Guardianship over women in medieval Flanders: a reappraisal

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

Occasionally records mark female possessors as somebody's wife. Most commonly they bear no descriptive appositives. Most of the forty-one female landholders mentioned in thirteenth-century Douaisian records, for example, lack identifying familial associations. Only three are described as some man's wife or mother.(72) It is possible that the women described as someone's wife are really widows. Interpretation depends on who is "deceased" in phrases exemplified by "the wife of Henry d'Escaillon who was" (qui fu). Familial associations, however, are less common than those denoting either class ("lady of") or deceased status, as exemplified by "Lady Mahaut Li Konestablesse," and "[the tenement of] Ermenfroit Piet d'Argent, deceased."(73)

The case of the woman in Douai who was identified with reference to her child raises interesting questions.(74) Was this woman a widow, or had she perhaps never married? There was nothing preventing a bastard child from possessing land. If she was widowed, the clerks neglected to mention it. Such neglect, if it was indeed neglect, signifies either that widowhood was not considered to be a defining status or that, at least in this case, parenthood superseded it. If the latter, it then becomes important to ask what other status superseded widowhood. Three out of forty-one women described as landholders in thirteenth-century Douai are identified only as dame, suggesting an elevated social position. Are we to assume that none of them were widows and thus that none had ever been married? Or was social position simply more noteworthy than widowhood? In the case of Margaret, countess of Flanders, it most certainly was. Although she had been widowed twice, none of the documents recording her actions subsequent to her accession as countess mentions the fact.

When a woman who owned, held or otherwise possessed property did happen to be identified with reference to another family member in the record of a transaction, it was probably in any case not for purposes of informing readers who her guardian was, but rather merely for purposes of unambiguously identifying the specific person to whom the particular parcel of land belonged. If such formulas did signify guardianship, we should expect the records to show far greater consistency in this regard. If, on the other hand, they represent nothing more than relatively ad hoc practical expedients for identifying the owner of particular properties, their sporadic appearance makes a good deal of sense. The crucial concern underlying these records was that taxes and rents be paid by someone capable of paying them; if the titular holder was incapable of paying them, then it would be necessary to find someone who could.(75)

Property brought into a marriage, whether managed by one spouse or the other, customarily remained associated with the spouse to whom it had originally belonged. When Jan Metsaert and Kateline Cays formally separated, for example, each was entitled to the goods they had brought into the marriage.(76) The natal family of either spouse retained a claim on such property in the event that a spouse should die without heir.(77) Even creditors had no right to the property of a debtor's spouse and could only claim the debtor's share of the marital property. (78)