“Women and the City: The Case of Medieval Montpellier”
Kathryn Reyerson

Much recent history of medieval women has produced “quantitative” studies of behavior, very valuable for our understanding of women’s experience. However, there is also a need for a study of individual lives, for the “naming” of women. In addition, with the emergence of gender studies, women’s history must now be set within the rich context of society as a whole. The Mediterranean city of Montpellier offers a wealth of documentary evidence of women’s activities in the surviving notarial registers.

Agnes de Bossones, widow of a prominent changer and guardian of her children, can be traced over forty years. She used the urban court system, managed real estate, and interacted on multiple social levels. Her reputation as “Na Bossonesa” echoed loud amongst the simple hucksters - men and women - who were her clients on a central market square. We are historians are privileged by the survival of her will which reveals how she put her house in order at the end of her life.

Martha de Cabanis, mother of the merchant brothers Guiraudus and Jacobus de Cabanis, can be traced in her commercial and real estate investments, and as guardian of her children. Beyond women of the urban elite, we can also trace the experience of women of more modest background, even prostitutes.

Through the use of case studies, I propose to examine how women negotiated gender and economic power, public authority, and the law within the setting of medieval Montpellier, under the dual jurisdictions of Aragon-Majorca and France.