that age-gaps especially where the man was significantly older than the woman were Not Cool
Whereas in my period, historians are at pains to tell us modern readers that contemporaries would not have batted an eye at a huge age difference among nobility and royalty, and that when your first wife died, of course you married another 17-yo to raise and/or replace the kids from your first marriage--and that was the nicest husbands!
Uncle/niece marriages, or marrying below your class, were the things that were *done* by nobles and royals, but definitely not the norm and quite scandalous.
ETA: BUT ALSO - fwiw I have also seen the occasional fantasy commentator who has indeed probably been told some of this at some point and has interpreted this as "our age-of-consummation norms are accurate to the mediaevals" which is itself deeply stupid, in much the same way that the same kind of person often takes "actually mediaeval and early modern women were central to the economic unit and operated with a particular kind of significant influence/etc" as "mediaeval and early-modern culture weren't actually virulently misogynistic and anti-woman", which is ALSO not correct!
This and this!
"well this was the norm in 1830 and The Past Was Worse so it must've been even worse in 1330"
I have facepalmed at this very argument!
This is part of why Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in Italy (Those Crazy Italians and their Crazy Thing With Marrying Off Babies), and you are still supposed to think that Paris and Capulet are being gross and creepy to marry off Juliet to an older man that young, it's just expected that Italians Are Weird And Creepy.
Huh. Yeah, a number of the examples I can think of off the top of my head, from 1000-1800, have involved Italians, but usually intermarrying with German or French nobles/royals.
As for Italian-internal practices among "normal" people, the only thing I would know well enough to speak to is Renaissance Florence. To copy-paste the stats from John Najemy's History of Florence:
Among all classes, men in the city married in smaller numbers and later in life than did men in the countryside. And while there was less variation in the ages at which women married, the city had many more widows than the contado. In all cities of Florentine Tuscany surveyed by the Catasto, the average age of marriage for women was just under 19, and for men just under 28. In the Florentine contado it was over 19 for women and just under 24 for men. But in Florence the average age of women marrying for the first time was between 17 and 18, and the vast majority of women who married did so by their early twenties; those who did not mostly entered convents. For men in the city, the average age at first marriage was around 30, but 12% of all men never married. The large age difference between husbands and wives (averaging 12 years, and in many cases much more) accounts for the startling number of urban widows: 25% of women over the age of 12 were widows in 1427. Many were widowed in their twenties, and few ever remarried.
You also get stats from the police records in Renaissance Florence (scandalous among contemporaries for its pre-Savonorola laissez-faire attitude toward male same-sex relationships) relating to sodomy, where, say 90+% of the "passive" partners recorded between 1478-1502* are below 18, and 90+% of the "active" partners are above 18. The passive partners start at age 6 and really take off at 13, peaking in the 15-18 range. Which is skeevy as hell by modern standards! But not UNHISTORICAL as some seem to believe.
* Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence.
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Date: 2022-06-18 07:56 pm (UTC)Whereas in my period, historians are at pains to tell us modern readers that contemporaries would not have batted an eye at a huge age difference among nobility and royalty, and that when your first wife died, of course you married another 17-yo to raise and/or replace the kids from your first marriage--and that was the nicest husbands!
Uncle/niece marriages, or marrying below your class, were the things that were *done* by nobles and royals, but definitely not the norm and quite scandalous.
ETA: BUT ALSO - fwiw I have also seen the occasional fantasy commentator who has indeed probably been told some of this at some point and has interpreted this as "our age-of-consummation norms are accurate to the mediaevals" which is itself deeply stupid, in much the same way that the same kind of person often takes "actually mediaeval and early modern women were central to the economic unit and operated with a particular kind of significant influence/etc" as "mediaeval and early-modern culture weren't actually virulently misogynistic and anti-woman", which is ALSO not correct!
This and this!
"well this was the norm in 1830 and The Past Was Worse so it must've been even worse in 1330"
I have facepalmed at this very argument!
This is part of why Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in Italy (Those Crazy Italians and their Crazy Thing With Marrying Off Babies), and you are still supposed to think that Paris and Capulet are being gross and creepy to marry off Juliet to an older man that young, it's just expected that Italians Are Weird And Creepy.
Huh. Yeah, a number of the examples I can think of off the top of my head, from 1000-1800, have involved Italians, but usually intermarrying with German or French nobles/royals.
As for Italian-internal practices among "normal" people, the only thing I would know well enough to speak to is Renaissance Florence. To copy-paste the stats from John Najemy's History of Florence:
Among all classes, men in the city married in smaller numbers and later in life than did men in the countryside. And while there was less variation in the ages at which women married, the city had many more widows than the contado. In all cities of Florentine Tuscany surveyed by the Catasto, the average age of marriage for women was just under 19, and for men just under 28. In the Florentine contado it was over 19 for women and just under 24 for men. But in Florence the average age of women marrying for the first time was between 17 and 18, and the vast majority of women who married did so by their early twenties; those who did not mostly entered convents. For men in the city, the average age at first marriage was around 30, but 12% of all men never married. The large age difference between husbands and wives (averaging 12 years, and in many cases much more) accounts for the startling number of urban widows: 25% of women over the age of 12 were widows in 1427. Many were widowed in their twenties, and few ever remarried.
You also get stats from the police records in Renaissance Florence (scandalous among contemporaries for its pre-Savonorola laissez-faire attitude toward male same-sex relationships) relating to sodomy, where, say 90+% of the "passive" partners recorded between 1478-1502* are below 18, and 90+% of the "active" partners are above 18. The passive partners start at age 6 and really take off at 13, peaking in the 15-18 range. Which is skeevy as hell by modern standards! But not UNHISTORICAL as some seem to believe.
* Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence.