Marriage records in secular justice of Cordoba in the first half of the 19th century

Abstract

Violence against women in conjugal life is not a current phenomenon and has been analyzed by historiography to a large extent on the basis of ecclesiastical documentary reservoirs that allow us to approach, in a mediated way, the torment of these women. In this sense, during the 18th century and most of the 19th century, the diocesan curia, through the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, received women's requests for divorce. However, in the Cordoba jurisdiction and for the same period, there are files with complaints by women against their husbands for ill-treatment but which were presented in secular courts. This paper explores the actions of secular justice agents in matrimonial cases, a matter understood as “exclusive” to the Church between the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century in Cordoba.