Love, medieval style

Karen Herland

Shannon McSheffrey (History) became interested in gender relations while doing her PhD research on the Lollards, a heretical community in late 15th and early 16th century England.

Her ongoing study of mores, manners and regulation in England during that period continues to include the Lollards (she was recently awarded the Walter D. Love Prize by the North American Conference on British Studies for a paper on the group published in 2005) and expanded to include other elements.

“I was interested in gender as a relational construction. Researching marriage and sexual relationships seemed the way to go,” McSheffrey said.

She has been poring over London court and church records from the late 15th century. Her research included breach of promise agreements, annulments, charges of cruelty and bigamy and any other documents that might illustrate how couples met, courted, and eventually paired off.

The result, Marriage, Sex and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London, was published in June of this year. The book is an exploration of the place of marital and sexual relationships in the context and culture of the times. McSheffrey learned that civic officials (including the mayor and aldermen) played a supervisory role in late 15th century London’s intimate relationships.

“I discovered that the personal was political, though not exactly as Germaine Greer saw it.”

Citizens (a status accorded only to relatively important men in the community including merchants and wealthy craftsmen) could name civic officials to act as guardians of their children in the event of their death. It would then fall to these politicians to supervise and agree to marriages proposed by those “orphans of the city,” as they were called.

Her research has revealed interesting connections between the civic and the social in late-medieval London. The connections made between the commercial interests of citizens and the political interests of politicians become more concrete within this arrangement.

Most issues involving marriage and sexual relations were the realm of the church courts. McSheffrey’s research revealed that these courts often worked hand in hand with civic channels.

Meanwhile, McSheffrey’s award- winning paper on the Lollards investigated why they were prosecuted as heretics for saying the Lord’s Prayer in English in late medieval England at a time when that same material was available in print in entirely orthodox contexts. McSheffrey concluded that intent became a key part of these trials. The fact that “the Lollards saw prayer in English as rebellion against the Church” became the offence.

McSheffrey’s current research is considering this period’s court documents from a different point of view. “Instead of looking past legal documents to the situations behind them, I am actually looking at the documents themselves.”

At a time when most men of a certain stature spent much of their time in court rooms, and courts essentially ran neighbourhoods and municipalities, McSheffrey has become intrigued with how individuals “used the recording power of the governing authority to achieve what they wanted.”

Her thesis suggests that individuals were not simply controlled by authorities, but could also use court records to establish economic and social agreements and legalize them.