Stepfamilies in Europe, 14001800
Stepfamilies were as common in the European past as they are today. Stepfamilies in Europe, 14001800 is the first in-depth study to chart four centuries of continuity and change for these complex families created by the death of a parent and the remarriage of the survivor. With geographic coverage from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia and from the Atlantic coast to Central Europe, this collection of essays from leading scholars compares how religious affiliation, laws and cultural attitudes shaped stepfamily realities.
Exploring stepfamilies across society from artisans to princely rulers, this book considers the impact of remarriage on the bonds between parents and their children, step-parents and stepchildren, while offering insights into the relationships between full siblings, half siblings and stepsiblings.
The contributors investigate a variety of primary sources, from songs to letters and memoirs, printed Protestant funeral works, Catholic dispensation requests, kinship puzzles, legitimation petitions, and documents drawn up by notaries, to understand the experiences and life cycle of a family and its members whether growing up as a stepchild or forming a stepfamily through marital choice as an adult.
Featuring an array of visual evidence, and drawing on topics such as widowhood, remarriage and the guardianship of children, Stepfamilies in Europe will be essential reading for scholars and students of the history of the family.
Lyndan Warner is Associate Professor of History at Saint Marys University, Canada. Her previous publications include Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe with Sandra Cavallo (1999) and The Ideas of Man and Woman in Renaissance France: Print, Rhetoric, and Law (2011).
Stepfamilies in Europe, 14001800
Edited by Lyndan Warner
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2018 selection and editorial matter, Lyndan Warner; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Lyndan Warner to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-92103-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-8153-8214-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-20907-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Charlotte, Ella, Victor
&
Tim
Contents
Lyndan Warner
Alexandra Guerson and Dana Wessell Lightfoot
Anu Lahtinen
Anna Bellavitis
Grace E. Coolidge
Tim Stretton
Sebastiaan Roes. Translated from Dutch by Cornelia Niekus Moore
Cornelia Niekus Moore
Gabriella Erdlyi
Margareth Lanzinger. Translated from German by Christopher Roth
Sylvie Perrier
Lyndan Warner
Lyndan Warner
The first appreciation belongs to the contributors to this collection. Each responded to an email from a stranger or an approach after a conference paper as I sought out researchers on a range of stepfamily-related topics or promising sources to cover all the corners of Europe. Over the years because by now it is years bare acquaintances have become friends and generous collaborators as we communicated back and forth about drafts, word meanings, themes and other possible contributors to this project of newly commissioned articles on the stepfamily in Europe across four centuries. They have all been a joy to work with and I learned so much in the process.
Many thanks are also due to the organizers and participants at Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (Geneva 2009, Montral 2010, and Vancouver 2015), European Social Science History Conference in Vienna 2014 and Valencia 2016, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians 2014, and the Attending to Early Modern Women 2015 conference for the opportunities to meet and develop stepfamily themes together. Giovana Benadusi, Simona Slanicka, Sara Beam, Laura van Aert, Susan Broomhall, Chris Corley and Cathryn Spence all helped on conference panels. Thanks are also due to scholars who provided advice as I sent out a call for papers or sought coverage of Central or Eastern Europe, Germany, visual sources, historical demography information, as well as the elusive chapter on Muslim Europe: Marina Arnold, Peter Gillgren, Clare Gittings, Rossitsa Gradeva, Teresa Heffernan, Margaret Hunt, Karl Kaser, Colin Mitchell, Beatrice Moring and Maria Todorova.
Anne Laurence kindly shared her unpublished work while Amy Louise Erickson and Sandra Cavallo cheerfully and unflinchingly answered pesky questions about their archival research.
Heartfelt thanks belong to Jill Bepler for her initial contributions and to Gerhild Williams for suggesting Cornelia Niekus Moore to ensure coverage of Protestant Germany and the printed funeral works that were a rich, untapped source on stepfamilies. Professor Moore saved the book, not once but twice, because she also volunteered to translate Sebastiaan Roes chapter on the Netherlands and provided a solid basis for the polishing and editing to follow.
Many individuals at institutions have helped to gather the images within the volume, among them Johanna Mock at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbttel; Hans Timmermans, Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen; and Daan Meijer, Conservator, Stichting tot Bevordering der Notarile Wetenschap, Amsterdam.
Emily Hillman, then a bright undergrad, began the early work compiling sources of visual imagery and a bibliography of the stepfamily as a summer research assistant. I am also grateful to the students at the University of Kings College, Halifax, who invited me to test out some of the material on stepfamilies in early modern visual culture at their Fifth Annual Conference of the Early Modern and asked great questions. Thanks are also due to Jack Crowley, Cornelia Niekus Moore, Tim Stretton and George F.W. Young for providing essential feedback on the visual material in a draft of .
At Saint Marys University Patrick Power Library, Sandra Hamm and Trish Grelot in document delivery have proven time and again to be a historians most valuable colleagues. No matter how obscure the language or the library, they have never been defeated. The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at Saint Marys University also helped with several internal research grants on stepfamilies in the early stages of planning the project.