Just curious. If a young adult European Prince marred a young adult European Princess between say 800 AD to 1800 AD was it important for her be “intact” (ie a verified virgin).
And if so, who was in charge of the actual verification???
I associate it more with ancient cultures. Deuteronomy discusses saving bloody sheets as proof of virginity and Egyptians, Arabs and other cultures had similar customs. In the ancient world little packets of blood could be purchased to mimic the wedding night blood, especially if the bride had lost her virginity to the groom before the wedding and thus had his assistance.
Of course a problem is that it’s difficult to verify virginity as any number of things can cause the hymen to be pierced. Horseback riding was notorious as an excuse even past 1800, whether the truth or not. I think in Europe proof she was a virgin was less important than absence of proof she wasn’t a virgin, if that makes sense. And of course it was important whatever happened before they married was discreet and didn’t result in pregnancy or disease.
Henry VIII’s marriages are of interest:
Catharine of Aragon- she was a widow when she married but almost certainly a virgin; her husband, Prince Arthur, was very sickly for the last year of his life, he was only 15 when he died and their marriage was probably in name only. However, Team Henry 8 would swear she had not been a virgin when she married him and she was not able to provide proof beyond her word and oath that she had been because
1- it was apparently taken for granted at the time of their marriage
2- it was a trumped up charge anyway- an attempt to invalidate their marriage as incestuous which could only be done if her marriage to Arthur had been consummated
Since nobody really believed that Catharine’s first marriage had been consummated and since nobody even tried to prove she had been adulterous they even went for the fact that Henry and Catharine were distant cousins (which had never stopped any royals from marrying- first cousin marriages weren’t unknown in H8’s direct ancestor).
That Anne Boleyne was not a virgin before her marriage can be pretty conclusively proven by the fact she was pregnant, but her prior history was evidently not that important to Henry until he sought to divorce her. At that time several men were accused of having previously been her lovers (including her brother). How accurate these charges were anybody’s guess, but since her father used his wife and daughters for advancement (Henry probably had a son with Anne’s married older sister Mary before he married Anne and may have had an affair with their mother) and since marrying one to a king had never really been seen as a possibility AND they had been at the French court and Anne was in her 20s when she and Henry became an item, it’s almost certain she was not a virgin and that Henry did not care.
Jane Seymour- the fact she was probably a virgin was probably less important than she had a scandal free past, plus she came from a family where many women (her mother, sisters, aunts, etc.) had large numbers of healthy children. Ironically Henry was more closely related to her than he’d been to Catherine of Aragon (2nd cousins once removed or something like it) but here it did not bother him. She of course died in childbirth and thus he never tired of her or sought to dig up anything.
Anne of Cleves- not only a virgin but ridiculously naive. She thought she was pregnant even though the marriage was unconsummated because Henry had kissed her and “lain with” her (literally: he had spent the night lying down beside her). Henry almost laughed this one off and didn’t try to prove anything sordid against her since she was so willing to be divorced in exchange for the golden parachute.
Katherine Howard- poor girl. I don’t think it was so much that she wasn’t a virgin as that she was falsely advertised to be and unlike her first cousin Anne she probably was guilty of adultery. Her past really wasn’t a big deal to anybody before she was engaged to the king because she was basically a nobody orphaned farm girl who happened to have important powerful relatives who’d forgotten her until they needed an attractive young girl they could dominate; she lived on an estate with her grandmother who pretty much let her run loose, and she did and had some fun with the farm boys and then things began moving so fast- the king didn’t just like her he wanted to marry her and so her past became whitewashed. It’s not even impossible he knew that his “rose without a thorn” had actually had a prick or two, but it wasn’t until learning she was still prickly that he cared.
Per tradition, her family urged her to get pregnant asap but when this proved to be less than easy since Henry wasn’t always able to finish the deal, they decided she should turn to “artificial insemination” by a courtier since she could probably convince him any pregnancy was his. Unfortunately her uncle had many enemies and she was a lot more closely watched than they counted on and it was adultery more than her past that condemned her; her past was just gravy.
Catharine Parr- Henry’s only wife whose lack of virginity wasn’t an issue since she’d been married twice (though ironically may have been a virgin- the previous husbands were older and or sickly) and her prior sexual history was never an issue. She did almost lose her head but unlike Anne and Katherine she had friends who tipped her off and she was able to seek a rapprochement which was granted since Henry really did like her. The only sexual indiscretion I’ve ever read associated with her was the “tickle fests” she participated in with her fourth husband and stepdaughter Elizabeth after H8’s death and her remarriage.
As for Elizabeth, her virginity was part of her brand so it probably was there, but most biographers who approach the matter believe her virginity meant she’d never had penile-vaginal sex but may well have amused herself in other ways. She’d never have risked an unplanned pregnancy, especially under the reigns of her brother and sister (though in her own lifetime there were rumors she had numerous bastards spirited away- total hogwash in the opinion of pretty much all reputable biographers).
She began insisting on her virginity when she was 14 after said ‘tickle fests’. As she became older the proof she was still menstruating became far more important than sexual activity because even in her 40s (when her maids were still being bribed by foreign agents for information on her sheets and Elizabeth probably knew it) the possibility she could beget a child (her ancestor Eleanor of Aquitaine and other women had produced children in their mid and late 40s) was of huge importance to an international marital alliance. If she ever did have “real” sex it was probably after menopause.
I think fertility was generally more important than premarital virginity in many cases. An interesting case is Constance of Sicily, who married Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. As she was over 40 and much older than her husband (depending on the source between 10 and 15 years older) there were rumors that she was not really pregnant when she became pregnant, so when she was ready for her “lying in” (the final weeks of pregnancy) she did it in a luxurious pavilion in a public square and when she went into labor the public was invited to watch that they might all be witnesses. The child was Frederick, who became HRE Frederick II and his life only got more bizarre from being born as a royal sideshow in public.
Meant to mention:
There’s no exact equivalent today to the betrothal, because while it was less than a wedding or marriage it was much more than an engagement. If the two parties to a betrothal had sex while betrothed then any child conceived was considered legitimate even if it was born before the wedding, but at the same time if the bride-to-be cheated during the betrothal it was far more serious than “my fiancee cheated on me” but on par with adultery (which was a crime in the best of circumstances but if you were betrothed to a king or a king’s heir could be counted as treason).
Many betrothals took place when the participants were children, sometimes in infancy. (A prime example is Mary Q of Scots; she was her father’s only surviving legitimate child and he died/she became queen when she was 6 days old, by which time the kings of England, France, Spain and other countries were already working on a betrothal and on kidnapping schemes; France won; there were some betrothals that occurred before one or more of the parties were even born [e.g. 'my oldest son will marry your oldest daughter once they exist- null and void if one or the other of us doesn’t have said child within 10 years]). When a girl was betrothed to a foreign royal she was often sent to live with his family so she could be raised in their ways. (If you’ve seen The Lion in Winter, the French princess Alais was such a case, sent to live with Eleanor and Henry when she was 7; Henry II’s mother Matilda was sent from England to [what’s now] Germany at 7 to be raised by the family of her betrothed husband the Holy Roman Emperor [who was already an adult and had many kids by a Russian mistress].) Since any sex they had between the betrothal and the wedding was not only losing their virginity but adultery they’d generally be guarded like hawks from anybody but the groom until after the wedding, thus the “original seal” was assumed to be intact.
Well, there is a bit of an issue with one portrait of Elizabeth 1 where she is wearing a style of gown normally worn by pregnant women [and not juvenile girls or unmarried women] I would have to dig out my copy of Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked and confirm, though with a smidge of googling I found a copy of it. The reason it isn’t ‘officially accepted’ is that it portrays a pregnant girl.:rolleyes:
One of the main problems is in how the English court at the time approached portraiture … they had a court painter make an ‘accepted’ portrait, of face and hands, and in a fairly generic posture. Then, if someone wanted to paint a portrait of the prince/princess/king/queen, the artist got a stand in wearing one of the royal outfits, to get the clothing and then they went by viewing the official portrait for the face and hands. The royal very rarely actually sat for a portrait. That is one reason that so many portraits look identical except for the clothing. I suppose the main reason for this is a combination of censorship and saving time - sitting for a portrait can take weeks of sittings.
As usual, the answer varies a lot by location and time. As far as I know, the general assumption was that the young lady would be a virgin: asking to check it would have been considered an insult.
Notice that in some cases there were handfastings, long bethrotals, weddings which had taken place waaaaaay before one or both spouses were old enough for consummation… the marriage customs of the common folk were, in general, much more straightforward.
Well, she wasn’t a princess, but determining Joan of Arc’s virginity was a hot issue, since it was a linchpin of her entire identity.
It was first checked by Yolande of Aragon, French King Charles VII’s mother-in-law, when Joan first reached him and begged him for an army. It was later re-checked by Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford, when Joan was first put on trial by the English, who declared her to still be a virgin at that point (of course, after a frustrating trial and a long imprisonment at the hands of British soldiers who hated her guts and beat her repeatedly, it’s little wonder whether or not she died one…).
I do not know, however, if these noblewomen did the, err, fact-digging themselves, or had servants, midwives or nuns do it for them. Still, this points to there being a precedent for a procedure being in place to determine the actual virginity of a young woman, should it become really important to be sure about those things.
Sampiro, that was a lot of information, and very interesting. (I love reading historical stuff. I just read a book about mistresses of king through the ages and couldn’t put it down.)
[Off Topic] I suspect that Elizabeth was terrified of sex, and certainly of marriage. She grew up knowing her mother had been executed on the whim of her father at a very young age. The first “mother” she ever knew, Jane Seymour, died in childbirth. Anne of Cleves never really married Henry, so she was OK, but Katherine Howard, who was kind to the children, was also executed on the whim of her father. Her most important mother figure, Katherine Parr, came within inches of being brought up on charges by Henry (as described by Sampiro), then, after Henry’s death, married Thomas Seymour.
Seymour was a ladies’ man with an eye to the main chance. He flirted so heavily with the fourteen year old Elizabeth that he would be brought up on charges these days, and Katherine Parr, loving both him and Elizabeth and not knowing how to fight back, joined him. As Katherine’s own pregnancy increased, so increased her paranoia, and she died in childbirth, insisting that Seymour had poisoned her.
Every single mother figure Elizabeth had died miserably because of her marriage/engaging in sex, whether or not it was by natural causes. If Elizabeth wasn’t terrified of sex and marriage, I would be very surprised. Her reign was a great one, but she personally was neurotic as hell, although her government and she worked with her neuroses very effectively. Her fear of marriage and sex turned out to be an enormous diplomatic asset, as she was able to extract all kinds of favors from other royal houses over the many years they thought they might be able to foist a relation on her as husband and thereby gain a kingdom for their own dynasty.
But the big question everyone always wondered was whether or not she had sex with Robert Dudley. This was certainly a contemporaneous question as well as an historical one. I personally believe it never happened because I think she was terrified of it, even though I suspect she was also a person who would have enjoyed sex very much (had she not been so afraid) and probably was quite sexually frustrated, at least about him.
[/Off Topic]
Henry II of Castille (uncle to Isabella of Civ fame ;)) earned his nickname of “the Impotent” when he tried to divorce his first wife, Blanca of Navarre (daughter of the queen by the same name and half-sister to Ferdinand through their father), on the basis of her infertility. Blanca, who until then had been playing her role of “shut up and embroider”, counterclaimed that it’s hard to get pregnant when your husband can’t fulfill his duties and that he had asked her to use “artificial insemination”; she’d refused.
He was checked by three young widows (who found that he did, indeed, have difficulties) and she by three midwives (who declared her virgo intacta).
I understand that the system used by the midwives was pretty much the same as that used nowadays in traditional Roma (gypsy) weddings in Spain: the checkers partially breach the girl; the blood on the handkerchief wrapped around the checker’s hand is the proof.
From my Spanish classes, I remember a fragment of a medieval document from one of the Muslim kingdoms, where a notary-public had been called to certify that an 11yo girl had bled from between her legs after falling down; thus, if her (future) husband found her not as hard to breach as he might have expected, the blame was on the stairs and not the girl. In this case, the records didn’t indicate whether the girl’s hymen had been checked, only that it might have gone AWOL, so we figured it had not been checked.
**Bolding **and capitalization mine:
And that’s how I found my new drag name.