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Indissolubility 115
are probably looking at a relatively unbiased sample of what once was. . . .
Third, not only were relatively few cases of incest recorded, but there were
relativelyfewsuchcases....wecanprobablyrejectonceandforallthe
suggestion that all medieval marriages were de facto dissoluble because of
the incest rules.
These converging investigations discredit the view once current
that the forbidden degrees provided a let-out clause for most marriages
in the Middle Ages. Of course it is possible that despite Donahue’s
confidence more records may come to light and that these
might alter the picture. It is hard to know what may or may not
survive in Italy because it was normal for ordinary notaries to keep
ecclesiastical court records and to mingle them with perfectly secular
documents. So more Italian ecclesiastical court cases about
marriage will probably be found from time to time and it is possible
that they may lead future scholars to rethink Donahue’s verdict—
but it does not seem likely. One set of Italian church court records
that seems to have escaped the scholars just quoted reminds us
that consanguinity cases need not be about the couple’s desire to
get out of a marriage, for in an Asti case of 1265 it is just the
opposite. A married couple, Pietro Rugio and Agnesina Rugna,
were reported as being related in the forbidden degrees. There followed
an investigation. Seven witnesses bore out the accusation,
so the marriage was pronounced null. Then Pietro and Agnesina
appeared and said under oath that they did not know themselves
C. Donahue, Jr., ‘The Monastic Judge: Social Practice, Formal Rule, and
the Medieval Canon Law of Incest’, in P. Landau, with M. Petzolt (eds.), De iure
canonico medii aevi: Festschrift f•ur Rudolf Weigand (Studia Gratiana, 27; Rome,
1996), 49–69 at 55–6.
A case in point was drawn to my attention by Chris Wickham: marriage cases
mixed with records of debt etc. in the records of Guglielmo Cassinese towards the
end of the twelfth century: see Guglielmo Cassinese (1190–1192), ed. M. W. Hall,
H. C. Krueger, and R. L. Reynolds (2 vols.; Notai liguri del sec. XII, 2; Documenti
e studi per la storia del commercio e del diritto commerziale italiano, 12–13; Turin,
1938). This has some interesting cases (e.g. vol. ii, no. 1293, pp. 70–1; no. 1467, pp.
138–40; no. 1641, pp. 212–13), though they do not a·ect the argument of this book
either way.
Documenti capitolari del secolo XIII (1265–66, 1285–88, 1291, 1296–98), ‘a
cura di Pietro Dacquino’, ed. A. M. Cotto Meluccio (Asti, 1987). (Trevor Dean
directed me to this rich and fascinating set of documents.) The collection reinforces
the conclusions of Donahue, Weigand, et al. A search through the entries listed in
the index under ‘Cause matrimoniali’ did not reveal a single case of annulment on
grounds of consanguinity or anity. As with English material, to which these cases
bear a striking resemblance, the disputes seem to turn on the formation of marriage:
consent, pre-contract, etc. Ibid., nos. 74 and 75, pp. 36–7.