If a man was permanently impotent, it "raised doubts about whether such a person should or could benefit from the privileges and prerogatives that men enjoyed in a patriarchal society."
He failed.
Though it sounds like a common nightmare, this story actually happened — indeed, these épreuve du congrès (or trials by congress) popped up all over France between 1426 to 1712. Although France had prohibited divorce under most circumstances since the early 12th century, by the mid-15th century ecclesiastical authorities found documents which asserted that impotence could be grounds for annulling a marriage. The underlying logic was that if a man was permanently unable to perform his most basic masculine responsibility and father children, a woman had a right to dissolve the marriage so she could fulfill her feminine responsibility of being a mother. Since medical technology was nowhere near advanced enough to perform the types of in-depth examinations that are possible today, a woman who accused her man of impotence could request a trial by congress. The one consistent theme of these trials is that the man had to prove that he was not impotent.
Beyond that, there was a lot of variety.
"There wasn't an exact formula each trial followed because it was based on provincial rule at the time in the church court," explained Jacob Gaines, a fourth-year medical student who worked with urology professor Dr. Robert Moldwin on a paper regarding the impotence trials. That said, there was a "general structure" in which testimony was gathered from both the husband and wife, lawyers were consulted, and a physical examination of some kind would be undertaken. It did not always have to involve sexual intercourse in front of witnesses — sometimes physicians, surgeons and midwives would try to get involved in a more sensitive way — but, if the marriage had deteriorated severely, things could get ugly. If alternatives like a waiting period failed to reconcile the couple or solve any supposed impotence problem, a trial by congress would be called.
"They had to perform the act of copulation in front of a judge and members of a jury," Gaines explained as he painted a picture for Salon. "In that case, they would go behind either a thin cloth or into another room adjacent to where the judge and the jury were sitting and attempt to have sex. And whether or not that was successful or not, they'd give them an hour or two. Then they would have them go and do a physical exam of the wife, as well as the man and bedsheets, to see if they had had sex or not."
If there was any silver lining to these humiliating trials, it is that they gave women a modicum of agency during an era when patriarchal structures severely curtailed their independence. The very nature of the trial itself put more pressure on the man than on the woman. Additionally, as H-France Editor-in-Chief and Reed College History Professor Michael P. Breen wrote to Salon, they were held in a forum which already tended to be more sympathetic to women's concerns.
"Church courts (which heard these cases) were widely considered to be more favorable venues for women and more receptive to their claims on a variety of matters than secular courts," Breen explained. "I don't know if I would say that women were uniquely empowered, but there certainly was an anxiety that they were — that they could use these accusations to undermine their husbands' authority and reputation. So the fear was there, but did it correspond with reality? That's harder to say."
"Impotent men were also described as frauds and imposters — as pretending to be something they were not. They were described as not being real men, with all the implications that followed."
A big catch was that wealthy women were usually the ones who could afford successful trials; the trials themselves were free, but decent attorneys were expensive, and the losers bore the full brunt of the legal costs. Noble women made up a disproportionate chunk of those who were granted trials by congress, and wealthier women had a better chance of winning than those who lacked either competent counsel or connections. Nevertheless, recent historians have learned that women in this era were in a limited way empowered to assert themselves if they wanted out of a marriage and thought an impotence accusation would achieve that result. In addition to annulment cases, a woman could file a separation suit that left the union intact but gave women some measure of control over their property and living arrangements. All of this was possible because medieval French society linked masculinity inextricably with virility and procreation. If a man could not get an erection, he was at risk of far more than just being humiliated.
"Occasional or temporary impotence could be embarrassing or humiliating but could be explained away by a range of factors ranging from magic/witchcraft to personal incompatibility (i.e. one could be impotent with a particular woman but not all women) to the unruliness of our bodies," Breen explained, noting that Montaigne remarked on this in his essay "On Imagination."
If a man was permanently impotent, however, it "raised doubts about whether such a person should or could benefit from the privileges and prerogatives that men enjoyed in a patriarchal society. As [historian] Julie Hardwick and others have shown, the status men enjoyed as fathers, husbands, heads of household, etc. were contingent on the performance of normative masculinity that was simultaneously assertive and disciplined." A husband who was unable to have sex with his wife was at risk of being cuckolded and running an inharmonious household, threatening the very fabric of the social order.
"Impotent men were also described as frauds and imposters — as pretending to be something they were not," Breen told Salon. "They were described as not being real men, with all the implications that followed."
"I think the publicity that the trial gained, and the fact that de Langey went on to father these children, just further proved what a farce these trials when trying to hold them in a legal and technical way as they did."
Naturally, the men themselves usually protested that there was another explanation for their public impotence — and sometimes those explanations were rooted in medical fact. A man in 1712 said that he became ill after eating an eel pie and developed impotence for that reason. Many others pointed out the painfully obvious: They could not get erect because they were nervous about being forced to have sex — often with a woman they no longer liked — in front of judging strangers. Yet on other occasions their desperation shone through, as with a man who failed his trial by congress in 1603 and insisted his wife had cast an evil spell on him to nullify his virility.
The trial of the Marquis de Langey in 1659 both epitomized and transformed the institution. While most trials by congress occurred in ecclesiastical courts, de Langey was a Protestant and as such the trial was held in the High Court of Paris. de Langey was also a celebrity by the standards of the time; women regarded him as a sex icon, and he was described by most of his peers as handsome and charming. While many trials by congress had become the subject of popular gossip, that of the Marquis de Langey swept France by storm. Bets were placed and, just as Marquis de Langey was adored, Madame de Langey was despised.
The tables turned after the trial, naturally, with Madame de Langey publicly reveling in her vindication and the disgraced de Langey not only divorced but legally banned from ever getting married again. Defying that edict, de Langey remarried anyway — and then, in a development that shocked France, went on to have seven children.
"I think the publicity that the trial gained, and the fact that de Langey went on to father these children, just further proved what a farce these trials when trying to hold them in a legal and technical way as they did," Gaines observed. Although trials by congress still occurred through the 18th century, men facing divorce accusations now had a famous name they could cite to cast doubt on the credibility of the entire proceedings.
"He clearly was not impotent," Gaines concluded.
