THE RULES AND THEIR APPLICATION

Our examination in some depth of marriage litigation in five medieval church courts has revealed relatively few cases that dealt with the complicated rules, outlined in Chapter 1, about the marriage of relatives. This finding may be surprising to some readers. A view popularized by F. W. Maitland in a footnote (but which had roots going back to the Reformation) holds that the medieval incest rules were so complicated and so extensive that all medieval marriages were dissoluble as a practical matter, because virtually any couple could get a divorce by showing some hitherto unsuspected relationship between them. This view was founded on more than speculation. Medieval history offers a number of examples of highly visible divorces granted or sought on the ground of incest: Robert the Pious and Bertha of Burgundy in the eleventh century, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France in the twelfth, Philip Augustus and Ingeborg of Denmark in the thirteenth.

Even before the analyses presented in this book, research had cast considerable doubt upon this view. What research had shown was the danger of writing legal history from causes célèbres. The visible is not necessarily the usual; high politics affects both the law and its application in ways that make it difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the normal from the spectacular.