HIST 357 - Marriage and Family in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

“The family is the true source and origin of all commonwealths,” the sixteenth-century French theorist Jean Bodin famously observed. This, in turn, made marriage the “primary foundation” of society and states, as another jurist put it. Yet despite their fundamental importance, premodern European marriage and family were fraught with tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions. Was marriage primarily a sacrament regulated by the Church or a civil contract governed by secular authorities? Did it result from the choices of individuals or agreements made by parents and kin? Were families defined by conjugal households (husbands, wives, and children) or shared descent from a common (usually male) ancestor? Were marital unions indissoluble or could spouses be separated, and if so under what circumstances? How did Christian European conceptions of marriage operate in colonial and imperial settings? Drawing on a range of religious, legal, literary, political, and other sources, this course will examine how Europeans continuously debated, contested, negotiated, and transformed the meanings of marriage and family across the medieval and early modern periods. In the process, we will consider related topics such as: the gendered nature of domestic authority and its limits; alternative visions of familial life (religious vocations, same-sex relationships), the construction of legitimacy and illegitimacy; the uses of marriage and family as political, social, and imperial metaphors; and changing ideas about the emotional and affective bonds between spouses as well as parents and children.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): HUM 110 or sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.