concubinage

1. Law. Cohabitation without legal marriage.
2. The state of being a concubine.

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While most early modern people married, a small number established semipermanent, nonmarital unions. Called concubinage in religious and legal terminology, these alliances were usually identified in everyday speech by the term for the woman, for example, "mistress" in England, and "femina" in northern Italy. Although not married to each other, the participants might be married to others. Long-established legal acceptance was on the wane by the late fifteenth century as church and state invested legitimate marriage with increased responsibilities for social and moral order. Concubinage nonetheless persisted for it met many needs, offering participants flexibility in their family lives and opportunities for social improvement, although it could also disrupt legitimate marriages. Some priests also kept concubines in defiance of the laws of celibacy, a practice known as clerical concubinage, which lies outside the scope of this entry.

Legal Aspects

In the Middle Ages concubinage between two unmarried lay people enjoyed legal tolerance, in part based on traditions of second-class marriage, such as morganatic marriage, in which children were unable to inherit from their father, and ancient Roman and Germanic concubinage. A concubine differed from a prostitute in the exclusivity and long duration of her relationship with one man. In theory alliances involving a married person were considered not concubinage but adultery and were punishable as such. In practice, however, these relationships sometimes met tolerance almost equal to a relationship between two unmarried people.

The church had always favored marriage over concubinage and urged couples to marry, but the conviction that marriage was based on the consent of the parties had helped give concubinage between unmarried people legitimacy. Following impulses for moral reform, however, the Fifth Lateran Council in 1514 and the Council of Trent in 1563 declared all concubinage illegal, the latter singling out married men who kept concubines. Protestant territories similarly pursued and prosecuted unmarried couples.

Secular law took into account concubinage of both married and unmarried men, for example, listing concubines among the people—including their wives—whom men could punish physically and detailing what kinds of gifts concubines could receive. In fourteenth-century Italy some patrons and concubines spelled out their obligations in written contracts. In the late fourteenth century, however, a few cities, including Cremona and Würzburg, made concubinage a crime. In the fifteenth century many more, such as Avignon, Basel, and Bergamo, followed, with adulterous relationships receiving harsher punishments. At the same time there was a substantial increase in the legal disabilities of concubines and their children, who were considered illegitimate and had limited inheritance and other rights, especially in France.

Social Aspects

Although it became less common, people from all social classes continued to practice concubinage throughout the period because it met many needs. In a common pattern an elite man kept a low-status woman—often a servant or tenant—as his concubine, although a few higher-status women became the concubines of dukes, princes, or kings. Concubinage enabled male aristocrats in arranged marriages to find emotionally satisfying relationships outside of them. For aristocratic men who were not yet married, who were widowed, or whose families decided they should not marry, concubinage offered a semblance of family life without the threats to family alliance and inheritance strategies that legitimate children would have posed.

People also used concubinage in strategies of social advancement. Elite men demonstrated their wealth and power by dressing their concubines well, keeping them in separate households, and openly defying conventional morality. Lower-status women (and their families) were attracted by alliances with wealthy and powerful men—who, tradition dictated, would raise any children—and to the frequent final benefit of a dowry and a marriage to a man of her social class. Arranging marriages of former concubines and illegitimate children was a way to maintain clientage networks and to demonstrate control over society. Increasingly, however, people found aristocratic men's open flouting of convention troubling, particularly when the men kept married women as their concubines, shaming their husbands, or when the men's relationships took resources from their legitimate families.

Low-status people might also live together in concubinage, although often for different reasons and in a manner that more closely resembled legitimate marriage. Some men sought to avoid producing legitimate children; others lived with one woman until they could find a better one to marry. Usually, however, commoner couples lived in nonmarital unions because they could not legally marry each other. One or both might already be married, or they might be too closely related to marry. Others, lacking the financial resources necessary to marriage, lived together unmarried until they could accumulate them.

Bibliography

Brucker, Gene. Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986.

Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago, 1987.

Eisenach, Emlyn. Husbands, Wives, and Concubines: Marriage, Family, and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona. Kirksville, Mo., forthcoming. Especially chapter 4.

Hufton, Olwen. The Prospect before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe. Vol. 1: 1500–1800. New York, 1996. Especially chapter 8.

—EMLYN EISENACH

Close relationships

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Concubinage is the state of a woman in an ongoing, usually matrimonially-oriented relationship with a man who cannot be married to her, often because of a difference in social status.

Contents 1 Concubinage 2 Concubinus 3 In Bible-based faiths 3.1 In the Bible 3.2 In Judaism 3.2.1 In the Hebrew used in the modern State of Israel 4 Other uses 4.1 France 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Concubinage

A concubine is generally a woman in an ongoing, matrimonial-like relationship with a man, whom she cannot marry for any reason. The reason may be because she is of lower social rank than the man or because the man is already married. Generally, only men of high economic and social status have concubines. Many historical Asian, Europeans and Middle Eastern rulers maintained concubines as well as wives.^[1]

Historically, concubinage was frequently voluntary (by the woman and/or her family's arrangement), as it provided a measure of economic security for the woman involved. Involuntary, or servile, concubinage sometimes involves sexual slavery of one member of the relationship, typically the woman, being a pleasure slave to the man.^{[citation needed]}

Where it has a legal status, as in ancient Rome, and in ancient China, concubinage is akin, although inferior, to marriage. In opposition to those laws, traditional Western laws do not acknowledge the legal status of concubines, rather only admitting monogamous marriages. Any other relationship does not enjoy legal protection; the woman is essentially a mistress.

Concubinus

In Ancient Rome, this was the title of a young male who was chosen by his master as a lover. Concubini were often referred to ironically in the literature of the time. Catullus assumes in the wedding poem 61.126 that the young manor lord has a concubinus who considers himself elevated above the other slaves.

An Emperor of China with his concubines inspecting his fantasy fishing fleet

In Bible-based faiths

In the Bible

Among the Israelites, it was common for men to acknowledge their concubines, and such women enjoyed the same rights in the house as legitimate wives^[2]. The principle difference in the bible between a wife and a concubine is that wives had dowries, while concubines did not.

The concubine commanded the same respect and inviolability as the wife, and it was regarded as the deepest dishonour, for the man to whom she belonged, if other hands were laid upon her^[2]; David is portrayed as having become greatly dishonoured when his concubines had a sexual relationship with Absalom^[3].

Since it was regarded as the highest blessing to have many children, while the greatest curse was childlessness, legitimate wives often gave their maids to their husbands to atone, at least in part, for their own barrenness, as in the cases of Sarah and Hagar, Leah and Zilpah, Rachel and Bilhah^[2]. The children of the concubine had equal rights with those of the legitimate wife^[2]; for example, king Abimelech was the son of Gideon and his concubine^[4].

Several biblical figures are portrayed as resorting to concubinage when they were not able to create natural children with their wives. The most famous example of this was with Abraham and Sarah. In the account, Sarah, feeling guilty about her inability to give Abraham children, gave her female slave - Hagar - to Abraham, and Ishmael resulted from the union; later, Sarah becomes fertile, and gives birth to Isaac, so she forces Abraham to exile Ishmael and Hagar into the desert.

Later^[2] biblical figures such as Gideon, David, and Solomon had concubines in addition to many childbearing wives. For example, the Book of Kings claims that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines^[5].

In Judaism

In Judaism, concubines are referred to by the Hebrew term pilegesh. This is etymologically related to the Aramaic phrase palga isha, meaning half-wife. A cognate term later appeared in Greek as the loan word pallax/pallakis.

According to the Babylonian Talmud^[6], the difference between a concubine and a full wife was that the latter received a marriage contract (Hebrew:ketubah) and her marriage (nissu'in) was preceded by a formal betrothal (erusin), neither being the case for a concubine. However, one opinion in the Palestinian Talmud argues that the concubine should also receive a marriage contract, but without including a clause specifying a divorce settlement^[2].

Certain Jewish thinkers, such as Maimonides, believe that concubines are strictly reserved for kings, and thus that a commoner may not have a concubine; indeed, such thinkers argue that commoners may nor engage in any type of sexual relations outside of a marriage. Shortly before Maimonides had reached this view, Sunni Muslims officially prohibited mutah relationships (which are similar to concubinage relationships); some^[who?] therefore suggest that Maimonides view was in response to this, in a similar way to Gershom ben Judah's ban on polygamy only being made after Christians had prohibited it.

Maimonides was not the first Jewish thinker to criticise concubinage; for example, it is severely condemned in Leviticus Rabbah^[7]. Other Jewish thinkers, such as Nahmanides, Samuel ben Uri Shraga Phoebus, and Jacob Emden, strongly object to the idea that concubines should be forbidden.

In the Hebrew used in the modern State of Israel

In the Hebrew of the contemporary State of Israel, the word pilegesh is often used as the equivalent of the English word mistress - i.e. the female partner in extramarital relations, even when these relations have no legal recognition. There are attempts there to popularise pilegesh as a form of premarital, non-marital and extramarital relationships which (in their view) would be permitted by Jewish religious law^[8][9][10].

Other uses

France

In contemporary France, concubinage refers to cohabitation and carries no inequality connotations (see Concubinage en France).^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Cohabitation
• Common-law marriage
• Free Union
• Harem
• Ma malakat aymanukum
• Monogamy
• Morganatic marriage
• Pilegesh
• Polygamy
• Polyamory
• Polygyny

References

1. ^ See Genesis 30
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Pilegesh", a publication now in the public domain.
3. ^ 2 Samuel 16:21-25
4. ^ Judges 8:31
5. ^ 1 Kings 11:1-3
6. ^ Sanhedrin 21a
7. ^ Leviticus Rabbah, 25
8. ^ Kosher sex without marriage Jpost By Mathew Wagner
9. ^ "ISO: Kosher Concubine" New York Jewish Week by Adam Dickter December 2006
10. ^ THE CONCUBINE CONNECTION The Independent - London October 20, 1996 SUZANNE GLASS

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External links

• Servile Concubinage

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