Medieval Jewish Widows: Their Control of Resources

Author(s): Cheryl Tallan

Source: Jewish History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 63-74
Published by: Springer
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 Jewish History Vol. 5, No. 1 Spring 1991

Medieval Jewish Widows:

Their Control of Resources

Cheryl Tallan

In a question that came before Rabbi Samson of Sens, France (d. 1216), the
business activities of and wealth acquired by a Jewish widow were thus described:

A question was asked a widow who survived her husband ten years or
concerning
more. The heirs of her husband came and demanded from her all that she had, for

they said that it remained from her husband. She answered that there remained
from her husband only nine qav [approximately twenty liters] of grain. She claims
that she sold it and made other profitable business dealings and that she also
borrowed from others and profited by that and now she has approximately thirty
pounds.1

This widow was not an anomaly. Historical records and responsa literature from
northern Europe of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries provide other
examples of self-sufficient and active widows.2 Records of poor widows are also
found, though to a much lesser extent. In this paper Iwill outline the source of the
assets of Jewish widows; the amount of control they had over these assets, relative
to Christian widows; and areas of contention over assets between Jewish widows
and heirs.
The woman whose case came before Rabbi Samson became self-sufficient after she
was widowed. Though married medieval Jewish women could and did engage in
business dealings,3 widows, relative to their percentage in the adult female
population, were the most active female group.4 Of female heads of households
almost all were widows. Head of household status gave widows power and
freedom not available tomarried women or single women living at home, for they
were not subject to the authority of a father or husband.5

In some medieval Jewish communities widows were a significant portion of the

adult female population. In the memorial list of the Jewish martyrs of Mainz who
died in 1096 during the massacres of the First Crusade, of the 124 adult females,
64 Cheryl Tallan

27 (22.6 percent) were widows with children, and approximately 8 (6.5 percent)
were widows without children.6 Among the older age groups, which possessed
much of the wealth and status, the percentage of widows was higher.

The medieval responsa literature, which contains a wealth of information on ritual,

ethical, legal, family, economic, and social matters,7 is also rich in material
concerning widows. Questions concerning widows in family disagreements about
such matters as possible second marriages and in economic disputes with heirs or
creditors over their late husbands' estates were frequently posed.

Not all medieval Jewish widows were as self-sufficient as the widow mentioned in
the responsum of Rabbi Samson of Sens. Many widows were without adequate
financial resources or were destitute. They were supported by their communities8 or
by relatives. A query that came before a late thirteenth-century German rabbi shows
a widow claiming support from her sons:

An answer by Rabbi Meir ben Barukh to a query concerning three brothers: one
has nothing but what he earns by teaching, the second has approximately fourteen

zequqim, and the third is not here and he is rich. They have an old mother who
claims support from them, for she is poor.9

For all medieval Jewish widows, the financial resources under their control were
among the most important factors in determining the level of their independence, as
well as their security and comfort. Without their own financial resources, medieval
Jewish widows were dependent on others for the necessities of life. On the other
hand, self-sufficient widows had a measure of security, and instead of being
dependent on their children could pay for their children's education10 and arrange
their marriages.11

According to Jewish law, widows cannot inherit from their husbands.12 After the
death of their husbands, northern European Jewish widows of the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries received either their maintenance13 (mezonot)14 or,
after swearing the Widow's Oath,15 the equivalent of their marriage contract
(ketubbah). Widows' claims were prior liens on their late husbands' estates and had
to be paid, if they so demanded, before estates were divided among the heirs.

It was often to the widow's advantage to choose maintenance over the marriage
contract. First, it constituted a continual lien on the estate until her death, although
there is some evidence that some widows were not provided with maintenance
indefinitely if the heirs objected.16 Second, according to Jewish law, the widow
was to be maintained in the style to which she was accustomed.17 Third, if she
claimed her maintenance, but not her ketubbah, she did not have to swear an oath.18
Jewish widows, like the rest of the medieval population, were reluctant to swear
oaths and often went to great lengths to refrain from having to do so.19

However, if the widow so chose and if the estate was adequate, she received the
amount specified in her ketubbah. The ketubbah of the northern European bride
typically consisted of three parts: an amount equivalent to her nedunya, the dowry
 Medieval Jewish Widows 65

that she brought with her at her marriage; the tosefet, the contribution of the groom
or his family, either given at the marriage or promised to her upon the dissolution
of themarriage by either divorce or the man's death; and the ikkar ketubbah, in the
amount of two hundred zuzim, from her husband, as prescribed in the Talmud. By
the twelfth century, however, since the value of the ikkar ketubbah was merely a
formality,20 the nedunya and tosefet were the main components of the ketubbah.
In the eleventh century and early twelfth century, at least in northern France, the
amount of the nedunya and the tosefet was not fixed and the writing of the tosefet
was optional. According to Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, d. 1105), "it is
necessary for the witnesses to read the ketubbah in order to know the conditions
[the amount of the nedunya and the tosefet]. If they have no opportunity for that,
they ask the groom [what are] the amounts of the conditions, are they great or
small."21 Rashi's grandson, Rabbi Jacob ben Meir, known as Rabbenu Tarn (d.
1171), stated that the giving of the tosefet is to be enforced only if it is specifically
written into the marriage contract, unless "the inhabitants of the town established
among themselves at a public meeting that anyone who marries a virgin will add
amount x [and anyone who marries a widow will add amount y]."22

In Germany, fixed amounts for both the nedunya and the tosefet were established in
the early twelfth century. The rabbis set the amount of the woman's ketubbah at
fifty pounds silver for the nedunya and an additional fifty pounds silver for the
tosefet. In explaining the reasons for this Rabbi Eliezer ben Natan (d.l 170) stated:
I considered the question of the custom among us to write in the ketubbot of
women, 'this nedunya that she brings with her [consists of] silver, gold, clothing,
and bedding to a total value of fifty pounds.' [We write the phrase] even if she
can't bring with her four pounds worth. On what authority does the recent
of rabbis write in this way? ... [The answer is] that since the whole
generation
matter depends only on custom, the rabbis of the recent were concerned
generation
with the betterment of the daughters of Israel so that they should not be easy to
divorce. Accordingly, [the rabbis] decreed that the ketubbot should be written in
the same manner for the poor as for the rich and that the nedunya should be equal
for all; they decreed [that] the tosefet that he [the groom] added from his own

[possessions] should be equal for all.23

As A. Freimann has written, the writing of the value of the ketubbah as one
hundred pounds became customary in Germany around the turn of the twelfth
century and about a century later in parts of northern France.24 That the sum was
uniform, wrote Eliezer ben Natan, prevented a poor family from being shamed
before their guests when the ketubbah was read aloud at the wedding ceremony.
Of course, this one hundred pounds was not actual money, itwas, rather, "money
of account."25 One hundred pounds was the theoretical amount owed to the widow,
but, depending on her husband's assets, she could be payed her ketubbah claim not
only in gold and silver, but also in land, dwellings, goods and chattels, books, or
jewelry, to a total value of one hundred pounds.26
66 CherylTallan

It is likely that such a payment was uncommon. Often, the husband's estate was
worth less than one hundred pounds, so that, as Freimann puts it, "the husband
would write over to his wife, in fact, all his assets for her ketubbah^21 Because of
the high ketubbah standard of northern European Jewry, the entire estate, except
among the very rich, could go to the widow as payment of her ketubbah. If, then,
the widow claimed her ketubbah, its value was the source of much of her financial
assets.

During the medieval period there was a shift in the type of assets used to pay the
widow's ketubbah. Previously, Jewish widows received their ketubbot only from
their husbands' land, but, since few Jewish men owned land later on, the
Babylonion Geonim decreed in 785-788 that widows could receive their ketubbah
from goods and chattels.28 By the late twelfth century in Germany, the widow
could collect her ketubbah even from repayment of money her husband had lent.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Joel ha-Levi of Germany (d. 1225) stated:
As to your question of whether a ketubbah collected from loan [payments] and
from a house that was and the interest that accrued from it during the
mortgaged
[children's] father's lifetime, ... it seems to me that she collects even [the

payments] that accrued after the [children's] father's death. Since collateral was

taken, the payments are considered to be of which one is 4in possession'

things
(muhzaq), not just things to which one is 'entitled' (ra'uy).29

In addition to what they received from their husbands' estates, income from work
was a significant part of the financial resources of many medieval Jewish widows.
Though all of the work that these widows performed was also done by married and
possibly by single women, it is reasonable to assume that widows were active in
greater numbers than their proportion of the adult female Jewish population. For
example, in Perpignan in the thirteenth century, "loans by Jewish women - mostly
- were
widows not uncommon"30 mine).31 In eleventh-century northern
(emphasis
France, widows owned and worked agricultural land,32 and at least one widow
owned a vineyard.33 During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in all of the northern
European communities, widows were involved in trade.34 In thirteenth-century
Exeter, England, for example, "Comitissa [the widow of Bonenfant the
Chirographer], who lived in High Street, dealt in corn to the value of 33 pounds
6s. 8d. for 100 quarters."35 However, it seems that the most common occupation
among eleventh-, twelfth-, and thirteenth-century Jewish widows was
moneylending.36 Among the most active widows in the financial sphere were the
female moneylenders of medieval England; many of these women were notable
businesswomen. Licoricia ofWinchester37 and others like her lent money to nobles,
even to the king. They were publicly active in the economic life of medieval
England, dealt with both Jews and Gentiles, and had no compunction about going
to court to settle their claims.

Through inheritance laws and customs, Christian widows inmedieval Europe also
usually obtained some payment from their late husbands' estates.38 The English
 Medieval Jewish Widows 67

widow in the year 1200 received dower from the estate of her late husband. This
dower would often be of specifically nominated property, that is, land, money,
rents, services, or chattel; or, if no property was specifically nominated, it could be
an endowment of a third of the land of which the husband had legal seisin (a kind
of possession) on the day of their marriage.39 The English widow received her
dower only as a life estate; she was not allowed to sell any part of it or alienate it
from the heirs. Thus, she remained essentially a pensioner of her family by
marriage. On her death, her dower did not pass to her heirs, but rather to the heirs
of her husband.40

In contrast, the proprietary rights of Jewish widows over the assets they acquired
upon the deaths of their husbands were more secure. The land, goods and chattels,
cash, or loans and interest that the Jewish widows received as payment of their
ketubbot belonged to them absolutely, and if they remarried formed part or all of
the assets they brought to their second husband as dowry. As widows, they could
sell, lease, mortgage, give away, or leave these assets to anyone they wished.
Because they had greater control over their assets, these Jewish widows enjoyed a
freedom of action unknown to their Christian counterparts.
Christian widows did not always receive their dower without litigation;
dower-related actions before the English royal court are found regularly in the
earliest plea rolls.41 Among the more frequent litigants were the widow and her
stepson. The frequency of actions concerning dower that came before the English
courts shows that in twelfth-century England a man's remarriage often was the
cause of strife, after his death, between his widow and the children of his first
marriage.42

Jewish widows, like Christian widows, occasionally had to litigate for their
ketubbah settlement. If the widow was a second wife and there were surviving
children from a first wife, her husband sometimes attempted before he died to give
away part, or all, of his estate to these children. For example, the following
question came before a rabbi in late twelfth-century France:

A question concerning Reuben who married Leah, who bore him sons and

daughters. Leah died, and he married Rachel, who bore him sons. When Reuben
fell ill with the sickness from which he later died, he owned only goods and
chattel. He said to his oldest son, a son of Leah's, 'All my assets I put into your
hands for the needs of my older daughters that Leah bore me, for I fear lest they be
led into wickedness. To this woman [Rachel] and the small sons that were born to
her from me, do not give anything. This woman caused me trouble all my days and
she is more able to come and go and to concern herself with provisions man my
elder daughters, for it is not their custom nor meir honour to go outside.'43

If the transferring of part or all of the estate occurred on the husband's deathbed,
most rabbis declared these gifts invalid.44 On the other hand, if the husband had
given away the whole or parts of the estate while he was still healthy, the gifts were
68 CherylTallan

unchallenged. Rabbi Meir ben Barukh (d. 1293), the eminent sage of Rothenburg,
Germany, declared: "One cannot collect maintenance and ketubbah from the gift of
a well man."45

In addition to the claims of the heirs, the claims of the late husband's creditors
could also reduce a widow's ketubbah. According to Talmudic law, if the assets of
the estate were in land or property, the widow's ketubbah claim had priority over
that of any creditor. If her claim was for goods and chattels, however, the claims of
a creditor holding a secured note took precedence (Babylonian Talmud, Ketubbot
86a). Since few Jews owned land, the widow's ketubbah claim was usually paid in
goods and chattels, and thus after a secured creditor was paid, as responsa from
both Germany and France show.
In a dispute that came before him, R. Meir stated: "In the case of a widow who
seized the goods and chattels, when the creditor of the deceased came [and
demanded payment, the rabbis] decreed that they remove [the goods] from her
possession and give them to her husband's creditor."46 A thirteenth-century French
rabbi, Isaac of Moret, declared that even if the woman had prior claim, the creditor
received all of his debt and the claim of the woman was set aside. Rabbi Isaac
stated that in the kingdom of France he had never seen anyone differing from this
custom. In fact, he went even further to state that "all widows pay [their husbands']
debts."47 However, if the ketubbah settlement came before the payment of a secured
creditor, any business on credit would have been impossible, for every man's
pledges would, in effect, have been mortgaged to his wife's ketubbah.

Toward the end of the thirteenth century the position of the heirs vis-?-vis the
widow may have been strengthened. Isaac ben Moses, also known as Isaac Or
Zarua, of Vienna (d. 1250), described the case of a woman who had to give away
some of her assets. "After her husband's death Leah wanted to marry Simon.
Relatives of Jacob (her late husband) came and protested her marriage until they
forced her to take the chattels for herself and give the land to her two daughters."48
A late thirteenth-century German rabbi wrote: "A woman will not collect her
ketubbah from goods and chattels, unless there are sufficient assets, so that after
she collects her ketubbah [enough] assets will remain to support the orphans."49 In a
case that came before R. Meir of Rothenburg, the heirs proposed several arguments
as to why the widow should not receive maintenance indefinitely, though R. Meir
rejected their claims.50 Rabbi Hayyim ben Isaac stated that in the case of a second
marriage, if a rich man with sons, or maybe even with brothers, wrote a large
tosefet, it obviously meant that the widow could act only as administrator.51 By the
end of the thirteenth century, there was even a prescribed method in some
communities of circumventing the high ketubbah standard. According to Rabbi
Alexander of Ehrfurt, although the standardized ketubbah was read at all
Zuslin
marriage ceremonies, in certain cases the bride wrote a receipt stating that she had
received part of her ketubbah.52 Thus, she would receive less than the standard one
hundred pounds if she were to be widowed.
 Medieval Jewish Widows 69

If there was increasedsensitivity to the claims of the heirs at the end of the
thirteenth century in northern Europe, one reason may have been the weakened
economic position of the Jewish community there. William Chester Jordan, in his
recently published book The French Monarchy and the Jews, has extensively
documented the economic disintegration of French Jewry through the continual
tallages of the French monarchs during the twelfth century.53 English Jews also
were heavily taxed in themid-thirteenth century, and by the time of the expulsion in
1290 they were impoverished.54 The Jews of Germany suffered neither a total
expulsion nor a comprehensive cancellation of debt, as did other northern European
Jews. But during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many localities endured
violent assaults and the economic distress that usually followed.55 All of this may
have made it difficult for families to pay the entire ketubbah while leaving sufficient
means for the heirs.

Christian customs, whereby widows shared the estate with heirs,56 may have
influenced the increased sensitivity within the Jewish communities to the rights of
heirs. In addition, the movement toward a more patriarchal family structure that
characterized central and eastern European Jewish families in early modern times
may have begun. In such families, male heirs generally were favored over others.57
Itmay also be asked whether ascetic Jewish tendencies led to an increasingly strict
enforcement of the laws of female modesty during the medieval period.58 If this
was the case, there would have been a concomitant reduction in the economic
power of women, as well as the necessity of weighing women's economic needs,
including those expressed through patterns of inheritance. As a result, the political
position of women, which was weak to begin with since they were ineligible for all
communal offices and functions,59 would have deteriorated further. However, this
is speculation. We must beware of generalizing. In certain cases, husbands dictated
in their wills that their widows were to inherit the entire family estate.60 Determining
the real extent of women's rights - or limitations - in any premodern setting is a
most difficult, and perplexing, problem.
70 CherylTallan

NOTES
Iwish to thank Dr. Martin Lockshin, York University, for his help with the translations from Hebrew
and Aramaic, as well as for guiding me through the intricacies of some of the aspects of Jewish law

dealing with women and the family.

1. Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot ha-Maharam, Prague, ed. M. Bloch (1893; reprint, Tel
Aviv, 1969-70), no. 502.
2. See Michael Adler, Jews of Medieval England (London, 1939), 17-42.
3. Avraham Grossman, 'The Historical Background for the Ordinances on Family Affairs Attributed
to Rabbenu Gershom Me'or ha-Golah (The Light of the Exile')," in Jewish History: Essays in
Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. A. Rapoport-Albert and S. Zipperstein (London, 1988), 14,
states: "Generally the women were in charge of all these [domestic and business! affairs during the
long absences of their husbands. In spite of all the rules of modesty formally imposed on women

by the halakhah. many of them went out to conduct negotiations with feudal princes and with other
Jewish and Gentile merchants."
4. See Richard Emery, The Jews of Perpignan in the Thirteenth
Century (New York, 1959), 26.
5. This was also true in some medieval Christian communities. Tt was only in widowhood that a
woman could have real opportunities as a.femme sole.*" Barbara Hanawalt, "Introduction," in
Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Bloomington, IN, 1986), xi.
6. These figures were taken and percentages calculated from Kenneth R. Stow, 'The Jewish Family
in the Rhineland in the High Middle Ages: Form and Function," American Historical Revue 92
(1987): 1088
7. See B. D. Weinryb, "Responsa as a Source for History (Methodological Problems)," in Essays
Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on his Seventieth Birthday (London, 1967), 399-417.
8. See Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (London, 1932), 334: "Ostentatious
pauperism was undoubtedly diminished by complete measures adopted for relieving widows and
orphans. The orphans were married and the widows pensioned."
9. Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 541.
10. For a widow paying for her son's education, see ibid, no. 245.
11. For a mother arranging her son's marriage, see ibid, no. 981.
12. According to Ben-Zion Schereschewsky, "[i]n Jewish law a widow
does not inherit from her
husband,... but she is entitled to her ketubbah and the rights due to her by virtue of its provisions,
which the husband's heirs must satisfy out of the estate." See Schereschewsky, "Widows," in The
Principles of Jewish Law, ed. Menachem Elon (Jerusalem, 1985), 399.
13. For a general discussion of maintenance see Ben-Zion Schereschewsky, "Maintenance," in
Principles of Jewish Law, ed. Menachem Elon (Jerusalem, 1985), 394-98.
14. "[T]he most important of these provisions [which the husband's heirs must satisfy out of the
estate] relate to her [the widow's] maintenance.... The widow is generally entitled to receive the
same maintenance as she was entitled to receive during the husband's lifetime. The same rules
therefore apply, e.g., maintenance will include clothing, residence, medical expenses, use of
household articles, and the like." Schereschewsky, "Widows," 399.
15. In her oath the widow swore, according to R. Joseph Karo, Shulhan Arukh, Eben Ha-Ezer 96:2,
that she did not cause to be seized and did not seize anything from her dead husband. Karo goes
on to say that there are those who said that she needed to swear that she had not relinquished her
right to her ketubbah to her late husband and she had not sold her ketubbah to him. R. Moses
Isserles adds that if she just swore that she had had no enjoyment from her ketubbah it is enough.
Also they were accustomed to make her swear that she had not given away anything without the
permission of her husband.
16. See Mordekhai ben Hillel, "Commentary on the Treatise Ketubbot," Babylonian Talmud,
Ketubbot, chap. 3, nos. 170-71.
 Medieval Jewish Widows 71

17. See Mishnah Ketubbot 12, Mishnah 3. "Rather they [the heirs] must maintain her [the widow] in
her husband's house and give her a dwelling benefitting her station"; translation from Judith R.

Wegner's Chattel or Person? (New York, 1988), 140.

18. According to Irving Agus, "Biblical oath, administered to a person while he was holding a Scroll
of the Law, was very rarely used. It was reserved for the most solemn occasions.... In a solemn

atmosphere, probably while holding the Scroll of the Law, the judge, or the hazzan, would say to
the person: 'If you are professing a lie regarding this matter, you shall be seized by the following
curses. ...You shall be cursed by the Almighty, you shall be cursed by the angel.... by the seven
"
angels,... by the four angels, ...etc' See Agus, Urban Civilization in Pre-Crusade Europe, vol.
2 (New York, 1965), 580-81.
19. See Babylonian Talmud, Shevuot 39a, which mentions extreme punishments for those swearing
false oaths.
20. According to A. Freimann in his article, "She'ure ha-Ketubbah be-Ashkenaz ve-Tsorfat bi-Yeme

ha-Benayim," in the Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume, vol. 2, ed. S. Lieberman (New York,
1950), 381. "The decreasing value of the money is such that by the time of Rabbenu Tarn (R.
Jacob ben Meir, 1100-1171), the 'ikkar ketubbah of two hundred to an unmarried girl is worth

only two zequqim."

21. Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), Teshuvot Rashi, ed. I. Elfenbein (Jerusalem, 1943), no. 193.
22. See Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 268.
23. Freimann, "She'ure ha-Ketubbah," 374.
24. See Freimann, "She'ure ha-Ketubbah," 374-76, citing Rabbi Eliezer. Indeed, one ketubbah form
written after1240 states: "This nedunya that she brought to him from her father's house [includes]
silver, gold jewelry, house furnishings, bedding, the sum total of which he, R. x, the groom, the
son of R. y, accepts as [equivalent to] fifty pounds of the coin of Poitvine, made of good peshitim
that are accepted as currency anywhere. These peshitim should be such that four of them make one
dinar of refined silver. R. x, the son of R. y, our groom, of his own desire added from his own

fifty similar pounds as a present so that there would be one hundred pounds in her ketubbah."
Simhah ben Samuel, Mahzor Vitry (Jerusalem, 1963), 791.
25. Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986), xx.
26. In her settlement with her levirs, the widow Urigenia of mid-twelfth-century Germany was forced
to give them "land and books and silver equivalent to one hundred zequqim." Victor Aptowitzer,
ed., Mavo le-Sefer Raviah (Jerusalem, 1938), 203. Presumably, this land, books, and silver were
part of her ketubbah settlement.
27. Freimann, "She 'ure ha-Ketubbah," 382.
28. See Iggeret Rav Sherrura Gaon, ed. B. Levin (reprint, Jerusalem, 1971), 105; Otsar ha-Gaonim,
ed. B. Levin (Jerusalem, 1938-39), Ketubbot, no. 536. According to Louis Rabinowitz: "[The
change from an agricultural economy to a money one starting in the fifth century is reflected] in the
takkanah enacted by R. Huna ha-Levi b. Isaac and R. Manasseh b. Joseph, the geonim of
Pumbeditha, together with their colleague Biboi of Sura, between 785-788 CE., whereby the
previous law that a widow could claim her ketubbah only on the landed property of her husband
was changed to enable her to claim on his removable property also." Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v.

"Agriculture."
29. Aptowitzer, Mavo le-Sefer Raviah, 209, no. 4. The Jewish widows of Perpignan also could
collect their ketubbot from debts owed to their late husbands. Emery states: "If he [a typical Jew of

thirteenth-century Perpignan] died his wife's dowry would be restored to her in the form of loan
contracts." Emery, The Jews of Perpignan, 38.
30. Emery, The Jews of Perpignan, 26.
31. The fact that widows were the most active group in the female population in business has also been
noted by historians of medieval Christian women. See Hanawalt, cited above, n. 5. Also, Kathryn
Reyerson, "Women in Business inMedieval Montpellier," in Women and Work, 117-44.
32. Joel M?ller, Teshuvot Hakhme Tsorfat ve-Lotir (1881; reprint, Jerusalem, 1966-67), no. 91.
72 CherylTallan

33. Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 941.

34. For northern France, see Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 502. For Germany, ibid, no.
876. For activities of medieval Jewish widows in both trade and finance, see S. Krauss, "Torat
ha-Almanah be-Israel," Ha-Atid 6 (1925-26): 75 n. 2.1 am grateful to Prof. D. Golinkin, of the
Jewish Theological Seminary, Jerusalem, for this reference. For women involved in trading
activities, see Grossman, cited above, n. 3.
35. Michael Adler, "The Medieval Jews of Exeter," inDevonshire Association for the Advancement of
Science, Literature and Art: Transactions 63 ( 1931 ), 236-37.
36. For a widow as moneylender in France see M?ller, Teshuvot Hakhme Tsorfat ve-Lotir, no. 81.
For women, some of whom were probably widows, as moneylenders in a German-speaking land,
see Isaac ben Moses, Sefer Or Zarua (Zhitomir, 1862), pt. a, p. 113b, no. 762; for northern
France, see William C. Jordan, "Jews on Top." Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 39-56; for
Germany, see Ivan Marcus, "Mothers, Martyrs, and Moneymakers," Conservative Judaism 38(3)
(1986): 38-39; for Perpignan, see Emery, The Jews of Perpignan, 26; for southern France, see
Andr?e Courtemanche, "Les Femmes Juives et le Credit a Manosque au Tournant du XlVe
Si?cle," Provence Historique 37 (1987): 550-58.
37. For an extended discussion of the activities of Licoricia, see Adler, lews of Medieval England,
39-42. In addition to Licoricia, among Jewish women moneylenders of medieval England were
"Belia, the widow of Pictavin of Bedford; Mirabel of Gloucester, who had as partners her

daughter Bella and her grand-daughter Pucella; Henne, widow of Aaron of York; Floria, widow of
Master Elias, the son of Master Moses; Belia of Winchester; Milka of Canterbury; Avigay of
London; Belassez of Oxford; Comitessa of Cambridge; Belassez, widow of Leo, the son of
Preciosa; Henne, widow of Jacob of Oxford; Floria, widow of Bonevie of Newbury; Chera of
Winchester, and numerous others"; Sisters of Exile (New York, 1973), 37.
38. For an interesting discussion of dowry, dower, and other types of financial exchanges connected
to marriage, see Diane Owen Hughes, "From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe,"
Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 262-96.
39. See Janet Loengard, "Of the Gift of her Husband," in Women of the Medieval World, ed. J.
Kirshner and S. Wemple (New York, 1985), 220.
40. Ibid., 217.
41. Ibid., 231.
42. Ibid., 232.
43. M?ller, Teshuvot Hakhme Tsorfat ve-Lotir, no. 47.
44. See Irving Agus, "The Development of the Money Clause in the Ashkenazic Ketubah," Jewish
Quarterly Review 30 (1939-40): 223.
45. Meir ben Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 224.
46. Irving Agus, ed., Teshuvot Baale ha-Tosafot (New York, 1954), no. 57.
47. Ephraim Kupfer, ed. Teshuvot u-Pesaqim me 'etHakhme Ashkenaz ve-Tsorfat (Jerusalem, 1973),
no. 102.
48. Isaac ben Moses (Or Zarua), Sefer Or Zarua, pt. a, p. 102b, no. 743.
49. Kupfer, Teshuvot u-Pesaqim, no. 154.
50. Mordekhai ben Hillel, "Commentary on the Treatise Ketubbot."
51. Hayyim Or Zarua, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, in Sheelot u-Teshuvot - Sefer ha-Yashar, Jacob ben Meir
Tarn (Jerusalem, 1979-80), no. 232.
52. Zuslin is quoted in Freimann, "She'ure ha-Ketubbah," 385. Evidence for the difficulty widows
had in collecting their dowry was also found (by Emery) in Perpignan (1317-1416). As Emery
states: "In spite of all the legal guarantees, the dowry represented a veritable Achilles heel in the
matrimonial system of the Middle Ages. Our documentation reveals that women, Jews as well as
Christians, confronted grave difficulties in this area. It was sometimes difficult to recover a dowry
from the estate of a deceased husband, especially if he had died leaving debts"; "Les Veuves Juives
de Perpignan," 567 n. 26.
 Medieval Jewish Widows 73

53. In discussing the effect on the French Jews of Philip the Fair's war against Edward I of England
over Gascony in 1294-97, Jordan states: "It was inevitable that the Jews would be tallaged heavily
in France (they had already been expelled from England and Gascony). This was still limited
taxation, but it was an attempt to get a great deal from all the Jews - northern, southern,
Champenois, French, inhabitants of the western provinces. The take, if it had been all collected,
was supposed to come to 215,000 pounds. (Recall that an annual tallage of the Jews brought in
fifteen thousand.) We must imagine that French Jewry was close to economic ruin as a result of
this event." William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews (Philadelphia, 1989),
198.
54. Robert Stacey, "1240-60: A Watershed in Anglo-Jewish Relations?" Historical Research 61
(1988): 138-39: "Between 1241 and 1255, the king [Henry III] thus assessed close to 100,000
marks in direct taxation against the Jews in England, more than three times what he assessed
between 1221 and 1239. ... On the Jews, of course, the effects of these tallages were disastrous.

Financially, these tallages produced a kind of spiral of collapse."

55. Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 11 (New York, 1967), 264: "The
events during the First and Second Crusades had left behind a heritage of both animosity and
violence which could not easily be repressed. Germany thus became the scene of the most
extensive slaughter of Jews and the wholesale destruction of communities, far exceeding in both

frequency and geographic extension anything that happened in neighbouring lands."

56. There are several articles dealing with the division and the sharing of the estate between widows
and the heirs of their late husbands in certain medieval Christian communities. For England, see
Judith M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside (New York, 1987), 162-68, and
Loengard, "Of the Gift of her Huband," 215-55; for Renaissance Italy, see Christiane
"
Klapisch-Zuber, "The 'Cruel Mother,' in her Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy,
trans. L. Cochrane (Chicago, 1985), 117-31; for France, see Marie-Th?r?se Lorcin, "Veuve noble
et veuve paysanne en Lyonnais d'apr?s les testements des XIV et XV si?cles," Annales de
D?mographie Historique (1981): 273-88; and for a historical development, see Hughes, "From
Brideprice to Dowry," 262-96.
57. According to Hughes in "From Brideprice to Dowry," 278: "Renewed lineal organization in the
[High Middle Ages] had begun to weaken the authority of the conjugal bond. The unwillingness of
husbands (and their kin) to assign important parts of their patrimony to wives is one sign of a kin
group restrengthened on patrilineal principles."
Medieval northern European Jewry, like the rest of medieval northern European society, was
organized in a hierarchical system. The hierarchical stratification and the mobility between the
strata of early modern Jewish societies in terms of wealth, political position, scholarship, and
family connections is described by Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis (New York, 1971), 199-209.
But there is another basis for stratification: gender. Paula Hyman, "Gender and Jewish History,"
Tikkun (3)1 (1988), 35, writes: "[Jews] too had a hierarchy of power, measured in wealth and
rabbinic learning, if not in prowess and political might. In Jewish society, as in all others, power
was distributed primarily among men."
58. Eleazar of Mayence (d. 1357) stated: "[T]hey [his daughters] ought to be always at home, and not
to be gadding about"; Hebrew Ethical Wills, ed. I Abrahams, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1926, reprint,
1948), 211. In late medieval Europe, the sixteenth-century Polish rabbi. Rabbi Moses Isserles,
following the statements of Maimonides (Mishnah Torah, Ishut 13:11) and Rabbi Jacob ben
Asher (d. 1340; Arba'ah Turim, Even ha-Ezer 73), had almost the same opinion. He stated: "[A]
woman should not make a habit of going out much, but should sit in the corner of her house"
(Shulhan Arukh, Even ha-Ezer 73:1). For a thorough discussion of this topic, see Mordechai A.
Friedman, "The Ethics of Medieval Jewish Marriage," in Religion in a Religious Age. ed. S.
Goitein (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 87-95.
59. The reasons for the limitations of women inmale-directed religions have recently been the subject
of investigations by many scholars. For recent surveys of that material and its application to
74 Cheryl Tallan

Judaism, see Judith R. Wegner, Chattel or Person? (New York, 1988), 182-98, and Judith
Baskin, "The Separation of Women in Rabbinic Judaism," in Women, Religion, and Social
Change, ed. Y. Haddad and E. Findly (Albany NY, 1985), 3-18.
60. R. Meir ben Barukh stated: "It seems to me [in the case of] those worthy women, businesswomen,
whose husbands had written over to them all their assets at the time of their deaths...." (Meir ben
Barukh, Sheelot u-Teshuvot, no. 958). In sixteenth-century Rome, husbands sometimes dictated
in their wills that their wives were to be their principle or sole heir; Kenneth Stow and Sandra D.
Stow, "Donne ebree a Roma nell'eta' del ghetto: affetto, dependenza, autonom?a," Rassegna
Mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 90. I am grateful to Dr. E. Cohen and Dr. T. Cohen of York
University for help with this reference.

Toronto, Canada