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60 | Arno Haldemann www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 55–66
Bern as well as the rest of the Helvetic Republic, enabled communal control of
marital affairs and the rejection of an intended marriage. The banns served as
the official public announcement of an intention to marry, made to the parish
during the Sunday service. Their reading was intended to avert clandestine mar-
riages undertaken against the will of the families involved and against corpora-
tive and communal interests. Dispensation from the reading of the banns was
an exemption accorded patricians in this corporative society. Subaltern couples
used such petitions to try to avoid attention and thus escape the communal
tribunal. The usually public wedding would then be inverted into a private affair.
The ritualised and public reproach of a charivari and the like “usually directed
[audio-visually and violently expressed] mockery or hostility against individuals
who offended against certain community norms”.19 Because of their socio-eco-
nomical configurations, precarious marriages endangered communal material
resources and threatened both customary law and the common ethic. Thus,
they adversely affected the prevalent moral economy.20 The petitions reveal ac-
tors who were part of precarious relational configurations and urged the au-
thorities to exclude the public reading of the banns from the pulpit to allow for
a more intimate or even secret event.
An example for this finding is the case of petitioner Johannes Hermann and
his wife-to-be. Hermann, a master stocking weaver resident in Bern who had
been widowed for 20 years, wanted to marry the recently widowed and elderly
Catharina Labhardt, who was not a resident of Bern. Because the remarriage
of widowers essentially made the redistribution of property less probable and
diminished the marriage opportunities for those who were as yet unmarried,
Labhardt would be seen as endangering local communal resources. Impedi-
ments to marriage, financial resources, and the high age of marital majority all
strongly limited the reservoir of eligible women and men. “To avoid the both-
ersome public gossip at such events”, the couple appealed to the republican
government for suspension of the requirement that the banns be read publicly
from the pulpit.21 Evidently not only invited guests were present at early modern
marriages but also curious, gossiping, and backbiting spectators – whether one
wanted them to be there or not. They threatened the bridal couple with infamy
and thus with the loss of the early modern symbolic capital of honour and re-
spectability.22 Another example is provided by a pastor and petitioner “who to
avoid sensation wishes to be able to marry without preceding three-time proc-
19 Thompson 1992, 3.
20 On the concept of the moral economy see Thompson 1971, 76–136.
21 “Zu Vermeidung des ärgerlichen Publikums-Geschwäzes bey dergleichen Anlässen”, BAR
B0#1000/1483#490* 1802–1803, 501–502.
22 On the sociological concept of honour as a symbolic capital see Bourdieu 1979, 95–132. On the concept
of honour in early modern societies see Schreiner/Schwerhoff 1995, 2; Dinges 1994, 144; Backmann/
Ecker-Offenhäusser 1998.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 135
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM