The ‘union and joining of a man and a woman for life’ (Scheltema and van der Wal 1962: B.28.4.1) linked the families of origin of the man and woman and constituted a new family whose descendants were connected by blood and by economic rights with the families of their mother and father. Marriages were arranged by the parents of the children or another relative (Patlagean 1996: 483) and were accompanied by the obligatory ‘gift’ of a dowry {proix) for both children (Macrides 1992b: 94). Although the legal age for a marriage was 13 for a girl and 15 for a boy, evidence from civil and ecclesiastical court cases shows that, in practice, girls especially were married at a much younger age (Laiou 1984: 279, 283; Kiousopoulou 1990: 29; Macrides 1992a: 273). The impetus behind such early marriages, attested at all levels of society and for all periods, was the desire, on the part of the parent or another relative, to secure the child’s future before a parent’s (premature) death. Indeed, in 40 per cent of cases from the registers of Chomatianos and Apokaukos, the first marriage was dissolved by the death of one of the spouses (Laiou 1984: 280). Eustathios Romaios, judge at the court of the Hippodrome in Constantinople in the eleventh century, declared in a decision collected in the Peira (17.14) that if offspring were to wait to reach the age of majority at 25 before marrying, they would be orphans (Zepos and Zepos 1931/1962:65).
A different source of pressure on a parent arranging an early marriage is described by a scholiast of the Ecloga Basilicorum (1142) at B.2.3.162. He claims that the emperor might marry his son to the 8- or lo-year-old daughter of an enemy ruler in order to prevent an attack on the empire; his subjects should not, however, imitate him, using his behaviour as an example, since he acted out of dire necessity (Burgmann 1988:147). Yet, while the circumstances behind the emperor’s contravention of the law might be politically pressing, it would be wrong to assume that his subjects’ reasons were any less strategic (Macrides 1992a: 263-80). The scholiast’s comments expose the parallels between the emperor’s behaviour and that of their subjects in marital alliances. The difference between them is in the eloquence of the imperial examples which reveal the circumstances and objectives of the marriage, while the court cases of the emperor’s subjects usually do not.
Examples of more parallels can be found. The emperor, like his subjects, sought to arrange marriages within the prohibited degrees of kinship to prevent the dispersal of wealth and power outside the family. One thirteenth-century writer defended such a marriage arranged by the emperor for his subject who was already related to him by marriage, by stating: ‘For even though it was prohibited by the Qiurch, it is allowed to the emperors for the sake of pubUc welfare and expediency (Laiou 1992:56). The emperor’s subjects likewise tried to contract these prohibited matrimonial unions. Their cases, before ecclesiastical and civil courts, proliferated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ‘at a time when matrimonial alliances became, for the aristocracy, one of the most powerful tools for developing and affirming its political power’ (Laiou 1992:21). But not all cases are from the aristocracy, although the overwhelming number are (Laiou 1992: 59-66). The prohibitions on marriage could also be used to call off a union should the need arise.
The marriage an emperor arranged for his subjects or his own children had as its object to obtain support, loyalty, and goodwill from the newly added family. Affines could be called upon to help each other. This point is made in a negative way by John Doukas when he advised the emperor Nikephoros Botaneiates to marry Maria ‘of the Alans’ because she was ‘a foreigner and did not have a crowd of relatives who would trouble the emperor’ (Macrides 1992a: 275; cf. Kazdan and Gmstable 1982:54).
Although the support was of a different order when non-imperial in-laws were concerned, cooperation and mutual economic support might be forthcoming in this case also. Examples of the involvement of relations-in-law in decisions concerning property are found in the patriarchal register. In a case of 1401, Gabriel, son of kyr Perios Lampadenos, wanted to buy his brother’s share in a field, to prevent an outsider from buying inherited family land. ‘The whole side (meros) of his wife’ suggested that he pawn dowry jewellery in order to accompUsh this. In another case of the same year, a cousin of Boullotes’ wife made Boullotes executor, heir, and caretaker of her soul (Macrides 1998:182).
Gift-giving was a major part of the formation of kin alliances. Parents or other relatives were obUged to provide the marriage gifts for their child, a dowry {proix) or a donatio propter nuptias (hypobolon), sometimes also referred to as a ‘dowry’ (Gedeon 1896: 114). The latter was originally of equal value with the woman’s dowry in Justinian’s legislation but was reduced to a half and then one-third of the value of the dowry by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Together these gifts constituted the marriage property of a couple. Cases from the patriarchal register show that dowries consisted of movable and immovable property (Macrides 1992b: 90, 94). Children who had been dowered might still hope to inherit from their parents. The marriage settlements on older children could, however, limit the dowries and inheritances of other children in the family, especially younger sons. Yet, according to the law, all the children of a marriage were entitled to a share in their parents’ property. How much they might inherit would depend on the number of children, the timing of their marriages, and their parents’ disposition towards them (Macrides 1992b: 96-8; Laiou 1998:135-6). Another limiting factor on the inheritance of children of a marriage was the birth of children from subsequent marriages. Eustathios Romaios is cited in the Peira (25.25) in support of a clandestine arrangement between a widow and her lover as preferable to a second marriage. He argues that a second marriage would reduce significantly the property of her children by the first marriage and would affect her feelings for them also (Zepos and Zepos 1931/1962: 98-9). In another case, a young man was being neglected by his widowed father because of his father’s love for his concubine {pallake) and their children. The son, deprived of food and shelter, was also unable to marry without a dowry (Macrides 1990:115 n. 74).
World History
