Las mujeres mediadoras, conciliadoras y/o constructoras de la concordia familiar

Résumé

In the patriarchal society compartmentalizing the spaces according to the sex, the men reserve the public places, only spaces of activities valuing. All their activities (political, socio-economic and cultural) value the competition and their rivalries sometimes push them to start the war (their case). The public spaces that escape women, the family and domestic spaces that surround them, enhance relations of love and solidarity that are supposed to unite the family. In these private spaces, but production units, the free labor by women supply, maintenance, food, education, care, generates a capital gain that benefits the head of the family. The links between women (maternal, filial and sororal feelings) are useful for uniting families, avoiding clashes between men, the proximity between them helps to concord in family conflicts. Love built between women of a family makes them mediators that men use by marrying them to improve their status, negotiate pacts or commitments. Women cause wars or family conflicts, others are not agents of peace or harmony, but when mediation exists, it is based on these private relations between them. The mediation of powerful women is evident in their interventions in public affairs to reach agreements with male parents. The succession of the Kingdom of Leon in the thirteenth century and the clashes with Álvaro de Luna in Castile in the fifteenth century mediatised queens, infantes, cousins, sisters-in-law: Queen Berengaria of Castile, daughter-in-law of Alfonso VIII, Queen Maria, sister of Juan II of Castile, married to Alfonso V of Aragón and Queen Maria, sister of the same king, married to Juan II of Spain, struggled to solve political conflicts and build peace instead of making war . In spite of this recognized determinant role of the chroniclers, the space concerning them in the sources and the historiography is reduced: the decisive political relations of these women have not been valorized with their right measure, from where the revisit of the facts concerning them, to propose other analyzes and methodologies of the History of Women