CHURCH, PROPERTY, AND WIFE-BEATING IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LIEGE: THE CASE OF CATHERINE WOET DE TRIXHE
D. Henry Dieterich, Washtenaw Community College
On 8 July 1535, Catherine, wife of Jean de Fanchon, appeared before the Officialité of Liège with a complaint against her husband. In the seventeen years or so that they had been married, he had many times "both by day and night" beaten her without any reason, "with his fists, as well as with sticks and naked and drawn swords (gladiis nudis et extractis) ." He had often seized her by the throat in an attempt to strangle her; when neighbors came to the house attracted by her cries, he attacked them; he had even enlisted the help of his son Collard in attacking her. Moreover, he had during this time lived "openly and publicly" in adultery with a certain Catherine widow of Renerus le Clauteur, keeping her in the house so that they could make love as often as they wanted. She could no longer remain with her husband under these circumstances.1
We do not know much more about this case. There is no formal decision by the court to allow the couple to separate or to levy any punishment. We do know that Jean appeared in court the next day to deny the most serious charges. Yes, they were married, and during their marriage he had hit her to correct her, but nothing more than this. She herself had attacked Collard, and he had only attempted to defend himself. As for the other Catherine, she was just in the house as a servant; he wanted to take his wife back and fire the servant.
Although we do not know if she received it, Catherine was presumably asking the Officialité for what was called a divortium a mense et thoro or divorce from bed and board: not a true divorce in the modern sense but a canonical decree permitting the couple to live apart while still legally married. It was the only relief available for a woman in this situation, since a validly contracted marriage was indissoluble under Church law. This essay cannot be an exhaustive account of Catherine’s case, but only a look at what we know of her life, of her marriage, and perhaps some notion of her motives and responses. Catherine and her husband both came from fairly wealthy, office-holding families; the marriage to Jean de Fanchon was her second. Her first marriage, to a man of similar social status, had left her with several children. These children, her natal family, and the local parish constituted the background for her marital drama. This marriage appears to have been part of a family strategy, one which Catherine tried to preserve even in the face of her second husband’s abuse.
It would also be desirable to compare Catherine’s case with the experience of other women in early modern Europe; but here we encounter a dearth of research. In view of the growing interest among historians in the history of the family and the history of women, it is surprising that there are no studies dealing specifically with domestic violence in this period. This is not to say that the occurrence of wife-beating has been entirely ignored, but it appears only peripherally in connection with other aspects of family and marriage. Merry Weisner’s survey Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe hardly mentions wife-beating in her survey of attitudes toward women both popular and legal.2 In some other surveys of marriage and family such as Thomas Safely’s Let No Man Put Asunder and Rosemary O’Day’s The Family and Family Relationships 1500-1900 mention violence as one of the possible grounds for divorce. O’Day notes, however, that in early modern Europe, "at all levels of society, interpersonal violence was common," even while suggesting that the period saw changes in attitude.3
One study that does discuss marital conflict, including violence, is David Sabean’s Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen.4 Using local court records, Sabean is able to document not only the existence of domestic violence, but also changes in the terms employed in marital conflict and the meanings it conveyed. This study of a German village in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while temporally, geographically, and socially distant from sixteenth-century Liège, raises important issues. It also suggests that even marital discord has a history and is related to developments in the larger society. The control of domestic conflict was important to both authorities and peasants in Neckarhausen because of concern for both social order and the economic interests of the family.5
In his 1983 study When Fathers Ruled, Steven Ozment occasionally mentions wife-beating in passing in the context of mainly Protestant attitudes toward marriage. He associates a change in attitude toward violence with Protestant theologians, citing, for example, Justus Menius’s opinion that it is "insanity" for a man to give "blows to a poor, weak woman."6 He mentions, without citing many specifics, that wife-beaters in Protestant cities were brought before marriage courts or consistories, although women found to have struck their husbands were punished more severely.7 Although most of Ozment’s sources for prescriptive attitudes toward marriage are Protestant, the one extensive example of the experience of marriage is a Catholic lawyer from Cologne, Hermann von Weinsberg, based on Hermann’s own memoir of his two marriages. Hermann’s second wife Drutgin was a scold, and when her taunts became too much "he violently beat and cursed her . . . something he claimed he had never done with his first wife." At the same time, he seemed to manifest real devotion to Drutgin, and he appears to have missed her deeply when she died after a long illness.8
While Ozment notes that "wife-beating … certainly knew no religious confession,"9 he implies that Protestants took a more severe view of such abuse than Catholics. This view is shared by John Witte in his study From Sacrament to Contract. He credits the Genevan marriage ordinances with a number of "innovations, or novel emphases" including "the stern prohibition against wife abuse."10 In practice, however, even in Geneva this prohibition did not change legal practice in the treatment of abusive marriages; in the marriage ordinances "separation from bed and board was not an option, save in the most dire cases of danger to an innocent spouse’s body and soul."11 This does not mark much of a change from medival practice. Nor does it contrast much with Catholic jurisdictions, as Joel Harrington notes in his more balanced study of Catholic and Protestant states in the region of the Rhenish Palatinate. His evidence suggests that in practice the remedies of domestic abuse were similar, and support O’Day’s contention that a certain level of violence was considered normal. Citing cases from different jursidictions, he summarizes the problem of abuse as follows:
Significantly, few authorities, Protestant or Catholic, ever considered physical abuse in itself—except in life-threatening situations—as worthy of serious punishment. . . . Relying almost exclusively on warnings and threats of excommunication to achieve their end, ecclesaitical officials surely found the possibilities for significant behavior modification extremely limited, to say the least.12
While Harrington, and to a lesser degree Witte and Ozment, do discuss specific experiences of marriage, they all, like most studies of marriage in the sixteenth century, emphasize changes in marriage law. One study that attempts to quantify the actual practice of marital law is Thomas Max Safley’s Let No Man Put Asunder. This contains considerable statistical evidence concerning marital litigation in the German-speaking southwest.13 His intention being to study the impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations on the development of marriage law, he studies the municipal courts of Freiburg im Breisgau and the ecclesiatical court of its diocesan see city of Constance for the Catholic side and, on the other, the marriage court of the Protestant city of Basel in the last half of the sixteenth century. Of these, the discussion of Freiburg and Constance provide the closest analogy to Liège.
Safely finds that most marriage cases brought before the ecclesiastical court at Constance involve questions related to the validity of marriage. Out of about 10,000 cases, nearly half (49.7%) involve the marriage contract and a further 13 percent the allegation of various impediments to marriage. About a third (32.7%) involve consummated unions, including paternity cases. Only 250 cases (2.5%) are requests for canonical separation, mostly on grounds of adultery or impotence. In only one case is abuse alleged as a reason for a wife leaving her husband In Basel, where Protestant marriage law allowed full divorce, both divorce and complaints of abuse were somewhat more common. There 16.8% of all cases were requests for divorce, 8.4% of which were because of abuse.14
The one case separation on the grounds of abuse from the court of Constance that Safely records deals with a couple of high social status: the Burgermeister of Freiburg, Hans Caspar Ingolstetter, and his nobly-born wife, Appolonia Meckhen. She brought her case first to the city authorities, who attempted to reconcile to couple in spite of her claim that she feared for her life. While the authorities apparently sided at first with the husband, the failure of their efforts in the end led them to strip Ingolstetter of his offices. Meckhen had by this time successfully petitioned for a separation.15
Another study by R.H. Helmholtz, based on the records of English episcopal courts from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, also finds that suits for divorce a mense et thoro were rare in this period. Unlike the pattern in sixteenth-century Freiburg, in late medieval England "almost all" of the few that did come before the ecclesiastical courts were for cruelty.16 Obtaining a separation on this ground was not always easy; cruelty had to be demonstrated by "the actual infliction of physical harm" and even then, the judges’ usual course was to try to persuade the couple to live together peaceably. Sometimes the couple might be sent home after the husband had agreed to post a bond (cautio) as guarantee of future good behavior.17
When a separation was granted, it released the couple from the duty of living together and from the obligation to pay the "marital debt"—that is, to engage in sexual relations. What is not clear is whether the husband was still obliged to support his wife financially. Helmholtz finds a few cases in which it is specified, but no general pattern.18 This points to one reason for the rarity of such separations: since the wife could not remarry, she might find herself isolated and without support if she left her husband. Even if the ecclesiastical court ordered him to provide for his wife, it might have some difficulty enforcing its will. A woman with sufficient means of her own and the support of a wealthy family might be more able to take such a step. While it is foolish to generalize from so few cases, we can see that both Appolonia Menckhen and Catherine were in that position.
The records of the Officialité of Liège reflect a distribution of cases similar to those discovered in other studies. As in other cities of Catholic Europe, it was the principal ecclesiastical court, the one that heard cases involving marriage. Even taken as a whole, these were a small part of its business, and most, as elsewhere, turn on issues of validity and consent. A typical case is that of Lynette, widow of Albert le Halbardier. A certain Collard approached her in her house and promised her that he would "have no other wife" but her. After he gave her a silver ring in token of "the words that are between us" the two had sexual relations. Lynette asked the Officialité to order him to carry through on his promise of marriage.19 Other cases involve complaints of forced marriage, but cases like Catherine’s involving a duly contracted marriage are vanishingly rare.
While we cannot generalize about abused wives and their abusers in Liège, we do know something about this one. Catherine was the daughter of a substantial tanner, Walter or Woet de Trixhe, and his wife Marie de Lens.20 The family of Woet de Trixhe lived in the Outremeuse district of the Liège, a remote corner of the city on several islands at the far side of the Meuse River where numerous tanneries were located. The family’s status is demonstrated by the offices its members held. Catherine’s brother, Jean Woet de Trixhe, was chosen commissaire of the city in 1530. The commissaires of Liège served as minor magistrates and were responsible for law and order in their neighborhoods. Jean’s sons Thomas (Masset) and Walther Woet de Trixhe, served respectively as a member of the council of the prince-bishop and burgomaster of Liège.21 The two nephews held office during the 1530s and early 1540s, while Catherine was still living.
Like her own brother, her first husband was a commissaire of the city, chosen in either 1576 or 1580.22 We know nothing of Johannes Saverot’s origins, but he lived in the Ile district where Catherine and her children were subsequently to make their home.23 He served as a compteur or accountant for a number of local organizations; the first document mentioning him in this capacity is a land transaction in which he acted as compteur of the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix in 1484.24 Later he served the leading charitable foundation, the Pauvres-en-Ile, in the same capacity, and he was a churchwarden of the parish of Saint-Martin-en-Ile as well as a commissaire for the neighborhood. His name occurs repeatedly from 1481 to his death in 1516 in documents referring to the buying of cens and rentes, a form of investment or money-lending common in sixteenth-century Liège.25 In many of these documents, his occupation is listed as "clerc."
The otherwise undated marriage contract of Catherine and Johannes in the registers of the Echevins of Liège is marked "mise en warde" (registered) 12 June 1505.26 In it her father promises 200 florins in cash and rentes worth 15 muids of spelt annually. The presence of their marriage contract at this late date is problematical. Saverot clearly had at least two children of marriageable age by this time: a document dated 29 January 1501 refers to Jean Hochet the younger as the husband of Johannes’ daughter Marie.27 Another document in which Johannes transfers property that is part of the marriage settlement of his daughter Barbe to Baldwin son of Anthone Gambassin is dated 4 April 1502.28 Yet they are referred to in other documents as Catherine’s daughters, with no hint that they had any other mother.
There are no clear references in the documents to any previous marriage for Saverot. In a document dated 26 August 1507, Saverot transfers property to Jean Charle, husband of his daughter Catherine "engedrée en dlle. Katherine sa premiere espeuze."29 Thus if he had a previous wife, her name was also Catherine, but no other document mentions her. He was probably married by 1480, since it is unlikely that a single man would have been chosen to serve as commissaire.30 If Catherine Woet de Trixhe was this wife, she would have had to be about 80 years old at the time of her will, and at least 55 at the time of her first husband’s death. It is possible that the date on the document reflects the registration of a much earlier contract; this is possible but it is unlikely that 25 years would elapse. Its location in the register suggests an actual date sometime in 1503; so does the presence of Jean Hochet as one of the witnesses. While Catherine is not mentioned in earlier documents, she is in several subsequent ones, as Johannes carries out some property transactions in their joint names. In some cases, she acted on his behalf in these transactions.31
In their joint will dated 15 July 1516, Catherine and Johannes list six children, at least five of them grown, and Catherine is clearly referred to as their mother. All the bequests to the children are conditioned by the proviso that if any of them marries without their mother’s consent, his or her share will be reduced to a single payment of four florins. The provisions of the will, clearly written as the father’s last testament, provide evidence as to the current positions of the children. Henry, the only son, was a Carmelite friar; one daughter, Jeanne, was a professed sister in the Franciscan tertiaries of St. Anne known locally as the "Sœurs de Hasque." Ysabeaux does not seem to have settled on a direction in life; she received a bequest to use to fulfil her parents’ wish that she should go "to the church or some monastery." Three children were then or had been married: Marie wife of Jean Hochet, Cathon (Catherine) the wife of Charle, and Barbette, widowed at least since 1505.32 Catherine received all the property that came from her father’s family, as well as the house called "Le Croix d’Or" where the couple had lived. The children were cautioned not to disturb their mother with complaints or they would lose everything.33
A lot can happen in six months. On 21 December 1516, Catherine appeared before the echevins of Liège to witness the marriage contract of her daughter Marie with Martin son of Jean de Fanchon. She herself was already married to her daughter’s new father-in-law. Evidently mother and daughter had been widowed since July. Unfortunately we have no record of the deaths of either Johannes Saverot or Jean Hochet, although they disappear from the annual membership lists of the parish confraternity at this time, nor do we have the marriage contract of Catherine and Jean. But in the contract between Marie and Martin, Catherine is referred to both as mother of the bride and wife of Jean de Fanchon. There is no mention, now or later, of any children from the Hochet marriage, but she does bring into the marriage 6 muids of spelt in rentes and 6 florins in cens. Along with Catherine, her brother Jean Woet [de Trixhe] commissaire of the City serves as a witness.34
Jean de Fanchon came from a family of at least equal status to Catherine’s. He was one of three sons of Collard (Nicholas) de Fanchon, a mangon or butcher, but evidently a substantial one. While Jean appears to have carried on in the trade,35 Hubert became a priest and a chaplain at the collegiate church of St. Paul, and Gilles took a licentiate in civil and canon law and became, in 1513, one of the échevins of Liège. The échevins were the highest court not only for the city of Liège but also for the entire principality; those members who were not noble were like Maître Gilles (as he is always referred to) holders of university law degrees. It was the highest office to which a lay bourgeois of Liège could reasonably aspire. They were apparently from the Ile neighborhood like Saverot: Gilles had been a member of the parish of Saint-Martin-en-Ile, Hubert was a priest at the neighborhood collegiate church, and when Jean joined the butchers’ guild in 1497, he did so by transferring 6 florins of cens on two houses in different parts of the island.
Jean de Fanchon is always referred to in the documents as a butcher, but he is also a frequent participant in the same kinds of investment or lending as Johannes Saverot. Unlike Saverot, he never appears on behalf of any other organization, but always on his own account. He was, however, a "clericus conjugatus," that is, a married cleric in minor orders, although this status had no apparent effect on his daily life. We only know about it from a single document which also foreshadows the trouble that was to come about later in his marriage to Catherine Woet de Trixhe. Since he was a cleric, Fanchon’s misdeeds fell within the competence of the court of the Official of Liège, and on February 1518, the procurator of the court charged him with attacking a certain Johannes Datis with a sword (although not touching him) in an argument after supper concerning "certain goods." He was condemned to a pilgrimage to Ste. Anne at Dueren plus expenses.36
Before marrying Catherine, Jean had been married to Idelette de Bellefroid. Their joint will dated 31 August 1515 and registered by the testators themselves on 25 October 1515, demonstrates that Idelette was still alive at that time. It mentions four children, Martin, Lambert, Collard, and Hellewy (Eloise). It also suggests that they had been living in the central Liège parish of St. And André, since they refer to the saint as their patron and declare a wish to be buried in that church. By the time of his marriage to Catherine, however, he had returned to the Ile neighborhood to effect the new family alliance, while maintaining his connections to the Bellefroid family. Witnessing the new marriage agreement on his side, besides Maître Gilles who served as notary, were Jean Dary, a hallier or cloth merchant, husband of his late wife’s sister Marie, and a certain Phillippe, probably Phillippe le Retondeur, husband of Idelette’s other sister Catherine. The Dary family was further connected with the Fanchon in that Jean’s daughter Pirette (that is, Jean de Fanchon’s wife’s niece) married Maître Gilles some time between his first wife’s death in 1515 and his own in 1519.
As a piece of family economic strategy, the double marriage of mother and daughter to father and son seems brilliant. Here are four prosperous, rising families—Woet de Trixhe, Saverot, Fanchon, and Bellefroid—all coming together in a grand alliance centered on a couple who both appear capable and enterprising. During the next year we see Catherine occupied with settling her late husband’s estate: transferring property left to the parish for a memorial mass37 and signing over a rente to the Pauvres de la Cité in accordance with Johannes’s will "in recompense for anything that by chance he might have failed to account for" to discharge his conscience before God and the world.38 When a certain Toussaint Lowar redeems some property mortgaged to Johannes Saverot, Jean de Fanchon acts for Catherine and Jean Woet de Trixhe her brother as mambour for Johannes’s children.39
Apart from a few intra-familial transactions, we do not find Jean’s name in the registers of property transactions as before the marriage. Nor—apart from his punishment by the ecclesiastical court—do we know much else about what he was doing. Johannes Saverot had been a stalwart of the local parish: a churchwarden for over thirty years and a member of the Confraternity of Our Lady and the Blessed Sacrament that included most of the parish’s leading laymen.40 Catherine remained a member of the confraternity on her own until 1526, when Jean appears to have joined and paid dues for both of them for three years. From 1525 until 1529, they are joined on the membership list by a woman called Jenon Saverot, probably the daughter Jeanne who had been a tertiary at the Sœurs de Hasque in 1516.
It is during these years that the savage violence described in Catherine’s complaint took place. There is no indication of exactly when it happened. Catherine merely testified that it happened "during that time"—that is, the years since their marriage—"many and various times."41 Why did she choose that moment in 1535 to bring her complaint to the court? Was it because one of the incidents describe in the complaint, or some other, convinced her that she was truly in danger of her life? Was it the appearance of the other Catherine in her husband’s bed that drove her over the edge? Or did some circumstance in the outside world influence the timing? One possibility is that she waited until her grandchildren who were also Jean’s grandchildren were old enough that she might have some assurance of their safety. Another possibility is that members of her own family had now reached positions that assured her of sufficient support, both financial and social. Her brother Jean became a commissaire in 1530, and his son Thomas a counsellor of the prince-bishop in 1535. Her daughter Jeanne, some time during this period, married Jean, seigneur de Bavegnée. By 1535 her family was sufficiently established that she could challenge her husband in the public forum.
While we do not know the final disposition of her case before the Officialité, but Catherine appears to have regained some freedom of action after 1535. Beginning that year, she rejoined the Confraternity of Our Lady at Saint-Martin-en-Ile and remained on the books through 1540. The confraternity included some married women whose husbands were not members as well as a number of widows, including Catherine’s sometime sister-in-law, Pirette Dary, widow of Maître Gilles de Fanchon since 1519. The real demonstration of Catherine’s independence, however, is her will, drawn up on 9 February 1543.
In wills and other documents, a married woman is invariably referred to as "wife of" and widows as "widow of" her husband, living or deceased. A remarried widow might be referred to as both, especially if the property or family of her first husband was involved. In drawing up her will, Catherine identifies herself in a way that ignores the preceding 27 years. The document is the last testament of Catherine de Trixhe, widow of Johannes Saverot. She asks to be buried in the chapel of St. Anne in the parish church of St. Martin-en-Ile, as her first husband had in his will in 1516. Living or dead (we do not know which, at this point) Jean de Fanchon has no part in her life. Nor will he, or any relation of his that is not a relation of Catherine’s, have any place in her inheritance. The difficulty here is that Catherine does not wish to disinherit her grandchildren, even if they bear Fanchon’s name. Her part in the grand family alliance will remain under her control.
Of the six children mentioned in the 1516 will, four appear in this document. Henry and Barbe are gone, quite possibly dead before their mother. Isabeaux has apparently taken her parents’ advice and is now a sister at the convent "del Cheyne"; she receives some jewelry on condition that after her death it reverts to Catherine’s kin. Catherine is mentioned as receiving some cloth and silver, but no husband or children appear. Most of the attention goes to Jeanne and Marie, and to their children. Jeanne, apparently the former Franciscan tertiary, is now the wife of Jean, seigneur de Bavegnée. This particular son-in-law, along with her nephew Woet son of Jean Woet, referred to as "nostre maistre" since he had already served one term as burgomaster (1538), is among the executors appointed in the will. Jeanne and Jean have three children: Marie, "petite Catherine," and Gerard, each of whom receive legacies of property along with their mother. The property Catherine inherited from her father Woet de Trixhe is to go to Jean and Catherine, the children of Martin de Fanchon and his wife Marie. But this bequest, unlike those to her other grandchildren, is hedged around with conditions. The parents are not allowed to sell or mortgage the property, and if Jean and his wife have no children nor does Catherine, the property is to revert to their grandmother’s nearest kin. All the grandchildren and their mothers get some personal items of clothing, jewelry, and plate: but Marie alone gets no real property. The residue of the estate, apart from charitable bequests and payments to the executors, is to be divided, half to Jean and Catherine, Marie’s children, and half to Jeanne.42
Catherine’s death probably followed soon after the making of this will. One nineteenth-century antiquarian, taking his data from an eighteenth-century compilation of epitaphs, cites an epitaph in the church of Saint-Martin-en-Ile for Jean Saverot and "Katheline le Tanneur" his wife, the death of the former dated on the 15th of an unknown month in 1516, that of the latter on 15 March 1514.43 If this is an error for 1544, we have what could be a reasonable date for Catherine’s death. By 1545 she had probably died. She is not mentioned in the marriage contract of her grandson Jean, son of Martin de Fanchon; nor is Jean de Fanchon, Martin’s father. The contract does state that Marie, young Jean’s mother, has died; her cousin Woet de Trixhe, the former burgomaster, is one of the witnesses, along with Lambert de Fanchon, probably Martin’s brother.44
The ill-fated marriage of Catherine Woet de Trixhe and Jean de Fanchon was part of a family strategy that she did not abandon even in the face of physical abuse and danger. She did, however, use the resources at her disposal to direct the benefits of the strategy to her own kin and descendants. Her election of a burial place and her continuing ties with the parish church recall her first marriage, which must have been considerably more personally satisfying. Along with her family property, the Church seems to have been her principal support, providing her with both local ties and, at the extreme point, a forum to present her complaints. Because she had these resources, Catherine could survive and keep some control over her life.
Still, her case leaves many questions unanswered; indeed, it sugggests more than it answers. It seems that few cases like Catherine’s appear in the record. Was it only women like Catherine or the similarly placed Appollonia Menckhen who dared to take the step? Or did women of less means just run away or separate quietly, while elite women needed to take legal measures to protect kin and social standing? Or are we reading too much of the standards of our own age into the sixteenth century, when a certain level of physical violence was considered tolerable and normal? After all, Jean de Fanchon tried at least to justify his conduct as correction, and even Hermann von Weinsberg, who seems to have had a genuine affection for his wives, expresses no more than mild regret for beating one of them. What then were the standards of behavior expected of husbands and wives? If the ideal of a harmonious marriage without verbal or physical violence was gaining ground in the sixteenth century, as Ozment suggests, how did this translate into actual experience? How did the institutions ot Church and state, which provided the legal and moral framework for marriage and family, deal with difficulties that threatened or violated their ideals? All these questions await a more extensive study than this sketch of the life of one woman can provide.