Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe

by Steven Ozment

Overview

Rescuing the premodern family from the grim picture many historians have given us of life in early Europe, Ancestors offers a major reassessment of a crucial aspect of European history—and tells a story of age-old domesticity inextricably linked, and surprisingly similar, to our own.

An elegant summa on family life in Europe past, this compact and powerful book extends and completes a project begun with Steven Ozment’s When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Here Ozment, the leading historian of the family in the middle centuries, replaces the often miserable depiction of premodern family relations with a delicately nuanced portrait of a vibrant and loving social group. Mining the records of families’ private lives—from diaries and letters to fiction and woodcuts—Ozment shows us a preindustrial family not very different from the later family of high industry that is generally viewed as the precursor to the sentimental nuclear family of today.

In Ancestors, we see the familiar pattern of a domestic wife and working father in a home in which spousal and parental love were amply present: parents cherished their children, wives were helpmeets in providing for the family, and the genders were nearly equal. Contrary to the abstractions of history, parents then—as now—were sensitive to the emotional and psychological needs of their children, treated them with affection, and gave them a secure early life and caring preparation for adulthood.

As it recasts familial history, Ancestors resonates beyond its time, revealing how much the story of the premodern family has to say to a modern society that finds itself in the throes of a family crisis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674004849
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2001
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.69(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Steven Ozment is McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University. He is the author of Flesh and Spirit and The Bürgermeister’s Daughter.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Structure and Sentiment

2. A Gendered View of Family Life

3. Rebuilding the Premodern Family

4. The Omnipresent Child

5. Parental Advice

6. Family Archives

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

Over the past three decades, Steve Ozment has brought to brilliant light and life the intricacies and intimacies of the Western family. This book is a crisp distillation of his most impressive findings, and a stirring declaration of a new historiography of the Western family.

Andrew Pettegree

In this boldly written polemic Steven Ozment takes an enthusiastic cudgel to prevailing negative perceptions of Early Modern family life. Drawing on his unrivalled knowledge of contemporary family archives, Ozment shows that contrary to myth, relations between husband and wife, and between parent and child, were characterized by affection and mutual respect. This text, the product of half a lifetime of research and contemplation, will be an important point of departure for future scholarship on the subject.
— Andrew Pettegree, University of St. Andrews

Roderick Phillips

This is vintage Ozment: fluent, insightful, provocative. Ancestors challenges us to take a fresh look at the way we approach the history of the family.
— Roderick Phillips, Carleton University

John Witte

Over the past three decades, Steve Ozment has brought to brilliant light and life the intricacies and intimacies of the Western family. This book is a crisp distillation of his most impressive findings, and a stirring declaration of a new historiography of the Western family.
— John Witte, Jr., Emory University

Robert M. Kingdon

A major contribution to a field of historical study that has been particularly active over the last forty years. It provides a magistral overview that is uniformly astute and fair-minded of a great many studies, both general and specific, written in many countries from many points of view, some of them highly controversial. It ends with a compelling explanation of the method underlying Ozment's own substantial contributions to the field.
— Robert M. Kingdon, author of Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva

Editorial Reviews

For some years now, says Steven Ozment…historians have been…maintaining that all the virtues we associate with families today—love, cooperation, mutual respect, the nurturing of children—are modern inventions, unknown in Europe prior to the Renaissance. Any evidence to the contrary [has been] dismissed as an exception to the rule. But how ‘exceptional’ can it be, Ozment asks, if sources ranging from the arts to legal records to advice books to private letters and diaries, from the days of the Roman Empire to the modern era, all attest not to a Dark Ages of the emotions but to an emotional life much like our own? From sources such as these he marshals ample proof that men and women throughout history have married for love, have raised their children with tender affection and sent them out into the world with a mixture of pride and trepidation, and that women’s work both inside and outside the home has been acknowledged and valued. Ozment speaks to a general audience, not just a scholarly one, when he warns us about the temptation to believe ‘that past, present, and future constitute absolutely different periods of time and fundamentally distinct types of humanity.’ How refreshing it is to find a scholar of Ozment’s stature speaking up for such homely notions as common sense and the persistence of human nature.

Boston Globe

In the 1960s and 1970s a group of enormously influential historians…argued that pre-industrial families were…rigidly ‘patriarchal,’ and children were viewed mainly as assets; hence the deep bonds of love and care between parent and child which we now associate with the ‘nuclear family’ were essentially nonexistent. In this elegant, persuasive book…Ozment presents a very different picture. He argues that the relationship between spouses was far more cooperative and loving, and the affection of parents for their children was far fiercer, than [Philippe] Ariès and his disciples would have it… An example of scholarship confirming common sense (and refuting the highly theoretical work of once trendy historians)… Ancestors amounts to an eloquent—and academically unfashionable—condemnation of those historians who approach an earlier age ‘with an eye only to determining where that age stands on some burning present-day issue.’

The Atlantic - Benjamin Schwarz

This is vintage Ozment: fluent, insightful, provocative. Ancestors challenges us to take a fresh look at the way we approach the history of the family.

Roderick Phillips

A major contribution to a field of historical study that has been particularly active over the last forty years. It provides a magisterial overview that is uniformly astute and fair-minded of a great many studies, both general and specific, written in many countries from many points of view, some of them highly controversial. It ends with a compelling explanation of the method underlying Ozment’s own substantial contributions to the field.

Robert M. Kingdon

Steven Ozment’s handsome short book Ancestors is an unashamed polemic, a robust if not uniformly persuasive defense of the existence of the ‘loving family in Old Europe,’ and an assertion of its fundamental continuity with modern family experience… Ozment is…a first-rate religious historian.

New York Review of Books - Eamon Duffy

Ozment…has written a concise answer to [Philippe] Ariès and his admirers which can be read in a pleasurable couple of hours by the occupant of a Saturday sofa or a seat on a commuter train. In Ancestors…Ozment sets out to challenge a conception of the premodern family as a stifling patriarchal tyranny inimical to ‘bonds of deep affection or relationships of true equality’… Everybody interested in the history of the family should certainly read this thought-provoking little book, tract for the times as well as guide to the past.

Times Literary Supplement - Ralph Houlbrooke

In this boldly written polemic Steven Ozment takes an enthusiastic cudgel to prevailing negative perceptions of Early Modern family life. Drawing on his unrivalled knowledge of contemporary family archives, Ozment shows that contrary to myth, relations between husband and wife, and between parent and child, were characterized by affection and mutual respect. This text, the product of half a lifetime of research and contemplation, will be an important point of departure for future scholarship on the subject.

Andrew Pettegree

Over the past three decades, Steve Ozment has brought to brilliant light and life the intricacies and intimacies of the Western family. This book is a crisp distillation of his most impressive findings, and a stirring declaration of a new historiography of the Western family.

John Witte

Ozment…has researched diaries, letters, fiction, and even woodcuts to present a picture of pre-industrial family life in Europe in the Middle Ages. He discusses such themes as working women…and women’s place in religion and society. He examines the practice of contraception (condemned by the church and justified by the laity), parent–child relations, infanticide, wet-nursing, and parental advice to children… Ozment’s absorbing look at some of our ancestors living in a wholly different society shows us how little things have changed.

Booklist - George Cohen

Steven Ozment's handsome short book Ancestors is an unashamed polemic, a robust if not uniformly persuasive defense of the existence of the "loving family in Old Europe," and an assertion of its fundamental continuity with modern family experience...Ozment is...a first-rate religious historian.
— Eamon Duffy

New York Review of Books

Ozment...has written a concise answer to Ariès and his admirers which can be read in a pleasurable couple of hours by the occupant of a Saturday sofa or a seat on a commuter train. In Ancestors...Ozment sets out to challenge a conception of the premodern family as a stifling patriarchal tyranny inimical to "bonds of deep affection or relationships of true equality"...Everybody interested in the history of the family should certainly read this thought-provoking little book, tract for the times as well as guide to the past.
— Ralph Houlbrooke

Times Literary Supplement

In the 1960s and 1970s a group of enormously influential historians...argued that pre-industrial families were...rigidly 'patriarchal,' and children were viewed mainly as assets; hence the deep bonds of love and care between parent and child which we now associate with the 'nuclear family' were essentially nonexistent. In this elegant, persuasive book...Ozment presents a very different picture. He argues that the relationship between spouses was far more cooperative and loving, and the affection of parents for their children was far fiercer, than [Philippe] Aries and his disciples would have it...An example of scholarship confirming common sense (and refuting the highly theoretical work of once trendy historians)...Ancestors amounts to an eloquent—and academically unfashionable—condemnation of those historians who approach an earlier age 'with an eye only to determining where that age stands on some burning present-day issue.'
— Benjamin Schwarz

The Atlantic

Ozment...has researched diaries, letters, fiction, and even woodcuts to present a picture of pre-industrial family life in Europe in the Middle Ages. He discusses such themes as working women...and women's place in religion and society. He examines the practice of contraception (condemned by the church and justified by the laity), parent-child relations, infanticide, wet-nursing, and parental advice to children...Ozment's absorbing look at some of our ancestors living in a wholly different society shows us how little things have changed.
— George Cohen

Booklist

Ozment (Flesh and Spirit, 1999, etc.) argues persuasively that medieval and early Renaissance families displayed in abundance many of the characteristics of modern ones. The author begins this brief but never superficial analysis by exposing the inadequacies and inaccuracies of the earlier theories of family and childhood—such as those advanced by Philippe Ariès and his successors (primarily Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, Edward Shorter, Jean-Louis Flandrin, and Lawrence Stone). Ozment believes that the truth about family structure and dynamics cannot be inferred from statistics but is to be found instead in the archives of actual families—in surviving letters, diaries, financial records, wills, and other documents. He employs archival research ("microhistorical studies," he calls them) to drive home his principal points—that women at the end of the Middle Ages were not terribly dissatisfied with their lot (they viewed themselves as co-workers and co-earners), that medieval parents did not consider their children"little adults" and in fact recognized that childhood consisted of various stages with varying requirements, that parents loved their children fiercely and mourned deeply their often premature deaths. He shows that infanticide, swaddling, and wet-nursing were not nearly so common as once thought—and in fact believes the killing of children is probably more common today. He has assembled some powerful documentary evidence to support his theses, all of it convincing, some of it amusing. A 17th-century mother advises her daughter:"At parties ... accept drinks only from other girls." And:"When boyshappen to come into your bedroom,hidebehind the bed and hit them in the face." Ozment argues that the family has not evolved slowly over the last five centuries into the sentimental, nuclear unit it appears to be today; rather, it has always been both the bedrock and the fault line of humankind. A groundbreaking work: The hammer of Ozment's silvery prose and sturdy logic shatters the surprisingly fragile theories of some of the trendiest historians of the human family. (6 halftones, 4 line illustrations)

Kirkus Reviews