Family Life in The Middle Ages

241 Pages·2007·3.75 MB·english

by  Linda E. Mitchell

FAMILY LIFE IN

THE MIDDLE

AGES
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FAMILY LIFE IN

THE MIDDLE

AGES
LINDA E. MITCHELL
Family Life through History

GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut (cid:129) London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mitchell, Linda Elizabeth.
Family life in the Middle Ages / Linda E. Mitchell.
p. cm. — (Family life through history, ISSN 1558–6286)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33630–0 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–313–33630–X (alk. paper)
1. Family — History — To 1500. 2. Social history — Medieval, 500–1500.
3. Civilization, Medieval. I. Title.
HQ513.M45 2007
306.8509’02 — dc22 2007018268
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2007 by Linda E. Mitchell
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007018268
ISBN-13: 978–0-313–33630–0
ISBN-10: 0–313–33630-X
ISSN: 1558–6286
First published in 2007
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction: Investigating the Medieval Family vii
Section I: Defining the Family in the Middle Ages 1
1. The Late Roman Family and Transition to
the Middle Ages 3
2. The Family in the Medieval West 25
3. The Family in the Byzantine East 47
4. The Family in the Islamic World 63
5. The Jewish Family in the Middle Ages 79
Section II: The Environment of the Family in the Middle Ages 93
6. The Physical Environment of the Medieval Family 95
7. Grooms and Brides, Husbands and Wives,
Fathers and Mothers 125
8. Children and the Family 151
9. Religion and the Family 171
10. Families, Labor, and the Laboring Family 193
vi Contents
11. The Family as Rhetorical Device: Traditional,
Transitional, and Non-traditional Families 211
Glossary 225
Bibliography and Recommended Further Reading 229
Index 235
Introduction: Investigating
the Medieval Family
The family in the Middle Ages is a large and complex topic. The medieval
world was multi-ethnic, included many different kinds of cultures, and
occupied a broad range of geographical regions, from the Mediterranean
to the Baltic Seas, and from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the Central
Asian Mongolian Khanate of the Golden Horn. Three cultures dominated
the medieval world: the Roman-Germanic culture of Western Europe,
the Byzantine Empire of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, and the
Muslim world of the southern Mediterranean, Spain, and central Asia. In
addition, a fourth culture, that of medieval Jews, operated symbiotically
with these other three cultures, always existing in tandem with them, but
often quite separate as to customs and practices. All four cultures of the
medieval world will be considered in this volume.
How Historians Look at the Medieval Family
U ntil quite recently—the last fifty years—medieval historians rarely
discussed the experiences of medieval families as a topic in its own right.
Family history appeared only in the context of political events, such as
the political maneuvering of royal dynasties in western Europe or the
Byzantine Empire, or in discussions of medieval legal systems in the
context of marriage and inheritance law. Moreover, when families were
discussed at all, the only ones mentioned tended to come from the most
elite social classes: the aristocracy and the families of kings, queens, and
viii Introduction
emperors. The urban middle classes and the rural and urban poor were
scarcely considered as appropriate subjects for study.
T wo elements changed historians’ attitudes about studying the medi-
eval family. Firstly, some historians began to use approaches found in
the study of anthropology to develop ways of looking at families in the
pre-modern past. This anthropological approach encouraged historians
to look at families as culturally determined systems, rather than merely
as collections of related people. If family structure is affected by the
larger culture, then the ways in which families operate and interact are
worthy of study. Anthropological approaches also provided historians
with methods that could be used fruitfully when studying the medieval
family. Families could be discussed as centers of production, as systems
for defining social roles, as structures that mirror the larger culture in
which the family is embedded. Armed with these innovative methods
and approaches, historians began to find family life in the Middle Ages
more interesting and worthy of being studied.
The second element that changed attitudes about studying the medieval
family was the expansion of archaeology into the uncovering and analysis
of medieval remains. For nearly two centuries, the focus of archaeologists
was entirely on the ancient world, especially Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Medieval remains were uninteresting to archaeologists who studied the
classical world. They merely got in the way of excavations of ancient sites.
Ancient artifacts, such as those found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen,
were glamorous. The treasures of classical Athens and of the so-called
glorious Roman Empire were considered the artifacts of superior civiliza-
tions. Medieval artifacts were considered the leftovers of an inferior civi-
lization. As a result, a huge amount of material remains from the Middle
Ages have disappeared under the bulldozers of modern cities and the
earth scrapers of nineteenth-century archaeologists in search of ancient
treasures.
A s interest in the social culture of the Middle Ages began to grow,
especially after World War II, so too did interest in preserving the physical
remains of the medieval past. Local historical societies in European and
Middle Eastern countries began to raise funds to preserve crumbling cas-
tles. Archaeologists began to use the aerial reconnaissance photographs
taken during the war to identify sites of lost and forgotten castles, the
shape of medieval agricultural fields, and evidence of medieval peasant
villages. Dramatic discoveries of treasure hoards, such as the 1939 dis-
covery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, which contained fabulous artifacts
as well as the body of a seventh-century king of the Anglo-Saxon king-
dom of East Anglia, made medieval archaeology more glamorous. More
recently, the unearthing of the so-called bog men in Ireland, Sweden,
and England—ancient and medieval people whose bodies are preserved
because they fell or were buried in peat bogs, which are so dense that air
cannot penetrate to the lower layers—has given archaeologists incredible
Introduction ix
opportunities to investigate everything from what medieval people ate to
the chemicals they used to dye cloth and tan leather.
T hus, especially in the last fifty years or so, the lives of common people
in the Middle Ages have become much more interesting to historians of
the period. This new interest, combined with new ways of looking at writ-
ten sources—such as the use of statistical evidence to develop analysis and
form conclusions—has led to a burgeoning in the field of medieval family
history, especially for western Europe. Interest in families in the Islamic
and Byzantine cultures of the Middle Ages, as well as Jewish families, has
lagged considerably behind research on western European families, but
historians are beginning to address these populations as well.
Sources for the History of the Medieval Family
T he sources for the history of the family vary widely as to time, level of
detail, and availability. Although much information has come to light for
the medieval west by picking through legal records, transfers of property
(sometimes by means of wills and testaments), and economic transac-
tions, similar work is lacking for the Byzantine and Islamic regions. As a
result, our understanding of family life in the Middle Ages is both incom-
plete and fragmented. We know, for example, a lot about peasant families
in late medieval England, but almost nothing about Russian peasant
families in the same era.
S ince the historian’s craft focuses on mining these kinds of primary
sources, the ways in which such records are interpreted has also changed
over the years. No longer do historians assume, as the Victorian-era ones
did, that medieval families were just like ones in the nineteenth century.
They recognize that family structures are often fluid, especially in the
West, and that changing economic circumstances, the rise of urban com-
munities, and changing social statuses can all alter the family dynamic.
D ifferent kinds of sources provide different windows on the medieval
family. Religious texts, such as saints’ lives, depictions of the Holy Family,
popular selections from the Bible, sermons, and similar texts from the
Islamic and Jewish cultures such as the Quran and the body of interpre-
tive work connected to it, and the body of rabbinic literature known as
responsas present families as part of the socio-religious system, one that
reinforces the ideals of the religious perspective. Occasionally, families are
seen as operating contrary to the religious ideal, such as in the stories in
Christian texts of female saints whose families were resistant to their reli-
gious vocations, since such a vocation removed these daughters from the
family’s orbit of appropriate marriage partners. Legal texts, such as the
extensive records of the courts of common law in England and the docu-
ments of the Cairo geniza ( the storage warehouse used by medieval Jews
to house damaged Torah scrolls and family archives, which was discov-
ered in a suburb of Old Cairo in the late nineteenth century), emphasize