Marriage and the family in the Middle ages

Book

Marriage and the family in the Middle ages / Frances and Joseph Gies.

Gies, Frances, (author.). Gies, Joseph, (author.).

Summary:

History of the development of marriage and the family in the Middle Ages.

Traces the development of marriage and the family from the Middle Ages to the early modern era. It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian Church to forge new family concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century, the book follows the development of significant elements 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, and its surrender of one role after another to the growing power of State and Church; The shift of marriage from private arrangement between families to public ceremony between individuals, and the adjustments among dowry, bride-price, and counter-dowry to the advantage of one or another of the parties and their families; The development of consanguinity rules and incest taboos in Church Law and lay custom and their effects on marriage and the dissolution of marriage; -- Kindred lineage: the changing role of the two kinds of supra-family groupings, one contemporary, one ancestral; The peasant family in its varying conditions of free and unfree, poor, middling, and rich. It also discusses 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 of women at marriage; The changing physical environment of noble, peasant, and urban families; and Arrangements by families for old age and retirement. -- Publisher description

Record details

ISBN: 0060157917
ISBN: 9780060157913
ISBN: 0060914688
ISBN: 9780060914684
Physical Description: viii, 372 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Harper & Row, [1987]
Copyright: ©1987

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-358) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: I. Origins : -- Historians discover the family -- Roots: Roman, German, Christian -- II. The early Middle Ages : -- The European family: 500-700 -- The Carolingian age -- Anglo-Saxon England: marriage and the family in the year 1000 -- III. The high Middle Ages : -- The family revolution of the eleventh century -- The twelfth century: new family models -- Peasants before the Black Death: 1200-1347 -- The aristocratic lineage: perils of primogeniture -- Children in the high Middle Ages: marriage and the family in the year 1300 -- IV. The late Middle Ages : -- The impact of the Black Death -- The late Medieval peasant family: 1350-1500 -- A family of the English landed gentry -- A merchant's family in fifteenth-century Florence: marriage and the family after the Black Death -- V. The end of the Middle Ages : -- Legacy.