ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship of honour to social structure and mobility in the early modern period, and at ways in which honour was scientifically assessed. The discussion is centred on the modal shift from honour to wit and learning, often via the mediation of “virtue.” Religious authorities attempted, with some success, to replace bloodline with the soul and the mind as the locus of honour, which helped justify a limited extension of status down the social scale. It also sowed the seeds of honour’s decline, since it meant the individual might be author of his own code; this semi-classless honour was eventually reduced to bourgeois “honesty” (financial and contractual), thus provoking conflict with the anti-mercenary bias of the old honour codes. “Virtue” drew a veil over any conflictedness in the relationship between lineage and learning. The identification of virtue with learning had a strongly Christian inflection.
