Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1875 — Marriageable Ages In Europe. [ARTICLE]

Marriageable Ages In Europe.

Reports from the British representatives abroad showing the earliest age at which marriages can be legally solemnized in each of the States of the Continent of Europe have been presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of their address dated June 15, 1874. In Austria the age of discretion, both for males and females, is fourteen, and this period of life must be reached on both sides before a marriage can be valid. In Hungary, however, the marriage laws are entirely ecclesiastical, and males of the Roman Catholic confession cannot contract marriage till they have completed their fourteenth year, nor females till they are twelve "years of age. The Orthodox Greek Church follows the same rule; but Protestants consider males under the age of eighteen and females under the age of fifteen unable to contract valid marriages. In Cisleithania Jews are subject to the civil law; but in Hungary there is no restriction as to the age at which they may marry. In Russia eighteen years for males and sixteen for females are the periods of life at which marriage may be legally con tracted. In Turuey there is no general law on the subject of marriageable ages. The Italian law fixes eighteen years for males and fifteen years for females as the earliest time of life at which marriages may be solemnized. Prussia, by the statute of December, 1872, sanctions marriage in the case of males on the completion of their eighteenth year, and the fourteenth year in the case of females, no exception being allowed to these provisions. The law in France states the earliest age at which marriages can be contracted to be eighteen years in the case of males and fifteen in the case of females, but powers of dispensation are reserved by the code. Under the old monarchy boys could marry at the age of fourteen and girls at twelve, as under ancient Roman and even Athenian law. The Belgian code is the same as the French in determining the ages of eighteen and fifteen severally as those at which men and women may marry, and in leaving a right of dispensation. In Greece males cannot marry before fourteen years of .age, nor females before twelve; while in the lonian Islands sixteen and fourteen years are respectively the legal ages." A bill has been, or is about to be, introduced into the Athenian Chamber, appointing fifteen as the earliest age for males and twelve for females. By the law of June, 1870, the legal ages of marriage in Spain are fourteen for males and twelve for females. It is the same in Portugal, with this qualification: that minors —that is, persons of either sex under twenty-one years of age—cannot contract marriage without consent of their parents. In Saxony the legal age for the marriage of males is eighteen, for females sixteen years. According to the amended paragraph of the new German Civil ’Mar-

riage bill the ages would be respectively twenty and sixteen yean, instead of eighteen and fourteen as in the draft of the bill. In Roumania the legal age for marriage is eighteen years in the case of males and fifteen in that of females. There is much variation of the marriage law in Switzerland as to the ages of contracting parties, which in some Cantons is as high as twenty years for males and seventeen for females, and in others as low as fourteen for males and twelve for females. Consent of parents is also required up to twenty-five years in Uri, in Schaflhouse, in Appenzell, m Tessin and in Geneva.