In recent years, medievalists have been revisiting and revising the conclusions of historians of earlier generations. In this micro-study of families in the Loire Valley from 100-1200, Livingstone (history, Wittenberg University) gives a fascinating portrait of family interactions through the generations. With many examples as well as comparisons with results from other regions, she also convincingly refutes several popular beliefs: that all families of this time followed primogeniture, that the maternal line had no importance, that women had no power or rights to inheritance and lastly, that families were constantly at war with each other. Instead she presents a much more complex order in which decisions of marriage and inheritance were mutable according to the personalities and needs within the family. Uncles did not always try to despoil the lands of their orphaned nieces and nephews. Fathers did not always favor the oldest son. Women had property rights and many held lordships. These are just a few of the facts that Livingstone found which go against stereotypes. After giving some background on the territory of the Loire, she introduces the reader to the families studied. She does not expect the reader to remember all the relations but inserts the genealogical information again when needed. This is an excellent, well-written contribution to the field. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth...
In Out of Love for My Kin, Amy Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She argues for a new conceptualization of aristocratic family life based on an ethos of inclusion. Inclusivity is evident in the care that medieval aristocrats showed toward their families by putting in place strategies, practices, and behaviors aimed at providing for a wide range of relatives. Indeed, this care—and in some cases outright affection—for family members is recorded in the documents themselves, as many a nobleman and woman made pious benefactions "out of love for my kin."
In a book made rich by evidence from charters—which provide details about life events including birth, death, marriage, and legal disputes over property—Livingstone reveals an aristocratic family dynamic that is quite different from the fictional or prescriptive views offered by literary depictions or ecclesiastical sources, or from later historiography. For example, she finds that there was no single monolithic mode of inheritance that privileged the few and that these families employed a variety of inheritance practices. Similarly, aristocratic women, long imagined to have been excluded from power, exerted a strong influence on family life, as Livingstone makes clear in her gender-conscious analysis of dowries, the age of men and women at marriage, lordship responsibilities of women, and contestations over property.The web of relations that bound aristocratic families in this period of French history, she finds, was a model of family based on affection, inclusion, and support, not domination and exclusion.
