Patriarchal Ideology

Christianity defined greed and lust explicitly with lists of carnal, venal, and mortal sins. It condemned sinful desire as well as behavior, encouraging believers to resist their inner devils.

Yet the most influential apostles agreed that Christianity should be preached by men alone. The burden of Eve's sin weighed heavily on her daughters. In general, Christian doctrine held that women were more prone to wickedness than men because they were more likely to be con­sumed by sexual passion.³⁷ Both the Jewish tradition and its Christian offshoot venerated maternal love, often using it as a metaphor for God's love of his children. At the same time, scriptural authority justified strict forms of social control over women, including restrictions on their economic opportunities.³⁸

Many early Christians warned against the corrupting influence of wealth. St. Jerome explained that opulence was always the result of theft, if not by the actual possessor, then by his predecessors.³⁹ The Greek father St. John Chrystostom called for voluntary communism, while St. Basil preached charity as a solution to earthly woes: ‘‘For if each one, after having taken from his wealth whatever would satisfy his personal needs, left what was superfluous to him who lacks every necessity, there would be neither rich nor poor.''⁴⁰ The early Christian emphasis on obligations to family and community may have discouraged economic growth.

However, significant doctrinal changes came early, as Christianity became the official ideology of the Roman empire.⁴¹ The fourth-century writings of St. Augustine described social equality as impractical and dis­ruptive. He spoke favorably of merchants and narrowed definitions of charitable obligation. Augustine also elaborated at length on female suscep­tibility to lust, equating masculinity with rationality and femininity with sensuality. As the father of a child born out of wedlock, he could not argue that men were invulnerable to lust, but he could blame women for their seduction. His Soliloquia idealized celibacy: ‘‘I feel there is nothing which so degrades the high intelligence of a man than the embraces of a woman and the contact with her body.''⁴²

Thomas Aquinas, whose thirteenth century Summa Theologica codified Catholic doctrine, held that commerce, though riddled with temptations, was no sin in and of itself. He systematized the concept of a just price, explaining that it was morally wrong to sell a thing for more than it was worth. Since worth itself was difficult to define independently of price (as the classical political economists would later emphasize), this explanation left ample room for an interest charge and a profit margin.

Like Augustine, Aquinas offered women's lack of sexual self control as justification for their subordination, stipulating that sexual intercourse was permissible only for the conception of children within marriage.⁴³ Both men viewed prostitution as a necessary means of channeling male lust.⁴⁴ Just as God creates sin, he also creates a partial remedy for it. Aquinas famously linked prostitutes to sewers that drained unhealthy substances, protecting the public from worse contamination.⁴⁵

Women other than prostitutes were held to high standards of chastity or fidelity enforced by a father, a brother, or a husband. The economic disruption and depopulation wrought by the plagues and wars of the later Middle Ages periodically weakened patriarchal authority, but led to new means of reinforcing it.

Most women and men married, but women's sexual desires were com­pressed more tightly into one small arena—intercourse for the purpose of procreation within marriage. (No estimates exist of the number of prosti­tutes and nuns compared to the number of men who became monks or priests). Thomas Aquinas lumped masturbation, intercourse with animals, homosexual intercourse, and non-procreative heterosexual intercourse into one category—vices against nature.⁴⁷ Church authorities condemned the Manichean and Cathar heresies that encouraged avoidance of births within marriage, and approved the brutal extirpation of those who clung to them.⁴⁸ Between 1250 and 1300, homosexual activities once considered legal in most of Europe were redefined as capital crimes.⁴⁹

More positive reinforcement for fertility within marriage came in the form of idealized images of motherhood, exemplified by veneration of the Virgin Mary. As the Mother of God, she is free of sin, promising to serve as a feminine intercessor for divine mercy as well as a role model for every woman. Religious icons and statuary typically portray her caring for the baby Christ with extraordinary tenderness.

With the gradual growth of commerce in the later Middle Ages, greed became more prominent in the pantheon of sins. Visual representations often featured a wicked man holding coins or a money bag.⁵⁰ In 1275 a French monk ventured the opinion that ‘‘avarice is worse than debauchery, which does not prevent people from loving their neighbor or from spending generously.”⁵¹ Catholic interpretations of scripture held that it was sinful to charge interest to fellow Christians.⁵² But money lending, like prostitution, was discouraged more in principle than in practice. Bans on charging interest were never completely effective, but they did increase the difficulty, and therefore the costs, of borrowing money.