From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe

Abstract

This study traces the long term evolution of dowry systems, which can go from brideprice to dowry (the idea of purchase, exchange price, or the value of the bride for that of the dowry). The author discusses the existence and development of two types of dowry: that which is given by the bride's parents and that which is given by the groom in exchange for the bride (propter wedding donation). She considers the medieval dowry to be a return to the Greek and Roman system and a move away from the "brideprice'' system toward dowry, which was a symbol of the patrimonial status of the paternal family line. She argues that the marital offering was an expression of bilateral conjugal principies. She further argues that the dowry was a system of disinheritance, or the exclusion of women from the inheritance, which in Mediterranean Europe was concentrated progressively through the system of entailed property and the renunciation of family property by women. Thus, where dowry flourished, it ended up supplanting other forms of marital assignment. In contrast to J. Goody, Hughes asserts that dowry was a form of disinheritance within the social group, the organisation of which had become significantly less bilateral.