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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2000-12 > 0975991247


From: Amanda Jones< >
Subject: Re: Which Agatha? == and her sister, Anna?
Date: 5 Dec 2000 04:40:47 GMT


> > If anyone is interested, I can post an explanation of the origins and
> > sources of the consanguinity rules in the Church. Anyone care?
> >
> > Amanda
>
> This comes up perennially here. Todd put up a version of a summary I
> posted a while back at:

I think this article contains a misunderstanding:

""Roman civil law [which was the code adopted by the early Church] had
forbidden marriages within 'four degrees' and had computed degrees by
counting from one prospective spouse up to the common ancestor and then
down to the other partner.... Marriages of first cousins, those between
people related within four degrees, were forbidden...""

Roman civil law was adopted, mostly, but from a specific format, the
Justinian Codes. These were a late codification of Roman Law by the Emp.
Justinian in the 7th century AD, in Constantinople. It wasn't adopted
fully by the Canon Law, as the Code allowed divorce, for example. Roman
Law wasn't the only source of Canon Law either, an recent article by
Weinrot (sp?) says that Gratian's Decretum, in its first edition,
contained almost no Roman law. Roman Law became more influential after the
setting up of the school in Bologna, in the late 12th century.

Further, in my recollection, the Roman Code didn't prohibit marriage in
the 4th degree, it said instead that this was the inheritance limitation.
Therefore an estate could be inherited up to the 4th degree, but marriage
was not prohibited within this degree.

Amanda

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