"What Do Your Women Do?": Western Practices of the Fifteenth Century

Stunned that I didn't notice it was Women's History Month until just a couple days ago, it seemed well past the time I should give a few views on what it was like for half the population in the late medieval/renaissance period of Europe. One from a series of books on women through history, gathers many several experts presenting research they have found.

Jumping right into it, from an essay by Claudia Opitz fitly entitled for English as, 'Life In The Late Middle Ages',

"... many women felt that since marriage was the best option available, they must find husbands for their daughters as soon as possible. This was the legitimation for the widespread practice of child marriage at the highest levels of society. But even among the lesser nobility and gentry girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen  were considered marriageable. At such an age, however, the chance of their own will being expressed or consulted was considerably reduced.

Contemporary sources show that delaying marriage until a girl had reached a more advanced age was the first prerequisite for improving her negotiating position, but still no guarantee that her own interests would be protected. Literary texts and legal documents suggest that only widows were granted relative autonomy in the question of remarriage; they could choose among several suitors.

A girl resisting a marriage could expect little support from the clergy.... As we know from the biographies of several notable medieval women, girls wishing to escape the clan's iron grip were forced to resort to deceit and strategems, hoping that God would indeed help those who helped themselves, Clare of Assisi, founder of the order of Poor Clares and abbess of San Damiano,  and her younger sister Agnes stole away from home in the dead of night and found refuge with Francis and his unconventional band of friars. Without God's help, the hagiographer reports, they would never have been able to withstand the threats, curses, and beatings of their (male) relatives.

That such tales are not merely pious fictions is shown by records of court cases dealing with unauthorized marriages from the later Middle Ages. Marriages entered into against the wishes of the spouses'  parents continued to be regarded as invalid long after the Council of Trent (1546-1562).... Parties to such marriages could be disinherited by their parents or families. The records deal to a large extent with young men .... At the same time they reveal that women were treated differently under the law and that their actions were measured by a different standard. ... Early engagements, intimidation up to and including physical force, and legal prosecution in cases of disobedience -- these were the means by which the older generation secured the compliance of the young, and their daughters in particular." [pp 274-5]

 There is evidence that there may have been more relative numbers of unmarried women in the late 14- and early 1500's. But like much else, we don't know and the knowledge is contested in different ways or for different reasons. Education for girls or women while increasing broadly, one suspects in cities and in the written record, as those generally expanded all over, remains mostly rare.

"More and more people, particularly upper-class women, began to participate in the intellectual life of their age as listeners, readers, and patrons. Documents from this and other social classes show women participating in and shaping medieval life in roles such as legal guardian and testator.

This is not to say that women could escape male hegemony in the cultural field or any other area of social life. Their daily experience must be culled from accounts informed by male idealization and devaluation -- as continues to be the case long after the Middle Ages. Women's opinion and wishes frequently remains a matter of speculation, hidden behind the veil of male authority and regimentation by fathers, husbands, and confessors, their sphere of action limited by social norms and pressures. Nevertheless, the late medieval period -- despite its catastrophes and conflicts, economic and cultural upheavals, the prevalence of religious hysteria and expectations of the end of the world -- was a period of awakening and positive change, not least for members of the female sex. ... women shared in ... increased possibilities for social mobility ... great changes occurring in European society at the end of the period were accompanied by widespread belief in witchcraft and persecution  of women as witches.... Medieval law codes, which despite their basis in tradition and long-established practices, tended to be more prescriptive than descriptive, perhaps reflect not so much the realities of the era as the ideals and wishes of their authors. This may be most particularly true where the status of women are concerned, since in general women were neither actively involved nor consulted in the formulating of such codes. The law thus emerges as an element in women's daily lives that, more than any other, was male-dominated...." [pp. 268-69]

 But women could and did do everything. As keepers of the house, bearing, raising children, watching on the fowl and livestock, helping at harvest, vine-tending, sheep shearing or milking, cheese-making, bread baking, wool-carding; they also ran businesses from the cities. Brewing beer, and selling it. Moving valuables between cities,

"... women traders were granted a limited capacity to transact business in their own name. The volume of trade varied enormously, and it was above all the women organized in guilds (primarily for long-distance trading) who acquired considerable wealth. Wills preserved in the archives of the Hansa city of Lübeck reflect this range.... 

Importing goods from abroad was not without risk. Records of Basel from the early fifteenth century show that a number of traders suffered considerable losses when a goods  train was set upon and robbed. Of the sixty-one merchants who had financed the shipment, thirty-seven were women. One of them, Cristina Oflaterin, had invested 501 florins, and another, an apothecary's widow, 270 florins. Most of the other women had invested only small sums, between 7 1/2  and 9 florins.

The goods traded included virtually every kind of item needed in daily life as well as luxuries. While prices were determined to some extent by the market, both city and guild organizations supervised trade closely, inspecting the quality of imported goods and setting limits on the volume of trade and profits. These regulations by no means required specialization in one sort of merchandise, however. In 1420 a woman trader named Czachmannin in the German town of Görlitz is recorded as having dealt in crossbows, saddle bags, bridles, harnesses, halters, spurs, and stirrups, as well as sulphur, copperas, verdigris, arrow quivers, soap, parchment, wax, paper, and spices." [pp 295-96]

In the great mercantile cities, education for girls began in the 13th century and spread. Some became teachers some practiced health care but doctors basically forced them out as practitioners, but they continued in obstetrics and as midwives where they could. By 1500 most cities had guilds and organizations of women and men who dealt with healthcare issues, complete with legal regulations and municipal fines attached to divergence from the rules. They would get a stipend, or maybe be free from taxes, or lodging, maybe firewood in payment. There were furriers in Basel organized in a guild since 1226. Food production was also very common. In the mid-1500's in one German parish there were six jug-makers, nine coppersmiths, seven brass workers, three tin-smiths, a thimbelmaker. In Basel, there were female masons, painters, plasterers, they mixed mortar, replaced glass, acted as day-laborers. 

But,  "Toward the end of the fifteenth century women laborers at building sites in Würzburg earned an average of 7.7 pence per day, while men earned 11.6 pence." [p 301]

All quotes from the 9th chapter, "Life In The Late Middle Ages" by Claudia Opitz, translated from German by Deborah Lucas Schneider, found in 

A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, general editors, Harvard University Press paperback edition, 

2nd USA printing, 1994