1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., Oxford, 1989, 5:396. Cf. the definition s.v. "espouse" in John Kersey, Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, London, 1708: "to Betroth, Wed, or take in Marriage."

2. Panofsky, 1934, 123. The confusion stems from nineteenth-century works cited by Panofsky that were based largely on twelfth-century sources. These authors in turn naturally reflect the controversies of their own time rather than the more fully developed medieval ideas about marriage found in writers of the thirteenth century and later.

3. From the thirteenth century on, legal treatises analyze whether the tense is present or future in sample expressions of consent; see for example Durantis, Speculum iudiciale, 4.4.1 (ed. 1574, 2:438-39). In 1310 the bishop of Cambrai amended the marriage legislation of the provincial council of 1304 (see text of Chapter 2 at n. 38), prescribing for his diocese specific words of future consent "in sponsalibus seu fidedationibus" to avoid possible confusion among simple persons, whether clergy or laity; Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum amplissima collectio, Paris, 1724-33; reprint, New York, 1968, 7:1338.

4. Decretum C. 27 q. 2 c. 34; see also Gaudemet, 379-91, and Brundage, 235-36. Later writers, particularly from the time of Hostiensis, adjusted Gratian's terminology to suit the consensualist position; Antoninus provides a convenient fifteenth-century example. The contracting of matrimony, he says, is initiated by "sponsalia with words of the future," ratified "by words of the present or other signs expressing consent" and consummated by sexual union. Noting that this sequence of actions constitutes common practice, he adds it is not necessary that "sponsalia" precede, because matrimony can be "immediately contracted by words of the present," or that sexual union follow, since (and this was the standard reason) the marriage of Mary and Joseph was perfect with respect to the "essence" of matrimony; Summa, Pars tertia, t. 1 c. 18 (ed. 1740, 3:64-65). It should be noted that neither here nor elsewhere does Antoninus refer to "verba de praesenti" as sponsalia . See also n. 13 below.

5. Ives of Chartres is said (see Ritzer, 374) to have been the first to distinguish between fides pactionis and fides consensus; the same distinction is also found in the writings of his contemporary Anselm of Laon; see Le Bras (1927), 2142. These ideas continued to be advanced by twelfth-century theologians in Paris, including Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard. See also Esmein, 1:134-36, and Gaudemet, 40-41. For the spurious Augustinian text in the canon law that similarly juxtaposes the two terms, see above, Chapter 2, n. 24. The fundamentally important distinction between future and present consent was based on this difference between betrothal and matrimonial fides .

6. Raymond of Peñafort's usage is typical of that found from the thirteenth century on, as for example in the following passage (the omissions are various illustrations of future and present consent): "Quoniam matrimonium sponsalia praecedere consueverunt, ideo primo loco de sponsalibus est agendum. . . . et ista sunt vera sponsalia, quando sic per verba de futuro contrahuntur; si vero per verba praesentis temporis contrahuntur. . . . talia dicuntur sponsalia de praesenti, sed improprie, quia vere est matrimonum" ( Summa 4. t. I [ed. 1725, 739-41]).

7. On this Italian marriage rite, see Klapisch-Zuber, 178-212, and the collected studies of Brandileone, which are particularly useful for the documents included.

8. Altieri, 49-53, 67-69 (see also Brandileone, 291-307).

9. As for example in the Rituale romanum, Bologna, 1487 (Goff R-201, fols. 10v-14v.

10. Brandileone, 102-3.

11. The Formularium diversorum contractum secundum stilum et modum florentinum containing the text of this marriage ritual was printed a number of times in the fifteenth century, beginning with Florentine editions of c. 1487 and 1488; see Goff F-249-F-252. The full text from the earliest printed edition is given in the Appendix. As the short form of the notarial instrument stresses, the consent was symbolized by the mutual giving and receiving of the ring; Klapisch-Zuber's interpretation of the ring (39) is not compatible with this text.

12. There may be a simple explanation for the omission of the religious ceremony in Florence. By the second half of the fifteenth century upper-class Florentine marriages were often consummated in the house of the groom's father-in-law the day the marriage was contracted by the subarrhatio anuli ceremony, or shortly thereafter. The reason for this practice was that many Florentine dowries were financed through a state dowry fund known as the Monte delle doti, whose regulations stipulated that the marriage must be consummated before the dowry could be paid (see below, Chapter 4 at n. 23, and Klapisch-Zuber, 189-91). Because the bride was thus no longer a virgin when conducted to her husband's house, there could be no nuptial blessing in a religious service, which elsewhere was normally part of the nozze . The great emphasis Altieri places on the virginity of the bride when she was taken to her husband's house underscores a major difference between marriage customs in Rome and Florence.

13. Antoninus, Confessionale, says (lois. 60v-61r) that "questo sacramento del matrimonio quanto a la essentia sua, allhora e perfecto quando . . . secondo che comunemente si usa il notaio . . . domanda l'huomo se vuole tale donna per mogliera, et lui risponde si, dippoi domanda la donna se vuole tale huomo per suo legitimo sponso, similmente risponde de si, con parole, o altri segni sufficienti a dichiarare loro consentimento. . . . Et tale matrimonio cosi contratto per parole de presenti in caso nessuno si puo dissoluere." As for the religious ceremony, he says (fols. 61v-62r): "see primo matrimonio da l'una parte et dal'altra non debbe menare la moglie se prima non ode la messa del coniugio et faccendo il contrario dove che e la consuetudine di udire tale messa, et di aspettare la benedittione del prete avanti la consumatione del matrimonio peccherebbe mortalmente. Ma quando da l'una parte et l'altra fusse secondo matrimonio, non debbono udire tale messa et il sacerdote che benedice le seconde nozze, pecca mortalmente et dale leggi canonice e punito."

14. For this miniature, see Medieval and Renaissance Miniatures from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1975, 50-52. A closely related miniature from another manuscript (which unfortunately is not identified) is reproduced in Studia Gratiana 12 (1967): pl. IV.

15. Castiglione alludes to this practice of holding a falcon in book 2 of Il Cortegiano, noting that it was formerly acceptable to carry a sparrow hawk on the wrist for no other reason than to cut a good figure.

16. For an example of a marriage conducted in the street before the bride's house, see Brandileone, 108, and for a sponsalia instrument in which the groom agrees to pay an additional sum "for the honor of the first kiss" at the marriage, ibid., III.

17. The considerable confusion in recent scholarship seems to stem from Brandileone's frequent antithetical juxtaposition (e.g., 302-3) of what be anachronistically calls the "cerimonia civile" (i.e. the ring ceremony before the notary) and the "cerimonia ecclesiastica" (i.e. the nuptial blessing as part of the nozze ). From a theological or canonical perspective the former, and not the latter, created the matrimonial bond and constituted the sacrament of matrimony, and thus it was certainly not a "civil ceremony" in the sense that term has had since marriage rites were secularized in modern times. Klapisch-Zuber, 185-87, 195-96, understands that notaries and canonists refer to the ring ceremony as matrimonium, but there is a certain ambiguity about her presentation that leads Brundage, 497, citing these pages of Klapisch-Zuber, to conclude erroneously that the ring ceremony was "a formal betrothal . . . during which they [the couple] exchanged future consent." Elsewhere Klapisch-Zuber refers to the ring ceremony before the notary as "the preliminary exchange of consent" (190-91), but it was in fact the sacramental consent; see also n. II above. There is similar confusion in the attempt of Brucia Witthoft, "Marriage Rituals and Marriage Chests in Quattrocento Florence," Artibus et historiae 5 (1982): 56 n. 27, to differentiate between "actual marriage ceremonies" (i.e. the ring giving before a notary) and "pictures of the sacrament of marriage" (i.e. works like Raphael's Sposalizio ); actually they are the same. In n. 26 Witthoft confuses betrothal and marriage rites and on 45 conflates northern and southern marriage ceremonies to introduce a spurious hand-joining rite into the Italian ring ceremony before a notary.

18. Altieri, 51.

19. Martin Davies, revised by Dillian Gordon, The Early Italian Schools before 1400, London, 1988, 86-88. For a similar example, see the "Marriage of Anna and Joachim" miniature in the Visconti Hours; Millard Meiss and Edith Kirsch, The Visconti Hours, New York, 1972, BR fol. 1r.

20. For a short introduction to these matters, see C. R. Cheney, Notaries Public in England, Oxford, 1972, 1-11. See also Boüard, 2:216-17, as well as pl. 39 in the accompanying album of illustrations. For Flemish notaries by papal and imperial commission, see Murray, 158-59.

21. For the full text of Alexander III's letter, codified in abbreviated form as Decretales 4.4.3, see Friedberg 2:681: "praesente scilicet sacerdote aut etiam notario, sicut etiam in quibusdam locis adhuc observatur." The notary as witness to matrimonial consent has been studied in detail by Peter Leisching, "Eheschliessungen vor dem Notar im 13. Jahrhundert," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonische Abteilung, 94 (1977): 20-46.

22. Mansi 35:247.

23. Brucker, 16.

24. For a poor girl whose ring ceremony was witnessed by the clergy of Santa Trinità in Florence, see Klapisch-Zuber, 196 n. 65. In those parts of Italy where the present consent was exchanged before a priest in facie ecclesiae, the consent was also commonly recorded in a public instrument drawn up by a notary; see Brandileone, 111-12.

25. This is a reasonable assumption based on the presence of the ring ceremony (it follows immediately after the binding of the joined hands with the priest's stole) both in Martène's ordo XIII and in the Ghent rituale of 1576 (see Chapter 2, nn. 74 and 76).

26. Digest 23.1.1. and Institutes 1.9.1, the latter sometimes conflated with Digest 23.2.1. From the thirteenth century these definitions are standard in canon law commentaries; see for example Hostiensis, Summa (ed. 1537, fols. 193r, 194v).

27. These various ways to dissolve a betrothal constitute a conventional list found in popular handbooks on the sacraments like the Manipulus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rochen or the Confessionale of Antoninus as well as in academic works such as the Summa of Hostiensis (ed. 1537, fol. 194r). See also Antoninus, Summa, Pars tertia, t. 1. c. 18 (ed. 1740, 3:67-68). Although modern writers on late medieval marriage often state that sponsalia were binding, they were not as far as canon law was concerned. According to the acts of a Florentine provincial council in 1517 (Mansi, 35:247), for instance, "sponsalia de futuro . . . si possono dissolvere di consentimento delle parti" with the bishop's approval. Even when other approaches failed, it was still possible to break a betrothal promise by exchanging verba de praesenti with a third party, for when such cases came before ecclesiastical courts, words of present consent almost invariably took precedence over sponsalia . Important persons nonetheless often sought to have sponsalia that did not lead to marriage formally dissolved by the pope to ensure there would be no complications if other matrimonial arrangements were made later; see Calendar of Papal Registers 12: 150-51 for a case where a countess claimed to have feigned betrothal to a knight to secure protection for herself during the Wars of the Roses; see Bennett, 37-39, for another example.

28. See W. L. Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts, 4 (Leipzig, 1927): 125, no. 1991, where the inscription is transcribed.

29. The four ways to contract sponsalia are a commonplace, found in virtually any discussion of marriage during this period, whether that of theologians like Aquinas and Antoninus, canonists like Hostiensis and Durantis, or popular handbooks like those mentioned in n. 27 above. In the early 1240s Goffredus de Trano ( Summa, ed. 1519, fol. 175r) distinguished the matrimonial subarrhatio anuli (both in its Italian and northern European "in the face of the church" form) from the betrothal subarrhatio anuli on the basis of the tense of the words accompanying the giving of the ring. For Hostiensis's use of fides to mean a betrothal oath, see Summa, ed. 1537, fol. 193r: "alia fide interposita seu iuramento quod idem est." For Antoninus (actually quoting Richardus de Mediavilla) on fides as a unilateral betrothal oath, see Summa, Pars tertia, t. 1 c. 18 (ed. 1740, 3:69): "quando datur fides ab alterutro, quod pertinere videtur ad juramentum." For a similar usage equating a betrothal oath with fides, again in the context of the four ways to contract sponsalia, see the Dialogus de septem sacramentis, probably by Guillelmus Parisiensis, a pastoral manual for priests written about 1300 and often reprinted in the fifteenth century, e.g. the Mainz edition c. 1492 (Goff G-720), fol. 54r: "Primo nuda promissione, ut dicendo accipiam te. Secundo datis arris sponsaliciis, sicut pecunia vel aliquo alio. Tercio anuli subarratione. Quarto iuramento interueniente vel fide."

30. Molin and Mutembe, ordo XI, 298-99.

31. Martène, ordo IX, 2:372.

32. Ghent rituale of 1576, 52-53. The essential formula of this "rite for solemnly celebrating sponsalia " is given in both Latin and the vernacular: "promitto me daturum fidem meam tibi N. quam hic manu teneo" becomes in the Dutch "mijn trauwe te gheuen . . . die ic haude metter handt." Conversely, in the "order for celebrating the sacrament of matrimony" (ibid., 54-55) the Latin form is "do tibi N. fidem meam maritalem," which becomes in the vernacular "mijn mannelicke trauwe" for the groom and "mijn vrauwelicke trauwe" for the bride.

33. Martène, ordo IX, 2:372.

34. Molin and Mutembe, 53.

35. Davies, 1954, 126; cf. also the text as given by Weale, lxxxv.

36. It is noteworthy, for example, that the Ghent rituale (see n. 32 above), published only eight years later, uses "trauwe" without further qualification for the fides of betrothal.

37. To justify fides levata as "the forearm raised in confirmation of the matrimonial oath," Panofsky cites only a text in Du Cange (3:490) that refers to the giving of fides by raising a finger in a context unrelated to marriage (see also Kelly, 174 n. 40). The assertion that "the dextrarum iunctio was called fides manualis " rests on a passage in Leclercq, 1895, where that author (not realizing that the pseudo-Augustinian text cited in the following note was spurious) specifically declined to equate the matrimonial dextrarum iunctio of antiquity with fides manualis as the medieval practice of agreeing to a contract by a handclasp. All modern references to fides manualis in the context of medieval marriage stem either from Leclercq or Panofsky (see for example Molin, 355, where Leclercq is quoted verbatim without acknowledgment). Molin and Mutembe (100, 117) have further complicated the issue by calling attention to the marriage service in late rituals from Thérouanne (1557) and Arras (1600) where the priest, while the couple's right hands are joined, tells them to "Levez la main aux saints" (obviously this could only be done with the left hand). These rituals are then used to explain miniatures like Figures 16 and 17, which are two to three centuries earlier (see also Molin, 356 n. 15). Although betrothal oaths are commonplace, these sixteenth-century "marriage oaths" are highly unusual—"tout à fait extravagant," as Molin and Mutembe (117) themselves note—and without medieval precedent; because of their rarity as well as their late date, they have no bearing either on the London double portrait or on miniatures of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Furthermore, "Levez la main aux saints" has reference to a corporal oath (discussed later in this chapter) and not to an oath of the type seen in the double portrait; see Du Cange, 4:456, for several examples of oaths where the oath taker "leva sa main" toward the relics of saints. In a few late rituals (e.g., Martène, ordo IX, which Molin and Mutembe, 12, date to the fifteenth or sixteenth century) the words of consent are followed by a promise of fidelity linked with forms of iurare, but according to canonists, the use of iurare alone, without specific reference to God or the touching action of a corporal oath, did not constitute an oath; see Ferraris, s.v. "juramentum," art. I, 39-42 (ed. 1782, 5:187). Cf. the usage in Martène, ordo X, where "jurez" is used synonymously with "promettez," and "fianciez."

38. Decretales, 4.4.1, gloss ad v. pactionis et consensus: "Hoc est dicere, una est fides desponsationis de futuro, et altera consensus de praesenti."

39. For example, in Molin and Mutembe, ordo X (a thirteenth-century pontifical from Arras), "date invicem fidem" refers to matrimonial consent, but in ordo XI (a thirteenth-century missal from Paris), "fidem super hoc ad invicem prebentibus" refers to the betrothal promise.

40. See Oxford Latin Dictionary, 697-98; and Niermeyer, 424-25.

41. For this document, see The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages, New York, 1975, cat. no. 249. It was not uncommon in Flanders for a notary to be also a priest; see Murray, 161.

42. Besides the ordines cited in nn. 30-33 above, the right hands are joined by the priest in the betrothal ceremonies of Martène's ordines XI-XIV, but some of these are later than the double portrait.

43. Bartholomaeus Caepolla, Consilia ad diversas materias, Venice, 1575, consilium VI, fols. 25v-27r. Maria, Sempronius, and Titius are conventional fictitious names used in legal literature of the time to designate the bride, her father or guardian, and the groom. At issue was whether Maria's actions constituted de praesenti consent; Caepolla concluded that it did not, making this a "sponsalia de futuro" and not a "matrimonium."

44. Altieri, 51; after a kiss the two men touch hands: "dunandose lo baso della bocca col toccar-sece la mano." See also Klapisch-Zuber, 183. In modern Italian toccamano has come to mean a handclasp or handshake, but as the etymology of the word (from toccare, "to touch") indicates, this was not originally the case; in general, and for the definition quoted, see Dizionario delle lingue italiana e inglese, ed. Vladimiro Macchi, 2d ed., Parte prima, Florence, 1985, 1365.

45. See for example Oscar Bloch and Walther yon Wartburg, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, Paris, 1968, 640.

46. Gloss ad v. percussit to Digest 50.15.1: "vel dicitur pactum a percussione palmarum."

47. Larivey's La Constance is reprinted in Emmanuel Louis Nicolas Viollet-le-Duc's Ancien théâtre français, Paris, 1854-57, 6:195-302; for the passage cited (act 1, scene 2), 212.

48. For the text of Bernger's poem, "Wie solte ich armer der swaere getrûwen," see Hugo Moser and Helmut Tervooren, eds., Des Minnesangs Frühling, Stuttgart, 1977, 1:227-28; for the Codex Manesse, ibid., 2:44-47.

49. See the facsimile version edited by Ingo F. Walther, Sämtliche Miniaturen der Manesse-Liederhandschrifs, Aachen, 1981, fols. 146r, 251r, 371r, 407r, 413v. This book is a good illustration of Panofsky's pervasive influence: the author of the entry on the Von Horheim miniature (text to fol. 178r) speculates that it may, like the Arnolfini double portrait, represent a "secular" marriage. The right-hand gesture of the miniature is described as the "conjunctio per fidem manualem"; the requisite "fides levata" is noted as missing, but the hand on the sword is suggested as a substitute gesture; and the dog on the woman's arm is said to be a "Symbol der Treue." All these comments are made without specific reference to Panofsky.

50. Raymond of Peñafort, Summa 4. t. 1, gloss ad v. ilia respondet (ed. 1725, 740). The description of the gesture reads as follows: "Quid si quis injecta manu, vel innexa manu mulieris dicat, do tibi fidem de te accipienda in uxorem."

51. Antoninus, Summa, Pars tertia, t. 1 c. 18 (ed. 1740, 3:65): "Unde si ante fidem sic datam tractabatur de sponsalibus vel matrimonio inter eos, et ipsa requisita sponte manum dedit ad fidem recipiendam et hujusmodi; tunc essent contracta sponsalia."

52. Ferraris, s.v. "sponsalia," 44 (ed. 1782, 8:463): "per porrectionem manus ab uno factam, et ab altera sine renitentia, et contradictione acceptatam censentur, et praesumuntur contracta sponsalia."

53. For the Arsenal and Vatican Decameron manuscripts, see the Bibliothèque Nationale exhibition catalogue Boccace en France: De l'humanisme à l'l'érotisme, Paris, 1975, 58-60; Dogaer, 14, 33, 43; Meiss (1967), 56-61; and Eberhard König, Boccaccio Decameron, Stuttgart, 1989, which illustrates all the Vatican Palatinus miniatures in color.

54. Boccaccio's usage, consistent throughout the Decameron, is exemplified by the tale of Alessandro and the "abbot" in 2.3. The couple's clandestine marriage takes place in the "abbot's" bed, before an image of Christ, as Alessandro places a ring on the woman's hand and "gli si fece sposare." Later, when relating to the pope what happened, the "abbot" refers to that episode as "il contratto matrimonio" between herself and Alessandro, made "solamente nella presenza di Dio." Because the first marriage was clandestine, the ceremony had to be repeated in the pope's presence ("e quivi da capo fece solennemente le sponsalizie celebrare") and was followed by the nozze, or marriage festivities. In 10.10, Griselda—wearing a bridal crown—exchanges words of present consent with Gualtieri, who thus "in presenza di tutti la sposò"; the bride then mounts the traditional palfrey for the deductio to her husband's house, where the "nozze belle e grandi" were worthy of a daughter of the king of France. Modern critics have sometimes misunderstood Boccaccio's terminology; see for example Vittore Branca's edition of the Decameron, Florence, 1965, 156 n. 1, 626 n. 1, 656 n. 1. Contemporary French usage is illustrated by Martène's ordo IX, which begins with a formal betrothal rite in the presence of a priest. A rubric then introduces the marriage ceremony proper, which follows at some later date: "On the day of the nuptials [i.e. the noces ] when the couple are before the entrance of the church the priest says, 'Bonnes gens, nous sommes icy assemblez pour faire le mariage de N. & N. '"

55. Laurent de Premierfait, Le livre cameron, Paris, 1521, fol. 135r.

56. Besides the three miniatures discussed here, further examples of betrothal gestures illustrate 5.4 and 10.6.

57. Significantly, in all the other Decameron betrothal miniatures the two right hands are used for the characteristic sponsalia gesture.

58. For this manuscript, see Le siècle d'or de la minature flamande: Le mécènat de Philippe le Bon, Brussels, 1959, 132-34.

59. Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed., Oeuvres de Froissart—Chroniques, 1867-77; reprint, [Osnabrück, 1967, 15:237, 302-6. This marriage was highly unusual in that canon law prohibited marriage before puberty (reckoned at twelve years for females and fourteen for males); Decretales 4.2.2 made an exception on grounds of urgent necessity "pro bono pacis" to foster peace and prevent war, which was in fact why this Anglo-French marriage was arranged.

60. That the miniature in Fig. 33 is a composite can be confirmed by comparing it with the corresponding miniature in the famous Breslau Froissart (Arthur Linder, Der Breslauer Froissart, Berlin, 1912, pl. 47), which depicts in several scenes the events of the two-day encampment as described by the author. The illuminator of the Paris manuscript has conflated two of these scenes into one image: the initial meeting of the two kings between flanks of kneeling soldiers, which was the inaugural ceremony of the first day, with the delivery of Isabelle to Richard, the final event of the second day.

61. These details are from an eyewitness account of the Burgundian embassy, which included Van Eyck, that was dispatched to Portugal in 1428-29; for the two ceremonies, see Weale, lxii, lxxi-lxxii. The bride arrived on Christmas day, and the private ceremony took place on 7 January, i.e. immediately after Twelfth Night and the end of the Christmas festivities.

62. Ferraris, s.v. "juramentum," art. I, 5 (ed. 1782, 5:180); see also N. Iung, "Serment," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 14 (1939): 1940-56, especially 1943; and Bernard Guindon, Le serment: Son histoire, son caractère sacré, Ottawa, 1957, 126-29. When verbal formulas were combined with gestures, the oath was termed "mixed."

63. Pelbartus of Themeswar, Aureum sacrae theologiae rosarium iuxta quattuor sententiarum libros quadripartitum, Venice, 1586, 3:178v. Aquinas makes the same point in Summa theologiae, 2a-2ae, q. 89, a. 6.

64. See for example Brandileone, 105, 107.

65. Antoninus, Summa, Pars secunda, t. 10 c. 5 (ed. 1740, 2:1076). Canon law required physical contact with the Gospels; see the gloss ad v. tacta to Constitutiones Clementinae 5.3.1.

66. The window is illustrated in Prevenier and Blockmans, fig. 128.

67. For examples of oaths sworn in this fashion, see Du Cange, 4:456-57, in one instance with specific reference to the biblical text: "Extendamus dexteras nostras ad justum judicium Dei, et tunc manus dextras uterque ad coelum extendat."

68. The authenticity of the picture's representation of two forms of the solemn oath is verified by Johan Cools's eyewitness account of the ceremony, which notes that the Spaniards swore by placing their right hands on the Gospels and then kissing a crucifix, while the Dutch swore by raising their right hands; see the National Gallery exhibition catalogue, Art in Seventeenth Century Holland, London, 1976, 24.

69. For other modern survivals, see Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 19:940. A French clerical canon law handbook of the nineteenth century notes simply that the laity swear by raising the right hand: "en levant la main droite comme font les séculiers"; see Michel André, Cours alphabétique et méthodique de droit canon, 2 vols., Paris, 1844, 2:1064.

70. For further examples of both forms, see Frederick van der Meer, Apocalypse: Visions from the Book of Revelation in Western Art, London, 1978, figs. 59, 106, 147. The open-hand gesture also appears in the Angers Apocalypse tapestries, woven in Paris in the 1370s for Louis of Anjou, the brother of Jean de Berry and Philip the Bold of Burgundy.

71. It should be further noted that in the Ghent rituale of 1576 (see n. 32 above), printed less than a decade after Van Vaernewyck's description, "trauwe," used without further qualification, refers to the betrothal promise and not the matrimonial consent, and since Van Vaernewyck capitalizes other common nouns, it is not necessarily significant, as Panofsky argued, that he used a majuscule for fides .

72. Derived from Panofsky, these ideas were elaborated by others—for example Baldass, 74, who linked the supposed nuptial chamber with the mistaken idea that consummation was necessary "to complete the validity of the marriage," and those who anachronistically read sexual symbolism into the bed; see the cautionary remarks in Mercer, 63 and 74. See also Chapter 2, n. 58.

73. Eames (reprinting as an appendix a lengthy extract of Aliénor's Les honneurs de la cour from La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, Paris, 1759), 260. Because of the obvious incongruity between the object and its setting, the Boucicaut Master's use of the hung bed is particularly striking, for twice in the Boucicaut Hours an elaborately hung bed is introduced into the otherwise rustic surroundings of the Nativity stable: first it serves as a lit de repos for the Child, and then, in the Adoration of the Magi miniature, it becomes a thronelike seat of estate for the Virgin and Child; see Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, London, 1968, pls. 31 and 33.

74. Eames, 75-78, 85-86, 181, 198, 240-42; for the chair, 258: "une grande chaise à hault dos par derriere, comme ces grandes chaises du temps passé."

75. For this picture, sometimes attributed to Petrus Christus, see C. Aru and Et. de Geradon, La Galerie Sabauda de Turin ( Les Primitifs Flamands, I.2), Antwerp, 1952, 1-5.

76. Many other early Netherlandish works document this location for the hung bed, for example the left wing of Rogier's Saint John the Baptist Altarpiece or the Annunciation panel in the Berlin altar wing of Petrus Christus. Van Eyck has apparently given a simplified representation of the chamber in the double portrait, limiting himself to the portion of the room that is reflected in the mirror. A comparison with other contemporary depictions of Flemish interiors suggests that a room with so much furniture for sitting disposed along the back wall, as well as such an elaborate chandelier, probably also had a fireplace.

77. Eames, 86.

78. Altieri, 50-51; Klapisch-Zuber, 184-85; see also Brandileone, 105, 107.

79. Léon Mirot, "Etudes Lucquoises," Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 88 (1927): 78-80, 83-86; 91 (1930): 103-14.

80. C. A. J. Armstrong, "La politique matrimoniale des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois," Annales de Bourgogne 40 (1968): 5-58, 89-142, especially 42-43. Sample forms for such documents are given by Durantis, Speculum iudiciale, 4.4.1 and 4.4.19 (ed. 1574, 2:440, 471). For a short summary of fifteenth-century law on both the dowry and the dower, see Antoninus, Summa, Pars tertia t. 1 c. 23 (ed. 1740, 3:111-14).

81. The couple portrayed in the Dessau panel are commonly identified, on the basis of a copy made c. 1550, as Berthold Tucher and Christiana Schmidtmayerin, but for various reasons (e.g. Christina was born only in 1465) this identification requires rejection of the 1475 date on the panel; see Ernst Buchner, Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der frühen Dürerzeit, Berlin, 1953, 176-78, 219-20, where there are numerous mistakes in transcribing the text on the copy. It is surely more plausible to accept the date on the panel as correct and to question instead the sitters' identity, which rests only on the testimony of the much later copy. For the Fürstenberg panel, see ibid., 170.

82. The standard work on German marriage rituals is Basilius Binder, Geschichte des feierlichen Ehesegens, Abtei Metten, 1938; the material discussed here is summarized by Kenneth Stevenson, Nuptial Blessing: A Study of Christian Marriage Rites, New York, 1983, 88-91.

83. Conversely, in the iconography of the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine in both northern and southern Europe the ring is placed on the saint's finger by the Child.

84. Altieri, 51.

85. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 226-28.

86. Mirot and Lazzareschi, 84-85.

87. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 210-11, 226-28; Brucker, 78.