Dobrescu, Adela (szerk.): Samcult. Revistă de cultură şi civilizaţie (Satu Mare - Mátészalka, 2010)
Dr. Paula Cătălina Virag: The family of the romanian village int he country of Satu Mare during the end of 19th-the 20th centuries
their number is extremely small. Mixed marriages, especially from the confessional point of view, contracted in the county of Satu Mare, in the period 1867-1914, are registered in the parish documents which contain a section specifying the groom and bride’s confessions. The number of mixed marriages contracted in Satu Mare County between of 1867- 1914 was little due to the formalities the couples had to accomplish and due to the negative attitude that the community has shown towards mixed marriages. The larger number of intermarriages was between the Eastern-Catholic and Roman- Catholic, or between the Catholic and the Protestant. The Catholic Church didn’t encourage this type of marriages, but it agreed with the mixed marriages if the Non-Catholic believers accepted some conditions regarding the religion and the education of their children. In generally, those had to be after the Catholic advices. As the ordinary marriages, the intermarriages were also influenced by the economic, cultural, and psychological circumstances. Their number changed from a year to another depending on these elements. The church has refused radically the concubinage and did everything to cease it or, at least to reduce its number. To this, it has used all the possible means: sermons, catechism and the help of civil and military authorities. The problem of illegal children was also in the Church attention, whose activity intensified trying to convince the people to live as in the Church law. The fight of the Church was in tow directions: against the civil marriage (the marriage which was closed only by the civil authorities) and against the concubinage. These tow forms of the marriage were not accepted by the clerics. They made known their opinions through preaches, the clerical letters and through the advices that they gave to the young couples who were prepared to make the step to the marriage. When the Church rules were not respected, by some people, thy had to suffer some “punishments”: they couldn’t bee forgiven after the confess, so, they could not receive the Eucharist, they could not get some ecclesiastic rights, they could not be godparents for other couples or children and they could have a Christian funerary only if they would died in peace with God. Concubinages must be regarded as a consequence of legal and moral rules of the community, who tried to plan emotional life. The young could not decide for themselves as they were submitted to their parents or community’s will, thus the temptation of true love, the lack of spiritual satisfaction, the burden of a forced marriage have drawn the individuals to act different than the civil and religious morality would require. Concubinages would often acquire an almost “legal” status through the partners’ perseverance in keeping their relation, thus the couples were perfectly integrated into community life. The stability of the couples living in concubinage is proven by the large number of illegitimate births. These cases were not approved by the church and villagers, as they would not fit the moral grounds of the community life. The Greek Catholic Church, who had the most followers in the county of Satu Mare, had a rather loose position about divorce in the period under consideration. The Provincial Concilium of the Greek Catholic Church of Alba Iulia and Fagaras from 1872 mentions that “the Christian marriage contracted in the institution of our Lord Jesus Christ can’t end either for adultery or for other reason. As we have mentioned before, the church would act by all means to prevent the divorce. In this sense, priests would try to keep the couple together, to bring the sinful husband on the good way, in the hope the couple stays together. The priests were supported by the members of the families and community in this action. The rural society was still dominated by the church precepts, as well as by the talk of the village that would make the unwritten laws regarding the way of living together. Most of the times, couples would rather keep silent about their hard times together than taking the consequences of being judged by neighbors or by the members of the community. The physical efforts made in order to ensure the living, the material deficiencies, the alcohol, domestic violence (physical or verbal), fatigue, premature aging, deformation of body at women due to many births are just some reasons that wipe away the feelings between the husbands, if there had been any from the beginning of their marriage. However, there were few couples who would fall into the disgrace of the village and church by requiring breaking up, especially through divorce, as it is understood in terms of civil law. The number of divorced persons is very little. It increases gradually, as years pass, but 55
