From its inception, the “clerical take-over” of marriage, as it has come to be described, was destined for a troubled reception. The church did not invent marriage; both the institution, as well as its attendant customs and rituals, predate Christianity, and its goals were very much at odds with those of the church. The laity saw marriage as a property matter negotiated between families. Theologians and canonists saw marriage as an analogy for Christ's relationship with the church, and, as such, their focus was on mutual consent, monogamy, and permanence of the union. With such disparate perceptions, there was bound to be conflict. Thus, it is no surprise that the process of sacramentalizing marriage after 1215 proceeded slowly and unevenly. While the same law was meant to apply universally across Europe, it was implemented and administered in distinctly regional ways. Even when the church managed successfully to assert control over marriage, its supervision was rarely in line with expectations sketched out by canonists. Often, the church courts had to work alongside or at variance with local authorities and communities whose vision of marriage explicitly contradicted that of the church.

This diversity in approaches to marriage is the subject of Wolfgang Müller's Marriage Litigation in the Western Church, 1215–1517. Examining records from ecclesiastical jurisdictions across Europe (Xanten, Basel, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ely, Rochester, Paris, Cambrai, Lucca, Venice, Girona, Castile), Müller's goal is to sketch variations in marriage litigation not only along a north-side divide but also taking into account regional peculiarities. Canonists expected bishops would adjudicate marriage litigation in which one spouse contested the validity of the union. However, northern evidence reveals instead that marital irregularities were more often discovered in the penitential forum (rather than the judicial) and addressed entirely by the lower courts (that is, at the level of parishes, deaneries, or chapters), not by the bishop. Moreover, while the south mostly adhered to canon law's stringent expectations for evidence, courts in the north were more than willing to look to hearsay and decisory oaths.

Regional findings are equally fascinating. The records of the Great Archdeaconry of Xanten reveal a pattern of women litigants suing to claim men as their husbands knowing all along that they would lose because they did not have the necessary evidence. Yet, winning was not their goal: rather, they used the man's testimony in the lost suit to put forward new litigation for defloration or child support. While much has been made of the predominance of women as plaintiffs in litigation to enforce a marriage, Müller notes that this was not the case in the Italian courts. There, men predominated because the suits were really about trying to secure the payment of a dowry. Both Italian and Catalan statutes issued by municipal authorities directly challenged ecclesiastical directives when it came to marriage: where the church stressed only the bride and groom need consent to marry, in both regions, marrying without parental consent was a criminal offence.

The Iberian evidence was the most striking. While the Siete Partidas acknowledged the existence of sacramental marriage, it existed alongside more traditional forms of cohabitation, including barragania (a temporary arrangement with a set date for termination), amancebamiento (similar to barragania but for those who were ineligible to wed, such as priests or those who were already married), and domestic service, which often included sexual relationships in the written agreements. Much like the Italians and the Catalans, the Iberians managed to continue these older traditions of marriage because they sidestepped the church courts entirely, choosing instead to have agreements ratified by the local notary.

Examining how the church implemented its sacramental vision of marriage in Europe over a five-hundred-year period is no small undertaking! Writing a book of this scope requires mastering multiple historiographies in a wide variety of languages, as well as analyzing and submitting to statistical analysis findings from a diversity of primary source materials. Few scholars would be capable of carrying out such an ambitious project. Müller meets with a good deal of success. His appendices, in which he breaks down marriage disputes by type, provide manuscript references to where they can be found and include a brief notation about their sentencing, which will be welcomed by all historians of marriage. Moreover, while the book's observations are not necessarily new to those who teach courses on marriage or women in the Middle Ages, it is useful to have these patterns clearly articulated in one place.

Nonetheless, in reality, one cannot be an expert on marriage in all of these regions at once, and Müller's unfamiliarity undermines his overall findings. For example, when it comes to England, Müller's discovery that most marriage-related cases spring from the penitential forum is not in fact new. What is new is his wording: what he calls “penitential,” others have referred to simply as “disciplinary.” Müller observes that the south was far more concerned with marital property than were the English. However, in England, all property disputes, even those arising from broken marriages (and there were many), belong to the king's courts, and Müller was not looking at those records. As Müller acknowledges in the conclusion to his book, medieval men and women were astute litigants eager to engage in forum shopping. If that is the case, how can anyone hope to gain the whole picture with records drawn from only one jurisdiction?

On a less significant note, there is a distinct lack of meticulousness when it comes to the citations. Some names are simply mangled: John Hajnal has become “John Hainal,” Lindsay Bryant is “Brian Lindsay.” Others are presented too familiarly: Joseph Goering is “Joe Goering,” P. J. P. Goldberg is “Jeremy Goldberg.” This inattention to detail also bleeds over into the text with multiple references to the English Channel as “the British Channel” (120 and 130).

Despite the difficulties of carrying out such a large-scale project, Müller needs to be commended for his recognition of the importance of comparative history and understanding that even something as foundational as marriage can differ enormously from region to region, despite the universalizing influence of the church.