328 anna bellavitis
From the 15th century onward, the increasing value of dowries appeared
to confer greater power and authority onto wives in patrician families, to
the point that maternal bequests have been considered to be the primary
factor contributing to the uncontrolled rise in dowries. While fathers were
responsible for assigning dowries to their daughters, as a matter of fact,
mothers contributed significantly to dowries. the economic weight, the
“value,” of wives translated into the importance of the two lineages, the
paternal and the maternal, and in determining sons’ political career or
daughters’ matrimonial career. in a family system in which not all sons
and daughters acceded to marriage, however, the careers of young patri-
cians were also constructed on the basis of relationships not only with
father and mother, but also with the unmarried maternal uncle, especially
in the case of the father’s premature death. the “imperfect bilinearity”
of Venetian successory legislation is documented also in the social and
political behaviors of the governing class.22
Dowry and Inheritance
Venetian successory laws privileged sons and male descendants in the
transmission of real property, but patrician dowries also often included
real property as well, excluding the family’s palace, which was kept when-
ever possible within the male hereditary axis. in any case, for a woman,
having a rich dowry did not necessarily come with the possibility of man-
aging it, given that this form of wifely property remained in the husband’s
possession throughout the entire duration of the marriage. often married
very young to men who were by far their elders, patrician women who
managed to survive numerous births were frequently widowed at a young
age. Whereas in many cases they were “invited” by their husbands’ wills
not to reclaim their dowries in case of widowhood, and not to remarry, the
Venetian statutes facilitated the restitution of the dowry to widows, thus
limiting the transfer of wealth from one family to another and enabling
the maintenance of a balance among patrician households. these “resti-
tutions” could give way to significant passages of real property from the
(Rome, 2008), pp. 375–404; laura megna, “Grandezza e miseria della nobiltà veneziana,”
in Storia di Venezia, vol. 7 (1997): La Venezia barocca, ed. Gino Benzoni and Gaetano cozzi,
pp. 161–200; antonio menniti ippolito, Fortuna e sfortune di una famiglia veneziana nel Sei-
cento. Gli Ottoboni al tempo dell’aggregazione al patriziato (Venice, 1996).
22 chojnacki, Women and Men; donald e. Queller and thomas F. madden, “Father of
the Bride: Fathers, daughters and dowries in late medieval and early Renaissance Venice,”
Renaissance Quarterly 46/4 (Winter, 1993), 685–711; Bellavitis, Identité.