Other Collectivities

Beyond the family, other collectivities also played a role in the production of written works that endured across generations. For literary and learned works, these other collectivities included: households (with their servants, secretaries, disciples, and collaborators in addition to family members); networks of clients, patrons, and friends; salons; courtly circles; institutions such as universities, humanist colleges, and printers’ workshops; religious communities ranging from monastic orders to Jesuits to Protestant churches. They had complex and varying relationships to families. Some overlapped with families or were supplementary extensions of them—especially households, governed by the family head. But some of these other collectivities were in competition with families for loyalty or offered an alternative to them. Moreover, literary and learned legacies could reach beyond the family to benefit broader communities.