The editors of this volume, a selection of papers from the Leeds International Medieval Congress of 2001, make a heroic effort to impose some unity on the collection as a whole and on the sections into which they have divided it. Besides the general "Introduction--Locating the Household: Public, Private, and the Social Construction of Gender and Space" that precedes the entire collection, each of the four sections is introduced by its own separate 'Preface.' Most readers will concede that there is some coherence in the various sections, but even the most sympathetic reader will have to conclude that the essays, taken together, constitute a hodge-podge. This volume offers neither a comprehensive geographical exploration nor a systematic chronological study of the medieval household in Christian Europe. The editors are aware of many of the shortcomings, such as the stark under-representation of the earlier Middle Ages (xiii), and although some territories in Europe like Croatia and Portugal not usually considered in predominantly English-language works do receive treatment, many others are conspicuously absent: Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Bohemia, Poland. It is to be hoped that the planned second volume of this collection, when it appears, will go some way towards rectifying the present imbalance.
That said, there are many scholars, myself included, who often take a delight in eclectic collections like this one. One never knows what one can expect to find, and often enough there are golden nuggets. That is true of this volume. Readers need to know the full contents of the volume, although I will only be highlighting a few of the articles. (My choice, by the way, should not be read as a negative response to the articles left undiscussed.)
Section one of the book addresses "The Public Household and Political Power." It includes the following contributions: Irena Benyovsky, "Noble Family Clans and their Urban Distribution in Medieval Trogir" (pp. 19-33); Barbara Visentin, "Chiesa, famiglia e corte: espressioni materiali della cultura politica longobarda" (pp. 35-51); Christoph Weber, "Formation of Identity and Appearance of North Italian Signoral Families in the Fourteenth Century" (pp. 53-57); Marta VanLandingham, "Household Practice and Royal Programme in the High Medieval Realms of Aragon" (pp.79-90); Jenni Nuttall, "Household Narratives and Lancastrian Poetics in Hoccleve's Envoys and Other Early-Fifteenth-Century Middle English Poems" (pp. 91-106); and Janet M. Cowen and Jennifer Ward's "'Al myn array is bliew, what nedeth more?': Gender and the Household in The Assembly of Ladies" (pp. 107-26). Of all of these, Marta VanLandingham's, given my own scholarly interests, is the most compelling. What she shows here in a short and emphatic essay that summarizes much of her recent book on the same subject is that the impulse towards radical administrative reform, from the royal household outward, was very powerful in thirteenth-century Aragon, and by so doing, I think, contributes substantially to an ongoing re-evaluation of the bureaucratic impulse throughout Europe. Administrative and institutional history is not very popular right now, but VanLandingham shows that it should be and that it is fundamental to understanding a wide array of concerns (and I would underscore 'moral' concerns, although she is more reserved on this point) among thirteenth-century Christian princes.
The second section, in fact, takes up the theme of the moral household. It includes Joanna Martin's "'Had the Hous, for it is myne': Royal and Self-Reform in Older Scots Literature from King Hart (c. 1500) to Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (c. 1552)" (pp. 137-54); Fiona Dunlop's "The Rule of Youth and the Rule of the Familia in Henry Medwall's Nature" (pp. 155-66); Denis Renevey' "Household Chores in The Doctrine of the Hert: Affective Spirituality and Subjectivity" (pp. 167-85); Karen Fresco's "Gendered Household Spaces in Christine de Pizan's Livre des trois vertus" (pp. 187-97); and Cordelia Beattie's "Governing Bodies: Law Courts, Male Householders, and Single Women in Late Medieval England" (pp. 199-220). Here I would single out Beattie's contribution. She points out that the ideal household was supposed to be run by an adult male and that this morally strict male was to operate in such a way as to assure the moral behavior of the inmates. Indeed, governments could not effectively police medieval communities, and they depended in theory on the heads of households to take on most of the responsibility. Reality was strange: so many households were not governed by adult males, and even when they did govern, sometimes they governed, by medieval standards, blatantly immoral households, like brothels. And yet ideals intruded even into the most bizarre arrangements, turning the brothel keeper into a "goodman."
Section three on household economics contains four essays: Chris Briggs looks at "Credit and the Peasant Household Economy in England Before the Black Death: Evidence from a Cambridgeshire Manor" (pp. 231-48); Arnaldo Sousa Melo explores "Women and Work in the Household Economy: The Social and Linguistic Evidence from Porto, c. 1340-1450" (pp. 249-69); Isabel Maria Madureira Franco turns her eye on "Les Dynamiques familiales et sociales dans un village de pecheurs des environs de Porto (1449-1497)" (pp. 271-92); and Louise Wilkinson reevaluates a familiar text in "The Rules of Robert Grosseteste Reconsidered: The Lady as Estate and Household Manager in Thirteenth-Century England" (pp. 293-306). The articles by Briggs and Madureira Franco are to be recommended if only for their relatively untypical focus on non-urban and non-elite environments--peasant households and a fishing village. Madureira Franco's piece is a little gem.
The fourth and final section, also the longest, focuses on matters of space or the material household and includes the following articles: Jill Caskey, "The House of the Rufolos in Ravello: Lay Patronage and Diversification of Domestic Space in Southern Italy" (pp. 315-34); Fiorella Paino, "The Palazzo of the da Varano Family in Camerino (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries): Typology and Evolution of a Central Italian Aristocratic Residence" (pp. 335-58); Maria da Conceico Falco Ferreira and Jane Grenville, "Urban Vernacular Housing in Medieval Northern Portugal and the Usefulness of Typologies" (pp. 359-89); Elisabeth Salter, "Some Differences in the Cultural Production of Household Consumption in Three North Kent Communities, c. 1450-1550" (pp. 391-407); Sarah Pearson, "Houses, Shops, and Storage: Building Evidence from Two Kentish Ports" (pp. 409-31); Catherine Richardson, "Household Objects and Domestic Ties" (pp. 433-47); N. W. Alcock, "The Medieval Peasant at Home, 1250-1550" (pp. 449-68); and Hipolito Rafael Oliva Herrer, "The Peasant Domus and Material Culture in Northern Castile in the Later Middle Ages" (pp. 469-86).
All in all, as the entire list of essay titles suggests, this volume provides an enormous amount of information, much of it of considerable interest to specialists and comparativists alike, on a wide array of subjects. One real misfortune, however, that cannot go unmentioned is the absence of an index. Perhaps the index for volume two, if one is provided, can cover volume one. It would be a shame if the absence of this essential tool leads to an underutilization of the material offered in The Medieval Household in Christian Europe.