András Péter Szabó

Betrothal and Wedding, Church Wedding and Nuptials: Reflections on the System of Marriages in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Hungary

The aim of the present study is to sketch briefly the relationship between the ecclesiastical and secular elements of the marriage customs in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kingdom of Hungary and Principality of Transylvania with the help of the sixteenth-century nuptial invitations preserved in the town archives of Beszterce (German: Bistritz; today Bistriţa, Romania), the specialist literature and ethnographic analogies. The common Hungarian and Latin designation for the betrothal and the church marriage (kézfogás/desponsatio) indicates that the two concepts had not separated completely. The terminological uncertainty can be explained by the slow implementation of canonical requirements: in practice the betrothal, adopted in the twelfth century, originating in Roman law, only gradually earned its place. The Reformation gave further impetus to doctrines proclaiming the binding force of betrothal, perhaps also connected with this is the fact that a binding form of betrothal also existed alongside that corresponding to today’s version for a very long time in both Transylvania and Hungary. Betrothal accompanied by church ceremony in this case was followed as a second phase by a purely secular wedding feast. Only after the wedding subsequently became permanently embedded in the wedding feast did the church ceremony become the central element in the series of events.

Keywords: marriage rites, church law, ethnography of nuptials, wedding invitations

The Starting Point for Research

The examination of marriage in the medieval and early modern eras has been one of the most preferred topics of European and American social history in recent decades. Research into legal history has extended attention not only to the family as an institution but also to the legal regulation of marriages.1 Among the sources of both trends the protocols and documents of the various ecclesiastical courts, which are truly the best and most eloquent sources for the practice of concluding marriages and domestic cohabitation, have occupied a prominent place despite the fact they first and foremost attest to deviations from the norm.2 With a certain lapse of time, indirect evidence has also been included, and thus have, for example, literary texts come under the magnifying glass as well.3 In the present study our guiding thread will be a set of sources that until now has mostly escaped the attention of research: the formal letters of invitation to the great weddings of the early modern era.4

A source publication I collaborated on, which appeared in 2005, forms the starting point for the examination. In it were published the sixteenth-century nuptial invitations sent to Beszterce (today: Bistriţa, Romania), more specifically those invitations that the German-populated town received from the Hungarian nobles of the surrounding territories and preserved in its exceptionally rich archives.5 The 123 invitation letters and the 111 nuptials included in them are a quantity that cannot be statistically evaluated, and in terms of quantity do not even approach the documentary material of the activity of any medieval English ecclesiastical court; yet on the eastern frontiers of Western Christianity, where even from the early modern era the types of serial source known from Western Europe have survived only sporadically, this does represent a sizeable quantity. In our opinion, the multilingual region, which after the Reformation became confessionally variegated as well, as a unique laboratory may also assist us in gaining a better understanding of pan-European developments.

It was while preparing the abstracts of the invitations that we realized just how much the marriage practice of the sixteenth century diverged from that of the modern era. In our study, starting from the invitations of Beszterce, but extending our research to the entire sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as all of historical Hungary, we will attempt to chart the most important differences. At the center of our interest there are two questions of key importance: the relationship between the betrothal and the wedding ceremony, as well as that between the ecclesiastical and secular episodes of the marriage (simply put, the wedding ceremony and the wedding feast). In order to obtain a fuller picture, we have extended our research to the full range of source types based on the specialist literature and published sources. The archaism of nineteenth-century folk culture, unknown in the West European region, made it possible for us to rely also on the results of ethnography in interpreting medieval and early modern rituals.6

From the outset a few basic concepts must be clarified, however. By the modern practice of marriage we mean that system in which the betrothal, a legally non-binding promise relating to marriage in the future, creating a freely dissoluble betrothed relationship, represents the first step, and the legal transaction establishing the marriage, the exchange of vows in church or, beginning with the introduction of secular marriages, the civil marriage, represents the second step. Occurring on the same day as the latter is the wedding feast, with a purely social integration function, which can even be omitted altogether. The custom of the traditional folk culture differs from this in two respects: first, the betrothal is more serious and accordingly more difficult to dissolve; and second, the wedding feast as a framework completely encompasses the ecclesiastical (and later the secular) marriage ceremony (thus the celebration commences already before the “wedding”) and cannot be regarded simply as eating and drinking intended to announce the new position in society and strengthen familial ties, but possesses legal significance as well. In other words, the wedding feast is a rich storehouse of legal folk customs, and according to popular perception some of these make up the secular ceremony necessary for contracting the marriage.7 Yet in reality the church could not have considered the wedding feast to be a simple entertainment either, since it included as a crucial factor the consummation of the marriage as well, which had significance in canon law and Protestant church law. Despite its crucial significance, however, we cannot regard canon law/church law as the sole possible framework for interpreting medieval and early modern marriage.

The Nuptial Invitations

At first the invitations serving as the guiding thread for our examination were written in Latin, in both of the Christian successor states of the medieval kingdom of Hungary, in the kingdom forming part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and in the Ottoman vassal state, the Principality of Transylvania. In Transylvania it is only from the 1580s on that letters of invitation composed in Hungarian or German completely assume their role. In the Holy Roman Empire, by contrast, invitations in the vernacular were typical in the fifteenth century as well.8 Here it was only Humanists who favored the use of Latin. The structure of the wedding invitations, however, almost independently of the language of the letter, show a uniform image throughout the late medieval and early modern eras, allowing us to conclude that they were written according to a widely used model.

In Hungary the first Latin-language letter we know, already displaying numerous obligatory elements of the genre, is from the early fifteenth century. The Hungarian-language invitations appearing in the mid-sixteenth century are free translations of the Latin versions.

The text of the invitations, regardless of whether they were sent to a noble, a town or some other body, in almost every case is divided into the following units. 1. Address, greeting. Generally in Latin, the corresponding Hungarian- and German-language formulae came into use only beginning in the late sixteenth century. 2. Arenga, or introductory flourish, which calls attention to the fact that man must live in matrimony as ordained by God. In the more verbose formulations, it is the story of Eve’s creation that crops up: “It is not good for man to be alone” (Non est bonum homini esse solum, Genesis 2:18). The story of the first human couple is incidentally the leading topic of Catholic and Protestant wedding sermons. Often only the expression “as ordained by God” (divina ordinatione/Isten rendelése szerint/durch Gottes Ordnung und Fürschung) remains of the obligatory theological justification. Sometimes this is supplemented also by a comment referring to the fact that the decision has occurred “by the approval” of the relatives. 3. Announcement of the approaching nuptials and the antecedent act contracting the marriage, with the names of the marrying parties, their fathers or, in the case of a widow bride, the previous husband. 4. The place and date of the wedding. 5. The actual invitation. 6. The justification for the invitation, which is always that the presence of the addressee will elevate the splendor of the festivities. 7. In return for the favor, the addressee’s presence, the sender of the invitation pledges his future services. 8. The closing good wishes, date and signature customary in such missives. The various component elements of the invitation text at times slide together, winding up in the same sentence, though this does not alter the essence of the structure. From the point of view of the present study it is the third point of the invitations that will be of fundamental importance.

The Unknown Menyegző (Nuptials)

At first it perhaps seems curious to ask what kind of event is in fact specified by the early modern wedding invitations. An answer to the question is rendered exceedingly difficult by the fact that the words we currently use for marriage and the modern rituals behind them latently influence all attempts at an interpretation. Therefore, it is worth first examining the meaning of the words, and thereby we may perhaps come one step closer to the old system of marriage.

The Meaning of the Words

The Hungarian-language invitation letters of the sixteenth century generally refer to the event specified in the invitation with the word menyegző. The expression menyegző appears in the fourteenth century and is a noun formed from the medieval Hungarian verb menyez (nubo). In contrast to the Latin equivalent, it contains not the word “veil” but “bride” (meny). At the same time, the first printed Latin–Hungarian dictionary (1604) and the bilingual sources give the word menyegző as the precise translation of the Latin word nuptiae.9 We may regard the German Hochzeit, which replaced the earlier expression Brautlauf in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and originally meant simply a large celebration, as having semantic spheres completely identical to these two terms.10 According to the most plausible view, in the early modern era all three words referred to a feast in the modern sense as the secular part of the marriage; however, in many cases they implied the marriage ceremony blessed by the church as well, and thus in their latter meaning they are actually the equivalents of “wedding” (a complex matrimonial event: wedding + feast) in today’s broader sense. While the German Hochzeit is the primary noun for marriage even today, the word menyegző began from the late sixteenth century on to be supplanted in a large part of the Hungarian language area by the expression lakodalom.11

We can show the use of the word lakodalom beginning in the early sixteenth century. Contained in it is the verb lakik (to regale oneself) referring to eating. Originally the term lakodalom was used for all large celebratory feasts. The role played by the festive meal in the menyegző may explain how the word lakodalom could so easily assume the earlier meaning of the word menyegző: first perhaps the narrower, and then in the seventeenth century the broader one encompassing the entire marriage. The explanation of the expression menyegzői lakodalom, typical of this same century, confronts us with a more difficult task. Based on our sources it appears unequivocal that it is the Hungarian equivalent of the Latin expression nuptiarum sollemnitas. In the Transylvanian and Hungarian invitations of the seventeenth century, the event specified in the invitation is quite frequently called menyegzői lakodalom. Does the phrase menyegzői lakodalom possess the broader meaning of menyegző as the word lakodalom does? The signs indicate that generally not in the usage of the majority, but rather that it was used only for the secular celebration, somewhat like the structurally similar modern English wedding party or the German Hochzeitsfeier expressions.

In place of both menyegző and lakodalom the invitations very often employ those words which originally referred to a single episode of the event, though one that held crucial importance, the handing over of the bride from her parents’ home, and her being led over to the groom’s house, but later on they covered the whole secular part of the marriage. In Hungarian these expressions are the megadás and hazaadás (on the part of the bride’s family), as well as the elhozás and hazavitel (on the part of the groom’s family), while the equivalent Latin technical term, which underwent a similar expansion of meaning, is unequivocally elocatio.

The name for the church part of the marriage represents a problem of comparable weight to the above, since some of the equivalent words may equally designate a betrothal in today’s sense also. Such polysemous words are the Hungarian kézfogás/kézfogó (“handfasting”) and the Latin desponsatio or sponsalia. However, there also exist words that beyond any doubt designate only the church ceremony.12 Both the sixteenth-century hitlés/hitelő, and the esketés/esküvő and its variants in use beginning in the seventeenth century refer to the vow by which the parties affirmed their mutually declared intention to marry (consensus) during the ceremony. Our seventeenth-century sources also reveal that a pars pro toto referring to a completely different element of the marriage was regarded as the Latin equivalent of the two word clusters: the word copulatio, which in a narrower sense is that element of the wedding ceremony when the priest (for Catholics before the parties take their vows, and for Protestants following this) declares the marriage established. It is very important to make clear that only in the rarest of cases do the terms for the church part of the marriage occur in the nuptial invitations of the sixteenth- and seventeenth century.

For the sake of better comprehensibility, the results of our conceptual analysis are summarized in a table as well (Table 1).

Table 1.

The polysemy of the nouns meaning marriage in and of itself would not cause much trouble if in the invitations the verb clearly defined the act preceding the invitation. Unfortunately this is not the case. While most Latin-language letters as a rule make use of the phrase desponsavi/desponsaverim in coniugem/uxorem (thus, the inviting party literally speaks of betrothal), in the Hungarian-language letters we generally read vettem magamnak feleségül (“I have taken for myself as a wife”). But if the father or guardian of the bride writes the letter, in the majority of cases he uses the expression adtam feleségül (“I have given as a wife”) and its Latin equivalent (elocavi/elocaverim in coniugem/uxorem). Yet according to our modern linguistic intuition these formulations would mean not the betrothal but rather the marriage.13 The seventeenth-century invitations introduce the announcement of the wedding much rather with the phrases jegyzette(m) el (“I have betrothed”) or, in the case of the bride’s father, ígértem házastársul (“I have pledged as a spouse”). The enigmatic form vettem (“I have taken”) known from the letters crops up in the earliest Hungarian-language marriage vow (from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), as well as in numerous Protestant ritual books of the sixteenth century.14

One means of resolving the contradiction would be if we took the expression feleségül venni (“I have taken as wife”) to be equivalent to the phrase választottam feleségül (“I have chosen as wife;” in Latin: elegerim (et petiverim) in coniugem) employed in some of the sixteenth-century invitations, thus we could apply it to a simple betrothal. According to another proposed solution, the odd past-tense expression allows us to conclude the occurrence of a “handfasting” (kézfogó) prior to the invitation and reinforced by a vow (a firmer betrothal than that of today). 15

Even more surprising than the above was that some of the sixteenth-century Latin-language invitations from Beszterce feature iungo or copulo, which are unequivocally the verbs of the church marriage, instead of desponso. All this would mean that the marriage ceremony occurred well before the wedding feast (lakodalom), indeed, before the letters were sent out. Moreover, the verb desponso is also frequently accompanied by a phrase difficult to interpret, namely, iure/ritu matrimonii (or possibly in the form ritu sanctae catholicae ecclesiae), that is, in accordance with the law/rite of marriage of the Universal Church (in a longer version: iuxta ritum et (antiquam) consuetudinem sanctae catholicae ecclesiae/matris ecclesiae, that is “according to the ancient rite and custom of the Holy Mother Church”).

Our analysis of the early modern vocabulary of marriage has perhaps succeeded in conveying the difficulties with which our sources confront us at almost every turn. It is also clear that the old Hungarian system of marriage cannot be decoded solely with the help of the invitations and ritual books—only with the help of reference points outside the text can we free ourselves from the influence of our own era. We must move beyond and examine the ecclesiastical law background and conceptual network that defined the content and interrelationship of the above expressions.

The Evolution of Christian Marriage Law in a Nutshell

At first Christianity prescribed no formal marriage ceremony for its adherents; from the mid-fourth century on, however, the practice of the priest blessing marriages after the fact spread. Although the blessing was by no means necessary for the validity of the marriage, later nevertheless it was around it that a nuptial mass gradually crystalized, and as the last stage of the process the marriage ceremony of the church. In this evolution, the twelfth century, when marriage—primarily based on the teachings of Saint Augustine—finally earned its placed among the sacraments, was of crucial importance. The consequence in this life of the acceptance of the sacramental nature was the veritable “reformation” of marriage law and, through it, of society.16 The church thereafter increasingly lay claim to the oversight of marriages, and demanded for itself the right to adjudicate them as well, while it regarded marriage as indissoluble. A new ideal equal in rank to celibacy was born,17 the institutional regulation of which was formed with the incorporation of important elements of Roman law. The most important borrowing undoubtedly was the basic principle that only a free act of agreement between two persons (consensus) with no external coercion could establish a marriage, which was a radical departure from the view emphasizing the exclusive right of the extended family of Germanic law to decide.18

Two great twelfth-century canonical schools were allotted a crucial role in shaping the details of the reform: the Parisian school, representing the Gallic church, and the Bolognese school, closely linked to the Italian church (ecclesia cisalpina). The Parisians, led by Peter Lombard [Petrus Lombardus] (†1164) and the Bolognese, associated with the name of Gratian [Gratianus], agreed on the primacy of consensus and the indissolubility of marriage, though their opinions differed over which act contained the sacrament that ultimately sealed the marital relationship.19 According to Gratian, this element was the consummation of the marriage (copula carnalis), therefore an unconsummated marriage (conjugium initiatum) could be dissolved, and of two declarations of consensus it was always the consummated one (conjugium ratum) that was the valid one, regardless of chronological order. The Parisian school, however, believed to have discovered the sacrament in the declaration of the will to marry itself and sought to achieve the consolidation of the institution of marriage by introducing an additional concept of Roman law, betrothal in today’s sense. It is in the canonical works of Ivo of Chartres (†1116) that the view first appears, which distinguishes the betrothal (sponsalia de futuro), containing a pledge in the future and dissoluble, from the marriage (sponsalia de praesenti), articulating a present-tense promise and regarded as completely indissoluble. By adopting this distinction, the Parisian school—at least on a theoretical plane—created the system of Christian marriages known today. In their view, if a person entered into two “betrothals” (sponsalia), the one in which the intention to marry is expressed by the exchange of words of present consent (de praesenti) was the valid one, and the issue of which was consummated was not crucial. While Gratian carried forward the traditional notion of a processual marriage (placing, it is true, unusually great emphasis on consummation), the Parisian school tied the establishment of the marriage to a single act, the sponsalia de praesenti.20

It was Pope Alexander III (1159–1181), recognized as a canon lawyer as well, who settled the debate between the two schools, in essence more inclined to agree with the Parisian school. Gratian’s views regarding the significant legal role played by consummation prevailed in merely two particulars: in the event of an unconsummated marriage the church permitted the spouses to enter a religious order; and it recognized that consummation transformed the intention to marry expressed by words of future consent into a valid marriage (sponsalia de futuro carnali copula subsecuta).21

Although these changes were meant to increase ecclesiastical influence over marriage, as a result of the exclusive emphasis of consensus, in a given situation they provided an opportunity to evade ecclesiastical and societal rules. For the church, because of its own principles of canon law, was also forced to recognize the validity of those marriages concluded out of the public eye and without formal ceremonies, or even without seeking the parents’ consent (matrimonium clandestinum).22 Thus it is understandable that the fight against clandestine marriages became one of the engines for the development of marriage law. In the eyes of the church marriage remained a sacrament that the parties bestowed to one other, but for this there was an increasing demand for public scrutiny and the authenticating role of the priest.23 Accordingly, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) prescribed the priestly blessing of marriages, and in addition considered the reading of the banns three times in advance and the presence of witnesses to be necessary. It is true, however, that this regulation did not call the validity of clandestine marriages into question either.24

Yet the late medieval evolution ultimately brought about the slow but continuous strengthening of the church’s role. In many places the church ceremony confined itself to a blessing of the contracted marriage after the fact, but elsewhere it now became linked to some act of the traditionally multiphase marriage, for example, the rite of handing over the bride (traditio/Trauung). Here the priest was promoted from prominent witness to master of ceremonies: instead of the bride’s relative or an entrusted third person it was now he who placed the girl into the groom’s hand, while the ceremony moved from private homes and public spaces to the churches. At first it appeared that the Reformation was creating a new marriage law radically departing from the medieval one. Luther after a brief vacillation rejected the sacramental nature of marriage. Accordingly, he no longer regarded it as indissoluble either, calling it in fact a secular matter, by this he meant that it belonged among the institutions of the world that came into existence after the fall from grace, and subject to secular regulation.25 One practical consequence of the line of thought was that the possibility of divorce appeared, while among the impediments to marriage “spiritual kinship” (coming about during baptism) disappeared.26 Although the Reformation removed marriage from among the ranks of the sacraments, it increased its significance vis-à-vis celibacy, held to be harmful, and in the long term this laid the foundations of the superior ecclesiastical notion of marriage almost reminiscent of that of the sacraments.

At first Luther considered the distinction between the two kinds of betrothal (sponsalia de praesenti/de futuro) also to be contrived, a word game, and recognized only one, legally binding betrothal.27 He questioned the constituting power of betrothal only in those cases where its validity was tied to some specific condition. In his view, therefore, it was the betrothal that created the marriage, while within the church ceremony only the public affirmation of the already contracted marriage took place. His opinion is strongly reminiscent of the teachings of the master of the Bolognese school, Gratian, though he does differ from the latter in that he considers parental consent as necessary for the marriage and, unlike Melanchthon or Théodore de Béze, does not attribute primary legal significance to consummation. Luther’s view about the “secular” character of marriage was shared by the great figures of the Swiss Reformation as well, though the renewal of the faith ultimately failed to bring about a revolutionary change in the area of marriage law.28 It is the medieval legacy of the new denominations that makes it comprehensible why in the end, despite Luther’s fierce outbursts against canon lawyers, Protestant ecclesiastical law was established on foundations of medieval canon law and failed to break completely with the distinction between the two kinds of betrothal: the views regarding the question were visibly sharply divided. It may be stated in any case that, like Luther, a significant number of Lutherans saw the public betrothal as the beginning of legal marital relations and regarded the church ceremony that followed it as only a kind of affirmation. It is the medieval roots that explain also why right up until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Protestant churches did not necessarily link the validity of the marriage to the church ceremony. However, in their case, too, the ambition to control marriages became increasingly strong, which was reflected in the marital arbitration as well.

The new Catholic Church born in the debates of the Council of Trent, on the other hand, already quite early on resolved itself to a comprehensive regulation of marriage law, first and foremost in order to eliminate clandestine marriages. With the Council of Trent’s so-called decree Tametsi issued in 1563 a new era commenced in the area of marriage. Here those requirements already articulated in the Middle Ages but not consistently enforced were incorporated into a general system: marriages were to be concluded in a church, before the competent parish priest or priest entrusted by him, in the presence of two or three witnesses, and it was necessary to read the banns three times before the wedding because of any potential obstacles to marriage.29 All marriages not satisfying these criteria were deemed invalid. The Catholic Church therefore stepping over the previous theological and canonical reservations broke with the monopoly of consensus, and proclaimed its own collaboration to be indispensable. (It was from this time on that there appeared the widely held view, naturally erroneous in the canon-law sense, that the act establishing the marriage was the joining of the couple by the priest.)

The reorganization exerted a significant influence also on the Protestant denominations, which were trying to introduce similar rules at this same time. As the final result of a lengthy process, by the eighteenth century, with the adoption of the Roman law notion, they too arrived at a result similar to the Catholic regulation, prescribing the church ceremony for the validity of marriages.

An Old Debate and Its Hungarian Offshoot

Naturally, the evolution of Christian marriage outlined above is the topic of numerous debates even today, with regard to both the form of the acts and their legal content. From the point of view of our present inquiry (the relationship of the ecclesiastical and secular elements of marriage) a nineteenth-century German legal history debate that hardly crops up in the modern English-language specialist literature, and its completely unknown continuation in Hungary will be the most important for us. It was at the time of the Bismarckian Kulturkampf in Germany that the debate between two extraordinarily well-prepared Lutheran legal historians, the national liberal supporter of the chancellor, Emil Friedberg (1837–1910), and the conservative Rudolph Sohm (1841–1917) about the history of marriage would take place.30 Their positions held quite strong topicality as well, for it was precisely during the debate (in 1875) that compulsory civil marriages were introduced in the German Empire. The debate occurred mostly around the content and origin of the various legal acts: they tried to uncover the role and interrelationship of Germanic, canon and Roman law in the historical formation of West European marriage.

Sohm claimed no less than that the Germanic marriage law had lived on latently, in the guise of scholasticism, in medieval canon law, and from there the basic structure passed over intact into Lutheran ecclesiastical law as well. Of the two phases of the marriage throughout it was the first that remains binding. In the most widespread form of Germanic marriage (Muntehe) this first phase was the betrothal (Verlobung), which the two extended families concluded with one another in the form of an oral contract (later the groom was also allotted an active role), while the second phase is the ceremonial handing over of the bride and the guardianship exercised over her to the groom (Trauung). The marriage, according to Sohm’s theory, was established by the Verlobung, though to purely negative effect, determining that they could not enter into a similar relationship with another person, then during the Trauung as an act of fulfillment the positive impact appeared: namely the marital union. The Gratian-type conjugium initiatum of canon law was nothing less than the Germanic Verlobung, while the conjugium perfectum essentially corresponded to the Germanic Trauung.31 The sole difference was that in canon law the legal function of the Trauung was assumed by consummation (matrimonii consummatio). Sohm also claimed resolutely that the Parisian school’s distinction, elevated to an official position in the twelfth century, had remained a dead letter: the sponsalia de futuro (the betrothal corresponding to today’s notion) originating in Roman law had not taken hold in practice, and throughout the Middle Ages only a single marriage-forming betrothal had existed.32 This was attested also by those words in numerous Germanic and Romance languages that could designate equally spouse and betrothed, as well as betrothal and marriage. (We could note this fact earlier in relation to the Hungarian language as well.) The church ceremony coming into use after the great reform of the twelfth century as a complementary element in his view was connected to the second phase, counting as an act of fulfillment, and not to the betrothal actually establishing the marriage, since it was on the day of the Trauung that the secular celebration of the marriage was held, i.e., the wedding feast in its narrower sense (Hochzeitsfeier), and it appeared logical that the church celebration should also be connected to this.33 With the linking of the element of fulfillment and the church ceremony, however, it was precisely the act forming marriage, the legally crucial betrothal, that had remained unregulated, and this had resulted in the complete irrelevance of the church. The Catholic Church had drawn the lesson at the Council of Trent: it had carried out the first substantive modification of canon law marriage. Recognizing the marriage-constituting force of betrothal, they had changed the church ceremony into a ceremony in the nature of a betrothal, the second phase, the Trauung in fact had ceased to exist, and its remnants came to be linked to the binding betrothal as wedding formulas. However, it was not these words of copulatio that formed the essence of the new church ceremony, but rather the consensus solemnly declared in the presence of the priest as witness. It was now that the distinction formed in the twelfth century became reality: before the sponsalia de praesenti as marriage solemnized by the church’s involvement, the genuine, modern betrothal that originated in Roman law and could no longer be changed into a marriage through consummation, appeared in the Catholic matrimonial ritual.

The Lutherans, according to Sohm, had tread a different path. Luther had by no means opposed the essence of canonical teachings when he deemed the entirely theoretical distinction between the sponsalia de futuro and sponsalia de praesenti to be word play but rather had simply registered the previously widespread perception.34 As Sohm saw it, Lutheran church law in the sixteenth century had completely preserved the marriage system of medieval canon law, with the betrothal that created a legal relationship, and the fulfillment of the contract, consummation. Over the course of the seventeenth century this had been altered in that it was the church ceremony emerging around the handover transaction of Germanic law (Trauung), at first in addition to consummation, and later completely assuming its role, that represented the second, contract-fulfilling act. And this would have restored the original Germanic marriage system, which only the reception of Roman marriage law in the eighteenth century effaced.35

Friedberg’s views, expounded with similar erudition, were diametrically opposed to the above ideas. For him, already in the era of Germanic law it was the second phase, the Trauung, that established the marriage, and in his view this remained so in canon law as well. Friedberg believed that the Verlobung of Germanic law over the course of the Middle Ages had fused into the Trauung, forming a single act of marriage, and it was as preparation for this that the betrothal originating in Roman law (sponsalia de futuro) appeared in the twelfth century. The sponsalia de praesenti establishing the marriage, likewise adopted from Roman law, in turn appears as one of the elements of the new complex Trauung. It was precisely in this that the canon lawyer believed to have discovered the proof that it was the Trauung that had been the start of marriage in earlier times, too.

Thus, according to Freidberg the distinction of the Parisian school had indeed taken root, and in fact had become generally accepted in canon law. He calls into question the significance of Gratian’s teachings.36 In his opinion, the significance of the Tridentine reform lies not in the fact that it joins the church ceremony to the act establishing the marriage, since it had been connected to it up until then, but rather in that with the complete fading of the legal significance of the Trauung the last elements of Germanic law also disappeared from the marriage rite formed on the basis of Roman law in the twelfth century.

Friedberg naturally thought differently about Luther as well. In his assessment, the reformer had adopted the binding betrothal not from the hated medieval canon law but from the church fathers. Although the Luther-type “sponsalia theory” had won acceptance in Lutheran church law (and betrothals, in contrast to Sohm’s view, were regarded as marriages possessing full legal force), in practice because of the resistance of society and the secular authorities it had penetrated but little.37 Critical voices among Lutheran church lawyers appear already in the seventeenth century, then in the eighteenth century the influence of natural law displaced the archaic notion introduced by Luther, which was completely at variance with medieval practice as well.38

From the above it is perhaps clear that both theories contain numerous speculative elements, and it is their strength that is also their weakness: they seek to provide a unitary, comprehensive explanation for the development of marriage in Western Europe. The seeds of the debate in Germany a decade later sprouted in Hungary. This is no coincidence, for in the decades prior to the introduction of compulsory civil marriage (1894) in Hungary, too, interest in the history of marriage customs increased greatly. Gyula Kováts’s (1849–1935) work A házasságkötés Magyarországon egyházi és polgári jog szerint [Marriage in Hungary according to Ecclesiastical and Civil Law] appeared in 1883, followed in 1887 by Baron Ervin Roszner’s (1852–1928) strongly polemical monograph.39 A heated scholarly debate erupted between the two canon lawyers, followed with lively attention by educated public opinion as well. The Protestant Kováts emerged as a follower of Sohm, while the Catholic Roszner championed Friedberg’s teachings.

Although more than one renowned legal historian of the era paid tribute to Roszner’s accomplishment, nevertheless in hindsight it is evident that in a few important questions we must side with the much better trained Kováts, who adapted his German master’s theses independently. For us, the most interesting element of the dispute is the same question that earlier had caused the greatest commotion in Germany too: the presumed marriage-forming nature of betrothal. In the course of the debate Roszner succeeded in proving that the distinction between sponsalia de praesenti and de futuro in the thirteenth century cropped up in legal documents in Hungary (later, sporadically, in diplomas as well), and on the basis of this he presumed that the modern ritual had appeared in Hungary already in the Middle Ages, with the betrothal that created the engaged relationship, and the subsequent marriage.40 Kováts by contrast argued that although the distinction had been known in theory, in practice for a very long time only one marriage-forming betrothal, called desponsatio or desponsatio per verba de praesenti in Latin, had existed, followed after a certain interval by a secular act of fulfillment incorporating consummation as an essential moment: the wedding feast.41 (In the Hungarian canon lawyer’s theory this occupied the place of Sohm’s Trauung, originating in Germanic law, becoming over time part of the church ceremony.) From his writings it is strongly apparent that he himself could not decide with absolute certainty: to which phase of the marriage the church ceremony, at this time still insignificant in a legal sense, was typically linked—the first: marriage-binding betrothal, the second: the wedding feast (lakodalom), or perhaps occurring as a third element in time between the betrothal and the wedding feast (lakodalom). As far as can be discerned from his obscure formulations, he considers perhaps the first version to be the most widespread, though he does not reflect at all on how strongly he diverges from Sohm’s thinking in this regard. Kováts believed that this custom―at times with the temporal separation of the betrothal (kézfogó) serving as marriage and the church wedding (összeadás)―had predominated, for Catholics until the reception of the Council of Trent while for Protestants right up until the mid-eighteenth century.42 The great strength of his argument, compared not only to Roszner’s thinking but Sohm’s as well, was that his attention also extended to the role played by the wedding feast in the marriage. (For Sohm the wedding feast was merely a secular celebration accompanying the Trauung always held on the same day as the latter, to which he attributes no great significance despite the fact that it serves as the framework for consummation—essentially he considers it a sort of appendage to the second phase.) Although Kováts’s assertions, formulated partly following Sohm and partly on the basis of his own research, are highly generalizing, and debatable with regard to the legal content of certain acts, his theory as an attempt at description nevertheless can offer a strong basis for analysis.

Marriage Practice in Medieval and Early Modern Hungary

One of the Hungarian canon lawyer’s most important guiding threads in the issue of betrothal was Transylvanian memoir literature. It was Gyula Kováts who first read with a truly keen eye the description of marriages given by Baron Péter Apor (1676–1752) in his nostalgic Hungarian-language work about the everyday life of the Transylvanian nobility in the seventeenth century. The text, apart from the blessing of the nuptial table, mentions only one church ceremony, specifically in connection with the “handfasting.” According to the author of the Metamorphosis Transylvaniae, among the Transylvanian nobility the custom was that immediately after the exchange of rings:

... the young man sent again his two relatives and called on the girl to pledge herself. Then the father and mother and their relatives once more brought out the girl and the ceremony took place. There was a decent cloth on the table, and another was spread on the ground in front of it, and the priest stood in front with his back to the table facing the assembled company; the young man came forth and stood on the cloth, a female relative led the girl forth, and the priest administered the vows. When the ceremony was concluded the girl was led inside once more (translation by Bernard Adams).43

The authenticity of Apor’s description is buttressed by the autobiography of Miklós Bethlen (1642–1716) as well. Reading his account of the two marriages carefully, it is unequivocal that on both occasions the wedding (church ceremony) took place only within the framework of the betrothal, while the feast following the rather large-scale event was merely a feast and nothing more.44

Kováts also uses the bible of traditional Hungarian noble customary law, István Werbőczi’s Tripartitum (1514) as support for his theory. The legal scholar in the first part of his work writes that sons are freed from paternal authority through division of the estate and daughters by the desponsatio and the nuptiarum sollemnitas.45 Because a Roman-law type de futuro betrothal could not have involved such a legal consequence, it is therefore unequivocal in his opinion that the former expression must be translated as a binding betrothal, and the latter as wedding feast. The identification of the nuptiarum sollemnitas in addition is aided by the fact that Werbőczi equates it with consummation by inserting the Latin conjunction sive (“that is”).

Although Kováts unfortunately ignores the ritual books (and his work suffered from this), nonetheless he does list one Calvinist ecclesiastical source rejecting the distinction between the betrothal and the marriage among the main proofs for his theory. This is a work of ecclesiastical law appearing in 1690 and written by Márton Szilágyi, from the Tiszántúl (region east of the Tisza River): the Triga divortialis, which in its outlook truly stands quite close to the old teachings of Gratian.46 Kováts’s observations about the form of the marriage can be supported, apart from the already quoted wedding invitations, primarily with narrative sources: for example, noble diaries, which are excellent records of the schedule of customs. In these it frequently occurs that the church ceremony (handfasting, vow-taking) is joined not to the wedding feast, but to the betrothal. However, in general the two elements are clearly distinguished from one another.47

Among the sources of the church administration, too, we find ones attesting to the fact that the church ceremony did not, or more precisely did not always occur within the framework of the wedding feast (lakodalom). The church visitation register of István Csulyak Miskolci, the Calvinist dean of Zemplén County (1629–1645), contains the following requirement, reflecting the multiplicity of practice: that “those who do not wed at the time of their betrothal (kézfogáskor) should wed in the morning, and in the church.”48 The 1649 ecclesiastical law book of the Transylvanian Calvinist bishop István Geleji Katona prescribes that not much time should pass between the joining of the couple (copulatio) and the wedding feast (nuptiae), lest the couple become intimate ahead of time or, on the contrary, quarrel.49

In examining the relationship of the ecclesiastical and secular elements of marriage ethnographic research also comes to our aid. It was the best known Hungarian researcher of folk legal customs, Ernő Tárkány Szűcs, who observed that in a few conservative Calvinist villages in southern Hungary the handfasting (kézfogó) likewise used to be held in the church, before a priest.50 Among the Hungarians of Slavonia, this ceremony assured the groom the right also to sleep with his fiancée. The author himself thought that the phenomenon was the remnant of an archaic set of customs, in which the contracting of a marriage consisted of merely two elements: the betrothal performed in the presence of the church and the consummation. More recently, researching the ecclesiastical administration of justice, Réka Kiss pointed out that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hungary and Transylvania the church wedding ceremony (esküvő) was often linked to the betrothal and in such instances preceded the completely secular wedding feast.51

However, we also possess ample sources that prove the existence in the medieval and early modern eras of the custom known today: the church ceremony integrated into the wedding feast, and the betrothal preceding it. For example, it is unequivocally in connection with the menyegző that the 1538 special statute of Beszterce, citing the provisions of the Hochzeitsordnungen (wedding ordinances) of Germany, stipulates that only as many bridesmaids (nyoszolyólány) escort the bride to the church as can be seated at one table.52

Elsewhere we likewise encounter wedding feast linked with wedding ceremony (and with the betrothal, or exchange of rings, presumably preceding it, functionally corresponding to that of today). One such is the menyegző combined with kézfogó (i.e., wedding) of György Thurzó’s daughter Judit in 1607.53 Nor must we forget that a significant number of the early modern Protestant ritual books not consulted by Gyula Kováts record the custom known today. Finally, we must mention also that in a few of our sixteenth-century invitations from Beszterce the impending event is called hitelés rather than the customary menyegző, which almost certainly indicates that the church ceremony was held within the framework of the wedding feast.

Apart from the two basic form of marriage presented, additional variants crop up in early modern Hungary: it is very likely that the separation and joining together of the different elements of the church marriage (copulatio, vows, exchange of rings, nuptial blessing), as well as their varying connection to the wedding feast, brought about numerous variations.54 Instructive is the case of a seventeenth-century Lutheran noble, Mihály Libercsey, whose first marriage in 1638 occurred entirely according to the modern custom: he became engaged to the girl with an exchange of rings, then the wedding feast was celebrated on the same day as the kézfogás (= wedding).55 After becoming widowed he remarried, but this time following a completely different schedule. On April 3, 1667 he became engaged to the widow of György Zmeskál, Anna Aranyadi, in Lestina [Leštiny, Slovakia], the next day he “takes her as a wife,” while they hold their wedding feast on May 1, 1667 in the castle of Gács [Halič, Slovakia].56 The betrothal and the handfasting presumably incorporating the church ceremony as well here almost coincide (though they are clearly distinct), while the wedding feast became detached in time and space.

Conclusion

Based on the above, a unitary, pure picture of the forms of marriages like that which the German and Hungarian legal historians of the nineteenth century believed to see, can certainly not be drawn. All signs indicate that in medieval and early modern Hungary and Transylvania several forms of marriage existed. The Tridentine reform of marriage and the similar resolutions of the Protestant synods later on gradually made the modern betrothal and the wedding ceremony (esküvő) integrated into the wedding feast (lakodalom) a general practice. However, the invitations from Beszterce and other sources reveal that, prior to the reception of the Decree Tametsi and the complete consolidation of Protestant marriage law, a betrothal closely linked to the church ceremony and a purely secular wedding feast formed one of the basic types, which we may by no means consider a rare exception.

It may also be rightly assumed that among commoners despite prohibitions in numerous cases the church’s collaboration was lacking.57 Some of the European parallels likewise show the long survival of clandestine marriages and diversity.58 The Protestant and Catholic ritual books of the seventeenth century reveal that the church did not insist firmly in every case on the church building as the venue for administering the vows. The uniform timetable and form of marriage in Hungary emerged as the result of a very long process, through the gradual encroachment of ecclesiastical supervision. We as yet cannot see clearly the existing territorial, confessional and societal differences in regard to marriage, nor the date when the unification occurred in the various areas of the country. We suspect that in many areas this transpired only in the eighteenth century. Indeed, even in an early ethnographic description of customs, György Nemesnépi Zakál’s 1818 work on the ethnography of the Őrség region, the wedding feast figures as an event separate from the church wedding in time. (True, the church ceremony is preceded by a “modern” betrothal.)59

It is not by chance that we spoke about the form of marriage above. At the forefront of Rudolph Sohm’s and Gyula Kováts’s inquiry—being legal historians—is not this, but rather the legal content of the marriage acts. Kováts considered betrothal as constituting marriages not only in those cases when they were paired with the administration of wedding vows, but rather he regarded every betrothal as establishing marriage, regardless of the form it took. This was specifically because he denied the validity of the canonical distinction that appeared in the twelfth century separating the betrothal from the marriage. (Regarding the characteristic form, he in fact diametrically opposes Sohm: according to the German canon lawyer, the church act, for a long time insignificant, was always connected to the second stage of the marriage.) In Kováts’s works the questions of legal content and form become blurred in a very misleading way. The historical sources from Hungary that he cites to demonstrate the marriage-binding betrothal in reality prove only the temporal separation of the wedding feast and the wedding, as well as the frequent coincidence of the betrothal and the church ceremony, that is, the physical sequence of the events. Today scholars view the marriage of Germanic law, which served as Sohm’s standard, differently as well: in addition to Verlobung and Trauung, they interpret the “taking home of the bride” (Heimführung), as well as the ritual placing of the couple into the nuptial bed (Beilager), very important from the point of view of property law, as an independent, temporally separate, third phase introducing marital life.60 Through the change in outlook it was the acts of the wedding feast in fact that assumed independent legal meaning. Moreover similar developments in research obviously dismantle the perfect symmetry of nineteenth-century theoretical systems. Must we completely reject the views of the German canon lawyer and his Hungarian follower concerning the binding betrothal? We think not, because in addition to the opinion victorious in the great debate of the twelfth century, the Gratian-type position, which did not accept the betrothal of Roman law (de futuro), reappeared time and again with varying intensity. It is our strong suspicion that ultimately it is to this legal outlook, gaining strength once again after the Reformation, that the past tense forms appearing in Hungarian wedding vows and banns, as well as the wedding invitations of the sixteenth century, can be traced back, and not to the fact that in terms of form the betrothal happened to occur in combination with the administration of the vows. A further argument in favor of the existence of the notion of marriage-forming betrothal, and against the general and fully clear distinction between betrothal and marriage is the prominent fact that in the early modern era both the Latin and Hungarian languages each had a very widespread term which, as we saw, was equally applied to both acts (desponsatio/kézfogás). And this allows us to conclude that the undifferentiated betrothal of medieval marriages only slowly disappeared from both spoken usage and practice.61

Therefore, the simplest and most concrete results of our examination are the following. From the point of view of the historical sciences, one of the serious lessons is that we must proceed very cautiously in analyzing our medieval and early modern sources: the Latin nuptiae, the Hungarian words menyegző and later lakodalom may designate both a purely secular celebration as well as an occasion that incorporates the church ceremony. The Latin desponsatio and its verbal forms may denote not only a simple betrothal (sponsalia de futuro) but also a betrothal contracting marriage, i.e., “wedding” (sponsalia de praesenti).62

For ethnographic research, in turn, it may be very interesting that in the event of a binding form of betrothal (betrothal + administering of vows) followed by a separate feast (lakodalom) all those liminal rites63 that in a wedding integrated into the feast (known from twentieth-century popular culture) immediately precede the church ceremony, here occur later: do prepare the taking home of the bride or the consummation; moreover, they occur within the framework of a secular feast. The emphasis fall completely elsewhere, it is not the church wedding ceremony that is the great turning-point of the ritual. In addition to making the Trident conditions compulsory this may be one of the crucial moment when the church exercised decisive influence on folk culture. That the integration of the wedding ceremony into the lakodalom fundamentally altered the secular rites of marriage is clearly shown by nineteenth-century ethnographic collections as well. From all parts of the Hungarian language territory we have data from this time that after the wedding ceremony the couple and the two wedding parties withdrew from the church separately and went to separate houses to have lunch as if nothing had happened.64 Only in the afternoon, after the meal had been consumed, did the groom’s wedding party set out for the bridal house, so that the final requesting the bride (kikérés) and solemn handing over of the bride (from an ecclesiastical point of view already wife) to happen in dramatic form, which is followed by the sad farewell of the bride from her kinfolk and her companions and her being led over to the groom’s house. (The above liminal rites clearly indicate that in the given system the leading of the bride to the groom’s house [átvezetés/hazavitel = leading over, taking home] is the most important secular element of the marriage.) This peculiar sequence of nuptial events, widespread in Hungary but not occurring in the West European descriptions of customs known to us, the requesting after the church wedding in our opinion mirrors the fact that the rigid structure of the feast, in its basic form purely secular, only gradually adapted to the insertion of the church ceremony, only after some delay. If we regard the late rise of ethnographic collecting, we now see that the abovementioned liminal rites as the indicators of the crucial event shifted to an earlier time, that is, they immediately precede the church wedding ceremony.

With the help of the sixteenth-century wedding invitations sent to the Transylvanian town of Beszterce we have perhaps succeeded in showing that, in addition to the much-interrogated protocol records and documents of ecclesiastical courts, other sources may also take us closer to the labyrinthine system of medieval and early modern marriages. Their serious advantage over the litigation material is that they are witnesses not of deviations from the norm but rather of everyday practice. The invitations, the narrative and legal sources called upon to assist in their analysis, as well as the ethnographic data all point in the direction that not even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can we speak of the full realization of twelfth- and thirteenth-century ecclesiastical regulation in the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania. Perhaps the denominational variety of the territory also played a role in this, but a comprehensive explanation can hardly be the task of our brief study.

Archival Sources

Arhivele Naţionale Direcţia Judeteană Cluj, Primăria oraşului Bistriţa [Cluj County Branch of the National Archives of Romania in Cluj, Archive of the Town of Bistriţa] III. a. 2. Magistratsprotokoll 1525–1541.

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Nógrád Megyei Levéltára. XIV.3. Nagy Iván akadémikus-történész iratai. [Nógrád County Branch of the National Archives of Hungary, Balassagyarmat, Documents of the historian Iván Nagy].

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára. P 481. Madách család levéltára [National Archives of Hungary, Central Archive in Budapest, Documents of the Madách Family].

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Translated by Matthew Caples

György Kövér

“A Satisfactory Combination in Every Respect…”

The Spouse Selection Dilemmas of a Young Man of the Christian Middle Class at the Turn of the Century

This case study looks at how a late nineteenth-century diarist from Hungary approached the problem of finding a wife. His system was to make lists of the ladies he met in various social circles, and appraise their potential benefits and drawbacks. In later life, he also left memoirs of his youth, although these make few references to the dilemmas he faced in choosing a wife. The literature on spouse selection focuses on the relative weights of socio-economic motives and “emotional-affective” conditions in courtship. How much did parents and relatives have a say in the choice, and how much did the decision rest on the young people’s individual will, or feelings of love? How much were the norms and the actual relationships differentiated by social class and gender? What was the balance between interests and emotions in the final outcome? Alajos Paikert (1866–1948), taken as a representative of the non-gentry middle class, did attempt to meet family expectations, but did not leave the choice to his parents. He wanted to find his future partner himself. The diary is a document of internal struggle, but is less concerned with feelings than with desires, possibilities and calculations. By bringing in other sources, however, the historian can try to work out what lay behind the words.

Keywords: gender relations, spouse selection, courtship, marriage

Max Weber’s primary operationalized index of “ständische Lage” (which in American sociology became simply “status”) was connubium, or who marries whom.1 Weber here was not thinking of status in its historical-legal sense, but of “behavioral-sociological” status. If we relate this concept to nineteenth-century Hungarian history, then in the pre-1848 (Vormärz) period, this might mean marriage of noble and bourgeois young people within their own groups, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, when “the society of Estates” was breaking down, it manifested itself much more as an expression of the endogamy of occupational or socio-cultural groups.

Historiography oriented to modernization, or more broadly, to evolution, has also come up with a model of the long-term development of spouse-selection strategies. This sees a dominance in traditional societies of socio-economic interests rather than “emotional-affective” relations.2 In the transition to modern society—which Lawrence Stone sees as having taken place in England and New England in the second half of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth century—the spread of individualism resulted in a radical shift of emphasis. Young people increasingly took the decisions themselves, of course leaving their parents the power of veto over socially or economically unacceptable candidates.3 The general picture naturally has some social differentiation, in that wealth strongly influenced the possibility and justification for intervention by parents and relatives, and there must have been numerous types and variants within each group.4

A decade later, although maintaining his views on the direction and phasing of the process, Stone put his argument much more subtly:

At all levels of society, there was a complex admixture of emotion and interest, affection and calculation, and a complex interaction between the wishes of the individuals and those of their ‘friends.’ The higher the social level, the more parents and friends dominated the situation and controlled the outcome; the lower in the social and economic scale the families were, the more free were the individuals to make their own choices, although that choice was itself not infrequently based as much on economic calculations as emotional commitment. Only in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries did patriarchal ideas of parental power, even at the highest levels of society, begin to give way to a new ideal of affective individualism, so that the companionate marriage emerged first to compete with, and finally to take full priority over, calculations of interest and economic advantage.5

Pressure for a more sophisticated evaluation of the process came from leading historical anthropologist authors for whom the above argument was never fully convincing.6 The somewhat limited set of sources—diaries from various social groups—did not support the chronological linearity of the thesis either in the early stage or the stage of transition.7 And the customs of transferring wealth and the regulated institutions of courtship for a long time permitted the parents to control their offspring.8

In addition, if we look beyond the early modern and Western European transition and take a comparative perspective on nineteenth century changes in continental Europe, we find much more differentiated views in recent literature. For example, Josef Ehmer, writing about nineteenth-century “bourgeois” marriages, asserted:

Of course, in many individual cases, there were conflicts between family strategies, parental plans, and the feelings of young people. The novels of the nineteenth century are full of such plots. Historical research, however, has shown that marriage alliances and individual love did not necessarily have to come into conflict. Since these young people moved within a particular social milieu and communication network, their individual contacts were concentrated within a narrow circle of marriage candidates who fitted into their own family strategies.9

David Sabean, looking at European systems of relations over a much longer timespan (and of course always drawing on the enormous Neckarhausen microhistory base) goes further, in declaring about the formation of various networks:

The education of both men and women to open and fluid systems where couples had to cooperate in tasks of social representation required protracted drill in taste, morality, sentiment, and style. Love and sentiment and emotional response or their expected development were built into the very nature of familial circuitry. They were the software necessary to direct the course of all the hard-wired connectors. There were, of course, different ways of falling in love. Some people first chose a suitable family by visiting, dining, walking, and playing cards together in the evening, and others did it by correspondence. Some looked for a friendly face among relatives, while others latched onto families where their careers were directed. Some followed the wishes and advice of their parents and siblings, and some bravely struck off for themselves. But love always determined the flow of capital, access to office, the course of a career.10

Here, the financial and mental motifs are not static preconditions, but interactive products of everyday social organization and the subtle and sensitive network of relationships.

When we examine marriage strategy in general, we attempt to answer the question of “who marries whom” using registers of births, marriages and deaths, and genealogies. So we determine from a kind of ex post viewpoint what the ex ante motives of spouse selection might have been. From the “what it became” we try to find out “what it evolved out of”. Without going into the argument of how this is methodologically possible, we address the question using a source which allows us to take a definitely ex ante approach. This case study looks at how a late nineteenth-century diarist from Hungary approached the problem of finding a wife. His system was to make lists of the ladies he met in various social circles, and appraise their potential benefits and drawbacks. Of course it is difficult to determine the extent to which “marriage market” is based on rational choices, because the emotional motive of decisions, however unpredictable it might seem, is somewhat self-evident. In our case, however, as we shall see, the presence and extent of rational assessment is quite striking. In addition, the man in question left later memoirs, so that we do not lose the ex post viewpoint either. If we have to rely on memoirs alone, we deprive ourselves of the sight of the rival candidates and are forced to look at the whole process of spouse selection purely through the actual marriage.

Youthful diaries permit a genetic study of marriage strategies even for the pre-1848 period. A well-known diary in the Hungarian literature is that of Etelka Slachta. While she was tending her sick mother in Balatonfüred in the summer of 1841, she was also choosing among suitors. At the same time, she wrote the following to her cousin and friend:

There are two serious candidates among these 14 suitors, but that must remain between us. If I do not take their hand, I do not want to enquire about what they have to offer. One is as handsome as Adonis, with fine manners, a majestic upbringing, very noble, elegant exterior. His father was only a grain factor, but he is very rich. He came here with four horses, but fancy, I didn’t say yes! I am this young man’s first true love. He is from Komárom. I thought for a moment, but I know little about this handsome, intelligent youth. The other is from Pest, not so handsome as pleasant, intelligent, jolly, witty and so dreadfully in love, declaring that only now he sees what true love is. He is so rich he keeps an equipage in the city. I think he should also be considered. I am not in love with either of them; I would go to them only out of reason. And where the mind and not heart decides, we always choose more slowly.11

In her diary, she goes well beyond wealth and noble origin to consider many other aspects and tricks of hunting for a husband. Here it is worth having a look at the subtle differentiation of social life in Balatonfüred in the circumstances of society of estates, where a distinction was made between “société” and aristocratic “haute volée”. Etelka, although her mother was a baroness, was not at home in the latter.12 Etelka Slachta’s freedom of choice was afforded to a great extent to her remaining alone after the death of her mother, allowing her to give free rein to her feelings towards the man of the Reformed faith who kept an “equipage”.

Even the diaries do not simply record established customs. That would hardly be worth writing down on a daily basis. As Alan Macfarlane wrote about the diary he published, kept by a seventeenth-century pastor, “the very fact that he kept a diary suggests that he was slightly exceptional.”13 Contemporary diaries certainly do not contain all the important information. There are things that are kept quiet deliberately, and others for which the author has no worlds. There are facts that cannot be uttered.

This is when we can find some assistance in the memoirs of advanced age, which show more insight by virtue of life experience and wisdom, not to mention the distance from the emotional storms of the time. Júlia M. Hrabovszky, aunt of Sándor Márai, put to paper at the age of eighty her memories of struggles to find a spouse in the late 1870s. She too had lost her father at an early age, and the family of landed gentry became impoverished. When still a girl, she earned her bread as a governess while seeking possible spouses in various spa towns (Herkulesfürdő, Buziás). She also had several suitors, and according to the narrative of her memoirs, she too made her own choice. One suitor inquired after her financial position, causing her deep offence. Another, for similar reasons, did not want to marry her but invited her as a girlfriend on a trip around the world, thus putting an end to that connection. One she rejected because he was old, and another was unacceptable on account of his employment as a farm bailiff; she did not want to live with him in a village. The latter, according to gossip, was of Jewish origin, although “nobody could prove it” (why take the trouble if a rumour did the job!). Then she met the nephew of the Prince of Serbia, but ruled him out because he had neither wealth nor employment. Finally, a noble judge of Romanian origin and a Romanian architect from Bucharest came on to the scene almost simultaneously, and clearly coincidentally. Somewhat less accidental was Júlia Hrabovszky’s choice of the latter. In Georges Muntureanu she found everything in one. As she looked back, the former bride wrote in the narrative present: “now that the matter is settled. I am marrying a handsome, elegant witty, well-placed man whom I like.” Later she added, “although I found perfect satisfaction in marriage, and the happiness I wanted, I would still say that unless one is moved by great love or great advantage, a girl should marry in her own country and not wish for a foreign place.”14 But it is not only abroad that sentiment and interest (“advantage”), can harmoniously complement each other.

Alajos Paikert’s Diary Entries and Gender Lists

Alajos Paikert (1866–1948) was much more of a public figure than Etelka Slachta or Júlia Hrabovszky, indeed the biographical dictionaries tell us he was one of the founders of Magyar Gazdaságtörténelmi Szemle (Hungarian Economic History Review) and a founder of the agricultural museums in Budapest and Cairo and of the Turán Society. It is his diaries, however, rather then any public capacity, which make him interesting here. These, written in several volumes of various sizes, and now held in the Manuscript Department of the National Széchényi Library, cover the years between 1887 and 1943.15 He also wrote several versions of his autobiography, now held in the Personal Memory Collection of the Budapest Museum of Agriculture, and from which a member of the Museum staff has published an extensive selection.16 Although he clearly did not keep his diary continuously, we have documentation of a volume that permits analysis to some depth. As might be expected from a male diary, the main subject is the author’s career and his activities in public life. Nonetheless, his private life does feature quite strongly in the diaries of his youth, particularly on the subject of seeking and courting potential spouses. The young man tried to fulfil family expectations, but did not leave the choice to his parents. He wanted to find his future wife himself. His diary is the documentation of this internal struggle. First of all, in order to understand the parental norms, we must first introduce the family.

His parents traced themselves, according to the author of the diary, to Sudeten German ancestors. His father and his maternal grandfather were both high-ranking military doctors: the father, also Alajos, was staff doctor in the army and at the peak of his career was chief medical officer of the Budapest corps. His mother’s father, Dr Vince Walter of Waltenau was also a staff doctor, the chief medical officer of the Kassa corps. Alajos senior (Jeleny, 1831–Budapest, 1914) was raised to the nobility in 1909 with the noble predicate “of Seprős”, which extended to his two surviving sons. Henrik (1865–1949) and Alajos were born in Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia) and went to school in Pozsony. Henrik chose a military career, enrolling in the military academy of Wiener Neustadt and advancing to the rank of lieutenant of hussars. After his marriage, however, he exchanged life as a hussar officer for that of a farming landowner.17 Alajos first graduated from the agricultural college in Magyaróvár and then matriculated in the Faculty of Law in the University of Pest. For both sons, the somewhat autocratic father played a decisive part in their choice of career. In his memoirs, the son largely blamed his father’s strictness for the loss of his hitherto swelling fortune in 1873. To at least partly recover it was thenceforth his father’s overriding ambition. He did not succeed.18 Young Alajos for a long time swithered between an agricultural or a legal career, and even toyed with the idea of painting (robustly opposed by his father) or becoming an inventor. For a short time, he served as a junior lecturer in the anthropological department in the humanities faculty. Finally, in 1891, he became assistant secretary of the organization representing large estates and the agricultural profession in Hungary, the National Hungarian Agricultural Association (OMGE), later rising to secretary. In that capacity, he made extended visits to England and North America, was involved in organizing the international agrarian movement, edited the agricultural historical journal Magyar Gazdaságtörténelmi Szemle, and founded the Museum of Agriculture. He resigned his office in OMGE in 1896 (again earning his father’s disapproval), and as he rebuilt his career, his thoughts increasingly turned to marriage.

On 21 April 1897, he noted in his diary:

I should: get married, have myself appointed director, I should write articles for newspapers and journals, I should go to meetings, take part in moderate movements, correspond with various personages, make some appearances in society, I should travel, I should take photographs, paint, sculpt, invent, write poetry, do scientific research, etc. etc. This is all feasible!19 (Underlining in the original)

Ultimately, he was not appointed director of the agricultural museum he had founded. Nonetheless, he moved into his office there and worked as a curator (custos) while he planned his future.

His distinctively thorough approach to the subject of marriage was not a new line of thought for him. He also received clear prompts in this direction from home. As he wrote in the unfinished memoirs he intended for his family, after his elder brother married, his mother urged the issue: “...often holding agreeable tea parties to which she invited mothers of girls whom she considered worthy of my considering as a bride; of course the mothers were to bring their daughters.”20 Most often, however, the young man did not even attend these. He wanted to take his affairs into his own hands. Living in the same house as his parents, this was not easy to do.

Over several days in 1894, he drew up a list of his acquaintances among members of parliament, the aristocracy, academia, finance, literature, the arts and public administration. His review of this network of contacts ended with a list of ladies and girls.21 Of course, not all of the seventeen spinsters in the list could have been regarded as candidate brides, but they all had a reason for being there. We cannot identify every name on the list (one even lacks a Christian name), but some are marked with the letter “t”. Since this also appears in the other lists, we have inferred from the names that it denotes a level of social connection. On the page before the young-lady acquaintances, for example, it appears in the list of lady acquaintances against the names Baroness Ida Kollmann, Mrs Ferenc Kintzig and Mrs Béla Kintzig.22

gf. [countess] Mária Kornis

Erzsébet Concha

Hedvig Concha

Melanie Koller

Margit Tyroch

Margit Baross

Laura Whilen [?]

Elsie Whilen [?]

Iza Dömötör

Irén Dömötör

t Ida Kollmann

Herzog

Natalia Kormann

Margit Gombár

t Margit Kintzig

t Erzsébet Hasz

t Sarolta Hasz

The girls marked “t” are mostly placed towards the end of the list, and the last three were probably relatives: his brother Henrik had married Lujza Kintzig in 1891, and Sarolta and Erzsébet Hasz’s brother Antal was also married to a Kintzig girl.

Alajos Paikert’s diary includes several lists of marriageable girls. When planning the period ahead of him a year later, in October 1895, he envisaged getting engaged before the end of the year and marrying during the next. The engagement and marriage had career overtones. The engagement was connected with a post of “ministerial secretary” which carried a salary of 2–3000 forints and required further actions to attain (“an article, a plan, a drawing, a poem, a speech, a deed”), while marriage by 1896, counting on the higher income, was linked with the keywords “travel, son, district, abroad”. The word district (kerület) undoubtedly alluded to an election constituency, and thus to political ambitions. After the action plan came a reduced list of names marked only with initials (although at least half of the names can be deduced from the first list).

Winifred W.

Marie D.

Mária K. [Countess Mária Kornis]

Erzsébet C. [Erzsébet Concha]

Hedvig C. [Hedvig Concha]

Anita G.

Melanie H.

Natalia K. [Natalia Kormann]23

The other names, as our present knowledge stands, remain undecipherable. Even such an intimate journal, it seems, does not lift the veil on every secret. We are restricted to discussing the girls who feature on subsequent pages of the diary.

Countess Mária Kornis (1878–1955), who we may recognize from the top of the first list, was the daughter of Count Károly Kornis (1841–1893). Her brother, also Károly Kornis (1869–1918) appears on Alajos Paikert’s diary as one of his friends.24 Károly, the child count, who was some years younger than Alajos, went to school in Pozsony. Indeed, the strict Paikert father allowed him—at the request of the Batthyány counts—to live in their house as part of the family. Through this friendship, Károly Kornis the elder invited Alajos Paikert several times during his school years to his estate in Szerep, Bihar county, where the hunts and the wetlands of Sárrét aroused pleasant recollections when he wrote his memoirs several decades later.25 We know only from the diary, however, that when he met his friend again in 1896, somewhat different experiences came to the mind of the still-young man:

In Váci utca, I met with Count Károly Kornis, my best friend. I was most pleased to meet him again, and he was too. We walked and talked for half an hour, while he told me of his plans (to sell land for 300 florins per lesser hold [1 lesser hold=0.36 hectares]) and I told him mine (museum and attaché). If Károly divests himself of his estate, he will get about 2 million for it. He will be there in winter, and he will visit me. Marie is now 18 years old. If she loves me as she did then, I will immediately ask her hand […]26

The feelings of a young girl are of course no basis for marriage, as the young Paikert clearly well knew, but Mária’s fate was still on his mind in spring 1897: “I take umbrance at Károly Kornis visiting me so rarely. He has no office, he’s got the time. Will Mária be happy?”27

It was during his years at school in Pozsony that Alajos first developed strong inclinations towards the aristocracy (and the gentry), and some illusions in that regard.28 The feeling of “amalgamation” may have been aroused by musical evenings in certain houses, although the partitions between the “first” and “second” societies clearly remained in place and were apparent on some occasions.29 This occasionality may be compared to that moment after the aeroplane takes off, when the stewardess discreetly draws the curtain between the business and economy classes so as not to show off the difference in service between the classes (but to indicate that this dividing line exists). His time in the OMGE only stoked the awe Paikert felt towards the aristocracy.30 We know from the original manuscript of his memoirs that, after he moved to Budapest, he often went on excursions to the Buda hills. The lady members of the party may have been the inspiration behind his lists of women.31 It was clearly after one of these occasions that Paikert put to himself a kind of “why not?” question: “Why should I not marry Count Béla Széchenyi’s daughter?”32 An interesting point about the retrospective lists of excursion-goers and the contemporary lists in the diary is that Cécile Tormay, who later became a writer, appears only among the excursion company. Considering the system of social connections, this seems plausible, because her father, Béla Tormay, who had graduated in veterinary science and agriculture and gained employment on the Derekegyház estate, rose step by step to membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in 1899).33 It may be a subtle sign that Edina Pallavicini (1877–1964), whose divorce case put the matter of Cecil Tormay’s lesbianism on spectacular public display in the 1920s, may be found in both the contemporary and retrospective lists.34 The name at the head of the list of the excursion company was Helén Bartha, daughter of military staff doctor János Bartha, who belonged to the same professional circle as the Paikert family and was made a noble in 1909. She, however, does not appear in any of the lists of potential brides. In addition, at the turn of the century, the Barthas lived nearby in Döbrentei utca 4, and were very likely to have attended the tea parties arranged by Paikert’s mother.35 The name Margit Tyroch does not appear in the retrospective list of excursioners, but recurs in several other lists. She also belonged to the father’s old professional-collegial circle and the Pozsony company: “Last night I was at the Tyrochs, perhaps the first time for a year. Margit indeed takes my fancy, a bright, kind, natural girl, just right for me. I felt very good in her company.”36

The diary for autumn 1895 makes several mentions of the Concha girls, daughters of Professor Győző Concha. Prof. Concha, from Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania), was one of the pioneers of political science and history of ideas in Hungary. He had been widowed upon the birth of his fourth daughter in 1883, in the eighth year of marriage. He had multiple connections to the Paikerts’ company, and his mixture of occupational and kin relationships extended to the Baross, Forster and Dömötör families.37 We know only from the memoirs that Alajos wrote for the family that the Dömötör girls’ brother László, another leading light among the young members of OMGE, was also a great admirer of Erzsébet Concha, although this did not damage the friendship between the two men.38 The four marriageable girls must have been a factor in the young Paikert’s interest in the family, even if Győző Concha headed the list of academics for 1894. “I would very much like Erzsike as my wife, but I do not have enough money to satisfy her ambitions. Marriage: must think about it very hard…”39 Perhaps his attitude to the girl would have been more positive had he still been aiming for an academic career, although there may have been something else in the background: upon meeting her father a year later, he noted: “Concha came with kindness. – Concha was as charming as ever, it seems he would like me to forget the past and marry Erzsébet.”40 The Concha girls never completely disappeared from the list of choices. Hardly six months later, new motives appeared: “On the way to Köztelek I met the Conchas. Oh Erzsi why are you not my wife. On the way back, I saw Erzsi again on her father’s arm. It is only because of my parents I do not ask her. And yet what a splendid wife she would make…”41 Alajos, whose abilities also extended to art, actually painted Erzsébet in 1898. The picture shows not a social type but one of the female ideals: she is painted with a bonnet, a combination of innocent little girl and nun.42

A high-ranking name on the early lists was Melanie Koller. Although it has not been possible to identify a Koller named Melanie, the diary frequently mentions the pretty Edith Koller, daughter of Koller Lajos of Grantzow, trade counsellor, who died in 1891 at the age of 51. They also lived not far from the Paikerts in Buda, on Várkert rakpart.43 Beauty and brightness of eyes clearly complicated the choices:

When I was on the underground in the afternoon, Mrs László Arany came on to the train with the pretty Edith Koller at the Opera. She is a decidedly beautiful girl, with good taste. I was somewhat clumsy and did not greet the handsome lady, but Edith threw me a secretive glance with her black eyes – and set me alight. It is difficult to choose.44

So powerful was the experience that next day he put her on the list of his top favourites: “I must get married. Margit Lukács, Erzsébet Concha, Edith Koller, all three grazia are beautiful and good and intelligent.”45 This shows how uncertain was the rationally-selected place in the hierarchy when exposed to the caprices of the market.

For all his thoroughness, the lists he produced were far from perfect. The detailed diary entries reveal that in autumn 1896, young Alajos was making his most fervent advances towards Margit Lukács, whose name is absent from the first lists. Although not listed until early November, she was not a new acquaintance and came from a family with several marriageable girls. Antal Lukács, Director of the Magyar Földhitelintézet (Hungarian Agricultural Land Credit Institute), had seven daughters and one son. Margit (1875–1952) was the fourth daughter.46

I am utterly happy. This evening I was at the Lukácses. I went up in some trepidation that they might receive me somewhat coolly owing to my long absence, but they received me warmly indeed! – they were just having tea, and I went with them to the opera and we had a fine time together. I am completely reassured. – I find Margit most attractive, she will be just right for me! It will be splendid, why can’t we have the wedding tomorrow!47

He was clearly finding his self-confidence, as if marriage was of more concern to him than progress in other areas of life:

But my marriage is even more important. At the moment, Margit Lukács is the favourite. I would be glad if she married me, and I think she would be glad to be my wife. I will truly love her and I can make her happy, and that is approximately what I will say to her.48

Then he seemed to waver, while feeling a stronger drive than ever:

My lady, my fine upright lady, loving wife. I forget the past, live for the future, my family’s future. Margit Lukács was a proper and in every respect satisfactory combination, and that it did not become a reality was down to me alone. She was taken hand in hand before me in her finest dress, with the sincere good wishes of both parental families. One word, one misunderstanding, drew us apart. And yet how good it would have been for both sides! There is so much in common between the two families, and it would have been a truly harmonious and healthy accord.49

There seems to have been an understanding between the families, and the failure of the match was obviously because of the young people. In the light of what happened later, it is hard to believe Alajos:

I sigh deeply, thinking that in January I could have taken here my bride, Margit Lukács. How splendid it would have been. What joy I would have caused the good parents!50

Nonetheless, the fateful year of 1898 still seemed to revolve around Margit:

Margit. You have wounded me. I am not like the others. Love me, or do not love me and let us go our separate ways. I will not run after you. I found everything in you that I sought – I want to be your everything, and if I am not, that is the end of everything.

In the meantime, more about the background comes to light:

Margit. She would still have been best for me. She is homely, good-hearted, healthy, nice, good family, thrifty, pretty, etc. etc. – But I have done everything, she knows I am not a courmacher (“Romeo”), why does she demand that from me? I will not humiliate myself.51

What the girl actually felt is sadly unknown to us. Some signs, however, do emerge from the background. These suggest more than “one word” or “a misunderstanding”. There must have been more subtle “behavioural sociological” barriers to the marriage if the error was in the courtship. Could it be that Margit Lukács put him to the test, or in fact wanted to rebuff a young man who she did not really like?

This was just as he was producing his final list, consisting mostly of familiar names (or at least Christian names), but ending with a completely new one. “Girls: Erzsébet – Margit – Adrienne – Hedvig – Irma – T. Margit – Mila – H. Marie – Winifred – Deli.”52

Erzsébet and Hedvig are clearly the Concha girls. The Margit without a surname is Margit Lukács, and T. Margit is Margit Tyroch. The name Adrienne appears only on this list, and may be the Adrienne Fischel from the retrospective list of excursioners, or possibly the lady to whom he wrote a poem in 1895 (Paikert wrote poetry throughout his life), the eldest daughter of Károly Andrényi of Györök, trade counsellor of Arad, who died in 1893 at the age of 55. Whoever it was, she still ruffled the conscience of Alajos Paikert as he sought a mate in 1897: “I am so miserable! – I have alienated the angelic Adrienne from me. How long will this last? It will end in madness.”53 This was clearly the period of ultimate desperation and final effort, but one in which a new ray of hope appeared.

The Decision: Deli

In summer 1898, several of his relatives were still encouraging him to make up his mind and finally marry Margit Lukács: “…I must embark upon the siege of Margit, God grant me that I will succeed and M. will love me, I know we will be a very good couple.”54 In early September, however, he was back to the cultural and methodological problems of courtship, considerations unlikely to win him the battle.

Why cannot I say to Margit: I love you, love me, do you love me? – Yes or no. – No, nowadays I have to swerve around the question ten times in all kinds of attitude and costume, and she has to play the most hostile faces, before we get anywhere. What’s the use? Ah – the choice of a wife is certainly the most important when one is married for life. A one-year marriage with a six-month break, that is much more practical.55

His outrage against middle-class courtship norms was stronger than his resolution.

Then the diary seemed to find a new protagonist. At the end of May, for the sake of Deli, the last on the list, he seemed to put all of his cards on the table.

Deli – Do you understand me, will you love me? Oh God give my heart peace! From your beautiful gentle eyes, so much goodness radiates towards me, will you keep what you promise me?56

Then he gives himself a stern command: “It must be decided, a man cannot love more than one! – Let there be an end.”57 This sentence is misleading at first sight. It looks as though Alajos had been simultaneously in love with all of the women he had listed and courted. His diary is not, however, the outpouring of an adolescent girl’s secrets. In fact, he betrays no signs of romantic love, and as for feelings, he wrote much more about what he perceived—or hoped for—in others, than about what he felt himself. We cannot say he was devoid of feelings, but he was certainly either incapable of expressing them or considered it unmanly to write them down.

The diary fails to reveal what caused the sudden urgency surrounding marriage two years into his thirties, or what led to Deli Rónay’s appearance at the end of the final list. More helpful are the memoirs he wrote for his family. From there, we find that he had seen her as a little girl on a photograph when she was eight years old and immediately declared, “she will be my wife.” His first real-life acquaintance with the Rónay family was a wedding, where he was a groomsman and asked Deli to accompany him as bridesmaid.58

Who were they? Károly Rónay (1849–1935) was a prosperous attorney and later royal notary. His wife Izabella Sztipán gave him three daughters and a son, the first, in 1880, being Deli Franciska Izabella.59 The father (and his family) were raised to the nobility in 1912 with the noble predicate “of Osgyán”, thus following a similar path of elevation to that of the elder Alajos Paikert (although neither of them could have known this in 1898).60 Károly Rónay’s wife on her mother’s side was a descendent of the “Fluk family of Rággamb” and brought with her “a substantial fortune”. This important aspect only comes to light in the memoirs, as does the fact that the Rónay parents were “highly cultured, learned, well-travelled and spoke fluent English, French and German, and provided their children with a first-class education.”61

The memoirs give an accelerated account of the courtship, at first leaving the year of engagement blank. The somewhat slower progress of events in reality is evident from the diary. “On 3 October I talked to Dr Rónay. Deli, my gentle little Deli, my youthful dream will come true. Love me, love me, and heaven will be ours!”62 Since the girl was still a minor, it was natural that he spoke with the father. But this did not settle the matter. The uncertainty partly arose from external causes: the father did not want to act in haste:

I do not understand Rónay’s advice not to be in undue haste. I can find no other explanation than that Deli cannot yet decide. It has made me very sad. Or… or. This vacillation cannot go on. As soon as possible! Oh, how I would like a nice little wife.63

On the other hand, the young man himself was in a state of some confusion. We almost see the great dilemma of classical dramas in microcosm: reason or passion? Failing (or not wanting) to realize this himself, he directly ascribed the curious situation to nature (he resembles his mother) or upbringing (father’s hard drilling) or even some kind of disease.

My mind is utterly confused. I am mixing up everything, I cannot make a good judgement, I ascribe importance to matters of no substance and miss what is important, I busy myself with trivialities, ignoring questions of life itself. – Paralysis progressiva. My speech is slovenly, and I write the same way, leaving out words, letters and sentences. I mix up everything. It is all the consequence of an unnatural way of life. I must get married.64

And although falling somewhat short in logic, this sequence of thoughts ends with a fairly definite conclusion. Since the goal seemed to be coming no closer, dissatisfaction and rumination escalated:

Deli’s irresolution is extremely irritating. Or is it hostility? (5 Dec)

Tomorrow, after a long enforced pause, I go again to Deli, or to the Rónays. Why must they draw this out so? – I very much like the girl and would be happy with her, but I do not want to force my love on anyone.65 (6 Dec)

Finally, however, his perseverance bore fruit, and the engagement took place before Christmas. The diary does not confine itself to the romantic moment of the avowal, and records for posterity the family ritual of the engagement day:

Today I engaged myself [sic!] to Deli Rónay. Heaven grant us that we will find mutual happiness. The avowal took place in the Museum of Applied Arts, in the English exhibition in front of a drawing of a yacht. Yes, oh Deli, how happy you have made me.

We went home by coach. Kinga, Alice. Then I went home to give the happy news. Mama was very moved, Papa had been to Count Endre Csekonics and came home in full dress. They came to the Rónays, introductions, festive mood, friendship made. After lunch, at 4 o’clock, the Rónays, the parents and Deli came to us. It was so congenial. Papa and Mama were very cordial, sincere, showing all kinds of things. […] Farewell, tea, whist party, and then to the Rónays, photographs, signatures, […], Papa, dinner, champagne, toasts, Kinga, joyful mood, Dalma, drafting the engagement card.66

The wedding took place on 4 April 1899. The groom’s witness was his youthful friend Count Károly Kornis, effectively representing the historic aristocracy, and raising the tone of the occasion.67 In his sketch book, we find only a portrait taken after the wedding, with the title Deli my lovely wife.68 She was hardly more than a girl, her hair done up in a bun. Not long after the wedding they left for North America, which solved Paikert’s employment problems for a while. The Minister of Agriculture, Ignác Darányi, appointed him as agricultural counsel to Washington (as Paikert had written “attaché” in his earlier plans). The ageing Paikert joined up the themes of career and marriage in his memoirs thus:

My dear wife Deli immediately declared me ready for travel over the ocean, there to share with me for at least three years the vicissitudes of unaccustomed climate and social conditions. This showed her intelligence, astuteness and wifely devotion. Few Hungarian genteel brides would have done the same.69

Thus even in reminiscence, Alajos Paikert felt that he had taken a long time but chosen well. He did not regret missing his mother’s tea parties with girls.

I did the right thing, because that way I could choose as my wife the one who was and is best suited to me, and who has devoted her entire life to me and our children, and if I have achieved anything in life, it is mainly thanks to her… she gave me the gift of three splendid children, brought them up admirably, and now shares with me everything that fate has dealt.70

This frank statement of the male-centred family model may be regarded as a social fact, even if the reminiscence obviously idealizes the image of the past. The marriage hardly features in subsequent volumes of the diary, and we do not even know whether his wife left any source on this subject. Our evaluation is therefore unfortunately but unavoidably asymmetric.

Consequences

The characteristics of Paikert’s marriage strategy may be viewed according to Weber’s criteria of “behavioural sociological status”, and the young man’s dilemmas—at least in the “end game”—can be placed in the context of the “marriage market” model. We will not, however, attempt to interpret events in the spirit of the “stable matching algorithm” of the Nobel prize-winning theory.71 Our sources, however informative and intimate they may be, unfortunately do not provide a sufficiently comparative perspective. We do not know the preference of the other side, the ladies, or the potential rivals.72 Secondly, the original model makes the implicit assumption that there is “no payment (dowry) between the actors,” which in our case would clearly not be realistic. One conclusion of the theory was considered self-evident in the male-dominated society of the turn of the century: the stable matching algorithm leads to a boy-optimum result.73 For the candidate brides who stayed in the “competition” longest, however, we would have to assess which parameters the self-appointed groom took into account.

Two empirical observations should be stated at the outset:

1. There was a substantial oversupply of females in the Concha, Lukács and Rónay families. We cannot say that this was the general demographic male/female ratio (although there was actually a female surplus in the 15–45 cohort at the turn of the century), but it was clearly the situation in the middle-class circles where Alajos Paikert made his selection in the “end game” (the Conchas with four girls, the Lukácses with seven girls and one boy, and the Rónays with three girls and one boy). And as well as playing a part in the number of potential heirs, it indicates a buyer’s market in the wider sense.

2. This is why Alajos Paikert stresses in his memoirs how “the market came to him”, how much in demand he was (which he of course tended to ascribe to his own qualities): “I could have chosen a daughter from any of several very fine families, because I was a young, educated, healthy, well brought-up, well turned-out, modern young man, I excelled in nearly all the manly sports, and I had a good general knowledge and a promising future.”74

Let us now look at Alajos Paikert’s “ranking matrix” in 1896–98:

* According to the 1892 national register, Lukács Antal, virilis [major taxpayer] of Bihar county (address: Bp. V., Bálvány u. 7.) paid direct taxes of 2547 forints. In 1895, Lukács’ estate in Újpalota (Bihar county) extended to 2149 cadastral holds (1 hold = 0.57 hectare), but he also owned land in Csömör (Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun county) and in several places in Csanád (his wife also owned land in one of these).75

** Károly Rónay, then still an “attorney” (address: Bp. II., Apor u. 3.) in 1892 was a virilis of Pest, paying tax of 604 forints. He was also part-owner, in 1895, of a farm of 1380 cadastral holds in Osgyán (Gömör and Kishont county), from where later he took his noble predicate.76

Had Alajos chosen a university career (he did reach the status of junior lecturer), Professor Győző Concha’s family would clearly have appreciated in value, even though the father was not of noble birth and the four girls’ dowry could not have been large (this was probably what caused the Paikert parents to oppose the match). To marry her, Paikert would have needed more money of his own (“I do not have enough money to satisfy her ambitions”).

The choice of Margit Lukács (“harmonious and healthy accord”) was expressly supported by the parents (and other relatives). A bank-director father-in-law would have opened up good prospects on the economic front, and he was of noble rank and had a substantial fortune. Here, however, the girl was choosy, demanding that her suitor be a courmacher, which must have meant more than the usual middle-class norms if Paikert regarded the idea of fulfilling her wishes as “humiliation”. He was clearly put off by a female character who placed strong demands, but it is also possible that Margit Lukács was employing a courting-game gambit to express distance, and difference in rank, from her suitor.77

It seems that Paikert, just as he was embarking on a government-service career, was most impressed by a man who was freshly—in 1898—elevated from attorney to notary public in the 1st District (!) of Budapest. Rónay had authority, learning and knowledge of languages (which must have been particularly important for the future American “attaché”), and had inherited wealth and rank through both the paternal and maternal lines. It cannot have been accidental that the Rónay daughters all made marriages befitting their rank. The memoirs particularly mention the excellent upbringing, which in these circles was almost natural. And since Deli was hardly 18 years old, she could be further “educated” as an obedient wife. Although the young man had not found the answer among the military officer–medical-profession circles managed by his mother, he did make a decision that his parents could support. This also contributed to the establishment of a stable marriage. The family dynamics of the choice was only confirmed by the raising of the two heads of the family to noble rank. The match proved to be a “harmonious accord” for more than just that moment, and persisted in the long term. The young couple could make their own lives, but within the bounds of social norms and parental expectations. For which, of course, they had complete freedom in America. Paikert must surely have looked through his old diary entries as he was writing his memoirs in old age. The diary’s serial account of protracted indecision may not have made for pleasant reading. The gallery of rival ladies did not find its way into the catalogue listing of the memoirs. He did, however, leave everything for the archives, so that someone in a later age, with time and inclination, could reconstruct his youthful decision-making mechanism.

Archival Sources

Budapest Főváros Levéltára (BFL) [Municipal Archives of Budapest]

VII.6.e. Kihirdetett végrendeletek [Announced Wills], 1896–1950.

Budapesti cím és lakjegyzék [Budapest Directory of Addresses], 1900. http://bfl.archivportal.hu/cgi-bin/lakas/lakas.pl. Accessed March 27, 2014.

Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Adattár, Személyi emlékanyag-gyűjtemény (MgM) [Archives of the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture, Personal Memory Collection].

1338. Paikert, Alajos. Életem (manuscript).

2012.3.1. Paikert, Alajos. Régi feljegyzés, Személyes, 1898. máj. 2. – dec. 18 [Old notes, Personal, 2 May – 18 December 1898] and notes marked “24. napló 1944. máj. 3. – 1945. máj. 8” [24th Diary, 3 May 1944 – 8 May 1945].

2012.8.1. Paikert, Alajos. Kis napló [Small diary] 1946.

2012.9.1. Paikert, Alajos. Kis napló [Small diary] 1947. jan. 1. – dec. 30.

2012.19.1. Paikert, Alajos. Vázlatkönyv [Sketch book].

2012. 20. 1. Paikert Alajos önéletrajza [Autobiography of Alajos Paikert] 1940. II. Életem és működésem [My Life and Work].

Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Kézirattár (OSZK Kt) [Manuscript Department of the National Széchényi Library]

Quart. Hung. 3264. Paikert Alajos naplói (1887–1943) [Diaries of Alajos Paikert]. Vols. 1–11.

Quart. Hung. 3265. Paikert Alajos vegyes feljegyzései és rajzai (1889–1894) [Miscellaneous Notes and Drawings by Alajos Paikert]. Vols. 1–4.

Quart. Hung. 3509. Paikert, Alajos. Naplórajzok (1889) [Diary Drawings].

Quart. Hung. 3605. Paikert Alajos naplói és egyéb feljegyzései (1886–1895) [Diaries and Other Notes by Alajos Paikert]. Vols. 1–4.

Oct. Hung. 1299. Paikert Alajos naplója és egyéb feljegyzései. (1909). [Diaries and Other Notes by Alajos Paikert]. Vols. 1–2.

Oct. Hung. 1445. Paikert Alajos évről évre szóló kis naplója [Small Diaries from Year to Year by Alajos Paikert]. (1911–1916) Vols. 1–2.

Fol. Hung. 2549. Paikert Alajos: Napló [Diary]. (March–October 1890).

OSZK gyászjelentés-gyűjtemény [OSZK Death Announcement Collection]

http://www.rakovszky.net/E1_LSG_ObitsIndex/GYJ-NevIndex.shtml. Accessed March 27, 2014.

Registers of Births and Deaths

https://familysearch.org/search/record/results#count. Accessed March 27, 2014.

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Translated by Alan Campbell