Women held a high place in the 10th and 11th centuries in southern

Women held a high place in southern European societies in the 10th and 11th centuries. As a wife, the woman was protected by a dowry or decimum. This purpose of this was to protect her against the risk of desertion, but in reality its function in the social and family life of the time was much more important. The decimum was the wife’s right to receive a tenth of all her husband’s property. The wife had the right to withhold consent, in all transactions the husband would make. And more than just a right: she also enjoyed a real power of decision, equal to that of her husband.
     The wife shared in the management of her husband’s persona property, but the opposite was not aways true. Women seemed perfectly prepared to defend their own in heritance against husbands who tried to exceed their rights. A case in point is that of Maria Vivas, a Catalan woman of Barcelona. Having agreed with her husband Miro to sell a field she had inherited, for the needs of the household, she insisted on compensation. The unfortunate husband was obliged to assign her a piece of land from his personal inheritance. Either through the dowry or through being hot-tempered, the wife knew how to win herself, within the context of the family a powerful economic position.