390 cecilia cristellon and silvana seidel menchi
statue of santa Monica in the church of santo stefano and now conserved
in the Accademia. The painting depicts a nuptial celebration stipulated in
the presence of the parents and two witnesses alone.27
Not only was the presence of a priest pre-Trent not indispensable for a
valid union, it was not even considered necessary for conferring a sacred
character to the nuptials: an image of the Virgin, the open tabernacle, a
crucifix, the oath—better if sworn while touching the gospels—the sign
of the cross traced on the bride’s forehead, the invocation of the father,
son, and the Holy spirit, the simple expression “as god and Holy Mother
Church command,”28 were all elements the faithful considered capable
of placing marriage in the sphere of the sacred. only when blood rela-
tions united a churchman to one of the betrothed was the former given
priority in officiating the rite: if he were a friar, for example, the brother
of the bride substituted the father in the ritual requests of consent. More
frequent was the case of a marriage celebrated by a confessor who often
functioned as a social mediator in cases of controversial marriages, and
as an educator in the nature and goal of the marriage bond. in cases that
involve members of the most erudite regular clergy, the actions of the
confessor tend to reconcile the lay conception of an honorable marriage,
in which the family plays an active role in negotiations and which consid-
ers the deflowering of a virgin as akin to murder, with the Catholic doc-
trine that requires solely the consent of the spouses for a valid marriage.
We thus find confessors as mediators between spouses who contracted
marriage in secret, encouraging and sometimes prohibiting its public cele-
bration; confessors who take the responsibility of conducting negotiations
with the father of the groom to celebrate honorably a marriage already
stipulated without his knowledge,29 or confessors who take on the role of
nuptial ministers so as to control the atmosphere of violence that made
marriage necessary: the confessors, for instance, might be called for in
great haste by the bride’s armed relatives who had surprised her in the act
with her lover.30 in each of these cases the social and pastoral functions
are united in what becomes an occasion for spreading the official doctrine
of marriage. When a spiritual father became involved in a marriage in
27 see also the Matrimonio di san Giuliano, in the cycle of the Leggenda di san Giuliano
(XIV sec.) depicted in the northern transept of the cathedral of Trent, and the Sposalizio
della Vergine in the church of the Annunziata di Borno in the Val Camonica (1474/75,
the latter an example mentioned by Jörg Traeger Renaissance und Religion. Die Kunst des
Glaubens im Zeitalter Raphaels (Munich, 1997), p. 84.
28 ASPV, FC, vol. 2: Valeria figlia di Marco Rio vs Francesco aurefice, 1501.
29 ASPV, CM, vol. 9: Marco Antonio de Stefani vs Lucretia q. Simonis Vacha, 1506–1507.
30 ASPV, CM, vol. 11: Ambrosina de Balsonibus vs Marco Antonio Bacinetto, 1509–1510.