Angela
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Too close cousin marriage is also forbidden within the Catholic tradition. The rule is that 3rd cousin and beyond is OK, but not second, or especially first cousins. It's one of the reasons that the Council of Trent required that all marriages and births be recorded in the parish of the mother.
In my mother's area, which was in the foothills of the Apennines, there was more out marriage, with Tuscans, Ligurians from near France etc.
My father's area, high atop the Apennines in the province of Parma, was accessible only on foot or by mule until the 1920s. The "marriage circle" was the other villages high in the Apennines. The priests did check to see if the would-be partners were within the prohibited level, but in reality, after 700 years in the same general area with only a few new arrivals per hundred years, I'm sure they were more related than that. That's why Cavalli-Sforza used them for his seminal works on drift in isolated populations. It's also why I became so interested in population genetics; I read an article by him on my father's villages in a biology class. Thank goodness for my father's people that by chance the founder populations didn't seem to carry very many deleterious recessive genes, or there would have been a lot of dangerous diseases and anomalies up there.
Still, a young man and woman, second cousins of my paternal grandmother, but first cousins to each other, sought a dispensation and got one, goodness knows why. Most of their children died at birth or shortly thereafter or were infertile as adults. Only two of the 12 reached adulthood healthy and fertile. They were the cautionary tale I heard repeated over and over again as I grew up, especially because as one of 24 first cousins, all of whom played together all the time and grew up together, I suppose they were worried that attractions could occur. I certainly had what in retrospect was probably a "crush" on my very handsome older cousin, who looked a lot like my father in youth. Of course, one outgrows these things even if one can't name what they are, exactly at the time.
What I find very interesting, however, are the numerous papers, the latest of which was from Scandinavia, showing that some "closeness" in ancestry is actually beneficial. What the scientists found from studying genealogical records from hundreds of years into the past was that while first and second cousin marriages adversely affected fertility and disease risk, i.e. "genetic fitness", the offspring of totally unrelated couples also were less "fit". The most "fit" offspring were the products of third cousin mating. The speculation is that it has something to do with immune system compatibility as one of many possibilities.
There's an old, sexist saying in Italian: moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi. Wives and oxen from your own village. (Sounds better in Italian because it rhymes.) They didn't know about genes, but they knew certain families ran to certain traits, and that certain marriages had more "luck" where children were concerned. You knew what you were getting, i.e. the bloodlines, the way you would know them about your horses, oxen, dogs etc. and it applied to men too, with marriage into certain male lines being frowned upon. Of course, nowadays, the ability to conceive and bear twelve or more healthy children isn't the boon it used to be. My handsome cousin wound up marrying one of our third cousins. She was very devout, so no birth control, and, to her dismay she joked that all he had to do was get into bed for her to get pregnant. She had seven beautiful, healthy, very intelligent children, but he went grey before his time trying to support them.
This constant "re-passing" of the same genes, especially in rural areas in the era before cars, trains, planes etc. is part of the reason that we see the continuity that we do.
In my mother's area, which was in the foothills of the Apennines, there was more out marriage, with Tuscans, Ligurians from near France etc.
My father's area, high atop the Apennines in the province of Parma, was accessible only on foot or by mule until the 1920s. The "marriage circle" was the other villages high in the Apennines. The priests did check to see if the would-be partners were within the prohibited level, but in reality, after 700 years in the same general area with only a few new arrivals per hundred years, I'm sure they were more related than that. That's why Cavalli-Sforza used them for his seminal works on drift in isolated populations. It's also why I became so interested in population genetics; I read an article by him on my father's villages in a biology class. Thank goodness for my father's people that by chance the founder populations didn't seem to carry very many deleterious recessive genes, or there would have been a lot of dangerous diseases and anomalies up there.
Still, a young man and woman, second cousins of my paternal grandmother, but first cousins to each other, sought a dispensation and got one, goodness knows why. Most of their children died at birth or shortly thereafter or were infertile as adults. Only two of the 12 reached adulthood healthy and fertile. They were the cautionary tale I heard repeated over and over again as I grew up, especially because as one of 24 first cousins, all of whom played together all the time and grew up together, I suppose they were worried that attractions could occur. I certainly had what in retrospect was probably a "crush" on my very handsome older cousin, who looked a lot like my father in youth. Of course, one outgrows these things even if one can't name what they are, exactly at the time.
What I find very interesting, however, are the numerous papers, the latest of which was from Scandinavia, showing that some "closeness" in ancestry is actually beneficial. What the scientists found from studying genealogical records from hundreds of years into the past was that while first and second cousin marriages adversely affected fertility and disease risk, i.e. "genetic fitness", the offspring of totally unrelated couples also were less "fit". The most "fit" offspring were the products of third cousin mating. The speculation is that it has something to do with immune system compatibility as one of many possibilities.
There's an old, sexist saying in Italian: moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi. Wives and oxen from your own village. (Sounds better in Italian because it rhymes.) They didn't know about genes, but they knew certain families ran to certain traits, and that certain marriages had more "luck" where children were concerned. You knew what you were getting, i.e. the bloodlines, the way you would know them about your horses, oxen, dogs etc. and it applied to men too, with marriage into certain male lines being frowned upon. Of course, nowadays, the ability to conceive and bear twelve or more healthy children isn't the boon it used to be. My handsome cousin wound up marrying one of our third cousins. She was very devout, so no birth control, and, to her dismay she joked that all he had to do was get into bed for her to get pregnant. She had seven beautiful, healthy, very intelligent children, but he went grey before his time trying to support them.
This constant "re-passing" of the same genes, especially in rural areas in the era before cars, trains, planes etc. is part of the reason that we see the continuity that we do.