Land: Building and Maintaining a Property Portfolio

Abstract

Case studies of three locations, Melara, Hochfelden and Canossa, show the rise of comital wealth and power in the late eleventh century. In the Middle Ages property, especially land, was the source of wealth and power. Women inherited property directly or obtained it as a dowry, a reverse dowry or, in Germany, as Morgengabe, which could be inherited by the bride’s surviving heirs, but their property was not secure. Salian and Lombard law affected how women could act. Empress Adelheid controlled vast estates in Germany and Italy, but Emperor Henry III gave away Empress Agnes’s dower lands. Countess Matilda of Tuscany’s property in northern Italy was subject to the confiscation whims of her cousin, Emperor Henry IV.