Lineage interests and nonreproductive strategies

Abstract

The nonreproductive role of religious women in the European Middle Ages presents the ideal forum for the discussion of elite family strategies within a historical context. I apply the evolutionary concept of kin selection to this group of women in order to explain how a social formation in which religious women failed to reproduce benefited medieval noble lineages. After a brief review of the roles of noble women in the later Middle Ages, I identify two benefits that nonreproductive women provided within a patrilineal inheritance system. First, spatial segregation and Christian ideology together served to curtail the production of offspring who could pose a threat to lineage interests. Second, cloistered noble women served as a strong political and economic bloc that could further lineage interests within a religious context. Finally, I discuss the evolutionary basis for the formation of groups of nonreproductive women. Using the foundation provided by animal behavioral studies, I apply the twin concepts of cooperative breeding and parental manipulation to noble lineages of the medieval period.

Property and wealth inequality as cultural niche construction

“…Similar points are made by Boone [40] in his study of the fifteenth century Portugese nobility, and by Hill [51] in her evolutionary analysis of the situation of medieval religious women. Summers' paper on the evolutionary ecology of despotism [52] makes an argument on similar lines in many respects to that presented here, noting that aristocratic endogamy was a further means of ensuring the continuing existence of lineage land holdings (cf.…”

Religious celibacy brings inclusive fitness benefits

“…Our results help clarify what conditions are necessary for celibacy to appear and be maintained through kin-selected benefits. Genealogical analyses of Medieval and Early Modern European nobility have shown that more children were directed to religious careers in higher social strata [22] and a comparison of two French noble families has suggested that lineages with more celibates were more likely to persist [23]. Both our model and data have shown that celibacy can appear and be maintained in a society without social stratification and hypergamy, two factors that have previously been suggested to be crucial [22,23,50,51].…”

“…Genealogical analyses of Medieval and Early Modern European nobility have shown that more children were directed to religious careers in higher social strata [22] and a comparison of two French noble families has suggested that lineages with more celibates were more likely to persist [23]. Both our model and data have shown that celibacy can appear and be maintained in a society without social stratification and hypergamy, two factors that have previously been suggested to be crucial [22,23,50,51]. It has been argued that psychological reinforcement mechanisms and costly ostracism in the case of abandonment of the monastery are key for religious celibacy to appear and be maintained, and they might be used as proximate mechanisms for parents and religious institutions to enforce their own interests [4].…”

“…In our population, Tibetan Buddhism affords this opportunity. In Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Catholic Christianity also offered this way for parents to suppress their children's reproduction [22,23]. Practices are adopted when they are in line with an individual's interests and, when they are not, they are either abandoned or altered.…”

“…Historically, across religious traditions, individuals were often induced by their parents to become monks or nuns at a very young age [4], which suggests that this behaviour could be a form of reproductive suppression. Some have suggested that, by making a fraction of their children celibate, parents in Medieval and Early Modern Europe could avoid dividing their wealth, boosting the survival of the family lineage [22][23][24]. In addition, owing to their social roles as religious leaders, celibates might have further advanced their families' material interests [22][23][24].…”