European Cultural History of the Middle Ages Series: Private Living Concept

Foreword

The article explores the cultural history of the European medieval and early modern period. It presents the development of cultural history as a field, the theoretical framework, methodology, different schools of thought, input from other humanities like cultural anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, literary studies, and sociology, and introduces the crucial names associated with the discipline. Specific installments provide a glimpse into the significant themes covered by renowned cultural historians, like LeGoff, Huizinga, Duby, and others whose capital works covered medieval and early modern history. Through the coverage of subjects like the body, imagination, private space, magical practices, power, and games, the readers will gain a deeper knowledge of the lived experiences, mental structures, mentalities, and concepts of medieval Europeans. They will broaden their perspective of the past,  understand the significance of the interdisciplinary approach in humanities and identify the challenges and issues plaguing contemporary studies of the past eras, particularly regarding sources and interpretations.

Introduction

The meaning of the private sphere is often taken for granted in modern societies. Almost as if it has been present forever. People, at least in the developed world, rely on having their own rooms within a house or an apartment and feel confident distinguishing between the public and private spheres. The idea that life should be divided between these concepts seems natural and self-evident. But privacy’s journey toward the modern era has hardly been without redefinitions, transformations, and conflicts. The concept, as it is known today, was fully established throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the seeds were planted in previous eras. The late medieval period and early Renaissance were pivotal in the development of the modern private sphere, however, the beginning was peculiar. Dynastic feudalism as a system created a unique interplay between the private and the public. In a way, feudalisation reflected the privatization of power-the rights of the public government assumed the traits of family legacy (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 27). In other words, feudalism meant the disappearance of the public; everything became private. The concepts of monarchy and religion assumed the shape of a family, with intricate relationships between the members and strict hierarchical rules meant to ensure everyone’s place. This article will discuss the shaping of the private sphere in the late medieval and early modern periods and its continuity with modernity achieved through surviving concepts, literary tropes, and influences. It will provide examples of the blurring between the private and the public and delve into power struggles, negotiations and the establishment of social positions and ideas born from the unique correlation between the two, assumingly opposite, spheres around which human life was and is still organized. The text will provide the readers with a general understanding of how the modern concept of private living was shaped in the late medieval period, the factors that influenced it, like class, and how it gradually developed into the forms that are still recognizable and prominent today.

Figure 1: (1316). Merlin and the barons address King Uther Pendragon, from L'estoire de Merlin. Ian Ross Novelist.

Privacy: What’s in a Name?

A History of Private Life is a comprehensive book series by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby that explores the development of the private sphere between the Roman period and its peak in the 19th century, highlighting the way it interacts with the public life and how it co-creates power, social norms, and everyday living routine. The French verb 'priver' means "to domesticate" or "tame," making the concept of privacy inherently linked to the rise of sedentary lifestyles (Aries & Duby, 1985/2020, p. 21). Earlier Latin versions of the word imply notions of ownership and secrecy, emphasizing the private as one's hidden life and possessions (Aries & Duby, 1985/2020, p. 24). As societies moved away from nomadism and the ownership of property became normalized, a strict distinction between the public and private spheres emerged. In the ancient world, many public services and communal spaces, such as public baths, were celebrated. Despite the existence of private spaces, significant social decisions were largely shaped by activities in the public sphere, which varied in inclusivity based on period and location. For example, Greek democracy allowed political participation for property-owning men while excluding women, slaves, and foreigners. During the medieval period, driven by both religious ideologies and material factors such as power shifts and environmental changes, ancient cities were reimagined. Public spaces like theatres and baths were condemned as sinful and lacking in propriety (LeGoff, 1988, p. 83).

During the 12th and 13th centuries, as feudalism gradually grew in strength and organization throughout Europe, albeit not at the same speed in every location, the public sphere was slowly exiled and branded untrustworthy. Nomadic life was demonized, which boosted prejudice and stigmatization of wondering individuals and groups, like the Romani, and the Jewish, but also professions that relied on travel, like jonglers (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 29). Nomadism was common for a long time and was not unusual throughout the Middle Ages. However, as the feudal power tightened its grip, sedentary life needed to become naturalized. The feudalistic system was eager to control its population and the easiest way to do that was by ordaining a proper place for everyone. By the late medieval period, the only things that remained public without dispute were roads, fields and water springs (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 29). 

This newly structured life was reflected in the physical appearance of the towns, cities, and homes. Suddenly, fences and walls were omnipresent. Even people needed a metaphorical wall when leaving their houses. For adult men, this meant carrying weapons, and for adult women, veils to cover their heads (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 30). The state was portrayed as a large family in paintings and other visual depictions, with rulers as fathers. The ceremonies between nobles and knights carried symbolism of adoption rites, and acceptance into a family (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 39). Mannerisms between different power groups carried familial symbolism, solidifying the concepts of loyalty and obligation at the core of the feudal community. 

Figure 2: Medieval Jongleurs. (n.d.). Knights Templar.

In regards to ownership, the private sphere contained human beings who did not answer to public laws. Slaves, children, and women, who maintained the status of an underage person for their whole lives, were exempted from the public sphere. This also meant that their transgressions were dealt with by their owners- the men of the house (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 32). Religious gesticulation, particularly the still popular kneeling in prayer, imitated the mannerisms between higher and lower nobles and represented acceptance into God’s family (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 44). The concept of God’s house or city was prevalent in the medieval period (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 60). If the feudal state was a family with a ruler as its head, the ultimate familial community was God’s family, with God as the primordial, heavenly Father. Every proper individual in the medieval period was supposed to long to be accepted by the divine. The road to heaven was paved with obedience and knowing one’s exact place. 

Rites as the Blurring Between the Public and the Private

Rites of passage, such as weddings and funerals, typically belong to the public domain. To be sanctified, these events require witnesses. For instance, in noble marriages, witnesses remained present until the couple withdrew to their private chambers to confirm the marriage's consummation. Similarly, death was regarded as a public event, where individuals were not left to die alone but were surrounded by others (Aries & Duby, 1985/2020, p. 102). In a 1507 painting by Vittore Carpaccio, Saint Tripun is depicted exorcizing a demon from Emperor Gordian’s daughter. The event unfolds in a Venetian loggia, a space overlooking the palace entrance, where friends and relatives observe the ritual as if it were a public spectacle (Aries & Duby, 1985/2020, p. 205). This depiction illustrates how Venetian privacy intertwined with public life; the balcony, while part of the family's private quarters, simultaneously functioned as a public space visible to outsiders. Similarly, Renaissance inner courts served as concealed private areas for palace inhabitants but also doubled as venues for social gatherings. The potential meaning of the exorcism and the location where it takes place are intriguing. The rite may be interpreted as a form of punishment or, more likely, a demonstration of Christianity’s protective power since Gordian was a Roman emperor at a time when the new religion was still fighting for dominion. As such, the rite requires an audience and publicity. Still, the location where the rite takes place is a private space for familial gatherings. This example illustrates the blurring of the private and the public sphere and emphasizes the significance of the architectural solutions that are meant to reflect both, like loggias, balconies, and inner gardens/courts.

Apart from rituals and socially significant rites, the extortion of punishment was a public event as well. Not in the sense of the general population having a say, but as a warning and a mechanism of mass control. The public sphere in the medieval and early modern periods had two faces, just like privacy. It still somewhat served as a common right but was mostly used to reinforce the social order through either intimidation or confirmation. In his 1962 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Habermas defined the public sphere as a common good that did not specifically belong to either the state or the family, but a space where private individuals gathered to discuss issues and form the so-called „public opinion“. Focusing on France, Britain, and Germany between the early modern era and the 20th century, he described the medieval public sphere as a mere performance for the noble class to display power (Habermas, 1962/1989, pp. 7-10).  The public sphere's rise from the ashes was, according to Habermas, tightly linked to the development of the literary public sphere in the 18th century. Societal changes like the emergence of mass literacy inspired gatherings dedicated to literary discussion that encouraged individual thinking and normalized public critique of public institutions. In medieval and early modern times, this practice was far from massive but the private sphere granted some, mostly privileged individuals more influence.

Figure 3: Carpaccio, V. (1507). St. Tripun Exorcizing the Emperor Gordian's Daughter. Wikipedia.

Multiple Threats

The Wandering and the Dead

The growing attitude of fear and distrust of the wandering positioned itself at the core of the conflicts and conceptualizations of both the private and the public sphere in the feudal system. In order for everyone to occupy their natural position, they needed to belong. To a land, noble, king, and God. Those at the margins of society, without a firm definition or station, were viewed as a threat and often dealt with brutally. Apart from nomadically inclined individuals and groups, the deceased were also seen as a restless, wandering category. To be placated, they needed to be given a proper place in the overall hierarchy of existence. Therefore, graveyards and necropolis were regarded as cities for the dead, which were supposed to keep them from returning to their previous homes. A ritual of dining with the dead was considered to be a way of keeping them peaceful and giving them a sense of still-existing ties to their living relatives (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 102). After all, not belonging was dangerous and undesirable. It was a sign of chaos and heresy. 

Women

The women, the eternal inhabitants of the private sphere, posed another threat to the social order. One came from external factors, like visitors and potential adultery. Another, from the lack of surveillance over the womenfolk. What could they be doing while alone? Probably nothing good. The idea of witchcraft was born from the wild imagination surrounding isolated groups of women, out of men’s sight (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 99). The obsession with female adultery was linked to the possibility of it tainting the noble bloodline. The more powerful a family was, the more anxious they’d be around the chastity and fidelity of wives (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 164). The private sphere was dangerous because of the multiple young men visiting for various reasons but also because women in the house were not always under male surveillance. The medieval period brought the blurring of the line between the spheres by privatizing public power and turning it into a metaphorical family. However, in order for such an organism to exist, everyone needed to play their exact, given role. By potentially disobeying, the inhabitants of the private sphere were bringing shame or loss of position to their masters.

Christine de Pisan, a 14th and early 15th-century female author, left her own vision of the private and the public from the feminine perspective. In her capital work, The Book of the Treasure of the City of Ladies, she established an imaginary city of women (Dufresne, 1995). The book was an argument against the dominant, male attitude towards the fairer sex, an attempt at depicting different classes of women, and an escapist metaphor, not very different from the famous A Room of Own’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Despite the centuries between them, a kindred spirit haunts their works. Both include the same scene of reading male work about women and feeling anger, as well as imagining a private and public sphere fantasy to support their claims (Bulić, 2020). Wolf depicts an imaginary university of Oxbridge, an intentional reference to Oxford and Cambridge. The university is for women and is therefore neglected, with less funds and even external beauty. A room of one’s own, as a metaphor, suggests that a woman would need privacy and safety to be able to engage in creative and intellectual endeavours. Pisan offers a vision of a city of women. Famous historical women are contained in her city and serve as building blocks. Their major role is to prove women as equally important creators of human societies and histories. The metaphor of a city means public influence and the feature of being exclusively for women is a form of privacy. For women, the members of the men’s private sphere who never had actual privacy, the concept was a fantasy of freedom. In the Middle Ages, privacy, just like the public sphere, had a double meaning. One that marked its inhabitants as members of somebody else’s possessions, and the longing for isolation to extort one’s autonomy, authority, and independence. 

Figure 4: The City of Ladies. (n.d.). A Medieval Woman's Companion.

Defending the Private

If women were interior threats, the outsiders were the exterior. The medieval court was vulnerable to both inner and outer enemies. It was a place of safety and danger at the same time, but it also needed to display the nobles’ power, wealth, and status. The architecture and appearance of the castle are the best examples of the simultaneous wish to portray luxury and aesthetic grandeur and deter potential invaders. The tower in particular became a symbol of military power. The castle’s architecture was organized around power and wealth. It was a physical manifestation of the noble family’s high status and ability to defend itself. The control over the private sphere’s inhabitants, like women and children, represented another layer of the desired order and control.

Cities, Class, and Different Privacies

The differentiation between city houses regarding class was obvious. The rich used materials like stone, while the poor residencies were usually made of wood. Renaissance brought the rise of city palaces, whose exterior was aiming to inspire awe. More and more rooms were eventually added to the palace model, resulting in specific spaces for various individuals and purposes (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 208). Rich bourgeois families like the Medicis threatened the aristocracy by being able to afford a noble-like lifestyle and were not afraid to showcase it.

For the poor, moving to the cities meant breaking the communities they came from, further isolating them, and destroying their private solidarity. At the same time, their living quarters became smaller and smaller. In the country, the poor enjoyed more space. In the city, they usually shared but one room (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 182). Privacy clearly meant radically different things to members of different classes. For the privileged, newfound privacy introduced many freedoms. Noble residencies often included private chapels enabling them to worship within the household (Saul, 2017, pp. 105-134). Rich institutions and individuals, including those of bourgeois origin, engaged in the patronage of the arts, influencing architecture, interiors, and exteriors of settlements but also imposing ideology (Cartwright, 2020). Artists were not expected to showcase their vision but to adhere to the representations and rules of those who hired and paid them. While the class element limited the poor majority from participating in the creation of the cities’ appearances, it enabled those with enough resources to cultivate individual thought by being removed from public criticism. Private worship of the nobles was a fertile ground for different religious representations, and having money carved a path for wealthy, non-aristocratic families toward ideological and political influence.

Figure 5: French Castle Interior. (n.d.). M

The Private Horror

The private space as a horror story setting is still popular across various contemporary media platforms, from novels to movies and video games. The experience of being a conscious captive within somebody else’s private sphere is at the core of the gothic genre. Named after a late medieval architecture style, the gothic novel developed in the 18th and 19th centuries and was particularly linked to female literacy. The author Ann Radcliffe wrote her fiction with women readers in mind (Knowles, n.d.). The rise of general literacy allowed women more influence within the public sphere and an outlet to share and voice their unique experiences. The more women started reading and writing, their generational concerns and gender-specific experiences found their way into popular fiction. In a gothic story, the protagonist is a woman or a child while the master of the house is the villain. The home is framed not as a place of safety, a hidden oasis far from public scrutiny, but as a space of terror and abuse. For the woman or the child, it is, in a way, a prison, meant not to protect them from external danger, but to keep them under control. The gothic literary genre is a witness to the lost feminine perspective of the medieval framing of the private sphere as a vulnerable space in need of protection from the outside world. 

The genre was similar to medieval and Renaissance castles not just in the ability to keep women and children prisoners but as a metaphorical wall against exterior threats. Foreigners played a crucial role in the genre, often with an ethnic flair. Whether it was ambiguously brown-skinned Heathcliff or vaguely Eastern European Count Dracula, the threat of the outsider who entered the heavily guarded castle or a home embodied the anxieties of the times regarding immigration. The process of colonialism only just started during the 16th century but by the time of the pinnacle of Gothic literature, many European countries, like England, were huge colonial empires. As such, their focus was on maintaining the dominant status and many of the time’s anxieties around foreigners found their way into popular fiction (Taylor, 2020, p. 2). Whenever an exterior threat is detected, the private is framed as something that needs to be protected by keeping the unwanted influences outside the literal or metaphorical castle walls.

Figure 6: (1833). Catherine reading Udolpho, from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. A Gothic Quest.

The Writing and the Personal

Cultural history as opposed to the official one, has always included document leftovers that could clarify the lives of the ordinary folk alongside those in power. With the discipline’s rise in the 20th century, previously neglected paraphernalia of the past found themselves in the spotlight. Official history was about wars and the elites, regarding the documented evidence concerning them the only things that mattered. Cultural history brought attention to the everyday person, expanding the scope to reinforce the necessity of a diversification of sources. Suddenly, personal correspondence, commonplace books, graffiti, diaries, art, and particularly literature became just as valid, even when they did not belong to historically relevant persons.

Using Commonplace Books to Enrich Medieval and Renaissance Courses, a collection of essays edited by Sarah E. Parker and Andie Silva, introduces the so-called commonplace books to the history discourse. These works represented a mixture of journaling, note-taking and mementos, almost like equivalents of today’s digital journaling, bookmarking, and note-taking (Parker, Silva, 2024). The fascinating techniques are an integral part of Renaissance reading habits and provide an insight into the reader’s mind, highlighting the importance of personal documents in the overall study of human societies and cultures. 

The complex interactions between the private and the public spheres have influenced the development of modern cultural history and anthropology. For a long time, the public was considered important and the private was simply an extension. Within cultural history, the private has become both politically and historically relevant because of its ability to form crucial questions about modern views on past eras. Who got to share information and whose lives were important enough to be studied? 

Figure 7: A medieval writer. (n.d.). Medieval Travel Writing.

Privacy and Reading in Silence

For a long time, reading was a public affair. It started, perhaps, with oral storytelling around the fire or during a tribal ritual and has remained a dominant practice throughout antiquity and the medieval period. The 16th and the 17th centuries introduced drastic changes to the culture of reading. The most obvious element was, of course, the invention of the printing press. This allowed books to be distributed more easily, faster, and on a more massive scale. For most of medieval European history, reading was a social activity that took place in taverns and other gathering places (Darnton, as cited by Ha Huong, 2017). 

Interestingly, in his book Space Between Worlds, Paul Saenger proposed the idea that public reading was not just a form of entertainment but again, control, and scrutiny over the reader’s or writer’s heresy (Saenger, as cited by Ha Huong, 2017). Private and silent reading transformed the activity into a hidden, thus individualized endeavour, which led to the outcry of the many centuries’ moralists who often blamed novel reading for the supposed disobedience of the youth. After all, the famous Don Quijote and the bourgeois ill-fated anti-heroine Madame Bovary both modelled their behaviour after the books they read. The stories helped them envision what they wanted and created discontent with their lot in life. According to Saenger, private reading didn’t just encourage rebellion against the dominant values, but facilitated critical thinking, irony, and introspection, allowing the individual mind to practice intellectualism, free from the fear of public judgment and control. The youth and women were particularly under scrutiny if they indulged in secret reading for many believed it made them susceptible to sinful, dangerous thoughts (Ha Huong, 2017). 

The Privacy of Childhood and Adolescence

Children and adolescents formed their own private categories throughout the medieval and early modern period. As the primary family found itself at the center of public interest since power, apart from force, was gained through family ties and liaisons, the private aspects, women and children, even though not directly active, were pivotal for the system to function. The family, in unison, was a public player in the game of medieval and early modern power, but the individual members occupied different positions. The man of the house was the facade and his reputation depended heavily on the decisions and behaviours made by those he governed over. As such, the family was perceived as both a public and private category, an almost creature-like mechanism made of tiny, sentient cogs. Its success depended completely on inner order and unreputable loyalty. The broader community, be it a smaller feudal organization or, in the early modern period, a monarchy-state, followed the same model.

Figure 8: Medieval children playing. (n.d.). Merry Farmer.

Legally, they were governed by adults, but just like today, they surrounded themselves with peers and indulged in mutual activities, which included personal secrets kept from adults, at least to a certain point. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is a collection of stories focused on a group of youths who isolate themselves from society due to the outbreak of the plague and entertain each other by telling stories (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 271). Despite the commonly found misconception, children in the Middle Ages were as loved by their parents as they are today. Also, they were not just tiny adults. Their everyday activities and obligations were different, but medieval childhood definitely included play and toys (Cybulskie, n.d.).  In the medieval period, one was considered a child until they reached the age of twelve. Afterwards, they could assume adult roles, like apprenticeships, education, household duties, etc. Children from noble families went through many separations from their primary family since they would often be sent away from home by a certain age or even fostered at another court (Aries, Duby, 1985/2020, p. 247). In a way, noble childhood used the separation of the original familial community to reinforce the loyalty and ties to the broader, feudal family.

The Renaissance period encouraged the humanization of religious characters, which sometimes relied on their portrayal in private moments. A 14th-century poem depicting a lullaby sung to the baby Jesus by the Virgin Mary is meant to portray the mythological figures sharing a typical parent-child moment, similar to what people of the times would do with their progeny (Cybulskie, n.d.). The stylistic shift toward humanism in the early modern era used the concepts of private lives to create familiarity between social groups as well as people and divine figures.

Figure 9: De Vos, C. (1585-1651). Portrait of Anthony Reyniers and His Family. Wikipedia.

Conclusion

Both the private and the public spheres played contradictory roles in the medieval and early modern period. The private was considered legally dependent, its members disenfranchised

and left under the government of others. Feudalism introduced the blurring of the line between the spheres by modelling the system after a family, thus reducing the public sphere to a mere representation of power and reinforcement of order through rituals and punishments. The noble household’s role was to keep its inner inhabitants in their proper places and display an outward attitude of wealth and military strength. The private sphere was conceived as a threat to feudal hierarchy due to potential misbehaviour of women and children and as worth protecting from external threats, which always meant threats to not just the family members’ lives but the perceived proper social order. 

As such, the private sphere has inspired still popular gothic horror to give voice to the potential abuse and imprisonment. It was also a dream of freedom, through the idea of a private space, one’s individual thoughts and the ability to rule one’s time. The rise of middle-class families in the Renaissance allowed groups other than the aristocracy to access this type of wealth and independence, but the poor majority was still excluded. The freedom potential of the private sphere developed first among the nobles and then the rich bourgeois, which influenced the architecture of the palaces and homes to include rooms dedicated to different individuals and purposes. Some of the popular additions included loggias and inner gardens/courts. The public sphere encompassed individuals and groups with major political rights but was also used to reinforce order through public rituals, rites, and punishments. The intricacies between the two spheres have been both reflections as well as influencing forces over social reality. Complex social systems have developed between the public and the private, while the concepts have constantly been transformed and redefined. Contemporary cultural history understands and promotes the idea of taking both spheres into account to gain a deeper understanding of past societies.

Bibliographical References

Aries, P., & G. Duby. (2020). Povijest privatnog života. Od feudalne Europe do Renesanse. Mizantrop. Mizantrop. (Original work published 1985 by Editions du Seuil).

Bulić, A. (2020). Šetnja kroz Vlastitu sobu Virginije Woolf. Metafora.hr. Retrieved from https://www.metafora.hr/setnja-kroz-vlastitu-sobu-virginije-woolf/

Cartwright, M. (2020). Patrons & Artists in Renaissance Italy. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1624/patrons--artists-in-renaissance-italy/

Cybulskie, D. (n.d.). Childhood in the Middle Ages. Medievalist.net. Retrieved from  https://www.medievalists.net/2018/11/childhood-middle-ages/

Dufresne, L.R. (1995/1996). Christine de Pizan's "Treasure of the City of Ladies": A Study of Dress and Social Hierarchy. Women’s Art Journal. Vol. 16, No. 2 , pp. 29-34 https://doi.org/10.2307/1358572

Ha, Huong, T. (2017). The beginning of silent reading changed Westerners’ interior life. Quartz. Retrieved from https://qz.com/quartzy/1118580/the-beginning-of-silent-reading-was-also-the-beginning-of-an-interior-life

Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Polity Press. Cambridge. (Original work published in 1962, Germany).

Kern, T. (2020). The Dracula Difference: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Threat of the Other, Articulāte, 25(1). Retrieved from  https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/articulate/vol25/iss1/2 

Knowles, C. ( n.d.). Feminism and the Gothic: A Brief History. The University of Melbourne. Archives and Special Collections. Retrieved from  

https://library.unimelb.edu.au/asc/whats-on/exhibitions/dark-imaginings/gothicresearch/feminism-and-the-gothic-a-brief-history

LeGoff, J. (1988). Medieval Imagination. The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published in 1985 by Editions Gallimard).

Saul, N. (2017). Lordship and Faith. The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press.

Parker, S.E., Silva, A. (2024). Using Commonplace Books to enrich Medieval and Renaissance courses. ARC Humanities Press

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