The widow and the notary: death, gender, and legal culture in the Jewish and Christian communities of medieval Catalonia

Abstract

When men died in medieval Catalonia, their widows went to the notaries. This article traces the ways in which Jewish and Christian women negotiated legal culture in response to their husbands’ deaths in Catalan cities between 1250 and 1350. Death required deeply practical responses as well as emotional ones: the administration of the estate of the deceased was often a pressing concern. Both Jewish and Christian women relied on a variety of legal institutions to safeguard their own and (in some cases) their children’s financial futures as they entered widowhood. Through a combination of Latin notarial documentation and Hebrew responsa literature, this article compares Jewish and Christian women’s legal responses to the deaths of their husbands. Jews navigated Christian legal institutions and sometimes adapted Christian customs. Yet they also maintained distinct practices, and Jewish widows and their families maneuvered between Christian notaries and Jewish rabbinic authorities as they shaped their individual legal responses to the life-changing deaths of their husbands.