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Dowry Increase and Increments in Wealth in Medieval Ragusa (Dubrovnik)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Susan Mosher Stuard
Susan Mosher Stuard
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York, College at Brockport, Brockport, New York 14420.
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Abstract

Certain data from the familial world have value as a means for charting increments in wealth over the long term. Dowries from medieval Ragusa (Dubrovnik), 1235 to 1460, provide such evidence where other surviving records prove inadequate. Social cohesion and endogamy allowed the noble merchant citizenry to utilize dowries to redistribute personal fortunes broadly, thereby creating broad-based wealth. Comparisons with Italian towns indicate dowry increase was widespread but often served different social and economic purposes. Analyzing dotal strategies at Ragusa allows a glimpse of the means a cohesive elite could employ to promote economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 795 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

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29 Kirshner, Julius and Mohlo, Anthony, “The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence,” Journal of Modern History, 50 (1978), 403–38.Google Scholar See also their “Il monte delle doti a Firenze dalla sua fondazione nel 1425 alla meta del sedicesimo secolo abbozzo di una ricerca,” Ricerche Storiche, 4 (1980), 21–47.Google ScholarHerlihy, David and Klapische-Zuber, Christiane, Les Toscans et leurs familles (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar See also Kent, Francia, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977);Google ScholarBrucker, Gene, Renaissance Florence (New York, 1969);Google ScholarMartines, Lauro, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists (Princeton, 1963).Google Scholar

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33 One Florentine in Ragusa on business married the daughter of another foreigner, a pharmacist from Bologna. He received a dowry of 4,000 hyperpera (2,000 ducats), an award which outran noble dowry awards for the period 1350 by a considerable amount (cf. Table 2 for a comparative award from Liber Dotium, I, 1348–1349).Google Scholar The fortunate groom, Bencius del Bona del Flora, returned to Florence with his bride. On the strength of his wife's dowry and his own amassed capital, he entered the ranks of the prosperous upper bourgeoisie. Dowries were one major element in upward mobility for ambitious Florentine merchants, and could on occasion be found abroad more easily than an home. Voje, Ignacij, “Bencio del Buono,” Isroriski Čašopis, 18 (1971), 189–99.Google Scholar

34 Krekić, , Dubrovnik et le Levant au Moyen Āge (Paris,1961), p. 94.Google Scholar

35 See Stuard, “The Silver Trade in the Adriatic,” pp. 95–143 for a fuller treatment of the issue.Google Scholar