Feedom at Work

[Evola As He Is]

The intimate connexion between the concept of freedom and that of equality in Sophism, Cynicism, Stoicism, and Judeo-Christianity, has been the object of our investigation in `From Freedom to Feedom', which has showed, on one hand, that their hand-in-hand development, as a result of the increasingly subjective standpoint from which the relationship with the sacred was viewed, was marked by an increasing abstraction, and, on the other hand, that the subversive potential they possessed intrinsically developed accordingly. The time is now to go further into the examination of the influence of this twin concept on the formation of the civilisation which is known as the `European civilisation', and, beyond this, on the Teutonic spirit.

To begin with, there is some wisdom in dwelling on the fallaciousness of two related theories on the early Germans.

The first is the theory concerning their `freedom' and `equality' and their so-called self-government, which had its origins in the `German' nationalist aspirations of the eighteenth century, only to be furthered in the nineteenth century by the liberal claim that the political institutions of the ancient Germans, as described by Tacitus, were essentially of a democratic and constitutionalist character. Even though it was brushed aside conclusively as a romantic fancy a long time ago, it seems to be assumed and proclaimed again by the Marxists who make up much of the current self-styled anti-establishment intelligentsia on our continent nowadays, especially in France and in Italy.

Equality of all free men - and not equality of all men - formed the basis of the ancient Teutonic society. Out of the four classes the early Germanic society was composed of, namely the nobiles, the freeborn, the freedmen, and the slaves, only the first two had political power, while the freedmen and the slaves did not enjoy any political rights ; nor did women ; these « were not in any sense members of the legal community », yet « the unfree might be manumitted, and emancipation usually secured to them half-freedom. Such half-free persons, or serfs (`Hoerigen', `Liten', `Aldien') were capable of rights ; but they continued to be marked off from the full freemen by the lack of liberty of domicile » (1), an essential measure to curtail traffic. In fact, « Early Germanic society was not democratic ; it was very conscious of differences in class and rank. » (2) The primary sources are so clear about it that it is hard not to think that it was merely to push their political agenda that XIXth century `German' nationalists deliberately ignored the fundamental and critical distinction between equality of all men and equality of all free men.

The second is the assumption that the Christian proclamation of the primacy and the supremacy of certain rights and interests of the individual over any of his duties to the state could resonate with the very high idea of personal independence, the emphasis on the value and importance of the individual man as compared with the state, which was characteristic of the Teutonic tribes. (3) It is based on the mistaken and somehow romantic notion that liberty and independence had the same meaning for the German and for the Christians. With a reference to the Anglo-Saxon freeman that can be applied to a large extent to all German freemen, S. Turner sets the record straight in this respect : « In talking of the Anglo-Saxon freemen, we must not let our minds expatiate on an ideal character which eloquence and hope have invested with charms almost magical. No Utopian state, no paradise of such a pure republic as reason can conceive, but as human nature can neither establish nor support, is about to shine around us when we describe the Anglo-Saxon freeman. A freeman among our ancestors was not that dignified independent being, `lord of the lion heart and eagle eye,' which our poets fancy under this appellation ; he was rather an Anglo-Saxon not in a servile state ; not property attached to the land as the slaves were ; he was freed from the oppression of arbitrary bondage ; he was often a servant, and had a master, but he had the liberty to quit the service of one lord and to choose another. » (4) Their state of freedom had great benefits and some inconvenients. It was based on rights and duties.

This is not to say that there is not truth to the belief that the modern concept of representative and constitutional government developed gradually from the political institutions of the early Germans, and, in the last analysis, from their notion of individual liberty and their system of common laws. It is true insofar and only insofar as it takes account of the involutory and parodic character of the whole process. In ancient Germany, « 'Parity' referred in a legitimate and virile way only to `free men' and `nobles', beyond any difference in nature… however, the democratisation and the inversion of this concept led to the egalitarian `immortal principle', precisely as a tool of world-wide subversion. » In short, « It is enough to desecrate [principles such as this one], to secularise and to democratise them, so as to make them an ideal for any individual whatsoever, so as to make them weapons of subversion and to arrive at anarchism and individualism, that is to say, to errors and attitudes which would result in the negation and the destruction of the spiritual plane, the only one to which these principles could apply legitimately. » (5) The ultimate and practical consequences of this illegitimate conceptual extension of inborn quality of freedom to all men in the political domain are well summarised in `Men among the Ruins' : « Where there is equality there cannot be freedom : what exists is not pure freedom, but rather the many individual, domesticated, and mechanized freedoms, in a state of reciprocal limitation. Paradoxically, that kind of freedom could approximately be realized in the system that is most opposite to liberal preferences : namely, in the system in which the social question is resolved in such a way as to guarantee certain privileges for a small group, at the cost of the total subjugation of everybody else. If carried to its extreme consequences, the figure of a tyrant would then be the most perfect concretization of this concept or ideal of formless freedom. » While, down to Carolingian times, only the freeman of the tribe had the right and the duty to take part in the `thing', the assembly, experience in democratic conditions, such as those the occupied countries of our continent are under, shows increasingly that the indiscriminate granting of civil and political rights to any adult who is not disqualified by the laws of the country, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, is a recipe for such a disaster, through popular vote, universal suffrage. (6)

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There was, as it is clear from all available primary sources, no such thing as a concept of freedom in the early Germanic world. As has been seen, lack of conceptualisation of freedom should not be regarded as a minus, but as a plus. Freedom, rather than being conceptualised, the object of ethical or political reflection, was essentially experienced, in the fullest sense of the term and, so to speak, hereditarily : the nobles were originally « those who, being born from parents long possessed of freedom, were invested with the dignities of the commonwealth », (7) that is to say, with full citizenship and, in particular, with the right to assume arms. As in ancient Rome, « freedom was simply another expression for the right of citizenship in its widest sense. » (8)

So, in this Genossenschaft, freedom could be defined as having been under the law, provided that `law' is understood, not in the secular sense of the word, but in the Aryan sense of `dharma' and `rta', whether at an individual or at a collective level ; in a Greek context, as `ethos', and, in a Roman context, as `ius'. « Law among the early Germans was regarded as customary, sacred, eternal, and unchangeable. The object of government, they thought, was not to make new laws, but to maintain the good old laws. » (9) `Ewa', the OHG for `law' as `custom, habitual practice', refers to both the legal and religious sphere. In relation to the developments below, it is worth noting that in late OHG it was confined to the meaning `matrimonium`, a legally contracted marriage.

A lot of water would pass under the bridge before the old Germanic institutions would be contaminated and distorted by non Aryan egalitarian doctrines and views. While it does not fall within the scope of this study to reconstruct this process, it is important to remember that egalitarianism can be traced to the Deuteronomic code and the Prophets, to Yahweh's « burning compassion for the oppressed », and that the expression it naturally found in the organisation of some early `oppressed' Christian communities (« The way in which the various ekklesiai in different localities originally organized themselves varied, though, at least in some, local leaders, both men and women, were democratically elected (Acts 6). Likewise, major issues facing the expanding church were dealt with in council and often by consensus ») (10) went underground in the institutionalised Church of the `Middle-Ages' only to resurface more acutely in so-called secular forms in later times, beginning with the emphasis on liberty and equality as `natural rights' that is found in Calvin, Hobbes, as well as in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

As the development of Christian orthodoxy resulted in increasing hierarchical structures of the Church, in order to ostracise and to control heretical apocalyptic and millenarian factions, where women shared an equal status with men, more radical groups emerged which « have retrieved those socially subversive texts within Scripture which demand liberation, justice, and equity, for the poor and oppressed… » and « have kept alive the utopian prophetic vision of an egalitarian and participatory society both in the church and in the public arena, while « others, inspired by the same prophetic vision, but less utopians in their expectations and usually less radical in their strategies, have likewise struggled for freedom… In doing so they have helped to develop social structures which have found particular expression in representative forms of democracy. » (11) To put it bluntly, « Christianity, or the religion of the Bible, is emphatically and distinctively, THE religion of the equal and common brotherhood of mankind… And this feature embodies the only solid foundation for the principle of democracy. » (12) Now, the Christian notion of brotherhood is nothing else than freedom in equality.

It is well known since the works of J. Bachofen that equality is the foundation and the driving force of any society in which females, especially mothers, wield familial and political authority, and, more precisely since the works of J. Evola, that any society characterised by the actual predominance of feminine values over manly values can be considered as a gynecocracy, irrespective of whether it is actually managed by females or by males, by, in the case at hand, feminine males. Freedom as a concept played almost no part in intrinsically matriarchal societies such as the African one and the Arabic one, anymore than it did in intrinsically patriarchal societies, in which manly values prevailed over feminine ones, informing and shaping these societies in all their aspects and in all their areas. Since the concept of freedom first penetrated our civilisation through ancient Greece under the influence of philosophers who were all of Semitic background, the question arises on the historical plane as to whether this concept was meant to act as an agent of destruction ; whether or not it was meant to act as such, it did have destructive, poisonous, effects on the social texture, on the economic system, and on the political institutions of Indo-European peoples, through the ferment and restlessness it caused in the less thoroughbred elements which made up, so to speak, the residue of these stocks, and which, by their nature, were receptive to non- or even anti-Aryan values.

To destroy White traditional society meant to undermine its foundations, that is, the family, and to undermine the family meant to emancipate women and, to start with, to free her internally : to enslave her to herself, so as to use her as a medium to release and turn loose infra-human forces.

Germanic institutions, to be fully understood, must be studied on the basis of kin. A family, smaller or larger, held its members united by the strongest of bonds ; they made common front against an enemy, and kept peace among themselves. The word 'sib' means both `peace' and'relationship`. To give this little senate laws, to govern his immediate family and do his duty as member of the larger family, was chief business of the Germanic freeman aside from his vocation of warrior and his avocation of huntsman. Every member of the family was subordinate to its head, not simply under his control, but at his mercy : he could punish, sell, and, in primitive times, kill. We must here as before clear our minds of modern sentiment, and keep in sight the rigid nature of household organization. (13)

The sense of kin took just precedence of all human bonds. Peace, good-will, the sense of honor, loyalty to friend and kinsman, brotherly affection, all were plants that found in the Germanic home that congenial warmth they needed for their earliest stages of growth. Blood-relationship and mutual peace conditioned each other. The family tie engendered the earliest notions of duty, whether to the living or to the dead ; and this sense of duty is the moral foundation of all Germanic history. Alive, the head of the house exacted obedience and respect, fostered order and justice ; dead, he was the object of cult, grew mightier with lapse of time, and as a tribal god sanctioned wider and deeper laws of society. His fireplace was the primitive council chamber ; his grave was the primitive altar.

The heaviest punishment was expulsion from the family ; and banishment, the crown of sorrow for a German. (14) « The wretched victim of such a fate was cut off from all protection of law and order, and renounced the benefits of civilization. Thus at the other extreme of fortune from the proud head of a proud and powerful clan stood the clanless man, the exile, the outlaw, who had no protecting relative, no strong kinsman, no "gold-friend and lord. » (15) « Blood-brotherhood is a very pretty word for our ears ; but in the brave old days it was no metaphor. The soul was thought to abide chiefly in the warm blood, as well as in the breath and the eyes. » (16) « The ties of blood being the most sacred known to the ancients, the one band of society, the beginning and chief sanction of religion, it was natural that any conflict of duty, any case of doubt which way the claim of blood should draw one, must have formed chief material for their tragedy. » (17) Originally, the family or clan made a definite sphere or community of life ; outside of it the homeless man felt indeed that chaos had come again.

« The free German was essentially a warrior, and such farming as he had was in the hands of his wife, who was helped by slaves and the weaker members of the household. The primitive German wife, says Lippert, "span wool, made clothes, cared for the fowls, and tried her hand at raising barley". There was a total absence of sentiment in Germanic life ; but a householder respected the capable mistress of his home because she was capable ; and he accorded her a certain supremacy, because only thus could she do her best work and bring about the most good for the family. She had, therefore, full sway in her own realm. » (18) To leave a son who should be head of the house, and therefore its priest, who would perform its rites according to the good old custom, and train up his own children to the same belief and practice, was one of the foundations of family life. Household gods were no fiction in those days. To marry meant literally to make free (`frî') - where `frî' still had the sense of `one's own (kinsmen)' -, since marriage was the means by which a kindred based on blood ties was enlarged by the admission of an outsider who by that legal act came to enjoy the rights and protection of that kindred.

« From ownership of land woman was probably excluded in all Germanic tribes, and this Salic Law represents the general point of view. But custom is law ; and custom had very early begun to give woman a certain legal standing. » (19) « It is popularly supposed that women were lifted to their present place mainly by the influence of the church and of chivalry. This is in great measure true. » (20) Moreover, women were not members of the state, but were under control of father or brother, who punished or rewarded them. The oldest English law is full of this doctrine. Refractory wife or daughter, where stripes are unavailing, is sold or even given away. Yet her importance in the household and in the farm gave her a certain responsibility, leadership, and dignity. The sense of kinship was so strong that, if a free woman married below her rank, she came into a painful position, and must lose either her husband or her freedom ; that foreigners who came into a country without friends and kin behind them, and made to stay, were in danger of unfreedom : a year and a day they might bide, and after that it was often slavery. But the wayfaring man who had definite objects in view was welcome to this boundless hospitality. « The famous German hospitality praised by Tacitus was limited to transient guests, who had certain forms with which he must comply, if he would not run the risk of being cut down like a thief. » (21)

« Now with such a sanction for the family, with such necessity for a head, for strict gradations of birth, we can see how the iron weight of custom and religious tradition, and not the feeble breath of sentiment, inclined the scale in favor of German women. » (22)

We must remember, too, what an important part the German woman played in matters of divination and religion. (23) There was abundant reverence for the prophetic and sacred character of woman ; but it was a reverence based on religious tradition, and was at the farthest possible remove from mediaeval or modern chivalry. We are hardly to think that the German attributed superior insight to woman as woman ; the gods spoke through her. The Veleda, whom Tacitus mentions, both in this passage and in the histories, was a typical wise woman, who had prophesied the defeat of the Roman legions. Then « Christianity banned the old sanctities and mysteries, and the prophetic maiden'ea virgo` grew little by little into a woman who clung to the disgraced divinities, had dealings with Satan, was guilty of the lowest vices and the most disgraceful motives, did nothing but harm, caused storm, ruin, pestilence, and death. » (24)

Marriage in Antiquity was contracted within the kinship group, the `domus'. The purpose of endogamy was to produce an heir and a lineage while maintaining the purity of blood, transmitting wealth, honour and status, and ensuring the hereditary perpetuation of the hierarchical principle. Marriage had thus socio-economical, racial, political and spiritual motivations and implications into which sexuality and feeling did not come into play.

This traditional foundational concept of the formation and of the perpetuation of ancient European societies was undermined and shattered by Christianity.

To be sure, Jesus-Christ did not reject marriage. Nor did he explicitly approve of it. He was more concerned with « marriage in heaven » (Luke, 20:27-39) and « marriage in the last days » (Matthew 24:36-39), as well as with the issues of divorce and adultery. Marriage was considered as a lesser evil for Paul - whose emphasis on sex in marriage says a lot about the kind of public to which he preached - and the Pauline tradition ; celibacy is preferable to marriage, in view of the fact that « Marriage inevitably brings with it a concern for the `affairs of the world' and thereby hinders total devotion to the mission of the church at the turn of the ages (7:32-35). » (25) Basically, « The contrast is one of `impurity' versus'holiness`. Christians are urged to behave `not like the Gentiles`, but to take a wife in 'holiness and honour' (1Thess 4:6-7). The problem here is sexuality and desire… It is the fear of filthy, unbridled sexuality that comes to the fore - so that marriage is regarded as a protection against this desire (1 Cor. 7) and as an expression of holiness (1 Cor 7 ; 1 Pet I : l4ff ; cf. Rom 12:2ff ; 1 Thess 4:6-7 ; Eph 5). The unity of husband and wife is strongly emphasised, but the basis for the union should not be « carnal desire, » an antithesis which was unknown to Patricians, « but Christian love and holiness. » (26) There, he has said it : love. Love, instead of, and as opposed to, blood, is to be the foundation of the family, is to unify the family. Love as the reflection of the love of God is also pivotal to the Paulinian concept of « new life » (in Christ). The new life is realised in love. « Love must be the determining reality for everything the Christian or the Christian community does. » (27) « The liberty in Christ must show itself especially in this, that believers are to be servants of one another through love (Gal. 5:13). » (28) The Christian view of family is formed in the image of the Holy Family. The word and heart are put into marriage (1 Peter 3.1b-4 ; Mark 10.3-9). Peter is intent on improving the quality of marriages, especially in situations where the husband rejects the word. In Peter's view, the key to acceptance of the word is through the heart. If wives show the right kind of heart, husbands will be won over to the word. Mark, too, wants to put heart and the word into marriage… Both texts conclude with a little note that the idea of a heart-filled marriage is important in God's eyes (it is of great value, 1 Pet. 3.4b ; it must not be broken up, Mk 10.9). » (29)

This sentimentalist view of marriage formed part of a far-reaching attempt to undermine the patriarchal character of the traditional Roman family and culture, and, even beyond, the very essence of kinship. Jesus-Christ calls the whole nature of the kinship bond into question (Mark 3:33-35), placing above this bond a bond of fellowship in a common obedience to God (12). « When confronted with the demands of his family, Jesus proposes a new radical moral (sic) standard that threatens the most basic family loyalties and engenders the most difficult conflicts between family and religious commitment. » (30) He sought to compromise the role, the status, and the aura of fathers (Mark 10:29:30), going so far as to assert : « call no one your father » (Matthew 23:9), implying that the over-arching authority of the pater familias has no place in the community of the faithful : only children, barren women, angel-like beings, and eunuchs can enter the kingdom of God. Much of the Synoptic material « portrays Jesus' tension with his own kin and his call of the disciples to give his mission a higher priority than the love of their family (e.g. Mark 1:16-20 ; 3:21-35 ; 10:28-31 ; 13:9-13 ; Matt 10:16-23; 34-39 ; Luke 14:25-27). Its most pointed expression is the demand that the disciple not bury his father, but 'leave the dead to bury their own dead' (Mart 8:21-22), a saying so counter to the family values of the ancient world that it is practically unparalleled in all ancient literature. » (31). « When Jesus asks his followers to leave family behind, he is talking about a particular kind of family : the patriarchal family in which men held nearly absolute power over women. » (32) It is mainly this family that Jesus finds objectionable. It is essentially this family that has no place in the Christian community.

It was not Jesus-Christ who said : « Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. » For that matter, it was not Paul either. (33) Had the subordination of women to men been unambiguously recalled in the Gospels, where, of course, some sensible things about the natural and normative relations between man and woman in the context of an intrinsically patriarchal society can be found, other texts, (34) which express clearly the notion of equality or identity between the sexes, would have mitigated it, all the more so as the very categories of male and female are more or less implicitly called in question in favour of an ideal of humanity beyond natural gender inequality. (35)

Conversely, the followers of Jesus Christ were implicitly called to reject blood kinship as a foundation of society, of culture, of civilisation, in favour of a « new family ». « The first Christians can be seen as a people who wanted to actualize Jesus' vision of the kingdom. Horsley claims that even if we allow for considerable exaggeration in Luke's nostalgic and romanticizing summaries (eg, [Acts] 2:41-47 ; 4:32-37 ; 5:42), we can still imagine a group excitedly celebrating table fellowship, sharing resources, and energetically preaching and healing in the Temple area. This group would have heard Jesus' message about the dangers of all- encompassing family loyalty. They would have been attempting to live in a new kind of family-community in which all those who were disciples of Jesus would be better able to focus on what was really important : teaching and living the good news. The Jesus of the Gospels used radical anti-family-devoted listeners, shake them loose from the ties that kept them from being true servants of God. And they, in response, changed the ways they thought about family, and, more significantly, the way they lived as family.

In this Christian family-community », (36) four main changes can be identified : the emphasis on the child as a unique individual ; the movement toward equality : Paul's assertion of the equality of rights, of authority and of obligations between wives and husbands was not ignored : « Unlike the patriarchal Jewish and Roman marriages, early Christian marriages were notable for their emerging egalitarianism. While it would be anachronistic to claim that these Christians were feminists or that they believed in the kind of equality many envision today, it is fair to say that the first Christians responded to Jesus' message and practice by trying to reshape their marriages so that they would be more equal » ; (37) the rejection of hierarchy : « The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles is full of... stories of young men who leave behind possessions, of young women who sneak out of their husbands' marriage beds into other bedrooms where Christian worship is taking place, of disciples of Christ who come together despite diverse backgrounds, of women who give up their high status as wives to `slaves of God' are common in Christian literature of the time. In sum, Christians who turned away from marriage did so, at least in part, because they rejected the upper class status that marriage would bring them. Instead, they identified with a small Christian community that included people from all walks of life, and they called this community their family... We know that the baptism of adult Christians included the formula found in Galatians 3:27-28 (you have `clothed yourselves with Christ Jesus. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.'). Many scholars have come to believe that this formula was understood by the earliest Christians not just spiritually, but concretely. To be baptized, then, was to affirm that all socially important distinctions were no longer significant. A Christian was a brother or sister to all. Christian families crossed class lines and in doing so repudiated social norms » ; (38) the « inclusion of all » is the logical conclusion of such premises : clearly, it means the disintegration of any blood kinship into the so-called `human family'.

« The early Christian movement brought into question not only ethnic but also family solidarities… The Christian message embraced INDIVIDUALS, who were bound together, to be sure, in a new metaphorical family as brothers and sisters in Christ, but did not necessarily live, and were not required to live, within the solidarity of a `Christian family'. » (39) « The practical effect of the early Christian movement was not to solidify but to undermine family loyalties for a significant proportion of its adherents. Whatever partial parallels there may be outside Christianity to the notion that God (or philosophy) might take precedence over family ties, the fact remains that early Christianity became distinguished by this characteristic, whose importance led to a fundamental reconsideration of the worth of family loyalties and of the family as such. This reconsideration could express itself in more or less radical forms. At the less radical end of the scale, Christians could be encouraged to reckon that their commitment to Jesus and the demands of his mission might require them both to forego family commitments and to forge alternative `kinship' relations with fellow believers outside the family circle. » (40)

Early Christians did not just endeavour to form alternative kinship relations and an alternative kind of community, which, after all and in theory, could have existed alongside with the traditional Roman institution of family at the bottom of the existing order. However, they sought to undermine the `familia' from within, targeting essentially women, slaves and children : « We see, indeed, in private houses workers in wool and leather, and fullers, and persons of the most uninstructed and rustic character, not venturing to utter a word in the presence of their elders and wiser masters; but when they get hold of the children privately, and certain women as ignorant as themselves, they pour forth wonderful statements, to the effect that they ought not to give heed to their father and to their teachers, but should obey them ; that the former are foolish and stupid, and neither know nor can perform anything that is really good, being preoccupied with empty trifles ; that they alone know how men ought to live, and that, if the children obey them, they will both be happy themselves, and will make their home happy also. And while thus speaking, if they see one of the instructors of youth approaching, or one of the more intelligent class, or even the father himself, the more timid among them become afraid, while the more forward incite the children to throw off the yoke, whispering that in the presence of father and teachers they neither will nor can explain to them any good thing, seeing they turn away with aversion from the silliness and stupidity of such persons as being altogether corrupt, and far advanced in wickedness, and such as would inflict punishment upon them ; but that if they wish (to avail themselves of their aid) they must leave their father and their instructors, and go with the women and their playfellows to the women's apartments, or to the leather shop, or to the fuller's shop, that they may attain to perfection ;--and by words like these they gain them over. » (41) In Juvenal, too, women are depicted as the main focus of early Christian clandestine proselytising tactics. « It is clear that Celsus believes that women make up a considerable part of the early Christian population, » but, from his account, it becomes just as evident that « women are not merely followers of the early Christian evangelists, but they are also actively involved in the missionary enterprise. » (42)

Once Christianity was established, the forces at work in it were left free to further the process of undermining of the kinship system.

Marriage laws were dramatically changed, and this change had momentous consequences at both ends of the social scale.

« At both ends of the social spectrum, the Christian emperors introduced laws that modified the ways in which people married. For the highest classes, the new legislation further restricted the groups within which marriage was permitted, thus narrowing the choice of marriage partner. » (43) .

« The traditional system was concerned with the provision of an heir to inherit family property. It allowed marriage to close kin, marriages to close affines or widows of close kin, the transfer of children by adoption, and concubinage, a form of secondary union. Gregory banned all four practices. » (44) Later, in 720, pope Gregory II forbade all marriages with consanguineal or affinal kin. In 732, Gregory III instructed Boniface that marriages were not to be contracted within the seventh degree.

Of the four main aspects of traditional marriage and family, that is close marriages, union with affines, adoption and concubinage, the fate of the widows, which were targeted by medieval Christianity, the devastating effects brought about by and the underlying reasons behind the changes in the treatment of the latter merits special attention : « From its inception the Church had grown as a temporal power through gifts and donations, particularly from rich widows. So much wealth had the Church acquired in this way that in July 370 the Emperor Valentinian addressed a ruling to the Pope that male clerics and unmarried ascetics should not hang around the houses of women and widows and try to worm themselves and their churches into the women's bequests at the expense of the women's families and blood relations. The early Church's extolling of virginity and its discouragement of second marriages helped it to increase the number of single women who would leave bequests to the Church.

« This process of inhibiting a family from retaining its property and promoting its alienation accelerated with the answers that Pope Gregory I gave to some questions posed in 597 A.D. by Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning his new charges. » (45) « It is clear that from the beginning the interests of the new religious community lay in a reorganization of the laws of inheritance, and especially in a loosening of die old legal family ties. Here the aim of the Church was in the direction of individualism, making the individual independent of his kinsmen. » (46) Since the marriage policies introduced by the Church made it more likely that it would inherit property from wealthy people, insofar as they could not longer use interfamilial marriage alliances to keep full control of family estates within their kinship group, it is arguable that these policies benefited the Church financially.

« One result of Christian influence on Roman marriage law was to make bigamy for the first time a crime in the Empire. The classical concept of consensual marriage, which depended upon… the continuing consent of both parties to remain married to each other, had made it nearly impossible for a Roman to contract a bigamous marriage. Under the Christian emperors, however, divorce became the sole procedure for terminating a marriage between living partners, and the grounds for divorce became more restricted. As a result of these changes, bigamy for the first time became a legal problem. In addition, Constantine made it legally impossible for a Roman subject to have both a wife and a concubine simultaneously. This alteration marked a break with earlier practice and illustrates, as does the development of the bigamy problem, the gradual enactment of Christian sexual teachings into public law. » (47)

The legal enforcement of monogamy as the only form of marriage by the Church had long-term devastating side-effects. To be sure, monogamy « was mandated in the late Roman empire as the only proper form of sexual expression and family organization. » (48) In the old days, however, formal monogamy could be reconciled with effectively polygynous relationships in the social and sexual spheres. Greek and Roman societies accommodated multiple sexual relations for married men ; monogamous norms were even relaxed in times of serious crisis : near the end of the Peloponnese War, massive male casualties justified a temporary exception that allowed men to father legitimate offspring with one woman other than their own wife. Christianity maintained and reinforced monogamous norms in their most rigid form. Had it limited itself to reinforcing monogamy, it would have been a lesser evil, especially for the Germanic kinship group. What made it particularly destructive for the clan social, mental and emotional balance and also for the whole society was that it was hardened, on one hand, by the radical condemnation of extra-marital sexual congress, and, on the other hand, by the consideration of love as the only foundation of marriage and as the only element likely to sustain it, thus causing the two separate aspects of parenthood and sexuality to be considered as inextricable. A recipe for disaster was that, to quote A. de Benoist, « Marital relationship became the only legitimate context for erotic involvement, which amounts to not being able to distinguish between Venus and Juno anymore. »

Generally speaking, the imposition of social monogamy on the aforementioned basis and, what's more, the legal acknowledgment of only one type of marriage - namely that which was distinguished by marital affection, as opposed to the several types of marital unions which existed both in the organically hierarchical ancient Roman and Germanic society -, coupled with the enjoinment of one ethic upon all people, irrespective of wealth, status and sex, were part of the levelling policy of the Church, in keeping with Christian egalitarianism, that is, with the subversive propensity to lower the noble whilst raising the humble. « the enactments of the Christian emperors made marriage for the first time legally available [to the low-born] : successive laws transformed the informal couplings of slaves (contubernium) into legitimate matrimony, with all its rights and consequences. » (49)

« With the gradual imposition of monogamy, the number of marriageable women increased. More poor men could find mates and raise families. They were given a stake in settled society, and the numbers of wandering outlaws decreased. » (50) From a racial and eugenic standpoint, it must be pointed out that the decrease of the numbers of wandering outlaws only resulted in the increase of the numbers of settled outlaws : a married criminal certainly does not ceased to be a criminal.

Strict monogamous marriage, too, would have been a lesser evil, had it not been pushed to its extreme consequences by the sanctification of the consensual marriage and its implicit promotion of the sophism of the equality of men and women, as reinforced by the claim that, if the husband has authority over his wife's body, the wife, too has authority over her husband's body (1 Cor. 7:4). (51)

If it was extremely difficult for Christian marriage to gain ground, since it was in stark contrast on several essential points with the pattern of married and family life in ancient Rome and in ancient Germany, whose laws allowed in certain cases repudiation or divorce, the indissolubility of the Christian marriage meant the primacy of the logic of the couple on that of the line. « This feature was further accentuated by the emphasis laid by the Church on the freedom of the personal consent of the couple. In the context of those times, this attitude amounted, by instituting a new form of autonomy of the subject, to considering the interests of families and clans, that is, the transmission of inheritance, of secondary importance. By institutionalising an autonomous conjugality to the detriment of broader forms of adherence and of solidarity (community, lineage, and extended family), Christian marriage initiated a long process of individualisation, whose final result was love-based modern marriage (today, it is the main cause of divorce). » (52)

Engels pointed out that monogamy « does not by any means make its appearance in history as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation. On the contrary, it appears as the subjugation of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of a conflict between the sexes entirely unknown hitherto in prehistoric times » ; (53) he was just too-narrow-minded to realise, or too cunning to reveal, which one would end up being subjugated. For, since there is no such thing as equality between men and women, this is what consensuality would really mean in the long run : « The fact that both the man's and his future wife's consent was necessary for marriage meant that it was a contract between `equals' since neither one could impose consensus upon the other partner. This means that in principle the bargaining position of women in such a marriage pattern is relatively strong : a woman could (try to) select the kind of husband that suited her. » (54)

So, to crown it all, the ratification of consensual marriage by Alexander III in the decretal veniens ad nos (sic) was a deadly blow at the root of the European traditional patriarchal authority. It instigated a family revolution which can be considered as « largely responsible for the individualism that characterizes the West. » (55) From a social and economic standpoint, through its precepts for marriage, child bearing, sexuality and family roles, Christianity fostered the rise of the actual nuclear family, a `social' unit which, nota bene, was in turn a precondition of the industrial revolution. (56)

As has been seen in'The Jewels of the Papacy', the whole Germanic tradition was twisted and assimilated into a Christian world-view by the act of euhemerisation and by the use of various literary devices, so that the Christian message imposed itself upon the Germanic tradition in the heroic epic poems of the `Middle-Ages`. Whether or not the « The fatherhood of God appeals with peculiar force to the German, » (57) the fact remains that the Christian glorification of the almighty Father with a capital F was paralleled by a twofold process of disempowerment of the German warrior as a father and of consequent empowerment of the German woman, and an increasing glorification of feminine values. (58)

The passage from Antiquity to the Christian era, besides altering the structure of the family architecture, altered the system of relationships between women, men and children. It is by religious assertion that women put a distance between their will and that of their family, their father, and their husband. The rules of marriage dictated by the Church and the indissolubility of marriage hindered the will of the fathers in their choice of alliances, because they could no longer form and break up alliances whenever they wished. The man lost the power to become a father as he wished. The position of the Church, which did not approve of divorce, refused to consecrate remarriages, and discouraged the remarriage of widows, made it more difficult to find a wife. However, Christian ideas were not anchored to the same extent in all walks of life. Heathen traditions were still present. The place of the child was still determined by the will of the father. Yet, the influence of Christianity and of its morality brought about a difference in the legal situation of legitimate children and illegitimate children ; as early as in the late Roman empire, that is in the Christian Roman empire, any child born out of illicit unions was legally a bastard and an outcast.

Besides, prior to the conversion of the Germanic tribes, women, through marriage, appeased conflicts, and, by recognising their illegitimate children, encouraged the harmony of the kinship group. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand how devastating the canon laws on illegitimate children were to be for the organic structure of the traditional Germanic kinship group, once, through these laws, women lost the regulatory role they had as subjects of alliances within it, nor is it difficult to fathom the new role she was spurred to play within it. (59)

« Bearing children, which might have been done by a succession of wives or simultaneous wives in an earlier period, and supervising domestic activities, which had been previously shared by all female members of the family, were now the exclusive duty of one wife. Further, a married woman… had greater responsibility for land management than her Merovingian ancestors. She was thus expected not only to produce children but also to administer a complex family economy. » (60) It may be that « The introduction of the Christian model of marriage did not alter the role of the wife », yet « it increased her responsibilities » in the economic sphere, the sphere of conflicts, and empowered her as an individual.

Now, if there is some evidence that the shift from polygamy to monogamy which occurred in Carolingian times resulted in an emphasis on the domestic responsibilities and duties of the aristocratic wife, there is every indication that the imposition of monogamy addressed the needs of the lower estates, that is, the peasantry and, above all, the (upper) middle class. Kautsky accurately notes : « The individual household, and also a certain degree of monogamy, were economic necessities for the artisan and peasant… As his business [the merchant's] was independent of a household, it was of little importance whether he had a housewife or not. Marriage and a household became a luxury for him, whereas it had been an economic necessity. If he were frugal, he need not marry at all, unless he took a wife not – as a housekeeper, but as an heiress. If his trading profits were large enough, he could transfer the management of his household to hirelings. Thus, in consequence of the unlimited profits of trade, the wives of merchants, and to some extent of professional men, were freed from household duties, as well as from work generally, in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They found time to interest themselves in questions outside their former mental horizon. But concomitant with this emancipation, the traditional form of marriage tended to become an article of luxury in mercantile and Humanist circles, resulting in a loosening of sexual ties, above all in Italy, the home of Humanism. With the impetuosity of youth the upper middle class burst the bonds of the patriarchal family, of monogamy... » (61)

Another key and decisive factor in the spreading of the twin concepts of freedom and equality in the `Middle-Ages' was the rise of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois mentality. « The trader, as a man who wanted to do a lucrative business and, therefore, who was totally oriented to the money value of things, [could only see] the world as one great market. He never thought beyond his business, which received his entire energy. This demanded the instrumental ability to be both a speculating calculator and a negotiator, » a calculator and a negotiator who « was concerned primary with means rather than goals. » (62) To the bourgeois, freedom and equality of all are presuppositions of economic exchange. To the bourgeois, equality is both a presupposition and a constitutive feature of the market : « ... since the practice of exchange requires agents to abstract from all social differences except the roles of buyer and seller, it can apply to anyone who owns something marketable. Once labour-power becomes a commodity, therefore, the market promises equal access for all - or at least for all whose labour-power is employable - and thus equal opportunity for every commodity (product or personal capacity) to prove its equal value with others. » (63) To the bourgeois, freedom means essentially market freedom, conceived of as the absence of external coercion : « In commodity exchange, said Marx, The complete freedom of the individual is posited : voluntary transaction ; no force on either side. Since the market offers equal access to all, it offers equal freedom for all. » (64)

K. Marx rightly noted that « in Roman law, the servus is... defined as one who may not enter into exchange for the purpose of acquiring anything for himself », and was just as right to consider that freedom and equality as the presuppositions of economic exchange are « exactly the opposite of the freedom and equality in the world of antiquity. » (65) « The Greek paradigm was dichotomous, and gave priority to the freedom of household heads to participate in the polis as equal citizens, free from constraints of foreignness, slavery, industrial or domestic labour, womanhood or immaturity, any of which justified unequal treatment. Greek conceptions of freedom and equality conflicted with those prioritized by the exchange paradigm mainly in so far as they reflected the restriction of property ownership to citizens. But if non-citizens (foreigners especially, but also freedmen and slaves) could obtain commodities and money they would meet citizens in the marketplace as equal trading partners, free to strike or refuse a deal as they pleased. So with the development of markets an exchange paradigm of social intercourse, prioritizing more universalistic conceptions of freedom and equality, would gain currency and undermine the older political one ». (66)

The rise of the bourgeoisie and, with it, the spreading of the values of indiscriminate equality and individual and universal freedom can be attributed to the breakdown of feudalism, but only in part, since feudal society, whose greatness in terms of political, military, social and economic achievements should not distract one from acknowledging that it was build on the ruins of a society of a higher traditional character, contained the seeds of its own destruction. Two of these are relevant to our topic : first, if feudality was « a society dominated by a vast network of mutual relationships based almost entirely on personal loyalty and service, » (67) the fact, that the personal bonds of mutual loyalty and military service were no longer exclusively tribal, as they were among Germanic peoples before their Christianisation, weakened them significantly in practice ; then, if, in the early `Middle Ages`, social mobility was, if not utterly impossible, except through the Church, which, as always, led the way, at least strictly delimited, the strict feudal hierarchy began to fracture under the impact of other, mainly economic and military, factors, which, in the last analysis, can also be brought back to the weakening of tribal bonds, as service, from a clan matter, became more and more a matter for specialists.

After the migrations of the Germanic tribes and their Christianisation, « the contrast between freedom and unfreedom lost definiteness, the unfree securing legal personality and thereby becoming folk-fellows. Besides this, whole classes of the unfree moved upward, as settled rent-paying peasants, into the class of the half-free, which was thus notably increased. Where the old folk-nobility maintained itself against extinction by the kingship, it developed into an estate superior also in law to the commonalty. Thus there were gradually differentiated four blood estates : the noble, the free, the half-free (`Horige', serfs), and the unfree (`Knechte'). This fourfold legal hierarchy of freedom found visible expression in a scale of varying wergelds.

But development soon went further. « Many of the demands of Christian practice caused economic hardship. » For instance, « All agricultural labor had to cease on Sunday. » (68) « Altered economic and political relations led in the Frankish period to a transformation of momentous consequences of this social organization of the Germanic epoch. The accumulation of riches in the hands of great landholders, secular and ecclesiastic, called into being a new aristocracy of wealth, while the royal service created a new nobility of office. Two new classes rose thereby above the estate of the common freemen. They coalesced readily, inasmuch as royal service was rewarded with land, and they wholly or partially absorbed the remnants of the old nobility of blood. The increased wergeld of the royal officials gave them also a higher legal worth. Although it was not yet an estate limited by birth, this aristocracy developed into such an estate — the estate of lords and princes—in the post-Frankish period, as a result of the transformation of powers of public office into heritable rights of lordship over land and people associated with the possession of land. » (69) In this context, land provided the facility for rising to a higher social or economic position or, on the contrary, for being relegated to a lower social or economic stratum. On one hand, « many of the common freemen sank into the estate of serfs, and there met the slaves who had risen into it. For whoever was not in a position to protect his own free holding, but was forced to entrust it to a richer man and receive it back as a tenancy for rent, thereby eventually lowered his personal status. And so, here again, possession of land called into existence, first social and economic, and then legal distinctions. » (70) On the other hand, « The successful management of even a medium-sized estate in the early Middle Ages was predicated on the service of numerous specially trained individuals, who may have been unfree yet were in the position to accumulate not just property but also money in the form of coinage to enhance their financial freedom ». (71)

Another issue was that the Germanic common freeman ceased to be at once warrior and cultivator of the soil in Frankish times, and the army became a profession, a matter for `specialists', with all the attendant negative consequences. On one hand, while « A barbarian people, for example, was one and the same as its army when on the move », « The exigencies of life on the road entailed dramatic social mobility within such a people's rank, which were open to anyone — regardless of ethnic or social background—who was adept and accomplished in battle. Simply put, specialized service—in this case, on the battlefield—could lead to social advancement… The ranks of feudal armies were increasingly filled with unfree individuals. » (72) In the early times of the Germanic society described by Tacitus, war was conducted with simple equipment ; for example, only the most important warriors in a tribe owned swords. The warrior began to emerge as a distinctive profession when the cost of equipping him became substantial. « The revolution in medieval warfare triggered by the switch to a heavily armored, mounted force during the Carolingian period steeply raised the cost of outfitting a fully equipped fighter—a chain-mail tunic alone was worth as much as a medium-sized piece of property—and the level of training an individual needed to perform his duties with distinction. Since there were never enough free vassals capable of fulfilling the military needs of an overlord, it fell to the king or magnate to equip the requisite number of unfree men and earmark them for lifelong training. Given the unique institutional history of the medieval empire, however, Ottonian and Salian military leaders were able – —indeed constrained— – to rely upon the imperial church for their troops. Hence, the earliest ministerials were drawn from the imperial church, which was in the very broadest sense part of the royal fisc, and from the royal fisc in the narrow sense ». (73)

The fact that the « royal right to muster the free and unfree milites » was often delegated to ecclesiastics throughout the `Middle Ages' is the first reason why the fierce criticism faced by Charles Martel from some ecclesiastics for carrying out the Merovingian tradition of using the resources of the Church for military purposes qualifies as a form of ingratitude. The second reason is that most of the wars of aggression launched by the Frankish kings were carried out under papal sanction, in order to spread the Christian faith (in his admonition generalis (789), Charles demanded that the Sanctus be sung at mass in honour of the Dominus Sabaoth, the king of the armies) the third being that, when the non Christian tribes they attacked on religious grounds later responded in kind, the wealth of the Church was used to protect'God's resources`.

An insatiable appetite for conquest mixed with religious zeal can already be felt in Gregory of Tours's writings. Wars, beginning with Charles, are explicitly identified with holy wars in Alcuin's prophetic flights. Not to mention that, by the late eleventh century, when most Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic peoples were already converted, the great struggle between the Church and the Empire exacerbated domestic conflicts.

The aforementioned « need of a professionally trained mounted force created chivalry and the estate of knights. This estate of the knightage (`ordo militaris'), too, was at first a purely social fellowship of all men capable of knight service. » (74) It should be stressed that the earliest knights formed no uniform class, for there were of very different backgrounds. « What identified them was their warrior function, even when that function was temporary. A man was a knight only as long as he wielded the arms his lord had issued to him, often briefly. Nor was eleventh-century knighthood synonymous with chivalry, which did not develop until the twelfth century, or, indeed, with any particular standard of behavior. Robbers and mercenaries could be described as knights as easily as honorable and loyal soldiers. There was no equation between knights and vassals either... In many ways, these knights of the eleventh century were closer to peasants than to their noble lords. Many seem to have been servile, legally unfree. » (75) « Until the late Middle Ages, in the German Empire, serf-knights, ministeriales, had to gain the permission of their lords to marry, as did any serf, even after they had become the de facto nobility of their regions. A similar social gulf also persisted in some French-speaking areas that bordered the Empire. » (76) « In France the social status of knights and nobles drew closer together in the twelfth century until they eventually fused as a single group in the thirteenth century… » In the early `Middle-Ages`, knighthood was not identical with nobility. In fact, the earliest knights were sharply differentiated from the noble they served. Only by the fourteenth century did the terms `knight' and `noble' become used almost interchangeably. On the whole, however, « knights, cavalry fighters of fairly undistinguished backgrounds, quickly became an important part of the medieval social landscape. From the first, the idea of service was integral to the concept of knighthood. Knights followed their lords to war, to regional councils, and on excursions to cities and monasteries. » (77) « ... as mounted service in war was as dear as it was distinguished, a knightly lineage was very soon added to the requirement of a knightly mode of life, and thereby transformed a professional into a blood estate. The feudal law included in one legal unit all persons of knightly birth and calling, and graded them within this unity in estates, according to their military rank. Distinctions between the status of freedom and of unfreedom in the Territorial law did not affect membership in this estate, notwithstanding that they were the basis of gradations within it. Unfree persons found admission to it, viz. the ministri, — the servitors of the king and the landed aristocracy employed in military service. So long, therefore, as the distinction made by the Territorial law outweighed in importance the unity that prevailed in the feudal law, the knightage was no status in the sense of the Territorial law, and the feudal law was no law of status but simply a `Rechtskreis'..., — the aggregate of the legal rules that regulated the legal relations associated with feudal tenancy. The Sachsenspiegel still shows us this peculiar parallel growth of estates on the double basis of Territorial and feudal law. Ultimately the principles of the latter came to prevail. Persons of knightly birth separated themselves from all other classes of society as a blood estate, recognizable by their peculiar mode of life. But within this knightly or noble class, a unit both in self-consciousness and in law, the distinction between elements originally free and unfree continued to be reflected in a division between a higher and a lower nobility. » (78) The imposition of legal restrictions on the dubbing of knights of low birth in the late twelfth century in Germany and in Spain shows that men of low birth were sometimes knighted prior to these times. In 1140, Roger II forbid the knighting of men who might disturb peace, in a move to check the rise of a rebellious movement by a wholesale dubbing and equipping of merchants and rich peasants.

« Hitherto, knights had been distinguished from the rest of society merely by their qualification in arms, which in turn had brought them relative wealth. Entry into knighthood and the attendant ceremony had been a simple formality that could be carried out by any knight for anyone's benefit » ; (79) and, even though knighthood remained a secular institution, it was the Church that made the knight, and its symbolic, ritual, and ethical basis increasingly derived from the Church's conception of the order inherent in society. Contrary to what was assumed by J Evola, the Church conformed to a type of ethics that was more heroic and heathen than evangelical and that could not be reconciled with « the principles of that dualistic and escapist spirituality », but it did so only apparently and in the initial stage. In fact, it strove to sway the martial ethos of the knighthood and to adapt it to the Christian world-view. « The Church had educated the knighthood for its religious ideals and ecclesiastical purposes… The protection of the weak now became a knightly point d'honneur ; in relation to the external world, the arms of knighthood were put into the service of the struggle against heathens and heretics… the knightly ethos of self-discipline which sprang from the spontaneous spiritual dynamism of this estate, met this [ecclesiastical policy] half way : it was ready to acknowledge religious and ethical values, if it saw them in agreement with its esprit de corps and was thus able mentally to digest them. Triuwe and staete are virtues immediately intelligible to the vital feelings of a liege-man', for triuwe (faithfulness) and staete (steadfastness) were merely the mental concomitants and unavoidable implications of the real (social and economic) relationship of the feudal nexus between lord and vassal. By conceiving his relation to God as a personal relation of vassalage and an obligation of honour, belief in God appears to [the knightly] religious and ethical consciousness as faith in God [trinwe] — and this accords well with the ecclesiastical concept of constantia in the Church's moral philosophy. And in the same way the Knight virtue of maze [moderation], the expression of the predilection, characteristic of this status group, for a noble form of living, for style, harmonizes with the temperentia of the ecclesiastical doctrine, and that milte [generosity], the highest lordly virtue of the knight — in the sense of noblesse oblige - with the virtue of liberalitas taught by the Church. » (80) The later development of knighthood shows that the paralles drawn here are far from being tendentious or fanciful, and thus that the ethos of knighthood hardly had any corrective and formative influence on the Christian mentality ; quite the contrary : « By the fifteenth Century… the aristocratic warrior had been transformed into the miles Christianus, or knight of Christ. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the ecclesiastical hierarchy had become sympathetic to the institution of knighthood after realising that it could be deployed on the Church's behalf ; the chevaliers themselves became more devout — `knights of Christ', indeed, conscious of their membership of Christian society. In consequence, the Christian ethos was intimately bound up with the fully developed cult of chivalry and there is no doubt that Christian religious feeling coloured contemporary views of chivalry, at the end as much as at the beginning of the Middle Ages. In the chivalric value system — the twin goals of which were `fame in this world and salvation in the next' — martial and Christian qualities (as well as rhetoric) were integrated to such an extent that that the distinct strands cannot be unravelled. » (81)

Beside the knightly estate there appeared an estate of burghers and peasants, whose formation followed a similar logic. « Urban occupations, which in the flourishing towns offered abundant support through industry and trade to an ever-increasing stratum of the population, brought within the burghal class the most diverse elements of the Territorial law. The principle `Luft macht frei' (`free town air makes free') wore down the original contrasts and fused the town population into a legal unit, although indeed social differences, often of great sharpness, persisted or first took form within it. The burghal class also became in a legal sense a blood-estate determined by the occupation into which one was born. Within the town law (`Weichbildrecht') it developed its own law of status, and as the citizenry of the State grew later out of the burghal community, so burghal (`buergerliches') law became the common (`civil') law of the whole nation.

« Among the rural population, also, the distinctions of status connected with the original folk organization became obliterated in course of time, although they did not disappear completely, nor everywhere to the same extent. In some regions free peasants maintained themselves on free soil, though henceforth distinguished by their rustic life from their erstwhile fellows of the knightly and burghal estates. Socially, they constituted one class with the half-free and unfree cultivators of the soil. The peasantry lived under complicated tenurial relations : in the West partly bound to the soil, and partly personally dependent ; in the eastern colonized regions originally merely bound to the soil, — it was only in the course of the modern period that personal serfdom (`Leibeigenschaft') found in the latter regions its widest prevalence as a new form of unfreedom. » (82) Thus it came that the older estates were gradually displaced by the organisation of the folk as knights, burgesses, and peasants, which « had reached perfection in the 1100s and 1200s » and « remained the essential basis of social grouping until the 1800s. »

In this respect, the important point about the transition from late Merovingian and early Carolingian times to the eleventh century is that, if birth, blood, was still the criterion of freedom, of the belonging to this or that class of the Germanic society, the make-up of each of these classes had changed and had lost greatly in homogeneity. In the words of R. Guénon, the normal correspondence between the nature of individuals and the functions they carry out became an exception.

As has been pointed out in `The Jewels of the Papacy', it is not exactly true that the Teutonic races that « descended from the last offshoots to leave the Arctic seat… had not suffered the miscegenation and the alterations experienced by similar populations that had abandoned the Arctic seat much earlier ». Miscegenation increased among them, under the necessities of conquest, after they took control of most areas of the Western Roman Empire. For example, « The Visigothic nucleus which Alaric had originally commanded in Epirus was quite small ; it only swelled to a great army by the junction of adventurers of all sorts, especially that of the thirty thousand Foederati in Italy who joined the invader after the murder of Stilicho. Hence in this heterogeneous mass there was no generally recognised noble blood, such as was to be found among more compact nationalities, like the Lombards, Bavarians, or Saxons » ; (83) only the former « were not a collection of war-bands, nor a mixed multitude of diverse races. » (84) « The only original distinction came from being promoted to official command by the king. But the men who had once been given the appointment of `count' or `duke' grew wealthy, acquired lands, and accumulated clients. Their descendants in a few generations formed a true nobility based on wealth and local influence. » The Spanish nobles and the English thegnhood were originally an aristocracy of service, not of blood, and the Franks in Gaul appear to have had no ancient nobility of blood. « The Franks, like the Visigoths, seem to have known no other nobility than that of service ». (85) The court officials and provincial dukes and counts of the early Merovingians were drawn from all classes, whether Frankish or not.

Most medievalists, not realising that they strengthen in this respect the racial theories upheld by all serious racist authors, which they have not studied seriously, and not realising either, of course, the deadly dangers that miscegenation represents for a stock, agree that Teutonic tribes were already the products of miscegenation by the sixth or seventh century.

H. F. K. Günther described masterfully the far-reaching consequences of this process of upward mobility : « Wealth was a noble thing so long as it was essentially landed property, and belonged to a class that through its race was fitted for ruling, and brought up to own property, and loved wealth not for its own sake, but for the sake of power, and treasure, and honour. Wealth becomes something mean so soon as a class collects it which does not bring a high mind to the task ; it becomes something mean in the history of a people under Nordic influence the moment the non-Nordic man comes to riches. He has not inherited the way of life that befits wealth if it is not to be something base… The purse-proud upstart, the new man, are seldom found among the Nordics. If a Nordic man should be raised from poverty to wealth, he would so have within him the way of life of the original upper class that he would not attract attention… The history of all peoples under Nordic influence shows the figure of the newly rich man with political influence -- the Roman satirists often draw his picture -- and the moment of his appearance marks racial movement and change. From this moment the decline of the people is hastened.

« The disruption shows itself in the daily life. Elements from the lower class have become rich, elements that have built up no idea of honour of their own, that are held back by no traditional sense of dignity from using their wealth to the full. Everything now can be bought : the State can be bought, so can fair hair to make a pretense of noble blood ; the nobility itself can be bought. The ideas of the former upper class become ridiculous to the people that is changing : the heroic age lies far behind. Customs belonging to the races of the pre-Nordic populations again make their appearance. Morals change ; the class divisions are effaced by an unbounded freedom and restlessness, but, above all, by the rise of the new rich. The racial mixture has broken up the nobility ; the new rich control the State, and use their power against the free peasantry, who now have the comparatively purest Nordic blood. The land goes to waste, the towns grow. The general mixture of blood… to which the flow of foreign racial elements contributes, breeds the mob of the great cities -- masses of men, who, as a result of the mixed blood, are utterly without goal, and exposed to any and every influence. » (86)

Even as some of the first had become the last, that is, when, in 841, some of the freemen, reduced as they were to serfdom, undertook an uprising, the so-called Stellinga uprising, which the Annales Fuldenses described as a « validissimam conspirationem libertorum legitimos dominos opprimere conantium, against the State, » against the Saxon and Frankish nobility, no democratic aspirations for political freedom such as those which would grow in the Medieval Italian cities as a result of that union between the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom whose synergy Tocqueville will later see at work in America, no inner revolutionary urge, inspired them, let alone that what they threatened was not the principle of authority, the principle of kingship, but « fundamental aspects of the social ideology embraced and propagated by medieval Christian kings. » (87) Consistent with themselves, they were dedicated to the re-establishment of the tradition of the ancient Saxons. The humanitarian and abstract Paulinian notion of personal freedom as a reward for giving oneself to God, as the ultimate goal of salvation, which resounded in the ears of the Roman proletariat of alien and slave ancestry as the Goths settled in the Empire, had no impact on them. On the other hand, it is not surprising that these Germans rose up against the leadership of the theocratic state which had dragged them into bondage. Indeed, Christianity conquest worsened the condition of the frilingi and lazzi. « Charlemagne equated conquest with conversion, and he demanded that all Saxons renounce polytheism and accept baptism under penalty of death. While the Saxon nobles embraced Christianity quite willingly, the frilingi and lazzi associated the new religion with Frankish oppression. Moreover, the newly erected Church compelled all Saxons to pay the tithe — one-tenth of their annual income — to support the local bishop and parish priests. » (88)

The Church stepped into the breach the forced Christianisation of the Saxons and other tribes, with the dramatic economic, social and ethnic changes it brought about, had contributed greatly to open in the Germanic traditional society. « Individuals who once drew strength from their family and tribal ties [began] to feel alone, alienated from their ancestors and tribal bonds. In such a state, the appeal of mystery cults that look not to this world but to the next can be strong. These cults are world rejecting and can be strongly attractive to individuals and societies experiencing a break down of the known world around them. An early example of this lies in classical Greece. Originally, she held to an Indo-European religion the Greeks considered to come from the north. As society changed and became more cosmopolitan, the people began to look eastwards to the world rejecting mystery cults. This process is exemplified in Alexander the Great's Policy of higoumène (ecumenism or cosmopolitanism). These cults offered a different sense of community – one based on shared belief and practice rather than ethnic ancestry. As the old Cyn structures broke down, so the Church began to take its place by offering food, shelter, education and many other social services that dis-enfranchised people found very attractive. » (89)

What should always be borne in mind and always kept in sight in this respect is, on the one hand, that the audience mainly targeted by early Christian propaganda in Rome and on our continent was the lower classes, slaves and women, that is, elements which, by nature, are not and cannot be absolutely free, for which absolute freedom can only stand as an aspiration and develop as a longing, a craving, which reflects in turn an essential lack of freedom, and, on the other hand, that the only freedom that could be offered to them was an abstract, formal, `inward' and `spiritual' freedom (« where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty », 2 Corinthians 3:17, etc.), which, however, could not but result in a boomerang effect – nature abhors a vacuum, specially, so to speak, an `inner' vacuum -, and be led ultimately to assert itself in a political, social, and economic setting, whereas, in the early Germanic society, freedom was exclusively based on a person's kinship, who was the legitimate offspring of the freemen of society (freobearn) and, as such, had the right to participate in political decision-making and to bear arms, which was also a duty. Again, the idea `free' (OHG fri) developed from nothing else than the concept of legitimate, full fledged membership of the kindred or tribe. The Platonic conception of freedom as independent self-determination in the sense of self-control, of the neutralisation of passions, on which Paul drew so largely, peppering it with standard themes of Socratism and Stoic conceptions on an internal freedom over against the things of this world, a potential retreat into inwardness, (90) is not found in the Politics of Aristotle, whose definitions of eleutheria are quite consistent with the true Hellenic tradition's, anymore than it is found in the mental universe of the early frihals (The difference, in nature, and not in degree, between frihals and the Christian concept of freedom is so abyssal that frihals was about the only key word of the Germanic vocabulary that contemporary translators did not even bother to Christianize).

Little wonder that women « were more intensively involved in the dissemination of Christianity than the sources with their androcentric colouring at first give us to understand. » (91) The way was first showed by the women who were part of the group of Jesus-Christ. « Remarkably few women in the early Jesus movement appear to conform to the most socially acceptable categories of virgin daughter, respectable wife, and mother of legitimate children. Frequently, they are anomalous not merely by virtue of their gender, but also by additional marginal traits, often specific to women. » (92) Little wonder either that many women rose to positions of power in early Christian movements and « ... many measures which repressed the activity of women in the church at first had little success, since the Hellenistic Roman women who became Christians were not going to submit to discipline lightly. Though they had no access to political they were nevertheless 'e-mancipated' in the literal sense : they were no longer under the manus (= `hand`, in the sense of power and protection) of a spouse, but were free partners and economically independent to the degree that they had personal resources. So it was quite possible for women of the upper class to lead their own lives even within marriage. This explains why there are no indications in the sources that women hoped for an improvement of their condition as women by going over to Christianity.

« Nevertheless, many women who were still single or had again become single decided against a traditional family life. So widows now played a significant role in the communities, as soon also did virgins, young women who had resolved from the start not to get married… these voluntarily celibate Christian women created organizations within the churches which are unique in contemporary Hellenism on this scale. In Christianity, alternative forms of life were now possible for a large group of women, forms of life which were not defined by biological determination. This institutionalization guaranteed women both material provisions and a high degree of social recognition. Thus the association of women with a particular social role was broken through and transcended. » (93) The opportunity was provided in the institutional Christian framework for women desirous to divorce themselves from domestic responsibilities. « ascetic Christianity, in fact, offered women a new measure of worth which involved a rejection of their traditional roles. » ... The women who choose celibacy did, for a time, and in some places, gain a degree of autonomy. » (94)

The objection that emancipating women, who were leaders in churches prior to the third and fourth centuries, were later precluded from the ministry of the Church, from any position of power in the Church and, more specifically, from any involvement in the rites and ceremonial forms of a religion seemingly tailored for their psyche, with its emphasis on feeling and emotion, personal liberty and universal equality, with the `immortal soul' as a carrot and the `original sin' as a stick, misses the point. It is outweighted by the fact that ecclesiastics, in accordance with the nature of the values with which they are suffused, are often feminine beings psychologically, mentally, and spiritually. Besides, it does not take into account that the energies released by the frustrated impulse to freedom and the broken dream of empowerment were to be transferred gradually from their original object to a substitute, to any field of worldly activity, from economy to the social, cultural and political spheres, in which they acted as powerful disintegrative forces ; to proceed further along the lines of the `occult war`, it can also be pointed out that emancipating Christian women were put back in their place by the ecclesiastic hierarchy after they had served their purpose in helping the Church to emancipate.

To a certain extent, it can be said that a true emancipation of women IN the Church would have been largely incompatible with or, at least, would have bridled a full emancipation of women THROUGH Christianity in the long-run.

The way to women's « liberation », which was not opened by Christianity, but by various religious manifestations of the spirit of which Christianity was later only one particular form, was to be long. The development of the de facto freedom of Roman women, the decline in the powers of the father and husband of a woman, the break-up of the traditional Roman family, the development of reciprocal obligations of spouses in divorce, do not go back to the advent of Judeo-Christianity ; yet, these developments are to be brought back to the zymosis of « an alien and adulterating, not to say infecting, residue » which persisted in ancient Rome and which eventually crystallised into Judeo-Christianity. Fortunately from a White standpoint, there were still « forces at work which always sought to limit the equal treatment of Jews and Greeks, freemen and slaves, men and women ». (95)

What is systematically overlooked in most scholarly works on this subject is the main thing : the inner « liberation » of women, that is, in concrete terms, the freeing, through their individuality and by means of incantations such as Galatians 3:28, of what lies within women in terms of undifferentiated forces, which, indeed, are neither masculine nor feminine ; once these forces were freed, it was only a matter of time before the outer economic, social, cultural, legal and political liberation of women was achieved. No matter how misogynist the writings of the Church fathers and of their successors could be, how often she was reminded that she was an embodiment of evil and a creature congenitally weak and inferior, how resounding was the rebuttal that social, economical, cultural and political conditions provided to the teaching that both males and females enjoyed the same freedom on the basis of their `identity in Christ', how aware she was that Freedom with a capital F could only be realised through asceticism or virginity, the newly-found 'inner kingdom' was there for her to retreat in and to act out the craving, fuelled by the rewarding lure of the `immortality of the soul' and of the `equality of all human beings before God`, that was burning inside her for emancipation, for liberation, for freedom, in the outer kingdom.

Besides, the Christian emphasis on the subjective standpoint cannot but appeal to and make a deep impact on waxy beings like women.

Since the intimate link between the rise of Christianity and the discovery of subjectivity does not seem to have been perceived by those who are rightly critical of modern individualism, (96) which they view as a modern evil, and it has been studied at its core by A. I. Gurevich in'The Origins of European Individualism', this work is worth being quoted at length':

Christianity underlines the importance of the institutionalization of the individual. Christianity is not merely a faith, but a social community, a world built according to the will and teaching of the Creator and Saviour. Between the `natural' or `carnal' human being… and the human being, who has been transformed by the act of baptism into `Homo Christianus`, there is an enormous gulf that can be bridged only through the act of `initiation`. The act of baptism constitutes the profound transformation of the very essence of the human being no less, the incorporation of the `natural human being' into the community of the faithful. Through this act a human being acquires the chance of salvation. He or she absorbs the `cultural code' of the Christian community, its principles and norms - the human being becomes a person. A text of AD 1234 states : `Through baptism in the Church of Christ a man becomes a person' (Baptismate homo constituitur in ecclesia Christi persona). What the Middle Ages inherited from classical times - anthropologically speaking - was no straightforward legacy. In the Graeco-Roman period the concept'person' did not exist. The Greek word prosopon and the Latin persona served to denote a theatrical mask. A mask is not only not a person but probably the very opposite, and the evolution that the term persona underwent over the course of many centuries can testify to the efforts that were undertaken by various cultures before Europeans succeeded in investing that term with the content which might express the essence of the human personality. The persona, behind which the actor in Classical drama might conceal his true face did not presuppose any personality, just as an abstract juridical person lacked one : such a person was merely a symbol for legal capability which, in Roman law, went by the name persona. Classical thinkers would see the term persona as signifying, above all, a social role that had been assigned by society to one or other of its members. This term was used in the world of the theatre or court procedure and was not linked with the field of psychology. Another concept just as close in meaning to the term persona was 'character', which was linked to the sphere of the mind only insofar as it bore an imprint of something, just as some material might have an impression made on it (the word 'character' was interchangeable with `stamp`, `brand' or `imprint`). These concepts are distinguished by their static nature and they indicated to people or to groups of people the place allocated to them within the framework of the system. The identity of persons is determined from without, laid down in advance by institutions and objective considerations, but it does not reflect any subjective elements or shared emotional experiences.

Indeed, there seems to have been no awareness of individuality in ancient times. People were not aware of themselves as individuals and did not conceive of their pagan deities in that light : they saw them as personified forces of one kind or another rather than as individuals. The beautiful, harmonious and well-proportioned bodies of Classical sculpture did not portray individuals : their souls did not reflect the uniqueness of the human being, the vessel containing the divine principle.

In the person of Augustine Christianity made a major advance towards penetrating the individual's 'inner space' and in achieving a more profound understanding of the individual. The human ego was discovered and came to be viewed as the combination of substance endowed with awareness and a will and a personality capable of reasoning and of emotion. In contrast to the concentration of the Classical era on Fate, Augustine declared : `I - not fate, not destiny, not the devil' (Ego, non fatum, non fortuna, non diabolus). The centre of the world was the ego, face to face with its Creator. St Augustine responds with dramatic emotion to the experiences of his path through life, which led from his sinful excesses as a young man to his discovery of the true God. Self-knowledge was presented as knowledge of God, the path to God. Even before Augustine, such works as the Confession of Cyprianus (fourth century) or De Trinitate (On the Trinity) by Augustine's contemporary, Hilarius, had been written, but it was the Confessions of the Bishop of Hippo which introduced into our culture a new paradigm for the self- expression of the individual.

Now the early German, whose « imaginative powers are not easily roused, but rather show a calm evenness, while not lacking in boldness, and even extravagance », (97) had little talent or taste for introspection, and was incapable of any worship which scorned external helps and which needed only the fervor of the heart. Immersed in the softening atmosphere of the new religion, his relation to the sacred could not fail to undergo a process of individualization.

« To put it briefly, Christianity forbade that a man's future should be merged, after the heathen fashion, in the future of his family or clan ; it treated him as an individual and mediated directly between him and God. This personal religion began by slow degrees to take its place in the midst of collective and ceremonial religion ; and thus arose that great modern fact which we call sentiment. Contrast the ceremonial worship of a heathen clan with the personal sentiment of a mediaeval hymn ! Contrast the chorus, the feast, the wide pagan publicity of worship (and the church took care to preserve a plenty of this element) with the direct and piercing individualism of the monk who in his solitary fervor poured out such words as these :
O Deus, ego amo te !
Tu, tu, mi Jesu, totum me
Amplexus es in cruce,
Tulisti
Innumeros dolores,
Sudores et angores,
Et mortem et hæc propter me,
Ah ! pro me peccatore !

State and family religion, with the head of State or family as priest, yielded ground to the personal expression of awe, of reverence, of love ; the mere sense of conduct, modern writers would say, became the sense of conduct touched by emotion. » (98) An attempt was made to subjectivise the living concepts and rites of the Germanic cult. Through religious sentimentalism, for example, the fylgja, a supernatural entity acting as a guardian and protector spirit both for the clan and for the individuals conceived of as part of a lineage and following an individual from each generation, degenerated into a personal `guardian angel', until, one thing leading fatally another, the so-called `worship of nature' became the actual `worship of oneself'.

Besides, it goes without saying that none of the Germanic core values, honour and loyalty, were looked favourable by the Church. Honour should be understood « in the sense of glory, splendour or everlasting fame. It was a notion of external approval and praise being granted by the Chieftain and tribe for acts of great courage performed on behalf of the tribe. This externalised concept of honour stemmed from a desire not to be publicly shamed and can be contrasted with the Christian concept of internalised honour based on guilt and personal sin. Central to the Indo-European society was the idea of war and the heroic warrior cult as a religious practice. This was probably because of the central importance of the warrior to defending the homeland and to winning more territory for the expanding tribe to farm. Thus, the warrior and farming classes were closely inter-related and depended on each other. The warrior code was itself central to the social bonds that defined the tribe and gave it such strength. This was a code based on honour, bravery and the winning of eternal glory. The poem Havamal (attributed to the sayings of Odin) puts it succinctly : `Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself will die, but fair fame will never die for him who wins it'.

« Nowhere else was this ethos as strongly embedded into social structure as it was in the Germanic society. Warriors were bound to their Lord by an oath of loyalty that they could not break. They would be expected to fight for and defend their Lord in battle even if that meant their own death. In fact, surviving a battle in which the King was killed was a great shame to the warrior. However, the King was bound to his warriors by the same code – bound to gain favour from the gods in both battle and agriculture. This `favour' with the gods formed the basis of the Germanic notion of holiness to which the words holy, healthy and hail were originally applied. As the process of Christianisation took hold, so the concept of holiness changed to one of personal holiness.

« This concept of loyalty to the warlord and folk group was so central to Germanic society and world view, and so different to the cosmopolitan Christian world view, that the early missionaries simply could not directly oppose it. Instead, they sought to present their religion in a way that was compatible with this world view and then sought to slowly adapt society to true Christian values. » (99)

By coercion, by « imperceptible degrees », the Church of the `Middle-Ages' aimed at influencing and conditioning emotions, motives, reasoning, attitudes and behaviours in order to achieve objectives which were not limited to the social and political realm. It had the means of its ambitions : as a visible organization « [she] never had greater power over the minds of men. She controlled all departments of life from the cradle to the grave. » (100) Every aspect of people's life was checked by a self-righteous discourse. Nothing remained hidden to this all-seeing eye, especially sexuality, which became the object of a thorough investigation. The theology of the seven deadly sins became officially part of the basic elements which any priest was expected to know and which he was legally required to expound to his flock ; from their pulpits, vociferous orators would throw their parishioners into the fires of hell and count the very few survivors upon their fingers ; the requirement of yearly confession was enforced. « A terrible God, more a judge than a father, despite the mercy with which He was almost accidentally credited ; a divine justice connected to vengeance ; the conviction that, despite Redemption, there would remain only a chosen few, all humanity having deserved hellfire because of Original Sin ; the certainty that each sin is both insult and injury to God ; the rejection of any amusement or concession to human nature, since these remove one from salvation », (101) the relentless hammering of all these topics into people's head in sermons from the early thirteenth century to the seventeenth century, led to the emergence of a Western guilt culture whose pathological symptoms had been dormant since the dissemination of Augustine's pessimistic and even morbid interpretation of the dogma of `original sin' in the fifth century. From the early thirteenth century, the representation of a depraved humanity pervaded the whole personal and public space, through philosophical treatises, theological tracts, confession manuals, prayer books, sermons, painting, sculpture, etc. « In one treatise published in 1523 a doctor Bartolomeo Spina of the Holy See replies to the question, `Why does God let innocent people die ?' with the following words : `He does so with just cause. For though they do not die because of the sins they have committed, they still die guilty of original sin.' » (102) « Persons who accepted this narrative as truth believed that there was something wrong with them. In addition to being criminals as a result of original sin, they were impure, diseased. » (103) The visceral fear of God led to the cultivation of introspection. The issues of grace, of predestination, of sin and of salvation turned into obsessions.

The `new man' was being born.

(1) Hübner R., A History of Germanic Private Law, New Jersey : The Lawbook Exchange Ltd, 2000, p. 89.
(2) Strayer, J. R., The Mainstream of Civilization, vol. 1, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1989, p. 146.
(3) Adams, G. B., Civilization During the Middle Ages Especially in Relation to Modern Civilization, New-York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. Chap. V.
(4) Turner, S., The history of the Anglo-Saxons, comprising the history of England from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest, vol. 3, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1823, p. 84.
(5) Cf. Evola, J., Fenomenologia della sovversione. L'Antitradizione in scritti politici del 1933-70, Ed. SeaR, coll. « Il Cinabro », 1993.
(6) In the Carolingian period, limitations on the legislative rights of the old assembly were imposed by the introduction of lay assessors responsible to the emperor for the administration of justice, who prevented the freeman from taking an active part at the thing and expressing his approval in the time-honoured way : he `was entitled only to attend'. Green, D. H., Language and History in the Early Germanic World, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 39. If the representative assembly as a political institution and the corresponding appeal to the lower rank of society goes back to the XIIIth century, the institution of the Schöffen could be seen as the first step to the establishment and the generalisation of representative system.
(7) Dunham, S. A., History of the Germanic Empire, Volume 1, London : Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1834, p. 57.
(8) A semantic study of the word `fri' (`free) and its cognates make it abundantly clear that what ancient Germans meant by `freedom' had nothing to do with the Christian definition of `libertas'. Originally, the adjective `fri', which is attested in all Germanic languages, simply meant `own', in connection with kinsmen as well as with parts of the body ; it denoted one's own kinsmen and members of one's own tribe, before being applied more broadly to legitimate, fully fledged membership of the kindred or tribe - as opposed to unfree slaves of other tribes – and leading to the idea `free (by birth). For example, OE `Freobearn' meant `one's own children' and later came to mean `the legitimate offspring of the free members of society'; even more meaningful in this respect is the original meaning of OHG `frituam' : `power', dominion, authority', and, by extension, the legal privilege of self-judgement enjoyed by a freeman. See Green, D. H., Language and History in the Early Germanic World, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998, Chap. 2.
(9) Thorndike L., The History Of Medieval Europe, Kessinger Publishing, 1917, 3d ed., p. 49. From the outset of modern democracy, the government was substituted for an `administration', whose `legislative' branch is a law factory and which passes endless codes and rules whose increasingly tangled web forms a legalistic maze in which only individuals endowed with rabbinic skills can find their way.
(10) De Gruchy, J.W. Christianity and Democracy : A Theology for a Just World Order, p. 50-51.
(11) Ibid. p. 52-53.
(12) W. Goodell, The democracy of Christianity : or, An analysis of the Bible and Its Doctrines in Their Relation to the Principles of Democracy, Volume 1, New York : Cady & Burgess, 1849, p. 19. « The relation… of Christianity to democracy may be ascertained by fixing, with equal precision, if we can, the connexion subsisting between the democratic principle and the same great fact of the common origin, unity, and equality, of all men ». Ibid., p. 18.
(13) Gummere, F. B., Germanic Origins : A Study in Primitive Culture, London : David Nutt, 1892, p. 144-45.
(14) Ibid. p. 169-171.
(15) Ibid., p. 172.
(16) Ibid., p. 175.
(17) Ibid., p. 176.
(18) Ibid., p. 136.
(19) Ibid., p. 131.
(20) Ibid., p. 133.
(21) Ibid., p. 165.
(22) Ibid., p. 137.
(23) Ibid., p. 140.
(24) Ibid., p. 143.
(25) Hays, R., Moral Vision of the New Testament : A Contemporary Introduction To New Testament Ethics, New York : Harper Collins Publishing, 1996, p. 52.
(26) Moxnes, H., Constructing Early Christian Families : Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, London : Routledge, 1997, p. 32.
(27) Neville, D., Prophecy and Passion : Essays in Honour of Athol Gill, Hindmarsh, SA : Australian Theological Forum, 2002, p. 114.
(28) Ridderbos, H. N., Paul : An Outline of His Theology, Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, 1975. p. 294.
(29) See Brodie, T. L., The Birthing of the New Testament : The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings, Sheffield : Sheffield Phoenix Press, p. 192.
(30) Rubio, J. H., A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family, New York : Paulist Press, 2003, p. 48.
(31) Moxnes, H., Constructing Early Christian Families : Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, London : Routledge, 1997, p. 74. The issue of marriage was not handled with kid gloves by most Church Fathers : " Marriage is a sin" (Augustine) ; "Matrimony is impure and unholy, a means of sexual passion." (Origen) ; "Marriage is a moral crime, more dreadful than any punishment or any death… spurcitiae, obscenity, filth." (Tertullian) ; "Marriage is corruption, a polluted and foul way of life." (Tatian) ; "Marriage is a crime against God. Marriage is prostitution of the members of Christ. Married people ought to blush at the state in which they are living." (Ambrose) ; "The primary purpose of a man of God is to cut down the wood of marriage with the axe of virginity." (Jerome). See www.the-goldenrule.name/Marriage–EARLY_CHURCH_against_marriage.htm
(32) Ibid., p. 51.
(33) The Greek verb for `to submit' is `Hupotasso', which, « as it relates to members of the church interacting with each other is « a voluntary attitude of living in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden. » (Pastor Kyeyune, S., The New Generation of Worshipers in the 21st Century, Bloomington, Ind. : AuthorHouse, 2012, p. 570), in short « a voluntary yielding in love ». See Bauer, W., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1957, p. 855.
(34) Of course, the Gospels contain « a kernel of soundness - that is true of all false doctrines, since if they were wholly absurd they could make no converts outside of bedlam, and could thus never become dangerous to society. »
Stoddard, L., The Revolt Against Civilization : The Menace of the Under Man, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922, p. 129.
(35) Philo and Paul « both entertain an ideal of humanity beyond gender inequality, at least implicitly. And both, significantly, express that ideal in very similar terminology. Philo speaks of the human being, created in the image of god, as "neither male or female". Paul's foundational statement about the new humanity in Christ in Gal. 3:28 contains the words : "there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Jesus Christ." » See Longenecker, R. N., The Road from Damascus : The Impact of Paul's Conversion on His Life, Thought, and Ministry, Grand Rapids, Mich. : Eerdmans, 1997, p. 198.
(36) Rubio, J. H., A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family, p. 55-56.
(37) Ibid., p. 57.
(38) Ibid., p. 58-59.
(39) Moxnes, H., op. cit., p. 73.
(40) Ibid., p. 74.
(41) Reverend Roberts, A., Donaldson J., The Writings of Origen I and II, Ante Nicene Christian Library Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to AD 325 Part Twenty-Three, Kessinger Publishing, 210, p. 135-136. The accusation made by Celsus to early Christians of privatising of religion, of severing the ties between religion, tradition, the private sphere and the public institution of cities and nations brings to mind the separation between temporal power and spiritual authority.
A most suggestive remark by Celsus is that the very origin of Christianity lies in the adulterous behaviour of a peasant woman to witchcraft.
(42) MacDonald, M. Y., Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion : the Power of the Hysterical Woman, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 111. See also Cohick, L. H., Women in the World of the Earliest Christians, Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Academic, 2009.
(43) Brundage, J. A., Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 87.
(44) Lal, T., Reviving the Invisible Hand : The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty- First Century, Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 156.
(45) Ibid., p. 155-56.
(46) Dopsch, A., The Economic And Social Foundations of European Civilization, New York, Harcourt, Brace and co.; London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, & co., ltd., 1937, p. 247.
(47) Brundage, J. A, op. cit., p. 87.
(48) Lawrence, Jr., R. J., Sexual Liberation : The Scandal of Christendom, Westport, CT : Praeger publishers, 2007, p. 4.
(49) Brundage, J. A, op. cit., p. 87.
(50) Watkins, W. D., The New Absolutes, 1997, Bethany House Publishers, p. 108.
(51) In 757, the Council of Compiegne stressed that both men and women were subject to the same laws and that neither could deny the conjugal rights of the other ; the formulae of the late eight century recognised the right of women to seek a divorce ; Hincmar of Rheims stipulated that a marriage was not complete until it was consummated ; in the mid-twelve century, Peter Lombard freed women from the necessity of obtaining parental consent to their marriages. See Wemple, S. F., Women in Frankish Society Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900, Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. 1981, chap. 4.
(52) www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/entretien_sur_le_paganisme.pdf. « Boniface also concerned himself with extramarital fornication between relatives. Sexual intercourse before or after marriage with a relative of the spouse was held to constitute a bond of affinity similar to that arising from betrothal, marriage, baptism, or confirmation. Disregard for these bonds of affinity or for consanguinity, even in the case of casual intercourse, was considered a serious offense and disqualified the transgressors from marriage for the rest of their lives. Their punishment was lifelong penance, to which Charlemagne added confiscation of their property. » See Wemple S. F., op. cit. p. 76.
(53) Engels, F., The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Resistance Books, p. 73.
(54) vkc.library.uu.nl/vkc/seh/research/Lists/Research%20Desk/Attachments/1/Girlpower_published%20EcHR.pdf, p.6.
(55) Wemple, S. F., op. cit., p. 97.
(56) ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Lal.pdf, p. 12.
(57) Gummere, F. B., op. cit., p. 172.
(58) « Passionate, graphic comparisons to motherhood fill the lives of later medieval saints, and these maternal analogies were rooted in everyday family life, otherwise the saints' lives, which were intended to teach and inspire, would have fallen on deaf ears. Medieval images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, like the Mater Dolorosa and the gracious advocate of the `Salve Regina' and `Memorare', must also have originated in the medieval family. Mary was the blessed intercessor who understood and consoled the sorrows, sufferings and anxieties of men and women. On the other hand, no such devotion to St Joseph emerged in the Middle Ages. In the 14th century especially, groups of disciples followed women visionaries, whom they called "mother". St Catherine of Siena often referred in her letters to her "family" of followers. » Backous, T., Graham, W. C., Common Good, Uncommon Questions: A Primer in Moral Theology, p. 136.
(59) « For from now on there will be five in one household divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law ». Luke 12 : 52-53.
(60) This is so true that words synonymous with the modern English "family" came into use only at that time. See Backous, T., Graham, W. C., op. cit., p. 131-33.
(61) Kautsky, K., Thomas More and His Utopia With a Historical Introduction, Kessinger Publishing, 2003, p. 66.
(62) www.cjsonline.ca/articles/webersom.html.
(63) Torrance, J., Karl Marx's Theory of Ideas, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press ; Paris : Editions de la Maison des Sciences de L'Homme, 1995, p. 178.
(64) Ibid.
(65) In Jennings, J., Socialism : Critical Concepts in Political Science, London : Routledge, 2003, p. 57.
(66) Ibid., 176-77.
(67) www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture21b.html.
(68) Karras, R. M., `Pagan Survivals and Syncretism in the Conversion of Saxony`, The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Oct., 1986), p. 557.
(69) Hübner, R., A History of Germanic Private Law, New Jersey : The Lawbook Exchange, 2000, p. 89-90.
(70) Ibid., p. 90.
(71) Wolfram, H., Conrad II, 990-1039 : Emperor of Three Kingdoms, Pennsylvania State University, 2006, p. 174.
(72) Ibid.
(73) Ibid. p. 64-65.
(74) Ibid., p. 90.
(75) Bouchard, C. B., Strong of Body, Brave and Noble : Chivalry and Society in Medieval France, Cornell University Press, 1998, p. 13.
(76) Ibid.
(77) Ibid.
(78) Hübner, R., op. cit., p. 90-91.
(79) Church, S., Harvey, R., Medieval Knighthood V : Papers from the Sixth Strawberry Hill Conference 1994, Boydell & Brewer, 1995, p. 16.
(80) In Werner, S. F., The Sociology of Knowledge, London : Routledge, 2003, p. 267-268.
(81) In Trim, D. J. B., Balderstone, B. J., Cross, Crown & Community. Religion, Government and Culture in Early Modern England. 1400-1800, Oxford : Peter Lang, 2004, p. 87. This ruins one of the main arguments presented without much substantiation by J. C. Russell in 'The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity'.
(82) Hübner, R., op. cit., p. 91.
(83) Ibid.
(84) Oman, C. W. C., Sir, A History of the Art of War : The Middle Ages from the Fourth to the fourteenth century, Vol. 1, London, Methuen, 1898, p. 49.
(85) Ibid.
(86) See Günther, K. F. H., The Racial Elements of European History, New York, E.P. Dutton and Co, 1927, Chap. 8.
(87) Anderson, C. E., Formation and Resolution of Ideological Contrast in the Early History of Scandinavia, University of Cambridge, Faculty of English, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic PhD dissertation, 1999, p. 11.
(88) Goldberg, E. J., Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817-876, Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 200-, p. 110.
(89) www.anglosaxonanglicans.org/anglosaxon/germanic.htm.
(90) From our standpoint, the much-discussed question of whether in 1 Corinthians 7:21b, Paul advises slaves to obtain their freedom or to remain in their status as slaves (Apostle Paul : His Life And Theology, Udo Schnelle), is irrelevant ; it is all very well to point at the ambiguous character of the passage by noting that "it is not clear grammatically whether the aorist verb χρήσαι refers to το
Δουλεια (service as a slave) or ελευθερία. The conjunction introducing 7:21b (ἀλλά [but even]) can be understood as introducing a clause contrasting with the preceding, which would then be translated with `however' or `nevertheless' and would speak for `freedom' as the object of the verb. On the other hand, ἀλλά can function to further strengthen the following clause, in the sense of `and not only but also' or `yes, even', which suggests that the meaning is that the slave should remain a slave", yet it would be just as well to wonder whether the kind of audience which Paul addressed was able to engage in such a scholarly exegesis ; once again, scholars need to realise that the Scriptures were not written for scholars. More realistically, would it not be possible that Corinthian masters interpreted this intricate and equivocal passage as an admonition to slaves to remain in their status and Corinthian slaves as an encouragement to emancipate themselves ? True demagogy is the art of telling everyone what they want to hear.
(91) Unsurprisingly, women are also considered as having been instrumental in the transition from Judaism to Christianity.
(92) Kraemer, R. S., Her Share of the Blessings : Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World, New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 133.
(93) Küng, H., Women in Christianity, London and New York : Continuum Books, 2002, p. 21-22.
(94) In Evans, R. S., Sex And Salvation : Virginity as a Soteriological Paradigm in Ancient Christianity, University Press of America, 2003, p. 78-79.
(95) Küng, H., op. cit., p. 12.
(96) « ... if individualism is to appear in a society of the traditional, holistic type, it will be in opposition to society and as a kind of supplement to it, that is, in the form of the outworldly individual… There is no doubt about the fundamental conception of man that flowed from the teaching of Christ : as Troeltsch said, man is an individual in-relation-to God... this means that man is in essence an out-worldly individual... It can be argued that the Hellenistic world itself was so permeated with the same conception among the educated, that Christianity could not have succeeded in the long run in that milieu if it had offered an individualism of a different sort… It is commonly admitted that the transition in philosophical thought from Plato and Aristotle to the new schools of the Hellenistic period shows a discontinuity, a great gap - the surge of individualism [...]. Self-sufficiency, which Plato and Aristotle regarded as an attribute of the state, became an attribute of an individual human being." (Dumont, L., Essays on Individualism : Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective, The University of Chicago Press, 1986, p. 27)
(97) Günther, K. F. H., op. cit., p. 52.
(98) Gummere, F. B., op. cit., p. 346.
(99) www.anglosaxonanglicans.org/anglosaxon/germanic.htm.
(100) Schaff, P. History of the Christian Church, Volume IV : Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590 to 1517, New York : C. Scribner and Sons, 1886, p. 436.
(101) Delumeau J., Sin and Fear : The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries, New York : St Martin's Press, 1990, p. 28.
(102) In Rancour-Laferriere, D., The Sign of the Cross : From Golgotha to Genocide, Transaction Publishers, 2011, p. 48.
(103) Farber S., Unholy Madness : The Church's Surrender to Psychiatry, Downers Grove, IL : IntervVarsity Press, 1999, p. 95.