Unfit for Marriage

About this book

"Historian Edward J. Behrend-Martinez studied the transcripts of eighty-three impotency trials conducted by the ecclesiastical court of the Spanish diocese of Calahorra (La Rioja), an area incorporating both Basque and Castilian populations and including urban and rural parishes. From these records, he produced a detailed account of private life and public sexuality in these early years of the modern era." "The transcripts provide insights into the dynamics of daily marital life and the role that property, gender, and personal preference played in marriage. They also reveal information about medical knowledge at the time and about contemporary understanding of the physiology and psychology of sex. Unfit for Marriage is the first study in English to address the proceedings of a Spanish ecclesiastical court and is a portrait of marriage and marital sex in early modern Europe."--Jacket.