Forbidden Marriages

With us, just as with savages and barbarians, there is an inner circle of relatives with whom we may not mate, an outer circle beyond which we may not go. Thus, in modern civilized countries, brothers do not marry sisters, mothers do not marry sons. There are jurisdictions in which the marriage of first cousins is forbidden. As to the outer circle, it sometimes engirdles the whole of humanity. We are, however, familiar with narrower limits, since we have in the United States laws forbidding white people to marry Negroes and sometimes members of other races as well. Besides, lines are drawn by custom and religion. Catholics seldom marry Protestants, pious Jews practically never marry Gentiles. There was a time when orthodox Quakers did not allow their children to woo Hicksites. Even in America, there are important class distinctions. A millionaire’s daughter may elope with the chauffeur, but her father and his friends are not likely to be pleased about it. The son of a first family is not expected to marry a girl from the wrong side of the gasworks.

We may define endogamy as the requirement of marrying within a certain group. The laws and customs which forbid “mixed marriages” are endogamous. Exogamy is the rule prohibiting the marriage of those who are considered too closely related. The crime forbidden by exogamy we call incest. In most civilized countries, there are comparatively few degrees of relationship which are considered incestuous. In primitive communities, very distant cousins and persons whose blood ties are imaginary may be forbidden to marry.

The most general rule of incest forbids a father to marry his daughter, a mother to marry her son. It seems to be “universally prevalent in mankind,” according to Westermarck. Rivers says, “We know of no people who allow marriage between mother and son.” He thinks that matrimony between father and daughter is sometimes legal. The authorities do not deny that there are cases of mother-son as well as father-daughter cohabitation. In fact, they exist in Europe and the United States. The debatable matter is whether or not they are ever recognized and approved by custom.

We have a number of accounts, from various parts of the American continents, of Indian tribes in which our rules of incest do not hold. Thus, a traveler in Ecuador tells us that Pioje widows often take their sons as second husbands, and that widowers take their daughters. Some of the Tinne Indians marry sisters and daughters. And similar cases are reported from Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. If these are incestuous, at least incest is treated as a very mild offense in the communities where they occur. And we know that there was a time when the priests of Persia advocated marriage between near relatives as a religious duty. In short, the comparative study of exogamy confirms the general rule that there is absolutely no moral principle upon which all mankind agrees. There are, indeed, some fairly well defined ethical principles; and it may be true that the human repugnance toward intimate relations with a father or mother, with sons or with daughters, which is widespread though not universal, arose originally out of an animal instinct.

Marriage between brother and sister is not a great deal commoner. It has perhaps occurred most commonly in the case of monarchs. The Pharaohs and the Ptolemies of Egypt seem to have believed that they could find women sufficiently exalted to be their queens only in the daughters of their own fathers and mothers. The chieftains of Hawaii had similar ideas. Among the Incas of Peru, the Singhalese, the Persians, and a few other peoples, the kings were privileged to marry full sisters.

In some of these countries, persons of lower rank are also reported to have contracted such matrimonial alliances. Much more frequent are weddings between half-brothers and half-sisters. In our own century, a king of Siam has had two queens, both his half-sisters. Usually the relationship in such marriages is through the fathers, perhaps because paternity is more difficult to prove than maternity. In ancient Athens, it was legally permissible to marry a half-sister. According to some authorities, she might not be the child of the same mother. There are several stories in the Bible about unions between half-brother and half-sister. Abraham says of Sarah, “And yet she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.”

The propriety of marriage between cousins, between uncle and niece, and between aunt and nephew, varies greatly from one country to another and sometimes within the community according to religious belief and social rank. The Jewish code permits an uncle to marry his niece, but treats a union between aunt and nephew as incestuous. There is a tribe in the Caucasus where a mother’s sister, but not a father’s sister, may be married. Marriage with a first cousin is by some peoples considered highly meritorious. By others it is strictly forbidden. It is against the law in a few European countries and in some of our states, but is usually possible with some little extra trouble. The objection to it seems to be derived chiefly from the old law of the Christian church, although it may be eugenically unsound in certain instances. The prohibition against marrying a nephew or a niece is commoner than that against the marriage of cousins german. There does not seem to be any civilized country where remoter cousins are forbidden to marry, except a few influenced by the Eastern church.

In the simpler communities, exogamy often has reference to a large class, such as a phratry or sub-tribe or clan. Whether the members of these subdivisions are what we should call close relatives or not, marriage between them is forbidden. Some of the Iroquois Indians had a complicated system of clans, of which half were in one group and half in another. It used to be forbidden to marry any person within the group to which one belonged; that is to say, about half the tribe was ineligible. More recently, exogamy has been confined to the clan alone, or to about one-eighth of the tribe. Other Indians have had similar laws, varying greatly in detail.

There are regions in various parts of the world where known relatives, no matter of what degree, are unable to marry legally. The old penal law of China provided that anybody marrying a person bearing the same name as himself should be severely beaten, and the marriage declared invalid. Elsewhere, cousins of seven degrees or less are held to be within the incest circle. Clan exogamy is found in most of the Australian tribes, with complications which we might otherwise believe to be beyond the capacity of the natives; and violations have until recent times been usually punishable with death.

In the early days of Rome, marriages within the sixth degree were treated as incestuous. The degrees were computed by counting back to the common ancestor and then down again. Thus, second cousins were related in the sixth degree; parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, grandparent, parent, and the cousin. In the Eastern or Orthodox branch of the Christian church, second cousins were forbidden to marry, only the seventh degree being considered sufficiently removed. In the Western or Roman Catholic church, the prohibition extended at one time to sixth cousins. It no longer exists beyond the degree of third cousins, and dispensations for those who are more closely related are common.

Adoption and the spiritual relationship existing between godfather and godchild (sometimes also between close relatives of the two) have been at various times and in many places barriers to marriage. In Great Britain, it was not made possible until 1907 for a man to wed his deceased wife’s sister. Such a wedding is also forbidden by the Catholic canon law.

However, the levirate (from the Latin levir, brother-in-law), which is a custom according to which a dead man’s brother must inevitably under certain circumstances marry his widow, has been very widespread. Among the Hindus and some others, the obligation arises if the dead man has left no children behind. The Bible has two laws on the subject. In Leviticus: “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” In Deuteronomy: “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, leaving no child, the dead man’s wife shall not marry a stranger; her husband’s brother shall go unto her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the firstborn that she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name shall not disappear in Israel.”

It is sometimes said that the law of Leviticus sets up a general rule, to which an exception is made in Deuteronomy. More likely, there was an actual change in custom. Later still, the rabbis frowned upon levirate marriage even in cases of childless death. The exposure to shame provided for brothers-in-law who fail to marry as directed in Deuteronomy has become a merely formal ceremony among orthodox Jews. The widow loosens her brother-in-law’s shoe (this and his foot must be clean, according to rabbinic law) and spits on the ground before him. The levirate often encourages polygamy, for the duty of marrying a dead brother’s sister may exist even when one already has a wife or two.

Among various peoples, marriage between cousins has been especially stimulated. Sometimes it is possible to get a cousin as a wife without charge, while others must be paid for. Or, as among the desert Bedouin, the first cousin has an option to purchase at a reduced rate. In certain Hindu communities, a man is supposed to marry his sister’s daughter, even if she happens to be older than himself.

The caste system of India greatly limits the circle from which a wife or a husband may be chosen. There are sub-castes, and under certain circumstances bride and groom may have to belong to the same one. Sometimes hypergamy, which has already been explained, makes the matter still more complicated.

In general, caste or class as a matter of endogamy is of importance not only in India. In parts of Africa, the blacksmiths never intermarry with the rest of the population, taking only smiths’ daughters as their wives. Free men have often been forbidden to marry slaves, though not necessarily to cohabit with them. Medieval knights were not accustomed to make the daughters of serfs their wedded wives. Modern noblemen marry untitled women only for especially good reasons. Monarchs are expected to enter into full matrimony with persons of royal or princely rank.

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