Abducting women: early modern Europe's solution to marital problems

Yahoo

04-03-2025

Post-Medieval Europe (from the 16th to the 18th century), was when the patriarchal family became the entrenched norm. In this context, arranging marriages for women was a very important social strategy for sustaining family, lineage, and the community. The last word on the subject was, like practically all other decisions, left to men.
When disputes arose over marriage, there was one very common solution: abducting the woman in question. This consisted of depositing a woman somewhere and locking her up for a period of time. This could have been in a convent, the residence of a respectable widow, or even a charitable home for the poor – the destination was determined by social class.
The abduction of women is just one particularly eye-catching example of the various practices that families used to achieve their goals in this period. These goals could include securing a desired marital alliance, or shoring up a relationship in crisis.
Abductions could affect both young or unmarried girls and married women. For the former, parents or guardians decided on an abduction if someone sought the girl's hand against her family's will, or if she herself disagreed with the opinion of her elders. For the latter, either the woman or her husband agreed to an abduction as a temporary break in cohabitation in order to rebuild the relationship, or to initiate divorce proceedings (something the Catholic world then understood as a mere separation of bodies).
The involvement of the Church was crucial. It had the jurisdictional monopoly on marriage, and families sought the support or assent of the vicar of their diocese in order to legally proceed with an abduction. The ecclesiastical court also had the authority to order an abduction when divorce proceedings had already been initiated. This practice occurred alongside other support mechanisms, such as local networks of family or neighbours to help wives in dangerous or violent marital crises.
Kidnapping a woman meant, in effect, confiscating her body, removing it from her daily life, reordering it, and making it conform. It was part of the logic that culturally underpinned marriage and the model of what a woman should be: domesticated, neither bold nor adventurous, and not prone to wandering. Women were supposed to love seclusion, and be devoted to the chores of a wife and mother.
This model had been dictated by the majority of theologians, catechists and humanists, especially from the end of the Middle Ages and into the early Modern Age. Proponents included Juan Luis Vives and Friar Luis de León, authors of The Education of a Christian Woman and La perfecta casada (The Perfect Wife), respectively.
Abducting a woman was in keeping with the ancient practice of raptio. This Latin word shares its etymology with the English word 'rape', but originally meant kidnapping a woman or women, either for marriage or other purposes. Although criminalised, it had its roots in the rituals of marriage formation, and it was not infrequently used by the community and the Church to calm or temper strong-willed parents. A young woman could thus be temporarily isolated from family pressures, leaving her able to decide freely whether or not to marry.
Tensions between feudal lineages created the breeding ground, in the Middle Ages and beyond, for making their women's bodies the focus of male competitiveness and power relations. In parallel, canon law also understood that deviations such as female adultery deserved the punishment of confinement to conceal the woman's body.
Once marriage annulments became possible, it was even advised that, after being disowned by her husband, the woman should enter a convent. Women's monasteries spread, and in many cases they hosted repudiated women who healed their souls and, metaphorically, their bodies.
The abduction also had a doctrinal and theological meaning. Marriage was one body, a reminder of the union between Christ and his Church, and the woman was only one of its parts. Taking her away or out was supposed to have no other intention than to restore her to full health. Moreover, married women were supposed to set an example – hiding her away for a time diluted any threat that her bad example might pose to society.
Although female abduction in marriage-related matters is understood as an instrument of repression, it has been shown that women also used it to free themselves. In the cases of married women being abducted, it was usually the women themselves who had taken legal action. For those living with an abusive husband, the ability to leave and be surrounded by people who were obliged by the Church to protect them was a very satisfactory alternative.
When the Church ratified the necessity of free consent for the validity of marriage under the Council of Trent in 1563, many marriageable girls went directly to the vicar of their diocese to request their own abduction. In this way, they sought to distance themselves from the pressures of their parents or relatives, publicly demonstrating the importance of having their own space and time to reflect and make the most appropriate decision.
In a way, they used the abduction not only to protest, but also to help reconfigure a model of marriage that, despite Catholic doctrine and norms, was controlled by family interests, and in which women's voices had little weight.
Este artículo fue publicado originalmente en The Conversation, un sitio de noticias sin fines de lucro dedicado a compartir ideas de expertos académicos.
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Mariela Fargas Peñarrocha receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities - State Research Agency, project number PID2019-103970GB-I00.