Marriage or Marriage Bann

[rp76226]

I think this is a marriage bann - http://postimg.org/image/lje0st0kf/

The date looks like 10 June 1834 for both the civil record and the church side of the document. Is that the date of the promise or the date of the wedding? If the promise, is the wedding date indicated.

[AngelaGrace56]

The marriage took place on 15 (quindici) June 1834.
The left hand side is the promise to marry (which took place 10 June 1834 - yes ) and the right hand side gives the marriage info. If you look where it says "e seguita nel giorno "quindici" del mese di Guigno".
Angela

[rp76226]

Thanks Angela.

Ron

[AngelaGrace56]

Happy to help.
Angela

[carubia]

This is not a marriage bann, but rather a marriage act. The marriage banns would be found earlier on the microfilm roll, in the sections called Parte Prima and Parte Seconda.

[rp76226]

What does the June 10 date on the left side of the page mean versus the June 15 date on the right side of the page for the actual marriage date?

[carubia]

On 10 Jun the couple went to city hall to get married civilly (similar to getting a marriage license in the US). On the 15th they had the church wedding ceremony. On the 16th the church notified city hall of the performance of the wedding ceremony.

During that time period, before 1865, the religious ceremony was required in order to be legally married civilly. If one looks through indexes from that time period, for the date of the marriage, which was also in the index, sometimes the index has the date of the church ceremony and sometimes it has the date of the "promise."

Sometimes people had a church marriage but did not register it civilly, or only did so well after the fact. This became less common over the course of the 19th century.

You'll sometimes find that the right-hand side of the marriage act is blank. This could be because the couple never actually went through with the marriage, or because the ceremony took place the following year after the books had been closed for the year (this is not unusual for marriage acts from December), or even just because the civil records officer never bothered to record the wedding details (you can see this happening for months at a time).

In the 1865 Civil Code, civil marriage was separated from religious marriage, so that from 1866 church details were no longer included in civil marriage acts and a church ceremony was no longer required to be legally married.

[rp76226]

Thank you. My grandparents (born in Italy) and my aunt( born in America), had both a civil ceremony and months later a church wedding, which they considered their real wedding. I guess some italians carried their habits regarding marriage, to America.

[carubia]

Ron,

In America most people legally aren't married until the church wedding. I really doubt your grandparents married legally at city hall before their church wedding. The standard procedure in the US was to go to city hall and get a marriage license. Then one goes to a church (or anyone licensed to perform a wedding) and marries. At that time, when you sign the license just after the ceremony, you're legally married. Generally the only people who legally marry at city hall are those who have no intention of marrying in a religious ceremony (e.g., atheists).

Before 1865 in Italy the situation was similar, except that a purely secular marriage was not an option. After 1865 secular marriage was separated from religious marriage to an extent that is still not true in the US.

Where I live now, in Japan, is more similar to the Italian system. Secular and religious weddings are completely distinct - you can have either or both, in any order. One has nothing to do with the other.

One thing, though, that sometimes occurred among Italians in America was to not get a marriage license in the first place and just have a religious marriage without one. Technically one would not be legally married in that case. Alternatively, couples (such as my grandparents) would get a license and get married, but not return the signed marriage license to the city. In that case they would be legally married but could only obtain a marriage certificate from the church, not the government.

[liviomoreno]

As Angela stated in her first answer (http://www.italiangenealogy.com/forum/t ... 52#p229052) June 10 is not a civil marriage, it is the marriage promise. The actual marriage was celebrated in the Parish on June 15. The religious marriage was then transcribed in the city hall registers.

[AngelaGrace56]

As Angela stated in her first answer (http://www.italiangenealogy.com/forum/t ... 52#p229052) June 10 is not a civil marriage, it is the marriage promise. The actual marriage was celebrated in the Parish on June 15. The religious marriage was then transcribed in the city hall registers.

Grazie Livio
Angela

[rp76226]

So we have a disagreement with Carubia's interpretation of June 10 as a civil wedding. Wouldn't a marriage bann be posted more than 5 days before the church wedding? I thought that civil marriage banns were normally on a separate document by themselves.

[liviomoreno]

See:
https://books.google.it/books?id=HAuKMV ... re&f=false
and
https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/ ... riages.pdf

[liviomoreno]

The date of the banns are found on the second page of the "atto della solenne promessa di celebrare matrimonio"

[carubia]

So we have a disagreement with Carubia's interpretation of June 10 as a civil wedding.

There's no disagreement. I just didn't express my first sentence clearly. I was trying to say that on the 10th of Jun they went to the town hall to continue the process of getting married. They didn't actually get married on that day. As I pointed out in the same post, they weren't legally married until the church ceremony was performed. Also, while the registration at the town hall was a civil procedure, the marriage itself was not. There was no secular marriage in Italy before 1865.

It's a little hard to explain exactly what the "solemn promise" was. It was not a registration of an existing marriage, it was not a marriage ceremony, and it wasn't even really required to get married. It was sort of a pre-registration of a marriage. It was similar to the process of getting a marriage license in the US, except that in the US a marriage license is required in order to be legally married. In Italy before 1865 one could get married in a church without having registered with the comune first, and then have the marriage registered civilly after that. In fact, when the civil registration of marriages in Sicily started in the early 1820s, some couples who already were married religiously registered their marriages civilly, but others didn't. After 1865 it didn't matter whether one married in church or not.

Wouldn't a marriage bann be posted more than 5 days before the church wedding? I thought that civil marriage banns were normally on a separate document by themselves.

The first bann was usually a couple of weeks before the marriage act. The second bann was a week after the first. The marriage act served as the 3rd marriage bann. (The Council of Trent required marriage banns on 3 consecutive Holy Days.) The church ceremony could occur any time after that, from the day of the act to months later. However, sometimes you'll see a marriage act where the wedding actually occurred before the date of the act, even years earlier.