"I DO, I DO": MEDIEVAL MODELS OF MARRIAGE AND CHOICE OF PARTNERS IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S "LE FRAISNE"

Romanic Review, Nov 2001 by Hurtig, Dolliann Margaret

Placed at the intersection of the spiritual and the physical, it was the sacrament that most manifestly symbolized the mystery of the incarnation; it was trembling on the brink, in the middle ground, dangerous.... But the main thing is that by the middle of the twelfth century marriage had come to be sacralized without being disincarnated. The conflict between the ecclesiastical and lay models of marriage had become much less acute. (185)

When we revisit Marie's story, the wedding of Gurun and La Codre, a binding and sacramental marriage, has taken place in a lavish manner:

Les noces tindrent richement;

mult i out esbaneiement. (383-385)

[The wedding was richly celebrated

and there was much merrymaking.]

According to Neil Cartlidge, in marriages of the era, "the practice of using written records to assert the concrete existence of each marriage had yet to develop, and, in its absence, the more impressive the marital ceremony could be made to seem, then the greater the emphasis upon the finality of the union"(13).

When the ceremonies of the day are over, the Archbishop assumes an active role in the blessing of the couple and of the marriage bed, a ritual that will precede the couple's first night together:

kar l'erceveskes i esteit

purs els beneistre e seignier;

ceo afereit a sun mestier. (416-418)

[The Archbishop was there

to bless them and make the sign

of the cross over them,

for this was part of his duty.]

Michael Sheehan remarks how clergymen were gaining more control of the institution of marriage to the extent that "marriage, hitherto, essentially an institution regulated by family custom and, to a certain extent, by Roman and barbarian civil law, passed more and more into the jurisdiction of the bishop"(91).

Le Fraisne, who remains silent about the marriage, prepares the bed and covers it with the fine cloth she was wrapped in as a babe. The mother of the bride ushers in her daughter to the marriage chamber and spies the rich coverlet on the bridal bed. She examines a bejewelled ring on the hand of Le Fraisne and recognizes the girl as the babe she had forsaken. The moment of recognition in the lay is considered by Donald Maddox as one of many "specular encounters" of which literature of the medieval ages is replete (58). For Maddox the specular encounter includes "... at least one locus in which action becomes contingent upon a primary personage's receipt of crucial information pertaining to the self and various aspects of its identity. The addressee of a specular disclosure ... has in most instances been unaware of the degree and gravity of his or her prior ignorance"(11). Le Fraisne has now become aware of her birthright; she is orphaned no more. She has become the noble and marriageable daughter of a wealthy feudal lord. Le Fraisne's mother then tells her story to her husband, how many years ago she had given birth to twin girls and feared for her reputation, as it was she who had viciously maligned the mother of the twin boys. The feudal lord immediately sets about righting the injustice done to his daughter: