After the Divorce

Until the introduction of civil marriage (in Austria in 1938), marriages could be entered into and ended only in accordance with the regulations of the recognized religious communities. Married Catholics were bound by a sacramental marriage bond that could be dissolved only by the death of the spouse or the annulment of the marriage by the church. Nevertheless, research in recent years has made it clear that married Catholics did not necessarily accept an unhappy marriage as an inevitable fate. They did get divorced. However, unlike Protestants, they were not allowed to remarry during the lifetime of their spouse, which is why this form of divorce was legally referred to as a divorce from bed and board. Over the past few years, research has focussed intensively on marital conflicts and divorce records. What remains largely unknown are the lives women and men lead after divorce, especially if they were of Catholic faith. After the Divorce uses the example of the Archduchy of Austria below the Enns today`s Vienna and Lower Austria to study the reality of the lives of men and women whose marriages were divorced between 1750 and 1850. Where did they live after the divorce in their own home, at their parents` or children`s, at their employer`s? Did they change their profession, or did they continue in the profession they already had during the marriage? Did they enter into new partnerships? How was the couple`s relationship after the divorce? Did they comply with the court verdict or the divorce settlement, or did one of them take legal action to settle issues such as maintenance, the division of property or custody of children? How and to whom did divorced women and men leave their assets when they died? To answer these research questions, we selected approximately 50 Catholic couples whose marriage ended in divorce between 1750 and 1850. For these women and men, we will research historical sources such as marriage contracts, court records, wills or the files of probate proceedings in Austrian archives and analyse them in relation to each other. A particular concern is to place the divorced women and men in their social context. Factors such as age, gender, social background and place of residence, as well as any children from previous relationships or from the divorced marriage are taken into account. Even though divorce was not a mass phenomenon in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was an option available to people of all social backgrounds. The study of the lives of divorced women and men in this period, when many of the foundations of today`s marriage and family law were established, is therefore of particular importance, from the perspective of the history of marriage, the family and the gender order.