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Throughout the high and late Middle Ages, an individual’s social acceptance and well-being were heavily dependent upon fama, or reputation, they cultivated within their communities. Women, especially, constructed and molded their reputations to protect themselves from hardship and social ostracization, allowing them a degree of agency in social situations. In this thesis, I argue that the mindful development of one’s fama was key for women to protect themselves from accusations of witchcraft. Through the lives of Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, and Jeanne d’Arc, I demonstrate how medieval reputations were built, the trifold nature it could hold, and the complexities fama held in social and legal history. By exploring the construction of fama, I dispute the simplified role reputation has as mere gossip or rumor; rather, it was a key component in the establishment of social currency and legal protection.

This thesis contributes to the historiography by locating active women of medieval Spain in sources that reveal the reality of women's actions as opposed to their ideal behavior. Evidence for women's activities comes from charters—legal documents that recorded property transfers—from various religious institutions in thirteenth-century Burgos, the historic capital of the Christian kingdom of Castile. Women participated in 60% of transactions. Empowering factors included connections to urban oligarchs, dense social networks, collective enterprise, and generous inheritances. Women were not inherently disenfranchised as property owners by virtue of sex, though their absence in the roles of witness and guarantor indicates efforts to exclude women from public space. Nonetheless, the valorization of private law and the commitment to patrimonial rights worked in women's favor to counteract (in part) the legal disabilities they faced on account of perceived feminine weaknesses. Socioeconomic status more greatly affected one's economic opportunities than did gender.

Mediante los procesos litigados por un linaje –los dueños del Palacio de Leyún– entre 1600 y 1829, nos acercamos al tema de la “fama” de los sujetos individuales y de las familias, y cómo la información sobre aquella se difunde por los círculos de sociabilidad en los que se desenvuelve su vida y se oculta a los extraños.