engleski

Who owns the dowry? Tracing one Dubrovnik-Zadar story from the late 14th century

Within Curia maior civilium, a collection of surviving Zadar court records from the second half of the 14th century, one may find a sentence in a dispute over the dowry of Anna, daughter of a famous Dubrovnik nobleman John de Grade. Although only the sentence survived, it can be combined with other documents cited as evidence in resolving the dispute in order to reconstruct the major part of the story from the standard procedure of mediation and negotiation of marriage, through the marriage itself and the payment of dowry, all the way to Anna's death and issues that arose from it. The main issue of course is: Who does Anna's dowry belong to? The sentence stands out from the others preserved not only because of the circumstances in which the dispute arose, but also because such disputes are rare in the surviving records of the Dalmatian towns and because it allows comparison of legal systems of the two Dalmatian towns. The problem arose bacause Anna did not marry one of Dubrovnik's noblemen but Zadar's nobleman George de Matafaris, and from the fact that in her relatively short life Anna did not have children. The combination of these two factors, stemming from two different aproaches to the issue of dowry restitution in the legal traditions of Dubrovnik and Zadar, ultimately led to litigation before Zadar's civil court. The lawsuit was initiated by Anna's father John assuming that half of his daughter's dowry should be returned to him. Mainstay of his claim can be found in Dubrovnik Statute which actually prescribed such a rule. However, the provision of Dubrovnik Statute did not count for in Zadar where Anna lived after she had married and where she drew up her last will. Zadar statute regulated the right of a woman without legal heirs to make available her entire dowry through her testament to whom she wished. From this individual story alone, one can outline some general differences in matters of dowry restitution in the legal systems od Dubrovnik and Zadar. The contours can be discerned according to which the legal system of Dubrovnik was more conservative in case of death of a woman who left no legitimate heirs. On the other hand, similarities arise between Dubrovnik and Zadar when a woman dies leaving heirs, in which case her children inherit the entire dowry by right equally. However, case law and relatively large number od preserved disputes relating to dowry show that husband's testamentary executors often did not have a practice of returning woman's dowry to her after her husband's death nor a practice of giving it to woman's children after her death. Therefore, women and her children often try to materialize their rights by initiating lawsuits.

dowry ; property ; women ; microhistory ; middle ages

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