Aubrun, Michel. L’ancien diocèse de Limoges des origines au milieu du XIe siècle. Clermont-
Ferrand: Institut des Études du Massif Central, 1981.
Brelingard, Désiré. Histoire du Limousin et de La Marche. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1971.
Gaborit-Chopin, D. La décoration des manuscripts a Saint-Martial de Limoges et en Limousin du
IVe au XIIe siècle. Paris: Droz, 1969.
Labande, Edmond-René, ed. Histoire du Poitou, du Limousin et des pays charentais. Toulouse:
Privat, 1976.
Lasteyrie du Saillant, Robert de. Étude sur les comtes et vicomtes de Limoges antérieurs a l’an mil
Paris: Franck, 1874.
LINEAGE AND INHERITANCE
. Medieval nobles took much of their identity from their lineage, those from whom they
descended and from whom they had inherited their power and property. One’s lineage
was a selected group out of all the people one might find in one’s family tree, for nobles
normally identified only with those ancestors from whom they were descended in the
male line, unless at some point the inheritance had gone through a woman or unless one
of the male ancestors had married a woman from a much more powerful family.
This agnatic tendency is clearest among royal families and those of the upper nobility.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, a lineage’s self-identification became closely linked with
the hereditary castle, and it became common for the oldest son to inherit the castle and
most of his parents’ property. Daughters were given dowries, but younger sons were, if
possible, not given any land that would be permanently alienated from their older
brother’s inheritance. An emphasis on male inheritance, however, was well established
long before primogeniture became normal practice in the 12th century. In the turbulent
9th and 10th centuries, while men trying to establish a strong position took power and
authority from wherever they could find it, whether from their wives, their allies, or their
lords, they always intended to pass that authority on to their sons.
Women were a vital component of the continuity of an agnatic lineage. They brought
land, prestige, and sometimes princely names to the lineage of men lucky enough to be
able to marry wives socially above themselves, as most ambitious medieval men tried to
do. Choice of a suitable marriage partner was a complicated decision that might cement
an alliance, join warring factions, or create a dynasty. Men always considered their wives
to some extent as outsiders, but to their sons these same women were an integral part of
their lineage.
The Romans had had a testamentary system, which assumed that a man would leave a
will. He was legally supposed to leave a certain minimum of property to his relatives but
could dispose of the rest as he wished. From the 8th century on, however, written
testaments were rare. They began to be common again only in the 13th century. Medieval
men and women assumed that their relatives, in particular their children, would inherit all
their property. If they wanted to dispose of some of it elsewhere, say as a gift to a church,
they would normally make such a gift during their own lifetimes rather than after their
deaths via testament. The force of custom, rather than written law, in determining
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