« Usage qui tendoit à donner atteinte au Mariage »: Marriage, Family and the épreuve du congrès in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century causes célèbres

Historians have long recognized the ways marital litigation provided opportunities to debate the meanings of marriage and family. In spite of this, annulment suits before church courts remain understudied, even though they explicitly confronted the meaning of marriage and the expectations of husbands and wives. Comparatively rare, annulment suits for impotence nevertheless attracted widespread public attention and featured prominently in early modern French legal literature, due in large part to the controversial medico-legal procedure often employed in such cases–the so-called épreuve du congrès. Analyzing factums, plaidoyers, commentaries, and other accounts of four 16 th and 17 th -century causes célèbres, I will examine how early modern jurists used these cases to interrogate behavioral norms, gender roles, and societal expectations not only of husbands and the wives who sought to leave them, but also parents, judges, medical experts, and even the Church itself.