Unfit for Marriage: Impotent Spouses on Trial in the Basque Region of Spain, 1650-1750

This book is about men-and women-accused by their spouses of being impotent in an era and place when such an indictment could dissolve unconsummated marriages. In itself, each impotence trial seems to be a trivial example of recognizable sexual and marital problems. There are the tales of a pathetic nobleman who could not "get it up," a wife wanting to escape a marriage she never agreed to, and a young man who accused himself of impotence in order to desert his pregnant wife and flee on a ship t…