
Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages
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Narrated by:
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Anne Flosnik
About this listen
A compelling, lucid, and highly enjoyable chronicle of medieval life written by the authors of the bestselling Life in a Medieval Castle and Life in a Medieval City
Historians have only recently awakened to the importance of the family, the basic social unit throughout human history. This book traces the development of marriage and the family from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.
It describes how the Roman and barbarian cultural streams merged under the influence of the Christian church to forge new concepts, customs, laws, and practices. Century by century, it follows the development—sometimes gradual, at other times revolutionary—of significant elements in the history of the family, including
- The basic functions of the family as production unit, as well as its religious, social, judicial, and educational roles;
- The shift of marriage from private arrangement between families to public ceremony between individuals, and the adjustments in dowry, bride-price, and counter-dowry;
- The development of consanguinity rules and incest taboos in church law and lay custom;
- The peasant family in its varying condition of being free or unfree, poor, middling, or rich;
- The aristocratic estate, the problem of the younger son, and the disinheritance of daughters;
- The Black Death and its long-term effects on the family;
- Sex attitudes and customs: the effects of variations in age of men and women at marriage;
- The changing physical environment of noble, peasant, and urban families; and
- Arrangements by families for old age and retirement.
Expertly researched, master historians Frances and Joseph Gies—whose books were used by George R. R. Martin in his research for Game of Thrones—paint a compelling, detailed portrait of family life and social customs in one of the most riveting eras in history.
©1987 Frances and Joseph Gies (P)2022 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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The Gilded Page
- The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts
- By: Mary Wellesley
- Narrated by: Mary Wellesley
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status - part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second.
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Not suited for audio
- By Secutor on 05-27-22
By: Mary Wellesley
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Everyday Life in Medieval London
- From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors
- By: Toni Mount
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Our capital city has always been a thriving and colorful place, full of diverse and determined individuals developing trade and finance, exchanging gossip and doing business. Abandoned by the Romans, rebuilt by the Saxons, occupied by the Vikings and reconstructed by the Normans, London would become the largest trade and financial center, dominating the world in later centuries. London has always been a brilliant, vibrant, and eclectic place.
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Interesting
- By Faycal Ikhouane on 01-16-24
By: Toni Mount
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The Second Shift
- Working Families and the Revolution at Home
- By: Anne Machung, Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 20 years ago, sociologist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Arlie Hochschild set off a tidal wave of conversation and controversy with her best-selling book, The Second Shift. In it, she examined what really happens in dual-career households. Adding together time in paid work, child care, and housework, she found that working mothers put in a month of work a year more than their spouses.
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Not helpful for working parents
- By J. F. V. Davis on 07-11-22
By: Anne Machung, and others
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Unequal Childhoods
- Class, Race, and Family Life, Second Edition, with an Update a Decade Later
- By: Annette Lareau
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security.
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Essential reading for everyone
- By Jared on 10-09-12
By: Annette Lareau
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Wine of Violence
- The Medieval Mysteries, Book 1
- By: Priscilla Royal
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Late summer, 1270. Although the Simon de Montfort rebellion is over, the smell of death still hangs over the land. In the small priory of Tyndal, the monks and nuns of the Order of Fontevraud long for a return to routine. Their hopes are dashed, however, when the young and inexperienced Eleanor of Wynethorpe is appointed their new prioress. Only a day after her arrival, a brutally murdered monk is found in the cloister gardens, and Brother Thomas, a young priest with a troubled past, arrives to bring her a more personal grief.
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If you're not into sodomy, this book's not for you
- By misskris on 06-15-18
By: Priscilla Royal
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Life in a Medieval City
- By: Frances Gies, Joseph Gies
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Life in a Medieval City is the classic account of the year 1250 in the city of Troyes, in modern-day France. Acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies focus on a high point of medieval civilization - before war and the Black Death ravaged Europe - providing a fascinating window into the sophistication of a period we too often dismiss as backward. Urban life in the Middle Ages revolved around the home, often a mixed-use dwelling for burghers with a store or workshop on the ground floor and living quarters upstairs.
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Troyes, an old town but a new city
- By Darwin8u on 04-02-18
By: Frances Gies, and others
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Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown
- The Kings and Queens Who Never Were
- By: J.F. Andrews
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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When William the Conqueror died in 1087, he left the throne of England to William Rufus . . . his second son. The result was an immediate war as Rufus's elder brother Robert fought to gain the crown he saw as rightfully his; this conflict marked the start of 400 years of bloody disputes as the English monarchy's line of hereditary succession was bent, twisted, and finally broken when the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, fell at Bosworth in 1485.
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An American mispronouncing English names?
- By SM on 06-30-25
By: J.F. Andrews
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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages
- The World Through Medieval Eyes
- By: Anthony Bale
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites listeners on an odyssey across the medieval world. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens.
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Bit Academic
- By PG on 05-06-25
By: Anthony Bale
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The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: Ian Mortimer
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveler's Guides, Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history—the Regency, or Georgian England. A time of exuberance, thrills, frills, and unchecked bad behavior, it was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality. At the same time, it was a period of transition. Conveying the sights, sounds, and smells of the Regency period, this is history at its most exciting—the past not as something to be studied, but as lived experience.
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SKIP THIS BOOK
- By Lady Aristotle on 09-05-22
By: Ian Mortimer
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Medieval Christianity
- A New History
- By: Kevin Madigan
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind.
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New Standard Text for This Period
- By Bill Martin on 10-22-16
By: Kevin Madigan
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The Birth of Classical Europe
- A History from Troy to Augustine
- By: Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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To an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level, from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a “classical Europe,” using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures. As this consistently fresh and surprising new audio book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past - one filled with great leaders and writers....
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Excellent overview of the Classical World
- By David I. Williams on 01-12-14
By: Simon Price, and others
For the average reader, it’s not one that will keep you up in the late hours, turning pages til the wee dawn. Delivered well.
Quite in depth.
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Amazing how much marriage and families changed yet the same
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Fun narration for an interesting topic
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Strong disagree to the other review, there is an enormous amount of information in this book
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Good history
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Addition information to what previous books had given me
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The history of everyday
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Could have been cut in half, would not read again
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