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.
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