CONFARREATIO. - Among the Romans this was the sacred nuptial rite par excellence (Pliny, Nat. hist., XVIII, 14), which originally must have consisted in the offering made by the two spouses of a cake of emmer, the oldest cereal cultivated by the Romans. Under the empire it remained a prerogative of the members of the great priestly colleges and took place not before the hearth, but in a public place, as a marriage from which were born children capable of exercising the highest functions of the State.

At the ceremony, besides ten witnesses, the pontifex maximus and the flamen dialis were present. If the latter was the contracting party, the union of the spouses was expressed not only by eating the same cake, but also by sitting on two seats covered with the skin of a sheep sacrificed to Jupiter Farreus (Servius, ad Aen., IV, 374; Gaius, Inst., I, 112). The confarreate marriage was dissolved by diffarreatio, whose ritual is not known, except that emmer was also used in it, and that (according to Plutarch, Quaest. rom., 59; and Festus, s. v. Diffarreatio), it was accompanied by strange and frightening ceremonies.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: P. Bonfante, Corso di diritto romano, 1, Rome 1925, p. 187 ff.; U. E. Paoli, Lar familiaris, Florence 1929, p. 255 ff.; N. Turchi, La religione di Roma antica, Bologna 1939, p. 25.

Alberto Galieri

@incollection{ec4_confarreatio, author = {Galieti, Alberto}, title = {Confarreatio}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {218}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/confarreatio} }

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