Provisions for widowhood in the legal sources of sixteenth-century Lithuania

The focus of this book is the property status of noble widows and their relation to family property in Lithuania between 1529 and 1566 from a gender perspective. It is based both on sources of the normative law and records of legal practice. Kunsmanaite traces and compares the development of two coexisting legal models – contractual provisions and legal provisions – and analyses their reflection in legal practice by examining numerous case studies, finding that the latter followed the normative law in a very flexible way. She is also concerned with the connection of laws on disposal of land with dower laws as well as the re-evaluation of the status of the non-dowered widows. By comparing her results with the situation in other countries, she puts her analysis into a European context. Thus, Kunsmanaite makes an important contribution to gender history by giving an insight into the economic and legal situation of women in the Early Modern Period. She also gives a valuable tool for further research by including transcriptions and translations of the mid-sixteenth century Lithuanian normative sources, which were written in Ruthenian and Latin language.