engleski

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

Surviving fourteenth century court records from Zadar reveal among other things one sentence brought in a dispute over the dowry of Anna, daughter of Dubrovnik nobleman John de Grade. Combining the sentence with other documents cited as evidence in resolving the dispute and using microhistoric approach we can reconstruct major parts of one particular story about marriage mediation and negotiation in the Middle Ages, about Anna’s dowry, her death and issues that arose from it. The problem with Anna’s dowry was that she was married to one of Zadar’s noblemen and that she did not have any living children at the time of her death. Combination of these two factors that stemmed from two different approaches to disposing dowry after woman’s death in legal traditions of Dubrovnik and Zadar, ultimately led to litigation before Zadar's civil court. The main question: To whom does Anna’s dowry belong?

dowry, property, women, microhistory, middle ages

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