Diplomata Belgica: les sources diplomatiques des Pays-Bas méridionaux au Moyen Âge. The Diplomatic Sources from the Medieval Southern Low Countries

Diplomata Belgica offers a critical survey of all the diplomatic sources (various types of charters and deeds), edited or still unpublished, and issued by both natural persons and legal bodies from the medieval Southern Low Countries. Diplomata Belgica covers present day Belgium as well as those areas which belonged historically to the Southern Low Countries but are part now of France (French Flanders, French Hainault), the Netherlands (parts of the provinces of Zeeland, Noord-Brabant, Limburg), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg or Germany (parts of the Rhineland). The database aims at exhaustivity for the period before 1250 and will, in the future, also include late medieval diplomatic materials without striving after completeness

Women’s mobility in the Late Medieval low countries: the evidence of diplomatic documents (12th-13th century)

This contribution examines the extent to which people, and especially women, moved around, as revealed in diplomatic documents from the Low Countries in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. It illustrates both the scope and the limitations of this type of document in the study of norms and practices. Medieval people were permanently on the move. They left their homes for hundreds of reasons, on an errand or a walk in the neighbourhood, on a short journey, or on a long trip far away. The evidence from diplomatic documents reveals no more than many other sources under scrutiny in this volume. However, charters would not seem to be the most obvious source for investigating people’s mobility and travel habits, especially women’s. Apart from those charters that are well dated and located, the general body of evidence is anecdotal and fortuitous, and women were not involved to any great extent in matters that are the subjects of diplomatic documents. In this article we try to explain why the search for evidence of women’s mobility in these diplomatic sources is more productive than one might expect