MARRIAGE IN THE MODERN AGE

The society of the old regime considered marriage as a representation of class

and prestige. Marriages of convenience were the most common at that time. With
them, it was possible to maintain social status, family rank and honor. Therefore,
these marriages were not voluntary at all, but simply pacts between the parents
of the corresponding spouses. The dowry, the economic regime and the titles of
each one should be fixed in the so-called capitulations, and if they were not met,
the marriage agreement could be broken. Therefore, marriages for love
practically did not exist, money and social class were the only interests present;
The goal of marriages was to have offspring, create a family and thus perpetuate
surnames. It is not surprising with this, the existence of lovers and illegitimate
children as something completely normal in society. It was especially in the
eighteenth century when the births of illegitimate children were raised, then, due
to a series of readjustments in the economic and labor field, the Guilds began to
be used for the first time in children, leading to a great change in the social
structure. Obviously, the possibility of having fun in extramarital ways is not seen
in the same way in a man as in a woman: she accepts her role of submission and
service to her lord.

The struggles to break up the marriage into a sacrament whose validity belonged
only to the church and its courts and to a contract with civil effects whose
competences belonged only to secular jurisdictions.

During the Modern Age, the Church and the Monarchy had legislative and
jurisdictional competence over marriage. The Church had as a "mission" to
prevent unions contrary to the divine order and to regulate the marriage union,
and the monarchy was the guarantor of compliance with the canonical legislation,
and also the promoter of some legal initiatives on the marriage of the subjects,
serving as complement or reinforcement to those established by the Church,
especially from the eighteenth century with the Royal Pragmatic.
The power competition that came to meet the Catholic Church during the Modern
Age was the beginning of the loss of religious monopoly on marriage and family,
which will later become patent in the nineteenth century, when it must yield to the
great civil law part of said tuition.

Undoubtedly, the canon law Protestant destabilized the univocal power of

Catholicism, on the one hand, because the matrimonial dogmatics was not so
severe. For example, Calvino accepted sexual relations that were not intended
for procreation, leaving it to the discretion of the couple, which strictly prohibited
Catholicism.

The great differences are in a more than substantive way, because ultimately
both are aware of the value that marriage represented for conjugal and family
stability. In relation to the latter, in 1537, Luther declared that "divorce or
separation are always sin, except in case of adultery, because then it is God
himself who makes the break of marriage.

The competence of powers between the Catholic Church and the absolute
monarchy can be seen in Latin America, and especially in colonial Mexico, from
1650, to unleash a competition of authority that ended up giving more influence
to officials or real bureaucrats; the archbishops yielded power to the viceroys and
the Council of the Indies, for example, in the designation of the bishops (right of
patronage), which were mostly peninsular. Previously, the ecclesiastical officials
to settle the prenuptial conflicts of the community, had the real police, now had to
resort to the Hearing, making the procedure of the church more difficult, for
example, in cases of clandestine marriages, breach of marital promise, for
adultery, etc., there was always a need for officials in charge of doing normal
procedures, such as summoning the accused, witnesses, making deposits for
women, etc.
Something that marked the time was the end of the council of trento that
consisted of a series of reforms mainly to the ecclesiastical positions, to be able
to discuss the foundations of the Catholic religion to the reforms proposed by
Martin Luther and his Protestant Reformation and to face the serious crisis that
the Church had during the sixteenth century. What stands out in the council of
trento was the affirmation of the indissolubility of marriage, which could only be
broken by adultery as a cause of divorce, some doctrinaires thought different
respect this cause.

The marriage began to be a civil contract where the parents of the bride and the
groom arranged married as a legal and contractual act. They performed it for
themselves. It means that a woman couldn´t choose her husband. Marriages for
love practically didn´t exist, money and social class were the only interest. This
gave rise to the bastards, illegitimate children that the man had with other women
when he was married.

There was a struggle to decompose the marriage in sacrament that only was
worth for the church. It was the appearance of civil marriage over Catholic, with
legal effects. The code of Napoleon consecrates marriage as an essentially civil
institution, influencing most of the world's legislations (French revolution).

The Church and the Monarchy had legislative and jurisdictional competence over
marriage. There was a power competition between the Catholic Church and the
absolute monarchy. Officials in charge of doing normal procedures were needed,
as the person who married them, who registered the marriage, etc.