Concubinage

Concubinage refers to the state of a woman or youth in an ongoing, quasi-matrimonial relationship with a man of higher social status. Typically, the man has an official wife in addition to one or more concubines. Concubines have limited rights of support as against the man, and their offspring are publicly acknowledged as the man's children, albeit of lower status than children born by the official wife or wives.

Definition

The term concubine generally signifies ongoing, quasi-matrimonial relationships where the woman is of lower social status than the man or the official wife or wives. Some historical Asian and European rulers maintained concubines as well as wives. The origins of the word can be traced back to Latin, from the word concumbere which means "to lie with." In Roman times, Concubinus was the title of a young male who was chosen by his master as a bedmate. They were often referred to ironically in the literature of the time. Catullus assumes in the wedding poem 61.126 that the young manor lord has a concubinus who considers himself elevated above the other slaves.

Historically, concubinage was frequently voluntary, as it provided a measure of economic security for the woman involved. Involuntary, or servile, concubinage involves sexual slavery of one member of the relationship; typically the woman.

In modern usage, the term concubine often denotes the status of a quasi-wife who is not legally married to a man with whom she lives. The man (but not the woman) may or may not be in an ongoing legal marriage with another person. For example, in a California court case involving inheritance, Rosales v. Battle, a Mexican court had decided that the plaintiff had been the concubine of the deceased, on the grounds that they "had maintained a relationship publicly comparable to a marriage for about four or five years and had always behaved as though they were married, even though they had not contracted legal matrimony."

In France, Concubinage is the official term for cohabitation of heterosexual and (since 1998) homosexual couples. Some benefits of married couples or those bound by PACS (civil union) may then apply. In jurisdictions with common-law marriage, cohabiting partners may become common-law spouses after a certain length of time.

History

In the Middle Ages concubinage between two unmarried lay people enjoyed legal tolerance, in part based on traditions of second-class marriage, such as morganatic marriage, in which children were unable to inherit from their father, and ancient Roman and Germanic concubinage. A concubine differed from a prostitute in the exclusivity and long duration of her relationship with one man. In theory alliances involving a married person were considered not concubinage but adultery and were punishable as such. In practice, however, these relationships sometimes met tolerance almost equal to a relationship between two unmarried people.

The church had always favored marriage over concubinage and urged couples to marry, but the conviction that marriage was based on the consent of the parties had helped give concubinage between unmarried people legitimacy. Following impulses for moral reform, however, the Fifth Lateran Council in 1514 and the Council of Trent in 1563 declared all concubinage illegal, the latter singling out married men who kept concubines. Protestant territories similarly pursued and prosecuted unmarried couples.

Secular law took into account concubinage of both married and unmarried men, for example, listing concubines among the people—including their wives—whom men could punish physically and detailing what kinds of gifts concubines could receive. In fourteenth-century Italy some patrons and concubines spelled out their obligations in written contracts. In the late fourteenth century, however, a few cities, including Cremona and Würzburg, made concubinage a crime. In the fifteenth century many more, such as Avignon, Basel, and Bergamo, followed, with adulterous relationships receiving harsher punishments. At the same time there was a substantial increase in the legal disabilities of concubines and their children, who were considered illegitimate and had limited inheritance and other rights, especially in France.

Social Aspects

Although it became less common, people from all social classes continued to practice concubinage throughout the period because it met many needs. In a common pattern an elite man kept a low-status woman—often a servant or tenant—as his concubine, although a few higher-status women became the concubines of dukes, princes, or kings. Concubinage enabled male aristocrats in arranged marriages to find emotionally satisfying relationships outside of them. For aristocratic men who were not yet married, who were widowed, or whose families decided they should not marry, concubinage offered a semblance of family life without the threats to family alliance and inheritance strategies that legitimate children would have posed.

People also used concubinage in strategies of social advancement. Elite men demonstrated their wealth and power by dressing their concubines well, keeping them in separate households, and openly defying conventional morality. Lower-status women (and their families) were attracted by alliances with wealthy and powerful men—who, tradition dictated, would raise any children—and to the frequent final benefit of a dowry and a marriage to a man of her social class. Arranging marriages of former concubines and illegitimate children was a way to maintain clientage networks and to demonstrate control over society. Increasingly, however, people found aristocratic men's open flouting of convention troubling, particularly when the men kept married women as their concubines, shaming their husbands, or when the men's relationships took resources from their legitimate families.

Low-status people might also live together in concubinage, although often for different reasons and in a manner that more closely resembled legitimate marriage. Some men sought to avoid producing legitimate children; others lived with one woman until they could find a better one to marry. Usually, however, commoner couples lived in nonmarital unions because they could not legally marry each other. One or both might already be married, or they might be too closely related to marry. Others, lacking the financial resources necessary to marriage, lived together unmarried until they could accumulate them.

Concubines in Different Cultures

Africa

Recent Events

Sex slavery is a problem in some parts of Africa. The colonial powers abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, but in areas outside their jurisdiction, such as the Mahdist empire in Sudan, the practice continued to thrive. Nowadays, institutional slavery has been banned worldwide, but there are numerous reports of women sex slaves as sex slaves and concubines in areas without an effective government control.

In Ghana, Togo, and Benin, a form of religious prostitution known as trokosi or ritual servitude keeps thousands of girls and women in traditional shrines against their will, forcing them to act as "wives of the gods," the shrine priests performing the sexual function in place of the gods. This can be compared with the devadasi system in India.

Hebrew

Pilegesh is a Hebrew term for a concubine with similar social and legal standing to a recognized wife, often for the purpose of producing offspring.

Pilegesh is from the Greek pallax/pallakis, "mistress" or "lover-girl," or possibly the Hebrew palga isha, "half a wife."

Legal characteristics

A pilegesh was recognized among the ancient Hebrews and enjoyed the same rights in the house as the legitimate wife. Since it was regarded as the highest blessing to have many children, while the greatest curse was childlessness, legitimate wives often gave their maids to their husbands to atone, at least in part, for their own barrenness, as in the cases of Sarah and Hagar, Leah and Zilpah, Rachel and Bilhah. The concubine commanded the same respect and inviolability as the wife, and it was regarded as the deepest dishonor for the man to whom she belonged if hands were laid upon her.

According to the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh. 21a), the difference between a pilegesh and a full wife was that the latter received a ketubah and her marriage was preceded by a formal betrothal ("kiddushin"), which was not the case with the former. According to R. Judah, however, the concubine also received a ketubah, but without the aliment pertaining to it.

Any offspring created as a result of a union between a pilegesh and a man were on equal legal footing with children of the man and his wife.

Biblical examples

Several biblical figures had concubines when they were not able to create natural children with their wives. The most famous example of this was with Abraham and Sarah. Sarah, feeling guilty about her inability to give Abraham children, gave her maidservant Hagar to Abraham. Their union created Ishmael.

Other biblical figures such as Gideon, David, and Solomon had concubines in addition to many childbearing wives. The Book of Kings mentions that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines; the wives were royal princesses with dowries, while concubines had no dowries.

History

Certain Jewish thinkers, such as Rambam (Maimonides), have declared that the act of acquiring a concubine is prohibited under Jewish law; he has noted that concubines are strictly reserved for kings and that a commoner may not have a concubine or engage in any type of sexual relations outside of a marriage. Others, like the Ramban (Nahmanides), Shmuel ben Uri, and Yaakov Emden, strongly object to this claim.

Some suggest that Rambam's published view was meant to shape a public policy in response to the prohibition of mutah relationships by Muslims, which are in many ways similar to pilegesh relationships, just as the ban on polygamy by Rabbeinu Gershom was made only subsequently to the Christian prohibition of it that effectively changed the law of the land.

Recent Events

In contemporary Israeli Hebrew, the word "pilegesh" is often used as the equivalent of English "mistress" - i.e. the female partner in extra-marital relations even when these relations have no legal recognition. There are attempts to popularize pilegesh relationships as permitted forms of premarital non-marital and extra-marital relationships.

China

Past Events

In the Ch'in Dynasty (221 B.C.E. to 24 C.E.), there was a whole subset of Confucianist rules for concubines, such as grooming rules. Such rules included concubines having to leave the bed after a sexual act even if the wife was not present, and concubines had to engage in sexual activities with their men at least every five days. Many times, concubines would engage in incestuous activities amongst the men in their families, and some of these concubine relationships were very sadistic.

Recent Events

Recent incidents involve many top politicians being exposed funding concubines with government money. It is suggested that concubines have become a staple of power and status in the Chinese government, and that the most powerful politicians have multiple concubines, with the most mistresses being the mark of the elite. The increase in mistresses has occurred over the past two decades, and many wives have grown suspicious of their husband's activities. When a politician has a concubine, he is automatically suspected of embezzelment because of the salaries of government officials. New laws have given wives more power when a husband is caught with a mistress and a divorce ensues, but it is assumed that this will not deter the practice of keeping concubines. Women in Chinese culture are often looked at as commodities, and so men with power want to flaunt their power through different concubines.

Japan

World War Two

It is estimated that from the 1930s to 1945 between 100,000 and 200,000 women, mostly from Japan's colony of Chosen Korea, were forced into sexual slavery and concubinage by the Japanese military. Women, some as young as twelve when their ordeal began, endured years of coercion, violence, abduction, rape and wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese. Successive post-war Japanese governments refused to acknowledge what had taken place, a situation compounded by the indifference to the former comfort women's plight by the wartime Allies. A coalition of Korean women's groups, church organisations and Japanese feminists have combined to publicise the sufferings of these, now elderly, survivors and have endeavoured to correct a historical wrong.

During World War II the Japanese Imperial Forces Ministries, the Foreign Office, the secret police, the military and naval police and local 'recruiters' ran a highly organised prostitution network to supply the military brothels with Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino women. It should be added that this trafficking also included Dutch women from PoW camps, Eurasian and Indonesian females. It is important to note, too, that this trafficking was carried out by official Imperial Edict and was an established policy known and approved by such as convicted Class A war criminal and General Vice-Minister of War, Yashijiro Umezu.

Famous Concubines

• Jane Shore, mistress of King Edward IV of England.
• Yang Yuhan, one of the most famous Chinese concubines.
• Micaela Villegas, a famous Peruvian mistress.
• Agnes, concubine and later wife to Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, archbishop of Cologne.
• Neil Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Kosher sex without marriage By MATTHEW WAGNER
• ISO: Kosher Concubine Adam Dickter
• http://www.pilegesh.org

Rosales v. Battle (2003) 113 Cal.App.4th 1178 (California court decision involving status of concubine. Link requires free registration.)

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Concubinage  ^history
• Pilegesh  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Concubinage"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.