The aim of this thesis is to understand the legal status of unmarried couples, over a period of time extending for nearly five centuries. The canon law of marriage relegated cohabitation to a permanent state of sin, and in the sixteenth century, the council of Trent prescribed severe penalties to punish cohabitation. The fathers of the council enacted rules governing the celebration of marriage. Secular authority then gradually arrogated jurisdiction in matrimonial matters by means of laws and jurisprudence. The line between marriage and cohabitation was now strictly drawn. Although the old law did not consider cohabitation as a crime, it castigated children born outside of wedlock by subjecting them to an inferior status. During the Revolution, the secularization of marriage did not call into question the traditional form of the marital union; however, legislators granted rights to recognized natural children. In 1804, the question of cohabitation was totally absent from the civil Code. Marriage represented the foundation of the family, and illegitimate children were once again the victims of the rule of lawful union. By the mid-nineteenth century, the rigor of the Code toward the natural family was mitigated by a current of progressive ideas. Then, in the early twentieth century, official recognition of cohabitation was brought about by a series of legally-binding legislative measures, and the path to legal pluralism in family matters found an opening.
