Kathryn L. Reyerson is Professor of History and founding Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota, USA.  She has written books and articles on business, law, and trade in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean world.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Charts

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Agnes de Bossones' Origins, Marriage, and Litigation

Chapter 2 - Agnes's Family Networks

Chapter 3 - Agnes's Networks of Property

Chapter 4 - Marriage

Chapter 5 - Apprenticeship

Chapter 6 - Urban/Rural Connections

Chapter 7 - Women of the Marketplace: Horizontal and Vertical Links

Chapter 8 - A Community of Prostitutes in Campus Polverel

Chapter 9 -Agnes's Networks of Philanthropy

Conclusions

Appendices

1 - Women Market sellers

2 - Prostitutes

3 - Burial Requests to the Dominican Convent

4 - Burial Requests to the Franciscan Convent

5 - Transcription and Translation of Agnes's will

Bibliography

Index

This book illuminates the connections and interaction among women and between women and men during the medieval period. To do this, Kathryn L. Reyerson focuses specifically on the experiences of Agnes de Bossones, widow of a changer of the mercantile elite of Montpellier. Agnes was a real estate mogul and a patron of philanthropic institutions that permitted lower strata women to survive and thrive in a mature urban economy of the period before 1350. Notably, Montpellier was a large urban center in southern France. Linkages stretched horizontally and vertically in this robust urban environment, mitigating the restrictions of patriarchy and the constraints of gender. Using the story of Agnes de Bossones as a vehicle to larger discussions about gender, this book highlights the undeniable impact that networks had on women's mobility and navigation within a restrictive medieval society.