Брак у народов Западной и Южной Европы

Summary

In this present monograph authors study and describe different aspects of marriage and wedding rituals in the areas of Southern and Western Europe. Some of the peoples are considered within the state borders of relevant modern countries. Chronological framework of the book embraces the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ten chapters are devoted to the peoples of Italy, Spain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the Portuguese. All the chapters follow the same principle of material presentation by which fact comparability is ensured.

The forms of marriage and accompanying customs were dependent on the levels of development of socio-economic relations. For instance, the strict principle of local and social endogamy was weakening gradually and at different rates in different rural and urban groups remained significant through the first half of the 20th century.

As a rule, weddings as such were preceeded by match-making and engagement events. For all the variations between countries and peoples the meaning of such acts was the same, i. e. completion of the choice of marriage partner and its wide announcement and agreement about material provisions for the subsequent marriage union.

Wedding proper was the pivotal point of the entire wedding cycle at which moment a marriage union was sanctified and formalized with three categories of acts — traditional custom, church wedding and civil registration which combined variously among different peoples. However, in real life the greatest importance was attached to customs.

The book underlines the multilineality and polyfunctionality of wedding ritualism and describes acts, symbols and verbal formulae whose origins belong to different epochs and reflect social, legal, moral and ethnic, as well as religious notions of the contemporary man.

The book shows the trends observed in the development of wedding rituals; while the traditional acts and symbols survived their meaning and functional significance changed.