The Establishment and Maintenance of Socially Imposed Monogamy in Western Europe

1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Dominance Status ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Motivational Systems ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Social Controls

Although stratified societies have typically been characterized by intensive polygyny, socially imposed monogamy has developed in the stratified societies of Western Europe. Following a critical review of other theories of socially imposed monogamy, a multivariate, nondeterministic theory is developed. Within this theory, a variety of internal political processes can result in socially imposed monogamy, but this phenomenon—while consistent with evolutionary theory—is underdetermined with respect to (1) evolutionary theory, (2) human nature/nurture (i.e., the characteristics of humans), and (3) external ecological variables. Data on the origins and maintenance of socially imposed monogamy in Western Europe are reviewed, indicating that post-antiquity socially imposed monogamy originated in the late Middle Ages and has been maintained since that period by a variety of social controls and ideologies, including political activities of the Christian Church and, in later periods, of women and lower- and middle-status males. As a result of institutionalized controls on reproduction, non-monogamous Western sexuality has been directed at obtaining psychological rewards deriving from evolved motivational systems (e.g., sexual pleasure, excitement, feelings of dominance, status, or intimacy), but this non-monogamous sexuality has not typically been a major source of increased reproductive success.

scholarly journals Features of the Socio-Cultural Development of Syria from Ancient Times to the Early XX Century

2018 ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
I. Vietrynskyi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Syrian Arab Republic ◽  
Ancient Times

In order to determine the fundamental factors that have become the foundation of modern conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic the early stages of formation and development of the state on the territoryof modern-day Syria are analyzed. These processes are discussed in the context of socio-cultural transformations in the Middle East. The features of development of Syria in ancient times are also discussed, as well as Syrian role and place in international political processes of the early and late Middle Ages. The features of the socio-political situation in Syria, during its tenure as a part of the Arab Caliphate are considered, at the same time are the aspects of religious factors influencing the formation of Arab national identity as well as national identity of the Syrian in particular are analyzed. The specific character of development of Syria in Modern history, particularly in the context of regional dominance of the Ottoman Empire are determined.

scholarly journals The Stone Vessels in the Cities of Russian North-West

2018 ◽  
pp. 361-371
Author(s):  
П. Е. Сорокин ◽  
В. И. Кильдюшевский ◽  
В. Н. Матвеев
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
North West ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Russian North ◽  
The Baltic

Сосуды из каменной массы, изготавливавшиеся в городах Северной Германии и получившие в литературе название рейнской керамики, были широко распространены в позднее Средневековье и Новое время в Северной Европе. В русских городах они встречаются значительно реже, причем в основном на Северо-Западе, вовлеченном в балтийскую торговлю. Значительно более широко они представлены в Восточной Прибалтике, Финляндии, а также в городах Выборг, Ниеншанц и Но-тебург, входивших в состав шведских владений. Поступление сосудов из каменной массы в прибалтийские страны отражает торговые и политические процессы в Балтийском регионе. The stone vessels, manufactured in the cities of Northern Germany and got the name of Rhenish ceramics in literature were widespread in the Late Middle Ages and Modern Time in Northern Europe. In Russian cities, they are met much rarer, mostly in the North-West involved in the Baltic trade. Much more commonly they are represented in the Eastern Baltic countries, Finland, and also in the cities of Vyborg, Nyenschantz and Noteburg, which once were part of the Swedish realm. The flow of stone vessels into the Baltic countries reflects trade and political processes in the Baltic region.

scholarly journals Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Corran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Moral Rules

Thought about lying and perjury became increasingly practical from the end of the twelfth century in Western Europe. At this time, a distinctive way of thinking about deception and false oaths appeared, which dealt with moral dilemmas and the application of moral rules in exceptional cases. It first emerged in the schools of Paris and Bologna, most notably in the Summa de Sacramentis et Animae Consiliis of Peter the Chanter. The tradition continued in pastoral writings of the thirteenth century, the practical moral questions addressed by theologians in universities in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in the Summae de Casibus Conscientiae of the late Middle Ages. This book argues that medieval practical ethics of this sort can usefully be described as casuistry—a term for the discipline of moral theology that became famous during the Counter-Reformation. This can be seen in the medieval origins of the concept of equivocation, an idea that was explored in medieval literature with varying degrees of moral ambiguity. From the turn of the thirteenth century, the concept was adopted by canon lawyers and theologians, as a means of exploring questions about exceptional situations in ethics. It has been assumed in the past that equivocation and the casuistry of lying was an academic discourse invented in the sixteenth century in order to evade moral obligations. This study reveals that casuistry in the Middle Ages was developed in ecclesiastical thought as part of an effort to explain how to follow moral rules in ambiguous and perplexing cases.

500 Jahre Rezeption der Reformation in Siebenbürgen und Ungarn: Anfänge und Netzwerke von Konfessionspluralismus in der Überlappungszone von West- und Ostkirche

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ulrich A. Wien
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Joint Effort ◽  
Influence Zone ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation

Abstract This thematic issue of the Journal of Early Modern Christianity focuses on the reception of the Reformation in Transylvania and especially on the development of Protestant churches oriented towards Luther and influenced by Melanchthon. In the late Middle Ages, Transylvania had become part of the cultural influence zone of Central Europe, but throughout the sixteenth century the region became permeated by religious developments in Western Europe too. Here, a very peculiar constellation of religious pluralism and co-existence emerged, and the different contributions examine the premises and networks behind these dynamics. In this joint effort, it becomes clear how Transylvania turned into a pioneer region of religious freedom, as it witnessed simultaneously the development of Catholic, Orthodox and various Protestant confessional cultures.

scholarly journals Arheološki nalazi dekorativno-funkcionalnih elemenata obuće iz kasnoga srednjeg vijeka u Kaštelima

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonči Burić
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church

Late medieval graves in the Kaštela region have been found to contain, in addition to jewelry, decorative-functional elements of clothing and footwear, termed Gothic according to the stylistic period then in fashion. These are finds from graves that were then on the territory of the commune districts of Split and Trogir. Finds are taken into consideration here that belong to remains of footwear, which so far in Croatia have not even been recognized as such, and which can be stratigraphically and typologically placed in the late Middle Ages (14th-15th cent.). These are objects of a utilitarian character that at the same time have clear stylistic traits, and they have been discovered in the past two decades during systematic excavation of medieval cemeteries in Kaštela. These are large parish cemeteries that grew up around early medieval churches; the cemetery around the church of St. George of Putalj and the cemetery around the church of St. George of Radun. The Putalj cemetery was the graveyard for the inhabitants of medieval Sućurac for more than four centuries (12th-16th cent.), and the Radun cemetery belonged to part of the village of Radun and had an even longer continuity of burial (11th-16th cent.). The first examples were found at these sites, some of them in situ, which enabled a more precise functional determination of them through stylistic-typological parallels and also among dislocated finds in graves with multiple burials, as well as parallels at cemeteries in neighboring regions in central Dalmatia. Finds to the present of shoe buckles can be classified to two typological variants (Pl. I:1-3), one of them called the Radun type according to the eponymous site (Pl. I:1, 3). They are all chronologically coherent and belong to those strata of the cemeteries that are dated according to determined parameters (stratigraphy, typology of the finds) to the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, when the Gothic style in art was already completely developed. They can thus be attributed as artistic craft products of the artisan workshops in Split and Trogir at that time, which were distributed throughout the area of the urban districts of those communes. Finds of functionally identical objects have been recorded on the territory of Roman Salona and its broader vicinity, but in the period of late antiquity, while in the early modern period (16th-18th cent.) finds of iron hobnails for shoes or boots have been registered at a large number of sites in the hinterland of central Dalmatia. In addition to the rare and generalized tiny depictions of shoe buckles in the artistic sources of the Gothic and Renaissance (paintings, frescoes, sculptures) in Western Europe, references to them can also be found in written sources. One notarial document from the 16th century in Zadar mentions shoe buckles under the term fiube da scarpe. The investigation of this segment of material culture is just beginning, and new data can be expected to be discovered in documents and works of art, and above all in new archaeological finds of buckles for footwear, which will considerably improve our knowledge of this interesting attire detail from the Gothic and Renaissance periods.

scholarly journals La doctrina de la potestas omninsular

Cliocanarias ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Osvaldo Víctor Pereyra ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Functional Image

Before Europeans were «shocked» by the sheer extent of American space opened up by discovery and conquest, the New World was thought —assembled and deconstructed— within the constricting frames of medieval thought. The first functional image that made it possible to «mentally compose» these new spaces was insularity. This image was perfectly suited to the traditional matrix of legal doctrine upheld by the roman papacy that will result in the so-called Alexandrian Bulls of Partition of 1493. The potestas omninsular —developed throughout the Late Middle Ages in Western Europe— constitutes the legal basis that gives meaning to this donation.

scholarly journals East meets West: Mounted Encounters in Early and High Mediaeval Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-107
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Horse Breeding ◽  
And Training ◽  
North Western

Abstract By the Late Middle Ages, mounted troops - cavalry in the form of knights - are established as the dominant battlefield arm in North-Western Europe. This paper considers the development of cavalry after the Germanic Barbarian Successor Kingdoms such as the Visigoths in Spain or the Carolingian Franks emerged from Roman Late Antiquity and their encounters with Islam, as with the Moors in Iberia or the Saracens (Arabs and Turks) during the Crusades, since an important part of literature ascribes advances in European horse breeding and horsemanship to Arab influence. Special attention is paid to information about horse types or breeds, conformation, tactics - fighting with lance and bow - and training. Genetic studies and the archaeological record are incorporated to test the literary tradition.

The organization and rise of land and lease markets in northwestern Europe and Italy, c. 1000–1800

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. P. VAN BAVEL
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Main Determinant ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Institutional Organization

ABSTRACTIn the course of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, in Western Europe, ways of transferring and redistributing land outside the market were replaced by market transactions. This, however, was by no means a general and unilinear process, but one that displays strong regional differences and temporal discontinuities. This article aims to gain more insight in the factors underlying these differences, by reconstructing and analysing the institutional organization of exchange in land and lease markets. The analysis, undertaken for northwestern Europe and Italy, points to the socio-political context as a main determinant of this organization.

scholarly journals Manual Labour and Biblical Reading in Late Medieval France

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-297
Author(s):  
Margriet Hoogvliet
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Manual Work ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval France ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Private Homes

Abstract This article discusses artisans and people doing manual work in the French-speaking areas of Western Europe who owned and read the Bible or parts of its text during the late Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century. The historical evidence is based on post-mortem inventories from Amiens, Tournai, Lyon, and the Toulouse area. These documents show that Bibles were present in the private homes of artisans, some of them well-to-do, but others quite destitute. This development was probably related to a shift in the cultural representation of manual work in the same period: from a divine punishment into a social space of religion. The simple artisan life of the holy family, as imagined based upon the Gospel text, and their religious reading practices were recommended as an example to follow by both lay people and clerics.

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