In dotem pro dote et dotis nomine. Il sistema dotale tra norma e prassi nella Ferrara del XIV secolo.

In dotem pro dote et dotis nomine is the notarial form used in the dowry pacts during the Fourteenth century in Ferrara. The dowry system, which is the whole set of rules, legal practices, customs and rituals, is an interdisciplinary subject: focused on the economic and legal impact, the topic has also important social and cultural implications and it is connected with the artistic and literary production. The dowry is also considered by gender history as a key that allows an interpretation of the roles of men and women in relation to family and heritage. Through legislative and documentary sources, the research seeks to reconstruct and to reveal some aspects of the dowry system in Este’s city. Thus, the dowry is condensed into a contract draft of a notary, very careful for the correctness of the form not to impair its legal validity, but it is also the fragment of a story that springs from the pen of a chronicler, still thrilled at the sight of a princely trousseau has seen paraded through the streets of the city. There is a dowry crystallized under the headings of city statutes, obligation and right, punishment and compensation, and another one made of fabrics and small objects, clothes and jewelry carefully placed in the trunks that follow the bride in her new home. There are wasted and stolen dowries, not returned or not paid during the long litigations that drag on beyond the death of the first contenders, there are others dowries consisting of a few coins gived to poor unmarried women, given for charity in exchange for a prayer. And again, the dowry earned in the service of a wealthy family and received at the time of dismissal after many years of work is very different from the dowry of a nun, married to a husband whose wife will never be a widow and that will not return it to her. The dowry, indeed indispensable prerequisite for entering marriage, cuts across all social strata. It is part of the negotiation between the powerful, in the correspondence of ambassadors, or delivered with bare hands, as alms on the threshold of a church, trimmed portion on the sidelines of a noble heritage, or accumulated in the sedimentation of business of a merchant. The trousseaux move along short segments that separate the two houses built in the same contrada or long journeys, by land and river, accompanying their wives promised to husbands in distant lands. Some dowries in the hands of the heirs are stuck waiting for a sentence determines that the appropriation or surrender, others take the way back, returned to a widow who tie the second marriage or simply who can take ownership of their substance to reinvest in a business other than marriage.