Elma Brenner

Society and culture in medieval Rouen, 911-1300

This book presents exciting new research on the society and culture of medieval Rouen by British and Continental historians. Divided into three sections, addressing space and representation, religious culture, and social networks, the volume is both wide-ranging and tightly focused. The key themes include Rouen’s relationship with its environs, image and identity, social and political relationships, and Rouen’s status as the ‘capital’ of Normandy. The essays discuss topics ranging from urban development and charity, the citys aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites, to the Jewish community, and the relationship of the Angevin kings with Rouen. Comparisons and contextualization, as well as detailed maps, make the book valuable to not only readers interested in Rouen and Normandy, but also those who wish to learn more about medieval cities, culture, and society.

Women, Wealth, and Community in Perpignan, c. 1250–1300: Christians, Jews, and Enslaved Muslims in a Medieval Mediterranean Town

This study of the Christian, Jewish and enslaved Muslim women of thirteenthcentury Perpignan, a major commercial centre in this period, marks an important contribution to our understanding of the diverse roles and statuses of women in the medieval Mediterranean. Winer assesses the extent of women’s economic empowerment, and their agency within the family, by analysing notarial registers (protocols) – an exceptional set of these sources survives for thirteenthcentury Perpignan – wills, legal cases and civil codes. In particular, she focuses on women’s roles as daughters, wives, mothers, widows and servants/slaves, skilfully interpreting the data she has derived from her often difficult source material. The introduction presents a feminist perspective, suggesting that what follows will be more sympathetic towards women than men. Winer states that ‘‘. . . women were dominated by a gender system that was built by and for men’’ (p. 11), and refers (at the beginning of Chapter 2) to ‘‘. . . the inheritance and marriage customs created by men to further their own economic interests’’ (p. 18). These statements cast men as women’s oppressors, imbuing them with intentions for which we do not necessarily have evidence. Interestingly, however, the chapters that follow in fact highlight how some women in thirteenth-century Perpignan came to have individual agency, often more so than their counterparts elsewhere in the medieval Mediterranean. Nonetheless, in the case of Christian women, this ‘‘independence’’ resulted from Christian society’s understanding of the needs of fatherless children, not from a concern to empower women, and still entailed social restrictions for women. Christian widowed mothers of minor children were entitled to become their legal guardians, enabling them to dispose of their deceased husband’s estate on their children’s behalf, to make business investments, and to arrange marriage contracts for their children. However, if they wished to retain guardianship of their children, widows were prohibited from remarrying and, furthermore, when a fatherless son reached adulthood his mother was expected to cede her control of the household to him. Winer’s discussion of the Jewish women of thirteenth-century Perpignan is particularly fascinating, as it reveals how Jewish women’s experiences were affected by their membership of a religious culture that was not only different, but also