THE PROBLEM OF CONGENERIC MARRIAGES FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF CHURCH AND TRADITION

Abstract

The article, keeping to the historical chronology, attempts to reveal and represent the laws forbidding the marriages based on kinship partnership adopted by both Church Councils as well as the secular and religious laws. Based on the comparisons and contradictions the article puts an emphasis on the great influence that the Christian Value System could have on the banning the kinship marriages.  After adoption of Christianity and within its efforts to fight against the pagan rights the Armenian Church via its canonical councils could adopt laws and rules to ban the marriages between the relatives. During the period, those laws and rules have undergone slight changes and reached to us in the form they are now. The article contains some citations from orders by Chatholicos, that particularly emphasise the Church’s strong attitude towards the matter under discussion. The article also discusses the questions of marriage between adopted children and step-relatives and the Church’s attitude is the same.

It is very important to mention the great role of the Armenian Church in the solution and reinforcement of the marriage question in our reality that in its turn, greatly favoured to the heightening and evaluating the role of the Armenian Woman.