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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-02 > 0823646367


From: Chris Bennett <>
Subject: Re[2]: Adultery
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 14:39:27 PST


Subject: Re: Adultery
Author:
Date: 2/6/96 12:54 PM

Can I poke my nose out of my den of hibernation and toss in two cents
worth? Most readers of this newsgroup who have royal lines have them
through a handful of gateway ancestors whose connection to families of
royal and noble descent in the old sod is well proven. I'm not sure we
can take current statistical estimates of female adultery and apply them
to the medieval period anyway. Maybe if a medieval version of Masters
and Johnson existed we'd have some data to analyze. But we don't. My
own hunch is that the long-suffering wife putting up with a husband's
philandering was quite common among the families we study. In my case a
relative has had our common gateway ancestor and offspring accepted by
the Royal Bastards. What else can we do? Common sense tells us that
when we're dealing with a very early pedigree that consists of nothing
but strings of names and few or no dates we shouldn't accept the pedigree
as literally true. Since few source materials for the study of medieval
female adultery exist, what is ultimately the basis for your position?
Consider this story--Fulk Nerra had his first wife burned at the stake
for infidelity....
Jeff Chipman


I completely agree the rate is likely to vary over time, place, class and
circumstance -- this is the thought behind the second, conservative, model
I presented (assuming an adultery rate of 1% instead of 10%). Of course,
the adultery rate may well have been higher than 10% at certain times (the
Vikings? The troubadour era?).

You can turn the problem around and ask yourself: what does the adultery
rate need to have been, over the entire span of my genealogy, in order for
me to have X% confidence (whatever threshold you feel comfortable with)
that its overall accuracy is not affected by this issue? Here is a little
spreadsheet I worked up which shows this relationship (1E-02 = 1 * 10
raised to the power -2 = 1% adultery rate). It covers up to 200
generations, which is sufficient to cover recorded history (4
generations/century * 50 centuries). I think the figures speak for
themselves - the rate needs to be low, and needs to sustained low. A
couple of generations of sexual freedom and the confidence in your
genealogy can go to hell very fast.

Confidence thresholds
Male 99 95 90 80 70 60
Gens

2 5.01E-03 2.53E-02 5.13E-02 1.06E-01 1.63E-01 2.25E-01
5 2.01E-03 1.02E-02 2.09E-02 4.36E-02 6.89E-02 9.71E-02
10 1.00E-03 5.12E-03 1.05E-02 2.21E-02 3.50E-02 4.98E-02
25 4.02E-04 2.05E-03 4.21E-03 8.89E-03 1.42E-02 2.02E-02
50 2.01E-04 1.03E-03 2.10E-03 4.45E-03 7.11E-03 1.02E-02
100 1.00E-04 5.13E-04 1.05E-03 2.23E-03 3.56E-03 5.10E-03
200 5.03E-05 2.56E-04 5.27E-04 1.12E-03 1.78E-03 2.55E-03

CHris

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