ABSTRACT
The city of Perpignan provides the example of Sara, the widow of Davi de Cabestany, who on 24 September 1286 dictated the will to her local notary. This chapter helps to use documents such as Sara's to make sense of the place, role, and practices of Jewish women without disregarding the ideals of men like ibn Tibbon that fuelled the networks of family and community that shaped these women's lives. Most scholarship concerning medieval Jewish women is based on normative documentation more akin to ibn Tibbon's Hebrew ethical will than Sara's testament. Sara dictated her will in Catalan to a Christian notary who translated it into the appropriate Latin form. Jews actively participated in the notarial culture of the city in which private individuals paid to have royally appointed notaries draft charters and register their financial transactions.
