Porumbăcean, Claudiu (szerk.): Satu Mare. Studii şi comunicări. Seria istorie-etnografie-artă 35/2. Volum aniversar 1969-2019 (2019)
Istorie
EVOLUŢIA ŞI STRUCTURA CĂSĂTORIILOR ÎN LIVADA (JUDEŢUL SATU MARE) ÎNTRE ANII 1867 - 19061 Camelia DAVID ABSTRACT: Marriage has been, up to the modern age inclusive, the essential way of forming a family, the social legitimacy of a basic institution in the history of humanity. By marrying the family, the newly formed couple, together with its biological descendants, enters the cosmic cycle of life and death. The most important moments of a shorter or longer life of a person, such as birth, baptism, marriage, death, were recorded by priests of the place in the Parish Registers, so that the information on which we carried out this work came from this source. We analysed the village (today the town) Livada, located 23 km northeast of Satu Mare. The place was (and is) a multi-ethnic (Romanian, Hungarian, Ruthenian) and multi-religious (Roman Catholic, Greek-Catholic and Protestant). Marriage was made according to the opinion of the members of rural communities and not only for three reasons: First of all, to have a cohort to help and party, to comfort and relieve pain, more precisely to have someone to share the joys and sorrows of life. Secondly, to have legitimate descendants to keep their name, to have someone who inherited the parental wealth so that it does not pass into foreign hands and have worries about old age, and after death there is someone who mourns them to pray for the forgiveness of their sins. Thirdly, not to be reproached that they lived in vain in this world, as they leave no physical trace of their passage. The tradition and customs of the rural world, though imposing certain rigor, allowed some freedom in choosing a partner. In choosing a partner, feelings were often on the last place, focusing on the material side of the family they were coping with and last but not least on tradition. Parents wanted their offspring to conclude a ’good party” after marriage, not to worry about tomorrow, but at the same time they demanded understanding among partners, divorces not being looked at with good eyes (in Livada there was no divorce in the range studied by us). The first attempts of marriage were most often made by parents, sometimes promising children since they were minors, and the promise had to be kept, so the friendship between the two families was strengthened by an imprint. Leaving aside the material aspect of marriage, the young man also followed the partner’s age, because traditionally, the woman was not supposed to be older than the man. However, in the village of Livada we will find enough examples of couples in which the woman was older. The influence of the parents is not excluded, especially if the future husband was in good condition after the marriage, and they 1 Prezentul articol reprezintă o parte din lucrarea metodico-ştiinţifică pentru obţinerea gradului didactic I, cu titlul: Evoluţii demografice în satul Livada în a doua jumătate a secolului XIX şi începutul secolului XX. Satu Mare - Studii şi Comunicări, nr. XXXV/II, 2019, p. 69-81
