About the Author

Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian (c. 675 – 741). When Leo was a young man, his parents had brought him from his native Syria to Constantinople, the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire. The emperor had given young Leo a job, but grown worried about his ambition. He had sent Leo off on an impossible military mission, but to everyone’s amazement, Leo had prevailed and returned alive. Leo soon maneuvered his way to the throne himself. His reign combined good and bad. It was in his time that a vast Muslim fleet attacked Constantinople, and Leo repelled it using a new tool for naval warfare: an unquenchable burning chemical we call Greek Fire. But in other ways, Leo was inspired by Islam, for example in his support for iconoclasm, the fear that there is something wrong with holy images of Christ and the saints. In between winning wars and stirring religious controversies, Leo III also reformed the law. Here is a passage from his new code, the Ecloga, that describes the correct way to set up a marriage contract.

What to Expect in your 8th Century Marriage

The marriage of Christians, man and woman, who have reached years of discretion, that is for a man at fifteen and for a woman at thirteen years of age, both being desirous and having obtained the consent of their parents, shall be contracted either by deed or by giving their word.

A written marriage contract shall be based upon a written agreement providing the wife’s marriage portion; and it shall be made before three credible witnesses according to the new decrees auspiciously prescribed by us. The man on his part agreeing by it continually to protect an preserve undiminished the wife’s marriage portion, and also such additions as he may naturally make thereto in augmentation thereof; and it shall be recorded in the agreement made on that in case there are no children, one-fourth part thereof shall be secured in settlement.

If the wife happens to predecease the husband and there are no children of the marriage, the husband shall receive only one-fourth part of the wife’s portion for himself, and the remainder thereof shall be given to the beneficiaries named in the wife’s will or, if she be intestate, to the next of kin. If the husband predeceases the wife, and there are no children of the marriage, then all the wife’s portion shall revert to her, and so much of her husband’s estate as shall be equal to a fourth part of his portion shall also inure to her as her own, and the remainder of his estate shall revert either to his beneficiaries or, if he be intestate, to his next of kin.

If the husband predecease the wife and there are children of the marriage, the wife being their mother, she shall control her marriage portion and all her husband’s property as becomes the head of the family and household.

(Adapted from the E. Freshfield translation)