Material and Social Life in the Middle Ages209in the north. The phenomenon is probably related to
the concept of the domus,or house, as a basic compo-
nent of family identity.
In the north, the idea of family as a lineage group
associated with a particular estate was largely restricted
to the feudal aristocracy. The continuing presence of al-
lodial land and the relative weakness of feudal ties in
Mediterranean society extended the concept to rela-
tively humble folk, though rarely to the very poor. In its
extreme forms—the Catalan masia,for example—the
name of the family, the stone house in which it lived,
and the property upon which it was located were the
same. The prevalence of family names among the more
prosperous peasants reveals the degree to which domus
was associated with family in a given region. In Italy,
family names were well established in the twelfth cen-
tury, while in England they did not become common
among ordinary folk until after the Black Death. Those
who did not own their own land could have adopted the
custom in imitation of their social superiors, and with it
the concept of familial obligation that it implies.
To southern Europeans with modest property and
a name, the extended family was likely to be seen as a
source of economic and social support. This created
a sense of mutual obligation that many chose to ignore
but that could be of great value in difficult times for
those who did not. For them, the family was both a
refuge and a protection against a hostile world. Some
no doubt went further and agreed with Peter Lombard
that those outside the family were inimici,or enemies.
This, however, was a notion that disturbed jurists and
helps to explain why the villages of Spain and Italy
were as troubled by faction and vendetta as their cities.
The organization of all European families was typi-
cally patriarchal. Households dominated by widows
have been recorded, as have phratries in which two or
more brothers with their own nuclear families inhabited
the same house. Such variants probably were family
strategies adopted to meet specific conditions. Other-
wise, the authority of the husband or father was univer-
sally recognized in law and custom. It was not an
absolute authority over life and death and was typically
modified by familial love, an emotion fully recognized
by medieval writers from Augustine to Albertus Magnus.
In extended families, the problem of authority was more
complex. Decisions might sometimes require consensus,
but one individual, usually a mature male characterized
by greater wealth or force of character than the others,
was generally acknowledged as the family’s leader. This
pattern was also found in the clientage groups that de-
veloped, as they had done in antiquity, from the eco-
nomic or political success of prominent families.
The laws of inheritance had less to do with family
organization than might be supposed. They, too, ex-
hibit wide regional variations, but two main types
emerged—partible and impartible. Partible inheritance
provides equally for all heirs. It was a fundamental prin-
ciple in Roman law and was far more common than its
alternative, especially in continental Europe. Its chief
disadvantage is that a multiplicity of holdings eventu-
ally results that are too small to support a family. Im-
partible inheritance leaves everything to a single heir.
This preserves a family’s estate while reducing most of
its members to penury. Primogeniture, or exclusive in-
heritance by the eldest son, is the best known form of
impartible inheritance, but in some peasant societies
leaving everything to the youngest was the rule.
Everyone knew that partibility could impoverish
and eventually destroy a family, while impartibility was
grossly unfair and tended to destroy the family’s bonds
of affection. Many people therefore adopted strategies
to circumvent the law or regional custom. Much of
England, Scandinavia, and northern France had
adopted primogeniture by the twelfth century. Be-
queathing the bulk of a family’s land to a single heir and
making other provisions for noninheriting children
while the parents were still alive became customary. A
couple could also make special legacies in their wills
that partially subverted the law’s intent.
Where partibility was preferred, strategies varied
widely. In Italy and southern France, siblings entered
into a variety of arrangements (consorteriein Italian) that
helped to preserve the integrity of the estate. Some
sold or leased their portion to an elder brother in return
for monetary or other considerations. Others agreed
not to marry and remained on the family property.
Such arrangements worked best when there was an ex-
tended family structure or, at the very least, a strong
sense of family identity. In Castile, the practice of en-
tailing parts of an estate on behalf of a single heir began
as early as the thirteenth century. The grim alternatives
were illustrated in places such as Galicia and parts of
southwest Germany where partibility was strictly en-
forced. The inexorable subdivision of the land caused
widespread misery among the peasants, while among
the princely families of the empire it led to a bewilder-
ing proliferation of petty states.Marriage
The proportion of married people in the medieval pop-
ulation was undoubtedly lower than it is today, but most
people eventually married. In the peasant societies of