Joseph Henrich

But what we find in Europe during this period is the church are encouraging them to marry later and set up an independent residence so that they're independent from either side of the family.

And so you have a new couple making their own decisions independent of the family.

Yeah, there could be quite severe punishment.

So the church can always excommunicate you, and then there's something even more severe called an anathema.

And excommunication might, in the modern context, not sound very severe, but it meant you couldn't enter into contracts with other Christians, you were ostracized.

Those who might associate with an excommunicated individual got some of this spiritual taint on them, and it could affect their relationships.

And in some cases, the church's protection of you was withdrawn.

So if someone killed you or injured you, it wasn't considered a crime.

So being excommunicated had real heft.

It took a long time, but it eventually breaks European families in different parts of Europe to differing degrees down into monogamous nuclear families.

So you went from large clans and kindreds down to, you know, the husband, wife and the children.

And that was the basic family unit.

Yeah, because what the church did by having these prohibitions and prescriptions about marriage in the family is you no longer had a big clan or this large extended family that you could rely on.

You couldn't build alliances by marriage very easily.

So people began to set up voluntary associations where people would join.

These were often Christian-based.

You'd have to take an oath.

And in order to get those organizations interested in you, you'd have to have certain attributes and accomplishments and things you brought to the table.

So rather than having a large number of relationships that you inherited by birth and had via all these various kin ties, you had more of these optional relationships where you had, it was kind of a more of a marketplace for relationships.

So this affected finding mates.