Divorce in Odorhei County, during the 19th Century

Abstract

The scope of our study covers the 19th century and a currently non-existent administrative unit within the borders of Romania, where Odorhei Seat, and after 1876, Odorhei County was found. In 1869, Odorhei County’s population was 105467. The predominantly (98.57%) Hungarian population followed three different religions: Roman Catholic, Calvinist and Unitarian. In the investigated region, until the introduction of civil marriages (1895), the church possessed the right of declaring the break-up of families. As a source of our assessment we use ecclesiastical archival sources, principally divorce files (almost full collections in the Reformed and Unitarian church archives, conserved sporadically in the case of Roman Catholics). Our goal is to examine these sources from different perspectives, both quantitatively and qualitatively, collecting demographic, ethnographic and anthropological data. We are focusing on problems like: the number of divorces, internal and external factors influencing divorce, causes of divorce and their evolution, the evolution of sexual crimes, the meaning and the role of divorce in the traditional society etc.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p192