Marriage, Family, And Law In Medieval Europe

Michael M. Sheehan

Edited by James K. Farge

pp xxxi330 Royal 8vo 1996 hardback
ISBN 0-7083-1354-X

'This collection of essays will be welcomed both by longstanding adherents of Sheehan's work and those as yet unacquainted with it. I can see it being used both as a scholar's reference book and as prescribed reading for many a student's course. ' (Medieval Life)

The sixteen studies in this book contain the fruits of a forty-year-long career of archival research and interpretation of documents on property, marriage, family, sexuality, and law in medieval Europe. Marked by an early orientation and developing focus on the status of women in the Middle Ages, the work of Michael Sheehan displays a unique tapestry of the social and legal realities of medieval marriages and family life. The unique feature of Michael Sheehan's work was his juxtaposition of evidence about medieval life, drawn from records of church courts, with the statements of canon and civil law of medieval Europe. With this methodology and insightful interpretation, Michael Sheehan was able to throw light on the way marriage and family life both influenced and was influenced by evolving definitions of law.

'This collection of Father Sheehan's articles and papers will be a valuable resource, I believe, for virtually every serious scholar who deals with the intersection of law and society in medieval Europe.' James A. Brundage, Ahmanson-Murphy Distinguished Professor of History, University of Kansas

Because of the nature of his sources, Michael Sheehan was one of the first social historians to appreciate the importance of what we now call "women's history." The role of women in medieval social and economic life is almost always either the major theme or an underlying sub-theme of these articles. The studies are models of methodology and interpretion, and continue to inspire the work of both students and mature scholars.

Until his death, Michael Sheehan was Senior Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto.

Contents:

• Foreword - James K. Farge
• Introduction - Joel T. Rosenthal
• Report of a Thesis on the Will in Medieval England
• A List of Thirteenth-Century English Wills
• The Influence of Canon Law on the Property Rights of Married Women in England
• Canon Law and English Institutions: Some Notes on Current Research
• The Formation and Stability of Marriage in Fourteenth-Century England: Evidence of an Ely Register
• Marriage and Family in English Conciliar and Synodal Legislation
• Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages: Development and Mode of Application of a Theory of Marriage
• Marriage Theory and Practice in the Conciliar Legislation and Diocesan Statutes of Medieval England
• The Wife of Bath and Her Four Sisters: Reflections on a Woman's Life in the Age of Chaucer
• English Wills and the Records of the Ecclesiastical and Civil Jurisdictions
• Theory and Practice: Marriage of the Unfree and the Poor in Medieval Society
• The European Family and Canon Law
• `Maritalis affectio' Revisited
• The Bishop of Rome to a Barbarian King on the Rituals of Marriage
• Sexuality, Marriage, Celibacy, and the Family in Central and Northern Italy: Christian Legal and Moral Guides in the Early Middle Ages
• The Bequest of Land in England in the High Middle Ages: Testaments and the Law
• Bibliography of Michael M. Sheeham, CSB Compiled by Mary C. English and James K. Farge

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