Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages

Frances Gies

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780060914684
• eBook ISBN: 9780062016737
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

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.

Notes

Chapter 1. Historians Discover the Family

1. Donald R. Bender, “A Refinement of the Concept of Household: Families, Co-Residence, and Domestic Function,” American Anthropologist 69 (1967), pp. 495–504.

2. Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Karla Oosterveen and Manfred Hörzinger, Chicago, 1982, pp. 6–7.

3. Frédéric Le Play, L’Organisation de la famille selon le vrai modèle signalé par l’histoire de toutes les races et tous les temps, Paris, 1871.

4. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick, London, 1962.

5. Peter Laslett and Richard Wall, eds., Household and Family in Past Time, Cambridge, 1972; Peter Laslett, “The Comparative History of Household and Family,” Journal of Social History 4 (1970), pp. 75–87; Peter Laslett, “La Famille et le ménage: approches historiques,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 27 (1972), pp. 847–872; E. A. Hammell and Peter Laslett, “Comparing Household Structure over Time and Between Cultures,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16 (1974), pp. 73–109.

6. Mitterauer and Sieder, The European Family; Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household, and Sexuality, trans. Richard Southern, Cambridge, 1979; Robert Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven, eds., Family and Sexuality in French History, Philadelphia, 1980.

7. David Herlihy, Medieval Households, Cambridge, Mass., 1985.

8. Georges Duby and Jacques le Goff, eds., Famille et parenté dans l’Occident mediéval, Rome, 1977.

9. Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Foster, Baltimore, 1978; and The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray, New York, 1983.

10. Heath Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300, Cambridge, 1985; Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Chicago, 1985; Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the impact of 1066, Bloomington, Ind., 1984; Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900, Philadelphia, 1981; Barbara Kenner, ed., The Women of England from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present, Hamden, Conn., 1979; Frances and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages, New York, 1978.

11. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427, New Haven, 1985.

12. David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City: Women, Children, and the Family in Fourteenth-Century Ghent, Lincoln, Nebr., 1985.

13. Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, Oxford, 1986.

14. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, New York, 1977.

15. Laslett, “Comparative History of Household and Family.”

16. Robert Wheaton, “Family and Kinship in Western Europe: The Problem of the Joint Family Household,” journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 (1975), pp. 601–628. Also Tamara K. Hareven, “The Family as Process: The Historical Study of the Family Cycle,” Journal of Social History 7 (1974), pp. 322–329.

17. Marion J. Levy, Jr., “Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure,” in Ansley J. Coale et al., eds., Aspects of the Analysis of Family Structure, Princeton...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• I. Origins
• II. The Early Middle Ages
• III. The High Middle Ages
• IV. The Late Middle Ages
• V. The End of the Middle Ages
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index
• P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
• Also by Frances Gies
• Copyright
• Copyright Acknowledgments
• About the Publisher