women as issuers of testaments in medieval denmark Legal historians have been highly surprised at my conclusion that there was no difference between the testaments of women and those of men. “Testaments are the most gendered documents we have from the Middle Ages!” one said when we discussed it.18 At first, her opinion surprised me, but I must admit that there is a difference between the testaments of women and men when it comes to the legacies. It seems that women and men remembered different sorts of people in their testaments and left them different items. Laymen often remembered members of their retinue with arms or horses, while laywomen bequeathed clothes, linen, or money to their chambermaids. It seems that women to a much greater extent than men left legacies to members of the household in the wider sense. In discussing the role of women as issuers of testaments, this feature is obviously important: the legacies reflected the different spheres of life of men and women. In that sense, they are gendered and thus different. This does not alter the fact that the testaments of men and women were the same type of document. This is my principal argument in this paper. Despite their inferior legal status compared to men, women issued documents of the same type, and thus circumvented the legal problems arising from this inferior status. The legacies range from small trinkets – some of them with sentimental value − to more substantial gifts, such as jewelry or silver objects of considerable value. Occasionally, provisions were made to trusted servants, who were granted possession and use of a farm for the remaining days of their lives.19 And then there were the donations of land. Sometimes only a single farm, maybe, but occasionally large donations of entire estates or several farms at a time occurred. It is certain that several Danish monasteries were founded by exceptionally generous testamentary gifts, but unfortunately we shall never know exactly how many. I mention but two that were founded by exceptionally generous testamentary gifts: one from the 18 Personal conversation with Professor Helle Vogt, University of Copenhagen, Spring, 2023. I thank Professor Vogt for permission to quote from the conversation. 19 See Vogt 2017. 156
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=