The wary widow
Janet L. Nelson
Over thirty years ago David Herlihy claimed that women between the Carolingian period and twelfth century played ‘an extraordinary role in management of family property’. Where wrote, cautiously, women's ‘importance’ ‘social prominence’, words often encountered more recent historiography are ‘power’ ‘empowerment’. It may be timely to re-examine power over property a broad context, also narrower one. The present book considers general. This chapter focusses, first on widows as particular kind women, then single instance an aristocratic widow claiming certain powers within specific social context ninth-century Francia. Gender is useful category for historians not least because it relational term: its use requires, we isolate but analyse complementarity men. For when they can seen, darkly, through surviving documentary evidence, even seem acting autonomously, never alone. They appear, above all, relation men: biologically, alongside, or against, male kin; sociologically, supported by genuine, soi-disants, ecclesiastical protectors. Women deployed agents, allies, pawns, lay kin, and/or communities.
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