Did Any Of The Teutonic Tribes Ever Practiced Polygamy

How did monogamy become really popular in Western society?

I’d say its a mixture of Christianity, Germanic culture and economy.Tacitus notes how with a few exception the Germanic tribes usually practiced monogamy. The same tribes that would eventually settle in most of Europe. By the time they were doing that they were also Christians and the Christian doctrine or at least the church also tried to enforce monogamy.An early medieval figure like Charlemagne stands out for having multiple wives and concubines but later on that simply wasn’t done in Europe.

Why did polygamy never become prevalent in Western Civilization?

There could be  more than one reason. Life was not easy in earlier times. The main food producing workforce was the men. Feeding one family was problematic  under moderate or cold climates. Feeding two families might be impossible unless you are high at the hierarchy. In tropic climates, where food could be plentiful, and farming was female task, poligamy was more widespread. But to keep the number of rival males number low enough, constant warring required between tribes.Before antibiotics uncontrolled poligamy and promiscuity favoured STDs. And communities allowing free love swiftly found themshelf full of sick or infertile women and having few children.Being monogamous allowing most men having wife effectively calming them, and instead of fighting, they worked to feed their families. this method resulted faster population growth.

Was polygamy ever part of any pre-Christian European culture? Or is it more of a Middle Eastern cultural thing?

This question got me interested, and so I did a bit of internet research. This is what I found out:Romans were apparently notoriously monogamous and so the polygamy was suppressed and more or less extinct in most of the Roman empire. However, the polygamy did exist and persist in some parts of the Europe that were outside the Roman Empire.Alternative Forms of Marriage Polygyny Part 1The Greek kings had concubines (concubinage was a kind of polygyny), but the Romans did not allow more than one mate per man. By 1000 A.D., the practice in Europe was largely ended, except among the Frankish and Irish tribes. Later, however, Erasmus, Henry VIII, and Martin Luther approved it under certain extenuating circumstances.What makes things more interesting is that some of the European Christians practiced polygamy in the early middle ages. See The Western Case for Monogamy Over PolygamyThe most curious thing that I found is the Münster Rebellion:There were at least three times as many women of marriageable age as men now in the town and he legalized polygamy and himself took sixteen wives. (John is said to have beheaded one woman in the marketplace for refusing to marry him; this act might have been falsely attributed to him after his death.) Meanwhile, most of the residents of Münster were starving as a result of the year-long siege.

In the Old Testament, Jewish men sometimes had more than one wife. When and why did this practice end?

Well, the practice started with Abraham, who took a second wife at the request of his beloved Sarah, in order to bring an heir into the family.His grandson, Yaakov, also intended to work for one wife, but ended up with two because his brother chose not to accept the burden of Egyptian slavery that was prophecied to Abraham. Now each of those two wives, who were sisters, had a handmaid, who also became a concubine, and thus he ended up with four wives. The purpose of all these wives was to build a nation in a short time. From these the twelve tribes were created.Meanwhile back at the ranch of the oldest son of Abraham, he also produced twelve tribes in a parallel fashion. Ishmael also had twelve tribes initially.We read of King David having twenty-two wives, and of Solomon multiplying his wives until he reached a thousand marriages. Even if he slept with a different wife each night, it would take three years to bed all of them.The Hebrew bible makes certain to point out that there are certain problems with these types of marital arrangements, and the more wives, the more problems a man creates for himself. He must provide equally for all his wives and children, with clothing and food and shelter. And the bible forbids kings to multiply wives, horses, and gold. Solomon violated all three because he considered himself above these restrictions, but he found out that they also did apply to him.Down to the present generation, Sephardic Jews never accepted these restrictions, and it was not that unusual to find Jewish men from Teiman or other eastern and Islamic countries having two wives. But through the last two millennia, most Jewish men had one wife, and that was enough to occupy them. Israeli law today forbids plural marriages of any kind, and people who behave like this are arrested and put in prison.The jealousy between siblings of the same father but different mothers can be intense. I have seen it with my own eyes. So why invite more problems than one can handle? It is hard enough to make a monogamous marriage work these days with all the pressures that exist.