Kinship, gender and the spiritual economy in medieval Central European Towns

ABSTRACT

The present contribution starts from the debate about kinship as a social institution in medieval Europe initiated by Jack Goody's pioneering anthropological work in the 1980s and drawn upon by historians and anthropologists alike. We focus on the aspect of the allegedly systematic separation of kinship from the organization of memory of the dead brought about by the establishment of Christianity. However, throughout the European Middle Ages families did not completely cede memorial tasks to religious institutions. Rather, they re-affirmed memorial bonds to religious institutions by legal arrangements and through family members within these communities, just as kinship continued to play a key role in medieval political organization. Given their social heterogeneity medieval cities provide a rich documentation of networks across ties of family, kinship, friends, and clients that intersected with more institutionalized communities (parish churches, monasteries, hospitals). People bestowed economic benefits on these communities in return for their members' “eternal” prayer for the donators' souls. This created mutual bonds both between kin and religious communities. The ensuing forms of belonging were part of a more complex frame of social exchange, as families used the same institutions as “hubs” to corroborate social and political relations to their peers. These bonds would intersect with ties between representatives of kin groups with positions in key political organizations such as city councils. A further clue to understanding these relations is gender. Economic transactions and related memorial practices feature a considerable number of female actors underlining the salience of bilateral kin relations and practices of property devolution.

KEYWORDS:

• Central Europe
• urban history
• medieval history
• gender history
• kinship
• social networks

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for feedback and comments to Andre Gingrich, Bernhard Jussen, Margareth Lanzinger and Gabriela Signori.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jussen 2013, cf., Mitterauer 2003; for the broader debate among historians about Goody’s approach, see e.g. the special issue of Continuity and Change (1991); for a good recent summary of this debate with more up to date bibliographical references see Mathieu 2018. Jack Goody’s conceptual framework to analyse patterns of kinship and marriage as key elements of social organization deeply interwoven with political, economic and religious fields still provides important methodological tools to overcome meta-categories of structural thought and binary terms for framing them, cf. esp. Segalen 2021.

2 In the following, today’s geographical names Budapest and Bratislava are given in their contemporary forms, i.e. Buda and Pressburg respectively. Studies on the topics discussed in this article covering the Central European towns mentioned include Signori 2011; Gruber 2013; Lutter 2021; Majorossy 2021; Rolker 2014; Teuscher 2007.

3 The term was first coined by Max Weber in his book on Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber [1905] 2005). While Weber recognized the idea of ‘accountability’ in medieval ‘Catholic’ practices of penitence and redemption, he did not link this idea to economic thinking in a narrower profit-oriented sense. According to Weber, the divide between religiously and economically motivated social practices was utterly modern and connected to the rise of Protestantism. His approach was criticized in several respects (cf. A. Giddens in his introduction to the English translation of the book, [1905] 2005). Contrary to Weber, we argue in this paper that Catholic city dwellers were perfectly able to distinguish between moral and economic motives, yet they did so in a way that made these motives appear two sides of the same coin (cf. Chiffoleau [1980] 2011, see also Signori 2021). For recent and comparable uses of the concept in social anthropology cf. D. Rudnyckj´s book on efforts in contemporary Indonesia to reconcile Muslim virtues with the principles of a global market economy. Rudnyckj addresses spiritual economy as a reconfiguration of faith and economy ‘in which religious values are mobilized to address […] the move toward transnational economic integration.’

4 This Jakob Poll is not to be confused with the prominent family member and chaplain Jakob Poll, who will be introduced later. This marriage arrangement is documented in QGStW II/1, nn. 527, 830. It is a case in point that would have required a dispensation by ecclesiastical authorities from the canonical rules of marriage degree. However, respective legal documentation is still rare at the time and has not survived in this case (Rudnyckyj 2010).

5 Medieval inheritance law is particularly complicated, because it was regionally oriented and thus subject to numerous variations; for a good recent overview on medieval Europe see Gottschalk 2013; for Vienna see Lentze 1952/53; Demelius 1970.

6 All documented in QGStW, online at www.monasterium.at

7 QGStW II/1, n. 385. Contemporary kin terminology reflects the openness of bilateral relations: the middle-high German term Vetter may refer to any male cousin (regardless of whether he is on the maternal or paternal side), but it also can address a more distant, not further specified male relative of the same generation. The corresponding term for female relatives covering the same range of relations is Muhme (cf. below, next section).

8 These transactions are documented in QGStW II/1, nn. 295, 719, 741. The Haslau were one of the politically most influential noble families in the Duchy of Austria, cf. Frey and Krammer 2019, 392–94, and 399.

9 Stephan II himself donated at least twice to the chapel: QGStW II/1, nn. 411, 903; further benefits by in-laws are documented in QGStW II/1, nn. 339, 962; 690.

10 In-laws: QGStW II/1, n. 765; bishop: QGStW II/1, nn. 333, 362, 479, 492, 493, 595, 680, 683, 709, 713, 793, 901–903, 929, 951, 953, 954.

11 Transactions in QGStW II/1, nn. 485, 487, 505, 682, 790, 964.

12 The register for 1367 has survived in the collection of charters of the Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna; other transactions in QGStW II/1, nn. 706; 568; 798, 889, 929.

13 QGStW II/1, nn. 364, 475, 793; on Jakob Poll’s own provisions see QGStW II/1, n. 765.

14 E.g. QGStW II/5, n. 47. Jakob Meserl was head of Vienna’s civic hospital (QGStW II/1, nn. 83, 224); Niklas Meserl, probably a brother of Jakob, was the city’s judge (QGStW II/1, n. 207).

15 Often, charters do explicitly spell out only some aspects of the relations between people involved in legal transactions. Further information has to be deduced from mostly fragmentary data given by various documents: Katharina Meserl II is mentioned for the first time in 1333, whereas Heinrich Schemnitzer is referred to for the first time in 1317 and for the last time in 1340. It thus seems that the spouses' age difference was large, and their marriage short (Sailer 1931, 391f).

16 Leopold Sailer (1931, 216) lists four different members of the Poll family with the name Jans (Jans Poll I, II, III, IV). However, a re-reading of the charters suggests that there were only two and the references actually refer to Jans Poll I and his nephew, Jans Poll II (and the latter was the one who moved to Pressburg).

17 For his activity as witness: QGStW II/1, nn. 380, 426, 468; Csendes 2018, 48, 75. For his wives in Vienna: QGStW II/1, nn. 261, 380, 681 (Anna); QGStW II/1, nn. 467, 502; I/10, n. 17914 (Kathrein).

18 Ljubić 1874, 31: Hungarian citizenship; QGStW I/8, n. 15823: special protection; cf. Majorossy 2021; Skorka 2018.

19 Sources on purchases in Pressburg: AMB, nn. 216, 256 (Hochstrasse, Pechkengasse), n. 323 (Judenhof), n. 276 (St Lawrence gate). Viennese houses during his time in Pressburg: Münzerstrasse,1374, vor Stubentor under den Ledreren, 1372, in Antiquo Foro, 1374, domo sita in acie, 1375: QGStW II/1, n. 840; I/3, n. 3305; III/1, n. 620; III/3, n. 3170; III/2, n. 2090.

20 QGStW II/1, n. 600; Melk Stiftsarchiv, Urkunden, 15.6.1395; daughters: AMB, n. 327.

21 For contrasting marriage patterns in South Arabia after 1250 see Gingrich et al., 2021 in this issue.

Additional information

Funding

This contribution is based on considerations developed within the Special Research Programme (SFB) 42 VISCOM Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE), https://viscom.ac.at/home/ (28.10.2019), Project F4206 Social and Cultural Communities across Medieval Monastic, Urban, and Courtly Cultures in High and Late Medieval Central Europe (PI: C. Lutter), 2011–2019, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).