Marriage and European Views Fertility

Its inheritance of intertestamentary Judaism, more particularly from the radical fringes that had a fanatical devotion to self-abnegation and ritual purity, gave ancient Christianity a profoundly ambivalent attitude toward the body and sexuality. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians, it was better to marry than to burn with desire (1 Cor. 7:33). Marital sexual relations were given a grudging acceptance although it was made clear that holy activity was incompatible with them: "Do not refuse each other except by mutual consent, and then only for an agreed time, to leave yourselves free for prayer" (1 Cor. 7:5). This ambivalence towards sexuality was emphasized in Saint Paul's message to fathers: "He that giveth his daughter in marriage doeth well, but he that giveth her not doeth better" (1 Cor. 7:38). The Pauline ideology of sexual austerity was later confirmed within the newly established, fourth-century Church by such powerful prince-bishops as Ambrose of Milan, who was Augustine's patron and mentor. He observed, "Marriage is honourable but celibacy is more honourable; that which is good need not be avoided, but that which is better should be chosen."

Although the continuities with its original religious milieu are striking so, too, were the changes—Christianity radically broke away from its Judaic and pagan inheritance in separating descent from reproduction. Christianity was from its beginnings a religion of revelation that believers joined by being reborn in Christ's grace. For Christians, therefore, expectations of salvation were not linked with lineage nor were the achievements of ancestors passed on to descendants. Because charisma was not transmitted, Christians were not enjoined to maintain the patriline as a religious task nor were they expected to continue the cult of the dead through physical or fictitious descendants. Its novel restrictions on the ancient practices of endogamy, adoption, and concubinage made it more difficult for the propertied classes in the Roman Empire to transfer property within the family over generations because it closed the option of creating tight, endogamous knots of restricted elementary families within which wealth could be secured in the face of demographic uncertainties.

The early modern European family system was related to the unique Christian emphasis on rebirth in Christ. This religious concept wrapped both family life and sexuality in the institutional structure of the Church. The central position of baptism in Christian society was driven by the logic of its theology that every Christian was born carnally and in sin but was then reborn spiritually in Christ's grace. Baptism was a second birth that provided a rite of entry into the Church and full citizenship in the secular world.

This holy relationship and the accompanying incest taboos found fertile soil north of the Alps where they were grafted onto Frankish kinship systems. Papal decretals, royal capitularies, episcopal statutes, canonical collections, penitentials, and sermons continuously reiterated the point that spiritual kinsmen/women were sexually off-limits to one another. In this way, the northwest European system of family formation decisively turned its back on inherited traditions of endogamy.