# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S324
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

324 On Matrimonial Matters.

Third Question: Is marriage between two persons, who, either both, or at least one of them, having previously been bound to another spouse, have carnally mingled with one another, permissible or not after the divorce or death of the wronged party?

1. By God's ordinance and according to His will, both should be put to death by the civil authority. But if this is not the case, nor life imprisonment either, then careful attention must be paid to the circumstances which have preceded, or which accompany, such marriages. Noteworthy remains the statement of Luther in the little book, written admittedly already in 1520, "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church," Leipzig edition, vol. XVII, p. 550: "One such obstinate folly — indeed, rather a wickedness — is the impediment of crime, impedimentum criminis, that is, an impediment to contracting a marriage, namely when someone takes in marriage her who was previously defiled by adultery, or who had ventured to do away with her former husband, in order that he might marry the surviving wife. I ask you, whence indeed comes this strict law of men against men, which God has never required? Do they not know, or do they not wish to know, that Bathsheba, a wife of Uriah, committed both crimes, that is, she was defiled with the

...[continuing Note 1 from the previous page] between those related by blood and step-siblings. (Among the latter, Spener names in particular the Wittenberg faculty as again in agreement, part IV, p. 710. Compare part II, p. 555. See, on the other hand, Joh. Gerhard, loc. cit., p. 1081.) From Leviticus 20:19, 20, 21, and likewise verse 17, 9ff. (Deuteronomy 27:22, 20, etc.) it is evident that a distinction must be made. For how could the death of the children begotten, or infertility in general, be inflicted as a punishment, if the married couple (according to God's ordinance through Moses, though not expressly stated in Scripture) were separated from one another immediately after their union? Compare "Der Lutheraner," loc. cit., p. 5f.

Note 2. The following are the canons which were established in the marriage laws sanctioned for the Holy Roman Empire regarding the forbidden degrees of kinship: 1) In linea recta ascendentium et descendentium prohibita sunt matrimonia in infinitum [In the direct line of ascendants and descendants, marriages are forbidden without limit]; 2) in lineis collateralibus, quoties alter consanguineorum unico duntaxat gradu a communi stipite abest [in the collateral lines, whenever either blood relation is separated from the common stock by only a single degree]; 3) quibus consanguineis inter se matrimonio jungi interdictum est, iisdem cum alterius conjuge jungi interdictum est [those blood relations forbidden to marry one another are likewise forbidden to marry each other's spouse]. The degrees, however, are counted according to civil law thus: Quot sunt generationes, tot sunt gradus [As many as the generations, so many are the degrees]. In canon law this rule holds only for the direct ascending or descending line; hence two further rules are needed here: 1) In linea collaterali aequali personae ab invicem tot gradibus distare dicuntur, quot gradibus a communi stipite distant [In the collateral line of equal degree, persons are said to be as many degrees apart from one another as they are from the common stock]; 2) in linea collaterali inaequali personae ab invicem tot gradibus distare dicuntur, quot gradibus personarum ea, quae remotissima est, a stipite distat [in the collateral line of unequal degree, persons are said to be as many degrees apart from one another as the most remote of them is from the common stock]. The retention of the latter rule was most vigorously defended, against Luther, by the jurists at Wittenberg. — Most of the forbidden degrees are summed up in the following four hexameters:

Nata, soror, neptis, matertera, fratris et uxor,

Et patrui conjux, mater, privigna, noverca,

Uxorisque soror, privigni nata, nurusque,

Atque soror patris conjungi lege vetantur.

[Daughter, sister, granddaughter, aunt, and a brother's wife; an uncle's wife, mother, stepdaughter, stepmother; a wife's sister, a stepson's daughter, and a daughter-in-law; and a father's sister — these are forbidden by law to be joined in marriage.] Still lacking, however, are these three: socrus, privignae filia, and soror ex altero tantum parente [a mother-in-law, a stepdaughter's daughter, and a sister by only one parent in common].