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Transformations of the family from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (300-900)

Department: Centre for Medieval Studies

Module co-ordinator: Dr Becca Grose

• Credit value: 20 credits
• Credit level: M
• Academic year of delivery: 2022-23

Module will run

Module aims

The module aims to:

• Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
• Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
• Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.

Module learning outcomes

After completing this module students should have

• Identified various early-medieval sources available to social historians and assessed their suitability for investigating different questions.
• Demonstrated knowledge of key debates in the field of late-antique and early-medieval social history Assessed the limitations and possibilities of textual evidence for the study of late-antique and early-medieval social history and the family
• Developed their own definition and understanding of ‘family’ and its use in understanding past social structures
  

Module content:

As the Roman empire collapsed or transformed, so too did social relationships. New roles emerged for families in political culture, while changing attitudes to marriage, virginity, adoption and abortion interacted with new types of kinship, including godparents and religious brothers and sisters.  This module investigates this series of significant shifts in family roles, structures, expectations, and meanings from the end of the Roman empire to the dawn of the Carolingian Empire, focusing primarily on Gaul, North Africa, and the insular world.

Students will have the opportunity to meet a range of late-antique and early-medieval sources in English translation, including saints’ lives, legal texts, conciliar acts, penitentials, letters, tombstones, and sermons. Further reading options will be available for students who wish to explore the evidence from material culture and students with prior Latin experience can be supported in accessing the source texts in their original language, if they are interested.

Teaching Programme:

Students will attend eight weekly two-hour seminars in weeks 2-9.

         The provisional outline for the module is as follows:

1. What is family? Legal, social, and religious frameworks.
2. The late Roman marriage revolution
3. Families as political units: maternal and paternal kinship
4. Virginity, abortion, infertility and familial power(lessness) over bodies
5. Enslavement and the family
6. Divorce, abandonment and breaking up the family
7. Death, widowhood, orphanhood, and inheritance
8. Family transformations in the insular world.

Assessment

Reassessment

Module feedback

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.

Indicative reading

For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading: 

• Cooper, Kate. The Fall of the Roman Household. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Hummer, Hans. Visions of kinship in medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Mistry, Zubin. Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500–900. Woodbridge:  York Medieval Press, 2015.
• Nathan, Geoffrey. The Family in Late Antiquity: The rise of Christianity and the endurance of tradition. London: Routledge, 2002.