If marriage long remained more a matter of politics than of Christian morality, it did so because it involved far more than regulation of sexual activity. At the very least, the arrival of a wife and daughter-in-law into a man’s home increased the pool of labour available for women’s work—the spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidering to which women of all social levels devoted their energies, and the food preparation and other tasks that slave and peasant women undertook. Among the elite, marriage also involved calculations about conserving, distributing, and augmenting family property so as to arrange its disposition across generations. With land came the wherewithal to survive and, for all property-owners above the meagre subsistence farmer, the possibility of a surplus. The next chap- ter will emphasize how rights over landed property opened the way to sta- tus, political power, and influence; here the focus is on inheritance of the patrimony as a means of negotiating gender disparities. This analysis ar- gues that, while the distribution of resources among heirs reinforced men’s and women’s differential access to wealth, influence, and power, women’s access to property was nevertheless crucial to early medieval familial interactions.
evolving local legal procedures, and changing ideas of family, early medi- eval inheritance customs varied widely from place to place. Yet, despite widespread regional and temporal variation, some general points are clear. The first is that sexual partnerships transmit property (movables and land) from parents to children, and that the right to inherit is generally closely related to the nature of the parents’ partnership. The formal and publicly acknowledged unions in early Ireland gave sons a greater right to their father’s property than those of less formal partnerships; elsewhere the developing notions of Christian marriage strengthened the inheritance rights of a man’s child by his wife against claims by the children of less formal unions. Secondly, the normal patterns for inheriting land diverged from those for movable property such as cattle, slaves, or jewellery, and procedures for inheriting political office might be different again. Thirdly, parental property was in principle partible—in other words, was shared between some or all children, albeit usually in unequal amounts. By the eleventh century, however, some families were beginning to develop strate- gies for channelling most or all of their patrimony to a single son, as no- tions of family and identity continued to evolve. Fourthly, the transmission of property from one generation to the next was rarely the concern of parents and children alone. Kings were watchful, keen for an excuse to intervene, and, except where Roman property law persisted, the wider kin group was also involved. This discussion therefore locates men and women among their relatives and also keeps an eye on the broader political con- texts within which they lived. Finally and fundamentally, men’s right to inherit land was one of the commonalities of all early medieval cultures; women’s access to the family patrimony, on the other hand, varied greatly from region to region, and from generation to generation. By tracing women’s differential access to land vis-à-vis their brothers, a gendered pat- tern of immense political significance emerges.
Identifying strategies of inheritance inevitably depends upon the surviving documentation. In this context, it is germane to reiterate sev- eral points made earlier. On the one hand, the norms articulated in law codes about the transmission of property are not an adequate guide to how people behaved in practice: to get at that, we must juxtapose them with the records of transfers of specific, named estates such as charters of donation, wills, and bequests. Further, not only did the degree of document-mindedness vary markedly from region to region, but the rate of documentary survival has been much better in some places than oth- ers. A final point to recall is the gradual adoption across northern Europe of testamentary practices of Roman origin, practices that affected meth-
detailing land transfers generally survive in some numbers only from the late seventh century onwards in Italy and the Frankish lands, the late ninth century in northern Spain, the mid-tenth century in England, and even later elsewhere.
It is nevertheless possible to sketch some of the most obvious regional distinctions in inheritance custom. The two extremes are, as so often, Ireland, on the one hand, and the southern, enduringly Roman areas of continental Europe, on the other. In Ireland, the paternal land was divided equally between all recognized sons, but daughters were entitled to an equal share of movable property, most notably slaves and cattle. If a man died leaving a daughter but no sons, she might have a life interest in his estate, but on her death the property reverted to her male kinsmen on her father’s side. These practices operated within a culture that emphasized that land was the property of a four-generation kin group, known as the
derbfine, and in which alienation of land away from the derbfine was dis-
couraged and difficult to achieve. Female inheritance would pose a threat to the kin group and its land, for recognized sons belonged to their father’s derbfine, not their mother’s: were a woman to inherit land and pass it to her sons, it would pass from one derbfine to another. This is why an heiress would find herself pressured to marry her father’s nearest male relative.32By contrast, Roman property law of the fifth and sixth centuries operated on two quite different principles, which remained intact throughout the early Middle Ages, and long beyond. First, land was owned in full and outright ownership only by individuals: there was no notion of any collective interests or rights over land. Secondly, the law of the late Roman Empire was based upon the assumption that daughters had the right to inherit on equal terms alongside their brothers in the event of intestacy. Overall, it posed no legal obstacles to the full control and free disposal of property by women independent of any guardian. In areas such as Calabria and Lucania in southern Italy or Aquitaine and Provence in southern France, where Roman practices persisted through- out the early Middle Ages, women’s access to property gave them in prin- ciple a degree of economic independence quite unthinkable in early Ireland.
But what of those regions between Ireland and southern Italy, in other words in the kingdoms where Germanic-speaking settlers and their descendants persisted in their own customs? Here, it is important to acknowledge a wide range of local differences, but with two significant common factors. First, rights to private, individual ownership of property were balanced alongside the interests of the kin, who might wish to claim it or to be consulted if its owner desired to sell or donate land to anyone
other than his offspring. Secondly, these traditions clearly preferred trans- mitting land to male heirs, and generally acknowledged inheritance rights of daughters or sisters only when sons were lacking. More hostile to women owning land than any other law code, the mid-eighth-century compilation of Thuringian law specified that, in the absence of a son, the property would go to the father’s nearest male relative. The Thuringian law is also useful for making more explicit than any other law code the differential routes to be used in passing on movable goods as distinct from land, for it stipulated that, although the latter went to the father’s nearest male relative, livestock and slaves went to his daughters, who would also be the ones to inherit their mother’s clothing, jewellery, and personal ornaments.
And yet: prescribing written rules for inheritance and drawing up docu- ments confirming individual land transactions were both devices adopted from Roman tradition. The result of this is that, from the earliest moment when the written record first allows us to glimpse inheritance strategies in the post-imperial kingdoms, they are already touched by Roman norms. This trend intensified only in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. The Lombard kingdom in northern Italy is a particularly clear instance where the inheritance rights of Lombard women altered significantly under the heavy pressure of the customs of their Roman neighbours, and, by the end of the eighth century, Lombard daughters had a far greater chance of inheriting a part of their father’s property than did their pre- decessors who had lived under Rothari’s rule. In effect, wherever the documentation survives to reveal the specificities of property transactions, women in the successor kingdoms could and did inherit land as well as movables.
That is not to say, however, that women’s access to property was ever as great or as secure as men’s. Rather, it remained limited, insecure, and liable to be contested. Although statistical deductions are notoriously un- reliable for the early Middle Ages, several rough calculations may help focus this discussion. Late Roman women, it has been optimistically sug- gested, may have owned 30–45 per cent of all the landed property in the empire. Admittedly, this is little more than guesswork, but it may be con- trasted with figures for later centuries derived from differing types of material. First, analysis of continental charters from the eighth century onwards suggests sharp regional differences in women’s access to land. In areas where the influence of Roman legal traditions remained strong, women may have controlled significant amounts of land—approximately 17 per cent in tenth-century northern Spain and 13 per cent in adjacent
regions of southern France. North of the Loire, in Germany and in Lombard Italy, women had less than 10 per cent, and probably less
than 5 per cent of all land. For England, the evidence is rather different:
Domesday Book, the national survey of landholding compiled for William the Conqueror (1066–87). In addition to reporting on landholding in 1086, Domesday records the pattern of landownership in Anglo-Saxon England on ‘the day when King Edward was alive and dead’, that is in 1066, and it offers a snapshot of property rights immediately before the Norman Conquest. Anglo-Saxon custom strongly preferred land to pass from man to man, and, in general, women’s access was conditional and restricted. Domesday records only about 5 per cent of all the land in England as being owned by women in 1066: and there are good reasons for believing that somewhat more land was in female hands by 1066 than it had been in
c.1000. These figures suggest—however tentatively—that, subject to the
influence of legal cultures and local traditions, female property rights varied tremendously and that, even on the best possible estimate in the regions most favourable to women’s property rights, the vast majority of all land remained under men’s control.
Access to landed wealth was not only conditioned by the constraints of local social practice or legal restrictions. Specific familial circumstances were of equal significance, and might affect women just as much as men. First and foremost, the uncertainties of birth or the vagaries of sudden death might throw into confusion even the most carefully planned prop- erty distribution. Abba, the reeve—king’s official—in Kent, had a child- less marriage. Between 833 and 839 he drew up a will in which he made arrangements for several possible futures. ‘It is my desire’, he stated at the outset, ‘that if God will give me a child, he shall have the land after me, and enjoy it with my wife; and similarly, and that after him my descend- ants shall continue to hold it as long as it is God’s will that there be any of them able and qualified to hold land.’ But Abba also envisaged a child- less old age: ‘If, however, it is my lot not to have a child, then I desire that my wife shall have it [my land] as long as she is willing to keep it with-
out marrying again.’33 Another possible future was that his widow
Heregyth remarried. In that case, the land was to return to his own kins- men, leaving her with only whatever property she had herself brought into the marriage. Finally, he made provisions in case Heregyth wished to enter a convent, provisions designed to ensure that she had adequate wealth to be accepted into the community but that the land remained with his own kin. Abba also gave some thought as to which of his kinsmen might expect to benefit if he did indeed die childless. His brothers were to pass
the property to their heirs, if they had any; failing them, one Freothomund (cousin? uncle?) would inherit if he were still alive; if he had already died, then one of Abba’s sisters’ sons could claim the land. If his family died out completely, the land was to go to the local cathedral church, Christ Church in Canterbury. Abba had stared into an uncertain future, not knowing whether his wife would ever conceive, or which of his relatives might predecease him.
How did things turn out? We do know that, in her widowhood, Heregyth surrendered Abba’s lands to his kin in a way that diverted some of the produce from them to Christ Church, Canterbury, to enable both their deaths to be properly commemorated there with regular intercessory prayer for the sake of their souls. She herself may have retired to a con- vent, or perhaps secluded herself back in the home of her natal family. Such a fate for a widow was far from unusual. Abba had left her a life in- terest in his lands, but had directed that ownership of those should be re- stricted to his male blood relatives. Abba’s decisions exemplify a practice particularly common in, but not confined to, Anglo-Saxon England, a practice that channelled property from man to man through women. Heregyth and Abba’s sisters could transmit the title but not hold it in their own right.
Occasionally, family circumstances might work out very much to a widow’s advantage. The characteristic demographic profile of early medi- eval communities must have meant that it was not uncommon for adult
children to die before their parents.34 Whenever offspring who lacked
children of their own predeceased their parents, their heirs were normally either siblings or parents. Reverse inheritance from children to parents is well attested, and may not have been all that unusual. An eleventh- century runic inscription from Hillersjö in Sweden reflects conventions widespread in northern Europe in the preceding two centuries. It runs as follows:
Read! Germund took Gerlög, a maiden, as wife. Then they had a son before he (Germund) was drowned and then the son died. Thereafter she had Gudrik as her husband. . . . Then they had children but only one girl survived, her name was Inga. Ragnfast of Snottsta had her as his wife. Thereafter he died and then the son. And the mother (Inga) inherited from her son. Then she had Erik as her husband. Then she died. Then Gerlög inherited from Inga her daughter. Torbjörn the skald carved the runes.35
Gerlög had outlived her first husband (Germund), her son by him, her second husband (Gudrik), her only surviving child by her second husband (her daughter Inga), her son-in-law (Ragnfast), and her unnamed grand-
son. Directly or indirectly, she was the heir to all of them. In the course of her long life, she accumulated by reverse inheritance from her own chil- dren the lands of her first husband, her second husband, and her son-in- law. Marriage normally transmits property from the older generation to the younger, and no one would plan for the grandmother to be the sole heir of all the wealth of the younger generations of her family. But, with all the uncertainties of mortality in the early Middle Ages, it could and, on this occasion, certainly did happen.
More commonly, widows found that their access to the property left to them by their husband either with a life interest or in outright ownership was contested by their dead husband’s relatives. Abba had certainly foreseen that his brothers would prowl around his widow Heregyth, and had tried to co-opt their support for her. But, on occasions, the opposi- tion might come not from the husband’s kin, but from a woman’s own son, eager to take immediate control of his paternal inheritance without having to wait for his mother to die. A famous dispute occurred at Aylestone in Herefordshire in the reign of Cnut (1016–35), when a man called Edwin brought a lawsuit against his unnamed mother. In consign- ing her to anonymity, the charter scribe nevertheless recorded that she successfully defended her right to bequeathe ‘my land and my gold, and my clothing and my raiment, and everything I possess’ to her kinswoman
Leofflæd.36Such conflicts between a man’s widow and his heir were hardly
unusual, but, in all probability, widows won them infrequently. In this instance it may well have been the fact that Leofflæd was the wife of an important local landowner and power broker that enabled mother to fend off son.
Partible inheritance did not require a parent to divide land equally among heirs, whether sons and daughters, or just sons. The chances of squabbling were therefore high. Siblings might find themselves jockeying for more favoured treatment from one or both parents; cousins might also be eyeing lands formerly the possession of their common grandfather; the brother of a dead man might dispute with the adult sons of the deceased for control of his lands. Such tensions could spill over into hostility, even feuding, notoriously in Ottonian Germany. Although chronicles may nar- rate these familial animosities, charters normally only hint discreetly at them. An unusual example of frankness, and unusual too in revealing the strategies available to parents, comes from Spoleto, in central–southern Italy. Pando had given his wife Taneldis a life interest in his estate of
Cicilianus, with directions to pass it on to their son Benedict if he behaved
well towards his mother in her widowhood. But, Taneldis declared, Benedict ‘insulted me and was hostile to me and inflicted many wrongs
on me, as is known to many people’, and so in 768 she gave his father’s
land in its entirety to the monastery of Farfa.37She doubtless acted not
so much out of spite for her son but to secure her own income in her