“Claiming what is Mine”: Dowry Disputes among Aragonese Jews

Throughout the late Middle Ages, and especially during the 15^th century, Iberian documentary sources witness the claim by Aragonese Jewish women over their dowry. These women appear before courts, almost always with the support of their parents and/or siblings, and they try to get control over the assets that had been granted to them as dowry (stipulated in their ketubbot) when they married. They argue various reasons for this: among those partners that remain Jewish, either the husband has used these assets for his own business that later on failed, or the agreed marriage does not finally take place; in other cases, the marriage breaks down when one of the partners (generally, the husband) decides to baptize; here, it is not infrequent that the wife decides to fight defending her rights, occasionally before a Christian judge, that is, the merino or the bailiff, and ultimately, the king. With the use of Latin sources, this paper tries to analyze the status of the Jewish women who decided to sue their partners and/or in-laws and the consequences of this decision. It is based on documentary sources, for the most part, unpublished, extracted from the royal court (Cancillería) records of the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón in Barcelona, and also from Aragonese notarial archives.