To the body of scholarly literature on medieval marriage, increasingly well developed in North American and west European scholarship, this impressive study, devoted to developments in part of early fifteenth-century Piast Poland, represents a welcome contribution. Magdalena Biniaś-Szkopek’s volume, lightly reworked from its Polish original, focuses upon volumes in the Acta Causarum in the Poznań consistory in the region of Greater Poland dating from 1404 to 1428. From this material she has identified 708 matrimonial cases, upon which she builds her study. Her book provides a reliable and up-to-date overview of Polish marital issues that will create opportunities for comparative research.

Following a brief Introduction, which effectively surveys both western and Polish historiography, the volume contains eight chapters devoted to a range of aspects related to the institution of marriage, followed by a ninth chapter that examines the treatment of children by this ecclesiastical court. The first chapter treats broadly the laws and traditions that developed in Europe over time. The general picture of Latin Christendom and the similarities or differences on the Polish scene are skillfully integrated and reflect the author’s command of the scholarship. Chapter 2 traces the development of the structure and function of medieval consistory courts in Poland, particularly in the Poznań diocese. It includes a detailed description of the creation of the Official, the officer whose authority included adjudication in all judicial matters on behalf of the bishop. The next chapter examines the kinds of litigation brought before the consistory court and what they reveal in particular about lower social strata, who were the most frequent appellants to come before the court. Biniaś-Szkopek is especially good at teasing out information about the identity of women. She points out that this enables one to identify the problems spouses faced and how the Officials resolved them.

These chapters effectively prepare the ground for the close analyses that come in the next three chapters. Chapter 4 deals with ambiguities in defining what a marriage was and what, in cases of conflict, the consistory court could determine about whether vows, bans, and ceremonies had been properly performed. Helpful tables provide visual evidence of the patterns Biniaś-Szkopek identifies. The focus shifts in the next chapter to cases brought by women who sought financial restitution for having in some way been dishonored (stuprum) or having lost their virginity (defloratio). This leads more concretely to cases charging rape. All of this is treated by the author in careful summaries of details found in the types of problems reported. Chapter 6 (the longest in the book at sixty pages) reveals the range of impediments brought before the court, arguing in one way or another that a marriage was invalid. These include—but are not limited to—bigamy (168 cases among the 708), impotence (thirty-eight of 708), kinship in a prohibited degree (twenty-one of 708), and coercion (twenty-five of 708). These pages reveal, among other things, the attitude of the church at this point regarding cases that deviated from the ideal norm. But they also reveal the pain and frustration of both women and men when conflict could not be contained within the marriage union.

Marital violence is the subject of Ch. 7. It reveals that violence was both accepted and condoned as an instrument of “disciplining and protecting the morality of wives,” but, as Biniaś-Szkopek emphasizes, this insight reinforces the need for a “more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics and the manifestation of violence in historical contexts” (211). The brief Ch. 8 focuses on the issues of adultery and fornication brought before the court. These were generally not enough to justify annulment (divortium), and the courts’ decisions usually counseled apology, repentance, and reconciliation. Only in extreme situations did they allow separation, though remarriage was forbidden until one of the partners had died. Finally, in a chapter devoted to children and the court, which lies a bit outside the main focus of the book, Biniaś-Szkopek concludes that both parents and the courts considered the needs of children only in passing.

One minor criticism: Biniaś-Szkopek sometimes cites Polish publications that have been translated into English in their original Polish or cites western language publications in their Polish translations. This is not helpful for non-Polish readers. Anglophone and other western readers will find much in this volume that can be compared and contrasted with the current state of medieval marriage scholarship in western Europe. It provides the opportunity for enhanced comparative treatments, and its insights should be incorporated into such future efforts.