Paternal authority and patrilineal power: stem family arrangements in peasant communities and eighteenth-century Tyrolean marriage contracts

Abstract

In historical research, stem family arrangements are regarded as a classic context for the exertion of paternal power and authority. Inheritance practice has hitherto been considered a crucial basis for stem family households, but this paper emphasizes the significance of marital property law, as an instrument for further reinforcing paternal authority by means of patrilineal logics and the vertical orientation derived from these. Stem family arrangements imply that, despite their status as married men, sons or sons-in-law were subject to the father's management and decision-making power in the household. Working with marriage contracts from two Tyrolean courts, the article highlights forms of paternal authority over the couple marrying into the house. It notes that in the region studied, stem family arrangements are documented primarily for the peasant communities of the Welsberg court, and almost never in the market town of Innichen with its artisan and trade-based structure; and that stem families, as one generation arrangement among others, were not dominant locally but do appear to have been more frequent than has generally been presumed up to now. Finally, the article addresses the changes and the continuities that occurred during the transition from the ancien régime to the modern period.

Keywords:

• marriage
• marriage contracts
• stem families
• marital property regimes
• patrilineal logics

Notes

*Author affiliated with Department of History, Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, since April 2012.

^1. For German territories, as well, there are numerous indications that joint property or community of acquests (Errungenschaftsgemeinschaft or Zugewinngemeinschaft) came to prevail as the preferred form in the course of the early modern period, a process that was accompanied by conflict (Landau, 2008; Ingendahl, 2006, pp. 174–190; Signori, 2001, pp. 63–143). One territory with a separation of property regime was Saxony (Gottschalk, 2003).

^2. Beyond the ten-year segments, I also included the year 1795, because it is there that we find the largest concentration of marriage contracts and, in some cases, also sets of interrelated documents.

^3. The framework within which the present paper arose, the project ‘Negotiating Marriage’, enabled a comparative view of marriage contracts. It consisted of four detailed studies on different territories (Lanzinger, Barth-Scalmani, Forster & Langer-Ostrawsky, 2010). The four studies cover different models of marital property – community of property, community of acquests, and separation of property – and different social milieus: rural/peasant, artisan, urban/merchant and nobility. The core period is the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The studies are based on a shared framework of research questions and themes.

^4. Tiroler Landesarchiv (TLA) Innsbruck, Verfachbuch Innichen (VBI) 1797, fol. 176’–177.

^5. This cannot be further elaborated here, but examples are analysed in Lanzinger (2011).

^6. In addition to the studies already cited, important international research on this topic includes the works of Diefendorf (1995); Erickson (1990); Hughes (1998); Kaplan (1995); Kasdagli (1999).

^7. Des Kayserlichen Hochstifts, und Fürstenthums Bamberg verfaßtes Land-Recht. Desselben Erster Haupt-Theil von Civil-oder sogenannten Bürgerlichen Sachen handlend (1769), cited in Landau (2008, pp. 5–6).

^8. Tiroler Landesordnung, 1573, 3. Buch, fol. 38re–39re.

^9. Südtiroler Landesarchiv (SLA) Bozen, Verfachbuch Welsberg (VBW) 1770, fol. 259–261; SLA Bozen, VBW, 1790, fol. 67–69; SLA Bozen, VBW 1800, Teil 1, fol. 170.

^10. See SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 14; SLA Bozen, VBW 1780, fol. 49.

^11. SLA Bozen, VBW 1780, fol. 46 (original German: mit räthlichem nebenstand und gutbefindung seines geliebten vaters).

^12. Tiroler Landesordnung, 1573, 3. Buch, fol. 56re–56ve.

^13. See TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1783, fol. 364; fol. 477’; fol. 528’; TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1784, fol. 693’; fol. 698; fol. 703; fol. 706’; TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1785, fol. 1’; fol. 34.

^14. While it was very difficult for men to gain admittance into the Innichen town citizenry because of the rather strict criteria, the proportion of women marrying into the town from outside was comparatively high, at 43.4 per cent between 1759 and 1799 and 47.5 per cent between 1800 and 1849 (Lanzinger, 2003a, p. 83).

^15. For example, TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1792, 269; TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1800, fol. 11.

^16. A kin relation was sometimes explicitly mentioned along with the name of the witness. For marriages across community boundaries, the correspondence of the witness's family name and place of origin with that of the bridegroom or bride could to some extent be understood – with due caution – as an indication of such a relationship.

^17. See TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1780, fol. 493–494.

^18. David W. Sabean and Simon Teuscher note that the presence of relatives at the signing of marriage contracts became more frequent in the early modern period compared to the Middle Ages, specifically in the context of marital separation of property: ‘whereas the contracts of the older system were between just two people, the wife and her husband, the new system required the participation of large numbers of kin who also came to acquire lasting responsibilities. Members of the wife's family of origin would protect her property both while her husband was alive and thereafter’ (Sabean & Teuscher, 2007, p. 7).

^19. On this, see also the discussions of ‘land family bond’ (Schlumbohm, 1994b).

^20. In the area under study, legally speaking the transfer of property, commonly referred to by the terms ‘bequeathing’ and ‘inheriting’, was in fact always a purchase, and one in which complex mathematical constructions were deployed. These aimed on the one hand to achieve maximum safeguards for economic continuity under the new succession, and on the other to enable the portions of the ‘ceding’ heirs, the siblings, to be paid out their portions. In this respect, it was very much in a successor's interest to have the goods costed at the ‘old price’ over several generations, especially if money was losing value, as it did in the course of the eighteenth century, or if the property was appreciating in value. An act of purchase of this kind listed all the assets – including the value of the farm, calculated at the ‘old price’ – and all the liabilities, including, alongside any debts, the mother's Heiratsgut and the interest due on it. The aim was to arrive at a reasonably low final sum that would then be divided among all the children, including the successor, and constituted their inheritance. This was often only paid out when the legatees married. As a result, it might happen that this kind of purchase did not in practice involve any money changing hands, at least for some time.

^21. The notion of the Besitzvorteil or ‘property benefit’ followed the same logic as that of the ‘old price’. It referred to a sum that was transferred to a female successor separately, and independently of the portion of the inheritance due to her, in a certain sense as compensation for the encumbrances on the property which she inherited along with the property itself: paying off the siblings, but also all the other liabilities. In the case of a male successor, this institution was usually referred to as Mannsvorteil, or ‘man's benefit’.

^22. SLA Bozen, VBW 1730, fol. 245’–246’.

^23. In a society like the one studied here, in which property was highly relevant for social status, a property title counted for considerably more than any financial burdens that might be assumed along with it. Restrictions on marriage based on economic arguments, and settlement policies based on those restrictions, may be regarded as indications of the social focus on property (Mantl, 1999; Lanzinger, 2003a, pp. 65–71, 126–136; 2010a).

^24. SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 531–534.

^25. In the dictionary of Alsatian dialects, Lidlohn is recorded as meaning not only a servant's wage but also the payment made to an unmarried daughter who ran the household for her father and brothers after her mother's death.

^26. This fee was usually higher in cases where a daughter rather than a son took over the property; a further fee was payable for the enfeoffment of a son-in-law, as for example in the manorial regulations of Innichen (Lanzinger, 2004).

^27. The siblings' portions of the inheritance were usually paid out only as a Heiratsgut or starting capital around the time of their marriage. Up to that point, interest had to be paid on their portions.

^28. The advantage of this kind of usufruct arrangement was that the capital was not used up, so that the widow was guaranteed the same sum for her whole life; at the same time, the assets were preserved for the heirs.

^29. In practice, mainly cabbage, which was easy to grow and to preserve in this mountainous region.

^30. SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 12; SLA Bozen, VBW 1770, fol. 459’; SLA Bozen, VBW 1810, fol. 300–300’.

^31. The person selling the land in question had the same name as the bride's father. However, it was very common in these rural areas to share a name, the repertoire of given names being so small.

^32. SLA Bozen, VBW 1770, fol. 96.

^33. SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 8. In this case, too, the bride received a sum of money, 50 gulden, as her Besitzvorteil; the groom brought 250 gulden into the household, which was to be used to pay off debts. The contract finished with an agreement to pay out a portion of the inheritance still owed to Schwingshackhl's son Blasius, who had taken over another farmstead.

^34. SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 14 (original German: ‘kindlich zu ehren und zu respektieren’ as ‘Knecht und Magd’).

^35. SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 60’.

^36. On the basis of seventeenth-century marriage contracts from North Germany, Margarete Sturm-Heumann writes that, in this region, if the bridegroom was young and the father-in-law still hale and hearty, it was the older man who retained the household management and power, while the young couple worked for him ‘as servant and maidservant’ (Sturm-Heumann, 2004, p. 17).

^37. SLA Bozen, VBW 1780, fol. 93’.

^38. See SLA Bozen, VBW 1760, fol. 531’. For similar examples, see Bamberger (1998, pp. 32–33).

^39. TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1761, fol. 245’.

^40. TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1800, fol. 28’; fol. 73.

^41. In the Swiss municipality of Törbel, even the wood crosses in cemeteries indicated a person's marital status: the crosses for the unmarried deceased were blue, those for the married were black (Ortmayr, 1992, p. 139).

^42. As Sandra Cavallo has shown in her study, the situation was quite different for the barbers and surgeons of Turin as well, many of whom remained unmarried. Their marital status did not present an impediment to employment or to their access to public office, nor did it mar their standing in society (Cavallo, 2007).

^43. TLA Innsbruck, VBI 1791, fol. 43.