By the fourteenth century, several rights were defended—property, consent to government, self-defense, marriage, and procedural rights. Canonists moved in the direction that the right to property entailed the duty to share in time of need. This led to the idea that the poor had rights—the intellectual ancestor to the modern welfare state. Rulers had limitations on what they could do beyond the reciprocal obligations of vassalage.
Indeed, despite the importance of powerful ingroup-outgroup conflicts between Christians and with both Muslims and Jews, natural rights were defined as even applying to infidels—an indication of the pervasive universalism of medieval Christianity. Innocent IV: “All men, faithful and unfaithful alike, are Christ’s sheep by creation even though they are not of the fold of the Church.”[467]
By the second half of eleventh century, Europe “was acquiring a moral identity” centered around Christian intuitions of moral egalitarianism.[468] The Crusades, a collective Christian enterprise against Muslims as a negatively evaluated outgroup were a defining event resulting in a shared Christian identity that overrode the different regional identities within Europe—a form of Christian collectivism in opposition to Muslims as a negatively evaluated outgroup. This is why the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170 had repercussions throughout Europe, his place of death becoming a pilgrimage site.
Essentially the Church had created a moral community based on Christian egalitarian universalism. Within this moral community, all other identities, such as ethnic, social class, or regional identities (e.g., being a member of a particular kingdom), had lesser moral standing.
Church Policy in Opposition to the Power of Extended
Kinship Groups
As in the case of monogamy, the Church also had a role in the decline of the power of extended kinship relationships. In this case, however, Church policy was aided by the rise of strong central governments, which also discouraged the power of the extended family and ultimately replaced it in the role of guaranteeing individual interests.
From an evolutionary perspective one can scarcely overestimate the potential importance of kinship. Because of biological relatedness, kin are expected to have common interests and lower thresholds for cooperation and even self-sacrificing behavior. The Germanic tribes who settled much of Western Europe toward the end of the Roman Empire were organized as kinship groups based on biological relatedness among males, although there were also overarching social structures not based on kinship, such as the männerbünde.
Since the early Germans could not rely upon the protection and assistance of a bureaucratic empire when they were threatened with attack or famine, it was incumbent upon each man and woman of the community to adhere to the fundamental sociobiological principle of group survival embodied in the bonds of familial and communal solidarity.[469]
It was this world of tribally based kinship groups that the kings and the Church wanted to eradicate.
The general thrust of Chapters 2–4 is that European groups, especially in the northwest of Europe, were less prone to extended kinship relations than other cultures long predating Christian influence, likely as a consequence of their unique evolutionary history. As a result, although extended kinship did play a role in early medieval Europe, it was not as powerful as in many other cultures (see especially Chapter 4). Nevertheless, it is certainly of interest to document the role of the Church in encouraging the trend away from extended kinship solidarity. Given that Europeans are relatively prone to individualism, there is the expectation that they would be relatively prone to shed ties to extended kin under conditions in which their individual interests are met.
The picture one gets is the gradual development in the West of an aristocracy based on the simple household and freed from obligations to collateral kin dominating a peasantry characterized by the simple family and embedded in a society of neighbors and friends rather than in an extended kinship group. This social structure was an achievement of the late Middle Ages. Extended kinship relations were not important among the peasantry in late medieval England or France.[470]
The Church contributed to the eradication of extended kinship ties in Western Europe by opposing consanguineous marriage (marriage of blood relatives) and supporting marriage based solely on consent of the partners. In the case of consanguinity, the Church prohibited marriage between an ever-expanding set of individuals. In the sixth century the prohibition was extended to second cousins and by the eleventh century it was extended to sixth cousins, i.e., individuals with a common great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Clearly these prohibitions on consanguinity go far beyond those predicted by evolutionary theory.[471] Moreover, biological relatedness was not even relevant, since marriage was forbidden to similarly distant affinal relatives (i.e., relatives by marriage) as well as to individuals with spiritual kinship (i.e., relatives of godparents). These rules must therefore be conceptualized as ideology in pursuit of power: the effect of the policy was to undermine extensive kinship networks and to create an aristocracy freed from obligations to the wider kin group.
Whatever the rationale given to these prohibitions by the Church, there is evidence that the aristocracy obeyed the ecclesiastical rules. There were very few marriages closer than fourth or fifth cousins among the French nobility of the tenth and eleventh centuries.[472] These practices weakened the extended kinship group, since the expanded range of incestuous marriages prevented the solidarity of extended kinship groups by excluding “the reinforcing of blood with marriage.”[473] The result was that biological relatedness was spread diffusely throughout the nobility rather than concentrated at the top. The direct descendants of the family rather than the wider kinship group also benefited: “Men in high secular positions ... strove to consolidate their fortunes and their families in order to secure as much as possible for their direct descendants to the detriment of wider kin.”[474]
In addition to its policy on consanguinity, the Church’s doctrine of consent in marriage acted as a force against extended kinship relationships. “The family, the tribe, the clan, were subordinated to the individual. If one wanted to marry enough, one could choose one’s own mate and the Church would vindicate one’s choice.”[475] Marriage came about as a result of consent and was ratified by sexual intercourse. By removing the fundamental nature of marriage from the control of the family and the secular lord to the individuals involved, the Church established its authority against the traditional ties of kinship and family. Freedom of choice of marriage partner was the rule in England throughout the modern period and parental control was exercised only in the top one percent of the population.[476]
The Church’s Encouragement of Diverse Centers of
Power
Medieval towns and cities began to govern themselves and thus be independent or semi-independent power centers. In general, the towns and cities tended to be more egalitarian than feudal systems, and they differed dramatically from the Greek and Roman models of cities based on aristocratic dominance. These new power centers often had bloody conflicts with feudal lords, with Church policy tending to favor the cities.[477] Thus, people fleeing serfdom often took refuge in cities and were protected by the Church.
Nevertheless, Henri Pirenne notes examples where the Church opposed the interests of the cities, either because they controlled the cities (episcopal cities), or because they were in thrall to the nobles who controlled the cities (prior to the full consequences of the papal revolution), or because of their general lack of sympathy with trade. Thus, while many bishops “distinguished themselves … by their manifest solicitude for the public weal,” “episcopal cities were the first to be the scene of combat” between the burgers and other levels of power—again indicating that the Church was intent on maximizing its own power. In the late eleventh century and early twelfth centuries, “the middle class and the bishops lived in a state of permanent hostility and, as it were, on the point of open war. Force alone was able to prevail been such adversaries.”[478]
&nb
sp; But many bishops were caught between the interests of the nobles who had patronized them and the rising townspeople. In this conflict, the townspeople had powerful allies in monarchs attempting to reign in the power of the nobility. Eventually many towns gradually achieved freedom from feudal overlords. These towns did not have complete sovereignty—kings had rights over them, such as adjudicating capital offences, but they were often free of feudal obligations or royal taxes. These urban areas created a middle class that “contained the seeds of a modern constitutional order,”[479] although oligarchic tendencies existed as well.
Christianity and the Rational Tradition of West
Beginning in the Greco-Roman world of antiquity, disputation and logical argument have been far more characteristic Western cultures than any other. As Ricardo Duchesne has pointed out, although the Chinese made many practical discoveries, they never developed the idea of a rational, orderly universe guided by universal laws comprehensible to humans. Nor did they ever develop a “deductive method of rigorous demonstration according to which a conclusion, a theorem, was proven by reasoning from a series of self-evident axioms.”[480]
Despite a lesser role for reason in Christian thinking and periods of dogmatism in which, for example, heretics were dealt with harshly, the spirit of disputation and logical argument so apparent among the Greeks persisted within Christianity: “Christian convictions were submitted to the disciplines of logic and metaphysical speculation to the requirements of disciplined argument.”[481] “The habit of disputation—of disciplined argument—was preserved by the Church in later antiquity … . The habit of disputation became engrained in the life of the Church.”[482]
This rational worldview was accompanied by intense, individualistic competition in the market of ideas, as recounted in Chapter 2 for classical Greece and with the development of science discussed in Chapter 9 which emphasizes the individualistic nature of scientific endeavor. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is a good illustration of the importance of rationality even in the area of religion, an area particularly prone to dogmatism. Heavily influenced by Aristotle, Thomas developed rational proofs for the existence of God. No other intellectual tradition has ever attempted this.
The Realism Versus Nominalism Debate
A good example of Western disputation with great relevance to egalitarian ideology was the debate between realism and nominalism associated with two mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, respectively. These orders had a high profile in the cities and were very popular among the poor; they developed rapidly in the thirteenth century and had a prominent role in establishing the intellectual milieu at universities.
The Dominican tradition, associated mainly with Aquinas, was Aristotelian and biased toward rationalism, reflecting the world view of the ancients based on natural inequality. On the other hand, Siedentop sees the Franciscan tradition beginning in the fourteenth century with Duns Scotus and especially William of Ockham as carrying on the tradition of Christian egalitarianism, inspired by St. Augustine. The Franciscan tradition was based on nominalism (the philosophy that classes are constructions of the human mind and that only particular objects exist) and empiricism (the view that facts could be discovered by experience rather than deduced rationally from first principles). For the Franciscans, a morally upright will (intentions) was more important than reasoning ability, whereas the ancients saw reasoning ability as unevenly distributed among people, leading to natural inequality. Will was under voluntary control and thus available to everyone. The nominalists asserted that reason had no motivating power; it “could and should shape action, but it could not determine action.”[483] Proper action required grace.
The Franciscan tradition, following Augustine, saw moral inequality as the common assumption of ancient philosophy.
Whether the assumption of natural inequality took the form of Plato’s guardians, warriors, and workers, Aristotle’s division into citizens and slaves (‘living tools’), or the Stoics’ aristocratic view that only a few could ever attain ‘true’ knowledge and virtue, that assumption effectively ruled out the moral universalism that, for Augustine, was the crux of Paul’s message.[484]
Contrary to the Aristotelians, Ockham distrusted the ability of humans to explain the world as resulting from “rational necessity.”[485] God could have made things differently—“God’s freedom.” Ockham’s nominalism thus “celebrated contingency rather than rational necessity.”[486] He therefore championed inductive reasoning verified by the senses rather than deductive reasoning from first principles. If God was free to make the world any way He wanted to, then reality is contingent and must be discovered by observation and experiment.
Nominalists paved the way for empirical science by rejecting Aristotle’s idea of “final causes” (goals, purposes) and emphasizing efficient (mechanical) causes (in a manner quite similar to David Hume’s classic analysis of causality). They demanded empirical proof rather than seeking logical entailment.
As noted above, Christian theorists emphasized individual conscience rather than damages as central to morality. Thus, they recognized that individuals can make mistakes in good conscience. It is conscience (intention) that makes an act moral or not, not mere conformity to convention —“even if they are doctrines and institutions of the Church.”[487]
The nominalist emphasis on human freedom and individual conscience had profound implications congruent with the general idea that it was in the Church’s interest to promote individualism. Church canonists developed the idea that legitimacy—even the legitimacy of the Church—depended on consent, not coercion or power. This led to theories of representative government and corporations as consisting of consenting individuals with equal status. Bishops did not have dominium in the ancient sense (domination over subordinates), but rather the entire community of believers had dominion over the Church. Representatives should “have a mandate” from those represented. The connections of these ideas to the rise of Protestantism and the eventual rise of egalitarian individualism are obvious.
Christianity and Post-medieval Europe
Siedentop argues that Christian moral intuitions centered around individual conscience and moral egalitarianism ultimately caused the downfall of the Church as a hegemonic religious institution. Liberal thought “emerged as the moral intuitions generated by Christianity were turned against an authoritarian model of the Church.”[488] By the fourteenth century, there were calls for representative government within the Church. These were resisted by the papacy, resulting in widespread “agitation” against the Church (e.g., Hussites in Bohemia, Lollards in England). These were essentially democratic movements that rejected the top-down structure of the Church, promoted individual devotion, and campaigned to be able to read scriptures in native languages—harbingers of Protestantism.
Thus basic liberal ideas that had been propagated by the Church predated Protestantism but were contradicted by the Church’s own collectivist structure. In the end, those liberal ideas—equality of status, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and representative government—opposed the interests of the Church as well as most Protestant sects. This resulted in the religious wars of the Reformation, after which there came to be general skepticism about the wisdom of enforcing religious orthodoxy. These trends continued, so that by the eighteenth century, clericalism was seen as the enemy of liberal secularism. The attitude developed that “uncoerced belief provides the foundation for ‘legitimate’ authority.”[489]
However, given the biological thrust of my thinking, I can’t help being struck by nineteenth-century historian Thomas Macaulay’s comment in his History of England, emphasizing the special characteristics of the “German race”:
The Reformation had been a national as well as a moral revolt. It had been not only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the great German race against an alien domination. It is a most significant circumstance, that no large society of whic
h the tongue is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails.[490]
The Reformation and the end of “alien domination” of the collectivist Church ultimately unleashed the full flowering of egalitarian individualism in northwestern Europeans discussed in the following chapter.
Conclusion: The Church Facilitated but Did Not Cause Western Individualism
Siedentop presents a strong case for a role of Christianity in the development of the Western individualism beginning in the ancient world. However, there is evidence, some of it mentioned by Siedentop, that the roots of European egalitarianism and individualism are far deeper.
Monogamy (which implies sexual egalitarianism), is a unique aspect of Western culture, long predating Christianity. Early Roman marriage practices departed from Indo-European patterns by eschewing bridewealth (payment from the groom) a practice common in tribal societies around the world and closely linked to male sexual competition (wealthy males are able to purchase more females). Roman monogamy was maintained by controls on sexual behavior (bigamy and polygyny were illegal), laws relating to legitimacy (bastards suffered social opprobrium; marriage with slaves was typically prohibited); inheritance laws penalized children who were not the products of monogamous marriage (bastards could not inherit; the children of slaves retained the status of the mother).[491] In an intensively polygynous society such as classical China, none of these occurred, so that, for example, the offspring of a concubine were entirely legitimate and could inherit property, depending on the wishes of the father.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 18