Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition

by Kevin MacDonald

  Critical to the success of the Church was that from mid-eleventh to the mid-thirteenth century there was a successful reform away from the abuses resulting from secular control over Church offices. Reform was inspired by the prestige and power of monasteries, especially Cluny, with their ascetic lifestyle, and “the creation of a clerical elite determined on systematic reform.”[405] Pope Leo IX (pope from 1049 to 1054) was central, e.g., to reestablishing clerical celibacy and opposing simony. Several popes during this period had monastic backgrounds, and Leo IX, who was not a monk himself, was an enthusiastic promoter of the monastic order of Cluny. Ultimately, the credibility of the Church depended on an image of ascetic, celibate clergy; this was substantially achieved during the High Middle Ages.

  “From the beginnings of monasticism in Western Europe monks had enjoyed a special standing among the poor. They aroused respect and even affection because they were understood as representing the Christian life more fully than any other group, including—perhaps especially—the secular clergy.”[406] There was a pattern of “religious radicalism” advocating ascetic life, condemning high living.

  The Church therefore projected the image of chastity and altruism while assiduously pursuing power over secular elites. Its power and wealth were not directed at reproductive success. Reform of the sexual behavior of the clergy was real. No English prelate of the thirteenth century is known to have had a wife or family. Married clergy even at lower levels were exceptional during this period in England, and low levels of clerical incontinence continued into the Reformation.

  True reproductive altruism appears to have been a factor in the very widespread attraction of extremely ascetic monastic lifestyles and contributed greatly to the public’s perception of the Church during the high Middle Ages. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries thousands of monasteries were founded. Composed of celibate and ascetic males and recruited mainly from the more affluent classes, monasteries “set the tone in the spirituality of the whole Church, in education and in art, [and] in the transmission of culture.”[407] The image of monastic altruism was also fostered by an ideology in which the prayers of monks were believed to aid all Christians.

  These orders provided a very popular public image of the Church. During the thirteenth century, mendicant friars,[408] such as the Dominicans and Franciscans, were instrumental in reforming the Church to extend the power of the Pope, to enforce rules on clerical celibacy, to preach against nepotism and simony, and to give the Church substantial authority over secular powers, including the ability to regulate sexual relationships. “The voluntary poverty and self-imposed destitution that identified the early Mendicants with the humblest and most deprived sections of the population, in loud contrast to the careerism and ostentation of the secular clergy and the corporate wealth and exclusiveness of the monasteries, moved the conscience and touched the generosity of commercial communities.”[409]

  It is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the whole of history that in the high Middle Ages ... many members of the highest and wealthiest or at least prosperous strata of society, who had the best chances of enjoying earthly pleasures to the full, renounced them. ... The flow of new candidates was particularly impressive in those places where the rules of monastic life had been restored to their ancient strictness, imposed more rigorously or even redefined more severely. ... We must assume that the main motive for the choice of a monastic life was always the eschatological ideal of monasticism, even if this may have lost something of its driving force in the course of a long life or was mixed with other motives from the start.[410]

  Whatever the motivations involved, these societies of celibate and ascetic males “set the tone of the spirituality of the whole Church, in education and in art [and] in the transmission of culture.”[411] Miccoli notes that five of the six popes during the critical reform period of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries had a monastic background and that their influence was directed at attaining monastic hegemony over all of society. It was

  a powerful movement to gain command of all life in society and organize it according to monastic views. The legacy of the Church Fathers and the early Middle Ages was reinterpreted and reformulated in terms of monastic hegemony: theology, cosmology, anthropology, morality, and the law were recast to provide a foundation and justification for the preeminence of monks with the rigid social categories that subdivided and disciplined society.[412]

  During the thirteenth century, the mendicant friars were typically recruited from the aristocracy, the landed gentry, and other affluent families. Their parents often disapproved of their decision, presumably because, like most parents, they wanted biological descendants. “It was a nightmare for well-to-do families that their children might become friars.”[413] These families began to avoid sending their children to universities because of well-founded fears that they would be recruited into a religious life.

  Thus, at the center of society was an institution with an ideology that people ought to be altruistic and ought to be celibate even when they were born to wealth. This explains popular acceptance of the authority of the Church in matters of marriage and sex. The Church had evidently seized the moral and ideological high ground of the society, so that decisions to adopt a monastic lifestyle were highly regarded and seen as a sure path to the rewards of an afterlife.

  Whatever else one might say about Western Europe during this period, eugenics was not a part of the picture, and in general, this phenomenon is a paradigmatic example of the importance of ideology in the history of the West. The powerful religious identifications of the period revolving around the belief that asceticism and a life of service—“one of the most remarkable phenomena in the whole of history”[414]— would reap rewards in the next life likely lay in the background of much of the intense motivation of the period.

  The Papal Revolution: The Church’s Power Over Secular Elites

  Along with the acceptance of celibacy and asceticism, there was a concern to extend the power of the church—“a powerful movement to gain command of all life in society and organize it according to monastic views.”[415] It is this drive to increase its own power at the expense of other potential sources of power—kings and the aristocracy, extended kinship groups—that best explains the behavior of the medieval Church. This desire for power is a human universal entirely congruent with evolutionary thinking, except that in this case, it was not accompanied by the usual accouterments of power: reproductive success and control over women.

  There is a long history of popes disciplining or at least attempting to discipline secular rulers. In 390, St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, excommunicated Emperor Theodosius because of a massacre in Greece, with Theodosius submitting by doing penance at the cathedral of Milan. By the Middle Ages, the Church had already had a long history of involvement in civic affairs stemming from its role during the barbarian invasions. But the real revolution began in the mid-eleventh century with stronger papal control over bishops. The papacy came to be elected by the College of Cardinals in 1059, rather than simply being auctioned off to powerful Roman families.

  Pope Gregory VII, pope from 1073–1085, completed the revolution with his conflict with the German emperor, Henry IV. His Dictatus Papae laid out the claims for papal authority over investiture (i.e., appointing local clergy, which had previously been a power of the German emperors), even claiming the ability to depose emperors. Gregory established the Church as a legal system based on its “moral primacy.”[416] He not only had power to excommunicate, but at times encouraged subjects not to obey rulers.

  The papal revolution resulted in a clear distinction between secular and sacred. Whereas prior to the revolution, kings routinely felt able to appoint clerics and interfere in ecclesiastical affairs, the success of the revolution meant this was no longer possible.

  The Church never completely won the battle over investiture, but in general the secular authorities acknowledged its autonomy. The Church presented itself as the final co
urt of appeal for Western Europe. The perceived need for a legal framework for the Church renewed interest in Roman law, but canon law interpreted Roman law to conform to Christian moral intuitions. Gratian (mid-twelfth-century), a principal codifier of canon law, assumed that equality and reciprocity were antecedent to laws; this contrasted with Roman law which prioritized a person’s status (e.g., paterfamilias), therefore assuming natural inequality—an aristocratic worldview. Pope Innocent III, writing in the early thirteenth century, stated “You shall judge the great as well as the little and there shall be no difference of persons.”[417]

  Canon law thus had a strongly egalitarian tenor—status, which had been central to ancient law—was irrelevant. Ecclesiastical ideology thus facilitated the Western liberal tradition. Aristocrats and commoners had the same moral standing. Moreover, canon law was recruited to lessen the power of kinship groups by also rejecting the privileged status of testimony from family and friends (which had led to more powerful families getting favorable judgments). In general, “this moral vantage point [emphasizing “equality and reciprocity”] fostered a mildness in canon law which distinguished it not only from customary and feudal law but also from Roman civil law.”[418] Canon law emphasized public punishments aimed at inducing guilt—“to reach and stir the conscience of the offender.”[419] Guilty people act on the basis of an internally accepted moral standard; they feel guilty whether or not their actions become publicly known.

  Other aspects of canon law directly challenged traditional Germanic practices and thus key privileges of aristocratic elites. There was an emphasis on (1) marriage being based on consent of spouses even in opposition to parental wishes; (2) prohibiting divorce even if the marriage was infertile; and (3) delegitimizing concubinage by preventing bastards from inheriting; for example, in 1202 the pope ruled against a count who sought a dispensation so that his bastard son could inherit.

  In general, consent and voluntary association assumed central importance. Unlike in the ancient world, private societies such as guilds, or even towns and cities, did not have to be approved by authorities but were based simply on associations among members. Such corporations could have judicial and legislative authority over their members, thus diminishing the power of aristocracy. Major decisions had to be made with consent of members rather than representatives. (In Roman law representatives were appointed by authorities.) Corporations thus were voluntary associations that existed by consent of their members.

  The battle between the Church and secular rulers ended in a stand-off, with two structures of authority being acknowledged. Nevertheless, Siedentop claims that the Church as a unified legal system doomed feudalism with its widely dispersed centers of power, “initiating the process that led to European nation-states.”[420] The interests of both kings and the Church opposed feudalism.

  Medieval Ecclesiastical Collectivism

  The medieval Church was a unique feature of Western culture, but in critical ways it was most un-Western. This is because medieval Europe was a collectivist society with a strong sense of group identification and commitment. This conflicts with the general thrust of this book: that Western societies are unique in their commitment to individualism—that in fact individualism is a defining feature of Western civilization. Indeed, the decline of ecclesiastical collectivism was very likely a precondition to the full flowering of individualism in the West in the areas most pre-disposed to it: northwest Europe inhabited by the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples.

  The collectivism of Western European society in the High Middle Ages was real. There was intense group identification and group commitment to Christianity among all levels of society, as indicated, for example, by the multitudes of pilgrims and the outpouring of religious fervor and ingroup fervor that accompanied the Crusades aimed at freeing the Holy Land from Muslim control. The medieval Church often had a strong sense of Christian group economic interests vis-à-vis the Jews, and often worked vigorously to exclude Jews from economic and political influence and to prevent social intercourse between Christians and Jews.[421]

  As described above, there were also high levels of reproductive altruism, particularly among the mendicant friars, many other religious personnel, and eventually even the secular elite, e.g., Louis IX of France—St. Louis. St. Louis was not only a paragon of voluntary restraint and proper Christian sexual behavior; he also had a powerful sense of Christian group economic interests vis-à-vis the Jews and was heavily involved in the crusades to return the Holy Land to Christian control.[422] Europeans considered themselves part of a Christian ingroup arrayed against non‑Christian out-groups (particularly Muslims and Jews) who were seen as powerful and threatening enemies.

  There were indeed gaps between reality and the ideal of a unified Christian society based on the power of the Church and sexual restraint among the elite. But these gaps must be balanced by the recognition that many medieval Christians, and especially the central actors in medieval society, such as the monastic movements, the mendicant friars, the reforming popes, the fervent Crusaders, the pious pilgrims, and even many elite aristocrats, saw themselves as part of a highly unified, supranational collectivity. It is this fundamentally collectivist orientation—so foreign to contemporary Western life—that renders the high levels of group commitment and altruism characteristic of the medieval period comprehensible in psychological terms.[423]

  As discussed below, this medieval religious collectivism combined with the desire for power by the Church actually facilitated Western individualism and the liberal tradition in the long run because, as a hegemonic entity, the Church battled against other, opposing collectivities (e.g., kinship groups, secular kingdoms), leading eventually to a conception of Christendom as a collection of individual, morally equal souls united by their religious identification and paving the way ultimately for Protestantism and the Enlightenment.

  Social Controls and Ideology Maintaining

  Socially Imposed Monogamy

  Policing Sexual Behavior in the Middle Ages

  and Later

  One of the prime goals of the medieval Church was to police sexual behavior outside of monogamous marriage. Policing sexual violations was an important function of the ecclesiastical courts beginning in the Middle Ages and extending at least to the end of the seventeenth century. These courts were very active in seventeenth-century England prosecuting cases of fornication, adultery, incest, and illicit cohabitation. Although the effectiveness of these ecclesiastical sanctions varied by region and period, there were examples of devastating consequences in which “the victim was hounded by his fellows, deprived of his living by a community boycott, and treated as an outcast.”

  In the seventeenth century the High Commission of the Ecclesiastical Court system could impose sanctions, including for adultery, on the propertied who could expect to be immune from other judicial processes: “This enforcement of equality before the law did not endear the court to those who mattered in seventeenth-century England.”[424] The secular authorities, such as justices of the peace, also stood ready to prosecute such offenses. For example, pursuant to Elizabethan statutes, justices of the peace in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commonly sentenced sexual offenders of both sexes to a public whipping while stripped to waist (the woman “until her back be bloody”) and placed in the stocks.[425]

  Ideologies Promoting Monogamy

  Although ultimately relying on social controls, the Medieval Church developed elaborate ideologies to promote monogamy and sexual restraint. In general, these writings emphasized the moral superiority of celibacy and the sinfulness of extra-marital sex of any kind. All sexual relationships apart from monogamous marriage were universally condemned by religious authority throughout the early modern period into contemporary times. Marital sex was viewed as a regrettable and sinful necessity, and even excess passion towards one’s wife was considered adultery. One aspect of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for greater sexual freedom, but this
was confined to the elite and was short-lived. A powerful anti-hedonist religious sexual ideology rose to prominence once again in the nineteenth century.

  Conclusion

  Beginning in the Middle Ages an elaborate system of social controls and ideologies resulted in the more or less complete imposition of monogamy in large areas of Western Europe. “The great social achievement of the early Middle Ages was the imposition of the same rules of sexual and domestic conduct on both rich and poor. The King in has palace, the peasant in his hovel: neither was exempt.”[426] Nevertheless, the system was by no means completely egalitarian. There was a positive association between wealth and reproductive success throughout pre-industrial Europe.

  In Western Europe there has been a remarkable continuity within a varied set of institutions, which have penalized polygyny and channeled non-monogamous sexuality into non-reproductive outlets or suppressed it altogether. Despite changes in these institutions and despite vast changes in political and economic conditions, Western family institutions, facilitated by a unique evolutionary history (see Chapter 4) have clearly aimed at the social imposition of monogamy. By and large, this effort has been successful.

  Effects of Monogamy

  Monogamy as a Precondition for the European “Low-

  Pressure” Demographic Profile and the Industrial

  Revolution