From woman to woman: female succession in the capelas and morgados of the portuguese crown territories (14th–17th centuries)

Abstract

This article explores a set of entail foundations carried out in territories of the Portuguese crown between the 14^th and 17^th centuries, characterized by the inversion of the most common succession principles: instead of favoring succession by masculinity and primogeniture, these institutions explicitly preferred female succession, with the entail being passed on from woman to woman. This sample is analyzed from various points of view: the archival problems and the representativeness of the information; sociologically characterizing who founded these entails; mapping the parental structures and the way in which they are imagined and organized; and trying to understand the organizational modalities regarding pious charges and other devices that could constitute forms of social distinction and identity construction. This analysis is also based on a question raised by historiography on parallel themes, especially for the 16^th-17^th centuries: were these foundations entails of sorority?