The Change in the Spanish Value-System that Accompanied the Spread of Capitalism

In Patricia Seed’s To Love, Honor, and Obey…, the author demonstrates how the spread of capitalism throughout Western Europe brought about a dramatic change in popular attitudes towards marriage choice, a change which was reflected over time in the responses  of the Church to conflicts over Marriage.  In the 16th and 17th centuries, whenever there was disagreement between parents and their children with respect to a marriage, the Church always defended the right of children to actualize their own wishes in marriage, rather than obeying the wishes of their parents.  This can be seen in Seed’s first example, which she dubs “Romeo and Juliet in Mexico,” as well as countless other examples Seed uses throughout the book.  The reason for the Church’s ruling in such disputes is rooted in the cultural perceptions of marriage, seen as an intersection between Will, Love, and Honor.  Seed defines these seemingly amorphous concepts within the Spanish Catholic language of meaning, which saw an individual’s Will as ordained by God ( as opposed to the Protestant notion of predestination), and Love as a particular manifestation of this Will.  Marriage also involved the concept of Honor, fundamental to the Spanish worldview, which took on two distinct characters: Honor as virtue, which for women meant the preservation of sexual virtue, and for men meant the keeping of promises, such as the promise to marry a girl whose sexual virtue he has sullied, and Honor as status, which means Honor afforded to members of a higher social class.

With the spread of capitalism in the late 17th and on through the 18th and 19th centuries, Seed traces a paradigmatic shift in view of these three concepts, which over time changed public opinion surrounding parental authority and marriage, thus affecting the Church’s stance on such issues.  Fist of all, as money gained importance in society Honor as Status began to eclipse Honor as Virtue, and in situations in which these interests collided, such as a man of higher status’s promise to marry a lower status girl, the side of Status, often reflected in the parents’ wishes for a marriage took precedence.  Also the view of Will as divine ordinance began to diminish as the capacity for fickleness of Will became increasingly apparent, and so the importance attributed to Love was diminished as well.  Essentially, as these concepts became devalued in the public eye, they took a backseat to Interest, a blanket term used to refer to any motive focused on personal gain.  The shift to capitalism was combined with philosophic views which stressed “rational self-interest” and utilitarian gain over a religious conception of the world, in which a person’s will was the manifestation of God’s will.  While it is common practice in the Western world today to see this shift in values as progress, seeing the Church’s rule as dogmatic and overbearing, it is important also to realize that in making this shift, the West has swapped a value-system centered around virtue for one centered around money and its “rational” acquisition.  In the case of marriage choice, however, as the Church began o change with the culture to incorporate these views into its own doctrine, it in fact became more dogmatic and overbearing.