Engagement and Divorce Cases Before the Unitarian Consistory in Seventeenth-Century Transylvania. Frameworks in Church Law and the Doctrine of Marriage

The historical research of matrimony and divorce is a popular area among both foreign and domestic researchers, who have written entire libraries on these issues. I add new data regarding early modern Unitarians that have not been included in the literature so far. This chapter is largely based on manuscript protocol. I discuss the Unitarian ecclesiastical courts and the litigation process. I then proceed to provide a typology of cases, Unitarian teaching on marriage, betrothal and its dissolution, separation, and divorce. In the final section I analyse the main causes of divorce: adultery, unfaithful abandonment, physical incapacity, cheating, violence, and its obstacles. In this way I hope to show how matrimonial cases were handled in practice by the Unitarian Church in Transylvania.