The Legal Betrothal

A New Legal Concept in Protocols with Marriage Judgments from the Cathedral Chapter of Lund, 1577–1579 and 1589–1597

Abstract

The Marriage Ordinance issued by King Frederik II in 1582 made betrothal mandatory in Denmark. If a couple wanted to marry, they first had to be betrothed in the presence of a priest and at least five witnesses. This article investigates the background of this introduction of mandatory betrothals by conducting a detailed study of 33 cases of contested betrothals found in a court record book from 1577–1579 kept by the cathedral chapter in Lund. In many cases, betrothals were contested as not being a formal betrothal in the presence of relatives and other witnesses, including an exchange of engagement gifts. Such informal betrothals represented the normal practice when a man was betrothed to a widow, and they constituted a problem for the cathedral chapter, which in such cases had to pass judgments. Problems also materialised as betrothals could be entered into based on certain conditions; for instance, when a widow promised to marry a man if he would take over and rent her copyhold farm from the landowner.

The number of problems involved in making judgments in such cases increased after the Reformation, as Protestant marriage law continued to uphold the old Canon Law rule from the Middle Ages, stating that a valid marriage had been established if a betrothal was followed by sexual intercourse. However, the most fundamental problem was that Danish secular law did not have any single, secure criterion defining when a betrothal was valid. As a result, the traditional forms of betrothal were regulated by customs, where the most common custom was that engagement gifts had to be exchanged.

The Marriage Ordinance of 1582 stated that a valid betrothal required the presence of a priest and at least five witnesses. After conducting a detailed study of the court record book from 1577–1579, I carried out a more cursory investigation of a later court record book from the chapter in Lund, covering the years 1589–1597. Here, a new concept appears, namely that of a legal betrothal. The judgments in the later record book show that betrothals were only valid if they were performed in the presence of a priest – meaning that the requirement in the Marriage Ordinance that at least five witnesses were to be present was not observed by the chapter in Lund. The article thus concludes that after 1582, the presence of a priest was the sine qua non of a valid betrothal.