It is to this want of affection and sympathy between the different layers of society, together with the vain desire of keeping the blood pure, that the prohibition of marriage out of the class, or the general avoidance of such marriages, owes its origin. Among the Ahts, for instance, who take great pride in honourable birth, a patrician loses caste unless he marries a woman of corresponding rank, in his own or another tribe.[2173] Among the Isthmians of Central America, the lords married only the daughters of noble blood; and, in Guatemala, marriage with a slave reduced the freeman to a slave’s condition.[2174] The tribes of Brazil also consider such alliances highly disgraceful.[2175]
Nowhere are the different orders of society more distinctly separated from each other than in the South Sea Islands. In the Marianne group, it was the common belief that only the nobles were endowed with an immortal soul; and a nobleman who married a girl of the people was punished with death.[2176] In Polynesia also, the commoners were looked upon by the nobility almost as a different species of beings.[2177] Hence in the higher ranks marriage was concluded only between persons of corresponding position; and if, in Tahiti, a woman of condition chose an inferior person as a husband, the children he had by her were killed.[2178] In the Indian Archipelago, marriages between persons of different rank are, as a rule, disapproved, and in some places they are prohibited.[2179] Among the Hovas of Madagascar, the three great divisions—the nobles, the commoners, and the slaves,—with few exceptions, cannot intermarry; neither do the three different classes of slaves marry each other.[2180] Almost the same rule holds good for the different orders of the Beni-Amer and Marea;[2181] whilst, among the Tedâ, the smiths form an hereditary and utterly despised caste by themselves, being obliged to marry solely with members of their own caste.[2182] By several African peoples, however, slaves and freemen are allowed to intermarry.[2183]
The Aenezes of Arabia never intermarry with the “szona,” handicraftsmen or artizans; nor do they ever marry their daughters to Fellahs, or to inhabitants of towns.[2184] In India, intermarriage between different castes was in Manu’s time permissible, but is now altogether prohibited. Of the original four castes, the Brahmans alone have retained their purity to any extent, but there is an almost endless number of trade-castes, resulting chiefly from associations of men engaged in the same occupation.[2185] Moreover, as Sir Monier Williams remarks, “we find castes within castes, so that even the Brahmans are broken up and divided into numerous races, which again are subdivided into numerous tribes, families, or sub-castes ... which do not intermarry.”[2186] Class-endogamy prevails in Ceylon,[2187] Siam,[2188] and Corea;[2189] and in the Chittagong district, when a slave marries, the person chosen must be a slave.[2190] In China, play-actors, policemen, boatmen, and slaves are not allowed to marry women of any other class than that to which they respectively belong.[2191] And in Japan, before the year 1868, when a new order of things was introduced, the different classes of nobles were not permitted to intermarry with each other or with common people.[2192]
In Europe there have been similar prohibitions. In Rome, plebeians and patricians could not intermarry till the year 455 B.C., nor were marriages allowed between patricians and clients. Cicero himself disapproved of intermarriages of ingenui and freedmen, and, though such alliances were generally permitted under the Emperors, yet a senator could not marry a freed-woman, nor a patroness her liberated slave. Between freemen and slaves contubernium could take place, but not marriage.[2193] Among the Teutonic peoples, in ancient times, any freeman who had intercourse with a slave was punished with slavery, and a woman guilty of such a crime might be killed. In the Scandinavian countries, slavery came to an end at a comparatively early period, but in Germany it was succeeded by serfdom; and equality of birth continued to be regarded as an indispensable condition of lawful marriage. As late as the thirteenth century any German woman who had intercourse with a serf lost her liberty.[2194] From the class of freemen, both in Germany and in Scandinavia, the nobility gradually emerged as a distinct order, and marriages between persons of noble birth and persons who, although free, were not noble, came to be considered misalliances.[2195] In Sweden, in the seventeenth century, such marriages were punished.[2196]
Modern civilization tends to pull down the barriers which separate the various classes of society, just as it tends to diminish the differences in interests, habits, sentiments, and knowledge. Birth no longer determines to the same extent as before a man’s social position, and nobility has become a shadow of what it was. Thus there survive but few traces of the former class-endogamy. According to German Civil Law, the marriage of a man belonging to the high nobility with a woman of inferior birth is still regarded as a disparagium; and the woman is not entitled to the rank of her husband, nor is the full right of inheritance possessed by her or by her children.[2197] Although in no way prevented by law, marriages out of the class are generally avoided by custom. “The outer or endogamous limit, within which a man or woman must marry,” says Sir Henry Maine, “has been mostly taken under the shelter of fashion or prejudice. It is but faintly traced in England, though not wholly obscured. It is (or perhaps was) rather more distinctly marked in the United States, through prejudices against the blending of white and coloured blood. But in Germany certain hereditary dignities are still forfeited by a marriage beyond the forbidden limits; and in France, in spite of all formal institutions, marriages between a person belonging to the noblesse and a person belonging to the bourgeoisie (distinguished roughly from one another by the particle ‘de’) are wonderfully rare, though they are not unknown.[2198]
Different nations, like the different classes of society, have been gradually drawing nearer to each other. National prejudices have diminished, and international sympathy has increased. During the Middle Ages a foreigner was called in Germany “ein Elender,” because he stood outside the law;[2199] to-day he enjoys the protection of the law in all civilized countries, and is not as a foreigner an object of prejudice. This widening of sympathy, and improved means of communication, have of course made intermarriages between the several nations much more common than they used to be.
Religion, finally, has formed a great bar to intermarriage. In British India, the descendants of all the Mohammedan races—Arab, Iranian, Turanian, Mongol, and Hindu converts—intermarry, but there are few unions between Christian men and Mohammedan women.[2200] Indeed, according to Mr. Lane, such a marriage is not permitted under any circumstances, and cannot take place otherwise than by force. On the other hand, it is held lawful for a Mohammedan to marry a Christian or a Jewish woman, if induced to do so by excessive love of her, or if he cannot obtain a wife of his own religion. In this case, however, the offspring must follow the father’s faith, and the wife does not inherit when the husband dies.[2201] Marriage with a heathen woman is never permitted to a Mussulman.[2202]
It is mainly religion that has kept the Jews a relatively pure race. “The Jew,” says Dr. Neubauer, “has no preference for, or any aversion from, one race or another, provided he can marry a woman of his religion, and vice versa.”[2203] Indeed, the Jewish law does not recognize marriage with a person of another belief,[2204] though there are instances of such marriages in the early days of Israel.[2205] During the Middle Ages, marriage between Jews and Christians was prohibited by the Christians also, and universally avoided.[2206] “The folk-lore of Europe,” Mr. Jacobs remarks, “regarded the Jews as something infra-human, and it would require an almost impossible amount of large toleration for a Christian maiden of the Middle Ages to regard union with a Jew as anything other than unnatural.” Mr. Jacobs thinks it may be doubted whether even at the present day there is one mixed marriage to five hundred pure Jewish marriages.[2207]
St. Paul indicates that a Christian was not allowed to marry a heathen,[2208] and Tertullian calls such an alliance fornication.[2209] In early times, the Church often encouraged marriages of this sort as a means of propagating Christianity, and it was only when its success was beyond doubt that it actually prohibited them.[2210] The Council of Elvira expressly forbade Christian parents to give their daughters in marriage to heathens, ordering that those who did so should be excommunicated.[2211]
Even the adherents of different Christian confessions have been prohibited from intermarrying. In the Roman Church the prohibition of marriage with heathens and Jews (impedimentum cultus disparitatis) was soon followed by the prohibition of “mixed marriages” (impedimentum mixtae religionis); and the Protestants also originally forbade such unions. The Greek Church, on the other hand, made in this respect a distinction between schismatici, or those who dissent from the Church in non-essential points only, and haeretici, or those who dissent from its fundamental doctrines.[2212] Mixed marriages are not now contrary to the civil law either in Roman Catholic or in Protestant countries; but in countries belonging to the Orthodox Greek Church the ecclesiastical restrictions have been adopted by the State. In Russia, Greece, and Servia, Roman Catholics and Protestants are regarded as schismatici but in the Turkish countries as haeretici.[2213] It is noteworthy that, in countries which are partly Roman Catholic, partly Protestant, mixed marriages form only a comparatively small percentage of the whole number of marriages.[2214]