Untitled

Consummation 185
Stephen from him, indeed he says that in truth the aforesaid Stephen
was espoused to the daughter of the aforesaid Walter, and since the same
Stephen did not want to take his aforesaid wife home after he had espoused
her, until the aforesaid Walter paid him back twenty shillings that he owed
him...
Here a debt is the reason for the delay in consummating the marriage.
A legal way to end delay: the Audientia litterarum contradictarum
In such cases an enterprising spouse might have recourse to a routinized
procedure at the papal court. We know about it through
a formulary of the Audientia litterarum contradictarum, the papal
court that dealt with routine cases which would be passed on to
judges delegate. Di·erent form letters deal with several variants
of the problem. Thus, the girl might refuse to join her husband,
or her father might prevent her, or again the wife might use the
‘Et Alexander venit et de·endit vim et injuriam quando etc., et dicit quod nulla
catalla predicti Stephani ei detinet immo dicit quod revera predictus Stephanus
disponsavit filiam predicti Walteri, et quia idem Stephanus noluit predictam uxorem
suam postquam ipsam desponsaverat ad hospicium suum ducere donec predictus
Walterus redderet ei xx solidos quod ei debuit’ (The Roll and Writ File of the
Berkshire Eyre of 1248, ed. M. T. Clanchy (London, 1973), 195). I have used the
word ‘espoused’ to translate ‘desponsare’, to capture the ambiguity of a word which
can mean either ‘marry’ or ‘betroth’, but the use of the word ‘wife’, uxor, makes it
overwhelmingly probable that the espousal had been in words of the present tense,
so constituting the ‘ratification’ of a true marriage according to the Church.
On the system see P. Herde, Audientia litterarum contradictarum: Untersuchungen
•uber die p•apstlichen Justizbriefe und die p•apstliche Delegationsgerichtsbarkeit vom
13. bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (2 vols.; Bibliothek des deutschen historischen
Instituts in Rom, 31–2; T •ubingen, 1970). The system, which cannot be
described here, was a brilliant administrative creation, enabling a combination of
local knowledge and central authority hard to parallel in world history before the
twentieth century: though the English system of royal writs and local juries did
the same over a smaller geographical area. The formulary could be compared to a
register of writs in England.
Herde, Audientia litterarum contradictarum, ii. 298–302. One variant (ibid.,
K 155a, ii. 300–1) specifies that the marriage had been consummated. In the other
variants it would appear that it had not.
‘Episcopo. Sua nobis . . laicus petitione monstravit, quod, cum ipse cum M.
filia . . matrimonium per verba legitime contraxerit de presenti, eadem tamen M.
ab ipso non patitur se traduci.—mandamus, quatinus, si est ita, predictam M.,
quod ab eodem viro se traduci libere patiatur, monitione premissa per censuram
ecclesiasticam, sicut iustum fuerit, appellatione remota compellas’ (ibid., K 152,
ii. 298).
‘Episcopo. Conquestus est nobis . . laicus, quod, licet ipse cum M. muliere . .
diocesis matrimonium legitime per verba contraxerit de presenti, tamen eadem ab