Authenticating Marriage: The Decree Tametsi in a Comparative Global Perspective

Abstract

The most common form of global history traces the growing power of the West and tries to explain it. There is a parallel story of the expansion of Christianity, in which the influence of the Council of Trent on the world as a whole deserves a more prominent place than it has received. But there is another kind of global history: the comparative sort. This article looks at the Council of Trent’s solution to the problem of clandestine marriages in a comparative perspective, showing how the problems it faced are paralleled in three other societies, but also that a unique mechanism for dealing with them was created, the Congregatio Concilii.