Seite - 61 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/02

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.