Guardianship over women in medieval Flanders: a reappraisal

Journal of Social History, Summer, 1998 by Ellen E. Kittell

Wills sometimes include a rather more ambiguous reference to the body. There are at least four wills in which husbands apparently leave their wives items such as clothes and jewels pour sen cor "for her body."(44) Wills which confide the guardianship of minor children to someone almost always use words such as "feed," "provide" or "clothe;"(45) the apparent bequest of clothing on the part of husbands to their wives might, by extension, seem to suggest that husbands were similarly responsible at least for clothing their wives. The phrasing is, however, standard, and its location in these wills - either before or after the designation of the residuary legatee - suggests that the reference to a "body" is not literal, but idiomatic.(46) In other words, he is not leaving clothes to her that she has by his fiat, but rather making sure, in a rather conventionalized fashion, that those items that are hers in the first place will not be included in the remainder and thus divided among his heirs.(47)

The evidence from criminal records is also ambiguous. On the surface, it seems to suggest that men did not have legal authority over women's persons. On 2 July 1306, the aldermen of Ypres, for example, levied the fine of 30 sous on Pierre Spelisant for wounds he inflicted on his wife, Catherine de Morbeke.(48) On 24 November, 1319, Louis de Nevers, eldest son of the count of Flanders, condemned Walter Masiere to pilgrimages to St. Giles in Provence and to Saint Andrews in Scotland, among other penalties, for beating his wife Catherine.(49) In 1375, Lieven de Nayere was forced to pay 10 l. for mistreating his wife.(50) While these cases suggest that society invested women with bodily integrity, they do not prove it. At the time that Pierre was fined, his wife was, in fact, dead; the account's one line gives no indication whether she died of these wounds or of something else. Men did not have the right to kill their wives, and so this particular case gives us little information as to whether men were permitted to beat their wives. The case of Walter Masiere suggests that they were not. But it turns out that Walter had beaten his wife because she had entertained the count's son and his entourage. The issue is not how she might have entertained Louis, but rather that she obviously complained to him that she had been beaten. The motivation for his condemnation, therefore, may not have been to satisfy customary law, but rather to satisfy something less objective. The significance of this fact, however, remains to be explored.

Property

The bulk of archival detritus consists of property transactions. Guardianship over minors focused heavily on what property the child was to inherit, who was to manage it, and what condition it was to be in when it was turned over to its rightful owner at the time of majority. A large part of wardship, therefore, was expressed in the nature of the association between the persons and any property they might own or possess. If women were formally or informally under the guardianship of some male, it should most certainly show up in documents resulting from property transactions.