Far from abandoning their children, as certain stereotypes convey, parents in the Middle Ages invested in their education. This attention has consequences on other members of the family: the bonds forged between children often last throughout life and even in death.
If relationships between brothers and sisters are underpinned by power issues in aristocratic groups, they also relate to the emotional sphere and can be intense, even constituting an ideal for some, in the first half of the Middle Ages, during the period from 650 to 1000.
Bonds forged in childhood
As today, it is in childhood that adelphic bonds are formed. This adjective, formed on the Greek adelphos (born from the same womb), is preferred to “fraternal” by family historians, because it allows daughters to be fully included. Most of the time, children grow up partly together, at least until the age of 7, and without there necessarily being any distinction between the sexes: this is the case, it seems, of the sons and daughters of the future emperor Charlemagne (768-814).
In the event of the death of the parents, we try to ensure not to separate the brothers and sisters, who can then join a parent’s house or a monastery. Of course, these trends are only one choice among others: after the first years, some children are also raised far from their family, either in a religious institution or in “fosterage” with a relative. Cohabitation probably forges a lasting bond, including between children from different unions, because remarriages are then frequent.
But childhood rivalries also exist. The sources say very little about it, but we can sometimes reconstruct them from scraps. Thus, the biographer of the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great (871-899) says that his mother would have put him and his brothers in competition to learn a book of poetry by heart. This competition is a harbinger of later conflicts between them, once they become adults.
Solidarity throughout life
However, if we look outside the royal families, in which rivalries are exacerbated, it is very often solidarity that is highlighted in the sources. Brotherly love (masculine) constitutes an ideal in Christian societies, undoubtedly because it is the vector of an idea of help and harmony.
The sources are littered with examples of adults who maintain close relationships with their brothers and sisters. For men who have entered religion, the sister is even the only woman above all suspicion and it is not uncommon to see bishops or monks continue to see their sister.
Cases of Adelphic incest are almost non-existent in documentation before the year 1000. This does not mean that it does not exist, but rather that clergy authors do not speak of these phenomena.
The paradigmatic example is that of Benedict of Nursia (Saint Benedict, 480-547) who, according to Pope Gregory the Great (writing in the early 590s), would have consented to visit his sister Scholastica once a year. One day, Scholastica of Nursia begged her brother to stay longer. His wish was granted by divine will since a violent storm forced Saint Benedict to spend the night with his sister. In this story, the sister’s love for her brother and the desire to perpetuate the Adelphic bond despite monastic vows are considered normal and positive elements.
At the same time, the example of Benedict and Scholastica also illustrates the gender inequalities that exist in any patriarchal society. In several Lives of holy women, the unconditional love of the saint for her brother – ideally also a saint – is highlighted. It is also because the brother constitutes an important support.
Thus, when Saint Baudouin (of Laon) was assassinated in the second half of the 670s, his sister Anstrude, abbess of the Saint-Jean de Laon monastery (Aisne), lamented both the loss of her brother and that of her protector. This particularly applies to nuns, but lay women can also turn to their brothers in times of need, either at the time of widowhood or in cases of marital conflict.
The closeness of this bond can even manifest itself on a political level. Several kings of porne century, like Athelstan (924-939) in England or the Germanic sovereign Otto III (983-1002), single, on certain occasions asked one of their sisters to play the role of queen. Thus, Sophie, Otto III’s eldest, accompanied him during his imperial coronation in Rome and she frequently interceded for aristocrats with her brother.
This substitution is, of course, purely ceremonial and political, and in no way carnal. In fact, cases of Adelphic incest are almost non-existent in documentation before the year 1000. This does not mean that it does not exist, but rather that clergy authors overemphasize the adelphic relationship and do not talk about these phenomena.
Facing death…and beyond
The death of a family member always constitutes a moment of crisis which allows, implicitly, to reveal the strength of the Adelphic bond. When texts depict long periods of agony before death, siblings are often recurring supportive figures. Archbishop Drogon of Metz (801-855) assists his brother, Emperor Louis Ier the Pious (814-840), in his last moments in 840. The author of the text which relates these facts insists on the fraternal bond between the two men and not on the political functions of Drogon at the imperial court.
In this context, brothers and sisters (when they are widows or nuns) appear as guarantors of family continuity by collecting the last wishes of the dying person.
Reactions to death also reflect the power of the Adelphic bond as well as its modalities: sources before the year 1000 almost never describe the mourning following the death of sisters, it is almost always the brothers who are put forward. The role of women, for its part, is that of maintaining the memory of the deceased, particularly their brothers. It is rarer for sources to tell us about the perpetuation of the sisters’ memory, but moving examples exist.
Thus, at the very beginning of thee century, the English aristocrat Ælfflæd had her will drawn up, which included part of the provisions of that of her sister Æthelflæd. Their two wills are copied by the same hand, on the same parchment, perhaps ordered by Ælfflæd herself. These two sisters thus materialize their closeness, both emotional and patrimonial, for centuries to come.
