NPR: Could the Idea of Civil Unions Be 600 Years Old?

Could the Idea of Civil Unions Be 600 Years Old?

You know how it is with history. We keep doing the same things, again and again. Now, a new study suggests unions between people of the same sex might be another thing to add to the list.

A new study in the Journal of Modern History "reviews historical evidence, including documents and gravesites" and finds that civil unions may have existed in France as long as 600 years ago. The term "affrerement" — roughly translated as brotherment — referred "to a certain type of legal contract, which also existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe." While they were often used for members of the same family when parents left the same property to two brothers who continued to live together, they were also used between men of the same sex who weren't related.

The author of the report can't prove it one way or another conclusively but says the evidence seems to point to, well, something that looks remarkably like homosexual civil unions. Which would only prove, as the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

3:52 PM ET | 08-27-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Oh the irony of the opening sentence of this story! In 1994, long before this "new" study, Yale University Professor of History John Boswell published "Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe" which goes beyond the era of affrerement and seeks the roots of religiously sanctified same-sex relationships even as far back as Greek and Roman times. Boswell's book seems to never factor in any current conversations seeking to counter the viewpoints about the "tradition" of what we know today as heterosexual marriage. Perhaps this is due to the fact he died shortly after the book was published and his work has been overlooked by modern activists, or cynically because his work challenges long-held beliefs and myths regarding the origins of the rites of marriage as being limited to mixed gender couples. Boswell's work could benefit those activists seeking to establish equality in modern marriage ceremonies and laws.

Sent by Christopher Wilde | 9:37 PM ET | 08-27-2007

It is profitable to remind readers that until very recently, marriage was about controlling property -- laws about marriage were really laws about inheritance, and throughout most of Western Europe and later the United States, property was primarily controlled by men. Of course, then, it made sense that men should be allowed to enter into a legal contract and define their inheritance so that they could control their property -- in other words, "keep it in the family."

Producing progeny, the other main goal of marriage, is also about controlling property. Two "brothers" -- a childless couple of men -- would of necessity have to make rules about their property. Legally, what they might do in their individual bedrooms would have no bearing on the disposition of their property, unless they produced viable, legal heirs -- again defined in a marriage contract.

Marriage being about love, romance, building strong families (in any sense but families capable of inheriting or gaining more property) is a very recent ideal. Therefore, any insistence that marriage must be between a man and a woman has its roots in that old drive to produce viable heirs to whom to bequeath your worldly goods.

Sent by Rachel N H | 4:37 PM ET | 08-28-2007

In reply to Rachel:

Lots of people in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance didn't have any property. What was marriage like for them? You're echoing a very controversial interpretation of pre-modern marriage -- one I don't really agree with -- and stating it as truth. It's just not so clear. My view, and it's hardly unique to me, is that rich families (esp. the nobility) married children off for tactical reasons, but poor ones gave them a lot more latitude.

Sent by Allan Tulchin | 5:24 AM ET | 11-06-2007

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