SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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clarification. Pope Gregory II advised reducing the number of prohibited degrees for new
converts, i.e. pagans and Germanic peoples who were unused to Christian practices in an
attempt to encourage them to stay in the Christian faith (Archibald 34).
By the 1215 A.D., convening of the Lateran Council, the “official” definition of
incest was sexual intercourse between people related to the 4 th degree (parent, sibling,
aunt, uncle, first cousin, second cousin, third cousin) (Donavin 9). This also applied to
spiritual relationships; godparents, children of godparents, siblings of godparents and so
forth, and extended even to relationships that had been terminated by death. The issue
was addressed by removing the prohibitions beyond the fourth degree and recognizing
that “human statutes change sometimes with the change of time, especially when urgent
necessity or common interest demands it, since God himself has changed in the New
Testament some things that He had decreed in the Old” (Medieval Sourcebook). St.
Thomas Aquinas’s writings upheld the 1215 decision (Summa Theologica II-II, 154, 9),
acknowledging St. Augustine’s view that that while tales of incest appear in the Bible,
incestuous (sibling) marriages were necessary in the newly created world, but as soon as
the population had grown sufficiently, the “natural revulsion” of people against incest
compelled them to form relationships outside of their own immediate kin group (City of
God 15.16). Fixing the law at the fourth degree, Aquinas felt, would prevent society
from being overcome with the lechery that would occur if all people were available as
sexual partners; would maintain appropriate levels of respect between family members;
and would expand familial circles by forcing people to look outside of their own
immediate groups. The prohibition prevents the degradation of human nature that would