Gender, Law and the State: Women's Rule in Medieval Iberia

It is well understood by Iberianists that women who lived in the region that would come to be Spain and Portugal during the middle ages held a special status in relationship to property and inheritance, compared to their sisters elsewhere in the medieval west – this is to say, they inherited equally with their brothers, participated in a society of acquisitions with their husbands, and held property independently, whether they were married or singlewomen, whether they were elites or “lesser” free women. This phenomena emerges out of Christian Iberians’ adherence to Visigothic Law, which in turn was based on Roman legal ideas about gender and property. These legal principals and social customs are key to understanding why and how women were fully (if not equally) incorporated into the governance of Iberian lordships and realms throughout the medieval period. The foundation of the realm of Portugal in the twelfth and thirteenth century offers a laboratory for the application of these principles, as well as the challenges inheriting and co-ruling women faced – not from their fathers, who endorsed these principles, but from their brothers and other lords who sought to hold power independently and fully of their sisters’ claims. My research on these “queens” of early Portugal (as these women were called, explicates this dynamic and enriches our understanding of the role of gender in early state formation.