Free Life in a Medieval City by Frances Gies, Joseph Gies

I ran to the miller and got an iron bar to get it out.”
“Steeper and steeper,” said the king. “But continue.”
“When I came back an enormous wolf wanted to get my head out of the rock to eat it, but I gave him a blow with the iron bar so that a letter was forced out of his behind!”
“Very steep indeed!” cried the king. “But what did the letter say?”
“The letter said, sire, that your father was a miller’s apprentice at my grandfather’s house.”
“You’re a liar!” cried the king indignantly.
“Well, king, I have won,” said the shepherd. And that’s how the shepherd got the king’s daughter!

5.
    Weddings and Funerals
In the great hall there was much merry-making, each one contributing what he could to the entertainment: one jumps, another tumbles, another does magic; there is story-telling, singing, whistling, playing on the harp, the rote, the fiddle, the flute and pipe, singing and dancing. At the wedding that day everything was done which can give joy. Not a wicket or a gate was left closed; but the exits and entrances all stood ajar, so that no one, poor or rich, was turned away .
    — CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES in Eric et Enide
    M arriage in the thirteenth century normally unites people of the same class. But social mobility is present here as in all times. Marriages joining prosperous burgher families with the petty nobility are not uncommon. Marriage is also an avenue for an artisan to make his fortune; an alliance with a rich widow may mean a house in town, a stock of clothing belonging to the late husband, furniture, silver, and real estate.
    Arranged marriages are the rule, but the Church emphasizes consent. Its preachers heap scorn on marriages based exclusively on financial considerations. “One might as well publish the banns of Lord Such-and-Such with the purse of Madame So-and-So, and on the day of the wedding lead to the church not the fiancée but her money or her cows,” says the sharp-tongued Paris preacher Jacques de Vitry. By Church law, a bride must be at least twelve, a bridegroom fourteen. Consanguinity is taboo; bride and groom cannot be related in the fourth degree (until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 it was the seventh). The expression of the free accord of the two parties is the most important feature of the marriage ritual.
    Marriages are recognized between slaves, between freemen and serfs, between Catholics and heretics, or Catholics and excommunicants, but not between Christians and heathens, since the latter have not been baptized. Until the Fourth Lateran Council, marriage between an adulterer who became free to marry and his fellow-sinner was prohibited, as was marriage between an abductor and a victim he later set free; now both are permitted.
    Divorce (annulment) is rare. It is only permitted on the grounds that the union has broken one of the Church’s three laws on marriage—age, consent, and consanguinity. The intricacies of consanguinity sometimes provide a loophole toward annulment for the rich and powerful, but even they cannot easily get away with fraudulent claims. King Philip Augustus ran afoul of the Church when he sought to get rid of his Danish wife, and finally had to take her back.
    Marriages, at least those of the wealthy classes, have a legal as well as religious basis, with a contract drawn up by the notary specifying the bride’s dowry. The son and daughter of wealthy burghers may start life with a house, one or two small farm properties, some cash, and the rent from a house in town. The contract may also specify what property will be the bride’s after her husband’s death; if it does not, she automatically inherits one-third of his worldly goods.
    After the contract is drawn up, the next step is the betrothal, a religious ceremony of a solemnity approaching that of marriage itself. In fact, the similarity of the vows exchanged to those of the marriage ceremony gives rise to an awkward difficulty that results in many suits in the