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Family Culture, Renaissance Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Barbara B. Diefendorf
Barbara B. Diefendorf*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

Born in 1960 with the publication of Philippe Ariès's L'enfant et la vie familiale, family history as we know it has been tremendously fertile. Although the succession is disputed, its progeny are legion. It is not my intention here to trace the complex genealogy of Ariès's descendants or to separate dutiful heirs from rebels who have renounced their patrimony. The family tree is too prolific, its internal divisions too complex. I hope rather to focus on two main themes in the history of the family, themes which seem to me particularly fruitful where our understanding of the Renaissance is concerned. The first theme involves the fundamental structures of family life— ties of kinship and patterns of residence. The second is marriage and the role of women in the family. In both cases, I am particularly interested in the cultural values represented by these structures and behaviors.

Type
From the 1987 National Conference
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 661 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1987

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References

1 Kuehn, , Emancipation, p. 162.Google Scholar

2 Medick, and Sabean, , Interest and Emotion, p. 11.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Herlihy, and Klapisch-Zuber, , Tuscans and their Families, p. 324 Google Scholar; Kuehn, , Emancipation, pp. 55–58 Google Scholar; Kent, , Household and Lineage, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

4 Goldthwaite, , Private Wealth, p. 261.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 262.

6 Ibid., p. 267.

7 Ibid., p. 274.

8 Goldthwaite, “The Florentine Palace.”

9 Kent, , Household and Lineage, pp. 23–34.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 99-108, 252-72.

11 Goldthwaite, , Private Wealth, pp. 37, 45, 53, 80-95Google Scholar: examples from the Strozzi family; but see also Starn, “Francesco Guicciardini and his Brothers,” pp. 409-44.

12 Kent, , Household and Lineage, p. 26.Google Scholar

13 Herlihy, and Klapisch-Zuber, , Tuscans and their Families, pp. 290-98.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 297 (fig. 10.5).

15 Ibid., p. 324.

16 Klapisch-Zuber, “Kin, Friends, and Neighbors.”

17 Davis, , A Venetian Family, p. 87.Google Scholar

18 Kuehn, , Emancipation, p. 68.Google Scholar

19 King, , Venetian Humanism, especially pp. 249-50, 288.Google Scholar For a view of the potential disorders concealed behind the patrician facade, see Ruggiero, , Violence, especially pp. 65–82 Google Scholar, and Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros.

20 Laslett, , Family Life, pp. 12–39 Google Scholar; on the plurarity of family structures, see Burguiere, “Pour une typologie.”

21 Macfarlane, , Marriage and Love, pp. 96–101.Google Scholar

22 Stone, , Family, Sex, and Marriage, p. 409.Google Scholar

23 Cressy, “Kinship and Kin Interaction,” pp. 40, 41, 44.

24 Ibid., pp. 44, 69.

25 Davis, “Reconstructing Individualism,” pp. 53, 54.

26 Weinstein, and Bell, , Saints and Society, pp. 67–70, 97.Google Scholar Bynum, , Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 218-27.Google Scholar

27 The term is borrowed from Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Greenblatt's interpretation of the process of self-definition in the Renaissance is, however, more individualistic than the one offered here.

28 Cressy, “Kinship and Kin Interaction,” p. 67. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families, pp. 324-25, qualify this view somewhat by pointing out that the patrilineal character of Florentine society is less apparent at lower social levels, where inheritance possibilities played a lesser role.

29 Chojnacki, “Kinship Ties,” p. 243.

30 Stone, , Family, Sex, and Marriage, p. 70.Google Scholar

31 Ibid.

32 See, for example, ibid., pp. 134-36.

33 Ingram, “Spousals Litigation,” p. 49; Macfarlane, , Marriage and Love, p. 124 Google Scholar; Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 74–79 Google Scholar, Houlbrooke, “The Making of Marriage.”

34 Elliott, “Single Women,” p. 86.

35 Hajnal, “European Marriage Patterns.”

36 Elliott, “Single Women,” p. 87. Cf. Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, p. 181 Google Scholar; Dewald, , Formation of a Provincial Nobility, p. 278.Google Scholar On the Tuscan pattern: Herlihy, and Klapisch-Zuber, , Tuscans and their Families, pp. 202-11Google Scholar on age at marriage, p. 204 on bias toward upper classes.

37 Gottlieb, “The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage,” pp. 69-70.

38 Nicholas, , Domestic Life, p. 55.Google Scholar

39 Ingram, “Spousals Litigation,” pp. 38-41, 53.

40 Macfarlane, , Marriage and Love, pp. 125-27.Google Scholar

41 Ozment, , When Fathers Ruled, pp. 25–44.Google Scholar See also Safley, , Let No Man Put Asunder, pp. 11–38 Google Scholar, on Basel, Constance, and Freiburg; Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 156-70Google Scholar, on France. For a rather different view of the relationship between seduction and marriage, see Ruggiero, , The Boundaries of Eros, pp. 28–44.Google Scholar

42 Burguière, “Le rituel du manage in France.”

43 Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias, or the Ousted Father.”

44 Ibid., p. 212.

45 Roper, “Going to Church and Street,” p. 101; see also Bossy, , Christianity in the West, pp. 20–23.Google Scholar

46 Davis, , A Venetian Family, p. 107.Google Scholar

47 Chojnacki, “Dowries and Kinsmen,” p. 576; also Chojnacki, “Patrician Women.”

48 Chojnacki, “Patrician Women,” pp. 193-201.

49 Klapisch-Zuber, “The Griselda Complex,” pp. 218, 217.

50 Ibid., p. 246.

51 Ibid., pp. 239-40.

52 Ibid., p. 216; see also Hughes, “From Brideprice to Dowry.” Cf. Goody, “Inheritance, Property, and Women.”

53 Kirshner and Molho, “The Dowry Fund,” p. 435; more generally on the Monte delle doti, see Kirshner, “Pursuing Honor.”

54 Klapisch-Zuber, “The Griselda Complex,” pp. 216-17n, points out that no study has been made to determine whether or not the dowries Florentine women received were in fact equal to the inheritance shares of their brothers.

55 Chojnacki, “Patrician Women,” p. 186.

56 See, for example, Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance,” p. 275. On the regional variations in French customary law, see Yver, Egalité entre héritiers, summarized in Le Roy Ladurie, “Family Structures and Inheritance Customs.”

57 Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 222-78Google Scholar; see also Diefendorf, “Widowhood and Remarriage,” pp. 383-84. Only two of the one hundred and eighty contracts used for this study involved the renunciation of future inheritances, and one of these renunciations was voided less than a year later. The right to return marriage portions and share in the parental succession was in fact written into the Paris customary laws as the norm when these laws were first codified in 1510; it seems to have been largely overlooked because historians have assumed that favoring sons was a popular family strategy.

58 Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, p. 188 Google Scholar; cf. Muchembled, “Famille, amour, et mariage“; Klapisch-Zuber, “The Name ‘Remade’ ” pp. 287, 291, 294-95.

59 Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 141-42, 208, 302-303.Google Scholar

60 Chojnacki, “Kinship Ties.”

61 Klapisch-Zuber, “Kin, Friends, and Neighbors,” p. 86.

62 Chojnacki, “Kinship Ties.”

63 Martines, “A Way of Looking at Women,” p. 17; Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 176-77.Google Scholar Cf. Ozment, , Maqdalena and Balthasar, pp. 70–78 Google Scholar, on the responsibilities of a merchant's wife in sixteenth-century Nuremberg; Nicholas, , Domestic Life, pp. 70–82 Google Scholar, on economic roles of women in fourteenth-century Ghent.

64 Wrightson, , English Society, p. 94 Google Scholar, expresses the opinion that decision-making “lay officially with the husband, but it was frequently based upon prior discussion between husband and wife. Effectively then, it was shared.”

65 Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 278-97Google Scholar; Diefendorf, “Widowhood and Remarriage.” Cf. Wyntjes, “Survivors and Status,” and Todd, “The Remarrying Widow.”

66 Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother,’” pp. 120-21.

67 Diefendorf, “Widowhood and Remarriage,” pp. 380-82.

68 Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother,’” p . 125.

69 Martines, “A Way of Looking at Women,” pp. 19-27.

70 Goldthwaite, , Private Wealth, pp. 77–85.Google Scholar

71 Starn, Contrary Commonwealth.

72 Bréjon, , André Tiraqueau, pp. 110-37Google Scholar; Ourliac, and Malafosse, , Droit privé, p. 147.Google Scholar

73 Bascou-Bance, “La condition des femmes,” p. 140, citing Coquille's Questions et reponsessur les Coutumes de France (1611).

74 Trexler, , Public Life in Renaissance Florence, pp. 161-72.Google Scholar

75 Martines, “A Way of Looking at Women,” p. 17.

76 As Starn has written of Florence, “the little community of the family traditionally mediated between the individual and the larger community, so much so that Florentine history is often the history of its great families.” “Francesco Guicciardini and his Brothers,” p. 409.

77 David Herlihy, for example, suggests that “the proclivity to violence so characteristic of the Tuscan cities seems to be related to certain distinctive features of both the urban family and urban society.” “Some Psychological Roots of Violence,” p. 152.

78 King, Venetian Humanism; Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors, especially pp. 214-19.

79 See Diefendorf, , Paris City Councillors, pp. 159-60Google Scholar, on Gargantua's lament; pp. 277-78 and 287-88 on Montaigne's advice on inheritance practices.