Relations de parenté et solidarités dans la noblesse en France au xvie siècle

During the early modem age, several sorts of personal links existed, founded for example, on friendship, on neighbourhood or on kinship. Generally speaking, they all acted simultaneously, to different degrees. The role of kinship was especially important for the nobility. This study describes the real substance of the kinship links within this social group through its stakes (affection, material interest), its form-from solidarity to conflict – and its character (egalitarian or not). The stories used here have been taken from the criminal archives of the Chancery of Brittany from 1520 to 1570. They show that the links derived from kinship were the model of the ties of clientage and that kinship theoretically created an obligation of solidarity but, as all forms of links overlapped, this was not systematically the case.