Did the Catholic Church ban adoption in the Middle Ages?
score:15
Adoption was never banned, and in fact was only ever encouraged quite strongly.
First, though, your source is a little off the mark on some of its details:
For one, widows and widowers could certainly remarry and they did so all the time. It is true that second marriages weren’t always necessarily seen favorably throughout the Middle Ages; entering a convent or monastery upon losing a spouse might be regarded more positively for some. But remarriage following the loss of a spouse was not forbidden. (Divorce, on the other hand, was a different matter.)
Specific to priests, celibacy was widely encouraged as early as 305/306 (and perhaps earlier). Saying it was unequivocally "imposed" in 385 is just a tad overstating the situation, but it’s safe to say that by the middle of the 5th century it was already generally adhered to throughout the West.
Now, as for adoption, I’m not sure where this notion is coming from. Laypersons were always strongly encouraged to adopt. And, although members of the clergy do not themselves adopt, medieval monasteries were something akin to modern orphanages in that they took in orphaned youths (albeit mostly to enter them into religious service).
If anything, I would argue that an ever-increasing importance placed on kinship ties would serve to discourage adoption in itself, rather than the Church aiming to put pressure on social systems of inheritance; the argument as stated seems to be confusing cause and effect, in my view.
Further reading:
Brundage, James A. “Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe.” 1987.
Payling, Simon. “The Politics of Family: Late Medieval Marriage Contracts.” In “The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society.” 1995.
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