greater wealth also made for larger households, since the rich could afford to keep more
servants and apprentices.
Most urban inhabitants did not, however, possess the wealth, political power, or social
status of the patriciate. Instead of being wealthy merchants, officeholders, or rentiers,
they worked in the crafts or petty retail trades. These artisanal families, like those of the
urban elite, were primarily nuclear in form and were headed by men who first married in
their mid to late twenties. But the wives and daughters of these families were more likely
to work in the family business or outside of the household, particularly as domestic
servants, or in the textile or food trades. Because the economic contribution of artisanal
wives to the family income could be substantial, their influence within the family may
have differed from that of patriciate women, whose primary financial contribution to the
family was their large dowries.
Sons of artisans frequently began an apprenticeship when they were about fourteen
and moved away from home to board and train in the homes of their masters. Apprentices
also came from outside of the city, migrating along with many other young men and
women who were attracted by the economic opportunities offered by towns. Most of
these migrants were probably poor rural residents who took low-paying jobs that made it
difficult for them to save sufficient funds to marry. They, along with the city’s large
numbers of apprentices, servants, and widows, accounted for the extraordinarily large
number of single people in medieval towns.
Urban economic prosperity or demographic experience could also affect family life.
Few urban families, even among the elite, lasted beyond three generations in the male
line, especially during the late Middle Ages, when plague elevated urban mortality and
family and household size declined. The effect of these factors must, however, have
varied regionally, since differences in local custom, law, and economy, particularly
between northern and southern France, undoubtedly had a significant impact on family
formation, the status of women, and domestic life in medieval towns.
Maryanne Kowaleski
Desportes, Pierre. “La population de Reims au XVe siècle d’après un dénombrement de 1422.”
Moyen âge 72(1966):463–509.
Frappier-Bigras, Diane. “La famille dans l’artisanat parisien du XIIIe siècle.” Moyen Age
95(1989):47–74.
Higounet-Nadal, Arlette. Périgueux aux XIVe et XVe siècles: étude de démographie historique.
Bordeaux: Fédération Historique du Sud-Ouest, 1978.
Howell, Martha. “Rewriting Marriage in Late Medieval Douai.” Romanic Review. Forthcoming.
Rossiaud, Jacques. “Prostitution, Youth, and Society in the Towns of Southeastern France in the
Fifteenth Century.” In Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society: Selections from the
Annales, ed. R.Forster and O.Ranum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, pp. 3–
46.
FAMILY AND GENDER (PEASANTRY)
. The basic unit of the peasant economy and social organization was the family. The basic
lines of the household economy and gender roles within it were part of the negotiations
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