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

ecclesiastical courts. The Church emphasizes the distinction between these “words of the future” spoken at the betrothal and the “words of the present” that will be said at the wedding, but sometimes couples consider themselves married when they are no more than betrothed, converting an engagement into a clandestine marriage, which one party may later find easy to dissolve.
    The priest asks the prospective groom, “Do you promise that you will take this woman to wife, if the Holy Church consents?” He addresses the girl similarly. The couple exchange rings, and the banns are published on three successive Sundays. Weddings cannot take place during Advent and the twelve days of Christmas, or during Lent, or between Ascension Sunday and the week of Pentecost.
    On the day of the wedding, the bride’s mother and sisters and some of her friends help her to dress. There is no special bridal costume. She simply wears her best clothes: her finest linen chemise; her best silk tunic, trimmed with fur, perhaps with a velvet surcoat over it, embroidered with gold thread; and a mantle edged with gold lace. On her head a small veil is held by a narrow gold band; on her feet are shoes of fine leather, worked with gold.
    The groom is also dressed in his best. As they ride to church, a little troop of jongleurs precedes them, playing on flute, viol, harp, and bagpipe. Behind ride parents and relatives and the other wedding guests. All along the way crowds gather to watch. In the square in front of the church everyone dismounts, and the priest steps out under the portico, carrying an open book and also the wedding ring.
    He interrogates the couple: Are they of age? Do they swear that they are not within the forbidden degree of consanguinity? Do their parents consent? Have the banns been published? Finally, do they themselves both freely consent? Taking each other’s right hand they repeat their vows.
    The priest delivers a short homily. A typical example, by Henri of Provins, dwells on religious education of children, domestic peace, and mutual fidelity. Henri observes that at the moment of the Flood, the Lord by preference saved married creatures; that if the blessed Virgin, the Queen of Paradise, had not been married God would not have been born from her womb; and that conjugal life represents a model of felicity in this world.
    The priest blesses the ring; the groom takes it and slips it in turn on each of three fingers of the bride’s left hand, saying, “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Finally he fits it onto her third finger, saying, “With this ring I thee wed.”
    Alms are distributed by the bride and groom to the poor who have collected outside the portico, and the wedding party enters the church. At this point, some ten years before in Dijon, a moneylender met with disaster at his wedding when one of the sculptures on the portico—a stone figure of a usurer in a Last Judgment scene—fell and struck him a fatal blow on the head with its purse. His relatives and friends obtained permission to demolish the other sculptures on the portico. 1
    By their exchange of promises, the young couple are married. After the nuptial mass, the groom receives the Kiss of Peace from the priest and transmits it to his bride. They leave the church, remount their horses, and the procession returns to the bride’s home, again led by the little troop of minstrels.
    A wedding feast in a wealthy burgher’s household is gargantuan, with wine by the barrel, legs of beef, mutton, veal and venison, capons, ducklings, chicken, rabbits, wafers from the wafer maker, spices, confections, oranges, apples, cheese, dozens of eggs, perhaps a boar’s head or a swan in its plumage. An array of extra servants is hired for the day—porters, cooks, waiters, carvers, stewards, a sergeant to guard the door, a chaplet maker to prepare garlands.
    Jongleurs 2 accompany the successive courses with music, and as soon as the