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432 15. family and friendship in the west
affected that uxorious monarch. 140 The one case of incest which caused a
religious and political crisis was the marriage of Stephanus to Palladia, the
sister of his dead wife, shortly after 518. Stephanus, who was presumably a
Gallo-Roman, was the treasurer of the Burgundian king Sigismund, whose
decision to support his treasurer led to a withdrawal of co-operation from
his bishops. 141 It may be significant that the case followed shortly after the
council of Epaon, the council which saw the first detailed legislation
against incest. 142
Although it was a Gallo-Roman official who fell foul of this legislation
at the council of Lyons, it is likely to have been at the lowest end of the
social scale that the canons caused most difficulties. The upper classes of
late and sub-Roman Gaul had contacts over a wide region, and marriage
outside their immediate kin can have presented few problems. Among the
lower orders of society, marriage outside a confined geographical area or
social group would have been almost impossible – it may well not have
been desirable, if families wanted to keep the few possessions they had
within a closed circle. As a result, they are likely to have been affected by
incest legislation more consistently than their masters. 143 In the course of
the early Middle Ages, the church defined and redefined what constituted
the prohibited degrees of marriage. Whether one accepts that this was part
of a deliberate policy developed by the church 144 or whether one sees it as
a rather less calculated attempt to define marital purity, the net result is
likely to have made legal marriage in small communities more and more
difficult.
The chief division in family practice in the fifth and sixth century is,
therefore, less likely to have lain between Roman and Germanic – despite
all the individual quirks of the senatorial aristocracy or of the Merovingians
– than between the relatively closed worlds of village or peasant life and
the very much more open world of royalty and the aristocracy. The peasantry
had limited geographical horizons and a very small array of strategies
for preserving their land and property. At the upper level of society the
horizons were much wider, and the strategies available more numerous.
In considering the family of the monarch and the aristocracy it would be
wrong to concentrate solely on the bonds of marriage. The familia included
the whole household, and it also spilt over into the world of clientship. In
the Roman world the clientela of an aristocrat was central to his status.
Because the carrying of arms was legally restricted before the fifth century,
this clientela was necessarily civilian. The practice of civilian patronage continued
throughout the fifth and sixth century – Ruricius and other
members of his circle made great play of addressing those of their fellows
140 Greg. Tur. Hist. iv.3. 141 Council of Lyons (518–23) c. 1.
142 Epaon (517) c. 30. It should be noted that Agde (506) c. 61 was thought by Munier to be an interpolation,
CCSL 148. 143 Rouche (1987) 470–1. 144 Goody (1983) 134–46.
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