Page - 60 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

Charivari or the Historicising of a Question | 59www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 55–66 culture. This culture assumes that marriages “have become events, a big busi- ness with fairs, wedding planners and specific products for the special day(s)” for reasons of individualism.15 Thus, the intensely loving and unique marrying couple come into focus in a romantically staged wedding that celebrates and exhibits their private happiness and intimate feelings. The wedding’s unique- ness is made public to showcase the couple’s private bliss. Only the romantic and allegedly individual consensus of the lovers shall be constitutive for the ac- complishment of the marriage. Social prosperity as a fundamental precondition for this kind of individualistic and love-centred marriage is disguised by roman- tic feelings. MARRIAGE AS A COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE In my current research I investigate precarious marriage aspirations in the canton of Bern during the “Sattelzeit” (Reinhart Koselleck), the pivotal age between 1750 and 1850. I use the term “precarious marriage aspirations” to refer to conjugal liaisons which arose from controversial marital intentions, marriages that accorded with the dictionary definition of “precarious” in being “not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse”. The pre- cariousness of these marriages derived from their specific social, generational, economic, or confessional configuration, which deviated from the prevalent lo- cal customs. Thus, the right to marry was, as the dictionary definition of precari- ous requires, “dependent on chance” and had to be “obtained by entreaty”.16 Precarious marriages had to fight against societal impediments and opposition. Hence, they elucidate that marriages were certainly not an individualistic event in this transitional period in the 18th and 19th centuries, but were involuntarily yet attentively monitored, controlled, and, if necessary, collectively disciplined events in the local community.17 An optimal way to approach exemplary precarious marriages in the canton of Bern in this period is to analyse contemporary petitions as historical sources.18 In these petitions, which requested dispensation from the preacher’s reading of the banns from the pulpit on three occasions, the fear of becoming the object of public attention and, therefore, of a “rough music” or a charivari is implicit. The threefold banns reading, legally codified and obligatory for the canton of 15 See the call for papers for the current issue of this journal. 16 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/precarious [accessed 13 September 2018]. 17 Coontz 2014, 5–9. 18 In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Bern and the rest of the aristocratic-ruled ancient Swiss Federation were occupied by the Napoleonic army. The French imposed a centralised republic. The strongly Napoleonically influenced Helvetic Republic confirmed the right to petition by constitution. Thus, a torrent of individual petitions from all cantons reached the executive authority, although the practice of petitioning had already existed under the Ancien Régime.