A Cultural History of Marriage in the Medieval Age by Joanne M. Ferraro;Frederik Pedersen;

Author:Joanne M. Ferraro;Frederik Pedersen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.2 Master of the City of Ladies, 1400–1415, Bibliothèque nationale de France, The Yorck Project (2002) Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

FIGURE 5.3 Daily Life, Eve Spins Wool and Adam Ploughs, c. 1475–1550. © Photo: Kirsten Trampedach, 2010. National Museum of Denmark, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA).

FIGURE 5.4 Eve spins wool. © Photo: Kirsten Trampedach, 2010, National Museum of Denmark, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA).

Smaller households also benefited from gradual shifts in inheritance practices during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Two areas contributed to this change: an increasing number of regions abandoned or diluted the inheritance rules of primogeniture (under which the oldest son took possession of the family lands) in favor of partible inheritance (under which all heirs took possession of a part of their family’s possessions) and a wholesale change took place in the nature of feudal rents, which increasingly were paid in money rather than in kind. An increasing number of landholders saw fit to endow their younger sons—and often also their daughters—with smaller parcels of land which could form the nucleus around which sons could build larger land-holdings by selling or exchanging their lands for money or fields with better soils. This development is seen most clearly in patterns of English land tenure, but it is clear from the manner in which Scandinavian law codes separate categories of land into patrimony and “bought lands” that such changes were not limited to England. This development of a pattern of smaller land-holdings encouraged the formation of smaller but more intensively managed households and a more active market in land. Chesterton in Cambridgeshire, where one-sixth of sons purchased land during the lifetime of their fathers, is an example of the increasing flexibility in land transfer.38

In rural areas the performance of daily tasks, for example, raising crops, producing textiles, and making clothing, were performed by family members and split along gender lines.39 Among the rural population, married women looked after the family’s pigs and poultry and tended the family’s orchard, a plot of land near the house where the family grew useful domestic produce, such as apples, kale, and even wheat. Married women also produced for consumption outside the family: eggs, cured meats, bread, and other domestic produce that was abundant enough to be sold at local markets, and brewing ale was virtually a female monopoly.40

The simultaneous development of urban centers of industrial production and a rural hinterland with strong market-oriented manufacturing combined with an increased access to cash to allow women to take a more active (or at least a more visible) role in manufacture and trade.

The interpretation of the voluminous material produced by medieval city authorities has been the subject of many, varied studies. Merry Wiesner attributed the decreased visibility of women in early modern sources to cultural factors: women’s lack of skill and education, and an increased competition from men who refused to work alongside women, combined with the new moral concerns of the Reformation to push out women from the labor market.41 Martha C. Howell, on the other hand,

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