ABSTRACT
There were steady efforts by lawmakers to provide institutional support for marriage and to recognize marriage as the means by which the next generation should come into being and be trained to accept its responsibilities. This chapter considers four societies that have existed over the course of western history. These include pre-Christian classical Rome, the early medieval West of the sixth through eleventh centuries, the High Middle Ages of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, and the Anglican high church and theological culture of the early modern period. Indeed, the procreative dimension of marriage was, in each of these societies, the central organizing principle of legal analysis and social life. The morals of Petronius and Nero are likely what most people would think of should they be asked to focus on pre-Christian Roman sexual behaviors and expectations. Virginity had existed as a religiously motivated phenomenon in the ancient world prior to the rise of Christianity.
