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

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 dEmpúries, 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 familys financial resources. In
these families, Jewish husbands and wives both accessed a shared conjugal fund to
extend credit.