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Source: (consider it) Thread: An Eastern Orthodox Research Q
Brenda Clough
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I am writing a novel. It is set in 1865. The hero got married in an ordinary CofE service some years previously, in a church near London, all copacetic.

He is now in eastern Europe, where (after many plot complications with which I will not burden you) it is proposed that he marry in the Orthodox church. He is reluctant, pointing out that hey! his English wife is standing right here. But they argue that a Protestant wedding and wife don't really count, and that he could start over fresh with a decent Eastern Orthodox ceremony.

Is this accurate? How valid were marriages in that period, across the various denominations of Christianity? The only analogy that comes to my mind is that of the extremely orthodox Jews, who to this day do not recognize conversions or rites conducted by Liberal or even Conservative Judaism.

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Augustine the Aleut
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If the husband were Orthodox and a national of the country (Russia would have been the only Orthodox monarchy of the time in eastern Europe-- or perhaps Montenegro??), then this might be the case.

If he were legally domiciled in England and CoE, then a CoE marriage would be valid pretty well everywhere on the planet in international private law.

Diplomatic considerations were at play at more exalted levels, likely not relevant to this exercise. At the imperial family marriage level, there were cases of Lutheran marriage followed by Orthodox marriage but this likely had to do with house laws applying to the various German ruling families-- more generally, there were only Orthodox services, usually but not always after the Lutheran prince(sse)s converted to Orthodoxy.

[ 15. February 2015, 14:53: Message edited by: Augustine the Aleut ]

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Brenda Clough
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Oh super. I remember that, when Alix of Hesse married Tsar Nicholas. Many luscious plot complications burgeon. Thank you!

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Enoch
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Is it proposed that he marry his existing wife, or that he marry a different one?

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mousethief

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I don't know the way things were done in 19th century Russia (which may come as an ironic shock to some), but nowadays I think most Orthodoxen would have the marriage blessed in the church, but not redone. Technically speaking couples who marry outside the church become married inside the church when they commune together (take eucharist from the same chalice). But that may be so old-fashioned (weddings and marriages, if you go back far enough, were not something done inside the church) that nobody holds to it anymore. To be honest, it's not been an area that interests me. I'll try to talk Josephine into coming and sharing her wisdom and knowledge of history, which is an ocean compared to my Nyquil cup.

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Josephine

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Has he converted to Orthodoxy? If not, then they could NOT have an Orthodox wedding, and it would be shocking if anyone proposed such a thing. In the Orthodox Church, marriage is a sacrament, and people who are not Orthodox do not receive sacraments in the Orthodox church.

If he had converted, then the status of his marriage would be one of the things discussed with his priest as part of the conversion process. And what, exactly, the outcome of that discussion would be would vary. Economia.

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Brenda Clough
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In fact he is not at all anxious to convert to Orthodoxy, having descended from a long line of Protestants back to the time of Mary Tudor. But not to worry, it will all work out. The young lady in question will be wooed and won by another.

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Curiosity killed ...

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I rather suspect that his family would have had a better time had his Church of England credentials gone back to Henry VIII or Edward VI. Mary Tudor tried to turn the country Catholic again and Protestants did not have a healthy existence during her reign.

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Adam.

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
If not, then they could NOT have an Orthodox wedding, and it would be shocking if anyone proposed such a thing. In the Orthodox Church, marriage is a sacrament, and people who are not Orthodox do not receive sacraments in the Orthodox church.

I actually didn't know that. If an Orthodox person falls in love with a non-Orthodox do they have to leave the Church to get married, or is it permitted for them to have a civil (or other) ceremony and still practice their faith?

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Adam.:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
If not, then they could NOT have an Orthodox wedding, and it would be shocking if anyone proposed such a thing. In the Orthodox Church, marriage is a sacrament, and people who are not Orthodox do not receive sacraments in the Orthodox church.

I actually didn't know that. If an Orthodox person falls in love with a non-Orthodox do they have to leave the Church to get married, or is it permitted for them to have a civil (or other) ceremony and still practice their faith?
Oh, I'm sorry, I was trying to avoid giving way more information than anyone wanted, and in trying to be concise, I'm afraid I wasn't clear.

Currently, to be married in the Orthodox Church, at least one of the couple has to be Orthodox. The other, if not Orthodox, has to be a Christian who was baptized with a trinitarian formula.

In the distant past, both would have to be Orthodox. But for about a thousand years, by economia, the Church has allowed an Orthodox Christian to marry someone who wouldn't properly qualify for a marriage in the Church.

However, there are limits to the economia. And the limit is a Christian baptized with a trinitarian formula.

So if an Orthodox Christian wanted to marry a Muslim or a Hindu, they couldn't get married in the Orthodox Church. But an Orthodox Christian must marry in the Orthodox Church. If you marry in the local Methodist church or a JP's office, you're excommunicate.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
In fact he is not at all anxious to convert to Orthodoxy, having descended from a long line of Protestants back to the time of Mary Tudor. But not to worry, it will all work out. The young lady in question will be wooed and won by another.

Wait, you're saying that the Orthodox folks in the story suggested he could dump his non-Orthodox wife and marry an Orthodox woman?

Would.Not.Have.Happened.

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Brenda Clough
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Yes. But this is a dynastic union, and there is a long list of reasons why it has to take place; rather than have a war the pols are suggesting that my hero simply keep his Protestant wife on the side as a morganatic spouse and have an Orthodox queen for official purposes -- like the Romanovs, or George IV with Maria Fitzherbert and Catherine of Brunswick.

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Albertus
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Hang on, having a morganatic spouse doesn't mean that you can have another non-morganatic one as well. And George IV's first marriage, if it was valid in the eyes of God, would not have been valid in English Law because (i) he married an RC without giving up his claim to the throne (ii) it was not with the consent of the monarch (iii) possibly- Ii don't know- it breached the Marriage Act of 1753 as well, as a clandestine marriage.
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Bishops Finger
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I'm tempted to reverse St. Paul's advice, and say that it is better to burn than to marry (...at least, in Russia! [Paranoid] ).

OK, I'll get me coat............

Ian J.

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Augustine the Aleut
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You can't have a morganatic spouse and a more dynastic one. It doesn't work that way. Morganatic simply means (in short) that the spouse and the offspring do not have succession rights: in every other way they are the legal spouse. Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg and wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is a good example of a morganatic wife. A second simultanneous spouse is not possible (unless you are Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse).

It is more likely that the political advisers would suggest that the Protestant wife be downgraded to official mistress, with title and honours for her and offspring, and that the dynastic wife would be the only official one.

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mdijon
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That would only be possible with a divorce though. Which I think would be problematic for the Orthodox. I believe divorce rules are quite strict, and advising divorce wouldn't be undertaken lightly. This could be a very interesting plot!

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Augustine the Aleut
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quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
That would only be possible with a divorce though. Which I think would be problematic for the Orthodox. I believe divorce rules are quite strict, and advising divorce wouldn't be undertaken lightly. This could be a very interesting plot!

Not necessarily, although one enters into the murky world of house laws, by which many European ruling families operated. Certainly in some German families and, if I recall my once and cursory reading of the Romanov house laws, marriages needed the consent of the sovereign to be valid (much like Britain's defunct-as-soon-as-Australia-agrees Royal Marriages Act) but once-illegal marriages could be retroactively validated. In some German houses, the sovereign could simply decree that a marriage be annulled, or end.

Before World War I, this sort of thing was an entire area of legal practice. When one thinks of all of the young law students who, in 1912, were urged to commit themselves to an ever-relevant specialty...

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Brenda Clough
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There comes a point in the researching of arcanities of law where the author gets a bye -- no reader is likely to know what the true legal status of the situation is. I can see that I am approaching that happy event horizon.
There is also the fact that this is an entirely fictional country, which means I can make the laws what I want them to be as long as they are sorta kinda like what some other countries of the period and region are doing. Let me just slide back in time and create a historical precedent for what I am doing, and all shall be well.

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Josephine

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He'd have to have permission from both the bishop and his English wife to divorce her for reasons of state. And then permission from the bishop for a second marriage.

Your country might be fictional, but the Orthodox Church isn't.

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Gamaliel
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I'm not Orthodox, but I'm with Josephine on this one.

I'd be very wary of fictionalising Orthodox practice in this respect - just as I'd be wary of amending some feature of RC or Protestant practice - or any other religious practice come to that - simply to create a nice, neat plot development in a novel.

I'm not saying that historical novels have to dot every 'i' and cross every single 't' but credibility is important ... you wouldn't have maxim guns at the Battle of Waterloo, for instance, nor would you have Oliver Cromwell, say, arguing with the Rump that gay marriage was legitimate and ought to be considered alongside other reforms ...

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mousethief

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As long as you only want to sell books to non-Orthodox and people who are ignorant of Orthodox praxis, and don't care about Ortho bloggers ripping your depiction of their church to shreds, knock yourself out. But writers of historical fiction tend to do better than that if they can.

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Basilica
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Though it's worth mentioning that, for the purpose of fiction, a story doesn't have to reflect the official position of the Orthodox Church, merely a position that could conceivably be held by a priest and a local community.

In the same way, you could write an article about Victorian Church of England attitudes about the Churching of Women that referred to popular beliefs about the service (i.e. purification) rather than official beliefs (i.e. thanksgiving).

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The Scrumpmeister
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
As long as you only want to sell books to non-Orthodox and people who are ignorant of Orthodox praxis, and don't care about Ortho bloggers ripping your depiction of their church to shreds, knock yourself out. But writers of historical fiction tend to do better than that if they can.

This.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Basilica:
Though it's worth mentioning that, for the purpose of fiction, a story doesn't have to reflect the official position of the Orthodox Church, merely a position that could conceivably be held by a priest and a local community.

In the same way, you could write an article about Victorian Church of England attitudes about the Churching of Women that referred to popular beliefs about the service (i.e. purification) rather than official beliefs (i.e. thanksgiving).

What Brenda Clough describes is neither official praxis nor popular beliefs. It is outside the realm of plausible. It lacks verisimilitude.

And maybe, for Brenda's book, that's okay. If the book is otherwise fabulous, I may forgive her for it. I forgave one author for having a medieval wedding during Advent. I forgave another author for having wedding bands of 24 karat gold. Those glitches marred the story, but not so much that the story was ruined.

When an author had a saboteur pour ammonia and bleach into the potable water supply on a ship, and no noxious fumes were created, that was it. I couldn't finish the book.

It depends on how important the error is to the story, and on how good the story is. In the case of the gold ring, if you just read "obviously valuable" in place of 24-karat, it worked. It was annoying, but it didn't really hurt anything. And the wedding during Advent was at the end of the book, a wrapping up of things, and nothing in the story depended on it. So a sigh and a shrug, and it was a good story anyway.

The contamination of the potable water supply was a huge plot point, and that mistake was inexcusable.

And if this marriage-that-doesn't-happen-after-all is important to the story, fudging around with how marriage is done in the Orthodox Church is going to be that kind of mistake. It will cause the book to get thrown across the room in irritation, and generate 1-star reviews on Goodreads.

[ 16. February 2015, 20:56: Message edited by: Josephine ]

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Teufelchen
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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Yes. But this is a dynastic union, and there is a long list of reasons why it has to take place; rather than have a war the pols are suggesting that my hero simply keep his Protestant wife on the side as a morganatic spouse and have an Orthodox queen for official purposes -- like the Romanovs, or George IV with Maria Fitzherbert and Catherine of Brunswick.

You're confusing a lot of different ideas about marriage here.

1) In British law, there is no such thing as a morganatic marriage. The children of James II/VII by Anne Hyde (the daughter of a non-royal, but James' legitimate wife until her death) were just as much heirs as his son by Mary of Modena (a royal), and indeed duly inherited.

2) A morganatic marriage disinherits its issue of any royal titles, but does not allow either party to marry while the other lives. Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este's children were not archdukes, but Sophie Chotek was his only wife.

3) You may be thinking of marriage more Danico, a form of irregular secondary marriage practiced before the Norman Conquest, in which a man might have a principal wife more Christiano, and an official mistress married according to some kind of handfasting ritual. Harold Godwinson was simultaneously married more Christiano to Edith of Mercia (an heiress) and more Danico to Edith Swan-Neck. Edith of Mercia became queen during Harold's brief reign.

4) George IV's marriage to Maria Fitzherbert was illegal and invalid under British law from the outset, owing to the effect of the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Had it been conducted within the strictures of that Act, George could never have become king, as Mrs Fitzherbert was a Catholic. (George's queen was Caroline of Brunswick.)

5) As discussed at length above, the provisions for marriage between members of Orthodox churches and other Christians, which have nothing intrinsically to do with dynastic law at all.

I think your fictional politicians may find that they are taken aside by ashen-faced clerics of both affected churches, and politely but firmly schooled in why this particular fix won't work.

t

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Teufelchen
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
A second simultanneous spouse is not possible (unless you are Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse).

OK, I'll bite - is this a reference to Phillip of Hesse's bisexuality? Or is there another Phillip of Hesse with a different interesting sex life?

t

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Augustine the Aleut
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quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
A second simultanneous spouse is not possible (unless you are Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse).

OK, I'll bite - is this a reference to Phillip of Hesse's bisexuality? Or is there another Phillip of Hesse with a different interesting sex life?

t

I didn't know about his bisexuality but who knows what he got up to. In any event, this was the Reformation-era prince who took on a
second wife with Luther's sort-of approval.

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Teufelchen
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
A second simultanneous spouse is not possible (unless you are Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse).

OK, I'll bite - is this a reference to Phillip of Hesse's bisexuality? Or is there another Phillip of Hesse with a different interesting sex life?

t

I didn't know about his bisexuality but who knows what he got up to. In any event, this was the Reformation-era prince who took on a
second wife with Luther's sort-of approval.

Different guy.

t

[ 17. February 2015, 00:42: Message edited by: Teufelchen ]

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Brenda Clough
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Oh, you give me ideas. Lemme rewrite a little...

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Augustine the Aleut
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I think that it is now pretty well clearly established that all Landgraves of Hesse named Phillip are going to be adventurous sorts. As the two older women in the audience at a performance of Macbeth were to have said: How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.
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venbede
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quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
. As the two older women in the audience at a performance of Macbeth were to have said: How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.

I thought it was
Anthony amd Cleopatra.

I remember Father Stephen Platt saying that as the Orthodox church service does not include any vows, to be legal in English law, there has to be a civil service first.

And a jolly good thing too. And we could do with some suptuary laws to forbid more than £1000 being paid for any wedding. I thank God fasting that I'm gay and have never been expected to have some ghasty extravagant sentimental narcissistic do, and just get on living faithfully with someone who loves me for nigh forty years.

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Sober Preacher's Kid

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quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
. As the two older women in the audience at a performance of Macbeth were to have said: How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.

I thought it was
Anthony amd Cleopatra.

I remember Father Stephen Platt saying that as the Orthodox church service does not include any vows, to be legal in English law, there has to be a civil service first.

And a jolly good thing too. And we could do with some suptuary laws to forbid more than £1000 being paid for any wedding. I thank God fasting that I'm gay and have never been expected to have some ghasty extravagant sentimental narcissistic do, and just get on living faithfully with someone who loves me for nigh forty years.

I had a cousin who got married in the (Greek) Orthodox Church, and Ma Preacher had the same objection (this was 15 years ago). No vows = invalid under Canadian law. In every province.
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L'organist
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One of my siblings married in the Greek Orthodox church (because marrying a Greek national).

Yes, the wedding did include vows.

It was seen as a valid marriage in the UK because it was 'declared' at the local Register Office in Greece within 40 days of the wedding and a Marriage Certificate issued; that was then translated into English and the embassy (Consular Officer) sent it to the General Register Office here in the UK.

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venbede
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# 16669

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Maybe Greek law requires the inclusion of vows in the service to meet the requirements of international law.

Mind you, I believe the vows in a British civil wedding are "I promise to be your husband/wife" which doesn't mean much in any case.

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Enoch
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# 14322

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In English law, I don't think it would be the absence of vows that might be a problem. The critical bit is that each party must say in the ceremony and not before it, openly, audibly and of their own free will, something broadly on the lines of 'I take you as my husband/wife' respectively.

I don't know what form an Orthodox wedding takes, but the only way that might not be the case would be if the couple appear before the priest in silence and he confers marriage upon them

Clergy who aren't CofE or CinW have to be authorised by the local Registrar of Marriages to perform weddings. I'd imagine he or she checks the script of the ceremony to make sure it includes this.The building also has to be registered. If a church doesn't do very many, it may be more work than its worth to get the two accreditations.

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I don't know what form an Orthodox wedding takes, but the only way that might not be the case would be if the couple appear before the priest in silence and he confers marriage upon them

The Orfie wedding service consists of two parts, the betrothal and the crowning. During the bethrothal, the priest asks if they have promised themselves to any other, and they say "no" (hopefully), and asks if they are entering in to the marriage with a free will, and they say "yes" (hopefully). That's all the couple say in either part; the rest is the priest, deacon, reader, and choir.

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Timothy the Obscure

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# 292

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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
There comes a point in the researching of arcanities of law where the author gets a bye -- no reader is likely to know what the true legal status of the situation is. I can see that I am approaching that happy event horizon.
There is also the fact that this is an entirely fictional country, which means I can make the laws what I want them to be as long as they are sorta kinda like what some other countries of the period and region are doing. Let me just slide back in time and create a historical precedent for what I am doing, and all shall be well.

Ahem... Every author I have ever had a conversation with about this sort of thing has told me that readers are ferocious about historical detail. If you write about the Battle of Balaclava and happen to mention the number of buttons on the 17th Hussars' uniforms, and get it wrong, you will be deluged in letters of complaint. Your only hope is to go the Guy Gavriel Kay route and set your story in a parallel world with a quasi-Orthodox church.

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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
  - C. P. Snow

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Your only hope is to go the Guy Gavriel Kay route and set your story in a parallel world with a quasi-Orthodox church.

Or do your homework and get it right.

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iamchristianhearmeroar
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# 15483

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Or have the Protestant wife have an unfortunate accident - fall through the ice on a lake or something like that. Problem solved...

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My blog: http://alastairnewman.wordpress.com/

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Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

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Or, maybe write an entirely different story about an author who kept on using an internet discussion forum to do her research for her, ignoring the long standing "we don't do your homework for you" rule on that site. Eventually pushing the board hosts and administrators to the point where they summarily closed every thread she started.

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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

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iamchristianhearmeroar
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# 15483

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I'd read that book.

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Teufelchen
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# 10158

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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Or, maybe write an entirely different story about an author who kept on using an internet discussion forum to do her research for her, ignoring the long standing "we don't do your homework for you" rule on that site. Eventually pushing the board hosts and administrators to the point where they summarily closed every thread she started.

I may have asked you this in the past, Alan, but are those claws retractable?

But I agree: the facts that I related in my earlier reply are not even that obscure; they are the commonplaces of a large and active field of nerd-dom which I am only scarcely a part of.

Brenda: Bigamy has been illegal throughout Europe since the early middle ages. Your enabling precedent is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

My advice to you is not to become wedded (!) to a particular scenario before you have checked that it will make sense in context.

t

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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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No problem.

The world is wide. I don't have to be here.

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Alan Cresswell

Mad Scientist 先生
# 31

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quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Or, maybe write an entirely different story about an author who kept on using an internet discussion forum to do her research for her, ignoring the long standing "we don't do your homework for you" rule on that site. Eventually pushing the board hosts and administrators to the point where they summarily closed every thread she started.

I may have asked you this in the past, Alan, but are those claws retractable?
Do you mean, am I a pussy cat?

OK, that's not a line of discussion relevant here. I can't see how it relates to Orthodox marriage liturgy. Any other discussion belongs elsewhere.

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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

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dj_ordinaire
Host
# 4643

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Indeed.

We are more than happy to discuss the ceremonies associated with marriage in the Orthodox Church. Other topics - including how marriage might occur in the some hypothetical, bigamy-enabling alternative-timeline/fantasy church - is not suitable for discussion in Ecclesiantics.

Your assistance in this is appreciated as ever!

dj_ordinaire, Eccles host

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Albertus
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# 13356

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quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
... If you write about the Battle of Balaclava and happen to mention the number of buttons on the 17th Hussars' uniforms, and get it wrong, you will be deluged in letters of complaint...

Ahem. 17th Lancers, if you are talking about the British Army.
QED. [Smile]

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Timothy the Obscure

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# 292

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That's what I get for trusting Wikipedia (though I do believe it was the 11th Lancers, from my memory of the Flashman books).

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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
  - C. P. Snow

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L'organist
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# 17338

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No, the 17th - sometimes called Bingham's Dandies after the 3rd Earl Lucan who paid much attention to their uniform - and decreed they keep the white facings from their original uniform which signified they started as light dragoons.

The 11th Lancers were the Bengal Lancers - aka Probyn's Horse and the Prince of Wales' Own.

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The Scrumpmeister
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# 5638

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quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Maybe Greek law requires the inclusion of vows in the service to meet the requirements of international law.

Or simply local law.

This is the case in the UK. As standard, the legal vows do not form part of the Orthodox marriage service, and general practice in the UK is that Orthodox couples will have a civil marriage ceremony before coming to church for the sacrament. This is for the simple reason that, unlike CofE clergy, Orthodox clergy are not registrars and cannot perform a marriage in law. Therefore, the state doesn't recognise what we do in church as a civil marriage. Similarly, a civil marriage performed by a registar is not a Christian sacrament and is not recognised by the Orthodox Church as such, (which makes one wonder why our bishops were sticking their beards into the same-sex marriage debate a couple of years ago, when it had nothing whatsoever to do with what happens in church).

However...

There is provision for churches that are not established to have a registrar or "Special Person" present at the church wedding to kill two birds with one stone. In those cases, the church service must have inserted into it the relevant words to satisfy the legal requirements. I have attended one such wedding in an Orthodox church in the UK. (Although, due to the immigration status of a large percentage of UK Orthodox Christians, many clergy would rather not enter these legal murky waters at all and avoid any question of legal impropriety by insisting that the civil marriage be done outside of church, by a registrar.)

So there are occasions when UK Orthodox weddings do contain marriage vows, although this is to fulfil legal requirements rather than anything specifically Orthodox. Perhaps this is also the case in Greece.

[ 22. February 2015, 14:37: Message edited by: The Scrumpmeister ]

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Baptist Trainfan
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# 15128

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quote:
Originally posted by The Scrumpmeister:
There is provision for churches that are not established to have a registrar or "Special Person" present at the church wedding to kill two birds with one stone. In those cases, the church service must have inserted into it the relevant words to satisfy the legal requirements.

This would be the normal practise in English Nonconformist churches (e.g. Baptist, Methodist), assuming they have registered their premises for weddings. And the "Authorised Person" can be a member of the church (even, but not necessarily, the Minister), duly legitimised by the local Council. Having said that, some churches prefer not to get mixed up in the "legal business" and prefer simply to have a church Blessing after a civil Wedding.

(I can't speak for Greece, nor in fact for Scotland or NI which have different laws on marriage).

[ 22. February 2015, 15:23: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]

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