# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S252
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

252 Extracts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.

On Secret Betrothals.

Johann Gerhard writes:

“Although secret betrothals are not approved by the law itself, they are nevertheless said to remain valid if both parties acknowledge them, or if they are proved in a lawful manner, especially if the promises were made under oath. This, however, must be understood with a twofold qualification: first, if no public betrothal either preceded or followed them; second, if those who entered into the agreement are not under the authority of another, but are legally independent (sui juris). For the situation is different with children who are still under parental authority; betrothals into which they have entered without the consent of their parents are not valid, even if they acknowledge them and claim to have confirmed them under oath. Now, if a public and a secret betrothal coincide, the public one is to be preferred to the secret one, whether the public one occurred earlier or later than the secret one. For the public one accords with the institution of marriage and with the laws of propriety, whereas the secret one conflicts with them; therefore the former is rightly preferred to the latter, and it makes no difference whether the public betrothal preceded or followed it, because what was defective at the outset does not become legally valid with the passage of time. Therefore, when it is said that secret betrothals remain valid, this is to be understood as applying when both contracting parties renewed their consent before honorable men, and when in this way the secret betrothal becomes a public one; an example of this is presented in Boas, Ruth 3:12; 4:9.”

“Furthermore, since it has been shown above that children who are still under parental authority cannot enter into marriage without their parents’ consent and counsel, Luther also calls those betrothals secret which are entered into by persons who are not legally independent without the consent of those under whose authority they stand, even if a hundred witnesses were present. In this sense and in this respect, therefore, betrothals performed by children in the presence and with the consent of their parents and of those who stand in the place of parents are called public, while those contracted without the counsel and knowledge of the parents are called secret. And such betrothals are to be declared invalid even if they were performed before several witnesses, as Luther declares with great earnestness and as may easily be seen from the reasons we have given above for the necessity of parental consent. Properly and strictly speaking, those are indeed called”