Charlemagne - Charlemagne's marriages

Very interesting. I wonder what a freidlefrau is. Is the book you cite published in English? I will have to look into it. By the way, as a descendant of Charlemagne, my ancestor appears to be his wife Hildegarde. I wonder of the folks here that can trace their ancestry back, which wife of his they are descended from.

Gerswinde.

Hildegarde

Hildegarde 13 Xs, Himiltrude once...so far in my search

Friedelfrau, Wikipedia German in translation, referencing American books

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://...

Royal mistresses have been quite common through the history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_mistress
The "frille"s or "freidlefrau"s were mostly just one-man-prostitutes?

Hildegarde

Hildegarde

Children in a "morganatic" marriage are legitimate but cannot inherit - unlike a mistress, where the children are illegitimate.

German term is unebenbürtig or ehe zur linken hand. The source of the term is from the German morgengabe which means "morning gift." Morning gift refers to an old custom of the husband presenting his wife with a gift the morning after their marriage was consummated. In a morganatic marriage, that was the only gift she would receive.

http://marriage.about.com/od/royalty/g/morganatic.htm

I have no idea of the validity of this source and it's probably better in German than machine translated - i don't think it contradicts Justin's source

http://www.kleio.org/de/geschichte/alltag/kap_V15.html
The Munt & Friedel Marriages of Merovingians & Carolingians

33rd GGM Hildegarde.

Erica, there is a large literature in English on morganatic marriages. They're a standard feature among German noble families. The von Battenberg (Mountbatten) descent from the Grand Dukes of Hesse are a good example. I hadn't thought about seeing Charlemagne's marriages in those terms. A defect in my academic training, no doubt, that I could go so many years separating related concepts into nice little boxes ;)

As long as we get it all stright who cares which langures is more correct. They peoblably are all correct in their own way. Diferent countries record differently. Lets face each of us need info in our own main langure , so we can understand it.

Judy, the question of language has been a HUGE debate right from the beginning. Charlemagne's current profile reflects the competing opinions of dozens of people who weighed in. Hopefully, some day Geni will give us a language dependent display for names so that we can all see our ancestors' names displayed in our own language.

I searched on "munt marriage" and find this reference:

http://books.google.com/books?id=gjq6rvoIRpAC&pg=PT91&lpg=P...

Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes & Interactions. edited by Anders Andren, Kristina Jennbert.

"... the so called friedel marriage - where men and women are allowed to live together without a formal contract -- it is more or less a love marriage."

What I'm wondering is if the concept of "concubine" is a later concept applied to Charlesmagne's liaisons, and what it was thought of "at the time." Are his "lawful" marriages munt marriages? The "friedel marriage" does not seem analogous to a "mistress."

The passage about Charlemagne that I quote above is part of a long set up, in which the author is showing that under the early Capetians the nobles of France were still practicing pre-Christian marriage customs. That is, they were polygamists, they also had concubines, and they often married "relatives".

In the course of the book, the author shows how the Christian church challenged each element and transformed it. The church did this by introducing a variety of laws, each of which caused problems.

For example, by introducing monogamy the church forced rulers to divorce old wives instead of just marrying new ones. By discouraging concubinage, the church disenfranchised illegitimate children who previously had some chance of inheriting, but also helped secure the loyalty of those children to their legitimate brother, the heir. By prohibiting marriage of relatives, the church caused nobles to prefer wives right at the edge of what was allowed so that they could be easily divorced if the need arose.

An interesting side-effect for us is that the church's emphasis on marrying out, meant that the nobles were encouraged to keep better records of their genealogies ;)

Quoting another passage:

"In 829 the Frankish bishops, which remaining intransigent on monogamy, declaring that a man might have only one partner, were prepared to tolerate concubinage as a poor substitute for full marriage. They could hardly do otherwise if they did not want to destroy society. And there were advantages to this dual system. Precepts could be applied more flexibly. A priest might be refused a wife but allowed to keep a concubine. A noble might drop his concubine in order to contract a "lawful marriage," and yet not commit bigamy. All that was needed was to quote another canonical text, a letter from Pope Leo I: 'A man who is married after having put away his concubine is not remarrying: the former was not a full marriage . . . not every woman united [juncta] to a man is his wife [uxor].' These words made it possible to leave custom undisturbed.

"Though we are largely ignorant of Frankish marriage laws, we do know that they recognized, somewhere below the Muntehe, equivalent to the Roman "lawful marriage," but far above mere liaison, the Friedelehe. This second-class kind of marriage was used to impose some discipline on the sexual activities of young men without involving family "honor" in the long term. The offspring of such unions had a weaker claim to inheritance than the offspring of legitimate marriage; if the father later contracted a lawful union, the children of the second arrangement supplanted those of the first. A union entered into in this less definite manner was often temporary, but it was official, and was concluded by means of the appropriate rites. The Morgengabe, or price of virginity, paid on the morning after the wedding night, was the public sign that the match was in order. The girl had been lent rather than given, but her relations had made the loan ceremonially, by contract, freely and in peace."

Duby, 41.

So UNlike Morgantic marriages, which seems to be a "class" issue, the "friedel" marriage was "OK, families give their blessing -some.". And the woman could go on to "munte" marriages with no disgrace for herself or her children in eyes of family or church?

That's why I hadn't ever before thought of them in the same category. At heart, both are a reflection on the status of the wife. The only thing that prevented a Friedelehe from being permanent is that the man's family thought they could get a better alliance for him by waiting, so they didn't want to commit. In modern times, we have a rule in favor of monogamy, so the same man later would have to make a firm commitment, yes or no. Same class dimension, but different way of playing it.

The two are also similar in the status of the children. In a polygamous society, it's a truism to say that the relative status of the children depends on the relative status of their mothers. For the mothers, that relative status depends both on her official status in the hierarchy of "wives" and on the power of her kinsmen who might prefer that her children succeed to a larger share.

When we think of women going on to a Munte marriage, Duby makes it clear that second marriages for women, Friedelehe or Munte, depended primarily on their wealth, and on whether they already had sons to inherit their property. I can imagine that the former wife of a king, even with sons, might still be a desirable wife for a baron, who could hope to enjoy her property for life and to give his own sons with her some powerful relatives in the form of their half-brothers from her first marriage. Still, in this period I don't see many women re-marrying unless they were great heiresses. Instead, they go into convents. This wasn't love. It was all politics.

You do remember he was a King an Emperor! They just lived that way. PS Marriage was different way back then. What is the problem here. He had desendance , many of them and that's it.

By request:

"The story of Charlemagne himself shows how there were two ways of taking a wife. And Charlemagne was canonized -- though admittedly much later. The emperor had begotten daughters but did not give them in marriage for fear of creating too many claimants to the succession. He kept them at home in his Munt, his power. But he did lend them in Friedelehe, thus providing himself with grandsons whose rights were as nothing compared with those of grandsons born in lawful marriage." Duby, 41-42.

"A father had to marry off his daughters so as to guard himself against the dishonor they might otherwise bring on him Charlemagne was scarcely cold in his grave before he was opening criticized for neglecting his daughters: instead of placing them under the authority of husbands by means of lawful marriages, he had left them to their innate perfidy. He was therefore responsible for conduct some said had tarnished the honor of the royal family." Duby, 47.