Justinian and Women - Imperial Law from a Gender Perspective

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Katharina Wojciech
• Subject Area: Ancient History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493947268

The project deals with the legislation of the Emperor Justinian (527-565) with regard to women and combines the social and legal historical perspective with the gender perspective. As a legislator, Justinian paid a great deal of attention to the concerns of women, and accordingly the question regarding the reasons for and consequences of this interest is all the more pertinent. Above all, however, it is necessary to ask how his laws reflected the ideas of 'femininity' within 6th-century Byzantine society and how they themselves influenced it. To answer these questions, approximately 200 provisions from the Codex Iustinianus and the Novellae are evaluated. Laws that show women in secular contexts (e.g. as wife, mother, heiress, patroness) are considered. They formulate specific expectations of women and convey an impression of ideal-typical gender roles as well as relationships between the sexes. At the same time, a tension between real women's problems and ideal-typical conceptions of women becomes clear here. In a synopsis with literary, epigraphic, and papyrological texts, the laws are thus contextualized and examined for their place in life. In this way, not only specific women's worlds, but also the social order of the 6th century and the view of women within this order can be explored. Specifically, we will examine, (1) what influence Christian ideas had on Justinian's 'women's legislation' and the gender roles conveyed there, (2) how the strengthening of women's financial situation affected family life and women's freedom of action and which motives underlay it, (3) how legislation affected the lives of women beyond the sphere of the elites (prostitutes, actresses, so-called 'heretics'), (4) how women themselves contributed to the development of law through their own initiative and helped to stimulate important changes,(5) how gender roles were negotiated between old social customs and new ideas of the emperor,(6) how regional traditions in the Roman Empire helped shape the image of women and 'women's laws'. The project builds on the applicant's many years of experience with Roman legal texts. Furthermore, she was able to win Rene Pfeilschifter (Würzburg), Günther Vittmann (Würzburg), Wolfram Buchwitz (Würzburg), Katharina Waldner (Erfurt), Denis Feissel (Paris), Peter Riedlberger (Bamberg), Wolfgang Kaiser (Freiburg) and Tonio Sebastian Richter (Berlin) as cooperation partners. The project will be carried out at the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Würzburg. For the work on it (36 months), the applicant requests funding for a dedicated position (postdoc), a student assistant, and the publication of a monograph containing the results of the study (printed and electronic).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants