Optional course No 4

GENDER ISSUES IN
COMPARATIVE LEGAL
HISTORY
Lecture No 2
Gender Roles and Relations and the Legal Position of Women
in the Middle Ages

Assist. Prof. Dr Nina Kršljanin

Dominant monotheism: does religion change
the status of (men and) women?
Byzantine Empire:
ancient Rome reborn as Christian
• Ostrogorsky: Byzantium based on “Roman political concepts, Greek
culture and the Christian faith”
• Women have full legal capacity and inheritance rights
• Dowry and hypobolon
• Ruling empresses
• Sex crimes: a pronounced dichotomy
• Eunuchs: maimed men or a “third gender”?
Arabian Caliphates: the gifts of Islam
• Pre-Islamic Arabia: women as men’s property
• Polygyny: causes and consequences
• Is a woman worth half a man?
(testimony, inheritance)
• Ownership of immovable property!
• No dowry, only mahr (marriage gift)
• Female virtue and zina
Eastern Europe
(Slavic laws and the Orthodox Church)
• Eastern Slavs - “Byzantine commonwealth”
• Western – Catholic influence
• Women mostly have full legal capacity, inheritance
rights vary
• Dowries less common and come with foreign
influence
• Severe punishment of sex crimes
• Male honour prominent (e.g. beards)
• Procedural roles (parties, witnesses, jurors)
Western Europe
(Germanic laws and the Catholic Church)
• Prominent male head of family and mundium
• Women fight with men in some tribes
• Protection of female honour – very detailed
• High wergeld for the murder of women
• Inheritance, dowry and Morgengabe
• Inequality in the punishment of sex crimes
• Problems with clandestine marriages
England (Common Law):
a system apart
• Early law – closer to man’s property
• Dowry, dower and paraphernal property
• ‘Courtesy’ – dowry belongs to husband
• Husband’s broad right to punish
• 'The husband and wife are one, and that
one is the husband!' (William Blackstone)
• The pros and cons of being femme sole
Common themes: family and faith
• Women’s roles in the family: daughters, mothers, widows
• Economic and political role of marriage
• The good pious woman
• Women in the church?
• Nuns and convent life
• ‘Whores’ and sinners: prostitution
• Women’s work: between private and public spheres