SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...
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8<br />
sibling, and mother-son. 2<br />
She notes that incest “creates convoluted and ambiguous<br />
family relationships” (2) and finds that most incest stories do not fall into clear-cut<br />
categories. In other words, the borders confining families, definitions, and even literary<br />
groupings are rarely static. According to the ultimate medieval authority—the Bible—all<br />
people are products of the incestuous couplings of brothers and sisters; but as part of<br />
God’s design, why should it be prohibited? It was church fathers who interpreted the<br />
move away from incestuous brother-sister couplings as later revisions of the divine plan.<br />
Like the serpent in the Garden, the question of incest poses a problem for medieval<br />
thinkers: if all things come from an omnipotent God, how can evil exist? Yet medieval<br />
writers saw their societies beset by war, plague, royal ineptitude, and human cruelty.<br />
<strong>The</strong> 1563 version of the English Book of Common Prayer reaffirmed the incest<br />
prohibition, incorporating a “Table of Kindred and Affinity” that listed sixty<br />
relationships for which marriage was forbidden, among them marriage with sisters- or<br />
brothers- in law; man and niece; and, man and aunt; cousin marriages were acceptable,<br />
though (McCabe 63). 3<br />
Tudor matrimonial prospects were particularly vulnerable to the<br />
many possible contemporary interpretations of Biblical law, because the legitimacy of the<br />
succession to the throne depended upon it.<br />
<strong>The</strong> legitimacy of Elizabeth I’s clams to the throne was troubled by Henry VIII’s<br />
marital machinations and the ambiguity of the definition of incest. Was his marriage to<br />
Katherine incestuous or not? According to Levitical law, it would have been; the Pope<br />
declared that it was not through a dispensation. <strong>The</strong> “implications for English history are<br />
2 Archibald, Elizabeth. <strong>Incest</strong> and the Medieval Imagination.<br />
3 James I was the son of first cousins, so this was fortunate for his claim to the throne.