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How should the medieval family be characterized? Who formed the household and what were the ties of kinship, law, and affection that bound the members together? David Herlihy explores these questions from ancient Greece to the households of fifteenth-century Tuscany, to provide a broad new interpretation of family life. In a series of bold hypotheses, he presents his ideas about the emergence of a distinctive medieval household and its transformation over a thousand years. Ancient societies lacked the concept of the family as a moral unit and displayed an extraordinary variety of living arrangements, from the huge palaces of the rich to the hovels of the slaves. Not until the seventh and eighth centuries did families take on a more standard form as a result of the congruence of material circumstances, ideological pressures, and the force of cultural norms. By the eleventh century, families had acquired a characteristic kinship organization first visible among elites and then spreading to other classes. From an indifferent network of descent through either male or female lines evolved the new concept of patrilineage, or descent and inheritance through the male line. For the first time a clear set of emotional ties linked family members. It is the author's singular contribution to show how, as they evolved from their heritages of either barbarian society or classical antiquity, medieval households developed commensurable forms, distinctive ties of kindred, and a tighter moral and emotional unity to produce the family as we know it. Herlihy's range of sources is prodigious: ancient Roman and Greek authors, Aquinas, Augustine, archives of monasteries, sermons of saints, civil and canon law, inquisitorial records, civil registers, charters, censuses and surveys, wills, marriage certificates, birth records, and more. This well-written book will be the starting point for all future studies of medieval domestic life.
In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes. The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le Ménagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers. The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.
This series comprises regional studies in the rural history of the European continent during the Middle Ages (concentrating on the period 1000-1500). Integrating written records, archaeology, and research on the history of the landscape and environment, the books profile work on particular regions in detail. Implicitly and explicitly the series seeks to generate a comparative vocabulary and understanding of phenomena that heretofore have been studied in their local settings. These studies offer broader implications for the history of the seigneurial regime of the Middle Ages, and concern such topics as the history of servitude, the settlement of the land, the functioning of the economy, food, and agricultural practices.
This volume asks whether there was a common structure, ideology, and image of the household in the medieval Christian West. In the period under examination, noble households often exercised great power in their own right, while even quite humble households were defined as agents of government in the administration of local communities. Many of the papers therefore address the public functions and perceptions of the household, and argue that the formulation of domestic (and family) values was of essential importance in the growth and development of the medieval Christian state. Contributors to this volume of collected essays write from a number of disciplinary perspectives (archaeological, art-historical, historical, and literary). They examine socially diverse households (from peasants to kings) and use case-studies from different regions across Europe in different periods from the medieval epoch from c.850 to c.1550. The volume both includes studies from archives and collections not often covered in English-language publications, and offers new approaches to more familiar material.It is divided into thematic sections exploring the role of households in the exercise of power, in controlling the body, in the distribution of wealth and within a wider economy of possessions. The majority of the papers were first given at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds in 2001, in a strand on 'Domus and Familia' organised by the Urban Household Group of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York.
In the later medieval centuries, a whole range of important social, political and artistic activities took place against the backdrop of the great English households. In this vividly illuminating book, C. M. Woolgar explores the details of life in these great houses. Based on an extensive investigation of household accounts and related primary documents, he examines the daily routines, the weekly and annual patterns, and the life-cycle observances of birth, childhood, marriage, death and burial. He also delineates the major changes that transformed the economy and geography of both lay and clerical households between 1200 and 1500.
Catalogue of excavated household items from the middle ages provides an invaluable reference tool for experts and the general reader alike. This book brings together for the first time the astonishing diversity of excavated furnishings and artefacts from medieval London homes. These include roofing and other structural items, decorative fixtures and fittings, and assortment of culinary utensils, writing instruments, and toys and weights. Illustrating some 1,000 items, the catalogue provides a fascinating account of how metalwork and glassware manufacturing trends changed during the period covered, while close dating of many of the finds has resulted in many new insights into life at the time.
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Family and Household in Medieval England discusses the history of family life in England from c. 1066 to c. 1530, drawing upon both primary sources and a wide range of secondary literature. After a discussion of the family in theory and law from late classical times, the book traces the development of the family in this period by following a "life-cycle" approach, from marriage, through childbirth, to the dissolution of marriage by death or separation.
The aim of this lavishly illustrated book is to provide an in-depth study of the many medieval peasant houses still standing in Midland villages, and of their historical context. In particular, the combination of tree-ring and radiocarbon dating, detailed architectural study and documentary research illuminates both their nature and their status. The results are brought together to provide a new and detailed view of the medieval peasant house, resolving the contradiction between the archaeological and architectural evidence, and illustrating how its social organisation developed in the period before we have extensive documentary evidence for the use of space within the house. Nat Alcock and Dan Miles' work on Medieval Peasant Houses in Midland England has been nominated for the 2014 Current Archaeology Research Project of the Year.
From bestselling historians Frances and Joseph Gies, authors of the classic "Medieval Life" series, comes this compelling, lucid, and highly readable account of the family unit as it evolved throughout the Medieval period--reissued for the first time in decades. "Some particular books that I found useful for Game of Thrones and its sequels deserve mention. Life in a Medieval Castle and Life in a Medieval City, both by Joseph and Frances Gies." --George R. R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones Throughout history, the significance of the family--the basic social unit--has been vital. In Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies trace the development of marriage and the family from the medieval era to early modern times. It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian church to forge new concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century, the Gies follow the development--sometimes gradual, at other times revolutionary--of significant components in the history of the family including: The basic functions of the family as a production unit, as well as its religious, social, judicial, and educational roles. The shift of marriage from private arrangement between families to public ceremony between individuals, and the adjustments in dowry, bride-price, and counter-dowry. The development of consanguinity rules and incest taboos in church law and lay custom. The peasant family in its varying condition of being free or unfree, poor, middling, or rich. The aristocratic estate, the problem of the younger son, and the disinheritance of daughters. The Black Death and its long-term effects on the family. Sex attitudes and customs: the effects of variations in age of men and women at marriage. The changing physical environment of noble, peasant, and urban families. Arrangements by families for old age and retirement. Expertly researched, master historians Frances and Joseph Gies--whose books were used by George R.R. Martin in his research for Game of Thrones--paint a compelling, detailed portrait of family life and social customs in one of the most riveting eras in history.