Introduction:
I include this text because it reveals, in a rather casual way, some
of the only too common dangers to medieval women that stemmed from pregancy
and childbirth. Were it not for the property under dispute, we would
never have learned that Serra of Noyers lost her baby due to a hard fall
while attempting to exact what she felt were her property rights over the
local peasantry. The text also provides a nice, if not very unusual,
look at motives for aristocratic donations to monasteries. The text comes
from the cartulary of the monastery of Noyers, located in the southern
Touraine.
The Land of Cultura-Palestrelli
Let it be known to everyone, both present and future, that a certain
man who was living at Noyers, named Ingelgerius, fell ill. Before his life
could be ended by that illness, he sent for Stephen, abbot of the same
monastery of Noyers, and sought from him most humbly consolation of soul
and body. What he most piously sought was benignly offered by the abbot.
Ingelgerius, moreover, gave to the abbot and monastery of Noyers, with
the consent of his wife Serra and their sons, a certain land with its meadow
[pratus], which is called Cultura Palestelli. This land lies between
the main road which heads from le Nouatre to Port-de-Piles and the road
which leads from Noyers to the spring called Fons Poillosa.
He died and was buried by the monks. After his wife and sons completed their mourning, they denied that they had affirmed the gift of the land to the monks, even though previously they had agreed to their father's alms. In the same year, however, while this same woman, who was pregnant at the castle of le Nouatre, was continuing to require sheep from certain of their peasants [rusticani] during the winter, she fell down on the ground; this caused her to miscarry [facto abortivo] and, greatly terrified by fear of death, she therefore asked the afore-mentioned Abbot Stephen to come to her. With all her sons standing by and agreeing, she once again affirmed the aforesaid land, namely the land of Palestelli, as it is called, to the church of Noyers and the monks of this place. She also affirmed the meadow which is there, and which we call Beram. Her six sons affirmed this: Pagan, William, Rainald, Benedict, Urias, and Walter.
Witnesses: Huo the priest; Adelelmus Who Fights the Vicarius [Pugna-Vicarium], Arnulfus Chillos, Stephen his brother, Geoffrey de Malo-Fremero, Hubelinus the mercer, and Humbaldus the youth.
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