-----Original Message----- From: Janet Kozlay [mailto:kozlay@comcast.net] Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 8:49 PM To: 'margaret' Subject: RE: [HUNGARY-L] Miscellaneous questions Let me add a few comments on these issues. Sometime back there was a considerable discussion of the issue of illegitimacy on the Slovak-Roots mail list. Vladimir Bohinc, who is an exceptionally knowledgeable professional genealogist from the Bratislava area, added the following: "...if somebody was born illegitimate, then as a rule, there should not be any name of the father. However, in many cases, the children were legitimized later, sometimes 6 or 8 years later , based on the subsequent marriage. In general, illegitimate children and their mothers were usually doomed and had to leave the community in many cases. Nobody really wanted to marry a illegitimate child. The ones who did, were widowers, strangers, or handicapped soldiers. Many of illegitimate ones left for US, since they did not have any future here. They did not have any inheritance to expect etc. Also, the priest usually knew who was the father though confession, so he could more or less discretely manage for the doomed either to leave or to get married. He had all kinds of "means" to control what happened in his community. Before marriage, the priest had to check the books not only for legitimacy ( if foreigner, he had to present the birth certificate from his own parish), but also for possible consanguinitatis. In case of one, a special permission had to be given and a tax paid, depending on degree of blod relation and the status of the spouses. Conducting a marriage was a very serious business, which if wrong, could have heavy consequences, also for the priest. That's why the banns. Just to make sure, there were no known objections." Elsewhere I have read that the condition of illegitimacy was so serious that it often led to infanticide rather than subject the child to, as Vladimir put it, "doom." As far as consanguinity is concerned, the definition has changed through the centuries. There is an excellent, detailed discussion of that issue as well as dispensation in the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04264a.htm). According to this, the 4th degree of consanguinity could refer either to first cousins or third cousins, depending on the time, whether it was civil or canon law, and the location. All the Hungarian ethnographic literature I have read tends to confirm that marriage contracts were closely tied to social status, wealth, and inheritance, and in most cases, for the groom, this indeed meant land ownership. (A woman rarely inherited land, but she might inherit livestock or money.) There were far more levels of status than just nobility and peasantry, and of course it was always hoped that a marriage would result in greater status or wealth. Many peasants were landowners, especially after 1848, when they were permitted to purchase lands they worked. Before that date they frequently at least "owned" their houses and a bit of land, though it was more like they leased the land from the landowner in exchange for a certain number of days of labor on the landowner's property (socage, robot days). However, this lease was heritable and for all practical purposes they "owned" it. A side issue here is that nobility very rarely married non-nobles, and then usually only if the non-noble was wealthy. (Yes, there were both wealthy peasants and poor [called "sandaled" or "barefoot"] nobles.) One of my Hungarian correspondents has said that it was nearly as unacceptable as for a white to marry a black in the old South. This custom was so strong that it lasted well into the 20th century, long after nobility was no longer officially recognized. People on the whole were well aware of their ancestry, sometimes for many generations back. Another interesting side issue is the use of money. Although payments were probably most often made in "kind," i.e., farm produce, at least in the countryside, money was far from unknown. We have direct evidence from my husband's great-grandfather's diaries that serfs working vineyards in Pomaz in the 1840s were either working off their socage or were paid their money wages on Sunday based on days worked for the week. It is probable, however, that most of this hard cash was eaten up by various taxes and fees, and there was likely little left over. Nevertheless, some were able to save up enough cash that they were able to buy their lands outright following 1848. Of course all of this only scratches the surface on these issues. As I have recommended before, for a much more thorough understanding of peasant life in 19th-century Hungary, read Fel and Hofer's "Proper Peasants: Traditional Life in a Hungarian Village." The book is widely available and is relatively inexpensive. www.abebooks.com has 30 copies available ranging in price from $10.00 to a really outrageous $163.00. The book is over 400 pages long and has many illustrations and photographs. Janet