Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy

"This collection brings some of Julius Kirshner's most trenchant ideas about marriage, property, and the law together in one place." -- Roisin Cossar, Department of History, University of Manitoba "Julius Kirshner virtually invented the field of Renaissance socio-legal history. The informed exegesis of thickly contextualized learned opinions (consilia) and related material that is the hallmark of Kirshner's work nuances our understanding of society, politics, and economy in pre-modern Europe, especially in Italy, where the surviving evidence is superabundant." -- Lawrin Armstrong, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

In Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Kirshner collects nine important essays which address the socio-legal history of women in Florence and the cities of northern and central Italy.

Through his research on the status of women in Florence and other Italian cities, Julius Kirshner helped to establish the socio-legal history of women in late medieval and Renaissance Italy and challenge the idea that Florentine women had an inferior legal position and civic status.

In Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, Kirshner collects nine important essays which address these issues in Florence and the cities of northern and central Italy. Using a cross-disciplinary approach that draws on the methodologies of both social and legal history, the essays in this collection present a wealth of examples of daughters, wives, and widows acting as full-fledged social and legal actors.

Revised and updated to reflect current scholarship, the essays in Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy appear alongside an extended introduction which situates them within the broader field of Renaissance legal history.