The Transformation of Private Space in the Later Middle Ages: Rooms and Living Standards in the Kingdom of Valencia (1280-1450)

Abstract

This article undertakes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of probate inventories from a selection of towns and highly urbanized areas from the kingdom of Valencia in the period 1280-1460, which are used to explore the inner distribution of more than 300 housings. Agreeing with the historiographical statement that this period was one of general improvement as to living standards and housing, this article reveals Valencian dwellings were provided with more specialized rooms since the late fourteenth century. This phenomenon was present particularly in the residences of townspeople living in large urban centers. Despite the predominant spatial simplicity of most late medieval housings, this article suggests more people enjoyed a more complex private space, which agreed with the needs of ostentation and privacy that characterized the new domestic culture that developed in the period.

Innovations and the art of deception: mixed cloths in Venetian Crete (17th century)

“…The proliferation of sumptuary laws and criticisms of contemporary clergymen to these realities also supports the idea that emulative attitudes existed and were widely present in late medieval society (Muzzarelli 2003). In Iberia and, more specifically, in the kingdom of Valencia, a realm located in the east of the peninsula that was part of the Crown of Aragon, similar processes have been detected in the last years, with a general rise in living standards and consumption that lead altogether to changing textile fashions as well as emulative attitudes (Furió 2009;García Marsilla 2014;Belenguer González 2020). The purpose of this work is to explore textile consumption among various social classes so as to identify the origins, spread and consolidation or extinction of particular textile fashions.…”

“…In this work we carry out these analyses by turning to a sample of 83 inventories covering the period 1307-1413, a key moment when European living standards would have increased and changes in consumption patterns were more visible (Allen 2001;Petrowiste 2018), also in the kingdom of Valencia (Furió 2009;García Marsilla 2014;Almenar Fernández and Belenguer González 2020). The collection of inventories has attempted to be exhaustive as to the period before the Black Death, for the lower number of notarial records from that period has allowed compiling nearly all extant inventories of deceased of the city of Valencia and its hinterland by 1350.…”

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (ii) 1100–1500

“…Their key findings (for the medieval era) are that families struggled before c.1400, meaning that their children were required to perform significant amounts of labour to support a respectable standard of living, but during the so‐called ‘Golden Age of Labour’ in the fifteenth century family incomes improved, although likely not to the extent that previous studies have argued. Almenar Fernández and Belenguer González examine changes in the spatial organisation of Valencian housing between 1280 and 1450. Using information about the distribution of rooms of 336 dwellings recorded in probate inventories, they find a shift from the 1370s onwards away from a simplistic hall‐chamber model to more complexity with the addition sequentially of kitchens, dining rooms and living rooms to houses.…”