Mary Begus, Antonia Gradisnik and Martin Begus 1932
Last week I posted this picture of my Great-Great Aunt Antonia. I didn’t hear her story until I was an adult. She was my Great Grandmother Mary Begus’ half sister. Their mother Anna Nerat was single when Antonia was born. Anna came home to her parents to have Antonia and her father told her not to marry Antonia’s father since he was a mean man. Anna married Joseph Bertot instead and had at least two more children: Mary and a son. Joseph came to Wyoming and made enough money to bring Antonia and Mary over to the US. When they were settled and married he went back to Slovenia since his son had a seizure disorder and could not immigrate and Anna would not leave him.
I’ve been wondering for a while about why Anna’s father was so lenient about her unwed pregnancy and why Joseph was apparently accepting of her. Afterall, Joseph thought enough of his step daughter to help her immigrate. I had heard stories in the family that at that time in Slovenia the peasants would often have sex before marriage to ensure that the couple would be able to have children before making the permanent vows of marriage. Children were an essential part of the workforce in a largely agrarian society, and the only insurance people had in their old age, so a childless couple would suffer.
Children working in Slovenia
Hungarian Empress Elizabeth (Erzebet Kiralyne) 1867
I wasn’t sure about the rationale though because these were also deeply Catholic people and the church is notoriously restrictive on premarital sex. So I did a little research – I’m a PhD, I can’t help it, check out this lecture from Clark College. First of all the class of people mattered. For upper-class people female virginity before marriage was important because there were titles and property to be inherited. Underlying the restrictions was the need of the church to control women. Women were for procreation and were the property of men. If a woman was pregnant before marriage her father could sue the father of the baby for damaging his property.
The lower classes didn’t have any property to pass down and were much more concerned with fertility and workforce. In addition, the church often had fees to get married and couples couldn’t afford the fees. Sometimes the couples would live together as man and wife and maybe get married after the woman got pregnant. Check out your own family records and calculate the time of marriage to the time of birth for the first child. As the old saying goes ‘First babies come at any time, other babies take 9 months’.
Slovene Couple Working
Kurentovanje Dancers
The friction between the Catholic Church and the older pagan religions in Europe is a theme that runs through my book ‘Longing for Home’. The attitudes on premarital sex and illegitimate children illustrates the point. On one hand the people accepted the church and its’ teachings. On the other hand Slovenes were converted to Christianity relatively late in the 9th and 10th century. Pagan practices were deeply entrenched in the people and Christian traditions blended with Pagan traditions to form a uniquely Slovene expression of Catholicism. For example the bells of Kurents to scare the winter away and the bells and canon shooting of Easter. The loud noises scared off evil spirits. So, in the 1800’s maybe babies before marriage were one of those things that were a combination of Pagan customs fitted into Catholicism.
I’m including a picture here of the Castle in Bled that was built on a Pagan site just for the sheer beauty of it.
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