Family history is an area where the interests of a wide variety of specialists cross - from cultural historians, religious historians, law historians, demographers to art historians, ethnographers, and anthropologists. This corresponds to the variety of problems that arise from a broad approach to the study of this topic. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the appeal of medievalists to it. The study of specific forms of the family, the role of kinship relations in feudal society is essential for a deeper understanding of both the medieval social structure as a whole and the specific interrelations that existed in that era between the family, relations of feudal property and power, class domination and subordination .1
Before the Second World War, the family and kinship relations were considered in bourgeois medieval studies, as a rule, only in connection with other topics - the history of law, taxation, population movements, etc. The specific problems of the family itself as a product of a certain social system, its forms, features of functioning in the pre-capitalist era, the direction of evolution, and other issues did not attract attention historians who transferred their modern ideas about family and marriage to the Middle Ages.

Intensive research on the history of the medieval family has developed relatively recently - in the last 25-30 years. Currently, this issue has gained a strong position in the world historiography. Suffice it to say that since 1970 it is always included in the program of international congresses of historical sciences. At the XVI Congress in Stuttgart (August 1985), a "round table" was dedicated to it.

What is the reason for this growing interest in a topic that is "unconventional" for historians? The question is complex enough to be answered unambiguously. To a certain extent, this is undoubtedly due to the crisis experienced by the family in modern bourgeois society .2 But no less important are the processes taking place in historical science itself and the expansion of its research horizons associated with them. It is symptomatic that the history of the family attracted the attention primarily of those Western historians-medievalists who, to one degree or another, share the attitudes of the so-called new historical science (Zh. Duby, J. Legoff, R. Faucier, P. Touber, and others) 3 .

1 See K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 21, p. 26.

2 См. Duby G. L'invite de l'Humanite Georges Duby historien de Moven Age professeur an College de France. - L'Humanite. 30.III.1981.

3 Afanasyev Yu. N. Yesterday and today of the French "new Historical science". - Questions of history, 1984, N 8; see also Immortal, Y. L. Structure of a peasant family in the French village of IX.. data anthropological analysis of Saint-Germain policy. In: The Middle Ages. Issue 43, 1980; his own. The "Feudal Revolution" of the X-XI centuries? Voprosy istorii, 1984, No. 1; Ideology of feudal Society in Western Europe: Problems of Culture and socio-cultural representations of the Middle Ages in Modern foreign historiography. Abstract collection (RS) of the INION Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow, 1980; Kul'tura i obshchestvo v sredniye veka: Metodologiya i metodika zarubezhnykh issledovaniy. RS INION OF THE USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1982.

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Among the new works about the medieval family, there are quite a few that make extensive use of materials from urban sources - tax lists, property inventories, wills, family chronicles, diaries, etc. As a rule, these are local studies, the authors of which try to reconstruct the structure of the urban family, its numerical composition, depending on the possibilities of their material to identify demographic characteristics (fecundity, mortality, marriage age, strategy of marriage alliances, etc.), economic and political functioning of family collectives 4 . But only a very few of these works attempt to understand the concrete material from the point of view of the specifics of the urban family .5 Moreover, the very formulation of the question often reveals not so much the researcher's intention to understand the urban family in its uniqueness, but rather the impact of modern sociological theories on the historian himself .6
Of course, today in Western medieval studies, perhaps, you will no longer find a direct interpretation of the medieval urban family as a prototype of the bourgeois one, which was in the tradition of historiography of the last century. At the same time, even in works similar in their methodological principles to the "new historical science", whose motto is to understand the Middle Ages "in its own categories and representations", the city is still unambiguously interpreted as an environment that decomposes "traditional family structures". This idea was once expressed by M. Blok (who at the same time emphasized the importance of kinship relations among both rural feudal lords and urban patricians).7 . Adopted by a subsequent generation of Western Medievalists, this position is semi-correct.-

4 Cm. Bessmertny Yu. L. Problems of historical demography of the Middle Ages in modern Medieval Studies. In: Demography of the Western European Middle Ages in Modern Foreign Historiography. RS INION of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1984; La demographie medieval: Sources et metodes. Actes du congres de l'Association des historiens medievistes de l'enseignement superieur public (Nice, 1 - 16 imai 1970). Nice - P. 1972; Famille et parente dans l'Occident medieval: Actes du colloque de Paris (6 - 8 juin 1974) organise par l'Ecole praiique des hautes etudes (Vl-e section) en collaboration avec le College de France et l'Ecole Francaise de Rome. Communications et debats presentes par G. Duby et J. Le Goff. P. - R. 1977; Ruining H. Die Familie in einer deutschen Kleinstadt am Obergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit. Materialien und Beobachtungen. In: Familie zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Studien zur Geschichte der Familie in Deutschland und Frankreich vom 16. bis zum 20. Jh. Gottingen. 1981; Richet D. Familialcs Verhalten der Eliten in Paris in der 2. Halfte des 16. Ih Quellen und Probleme. - Ibid.; Schuler Th. Familien in Mittelalter. - In: Die Familie in der Geschichte. Gottingen. 1982; Annales de demographie historique: Villes du passe. P. 1982.

5 In this regard, the works of D. A. Shishkin attract attention. Hughes D.-O. Urban Growth and Family Structure in Medieval Genoa. - Past and Present (PP), 1975, N 66; e j and s d. Struttura familiare e sistemi di successione ereditaria nei teslarnenti dell'Europa medievale. In: Famiglia e communita. - Quaderni Storici, 33. Ancona. Settemb-re-dicernbre, 1976; ejusd. Kinsmen and Neighbors in Medieval Genoa. In: The Medieval City. New Haven and Lnd. 1978). We should also mention the book "Toscans and their Families" by D. Herlihy and K. Klapisch-Zuber, which is unique both in the nature of its source and in the versatility of its coverage of the subject of research. The Tuscan Cadastre of 1427, which contains data from the census of the population of Florence and its subordinate territories, allowed the authors to reconstruct the urban family at the level of its elementary unit-the hearth (household) and at the same time in the context of demographic, economic and social processes in the region during this era; Herlihy D., Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Les Toscans et leurs families: Une etude du catasto Florentin de 1427. P. 1978; see also: Demography of the Western European Middle Ages in modern foreign Historiography, pp. 195-217.

6 Goode J. World Revolution and Family Patterns. N. Y. 1963; Le Play F. L'or-ganisation de la famille. P. 1972; Maire-Vigueur J. G. A propos d'un colloque sur "Familie et parente". In: Studi medievali, seriie terza, a. XVI. Fasc. I. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull'alto medioeva, 1975.

7 See Bloch M. La societe feodale: La formation des liens de dependance. P. 1939, pp. 191, 206, 216 - 217.

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Some of the works of modern historians have been interpreted and developed in a peculiar way. In particular, a number of studies published in the proceedings of the Rome Colloquium "Family and Kinship", which was organized in June 1974 on the initiative of such leading centers of modern Western medieval studies as the Collège de France and the Practical School of Higher Studies. 8 We are talking about the articles of J. R. R. Tolkien. Violante and P. Cammarozano, who considered the evolution of family relations in Italian communes of the 12th - 14th centuries; and S. de Ronsiera, M. Luzzato, and G. Rosetti, who described a number of noble and merchant families in Florence, Pisa, and other Italian cities of the 14th and 15th centuries .9
For these historians, the family forms and kinship relations of the feudal nobility, which are better studied at the present time, serve as a starting point for assessing the character of the urban family and its evolution. Focusing as a model on the aristocratic lineage in its classical expression (continuity of generations along the male line, undivided ownership of hereditary property-patrimonium), they talk about the "loosening of family structures" in urban economy (as opposed to their greater rigidity among the feudal aristocracy), about the "decomposition" of complex family collectives and the dominant position of the state in the city. a small married family. At the same time, attention is focused almost exclusively on patrician and noble surnames, which are better covered by sources. With this approach, the whole picture is inevitably lost, and the city itself, whether the authors want it or not, appears fundamentally opposed to the feudal environment (as bourgeois-liberal historiography claimed in the XIX century).

Meanwhile, the unambiguity of the final conclusions and partial assessments contradicts the material of new sources (G. Violante, G. Rosetti) or old, but in a new way meaningful (Sh. de Ronsier, P. Cammarozano), which is contained in these works themselves. A broad source base that allows us to shed light on a number of aspects that are important for understanding the medieval urban family (not just the Italian one) is the main value of these small concrete studies, the results of which, however, require a more comprehensive and dialectical assessment of this institution than that given in the works of Western historians.

The purpose of this article is to systematize the new material introduced into scientific circulation, to try to characterize the urban family at the main social levels, i.e. not only the nobility, but also the merchants, artisans, to trace the general features of its organization common to the Middle Ages as a whole and specific urban features, to determine the significance, forms, principles of traditional relations kinship relationships in the urban environment for different social classes. The article attempts to summarize the specific results of the above-mentioned and a number of other modern studies of family history, primarily in the best-studied Italian cities .10
8 See ch. 4.

9 Violante C. Quelques caracteristiques des structures familiales en Lombardie, Emilie et Toscane aux Xle et Xlle siecles. In: Famille et parente dans l'Occident medieval; Cammarosano P. Les structures familiales dans les villes de l'ltalie communale (XIIe-XIVe siecles). - Ibid.; De la Ronciere Ch. -M. Une Famille florentine au XlVe siecle: Les Velluti. - Ibid.; Rosetti G. Histoire familliale et structures sociales et politiques a Pise aux Xle et Xlle siecles. - Ibid.; Luzzato M. Families nobles et families marchandes a Pise et en Toscane dans le Bas Moyen Age. - Ibid.

10 The predominance of family studies in Italian cities is largely due to the state of the sources. In Italy, historians have been given a rare opportunity to reconstruct family relationships and genealogies based on a series of private legal acts (which are plentiful in the archives) that have been used for generations to reconstruct family relationships and genealogies.-

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Before proceeding to the above-mentioned set of questions, it is advisable to pay attention to a number of general aspects of the medieval history of the institution of the family. The fact that the question of the medieval family, which is new and "unconventional" for historians, has turned out to be closely connected with one of the central methodological problems of medieval studies - the nature of the medieval city, its place in the system of feudalism, is far from accidental. The family formed an organic group of traditional medieval society. Within its framework, especially in the early Middle Ages and in the peasant environment, not only "the production of man himself, the continuation of the race", but also the production of means of subsistence was ensured .11 But if at the level of the productive exploited and oppressed masses of feudal society - the peasantry and townspeople - the family often functioned as the primary and main production unit, then among the ruling class-the feudal nobility, as well as the urban nobility, the family was the form through which the relations of feudal property and domination were realized. Through the family, first of all, the person of the Middle Ages was included in social life; the family was the keeper of traditions, the transmitter of the memory of generations and socio-psychological ideas that formed the system of values and the code of social behavior of the individual. Therefore, the study of the family opens up additional opportunities for a deeper understanding of the cardinal problems of the Western European Middle Ages (property relations, social and political structures, demography, spiritual life).12, the specifics of such complex phenomena as the city. It follows from this that to understand the features of the medieval urban family, it is not enough to formally correlate it with the organization of family relations among the feudal nobility. The broader context of family development and function in feudal Europe must be taken into account.

To begin with, the Middle Ages did not know the concept of "family" in its modern everyday meaning as a married couple with their minor children ("left to their own fate")13 . The term used in modern languages to denote a family could have meant at that time a combination of both a wide circle of relatives (relatives, blood-related group)14 and people living together who were not necessarily related 15 . The modern understanding of the family replaces these medieval ideas relatively late in England and France from the XVIII century; from about the same time (the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries) - in Germany, where, as a tracing paper from French, the term "Familie" itself becomes widespread (at first, also often in the sense of a broad household community).13 . The ambiguity of the concept of family reflects the characteristic reality of the Western world.-

every generation, the rights to own patrimonium were formalized. This type of document, which has been widely distributed in Italy since the tenth century, became, in the figurative expression of J. R. R. Tolkien. Violante, "a kind of form of preserving the memory of our ancestors" for centuries. According to the same author, it is precisely the detailed legal tradition going back centuries that has led to the extraordinary stability of "family memory"in Italy. Many Italian medievalists are currently working on reconstructing the history of urban families and their pedigrees (see: Viol ante C. Op. cit.; Rosetti G. Op. cit.).

11 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 21, p. 26.

12 Bessmertny Yu. L. Struktura krestyanskoi semey [Structure of the peasant family], pp. 32-38.

13 Fossier R. Enfance de l'Europe: Aspects economiques et sociaux. T 2 Structure et probleme. P. 1982, p. 908.

14 См. Geschichte Grundbegriffe. Bd. 2. Etonn. 1978, S. 254 - 255.

15 Ibid., S. 157.

16 See: Ideology of feudal Society in Western Europe, p. 46; Schuler Th Op. cit., S. 29; Geschichte Grundbegriffe, Bd. 2, S. 266; Flandrin J.-L. Families: parente, maison, sexualite dans l'ancienne societe. P. 1976.

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in this sphere of social relations, namely, the specific relationship between a kinship group and a small married family that is inherent in it. Modern researchers note the disintegration of archaic patriarchal clans as a whole by the middle of the tenth century, at least in the south and west of the European continent, and the consolidation of a small married family in the course of it17 . This process, which began in late antiquity, was slow and sometimes backward .18
The small married family was not only internally fragile, but also economically and socially insufficient in the conditions of the agrarian economy and the feudal socio-political structure. It was supplemented by more extensive family groups and related associations, as if dissolving into them. On the one hand, it is a domestic community, a household; on the other, it is related collectives (in which households were included as one of the constituent elements), united by blood ties and marriage unions. Modern research reveals the fundamental role of traditional blood relations - "kindred" - also in feudal society. In this sense, this society, in the words of A. Gereau-Jalabert, is comparable to primitive societies . Although the feudal West recognized the legitimacy of individual ownership, in practice the influence of the family group also extended to property; in many land alienation acts dating back to the X-XII centuries, the preamble speaks of complete freedom of disposal of property and at the same time often mentions the consent of persons of various degrees of kinship to its sale or division; approval of loved ones was mandatory 20 .

Feudal Europe is characterized by various types of complex households, "multi-family" or "undivided", which included two or more married families (patriarchal, root family, association of brothers)21 . Commonality of family property, although conditioned by different circumstances.-

17 Fossier R. Op. cit. Vol. 2, p. 908.

18 A source such as penitentiaries (guidelines for priests in their dealings with the congregation) attests to the extreme persistence of Germanic and Celtic ideas about family customs and mores throughout the early Middle Ages. Remarriage was a common practice, especially among the upper aristocracy. Premarital affairs, or concubination, are a phenomenon common to the Western Middle Ages throughout its history. The codification of family relations was slow; even in the ninth and tenth centuries, "marriage consent" (engagement) was considered a sufficient condition for creating a family. The introduction of the church model of marriage (the main element of which is the church wedding) began in France in the XII century, and in other countries, in Italy, for example, it was fully implemented only by the beginning of modern times (see: Manselli R. Vie familiale et ethique sexuelle dans les penitentiels. In: Famille et parente dans l'Occident medieval, pp. 363 - 384; Duby G. Le chevalier, la femme et le pretre: Le mariage dans France feodale. P. 1981; Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Une tnologie du mariage au temps de Humanisrne. - Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 1981, N 6, p. 1019; ejusd. Zacharie ou le pere evince: les rites a nuptiaux en Toccane. - Annales, 1979, a. 34, N 2.

19 Guerreau-Jalabert A. Sur les structures de parente dans l'Europe medie- vale (Note critique). - Annales, 1981, N 6, p. 1034 (see also: In loch M. Op. cit., p. 191; Tabacco G. Le rapport de parente comme instrument de domination consortiale: quelques exemples piemontais. In: Famille et parente dans l'Occident medieval, pp. 153 - 158).

20 Bloch M. Op. cit., pp. 194 - 195.

21 One of the results of modern historical and demographic studies of the composition and structure of households is precisely the statement of the regional and local diversity of their types in medieval Europe. P. Laslett and J. Flandren believe that the type of simple household is most typical for the European North-Western region, while various types of complex families are especially frequent in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, which does not exclude areas with a predominance of simple households (Languedoc, Provence, Latium) (see: Laslett P. Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge. 1972; Toubert P. Les structures du Latium medieval Le Latium meridional et la Sabine du IX-e siecle a la fin du XII-е siecle. R. 1973; Flandrin J. -L. Famille. - La nouvelle histoire. P. 1978.

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for various reasons and with different goals, it was widespread both among the lords and among dependent peasants. The low level of agriculture, lack of equipment and draft cattle, seignorial and fiscal oppression, frequent hunger strikes and epidemics, which caused a shortage of workers, in a particular situation could prescribe the need for a broader family cooperation than the marital unit22 (one should not, of course, ignore the ancestral traditions, especially those that are stable in the peasant environment, especially in rural areas). especially in the early Middle Ages and in underdeveloped areas).

An important result of modern studies of the medieval family is also the statement of the complexity of its development, which does not fit into a single and continuous line of gradual release of the individual from the control of the family group. M. Blok also drew attention to this: "The right to dispose of property among barbarians seems to be more free from restrictions than the corresponding right of the XI century....The establishment of feudal relations was accompanied by the consolidation of kinship ties: times were restless, public power was powerless, and people sought protection and help from their relatives"23 . The tightening of previously looser family structures from the end of the X-XII centuries and the emergence of extensive aristocratic molts with agnatic continuity (i.e., with the priority of relatives in the male line of generations) and undivided land ownership are also noted by historians of the post-war period, who, however, put this process in a different causal relationship .24 But despite all the differences in explaining the reasons for this phenomenon, researchers are unanimous in recognizing the qualitatively new nature of these complex family structures, as well as the critical nature of the era in which they were created. 25
The aristocratic lineage is not a relic of the ancestral system, but an element of the feudal social system. From the primitive clan, it was distinguished by the smaller scale of the kinship group and clear economic ties, developed family consciousness, which found expression in genealogies and the generic name. Its function was also different: the hierarchical structure, the principle of the indivisibility of patrimonium, the practice of marriage alliances-all this was subordinated to the strengthening of land ownership as the basis of feudal rule and the consolidation of hierarchical power relations. Similarly, the formation of multi-chain, complex

22 This is the origin of multi-family communities, for example, on the lands of the Abbey of Saint-Germain in the 9th century (at a time when the disintegration of large Carolingian families had already ended) and in Southern Italy in the 10th-13th centuries; peasant "domus" and patriarchal families in the 15th century in Latium and at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries in Contado Prato (see: Bessmertny Yu. L. Structure of the peasant family; Abramson M. L. Peasant communities in Southern Italy in the X-XIII centuries. - Europe in the Middle Ages: economy, politics, culture. M. 1972; Le Roy Ladurie E. Montaillon village Occitan. P. 1975; Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Declin dernographique et structure du menage. L'exemple de Prato fin XlV-e - fin XV-e. In: Famille et parente dans l'Occident medieval).

23 Bloch M. Op. cit., p. 220.

24 Hours. Duby., who studied the French aristocratic lignage, attributes its origin to the turn of the X-XI centuries and connects it with the establishment of feudal seignorial rule, the most important tool for the implementation of which, in fact, was lignage (see: Dub, G. Lignage, noblesse et chevalerie. - Annales, 1972, N 4 - 5; Bessmertny Yu. L. The "Feudal Revolution" of the X-XI centuries?). According to J. R. R. Tolkien, Violante, an important role in the emergence of lignage was played by the Gregorian reform, which was accompanied by the prohibition of marriages between relatives up to the seventh generation (see Violant'e C. Op. cit., p. 91). D. Herlihy connects the emergence of lignage with the sharp reduction of the fund of non-feudalized lands, the increased pressure of the reformed church, which demanded the return of lands once seized from it by the secular nobility: related collectives of this type were designed to prevent the fragmentation of family land ownership and strengthen collective control over it (see Herlihy D., Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Op. cit., pp. 532-533).

25 See Bessmertny Yu. L. "Feudal Revolution" of the X-XI centuries?

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Modern researchers place the concept of peasant households in relation not to the remnants of late Antique or Germanic tribal relations, but to the reality of already feudal society (economic conjuncture, demographic processes, changes in the forms of feudal exploitation, etc.).

What nuances did the city bring to this picture? To what extent did the family forms inherent in it reflect the general principles of its medieval organization and development trends? The current state of research on the urban family proper allows us to outline only the most general outlines of the problem, and, as noted above, using the example of a Mediterranean city first of all. At the same time, the patterns revealed by more complete, mass-produced Italian, in particular, the material presented by various types of sources, are confirmed in fragmentary evidence about the urban family in other regions of medieval Europe.

First of all, it is noteworthy that the city, which proclaimed communal freedoms, abolished seigniorial claims in the sphere of marriage and inheritance, and at the same time in matters related to the succession of family property, its alienation, etc., followed the general norms of feudal law, which also guided the rural land aristocracy from the XI century: the priority of relatives in all real estate transactions, as well as the desire to preserve it within the patriarchal family group, the main principle of family legislation has been the main principle since the end of the twelfth century, at least among the northern Italian communes. The city also adopted the agnatic principle of inheriting patronage over church institutions and related positions, as well as ancestral fortified towers, which were usually also built together .26 At the same time, it was not a question of mechanically transferring the traditional norms of inheritance for the feudal nobility (which might be expected, taking into account the social composition of the early Italian communes, in which feudal landowners played an important role), but of adapting them to the needs of urban economic life as a whole (and not just the nobility).

The city legislation has strengthened the effect of these norms, clearing out contradictions and expanding the social sphere of their application; this was achieved, in particular ,by introducing a new system of marriage allowances, which is standard for all social strata of citizens. 27 P. Cammarozano's research, which touches on this legal aspect of the urban family problem, simultaneously reveals the complexity of its structure in one of the main points - the relationship between the kinship group and a small married family, and the economic capabilities of the latter seem very far from independence. It is impossible not to notice, however, that the city legislation, rebuilding the system of marriage appropriations, takes into account the interests of agnates

26 Cainmarosano P. Op. cit., p. 182 a. o.

27 The fact is that until the thirteenth century in Italy, the German system of marriage appropriations, which was widely practiced in aristocratic families, was preserved, ensuring that the wife had the right to a third or a quarter of the inheritance of the deceased spouse, which infringed on the interests of the husband's related group and male heirs. The city legislation, having abolished this right, limited the wife's hereditary claims to the "marriage gift" (antifactum) borrowed from the late Antique law (in its Justinian interpretation), the amount of which was to be proportional to the size of the dowry and generally not exceed the established maximum. This, in turn, led to a change in the dowry system, this time taking into account the interests of the wife's kindred group. In the XIII-XIV centuries in Italian cities, the practice of allocating dowry only in monetary form and in the amount stipulated by the marriage contract is widespread. Daughters who received such a dowry were excluded from the total number of heirs to their father's patrimonium

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and thus, to the detriment of the marital unit, at the same time objectively created the ground for the development of other trends. Thus, the equation in the size of the dowry of the wife and the" marriage gift " of the husband objectively opened the way to the creation of a family - wide property fund, and for each of the spouses-the right to dispose of that part of the property that was brought to them in accordance with the marriage contract. This, in turn, indicates the formation of conditions in the urban environment for the emergence of a different, non-traditional form of marriage-contract marriage .28
The aspirations of the city legislation to support and strengthen the economic authority of the related group, which was united on an agnatic basis, had a very real economic and political basis, meeting the interests of the city's nobility first of all. The inclusion of feudal landowners in Mediterranean cities in a sphere of activity alien to the" real " knights, such as trade, usury, exploitation of urban revenue items, etc., of course, could not fail to lead to changes in the organization of family relations inherent in the feudal class, but it is unlikely that the nature of these changes can be reduced only to "loosening" or "loosening" molting bonds 29 . It is probably more correct to talk about their transformation, the degree and specific forms of which, of course, depended largely on the type of economy and features of the political management of the city, the historical development of the region as a whole, etc. Thus, D. Hughes, who studied the family structures of the population of Genoa in the XI-XIV centuries, shows that the specifics of this port city However , despite the fact that China is almost exclusively focused on long-distance trade, it has not weakened its long-distance ties. On the contrary, the desire to consolidate key positions in overseas trade and in the political life of the city, the sharpness of social contradictions forced the Genoese consularian nobility-these descendants of small Ligurian feudal lords - "who realized (in the words of D. Hughes) in the X-XI centuries the benefits of urban life", to intensify their family organization. As the Genoese nobles increased their control over the city's most important markets, port areas, and city gates, their kinship and family ties became more and more pronounced patrilineal, and the patrimonial basis of kinship groups became more and more solid .30
Family cohesion is a characteristic of the Consularian nobility not only in Genoa. Closely connected related groups ("genera", "linyazhi") M. L. Abramson traced the aristocracies that traced their genealogies back to the Norman and sometimes Byzantine eras in the XII-XIII centuries in another major center of long - distance sea trade - Bari on the Adriatic coast of Southern Italy and in Barletta, the commercial center of Apulia. Their internal organization reveals features similar to Genoese aristocratic lignages: joint business operations and joint management of real estate (more often part of it: the "Main House", estate, fixed capital), co-ownership of commercial enterprises and farm buildings; construction of a fortress tower and a church at the common expense; family name; monopolization of top positions in municipal administration and management. in the church hierarchy.

28 Fossier R. Op. cit. Vol. 2, p. 921 a. o.; Gulyaev A.M. Pre-marital gift in Roman law and in monuments of Byzantine legislation. Dorpat, 1891; Khvostov V. M. Istoriya rimskogo prava [History of Roman Law], Moscow, 1916, pp. 398-404.

29 Cp. Bloch M. Op. cit., pp. 216 - 217, 220.

30 Hughes D.-O. Op. cit., pp. 9 - 11, 16, 19 - 20; see also: Sammagos about P. Op cit., p. 182; Ortauli Ch. La Famille a Bologne au XIII-e siecile entre la realite des groupes inferieurs et la mentalite des classes dominantes. In: Famille et parenle dans I'Occident medieval, p. 215.

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The strength and importance of kinship relations are also evident at another social level of the urban population, which is not genetically related to either the feudal landed aristocracy or the nobility. Merchant " lignages "and" families", well-known in cities also north of the Alps and not just borrowing, as is commonly believed, a prestigious form of organizing kinship relations by a class that realized its power, not only imitating the well-born feudal nobility (which, of course, took place, especially in the late Middle Ages). The perception of" lignage " by merchants was no less, if not more, due to the effectiveness of such a form of family relations in the conditions of urban reality, permeated by competition and political rivalry. Family solidarity is the most important tool for realizing both the political and economic dominance of urban nobility and the economic and political aspirations of the upper strata of the merchant class .31
Often, when assessing merchant families, they focus on the "brevity" of their pedigrees, the short duration of cohabitation, the undivided use of inherited property, the conduct of a "common" commercial enterprise, etc., making on this basis a conclusion about the "progressive disintegration" of related collectives and the "individualization" of the family in the merchant environment. This position is shared, in particular, by S. Ronsier, the author of an interesting study reconstructing the genealogy and structure of the Florentine merchant family of the XIV century. Vellutti. Undoubtedly, the genealogies of merchant families are shorter than aristocratic ones and do not go (or are not built) "into the depths of centuries". The city's merchants could not have had "ancient" roots: the founder of the Vellutti family, for example, did not appear in Florence until 1244: But, short in the ascending line, these families are impressively extensive in their side branches, and this is well shown by Roncier. Vellutti's genealogy, according to the household chronicle on which Roncier bases his calculations, spanned three generations by 1370, including 17 straight lines and over 160 lateral lines (a total of 490 people and 92 households).

We should not absolutize the principle of cohabitation, as evidenced by the history of the same Vellutti. Indeed, the brothers lived together only at the beginning of the family's history, when its founder and four sons came to Florence. After their marriage, two of the brothers built a house not far from their father's; in the next generation, the nephews moved out, building a new family house next to their grandfather's. It is important, however, that, despite all the sections, in the XIV century. already numerous Vellutti, who lived side by side in many houses grouped around the "ancestral palace", dominated the entire quarter, where the family church and the "ancestral" graves were located .32 Thus, the essence of the problem is probably not the degree of" antiquity " of merchant genealogies constructed by domestic chroniclers, but the importance that kinship relations also had in this social environment. The "individualization" of individual families in the process of splitting up the merchant family was also very relative and was not identical with the family individual.-

31 D. Herlihy attributes the spread of merchant" lignages " in Tuscany to the XIII century (aristocratic-to the end of the XII century). It is at that time, according to his observation, that the appearance of "lignage names" - a family cognomen, i.e., a name common to families of a particular kinship group-also belongs. The family cognomen, according to D. Herlihy, is a product of urbanization, a sign of wealth, involvement in political struggle, power, contacts with the "outside" world; this is a phenomenon primarily of rich, developed commercial and industrial cities (Herlihy D., Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Op. cit., pp. 537-543; Michaelsson K. Etudes sur les noms de personne franc. ais d'apres les roles de taille parisiens (de 1292, 1296-1300, 1313). Uppsala. 1927).

32 De la Ronciere Ch. Op. cit., pp. 230, 233, 234 - 237.

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dualization in its modern sense. The division, at least in a large merchant family (as well as in a noble one), was never absolute and was not accompanied by the termination of economic cooperation, the weakening of ties of kinship solidarity, a change in place of residence, nor did it lead to the absolute liquidation of the common business and co-ownership of real estate .33
The relatively rapid disintegration of the family, which marked the beginning of the genealogy of the merchant family, is an inevitable phenomenon in the city. The company of co-heirs, the possibility of influencing the course of affairs of which was automatically opened to a wide range of people-older male representatives of all generations, justified itself (and this is well shown by Roncier) only to a certain extent. The specifics of commercial business required mobility, rapid decision-making, and more flexible forms of association. At the same time, it does not follow that the urban economy "weakened" the importance of kinship solidarity as such even among merchants. In a socially and economically unstable society, where the mortality rate was very high, family and wider family ties ensured continuity in business, credit and its security. They also opened up the possibility of a kind of "division of labor": long - distance business trips, navigation became the function of some (more often the younger generation, unmarried), and office management, loans-other (fathers, uncles, older brothers) members of the related team34 .

The needs of commercial and financial activity gave rise to other forms of kinship solidarity, more flexible than the classical lineage of the rural feudal aristocracy, which were based not only and not so much on the indivisibility of hereditary possession, but on a contractual basis. These are, in particular, mutual-interest related companies that were well-known during the classical Middle Ages, not only in Mediterranean cities, but also north of the Alps. It is enough to recall the companies of the XIV-XVI centuries of the merchants of the Upper German cities-Fuggers, Rems, Welsers, Diesbachs, Stremers and many others, which were based on contracts between fathers and sons, relatives and cousins, second cousins and nephews, etc. Short-term trade associations based on family contracts were widespread in the Hansa area. Orders of an uncle to transfer a share in a joint commercial enterprise to a nephew (son of a brother or sister )or brothers-sons are a frequent phenomenon in the testamentary practice, in particular of the Lubeck burghers in the XIII-XIV centuries. 35 Companies of this type assumed a certain economic autonomy of the members of the related group, the possibility of cooperation with other associations along with conducting a common business, as well as the inclusion of unrelated people in the related economic association. This is the so-called consortium-a form of association that is often found outside the urban environment.

The introduction of the contractual principle in economic contacts between members of the family union did not detract from the authority of the related group. This is also evidenced by the practice of mutual financial assistance (uncles and nephews, bequeathing money to orphans, impoverished

33 See ibid., p. 235; Cammarosano P. Op. cit., p. 188.

34 См. Herliny D. Family and Property in Renaissance Florence. In: The Medieval City. New Haven and Lnd. 1978, pp. 3 - 24.

35 See Arnmann H. Die Diesbach-Watt-Gesellschaft. Ste. Gallen. 1928; StromerW. von. Die Nurnberger Handelsgesellschaft Gruber-Podmer Stromer im 15. Jah. Nurnberg. 1963; L u t z E. Die rechtliche Struktur suddeutscher Handelsgesellschaften in der Zeit der Fugger. Tubingen. 1977.

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36), the hierarchy of authority (father, uncle, older brother), which is often felt even at the level of distant degrees of kinship, especially when there was a question of selling part of the inherited property or entering into a marriage union 37 . Kinship solidarity is also an important factor in the city's political life. Monopolization by individual families (not only Patrician and merchant families, but also in individual cities and rich artisans) of honorary and important positions and services in the field of urban administration and judicial proceedings over a number of generations is a phenomenon that can be traced almost everywhere in medieval Europe. It was common not only in large export and trade centers, but also in small cities. Thus, in the North German Hexter, which in 1482-1517 numbered about 2,500 inhabitants (450-500 households), the positions of burgomaster and ratmans did not actually go beyond the representatives of the three Patrician-merchant family unions connected by blood and marriage alliances and economically the most influential 38 .

Emphasizing the strength and importance of the family and kinship relations in a medieval city, it is dangerous to go to the other extreme and ignore the tendency (for all its relativity) to increase the importance of the marital family core, especially among the same merchants. This is also reflected in the practice of allocating married sons, initially (XI-XII centuries) partial and limited, and eventually more and more complete; in the increase in the rights of the husband and sons to the property of the wife and mother in the XII-XIII centuries .39 It is also symptomatic in this respect of the actual influence (as opposed to the general and legal belittlement of women) that the married mother enjoyed in merchant families. She was responsible for raising the younger children and running the household during her husband's extended business trips. In the case of widowhood, usually early, she often acted as the de facto guardian of the children and, thus, the head of a commercial enterprise, the manager of the family property. The city develops a special type of woman-housewife, housekeeper 40 .

The most economically pronounced was the married family in the craft environment. This was determined by the nature and conditions of economic activity, relatively weak roots and at the same time greater mobility inherent in this segment of the urban population, which was constantly replenished by immigrants and generally low-income. Highly specialized production, focused on the local market, placed high demands on professional training, but did not experience the need for large and long-term loans. The detachment of the main craft activity also played a role.

36 See DelaRonciere Ch. M. Op. cit., p. 236. This can be clearly seen not only in the Italian household chronicles, but also in the testamentary acts of the Lubeck burghers (see Regesten der Lubecker Biirgertestamente des Mittelalters. Bd. I: 1278-1350 Lubeck. 1964; bd. 2: 1351 - 1363. Lubeck. 1973).

37 See De la Ronciere Ch. M. Op. cit., p. 232.

38 SEE Ruthig H. Op. cit., S. 27-32.

39 Violante G. Op. cit., pp. 114 - 116.

40 D. Herlikhi believes that the high authority of the spouse and mother in the merchant household was largely due to the specifics of marriage in the urban environment, namely, the large age gap between spouses (the age of first marriage for men was on average 39 years, for women - 18-22 years). Most Florentine men had already passed the culminating age point at the time of their fatherhood. Business and politics left little time and opportunity to delve into the life of the household and the upbringing of children. In addition, only a few fathers lived to see their sons reach adolescence. Thus, the household, raising children (especially in the absence of a married older brother or grandfather) were almost exclusively the domain of women-mothers, wives (see Herlihy D. Vieillir au Quattrocento. In: Annales, 1969, N 6, pp. 1342 - 1344).

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the masses, with the exception of a narrow circle of shop bosses, suffer from problems of city administration. In this environment, marriage practices were built differently and the nature of marriage was different. Although the engagement was made early, but the marriage was usually entered into after the man completed the period of training in the profession and received the title of master. The separation of a married son was accompanied by the alienation of part (and sometimes all) of his father's business and property .41 But often, by the time a man was promoted to master, his father was no longer alive .42 The figure of the" patriarch", typical of the aristocratic, patrician environment, is rare here.

Marriages were usually made in the same professional group (but sometimes also in related ones - for example, clothiers and dyers) and more often than in Patrician families, by free and mutual expression of will. The husband's profession, dowry, and "marriage gift" formed the economic basis of the young family. A craft enterprise was often the result of a joint initiative of the spouses (especially in the textile industry). The spirit of economic partnership inherent in marriage in the craft environment also transformed the practice of inheritance: in the absence of children, the husband often bequeathed the workshop to his wife, and wives often bequeathed their property to their husbands .43
The very nature of the craftsman's professional development took him out of the control of the family group for a long time and connected him with strangers (in the Patrician-merchant environment, the preparation of sons for the family "business", on the contrary, contributed to their early inclusion in the system of broad kinship relationships). Unlike the nobility and large merchants, the artisan population of cities focused in their family relations primarily on the marital unit. However, it is unlikely that even in this case, on the one hand, the importance of a wider family group should be underestimated, and on the other hand, the degree of independence of a small family should be exaggerated.

The development of the consciousness of belonging to the"family" 44 , although not as extensive and extensive as that of the ruling class, was due to the social and economic role that it also played in the craft environment. As you know, in order to start their own business, a craftsman had to complete an apprenticeship, work as an apprentice, and acquire the necessary minimum funds for its management. In providing all these conditions, one of the most important places belonged to the family group. It is enough to recall the regulations of the statutes of the German guilds, which closed access to their ranks to illegitimate sons of persons associated with "disgraceful" professions (barber, cloth weaver, musician, etc.) 45. The hereditary family character of the profession is one of the main conditions for the admission of new craftsmen to the workshop, especially in the late Middle Ages. Workshops

41 As a rule, only one master could be at the head of a business. There seems to have been no rigid succession to his father's workshop, at least not in German cities. There are often cases when my father's workshop was inherited by the youngest, because my father managed the business himself for a long time. But it also happened that, having handed over his workshop to his son, the father opened a new, smaller one (see Riithing G. Op. cit., S. 33).

42 Higounet-Nadal A. Perigueux aux XIV-е et XV-e siecles; Etude de demo- graphie historique. Bordeaux. 1978, pp. 281 - 295; Richet D. Op. cit.

43 Higounet-Nada I A. Op. cit., p. 290; Hughes D. -O. Op. cit., p. 25; Violante G. Op. cit., pp. 29 - 34; Regesten der Lubecker Burgertestamente des Mittelalters, NN 3, 11, 23, 40, 84, 557, 571, 865, 867.

44 In Tuscany in the 14th and 15th centuries, this was reflected, in particular,in the method of assigning a name to artisan families, which included two, often three components: the proper name received at baptism, the father's and grandfather's. The traditional custom of giving the eldest son in the family the name of the deceased grandfather (father), which was thus passed down from generation to generation, was also widespread (see Herlihy D., Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Op. cit., p. 552).

45 See German City of the XIV-XV centuries, Moscow, 1936, p. 57.

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exempted the sons of masters from the entrance fee or reduced it to a minimum 46 . The family nature of the profession was often taken into account when applying for an apprenticeship. Thus, the family determined professional continuity and social status. One gets the impression, however, that in comparison with the merchant class, especially its upper stratum, the influence of the family group on the fate of the younger generation was still less intense here. Coming from the same family did not necessarily entail equally favorable chances for all children in their subsequent independent life, just as the transfer of the workshop to one of the sons did not in itself serve as a guarantee of his business prosperity .47
The lack of kinship and family solidarity at this social level of the urban population was compensated by the strength of territorial - neighborly and even, as studies show, community ties, 48 while the economic independence and apparent isolation of the married family were violated and limited to trade and craft corporations. But it is not only this circumstance that prevents the identification of the family of a medieval urban artisan with a modern small family. Just as in the peasant environment at that time, it was mainly a domestic community - a household. Along with the master, his wife and their children, it included one of the widowed or disabled parents (most often the husband), impoverished or single relatives (unmarried sister of the husband, niece, aunt). These were welcome additional workers for a variety of tasks - around the house and related to the economy (remember that rural activities were then an integral element of urban life). But this was not the only part of the family community: apprentices, apprentices, and employees also lived in the master's house, obeying the same household rhythm and general household routine, ate at the same table with him, received clothes from him, and often marrying a widowed mistress or the master's daughter crowned the career of an apprentice.

Thus, the family of an urban craftsman was a collective of people connected not only by marriage and blood kinship, but also by joint production. This organic unity of the household as a place of family residence and at the same time a sphere of productive activity is a distinctive feature of the family structure in the craft environment of the urban population. Reducing the size of a household, reducing it to a single marital unit, or, on the contrary, enlarging it (multi-family, extended households), which could be determined, as studies show , by a complex of heterogeneous causes49, made little difference in its nature as a domestic community. This family structure functioned without changing its essence.-

46 The butchers ' shop at Hexter required (1500) new arrivals to give evidence that the profession had been practised by one of their relatives-their father, stepfather, father - in-law, or, in the case of a widow who had married, her deceased husband (Ruthing H. Op. cit., p.32).

47 CM. ibid., S. 33.

48 In particular, they were very effective in Genoa, a port city subject to heavy immigration processes. In the commercial and craft districts located far from the port, on the hills, people settled not so much (and not only) on a professional basis, but rather by origin from the same area, villages. With this in mind, the marriage practice was also built here (Hughes D.-O. Kinsmen and Neighbors in Medieval Genoa. In: The Medieval City, pp. 95-112; see also: Tushina G. N. Issledovanie demograficheskikh osobennosti gorodov Provansa XIV-XV vv. In: Demography of the Western European Middle Ages in Modern Foreign Historiography, pp. 238-239).

49 La demographie medievale, sources et methodes, p. 125; Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Declin demographique et structure du menage. L'exemple de Prato, fin XIV-е-fin XV-e siecles, pp. 235 - 273; Herlihy D., Klapisch-Zuber Ch. Op. cit.

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over the centuries. It enters a period of crisis as medieval handicraft production decays, contradictions between masters and apprentices become more acute, social and property differentiation of independent craftsmen deepens, and early capitalist forms of production organization spread.

We have traced the characteristic features of the organization of family relations in different social groups of the medieval city. The considered material makes it possible to reveal the importance of traditional blood relations in the urban environment of medieval society, to feel the social significance of family structures and kinship ties. This not only did not contradict the conditions of urban economic life, but to a certain extent was even due to the small-scale nature of handicraft production and the relatively low level of development of commodity-money and credit relations in general at that time. It is noteworthy that the complexity of family forms and the strength of kinship ties were distinguished primarily by the most active economically and politically leading, dominant layers of the urban population - the nobility and merchants. The urban environment undoubtedly favored individualization ("privatization"), a small, married family, economically most pronounced, but only among the ordinary mass of citizens - artisans, small merchants. But even in this case, as far as the current state of research allows us to judge, it is still more likely only a trend in this direction.

When speaking about the nature of the urban family, one should raise the question not about the "decomposition of traditional structures", as Western historians do, but about the peculiarities of transformation in the urban environment of the principles of organizing blood-related succession, marriage alliances, property management, etc. inherent in feudal society.

The European city in the Middle Ages was characterized by no less complex (than those that were found outside its walls) forms of organizing family relations and kinship: a multi-layered patriarchal society, fratrery (cohabitation of brothers), an individual married family in its household frame. This diversity corresponded to the complexity of the city's economic life and socio-political structure and their needs. The types of family and related associations, and their ratios varied depending on the era and region, the type of city, and the social and property level. But the essence of the matter remained unchanged: in the midst of medieval traditional urban society, family and kinship relations remained an important factor in organizing economic and social life. The complexity of their forms fully corresponded to the multiplicity of functions they performed. The development of the medieval urban family proceeded (and this was also its peculiarity) as if in a constant confrontation of two tendencies - to rally the family team around the closest relatives (and thereby to its individualization) and at the same time - to preserve the kinship molt.

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