Le nom et les armes : la matrilinéarité dans la parenté aristocratique du second Moyen Âge

• Main Author: Jean-Luc Chassel
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: L’Harmattan 2012-12-01
• Series: Droit et Cultures
• Subjects: Coat of Arms; Kinship; Matrilateral Relations; Name; Occidental Middle Ages.; Seal
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/droitcultures/2849

Anthroponymy and heraldic evidences are incentive together, between XIIth and XIVth centuries, to upgrade the matrilateral aspect of the bilateral kinship system in occidental society of the Middle Ages. The transmission of names and coats of arms by women is common, when their dowry and inheritance of material and non material goods is important. The phenomenon express that the marriage is homo- or hypogamic for the wife. Sometimes, according to the seal of any princesses (Jeanne de Châtillon, countess of Alençon and Chartres, Yolande de Flandre-Cassel, and her mother Jeanne de Bretagne), the passing on of name and coat of arms goes from mother to daughter, even from grandmother to granddaughter. This practice is a real feminine discourse of kinship, a celebration of the ancestresses’ prestige, a commemoration of their part in the lineage increase.