Emil Kirkegaard: Why did NW Europeans become WEIRD?

Kirkegaard: ” A more likely explanation for their ban [on marriage between a wide range of relatives] is that the church was trying to break up powerful noble families that the church had conflicts with.”

I agree. From my comment on Henrich (The previous is a link is to the entire comment. E.K.’s article links only to the the abstract):

The Church facilitated individualism by pursuing the policies highlighted
in The WEIRDest People in the World] and Individualism [and the Western Liberal Tradition] (rules on incestuous marriage, developing ideologies and enforcing social controls supporting monogamy, preventing divorce, preventing bastards from inheriting), but did not cause Western individualism. As noted above, similar policies were also customary in Greece during the classical period and in Rome, especially during the Republic. The Church was able to exert its power over marriage because it had created the
image of reproductive altruism by enforcing clerical celibacy and suppressing
corruption as a result of the Papal Revolution beginning in the tenth century and
completed by the High Middle Ages. (Corruption reemerged in later centuries and
was a major cause of the Protestant Reformation.)
Church rules on incestuous marriage were not a response to a common
situation in the late Roman Empire. … The Church was far more concerned about marriages of the nobility; many commoners disregarded the rules and, given the lack of mobility at the time, perforce married individuals within the prohibited degrees of relatedness. This contrasts with Henrich’s claim, without citing data, that the Church’s policies “dissolved intensive kinship from the middle outward. The elites of Europe would be the last holdouts” (p. 180). On the contrary, elites were the main target. Males with little wealth or power could hardly aspire to cementing a powerful kinship group via marriage ties any more than they could aspire to polygyny or having concubines. I know of no evidence that those of more modest means avoided marriage within the
prohibited degrees of relatedness apart from very close blood relatives. The
discussion of actual cases shows little concern with the seven degrees of
relatedness, but much concern with near blood relatives (e.g., uncle, niece) or
affinal relatives. In general:

However much the Church rationalized its position and strove to
enforce it, it is evident from ecclesiastical correspondence, court records,
and well-known scandals of the time that the rules were ignored or honoured
in the breach by many Christians during the Middle Ages, or were
manipulated for personal advantage to get around the principle of the
indissolubility of marriage. … In spite of the determination with which the
Church insisted on its complex rules of who could marry whom, the
ecclesiastical authorities were remarkably lenient in interpreting many parts
of the incest legislation, especially in regard to more distant relations and
affines. It is also clear that many people in the Middle Ages were not
particularly bothered by breaches of the incest rule, such as the marriage of
second cousins [who on average share only around three percent of their
genomes by descent]. (Archibald, 2001:410)

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2 replies
  1. D. H. Corax
    D. H. Corax says:

    Good article. I wonder to what extent Henrich truly believes that the Church’s cultural influence was so decisive and to what extent he wants to avoid further proof the the degree to which genetics influences culture–and thus becomes too intellectually close to his less reputable brethren (eg, Dr. MacDonald)

    As far as the “(yes, I know)” comment goes, I suspect it’s that case that Dr. MacDonald’s works have achieved such dominance in DR circles that they’re regarded almost as intellectual cliches, rather like David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed in colonial American history: it’s a way, of acknowledging, yes, I’m not giving you a very original source (and I’m sure most of you have already read it) but there really aren’t any that newer ones out there that are even nearly as good.

    Reply
  2. Emma Smith
    Emma Smith says:

    Here’s a challenge for objective TOO reviewers & thoughtful readers: Melanie Phillips, “The Builder’s Stone” (Wicked Son, 2025), re current Western “denigration of the nation, the abandonment of the family…contempt for the past and despair about the future”; and her “religious” recommendation for survival and revival in face of Marxism, Postmodernism, Hedonism and Islamism.

    Reply

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