Bastards: Politics, Family, and Law in Early Modern France

Children born out of wedlock were commonly stigmatized as "bastards" in early modern France. Deprived of inheritance, they were said to have neither kin nor kind, neither family nor nation. Why was this the case? Gentler alternatives to "bastard" existed in early modern French discourse, and many natural parents voluntarily recognized and cared for their extramarital offspring. Drawing upon a wide array of archival and published sources, Matthew Gerber has reconstructed numerous disputes over the rights and disabilities of children born out of wedlock in order to illuminate the changing legal condition and practical treatment of extramarital offspring over a period of two and half centuries. Gerber's study reveals that the exclusion of children born out of wedlock from the family was perpetually debated. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France, royal law courts intensified their stigmatization of extramarital offspring even as they usurped jurisdiction over marriage from ecclesiastic courts. Mindful of preserving elite lineages and dynastic succession of power, reform-minded jurists sought to exclude illegitimate children more thoroughly from the household. Adopting a strict moral tone, they referred to illegitimate children as "bastards" in an attempt to underscore their supposed degeneracy. Hostility toward extramarital offspring culminated in 1697 with the levying of a tax on illegitimate offspring. Contempt was never unanimous, however, and in the absence of a unified body of French law, law courts became vital sites for a highly contested cultural construction of family. Lawyers pleading on behalf of extramarital offspring typically referred to them as "natural children." French magistrates grew more receptive to this sympathetic discourse in the eighteenth century, partly in response to soaring rates of child abandonment. As costs of "foundling" care increasingly strained the resources of local communities and the state, some French elites began to publicly advocate a destigmatization of extramarital offspring while valorizing foundlings as "children of the state." By the time the Code Civil (1804) finally established a uniform body of French family law, the concept of bastardy had become largely archaic.With a cast of characters ranging from royal bastards to foundlings, Bastards explores the relationship between social and political change in the early modern era, offering new insight into the changing nature of early modern French law and its evolving contribution to the historical construction of both the family and the state.

Table of Contents:
Preface A Note on the Text Introduction: Illegitimacy and the Political History of the Family Part I: Stigmatizing the Bastard Chapter One: Bastardy in Sixteenth-Century French Legal Doctrine and Practice Chapter Two: Jurisprudential Reform of Illegitimacy in Seventeenth-Century France Chapter Three: Royal Bastardy & Dynastic Crisis Part II: Destigmatizing the Natural Child Chapter Four: State Expansion, Social Practice, and the Quandaries of Legal Unification Chapter Five: Redefining Social Interest: The Eighteenth-Century Foundling Crisis Chapter Six: Illegitimacy and Legal Change in the French Enlightenment Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Matthew Gerber is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Review :
"Matthew Gerber's account provides a welcome window into the legal status of children born out of wedlock in Old Regime France...Gerber sets his account within an important strand of historiography, one that seeks to examine the relationship between law and the construction of the early modern state...By looking at the construction of the household through the lens of those deemed outside its confines, Gerber's book contributes much to our understanding of the household and the family as a political institution."--Christopher R. Corley, Journal of Modern History "Impressive first monograph Gerber's work is a good example of the 'new' legal history. His work makes a valuable contribution to ongoing scholarly debates regarding law, family, and the early modern state."--American Historical Review "Gerber provides a complex, compelling account of legal and social change surrounding illegitimacy in early modern France...[A] sophisticated, significant work...Highly recommended."--CHOICE "Gerber shows how the experiences of illegitimate children did not follow a smooth path of progress from the unenlightened days of the sixteenth century to the enlightened nineteenth century. Rather, in demonstrating how attitudes and behavior toward illegitimate children shifted over several centuries by responding to changing social and economic conditions, Gerber presents his readers with a nuanced and enlightening picture of how families responded to changing times."--Janine Lanza, H-France "Excavating the diverse legal practices with respect to bastardy in early modern French law, Matthew Gerber at once reveals how the multiplicity of legal standards and jurisdictions had positive cultural functions and how bastardy reflected the changing history of the family....This study indicates how French society managed extra-marital sexuality within the family, at law, as a social problem, within an intellectual scheme, and as an institutional challenge."--Katherine Crawford, Journal of Family History "This impressive monograph traces the contested legal status of children born outside wedlock in the era of French state formation stretching from the sixteenth century to the Napoleonic Code. But it does more: Gerber offers a primer on the evolution of French law and asks fruitful questions about the relationship between legal practice, intellectual trends and social crises....In tracing the story of extramarital offspring, Gerber offers a satisfyingly complex picture of how legal theory and legal practice played a role in the broader culture of early modern France, including the culture of politics...This fine book offers much for historians interested not just in family law in early modern France, but also for those interested in the construction of the early modern public sphere."--Leslie Tuttle, History "A fascinating history that is a legitimate successor to the work of Sarah Hanley, skillfully intertwining law, family, and politics Although Gerber points to influential texts and widely publicized cases that served as pivots for these changes, he relates the arguments to larger socioeconomic and political forces."--Margaret H. Darrow, The Historian "In this formidable study, Matthew Gerber traces the legal transformation of a social category in early modern France--the children born out of wedlock, or 'bastards,' whose legal disabilities were inborn and rights hedged. He shows how the interactive social demands and legal actions in the greater legal community reconfigured the way 'extra-marital' children born to a parent, or parents, determined to claim them were related to expanding notions of familial norms and developing state concerns for child welfare."--Sarah Hanley, University of Iowa "Matthew Gerber combines dazzling erudition and great ambition to produce a pioneering political history of the early modern family and a persuasively sophisticated reinterpretation of the early modern legal system."--Julie Hardwick, author of Family Business: Litigation and the Political Economies of Daily Life in Early Modern France "Demonstrating profound expertise in early modern law, Matthew Gerber offers a highly original and much needed history of illegitimacy in Old Regime France. Bastards moves deftly between families, law, and politics to rethink family-state relations in the absolutist era."--Suzanne Desan, author of The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France