Brief Description
Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Learn More about the Book
In Out of Love for My Kin, Amy Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She argues for a new conceptualization of aristocratic family life based on an ethos of inclusion. Inclusivity is evident in the care that medieval aristocrats showed toward their families by putting in place strategies, practices, and behaviors aimed at providing for a wide range of relatives. Indeed, this care and in some cases outright affection for family members is recorded in the documents themselves, as many a nobleman and woman made pious benefactions "out of love for my kin."
In a book made rich by evidence from charters which provide details about life events including birth, death, marriage, and legal disputes over property Livingstone reveals an aristocratic family dynamic that is quite different from the fictional or prescriptive views offered by literary depictions or ecclesiastical sources, or from later historiography. For example, she finds that there was no single monolithic mode of inheritance that privileged the few and that these families employed a variety of inheritance practices. Similarly, aristocratic women, long imagined to have been excluded from power, exerted a strong influence on family life, as Livingstone makes clear in her gender-conscious analysis of dowries, the age of men and women at marriage, lordship responsibilities of women, and contestations over property.
The web of relations that bound aristocratic families in this period of French history, she finds, was a model of family based on affection, inclusion, and support, not domination and exclusion.
"
Review Quotes
1.
"Livingstone's examination of aristocratic family life in central France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries takes issue with models presented in works by Georges Duby and Karl Schmid. Rejecting their concept of a revolution in family relationships centered on patrilineage, primogeniture, and exclusion of kin to preserve assets, the author argues for inclusive behavior that valued a broad definition of kin and provided liberally for all offspring. Citing evidence from charters, monastic obituaries, and chronicles, Livingstone presents abundant examples of family life marked by affection, devotion, and cooperation. Such a revision of family dynamics also influences the portrait of the medieval noblewoman, who is here revealed to be valued by parents and spouse, active in disposing of lands both her own and shared, and retaining a place within her natal family as well as carving out a cooperative lordship with her husband." Choice"
2.
"Amy Livingstone has addressed a central question about medieval family structure. Out of Love for My Kin is clearly based on an intimate knowledge of an enormous amount of primary information to the extent that she often appears personally acquainted with the families discussed and she is up to date on the vast modern literature as well." Constance Brittain Bouchard, Distinguished Professor of Medieval History, University of Akron"
3. "Amy Livingstone has come to know the eleventh- and twelfth-century aristocratic families of the Loire region so well that she writes of them almost as though they were her own extended parentela. Here at last we have an account of medieval familial practices that uses the full range of available sources (and they are mountainous for this region stretching from Chartres to the Loire estuary) and that views a full range of familial activities. It is hardly surprising that we quickly discover that everything we thought we knew about the subject turns out to be partial or simply wrong (the supposed shift to strict patrilineage, for example). Livingstone s book is a major contribution to the current reshaping of our conceptions of eleventh- and twelfth-century society." Fredric Cheyette, Amherst College"
4.
"The prosopography, of course, is splendid in all technical aspects. But it is more than this: she seems so familiar with and understanding of these people that they come alive on the page. Her treatment of the name Domitilla (pp. 176-178), which at least two women assumed in the course of their lives, is a gem in its technical virtuosity and as a way to understand the noble self-fashioning of her aristocratic subjects. The book is full of gems. In a phrase this is an extraordinarily fine book and a most valuable blueprint for future work on other regions. The author is to be commended." William Chester Jordan, Medieval Prosopography (April 2014)"
5.
"The prosopography, of course, is splendid in all technical aspects. But it is more than this: she seems so familiar with and understanding of these people that they come alive on the page. Her treatment of the name Domitilla (pp. 176-178), which at least two women assumed in the course of their lives, is a gem in its technical virtuosity and as a way to understand the noble self-fashioning of her aristocratic subjects. The book is full of gems. In a phrase this is an extraordinarily fine book and a most valuable blueprint for future work on other regions. The author is to be commended." William Chester Jordan, Medieval Prosopography (April 2014)"
6.
"Livingstone's examination of aristocratic family life in central France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries takes issue with models presented in works by Georges Duby and Karl Schmid. Rejecting their concept of a revolution in family relationships centered on patrilineage, primogeniture, and exclusion of kin to preserve assets, the author argues for inclusive behavior that valued a broad definition of kin and provided liberally for all offspring. Citing evidence from charters, monastic obituaries, and chronicles, Livingstone presents abundant examples of family life marked by affection, devotion, and cooperation. Such a revision of family dynamics also influences the portrait of the medieval noblewoman, who is here revealed to be valued by parents and spouse, active in disposing of lands both her own and shared, and retaining a place within her natal family as well as carving out a cooperative lordship with her husband." Choice
"
7.
"The prosopography, of course, is splendid in all technical aspects. But it is more than this: she seems so familiar with and understanding of these people that they come alive on the page. Her treatment of the name Domitilla (pp. 176-178), which at least two women assumed in the course of their lives, is a gem in its technical virtuosity and as a way to understand the noble self-fashioning of her aristocratic subjects. The book is full of gems. In a phrase this is an extraordinarily fine book and a most valuable blueprint for future work on other regions. The author is to be commended." William Chester Jordan, Medieval Prosopography (April 2014)
"
8.
"Amy Livingstone has addressed a central question about medieval family structure. Out of Love for My Kin is clearly based on an intimate knowledge of an enormous amount of primary information to the extent that she often appears personally acquainted with the families discussed and she is up to date on the vast modern literature as well." Constance Brittain Bouchard, Distinguished Professor of Medieval History, University of Akron
"
