Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence

by Molho, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780674550704
• ISBN10: 0674550706
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-03-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

How did propertied families in late medieval and early modern Florence maintain their power and affluence while equally important clans elsewhere were fatally undermined by the growth of commerce and personal freedom, and the consequences of the Plague? Drawing on a vast array of archival research - from letters and memoirs to fiscal declarations to records of the Dowry Fund, Anthony Molho suggests that the answer is found in the twin institutions of arranged marriage and the dowry.
Molho focuses on the relations between Florentine families of this period and demonstrates that the links among families - created by arranged marriages within a narrow and well-defined social class, a system of dowries that was a combination of speculation and manipulation, and an entrenched memory of these processes - account for the resilience of this ruling class. The individuals or single families whose records Molho has scrutinized, as well as his analysis of several thousand marriages over nearly a century and a half, illuminate a culture that consistently and relentlessly subordinated individual goals and preferences to larger and deeper concerns. The book combines the application of quantitative methods and close reading of contemporary texts in order to gain new insights into the history of Florence in the late Middle Ages.

Author Biography

Anthony Molho is the Munro Goodwin Wilkinson Professor of European History at Brown University.

Table of Contents

Note on Dates
Introduction	p. 1
Contexts
The Monte delle Doti	p. 27
Investors and Beneficiaries	p. 80
Honorable Marriages: Registrations in the Monte	p. 128
Marriages
Norms and Numbers	p. 181
Marriages in the Ruling Class	p. 233
Aristocratization, Dowries, and Endogamy	p. 298
Appendix 1. Sources	p. 351
Appendix 2. The Catasto of 1480	p. 361
Appendix 3. The Florentine Ruling Class	p. 365
Appendix 4. The Florentine Population According to the Catasto of 1480	p. 411
Appendix 5. Marriages in the Five Generations of Francesco Rinuccini and Filippa Bardi's Descent	p. 416
Appendix 6. Guicciardini and Martelli Marriages	p. 427
Manuscript Sources and Their Abbreviations	p. 433
References	p. 435
Index	p. 445
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.