Marriage, sex and civic culture in late medieval London

by Shannon McSheffrey

"How were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval society, and what form did these relationships take? Using extensive documentary evidence from both the ecclesiastical court system and the records of city and royal government, as well as advice manuals, chronicles, moral tales, and liturgical texts, Shannon McSheffrey focuses her study on England's largest city in the second half of the fifteenth century. Marriage was a religious union--one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and imbued with deep spiritual significance--but the marital unit of husband and wife was also the fundamental domestic, social, political, and economic unit of medieval society. As such, marriage created political alliances at all levels, from the arena of international politics to local neighborhoods. Sexual relationships outside marriage were even more complicated.^ McSheffrey notes that medieval Londoners saw them as variously attributable to female seduction or to m