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Title
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Replacing the family? Beguinages in early modern western European cities: an analysis of the family networks of beguines living in Mechelen (1532-1591)
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Author
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Abstract
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| In many early modern towns of the southern Low Countries, beguinages gave adult single women of all ages the possibility to lead a religious life of contemplation in a secure setting, retaining rights to their property and not having to take permanent vows. This paper re-examines the family networks of these women by means of a micro-study of the wills left by beguines who lived in the Great Beguinage of St Catherine in sixteenth-century Mechelen, a middle-sized city in the Low Countries. By doing so, this research seeks to add nuance to a historiography that has tended to consider beguinages as artificial families, presumably during a period associated with the increasing dominance of the nuclear family and the unravelling ties of extended family. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Continuity and change : a journal of social structure, law and demography in past societies. - Cambridge, 1986, currens
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Publication
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Cambridge
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2014
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ISSN
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0268-4160
[print]
1469-218X
[online]
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DOI
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10.1017/S0268416014000265
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Volume/pages
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29
:3
(2014)
, p. 325-347
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ISI
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000347467000002
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
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