Medieval grandparents

All human societies have a role for grandparents, people who are no longer as active as they once were but are full of accumulated wisdom and are eager to pass it on to their children and grandchildren.  Today the ideal (though not attained nearly as often as one would hope) is to have children grow up with all four grandparents in the picture.  This was less likely in the Middle Ages.

In part people lived shorter lives, on average.  The human life "span" hasn't changed, as I've discussed earlier, that is the maximum length one might live if everything went very well, but the "expectancy" has gotten a lot longer, that is how long one might on average expect to live, given modern medicine and nutrition (and less back-breaking labor).  Someone who made it to 60 in the Middle Ages, even among the aristocracy, would be more like someone making 80 today.  (Just for the record, someone in their 60s now is young-n-fun.)

Grandparents often lived with their children and grandchildren, or at least nearby.  Among the peasantry, moving far away for a job was far less common than it is in modern America.  Among the aristocracy, the oldest son at least assumed he would life in the same castle or manor house as his parents--and would be eager for Dad to retire so he could take over.  ("Haven't you ever given thought to your soul, Dad?  You know retiring to a monastery can help!")

But until they died or retired, grandparents would be very useful.  As we know, "it takes a village to raise a child," and grandparents, then and now, can be part of this if still around.

Aristocratic young women were more likely to marry far from their parents, who they might indeed never see again after their wedding.  So the new countess (or whatever) would have to make peace with her mother-in-law, who might be the only grandparent her children would know.

There are examples of women continuing to play a major role in their families' lives; Countess Mathilda of Nevers in the thirteenth century, for example, arranged the marriages of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-granddaughters.

Because medieval people defined themselves in large part by their families, they were acutely aware of who their grandparents were, even if they never knew them.  Knowing your grandparents and more distant ancestors' identities was also important for avoiding consanguineous (incestuous) marriages, since medieval definitions of incest stretched out to quite distant cousins.  The male line of one's family was more crucial than the female, as is still the case today, when last names often define "family," and children typically take the father's last name.

(In doing my own family's history, I've found death certificates of women ancestors, filled out with information provided by their daughters, and the younger generation often did not even know their maternal grandmother's maiden name.  Death certificates often ask for names of the deceased's parents, including the deceased's mother's maiden name.)

The medieval Latin term for grandfather was avus, with avia for grandmother.   Going back to great-grandfather etc., the terms were proavus, abavus, and atavus.  Sometimes the ab- and at- got switched.  The same prefixes were attached to avia.  Periodically noble families would draw up elaborate lists of their ancestors, sometimes arranged in a family tree.

In the image above, from a twelfth-century manuscript, a figure holds a chart showing how relatives are named, filius and filia for son and daughter, nepos and neptis for grandson and granddaughter (the same words were used for nephew and niece), avus and avia for grandparents, and so on.  Next to each Latin word is a number indicating "degrees of consanguinity" (1 for a child or parent, 2 for a grandparent, and so on).

© C. Dale Brittain 2020

For more on medieval families, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available from Amazon and other ebook platforms.  (Also available in print.)