Marriage in Pre-Industrial Warsaw in the Light of Demographic Studies

Abstract

The study describes the marriages contracted in the Holy Cross parish, one of the largest parishes in pre-industrial Warsaw. On the basis of the eighteenth-century parish registers of marriages, baptism and burials, taxation documents and population censuses, an attempt is made to establish the proportion of full celibaterians, the social and territorial origin of the newlyweds, their age, the duration of marriage and widowhood, the time when the marriages were contracted and their frequency in the largest urban agglomeration of pre industrial Poland. The data are examined on the basis of reconstituted marriages in two subperiods: the late Saxon (1740-1769) and the Enlightenment (1770-1799).