El embarazo previo al matrimonio. Notas histórico-jurídicas a tres escrituras lucenses de finales del siglo XVIII

Abstract

The article examines three notarized documents from the Provincial Historical Archive in Lugo; these date from the end of the 18 t h century and deal with the voluntary declaration by a young spinster who alleged that she had been left pregnant by her boyfriend, due to her trusting in his promise of future marriage. The young lady, finding herself pregnant, threw herself on the mercy of the court in order to avoid any sanction beyond costs of her recourse to law and the relevant notarized statement. Thanks to the intervention of the judicial authority in the penal process undertaken, she acquired full freedom of movement; this was only restricted by the express prohibition of coming into direct contact with her unborn child's father -neither in public nor in private- and promising to present her child after the birth, alleging that this was the first time she had indulged in «deficient» conduct, no doubt to avoid being class as a «public woman. The same judicial treatment is applied in another case of supposed pre-marital pregnancy, where the young spinster had sexual relations with two men, father and son, and there was a doubt as to which of them had left her pregnant; the child she was expecting would have the condition of «spurious». This situation did not prevent the pregnant girl leaving her own dwelling and being received freely in any home; she was not however allowed contact with either or her sexual partners, which could be related to trying to avoid one of the more common sexual crimes, such as amancebamiento (Spanish term for stable and lasting cohabitation), the penalty for which almost always fell on the woman both in the form of financial sanctions and also exile, the physical separation of members of an illegitimate cohabitation in order to avoid the continuance of the crime; the pregnant woman who made the voluntary admission was condemned to pay the costs of the intervention of the judicial authority and the expenses of the notary involved.