ABSTRACT
Drawing on a vast array of normative and narrative sources ranging from legal codes to marriage manuals, wills, and autobiographies, the author focuses on the legal, social, and cultural backdrop which facilitated the restructuring of broken noble families into stepfamilies in seventeenth-century Transylvania. He argues that the multi-confessional character of the nobility and the intensity of the wars at the time led to particular familial practices (remarriages of widows and widowers who had lost their spouses in military campaigns, divorces among members of the Protestant majority, and religiously mixed-marriages) which differed from the patterns of remarriage in Western Europe. He demonstrates that widows were attractive marriage partners due to the considerable assets with which they were often left after their husbands’ deaths, and these assets could be best protected from their kin and in-laws under the authority of a new husband. The socially endogamous marriage market contributed to frequent widow–widower remarriages. In the patrilineal system of inheritance, widowed mothers lost guardianship upon remarriage, and stepfathers and maternal kindred competed for the right to manage the possessions of underage children, with mothers often being entrusted with child custody. Despite the principle of tied property turnover, guardians had ample opportunity to exploit their wards by mortgaging their estates.
