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E-book
Author Evergates, Theodore

Title The aristocracy in the county of Champagne, 1100-1300 / Theodore Evergates
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2007]
©2007

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Description 1 online resource (424 pages) : maps
Series The Middle Ages series
Middle Ages series.
Contents Forming the county and a regional aristocracy -- Governing the principality and its aristocracy -- The circulation of fiefs -- The aristocratic family -- The marriage contract -- Inheritance and succession -- The aristocratic life course -- Aristocratic lineages : case studies
Summary Theodore Evergates provides the first systematic analysis of the aristocracy in the county of Champagne under the independent counts. He argues that three factors--the rise of the comital state, fiefholding, and the conjugal family--were critical to shaping a loose assortment of baronial and knightly families into an aristocracy with shared customs, institutions, and identity. Evergates mines the rich, varied, and in some respects unique collection of source materials from Champagne to provide a dynamic picture of a medieval aristocracy and its evolving symbiotic relationship with the counts. Count Henry the Liberal (1152-81) began the process of transforming a quasi-independent baronage accustomed to collegial governance into an elite of landholding families subordinate to the count and his officials. By the time Countess Jeanne married the future King Philip IV of France in 1284, the fiefholding families of Champagne had become a distinct provincial nobility. Throughout, it was the conjugal community, rather than primogeniture or patrilineage, that remained the core familial institution determining the customs regarding community property, dowry, dower, and partible inheritance. Those customs guaranteed that every lineage would survive, but frequently through a younger son or daughter. The life courses of women and men, influenced not only by social norms but also by individual choice and circumstance, were equally unpredictable. Evergates concludes that imposed models of "the aristocratic family" fail to capture the diversity of individual lives and lineages within one of the more vibrant principalities of medieval France
Analysis History
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Bibliography Includes bibliographies (pages 379-403) and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Aristocracy (Social class) -- France -- Champagne-Ardenne -- History -- To 1500
Nobility -- France -- Champagne-Ardenne -- History -- To 1500
HISTORY -- Medieval.
Aristocracy (Social class)
Manners and customs
Nobility
SUBJECT Champagne-Ardenne (France) -- History
Champagne-Ardenne (France) -- Social life and customs
Subject France -- Champagne-Ardenne
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780812201888
0812201884
1322510792
9781322510798
0812240197
9780812240191