that a promise to serve as shushvin was violated. In one Ashkenazic source,
however, we find the ba’al brit mentioned alongside the shushvin. The author
of Sefer H·asidim says:
Once a H·asid was asked to be a ba’al brit and to be a shushvin for a groom. He
said to those who asked him: You would be better off buying yourself friends. Ask
others and they will love you and I will consider it as if you had asked me.^127This source equates the two figures, as well as the honor of serving as a ba’al
brit or shushvin. In both cases, the bestowal of the honor was considered a way
to “buy friends.” This interpretation seems to support Bossy’s and Jussen’s sug-
gestions as to the function of the co-parents/ba’alei brit.^128
We are still left with the difference between Jewish and Christian practice
in bestowing the honor of ba’alei brit/co-parents on relatives. Even if we ex-
plain this difference, as I did before, as the result of differing Jewish and Chris-
tian understandings of incest, we must still determine the social function of
having a grandparent serve as a ba’al brit. I would suggest that this may be
linked to developments in the medieval marriage ceremony.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the emergence of new strategies of
marriage negotiation in Ashkenazic society. One of the most noticeable
changes was related to the monetary payments made by the families of the
groom and the bride. Eleventh-century records show that marriage was an
arrangement in which money changed hands. Up until the mid-thirteenth
century, only the woman’s family advanced money before marriage, in the
form of a dowry, whereas the groom’s family committed itself to funding by way
of the sum promised in the ketubbah. A new ruling that originated in the
twelfth century enhanced the position of the bride’s family. Previously, once
the marriage was contracted, the money was transferred to the husband’s fam-
ily, and, even if the bride died the day after the wedding, the money was not
returned. In the twelfth century, a new ruling became accepted, whereby if the
bride passed away within the first two years of marriage and no children had
been born to the couple, the money was returned to the bride’s family.^129
In the mid-thirteenth century, double marriage payments seem to have be-
come standard; thus, not only the bride’s family, but also the groom’s family,
contributed to the young couple’s economic position. Some scholars have sug-
gested that this double marriage payment became necessary because the Jew-
ish economy relied so heavily on moneylending. The new ruling was that if
the bride or the groom passed away either before the birth of offspring or be-
fore two years had passed, the monies were returned to the respective fami-
lies.^130 Although we have little information on this process, some of the issues
regarding changes in marriage agreements are relevant to an understanding of
the forces at work in the circumcision ceremony.^131
This change in the dowry system was a response to existing social tensions;
however, it also produced new frictions that the society had to cope with. I sug-