K athryn L. R eyerson . Mother and Sons, Inc

Drawing on notarial records concerning the financial and commercial activities of a prominent widow and her two sons, who were members of the merchant elite of early fourteenth-century Montpellier, Kathryn L. Reyerson, in Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier, contributes to our understanding of the economic opportunities that were open to talented and well-connected women in parts of the Mediterranean world that lay under the influence of Roman law and the ius commune. Like other widows in this region, Martha de Cabanis would have risked losing her children and access to her husband’s patrimony if she had chosen to remarry. By remaining a widow, however, and by repeatedly renouncing the “protections” of Roman law (which aimed at preventing women from entering into contractual obligations in behalf of others), Martha, like other widows in Montpellier and various parts of the Crown of Aragon, was able to act as guardian and curatrix for her minor and young adult sons. Martha’s continued collaboration with her sons even after her role as guardian and curatrix had ended underscores, Reyerson argues convincingly, the degree to which her sons recognized Martha’s talents. Indeed, Reyerson argues further, it was largely because of Martha’s abilities to preserve and capitalize upon the resources that her husband had left behind that two of their three sons became prominent retailers of Lucchese silks, spices from the Levant, French linens and woolens, and saffron from Catalonia; their clients included residents of Paris, Toulouse, Cyprus, and the Byzantine Empire.

Ancient history · Byzantine architecture · Elite · Empire · Guardian · Middle Ages · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies