Private Properties, Seigniorial Tributes, and Jurisdictional Rents: The Income of the Queens of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The twelve essays inWomen and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe re-examine the vexing issue of women, money, wealth, and power from distinctive perspectives—literature, history, architectural history—using new archival sources. The contributors examine how money and changing attitudes toward wealth affected power relations between women and men of all ranks, especially the patriarchal social forces that constrained the range of women’s economic choices. Employing theories on gender, culture, and power, this volume reveals wealth as both the motive force in gender relations and a precise indicator of other, more subtle, forms of power and influence mediated by gender.