The Do’s and Don’ts of Marriage

it’s no surprise to me that the church would try to say what is acceptable and what is not. Even today churches have rules based on scripture in most cases of what is appropriate for the average family. What we have here is that a marriage must be 1) consensual 2) procreative and 3) unadventurous as set by the church. It’s obviously important that the marriage was consented by both parties and not forced. It was important for family to be able to procreate because bigger families usually meant more work got done and also more children to carry on the family name if they were male. Last but not least a couple must be unadventurous which I assume means be boring and do the same thing over and over again. Now I can understand why the church wags its finger at many of the items on the lust list but I never got why masturbation is a sin. I haven’t read the bible or anything and if anyone has an answer for that let me know. But the rest I can see as bad, sex for pure pleasure I can see as wrong, adultery obviously. Incest has always been a big no no except for in monarchies where it’s been encouraged. Rape is wrong no matter what and should be punished now abduction is sketchy. One person could say that they were kidnapped but I know that some were probably happy to get away from their lives to be with someone they loved.  I went over my confusion about masturbation but I can surely understand sodomy and bestiality. The church is often seen to many as the role model for everything good and we always lash out when they mess up but people forget that the church is run by humans and temptation gets the best of all humans from time to time. So these rules are set in place to keep people from straying down the wrong path or at least to remind people to be good citizens. Nowadays I don’t see that unadventurous thing flying and I think that if a couple is happily married that as long as things are kept within reason that they should be able to expand their love making beyond the simple and boring.

In my honest opinion though all these rules can also backfire on the ones that put them in place. I know from observing others and reading news that when rules are strictly enforced that many times it just makes people want to break them just to experience what was so forbidden. So I understand why the church during these times had rules like this in place but I also understand why many acted out against them.

Marriage and Religion

For centuries marriage has constantly changed in meaning and practice. We read many difference accounts of marriages that were for monetary of territory gains and not at all about a relationship or love. And the only institution that could arrange a marriage was the church during these times. The Catholic church in Spain at the time kept tight restrictions on marriage and every aspect of it. As centuries passed and marriage changed the church implemented more rules. Divorce and annulment could only be done through the church if a couple was not happy with their marriage but both were hard to obtain. Technically according to the church once you were married the marriage should not be able to break. Only in special cases could you divorce such as proving that the marriage was forced or something of that nature. Once a divorce was granted though the couple could not get remarried for a set amount of time. An annulment was different and it only occurred when it was proven that the marriage should not have happened in the first place. A marriage could be annulled if  one of the party went to the church and claimed that the person they married was their relative or something equally crazy. However there were also those who chose to marry their cousins and even though it was frowned upon by the church couples found ways around it. As the decades went the church began to lose some of its influence on marriage and the royal family began to share the right to make marriages.  While marriage was still about land and combining assets the idea of marriage began to change which led to the shared right to arrange marriages between the two institutions.

Keeping customs alive in Spanish colonies.

The Spanish conquered a lot of territory in South and Central America during the late 1400’s and early 1500’s. Their conquests were accomplished because of several variables since they were truly outnumbered by the indigenous populations. Technology played a major role in winning over the natives such as armor, guns and cannons. Horses also helped since the natives hadn’t really seen them in their daily lives. For the big groups like the Aztecs and Mayans, neighboring groups allied with the Spanish to increase their numbers in order to fight these huge groups off. I would say this was the 2nd biggest contributor to the conquest but the number one reason for Spanish success in the Americas was disease. Small pox and various other diseases spread like wild fire through the indigenous tribes in such huge numbers that within a few decades 90% of the population was gone. All these factors led to the take over of South and central America by the Spanish where they established their own settlements for trade. As time went on and the Spanish colonies grew the indigenous populations that had survived the disease and battles started to integrate into the new society. The Spanish tried to press their customs and ways of life onto these people and tried to set up their own government to aid them. While the indigenous people adapted to these forms of government they still kept their own customs within the disguise of the Spanish way. In one chapter we read in class about wills and testaments for example, the natives used these wills that they did not have before the Spanish as a way to pass down their possessions to their kids. The women would pass on items that only they used in their gender defined society such as garden tools and house items.  Also the leaders they picked for their political offices were the same exact people who led their villages before the Spanish conquest. It was important for these people to keep their practices alive under the disguise of the Spanish customs because it was all they could do against the now dominant group.

The indigenous groups, such as the Mexica, needed to maintain their customs and ways of life after the Spanish conquests because of the importance of them. Many of their people had died and a lot of their culture wiped out from the conquest and not much could be done about the Spanish so their religion and practices had to be taken. However, the natives learned how to incorporate their customs within the Spanish customs to keep their previous lives and culture intact.