hrj

It's time once again for the Kalamazoo Sessions Live-Blog!

I got started a little late on this session because I needed to get my wi-fi access set up, so the first one is a bit more incoherent than I like.

Session 1 Valley III 303 -- Women and Authority: Truth and Testimony in Late Medieval English Courts
Organizer: Jennifer McNabb, Western Illinois Univ. Presider: Karl Shoemaker, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison

Witness Testimony and the Ecclesiastical and Municipal Regulation of Midwifery in the Late Middle Ages
Ginger L. Smoak, Univ. of Utah

Exploration of the ways in which authorities imposed regulation on midwives in the context of their correctly performing religious duties, e.g., emergency baptisms, where they are required to prioritize baptism even over life of mother. Similarly religious regulation motivation for prohibition on use of prayers or charms to ease childbirth. Midwives vulnerable to prosecution if they didn't enter into regulatory relationship, but also vulnerable to charges of malpractice if they did, e.g., for baptizing stillborn children. Midwives needed witnesses to prove they'd followed correct procedures, hence the practice of having a 2nd midwife or having a priest present as witness at the birth. Practicing without a license was a hazard because they weren't established as valid religious practioners, not because of medical concerns. Midwives as witnesses often had different goals from the regulating authorities and were thought to be prone to protecting their patients' secrets rather than testifying against them. Although registration was ostensibly secular, it often specified getting a license from the bishop. Could also include being evaluated by a male physician. When midwive-licensing grew more obligatory, there was a simultaneous crackdown on male unlicensed medical practitioners. Licensed midwives were sworn to attend any woman in need and forbidden to leave one birth for another, e.g., for a higher fee. License included an oath to report unlicensed practitioners to the authorities. Set up board of female supervisors who monitored practitioners and made regular reports. This created a pressure toward standardization of care. Certain types of birth problems (e.g., deformity, stillbirth) required verification by a physician.

Changes in regulation of midwives was not necessarily intended to limit or discourage their practice, but to standardize practice and add supervision more in the line of quality control.

“That Right May Take Place”: Female Witnesses and Their Stories in Late Medieval English Church Courts
Jennifer McNabb

Uses of courts by women for dispute resolution. Gendered patterns in how witnesses presented and framed testimony. Testimony was necessarily an artificially constructed narrative, based on formal interrogatories and versions of the witness's responses as recorded by a third party acting as an agent of the court. Combination of what witnesses intended to share and what clerks chose to record.

Types of cases include not only defamation suits, but also apparently objective subjects such as probate (e.g., how valuation of goods is pressnted). Suits regarding non-ecclesiastical matrimonial arrangements are a fertile ground for gendered framing of testimony. Matrimonial-related suits from Chester include 30% female testimony. Memories of exact wording of marital contracts was key as statements of present consent was the relevant requirement. As irregular marital contracts were often performed in female-dominated spaces, women were often key witnesses. Additional testimony covered the behavior of the couple (gestures of affection, use of forms of address indicating spousehood, exchange of gifts, etc.) even though this was not definitive evidence of a contract. Other topics of testimony included the clothing worn, tone of voice during the spoken contract, prior behavior of the couple. Testimony of consummation, particularly regarding child-brides, was typically provided by female servants. But the testimony also shows how women were often drivers of creating the context or evidence that consummation had taken place.

Breach of contract suits include similar types of evidence for the existence of a marital contract. "Spousal behavior" constituted evidence of a marital contract. But similarly testimony around apparent spousal behavior could be used when denying a contract, e.g., explaining how a man came to have in his possession a woman's glove (typically a spousal-type gift) by claiming he had bought it from another person.

Women's knowledge of the law was often deliberately framed based on the desired outcome (e.g., ignorance of the types of behavior that could support a conclusion of marriage might be presented by a woman who wanted the allegation of marriage denied, claiming "we didn't marry in the church so I thought I wasn't married", while a desired judgement supporting the marriage would include very detailed knowledge of how this supporting evidence should be construed.

Female witnesses therefore had a great deal of agency in constructing the desired outcome using nuanced manipulation of the content and framing of the testimony.

Marking the Woman a Sinner: Testimony and Legal Fiction in Renaissance England
Lesley Skousen, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison

Contrast between women's active participation in the courts as shown by legal records, versus the image of women as legally powerless as presented in literature of the time. As noted in the previous paper, women in court could manipulate both images (powerfull or powerless) as it suited their strategic needs.

English common law created an ambiguous situation for the benefit of clergy until deliberately included in statutary law, esp. after the Beckett affair. This enhancement of benefit of clergy encouraged the claim of clerical status by all manner of improbable defendents, resulting in calls for clarification or limitation of the scope, e.g., in the case of university communities. Some work-arounds evolved like a "two-strikes" approach for those claiming benefit who can't document being in orders, where at getting off for a first offense you might be branded discreetly with an indication of your offense and at the second similar offense this would be taken into account.

Women could not claim benefit of clergy, in theory, although there is evidence of some claims in dispite of this. (Also rare cases where nuns made claim of it successfully.) Rare case of a claim that a priet's entire household should be able to invoke his clerical status for immunity.

Women had other "mercies" under the legal system, e.g., "benefit of belly", that could make it difficult to get convictions. Although technically only a reprieve until the birth, it was used in extended ways similarly to the clerical benefit, as with elderly women who claimed it, or women who claimed it but the conviction was never enforced after the birth.

Another out was the common motif of "some random stranger happend along and killed this person I'm accused of killing" which appears to have been more readily accepted in cases where leniancy was desired (e.g., domestic violence situations).

After "benefit of clergy" was extended by statute to women in context with the "two strikes" addendum this seems to have been in part a means of providing a context for convicting repeat offenders who otherwise might have repeatedly gotten off by "feminine" escape clauses. Once this becomes established, the statistics suggest a "feminization" of benefit of clergy with a corresonding shift for male offenders to sentences of transportation. [Note: the "two strikes" label is my own, not the speaker's terminology.]

This shifting use of the benefit of clergy with the two-strikes branding was a means of offering mercy while still maintaining some level of order.