조선시대 혼인법의 주혼자제도에 관한 연구 ―조선왕조실록을 중심으로―

Abstract

This paper studies ‘the marriage officiator system recorded in The Annals of Chosun Dynasty’. According to the marriage law in Chosun Dynasty, agreement on a marriage was not made between the partners in a marriage, but by the officiator of the marriage and the role of a marriage officiator was very critical. In accordance with the Grand Ming Code, a marriage officiator was decided in order of grandparents, parents, one’s father’s older․younger brothers and their wives, brother․sister and close relatives. Article of the annals says the rules in the law books were kept in general but there were exceptions as well. The officiator takes responsibility for the agreement on marriage and overall matters of wedding ceremony, which means it is his/her responsibility to have his/her children at the marriageable age get married, send blue and red silks to the bride’s house and participate in the actual wedding ceremony. One thing to note is this system is that the officiator should not violate the marriage regulations stated in the Grand Ming Code. That is, if a officiator —in this case, a mother — makes her daughter get married during the mourning period of her husband’s death or if an officiator takes someone’s daughter without an agreement and forces her to get married to his/her son or if an officiator forces his/her daughter who wants to maintain her integrity since her husband’s death to get married, the officiator was punished. This rule was extensively applied to the marriage of the royal family even though there was a special code only for them. However, there were no regulations to punish an officiator who behaved against the marriage ethics/courtesy. If an officiator — in this case, a brother — makes his sister get married to an old man or if an officiator — in this case, a maternal great grandfather has his granddaughter by concubine marry an enemy general or if an officiator behaves disrespectfully, there was no official way to punish the officiator. But the Confucian values and idea of marriage of the king and the noble were seen in the cases when the officiator who didn’t follow the marriage ethics/courtesy was punished strictly.