The Fruit of Her Hands

In the thriving urban economies of late thirteenth-century Catalonia, Jewish and Christian women labored to support their families and their communities. The Fruit of Her Hands examines how gender, socioeconomic status, and religious identity shaped how these women lived and worked.

Sarah Ifft Decker draws on thousands of notarial contracts as well as legal codes, urban ordinances, and Hebrew responsa literature to explore the lived experiences of Jewish and Christian women in the cities of Barcelona, Girona, and Vic between 1250 and 1350. Relying on an expanded definition of women’s work that includes the management of household resources as well as wage labor and artisanal production, this study highlights the crucial contributions women made both to their families and to urban economies. Christian women, Ifft Decker finds, were deeply embedded in urban economic life in ways that challenge traditional dichotomies between women in northern and Mediterranean Europe. And while Jewish women typically played a less active role than their Christian counterparts, Ifft Decker shows how, in moments of communal change and crisis, they could and did assume prominent roles in urban economies.

Through its attention to the distinct experiences of Jewish and Christian women, The Fruit of Her Hands advances our understanding of Jewish acculturation in the Iberian Peninsula and the shared experiences of women of different faiths. It will be welcomed by specialists in gender studies and religious studies as well as students and scholars of medieval Iberia.

“Sarah Ifft Decker has admirably and deftly met the myriad challenges facing medieval women’s historians. . . . The Fruit of Her Hands is an extensively and meticulously researched book.”—Nina Caputo, Jewish Historical Studies

“Decker’s study makes an important contribution to the study of women’s home life and work in nonmodern Catalunya and should be read widely.”—Jean Dangler, Church History

“By focusing her attention on exploring the economic status and activities of Jewish women in medieval Catalonia (in comparison with their Christian counterparts), Sarah Ifft Decker makes an important intervention. The Fruit of Her Hands is not only groundbreaking but beautifully written and solidly based on extensive archival research.”—Debra Blumenthal, author of Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia

“The Fruit of Her Hands presents—and expertly analyzes—rich archival evidence about the lives and financial activities of Jewish and Christian women in medieval Catalonia, with important implications for understanding the intersections of gender, religion, socioeconomic status, and geography.”—Paola Tartakoff, author of Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

Sarah Ifft Decker is Assistant Professor of History at Rhodes College and the host of Media-eval: A Medieval Pop Culture Podcast.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Note on Naming and Coinage

Introduction

Part I: Family Law

1. Marriage and Inheritance in Catalan Christian Legal Culture

2. Gender, Acculturation, and Resistance in Catalan Jewish Family Law

Part II: Notarial Culture

3. Christian Women in Notarial Culture

4. Jews, Notaries, and the Christian City

Part III: Women’s Work

5. Working Women in Medieval Catalan Cities

6. Christian and Jewish Women in the Interreligious Real Estate Market

7. Credit, Change, and Crisis in Catalan Jewish Communities

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Gender Studies

History

           European

           History of Religion

           Medieval

Jewish Studies

Religious Studies & Religion

           Judaism

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Medieval History

           Medieval Religion