Canadian marriage dispensations in Vatican papers

Newly released digital inventories of Vatican documents reveal insights into Canadian history, from 1622 to 1922, and these records include marriage dispensations between Catholics and non-Catholics who wanted to marry.

The majority of marriage dispensations in these inventories appear to be from Quebec, with some from Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

A dispensation was needed if a Catholic and non-Catholic wanted to marry and the Catholic party wanted the marriage to be solemnized in the parish church, or if a Catholic wanted to marry in a non-Catholic church.

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican, Rome. Photo: Websi.

Until recently, the only way you could look at these inventories is in hard copy or on microfiche. That changed in November when Saint Paul University in Ottawa launched its online portal to tens of thousands of Vatican documents pertaining to Canada.

At the time of the launch, I had read about these Vatican papers, but until former Library and Archives Canada (LAC) archivist Glenn Wright sent me a note, I had overlooked the dispensations.

Glenn wrote, “The request for dispensation began with the couple and the parish priest. The latter then forwarded the request to his Bishop who then sent it on to Rome for a decision.”

The Congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome, in charge of Canada until 1908, would forward the case to the Inquisition for a decision.

According to a Canadian Catholic News article about the online initiative, the Roman archives contain vast amounts of information on these mixed marriages.

The search for these records goes back to 1977 when the Research Centre for the Religious History of Canada, in collaboration with the Public Archives of Canada (known today as Library and Archives Canada), established a project to gather an inventory of documents of interest to Canada in the archives and libraries of Rome.

Some 20 inventories were created.

Marriage dispensations
Unfortunately, finding marriage dispensations is not as easy as entering a name, hitting the enter key, and seeing dozens of results as in some databases, but it can be worth the effort of looking. Most of the text is in French, but fairly easy to understand with the help of Google Translate.

Perhaps one of the easiest indexes to search for a bridal couple is c) Pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1878) in the Archives of the Propaganda Fide on St. Paul University’s website. To find it, scroll down past the midway point of the page.

Click on the last item, Index des demandes de dispenses de mariage, p. 761 (Index of marriage dispensation requests).  This is a 124-page PDF.

To find a name within this index, press CTRL + F. Then, in the small box that appears, type a family name, and hit enter. This should take you to the first reference to the family name. Click on the arrow next to the box to look for the same name further down in the document.

For example, take a look below at Fortier at the top-right of the page. There are two references, 188 and 470. These are page references. Because these inventories hold many pages, they have been divided into sections (parties).  At the end of the title of each section, is the starting page number. So, to find Fortier on page 188, you must open the document that begins with page 147.

Another series of documents to look at is d) Pontificate of Leo XIII (1878-1903). Within that section, go to Volume III and click on the final item, Inventaire de la série N.S. (Nova Serie) (1893-1903), pp. 539- 1158, to open the 627-page PDF.

Is there a lot to learn about your ancestors in this collection? Perhaps not as much as we would like. Still, you could find the name of a spouse that had remained elusive to you until now. And that’s a good thing.

To learn more about this collection, read the Description of archives and documents.