Married women, law and wealth in fourteenth-century Genoa

Description

My aim here is to assess the relationship between the marital status of women and their ability to accrue wealth and dispose of it by drawing on multiple sources (especially statutes and notarial sources) and focusing specifically on non-dotal assets in 14th-century Genoa. During this period new norms were introduced in Genoa that echoed those which were being implemented in other north-central Italian cities. The late 13th-/early 14th-century Genoese statutes and the successive redaction of 1375 contain restrictive measures in regard to married women and wealth, but to what extent did practice fall squarely within these prescribed rules? Evidence in notarial sources suggests that while women continued to enjoy some leeway (especially when expressing their last wishes), law and practice largely coincided. This is especially evident in the tendency of married women to give full mandate to husbands to manage their personal property and in the conceptual assimilation of non-dotal assets to the dowry.

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