Conclusion

Summary

The preceding six chapters progressively abandon their original focus. Regular recourse to marriage litigation in the late medieval ecclesiastical courts forms the initial concern before a shift occurs when the treatment of the causae matrimoniales in Southern jurisdictions comes into view. In the Franco-Germanic and English churches of the North, judges handled large numbers of enforcement claims, annulments, and separations, prompting modern observers to explore the data quantitatively. The Italian material, on the other hand, has favored typological approaches as daily demand for adjudication was far more modest. The Iberian documentation, finally, does not invite statistics or legal categorization because every piece of historical testimony constitutes a rare find.