Femei din Banatul medieval în fața scaunelor de judecată comitatense și capitulare (1350-1450)
Women in Medieval Banat in Front of the County and Chapters Courts (1350-1450)

Summary/Abstract: The medieval studies during the last decades often focused on non-traditional subjects, especially on women, children or other categories seen as marginal within the medieval society. My approach here has aimed to discuss few aspects concerning the presence of women in the medieval Banat before the counties and chapters courts (Fig. 1-2). I have focused on the 14th century and the first half of the 15th one for a very objective reason: after a long silence of the office documents during the anterior centuries, that was the moment the woman, the noble one firstly, came into documents, not in a spectacular way, but sufficiently to frame certain hypostases I believe be reasonably extrapolate to the medieval society in whole. Their juridical status, their right to own lands and, by this, their juridical personality were to give the noble women access to justice, but also created problems when joined issue with the men’s traditional patrimonial right. I have had no intention to overbid the subject – at that time the female condition was subordinated to male preeminence. However, ignoring such a subject runs the risk of making it ridiculous, and by this, of lacking a reconstruction of a more realistic landscape of the medieval courts in front of which the presence of women was not an accidental but rather a common one.Absolutely, the noble women were in the cases I have analyzed those who had access to the judiciary units when their rights were endangered or they were prosecuted. Which was the reason of appearing before a judge is one of the first questions in the matter. Their privileged social status is the main way to find the answer, in connection with their right of lands possession, so to say their legal personality they needed to appear before the judge. As a general rule, only the unmarried ladies or the widows had the right to come alone before a judge, the married ones being assisted by their husbands or some appointed representatives. But the documents of the time show us a great diversity of cases that come with tinges in the law courts landscape in the Magyar kingdom during the 14-15th centuries, as the human presence had to influence traditions and customs or judiciary rules and practices, and made them more flexible and adapted to the time circumstances, as usually happens.

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