606 | WARREN BROWN spective on the . His book falls short of its aims, however, on a number of levels. Most important, Levine never clearly deªnes what he means by “early modernization.” Despite repeated references to this or that phenomenon being evidence of “early modernization,” what made something “early modern” remains unresolved in the end. More- over, Levine’s use of others’ work seems shaped by the needs of his ar- gument; he shows little apparent sensitivity to how their work has stood the test of time or how it ªts into a continuum of debate. For example, he accepts the eleventh century “Feudal Revolution” as a given, with only a cursory and incomplete glance at the still-raging debate about whether it took place, and he accepts White’s largely outdated thesis that the stirrup provoked a revolution in military tactics during the ninth and tenth centuries that in turn led to (17–20).1 The many valuable insights contained in the book are too often ob- scured by Levine’s presentation. His prose is dense, sometimes confus- ing, and burdened with jargon. The book is also unfocused. It is difªcult to keep track of where his synthetic narrative is leading or how it all re- lates to his central point. In short, At the Dawn of Modernity does not live up to its promise or potential. Thought-provoking and interdisciplinary as it may be for those who persevere, the book is seriously weakened by its failure to clearly deªne its premises, by its unconvincing use of secondary scholar- ship, and ªnally by its own weight. Warren Brown California Institute of Technology

Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old . By Steven Ozment (Cam- bridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2001) 162 pp. $14.95 In this thoughtful, wide-ranging survey of the premodern family, Ozment challenges the historiographical underpinnings of present-day family studies. Beginning with the work of Philippe Ariès, notably his Centuries of Childhood: A Social of Family (New York, 1962), Ozment characterizes Ariès contribution to family studies as a recogni- tion of “a new sensibility in family life that led in the early modern pe- riod to the triumph of privacy over sensibility and of paternal control over insouciance.” Proceeding from “the house that Ariès built,” Ozment surveys the work of two German critics, Michel Mitterauer and Richard Sieders, whose book appeared in English as The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership (Chicago, 1981), tracing the growth of the “Sentimental Family” to the eve of the modern period, when urbanism and the indus- trial revolution allowed for the rise of an egalitarian family structure. In

1 Lynn White, “Stirrup, Mounted Shock Combat, Feudalism, and ,” in idem, Me- dieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), 1–38.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/00221950360536648 by guest on 03 October 2021 REVIEWS | 607 his work, Families in Former Times (Cambridge, 1979), Jean-Louis Flandrin added to the historiographical discussion by probing the Ro- man Catholic teaching manuals and confessional literature as a means of understanding spousal interaction in the . Ozment’s principal historiographical icon is Lawerence Stone, whose The Family, Sex, and Marriage in , 1500–1800 (New York, 1977) divided the evolution of the family into three epochs. The ªrst, “The Open Lineage Family (1450–1630),” manifested greater concern with the extended rather than the compact family; the second, “Re- stricted Patriarchal Nuclear Family, 1500–1700,” was marked by a higher degree of intimacy, inward-looking affection than its predeces- sor; ªnally, “The Closed Domesticated Nuclear Family, 1640–1800,” emphasized paternal rights and the responsibilities of both genders. With a pinch of irony, Ozment ªnds Stone’s precisely honed divisions dressed by “a happy argument” and an “even happier prose” (20). Ozment moves with ease from historiographical explorations to an evenhanded, compact narrative line. Among several excellent narrative chapters, the fourth, “The Omnipresent Child,” is the most challenging. Ozment ªnds a growing concern among parents of the middle class dur- ing the early modern period that they might lose their children in pre- mature birth, or in childbirth, accident, or disease. If, barring peradventure, a child survived, the parents sought to prepare him/her for a life independent of them. By the age of twelve or thirteen to the early twenties, children entered upon years of apprenticeship, as an arti- san, a merchant, a church cleric, or a professional. These years became a continuation of training begun in the household. In his concluding chapter, Ozment reviews “pragmatic epistolo- graphy,” which includes the study of such family archives, inter alia, as diaries, journals, autobiographies, and private correspondence. In their very singularity, these ªrst-person narratives provide a source that is of- ten marked by clarity and truthfulness. Recent microhistorical studies have opened up new avenues of research, and contrary to the historians of the 1960s and 1970s (including Stone), the “modern sentimental fam- ily exists as far back in time and as widely in space as there are proper sources to document it” (109). John C. Rule Ohio State University

The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought. By Peter Biller (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 476 pp. $60.00 Biller has discovered a new subject, medieval demographic thought, and written the ªrst book to explore medieval ideas about population. This is not a study of medieval , for which sources are poor, but a series of close readings of contemporary theologians to uncover possible reactions to issues concerning nuptiality and population levels. Conªned

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