Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History)

By David Herlihy

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067456376X
• ISBN13: 9780674563766
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview, but a bit narrow

Herlihy has done a masterful job of detaling the daily life of most Europeans during the middle ages, exploring gender roles and the various "chores" a household had to tend to as the seasons changed. It provides an outstanding overview of the complex and labor intensive work of survival during this period of time. However, I found it a bit narrow in terms of the time period it covered. The "middle ages" last over 1000 years - from around 500 AD (the "early middle ages") to the "late middle ages" (ending around 1450). In the course of such a long period of time, even in the middle ages, tasks, roles and habits change. This is not fully addressed, as the majority of the book discusses households in the "high" (800 - 1200) middle ages. Nonetheless, an excellent introduction to the subject.