2023-12-24 05:17:27
Under the prism of the Enlightenment, a series of myths arose about the Middle Ages that reduced this period to the greatest moral pestilence in history. Chastity belts, which never existed; the burning of witches, more like the 16th century; and another series of abuses such as the right of stay were exaggerated and deformed to discredit the nobility and the Church. But did it really exist? el ‘right of the first night’?
The right of pernada or ‘ius primae noctis’ was the feudal privilege through which the nobles had the power to pass the wedding night with the wife of his vassals, that is, to deflower it. It was considered one of the many abuses suffered by the vassals, who in practice belonged to the lord of the region as much as the land or the crops.
The origin of this practice is uncertain, although it is Herodotus He made reference to the custom of a Libyan tribe by which “all the maidens who are about to be married are presented to the king, and if he likes one, he is the first to meet her.” In the middle Ages, the Right to Stay could have its direct antecedent in the Germanic custom called ‘side stock’, by which the lord of each town reserved the first copulation with the bride. A practice that derived from the magical properties attributed to the blood of deflowering. However, in a strict sense the right of the lord to share the bed with the newlywed was translated into payment in cash by the servant’s family to avoid humiliation.
The concept of privilege on the first night was perpetuated in feudal times, although always associated with taxes or tributes that received local names, such as ‘el merchet’, ‘el cullagium’ or “el bail”, among others. Most historians reduce the incidence of the right of pernada to very specific cases and places, although they remember that this feudal privilege was exercised indirectly through the payment of a tax to the lord for having authorized the marriage of his vassals.
Coitus represented in the medieval codex ‘Tacuinum sanitatis’ ABC
Furthermore, it was traditional in many places for the lord to simulate the sexual act or jump on top of the bride in the celebrations that followed the wedding, as a reminder of the power of the noble over his vassals and as a remnant of what once was the right to stay.
Those who defend that it did not exist either on a practical or theoretical level cling to the scarce documentation and the few legal texts in which there is reference to this abuse, but they ignore that, in the medieval case, the written tradition is weak and little time resistant. Even so, the Guadalupe Arbitration Ruling (1486) by which Ferdinand the Catholic put an end to many of the abuses of the nobility against the Catalan vassals, it is mentioned that “nor can they [los señores] “the first night that the peasant makes a woman sleep with her or as a sign of seniority.” A phrase that demonstrates that the right to leave had been something at least theoretical in the past or that, at least among the peasants, many believed that it was still exercised.
The strength of the Crown
The kings had been the first to combat this type of abuse that revealed the weakness of the central power. The kings barely had their own territories and soldiers and their power depended on the loyalty of the nobles. Alfonso
Furthermore, the growing authority of the Church also gained strength over the centuries and allowed marriage was protected by the ecclesial institution. When religious marriage was consolidated, it became clear that canon law was above any ancestral use or jurisdiction and that, if God and the Church blessed the union, the intervention of the nobility was unnecessary.
After the Church monopolized marriages, sexual abuse went from being a pseudo-right to being the whims of an uncontrolled lord incapable of respecting the dignity of the people in his care. Marriage was something sacred that not even feudal lords could sully.
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