Julius Kirshner - Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy

In researching and writing the studies in this volume, I have benefited from the innumerable acts of generosity smoothing the way for me to gain access to local archives, providing archival and manuscript references, sending copies and scans of texts that were unavailable in Chicago, providing bibliographic leads, and commenting on drafts of early versions of the studies of friends and colleagues. Warm thanks to all: Harvey Adelstein, Lawrin Armstrong, Mario Ascheri, Nicola Lorenzo Barile, Gabriella Battista, Kees Bezemer, John Cochrane, Vincenzo Colli, Gino Corti, Angela De Benedictis, Constantin Fasolt, Robert Fredona, Orsola Gori, Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, Linda Guzzetti, David Herlihy, Alexander Kirshner, Susanne Lepsius, Michele Luzzati, Christine Meek, Sara Menzinger, Maria Grazia Nico, Diana Robin, Rodolfo Savelli, Justin Steinberg, Claudia Storti Storchi, Francesca Trivellato, and Alan Watson.

Special thanks are due to Elena Brizio of the Medici Archive Project, who verified archival and manuscript references in Florence; Daniel Jamison, who skillfully transformed the PDF files of the published studies into clean MS Word files and compiled the first draft of the comprehensive bibliography; Erik Carlson, who meticulously edited the manuscript; and my coauthors Osvaldo Cavallar and Jacob Klerman, who agreed to the republication of chapters 1 and 5, respectively, in this volume.

The research on the records of the Monte delle doti and Monte delle Graticole , which supplies the basis for the findings in chapters 4 and 5, was undertaken in collaboration with Tony Molho. Our collaboration has been fruitful, resulting in a number of publications, written together as well as individually. I want to express my appreciation for Tonys hospitality, first in Providence and then in Florence, intellectual engagement, and readiness to share his incomparable knowledge of Florentine public finance in the Renaissance. Tom Kuehn and I have been commenting on each others drafts and exchanging ideas since the 1970s. I have come to rely on his sound judgment and have profited immensely from his substantial and farsighted sociolegal contributions. I am beholden to Osvaldo Cavallar, friend, coauthor, and indefatigable decipherer of medieval legal texts, who over the past twenty-five years has patiently read and critically commented on draft after draft of my work. It was Lauro Martines who urged me to publish a volume of my studies. I hope the volume measures up to his high scholarly standards.

I am indebted to Paolo Grossi for his welcoming friendship and for making available the resources of the Centro di Studi per la Storia del Pensiero Giuridico Moderno at the University of Florence, when he was its director and before his appointment to Italys Constitutional Court. Many of the legal works cited in the volume are found at the remarkable Robbins Religious and Civil Law Collection, School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California at Berkeley. I am grateful to its director, Laurent Mayali, and staff for making my visits to the Robbins both pleasurable and productive. I am also grateful to the personnel of the Archivio di Stato and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence and the Biblioteca del Senato in Rome for their efficient and courteous assistance.

I wish to acknowledge the support of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, and particularly its sometime director, John Magee, who generously allocated a subsidy from the departmental publication fund for the production of this volume; and Lawrin Armstrong for his abiding enthusiasm for this project and encouraging me to publish the volume in the Toronto Studies in Medieval Law, of which he is the editor.

Much more than formal acknowledgment can express, my deepest debt is to my family, and above all to Judith, whose loving support sustained me during the years of research and writing, and finally and happily I dedicate the book to her.