The History of Families and Households Comparative European Dimensions

The History of Families and Households
Central and Eastern Europe

Regional Perspectives in Global Context
Series Editors
Constantin Iordachi (Central European University, Budapest)

Maciej Janowski (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
Balzs Trencsnyi (Central European University, Budapest)
VOLUME 6
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cee

The History of Families
and Households
Comparative European Dimensions
Edited by
Silvia Sovi, Pat Thane, and Pier Paolo Viazzo
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Family portrait, c. 1910. Unterdrauburg, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Dravograd,
Slovenia). Photo by Pietro Antonio Micelli (18461929).
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Contents
List of Figures and Tablesvii

Notes on ContributorsIX
1 The History of European Families: Old and New Directions1

Silvia Sovi, Pat Thane and Pier Paolo Viazzo
part 1
Commonalities and Diversities
2 North European Families in the Past: Family Ties Revisited23

Beatrice Moring
3 From Modernity to Tradition: Households on Kythera in the Early

Nineteenth Century47
Violetta Hionidou
4 The Reconstruction of Domestic Communities in the Brankovi Region

of Serbia in 145569
Mirjana Bobi
5 Variation Within: Regional Differences in Household Structures in

Mid-Nineteenth Century Rural Serbia93
Siegfried Gruber
PART 2
Church, State and Family
6 Womens Reputation and Marriage Disputes in Protestant and Catholic

Europe, 15001800119
Daniela Lombardi
7 The Reformation, the Council of Trent and the Divergence of Spiritual

Kinship and Godparenthood across Europe: A Long-run Analysis142
Guido Alfani
vi contents
8 Household Structure in the Nineteenth Century in a Transylvanian

Village168
Judit Ambrus
PART 3
Family Strategies
9 Old Age in the Life Cycle of Polish Peasants at the Turn of the
Middle Ages189
Piotr Guzowski

10 Succession Choices of Small Farmers and Women Farmers Wills in
the Area around Trieste in the Nineteenth Century207
Marta Verginella
11 Inheritance Practice and the Elderly in Central Europe: The Example

of Western Bohemia, 17001850232
Alice Velkov
Index257
List of Figures and Tables

Figures
4.1 Map of Central Balkan States, 1375139572

4.2 Map of the Region of Brankovi in 145574
4.3 Ideographic representation of various family (agnatic) forms in the
village of Vrbua87
5.1 Household typology in 13 districts in Serbia in 1863116
5.2 Married couples per household in Serbia in 1866116
8.1 Family book of Vista173
10.1 The area of Breg208
10.2 The age of testators from Dolina211
10.3 Percentage of testators regarding the number of deaths and
according to gender between 1833 and 1904 Dolina212
10.4 Percentage of testators regarding total number of deaths between 1833
and 1894 Dolina212
11.1 Age of heirs at the time of their fathers retirement249
11.2 Still active full peasants holders and smallholders by their age252
11.3 Still active cottagers by their age253
Tables
2.1 Residence patterns of widows in Northern European localities27

2.2 Age distribution of widows in local communities, percentages31
2.3 Occupational distribution of widows in 19th century rural parishes34
2.4 Widows co-residence and gender35
2.5 Co-residence partners of urban widows, percentages41
2.6 Age distribution of widows42
2.7 Classification of occupation or known source of income of widows in
census of Helsinki and Moss 1900, Lichfield 1851, percentages43
2.8 Age distribution of widows in the Nordic countries, percentages45
2.9 Age distribution of widows in England and Wales 1861191146
3.1 Census year and population of Kythera51
3.2 Percentage of migrants by sex and age group, Kythera54
3.3 Percentage distribution of households, Kythera57
3.4 Singulate mean age at marriage, Kythera59
3.5 Percentage distribution of households by type, year and heads gender60
3.6 Percentage distribution of households for male heads by type and by
reported status of the father61
viii list of figures and tables
3.7 Living arrangements by marital status of older people, Kythera62

3.8 Percentage of male married heads among all married men by age group,
conjugal family and complex households only, Kythera65
4.1 Houses according to the number of heads/tax payers, share of total in
percentages, Brankovi Region, 145586
4.2 Distribution of houses and taxpayers in Brankovi Region, 145587
4.3 Family households in Brankovi Region, 145589
4.4 Distribution of the population of the Brankovi Region in 145590
5.1 Correlation of the number of married couples with household
typology107
5.2 Mean household size and mean number of married couples in rural
Serbia 1866 by srez109
5.3 Descriptive statistics of independent variables112
5.4 Model estimates: Serbia 1866114
7.1 Typology of godparenthood models148
8.1 Household types in Vista (1883/1884)177
9.1 Duration of economic activity of Trzeniowa villagers196
9.2 Duration of economic activity of Trzeniowas social elite197
9.3 Duration of economic activity of peasants in Trzeniowa197
10.1 Number of testaments by settlement and time period209
10.2 Gender of testators by time period Breg210
10.3 Population change in Breg (17791910)215
10.4 Testators as percentage of the number of people who died in Dolina221
10.5 Marriage status of testator by 10-year periods Dolina227
10.6 Gender of testator by 10-year periods Ricmanje227
10.7 Marriage status of testators by 10-year periods Ricmanje228
10.8 Marriage status of testators by 10-year periods Boljunec229
11.1 Structure of the deceased broken down by age and sex in the hlavy
region, 17081834 (in percentages)238
11.2 Structure of the deceased at 50+ (in percentages) in the hlavy region
broken down by age and sex in 17081850239
11.3 Structure of heirs of fathers handing over only one holding to their
children in the hlavy region, 17011850243
11.4 Property transfers broken down by economic continuity in the hlavy
region, 17011850244
11.5 Age at which heirs took charge of the holding inherited from their
fathers in the hlavy region, 17011850245
11.6 Age at marriage of heirs of paternal holdings, 17011850246
11.7 Mean age of fathers at time of property transfer in 17011787 and their
age at death247
11.8 Age of fathers at the time of property transfer carried out in 17881850
and their age of death250
Notes on Contributors
Guido Alfani
is Associate Professor at Bocconi University, Italy. He is chief editor of the
journal Popolazione e Storia and the organizer of the international scientific
networks EI-Net (Economic Inequality Network) and, together with Vincent
Gourdon, Patrinus. An economic and social historian and an historical demog-
rapher, he published extensively on godparenthood and social alliance sys-
tems, on economic inequality, and on the history of epidemics and famines.
He is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project EINITE-Economic
Inequality across Italy and Europe, 13001800. His recent publications include
Fathers and Godfathers: Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern Italy (Farnham, 2009)
and Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy (Basingstoke, 2013).
Judit Ambrus
received her PhD in ethnography and cultural anthropology from Babes Bolyai
University (Romania) in 2009. Since 2008 she has been an assistant professor
at Kodolnyi Jnos University College (Hungary). She teaches history, ethnog-
raphy and cultural anthropology, and has published most notably The Family
Book as a Source of Ethnographical Research (Szolnok, 2007), and Old People in
Peasant Society (Szkelyfld Journal, Cskszereda, 2008) on the social history
and ethnography of the elderly in the second half of the 20th century in two
Transylvanian villages. Her research interests include the history of population
exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1940s.
Mirjana Bobi
is professor of Social Demography, Contemporary Family Challenges,
Partnership and Childbearing, Contemporary Migrations, at the Faculty of
Philosophy, Department of Sociology, University of Belgrade, Serbia. She
received her PhD in Social Demography from University of Belgrade in 2003.
Since 2003 she has been a professor at the University of Belgrade. She is the
author of the books Brak ili/i partnerstvo. Demografsko socioloska studija
[Marriage and Partnership. Demographic and sociological study] (Belgrade,
2003), Demografija i sociologija. Veza ili sinteza [Demography and Sociology.
Relationship or Synthesis] (Belgrade, 2007); Postmoderne populacione studije.
Demografija kao intersekcija [Postmodern Population Studies. Demography as
an Intersection] (Belgrade, 2013). She has written several articles related to her
master thesis on the history of Serbian Family based on the Ottoman Census
x notes on contributors
from 1455, as well as on contemporary families and marital patterns in the

times of current social transformation.
Siegfried Gruber
received his PhD in history from the University of Graz (Austria) in 2004. Since
1993 he has been engaged in numerous research projects at the University
of Graz, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale
(Germany), and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in
Rostock (Germany). His main research areas include household structures in
Southeastern Europe, historical demography, and quantifying patriarchy.
Piotr Guzowski
is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Economic History at the Institute of
History and Political Sciences at University of Bialystok. He teaches medi-
eval history, economic history and historical demography. His major publica-
tions are: Chopi i pienidze na przeomie redniowiecza i czasw nowoytnych
[Peasants and Money in Poland at the Turn of the Middle Ages] (Crakow, 2008);
Changing Economy Models of Peasant Budgets in 15th and 16th Century
Poland, Continuity and Change, 20 (2005), 926; The Influence of Exports
on Grain Production on Polish Royal Demesne Farms in the Second Half of
the Sixteenth Century, Agricultural History Review, 59 (2011), 31227; Money
Economy and Economic Growth: the Case of Medieval and Early Modern
Poland, Questiones Medii Aevi Novae, 18 (2013), 23556; Village Court Records
and Peasant Credit Market in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Poland,
Continuity and Change, 29: 1 (2014), 11541.
Violetta Hionidou
is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at Newcastle University, UK. Her
research interests are in Modern Greece, particularly in historical demography,
history of the family, famines and oral history. She is the author of Famine and
Death in Occupied Greece, 19411944, published by Cambridge University Press
and co-winner of the 2007 Edmund Keely book award. The book has been
translated and published in Greek.
Daniela Lombardi
is professor of Early Modern History at the Department Civilt e forme del
sapere at the University of Pisa, Italy. She teaches Early Modern History and
Gender History. Research interests include charity and poor relief and mar-
riage and family history in Early Modern and Modern Europe. Her major
notes on contributors xi
publications are Povert maschile, povert femminile. Lospedale dei Mendicanti

nella Firenze dei Medici (Bologna, 1988); Matrimoni di antico regime (Bologna,
2001); Generazioni. Legami di parentela tra passato e presente (co-editor, Rome,
2006); Storia del matrimonio. Dal Medioevo a oggi (Bologna, 2008).
Beatrice Moring
attained her PhD in History in 1994. She joined the Cambridge Group for the
History of Population and Social history in 1996 and the University of Essex in
2001. In 2007 she was appointed associate professor of Social and Economic
History at the Department for Economic and Political Studies, University of
Helsinki. Her research interests are women, the household and family, inheri-
tance customs and family strategies, social stratification poverty and survival
on the topics of which she has published extensively in academic journals.
In 2012 she published the edited volume Female Economic Strategies in the
Modern World, (Pickering & Chatto, London) and at present she is finishing
a monograph about the life and economic situation of widows (based on col-
laborative work with Richard Wall d. 2011) to be published under the title The
Welfare of Widows in European Society (Boydell and Brewer).
Silvia Sovi
received her PhD from the University of Essex in 2001 for a thesis on Peasant
Communities, Local Economies and Household Composition in 19th-Century
Slovenia. Her publications on family history include European Family History:
Moving Beyond Cultural Stereotypes of East and West, Cultural and Social
History, 5: 2 (2008), 14164. From 2007 to 2011 she was Senior Research Fellow
at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where in 2010
she organised the conference on The History of Families and Households:
Comparative European Dimensions on which this volume, and a special issue
of The History of the Family (2014), are based. She has also researched widely in
the pedagogy of higher education, notably teaching and learning in an inter-
national context (at University of the Arts, London, and University College
London).
Pat Thane
MA (Oxford), PhD (LSE), FBA is Research Professor in Contemporary History,
Kings College, London. Publications include: The Foundations of the Welfare
State (2nd ed. New York, 1996); Maternity and Gender Policies. Women and the
Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s, co-edited with Gisela Bock
(London, 1991); Old Age in English History. Past Experiences, Present Issues
xii notes on contributors
(Oxford, 2000); The Long History of Old Age, edited book (London, 2005); Women
and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century. What Difference
did the Vote Make?, co-edited with Esther Breitenbach (London, 2010); Sinners?
Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth Century England, with
Tanya Evans (Oxford, 2012).
Alice Velkov
is a researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the
Czech Republic, and teaches historical demography at Charles University
in Prague. She is the author of the books Krut vrchnost, uboz poddan.
Promny venkovsk rodiny a spolenosti v 18. a prvn polovin 19. stolet na
pkladu zpadoeskho panstv hlavy [Cruel Landlords, Poor Subjects?
Transformations of the Bohemian Rural Family and Society in the 18th and in
the First Half of the 19th Centuries] (Prague, 2009), and Schuld und Strafe. Von
Frauen begangene Morde in den bhmischen Lndern in der zweiten Hlfte des
19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2012). Research interests include the social structure
of historical rural society, inheritance practice, marriage strategies and crimi-
nality of women 17501900.
Marta Verginella
is Full Professor of General History of the 19th Century and Theory of History
at the University of Ljubljana. She is the author of several books and articles:
Il confine degli altri. La questione giuliana e la memoria slovena (Rome, 2008);
La guerra di Bruno: l identit di confine di un antieroe triestino e sloveno (Rome,
2015); enska obrobja: vpis ensk v zgodovino Slovencev [Womens Margins:
the Inscription of Women in Slovene History] (Ljubljana, 2006); Between
Rejection and Affinity: Slovene-German Relations on the Periphery of the
Habsburg Monarchy, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fr deutsche Geschichte, 40 (2012),
4459.
Pier Paolo Viazzo

received his PhD in social anthropology from University College London. He was
a research associate at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and
Social Structure and is now professor of social anthropology at the University
of Turin. He is the author of Upland Communities: Environment, Population
and Social Structure in the Alps since the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989)
and has published extensively on European social, environmental and demo-
graphic history as well as on family and marriage patterns, with special refer-
ence to the Alps and other mountain areas and to the Mediterranean region.
CHAPTER 1
The History of European Families: Old and New

Directions
Silvia Sovi, Pat Thane and Pier Paolo Viazzo
1 Pendulum Swings in Family History
Half a century ago any scholar venturing into the still unfashionable topic of
the history of family and kinship would have confidently asserted that since
the 16th century Europe had witnessed a gradual rise of the nuclear family
under the influence of social and economic transformations.1 Common to
most sociological theories, rather passively accepted by historians, was a belief
in the passage of the traditional extended family, where married sons lived
under the same roof with their ageing parents, into the modern conjugal fam-
ily. It was assumed that in the past the size and composition of domestic groups
had been very much the same all over Europe, and that the differences which
could be observed in the 20th century were to be explained by economic or
cultural lags caused by differential rates of modernization. It was nevertheless
confidently predicted that national and regional differences would soon dis-
solve and uniformity would reign again, with European families responding
to similar policies. It was also generally assumed that the moral and practical
significance of kinship was bound to decline and eventually fade away. This
powerful master narrative, whose origins can be traced to key 19th-century
social theorists such as Henry Sumner Maine, Ferdinand Tnnies, Lewis Henry
Morgan, Frdric Le Play and mile Durkheim, held sway in the accounts of
1 This first section draws on the text of the keynote lecture delivered by Pier Paolo Viazzo at the
conference on The History of the Family and Households: Comparative European Dimensions
held in London at the Institute of Historical Research, 2426 June 2010 (see Section 2 below).
A somewhat different version of that lecture has been published, under the title Looking
East. What Can Historical Studies of Eastern Countries Contribute to Current Debates on
Commonalities and Divergences in Family, Kinship and Welfare Provision in Europe, Past
and Present?, in the Italian journal Popolazione e Storia, 9: 2 (2011), 119136.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 6|doi .63/9789004307865_002

2 Sovi, Thane and Viazzo
leading family sociologists in the 1960s and, indeed, of quite a few historians
still in the 1970s.2
This master narrative began to be challenged in the late 1960s, not only as
part of a general retreat from the rigid evolutionary framework which had long
prevailed in the social sciences, but also and more decisively because of the
surprising evidence brought to light by the first forays into the past made by
pioneers of historical demography like John Hajnal and Peter Laslett. In a clas-
sic work, Hajnal contended that between the 16th and the early 20th century
an imaginary line running roughly from St Petersburg to Trieste had separated
eastern Europe, where marriage had been early and almost universal, from
north-western Europe, which had been characterized by a pattern whose dis-
tinctive marks were a late age at marriage for both men and women and a high
proportion of people who never married at all.3 A few years later, spurred by
Laslett and his associates at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population
and Social Structure,4 other studies located in western Europe a second demo-
graphic fault line, running across from west to east. To the north of this line,
households had been small and simple in structure, as they overwhelmingly
consisted only of parents, some unmarried children and possibly servants,
and marriages had been almost without exception neolocal, in that bride and
groom set up their own household instead of staying with the husbands family.
To the south, by contrast, households appeared to have been larger and often
complex in structure, and it was common for newly-wed couples to start their
married life in the parental home. These findings strongly suggested that new
maps of family forms and marriage and kinship patterns in historic Europe had
to be drawn. As Alan Macfarlane remarked in a comparatively little-known but
highly revealing article, we thus have three demographic regions, the eastern,
the western (north) and the western (south).5
Macfarlanes article inaugurated a series of influential attempts by histo-
rians and historical demographers to map the European family, all put for-
ward in rapid succession in the early 1980s: Richard Smiths suggestion that
2
See Steven Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living
Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective, Population and
Development Review, 35: 2 (2009), 249273 (249250); Naomi Tadmor, Early Modern English
Kinship in the Long Run: Reflections on Continuity and Change, Continuity and Change,
25: 1 (2010), 1548 (1718).
3 John Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective, in Population in History, eds.
David V. Glass and David E. C. Eversley (London, 1965), 101143.
4 Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (eds.), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972).
5 Alan Macfarlane, Demographic Structures and Cultural Regions in Europe, Cambridge
Anthropology, 6: 12 (1980), 117 (5).
The History of European Families 3
a Mediterranean marriage and family pattern was detectable before the 16th
century;6 Hajnals distinction between a north-west European simple house-
hold system of household formation and a joint household system ultimately
to be found in both southern and eastern Europe;7 and, finally, Lasletts partition
of Europe into four macro-regions: Western, West-central, Mediterranean
and Eastern.8 It is important to notice that all these attempts shared at least
two significant features. The first one was their emphasis on long-term conti-
nuity, as shown most explicitly by Smiths argument that the characteristics
of marriage and the family encountered by Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber in
15th-century Tuscany early marriage for women and late marriage for men,
and a high proportion of joint family households9 were not to be seen as
indicators of a transition from a uniformly medieval pattern spread all over
Europe to a more varied early modern scenario, but rather as evidence of a
contrast between southern and northern European patterns already visible in
the Middle Ages. A second common feature was their emphasis on culture.
As explicitly argued by Macfarlane,10 the demographic structures uncovered
by historians appeared to be coterminous with broad cultural regions: is it
a pure coincidence, he had wondered, that Hajnals line seems to follow the
Slav/non-Slav division [and that] the extended household region is that of
dominant Roman culture?
This is a story which has been told over and over again in the past two
decades. A less familiar aspect of the whole enterprise, but certainly an increas-
ingly important issue, especially in the agenda set by Laslett, was to investigate
marriage and family patterns in the various parts of Europe in order to shed
light on how, and to what extent, domestic groups had taken care of vulnerable
categories such as orphaned children, widows, the elderly, and other needy
people. The discovery that in pre-industrial times England and more gener-
ally north-western Europe displayed a marked prevalence of neolocal simple-
family households implied that living in nuclear families inevitably left many
individuals without familial support, in a condition of actual or potential
6 Richard M. Smith, The People of Tuscany and their Families in the Fifteenth Century:
Medieval or Mediterranean?, Journal of Family History, 6: 1 (1981), 107128.
7 John Hajnal, Two Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System, Population and
Development Review, 8: 3 (1982), 449494.
8 Peter Laslett, Family and Household as Work Group and Kin Group: Areas of Traditional
Europe Compared, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Richard Wall, Jean Robin and
Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1983), 513563.
9 David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles: une tude du
catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris, 1978), 393419, 469511.
10 Macfarlane, Demographic Structures and Cultural Regions in Europe, 14.
hardship. Far from being self-sufficient (as some scholars had argued), the small
and structurally simple households of England and north-western Europe were
therefore vitally dependent on external support. But where did this support
come from? The existence in England of a deep-rooted and highly developed
state system of poor relief led Laslett tentatively to suggest, in the late 1970s,
that external support had come essentially from what he liked to call the
collectivity.11 The clearest formulation of this claim was provided by Laslett
himself some ten years later in the form of his nuclear-hardship hypothesis,
which maintains that in England and north-western Europe, where simple-
family households were dominant, transfers from the collectivity were of the
highest importance, whereas transfers from the kin were of little significance.12
Once again, it is relevant to observe that these and other similar claims were
largely based on cultural grounds: according to Laslett, in England and north-
western Europe moral obligations to reside with ones kin in order to provide
support when needed were either absent or weak. In fact, the nuclear-hardship
hypothesis entailed a set of opposite predictions for those European regions
where the role of kinship was believed to have been of much greater impor-
tance for primarily cultural reasons, namely southern Europe and most likely
eastern Europe. Lasletts hypothesis also proposed that the macro-regional
family and marriage patterns tended to correspond geographically as well as
typologically to contrasting systems of welfare provision: the role of kinship
and family had presumably been far greater in the southern and eastern parts
of Europe than in the north-western countries, where the long-term preva-
lence of intrinsically vulnerable nuclear families had been made possible by
support provided by the state, or had perhaps urged the creation of a system of
state or otherwise public welfare. This argument was encouraged by the geo-
graphical contrast habitually drawn by historians between a northern welfare
system (best exemplified by England, and characterized by comprehensive,
parish-based outdoor relief) and a southern or continental system, suppos-
edly haphazard and limited in its finances and scope, and based on the indoor
assistance provided in large hospitals.13 In the 1980s and early 1990s a favourite
way of testing this hypothesis was the investigation of the living arrangements
of the elderly. The evidence yielded by research on southern Europe appeared
11 Peter Laslett, Family and Collectivity, Sociology and Social Research, 63: 3 (1979), 432442.
12 Peter Laslett, Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial
Europe: A Consideration of the Nuclear-Hardship Hypothesis, Continuity and Change,
3: 2 (1988), 153175.
13 Peregrine Horden, Family History and Hospital History in the Middle Ages, in Living in
the City, ed. Eugenio Sonnino (Rome, 2004), 255282 (260).
to provide convincing corroboration as it showed that in the areas where joint

or stem family systems prevailed, the great majority of old people lived in large
complex households: no one had been left alone, and virtually no widows or
widowers lived in households without at least one of their children.14 Roughly
in the same years similar findings were reported for eastern Europe.15
However, already in the 1980s both the major statements which were
at the core of the revisionist approach and the corollaries which followed
from these statements were subjected to a severe critique. It was no accident
that the attack came mainly from anthropologists or historians influenced
by anthropology, who denied the legitimacy of macro-regional approaches
for several reasons. One major objection was that the alleged cultural regions
were hardly homogeneous, and that supposedly distinctive traits were detect-
able on both sides of boundaries which looked far more blurred than originally
envisaged by the proponents of the macro-regional theses. A lot of criticism
was attracted, in particular, by the Mediterranean family model outlined by
Smith and Laslett,16 but an array of studies also affirmed contra Laslett the
salience of alliances of blood and marriage in England and other north-western
countries in early modern times and beyond.17 As early as 1991 such a hail of
criticisms entitled David Kertzer to assert, in a much-quoted sentence, that
the whole enterprise of branding major areas of Europe as having a particu-
lar type of household system was ultimately misleading.18 Instead of looking
for broad regional uniformities, he argued, the task of family historians was
to develop a theoretically more comprehensive and sophisticated approach
where economic, demographic, ecological and cultural factors were all taken
into account in order to properly address the unexpected degree of variabil-
ity. This was tantamount to proclaiming the superiority of micro-approaches
14 E.g. David I. Kertzer, Family Life in Central Italy, 18801910 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984);
Patrice Bourdelais, Vieillir en famille dans la France des mnages complexes: lexemple
de Prayssans, 18361911, Annales de Dmographie Historique, 22 (1985), 2138; Antoinette
Fauve-Chamoux, Aging in a Never-Empty Nest: The Elasticity of the Stem Family, in
Aging and Generational Relations over the Life Course, ed. Tamara Hareven (Berlin and
New York, 1996), 7599.
15 Andrejs Plakans, Stepping Down in Former Times: A Comparative Assessment of
Retirement in Traditional Europe, in Age Structuring in Comparative Perspective, eds.
David I. Kertzer and K. Warner Schaie (Hillsdale, N.J., 1989), 175194.
16 Pier Paolo Viazzo, Whats So Special about the Mediterranean? Thirty Years of Research
on Household and Family in Italy, Continuity and Change, 18: 1 (2003), 111137 (114117).
17 Tadmor, Early Modern English Kinship in the Long Run, 1928.
18 David I. Kertzer, Household History and Sociological Theory, Annual Review of Sociology,
17 (1991), 155179 (156).
over macro-approaches, indeed their triumph. By the middle of the 1990s what
had come to be known as the Hajnal/Laslett model had been seriously ques-
tioned, and a further blow was inflicted a few years later by historical studies of
assistance and poor relief, strongly suggesting either that the contrast between
a northern and a southern model of welfare provision did not exist, or that its
salience had been greatly exaggerated.19
Thus it was that the revisionist approach, which had ousted the master nar-
rative, was itself supplanted by what Tadmor calls a neo-revisionist approach.20
Neo-revisionist stances had already acquired a dominant position in the litera-
ture on households and families in southern Europe in the early 1990s, and a
few years later similar views were clearly detectable in the literature on north-
western Europe. Their progress has apparently been slower for eastern Europe,
owing to persistent assumptions about the distinguishing features, the alleged
antiquity and the basic homogeneity of marriage patterns and household for-
mation systems east of the Hajnal line. In the past few years, however, articles
on eastern Europe challenging the Hajnal/Laslett model from various angles
have started to be published in significant numbers.21
These critical reassessments of the validity of Hajnals and Lasletts hypoth-
eses when applied to eastern Europe are testimony to the vitality of neo-
revisionism. It would be wrong, however, to infer that macro-regional
approaches reminiscent in more than one respect of the Hajnal/Laslett model
have completely disappeared from the scene. Quite the contrary; over the past
fifteen years or so they have been given new life by the ambitious attempts
19 Cf. Peregrine Horden, Household Care and Informal Networks: Comparisons and
Continuities from Antiquity to the Present, in The Locus of Care. Families, Communities,
Institutions, and the Provision of Welfare since Antiquity, eds. Peregrine Horden and
Richard Smith (London, 1998), 2167 (2431).
20 Tadmor, Early Modern English Kinship in the Long Run, 16.
21 See e.g. Silvia Sovi, European Family History. Moving Beyond Stereotypes of East and
West, Cultural and Social History, 5: 2 (2008), 141164; Mikoaj Szotysek, Rethinking
Eastern Europe: Household-Formation Patterns in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
and European Family Systems, Continuity and Change, 23: 3 (2008), 389427. But
see already Maria Todorova, Myth-Making in European Family History: the Zadruga
Revisited, East European Politics and Society, 4: 1 (1990), pp. 3076 (44), and eadem,
Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern; Demographic Developments in Ottoman
Bulgaria (Washington, D.C., 1993); Jasna apo mega, New Evidence and Old Theories:
Multiple Family Households in Northern Croatia, Continuity and Change, 11: 3 (1996), pp.
375398.
to map past and present family systems made by geographers,22 political

scientists,23 sociologists24 and, not least, historical demographers like David
Reher.25 The case of Reher is especially interesting, since he had previously
been one of the most vigorous neo-revisionist critics of the Mediterranean
model.26 It came therefore as a surprise when, in 1998, he rekindled the debate
by publishing an article where he argued that contrasts between macro-regions
in Europe and particularly between the northern and southern halves of
western Europe not only had existed in the past but persisted in the present,
as demonstrated by the continuing, much greater strength of family ties in the
Mediterranean countries.
What is especially surprising in this article is of course that Reher abandons
the usual path trodden by most specialists of the area, who had emphasized
the regional and sub-regional diversity of southern Europe, and proposes again
a stark north/south boundary separating two fundamentally homogeneous
culture areas. For Reher, too, the care of the elderly provides a critical test. He
has no doubt that in Mediterranean Europe the family was far more essential
for the well-being of its more vulnerable members than in northern latitudes,
and that the care of the elderly in particular fell almost exclusively on the
family as shown still today by the much higher proportion of old people living
in institutions in northern Europe than in Italy, Spain and Portugal. It should be
noticed, however, that Reher stresses that co-residence was not the only means
of taking care of the elderly: alternative means were, he says, the circulation
of the elderly among the households of their offspring, or the spatial proxim-
ity between the homes of the elderly and those of their children.27 Indeed, in
view of Rehers own conviction that in southern Europe, too, nuclear arrange-
ments have been historically much more frequent than complex households,28
22 Virginie Mamadouh, A Political-Cultural Map of Europe. Family Structures and the

Origins of the Differences between National Political Cultures in the European Union,
GeoJournal, 47: 3 (1999), 477496; Gilles Duranton, Family Types and the Persistence of
Regional Disparities in Europe, Economic Geography, 85: 1 (2009), 2347.
23 Gunnar Grendstad, A Political Cultural Map of Europe. A Survey Approach, GeoJournal,
47: 3 (1999), 463475.
24 Gran Therborn, Between Sex and Power. Family in the World, 19002000 (London, 2004).
25 David S. Reher, Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts, Population and
26 David S. Reher, Marriage Patterns in Spain, 18871930, Journal of Family History 16: 1
(1991), 730.
27 Reher, Family Ties in Western Europe, 209.
28 This is of course highly debatable in view of extensive evidence demonstrating that
in central and northern Italy, but also in northern Iberia, regional and local systems of
it is plain that he regards these two latter ways of providing welfare to have
been definitely more important than co-residence.
It is interesting, in this connection, to note that several historians and soci-
ologists believe that a visitor from southern Europe would have been struck by
the weakness of kinship in pre-industrial or early industrial England, a weak-
ness that showed itself in the household structure, which was overwhelmingly
nuclear with only few, if any, extended families.29 Reher agrees wholeheart-
edly that a visitor from southern Europe would have been struck. However,
such a visitor would have been astonished not so much by the lack of joint or
extended families as by the divergent ethics almost palpable in northern and
southern Europe, and most evident in the markedly greater propensity of the
English to invest the collectivity with the ultimate responsibility of taking care
of the elderly and other needy people. As has been fittingly remarked, Rehers
model is therefore characterized by a shift of the analytical focus primarily
towards culture and values, as made evident by his emphasis on ties, whose
geography is divorced from the geography of co-residential structures.30 This
is an important point to keep in mind when evaluating the implications of
some recent historical analyses of the residential arrangements of the elderly
in north-west Europe and in the United States,31 whose findings are far more
damaging for the Hajnal/Laslett model, where co-residence is singled out as
the crucial way to provide support to the elderly, than for Rehers significantly
different formulation.
Although Rehers arguments and his reliance on the contrast between
weak and strong ties may easily be accused of favouring simplified compari-
sons and dichotomous contrapositions, they have proved hugely influential
among sociologists and demographers, and increasingly also among histori-
ans: even those who remain critical are now conceding that they cannot avoid
coming to grips with his theses. This shows, first of all, that in the past decades
stem or joint household formation were far from exceptional, as remarked by Viazzo,
Whats So Special about the Mediterranean?, 123. The relevant point is, however, that in
this respect Reher departs from Lasletts assertions about family structures in southern
Europe.
29 See especially Alan Macfarlane, The Culture of Capitalism (Oxford, 1987), 145146, 151, and
Marzio Barbagli, Maria Castiglioni and Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, Fare famiglia in Italia. Un
secolo di cambiamenti (Bologna, 2003), 4344.
30 Ida Fazio, Legami forti e storia della famiglia in Italia. Questioni di metodo, questioni di
genere, Storica, 11: 3 (2005), 739 (12).
31 Steven Ruggles, The Decline of Intergenerational Coresidence in the United States, 1850
to 2000, American Sociological Review, 72: 6 (2007), 964989; idem, Reconsidering the
Northwest European Family System.
there has been no simple progression away from the master narrative and
then from revisionism, ending in a clear victory of post-revisionism and in a
parallel final demise of macro-regional approaches. Rather, the pendulum has
been swinging and keeps swinging today, although in hardly linear or regular
ways. If Rehers arguments look at least partly similar to those advanced by
the proponents of the revisionist approach, other scholars are encouraged
by the results of recent wide-ranging investigations of living arrangements
across the Atlantic to urge a return to the master narrative.32 Second, the
sheer number of quotations in sociological and demographic journals that
Rehers 1998 article can boast demonstrates that he has been able to link very
effectively the historical work on families and households to the literature on
20th-century welfare systems. This is a literature that cannot be overlooked by
family historians, as it raises again the question of the legitimacy, or otherwise,
of macro-regions as objects and comparative settings as well as crucial issues
about change and continuity in European family systems.
The past fifteen years have seen a spate of wide-ranging cross-national
research projects, mostly sociological, which have investigated the relation-
ships between family, social security and the welfare state in contemporary
Europe.33 In addition, a number of works adopting a variety of macro-regional
approaches to study trends in living arrangements and the relationships
between family and welfare, in Europe and elsewhere, have also been
published.34 Although space inhibits any detailed analysis, it seems fair to state
that by and large these studies agree that by the beginning of the 21st century
there is little evidence of the process of convergence foretold by modernization
theorists. Research has mainly focused (at least initially) on western Europe,
and survey data on such classic variables as household structure, residential
proximity and frequency of contacts clearly indicate, to quote the authors of
the final report of the most influential of these projects, that there are impor-
tant differences among the strong family countries in the South and the weak
family countries in the North.35 More recent studies also covering eastern
32 See especially Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System.

33 For a review of these studies, and an evaluation of their relevance to family history, see
Pier Paolo Viazzo, Family, Kinship and Welfare Provision in Europe, Past and Present:
Commonalities and Divergences, Continuity and Change, 25: 1 (2010), 137159 (144149).
34 See e.g. Gran Therborn, Between Sex and Power, and also Tineke Fokkema and Aart
C. Liefbroer, Trends in Living Arrangements in Europe: Convergence or Divergence?.
Demographic Research, 19 (2008), 13511418.
35 Martin Kohli, Harald Knemund and Jrg Ludicke, Family Structure, Proximity and
Contact, in Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe First Results from SHARE, eds. Axel
Brsch-Supan et al. (Mannheim, 2006), 164170 (170).
European countries, while revealing a rather mixed picture for central and
eastern Europe, seem to confirm that cross-national and macro-regional differ-
ences are not just a figment of classificatory imagination.36 What is especially
intriguing is that the maps which emerge from these investigations ultimately
look not too different from the ones drawn for historic Europe by Laslett: con-
temporary European family systems appear to be separated from one another
by boundaries which coincide to a remarkable extent with the fault lines
identified by the pioneers of historical demography.37 Rehers contention that
macro-regional contrasts not only existed in the past but persist in the present
would seem to be vindicated. One may wonder, however, whether it is cor-
rect to explore family life, either in the present or in the past, by paying atten-
tion only to quantifiable socio-demographic evidence such as household size
and composition, marriage patterns, residential proximity and increasingly
nowadays the frequency of contacts and exchanges between relatives. There
might be other perspectives from which households, families and kinship ties
can be observed, and other evidence to be tapped.
Reflecting on these issues is all the more necessary today as we are on the
eve of a major revolution in terms of both data and methods. Steven Ruggles
has recently argued that one of the weaknesses of historical studies of fam-
ilies and households has been their reliance on small data sets laboriously
gathered by individual scholars to describe particular communities. However,
the launching in the past few years of large-scale international collabora-
tions is going to change soon, and profoundly, the scope and the methods of
family history by providing scholars with access to hundreds of millions of
records extracted from censuses or census-like sources, population registers
and genealogies with the aim of offering (when possible) continuous informa-
tion on historical life courses and, more generally, of maximizing compara-
bility across time and space.38 It is worth noting that the criticisms already
levelled in the 1970s against the Laslettian paradigm emphasized the rigidity
of its typology, its tendency to privilege cross-sectional analysis of census data
and to ignore the developmental cycles of domestic groups, but also its pro-
36 See e.g. Fokkema and Liefbroer, Trends in Living Arrangements, and Patrick Heady and
Martin Kohli (eds.), Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe. Perspectives on
Theory and Policy (Frankfurt, 2010).
37 See especially Therborn, Between Sex and Power, 220222, 297306, and Karsten Hank,
Proximity and Contacts between Older Parents and Their Children: A European
Comparison, Journal of Marriage and Family, 69: 1 (2007), 157173.
38 Steven Ruggles, The Future of Historical Family Demography, Annual Review of
Sociology, 38 (2012), 423441 (424427).
clivity to focus almost exclusively on census data, which promised more solid,
systematic and easily quantifiable evidence than other sources.39 There can be
little doubt that the avalanche of data40 which will be produced in the coming
years by the international projects in historical family demography which are
currently on course, and the armoury of new methods that are now available
for analysis, will allow family historians to overcome many of Lasletts short-
comings, since in many cases they will enable them to assess family choices at
the individual level, and more generally to inject dynamics into their accounts.
It is nevertheless remarkable that these projects are still pursuing Lasletts
goal comparability across time and space41 by resorting to data which will
be far more abundant and will be dissected with the help of immensely more
sophisticated statistical techniques. However these projects remain squarely
on the quantitative side and will also tend, by their very nature, to concentrate
on co-resident groups instead of going beyond the household as advocated by
the neo-revisionist critics of Laslett.
Before accepting Rehers theses about the existence of historical boundaries
between European macro-regions and their persistence, or Ruggles conten-
tion that the future of family history lies in the opportunities for sophisti-
cated quantitative analysis opened by the huge data sets amassed by the new
wave of international projects, it seems appropriate to assess what is still vital
among the traditions and practices of research that have shaped family history
over the past fifty years and what can be gained by taking untrodden paths or
adopting vantage points that have been so far neglected. This is what the pres-
ent book aims to do by presenting a set of studies which differ in scale, sources,
methods and historical and geographical location.
2 The Present Volume
The considerations outlined above were behind the idea of holding an inter-
national conference in June 2010 at the Institute of Historical Research,
University of London, on the theme The History of Families and Households:
Comparative European Dimensions. The conference attracted over forty
speakers from nineteen countries. As its title indicates, this event tried to
39 Lutz K. Berkner, The Use and Abuse of Census Data for the Historical Analysis of Family
Structure, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5: 4 (1975), 721738.
40 Ruggles, The Future of Historical Family Demography, 424.
41 Eugene A. Hammel and Peter Laslett, Comparing Household Structure Over Time and
Between Cultures, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16: 1 (1974), 73109.
assess developments and the current state of affairs in the field of family his-
tory. A specific aim of the initiative was to locate south-east European family
history under-represented in comparison to other European regions in wider
historiographical debates, as well as to give local and younger scholars from the
region opportunities to engage with a wider audience and encounter different
methodological approaches. In that respect the conference was organised as a
broader follow-up to the Regional Symposium on Social Behaviour and Family
Strategies in the Balkans held at the New Europe College in Bucharest in June
2006. Some of the more regional papers with specific focus on south-eastern
Europe have been published in a special issue of The History of the Family.42
The papers presented here relate to the broader European debate on family
history discussed above. Not all were presented at the 2010 conference, and some
have evolved considerably since that event. In this volume we have focused on
three major themes. Part 1 of the book, Commonalties and Diversities, con-
sists of contributions, from different angles, to the ongoing debate on what has
been the dominant focus of family history for several decades, regional differ-
ences across Europe. The first contribution explores issues surrounding family
co-habitation and collaboration in northern Europe, with specific attention
to widows and their relations with children. Beatrice Moring, in her chapter
on North European Families in the Past: Family Ties Revisited, questions the
theory proposed by David Reher in which he argued that people in southern
Europe in the past relied to a much greater extent on strong family ties, while
in northern Europe the state played a more prominent role in providing sup-
port for the care of the elderly. She highlights serious methodological problems
with the analysis of household studies, and suggests that the only way to reli-
ably measure inter-generational co-residence is not to approach all families,
but the representatives of the older generations.43
Violetta Hionidous study From Modernity to Tradition: Households on
Kythera in the Early Nineteenth Century assesses, identifies and explains
the changes of household pattern in the case of the Greek island of Kythera,
situated near the southern tip of the Peloponnese. Her analysis for the 18th
century is based on the census-type document created by the Venetian admin-
istration, and for the 19th century, census manuscripts, which were registered
during the period of British protection of the island. Contrary to expectations,
Hionidou observes that Kythera represents a community that turned from
modern to traditional, i.e. from a predominance of nuclear households to a
42 The History of the Family, Special Issue on South-Eastern Europe, eds. Silvia Sovi, Pat
Thane and Pier Paolo Viazzo, 19: 2 (2014), pp. 141234.
43 Below, p. 24.
significant presence of complex households within a century and a half.44 The

explanation for this is not found in the effects of industrialization or urbaniza-
tion but in extensive migration from the island and the adaptability of existing
practices such as the age of marriage, the household structure and inheritance
practices. She concludes with the pithy observation that the culture prescribes
what economy dictates.45
The two other chapters in this part both focus on Serbia. In The
Reconstruction of Domestic Communities in the Brankovi Region of Serbia
in 1455 Mirjana Bobi discusses problems relating to a specific source, the
defter, the first detailed Ottoman poll tax of Serbian territory. She begins
with a detailed history of the Brankovi region (in present-day Kosovo and
Serbia) at the time, paying special attention to the Ottoman administration
of the region. Bobi seeks to reconstruct families and households from this
document, discusses the methodological issues involved, and warns that the
results presented in this study are preliminary and speculative. A very dif-
ferent approach is taken by Siegfried Gruber. In Variation Within: Regional
Differences in Household Structures in Mid-Nineteenth Century Rural Serbia,
Gruber conducts an in-depth analysis of spatial variation across rural Serbia.
Taking published results of the population censuses of 1866 in Serbia, and
using the average number of married couples per household as a measure of
the proportion of multiple family households, Gruber concludes that, notwith-
standing the traditional picture for the region, there was quite a high degree of
variation within Serbia, and no uniform pattern.46
A common feature of these two contributions is the degree of attention that
both pay to the classification scheme of Laslett, discussed above. Bobis study
is based on research completed twenty years ago; it is included in this volume
because her work, as well as being unknown to Anglophones, gives us insights
into a still neglected area family historians are still insufficiently engaged
with the history of the Ottoman system in the region and raises methodologi-
cal issues that have broader relevance. Both she and Gruber, while fully recog-
nising that the Laslettian scheme is outdated and in need of replacement, take
the line that until such a replacement is found and accepted, there is still some
value in the adoption of conventions that allow for systematic comparison,
even if those conventions are imperfect.
Part 2 of the book considers themes that emerged as a central part of the
2010 conference, Church, State and Family. Daniela Lombardis Womens
44 Below, p. 68.
45 Below, p. 68.
46 Below, p. 114.
Reputation and Marriage Disputes in Protestant and Catholic Europe, 1500

1800 takes a comparative European approach to investigate religious influences
on marriage and family life. She argues that during the period under consider-
ation marriage was transformed from a private act to a public ceremony which
had many implications, especially for women. The expression and meaning of
the word fama is discussed from the communal as well as the legal perspective,
and Lombardi emphasises that community relations and judiciary procedure
were closely intertwined, pointing out that restoring peace and order to the
community was the main goal for both the neighbourhood and the judicial
authorities.47 The focal point of this study is conflict during the phase of for-
mation of the couple, as both Protestants and Catholic authorities imposed a
considerable degree of interference during this process. Lombardi argues that
medieval canon law offered concrete protection for seduced and abandoned
women, and she exposes the ways in which Protestant and Catholic authorities
attempted to reduce the force of these measures.
The next chapter makes a substantial contribution to the growing lit-
erature on the history of godparenthood and baptism in Europe. In The
Reformation, the Council of Trent and the Divergence of Spiritual Kinship and
Godparenthood across Europe: a Long-run Analysis Guido Alfani investigates
the notion of spiritual kinship before and after the Reformation. He reflects on
transformations in the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches and analy-
ses the implication of divergence across the European continent, concentrat-
ing on how godparenthood and spiritual kinship were used to pursue aims very
different from those prescribed by religious teaching.48 Alfani makes use of a
variety of documents and seeks to reconstruct the meaning given to spiritual
kinship and godparenthood by different religious authorities through studying
conciliar decrees and discussions, diocesan statutes, theological treatises and
other sources. Furthermore, the author discusses a survey he conducted on
northern Italy to show the versatility of godparenthood choices. On the basis
of its outcome Alfani proposes a typology of godparenting models according
to the number and gender of godparents chosen, that can be applicable across
Europe. Finally he assesses interactions between households, godparenthood
and spiritual ties, stressing the importance of strategies adopted by the couple.
Judit Ambrus addresses methodological issues by tracing household dynam-
ics from the under-researched family books compiled by the Hungarian
Calvinist Church in Transylvania to shed more light on the complex picture of
family life in south-eastern Europe. In Household Structure in the Nineteenth
47 Below, p. 121.
48 Below, p. 142.
Century in a Transylvanian Village she questions the applicability of the clas-

sification system proposed by Laslett and his research group to this specific
ecclesiastical source, and explores the wider social implications of the rela-
tionships between family, household and community. The chapter combines
qualitative and quantitative approaches, stressing the importance of using a
variety of sources as well as of disciplines in order to avoid simplification and
misrepresentation of social realities in the past.
Part 3 considers Family Strategies, and specifically the ways in which trans-
mission of headship and inheritance could be handled. In Old Age in the Life
Cycle of Polish Peasants at the Turn of the Middle Ages Piotr Guzowski outlines
the situation of elderly people and their economic activity in a peasant com-
munity in south-eastern Poland. He illustrates the extent to which retirement
arrangements were present among the older people of the community, exam-
ining different strategies in passing on their possessions and landholdings, and
discussing their roles in a rural setting. Guzowski utilises a village court roll for
the period between 1419 and 1609 which not only contains information about
land and purchases but also records rents, wills, loans and pledges, criminal
and civil cases, and conflicts between neighbours. The discussion includes an
assessment of the roles played by women in these sources, a welcome addition
given the low profile usually accorded to them in the historiography.
The roles played by women is also a central theme of the next contribution,
which offers valuable insight into inheritance practices and strategies in the
south-eastern hinterland of the once important Habsburg port town of Trieste.
In Succession Choices of Small Farmers and Women Farmers Wills in the
Area around Trieste in the Nineteenth Century Marta Verginella investigates
mens and womens wills in the area of Breg, populated by Slovenian peasants,
and highlights the womens market activities. The proximity to Trieste enabled
women to earn additional cash income to supplement what they might have
possessed through dowry or inheritance. Verginella points out not only that
baking and selling bread became an important economic activity for many
women, but also that some women acted as creditors as well as debtors, thus
becoming an alternative to village loan sharks. This situation changed at the
beginning of the 20th century with the rise of farmers loan banks on one hand
and, on the other, village authorities promoting passive and submissive roles
for women. The decline of the economic power of women was exacerbated
by the foundation by the clergy of the Society of Mary in 1904. Their mission
was to create a new family role for women in Breg, following the example of
Mary, as housewives who looked after their children but were also allowed to
do fieldwork. Verginella argues that clergy supported spiritual wills, especially
for women without money and dowry, as in the eyes of God they were freed
from chains of worldly possessions, but only at the price of a new subservience
to men.49
The final chapter addresses inheritance law, and particularly the position of
elderly men, in the rural domain of hlavy, situated in Western Bohemia. In
Inheritance Practice and the Elderly in Central Europe: the Example of Western
Bohemia, 17001850 Alice Velkov examines the inheritance law which was
passed in 1787 and had profound implications for landowners and the retire-
ment strategies they adopted. Until then the successor to the farm appeared
automatically to be the youngest son. In practice this meant that fathers only
rarely lived long enough to see the transfer of their holdings to an adult heir,
and as a consequence they were forced to remain in charge of the farm for
longer than they would have liked. After the 1787 reform it was the oldest son
who inherited the property unless the father decided otherwise. Velkov sug-
gests that this act enabled fathers to enjoy much more freedom in their deci-
sion on their specific family situations, since they were no longer obliged to
wait for their youngest sons coming of age.50 The study also analyses retire-
ment strategies among different social categories of land owner. The tech-
niques of family reconstitution were applied to data obtained from population
registers, registers of real property, cadastres and Urbaries or tax-registers,
to identify changes in family strategies associated with property transfers and
old-age retirement agreements.
3 Family History: The Future?
What future trajectories for family history are suggested by these essays? Most
obviously they call in question rigid typologies of regional differences in fam-
ily structures within Europe. However, they do not deny the possible existence
of certain regional variations which need to be explored in perhaps a more
nuanced fashion than in the past.
The essays particularly Beatrice Morings contribution also suggest the
limitations of quantitative family reconstitution techniques for informing us
about past relationships within families and households, as distinct from struc-
tures. This has influenced understandings of the lives of older people and their
relationships with younger relatives, which several of the essays discuss. As
Moring points out, techniques which count only biological kin as household
members can seriously overstate the aloneness of individuals who shared a
49 Below, p. 230.
50 Below, p. 254.
household not with kin but with friends or lodgers, as many older women did
in particular. We should remember that in most times and places for which
we have data women have outlived men. Old age was, and is, predominantly a
female condition. Some older people were alone in the past, as now. But close
kin-like relationships might be formed between people who shared a home
or supported one another in other ways without being related by biology or
marriage. Alfanis chapter in the volume reveals the importance of godparent
relationships, one form of many such relationships concerning all age-groups
that remain to be explored.
Similarly, the belief that kin support one another only or mainly when co-
resident in households and that, for example, older people who did not live
with close relatives were neglected by them and therefore required support
from collective welfare systems overlooks relationships which are revealed
when quantitative is combined with qualitative data such as memoirs, diaries
and local social surveys and commentaries. For example, there is strong evi-
dence that in medieval and early modern times, and indeed up to the present,
in England older people often lived alone for as long as they were fit and active
enough to do so, not because they were neglected by their relatives, but because
they preferred to keep their independence for as long as possible, often moving
to live with children or other relatives only when decrepitude finally got the
better of them. Or, as quantitative data can inform us, they lived alone because
they had no children in times of relatively low marriage rates and high death
rates at younger ages i.e. most historical times before the mid-20th century. Or
younger relatives might have moved far away in search of work, as they have
long done. In the past when communications were poor and not everyone was
literate, it was much harder for the generations to keep in contact over even
quite short distances than in these days of modern communications technol-
ogy and fast transport. Though the ways in which younger migrants did keep in
contact with parents, and send remittances, even over such a distance as from
Australia to Britain in the 19th century, merits research.
Also, commonly, children or other relatives might live close to older people,
the relationship hidden in the censuses because, for example, a daughter had
changed her name on marriage. There is strong evidence for England of sup-
port exchanged between generations living nearby: daughters providing food,
performing housework, sons carrying out repairs and other services for ageing
parents, grandparents caring for nearby grandchildren or giving financial sup-
port to children and grandchildren, as they still do. Sometimes younger people
did not support their ageing parents because they were simply too poor and
needed support themselves from the older generation. Support was commonly
exchanged both ways between the generations, not just from younger to older.
Older people living in English welfare institutions, at least since the 19th cen-
tury when we have data, were and are most likely to have no close surviving
relatives or to be so infirm that they require specialist care beyond the capacity
of the family, rather than to be victims of family neglect.51 As Moring argues,
family care for older people has always been important wherever it has been
researched in northern Europe.
We should be wary also of taking for granted that when the generations
did share a household all household members were affectionately cared for.
There is strong evidence from modern Japan of the extent of physical abuse of
older people co-residing with younger relatives, and no reason to believe that
this is a phenomenon only of Japan or of modern times.52 Indeed folktales in
medieval Europe warned older people of the danger of neglect if they shared
a home with their children.53 Similarly, quantitative sources tell us nothing
about other severe tensions among co-residing kin: the extent of domestic vio-
lence or wife-beating as it was once known or of physical or sexual abuse
of children, though such cruelty also tragically widespread as it is today is
unlikely to be a modern invention. Such events are also often hidden in quali-
tative sources since they were sources of shame, not readily admitted even in
private diaries.
Also hidden in both quantitative and qualitative data can be other family
secrets regarded as shameful within the culture, such as unmarried mother-
hood.54 Official sources can provide the numbers of illegitimate children but
cannot always tell what happened to them, what were their subsequent family
situations, if they survived. In England it was only in the mid-20th century,
when social researchers began to research family relationships, studying sam-
ples from local communities, that it was realized that, while some children
went to institutions, or were adopted, lived alone with their mothers or with
cohabiting parents, as many as one-third of unmarried mothers and their chil-
dren lived with the mothers parents. Sometimes the parents brought up the
child as their own, keeping the real relationship secret even from the child,
51 Susannah Ottoway, The Decline of Life. Old Age in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge,
2004), 141172; Pat Thane, Old Age in English History. Past Experiences, Present Issues
(Oxford, 2000), 119146, 287307, 407435.
52 Mayumi Hayashi, The Care of Older People in Japan: Myths and Realities of Family
Care, Policy paper, www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-121.html (accessed
15 May 2014).
53 Shulamith Shahar, Growing Old in the Middle Ages (London, 1997), 94; Thane, Old Age,
7374.
54 Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets. Living with Shame from the Victorians to the Present Day
(London, 2013).
who might suffer a severe shock if it was revealed. In times when families were
large and births spread over many years such subterfuge was possible, though
neighbours were rarely deceived. Such relationships were hidden in the English
census which recorded only the relationship of each household member to
the household head (as daughter, grandson) and not to each other, so the
mother/child relationship was obscured in the quantitative source as it was
sometimes hidden from the child.55 Again, it is unlikely that such households
existed only in England or only in the recent past.
Such reflections are finding lively echoes in emerging research in other
parts of Europe and beyond. A recent special issue of The History and the
Family explores the themes of violence, family and sexuality in early modern
Europe.56 Patrinus, an international and interdisciplinary research group of
around a hundred scholars, established in 2006, focuses on the cultural and
social history of baptism and godparenthood.57 In 2013, the fourth of the series
of activities of the Balkan Family History Network, initiated by the Nicolae
Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest, took as its theme Paupers in the Midst
of Others: Orphans and Abandoned Children in Europe (17th to 20th Centuries).58
The steady broadening of the horizons of family history are undoubtedly mak-
ing their mark.
We have learned much about the history of the family in recent decades,
these essays suggest how many fascinating and important facets of family life
remain to be explored. The pendulum will go on swinging.
55 Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in
Twentieth Century England (Oxford, 2012).
56 See The History of the Family, Special Issue: Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values:
Violence, Family and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe, ed. Marianna Muravyeva, 18: 3
(2013), pp. 261277.
57 Publications include: Guido Alfani and Philippe Castagnetti eds., Baptiser. Pratique sac-
ramentelle, pratique sociale (XVIeXXe sicles) (St-Etienne, 2009); and Guido Alfani and
Vincent Gourdon (eds.), Spiritual Kinship in Europe, 15001900 (London, 2012).
58 Publication is in preparation.
part 1
Commonalities and Diversities

CHAPTER 2
North European Families in the Past: Family Ties

Revisited
Beatrice Moring
1 Introduction
In his article in Population and Development Review (1998), David Reher put for-
ward a theory that in the past and today, there were and are considerable dif-
ferences in family behaviour between northern and southern Europe. Because
of strong family ties in the south people relied on their family members, while
in the north the state provided the care when people were no longer able to
work for their living.1 The role of poor relief and the absence of family care has
also been a central theme in the Rowntree model of life cycle poverty and that
of the nuclear hardship hypothesis of Laslett. While the Reher theory con-
tains many interesting and valuable observations, particularly about present-
day society, studies of the elderly in Britain in the past have revealed that a
disregard of the family as a provider of care is highly questionable. Robin and
Rose have shown close cooperation between the generations, particularly in
the case of mothers and daughters.2 Wall has demonstrated that survival in
widowhood was built on multiple strategies; poor relief would not have been
sufficient. Family assistance, work and poor relief in combination formed
the building-blocks for existence in old age and widowhood.3 Anderson and
Cohen have drawn attention to close-knit family networks in industrial areas
1 David S. Reher, Family Ties in Western Europe; Persistent Contrasts, Population Development
Review, 24: 2 (1998), 203234.
2 J. Robin, Family Care of the Elderly in a Nineteenth Century Devonshire Parish, Ageing and
Society, 4 (1984), 505516 (508511); Sonya Rose, The Varying Household Arrangements of
the Elderly in Three English Villages: Nottinghamshire 18511881, Continuity and Change 3: 1
(1988), 101122 (113115); Pat Thane, Intergenerational Support in Families in Modern Britain,
in Gender Inequalities, Households and the Production of Well-Being in Modern Europe, eds.
Tindara Addabo, Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, Chrisina Borderias and Alastair Owens (London,
2010), 109122.
3 Richard Wall, Relationships Between Generations in British Families Past and Present,
in, Families and Households, Divisions and Change, eds. Catherine Marsh and Sarah
Aber (London, 1992) 6385; idem, The Residence Patterns of Elderly English Women in

24 Moring
of Lancashire and Ireland.4 Ruggles has more recently presented national level
data revealing high rates of co-residence between the elderly and their chil-
dren in 19th-century England and Scandinavia,5 higher than those presented
by Reher.
One might ask what the reasons are for the assumptions of lack of inter-
generational co-operation in northern Europe of the past. These can first and
foremost be divided into the nature of registration, particularly census reg-
istration, the methods of household classification and the interpretation of
the terms household and family. In addition there are the questions raised by
problematic analysis of defective methodologies.
2 Problems, Definitions, Methodologies
A serious problem with methodologies used in household studies is the preva-

lence of the Laslett-Hammel household classification scheme. Based on calcu-
lation using the scheme, sweeping statements have been made, not only about
inter-generational co-residence in north-west Europe, but also about prefer-
ences for particular types of behaviour.6 Steve Ruggles has repeatedly raised
the problem that the method does not take into account the consequences of
the demographic situation. In areas with high age at marriage, whatever the
preference, the children were unable to co-reside with their dead parents. In
situations of increasing survival of the offspring it would not be possible for
parents to reside with all their living children in old age. Therefore the only
way to reliably measure inter-generational co-residence is not to approach all
families, but the representatives of the older generation.7
Comparative Perspective, in Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500, eds. Lynn
Botellho and Pat Thane (London, 2001), 139165.
4 Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971);
Marilyn Cohen, Survival Strategies in Female-Headed Households, Linen Workers in
Tullyish, County Down 1901, Journal of Family History, 17 (1992) 303318.
5 Steve Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements
of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective, Population Development Review, 35: 2
(2009), 249273 (265, 269).
6 Peter Laslett, Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-industrial
Europe: a Consideration of the Nuclear-hardship Hypothesis, Continuity and Change, 3: 2
(1988), 153175.
7 Steve Ruggles, Prolonged Connections: The Rise of the Extended Family in Nineteenth Century
England and America (Madison, Wi., 1987), 7588; idem, Multigenerational Families in 19th
Century America, Continuity and Change, 18: 1 (2003), 137165 (140143).
North European Families in the Past 25
When embarking on household studies, decisions also have to be made

about how the family or household is understood. The Laslett-Hammel
scheme8 only registered biological relationships. As a result of such an analysis
the share of persons living alone would be seriously inflated. The same prob-
lem can sometimes be found in urban censuses that used biology or economy
as criteria for household boundaries. In urban areas many householders sub-
mitted schedules that included lodgers and the census bureau divided up the
household, defining each lodger as living in a household of their own unless
they were related to each other thereby enhancing the proportion of single
person households.9 Oral history records have shown that such an attitude
provides a false image. In actual fact unrelated lodgers could reside in re-
constituted family-like structures sharing not only sleeping quarters and beds
but also food and services.10 It is therefore of some importance to assess the
household definitions of the data collection; whether the definition was joint
residence, joint economy or the sharing of meals. Where a joint economy was
used as the criterion, examples have been found from rural Nordic datasets
showing that old mothers who held a retirement contract were registered as
living in separate households. There have even been cases where taxation
authorities separated adult children with earnings from an outside employer
into single person households.11
This paper will focus on widows and their co-residence systems. We will
avoid the problems pointed out by Ruggles by approaching the issue from the
older generation. We will analyse a set of households of widows in detail in a
number of 19th-century local communities. We will analyse co-residence pat-
terns, age and availability of children, gender issues, the socio-economic posi-
tion of the families and geographic locality. When looking at the households
we want to determine if there are any indications not only of the north-south
but also the east-west patterns that has coloured a lot of thinking. The locali-
ties include a community from north-west Russia in the east and progress over
Finland to communities in Norway and Britain in the west, from communities
8 Peter Laslett, Introduction: the History of the Family, in Household and Family in Past
Time, eds. Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (Cambridge, 1972), 2832.
9 The Census of Helsinki 1900, Original sheets, the National Archive, Helsinki.
10 Beatrice Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance from Society in Urban Northern
Europe 18901910, The Family History Quarterly, 1 (2008), 105117 (112113).
11 Beatrice Moring, Skrgrdsbor. Familj, hushll och demografi i filndsk kustbygd 16351920
[Household, Family and Demography in Finnish Coastal Societies from the Seventeenth
to the Nineteenth Century] (Helsinki, 1994).
26 Moring
on the northern Baltic, Sweden and Finland to the southern Baltic, north
Germany. Both rural and urban datasets are included.
The data has been extracted from censuses and census type records from
the period 18001900. The questions that are going to be raised in this presen-
tation are: How did the composition of widows households reflect the issue
of co-residence between generations? To what extent can we see and effect of
engagement in agrarian or non-agrarian pursuits? What is the effect of demog-
raphy on a study of micro level cohorts? What kind of household arrangements
did the widows embark upon in urban areas that were different from those in
a rural environment? Did widows rely more on sons than on daughters? Are
there any indications of an east-west effect? Was the situation in Northern
Europe really that different from that in the South?
One of the hypotheses that will be tested is that co-habitation patterns
should not be assumed to have their background primarily in geographic loca-
tion. Rather one should look at the economic capacity of families to collaborate
or assist one another. Siding with Ruggles, we expect that where landholding
farmers had the capacity, space and economy, making family collaboration pos-
sible, other groups were not in the same position. Where a farm or a business
needed the young while providing for the old, both parties could profit from
the arrangement. Families with no land or capital were in a different position.
Therefore if there are many landholding farmers we expect higher levels of co-
residence than in localities with high levels of landless workers. If however the
local economy provided earning opportunities, alternative systems could be
set up. We expect to find that in rural families without land or property, and in
urban families, depending on wage labour, higher levels of co-residence with
daughters can be detected. On the other hand if land, property or a business
was the basis of existence we envisage higher levels of co-residence with sons.
3 Household Structure: Co-residence, Married or Unmarried

Children
To answer the question of co-residence, information about the households of

widows from 10 localities in the 19th century from Britain, Finland, Germany,
Norway, Sweden and Russia has been collected. The households have been
located in tax registers, communion books and censuses with detailed infor-
mation about household composition. The aim has been to gather informa-
tion about the household arrangements of widows; did they predominantly
live with their children and or kin, or did they live alone? Efforts have also been
TABLE 2.1 Residence patterns of widows in Northern European localities, percentages
Year, locality Alone With Child Child Kin Non Widow Nr wid.
child Married Unmarried relative head
1. Britain 1851 0 60 27 33 15 24 60 33 (100%)

2. Britain 1851 3 79 25.5 53 5.5 12 83 90 (100%)
3. Germany 1867 8 81 41 40 4 7 53 157 (100%)
4. Norway 1801 1 68 36 32 10 21 26 94 (100%)
5. Finland 1800 15 74 41 33 6.5 5 60 107 (100%)
6. Finland 1809 10 86 60 26 1 2 42 88 (100%)
7. Finland 1809 4 90 59 31 0 4 37 49 (100%)
8. Finland 1859 10 89 35 54 0 0 68 48 (100%)
9. Finland 1890 10 87 48 39 1 1 51 89 (100%)
10. Sweden 19c 8 73 58 15 0 19 37 185 (100%)
11. Finland 1851 4 84 44 40 11 1 74 231 (100%)
12. Fin/Rus 1835 4 81 39 42 5 10 68 126 (100%)
13. Finland 1876 12 85 41 44 3 1 43 282 (100%)
1. Grasmere and Langdale UK (north) 1851; 2. Berkhamsted UK (south east) 1851; 3. Mecklenburg, Germany (north)
1867; 4. Ullensaker, Norway (south east) 1801; 5. Kalanti, Finland (west) 1800; 6. Korpo-Houtskar, Finland (south west)
1809; 7. Kumlinge, Finland (south west) 1809; 8. Houtskar, Finland (south west) 1859; 9. Houtskar, Finland (south
west) 1890; 10. Sundsvall district, Sweden (north) 1880s; 11. Virolahti, Finland (east) 1851; 12. Kitela, Russian Karelia
(easten Finnish border) 1835; 13. Virolahti, Finland (east) 1876.
Sources: Censuses and census type records
made to find potential effects of social and economic position on co-residence

patterns. Instead of using the Laslett-Hammel classification scheme the wid-
ows have been divided into groups depending on whether they lived with their
married or unmarried children, with relatives, with strangers or on their own.
Information about age and occupation has also been recorded.
When we study the household composition of these widows we find that
the overwhelmingly dominant co-residence partner was a child. Depending on
time and place between 70% and 90% of the widows shared household with
a son or daughter or several sons and daughters. The proportions living with a
married child varied between 27% and 60%. It does not seem, however, that
there are any clear east-west or north-south gradients in this category. While
it seems that a higher proportion of widows in Finland lived with married
28 Moring
children than in Britain, it is interesting to notice that the proportion living

with married offspring was no higher in Kitela in western Russia than for
example in Mecklenburg, northern Germany (see Table 2.1). Co-residence lev-
els of similar magnitude, based on national level census data for a number of
Northern European countries, have been presented by Ruggles in a compara-
tive analysis of inter-generational co-habitation.12
Whether or not children would be available would of course be affected by
age at marriage, fertility and mortality. Studies of 18th-century Sweden have
revealed that while women in their 60s tended to live with offspring and less
than 10% lived alone, 50% of the children to which these women had given
birth were no longer alive at this point in time.13 The loss of children in the
past did not hit all families identically; some couples were childless from the
start while others became childless over time. In some cases mobility affected
the availability of kin.14 A large proportion of the datasets used for this study
do not include a family reconstitution element, which makes it impossible to
tell if the widows had children elsewhere in the community or further away.
However, where it has been possible to follow this line of thought, it transpired
that the widows of farmers, who did not reside with children, did not have
any children living in the parish. The widows living with kin only were either
young childless widows returning to the parental home or old widows without
children living with siblings or nephews and nieces. Living alone seems to have
been relatively rare.
A comparison with some southern European communities indicates, if
anything, similar levels of co-residence. In 1881 58% of the widows over 50 in
the community of Casaleccio in Italy, lived in the household of one of their
children, 13% lived with other relatives and 13% with non-relatives.15 In 1880s
Majorca 40% of widows over 60 lived with married children while 21% shared
12 Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System, 265266.

13 David Gaunt, Household Typology: Problems-Methods-Results, in Chance and Change,
eds. Sune kerman, Hans-Christian Johansen and David Gaunt (Odense, 1978), 6983
(7679).
14 Yrj Kaukiainen, Social Structure and Demographic Development in a Southern Finnish
Parish, Lohja, 181050 (Helsinki, 1979), 27; Richard Wall, Economic Collaboration of Family
Members Within and Beyond Households in English Society 16002000, Continuity and
Change, 23: 1 (2010), 83108 (9596); David S. Reher, Perspectives on the Family in Spain
Past and Present (Oxford, 1997), pp. 250252.
15 David Kertzer and N. Karweit, The Impact of Widowhood in Nineteenth Century Italy,
in Aging in the Past, eds. David I. Kertzer and Peter Laslett (Berkeley, Ca., 1995), 239240.
a household with a single child.16 A study by Reher himself has shown co-
residence levels of less than 10% in 19th-century Spain, although the north-
ern parts of the country revealed 3040% extended families in the previous
century.17 Similar differences, with low levels of co-residence in the south and
higher in the north, have been presented for Italy by Da Molin18 and Viazzo
and Albera.19
One would feel inclined to conclude that the evidence so far does not sup-
port the idea of a less family-orientated Northern Europe and an integrated
south. It would seem that drawing conclusions about patterns for such large
geographic regions would be slightly precarious. We will progress to analyse
individual factors that might promote or make difficult maintaining systems
for family collaboration.
4 Age, Widowhood and Co-residence
The question about co-residence with married or unmarried children is natu-

rally linked to the age of the widow, as has been discussed by Wall in 2002. He
demonstrated that of a cohort of widows in England and Wales in 1891, 29% of
those over 65 lived with married children, but only 13% of those aged between
40 and 64. However, 64% of the younger widows lived with an unmarried child
but only 31% of those over 65.20 This progression through the life course then
creates a biological framework that affects all studies of co-residence, with
little or no links to preference by the individuals concerned; it only reflects
what is biologically possible.
To determine the effect of the age distribution of the widows included in
this study, the ages have been tabulated and will be analysed. The widows from
the Sundsvall district in northern Sweden have not been tabulated as all the
16 Antonia Gomila Grau, Residence Patterns of Aged Widows in Three Mediterranean

Communities and the Organisation of Care, The History of the Family, 7 (2002) 157173
(164).
17 Reher, Perspectives on the Family in Spain, 33.
18 Giovanna Da Molin, Family Forms and Domestic Service in Southern Italy from the
Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries, Journal of Family History, 15: 4 (1990), 503528
(508).
19 Paolo Viazzo and Dionigi Albera, The Peasant Family in Northern Italy 17501930, Journal
of Family History, 15: 4 (1990), 461482 (466467).
20 Richard Wall, Elderly Widows and Widowers and their Co-residence in Late 19th and
Early 20th Century England and Wales, The History of the Family, 7: 2 (2002), 139155 (143).
30 Moring
widows were in their 50s or 60s which of course partly explains the high co-
residence rates with married rather than unmarried children.
It is fairly interesting to notice that considerable variation in age distribu-
tion among the widows can be observed. The highest proportion of widows
over the age of 60 can be found in Mecklenburg in northern Germany and
Kalanti on the western Finnish mainland. Both parishes were not only rural
but also orientated toward agrarian activity. Houtskar on the south west coast
of Finland shows certain similarities with these areas. The age distribution is
also similar to that on the Finnish national level.21
On the other hand Berkhamsted in south-east England and Grasmere in the
Lake District had a more even spread of widows over the age categories. The
most surprising age distribution is however to be found in the parish of Kitela
on the north west Russian border. Here only 33% of the widows were over 60
years old. The reason for the unexpected pattern is likely to be the fairly low
age at first marriage in the parish, with a tendency to cluster around the age of
20 rather than 25, with the opportunity to become widowed at an earlier age,
and with as much as 4% of the widows being under the age of 30 (Table 2.2).
Considering the relatively high age at first marriage in Britain it is interest-
ing to note the high proportions of young widows, exceeding both Kitela with
early age at marriage and the coastal parish of Replot with considerable risks
of male drowning. Naturally the sizes of the cohorts might slightly distort the
results because of the impact of a few cases on the outcome. I would however
be inclined to suggest that the explanations could be linked to the urban traits
of rural English society in comparison with other parts of Europe.
The conclusions that can be drawn about opportunities for co-residence with
married or unmarried children are however that the age of the widows con-
tributes to explain the relatively high co-residence rates with married children
in Finland and Germany. The high proportion of young widows in Kitela also
explains the relatively high headship rates and the high rates of co-residence
with unmarried children.
5 Farm, Workshop or Other Property: Socio-Economic Distribution

and Opportunities
In a paper of 2010 Moring demonstrated that a variation can be found in the

co-residence patterns between different socio-economic groups. In rural
21 SVT, kolmas vuosikerta, (Helsinki, 1905), 30; FOS VI, 41, Finlands befolkningsstatistik 1750
1890, (Helsingfors, 1909).
TABLE 2.2 Age distribution of widows in local communities, percentages
Age Kalanti Kitela Houtskar Replot Mecklenburg Berkhamsted Grasmere

Finland 1835 Finland Finland Germany Britain Britain
1800 1890 1890 1867 1851 1851
2029 0.9 4 1 1.1 0 2.2 0

3039 4 8 6 12.3 4.5 13.4 18
2040 5 12 7 13.4 4.5 15.6 18
4049 12 23 16 17.9 12.3 17.9 9
5059 23 38 20 23.5 25.3 23.5 24
6069 44 24 22.5 22.4 36.3 20.2 24
7079 16 8 22.5 17.9 18.8 16.8 21
80+ 0.9 0.8 9 4.5 2.5 5.6 3
60+ 60.9 32.8 54 44.6 57.6 42.6 48
Nr (100%) 107 126 80 89 157 90 33
Sources: Kalanti (West Finland) tax register and communion book 1800; Kitela (Russian Karelia,
the Finnish border) communion book 1835; Houtskar (south west Finland) tax register and
communion book 1890; Replot (North west Finland) tax register and communion book 1890;
Mecklenburg (Germany) census 1867; Berkhamsted (south east England) census 1851; Grasmere
(North England) census 1851.
Scandinavia it was common for proletarians to marry later than farmers, and
landless marriages could also be of shorter duration. Therefore an increase in
the number of proletarians in a community could result in higher proportions
of families with children under the age of 15 at the time of the death of the
husband. There also seems to have been a stronger tendency to neo-locality
among the landless.22
22 Beatrice Moring, Rural Widows, Economy and Co-residence in the 18th and 19th
Centuries, The History of the Family, 15 (2010), 239254 (242248); eadem, Nordic Family
Patterns and the North-west European Household System, Continuity and Change, 18: 1
(2003), 77110 (86); eadem, Systems of Survival Continuities and Discontinuities after
the Death of the Household Head, in When Dad Died Family Stress and Household
Dynamics in Historical Societies, eds. Renzo Derosas and Michel Oris (Berne, 2002),
173193 (187, 190); Orvar Lfgren, Family and Household among Scandinavian Peasants,
Ethnologia Scandinavica (1974), 1752 (4043); Gaunt, Household Typology, 8182;
Christer Lundh, Households and Families in Pre-industrial Sweden, Continuity and
Change, 10: 1 (1995), 3368 (45, 55).
32 Moring
Such behaviour was not unique to the Nordic countries. Jrgen Schlumbohm
has demonstrated that while the practice of cohabitation between genera-
tions was particularly pronounced in the German landholding group, lack of
capital could prevent collaborative strategies among the landless. However, in
the north German community of Belm, where co-habitation of widows with
their children was common on farms and smallholdings, proto-industrial
textile work increased co-habitation rates between adult children and their
widowed mothers.23 In Austria the difference in co-residence rates between
widows and their adult children varied considerably depending on social
group in the first half of the 19th century. While 52% of the widows of farmers
resided in the households of their adult children, only 12% of the widows of
inmates did so.24
The differences in co-residence patterns between social groups have also
been detected in studies of Spanish households, where the family held land or
capital the levels of co-residence were higher.25
Since the Middle Ages the Nordic countries and the Germanic area operated
a system whereby the care of the older generation was part of the land trans-
mission system (syting, kar, Ausgedinge, Altenteil). The duty of care embraced
both old fathers and mothers, and it was often practiced through co-residence
between generations. Even though changes in legislation, landownership and
demography over the centuries increased the need for specific procedures,
such as detailed retirement contracts, the co-residence between the heir to the
land and old mothers continued into the 20th century in the farming class.26
Widows also inherited one third or one half of the marital property. In farm-
ing households or workshops property relations could be intertwined, and as
long as the property was held together all parties could profit from its use. If
the husband died early the widow became the guardian of her children. As the
mother of the prospective heir her power could be considerable. She could
even remarry and still remain running the holding while her son or daughter
23 Jrgen Schlumbohm, Lebenslaufe, Familien, Hofe ((Gttingen, 1994), 253255.

24 Jim Brown, Rural Widows in Lower Austria 17881848, The History of the Family, 7 (2002),
117124 (120122).
25 Reher, Perspectives on the Family, 35.
26 Moring Beatrice, Conflict or Co-operation Old Age and Retirement in the Nordic Past,
Journal of Family History 28: 2, (2003), 231257 (236242); eadem, Retirement Contracts
and the Economics of Widowhood in the Nordic Countries, Continuity and Change, 21:
3 (2006), 383418 (391392); Onni Koskikallio, Maatalouskiinteistjen elkerasituksesta
Pirkkalan ja Ruoveden tuomiokunnissa vuosina 18001913 [The Burden of Retirement on
Farms in the Parishes of Pirkkkala and Ruovesi 18001913] (Helsinki, 1927), 1926.
from the first marriage was growing up to adulthood. If the farm originated
from her own family her position was secure.27
In eastern Finland and western Russia aged parents could retain formal
headship until death, even though the actual farming was in the hands of the
younger generation. Where formal transfer of land took place, with court reg-
istration, such transfers were generally very simple and did not include specifi-
cations about the rights of the parents.28 In 1775 one in four widows in Finland
headed a farm, while one in five lived in retirement with their children. By 1805
10% of the widows headed farms while 38% were registered as living in retire-
ment. By 1875 12% of widows were running farms but the level of retirement
was less well registered. In Sweden the situation was fairly similar in the late
18th century.29
In Britain the widow usually had the right to remain on her husbands tene-
ment until death (free bench) unless she remarried. Even in such cases the
tenancy could sometimes be held onto. 16th- and 17th-century wills indicate
that although many men preferred their property to be transferred to their
children, particularly sons, when they reached adulthood, arrangements were
usually put in for the widow to continue residence in a particular room of the
house and have a specific part of the holding tilled for her by her son. There are
even examples, similar to 19th century Finnish contracts, that in case of a land
sale, the widow retained her right of residence.30
The situation of the landless labouring class was different. Generally they
had to take work where it could be found, which made them more mobile.
27 Ake Holmbck and Elias Wessen, Svenska landskapslagar 3, Hlsingelagen [Swedish

Regional Laws 3, the Law of Hlsingland] (Stockholm, 1940), 351; Anu Pylkknen, Puoli
vuodetta, lukot ja avaimet [Half the Bed, Locks and Leys] (Helsinki, 1990), 98103; Rudolph
Huebner, A History of Germanic Private Law (London, 1918), 621623, 628; Fr. Hallager. and
Fr. Brandt, Kong Christian den fjerdes Norske Lov af 1604 [The Law for Norway of King
Christian the Fourth, 1604], (Kristiania, 1855), 73, 77.
28 Moring, Beatrice, Family Strategies, Inheritance Systems and the Care of the Elderly in
Historical Perspective, Historical Social Research, 23: 1/2 (1998), 6782 (7277).
29 Gunnar Fougstedt and A. Raivio, Suomen vestn sty ja ammattiryhmitys v. 17511805
[The Occupational and Social Structure of the Population in Finland 17511805] (Helsinki,
1953), 2629; Kaarina Vattula, Kvinnors forvarvsarbete i Norden under 100 ar 18701970
[Female Employment in the Nordic Countries 18701970], Studia Historica Jyvaskylaensia,
27 (Jyvskyl, 1983), 3639; FOS VI, 41, Finlands befolkningsstatistik 17501890, (Helsingfors,
1909); Nils Wohlin, Jordbruksbefolkningen i Sverige [The Agrarian Population of
Sweden], Emigrationsutredningen Bilaga, IX (Stockholm, 1909), 197207, 236.
30 E. P. Thompson, The Grid of Inheritance: a Comment, in Family and Inheritance, eds.
Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson(Cambridge, 1976), 328360 (334335, 352,
356); Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities, English Villagers in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974), 112115.
34 Moring
In 19th-century Scandinavia the choice could be between working as an in-liv-

ing servant or living as lodgers. If a croft or a cottage was acquired, kin collabo-
ration was practiced when possible. However, their economic or employment
situation could pose restrictions on the ability to care for family members or
have the means to do so. Therefore it would not be unlikely that members of
this group would have to seek assistance from society in old age.31
An analysis of the occupational distribution in some of the localities supports
the hypothesis that localities with a high rate of farmers of families with access
to land did increase the level of co-residence between widowed mothers and
married children if account is taken of age distribution (Table 2.3). However
the gender preferences in co-residence patters also varied considerably.
TABLE 2.3 Occupational distribution of widows in 19th century rural parishes
Occupation Kalanti Houtsk Replot Sundsvall Ullensaker Mecklenburg

1800 1859 1855 reg. 1801 1867
Farmers widow* 53.3 43 42 44 26.6 39.9
Crofters widow 23.3** 34 23 25 16.6

Inmate, lodger 6.5 18 27 12 33.3
Craftsmans 2.8 5 2 5 6.6 5.7
widow
Cotter, lab. widow 7 4 16.6 9.9
Middle class 5.6 5?
No info 37
Nr (100%) 107 49 60 185 94 157
*also retired widows of farmers **crofters and soldiers

Sources: Kalanti tax register and communion book 1800; Kitela communion book 1835;
Houtskar tax register and communion book 1859; Replot tax register and communion book
1855; Mecklenburg census 1867; Ullensaker census 1801; Sundsvall region late 19th century.
31 Beatrice Moring, Widowhood Options and Strategies in Pre-industrial Northern Europe,

The History of the Family, 7: 1 (2002), 7999 (9495); Mats Hellspong and Orvar Lfgren,
Land och stad. Svenska samhllstyper och livsformer frn medeltid till nutid [Town and
Countryside, Society and Life in Sweden from Medieval Times to the Present Day] (Lund,
1988), 242243, 248250; Ingrid Eriksson and John Rogers, Rural Labor and Population
Change (Uppsala, 1978), 163, 166; Stle Dyrvik et al., Norges ekonomiske historie I [The
Economic History of Norway I (Oslo, 1979), 32, 186; Eino Jutikkala, Suomen talonpojan
historia [The History of the Finnish Farmer] (Turku, 1958), 300.
6 Sons, Daughters and Co-residence
The tendency to transfer land to male offspring whenever possible has been
predominant in Europe in the past. Elsewhere Moring has demonstrated
higher rates of co-residence with sons in the rural Nordic countries.32 In Italy,
similar gender preferences have been documented among widowed mothers.
In 19th-century Casaleccio 50% of widows co-resided with married sons and
only 10% with married daughters.33 Wall on the other hand has detected little
effect of occupation on gender preference in the co-residence of widows.34
As a result the expectation would be that, for some of the localities, the
more important the agrarian sector is to the local economy, the higher the rate
of co-residence between widows and married sons.
The results presented in Table 2.4 seem to support the hypothesis. In
Kalanti, Kitela, Houtskar and the Sundsvall district where the proportion
of farmers widows was 40% or higher, 30% or more of the widows shared a
household with a married son. In Ullensaker, where the level of proletarianisa-
tion was higher, the level of co-residence with daughters was also relatively
high. It would also seem that widows in Grasmere sought the company of their
daughters rather than that of their sons. In the urban localities like Helsinki,
Moss and Lichfield, the co-residence levels with sons was low, and in every
case lower than co-residence with daughters.
TABLE 2.4 Widows co-residence and gender
Any child Married Married Married Unmarried No

child son daughter child child
Kalanti 74 41 36.4 4.6 32.7 26

(Finland) 1800
Kitela (Russia) 80.9 38.8 35 3.9 42 19
1835
Houtskar, 87 35 30 5.6 54 13
(Finland) 1859
32 Moring, Beatrice. Rural Widows, 246247; eadem, Land Inheritance and the Finnish
Stem Family in The Stem Family in Eurasian Perspective, eds. Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux
and Emiko Ochiai (Berne and Oxford, 2009), 173202; eadem, Nordic Family Patterns,
186188, 191.
33 Kertzer and Karweit, The Impact of Widowhood, 239240.
34 Wall, Elderly Widows and Widowers, 147.
36 Moring
TABLE 2.4Widows co-residence and gender (cont.)
Any child Married Married Married Unmarried No

child son daughter child child
Ullensaker 71.3 36 16 20 43 28
(Norway) 1801
Sundsvall distr. 73 58 33 26 15 27
(Sweden)1880s
Mecklenburg 81.3 40.7 36.6 16.5 40.6 18.4
(Germany)1867
Grasmere 60 27 9 18 33 39
(Britain) 1851
Helsinki 80.7 4.5 1.2 3.2 76 18.9
(Finland)1900
Moss (Norway) 66.9 16.1 1.7 14.4 50.8 33
1900
Lichfield 64 18 7 11 46 36
(Britain) 1851
Sources: Kalanti tax register and communion book 1800; Kitela communion book 1835;
Houtskar tax register and communion book 1859; Mecklenburg census 1867; Ullensaker census
1801; Sundsvall region late 19th century; Grasmere census 1851; Helsinki census 1900; Moss
census 1900; Lichfield census 1851.
7 Urban Life and Widows
While pre-industrial urban economic life contained a strong element of crafts

connected to guilds and citizenship rights, these systems were eroded if not
before then in the 19th century. The urban dweller was no longer a specialist;
employment could be secured in factories, mills and the growing sector pro-
viding urban centres with services and goods. In addition to housing problems,
low-paid shift work, seasonal unemployment and a segregated labour market,
urban life also brought the male bread-winner system. While the poor families
in rural areas in Northern and central Europe had in many cases been able
to keep some animals or engage in household production, and poverty had
primarily been connected to illness and old age, this was not the case in town.
While industrial work was available for women, and could bring in as much as
60% of the male wage in some industrial sectors, such income was not always
at hand. Old widows or widows with young children could encounter prob-
lems in working full time, and the remuneration for casual work like washing
and cleaning was not very rewarding.35 One of the options for a widow would
therefore be collaboration with family members or other women in a similar
position.
Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux has demonstrated that although urban widows
did practice co-residence with their children the level of co-residence seems
to have been less pronounced than in the countryside, for economic reasons.36
However systems of cooperation of a different kind, female networks, mother
and daughter systems, have been recorded in industrial and urban areas by
Anderson,37 Cohen,38 Hahn39 and Moring.40
Studies of working-class biographies in the British Isles in the early 20th-
century have evidenced strong economic ties between mothers and children.
Many mothers seem to have controlled the earnings of the children, and the
sense of obligation towards the mother could even extend into the time after
the child had left home.41 In her study of female-headed households in an Irish
textile area in 1901, Cohen revealed close knit families with adult children, par-
ticularly daughters, pooling their resources with their mothers to support sib-
lings and maintain the family.42 Michael Anderson has drawn our attention to
the variable systems of female collaboration in industrial Lancashire, includ-
ing women at various stages in life and marital status.43
35 Sakari Heikkinen, Labour and the Market (Helsinki, 1997), 85, 160; Pirjo Markkola,
Tyolaiskodin synty [The Birth of the Working-class Home] (Helsinki, 1994), 107, 110;
Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance, 106107; eadem, Strategies and Networks:
Family Earnings and Institutional Contributions to Womens Households in Urban
Sweden and Finland 18901910, in Gender Inequalities, eds. Addabo et al., 8285.
36 Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, Widows and their Living Arrangements in Pre-industrial
France, The History of the Family, 7 (2002), 101116 (104105).
37 Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971).
38 Cohen, Survival Strategies.
39 Sylvia Hahn, Women in Older ages Old Women?, The History of the Family, 7: 1 (2002),
3358 (4852).
40 Moring, Strategies and Networks, 8587.
41 Ellen Ross, Rediscovering Londons Working Class Mothers 18701918, in Labour and
Love Womens Experience of Home and the Family, ed. Jane Lewis (London, 1986), 7398
(8587).
42 Cohen, Survival Strategies, 308.
43 Michael Anderson, The Social Position of Spinsters in Mid-Victorian Britain, Journal of
Family History, 9: 4 (1984), 377393 (390391); idem, Family Structure, 139144.
38 Moring
In the textile town of Norrkoping young workers tended to stay in the paren-
tal home, particularly if their mother was a widow. One third of the young
people starting work in the 1870s were the children of widows and no less than
37% of young textile workers lived with parent(s). Longitudinal observations
of this group revealed that women held the families together even after the
loss of a husband. Through united efforts and pooling of income the family
continued as a family, even though the economic situation could be difficult.44
A survey of women at the textile mills in the 1890s revealed that widows did
combine full-time work with family duties but sharing household with moth-
ers, adult daughters or other women was quite common.45
A survey of women in industrial work in 1890s Stockholm did show that
more than 70% of widows and unmarried mothers shared a household with
one or several children and in addition often co-resided with mothers, sisters
or women in a similar situation. Half of unmarried female industrial workers
lived with their parents, particularly mothers. Even though Stockholm had a
long urban history, 60% of the female industrial workers were migrants, and
only 40% had been born in Stockholm, which of course reduced the availabil-
ity of kin outside the immediate family, for potential cohabitation.46
Studies in early 20th-century Finland revealed similar patterns. Young
unmarried women often lived with family, and widows lived with children and
other kin or lodgers.47 Textile towns like Tampere demonstrated high rates of
co-residence between widows and children. Daughters in particular tended to
stay with their mothers and provide assistance or support, and in old age many
a poor widow is found in the household of her married daughter.48
44 Anita Goransson, Fran familj till fabrik [From Family to Factory] (Lund, 1988), 249251,
259).
45 Birgitta Plymoth, Fattigvard och filantropi i Norrkoping 18721914 [Poor Relief and
Philanthropy in Norrkoping] (Stockholm, 1999), 65; K. Key-Aberg, Inom textilindustrien
in Norrkoping sysselsatta arbetares lonevillkor och bostadsforhallanden [The Wages and
Living Conditions of Workers in the Textile Industry of Norrkoping], Skrifter ugifna af
Lorenska Stiftelsen, 12 (Stockholm, 1896), 4849.
46 Johan Leffler, Zur Kenntniss von den Lebens und Lohnverhltnissen Industrieller
Arbeiterinnen in Stockholm, Skrifter ugifna af Lorenska Stiftelsen, 15 (Stockholm, 1897),
1519, 25, 137.
47 G. R. Snellman, Undersokning angaende pappersindustrin [Survey of the Paper Industry]
(Helsinki, 1912), 29; SVT (Official statistics of Finland), Sosiaalisia Erkoistutkimuksia 12,
Ytyntekijttret (Helsinki, 1935), 8, 1011, 14, 67, 9899.
48 Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance, 111112; eadem, Strategies and Networks,
8687; Markkola, Tyolaiskodin synty, 111.
The data collected from urban areas for the present study have revealed,
as was seen in Table 2.4, that the urban widows seemed to seek the company
of adult daughters rather than adult sons. While more than 60% lived with
their children, in most cases the children were unmarried. The co-residence
rates with married children were considerably lower than in the countryside.
In Moss, 16% of the widows lived with a married child, in Lichfield 17% but in
Helsinki only 4%.
Contrary to theories put forward about loneliness it would seem that living
alone was not the norm. While more than 10% of the widows in Moss lived
alone, in both Helsinki and Lichfield this was much rarer. These results are also
supportive of previous findings by Sokoll,49 Wall,50 Moring,51 and Ottaway and
Anderson.52 The numbers of single person households have been artificially
inflated in censuses by using biological relationship as a household boundary.
The levels of co-residence with kin were higher than the table indicates, as
many widows lived both with children and relative often a mother or sister.
Some had moved back into their parental household after becoming widowed.
In Lichfield one third of the widows who lived with unmarried children also
had a grandchild in the household. Of those living with kin only, more than
half lived with sisters, and one in four with their parents.
In Moss the widows living with kin only lived either with parents or sib-
lings. In a couple of cases there were grandchildren in addition to unmarried
children. In Helsinki, although only 4% of the widows lived with a married
child, they lived more often with a daughter than with a son, some unmarried
daughters also had illegitimate children. 7% of the widows had a grandchild in
the household, 6% co-resided with a parent or sibling and 60% kept lodgers.
20% had only children under 15, but 29% had earning sons and 33% earning
daughters. This illuminates the issue of the different collaborative strategies
that were applied by families who had left the rural environment and opted
for a new life in town. While sons could stay on to help their mothers or care
for them in old age, it was more common for daughters to do so. The time of
49 Thomas Sokoll, The Household Position of Elderly Widows in Poverty, in Poor Women
and Children in the European Past, eds. John Henderson and Richard Wall (London, 1994),
210212.
50 Wall, Economic Collaboration of Family Members, 14243.
51 Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance, 110.
52 Susannah Ottaway, Women, Households and Independence under the Old Poor Law,
Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World, ed. Beatrice Moring (London 2012),
7388; Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge,
1971).
40 Moring
collaboration could extend from an early age and the first earnings into adult-
hood and marriage.53
A study of working-class households in Stockholm, conducted in the 1890s,
indicated that married men would assist mothers economically even when
they did not co-reside. On the other hand unmarried children, particularly
daughters, would remain in the parental household, if the mother was wid-
owed, and pool their income with her. Sometimes the daughter handed over
all her earnings to the mother. Frequent examples can also be found of cohabi-
tation between a widowed mother and a widowed, abandoned or unmarried
daughter with children. Widows with young children seem to have sought
the company of kin or taken in lodgers for the purpose of assistance with
childcare.54
8 Age Distribution of Urban Widows
The considerable differences in results between Helsinki and the other two
urban areas encouraged a more detailed look at the age distribution between
the localities.
Helsinki was an area of rapid in-migration between 1880 and 1910 while
the other two represented a more stable urban development. As Table 2.6
reveals, the widows in Helsinki were very young in comparison with the other
areas. Only 27% had reached the age of 60, unlike the 54% in Moss and 66%
in Lichfield. A comparison of Helsinki with Finland as a whole also shows an
anomaly. While 56% of the widows in Finland had reached the age of 60, in
Helsinki only 44% were of that age. The explosion level of in-migration, partic-
ularly attracting young people, created a demographic situation where young
adults formed a very considerable part of the population. Some of the migrants
were widows seeking a better life; others came, married and lost their spouse,
but lacked the security network of family present in the growing urban centre,
i.e. the possibility of returning to the parental home. A possible reason for the
particularly high proportion of young widows in the sample is linked to the
fact that the widows have been extracted from the census for the working-
53 Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance, 111112; Martta Salmela-Jarvinen, Kun se

parasta on ollut [When Things were at their Best] (Helsinki, 1965), 110115; Markkola,
Tyolaiskodin synty, 111; Ross, Labour and Love, 7577.
54 Gustaf af Geijerstam, Anteckningar rorande fabriksarbetarnes stallning i Marks harad.
[Notes on the Position of Factory Workers in Mark County] Skrifter ugifna af Lorenska
Stiftelsen 10 (Stockholm, 1894), 55, 57, 63; Leffler, Zur Kenntniss, 103, 110, 125.
TABLE 2.5 Co-residence partners of urban widows, percentages
Moss Norway Helsinki Finland Lichfield Britain

1900 1900 1851
Married child 16 4 17
Unmarried child 51 76 46.5
Relative 7 2.5 10.2
Non relative 13.5 14 18
Alone 13 2.5 7.9
Nr of widows 118 (100%) 158 (100%) 88 (100%)
Sources: census of Helsinki, Finland, 1900; census of Moss, Norway, 1900; census of Lichfield,
Britain 1851.
Widow head of household 73% Moss, 94% Helsinki, 71.5% Lichfield
class part of Helsinki. This would probably result in a particularly high level
of in-migrants. This was also the case; more than half of the widows in the
sample were born outside Helsinki. Because the widows were young their
children were young, and fewer opportunities of co-residence with married
children were available.
9 Work, Earnings and Strategy Opportunities
The opportunities for a widow in an urban environment were, as in the coun-

tryside, linked to her social position. While the working-class widow had to
build strategies based on pooling restricted assets, women with capital could
share a household with relatives of the same status or with fewerresources.55
Jane Humphries has suggested that widows with adult children tended to with-
draw from active working life and acted as their housekeepers.56 This seems to
have been the case sometimes. While the census of Moss states that the main
55 Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, The Myth of the Victorian Patriarchal Family, The
History of the Family 7: 1 (2002), 125138 (134135).
56 Jane Humphries, Female-Headed Households in Early Industrial Britain: The Vanguard
of the Proletariat?, Labour History Review, 69: 1 (1998), 3165; eadem, From Work to
Dependence Womens Experience of Industrialisation in Britain, Refresh, 21 (Autumn
1995), 58.
42 Moring
TABLE 2.6 Age distribution of widows
Age Helsinki Finland 1900 Moss Norway 1900 Lichfield Britain 1851
2029 4 1.1
3039 13 5 7.9
2040 17 5 9
4049 29 21 13.6
5059 27 19 10.2
6069 20 24.5 30.6
7079 5 23 26.1
80+ 2 7 10.2
Of these 60+ 27 54.5 66.9
Nr (100%) 158 118 88
Sources: census of Helsinki 1900, original sheets; census of Moss 1900; census of Lichfield 1851.
breadwinner in 25% of the households containing widows was the son, or

daughter and son-in-law, many widows did have a registered occupation. The
Lichfield census reveals co-residence between widows and children with an
occupation, but does not state anything definite about support. The Helsinki
and Moss censuses register doing housework as an occupation even when the
other household members were children or relatives of the widow. Owning a
house would be the same as having an income from rent paid by the other resi-
dents. Keeping lodgers was sometimes but not always seen as an occupation.
Washing and ironing were often activities in which the widow was assisted by
a daughter or a sister. Sewing or other textile work also sometimes engaged
several women in the same household. Where the widow kept a shop, family
members could also be engaged in the work. However, factory work and work
in the service sector outside the home could not include any intra-familial col-
laborative strategies.
It is interesting to observe that even within an urban economic framework
there seem to have been certain efforts to engage in productive work that would
benefit from some collaboration. In many cases widows mined the traditional
feminine sectors of the production and provision of food, lodging, clothes and
the cleaning of the same. The main restrictions to activity would naturally be
found in availability of capital, but it would seem that the human capital ele-
ment could when possible be provided from the bosom of the family.
TABLE 2.7 Classification of occupation or known source of income of widows in census of

Helsinki and Moss 1900, Lichfield 1851, percentages
Occupation or source Helsinki Finland% Moss Norway % Lichfield Britain %

of income
Kept by child (noc) 11.1 25.2 21(noc)

Keeps lodgers (noc) 17.7
Keeps guesthouse 3.5 2.4
Housework 8.6 6.0
House owner 2.4 6.0
Lives of capital 6.0 7.3
Pension 1.2 0.8 8.4
Washing, cleaning 14.8 10.3 19.2
Labourer 13.5 2.6
Trade and petty trade 8.0 12.1 9.6
Textile work 6.1 6.9 6.1
Factory work 1.8 2.6
Craft 4.2 0.8
Service public, private 4.2 3.5 4.8
Poor relief 1.8 10.3 16.8
Professions 2.4 2.4
No information 2.2 3.5 1.9
Percent 100 100 100
Nr of widows 162 115 83
Noc=no occupation
Sources: census of Helsinki, Finland 1900, original sheets; census of Moss, Norway 1900; census
of Lichfield, Britain 1851.
10 Conclusion
The aim of this paper has been to address the theory presented by David Reher
of a Europe in the past, divided into a northern zone with loose or defective
family ties, and a south with close kinship connections. The intention has
been to present data showing that families in Northern Europe did practice
family co-habitation and collaboration. Particularly in the case of widows, the
mother-child tie was very much in evidence.
44 Moring
The reasons for theories put forward about the loose family ties in the North
are linked to widespread use of methodologies that do not take account of
demographic effects. This problem was repeatedly highlighted by Ruggles but
has been widely ignored. For an analysis of generational contacts to be reliable
it has to be focused on the parental generation; co-residence with a dead par-
ent is not possible.57
This study has used census-type documents to present evidence for co-
residence and collaboration between widows and children of different ages.
The influence of socio-economic circumstances, migration, demography and
gender issues have been included in the queries.
The empirical evidence from these localities in Northern Europe shows that
co-residence between widowed mothers and married children was quite com-
mon in rural areas. Because of a general preference for males in land transfer,
a higher proportion of farmers widows resided with married sons than with
married daughters. The landless widows, however, do not demonstrate prefer-
ence for male children and therefore it would seem that increasing levels of
proletarianisation also resulted in higher levels of co-residence with daughters.
Where opportunities existed for earning without leaving home, as in indus-
trial areas, a number of children stayed with their mothers. Co-residence levels
with children could be high, but it is more likely that the children were unmar-
ried, widowed or single parents. Urban working class widows seem to have
co-operated particularly with daughters. Sometimes they ran an economy of
multiple elements consisting of earnings, childrens earnings, lodgers and even
poor relief.58
Whether or not a woman lived with a married child in widowhood was nat-
urally affected by her age. This study would indicate that generally one would
be more likely to find older widows in the countryside and younger widows in
urban areas. One of the reasons for this pattern is of course migration. Of the
three urban areas included in the study Helsinki experienced explosive expan-
sion around the years of the 1900 census. Therefore it is perhaps unsurprising
that the sample included a high level of young widows and widows with young
children.
The study shows little evidence that the levels of family collaboration would
have been less predominant than in southern Europe. While the localities were
far from uniform, the variation generally seems to have been linked to demog-
raphy, the economic situation of the family or the effects of migration.
57 Ruggles, Prolonged Connections; idem, Multigenerational Families; idem, Reconsidering

the Northwest European Family System.
58 Key-Aberg, Inom textilindustrien in Norrkoping, 48.
Appendix
The national level statistics in Britain and the Nordic countries reveal that in the late
19th century and early 20th century widows were generally middle aged or older (see
Tables 2.8 and 2.9). Therefore the opportunities of creating collaborative strategies
with teenage or adult children were often possible from a biological point of view. If,
however, the locality was affected by high levels of in- or out-migration the situation
could be different. In Table 2.8 the national figures for Finland are compared with the
figures for the town of Helsinki, a high in-migration area. In Helsinki the widows were
considerably younger than in the nation as a whole, and would be expected to have
younger children. From a purely biological point of view the availability of adult mar-
ried children who could be drafted into collaboration must therefore be seen as less
abundant than where the effect of migration was less pronounced. As many family
studies focus on local communities, and relatively small numbers, the issue of migra-
tion should if possible be taken into consideration when drawing conclusions about
what kind of structures were considered desirable.
TABLE 2.8 Age distribution of widows in the Nordic countries, percentages
1529 3039 4049 5060 60+
Sweden
1870 1 5.6 14 23 56.4
1900 0.8 4 10 18.2 53
Norway
1875 1.5 5.9 12.8 21 58.8
1900 1.5 5.7 11.7 18 63
Finland
1880 1.8 7.0 14.4 26.6 49.8
1900 1.6 6 13 23 56
1900 2.3 8.9 18.2 26.3 44.3
Helsinki
Sources: G. Sundberg, Historical Statistics of Sweden (Stockholm, 1969), 103; Norges offisielle
statistikk (Oslo, 1978), 34; Official statistics of Finland (SVT), kolmas vuosikerta (Helsinki, 1905),
30; FOS VI, 41, Finlands befolkningsstatistik 17501890 (Helsinki, 1909); Statistsk rsbok fr
Helsingfors stad (Helsinki, 1908), 87.
46 Moring
TABLE 2.9 Age distribution of widows in England and Wales 18611911
Date 1524 2534 3544 4554 5564 >65 N1
1861 1 6 13 19 24 37 7354
1871 1 6 13 19 24 37 7544
1881 1 5 12 19 25 37 7492
1891 0 4 11 20 25 39 7524
1901 0 4 11 19 26 40 7419
1911 0 3 9 18 25 44 7328
Notes: 1Numbers per 100,000 females at all ages

Sources: Census of England and Wales 1951 General Tables, Table 22B (HMSO 1956); Census 2001
National Report for England and Wales, Table S002 (Office for National Statistics 2003).
CHAPTER 3
From Modernity to Tradition: Households on

Kythera in the Early Nineteenth Century
Violetta Hionidou
1 Introduction
Greece, in Hajnals seminal paper where Eastern and Western European mar-
riage patterns were distinguished, was put clearly within the former.1 Almost
two decades later Laslett, in his map of European households, located Greece
within the Mediterranean tendency. Though a final picture of Greek nuptial-
ity and household formation patterns is still not in sight, the existing cases
from Greece and the clear examples of Italy, Spain and Portugal suggest that
we may eventually find a wide variety of patterns, both geographically and
temporally.2
Most existing studies just like those of Hajnal and Laslett compare and
contrast virtually contemporaneous populations or, more rarely, the same
population over a few decades, attempting to explain the observed differences.
In seeking to account for such differences, Ruggles, for example, following
a thorough discussion of the current debates suggests that, at least for stem
families, such differences in historical Northwest Europe and North America
can be explained through variations in demographic characteristics and levels
of agricultural employment.3 Therefore, according to Ruggles, culture is not
* During the Venetian and British years, the island Kythera was known as Cerigo. Since the
islands incorporation into the Greek state, the name was changed to Kythera which is the
one that will be used throughout this chapter.
1 John Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective, in Population in History, eds. D. V.
Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (London, 1965), 101143.
2 Violetta Hionidou, Independence and Inter-dependence: Household Formation Patterns in
Eighteenth Century Kythera, Greece, The History of the Family, 16: 3 (2002), 217234 (217218).
3 Steven Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements
of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective, Population and Development Review,
35: 2 (2009), 249273; idem, Stem Families and Joint Families in Comparative Historical
Perspective, Population and Development Review, 36: 3 (2010), 563577; Mikoaj Szotysek,
Siegfried Gruber, Sebastian Klsener and Joshua R. Goldstein, Spatial Variation in Household
Structure in 19th-century Germany, MPIDR Working paper WP 2010-030, October 2010, 7.

48 Hionidou
significant in creating the differences. Similarly Berkner, referring to changes over

time, argued that, in a stem family situation, the diminution of complex house-
holds and concomitant prevalence of nuclear households may be explained by
structural changes such as the declining numbers of the farming population.4 In
contrast, Laslett as early as 1983 underlined the significance of culture in deter-
mining the household formation patterns of a region, an idea reinforced by many
scholars culminating with the argument by Reher as late as 1998.5
Assessing temporal changes, as early as 1872 Le Play suggested (or more
correctly lamented) that modernisation was transforming the strong, com-
plex household unit into a weak, nuclear unit. Laslett, in contrast, argued that
modernisation had very little impact on English households in the past few
centuries. In line with Lasletts argument, subsequent studies reveal a variety
of situations where modernisation and its equivalents, industrialisation and
urbanisation, at times had no effect on household formation.6 Thus social and
economic change, it has been argued, does not necessarily bring changes in
households.7 Still, the suggestion that the changes may appear following a lag
has also been put forward.8 Other authors have argued that industrialisation
4 Lutz K. Berkner, The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant Household:
An Eighteenth-Century Austrian Example, The American Historical Review, 77: 2 (1972), 398
418 (410).
Europe Compared, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Richard Wall, Jean Robin and
Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1983), 513563. David Sven Reher, Family Ties in Western Europe:
Persistent Contrast, Population and Development Review, 24:2 (1998), 203-234.
6 See for example David I. Kertzer, Family Life in Central Italy, 18801910: Sharecropping, Wage
Labor, and Coresidence (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984); Angelique Janssens, Family and Social
Change. The Household as a Process in an Industrializing Community (Cambridge, 1993),
216218. Janssens, who examined two occupational groups over time, the industrialised fac-
tory workers and the traditional domestic weavers, found no discernible differences in their
propensity to form complex households. Interestingly, if the observation period had been
shorter than the complete family cycle that Janssens used, the conclusions would have been
different.
7 Mikoaj Szotysek, Siegfried Gruber, Barbara Zuber-Goldstein and Rembrandt Scholz, Living
Arrangements and Household Formation in the Crucible of Social Change: Rostock 18671900,
MPIDR Working paper WP 2010-036, December 2010, 27.
8 Janssens strongly argued against an easy and immediate change of family behaviour and atti-
tudes as a result of economic changes (Family and Social Change, 234); also, Joan W. Scott and
Louise A. Tilly, Womens Work and the Family in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 17 (1975), 3664; and Hans Medick, The Protoindustrial
Family Economy, in Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis
of Capitalism, eds. Peter Kriedte, Hans Medick and Jrgen Schlumbohm (Cambridge, 1981),
3873.
From Modernity to Tradition 49
did increase reliance on the family, with households displaying increased inci-
dence of complexity and prolonging of the time that such complexity was
present.9
In only a few instances, sources are available for a specific population over a
long period of time, enabling the study of household formation within a popu-
lation and its temporal changes. One such case is that of the population of the
island of Kythera, for which such a study is possible for the 18th and first half
of the 19th. This paper aims to assess the household patterns of this Ionian
island population, to identify the changes it may have experienced during the
one and a half centuries of observation, and finally to explain the observed
changes.
2 Sources
The 18th-century sources are a series of census-like nominal population

listings of the whole population of Kythera conducted by the Venetian
administration.10 Though a good number of such censuses is available, only
three have been analysed. The 19th-century censuses were conducted during
the period of British protection.11 The 1836 census, like the 18th-century ones,
are all hand-written in Latin characters and presented, in each case, in a single
volume. The 1844 census is made up of a number of unbound documents, in
9 Thomas A. Arcury, Industrialization and Households and Family Life Course

Characteristics: Appalachian Kentucky Young Adults in 1880 and 1910, Journal of Family
History, 15: 3 (1990), 285312; Stephen King and Geoffrey Timmins, Making Sense of the
Industrial Revolution. English Economy and Society 17001850 (Manchester, 2001), 276.
Andersons study of 19th-century Lancashire remains one of the most important illus-
trations of such an example (Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century
Lancashire [Cambridge, 1971]).
10 Antonia K. Marmarele, Maria G. Patramane and Emmanouel G. Drakakes (eds.),
Apographes Plethysmou Kytheron (18os ai.) [Population Censuses of Kythera (18th
Century)] (Athens, 1997). For a discussion of the sources see Hionidou, Independence
and Inter-dependence, 218219.
11 The 1836 census manuscript is deposited in the National Archives, CO 1836/1248, 332954.
The 1844 material along with that of the 18th century is deposited at the local archives
of Kythera, folder Apografe tou pluthesmou tes nesou Kytheron 61, 1 and 4 . For
the 1844 material, some of the subfolder covers, handwritten by the archivists, indicate
that the census refers to 183032 or various dates in the early 1840s. None of the original
material has any date indications. Nevertheless, linking individual families/households
between 1836 and the rest of the material makes it clear from the ages of the individuals
that the latest census material is from the 1840s and almost certainly forms part of the first
stage of the taking of the 1844 census.
50 Hionidou
which the author wrote, using his own template, the list of names and other
information concerning specific parishes. There is good variation in the infor-
mation provided in each list, and successive households are, for some parishes,
clearly separated one from each other, while in other parishes such separation
is not evident. Those lists where the separation of successive households is
not made unequivocally were not used in this study. The information consis-
tently given includes name, relationship to the head of the household, age,
occupation and whether the individual was present or absent from the island
at the time of the census. The language used in the 1844 lists is Greek. The use
of Greek rather than Italian should not be taken as an innovation. Rather, I
would argue that, as for all other censuses, the clergy was responsible for col-
lecting the data. For the last census, what is available to us is the material col-
lected by parish priests, all written in Greek, which was the only language they
knew during both the Venetian and the British periods. For all the earlier cen-
suses, the parish data were transcribed into a manuscript book by an educated
administrator who could write in Italian.12
While the manuscript books refer to famiglie, the last census refers essen-
tially to the same term translated into Greek, (famelia), both meaning
family. But their use conforms more to the definition of household rather than
that of family, since it includes not only conjugal units but also servants and
relatives.13
The censuses reveal a constantly increasing population, slower in the eigh-
teenth, much faster in the middle of the 19th century, with much of the increase
12 The Constitution of 1817 dictated that the Greek language would be the official language
of the Ionian Islands. But it recognised the necessity to continue using Italian as this
was the only language the educated elite could use (Constitutional charter of the United
States of the Ionian Islands: ratified by the Sovereign Protector, the King of Great Britain,
the 26th of August, 1817. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection (1817)). In real-
ity, the official utilisation of the Italian language was not challenged by the British since
the Ionian elites were exclusively educated in Italian; David Hannell, The Ionian Islands
under the British Protectorate: Social and Economic Problems, Journal of Modern Greek
Studies, 7 (1989), 111 and 125. The uneducated peasants spoke and understood only Greek
(op. cit., 125). That language so long having been banished from official and even social
use was difficult to introduce quickly; Viscount Kirkwall (ed.), Four Years in the Ionian
Islands. Their Political and Social Condition (London, 1864), vol. 1, 132.
13 In 1836 there are two girls and a boy referred to as servants in the census. In 1844, there
is one case of a 12 year old male servant included in a household. Komiss interpreta-
tion of the listings is also the same referring to similar listings for Preveza; Kostas Komis,
Demographikes opseis tes Prevezas 16os-18os aionas [Demographic Dimensions of Preveza,
16th18th Century] (Ioannina, 1999), 155.
taking place among the numerically dominant rural population (Table 3.1).
While the 18th-century census records cover the whole island population, the
available records for the 1836 census cover 41% of the population (rural only);
the 1844 surviving and selected census records cover 25% of the population
(rural only).
TABLE 3.1 Census year and population of Kythera
Census year Urban Rural Total
1724 838 4,222 5,060

1753 828 4,680 5,508
1770 828 5,243 6,071
1772 687 4,535 5,222
1784 737 6,224 6,961
1788 830 6,652 7,482
1825 1,293 9,858 11,151*
1830 1,065 7,595 8,660
1836 1,016 7,966 8,982
1843 1,040 8,475 9,515
1844 1,144 10,375 11,519
1850 1,326 11,234 12,560
1860 1,414 12,286 13,700
Sources: for 1724, 1784 and 1788, Kythera database; for 1825, Leontsinis 1987, pp. 1934; for 1753,
Marmarele et al. 1997, p. 340, vol. 1; for 1770, 1772 Marmarele et al. 1997, pp. 139, 261, vol. 2)
* 908 of these were refugees from mainland Greece
3 The Island
Kythera is situated very near to the southern tip of Peloponnese. The island was
administered by Venice from 1374 and occupied by the Ottomans between 1715
and 1718, only to revert to Venice until the end of the Venetian Republic in 1797.14
14 Emmanouel P. Kalligeros, Synoptike Istoria ton Kytheron [Short History of Kythera]

(Athens, 2008), 4th edition, 3436; Chrysa Maltezou, A Contribution on the Historical
Geography of the Island of Kythera during the Venetian Occupation, in Charanis Studies.
52 Hionidou
France occupied Kythera between 1797 and 1799. In the 19th century a series
of changes took place, the most significant being that the Ionian Islands, and
thus Kythera, came under British protection between 1815 and 1864. Thereafter
Kythera became part of the Greek State.15 While the British administration sig-
nalled some changes, the land tenure system, agricultural practices and inheri-
tance practices remained untouched.
19th-century visitors referred to Kythera as a desolate wind-bound, tree-
less, unfrequented island.16 The economy of the island was based almost
entirely on agriculture at the start of the 19th; it was highly monetised and
characterised by a high rate of land sales and exchanges.17 Being poor, barren,
and rocky, Kytherian produce was consumed locally and virtually nothing was
exported, unlike some other Ionian Islands.18 Moreover, it seems that foods
had to be regularly imported for the consumption needs of the population.19
The 1820s seem to have been a decade of economic decline with a near fam-
ine situation being vividly described for Cephalonia in 1827.20 During 18312,
there was a very rapid decline in the price of currants, as the Peloponnesian
economy was recovering, something that caused distress in the Ionian Islands
exporting the fruit, though Kythera was not one of these.21 Occasionally, even
products grown on the island had to be imported, as in 1835 when local olive
oil production was exceptionally low.22
The overall assessment of the British presence on the Ionian Islands is not
positive in terms of supporting the economic prosperity of the Islands.23
Essays in Honor of Peter Charanis, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou-Thomadakis (New Brunswick,

1980), 151175 (151).
15 Georgios Leontsinis, The Island of Kythera: A Social History of Kythera (17001863) (Athens,
1987), 1920.
16 Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, vol. 2, 301.
17 Leontsinis, The Island of Kythera, 756; Andreas Mazarakes, E adelphotes tes Kontoletou
[The Brotherhood of Kontoletou] (Athens, 2010), 8997.
19 Peter Prineas, Britains Greek Islands: Kythera and the Ionian Islands 1809 to 1864
(Darlington, N.S.W., 2009), 196.
20 Ibid., 14560; John Davy, Notes and Observations on the Ionian Islands and Malta: With
Some Remarks on Constantinople and Turkey and on the System of Quarantine as at Present
Conducted (London, 1842), vol. 1, 3489.
21 Davy, Notes and Observations, vol. 2, 92.
22 Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 194.
23 Michael Pratt, Britains Greek Empire. Reflection on the History of the Ionian Islands from
the Fall of Byzantium (London, 1978), 115; Hannell, The Ionian Islands, 127.
4 Migration
Migration constituted, as among many other Greek populations, the major

safety valve of the population balance.24 Though Kythera was always described
as an isolated, remote and inaccessible island during the 18th and first half
of the 19th century, migration nevertheless was taking place. So, at the turn
of the 19th century and while Peloponnese was also under Venetian rule, it
was seasonal migration from Kythera to Peloponnese that was taking place.25
Leontsinis argues that from 1770 onwards outmigration increased, though this
was often interrupted by wars and other events.26 Wars or military operations
in the area were a constant for Kythera in the first two decades of the 19th cen-
tury, though the arrival of the British in 1815 signalled a less disturbed period
for the island. However, the 1821 outburst of the Greek revolution on mainland
Greece, which was at arms length from Kythera, wrecked any possibilities of
migration there at least until 1828 when the outcome of the revolution was
clearly determined.27
Still, it should be mentioned that, throughout this period, wars were not
the only threat to potential migrants. The very real fear of piracy must have
deterred most from migrating, except when the anticipated outcomes of
migration were very significant. References to piracy and enslavement are
abundant for the 18th and earlier centuries.28 For the early 19th century,
the piracy threat seems to have been more to the goods and money carried
rather than to enslavement.29 For a migrant who had worked for months and
24 See for example, Violetta Hionidou, They Used To Go And Come. A Century of Circular
Migration from a Greek Island, Mykonos 1850 to 1950, Annales de Demographie Historique,
104: 2 (2002), 5177.
25 Leontsinis, The Island of Kythera, 7879.
26 Ibid., 29.
27 The 1820s saw the exceptional presence of approximately 1,000 refugees from Peloponnese
who were allowed to remain in the safety of Kythera. All these left Kythera soon after 1828.
The presence of immigrants was always very small, usually numbering less than 50 at any
point in time. For example, in 1836 there were 37 resident aliens on the island; by 1858
there were 42 (Davy, Notes and Observations, vol. 2, 58; Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian
Islands, vol. 2, 328).
28 Pratt, Britains Greek Empire, 35 referring to Katsonis in 178792.
29 Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 1479 referring to the years 18239. Still, in 182122 a
Kytherian philanthropic organisation, possibly based in Smyrna, offered money for the
repurchasing and presumably liberation of slaves; Elias Marcellos, Mia apodemia
eis Kythera. Istorika ereunemata [A Migration to Kythera. Historical Studies] (Athens,
1974), 69.
54 Hionidou
returned home with his/her amassed income, the possibility of losing every-
thing due to piracy must have been a deterrent. So, in 1825 only 498 Kytherians
were recorded as absent from the island, totalling 4.9% of the whole popula-
tion, with a clear urban bias since the percentage of urban migrants reached
8% of the urban population.30 The British resident in Kythera reported in the
1830s that on average 500 people migrated seasonally from the island, heading
to Candia (that is, Crete) and Peloponnese.31
It is with the end of the Greek revolution and the establishment of a British
presence on the Ionian Islands that migration becomes a safe and profitable
venture, in which peasants start participating in large numbers. The issuing
of British passports, despite the complaints of locals about the administrative
complexity and the monies required for their processing, provided clear pro-
tection for their bearers whether they migrated to the Ottoman Empire, Greece
or elsewhere.32 Moreover, the British presence ensured the absence of external
attacks, a rare thing for the Ionian Islands.33 This led to a boom in migration
leading to 19% of all males being absent from the rural parts of the island in
1844, that is one in five men (Table 3.2). For specific age groups the percentages
of migrants were not far from half the men of that group; for example, 40% of
those aged 3034 were absent from the island.
TABLE 3.2 Percentage of migrants by sex and age group, Kythera 1844
(number of migrants in brackets)
Age group Females 1844 Males 1844
04 1.2 (2) 1.1 (2)

59 0.6 (1) 2.2 (4)
1014 1.6 (2) 4.5 (7)
30 Archives of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, Athens, record 14759, April
1825. This figure presumably included the absent sailors too. In the previous decade, the
figure of 230 men being engaged in maritime pursuits was given (Prineas, Britains Greek
Islands, 38).
31 Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 190, 198, 203 citing National Archives, CO136/1359, List of
Nobles and other proprietors of land possessing landed property above 50 a year in value
at Cerigo, 20 July 1841.
32 Marcellos, Mia apodemia eis Kythera, 45 referring to an incidence in Smyrna in 1823
where those Kytherians with passports were spared by the Ottoman authorities but those
without were massacred.
33 Pratt, Britains Greek Empire, 109.
Age group Females 1844 Males 1844
1519 7.9 (8) 32.7 (34)

2024 9.1 (8) 38.5 (37)
2529 1.3 (2) 34.8 (39)
3034 6.3 (6) 40.3 (48)
3539 6.9 (7) 29.0 (27)
4044 2.6 (2) 27.7 (23)
4549 0.0 (0) 21.2 (11)
5054 0.0 (0) 22.7 15)
5559 4.2 (2) 13.3 (6)
6064 0.0 (0) 19.4 (6)
65+ 0.0 (0) 3.8 (3)
All 3.0 (40) 18.8 (262)
Source: 1844 nominal census returns
So, what were their destinations? During the Venetian era, these were
Peloponnese and Crete, both within the Venetian State. The movements were
seasonal and the job was assisting in the harvest. At the same time, the more
affluent would move further afield to Smyrna in Asia Minor where they would
establish businesses.34 Their early presence there and the increased safety of
travelling meant that many more peasants would travel to Smyrna, though
still engaging in temporary/seasonal migration rather than permanent migra-
tion. The economic crisis of Greece in 184143 must have deterred many from
migrating to Peloponnese and encouraged them to move to Smyrna which was
becoming the new destination for Kytherians.35
During the British period, observers commented on the temporary
nature of Kytherian migration, though the moves must have become longer
34 See the case of Georgios Zervos in 1776 (Marcellos, Mia apodemia eis Kythera, p. 72).
Already in 1802 there is presence of a Kytherian community in Smyrna (Marcellos, Mia
apodemia eis Kythera, p. 72).
35 Demetres Thrasuvoulos, Agrotiki krise kai koinonikoi mehanismoi. E peina tou 1854
[Agricultural Crisis and Social Mechanisms. The Famine of 1854], in E Samos apo ta
Byzantina hronia mehri semera [Samos from the Byzantine times to today], Conference
Proceedings, vol. 2 (Athens, 1998), 168, citing A. Sideris, E Istorike exelixis tes georgikes mas
forologias [The historical evolution of our agricultural taxation system] (Athens, 1931),
360.
56 Hionidou
considering the numbers absent from the island.36 Towards the end of this
period, an observer noted that Kytherians abandon in youth their own happy
land to make money abroad, but it is said that when they have made it they
usually return to their own homes.37 This suggests moves that lasted for much
of someones adult life. It is after 1856, on the eve of the British presence, that
the Kytherians started migrating en masse and permanently to Smyrna.38
5 Households, Inheritance and Marriage in the Eighteenth Century
The 18th-century household system of Kythera was one where single family
households prevailed but where complex (extended and multiple) households
had an unmistakable presence making up somewhat less than 10% (Table 3.3).39
Still, the presence of solitary households was more significant than that of com-
plex households, ranging from 16.6% to 13.3% of all households and compris-
ing mostly widowed women and much less often single men (single men
refers to either single or widowed since there is no distinction made between
the two in the sources). It was married or widowed men and widowed women
who were the heads of households. While age at marriage was remarkably
stable for men, at 26, for women this seems to have experienced an increase
during the century. Most of the newly married would establish an independent
residence, usually in close proximity to the grooms parental household. The
new residence would be set up through the combination of resources from
the parental families of the groom and the bride: the former contributing land
and house, the latter mostly movables and cash, though occasionally it would
include land and houses also. For some couples, and only occasionally, co-
residence with the grooms parental family would take place but in most
cases this would last for a short period of time (less than four years). Only in a
36 According to Hannell Kytherians, in the late 1840s, migrated extensively to Crete and
Smyrna but always returned home (Hannell, The Ionian Islands, 128). In 1849 the
Colonial Secretary Earl Grey suggested the migration and permanent establishment of
Kytherians to Western Australia. But the local British administrator rejected the idea
because Kytherian migrants always returned to their island (Pratt, Britains Greek Empire,
179, cited in Hannell, The Ionian Islands, 128).
38 Marcellos, Mia apodemia eis Kythera, 71; John Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Greece
(London, 1884). The impetus for the move was given by the diseases that affected the local
vines and later on the wheat.
39 Hionidou, Independence and Inter-dependence, 217234.
minority of cases was such a co-residence permanent. Among the elderly

(those over 65 years) in 1784, that is the year with the highest presence of mul-
tiple households, co-residence with their own single children was the most
common (31.3% and 38.1% of women and men respectively), though more
than a quarter of elderly women resided alone while among elderly men this
reached only 14.4%. A not insignificant percentage of women and men lived
with at least one married child (22.3% and 17.3% respectively). Nevertheless,
among elderly women and men, only 8 and 11% resided in a multiple family
household, that is, approximately 1 in 10 elderly persons. In the 18th century,
and in situations of multiple households, the elderly father would always have
been the head of the household in 1724, and almost always in 1788. So a married
son would have to set up his own independent residence in order to become
head in the 18th century.
TABLE 3.3 Percentage distribution of households according to the Hammel-Laslett

classification, Kythera 1724, 1784, 1788, 1836, 1844
Type 1724 1784 1788 1836 1844
Solitaries 16.6 13.3 14.4 12.4 5.8

No conjugal family 2.6 2.6 2.6 3.2 3.2
Conjugal family 70.6 74.0 75.7 64.2 69.1
Extended 7.7 4.7 4.5 10.1 11.3
Multiple 1.1 4.5 2.7 6.2 9.9
Indeterminate 1.5 0.9 0.2 3.9 0.7
Number of 1,407 1,883 2,031 902 567
households
Source: Kythera database. The eighteenth century censuses cover the whole island population.
The nineteenth century ones cover only part of the rural population.
But even when a married son had independence of residence, this did not
bring financial independence. The inheritance system, with its equitable dis-
tribution of immovables among sons, prescribed that dowered sons received
upon their marriage the usufruct of what they would receive in full after the
death of the father. Thus, financial links and dependence upon the parental
household remained while the father was alive, and despite the residential
independence of the married son.
58 Hionidou
6 Marriage
Marriage patterns are strongly associated with the prevailing household struc-
tures in a society.40 That is, early or late marriage can influence, to a degree,
how many nuclear or complex households exist at any one time in the locality.
Also, the timing of marriage dissolution virtually only through death in this
case opens up issues of headship of the household. Though there are no data
available on age at marriage for the island population, the censuses and the
Singulate Mean Age at Marriage (thereafter SMAM) have been used to assess
marriage in 18th- and 19th-century Kythera.41
For the 18th century, despite problems associated with the sources, evi-
dence suggests that marriage was widespread, with as few as 7.4% and 5.2% of
women never married in 1784 in the age groups 4549 and 6569 respectively.
The lowest percentage of never-married men among the various five-year age
groups was just under 10 in 1724, 5.9 in 1784 and 4.1 in 1788. While for women,
the SMAM figures describe a moderately early age at marriage that fluctuated
from 20.6 to 23.3, for men this was moderately high and virtually fixed between
26 and 27. In the first half of the 19th century, there are distinct and significant
increases in the SMAM for women and men, reaching 26.3 in 1844 and 29.9 in
1836 (Table 3.4). That both such increases in age at marriage and permanent
celibacy were taking place at the time, was evident and discussed by contem-
poraries. So, Baron Theotokis reading of the situation in Corfu in the first half of
the 19th century was that celibacy and late marriage were very common among
urban elites, whereas among peasants celibacy is almost entirely unknown.42
Though evidence of increasing age at marriage is clear for Kythera, there is no
clear evidence of increasing celibacy. While this may simply reflect the quality
of the data, it could also be attributed to the overwhelming predominance of
peasants among the Kytherian population (see Table 3.1).
40 John Hajnal, Two Kinds of Pre-industrial Household Formation Systems, Population and
41 For the problems associated with the specific data sources in relation to marriage see
Hionidou, Independence and Inter-dependence, 2239. In relation to the SMAM mea-
sure please see Kevin Schrer, A Note Concerning the Calculation of the Singulate Mean
Age at Marriage, Local Population Studies, 43 (1989), 6770.
42 Davy, Notes and Observations, vol. 2, 123; David Thomas Ansted, The Ionian Islands in the
Year 1863 (London, 1863), 200 referring to Leukada. Sereleas calculations for later dates
also confirm the widespread celibacy and high age at marriage in the Ionian Islands;
Gariphalia Serelea, Regards sur la nuptialit et la fcondit au Grce pendant la Second
moiti du XIXeme sicle, Greek Review of Social Research, 67: 1 (1978), 4250.
TABLE 3.4 Singulate mean age at marriage, Kythera

(number of total persons aged 1049 in brackets)
Year Females Males
1724 20.6 (1,324) 26.6 (1,524)

1784 23.3 (2,135) 26.6 (1,862)
1788 22.3 (2,157) 26.2 (2,035)
1836 25.7 (1,087) 29.9 (985)
1844 26.3 (817) 29.6 (813)
Note: For the calculation of SMAM the age range 1049

was used and the average of the 4549 and 5054
groups is taken as expressing those never married.
7 The Nineteenth Century: Continuity and Change?
The availability of the 19th-century censuses provides a rare opportunity to

examine households and their changes in the long term and under differ-
ent administrations. To start with, the observation should be made that the
population increased substantially during the years of British administration
(Table 3.1). Thus this is a time of significant population pressure. Interestingly,
British observers thought the population increase was negligible and that the
availability of land could sustain a much greater increase of population.43 We
can only speculate on the reasons for such an increase. It could not have been
immigration, except for the 1820s when refugees arrived on the island from
mainland Greece, fleeing the war situation there due to the Greek revolution.
All left the island once things settled in mainland Greece. The rapid population
growth was certainly due to natural increase. For example, in 1858, 210 deaths
were registered as opposed to 326 births, indicating a high natural growth.44
A clear change seems also to have taken place in the 19th century regard-
ing households. The incidence of nuclear households was reduced for the first
time to below 70%; complex households amounted to 16% and 21% in 1836
43 Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 151; Ansted, The Ionian Islands, 254255.
44 Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, vol. 2, 328, table K. The trend observed in Kythera
represents the wider trend for the Ionian Islands, though Kythera seems to have been the
island with the largest gap between births and deaths and the one with the largest popu-
lation increases. The assumption is made here that the under-reporting of deaths and
births was approximately the same.
60 Hionidou
and 1844 respectively, whereas in the 18th century it never surpassed 10%; and
solitary households were reduced to 6% in 1844, less than half of what they
had been in the 18th century (Table 3.3). These changes affected households
headed by both men and women. For those headed by women, the change
was clearly seen in the 1844 census, with 1836 resembling more the 18th cen-
tury (Table 3.5). For male heads, the changes were already taking place in 1836,
with sharply declining conjugal households, significant increases in extended
households and somewhat less significant increases in multiple households.
It is the significant increase in complex households, both extended and mul-
tiple, and the concomitant decline in solitary households that characterises
the households of 1844, both male and female headed. So, for a shift that had
already started by 1836, its effects were startlingly visible by 1844.45 The fun-
damental changes of the system become evident when we also look at the
differences between those household heads whose father was dead and those
with a father alive. For both groups, similar changes took place, with multiple
and extended households increasing significantly while solitary households
declined in both groups (Table 3.6).
TABLE 3.5 Percentage distribution of households by type, year and heads gender
Female Heads
Type 1724 1784 1788 1836 1844

Solitaries 38.4 30.6 35.5 29.4 18.8
No-family 4.4 3.5 5.0 6.1 10.9
Conjugal family 51.7 54.3 49.6 53.1 46.5
Extended 4.9 7.4 6.5 4.4 12.9
Multiple 0.5 2.8 3.0 2.6 7.9
Indeterminate 0.0 1.3 0.4 4.4 3.0
Numbers 203 457 504 228 101
45 The observed differences remain unchanged when only the rural population is examined.
Though the figures do change for the 18th century, the changes are very small.
Male Heads
Type 1724 1784 1788 1836 1844

Solitaries 12.9 7.8 7.5 6.7 3.0
No-family 2.2 2.3 1.8 2.2 1.5
Conjugal family 73.8 80.4 84.2 68.0 74.0
Extended 8.1 3.8 3.9 12.0 10.9
Multiple 1.2 5.0 2.6 7.4 10.3
Indeterminate 1.7 0.7 0.1 3.7 0.2
Numbers 1407 1426 1527 674 466
TABLE 3.6 Percentage distribution of households for male heads by type and by reported status
of the father (Dead, Alive, Unknown), Kythera 1724, 1788, 1844
Type 1724D 1724A 1788D 1788A 1844D 1844A
Solitaries 10.6 7.5 7.1 2.8 3.1 2.7

No conjugal family 2.0 1.0 2.1 0.4 1.6 0.0
Conjugal family 72.7 86.5 82.2 95.6 72.3 81.3
Extended 10.9 3.5 5.2 0.8 11.0 12.0
Multiple 1.2 0.0 3.4 0.4 11.8 4.0
Indeterminate 2.5 1.5 0.1 0.0 0.3 0.0
Numbers 689 200 1009 249 382 75
Source: Kythera database.

Note: For 1844 those reported as outsiders were not included in the calculations.
The increasing co-residence of widowed parents mothers and fathers with

a married child is also evident when the residence patterns of the elderly are
examined (Table 3.7). This seems to have taken place by 1836, with 35% and
18% of widows and widowers co-residing with a married child compared to
15% and 6% in 1788. This coincides with a corresponding significant reduc-
tion in solitary male households but less so for females. In 1836 there is no
increase in the co-residence of married parents with a married child, if any-
thing a reduction can be seen.
62 Hionidou
TABLE 3.7 Living arrangements by marital status of older (over 65 years) people, Kythera 1784
and 1844
Living arrangements Females Males Females Males Females Males
1784 1836 1844
Single/unknown
alone 3.4 14.4 13.5 6.8 7.7 1.5
with kin 3.4 7.4 1.4 9.7 0.0 1.5
Married
with spouse only 11.7 21.8 10.8 12.6 5.1 10.3
with own non- 10.1 27.7 6.8 44.7 5.1 32.4
married children
with at least one 7.8 11.4 5.4 0.0 10.3 23.5
married child
Widowed
alone 25.1 0.0 9.5 0.0 10.3 0.0
with own non-mar- 21.2 10.4 16.2 6.8 10.3 10.3
ried children
with at least one 14.5 5.9 35.1 17.5 41.0 14.7
married child
other kin 2.2 0.0 1.4 0.0 5.1 0.0
Indeterminate 0.6 1.0 0.0 1.9 5.1 5.9
Numbers 179 202 74 104 39 68
Source: Kythera database.

Note: The indeterminate cases refer to the unknown marital status.
The major change that occurs between 1836 and 1844 is the significant increase
of elderly married women and men who reside with a married child. The per-
centage doubles for women to 10.3 from 5.4 in 1836 while for men it jumps from
zero in 1836 to nearly a quarter in 1844. In relation to solitary households, there
is a virtual disappearance of solitary male households while for women there
was reduction from 23% to 18% of all elderly women.
Thus, in the 19th century an expansion of extended households seems to
take place in the first instance. Following that, increasing co-residence between
parental couples and a married child takes place, mostly at the expense of soli-
tary households. The question arising is why such a change took place.
8 What Caused the Change? Culture Prescribes, Economy Dictates
There are a number of reasons for the observed household patterns. To start
with, it should be clarified that the household formation system was not based
on the stem family since all male children inherited the immovable part of
the parental estate equally.46 This was the case in the 18th century and also in
the 19th century, as reports make it clear that land was shared among all male
children. As contemporary observers noted on Kythera and the Ionian Islands
of Santa Maura (Leukada) and Cephalonia, almost every peasant was a landed
proprietor.47 Furthermore, there is an almost complete absence of servants.
Berkners argument on how the developmental cycle of the family and house-
hold affect the observations on aggregate data explains why we observe the
existence of complex, extended and nuclear households at a certain moment.48
Still, for 18th-century Kythera there is evidence that even when live parents
resided on their own, married children in many cases did not reside with them,
though some did.49 Thus, there is a clear element of choice of what is desir-
able and what is not for the 18th century and co-residence with elderly par-
ents was not a universally desired or culturally imposed option. The significant
increase in numbers of extended households in 1836 and multiple households
in 1844 cannot be explained through the impact of the life-cycle. Nor can it be
explained solely through changing demographics, as the major change from
extended to multiple household seems rather sudden, happening within eight
years. Indeed significant demographic changes were taking place in the first
half of the 19th century enabling substantial increases in the population, in
all probability due to declining mortality, especially among adults. We know
that age at marriage was rising in the 18th century and in the first half of the
19th century for women, so increased fertility could not have been the main
46 The British Resident Colthurst reported that I do not believe there exists a single family,
or almost an individual, in the island who does not possess a certain portion of ground
(Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 190 citing National Archives, CO136/1359, List of Nobles
and other proprietors of land possessing landed property above 50 a year in value at
Cerigo, 20 July 1841).
47 Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, 334. Davy, Notes and Observations, 321 and 385.
Similar remarks were made for Corfu along with references to the constant subdivi-
sions of property (British Parliamentary Papers 1850, Despatches between the Lord High
Commissioner of the Ionian Islands and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, respect-
ing the state of Cephalonia in 1849; the Proclamation of Martial Law, and the punish-
ments inflicted under it, volume XXXVI, 45, cited in Hannell, The Ionian Islands, 109).
48 Berkner, The Stem Family, 410.
64 Hionidou
reason for the increasing population. Assuming that most of the mortality
decline concerned adults, this would have lengthened the period that fathers
and mothers remained alive, thus prolonging the period that married chil-
dren would have to wait before assuming full ownership of the land for which
they had usufruct rights.50 This to a good degree was counterbalanced by an
increase of three years in the SMAM of men and women between 1788 and
1836. If the given percentage of landowners among the male population in 1856
is taken as a guide, for 1844 this would mean that all men over the age of 35
were landowners.51 This, taken in conjunction with evidence from Table 3.8,
suggests that, while most men would be married when in the 3034 age group,
they would be owners of land in the 3539 age group and almost certainly
would be heads of their own household while in the 4044 age group, though
many would become heads earlier. Therefore, what we observe in Kythera is
an actual change in the household formation system that came about through
adaptation rather than as a rupture with the past. The most significant rea-
son for such a change was the mobilisation of the population through migra-
tion along with the increase in the life expectancy of adults. While migration
itself was partly a result of changing demographics, the increased security that
British protection offered and also the ailing economy of the island were other
reasons that encouraged its increase and the change from seasonal to long-
term moves, even if not permanent for most. So, in the changing early 19th-
century situation, the increased life expectancy of the older generation made
them more reluctant to let go of their economic resources. Despite the increas-
ing age at marriage of the younger generation, which could be seen as coun-
terbalancing the increased life expectancy, the increased life expectancy led to
the creation of more multiple unit households. Nevertheless, migration, which
was perceived by all as temporary, even if eventually becoming permanent for
some, had other significant effects apart from the obvious one of relieving the
island of its excess population.
50 The observations of a British visitor regarding the care of infants and young children of
the Kytherians were referring to the carelessness of the mothers of the labouring class
who were nevertheless fruitful (Davy, Notes and Observations, vol. 2, 123). Earlier, the
British resident commented that infants were destroyed before or after birth to a consid-
erable extent (Prineas, Britains Greek Islands, 198 citing National Archives, CO 136/1338
Fraser to Colthurst, 23 March 1836).
51 Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, 334. Kirkwall reports that in 1858, in a male
population of 7,281, there were 2,300 freeholders. If we were to assume that the 1844 and
1858 age and sex population structures were identical then Kirkwalls figures suggest that
essentially every adult male over the age of 35 was a landowner.
TABLE 3.8 Percentage of male married heads among all married men by age group, conjugal
family and complex households only, Kythera (number of married men who reside in
conjugal family or complex households given in brackets)
Age group 1724 1784 1788 1836 1844
1519 66.7 (15) 66.7 (9) 45.5 (11) (0) 0.0 (1)
2024 88.2 (51) 68.8 (48) 74.5 (47) 27.3 (11) 22.2 (9)
2529 92.1 (101) 86.6 (127) 81.2 (133) 75.0 (32) 63.4 (41)
3034 96.9 (90) 86.2 (210) 87.4 (183) 79.0 (62) 75.7 (74)
3539 96.9 (127) 86.4 (176) 91.2 (193) 76.7 (86) 77.8 (63)
4044 98.4 (125) 92.6 (162) 94.3 (192) 94.4 (71) 95.5 (66)
4549 96.3 (80) 92.9 (156) 100.0 (157) 91.3 (80) 79.5 (39)
5054 97.1 (69) 97.7 (133) 97.3 (146) 100.0 (66) 91.1 (56)
5559 95.2 (63) 97.0 (103) 100.0 (106) 97.7 (43) 94.4 (36)
6064 98.6 (74) 97.3 (74) 100.0 (109) 100.0 (43) 100.0 (23)
6569 100.0 (68) 98.0 (50) 100.0 (49) 100.0 (28) 96.8 (31)
7074 97.3 (37) 97.2 (36) 97.7 (44) 100.0 (30) 92.9 (14)
75+ 100.0 (28) 100.0 (37) 100.0 (31) 100.0 (20) 100.0 (8)
Note: In 1844, all outsiders were excluded from all calculations.
In the late 18th century, when sons reached adulthood there was increasing
pressure for the father to distribute the estate, with the clear understanding of
continued co-operation between the father and his sons in the cultivation of
the land and also other kinds of help that would flow across the households,
such as nursing in times of illness or providing cooked food on occasions. As
migration increased, the prospect of some sons making a living elsewhere also
became significant, and, as sons were not present on the island to cultivate
their share of the land, a reassessment of the situation became necessary. First,
greater co-operation was required among those male family members pres-
ent on the island so that the family land could be cultivated, including what
were perceived to be the parts that, one day, would be inherited by the migrant
son(s). Second, the migrant sons could decide never to return to the island, or
they would become so wealthy that their share could become minimal, reflect-
ing the increasing input of the sons present on the island into the household
economy. Early partitioning of the parental land would disadvantage those
who remained on the island, since its postponement, in all probability, would
66 Hionidou
be to their benefit.52 Evidence from 18th-century Kythera and mid-20th-

century practices on a neighbouring island demonstrate that those who
remained on the island would cultivate and retain the produce for themselves,
the service provided to the probable future owner being that of looking after
their land.53 This seems also to have taken place in 1844 for some, beyond the
fathers death, since of the 32 single migrants who were not included in their
fathers household, 22 were listed as members of their brothers household,
suggesting that the brother was in charge of the migrants share of land after
the fathers death. Fifteen of these households were complex, though the
absence of the migrant brother made these households de facto simple ones.
For the father, the postponement of sharing his land would have further
enhanced his control over the younger generation, a control that in earlier
times he would have partly, though never entirely, foregone, since he contin-
ued to retain ownership of the land until his death. For the sons who remained
on the island, the vision of a more beneficial sharing of the inheritance for
them seems to have been a strong enough reason to adapt household struc-
tures. For the migrant sons, when there was a more profitable alternative
where they migrated, they remained away. If and when this alternative ceased
to be good enough, they could return and claim their share of the parental
inheritance and initiate the sharing of the inheritance, if other sons were
not away. Some would marry and leave their wives and sometimes children
behind, constant reminders of their claim to the parental estate. 14 out of the
96 married migrants had their wives and young families co-residing with their
fathers. Still, 80 were heads of their own independent household, suggesting
that either partitioning had already taken place or that the migrant had estab-
lished an independent household irrespective of the partitioning of the paren-
tal estate. Yet there were also two cases where the married migrant was brother
of the head of the household, suggesting that the parental estate had not been
partitioned even after the death of the father.
Thus, all in all, in the new situation the older generation prolonged the time
that they remained in full authority, and continued to ensure their old age
52 Such a case was observed in the late 18th century leading to the creation of a multiple
family household. Hionidou, Independence and Inter-dependence, 230.
53 A similar situation was observed on Hios among those who left the island during the
194143 famine; Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 19411944
(Cambridge, 2006), chapter 5; and, Roger Just, A Small Island Cosmos. Kinship and
Community on Meganisi (Oxford, 2000), 191.
economic security.54 Just as in the 18th century, in the early 19th century the
main ingredients of the household formation system were built around the cul-
tural prescriptions of this society: ensuring the marriage of children; providing
them with the economic resources to do so but also ensuring the provisioning
of the elderly. These were clear constants for this population, essentially the
cultural prescriptions. When changes occurred demographic and economic
adjustments had to be made: age at marriage increased significantly, migration
grew, inheritance customs were adjusted and so were household structures.
Nevertheless, all these were adjustments, not ruptures with the past as, even
in the 18th century, there were some complex households and inheritance cus-
toms that were always flexible enough to accommodate the specific needs of
individuals.55 Moreover, the change in the structure of households seems to
have taken place gradually, leading to more extended households in 1836 and
to more multiple households in 1844. Gradual it may have been, nevertheless
it was significant.
9 Conclusions
The effects of industrialisation, urbanisation and, in general, modernisation,

as argued by some authors, brought the adaptation of traditional family struc-
tures to a new form, i.e. from complex to nuclear, though for some the change
was from nuclear to complex. Kaser specifically argued the former for Eastern
Europe, in which Greece was included, except for the Aegean islands where
simple households prevailed before the transition.56 Others conceded that no
such change took place, but argued that the cultural elements conserved the
main elements of the household formation system. The case of Kythera out-
lines a case where the change took place from modern to traditional, i.e. from
54 Couroucli also suggests that the inheritance customs seem to have changed in Episkepsi
since the 19th century, with parents delaying the moment of the division of the paren-
tal estate so that they could ensure their old age; Maria Couroucli, Erga kai emeres sten
Kerkyra. Istorike anthropologia mias topikes koinonias [Works and Days in Corfu. Historical
Anthropology of a Local Society] (Athens, 2008), 125.
56 Karl Kaser, The Stem Family in Eastern Europe: Cross-cultural and Trans-temporal
Perspectives, in The Stem Family in Eurasian Perspective. Revisiting House Societies, 17th
20th Centuries, eds. Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Emiko Ochiai (Berne, 2009), 255258
citing Joel M. Halpern, Memoirs of Recent Change: Some East European Perspectives,
in The Process of Rural Transformation: Eastern Europe, Latin America and Australia, eds.
Ivan Volgyes, William P. Avery and Richard E. Longsdale (White Plains, 1980), 242268.
68 Hionidou
a predominance of nuclear households to a significant presence of complex

households. This happened in the space of a century and a half, but not as a
result of industrialisation or urbanisation, though it could be argued that a
process of significant, structural change was at play, its main element being the
extensive possibility of outmigration from the island and all that that entailed.
What is significant to observe in the case of Kythera is the adaptability of
existing practices, when changes required such adaptations. Inheritance prac-
tices were somewhat adjusted, the age at marriage increased, the household
structures were also modified accordingly. In none of these was there a rup-
ture with the past. In all of them, whatever occurred had happened before.
These changes took place because of the changing economy of the island and
its increasing connection with migration. But while the essential cultural ele-
ments remained stable the obligation of parents to marry off their children
and to finance their long-term independence, to provide equal inheritance of
the estate among the male children how these were achieved, was modified.
The causes of the modification were economic. Thus, it could be argued that
culture prescribes whereas economy dictates.
CHAPTER 4
The Reconstruction of Domestic Communities

in the Brankovi Region of Serbia in 1455
Mirjana Bobi
1 Introduction
After the death of Prince Duan The Great (13081355),1 who had conquered
great territories and thus created a most powerful medieval Serbian state
* The present contribution is based on research carried out for the authors MA thesis,
Teorijsko konceptualni i metodoloki problemi u istraivanju porodice i domainstva na
osnovu turskog popisa Oblasti Brankovia iz 1455. Godine [Theoretical-Conceptual and
Methodological Problems in the Study of Family and Household on the Basis of the Turkish
Census of the Brankovi Region from Year 1455], Unpublished MA dissertation, University of
Belgrade, 1995. Several studies have appeared since then, which it has not been possible to take
into account here. The author and editors are most grateful to one of the anonymous review-
ers for drawing their attention to the following, which are included as indications of recent
work: Ema Miljkovi, 14761560:
[The Sanjak of Smederevo 14761560: Land Settlements Population] (Belgrade, 2004);
eadem, [Family in
the Region of Pljevlja in the First Century of Ottoman Rule],
(), 2 (2001), 103117; eadem,
(
) [Ottoman Census Books as a Source for the History of Serbian
People under Ottoman Rule: on Present Critical Editions and Planned Projects],
, ,
, 6: 1 (2006), 269281; eadem, Studies of Ottoman History in Serbia, Montenegro
and Croatia (Modern Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian Historiography on the Ottoman
Empire), Trkiye Aratrmalar Literatr Dergisi, Cilt 8, Say 15, XX, (2010), 118; eadem and
Sinia Mii, Structure of the Serbian family in the late Middle Ages, Romanian Journal of
Population Studies, 6: 2 (2012), 518; Aleksandra Vuleti, Porodica u Srbiji sredinom XIX veka
[Family in Serbia during the 19th Century] (Belgrade, 2002); eadem,
[Marriage in the Principality of Serbia] (Belgrade, 2008); eadem,
19. [Family
Relations in Serbia During the Second Half of the 19th Century in Memoir Literature], in
: (Belgrade, 1999), 163172; eadem,
From the Family Life of Ilija Garaanin], in :
(Belgrade, 2001), 129139; eadem, 19.

70 Bobi
in political and military terms, there came a period of huge decline and
disintegration.2 His son and inheritor, Prince Uro V, was too weak to resist the
selfish interests of local nobles who jeopardized central administration and
were therefore threatening to bring about the disintegration of the country.
There were several families who were struggling to overtake the power, the
most dominant being the Mrnjavevi. Although some of them approved the
sovereignty of Prince Uro V, such as Lazar Hrebeljanovi in southern parts
of Serbia (see Figure 4.1) and Vuk Brankovi in Kosovo, generally speaking
they nevertheless ruled their territories independently. These were the cir-
cumstances when Serbs came across Ottomans, the newly emerging military
force arriving in the Balkans. The ultimate debacle of Serbs in the battle of the
Marica (a river in todays Bulgaria) in 1371 and the resulting death of Prince
Uro V spelt the total demise of Serbian medieval empire. The most outstand-
ing among the princes successors was Lazar Hrebeljanovi, who enlarged his
territories to include great parts of lands with the towns of Ni, Uice as well
as his later capital town of Kruevac (see Figure 4.1). He also came into posses-
sion of the renowned medieval mines of Novo Brdo and Rudnik. Apart from
him, the other two great nobles were his two sons-in-law: Vuk Brankovi, lord
of the region of Kosovo and Skoplje, and ura Bali of the County of Zeta.
Lazars ambition to unite Serbian lands and impose restrictions on the power
of local nobles was blocked by the Turks penetration of the territory which
began in 1381. The resulting historic and military clash took place, famously,
in Kosovo valley in 1389 and ended up with a huge Serbian defeat when the
country lost the majority of its nobles. Both armies were headed by their
[The Structure of the Rural Family in Klju in the Middle of the 19th Century], 6
(2003), 192199; eadem,
19. [The Family of Jovan Ili An Example of Serbian Bourgeois Family dur-
ing the Middle of the 19th Century], in
(Belgrade, 2003), 3743; eadem, State Involvement in the Institution of Marriage in
Serbia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, in Social Behaviour and Family Strategies
in the Balkans (16th20th Centuries) (Bucharest, 2008), 161180; eadem,
?: [How many persons live in
one house? Volume of peasants household in Serbia] 18341910, 3 (2012),
219244; Neboja uleti, XVI [Sanjak of Syrmia in the 16th Century],
Unpublished PhD dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, 2013.
1 His empire had spread from the Danube in the North to the Gulf of Corinth in the south
(todays Greece), and from the Adriatic Coast and Dubrovnik (todays Croatia) in the west to
the town of Cavalla and the Aegean Sea (Greece) to the east.
2 This paper is a part of my work on a project entitled Challenges and actors of new social
integration in Serbia: concepts and actors, No 179035, funded by the Ministry of Education
and Science, Republic of Serbia.
The Reconstruction of Domestic Communities 71
rulers (Sultan Murat and Prince Lazar), and both were killed. Vuk Brankovi
was one of the few to survive, a historic fact which paved the way for myths for
centuries ahead, blaming him for his alleged betrayal of Prince Lazar and his
compatriots. Later on the narrative of the Kosovo defeat became a part of the
national history, cultural heritage and identity of Serbs, and has remained so
until today. However after the victory at Kosovo and the occupation of Serbian
lands, the Turks temporarily withdrew from the Balkans in order to solve inner
political turmoil and consolidate their Empire. Serbia occupied the position of
vassal for the next 70 years,3 a status which greatly contributed to its restora-
tion and preservation up to 1459.4
The Serbian noble Vuk Brankovi, having also become a Turkish vassal, was
obliged to take part in military operations, but since he refused to follow these
requests on a regular basis, the Sultan Bayazid, the son and a successor of the
late Sultan Murat, recalled him granting the greater parts of his lands to the
Despot Stefan Lazarevi, the son of the late Prince Lazar. Small parts were
given to Vuk Brankovis wife and sons, whilst the Sultan retained the towns
of Zvean, Jele and Trepa. The Brankovi family returned all their lands
just before the battle of Ankara (1402) and ura Brankovi, Vuks son, was
appointed the new Despot of Serbia after the death of Despot Stefan Lazarevi
in 1427. However, the Ottomans were enraged because of uras relations to
the Hungarian King and they therefore pushed deeply to the inlands and con-
quered the towns of Ni and Kruevac. In that way the whole Despotovina was
defeated. In between the temporary occupation and the re-establishment of
Despotovina (14391444), timar organization was approved (distribution of
fiefs into hasses and timars), as had been documented in the tax poll (defter)
of the Region of Brankovi, and as will be discussed below in the text. Later
on, when Mehmed II the Conqueror, the successor of Bayazid, had come to
the Ottoman Turkish throne (14511481), he established links to both European
and Asian parts of the Empire and pushed its borders towards the Danube and
Hungary. In 1454 he attacked Despotovina and the Turkish army conquered
a good part of it. Thus Ottoman rule was finally established in the Region of
3 The position of vassal denotes partial independence, an intermediate state between total
occupation and independence. It meant that previous holders resumed ruling their lands,
but with clear obligations towards the Turkish conqueror in terms of military service and
civil duties (taxes and imposts were to be paid in cash and kind).
4 Lazars son, Stefan Lazarevi, was given the title of despot in 1402. By then he was a Despot, and
therefore the period (known as the Despotovina or despotate) was marked by a restoration of
national identity, territory, culture and politics. However the Turks took over the country in
1459 after they defeated the despot ura Brankovi (Vuks son) in the battle of Smederevo.
This was when the whole country came under their full occupation and administration.
72 Bobi
Hungarian Kingdom
Vlaka
Land of Lazar
Hrebeljanovi
Kingdom of
Bosnia Bulgarian Empire
Land of Vuk
Brankovi
Ottoman
Empire
Land of
Zeta Land of Konstantin Draga
Adriatic Sea
King Markos
Albanian Land
Rulers
Byzantine Empire
figure 4.1 Map of Central Balkan States, 13751395

Source: Wikipedia
Brankovi and the Despot had been required to pay tribute to the Ottomans
and send auxiliary troops when necessary. It was at that very time when the
detailed local tax poll (defter) of the Region of Brankovi was accomplished.5
5 The original title of the document was Defter-I Vilayet-i Vlk (defter za Vukovu Oblast); Hamid
Hadibegi, Adem Handi and Eref Kovaevi (eds.), Oblast Brankovia, opirni katastarski
popis iz 1455. godine [Detailed Census of the Region of Brankovi in 1455] (Sarajevo, 1972),
vxiv. This is actually the first detailed Turkish tax poll of Serbian countries which has been
preserved to the present time and translated into Serbo-Croat. However the Turkish admin-
istration undertook regular tax polls during the reign of Mehmed II the Conqueror. There
2 The Tax Poll of the Region of Brankovi in 14556
When the tax poll had been carried out, the Region of Brankovi included
Kosovo Polje, parts of the territory at the border of Montenegro, the Raka
region and Toplice (the latter two being parts of central Serbia),7 with the
exception of the territories taken by the Turks after 1392, such as Zvean, Jele
and some other settlements, which were registered in another document the
Summary Land Register of 14558 (see Figure 4.2).
According to the editors of the Serbo-Croat translation, registration of land,
settlements and population was a rigorous and highly institutionalized pro-
cess.9 In their introduction the editors wrote about the instructions on how
the whole action was to be performed. The sultans vassals responsible for car-
rying out of the tax poll were obliged to document relevant information on
all holders of hasses and timars as well as on the subordinated population.
Hasses were enjoyed by holders of the highest positions in Turkish admin-
istration (mir-i-alem Vukove Oblasti), who had to be Turks (Muslims). These
fiefs brought them an income of over 100,000 akes per year (Turkish currency
at the time). While hasses were linked to the proprietors place in the social
hierarchy, the other two types, timars and zeamets, were attributed to persons
and their revenue ranged from up to 19,990 akes (from timars) while zeamets
were two types of Turkish tax polls: summary and detailed. Summary ones were taken on the
ascension of a new sultan or at regular points in time, while detailed ones were conducted
following major changes either in the territory, tax laws or after shifts in administrative orga-
nization which occurred in the Region of Brankovi.
6 This analysis is based on the thorough research carried out by the interdisciplinary team
of scholars headed by academician Milo Macura, then the President of the Department
of Population Studies of Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. The researchers undertook
the reconstruction of the tax poll of the Brankovi Region in 1455 from various standpoints,
and published their results in the extensive monograph entitled Settlements and Population
of the Region of Brankovi in 1455; Milo Macura (ed.), Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti
Brankovia 1455 (Belgrade, 2001), 793 pp. There were five key authors whose contributions
were as following: Historic and Geographic Circumstances (Relja Novakovi), Settlements
and Population; Osmans Feudalism (Milo Macura), Demographic Characteristics and
Population (Miroslav Raevi), Houses, Families and Zadrugas (Mirjana Bobi) and
Anthroponomy and Toponymy (Milica Grkovi).
7 Macura, M. (ed.), Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, 5.
8 Hazim abanovi, Krajite Isa-begaIshakovia, Zbirni katastarsk i popis iz 1455. Godine
[Summary Land Register of of the Frontier Territory of Isa-bey Ishakovich in 1455] (Sarajevo,
1964).
9 Hadibegi, Handi and Kovaevi, Oblast Brankovia.
74
BLACE
PROKUPLJE
NOVI PAZAR KURUMLIJA
TUTIN
BANJSKA
VRBICA MITROVICA
ROAJ VUITRN
PE PRITINA
NOVO BRDO
GNJILANE
TRPCE
Bobi
figure 4.2 Map of the Region of Brankovi in 1455, with the village of Vrbua indicated
contributed 20,000 to 99,999 akes per year.10 Timars were granted to lower
strata of feudal nobles, who could also be non-Muslims, Christians (Orthodox
Serb nobles), and thus loyal to the emperors. These fiefs were listed by their
names, familial origin (agnatic links), (e.g. timar Umura, sina (son of) Hasan-
begova), but sometimes through geographical, ethnic or some other feature.
As stated above, holding a timar presupposed military obligations, as well as
safeguarding the territory and imposing a social system of feudalism.11 Serbian
authors who have studied this document thoroughly argue that the defter
offers a solid basis for the reconstruction of the Ottoman feudal system.12
There were 177 fiefs registered in the Region of Brankovi in 1455 in total,
containing four hasses and 173 timars. Their distribution followed the ter-
ritorial division into seven territorial entities called nahiyes and one vilayet
(Trgovite, Klopotnik, Dolci, Morava, Vuitrn, Topolnica, Lab and a vilayet of
Pritina).13 These 177 fiefs listed in the document were altogether headed by
262 nobles, hierarchically organized. The first two ranks were filled exclusively
by Muslims (four in the highest one and eleven in the middle ones) while the
lowest stratum included 86 Orthodox Serbs (out of 247 from the low rank).14
10 There is no mention on zeamets in this defter.

11 Ema Miljkovi Turski feudalni sistem na Balkanu u prvom veku vladavine [The Ottoman
Feudal System in the Balkans in the First Century of its Rule], in: Naselja i Stanovnitvo
Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 533549 (537).
12 Ema Miljkovi, op. cit.; Milo Macura, Osmanski feudalizam [Ottoman Feudalism], in
Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 471611. The ongoing debate on how
the Ottoman system should be defined is beyond the scope of this study.
13 Nahiyes denoted geographical parts, regions, units or countryside. More information
on the distribution of fiefs and their holders can be found in Hadibegi, Handi and
Kovaevi, Oblast Brankovia, viii.
14 The total number of fiefs-holders is greater than the actual number of fiefs because some
of the timars were administered by more than one person (Macura, Osmanski feudal-
izam, 481). This is especially case for fiefs that had been attributed to Serbs (86 Serbs
ruled 25 timars with the lowest level revenues). The highest rank was occupied by a fron-
tier and chief commander, Sandjakbey for the Vuk Region (Ilyas-bey, mir-i-alem), and his
hasses included nahiyes or parts of nahiyes: Trgovite, Klopotnik, Dolci, Morava and the
town of Vuitrn itself. The other three hasses were granted to: (1) Muhamed bey, subai
of Morava nahiye (subai was a military commander of the territory, nahiye or the town):
(2) Kasim-bey, subai of Novo Brdo, nahiye of Topolnica and (3) Mehmet-beyBahsayis-
agha son, subai of the Lab nahiey. Timars were distributed among middle and lower
ranks of military hierarchy. As said before, at the very bottom of the Ottoman hierar-
chies there were 86 Orthodox Serbs heading 25 timars in total. As local scholars argue
these Serbs became timar holders either because they were previous lords on these lands
(so-called spahije sipahis) or they had become loyal to the emperor and as such were
76 Bobi
The tax poll enumerates 646 villages which constituted parts of fiefs and
were territorialy located in nahiyes. That said, one fief could cover villages
and towns of several nahyies, and hence territorial and feudal organisation
and distribution did not overlap. The census also brings data on families and
households as well as on the production of the common population located
in villages, while the towns were populated by military troops and Turkish
administrators and therefore were not subject of the documents registration.
Thus villages have been listed along with data on economy which served as the
main source of revenues for fiefs holders.15 Each registered village is accom-
panied by a list of names of men, heads of households, coresident males (pro-
vided they were of age), and widows (if there were not males of age in the
house, in which case these females acted as heads). Altogether there were 497
widows registered in the tax poll. Otherwise heads wives were not declared;
nor their under-age offspring, which is in line with the very purpose of this
register. At the end of the listing for each village there is a recapitulation of the
number of houses, widows and unmarried men. Military personnel of the fort
of Novo Brdo, and monasteries (clergy), were registered as persons and not as
houses with their members, therefore they were not the subject of our analysis.
Thirdly, there was a category of soldiers whose obligations were tightly related
to military operations.16 What we however do learn from the introductory part
of the translated defter is that they had been obliged to pay only personal taxes,
and since they were thus a privileged part of subordinated people they have
not been included in our reconstruction of households and families. In the
awarded territory with population. However most of these timars were enjoyed jointly by
two or more brothers and rarely by a father and a son, while only one was independently
headed (Macura, Osmanski feudalizam, 521). The holders of these timars were identified
according to their (Serbian) names, which means that maybe some who were Islamicized
or had some different Orthodox names were not taken into consideration in this registra-
tion. Despite the fact that these fiefs were the poorest in terms of income generation, a
supply of military force and civil service, it emerges that in this way Turks expressed their
willingness to incorporate lower parts of local feudal holders in their system.
15 The editors claim that there was a great number of unidentified settlements indicating
ethnic changes, reflecting armed conflicts and political turmoil. There are also traces of
migration, reflected in the disappearance of some settlements and their names as well as
in the creation of new ones, Hadibegi, op. cit., X.
16 Besides the lack of data in the tax poll, we also do not hold information on whether mili-
tary personal, soldiers and clergy were admitted to marry, therefore we do not discuss
their family and household issues in the text.
nahyie of Klopotnik there were 11 villages with houses which served as a reserve
of voynuks17 and likewise 22 villages with such houses in the nahyie of Lab.18
Just a few lines on type of settlements and local economy in the Region. The
vast majority of the registered ordinary or dependent population lived in vil-
lages and engaged predominantly in agriculture and natural production, with
low levels of trade and manufacture developing as well as with the emerging
monetary economy.19 Besides farming and animal husbandry, there are some
mentions of occupations closely related to agriculture (8 out of 40) whilst 32
were non-agricultural. In the first group, the most frequent was cattle herder
(govedar) with 92 persons registered. In the non-agricultural group, the most
cited was a hammer-smith (kova), in 60 cases. Still, the most widespread non-
agricultural occupation was linked to the (Orthodox) church, with 288 priests
and clergy (1.7% of total). Even though there was some dispersion of occupa-
tions in the Region of Brankovi at the time, the fact is that division of labour
was still in its initial phases, with a general preponderance of farming with
production and consumption aimed at the fulfillment of personal needs only.
17 Hadibegi, Handi and Kovaevi, Oblast Brankovia, xi. The vast majority of sol-
diers came from subordinated people and to a lesser extent sipahis; Macura, Osmanski
feudalizam, 485.
18 This tax poll does not mention Vlachs, a social category that was in between the upper
strata of spahije (sipahis) and the dependent population, which is most probably the rea-
son why they were not registered in the Region. Unlike meropahs and voynuks, they were
directly subordinated to the Ottoman central administration in that they were privileged
both under the previous Serbian state and later under Ottomans. They were primarily
used to guard frontiers (to Austria to the West and Hungary to the North), as well as to
preserve forts and to transport goods and people. They lived in relatively independent vil-
lages in the mountains and under their own headmen, most probably in complex family
households. There are however some other Ottoman tax polls of vlachs, also translated
into Serbo-Croat, in a collection of historical documents (abanovi, Krajite Isa-bega
Ishakovia, Zbirni katastarski popis), mentioned above. This group was also thoroughly
analyzed and discussed by E. A. Hammel, The Zadruga as Process, in Household and
Family in Past Time, eds, Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (Cambridge, 1972), 337375. The
latter pertain to tax polls of villages of the county of Belgrade (Beogradska nahija) from
the 16th century (1528 and 1530). As Hammel points out (344), the term Vlach was used
by Slavs to denote Romanized Illyrians, whom they displaced after having arrived in the
Balkans. As time passed this meaning was transformed into stockman or shepherd,
and as such applied in administrative documents of the medieval Serbian state and the
Ottoman Empire.
19 Macura, Milos, Naselja i naseljenost [Settlements and Population], in Naselja i
Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 217.
78 Bobi
As stated above, the document does not include complete information on

towns, since they were populated by Ottomans and their troops, but it is quite
obvious that they played an important role as political and economic centres.
As can clearly be seen from what has been said above on the economy, the
population of villages must have been mutually dependent and their settle-
ments had multiple functions: demographic (socio-biological reproduction),
economic, religious and social ones, thus creating a world of their own.20
Tax poll data on houses, although specific in its nature, is highly important
because it allows various perspectives in the study not only of occupations and
social status, but of family and household, ethnic and migratory structures,
as well.21 Specifically, in the vast majority of cases, each name of a head of a
house in a settlement is followed by the name of his father and/or his brother
(for more than 16,000 houses collated from the document) and only to a lesser
extent by some position, either professional, social, ethnic or migratory.22
The document also registers various taxes based on the village economy of
the dependent population. Taxes paid in cash were personal (so-called ispence)
and counted annually according to the number of dependent Christians, heads
of houses, co-resident males and widows presuming they had been heads of
households. There were also other fixed dues (so called tithe and resm) for ani-
mals (pigs), mills and income generating from agriculture, vegetables (onion,
garlic, cabbage, beans), bees, fruit orchards, etc. Taxes in kind were demanded
from cereals (ur and tithe) such as wheat, barley, husked oats, millet, legumi-
nous plants (beans, vetch) as well as from vineyards (hassa vineyards belong-
20 Macura, op. cit., 206.

21 Macura, M., Oblasti Brankovia u susret [Towards the analysys of the Region of
Brankovi] in Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 529.
22 On the basis of the compilation of census data, it emerged that there were altogether
16,915 male taxpayers in the Region; Miroslav Raevi, Demografske prilike i stanovnitvo
[Demographic Conditions and Population], in Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia,
ed. Macura, 411457 (442454). Among them, a minority had been registered according
to the following characteristics: (1) a profession (a hammer-smith kova, a shoemaker
obuar, a shepherd govedar, etc., 643 in total, or 3.80%); (2) migrants status (prilac,
dolac, etc., 574 or 3.39%). For a minority of males there were (3) three social catego-
ries recognized: aged, poor (we dont know exactly what were the differences in between
these two) and persons with a physical disability (hrom, slep, etc.), (altogether 816 per-
sons or 4.82% of the total); (4) As to the ethnic structure, the vast majority were Serbs
(12,985 in villages and towns). Ethnic minorities were as few as 104 or 0.61% (48 Vlachs,
36 Albanians, 16 Bulgarians, only three Greeks and one Croat). As Raevi argues, how-
ever, there is some doubt as to the consistency and accuracy of the registration of all
these statuses. So for example there was certainly more than one Croat house (registered
in Janjevo village). There is no information on the methodology of how these personal
characteristics had been notified.
ing to timar holders and the other ones of villagers). Therefore, this document
offers quite solid information on the total annual crop coming from different
branches of the agricultural economy at that time.
When considering how to process evidence on houses and family relations
contained in the census, we have kept in mind Hammels warning that it is
incumbent on any author to make explicit what his analysis is and what is not
about.23 Thus the main aim of our paper is to reconstruct family and house-
hold, based on the data presented in this document. Therefore, we have posed
two main goals: to discuss relevant concepts and appropriate definitions of
domestic groups compiled in the document (kua) (house), as well as a method
for reconstruction of families and households out of the listing. As Sovi sug-
gests, in order to study the geography of households and families of Balkans24
it is highly important to set a rigorous and formal set of definitions which is
a central preliminary stage.25 I therefore adopted part of Peter Lasletts basic
rules for interpreting English documents, presupposing that historians work-
ing on the issues of families and households elsewhere meet the same prob-
lems of definitions, their accuracy and cross-cultural comparability.26
Finally, after we analyzed and interpreted the results, we reconsidered the
main findings not only in the light of the academic controversies and ambigui-
ties concerning single vs. multiple families and households, but also through
the lens of the perpetuation of a specific historic and anthropological thread,
preserved up to date as part of a social and collective unconscious in East
Europe and the Balkans (Hajnals line, or the so-called or East/West divide in
terms of marriage and family).27
It should however be stressed that the study of historic forms of family in
Serbia as well as in the Balkans more generally (as is often the case in the other
parts of the world) is complicated by two major issues: the lack of reliable,
objective and systematic evidence, and the ideological biases which interfere
23 Hammel, The Zadruga as Process, 366; Silvia Sovi, Definitions and Documents in
Family History: Towards an Agenda for Comparative Research, in Social Behaviour and
Family Strategies in the Balkans (16th20th Centuries) (Bucharest, 2006), 137158 (138).
24 Sovi, Definitions and Documents, 137.
25 Sovi, loc. cit.
26 Peter Laslett, Introduction: The History of the Family, in Household and Family in Past
Time, eds. Laslett and Wall, 8688. (Appendix to Introduction: Suggested Rules for
Interpreting English Documents). I recognize, of course, that Lasletts classification sys-
tem has in many respects become outdated. It is retained in the present study (which is
based on research completed twenty years ago) as its use at least has the merit of clarity
and comparability with other studies that have conformed to the same standard. On this
issue see Sovi, Definitions and Documents, 138.
27 Sovi, Definitions and Documents, 137.
80 Bobi
with academic research and therefore hinder the distinction of facts from arti-
facts, reality from myths of family life in past times.28
3 Main Paradigms
Family household was at the core of social life for all human communities
in pre-modern times, as is well documented in literature. It represented the
entirety of biological and social reproduction concerning both individual and
community. Male solidarity, rooted in firm kinship ties, generated material
production and economic exchange in a pre-modern village, while a hierarchy
of power, positions and roles were endorsed according to age and sex.29 The
clear segregation of male and female duties and responsibilities is one of the
main features of house communities in medieval Serbian and Balkan peas-
ant society.30 When discussing the history of Balkan family and household,
Todorova suggests introducing a complex model which best describes the
interplay between vital events of pre-transitional population (fertility, mortal-
ity and nuptiality), along with an inheritance system as well as all the ensuing
effects on household size and its complexity.31 The fact is, however, that we do
not know much about all these historic facts and figures, while at the same
time there is a need for a multidisciplinary historic demographic, anthropo-
logical and sociological research for each specific region.
What we can speculate, on the basis of our scholarly knowledge of demo-
graphic transition and history of the family, is that, due to short life expectancy,
the succession of generations must have been occurring rapidly. Therefore
elderly sons were inheriting patrimony soon after a fathers death. Under con-
ditions where only one son undertook the position of a head, other offspring,
presumably females, ought to have left the patrimony. However in the case of
an absence of a son, there were daughters who could have brought husbands
into a house, and these sons-in-law were termed domazet. In cases where
28 Hammel, The Zadruga as Process; Sovi, Definitions and Documents, 146147; Maria
Todorova, Situating the Family of Ottoman Bulgaria within the European Pattern,
History of the Family, 1: 4 (1996), 443459 (452).
29 Maurice Godelier Naini proizvodnje, odnosi srodstva i demografske strukture [Modes
of Production, Kinship Relations and Demographic Structures], in his Marksizam i
antropologija [Marxism and Anthropology] (Zagreb, 1982); Joel Halpern, Karl Kaser and
Richard A. Wagner, Patriarchy in the Balkans: Temporal and Cross-Cultural Approaches
The History of the Family An International Quarterly, 1: 4 (1996), 425442.
30 Anelka Mili, Raanje moderne porodice [The Rise of the Modern Family] (Belgrade,
1988).
31 Todorova, loc. cit.
there was more than one son, they might have continued living together in
one house, headed by one of the brothers, who was usually married and called
descendant by the will of the father.32 Therefore complex or multiple house-
holds consisting of two or more married sons have frequently formed fraternal
unions. Finally, if a father died (or was killed in one of the frequent armed con-
flicts) while his offspring were still under age, it was a mother who managed a
house (e.g. widows houses in the Region of Brankovi) until sons had grown
up and could take control.33
However historic demographical evidence and relevant methodologi-
cal approaches are underrepresented among East European scholars. These,
together with the dearth of reliable empirical evidence, further worsen the
study of already poorly preserved historical evidence. Therefore our analysis
of the tax poll of the Brankovi Region in 1455 has followed the arguments
of Peter Laslett and the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and
Social Structure34 because they: (a) used historical census type documents as
sources of evidence; (b) created suitable definitions and concepts referring to
the pre-modern family and household, as well as a set of hypotheses and meth-
odological suggestions as to how to use these specific artifacts to study domes-
tic groups; and (c) as a result they created a typology of households which
encompasses various forms, starting from single person households, through
small up to extended and/or multiple family households; (d) they also sug-
gested an ideographic model of representation of kinship structures within
houses. This model of presentation depicts the household head as the central
figure and thereafter points to the links with other (male) co-residents. The
model illuminates kinship ties in a household, and by doing so reconstructs
agnatic communities in particular time and space (cross-sectional approach).35
Laslett introduced three basic criteria for a domestic group to be treated as
a family and/or household. These are: local criterion or co-residence (common
dwelling of its members), functional (common work), kinship (all members of
the group have to be related by marriage or blood). This means members of
the households were men and women and their socially recognized children,
including sometimes other co-residents servants, dwellers, lodgers, visitors,
32 Stojan Novakovi, Selo [Village] (Belgrade, 1965).

33 Novakovi, loc. cit.; Milan Milievi, ivot Srba seljaka ]The Life of Serbian Villagers].
Zbornik SAN I (Belgrade, 1874); Henri Mendras, Seljaka drutva. Elementi za jednu teoriju
seljatva [Peasant Societies. Elements for a History of Peasantry) (Zagreb, 1986); Mili,
loc. cit.
34 Laslett and Wall (eds.), Household and Family in Past Time.
35 Peter Laslett, Introduction: the History of the Family, in op. cit., 2831.
82 Bobi
who lived with the main family household (headed by a man/husband).36

Thus we have adopted a part of the larger list of Lasletts definitions relevant to
house communities (a household, marital status, child, servant, kin, conjugal
family unit) for the treatment of census-type documents as well as the rules
for presumption (interpretative principles).37
In his typology of family households, Laslett distinguishes three main forms:
simple family household, extended family household and multiple family
household.38 Single family unions could emerge through several variations:
a marital couple with/without children, a widowed parent with a child. The
other form is extended family households which might consist of a conjugal
family with one or more relatives, other than offspring, presuming that the
whole group is living together on its own (independently). This extension is
always defined according to the head of the household or the first mentioned
person in the listing, and might be vertical (lineal), when the resident rela-
tive is either a member of the generation preceding (upwards) or succeeding
(downwards) that of the conjugal family unit (say married heads father, or
mother, or in the latter case a grandchild, a niece or a nephew). The horizon-
tal (lateral) links denote family households where the co-resident relative is a
brother, sister or a cousin. Finally multiple family households consist of two
or more conjugal families living together and mutually related by kinship or
marriage. These constitutive families could also have been simple or extended.
Similar to Laslett, Serbian medieval law acknowledges two types of domes-
tic groups, small and complex ones, the latter including extended and multiple
family households. The older historic sources, medieval in particular, do not
recognize the terms used above. Family appears under the concept of house
[kua].39 However whether it is simple or complex cannot be judged by its
title but its structure. Its structure is reflected in the listing of its members, and
it sometimes encompassed and denoted immediate members (children) or
wider kin (brothers, relatives).
36 Ibid. O 88 (Appendix to Introduction: Suggested Rules for Interpreting English

Documents).
37 Ibid. 8687. Laslett also makes a distinction between the compiler, referring to the per-
son who in the past made out the document being analyzed, and the word researcher
which denotes present day enquirer (86). So, for example, the compiler will use both
household and family to denote domestic groups in history, while a researcher will
avoid using the term family in such a wide sense in case that might cause ambiguity.
Furthermore, Laslett warns that researchers should draw attention once more to the
uncertainties of the task in hand, for it will be evident that they are somewhat arbitrary.
38 Ibid. 29 (Terminology and Scheme of Analysis).
39 Hammel, The Zadruga as Process, 338.
Jovan Cviji, Serbias leading geographer, geologist and anthropogeographer,

who also excelled as ethnographer and ethnologist, wrote that the popular
notion of house for South Slavs referred to a place where there was a fireplace
and where one could access from outside or a porch. The other terms for house
were hearth, fire, and chimney. A house consisting of one room with the
hearth at its centre represents the evolutionary standard in the development
of Serbian houses, while the married sons and their wives moved to the sepa-
rate space within the house, called vajat.40
After having adopted Lasletts concepts we undertook a reconstruction of
family households of the Region of Brankovi in 1455, based on the preserved
and translated Turkish tax roll. As mentioned above, we adopted Lasletts
cross-sectional methodological approach as the most appropriate one in the
absence of comparative datasets and valid additional sources which would
allow the performance of comparisons and analysis of anthropological fea-
tures of familial processes and changes in a longitudinal perspective. Such
an approach, however, suffers from a reflection of accidental demographic
circumstances instead of the underlying live household structures. In other
words, a cross-sectional analysis can tell us how many simple family house-
holds there were in a society at a given point in time, but it cannot tell us how
many of those households would eventually become complex households.41
4 Discussion
The Ottoman tax poll (defter) of the Brankovi Region in 1455 registered 15,162
houses, headed predominantly by males (14,665 houses, or 96.7%), and to a
much lesser extent by females, widows (497, or 3.3%). Such a breakdown, with
males prevailing, corresponds to pre-transitional populations with surpluses
of men. However due to continuous armed conflicts with Ottomans for several
decades before there had also been a massive loss of males, which explains
40 It might be that this form of house had been preserved throughout medieval times
with Yugoslav agricultural workers and shepherds, particularly in its mountain areas.
Moreover we know that this primitive one-room house...appears in many cases in all
villages under the Turkish occupation, as well as a shelter...The simplest form of old
Serbian houses was sibara. This house was shaped as a cup, with a round room and the
fire in the centre, without holes for windows in the walls and without a ceiling, and a
radius of two metres. Only later was another room added, but without a fireplace at the
beginning... Jovan Cviji, Antropogeografski i etnografski spisi [Anthropo-geographic
and Ethnographic Writings], book 4 (vol. I) (Belgrade, 1987), 268 (my translation).
41 Tracy K. Dennison, Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia: Voshchazhnikovo,
18161858, Continuity and Change, 18 (2003), 395429 (403).
84 Bobi
widows houses in the document. Finally, the defter counts 1,783 unmarried
males of age, which altogether makes up 12.2% of the total registered men.
To illustrate the census we have listed below the inhabitants of the village
of Vrbua (nahiya of Trgovite, hasses of Ilijas beg, the great commandment
mir-i-alema Vukove Oblasti) (for location see Figure 4.2).42
Selo Vrbua (Village of Vrbua)
Kosta, son of Berislava

Radovan, son of Kosta
Radenko, son of Radislav
Berislav, his brother
Radin, son of ilja
Radovan, his son
Radivoj, son of Bogoa
ura, son of Radivoje
Stepan, his brother
Radojin, son of Vlkain
Jovan, his brother
Raojko, son of Vlkain
Vladislav, son of Vlkain
Dimitrij, son of Vlkain
Radohna, son of Boban
Vlkain, his brother
Radoslav, brother of Radihna
Oliver, son of Radain
Vladko, his brother
Oliver, brother of Radihna
Dobrain, brother of Ivan
Radica, son of Kosta
Total: houses 14, unmarried 8.43
It seems pretty clear that the term house represents the nucleus of the village
in terms of its organization. The relationship between a village and a house is
formulated by Novakovi in the following manner:
42 Hadibegi, Handi and Kovaevi, Oblast Brankovia, 4.

43 The complete data on the village as cited in the defter is given in Figure 1.
Just as a village was the smallest administrative unit of the state, the
house was the smallest unit of a village. The house was looked upon
with greater rigor than the individual. Old statistical notes count houses
(hearths, fireplaces) and it seems that taxes were taken according to
houses. The house was responsible for all of its members...and dues
from vassals villages were also demanded from houses.44
The question arises as to how to treat males listed one after another. We adopted
Lasletts definitions of kin described above, as well as Hammels model of
analysis of the 1528 census of Vlachs in Belgrade County,45 which presupposed
that blocks of males depicted
core sets of agnatically related men...and the base on which patrilocal

extended and fraternal joint households were formed. The structure of
these, actually work groups, however, cannot be assumed to be identical
with that of complex households formed by the combination of conjugal
families, since some undetermined number of men in the work groups of
the listing of 1528 was probably not married.46
Relying on Lasletts proposed ideographic model,47 we reconstructed these

agnatic groups out of 617 peasants settlements of the Region.48 Through statis-
tical analysis we came to a total of 9,989 domestic groups (family households)
of various forms and structure. As we can see, this outcome is profoundly dif-
ferent from the initial figure of houses registered in the Ottoman document
(14,665 houses).
From Table 4.1 we can draw conclusions about the distribution of houses or
households and the overall population. Obviously small family units headed
by one person, mostly males, were prevalent, while those consisting of two or
more males were less frequent. This raises the next question: what was actually
44 Novakovi, Selo, 70 (my translation).

45 Hammel, The Zadruga as Process, 347348.
46 Ibid. 350.
47 Laslett, Introduction, 41. We however used the term sociograms; Mirjana Bobi, Kua,
porodica, zadruga [Houses, Families and Zadrugas], in Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti
Brankovia, ed. Macura, 316275 (373375).
48 The number is less than the total (646), because for some houses there were no fam-
ily members registered, while some settlements were depopulated. Miroslav Raevi,
Demografske prilike i stanovnitvo [Demographic Characteristics and Population], in
Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 407471.
86 Bobi
TABLE 4.1 Houses according to the number of heads/tax payers, share of total in percentages,
Brankovi Region, 1455
Number of Heads
1 2 3 4 5+ Total
Total 5,705 2,624 1,032 388 240 9,989

% 57.11 26.27 10.33 3.88 2.40 99.99
Source: Own calculation based on the defter (census)
a house registered in the tax poll? We treated a house as both a tax unit and
a household.49 To put it more precisely, the former must have been a part of
a domestic group, given the lack of information on other members, who were
not subject to feudal dues (wives, dependent children, elderly, etc., and who
were therefore not compiled). When we relate the total number of houses per
village (houses + widows) to the number of people counted (houses + widows +
co-resident persons), the outcome is that a house is a small unit, with a mean
size of slightly above one (tax payer) (Table 4.2).
The village of Vrbua lists 22 taxpayers, out of whom 14 were heads, while
eight were co-resident males. We assumed that all inhabitants registered were
members of houses. It is however unclear who was a head and who was a
co-resident male, and therefore it is difficult to determine the borders of a
house. What we do know is that both heads and co-resident males were
obliged to pay the same amount of personal tax (25 ake).50 By closely observ-
ing the listed relations (kinship ties) among the inhabitants of the village, we
determined that there were actually seven extended and/or multiple family
households in the village. Among them two were headed by a father and five
by one of the listed brothers51 (ideograph representation in Figure 4.3). The
49 Dennison, Serfdom and Household Structure, 402.

50 Widows were considerably less burdened, with 6 akci of personal tax. Hadibegi,
Handi and Kovaevi, Oblast Brankovia, x.
51 Again the question arises whether these closely related kin were dwelling together or liv-
ing in the neighborhood. Todorova suspected this in some cases, and therefore treated
them as a phenomenon of modified extended family structure; Todorova, Situating the
Family, 446. In the latter case they could also be considered a houseful in the Laslettian
sense.
TABLE 4.2 Distribution of houses and taxpayers in Brankovi Region, 1455
Total number Total number of Number of tax payers

of houses tax payers per house
Total 15,162 16,945 1.12
Source: Own calculations
1. Father headed 2. Brother headed 3. Father headed
Berislav Radislav ilja
Kosta Radenko Berislav Radin
Radovan Radovan
4.a Brothers union with late fathers name 4.b Brothers union with late
and head (brothers) descendant fathers name
Bogoa Radivoj
Radivoj Stepan ura Stepan
ura
5. Union of 5 brothers with late fathers name
Vukain
Radojin Jovan Raojko Vladislav Dimitrij
6. Brothers union 7. Brothers union 8. Brothers union

Boban Radoin
Radoslav Radihna
ura Stepan Oliver Vladko
9. Two brothers form 10. Two brothers form (the other one is dead) 11. Small family
Kosta
Oliver Radihna Dobrain Ivan
Radica
FIGURE 4.3 Ideographic representation of various family (agnatic) forms in the village
of Vrbua
88 Bobi
following were headed by fathers: (1) the (extended) family of Kosta, the son
of late Berislav and Kostas son Radovan; and (2) Radin, son of ilja with his
descendant Radovan. The complex or multiple families headed by a brother
were as follows: (1) Radenko (son of Radislav) and Berislav; (2) ura (son
of Radivoje) with his brother Stepan; (3) Radojin (son of Vlkain), who was
the head of a large family household, with his brother Jovan52 as well as other
brothers (probably married and/or widowers): Raojko, Vladislav and Dimitrij;
(4) Radohna (son of Boban) with brothers Vlkain, Radoslav and Oliver;
(5) Oliver (son of Radaina) with his brother Vladko. There were also two small
or nuclear family households, headed by single males: (1) Dobrain, the brother
of late Ivana; (2) Radica (Kostas son). Dobrain had evidently been a member
of the complex family together with his brother, who had died, and who could
have been either married or unmarried. If, say, his late brother had been a wid-
ower, then his surviving under-age children could have been living with their
uncle Dobrain, and therefore would not have been counted in the tax poll.
Therefore these units might have been treated as either small or nuclear (ino-
kosne), or the remainder of brother-headed multiple families. Radica, Kostas
son from the end of the list of dwellers, might have been in a nuclear fam-
ily household, but he might have also been the son of the first listed Kosta
(the son of Berislav), who was also the brother of Radovan. In that case Kostas
first son Radovan might have been co-resident (and unmarried). Unmarried
co-residents living in multiple family households were most probably sons or
younger brothers. There are two other reasons that another son of Kosta might
be listed at the end of the entry for the village. In the absence of empirical evi-
dence we can only speculate that it might have been the case, either because of
the fission of the household (after he had got married), or due to inner family
conflicts which could also lead to dissolution and which had happened occa-
sionally, as ethnographers like Novakovi, Cviji and others claimed. On the
other hand, it might also have been a single family, not linked to the patrimony.
Thirdly, the reasons might be methodological. Each village had its head (kmet)
who could have deliberately skewed the evidence on his dependant popula-
tion before the tax poll commission, for various reasons. Fourthly, it might also
be that Ottoman administrative personnel were not always fully precise when
compiling the evidence gathered from the ground.
52 According to the way in which the agnatic links were presented in the listing, we pre-
supposed, arbitrarily, that Jovan was an unmarried brother, and thus registered as his
brother (Jovan, brother of Radojin, son of Vlkain), while other brothers who were listed
thereafter might have been either married or widowers and therefore listed as son(s) of
Vlkain, like the head (Radohna).
5 Forms of Households
By reconstructing kinship structures and then processing data on houses and

their inhabitants we arrived at 45 various forms which we grouped into four
main types or classes: (1) simple or small family households; and complex
(extended and multiple) family households, the latter headed either by: (2) a
father; (3) brother(s): or to a much lesser extent by (4) (other) kin (relatives).
As stated, the nuclear or simple family type includes two modalities headed
either by a male or a female (a widow). By contrast, extended and multiple
family households were much more divergent. Those headed by a father
included seven modalities, covering at least two persons up to a maximum of
six. The most numerous complex unions were those headed by brothers. We
do not know whether they were married or single, but since they were listed
one after another, we have assumed they had been residing in the same house.
Brother-headed unions included as many as 23 different modalities, ranging
from two to eight members (adult males), a fact which speaks not only to the
absolute prevalence of brothers unions but also to their great diversification.
Finally, there was also a form identified in the tax poll headed by (other) kin or
relatives.53 In our calculations this form was represented by 12 modalities
ranging from three to eight people. We can therefore conclude that forms
consisting of one generation or laterally extended kin were actually the most
widespread.
TABLE 4.3 Family households in Brankovi Region, 1455
Type Small (nuclear) Complex (strong) unions headed by: Total

father brother Other relative
Number 5,705 1,018 3,130 136 9,989

% 57.11 10.19 31.34 1.36 100.00
53 We cannot say what this category consists of. Supposedly it denotes distant relatives,
other than those from family of procreation and/or orientation (e.g. son in law). No
detailed information on status or gender or kinship is provided, either in the document
or in the introduction to the Serbo-Croat translation.
90 Bobi
When, however, we look at the level of population contained in households, we

see that the vast majority (66.3%) of registered people lived within extended
and multiple family households (complex unions), with those headed by a
brother prevailing (50.53%) (Table 4.4).
TABLE 4.4 Distribution of the population of the Brankovi Region in 1455, according to
household subtype (in percentages)
Small or Extended and/or Extended/or Extended/or Total

nuclear multiple family multiple family multiple family
households households households
headed by headed by headed by other
fathers brothers relatives
% 33.67 13.63 50.53 2.17 100.00
6 Conclusion
Our study of the defter for the Region of Brankovi in 1455 aimed to identify
and reconstruct families and households. However many questions arose
when we considered how to analyse this tax poll, since it only offered lists of
inhabitants (with their first names and agnatic links) including recapitulation
of houses, co-resident males (sons and brothers of age) and widows, presup-
posed the latter were heading a house. Since the very nature of the docu-
ment determined the quality of the evidence, we had to search for a proper
method for combating the lack of systematic information on all family mem-
bers, their mutual relations, including other/distant relatives, and how to
elucidate the boundaries of a household (who was living together and who
separately).
We came to the conclusion that house the term which is in use in the
document was used to depict a nucleus of a village/settlement in terms of
its economic, social and biological reproduction, thus representing a part of
family and embracing adults males responsible for work, personal burden
and military service. In order to further reconstruct family groups and find
out about their inner structure, we adopted a list of definitions and rules for
presumptions set out by Cambridge Group for the History of Population and
Social Structure. It is nonetheless obvious that our endeavour to carry out the
whole reconstruction has remained speculative and tentative, involving some
decisions that were necessarily arbitrary, and constrained by a lack of accu-
racy and straightforwardness in the documents. Additional and complemen-
tary sources are actually missing, in particular those from cultural and social
history, ethnology and anthropology. They are needed in order to tackle these
issues more convincingly for this historical time and space.
Our reconstruction has led us to mainly confirm that pre-modern house-
holds in the Region consisted of small families which had been overwhelm-
ingly represented by one adult member, therefore conforming to historic
demographic viewpoints. This finding has also been confirmed by socio-
economic and historic analyses of the everyday living conditions of the ordi-
nary, subordinated (Orthodox) population. On the other hand the defter pro-
vides evidence on somewhat different (multiple) family structures of nobles
(either native Serbs or Islamicized populace). They were registered as holders
of the lowest rank fiefs (timari), who were obviously integrated by Ottoman
conquerors into their system and who therefore won some privileges. On the
basis of the defter data we learn that they used to administer their territories
as a family group (timar brae timar of brothers). Thus one can assume that
social hierarchy was more prevalent in moulding familial structure compared
to cultural or ethnic features.
On the other hand, when speaking of multiple family households of the
ordinary population of the Region, laterally extended unions were most fre-
quent, especially those headed by brothers. This was obviously linked to a
short life span (of around 2224 years).54 From the historical and ethnographic
literature referred above55 we have also learned that unmarried males were
co-residing either with a father or with a married brother. Under the condi-
tions of patriarchy, with a virtual absence of neo-locality, males were socially
supported to enter early marriages and create families, even though they did
not have the prerequisites for this (independent housing and resources). We
should also take into account that the demographic and social conditions of
the Region must have been very severe, with a calculated loss of population
for the period 13851455 of as much as 25.4 to 30.7%,56 due to frequent armed
54 Raevi, Demografske prilike i stanovnitvo, 440441.

55 Cviji, Antropogeografski i etnografski spisi; Valtazar Bogii, O obliku zvanom inokotina
u seoskoj porodici Srba i Hrvata [On the Form called inokotina (nuclear family) in the
Peasant Family of Serbs and Croats] (Belgrade, 1884).
56 The estimated number of subordinated Christians in 1455 was 67,500; Raevi,
Demografske prilike i stanovnitvo, 432, 453.
92 Bobi
clashes with Ottomans, epidemics of contagious diseases (plague, variola vera)

and occasional famines, all of which decreased fertility and forced people to
emigrate to other Serbian lands.57 These circumstances could have also been
beneficial to the strengthening of mutual dependence and networking among
families of the subordinated agrarian population.
57 Budimir Pavlovi, Socijalno-epidemijske prilike u Oblasti Brankovia sredinom XV veka

[Social and Epidemiological Conditions in the Region of Brankovi by the Middle of the
15th Century], in Naselja i Stanovnitvo Oblasti Brankovia, ed. Macura, 457469.
CHAPTER 5
Variation Within: Regional Differences

in Household Structures in Mid-Nineteenth
Century Rural Serbia
Siegfried Gruber
1 Introduction
Studies of household structures in the eastern half of Europe still represent

only a small proportion of the body of research on household structures in
Europe. The reasons for this situation are manifold, including a lack of sources,
less interest from Western scholars, and less orientation to international
research among scholars from the region. Generally, impressions of the region
have been based on ethnographic studies or scattered quantitative studies of
a few villages or cities. The absence of databases covering the whole country,
with the notable exception of Albania, makes it very difficult to paint a picture
of the whole of Southeastern Europe based on quantitative results. Published
statistical data in a highly aggregated form did not seem to provide researchers
with enough evidence for calculating rates for different kinds of households.
But recent results on the spatial variation in household structures in 19th-
century Germany1 have shown that aggregate data can in fact be used for this
type of research. Another aspect is spatial variation, which has not yet been
intensely investigated. Because the only in-depth studies have concentrated
on small areas, the general view of the region is based on these scattered stud-
ies, ethnographic evidence, and mere assumptions. In the following, we will
use Serbian data to conduct a more detailed analysis based on the census of
1866.
Our goal in this chapter is to provide answers to the following questions:
Can we distinguish between different regions of household structures in

rural Serbia in 1866?
1 Mikoaj Szotysek, Siegfried Gruber, Sebastian Klsener and Joshua Goldstein, Spatial
Variation in Household Structure in 19th-century Germany. MPIDR Working Paper WP 2010-
030 (Rostock, 2010).

94 Gruber
Which factors were responsible for regional differences in household struc-

tures in rural Serbia in 1866?
2 Household Structures in Rural Serbia
2.1 Definitions of the Joint Family Household in Serbia

The work of Karadi remains important for research on household and fam-
ily in Southeastern Europe, largely because he coined the term zadruga for
the Serbian type of a joint family household in his dictionary of the Serbian
language. This term was increasingly used because no term existed before to
distinguish this kind of household from nuclear families. Following his work,
the interest of researchers was often directed towards very large and complex
households, because Karadi had, for example, found evidence for a house-
hold with 62 members, 13 couples, 1,400 sheep and goats.2 At the end of the 19th
and the beginning of the 20th centuries, many ethnographers asserted that
the number of joint family households was declining. They published studies
about single large joint family households, and therefore helped to create and
perpetuate a certain image of this kind of household. Such publications were
also common later in the 20th century.3 Large and complex households were
often used as examples, even at the end of the 20th century: a household with
13 men, 12 women, and four servants served as an illustration of the Serbian
census of 1863: This extended family, heavy in lands, properties and financial
assets, employing several living-in servants, is of the type around which the
notion of the powerful, influential zadruga was based.4
The term had different connotations, and was often seen as a national cus-
tom or an essential characteristic of Slavic culture.5 The zadruga as national
custom was postulated for Serbs (by Serbian scholars) or Croats (by Croatian
scholars) and connected with many positive attributes of the own rural
2 Vuk Stefanovi Karadi, Lexicon serbico-germanico-latinum (Vienna, 1818) (p. 191).

3 See e.g. Milan Karanovi, Nekolike velike porodine zadruge u Bosni i Hercegovini [Some
Large Joint Families in Bosnia and Herzegovina], Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja, 42 (Sarajevo,
1930), 13356; Mirko R. Barjaktarovi, Die Sippenhausgemeinschaft Osmanaj im Dorfe
Djurakovac, Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie, 85: 2 (1960), 21427.
4 Michael Palairet, Rural Serbia in the Light of the Census of 1863, The Journal of European
Economic History, 24: 1 (1995), 41107.
5 Maria Todorova, Myth-Making in European Family History: the Zadruga Revisited, East
European Politics and Societies, 4: 1 (1990), 3076.
Variation Within 95
population.6 The term has also been used uncritically for any kind of large
family and has misled generations of scholars, because this kind of house-
hold was not restricted to South Slavs. Moreover it has been used for two dif-
ferent kinds of household complexity.7 The use of this term should therefore
be avoided in scholarly publications,8 and it is restricted to citations in this
chapter. The term joint family household will be used instead, because this
term is not loaded with (partly ideological) meanings.
The Serbian Civil Code of 1844 defined this kind of household as having
property in common, with clothing, weapons, and jewelry being the only
things owned personally. The household head needed the consent of the other
adult and married men for all property transactions. The death of the house-
hold head or of any other member of the household did not alter the status of
the common property. Only the division of the household or the death of all
members led to the end of the household and the dissolution of the common
property.9 Halpern defined it as follows:
An expanded definition of the zadruga is a residential kin unit com-

posed of at least two nuclear family units, often including other relatives
as well, who work and live together and jointly control and utilize the
resources of the household. Usually heads of the nuclear units and oth-
ers who may be members of the zadruga are related by common descent,
mainly in the male line. Thus the zadruga can be considered primarily
a patrilocal unit existing within a society which places stress on patri-
lineal descent and where the formal authority patterns are patriarchal.
The term zadruga, in addition to referring to such a household unit, is
6 Karl Kaser, Peoples of the Mountains, Peoples of the Plains: Space and Ethnographic
Representation, in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central
Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield. Austrian Studies, 5 (Oxford and New York 2003), 21630.
7 Karl Kaser, Familie und Verwandtschaft auf dem Balkan. Analyse einer untergehenden Kultur
(Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 1995), 37ff.
8 Todorova, Myth Making, 64; Kaser, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 37; Jasna apo mega, New
Evidence and Old Theories: Multiple Family Households in Northern Croatia, Continuity and
Change, 11: 3 (1996), 37598 (379).
9 Gojko Nikoli (ed.), Zbirka zakona Kraljevine Srbije. Protumaen odlukama dravnog
saveta, opte sednice i odeljenja kasacionog suda, glave kontrole itd. Vol. 1: Gradjanski zakonik
[Collection of Laws of the Kingdom of Serbia. Commented Decisions of the State Council,
General Sessions and Department of the Court of Cassation, etc.] (Belgrade, 1909); Holm
Sundhaussen, Historische Statistik Serbiens 18341914. Mit europischen Vergleichsdaten.
Sdosteuropische Arbeiten, 87 (Munich, 1989), 72.
96 Gruber
often translated from Serbo-Croat as cooperative or partnership, and this

reflects its ideal ethos.10
The joint family household in Southeastern Europe is therefore connected to a

patriarchal kinship system and a system of equal male inheritance in Eastern
and Southeastern Europe.11
The positive aspects of these joint family households, relative to nuclear
families, included the greater availability of people to perform farm work, and
more positive personal relationships.12 These households were also depicted
as the ideal foundation for the societal order, and as a bulwark against the
destructive forces of modernization in 19th-century Croatia and Slavonia.13
Others envisioned them as the basis for the creation of a socialist society,
because they could protect individuals from impoverishment, a problem that
was widespread in the industrialized West.14 Sicard stated that the economic
advantages of these households were more important than the fact that they
involved communal living, and that the head of the household was chosen
based on economic ability, and not simply age.15
The negative aspects of joint family households included increased hard-
ships for women, and the dissatisfaction of the female members of the house-
hold was often the reason for their division.16 The conservative, traditional
structure hindering new developments17 and the curbing of individual initia-
tive have also been mentioned as negative characteristics of these households,
10 Joel M. Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern, A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective

(New York, 1972), 17.
11 Karl Kaser, Macht und Erbe. Mnnerherrschaft, Besitz und Familie im stliche Europa
(15001900) (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2000).
12 Milan . Milievi, Pregled zadrunog stanja Srba seljaka [Overview of the Joint Family of
the Serbian peasant]. Glasnik SUD, 9 (Belgrade, 1857), 14561.
13 Ognjeslav M. Utieenovi, Die Hauskommunionen der Sdslaven (Vienna, 1859).
14 Svetozar Markovi, Srbija na istoku [Serbia in the East] (Belgrade, 1946).
15 Emile Sicard, Osnovni elementi jugoslovenske porodine zadruge (studija socijalne sta-
tike) [The Key Elements of the Yugoslav Joint Family (a Study of Social Statics)], Arhiv za
pravne i drutvene nauke, 32 (49) (Belgrade, 1936), 56475.
16 Milievi, Pregled, 14561.
17 Milovan Gavazzi, Seljaka zadruna obitelj kao injenica i kao problem [The Peasant Joint
Family as Fact and as Problem] (Sarajevo, 1934); Rudolf Biani, Kako ivi narod. ivot
u pasivnim krajevima [How the People Live. Life in the Passive Regions] (Zagreb, 1936);
Vera St. Erlich, Family in Transition. A Study of 300 Yugoslav Villages (Princeton, 1960);
Milenko S. Filipovi, Zadruga (Kuna Zadruga) [Joint Family], in Communal Families in
the Balkans: The Zadruga, ed. Robert F. Byrnes (Notre Dame, In., 1976), 26879.
Variation Within 97
along with the cultivation of a slave mentality and the fostering of provincial-
ism and xenophobia.18
A household classification system which can be used not only for one
European region, but theoretically all over the world was introduced by
Hammel and Laslett. The central concept of this classification system is the
conjugal family unit (CFU). A CFU consists either of a couple (with or without
children) or a single parent with an unmarried child (or children). The system
consists of six different categories which can be subdivided into several classes
each: Solitaries (no CFU, one person), No family (no CFU, more than one per-
son), Simple family households (one CFU), Extended family households (one
CFU plus other relatives), Multiple family households (more than one CFU),
and Indeterminate (households which cannot be classified into the other five
categories). This classification system has become widely used among family
historians and the category Multiple family household includes the house-
hold types referred to as zadruga and stem families.19
2.2 Distribution of Joint Family Households in Serbia

There have been a range of explanations for the differences in the distribution
of joint family households, including the origins of the population.20 Cviji
thought they were typical for the Dinaric regions, and were most common in
dispersed settlements.21 Filipovi stressed the importance of the economic
conditions for the prevalence of these households: they appeared among
cattle breeders, and were especially numerous in regions with cattle breeding
and agriculture, because these households needed a large number of workers.22
Mitterauer emphasized the importance of the pastoral economy in relatively
remote areas with an underdeveloped money economy. Other factors cited
18 Bojan Penev, Istoriia na novata blgarska literatura [History of New Bulgarian Literature]
(Sofia, 1936).
19 Eugene A. Hammel and Peter Laslett, Comparing Household Structures over Time and
between Cultures, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16: 1 (1974), 73109; Peter
Laslett, Introduction, in Household and Family in Past Time: Comparative Studies in the
Size and Structure of the Domestic Group over the Last Three Centuries in England, France,
Serbia, Japan and Colonial North America, with Further Materials from Western Europe,
eds. Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (London and New York 1972), 189.
20 Ljubomir Pavlovi, Antropogeografija Valjevske Tamnave [Anthropo-geography of the
District of Tamnava in the Region of Valjevo], Srpski etnografski zbornik, 18 (1912), 363635
(62428).
21 Jovan Cviji, Balkansko poluostrvo [The Balkan Peninsula] (Belgrade, 1922), 268, 36365.
22 Filipovi, Zadruga, 273.
98 Gruber
included the absence of cities and of a strong church or state administration.23

Palairet found evidence for the association between the sale of livestock and
the existence of joint family households in his analysis of the census of 1863.24
Stoianovich saw the structure and size of households as a result of geogra-
phy and culture. Large families were present in areas with difficult terrain and
low population density. The influence of feudal lords did not increase the size
of the households, because large families were economically disadvantaged.25
He agreed with the Nimkoff-Middleton model, which postulated that extended
families are typical of societies with a mixed agricultural-pastoral population.26
In Western Serbia in the late 18th century, the villages were small, the families
were large, and the economy was mixed agricultural-pastoral; while in Eastern
Serbia, the villages were larger, extended households were the exception, and
agriculture predominated.27
Todorova saw this kind of household as a product of the conditions that
were prevalent between the late 18th century and the beginning of the 20th
century. The decentralization of the Ottoman Empire was the reason for the
emergence of joint family households as a means of survival, especially in
Western Bulgaria. In this region, the pastoral economy was well developed, but
in Southeastern Europe, the relative importance of pastoral and agricultural
activities shifted several times. The joint family household was therefore not
seen as an archaic relic, but as a specific answer to a specific problem.28 In
Bulgaria, this kind of household was to be found mostly among pastoralists.29
23 Michael Mitterauer, Historisch-anthropologische Familienforschung. Fragestellungen

und Zugangsweisen. Kulturstudien. Bibliothek der Kulturgeschichte, 15 (Vienna and
Cologne, 1990), 10912; idem, Medieval Roots of European Family Developments, in
Stredoeurpske kontexty ludovey kultry na Slovensku [Central European contexts of folk
culture in Slovakia], ed. Jan Michlek (Bratislava, 1995), 92105.
24 Palairet, Rural Serbia.
25 Traian Stoianovich (ed.), Between East and West. The Balkan and Mediterranean Worlds,
2 vols. (New Rochelle, New York, 1992), 121ff.
26 M. F. Nimkoff and Russell Middleton, Types of Family and Types of Economy, American
Journal of Sociology, 66: 3 (1960), 21525.
27 Stoianovich, Between East and West, 142ff.
28 Todorova, Myth-Making, 5560, 63ff.; Maria Todorova, Balkan Family Structure and the
European Pattern. Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria (Washington, 1993),
15156.
29 Maria Todorova, Recent Research on Household and Family in the Balkans (1519th
Century), in Von der Pruth-Ebene bis zum Gipfel des Ida. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag
von Emanuel Turczinsky, ed. Gerhard Grimm. Sdosteuropaschriften, 10 (Munich, 1989),
1122 (19).
Variation Within 99
Stoianovich distinguished three belts of distribution of complex families

between 1500 and about 1850. The first belt was along the coast, with a low pro-
portion of joint family households (with the exception of the region of Poljica
in the hinterland of Zadar). The second belt was the Western continental zone,
with joint families making up 60 to 80% of households. The third belt was the
eastern continental zone, with 40% of the population living in complex house-
holds. In some peripheral regions, like the Greek-Albanian highlands, these
households were more prominent.30
Todorovas model of distribution included a coastal zone populated mainly
by nuclear families. The region of complex households was located to the
east of this zone, in the mountainous zone of the pastoralists in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Northern and Central Macedonia, and Central Albania. Similar
proportions could be found in the border region of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and in
the Rhodope Mountains. The tribal areas of Montenegro and Northern Albania
and the military border were separate entities with high proportions of com-
plex families. Lower proportions of complex families were found in the valleys
of Serbia, Western and Central Bulgaria, Southern Macedonia, and Southern
Albania.31
Kaser identified a core area consisting of northern and central Albania,
Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, western Bulgaria, north-
ern Greece, and the former military border.32 In rural areas of Serbia, joint
family households generally predominated in the mid-19th century; it was
only east of the Lower Morava that other family forms were more prevalent.33
For Central Serbia, most of the available data confirm this household pattern.
Later, Kaser divided Southeastern Europe into four different regions based on
residence patterns after marriage and household type:34
neolocal nuclear: Romania and parts of Eastern Serbia

patrilocal life cycle complexity: Hungary proper, Bulgaria, continental
Greece
neo- or uxorilocal nuclear: Aegean islands
patrilocal household cycle complexity: Hungary proper, Croatia and
Slovakia, most parts of Serbia, western Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia-
Hercegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and northern Greece, with variants in
30 Stoianovich, Between East and West, 148.

31 Todorova, Balkan Family Structure, 149.
32 Kaser, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 258.
33 Kaser, Familie und Verwandtschaft, 321.
34 Karl Kaser, Introduction, in Household and Family Contexts in the Balkans, ed. Karl Kaser
(= special issue of The History of the Family, 1: 4) (1996), 37586 (38083).
100 Gruber
the Maina region of the Peloponnesus and on larger islands like Crete,
Corfu, and Cyprus.
Serbia belonged mostly to the fourth region, which was characterized by par-
tible equal male inheritance, patrilocality, and complexity in the household
cycle. The transmission of property was not related to death or marriage and
took place when the household divided into several different groups after
generations.35 This pattern had a northern and a southern variant, of which
the latter was prevalent in Serbia.36 All of these maps were based on the
accounts of travellers, ethnographers, or local studies.
This model of four different regions and their distribution in Southeastern
Europe has been challenged by Brunnbauer for the Rhodope mountains37 and
by Gruber for Serbia.38
2.3 European Patterns

Hajnal published his influential article on European marriage patterns in
1965.39 In the article, he distinguished two different marriage patterns in
Europe, divided by a line from Leningrad/St. Petersburg to Trieste: a (Western)
European marriage pattern characterized by a high age at marriage, especially
for women, and a high proportion of never-married persons; and an Eastern
European marriage pattern characterized by a low age at marriage and almost
universal marriage.40 Subsequently, Hajnal added household formation pat-
terns to marriage patterns. The formation rules common to joint household
systems were early marriage for men and women, with young couples living
in the household of an older couple, most often the husbands parents, in con-
formity with the prevalent agnatic kinship ideology. From the point of view
35 Kaser, Introduction, 383.

36 Loc. cit.
37 Ulf Brunnbauer, Families and Mountains in the Balkans: Christian and Muslim
Household Structures in the Rhodopes, 19th20th century, The History of the Family, 7: 3
(2002), 32750.
38 Siegfried Gruber, Lebenslufe und Haushaltsformen auf dem Balkan: das serbische
Jasenica im 19. Jahrhundert (PhD diss., Karl-Franzens-Universitt Graz, 2004); idem,
Household Formation and Marriage: Different Patterns in Serbia and Albania?, in
Families in Europe between the 19th and 21st Centuries: From the Traditional Model to the
Contemporary PACS (Romanian Journal of Population Studies Supplement), eds. Antoinette
Fauve-Chamoux and Ioan Bolovan (Cluj-Napoca, 2009), 22947.
39 John Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective, in Population in History, eds.
D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (London, 1965), 10143.
40 Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns, 101ff.
Variation Within 101
of the individual, it was not necessary that the majority of households were
joint households, but that the majority of people were members of a joint
household at some stage in their lives.41 In the same volume, Laslett designed a
model of domestic group organization in traditional Europe with four regions
(West, West/Central or Middle, Mediterranean, and East). The criteria for cre-
ating these regions were the occasion and method of domestic group forma-
tion, procreational and demographic characteristics, the kin composition of
groups, and the organization of work and welfare.42 Hajnals and Lasletts divi-
sions of Europe have been very influential, and many scholars have taken them
for granted. Especially in East Central Europe, the applicability of this line has
been challenged.43 The region that is the subject of this chapter is clearly east
of this postulated line, but it has not been placed definitively into either the
Mediterranean or the East category.
Serbia was identified as the country with the lowest percentage of unmar-
ried people in the famous article on European marriage patterns44 and in
Sklars article.45 While there is still not enough material available from Eastern
Europe to allow for a complete picture,46 Plakans and Wetherell have proposed
dividing Eastern Europe into three subregions or subzones: northern, central,
and southern.47 Generally, they observed, the
Hajnal line remains a good on-the-ground predictor for the Balkan pen-
insula, where strong tendencies toward household complexity and low
marriage ages continued to exist well into the twentieth century. But as
Todorova and others have noted, these tendencies cannot be attributed
41 John Hajnal, Two Kinds of Pre-industrial Household Formation System, in Family Forms
in Historic Europe, eds. Richard Wall with Jean Robin and Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1983),
65104 (69).
Europe Compared, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Wall, Robin and Laslett, 51363
(526ff.).
43 Mikoaj Szotysek, Three Kinds of Preindustrial Household Formation System in
Historical Eastern Europe: A Challenge to Spatial Patterns of the European Family, The
History of the Family, 13 (2008), 22357.
44 Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns, 103.
45 June Sklar, The Role of Marriage Behaviour in the Demographic Transition: The Case of
Eastern Europe Around 1900, Population Studies, 28: 2 (1974), 23147 (245).
46 Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell, The Hajnal Line and Eastern Europe, in Marriage
and the Family in Eurasia: Perspectives on the Hajnal Hypothesis, eds. Theo Engelen and
Arthur P. Wolf (= Life at the Extremes, 1) (Amsterdam, 2005), 10526 (109).
47 Plakans and Wetherell, The Hajnal Line, p. 120.
102 Gruber
to the entire Balkan region, especially if that region includes Romania

and Bulgaria.48
2.4 Critical Voices

Jaki, the head of the Statistical Department of the Serbian Ministry of
Finances, calculated the mean household size based on the census of 1866.
The finding that an average of six persons lived in each household was simi-
lar to household size estimates for other European countries, and therefore
appears to contradict assumptions about the prevalence of the joint family
household.49 Another reason for the development of joint family households
in Southeastern Europe could have been a taxation system based on the house-
hold instead of individuals. Forming larger households would therefore have
served as a means of reducing taxes.50
Based on her research on household structures in Bulgaria, Todorova con-
cluded that families in Southeastern Europe were not very different from
families in the other parts of Europe.51 She analyzed data from northeastern
Bulgaria from the 1860s and a Catholic village in southern Bulgaria in the 1830s,
but they yielded different results.
Vuleti concluded that in view of basic characteristics size, structure
and function, the Serbian family of the mid-19th century did not differ much
from that in other European countries.52 The simple family household was
the predominant type of household, while the zadruga survived as a cultural
concept.53 In Serbia in 1863, simple family households comprised 68.8% of
all households, while zadruge made up only 16.7% of households.54 But these
figures are based on the household typology used by Vuleti: nuclear families
(including extended families), households with a son-in-law, households with
a father and a married son, zadruga (father with more than one married son,
48 Plakans and Wetherell, The Hajnal Line, 112.

49 Dravopis Srbije (Statistique de la Serbie), 3 (Belgrade 1869), 101ff.
50 Jan Peisker, Forschungen zur Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Slawen, 3: Die ser-
bische Zadruga, Zeitschrift fr Sociologie und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 7 (1900), 145260
(164ff.); Oleg Mandi, Klasni karakter buroaskih teorija o postanku zadruge [The Class
Character of Bourgeois Theories on the Origin of Joint Families], Istorisko-pravni zbornik,
34 (Sarajevo, 1949), 14449; Milovan Gavazzi, The Extended Family in Southeastern
Europe, Journal of Family History, 7 (1982), 89102 (100ff.).
51 Todorova, Balkan Family Structure, p. 110.
52 Aleksandra Vuleti, Porodica u Srbiji sredinom 19. veka [The Family in Serbia in the Mid-
19th century]. Istorijski Institut, posebna izdanja, 35 (Belgrade, 2002), 201.
53 Vuleti, Porodica, 153ff.
54 Vuleti, Porodica, 52.
married brothers, household head with another married relative), solitaries,

and children without parents.55 A conversion to the Hammel-Laslett scheme
yields the following results: 49.9% simple family households, 18.9% extended
family households, and 26.9% multiple family households (consisting of types
2, 3, and 4 of Vuletis typology).56
Sovi challenged the cultural myth of the existence of a mono-ethnic, uni-
form territory known as Eastern Europe, where people married young and
lived in large patriarchal households.57 She argued that scholars do not pay
enough attention to the variation within Eastern Europe.58 This is only partly
true, because a large number of studies published in recent decades have
noted that there was substantial variation within this region.59
2.5 Inheritance, Land Ownership and Taxation

In Eastern Europe (including Southeastern Europe), equally partible male
inheritance dominated according to Kaser. This is in contrast to Western
Europe where large areas were characterised by a single-heir system, and the
Mediterranean with its dominant system of equally partible male and female
inheritance.60 The original economic basis for this inheritance system was
animal husbandry and slash-and-burn agriculture. Both of them required the
cooperation of the male members of the household or even larger groups. In
the mountainous areas of the Balkans, the summer pastures were usually the
joint property of these groups. Because security in these areas was not guaran-
teed by the Ottoman Empire, they had to provide the security themselves. The
male members of the group were exclusively responsible for the livestock, and
55 Vuleti, Porodica, 35.

56 Gruber, Lebenslufe, 40.
57 Silvia Sovi, European Family History: Moving Beyond Stereotypes of East and West,
Cultural and Social History, 5: 2 (2008), 14164 (141).
58 Sovi, European Family History, 148.
59 See e.g. Joel M. Halpern, Town and Countryside in Serbia in the Nineteenth Century,
Social and Household Structure as Reflected in the Census of 1863, in Household and
Family in Past Time, eds. Laslett and Wall, 40127; Kaser, Introduction; Siegfried Gruber
and Robert Pichler, Household Structures in Albania in the Early 20th Century, The
History of the Family, 7 (2002), 35174; Siegfried Gruber and Mikoaj Szotysek, Stem
Families, Joint Families, and the European Pattern: What Kind of a Reconsideration Do
We Need?, Journal of Family History, 37: 1 (2012), 10525. (This article was published after
Sovis article.)
60 Karl Kaser, Power and Inheritance: Male Domination, Property, and Family in Eastern
Europe, 15001900, The History of the Family, 7 (2002), 37595 (378).
104 Gruber
this rigid division of labour made a male monopoly on property and inheri-
tance possible.61
This inheritance pattern is connected to the patriarchal organization of
households and society as a whole. The property of the household was not
owned by the household head, but by all of the adult male members of the
household.62 Equally partible male inheritance was a logical consequence of
this arrangement. The property was divided upon the division of the house-
hold, and not upon the death of the household head, since the death of the
household head did not affect the ownership of the other members of the
household. The death of the household head only led to inheritance when
there were no other male members of the household. In such a case, the closest
male relative in patrilineal descent was the heir. Normally, divisions of house-
holds took place after the death of the father, who could prevent the division of
the household among his sons much more easily than a household head who
was a brother of the other adult members of the household.63
During the 19th century in Serbia, there was considerable debate and inter-
est among the public about the size of peasant farms, household divisions,
and inheritance patterns. This society was primarily based on a land-owning
peasantry without large estates. There were, however, serious threats to such
an allegedly egalitarian society of small holders, including problems related
to impoverishment through indebtedness, economic stagnation, and the frag-
mentation of property by inheritance. Access to loans was rather difficult for
peasants because of the small number of banks in the country. Beginning
in 1836, regulations were implemented regarding the minimum size of land
property for a single household (including the house and some cattle). This
minimum unit of property could not be auctioned off or used for mortgages
to prevent excessive indebtedness, forced sales, and the pauperization of the
peasantry.64 The size of the minimum landholding changed throughout the
19th century, and went as high as 3.5 hectares.65 This regulation prevented,
however, easy access to loans, since potential creditors knew that they would
find it difficult to get their money back if the debtor defaulted.
Another possible factor influencing the composition of households is inter-
vention by feudal lords. In Serbia, after it gained autonomy in 1830, Muslim
61 Kaser, Power and Inheritance, 38587.

62 Sundhaussen, Historische Statistik, 72.
63 Gruber, Lebenslufe, 28285.
64 Marie-Janine Calic, Sozialgeschichte Serbiens 18151941. Der aufhaltsame Fortschritt
whrend der Industrialisierung. Sdosteuropische Arbeiten, 92 (Munich, 1994), 49.
65 Sundhaussen, Historische Statistik, 198ff.
landowners had to sell their property and leave the country. Ottoman admin-
istrative personnel lost their power over Serbian peasants, too. Serbian auton-
omy within the Ottoman Empire put an end therefore to possible interventions
by Muslim landlords. The new leadership in this autonomous principality pre-
vented also the establishment of a new Serbian feudal class and promoted a
society of free peasants with medium sized or small landholdings: In 1839 all
Serbs became the legal owners of the land they used.66 The situation in Serbia
after 1839 was therefore different from countries like Russia, with its continued
influence of feudal lords on the family life of peasants.67
Taxation can also affect the composition of the household in such a way
that the population tried to form households which could minimize the tax
burden. The situation in Serbia before 1835 was heterogeneous: besides tax-
ing households (chimneys) there were also taxes on livestock independently
from the household and taxes on individual persons. In 1835 all these taxes
were combined into a head tax to be paid by every married man capable of
work.68 This would therefore have been an incentive to marry late but on the
other hand one was exempted from this tax if one had several married sons. In
addition we know that the ages at marriage in Serbia were among the lowest
in Europe.69 There were tax incentives to form joint family households with
ones sons, but the tax incentives for late marriage were not successful. Why
therefore should the tax incentive to form joint family households have had
an effect?
3 Methodology
3.1 Quantitative Research on Household Structures in Serbia

Quantitative research on household structures in Serbia was presented at the
1969 conference which resulted in Household and Family in Past Time. This
volume contains three chapters on Serbia.70 None of them can be assumed to
66 Holm Sundhaussen, Geschichte Serbiens. 19.21. Jahrhundert (Vienna, Cologne and

Weimar, 2007), 174.
67 See e.g. Tracy K. Dennison, Serfdom and Household Structure in Central Russia:
Voshchazhnikovo, 18161858, Continuity and Change 18: 3 (2003), 395429.
69 Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns, 103.
70 Eugene A. Hammel, The zadruga as Process, in Household and Family in Past Time, eds.
Laslett and Wall, 33573; Peter Laslett and Marilyn Clarke, Houseful and Household in an
Eighteenth-century Balkan City. A Tabular Analysis of the Listing of the Serbian Sector of
106 Gruber
be representative of the whole country, because they each deal with only one
city (Laslett and Clarke) or one region (Hammel; Halpern). The authors own
research has concentrated on the region studied by Halpern, but has included
more households and three points in time.71 There are only two studies that
have gone beyond the examination of just one region: Palairets study covered
four districts and three cities in the census of 1863,72 while Vuleti covered 13
districts in the census of 1863.73 Both found a considerable degree of variation
in the distribution of joint family households across Serbia, and, unfortunately,
these large datasets have not been used to the full extent possible in exploring
the regional differences within Serbia.
3.2 Married Couples per Household

The published data of the census of 1866 does not allow us to calculate the
proportion of people living in multiple family households or extended family
households. In order to determine the number of married couples per house-
hold, we must have data on the number of married people and the number
of households. In a society with only nuclear family households, the number
of married couples per household would be 1.0. The presence of unmarried or
widowed household heads results in figures below 1.0, while the co-residence
of married couples leads to figures above 1.0.
How good is the correlation between crude measures of household com-
plexity at an aggregate level and measures of household complexity at the
household level in Southeastern Europe? We can answer this question by
using data from the Albanian census of 1918 at the sub-prefecture level on the
one hand, and by looking at data at the village level from eight settlements
of Jaseniki srez from the Serbian censuses of 1863 and 1884 on the other. The
results that can be used for correlating the number of married couples with the
number of multiple family households are extremely good for the Albanian
data and very good for the Serbian data.
Belgrade in 17334, in Household and Family in Past Time, eds. Laslett and Wall, 375400;
Halpern, Town and Countryside.
71 Gruber, Lebenslufe; idem, Household Formation.
72 Palairet, Rural Serbia.
73 Vuleti, Porodica.
TABLE 5.1 Correlation of the number of married couples with household typology
measure correlation N
Albania 1918: sub-prefecture level share of multiple .95* 22

family households
Serbia 1863/1884: village level share of multiple .81* 17
family households
*Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.

Note: In Albania in 1918, the two sub-prefectures with the lowest numbers of cases have been
excluded from the correlation analysis.
4 Data Used
The investigation is based on the published results of the population census

of 1866.74 This census is considered to be the first modern census in Serbia,
because the previous eight censuses from 1834 to 1863 did not meet the statisti-
cal standards and the complete results were not published officially.75 The pub-
lished results of the censuses beginning with 1866 provide information about
the number of households and the number of married and widowed persons
per administrative unit. Serbia was divided into 17 administrative units called
okrug. The second administrative level, the srez, consisted of 61 units in 1866.
The administrative unit of srez will be used in this analysis because the num-
ber of cases is too small at the highest administrative level.
One problem that we must address is how we will define the household in
Serbian censuses. The 1866 census has kua (house) as a unit, while the 1874
census has both kua and porodica (family) as units. The 1884 census again has
only one unit: dom (house), which is translated into French as famille. The 1895
census uses the same term, dom, which is translated into French as maison
(house). This census also has the term zadruga, which is translated into French
as mnage (household).
In rural areas, the numbers of houses and households were almost identical
(1.04 households per house in 1874). In cities, the difference between houses
and households was considerable (1.54 households per house) and therefore
74 Dravopis Srbije (Statistique de la Serbie), 2 (Belgrade, 1865).

108 Gruber
only the data for rural Serbia is used in this analysis.76 The proportion of
households per house in 1874 will be used to correct for the difference between
household and house in 1866, because there were differences between the dif-
ferent administrative units.
Additional data for analyzing the reasons for the spatial variation in house-
hold complexity are based on the published results of the population and
property census of 1863,77 the livestock census of 1866,78 the agricultural cen-
sus of 1867,79 the population census of 1874,80 and the population movements
in 1889.81
5 Household Complexity in Rural Serbia in 1866
Vuletis data show higher percentages of joint and stem family households
(according to her typology) and of extended and multiple family households
(according to the Hammel-Laslett typology) in the west and southeast of the
country in 1863 (see Figure 5.1).
Table 5.2 shows the results for the mean household size and the mean num-
ber of married couples per household for 1866. A mean number of married
couples per household only slightly higher than 1.0 does not seem to indicate
that there were many multiple family households. But the mean number of
married couples per household was only 0.79 in Germany in 1885 with a maxi-
mum of 0.87.82 Only two out of 61 Serbian administrative units had numbers
below the German maximum, while all of the others had numbers that were
clearly above the German figures, reaching as high as 200% of the German
mean.
76 The 17 administrative centers at the okrug level and the capital Belgrade are excluded
from the analysis.
77 Dravopis Srbije, 2.
81 Statistika Kraljevine Srbije, Vol. 4: Statistika roenja, venanja i umiranja u kraljevini Srbiji
za 1888. 1889. i 1890. godinu [Statistics of Births, Marriages, and Deaths in the Kingdom of
Serbia for the Years 1888, 1889, and 1890] (Belgrade, 1895).
82 Siegfried Gruber, Multiple Family Households East of the Hajnal Line: Evidence from
Albania and Serbia, Marriage as a System: Insights from the Hajnals Line and Current
East-European Family Patterns. Special issue of The Journal of Comparative Family Studies
43, 3 (2012), 373388.
TABLE 5.2 Mean household size and mean number of married couples in rural Serbia 1866
by srez
mean minimum maximum standard deviation
household size 6.16 4.41 8.55 0.98

couples per household 1.15 0.81 1.65 0.16
households per house 1.04 0.97 1.17 0.04
1874
Figures are based on: Dravopis Srbije, 3, pp. 49100, 103; Dravopis Srbije, 9, pp. 138f.
The census data of 1866 reveal a considerable degree of variation in house-

hold complexity and size within Serbia at that time. In the west, southwest,
and southeast of the country, households were larger and more complex than
the Serbian average. In the administrative units in the centre and the east of
the country, households displayed a medium or low degree of complexity and
size. Meanwhile, households in the region of aak in the south of the coun-
try tended to be smaller and less complex (see Figure 5.2). The minimum, the
maximum, the mean, and the degree of variation in the number of married
couples per household were roughly the same as they were in Albania in 1918.83
By contrast, the levels of household complexity were lower and the degree of
variation was much less pronounced in Germany in 1885 and in France in 1876.84
How do these findings relate to the existing literature about the distribution
of complex households in Serbia in the 19th century? The region to the east of
the Lower Morava does not appear to be different from the rest of the coun-
try in terms of having smaller and less complex households. The mountainous
regions in the west and south seem to have a higher degree of complexity than
the average, which appears to confirm the assumption that complex house-
holds were more common in the mountains.
83 Gruber, Multiple Family Households.

84 Szotysek, Gruber, Klsener and Goldstein, Spatial Variation, 9.
110 Gruber
6 Possible Reasons for Regional Differences in Household Structures

in Rural Serbia in 1866
In the final step of this chapter, we consider what factors may have influenced
the degree of household complexity in rural Serbia in 1866. We apply the
method of regression analysis to this census, because these are the first census
data available and more independent variables are available for this point in
time than for later ones. These variables are separated into four groups: econ-
omy and ecology, modernization, demography, and other variables.
6.1 Economy and Ecology

The first group, which explores the influence of ecological and economic con-
ditions on household complexity, is the largest and most important. The first
variable is the number of livestock per capita in 1866.85 This includes the num-
ber of horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. Because animal husbandry has
often been described as having a crucial influence on household complexity,
we expect to find that higher numbers of livestock are associated with a greater
degree of household complexity.
The agricultural area per capita in 186786 allows us to assess the influence of
farming on household complexity. This variable is defined as the area, in hect-
ares per capita, that was used for the production of wheat, rye, barley, maize,
spelt, oats, buckwheat, millet, potatoes, cabbage, tobacco, flax, and hemp.
Because this variable is understood to represent a different way of earning a
living in a peasant society, larger areas should be associated with lower house-
hold complexity.
The property value in ducats per capita in 186387 helps us to investigate
whether household complexity was associated with wealth or poverty. This
includes only real estate, and no other forms of property.
The share of the non-agricultural population in 186688 allows us to assess the
influence of the non-agricultural population on household complexity. We
expect to find that a higher share of non-agricultural population results in a
lower degree of household complexity.
The presence of urban population in 186689 indicates a possible influ-
ence of a different socioeconomic environment. The presence of an urban
population within a district should result in lower levels of household com-

plexity. The urban population is defined here as the inhabitants of the admin-
istrative centers of each okrug. This is a dummy variable.
The final variable is a dummy variable indicating mountainous districts
within Serbia with an altitude of at least 500 meters. The use of this variable
has been advocated in several models of the distribution of complex house-
holds in the Balkans.
6.2 Modernization
The second group of variables is related to modernization, and will be used to
determine whether the processes associated with urbanization, industrializa-
tion, education, and bureaucratization affected household complexity. We use
as a proxy variable the share of literate people in 1866.90 A higher share of liter-
ate people should result in a lower share of complex households.
6.3 Demography
The third group consists of variables that control for demographic influences
on household complexity. The first is the mean female age at first marriage in
1889.91 Unfortunately, it is only available for the level of okrug and at a later
time period. We expect to find that a lower age at marriage is associated with a
higher degree of household complexity.
As a second variable, we use the proportion of widowed persons in 1866.92
This is a proxy for the influence of mortality on household complexity and the
availability of persons for forming households consisting of three generations.
A higher proportion of widowed persons should lead to lower numbers of mar-
ried couples because one partner has already died.
6.4 Other Factors

The final group consists of three variables. The first is the proportion of non-
Serbs in 186693 in the population. About 13% of the population was made up
of ethnic minorities, mostly Romanians and Roma, and they were not evenly
spread over Serbia. This information is also available only at the level of the
okrug. Because Romania has mostly nuclear households, we expect to find
that a higher proportion of non-Serbian population is associated with a lower
degree of household complexity.94
91 Statistika Kraljevine Srbije, Vol. 4: Statistika, 169.
94 Kaser, Introduction, 380ff.
112 Gruber
The second variable is the proportion of households per house in 1874.95 The
census of 1866 used the unit of house instead of household. The number of
households per house was not evenly distributed within Serbia, and therefore
we use the ratio of the census of 1874 to control for a possible bias that could
result from using houses instead of households in 1866.
The third variable is a dummy variable indicating the districts east of the
Lower Morava. This region is known to have had mainly nuclear households,
and we want to explore whether there is a region effect, or whether other vari-
ables explain the lower proportion of complex households.
It is important to bear in mind that the published results of the popula-
tion and agricultural censuses do not always meet modern standards, and that
the sums of the administrative units do not always match up with the overall
sums. But the differences are generally below 1%. The agricultural statistics
are known to be the weakest of the Serbian statistics, because the first official
survey of the land was not done until after the First World War.96 We therefore
cannot take the information about farm sizes and the number of domestic ani-
mals at face value, but rather as crude estimations. Nevertheless, these figures
provide clear indications of regional differences within the country.
TABLE 5.3 Descriptive statistics of independent variables
N minimum maximum mean standard deviation
livestock 61 2.61 7.23 4.60 1.09

agricultural area 61 0.10 0.83 0.29 0.12
property value 61 3.09 47.66 14.49 9.21
non-agricultural 61 0.01 0.14 0.05 0.03
urban 61 0.00 1.00 0.30 0.46
mountain 61 0.00 1.00 0.26 0.44
literacy 61 0.01 0.05 0.02 0.01
FAFM 61 18.04 21.13 19.95 0.68
widowed 61 0.04 0.07 0.05 0.01
non-Serbs 61 0.00 0.65 0.12 0.20
households per 61 0.97 1.17 1.04 0.04
house
east of the Morava 61 0.00 1.00 0.25 0.43
7 Results of the Models
In Model 1 we include all the variables which have been explained above, while
in Model 2 we include only those variables which result in the best explanatory
power of the model. Model 1 (twelve independent variables) explains 38% of
the variation in the mean number of married couples per household, and only
the agricultural area and the property value are significant. All of the other
variables are insignificant. Several variables have the opposite effect on house-
hold complexity than the one assumed: the agricultural area, non-agricultural
population, female age at marriage, and the proportion of the non-Serbian
population have a positive effect on household complexity. In a next step we
exclude variables which do not help to improve the fit of model 1. In Model 2
(six independent variables), the dummy variable east of the Morava and the
variable proportion of widowed persons are significant at the 0.05 level, and
the adjusted R-squared increases to 0.42.
The importance of the economic and ecological variables can be proved: the
agricultural area is the most important determinant of household complexity
in Serbia in 1866 measured by the mean number of married couples per house-
hold at the srez level, explaining 24% of its variation. In addition, it is positively
correlated with household complexity, while the influence of the number of
domestic animals is not significant. We therefore cannot confirm the influence
of livestock herding on household complexity. This finding is strengthened by
the insignificance of the influence of the variable for mountainous districts.
The second important predictor is the property value per capita, which has
a negative effect on household complexity. The other variable of importance
is the share of the non-agricultural population, which is positively correlated
with household complexity, but not in a significant way.
The variable about modernization (literacy) is excluded from model 2,
because it does not help to improve the model. The proportion of widowed
persons has a significant negative influence on household complexity, while
the female age at marriage is, interestingly, positively correlated with house-
hold complexity, and is almost significant (0.06). The proportion of the non-
Serbian population was highest in the districts east of the Lower Morava.
Thus, only one of these variables remains in Model 2 and it shows a significant
regional influence towards lower household complexity.
114 Gruber
TABLE 5.4 Model estimates: Serbia 1866
expected Model 1 Model 2

influence
estimates
Intercept 0.604 0.416
Economy and ecology: livestock + 0.009
agricultural area 0.740*** 0.771***
Property value ? 0.006* 0.008**
non-agricultural 1.207 0.723
Urban 0.012
mountain + 0.028
Modernization: Literacy 2.649
Demography: FAFM 0.043 0.048
widowed 5.103 7.043*
Other: non-Serbs 0.098
households per house 0.201
east of the Morava 0.129 0.095*
diagnostics: adjusted R-squared 0.375 0.415
F (df, n) 3.995*** 8.107***
Signif. codes: 0 *** 0.001 ** 0.01 * 0.05 . 0.1 1
8 Conclusions
The measure mean number of married couples per household is highly cor-
related with the proportion of multiple family households in the data from
Serbia and Albania. We therefore conclude that it makes sense to use this mea-
sure of household complexity in the absence of direct measures of household
complexity. In Serbia in 1866, the degree of household complexity was higher
in the west, southwest, and southeast of the country. We can see that there was
quite a high degree of variation within Serbia, and no uniform pattern.
The analysis of the variables for differences in household complexity show
that the agricultural area is the most important determinant for Serbia in
1866. The variables of pastoral economy or of living in mountainous districts
are not statistically significant for household complexity (or they may no
longer be significant). An explanation for this could be that the shift from a
predominantly pastoral economy to a predominately agricultural one97 was

already more advanced than had previously been assumed. This analysis can-
not reveal the causal link between household complexity and large agricul-
tural landholdings: whether complex households could acquire more land or
whether households with more land tended to become more complex than
other households.
The share of the non-agricultural population does, interestingly, appear to
positively affect household complexity, which could suggest that household
complexity was seen as a positive ideal. On the other hand, property value
per capita has a negative influence on household complexity. The interplay of
these two variables with the status of a household should be given more atten-
tion in a future study (household complexity as an effect of high status, or as
the last resort of an impoverished population).
The influence of demographic conditions on household complexity is also
confirmed, although a higher female age at marriage is shown to have a posi-
tive effect on household complexity, which contradicts all of our theoretical
assumptions about household organization in Serbia. This subject will require
further analysis. The region east of the Lower Morava is, by contrast, nega-
tively correlated with household complexity. This finding confirms previous
research, although this effect cannot be seen directly on Figure 5.2.
We therefore conclude that economic variables have a greater influence on
the variation in household complexity than cultural variables. Demographic
variables are important, while the effect of modernization cannot be proved.
Maybe such an effect can only be seen later in the 19th century.
97 Joel Martin Halpern, The Ecological Transformation of a Resettled Area, Pig Herders
to Settled Farmers in Central Serbia (umadija, Yugoslavia) during the 19th and 20th
Centuries, in Transhumant Pastoralism in Southern Europe: Recent Perspectives from
Archaeology, History and Ethnology, eds. Lszl Bartosiewicz and Haskel J. Greenfield.
Archaeolingua, Series Minor, 11 (Budapest, 1999), 7995.
116 Gruber
figure 5.1 Household typology in 13 districts in Serbia in 1863 (Hammel-Laslett typology) based
on Vuleti, Porodica, 3952
figure 5.2 Married couples per household in Serbia in 1866

Part 2
Church, State and Family

CHAPTER 6
Womens Reputation and Marriage Disputes

in Protestant and Catholic Europe, 15001800
Daniela Lombardi
1 Marriage, fama and the Law
In late medieval and early modern European countries the conjugal couple
was immersed in a network of relations that accompanied it along its entire
path. From this network came solidarity in hard times and disapproval in case
of transgression. But above all, the couple received judgments of good or bad
repute: in their sexual behaviour (both before and during the marriage), their
handling of the house and the family, their relations between wife and hus-
band and between parents and children. Love and hate had to be public, open
to view, listening, and judgment on the part of the neighbours. This was not
hard: not only because the daily life of the common people took part largely
in the streets, but also because the restricted living quarters and quality of the
building materials made it possible to hear, and in some cases to see through
holes in the walls, what was happening next door. It was a neighbours duty to
come running in cases of cries for help or domestic quarrels, not a violation
of privacy.1 A good neighbour was someone who not only did not disturb the
public peace but made efforts to restore it.
The judgment of public opinion thus came continually into play when it
was a question of resolving marriage disputes. The expression public talk and
fame (publica vox et fama) among the neighbours had a legal status. But what
did the word fama precisely mean? And why it was so important in the courts?
From ancient times, fama has had two meanings: on one hand what people
were saying about a certain fact or event (from the verb fari, to speak), and on
the other a persons reputation. In both cases, the stress is on words expressed
in public by the majority, if not all the people. Fama is what everyone is talking
about, what everyone knows to be true. It is common knowledge. It enables
communication, exchange, relations among the members of a community. But
1 James R. Farr, Crimine nel vicinato: matrimonio e onore nella Digione del XVI e XVII secolo,
Quaderni storici, 22 (1987), 83954. See also Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women,
Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003).

120 Lombardi
there is more: from the late Middle Ages, the talk of the town took on legal sta-
tus. Between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, a new
procedure emerged in criminal trials, the inquisitorial or ex officio procedure,
which gradually replaced accusatory procedure and gave the judge the power
to set a trial in motion on the basis of news he had received about a crime. The
role of the judge became central: it fell to him to investigate, using all available
means, rumours circulating among the public and arrive at punishment of the
guilty party. In accusatory procedure, conversely, suit brought by one party ini-
tiated the judicial proceedings (an accusation), and the two sides conducted
the reconstruction of the facts, without the judge being able to intervene.
When talk acquired juridical importance, it was necessary to establish the
criteria that could guarantee its reliability. According to the more authorita-
tive jurists, it was necessary that the majority of the inhabitants of a certain
place knew about the story and talked about it in public, and that at least two
reliable and credible persons were willing to testify about the existence of this
talk. In the ensuing centuries, these guarantees protecting credibility grew less
strict in order to leave more room for the initiative of the judges and ensure a
more effective prosecution of crimes.
But since it was very difficult to have at hand reliable proof and direct tes-
timony of the criminal event that had taken place, the other meaning of fama
came into play, the reputation of the defendant. In this case, fame arose from
the social standing of the individual and the degree of his or her integration
into the community. A person who behaved properly and had good relations
with the neighbours was recognized by the community as having a good repu-
tation, and the community aided him/her by testifying in his/her behalf, for
example. The defendants reputation thus assumed a probative value which,
in the absence of certain proof, could go so far as to cancel out the report of
the event. In other words, the good reputation of the person indicated as the
possible guilty party took on in court a value superior to the testimony of those
who attributed to him/her responsibility for the crime. Ill repute, conversely,
became a presumption of guilt, because authoritative jurists like Alberto
Gandino (b. between 1240 and 1250 d. after 1310) felt that someone who had
done wrong once would be very likely to do the same thing again.2
2 Massimo Vallerani, I fatti nella logica del processo medievale. Note introduttive, Quaderni
storici, 36 (2001), 66593; Chris Wickham, Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany,
and Thomas Kuehn, Fama as Legal Status in Renaissance Florence, in Fama. The Politics of
Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, eds. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca-
London, 2003), 1526, 2746. See also Antonella Bettoni, Voci malevole. Fama, notizia del
Women s Reputation and Marriage Disputes 121
Fama as reputation thus assumed a greater importance than fama as talk,

and this was the meaning that has prevailed until today. An individuals
reputation which was never separate from that of the members of his
family was not only an instrument of integration or exclusion from the com-
munity, but also an important factor in determining the outcome of a trial.
Community relations and judiciary procedure were closely intertwined. Their
influence was mutual. Moreover, recent studies have shown that justice in the
courts, similarly to the practices of community justice, often had the objec-
tive of reconciling the litigants more than punishing the guilty. Restoring
peace and order to the community was the main goal for both the neighbour-
hood and the judicial authorities. Community justice and justice in the courts
were not necessarily alternatives to each other. Private agreements were pro-
vided for in the judiciary procedures of many European courts and were rec-
ognized as a formal part of the legal process.3 They enabled the saving of time
and money: once achieved, the trial usually came to a halt. There was no need
to wait for a judges decision, because the objective of a peace settlement had
been reached in any case. Therefore, stopping a trial did not mean that the
judiciary process had failed, but rather, as Bernard Capp has observed, that it
succeeded, because the judge had achieved the aim of reaching a solution to
the conflict that was accepted by both sides.4
Control of a womans sexual reputation was at the centre of numerous
conflicts. The obsession with certainty concerning offspring the premise for
passing inheritance only to legitimate children forced men to keep a close
watch on their women: on their reputation, more than on their bodies. I shall
focus here on conflicts during the phase of formation of the couple, which
constituted the bulk of litigation in court in many early modern European
countries. The formation of the couple was the object of specific interven-
tion, at different times, both on the part of Protestant and of Catholic authori-
ties; therefore I shall attempt to compare interventions in the Italian States
crimine e azione del giudice nel processo criminale (secc. XVI e XVII), Quaderni storici, 41
(2006), 1338.
3 E.g., Benot Garnot (ed.), Linfrajudiciaire du Moyen-ge lpoque contemporaine (Dijon,
1996); Mario Sbriccoli, Giustizia negoziata, giustizia egemonica. Riflessioni su una nuova
fase degli studi di storia della giustizia criminale, in Criminalit e giustizia in Germania e in
Italia. Pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo ed et moderna, eds. Marco
Bellabarba, Gerd Schwerhoff and Andrea Zorzi (Bologna, 2001), 345364; Stuart Carroll,
Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford, 2006), 222228.
4 Bernard Capp, Life, Love and Litigation: Sileby in the 1630s, Past and Present, 182 (2004),
5583 (77). See also Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern
London (Oxford, 1996), 178.
122 Lombardi
(focusing on Florence and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany), in other Catholic

countries as France and Spain, and in some cities and territories passed under
the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, as well as in Anglican England
and Calvinist Holland. As we shall see, the central question was the promise
of marriage and its binding nature, established by medieval canon law, which
acted as an effective tool to protect a womans reputation even in the case of
seduction and premarital pregnancy. Protestants and Catholics aimed to re-
examine this longstanding legal protection in order to reinforce the control
of fathers over children, but they met with the resistance of many women
and the persistence of traditional ideas also among the judges of the courts to
which they appealed. Despite the new laws, the promise continued to protect
the good fame of seduced women, even if the conflict with the partner often
ended in financial remuneration rather than a wedding.
2 Rough Paths in the Formation of the Couple
Before the Lutheran Reformation (1517) and the Council of Trent (1545
1563), it was not always easy to distinguish between the status of married or
unmarried. Marriage was not an instantaneous act, but a long process with
a beginning and an end. It began with negotiations on the size of the dowry
and the methods for its payment and continued with the gestures which
ratified the exchange of the promise, in many cases a handshake between the
groom and the father of the bride. The next step was the exchange of consent
between the partners and the gift of a ring to the bride. Finally, it concluded
with the bride moving into the grooms house.5 Beginning, continuing, and
perfecting a marriage were customary expressions, which contrast with the
rigidity of our definitions of unmarried and married.6
Furthermore, despite the fact that marriage fell under ecclesiastical juris-
diction, it was not necessary to celebrate it in a religious form in front of a
5 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Zacharie, ou le pre vinc. Les rites nuptiaux toscans entre
Giotto et le concile de Trente, Annales ESC, 34 (1979), 12161243; Beatrice Gottlieb, The
Meaning of Clandestine Marriage, in Family and Sexuality in French History, eds. Robert
Wheaton and Tamara K. Hareven (Philadelphia, 1980), 4983. For the pre-Reformation
ritual sequence in Augsburg, see Lyndal Roper, Going to Church and Street: Weddings in
Reformation Augsburg, Past and Present, 106 (1985), 62101 (658).
6 Daniela Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime (Bologna, 2001), 22841; Raffaella Sarti, Nubili e
celibi tra scelta e costrizione. I percorsi di Clio (Europa occidentale, secoli XVIXX), in Nubili e celibi
tra scelta e costrizione (secoli XVIXX), eds. Margareth Lanzinger and Raffaella Sarti (Udine,
2006), 145318.
priest and in a sacred place. Twelfth-century canon law had established that in
order for a marriage to be valid and to have legal effects the legitimacy of the
children and the right of inheritance the consent of the bride and groom was
sufficient. However, their consent had to be expressed in the present tense
I take you as my husband/wife so as to distinguish it from the promise,
in the future tense. Only consent in the present tense entailed the indissolu-
bility of the bond, while the promise could be broken under certain condi-
tions and upon a decision by the ecclesiastical authority. Thus it was consent
in the present which determined married status. But complicating matters
was the fact that the promise was considered binding at the same time; canon
law required it be kept if there were no impediments to the marriage and it
had been exchanged freely. Consequently, the promise was perceived as the
moment initiating the process which would conclude with the wedding; it is
no coincidence that from this moment the couple considered themselves to be
husband and wife and were recognized as such by the community.7
The uncertainties did not end here. Since neither a public celebration
nor the presence of a clergyman was obligatory, even marriages contracted
between the two partners without anyone else being present were fully valid.
But how could it be demonstrated that the marriage had in fact been cele-
brated? If one of the two maintained that he or she had not consented and
thus considered himself or herself to be unmarried, how could the abandoned
partner prove the reverse? So-called clandestine marriages that is to say, non-
public in nature created numerous problems and endangered the stability
and order of the community.
In the absence of certain proof, that is of witnesses who testified to the
words or gestures exchanged by the partners, it was necessary to turn to pre-
sumptions, in other words to the signs and clues that could be helpful to the
judges to bring the case to resolution. The existence of the marriage bond was
presumed if the couple had lived together for a long time, if they had behaved
as though they were married for example, referring to each other as husband
and wife or sharing meals or if they were recognized by the community as a
legitimate couple. That is to say, appeal was made to public opinion, to com-
mon knowledge of the fact, which, as we have seen, had to be shared by at least
the majority of the community. Alone, however, this was not enough: among
canon law experts, the stricter interpretation prevailed, according to which,
7 Adhmar Esmein, Le mariage en droit canonique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1891); Jean Gaudemet,
Le mariage en Occident: les murs et le droit (Paris, 1987); Richard H. Helmholz, Marriage
Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1974).
124 Lombardi
if it was a question of attesting to the validity of a marriage, the presence of a

tangible sign like a wedding ring was required.8
In any case, having roots in the community and relations with neighbours
were crucial factors for solution of a lawsuit concerning marriage. If the couple
was not part of a community, if they did not have acquaintances on whom they
could rely, if they did not share local rites and customs in short, if they did
not enjoy a good reputation it was difficult to have the evidence necessary to
show if they were married or not. A persons marital status depended in large
part on the communitys opinion of him or her.
3 A New Model for Marriage
The fight against clandestine marriages was undertaken first by Lutherans

and Calvinists and only subsequently by Catholics. It was necessary to sub-
ject marriage to rules, controls, and registrations that would enable a clearer
distinction between married and unmarried persons. Certain proof, no longer
presumptions, had to attest to the married status. In fairly short time, a com-
mon battle transformed marriage into a public, solemn ceremony which took
place in the presence of witnesses, celebrated by a clergyman in a sacred
space, preceded by the posting of the banns for three Sundays beforehand,
and finally recorded in dedicated books kept by the parish. Thus the consent of
the bride and groom was no longer enough. The status of a married person had
to be clearly proven by the statements of the witnesses and the parish records.
For Protestants, parental consent was also required if the bridal couple were
minors. The purpose was to combat more effectively the plague of clandes-
tinity, given that recourse was often had to clandestine marriages precisely in
order to evade family opposition.
To be sure, for Luther marriage was not a sacrament instituted by God;
therefore, jurisdiction over it fell to the secular power and no longer to the
ecclesiastical one. Nonetheless, it was an institution regulated by divine laws
and one to be honoured as divine work, as he stated in his leaflet Traubchlein
fr die einfltigen Pfarrherrn, in which he gave advice on how to celebrate
wedding ceremonies.9 Therefore in Protestant areas too the attempt was
made to impose a silent, austere rite, purged of the profane elements that had
8 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 4647.

9 Martin Luther, Scritti pastorali minori, ed. Stefano Cavallotto (Naples, 1987), 14974 (165). The
date of the pamphlet is uncertain: 1529 or 1534. See Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation
of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London, 1997), 209, nn. 2627.
characterized it until then. It was forbidden to all, bridal couple and guests
alike, to arrive late, to laugh and joke, sing and dance, or pronounce magical
formulas to ward off possible evil spells.10
Up to then, wedding rituals had been chosen by the couples and their fami-
lies, permitting them to construct their marital path with a certain freedom,
albeit within the bounds of local customs. With the new ordinances, they were
compelled to respect rules imposed from above which had to be the same for
everybody. In contrast with the Catholic world, where the Council of Trent
prescribed the same rules for all of Catholicism, the German-speaking cities
and territories which passed under the Reformation moved autonomously, at
different times, following the ideas and programs of the various reformers. The
first ordinances concerning marriage were issued as early as the 1520s.11
The break with the doctrine of consent was thus a clean one. In the Catholic
countries the most important innovation was the role assigned to the parish
priest. A number of tasks was concentrated in his hands which, over time,
made him the central figure in the various steps that made up the formation of
the marriage: from the first contacts with the future bride and groom, aimed
at ascertaining their free will, degree of spiritual preparation, and requisites
of age and freedom from other ties, also by means of careful investigation in
the case of persons without a fixed residence, up to the recording of the act
sacramental and civil at the same time in the marriage register. For the first
time, the celebration of marriage was subjected to the control of the clergy.
In the areas which passed under the Reformation, too, the pastor acquired a
more important role than in the past. But for a different purpose: to make the
couple responsibly aware of the tasks awaiting them. Luther suggested that
the pastor recite some passages from the Bible instructing the bridal couple
about the roles assigned to them in their married life. In the following centu-
ries these sermons grew increasingly rich in Scriptural references and became
an important part of the wedding ritual. They dwelt on the shared respon-
sibilities of husband and wife, but without calling into question the rigid
10 For Germany, see Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, passim; for the Italian states,
see Arturo C. Jemolo, Le disposizioni sul matrimonio in alcune sinodo italiane post-
tridentine, Archivio di diritto ecclesiastico, 1 (1939), 632; for France, see Andr Burguire,
Le rituel du mariage en France: pratiques ecclsiastiques et pratiques populaires (XVIe
XVIIIe sicle), Annales ESC, 33 (1978), 63749.
11 Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, Mass.,
1983); Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg
(Oxford, 1989); Joel F. Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation
Germany (Cambridge, 1995).
126 Lombardi
family hierarchies. Rather, stress was placed on the necessary submission of

wives to their husbands.12 Nonetheless, the importance assigned to religious
education in the family accentuated the collaboration between the parents in
a constant effort to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth and to bring up
their children in the fear of the Lord.13 In the Catholic countries, on the other
hand, despite the value given to the educational role of parents, the responsi-
bility for the family was subordinated to the authority of the clergy.14 The dis-
tinction between clergy and laity, emphasized by the Council of Trent, fostered
this subordination.
Unity of the couple and order in the family, to be achieved by maintain-
ing the hierarchy between genders and generations, were goals pursued both
by Catholics and Reformers. The introduction of divorce in the Lutheran and
Calvinist territories (with the exception of England and Scotland) did not place
in doubt the importance of the stability of marriage. Albeit among different
positions, there was a general consensus in limiting the granting of divorce as
much as possible to particularly serious cases (like adultery by the wife and
abandonment of the family home) and conceding the possibility of remarriage
only to the innocent party.15
Among the Protestant countries, England and Scotland were unusual cases.
Aside from the abolition of priestly celibacy, very little changed, to the point
that both remained firmly anchored in medieval canon law, even more than
the Catholic countries, where the Council of Trent, as we have seen, had
brought profound innovations to the marriage doctrine. The principle of spou-
sal consent remained in force as the only condition for validity of the marriage
bond. Nonetheless the churches, the Anglican Church in particular, commit-
ted to spreading the usage of a public ceremony in church in the presence of
a pastor, punishing transgressors with excommunication and other spiritual
censures. Only in 1753 did England but not Scotland fall into line with the
12 Luther, Scritti pastorali, 1316, 149174; Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual, 1322.
13 Heidi Wunder, He Is the Sun, She Is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge,
1998, first edition Munich, 1992).
14 Adriano Prosperi, Intellettuali e Chiesa allinizio dellet moderna, in Storia dItalia.
Annali, vol. 4: ed. Corrado Vivanti, Intellettuali e potere (Turin, 1981), 246248.
15 Roderick Phillips, Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge,
1988); Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England, 15301987 (Oxford, 1990); Jeffrey R. Watt,
The Impact of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in The History of the European
Family, eds. Marzio Barbagli and David I. Kertzer, vol. 1: Family Life in Early Modern Times,
15001789 (New Haven and London, 2001), 125154. On judicial separations in a Catholic
town see Chiara La Rocca, Tra moglie e marito. Matrimoni e separazioni nel Settecento a
Livorno (Bologna, 2009).
other Protestant countries. The Hardwicke Marriage Act imposed, this time on
pain of annulment of the marriage, parental consent for minors under 21 and
celebration in the same church where the banns were posted, in the presence
of the pastor and witnesses.16
4 Promises and Sexuality
Besides the battle against clandestine marriages, Reformers and Catholics

shared another commitment, against illicit sex. Not only against concubinage
and adultery, but also against sexual relations between the betrothed couple
before the wedding. This meant that not even the customary practices of court-
ship like evening gatherings (variously known as veglie and veilles in Italy and
France, or Spinnstuben in German-speaking Europe) and balls could be toler-
ated, because they were considered an incentive to sexual activity between the
bride and groom-to-be.17 To attempt to uproot these habits, it was necessary to
turn them into sins of the flesh, to charge them with transgressive significance.18
The battle was fought using sermons and missions, treatises by lay and
ecclesiastical moralists, laws of the state and precepts of the Churches, civil
and criminal courts. In the Catholic world, it was fought above all through
confession, which right in the Age of the Counter-Reformation was being
transformed from an obligation to be fulfilled once a year at Easter into an
experience of introspection and excavation into the soul to be engaged in fairly
assiduously.19 But it was not an easy battle. It encountered significant resis-
tance, not only on the part of the faithful but also of many pastors and priests,
16 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 15001800 (London, 1977);
John R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985);
Martin Ingram, Church Courts, Sex, and Marriage in England, 15701640 (Cambridge, 1987);
Richard Brian Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 15001850 (London, 1995); Joan
Bailey, Unquiet Lives. Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England (Cambridge, 2003).
17 E.g., Hans Medick, Village Spinning Bees. Sexual Culture and Free Time among Rural
Youth in Early Modern Germany, in Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family
and Kinship, eds. Hans Medick and David W. Sabean (Cambridge and Paris, 1984), 317
339; Wietse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in
Counter-Reformation Milan (Leiden, 2001).
18 Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern
Europe (London and New York, 1994), 155156.
19 Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin,
1996); Giovanni Romeo, Ricerche su confessione dei peccati e Inquisizione nellItalia del
Cinquecento (Naples, 1997).
128 Lombardi
who were more in contact with the faithful, and of judges, both ecclesiastical
and secular, who were called to judge these transgressions to the point that I
believe one can say that it was not very successful, either among the Protestants
or among the Catholics.
In order to understand the reason for so much resistance, we have to turn
our attention to the meaning that the promise (sponsalia) and sexuality
assumed in the very often long and arduous course leading up to marriage.
As we have seen, the promise was the beginning of this process. Furthermore,
if after the promise the partners had sexual relations, medieval canon law
presumed the existence of consent in the present tense, that is to say, of an
indissoluble conjugal tie. This was the so-called presumed marriage, which
attributed to sexual activity between the engaged couple the strength of con-
sent de praesenti.20
Therefore, it is anachronistic to speak of premarital relations: this sexual
activity took place within the bounds of a process which was already matri
monial; thus it had to be considered licit. It is no coincidence that in the
15th- and 16th-century trials which had to adjudicate the validity or nullity
of a bond, a clear distinction did not emerge between promise and marriage:
for both, the terms sponsalia and matrimonium were used indiscriminately.
In the Germanic world, both because of the influence of Germanic law and
for linguistic reasons, the distinction between promise and marriage was even
fainter.21 Let us not forget, too, that the binding nature of the promise enabled
sons and daughters to make autonomous marriage decisions: it was sufficient
to exchange a promise and then to claim its fulfilment.
What solutions were adopted to circumscribe legitimate sexual activity
within the marriage bond, separating it from the promise, and to avoid the use
by young people of the promise as a means to enter into marriages opposed by
their families?
Luther rejected canon laws distinction between the present vows of mar-
riage and the promise to exchange vows in the future, because it was not found
in the Scriptures. Any consent, freely given, constituted a valid marriage.
Therefore, he imposed also for the promise the obligation to exchange it pub-
licly, in the presence of witnesses and with the consent of the parents. The par-
ties to the marriage could be obliged to keep their promise only if it had been
made in this form. In this way, the battle against clandestinity became more
20 Gaudemet, Le mariage, 134135.

21 Franois Wendel, Le mariage Strasbourg lpoque de la Rforme, 15201692 (Strasbourg,
1928), 2728. In German the same words (Ich will dich nehmen) could mean either promise
or marriage.
effective, and children lost their ability to use secret promises which, not being
considered valid, carried no obligation to be fulfilled.22 The primary objec-
tive was to eradicate clandestine marriages. In fact, the first marriage ordi-
nances issued in the Lutheran territories were aimed at punishing anyone who
entered into secret promises or marriages, especially if these were followed by
sexual relations, which by virtue of the principle of presumed marriage would
transform the promise into marriage. Only later, when clandestinity was under
control, did the concern move towards punishing illicit sexual activity. From
the end of the 16th century, as the public celebration of marriage began to be a
widespread practice, repression turned towards the couples who, after having
properly exchanged their consent in public, then had sexual relations before
the actual wedding in front of the pastor and witnesses.23 Sexual activity out-
side the bounds of marriage, which more and more tended to be identified with
the religious ceremony, was persecuted in that it was fornication, lust, impurity
(Unzucht, Hurerei). Fornication was the term used to define carnal relations
between a bachelor and a prostitute or in any case a dishonest woman thus
these were a mercenary type of relations. From the end of the 16th century,
fornication took on a broader meaning which included also the sexual activity
between betrothed partners, until then widely tolerated as long as the couple
ended up getting married.
The Council of Trent did not intervene in the matter of the promise and left
it up to local and family custom, which assigned to the promise the function of
establishing the exchange of property between the two families. Nonetheless,
by giving value to the solemn public celebration of the marriage bond in front
of a priest, the Council undermined the role of the promise as first step towards
marriage. Betrothal and marriage became two institutions clearly distinct
from each other, because precise forms of celebration were required, with-
out which the bond was null and void, for marriage but not for the promise.
Moreover, the institution of presumed marriage was no longer valid, because
marriage could not be presumed if it had not been celebrated according to the
Tridentine norms.
22 John Witte, Jr., The Reformation of Marriage Law in Martin Luthers Germany: Its
Significance Then and Now, The Journal of Law and Religion, 4 (1986), 159.
23 Guilty couples were punished with imprisonment, monetary fine, and sometimes pub-
lic penance. See Terence McIntosh, Confessionalization and the Campaign against
Prenuptial Coitus in Sixteenth-Century Germany, in Confessionalization in Europe,
15501700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bobo Nischan, eds. John M. Headley, Hans J.
Hillerbrand and Anthony J. Papalas (Aldershot, 2004), 155174.
130 Lombardi
Despite this, the promise did not lose its importance in the social customs
of Catholics. Indeed, it became a battleground. Before the Council of Trent, the
ecclesiastical courts were filled mainly with marriage cases seeking to obtain
the confirmation or annulment of a marriage that had been celebrated without
any form of publicity. These began to diminish starting in the closing decades
of the 16th century, as the margins of uncertainty concerning the validity or
nullity of the bond had shrunk drastically, making an appeal to the courts use-
less, since by this point they possessed certain proof to establish if a couple
was legitimately wed. On the increase, instead, were lawsuits to obtain fulfil-
ment, or more rarely dissolution, of the promise, whose validity continued to
be based only on the exchange of consent in the future tense, which was diffi-
cult to ascertain in the absence of witnesses. In the diocese of Florence, where
it has been possible to reconstruct the course of civil matrimonial cases over
a span of three centuries, from the 16th to the 18th, the shift of conflict from
marriage to betrothal emerges clearly.24
It was above all women who asked that the promise be kept. They had prev-
alently been the ones who used the institution of presumed marriage to for-
malize ambiguous relations, obtaining recognition as legitimate spouses. Now
that they could no longer have recourse to this, they had to appeal to the bind-
ing nature of the promise to put pressure on the partner who no longer wanted
to go through with the wedding. The outcome, however, was more uncertain,
because he could only be persuaded to keep the promise he had made. Thus
women lost an important instrument for their legal protection.25 Another
possibility remained, especially in the case the woman was pregnant, since the
pregnancy supplied certain proof of her loss of virginity: this was a charge of
non-violent rape or seduction preceded by a promise, and it could only
be brought by individuals (ad instantiam), not prosecuted on judges initiative
(ex officio). At this time, the word rape (stuprum) did not primarily mean car-
nal violence, but rather defloration of a virgin or sexual relations with an honest
widow. The victims respectability virginity or honesty was a requirement
24 Lombardi, Matrimoni, 16975. See also Giovanni Ciappelli, I processi matrimoniali:

quadro di raccordo dei risultati della schedatura (Venezia, Verona, Napoli, Feltre e Trento,
14201803), in I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli XVXVIII), eds. Silvana Seidel Menchi and
Diego Quaglioni (Bologna, 2006), 67100.
25 It is worth to note that in England the opponents of the Marriage Act of 1753, which
required a public wedding ceremony as condition for validity, observe that the new law
would have been the ruin of a multitude of young women, because they could no longer
get the easy recognition by the courts of the bond. Quoted in Eve Tavor Bannet, The
Marriage Act of 1753: A Most Cruel Law for the Fair Sex, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 30
(1997), 233254 (235).
for this crime, and violence was only an aggravating circumstance.26 Stuprum
was a crime with mixed jurisdiction, which could be tried either by an ecclesi-
astical or by a secular court. In the ecclesiastical court, it was possible to utilize
civil as well as penal procedure (which was more effective, because it provided
for imprisonment of the defendant): in the civil procedure it was a question
of a suit for fulfilment of a promise followed by carnal union; in the penal one
the same story could be told as a suit for non-violent stuprum. Accusations of
violent rapes were brought only in the secular criminal courts.27
5 The Reputation of Betrothed Women
In ecclesiastical and in secular courts, the reputation of a seduced woman was

crucially important. In this case, the fame of the plaintiff, not the defendant,
conditioned the course of the trial. Even if canon law had established that in
rape trials, the honesty of the plaintiff had to be presumed and it fell to the
defendant to prove the contrary, in practice it was more usual that the victim,
from the moment of bringing suit, presented a version of the facts, supported
by witnesses, intended to dispel any doubt about her honesty.
The seduced woman had to demonstrate that she had yielded to male lures
only after having received a promise of marriage. And this was not easy. In the
Catholic countries, not only carnal union but also the promise was very hard
to prove, given that it was not necessary to make it in front of witnesses. Many
people, obviously, protected themselves from possible challenges by making
their promises as public as possible; but for the most part it was the hard-to-
solve cases that went to court, those where no witnesses had been present and
the promise had not been put in writing. Protestant courts, too, sometimes
found themselves having to judge cases in which there was no certain proof of
26 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and
London, 1987); Giovanni Cazzetta, Praesumitur seducta. Onest e consenso femminile
nella cultura giuridica moderna (Milan, 1999).
27 Daniela Lombardi, Il reato di stupro tra foro ecclesiastico e foro secolare, in Trasgressioni.
Seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (XIVXVIII secolo), eds. Silvana Seidel Menchi
and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna, 2004), 351382; Georgia Arrivo, Raccontare lo stupro.
Strategie narrative e modelli giudiziari nei processi fiorentini di fine Settecento, in Corpi
e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico allet contemporanea, eds. Nadia M. Filippini,
Tiziana Plebani and Anna Scattigno (Rome, 2002), 6986. On narratives of violent rapes
see Miranda Chaytor, Husband(ry): Narratives of Rape in the Seventeenth Century,
Gender & History, 7 (1995), 378407.
132 Lombardi
the promise, despite the fact that this was prescribed as a requisite for validity.28
It was even more difficult to establish if the couple had engaged in sexual rela-
tions after the promise. In the case of a woman who was a virgin, proof of the
crime could be constituted by the breaking of the hymen, which had to be
ascertained by at least two midwives. But physicians and jurists entertained
many doubts about the possibility of examining with certainty that the hymen
had been broken, and some even doubted the very existence of the hymen.
Consequently, also in these cases recourse was made to public talk and fame
among the neighbours. The neighbourhood was called to express its opinion
about the couples behaviour, and from this the judge could draw his conclu-
sions as to the exchange of the promise and the sexual relations, as well as the
womans honesty.29 What made up a womans honesty? The fact that she was
a devout Christian, that she did nothing to make people talk about her, and
that she was faithful to just one man: the one who had deflowered her. The
good opinion of the neighbours about the womans conduct during the entire
period before the loss of her virginity was the indispensable premise for taking
the matter to court.
But this was still not enough. In reconstructing the facts, the woman had to
project an image of herself that corresponded perfectly with the honest person
that the law was obligated to protect. Her story had to follow a precise narra-
tive strategy that spotlighted the long courtship, her resistance to attempts to
seduce her, up to her final surrender justified by repeated promises of marriage.
Even the language used to describe these facts in particular the sexual act
was meant to express the passivity and natural repugnance towards sex felt by
an honest young woman.30
28 For example in Holland: Manon van der Heijden, Punishment versus Reconciliation:
Marriage Control in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Holland, in Social Control in
Europe, vol. 1: 15001800, eds. Herman Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (Columbus,
Oh., 2004), 5577, and some Swiss cantons: Anne-Lise Head-Knig, Forced Marriages
and Forbidden Marriages in Switzerland: State Control of the Formation of Marriage in
Catholic and Protestant Cantons in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Continuity
and Change, 8 (1993), 441465.
29 Anton Maria Cospi, Il giudice criminalista (Florence, 1643), 521530; Marco Antonio
Savelli, Pratica universale (Florence, 1681), Stupro, no. 23, 376. On midwives in the
courts see Alessandro Pastore, Il medico in tribunale. La perizia medica nella procedura
penale dantico regime (secoli XVIXVIII) (Bellinzona, 1998).
30 Arlette Farge, La vie fragile. Violence, pouvoirs et solidarits Paris au XVIIIe sicle (Paris,
1986); Georgia Arrivo, Seduzioni, promesse, matrimoni. Il processo per stupro nella Toscana
del Settecento (Rome, 2006).
Honesty proven by the publica vox et fama and confirmed by the way the
woman presented herself in court enabled the presumption of the exis-
tence of a promise of marriage. For it was not credible that an honest woman
would give up her virginity without being sure that marriage was the outcome.
Theologians and jurists presupposed that the woman, by giving the gift of
her body, entered in that very moment into a tacit contract with her partner
which ensured a forthcoming wedding.31 Sexual activity was part of the course
towards marriage which began, as we have seen, with the promise.
In this context, we should not be surprised if the loss of virginity was not
perceived as irredeemable. The women were demanding the restitution of
the honour that had been taken from them by illicit defloration.32 How could
honour be regained? Marriage would erase all trace of illicit sex, restoring the
woman to the condition she was in before she was deflowered. Here came into
play a concept of virginity as a spiritual good which was present in Christianity
alongside a material view that insisted on the physical integrity of the hymen.
According to Saint Augustine, a woman who had undergone sexual violence
preserved her chastity if she had not been a willing party to the crime: the
victims moral purity permitted the body to remain intact.33 Even while exalt-
ing the purity of the soul, some Catholic moralists adopted a concrete image of
virginity: that of a crystal vase that would shatter into a thousand pieces if not
safeguarded very carefully. According to the Jesuit Paolo Segneri, once honour
was lost it could not be restored, just as a shattered crystal vase could not be
31 Paul Laymann, Theologia moralis (Venice, 1760, first edition Munich, 1625), lib. V, tract. X,
pars I, cap. I, no. 11, 124; Giovanni Domenico Rinaldi, Observationes criminales, civiles, et
mixtae (Rome, 168890), vol. 2, cap. XXIII, IVVI, no. 151, p. 401.
32 Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti, Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction
in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800, and Lucia Ferrante, Honor Regained: Women in
the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in Sixteenth-Century Bologna, in Sex and Gender
in Historical Perspective: Selections from Quaderni Storici, eds. Edward Muir and Guido
Ruggiero (Baltimore, 1990), 73109, 4672; Margherita Pelaja, Matrimonio e sessualit a
Roma nellOttocento (Rome and Bari, 1994); Daniela Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage in
Early Modern Venice (Aldershot, 2004). The same way of speaking is in a suit for breach of
promise in a Protestant court: Susanna Burghatz, Tales of Seduction, Tales of Violence:
Argumentative Strategies before the Basel Marriage Court, German History, 17 (1999),
4155 (49).
33 Clarissa W. Atkinson, Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass: The Ideology of Virginity in the
Later Middle Ages, Journal of Family History, 8 (1983), 131143; Alain Boureau, Limene e
lulivo. La verginit femminile nel discorso della Chiesa nel XIII secolo, and Giulia Sissa,
La verginit materiale. Evanescenza di un oggetto, Quaderni storici, 25 (1990), 791803,
739755.
134 Lombardi
repaired. He did not share the opinion of those who, like the Spanish Jesuit
Francisco Toledo, admitted the possibility of fully reintegrating the deflowered
woman onto the marriage market, as though she were a virgin.34 In fact,
the punishment prescribed for the seducer to marry or give a dowry to the
woman favoured the marriage of the seduced to the seducer or, thanks to her
dowry, to another man.
Despite the diverse opinions of the moralists, honesty and the promise
enabled women to pass unscathed through behaviours that otherwise would
have been judged illicit. Feelings of modesty and shame were not part of trial
debates in the Old Regime. In the plaintiffs words we do not find a percep-
tion of sexual activity between engaged couples as a serious sin of which they
should be ashamed. Guilt and thus shame accrued to the man who had not
kept his promise. Many women had recourse to justice after their pregnancy
revealed the illicit nature of their behaviour. In the secular criminal court of
Florence, between 1777 and 1790, only 10% of the plaintiffs were not pregnant
or had not very recently given birth. Pregnancy was indirect proof of deflora-
tion which inspection by the midwives had not been able to ascertain with
certainty. Therefore, pregnant women had a greater chance of being believed
in court. But above all, pregnancy brought to light sexual behaviour that would
otherwise have remained secret. More than the loss of virginity, it was preg-
nancy that set in motion formal and informal attempts at reconciliation. This
leads us to think that the good which needed to be protected was not the
womans virginity but her reputation. According to authoritative jurists, even
the seducer who, although not actually deflowering the woman, had black-
ened her reputation by getting her pregnant and making public the loss of her
virginity, which had remained hidden until then, deserved punishment.35 In
short, an unexpected pregnancy was what threatened a womans good name.
As long as illicit behaviour remained secret it had no consequences, except
in a persons conscience. In the secrecy of the confessional, not in the public
courtroom, was where it should be revealed.
The promise was in any case able to protect even the reputation of the preg-
nant woman. The status of bride-to-be gave her juridical privileges similar to
those enjoyed by a married woman. Even while considering it a less perfect
34 Paolo Segneri, Il cristiano instruito nella sua legge (Florence, 1686), vol. 1, cap. XXV, 236;
Francisco Toledo, Instruttione de sacerdoti, e penitenti, nella quale si contiene la somma
assolutissima di tutti i casi di coscienza (Venice, 1657, original edition Summae de instruc-
tione sacerdotum..., Milan, 1599), 497.
35 Arrivo, Seduzioni, 923, 401.
status than that of wife, the jurist Carlo Rota called it not too far from this
latter, to the point that some rights of a wife were extended also to the bride-
to-be.36 Thus this was a condition judged more similar to that of wife than of
an unmarried woman. Lying at the root of this interpretation was the concep-
tion of the promise as the path to marriage which had been worked out by
medieval canon law. For the female gender, the current definitions of nubile
and married were even stricter than for males, since they could not include the
status of bride-to-be.
What happened if the woman did not succeed in persuading the seducer,
either by recourse to justice or extra-judicial agreements, to go through with
the marriage? Did the loss of her virginity, by this point public knowledge, not
restrict the marriage prospects of the seduced young woman? This is not an
easy question to answer. It could be that she had to be content with suitors of a
slightly lower social rank or somewhat older,37 but the fact of receiving a mon-
etary award from her seducer, which she could then offer as a dowry, certainly
helped favour marriage to another man. The amounts of those monetary com-
pensations, which were often out-of-court agreements, were rarely mentioned.
Probably they were modest but assured, since their payment brought litiga-
tion to an end. Financial compensations became frequent in both Protestant
and Catholic courts in the 17th and 18th centuries, since the judges aimed to
prevent forced marriages which would produce adverse consequences on
married life, as well as marriages to whom the couples parents were opposed,
and marriages which (above all in the protestants opinion) were obtained by
means of illicit sexual behaviour. To be sure, when a child was involved, the
attitudes of judges were more cautious. Sometimes, however, the same women
plaintiffs preferred to receive a sum of money rather than to get married to a
partner with whom there had been a final break, especially if he provided for
the maintaining of child born from their love affairs.38
36 Carlo Rota, Legalis androgynus, sive tractatus de privilegiis mulierum (Naples, 1665).
37 Ingram, Church Courts, 3101; Leah Leneman, Promises, Promises: Marriage Litigation in
Scotland, 16981830 (Edinburgh, 2003), 1323.
38 Jeffrey R. Watt, The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of
Sentiment in Neuchtel, 15501800 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992), 917, 20610; Allyson Poska, When
Love Goes Wrong: Getting Out of Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Journal
of Social History, 29 (1996), 871882 (874877); Abigail Dyer, Seduction by Promise
of Marriage: Law, Sex, and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Sixteenth Century
Journal, 34 (2003), 439455; Daniela Lombardi, Storia del matrimonio. Dal Medioevo a oggi
(Bologna, 2008), 1309.
136 Lombardi
Canon law, also welcomed by civil legislation, in fact required fathers or

paternal grandfathers to take custody of the children, including illegitimate
ones.39 It was thus important to look for the fathers in order to make them pay
for child support. Seduction (stuprum) trials could turn into procedures over
questions of paternity. Yet other practices were used to identify the fathers of
children born out of wedlock. In some Protestant countries, where the aban-
donment of a child was forbidden and the costs of social aid fell onto the
parish communities, the mothers of illegitimate children were asked, generally
by midwives, to declare the fathers name during the labour pains, when they
found it difficult to resist.40 In Catholic countries, the presence of foundling
hospitals enabled mothers to free themselves of the children of sin and the
fathers to avoid any responsibility. In practice, however, nursing abandoned
infants was among the highest costs of the hospitals. Therefore their directors
were compelled to look for the childs parents and lay on them the expenses
incurred for abandoned children in the hospitals.41 The results were proba-
bly not as effectual as in Protestant countries, because the declaration of the
fathers name was seldom a compulsory procedure.42 At any event one point is
relevant here: paternal responsibility for all the children was a common opin-
ion in many European countries. Because of this, until the end of the 18th cen-
tury the weight of an illegitimate motherhood did not fall exclusively on the
woman. Moreover, as we have seen, the fact that she had received a promise
protected her reputation.
We should add that a womans reputation was not based exclusively on her
sexual behaviour. Other elements contributed to forming a good or bad reputa-
tion, so much so that a woman could be judged positively even if the way she
conducted her sexual life was not entirely irreprehensible. She is of ill repute
only in letting herself be mounted and for the rest I consider her a proper
lady, were the words of a peasant from the hills around Florence concern-
ing a young unmarried woman who was about 26 years old.43 Female honour
39 Fathers were required to give alimenta, that is, maintenance and education. See Gian
Savino Pene Vidari, Ricerche sul diritto agli alimenti, I: Lobbligo ex lege dei familiari nei
giuristi dei secc. XIIXIV (Torino, 1972).
40 E.g., Alan Macfarlane, Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in English History, in Bastardy
and Its Comparative History, eds. Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen and Richard M. Smith
(Cambridge, Ma., 1980), 7185 (7374); Watt, The Making of Modern Marriage, 102104.
41 Daniela Lombardi (ed.), Legittimi e illegittimi. Responsabilit dei genitori e identit dei figli
tra Cinque e Ottocento, Ricerche storiche, 27 (1997).
42 On dclarations de grossesse en France see Marie-Claude Phan, Les amours illgitimes.
Histoires de sduction en Languedoc (16761786) (Paris, 1986).
43 Archivio Arcivescovile, Florence, Cause civili matrimoniali, 24, no. 10, years 15781579.
concerned also the ability to defend the social and economic fortunes of own
family, manage credit and debts relationships, exercise control over dowries,
and so on.44 Certainly, sexual behaviour was studied more closely, because
on this depended the guarantee of legitimacy of ones heirs. The virginity of
unmarried girls and the honesty of married women were symbolic values
that expressed the ability of the head of the household to keep control over
his women. Whenever it was said that a young woman and maybe even her
mother was excessively loose in her relations with the opposite sex, the man
who was considered responsible for their behaviour was also automatically
discredited. The court proceedings are full of these accusations. In fact, sexual
defamation was prevalently aimed at the female gender, as demonstrated by
the numerous cases debated in the English ecclesiastical courts of the 16th and
17th centuries.45 But the language of honour was often a tool for negotiating
disputes with their neighbours that had little to do with sexual conduct.
On the other hand, a woman could lose her good name much more easily
if there were no credible plans for marriage, whether because the man was
already married or belonged to a higher social class or practiced an itinerant
occupation including soldier which permitted him to disappear after
seducing the young lady. In these cases, the woman not the man was con-
sidered responsible because she naively yielded to the wiles of a man who
would never have been able to keep his promise. With no hopes of proceeding
to a wedding, these women were easily likened to prostitutes and punished
with banishment.46
6 The Loss of Juridical Privileges
Between the 16th and the 18th centuries, the women of some European coun-
tries began losing the legal privileges that derived from the medieval con-
ception of the promise. Called into question was the principle of canon law
44 Anna Clark, Whores and Gossips: Sexual Reputation in London, 17701825, in, Current
Issues in Womens History, eds. Arina Angerman et al. (London and New York, 1989),
231248 (236237); Garthine Walker, Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in
Early Modern England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996), 235245;
Scott K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven, Ct. and London,
2008), 157193.
45 Ingram, Church Courts, 302303; Susan D. Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class
in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988), 98111; Laura Gowing, Gender and the Language
of Insult in Early Modern London, History Workshop Journal, 35 (1993), 121.
46 Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 1999), 134ff.
138 Lombardi
according to which it was necessary to facilitate passage from the promise

to the wedding, if there were no impediments. In the Lutheran and Calvinist
territories, the requirements of paternal consent and public celebration of the
promise ensured greater control on the part of families in the initial phase
of the path to marriage as well. Consequently, it became easier to punish
transgressors.
In Zurich, Basel, and other German-speaking cities, the crime of premature
carnal knowledge (frher Beischlaf) was invented, which punished even the
couples who subsequently married. Responsibility for the crime was attrib-
uted to both partners.47 Conversely, medieval canon law had considered only
the male partner responsible, on the condition that the womans honesty was
demonstrated. In the case of seduction, canon law, referring to some passages
from the Bible (Exodus 22:1516; Deuteronomy 22:2829), obligated the seducer
to marry and pay the bride-price for the seduced woman. In practice the church
courts and later the secular ones interpreted this obligation as separate, that
is to marry or remunerate, in order to preserve the principle of marriage freely
contracted. If seduction was achieved via a promise of marriage, the obligation
was to wed. Marriage, for the seduced woman, to the seducer or another man,
was thus able to redeem the offence and restore the woman to an honourable
condition. From these laws protecting honest women from male wiles based
on her good name the shift was made towards laws which considered both
partners guilty of sexual behaviour that had been broadly tolerated until then
and was now punished with afflictive penalties (fines or prison). Consequently,
these behaviours began to be prosecuted on the judges initiative,48 as well as
after the filing of a complaint by the seduced woman. The penalties were, how-
ever, lighter than those assigned to the parties to concubinage unions or casual
relations which did not have marriage as a goal.
47 Susanna Burghartz, Ordering Discourse and Society: Moral Politics, Marriage, and
Fornication during the Reformation and the Confessionalization Process in Germany and
Switzerland, in Social Control, eds. Roodenburg and Spierenburg, 7898 (8587); eadem,
Orte der Unzucht. Ehe und Sexualitt in Basel whrend der Frhen Neuzeit (Schningh,
1999). In England as well, albeit with pronounced differences from one place to another,
from the late 16th century church courts became stricter about premarital sex, which was
punished even if the couple had in the meantime already celebrated their wedding in
church. See Ingram, Church Courts, 21937; Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty
and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 15251700 (London, 1979), 125133.
48 Burghartz, Ordering Discourse; Thomas M. Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control
of Marriage in the German Southwest. A Comparative Study, 15501600 (Kirksville, Mo.,
1984), 160162: in Basel, more than half of all ex officio cases were clandestine marriages
or secret promises to marry accompanied by sexual intercourse.
The close tie between promise, sexual activity, and marriage thus was begin-
ning to fray. The case of Holland appears different: if the matter concluded
with a wedding, the secular criminal courts did not proceed to punishment of
the couple. Here, as in some Calvinist cities in Germany, premarital sex was
considered a serious sin because it violated the Reformist rule requiring a reli-
gious ceremony before consummation of the marriage, but it was not severely
punished; the idea prevailed of tolerance towards the traditional concept of
sexual activity which led to marriage and thus did not transgress the Christian
principles of faithfulness and responsibility within the couple. This same toler-
ance was practiced by the Calvinist Church through its consistories, which did
not set in motion any disciplinary procedure if the couple went on to wed.49
In Calvinist France, on the contrary, in Languedoc, marriage did not cancel
the obligation to repent in front of the consistory but only the woman was
required to confess her sin in order to free herself from the infamy of transgres-
sive sexual conduct.50 In the long run, changes can be perceived: in Calvinist
Neuchtel (now a Swiss canton), during the 18th century the judges showed
themselves more open than in preceding centuries to favouring an outcome in
marriage, even without direct proof of a promise, if the woman was pregnant
and of the same social rank as her partner.51
In the Catholic Italian States, some diocesan synods expressed themselves
in favour of fines and penances, but in the top echelons of the Church of Rome,
a cautious attitude prevailed which entrusted to confession the task of repress-
ing sexual behaviour among betrothed couples.52 Nonetheless, also in the
Catholic world, criticism of the binding nature of the promise was circulating.53
It was first in the courts that the tendency emerged to require certain proof of
the promise and not to obligate its fulfilment, even if it had been followed by
49 Heinz Schilling, Reform and Supervision of Family Life in Germany and the Netherlands,
in Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition, ed.
Raymond A. Mentzer (Kirksville, Mo., 1994), 1561 (50, 54); Heijden, Punishment versus
Reconciliation.
50 Bernard Vogler and Jeanine Estbe, La gense dune socit protestante: tude compare
de quelques registres consistoriaux languedociens et palatins vers 1600, Annales ESC, 31
(1976), 381382.
51 Watt, The Making of Modern Marriage, 202203. The author suggests that 18th-century
judges were more interested in procuring the legitimate status for their [pregnant
women] children than in forcing men to marry them (204).
52 Prospero Lambertini, Raccolta di alcune notificazioni [...] pel buon governo della sua
diocesi (Bologna, 173338), vol. 3, 67.
53 Arturo C. Jemolo, Stato e Chiesa negli scrittori politici italiani del Seicento e del Settecento
(Turin, 1914).
140 Lombardi
sexual relations. Thus even in cases of seduction preceded by a promise the

judges whether secular or ecclesiastical moved very cautiously in imposing
a reparatory marriage. In France, these orientations emerged more rapidly and
radically: the parliaments which were state courts of appeal as early as the
17th century reached the point of judging cases of validity or nullity of the mar-
riage bond, encroaching on ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters of marriage
and reinforcing the control of fathers over children.54 In Italy and Spain, it was
necessary to await 18th-century reforms by enlightened rulers who had among
their objectives the limitation of the power of the Church. Two centuries after
the Lutheran marriage ordinances, Italian and Spanish laws also required the
promise to be proven by written documents or the presence of witnesses, and
by paternal consent if the young people were underage.
The definitive solution the avocation on the part of the secular courts of
jurisdiction over betrothal and the abolition of its binding nature was adopted
in Lombardy under the rule of Joseph II of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty
(17801790) and Tuscany under his brother Leopold of Habsburg Lorraine
(17651790). In 1779, the Kingdom of Naples abolished the crime of seduc-
tion preceded by a promise, in that it was consensual sexual activity and thus
not subject to criminal punishment.55 In Spain (and in Spanish America), the
same Bourbon dynasty which ruled the Kingdom of Naples issued more mod-
erate laws. They required certain proofs of the promise (the paternal consent if
children were younger than 25, in 1766, and a written document too, in 1806),
but its binding nature was not challenged.56
Despite the growing climate of diffidence in the courtrooms surround-
ing seduction and promises, Catholic women did not stop appealing to jus-
tice, whether secular or ecclesiastical. It was unlikely that they would obtain
a sentence obligating their seducer to marry them, but they could expect to
54 Anne Lefebvre-Teillard, Ad matrimonium contrahere compellitur, Revue de droit cano-

nique, 28 (1978), 210217; Vronique Demars-Sion, Femmes sduites et abandonnes au 18e
sicle. Lexemple du Cambrsis (Lille, 1991); James R. Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early
Modern Burgundy (15501730) (New York, 1995).
55 Giorgia Alessi, Lonore riparato. Il riformismo del Settecento e le ridicole leggi contro lo
stupro, in ed. Giovanna Fiume, Onore e storia nelle societ mediterranee (Palermo, 1989),
129142.
56 Daisy Rpodas Ardanaz, El matrimonio en Indias: realidad social y regulacin jurdica
(Buenos Aires, 1977), 266267; James Casey, Le mariage clandestin en Andalusia
lpoque moderne, in Amours lgitimes, amours illgitimes en Espagne (XVIeXVIIe sicles),
ed. Augustin Redondo (Paris, 1985), 5768; Isidro Dubert, glise, monarchie, mariage
et contrle social dans la Galice rurale, XVIIIe et XIXe sicles, Annales de Dmographie
Historique, 2009, no. 2, 101121.
be awarded compensation for the harm they had undergone or, more prob-
ably, reach an agreement with the counterparty without pursing the trial to its
conclusion. In the secular criminal court of Florence, more than half the trials
for seduction debated in the years 17771790 were halted because of an agree-
ment reached between the parties; a good 64% of these agreements resulted in
marriage and the remaining 36% awarded financial compensation. This means
that marriage could be the outcome of private negotiations, especially when
the woman was pregnant. Faced with a pregnancy, men tended to accept their
responsibilities and chose more frequently to marry than to give a dowry to the
woman, even without being obligated by a judge.57 But even obtaining finan-
cial compensation evidently had its merits: otherwise we could not explain the
large number of lawsuits brought before the secular and ecclesiastical courts
of Florence in the late 18th century.
From this we can deduce that women who appealed to justice did not
fear a loss of reputation; rather, in all probability the courts enabled them to
argue their case in public and to demonstrate to the community that they had
behaved properly. Medieval canon law, which presumably to a certain degree
still influenced the popular mores, had allowed it. Even if both Catholic and
Protestant courts were more likely to hand down a decision for financial
compensation rather than requiring the promise be kept, and even if some
Protestant courts charged them with shared responsibility for illicit sex, many
women continued to defend their reputation by appealing to the promise,
whether true or false, made to them by their partner.
What was changing was the very definition of betrothal: no longer an obli-
gation to contract marriage in the future, but a guarantee against the damage
resulting from the failure of marriage plans to go through, which was con-
sidered more significant for a woman than for a man. In this new meaning,
the promise continued to be used as long as a womans honesty constituted a
premise for her protection under the law.
57 Arrivo, Seduzioni.
CHAPTER 7
The Reformation, the Council of Trent

and the Divergence of Spiritual Kinship
and Godparenthood across Europe:
A Long-run Analysis
Guido Alfani
The presence of one or more godparents still remains a requirement at Catholic

and Orthodox baptisms. The same is true for almost all versions of the Christian
religion related to the Reformation. The Orthodox also continue to believe that
the baptismal ceremony creates a specific kind of kinship, called spiritual kin-
ship, and subsequently establishes impediments to marriage between some
of the actors involved in the ceremony. This concept of spiritual kinship does
not exist under the Reformation (having being removed by Luther himself)
whereas the Catholics renounced it in the course of the 20th century. However
evidence suggests that everywhere in Europe, in the Middle Ages as in Early
Modern times, godparenthood was mostly used to pursue aims very different
from those prescribed by religious teaching, and that the results of religious
innovations regarding the celebration of baptisms (particularly, but not exclu-
sively, innovations in the rules of selection of the godparents) were very differ-
ent from those the reformers hoped for.
This chapter explores how key religious divides, and particularly that created
between Catholic and Orthodox at the time of the East-West schism in the 11th
century and that created by the Reformation in the 16th century, were also able
to create divergence in social structures and social behaviour. The first section
briefly reconstructs the emergence, in the East, of the notion of spiritual kin-
ship and its spread to the West, up until, and including, the Reformation and
the Catholic Reformation. It also discusses the early developments of godpar-
enthood. The second section provides an overview of the differences between
Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant social customs, particularly regarding the
selection of godparents and the social and economic role they played in the late
Middle Ages and in the Early Modern period. The third section explores
the link between godparenthood and family structures, focusing in particular
on the selection of godparents as part of household strategies of social alliance.

Divergence of Spiritual Kinship 143
The chapter makes use of a variety of sources. Conciliar decrees and dis-
cussions, diocesan statutes, theological treaties and the like are used to recon-
struct the meaning given to spiritual kinship and godparenthood by religious
authorities accepting different versions of the Christian faith. Parish books
of baptism, family books, sumptuary laws and similar sources provide infor-
mation about actual practices. The chapter also relies on a growing literature
about the history of godparenthood and baptism.1 As will be shown, such
literature suggests that this is a perspective from which to view key historical
transformations of the European families in a new light.
1 A Short History of Spiritual Kinship and Godparenthood from the

Origins to the Reformation
On the eve of the Reformation, Europeans be they Catholic or Orthodox

believed that the baptismal rite conferred new ties of kinship on the people
involved in the ceremony. This was known as spiritual kinship, and was accom-
panied by an impediment to marriage between all those who were tied by it. As
will be seen, the extension of spiritual kinship (the number and kind of people
among which it was established) changed between East (Orthodox) and West
(Catholic) and also changed in time, but by the fifteenth century it involved all
the key actors of the baptism (the baptized, his or her parents, the godparents
and the person officiating usually, a priest).
The origin of the notion of spiritual kinship dates back to the first centuries
of the Christian era. It appeared more or less as the same time as the other
social and religious institution considered in this chapter, godparenthood, but
it can also be noticed that the latter had antecedents in the sponsorship prac-
tice used by the early Christians. In this section, the historical developments of
godparenthood and spiritual kinship from the late Antiquity to the end of the
Middle Ages will be synthetically reconstructed,2 paying particular attention
to the reciprocal influences between the Eastern and Western Churches.
1 For an updated synthesis of such literature, see Guido Alfani and Vincent Gourdon (eds.),
Spiritual Kinship in Europe, 15001900 (London, 2012). More particularly about the history of
baptism, Guido Alfani, Philippe Castagnetti and Vincent Gourdon (eds.), Baptiser: pratique
sacramentelle, pratique sociale (St Etienne, 2009).
2 For a fuller reconstruction, see Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval
Europe (Princeton, 1986); Guido Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers. Spiritual Kinship in Early
Modern Italy (Aldershot, 2009); Guido Alfani and Vincent Gourdon, Spiritual Kinship
144 Alfani
The early Christians were normally baptized as adults. Between the second
and the fourth centuries a series of practices, called together catechumenate,
evolved to test and instruct aspiring Christians. To be admitted to this course
of instruction, it was necessary to be accompanied and presented by two guar-
antors (fideiussores, sponsores) who vouched for the dignity and the trustwor-
thiness of the candidate. This practice, although suitable for the religion of a
minority living in a mainly pagan world and at risk of facing persecution, was
no longer necessary when Christianity prevailed and infant baptism became
customary. We are not sure when the second process was completed, but by
the fifth century AD, Saint Augustine was viewing infant baptism as the norm.3
Baptizing infants created a ritual and theological problem, given that the rite
demanded an active participation and the use of speech. Godparents, direct
descendants of the ancient sponsores, were introduced to answer the priests
questions in place of the child, and the Church soon attributed them the role
of tutors in his or her Christian education.
An early development was the exclusion of parents as godparents of their
own children, a prohibition that was connected to theological elaboration,
notably to the distinction between the carnal generation and the spiritual
generation.4 This prohibition was clearly stated by the Council of Mainz of
813. The notion of spiritual generation and the exclusion of parents from god-
parenthood of their own children does not automatically explain the emer-
gence of new impediments to marriage. It was the taboo of incest, so strongly
rooted in European societies, and the deeply disturbing suspicion that even
the ties between people related by godparenthood could create barriers not to
be crossed, which led civil and religious authorities to lay down rules establish-
ing matrimonial bans also for the spiritual generation.5 Where there is incest
there is certainly kinship; the safest foundation for spiritual kinship (far more
and Godparenthood: An Introduction, in Spiritual Kinship in Europe, eds. Alfani and

Gourdon 143.
3 Lynch, Godparents, 120.
4 Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, Spiritus et Caritas. Le baptme dans la socit mdivale, in La
parent spirituelle, eds. Franoise Hritier-Aug and lisabeth Copet-Rougier (Paris, 1995),
133203 (161162).
5 Canonical tradition recognised four forms of kinship (cognatio) which prohibited marriage
and sexual relations: natural kinship or blood-relations, kinship due to alliances or affinity
(ensuing from marriage), legal kinship or adoption, and spiritual kinship. Franois Cimetier]
Parent (empchements de), in Dictionnaire de Thologie Catholique, eds. Alfred Vacant,
Eugne Mangenot and Emile Amann] (Paris, 1932), 19952003.
than any theological reflection) was, right from the outset, the restriction on
sexual intercourse.6
The idea of spiritual incest first developed in the Eastern Church. The first
ban on marriage on account of spiritual kinship dates to 530 and was later
included in the Justinian Code. The ban concerned marriage between a god-
father and his goddaughter, and was justified by the fact that the very rela-
tionship of godparenthood, more than anything else, can generate paternal
affection; and therefore this kind of union is incestuous. In the following cen-
turies, the extension of spiritual kinship would grow and impediments would
include marriage between a godfather and the mother of the godson (Trullan
Synod of Constantinople, 692), from which the notion of compaternitas, that
is the spiritual kinship relation between godparents and the parents of their
godchildren, would develop.7
These early developments took place mainly within the boundaries of the
Eastern Church, while the Western one was slow to accept such theological
and regulatory innovations. Only after the Council of Rome of 721 AD, which
accepted most of the canons of the Trullan Synod, was the development of
spiritual kinship assured also in the West, with bans on marriage due to spiri-
tual kinship being included in the edict of the Longobard king Liutprand of
723. Such bans included marriage between a godson and the daughter of the
godparent. This is the principle of the fraternitas spiritualis (spiritual brother-
hood); when fully established, it resulted in a ban on marriages between all
the children of a given godfather or godmother and all their godsons and god-
daughters. Also fraternitas spiritualis developed first in the Eastern Church. In
particular, the Ecloga, an ambitious project of reform of the Justinian code put
forward by the emperor Leo III and his son Constantine V, published in 726 or
in 741, recognized fraternitas spiritualis as well as bans on marriage between
the children of the godfather and his compatres (that is those who were con-
nected to him by compaternitas spiritualis), and between the baptiser and the
person baptized.8
On this point at least, the Western Church welcomed innovations from the
East and was fairly quick in accepting the new bans included in the Ecloga.
However, the spread of the notion of spiritual kinship in the West was not
without opposition, particularly because it implied unpopular impediments
to marriage. The situation appears different from the East, whence came
most innovations in the field and where the Church continued to extend the
6 Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers.

7 Lynch, Godparents.
8 Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers; Lynch, Godparents.
146 Alfani
interdictions on marriage due to baptism to include all the blood relations of

the godson, and all the blood relations of the godparent to the degree already
recognised for consanguinity.9
After the Schism of the East (1054), the capacity of the two sides of Christi-
anity to influence each other was abruptly reduced, even though not entirely
interrupted. As far as spiritual kinship is concerned, the Schism did not deter-
mine any deep differences among Orthodox and Catholic versions of Christi-
anity, as the notion of spiritual kinship continued to develop and to expand
in both areas. In the West for example, in the canonical collection of Gratian
(1140), which had a wide circulation and was largely used also in the following
centuries, we find a clear description of the three components of the system
of spiritual kinship in use at the time: the paternitas, or the direct link between
godfathers, godmothers, the person who administered baptism and the god-
child; the compaternitas that linked godfathers, godmothers and the minister
of baptism to the parents of their godchild; the fraternitas that established
spiritual kinship between the natural children of the godfathers, of the god-
mothers and of the minister of baptism and their godchild.10 In time, however,
the commentaries to Gratian added to the direct relationships quoted above,
other indirect ones: between the godchild and the spouses of the godfathers,
of the godmothers and of the minister of baptism; between the parents of
the child and the spouses of his (or her) godfathers, godmothers and of the
minister of baptism.11
Both in Catholic and Orthodox Europe, then, spiritual kinship continued to
expand throughout the Middle Ages. As will be seen, only after the Reformation
and Catholic Reformation (or Counter-Reformation) in the West would a
deep fissure develop with the East regarding spiritual kinship. The situation is
different, though, if we look at an aspect of considerable social importance: the
number of godparents admitted per baptism. If one looks only at regulations,
then we find the same tendency both in the Eastern and Western Churches
during the Middle Ages, but the same is not true if actual practice is consid-
ered. Here it will suffice to recollect the main points.12
In the early times of infant baptism, it seems that each new Christian was
given only one godparent, normally of his or her same sex. It also seems that a
tendency very soon developed to increase the number of godparents; what is
sure, is that in the West from the 9th century the Church began to oppose the
9 Agns Fine, Parrains, marraines. La parent spirituelle en Europe (Paris, 1994), 2526.
10 Decretum Gratiani, in Jean-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina (Paris 1855), CLXXXVII.
11 Guerreau-Jalabert, Spiritus et Caritas.
12 See Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, for a complete reconstruction.
spread of these new practices (Council of Metz of 89313), promoting instead

the ancient custom of just one godparent per baptism. In spite of this the new
practices spread far and wide developing not only into specific local customs,
but also into a fragmented local regulation with synod rules being applied
instead of canons coming from ancient and obscure councils. For example in
France, the synod statutes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries allowed
only one spiritual parent at Dax and Cahors, one or two at Bourges, two at
Chlons, three at Bayeux, Nantes and Arras, three or four at Chartres, four
at Cambrai.14
It is difficult to know which of the many rules regulating the matter were
really applied, and which were the most widespread customs in different
parts of Catholic Europe. The available studies on specific areas from the late
Middle Ages suggest that there was a clear difference between law and prac-
tice, and in fact much legal innovation in both spiritual kinship and godparent-
hood aimed at reforming or banning entirely specific practices. This has two
implications. First, it suggests that new research on practices is surely needed,
especially for Orthodox Europe. Secondly, and with reference in particular to
Catholic Europe, the insistence of the Church on specific regulations which
were repeated over time (in particular, the attempts to limit the number of
godparents) provides additional proof of the resistance of European societies
to reform in the field, which in itself is proof of the importance they attributed
to their own godparenthood practices.
At present, the best documented case (the one for which we have more
information about actual practice) is that of Italy. Here, libri di famiglia (family
books) recording relevant events such as baptisms, marriages and burials
have existed since the fourteenth century. They suggest that the selection of
numerous godparents and godmothers was common in regions as diverse as
Tuscany and Veneto.15 At the end of the fifteenth/beginning of the sixteenth
century, books of baptism were introduced in many places, well before the
Council of Trent (ended 1563) made them mandatory for all Catholic parishes.
13 Lynch, Godparents, 205206.

14 Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, 2425.
15 Christiane Klapisch, Parrains et filleuls: Une approche compare de la France, lAngleterre
et lItalie mdivales, Medieval Prosopography, 6 (1985), 5177; eadem, La maison et le
nom. Stratgies et rituels dans lItalie de la Renaissance (Paris, 1990); Louis Haas, Il mio
buon compare: Choosing Godparents and the Uses of Baptismal Kinship in Renaissance
Florence, Journal of Social History, 29 (199596), 341356; idem, The Renaissance Man
and his Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence, 13001600 (New York, 1998);
James S. Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto
(Baltimore and London, 1996).
148 Alfani
They demonstrate that, where local customs allowed, the number of god
parents participating at baptisms was very large, in certain cases rising to
twenty to thirty and even beyond.
A recent survey which I conducted on Northern Italy showed that the abun-
dance of godparents was not limited to social and economic elites and was
largely independent of status.16 The survey also showed that each community
indeed had its own model of godparenthood, often markedly different from
that of communities nearby. On the basis of the survey results I elaborated a
typology of godparenthood models, based on two fundamental distinctions:
multi-godfather models (characterized by many godfathers and/or godmoth-
ers) versus single godfather models (only one godfather and/or one god-
mother); symmetric models (each infant baptized receives both godfathers
and godmothers) versus asymmetric models (each infant baptized receives
either godfathers or godmothers). Multi-godfather models can be further dif-
ferentiated between limited models (when in at least 99% of baptisms there
are no more than four godparents) and unlimited, or pure, ones. Combining
these three variables produces the typology presented in Table 7.1.
TABLE 7.1 Typology of godparenthood models
Multi-godfather Single godfather

Symmetric Asymmetric Symmetric Asymmetric
Unlimited Pure multi- Asymmetric

godfather multi-godfather
(type 1) (type 2)
Limited Limited Limited Pure single Asymmetric
multi- asymmetric godfather single godfather
godfather multi-godfather (couple model) (type 6)
(type 3) (type 4) (type 5)
Source: Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, p. 42
16 The survey was conducted on some of the earliest (pre-Tridentine) parish books of bap-
tism preserved in Italian archives. It collected new information for 35 communities in the
North of the Peninsula, to which available information for an extra eight communities
was added. Details about the cases included in the survey are published in Alfani, Fathers
and Godfathers, 4748.
This typology, which is discussed in much greater detail elsewhere,17 is aimed at

making possible extensive comparisons, across time and space, of the customs
of godparenthood. On this point it should be noticed that until recently, the
only work comparing godparenthood practices across Europe was an article by
Klapisch-Zuber18 covering Tuscany, France and England. Striking differences
were found between Tuscany, where godparents were abundant, and France/
England where two godfathers and one godmother were given to male chil-
dren and two godmothers and one godfather to females. This French-English
model, which I will call ternary, is a specific kind of limited multigodfather
model. However, we now know that this is only part of a more general distinc-
tion between Northern Europe (England, Holland, Denmark, perhaps Sweden
and the North of Germany) and France, where the ternary model prevailed,
and Central and Southern Europe (Italy, probably Spain and Central-Southern
Germany) characterized by a greater propensity to multiple godparenthood
and probably by a greater fragmentation in the practices in general.19
For Eastern (Orthodox) Europe, we have to accept that there is a severe
scarcity of studies on the early developments of godparenthood. It seems,
however, that here the custom of the single godparent, characteristic of early
Christianity and transformed into law by a series of councils during the Middle
Ages, resisted longer than in Catholic Europe. Indeed, when referring to the
custom of giving two godparents (a godfather and a godmother), the late four-
teenth century Orthodox theologian Kiprian called this a Latin custom which
was consequently to be rejected in favour of the single-godparent tradition.20
It seems, then, that contrary to the process of expansion of spiritual kinship (a
process that saw the Eastern Church influencing the Western), regarding the
model of godparenthood the Orthodox were fighting against Western influ-
ences, apparently with some success since, in the case of the Russian patri-
archate, for example, the presence of both a godfather and a godmother at
baptism was accepted only in 1666 (see next section).
It should be remembered that these broad distinctions are based on ten-
dencies. For example, in areas where the ternary model was prevalent we also
find communities following different customs.21 However, it seems clear that

18 Klapisch, Parrains et filleuls.
20 Marianna G. Muravyeva, Godparenthood in the Russian Orthodox Tradition: Custom
Versus the Law, in Spiritual Kinship in Europe, eds. Alfani and Gourdon, 247274.
21 For example in France, in the late Middle Ages Lyons already followed the couple model
(one godfather and one godmother) which the Council of Trent would generalize to
150 Alfani
overall Orthodox Europe was hostile to multi-godfather models, and that in

central and southern Europe the variety of models was altogether greater
(and, very often, the number of godparents larger although single godfather
models were not entirely unknown) than in the northern part of the continent.
By applying the typology described above to the available information it is
possible to propose the following broad distinction, which would be valid for
the late Middle Ages:
1. Northern Europe (Catholic): ternary model (limited multigodfather

model)
2. Central-southern Europe (Catholic): multigodfather models (limited or
not, asymmetric or not)
3. Eastern Europe (Orthodox): single godfather models (asymmetric or not)
As will be seen in the next section, these differences were of no little conse-
quence regarding how godparenthood could be used as an instrument for pur-
suing social strategies.
In Catholic Europe the Council of Trent was a turning point as after it, and
for the first time, the Church was able to impose (some of) its views on godpar-
enthood on a recalcitrant population. As I said earlier, even after the East-West
Schism in 1054, theology and legislation about spiritual kinship continued to
proceed along the same path in different areas of Christianity. Differences
were to be found, instead, regarding godparenthood practices, with the num-
ber of godparents per baptism increasing in the West over time, while seem-
ingly in Orthodox Europe these Latin tendencies were kept at bay. However,
this development was not related to the accepted version of the Christian reli-
gion, but was the result of the inability of Western Church authorities to fully
control religious behaviour as it related to social practice.
The Reformation ended this situation of unity-in-diversity. Luther himself
rejected entirely the idea that a spiritual kinship could exist, as there was no
reference to it in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, it had to be abandoned, along
most of Catholic Europe. Etienne Couriol, Godparenthood and Social Relationships in

France during the Ancien Rgime: Lyons as a Case Study, in Spiritual Kinship in Europe,
eds. Alfani and Gourdon, 124151. On the other side of the spectrum, we also find cases of
abundant godparents like that of Joan of Arc who, at the moment of her trial, recalled two
godfathers and three godmothers. Bernhard Jussen, Spiritual Kinship as Social Practice.
Godparenthood and Adoption in the Early Middle Ages (Cranbury, 2000).
with all the impediments to marriage it implied.22 On the contrary, godparents

had to be preserved, as they could play a useful role as tutors of the Christian
education of their godchildren.23 As shall be seen in the next section, this deci-
sion allowed traditional customs regarding godparenthood to survive almost
unchanged under the Reformation.
Calvin was more radical. Not only did he reject the very notion of spiritual
kinship, as Luther had, but he also tried to eliminate godparents: they were to
be replaced at the baptismal font by the parents of the infant (a practice forbid-
den since at least the Council of Mainz of 813). Indeed, Calvin tried to impose
his views upon the citizens of Geneva, but found himself faced with strong
opposition, and in the end he had to accept many compromises,24 including
the presence at baptism of godparents, whose role, however, was scaled down,
as now they shared the task of presenting children at the baptismal font with
the natural parents and the congregation as a whole. Calvin also faced strong
opposition on a number of other aspects, including his attempts to forbid bap-
tismal banquets and parties25 and his reform of the baptismal rite and rituals.
Opposition to Calvins attempts at reform is yet further proof of the affection
of European societies for ancient customs regarding godparenthood, and sug-
gests that this social institution was important to them: important enough to
become a source of harsh conflict with the preachers whose lead they were
ready to follow in other matters.26
Generally speaking, the Reformed churches followed the same path, reject-
ing spiritual kinship whilst preserving godparents. This is true, for example,
22 According to Luther, spiritual kinship had to be counted among the ways the Catholic
Church had devised to reap a profit from the sacraments (through the venality of mar-
riage dispensations). He expressed his thoughts on the topic in De captivitate Babylonica
ecclesiae praeludium of 1520. On this, Guido Alfani, Geistige Allianzen: Patenschaft als
Instrument sozialer Beziehung in Italien und Europa (15. bis 20. Jahrhundert), in Politiken
der Verwandschaft, eds. Margareth Lanzinger and Edith Saurer (Gttingen, 2007), 2554;
idem, Fathers and Godfathers, 6769.
23 John Bossy, Christianity in the West (Oxford, 1985); Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers; idem,
Geistige Allianzen; Karen E. Spierling, Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva (Aldershot,
2005).
24 Spierling, Infant baptism.
25 Guido Alfani and Vincent Gourdon, Il ruolo economico del padrinato: un fenomeno
osservabile?, Cheiron, 4546 (2006), 129177; eidem, Ftes du baptme et publicit des
rseaux sociaux en Europe occidentale. Grandes tendances de la fin du Moyen-ge au
XXe sicle, Annales de Dmographie Historique, 1 (2009), 153189.
152 Alfani
of the Church of England27 and the Church of Sweden.28 Indeed, of the many
churches and sects adhering to the Reformation, only those that rejected infant
baptism totally, such as the Anabaptists, abolished godparenthood. Without
spiritual kinship, godparents became simply witnesses to baptism and were
defined as such in some Protestant areas, but this change in definition does
not seem to have had any relevant implication for actual social practice. In
other words, the loss of theological relevance did not imply any loss of social
relevance, and under the Reformation we find godparenthood models and
practices which are very similar, if not identical, to those that had been in use
during the Middle Ages.29
The Catholic Church, in reply to criticism and derision from Protestants
(particularly about spiritual incest, at the time quite widespread and harbin-
ger of scandal), resorted to introducing a reform of the sacrament of baptism
which led, from the point of view of social customs, to much more drastic trans-
formations. The Council of Trent is a turning point in the history of Catholic
godparenthood as a social institution. The Council acted on two fronts: the
extension of the ties of spiritual kinship and of the relative impediments to
marriage, and the admissible number of godfathers and godmothers.
Regarding spiritual kinship, wanting to reduce the incidence of spiritual
incest, the Council stated that spiritual kinship existed only between godfa-
thers and godmothers on one side, parents of the baptised child on the other;
between the child and his godfathers and godmothers; between the child and
the person who baptised him. This innovation did not bridge the gap with the
Protestants (who had cancelled spiritual kinship entirely) but distinguished
the Catholic from the Orthodox, who continued to recognized the older, wider
boundaries to spiritual kinship.
As for the admissible number of godparents, the Council stated that one
godparent was enough, be it male or female, but a maximum of two of dif-
ferent gender were acceptable: one godfather and one godmother. The new
rules about godparenthood encountered a great deal of resistance which was
27 Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2002).
28 Tom Ericsson, Witnesses, and Social Class in Mid-Nineteenth Century Sweden, in
History of the Family, 5 (2000), 273286; Kari-Matti Piilahti, Kin, Neighbours or Prominent
Persons? Godparenthood in a Finnish Community in the First Half of the Eighteenth
Century, in Spiritual Kinship in Europe, eds. Alfani and Gourdon, 207226.
29 Guido Alfani and Vincent Gourdon, Entrepreneurs, Formalization of Social Ties, and
Trustbuilding in Europe (Fourteenth to Twentieth Centuries), The Economic History
Review, 65: 3 (2012), 10051028.
finally overcome by means of the new control powers quickly acquired by the
counter-Reformed Church, and their application caused a significant shift in
the distribution of godparenthood models across Europe. Applying my typol-
ogy to the new situation, the following broad distinction is to be found, valid
from late 16th/early 17th century (when adaptation to the new rules was com-
pleted across Catholic Europe) until today:
1. Protestant Europe: multi-godfather models

2. Catholic Europe: couple model (single godfather model, symmetric)
3. Orthodox Europe: single godfather models (asymmetric or not)
The Catholic reform of spiritual kinship and godparenthood, and particu-

larly the new rule regarding the maximum admissible number of godpar-
ents, caused the crisis of those traditional models based on the abundance
of godfathers and godmothers. The complex social networks based on spiri-
tual kinship ties had to be reduced to much simpler structures, which from a
qualitative point of view were also very different from the original ones. This
process started a path of divergence in social practices, as well as in social
structures, which progressively differentiated the Catholic not only from the
Protestant, but possibly also from the Orthodox. These aspects are analyzed in
the next section.
2 Religious Divides as Cause for Divergence in Social Structures?

Godparenthood in Europe after the East-West Schism and the
Reformation
The Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation that followed, increased the
religious differences across the European continent. Not only did the Protestant
move away from Catholic traditions, but both the Protestant and the Catholic
started on paths diverging from that followed by the Orthodox. From our spe-
cific point of view, this is particularly clear considering spiritual kinship. In the
case of godparenthood, one could argue that in southern Europe, godparent-
hood models became more similar to those characterizing the Orthodox but
this is without considering the unexpected social consequence that the change
brought forward in Catholic areas. Before analyzing this process, which is one
of divergence in social structures and behaviours and not only in religious
ideas and regulations, it is necessary to say something more about the social
significance of godparenthood in late Medieval Catholic Europe.
154 Alfani
As has already been mentioned, the Medieval Church attributed to god

parents religious and ritual functions, adding to these a responsibility as tutors
of the Christian education of the godchildren (a function, it seems, that they
rarely truly performed). On the other hand, the tasks assigned to godparents
by the clergy were only a small part of their range of functions, many of which
escaped the control of the religious authorities to a greater or lesser degree.
Research on this topic has greatly increased in the last few years, and here it
will be possible to provide only a succinct account.30
The first and fundamental point to underline is that the tie of spiritual kin-
ship considered the most important was that of compaternitas between the
godparents and the godchildrens parents, and not the one between the god-
parents and their godchildren (a tie made fragile by high infant mortality). A
consequence of this was that, in the selection of godparents, the sex of the
newborn had far less influence on the number and quality of those given to
him, or her, than one might expect.31 Furthermore, while many works under-
line the relative rarity of material help of godparents to godchildren, relation-
ships of compaternitas were the vehicle of much more frequent and relevant
social and economic interaction.
The main social use of godparenthood, and particularly of compaternitas,
was to weave or activate ties between individuals and households or families.
Contrary to other forms of relationship, the baptismal ceremony gave to these
new ties a ritual character, holy and public given that they were established in
facie communitatis (in front of the social and religious community that wit-
nessed the baptism). All this conferred on such ties a much stronger value than
that of simple social contacts. Through the relationships established at bap-
tism, individuals and families became publicly bound by a set of social rules
regarding forms of solidarity, cooperation, friendship, and forbidding hostile
behaviour.32
30 For an updated synthesis, Alfani and Gourdon, Spiritual Kinship and Godparenthood,
1725. More specifically about the economic use of godparenthood, Alfani and
Gourdon, Entrepreneurs; eidem, Il ruolo economico del padrinato; Guido Alfani,
Reformation, Counter-reformation and Economic Development from the Point of View
of Godparenthood: an Anomaly? (Italy and Europe, 14th19th Centuries), in Religione e
istituzioni religiose nelleconomia europea. 10001800, ed. Francesco Ammannati (Florence,
2012), 477489.
31 Guido Alfani, Lattribuzione dei padrini di battesimo secondo il genere e lordine di
nascita: una gerarchia del privilegio (secoli XVIXVII), Mlanges de lcole Franaise de
Rome, 123: 2 (2011), 337346; idem, Fathers and Godfathers, 134140; Klapisch, Parrains et
filleuls.
32 Alfani and Gourdon, Entrepreneurs; eidem, Ftes du baptme.
To better understand the utility of godparenthood as a social institution, it

is useful to compare it to marriage. Being a form of social alliance, it indeed
shared some characteristics with the marriage alliance. However, while mar-
riages were established mostly according to a multi-faceted logic of endogamy
taking into account social and economic status, religion and ethnicity, com-
paternitas could bind different and unequal actors and so appears to be more
open and much less strictly regulated than marriage alliance.33 More generally,
we can say that what characterized a tie such as compaternitas, strong in its
regards but much weaker than marriage, was its flexibility, a point stressed first
by anthropological research on contemporary societies,34 and confirmed by
more recent research into societies of the past. By flexibility we mean the abil-
ity of godparenthood in general and compaternitas in particular to give a ritual
and public character, and a lasting social content, to a set of social relation-
ships that could not be reinforced by consanguinity or marriage alliance, and
whose exact nature could vary according to time and space. In other words,
even though godparenthood as a social institution was regulated by customs
and social norms that changed only slowly in time, it nevertheless offered
important openings for improvisation and furnished solutions in individual
or one-off situations. Its strong point was its capacity to adapt to exceptional
needs, for which there was no social norm to dictate procedure, acting as the
catalyst for otherwise unexpressed potentialities.35
In the areas of Europe where it was customary to select many godparents
per baptism, strategies of selection were very complex and varied. As I have
shown in earlier research mostly related to Northern Italy at the end of the
fifteenth/beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the selection of godparents did
not follow a single logic, for example the choice of high-status godparents able
to provide social, economic or political protection, but obeyed a variety of
motivations. Both at the level of whole communities and of single house-
holds, upwardly orientated choices coexisted with horizontal ones (within the
same social or professional group), or even with choices regarding individuals
of lower social status than the baptized parents. Consequently, and as is to
be expected from such an adaptive social institution, we find empirical evi-
dence of a large number of possible uses of godparenthood ties: creating or

34 See in particular Sidney W. Mintz and Eric R. Wolf, An Analysis of Ritual Co-parenthood
(Compadrazgo), SouthWestern Journal of Anthropology, 6 (1950), 341368.
156 Alfani
reinforcing economic ties or political alliances;36 pacifying a conflict between

great families or even between neighbours;37 strengthening a tie of friendship;
being charitable towards the poor; and so on. From the specific point of view
of economic activity, five main fields in which godparenthood was relevant
have recently been enumerated:38 protection of common or complementary
economic interests between economic actors; formalization and ritual protec-
tion of business relationships; economic mediation and access to information;
establishment of ties of patronage or of clientele; financial and material help
from godparents to godchildren (this last field is the only one in which the
relationship of godparent-godchild rather than godparent-parent of godchild,
is relevant).
In Catholic Europe, the establishment of the Tridentine model of godpar-
enthood had largely unexpected consequences which in many ways compro-
mised most of the traditional uses of godparenthood. The Council of Trent had
aspired to transform godparenthood and compaternitas into horizontal rela-
tionships, in which godparents of equivalent social rank to the parents would
truly assume the responsibility for the spiritual education of their godchildren.
Instead, what they obtained was a vertical relationship, in which, with only
one godfather permissible, he was the most prestigious possible and so the
whole institution of godparenthood tended to become a means for establish-
ing and reinforcing social clienteles. The lower ranks of society tended to con-
centrate their choices on the elites, both noble and non-noble, a process that
can be measured statistically thanks to the parish books of baptism. In Italy for
example, between 154049 and 160009, among the children of fathers with-
out title (neither noble nor belonging to the productive elite of master artisans
and similar) the share of Signori (high social rank) godfathers rose from 18%
to 52% at Voghera in Lombardy, from 64% to 89% at Mirandola in Emilia, from
5% to 28% at Finale in Liguria, from 7% to 37% at Turin and from 20% to 42%
at Ivrea in Piedmont, and from 7% to 11% at Gambellara in Veneto. At the same
time, the highest ranks of society intensified choices made within their groups
(fellow nobles, political partners, etc.). In Turin, the proportion of Signori god-
parents given to children of other Signori rose from 46% to 93%, while in Ivrea
it went from 58% to 88%.39
36 Christiane Klapisch, Comprage et clientlisme Florence (13601520), Ricerche

Storiche, 15: 1 (1985), 6176; Haas, Il mio buon compare.
37 Claude Gauvard, Violence citadine et rseaux de solidarit. Lexemple franais aux XIVe
et XVe sicles, Annales ESC, 48: 5 (1993), 11131126.
38 Alfani, Reformation, Counter-reformation and Economic Development.
39 Data from Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, 120131.
All the research carried out on this process of transformation suggests that
it is during the Early Modern period that Catholic godparenthood acquired
the strong vertical character (to establish social clienteles) that is so apparent
to historians and historical anthropologists of Mediterranean Europe from the
17th to the 19th or, in some areas, even the 20th centuries. In Portugal as in
Spain there is a clear tendency, during the Early Modern period, to transform
godparenthood into a system of patronage. For the great noble landowners,
acting as godfather not only for the children of their peasants, but also for
those of their higher-level employees or providers of services such as notaries
and merchants was a common strategy for publicly reaffirming their social
dominance.40 There are indications that the procedure was also the same in
France.41 Across Catholic Europe, this situation would start to change only
from the late 18th or the 19th century, when it became the custom to choose
godparents from within kin, a choice which was almost entirely avoided in the
Medieval and Early Modern period (see next section).
As already noted, verticalization of godparenthood in Catholic Europe was
an unwanted consequence of the Catholic reform of baptism. This is even more
striking if we consider that, in Protestant Europe, godparenthood continued
to be mainly horizontal, and was used in ways entirely similar to those com-
mon throughout the continent before the Reformation.42 Godparents contin-
ued to act as economic mediators in 18th-century rural Germany;43 artisans
and guild masters protected their common interests by acting as godfathers of
each others children in 18th- and 19th-century Sweden;44 and probably most
significantly, merchants continued to formalize and ritualize their economic
ties by recurring to the baptismal rite.45 Recent research on Protestant entre-
preneurial communities in Catholic areas during the Industrial Revolution (for
40 Joaquim Carvalho and Rosrio Campos, Interpersonal Networks and the Archaeology
of Social Structures, paper presented at the XXV Encontro da Associaao Portuguesa de
Historia Economica e Social (Evora, 2005); Francisco Chacn Jimnez, Identidad y par-
entescos ficticios en la organizacin social castellana de los siglos XVI y XVII. El ejemplo
de Murcia, in Les parents fictives en Espagne (XVIeXVIIe sicles), ed. Augustin Redondo
(Paris, 1988), 3750; Francisco Garca Gonzlez and Cosme J. Gmez Carrasco, Parentesco
ficticio y red social en la Espaa meridional (Albacete, 17501808), Popolazione e Storia, 1
(2008), 3554.
41 Alfani and Gourdon (eds.), Spiritual Kinship in Europe.
42 Alfani, Geistige Allianzen.
43 David W. Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, 17001870 (Cambridge, 1998).
44 Ericsson, Godparents.
45 Thomas M. Safley, Matheus Millers Memoir: a Merchants Life in the Seventeenth Century
(London, 2000).
158 Alfani
example, the Swiss cotton entrepreneurs in Piedmont and Lombardy, or the

Protestant businessmen in Paris, active in key sectors such as finance) showed
that these patterns of behaviour were still common in the second half of the
19th century, and later.46
In Catholic Europe, by contrast, the verticalization of godparenthood
affected the economic elites as well. Not only did merchants begin to sys-
tematically choose nobles as godparents to their children, but doing so also
seems to have fed their ambition to become nobles themselves, which usu-
ally implied abandoning trade to invest capital in land. This tendency might
also have favoured a change in the attitude towards how to do business, and in
particular, might have favoured the appearance of customs which could eas-
ily involve moral hazards.47 In fact, a different propensity when looking for
patrons, favoured by the Catholic reform of godparenthood, might help to
explain behaviour testified to by anthropological research on contemporary
societies, for example the selection of politicians as godparents in the hope
of receiving favours and protection from them.48 More generally, in Catholic
Europe and especially in Italy, the verticalization of godparenthood might
have acted as a force for the closure of societies, bringing increasing rigidity of
social-economic structures and ultimately weakening the vitality and innova-
tiveness of the economy.49
Contrary to what one might expect, in post-Reformation Europe, and not-
withstanding abstract theological positions, the practices of Protestant god-
parenthood were much more similar to the Medieval ones than the Catholic:
large groups of godparents were still selected, the strategies regulating choice
of godparents were complex and varied, and pious economic actors continued
to use godparenthood to establish connections to foster their economic inter-
ests. The Catholic reform of godparenthood, instead, brought radical change to
ancient practices, succeeding where the Church had failed for many centuries:
reducing the number of godparents. As a consequence of this, the Catholic
reform of godparenthood was able to change societies much more than the
Protestant one. Furthermore, it fostered (albeit unwittingly) the appearance of
new patterns of behaviour, whilst under the Reformation traditional customs
46 Alfani and Gourdon, Entrepreneurs.

47 Guido Alfani, Ungodly Godparenthood. Social Clientele, Mafia and Dark Networks,
paper given at World Economic History Congress, Utrecht 2009; Alfani and Gourdon,
Entrepreneurs.
48 Fortunata Piselli, Il compare politico, LUomo, 11 (1987), 137159.
49 Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, 130; Alfani and Gourdon, Entrepreneurs.
continued to be practiced, even against the will of impassioned reformers such

as Calvin.
In this picture of Protestant-Catholic divergence, one could wonder where
we should place the Orthodox. The first thing to underline is that, from the
point of view of Church regulations (and seemingly, also of godparenthood
models), there is perfect continuity from the Middle Ages into the Early
Modern period. Differently from the Protestant (who cancelled spiritual kin-
ship entirely) and from the Catholic (who inverted a millenary tendency to the
expansion of spiritual kinship and reformed godparenthood), the Orthodox
continued to accept a very extended notion of spiritual kinship, and conse-
quently to apply a very wide array of impediments to marriage. For example
in the case of the patriarchate or Russia, the Kormchaja canonical code of
165052 (which still referred to the Trullan Synod of 692 as a testament to the
extensive impediments to marriage due to spiritual kinship) recognized seven
degrees of spiritual kinship. The first degree connected godparent to godchild.
The second, godparent to parents of the godchild, and godchild to godparents
children. The third, godchilds brothers and sisters to godparents children.
And so on; marriage was prohibited within all seven degrees.50
Regarding the number of godparents to be admitted per baptism, the
Kormchaja stated that there had to be only one godparent per baptism, one
trustful person charged with teaching piety or religious devotion to the god-
child. This prescription reiterated older rules, and in particular the decrees
of the Moscow Council of 1551. However, if church rules favoured the single
godparent, actual practice must have been different as the Moscow Council
hinted at customs allowing multiple godparents, customs which had to be
abandoned. At least one code of the late fifteenth century not only mentioned
the custom of giving multiple godparents (two godfathers or two godmothers)
but also stated that this was acceptable. The prevalent opinion among Russian
theologians, however, was clearly in favour of a single godparent, of the same
sex as the child, but significantly the occasion for them to state their opinion
on the matter was the reality of different customs. The metropolitan of Kiev
and all Rus, Kiprian, who wrote in the late 14th/early 15th century and is the
first to mention the issue of the multiplication of godparents, stated that there
had to be just one godparent, not a godfather and a godmother as they do in
this land51 (note that this custom, one godfather and one godmother, is differ-
ent from the two godfathers or two godmothers mentioned above does this
50 Muravyeva, Godparenthood, 252, which is also my source for the developments in the
Russian Church described below.
51 Cited from Muravyeva, Godparenthood, 251.
160 Alfani
hint at a fragmentation of customs within the Russian area?). Interestingly,

Kiprian stated that multiple godparents were a Catholic (Latin) custom, and
therefore the result of foreign influences that had to be eradicated. To a degree,
this battle was lost, as shortly after the Kormchaja canon code was introduced,
a new Moscow Council (1666) accepted the custom of having both a godfather
and a godmother per baptism (the custom which is still dominant today in
Russia). If we consider the wider picture, however, we can say that the Russian
Church was successful in keeping the western influences to a minimum as
seemingly there is no trace, in this area, of the kind of multi-godfather models
so widespread across Catholic Europe during the late Middle Ages.
Unfortunately, for the other Orthodox patriarchates of Europe we lack the
kind of long-term historical reconstruction of rules and practices that is now
available for Russia, although in works covering different areas in specific peri-
ods, it is consistently suggested that godparents per baptism were few. For
example in Romania, archival sources suggest that during the 17th and 18th
centuries the prevalent custom was to have just one godparent, not necessarily
of the same gender as the godchild and with a clear prevalence of godfathers.52
However, we know from contemporary anthropological research that in cer-
tain areas of the country, such as the Bukowina region, there is a tendency
(seemingly corresponding to a local custom) to ask for many more godparents
(up to fifty). This is contrary to Church regulations mindful of spiritual incest,
but official rules notwithstanding certain priests agree to perform marriages
and baptisms with this large number of parents, in this way brokering the local
customs into the Orthodox Church.53 Furthermore, there are hints about the
fact that these practices appeared only in the first half of the 20th century, to
maximize baptismal gifts received from godparents, but other scholars suggest
that they are much older, being connected to regulations requiring land to be
sold only to kin (including spiritual).54
The case of contemporary Bukowina surely suggests that caution is needed
when trying to reconstruct the whole picture on the grounds of mostly
legal and theological sources. At the very least, while it seems certain that
single-godfather models are vastly prevalent in the Orthodox world, both
52 Costana Vintil-Ghiulescu, Construire autour du baptme: parrains et filleuls dans la

socit roumaine (XVIIeXVIIIe sicles), in Baptiser: pratique sacramentelle, pratique
sociale, eds. Alfani, Castagnetti and Gourdon, 261280.
53 Monica Vasile, Godparenthood Capitalism: Strong Ties as Anchor and Shield in
Illegal Economic Practices, paper presented at the European Association of Social
Anthropologists conference Experiencing Diversity and Mutuality, August 2008, 11.
54 Monica Vasile, A Typology of Godkinship Practices in Romania, Annuaire Roumain
dAnthropologie (forthcoming).
today and in the past, we should recognize the possibility that specific areas
or communities, maybe profiting from jurisdictional or regulatory loopholes,
adopted multi-godfather customs similar to the European Late Medieval ones.
Given the relative scarcity of studies concerned with the history of Orthodox
godparenthood, similar caution is necessary when trying to compare the social
significance of godparenthood in the East and West. A classic study of god-
parenthood in the Balkans in the 1960s and earlier by Hammel has provided
evidence that godparenthood was used to establish and strengthen relations
of solidarity between peers; to show respect towards a godfather of a higher
rank than their own (and sometimes to become his clients); to integrate and
finalize marriage alliances; to overcome disputes and bring an end to blood
feuds, and so on.55 There is a clear resemblance between these uses and those
described for Catholic Europe in earlier epochs, although possibly with a
stronger focus on the use of godparenthood to prevent violence and maintain
peace within fragmented and divided societies. However, evolution of the uses
of godparenthood in the Orthodox world occurred over time and could adapt
slowly to changing societies a situation which, somewhat paradoxically, is
more similar to that of the Protestant than to the Catholic.
3 Households, Godparenthood and Kinship in Late Medieval

and Early Modern Europe: An Overview
To conclude this comparative survey of spiritual kinship and godparenthood

across Europe, I will now focus on how households made use of godparent-
hood, and how spiritual kinship ties connected different households. Both for
reasons of synthesis and because of the serious scarcity of the kind of detailed
micro-studies needed to fully assess this topic, I will simply mention some key
questions and will provide answers as complete as possible given the limited
information available.
The first, and possibly the most important, question is how spiritual kin-
ship related to kinship. In her pioneering comparative study of European god-
parenthood practices in the late Middle Ages, Klapisch suggested that in such
diverse areas as Italy, France, England and Germany godparents were usually
selected outside of kin.56 The choice of godparents, then, was of the extensive
rather than the intensive kind, according to a dichotomy developed by many
55 Eugene A. Hammel, Alternative Social Structures and Ritual Relations in the Balkans
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968).
56 Klapisch, Comprage.
162 Alfani
early anthropological studies of godparenthood.57 Extensive choices relate

to the selection of godparents outside of kin, while intensive ones would be
aimed at strengthening and reviving or at least, at replicating existing ties
of kinship.
To reach this conclusion, Klapisch made use of mostly allusive material
and relied heavily on intuition, save for Italy and particularly for Florence, for
which she was able to make use of her ample database of information coming
from family records. However, Klapischs intuition was probably correct, as a
growing number of local studies are providing support for the idea that gener-
ally, in Catholic Europe during the late Middle Ages, godparents were selected
from outside kinship; for example in Italy, in Ivrea (Piedmont) in the late 15th
century less than 1% of godparents were selected from within patrilinear kin-
ship while in other communities such as Mirandola (Emilia) the share was
even smaller, bordering zero. About one century later (end of sixteenth), the
situation was much the same, with patrilinear kinship accounting for no more
than 24% of all godparents in Ivrea and 34% in Nonantola (Emilia).58 Even if
we doubled the percentages to estimate the share of godparents coming from
both patrilinear and matrilinear kinship, the overall picture would not change:
godparents were not kin, save for exceptions.
The findings for Italy are confirmed by the scattered data available for
other parts of Europe. In Bordeaux (France) in 1561, just before the end of the
Council of Trent, the share of godfathers chosen from within kin (both patri-
linear and matrilinear) was in the 1112% range and that of godmothers about
10%: markedly higher than that found for Northern Italy, but nevertheless a
small minority.59 In England at the end of the Middle Ages, it has been esti-
mated that about 8% of the godparents came from patrilinear kinship.60
57 The dichotomy was introduced by Benjamin. D. Paul, Ritual Kinship, with Special
Reference to Godparenthood in Middle America, PhD thesis, University of Chicago
(1942).
58 Guido Alfani, I padrini: patroni o parenti? Tendenze di fondo nella selezione dei parenti
spirituali in Europa (XVXX secolo), Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, Coloquios (2008),
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/30172; idem, Selection of Godparents from within Kin
in Europe (15002000 ca.), paper given at European Social Science History Conference,
Glasgow (2012); idem, Parrains, partecipanti et parent. Tendances de longue dure dans
la slection des parents spirituels au sein dune communaut exceptionnelle: Nonantola
XVIeXVIIIe sicles, in Baptiser: pratique sacramentelle, pratique sociale, eds. Alfani,
Castagnetti and Gourdon, 293316.
59 This data is related to the parish of Saint-Andr (Paroisse Saint-Andr, baptmes, 1561
1564, Archives Municipales de Bordeaux).
60 Philip Niles, Baptism and the Naming of Children in Late Medieval England, Medieval
Prosopography, 3: 1 (1982), 95107.
This situation is in strong contrast with what we know about godparent-

hood today, which is characterized by the marked prevalence of choices of god-
parents from within kin. This also requires us to place in time the emergence
of the custom of selecting godparents from within kin. To track this develop-
ment, we can at present only rely on a limited number of case studies covering
the very long run and on a larger number of works giving information about
shorter time periods or just providing spot measures.61 Taken together, this
information suggests that, while the chronology of the change varied accord-
ing to country, area and social milieu, all in all from the late Middle Ages to the
19th century there was a significant increase in the number of godparents cho-
sen from within kin. Although the tendency seems to begin during the Early
Modern period, the process intensified no earlier than the 18th century, and
selection of kin as godparents became the dominant choice only in the later
19th century or during the 20th, according to the area.
One of the most striking features of this process is that it seemingly involved
both Catholics and Protestants of various denominations, independently
from the differences in their godparenthood models. Various explanations
have been suggested, such as the crisis of traditional forms of community life
from the 17th century, which would be associated with the progressive rise of
individualism,62 or the development within the bourgeoisie of a new vision
of the family, which later spread to lower social strata. However, at present
none of these or the other factors mentioned in the literature seems able to
fully explain what is still a mysterious process.63 In Catholic Europe, it seems
assured that the emergence of intra-kin choices is somehow connected with
the decline of the vertical godparenthood which had become prevalent after
the Council of Trent, but the situation is strikingly different for the Protestant
(who did not have to endure any radical transformation in their godparent-
hood models). We know little about the Orthodox, but for example in Russia,
in the St Petersburg region, the quota of godparents chosen from within kin
(patrilinear or matrilinear) was around 910% at the beginning of the 18th cen-
tury, rising to 2122% by the beginning of the 19th:64 a rise which could suggest
a general and growing process analogous to that described above for the West.
Kin selected as godparents in the St Petersburg region were usually of the
same generation as the godchild; older brothers and sisters were often selected.
In Catholic Europe, however, when choices from within kin started to become
commonplace, it seems that the older generations were preferred: particularly
61 See the synthesis in Alfani, Selection of Godparents.

62 Alfani, I padrini.
63 Alfani and Gourdon, Spiritual Kinship and Godparenthood, 3032.
64 Muravyeva, Godparenthood, p. 266.
164 Alfani
grandparents, uncles and aunts (note that, as shown by a survey on contempo-

rary godparenthood practices in Italy and France, uncles and aunts are today
the most common choice by far65). I will not develop this matter further here
as, during almost all of the time period considered by this article, the vast
majority of godparents was selected from outside kin.
If we consider how spiritual kinship connected different households, we
must conclude that during the Medieval and Early Modern period the choice
of godparents was made in order to establish new formal ties between house-
holds of non-kin. A number of specific uses have been described: for example,
households of migrants used spiritual kinship as a means of integrating with
the host community,66 or neighbours could establish formal ties in order to
ease their relationships, ending quarrels or preventing violence, small thefts,
etc.67 Many of these uses, when interpreted from the household perspective,
simply replicate what has already been described for individuals (see previous
section). However, there are certain aspects of how godparenthood strategies
are managed that only fully emerge if the focus is on the household. We know,
for example, that certain households exchanged godparenthood services
(with members of one household being godparent to children born to the sec-
ond household, and vice versa).68 This practice created a kind of horizontal
relationship between the two households, as the honour of being a godfather,
with all that this implied, was reciprocated. In other instances, one household
was placed symbolically under the protection of another, or even of one spe-
cific person. This happened when the same godparent (or different godparents
from the same household, see later) was repeatedly given to the children born
to a given household. In 16th-century Ivrea, these recurring godparenthoods
(calculated taking into account household heads delegating their wives and
daughters to the task) accounted for close to 20% of the total.69 However, we
know that in other parts of Europe such behaviour was much more common,
and even predominant. For example, in the German (Protestant) village of
Neckarhausen in Wrttemberg, during the 18th19th centuries each couple
65 Guido Alfani, Agnese Vitali and Vincent Gourdon, Social Customs and Demographic
Change: the Case of Godparenthood in Catholic Europe Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion, 51: 3 (2012), 483505.
66 Guido Alfani, Immigrants and Formalisation of Social Ties in Early Modern Italy (Ivrea,
Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries), in Spiritual Kinship in Europe, eds. Alfani and Gourdon,
4773; Couriol, Godparenthood.
67 Gauvard, Violence.
68 See for example the case of Ivrea: Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, 182183.
selected one specific person, who acted as godfather for all of their children.70 A
similar custom is attested in another Protestant German city, Oettingen.71 This
kind of use was possibly even more widespread in Orthodox areas, and par-
ticularly in the Balkans.72 In 18th-century Romania, the custom also required
that a father give his own godfather to all of his children. If the godfather died,
his firstborn inherited the task, thus perpetuating the ritual subordination of
one household to the other.73
Apart from the ritual placement of different households in a position of
social coordination or subordination, another aspect worthy of some consid-
eration (and definitely of more research) is the role played by each household
member in the household godparenthood strategy. The first question that
arises is who took the decision about which godparents to select (if a deci-
sion was possible, since customs like that described for Romania allowed lit-
tle or no space for manoeuvre but as far as we know, customs of this kind
were far from being widespread in Europe). Elsewhere, I suggested that the
choice of godparents was relatively free from the control of the larger family
or the kinship group; in other words, although a young man was rarely free
to choose his marriage partner, he could usually select the godparents for his
children.74 However, I also suggested the existence of couple strategies, with
the wife acting as godmother integrating the ties established by the husband
acting as godfather. Some evidence of these processes can be found by ana-
lyzing the careers of godparents; that is, their presence at baptisms during
the course of their life. For example in 16th and early 17th-century Ivrea, if we
compare the careers of the husband (as godfather) and of the wife (as god-
mother) we get the impression of a common purpose, and also of a certain
degree of integration. In fact, it is a fairly common occurrence to find the hus-
band playing a particularly active role in the earlier years, while later in the life
cycle of the couple it is the wife who participates most often at baptisms as
godmother. Daughters also can be activated to further support the household
godparenthood strategies.75
70 Sabean, Kinship.
71 Barbara Rajkay and Wolfgang Reinhard, Le choix des parrains dans une ville bi-
confessionnelle. Oettingen de 1580 1806, in Aux sources de la puissance: sociabilit et
parent, ed. Franoise Thelamon (Rouen, 1989), 161167.
72 Hammel, Alternative Social Structures.
73 Vintil-Ghiulescu, Construire autour du baptme, 273274.
75 Alfani, Fathers and Godfathers, 175180; idem, Les rseaux de marrainage en Italie du Nord
du XVe au XVIIe sicle: coutumes, volution, parcours individuels, Histoire, Economie et
Socit, 4 (2006), 1744.
166 Alfani
Different household components, then, contributed to a largely com-

mon purpose. One open question is whether the existence of couple strate-
gies implied an active role of women also in drawing an overall strategy of
social relations, or whether they simply acted in vece of their husbands, who,
by reducing their own presences at baptisms, might have wished to mark a
process of status acquisition, while at the same time preserving useful formal
social contacts through the feminine components of their household.76 On
this like on many other aspects of the history of godparenthood, more research
would be needed.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided a survey of long-term changes in spiritual kinship

and godparenthood regulations and practices, paying particular attention
to how the East and West influenced each other, and on processes of diver-
gence between different versions of the Christian religion following two main
breakpoints: the East-West Schism (11th century) and the Reformation (16th
century).
In the late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, it was in the Eastern Church
that the notion of spiritual kinship as well as that of spiritual incest developed
first, later spreading to the West. The first appearance of baptismal godparents,
by contrast, is related to the introduction of infant baptism and is difficult to
place geographically. However, the tendency towards an increase in the num-
ber of godparents seems to have been a characteristic of the West, while in the
East, new customs prescribing the presence of more than one godparent were
considered Latin influences to be fought. This is particularly true after the
Schism, which however from our specific perspective does not seem to have
been the cause of East-West divergence, neither in regulations (both Catholic
and Orthodox favoured expansion of the boundaries of spiritual kinship, as
well as reduction in the number of godparents) nor in customs.
The Reformation, by contrast, was a real turning point, causing divergence
both between East (Orthodox) and West overall, and between Catholic and
Protestant. While the Orthodox continued on the same path they had been
following during the Middle Ages, the Protestants diverged radically concern-
ing spiritual kinship (whose existence they negated entirely). The Catholics
76 Guido Alfani, Padrini, madrine e figliocce dal 1400 a oggi, in Padri nostri. Archetipi e mod-
elli delle relazioni tra padri e figlie, ed. Saveria. Chemotti (Padua, 2010), 119169; idem,
Les rseaux de marrainage.
interrupted a millennium-old process of expansion of spiritual kinship, and

effectively imposed a cap on the number of godparents present at baptism
(one godfather and one godmother maximum). The new rule was consistent
with a (rarely applied) regulatory tradition, and consequently was similar to
the regulations spread among the Orthodox, but interestingly, from the point
of view of practices, after the end of the Council of Trent in 1563 it was the
Catholics who seem to have diverged most from the East, as a consequence
of the verticalization of godparenthood that followed a sudden and drastic
reform affecting actual practices.
In other respects, however, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant seem to have
followed much the same path. In particular, from the 18th19th century all of
them seem to have been affected by a process leading to the increase in the
number of godparents being selected from among kin, a practice which had
accounted for just a small minority of choices throughout the Medieval and
Early Modern period. This process, which ultimately led to godparents being
selected predominantly from kin, significantly changed the ways in which
spiritual kinship connected individuals and households. More generally, the
chapter has provided some initial insights into how households developed
strategies of coordination or subordination/patronage with other households,
and how different members of the household participated in these common
strategies. However, this is a field in which much more comparative research
is needed, especially in the East, research which promises to shed new light
on household and individual interaction as well as on general tendencies in
strategies of social alliance across the European continent.
CHAPTER 8
Household Structure in the Nineteenth Century in

a Transylvanian Village
Judit Ambrus
The topic of family and household structure has been intensively investigated
by Hungarian historians and ethnographers alike since the middle of the previ-
ous century. Ethnographers rarely use the method of quantitative analysis if
they use historical sources it is usually qualitatively, or their work is generally
based on classical ethnographic methods: observation and oral questioning.
One result of the growing volume of family and household analysis in the field
of historic demography in the second half of the 20th century especially that
of Rudolf Andorka, Tams Farag and Dezs Dnyi1 was to query the preva-
lence of the joint family2 type in Hungary, a notion had found wide accep-
tance amongst ethnographers. According to these investigations into historical
demography the joint family type was neither as common nor as widespread
in Hungarian peasant society at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the
19th centuries as had been assumed in the ethnographic literature. It was most
1 Rudolf Andorka, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele kt dl-dunntli faluban

(Alsnyken s Klkeden). Ksrlet P. Laslett elemzsi mdszernek felhasznlsra [Size
and Structure of Families and Households in Two Transdanubian Villages (Alsnyk and
Klked)], Trtneti Statisztikai Tanulmnyok, 3 (1977), 215236; Rudolf Andorka and Tams
Farag, Pre-industrial Household Structure in Hungary, in Family Forms in Historic Europe,
eds. Richard Wall, Jean Robin and Peter Laslett(Cambridge, 1983), 281308; Tams Farag,
Hztarts, csald, rokonsg [Household, Family, Relations], Ethnographia, 94: 2 (1983), 216
254; Tams Farag, Tr is id csald s trtnelem [Time and Space Families and History]
(Miskolc, 1999); Dezs Dnyi, Hztarts s csald nagysga s struktrja az iparosods
eltt Magyarorszgon [Household, Family Size and Structure in Pre-industrial Hungary],
Trtneti-Statisztikai Tanulmnyok, 3 (1977), 5104.
2 I use the term joint family here as an equivalent of the Hungarian term nagycsald, by
which is meant in the terminology of ethnographers a patriarchal group involving several
(either directly descended or collaterally connected) families related by economic and kin-
ship bonds living in the same house (or on the same plot) farming and consuming together
under the leadership of the head of the household (gazda), usually the eldest man. Work on
the estate and the goods produced by the family members were allocated by him. A joint
family like this generally contained 2025 people (though groups of 40 were not unknown),
and often split up after the death of the head of the family.

Household Structure in a Transylvanian Village 169
typically found in poor, barely developed uplands, and in those areas where
the density of population was low, the extent of disposable lands was large,
and the population practised an extensive form of farming.
As far as long-term changes in household structure in Hungary in the 18th
and 19th centuries are concerned, Tams Farag asserts in the latest summary
of research in that area that the mean size of households in most of the peas-
ant communities was between 4.5 and 5.7 persons in the 18th and 19th cen-
turies, while in the countrywide the overwhelming majority of households
contained 36 inhabitants.3 At the same time it is important to note that this
general picture covers variations in household structure and household type in
different regions of the country.
In rural communities it was not rare to find households composed of sev-
eral generations of the same family living together. This situation obtained
until the end of the 19th century not only was the number of those living
alone low, but also that of old people living solely with their spouse or only one
child.4 Andorka drew attention to another characteristic of Hungarian peasant
co-habiting strategies: until the middle of the 20th century it was quite com-
mon for married children to stay in the parental house for several years, and
this found support in the norms of the communities since it meant mutual
help and benefits for both the older and younger generations.5
Nevertheless, from the beginning of the 20th century the mean size of
households in Hungary started to decrease and the structure of the house-
holds to become less complex. In Transylvania this tendency seems to have
begun one or two generations later than in the (post World War I) territory
of Hungary.6 In Transylvanian historical literature concerning the family it is
often assumed that the nuclear family type predominates in the region at the
end of the 19th century, though islands of the joint family type are also found
3 Tams Farag, Nemek, nemzedkek, rokonsg, csald [Gender, Generations, Relations,

Family], in Magyar nprajz VIII., eds. Mihly Srkny and Mikls Szilgyi (Budapest, 2000),
457.
4 Farag, Nemek, nemzedkek, rokonsg, csald, 458.
5 Rudolf Andorka, Hztartsi rendszerek s az ids emberek lete a 1819. szzadi mag-
yarorszgi falvakban [Household Structure and the Lives of Older People in 18th and
19th Century Hungarian Villages], in idem, Gyermek, csald, trtnelem [Children, Family,
History] (Budapest, 2001), 257.
6 Farag, Nemek, nemzedkek, rokonsg, csald, 470472. In Transylvania the research into
Hungarian communities households and families thus far conducted does not even reach
the level of the research relating to the communities in present-day Hungary.
170 Ambrus
Csk and Arad counties and Kalotaszeg are considered such areas.7 This latter
area, Kalotaszeg, is an ethnographic region in Transylvania (near to the city of
Cluj-Napoca) which has been a part of Romania for almost a hundred years
but is still inhabited by large Hungarian communities. The inhabitants of the
region in the past had lived predominantly on agriculture, but owing to the low
fertility of their lands they had to seek work as day-labourers, lime-burners,
stone carvers and merchants.8 The village of Magyarvista (Vitea),9 in which
I conducted anthropological fieldwork between 2004 and 2007, is located in
this region (18 kilometres from Cluj-Napoca, Cluj county, Romania), and had
the same characteristics in the 19th century and in the first half of the twenti-
eth century. In the period this analysis refers to (the end of the 19th century)10
a predominantly Hungarian and Calvinist11 community lived in Vista, which
according to the official census of Hungary in 1900 was an essentially agricul-
tural community.12
7 kos Egyed, Falu, vros, civilizci. Tanulmnyok a jobbgyfelszabadts s a kapitalizmus

trtnetbl Erdlyben 18481914 [Villages, Cities, Civilization. Studies in the Liberation of
Serfs and the History of Capitalism in Transylvania. 18481914] (Bucharest, 1981), 261.
8 Jnos Jank, Kalotaszeg magyar npe [The Hungarians in Kalotaszeg] (Budapest, 1998),
56.
9 The official form of the name of the village today is Vitea in Romanian and Magyarvista
in Hungarian, but it used to be Vista in the period under discussion, thus we use this form
in this paper.
10 At the end of the 19th century the village was in Hungary, as Transylvania was then
part of Hungary until the Trianon treaty (1920), according to the provisions of which
Transylvania was annexed by Romania.
11 In the middle and the second half of the 19th century c. 60% of the population in
Transylvania belonged to the Orthodox and Uniate Church, 1011% to the Roman
Catholic and 14% to the Calvinist Church. According to the historical demographic
research conducted on the region, the Orthodox and Uniate congregations consisted
of Romanians, while the Roman Catholics and Calvinists were Hungarians. Nyrdy R.
Kroly: Erdly npessgnek etnikai s vallsi tagoldsa a magyar llamalaptstl a dual-
izmus korig [The Ethnic and Religious Structure of the Population of Transylvania from
the Foundation of the Hungarian State to the Dualist Era], A Kzponti Statisztikai Hivatal
Npessgtudomnyi Kutat Intzetnek trtneti demogrfiai fzetei, 3 (Budapest, 1987),
755 (3538).
12 92% of the active population made their living from agriculture and horticulture. As my
research originally was not historical (this aspect of the life of the community began to
interest me only once the research started) I have not yet looked systematically at the
archival sources and cannot give a more detailed description of the occupational struc-
ture of the community in the 19th century, as 19th-century censuses do not give details of
this for particular communities.
In the course of the fieldwork the research focused on the changing role of
the elderly in the village in the 20th century, recording 37 interviews there. The
interviews were recorded in two sections: first a life story interview and then a
semi-structured one that contained questions related to household and fam-
ily forms in which the subject of the interview lived during the course of their
life, and questions related to different aspects of old age. At a certain point
in the research it was necessary to reveal the historical background of family
and household forms in the community for the sake of a better understanding
the main topic, and the investigations were extended to the documents in the
archive of the congregation. Amongst these I found a so-called family book,
which became the starting point of the analysis presented in this study. The
reason for starting to analyse this family book was to clarify the part played
by family and household structure in determining the framework of elderly
peoples lives in this village and this analysis confronted me with several
methodological questions which are, in my judgement, relevant not just in
this particular case and source. The aim of this article is, besides providing
a description of the structure of a specific administration form, which was
mainly used in the Transylvanian Calvinist Church, to attempt to find answers
to these methodological problems. The most important question is that of how
these categories, which were elaborated by Laslett and his research group and
are widely used in studies dealing with household-structure in different parts
of the world, can be applied in this particular case.13 In the case of such a source
as the family book, is it possible to interpret the kindred families recorded in
it as households according to the definition of Laslett? Does such a one-off
registration provide enough information to apply the original definition of
household without (partially) basing our interpretation on assumptions? How
does the rethinking and re-examination of the analysis in the context of other
sources and data colour the picture we get from the original source?
I am aware of the fact that analysing household and family forms and struc-
tures requires a complex and dynamic approach using different types of sources
if we want to show a picture of the real content and functions of the social phe-
nomena we call household or family in the context of a particular community,
and if not only quantitative sources are to determine what we understand by
household or family.14 In the case of the investigated community it is necessary
13 For the definition of household see Peter Laslett, Introduction: the History of the Family,
in Household and Family in Past Time, eds. Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (Cambridge,
1972), 2832.
14 Cf. Lutz K. Berkner, The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant
Household: An Eighteenth-Century Austrian Example, American Historical Review, 77
(1972), 398418.
172 Ambrus
to extend the analyses to further sources (historical qualitative sources such

as wills, court proceedings) and aspects (e.g. landholding, retirement arrange-
ments, inheritance, the number and frequency of children in the family, the
role of religion). This article summarizes the first results of research which
aims to reveal the household and family structure in a Transylvanian village
and the questions raised by the first phase (based mainly on quantitative data)
of a broader research project.
The family books kept by the Hungarian Calvinist Church in Transylvania15
are a special kind of ecclesiastical source, which emerged as an additional
administrative form (besides the parochial registers) in the second half of
the 19th century, when the General Assembly of the Church introduced and
worked out the structure and rules for keeping this type of register.16 Their
importance lies in the fact that they are under-researched by Hungarian schol-
ars dealing with family and household structure or family history, historians,
demographers and ethnographers equally. In the family books two leaves
served as a Family page: on the left hand side the heads of the families that
is to say, the parents and on the right their children were to be recorded. In
relation to the parents, their names, dates of birth, date of marriage and dates
of death had to be entered. The same data was entered for their children, with
the addition of the dates of their confirmations (see Figure 8.1). The main rules
for keeping them as laid down by the Church were the following:
the pastor had to start a new page for every family if a child established
their own family, the number of the page thus begun for the new family was
then recorded in the Notes column on the original family page
the Moving away column had to be filled in only if somebody left the settle-
ment; so it was not mandatory for the pastor to record a change of address
within the settlement
if a widow remarried she had to be recorded on the page of her new husband
15 As far as I know the Churches (Calvinist and Catholic) tried to introduce this administra-
tive form in the present territory of Hungary too, but it did not become as prevalent as in
Transylvania.
16 In 1874 the Assembly of the Transylvanian Church District obliged the pastors to keep a
family book for their own congregation (Reports of the Assembly 187475. II/3. Archive of
the Calvinist Church, Cluj). Some years later the assembly realized that in many congre-
gations the pastors had neglected the administration of the families, and thus ordained
that the canonica visitatio had to check the family books of the parishes and punish the
pastor if the book was incomplete (Reports of the Assembly 187884. II/109. Archive of
the Calvinist Church, Cluj).
FIGURE 8.1 Family book of Vista
in bigger towns it was acceptable for the pastor not to note the house
number
divorces had to be written in the Notes column
the rules also governed those people who lived with the nuclear family but
were not members of it: relatives had to be registered, but servants did not.
After starting a family book and registering all the Calvinist families in it,
the pastor had to continue the registration of all the above-mentioned data
(births, marriages etc.). Thus, if a family book was kept correctly, it included all
the families in the congregation and the main demographic data concerning
the family members lives.
The particular family book I analysed17 was begun in the congregation of
Vista in 1883 and it was in use until 1972. Missing data is quite rare in this family
book, and in most cases can be filled in using data from the parish registries. As
Vista has been inhabited by Hungarian Calvinists since the middle of the 19th
17 Family book of Vista, I/5. Archive of Magyarvista Congregation.

174 Ambrus
century,18 this source involves the whole Hungarian community of this village.19
Besides the above-mentioned data, the book also contains additional notes
by the various priests in connection with certain events in the families and
individuals lives and their habits and characters. The arrangement of the data
concerning those families that were added under a house number in the fam-
ily book indicates that the local priest who started to keep the register took
on the task of constructing a status animarum he registered all the Calvinist
families in the village living together at the time of starting the book and their
exact birth, marriage and death dates. The pastors of the Vista Congregation
recorded more than 1,300 conjugal families in the course of almost a hundred
years in the book. Since there was a strong connection between the nationality
and the religion of the inhabitants (the Hungarians in the village belonged to
the Calvinist Church, and Romanians belonged to the Uniate20), the data in
the family book cover the Hungarian Calvinist community of Vista.21
This huge amount of data and its method of arrangement raises the prob-
lem of how to differentiate between those who were registered as the part of
this initial registration22 and those who were registered later on. In the case
of the first registration, it also raises the question of when this registration
took place. By analysing the arrangement of the data I tried to get a reassuring
answer to these questions. The pastor who made this initial registration added
a serial number to all nuclear families and listed them under a house number.
Considering the fact that in those families which were assigned a serial num-
ber and arranged in the family book in sequence, the date of marriage was
18 The proportion of Hungarians and Calvinists has been about 90% since 1850.
19 The completeness of the family book will be discussed later.
20 Uniate (or Eastern Rite) Churches are Christian Churches in Eastern-Europe which
acknowledge the authority of the Pope (as the head of the Christian Church) and the
Roman curia but retain their own language, religious laws and liturgy.
21 According to the national census in 1881, the number of those whose mother tongue was
Hungarian was 810 and those who spoke Romanian as a mother tongue numbered 104
the number of Calvinists was 835 and the members of the United Church was 104. The
difference may originate from the inclusion of those infants who could not speak at the
time of the census but had already been christened (28) and/or those whose nationality
was defined as other in the census (7). The fact that there are no Romanian names in
the family book or in the registry of births, marriages and deaths reinforces the correla-
tion between nationality and religion as well. 87% of the population was Calvinist (and
Hungarian) in 1881 according to the census.
22 This initial registration was made by Lajos Knya who was the priest of the congregation
between 1855 and 1905.
practically without exception before 29th January 1884,23 and the fact that the
couple married on this date is recorded in the beginning of the book,24 we can
conclude that this first and original registration must have taken place at the
end of 1883 or the beginning of 1884. A short period after this initial registra-
tion involving all the Calvinist families in Vista the pastor abandoned the
recording of house numbers. Thus, unfortunately, this source does not enable
us to follow the changes in household structure through time, but only in
cross-section.
If we follow the practice that presumes the families were linked by kinship
and locality, sharing activities and consumption, we can consider the families
listed under the same house number as households. In this way I conducted
an analysis of the structure of the households on the basis of this original reg-
istration from 1883/84 using the categories elaborated by Laslett, except that
in this particular case the subcategories of Laslett (4a) and (4b), also (5a) and
(5b) could not be distinguished within the main categories (4 and 5), since it is
not possible to define the heads of the households.25 In spite of that, this kind
of ecclesiastical registration form is an important, multifaceted and useful but
unexploited source for investigations in the field of historical demography and
ethnography; in fact, there is not a single study in the Hungarian literature
which uses this type of source. That is why a detailed description of the meth-
odology of the analysis is provided before unfolding the results relating to the
household structure itself. Another reason for providing such a methodologi-
cal description lays in the nature of the source: it has a different structure to
that of the documents generally used in the field of historical demography,
as it involves a longitudinal sequence of data that raises some specific issues
concerning the analysis.
First of all, it was essential to clarify whether this family book was com-
plete and sufficiently reliable to serve as the basis of the analysis. I used the
23 Though there are 3 exceptions where the serial number fits into the order of the list but
the date of the marriage is earlier, the common law marriage notes were recorded next
to these families by the priest and the first children of these couples were born before the
date of their marriage; thus it is quite obvious that these couples had been living together
before they officially got married.
24 Altogether 230 families are provided with a serial number this particular one is the 22nd.
25 In several cases the families recorded under the same house number by the priest were
not recorded on the same sheet. The regulations of the church relating to the keeping of a
family book can provide an explanation for this: the pastors had to record every conjugal
family on different sheets. Because of this we cannot apply the method of considering the
first person listed as the head of the household.
176 Ambrus
data of the national census in 188126 to check the completeness of this register:
the census recorded 835 Calvinists. The number of the population recorded
in the framework of the pastors registration in 1883/188427 was 847 people.
Since there is no significant difference between these data we can rely on this
document as a registration that included approximately the whole Hungarian
population of the village at the end of 1883 / the beginning of 1884.28 Following
this, I identified the families in the book that were registered under the same
house number, and, if necessary, completed the data concerning members of
these families from the register of births, marriages and deaths. I then filtered
out those who had left the household before the end of January 1884 and those
who were born after this date. In this way it was possible to identify 128 house-
holds as existing at this time. Of these, 117 were households in which the kin-
ship type could clearly be established (naturally this was a problem mainly
in the case of complex households). I restricted my analysis only to these
117 cohabiting familial groups that included altogether 748 people.29
Thereafter an analysis of the structure of these households was conducted,
which gave following results presented in Table 8.1. More than a half (59.5%) of
the households had a complex structure and of these, 48% were of the multi-
ple (Laslett 5) type, and 9.5% of the extended household type (Laslett 4). More
than a third of the households (40%) belonged to the simple type (Laslett 3).
Besides this, there was one no family-type (L2)30 and there were just two per-
sons living alone one widowed woman, and a bachelor.31 In the extended
households, in every case a cohabiting widowed parent lived with a married
son and his family. According to the analysis the mean household size was 6.3
at the beginning of 1884 in Vista. This is close to the figure which can be calcu-
lated on the basis of the national census in 1881 (5.9).
19 (34%) of the multiple families can be regarded as belonging to Lasletts
category (5e). In these households there were conjugal family units disposed
both laterally and vertically as well (married parents with their married child/
26 The nominal date of the census was officially the first of January 1881.
27 I defined the number of the persons recorded in the course of this first registration
that is, those who could have lived under a particular house number before 29th January
1884 by checking the dates of births, deaths and (in the case of children) marriages.
28 Since the registry of death is missing from the period between 1876 and 1905 it was not
possible to calculate the natural increase of the population between 1880 and 1884.
29 Silvia Sovi has drawn my attention to the fact that non-related members of a house-
hold could be the poor inmates or unrelated mothers with illegitimate children. Further
research is needed to clarify this.
30 A widow and her grandchild.
31 In this case the house was listed as unnumbered.
TABLE 8.1 Household types in Vista (1883/1884)
Complex Households Simple Households No Family Type Alone

Multiple Type Extended Type
% No. % No. % No. % No. % No.
48% 56 9.5% 11 40% 47 0.9% 1 1.7% 2
children). Almost the same proportion (32%) of households (18) belonged to

the type (5a or 5b according to Laslett) in which a secondary unit (up or down)
cohabited with one conjugal family unit. The rest of the households belonged
to the 5c or 5d type: in 6 households (11%) married siblings cohabited with
a widowed parent (5c), and 13 households (23%) of this type involved later-
ally conjoined conjugal families without a parent of cohabiting siblings (5d).
Where a household comprised more than one conjugal family, the presence of
a married woman living with her parents was very rare. This reinforces the fact
that the settlement pattern was predominantly patrilocal in this village at this
time (by the middle of the 20th century it had changed considerably due to the
increased use of birth control). In half of the households two generations lived
together (57%) and one third of them comprised three generations (36%).32 In
this village at the end of the 19th century it was rare to live in a one generation
household only the 2 solitary dwellers, 4 conjugal families without children,
and a multiple household in which two married siblings lived together without
children belonged to this category.
According to investigations conducted into Hungarian peasant society, it
was not unknown in the 18th and 19th centuries for married children (sons)
to live in the household of their parents.33 Andorka revealed the existence of
such cases in those Transdanubian villages (Alsnyk and Klked) he exam-
ined on the basis of two status animarum books from the end of the 18th and
the beginning of the 19th centuries.34 Although the proportion of cohabiting
32 There were four generations in two multiple households.

33 Edit Fl and Tams Hofer, Proper Peasants (Chicago-Budapest, 1969), 103; Ildik Husz,
Aprl fikra. rksdsi jogszoksok s gyakorlat Zsmbkon a 19. szzad els
felben [From Father to Son. Inheritance Practices in Zsmbk in the First Half of the
19th Century], Korall 2 (2000), 1213.
34 Andorka, Rudolf, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele, 156.
178 Ambrus
married siblings was lower in these villages,35 in general the structure of their
households was quite similar to that in Vista, which is discussed here: more
than half of the households were complex (Laslett 4 and 5 type), the propor-
tion of simple households was quite large, the number of those living alone was
insignificant, and the generational depth of households was almost the same
as found here. As Andorka pointed out in his study, a relatively low mortality
rate (especially adult mortality) is a premise of the high frequency of three
generational households in a community. Furthermore Andorka assumed that
there must have been some connection between the relatively high proportion
of three generational households and the low age at marriage, as also of the
high proportion of remarried widows / widowers.36 In Vista, due to the lack
of registration of death between 1876 and 1905 it was not possible to calculate
mortality, but we can indicate the average age of marriage: between 1870 and
1890 the average age of women when they got married was 2021 and for men
it was 2425 according to the data in the register of marriages. But in relation
to this data we have to consider the emerging fact of a number of common law
marriages (we will return to this later), so the actual average age of marriage
could have been lower.37
In order to make clearer the picture given by the data of the family book,
I re-examined the validity of my analysis in the light of the quantitative and
qualitative data of the family book itself and of further sources the national
census (1881), registers of births, deaths and marriages, also a registry compiled
by the local priest at the beginning of the 20th century that includes the couples
living together without being married, plus additional notes by the priests in
the family book, and interviews that I recorded during my fieldwork in Vista
providing data concerning the forms of cohabiting in the 1920s and 1930s.
On the basis of the national census that took place in 1881 in Hungary, it is
possible to compare the number of the houses in Vista recorded in the reg-
istration compiled by the priest and recorded by the census. The number of
the houses (if we assume that each house number belonged to a single house)
in which Calvinist families were living at the time of the priests registration
was 128. According to the 1881 census the number of houses in Vista was 161.
The most obvious explanation for the difference between the two data is
that the houses which were not registered in the family book were inhabited
by the non-Calvinists (mostly Romanians) living in the village at that time.
The number of non-Calvinists in 1881 was 121 and if we assume that they lived
35 13% in Alsnyk and 15% in Klked.

36 Rudolf Andorka, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele, 160.
37 The proportion of remarried widows/widowers has not been analysed yet in Vista.
in small households, this former explanation seems reasonable. At the same

time, given that we do not know anything about the average household size of
the Romanians in the village, another possibility emerges: the Romanians did
not live in small households and the explanation for the difference between
the number of the houses is that the house numbers in the family book cover
more than one building on the same plot of ground. Since Kalotaszeg has been
comprehensively researched by ethnographers (owing to the rich folk-art of
the region) since the 1870s, we have some descriptions by ethnographers relat-
ing to the cohabiting strategies of the Hungarians living in the region which
reinforce this second possibility, such as the following from 1907, provided by
Dezs Malonyay who spent a lot of time in the villages of Kalotaszeg at the
beginning of the 20th century and visited, among others, Vista:
The house of Mrton Vrs and Jnos Vrs is a very ably enlarged
dwelling. To be able to stay together with their younger sister who has
got married, they make room for the young couple on the part of their
plot adjacent to the street. When the third generation, the grandson, gets
married, they will separate totally: the parents and the grandparents will
stay in the old house, the grandson will build a new house for himself on
the other side of the plot, maybe a nicer one than the old house itself.
The house of old Pl Lrinc is such a one: he lives up next to the fruit-
garden and his married sons, Gyrgy and Istvn live down close to the
gate and the barn because usually they have to work there.
If three or four generations stay together fathers, sons and not rarely
the great-grandfather as well the house is enlarged. First the elder son
separates when he brings a wife into the house. They make a separate
house38 for the young but just adjoining the same veranda as the old
folks. At such times the old give up their room to the young couple and
they make alterations to the large room at the end of the veranda, which
had, till then, been used for storing the grain crop, and they live in there
after that.39
On the basis of this description we can safely assume that the families listed
in the family book under the same house number in certain cases may indeed
have lived under the same roof (as the definition of household used by Laslett
38 The word house here stands for room according to the Hungarian dialect in Kalotaszeg
in that time.
39 Dezs Malonyay, A magyar np mvszete. I. ktet. (A kalotaszegi magyar np mvszete)
[The Art of Hungarian People of Kalotaszeg] (Budapest, 1907).
180 Ambrus
indicates), but in certain cases they may have lived only on the same plot, close
to each other, but not in the same house.
At this point in the analysis we have to face another problematic aspect of
the definition of household elaborated by Laslett: what do we know about the
families registered in the family book in relation to the third criteria of what
constitutes a household on the basis of the family book? We know for sure
that they were linked by kinship and lived either in the same house or in close
proximity to each other, that is, probably on the same plot. But we do not know
whether the fact that these families were listed under the same house numbers
means that they constituted a unit of production and consumption or not.
Researchers dealing with the analysis of household structure sometimes
set a high value on the residential criterion, and sometimes on patterns of
production and consumption when defining households, thereby giving the
impression that they are making an effort to compensate for the insufficient
information provided by their sources, in order to make them suitable for anal-
ysis and to make possible the application of Lasletts categories.
Farag, in his summary of family and household structure in a compendium
of Hungarian peasant society, summarily assumes that co-residence was an
essential criterion of the household there.40 In his study of peasant society in
the above-mentioned Transdanubian villages, Andorka interpreted co-residing
groups as households on the basis of the residential criterion,41 while in the
study of preindustrial household structure in Hungary which he wrote jointly
with Farag,42 they considered the consumption criterion as decisive, even
if the members of the household lived separately. Edit Fl and Tams Hofer
assumed that the residential criterion was not a fundamental element of joint
production and consumption in tny43 in the 20th century either this latter
could have been realized even in the case of spatial separation of the members
of the household.44 Pter Pozsgai asserted in his work concerning a northern
region45 of Hungary that when children remained in their parents house after
marriage, this did not automatically mean that they constituted a common
40 Farag, Nemek, nemzedkek, rokonsg, csald, 475.

41 Andorka, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele, 158.
42 Andorka and Farag, Preindustrial Household in Hungary, 281308; cf. Richard Wall,
Introduction, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Wall, Robin and Laslett, 9.
43 tny is a village located in the east-northern part of Hungary where Fl and Hofer con-
ducted their ethnographic research for more than 20 years (19541979).
44 Fl and Hofer, Proper Peasants, 80112.; cf. Wall, Introduction, cit., 10.
45 Torna county.
unit of production and consumption together with the older generation they
may have separated partially in production and/or totally in consumption.46
We cannot sidestep the issue raised by these researchers when they point
out that the lack of co-residence does not definitely mean the absence of a
production and consumption unit, and on the contrary, as we have seen, on
the basis of Pozsgais assertions: co-residence does not necessarily means com-
mon production and consumption.47 In connection with this, the family book
of Vista does not provide any information. For this reason I tried to reconstruct
the cohabiting forms of the parents and grandparents of those older people
with whom I had the opportunity to record interviews during my fieldwork in
the village. These examples therefore recall the first decades of the 20th cen-
tury (mainly the 1920s and 1930s). Amongst those households which I managed
to reconstruct on the basis of the interviews and in which several conjugal
units lived in the same house, four main forms were identifiable: (1) a married
son living with his parents in the same household, that is, they shared produc-
tion and consumption; (2) a married son living with his parents in separate
households (in these cases the reason for not living in common households
was specific: the son did not work in agriculture, or the relationship between
the sons wife and his mother was troubled); (3) married brothers and their
parents living in the same house but in separate households; (4) married
brothers living with their parents in the same house where the parents shared
the household with only one of their sons (usually with the younger one). I am
aware of the fact that these households existed three or four decades later than
the ones in the registry of the family book, but would argue that these later
examples leave room for us to suspect that the variations of cohabiting and
sharing households of the families would probably have been more miscella-
neous than the arrangement of the data in the registry itself shows.
In the light of the historical and ethnographic literature we can see that
the joint family type was prevalent in the Kalotaszeg region at the end of the
19th century, and that co-residence and farming together by three or four fami-
lies was not rare even in the first half of the 20th century. Furthermore, on the
evidence of the interviews analysed above, we can assume that those house-
holds where married siblings lived together in Vista (with or without parents)
46 Pter Pozsgai, Csaldok s hztartsok. Torna megye trsadalma a 19. szzad kzepn
[Familes and Households. Torna County Society in the Middle of the 19th Century], PhD
dissertation, Etvs Lornd Tudomny Eegyetem, Budapest, 2006), 229, 252; cf. Rudolf
Andorka, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele, 158.
47 Cf. Jack Goody, The Evolution of the Family, in Household and Family in Past Time, eds.
Laslett and Wall, 108110.
182 Ambrus
were, according to our analysis, joint families, and the other households
(which were of the complex, 4 and 5 type) belonged to some other (previous
or subsequent) phase of the household cycle of the joint family system.48 But
we cannot take this for granted in all cases as is reinforced by the above men-
tioned examples. Co-residence strengthens the possibility of the existence of a
production and consumption unit, but there may have been varying practices,
depending on, for example, the size of the plot of land, the particular form of
farming,49 or the relationship between the family members.
In the case of Vista another important aspect of the problem of households
becomes apparent, namely the stability of marriages. Conjugal families are the
foundation of households, any household systems long-term strategy in a com-
munity is strongly determined by this. I therefore sought traces of relationship
instability in the documents. According to the legal custom, divorce cases were
heard by the partial synods (partialis synodus) of the dioceses in Transylvania.
In the proceedings of the Kolozs-Kalota Calvinist Church diocese I found 26
cases in which both the husband and wife were from Vista and 9 cases in which
one of the couple was from this village. From the first group, between 1791 and
1818 there were 9 cases recorded, and 15 in the period between 1867 and 1894.50
The 138 marriages started between 1871 and 1900 recorded in the family book
ended in divorce in ten of cases (7%), according to the pastors notes. Should
we consider these numbers high or low or usual? Ethnographic research shows
that divorce appears as a social phenomenon in Hungarian peasant society
just after the turn of the 20th century.51 It was considered to be alien to the
norms and practices of peasant communities until the beginning of the 20th
century (or in some regions even to the middle of the century)52 because of
the strength of the tendency to keep the family together, even if the marriage
was bad and full of conflicts, in the interest of guaranteeing the stability of
the community.53 Relying upon these assertions, we have to say that the early
48 Cf. Andorka, A csald s hztarts nagysga s sszettele, 159.

49 See Fl and Hofer, Proper Peasants, 80112.
50 Between 1819 and 1866 there were no cases in the report with the exception of the two
in 1852.
51 See Jzsef Kotics, A n szerepnek vltozsa polgrosod parasztkzssgekben.
(Vlsok a Tiszazugban) [The Changing Role of Women in Peasant Societies Rising into
the Middle Class. Divorces in Tiszazug], in Jzsef Kotics, Msok tekintetben (Miskolc,
2001), 65.
52 Ern Trkny Szcs, Magyar jogi npszoksok [Hungarian Common Law] (Budapest,
1981), 275.
53 Tams Hofer and Edit Fl conducted research in tny (Hungary) between 1951 and 1967,
and they found that divorce was alien to the villagers norms where family life was con-
occurrence of divorces and their spread in the last decades of the 19th century
was unusual.54
The documents also illuminate another feature of the marriages in this vil-
lage: the custom of establishing a family without getting officially married.
There is no space here to go into the details of this, but if we confine ourselves
to the most important facts, we can say the following. In the Historia Domus
of the Congregation55 that was started sometime in 1929 by the local priest
there is a note in connection with the presumed date of the first common-law
marriage:
The first person to do this was Istvn Barta, who had lost an arm in the
battle of Knnigratz. As a cripple he served in the house of a furrier,
Istvn Nagy. His daughter and Barta fell in love with each other, but as
they were not permitted to be together, they eloped. This could have
happened sometime at the very end of the 1860s since their first child
was born on 23rd June 1870. Their example was soon followed by many
others it swept across the area like a polluted flood.56
Amongst the 187 couples who were registered in the course of the initial regis-
tration of the families in 1883/1884, there were 9 in connection with whom the
priest noted the fact that they had lived together before they got married. The
duration of these common law marriages57 was mostly between 1 and 3 years
(in one case 5 years). Should we consider these couples as rare exceptions or as
indicators of an important change in the mentality and values related to mar-
riage and family life in Vista? To decide this, it was necessary to examine other
sources in the Congregation: the List of Common Law Marriages, which was
started in 1912, and the registry of marriages. From the period we are interested
in there just a few couples recorded in the List of Common Law Marriages,
but in this case we have to consider the fact that it was started some decades
cerned. The first divorce in this village took place at the beginning of the 20th century,
but the number of divorced people was still low in the period when they were doing their
research. The people in tny were accustomed to resigning themselves to their fate if
their marriage was bad and divorced only rarely. Fl and Hofer, Proper Peasants, 146147.
54 My research included not just Vista but another Hungarian village in Cluj county Kide
(Chidea) and in that village I found just a few divorce cases in the reports.
55 Notes on the Past of the Congregation of Vista. Archives of the Vista Congregation. See
Historia Domus.
56 Historia Domus, 56.
57 The priests of the Congregation regarded as common law marriage those cohabiting
couples who did not get married either in an ecclesiastical or in a civil ceremony.
184 Ambrus
later. What is more important here is that altogether there are 979 couples who
lived together without being officially married for a shorter or longer period
recorded in the list in the period 1886 (the date of the first common law mar-
riage recorded here) up to the beginning of the 21st century (2005). The num-
ber of such cases was highest in the decades between 1920 and 1960.
In the register of marriages, unfortunately, the priests noted the fact of com-
mon law marriage only after 1905, but after that year this kind of note became
frequent in it. On the basis of the analysis of these notes, it seems clear that
after the beginning of the 20th century starting family life without officially
getting married became a widespread practice amongst the Hungarians in
Vista (for instance, of the couples who got married between 1910 and 1920,
more than 60% (56 cases) started their common life cohabiting without being
married, and in most cases its duration was over one year.58 Thus the examples
we found in the family book were not unique, one-off cases, but the first signs
of a process that reached its culmination in the first decades of the 20th cen-
tury in this community. Regarding the potential reasons for common law mar-
riages, several can be identified such as conflicts with parents about the future
wife / husband, the high cost of weddings, or a rule that was introduced in 1853
and raised the age limit of marriage for men to 24.59 According to the priest
notes in the Historia Domus the most likely reason in the case of Vista seems
to be the avoidance of the high costs of a wedding at first, but by the begin-
ning of the 20th century it had become a widespread and customary practice.
However, it is still a question whether this change of the habits and mentality
meant the instability of relationships and marriages here the priests notes in
the family book and in the Historia Domus reinforce the assumption that it did:
In a common law marriage separating is as easy as uniting. Thus a woman

has lived together with four or five men for more or less time, and a man
has tried several women by the time they finally settle with one.60
These features of the marriage habits of this community can be understood as

an indicator of weakening of community control, of secularisation, the plurali-
sation of the norms, the strengthening of individual values, and changes in the
58 In consequence the number of illegitimate children was also high from the end of the
19th century: according to the records of the birth registry of the congregation, the pro-
portion of them was higher than 10% between 1870 and 1910.
59 Szcs, Magyar jogi npszoksok, 254.
60 Historia Domus, 91.
status of women in the community.61 We have to reckon with this especially

because, as we described above, in the 1870s symptoms began to appear of this
change in mentality and values relating to marriage and the family, which indi-
cated a more individual way of thinking, thereby making the coexistence of
transitional forms of households and different kinds of household strategies
more possible among the households analyzed in the period examined.
For us to be able to draw a more precise picture of household structure
in Vista at the end of the 19th century, further and more complex research
is required which makes use of additional sources and perspectives, such as
inheritance practice,62 forms of production, relations between households,
the role of the household in the economic and social life of the community (for
instance, in the care of old people), or birth control and the norms behind
these practices. This is indispensable if we are to be able to say with any greater
degree of certainty that these households can indeed be categorized according
to the scheme of Laslett as was done in the first part of this paper.
If researchers in the field fail to do this, and interpret the concept of house-
hold solely on the basis of quantitative sources; if they content themselves with
an analysis of the registers without regard to other kinds of sources; and if they
just make general assumptions concerning the concrete forms of residence,
production and consumption, interpreting the groups listed together in these
registers as households, they run the risk that the household will be defined
by the predefined units of particular sources. This would mean a substantial
simplification of the social reality which characterized the lives of the people
who are mentioned by these sources, and of the reality that is revealed, albeit
in a limited way, by them.63 To avoid this risk we should evolve an approach in
which there is a place for quantitative and qualitative sources alike, and which
has as its goal an anthropological, microhistorical analysis and interpretation
of the whole community, since the household cannot be understood in isola-
tion from the rest of the society of which it formed a part.64
61 Cf. Kotics, A n szerepnek vltozsa, 65. On the relation between divorces and the sta-
tus of women in Hungary see Mnika Mtay, Trvnyszki jtszmk. Vls Debrecenben
17931848 [Court-room Games. Divorce in Debrecen 17931848] (Debrecen, 2006).
62 On the relationship between inheritance practice and household structure, see Husz,
Aprl fikra, 522.
63 Cf. Goody, The Evolution of the Family, 110; Silvia Sovi, Definitions and Documents in
Family History: Towards an Agenda for Comparative Research, in Social Behaviour and
Family Strategies in the Balkans (16th20th Centuries) (Bucharest, 2006), 137; Pter Pozsgai,
Csald s hztarts. Magyarorszgi trtneti demogrfiai forrsok fogalomhasznlata a
1619. Szzadban [Familes and Households. Torna County Society in the Middle of the
19th Century. PhD Thesis], Demogrfia, 34 (2001), 342.
64 Wall, Introduction, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Wall, Robin and Laslett, 7.
Part 3
Family Strategies

CHAPTER 9
Old Age in the Life Cycle of Polish Peasants at the

Turn of the Middle Ages
Piotr Guzowski
The issue of old age in the life cycle of peasants in old Poland has long
attracted the interest of Polish economic and demographic historians, with
Jan Rutkowski as a pioneer in the field. He wrote about the status of old people
in social and economical structures in 18th-century Poland.1 Rutkowskis suc-
cessors have addressed the issue frequently, but studies of old age have usu-
ally been peripheral to scholars primary fields of interest. If they devoted any
attention to this problem, it was usually when they worked with village court
rolls or when they used ethnographic methodology in studying Polish society
in the past.2
The only essay which comprehensively explores the issue of peasants old
age at the beginning of the early modern period is Andrzej Wyczaskis short
text on the institution of the retirement contract (Polish: wymowa).3 There has
1 Jan Rutkowski, Studia z dziejw wsi polskiej XVIXVIII wieku [Studies in the History of Polish
Villages in the 16th18th Centuries] (Warsaw, 1956) (especially the chapter on Studia nad
pooeniem wocian w Polsce XVIII wieku [Studies in the Situation of Peasants in 18th-century
Poland]).
2 Bohdan Baranowski, Kultura ludowa XVII i XVIII wieku na ziemiach Polski rodkowej [Folk
Culture in Central Poland in the 17th and 18th Centuries] (d, 1971), 336n; Andrzej Woniak,
Kultura mazowieckiej wsi paszczynianej XVIII i pocztku XIX wieku (wybrane zagadnie-
nia) [Culture of Masovian Villages in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries Selected Aspects]
(Wrocaw, 1987), 110115; Anna Izydorczyk, Rodzina chopska w Maopolsce w XV i XVI
wieku [The Peasant Family in Little Poland in the 15th and 16th Centuries], in Spoeczestwo
staropolskie, ed. Andrzej Wyczaski [Society in Historic Poland] vol. III (Warsaw, 1983), 727;
Boena Korniak, ycie codzienne mieszkacw parafii spowskiej w wietle ksigi sdowej
klucza dbr Pieskowej Skay, [Everyday Life of the Inhabitants of Spowska Parish in the
Light of the Court Rolls from the Pieskowa Skaa Estate] Rocznik Biblioteki PAU i PAN 45 (2000),
7591; Ewa Baniowska, Chopski wiat w wietle sdowych ksig wiejskich [The World of
Peasants in Village Court Rolls] in Czas zmiany, czas trwania. Studia etnologiczne, eds. Jolanta
Kowalska, Sawoj Szynkiewicz, Ryszard Tomicki [Change and Continuity. Ethnological
Studies] (Warsaw, 2003), 117132.
3 Andrzej Wyczaski, Opieka nad ludmi starymi na wsi polskiej w XVI w. [Elderly Care
in Polish Villages in the 16th Century], in Biedni i bogaci. Studia z dziejw spoeczestwa i

190 Guzowski
also been some demographic research into early modern Polish society, which
focused on the population structure. Among other areas, the research was
aimed also at showing the place of elderly members in the structure of a house-
hold, and determining the percentage of people in the oldest age groups.4 The
chronological range of these studies is, in the majority of cases, limited to the
18th century because of the larger number of sources available for this than
for earlier periods. It is also worth adding that Polish historical demographers
have tried to present the results of their research in a wider European context,5
drawing heavily on the well-established west European historiography on the
issue of old age.6
In my paper, I will try to throw some light on the situation of elderly people
in peasant communities at the turn of the Middle Ages, the period which has
been largely neglected by Polish historical demographers. Polish peasants, as
other European peasants,
are farm households, with access to their means of livelihood in land, uti-
lizing mainly family labour in farm production, always located in a larger
kultury ofiarowane B. Geremkowi w szedziesit rocznic urodzin [The Poor and the Wealthy.
Studies in the History of Society and Culture Dedicated to B. Geremek on his 60th Birthday]
(Warsaw, 1992), 6570.
4 Of special significance among a plethora of works on historical demography is Micha
Kopczyski, Staro nie rado? Ludzie starzy na wsi kujawskiej u schyku XVIII stulecia
[Age is a Heavy Burden? The Elderly in Kuiavian Villages at the End of the 18th Century],
Zapiski Historyczne, 61 (1996), 4564. See also another book by this author: Studia nad
rodzin chopsk w Koronie w XVIIXVIII wieku [Studies on the Peasant Family in the Kingdom
of Poland in the 17th and 18th Centuries] (Warsaw, 1998), especially 147166.
5 Mikoaj Szotysek, Rethinking Eastern Europe: Household Formation Patterns in the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth and European Family Systems, Continuity and Change, 23
(2008), 389427; idem, Three Household Formation Systems in Eastern Europe: Another
Challenge to Spatial Patterns of the European Family, The History of the Family 13: 3 (2008),
223257; Iidem, Life Cycle Service and Family Systems in the Rural Countryside: a Lesson
from Historical East-central Europe, Annales de dmagraphie historique, 17: 1 (2009), 5394.
6 An attempt to summarise previous studies, define methodology and propose the areas for fur-
ther research is David Kertzer and Peter Laslett (eds.), Ageing in the Past: Demography, Society
and Old Age (Berkeley and London, 1995); a synthetic approach to the situation of elderly
people also in central Europe over time is D. Gaunt, The Property and Kin Relationships
of Retired Farmers in Northern and Central Europe, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds.
Richard Wall, Jean Robin and Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1983), 249280. For a model presen-
tation of the question of old age in England see Pat Thane, Old Age in English History. Past
Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford, 2000).
Old Age in the Life Cycle of Polish Peasants 191
economic system, but functionally characterized by partial engagement

in markets which tend to function with a high degree of imperfection.7
In reality in the 15th and 16th century Poland peasants (Polish: kmiecie) were
personally free people, whose dependence on the landlord derived from
the fact of holding the lords land or from the lords public functions (legal
dependence). They were free to dispose of their land and were obliged to per-
form standard duties for their lords: pay rents and dues in kind and provide
unpaid labour.8
Michael Mitterauer noticed that one of the features unique to European
household formation in some areas in Europe was retirement as a form of
maintenance of the parents. It was to characterise not only the inhabitants
of western Europe but also of its central part, where the so-called hide system
(Hufenverfassung) was widespread and where the principal form of peasant
holding was impartible Hufe (the manus or hide). The reach of the hide sys-
tem was similar to the area delimited by the Hajnal line9 and the dividing line
between the Western and Eastern Churches.10 The location of the line between
two models of household, family and marriage has been modified over time,
which in the case of Polish lands means that they have been incorporated into
the area where the western model prevailed.11 The south-eastern parts of the
Kingdom of Poland, i.e. Little Poland and Red Ruthenia, are now perceived
7 Frank Ellis, Peasant Economics: Farm Households and Agrarian Development (Cambridge,
1988), 12. For more about definition of peasantry see Tom Scott, Introduction in The
Peasantries of Europe from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Tom Scott
(London, 1998), 119.
8 Piotr Guzowski, Polish and English Peasants in the Late Medieval and Early Modern
Periods: a Comparative View, in Britain and Poland-Lithuania. Contact and Comparison
from the Middle Ages to 1795, ed. Richard Unger (Leiden, 2008), 137145.
9 John Hajnal, European Marriage in Perspective, in Population in History, eds. D. V. Glass
and D. E. C. Eversley (London, 1965), 101143; see also the same authors Two Kinds of
Preindustrial Household Formation System, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Wall,
Robin and Laslett, 65104.
10 Michael Mitterauer, European Kinship Systems and Household Structures: Medieval
Origins, in Distinct Inheritances. Property, Family and Community in Changing Europe
(Mnster, 2003), eds. Hannes Grandits and Patrick Heady, 3552; Michael Mitterauer, Why
Europe. The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path (Chicago, 2010), 5897.
11 Karl Kaser, Macht und Erbe: Mnnerherrschaft, Besitz und Familie im stlichen Europa
(15001900), (Vienna, 2000); see also his Power and Inheritance: Male Domination,
Property and Family in Eastern Europe, 15001900, History of the Family, 7 (2007), 375395.
192 Guzowski
as borderline areas, characterised by cultural, ethnic and religious diversity,

where elements of the eastern model tended to dominate.
The source material I want to explore is a village court roll from Trzeniowa
village in the south east of Poland.12 Chronologically, the document covers the
period between 1419 and 1609. I have been inspired in my decision to use court
rolls as sources in my research into demographic aspects of the life of medieval
Polish peasants by a seminal book by Zvi Razi, who studied English peasant
families in the later Middle Ages on the basis of manorial court rolls.13 The
rolls contain information about peasants trading in land, about inheritance
procedures, feudal dues, village self-government and elections, and also about
marriages, deaths and migrations. It is assumed that each peasant had his or
her name recorded in village court rolls at least once in his or her lifetime,
which makes the rolls an invaluable primary source in social and demographic
studies on peasant families in the past.
Polish late medieval and early-modern sources containing information
about peasants are neither as numerous nor as detailed as the English ones.
Nevertheless, if a simplified questionnaire is applied to available village court
rolls, they may also serve as a sufficient basis for a demographic reconstruc-
tion of peasant families. Today, only about 200 late medieval and early-modern
village court rolls are available to Polish historians. Most of the rolls come
from Little Poland and Red Ruthenia.14 The emergence of village court rolls
was connected with the introduction of ius Teutonicum in Poland. The head
of the village (Pol. sotys) performed, together with peasant members of the
jury, judicial functions in the village.15 If a peasant wanted the sentence passed
in his case to be officially recorded, the peasant paid a fee and his name and
details of the case were written in the rolls.16 So the vast majority of entries in
12 Helena Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej 14191609 [The Oldest
Trzeniowa Village Court Rolls, 14191609] (Lww, 1923).
13 Zvi Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish. Economy, Society and Demography
in Halesowen 12701400 (Cambridge, 1980).
14 Tomasz Wilicz (ed.), Katalog maopolskich ksig sdowych wiejskich XVXVIII wiek
[Catalogue of Court Rolls in Little Poland in the 15th18th Centuries] (Warsaw, 2007).
15 Stanisaw Grodziski, Ksigi sdowe wiejskie (Zasig terytorialny i geneza) [Village Court
Rolls (their Geography and Origins)], Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 12 (1960), 85139;
Ludwik ysiak, W sprawie genezy ksig sdowych wiejskich [On the Origins of Village
Court Rolls], Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 14 (1962), 175194. By the same author also:
W sprawie genezy ksig sdowych wiejskich (po raz drugi) [On the Origins of Village
Court Rolls (Revisited)], Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 15 (1963), 293297.
16 Adam Vetulani, Warto badawcza ksig sdowych wiejskich [The Research Value of
Village Court Rolls], in Pamitnik VIII Powszechnego Zjazdu Historykw Polskich w Krakowie
the rolls (about 70%) concerned land, its sale, purchase, exchange or inheri-
tance, but the rolls recorded also rents, wills, inventories, loans and pledges,
criminal and civil cases, and conflicts between neighbours.17
There has been much controversy in the historiography between the advo-
cates of a quantitative approach to demographic and social historical studies
and the supporters of applying a qualitative approach drawing on anthro-
pological and sociological methodology.18 In the study of village court rolls,
especially the oldest ones, complex statistical analysis is hardly possible, but
the family reconstruction method and genealogical method help to gain some
insight into the lives and life cycle of medieval peasants.19
In the oldest Trzeniowa court rolls, there are 1,542 entries made between
1419 and 1609. The number of entries in individual years varied. The largest
number was 37, but an average annual number of entries was eight. During
the period under study, there were also 31 years when no cases were recorded.
Most cases were recorded by the so-called zagajne courts which assembled
usually at the turn of the year. Statistically, the majority of entries came from
the period between November and February, although the legal proceedings
themselves might have taken place earlier.20
The role and character of village court rolls accounts for the fact that some
groups of peasants are overrepresented whereas others appear very rarely. The
1417 wrzenia 1958r., cz. 1 [Proceedings of the 8th General Convention of Polish Historians
in Cracow, 1417 September 1985, part 1] (Warsaw, 1958), 99114.
17 Jan Sowiski, Kancelarie wsi maopolskich od koca XIV do schyku XVIII wieku
[Village Offices in Little Poland between the Late 14th and the Late 18th Centuries],
Studia rdoznawcze, 31 (1990), 2536.
18 The first texts indicating the usefulness of the quantitative approach in demographical
analysis were articles by Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The Development
Process of Domestic Groups: Problems of Reconstruction and Possibilities of
Interpretation, Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), 257284; Reinhard Sieder and Michael
Mitterauer, The Reconstruction of the Family Life Course: Theoretical Problems and
Empirical Results, in Family Forms in Historic Europe, eds. Wall, Robin and Laslett,
309345.
19 An attempt to apply this approach to the analysis of a series of registers of parishioners
receiving communion and of parish registers is Mikoaj Szotyseks Central European
Household and Family Systems, and the Hajnal-Mitterauer Line: the Parish of Bujakow
(18th19th Centuries), The History of the Family, 12 (2007), 1942.
20 Piotr Guzowski, Kalendarz gospodarczy i finansowy kmieci polskich na przeomie
redniowiecza i czasw wczesno nowoytnych [Economic and Financial Calendar
of Polish Peasants at the Turn of the Middle Ages], in Czowiek wobec miar i czasu w
przeszoci [Men, measures and time in the past], eds. Piotr Guzowski and Marzena
Liedke (Cracow, 2007), 3649.
194 Guzowski
most frequently recorded were the names of peasants who were the users of
hereditary farms and who at the same time served as jurymen or landlords
officials. Much less frequently, the rolls contained the names of smallholders,
cottagers and lodgers. There is also a discernible lack of balance between the
number of men and women appearing in the rolls. The disproportion may be
explained by the fact that courts treated men as heads of households and their
names that were recorded, even if men, in fact, represented their wives, sisters
or daughters in court.
The number of times individual peasants featured in court cases recorded
in the rolls ranged from one to over one hundred. Sometimes they were not
even personally involved, but their names were recorded to help to locate a
farm which was the subject of a particular case. If the farm was located between
two others, the names of all three peasants were recorded to help to identify
a given piece of land. Thanks to this, it is possible to study some aspects of
the lives of peasants even if they never appeared as personally involved agents
in recorded court cases. Identification of individual people mentioned in the
rolls may often be very difficult because court writers rarely recorded infor-
mation useful in reconstructing relationships between people. Besides, writers
often omitted peasants nicknames and provided only their first names, which
did not facilitate their identification. Despite these difficulties, a simple demo-
graphic analysis of the rolls is possible, allowing for some conclusions con-
cerning an average duration of peasants economic activity, the size of peasant
families (by applying the method of family reconstruction), replacement rate
and territorial selection of spouses.
In the context of the main topic of this paper, it is important what
Trzeniowa village court rolls tell us about the duration of economic activity of
local peasants. Trzeniowa was a crown village, located in the Sanok adminis-
trative area. Some time prior to 1419, the year when the first entry in the village
court roll was written, Trzeniowa was pledged by the king. Then, throughout
the period under the study here, it changed hands several times. It was owned
by gentry families of the Pstroskis, the Szafrots, the Kmitas, the Doliskis,
the Radwans, the Derszniaks.21 Trzeniowa was a village of a medium size.22
21 Adam Fastnacht, Sownik historyczno-geograficzny ziemi sanockiej w redniowieczu

[Historical and Geographical Dictionary of the Sanok Land in the Middle Ages], vol. 3
(Cracow, 2002), 192196.
22 For more about the socio-economic situation of the region see Adam Fastnacht,
Osadnictwo ziemi sanockiej w latach 13401650 [Settlement in the Sanok Land in 1340
1650], (Wrocaw, 1962); Edward Trzyna, Ziemia sanocka i struktura jej wasnoci feudal-
nej od polowy XVI do drugiej poowy XVII wieku [Feudal Land Property in the Sanok
In 1507, the village paid taxes from 12 mansi of land, a mill and an inn.23 By
1567, the amount of taxed land had increased to 13 mansi,24 but by the end of
the century (1579 and 1589) the amount of taxed land had decreased again, to
only nine mansi.25 In 1552, there were 34 peasants in Trzeniowa,26 but fiscal
sources from 1579 and 1589 showed also the presence of six smallholders and
1011 lodgers.27
As there is no surviving inventory of Trzeniowa, its court rolls remain the
principal source of information about the inhabitants of the village. Most
of them were Polish, but nicknames of some villagers, e.g. Slovak, Wgrzyn
(Hungarian) or Czech, are indicative of their other than Polish ethnic origins.
Trzeniowa was a part of a Catholic parish in Jasionowo. When at the end of
the 16th century the parish church was transformed into a Protestant church,
its Catholic presbyter fled into exile to Trzeniowa.28
Andrzej Wyczaski, in his study on the duration of economic activity of vil-
lage court jurymen, took into account the cases of people whose names were
recorded in the source at least three times.29 In my research I have extended
Land and its Structure between the Mid-15th and the Late 16th Centuries], Rocznik
Wojewdztwa Rzeszowskiego, 9 (1978), 145184; Robert Lipelt (ed.), ycie gospodarcze ziemi
sanockiej od XVI do XVIII wieku [Economic Life in the Sanok Land between the 16th and
18th Centuries], (Sanok, 2004); Piotr Guzowski, Warunki gospodarowania chopw w
starostwie sanockim w XVI wieku [Economic Conditions of Land Farming in the Sanok
Land in the 16th Century], Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej, 54 (2006), 1124.
23 Archiwum Gwne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie Central Archives of Historical Records
in Warsaw (further cited as: AGAD), Archiwum Skarbu Koronnego (further cited as: ASK)
I, 20, c. 49v.
24 AGAD, ASK I, 20, c. 705. The picture of stable peasant land ownership may result from a
specific system of tax register based on so-called old receipts, i.e. old tax return papers.
25 AGAD, ASK I, 17, c. 552; AGAD, ASK I, 20, c. 918v.
26 AGAD, ASK I, 21, c. 908v.
27 AGAD, ASK I, 17, c. 552; AGAD, ASK I, 20, c. 918v.
28 Filip Sulimierski, Bronisaw Chlebowski and Wadysaw Walewski (eds.), Sownik geo-
graficzny Krlestwa Polskiego i innych krajw sowiaskich [Geographical Dictionary of the
Kingdom of Poland and other Slavic Countries], vol. III, (Warsaw, 1882), 483.
29 Andrzej Wyczaski, Powrt do dyskusji o anach pustych [The Debate on Abandoned
Lands rRvisited], in Celem nauki jest czowiek...Studia z historii spoecznej ofiarowane
H. Madurowicz-Urbaskiej [Man is the Ultimate Goal of Studying...Studies in Social
History dedicated to H. Madurowicz-Urbaska], Cracow, 2000, 347353; by the same
author see also: O dawnej rodzinie w Polsce i Europie [On Families in Old-time
Poland and Europe], in Cywilizacja europejska. Eseje i szkice z dziejw cywilizacji i dyplo-
macji [European Civilization. Essays and Sketches on the History of Civilization and
Diplomacy], ed. Maciej Komiski (Warsaw, 2010), 149164.
196 Guzowski
TABLE 9.1 Duration of economic activity of Trzeniowa villagers between 1430 and 1603
Years Number of people Mean duration of economic activity Median
14301500 82 25 24
15011550 86 23.5 21
15511603 51 21.5 20
15011603 137 22.8 21
14301603 219 23.6 21
Source: Piotr Guzowski, Demograficzne uwarunkowania funkcjonowania rodziny chopskiej na

przeomie redniowiecza i nowoytnoci, in Cezary Kuklo (ed.), Rodzina, gospodarstwo domowe i
pokrewiestwo na ziemiach polskich w perspektywie historycznej cigo czy zmiana
(Warszawa, 2012), table 1.
the group examined beyond jurymen, so it appeared necessary to use stricter

selection criteria. From among 1,500 records providing genealogical data (wife/
husband, parents, children, occupation) I have decided to select a group of 219
peasants whose names were recorded in the source at least five times. Applying
this criterion allows us to observe a considerable portion of peasants life cycle,
starting from the moment of inheriting or purchasing land (Table 9.1).
Over twenty years normally passed between a peasants first and last appear-
ance in the source. On average, it was almost 24 years, but the median dura-
tion was 21 years. There are also discernible differences between sub-periods
throughout the period under study. Peasants whose economic activity as
farm holders was the longest (almost 25 years) were the ones who began their
activity in the 15th century (25 years on average, 24 years median). In the next
century, the duration of economic activity shortened by a few years (21.5 on
average; median 20).
Economic activity varied also with regard to peasants social status. Of the
219 peasants studied, 130 performed judicial functions as jurymen or landlords
officials. It appears, then, that they were members of both social and economic
elites in their communities (Table 9.2).
Members of Trzeniowas social elite were economically active for an aver-
age of over 25 years (mean 26 years, median 25). At the beginning of the period
studied, the elites economic activity was longer (mean 26.6; median 27), then,
as in other groups of peasants, it gradually fell, to reach the level of 24.7 years
(median 22 years) in the second half of the 16th century. It is worth noting
that, although the downward trend characterized all socio-economic groups
TABLE 9.2 Duration of economic activity of Trzeniowas social elite between 1430 and 1603
14301500 61 26.6 27
15011550 48 25.9 23.5
15511603 21 24.7 22
15011603 69 25.5 22
14301603 130 26 25
Source of data: P. Guzowski, Demograficzne uwarunkowania, table 2.
TABLE 9.3 Duration of economic activity of peasants who did not hold any administrative
position in Trzeniowa between 1430 and 1603
14301500 21 20.3 19
15011550 38 20.6 21
15511603 30 19.3 17.5
15011603 68 20 19
14301603 89 20.1 19
Source of data: P. Guzowski, Demograficzne uwarunkowania, table 3.
within the village community, peasants actively participating in the work of

village self-government tended to participate in the economic life of their
communities longer than the ones who never held any administrative position
(Table 9.3).
The average duration of economic activity among 89 peasants who did not
hold any position in village courts was twenty years during the whole period
under study (median 19). The average number of economically active years
was subject to only minor fluctuations over consecutive sub-periods, but the
median had dropped by the second half of the 16th century from 21 to 17.5
years. These estimates differ markedly from the findings of Andrzej Wyczaski,
which I have discussed at length elsewhere.30
30 Guzowski, Demograficzne uwarunkowania.

198 Guzowski
For the purposes of this article, conventional demographic criteria in defin-

ing old age have been adopted. According to the Polish demographer Cezary
Kuklo, Mens old age in crown villages began between the ages of 55 and 64.31
Assuming that taking a farm coincided in time with getting married, it may be
concluded that the first time a peasant appeared in court to register as a farm
holder was more or less at the age of marriage. Unfortunately, sources do not
provide sufficient information to determine the age of Polish peasants at mar-
riage at the turn of the Middle Ages, but it may be tentatively assumed that
their age would not have been notably different from that of their counterparts
in the 17th and 18th centuries, who established families between the ages of 24
and 30.32 According to such criteria, an aged peasant was one who had been
economically active for thirty or more years of his life.
From all men who appear in our primary sources at least five times, I have
decided to select 64 whose period of economic activity was exceptionally
long (at least 30 years), so their names may be found in village court rolls rela-
tively frequently. Only two of them were referred to in the source as the old.
One was Jan Stpiski, described as senex, antiquus.33 The other was Albert
(Wojtek) the Old, whose nickname was used probably not necessarily to indi-
cate his old age, but to differentiate him from a younger man of the same first
name.34 Similar nicknames were used also with reference to women. A wife
of the aforementioned Albert was also called the Old, probably due to her
husbands nickname.35 Actual old age and the need to distinguish between dif-
ferent bearers of the same first name were the reasons why widows appearing
in the rolls were referred to as, for instance, Marcinkowa antiqua36 or Jadwiga
Thelebuchowa stara (the old).37
Micha Kopczyski in his article about elderly peasants in 18th-century
Poland noticed that
there were three options available to elderly people in a medieval vil-

lage: first, staying with the family as a household member for life (Polish:
31 Cezary Kuklo, Demografia Rzeczypospolitej przedrozbiorowej [Demography of Pre-

partition Poland] (Warszawa, 2009), 376. According to Pat Thane, in early modern
England a person over the age of 60 was treated as old Thane, Old Age, 2427.
32 Kuklo, Demografia Rzeczypospolitej przedrozbiorowej, 279.
33 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, no. 1100.
34 Ibidem, no. 494 and in further footnotes.
35 Ibidem, no. 890.
36 Ibidem, no. 310.
37 Ibidem, no. 1158.
doywotnik) with or without having their status legally confirmed; second,

spending the reminder of ones life in hospital; third, joining a household
of another villager as a lodger.38
Of the 64 peasants under study, as many as 26 sold their farms when they
reached old age, which meant that they were giving up their status as heads of
their households and were becoming dependent on their relatives or strang-
ers if they decided to move house. Unlike in the 17th and 18th centuries, at
the turn of the Middle Ages the institution of wymowa was hardly known.39
Wymowa was a legal procedure of securing oneself some kind of life mainte-
nance after bequeathing a farm to someone else, usually a family member.40
Peasants secured for themselves a right to a piece of land, to a room in the
house, and to some household equipment. At that moment so-called wycug
began for them.41
In The Trzeniowa village court rolls, entries containing the cases of wymowa
did not appear before 1597. The first entry described the case of Adam Kawalec
who sold his farm to Walenty Wiek for ten marcs paid in annual installments
of one marc. At the same time, he kept three pieces of land at his disposal for
life.42 It is worth adding that the arrangement in question was not a land trans-
action between family members but between non-related strangers.
Among all entries studied the practice of wymowa was implied rather than
stated directly. There are ten cases when peasants were selling their land to
sons, sons-in-law or nephews. Each time, although wymowa was not formally
made, it appears that annual payments of money for the farm paid regularly to
former owners were to provide them with financial security at old age.
Another option available to elderly peasants was to become a lodger in
another peasants household, and it appears that the most likely to opt for
this solution were peasants selling their farms to non-related strangers. There
are 16 such cases in Trzeniowa. Most of them involve people who either did
not have their own children, or whose children had become independent
before and had probably received their share in family inheritance already. It
is difficult to assess, on the basis of the Trzeniowa court rolls, whose authors
rarely recorded exact details of land transactions, how common wymowa and
lodging were during the period under study. However, the relative frequency
38 Kopczyski, Staro nie rado, 54.

39 Wyczaski, Opieka, 66.
40 Ibidem.
41 Kuklo, Demografia, 377.
200 Guzowski
of hire purchase43 promoted the development of both practices. Annual

instalments were also a kind of old age pension, securing financial comfort of
elderly peasants.
Some of the peasants who were economically active for a long period of at
least thirty years did not have direct heirs, sons or sons-in-law, and they were
forced to sell their farms to strangers. This fact appears to support Andrzej
Wyczaskis hypothesis that the lack of direct heirs, typical of peasants with a
short time-span of economic activity, was the main reason for the appearance
of the so-called deserted farms (Polish: any puste). According to Wyczaski,
the period of about 19 to 21 years of economic activity was often too short for
peasants to be able to secure direct inheritance of their land by children or
children-in-law.44 It was, most probably, one of the contributory factors in the
development of a peasant land market. Almost half (12) of Trzeniowa peas-
ants who sold their farms at the end of their lives had not received them from
their parents but had acquired them by purchase. Almost a third (19) of all the
peasants studied here appeared for the first time in the Trzeniowa court rolls
at the moment of land purchase.
The category of peasants who did not inherit their parents land may be fur-
ther subdivided into three groups according to the method of acquiring their
own farms. The first is a group of peasants who bought land from their fathers
or fathers-in-law. Then there are peasants who bought their farms from distant
relatives or non-related strangers. Others were, in turn, given land by their feu-
dal lords. By means of land distribution, lords could potentially influence not
only intergenerational transfers but also the size of peasant household. At the
turn of the Middle Ages, however, this influence was definitely much smaller
than it was to become in the 18th century.45 The first two means of land acqui-
sition were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes adult sons, tired of
a long wait to see their fathers retire, used the capital they had accumulated
during the time of service typical of the peasant life cycle to buy their own,
43 Piotr Guzowski, Chopi i pienidze na przeomie redniowiecza i czasw nowoytnych

[Peasants and Money at the Turn of the Middle Ages] (Cracow, 2008), 4468.
44 Wyczaski, Powrt do dyskusji, 347353.
45 Witold Kula, Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju feudalnego [Economic theory of feudalism]
(Warsaw, 1983), 233245; Andrzej Woniak, Kultura mazowieckiej wsi paszczynianej, 71n.;
Micha Kopczyski, Dwr a rodzina chopska przymus i koegzystencja [Manor House
and Peasant Families Coercion and Coexistence], in Dwr, plebania, rodzina chopska
[Manor House, Presbytery, Peasant Family], ed. M. lusarska (Warsaw, 1998), 1226;
Konrad Rzemieniecki, Cykl rozwojowy gospodarstwa chopskiego na przykadzie parafii
Bdkw (na podstawie spisu ludnoci z 1791 roku) [The Life Cycle of Peasant Households
in the Parish of Bdkw (according to the 1791 Census], Przeszo Demograficzna Polski,
26 (2005), 129.
independent farms. We learn about such a case in Trzeniowa, where an inn-

keepers son, Jacob, purchased land and farmed it independently of his father
who still managed his own farm and business.46 In another case, we can see a
father, Andrzej Telebuch, who in 1561 supported his son financially by making
a payment of a cash equivalent of the young mans share in Andrzejs property.47
After some time, the father decided to retire and his sons and daughters either
purchased or inherited portions of his land.
Of the 64 peasants with the longest economic activity, in only 35 cases did
children inherit their fathers farms. In only 10 of these 35 cases were fathers
still alive at the moment their children took over their farms. In all other cases,
village court rolls mentioned children as new owners several years after their
fathers last appearances as farm owners in court records. Twenty-nine peas-
ants did not have any children recorded by the rolls, which does not necessar-
ily mean that they were childless.
One explanation may be that peasant daughters, like wives and widows,
tended to be underrepresented in court rolls. Women appeared in our source
material much less frequently than men. For about 1,500 individuals recorded
in the Trzesniowa rolls, only 370 were women.48 Registered women represented
all marital status groups: single, married and widows. One of the reasons why
women may have been absent from the rolls is that even though cases in court
regarded their rights, womens names were not mentioned because they were
formally represented by their husbands, brothers or fathers acting as womens
legal protectors. In the 16th century, more women appeared in court and they
did so more frequently than in the previous century.
Single women made the smallest group of women participating in court
proceedings. If they did, their names were usually recorded along the names of
their widowed mothers selling their deceased husbands farms. The girls pres-
ence was essential because they were obliged to officially renounce any future
claims to the sold property.49 If a sold holding also included a piece of land that
had been originally assigned as a girls dowry, the rule was that it was treated
separately, and the girl had the right to the money her mother received for the
dowry as well as for the part that was to be her inheritance.50

47 Ibidem, nos. 1131 and 1132.
48 These are only rough figures because Identification of individual people mentioned in
the rolls may often be very difficult. Court scribes often omitted peasants surnames or
nicknames and failed to indicate the mens and womens filiation.
49 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, 48; 165.
50 Ibidem, 310.
202 Guzowski
Daughters right to the share of their parents property was popularly

recognized and village court rolls contain numerous entries in which women,
accompanied usually by their husbands, acknowledged in court the fact of
receiving their due shares either in cash51 or in movables.52 The other party
in the transaction was either a brother who took over the farm53 or, if the land
was sold, a buyer.54 If a widow remarried, it was her new husbands duty to
meet the claims of his step-daughters.55 If a womans right to the inheritance
was not respected, her husband would stand up for it and represent his wife
in court.56
When there was no male heir to the land, it could be transmitted to daugh-
ters, but in such cases heiresses usually sold their inheritance,57 or the man-
agement of the farm was entrusted to a husband of one of them.58 In case
of a womans death, the right to her part of the property was taken over by
her husband.59 Women frequently testified in court about handing over their
fathers inheritance to their husbands.60
It is interesting that women who appeared in court to claim their rights
to the land were not only those who lived in the village or its vicinity, but also
the ones who had previously left their homes. Women were not in any way
administratively limited in their freedom of movement, so they often sought
employment outside their villages, in nearby towns or other villages. Female
inhabitants of Trzeniowa travelled to places within a radius of 80 km from
their own village, which was much further than the boundaries of the parish.
They established families there and lived independent lives, but on the death
of their fathers, they often returned to their village of birth to stake a claim to
their part of the inheritance.
Widows appeared in court more frequently than women from other mari-
tal status groups. They came alone or with children, usually after the hus-
bands death, to sell the family estate. Widows were legally entitled to a third
51 Ibidem, 92, 101, 119, 192.

52 Ibidem, 374.
53 Ibidem, 92, 193.
54 Ibidem, 101.
55 Ibidem, 733.
56 Ibidem, 37.
57 Ibidem, 556, 836, 1097, 1121, 1124, 1202.
58 Ibidem, no. 526; a son-in-law inherited not only a deceased peasants land but also his
surname See: M. Grny, Uwagi o badaniu przezwisk i nazwisk staropolskich [On the
Study of Old Polish Cognomens and Names], Genealogia, 6 (1995), 147154 (151).
59 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, 733.
60 Similarly in Brzezwka 176.
of the estate,61 whereas the rest was supposed to be divided equally among
sons and daughters.62 Sometimes records in village court rolls relate also to
customs regarding inheritance of movables by widows. For example, in 1533,
in Trzeniowa, a widow was endowed with a quarter of her dead husbands
personal property and a third of grain.63 If on the fathers death the children
were still minors and a widow decided to keep the farm and remarry, she was
obliged to pay off her children in the future, either on her own or together with
her new husband.64 Trzesniowa village court roll contains information about
35 widowed women. The lives of three of them are rather obscure, but our
knowledge about the remaining 32 is quite detailed. Twelve widows appeared
in the rolls when they were selling their lands, alone or with their children, to
unrelated strangers. Three more widows sold their farms to their own sons, and
nine to relatives. Eight widows decided to keep and farm their lands together
with their minor children or, if they married later, with their new husbands,
and reappeared in the rolls as purchasers of land65 and animals.66 One of the
widows who sold their lands made a life-rent contract where she made a gift
of her part of the inheritance to a person who was obliged, in turn, to take
care of the woman in her old age.67
The specific character of village court rolls, containing primarily the records
of land transactions, makes it difficult to assess the situation of elderly peas-
ants who had retired. It is popularly assumed in the literature that their social
and economic status decreased after they had given up their positions as heads
of their households.68 A good example is Stanisaw Sbygen who, having sold
61 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, nos. 746, 790, 845, 1095; a
similar situation occurred in another village, Krocienko, near Trzeniowa; see: Ksigi
gromadzkie wsi Krocienko z lat 14081535 [Court Rolls in Krocienko Village, 1408
1535], in Starodawne Prawa Polskiego Pomniki, ed. Bolesaw Ulanowski, vol. 11 (Cracow,
1921) nos. 181, 359, 490, 867, 988, 1048, 1118, 1273, 1376.
62 Piotr Guzowski, System dziedziczenia chopw polskich w XV i XVI wieku [The
Inheritance System in Polish Villages in the 15th and 16th Centuries], in Rodzina i gos-
podarstwo domowe na ziemiach polskich w XVXX wieku [Family and Households in the
Polish Lands between the 15th and 20th Centuries], ed. Cezary Kuklo (Warsaw, 2008),
2935.
63 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, 733.
64 Ibidem, 18; 177.
65 Ibidem, 60, 146,
66 Ibidem, 404.
67 Ibidem, 56.
68 Korniak, ycie, 80; Kuklo, Demografia, 378.
204 Guzowski
his farm to his son, ceased performing the function of a landlords official.69
Most Trzeniowa peasants who had sold their farms also withdrew from vil-
lage social life and, if they did appear in court, it was only to confirm that they
received another annual payment for their lands. There were only two excep-
tions: Jan lep and Jan the son-in-law of a Piertrzyk, who continued as jurymen
for some time after they had retired as householders.70
On the basis of the Trzeniowa rolls it is possible to prove indirectly that
there existed a certain system of social control of the situation of elderly retired
villagers. Village authorities showed some consideration for people in need.
In 1495, Jan Diczko was admonished by the court for mistreating his mother. In
1557, it was decided that one of the conditions upon which Walek lep was
allowed to take over his siblings inheritance was that he was to take care of his
mentally disabled brothers in their old age until they died.71 Trzeniowa vil-
lagers social awareness and compassion are visible also in an entry from 1585
when one Jarosz paid two marcs from his farm, of which one was used to Gods
greater glory and to feed the poor.72
Very little can be said about 38 peasants who formally did not sell their
farms and, apparently, remained heads of their households in spite of being at
an advanced age. Interestingly, as many as 22 elderly householders continued
also as members of the jury or other village officials. The names of the remain-
ing 16 peasants were mentioned in court records either in the context of land
transactions, when seven elderly peasants were named as holders of farms
adjacent to the pieces of land that were the subjects of transactions, or when
the men appeared as sureties, parish collectors or legal guardians. These peas-
ants seemed also to have retained their social and economic status in their old
age. Some, like Grzegorz the Miller, decided to write their wills, an exceptional
practice among late medieval peasantry. We learn from Grzegorzs will that his
old age was far from being characterized by destitution, loneliness and social
degradation. Among the beneficiaries of his will there were not only his rela-
tives (sister, grandson and step-son) but also his peasant servant with a wife.
He also designated some money for the parish church in Jasionowa and two
hospitals, in Sanok and in Krosno.73
Spending money on causes other than feudal or state taxes, as was done
by the said miller, was not unusual among peasants, even the elderly ones.
69 Polaczkwna (ed.), Najstarsza ksiga sdowa wsi Trzeniowej, nos. 1265 and 1266.
70 Ibidem, nos. 929, 1246.
73 Ibidem, no. 376.
A generous donation of six marcs to the church was made by Stanisaw

Alwatko, a parish collector, though it is not certain whether it was his own
money or whether the amount was collected by the whole village.74
To sum up, it is worth remembering that peasants whose time of economic
activity was longer than average were usually at the same time members of
their communitys social and economic elite. Of the 64 householders stud-
ied, as many as 50 performed various official functions in their village or were
socially higher ranking villagers, such as inn-keepers or millers. Their rela-
tively high standards of living must have lengthened their lives, while their
personal social status might have affected their decisions to stay in the role
of householders in spite of their advanced age. Only six out of 38 peasants
who did not sell their farms in old age kept no court or administrative posi-
tions in Trzeniowa. It may be concluded, then, that the higher peasants socio-
economic status was, the more likely they were to remain economically active
as householders and heads of the family even after they had attained advanced
age. It appears also that wealthy and influential peasants were not likely to
abandon easily their social and economic standing once achieved. In this con-
text, we can clearly see the discrepancy between demographic and psycho-
sociological approaches to the notion of old age. The latter takes into account
the intensity of peoples engagement in various social spheres, such as local
community or family.75 From this point of view, the 38 Trzeniowa peasants
who remained economically and socially active in spite of being over 60 years
of age might not have been perceived as old by their contemporaries.
It is hard to determine to what extent Trzeniowa peasants were representa-
tive of Polish peasantry, the largest social group at the turn of the Middle Ages,
and to what extent data gained from the Trzeniowa village court rolls were
illustrative of the situation of peasants in other regions of Poland. Attitudes
to elderly people were affected by a number of economic, social, legal and cul-
tural factors. Although the Trzeniowa court rolls do not allow us to determine
the exact proportion of elderly people within the village community in the 15th
and 16th centuries, they provide enough information for us to conclude that at
the turn of the Middle Ages there were already many phenomena and insti-
tutions familiar to historians studying richer and more available 18th-century
sources. Among the oldest Trzeniowa householders we recognize almost all
74 Ibidem, no. 459.

75 Kopczyski, Staro nie rado, 48; Jacek Oldzki, Murzynowo. Znaki istnienia i
tosamoci mieszkacw wioski nadwilaskiej w XVIIIXX wieku [Murzynowo. Traces of
Life and Identity of the Inhabitants of One Village by the Vistula River in the 18th20th
Centuries] (Warsaw, 1992), 168.
206 Guzowski
patterns of conduct associated with old age which were to become typical in
later periods. Nearly fifty percent of peasants in the group characterized by
long economic activity sold their farms and began wycug or became lodgers.
The legal practice of wymowa was not yet formally regulated, and it was based
more on custom than on written contract, so it did not feature conspicuously
in our primary source. It may be assumed that peasants who sold their farms
might have treated annual payments of instalments as a form of financial secu-
rity in their old age. All other peasants tried to keep their positions as house-
holders for as long as possible, and they also actively participated in the social
and economic lives of their village community. Higher standards of living and
more prominent economic and social position explained the longer participa-
tion in economic life by the peasant elite. Just like ordinary peasants, however,
the richest ones also had problems securing direct heirs, sons or sons-in-law,
to their farms.
In the 17th and 18th centuries formal written retirement contracts became
a norm in villages in Little Poland and Red Ruthenia, both being areas east
of the Hajnal-Mitterauer line. A question requiring further research is what
factors contributed to the adoption of the western system of household for-
mation in these lands. Although the village of Trzeniowa was situated on the
Polish-Ruthenian borderland, it was inhabited mainly by Polish and German
Catholics, and since the 14th century its organization was based on the hide
system (Hufenverfassung). Interesting source material that survived from the
15th century onwards which could be used for further studies are the village
court rolls and inventories from villages inhabited by Orthodox Ruthenians.
CHAPTER 10
Succession Choices of Small Farmers and Women

Farmers Wills in the Area around Trieste in the
Nineteenth Century
Marta Verginella
The paper discusses the succession choices of peasant men and women in
Breg, an area on the south-eastern outskirts of Trieste,1 which in the 19th cen-
tury was the most important port of the Habsburg monarchy.2 The area, begin-
ning less than ten kilometres from the city centre, was part of the municipality
of Dolina, which as the seat of religious and political authority played the role
of local political and cultural centre. From the beginning of the 16th century
to 1814 it belonged administratively to Carniola, while clerically it was subordi-
nate to the Diocese of Trieste. The administrative separation from Trieste and
the existence of the Dolina deanery, led by Slovenian priests from Carniola,
ensured that the villages of Breg, which were inhabited by a Slovenian-speaking
population, enjoyed a relatively independent political life, and prevented the
meddling of Italian-speaking city authorities in local matters.
In 1832 the municipality of Dolina, consisting of seven villages (Log, Ricmanje,
Bort, Zabreec, Boljunec, Kroglje, Dolina),3 came under the jurisdiction of
1 In the 19th century Trieste was mainly populated by Italians, even though the size of the
Slovene population grew steadily, through both immigration and activities that raised
national awareness. In 1910 Slovenes represented 30% of the citys population, while the
outskirts of the city were predominantly populated by Slovenes. For a general overview,
see Marina Cattaruzza, Population Dynamics and Economic Change in Trieste and its
Hinterland, 18501914, in Population and Society in Western European Port Cities 16501939,
eds. Richard Lawton and Robert Lee (Liverpool, 2002), 176211; idem, Slovenes and Italians
in Trieste, 18501914, in Ethnic Identity in Urban Europe, eds. Max Engman et al. Comparative
Studies on Governments and Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups in Europe, 18501940, 8 (New
York/Dartmouth, 1992), 189219.
2 On the cosmopolitan business elite which settled in the city since the beginning of the
18th century after the Free Port of Trieste was established (1719), see Lois C. Dubin, The Port
Jews of Habsburg Trieste (Stanford, Ca., 1999).
3 In Table 10.3, which shows population change in Breg, smaller settlements that were part of
the municipality of Dolina are also included. In the article Slovenian names of the villages
are used because Italian versions of the villages names are in use only from the second half

208 Verginella
Trieste
Basovizza
A D R I A T I C
B R EG
Dolina
S E A
Koper
(Capodistria)
figure 10.1 The area of Breg

Succession Choices of Small Farmers Around Trieste 209
TABLE 10.1 Number of testaments by settlement and time period
Boljunec Ricmanje Makovlje Dolina All together

Period No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
18191824 0 0 0 0 3 3.3 0 0 3 0.4

18251834 5 2.2 2 1.2 4 4.4 4 1.6 15 2.0
18351844 18 8.0 15 8.9 5 5.5 27 10.7 65 8.8
18451854 21 9.4 13 7.7 9 9.9 22 8.7 65 8.8
18551864 33 14.7 19 11.2 17 18.7 33 13.1 102 13.9
18651874 38 17.0 22 13.0 10 11.0 31 12.3 101 13.7
18751884 38 17.0 33 19.5 11 12.1 46 18.3 128 17.4
18851894 41 18.3 41 24.3 21 23.1 47 18.7 150 20.4
18951904 30 13.4 24 14.2 11 12.1 42 16.7 107 14.5
All 224 100 169 100 91 100 252 100 736 100
Koper (Capodistria in Italian).4 Koper is a small coastal town, which is today

part of Slovenia, while it belonged to the Venetian Republic until the Napoleonic
wars, and is located just over ten kilometres away in north-western Istria. In the
town the people of Breg made sales agreements, settled legal disputes, signed
various documents and also dictated their last will and testament (Table 10.1).
Kopers judicial records, held by Pokrajinski arhiv Koper (The Regional Archive
of Koper), include 736 wills preserved from the period 18191904, of which 441
were made by men and 290 by women, while five were made jointly by hus-
band and wife.5 Whereas in the first half of the 19th century only the owners
of real estate as houses or land among farmers of both sexes in the villages of
Breg chose to make a will, in the second half of the century those owning less
property did so too.
In 19th-century Breg more than a quarter of those who died after the age
of 20 left a will (See Figure 10.2). 59.9% of the wills were made by men, 39.4%
by women (Table 10.2, and see Figures 10.3 and 10.4) The percentage of wom-
ens wills is relatively high compared to the western outskirts of Trieste and
of the 20th century after this area became part of Italy. The only exception was Makovlje
(Caresana).
4 Now the Slovenian name of the town is widely used also in foreign maps.
5 See Table 10.3. For more on testamentary practices in Breg, see Marta Verginella, Ekonomija
odreenja in preivetja [Economy of Salvation and Survival] (Koper, 1996).
210 Verginella
TABLE 10.2 Gender of testators by time period Breg
Man Woman Married Couple All

Period No. % No. % No. % No. %
18191824 2 66.7 1 33.3 0 0 3 100

18251834 8 53.3 6 40.0 1 6.7 15 100
18351844 43 66.2 22 33.8 0 0 65 100
18451854 45 69.2 20 30.8 0 0 65 100
18551864 62 60.8 38 37.3 2 2.0 102 100
18651874 58 57.4 42 41.6 1 1.0 101 100
18751884 74 57.8 54 42.2 0 0 128 100
18851894 85 56.7 64 42.7 1 0.7 150 100
18951904 64 59.8 43 40.2 0 0 107 100
All 441 59.9 290 39.4 5 0.7 736 100
its wider Slovenian surroundings, where testamentary practices among the

peasant population were less developed and the number of womens wills
very modest.
The causes of this situation can be found in, among other things, the aware-
ness of Bregs communities of their administrative and political autonomy
from Trieste, but also in the influence of the Venetian notarial culture,6 which
spread from Koper to its agrarian surroundings. Nevertheless, from an eco-
nomic perspective, Trieste was simply too close and too important not to have
an impact on the economy of Breg, especially following the citys industrial
development and subsequent rapid demographic growth.7 When in the years
1823 and 1830 a land surveyor visited Breg, he noted that it was too densely
inhabited, that there was a shortage of forests and pastures, and that the land
did not provide enough for a living. Due to the humble size of properties,
on average no larger than 3 hectares, a mixed type of agriculture prevailed.
In comparison with the rest of the Slovenian territory in 1902, 35.5% of land-
owners had farms no larger than 2 hectares (12.5% had land no larger than
6 Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy. Essays on Perception and
Communication (Cambridge, 1987).
7 Marco Breschi, Aleksej Kalc and Elisabetta Navarra, La nascita di una citt: storia minima
della popolazione di Trieste, secc. 18.19. , in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste; La citt dei
gruppi, [Economic and Social History of Trieste: The City of Groups] eds. Roberto Finzi and
Giovanni Panjek, vol. 1 (Trieste, 2001), 69181.
Men Women
Men
Men
Women
Women
To 40years
To 40 years
old old ToTo40 years
40 years old old
From 40 to 59 years old
Over 59 years old
Over 59 years old
Over 59 years old Over 59 years old
a)Men All b)Women
All All
To 40 years old
To 40 years old
Over 59 years old
Over 59 years old
c)All together
FIGURE 10.2 The age of testators from Dolina
0.5 hectares and 23 % no larger than 2 hectares), 21 % had farms between

25 hectares, mid-sized farms represented 33.3 % and they were considered
to have between 520 hectares and large farms had from 20 to 50 hectares
and represented 7.8 % of farms; only 1.1% were larger than 50 hectares.8 Each
individual property included various types of land, more or less fertile: vine-
yards, fields, meadows, vegetable gardens and pastures. For the majority of
small farmers land was the primary means of survival, a means of production,
and at the same time a prerequisite for membership in the local community.
Despite the fact that every village in Breg also had one or two craftsmen a
blacksmith, butcher, shoemaker or tailor and that the mills on the Glinica
River employed millers, these craftsmen also worked on the land. Land own-
ership determined the form of the family nucleus and conditioned marital
8
Jasna Fischer and Franc Rozman, Socialna demokracija in kmetstvo 18701914 na
Slovenskem [Social Democracy and Peasants 18701914 in Slovenian Territory], in Prispevki
za novejo zgodovino, 7 (1997), 516. In the whole district of Koper, which also included the
area of Breg, the size of farm units ranged from 7.9 to 17.1 hectares (Pavle Blaznik, Units of
Individual Property, and Economic and Social History of the Slovenes. History of Agrarian
Industries (Ljubljana, 1970), vol. 1, 161184).
212 Verginella
50
45
40
35
30
35 Men
20 Women
15
10
5
0
18331844 18451854 18551864 18651874 18751884 18851894 18951904
FIGURE 10.3 Percentage of testators regarding the number of deaths and according to gender
between 1833 and 1904 Dolina
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
0
18331844 18451854 18551864 18651874 18751884 18851894
FIGURE 10.4 Percentage of testators regarding total number of deaths between
1833 and 1894 Dolina
choices and alliances. Land was the essence of economic and social relations,
and as such was the centre around which family, kinship and community rela-
tions were organised.9 Especially in community relations land acted as the
9 David I. Kertzer, Family Life in Central Italy, 18801910: Sharecropping, Wage Labor and
Coresidence (New Brunswick, 1984).
most important, fixed economic good with a significant symbolic value, as a

good which both determined social relations and was determined by them. As
elsewhere in the European countryside, in Breg too the economy was embed-
ded in a web of social, cultural and political relations. It functioned in line with
tradition and was subordinate to a cluster of various interests and needs.10
In Breg there had been a shortage of agricultural land since the Middle Ages.
The basic principle of the village community as it had existed in Breg through-
out the centuries was that every family had access to sufficient agricultural
land and that communal land, forests, pastures and mills were managed jointly
by the heads of the families. In the 19th century the process of social differen-
tiation of small farmers corresponded with a new distribution of land among
the village families. Because of land releasing, the land was more freely sold,
especially as a result of the law of 1868, even though the state tried to limit
this process. Especially in the Littoral area, the land was distributed among
all the children as possibilities of earning were much more diverse there than
elsewhere in the Slovenian territory.11 The poorest of them were forced to sell
land while the richest bought it, the latter thus consolidating their social and
economic status.
1 Womens Market Activity
Modest agricultural output and meagre profits from selling wine and produce
in Trieste prompted Bregs inhabitants to seek additional income from sec-
ondary activities, mainly the production of flour and bread. According to the
1830 cadastral survey12 the baking and selling of bread by women was the most
important economic activity in Breg. The cadastral surveyor described the eco-
nomic importance of bread making with these words:
Whereas the men work in the fields and mainly in the vineyards, this
being their task, the women bake bread, buy wheat in Trieste and also sell
their bread there. They embark on this trip daily and therefore work in
the fields only when necessary. The activity carried out by women is the
10 Karol Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston, Ma., 1957).

11 Milivoja ircelj, Rodnost v Sloveniji od 18. stoletja do 21. stoletja [Birth rates in Slovenia from
the 18th Century to the 21st Century] (Ljubljana, 2006), 73.
12 In 1823 and 1830 the cadastral map was made that shows the boundaries and ownership
of land parcels. To do so, surveyers were also sent to Breg.
214 Verginella
most important economic trade, since with their industriousness women

satisfy the need for bread in the family, but also the need to put bread on
the familys table, as well as other goods.13
With the profits from selling bread, women bakers bought wheat from mer-
chants in Trieste, transported it by donkeys to the mills on the Glinica,
ground it into wheat, and then began a new cycle of independent work. The
only male input into this market activity was purchasing firewood at fairs in
nearby avlje (Zaule) and in Istrian villages.
The cadastral surveyor estimated that in 1830 in Bort, Zabreec, and Jezero,
villages with a total population of 617 (see Table 10.3), there were 213 women
bakers; in Boljunec (population 613) there were 314; in Ricmanje and Log (pop-
ulation 679) there were 315. In Dolina, with a population of 822 and the largest
settlement in Breg, there were as many as 434. Although the credibility of these
cadastral statistics is undoubtedly questionable, since it is hardly imaginable
that all women baked and sold bread, one cannot ignore the fact that bread
making was an important economic activity in Breg and that a significant
part of the female population was involved in it. This was the case until the
beginning of the 20th century, when urban bakeries appeared and city authori-
ties limited the activities of rural women bakers with ever-stricter regulations.14
The documentation studied here does not reveal how much women bakers
in Breg earned or how much money a woman baking bread and then selling
it in Trieste brought into her household every month, but numerous wills show
that women supplemented their dowry and the inheritance from their parents
with independent means. Some of Bregs women bought land and lent out
money with interest, without relying on their husbands or his familys money
to do so.
For example, Marija ernigoj from Ricmanje, like her late husband, acted as
creditor for her co-villagers, as also evidenced by the wills of her debtors. In her
last testament she addressed special advice to her sole heir, her sister Lucija:
And I also advise and order you, my dear sister Lucia; have patience with debt-
ors, do not oppress them, and divide their debt into instalments. And thus you
shall receive Love and blessings. The will-makers advice was thus to be con-
13 Archivio di Stato di Trieste, Archivio del Catasto fondiario di Trieste, Operato destimo
Catastale del Comune di Dolina, 30 giugno 1830.
14 Ennio Maserati states that this illegal market activity supplied Trieste daily with 12,000
kg of bread valued at 25,000 Gulden; Ennio Maserati, Il lavoro a domicilio alla fine
dellOttocento nelle province adriatiche dellAustria [Housework at the End of the 19th
Century in the Adriatic Region of Austria], Quaderni giuliani di Storia, 12 (1990), 90105.
TABLE 10.3 Population change in Breg (17791910)
1779 1790 1791 1834 1840 1869 1880 1890 1900 1910
Boljunec 454 477 449 732 781 764 812 830 821 962
Ricmanje 310 362* 354* 462 437 480 514 502
Makovlje 49 46 40 35 41
Dolina 536 570 589 694 802 764 859 874 884 950
Jezero 53 59 60 56 52
Kroglje 107 112 107 106 148 138 130 138 138 140
Log 133 138 178 189 248
Makovlje 276 374 364 357 387
Prebeneg 173 170 169 271 281 289 240 263 255 244
Ricmanje 289 571 625 650 617 657
Zabreec 105 125 130 183 197 209 248 249
* Included population of Jezero
siderate when collecting debts. Marija ernigoj froze the debts of five of her
debtors, even though they owed her relatively large amounts, ranging from 200
to 300 Gulden. She did not leave behind a list of debtors, but her last testament
reveals that she showed more tolerance and mercy towards some than others.15
In Ricmanje in the 1870s Marija Rihter too made loans to co-villagers and
relatives. Her loans were smaller than those in the previous case. She left all
uncollected debts to her husband, sisters and brother.16 In Dolina at the end
of the 19th century Ura Sancin, married to Jerjan, also acted as a creditor. For
larger loans she employed written contracts. In her will she divided her prop-
erty, including land and money, between her husband and brother. In it she
also divided her debtors into small and big. Joef Sancin, a big debtor, owed
her 500 Gulden under a contract and 56 Gulden without a contract. Gaper
esnik borrowed 300 Gulden from her without a contract. Martin Samec owed
her 500 Gulden under a contract. Marija Pangerc owed her 252 Gulden under a
contract and 56 on an oral agreement. Urh Pangerc owed her 300 Gulden under
a contract. Uras will reveals that she had 300 Gulden deposited at the post
15 Pokrajinski arhiv Koper (henceforth PAK), Oporoke, Marija ernigoi, 5.7.1880 (binder
18791883).
16 PAK, Oporoke, Marija Rihter, 18.1.1887, 14.9.1887, binder 18841887.
216 Verginella
office in Dolina.17 The amounts she managed were unusual for most women
farmers and bakers. The money Ura Sancin invested in money-lending did not
come from her parents or her husbands inheritance. It can only be ascribed
to her market and money-lending activities, with which at least in regard to
wealth she acquired a place in the upper stratum of the village community,
among wealthy landowners and clerics.
We have only mentioned cases of women who managed larger amounts of
money, but wills reveal that a good portion of the adult female population in
Breg acted as creditors as well as debtors, much like the men. One should note
that married women as well as widows18 acted as creditors, which means that
in the families of Breg the presence of a husband did not prevent women from
managing their money independently. Contracts with debtors were signed by
women themselves and not their husbands. Some women held money in their
own postal accounts and only through a special clause in their will left it to
their husbands.
Although we do not have documentary evidence confirming that income
from selling bread in Trieste was invested in money-lending in the villages, we
can deduce that womens market activity in Breg enabled some of them to lend
money, at least until the establishment of farmers loan banks. Regardless of
the amounts of money going through womens hands, it is significant in itself
that in the web of village relations women acted as an alternative to village loan
sharks. If we view money as a means of emancipation, we can, if nothing more,
argue that it contributed to the independence and authority of the women of
Breg, that is, if we really decline to consider female authority in the family and
in the community of the ancien rgime in general.
From this perspective, mens wills are more revealing than womens. As a
rule, male testators referred to their wives as housewife, rarely as my beloved
wife. Only in the 1880s did they begin to refer to them as spouse. In his will
Lovrenc Gerdeli left all of his property to his wife and appointed her to be
in charge of the farm until her death, but also added that she must neither
put in pledge nor sell the inherited property. After the wifes death the prop-
erty was to be inherited by the daughter.19 Bla Rihter named his wife to be in
17 PAK, Oporoke, Ura Sancin, 25.1.1903, binder 19001904.

18 Darja Miheli writes on the loan activities of women in the Istrian town of Piran during
the Middle Ages in ena v piranskem obmoju do srede 14. stoletja [Women in the Piran
Area till the Middle of the 14th Century], Zgodovinski asopis, 12 (1978), 2336 (289).
Cases of women who lent money in medieval Trieste are also mentioned by Daniela
Durissini, Donne a Trieste nel Medioevo tra XIV e XV secolo [Women in Trieste in Medieval
age during the fourteenth and fifteenth Century] (Trieste, 2010).
19 PAK, Oporoke, Lovrenc Gerdeli, 1.6.1868, binder 18171872.
charge of his inheritance. He left her all his real estate and other property, but
only on the condition that she remained a widow. He also allowed for the pos-
sibility that, if the need arose, especially if she was disowned by her family, she
could sell as much as needed to survive. She was obliged to pay her daughter
Marija 200 Gulden for her wedding, while the rest of the property was to be
inherited after her death by Blas brother Andrej.20
2 Inheritance Customs and Succession Choices
In the Primorska region from 1815 the Austrian Civil Code gave precise instruc-
tions on how to determine heirs. The testator was obliged to leave a share of
the inheritance to all legal heirs, i.e. all children regardless of sex.21 Men and
women in Breg generally did not attempt to evade this obligation. During the
years 1833 to 1904 in Dolina more than a quarter of all who died after they were
20 years old left a will.22 Let us look at the following example: Jurij Parovel
from Dolina stated in his will that his son-in-law Ivan was, through his marital
contract, entitled to a share of the inheritance as mandated by law. He felt that
Ivan was treated fairly and more than generously. To his daughter Marija, mar-
ried to Ivan Sancin, he left three weeks in Parovels mill, two meadows, two
gardens, half a field and a vineyard. The testator also foresaw the possibility of
his son Matija returning from the military, although he had been away for 20
years. In case he returned, his sister Marija was to give him a week in the mill.
As the primary heir the testator named his son Andrej, who was married and
lived in the house of Joef Lavriha. Andrej too was to give his brother Matija
a week in the mill and two pieces of land if he returned. Although the will
does not contain a list of testators property, it is evident that he acted accord-
ing to inheritance law norms. Judging by the codicil he added two weeks after
making his will, he was not completely satisfied. The week in the mill, which
20 PAK, Oporoke, Bla Rihter, 1.8.1873, binder 18731878.

21 According to article 762 of the Austrian Civil Code (Allgemeines brgerliches Gesetzbuch,
1911), there is no difference between the male or female sex, between birth in or out of
wedlock, when for such persons the right and order of legal inheritance occurs...
22 Even though statistical comparison of testators (women and men) in regard to the whole
mortality was done only for Dolina, preliminary analysis also for Boljunec, Ricmanje
and Makovje shows that the ratio was similar in those villages. Verginella, Ekonomija
odreenja in preivetja, 8990. On succession choices in the uek peasant family from
Viovlje (Visogliano), a village just ten kilometres west of Trieste where the farm was usu-
ally inherited by the eldest son, see James C. Davis, Rise From Want: A Peasant Family in
the Machine Age (Philadelphia, Pa., 1986).
218 Verginella
means the possibility of a weekly use of the mill, and the garden that he had
previously left to his daughter Marija are in the codicil left to his granddaugh-
ter, Marijas daughter.23
In the family portrait as revealed by the Status animarum IV of Dolina for
the second half of the 19th century, one notices that Matija did not return to
his fathers home, which was managed by Andrej until his death, when he was
succeeded by his son Joef, while Marija moved to her husbands home, also
in Dolina.24
The wills from Breg, which often reflect attempts by testators to bend inher-
itance law norms to suit their needs, indicate that testamentary choices in
Breg were not subordinate to individual logic or the benefit of a single family
member at the expense of others. Rather, they followed the logic of family and
community solidarity. Testators justified their decisions by reference to the
common good of the family.25
Ivan Jerjan from Dolina named as the primary heirs of all of his property
his sons Anton and Jakob, who, despite being married, lived in his house.
He underscored his decision by stating that the inheritance must remain undi-
vided and that Anton, who had been married a long time and was childless,
must live in peace and understanding with his brother Jakob. If after many
years his son Joef, who served in the military, returned, he would have to share
the same roof with the universal heirs, who would have to treat him as their
beloved brother.26 Since one of the heirs was childless, the testator ordered
his sons to live in a brotherly community, which had the advantage of keeping
the family farm intact. Fifteen other testators in Dolina between 1833 and 1904
made choices similar to Ivan Jerjans.
In this same period 27 testators in Boljunec, 27 in Ricmanje and 18 in
Makovlje also decided that their inheritance was to remain undivided.
Comparing this data with the total number of testators (474) reveals that joint
management of family farms was most common in Makovlje and Ricmanje,
i.e. in villages where the ratio of agricultural land to the number of people
who subsisted on it was less favourable than in Boljunec and Dolina (see
Table 10.1 above).
Although it had been possible to break up real estate before the abolition
of serfdom in 1849, there was a visible tendency throughout the 19th century
towards preserving the unity of agricultural property, provided, of course, that
23 PAK, Oporoke, Giorgio Paroverl, 5.8.1851, binder 18501854.

24 upnijski arhiv Dolina (hereafter AD), Status animarum, III.
25 Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Past (Chicago and London, 1985).
26 PAK, Oporoke, Giovanni Jerjan, 10.6.1835, binder 18361849.
this was not prevented by economic and demographic conditions. The farmers
of Breg divided their farms only when they had no choice. In cases of smaller
farms with more than one son, the breaking up of the property was inevitable.
The head of the family, who chose a single primary heir from among his sons,
obliged the heir to pay off his brothers in land or money. Since money was
almost always in short supply, the payment was usually in the form of land.
During the last three decades of the 19th century, due to demographic growth,
such cases became increasingly common.
The fear that their successors might fall into poverty prompted some testa-
tors to give very detailed instructions on how to manage their property after
their death. In the inheritance model chosen by more than a third of testa-
tors in Breg (35.8% of cases 268 from 749), the testator, head of the family,
was succeeded on the farm by his son, while daughters were compensated in
money. Due to unfavourable circumstances a large number of testators in Breg
had to adapt this model to their own special needs. In the absence of sons, tes-
tators left their realty to daughters, only rarely to a son-in-law. Thus, for exam-
ple, Janez Zafran named his wife the lifelong head of the farm and ordered that
no one should take the property from her hands. After his wifes death the
inheritance was to go to Urula and her husband Janez, on the condition that
neither of them could sell the property. His still unmarried daughter Anka
was to receive a dowry of 400 Gulden, to be paid by his son-in-law during the
four years after her marriage. For her marriage she was also to receive a trous-
seau and everything necessary for the wedding celebration.27
Between 1870 and 1900 families in Dolina had on average 5.3 children.
Approximately the same number was typical for the nearby, central Slovenian
region of Carniola where, between 1887 and 1900, the number of live births to
a married couple was between 4.9 and 5.6.28 About 16% of babies died after
27 PAK, Oporoke, Janez Zafran, 18.2,1878, binder 18731878.

28 Sabina . nidari, Ora et labora in moli, enska!, [Ora et Labora and be Quiet
Woman] (Ljubljana, 2000), 88. In Breg it was quite common for small peasants in the
second half of the 19th century that more than one generation lived under same roof or
that two brothers shared the same house, yet this was not usual for Gostai tenants
who lived as nuclear families according to the family typology advocated by Peter Laslett,
Introduction: the History of the Familym in Household and Family in Past Time, eds. Peter
Laslett and Richard Wall(Cambridge, 1972), 190. We could argue that the demographic,
social and economic situation endorsed the Eastern European pattern, as defined by
John Hajnal, European Marriage Patterns in Perspective, in Population in History, eds.
D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (London, 1965), 10143. For the questionability of the
distinction between the eastern and western family model, see Silvia Sovi, European
Family History. Moving beyond Stereotypes of East and West in Cultural and Social
220 Verginella
birth.29 Only 3.2 survived beyond the age of 10, which means that the average
testator divided his or her property between two or three children. The data
available from wills from Dolina, Boljunc, Ricmanje and Makovlje show that
at the moment of writing their will 12.7% of testators had one child, 17.3% had
two, 20.3% had three, while 32.8% had four or more (see Table 10.4). At the
end of the 19th century testators divided their property among a growing num-
ber of sons and daughters.
In cases of weaker properties the remuneration of brothers and sisters often
led to debt or the partial selling off of the inherited land. Although the people
of Breg did not base remuneration on the real value of the share to be inherited
but rather on the appraisal price, which was lower, it nevertheless placed a
heavy burden on most inheritors of family farms.30 Testators in Breg also made
use of escamotage: in cases where the heir to be remunerated was still single,
the heir to the farm would keep him or her on the farm. Delaying remuneration
to heirs was a common practice in Breg.
In some cases debt was an obstacle to the payment of remuneration, but at
the same time encouraged joint management. Anton Hreak, a blacksmith
from Ricmanje, left his blacksmith tools, house and field to his son, who had
supported and looked after him in his time of illness. He left the rest of his
tools and property to his other three sons, and ordered all of them to work on
the land together until they had paid off their debts and renovated the house31
The situation of some debtors was so hopeless that even shared management
of the family farm did not enable them to pay off their accumulated debts. A
Historv, 5:2 (2008), 141164., with a prevalence of complex or joint families, which was
established in the previous studies about family structures in Dolina. However, detailed
analysis of the dominant family type was made in the area of the village of Dolina on the
basis of three Status Animarum. The first, for the period 18301845, recorded 165 families,
of which 48.5% were joint, 7.3% were complex, 40.6% were nuclear and 3.6% were cases
of widowers and widows or individuals who lived alone. In the period 18461870 there
were 173 families, of which 11.6% were complex, 46.2% were joint and the number of
nuclear families decreased to 34.7%. In the period 18701900, 58.2% of the 184 families
were joint, 9.2% were of the complex type, the others were mononuclear. Mononuclear
families were prevalent among the tenants and sub-tenants who did not have their own
house. As for the others, the joint and complex types of family were forced by social, eco-
nomic and demographic circumstances. Marta Verginella, Druina v Dolini pri Trstu, v 19.
stoletju, [A Family in Dolina near Trieste in the 19th Century] (Ljubljana, 1990).
29 Milivoja ircelj, Rodnost v Sloveniji. Od 18. stoletja do 21. stoletja [Natality in Slovenia from
the 18th to the 21st Century] (Ljubljana, 2006), 85.
30 Sergij Vilfan, Pravna zgodovina Slovencev [Legal History of Slovenes] (Ljubljana, 1961), 466.
31 PAK, Oporoke, Antonio Kreschiack, 22.7.1843, binder 18361849.
TABLE 10.4 Testators as percentage of the number of people who died in Dolina
a.) By 10-year age groups
Age 183344 184554 185564 186574 187584 188594 18951904
< 30 26.7 30.8 37.5 21.4 11.1 18.2 10.0

3039 25.0 30.0 30.0 8.3 71.4 42.9 25.0
4049 31.3 33.3 46.7 66.7 25.0 50.0 37.5
5059 50.0 16.7 31.6 35.3 42.9 42.9 35.0
6069 32.0 17.2 38.2 44.8 26.1 42.9 34.5
> 69 25.9 6.1 16.7 22.2 34.5 34.1 25.6
All 30.5 18.8 32.7 31.4 33.3 37.9 28.7
b.) By 20-year age groups
Age 183344 184554 185564 186574 187584 188594 18951904
< 30 26.7 30.8 37.5 21.4 11.1 18.2 10.0

3049 56.3 63.3 76.7 75.0 96.4 92.9 62.5
5069 82.0 33.9 69.8 80.1 68.9 85.7 69.5
> 69 25.9 6.1 16.7 22.2 34.5 34.1 25.6
All 30.5 18.8 32.7 31.4 33.3 37.9 28.7
case in point is that of Franc uk, who had gained entry into the upper social
stratum of Dolina, but left his daughters Francka and Marija and his son Ivan
Joef a heavily indebted property. He stated: ...I leave to each this much, if
anything remains after debt, since all of my property is under debt, two houses,
a shop and a stable.32 Through unskilful management he had run his property
into the ground.
In the second half of the 19th century debt became a problem for an increas-
ing number of families in Breg. Wills reveal that farmers were burdened by the
payment of compensation, church donations, bad harvests and an increasing
number of children. Due to financial difficulties, borrowing money was inevi-
table, and this led to the selling of real estate, especially in the economically
32 PAK, Oporoke, Franc uk, 12.8.1893, fadc. 18931897

222 Verginella
weakest families. If we analyse all 749 testators, we find that 150 of them were
in some kind of debt.33 It should be added that not all testators mentioned
their debts in their wills. The picture is therefore again imperfect, but never-
theless telling.
3 Testamentary Ordering in a Prosperous Peasant Family:

The Lovriha
Since in the hands of the farmers of Breg a will was a means of stabilisation
with which they regulated economic, social and affective relations within the
family, as well as an important tool for preserving the traditional peasant social
structure and stemming the decay of peasant property, let us examine how
property was managed in a prosperous peasant family. Janez Lovriha from
Dolina, house number 46, named as the primary heir to all his property his son
Janez, who was married and lived at home, and whom he obliged to compensate
his brothers and sisters as stipulated in his will, in which he listed and evalu-
ated all of his property. His son Urh, who lived in house number 52 and was
married for the second time, inherited some land and movable property. In
his marital contract the testator had already given Urh two houses34 and three
pieces of land with a combined value of 871 Gulden. To his son Rok the testator
left three weeks in the mill, four pieces of land, 500 Gulden, and also a bucket
for crushing grapes, two barrels and a table. The combined value of this part of
the inheritance was 942 Gulden. In addition to the house number 84, his son
Anton inherited four weeks in the mill, ten pieces of land, wine barrels, a bed,
a wardrobe and three chairs. His inheritance was worth 1,037 Gulden. To his
son Janez, the primary heir, the testator left the house number 46, a butchers
shop and 12 pieces of land, together worth 2305 Gulden. The list of movables
inherited by Janez shows that in dividing furniture and dishware the father
privileged the primary heir, to whom he left most of the cellar dishware, an
olive press, wardrobes, a bread pan, kitchen dishware, furniture, including a
33 Even though the testators that were in debt belonged to all age groups, they were most
common among the oldest in the population, the ones who were exposed to payment of
hereditary shares and legacies. A precise analysis according to age groups was not pos-
sible, as testaments do not include data about the age of the testator; however, the ages
of testators were qualitatively analyzed as data from Status Animarum was taken into
consideration (AD). This can be seen in Figure 10.2.
34 The testator did not specify the house number; it was also not mentioned whether they
were neighboring houses. The testator only mentioned that one was bought.
wardrobe, two beds, a couch, 33 issues of the journal Novice, paintings, a mir-
ror and books. Upon marrying, Janez received from his father a house and four
weeks in the mill. Including the two debts he was to collect after his fathers
death, his inheritance was worth 3,375 Gulden. The testators son Jakob only
inherited 400 Gulden. The will does not mention any reason why he was given
a smaller share than his brothers.
Janez Lovriha had another son, the priest Andrej, who attended school for
12 years. Upon becoming a priest he received 400 Gulden from his father. In
his will his father left him an additional 200 Gulden and guaranteed him the
right to live in the primary heirs house in case of illness or if he left the priest-
hood. Janezs daughter Marija received a dowry of 500 Gulden and after her
fathers death her brother Rok was to pay her another 100 Gulden. The already
deceased daughter Katarina had received 700 Gulden from her father upon
marrying. The testator also ordered that his son Janez must pay back 400
Gulden to his mother Marija, which she had brought into the family upon mar-
riage. He also ordered that his wife Marija should receive 100 Gulden from his
property: Furthermore, I leave my wife Marija, who is ill in her bed, in the care
of my son Janez, as it is the sacred duty to care for ones beloved mother and
her every need until her death, and after.35
The son Janez, the primary heir, made his last will and testament three years
after his fathers death. To his second-born son he left two houses,36 five pieces
of land and four weeks in the mill. His two daughters were to be compensated
in the sum of 300 Gulden each. As the primary heir of all of his property he
named his eldest son Janez, whom he also ordered to pay back to his mother
the 400 Gulden she had brought to the household as her dowry. To his wife
Marija, born Metlika, the testator left 200 Gulden and appointed her the
head of the farm until his eldest son reached the age of 24.37 A comparison of
the wills of Janez Lovriha, Sr., and Janez Lovriha, Jr., reveals that even in one
of the wealthiest families in Dolina and Breg the younger generation had less
money and land. Although Janez, Jr., had half as many children as his father,
he nevertheless left his two daughters a smaller dowry than that brought to the
house by his wife or inherited by his two sisters.
Let us also examine the last will and testament of Janezs wife, Marija
Metlika, which she made two years after her husband. To her son Janez she
left 200 Gulden which she had received from her husband. She left 200 Gulden,
35 PAK, Oporoke, Janez Louriha, 17.3.1880, binder 18791883.

36 From the testament the data is not known; it only mentioned that one was inherited from
the second father , most probably the step-father.
37 PAK, Oporoke, Janez Louriha, 7.11.1883, binder 18791883.
224 Verginella
which she brought to the household as her dowry and invested in it, to her
daughter Ura. She left a further 200 Gulden to her youngest son Jakob. From
her mother Ura also inherited a wardrobe, a chest, a fur, two coats, a staple,
two gold rings, two pairs of earrings and all other clothes. The daughter Johana
died in 1883, aged nine, four months before her father. Thus Marija divided her
inheritance between three children, and not four like her husband. She antici-
pated the possibility that one of her children might die without a will. In that
case her inheritance would go to her brother Anton Metlika in Klanec. In two
clauses she also touched upon the management of the family farm and family
life after her death:
By my conscience and judgement I find that it would be right and good for
the children and the property if my farmhand Janez Prael from Prebeneg
upon consulting my caretaker and guarantor remained employed here,
because I recognise that he is a good and loyal farmhand and because he
has been employed by this house for several years, and he would care for
the children and the property.
Marija was also of the opinion that the girl farmhand who had looked after her
and her children during her illness should remain at the house, since she takes
good care of them and the children love her, and I say that she can surely keep
her job here in the role of caretaker.38
Urh, Marijas brother-in-law and Janez Lovriha, Jr.s brother named his only
son Martin the primary heir to his property, with the exception of a quarter,
which he had received from his wife who had died before him. This part,
together with three fields, he left to his daughter Ana. Despite the fact that he
had inherited from his father movable and immovable property worth more
than 800 Gulden, at the time of making his will his property was already heav-
ily in debt, which amounted to 490 Gulden.39 We can only guess the causes
of Urhs indebtedness. In all likelihood Urh had managed his property poorly.
Documentary sources do not tell us anything about his relationship with his
son Martin, who in 1894, three years before his fathers death, married Ura
Jerog, but we know that they had three daughters and a son.
Let us also look at the family of Rok Lovriha, son of Janez. Sr. Antonija
Lovriha, at the time already Roks widow, took over her late husbands property
in the absence of a will. Their marriage was childless, so she named her brother-
38 PAK, Oporoke, Marija Louriha, 24.2.1885, binder 18841887.

39 PAK, Oporoke, Urh Louriha, 8.2.1897, binder 18931897.
in-law Anton Lovriha the heir to the house and ten parcels of land, as well
as her debts. To her niece, the daughter of Antonija Lovriha, Roks sister, she
left two fields, a wardrobe and the clothes in it. To her nephew Janez, Antons
son, she left a field. Antonijas will shows that she did not divide her property
among all of her husbands brothers and sisters or all her nephews and nieces.
She only privileged her brother-in-law Anton, a nephew and a niece.40
The priest Andrejs will sheds light on his own role in the family strategies of
the Lovriha dynasty. After recommending his soul to God and making arrange-
ments for his funeral, Andrej ordered that his brothers should not receive any
part of his property. As his primary heir he named his nephew Ivan Sancin,
the son of his sister Marija, born Sancin. Ivan owed him 600 Gulden, which
the testator had once lent his father, who by then was already deceased. In
addition, Andrej also left Ivan 600 Gulden in land and 400 Gulden in money.
He ordered his primary heir to pay each of his sisters 200 Gulden and an addi-
tional 100 to his mother (Andrejs sister). To his nephew Ivan left all of his
books, two bookcases, one of them glassed, four clocks, two alarm clocks, one
for the wall and one for the pocket, and a silver tobacco box. He left the rest
of the kitchenware, furniture and clothes to Ivans mother, his sister Marija.41
From his father Anton inherited less property than his brothers, but his will
shows that the property he left behind was considerably larger than that he
had inherited. He most probably earned the difference through his work as a
priest. Significant also are his statement in his will that all of his brothers were
sufficiently provided for and his choice to leave most of his property to his
sisters offspring.
A summary of the main characteristics of succession choices in the Lovriha
dynasty reveals that the sons of Janez, Sr., had less property than their father.
Even their wives dowries did not significantly strengthen the familys property.
It should not be overlooked that the possibility of diminishing or expanding
property transcended interfamily dynamics, since it was also dependent on
broader alliances which individuals formed with members of their extended
family and village community. Sensible marriages, alliances and rational farm-
ing and property management were, in addition to womens bread making,
efficient means of protection against auctions and the accompanying slide to
the bottom of the social ladder. Those who did not make use of them inevi-
tably left their descendants an indebted property. Janez Lovriha belonged to
the upper stratum of the Dolina village community and was also one of the
40 PAK, Oporoke, Antonija Louriha, 12.12. 1897, binder 18981899.

41 PAK, Andrej Lovriha, 11.8.1888, binder 18881892.
226 Verginella
most educated and well-read inhabitants of Breg. His sons participated in

educational activities and were part of the communitys upper stratum, but
circumstances were not favourable enough to enable them to preserve the
property they inherited from their father. Compared to their father, their
wealth was visibly diminished. We would have to follow the third generation
and its life in the first half of the 20th century to establish whether the descent
from the village upper crust into proletarian misery took only a couple of
decades, the time of a single generation.
Already in the 1870s and 1880s, testators from the poorest families began to
divide up houses, stables, yards, gardens, fields and vineyards. Some testators
gave precise instructions as to where heirs were to put up a wall, doors and
so on. Choosing heirs in the families of Breg was thus carried out under pres-
sure from demographic, economic and social forces. It was conditioned by the
number of children, their sex, age, phase of the family cycle, the ratio between
consuming and productive family members, wealth, size of the land, the cur-
rent economic conjuncture and additional income brought into the household
by way of market activities, especially baking and selling bread. In the poorest
families at the end of the 19th century it was also increasingly influenced by
employment in factories in Trieste. In quite a number of families in Breg the
money flow increased in the 1890s when the youngest family members took up
jobs in the city. Working in the city supplemented the means received by sons
from their families, so that the wages earned by peasant sons gave a new shape
to inheritance practices, especially in the poorest families.42
4 Land and Money in the Hands of Women
As we have argued, women also employed wills as a useful inheritance law

institution which enabled the timely distribution of inheritance among indi-
vidual family members. In Breg unmarried as well as married women and wid-
ows made use of wills (see Tables 10.710.10). Womens inheritance practices
pursued the same goals as those of men, regardless of the fact that, as a rule,
women owned less property. Similarly to men, women hoped that by writ-
ing down their last will and testament they would prevent conflict and unfair
distribution of inheritance. Women testators showed concern for protecting
the welfare of the family, for rewarding diligence and care while punishing
42 For the process of urbanization of the Trieste region see Davis, Rise From Want.
laziness. In womens wills a family member who arbitrarily exploited family

property before it was rightfully theirs was scolded and punished economically
in a special clause. In the opinion of most women testators the duty of each
family member was to show diligence in submitting to the familys survival
strategy as set out by the parents.
TABLE 10.5 Marriage status of testator by 10-year periods Dolina
Not known Single Married Widow All

Period No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
183344 0 0 2 6.5 27 87.1 2 6.5 31 100

184554 0 0 1 4.8 16 76.2 4 19.0 21 100
185564 2 5.9 0 0 24 70.6 8 23.5 34 100
186574 0 0 8 25.8 19 61.3 4 12.9 31 100
187584 2 4.3 8 17.0 30 63.8 7 14.9 47 100
188594 3 6.5 9 19.6 24 52.2 10 21.7 46 100
18951904 1 2.4 9 21.4 27 64.3 5 11.9 42 100
All 8 3.2 37 14.7 167 66.3 40 15.9 252 100
TABLE 10.6 Gender of testator by 10-year periods Ricmanje
Man Woman Married Couple All

182534 1 50.0 1 50.0 0 0 2 100

183544 10 66.7 5 33.3 0 0 15 100
184554 10 76.9 3 23.1 0 0 13 100
185564 10 52.6 8 42.1 1 5.3 19 100
186574 16 72.7 5 22.7 1 4.5 22 100
187584 26 78.8 7 21.2 0 0 33 100
188594 22 53.7 19 46.3 0 0 41 100
18951904 14 58.3 10 41.7 0 0 24 100
All 109 64.5 58 34.3 2 1.2 169 100
228 Verginella
TABLE 10.7 Marriage status of testators by 10-year periods Ricmanje
Single Married Widow All

182534 0 0 2 100 0 0 2 100

183344 0 0 8 57.1 6 42.9 14 100
184554 1 11.1 6 66.7 2 22.2 9 100
185564 2 14.3 11 78.6 1 7.1 14 100
186574 2 10.0 16 80.0 2 10.0 20 100
187584 3 10.3 20 69.0 6 20.7 29 100
188594 4 12.9 19 61.3 8 25.8 21 100
18951904 1 5.0 17 85.0 2 10.0 20 100
All 13 9.4 99 71.2 27 19.4 139 100
Like their husbands, married women faced the question of whether to leave
their property to a single heir and pay off the others in money, or to divide it
equally among all of them. Compared to those of men, womens wills exhibit
a more flexible pattern, since in most cases their choice of successors was of
lesser economic importance. Only a small number of women, gospodarice
(landladies), who took their husbands under their roof, faced the question of
whether to keep their property unified or to divide it among all the children.
Until the 1860s women testators favoured sons over daughters as primary
heirs. Daughters were paid off in money, land or other property. In many
cases women favoured a male lineage, regardless of inheritance law norms.
They did not ignore female family members, but it seems that there did not
exist a privileged inheritance axis among women testators and their daugh-
ters, sisters, mothers and daughters-in-law, as was sometimes the case among
upper-class women. Still, at the end of the 19th century, one notices some new
tendencies in choosing the primary heir. Among universal heirs one more fre-
quently finds daughters and granddaughters, while sons are given the status of
legatees. Although the choice of primary heir is still conditioned by the fam-
ily economic calculus, the wish to reward helpful behaviour and to express
close emotional ties becomes increasingly noticeable. Womens expression of
affection is particularly noticeable in regard to clothing, which testators left
to daughters, granddaughters, brides, mothers and sisters, sometimes also
husbands. Childless women especially frequently left property to their nieces
and nephews.
TABLE 10.8 Marriage status of testators by 10-year periods Boljunec
Single Married Widow All

18251834 2 50,0 1 25,0 1 25,0 4 100

183344 2 11.8 14 82.4 1 5.9 17 100
184554 1 6.7 10 66.7 4 26.7 15 100
185564 1 3.6 24 85.7 3 10.7 28 100
186574 5 16.7 17 56.7 8 26.7 30 100
187584 4 11.4 24 68.6 7 20.0 35 100
188594 2 6.7 21 70.0 7 23.3 30 100
18951904 2 7.1 20 71.4 6 21.4 28 100
All 19 10.2 131 70.1 37 19.8 187 100
The dynamics of family relations began to change in Breg only after the
gradual abandonment of parent-controlled marital practices and the dowry
system, which took place in parallel with the decline of womens market activ-
ity and increasing male employment in Trieste. This led to a redefinition of
male and female family roles. The gradual decline of womens participation
in economic production and the increasing reliance of Breg families on fac-
tory wages weakened womens economic power and thus laid the foundation
for the disappearance of Bregs traditional division of labour and family roles.
Womens weakening economic power also diminished their chances of actively
intervening in the domestic sphere and shaping family strategies. At the end of
the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the first traces of these changes
are noticeable in testamentary practices (see Tables 10.1 and 10.3 above). The
number of testators who do not take into account their wifes situation after
their death increases. Simultaneously, the number of women who leave the
management of their inheritance to their husbands and do not change their
husbands testamentary decisions also increases (see Table 10.2 above).
All this took place at the same time that village authorities began to appeal
to women to embrace motherhood and the moral mission that awaited them
within the family. According to clerics and other influential individuals in
Breg, looking after the material well-being of the family, going to town and
managing land and money were not part of womens nature. They were to be
the exclusive domain of men.
230 Verginella
During this period village authorities led a campaign against undisciplined

women who were a disgrace to their family and community. The untamed
women bakers and farmers had to be encouraged to embrace the model of
a woman subservient to her husband and the Church, which was the mis-
sion of the Society of Mary, founded in Breg in 1904 by Bregs clergy.43 Marys
example defined a new family role for the women of Breg, the role of a suffer-
ing and passive woman. The model was only acceptable to women who gave
up bread making and all other commercial activities in the city. Although fol-
lowing Marys example, which encouraged women to be housewives and raise
children,44 still allowed women to work in the fields, it also corresponded to
the transfer of the economic sphere and the management of family property
into the hands of men. Women without money, especially if they were also
without a dowry, could only make spiritual wills, as churchmen called this
kind of unwritten, devotional last testament. In the eyes of God they were freed
from the chains of worldly possessions, but only at the price of a new subservi-
ence to men. The reciprocity of economic cooperation between husband and
wife, which was the engine of all family, kinship and community relations in
the ancien rgime in Breg, was replaced by economic dependency and a time
of socially unprotected woman.
5 Conclusion
The analysis of testaments for the southeast hinterland of Trieste, the area
of Breg, shows that the causes of very widespread testament practice among
small farmers, men as well as women, have to be attributed, on the one hand,
to the influence of Venetian notarial procedure which had spread from the
cities of Istria in the agrarian hinterland. On the other hand, demographic,
social and economic processes have to be taken into account in the 19th cen-
tury as they had started to change the traditional structure of those communi-
ties which were also experiencing urbanization. The testament was a means
of stabilization which made it possible for testators to moderate the influ-
ence of new legal norms which were introduced by the Austrian state after
the release of land, or they were the tool with which they prevented excessive
farm fragmentation and took care of the survival of family members. In Bregs
villages in the 19th century the symbolic and economic value of the land was
43 Marta Verginella, enska obrobja [Womens Margins] (Ljubljana, 2006), 111.

44 Luisa Accati, The Beauty and the Monster. Discursive and Figurative Representations of the
Parental Couple from Giotto to Tiepolo (Fucecchio and Florence, 2006).
still so important that the wealthiest social strata of the population were not
prepared to leave the decision about who was to inherit land exclusively to
Austrian legislation or their descendants will and therefore decided to made a
testament. Even though the women in Bregs villages usually only had disposal
of more modest property, in land as in money, than men, their decisions were
not substantiality different from those of men. Married women testators were,
like their husbands, faced with the question whether they should leave their
property only to one child and give the rest small compensation, or distribute
their property equally among all of the children.
CHAPTER 11
Inheritance Practice and the Elderly

in Central Europe: The Example of Western
Bohemia, 17001850
Alice Velkov
1 Introduction
In contrast to other stages of life, old age is to a certain extent difficult to delim-
it.1 People perceive old age individually, their own as well as that of others.
Some individuals are still active at a very advanced age, others look forward
to old age as a time of retirement and cannot wait to see it coming. Although
the dates defining old age have been viewed as somewhat arbitrary in the past
and present alike, there are important differences between old age in the
past and nowadays. In pre-industrial rural society, peoples choices of how they
would spend their old years were much more restricted. This final stage of their
life was profoundly influenced by a whole range of circumstances, including
physical condition, social status or family. Also the percentage of people who
did reach advanced old age was significantly lower, for a number of reasons.
In the first place, only about one half of the population was able to escape
the dangers of childhood, with its high mortality rate. If people survived into
adulthood, their chances of reaching a high age increased. Nevertheless, in
the pre-industrial period the elderly accounted for only a small percentage
of the overall population in the 18th century, the share of people over sixty
did not usually exceed 10%. In France, for instance, this share is estimated
at less than 8%, in England at 9% to 10%,2 in Bohemia, estimates exist for
1 For more on this issue, see e.g. Dana tefanov and Hermann Zeitlhofer, Alter und Genera-
tionbeziehungen in Bhmen. Zum Ausgedinge in nord- und sdbhmischen Drfern in der
Frhen Neuzeit, in Das Alter im Spiel der Generationen. Historische u. Sozialwissenschaftliche
Beitrge, eds. Josef Ehmer and Peter Gutschner (Vienna, 2000), 23158; Josef Ehmer, Zur
Stellung alter Menschen in Haushalt und Familie. Thesen auf der Grundlage von quantita-
tiven Quellen aus europischen Stdten seit dem 17. Jahrhundert, in Der alte Mensch in der
Geschichte, ed. Helmut Konrad (Vienna, 1982), 62106; Pat Thane (ed.), A History of Old Age
(Oxford, 2005).
2 David G. Troyansky, Das 18. Jahrhundert. Rckhalt in Familie und Gemeinde, in Pat Thane
(ed), Das Alter. Eine Kulturgeschichte (Darmstadt, 2005), 175210 (175).

Inheritance Practice and the Elderly 233
people over fifty, whose share was approximately 11%.3 Nevertheless, old age
has always been an important phenomenon, associated with various historical
concepts, theories and stereotypes.4
One of the typical stereotypes considers traditional society to have been
ideal for the co-existence of several generations. According to such beliefs,
old people were supposed to be part of an extensive network of relatives, who
supported them and cared for them, not leaving them to manage alone. The
modern era of industrialization and urbanization is sometimes believed to
have disrupted this traditional way of life and torn older people away from this
ideal community.5 However, research carried out in this field has shown that in
Western Europe, the co-existence of several generations within one household
has never been a prevailing model. On the contrary, in numerous societies,
including Bohemia, a typical household (simple family household) consisted
of the nuclear family, i.e. parents and children;6 when the children grew up,
they set up their own families, while their parents usually continued to run
their own separate household. People who lived by themselves in their old age
were not an exception. Richard Wall states that, at the turn of the 18th and
the 19th centuries, only about 5% of the children continued to live with their
parents on a permanent basis after the wedding.7
3 Ludmila Fialov, Pavla Horsk, Milan Kuera, Eduard Maur, Ji Musil and Milan Stloukal,
Djiny obyvatelstva eskch zem [The History of the Inhabitans of Czech Lands] (Prague,
1996), 155. A more general analysis of old age seen in the context of life expectancy or the
percentage of the elderly in various European and non-European societies can be found in
Peter Laslett, Necessary Knowledge: Age and Aging in the Societies of the Past, in Aging in
the Past: Demography, Society and Old Age, eds. David I. Kertzer and Peter Laslett (Berkeley,
Ca., 1995), 377.
4
Josef Ehmer, The Life Stairs: Aging, Generational Relations, and Small Commodity
Production in Central Europe, in Aging and Generational Relations over the Life Course.
A Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Tamara K. Hareven (Berlin and New York,
1996), 5374 (53); Hans Peter Tews, Soziologie des Alterns (Heidelberg, 1971).
5 Tamara K. Hareven, Introduction: Aging and Generational Relations Over the Life Course,
in Aging and Generational Relations, ed. Hareven, 112 (2).
6 Peter Laslett and Richard Wall (eds.), Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972);
Peter Laslett, Family life and illicit love in earlier generations. Essays in historical sociology
(London, New York and Melbourne, 1977); Jan Horsk and Markta Seligov, Rodina naich
pedk [A Family of our Ancestors] (Prague, 1996).
7 Richard Wall, Relationships Between the Generations in British Families Past and Present,
in Families and Households: Divisions and Change, eds. Catherine Marsh and Sara Arber
(London, 1992), 6385 (7076).
234 Velkov
Generational exchange was especially important when it involved the trans-

fer of family property, mainly immovable assets.8 Correct timing of this step
could favourably influence not only the lives of the family members, but also
the economic condition of the transferred property. Not all property holders,
however, were lucky enough to be able to freely choose the time of the prop-
erty transfer, since a whole range of factors affected it, among them inheri-
tance rights.
The aim of this article is to show how, in rural society, inheritance law influ-
enced the position of elderly people who, during their working life, owned
property which they subsequently transferred to their children. Given that up
until nearly the end of the 18th century, the position of regular farmers was
reserved for men only, the present study will leave aside the old age of farmers
wives. In discussing these issues, I will focus on the period 17011850, which is
of considerable interest for the topic in question, since, in 1787, inheritance law
in the Czech Lands was reformed, and the consequent changes had a substan-
tial impact on the rural society. In the first part of this study, I will explain the
nature of these reforms and their consequences. I will also use the year 1787 as
an important turning point, chronologically separating two different inheri-
tance systems, whose effects on the position of farmers in their old age I will
describe. Among other aspects, I will try to find out whether and how the age
at which fathers decided to transfer their property was changing. The cru-
cial question I will try to answer is whether fathers could deliberately choose
whether they would continue to manage their farm actively in their old age,
or even until their death, or whether they would retire. I will also examine
whether farmers could freely decide when they wished to transfer their prop-
erty and to what extent the timing of the transfer was influenced by inheri-
tance law. Last, but not least, I will look into the question of how long after the
transfer of property to the following generation fathers continued to live and
what was their social position in the last stages of their lives.
Geographically, my research has been limited to four localities which in
the period under examination were part of the hlavy estate near Pilsen
8 Alice Velkov, Krut vrchnost, uboz poddan? Promny venkovsk rodiny a spolenosti v 18. a
prvn polovin 19. stolet na pkladu zpadoeskho panstv hlavy [Cruel Landlords, Poor
Serfs? Transformations of the Rural Family and Society in the 18th and the First Half of the
19th Centuries] (Prague, 2009), 149246; Dana tefanov, K aspektm role pbuzenskch
vztah a majetkovch transakc. Situace na frdlantskm panstv v letech 15581750 [On
Certain Aspects of the Role of Kin Relationships and Property Transactions. The Situation in
the Estate of Frdlant in 15581750], Historick demografie, 22 (1998), 12530.
in Western Bohemia. The domain of hlavy was one of the smaller Czech
dominions,9 including 21 villages and one little town (Star Plzenec), with a
total population of 7,500 inhabitants in the mid-19th century.10 The domain
had always been in the possession of a noble house in 17101816 the Cernins
of Chudenice, from 1816 onwards the Wallensteins. The domain was predomi-
nantly agricultural, although there were important groups who made their liv-
ing by other means than farming (craftsmen, clerks, workers in the iron mills).
My study is based on the data available for hlavy, the administrative cen-
tre of the domain, Star Plzenec, the only small town on the estate, and two
villages (Lhta and Sedlec). Around 1700, these localities contained a total of
approximately 1,000 inhabitants, living in 130 houses. Over the following 150
years, the estate saw considerable population growth, so that by 1850 these
four localities contained c. 2,800 people, living in 300 houses.
For historical sources, my research is chiefly based on population registers,11
which were used to extract data on more than 15,000 persons and to carry
out a family reconstitution. Population registers also allowed me to estab-
lish the basic characteristics of the social status of individuals; these charac-
teristics were further refined on the basis of data obtained from registers of
9 Further characteristics of the domain in Alice Velkov, Die Herrschaft hlavy:

Wirtschaft, soziale Strukturen und Demographie, in Soziale Strukturen in Bhmen in der
Frhen Neuzeit, eds. Markus Cerman and Hermann Zeitlhofer (Vienna and Munich, 2001),
2941.
10 J. G. Sommer gives the figure of 7,124 inhabitans in 1838: Johann Gottfried Sommer, Das
Knigreich Bhmen, statistisch-topographisch dargestellt, vol. 6, Pilsner Kreis (Prague,
1838), F. Palack speaks about 7,617 already 10 years later: Frantiek Palack, Popis
Krlovstv eskho [Description of the Czech Kingdom] (Prague, 1848). Population was
Czech, however, authorities were mostly German.
11 Extraction of data was always carried out from the oldest register (i.e. for the register of
births from 1651, the register of marriages from 1661 and the death records from 1708) and
terminated for the register of births in 1834 (for Lhta in 1850), for the register of mar-
riages in 1850; for the deceased the data were searched as far as the registers contained in
the archives allowed the most recent registers were available for the village of Lhta
until 1938, which made it possible to determine with certainty the date of death of all the
persons born before 1835. For the other localities, the death records terminate earlier for
Star Plzenec in 1895, for Sedlec in 1893 and for hlavy as early as 1877. Sttn oblastn
archiv [State Regional archives] (hereinafter SRA) Plze, roman-catholic (hereinafter r. c.)
vicarage at Star Plzenec, volume number 19, 12, 1518, 21, 23, 25, 26, 31, 34, 35; ibidem,
r. c. vicarage at hlavy, volume number 16.
236 Velkov
real property dating back to 16941695,12 cadastres,13 the so-called urbaries /

Urbarium (Urbar-Register),14 which prescribed the levies due to the landlord,
and population lists from the 19th century.15
Given that this study focuses on the age of property holders, I believe it is
useful to briefly describe the typology of this social group.
In Bohemia, rural holders of immovable property can be divided into three
categories: full peasant holders (sedlci, Bauern), who held the largest amount
of land; smallholders (chalupnci, Chalupner or Grtner), who usually held less
than five hectares; and cottagers (domki, Husler), who held cottages with-
out land. The farms on the estate of hlavy tended to be rather small only
30% of the holdings were over ten hectares in size. Most families were thus
able to manage all the necessary work by themselves. Cottagers usually made
their living by practising a craft, or they hired themselves out as day-labourers
in the service of full peasant holders or landlords. Although this social group,
i.e. the cottagers, came into being only at the beginning of the 18th century,
thanks to a huge wave of cottage-building in the course of the 18th century the
number of holdings without land eventually outnumbered the existing hold-
ings with land.16
Although there existed three different groups of property holders, the
lifecycles and strategies of the first two groups, i.e. full peasant holders and
12 Two isolated records, dating respectively to 1686 and 1691, appear in the land registers.
SRA Prague, Collection of State land registers (hereinafter LR) Blovice n. 133139, 161, 168;
LR Plze n. 134136; LR Rokycany, n. 233, 268, 270, 273276.
13 Nrodn archiv [National Archives] (hereinafter NA) in Prague, coll. Bern rula, Plze dis-
trict, i. n. 18, fol. 576583, year 1654; NA, coll. Theresian cadastre (hereinafter TC), Plze
district 61, hlavy and Neblovy domain, rustical statement, i. n. 2252, box 684, year 1719;
coll. TC, Region of Plze (PS), hlavy and Neblovy domain i. n. 27, folio 238257, year
1748; coll. TC, Region of Plze (RS), hlavy and Neblovy domain, i. n. 90, folio 4486,
year 1757.
14 SRA Praha, coll. Est. hlavy, Urbary register of the hlavy-Neblovy domain, i. n. 6, year
1719.
15 Ibidem, coll. Est. hlavy Conscription of population of Star Plzenec, i. n. 169, year 1775;
List of subjects, i. n. 4349, years 18021817; Lists of population for the purposes of capi-
tation tax, i. n. 201204, years 18161824. Sttn okresn archiv [State Disctrict Archives]
Plze-south based in Blovice, coll. Archives of the vicarage of Star Plzenec, i. n. 3a,
Condition of souls, year 1838; NA, coll. List of subjects by religion 1651, volume number SM
R 109/45, PK 86.
16 Alice Velkov, Transformations of Rural Society between 17001850, Historica, 13 (2008),
109158 (115123); Markus Cerman and Eduard Maur, Promny vesnickch socilnch
struktur v echch 16501750 [Transformations of the rural social structures in Bohemia
16501750], esk asopis historick, 98 (2000), 737773 (753757).
smallholders were rather similar. This similarity consisted in, among other
things, a lower rate of migration, age at marriage of children, even the readi-
ness with which these social groups accepted the changes of the inheritance
law in 1787. In contrast to these two groups, the condition of cottagers, given
their means of subsistence, was much closer to the lifecycles of other landless
people (craftsmen, farm workers or hired labourers). For this reason, for the
purposes of analyzing the strategies of property holders in their old age and
their representation in graphs and tables, it is appropriate to separate the cat-
egory of cottagers from the remaining two social groups, i.e. from those who
actually held land. Such a division is also justified by the relative proportion
of the three groups, given that during the 18th century the cottagers outnum-
bered both the full peasant holders and the smallholders, the number of small-
holders being relatively small.
It is not easy to define precisely what old age means since no official thresh-
old dates exist. Usually people were considered old when they started to lose
their working capacity, their physical strength and began to develop physical
signs of old age, such as grey hair.17 Nor are historians unanimous on when
old age starts. For instance, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie places the lower limit
of old age at 50 years,18 Karl Kaser defines as old people over 6019 and Richard
Wall classifies as old persons reaching the age of 65.20 For the purposes of
this study, in line with the segmentation made by G. Sundbrg, I chose the
age of 50.21 Even though it is true that only very few people ceased their eco-
nomic activity immediately upon reaching this age limit, there do occur cases
of fifty-year-olds who vacated their position in favour of the younger genera-
tion. Moreover, setting the threshold between the period of economic activity
and retirement at a relatively low age will make it easier to follow the timing of
generational exchange.
Let us now explore the quantitative representation of old people in the
hlavy domain. The relevant data can only be taken from sources covering
17 Richard van Dlmen, Kultur und Alltag in der Frhen Neuzeit, vol. 1., Das Haus und seine
Menschen 16.18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1990).
18 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou. Ein Dorf vor dem Inquisitor 1294 bis 1324 (Frankfurt
am Main and Berlin, 1993), 238.
19 Karl Kaser, Macht und Erbe. Mnnerherrschaft, Besitz und Familie im stlichen Europa
(15001900) (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2000), 222.
20 Richard Wall, Elderly Persons and Members of Their Households in England and Wales
from Preindustrial Times to the Present, in Aging in the Past, eds. Kertzer and Laslett,
81106 (81).
21 Gustav Sundbrg, La Sude, son peuple et son industrie. Expos historique et statistique pub-
li par ordre du gouvernement (Stockholm, 1900).
238 Velkov
the entire population of the region, and there is just one such source.22 It
relates to the year 1820 and shows that men and women of 50+ accounted for
19% and 17% of the population respectively.
Another interesting figure shows the percentage of people who died after
reaching their fiftieth year compared with the deaths overall (Table 11.1).
Although the age of death recorded in the registers is not always accurate,
since, especially for very old individuals, it was often overestimated, a certain
trend can be recognized. It clearly appears that the proportion of people who
died after reaching the age of fifty was progressively increasing, which is linked
to a higher life expectancy. At the same time, the structure of the group of indi-
viduals who died after their fiftieth year was changing. While, in the first half
of the 18th century, up to one third of people who reached the age of fifty died
before their sixtieth year, and a maximum of 40% of the population reached
the age of 70, in the first half of the 19th century, people who died in the range
5059 accounted for only one fifth, while almost one half of old people reached
the age of 70 and more. Differences between the sexes were of no major signifi-
cance in the hlavy region.
TABLE 11.1 Structure of the deceased broken down by age and sex in the hlavy region,
17081834 (in percentages)
Age of death in Period of death Total

register 17081750 17511800 18011834
N % N % N % N %
Men
0 316 31.1 420 32.4 402 38.5 1145 34.1
14 216 21.2 306 23.6 174 16.7 695 20.7
514 74 7.3 99 7.6 61 5.8 232 6.9
1529 65 6.4 60 4.6 57 5.5 181 5.4
3049 100 9.8 105 8.1 54 5.2 259 7.7
50+ 208 20.5 292 22.5 267 25.6 766 22.8
No age provided 38 3.7 16 1.2 28 2.7 80 2.4
Total number 1017 100.0 1298 100.0 1043 100.0 3358 100.0
22 SRA Praha, coll. Est. hlavy, List of population for the purposes of capitation tax, i.n. 202,
year 1820.
Age of death in Period of death Total

register 17081750 17511800 18011834
N % N % N % N %
Women
0 246 26.3 363 27.1 328 31.8 932 28.2
14 208 22.3 288 21.5 180 17.4 677 20.5
514 51 5.5 72 5.4 51 4.9 175 5.3
1529 52 5.6 57 4.3 58 5.6 169 5.1
3049 99 10.6 137 10.2 100 9.7 337 10.2
50+ 247 26.5 410 30.6 308 29.8 965 29.2
No age provided 30 3.2 12 0.9 8 0.8 50 1.5
Total number 933 100.0 1339 100.0 1033 100.0 3305 100.0
Note: The research covers the period between the years 1708 and 1834, since in 1708 the oldest
register of deaths was established; excerpts from the register of births was terminated to the
year 1835, and only the deaths of people born before 1835 were looked up.
TABLE 11.2 Structure of the deceased at 50+ (in percentages) in the hlavy region broken down
by age and sex in 17081850 (based on age of death as reported in death registers)
Age of death Period of death

17081750 17511800 18011850
men women men women men women
N % N % N % N % N % N %
5059 70 33.4 69 27.9 92 31.6 115 28.0 81 18.9 105 21.0

6069 62 29.7 77 31.2 80 27.5 143 34.9 129 30.4 156 31.3
7079 34 16.3 53 21.5 74 25.4 90 22.0 115 27.1 137 27.5
80+ 43 20.6 48 19.4 45 15.5 62 15.1 101 23.6 101 20.2
Total number 209 100.0 247 100.0 291 100.0 410 100.0 426 100.0 499 100.0
Mean age 66.0 67.0 65.7 64.9 69.6 68.2
of death 50+
Median 62.0 65.0 65.0 64.0 70.0 68.0
240 Velkov
It may be expected that these changes life expectancy also became manifest
in the way of life of the elderly in the last stages of their lives. Did a longer
life expectancy automatically mean that people were economically active for
longer? Or, on the contrary, did the number of the elderly who spent their last
years enjoying their retirement rights (vmnek, Ausgedinge) increase? And to
what extent was the way of life they chose conditioned by the inheritance law
in force?
2 Influence of Inheritance Law on Property Transfer
On the estate of hlavy, as in the rest of Bohemia, the typical features of

inheritance law included impartibility of farmland, one main heir and a prev-
alence of single-family households. No unified inheritance system existed in
Bohemia until as late as the end of the 18th century. It was the overlords of
different estates who formulated and decided the rules governing inheritance,
which, as a consequence, may have differed from region to region.23 Most often
the existing holders youngest son inherited the holding in the 18th century,24
which was also the case on the estate of hlavy. The origins of this custom-
ary law are not entirely clear. Most probably, the right of the youngest son
took hold because it granted a sufficiently long period of tenure to the farm
manager, not disrupted by pressure to take over the holding on the part of the
heir. However, in practice, throughout the 18th century, this law appeared to
be more of a disadvantage. The farmer was often obliged to manage his hold-
ing until a relatively late age, in order to be able to hand over the property to
an adult heir. If, for a serious reason (e.g. due to very old age or poor health)
he was unable to run the household any longer, he could, with his landlords
assent, transfer it to another of his children. Usually, however, he did not make
use of such an option, thus selecting his heir indirectly by not carrying out
the property transfer in his lifetime. By continuing to keep his holding until
he died, he ensured the inheritance claim for his youngest son, since, accord-
ing to the inheritance law, the youngest son succeeded to him automatically.
It was not rare, however, that the original holder died before his heir reached
23 Eduard Maur, Das buerliche Erbrecht und die Erbschaftspraxis in Bhmen im 16.18.
Jahrhundert, Historick demografie, 20 (1996), 93118 (10115); Velkov, Transformations
of Rural Society, 1446; eadem, Krut vrchnost, 150174.
24 Vladimr Prochzka, esk poddansk nemovitost v pozemkovch knihch 16. a 17. stolet
[Czech Serf Holding in Land Transfer Registers in the 16th and the 17th Centuries]
(Prague, 1963), 5045; Maur, Das buerliche Erbrecht, p. 106.
majority and could become a regular holder. In such cases, it was necessary
to entrust the holding to an interim holder, usually the new husband of the
heirs widowed mother, or possibly the widow herself or the heirs brother-
in-law or older brother. Unfortunately, such a provisional solution tended to
reduce the prosperity of the holding and threatened the economic interests
of both the landlord and the State,25 since, while being entitled to make use
of the proceeds of his agricultural activity, the interim holder was not obliged
to pay back debts incurred by his or her predecessors. Often, the result was
that the property in question became more and more indebted.26 That is why
in 1787 Emperor Joseph II issued a Patent stipulating that if the holder died
without leaving a will naming his heir, his eldest son was to be appointed as his
successor.27 Already one year before, in 1786, subject holders were granted the
right to leave a testament;28 until that time they were not allowed to choose
their heirs freely without permission of the landlord.29
On the face of it, this modification of inheritance legislation might not seem
very significant it took place only after farmers had already been allowed to
choose their successor freely. The provisions of the Patent were in fact applied
only if the father had died without a testament. That however was not a rare
event at the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries, since it took a certain
time for the practice of making a testament to take root. This rural society
seems to have been rather conservative in this respect, because as late as the
early 19th century, making a written testament was not very widespread. If a
farmer expressed his will, he usually did so orally, and his oral statement was
25 Alice Velkov, Staatliches Eingreifen in die Beziehung zwischen Gutsherrschaft und

Untertanen. Zu Erbrecht und lndlicher Familienstruktur in Westbhmen an der Wende
vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert, in Untertanen, Herrschaft und Staat in Bhmen und im Alten
Reich. Sozialgeschichtliche Studien zur Frhen Neuzeit, eds. Markus Cerman and Robert
Luft (Munich, 2005), 15375 (155).
26 Prochzka, esk poddansk nemovitost, 421.
27 Joseph Kropatschek (ed.), Handbuch aller unter der Regierung des Kaisers Joseph II. fr
die k. k. Erblnder eingegangenen Verordnungen und Gesetze vom Jahre 1780 bis 1789, vol. 13
(Vienna, 1789), 98.
28 Kropatschek (ed.), Handbuch, vol. 10 (Vienna, 1788), 8992.
29 Some of the Josephine reforms mentioned here are analyzed by Karl Gutkas, Probleme
der Landwirtschaft zur Zeit Maria Theresias, in Die Auswirkungen der Theresianisch-
josephinischen Reformen auf die Landwirtschaft und die lndliche Sozialstruktur
Niedersterreichs, ed. Helmut Feigl. Vortrge und Diskussionen des ersten Symposiums
des Niedersterreichischen institutes fr Landeskunde Geras 9.11. Oktober 1980 (Vienna,
1982), 135; Roman Rosdolsky, Untertan und Staat in Galizien: die Reformen unter Maria
Theresia und Joseph II., (Mainz, 1992) (ed. Ralph Melville).
242 Velkov
afterwards registered in special books which recorded contracts and arrange-

ments concluded by the subjects. A certain reluctance to ponder over the end
of ones life may have played a role here, as well as the fact that the farmers
death was not usually preceded by a long illness which would turn his thoughts
in that direction. Also the cost of paying for drafting a written testament was
probably not negligible.
The importance of the Patent consisted primarily in the fact that it helped
push through a new model which proved to be more beneficial to all the stake-
holders. Since its provisions were applied when no testament was left, other
farmers could see the practical advantages of the new model, which they would
perhaps have been reluctant to adopt. One reason for this reluctance was that
farmers tended to be rather conservative in their thinking this also applied to
the hlavy region where, in the beginning, most farmers continued to follow
the original inheritance practice, although they were not obliged to do so. It
is also true, however, that the new inheritance order profoundly changed the
position of the individual family members and it is therefore understandable
that farmers could not change their original strategy overnight. Since for many
decades (even centuries) it had been firmly established that the youngest son
became the heir, farmers were used to taking steps to secure the future of those
children who did not inherit. Considering these circumstances, it was simply
not possible to take away the right to inherit from the youngest son, who had
often been preparing for his role for many years, and give it to the eldest who
had often settled down elsewhere. Only those families which were set up after
the Patent had been issued could adapt their strategies to the new situation,
therefore it was only the following generation, born after the law had changed,
who accepted the new rules with more openness and willingness.
Let us now consider how inheritance law was implemented on the hlavy
estate (see Table 11.3). Here, for most of the 18th century, the prevailing pattern
was that the farmer passed the property over to his youngest son (until 1787,
such transfers accounted for 72% of all the cases when the farmer had at least
two children). Other children were selected only if the rightful heir was unable
to take over the property (e.g. he was still minor or disabled) and the farmer
refused to carry on.
As a consequence, the father was usually constrained to run his farm for
a very long time before he was at all able to pass his farmstead over to his
youngest son. In most cases, however, the father did not live long enough for
his youngest son to reach majority: 78% of the land holders (i.e. full peasant
holders and smallholders) and 93% of the cottagers (i.e. landless people) held
their property until their death. However, even not managing ones farm for
TABLE 11.3 Structure of heirs of fathers handing over only one holding to their children in the
hlavy region, 17011850
Heir Time of retirement

17011787 17881820 18211850
N % N % N %
An only son 69 27.8 34 21.1 38 24.4

Youngest son 93 37.5 48 29.8 26 16.7
Eldest son 14 5.6 29 18.0 43 27.6
Other sons 9 3.6 14 8.7 15 9.6
Daughter (father also had a son) 13 5.2 10 6.2 16 10.3
Daughter (father had no son) 38 15.3 21 13.0 10 6.4
Not determined 12 4.8 5 3.1 8 5.1
Total 248 100.0 166 100.0 177 100.0
so long could guarantee economic continuity. What happened was rather the
contrary, since most heirs were still minors, i.e. younger than 24. Almost one
half of all heirs were under 20 when their fathers died and 29% of the heirs
had not even reached the age of 10 (Figure 11.1). It is therefore not surprising
that, quite often, after the farmer had died, a provisional administrator had to
be appointed. This was the case for 47% of the land holders and for 42% of the
cottagers (Table 11.4). Most frequently it was the deceased farmers widow or
her new husband who were appointed as provisional managers of the holding.
Such was the case for 90% of the land-holders and 80% of the cottagers. If the
future heir was already approaching adulthood, a provisional administrator
may not always have s been formally appointed. However, that did not mean
that such a young heir would have been immediately able to run the farm by
himself. Even there, his mother or an elder brother or another relative usually
assisted him in gradually taking over his responsibilities.
The need to appoint a provisional administrator after the farmers death
also had a bearing on the age at which the heir of the holding (both in case
of full peasant holders and smallholders) assumed his full responsibilities as
the manager of the farm. Paradoxically, in a situation when an administra-
tor had to be appointed, the moment of the takeover by the heir was usually
delayed, despite the fact that, formally, the heir became the holder right after
his fathers death. If the person appointed as provisional administrator was the
244 Velkov
TABLE 11.4 Property transfers broken down by economic continuity in the hlavy region,
17011850
Circumstances of property transfers 17011787 17881820 18211850

N % N % N %
Full peasants holders and smallholders

During the fathers lifetime 35 21.5 35 54.7 37 58.7
After fathers death to heir 52 31.9 16 25.0 18 28.6
After fathers death to provisional administrator 76 46.6 13 20.3 8 12.7
Total 163 100.0 64 100.0 63 100.0
Cottagers
During the fathers lifetime 6 7.1 32 33.0 39 41.9
After fathers death to heir 43 50.6 38 39.2 43 46.2
After fathers death to provisional administrator 36 42.4 27 27.8 11 11.8
Total 85 100.0 97 100.0 93 100.0
widowed housewifes new husband, he usually tried to maintain his position

for as long as possible, even when the rightful heir had long reached majority.30
Thus, before 1787, heirs on average took charge of the holding no sooner than
at age 28. After the change in the inheritance law, which led to a radical drop
in the need for provisional administrators (in 17881820 they were appointed
only in 20% of cases and in 18211850 in only 13% of the property transfers), the
average age at which the heir actually took charge of the holding decreased by
more than three years. As for the fathers, they considered it best to transfer the
holding to their heir before he reached 25 (see Table 11.5).
To summarize, after 1787 the age at marriage tends to coincide with the
age at which full peasant holders and smallholders take charge of the farm
(Table 11.6). This is confirmed by my research which shows that, after 1787,
fathers in the hlavy region indeed preferred transferring the holding to
their son on the occasion of his marriage.31 Linking the heirs marriage with
30 For more on this topic see Alice Velkov, Marriage and Property Transfer in Rural
Western Bohemia 17001850, in Inheritance Practices, Marriage Strategies and Household
Formation in European Rural Societies, ed. Anne-Lise Head-Knig. Rural History in Europe,
7 (Turnhout, 2012), 101125 (115).
31 Idem, 117.
TABLE 11.5 Age at which heirs took charge of the holding inherited from their fathers in the
hlavy region, 17011850
Age Full peasant holders and smallholders Cottagers

17011787 17881850 17011787 17881850
N % N % N % N %
1519 6 5.6 16 13.1 9 17.0 15 11.1

2024 31 28.7 55 45.1 6 11.3 32 23.7
2529 31 28.7 32 26.2 16 30.2 37 27.4
3034 20 18.5 11 9.0 10 18.9 28 20.7
3539 13 12.0 4 3.3 8 15.1 16 11.9
40+ 7 6.5 4 3.3 4 7.5 7 5.2
Total 108 100.0 122 100.0 53 100.0 135 100.0
Not known 37 25.5 24 16.4 26 32.9 46 24.4
Mean age 108 28.0 122 24.8 53 28.7 135 28.0
Median 108 27.0 122 24.0 53 28.0 135 27.0
the transfer of property allowed the fathers to carry out a transparent division
of inheritance shares among those of their children who had no inheritance
entitlement to the holding, since it was usually the dowry brought by the heirs
bride which was used to pay out the individual shares. In conclusion, what we
observe after 1787 is not only the decrease in the mean age of the takeover of
the holding, but also the mean marriage age, which applies to virtually all the
social categories involved.
One of the underlying reasons for this change consists in the fathers own
initiative, since after 1787 the father much more often lived long enough to see
his heir come of age. The inter vivos transfers between smallholders and full
peasant holders accounted for 57% of the cases (compared to 21.5% prior to
1788), and for 39.5% in the cottagers category (compared to only 7.3% prior
to 1788). This phenomenon is all the more interesting if we bear in mind that
the mere change of inheritance rules, i.e. giving preference to the oldest instead
of the youngest son, resulted in a situation where, at the moment of the heirs
maturity, the father was on average younger than in the previous period. If,
despite that, the age at which the heir married and took over the holding fur-
ther decreased, what it actually means is that, as I will show in more detail
further in the text, the father, of his own accord, decided to give up his own
economic activity at a younger age than was customary in the previous period.
246 Velkov
TABLE 11.6 Age at marriage of heirs of paternal holdings, 17011850
Age Full peasant holders and smallholders Cottagers

17011787 17881850 17011787 17881850
N % N % N % N %
1519 4 3.3 15 12.5 0 3 2.2

2024 55 45.1 61 50.8 21 31.9 56 41.2
2529 45 36.9 33 27.5 27 40.9 48 35.3
3034 13 10.6 9 7.5 12 18.2 20 14.7
3539 4 3.3 2 1.7 3 4.5 8 5.9
40+ 1 0.8 0 3 4.5 1 0.7
Total 122 100.0 120 100.0 66 100.0 135 100.0
Not known 23 15.9 26 17.8 13 16.5 46 24.4
Mean age 122 25.3 120 23.7 66 27.5 135 26.2
Median 122 25.0 120 23.0 66 25.5 135 25.0
This model clearly shows that in the 18th century farmers did not have much
choice in determining how they would spend their old age. Inheritance law de
facto predetermined their way of life. If a father did not wish to run his farm
until his death, he usually had to give up the idea of handing it over to the
youngest son and had to choose another heir. Indeed, before 1787, half of those
fathers who did not keep their holding until their death eventually transferred
the property to one of their older sons or to a daughters husband.
Let us now explore at what age fathers usually gave up farming and conse-
quently for how long they could enjoy their retirement.
Here again the answer depended on whether the farmer wished to preserve
the inheritance claim for his youngest son. There were also differences between
landholders and cottagers, who usually earned their living as craftsmen, day-
labourers or worked in iron mills. For the cottagers, passing on their cottage
meant running the risk of becoming totally dependent on their heir when they
grew old. Not all the cottagers were able to secure themselves, along with the
transfer of their property, and their retirement rights, which in Czech rural
society was an important institution for the security of old people.32 However
32 On the issue of retirement rights see Hermann Zeitlhofer, Arbeit und Alter in lndli-
chen Gesellschaften der Frhen Neuzeit. Die Erwerbsttigkeit im Alter zwischen
eigenem Besitz und den Zwngen einer konomie des Auskommens, Jahrbuch fr
TABLE 11.7 Mean age of fathers at time of property transfer in 17011787 and their age at death
Age of fathers Full peasants holders and Cottagers

smallholders
All property Only inter All property Only inter
transfers vivos transfers vivos
Fathers age by property transfer 57.8 66.0 56.6 62.5

Fathers age by death 59.4 73.3 57.1 71.3
Number 140 30 83 6
All fathers 163 35 85 6
% 100.0 21.5 100.0 7.1
the retirement rights of the cottagers (i.e. at maximum the right to be provided
accommodation and certain contributions for life by the heir of the property)
were not a form of social security, since they mostly included only the entitle-
ment to live in an outhouse. In certain cases, the heir pledged to maintain his
parents after they were no longer capable of work, which only strengthened
the system of dependence. This is probably one of the reasons why not only
before 1788, but also after that year a significantly lower number of cottagers,
compared to full peasant holders and smallholders, carried out the property
transfer during their lifetime. Holding a cottage until their death, represented
Wirtschafts-geschichte, 1 (2008), 3154; Josef Grulich, Zu ausgewhlten Aspekten des

Familien- und Lebenszyklus, Historick demografie, 20 (1996), 956; Dana tefanov,
Soziale Schichtung in der Herrschaft Frdlant, Historick demografie, 20 (1996), 177228;
Dana tefanov and Markus Cerman, Lebensunterhalt und Erwerb im Alter in lndli-
chen Gesellschaften der frhen Neuzeit, in Historik nechtnch djin. Sbornk pspvk
vnovanch prof. dr. Eduardu Maurovi [Historian of Unwanted History. Anthology in
Honour of Professor Eduard Maur], eds. Marie Koldinsk and Alice Velkov (Prague,
2003), 83107; Alice Kltersk, Forma socilnho zabezpeen na vesnici v 18. a prvn
polovin 19. stolet. (Vmnek v pozemkovch knihch vesnice Lhty u hlav) [A Form
of Social Security in the Country in the 18th and in the First Half of the Nineteenth
Century (Peasant Retirement Arrangements in Land Transfer Registers of the Village
of Lhty u hlav)], Historick demografie, 21 (1997), 95132; Josef Grulich, Das lnd-
liche Ausgedinge in der Frhen Neuzeit. Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Wahrnehmung
sozialer Kategorien im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, in Menschen Handlungen Strukturen.
Historisch-anthropologische Zugangsweisen in den Geschichtswissenschaften, eds. Vclav
Bek and Dana tefanov (esk Budjovice, 2001), 34369.
248 Velkov
at least a certain security if one day they became unable to maintain them-
selves by work. They would always be able to sell the cottage, even at the cost
of not transferring it to their children. On the other hand, even cottagers had to
put up with the pressure exercised by the heir, who was not willing to wait for
the transfer until his fathers death. As I will demonstrate later, such a situation
arises in particular after 1787, when, due to the reform of the inheritance law,
fathers are usually much younger when their heirs come of age, compared to
the previous period,
If a cottager did decide to transfer his cottage during his lifetime before
1788, the mean age of the transaction was 62.5 years, meaning that he spent
on average eight to nine years in retirement. These data, however, must be
taken only as indicative, since only six out of eighty-five cottagers decided to
carry out such a transfer during their lifetime, while all the others held the
cottage until their deaths. Compared with that, landholders who transferred
their holdings to their sons did so on average 3.5 years later than the cottagers,
and went on to enjoy their retirement rights for no longer than seven years. In
contrast to cottagers, the retirement rights of former landholders were much
more extensive, providing sound security for their old age. Apart from the right
to accommodation they could also comprise contributions in cash and, espe-
cially, in kind, which could, if necessary, be sold by the retired person. In case
of a poor harvest, the retired could even be better off than the active farmer,
since the latter was always obliged to provide the same amount of contribu-
tions, regardless of whether the harvest was good or bad, even if his own living
standard declined. The relatively advantageous position of former landholders
as regards security in their old age may have been one of the reasons why they
did not insist on running the farm until their death. To this end, as has already
been said, half of the fathers who transferred their property inter vivos, pre-
ferred an heir other than their youngest son, precisely to avoid the necessity to
keep farming longer
The fact that full peasant holders and smallholders, compared to cottag-
ers, transferred their holdings more frequently inter vivos, but were on aver-
age older than cottagers at the moment of the transfer, may have had several
causes. In the first place, the data may be slightly biased due to the low number
of such cases. Another reason may be the lower age of the cottagers at death. In
general, in the period before 1788, they died earlier, maybe even prematurely,
in comparison with full peasant holders, and who consequently did not have
time to carry out the transfer or had performed it at an earlier age.
Let us now see how this pattern changed after the inheritance law was
reformed in 1787. As we have already pointed out, the reform did not find
expression in the family strategy of farmers immediately after it had been

introduced. It became more widespread only in the following generation of
farmers, as is clearly shown also from the research on the hlavy estate.
Although it is true that here, after the Patent was issued, the number of eldest
sons appointed as heirs increased, in 17881820, the prevailing pattern still con-
sisted in appointing the youngest (in 48% of the cases). In contrast, after 1820
it became evident that fathers had already fully realized the advantages of the
new inheritance system and started to apply it in practice. If a father decided
between at least two children, he preferred the elder one in 43% of the cases,
and the younger only in 26%. But the chief contribution of the reforms car-
ried out in 17861787 consisted in giving the father more freedom to choose
the child to whom to give the property. The fact that fathers really did try to
choose the best possible solution is demonstrated by the increasing percent-
age of other than youngest children who were appointed as heirs: 31% after
1820 compared to 17% before 1788, or 24% in 17881820.
The changes in the strategy adopted by farmers became apparent on several
different levels. First and foremost, after 1820 cases of heirs who were still chil-
dren at the time of the transfer virtually disappeared. While in 17011787 as
many as 31% of the heirs were under 15, after 1820 they accounted for 6%. In
parallel with this trend, the necessity to entrust the management of the farm
into the hands of a provisional administrator after the farmers death became
much less frequent. Both among full peasant holders and smallholders, as well
30,0
28,0
26,0
24,0
22,0
20,0
18,0
16,0 17011787
% 14,0 17881820
18211850
12,0
10,0
8,0
6,0
4,0
2,0
0,0
04 59 1014 1519 2024 2529 3034 3539 40+
age
FIGURE 11.1 Age of heirs at the time of their fathers retirement
250 Velkov
TABLE 11.8 Age of fathers at the time of property transfer carried out in 17881850 and their age
of death
Age of fathers 17881820 18211850

All property Only inter All property Only inter
transfers vivos transfers vivos
Full peasants holders and smallholders

Number 59 32 57 33
% 100.0 54.7 100.0 59.7
Cottagers
Number 93 31 88 39
% 100.0 33.0 100.0 46.2
as among cottagers, this transitional measure had to be adopted in only 12% of

the cases. Also, the provisional periods became shorter, since most minor heirs
were over 15, and were approaching adulthood.
It is quite evident, therefore, that farmers were no longer so often con-
strained to farm until their deaths this occurred in 41% of property transfers
among the landholders and in 58% among the cottagers. The decreasing num-
ber of appointed provisional administrators, however, suggests that fathers,
especially cottagers, kept the tenure of their property until their deaths for
strategic reasons rather than because they had no adult son. The changed
inheritance practice thus allowed fathers to decide how they would spend
their old age whether they would continue to actively manage their holding
or whether they would delegate this role to their successor. At the same time,
they were able to choose the most suitable time for their retirement.
What, in conclusion, was the mean age at which fathers decided to transfer
their property to their successors after 1820? Since the holding after that year
was most often transferred to the eldest son, full peasant holders and small-
holders usually gave their farms over to their sons much earlier in their life
than in the 18th century. On average, fathers gave up work at approximately

fifty-nine, i.e. seven years earlier than in the period before 1788. They could
therefore expect to spend up to fourteen years in retirement which is twice as
long as in the 18th century. There is of course one other possible factor behind
the earlier retirement of the farmers which needs to be considered, namely
the pressure exercised by the adult heir, who wished to become independent.
It is true that when his eldest son reached his majority, the father may have
been considerably younger than when his youngest son came of age. In this
respect, the course of events would strongly depend on the fathers power and
authority, since nothing could make him transfer the holding contrary to his
own will.
As for the cottagers, no substantial change occurred comparable with the
landholders after 1820 the average age of fathers who handed over the cottage
to their heirs decreased by less than one year, to sixty-two years. Cottagers died
at earlier ages than full peasant holders and smallholders, and consequently
they spent on average only nine years living on retirement benefits.
3 Activities of Property Holders in Old Age
The mean age of farmers at the time of the property transfer provides us with
only indicative information on when fathers actually decided to give up their
active involvement in running their property. The picture of how many farmers
were still working at a given age before 1788, and how many were already enjoy-
ing retirement, becomes more focused when taking into account how fathers
themselves perceived their age, i.e. when they felt too old to manage their
holding. Let us now look at the individual age categories and how the change
of inheritance practice was reflected in this area As regards men in their fifties,
hardly any were retired only 12% among both cottagers and landholders.
This finding is by no means surprising since most people were still physically
fit at that age. They neither considered themselves old nor were they perceived
as such by the society. Moreover, given that the mean age of marriage was
between 25 and 30 years among men, it was only in their fifties that they had
adult and teenage children. More remarkable, however, is the pattern in the
other age groups. Among the cottagers, the proportion of active men remained
roughly the same among the 60-year-olds and 65-year-olds. Only among cot-
tagers in their seventies can we register a slight increase in the number of men
who had already handed over the property to their successor (in total 6% of
the cottagers). The proportion of cottagers who were still active continued to
be quite substantial (83%) even among 75-year-olds.
252 Velkov
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55 17911787
% 50 18211850
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
50 55 60 65 70 75
age
FIGURE 11.2 Still active full peasants holders and smallholders by their age
As concerns full peasant holders and smallholders, the proportion who were
still actively working in each of these age groups was relatively lower, compared
to cottagers, but the percentages were still significant. Up to 93% of 60-year-
olds and 89% of 65-year-olds who chose their child as a successor continued
to manage their holdings by themselves. Even among the 70-year-olds, no sub-
stantial decline can be observed (with 82% of the farmers still active). It is
only in the age group of 75+ that the percentage of men who decided to retire
increased (37.5%).
These data confirm the pattern outlined above, that most fathers kept
the holding until their death. As concerns men in their fifties or sixties, the
decision not to transfer the property might seem natural. Concerning the
higher age categories it seems likely that farmers, for one reason or another,
made this decision out of necessity rather than choosing to spend their last
years in that way of their own accord. The changed behaviour of farmers after
they started to fully exploit the reform of inheritance practice supports this
hypothesis.
More conspicuous changes occurred among full peasant holders and small-
holders. After 1820, even in the category of the 50-year-olds, the number of
fathers who handed over their holding to an heir increased, accounting for
813%. A truly distinctive change took place in the behaviour of fathers aged
6065. This was the age most fathers started to consider most suitable for a
property transfer among the 60 year-olds, as many as 75% were still active,
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
17911787
% 50 18211850
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
50 55 60 65 70 75
age
FIGURE 11.3 Still active cottagers by their age
while among men five years older, the share of non-active men prevailed at
almost 60%. Farming after the age of 70 was altogether exceptional, involving
a mere 10% of the fathers.
A similar change in behaviour can be noticed among the cottagers, although,
for the reasons given above, some fathers preferred to keep the holding until
their death. Among the fifty-year-olds, only 7% of the cottagers decided to
carry out the transfer. Even in this category, most men considered an age
between 60 and 65 to be the most suitable for retirement. Nevertheless, at the
age of 65, 65% of the men still kept their holding. Even among the 70+ category,
the cottagers who kept the property prevailed (52%). Only in the category of
75+ did the share of active men drop considerably, to one third.
Not all the fathers who handed the property over to their heirs, however,
gave up their active work. Even here, the behaviour of farmers in the 18th and
19th centuries varied, since, especially for full peasant holders and small-
holders, other ways of spending their old age were available. One option was
formally to transfer the holding to an heir while insisting on retaining the
entitlement to run the farm for an unspecified period of time. Altogether,
9% of the fathers opted for this strategy, since it allowed them to divide inheri-
tance shares among their offspring more easily, the impulse being in most
cases the heirs marriage. The property was thus formally entrusted to the heir,
while the father reserved to himself the right to run the farm for as long as
he wished.
254 Velkov
Still other fathers transferred their farm to their son and retired, but later
found that they did not yet wish to give up a working life, so they bought
another property on which they could continue farming. Among the 65-year-
olds, this was the case in 6% of the fathers, who were all rather well off and
after retirement had sufficient means to take such a step.
Sharing one place to live between the older and the younger generations
was not always smooth, especially if there were changes in the new farmers
family or if the new manager decided to sell the farm. For this reason, a father
may sometimes have decided to move away from the original farm even if he
did not intend to continue farming elsewhere. Instead of living on his retire-
ment pension, he bought a small cottage where he could spend his final days
in peace and quiet. In the hlavy region, this strategy was also sometimes
adopted mostly by very old men. Among the men in their seventies, 8% made
this choice. In this age group, 70% of farmers were already retired, and, of the
remaining 22%, one half were still running their farms while the other half
had transferred the farm to a son but reserved to themselves the right to farm
the land without any time-limit. The older the farmer, the more frequently he
chose formally to transfer the farm while keeping the theoretical possibility of
managing the property himself. In this way fathers tried to safeguard a peace-
ful life for themselves and their wives together with the younger generation.
Among the fathers aged 75, none held a farm himself, but 21% were still able to
claim their entitlement to the farm.
4 Conclusion
Owing to the inheritance system applied until the end of the 18th century, it
was unusual for older men who owned a property to enjoy life in retirement.
As they were obliged to wait for their heir to reach majority, they often had to
work on the farm until a very old age, often until they died. Later, the reform
of inheritance law enabled the fathers to choose a solution which they consid-
ered best. The most common model was where a father, in his sixties, trans-
ferred the property to his heir, while retaining a certain amount of control over
the farm as a retired member of the family. Thanks to higher life expectancy,
fathers could enjoy life in retirement for an increasingly long time.
It is likely that the idea of living in retirement was not perceived as some-
thing dreadful since fathers did not insist on managing their farm at any cost.
Continuing to run a farm until death typically occurred among men who did
not reach very old age those who died on average at age 56 before 1787, and
at age 59 after 1820. To summarize, the ideal age for retirement was around
60, when farmers were still in good shape and could hope to live for a long
time. What does this imply? I believe that this confirms that fathers generally
enjoyed a great degree of authority which did not disappear even after they had
transferred the farm to a son. Fathers did not seem to be afraid that by retir-
ing they would become useless or that their status would decline significantly.
Very likely, fathers continued to participate in the administration of the farm
by giving advice or giving a hand. Thanks to the model whereby a father retired
relatively early and gave the farm over to his heir, cases of three generations
living together, rather limited in the 18th century, became more frequent. The
forms of this co-existence varied considerably and would make an interesting
subject for a future study.
Index
Administration Collective4, 8, 17, 79

Austrian 217 Community18, 148, 163, 182
British52, 54, 59 Agrarian activity30, 35, 52, 77, 98, 169,
Carniolan207 170, 235
Ottoman13, 51, 72n5, 7380, 88, 98, 105 Conflicts121
Serbian 107 Fama117122, 132
Trieste, Diocese of207 Justice121
Venetian 51, 209210, 230 Mixed agricultural-pastoral98
Authorities1415, 144 Neighbourhood 121, 124, 132
Calvinists124, 126, 138, 171 Relations and judiciary procedure121
Catholic121122, 124128, 131 Religious154
Eastern Church145, 149, 166, 191 Peasants 182, 189206, 207213, 232255
Lutherans124126, 129, 138 Culture34, 78, 4748, 63, 6768
Ottoman54n32, 105
Protestant121122, 128 Defter (Ottoman tax poll) see Serbia
Reformers127, 151 Demographic regions2
Village229230 Domki, Husler (cottagers)236. See also
Western Church145, 150, 191 Socio-economic groups
See also Religion
Eastern Europe26, 10, 96, 100, 103105
Berkner, Lutz48 Elderly
Bohemia 232255 In Bohemia 232255
Inheritance Law of 1787 234, 241242 In England17, 23
Marriage244245, 251, 253 In Greece5657, 6162
Old age232233, 237, 251254 In Mediterranean Europe7, 57, 62
Provisional administration243244, In Northern Europe18, 2346
249250 In Poland189206
Typology of rural holders236 Authority66
Western Bohemia16, 232255 Cared for78, 18, 23, 32, 38, 204
See also Inheritance, Elderly, Social groups Changing role of the elderly171, 204,
and Headship 240242, 249251, 254255
Children24
Cambridge Group for the History of Definition of old age 198, 232233, 237
Population and Social Structure2, 81, Domestic violence 18
90 Economic activity15
Census-type documents and manu- Heads of household204, 240249,
scripts 1213, 17, 19, 26, 42, 44, 4950, 254255
5859, 76, 78, 82, 93, 107, 124, 143, 147, Independence17
171177, 179, 182183, 218, 235, 236 Life expectancy for older generation64,
Chalupnci, Chalupner or Grtner 254
(smallholders)236. See also Living arrangements4, 12, 2425, 28, 57,
Socio-economic groups 6263, 240, 242246
Co-habitation/co-residence8, 1112, 2426, Men16, 62, 246, 251255
2930, 32, 35, 38, 41, 4344, 57, 5963, Old people5, 12, 1617, 189206, 232255
66, 86, 91, 169, 180181 Poverty17, 36
258 Index
Elderly (cont.) Migration5356, 6465, 6768

Security246248 Revolution54, 59
Stereotypes233 See also Administration, Households,
Women17, 57, 62, 198 Inheritance and Migration
Wymowa199. See also Poland
See also Family Households, Inheritance Hajnal, John23, 6, 8, 10, 47, 100
and Widows Headship see Households
England/Britain45, 8, 1819, 33, 4546, 48 Herlihy, David3
European families120 Hide system (Hufenverfassung)191, 206
Historical demographers2
Fama14, 117122, 132133 Hospitals4, 136, 204
Family Households
Adultery127 In Bohemia233
Calvinist families172175, 178. See also In England/Britain2629, 48
Religion In Finland2629, 33
Care23 In Germany2629
Debt220222 In Greece5668
European families120 In Hungary 168185
Famelia (family)50 In Northern Europe2629, 35
Illicit sex127, 133, 135 In Norway2629
Mothers23, 3738 In Romania170, 179
Neglect 18 In Russia2629, 33
Networks23, 37 In Serbia8392, 108109
North European families2146 In Sweden2629
Peasant6992, 93115, 168185, 189206, In Transylvania169170
207231, 232255 Change over time 5962
Poor 36, 226 Christian78
Reconstitution 13, 16, 28, 6992 Definition2425, 82, 86, 9497, 180, 185
Relationships18 Divorce182. See also Religion and
Romanian179 Hungary
Rural 26, 3035, 6992, 93115, 168185, Family members34, 66, 89
189206, 207231, 232255 Headship15, 19, 33, 37, 56, 58, 6061,
Secrets1819 6466, 86, 89, 104, 205, 228, 242247,
Sexuality127131 249251
Sociologists2 Households, godparenthood and
Structures16 kinship 161166
Urban26, 3642 Identifying a household50, 8083
Ties (strong, weak)89, 12, 23, 86 Illicit sex127, 133, 135
See also Elderly, Household, Widows and Joint /stem3, 5, 7n28, 48, 94100,
Women 168169, 181182
Finland2146. See also Widows Lodgers25, 42, 44. See also
Socio-economic groups
Greece4768 Multiple and extended (complex or
Households and Inheritance5658, strong)12, 5, 78, 13, 48, 57, 5960,
5967 6264, 6768, 81, 99, 176, 254255
Island of Kythera12, 5152 Nuclear/weak/simple14, 78, 12, 48, 59,
Marriage5859 66, 68, 169, 176, 233
Index 259
Patterns49, 6368, 6992, 93116 Joint household system see Households

Rural93115, 107, 169, 170 Jurisdiction14
Separate (independent) household25,
66 Kaser, Karl99, 100
Single person households (solitary)25, Kertzer, David5
39, 5758, 6062 Kinship12, 4, 10
Structure26, 5759, 6667, 81, 85, 89, biological16
93116, 168185 support17, 38
System of Kythera (Greece)5668 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane3, 149, 161162
Taxation system based on house-
holds102, 105. See also Laslett, Peter24, 6, 8, 1011, 23, 4748
Administration, Serbia and Taxation Classification scheme 13. See also
Urban 25 Models
Working class households40 Le Play48
Zadruga94107 Life expectancy64
Hungary168185. See also Households, Loan sharks15, 213217
Marriage and Religion
Macfarlane, Alan3
Illegitimate children 18 Macro-regional approaches56, 910
Industrialisation and urbanisation4768. Macro-regional family4
See also Greece Marriage and family patterns23, 14, 47,
Inheritance1516, 57, 63, 6566, 80, 96, 100, 5859, 113, 123, 128129, 142, 155,
103105, 121, 199200, 240, 254255 244245
In Bohemia232255 Anglican church126127
Law in 1787234, 241243, 245246 Age at marriage24, 39, 56, 58, 6364,
In Greece5668 178, 198, 244, 251, 253
In Serbia103105 Catholic125127, 131, 133, 136, 139, 141
In Slovenia207231 Calvinists126, 139
Age categories and inheritance Children219220
practice151, 252254 Clandestine marriage123124, 127, 129
Deserted farms200 Common law marriages178, 183184
Land transmission 32, 35, 44, 66, 200201, Practice among Hungarians184
203204, 226231, 234, 240254 Consent122123
Marriage244245, 254 Council of Trent122, 125126, 129, 147,
Ownership of land64, 66, 236237, 241, 149n21, 150, 152, 156, 162
243, 245248 Courts127, 130131, 133, 139141
Partible63 Disputes117141
Provisional administration243244 Divorce126, 182
Retirement and retirements contracts Eastern European marriage pattern100
25, 32, 199, 203, 206, 245, 248 Ecclesiastical jurisdiction122123
System Ausgedinge, Altenteil, kar, European marriage pattern100103
syting32 Formation of the couple122124
Wills209231, 241 Fornication129
Womens inheritance practices226229 Germanic law128
See also Widows and Women Hardwicke Marriage Act127
Ireland 37 Headship 33, 6061, 242245, 253. See
Italy 7n28, 35, 139166 also Households
260 Index
Marriage and family patterns (cont.) Nuclear hardship hypothesis23

Illicit sex127131, 141 Todorova, Maria99
Incest144145 Tridentine156
Medieval canon law122123, 126, 128, 131, Modernization1, 9, 48, 67
136, 137141
Neo-locality31, 56, 91 National and regional differences1
Never married/permanent celibacy58 Neo-revisionist approach6, 11
Paternity136 North America47
Premarital relationships128 North-western Europe26, 8, 24, 47
Premature carnal knowledge (frher Northern Europe12, 23, 2829, 36, 4344
Beischlaf)138 Nuclear-hardship hypothesis4
Protestants126, 136, 141
Rape trials131 Occupation34, 42, 77, 170, 195196
Reformation42167 Old age see Elderly
Lutheran Reformation122, 124129 Outdoor relief, parish-based4
See also Authorities and Religion Ottomans13, 6980, 98, 105
Remarriage 32, 126
Reputation of betrothed women Poland15, 189206
131137 Peasants190192, 194, 200, 205206. See
Seduction trials136, 138, 140 also Socio-economic groups
Status122124 Village court rolls192195, 198203,
Virginity133 205206
Wedding ring124 Wymowa, institution 189190, 199, 206
Wedding rituals124127, 129 Parents18
Medieval canon law 14, 123 Pioneers of historical demography2. See
Mediterranean family model5, 7, 47. See also Models
also Models Poor relief4, 6, 23
Mediterranean marriage3. See also Population 5051, 232, 238
Marriage and Models Fertility63
Methodologies2426, 44, 7983, 105108, Mortality6364, 232, 238239
110114, 148, 168185, 234240 Trieste (19th century)207n1
Micro-regional approaches5 Post-revisionism 9
Migration13, 40, 44, 5356, 6465, 68
Age group5455 Reher, David7, 8, 1112, 23, 29, 43
Movements55 Religion
Piracy and enslavement5354 Calvinism 14, 151, 170176
Refugees53n27 Divorce182. See also Hungary
Seasonal migrants5455, 64 Catholic14, 119141, 142167, 230
Urban migrants54 Christian education151, 154
Models Church of England152
Co-habitation patterns26 Council of Mainz of 813144, 154
Godparenthood148157 Council of Trent122, 125126, 129, 147,
Hajnal, John23, 6, 8, 10, 47, 100 150, 152, 156, 162
Kaser, Karl99, 100 East-West schism142, 146, 150, 166
Laslett-Hammel household classification Godparenthood142167. See also
scheme2425, 79, 85, 97, 191 Spiritual Kinship
Life cycle poverty23 Muslims6992. See also Serbia and
Marriage124127, 191 Ottomans
Index 261
Orthodox14, 6992, 77, 91, 142, 150, 153, Serbian feudal class105
159161, 163, 166167, 191 Srez107
Protestant 14, 142, 153, 157158, 163, Taxpayers86, 88, 103105
166167 Timar71, 73, 75, 79, 91
Reformation142143, 146, 150153, 166 Vassal71n3, 73
St Augustine144 Vajat83
Uniate 174 Vilayet75
Western (Christian)143, 146, 191 Vlachs77n18, 85
See also Authorities, Marriage and Voynuks77
Spiritual kinship Zadruga94, 102, 107. See also joint
Retirement1516, 25, 199, 203206 family household
Wills15, 33, 209231. See also Zeamets73, 75
Inheritance, Widows and Women Head tax105. See also Taxation
See also Poland, Wymowa See also Administration, Inheritance and
Revisionist approach 56, 9 Religion
Russia33. See also Spiritual Kinship and Simple household system see Households
Religion Slovenia207231
Ruggles, Steven1011, 24, 44, 47 Austrian Civil Code of 1815217
Bakers213214, 216, 225, 230
Scandinavia3435 Dowry214, 229230
Sedlci, Bauern (peasants)236. See also Inheritance214, 216217, 228229
Socio-economic groups Mens will216
Serbia Money-lending activities214216
Brankovi family 70, 71 Peasant family222226
Brankovi region 13, 6992 Remuneration220
Cviji Jovan 83, 97 Society of Mary15, 230
Defter (Ottoman tax poll)13, 71, 73, Village loan sharks216
7576, 83, 9092 Wifes subservience to husband230
Despotovina71 Womens wills209, 215, 226230
Domazet80 See also Inheritance, Village authority and
Fiefs7576, 91 Women
Filipovi, Milenko S.97 Socio-economic groups30, 34, 77, 78n22
Hasses73, 75n14 Cottagers34, 194, 236237, 242243,
House (Kua)79, 8284, 86, 90, 107 246248, 250253
Inokosne (small or nuclear)88. See also Dwellers36
Households Farmers and landowners3132, 35, 64,
Karadi, Vuk Stefanovi94 77, 104105, 181, 194, 210211, 219,
Kmet88 222, 236237, 242246, 248255
Methodology79, 110115 Female industrial workers38
Medieval law82 Feudal lords98, 104, 200
Myths9495 Kin collaboration 34
Nahiyes7577 Landless31, 33, 237
Okrug107 Lodgers17, 25, 34, 194195, 199, 206
Ottoman hierarchy73, 75 Peasants58, 63, 104, 180182, 189206,
Rural13, 9497, 107, 110 207231, 236. See also Community
Soldiers7677 Proletarians31, 35
Serbian Civil Code of 184495 Servants34, 63
Serbian family of the mid-19 century102 Textile workers38
262 Index
Socio-economic groups (cont.) Incest144145, 152, 160

Smallholders194195, 219, 236237, 242, Justinian Code145
244245, 247248, 251253 Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane161162
Social and economic elites196, 205 Kormchaja canonical code, 165052
Urban elites58 159160
Urban settings36 Legislation150
South-east European family12, 14, 4768, Libri di famiglia (family books)147. See
6992, 93116, 168185, 207231 also Census-type documents and
Southern Europe24, 6, 8, 23, 2829, 44, manuscripts
4768 Luther151
Spiritual kinship14, 17, 19, 142167 Marriage145, 155
In the Balkans161 Mediterranean Europe157
In Central and Southern Europe149150 Patronage157
In England149, 161162 Reformation see Religion
In France 147, 149, 157, 161162, 164 Ritual153155
In Germany 157, 161, 164165 Social alliance155
In Italy147, 149, 155156, 161162, 164 Social institution155
In Northern Europe149150 Survey14, 148167
In Romania160, 165 Northern Italy 148n16. See also Italy
In Russia149, 159160, 163 Ties
Church160 between individuals and households
Moscow Council159160 or families154
In Southern Europe153 economic157
In Sweden157 Tridentine model of godparenthood
Alliances155156 156
Baptism14, 19, 142144, 146, 148, 151, Wills230. See also Inheritance and
154, 157 Women
Calvin151 Sweden 29, 38, 40
Compaternitas145, 154155
Council of Metz, 893147 Taxation25, 77n18, 78, 8388, 102, 105. See
Council of Rome, 721 AD145 also Serbia and Ottomans
Customs147, 149, 151, 155, 157, 163 Todorova, Maria80, 90, 98, 102
Eastern (Orthodox)142143, 145147,
149150, 153, 159161. See also Unmarried motherhood1819
Religion
Godparenthood in Europe after the Venetian rule53, 209. See also Authority
East-West Schism and the
Reformation153161 Welfare provision4, 6, 89, 17
Godparents142, 144148, 150152, Western Europe2, 233
154155, 157, 159 Widows 5, 12, 2527, 34, 76, 78, 81, 84
Horizontal relationships155157, 164 In Austria32
Kinship ties and households161, 163 In Central Europe36
Strategies154156, 161167 In England/Britain30, 33
Ties between households of In Finland27, 30, 33, 3840
non-kin164 In Germany30, 32
Vertical relationships156158 In Greece5657, 61
Households, Godparenthood and In Hungary178
Kinship161166 In Italy 35
Index 263
In Northern Europe2930, 32, 36, Concept of virginity133, 137

4041 Crime of premature carnal knowledge
In Poland198, 201203 (frher Beischlaf)138
In Serbia81, 84 Dowry201, 214
In Slovenia216 Economic activity213214, 229
In Sweden 29, 38 Female honour136137
Age of the widow29 (in England and Foundling hospitals136
Wales), 30, 40, 42, 44 Illicit sex127, 133, 135, 141
Family reconstitution28 Inheritance121, 123, 201202, 228229.
Head of household56. See also See also Inheritance
Households Land and Money226230
Inheritance 32, 201203. See also Legal protection130, 137141, 201
Inheritance Lending money214216
Living alone39 Medieval canon law122123
Living with kin28, 39, 61 Moral mission 229230
Local economy3044 Mothers of illegitimate children136
Migrant widows40 Pregnancy134
Occupation/work activities42 Rape130131
Remarriage202 Reputation121122, 131137
Retirement33. See also Retirement and Submission of wives to husbands126
Inheritance Seduced women138, 140
Rural widows3036, 44 Womens market activity 213217
Social position of widows41 Womens reputation in Protestant and
Urban places3536, 4041 Catholic Europe117141
Urban widows3644 Womens subservience to husband230
and widowers5, 12, 23, 37, 56, 61, 106, 113, Wills33, 209210, 214, 218222, 226230
141, 178, 243 Young single women38
Widows and children 3840, 4344 See also Family, Household, Inheritance
Wymowa199. See also Poland and Elderly
Women1415, 17, 25, 60, 96, 201202
Bakers213214, 216

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The History of Families and Households

Central and Eastern Europe

Constantin Iordachi (Central European University, Budapest)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cee

Silvia Sovi, Pat Thane, and Pier Paolo Viazzo

Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

List of Figures and Tablesvii

1 The History of European Families: Old and New Directions1

2 North European Families in the Past: Family Ties Revisited23

3 From Modernity to Tradition: Households on Kythera in the Early

4 The Reconstruction of Domestic Communities in the Brankovi Region

5 Variation Within: Regional Differences in Household Structures in

6 Womens Reputation and Marriage Disputes in Protestant and Catholic

7 The Reformation, the Council of Trent and the Divergence of Spiritual

8 Household Structure in the Nineteenth Century in a Transylvanian

11 Inheritance Practice and the Elderly in Central Europe: The Example

4.1 Map of Central Balkan States, 1375139572

2.1 Residence patterns of widows in Northern European localities27

3.7 Living arrangements by marital status of older people, Kythera62

from 1455, as well as on contemporary families and marital patterns in the

publications are Povert maschile, povert femminile. Lospedale dei Mendicanti

Pier Paolo Viazzo

The History of European Families: Old and New

Silvia Sovi, Pat Thane and Pier Paolo Viazzo

1 Pendulum Swings in Family History

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 6|doi .63/9789004307865_002

to provide convincing corroboration as it showed that in the areas where joint

to map past and present family systems made by geographers,22 political

22 Virginie Mamadouh, A Political-Cultural Map of Europe. Family Structures and the

32 See especially Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System.

2 The Present Volume

significant presence of complex households within a century and a half.44 The

Reputation and Marriage Disputes in Protestant and Catholic Europe, 1500

Century in a Transylvanian Village she questions the applicability of the clas-

3 Family History: The Future?

North European Families in the Past: Family Ties

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 6|doi .63/9789004307865_003

2 Problems, Definitions, Methodologies

A serious problem with methodologies used in household studies is the preva-

When embarking on household studies, decisions also have to be made

3 Household Structure: Co-residence, Married or Unmarried

To answer the question of co-residence, information about the households of

TABLE 2.1 Residence patterns of widows in Northern European localities, percentages

1. Britain 1851 0 60 27 33 15 24 60 33 (100%)

made to find potential effects of social and economic position on co-residence

children than in Britain, it is interesting to notice that the proportion living

12 Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System, 265266.

4 Age, Widowhood and Co-residence

The question about co-residence with married or unmarried children is natu-

16 Antonia Gomila Grau, Residence Patterns of Aged Widows in Three Mediterranean

5 Farm, Workshop or Other Property: Socio-Economic Distribution

In a paper of 2010 Moring demonstrated that a variation can be found in the

TABLE 2.2 Age distribution of widows in local communities, percentages

Age Kalanti Kitela Houtskar Replot Mecklenburg Berkhamsted Grasmere

2029 0.9 4 1 1.1 0 2.2 0

23 Jrgen Schlumbohm, Lebenslaufe, Familien, Hofe ((Gttingen, 1994), 253255.

27 Ake Holmbck and Elias Wessen, Svenska landskapslagar 3, Hlsingelagen [Swedish

In 19th-century Scandinavia the choice could be between working as an in-liv-

TABLE 2.3 Occupational distribution of widows in 19th century rural parishes

Occupation Kalanti Houtsk Replot Sundsvall Ullensaker Mecklenburg

Farmers widow* 53.3 43 42 44 26.6 39.9

Crofters widow 23.3** 34 23 25 16.6

*also retired widows of farmers **crofters and soldiers

22 Virginie Mamadouh, A Political-Cultural Map of Europe. Family Structures and the

32 See especially Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System.

12 Ruggles, Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System, 265266.

16 Antonia Gomila Grau, Residence Patterns of Aged Widows in Three Mediterranean

23 Jrgen Schlumbohm, Lebenslaufe, Familien, Hofe ((Gttingen, 1994), 253255.

27 Ake Holmbck and Elias Wessen, Svenska landskapslagar 3, Hlsingelagen [Swedish

31 Beatrice Moring, Widowhood Options and Strategies in Pre-industrial Northern Europe,

53 Moring, Widows, Children and Assistance, 111112; Martta Salmela-Jarvinen, Kun se

57 Ruggles, Prolonged Connections; idem, Multigenerational Families; idem, Reconsidering

9 Thomas A. Arcury, Industrialization and Households and Family Life Course

14 Emmanouel P. Kalligeros, Synoptike Istoria ton Kytheron [Short History of Kythera]