The End of Love in the Seventeenth Century: Certainty and Uncertainty in Courtship

Abstract

This article examines the emotional landscape of courtship and engagements in seventeenth-century Sweden. By using a framework by Illouz, understanding courtship as a cultural technique aimed at creating certainty in socially risky situations, the courtship of two women by one student is examined. The analysis moves from the intimate interactions of the couple to the family, the community and lastly the ecclesiastical and university authorities. The article shows that the main sources of uncertainty in the courtship process stemmed from procedural and ontological uncertainty—the order of courtship, the rituals of engagements and the significance of exchanged gifts were not clear, causing confusion and disruption in the courtship process.

Marina Olofsdotter was the daughter of Olof Michaelsson, a bailiff in Lagga, Uppland. Her sister Kerstin was married to the priest Nicolaus Petri, and she served as a maid in his household. We do not know anything about her charm or looks, but purely from her social standing, she seems to have been quite a catch. She also had several suitors. One of them was Nicolaus Medelius Smolandi, a student at the nearby university in Uppsala. But in 1632 Nicolaus was thrown in jail and brought before the consistory court of the university. He was accused of fornication and was rumored to not only have been betrothed to Marina but simultaneously having been betrothed to Anna Gudmundsdotter, the daughter of one of his previous masters down south in Småland. He had played a game of high stakes, it seems. Now he had to answer for his actions. ¹

Was Nicolaus simply a seducer, tricking his way into bed with several women? Or were the double betrothals a sign of emotional indecisiveness? Emotions are volatile things, and the choice of marriage partners was a risky business. In this article, I will explore certainties and uncertainties of the courtship process in seventeenth-century Sweden through an analytical framework by sociologist Eva Illouz. She argues that pre-modern societies had courtship processes that helped guide the courting couple in the risky decision of choosing a partner. Shared norms, gifts and commonly agreed-upon procedures on how the courtship was meant to progress created an emotional certainty during the courtship process. ² The aim is to add to our understanding of the seventeenth-century courtship process through the lens of emotional certainty and decision-making in courtship. By applying Illouz’s framework to the case of Nicolaus Medelius's double engagements, the article will map the pitfalls of the seventeenth-century courtship, and why it might have fallen short of creating emotional certainty. The case against Medelius was brought before the consistory court of Uppsala University. The records contain descriptions in some detail of the rituals and practices of courtship and betrothal, enabling a relative in-depth analysis of the seventeenth-century courtship. The analysis progresses with the relationship of Nicolaus and Marina. The first part of the article will focus on how the couple created certainty in the courtship between each other. The second part of the article discusses how the families of Nicolaus and Marina intervened in the courtship and sought to create further certainty in the courtship and engagement. The last empirical part of the article discusses how the wider community, as well as the ecclesiastical and university authorities (and the family of Anna in Småland) intervened and sought to create certainty in Nicolaus and his engagements.

Uppsala University and its Consistory Court

Nicolaus Medelius had been brought before the consistory court of Uppsala University since he was a student there. Uppsala University was founded in 1477, but the students were few, funding was unclear and the activities were sporadic during a religiously tumultuous sixteenth century. It was not until the 1620s, through a large royal donation of land, that the university resources ensured long-term survival and expansion. The consistory of Uppsala University was its governing board, but it also had jurisdiction over the university's faculty members and students. They had to both foster and judge, ³ and it seems that they paid careful attention to illicit sex during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is striking how zealous the consistory was in tracking down and bringing students accused of fornication to justice. Rumors seem to have been enough to start some form of investigation, such as when the rector in 1638 told the consistory that he had heard that some students had committed fornications, “some a year ago, some two years ago” with the widow of a soldier in the countryside. ⁴ They did not limit themselves to governing the students only when at university. Suspected fornicators, who had left the city, were searched for throughout Sweden. In one case some students had left Uppsala for Kopparberget, taking service in the mines there. When they did not summon the calls to appear before the consistory, the university wrote to the local magistrates, asking them to bring in the ex-students. ⁵ The consistory was also slow to forget. Though years could pass without them being able to track down an accused fornicator, the consistory would note that some cases were still open, writing letters to city courts and sending out agents to finally track them down. ⁶

The consistory protocols are of course shaped by their judicial context: although the consistory strived to strike a balance between their judicial duties as a court with institutional and patriarchal concerns as the governing body of their university students. Therefore, they were primarily concerned with matters of legal implication. In practice this means that the feelings, relationships, and other matters of interest for this study have often been left out of the records.

The consistory seemed to strive for a balance between judging and arbitrating, regularly seeking cooperation with the cathedral chapter in convincing students to settle cases of fornication by marriage. If students appeared reluctant to marry the women that they were accused of having fornicated with, it might have been due to the fact that the university for its first few decades did not allow married students, at least not during the first half of the seventeenth century. ⁷ When they condemned a student of fornication, they usually also relegated the student for a couple of years. This meant that there was little incentive for students to cast doubts on the conduct of the women they had courted. It generally did not count for much in the eyes of the consistory anyway, although some students tried to convince the consistory that they could not be held responsible for the fornication. Students were rarely able to avoid long expulsions. In one such case, a 16-year-old student told the consistory how the mother of the child that he was tutoring had been driven out of her house by her jealous husband. She sought refuge in the household of the young tutor and his father in Uppsala. At first, she slept in the same room as the student. One night she “forced herself” ⁸ into his bed, but the young student could not have been the father of the child that the woman carried, since “he was so young at the time.” ⁹ In this case, the University decided to allow him back at the university after having repented in church for five weeks. He was considered so young, that the responsibility mainly rested with the older woman, and since the student and his father had placed themselves at the Consistory's disposal. ¹⁰

Illicit Sex and Courtship in the Seventeenth Century

Fornication and bigamy had never been legal in Sweden, but the early seventeenth century was a period when sexual crimes were more strictly policed than before. ¹¹ Inspired by Lutheran ideals, authorities grew increasingly concerned with policing the sexual conduct of their citizens. This might have been especially true in Sweden. Fornication and adultery had always been criminal, but it had become increasingly policed. ¹² In 1608 the mosaic law was introduced as a penal code for certain, often sexual, crimes, mandating the death penalty for adultery. ¹³ This increased concern with policing sex and marriage led to a drastic increase in sexual offences in many courts, although regional patterns varied. ¹⁴ As a result, court records and cathedral chapter protocols were increasingly filled with matters concerning sexual crimes, such as adultery and fornication. ¹⁵ Despite this, extensive research on the period has shown that it was common for servants and young people to court each other and have pre-martial sexual relationships. ¹⁶

Previous research has largely been conducted on mostly judicial matters of the sexual repression of the early seventeenth century, focusing on sentencing, and the legal responsibility of man versus woman in cases of fornication. The largely hidden assumption often being that popular customs were being unchanged by legal reforms, rather than taking part in a dialogue with them, accepting, rejecting, and adapting to the new regulations. ¹⁷

This article discusses courtship on the road to marriage. There were several ways of entering into marriage, and historian Mia Korpiola argues that becoming married was in itself a process – a series of events – rather than one single defining ceremony that transformed the couple from single to married. The first step towards the marriage status was the betrothal, where the couple and their families declared their intent to marry. During the wedding that followed the father of the bride (or her Giftoman – guardian, responsible for negotiating her marriage) led her to the household of the groom, and after the couple had spent the night together, they were formally seen as married. ¹⁸ Korpiola noted that the Swedish marriage process had long medieval roots, and although the church and state made efforts to regulate and transform it, it changed at a glacial pace, retaining many of its medieval characteristics up until the eighteenth century. ¹⁹ In practice, long engagements were common. In many cases lasting for many years. ²⁰ If the betrothed couple had not had sexual intercourse, the church usually allowed the couple to break the betrothal, ²¹ but a betrothal followed by sexual intercourse meant that the couple were considered married. Many couples settled for simply being betrothed, and then started living together as married, which prompted campaigns by the church for sacralizing their unions during the late sixteenth century. ²²

Korpiola points to an alternative process of engagement, the trothplight (trolovning) emerging in the sixteenth century. While a betrothal (fästning) was a ceremony conducted by the suitor and the family of the bride with witnesses, trothplight was a solemn promise of marriage between the suitor and the women. Gifts could be exchanged both as a part of the betrothal ceremony and trothplights, the latter often in the form of exchanging rings. ²³ Trothplights could be used as an alternative to betrothals, or a couple could be both troth-plighted and betrothed, or just betrothed. This meant that there was more than one way that a couple could formally initiate the marriage process. In the material used here, the parties talk of trothplight and only mention betrothal in passing. Meanwhile, the Swedish church ordinance of 1571 only talks of betrothal. ²⁴ Contextually, however, the ceremony described by the parties in the sources corresponds to the ceremony described in the church ordinance as a betrothal. The distinction therefore does not make any sense, linguistically. But there is an analytical point in separating the ceremonies and underscoring the multiple paths to marriage. In this article, I use the term engagement, to signal the neutral meaning of the word, and betrothal is used to signify the more formal arrangements between a couple, family, and church. Trothplight is used for arrangements only between the couple.

Betrothals and trothplights were not the only way of entering a marriage. During the seventeenth century, cases of fornication under the promise of marriage were brought before the cathedral chapters. It meant that the cathedral chapter had to decide whether the intercourse meant that the couple had entered into a state of marriage (and therefore should be formally wed in church) or whether it was a case of fornication. ²⁵ The handling of these cases by the cathedral chapter shows that merely the promise of marriage was viewed as equal to trothplight or betrothal if it was followed by sexual intercourse. This occurred up until the 1680s when courts began laying the burden of proof on the one claiming that promises of marriage had been given. ²⁶

The many paths to marriage can be seen as a hallmark of the early modern marriage process. In a study of marriage and divorce in early modern England, Lawrence Stone shows how there were several binding ways of entering into a state of marriage, at times leading to people accidentally being promised, and technically arguably married to more than one person. ²⁷ The Swedish case appears similar in so far as there were several overlapping ways of entering into an engagement with someone, although they could usually be reversed as long as no sexual intercourse had taken place.

Korpiola characterizes the changes in the pre-modern Swedish marriage process as almost glacially slow. ²⁸ Did this mean then that its rules were commonly understood? Did it mean that the process was universally recognized enough to create a sense of emotional certainty?

Courtship Creating Certainty

This is a study of emotional practices in the sense that it is a study of emotionally charged practices. ²⁹ While we can never know for sure what Nicolaus Medelius, Marina Olofsdotter or Anna Gudmundsdotter felt, it might still be useful to discuss how society shaped the emotional experiences of courtship through a sociological framework.

Eva Illouz, a sociologist, researches contemporary coupling and love. She notices that while heartbreak and heartache are often attributed to individual shortcomings, they might as well be understood as the results of the contemporary social institutions of love and choice. She argues that people are encouraged to explain their romantic and sexual failures, insecurities, and heartaches through psychological explanations—childhood trauma, insecure attachment patterns, etc. “Despite the widespread and almost collective character of these experiences, our culture insists they are the result of faulty or insufficiently mature psyches.” ³⁰ With an understanding that our experiences are always rooted, contained, and organized through social institutions, and since so many seem to have issues so similar, she argued for a sociology of emotions, identifying “the institutional causes for romantic misery.” ³¹

As a part of that sociology of emotions, Illouz argues that modern love has undergone a dis-embedding; courtship and love are no longer entrenched in social relationships and shared systems of meaning. ³² Illouz's sociology of modern love, courtship and coupling aims at understanding contemporary society using the pre-modern society as a juxtaposition, a reference point for comparison and analysis. She draws most of her examples from nineteenth-century sources, often literary sources, such as Jane Austen. In this article I am going to turn that analysis around. Using her framework to understand how pre-modern courtship supposedly created certainty, I am going to analyze the courtship and ensuing confusion of the student Nicolaus and the maid Marina in early seventeenth-century Sweden.

Illouz describes pre-modern courtship as a cultural technique that enables decision making by procedures that make inner emotions clear and consolidated around several well-known rules. It was a social structure within which the actors could make risky decisions under social conditions that increased certainty. Courtship did not guarantee a good outcome for the parties, but its forms made the act of courtship itself clear and readable. ³³ The way they did this was through establishing certainty. Certainty here means the actors' ability to describe, predict and explain other people's behavior in social situations. ³⁴

Illouz breaks down the certainty that the pre-modern courtship technique established into six specific types.

Normative certainties, meaning that the perceived clarity of norms and values present in an interaction. The easier the norms can be identified in interactions, and the more norms that are active lead to greater predictability and more certainty. ³⁵

Existential certainty, mostly follows from normative certainty. When the norms are clear, for example, that women should be virgins and that heterosexual marriage is the only honourable end goal of sexual interaction, then people can perceive their roles in social situations. ³⁶

Ontological certainty, meaning that emotions were anchored in physical objects (such as gifts) and by witnesses, in that way manifesting the relationship and its progression. ³⁷

Evaluative certainty, meaning that “the capacity to gather reliable information about others or to know how to evaluate them according to established standards and criteria of evaluation, or both.” ³⁸

Procedural certainty, meaning that pre-modern courtship had a narrative structure, with an agreed-upon sequence of events. This sequence of events helped the actors in the courtship process to understand their own emotions, and to some degree also triggered these emotions.

Emotional certainty, meaning that the actors acted as if they knew the nature and intensity of their emotions and that they could decipher the emotional states of the other. ³⁹

In this article, I will demonstrate how this framework of understanding courtship as a cultural technique to create certainty is useful not only for describing the contemporary dis-embedded coupling process but also being a valuable tool in analyzing and describing the early modern courtship as well.

The Couple by the Bed

Nicolaus travelled to the Lagga parsonage, probably in the fall of 1631, to speak to its pastor about tutoring the pastor's son. He stayed there for eight days. The pastor was absent for some of them, due to a trip to Stockholm with his wife. It was at the parsonage that he met Marina, who served there as a maid. ⁴⁰

Most early modern couples met within the households they were living and working in. The circulation of servants between households provided many opportunities for young persons to spend time together in an environment less morally hazardous than pubs and taverns. Since couples meeting in households were also, nominally, supervised by masters and mistresses, the setting might have provided a bit more leeway than what could otherwise be afforded. ⁴¹ The pastor's temporary absence might also have provided opportunities for Nicolaus and Marina to get to know each other.

According to Nicolaus, he did not propose to Marina when the pastor was abscent. Marina's story differed slightly from his. According to Marina, he had asked her to marry him during her master's absence. He had asked her to marry him, and he had said that he wanted to “live and die by her side,” ⁴² but she said that she did not want to promise anything without the consent of her guardians. He, on the other hand, had said that he did not want to ask her guardians for her hand before he had gotten her consent. ⁴³ Therefore, the couple was in a bind procedurally already at an early stage. One interpretation of the situation is that Nicolaus was aiming for a trothplighting, where the couple promised themselves to each other, while Marina wanted to steer the process towards the more rigid and public betrothal ritual by referring the decision to parental approval.

Nicolaus said that when the pastor and his wife returned from Stockholm, the household attended a wedding in nearby Högby. Nicolaus accompanied them there. During the wedding, Nicolaus said that Marina had sent him a key to her lodgings. Therefore, he went to her and laid down in her bed, and later she followed and laid down together with him.

This bedside invitation resembles a nocturnal, chaste, courtship custom that has later been called nattfrieri—night courtship. This nattfrieri practice is well documented in the Swedish peasant society during the nineteenth century. Young men would go, often in groups, and ask to be invited to the maids’ bedsides. The one invited would enter and sit on the bedside, talking to the maid who was either sitting on the bedside herself or lying under the blankets. Sometimes they would sleep (literally) together with their clothes on, on top of the covers. Scholars have observed something resembling this custom in the seventeenth-century materials as well. ⁴⁴ It is often underlined that this form of courtship was an essentially chaste custom, allowing the couple to get to know each other without the interference of parents or masters and that sometimes a maid could have slept together with a large part of the village youths in this fashion. However, two things should be noted about the custom of nattfrieri in the seventeenth century: First, it is unclear to what extent the documented practices of the nineteenth century really describe the practices of the seventeenth century. Sources for the earlier centuries are vaguer, and there were probably great regional variations at play. Practices are mostly described as young men and women meeting each other, sleeping together, and courting in the outhouses. It is possible, I would dare to say likely, that nattfrieri was not yet as institutionalized and fixed in form as it would become in the coming centuries. Secondly, it should be noted that seventeenth-century clergy did, at least sometimes, view this form of courtship as a moral hazard, and they complained that it was the cause of premarital pregnancies in their community. ⁴⁵ It might be that the culturally established boundaries between chaste courtship and sex during courtship were not as clear during the seventeenth century as they would become in the 19th. In the cases of fornication brought before the university consistory during the early seventeenth century, several students described how they had visited a household, and that a maid went over and slipped into their bed at night, which then led to sex. ⁴⁶ However, sharing beds for sleeping was not necessarily sexual. One student described how he had slept in a bed next to a maid when another maid in the household who had shown interest in him during his visit came over and slipped under the blankets, where they then had intercourse. ⁴⁷ In conclusion, there were most likely some commonly understood cultural practices regarding bedside courtship, resembling the courtship customs of the nineteenth century. Young people needed to meet somewhere, and somehow, but that does not mean that the courtship practices of the seventeenth century had yet developed into the quite chaste courtship practices recorded by ethnologists of the nineteenth century.

The way Marina told it was that when her master returned, she had attended the wedding in Högby as a bridesmaid. Nicolaus had wanted to accompany her there, but she said that it would not look appropriate for them to go together. He had agreed with her but then followed her household there anyway. At the wedding, he had followed her around constantly, leaving her no peace. In the evening, he had snuck into the room where she slept. ⁴⁸

One of the main differences between Nicolaus’ and Marina's stories was that in Nicolaus’ case Marina was the active party in pursuing him, giving him the key as an invitation to her lodgings, while in her story the case was reversed. She underlined how he first had declared his intentions to her, later that he had pursued her during the wedding, and lastly that he had approached her bed. In Nicolaus’ version he was mostly the object of some woman's desire and acted upon it. In Marinas version, Nicolaus actively courted her in an easily recognizable fashion. Their testimonies were obviously shaped by the judicial context of the court, but they spoke strongly to a normative code, of honest and chaste women being pursued for marriage by men, and dishonest and loose women pursuing men for lust, or romantic schemes.

Marina told the consistory that Nicolaus at first stood by her bed, weeping over his previous fiancé in Småland who had betrayed him. He and Marina had talked for about three hours, and he had said that he never wanted to abandon her. Marina kept asking about his previous fiancé. He had cursed and said that he did not have any other fiancé. He then showed her a letter, stating that his previous fiancé had “disappointed him” ⁴⁹ and gone to bed with a student, and Nicolaus had explained that he did not want her anymore. Even if her father would insist on the marriage, and even if he owed him a lot of money, he could just show him the letter. “God save me from such haughty cackle and nobleman's whore!” ⁵⁰ The norms of female chastity were clearly very much in play here. The infidelity of a previous fiancé was enough to denounce her, but what the infidelity consisted of is not totally clear. The sources are, in the way many early modern sources are, seldom precise on matters of sexual intercourse and honor, instead relying on euphemisms. ⁵¹

Nicolaus had also asked Marina about the rings that she was carrying. Who had given them to her? Rather cryptically, she explained to the consistory that she had not wanted to confess who, for the sake of her sister. Instead, she lied and said that she had gotten them from a man called Johan Käiter, a man who her family would not allow her to marry. Nicolaus had then said that Käiter was a drifter, commenting that “I can provide for you as well as he can!” ⁵² This might have been seen as a hint of normative certainty at hand, that the inability to provide for a woman, and the lack of parental consent, seemed to have disqualified a male competitor from being taken seriously as a threat in courtship. Material objects, however, did not speak a clear language during the stages of the relationship. The rings Marina bore that had been given to her by other men did not prevent Nicolaus in his courtship and she was able to lie and explain their meaning away. One might say that they were meaningful to some extent since Nicolaus asked her about them, and since she lied about them. However, they were not so universally recognizable symbols of a relationship as to hinder his courtship or her consent of his courtship. Maybe here lies some of the explanation for Marina's procedural objections to trothplighting as well; rings as gifts were common symbols of trothplights, and they might have symbolized that Marina was already promised to someone else. ⁵³ By aiming for a betrothal ceremony with Nicolaus instead, she might have hoped that it would therefore trump the more informal trothplighting.

At this point, there still could have been little room for emotional uncertainty. Nicolaus had repeatedly declared his intention of forming a stable relationship with Marina. He also used material objects, in this case a letter somehow establishing his previous fiancé's infidelity, as proof that he was available for marriage. Interestingly, this letter was used to create ontological certainty that he did in fact not have a relationship, rather than using objects to mark the stages of an ongoing relationship.

Sometime thereafter, he must have laid down in her bed, because the pastor and Marina's father found them in bed together. ⁵⁴ Nicolaus was trying to hide under the covers when they entered. It caused Marina to have to leave the service of the pastor, returning to her father, the bailiff of Kasby in Lagga. However, the courtship routine of sitting by a girl's bedside was established in the seventeenth century, and Nicolaus and Marina had clearly crossed some form of line in this case, causing the master to send away his maid. Arguably, although speculative, they crossed that line when Nicolaus went under the covers of Marina's bed, and even more so when he tried to remain hidden there. It was not indicative of honorable intentions.

Previous research underlines that pre-marital sex was largely accepted, although illegal, in early modern society—as long as the couple was ready to marry in the case of a pregnancy. ⁵⁵ In the absence of actual penetrative sex, couples could get to know each other, fumble around under blankets or play in the hay together as a natural part of the courtship process. For Nicolaus and Marina, that was apparently not the case. Instead, they had had the opportunity to get to know each other first when the master and mistress had gone away for a few days, but they were separated as soon as they were found in bed together.

One reason for breaking up the couple might have been the social standing of the couple and the household they served in. The master of the house was a pastor, and while Lutheran clergy could and should marry, the sexual conduct of their households could have been more scrutinized than others. ⁵⁶ Adding to that, Marina was the daughter of a bailiff and therefore not just of any maid. Further, Nicolaus was likely studying to become clergy himself, putting further stress on proper sexual conduct.

In summary, the norms of conduct were clear between the couple: the man was supposed to pursue a chaste woman, and by extension, there was existential certainty as well: there could be no mistake in who was courting who. Ontologically, however, the situation seemed far from certain; the meaning of Marina's rings was unclear. Illouz writes that there was more evaluative certainty in the pre-modern era since couples often met within tight networks of villages and communities. In this case, however, the background of Nicolaus is slightly unclear to Marina since he comes from Småland, quite far away in southern Sweden. Having studied in Uppsala and being recruited to tutor the pastor's son, however, there was reasonably some vetting done before his employment. Most importantly, there seems to have been a considerable amount of procedural uncertainty. From whether to ask the parents before committing to one another, to what the proper boundaries of courtship by the bedside were.

The Family Takes Over

Marina was found with a man under the covers in her bed and was immediately sent away from her place of service to her father in Kasby. This could be interpreted as Marina having lost her good reputation, thereby losing her employment. However, considering the following events, I think that it could also be interpreted as an intervention of her employers and family to establish certainty in courtship. Their intervention wrestled the courtship process from the couple and into the hands of Marina's father. The stage of the relationship, the intents of Nicolaus and his financial situation had to be made clear, and Marina's family had to find Nicolaus’ family and formalize the relationship. The couple was separated; Marina went with her father, and Nicolaus stayed with his employer, the pastor of Lagga.

The day after having been found under the covers, the pastor asked Nicolaus what his intentions towards Marina were. Did he want to “hold it quick or not,” ⁵⁷ probably meaning the engagement ceremony, but it might also have referred to a wedding. While Nicolaus had been both bold and certain in his emotions and intentions towards Marina before, he now appeared fatalistic, albeit pessimistic, about his ability to become betrothed to Marina. He answered that “with the help of God, if I can support someone, I would take her as soon as anybody.” ⁵⁸ They then continued to write to Nicolaus’ brother-in-law Thomas Thomasson. When he arrived at Lagga they asked Nicolaus again if he wanted to be engaged to Marina. Nicolaus then said that he was a poor man, a simple student and that he did not know how to answer. He was then promised a promotion and a generous stipend, and they shook hands in agreement. ⁵⁹ Maybe Nicolaus’ fatalistic approach could have been an attempt to secure financial aid from his future father-in-law or it might have reflected a concern for the speed at which the relationship was now progressing. Nicolaus would be able to support Marina one day perhaps, but not immediately. This was around Christmas time, and Nicolaus stayed with the pastor over the holidays. It was likely crucial for both sides that Nicolaus could finish his studies, and to do that he had to remain unmarried, since the university did not allow married students to remain there. ⁶⁰ The family arranging a stipend and the possibility of future employment helped ensure the status of the suitor as well. The early modern household has been characterized as a two-supporter household. Both husband and wife had to work. ⁶¹ Here, Nicolaus was repeatedly stressing his ability to support Marina as a qualifier for his eligibility for marriage.

Creating evaluative certainty was still an issue. Who was this man, rumored to be already engaged? While Nicolaus was at the pastor's house, Marina was with her father. He had first told her to turn Nicolaus away. Marina was worried too, saying “dear father, I hear that he is a betrothed person.” ⁶² Nicolaus also wrote him a letter, wanting to speak to him, saying that “a lot of devil folk are interfering with what would otherwise happen.” ⁶³ He said that he knew that people were angry with him, and perhaps it was because they were spreading lies about him. The father answered him, saying that Nicolaus was already betrothed in Småland and that he knew the father of his fiancé. Nicolaus answered that “it's worth nothing, since she is betrothed to an ensign now, rumoured to be a thief. But with Marina, I have spoken honestly, and I want to live and die by her side.” ⁶⁴ The father then told him that he had his consent, but that he should not rush it and betroth her. ⁶⁵ Nicolaus repeated that he had nothing to do with his previous fiancé anymore. He said also that he already had acquired consent from the pastor, Thomas Thomasson, and Marina.

It seemed to have been common knowledge that Nicolaus was already engaged. Marina had asked him about it, her father knew about it and there was talk in the villages about it. It was an impressive feat of social control, given that Småland is more than 300 km south of Uppland. One prerequisite for that amount of social control, leading to greater evaluative certainty, was that Nicolaus courted a woman within the same social strata as his previous fiancé. Still, despite rumors, and despite Marina's father being in contact with the father of the previous fiancé, they went ahead with the betrothal. Why did they agree to do it? It might have been that the distances to Småland being so great, news travelling so slowly, and Nicolaus being present with his letter, proving in him free to marry convinced the family to take the risk.

To further strengthen the certainty of Nicolaus' status as free for marriage, and to anchor the betrothal in the community, they had to find some senior relations of Nicolaus. Providing witnesses in engagements was stipulated in the church ordinance of 1571 for suitors to ensure evaluative certainty. ⁶⁶ Nicolaus said his parents were dead, but the pastor also wanted some form of consent from Nicolaus superiors at the University in Uppsala. The pastor proposed that he could contact them, but Nicolaus said he would rather do it himself. He went to the town during the Disting market in February but said that he did not manage to get hold of them. It seems, however, that he really wanted that stipend he was promised, and urged the pastor to make haste with the betrothal. Then, when the pastor noticed how eager Nicolaus was to proceed, he suggested having a quick ceremony, “short and sweet,” ⁶⁷ immediately but now Nicolaus became the one slowing down the process. He insisted that Marina would first put away the ring that she bore and had received from a previous suitor, Johan Käiter. She sent the ring to her father. Two weeks afterwards they went ahead with the ceremony.

The form of the betrothal ceremony was unclear. Nicolaus asked the pastor if they should do it in the way they did in Småland, or in church the way it was usually done in Uppland. “In church” the pastor answered, maybe not all that surprisingly. Since Nicolaus did not have his parents present, he asked Mikael Sacallenum, probably a priest, to act as his representative. He then “stepped forward in church.” ⁶⁸

When the congregation left the church, the records say that Marina's father was cursing. He might already have suspected that this would not turn out well. Then they went together to the parsonage, Thomas came with his wife too. Nicolaus sent Mikael to ask if the father consented to the betrothal. He did. Then Nicolaus gave Marina a ring with “appropriate ceremony.” ⁶⁹ He had already, at the spring market in Uppsala, given her a book. The couple was then engaged in Marina's home, in a ceremony with rings and promises in the presence of witnesses on both sides.

What had happened before, in church? The protocols do not specify, but it is probable that the priest read the bans for the couple, announcing their intent to marry. In accordance with the Church ordinance of 1571, it was supposed to be read out three consecutive Sundays when a couple had been betrothed. In Uppland it might also have been a routine to read the bans once before the engagement of a couple as well. ⁷⁰

By separating the couple, trying to contact Nicolaus' senior relations, making sure that Nicolaus had a stipend and thus the ability to support Marina and finally by reading the bans in church and performing a betrothal process with witnesses, Marina's relations had stepped in and tried their best to create certainty in the courtship process where they must have considered there being none. Who was this Nicolaus, and what were his intentions? They managed to stage a betrothal, with witnesses and bans being read in church. But as we shall see, this was not enough to quell questions of Nicolaus' status. With the rings exchanged and the bans read in church, it was now time for the community at large to get involved.

Beyond the Family

While Nicolaus' courtship of Marina had started out just between the two of them, nothing had been done in secrecy. The community around them had been gossiping about them from the start. Already when Nicolaus was standing and talking (or rather crying, according to Marina) by Marina's bed, she had known enough about his background to ask him about his previous fiancé in Småland, quite far down south in Sweden. Marina's father apparently knew the father of Nicolaus’ previous fiancé and had also asked him about that engagement. Further, when Marina moved back in with her father, the protocol stated that “everyone” had talked about Nicolaus being previously engaged and therefore advising against the marriage. ⁷¹ Maybe these were the rumors that Nicolaus meant when he wrote a letter to Marina's father, claiming that some “devil folk” tried to interfere with his courtship. The reading of the bans in church and the engagement with Marina did not clear up the situation either. Both the statuses of Marina and Nicolaus seem to have been questionable. Hanna Kietäväinen-Sirén noted that relationships usually proceeded from the intimate to public and that it was the role of the local community to accept or condemn the relationship. The local community values often corresponded to some degree with the nationwide values of the authorities and the clergy, although they were at times more tolerant of pre-martial sexuality. ⁷² Had Nicolaus and Marina started to live together it might have been a done deal by this point, they could perhaps have already been considered as wed. In this case it does not seem to have happened, probably since it would jeopardize Nicolaus’ position at the University. ⁷³

It seems that both Nicolaus and Marina still had doubts about the relationship, and the betrothal ceremony did not seem to have been enough to erase any uncertainty about either their own wants and motives or the wants of the other. After the ceremony Nicolaus briefly travelled to Stockholm. He later returned to the parsonage to continue to tutor the pastor's son. Kerstin, Marina's sister, asked him why he looked so glum all the time, “is there someone who has seduced Marina from you?” ⁷⁴ she asked. To Nicolaus, that seemed to be the case. There were three men in the village who were rumored to be men whom one should guard young women from, one of them was Johan Käiter. The same man whose ring Marina bore before. When Nicolaus realized that Marina had accepted gifts from others, he lost interest. ⁷⁵

Meanwhile, another tragedy befell Nicolaus, when his and his friend's belongings were lost to a fire in Uppsala. Marina then returned the ring he had given her to him. Had Marina changed her mind or was the betrothal itself simply not enough to discourage other suitors from her?

Sometime in 1631 Nicolaus travelled together with his friend back to Småland to receive a grant from the diocese of Växjö as compensation for their belongings, especially books, that were lost in the fire. There, he resumed contact with Anna Gudmundsdotter, his previous fiancé.

In the consistory, he did his best to explain how their relationship had developed, before and after his engagement to Marina. He said that he had started talking to Anna while living in the same household and helped her in her studies. ⁷⁶ Nothing more seemed to have developed from this, and a merchant had asked for her hand in marriage. Nicolaus himself stressed how he several times had publicly denied their relationship, such as when he travelled to a nearby town to buy an ox. A merchant wanted to drink with his Anna, but he had answered that “it was over a long time ago” and showed him a letter that Anna had written to another student. ⁷⁷ But now, during the last winter, Anna's father Gudmund had contacted him (during his visit home to Småland, presumably), asking about his engagement. He told Anna's father that he was engaged to Marina, but the people in Småland did not recognize their betrothal as a proper betrothal, since in Småland they hold them in church with witnesses, so this did not count. (Note that Nicolaus previously had asked the pastor in Uppland if they would have the betrothal ceremony at home, or in church the way they did in Uppland, but here the church betrothals are characterized as something typical of Småland. The records are inconsistent on this point). He turned the conversation to their daughter's marriage with a merchant she had previously been engaged to, but Gudmund answered that they had never married. He also reminded Nicolaus to pay his debts to him. Soon after, Nicolaus and Anna were betrothed in her father's and two other men's presence. He had given her the same ring that he had previously given to Marina. Afterwards Nicolaus went from Gudmund to his father, who was apparently not dead, and then he returned to Uppsala. He did not return to Lagga to tell them about his new engagement.

Marina seemed uncertain of which suitor she preferred, and Nicolaus was betrothed to two women at the same time. A last and final important actor in creating certainty in the courtship was the authorities, in this case, the cathedral chapter in Växjö and the university consistory in Uppsala. Since premarital sexual intercourse and bigamy were illegal, it became to some extent a purely legal question whether Nicolaus was engaged multiple times or not. In this way, it can be said that the authorities acted as a kind of supreme authority to resolve conflicts within a couple's relationship. Previous research has shown how the cathedral council was able to consider the feelings of the parties regarding broken engagements—after all, their goal was also to create stable couple relationships. ⁷⁸ At the same time, great importance was attached to which engagements had been entered into and which promises had been made when deciding which jurisdiction the case fell within. A man who slept with a woman after having pledged to marry her would be held responsible for his vow, even if he now changed his mind. ⁷⁹

It seemed as if Nicolaus had wanted to be engaged first with Marina but had broken that engagement and instead returned to Småland to be properly engaged to Anna, but it was not as easy as that. Once returned to Uppsala, it seemed as if he intended to resume his relationship with Marina. ⁸⁰ How then did the authorities act to create certainty between Nicolaus and Marina? Their approach to creating certainty can be seen as an approach to making society more readable; a readability that ultimately rested on certificates, contracts, and clear agreements. What agreements had been made? First, none of the engagement ceremonies had taken place in front of the church gate, and both parties then argued before the university consistory that this made them invalid. In addition, when Nicolaus returned to Uppsala, he had with him a certificate from the Växjö cathedral chapter certifying that he was free from his relationship with Anna and that he was ready to enter a new relationship. ⁸¹ The authorities thus created an ontological certainty by issuing letters and certificates. A risk with this, however, was that authorities in different parts of the country could work with incomplete information and that the certificates that were issued therefore did not always give the full picture of the case. The certificates could also be used selectively and shown to some, but not to others. The consistory of Uppsala University asked him why he had not presented that letter to them before. He said that he only wanted to present it to his countrymen, probably meaning his peers in Småland, but that he had not wanted to deceive anyone. He wanted to continue to be betrothed to Marina. ⁸² On those words, his fellow student and countryman Henricus Magni revoked bail for his friend, and his other friend said that he could not be responsible for him until the morning, and thereafter someone else had to step in. Nicolaus was thrown back into jail, and a message was sent to Småland to sort this thing out. This is also the last mention of Nicolaus Medelius Smolandi in the consistory records. How the matter was resolved is therefore unknown. However, it does seem that things worked out quite nicely for Nicolaus. After the debacle in Uppsala, Nicolaus eventually ended up in the domains of Count Per Brahe. The Count granted him a vicarship in the diocese of Linköping and poll tax registers note him as married to Marina Olofsdotter. Together they had at least two children, one daughter who married a well-off farmer, and one son enlisted as a cavalryman in the army. He died on the 16^th of May 1672. ⁸³

Certainty and Seventeenth-Century Courtship

If the authorities and the church had wanted to impose order and clarity in the marriage market, it certainly seems to have failed in the case of Nicolaus and Marina's engagement. On the contrary, I would argue that one reason for the confused engagement between them was the clash of processes of marriage formation, one process led by the couple themselves, getting to know each other, and the other led by the family and authorities.

Nicolaus had previously broken off his engagement with Anna in Småland when he perceived it as her choosing someone else. He had then started courting Marina while he was in Uppland, but his courting of her was interrupted by her family. When the family took over, the courtship moved into a more formal and technical context. Certificates from relatives and the right ceremonies took more place to create security in the relationship. It was precisely these processes the requirements for an ecclesiastical betrothal and certification of one's freedom from marriage that the church order of 1571 had sought to introduce. As soon as the family took over the matter of the betrothal, Marina's intentions and emotions blend into the background of the story. Still, we know that she and Nicolaus interacted, at least since he gave her a book during the spring market—disatinget—in Uppsala and that she gave him his ring back to him at some point. These might have been meaningful interactions in their emotional process. At the very least, they seem to have signaled at first, when giving the book, Nicolaus’ intentions of going through with the betrothal, and later when Marina gave the ring back her disinterest in the betrothal. But we cannot be sure. Maybe the ring was not an anchor for the relationship as a contemporary engagement ring often is. Maybe she just gave it back to him to help him with an economic crisis since he lost his belongings. It might have been a move that signaled her commitment to the coming marriage, rather than her doubts about it. Maybe. Yet it bore little legal meaning, and since the sources are shaped by the judicial context of the university consistory, no further elaboration was given. One could argue that the family intervention in the courtship was a problem. Sure, it did make the roles of the parties clear. And sure, it managed to betroth the young couple to each other. But it did not create any emotional certainties. Perhaps, if Nicolaus and Marina had not been separated, and if they had gotten more time to discuss with each other, they would have had better chances of creating some certainty of their feelings towards each other. How they felt about each other's intentions seems to have mattered greatly to them.

What could they be certain of in their courtship? There was certainly no lack of normative or existential certainty between Nicolaus and Marina. The norm was a stable marriage, the man was supposed to court the woman and that is what Nicolaus did. I want to note that it was not only the man who could be active in the courtship. In front of the consistory, Nicolaus emphasized that it was Marina who gave him the key to the room where she slept, which she denied. His description of the incident may have been part of a play to show that he had simply responded to her advances. But we should not make the mistake of assuming that it is her version of the story where he is active and pursuing that is true, and that his is false. There may well have been some room for invitations for women as well. What is important here, however, is that it was Nicolaus who stated that he wanted to live together with Marina. He was the one who made it clear that the aim of his courtship was a proper and stable relationship.

Still, the courtship was plagued by indecision and doubt. What were Nicolaus’ intentions, truly? And what were Marina's? During the process, there were several attempts at establishing certainty through objects and witnesses—ontological certainty. However, these proofs of the progress of the relationship, such as the rings previously given to Marina from other suitors, the gifts that Nicolaus gave her and the letters from Småland that Nicolaus read were not able to create any true certainty. The meaning of the rings and other gifts seemed unclear and up for negotiation at any moment.

Evaluative certainty was also difficult. While it is impressive how the community was able to gather information, make contact and hold Nicolaus accountable over quite vast distances, it was not quite enough to provide enough transparency for the engagement.

Perhaps most clearly, there was a relative lack of procedural certainty. I say relatively because there certainly were some procedural certainties compared to today: A betrothed couple living together would be seen as the equivalent of a married couple. But there was considerable confusion about how to properly conduct an engagement ceremony, if it had been performed and how binding it really was in the way it was performed.

Illouz writes that all these (un)certainties, especially from the procedural certainty, arouse an emotional certainty; that the actors knew what they felt, and that they could decipher the emotions of their counterparts. ⁸⁴ Evidently, there was not much emotional certainty at all. Nicolaus seems to have had difficulties in deciding between Marina and Anna, going back and forth between them. The same might have applied to Marina and Anna as well. Even after the engagement, Nicolaus is warned of the suitors whose rings Marina carried, causing him to interpret that as something that makes him lose interest. The same goes for Anna, whose connections to various men (Nicolaus mentions various persons, an ensign, a student, and a merchant) make Nicolaus conclude that their engagement was annulled as well.

As we have seen in this study, there were several frameworks of marriage formation at play at the same time. Engagements could go awry, not because the couple didn't want to get married, but because the rules for how this should best be done meant a somewhat new and difficult landscape to navigate. When Nicolaus courted Marina, they talked to each other, got to know each other, and exchanged confidences with each other. It was a process to create security in the relationship and to get to know each other. In another context, in another time, with another woman, this might have worked. But for Marina's family, and for the professors at Uppsala University, this was risky behavior. Marina's reputation could be called into question if she was allowed to continue sharing a bed with Nicolaus, and Nicolaus could be suspended from the university if he was found to be having an active sexual relationship.

When the family and authorities were allowed to steer the marriage formation in a more formal direction, focused on certificates, testimonies and ceremonies, the question arose as to how Nicolaus’ previous relationships should be interpreted. Was he now engaged to two women? Or had it simply been the case that no ceremony could be considered valid since none of them had taken place in front of the church gate, as the church order prescribed that it should? This article has shown that the creation of certainty in early modern courtship cannot be seen as a process between the courting couple. Other actors were very much involved in shaping the courtship: from family to the surrounding community as well as governmental or ecclesiastic authorities.

Eva Illouz's framework of certainty in courtship allows us to understand something of the emotional landscape that people had to navigate. It maps the uncertain waters they had to steer through; it points to the part of the journey where hearts could be broken. While there was a lot more certainty created in the seventeenth-century courtship than it might be in the contemporary courtship, there was still ample opportunity for doubt and uncertainty.