Mother and Sons, Inc. Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Monpellier by Kathryn L. Reyerson (review)

The historiography on medieval women in business has flourished in recent years, and Professor Reyerson's work on Martha de Cabanis will certainly take a prominent place on the growing bookshelf of titles investigating the role of prominent widows in their respective communities. Martha's early fourteenth-century world, centred in Montpellier, is painstakingly reconstructed from materials which are not particularly abundant, and record mainly the business side of her activity. A prominent Aragonese possession since the early thirteenth century, Montpellier became a possession of the Kingdom of Majorca in 1276, and was sold to the King of France in 1349. Martha's activities, spanning the 1320s to 1340s, are brought to life principally through notarial deeds which are usually remarkably dry. The register of notary Guillelmus Nogareti provides the main source for the investigation. Martha belonged to a relatively successful family, the grand daughter of a grain merchant who served as town consul. Likewise, her father was a successful townsman, a tawer tentatively connected by Reyerson to the bookbinding trade of the University of Montpellier. Martha was married to Guiraudus de Cabanis before reaching 20 years of age, and widowed in 1326. Reyerson dates her year of birth approximately between 1295 and 1300; she had her eldest son in 1315, and may have died together with members of her family in the Black Death.

The reader is given one of the work's key objectives in the final words of the 'Introduction': to determine 'the limits of what was possible for elite mercantile women in the context of a patriarchal society'. Chapter 1 reconstructs Montpellier and its regional context in the early fourteenth century. A walled hilltop town of around forty-five hectares, Montpellier was home to a busy market economy and community which may have reached thirty-five to forty thousand inhabitants by 1300. Chapter 2 outlines the main known facts concerning Martha and her family. As a member of the urban elite, Martha was likely brought up in a relatively protected environment. Her father and grandfather enjoyed political influence and played a role in town decision-making. Reyerson makes the most of the scanty evidence available to piece together elements of martha's childhood and youth. Chapter 3 deals with Martha's marriage, the groom and in-laws. The couple had three sons, who would become involved in the family business. Reyerson believes there is enough evidence to suggest Martha's transit from her paternal family group to that of her husband, a model affirmed in fifteenth-century Florentine studies. This point would have merited further elaboration. Chapter 4 is a study of the Cabanis house, reconstructing domestic space and the household economy. The author draws on her intimate knowledge of medieval Montpellier to establish the wider contexts within which the limited evidence on these topics may be significantly interpreted.

A turning point in Martha's life, and in the book, occurs with the death of Guiraudus and her emergence in the records as a widow and tutor of their children. The onset of widowhood and the beginning of her guardianship are discussed in Chapter 5. In the final pages of this chapter, the author engages in the historio-graphical debate on female remarriage and its consequences, unfolding in the context of the Aragonese lands and elsewhere. Widowed before the age of thirty, Martha was able to conduct her own family business and participate openly in property transactions, preparing her sons for their eventual take-over. Chapter 6 looks at the legal framework which made her guardianship possible, while Martha's active exercise of that agency in the commerical sphere is discussed in Chapter 7. The affirmation of female agency in notarial contracts was achieved by renouncing the Senatus Consultum Velleianum, a cornerstone of Roman legal discrimination against women. Martha skilfully channeled incomes from landholdings as well as commercial profits back into the family's business activities. Moreover, the family farmed ecclesiastical rents, and backed their...