be as young as seven, but it was more usually between 10
and 16. The matrimonium took place in the house of the
girl in the presence of a notary, with the presentation of
the nuptial ring by the groom. The couple were formally
asked if they consented to the marriage, after which the
bride was referred to as “pledged.” The bride was then
transported to the house of her husband where, for the
wealthy, there would be banquets lasting several days. The
usual age for marriage for a girl was 17 to 18, but for men
it was commonly after the age of 25; thus the age gap be-
tween spouses was about 10 years. Widowers who remar-
ried often chose young girls, which made the gap even
greater.
A married woman had two functions: to oversee the
running of the house, and to be a mother. A husband
would generally instruct his wife in how to manage their
domestic affairs and then leave her to do so; however, he
would often reserve some rooms, such as his study, for
himself alone (Cosimo de’ Medici famously banished his
wife from his library). As to being a mother, it was a wife’s
duty to produce children throughout her period of fertil-
ity, though the rigors of childbirth meant that few women
attained menopause. Pregnancy, confinement, birth, and
churching (when, after a month or more’s seclusion a
woman underwent a ceremony of purification) took al-
most a year. The extraordinarily high birthrate was
matched only by the infant mortality rate. John COLET,
dean of St. Paul’s, for instance, was the only surviving
child of 22. Because of the periods of confinement and
churching, there were fewer opportunities for conjugal re-
lations than the birthrate figures would suggest.
Modesty prevented women from having a physician at
the birth; instead they relied on midwives. The newborn
was given out to a wetnurse, usually in the countryside,
where it would stay for up to two years, most of that time
being spent in swaddling clothes. There was much con-
cern about the quality of milk and of the wetnurse herself.
MICHELANGELO’s choice of sculpture as a profession was,
his distressed father claimed, the result of the boy having
been raised by a stonemason’s wife. Mothers, therefore,
had little to do with their children until it came to the time
to begin instruction in the “petties”—teaching them their
letters and numbers. The role of women in the education
of children before school or private tutoring has often
been overlooked.
Renissance humanism marked a changing attitude to-
ward the child. Leon Battista ALBERTI, himself illegitimate
and a celibate bachelor, wrote a treatise on the family,
Della famiglia (1435–41; translated into English by Renée
N. Watkins as The Family in Renaissance Florence, 1969),
mapping out the laws of prudent conduct. For him the
child was less an economic factor than an individual to be
nurtured. Paintings reflect this, with portrayals of a more
lifelike baby Jesus, and the fondness for putti or cherubs
may represent the souls of dead infants.
The Reformation made sweeping changes to family
life. Among its other effects, the model Christian life lived
in CALVIN’s Geneva brought a fall in the rate of illegitimacy.
The elders of Geneva had a great influence on domestic
life, and would call to account quarreling neighbors,
spouses, or kin so as to establish a harmonious society.
Engagements had to be made before witnesses and banns
read in church, where the marriage ceremony had also to
take place. Marriage was no longer considered a sacra-
ment but it was under stricter control by the Church. The
loss of sacramental status technically made divorce possi-
ble, though it was rare. With the great reduction in holy
days, the responsibility for Christian worship fell on the
father of the family rather than on the local priest. “Every
individual family must be a small separate church,” wrote
Calvin. For women under the reformed dispensation there
could be no religious life in a convent or, indeed, outside
the home.
Further reading: Richard W. Barber, The Pastons: A
Family in the Wars of the Roses (London: Folio Society,
1981); Gene Adam Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love
and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley, Calif.: Uni-
versity of California Press, repr. 1988); Muriel St. Clare
Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters, 6 vols (Chicago, Ill.: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1981); Norman Davis (ed.), The
Paston Letters: A Selection in Modern Spelling (Oxford,
U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1983); Joanne Marie Fer-
raro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford,
U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2001); Frances and Joseph
Gies, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages (New York,
Harper & Row, 1987); David Herlihy and Christine
Klapisch-Zuber, The Tuscans and their Families: A Study of
the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, Conn. and
London: Yale University Press, 1985); David I. Kertzer and
Marzio Barbagli (eds), Family Life in Early Modern Times,
1500–1789 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2001); Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Rit-
ual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, Ill. and London: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1985); Iris Origo, The Merchant of
Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini (London: Cape, 1957;
new ed. Boston, Mass.: Godine, 2002).Family of Love (Latin Familia Caritatis, Dutch Huis
der Liefde) An obscure group of ANABAPTISTS founded
(c. 1540) by Hendrik Niclaes (Henry Nicholas; c. 1502–
c. 1580) in the Netherlands. Niclaes, who had apparently
begun life as a Roman Catholic in Münster, went to Ams-
terdam (c. 1531) after suffering imprisonment for heresy,
and while there received what he interpreted as a divine
command to establish a new sect. He lived in Emden in
the period 1540–60, during which time he wrote numer-
ous books, all of which were placed on the INDEX LIBRO-
RUM PROHIBITORUM. Despite this, he attracted a sizeable
following in Holland. The Family of Love, however, be-
came best established in England during the second half117744 FFaammiillyy ooff LLoovvee