"Peopled by characters from across the social spectrum of the city of Verona and its contado, Emlyn Eisenach moves between stories about specific individuals - serving girls seeking honorable marriage through the unlikely route of concubinage, peasant men in search of independence from their fathers, and aristocratic wives seeking revenge against adulterous husbands - and broader analyses of social, economic, and geographical patterns of behavior. She shows how Veronese at all social levels attempted to better their familial and personal fortunes by creatively molding wedding rituals to fit their particular circumstances, or engaging in the significant but until now little understood practices of concubinage, clandestine marriage, or informal marriage dissolution." "Eisenach also evaluates the first half-century of religious reforms in Verona as the leading pre-Tridentine bishop Gian Matteo Giberti and his successors challenged common practices and understandings in sermons, treatises, confessionals, and court. Emphasizing the limitations of what the religious authorities could impose on the people, she explores how learned and popular notions of marriage, family, and gender shaped each other as they were put into action in the strategies of individual Veronese."--BOOK JACKET.