La fede nell'impotentia ex maleficio e i suoi riflessi negli usi nuziali tra il medioevo e l'età moderna

The custom of letting a few days pass, usually three (trinoctium castitatis), before the consummation of the marriage is found in many human communities over the centuries. The motivations at the origin of this practice could be different, but in Europe, between the Middle Ages and the modern age, the reference to the Old Testament story of Tobias seems to prevail and therefore to the possibility of overcoming the snares of the devil with this penitential choice which repeated, precisely, that of Tobias. There was opposition, in particular, in this way, to the impotentia ex maleficio, that is, to the action – whose possibility was affirmed by canonists, theologians, and even the popes – of individuals with extraordinary powers or, more often, followers of the devil, to make the sexuality of the spouses impossible: in such cases, marriage was not indissoluble. Since it was believed that the spell originated in certain gestures – usually a knot – made at the time of the exchange of wedding consents, this fear, which in certain territories and in certain periods was a real obsession, also led to other choices: to secret marriages and even nocturnal when possible, to contract marriage with the copula that follows the official betrothal, in the form of presumed marriage, or, where the Tridentine matrimonial decree was implemented, to contract marriage having premarital sexual relations behind it, which made the curse ineffective. The belief in the impotentia ex maleficio and the belief in the effectiveness of these means of countering it affected the times and methods of the formation of the bond and therefore had an undeniable, profound juridical value.