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include marriage law. Instead, the secular lawbook Grágás contains a Festa
þáttr that regulated betrothals and marriages.42 the rules here are typical of
what legal historians often call “Germanic marriage.” there is much about
agreement between families, about bride prices and dowries, and about
exactly which men should decide whom their daughters, sisters, or moth-
ers should marry. It is all very secular, which is in no way surprising if one
compares to the European context. Before the twelfth century, European
society had not yet come to a decision whether marriage was a matter for
church courts, and thus canon law, or for ordinary courts, and thus subject
to secular law. this meant that in many regions, such as in Scandinavia,
marriage was regulated in secular law, not in canon law.43
this state of affairs changed in the twelfth century when it became
generally recognized that marriage was one of the sacraments of the
church, and that it was thus regulated by canon law. theologians and canon
lawyers collaborated on working out a legal system for Christian marriage,
which became very different from the Germanic system. among the key
figures was Gratian of Bologna, the author around 1140 of the Decretum,
which became the first volume in the Corpus of canon law.44
Sawyer, Kvinnor och familj i det forn- och medeltida Skandinavien, occasional Papers on
Medieval topics 6 (Skara: Viktoria, 1992); Jenny M. Jochens, “‘Með jákvæði hennar
sjálfrar’: Consent as Signifier in the old norse World,” in Consent and Coercion to Sex
and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies, ed. angeliki E. Laiou (Washington, D.C.:
Dumbarton oaks research Library and Collection, 1993); agnes S. arnórsdóttir, “two
Models of Marriage? Canon Law and Icelandic Marriage Practice in the Late Middle
Ages,” in Nordic Perspectives on Medieval Canon Law, ed. Mia Korpiola (Helsinki: Matthias
Calonius Society, 1999); auður Magnúsdóttir, Frillor och fruar: Politik och samlevnad på
Island 1120–1400, avhandlingar från Historiska Institutionen i Göteborg (Göteborg;
Historiska Institutionen, 2001), 171–210; agnes S. arnórsdóttir, “Marriage in the Middle
ages: Canon Law and nordic family relations,” in Norden og Europa i middelalderen:
Rapport til det 24. Nordiske Historikermøde, ed. Per Ingesman and Thomas Lindkvist,
Skrifter udgivet af Jysk Selskab for Historie 47 (Århus: aarhus universitetsforlag, 2001);
Agnes Arnórsdóttir, Property and Virginity: The Christianization of Marriage in Medieval
Iceland 1200–1600 (aarhus: aarhus university Press, 2010), esp. 67–77; Björn Bandlien,
Strategies of Passion: Love and Marriage in Medieval Iceland and Norway, trans. Betsy van
der Hoek, Medieval texts and Cultures of northern Europe 6 (turnhout: Brepols, 2005),
151–188; Gunnar Karlsson, Ástarsaga Íslendinga að fornu, um 870–1300 (reykjavík: Mál
og menning, 2013), e.g., 105–106 and 185–188.
42 as pointed out by Sveinbjörn rafnsson, Af fornum lögum og sögum, 19.
43 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society. See also Witte and Hauk, Christianity and Family
Law.
44 the formation of the law of Christian marriage in the twelfth century is often discussed
THE CANON LAW OF EMERGENCY BAPTISM