bastards-msg - 4/13/08 Period views on children of unmarried women. NOTE: See also the files: religion-msg, p-sex-msg, prostitution-msg, birth-control-msg, p-swears-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 07:33:33 EDT From: To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Bastards in the Middle Ages I got this from a friend who works at a Dutch university. Some of you may find it interesting. I will ask her the name of the book. Phillipa For those of you who are interested: This is a summary of a very interesting book that I just read. Excuse me for the translation. It is a hell of a job to make look like acceptable English! BASTARDS IN THE BURGUNDIC NETHERLANDS Bastards always have been endangered species in our western society. During the ages they were the subject of juridical and social discrimination, from and rejection and mockery. Our enlightened and tolerant society is convinced of the fact that the discrimination of bastards in general is not tolerable any longer and that we behave now in a decent way towards them. A view in the history learns that we have to be very modest in this opinion. Because in the Middle Ages bastards were often treated with the utmost tolerance. Bishop David of Burgundy from Utrecht (a town in the middle of the Netherlands) was a bastard son of Duke Fillips De Goede (Fillips The Good). An historical study puts the position of the bastards in a surprisingly new light. Myriam Carlier from the University of Gent (Belgium) investigated the position of the illegal children in family and society during the 15th century in the period that is now known as the Burgundic Netherlands (1382-1500). The attitude towards illegal children had everything to do with the opinions about sexuality, love and affection. And these feelings have always been related to time, place and social class. This goes also for today: you just have to take in mind the contrast between the conservative-inspired fuss about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and the laughing-laconic reaction "so what?" when the French found out that President Mitterand had an illegal daughter. In the Middle Ages this attitude was not different, in spite of the moral of the Catholic Church. Birthcontrol and family planning were hardly possible in those days, and the numerous sexual relations caused a lot of children, especially extra-marital. Amorous liaisons were considered as normal for nobles, and also the catholic clergy, who were supposed to live in celibate, did not care about the rules and regulations from Rome. Tolerance was very high in the ranks of the political and economical elite's. Decisive norm was the question to what social class the person belonged and if the marriages were not jeopardized by the liaison. One has to realize that the marriage was the only guarantee for the protection of the family patrimonium, for the passing of noble titles, important offices and of course the heritages. Men were very free during and before the marriage. They were able to have a lot of sexual relations, as long as they did not jeopardize the marriage and the family capital. Women did not have this freedom. These double moral had varying levels of tolerance: although during the Middle Ages marriage and the position of children belonged to the statute of the ecclesiastical laws, there was an enormous gap between the juridical theories and the social practice of daily life. Of course it was not possible to prove a man's fatherhood, but even in these days the courts could oblige a man to pay alimentation and even appoint him as being the legal father. This often happened when it was common knowledge that the man had a sexual relation with the mother. For the illegal children of nobles, important politicians and people in high social ranks it was relatively easy to be juridical legitimated by the Burgundic Dukes. This legislation reduced the main part of the juridical discrimination and even stopped it. In that way it was made possible that the bastards were incorporated in the solidarity of the family and got their place in the politic and social networks that were so very important during the Middle Ages. The integration of bastards in the family-network mostly happened by employment, the bastards got jobs like estate agent, clerk, lady-in waiting or an important servant at the (royal) household.=20 In those days the mortality for children was very high and often there were not enough legal children for succeeding in all kind of offices and positions. Therefore the bastards were needed to secure the continuity of the family. Myriam Carlier states in her book that the Burgundic Netherlands offered a lot of possibilities for integration in the family and society and it was even not unusual to make social promotion. In the culture of the Burgundic courts having lot of bastards was concerned as normal and acceptable. It is known from Duke Philips the Good that he had 26 illegal sons and daughters. A lot of these bastardsons made carrier, not in the least in the clerical hierarchy. In noble families it was a habit to send the bastards to a convent and with support and intercession of the family they could reach the office of abbot or even bishop. A typical example was - like said before - Bishop David van Bourgondi=EB (David of Burgundy) from the diocese of Utrecht. He died in 1496 and was one of the many bastardsons of Philips The Good. In general the climate for bastards was very liberal during the time of the Burgundic Netherlands. The majority of the clergy was completely indifferent for the moral of the Roman Catholic Church. This was the reason why at the end of the 15th century there was more and more critic at the behavior of the clergy and the nobles. The results of the entire critic were eventually the Reformation of the 16th century Yet not everything was rosy for the bastards, some nuance is necessary. The position of the bastards who could not prove their descent, or who were not recognized, was far from enviable. By saying that somebody who had died was in fact a bastard, the servants of the court of the Duke could confiscate all the positions of the assumed bastard. And because of the lack of reliable registers of birth, deaths and marriages and modern communication it was almost impossible to prove that your deceased father who came from the Northern part of France was no bastard. So the bastards often lived in unsteadiness about their desent, their heritage and their juridical position. They were dependent from the goodwill of their father and the servants of the court. When the bastards could not integrate in a family-network, they had to live as individuals and that meant they were lost in the medieval society. Tolerance was high but there were also plenty of opportunities for the birth fathers to deny the existence of the bastards. During the dark Middle Ages life for illegal bastards could be a disaster. Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 13:11:16 EDT From: To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Bastards in the Middle Ages There is also a book out (have to go hunting for the title) on Royal Bastards of England. Also notably different from English law, Welsh law provided for bastards to inherit in the same manner as legitimate children. Morgaine Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 04:28:58 -0400 From: Melanie Wilson To: "INTERNET:sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu" Subject: Bastards in the Middle Ages Once again we seem to be stuck in the trap of the only people who existed in the middle ages were rich people and nobility, as many many, peasants NEVER got married in the first place (at least not in Church, only by declaration) may children by definition were bastards. Agreed many noble bastards who were recognised did very well, thank you, Perhaps the ones who didn't simply weren't the fathers children? Or were not out of a relationship where they were recognised, ie a roll in the hay versus and loving caring relationship. For Early noble bastards-Look at the bastard children of Harold Godwinson, all were brought up as Earls children & one daughter at least married into Royalty. William the Bastard hardly did badly for himself and was brought up at his fathers son. Both these examples were of well recognised relationships which were 'marriages' of a type, just not church marriges, many scholars now think for that time you often left the church marriage for the greatest political gain. Women were not offered such freedom? Well again in a political marriage obviously not as the fatherhood needs to be firm in a society where male line inherits, if the woman puts it about the child could be anyones. However I believe there are women who had lovers after the line was secure, & perhaps at othertimes they just didn't make it into any records (they were careful) Genetic test done randomly on babies and parents in hospitals (now) show high, non relation to declared father figures. Man, as a species, is not monogamous, as a great Ape he falls between chimps (very promiscuous) and Mountain gorillas (many wives-one male). Interstingly this is demonstrated by cetain body traits, but that is another story :) Wales, well they are pretty different there from the earlier push back, social origins. Just some thoughts! Mel Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 09:17:11 -0400 From: "Bere Patterson" To: Subject: Re: Bastards in the Middle Ages I would also like to point out that bastard daughters of prominent figures were frequently married off to nobility about one station down. The future husband got a tie to a higher ranked family, the daughter got to remain in the nobility class and be protected. The father washed his hand of another daughter and got a new Allie This was of course, as you stated, all a matter of whether the daughter was recognized by her father and was much more likely to be an issue from a liaison of the nobility with another member of the nobility, vs a romp with one of the servants. Berengaria Tarislyn From: clevin at ripco.com (Craig Levin) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Period contraception Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 20:32:44 +0000 (UTC) Margaret Northwode wrote: >Without forgetting that the nurse's own state of birth as well, and >that's since _The Republic_ was written. In period Christendom the >general belief was that bastards lacked fundamental mores that are >either very evident (and sometimes manifested as physical deformities), >or kept covert, to reappear when most devastating to good, upright, >virtuous, married Christians and their offspring. > >Functional belief might have been different (hey, I know Pierre over >there, and he's a bastard, and he saved me from falling off the bridge >in the middle of nowhere when he could've pushed me over), but the >propaganda was pretty explicit. It's also the reason I don't have a lot >of patience with reading The Republic, or, say, Francis Bacon. They >annoy me more than they edify me, I find. It's definitely a YMMV thing, in much of our era. Bastardy was apparently so common a problem in the Iberian Peninsula in the Renaissance that the bishops' chanceries that they developed blank forms for legitimization proceedings. This may be linked to the custom of barraganeria, that is, clergymen shacking up. The Christian Iberian principalities were always looking for men for war and for settling the newly conquered territory, so population growth was a good thing. Also, on a more universal level, the aristocracy seems to have had less of a hassle with the acceptance of bastards. Despite grumblings from authors on nobiliary law and their ilk, bastards fought in tournaments, had estates willed to them from their fathers, and did all the other things that their legitimate half- siblings did, including bear arms, suitably differenced. For more on that, see Fox-Davies or one of the other intro. treatises on heraldry. Pedro -- http://pages.ripco.net/~clevin/index.html clevin at ripco.com Craig Levin Librarians Rule: Oook! Edited by Mark S. Harris bastards-msg Page 5 of 5