By the 1820s, diocesan borders had been redrawn – and the granting of dispensations once again adhered to regular procedures. One piece of Maria Theresian and Josephine heritage, namely centralisation, continued to be a salient characteristic of nineteenth-century dispensation practice in Austria: all dispensation requests had to be handled by the diocesan consistories.1 Their number successively rose, and around 1900, Paul Baumgarten ascertained regarding the Roman Curia that “the workload of this authority has increased massively over the past fifty years”.2 The placetum regium, introduced in 1782, as well as the Exequatur of the dispensation briefs by the Gubernium that was necessary prior to a marriage remained part of the mandatory bureaucratic procedures into the 1850s.3 Save for a few exceptions, the Diocese of Brixen treated this state role as a formality. But in the Diocese of Trento, the situation looked different. Though the massive conflicts of the eighteenth century’s final decades did not continue, new problems emerged. The fact that the diocesan consistories were once again turning to Rome concerning requests for dispensations in the close degrees no longer triggered active opposition by the state. However, the Imperial-Royal Provisional General Commissariat in Innsbruck had notified the regional courts in Vorarlberg – “for information and future observance” – that “His Majesty” had decreed “that any and all influence by the Roman curial authorities that runs counter to the supreme provincial governments’ laws and ordinances in His Majesty’s own states is always and everywhere to be steadfastly suppressed”.4 The procedure once more primarily followed church norms and logics.5 Battles of authority between Church and state regarding marital law focused above all on interconfessional marriages, separations of table and bed and – during the final third of the nineteenth century – the “emergency civil marriage” (Notzivilehe).
The source material on dispensation requests to be found in diocesan archives differs substantially from diocese to diocese. In terms of density and organisation, it made sense to place the material of the Diocese of Brixen at the centre of further investigation. It is there that the available information concerning dispensation policies, dispensation practice and actions at the various ecclesiastical and state levels as well as on the part of the couples who requested dispensations is densest and most abundant. And because local and supra-local communication and mediation prior to the requests’ arrival at the diocesan consistory and the Gubernium are also documented there, this material affords insights into various stages of the long bureaucratic processes as well as the logics that characterised dispensation practice. This chapter seeks to investigate knowledge about relatedness and how kin marriages were perceived in village contexts. It also explores several conspicuous aspects that affected the process of dispensation-granting. Occasional attention will also be given to the neighbouring dioceses of Chur, Salzburg and Trento in order to show repertoires of action and the range of modes in which kinship was administrated.6
1 Dispensation Records and Dioceses
In Brixen, the dispensation records pertaining to marriage projects in close degrees of consanguinity and affinity preserved in the diocesan archive range from 1831 to 1910. This diocese stands out not only for the central position occupied by clergy and Church in dispensation matters throughout the nineteenth century7 but also on account of how strict it handled dispensation requests. This affected the extent and content of the material contained in the records, with elaborate portrayals of couples’ situations being produced. The comparatively numerous requests that were already rejected at the diocesan level were frequently followed by renewed attempts, often made years later. Nearly 20 per cent of the requests submitted between 1831 and 1864 were by couples whose requests had previously been rejected. The density of information contained in these resubmitted and even more urgently argued writings is all the greater, entailing a particularly rich body of documentation. Moreover, a major strong point of these holdings is that drafts of the correspondence sent by the diocese are included in the corresponding dispensation records up into the 1880s.8
Papal dispensations are organised by year and numbered consecutively, in the order in which they arrived at the consistory, on the respective fascicules’ cover pages. However, it frequently happened that a request could not be fully processed within the year of its submission. In such cases, the associated correspondence was transferred to the following or a later year and assigned with a new number, for which reason ascertaining the annual number of submitted requests – though it may appear easy at first glance – can in fact be tricky. Last but not least, we can repeatedly find records on interconfessional marriages or dispensations made necessary by adultery. “Faszikel a” with the Roman dispensations is usually joined by two further partial fascicules, namely “b geheime Dispensen”, Secret Dispensations, and “c Verschiedenes über Ehe”, Miscellany Concerning Marriage. Both the secret dispensations and the colourfully mixed, marriage-related “miscellany” also contain documents on kin marriage.
Obtaining a dispensation in the more distant third or fourth degree rarely entailed any difficulties, but there were isolated occasions where Brixen’s consistory reprimanded deans or imposed conditions on supplicants. Such gestures were probably intended to make examples of people while also emphasising that dispensations in the more distant degrees were not to be treated as mere formal acts. As a rule, the authority to dispense in the third and fourth degrees lay with the bishops. In the Diocese of Brixen, however, this authority passed to the deans in the mid-nineteenth century. The instructions sent to the deanery offices in November 1854 explicitly stated that this authority was contingent upon the presence of canonical reasons and that dispensations lacking “proper legal justification” were “invalid”. Dispensation was only permitted to “take place following examination of the couple’s knowledge of existing marriage impediments”. The closer the degree of kinship, the stronger the reasons needed to be. As a suggestion intended to help deans determine how to proceed, the consistory noted “that the dispenser [should] dispense in the fourth degree not blindly but also not fearfully”.9 A few years prior, at the 1849 Episcopal Conference of Austria in Vienna, the Austrian bishops expressed themselves to the effect “in Central Europe, the third and fourth degrees of kinship can no longer be enforced as marriage impediments” – for across “nearly the entire empire”, it had “for many long years been customary for forbearance to be granted without difficulties”.10 The Bishop of Brixen had not attended this meeting in person.11
The archived dispensation records in the Archdiocese of Salzburg are organised in an entirely different way than those in Brixen. Salzburg’s holdings are grouped not by year, but in part by specific degrees of consanguinity and affinity. Some of the holdings are also grouped together in a fascicule labelled “Ehedispensen”, marriage dispensations, that contains dispensations of various types from multiple decades: dispensations pertaining to affinity based on premarital sexual contact (ex copula illicita) or spiritual kinship (cognationis spiritualis), but also various papal dispensations. The records in Salzburg contain both overlaps and gaps, therefore it is difficult to get a good overview. Doing so for the dioceses of Chur12 and Trento13 is even more difficult. At the diocesan archive in Chur, it was possible to examine dispensation records from the period between 1827 and 1857. The majority of these records consist of individual letters with attachments such as baptismal certificates, certificates of unmarried status, family trees and certificates of domicile rather than complete documentation of cases’ progress from beginning to end. Dispensations from an extremely broad range of categories are collected within the individual years: dispensations of the banns of marriage, dispensations in order to marry during “forbidden times”, dispensations due to adultery, dispensations due to wide age gaps between the prospective spouses and – not insignificantly – dispensations for kin marriages in distant and close degrees.
Insights into dispensation practice are also afforded by registers, of which Chur possesses several from the nineteenth century, listing various types of dispensations. Quite numerous in this diocese were dispensations for interconfessional marriages (disparitas cultus or mixtae religionis). In the attached pieces of correspondence, interconfessionality was perceived as a problem much more than marriage between close kin. One also sees a significantly more complex situation than in Brixen and Salzburg due to the diverse modes of obtaining or granting a dispensation that remained possible into the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth-century central registers, which not only contain dispensations from Chur but also from the dioceses of Basel, Constance, Lausanne, Sitten and the Swiss areas of the dioceses of Como and Milan, it turns out that requests from the Swiss dioceses were sent to Rome en masse at more or less regular intervals of one or two months – “Romam missae fuerunt”. The resulting dispensation briefs returned in a similar manner: “advenerunt ab urbe”.14 Up to its elimination in 1873, the nunciature in Lucerne occupied an important position in the forwarding process as well as otherwise.15 For here, all roads did not lead to Rome.16 In August 1822 and again in June 1823, for example, Papal Nuncio Ignazio Nasalli had been granted authority to dispense 20 marriages each in the second and third as well as second and fourth unequal degrees of consanguinity and affinity, but not in the second degree itself.17 In the individual registers, papal dispensations are followed by numerous dispensations granted by the nunciature. However, there were repeated conflicts over authority with individual dioceses.18
The broader range of authorities to which one could turn probably came thanks not least to the mixed confessional situation. The Catholic Church was more liberal in its delegation of authority wherever it perceived its flock to be in ‘danger’. Particularly relevant in this context were the authorities delegated to the bishop, which also included contingent-like allowances that – much like those of legates and nuncios19 – encompassed specific numbers of dispensations for specific degrees and situations. If necessary, a bishop could grant these without being required to consult with Rome.20 A volume labelled as a fee register that covers the years between 1877 and 1892 documents such “dispensation packages” in a section entitled Dispensationes ex facultates Quinquennalibus et aliis extraordinariis Indultis.21 The entry fields are divided into rubrics for the various degrees and made it possible for dispensations to be granted in cases of imminent danger – “periculum in mora” – or in urgent cases – “casus urgentes”.22 It is likely that consanguineous and affine couples in the Diocese of Chur will have had an altogether easier time obtaining marriage dispensations than such couples in the Diocese of Brixen. Concerning many of these numerous requests, however, the only extant evidence consists of their entries in the register.
In the diocesan archive in Trento, the nineteenth-century dispensation records only cover the more distant degrees of kinship. Until the mid-1830s, these included dispensations in the second and third unequal degree.23 For certain periods of time, there exist registers concerning dispensation fees24 that provide an overview of the number and closeness of the degrees of kinship at issue, but it is often not indicated whether such kinship was consanguineous or affinal.25 No materials concerning papal dispensations were found. The documentation held by the Archivio di Stato di Trento and the State Archives of Bolzano indicates that in the Diocese of Trento, the district offices functioned as central nodes of communication during the nineteenth century. They were in contact with the diocesan ordinariate as well as the respective regional courts (Landgerichte). The latter submitted their own evaluations of marriage projects and couples, and they also communicated with the Gubernium in Innsbruck – to which, judging by the surviving notes and similarly to how things were in Salzburg, extensive documentation was sent. Dispensation requests are contained in the records of the district office in Rovereto that were investigated beginning in the 1820s, but those in Trento only contain dispensation requests from a few years beginning in 1843.26 The records from the district office in Bozen in the categories of “Spiritual” and/or “Marriage” that were analysed from 1831 onward contain only few dispensation requests, with some years containing none at all. Evidently, such documents were only kept in certain cases.27 This disparate source situation provides only fragmentary insights into nineteenth-century dispensation practice in the Diocese of Trento. But even so, certain routines and salient issues can still be recognised.
In the Diocese of Trento, in contrast to how things were in Brixen, the nineteenth century saw secular authorities remain far more strongly involved in the administrative procedures associated with dispensation practice. This can be seen in how, not unimportantly, the Gubernium in Innsbruck intervened here in a clearer way than it did vis-à-vis the consistory in Brixen. An example is the request of Giovanni S. and Maria C., already submitted multiple times. The Gubernium objected to how the ordinariate was proceeding – not only on principle, in view of what it deemed to be an excessively great number of submitted requests overall, but also in terms of substance via criticism of this request’s justification, which the Gubernium deemed to be too weak, why it rejected this request: “The dispensation requests coming so frequently from the Tridentine districts have moved the Gubernium to suspect that the prince-episcopal ordinariate is likely making its own work too easy in such cases.”28 Various subsequent references allow us to conclude that dispensation matters were probably not handled all that strictly here on the diocesan level. A decree by the provincial government addressed the “Italian ordinariates” with the admonishment to exhibit “strict observance” regarding the issuance of marriage dispensations in close degrees of kinship. This decree referred to the Court Chancellery decree of 29 May 1837 that came in reaction to a papal hierography received from the Imperial-Royal embassy in Rome.29
One context that may have caused state authorities to assume a central role in dispensation proceedings in the Diocese of Trento was that in Trentino a liberal flavour of Catholicism predominated during the Vormärz period. This was very much in contrast to German-speaking Tyrol “where the priests were recruited largely from the peasantry and the secondary schools were led mostly by anti-Josephine and ultramontane regular clergy”. According to the findings of Thomas Götz, “openness to the world, trust in education and the sciences and moderate political progressiveness” succeeded in uniting representatives of the most varied groups. In Trentino, “the Catholic clergy for a while remained, at least as far as its members with an above-average education were concerned, a prominent exponent of bourgeois culture in the ‘provinces’”.30
Looking at individual dioceses makes clear that their internal organisation varied significantly.31 But it was not only the degrees of state and church involvement in individual cases and the structuring of procedures that differed; there were also most certainly differences in terms of how the individual bishops proceeded. In addition, dioceses and even their various constituent regions had their own prior ecclesiastical and political histories in which the handling of dispensations had, in some cases, been organised in far simpler ways. The relative stability of bureaucratic procedures from the 1820s and 1830s onward had been preceded by turbulent times, most recently due to the restructuring of the dioceses during the nineteenth century’s initial two decades. Borders now ran differently, with some areas having been made part of other dioceses. Such changes had taken place in all four neighbouring dioceses of Brixen, Chur, Salzburg and Trento: the areas south of Brixen that belong to present-day South Tyrol, including Säben, passed to the Diocese of Trento in 1819. Vorarlberg was appended to the Diocese of Brixen,32 as were areas of present-day East Tyrol that had previously been part of the Diocese of Salzburg, and so on.33
Particularly in Vorarlberg, the transition period surrounding its transfer to the Diocese of Brixen was protracted and riddled with conflicts. Parishes that had previously been subject to the authority of Chur went unstaffed, and there was a lack of clarity as to who was competent where dispensation was concerned. “Where should the priest, where should the Christian subject now turn?”, asked the judge who presided over the regional court in the Montafon. The handling of certain cases could not be delayed, he stated, but the ordinariate in Brixen had declared that it did not consider itself authorised to “intervene” on behalf of those belonging to the Diocese of Chur. As a result, marriage dispensation requests were once again blocked.34 A report from the regional court in Feldkirch dated 20 June 1815 struck a similar note: “The current state of affairs regarding this matter”, it read, was “such that not even de facto” knowledge existed as to “which of those bishops it is who has assumed spiritual stewardship of the parishes in Vorarlberg that were previously subject to the Diocese of Chur”. For the Bishop of Brixen was not assuming the handling of “any business” concerning the territory that had belonged to Chur, the letter’s author continued, while the Prince-Bishop of Chur did not dare act there publicly as prince-bishop.35 Moreover, obtaining a dispensation would seem to have become noticeably more difficult upon the region’s transfer to the Diocese of Brixen. This is indicated by complaints voiced here and there as late as the 1830s. The Bregenz Forest’s dean, Johann Baptist Sinz, portrayed matters as follows: “Back when we still belonged to Constance, obtaining a marriage dispensation had been very easy. It was possible to obtain one in 3 to 4 days using one’s own messenger.”36 In terms of church organisation, Vorarlberg had previously been divided between the dioceses of Chur, Constance and Augsburg.37
It was thus that the nineteenth-century Diocese of Brixen came to encompass large areas of present-day North Tyrol (excepting its north-eastern part, which still belongs to the Diocese of Salzburg today), the northern part of present-day South Tyrol (the Puster Valley, the Upper Eisack Valley and the Upper Vinschgau), present-day East Tyrol and Vorarlberg (see Map 2).38 Beginning in 1820 (and until 1968), Vorarlberg had the status of a vicariate general with its seat in Feldkirch – a concession that Brixen had not made without resistance. The process of political reorganisation that began in 1815 saw the province involuntarily combined with Tyrol under a single Gubernium, with the province thus formed becoming a prefecture in 1850. During the nineteenth century, the repeated initiatives by Vorarlberg to obtain independent civil and ecclesiastical administration were to remain largely unsuccessful.39
Deaneries of the Diocese of Brixen as reorganised in 1818
Source: Digitised by Margareth Lanzinger from the original by Hugo A. Lanzinger, in Alexander, “Zur regionalen Herkunft des Priesternachwuchses”, p. 313.
The administrative level beneath the diocese and/or the vicariate general was that of the deaneries. The Diocese of Brixen initially had 26 deaneries, and the 1850s saw the two largest ones – both of which lay west of Innsbruck – divided: the new deaneries of Silz and Prutz were spun off from the deaneries of Flaurling and Zams, respectively, to make 28 deaneries in total. Each of these areas was overseen by its own dean, who served as a point of contact for the clergy of the local parishes, curacies and branches (Exposituren) and as an intermediate between them and the prince-episcopal consistory. The order in which enquiries, requests and the like were addressed adhered strictly to this hierarchy: local clergy did not communicate directly with the diocesan consistory regarding dispensation matters. In the Diocese of Trento, on the other hand, the direct route from the parishes to the consistory was the norm. The number of parishes that belonged to Brixen’s individual deaneries varied. It ranged from the single parish in the Deanery of Ampezzo to 37 in the Deanery of Flaurling prior to its division. On average, there were between 15 and 25.40
On the whole and in ways that depended on the administrative context, diocesan ordinariates, district offices and the Gubernium represented powerful decision-making entities placed before the papal authorities in Rome. Especially in Brixen, the consistory functioned as a bottleneck of sorts due to its representatives’ comparative restrictiveness when it came to judging which requests would or would not enjoy good prospects of being answered in the affirmative by Rome, thereafter forwarding or – in a great many cases – rejecting them. On the regional level, therefore, the Church wielded definitional power over which arguments and justifications would be sufficient to receive a marriage dispensation in close degrees of consanguinity or affinity. The share of rejections was hence significantly greater at the diocesan level that it was at the level of the competent Roman authorities: of the 946 requests submitted between 1831 and 1864, 126 (13.3 per cent) were rejected at the diocesan level and 17 (1.8 per cent) were rejected in Rome, while 4 (0.4 per cent) were rejected by the Gubernium.41 Thus approaching this matter via the references to dispensations contained in marriage registers42 only reveals a certain selection – especially in the stricter dioceses. After all, marriage registers only contain those that were approved. The sometimes arduous bureaucratic processes that were necessary left no traces there. As a consequence, failed marriage projects remain invisible.
2 Knowledge and Perception of Kinship
Knowledge of kinship was situated in various contexts. Formal canonical logics stood vis-à-vis lifeworld logics, as did the written and the spoken.43 Noble and patrician family books of varied form and content served purposes including intergenerational memory and identity formation while connecting the past with the future.44 However, they were also often simply “implicit representations concerning open or smouldering conflicts”, mostly in relation to property claims.45 Family trees, for their part, also preserved kinship-related knowledge. Both types of documents hence depicted inclusion as well as exclusion, above all in terms of how they focused on male lines.46 However, the number of people who possessed family registers, genealogical records or family trees was not particularly high when compared to the overall population. Dispensation requests thus often required laborious research aimed at ascertaining or excluding the possibility of relatedness by blood or by marriage.
Looking at dioceses and dispensation records,47 one must not succumb to the illusion of being able to apprehend all kin marriages – not even in cases where extensive collections of documents were stored in an intentionally centralised manner. Even where strict requirements existed such as specific questions in the context of a pre-wedding religious examination, and despite the prescribed threefold public announcement of every impending marriage known as the three “banns of marriage” (Aufgebote), clergymen, parishioners and the affected couples sometimes overlooked this or that instance of kinship. It happened more frequently in distant degrees than it did in close ones,48 and more often in cases of affinity than in cases of consanguinity. But since this was to be prevented wherever possible, the pressure felt by local clergymen was commensurately great.
Most nineteenth-century pastoral handbooks provided extensive support for those seeking to reconstruct blood and affinal kinship. They featured schematic illustrations as well as descriptions of all kinds of configurations (see Fig. 2), furthermore providing memory aids such as sayings or translations of complex relationships into riddles.49 The handbook by Julius Müllendorff features a general focus on the detection of marriage impediments.50 And publishers, for their part, made available pre-printed forms for the four generations of ancestors that needed to be researched.51 Such illustrative strategies were meant to help ease the reliable detection of unions that required dispensation. But even so, we must always assume a certain number of undetected cases.
Depiction of the prohibited degrees
Source: K.A.M. Schlegel, Kritische und systematische Darstellung der verbotenen Grade der Verwandtschaft und Schwägerschaft, bey Heurathen, nach dem Mosaischen Gesetze, dem Römischen und Canonischen Rechte, und den Protestantischen Kirchenordnungen …(Hannover: 1802), appendix.
As one can ascertain from numerous reports in the dispensation records, local clergymen would first seek to access local knowledge of kinship. Some places were home to people who could recall such things spontaneously. The dean in Innichen called one old man “a living register of kinship in this valley”.52 Certain women also possessed broad knowledge of intricate kinship networks.53 Clergymen were absolutely dependent on such sources of information, for the clues they succeeded in gleaning provided them with considerable support in their laborious research in the church registers, allowing such research to go forward in a way that was that far better targeted. One local clergyman described his procedure as follows: he would first query the parents of the bridal couple and then “make special enquiries among several old men”. Subsequently he would “spend hours upon hours consulting the canonical books” on account of his uncertainty as to whether kinship might not indeed be present.54
Several types of structural obstacles could present themselves when searching for possible marriage impediments. Where marriages concluded across parish borders were concerned, opportunities to obtain local knowledge of kinship decreased as the distance between the couples’ places of origin increased, and the necessary documentation regarding the ancestors of the bride or the groom was not locally accessible. Clergymen also occasionally lamented church registers whose entries exhibited gaps or that had fallen victim to fire.55 And above all in small communities, the large numbers of identical names also exacerbated the difficulty of researching kin relationships.56 Difficulty identifying marriage impediments could be expected particularly in cases where the bride, the groom or one of their ancestors had been born out of wedlock. For such couples, the lines of descent could only be reconstructed in their entirety if the father of the illegitimately born prospective spouse had declared himself to be such in the context of alimony payments or a financial settlement, or if his identity had been known in the corresponding social circle. A parish’s baptismal records were likewise not necessarily of help here during the nineteenth century, since fathers of illegitimate children in Austria could only be entered into such records if they themselves requested it. This rule had been established by Joseph II in a 1784 patent that regulated how baptismal registers were to be kept.57
If the father of a child born out of wedlock was known neither officially nor informally, clerics had to depend on rumours or coincidence. The Diocese of Brixen’s dispensation records document one particularly dramatic case that was ultimately decided before a marriage court: Johann Kaspar Meusburger and the illegitimately born Elisabeth Rüscher from the Bregenz Forest community of Bizau had gone to their rectorate and expressed their desire to be wed. The uncle and godfather of the bride subsequently informed the clergyman responsible for their case that his sister, the bride’s mother, had told him “on her death bed” that the man and woman to be wed were half-siblings. The groom was unwilling to accept the categorical refusal that ensued and involved a lawyer in the further proceedings – but to no avail.58
Finally, errors could also occur. In principle, the role of supervisory authority was to be fulfilled by the deans, who were the first to see the family trees and schematic illustrations drawn by local priests. One dean reported that when the bridal couple of Johann Klieber and Maria Graßl had come to take the matrimonial examination at his office in Flaurling, he had been so “preoccupied” by the opinion that they were blood kin in the third and fourth degree and hence a case for an episcopal dispensation that it had rendered him “entirely blind” and no longer able to count. Only while making a copy of the family tree had he then noticed that this was a case of kinship in the second and third unequal degree, which required a papal dispensation.59
Assured information regarding the bride and groom’s kinship status was supposed to come primarily from the mandatory two witnesses involved in the matrimonial examination. The consistory in Brixen repeatedly urged that only “well-informed” witnesses be used. And around 1856, amidst a period that saw the handling of dispensation cases grow altogether more severe, witnesses’ suitability began receiving special attention. Several letters concerning this were sent to various deaneries.60 Suspicions tended to crop up especially whenever a witness’s community of residence was also the seat of the deanery where the examination had been protocolled while the bridal couple resided somewhere else entirely. The fact was that summoning a second witness on location saved time and the expense of a long journey there, which made it a practical solution.61 The letters from the diocese were targeted attempts to address this “grievous state of affairs”. They referred to the “church rule” according to which witnesses had to “be selected from the dispensation applicant’s place of residence”. The only exception permissible was if “the witnesses from elsewhere” were among “the supplicants’ closest kin”.62
Despite all efforts, there were some instances where marriage impediments came to light too late, which triggered a specific procedure aimed to solve the resulting problem of an invalid marriage. In the case of the prospective spouses Gottlieb Vith from Laterns in the Deanery of Feldkirch and Seraphina Zech, their double marriage impediment of affinity – in the first and second unequal degree as well as in the third equal degree – only became apparent on the eve of their wedding, for which all preparations had already been made. In light of the this and by virtue of his authorities to act in such urgent circumstances, the dean felt entitled to issue an emergency dispensation of sorts – “due to gravem et urgentem necessitatem”. It was required that he report this action to Brixen. In Brixen, however, there existed uncertainty as to whether the dean’s authority had actually been valid in such a close degree of affinity. The consistory therefore forwarded this matter to Rome, where the Apostolic Penitentiary proceeded to invalidate the already concluded marriage.63
Most of the time, however, it was only after couples had been wed that priests would catch wind of such hidden cases of affinity or blood kinship: in Luttach in present-day South Tyrol’s Ahr Valley, which belonged to the Deanery of Taufers, Anna Auer appeared before the parish priest ten days after a wedding had taken place to report that “her aged mother had discovered by chance, in a conversation only a couple of days ago, that the aforementioned newlyweds are blood relatives”. The priest then set about investigating these claims of kinship, a task that required him to procure information from the church registries of three neighbouring parishes. “The certainty” of blood kinship in the fourth degree, he wrote, could now no longer be doubted.64 Jakob Neumair and Agnes Fischnaller of St. Lorenzen in the Puster Valley were also already married when a “woman related to the groom” came to their parish priest and declared that she was “left no peace by her fear that the two newlyweds are related”. Following a lengthy bit of research, it in fact did turn out that the groom and the bride had two great-grandfathers who had been brothers.65
Only once do the Brixen records reveal an overlooked marriage impediment in the second consanguineous degree, one discovered only after five years of marriage. Konrad Berkmann, who had been 43 years old and previously unmarried at the time of the wedding, and the 66-year-old widow Barbara Friß of Riefensberg were first cousins and had been wed without a dispensation. According to the dean’s report, they had voiced their own suspicion of possibly being related prior to their marriage in 1854. The parish priest had then asked around in the community – but at that time, nobody had known anything about “the ancestry of the bride’s mother”. “Only recently”, after the two had already been married for five years, wrote the dean to the consistory in Brixen, had their parish priest – “in a pertinent discourse with the retired teacher Berkmann” – realised that this couple was related by blood in the second canonical degree. Questions put to the husband, who was immediately summoned, permitted the inference that the couple honestly believed that they were not related. The new knowledge was thereupon revealed to him with the request that he “keep silent” about it. He was also instructed to “voice no demands for conjugal duties” until the necessary papal dispensation had been granted. In a postscript, the dean explained that the teacher Berkmann had in fact known of their kinship prior to the wedding but “refrained from reporting this impediment for fear of making enemies of the bride’s relatives, who had been pushing for this marriage par force”. The clerics of the consistory had a stern reprimand issued to the competent parish priest, since they found themselves unable to comprehend how this marriage impediment could have escaped him.66
Kin relationships that were overlooked and only discovered after the fact made necessary “revalidation” of the affected marriages. If, moreover, such a relationship was in degrees that fell within the purview of Rome, a dispensation had to be applied for there. In the Diocese of Brixen, this happened an average of once every ten years. Revalidation was typically handled in a way that kept secret the problem that had arisen. As soon as the dispensation had arrived from Rome, the couple was summoned to the parsonage and had to renew their consent to the union, the vows of ‘I do’ that had already been given. From the perspective of the Church, such a situation entailed a certain degree of risk. The supposed spouses could, after all, use the invalidity of their marriage as an excuse to separate and seek its annulment. Clergymen for the most part refrained from addressing the risk of such a scenario in explicit terms. This approach is exemplified by the interim parish priest Alois Pichler of Burgeis in connection with an overlooked case of fourth-degree consanguine kinship: he emphasised that the invalidly wed spouses were “of a good Christian disposition” and lived together “well and peacefully”. For this reason, “no difficulty on their part that would run counter to marriage consent renewal need be feared”.67 It was typically two members of the clergy who functioned as witnesses to the marriage in order to finalise revalidation in the most discreet way possible and unbeknownst to the local public.
In order to avoid a flood of revalidations, and probably also in order to minimise and best conceal the problem of the sheer impossibility of discovering and duly dispensing all marriage impediments in the more distant degrees of consanguinity and affinity, the nineteenth century saw the Church employ the instrument of sanatio in radice, or “radical sanation”, on a broad basis.68 Sanatio in radice rendered a marriage that had been concluded despite the existence of a marriage impediment fundamentally valid, entailing that the act of consent – meaning the couple’s mutual assent – did not need to be repeated.69 In a normative sense, the employment of this option required that at least one member of an affected marriage know nothing of that marriage’s invalidity. This instrument was employed primarily in so-called mission areas,70 but increasingly also – as the practice of Brixen’s consistory shows – in European dioceses in cases involving more distant degrees of consanguinity or affinity that had been discovered after the fact.71
The effectiveness of this form of control has to be taken into account not least whenever the frequency of kin marriage is at issue. In his analysis of the church registers of Vouvry in the Swiss canton of Valais between 1720 and 1840, Sandro Guzz-Heeb attributes such marriages’ steadily rising numbers in part to closer ecclesiastical scrutiny. During the eighteenth century’s second half, multiple consanguineous marriages had not been registered as such by the parishes. In Guzz-Heeb’s view, this may have been owed to a lack of genealogical knowledge but also possibly to an interest in keeping existing relational ties secret72 – as was also implied in the aforementioned case of Konrad Berkner and Barbara Friß. Guy Tassin, also looking at the eighteenth century, ascertained that one third of those 53 couples from Haveluy in the north of France who would have needed a dispensation according to his genealogical reconstructions never applied for one.73 Just how consistently or inconsistently dispensations were sought and granted would hence appear to have depended on the competent clerics’ zeal, the accessibility of the relevant knowledge and on the willingness of the couples’ close social circles to provide information on existing consanguine and affinal relationships.74
Where questions of social perception are concerned, it is necessary to distinguish between close and distant degrees. After all, dispensations in the third and fourth degrees were far more common than those granted in the close degrees, and their history also extended further back. Among the requests received by the Diocese of Brixen, the share of those in the close degrees that required papal dispensations amounted to but a few small percentage points.75 Such requests would occasionally proliferate in local clusters, however, and indeed increased noticeably – if not explosively – over the course of the nineteenth century. Yet their number alone is not sufficient to illustrate the contemporary social presence of this phenomenon. Marriage projects in the close degrees, especially when they occurred but rarely or were accompanied by dramatic situations, did not remain concealed from the local public in the village, the neighbourhood, the section of town or sometimes even the entire district. They were objects of public communication and judgment. The offered fodder for disputes, occasionally even for scandals. Last but not least, consanguine and affine couples repeatedly referred to other dispensations that had been granted and used these as references in support of their own marriage projects. Fundamentally, the perceived or expected reaction of the local public to a dispensation did represent a relevant factor in the associated decision-making process. Beginning in the mid-1850s, local priests in the Diocese of Brixen were required to provide their own personal assessments regarding the marriage projects for which a dispensation in the close degrees had been requested as a matter of course – though there are several comments that point in this direction earlier on, as well. The priests were now explicitly called upon to indicate whether a planned marriage in their community might make a negative impression or even cause a ‘scandal’. Here, the horror at such unions that had been spread and inculcated over the centuries must not be underestimated, particularly in localities where it was comparatively rare for dispensations in the close degrees to be applied for and granted.
Assessments as to the likelihood of public sensations exhibit a broad range. Some priests felt incapable of providing a clear answer to this question, since the marriage project at issue had not yet been made public. Others responded by saying that it was improbable, not uncommonly indicating that everyone in their communities was related by blood and by marriage to begin with, for which reason the lion’s share of marriages were possible only with a dispensation. One dean, concerning a request that had been made by the widowed peasant Paul Krug and his sister-in-law, Kriseldis Kranebitter of Miemingen in the Deanery of Silz, emphatically advocated approval and prognosticated “that among the populace in the broader surroundings, it would result in very bad blood if the well-justified request of these good supplicants, universally recognised as upstanding, should be rejected”. After all, he continued, “priests, confessors and even professors who themselves author works on canon law” gave the impression that dispensations were easy to obtain.76
In other cases, however, there were reports of great outrage among the local populace. At nearly the same time, in December 1860, the priest of Anras in the Deanery of Lienz in present-day East Tyrol addressed an identical couple configuration by writing: “Should this marriage actually come to pass, it will make an utterly wicked impression upon the community, in part because no marriage such as this one has been concluded here in living memory, in part because there have quite recently been three examples of such marriages in the surrounding area that took a truly unfavourable turn, and certainly also because, as in so many other places, the people here, too, are becoming ever more convinced that with enough money, anything becomes possible”.77 In contrast, the former dean of Lienz had indicated three decades prior in a very extensive December 1832 report on a dispensation request in the second and third unequal degree of affinity that, should the dispensation be granted, “absolutely no outrage must be feared”, since a certain Anton Libiseller from a neighbouring village had received a dispensation in the first degree of affinity a few years prior, which was commonly known. What is more, “his marriage turned out to be very happy”.78 Consultation of the dispensation register reveals that the dispensation to which the dean was referring had been granted on 2 July 1816, which was 16 years prior.79
The extent to which assessments of this sort reflected the general attitude of the local populace or much rather the position of their priest regarding marriages in close degrees of consanguinity and affinity is difficult to discern. Such marriages’ frequency or rarity certainly did play a role here, as did the matter of who the respective couples were, what kind of esteem and reputation they enjoyed and what social position they occupied within their communities. Asked as to the moral impression that a marriage in the second and third unequal degree as well as in the fourth equal degree of consanguinity would make in his community, the curate of a village in the Deanery of Taufers indicated that it would seem to be not a good one. He had heard only “disapproving statements” on this, almost all of them made in a fairly rough tone. One of the statements that he quoted was to the effect that it used to be that nobody had “dared seek marriage in such a configuration”. But the sons of Franz Auer lacked any regard for “time-honoured good traditions” to begin with, it was said: “As long as they can advance themselves, nothing at all matters.”80 In connection with the planned marriage, property had already been passed back and forth between Franz Auer’s sons.81
Regarding the question of how marriage projects between close blood and affinal kin might have struck the local public, and of whether we can assume a certain “normalcy” and disappearance of taboos, the various reactions would indicate that the attitude was not generally indifferent. Therefore, kin marriages cannot be viewed as having enjoyed broad social acceptance during the nineteenth century. Instead, there were probably locally and regionally distinct assessments, though these are rarely documented in so drastic a fashion as they are in the case of a couple from Elbigenalp in the North Tyrolean Deanery of Breitenwang who were related by affinity in the first degree. Their local priest was near-horrified upon learning that they had been granted a dispensation. It was not for him, he conceded, “to object to this decision by the highest church authority”. He was also comforted by the fact that responsibility for this lay with the church leadership, but “the bitter fruit” would be enjoyed “solely by their priest”. He stressed that “in these parts”, a dispensation in such a close degree was “unknown and unheard of”. The request at issue had been viewed “around here as being about nothing more than money changing hands”, for which reason “the entirely unexpected news of their successfully achieved aim ripped through the entire valley like foul-smelling lightning”. The “most vexing talk”, including as to the “bribability of the most reverend clergy”, had been heard immediately thereafter at three inns.82 The inn was not only a central location where information was disseminated but also a place of public debate and comment.83
3 Resistance and Obstacles
In discussing the frequency of kin marriage, one must also take into account that it was the particular responsibility of local priests84 in the Diocese of Brixen to fend off marriage wishes of prospective spouses who were closely related by blood or by marriage whenever possible. The rule was that the priests, if approached with such marriage projects, had to reject them three times before they were permitted to take further steps and send a letter to the dean.85 Often, priests referred to the official argument of decency advanced by theologians and jurisprudents, without elaborating these references in detail. Dispensation records also indicate local clerics frequently employed the claim that both Church and state frowned upon such marriages as their fundamental argument when it came to fending off couples in such situations. In individual cases, it was ascertained – and hence simultaneously predicted – that such marriages would turn out to be unhappy ones. “The Office of the Dean made repeated efforts to dissuade the dispensation supplicant and especially his intended bride from their plans by listing several extremely unhappy marriages in such close degrees of kinship and by introducing to them the lack of conjugal love that typically comes to plague such marriages and the horrific consequences that arise therefrom, but all efforts were in vain.”86
In some cases, couples allowed themselves to be swayed, though there are only scattered and rather coincidental traces of them in the dispensation records. Reports to this effect, such as one submitted by the dean of Breitenwang, reveal how the effectiveness of priests’ efforts to thwart such marriages even prior to initiating written communication must not be underestimated. In 1843, this dean wrote to the consistory in Brixen that he had been contacted by five widowers, all of them intending to request dispensations in the first degree of affinity. Two, he wrote, were “not to be dissuaded from their intentions by anything that could be told to them” and were insisting on moving forward with their plans. The three others, he reported with evident satisfaction, he had been able to successfully convince otherwise.87 One of the two couples mentioned in his letter received the necessary dispensation on their second attempt. From the second couple, however, there is no request in the records, which implies that this couple also eventually backed down from their original intent. It is hence fundamentally impossible to know how many couples who were closely related by blood or marriage planned to marry and articulated these plans before a competent authority only to be thwarted upon this initial enquiry. It also cannot be verified whether the quasi-ritualistic character of the aforementioned three admonishments was generally known.88 But especially in places where dispensation requests began to cluster locally or regionally, it is fair to assume that information to this effect had indeed been exchanged.
Particularly in the case of strongly taboo unions such as between stepparents and stepchildren or between uncle and niece,89 it may also be the case that differing administrative contexts also had their effects on marriage projects’ documentation. In Vienna and Lower Austria at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, for example, we could find up to three requests per year that were submitted by stepmothers and stepsons or stepfathers and stepdaughters – novel “couple configurations” that would have been “neither imaginable nor capable of being articulated insofar as marriage was concerned” prior to the late eighteenth century.90 But for Catholics, neither the state nor the Church viewed this first degree of affinity in the direct line of descent as being dispensable.
In Brixen, beginning in 1831 and throughout the period examined here, the records contain one single request in such a configuration. Either the taboo in this regard was actually stronger in this diocese, with the result that virtually no one considered such possibilities, or the local priests – to whom initial requests had to be directed – rejected requests of this type on account of their utter futility, for which reason not even enquiries ended up reaching the consistory. Brixen’s only such request documents the desire to marry expressed by a stepmother and her stepson: Ursula Valazza was 33 years old and a widow, and Joseph Crepaz was 30 years old. They resided in Livinallongo, in the Deanery of Buchenstein. In June 1833, it became known that Ursula Valazza was pregnant. The dean thereupon requested instructions from the prince-episcopal consistory and activated the regional court, which was supposed to separate the couple but refrained from doing so.91 With the dean then being out of ideas as to how he could separate the two, he requested multiple times that they appear at the rectory in order to initiate a dispensation request, “so that this evil may be ameliorated either through merciful forbearance or through the separation of these people”. A rejection, after all, would enable enforcement of the civil ordinance according to which rejected dispensation-seekers could no longer reside beneath the same roof.92
The dean therefore protocolled the matrimonial examination, which was kept rather brief, in early 1834. The most extensive justification for the request was provided by the first witness, Pietro Antonio De Lazer, who was a relative of the bridal couple. The main reason, he stated, was the most passionate love – “amore appassionatissimo” – that existed between the two hopefuls, which stemmed from the fact that they had already had carnal knowledge of each other for quite some time. A further reason was that their marriage would put an end to the gossip among the people as well as the public scandal evoked by this prospective couple’s cohabitation. And as a third reason, he mentioned significant economic advantages.93 The fact that passion was mentioned first, which was relatively unusual, may have been due to the bride’s pregnancy or been meant to serve as justification of this “unheard-of” ardour. It was with this expression, namely, that Brixen’s consistorial secretary characterised their intent. The request, as could hardly have been expected otherwise, was rejected.
Joseph Crepaz was undeterred, however, and soon proceeded to make a second attempt in the form of a personally signed letter of supplication. In it, he portrayed the preceding events: quite some time prior, he had had a two-year love affair – “Amourschaft” – with Ursula Valazza. He had desired to marry her but been unable to realise his intent. For his father, who was widowed by that point, then himself took Ursula Valazza as his second wife. Following his father’s death in 1832, he had continued “the earlier acquaintance with the stepmother even more devotedly, and mutual love” had “reached such a degree that the oft-mentioned stepmother became pregnant by the most obediently undersigned”. The consistory thereupon reiterated its rejection of his request. This couple, however, does reappear one more time in the dispensation records – in a document dated June 1835 and filed in the “miscellaneous” fascicule entitled Verschiedenes über Ehe. The consistory in Brixen had sent the district office in Bruneck a complaint “regarding the troublesome cohabitation of Joseph Crepaz and his stepmother”. The dean of Buchenstein – who was simultaneously its parish priest – had then requested “effective intervention” by the district office “in order to remove the concubine Valazza”. The consistory subsequently endorsed this request with an accompanying note in which it once again pointed out that “repeated intervention by the Imperial-Royal Regional Court” had been “fruitless thus far” but that “elimination of the existing scandal” was “most highly necessary”.94 The employment of church and state power evidently had its limitations. Here, clerics’ legally and morally founded horror stood vis-à-vis a tragic love story, that of two lovers who had no hope of seeing their relationship legitimised.
Edith Saurer has shown how such couples did have a chance if they converted to Protestantism. Ludwig Galler and his stepdaughter Franziska Delser moved to Pressburg, today’s Bratislava, in 1847 after their dispensation request had been rejected by the archepiscopal consistory in Vienna. Galler purchased a house there and acquired the status of a citizen. Both of them then converted, whereupon they received their dispensation from the emperor.95 At the end of the eighteenth century, another Viennese couple – Joseph and Katharina Arthaber – married in Hungary after both had also converted to Protestantism. This relationship had grown out of the same initial drama that characterised the aforementioned relationship in Livinallongo: the groom’s father, a wealthy merchant, had taken as his second wife a far younger woman with whom his son was in love, thus rendering their marriage a near-impossibility following his death.96
One such request that did not make it to Brixen – or at least did not make it into the archive there – can be found in the records of the Vicariate-General of Feldkirch. This request – by Rosa Gasser and Josef Sieber, a stepmother and stepson from Bildstein – can be found neither in the diocese’s Roman dispensation records nor in the accompanying fascicule “Pertaining to Marriage”.97 The dispensation records from the Diocese of Salzburg that were looked at turned up two requests in step-configurations.98 Here, reference was also made to the apostolic injunction that defined this type of affinity as an impediment “that the Church never” dispensed.99
The dispensation requests from Vienna and Lower Austria analysed by Edith Saurer were submitted to the provincial government and hence not prefiltered by the Church. But there, as well, all such requests were refused.100 Apparently, the maxim according to which stepparents and stepchildren were never to be dispensed was generally applicable. In this regard, Wolfgang Dannerbauer ascertained the following in a footnote to his Praktisches Geschäftsbuch für den Curat-Clerus Oesterreichs, published in 1893: “It is less rarely than one would believe that stepparents and stepchildren attempt to marry. Such an attempt must be rejected as entirely futile accompanied by serious admonishment and rebuke.” Couples contemplating such marriage projects, he continued, should therefore “at once be informed of the utter fruitlessness of the step they intend to take”.101 In some places, nonetheless, the intent and desire to form such unions did still end up being documented, perhaps due not least to the civil administration’s greater permeability.
Alongside such absolute marriage prohibitions, economically defined requirements pitted some marriage projects against formidable hurdles. The instrument employed in this respect – to demonstrably quite powerful effect in German-speaking Tyrol and in parts of Vorarlberg – was that of “political marriage consent”.102 Enacted by way of a court decree dated 12 May 1820 and promulgated in the provinces of the Habsburg monarchy in a government circular of 17 June 1820, it made consent on the part of municipal representatives a prerequisite for marriage.103 Such marriage consent was granted or refused based on an assessment as to whether the prospective couple commanded sufficient economic resources to sustain a family. While marriage consent was abolished in most provinces of the monarchy in 1869,104 it existed until 1883 in Salzburg and even longer – until 1921 – in Tyrol. 1869 saw decision-making competency in these two provinces transferred more or less successfully to the district captaincies. This change was made due to the state’s desire to effect the more liberal handling of marriage consent issuance.105
In some parts of Tyrol, the marriage consent policy was applied with significantly greater severity than the lawgiver had intended. This fact must be viewed here in light of how this policy was wielded with an eye to upholding and solidifying the existing socioeconomic structures. This finding, in combination with the underlying intent, applies primarily to the German-speaking part of Tyrol. In both Trentino and Vorarlberg, “prospects for marriage were far more balanced than in northern and southern Tyrol”, ascertained Elisabeth Mantl in her comparative study.106 While it was initially the case that the obligation to obtain marriage consent officially applied “only” to servants, journeymen, day labourers, lodgers and inhabitants without local citizenship (Inwohner), 1850 saw this marriage restriction expanded to cover everyone whose “livelihood” was “not assured over the long term”.107 A look at actual practice does not, however, permit the conclusion that the marriage consent policy only had a “limited effect” prior to the mid-nineteenth century.108
Dispensation requests from the Archdiocese of Salzburg contain scattered indications that the supplicants’ communities had already issued their consent to the couples’ marriage.109 There is no clear indication, however, that this was systematically checked for. In the Diocese of Brixen the situation was different. 1838 witnessed the creation of a legal precedent: the municipality of Lech had refused a bridal couple, Franz Joseph Walch and his cousin Creszenz Gassner, its consent to their marriage due to their lack of wealth while the church dispensation proceedings were already underway. In response, the prince-episcopal ordinariate in Brixen suggested to the provincial government in Innsbruck that all bridal couples, “in order to simplify this business and save time”, should be instructed to present preliminary marriage consent at the outset of any dispensation-requesting process.110 And so it subsequently occurred, almost without exception. Requesting marriage consent would hence appear to have by no means been limited just to that circle of persons – “servants, journeymen, day labourers, lodgers or inhabitants without local citizenship” – specified by law.
It was rarely the case that those applying for dispensations declared that they enjoyed a secure existence and hence did not need to present marriage consent – and those who did tended to be civil servants. Karl Frank, “imperial-royal police commissioner in Milan”, pointed to his salary in declaring that he “was bound to no other permission”,111 and Franz Schweiger, an “imperial-royal customs assistant”, also insisted that he needed no consent: “Any definitively employed civil servant can marry without obtaining political consent.”112 The 1845 dispensation request of the peasant Joseph Jud from Olang in the Puster Valley, owner of a large farm, was also submitted without marriage consent – for which reason the prince-episcopal consistory demanded that it be supplied. When questioned on this in the matrimonial examination, the groom declared that in keeping with applicable law, “every farm owner is entitled to marry without political consent” – but that in order to “obtain still greater assurance”, he had now applied for it.113
The instrument of marriage consent needs to be viewed within the general context of the anti-liberal climate that prevailed in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. It was supported by the highest church authorities – in particular by Prince-Bishop Vinzenz Gasser, who vehemently championed the marriage consent policy during his time as a representative in the provincial parliament from 1861 to 1879. Church representatives who were of different mind on this matter seldom voiced their opinions in the context of dispensation requests. One documented case where this did occur is that of the devoted efforts put forth by Franz Höfel, the dean in Hohenems, on behalf of a couple who were related in the first degree of affinity: the widow Elisabeth Klien, who had three small children from her first marriage, and her brother-in-law Anton Mathis, with whom Klien already had a fourth. Both were classified as poor. According to a statement by the Vicariate-General in Feldkirch, the dean had done “everything he was able both vis-à-vis the municipal committee and at the local Commission for the Poor, in particular with an eye to achieving wholesome change and order for the children – but unfortunately, all of his efforts have been in vain”. The municipality did ultimately grant marriage consent, but the consistory felt that this dispensation request lacked sufficient justification to be forwarded to Rome.114
Even though individual members of the clergy voiced criticism of the marriage consent policy and lobbied local political authorities on certain couples’ behalf, municipal and ecclesiastical interests concerning this matter largely overlapped. And especially in rural areas, municipal and church representatives repeatedly formed a united and powerful front whenever they sought to use the marriage consent policy to enforce notions of social order.115
4 Roman Dispensations: An Administrative Obstacle Course
The closer a related couple’s degree of consanguinity or affinity was, the more laborious the administrative process they faced and the better justified their dispensation request needed to be. The necessary bureaucratic procedures involved numerous persons and institutions. In the Diocese of Brixen, letters and official notifications circulated between local priests and their deans, between the deans and representatives of the prince-episcopal consistory, and between the consistory and the provincial government in Innsbruck, the dispensation-relevant papal institutions of the Datary and the Penitentiary116 and the imperial-royal agent in Rome. Furthermore, various documents and certifications were required that had to be issued by parish priests and representatives of a couple’s municipality: baptismal certificates, death certificates, certificates of good conduct, evaluations, political marriage consent and last but not least a family tree drawn up by the competent priest. These materials were accompanied by multiple letters of supplication, put to paper mostly by members of the cloth and only in rare cases written by the bridal couples themselves. The latter occurred most often among rural and urban elites. But even then, certain suggestions and formulations may have been contributed by third parties. As a rule, the lines of argument that were employed suggest that those writing were well informed with regard to dispensation-granting logics.
The amounts of material and information contained in the individual requests vary greatly. This can be ascribed in part to the deans’ personal ways of discharging their offices, but it could also be tied to the esteem in which the respective supplicants were held. Furthermore, the records not only contain complete dispensation cases but also enquiries that were not pursued further than an initial letter or that the consistory summarily rejected due to insufficient prospects for success. It is about such couples that we learn least because they made no further attempts that reached the prince-episcopal ordinariate.
If the competent local priest was willing to support the request, he would begin with a characterisation of the existing circumstances. Subsequently, the dean – or, in Vorarlberg, the vicariate general in Feldkirch117 – would forward this initial portrayal together with an accompanying letter or a portrayal of his own to the prince-episcopal consistory in Brixen. The consistory in Brixen would then ideally – that is if prospects for the request appeared good – grant permission to administer the matrimonial examination under oath; such protocols are largely missing in the other dioceses. It was in this phase that the couple also had to deposit with the competent deanery the sum of money that would have to be paid if their dispensation were granted, with the amount due being estimated in advance. The “matrimonial examination” itself represents more or less the core of each dispensation record. It protocolled the “examination” of two witnesses, without exception male, as well as an interrogation of the bridegroom and the bride according to an official catalogue of questions. While the fornication trials studied by Ulrike Gleixner placed the woman’s testimony first, thus providing the foil for the testimony of the man and the witnesses,118 the order of questioning in the matrimonial examination was reversed: the two witnesses first provided their version of things, followed by the bridegroom and finally the bride. The witnesses’ placement at the beginning may indicate the degree to which couples’ own circles as well as the broader public took an interest in such marriages.
The matrimonial examination contains general information on the bridal couple such as their names, ages and respective family status, whether they had reached the age of majority and in what degree they were related, and whether they had been aware of their kinship when he proposed and/or she assented. From the mid-1850s onward, deans also had to provide information regarding their wealth. The witnesses were asked whether they were aware of the couple’s consanguinity or affinity and, if so, how they had learned of it. Further questions concerned moral qualities. The couple had to provide information, for example, on whether they had “lived a life that was honourable and unobjectionable before God and the world” up to that point, whether “illicit relations” and/or “sins of the flesh” had already occurred and whether any that had occurred had been for the purpose of obtaining a dispensation more easily. This question had to be answered in the negative, for such an intention rendered dispensation fundamentally impossible. The dean in Matrei had written to the consistory in 1837 because “no template whatsoever for a matrimonial examination in order to obtain dispensations on account of kinship” was to be found in his chancery, which is why he requested a copy of such a form. The “remarks” included with the materials he duly received included the instruction to pose “Question VI” – this was the question as to “copula et raptu”, whether the couple had had sexual contact or the groom had kidnapped the bride – in the most careful possible way, quam cautissime, and only ever one-on-one.119 And of central importance was the question, to be answered by both bride and groom, as to the reasons why the couple wished to marry despite the existence of a marriage impediment.
The dean – or, in exceptional cases, an authorised parish priest – was responsible for posing questions while an “actuary” (Actuar) put the resulting testimony to paper. Deans generally played a crucial role as a node of communication between the church hierarchy’s various levels: they both forwarded the enquiries and supplications they received from the parishes to the consistory and mediated between the local perspective and that of the diocese. They were personally familiar with the situations at hand, were knowledgeable about church dispensation logics120 and ideally also possessed experience having to do with effective strategies of argumentation. For a marriage project between close kin, how the couple’s situation was portrayed in the initial letter to Brixen could play a decisive role in their chances of receiving a positive response, and the dean’s cleverness was the crucial factor behind how promising the reasons formulated in the matrimonial examination were.
The protocolled responses were read aloud to all participants at the end of the examination, and the witnesses as well as the bridal couple had to swear an oath as to the truth of the statements they had made. In the many hundreds of dispensation requests, it was only once that a local priest complained of the exaggerated character of the situation and conditions described by the bridal couple, hastening to put their dramatic quality into perspective. The 52-year-old widower Joseph Lerchegger had indicated in his matrimonial examination that he was already getting on in years and could not leave the “tenancy that he had held for so long” without being “thrown into manifest poverty”. He therefore required a wife. The curate characterised his claims as “exaggerated”, holding that it was untrue that the groom would be forced to leave his tenancy and become impoverished should his desired marriage not come to be, since he had full-grown daughters. He concluded by adding that this was fortunately not the decisive reason for dispensation, the “causa finalis” – for the dispensation request would have otherwise been fraudulent.121
In Salzburg, it was not an examen matrimoniale that was protocolled, but an examen informative – which, however, is rarely to be found in such records and was far less detailed. The basis for the further progress of dispensation proceedings here was a portrayal of the situation at hand in the form of a letter from the couple requesting the dispensation and possibly an accompanying letter written by the local priest or dean. A consistorial official would then produce a detailed commentary on the case in question, and his opinion was most probably then presented to the consistory at large. This official’s opinion was not, however, the deciding factor in terms of whether or not to forward a case to Rome. Even in cases where his opinion had been negative in character, it did still sometimes happen that the request was forwarded. For the purpose of procuring the placetum regium, it would seem that the entire record was sent to the provincial government – which, in the Diocese of Salzburg, played a more prominent role in dispensation proceedings than it did in the Diocese of Brixen. Especially couples who lived in or near towns in the Diocese of Salzburg would quite often submit their requests directly to the civil authorities.122 A further indication of the Salzburg consistory’s fundamentally cooperative stance and attitude toward civil law and state institutions is the fact that the official there, in evaluating the weight of the reasons for dispensation brought forth by a couple, would make reference to the discussions of marital law by Thomas Dolliner, the commentator of the Austrian Civil Code.123 This was not the case in the Diocese of Brixen.
In Brixen, it was accordingly quite inadvisable to submit one’s dispensation request to the provincial government. Gerhard Riedmüller and Gertraud Nockerin, who were related by marriage in the first and second unequal degree, had received a negative response to their initial request in 1819. Eleven years later, they involved the imperial-royal district office for the Lower Inn and Wipp Valleys, which sent a note to the consistory in order to reactivate the dispensation proceedings. The widower Gerhard Riedmüller had by then reached the age of 60 and was in need of nursing care.124 Gertraud Nockerin, a niece of his deceased wife, had spent eleven years working as his servant. Brixen’s response to the district office’s inquiry was that there was no prospect of obtaining a dispensation in Rome. The couple turned to the Deanery of Innsbruck, which forwarded their supplication to the consistory after approximately one year. This time, the consistory granted its permission to conduct the matrimonial examination without further ado, and they ultimately received their dispensation.125 The bride and groom lived in Hall, and it was hence the dean’s office there that was officially responsible for them. But Hall’s dean had become resigned due to the failure of other dispensation requests and is said to have told them he no longer dealt with Roman dispensations “because he is unable to obtain anything”.126 This had likely also been the reason for the likewise unsuccessful involvement of the district office.
Salzburg’s significantly different positioning was associated with the enlightened political stance – not dissimilar to that of Josephinism in its general outlines – taken up by Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo (1772–1803) during the late eighteenth century.127 “Practiced religion should first and foremost benefit the state” was the maxim to which his policies adhered.128 His successor Augustin Gruber (1823–1835), though he did advocate for the renewal of the Church, combined this cause with a moderate position vis-à-vis Josephine church reforms.129 Friedrich, Prince of Schwarzenberg (1836–1885) also took up an intermediate position in that he favoured stronger orientation of the Austrian Church toward Rome but was not considered ultramontane.130 In contrast, the bishops of the Diocese of Brixen – primarily Vinzenz Gasser (1856–1879), but also his forerunners – were representatives of a political and Rome-oriented Catholicism.131 Altogether, the climate in the Diocese of Salzburg was markedly more conciliatory and positive toward the men and women who applied for dispensations. In cases where Rome rejected an application, for example, the ordinariate would immediately take the initiative to begin a renewed attempt, stating – in a way that would have been unthinkable in Brixen. “Nonetheless, in view of the urgency of the circumstances, the ordinariate has seen fit to renew this request.”132
The consistory in Brixen examined the testimony in matrimonial examinations and use this as a basis to decide whether the stated reasons were sufficient in order to submit the corresponding requests to Rome. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, however, it was first necessary to obtain permission to do so from the provincial government, which still had to be done in Innsbruck. The consistory in Brixen also applied for such permission in the case of couple configurations that did not require dispensations according to civil law. This pertained to dispensations in the second and third unequal degree of consanguinity and affinity as well as to those needed due to affinity ex copula illicita. In the case of one such request, the vicar general in Feldkirch attempted to lodge the objection that, for him, the “Placetum regium, which so hampers church governance and hopefully stands on shaky ground in our parts anyhow”, seemed “entirely superfluous” in the case of a “solely canonical marriage impediment”.133 The consistory in Brixen, however, would not be deterred from its actions in this respect. In actual fact, the placetum regium was soon abolished by an ordinance of 18 April 1850. With this, “communication between the popes and the bishops” was officially liberated from state control.134 The Brixen consistory, however, continued applying for it at the district offices for years, only ending this practice upon the advent of the Concordat of 1855.135
Various instances of irritation occurred in the course of dispensation-related communication between the clergy and state officials during the 1840s. In individual cases, the provincial government demanded that the according documents be presented – such as in an extremely protracted case in which the groom, Johann Georg Kropf, had gone so far as to direct a letter of supplication to the emperor himself in 1844. Upon learning that he had done so, the Gubernium requested to see the documents. The consistory refused, pointing out that the orally stated reasons for dispensation were considered secret and could only be used “pro foro interno”, which is to say: by the Church and its clergy.136 The Brixen consistory’s practice for each case was to send only a specially prepared abbreviated report to the provincial government that contained no more than general information on the couple in question and their situation in life. These reports did not communicate details of a more sensitive nature, such as a bride’s pregnancy. In late 1841, the Gubernium in Innsbruck – with an eye to the Diocese of Trento – called upon Brixen’s consistory to involve the competent district offices as intermediate entities.137 This admonishment, however, would seem to have been for naught.
The letters to Rome were highly standardised and written in Latin. In 1859, Bishop Vinzenz Gasser introduced his own type of form with rubrics for the necessary information on the dispensation supplicants and in which to list reasons for dispensation (see Fig. 3). For this, he received praise from Rome – specifically from Simon de Dompieri, who was at that point serving as an intermediary:138 “I cannot help but express to you my satisfaction regarding the forms that you have adopted”, he wrote. “While the other Austrian dispensations often necessitate a great deal of informational back and forth, you accomplish everything in one fell swoop. But I am now working on introducing these forms everywhere.”139 In Salzburg, in any case, his efforts were to be unsuccessful. The consistory there continued doing without preprinted materials in their communications with Rome. Furthermore, Salzburg sent both standardised and exceptional letters of recommendation in the supplicants’ favour, also formulated in Latin, to the imperial-royal agent in Rome simultaneously with the letters that it sent to the pope. Some of these were sent together with correspondence that addressed financial issues associated with the coverage of dispensation fees and contained information regarding account balances and the transfer of funds.140
Vinzenz Gasser’s form for dispensation requests that were to be forwarded to Rome
Source: diöab, Konsistorialakten 1861, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 51.
The dispensation records in Brixen, in contrast to those in Salzburg, contain no documents of this sort. It proved possible to find part of this correspondence in separate holdings of the Diocesan Archive – namely those containing the responses from Rome, which refer to endorsements of dispensation requests alongside various other topics.141 Until the nineteenth century, Brixen had its own Italian secretary, who maintained regular written correspondence with Rome.142 Afterwards Consistorial Councillor and future Consistorial Chancellor Georg Prünster and his successor Kaspar Rauter wrote these letters, which they addressed to the imperial-royal agency in Rome as the intermediary and continued to formulate in Italian.143
Up to 1850, the so-called dispensation briefs or dispensation mandates received by Brixen initially had to be sent to Innsbruck for provincial government confirmation. In the process, the provincial government also granted its own dispensation that lifted the corresponding “civil marriage impediment”.144 This dispensation brief and/or its contents passed through several offices in the hierarchically graduated postal and communication channels, in urgent cases even being transmitted as a telegram: from Rome to the consistory and on to the deanery – with the vicariate general as an additional intermediate station in Vorarlberg – and from the deanery to the competent parish. At the same time, the fee to cover “agency costs”, which had been deposited with the deanery at the beginning of the matrimonial examination, had to be sent to Brixen, from where it was forwarded to Rome. Beginning in 1854, Rome required the production of a verification protocol involving both matrimonial examination witnesses and the bridal couple before the dispensation was handed over. Two questions were central here: whether the previously indicated reasons for dispensation still obtained, and whether “sins of the flesh” had indeed not been committed since submission of the application. If the couple had “sinned” in this regard, a renewed letter to Rome – addressed to the Apostolic Penitentiary – was required for the purpose of the dispensation’s “sanation”. This incurred an additional – albeit small – fee and entailed even more time lost prior to the wedding.
Occasionally, facts withheld during the verification process would only reach the parish priest’s ears after quite some time – typically by way of confession. The cousins Josef and Maria Erath from Au in the Bregenz Forest had received their requested dispensation and married in 1863.145 After 21 years, it came to light that the dispensation mandate and hence the marriage were invalid, since the couple had engaged in sexual contact between the protocolling of the matrimonial examination and its verification. “This offence”, as it was termed in the initial report referring to the pseudonymous Camillus and Afra that was sent to the consistory, had been “withheld from the verification protocol”. The consistory applied for an after-the-fact sanatio in Rome.146 Cases such as this one make clear how the arm of the Church, bolstered by the machinery of conscience, could indeed be very long.
The moralising and intensified monitoring of premarital sexuality as manifested by the introduction of the verification process brought with it more adamant insistence on humility, contrition and prostration that was expressed through the assignment of “penance” in connection with the aforementioned “sanation”. Moreover, from now on those couples who had admitted to a sexual relationship or for whom such could be assumed due to the bride’s pregnancy or the presence of children had to go through multiple months of probation in the run-up to a dispensation request. During such a period, they had to lead morally unassailable lives as proof of their willingness to mend their ways. Only then would the diocesan consistory initiate the decisive steps in the dispensation-requesting process. It is fair to assume a relatively high degree of moral pressure during the second half of the nineteenth century, predominantly in the smaller parishes.
The Church and its clergy were not the only ones who monitored and policed people’s lifestyles and moral conduct, with mayors, municipal committee members and other “honourable men” making their own contributions. Indeed, they had already been passing judgment on couples applying for dispensations as those who were charged with deciding on the issuance of political marriage consent, which tied marriageability to economic resources. This was now joined by their involvement in the moralising offensive that got underway beginning in the mid-1850s. Men of the cloth requested their opinions on the “decency” of certain dispensation supplicants, and clerics also assigned neighbours to monitor supplicant couples who had been given periods of probation, which could last half a year or, in extreme cases, even an entire year. While completing such a period, the men and women under observation were to avoid encountering each other whenever possible and – above all at night – scrupulously avoid being beneath the same roof. Due to the diversity of mutual support arrangements, dependencies and obligations between kin, and particularly in the context of difficult familial situations, this was not always manageable with ease.
The request submitted by the widower Franz Schnetzer from Rankweil in the Deanery of Feldkirch and his sister-in-law Regina Henni, who had taken care of his three children and the household since Schnetzer’s wife had fallen ill, was rejected by the consistory in Brixen in October 1858. The reasons given were their “notoriously licentious interactions”, the fact that they had “not yet separated or submitted to a test of true penance and reform” and a lack of canonical reasons for dispensation. Regina Henni was pregnant by her prospective groom, and their child was born in December 1858. Following the rejection of their dispensation request, she had been forced to leave the house of her brother-in-law – which was actually also her house that she had inherited together with her sister, so that she not only possessed rights of residency but also rights of ownership to it. Almost a year later, in September 1859, the parish priest reported that he had not neglected to “make strict and diligent enquiries as to whether the dispensation supplicants have, in the interim, striven to adhere to the rules of behaviour imposed upon them”. Since he could confirm that they had, he renewed their dispensation request. As Franz Schnetzer, who was a bricklayer, frequently worked away from home, Regina Henni had occasionally returned to the house – where she ultimately remained during the final six weeks prior to the arrival of their dispensation, even though her brother-in-law and groom was also spending his nights there. However, they successfully claimed that they had “mended their ways”. In the verification protocol, all those who were questioned affirmed that they had not repeated their sins. They received their dispensation in early 1860.147
During the nineteenth century, church and state bodies would sometimes interfere massively in the domestic sphere and family matters.148 It is hence by no means possible to assume a linear decrease in the significance and strength of the Church’s exercise of regulatory power. In cases of publicly known “incest” (Blutschande), the prescribed “penance programme” included an obligation for the bride and groom to “humbly beg forgiveness” for the “scandal” they had caused in the community in the presence of the witnesses to their matrimonial examination. It was probably not by chance that the onset of this moralising policy coincided with the declaration of the Immaculate Conception as dogma in 1854.149
Nineteenth-century dispensation proceedings always took multiple months following initial contact with the prince-episcopal consistory in Brixen, with two-and-a-half months being the minimum. But depending on the momentarily valid maxims of dispensation policy and weighting of the different degrees of affinity and consanguinity, the path to a dispensation could also last more than a year – and, in certain situations, even longer. Overly long waits were sometimes owed to external circumstances. If an important piece of writing had got lost on the way to its addressee, it could take some time for the matter to be cleared up. Misunderstandings arose frequently. A typical situation was for Brixen to await notification that the required sum of money for the dispensation fees had been deposited with the deanery before sending its letter to Rome while the competent dean had overlooked the fact that his explicit confirmation of such was required for further processing.
A pope’s death and the consequent vacancy of his office also tended to cause considerable delays in the processing of dispensation requests. Following the death of Gregory XVI on 1 June 1846, the first directive to be handed down by Brixen expressed the ordinariate’s “great desire” that supplicants with active dispensation cases be convinced to give up.150 However, this appeal by the consistory met with little success. Dispensation proceedings in Rome indeed came to a standstill for a certain time, since “official duties” of this sort remained undischarged pending election of the new pope.151 In September 1846, when Pope Pius IX took office, the diocese resent all open requests to Rome – but the granting of dispensations was once again delayed. Johann Schiffer and his sister-in-law Maria Rienzler had received permission to take their matrimonial examination in September 1845, and their request was forwarded to Rome in late February of 1846. Just shy of one year later, on 20 January 1847, Brixen received a letter signed by the groom requesting that “his business” continue to go forward, since it had “gone unresolved forever and a day”.152 For requests submitted in 1846, proceedings generally lasted over a year – with even two years sometimes passing before the requested dispensation arrived from Rome.
It was true that in exceptional circumstances, just like in urgent cases, bishops were authorised to grant dispensations on their own authority in the close degrees – but Brixen’s bishops made use of this option only very sparingly. Prince-Bishop Bernhard Galura, in office from 1829 to 1856, granted five dispensations in close degrees during each of the two decades between 1830 and 1850. The 1850s, however, saw such dispensations granted neither under his auspices nor under those of his successor. Exceptional circumstances occurred especially during 1848 and 1849 due to the First Italian War of Independence. The various rebellions and battles led to temporary interruptions of communication with Rome, with answers unable to get through by regular mail. The pope had then fled Rome in 1849 – and amidst this situation, Brixen’s prince-bishop indeed used his authorisation to dispense. He granted four of the five 1840s dispensations in 1848.153 Other requests, however, he rejected.154
During this period, the vicar general in Feldkirch sought to move the prince- bishop to utilise this competency in a more assertive manner by explicitly presenting a number of supplications as being well suited to being handled in this way.155 In a letter accompanying two simultaneously submitted requests, for example, he applied for dispensations for both couples “from the impediments preventing their marriage auctoritate ordinaria” and, a few lines below, opined that the bishop was unquestionably authorised to do so “in these times and in light of such piteous circumstances as affect the supplicants”.156 Here, it was not only the times that were exceptional but also the cases themselves: the first request spoke of “concubinage”. This couple had already produced six children together and were threatening to remove themselves to an “entirely Calvinist” community in Grisons in neighbouring Switzerland instead of, as the letter criticised, showing humility. The other couple had also already produced several children together. The bride and groom were related in the first degree of affinity as well as in the second degree of consanguinity – meaning that they were brother and sister-in-law as well as cousins – and had already submitted a dispensation request in 1844 that had been rejected. This couple also threatened to emigrate. In view of this situation, the bishop declared himself incapable of dispensing – not least in consideration of the fact that these requests would have had little chance of success in Rome. The vicar general, for his part, appears to have been motivated by a desire to bring these two families back into good order and possibly sought to take advantage of an exceptional situation. He therefore wrote a new letter, once again encouraging the prince-bishop to dispense on his own in these cases – and this time, he was indeed successful.
In dispensation matters, the nunciature in Vienna had long served as a tried and true alternative to the papal authorities in Rome. It first reappears as a point of contact during 1849 and 1850. Repeated and urgent “recourse to Rome” concerning several dispensation requests had gone unanswered. In reaction to this, “Ordinarius Huber” – who had been chosen to represent the prince-bishop at the meeting of the Episcopal Conference in Vienna in June 1849 – was charged with bringing up these dispensation cases there. Afterwards, the prince-bishop felt vindicated in his careful approach to the wielding of his dispensatory authority: not a single bishop there had been of the opinion that he had the right to dispense on his own in the cases in question. The papal nuncio also rejected this idea.157 The ordinariate therefore, in December 1849, requested the nunciature’s “gracious intermediation”, since the prince-bishop – contrary to his own consistory’s recommendation – did not dare dispense on his own. But the nunciature – in stark contrast to its swift handling of yore – took its time with a response.158 It eventually stated that it would take supportive action in Rome only once the pope had returned there. For the two requests that were open at the time, it would be another half-year and three quarters of a year, respectively, before the dispensations finally arrived.159
The following years saw eight requests granted by the nunciature. These concerned cases in which the bride was pregnant,160 pregnancy was suspected,161 the bridal couple already had children together,162 and/or the couple’s financial situation seemed quite precarious.163 In 1856, however, this practice came to an end – concurrent with the tenure of the Apostolic Nuncio Michele Viale Prelà in Vienna164 and that of Prince-Bishop Bernhard Galura in Brixen. As it had been during other periods, the advantages of having a dispensation granted by the prince-bishop or the nunciature during the nineteenth century stemmed from the fact that less bureaucracy was involved. Dispensations granted by the nunciature, compared with those from Rome, tended to arrive far more quickly. What is more, there were no dispensation fees – which, especially in the first degree of affinity, were typically quite high. Couples only had to compensate the consistory in Brixen for stamp duties and postage and make a charitable donation of several gulden to the nunciature for the support of missionary efforts.
5 Canonical Reasons for Dispensation: Logics of Status and Gender
A prerequisite for a dispensation to be granted was the presence of officially recognised “canonical reasons”. These underpinned the legitimacy of dispensation-granting and the validity of a granted dispensation along with the marriage concluded as a result. The individual canonical reasons for dispensation differed in their importance. As a general rule: the closer the degree of consanguinity or affinity, the weightier the applicable reasons had to be. Canonical reasons were divided into two groups, encompassing “honourable” and “dishonourable” reasons. Just what exactly was deemed worthy of recognition as a canonical reason for dispensation varied, at least at the level of nuance, over the centuries as well as between the various theological handbooks that circulated during the nineteenth century. During the High Middle Ages, the decretalists put forth competing opinions as to whether dispensation should be done for the good of the Church or “pro persona”, with some viewing the well-being of the individual as synonymous with the well-being of the Church while others insisted on direct benefit to the common good, which was later to be stipulated by the Decretum Tametsi adopted at the Council of Trent.165 The tension between personal and public implications was also to influence dispensation practice of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
Six reasons specified as early as the twelfth century by Gratian served as reference for how the canonical reasons for dispensation were configured particularly by the canonists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.166 Typical reasons for dispensation during the early modern period included narrowness of place (angustia loci), super-adult age (aetas superadulta sponsae), lack of a proper dowry (deficientia aut incompetentia dotis), conflict over property or wealth (lites de bonis), advantage of peace (bonum pacis), copula and pregnancy (copula et praegnantia), evil repute of the woman (infamia mulieris), revalidation of an invalid marriage (revalidatio matrimonii), removal of scandals (remotio gravium scandalorum) and excellence of merits (excellentia meritorium).167 On 9 May 1877, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith168 issued instructions on marriage dispensation requests that included a list of 16 reasons for dispensation.169 The new additions above and beyond the aforementioned reasons were poverty of the widow (point 5), excessive familiarity (point 7), danger of an interconfessional marriage (point 11), danger of incestuous concubinage (point 12), danger of a civil marriage (point 13) and the cessation of notorious concubinage (point 15). The Brixner Diözesan-Blatt published these in 1878170 along with a comment to the effect that this instruction was not intended to represent a “complete enumeration” of all canonical reasons for dispensation, and that readers should refer to tried-and-true authors “for the purpose of precise orientation”.171 1901 saw the Apostolic Datary issue an even more detailed list that had been expanded to encompass a full 28 reasons.172
Among the honourable reasons commonly considered in dispensation practice were the “narrowness of place”, which referred to the bride’s birthplace or place of residence; super-adult age of the bride at and above age 24; and lack of a proper dowry. These three reasons are encountered primarily in requests in the more distant degrees and typically did suffice in order to receive such a dispensation. In the close degrees, they carried less weight but were still taken into account. Another circumstance recognised as an honourable reason for dispensation was that of poverty of the widow burdened with children (pro oratrice filiis gravata). Honourable were also the danger of an interconfessional marriage and the related danger of “being led away” from one’s own faith (periculum seductionis); the advantage of peace (bonum pacis); and the protection of property and wealth. It was the norm, however, for this final reason to be reserved for the nobility and “families distinguished by exceptional service” (conservatio bonorum in eadem illustri familia). Moreover, “excellence of merits”, defined as major service rendered to the Church, was itself an honourable reason for dispensation.173
Typically, endowments that benefited the Church were recognised as service, as were financial and/or logistical support for the restoration and repair of church buildings. The weight accorded to this reason in dispensation in practice makes dispensation logic’s inherent social hierarchisation of supplicants all the clearer. Peter Zangerl from Nauders in the Deanery of Mals was the only person in all of the examined dispensation records to successfully thwart this logic: he sought to wed his sister-in-law Theres Zirnföld, a widow who lived on a “lonely, remote mountain”. His initial request, which the records show to have been submitted in 1855, was rejected. However, the two chose to live together in spite of this and conceived two children. A later report indicates that the district office then received an August 1856 request that the couple, who were living “in open concubinage”, be separated. The autumn of 1858 witnessed their next attempt – initiated via the district office in Nauders – to obtain a dispensation. Its refusal, they argued, would serve to punish “only the innocent children” and the community. The district office held Zangerl to be a “somewhat rough-hewn but by no means disreputable person”. The mayor (Ortsvorsteher) of Nauders, however, who was subsequently asked to provide his assessment in December 1858, stated that Zangerl led a “disorderly and dissolute life” as one who “gives himself over to drink and excess”, haunting various inns for days on end and wasting both “money and time”. His assessment of Theres Zirnfeld was no more flattering: her neighbours, he wrote, described her as “a careless person, improvident and unclean”. With recommendations like these, this couple’s prospects were anything but good. The letter from the district office had indicated that Peter Zangerl had “moved abroad pending a decision on this request”. Early 1861 saw things begin moving toward resolution. In the interim, the two had complied with the obligations placed upon them to separate and better themselves. Peter Zangerl was “away at work” in the neighbouring Engadin and was also able to present a “reference from a local priest” in the Pinzgau region, where he had most recently spent seven months working as a day labourer. He had arrived there – and this was the decisive point – from Italy. In Italy, he had performed “volunteer” service as a “soldier in the papal military” in the fight against the Italian unification movement before ultimately being taken captive near Pescara. He believed, as was then duly noted in the protocol of his matrimonial examination, that he had “thereby been of service to the Church” and was “hence now in a position to permit himself to hope for the Church’s mercy”. The two ultimately received their dispensation in the summer of 1861.174
Dishonourable reasons for dispensation included an endangered reputation as well as pregnancy of the bride and the associated “public scandal”, a marriage invalidly concluded in ignorance of a marriage impediment and the danger of “defection” from the true faith.175 Moreover, in cases deserving of special mercy but lacking sufficient officially recognised reasons for dispensation, it was also possible to indicate the existence of special circumstances. The reasons for dispensation were an altogether complex body of material, since they needed to be employed with an eye to the degrees of kinship in play as well as to the categories according to which dispensation fees were calculated – especially in the close degrees. These fees were calculated according to supplicants’ social situations: the forma pauperum applied to everyone who could not be considered wealthy and lived from their own labours, the forma communi was for wealthier couples and the forma nobelium applied to members of the nobility.176 This meant that fees could vary within one and the same degree of kinship depending on couples’ financial situations and moral aspects of the circumstances portrayed.
In processing requests, local parish priests and deans frequently interpreted canonical reasons for dispensation rather freely: they would employ angustia loci as a dispensation reason for men or they would list the preservation of property or inheritance as a reason for dispensation-seekers from peasant or artisanal and trade circles. In one instance, the dean of Zams even attempted to employ the age of the groom – who was 39 years old – in the matrimonial examination in the sense of aetas superadulta.177 Repeatedly the consistory had to point out that the reason of advanced age only applied to unmarried prospective brides and could not be taken into account in the case of widows. The overall body of correspondence contains no comments to the effect that exceeding age 24, which was the usual age of marriage as defined by Rome, was in fact fairly irrelevant when it came to women from the Diocese of Brixen. This was a Roman perspective that was applied to the entire Catholic world without accounting for differences between regions. Women in Tyrol and Vorarlberg, however, typically married for the first time between the ages of 28.6 (1828–1836) and 30.2 (1855–1863)178 – with the average tending to rise towards the end of the century. The dispensation records from Salzburg, on the other hand, contain isolated cases where the idea of dramatically dwindling chances of marriage past age 24 was downplayed. In one case, for example, the official charged with requests’ evaluation wrote that the supplicant was 28 years old and thus “certainly in aetate superadulta according to canon law, but in fact still at a good age at which the hope for another accommodation [synonymous with marriage, ML] need by no means be viewed as already dwindling”.179 This statement represents a rare counterpoint to the otherwise purely formalistic and pragmatic use of this reason.
Even though it was not, in principle, considered particularly weighty in close degrees of kinship, the reason of angustia loci is indeed present in the requests. 300 “hearths” served as a standard point of reference for determining whether the “place” was “narrow”, as can be seen in the notes and comments written in the margins of the dispensation requests from Brixen. Angustia loci applied wherever the number of houses in a community was lower. The consistory put some effort into formalising this criterion to the greatest possible extent, conducting a targeted survey in order to have a basis for decision-making.180 Even so, “narrowness” remained a flexible term and evidently represented an invitation to attempt definitional slights of hand – such as by counting only the houses in a certain hamlet or treating parish and municipality as interchangeable, depending on which of the two was smaller.181 The dean of Bregenz attempted a different variant by indicating that narrowness of place did not apply to Bregenz, where the widow in question had already been living for 14 years, but to her home village of Hard – “a place that comes nowhere close to numbering 300 hearths”.182
As illustrated by this reason’s description, numerous canonical reasons for dispensation were gender-oriented in that they applied exclusively to women. The intent was to protect women’s decency and morals: according to church logic, women were supposed to be able to find their purpose and sustenance in marriage if at all possible.183 This foundational principle most certainly applied to that most inflationary of all reasons for dispensation, angustia loci: if a parish was so small that a woman was unable to find a suitable husband, she was to be permitted to marry a kinsman in order to avoid remaining single. It was also fundamentally to be assumed that the circumstances of “super-adult” age and/or an absent or very low dowry worsened a woman’s chances of being able to marry, which could also be compensated for by the option of marrying a kinsman. These reasons for dispensation exhibit a second significant characteristic of dispensation logic: where insufficient selection or poor chances were at issue, the point was not that absolutely no marriageable man but that no suitable man could be found – with “suitable” being defined according to the socio-economic criteria of a marriage befitting one’s social position. In the context of angustia loci, therefore, this logic entails that purely arithmetical calculations regarding potentially available husbands who were related neither by blood or by marriage simply fall short.184 From the perspective of the Church, the risk of losing one’s social status was more important than the prohibition of kin marriage – and this was a regulatory and socio-political function of dispensation practice.
The focus of the reasons for dispensation, oriented as they were toward specific qualities and roles attributed to women, frequently conflicted with the concrete life situations of men – many of whom did, in actual fact, need help and support. This was a context in which institutional and everyday logics drifted impossibly far apart. In many cases, for example, a widower with small children and only a meagre basis for existence would apply for a dispensation because he was unable to pay for household help and could feel lucky if a blood or affinal relative of his were willing to marry him under such difficult circumstances. This configuration was typical, even if the details varied. Widowers were also far more strongly represented in the context of dispensations than were widows: in the Diocese of Brixen, the period from 1831 to 1864 featured three times as many, with 42 per cent of the male supplicants being widowers while only 14 per cent of the female supplicants were widows.185
However, there was no reason for dispensation intended specifically for widowers.186 At best, a widower could express concern for the well-being of his children (bonum prolis), but this did not count for all that much. There were no equivalents to the other reasons for dispensation that were available to widows. The same went for unmarried men, for whom the official catalogue of reasons for dispensation included none that could have been applied in difficult life situations. During phases when dispensation practice was strict, requests that argued mainly from the perspective of the men could be that much more easily rejected due to a lack of canonical reasons for dispensation. Therefore, a certain amount of abstraction was required in cases where the clerics at the consistory did, in fact, desire to support such a dispensation request. The letters sent to Rome occasionally read as if they had nothing to do with the circumstances that the witnesses and the bridal couple had actually portrayed.
Joseph Singer, an unmarried 45-year-old sexton from Grammais in the Deanery of Imst, had found himself in an unfortunate situation: For “his householding”, he needed a “tidy person” – not least because he was responsible for the “church laundry” and the “care of the church linens”. He had previously been assisted by two older, likewise-unmarried sisters who had since become unable to continue helping him on account of ill health. Singer also bore responsibility for the care of his mentally impaired brother, who was incapable of working and likewise lived in his household. He could not rely on his two other sisters. One of them had married into a rather sizeable farm and was herself now in need of help with her large brood of small children. The other had already been serving for many years as the housekeeper of a curate, a “good job” that she would hardly be willing to give up for his sake. He was also unable to afford a maidservant. So, if he could not marry his cousin Maria Anna Wechner, who seemed to him to be the only suitable woman in the community, he would perhaps be forced to sell the house that he had inherited from his parents. This was the scenario portrayed in the letter of supplication, which was signed by both marital hopefuls. About the prospective bride, however, one hears no more than that she fulfilled the specified expectations and requirements.187
It would probably have been difficult to simply brush off this request by a sexton who, like his father, had performed this “low-paying” job “loyally and earnestly, with tireless industriousness”. But what reasons for dispensation could be communicated to Rome? Reading the letter addressed “ad Sedem Apostolicam”, we will hardly recognise the original story: the bride, according to this letter, lacked a sufficient dowry, she had already exceeded her twenty-fourth year, and the narrow confines of the community entailed that there was no selection of men “paris conditionis” – of the same social status – whom she might marry who were related with her neither by blood nor by affinity. Furthermore, there existed “affectio” between the supplicants, who had also already shared a long and dangerous acquaintance. If this dispensation were denied and the marriage prevented from going forward, the letter argues, the bride would surely have to remain unmarried and lose her reputation – “certe innupta et diffamata remanere deberet” – which could touch off a considerable scandal. The passage with the words “innupta” and “diffamata” adhered to Catholic marriage logic, centred as it was on women, and the dispensation context often saw it employed in a manner that was similarly disconnected from the supplicants’ actual testimony. In this document, not a word was wasted on the altogether rather grim situation of the groom, whose household included three family members who were in need of care. The motivation behind this marriage project that had at first been formulated primarily from his perspective finds no portrayal whatsoever in this letter to Rome. In this case, the translation-like act that was performed stands out quite drastically – as does the discrepancy between the situation portrayed at the diocesan level and the official dispensation request that was addressed to the Apostolic Datary in Rome. Fundamentally, albeit in most cases more moderately, this mode of translation can be viewed as paradigmatic of communication with Rome.
As a rule, it was advisable to portray supplicants’ life circumstances in a way that was oriented as much as possible toward the canonical reasons – an orientation that prestructured the content of both the letters of supplication and the accompanying letters as well as the reports and matrimonial examinations. But as the material examined here shows, it by no means always stopped at that. André Burguière, who has examined eighteenth-century French sources, ascertains a predominantly stereotypical mode of argumentation that was closely tied to the predetermined official canonical reasons. In contrast to the records from Brixen, these hardly make it possible to go beyond quantitative enumeration of the aspects put forth to offer qualitative evaluations that would allow broader inferences.188 The conclusion drawn by Marion Trévisi is similar,189 and the fact that formulaically distilled reasons for dispensation can be viewed as being of only limited significance even in quantitative analyses is exemplified by the aforementioned dispensation request of Joseph Singer and Anna Maria Wechner.
It is precisely these detailed justifications and situational portrayals that make the material from Brixen especially valuable. At the same time, however, we must bear in mind that the relevant text types and passages represent communication of a strategic character. The arguments put forward are oriented toward the expectations of their addressees. The meaning of that which is communicated can therefore only be understood before the backdrop of the logics of those institutions for which the portrayals were intended – which is to say that the content thus conveyed is inextricably linked with the “how” of communication as guided by the institutionally established reasons for dispensation. What was being asked for was mercy – and therefore, these were supplications of a specific type that always signalled “unequal power relations”.190
6 Public and Secret, ‘Worthy’ and ‘Unworthy’
The criterion of publicity represented a factor that guided action within dispensation practice. One context in which it became relevant was when “public scandal” was a concern, or when cases involved “acquaintances” between women and men related closely by blood or by marriage that were deemed too familiar by those in their social environments. The opposite criterion, that of secrecy, also had its effect. A marriage rendered invalid by an overlooked marriage impediment that consequently had to be revalidated was, as previously mentioned, a matter that was to be kept as secret as possible. Under certain circumstances, the existence of a pregnancy not yet known to the community could significantly speed the dispensation-granting procedure. Marriage impediments were therefore classified according to this distinction between public and secret. Secret marriage impediments fell within the purview not of the Datary,191 but of the Penitentiary. One of the responsibilities of this ecclesiastical court of law, which was equipped with extensive authorities to dispense, was for the realm of conscience – pro foro interno.192
Three types of marriage impediment could be lifted only by means of secret dispensations, namely dispensations ex voto castitatis, inhonestis and ex copula illicita. The first type lifted a vow of chastity to allow a planned marriage to go forward and distinguished between a temporary vow, for which a bishop could grant dispensations, and a vow taken for life, for which only a papal dispensation would suffice. A dispensation inhonestis became necessary when a promise of marriage not been known publicly had been dissolved and the groom or bride instead sought to marry a first-degree relative of the formerly intended bride or groom. A dispensation ex copula illicita became necessary if a man or a woman had engaged in premarital sexual contact with a close relative of the future bride or groom that had remained concealed from public knowledge.
Matters that were secret or thought to be secret were to be dealt with in a discreet way, without causing a sensation, in order that they remain so. However, a civil ordinance of 1778 attempted to decouple such dispensations from Rome by placing the responsibility for obtaining this type of dispensation solely in the hands of the ordinariates,193 an attempt that was reinforced by an April 1783 court decree specifically regarding secret dispensations ex copula illicita.194 A July 1783 ordinance walked back this move by declaring that for secret dispensations, the way to Rome remained open: regarding impedimenta occulta, the “reverend ordinaries” were free to turn to the Roman Penitentiary on behalf of the supplicant parties with no need for approval by the secular power.195 Requests for dispensations in occultis differed primarily in a formal sense. They had to be anonymised, to which end a specific repertoire of names was employed. Titus and Livia from Außervillgraten in East Tyrol, for example, applied for a secret dispensation. The groom admitted “that he is related in the first degree of affinity with the widowed bride Livia due to illicit relations, which is entirely unknown, however, and which he believes shall forever remain unknown”.196 It was the norm that requests in this category had be formulated in Latin – a requirement that members of the clergy did not always uphold, however, such as in the example cited here.197
The question of whether a secret marriage impediment might be present was included in the matrimonial examination as well as in the pre-wedding religious examination (Brautexamen) that had to be taken prior to every marriage. The protocols do not clearly indicate its exact formulation. The answers allow for the conclusion that in some cases secret marriage impediments were probably gone through individually. Nonetheless, it did happen that a secret marriage impediment was only realised or became known after the wedding. One woman, dubbed Tranquillina in her request and already married to Pubblio for several weeks, had slept with his brothers some time prior but refrained from admitting this in the pre-wedding religious examination. She later explained that she had been sure this “sin” would not affect her nuptials, since it had occurred long before.198
A couple’s prospects for receiving the mercy of a dispensation not only depended on the presence of canonical reasons but also on the overall impression that they made. In the official church view, only “worthy” bridal couples – people who were known to have been living Christian lives that were beyond reproach with respect to morality and decency – were fundamentally eligible for dispensations. But in practice, at least until the mid-1850s, it was relatively promising – albeit not without risk – if a couple had engaged in all-too-familiar relations, if they had engaged in copula incestuosa or if a pregnancy was suspected or actually underway. This gave rise to a certain pressure, felt above all by the local clergy and less so by the higher ranking clerics of the consistory, to create an ‘orderly’ situation. It was fundamentally in the Church’s interest to ‘repair’ moral transgressions to the greatest possible extent, and marriage was an ideal way to do so. Prospective couples could not count on this, however. Especially during the 1830s and 1840s, the deans of the Diocese of Brixen frequently addressed this ambivalence that was structurally inherent in dispensation practice.199 Since the most efficient way of avoiding “public scandal” was via marriage, out-of-wedlock pregnancy was in fact quite frequently beneficial to a dispensation request. This could put members of the clergy in an awkward position, however, particularly when forced to refuse requests by couples of sterling reputation. When such couples pointed to dispensations that they knew had been granted under entirely different moral circumstances, clerics found it difficult to argue their positions since, strictly speaking, it was only couples who had lived lives beyond reproach who were worthy of receiving dispensations.
As a phase of moralisation began setting in around the mid-1850s, attention shifted to the period prior to the initiation of dispensation proceedings. An 1860 ecclesiastical ordinance required local priests as well as deans to turn away dispensation supplicants when the prospective bride was pregnant until both exhibited clear signs of regret and atonement. Moreover, it soon became typical for diocesan consistories to refrain from dealing with dispensation requests in cases where pregnancy was involved until childbirth had taken place. With this, marriage had been stripped of a function that had been important for centuries – that of avoiding public ‘disgrace’. As previously mentioned, a several-month probationary period was required during which the couple had to avoid all contact and, if possible, all encounters. A ‘penitential programme’ was also imposed upon them in accordance with the seriousness and frequency of their “sins of the flesh”. Such programmes entailed regular confession, saying the rosary on one’s knees, diligent church attendance on Sundays and holidays, fasting, devotions at the stations of the cross and sometimes even religious instruction by the priest. If a couple had already produced children together at the point in time when they submitted their request, the requirements of recognisable improvement and compensation for the “scandal” caused were even more extensive and frequently near-impossible to fulfil. It seems as if this more severe practice was intended to make examples of people in order to escape the ambivalence and double-tracking associated with the dispensation of ‘unworthy’ couples. And indeed, it was a certainty in small parishes that the required penance and atonement would not go unnoticed, due not least to the involvement of neighbours as monitors and the summoning of witnesses.
In Salzburg’s dispensation records, the tone of the language used is far less moralising – even during the period that began in the mid-1850s. The ‘penitential programmes’ here were more moderate. They typically mandated going to confession, with anything additional left up to the discretion of the competent priest. The couple’s “expiation under oath” took place not as a public act before witnesses but rather in written form. Cases in which an already granted dispensation’s “sanation” was mandated due to sexual contact during the intervening period are not documented in the examined material. However, the archepiscopal consistory in Salzburg – though consistently more conciliatory in how it dealt with related couples – allowed no room for manoeuvre when the prospective bride was pregnant, not even in the nineteenth century’s first half. Whenever a letter from a priest or a couple’s letter of supplication mentioned pregnancy or “sinful relations” as a reason for dispensation, the associated request had no prospects of receiving a positive answer. The recognition of this type of justification was refused not just on a case-by-case basis but as a matter of principle. There was no willingness to allow ambivalences to arise. Clear words to this effect can be found in the reaction to a July 1830 request where the bride was four months pregnant: in his report, the priest listed “a few more detailed circumstances that he characterises as reasons for dispensation, but these reasons are owed solely to the supplicant’s own transgression, and I do not think that decency would be served if close kin needed merely to sin with each other in order to immediately have hope of a dispensation’s being granted”.200
The Church even viewed the exchange of information between dispensation supplicants as morally ‘perilous’. With the practice of verification protocols that was instituted beginning in the second half of the 1850s, the sworn statement that “incestuous sin” had not been committed with the intent of more easily procuring a dispensation – which was typically required of all supplicant couples – was augmented by a further passage: they had to swear, under pain of being denied any further dispensation that they might seek in the future they would never “commit such a sin” and additionally swear to never “falsely instruct others” to the effect that a dispensation might be more easily received via this route. They also had to swear that they would refrain from “providing assistance” to others regarding matters of dispensation “in the form of advice or in any other way”. But despite all efforts, the opinion that prior sexual relations could positively influence the response to a dispensation request persisted stubbornly among the general public, even giving rise to the occasional case where a couple was said to have ‘confessed’ to sins that had not actually occurred.
Regarding Severin Hämmerle of Lustenau, a local priest reported the following in June 1863: “He was persuaded to make this false claim by somebody who had told him that dispensations are granted reliably and without delay in cases of sins of the flesh.” Upon hearing this, the Bishop of Brixen ordered an investigation that was led by the vicariate council with Canon Fidel Häusle as its commissioner. This investigation pinpointed four men, including the father of the bride, as the originators of this rumour.201 One of the four referred to a Lustenau dispensation case of 1854, nearly ten years prior, in which the bride had been pregnant and the couple had received a dispensation.202 The establishment of an investigative commission makes clear that the Church spared no expense during this period in its effort to combat an ambiguity that it had itself long upheld.
…
The main purpose of this chapter has been to outline the wholly altered premises from which the nineteenth century began in the wake of the late eighteenth century’s conflicts: following secularisation of the Prince-Bishoprics of Brixen, Salzburg and Trento plus the reorganisation of the dioceses, and above all in a post-Josephine era in which little remained of the ambitious programme to reform the practice of dispensation-granting. In the Austrian dioceses, the centralisation of dispensation-related proceedings and the obligatory placetum regium persisted. In other respects, however, procedures were anything but homogeneous. The character and extent of the civil authorities’ involvement in dispensation-granting varied greatly from diocese to diocese. In Brixen, they played a role that was fairly secondary and for the most part merely formal, while their presence was far greater in Salzburg, and in Trento, all indications point to their having functioned as the central protagonists. In the Swiss diocese of Chur, on the other hand, procedures were organised in an entirely different way. A similar degree of diversity is evident in the way in which dispensation-specific documentation is formulated and archived – which, in turn, entails commensurate differences in terms of such documentation’s usefulness as the basis for systematic analysis. The dispensation requests to be found in the Diocese of Brixen proved best suited to this purpose. These were recorded in a database that came to encompass nearly 2,150 cases, with detailed information being entered for slightly less than 1,000 from the 1831–1864 period. This basic source material was supplemented by sampling the material from the other three dioceses. Subsequent analysis indicated considerable divergences – not only in the organisation of procedures but also in how prospective couples and their requests were dealt with.
Further sections of this chapter have dealt with fundamental problem areas and logics of dispensation practice. In order to ascertain kinship and prohibited degrees of kinship, local knowledge proved essential. But some marriage impediments were overlooked even so, necessitating the revalidation of marriages that would have required dispensation but had already been concluded without it; such cases were to be prevented wherever possible. For this reason, clerics were subject to quite some pressure in their research on family relationships. It repeatedly became apparent that kin marriages were topics of public discourse, such as around the table at inns. It was in villages that the reactions to marriage projects in close degrees of consanguinity and affinity seem to have been especially diverse, ranging from perception as something normal to the most extreme scandalisation. We certainly cannot assume general acceptance: each individual case needs to be viewed as part of a specific local and social context.
Fundamentally, as few dispensations as possible were to be granted to couples where close degrees of kinship were in play. Local clergyman were called upon to turn away such couples three times before permitting themselves to put pen to paper for the next step. Moreover, a final bastion of dispensation denial was that of proposed unions between stepmothers and stepsons or vice versa. During the 60 years between 1831 and 1890, the Diocese of Brixen logged but two requests of this type – in contrast to the region of Vienna and Lower Austria, where requests were received primarily by the provincial government. Were there really no such marriage projects in the Diocese of Brixen apart from these two, or was it typical for such plans to only be articulated orally followed by successful deterrence on the local or regional levels by the competent priests, hence leaving no traces in the dispensation records? To the impression regarding contemplated and planned marriage projects between close kin – an impression that, in principle, can never be considered complete – we must not only add those projects that were rejected but also those that never made it into the records.
A further – and not insignificant – obstacle that could stand in the way of couples who desired to marry was that of the economic prerequisites for marriage, whose fulfilment had to be confirmed by municipalities via so-called political marriage consent. Particularly in the German-speaking part of Tyrol municipalities were comparatively rigid when it came to its granting or denial – but marriage consent policy also figured into marriage dispensation practice in Vorarlberg in Salzburg. In the Diocese of Brixen, the presentation of marriage consent became mandatory in 1838 – in response to a specific case. The multi-level procedure along with numerous documents that had to be presented, information that had to be procured, associated costs and numerous rejections make it more than clear that Catholic dispensation-granting in the nineteenth century was by no means a merely formal act. An extremely compressed Latin version, reduced to those reasons for dispensation that were officially recognised by the Church and accompanied by letters of recommendation, ultimately reached Rome. In the best-case scenario, it took months – or, in politically turbulent times, even longer – for a dispensation brief to reach the supplicants’ diocese. The 1850s saw the introduction of a requirement to reconfirm the presence of the reasons for dispensation and the moral integrity of the bridal couple in the form of an additional verification protocol. If sexual transgression had occurred during the period since the matrimonial examination, so-called sanation became necessary.
The catalogue-like list of reasons for dispensation adhered to an ecclesiastical logic that was oriented toward social status and the ‘protection’ of women – in the sense that it was to be made possible for them to marry. For men, the range of available reasons proved limited by comparison – which was not without its effects on how the arguments in dispensation requests were structured. Some administrative procedures had to account for the distinction between public and secret. Another set of opposites, the distinction between ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ dispensation supplicants based on sexual morality, frequently led to ambivalences and a lack of good explanations, leaving above all local priests with the following dilemma: as a rule, they were interested in making it possible for extramarital relationships – especially those where the woman was pregnant or the couple already had children – to be put in ‘order’ and legitimised via marriage. Officially, however, only couples who led morally upstanding lives were considered worthy. This matter shows yet again how the dioceses took differing approaches and how such approaches grew more severe over time. Concerning the wave of moralisation that set in around the mid-1850s, its temporal coincidence with the dogma of the “Immaculate Conception” in 1854 makes a connection seem quite plausible – a finding that would also serve to refute any all-too-linear impression of increasing liberation from church control.
This did not always go smoothly: 1842 saw the Gubernium in Innsbruck file a report in Vienna concerning the marriage of Johann Leit[n]er and Anna Reiner, who were first-degree cousins, in Rome. Prior to that, the two had submitted “a request for dispensation”. “The prince-episcopal ordinariate” – the reference here was to the one in Trento – had declared in a note of August 1841 “that having made extensive, reliable enquiries, it considered the intended marriage too ill-advised in every respect and had also found no tenable canonical reasons to submit to the Holy See in order to obtain the necessary dispensation”. The Gubernium stated that it had therefore likewise been forced to refuse this request. Regarding this point, the letter refers to a court decree of 6 February 1823, No. 3.342. “But hardly had the two prospective spouses received this official decision than they resolved to realise their plan by travelling to Rome.” They had been married there on 7 December 1841. ÖSTA, AVA, Alter Kultus, K. 12, Ehesachen, Taufen, Akatholiken, NÖ, Böhmen, OÖ, Slzb, Stmk, Innerösterr., Vorderösterr., Tirol, 1842, no. 27.282. This couple also receives brief mention in Rainer, Die Diözese Brixen, pp. 158–160. They were, however, subject to the Diocese of Trento, as is indicated by the note mentioned in the aforegoing. On this see TLA Innsbruck, Jüngeres Gubernium, Hauptgruppe 64 Ehesachen, 1840–1842, Fasc. no. 323, 1841, no. 20.042. This record contains no additional information.
Paul M. Baumgarten, “Die Geschäftsführung an der Kurie”, in Die römische Kurie um 1900. Ausgewählte Aufsätze von Paul M. Baumgarten, ed. Christoph Weber (Cologne/Vienna, 1986), pp. 90–98, 90.
On this cf. Steeb/Strimitzer, “Österreichs diplomatische Vertretung”, p. 41.
VLA Bregenz, Landgericht Bezau Akten, box 35, X.48.
In July 1836, the suffragan bishop and future archbishop Hermann von Vicari, who held office in Freiburg, wrote to the consistory in Brixen that the “worldly state government” sought to move his ordinariate to grant dispensations in the first and second degrees of affinity and consanguinity on its own authority. The government’s arguments “repeatedly” pointed to “the example in the Austrian imperial state”, he wrote. He stated that he was familiar with the Josephine ordinances but believed that Emperor Francis had amended the “ordinances that do not conform to the church canons”. For this reason, his consistory was requesting “information on current practice in this matter”. In its reply, the consistory in Brixen reported “that these marriage dispensation cases are submitted to the Holy See” and that “the Austrian bishops are not required to grant such dispensations auctoritate ordinaria”. The decades-long power struggle between the Church and the Austrian state concerning this issue went unmentioned. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1836, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 7.
In 1830, the Church’s “registers of souls” put the number of people living in the Diocese of Brixen at 355,000, of whom around one third lived in Vorarlberg. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, this figure reached 400,000. Salzburg’s diocesan schematism indicated a total of 198,448 “souls” in 1831, and that number had grown to 234,723 by 1892. In the Diocese of Trento, 385,046 persons were counted in 1826 and 546,117 in 1892. The Catholic population of the Diocese of Chur numbered 130,000 in 1825. Cf. Catalogus personarum ecclesiasticarum Dioecesis Brixinensis ad initium anni MCCCCXXXI, vol. 22 (Brixen, 1831), p. 352. This source contains the Diocese of Brixen’s figures for 1829. The Tyrolean portion of the diocese was home to ca. 266,000 inhabitants, while 89,000 lived in Vorarlberg. For the end of the nineteenth century cf. for example Schematismus der Säcular- und Regular-Geistlichkeit der Diözese Brixen. 1892, vol. 76 (Brixen, 1892), p. 230. This source puts the population of the diocese’s Tyrolean areas at ca. 280,000, with ca. 117,000 said to reside in Vorarlberg; Personalstand der Säkular- und Regular-Geistlichkeit des Erzbisthums Salzburg nebst dem Lehrpersonal-Stande der deutschen Schulen. In dem Jahre 1831 (Salzburg, 1831), p. 75; Personalstand der Säcular- und Regulargeistlichkeit des Erzbisthums Salzburg auf das Jahr 1892 (Salzburg, 1892), p. 183; Clerus et Dioecesis Tridentina exeunte anno MDCCCXXVI (Trent, 1826), p. 205; Catalogus Cleri Dioecesis Tridentinae ineunte anno MDCCCXCII (Trent, 1892), pp. 233–234. In 1892, the Italian-speaking part of the Diocese of Trento was home to 417,174 people while the German-speaking part was home to 128,943. Albert Fischer, “Bistum Chur”, in Die Bistümer der deutschsprachigen Länder, ed. Gatz, pp. 156–174, 157.
The situation in the Diocese of Brixen seems to have been comparable with what Edith Saurer ascertained for the Venetian territory in the early nineteenth century. Cf. Saurer, “Formen von Verwandtschaft und Liebe”, pp. 263–267. What is more, both areas also exhibited a comparably high density of clergymen relative to the total population, a fact that has to be viewed not only with respect to their support of couples but also with respect to their ability to exercise control. Saurer writes: “In Venice, there were 132 inhabitants per Catholic clergyman in 1830, whereas the ratio for the entire region of Veneto was 249 to 1; in Vienna, it was 796 to 1, and in Lower Austria as a whole it was 1,197 to 1” (ibid., p. 262). Comparing Austrian territories, Tyrol/Vorarlberg had the highest density of clergymen followed by Salzburg. While the Empire’s western half had an average of 1.5 clergymen for every 1,000 inhabitants, Salzburg had 4.7 and Tyrol including Vorarlberg had 5.8. Cf. Norbert Ortmayr, “Späte Heirat. Ursachen und Folgen des alpinen Heiratsmusters”, Zeitgeschichte 16 (1988/89), 119–134, 129, 132 (table). Helmut Alexander has shown that the “recruiting of pastoral clergy in the Diocese of Brixen took place almost exclusively within the diocese itself”. Their place of training was the seminary in Brixen. Alexander, “Zur regionalen Herkunft des Priesternachwuchses”, p. 314.
Later on, this dwindles to only brief and often barely legible annotations. For this reason, 1890 seemed like a point of empirical saturation in this respect.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1854, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 14. This “assessment of a highly respected and high-ranking canonist of our time” was characterised as being in conformance with earlier canonists.
Michel, Beiträge zur Geschichte, p. 67; cf also Saurer, “Stiefmütter und Stiefsöhne”, p. 352.
Cf. Peter Leisching, Die Bischofskonferenz. Beiträge zu ihrer Rechtsgeschichte, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Entwicklung in Österreich (Vienna/Munich, 1963), p. 130.
For a general impression on the Diocese of Chur in the nineteenth century cf. Fischer, “Bistum Chur”; Albert Gasser, “Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft”, in Handbuch der Bündner Geschichte, vol. 3: 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Verein für Bündner Kulturforschung im Auftrag der Regierung des Kantons Graubünden, 2nd ed. (Chur, 2000), pp. 229–247, 232–236.
For a general impression on the Diocese of Trento in the nineteenth century cf. Sergio Benvenuti, “Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche”, in Storia del Trentino, vol. 5: L’età contemporanea 1803–1918, ed. Maria Garberi and Andrea Leonardi (Bologna, 2000), pp. 275–317.
Bischöfliches Archiv Chur (BAC), Dispensationes matrimoniales, ab anno 1816 de Novem[bris] ad mensem Decembris 1818; ibid. Regestum Dispensationum Matrimon[ialium] quae Auctoritate Ap[osto]lica concessae sunt Ab Exc[ellentissi]mo P. Vincentio Macchi Nuntio, Ab Ill[ustrissi]mo P. Aloysio Nevi Internuntio, et ab Exc[ellentissi]mo P. Ignatio ex Comitibus Nasalli Archi-Episcopo Cyri, et Pro Sancta Sede ad Helevtos Nuntio Apostolico 1818–1828; ibid., Register Gizzi, Salzmann, Gizzi, Dispensationes Matrimoniales, 1823–1828. Cf. also BAC, Dispensationes matrimoniales, 1848–1853; and BAC, Dispensationes matrimoniales expeditae ab Ill[ustrissi]mo et R[everendissi]mo D[omi]no Jos[eph] Mar[ia] Bovieri S[anctis] Sedis Negotiorum Gestore, ab initio anni 1854 usque ad initium Decembris 1864. In both registers, the note reads either “Romam transmissae” or “Romam missae”. Giuseppe Maria Bovieri served as nuncio in Switzerland from 1848 to 1854. On this cf. also Mathieu, “Verwandtschaft als historischer Faktor”, p. 241.
Cf. Mathieu, “Verwandtschaft als historischer Faktor”, p. 242.
The various routes are depicted in the registers, which are typically divided into multiple sections. Cf. for example BAC, Dispens[ationes] Matrimoniales, Expeditiones Romanae, Curae Animarum, Confirmatio ad Beneficia, 1859–1933. This register contains both Roman and nunciatory dispensations.
Cf. the 18 June 1823 letter from the secretary of the Propaganda Fide that, among other things, refers to the authorities that had been delegated in 1822. This is included in the previously cited register Regestum Dispensationum Matrimon[ialium], 1818–1828. Ignazio Nasalli (1750–1831), who became the titular Bishop of Cyrrhus (Syria) in 1819, was accredited in Switzerland as nuncio from 1820 to 1826. Cf. Manfred E. Welti, “Das apostolische Gesandtschaftswesen in der Schweiz”, in Schweizerische Kardinäle. Das apostolische Gesandtschaftswesen in der Schweiz. Erzbistümer und Bistümer I, ed. Albert Bruckner (Bern, 1972), pp. 35–60, 56; Markus Ries, “Nasalli, Ignazio”, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D26834.php (last access: June 2022).
Cf. Mathieu, “Verwandtschaft als historische Faktor”, 241; Urban Fink, Die Luzerner Nuntiatur 1586–1873. Zur Behördengeschichte und Quellenkunde der päpstlichen Diplomatie in der Schweiz (Lucerne/Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 104, 117, 134.
Lucerne’s first nuncio Giovanni Battista Santonio, who was stationed there in 1586, is said to have already possessed “extensive dispensatory powers concerning marriage”. During the eighteenth century, for which the faculties delegated to the Lucerne nuncios are documented, the granting of marriage dispensations numbered among the basic faculties. Fink, Die Luzerner Nuntiatur, pp. 44, 103–104.
On the assignment of dispensation contingencies to the Diocese of Chur cf. the body of documents in BAC, 111.02.04, Päpstliche Erlasse, Bestände 19. Jahrhundert.
BAC, Dispens[ationes] Matrim[oniales], 1877–1892.
Cf. for example BAC, Registrum Dispensationum Matrimonialium quae Auctoritate Apostolica concessae sunt a Rev[erendissi]mo D[omi]no Paschale Gizzi Archiepiscopo Thebarum et ad Helvetos Ap[osto]lico Nuntio, 1839 ad 1841 [1848]. The volumes of this register are in part unpaginated. The section “Dispensationes in 2ogradu aequali cum facultate extraord[inaria] concessa a Summo Pontifice pro 12 casibus, quando adest periculum in mora” follows immediately after the entries from the years of 1839 to 1848. Cf. also the section “casus urgentes” in BAC, Dispens[ationes] Matrim[oniales], 1877–1892. These cases are positioned following the dispensations in the first and second unequal degree. Many such cases are also documented in BAC, Dispensationes Matrim[oniales] Specialium Facult[atis] Apost[olicae], incipit mense Maji 1892.
Scrutiny with this in mind was devoted to the fascicules Archivio Diocesano Tridentino (ADT), Dispense matrimoniali, Dispense 1830; ibid., Dispense 1831, which also contains dispensations from 1833; ibid., Dispense 1832; ibid., Dispense 1836; ibid., Dispense 1842; ibid., Dispense 1846; ibid., Dispense 1855; the years between 1856 and 1858 are missing.
Cf. ADT, Registro delle spese per dispense pontificie dei relativi depositi, dei pagamenti agli agenti, 1823. This lists dispensations up to 1841; the entries regarding various financial transactions run until 1848.
This remains open in ADT, Protocolli cancelleria. Indice dall’anno 1842 fino al 1845 inclusive; as well as ibid., Indice Eccl[esiastico] 1846–1849. Here, one finds a list of papal dispensations ordered alphabetically and chronologically according to the grooms’ surnames.
Archivio di Stato di Trento (ASTn), Capitanato Circolare di Rovereto, busta 90, 1823, Matrimoni; busta 120, 1825, Matrimoni; busta 143, 1827, Matrimoni; busta 156, 1828, Matrimoni. ASTn, Capitanato Circolare di Trento, busta 130, 1843, Ehe; busta 195, 1846, matrimoni; busta 213, 1847, Ehe – matrimoni. For the period around the mid-1850s, there exist no more dispensation records – which may have to do with the abolishment of the obligation to obtain provincial government consent.
Archivio di Stato Bolzano / Staatsarchiv Bozen (ASBz / SABo), Kreisamt Bozen, Bündel 331, 1 and 2, 1831, Geistlich, Ehe I; Bündel 332, 1831, Geistlich, Ehe II; Bündel 345, 1832, Geistlich, Ehe I; Bündel 346, 1832, Geistlich, Ehe II; Bündel 353, 1833, Geistlich, Ehe I; Bündel 354, 1833, Geistlich, Ehe II; Bündel 373, 1 and 2, 1834, Geistlich, Ehe; Bündel 388, 1 and 2, 1835, Geistlich, Ehe; Bündel 399, 1 and 2, Miscellanea [Though the repertory mentions marriage dispensations, none were found in the fascicule]; Bündel 401, 1 and 2, 1836, Geistlich, Ehe; Bündel 420, 1 and 2, 1837, Geistlich, Ehe; Bündel 426, 1838, Geistlich, Ehe, Schul….; Bündel 430, 1, 1839, Geistlich, Kanzl.
Letter from the Gubernium dated 31 July 1824, ASTn, Capitanato Circolare di Rovereto, busta 120 (1825), no. 7.310/702 Matrimoni; Italian version to the regional court in Tione dated 12 August 1824, ibid., no. 14.824/1.617 Ehe. In keeping with the policies of the State Archive in Trento, personal names from its holdings are anonymised here.
ASBz / SABo, Kreisamt Bozen, Bündel 420, 1 and 2, 1837, Geistlich, Ehe, no. 120.
Thomas Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol 1840–1873. Zwischen Stadt und ‘Region’, Staat und Nation (Cologne, 2001), pp. 102–103. In German-speaking Tyrol, liberals indeed put their stamp on the “historical reality” if not “the image of their country”, as Thomas Götz has ascertained. From 1861 and, after a brief interruption, from 1869 onward, Innsbruck had “a liberal mayor, a liberal city council and liberal municipal committees”, while Bozen’s “liberal municipal administration” stood “uncontested from the dawn of the constitutional era onward” (ibid., p. 14).
Ida Fazio, as well, has emphasised that there was no exclusive and monolithic Church, in contrast to the impression that often comes across in cases where the Church is equated with the pope or the Roman Curia. Ida Fazio, “Matrimoni, conflitti, istituzioni giudiziarie: le specificità italiane di un percorso di ricerca”, Rivista storica italiana 2 (2009), 645–672, 648.
On this cf. the document “Abtretung der bisher von den Fürst-Bischöfen in Chur und Constanz im Lande Vorarlberg besessenen Diözesan-Antheilen an den Fürstbischof in Brixen, die Aufstellung eines bischöflichen Vikars für Vorarlberg, und die Einführung des Placetum regium in kirchlichen und geistlichen Dingen 1814, 1815, 1816, 1817”, VLA Bregenz, Landgericht Bezau Akten, box 35, X.48.
On this cf. Hubert Bastgen, Die Neuerrichtung der Bistümer in Österreich nach der Säkularisation (Vienna, 1914), pp. 301–344; Aldo Stella, “I principati vescovili di Trento e Bressanone”, in I Ducati padani Trento e Trieste, ed. Lino Marini et al. (Turin, 1979), pp. 499–606, especially chapters IV and V; Franz Ortner, “Erzbistum Salzburg”, in Die Bistümer der deutschsprachigen Länder, ed. Gatz, pp. 638–653, 638–639; Fischer, “Bistum Chur”, pp. 156–157; Albert Gasser, “Vom rätischen Fürstbistum zur schweizerischen Diözese”, in Studien zur Geschichte des Bistums Chur, 451–2001, ed. Michael Durst (Freiburg, 2002), pp. 145–174, 145–147; Mercedes Blaas, Der letzte Fürstbischof von Chur und sein Klerus in Tirol. Der Tiroler Anteil der Diözese Chur unter Bischof Karl Rudolf von Buol-Schauenstein (1794–1808 und 1815–1816). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Jahres 1809, PhD thesis, University of Innsbruck, 1983; Elmar Fischer, Die Seelsorge im Generalvikariat Feldkirch von seiner Gründung bis zum Jahr 1848, PhD thesis, University of Innsbruck, 1968, pp. 8–11.
These complaints appear in a very extensive letter from the Imperial-Royal Provincial Regional Court in the Montafon dated 22 June 1815. VLA Bregenz, Kreisamt 1, box 286, Präsidiale 1814–1848, Fasc. 18b, Akten über die Bischöflich Churischen Dioces-Angelegenheiten, no. 605.
VLA Bregenz, Kreisamt 1, box 286, Präsidiale 1814–1848, Fasc. 18b, Akten über die Bischöflich Churischen Dioces-Angelegenheiten, no. 890.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1832, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 11, emphases in the original are underlined in red, which was probably done in Brixen.
Cf. Josef Gelmi, “Bistum Bozen-Brixen (bis 1964: Brixen)”, in Die Bistümer der deutschsprachigen Länder, ed. Gatz, pp. 141–155, 141; very detailed concerning the facts: Edmund Karlinger and Carl Holböck, Die Vorarlberger Bistumsfrage. Geschichtliche Entwicklung und kirchenrechtliche Beurteilung (Graz/Vienna/Cologne, 1963), pp. 149–265.
On the territorial development of the Diocese of Brixen cf. sources including Fridolin Dörrer, “Der Wandel der Diözesaneinteilung Tirols und Vorarlbergs”, Beiträge zur Geschichte Tirols. Festgabe des Landes Tirol zum Elften Österreichischen Historikertag in Innsbruck vom 5. bis 8. Oktober 1971 (Innsbruck, 1971), pp. 141–170; Gelmi, Geschichte der Kirche in Tirol, pp. 283–289; Josef Fontana, “Von der Restauration bis zur Revolution (1814–1848)”, in Geschichte des Landes Tirol, vol. 2: Die Zeit von 1490 bis 1848, ed. Fontana et al., 2nd ed. (Bolzano, 1998), pp. 583–737, 613–620; Rainer, Die Diözese Brixen, pp. 21–59; Bastgen, Die Neuerrichtung der Bistümer.
On this cf. Benedikt Bilgeri, Geschichte Vorarlbergs, vol. 4: Zwischen Absolutismus und halber Autonomie (Vienna/Cologne/Graz, 1982), pp. 275–282.
Cf. for example Schematismus der Geistlichkeit der Diözese Brixen für das Jahr 1840, vol. 24 (Brixen, 1840). The relevant tables appear following the descriptions of the respective deaneries.
Not all of the remaining requests were successful: in 65 cases, requests were not pursued further and/or were retracted.
Earlier studies were interested in “incest” and hence primarily in dispensations for consanguineous couples, although the information in this respect, as well, is frequently imprecise and therefore of little use for purposes of comparison, insofar as the unequal degrees are not individually specified. Cf. for example Franz Fliri, Bevölkerungsgeographische Untersuchungen im Unterinntal (Innsbruck, 1948), pp. 85–86; Gisela Winkler, Bevölkerungsgeographische Untersuchungen im Martelltal (Innsbruck/Munich, 1973), p. 40. For a critical assessment see Mathieu, “Verwandtschaft als historischer Faktor”, pp. 238–241.
See Jasmin Hauck, “Le témoignage de la parenté: la mémoire généalogique dans les dispenses matrimoniales à Florence (XVe–XVIe siècles)” Genre & Histoire 21 (2018), https://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/3512 (last access: June 2022). Recourse to orally transmitted knowledge regarding family and kinship has a long history. For the “birth certificates” or “kinship certificates” documenting legitimate birth that, during the eighteenth century, frequently still had to be issued to budding master tradesmen who sought to open a business far off from their communities of origin, for example, it was not the church registers that were consulted but rather three older men who were summoned to the court to provide information concerning the person’s parents, legitimate birth, etc. Cf. Margareth Lanzinger, Das gesicherte Erbe. Heirat in lokalen und familialen Kontexten, Innichen 1700–1900 (Vienna/Cologne/Weimar, 2003), pp. 80–81.
Cf. the thematic emphasis “Écritures et mémoire familiale”, Annales HSS 59, 4 (2004) with contributions by researchers including Raul Mordenti, “Les livres de famille en Italie”, ibid., 785–804, esp. 789–799; Claude Cazalé Bérard and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres dans les livres de famille italiens”, ibid., 805–826; cf. also Giovanni Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità tra Italia e Europa nell’età moderna (Bologna, 2009); Birgit Studt, “Haus- und Familienbücher”, in Quellenkunde der Habsburgermonarchie (16.–18. Jahrhundert). Ein exemplarisches Handbuch, ed. Josef Pauser, Martin Scheutz and Thomas Winkelbauer (Vienna/Munich, 2004), pp. 753–766.
Simon Teuscher, “Familienerinnerungen, Beziehungsmanagement und politische Sprache in spätmittelalterlichen Städten”, Traverse 2 (2002), 53–64, 55–56.
Cf. for example James S. Grubb, “I libri di famiglia a Venezia e nel Veneto”, in Memoria, famiglia, identità, ed. Ciappelli, pp. 133–158, 140–143. For a general overview cf. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Stammbäume. Eine illustrierte Geschichte der Ahnenkunde (Munich, 2004). One section here includes an illustration of “The Daughters Cut off of the Tree” (ibid., p. 109).
It is above all French and Italian studies that have worked with dispensation records: cf. Burguière, “‘Cher Cousin’”; Fazio, “Parentela e mercato”; Gouesse, “Parenté, famille et marriage”; Trévisi, “Le mariage entre parents”; Merzario, Il paese stretto; Merzario, “Land, Kinship and Consanguineous Marriage”.
The way in which awareness of kin relationships diminished toward the more distant degrees is pointed out by Jon Mathieu, “‘Ein Cousin an jeder Zaunlücke’”, p. 64.
Cf. Lyndan Warner, “Kinship Riddles”, genealogy 6, 43 (2022), https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020043 (last access: June 2022); Stapf/Egger, Vollständiger Pastoralunterricht, p. 268: It is pointed out how the fact that blood relatives of the husband could marry blood relatives of the wife – in contrast to the husband or wife doing so him or herself – could be “made visible by holding one’s two hands together”, where the right-hand thumb represented the husband with the fingers being his relatives out to the fourth degree, and the left-hand thumb represented the wife with the fingers being her relatives out to the fourth degree (ibid., p. 269). The affinity riddle is told as an “anecdote”: “On an old gravestone onto which is carved two women with children in their arms, one read this inscription: ‘These children are our children, / Their fathers our brothers, / All conceived from pure marriages, / Guess what kind of kin they are’”. The word for “kin” here, Sippschaft, was understood in this context to mean “affinity” (ibid., p. 262).
Mühlendorff explains this in his introduction by indicating how it would sometimes pit a priest against “not inconsiderable difficulties” and how it could easily happen “that he will not notice this or that existing marriage impediment. We therefore believe that it will be useful to discuss this matter in depth and present one or more methods whose use will allow one to discover with certainty all existing marriage impediments”. Julius Müllendorff, Methode zur Auffindung der Ehehindernisse bei mehrfacher Blutsverwandtschaft. Ein Beitrag zur Pastoral (Graz, 1888), p. 5.
For such a form cf. ADF, Generalvikariat Matrimonialia (GA), Ehesachen II, 1811–1916, Fasc. 1880, 1884, Hintanhaltung von Ehen in den nächsten Verwandtschaftsgraden betreffend.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1864, Fasc. 22, Bischöfliche Dispensen, no. 247.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1844, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 32.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1884, Fasc. 22c, Verschiedenes, no. 20.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1852, Fasc. 5c, Dispensen in occultis, no. 1.
In one case, the dean in Schwaz justified the fact that it was “entirely by chance” that he had discovered a case of second degree affinity in addition to the known third degree consanguinity that had been regularly dispensed by the bishop with reference to the difficult familial situation up on the Wattenberg: there had originally been just four family names there. Even though, as the dean emphasised, he possessed “assured familiarity with how people are related here thanks to long practice and study”, this had unfortunately still occurred. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1862, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 10. For an extreme case cf. the family reconstruction by Hans Matschek, Sippenbuch von Schröcken 1490–1906 (Regensburg, 2007). In the Vorarlberg community of Schröcken, 75 per cent of all pre-1800 inhabitants bore the family name of Jochum.
Cf. Peter Becker, Leben, Lieben, Sterben. Die Analyse von Kirchenbüchern (St. Katharinen, 1989), p. 29. A comparable stance on this matter was taken up by the French Code civil of 1804. Article 340 expressly forbade research for the purpose of identifying fathers: “La recherche de la paternité est interdite”. Ibid., p. 201.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1861, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 40.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 27.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 7, no. 26, no. 27 and no. 28; occasionally, there were orders to provide additional information on witnesses. Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 24.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 14. Here, the Dean of Innichen requested permission – albeit to no avail – to delegate the protocolling of the required examinations to the local priest in the case of Obertilliach. This community was a six-hour journey from the seat of the deanery, and it was impossible for bridal couples and their witnesses to make the journey in both directions within the space of one day – a situation that entailed considerable expense. He also reported that “particularly in Tilliach, the importance of marriage impediments in the minds of the people has declined so far that they view dispensation as naught but an unnecessary plague and an opportunity to extract fees”; and he quoted a “commonly heard statement”: “[T]hey love each other, and that should be enough”. The latter passage is underlined in the original.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 27. These criteria for witnesses were also portrayed in this way to the dean of the newly established Deanery of Silz with reference to the 1855 edition of the Manuale Sacrum, a handbook for the clergy of the diocese. An initial edition of the Manuale Sacrum ad usum sacerdotum Dioecesis Brixinensis had been published in Brixen in 1838, and editions were also published in 1886 and 1906. Cf. also DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1859, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 12.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1858, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 20.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1872, Fasc. 22b, Verschiedenes, no. 17.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1885, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 46.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1859, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 10.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1852, Fasc. 5c, Dispensen in occultis, no. 1.
This process had begun in 1803 with instructions issued by Cardinal Caprara in the form of dispensation authorities that French bishops had received as a consequence of the Concordat of 1801 between Pius VII and Napoleon.
Cf. Peter Fabritz, Sanatio in radice. Historie eines Rechtsinstituts und seine Beziehung zum sakralen Eheverständnis der katholischen Kirche (Frankfurt a. M. et al., 2010), p. 201.
Cf. Fabritz, Sanatio in radice, pp. 204–211, 225.
Cf. for example DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1861, Fasc. 22 II, Ad matrimonium spectantia, no. 20. This letter was also signed by Johann Duille, then consistorial chancellor. Cf. also DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1857, Fasc. 5b, Ehedispensen in occultis, no. 5 and no. 7. For a general look at this practice cf. Baura, La dispensa canonica, pp. 181–183.
Guzzi-Heeb, Donne, uomini, parentela, pp. 222–223. Marion Trévisi, starting from the fact that requests in the third degree were considerably more common than those in the fourth during the eighteenth century in the area that she was studying, draws similar conclusions. This, she writes, could indicate that genealogical memory did not extend that far, meaning that knowledge of fourth-degree relationships among the populace was less common, though it could also be owed to deliberate concealment. Trévisi, “Le mariage entre parents”, pp. 248–249; cf. also the corresponding findings of Nina Stren, Verbotene Beziehungen: Frühneuzeitliche Verwandtschafts- und Beziehungskonzepte in Ehedispensansuchen vor dem Passauer Konsistorium, diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2014, p. 78.
Guy Tassin, Qui épouser et comment. Alliances récurrentes à Haveluy de 1701 à 1870 (Paris, 2007), p. 124. David Sabean likewise points out that by employing family reconstitution, one arrives at a far higher number of kin marriages than the number of dispensations indicated by church registers. Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, pp. 431–432.
Martine Segalen, in her study, speaks of a “certain ambiguity about the depth of people’s genealogical memory”. Segalen, Fifteen Generations, pp. 125–128 (quote 125).
On numbers and percentages for the Diocese of Brixen see chapter six. In thematically related studies, the corresponding values have not always been indicated in a way that distinguishes between degrees, which would be necessary to facilitate comparison. Typically, it is granted dispensations – rather than dispensation requests – that have been evaluated. In the study conducted by Jon Mathieu in 14 Swiss Catholic communities, the shares of dispensations granted in close degrees of kinship ranged from 0 to 14 per cent, with the first and second halves of the nineteenth century seeing 9 per cent exceeded by only one community during each half. The increase in dispensed marriages beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century can be clearly discerned: if we look at the share of kin marriages extending all the way out to the fourth degree, the percentages exhibit a noticeable increase – in some cases reaching 40, 50 and nearly 60 per cent. Cf. Mathieu, “Verwandtschaft als historischer Faktor”, p. 239.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1861, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 9; emphasis underlined in the original.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1860, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 58; emphasis underlined in red in the original.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1833, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 16.
Cf. DIÖAB, Dispensationes matrimoniales ab anno 1795 usque ad annum 1829 inclusive.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1862, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 33.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1862, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 33.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1846, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 2.
This aspect has so far received greater attention by researchers as it pertains to the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Cf. Beat Kümin, Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe (Basingstoke, 2007); Susanne Rau and Gerd Schwerhoff (eds.), Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne. Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Cologne et al., 2004); Martin Scheutz, “‘hab ichs auch im würthshauß da und dort gehört […]’. Gaststätten als multifunktionale öffentliche Orte im 18. Jahrhundert”, in Orte des Wissens, ed. Martin Scheutz, Wolfgang Schmale and Dana Štefanova (Bochum, 2004), pp. 169–203.
On local priests as central figures in the process of dispensation-granting cf. also Pelaja, “Marriage by Exception”, pp. 229–230. They functioned as the outermost connecting links in the Catholic Church’s post-Tridentine network of control.
The fact that this was not a universal practice can be inferred from examples such as set of instructions intended for clergymen in Linz. If a marriage impediment became apparent, the bridal couple was to be lectured and instructed to “adhere to the law with all due obedience and, as a consequence, to abandon their initiated marriage plans and avoid all suspicious or dangerous contact with each other. If they then declare their intent to apply for a dispensation and ask the priest for their support, he shall hear their motivations […] and then judge carefully whether he can recognise the stated reasons as important and dispensation as being advisable”. No mention is made here of three refusals. “Ueber das Verfahren bey anzusuchenden Ehedispensen in dem Hinderniße der Verwandtschaft nach dem Sinne des k. k. Ehepatents”, Theologisch-praktische Linzer-Monathschrift zunächst für Seelsorger 1, 1 (1809), 304–316, 308.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1841, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 38.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1852, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 11. This case is filed under a later year because the bridal couple only submitted a renewed – and, this time, successful – application long after their initial request had been rejected in Rome in 1844.
On distinctions between law and ritual cf. Heinz Duchhardt and Gert Melville, “Vorwort”, in Im Spannungsfeld von Recht und Ritual. Soziale Kommunikation in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Duchhardt and Melville (Cologne, 1997), p. V.
On this see chapter six.
Cf. Saurer, “Stiefmütter und Stiefsöhne”, p. 360.
This correspondence is not included in the record; it is referred to in a later report by the dean submitted in 1834. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1834, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 10.
Reference was made here to the provincial government decree of 12 September 1823, Z. 20.536.
“La causa principale si è un amore appassionatissimo tra i suddetti Sposi il quale ebbe origine dall’aversi i medesimi carnalmente conosciuto per largo tempo. Un’altra si è il porre fine alle mormorazioni del popolo ed allo scandalo di tutto il comune a motivo della coabitazione dei due Sposi. La terza sono rilevanti vantaggi economici.” Emphasis double underlined in the original.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1835, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 4.
Cf. Saurer, “Formen von Verwandtschaft und Liebe”, pp. 269–270.
Cf. Edith Saurer, “Belles-mères et beaux-fils. Au sujet du choix du partenaire en Autriche vers 1800”, Annales de démographie historique (1998), 59–71, 63–64.
Cf. ADF, Generalvikariat Matrimonialia (GA), Ehesachen III, Präsidialakten 1830–1900 and Römische Dispensen I, 1853–1858, Fasc. 1862–1865, Präsidial behandelte Ehedispensfälle, 1863, no. 35.
Due to the unsystematic way in which records were filed here, the possibility cannot be excluded that still more requests in step-configurations may be preserved in other fascicules. AES, Kasten 22/38, Päpstliche Ehedispensen 1867–1934. This fascicule contains 15 records concerning papal dispensations in the usual degrees from 1868 followed by two cases in the stepfather-stepdaughter configuration from entirely different years: 1866 and 1887.
AES, Kasten 22/38 Päpstliche Ehedispensen 1867–1934, dispensation requests of Nikolaus Rußegger and Anna Holzer and of Georg Resel and his stepdaughter.
Cf. Saurer, “Stiefmütter und Stiefsöhne”, p. 360. On this cf. the court resolution of 18 September 1795, which determined that His Majesty would “regarding the marriage of a stepmother by no means grant dispensation for a civil marriage contract in any case where a deceased father’s inability to conceive cannot be legally ascertained”. Schwerdling, Praktische Anwendung, § 146–151, p. 366. According to this, dispensation of a marriage between stepson and stepmother was only possible in cases where the marriage between the father and the stepmother could not have been consummated.
Dannerbauer, Praktisches Geschäftsbuch, p. 183, FN.
This instrument was also employed in Switzerland and in southern German territories. Ehmer, Heiratsverhalten, pp. 45–61, 71–74; Head-König, “Forced Marriages and Forbidden Marriages”; Klaus-Jürgen Matz, Pauperismus und Bevölkerung. Die gesetzlichen Ehebeschränkungen in den süddeutschen Staaten während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1980); Raffaella Sarti, “Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione. I percorsi di Clio (Europa occidentale, secoli XVI–XX)”, in Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione. (secoli XVI–XX), ed. Margareth Lanzinger and Raffaela Sarti (Udine, 2006), pp. 145–318, 182–196.
For Austria cf. Elisabeth Mantl, Heirat als Privileg. Obrigkeitliche Heiratsbeschränkungen in Tirol und Vorarlberg 1820–1920 (Vienna/Munich, 1997); Elisabeth Mantl, “Legal Restrictions on Marriage: Marriage and Inequality in the Austrian Tyrol during the Nineteenth Century”, The History of the Family 4, 2 (1999), 185–207; Christa Pelikan, Aspekte der Geschichte des Eherechts in Österreich, PhD thesis, University of Vienna, 1981, pp. 53–172; Edith Saurer, “Reglementierte Liebe. Staatliche Ehehindernisse in der vormärzlichen Habsburgermonarchie”, Sozialwissenschaftliche Information 24 (1995), 245–252; Hubert Weitensfelder, “Zu arm zum Heiraten? Ehekonsense in Vorarlberg als Mittel konservativer Sozialpolitik (1850–1914)”, Montfort. Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs 57, 1 (2005), 18–40; Lanzinger, “Landlessness and Marriage Restrictions”.
For an extensive look at related debates cf. Pelikan, Aspekte der Geschichte des Eherechts, pp. 72–172.
At least in some cases, however, it turned out that municipalities continued to claim decision-making competency. Cf. Lanzinger, Das gesicherte Erbe, pp. 131–133.
Mantl, Heirat als Privileg, p. 73.
Ibid., pp. 9–10. The corresponding rule can be found in Tiroler Landesarchiv (TLA), Landesregierungsgesetzblatt 1849/50, no. 87, p. 151.
Weitensfelder, “Zu arm zum Heiraten”, p. 18.
In the request of Barlmä Rieser, a corporal in the Kaiserjägerregiment, and his widowed sister-in-law Maria Kröll, a smallholder and mother to five very young children, for example, the argument was that the widow and her children would become a burden to the municipality if no suitable man could be found. That is why the municipality “did not hesitate” to “grant these marriage supplicants preliminary political marriage consent”. AES 22/38 Päpstliche Dispensen 1856–1867, 1858, no. 10.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1838, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 17. On their second attempt, the couple received both consent and their dispensation.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1847, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 3.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1849, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 20. Cf. also ibid., 1854, no. 15, the request of Franz Brandl, chancellery clerk at the Imperial-Royal Postal Directorate in Innsbruck and a “house owner” in the parish of St. Nikolaus, as well as ibid., 1850, no. 1, the request of the shoemaker and small farmer Johann Zach and the farmer’s daughter Kreszenz Kallinger, whom the consistory called upon several times to present marriage consent, whereupon the imperial-royal district office in Innsbruck attested “that this bridal couple has, withal, no need of marriage consent”.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1845, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 9.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1862, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 20.
In this regard, Elisabeth Mantl speaks of “the ultramontane clergy” having provided “the ideological underpinnings for provincial policies that were restorational in both a social and an economic sense”. Mantl, Heirat als Privileg, p. 152.
Requests by ruling princes were handled by the Secretaria brevium ad Principes.
Regarding the dispensation requests from Vorarlberg, it should be noted that it was the vicariate general in Feldkirch that gave permission to protocol the matrimonial examination, and it was initially the case that all correspondence prior to the matrimonial examination remained in Vorarlberg. This was only sent to Brixen along with the examination following a late 1850s request by then Bishop Vinzenz Gasser, for which reason it can be found in Brixen from that point onward.
Ulrike Gleixner, ‘Das Mensch’ und ‘der Kerl’. Die Konstruktion von Geschlecht in Unzuchtsverfahren der Frühen Neuzeit, 1700–1760 (Frankfurt a. M./New York, 1994), p. 80.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1837, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 1. The numbering of the questions was inconsistent; there were evidently different forms in circulation in the individual deaneries. Correspondence with the question indicated here was checked on the basis of the next dispensation request from the Deanery of Matrei following the date of the consistory’s response. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1838, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 2.
Vinzenz Gasser used the publication Brixner Diözesan-Blatt, which he had founded in 1857, to circulate sermons, ordinances and instructions – including ones concerning dispensation practice – as well as current reading tips for the diocesan clergy. The extant correspondence with the deans includes frequent lectures and admonishments.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1852, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 7.
In contrast to the court decree of 16 October 1800, which determined that dispensation supplicants were to “always approach the religious ordinariate first”, the ABGB (part one, chapter two, § 84, section 2) had by this point designated the district captaincies as the proper places to submit dispensation requests.
Dolliner, Handbuch.
One of the two witnesses in this matrimonial examination was the groom’s physician.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1832, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 8.
Ibid.
Cf. Franz Ortner, Salzburgs Bischöfe in der Geschichte des Landes, 696–2005 (Frankfurt a. M. et al., 2005), pp. 266–270; Weiß, “Dem Pabste brach darüber das Herz”.
Weiß, “Josephinismus in Salzburg”, p. 95; cf. also Ortner, Salzburgs Bischöfe, pp. 265–273.
Cf. Ortner, Salzburgs Bischöfe, p. 282. Peter Unkelbach refers to his “work as a civil servant in state church service from 1802 to 1816”. Peter Unkelbach, “Die Päpste und die Bedeutsamkeit des Papsttums dokumentiert am Wirken des Salzburger Fürsterzbischofs Augustin Gruber”, in Salzburg und der Heilige Stuhl, ed. Paarhammer and Rinnerthaler, pp. 379–432, 379.
Cf. Ortner, Salzburgs Bischöfe, p. 288.
For a general impression of the situation in Tyrol cf. Fontana, Der Kulturkampf; as well as more recently Pfeifer/Nössing, Kulturkampf in Tirol; on Ultramontanism as a broader context cf. Gisela Fleckenstein and Joachim Schmiedl, “Ultramontanismus in der Diskussion. Zur Neupositionierung eines Forschungsbegriffs”, in Ultramontanismus. Tendenzen der Forschung, ed. Fleckenstein and Schmiedl (Paderborn, 2005), pp. 7–19.
AES, Kasten 22/38, Päpstliche Dispensen 1856–1867, 1856, Dispensansuchen von Sebastian Lederer und Maria Huber.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1848, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 5.
RGBl. 1850, no. 156, 157. On the events leading up to its abolishment cf. Weinzierl- Fischer, Die österreichischen Konkordate, pp. 52–59; cf. also Michel, Beiträge zur Geschichte, pp. 8, 37.
Article 2 of the Concordat states: “Since the Roman pope, in accordance with divine law, possesses primacy of honour as well as jurisdiction over the entire Church as far as it extends, the correspondence between the bishops, the clergy, the people and the Holy See in sacred and ecclesiastical matters is not subject to provincial government permission but entirely free.” Quoted in Weinzierl-Fischer, Die österreichischen Konkordate, pp. 250–251. On this cf. also Reinalter, “Liberalismus und Kirche”, p. 157. With this, Catholics were once again subject to the canonical marriage prohibitions. Cf. “Kaiserliches Patent vom 8. Oktober 1856, Anhang II: Anweisung für die geistlichen Gerichte des Kaiserthumes Oesterreich in Betreff der Ehesachen”, in Reichs-Gesetz-Blatt für das Kaiserthum Oesterreich, 1856, no. 185, 622–658, §§ 26 and 30.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1847, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 6; this record contains correspondence beginning in 1841. Regarding public and secret marriage impediments see Jemolo, Il matrimonio, pp. 208–210.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1841, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 35.
More details on such intermediation are contained in chapter five.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1859, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 16.
Cf. AES, Kasten 22/38, Päpstliche Dispensen 1856–1867.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten, Agentie, box 0A. This material covers the period running from 1798 to 1832.
Cf. for example DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten, Agentie, box 0A, Corrispondenze Agente. In this small-format book, which is an account book of sorts, the 1797 entries are interrupted by the note that the Prince-Bishop of Brixen had charged the note’s author, Gianbatt[ist]a Giulliani, with assuming the Italian secretariat – “Segrettario italiano” – following the death of “Segrettario italiano” Antonio Cibbini. It further states that, in this function, he would now reach agreement with the agent Merenda in Rome on the following debts, etc.
This correspondence is held by the Austrian State Archives in Vienna. ÖSTA, HHStA, Agentie-Archiv Rom, II Agentie Akten 1817–1832, K. 32–40; ibid., II Agentie Akten 1833– 1855, K. 75–76; ibid., II Agentie Akten 1856–1891, K. 163–181 (1871). Some of these holdings exhibit serious moisture damage. From Box 169 (1859) onward, almost nothing more from Brixen appears. These holdings were examined up to box 181 (1871).
In doing so, it counted degrees according to civil law. The second canonical degree of consanguinity corresponded to the fourth civil degree.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1863, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 24.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1884, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 16.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1860, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 23.
For a multiperspective approach see Joachim Eibach and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.), The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century (London, 2020).
On this as well as on the related theological concepts and discussions during the early modern period cf. Luisa Accati, Das Monster und die Schöne. Vater- und Mutterbilder in der katholischen Erziehung der Gefühle (Berlin, 2006), pp. 50–54, 71–99.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1846, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 1.
Ibid. Also mentioned here are a number of further dispensation requests from Vorarlberg that were blocked due to the pope’s death.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1846, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 2.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1848, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 5, no. 6, no. 7 and no. 23.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1848, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 26.
For a full four cases, a letter from the vicariate general dated 10 June 1849 requested dispensations auctoritate ordinaria, which – in its estimation – would have to be considered permissible “according to old Roman Catholic Church law”. This letter is included in the record DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1851, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1848, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 6 and no. 7.
This letter is dated 2 July 1849. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1851, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 18.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1851, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 18.
The second case in DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1851, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 17.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1854, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 5; ibid., 1855, no. 8; ibid., 1856, no. 6.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1854, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 6.
Ibid., no. 33; ibid., 1856, no. 16; ibid., 1856, no. 29.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1856, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 31. In this case, a few further special facts pertained: both had been born out of wedlock and had therefore not reckoned with the marriage impediment of kinship even though they knew that his mother and her father were siblings. She had already lived with him as his housekeeper for six years, but – as the groom insisted when asked later on – she was a “very decent and shy, pious and contemplative maiden who knows nothing at all of sexual matters”. He was 32 and she was 45 years old.
Regarding his person cf. for example Squicciarini, Die Apostolischen Nuntien, pp. 256–260.
On these differing views cf. for example William A. O’Mara, Canonical Causes for Matrimonial Dispensation. An Historical Synopsis and Commentary (Washington, 1935), pp. 26–29; treated in detail by A[dhémar] Esmein, Le mariage en droit canonique, vol. 2 (Paris, 1891), pp. 314–368.
Dictum Gratiani, C. 5, C. I, q. 7: “Nisi rigor disciplinae quandoque relaxetur ex dispensatione misericordiae. Multorum enim crimina sunt damnabilia, quae tamen Ecclesia tolerat pro tempore, pro persona, intuitu pietatis, vel necessitatis, sive utilitatis, et pro eventu rei.” Quoted in O’Mara, Canonical Causes, pp. 28–29. As the definitive canonists in this regard, O’Mara mentions Vincentius de Justis (De Dispensationibus Matrimonialibus, 1726), Pyrrhus Corradus (Praxis Dispensationum Apostolicarum pro utroque foro, 1697) and Thomas S.J. Sanchez (De Sancto Matrimonii Sacramento Disputationum, 1669), ibid., p. 29, note 19. Somewhat broader is the list provided by Kutschker, Das Eherecht der katholischen Kirche, vol. 5, pp. 112–126; on this cf. also Pelaja, “Marriage by Exception”, pp. 224–225.
Cf. O’Mara, Canonical Causes, pp. 31–36.
This is the “mission congregation”, which was divided into two areas: one for the Latin Rite and one for the Eastern Rite. It had been founded in 1622. Cf. Giovanni Pizzorusso, “La congregazione pontifica de Propaganda Fide nel XVII secolo: missioni, geopolitica, colonialism”, in Papato e politica internazionale nella prima età moderna, ed. Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Rome, 2013), pp. 149–172.
The full list was: 1. angustia loci 2. aetas foeminae superadulta, 3. deficientia aut incompetentia dotis, 4. lites super successione bonorum, 5. paupertas viduae, 6. bonum pacis, 7. nimia, suspecta, periculosa familiaritatis, 8. copula iam praehabita et praegnantia, ideoque legitimatio prolis, 9. infamia mulieris, 10. revalidatio matrimonii, 11. periculum matrimonii mixti vel coram acattolico ministro celebrandi, 12. periculum incestuosi concubinantes, 13. periculum matrimonii civilis, 14. remotio gravium scandalorum, 15. cessatio publici concubinatus and 16. excellentia meritorum.
In slightly different formulations, these can also be found in Dannerbauer, Praktisches Geschäftsbuch, pp. 234–240. Under “point five, On Widows” (“Punkt fünf, Witwen betreffend”), the burden of numerous children is added: “Paupertas viduae, quae numerosa prole sit onerata”; “point eight” outlines the relevant circle of relatives, but does not mention pregnancy: “Copula cum consanguinea vel affini vel alia persona impedimento laborante praehabita.” The tenth reason, on the revalidation of marriages, is missing, but Dannerbauer adds the danger of heresy: “Periculum haeresis”.
“Neueste offizielle Instruktion über Ehedispensgesuche”, Brixner Diözesanblatt 22 (1878), 33–38; on this cf. also O’Mara, Canonical Causes, pp. 72–130. The author comments on the above-mentioned canonical reasons in great detail and also describes their application in practice.
Cf. O’Mara, Canonical Causes, pp. 29, 131–135.
On this cf. Knopp, Vollständiges katholisches Eherecht, 1854, p. 444.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1861, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispensen, no. 23. Documents from the entire case are present here – while the initial reference to it is in ibid., 1855, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 21. The characterisations of the two in the protocol of their matrimonial examination of 1861, on the other hand, sound very positive.
Cf. Knopp, Vollständiges katholisches Eherecht, 1854, pp. 457–461.
Cf. for example the dispensation fees valid in the Austrian dioceses beginning in 1850, listed in Kutschker, Das Eherecht der katholischen Kirche, vol. 5, 290–291.
Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1835, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 12. Letter of the prince-episcopal ordinariate of 9 February 1835, signed by Chancellor Georg Prünster.
Cf. Mantl, Heirat als Privileg, p. 33.
AES, Kasten 22/35 Ehe-Dispensen 1841–1846 and 1883–1890, 1842, dispensation request of Jakob Schindler and Ludovika Gordon.
In December 1833, the prince-episcopal consistory in Brixen had called upon all deaneries to survey the “hearths, meaning families, in every pastoral care station of the deanery” in order to provide well-founded indications of their sizes to Rome. These numbers were referred to frequently, often being noted in the margins of matrimonial examination protocols in red or blue ink. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1833, Fasc. 5c, Verschiedenes über Ehe, no. 4: Zahl der Feuerstätten, Familien in jeder Seelsorgs-Station.
1876 saw an effort made at the highest level to clarify this. Cf. Petrus Gasparri (ed.), Codicis Iuris Canonici Fontes, vol. 6: Curia Romana (Rome, 1932), pp. 593–597, 593, with the conclusion: “Item in literis dispensationum, tum Sacrae Datariae tum etiam Poenitentiariae numquam mentio fit de exiguitate paroeciae, semper autem loquitur de angustia loci.” Cf. also ibid., pp. 872–875.
DIÖAB Konsistorialakten 1839, Fasc. 5a, Römische Ehedispensen, no. 5.
On this cf. also Saurer, “Stiefmütter und Stiefsöhne”, pp. 356–357.
David Sabean attempted to extrapolate how probable it was in smaller communities that unions with close consanguineous or affine relatives could be avoided. Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, p. 101, note 3: “If one reckons that each parent and grandparent has two siblings and takes the prohibition against marriage with consanguineal relatives out to second cousins, than in a village of about 350 people […] about 80 percent of the households are ‘nonrelated’. Each successive marriage cuts off another 20 percent, the relatives of the deceased wife. In a village of 500, about 84 percent of the households are open for a first marriage, and in a village of 1,000 […], about 92 percent.”
Explaining differing remarriage rates of widowers and widows demographically with reference to gender ratios would fall far short of being explanatory – something that Barbara Todd has most unambiguously pointed out. Todd advocates a nuanced view, specifying three interacting factors behind remarriage: opportunity, necessity and preference. The decision to enter into a second marriage should hence be regarded as a considered one. Cf. Barbara J. Todd, “Demographic Determinism and Female Agency: the Remarrying Widow Reconsidered … Again”, Continuity and Change 9 (1994), 421–450, 422 and 426–431. As a recent publication see Beatrice Moring and Richard Wall, Widows in European Economy and Society 1600–1920 (Woodbridge, 2017). In terms of historical research and gender history, widowers have been paid attention far too seldomly. An admirable contribution in this regard is the volume by Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds.), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Halow, 1999).
As part of its aforementioned 1901 addition to the list of recognised reasons for dispensation, the Datary did, however, add that of the preservation and/or betterment of a family – which could be employed by both women and men. Cf. Jemolo, Il matrimonio, p. 254.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1843, Fasc. 5a, Römische Dispensen, no. 12.
Cf. Burguière, “‘Cher Cousin’”, pp. 1346–1347.
Cf. Trévisi, “Le mariage entre parents”, pp. 252–257.
Cf. Cecilia Nubola and Andreas Würgler, “Einführung”, in Bittschriften und Gravamina, ed. Nubola and Würgler, pp. 7–16, 9. Letters of supplication were also shot through with tropes – such as that of the “poor widow” – that could function as situational gestures of submission in the interest of fulfilling institutional expectations.
In Johann Heinrich Bangen’s 1854 volume on the Roman Curia, which the title page states that he has “portrayed following several years of my own observation”, the topics covered include the practice of the Datary: “But indeed, the current procedures of the Datary show, just as it is clear from the nature of this matter as such, that the person who prepared the supplications for decision and ultimately even brought them to the audience also spoke regarding their content and advised the pope to grant or not to grant – at least insofar as he was requested to do so.” Johann Heinrich Bangen, Die Römische Kurie, ihre gegenwärtige Zusammensetzung und ihr Geschäftsgang (Münster, 1854), p. 397.
Regarding the Penitentiary, in existence since the twelfth century as one of the oldest institutions of the Roman Curia cf. Tamburini, “Le dispense matrimoniali”. It was subordinate to the major penitentiary, who was equipped with comprehensive authorities. Cf. also the overview by Erwin Ruck, Die Organisation der Römischen Kurie (Tübingen, 1913). As authorities of the Penitentiary, he enumerates: “the granting of all mercies, absolutions from all sins and censures, dispensations, condonations, commutations, sanations and decisions on all manner of moral issues” (ibid., pp. 31–32). On the practice of the Penitentiary cf. Schmugge, Ehen vor Gericht, pp. 11–15. During the Middle Ages, the Penitentiary had “a quasi-monopoly on the granting of marriage dispensations” (ibid., p. 33). During the nineteenth century, cases where the supplicants were capable of paying only minimal fees saw the Penitentiary repeatedly brought into play as an authority capable of granting mercies. Cf. also Pelaja, “Marriage by Exception”, pp. 230–232.
Cf. ordinance of 23 January 1778, in Sammlung in Publico-Ecclesiasticis vom Jahre 1767 bis Ende 1782, p. 105. In January 1783, this ordinance was sent out again together with two others and an explanation stating that it seemed “the following three supreme ordinances have likely not been publicised or fittingly announced”. TLA Innsbruck, Jüngeres Gubernium, Gubernialratsprotokolle, Ecclesiastica, Fasc. 212, 1783 (Jan.–Feb.), Ein- und Auslauf, vol. 5, no. 76 ½.
Cf. court decree of 13 April 1783 as quoted in Kropatschek, Handbuch, vol. 2, p. 171; cf. also Sammlung in Publico-Ecclesiasticis vom Jahre 1782 bis 1783, p. 67.
Ordinance of 10 July 1783, in Sammlung in Publico-Ecclesiasticis vom Jahre 1782 bis 1783, p. 90. Exceptions to this were dispensations of impedimenta occulta ex crimine – the impediments that arose from having committed adultery – which, from autumn 1781, could no longer be sought via the Penitentiary for a fee, nor from parish priests or confessors; the bishops were expected to dispense jure proprio. Ordinance of 25 October 1781, Sammlung in Publico-Ecclesiasticis vom Jahre 1767 bis Ende 1782, pp. 143–144, 143.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1893, Fasc. 22c, Varia über Eheangelegenheiten, unnumbered.
September 1833 saw the Deanery of Zams, for example, send a supplication for the annulment of a vow of chastity to the prince-episcopal ordinariate in Brixen that was anonymised – “Bertha” being its classic placeholder – but not formulated in Latin. In response to the admonishment that ensued, a new version of the request arrived two weeks later, in October 1833 – this time properly Latinised. Cf. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1833, Fasc. 5b, Ehedispensen in occultis et inhonestis, no. 9.
Cf. for example DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1891, Fasc. 22b, Casus occulti ex impedimento matrimonii, unnumbered.
The altogether 735 requests submitted up to 1864 include 93 (12.7 per cent) where the women were pregnant; 81 (11 per cent) already had at least one illegitimate child. The number of pregnant women rose slowly but consistently over multiple decades before then decreasing slightly during the late 1850s followed by a clear rise thereafter. Moreover, nearly 40 per cent of the couples overall had admitted at their matrimonial examinations that they had already engaged in sexual intercourse.
AES, Kasten 22/34, Ehedispensen I. u. II. Grades 1821–1830, 1830, dispensation request of Jakob Struber and Maria Anna Zink.
DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1863, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispense, no. 57. The groom and bride rescued themselves from the problem resulting from the fact that the matrimonial examination’s protocol was defined as under oath by insisting that they had not been made to take such an oath, having only been told that an oath might have to be taken.
This was the request of Ludwig Hofer and his sister-in-law Theres Egle. In this case, it was conversely the bride who, out of “shame and fear that she might consequently have no hope of receiving a dispensation”, had failed to divulge her “incestuous behaviour” in the matrimonial examination. The fact that the dispensation brief had already been issued and had arrived at the consistory prior to her admission had then made necessary a “sanation”, which was taken care of via the nunciature in Vienna. DIÖAB, Konsistorialakten 1854, Fasc. 22a, Römische Dispense, no. 4.