Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice

Based on a fascinating body of previously unexamined archival literature, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice brings to life the lost voices of ordinary Venetians and opens up their world of intimacy and conflict, sexuality, and living arrangements. Ferraro examines the scripts spouses, with the help of friends, kin, and neighbours, brought to the city's ecclesiastical court in order to annul their vows or achieve legal seperation. While church authorities attempted to regulate the rites of marriage and Venetian patricians tenaciously guarded the satbility of the maritla state, Ferraro finds that it was actually couples and their families, in collaboration if not collusion with the community, who regulated the making and breaking of marriage ties.