Marjorie Chibnall
In discussing the legal norms regulating marriage in medieval society, James Brundage observed that they were both sacred and secular, “controlled in part by the legal norms and courts of the church and in part by the customary law of the earthly kingdom.”1 Though he was concerned specially with the “intersection of the two jurisdictions” in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, his comments could be applied to other aspects of canon law in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. While Orderic Vitalis would have been the first to claim that he was no legal specialist, he was too nearly concerned with the reforms that were gradually introducing changes in the Church and with the problems of inheritance and marriage experienced by the patrons and monks he encountered in his daily life not to include much that was relevant in his Ecclesiastical History. In several places he copied some of the canons of provincial and general councils; and throughout his work he unconsciously reflected the views of men, whether knights or monks, he met. So he gives hints both of the methods by which reforming canons circulated and of the leisurely pace with which changes in law and custom became accepted in Norman society. He wrote, in brief, at “the intersection of the two jurisdictions,” and because of this his book contains a certain amount of relevant information.
Before the formal promulgation of the canons of ecumenical councils became established, their appearance in the works of chroniclers was haphazard, and the same applies to the canons of provincial synods.2 Orderic gave most prominence to the 1095 Council of Clermont and the 1119 Council of Reims, both of which were attended by representatives from Norman dioceses and abbeys; he himself, indeed, may have been at the Council of Reims, and if not he certainly had the report of an eye-witness. The Second Lateran Council in 1139 took place when his historical work was nearing completion, and it received more summary treatment; he said little more than that many decretals were published, but they produced very little effect.3 There are passing and insubstantial references to some other councils, such as the council of Pisa; but as their legislation like that of Piacenza (1095) and Rome (1099) was often absorbed into the general canonical tradition, knowledge of them mostly reached Normandy indirectly.4 Some of their decrees were repeated in the synods of the province of Rouen, which were frequent from the 1050s, or in the English provincial and diocesan councils, which became more frequent after 1066.5 Orderic recorded the canons of two or three Norman councils almost fully, and gave brief summaries of others that were relevant to matters of particular moment in Normandy, or that touched his own monastery of Saint-Évroult. He also recorded legal disputes that for a time made a direct impact on the daily life of his fellow monks, even if they were too localized to give rise to immediate legislation. They had, however, some influence on the formation of canonical tradition. When they are compared with similar references in the work of English historians, they illustrate some of the regional differences affecting the slow spread of new canon law and the effects of the strengthening of the hierarchy that resulted from recent reforms.
In preserving and commenting on some of the records of councils and synods, Orderic has shown something of the workings of these assemblies in a formative period. His Ecclesiastical History has been quarried by writers on canon law, notably Robert Somerville, to elucidate procedure, and there is no need to dwell on Orderic’s modest contribution towards the reconstruction of the business of the great councils such as Clermont in 1095 and Reims in 1119.6 Orderic depended for his information on the documents circulated to participants in these assemblies and many of the scita recorded were actually synopses of more detailed canons, or drafts of canons to be discussed and refined later. As an historian, however, he added details of procedure and some of the business transacted during the sessions of these assemblies, known to him through participants. At Reims in particular he described the seating and named officials taking part in the promulgation of the canons. He also described some individual pleas brought before the pope as part of the curial business. These included the plea by the countess of Poitou, who had been abandoned by her husband. Consideration was postponed because of her husband’s alleged illness, and a date was fixed when he should appear and either take back his lawful wife or suffer excommunication. The fact that a woman, especially one of high standing should be able to initiate legal proceedings is not surprising; ecclesiastical courts were more ready than secular to admit women in their business.7
Orderic also followed-up the business when it was continued in Norman provincial synods, and in doing so he indicated the importance of pastoral legislation alongside better known rulings on matters that concerned both church and state, such as investiture or the strengthening of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He wrote with knowledge of the reports of older eye-witnesses, and of records going back before 1066 in both England and Normandy. So he was able to show some of the effects of the Norman conquest in slowly producing a common practice that still left room for some differences in regional customs.
The first canons copied by Orderic were those of the 1072 provincial synod of Rouen. Called with the encouragement of the duke, it was held under the presidency of John, archbishop of Rouen. Its concern was with church discipline and ritual, fasts and the proper way to administer the sacraments. It was also one of a series of councils condemning the marriage of the clergy. Although it took place over 20 years after the great reforming council held at Reims by Leo IX, it falls into the category of regular local assemblies inspired by an important papal council. Unlike the later council of Lillebonne, whose canons were recorded by Orderic, amongst others, its business is known only from him;8 and it is evidence of the early reform movement in Normandy, in which both the duke and the bishops participated.
Orderic also noted the Norman sequel to the ecumenical councils of Clermont and Reims. As he relates, Odo bishop of Bayeux, Gilbert of Évreux, and Serlo of Sées, who had been personally present at Clermont, brought back letters that caused Archbishop William to summon a provincial synod to Rouen to confirm and record the papal decrees. The most important canons listed gave details of the enforcement of the Truce of God. Other canons forbade the holding of tithes, burial dues or oblations of the altar by laymen, and touched the burning question of the performance of homage by priests to laymen. This was forbidden at Rouen; but fealty was permitted if necessary for the lord’s safety. Orderic also described the procedure for promulgating the conciliar decrees; they were read out by some dignitary other than the president and confirmed by the archbishop and other prelates. By this time, however, William the Conqueror was dead, order had broken down under Duke Robert Curthose, and Orderic noted bitterly that these sound laws, promulgated with the best intentions, remained almost without effect.9
The immediate follow-up to the 1119 Council of Reims was at first even less effective. A council at Rouen was held by the fiery Breton archbishop, Geoffrey, and his passionate denunciation of any cohabitation with women provoked a riot. It was suppressed with such violence that proceedings had to be abandoned.10 Orderic gave no details of the other measures discussed; but since his description of the violence of the archbishop’s retainers mentions an unprovoked attack on two mature and pious old priests, who were quietly discussing confession and other similar topics, it seems likely that some of the business of the aborted council was pastoral. When another council was held at Rouen in 1128, it was summoned by King Henry I, and the papal legate, Matthew bishop of Albano, presided over its orderly proceedings. The prohibition of marriage was then applied only to priests, not to those in minor orders: an indication of the strong feeling that forced the introduction of the reform to be made in stages. Other canons dealt with the holding of tithes by monks. Orderic noted that King Henry was present as protector of the abbots and did not allow any burden to be imposed on them by the bishops.11
Orderic’s information came from Norman bishops, and he was not directly concerned with English provincial councils such as that of London in 1102.12 The condemnation of long hair was known directly in Normandy through the 1096 synod of Rouen, though possibly the London council inspired the dramatic scene in the church at Carenton, in 1105, when King Henry was moved by bishop Serlo’s denunciation of long hair to have his own hair and that of his knights cropped on the spot.13 What Orderic does show is the slow, piecemeal penetration of reforming canons into the dioceses. In doing so, he sometimes goes into detailed discussion of matters that impinged on the lives of Norman, but not English, monks. One of these was the question of written professions of obedience by abbots, which some bishops were demanding in the process of strengthening the hierarchy.
Unlike William of Malmesbury, Eadmer of Canterbury, Hugh the Chanter, and other chroniclers writing in England, Orderic had no interest whatsoever in the question of the primacy of Canterbury and the struggle of archbishops from Lanfranc onwards to exact written professions of obedience from the archbishops of York.14 Lanfranc was particularly strongly influenced by the legislation of the early Spanish church, and knew canon 10 of the eleventh council of Toledo, which expressed a widely-held view of the relation of a prelate to his superior. It did not become formally incorporated in the law of the Church until Gratian introduced it into his Decretum.15 But it helped to shape principles that were becoming accepted in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In Normandy disputes arose from the attempts by some bishops to exact written professions from abbots. The trouble, however, may have been due to the indirect influence of Lanfranc’s views. Written professions of obedience to their metropolitan had existed in the Anglo-Saxon church, but had become rare in the eleventh century. Lanfranc made a vigorous new beginning and, after initial difficulties, secured a provisional written profession from Thomas, archbishop of York.16 Although his attitude towards abbots is scanty, the earliest surviving written professions begin in 1070 with the profession of Scolland, abbot elect of St Augustine’s Canterbury.17 It ran, “Ego Scollandus ecclesiae beatorum Petri et Pauli et Sancti Augustini electus Abbas profiteor sancta dorobernensi ecclesiae eiusque vicariis canonicam subiectionem.” When it was issued Lanfranc had been blessed as archbishop, but had not yet received his pallium, so subjection was promised to the church of Canterbury, not to the archbishop. For a similar reason—a vacancy of the see—the profession of Scolland’s successor Guy in 1089 used the same words.18 The only difficulties in obtaining the admission of Abbot Hugh in 1124 arose over the place where he ought to be blessed. The regular series of professions from other abbots in the diocese of Canterbury, beginning with Faversham in 1147, show acceptance of the archbishop’s demands and contain essential formulae, with the addition sometimes of further information. Clarembald of Faversham gave a definition of the obedience due to ecclesiastical superiors: “Quisque a subditis suis subiectionis et obedientie reverentiam sibi exhiberi desiderat, prelatis suis iustum et rationabile est ut et ipse eam exhibeat, sic maioribus membris membra minora convenient sic omnis caput suum consentit.”19
In Normandy the first indication of any attempt to exact a written profession of obedience from an abbot was in the diocese of Bayeux in 1088. The bishop was Odo, recently returned from England, where, as earl of Kent, he would have been familiar with the views of Lanfranc. Odo demanded a written profession of obedience from Arnulf, bishop elect of Troarn, before he would consent to bless him. Arnulf appealed to Anselm, then abbot of Bec, for advice; and Anselm, who had never himself been asked for any such thing when he became abbot, replied by setting out the characteristic Benedictine line on the duty of obedience by monks: once obedience had been promised orally and not renounced, any repetition in writing would be superfluous.20 Monks who made their profession on conversion to the monastic life, as prescribed in the Regula Sancti Benedicti, promised obedience, not only to their abbot as long as they remained in the monastery, but to all their superiors for life. So, after a monk had written and read out his profession, and had not renounced it, to ask for a repetition would be superfluous. Besides this, among the monks of Bec, the monastic profession was then regarded as equivalent to a second baptism, not to be repeated. Anselm’s friend and fellow monk, Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster, also claimed that the monastic profession was a kind of baptism, a “baptism of penitence.”21
These views were developed in an anonymous treatise written, probably in the mid-twelfth century, by a monk of Bec.22 At Bec the views were held so strongly that disputes occurred over the elections of the next two abbots. These were settled only after the intervention, first of Robert Curthose as duke of Normandy and then of King Henry I, both sympathetic to the monks.23 The attitude of Anselm, known and revered at Saint-Évroult, certainly caused similar difficulties in two abbatial elections there.
Orderic has described the difficulties, real but less lasting, which he knew at first hand. His account of the election of Serlo as abbot in 1089 was in the last part of his holograph, and the twelfth-century copy made at Saint-Etienne, Caen, omitted some details.24 But Anselm was present at Serlo’s election, and must have been consulted. Orderic, in a back reference written later, stated that Serlo “cenobites duabus annis sine benedictione prefuit, quia Uticensi aecclesiae professionem facere recusavit.”25 When, in 1091, he was succeeded by Roger of Le Sap, Roger repeated the refusal. Although Robert Curthose invested him with temporal authority by means of the pastoral staff, Roger ruled the monks without ever carrying it for seven years. Bishop Gilbert’s obstinate refusal was overcome only when King William II ordered him “ut mores quos antecessors eius in Normannia sub patre suo tenuerunt observaret, et abbatem sine alicuius novitatis exactione consecraret.”26 The benediction was then carried out after the letter of the convent of Saint-Évroult, originally written in the hope of announcing the election seven years previously, had at long last been read out in public. When Roger finally retired in 1123 and Warin of Les Essarts was elected to succeed him, the approval of John bishop of Lisieux was secured before a delegation of monks crossed the Channel to seek out Henry I in England, and there was no further trouble.27 By then procedures had been changed and clarified. Yet it is possible that Orderic remembered the earlier troubles and the benefit of royal protection, when he wrote of the 1128 council of Rouen that the king was present as protector of the abbots, and would not allow the bishops to impose any burdens on them.28
What Orderic records is the confusion and inconvenience of the years of transition. The question of a profession of obedience to the diocesan bishop had been caught up in the much larger question of the share of a lay lord in the election and investiture of a bishop. This was exacerbated by the confusion of symbols, since in the late eleventh century investiture with the temporalities of an abbey might be made by handing over the pastoral staff, more properly used for admission to the spiritualities by the diocesan bishop.29 By the mid-twelfth century it was generally accepted that the profession of obedience made by an abbot to his diocesan involved only limited legal obligations. Moreover, the liturgical ceremonial was becoming more standardized, with the possibility for lay involvement greatly reduced.30
Orderic’s interest was that of a monk, deeply concerned with matters affecting the life of his own abbey, from the process of electing an abbot to the details of everyday ritual. Many of these did not come within the scope of canon law. He lived through a time when local variation was still acceptable in some liturgical matters. As V. Leroquais observed, “À cette époque chaque diocese, chaque ordre religieux, possédait sa liturgie particuliére. Et en l’espèce, son missel special.”31 Greater uniformity was to be introduced into liturgy, as into law, only very gradually.
Likewise, in other matters of wider interest uniformity came only slowly, if at all; and legislation, when necessary, took time to become effective at the grass roots. Orderic provides a touchstone of local acceptance, and shows the attitudes of individuals who were directly concerned. He reflects the views of the secular lords and knights he knew, no less than those of monks and bishops. Marriage and property rights connected with marriage were among the topics of concern in both secular and ecclesiastical courts.
Ecclesiastical law, as it developed in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries stressed the importance of consent between the contracting parties and the indissolubility of unions. Georges Duby’s claim that the ecclesiastical model, which emphasized consent,32 had triumphed at the turn of the century, has been challenged by James Brundage, with evidence of the much later persistence of the lay view in some places.33 Orderic’s Historia Ecclesiastica, written mainly in the third and fourth decades of the twelfth century about events some 30 years previously, also shows some signs of the slowness with which changes regarded as desirable in canon law affected actual practice. In this formative period the views of canonists on the proper form of a legal marriage and on grounds for annulment still varied, and compromise with the secular law was usually possible. The prohibition of marriage within seven degrees of consanguinity was known in northern France and Normandy through synodal decrees, but would have imposed intolerable restrictions on a large number of royal and aristocratic marriages had it been strictly applied, especially when it was advantageous to both parties. A long-standing family feud might be ended through “the sweetness of a marriage alliance,” regardless of the kinship between the two families.34 The prohibition would be relaxed with papal permission, and in practice many marriages between kinsfolk were never challenged. Their legitimacy was usually ignored, unless one party wished to prevent or terminate a union, and then appeal had to be made to the pope, who tended to take a pragmatic view of the affair. Influence could be very important in determining the outcome. As for consent, it was desirable but rarely invoked in legal actions. Certainly nothing that Orderic wrote suggests that lack of consent might invalidate a marriage, however reprehensible morally. He suggested that the marriage of King David of Scotland’s son Henry to Adela of Warenne had political advantages, but also (indicating consent) that Henry passionately desired to marry her.35 But his treatment of the marriage of an heiress, Bertrade of Montfort, who was a minor, to Fulk of Anjou, indicates only that the consent of her kinsfolk was necessary. This was in line with the promise, made later by King Henry I when he took the English throne, that wardships should be granted to kinsfolk, without mentioning the possible wishes of the ward.36 Here, certainly, the secular view that tried to balance the interests of a lord with those of a family in the distribution of family property ignored the individual’s consent, however desirable in ecclesiastical law.
Bertrade’s marriage attracted the attention of chroniclers because of the sequel, when a few years later she absconded with the married king of France. This led to ecclesiastical denunciation and intermittent excommunication; but there was some uncertainty about whether King Philip’s renunciation of his previous wife was lawful, and about his exact marital status at the time of his death.37 On this Orderic was imprecise, though his moral stance was somewhat clearer. His description of Bertrade’s initial marriage to Fulk is bitter and scathing; he makes it clear that her uncle and guardian, William count of Évreux, and William’s overlord, Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, were influenced entirely by their family and proprietary interests. The imaginary speech attributed to William, when Duke Robert asked him to consent to the marriage, begins by paying lip-service to Bertrade’s interests: “My lord duke, you ask something that is repugnant to me, for you wish me to give my niece, who was entrusted to my guardianship by my brother-in-law and is a young virgin, in marriage to a man who has already been twice married.” But the remainder of the speech is concerned simply to get the best possible territorial bargain: “You wish me to use my niece as a pawn to take away my inheritance from me. Is this just?” William then lists the properties claimed by him and his nephew, William of Breteuil, which had been taken from them and might be proved to be theirs by hereditary right. Orderic further enlarges on the unhappy lot of Bertrade, to be handed over in marriage to “a man with many reprehensible, even scandalous, habits, who gave way to many pestilential vices.”38 His sympathy, however, ended when Bertrade escaped from her husband by going through a form of marriage with the king of France; and his condemnation then was unqualified: “So the absconding concubine left the adulterous count and lived with the adulterous king until death parted them.” These words were written later, when the union was generally condemned; at the time, in 1092, many of the French bishops hesitated to condemn Philip’s repudiation of his first wife as invalid. Perhaps Orderic was influenced by the views of Ivo of Chartres, who had refused to recognize Philip’s marriage unless the pope sanctioned it.39 Both Orderic and William of Malmesbury assigned the initiative in the marriage to Bertrade.40 Neither chronicler succeeded in reconciling canon law, morality, individual consent, and secular advantage in this difficult case.
Orderic was more directly concerned with the legality of marriage within the prohibited degrees when it affected Anglo-Norman ambitions, especially when there was an appeal to the pope. He spelled out in detail the genealogy that enabled Henry I to prevent the marriage of his nephew, William Clito, to Sibyl, daughter of Fulk of Anjou. He openly described the methods by which King Henry secured a judgment advantageous to himself: “King Henry with great pertinacity … broke off the intended marriage, using threats and pleas and great quantities of gold and silver … He sent cunning advocates to allege consanguinity between the parties, with the result that it was ruled that they ought not to be married by Christian law.”41 Details of the family tree were then given. Orderic must have been very well aware that exactly the same objections applied to the marriage a few years later of Henry I’s daughter Matilda to Fulk’s son Geoffrey; but this was never challenged in the papal court, and the future succession to the English throne depended on it. Whenever a papal ruling existed, he was prepared to state the grounds for the pope’s decision, without drawing attention to any wider implications. He never openly questioned a papal decision, even when hinting at bribery and corruption. There had to be a compromise between the slow struggle of the learned law to win recognition and the practical needs and customs of secular society.
Although reports of events in the crusader states reached Orderic, they were too vague for his comments to have any value for legal history. He knew that the marriage of convenience between Adelaisia, the widow of Count Roger I of Sicily, and King Baldwin I in 1113 did not last; but he probably had neither the interest nor the knowledge to investigate whether Baldwin’s previous marriage had ever been legally dissolved. He merely alleged that Baldwin needed her wealth to pay his stipendiary troops, and repudiated the “mulierem veri vetustate rugosam et pluribus criminum nevis infamem.”42 There is here just a hint of the overriding importance of military strength in the embattled kingdom; no more than that. Secular pressures in that region were particularly strong.
Here, as elsewhere, the comprehensive range of Orderic’s attempt to record the whole history of the Christian church and all its members, lay and ecclesiastical, in so far as he was able, is apparent; but its content is of variable value to the legal historian. For distant regions his information was scant; nearer home his informants brought him a mass of material. This ranges from written records, sometimes themselves merely summaries and the reports of eye-witnesses, with all the limitations these involved, to details that were known to him from his own experience, and that sometimes had repercussions outside the walls of his own abbey. Nevertheless, for all its limitations his Historia Ecclesiastica always repays careful sifting.
1 James A. Brundage, “Marriage Law in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in B.Z. Kedar, H.E. Mayer, and R.C. Smail (eds), Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem, presented to Joshua Prawer (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 258–271.
2 See, Robert Somerville, The Councils of Urban II: 2, Decreta Claromontensis, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum Supplementum (Amsterdam, 1972).
3 The Ecclesiastical History of [O]rderic [V]italis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (6 vols, Oxford, 1969–1980), vol. 5, pp. 10–14; vol. 6, pp. xix–xxi, 252–276, 528–530.
4 Robert Somerville, “The Presentation of the Canons of Piacenza (March 1095): An Overview, Baronius to Weiland,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 27–28 (1995–1996): pp. 193–207.
5 R. Foreville, “The Synod of the Province of Rouen in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in C.N.L. Brooke, D.E. Luscombe, et al. (eds), Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C.R. Cheney (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 19–39.
6 Somerville, Councils of Urban II, pp. 23–29, 83–98.
7 OV, vol. 6, pp. 258–260. For women as witnesses in the ecclesiastical court of Canterbury, see Select Cases from the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury c. 1200–1301, eds Norma Adams and Charles Donahue, Jr., Seldon Society, 95 (London, 1981), pp. 26–27, 29–30.
8 OV, vol. 3, p. 25, n. 3; p. 26, n. 1.
9 OV, vol. 5, p. 24.
10 OV, vol. 6, pp. 290–294.
11 OV, vol. 6, pp. 388–390. The background to the 1128 canon regulating the holding of tithes and offerings by monks is given by Giles Constable, Monastic Tithes from Their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1964), esp. pp. 89–98.
12 Councils and Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, vol. 1, part 2: 1066–1204, eds Dorothy Whitelock, M. Brett, and C.N.L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), pp. 674–683.
13 OV, vol. 6, pp. 60–68.
14 Karl Schnith, “Die Englischen Geschichtsschreibung,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 12 (1980): pp. 183–197, esp. 190–192; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, eds R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), p. 535.
15 Michael Richter, Canterbury Professions, Canterbury and York Society, 67 (Torquay, 1973), pp. xii–xvii.
16 Richter, Canterbury Professions, pp. xlvii–lvii.
17 C.E. Woodruff, “Some Early Professions of Obedience to the See of Canterbury by Heads of Religious Houses,” Archaeologica Cantiana, 37 (1925): p. 60.
18 Ibid., p. 61.
19 Ibid., pp. 64–66.
20 Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt (6 vols, Edinburgh, 1946–1961), vol. 3, p. 123.
21 The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, eds Anna Sapir Abulafia and G.R. Evans, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi (Oxford, 1986), pp. 89–94.
22 A. Wilmart, “Les oeuvres d’un moine du Bec: Un débat sur la profession monastique au XII siècle,” Revue Bénédictine, 44 (1932): pp. 30–36.
23 Vita venerabilis Willelmi Beccensis tertii abbatis, in Migne (ed.), PL, vol. 159, cols 713–723; Vita venerabilis Bosonis abbatis Beccensis quarti, in Migne (ed.), PL, vol. 150, cols 723–734, at 727–729; De libertate Beccensis monasterii, in Jean Mabillon (ed.), Annales Ordines Sancti Benedicti (Paris, 1713), vol. 5, pp. 635–640; (rpt, Lucca, 1740), vol. 5, 601–605. Giles Constable and Bernard S. Smith have edited and translated the De libertate; see Three Treatises from Bec on the Nature of Life (Toronto, 2008), pp. 136–169.
24 OV, vol. 4, p. 265, n. 3.
25 OV, vol. 5, pp. 260–262.
26 OV, vol. 5, p. 262.
27 OV, vol. 6, pp. 320–326.
28 See above, n. 11.
29 OV, vol. 5, p. 262, n. 2, n. 3; J. Yver, “Autour de L’absence d’avouerie en Normandie,” Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 57–59 (1963–1964), pp. 271–279.
30 See Richter, Canterbury Professions, pp. lxxv–lxxvii.
31 V. Leroquais, Les sacramentaires et les missels manuscripts des bibliothèques publiques de France (3 vols, Paris-Macon, 1924), vol. 1, p. x.
32 Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. E. Forster (Baltimore, MD, 1978); see also Charles Donahue, Jr., “The Policy of Alexander the Third’s Consent Theory of Marriage,” in Stephan Kuttner (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Vatican City, 1976), pp. 251–291.
33 James A. Brundage, “Matrimonial Politics in Thirteenth-Century Aragon: Moncado v. Urgel,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31 (1980): pp. 271–282 at pp. 271–272.
34 OV, vol. 4, pp. 200–202.
35 OV, vol. 6, pp. 522–524.
36 See the charter issued by Henry I in 1100, F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols, Halle, 1903–1916), vol. 1, p. 521.
37 Duby, Medieval Marriage, pp. 29–45; Christopher N.L. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989), pp. 122–123.
38 OV, vol. 4, pp. 182–187.
39 OV, vol. 4, pp. 260–262; Yves de Chartres, Correspondence, ed. J. Leclercq (Paris, 1949), pp. 118–119, no. 28.
40 Malmesbury, Gesta regum, vol. 1, p. 438.
41 OV, vol. 6, pp. 164–166.
42 OV, vol. 6, p. 432.