Divorce is a subject that has provided endless material for drama and comedy writers through the ages, from Euripides to Shakespeare to today’s New York Times bestseller list. When Kenneth Hodges, a Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, discovered a medieval German manuscript laying out the rules for a “divorce by combat”, social media helped the sensational story quickly go viral. With the option of divorce by combat, divorce in medieval times could result in more than heartbreak. How common were these legally sanctioned marital duels, and how were they conducted?
Divorce by combat appears to have been a form of trial by combat. Trial by combat was part of Germanic law that dealt with accusations between two parties where there were no witnesses or a confession. Whoever won the duel was deemed to be right. It was essentially a legally-sanctioned duel.
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These rules for a divorce by combat come from Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch, which was written in 1467. The book serves as an instruction manual for how duels should be fought. The book deals with many different types of duels fought with various weapons. However, the section that caught Professor Hodges and the internet’s eye was the section on duels between men and women.
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