They Call it Schaec in Flemish”: The Language of Abduction with Marital Intent in the Late Medieval Low Countries
Keywords:
Schaec Raptus Marriage abduction Rape Medieval lawAbstract
AbstractHistorians use a wide range of terms to talk about premodern partner choice conflicts, ranging from rape to ravishment and elopement. This variety largely stems from the ambiguity and multivalence of some terms frequently used in medieval England, like the intensely scrutinized term raptus. Through a study of the language used in late medieval legal texts and judicial records from the Low Countries, this article shows that medieval Flemish had a specific term to describe an offense not captured by any other term available, namely schaec. Authorities clearly distinguished between schaec, that is the seizure of women for marriage, and rape, the seizure of women for sex. Yet, the Low Countries’ multilingual legal culture as well as the ambiguity that was inherent to many abductions with marital intent, continued to make it difficult for judges to label the cases they encountered as rape or schaec.
References
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De Pieter Grootwouters que fu calengié en l'amende de V lb. pour avoir prins à mariage et emmené la fille […] contre le gré dudit. In Brussels, State Archives, nr. 14112: account from May to September 1423, fol. 101r (hereafter SAB, nr. 14112, May–September 1423, fol. 101r).
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See, for example, Joye, Sylvie, Le Mariage par Rapt au Haut Moyen Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012)Google Scholar; and Ribordy, Geneviève, “Mariage Aristocratique et Doctrine Ecclésiastique : Le Témoignage du Rapt au Parlement de Paris pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans,” Crime, History & Societies 2 (1998): 29–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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This is largely due to the extensive attention given to famous authors of medieval English literature charged with raptus, which has led scholars to debate whether these men were guilty of rape, and what raptus, a term prevalent in Latin, Middle English, and Old French, entailed. For an overview of the literature on this topic, see Dunn, “The Language of Ravishment,” 79, n. 1.
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About these conflicts and how they were dealt with in court, see Fabrizio Titone, “The Right to Consent and Disciplined Dissent: Betrothals and Marriages in the Diocese of Catania in the Later Medieval Period,” in Disciplined Dissent. Strategies of Non-Confrontational Protest in Europe from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, ed. Fabrizio Titone (Rome: Viella, 2016), 139–68.
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There were a number of other conditions for a valid marriage related to the age and status of the partners. Monique Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek, “Classical Canon Law on Marriage. The Making and Breaking of Households,” in The Household in Late Medieval Cities. Italy and Northwestern Europe Compared, ed. Myriam Carlier and Tim Soens (Leuven: Garant, 200), 16.
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Legal texts issued for the Duchy of Brabant in 1356: Ria Van Bragt, De Blijde Inkomst van de hertogen van Brabant Johanna en Wenceslas (Leuven: Nauwelaerts, 1856); in 1406: City Archives Leuven, Oud Archief, nr. 1335, art. 16 (hereafter CAL, OA, nr. 1335, art. 16); and in 1427: CAL, OA, nr. 1254, art. 25. Legal texts issued for Leuven in 1364: Jan van Boendale, Brabantse Yeesten: Les Gestes des Ducs de Brabant (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1839–1869), 605; in 1396: see CAL, OA, nr. 1258, 16rv. Legal texts issued for Ghent in 1191: “Mathilde,” in De Oorkonden van de Graven van Vlaanderen (1191–1206), ed. Walter Prevenier (Brussels: Palais des académies, 1964–1971), II:1–16; in 1218: “VII. Ordonnance des Echevins,” in Coutume de la Ville de Gand, ed. Albert Gheldolf (Brussels: Gobbaerts, 1868–1887), I:398–401; around 1250: “Keure ou Statut Octroyé par la comtesse Marguerite,” in Coutume, I:405; in 1297 “XXIII. Grande charte des Gantois,” in Coutume, I:426–85, spec. 450–51; and, finally, two legal texts issued in 1438: State Archives Ghent, nr. 2356, 332v–333v; “LXXI. Peines contre le Rapt et le Viol,” Coutume, I:623–25.
13
For more information about the bailiff's role, see Guy Dupont, “Le Temps des Compositions : Pratiques Judiciaires à Bruges et à Gand du CIVe au XVIe Siècle (Partie I),” in Préfèrent Miséricorde à Rigueur de Justice, ed. Bernard Dauven and Xavier Rousseaux (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2012), 53–95; and Rompaey, Jan Van, “Het Compositierecht in Vlaanderen van de Veertiende tot de Achttiende Eeuw,” The Legal History Review 29 (1961): 43–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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Final sentences and court records from the consistory court of the diocese of Tournai, to which Ghent belonged, have not been preserved.
16
The consistory courts’ records will be included to a lesser extent in this analysis, as rape and abduction were mainly dealt with by secular authorities in the Low Countries.
17
Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, The Promised Land: The Low Countries Under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 46–47.
18
Between 1485 and 1488, the Flemish-speaking urban governors of several Flemish towns were able to exercise control over several central institutions, because of which Dutch replaced French as the language of administration for a few years: in Boone, Marc, “Langue, Pouvoirs et Dialogue,” Revue du Nord 379 (2009): 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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Scholars of linguistics agree that “language both reflects and creates how we see the world”: see Lia Litosseliti, Gender and Language. Theory and Practice (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006), 9–10, 13–14. About the importance of acknowledging the possible disparities between the language preserved in medieval sources and the language that was spoken in people's everyday lives, see Christopher Fletcher, “What Makes a Political Language? Key Terms, Profit and Damage in the Common Petition of the English Parliament, 1343–1422,” in The Voices of the People in Late Medieval Europe: Communication and Popular Politics, ed. Jan Dumolyn, Jelle Haemers, Hipolito Rafael Oliva Herrer, and Vincent Challet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 92; about the relationship between legal records and the voices of ordinary people, see discussion in Stretton, Tim, “Women, Legal Records, and the Problem of the Lawyers’ Hand,” Journal of British Studies 58 (2019): 684–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20
Eelco Verwijs and J. Verdam, “Schaec,” Middelnederlands Woordenboek. https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=MNW&id=48552&lemma=schaec&domein=0&conc=true (August 16, 2021); and Philippa Debrabandere,“Schaken,” Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands. https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/schaken2 (August 16, 2021).
21
Schaking is not frequently used in contemporary Dutch. It is still included in penal law codes to denote the abduction of a woman to have sexual intercourse with her or to marry her: see note 77. It also occurs in literature and is used to talk about the contemporary practice of bridal kidnapping in various regions across the world.
22
“VII. Ordonnance des Echevins,” 398–401.
23
Baker, John H., “The Three Languages of Common Law,” McGill Law Journal 43 (1998): 8Google Scholar.
24
“Keure ou Statut Octroyé par la Comtesse Marguerite,” 405.
25
This legal text from 1297 was still applied in fifteenth-century judicial practice as there are several pleas in which relatives of the abductee ask for her disinheritance after abduction, referring to this text. See Melkebeek, Monique Vleeschouwers-Van, “Mortificata Est: Het Onterven of Doodmaken van het Geschaakte Meisje in het Laatmiddeleeuws Gent,” Bulletin: Commission Royale pour la Publication des Anciennes Lois et Ordonnances de Belgique 51–52 (2011): 359Google Scholar.
26
Godding, Le Droit Privé, 71–72.
27
In France, the necessity of parental consent to the marriages of teenagers and people in their early to mid-20s emerged only in secular legal texts from the sixteenth century onwards; see Danielle Haase-Dubosc, Ravie et Enlevée: De l'Enlèvement des Femmes comme Stratégie Matrimoniale au XVIIe Siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 20. In Italian cities and in the German city of Nuremberg, such stipulations arose in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries already; see Gabriela Signori, “Family Networking. The Gift Book of the Nuremberg Patrician Walburg Kress, Née Waldstromer,” in The Urban Family: Marriage, Kinship and Lineage in the Middle Ages, ed. Jelle Haemers and Jesus Solorzano (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2020), 179; Trevor Dean, “A Regional Cluster? Italian Secular Laws on Abduction, Forced and Clandestine Marriage (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries),” in Regional Variations in Matrimonial Law and Custom in Europe, 1150 – 1600, ed. Mia Korpiola (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 147–59.
28
Scholars have suggested that there existed a plurality of sexual relations beyond marriage and that these were widespread and accepted: see Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
29
CAL, OA, nr. 1236, fol. 39r–43v.
30
State Archives Ghent, St-Baafs en Bisdom Gent, R2, fol. 332v–333 (April 24, 1438).
31
Marjorie McIntosh, “Finding Language for Misconduct: Jurors in Fifteenth-Century Local Courts,” in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-century England, ed. Barbara Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 89.
32
Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Felony and the Guilty Mind in Medieval England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 113.
33
City Archives Ghent, series 212 (hereafter CAG, 212), nr. 1, fol. 3r; CAG, 301, nr. 52, fol. 135v.
34
SAB, nr. 12902, June 1420-March 1421, fol. 282rv.
35
Widows were considered fully legally capable in the Low Countries and were thus free to choose their own spouses. However, scholarship has shown that relatives nevertheless regularly interfered with a widow's choice of spouse. Marianne Danneel, Weduwen en Wezen in Laatmiddeleeuwse Gent (Leuven: Garant, 1995).
36
SAB, nr. 12653, 1410, fol. 317rv.
37
SAB, nr. 12658, December 1471–June 1472, fol. 3v–5v.
38
I examined the importance and meaning of the abductee's consent in the late medieval Low Countries earlier in Delameillieure, Chanelle, “Partly With and Partly Against her Will: Female Consent, Abduction, And Elopement in Late Medieval Brabant,” Journal of Family History 42 (2017): 351–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39
Diederic van Assende, Floris ende Blancefloer, ed. Henri Ernst Moltzer (Groningen: JB Wolters, 1879), 60.
40
Dirc Potter, “Der Minnen Loep,” in Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (Sdu Uitgevers/Standaard Uitgeverij: The Hague/Antwerp, 1998), verse 1810.
41
Christine De Pizan, “De Stede der Vrauwen,” Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren, II, Cap. 46. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/pisa001nver01_01/ (July 21, 2022).
42
SAB, nr. 14113, January–May 1428, fol. 6v.
43
SAB, nr. 14111, January 1419–May 1420, fol. 195v.
44
SAB, nr. 14109, May–September 1409, fol. 242v–243r.
45
Latin abduction records from France regularly add “for the purpose” of marriage (favore matrimoni) to make it clear that not sex but abduction was at the case's core; see Henriette Benveniste, “Les Enlèvements: Strategies Matrimoniales, Discours Juridique et Discours Politique en France à la fin du Moyen Age,” Revue Historique 283 (1990): 25.
46
“schachare,” in Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, ed. Charles Du Fresne Du Cange (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–87).
47
State Archives Liège, Archives Diocésaines (hereafter SAG, AD), nr. 1, fol. 124r.
48
Dunn, “The Language of Ravishment,” 119.
49
CAG, 212, nr. 1, fol. 154r.
50
CAG, 212, nr. 1, fol. 90r.
51
Rolf Hage already cited that various parties involved in or affected by an abduction constructed their own version of the facts in court for the purpose of protecting their honor in the Dutch Republic. This led to different, often conflicting narratives in which even judges had a hard time determining the truth. See Rolf Hage, Eer tegen Eer: Een Cultuurhistorische Studie van Schaking tijdens de Republiek, 1580–1795 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2019).
52
According to Henry Ansgar Kelly, ravir and prendre were synonyms, both meaning “to take away,” in late medieval England. Dunn also sees the regular pairing of rapuit and abduxit and argues they were “lexical doublets” with a similar meaning: see Kelly, Henry Ansgar, “Statutes of Rape and Alleged Ravishers of Wives: A Context for the Charges against Thomas Malory, Knight,” Viator 28 (1997): 361–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dunn, “The Language of Ravishment,” 96. However, in the Low Countries records, ravir is paired with both abduction terms and rape terms, so it is not always possible to ascertain its exact meaning.
53
“Enforcer,” in Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2020. http://www.atilf.fr/dmf (August 16, 2021).
54
SAB, nr. 14113, January–May 1431, fol. 4v.
55
“LXXI. Peines contre le Rapt et le Viol,” 623–25.
56
SAG, nr. 2356, fol. 332v–333v.
57
Walter Prevenier, “Les Multiples Vérités dans les Discours sur les Offenses Criminelles envers les Femmes dans les Pays-Bas Méridionaux (XIVe et XVe siècles), ” in Retour aux Sources : Textes, Etudes et Documents d'Histoire Médiévale Offerts à Michel Parisse, ed. Sylvain Gouguenheim (Paris: Picard, 2004), 955–64.
58
SAB, nr. 14113, July–September 1431, fol. 3v.
59
SAB, nr. 14110, May–September 1414, fol. 194v and 14111, September 1416–January 1417, fol. 14rv.
60
SAB, nr. 14118, December 1481–May 1483, fol. 9v–10r; nr. 14108, January–May 1402, fol. 113r.
61
CAG, 212, 1, fol. 55r (August 14, 1481).
62
SAB, nr. 12658, July–December 1480, fol. 372rv.
63
CAG, 212, 1, fol. 377r (May 12, 1536).
64
SAB, nr. 12903, December 1456–June 1457, fol. 108rv.
65
Marie Kelleher, “Later Medieval Law in Community Context,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 140.
66
James Brundage, Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 62–75.
67
Cesco, Valentina, “Female Abduction, Family Honor, and Women's Agency in Early Modern Venetian Istria,” Journal of Early Modern History 15 (2011): 349–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recently, however, Carol Lansing has argued that lower-status women were not as affected by concerns over honor and sexual purity, and therefore, they could more easily make rape charges in late medieval Bologna; see Carol Lansing, “Opportunities to Charge Rape in Thirteenth-Century Bologna,” in Women and Violence in the Late Medieval Mediterranean, ca. 1100–1500, ed. Lidia L. Zanetti Domingues, Lorenzo Caravaggi, and Giulia M. Paoletti (New York: Routledge, 2022), 83–100.
68
SAB, nr. 14112, May–September 1423, fol. 4rv; the term violer was thus well-known and used regularly in late medieval Flanders, in spite of what has been argued by. among others, Virtue, Nancy, “Another Look at Medieval Rape Legislation,” Mediaevalia 22 (1998): 79Google Scholar.
69
SAB, nr. 14112, May–September 1423, fol. 4r.
70
SAB, nr. 14109, May 1409–September 1410, fol. 10r.
71
SAB, nr. 14109, September 1410–January 1411, fol. 328v.
72
SAB, nr. 12903, December 1453–June 1454, 64v, fol. 74v–75r.
73
Eelco Verwijs and Jacob Verdam, “Ontspanen,” Middelnederlands Woordenboek. https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=MNW&id=37963&lemma=ontspanen&domein=0&conc=true (August 16, 2021).
74
SAB, nr. 14113, January–May 1428, fol. 7v.
75
Filips Wielant, “Van ontschaken. CAP. XCVI.,” Pracktijcke criminele (Ghent: C. Annoot-Brackman, 1872), 130.
76
Garthine Walker, “‘Strange Kind of Stealing’: Abduction in Early Modern Wales,” in Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales, ed. Michael Roberts and Simone Clarke (Cardiff: The University of Wales Press, 2000), fol. 63–68.
77
See note 27.
78
One general dictionary explains schaking as taking away a woman against her will; see “Schaking,” Van Dale Lexicografie. https://vowb.vandale.nl/zoeken/zoeken.do (August 16, 2021). In the Netherlands, schaking is still included in the code of criminal law and defined as the abduction of an underage woman with her consent but against the will of her parents or guardian for the purpose of securing her property in or out of wedlock, in “Artikel 281,” Wetboek van Strafrecht, II. https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001854/2021-07-01/ (August 16, 2021).
79
Ennen, Edith, Frauen im Mittelalter (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1994), 62Google Scholar; and Matter-Bacon, Nicole, Städtische Ehepaare im Spätmittelalter: Verhaltensmuster und Handlungsspielräume im Zürich des 15. Jahrhunderts (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2016), 121–25Google Scholar.
