Fathers and sons in a charter database: statistics and storiesRachel Stone, King’s College London, IMC 2015, Session 313

(S1) In this paper, talking about using Making of Charlemagne’s Europe charter database to look at roles of fathers in chartersfamily emotions in chartersdrawing both on basic statistical analysis and stories in individual charters

(S2) Sources for early medieval fathers and sons: normative, narrative, documentary Most discussions of fathers and sons in Carolingian period relying on normative or narrative

sources

(S3) What are the advantages of using charters for studying fathers and sons?1) Wide spread of texts: over 3000 complete texts (excluding Lorsch) for Charlemagne’s reign, around 1300 German/Austria/Switzerland, 1200-1300 Italy, 400-450 France/Low Countries

2) How families work in practice, not just ideology

3) Look at families lower down social spectrum, whom narrative sources rarely discuss

(S4) Background on Making of Charlemagne’s Europe databaseAHRC-funded project at KCL 2012-2014, building a charter databaseroyal and private charters from 768-814web-based public interface (plus more data available via back-end queries)includes information on family relationships and roles in transactions

(S5) So far 929 charters in the system – not complete but still very largeacross most of empire

(S6) Looking at families in the database, there are immediate problems with some of the statistics. One big issue is how the charters talk about families:

People described as fathers in charters: 80People described as sons in charters: 601

Doesn’t mean average father has 7 or more sons, but reflects how we input data. If a charter states that “X is son of Y”, we just recorded that, not that “Y is father of X”, because it would have too time-consuming. We’d hoped the database could generate that information automatically, but it turned out be too complicated to do so.

So for this and all other statistics, have to do some playing round with data to pick up all the examples. When you do, find that number of men in database overall shown as fathers = 685.1

1 Made up of 80 people described as fathers in ARF from a charter and 611 male people who have children (appear as Male 2nd person in ARF with relationship type = 5 (child), 6 (son), 49 (daughter)). Overlap of two groups = 9 people.

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(S7) Difference between numbers of fathers and sons recorded also reflects regional differences. Revealing to look at breakdown by country, using slightly different statistics of numbers of charters rather than number of people:

No of charters mentioning place in country

No of charters mentioning fathers and place in country

No of charters mentioning sons and place in country

Austria 83 15 9Belgium 18 5 1France 211 41 21Germany 330 60 72Italy 315 16 208Luxembourg 5 1 8Netherlands 16 2 8Switzerland 14 1 8Turkey 1 0 0Spain 1 0 1

(Click) As you’ll see, there are a disproportionate number of sons in Italy. Why? Because sons are identified by their father’s name in Italian charters and not generally elsewhere. Need to be aware how much different traditions of diplomatic affect the data we get from charters about family relationships.

Fathers in charters: dead providers

(S8) So that’s an overview of the data we’re working with. Now for some of the details. One of the interesting points I realised when analysing the data is how many of the fathers mentioned in charters are dead by the time charter was written

336 fathers said to be dead (8 + 328) – just under half.

Why all the dead fathers? Is this simply because sons normally only inherit property on their father’s death, so that they don’t show up in charters until then?

But there are some fathers consenting to transactions that their sons have made, and we also get told about both living fathers and dead fathers of witnesses. So these dead fathers are significant.

(S9) It’s worth looking at Roman demographics, because there have been several recent studies looking specifically at dead fathers.2 And what they show is very high levels of children whose fathers die before they’re adults. Under a range of assumptions, you have around one-third of children whose father has died by the time they’re 15 and around half by the time the child is 25.3

2 Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, property and death in the Roman family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Walter Scheidel, 'The demographic background', in Sabine R. Hübner and David M. Ratzan (eds.), Growing up fatherless in antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

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(S10): How does this compare with the early Middle Ages? Richard Saller’s model is fundamental, but his assumptions have been disputed. But it’s revealing to consider his most conservative estimates for paternal death, using ‘senatorial level 6’ assumptions, with the mean age of marriage as 15 for women, 25 for men, and life-expectancy at birth of 32.5 years. It’s unlikely that life expectancy was much higher in the early Middle Ages, and as the examples show, it may have been as much as 10 years lower.4 We don’t know the age at first marriage, apart from a few royal examples, which may be atypical, but it’s difficult to see fertile marriages occurring much earlier than Saller’s estimates, especially since puberty may have been delayed by poor diet.

Whatever the exact statistics, any discussion of father-son relationships needs to consider that they may have been less common and shorter than in modern times.

(S11) We were hoping to find out more about inheritance patterns from the Charlemagne database, but in that respect our charters overall were disappointing. Only 61 charters included specific details of which property was inherited from whom. Most of what we found was very vague phrases: “anything I have from paternal or maternal inheritance” or references to someone’s “share” portiona mea or hereditas

(S12) However, in some individual charters, did get evidence for complex patterns of family inheritance. For example in Mondsee 48, Huno states:

“I give to St Michael [Mondsee] myself and my share which my father put aside for me in Köstendorf, which I had as my portion against (?) my sons and I have to this day.”5

The team’s conclusion, based on comparisons with other Mondsee charters, was that this probably meant that Huno’s father had divided the inheritance between Huno and some of Huno’s sons.

(S13) We can also see complex variations on future provision for families. For example, take three charters from Wissembourg, which state:

WBG 128 (773): Sigibald grants property to Wissembourg, but retains the right of a future legitimate son to buy back the property: “si filium genuero de legitima uxore”

WBG 79 (c. 790) Helphant gives property to Wissembourg but retains the usufruct, both for himself and for any future sons “si filios procreauerim”

3 Saller ordinary: mean age of first marriage 20 for women, 30 for men, mean female life expectancy 25; senatorial: mean ages of marriage 15/25, mean life expectancy 25 or 32.5

4 A. Cipriano-Bechtle, G. Grupe, and P Schröter, 'Ageing and life expectancy in the early Middle Ages', Homo 46 (1996), 273; Robin Fleming, 'Bones for historians: putting the body back into biography', in David Bates, Julia Crick, and Sarah Hamilton (eds.), Writing medieval biography: essays in honour of Professor Frank Barlow (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2006), p. 39

5 “donavi ad sanctum Michahelem me ipsum vel meam partem, quod mihi pater meus dimisit in Chessindorf, quod ego in portionem meam contra filios meos tuli et ego abui in ipsa diae.”

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WBG 19 (808) Arbio gives property to Wissembourg and receives it back as a precarial grant for himself and his children, Odo and Eugenia

Are such variants just a matter of diplomatic and the vagaries of Latin or do they possibly say something about how fathers (or potential fathers) thought of their children? They do suggest that sons and specifically legitimate sons were what were imagined, but that fathers in practice wanted to care for actual daughters as well as sons.

(S14) These future provisions in charters were the hardest to record systematically in the database. Here’s a particularly complex statement we found from Freising and our attempts at translating it:

I, Wurmhard...my inheritance after my death...ought to belong to the church of the immaculate virgin Mary...if my mother lets go breath before the end of my life and I have not generated children; but if it should happen that either my mother or my own child should survive my decease, a third part is to be kept for the church, and after their death the rest that is over is to be given piecemeal to that single church.6

I’m not sure how successful we were at capturing such details in the database, but they are revealing about the desire of some fathers or potential fathers to stay in control of events after their death. And again there are interesting hints here about how uncertain family life could be. Gifts are given to holy places only to be possibly retracted; the need for the saint’s support can’t wait in a world where your mother might survive you but any future children you have might not.

(S15) One aspect of families in charters that has been explored, most notably by Stephen White, is the role of relatives in consenting to grants of property.7 White argued that the laudatio parentum was uncommon before 1000. Our charters confirm that: only 78 charters of any type mention consenters. Those that consent are a mix of relatives and unrelated high-status men; we have 6 with sons consenting to a father’s donation and 5 with father/stepfather consenting to sons’ transactions

6 http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0000/bsb00004628/images/index.html (p. 69), FRE 41 'ego Vurmhart divine muneris concessione propriam hereditatem post obitum meum, si genetrix mea ante finem meum vitalem emitterit flatum et si soboles non genuissem, post dies meos funditus substantia mea res inquisitas ad intemerate virginis Mariae ecclesiae Rotae fluminis sitae ripae pertinere debuisset; si autem meae decessisse et genetrice aut infante proprio supervixisse contigerit, tertia pars ecclesiae conteneatur, eorum post obitum relique quae fuerint supra membratim ecclesiae soli dentur.'

7 Stephen D. White, Custom, kinship, and gifts to saints: the laudatio parentum in western France, 1050-1150 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)

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(not all donations).8 That aspect of associating one’s relatives with a transaction doesn’t seem to be significant in the Carolingian period.

(S16) But we also recorded information about another aspect of family life that can potentially take us towards looking at emotions within families. In transaction, who are the spiritual beneficiaries: whom do transactors ask to be prayed for or remembered? We have 192 charters which include references to someone other than the donor being prayed for or remembered. The vast majority of these are donations to monasteries, although we’ve also got 2 sales which include spiritual beneficiaries (CDL 2:225, SFL 22), thus proving once again that our neat categories of donations and sales don’t always work in practice.

In these 192 charters, we have 168 individuals or groups, since some get prayed for in multiple charters, and of these we have 90 individual men and 42 individual women.

(S17) In some case the charter doesn’t say what the relationship is, but of those we do, we have:13 fathers only being prayed for6 mothers only10 father and mother together4 groups of ancestors16 groups of “parentes” (which might indicate parents or kin more widely)

In other words, commemoration and memorialisation isn’t just of the paternal line

(S18) It’s also revealing to look at children as spiritual beneficiaries. We have a large number of royal diplomas where Charlemagne states that his children are to be prayed for: 50 for Children generally (ID 224), more than a quarter of all his charters, plus 2 with prayers specifically for Pippin of Italy (DKAR 1:202, 208).

In contrast, such prayers are rare in private charters: we’ve found 11 where sons are prayed for, 2 where daughters are, 4 where children generally are. 9 Worth remembering that requiring prayers

8 SonsFRE 30, Alberic, son of granterFRE 44, Charles, son of granterFRE 48, Silvester, son consenting to precarial grantMRH 39: anonymous son consenting to grantREG 2 anonymous sons of Opi consenting to grantWER 4: Maginhard, son of granter

FathersCHLA 23:750 Opteris, stepfather, consenting to saleCHLA 61:17 Bassacus, father, consent to receipt of livellusCRE 4: Benignus father, consenting to saleFRE 39, father Cello, consenting to grant FRE 72, Toto, father, consenting to grant

9 SonsCHLA 61:20 = CDA 72 – Appo, dead infant son of AscolfFAR 2:176 Peter & Paul, dead sons of Liuderisius

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for relatives is a lot easier than getting them to consent to a donation. You don’t have to gather them together or send a scribe off to record their consent, you just need an extra line or two in the charter. On this measure, it looks as if Charlemagne is one of the few Frankish fathers really concerned about the continuation of his paternal line.

(S19) Of the fathers who do want prayers for their children, a number of them are for dead children: 5 out of the 17 charters for such prayers concerned dead sons or daughters, including one heartbreaking charter from Tuscany. That’s a donation by Ascolfus to St Stephen’s Oile for his soul and that of his parentes and “for that little child Appo himself, who we buried in the same place, at the church itself”10

(S20) But some charters also show us more ambivalent attitudes between fathers and sons. One of the dead sons who is commemorated is a Bavarian called Keparohun, murdered in a conflict around 774. In FRE 65 his father Onolfus reports how he has lost his “beloved Keparohan, as if my only son”, so that “deprived of him I remain with my only son called Rodoin”11 Onolf gives the family church to Freising, but adds that if Rodoin becomes a cleric he should possess this church during his lifetime and pray for his father, mother and brother. But he also includes provisions if Rodoin “should neglect to raise priestly thanksgivings”.12 Is this extra clause just in case Rodoin doesn’t become a priest or is there also the possibility hinted at that Rodoin may not have appreciated being very much second-best to his dead brother?

FRE 54 Gunzo, son of HelmbertFRE 65 – Keparohun murdered son of Aunulf and AlbswindFRE 69: sons of Ricbald 7380FRE 72 – Scrot, dead son of TotoMON 115 – Maginhard son of Maginrad(PAS 37) – spiritual benefit from son being handed overSFL 22 – Adalbert & Starcholf, sons of vendorWBG 85 – Autbert son of GozbertWER 27 Bosoconis – murdered son of Thancgrim

DaughtersPAS 34, Anonymous daughter of MaginhardWER 20 Swanaburg, dead daughter of Snellhard

ChildrenFRE 79, Helmwin 7068FRE 84, Pircho 7761MON 12, Magilo 1039MON 112 – Poso 1674

10 CHLA 61:20 (812): pro ipsum infantulu nomine Appo, qem nos ividem ad ipsa ecclesia sepellimus

11 (p Ego Onolfus...dilectum et quasi unicum Keparohun amisi filium latrociniis insidie interemptum a quo orbatus remansi cum unico Hrodino filio vocabulo

12 ad honorem si [Rodoin] accesserit... possedeat praedictum patrimonium intercessor genitori matrique et germani adsistat...Sin autem nostris impetire dedierit delictis, ut sublimare sacerdotalis neglexerit gratibus...”impetere = to attack, accuse, call to account, claim, demand, require)

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(S21) There are similar hints of conflicts between sons over a father’s favour in a couple of other Freising charters from around the same time. These concern the wonderfully named Scrot, who died prematurely and on his death-bed in 776, left property to Freising for his soul. This donation was confirmed a week later by his father Toto. On same day Wago, Scrot’s brother, donates to Freising for himself, his father and ancestors (“tam pro me pro genitore vel prodecessoris”), but notably not for Scrot’s soul.13 A year later, meanwhile, there’s another charter concerning a dispute between Toto’s remaining sons and their father, along with his new wife Osperga; a family agreement had to be brokered by Duke Tassilo.14 At this social level, father-son disputes could become a matter for princes.

(S22) Occasionally, we can see hints of multi-generational tensions. A charter from the Siena archive from 777 has Walderan from Cosuna promising property to his son Rado, because he’s done so much for him in his old age and always been obedient; Rado’s given “better and more service” than Walderan’s granddaughters, the daughters of his dead son Insunus.15 However, these grand-daughters still get a share of Walderan’s property; had Rado’s devoted service really changed the amount he was due to inherit, or was his father merely trying to butter him up?

(S23) Charters can give us tantalising glimpses of family affection and tensions, but we rarely get all the details we’d like to have. Even so, we get insights that we can’t get elsewhere. Some aspects seem familiar, such as fathers’ concern to provide for their children and for sons in particular. Normative sources are full of demands for fathers to love their sons and sons to obey their fathers; they also accept the kind of favouritism towards a particular son seen in some of the Freising charters. Conflicts within families are also familiar from other Carolingian sources.

But the charters also suggest that father-son bonds may have been less strong than you might expect in a patriarchal society. From around 800, the Carolingian royal family were keen to stress their paternal line ancestors.16 The charter evidence suggests that this wasn’t a priority for other families in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Even in Italy, with its regular recording of names of men’s fathers, memorialisation didn’t focus on agnatic relatives.

Does this mean that we’re still in the period of the “large” family or clan? Not really: when specific relatives do get mentioned in charters, they’re overwhelmingly close ones: there are almost no cousins in our database, for example. Instead, it may have more to do with “fractured” families and 13 FRE 7214 FRE 86. Warren Brown, Unjust seizure: conflict, interest, and authority in an early medieval society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 54 pointed out how many important noblemen witnessed this agreement, including Virgil, the bishop of Salzburg.

15 CHLA 24:756 = CDA 29 “tu Rado, filius meus, mihi in mea senecta multa erga inpendere visus est in omnibus mihi semper obediens es; propterea volo, ut omnem tuo conquesitum aut lavoratum post decessum meo abere diveas, absque portionem nepotem meorum, que sunt filie quondam Insunu, qui fuit filius meus, quia melior et amplius tuus Radoni cognosce servitium quam de nepotis mee”. This may draw on Lombard legal norms which allow giving a preferential share to a favoured child: Cristina La Rocca, 'Multas amaritudines filius meus mihi fecit. Conflitti intrafamiliari nell'Italia longobarda (secolo VIII)', Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome 111 (1999) describes a case where such norms were adapted to disinherit a son.

16 Constance B. Bouchard, 'The Carolingian creation of a model of patrilineage', in Celia Chazelle and Felice Lifshitz (eds.), Paradigms and methods in early medieval studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

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the constant disruption to a patrilineal consciousness arising from prematurely dead fathers and sons. What may really have been distinctive about the Carolingian royal family was the number of kingly fathers who survived until their sons were well into adulthood and the resultant difficulty that royal sons had in dealing with living fathers rather than dead ones.

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