1315 upvotes, 9 direct replies (showing 9)
Your husband is dead? Congratulations! This is the best possible news you could have gotten.
For most war widows, the ultimate goal was remarriage in addition to work. But that's just the thing: REmarriage. Court records from the late Middle Ages show that widows seeking to remarry had to supply proof that their previous husband was in fact deceased. So if you have documentation or a witness, you are in good shape.
And remarriage was indeed the most common outcome, and broadly accepted socially. By the fifteenth century, we have cases where a widow remarried in a full public ceremony, nothing clandestine at all...only to be sued several years later by her *first* husband, who was, as it were, "only mostly dead"[1]. The public, approved marriage in an era where two people could technically marry themselves in complete private shows the public acceptance of second marriages.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X90qKQAMh8A&pbjreload=10
The fact that these non-widows were willing to pay witnesses to lie in court that their husbands were deceased shows the desirability of a second marriage for widows, and the acceptability of marrying a widow for men.
For some women who did remarry, and many (most?) who didn't, a solid option was domestic service. The classic case here is the "European Marriage Pattern," in which rural women move to cities, work for a few years as servants, and then maybe get married or maybe (10-25%) stay single. However, studies of individual parishes or data sets (Goldberg, Poos, Kowaleski) suggest that the number of servants in *rural* areas was also increasing significantly over the course of the later Middle Ages. Furthermore, this population was disproportionately female.
Especially in the more industrialized regions like the Low Countries, women in rural areas around cities might take in "piece work" for city corporations--doing a lot of the actual labor, especially in cloth/sewing based industries.
Sometimes, though, piecework could work without the middle layer. In the late Middle Ages, lay women often supplied candles on an as-needed basis for local parish churches and even monasteries. Think of going into Notre-Dame, or the grotto at the *other* Notre Dame, or another big touristy cathedral today--the walls and walls of devotional candles that people light in prayer or "prayer." That's what we're talking about here. (Actually, women in Reformation England had genuine economic problems with this, and some similar tasks, suddenly yanked away as possibilities.)
Again, this was not limited to widows. Many married women had to work to support their families, too.
I mentioned above that 10-25% of women in towns probably stayed single. This would also have been an option for widows. Some might even have found it an economic, not just social/personal, advantage to stay single. "Village" does not necessarily imply poor. (Joan d'Arc came from a peasant family, and they owned a stone house and had servants.)
Joining a convent...hm, probably less of an option for the social class we are talking about, even taking children out of the equation. Monasteries did hire servants (and in Spain, nuns enslaved women as well), so that type of servitude could have been an option. In the high Middle Ages, a category of convent residents known as "lay sisters" would be kind of a cross between a nun and a servant--doing the nicer types of domestic service work, while having access to maybe one of the nuns' prayer services each day. (There is VERY little research on lay sisters, and only beginning to be a little on lay brothers.).
However, by the late Middle Ages, "lay sister" much more often refers to wealthy widows who retired to monasteries, like Katharina Tucher in Nuremberg or Bavarian duchess Kunigunde. Here's a short bit I just wrote on another thread[2], if you're interested.
Women with a few financial resources and a devotion to God (or a sense of practicality for...reasons of their own...) who immigrated to a city did still have an option. Over the course of the late Middle Ages, urban women created a dazzling array of types of religious life, with varying degrees of independence from Church oversight.
Beguines, tertiaries, penitents, "quasi-religious women"...a hundred names, some of which were slurs as often as they were descriptors. Johannes Nider, one of the men who laid out the roadmap for witch hysteria and persecution--definitely a man who found ways to Put Things In Categories--basically threw up his hands and gave up when it came to independent religious women, or as John Van Engen translates his confusion, "lay people living as religious in the world" (three contradictions in one).
This is important for our case because women that our sources refer to as beguines could own their own houses, or co-own them with other beguines, and even have their children living with them. They could take temporary vows, not just permanent ones.
Or they could live stricter religious lives. Margaretha Beutler von Kenzingen technically lost her husband to, well, being executed, not war. Afterwards, she deposited her daughter Magdalena at a nearby Franciscan convent and went off to live an independent holy life. (Beutler ends up joining the sometime-rival Dominican order, which later causes some fireworks between the two). The rather creeptastic Augustinian friar Konrad Kügelin essentially inherited care of one artisan widow's teenage daughter and son when she decided to retire to a convent rather than seeking remarriage.
Independent religious life was certainly not an option for all widows, and we can imagine that most would not have wanted it regardless of whether they had the resources, freedom, and lack of social pressure.
Throughout this answer, I've been pretty blase about the whole "lost her husband" thing. In fact, medieval people absolutely fell in love, and absolutely went through desperate times when they lost a spouse. We shouldn't ignore women's needs and responses in this area. I've written before on AskHistorians about non-familial emotional support networks[3] available to young medieval women, some of which would apply to young village widows.
Comment by bushido216 at 01/01/2020 at 03:34 UTC
85 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Why is this news "the best"? As opposed to a husband with a debilitating injury? Or from coming back at all? Were young widows at an advantage in terms of owning assets to be brought into a marriage?
Thanks. I'm mostly trying to figure out why widowhood is preferable to the husband returning home. Thanks.
Comment by historibro at 01/01/2020 at 03:28 UTC
69 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Do you have a source you can recommend?
Comment by Tatem1961 at 01/01/2020 at 05:08 UTC
32 upvotes, 1 direct replies
and in Spain, nuns enslaved women as well
Can you tell me more about this?
Comment by oneeighthirish at 01/01/2020 at 06:39 UTC
20 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The rather creeptastic Augustinian friar Konrad Kügelin
If you have a moment, would you please indulge my curiosity about what made this man "creeptastic"? A cursory google search revealed only to me that he was the hagiographer of Elisabeth Achler, and that he seemed to bend the truth a bit.
Comment by dontgettooreal at 01/01/2020 at 13:24 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Such an excellent read. Thank you for all of that. Many questions arise, but here's my most burning:
What made Augustinian friar Konrad Kügelin so creeptastic?
Comment by sharabi_bandar at 01/01/2020 at 04:06 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Wow this is a great answer thank you
Comment by Redthrist at 01/01/2020 at 11:38 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Joining a convent...hm, probably less of an option for the social class we are talking about
I was always under the impression that convents were an option for everyone. Is it not true? Did you have to wealthy to become a nun?
Comment by mogrim at 01/01/2020 at 15:55 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
in Spain, nuns enslaved women as well
Have you got any more information on this?
Comment by Thesmartguava at 07/01/2020 at 02:16 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I have a question. You note that second marriages were socially and economically beneficial for women, even those who were already married. Why is that the case?