Wedding Wednesday: Medieval Marriages

Genealogist Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers runs a great website for genealogists. He suggests ‘Daily Blogging Prompts’ to help inspire bloggers to write genealogical posts.  In the spirit of one of his prompts, Wedding Wednesday, my post today contains images of English medieval weddings.  These images are all from the British Library’s collection of magnificent illuminated manuscripts. It can be safely assumed that these images are showing the weddings of high-born folk which were probably more for a political/family alliance than for love.

 Harley 326   f. 9   Marriage of king Alfour and princess Sybil Detail of a miniature of the marriage of Alfour, king of Sicily, and princess Sybil of Spain, from Romance of the Three Kings’ Sons (South England, (probably London), c.1475-c.1485), shelfmark Harley 326 f.9.

 

Lansdowne 451 f.230 Marriage A marriage ceremony from Pontifical; Tabula (England, 1st quarter of the 15th century), shelfmark Lansdowne 451 f.230.

 

 Royal 10 E IX  f.195 Marriage ceremony Marriage Ceremony from Decretales, with the Glossa ordinaria (England, 1st quarter of the 14th century) shelfmark Royal 10 E IX f.195.

 

Royal 14 C VII f.123v Frederick II and Isabella of England Marriage of Frederick II to Isabella of England from Historia Anglorum, Chronica majora, Part III; Continuation of Chronica maiora (St Albans, England, 1250-1259) shelfmark Royal 14 C VII f.123v.

 

Royal 14 C VII f.124v Marriage of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence Marriage of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence from Historia Anglorum, Chronica majora, Part III; Continuation of Chronica maiora (St Albans, England, 1250-1259) shelfmark Royal 14 C VII f.124v.

 

Sloane 3451 f.75v Drawing of a marriageA marriage ceremony from Speculum humanae salvationis (England, 1st quarter of the 15th century) shelfmark Sloane 3451 f.75v.

 

Note on the British Library’s copyright
Nearly a year ago, I first started to use on my blog digital images from the British Library’s catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.  As all the images were in copyright, I (quite rightly) had to request permission to use these images.  This permission the British Library very willingly and quickly granted me, as my blog is a non-profit hobby blog. However, just recently the British Library has marked all their images from their catalogue of illuminated manuscripts as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions.  This is fantastic news for both professional and amateur historians alike.  I have gained much pleasure from sharing my ‘finds’ from their catalogue with you.  The decision to remove their copyright will hopefully encourage more people to use some of the most exquisite images in existence, thereby giving us modern sophisticated(?) digital-age folk a fleeting glimpse into the medieval world.

You may also be interested in the following posts with images from the British Library’s Medieval Manuscript collections:
Images of Tudor people
Wild Animals and Early modern England
Images of the Devil in the Medieval/early-modern period
Images of medieval cats
Images of medieval cats – part 2
Images of medieval dogs
The Medieval Spinsters
The sinful hermit
The Snail and the Knight
Jousting snails

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