The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe
Around 300 A.D. European patterns of marriage and kinship were turned on their head. What had previously been the norm - marriage to close kin - became the new taboo. The same applied to adoption, the obligation of a man to marry his brother's widow and a number of other central practices. With these changes Christian Europe broke radically from its own past and established practices which diverged markedly from those of the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. In this highly original and far-reaching work Jack Goody argues that from the fourth century there developed in the northern Mediterranean a distinctive but not undifferentiated kinship system, whose growth can be attributed to the role of the Church in acquiring property formerly held by domestic groups. He suggests that the early Church, faced with the need to provide for people who had left their kin to devote themselves to the life of the Church, regulated the rules of marriage so that wealth could be channelled away from the family and into the Church. Thus the Church became an 'interitor', acquiring vast tracts of property through the alienation of familial rights. At the same time, the structure of domestic life was changed dramatically, the Church placing more emphasis on individual wishes, on conjugality, and on spiritual rather than natural kinship. Tracing the consequences of this change through to the present day, Jack Goody challenges some fundamental assumptions about the making of western society, and provides an alternative focus for future study of the European family, kinship structures and marriage patterns. The questions he raises will provoke much interest and discussion amongst anthropologists, sociologists and historians.
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Contents
Perspectives
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1 |
Two sides to the Mediterranean
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6 |
Change in the German lands
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34 |
Cousins and widows adoptees and concubines
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48 |
From sect to Church
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83 |
Church land and family in the West
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103 |
Reformation and reform
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157 |
The hidden economy of kinship
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183 |
The spiritual and the natural
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194 |
clans lineages and lignages
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222 |
2 From brideprice to dowry?
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240 |
3Bilaterality and the development of English kin terminology
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262 |
279 | |
Glossary
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295 |
296 | |
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Common terms and phrases
adoption affines Africa agnatic alienation Anglo-Saxon Bede bilateral bishops bride brideprice bridewealth brother canon canon law Cathars celibacy Christian Church clan clerical celibacy close marriage concubinage conjugal consanguinity consent continued cousin cousin marriage daughter death descent groups devolution direct dowry divorce dower Duby earlier early ecclesiastical elementary family eleventh century endowment England English Europe European father filiation Flandrin France German gift godparents Goody Guichard heir husband important incest inheritance Isidore of Seville kin groups kind kindred King land later levirate Leyser lignage lineage linked male marry medieval Mediterranean monasteries morgengabe mother organisation parents patrilineal patterns payment period plural marriage polygyny Pope practice priests problem prohibited degrees prohibitions on marriage Reformation religious remarriage riage Roman law sister social societies spiritual kinship spouse strategies of heirship terminology tion transfer unilineal unilineal descent union Visigothic wealth Western widow wife wife's woman women