On the margins of the family? The social and cultural significance of illegitimacy in high medieval Germany (900-1300)

• Applicant: Dr. Clara Harder
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437172478

Illegitimacy is an anthropological constant, and as such it plays an important role in discussions about family and kinship, marriage and divorce, parents and children, licit and illicit forms of sexuality. Medieval history tends to marginalize children who were born out of wedlock because of the scarce evidence and the increasing legal discrimination these children faced at the end of the Middle Ages. The project aims at demonstrating the various meanings of illegitimacy in the German noble society between the years 900 and 1300. This period is marked by pivotal changes concerning marriage and family that are reflected in social behavior, norms and narrative patterns. This is why the project reconstructs continuities and discontinuities concerning social practice and cultural perception of illegitimacy, by which it surmounts the established historical approach that focuses on the ability of children being born out of wedlock to inherit. Instead, questions about the strategies of dealing with these children in family and society will be addressed. Scattered and diverse sources will be made accessible and evaluated to conduct a social and cultural historical analysis of illegitimacy. The project draws from on a vast range of source material, including charters, historiography, literature, medieval exempla and normative sources. Legal and constitutional aspects will not be treated in an abstract way but in relation to historical cases of illegitimacy. Therefore, social relationships within noble families will be exemplified and acknowledged as being part of medieval social structures and family dynamics. Shifting in perception and handling of illegitimacy will come to the fore by a diachronic comparison, and conclusions will be drawn about the changes of social and political strategies and cultural narratives. Methodological innovation will be offered by the use of systems theory and a contrasting juxtaposition between children being born in and out of wedlock within the same family. Thus, the family will be analyzed as a whole and an appropriate standard of evaluation will be developed to recreate possibilities and limits for medieval individuals who were associated with illegitimacy. As a result, the comparison of the project’s socio-historical findings with medieval mentalities, normative discourse and cultural perceptions and attributions will offer a multi-dimensional interpretation of the phenomenon of illegitimacy in Germany in the high medieval period.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants