Case XXIII: Nullity of Marriage Owing to the Impediment of Fear

The following is a summary of the latest marriage case tried before the Rota:

On March 30, 1875, Catherine Alexandri and George Bal were married at Paris; it was said that Catherine did not freely consent to the marriage, but went through the ceremony through the influence of her mother. The marriage proved an unhappy one, in a short time the couple separated, and in 1883 a civil decree of divorce was granted to them. In 1908 Catherine Alexandri brought her case before the Archiepiscopal Curia of Paris, impugning the marriage on the ground of fear and violence, and the sentence was given in her favor. The defender of the bond appealed against this sentence to the Rota, and in a preliminary meeting of it was agreed that the question to be decided should be:

Is the nullity of the marriage shown?

The auditors have decided:

In the affirmative.

After quoting from the Corpus Juris two passages regarding the necessity of consent for the validity of marriage, they point out that the doctors interpreting these passages say that “at least according to ecclesiastical law fear is a diriment impediment to matrimony when it is grave, even relatively unjust, and produced in order to extort consent to a marriage; which they extend also to reverential fear, viz., that by which we dread the indignation of one in whose power we are, but in this case the fear must be accompanied by something else, importunate or most pressing entreaties, abuse, vexations, etc., so that the fear be really grave. In this sense the S. Congregation of the Council has frequently declared marriages contracted under such influence to be null.”

All these elements are verified in the case under sentence. On the one hand the girl’s mother wanted the marriage at all costs; for on account of the extravagance of her husband, who was Minister in Roumania, of the immense expenses in which both she and he indulged, and for various other causes, all the property of the family had practically disappeared. An evident remedy for this ruin was to be found in the marriage of her daughter with George Bal, a youth of great wealth who would improve the status not only of the girl, but would liberally help the entire family and especially the mother, who would thus be saved from the certainty of her poverty becoming public and from being obliged to return to Roumania or Moldavia. On the other hand, the girl, who was eighteen years of age at the time and of a gentle and timid disposition, absolutely abhorred the proposed marriage, for her affection had been centered for some years on a youth from her town, Alexander Steriadi, to whom she considered herself engaged; besides George Bal was, especially at the time, so strikingly ugly as to be repulsive not only to the girl, but, as the witnesses testify, to everybody.

The mother determined to break the will of the reluctant girl and bend her to her purpose. She is described by all the witnesses as a domineering woman who, in the almost constant absence of her husband, exercised full sway in the house and could not brook resistance from anyone. She left nothing undone to attain her end; for first she got Alexander Steriadi out of the way by persuading him to return to Roumania to make his fortune; then she made up with George Bal and introduced him into her house, but as her daughter from the very beginning was opposed to the marriage with George Bal, she devised and applied means to bend her will, by dwelling on the miserable plight of the family, their imminent ruin and degradation and the necessity of returning to Roumania, the only remedy being the marriage with Bal, and when all these arguments proved fruitless she followed them up with frequent abuse, grave reproaches and continual quarrels. But the girl refused to yield. Whenever she was brought into the presence of George her behavior was cold and severe, although she did not dare to make known by words or deeds her feelings of repugnance to him because her mother was always on the watch and never left her alone with him. George himself in his evidence before the Judge testified that he was struck by her coldness. After these meetings the mother used to abuse and even beat her daughter—a fact mentioned by all the witnesses as notorious. The girl suffered all the more from this from the fact that she had no one to turn to; her father was away in Roumania and indeed favored the mother’s designs; her elder sister was in the city of Valencienne, while the younger one was a mere child incapable of rendering any assistance.

This repugnance lasted until the marriage as the witnesses bear testimony; indeed the fact was almost notorious. On the day of the marriage the girl looked like a victim led to the sacrifice; George Bal himself remarked on her sadness, and the same sadness affected more or less all present, so that one of the servants remarked that it was more like a funeral than a marriage. It is true that the girl expressed her matrimonial consent before the priest as she herself confesses, but this was because she had nowhere to turn at this last moment and she muttered her consent under the influence of the fear and moral constraint under which she had been laboring for many months. George Steriadi, the brother of Catherine’s former betrothed, wrote to Madame Alexandri a letter concerning which he testifies: “I insist upon the fact that this marriage with M. Bal was contracted against the girl’s will in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon her by her mother. I was so affected and indignant that at the time I wrote a violent letter to the mother which was, doubtless, regrettable but excusable by reason of the grief my brother felt at her breaking of her word.” This evidence implies that it was well known in the family that the marriage had not been contracted freely.

The same thing was shown by the unfortunate results which followed immediately upon the marriage. For the aversion which Catherine had conceived for her husband increased rather than diminished for, as both he and she testify, Catherine abhorred matrimonial relations with him not on conscientious grounds (for she thought she was legitimately married), but on account of her dislike and repugnance to her husband which she could not overcome. The witnesses testify to the quarrels, abuse, beatings, etc., which followed, so that even during the first year of the marriage the husband wished to secure a separation from his wife, and was only restrained from this, as he himself says, because he dreaded the scandal and publicity that would follow. But the discord between them continued to grow worse, and after about eighteen months the plea for separation was filed and at last a civil divorce was pronounced between them.

All this is proved from the acts and allegations. It is true that several of the witnesses only testify to what they have heard, but it must be remembered (1) that after thirty-three years many of the eye-witnesses of the events are dead; (2) that many of the witnesses who have deposed in the case are to be believed because they treat of a matter which was well known in the family, they had their information from good sources and at a time when there was no question of a case for nullity, and (3) that there are some eye-witnesses who testify to the leading facts.

Nor can it be said that the petitioner, Catherine Alexandri, is open to a suspicion of bad faith because she allowed such a long time to elapse before impugning the validity of the marriage. For there is a good reason for this. She knew nothing of the nullity of her marriage until about 1907, when she attended a catechistical instruction in the Church of St. Honoré in Paris, and heard an explanation of the diriment impediments of marriage and, in particular, of the impediment of violence and fear. Struck by this she went to the Abbé Vigneron who was her adviser and who consulted an expert on the question and even came to Rome for the purpose of obtaining information. It was thus that the case was brought before the ecclesiastical judge, as is testified by the Abbé Vigneron.

In view of all this the three auditors, Serafino Mary (Ponent), Francis Heiner (Auditor of the Bench), and John Prior, confirm the sentence of the Archiepiscopal Curia of Paris and pronounce that: “The nullity of the marriage between Catherine Alexandri and George Bal is proved,” deciding that the said Catherine Alexandri is obliged to pay all the expenses of the case.