Les couples clandestins devant la justice d'Eglise : réflexions sur la normalisation matrimoniale judiciaire dans la France du Nord-Ouest à la fin du Moyen Age

The purpose of this paper is to study how, why and to what ends men and women in Western France are summoned to appear by ecclesiastical judges in the Later Middle Ages for secret, irregular or so-called “clandestine” marriage. Some couples were brought before the court for a clandestine marriage, because of a lack of witnesses, banns, or certificates, or a lack of ceremony in facie ecclesie. They were sentenced to pay a pecuniary fine and, if consents had been proved, to solemnize their marriage afterwards. Some other people instituted proceedings in order to be recognized as the legal husband or wife of someone who wanted to marry someone else, or because they feared his or her partner might desert or their children might be considered as illegitimate. The lack of ceremony in many clandestine marriages could weaken matrimonial bounds. When the man and the woman did not question the reality of a marriage which was irregularly celebrated from the legal viewpoint, standing trial and being penalized could be a possible way to perfect afterwards matrimonial bounds which could have to be quickly contracted. The study of clandestine marriage involves considering many attitudes to the matrimonial norms (canonical, social) and their uses by the laity. Because of the variety of forms of this matrimonial infraction, one has to consider the variety of uses of justice by the laity: ecclesiastical judges condemned or putted in order; couples submitted or tried in a way to take advantages of legal proceedings