Description
Book SynopsisIn 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
Trade Review“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
“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
