Single Life in Fifteenth-Century Bruges: Living Arrangements and Material Culture at the Fringes of Urban Society

Abstract

Unlike the complex “joint” and “stem” household systems which prevailed in southern Europe, most households in north-western Europe were neo-local and nuclear in structure, ideally existing of a conjugal family with their child(ren) as its basic core, with or without live-in apprentices and servants. 1 One of the most important characteristics of the (West) European Marriage Pattern was the high age at marriage for both men and women, which meant that they retained their single status for a longer period of time. Moreover, some people never married at all. Late medieval cities, with their high levels of migration, specific economic and commercial infrastructure and relatively liberal juridical positions for women 2 were home to many unmarried people. 3 Yet, almost no attention has been paid to how this significant part of the late medieval urban population arranged their living. 4 Indeed, although studies on single life have recently gained popularity, we know very little about the domestic and material culture of never-married and not-yet married women and widows and even less about the domestic life of their male counterparts. 5 Material culture studies usually do not consider differences in household composition, because this kind of information often is not provided by the inventory. To a large extent, people’s single status made them invisible for the historical record. 6 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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