I'd accept payment in lieu of my virginty, in order to restore my virginity...

“Your honor, this man told me he loved me, promised to marry me, so we hooked up, then I got pregnant and he didn’t want me no more. He “deflowered” me and left me for fill in the blank. I think he needs to support his baby and pay me for taking my virginity. Yes, your honor, two donkeys and a sack of beans will do…” No this is not a scene from Divorce Court with Judge Mablean, rather it is the social, religious and judicial system described by Allyson Poska in diocese of Ourense in northwest Spain from the mid sixteenth through eighteenth century. Poska examines the contradiction between the sovereign rules and edicts introduced by the Catholic Church to legislate the institution of marriage and the cultural adaption of said rules by the local clergy.
Poska has a couple of main goals. First, she wants to explain how the act of pablas de presente, the promise of marriage, was actually beneficial to females during this time compared to the church’s view of palabras del future, the actual act of marriage preformed by a priest, took away females rights as the woman simply passed from her father’s hands to her husband; thereby passing her legal rights as well, so she had no hand in the matter. Second, Poska empathizes that the marriage reforms passed by the church actual caused illegitimacy rates to explode in the region, since father’s who had claimed children born out of wedlock faced severe financial punishment by the church itself. Lastly, she explains how the church’s edicts actually created a legal nightmare for both parties; in essence, it punished them if they wanted to break up the relationship.
I found both her articles entirely gripping. She used the church’s own records to prove their edicts were ineffective and essentially took away women’s rights. Since legally, they were either represented by their father or their husband, the pablas de presente actually gave them financial compensation, similar to alimony in modern divorce, thus allowing them to provide for themselves until they found another mate. The male partner had no reason to not claim children from the relationship, thereby giving the child legitimate birth rights and support. Their mutual agreement to dissolve the relationship and support provisions mirror modern mediated agreements. Women and their families also gained familial honor, and my personal favorite, the restoration of the woman’s virginity, through financial restitution; which gave her and the child cultural acceptance rather than shame. However, the church though too much hanky-panky was going on and laid down the law. No more engagement were acceptable, the young couples had to marry, with little to no chances of divorce being granted, and no financial compensation if it was allowed. Then again, what do you expect out of an institution that went on murderous ethnic cleansing sprees in the name of God? Illegitimacy rates skyrocketed as a result and marriage rates plummeted.
I also found it rather interesting that the local priests, some of which had illegitimate children too, continued to practice the pablas de presente rather than the church official policies. Either they were not worried about punishment by the church itself, or they worried more about the welfare and stability of their local parish. Maybe they simply worried about their own chances of having sex, if they enforce the edicts. Either way, their ignoring of the policy, was financially beneficial to women, thereby creating a financial independence outside of inheritance laws that liberated women and was culturally accepted.
The main idea I took away from her essays was that once again, the Catholic Church itself was a biased institution that took away women’s legal rights as well as enforcing stigma’s that did not exist among lower classes prior to its involvement. I also hope that teenagers do not find out about the whole “restoration of virginity through payment”, since there are enough issues with just Facebook pages...