Who are the bastards, and how they became kings

A still from the “Game of Thrones” series Photos: imdb.com

The Game of Thrones series is one of the most successful on television, and the bastards are its key characters. About the position of bastards in medieval society, the rights of illegitimate children to inheritance and bastards who became kings - in the material PostScience.

Term bastardus - medieval invention, appears from the XI century in predominantly French sources and, according to the most common explanation, comes from the Latin word bastum ("Saddle"), and means, respectively, a person conceived "in the saddle", that is, on the go and (or) by some traveler, and not married to a lawful husband.

Also medieval, even of later origin, the concept illegitimus ("Illegal"), appearing in the sources of the XIII century. But before that, other terms came from Hebrew, Greek, and classical Latin, which denote different categories of illegitimate ones, although these differences were defined differently by different authors. So, mamzer designated the child of a prostitute notus - the fruit of adultery spurius - born mistress, and naturalis - concubine, permanent and only female partner, close to his wife. According to other interpretations notus и spurius - products of mesalliance, only in the notus a noble father, and in spurius - a noble mother (as Isidore of Seville believed). Naturalis but it is the child of two unmarried people who can theoretically marry; such children can inherit if the father has no legitimate children.

Bastards and law

Illegality was not a taboo subject, it was discussed in the legislation - take, for example, the Merton Statute 1235 of the Year or the English “Laws on the Poor” 1536 of the Year. The task of the lawmakers was to adjust the rights of inheritance as clearly as possible, preventing litigation and conflict, or, as in the case of the “Laws on the poor”, remove from the community the burden of maintaining a single mother, placing it on a secret father, if he could be identified. Somewhat later, moral considerations began to sound: why should a person suffer for the sins of others (his parents)? He suffered, not only because he lost his inheritance, but also because of various other restrictions. For example, under the imperial legislation, the bastard could not occupy public posts and could not conduct medical practice.

The position of the bastards varied in time and space, diversity covered several key issues. Could the father after the fact legitimize the child by marriage with his mother, or by official recognition of him as his child, or in some other way? Could the highest mercy save the bastard from the stigma? In what exceptional cases could a bastard claim an inheritance? The development of these themes correlated with larger changes in medieval family and property law, primarily with the tightening of the marriage framework, including the prohibition of incest and bigamy, produced by the 11th century Gregorian reform, and with the transition to the birthright laws.

As a result, although some scholars trace the discrimination of bastards in the 7th – 8th centuries, the 12th century is most often called a turning point in relation to the illegitimate: the opportunities for them were reduced (unlike previous centuries, the bastards of aristocrats could no longer be recognized as heirs, become princes of the church or - in England - peers), but at the same time their status and available rights were legally fixed, and in this sense the bastards were legalized. The choice of this milestone is consistent with the influential concept of Robert Moore about the formation in the XII century of the “persecuting society” - the beginning of European intolerance and the exclusion and persecution of various minorities.

King Arthur. Image with tapestry of Christian heroes. Photo: wikipedia.org

At the same time, this topic, becoming very topical, is reflected in the literature on the venacular, starting with the French epic poem “Raúl de Cambre”; in other texts, the most beloved and respectable medieval heroes turn out to be bastardic: King Arthur and Charlemagne, Charlemagne.

The position of the bastards after the XII century

But in the following centuries there were differences and fluctuations. So, in some cities in the XIV – XV centuries, illegitimate - both local and newcomers - could become full-fledged inhabitants, but they could not; however, could not some other categories, for example, unmarried people. As a rule, the admission of bastards and the general liberalization of immigration policies were caused by demographic crises after epidemics.

It is important to keep in mind that, whatever the legislation, especially in the absence of clear laws on bastards in the early Middle Ages, parents could act on their own. For example, bastards could not be the heirs of the main, real estate, but could live with it; they could be given generous gifts from the number of movable property, and daughters could be given extended dowry or they could be given a boarding house from funds diverting to the legal heir, and they could take care of respectable marriage parties for them so that they would not fall out of their social strata at all.

Actually, this stratum, coupled with the intentions of specific parents and special circumstances (for example, the absence of legitimate children, often leading to the legitimization of bastards and even giving them back to raising their legitimate wife), predetermined the position of the child born out of wedlock. The lower the social scale, the less enviable were his prospects: poor women simply abandoned such children shortly after their birth. Shelters were established for foundlings in many cities: the hospital of St. Catherine in London or the Holy Spirit in Rome (Pope Innocent III founded it so that women would not throw more of their children into the Tiber river), the famous Hospital of the Innocent (“The Shelter of the Innocent” in Florence): Of the first hundred foundlings who fell into this shelter, 99 were bastards, mostly born of mothers-servants and patrician fathers.

Bastards in Jewish communities

If we represent the medieval European world as multicultural, and not exclusively Roman Christian, and don’t forget about the diaspora, we can look at the attitude towards illegitimate people in Jewish communities for comparison. It is believed that the Sephardic people were distinguished by their special libertinism - Spanish Jews. Influenced by the Muslim practice that surrounded them, they led, if not second wives, then concubine women, who often turned out to be Saracen maidservants, that is, girls from a different ethnic and religious community and lower social status. If such a competition brought offspring, it caused special indignation of the rabbis, who rose up in defense of the offended feelings and the shaky position of lawful wives.

Men solved the problem in different ways: there is a case when a Jew killed two of several children born to him by a Saracen woman (no man - no problem), but more often, having received the news of pregnancy, the competition was converted to Judaism, and then the born child was considered a Jew, but did not represent a serious competition to the legal heirs of his father. However, these children, although born out of wedlock, were not actually illegitimate, mamzers, according to Jewish law. Mamzer is a child born to a married woman not from her husband. The status of mamzers is unenviable, they can marry only with others of their own kind and suffer from other discrimination. The fact that this is a kind of second-rate social category is clearly seen, for example, in such a joke from the Babylonian Talmud:

Said Rav Zeira in Makhuz: "Prozelita is allowed to marry a bastard." All the listeners showered him with their etrogi. Rava said: "Who says this in a place where there are many proselytes?" Said Rava in Makhuz: "Proselit is allowed to marry the daughter of a Cohen." Loaded it with silks.

Given the severity of the consequences, usually, if the husband was willing to recognize the child as his own, they tried to prevent the secret of his origin from emerging, sometimes despite the obvious: for example, they announced that the pregnancy lasted for twelve months and so on.

Bastards in noble families

The topic of illegitimateness was relevant primarily for the higher strata of society, because it was not so much the sinfulness of extramarital sex, but rather the inheritance of status and estate. Accordingly, the laws on bastards were of interest to people who had wealth and power, and these same people influenced their adoption. It is noteworthy that the registration of the status of a bastard in the XII century was followed not only by defining the boundaries of legal marriage in canonical law, but also by the formation of nobility, often engaged in disputes about inheritance and in need of appropriate legislation.

Wilhelm I the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Norman Duke Robert II the Magnificent. Photo: wikipedia.org

The bigger you know, the higher it stands on the ladder of the senior-vassal hierarchy, the more chances that the plot with the bastards attract the attention of the senior or the church will be reflected in the sources and will reach our days. For example, in the XII century, two Popeses accused Count Rusillon of rejecting the legitimate wife and mother of a legitimate son and reuniting with many years of concubine, the mother of other children, and preventively forbidding him to bequeath the county to unlawful offspring. However, the count, apparently, did not intend to act around the legitimate son, and he, in turn, did not leave the legitimate heirs, also did not consider this as bastards, and bequeathed the county to his overlord, the Count of Barcelona.

Another vivid example, referring to the same transitional period of the introduction of the boundaries of legal marriage and the beginning of the exclusion of bastards, includes the participation of the interested "good-hearted." English nephew, Senor William Sackville, starts a lawsuit, planning to inherit an uncle bypassing her cousin and his daughter, insisting that she was illegitimate, as her uncle concluded a marriage with her mother, without dissolving her first marriage, and therefore he was subsequently declared invalid and annulled by the papal legate. Her daughter’s lawyer ingeniously defended her interests, pointing out, for example, that she was innocent and should not be held responsible for her father’s sins, and that if the divorce retroactivity makes bastards of children born in it, then French princesses become illegitimate - daughters of Alienor of Aquitaine and Louis VII, who dissolved their marriage.

Royal bastards

Could be more powerful and interested to deprive someone of the inheritance. Thus, the English king Henry II took away the title and possession of his descendants - the same as his legal daughters and his illegitimate son, Count Kornuelsky, on the grounds that the count himself was a bastard of King Henry I. If you look at the genealogical trees of the European dynasties, offspring with suspicion of illegitimacy and marriages with suspicion of illegality will be everywhere and in fair quantities. At the same time, it is necessary - but far from always possible - to distinguish between reality and an instrument in a political game: there were undoubted bastards that did not prevent them from taking the throne, and there were legitimate heirs who had lost their chances of power, who were condemned by bastards by a hostile court group.

Bastard was the grandfather of Charlemagne Karl Martell. Bastard was William the Conqueror, who replaced this nickname with his original nickname, Bastard. It is noteworthy that if he could become a king, then his illegitimate grandson Richard Gloucester in the XII century could not. Bastards - not reigned, but titled - were in Philip II of France, Henry I of England and in various kings of Castile and Aragon. Not to mention the numerous incestuous royal marriages in which children were born, which were not needlessly declared bastards.

Conversely, as needed, the rebellious nobility resorted to such a strategy as supporting the royal bastards against the legitimate heirs. Depending on the alignment of forces in the feudal coalitions, such strife could end in a bastard victory, as happened in the war of the Castilian king Pedro the Cruel with his illegitimate stepbrother, after the death of Pedro who became king Enrique II. A century later, part of the Castilian nobility found it advantageous to recognize the illegitimate daughter of another Enrique - Enrique IV - Juan and support his sister Isabella, the future Isabella Catholic, in the struggle for the throne.

Coronation portrait of Elizabeth I Tudor. Photo: wikipedia.org

Another great queen of the late Middle Ages, Elizabeth Tudor, being the daughter of the king and queen, was often called illegitimate, and for various reasons. After the execution of her mother and the conclusion of her father's new marriage, Elizabeth was declared a bastard, as her mother was no longer the queen, and was deprived of the title of Princess of Wales. And subsequently, the Catholic party repeatedly argued about the queen's illegitimacy, not recognizing the legitimacy of her father's divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marriage with the maid of honor.

Culture bastards

As, of course, the phenomenon itself, as well as the medieval discourse about bastards with its duality - a combination of political pragmatism and Christian moralism - have survived in modern times. Thus, the duke of Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, was indignant that Louis XIV arranged marriages of his illegitimate children with princes of blood, thereby shedding unclean holy saints of the kingdom - the royal family. The bastards, from the point of view of Saint-Simon, are unclean, not only because their blood is different, not blue, but also because they bear the stigma of the parents' sin.

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