Could widow marry deceased husband's brother?

[stanmapstone]

Hi

In answer to your query about whether the Catholic Church would allow marriage within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity, it was possible to get a dispensation.   I believe (subject to correction) it could only be officially granted by the Pope, although the actual work of sorting it out would be done through first a local Bishop and then the Roman Curia.

You can read all about Affinity (in Canon Law) at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01178a.htm from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Stan

[stanmapstone]

But plenty of people did marry their deceased spouse's siblings, I've got plenty of examples in my research. The fact that something is forbidden/illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen!

The only thing is such marriages would be void, that is the marriage has never come into real existence because of a fundamental legal defect. Any children would, in law, be illegitimate. This may not be of much importance for the ordinary family, but could be for purposes of inheritance in more affluent families.

Stan

[Jeuel]

But the families in my and my husband's trees were far from affluent.  I think that's the main reason they remarried within the family anyway, to keep any money in the same family.

[mcmcara]

If you had the money to pay the fine the Catholic Church woud sell you a dispensation. Is this not how Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon in the first place.


mcmcara

[halhawk]

Re Henry VIII and Papal dispensations

1.  Granted 26 Dec 1503, to allow the marriage of the then Prince Henry with Katherine of Aragon, his brother's widow.  The dispensation included wording to the effect of Katherine's first marriage having 'perhaps' been consummated.  There was considerable debate as to whether the Pope could issue this dispensation if the marriage had been consummated, although since other dispensations had been previously granted despite consummation it was decided that he could.  (Katherine maintained that it was never consummated.)

Henry used this debate as part of his argument to gain the annulment of the marriage (eventually granted by Archbishop Cranmer in 1533) in order to marry Anne Boleyn.

2.  Henry also gained a dispensation for his marriage to Anne Boleyn, because his affair with her sister Mary put them within the forbidden degrees of affinity. This was granted in 1528, to allow for the marriage when Henry should be 'free to marry'.  In 1536 he insisted that Archbishop Cranmer annul his marriage to Anne, and this seems to have been done on the grounds that the dispensation was illegal due to a 1534 Act of Parliament.

[scunscan]

Thanks, Toni. I thought I had read that somewhere. But this just mentions the Church of England. Would the Catholic Church have had the same prohibitions?

It was normal among Irish Catholics for a dead mans brother to marry the widow in the 19th century. There were some examples of it in my own lineage. The main reason was that the strenuous life on  farms without  machinery made it very hard for a widow to feed a family in a time when starvation was never far away. Buying and selling cattle was a tough game that few or any women could succeed at.  The rules in the church were either far more liberal or not adhered to in the preceeding centuries especially in the 17th century.

[stanmapstone]

These marriages were illegal, under Civil Law, from 1835 until the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Acts, 1907 and 1921, that is the Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act, 1907 and the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act, 1921.
However many couples ignored the law, and many clergy overlooked it. In fact there were petitions from clergymen who implored that a Bill might be passed, since many of their parishioners had already married their sisters-in-law, under the belief that this was the best thing for the children, and of course it was the best thing for the children. However as late as 1949 a Marriage Act was passed that, among other provisions, prohibited marriage between a man and his divorced wife's sister.

Stan