# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S270
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

270 Whether Someone May Marry the Sister of His Deceased Wife?

marriage with that same person, whether he be still living or be dead and have left her a widow: so also does the law forbidding one to take the wife's sister wholly exclude marriage with her, whether the wife be still living or dead. For what reason, indeed, could one give for the other prohibitions being general — that is, that they apply not merely to cases where the persons still living, through whom one came into the blood-kinship or kinship by marriage, are alive, but also to those where the intervening persons are no longer among the living — while, on the other hand, the prohibition against taking the wife's sister is a special one and covers only the case where the wife is still living?

4. from the general rule, Lev. 18:6: "none shall come near to his nearest of kin" (literally: to the flesh of his flesh) [to uncover their nakedness]. Now man and wife indeed become One Flesh through marriage, Gen. 2:24, Matt. 19:5. Therefore my wife's sister becomes the flesh of my flesh, and accordingly I must abstain from marriage with her. Brother and sister, and accordingly also two sisters, are One Flesh, Gen. 37:27. The man, then, who through the marriage union has become One Flesh with the one sister, cannot marry the other sister, who was One Flesh with her through nearest blood-kinship and kinship of the flesh; —

5. from the inference from the greater to the lesser. If the more distant degree is forbidden, then much more must the closer be held forbidden. But by divine law it is forbidden to marry the daughter of one's deceased wife's sister, as will be shown elsewhere. Accordingly it is much more forbidden to take the sister of one's deceased wife. The daughter of one's deceased wife's sister is related to me in the second degree of the collateral line, but the sister of my deceased wife in the first degree of the direct line. If, then, I am forbidden to marry one who is related to me in the more distant degree, much more one who is more closely related to me. Likewise one may not take the wife of one's paternal uncle, nor the daughter of one's stepson or stepdaughter. Accordingly it will be far less permitted to take the wife's sister, since the wife of the paternal uncle is related in the second degree of the collateral line, the daughter of the stepson in the second degree of the direct line, but the sister of the wife in the first degree of the collateral line; —

6. from the absurdity of the consequence. Ambrose reminds us that one should avoid those marriages from which a confusion of kinship-designations arises. Now one cannot deny that from marriage with two sisters in succession a confusion of degrees and kinship-designations arises, for one and the same man would be both the father of the children and the husband of their aunt, and thus stand in the uncle's place; one and the same