Marriage Litigations from the 16th to the 19th Century. Regional and social Differentiation

The project applied for builds on the research findings and the knowledge acquired in the project Matrimony before the Court. Arenas of Conflict and Courses of Action from the 16th to the 19th Century (P 23394-G18). It focuses on marriage proceedings concerning an already existing marriage. Apart from divorce respectively separation proceedings it analyses proceedings aimed at determining the conditions of the marriage as well as the consequences of the divorce (alimony for the spouse and the children, the division of marital property and the custody of children). Due to the broad research field covered by the project, the results will be of interest for very different research disciplines and for the general public. Our thesis is that the religious affiliation (protestant, reformed, catholic) is only one - albeit important - element that determines the options of married women and men who did not want to live together or with her or his spouse any longer. Apart from age, gender and the position in the social space, varying matrimonial property and inheritance laws and different rules of dowry and of custody of children co-determined if a divorce was a conceivable option. For the investigation period before1783 our aim is first and foremost the localization and social positioning of the about 1,450 couples whose marriage litigations were identified in the minute books from the Upper Officialat of the diocese of Passau and the (arch)diocese of Vienna. We will then use the exceptional source transmission from the archducal cities respectively market towns of Eggenburg, Langenlois, Tulln and Perchtoldsdorf for micro historical case studies. To deepen our knowledge of the different procedural steps, we will study litigation files concerning couples of the Archduchy Austria above the Enns, kept at the archive of the bishopric of Passau. For the investigation period after 1783, when secular courts and the police took over marriage jurisdiction from the church, we will first examine the sources of the Viennese police authorities, kept at the NÖLA, on the couples already investigated by the previous project. We will then research the marriage proceedings at the magistrates of the four cities mentioned. To extend the focus to the more rural areas, we will take samples from local courts, incorporated in the archives of manorial estates. The sources from the Dioceses of Vienna and St. Pölten will allow us to find out if the Church courts, after the restoration of marriage jurisdiction in 1857, tried to build on their practices before 1783. Furthermore, the expert opinions of the Vienna medical faculty, kept at the University Archive, will be included for the entire study period. These sources, located at the intersection of justice and medicine, provide a new perspective on marriage. Regarding methodology, the project will follow to the well- tried research design of the previous project, combining in an innovative way discurse analysis and praxeological,, qualitative and quantitative approaches. The project applied for delivers fundamental research. It crosses the traditional line between "early modern" and "modern" and will provide regionally and socially differentiated knowledge on marriage conflicts and the options avasilable to quarreling spouses from the 16th to the 19th century.

th Starting in the 12 century the church had jurisdiction over matrimonial matters in Christianized Europe. The canonical matrimonial law required the married partners to live together and declared, with the theological argument that it was a sacrament, that a valid closed and consummated marriage was indissoluble. Married couples were not allowed to separate without the permission of the church. In order to receive the churchs permission to separate (limited time period) or to divorce (unlimited) from bed and board the canonical courts required the plaintiff to provide proof of legitimate grounds, for example danger of life and limb or adultery. The married parties who were granted a divorce of bed and board, were not allowed to remarry until the former spouse had died. After the Reformation the Protestant sovereigns increasingly put jurisdiction over matrimonial matters into the hands of the secular courts. In the Habsburg Monarchy the Catholic Church retained jurisdiction over such matters until 1783. The Josephinian Marriage Patent, which came into effect on 13 January 1783, defined marriage as a civil contract and handed jurisdiction over matrimonial matters to the secular courts as of November 1783. For Catholic married couples the secular marriage law retained the Catholic stance of the indissolubility of marriage and continued to grant only the divorce from bed and board. In the first years after this Patent came into effect a divorce was possible only if the attempts of reconciliation made by the priest were unsuccessful, both parties wished to live apart and they had come to an agreed in regard to the division of the property belonging to the couple. Up until the introduction of the civil marriage, which was first implemented in Austria after the adoption of German matrimonial law in June 1938, the divorced Catholics were prohibited to remarry while the former spouse was still alive. The research project carried out between October 2015 and September 2018 investigated the practices of the matrimonial court in the Archduchy of Austria below the Enns (now Vienna and Lower Austria). It followed a previous FWF research project, also led by Andrea Griesebner, which investigated matrimonial proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts of the dioceses of Passau and Vienna for selected time periods between 1558 and 1783 and the cases brought before the civil magistrate of the city of Vienna from 1783 1850. The research project extended the source basis in three respects: regionally, for divorces which were approved or decided upon either by the magistrates of Eggenburg, Langenlois, Tulln and Perchtoldsdorf or by the local courts of the dominions of Seitenstetten and Sitzendorf. Temporally, for marriages proceedings carried out by the Catholic matrimonial courts of St. Pölten and Vienna, whose jurisdiction over matrimonial matters was reinstated from 1857 1867 after the Concordat of 1855. Finally, also socially, in that for all recorded couples further sources were sought, making it possible to provide more information not only about the marriage itself but also on the social classification of the couple or one of the spouses. The continuous bilingual web portal Ehen vor Gericht 2.0 | Marriage at Court 2.0 provides information on the research results, the staff and the work being done with the sources. The marriage legislation and the options for separation or divorce are described under the menu item Norms, and at the same time are linked to the corresponding legal texts. The menu item Data Collection offers insight into the workshop of the project and the materiality of the examined sources. Differentiated according to the examined time segments and the gender, the legal interests as well as the verdicts are visualised by means of graphics in the menu item Matrimonial Proceedings. The core is the web database for the presentation of matrimonial proceedings. From 2,205 married couples who conducted almost 3,500 litigations, the key data for each individual procedure is retrievable, which, among other things, provides insight into the arguments put forward. If couples were involved in multiple proceedings, these are linked. If available, the civil status of the spouses, the last shared place of residence and the duration of the marriage up until the initiation of matrimonial or divorce proceedings are also provided.