There were also ideological components of Roman monogamy, with prestigious people and institutions expected to be monogamous or forego reproduction. At the beginning of the Republic and until 254 bc, the highest religious office, pontifex maximus, could only be held by patricians and was very prestigious and much sought after. These high priests were required to have monogamous marriages (termed confarreatio) that could only be dissolved by death; although divorce in a confarreatio marriage became possible in the later Republic, it remained rare and difficult to achieve. Originally, the high priest of Jupiter (flamen dialis) was required to marry a virgin and to have parents who had been married by confarreatio (relaxed when plebeians were allowed to hold the office); their marriages remained indissoluble throughout the Republic. Vestal Virgins, who were highly venerated as part of the state religion, were daughters of patricians who had been married by confarreatio; they were paragons of chastity who retained their virginity through their reproductive years. Finally, Stoicism, which became a powerful movement among artists, intellectuals and politicians during the Empire, extolled the ideal of monogamous family based on conjugal affection and sexual restraint for both sexes.[492]
There were also egalitarian political trends, as the plebeians gradually achieved considerable power and opportunities for upward mobility (see Appendix to Chapter 2). These changes parallel the general finding that barriers between Indo-Europeans and the European peoples they conquered gradually disappeared, and upward mobility was possible for males who had military talent (see Chapter 2). Indeed, it should be recalled that Indo-European culture should not be thought of as aristocratic simpliciter. As Ricardo Duchesne emphasizes,[493] Indo-European culture is best thought of as aristocratic-egalitarian—as hierarchical but with egalitarianism among aristocratic peers. Ending the practice of bridewealth and delegitimizing offspring outside of monogamous marriage, as occurred in Republican Rome, may then be considered an extreme version of aristocratic individualism.
Thus, although there is no question that Rome had strong features of an aristocratic society, as maintained by Siedentop, these features were by no means absolute, and elements of egalitarianism can be traced from the very earliest history of Rome. Christianity, then, appearing during the Empire after the huge influx of peoples to Rome, should be seen as accentuating and elaborating tendencies that were already apparent in Roman culture. From an evolutionary perspective, these new peoples were unrelated to the founding aristocratic stock and had an interest in deposing the aristocratic system. Christianity articulated their interests in doing so. The egalitarian forces that fueled the rise of the plebeians in the Republic had expanded to include the multiethnic masses of the Empire (all free men in the Empire were given Roman citizenship in ad 212 by Emperor Caracalla), accompanied by a powerful religious ideology of moral egalitarianism.
There are other grounds for emphasizing the underlying ethnic component of Western individualism and egalitarianism. For instance, there were important differences between Western and Eastern Christendom, and within Western Christendom itself. Regarding the latter, from the early Middle Ages, the Western family pattern was confined to northwest Europe, particularly the area encompassed by the Frankish Empire, Britain, and Scandinavia, but not, as emphasized in Chapter 4, the region to the south of the Loire in what is now France, and excluding much of Europe outside the Hajnal line despite being part of the Western Christendom (e.g., southern Italy, Ireland, the southern Iberian peninsula, Croatia and parts of eastern Europe).[494] Individualist family structure, which many scholars point to as critical for understanding the rise of the West, thus fails to include significant parts of Western Christendom.
One might argue that differences in family structure between Eastern and Western Europe are explainable by the later introduction of Christianity in Eastern Europe. Poland, for example, was Christianized relatively late (beginning in the tenth century) compared to the Frankish Empire (beginning with the conversion of Clovis I in 496). However, Scandinavian societies, which have the most individualist family structure in Europe (see Chapter 4), also converted quite late. For example, Denmark, the first Christian Scandinavian country, became Christianized only after the conversion of Harold Bluetooth in 972.[495] Sweden followed much later, first establishing an archdiocese in 1264, and even then, the eradication of pagan practices and beliefs took another 150–200 years.[496] Ethnic differences are a far more parsimonious explanation.
Outside of Western Christendom, a basic problem with supposing Christianity per se was the cause of European family practices is that lineage, joint families (where brothers would set up households together), and patrilineal patterns retained importance in Eastern Orthodox areas: southeastern Europe and Russia. Moreover, Christian groups in the Middle East generally remained tribal, thereby reflecting the culture of the area.[497] Given that many scholars attribute Western uniqueness to the unique family patterns of northwest Europe (see Chapter 4), Christianity or the Western Church cannot be its sole source. [498]
Parenthetically, it is worth noting that other religions, such as Islam, are universalist and desire all humans to be members. However, no other religion worked so energetically to achieve temporal power and use that power to overcome tribal, clan-type structures, as Christianity did during the early Middle Ages. Islam is universal, but it never tried to undermine the tribal nature of society based on extended kinship relations; Islamic societies throughout the Middle East remain tribal into contemporary times—a major difficulty for the nation-building programs that have been such a prominent feature of Western foreign policy in recent times.
Nevertheless, the power of the Church does seem important to include in any complete analysis. The Church is without doubt unique among the cultures of the world as a religious institution that was able to bend the wider culture toward its own interests in maximizing its power over the aristocracy and over extended kinship groups.[499] As noted above, a central aspect of the Church’s power during the High Middle Ages was the public perception of being reproductively altruistic. During the height of its power from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, the Church had successfully carved out a moral sphere as distinct from power politics, violence, warfare, etc.—of spiritual versus temporal power—even as it engaged in considerable power politics of its own. Nevertheless, as Siedentop notes, there is ample evidence that the Church often used its spiritual power to achieve temporal power (by, for example, excommunicating kings who attempted to divorce their wives or have their illegitimate offspring inherit). “The Church persisted in its moral enterprise, which was, after all, its raison d’être.”[500]
This concern with temporal power was apparent in the fourth century, when the Church exerted its power, not to regulate the sex life of aristocrats, but to combat Jewish power.[501] Indeed, Christian theology as it developed during this period was at its core anti-Jewish, and the rise of the Church to official status coincided with a decline in Jewish power and the enactment of laws against Jews owning Christian slaves. Moreover, although far from consistent, the Church continued to reign in Jewish power as, for example, with the Lateran Council of 1215 that mandated the wearing of distinctive clothing for Jews. And although the mendicant friars were models of reproductive altruism, they also spearheaded the anti-Jewish attitudes of the period; this was also an important part of why Christianity was so compelling during this period.[502]
This ideological shift (in which Jews were “portrayed in a more malevolent light”) coincided with an active campaign against Judaism. “The friars encroached upon the actual practice of Jewish life, forcibly entering synagogues and subjecting Jews to offensive harangues, participation in debates whose outcomes were predetermined, and the violence of the mob. The intent of the friars was obvious: to eliminate the Jewish presence in Christendom—both by inducing the Jews to convert and by destroying all remnants of Judaism even after no Jews remained.”[503] … A contemporary Jewish writer stated that the Franciscans and Dominicans “a
re everywhere oppressing Israel... . [T]hey are more wretched than all mankind.”[504], [505]
Devout kings, such as Louis IX of France, were instrumental in preventing Jewish exploitation of non-Jews. A contemporary biographer of Louis, William of Chartres, quotes him as determined “that [the Jews] may not oppress Christians through usury and that they not be permitted, under the shelter of my protection, to engage in such pursuits and to infect my land with their poison.”[506]
During the medieval period, the Church therefore carved out the moral realm as an area of influence. The effectiveness of this policy depended ultimately on the reality that so many people had fervently held religious beliefs—kings and aristocrats feared excommunication because they would lose the support of their people. One might ask, what else could a non-military organization do to attain power over the aristocracy, kings, etc.? From a strategic perspective, the Church chose areas that were prima facie moral and therefore came under religious purview.
In conclusion, the Church promoted policies that tended toward individualism—policies that were consistent with its own interests in becoming a powerful, hegemonic institution and that built on pre-existing tendencies toward individualism in Indo-European and northern hunter-gatherer cultures. Individualism was and remains strongest in northwest Europe because these evolutionarily based tendencies are stronger there. In the end, individualism militated against the Church as an authoritarian, collectivist institution with the result that Protestantism flourished throughout most of northwest Europe, with the radical individualism of the Enlightenment soon to follow.
It is noteworthy in this regard that an important factor motivating the Protestant Reformation was perceived corruption in the Church—e.g., the practice of selling indulgences (Luther) as well as the wealth of many monasteries, the idleness of many monks, and profit from the veneration of religious relics (Erasmus).[507] As on the eve of the Papal Revolution, the Church had lost its moral stature, rendering it vulnerable.
6
Puritanism: the Rise of
Egalitarian Individualism and Moralistic Utopianism
__________________________
The previous chapter concluded that the medieval Church set the stage for the demise of its hegemony partly by promoting the primacy of conscience in religious belief, eventually leading to the theological basis of the Protestant Reformation. In this chapter I aim to discuss Puritanism as a particularly important Protestant movement, not only in British history but also for the United States, where a Puritan-descended elite dominated intellectual discourse and the Ivy League universities, as well as the legal, political, and commercial establishment until the rise of a new elite. This new elite was influential even in the early decades of the twentieth century, but its influence expanded considerably in the post-World War II era and accelerated dramatically after 1965.
The English Civil War of the mid-seventeenth century, which established the influence of Puritan culture in both Britain and the United States, should therefore be seen as a turning point in the history of the West, a watershed event that eventually ended the domination of the fundamentally Indo-European-derived social structures that had held sway over the Western European political landscape from time immemorial.
However, despite Protestantism being ultimately enabled by Western individualism, Puritanism itself, in theory and for a considerable time in practice, was strongly collectivist. Ingroup-outgroup distinctions were highly salient and within the group there were powerful controls on thought and behavior. In other words, at its origins, Puritanism was a group evolutionary strategy.
Puritanism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy
Puritanism originated in East Anglia, which was settled mainly by Angles during the early medieval period.[508] They produced “a civic culture of high literacy, town meetings, and a tradition of freedom,” distinguished from other British groups by their “comparatively large ratios of freemen and small numbers of servi and villani.”[509] As noted in Chapter 4, this area, unlike central England, was not manorialized but rather consisted of small holdings with joint family structure centered around male siblings. As a result, East Anglians did not owe services to a lord and had relatively greater individual freedom. One might suppose that this resulted in East Anglians having a tendency toward “insurrections against arbitrary power”—the risings and rebellions of 1381 led by Jack Straw, Wat Tyler, and John Ball, Clarence’s rebellion in 1477, and Robert Kett’s rebellion of 1548, all of which predated the rise of Puritanism. President John Adams, cherished the East Anglian heritage of “self-determination, free male suffrage, and a consensual social contract.”[510]
This emphasis on relative egalitarianism and consensual, democratic government are tendencies characteristic of Northwest European peoples.[511] At the same time, there was a high degree of cohesion within the group made possible by a powerful emphasis on cultural conformity (e.g., punishment of religious heresy) and public regulation of personal behavior via social controls related to sex, lack of religious piety, public drunkenness, etc. These anti-individualist tendencies would be expected to strengthen not only the cohesion of the community but also tendencies for cooperation and high-investment parenting within the community, without compromising the tendencies toward political and a large (albeit limited) measure of economic individualism. One might say that Puritanism was an individualistic group strategy—individualistic in economic tendencies and political tendencies, but collectivist in the areas of religion and sexual behavior.
Indeed, the intensity of public violence directed at defectors may be an example of altruistic punishment (i.e., punishment of others at cost to oneself) discussed in Chapters 3 and 8. One would expect a cooperative culture of individualists attempting to create an effective group to employ high levels of punishment—even altruistic punishment—directed at free-riders and other forms of rule-violation.
John Calvin’s Group Strategy
Calvinism was conceived and developed by John Calvin, a sixteenth-century religious reformer based in Geneva. David Sloan Wilson notes that Calvin was not only conversant in Christian writings, but also impressed people with his ability to discuss these writings from memory as well as with his skills as a writer.[512] These traits indicate high general intelligence, a set of mechanisms critical for adapting to novel, complex environments.[513] In other words, Calvin, like Moses and the Jewish priests who invented Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, was an intelligent person attempting to design a strategy for living in a complicated world, but one embedded in a theological context typical of his age. Calvin and his colleagues talked a great deal among themselves about how to hold a community together. They developed a belief system that was “user-friendly” in the sense that it appealed to a wide range of people, not just the well-educated or highly intelligent. Of course, belief systems need not be true to motivate adaptive behavior, witness a belief that in the Book of Genesis God enjoins the Israelites to reproduce and multiply.
Calvin compared his church to an organism with many parts working together for the good of the whole:
All God’s elect are so united and conjoined together in Christ that as they are dependent on one Head, they also grow together into one body, being joined and knit together as are the limbs of one body. ... Just as the members of one body share among themselves by some sort of community, each nonetheless has his special gift and distinct ministry.[514]
Every person has a role to play in the group; therefore, all occupations from farmer to minister are worthy and sanctified.
The free-rider problem and other problems caused by cheating are a central issue for any group evolutionary strategy. Punishment is always an effective mechanism and is undoubtedly critical to the long-term success of any group strategy. However, there are obvious benefits to a group strategy if rule-abiding behavior is internally motivated, and Calvinist theology is designed to do just that. The internal motivation for not violating group norms is that violators have offended Go
d and must seek his forgiveness. They must repent for their sins. Forgiveness and repentance are basic to all human relationships—part of our evolved psychology. However, believing that one’s actions have not just wronged another human but have wronged a powerful and just God capable of the severe punishment of eternal damnation produces a powerful motivation to abide by the rules of the group. This is another example of how Christian religious ideology is able to motivate behavior.[515]
A great deal of attention was paid to making sure that pastors were paragons of moral rectitude and not prone to ideological deviation which would lead to schism and a breakdown of the organic, collectivist spirit of the group —reminiscent of the medieval Papal Reform movement that was so effective in motivating Christian commitment during the High Middle Ages (see Chapter 5). Indeed, an important factor motivating the Protestant Reformation was perceived corruption in the Church—e.g., the practice of selling indulgences (a particular focus of Martin Luther) and the wealth and idleness of many monasteries profiting from the veneration of religious relics (commented on by Erasmus, among others).[516] This is another indication that the power of the Church and other Christian religious sects has depended on the perception that clergy were paragons of morality and even altruism.
Calvinist pastors were to “admonish amicably those whom they see to be erring or to be living a disordered life.”[517] Those who violated the religious norms were subjected to an escalating set of penalties ranging from a private “brotherly admonition” from the pastor, to public forms of shaming, and finally to excommunication which would mean expulsion from the city.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 19