Competing conceptualizations of women's economic activities in fourteenth-century Ghent.

Abstract

On 16 October 1349, two parties reached an agreement to exchange properties from the estate of the deceased Pieter van Overtwater. The first party was his mother, identified as <<.! oncvrouw Kateline, mother of Pieter van Overtwater,» and the second was <<Joncvrouw Celie, who was the wife of Pieter van Overtwater, and Jan ser Magheleins of Sint Baafs, who is now her legal husband and guardian»2. Jan ser Magheleins was acting for his wife, following a patriarchal provision of the custom of Ghent, which like customary law all over northwestern medieval Europe, stipulated that a married woman was legally incapable and that her husband was the rightful manager of her property. However, cases where men managed women's property comprise less than ten percent of all the acts preserved in the earliest extant year registers of the aldermen of the Keure in Ghent. The aldermen of the Keure, the most important governing body under the unwritten customary law of Ghent, adjudicated disputes, issued ordinances, and legitimized and recorded contracts and other legal documents. A husband acted as his wife's «guardian» (voogd) in less than five percent of those acts. A more typical case occurred on 19 March 1350, when Ghiselbrecht van Wondelghem came before the aldermen of the Keure and appointed Beatrise Blanckaerds to collect a debt owed to him by Jan Braem3. Ghiselbrecht The research on which this article is based was funded by a Fulbright grant and conducted at the City Archives of Ghent (Stadsarchief Gent.