Concubinage and Illegitimacy in the Late Medieval Mediterranean

FAIN: FEL-262314-19

Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)

Research for a book-length study on the widespread practice of concubinage (living together without being married) in 14th- and 15th-century southern Europe.

This project is a study of informal sexual unions, clandestine marriage, and illegitimate children. It explores the spectrum of marriage that existed in the late medieval Mediterranean among the peasantry and the patrician class in the cities of Barcelona, Girona, Marseille, Perpignan, Pisa, and Lucca. I use these port cities as focal points that underscore a similar sexual practice with the eastern Mediterranean. I establish the prevalence of concubinage as a Mediterranean cultural custom and make the case that more women ended up in an informal union, by choice or by circumstances, than marriage and that historians must reconsider the primacy we give to marriage in the lives of late medieval people. I examine why an informal union offered men and women social and economic advantages, including how it affected the masculinity of men and highlight the empowerment of lower-level women to make decisions to marry or abandon a spouse.

Associated Products

“Finding Amica in the Archives: Navigating a Path between Strategic Collaboration and Independent Research,” American Historical Review, “History Unclassified” vol. 126 no. 3 (November 2021): 1154-1164. (Article)
Title: “Finding Amica in the Archives: Navigating a Path between Strategic Collaboration and Independent Research,” American Historical Review, “History Unclassified” vol. 126 no. 3 (November 2021): 1154-1164.
Author: Susan McDonough
Author: Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Abstract: This article is a call for US-based historians to consider participating in strategic collaboration with fellow academics in their field. Out of a series of lucky encounters in person and with documentary collections, the authors, both archival historians, created a generous and expansive collaboration both in research and writing. Galvanized by the shift in working conditions occasioned by the coronavirus, the authors map out how the field in the United States should change to accommodate and reward such collaboration.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http:/https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/126/3/1154/6421759?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Primary URL Description: The American Historical Review website
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The American Historical Review
Publisher: American Historical Review

“Amigas and their Amichs: Prostitute-Concubines, Strategic Coupling, and Laboring-Class Masculinity in Late Medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean” (Article)
Title: “Amigas and their Amichs: Prostitute-Concubines, Strategic Coupling, and Laboring-Class Masculinity in Late Medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean”
Author: Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Author: Susan McDonough
Abstract: This article illuminates the experiences of prostitute-concubines in late medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean. It addresses their economic and affective relationships with amichs and argues that the temporary concubinary union between a prostitute and a low-status man, often a foreigner or itinerant laborer, was important to the masculinity of men at the lower levels of medieval society. Our analysis shows that patrician men who comprised the Consell de Valencia worked to denigrate the manhood of poor and laboring men.
Year: 2020
Primary URL Description: This article is behind schedule and is expected to be released in January 2023.
Access Model: subscription (forthcoming in Jan 2023)
Format: Journal
Publisher: Speculum

“Singlewomen in the Late Medieval Mediterranean,” (Article)
Title: “Singlewomen in the Late Medieval Mediterranean,”
Author: Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Author: Susan McDonough
Abstract: This article challenges a long-entrenched model of two discrete marital regimes in northern and southern Europe. Demographer John Hajnal argued in 1965 that a distinctive northwestern European marriage pattern emerged post 1700 when a large population of unmarried men and women married in their early to late twenties, and formed their own household rather than join a multi-generational household. The corollary to this argument is that women in southern Europe married young and universally and thus rarely entered into domestic service. Medievalists have embraced and repeated this paradigm, shaping assumptions about the Mediterranean as less developed or “less European” than the north and ignoring the experience of women enslaved throughout the region. Notaries and judicial officials in medieval Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Marseille, Palermo, Venice, Famagusta, and Crete recognized singlewomen owning property, buying, selling and manumitting enslaved people, appointing procurators, committing crimes and making wills. We reintegrate the experiences of singlewomen, both enslaved and free, into the daily life of the medieval Mediterranean. Understanding how these women made community, survived economically and participated in the legal and notarial cultures of their cities reframes our understanding of women’s options outside of marriage in the medieval past.
Year: 2021
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Past & Present forthcoming in May 2023
Publisher: Past & Present

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