Kindness of Strangers
"In the second half of the thirteenth century the Bishop of Liège boasted of having fourteen sons in twenty-two months."
👁👄👁
Kindness of Strangers
Not related to the actual content of the book so much, but his author bio in this one is different from the other ones (which emphasize his professional credentials and don't mention his popularity as a teacher). I think he must have realized that the people who wanted to read this one were doing it because they liked his work and his thought processes, not because the subject matter was ~controversial and got a lot of sensational press.
Kindness of Strangers
This book also discusses more technical details about how he approaches the sources and how he draws conclusions from different kinds of information, so it almost reads like you're taking a course from him.
It came out in 1989, so I wonder if he knew he was dying and wanted to teach as much as he could :(
Kindness of Strangers
Both Church and civil law (in many places but most prominently in Spain) required the mother to care for an illegitimate child for the first three years of the child's life, with the father paying ye olde child support (typically a wet nurse's wages). After three years, responsibility was transferred to the father until the child attained legal majority. The mother could also relinquish custody to the father during the first three years.
Kindness of Strangers
This kind of support was most commonly associated with the children of concubines or mistresses, as opposed to the children of "adultery, incest, or fornication," which the father was not required to support.
Kindness of Strangers
@alpine_thistle so, concubines and mistresses were legally distinct from adultery within the church?
Kindness of Strangers
@Satsuma sometimes/it's complicated. There was an interplay between civil law and church law, so it may have been that mistresses/concubines were a different legal category in civil law from adultery, and this was recognized as a social reality by the church, etc