Welsh Journals

not been subjected to folklore analysis before. Here, there is a combination of folklore, history, literature and politics of a small nation looking for a source of inspiration. However it seems that Wales is not ready yet to call upon his services-several individuals have donned his mantle in recent years but none has so far succeeded. TECWYN VAUGHAN JONES Cardiff Marriage, FAMILY AND Law IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE: COLLECTED STUDIES. By M. M. Sheehan. Edited by J. K. Farge. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1996. Pp. xxxi, 330. £ 30.00. This volume commemorates the work of Michael Sheehan, whose career was cut short by a cycling accident in 1992. Prefaced by a helpful introduction by J. T. Rosenthal, it brings together sixteen articles arranged in the order in which they appeared between 1961 and 1992. Consistency of theme renders Sheehan's essays particularly well-adapted to such a collection. Their main focus is the evolution of the canon law regulating marriage and testament, with, as a recurring motif, the conflicts that arose in both these areas between the views of Church and temporal authorities. Two early papers explore the tension in England between the canon law's insistence that married women had the right to make wills (on the grounds that they, like their husbands, had the duty to give alms for the salvation of their souls) and what Sheehan described as the 'brutal simplicity' of the common law that no such right existed because during coverture a wife held no property in her own right. Here the Church met with defeat, but in an area of even greater importance its view prevailed. In the essays that form the core of his work, Sheehan described in detail the development of the doctrine of Christian marriage, and particularly of the important rule that a valid marriage depended on the free consent of the couple. He analysed the medieval Church's success in making its civilized doctrine, fully developed during the second half of the twelfth century, generally accepted and understood throughout Western Europe, and the consequent defeat, in theory at least, of temporal interests inclined to see marriage in terms of the dictates of feudal lordship. None the less, in reading the most impressive of these essays-his classic study of the regulation of marriage by the consistory court of the bishopric of Ely between 1374 and 1382-it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, in practical terms, the canonical theory of marriage could hardly have been better calculated to create