Date: 2022-10-24 01:21 am (UTC)
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
From: [personal profile] igenlode
I haven't done the research myself, but multiple historical bloggers, who may of course all be cribbing from one another, variously describe how under the Church of England -- annulments were handled by the ecclesiastical consistory courts, as opposed to divorces, which went through Parliament -- couples had to *prove* impotence or genital deformity at the hands of a surgeon (or, in earlier times, court-appointed courtesans) in order to obtain an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation. Wilfully failing to copulate wasn't grounds to annul a marriage; the presumption of the Church was that any couple who physically could eventually would. Although sufficient political pressure could eventually bring about the desired outcome, as in the case of the Earl of Essex, whose wife obtained a messy annulment on the grounds of alleged impotence in 1612: https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2021/04/15/three-degrees-of-separation-alternatives-to-divorce-in-early-modern-england/
All the articles concur that, while it is a beloved trope of historical novelists, the couple who enter into a 'trial marriage' and plan to have it annulled on the grounds that they never actually slept together simply wouldn't able to use this as a painless, scandal-free method of separation.


There may also be differences depending on which church someone belonged to. eg. Catholics and Protestants may have had different rules from each other in some periods.
The Church of England, thanks to its origins, was basically far more Catholic in its attitude than other Protestant churches (it remained the case into the 20th century that a divorced man could not remarry in church, since the sacrament of marriage was considered theologically indissoluble).
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igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
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