"A Renaissance Childhood"

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Nov 2, 1999

The word "Renaissance" means rebirth. A number of thoughtful people living in Italy between the years 1350 and 1600 believed they were witnessing the rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Hence, they applied the term "Renaissance" to this period, which in their view marked the dawn of a new era.

The portrait of this age as a time of a rebirth is only partly correct. Yet many changes did take place in politics, society, culture, and religion that dramatically altered the way men and women thought and lived. Among the most important changes to occur was the reappearance of cities, especially in Italy. The revival of cities, which had declined during the late Middle Ages, influenced many aspects of life, including the structure of the family.

The family played a key role during the Renaissance. Commonly, the Italian Renaissance family was made up not only of the father, mother, and children, but was an extended household that included grandparents, unmarried or widowed adult siblings, and servants, if the family was wealthy. The father and husband stood at the center of the Italian family. He gave to it the prestige of his name, managed all the family finances and property, and made critical decisions that shaped the lives of his wife and children. The authority of a father over his children was absolute until he died or formally freed them. In Renaissance Italy, children did not automatically become adults upon reaching a certain age as they do today. Rather, adulthood came only when their father went before a judge and legally granted his children their independence. The age of majority could thus vary from the early teens to the late twenties.

Maintaining the status, wealth, and property of the family required special attention be paid to marriage. Parents arranged marriages between their children and those of other desirable families. They often worked out the details of these unions well in advance, perhaps when the children were still in infancy. Most often the choice of a marriage partner had little to do with modern notions of romance and love. Considerations of how a proposed marriage might add to the family wealth or prestige were foremost in the minds of the parents of the bride and groom alike. Consequently, the most important part of the marriage contract was the size of the dowry, the sum of money paid by the bride's family to her new husband. With a large dowry, a daughter could marry a man from a family of higher social standing, thereby enabling her own family to move up in society.