The public economic role of Catalan Jewish wives, 1250-1350

Abstract

This article delineates the role of Jewish married women in economic transactions, including credit, real estate sales, and trade. Relying on notarial registers from Barcelona, Girona, Vic, and Castelló d’Empúries, the article employs both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to determine how often and under what circumstances Jewish wives, as opposed to widows, participated in credit transactions and other forms of economic activity. Still-married Jewish women played an essential role in family financial management, but this role rarely manifested itself in public, independent economic activity. Even Jewish wives with access to financial resources, such as heiresses, often relied on their husbands to administer property on their behalf. Jewish husbands only occasionally relied on their wives to conduct business in their absence. However, certain families and communities created a different gendered division of labor in which husbands and wives, individually and jointly, made loans to augment the family’s financial resources. In these families, Jewish husbands and wives both accessed a shared conjugal fund to extend credit.

Keywords: history, Catalonia, women, marriage, credit, 13th century, 14th century