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Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London

Author : Shannon McSheffrey
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812203976
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London by : Shannon McSheffrey

Download or read book Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London written by Shannon McSheffrey and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded honorable mention for the 2007 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize sponsored by the Canadian Historical Association How were marital and sexual relationships woven into the fabric of late medieval society, and what form did these relationships take? Using extensive documentary evidence from both the ecclesiastical court system and the records of city and royal government, as well as advice manuals, chronicles, moral tales, and liturgical texts, Shannon McSheffrey focuses her study on England's largest city in the second half of the fifteenth century. Marriage was a religious union—one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and imbued with deep spiritual significance—but the marital unit of husband and wife was also the fundamental domestic, social, political, and economic unit of medieval society. As such, marriage created political alliances at all levels, from the arena of international politics to local neighborhoods. Sexual relationships outside marriage were even more complicated. McSheffrey notes that medieval Londoners saw them as variously attributable to female seduction or to male lustfulness, as irrelevant or deeply damaging to society and to the body politic, as economically productive or wasteful of resources. Yet, like marriage, sexual relationships were also subject to control and influence from parents, relatives, neighbors, civic officials, parish priests, and ecclesiastical judges. Although by medieval canon law a marriage was irrevocable from the moment a man and a woman exchanged vows of consent before two witnesses, in practice marriage was usually a socially complicated process involving many people. McSheffrey looks more broadly at sex, governance, and civic morality to show how medieval patriarchy extended a far wider reach than a father's governance over his biological offspring. By focusing on a particular time and place, she not only elucidates the culture of England's metropolitan center but also contributes generally to our understanding of the social mechanisms through which premodern European people negotiated their lives.

Love & Marriage in Late Medieval London

Author :
Publisher : Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN 13 : 1580445144
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Love & Marriage in Late Medieval London by :

Download or read book Love & Marriage in Late Medieval London written by and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 1995-05-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depositions (or testimony) in marriage cases brought before fifteenth-century English church courts reveal the attitudes and feelings of medieval people towards the marital bond.

Ceremony and Civility

Author : Barbara A. Hanawalt
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780190490409
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Ceremony and Civility by : Barbara A. Hanawalt

Download or read book Ceremony and Civility written by Barbara A. Hanawalt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2017 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ceremony and Civility, Barbara Hanawalt shows how, in the late Middle Ages, London's elected officials and elites used ceremony and ritual to establish their legitimacy and power. These civic ceremonies helped delineate the relationship between London's mayors and the crown, but alsobetween denizens and their government, between gild wardens and their members, between masters and apprentices, and between parishioners and their churches. London, like all premodern cities, had a largely immigrant population - only a small proportion of the inhabitants were citizens - and the newly arrived needed to be taught the civic culture of the city in order for that city to function peacefully. Ritual and ceremony played key roles in thisacculturation process. In a society in which hierarchical authority was most commonly determined by inheritance of title and office, or sanctified by ordination, civic officials who had been elected to their posts relied on rituals to cement their authority, power, and dominance. Since the typicalterm of elected office was a year, elections and inaugurations had to be very public and visually distinct in order to quickly communicate with the masses: the robes of office needed to distinguish the officers so that everyone would know who they were. The result was a colorful civic pageantry. Newcomers themselves found their places within this structure in various ways. Apprentices entering the city to take up a trade were educated in civic culture by their masters. Gilds similarly used rituals, oath swearing, and distinctive livery to mark their members' belonging. But these publicshows of belonging and orderly civic life also had a dark side. Those who rebelled against authority and broke the civic ordinances were made spectacles through ritual humiliations and public parades through the streets so that others could take heed of these offenders of the law. At the parishlevel, and even at the level of the street, civic behavior was taught through example, through proclamations, and even through performances, like ballads.An accessible look at late medieval London through the lens of civic ceremonies and dispute resolution, Ceremony and Civility synthesizes archival research in London with existing scholarship to show how newcomers in an ever-shifting population were enculturated into premodern London.

Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne

Author : Sara McDougall
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812206541
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne by : Sara McDougall

Download or read book Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne written by Sara McDougall and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The institution of marriage is commonly thought to have fallen into crisis in late medieval northern France. While prior scholarship has identified the pervasiveness of clandestine marriage as the cause, Sara McDougall contends that the pressure came overwhelmingly from the prevalence of remarriage in violation of the Christian ban on divorce, a practice we might call "bigamy." Throughout the fifteenth century in Christian Europe, husbands and wives married to absent or distant spouses found new spouses to wed. In the church courts of northern France, many of the individuals so married were criminally prosecuted. In Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne, McDougall traces the history of this conflict in the diocese of Troyes and places it in the larger context of Christian theology and culture. Multiple marriage was both inevitable and repugnant in a Christian world that forbade divorce and associated bigamy with the unchristian practices of Islam or Judaism. The prevalence of bigamy might seem to suggest a failure of Christianization in late medieval northern France, but careful study of the sources shows otherwise: Clergy and laity alike valued marriage highly. Indeed, some members of the laity placed such a high value on the institution that they were willing to risk criminal punishment by entering into illegal remarriage. The risk was great: the Bishop of Troyes's judicial court prosecuted bigamy with unprecedented severity, although this prosecution broke down along gender lines. The court treated male bigamy, and only male bigamy, as a grave crime, while female bigamy was almost completely excluded from harsh punishment. As this suggests, the Church was primarily concerned with imposing a high standard on men as heads of Christian households, responsible for their own behavior and also that of their wives.

Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London

Author : Katherine L. French
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812299531
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London by : Katherine L. French

Download or read book Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London written by Katherine L. French and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death that arrived in the spring of 1348 eventually killed nearly half of England's population. In its long aftermath, wages in London rose in response to labor shortages, many survivors moved into larger quarters in the depopulated city, and people in general spent more money on food, clothing, and household furnishings than they had before. Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London looks at how this increased consumption reconfigured long-held gender roles and changed the domestic lives of London's merchants and artisans for years to come. Grounding her analysis in both the study of surviving household artifacts and extensive archival research, Katherine L. French examines the accommodations that Londoners made to their bigger houses and the increasing number of possessions these contained. The changes in material circumstance reshaped domestic hierarchies and produced new routines and expectations. Recognizing that the greater number of possessions required a different kind of management and care, French puts housework and gender at the center of her study. Historically, the task of managing bodies and things and the dirt and chaos they create has been unproblematically defined as women's work. Housework, however, is neither timeless nor ahistorical, and French traces a major shift in women's household responsibilities to the arrival and gendering of new possessions and the creation of new household spaces in the decades after the plague.

Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

Author : Daniel Woolf
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230597521
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England by : Daniel Woolf

Download or read book Local Identities in Late Medieval and Early Modern England written by Daniel Woolf and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the path-breaking work of Robert Tittler, the authors explore late Medieval and Early Modern community and identity across England. They examine the decline of neighbourliness, the politics of market towns, clerical status, charity, crime, and ways in which overlapping communities of court and country, London and Lancashire, relate.

Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England

Author : Hollie L. S. Morgan
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1903153719
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England by : Hollie L. S. Morgan

Download or read book Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England written by Hollie L. S. Morgan and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full-length interdisciplinary study of the effect of these everyday surroundings on literature, culture and the collective consciousness of the late middle ages.

The Wealth of Wives

Author : Barbara A. Hanawalt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190295228
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Wealth of Wives by : Barbara A. Hanawalt

Download or read book The Wealth of Wives written by Barbara A. Hanawalt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London became an international center for import and export trade in the late Middle Ages. The export of wool, the development of luxury crafts and the redistribution of goods from the continent made London one of the leading commercial cities of Europe. While capital for these ventures came from a variety of sources, the recirculation of wealth through London women was important in providing both material and social capital for the growth of London's economy. A shrewd Venetian visiting England around 1500 commented about the concentration of wealth and property in women's hands. He reported that London law divided a testator's property three ways allowing a third to the wife for her life use, a third for immediate inheritance of the heirs, and a third for burial and the benefit of the testator's soul. Women inherited equally with men and widows had custody of the wealth of minor children. In a society in which marriage was assumed to be a natural state for women, London women married and remarried. Their wealth followed them in their marriages and was it was administered by subsequent husbands. This study, based on extensive use of primary source materials, shows that London's economic growth was in part due to the substantial wealth that women transmitted through marriage. The Italian visitor observed that London men, unlike Venetians, did not seek to establish long patrilineages discouraging women to remarry, but instead preferred to recirculate wealth through women. London's social structure, therefore, was horizontal, spreading wealth among guilds rather than lineages. The liquidity of wealth was important to a growing commercial society and women brought not only wealth but social prestige and trade skills as well into their marriages. But marriage was not the only economic activity of women. London law permitted women to trade in their own right as femmes soles and a number of women, many of them immigrants from the countryside, served as wage laborers. But London's archives confirm women's chief economic impact was felt in the capital and skill they brought with them to marriages, rather than their profits as independent traders or wage laborers.

Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

Author : Susan Broomhall
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137531169
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (375 download)

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Book Synopsis Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England by : Susan Broomhall

Download or read book Authority, Gender and Emotions in Late Medieval and Early Modern England written by Susan Broomhall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores how situations of authority, governance, and influence were practised through both gender ideologies and affective performances in medieval and early modern England. Authority is inherently relational it must be asserted over someone who allows or is forced to accept this dominance. The capacity to exercise authority is therefore a social and cultural act, one that is shaped by social identities such as gender and by social practices that include emotions. The contributions in this volume, exploring case studies of women and men's letter-writing, political and ecclesiastical governance, household rule, exercise of law and order, and creative agency, investigate how gender and emotions shaped the ways different individuals could assert or maintain authority, or indeed disrupt or provide alternatives to conventional practices of authority.

The Fires of Lust

Author : Katherine Harvey
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789144884
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fires of Lust by : Katherine Harvey

Download or read book The Fires of Lust written by Katherine Harvey and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.

Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540

Author : Amy Appleford
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812246691
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540 by : Amy Appleford

Download or read book Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540 written by Amy Appleford and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as her focus a body of writings in poetic, didactic, and legal modes that circulated in England's capital between the 1380s—just a generation after the Black Death—and the first decade of the English reformation in the 1530s, Amy Appleford offers the first full-length study of the Middle English "art of dying" (ars moriendi). An educated awareness of death and mortality was a vital aspect of medieval civic culture, she contends, critical not only to the shaping of single lives and the management of families and households but also to the practices of cultural memory, the building of institutions, and the good government of the city itself. In fifteenth-century London in particular, where an increasingly laicized reformist religiosity coexisted with an ambitious program of urban renewal, cultivating a sophisticated attitude toward death was understood as essential to good living in the widest sense. The virtuous ordering of self, household, and city rested on a proper attitude toward mortality on the part both of the ruled and of their secular and religious rulers. The intricacies of keeping death constantly in mind informed not only the religious prose of the period, but also literary and visual arts. In London's version of the famous image-text known as the Dance of Death, Thomas Hoccleve's poetic collection The Series, and the early sixteenth-century prose treatises of Tudor writers Richard Whitford, Thomas Lupset, and Thomas More, death is understood as an explicitly generative force, one capable (if properly managed) of providing vital personal, social, and literary opportunities.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age

Author : Joanne M. Ferraro
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135017971X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age by : Joanne M. Ferraro

Download or read book A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age written by Joanne M. Ferraro and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage in Europe became a central pillar of society during the medieval period. Theologians, lawyers, and secular and church leaders agreed on a unique outline of the institution and its legal framework, the essential features of which remained in force until the 1980s. The medieval Western European definition of marriage was unique: before the legal consequences of marriage came into being, the parties had to promise to engage in sexual union only with one partner and to remain in the marriage until one of the parties died. This requirement had profound implications for inheritance rules and for the organization of the family economy; it was explained and justified in a multitude of theological discussions and legal decisions across all faiths on the European continent. Normative texts, built on the foundations of the scriptures of several religious traditions, provided an impressive intellectual framework around marriage. In addition, developments in iconography, including sculpture and painting, projected the dominant model of marriage, while social, demographic and cultural changes encouraged its adoption. This volume traces the medieval discussion of marriage in practice, law, theology and iconography. It provides an examination of the wider political and economic context of marriage and offers an overview of the ebb and flow of society's ideas about how expressions of human sexuality fit within the confines of a clearly defined social structure and ideology. A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage.

The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe

Author : Judith M. Bennett
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199582173
Total Pages : 641 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe by : Judith M. Bennett

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe written by Judith M. Bennett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive overview of the gender rules encountered in Europe in the period between approximately 500 and 1500 C.E.

The Good Women of the Parish

Author : Katherine L. French
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812201965
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Good Women of the Parish by : Katherine L. French

Download or read book The Good Women of the Parish written by Katherine L. French and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was immense social and economic upheaval between the Black Death and the English Reformation, and contemporary writers often blamed this upheaval on immorality, singling out women's behavior for particular censure. Late medieval moral treatises and sermons increasingly connected good behavior for women with Christianity, and their failure to conform to sin. Katherine L. French argues, however, that medieval laywomen both coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and responsibilities. Scholarship on medieval women's religious experiences has focused primarily on elite women, nuns, and mystics who either were literate enough to leave written records of their religious ideas and behavior or had access to literate men who did this for them. Most women, however, were not literate, were not members of religious orders, and did not have private confessors. As The Good Women of the Parish shows, the great majority of women practiced their religion in a parish church. By looking at women's contributions to parish maintenance, the ways they shaped the liturgy and church seating arrangements, and their increasing opportunities for collective action in all-women's groups, the book argues that gendered behavior was central to parish life and that women's parish activities gave them increasing visibility and even, on occasion, authority. In the face of demands for silence, modesty, and passivity, women of every social status used religious practices as an important source of self-expression, creativity, and agency.

The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England

Author : Derek G. Neal
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226569594
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England by : Derek G. Neal

Download or read book The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England written by Derek G. Neal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to be a man in medieval England? Most would answer this question by alluding to the power and status men enjoyed in a patriarchal society, or they might refer to iconic images of chivalrous knights. While these popular ideas do have their roots in the history of the aristocracy, the experience of ordinary men was far more complicated. Marshalling a wide array of colorful evidence—including legal records, letters, medical sources, and the literature of the period—Derek G. Neal here plumbs the social and cultural significance of masculinity during the generations born between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation. He discovers that social relations between men, founded on the ideals of honesty and self-restraint, were at least as important as their domination and control of women in defining their identities. By carefully exploring the social, physical, and psychological aspects of masculinity, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England offers a uniquely comprehensive account of the exterior and interior lives of medieval men.

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World

Author : Merry E Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429535619
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (295 download)

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Book Synopsis Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World by : Merry E Wiesner-Hanks

Download or read book Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World written by Merry E Wiesner-Hanks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World surveys the ways in which people from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson used Christian ideas and institutions to regulate and shape sexual norms and conduct, and examines the impact of their efforts. Global in scope and geographic in organization, the book contains chapters on Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, and North America. It explores key topics, including marriage and divorce, fornication and illegitimacy, clerical sexuality, same-sex relations, witchcraft and love magic, moral crimes, and interracial relationships. The book sets its findings within the context of many historical fields, including the history of gender and sexuality, and of colonialism and race. Each chapter in this third edition has been updated to reflect new scholarship, particularly on the actual lived experience of people around the world. This has resulted in expanded coverage of nearly every issue, including notions of the body and of honor, gendered religious symbols, religious and racial intermarriage, sexual and gender fluidity, the process of conversion, the interweaving of racial identity and religious ideologies, and the role of Indigenous and enslaved people in shaping Christian traditions and practices. It is ideal for students of the history of sexuality, early modern Christianity, and early modern gender.

Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300

Author : Elisabeth van Houts
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192519743
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 by : Elisabeth van Houts

Download or read book Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 written by Elisabeth van Houts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe, c. 900-1300. The study focusses on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage, breaking it into three parts: Getting Married - the process of getting married and wedding celebrations; Married Life - the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage; and Alternative Living - which explores concubinage and polygyny, as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. In this volume, van Houts deals with four central themes. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member's freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.