Dowry, Power and Female Agency: The Catalan Countesses during the Feudalization Process

Our hypothesis is that the consolidation of the count's power and the new co-governance formulas associated with extended family, combined with the legal mechanisms of inheritance and marriage of the Visigothic law, allowed women from the county families to exercise power whether they were mothers, widows, wives or daughters. This process would reach its peak during the first half of the 11th century with the government of Ermesinde of Carcassonne, who was Countess of Barcelona. The first feudal wave during her government, which she firmly opposed, would give way to a new period of retrogression in the legal mechanisms that allowed women to access power. The changes brought forward by feudalism impacted the whole of society and led to a progressive disappearance of the old public mechanisms that guaranteed the Count’s power and authority and, in turn, negatively affected female participation in power and resulted in a more marked differentiation of gender roles.