were considered related within four degrees. By the 8th century, however, the church
defined consanguinity as residing within seven degrees and changed the method of
calculating degrees by counting back only to the common ancestor; hence, sixth cousins
were considered related within seven degrees. These two changes vastly increased the
number of people to whom one was theoretically too closely related to marry. Although
the nobility initially tried to avoid consanguineous unions, not wanting to have a carefully
arranged marriage broken up by the bishop, by the 12th century they frequently married
their distant cousins deliberately. Then, if they decided they wanted a divorce, they could
“discover” the consanguinity and have their marriage annulled. To discourage this
divorce on demand, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 cut back the forbidden degrees
from seven to four, although continuing to calculate degrees by counting back to the
common ancestor.
Constance B.Bouchard
Bouchard, Constance B. “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries.” Speculum 56(1981): 268–87.
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987.
Duby, Georges. Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg
Forster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
——. The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France,
trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Pantheon, 1983.
Freisen, Joseph. Geschichte des kanonischen Eherechts. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1963.
CONSEIL
. The word conseil presents problems for students of medieval political institutions, for it
corresponds to two English words, “counsel” (advice) and “council” (deliberative body),
while also having, in the medieval setting, a close connection with words that we
translate as “court.” Early Capetian kings conducted their business with the help of a
small body of close advisers called the curia regis. Vassals who owed the king “counsel”
were an important element in this body, but only a few were continually with the king.
By the later 11th century, the most stable group of advisers came from the royal
household, first the “great officers” and later on people with special expertise in legal or
financial matters. When some important business, usually involving military operations,
brought together many royal vassals, the small curia became, for the moment, a much
larger assembly.
By the late 12th century, Langmuir has shown, this larger assembly was called a curia
(“court”) when its business was primarily judicial and a concilium when it deliberated on
a major project of common interest, such as a crusade. When the judicial specialists
began to act as a separate, sedentary body under Louis IX, the small body that remained
with the king tended increasingly to be called his “council” rather than curia regis. Yet
the Latin word concilium, when used in the French vernacular (concile) came to refer
exclusively to councils of the church. The word conseil (Lat. consilium ‘advice’) meant
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