Preliminary Programme

In this paper, the residential mobility of patrician women in late medieval Dubrovnik will be analysed through the complex relations between the urban setting, the family liasions and relevant legal and social circumstances. In Dubrovnik’s society, the patrician woman’s interests were completely subjected to the interests of their families. Ragusan nobility characteristically observed an outspokenly endogamous policy, and an extremely large dowry was prescribed by the law, which played a crucial role in marriage strategies. Also, the relationship between gender and urban space can be followed through the distribution of the patricians’ urban estates. Patrician women enjoyed an important social status, but they could not decide on whom they would marry, whether they would enter a monastery or which one. Besides a large number of unmarried women, there were many widows in late medieval Ragusa, since the age difference between noblemen and noblewomen was considerable (there was a policy for men to marry after their father’s death, and also their sisters had to be married first). Widows sometimes remarried again and moved to a new home (but there was also a clan allegiance), and sometimes they moved to monasteries or female hospitals as their public and business life was officially limited. Thus, depending on their marital statuts, their age, stages of life, demographic, economic and/or political position of their families, patrician women changed their residences through their lives. This intra-urban mobility played an important role in the community and was carefully governed by both – patrician families and the city’s authorities. (Show less)

This paper analyses the legal status of women in Istrian coastal towns in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, which were under the Venetian rule at that time. In this period the woman's position was greatly influenced by her status in a marriage. Thus, special attention is given to her status regarding the type of marriage she entered into (Istrian, Venetian, Slavic), then to her legal capacity and the possibility to dispose of property, the jobs she was able to do, the relationship toward male and female children when it came to inheritance, as well as the disposition of the public toward women. The research is based upon Istrian towns’ statutory provisions and the sources from the State Archives in Pazin and the Episcopal Archives in Pore?, primarily upon marriage disputes, notary files, the sources of the head of the Novigrad commune and the data found in register books. (Show less)

The situation of women and their formal relations with men in towns in Prussia (under the rule of Teutonic Order and later Polish kings) was governed by the so called Che?m law, which was based on Old Law from Flanders. According to the law, women and men had equal right to inherit. It seems, however, that this law did not affect the position of women in the city. A woman could not speak for herself, she always had her guardian. There is a very important question about differences between theory and reality, if the law gave the women their voice. I will attempt to answer these questions using sources from the State Archives in Gdansk such as books of councils, letters, wills. I will also compare the situation in Gdansk with other Polish and Prussian towns. (Show less)

This paper focuses on gender aspects of violence recorded in the towns of Albania Veneta (urban settlements in the coastal area of today’s Montenegro and Albania) during the 14th and the 15th centuries. Just like in other parts of medieval Europe, this violence reflected individuals’ personal interactions, but also more complex public social rapports. Usually, it was connected with men and their perpetrating behavior in criminal instances, while in many of them direct victims were women, whom the sources of the time often designated as the main culprits and motivators of the perpetrations. While this was partly due to the general medieval subjection of women to male dominance, in the towns of Albania Veneta women’s safety, well-being and dignity additionally depended on a highly volatile masculine environment, that largely grafted upon the region’s notorious political instability and the Venetian general tolerance towards the excessive behavior of its subjects in arms who were to defend the towns from various external attacks or internal conflicts.
Aiming at examining in detail the effects of this situation on the legal and socio-economic status of the violated women in the towns under the Venetian rule, in my paper I comparatively analyze diverse documentary evidence on types, patterns, dynamics of occurrence and tools regulating gender violations, as annotated for all strata of the local urban communities. The reports of the towns’ administrators, the records of the local litigation trials, and punishments imposed through the Venetian legal framework all reveal remarkable perspectives of multi-layered violence in which the damage of the actual acts only but increased through the victims’ public marginalization, or even their full social exclusion, both equally prompted by the local customary regulations, cannon law and the Venetian legal practices. (Show less)