POLYANDRY. — From the Greek πολύς = much and ἀνήρ = man, it is the simultaneous marital cohabitation of a woman with several men.
I. MORAL THEOLOGY AND CANON LAW
Polyandry directly opposes: 1) the divinely positive precept, promulgated at the very beginning of humanity (Gen. 2:23) and solemnly confirmed by Jesus Christ (Mt. 19:4-6). From this it is deduced that, while human will may condition the formation of a new family, it cannot in any way condition the intimate structure and purposes of marriage, which have a divine origin; 2) the primary natural law, inasmuch as it opposes the primary end of marriage, which is procreation (the woman in this condition generally becomes infertile) and consequently the education of children (the paternity of any children born would remain uncertain, making their upbringing more difficult). Moreover, if polyandry were legitimate, it would easily lead to recognizing offspring as the primary end of marriage, no longer considering the institution of marriage as serving life, but only as serving experiences without personal burdens or social responsibilities; 3) polyandry also opposes natural law in that it harms the social benefits of marriage, which are the mutual aid and perfection of the spouses, the tempering of concupiscence, and the peace and harmony of the family. It is not natural for a father to be ignorant of his own child and a child of his own father; nor, given the jealousy and passions rooted in human nature, can it be supposed possible to prevent the sprouting of the seeds of discord and disorder that may even lead to crime. Therefore, the Church has always affirmed as one of the essential properties of the marital bond its unity and has condemned polygamy in every form of polyandry and polygyny (cf. CIC, can. 1013 § 2, with the sources cited therein) and imposed on bigamists, who, despite the continued existence of a previously contracted marital bond, enter into a new marriage even if only civil, the penalty of infamy, which in certain cases may rise to excommunication and personal interdict (can. 2356).Vincenzo Fagiolo
II. ETHNOLOGY
Ethnologists, such as McLennan, have regarded polyandry as one of the stages in the evolution of marriage and the human family; others, like Corso, have seen it as a derivation of collective or group marriage. To understand polyandry in its true meaning and provide a proper explanation, it is necessary to examine its forms and its diffusion in the world.1. Forms of polyandry
A distinction must be made between sporadic polyandry and that which is systematic, having become the common form of marriage among a people, a regular institution. Systematic polyandry is twofold: matriarchal and patriarchal. Matriarchal polyandry is found in Tibet in the following manner: two or more young men, after paying a certain sum of money, become husbands of the same woman and live in her house. The children belong to the wife. However, when one of the husbands wishes to have the common woman exclusively for himself, the children are then divided among all the husbands. These, leaving the common wife and exiting the house, receive back the sum of money they paid upon entering the wife’s house. The woman’s situation is not enviable, for, as Bonvalot observed—who witnessed this form of polyandry during his exploratory journey in Tibet with the Prince of Orléans—the husbands make her work excessively and derive the greatest possible profit from her.Patriarchal polyandry is fraternal polyandry, in which the eldest brother marries the single woman for himself and his brothers. Indeed, for example among the Tibetans, it is the eldest brother who performs all the marriage ceremonies. The marriage is provisional and does not become stable until the first child is born. After the wedding festivities, and at most after twenty days, the bride returns to her home and visits her husband only for a few days during certain festivals of the year. Once her pregnancy is confirmed, a new celebration is held, and the bride takes up permanent residence in the house of her husbands, bringing her dowry with her. The legal husband, as noted by Fr. Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who was in Lhasa from 1712 to 1727, is considered the eldest brother, but the bride is recognized—and considers herself—as the legitimate wife of all the brothers. The children, both sons and daughters, are called the sons and daughters of the husband and the nephews of his brothers, although some of them, the same missionary observed, are certainly not the children of the same father. The right of primogeniture and exogamy apply to all generations of blood relatives.
Among the Toda (now in severe decline, according to information from Fr. H. Heras, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who visited them), the following characteristic custom prevails: they recognize as the legal father, in all social or legal matters, only the man who has delivered a bow and arrow to the woman during the seventh month of her pregnancy. If the blood relatives are brothers, this ceremony is performed by the eldest, though the other brothers are also considered fathers. If the blood relatives are not brothers but more distant relatives, then the man who delivers the bow and arrow is considered the father not only of one child but of all the children of the same woman, until another blood relative performs the same ceremony. This holds even if the man who performed the ceremony has long since died, provided no one else has performed it with the same woman. In feudal-era ancient China, the Emperor observed a similar rite after the spring sacrifice to Kao Mei, the goddess protector of marriages and births, with every pregnant woman in his harem.
2. Diffusion of polyandry
Polyandry is practiced by the Tibeto-Burman tribes of the Bathia in Nepal. It is found in Kashmir, in northern India (the Toda of the Nilgiri Mountains, the Rurumba, the Munduvar, the Naiar, especially among the Dravidians but also among the Munda), in southern Arabia (the *Mot’a* marriage), and among some Hamitic tribes, the Bahima or Bancayole of Uganda. It also exists in the Chinese province of Fujian, in two districts. It is found among the Jephthali (also called Hoa and White Huns), once considered Turks, now Mongols originating from Mongolia who, after the invasion of Persia, had their main centers in Bamiyan and Badakhshan; among the Tocharians, an Indo-European people of Central Asia, and in Zabulistan; it has been supposed among the Kazakhs in the northwest of the Ili region and among the Bolor to the west of Yarkand. Sporadically, it has been observed in Shaanxi (China), among the Indians of America (Orinoco), in the Arctic regions (Aleuts), and among some peoples of Oceania (New Zealanders).3. Explanation of polyandry
Given its limited diffusion, polyandry cannot be considered a stage of evolution through which all peoples of the world have passed, as the evolutionists believed. Even Frazer, at a later time, had to acknowledge that polyandry is rare and exceptional, adducing a biological reason, namely that polyandry could exist permanently only if there were a numerical preponderance of men over women, a condition that does not occur in any people of the world.How has polyandry been explained? According to Eberhard, polyandry is originally connected with matriarchy. This is true. But polyandry is not provided by matriarchy itself, as Father Schmidt rightly observed, but rather by the intermingling of peoples distinctly matriarchal with peoples strictly patriarchal who have the right of primogeniture. Indeed, this is what happened in southern India, for example, among the Nair, who later adopted polyandry. They were matriarchal when they were subjugated by the Nambutiri Brahmins, who had emigrated from northern India and were patriarchal with the right of primogeniture. The Nambutiri first adopted subsequent polyandry, then simultaneous and fraternal polyandry, and finally free or non-fraternal polyandry. Among them, in order to keep the family patrimony united, only the eldest brother married one or more Brahmin women, with whom fraternal polyandry was impossible and in fact strictly forbidden. The younger brothers, remaining in the house of the eldest brother, did with the Nair women what they could not do with the women of their own people, namely, they imposed upon them the duty of giving themselves to them, concluding with them free unions that could be dissolved at any moment. The woman then gave herself to another man, and first there was subsequent polyandry and then simultaneous polyandry. From this there developed free polyandry when, in due course, each younger brother of the Nambutiri successively took different Nair women, who thus had relations with brothers from several families, resulting in non-fraternal or free polyandry. This was then adopted by the Nair as well. The polyandry of Tibet, the classic land of polyandry, has been explained by various authors (P. Desideri, P. Della Penna, Williams, Grenard) with very different reasons: the poverty of the soil, or the insufficient number of women in proportion to men (seven women to eight men), or the right of primogeniture, the unity of the genealogical line which does not admit collateral lines, and the indivision of the family patrimony. All these reasons are insufficient to explain Tibetan polyandry without admitting, as in the case of India, the intermingling of a patriarchal culture with a matriarchal one, traces of which still exist in Tibet today, although the process may have been different. The same ethnological explanation can apply to polyandry among other peoples, while special explanations are required for sporadic polyandry.
From what has been said, it is clear that polyandry is a relatively recent phenomenon, since the cultures from which it derives are not archaic but primary ethnological cultures; hence there is another reason for saying that polyandry cannot be considered as a general stage or the basis of the evolution of human marriage.
POLYANDRY. — From the Greek πολυς = many and ανηρ = man, it is a term used by Fr. G. Marchi to denote a tomb containing several human bodies (Monumenti delle arti cristiane primitive, Rome 1844, p. 118).
Prudentius relates that he saw in the Christian cemeteries of Rome tombs closed by marbles on which no names were inscribed, but only a number, and that he learned that in one place beneath the same stone the relics of sixty martyrs were buried, of whom only Christ knows the names (Peristephanon, XI, 9-16). Perhaps this refers to the tomb of the sixty-two martyrs deposited on the Via Salaria, to whom Damasus dedicated a poem (A. Ferrara, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, pp. 184-86). The itineraries of pilgrims of the 7th century mention tombs of 30, 40, 80, 260, 365 and 800 martyrs, numbers which may have been exaggerated by the mansionarii or the guides who accompanied pilgrims to the shrines. In the underground cemeteries there are tombs for several people, which were sometimes used as true ossuaries, as is the case, for example, in the cemeteries inter duas lauros, of Ponziano and of Pretestato, and especially in the great ossuary beneath the crypt of the Popes and the chapel of St. Cecilia in the Catacomb of Callistus; there, in order to reuse the loculi near the said two shrines, the skeletons removed from the original tombs were arranged in several layers, separated by earth, until they reached a height of about 4 meters. G. Marangoni attests to having seen in a cemetery several bodies within individual tombs (Acta s. Victorini, Rome 1740, p. 114). The well-like tombs in Commodilla may also be considered true polyandria.