Human societies have passed customs and traditions that are reprehensible and beyond logic and common sense. One of these is the tradition of the “first night” that prevailed in Europe in the Middle Ages.
In that feudal period, the nobles and lords in several countries reserved for themselves the right to defloration or what is known as the right of the “first night”.
This “strange” tradition continued in Europe for several centuries, and at that time it was almost not subject to concrete protests, because the peasants were completely subject to the power of the feudal lords.
What is the “first night” tradition?
The defloration in the Middle Ages on the wedding night was the right of the feudal lords, the landlords, if the bride and groom belonged to the peasant class.
As a general rule, such a disgusting and shameful act could have been avoided only by paying a kind of “compensation”. The size and form of this tax imposed by the feudal “employer” of married peasants varied depending on the country as well as the “temperament” of the lords in that historical period.
In later historical times, some representatives of the authorities and the clergy, basing themselves on private views, confronted this custom and made efforts to eradicate it.
For example, Ferdinand II, King of Spain in 1486, decreed that noble lords were forbidden to exploit the daughters and sons of peasants against their will “with or without pay,” and it also applied to “sleeping” their brides on the wedding night.
In France no one restrained the aristocracy of this country, the right of the first night was openly used without any reservations, even the Catholic clergy, who often owned large plots of land, were involved in this abominable act, never thinking of salvation their souls by avoiding it.
The worst thing is that some nobles took advantage of this strange habit and turned it into a commercial activity, as they offered others to use their right to deflower girls in exchange for sums of money.
In order to avoid paying tax:
Despite the humiliation and insult in this custom, most of the inhabitants of Western European countries of that era were completely satisfied with it. One of the reasons that prompted the representatives of the lower classes to place their brides at the mercy of the feudal lords on the “first night” was the unwillingness to pay the tax in case they abstained, in the form of a sum of money or the purchase of a pig’s loin or a bottle of wine.
Peasants in the feudal Middle Ages lived in extreme poverty, and they lived on subsistence, and a historical document issued at the end of the fourteenth century mentions, for example, that the peasant, in the event of marrying a girl belonging to another noble, is obligated to pay a ransom to his master, while a fine can be avoided If the peasant drove his bride to “buy sugar,” it meant that she would “lie under the master!”
Specialization in “Defloration”:
Moreover, this habit became widespread, due to the inexperience of some men in those “dark” ages in Europe and their fear of the “first night”, as well as the clergy’s fear and unwillingness for such “work”! All of this provided a suitable ground for the continuation of this tradition by “experts” from the feudal nobility.
This tradition turned into law on one occasion, when the French city council of Amiens adopted in 1507 a new law: “The husband is not entitled to share the bed with his wife on their wedding night without the permission of his master, before his master himself kindly shares the bed with his subordinate wife! “.
In explaining such reprehensible behavior, Alberto Gómez, a scholar of the Middle Ages says that “it is all about the superstitions that existed at that time among the common people. In ancient times, when shamanic sects flourished in Europe, the execution of defloration was placed exclusively on The shoulders of “specialists.” It was believed that only a sorcerer could strip a girl of her “chastity” without “side effects” such as the wrath of spirits and gods.
In those times, the feudal nobility deflowered hundreds of girls a year. And if one of the elders was not able to carry out this “mission” properly, one of his sons or younger relatives took over it!
Myth about the “first man”:
In addition to all this, there was a pagan belief in many European countries that the first man was very important in the life of any woman, and it was delusional that the “first man” leaves the woman with his energy, and affects all her future children, who will inherit his qualities, regardless of whether Was this man their biological father or not.