Structures familiales et solidarités lignagères à Marseille au XVe siècle : autour de l'ascension sociale des Forbin

Family Structures and Solidarity in 15th Century Marseille: The Social Rise of the Forbin. C. Maurel. The micro-history of the Forbin family in Marseille and Provence around the 15th century—as it rose from artisanal honorability, to mercantile success and then on to the ranks of the country gentry—constitutes an exemplary case of family social rising based on commercial enrichment, princely favors, and strong lineal cohesion. Despite the family's recourse to dividing up their inheritance, its absence of communal economic structure, the dispersion of its hearth and burial-grounds, and its appreciable socio-economic heterogeneity, the Forbin 's saga shows how a high degree of political solidarity, as well as a sharing and defense of its collective symbolic inheritance—family name, coat of arms, emblem, and geneological records—were, in the course of the family's rise, the linchpins of the success of this naissant aristocratic "house".Maurel Christian. Structures familiales et solidarités lignagères à Marseille au XVe siècle : autour de l'ascension sociale des Forbin. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 41ᵉ année, N. 3, 1986. pp. 657-681