Brothers and Sisters: Family Solidarity and Patrimonial Partition in the Early Middle Ages
This essay illuminates the place of women in sibship and the relationship
between brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, documented through Bavarian
and Tuscanian charters of the 8th-10th centuries. Sisters are not necessarily
disadvantaged in the partition of a patrimonial heritage: they inherit specific
properties that have to be developed through a bi-lateral relationship with their
brothers or their nephews, especially when this men are ecclesiastics. From the
methodological point of view, this essay demonstrates the necessity to consider
all the interactions inside the family group to understand the place of women
in such a system.