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Can we speak of “Matrimony” Days?

2022-09-18T06:13:19.565Z


Everywhere in France for a few years replace or join the Days of "heritage", those of "heritage". What to say?


Rennes, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Saumur… Once again this year, on the occasion of European Heritage Days, several French towns are celebrating Heritage Days.

But what is it?

Do not try to type this word whose meaning escapes you into a search engine, your automatic corrector will most certainly replace it with “heritage”.

And for good reason, the term does not appear in any contemporary dictionary.

So much so that we tend to think that it could be, like the "femmage" coined to speak of a tribute to women, a neologism whose purpose is to mark the importance of female heritage in the history of France.

Created in 2015 by the feminist association HF Île-de-France, the Matrimony Days aim to highlight “the heritage of mothers”.

To discover

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In 1155, the “matremoigne” (in old French) appears to designate the material goods that a person has inherited from his mother.

In the 14th century, by extension, the

Trésor de la langue française

indicates that what comes from “matrimony” then designates what relates to marriage.

We therefore speak of “matrimonial agreements” and “matrimonial regime”, in other words a set of rules relating to the financial interests of the spouses during the duration of their marriage.

Quickly forgotten, the term was reborn in 1967, under the pen of Hervé Bazin, who published

Le Matrimoine

(Le Seuil).

In this work, its meaning deviates a little more, to qualify the daily management of the household.

A year later, Le Petit Écho de la mode attempted to reintroduce the term and defined it as follows:

“The “matrimoine”?

a fabricated word that will remain in dictionaries under this simple definition: everything in marriage that normally belongs to the woman.”

In its contemporary usage, it is now used to talk about what constitutes both the memory of women creators of the past and the transmission of their works.

A universal concept

“Heritage + Heritage = our common cultural heritage”

is the slogan of the HF Île-de-France association.

But is saying this etymologically correct?

Borrowed from the Latin "patrimonium", itself derived from "pater" meaning "father", that is to say the one who has one or more children (and who formerly was the only source of inheritance and filiation) , the “patrimony” determines the whole of the goods inherited from its ascendants or which one constitutes to transmit it to its descendants.

Employed from the twelfth century in this sense, "heritage" designates what is family property, coming from both the father and the mother, according to the

Dictionary of the French Academy

.

It is now agreed that heritage is a material and cultural heritage (intellectual, religious, values ​​and behaviors) which constitutes a people.

From there was born the "homeland", the legacy of the fathers, constituting the nation of which one feels a member.

“Matrimony”, on the other hand, has never meant anything more than a material inheritance from the mother.

Unlike the “Matrimony” Days, the “Heritage” Days, in a universal notion, therefore refer to our common heritage, both that of the men and women who have marked the history of France.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-09-18

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