"Those of my blood" : constructing noble families in medieval Francia / Constance Brittain Bouchard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bouchard, Constance Brittain.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nobility--France--History--To 1500.

Nobility.

Nobility--France--Genealogy.

Knights and knighthood--France--History--To 1500.

Knights and knighthood.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 248 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

For those who ruled medieval society, the family was the crucial social unit, made up of those from whom property and authority were inherited and those to whom it passed. One's kin could be one's closest political and military allies or one's fiercest enemies. While the general term used to describe family members was consanguinei mei, "those of my blood," not all of those relations-parents, siblings, children, distant cousins, maternal relatives, paternal ancestors, and so on-counted as true family in any given time, place, or circumstance. In the early and high Middle Ages, the "family" was a very different group than it is in modern society, and the ways in which medieval men and women conceptualized and structured the family unit changed markedly over time. Focusing on the Frankish realm between the eighth and twelfth centuries, Constance Brittain Bouchard outlines the operative definitions of "family" in this period when there existed various and flexible ways by which individuals were or were not incorporated into the family group. Even in medieval patriarchal society, women of the aristocracy, who were considered outsiders by their husbands and their husbands' siblings and elders, were never completely marginalized and paradoxically represented the very essence of "family" to their male children. Bouchard also engages in the ongoing scholarly debate about the nobility around the year 1000, arguing that there was no clear point of transition from amorphous family units to agnatically structured kindred. Instead, she points out that great noble families always privileged the male line of descent, even if most did not establish father-son inheritance until the eleventh or twelfth century. Those of My Blood clarifies the complex meanings of medieval family structure and family consciousness and shows the many ways in which negotiations of power within the noble family can help explain early medieval politics.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

ONE. Introduction

TWO. The Origins of the French Nobility

THREE. Consanguinity and Noble Marriages

FOUR. Family Structure and Family Consciousness in the Ninth Through Eleventh Centuries

FIVE. The Bosonids, Rising to Power in the Late Carolingian Age

SIX. Patterns of Women's Names in Royal Lineages

SEVEN. The Migration of Women's Names in the Upper Nobility

EIGHT. Genealogy and Politics: The Counts of Autun and Countess Adelaide of Chalon

NINE. Twelfth-Century Family Structures

TEN. Conclusions: Family Structure and the Transformations of the Year 1000

Appendix A: The Problem of the Three Bernards and the Dukes of Aquitaine

Appendix B: The Bosonids and the Family of Manasses

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-244) and index.

ISBN:

1-283-21148-3

9786613211484

0-8122-0140-X

0-585-43619-3

OCLC:

51322040