Page 217 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

Germanic, and Christian practices. The last in particu- lar seem to have exercised an ever-increasing influence.
THE FAMILY AND MARRIAGE By Carolingian times, the Catholic Church had begun to influence Frankish fam- ily life and marital and sexual attitudes. Fathers or uncles arranged marriages in Frankish society to meet the needs of the extended family. Although wives were expected to be faithful to their husbands, Frankish aristocrats often kept concubines, either slave girls or free women from their estates. Even the “most Chris- tian king” Charlemagne had a number of concubines.
To limit such sexual license, the church increasingly emphasized its role in marriage and attempted to Christianize it. Although marriage was a civil arrange- ment, priests tried to add their blessings and strengthen the concept of a special marriage cere- mony. To stabilize marriages, the church also began to emphasize monogamy and permanence. A Frankish church council in 789 stipulated that marriage was “indissoluble” and condemned the practice of concubi- nage and easy divorce, and during the reign of Em- peror Louis the Pious (814–840), the church formally prohibited divorce. Now a man who married was expected to remain with his wife “even though she were sterile, deformed, old, dirty, drunken, a fre- quenter of bad company, lascivious, vain, greedy, unfaithful, quarrelsome, abusive . . . , for when that man was free, he freely engaged himself.”5
The acceptance and spread of the Catholic Church’s views on the indissolubility of marriage encouraged the development of the nuclear family at the expense of the extended family. Although kinship was still an influ- ential social and political force, the conjugal unit came to be seen as the basic unit of society. The new practice of young couples establishing their own households brought a dynamic element to European society. It also had a significant impact on women. In the extended family, the eldest woman controlled all the other female members; in the nuclear family, the wife was still domi- nated by her husband, but at least she now had control of her own household and children. In aristocratic fami- lies, women had even more opportunity to play inde- pendent roles. The wives of Carolingian aristocrats were often entrusted with the management of the household and even the administration of extensive landed estates while their husbands were absent in the royal service or on a military campaign.
CHRISTIANITY AND SEXUALITY The early church fathers had stressed that celibacy and complete abstinence
from sexual activity constituted an ideal state superior to marriage. Subsequently, the early church gradually developed a case for clerical celibacy, although it proved impossible to enforce in the early Middle Ages. The early fathers had also emphasized, however, that not all people had the self-discipline to remain celibate. It was thus permissible to marry, as Paul had indicated in his first epistle to the Corinthians: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid for- nication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. . . . I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”6 The church thus viewed marriage as the lesser of two evils; it was a concession to human weakness and fulfilled the need for companionship, sex, and children. The early medieval church generally accepted that marriage gave the right to indulge in sexual intercourse. Sex, then, was permissible within marriage, but only so long as it was used for the sole purpose of procreation and not for pleasure. The church condemned all forms of contraception and also strongly condemned abortion, although this prohibition failed to stop either practice. Various herbal potions were available to prevent conception or cause abortion. The Catholic Church accepted only one way to limit children: periodic or total abstinence from intercourse.
The Catholic Church’s condemnation of sexual activ- ity outside marriage also included homosexuality. Nei- ther Roman religion nor Roman law had recognized any real difference between homosexual and heterosexual eroticism, and the Roman Empire had taken no legal measures against homosexual relations between adults. Later, in the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Justinian in 538 condemned homosexuality, emphasizing that such practices brought down the wrath of God (“we have provoked Him to anger”) and endangered the welfare of the state. Justinian recommended that the guilty parties be punished by castration. Although the early medieval church similarly condemned homosexuality, it also pursued a flexible policy in its treatment of homo- sexuals. In the early Middle Ages, homosexuals were treated less harshly than married couples who prac- ticed contraception.
DIET For both rich and poor, the fundamental staple of the Carolingian diet was bread. The aristocratic classes, as well as monks and peasants, consumed it in large quantities. Ovens at the monastery of Saint Gall were able to bake a thousand loaves of bread.
The World of the Carolingians 179
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