What is Going On Back in the Middle Ages?

New blog on the kid: Russia and US - Abortions · Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Charlotte of Savoy married the future Lewis XI of France when she was 9 - what about her ancestry? · What is Going On Back in the Middle Ages?

I am not sure why I get 14 women and 16 men in these marriages. We can rule out the idea of gay marriage directly, even a momentary sodomy would have got people executed back then. I probably did some mistake. Not sure which one. However, I think it may give a fairly good idea of what ages people were married back then, even so.

Before looking at the statistics, please note, some ages are not canonic. Let us take a look:

I answer that, Since marriage is effected by way of a contract, it comes under the ordinance of positive law like other contracts. Consequently according to law (cap. Tua, De sponsal. impub.) it is determined that marriage may not be contracted before the age of discretion when each party is capable of sufficient deliberation about marriage, and of mutual fulfilment of the marriage debt, and that marriages otherwise contracted are void. Now for the most part this age is the fourteenth year in males and the twelfth year in women: but since the ordinances of positive law are consequent upon what happens in the majority of cases, if anyone reach the required perfection before the aforesaid age, so that nature and reason are sufficiently developed to supply the lack of age, the marriage is not annulled. Wherefore if the parties who marry before the age of puberty have marital intercourse before the aforesaid age, their marriage is none the less perpetually indissoluble.

My emphasis. It is from Tertiae Partis Supplementum, Quaestio 58, Article 5. I have cited only the corpus of the article. Now, two or three** of the following ladies married before 12 and one man (a King to be, Lewis XI), before 14.

09 10 11 12 12 12 14 15 15 16 17 19 23 24
09 10 12 12 14 14 14 15 15 16 17 19 23 24
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14

13 15 16 16 17 17 19 20 20 20 21 21 24 27 27 36
13 16 16 16 17 19 20 20 20 21 21 21 27 27 27 36
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

So, what is going on?

Were European monarchies run by people like Epstein? Were young brides married off for the fun of tormenting the female gender? Not the least.

Getting married in your teens was simply considered normal. And while they had much more tolerance than the modern world for youth on the wedding night, they had, in return, zero tolerance for abortion. Not only a single act of sodomy, as already mentioned, but also a single killing of someone not born, could land you on the road to a very quick démise. Not modern death row, where lawyers may protract the anguish by searching for signs of insanity (which might land someone out of death penalty), but quickly executed death penalty.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
IV. Sunday after Easter
2.V.2021

* Tertiae Partis Supplementum, Quaestio 58, Article 5.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5058.htm#article5

** Some persons have two alternative or a range of alternative birth years, and in those cases, I have taken extreme age possibilities making two different lists per sex. This is typical of the Middle Ages.