Fratelli e sorelle. Solidarietà familiari e spartizione del patrimonio nell’alto medioevo

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.