China vs Europe

But you'll find pretty much all of that in Medieval Europe; you're talking at such a level of abstraction, it would be surprising if you didn't. Unless you get into the nitty-gritty of how idealised moral systems actually interact with the real world, something no more consistent or perfect in China than in the rest of the world, you're really just describing any traditionally-minded, patriarchal, agrarian society as it likes to imagine itself.

The only real distinction is the point about official culture- but even in China, that really only describes a small strata of officials, not to the greater mass of non-Han peoples, and you can arguably identify the same thing in the Catholic and Orthodox clergies, which represented a substantially larger part of the total European population, and had more regular interaction with the rest of the population, than the scholar-gentry ever did. It's less an argument about "China" and "Europe", and more an argument about how certain institutions successfully fostered elite identities, and on what scale.

At any rate, it's hard to credit that a country so frequently disturbed by messianic uprisings as China could really be described as having a bone-deep commitment to social stability.

I suppose the definition of China and Europe can be referring to either the cultural or political entity as a whole, although the definition can be interchangeable in some extent and not at all in some other extent.
So I agree that the arguement is leas useful in addressing the topic.

As what I interpret, the author of this thread is trying to ask about why China was a overall cultural continuity over the history, despite the vast variety of enthicity and territorial mass. Thus he is not focusing on political and administrative matters, although they also exert certain effect on culture. He may not define his question quite well so I may give some supplementary ideas according to my view.

The chinese was indeed culturally stable over the history, although social stability was not a norm. You are right on the country was facing uncountable uprising. But the uprising force, once they succeeded in establishing a government entity, they would continue to place the old chinese cultural values as moral standard. This is what makes the Chinese history interesting

The Mongolians, Manchurians and many other culturally distinct ethnicities in history adapted chinese culture and became assimilated, even if they were dominating in terms of military. The influence of chinese culture was strong and almost unshakable.

This is mainly built upon the concepts of family roles and morality standards, as I have mentioned in above post.

It is based on family and community. Thus the values are inherited rather than educated.
(E.g. Your parents teach you in your younger days and you will in term teach those values to your children. And your neighbors, friends following those values will exert a continuous comminity pressure.)

Also, this makes marriage a tool of culture spreading, as once they become family members, the family morality will be applicable.

As the whole society functions as a whole in cultural standards, it is no surprise that they always establish similar things over history.
 
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Hm, how is that different from Europe?
 
On the other hand, Europe relies more on education, religion and legislation to establish culture unity.

Say... what makes you differentiate (Medieval) Spain from France and Germany, despite their dressing and language, was their difference in cultural values/customs (e.g. they all disliked muslims, believed in the last judgement, but might think differently on family values) What linked them as Europe, was same faith and similar government/ legislative system, derived from roman laws. This linkage is also well demonstrated in the Catholic vs Prostestant conflict.

It is culture that separates Europe into different countries but they are linked, other than by geographical intimacy, by sharing faith and legislation systems. The interwining aspects of faith and culture in Europe makes this concept quite unclear though.

As for China, Southern China and northern China certainly didnt share same language variants and many customs. But they were linked by the morality and cultural similarities (i.e. they will all blame a wife disrespecting her mother-in-law, not by law, but by cultural values). Contrast to the heavily faith based European countries, China never minded religious differences, as long as they think in the same morality standards. (Say, as long as the religion does not encourage a wife to disrespect mother-in-law)

How this strong culture was caused and became so unshakable in Chinese remained unclear, as it certainly was somethting passed down long long ago, seemingly a legacy of cheifdom.
 
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It just seems to me the basic tenants of patriarchy (woman to man, young to old, rich to poor) are being replicated as intimately as within the family both in Europe as well as in China, with some flavor differences. But I'm repeating what was already said.

you're [...] describing any traditionally-minded, patriarchal, agrarian society as it likes to imagine itself.

Seems to be a feature of iron-age settled societies one way or another. I don't think the church/school invented the transmission of patriarchal values, when they already existed in Europe with and without codification.
 
Surely it demonstrates certain elements of patriarchy, but it was much more complicated than that.

The woman to man, young to old, rich to poor (I think this is not about patriarchy) pairs are simply basics for many civs.

But for chinese:

on top of them there are different proper manners of treating brothers, uncles, distant relatives, friends, neighbors, etc. A whole set of morality system to classify the entire society (again, not sth about nobility and commoners).

And there is the absolute Filial Piety demonstrated by all children to both genders of their parents.
It is something that is distinctive from normal patriarchy and hard for Europeans to understand.
(Say, they will ask, why should I place my parents above everyone, including God?)


The church, despite the heavy patriarchy, proposed "all men (and women I guess?) are equal before god".
The chinese insisted every members of different ranks had a different treatment, even in religious ceremony. They never developed a sense of equality.

Maybe the patriarchy is expressed in a more intense way, if to be compared, to Europe. But it is simply not the main focus of Chinese values.
 
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The church, despite the heavy patriarchy, proposed "all men (and women I guess?) are equal before god".
The chinese insisted every members of different ranks had a different treatment, even in religious ceremony. They never developed a sense of equality.

This is definitely not what the prevailing thought was in the Medieval period.
 
In Europe

Well, sort of agree with that. Christianity might very well have started as something akin to a social movement against the excesses of the Roman Empire, only to co-opt it and be co-opted by it, thus de-facto shedding its egalitarian credentials.
 
Fascinating thread to read through, I enjoy a good necro. I've got a few question from that:

How much continuity (political/cultural/identity) has there been in China? Obviously the different dynasties present clear breaks, but did some underlying system survive these? It was mentioned on the previous page that the concept of 'China' is a 20th century one, but was there not an idea of the "Mandate of the Heaven" going back way further to tie different periods into one narrative?

How much of the idea "Europe has lots of diverse politics, China is a single big one" stems from propaganda? A quick walk through the Chinese National Museum in Tiananmen square makes it clear that the communist party wants you to know that China has always been unified, any time they weren't was a temporary aberration. Popular european history, however, tends to emphasis the modern nation state as being the unit as the fundamental unit. Are these only very modern views, or has the dichotomy existed historically for much longer? If the latter, is the fact that China has been able to impose this perspective of history itself evidence that it was, periodically at least, politically unified?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, trying to get my head around all these concepts.
 
Emmm maybe that's the case.
But what I want to bring out is that Chinese shared the same/similar morality standards that covers &related to almost every actions in society.
Whilst European morality standards were not shared by all instead of religious standards (or chivalry spirits).

That restriction in mind-set gave great unity to China, but encaged their free will as well.
 
Well, sort of agree with that. Christianity might very well have started as something akin to a social movement against the excesses of the Roman Empire, only to co-opt it and be co-opted by it, thus de-facto shedding its egalitarian credentials.

Rome did not have egalitarian credentials. Nor did it try to have them.

Emmm maybe that's the case.
But what I want to bring out is that Chinese shared the same/similar morality standards that covers &related to almost every actions in society.
Whilst European morality standards were not shared by all instead of religious standards (or chivalry spirits).

Again, you are seriously understating the importance of Neoplatonic thought in Medieval European society.
 
How much of the idea "Europe has lots of diverse politics, China is a single big one" stems from propaganda? A quick walk through the Chinese National Museum in Tiananmen square makes it clear that the communist party wants you to know that China has always been unified, any time they weren't was a temporary aberration. Popular european history, however, tends to emphasis the modern nation state as being the unit as the fundamental unit. Are these only very modern views, or has the dichotomy existed historically for much longer? If the latter, is the fact that China has been able to impose this perspective of history itself evidence that it was, periodically at least, politically unified?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, trying to get my head around all these concepts.

Political unified was partially true.

Let's view the dynasties as a flow.
(Green=unified,
red= political chaos and separation,
blue = very old dynasties that do not have enough evidence to prove unity)

Arranged by time sequence:
Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Southern-and-Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, 5-dynasties & 10-kingdoms, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing.--> Pre-modern China

Some of the dynasties started with unity at the beginning, and then slipped into division and civil wars in later period. So they are roughly united.
From here, we can observe that China was a political unity in many dynasties and also a mass of numerous entities, depending on which period you are referring.
And these dynasties usually held approximately the same territories in as in ancient China (somewhere in Zhou/Qin) so they are view as "unified".

Thus, 'China is a single big one" is true and not true in terms of political entity, dependent on which period you are investigating.
In terms of time length and size of territory, this statement is valid to some point,. At least in a large portion of chinese history, China existed as a single one.
While culturally speaking, China had a higher unity than the others.
 
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Europe...
what Europe ?
Was there really ONE Europe in a worldly sense ?

The area of Europe had many wordly rulers and ONE religion.
Including a clear power rivalry between the worldly powers and the priests of that religion.

In China religion/philosophy was more alligned to the worldy power
 
I suppose the definition of China and Europe can be referring to either the cultural or political entity as a whole, although the definition can be interchangeable in some extent and not at all in some other extent.
So I agree that the arguement is leas useful in addressing the topic.

As what I interpret, the author of this thread is trying to ask about why China was a overall cultural continuity over the history, despite the vast variety of enthicity and territorial mass. Thus he is not focusing on political and administrative matters, although they also exert certain effect on culture. He may not define his question quite well so I may give some supplementary ideas according to my view.

The chinese was indeed culturally stable over the history, although social stability was not a norm. You are right on the country was facing uncountable uprising. But the uprising force, once they succeeded in establishing a government entity, they would continue to place the old chinese cultural values as moral standard. This is what makes the Chinese history interesting

The Mongolians, Manchurians and many other culturally distinct ethnicities in history adapted chinese culture and became assimilated, even if they were dominating in terms of military. The influence of chinese culture was strong and almost unshakable.
Okay, but my question is: how far does this describe the on-the-ground reality, and how much does this simply represent the idealised self-image of successive imperial elites? You say that "Chinese culture was unshakeable", but Chinese culture was neither monolithic nor uniform throughout history, even among the elite strata; you can't conflate the priorities and values of Tang aristocracy with the Song officialdom, for example. Confucian ideals were just that, ideals, not realities; if they had been, Confucian scholars wouldn't have needed to spent two thousand years propounding them.

Consider that one of the cornerstones of Chinese culture are the "Four Classic Novels", noted for being written in an everyday vernacular rather than a high-falutin' literary style, and that none of the four are particularly Confucian in their themes. Journey to the West deals with individual enlightentment, Dream of the Red Chamber deals with romantic rivalry, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms deals with heroic nobodies rising to greatness through wits and steel. The Water Margin, above all, celebrates the rowdy egalitarianism of a band of rebels living on the margins of society, the very inverse of a good Confucian gentleman. In all four cases, some of the central relationships are horizontal, friendships between men of roughly equal generation and social standing, relationships which are absolutely secondary, but they form the core of as quintessentially Chinese a motif as the Oath of the Peach Garden. (It's hard to think of a stronger rebuke to Confucian filial piety than three non-relatives swearing to die on the same day, regardless of what their ancestors or descendants might think about it.) How do we square a Chinese culture drenched in Confucian values with one that is evidently, at the same time, fascinated by stories that run entirely against the Confucian grain?

Ultimately, this whole reductive, essentialist idea of what constitutes "China" falls apart, a long with a lot of other things in China, in 1911. If these "unshakeable" Confucian values are not filtered down from the state, but are maintained by individual family units over thousands of years, how is it that they are swept away in a few generations? What was special about this rebellion, about these warlords, about this civil war, that was able to so utterly dissolve a set of values and practices that had continued, we are told, without rupture since, what, the Bronze Age?

How much continuity (political/cultural/identity) has there been in China? Obviously the different dynasties present clear breaks, but did some underlying system survive these? It was mentioned on the previous page that the concept of 'China' is a 20th century one, but was there not an idea of the "Mandate of the Heaven" going back way further to tie different periods into one narrative?
It's not really clear that the "Mandate of Heaven" meant the same thing throughout Chinese history. It's hardly as if the Chinese were the only people to imagine political power as having divine sponsors, certainly when power was framed in terms of universal authority. It's a pretty constant theme across Eurasia for most of recorded history; early modern Europe is really pretty unusual in that everyone came to just sort of agree that power was bounded into territoriality-specific units, and even then you had dissenters like the Corsican Devil. Successive dynasties gave it more or less weight, and interpreted it in different terms, and it's not really clear that it ever really played a central role in legitimising regimes or encouraging regime change, so much as it did in allowing historians to explain regime-changes after the fact. Whether literally, by taking the Mandate of Heaven as an actual Thing, or by framing this as something that Chinese people have all believed since forever. About the one consistent rule is that it matters most when a regime is feeling insecure- when it's new on the scene, or on its way out- and start investing a lot of energy into reminding people that "look, Heaven says I'm in charge, okay?", which rather undermines the idea that it's just a persistent aspect of Chinese culture.

How much of the idea "Europe has lots of diverse politics, China is a single big one" stems from propaganda? A quick walk through the Chinese National Museum in Tiananmen square makes it clear that the communist party wants you to know that China has always been unified, any time they weren't was a temporary aberration. Popular european history, however, tends to emphasis the modern nation state as being the unit as the fundamental unit. Are these only very modern views, or has the dichotomy existed historically for much longer? If the latter, is the fact that China has been able to impose this perspective of history itself evidence that it was, periodically at least, politically unified?
That's definitely a huge part of it, but it's not just propaganda of the Communist Party. Successive regimes have developing, refining and narrowing the idea of what it means for "China" to be "unified", from a Han era in which it simply meant that the entire civilised world paid homage to the Emperor, to the modern era where it's framed in specifically national (and nationalistic) terms. It particularly picks up speed from the Song onwards, when you get the emergence of a set of institutions which survive, with a few knocks, right down to 1911, but which are increasingly defining themselves against foreign rulers, or alternatively having to rationalise their subordination to those foreign rulers- sometimes both at once, as in the nineteenth century. The whole thing becomes easier to swallow if history can be seen to revolve around a clearly defined ethnic and territorial unit, rather than just a vague area in the middle where all the best people happen to live.
 
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Okay, but my question is: how far does this describe the on-the-ground reality, and how much does this simply represent the idealised self-image of successive imperial elites? You say that "Chinese culture was unshakeable", but Chinese culture was neither monolithic nor uniform throughout history, even among the elite strata; you can't conflate the priorities and values of Tang aristocracy with the Song officialdom, for example. Confucian ideals were just that, ideals, not realities; if they had been, Confucian scholars wouldn't have needed to spent two thousand years propounding them.

Consider that one of the cornerstones of Chinese culture are the "Four Classic Novels", noted for being written in an everyday vernacular rather than a high-falutin' literary style, and that none of the four are particularly Confucian in their themes. Journey to the West deals with individual enlightentment, Dream of the Red Chamber deals with romantic rivalry, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms deals with heroic nobodies rising to greatness through wits and steel. The Water Margin, above all, celebrates the rowdy egalitarianism of a band of rebels living on the margins of society, the very inverse of a good Confucian gentleman. In all four cases, some of the central relationships are horizontal, friendships between men of roughly equal generation and social standing, relationships which are absolutely secondary, but they form the core of as quintessentially Chinese a motif as the Oath of the Peach Garden. (It's hard to think of a stronger rebuke to Confucian filial piety than three non-relatives swearing to die on the same day, regardless of what their ancestors or descendants might think about it.) How do we square a Chinese culture drenched in Confucian values with one that is evidently, at the same time, fascinated by stories that run entirely against the Confucian grain?

Ultimately, this whole reductive, essentialist idea of what constitutes "China" falls apart, a long with a lot of other things in China, in 1911. If these "unshakeable" Confucian values are not filtered down from the state, but are maintained by individual family units over thousands of years, how is it that they are swept away in a few generations? What was special about this rebellion, about these warlords, about this civil war, that was able to so utterly dissolve a set of values and practices that had continued, we are told, without rupture since, what, the Bronze Age?

Tang Aristocracy or Song Officialdom, are merely political/administrative forms of government. They seldom touch the cultural part of chinese morality. Say, what does the form of the government have to do with my family structure?

Confucian tenants are ideals but this doesn't affect them to be the cultural dominance, like religion, as long as you have faith, who cares their practicality?

The 4 classical novels are mainly considered entertainment pieces in ancient china, holding little significant cultural importance recognized by the people at that time. That means, they will not be cultural/moral standards for people to follow. e.g. You will not take Shakespeare's work as a bible of faith. The "classical" title was added by later generation, considering their artistic values.

But the three kingdoms and The Water Margin echo much greater influence than the rest, as they contain elements of loyalty, trust and Yi ( 義I cannot find a good counterpart in english vocabulary ). These values are still part of Cofucianism so they are more praised in the society.

Dream of red chamber actually is delivering a taoist idea of worldly dettachment (but most people focus on the romance, anyway). Taoist ideas are oppressed to minority in Confucian society.

Journey to the West has a Buddhist background, but chinese mainly took it as an entertainment art piece rather than anything spiritual. ( But of course you can always find spiritual meanings, if you dig into it, but not the majority focus)

To conclude, the existence of other morality or different religious elements exist in par with confucian ideas. But they never defeated confucianism.

One crucial factor that contributed to this phenomenon was that, official examinations only, ONLY, examine knowledge and ideas of confucianism.

And the dissolution of the cultural values were, mainly Communist Party's work. If you recall, in 1950s there was a Cultural Revolution aiming the transitional values. But it was only the last blow to a collapsing building. Chinese culture had been threatened for a long time before 1950s. Pre-modern China after Qing dynasty was facing western cultural influence on top of non-stop social unrest. The defeat of Opium War echoed throughout chinese history, driving the chinese to reform their society and ultimately culture. That's a complete new situation China faced, for the first time it was not pouring cultural influence, but actively absorbing foreign ideas.

However, though experiencing such a challenge to its roots, chinese culture still reluctantly lives in modern chinese's lives. The patriarchy elements of preference to male births, undying filial piety that the society still promotes, and the heavy focus of family ideas (well demonstrated by people rushing home during chinese new year), are still among the foundations of their minds. That's what makes me recognize it as unshakable.
 
Rome did not have egalitarian credentials. Nor did it try to have them.
It's more complicated than that.

Regardless of European political fragmentation there has always been common features keeping things together in some ways. And in this case it wouldn't be directly Christianity per se, but an aspect of the High Middle Ages that the Church in Rome was very keen on — legislation.

The European legal tradition is as fragmented as anything else about Europe, but in this case it was something that was actively worked out to straighten out. You had Roman law, Germanic law and then Canon law, that of the church, side by side, co-existing but also getting in each others' way.

Which is why among medievalists the 13th c. can be referred to as "the century of the lawyer". There was a massive amount of work to manage the legal arguments and line up the three different legal traditions. The churchmen-lawyers were powerful people, the 13th c. popes were in effect lawyers, and then all the princes of Europe had to hire their own legal teams to manage the situation. The Fauclties of Law of the Medieval universities were big and important for churning out hordes of professionals.

As for the assigned roles of men and women, that's where the Church sorta kinda went egalitarian — at least when compared to Roman and even more so Germanic legal tradition. The Church in fact stipulated that marriage, "consortium", had to be entered into by two legally capable, rational individuals, one man and one woman. Compared to what Romans and Germanics thought about women and marital alliances, the Church certainly stood out as considering women both rational and capable like this
 
Tang Aristocracy or Song Officialdom, are merely political/administrative forms of government. They seldom touch the cultural part of chinese morality. Say, what does the form of the government have to do with my family structure?
China was not a series of atomised households, it was a complex, hierarchical society. You can't generalise about that society unless you're confident that those generalises describe all parts of that society, or at least all but the most marginal, with equal accuracy. Elite culture may not be as all-defining as older generations of historians believed, but the inverse, that it flows ephemerally above the "real" culture of the masses, is modern nationalism ideology, nos ancetres les gaulois stuff, it's just not tenable when looking at how the expectations and aspirations of different social groups develop and interact. Especially when the values you framed as quintessentially and transhistorically Chinese are tied pretty heavily to a specific section of Chinese society, the scholar-gentry, and which tend to wax and wane with the collective success of that class.

If a specific set of values are inherently and quintessentially Chinese, we would expect all or at least most pre-twentieth century Chinese regimes to express those values, and we would except all major segments of Chinese society to express these values. But do we see this in practice, even discounting foreign conquerors and military usurpers? Do landowners and officials express the same values? Gentlemen and merchants? Peasants and city-dwellers? It's not at all clear that they do.

Confucian tenants are ideals but this doesn't affect them to be the cultural dominance, like religion, as long as you have faith, who cares their practicality?
Well, Confucius, for one.

The 4 classical novels are mainly considered entertainment pieces in ancient china, holding little significant cultural importance recognized by the people at that time. That means, they will not be cultural/moral standards for people to follow. e.g. You will not take Shakespeare's work as a bible of faith. The "classical" title was added by later generation, considering their artistic values.

But the three kingdoms and The Water Margin echo much greater influence than the rest, as they contain elements of loyalty, trust and Yi ( 義I cannot find a good counterpart in english vocabulary ). These values are still part of Cofucianism so they are more praised in the society.

Dream of red chamber actually is delivering a taoist idea of worldly dettachment (but most people focus on the romance, anyway). Taoist ideas are oppressed to minority in Confucian society.

Journey to the West has a Buddhist background, but chinese mainly took it as an entertainment art piece rather than anything spiritual. ( But of course you can always find spiritual meanings, if you dig into it, but not the majority focus)

To conclude, the existence of other morality or different religious elements exist in par with confucian ideas. But they never defeated confucianism.

One crucial factor that contributed to this phenomenon was that, official examinations only, ONLY, examine knowledge and ideas of confucianism.
People absolutely do take Shakespeare as providing an insight into the attitudes and values of late Elizbethan and early Jacobean England, though, and the way in which later generations responded to Shakespeare as providing similar insight into their attitudes and values. The point is not that they dictate values to people, but that their popularity, their resonance, says something about the values people already have.

Yes, The Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin espouse the virtues of loyalty and moral courage, but the way they do so is not particularly Confucian: these are expressed through patient fillial piety, through patient and measured action, taken day-by-day, they're expressed daring do and self-sacrifice and waving a sword around because: yeah, swords, awesome. The heroic ideal embodied in a figure like Guan Yu is altogether distinct from that represented by a figure like Confucius- and it's not always clear who the Chinese people prefer, because it seems more common to encounter shrines to exciting figures like Guan Yu or endearing ones like Budai in Chinese homes and businesses than shrines to stuffy old sages. It's not inconceivable that a society could both uphold Confucianism as a set of principles while also upholding the exploits of Shu-Han or the Bandits of the Marsh - evidently, because that's what we see in China. But it means that we're looking at a society which is culturally and morally complex, one which contains contradictions and perhaps even hypocrisies, who's ideals and aspirations don't always line-up with realities, and perhaps not with each other. And why would we expect anything else, in a country of hundreds of millions? It would be altogether more startling if we encountered nothing but homogeneity.

And it's cheating, frankly, to discount Taoist and Buddhist texts as "not really Chinese", as if they don't both have a two thousand-plus year history in China, as if these texts haven't had major significance to millions of people, both among the masses and among ruling groups. Defining "China culture" as "Confucianism" and then insisting that China is inherently Confucian is simply circular reasoning.

And the dissolution of the cultural values were, mainly Communist Party's work. If you recall, in 1950s there was a Cultural Revolution aiming the transitional values. But it was only the last blow to a collapsing building. Chinese culture had been threatened for a long time before 1950s. Pre-modern China after Qing dynasty was facing western cultural influence on top of non-stop social unrest. The defeat of Opium War echoed throughout chinese history, driving the chinese to reform their society and ultimately culture. That's a complete new situation China faced, for the first time it was not pouring cultural influence, but actively absorbing foreign ideas.
That's not really good enough. You've framed these "Chinese values" as being formed and reproduced at the family level, so you'd have to explain their failure at a family level. Diplomatic embarrassments and government purges should not be capable of unmaking the family structure, any more than similar top-down events could be capable of making it. The family structure of most of China remained pretty much the same through the late Qing, Republican and Maoist eras, only really beginning to change with the Deng reforms and the shift to a more strongly individuated and cash-based economy. If the durability and momentum of this family morality was enough to shape China for thousand of years, what exactly gave way over the twentieth century that this morality now remains as little more than the vague prejudices and holiday traditions you describe?

As for the assigned roles of men and women, that's where the Church sorta kinda went egalitarian — at least when compared to Roman and even more so Germanic legal tradition. The Church in fact stipulated that marriage, "consortium", had to be entered into by two legally capable, rational individuals, one man and one woman. Compared to what Romans and Germanics thought about women and marital alliances, the Church certainly stood out as considering women both rational and capable like this
Weren't the vast majority of women in Medieval Europe legally classified as femme covert? It's hard to read that as an egalitarian arrangement just because certain of the terms by which the arrangement was established didn't distinguish explicitly between male and female.
 
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