Humble Petitioners and Able Contractors : French Women as Intermediaries in the Redemption of Captives

Résumé En

When corsairs stole French men away to North Africa, they fractured the hierarchical family unit at the basis of French society and left French women to pick up the pieces. The very notion of wives and widows acting without male protectors strained social conventions, but France’s legal system sanctioned and indeed depended on these same women as intermediaries in redemption. Despite real and increasing restraints on female authority over matters of personal status during the early modern period, therefore, the example of women petitioning officials and contracting with merchants to liberate captives points to an overlooked juridical and practical role for French women. Like Jewish brokers, religious aliens who by returning Christian captives to the proper side of the Mediterranean helped reestablish spiritual balance undone by Barbary captivity, French women – though outsiders by virtue of gender – helped restore social order by returning fathers and sons to their rightful positions within households.