ABSTRACT
The Church limited the relations of natural kinship and in their place extolled the ‘spiritual kinship’, which was supposed to make for harmonious relations in society. At the same time, and in consequence of the above, the Church set the conjugal family above the family of origin, conforming with the verse, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24), and St Paul’s dicta (I Corinthians 7:4 and Ephesians 5:21-2).2 But the quality of kinship relations (hence also of the relationship with the family of origin) was not dictated exclusively by the norms of the Church. In periods of insecurity kinship relations grew stronger. In northern Europe the nuclear became increasingly dominant from the twelfth century on. This process reflected the increased sense of security and the economic changes, such as the development of the land market, which served to weaken the link between the lands and the extended family,3 while in southern Europe the extended family remained dominant. However, this
difference between the northern and southern family structures, which was also reflected in the authority of the patriarch (greater in the south), found no expression in the normative literature that was written mostly by churchmen. The duty of honouring parents and supporting them materially was a basic norm everywhere.
