MONOGAMY. —
I. THEORIES AND RESEARCH INTO ITS ORIGINS
The first to challenge the traditional thesis concerning the monogamous matrimonial institution was the Swiss scholar Bachofen in 1861. matriarchy (v.) among certain peoples and having judged it to be a stage through which all the peoples of the earth must have passed, preceding patriarchy, he raised the question of how it could have happened that, despite the natural superiority of man, woman had been able to govern the family before him. To resolve this question, he appealed to the circumstance in which, for the purposes of the family name, inheritance, etc., of the children, account is taken only of the mother—a circumstance that still occurs today when children are born outside marriage. In that case the child does not know its father, and perhaps even the mother does not know him. Bachofen believed that he could explain the origin of matriarchy by generalizing the case of the child born outside marriage, and by drawing from it the conclusion that, before matriarchy, there had existed a state of agamy or sexual promiscuity. Since this state of general sexual promiscuity would have been particularly repugnant to the woman, given her psychological qualities, she would therefore have refused herself to all the other men and given herself only to one of them. According to Bachofen, then, it was to woman, and not to man, that belonged the glory of having founded monogamy and the monogamous family.Bachofen’s hypothesis was much discussed. Although many data could not be denied from the historical and archaeological point of view, it nevertheless came to be rightly challenged, as Wundt had already observed, the postulate of the universality of matriarchy, and still more its derivation from a state of complete promiscuity. The Swiss jurist’s theory, founded essentially on philological and archaeological arguments, thus gradually receded into the background, until around 1879 it reappeared in ethnology, where it was supported by new arguments and based on new foundations. Morgan distinguished six stages in the evolution of the matrimonial institution, McLennan four, although both placed monogamy at the final stage, resulting from the extreme development of civilization, after polygamy. This history of marriage was accepted by sociologists and jurists, particularly by Marx, Engels, and Simons, and popularized by Bebel (v. II).
One of the first extensive studies concerning marriage among historical and primitive peoples, which, through the eloquence of its facts, shook the theories mentioned above, was The History of Human Marriage (London 1891) by Westermarck. He arrived with certainty at the following results: polygamy exists among many peoples and polyandry among some; nevertheless, monogamy is by far the ordinary form of marriage. It also existed among the ancient peoples about whom direct knowledge is available. Moreover, monogamy is the only form of marriage generally recognized as legal and legitimate. The great majority of peoples are ordinarily monogamous, and the other forms of marriage have generally been modified and directed toward monogamy. Much more important is the historical evaluation of these facts, which he presented as follows: «With regard to the history of human marriage, two conclusions concerning monogamy and polygamy can be drawn with absolute certainty: monogamy, which is always the predominant form of marriage, has prevailed more distinctly among the lower strata of civilization than among the higher strata; polygamy, moreover, in these strata is once again significantly oriented toward monogamy».
Subsequently, the ever broader, more precise, and more thorough exploration of primitive peoples throughout the world, together with the astonishing development of ethnology, led to the distinction of groups of peoples according to definite types of civilization in genetic sequence. This was also advantageous for the history of marriage, increasingly confirming the historical-evolutionary reconstructions as erroneous, because they were a priori and hasty, and refining the conclusions cited above by Westermarck. Today it may be regarded as definitively proved that the so-called gathering peoples of Asia, Africa, and America represent the most ancient stage of human civilization, or the stage that most closely approaches II. After Schmidt demonstrated, in his study on The Position of the Pygmy Peoples in the History of the Development of Humanity (1910), that these peoples practiced monogamy in Africa and Asia, the celebrated scholar of the psychology of peoples, W. Wundt, wrote: «There is no other discovery in the history of human development that has so astonishingly and convincingly destroyed opinions hitherto widely held as the finding that primitive man was monogamous». And after acknowledging Schmidt’s having brought to light a fact of the greatest importance for the history of the development of human society, he added: «Its importance lies in the fact that it was not civilization that produced monogamy; rather, monogamy was one of the original conditions of civilization». And consequently, in the work Elements of the Psychology of Peoples. Outline of a Psychological History of the Evolution of Humanity (1912), having rejected all the reasons advanced by evolutionary ethnologists in support of their theories, and considering the civilization of the ethnologically most ancient peoples, that is, of peoples who, as he put it, «so to speak, halt at the lower limits of human civilization, and probably constitute the primordial state of social institutions and customs», Wundt asked himself: «What, then, at this stage, are the relations between marriage and family? The answer, if we consider the widespread hypotheses concerning the primitive horde, is surprising, yet it cannot be unexpected if we view these hypotheses in the proper light. Everywhere among these peoples we find monogamy, not only as the sole form of union, but, so to speak, as the natural form—that is, monogamy in the form of individual marriage».
Thus, for several decades now, it has become a common conviction among scholars in ethnology that human life certainly began not with promiscuity or group marriage, but with normal family conditions founded on monogamy. Among the more recent authors of particular authority on this subject, K. Birkett-Smith is often cited; in The History of Civilization (Zurich 1946), he expressed himself as follows: «One therefore begins with marriage as an entirely human institution and, moreover, in its most ancient forms not very different from that which we ourselves know». Monogamy is the stage to which he traces matrimonial rites among totemistic and matriarchal peoples, nomadic pastoralists, peoples of mixed civilizations, and even those of higher civilizations, such as the Chinese. Among the ancient Chinese, in fact, the bridegroom and bride had to drink during the ritual banquet, after making a libation to God, from two halves of a gourd—a rite that had a symbolic meaning, linking every marriage with that of the first human couple after the Flood. In China and among other peoples of the same linguistic family, marriage has always been recognized as monogamous, although concubinage and the levirate were permitted. The children of the concubines are regarded as the children of the wife: they call the latter their mother and the concubine their aunt. The same is apparent from the wedding rites in polyandrous marriage, for example, in southern Tibet, the classic land of polyandry. At the wedding ceremony the younger brothers do not participate at all; it is performed solely by the elder brother, who alone is the woman’s husband, as Grenard wrote. He alone possesses the land and everything belonging to the family, becoming heir to everything and head of the family itself; the younger brothers remain under his authority, are maintained at his expense, and stay under his protection, just as they had been under that of their father. As an example of monogamy in a mixed culture, one may take the natives of the Trobriand Islands and of other neighboring islands in Melanesia, among whom Malinowski and, before him, Father Salerio (1855), established that monogamy is the rule.
II. FONDAMENTA DELLA M
Perché gli uomini seguono la m.? Per gli evoluzionisti la m. è dovuta al progresso della civiltà, che conduce all'affinamento dei sentimenti e dei costumi. Il Thurnwald attribuisce la m. ad una ragione biologica ed economica. «Questa forma di matrimonio - dice egli - è nella più larga misura la più diffusa, perché è quella che corrisponde maggiormente al numero della media biologica dei sessi. La predominanza di questa forma non vuol dire però la sua esclusività. Generalmente sono gli uomini più poveri, che si accontentano di una sola donna».Lo Schmidt afferma che la m. è l'unica forma naturale del matrimonio e lo prova con la legge biologica. Secondo questa legge, in condizioni non anormali, nascono dovunque in linea generale un numero uguale di maschi e di femmine; un po' più di maschi, ma con una maggiore mortalità dei maschi nei primi anni, sicché non vi è che una donna per ogni uomo e un uomo per ogni donna. Questa legge biologica si vede chiaramente in atto presso molti popoli praticanti il matrimonio cosiddetto di scambio, che i Pigmei africani dell'Ituri chiamano, come riferisce p. Schebesta, «testa per testa», giacché un clan che riceve una donna in sposa, deve assicurarne una sua all'altro clan, come è di regola in questa relazione di scambio di donne.
La m. dipende, inoltre, da una legge morale e da una credenza religiosa. La legge morale si manifesta specialmente nel caso di adulterio, che è giudicato severamente e perseguito dalla legge penale, le cui sanzioni al riguardo, particolarmente presso i popoli etnologicamente più antichi, giungono fino alla pena di morte (v. primitivi*). Molti e specialmente i più antichi tra questi popoli (Fueghini, Andamanesi, Pigmei africani) affermano che Dio ha creato i primi uomini, cioè la prima coppia umana. Quindi, l'istituzione del matrimonio e della famiglia, come ha notato il p. Schmidt, è riferita esplicitamente o implicitamente all'Essere Sommo. E che trattisi di matrimonio monogamico risulta dal fatto che in nessuna delle leggende della creazione dell'uomo riferite da quei medesimi popoli si danno all'uomo due o più donne, o viceversa. Ciò vale anche per i Pigmei del Gabun, i quali credono alla creazione divina non di una coppia, ma di più coppie, che sono però sempre coppie monogamiche.