Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 6522
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Nassiet , Michel.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Parenté et successions dynastiques aux 14e et 15e siècles
  • Source: Annales : Histoire, Sciences Sociales 50, 3 (Mai-Juin 1995): Pages 621 - 644.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Daughters Family Heiresses Heraldry Inheritance Marriage Matrilineage Nobility Patrilineage Succession
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: France
  • Century: 14- 15
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations: Three figures illustrating the coat of arms of three members of the French royal family.
  • Table: One table charting the families of Born and Hautefort , thirteenth through fifteenth- centuries.
  • Abstract: The present article, a study of kinship within the nobility, offers a comparative analysis of the political events represented by the crisis in dynastic succession throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The fact that noble lineages had no children and notably no sons, became even more frequent due to the demographic crisis and to a high masculine mortality rate caused by violent deaths. This phenomenon became an important total social fact. In order to compensate for the physical extinction of the lineages, noble society sought to achieve social perpetuation by transmitting to the female filiation the patrimony and lineage identity. A system became crystallized, comprising heraldic practices, types of descent and types of alliances, homogamic and hypogamic. It is within the framework of this system that the crisis of dynastic succession were [sic] met. Notably in the Dauphiné inheritance (1343), in that of the Brittany Dukedom (1499-1532) and in the two Burgundian inheritances (1363, 1477) we can see the devolution of patrimony and of the maternal identity to the youngest sister after a homogamous marriage. [© Armand Colin, Paris, 1996. Avec l'accord de l'éditeur].
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: Université de Rennes 2
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1995.
  • Language: French
  • ISSN/ISBN: 03952649