Skip to main content Skip to table of contents. Advertisement Hide. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Marriage, the Church, and its Judges in Renaissance Venice, Front Matter Pages i-xvii. Pages Witnesses and Testimony. Back Matter Pages About this book Introduction This book investigates the actions of marriage tribunals by analyzing the richest source of marriage suits extant in Italy, those of the Venetian ecclesiastical tribunal, between and the opening of the Council of Trent.
It offers a strongly representative overview of the changes the Council introduced to centuries-old marriage practices, relegating it to the realm of marginality and deviance and nearly erasing the memory of it altogether. Secular tribunals were responsible for patrimonial matters between spouses, though the Church at times inserted itself into these matters either directly, by substituting itself for the secular authority, or indirectly, by influencing Rulings through their own sentences.
Lay magistratures, for their part, somewhat eroded the authority of ecclesiastical tribunals by continuing to exercise autonomous jurisdiction over marriage, especially regarding separation and crimes strictly connected to the nuptial bond and its definition, including adultery, bigamy, and rape.
Buy options.
