Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Marrying and Its Documentation in Pre-Modern Europe: Consent, Celebration, and Property
- 2 Marrying and Its Documentation in Later Roman Law
- 3 Marrying and the Tabulae Nuptiales in Roman North Africa from Tertullian to Augustine
- 4 Dotal Charters in the Frankish Tradition
- 5 Marriage and Diplomatics: Five Dower Charters from the Regions of Laon and Soissons, 1163–1181
- 6 Marriage Agreements from Twelfth-Century Southern France
- 7 Marriage Contracts in Medieval England
- 8 Marriage Contracts and the Church Courts of Fourteenth-Century England
- 9 Marrying and Marriage Litigation in Medieval Ireland
- 10 Marriage Contracts in Medieval Iceland
- 11 Contracting Marriage in Renaissance Florence
- 12 Marital Property Law as Socio-Cultural Text: The Case of Late-Medieval Douai
- 13 Marriage Contracts, Liturgies, and Properties in Reformation Geneva
- Index
4 - Dotal Charters in the Frankish Tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Marrying and Its Documentation in Pre-Modern Europe: Consent, Celebration, and Property
- 2 Marrying and Its Documentation in Later Roman Law
- 3 Marrying and the Tabulae Nuptiales in Roman North Africa from Tertullian to Augustine
- 4 Dotal Charters in the Frankish Tradition
- 5 Marriage and Diplomatics: Five Dower Charters from the Regions of Laon and Soissons, 1163–1181
- 6 Marriage Agreements from Twelfth-Century Southern France
- 7 Marriage Contracts in Medieval England
- 8 Marriage Contracts and the Church Courts of Fourteenth-Century England
- 9 Marrying and Marriage Litigation in Medieval Ireland
- 10 Marriage Contracts in Medieval Iceland
- 11 Contracting Marriage in Renaissance Florence
- 12 Marital Property Law as Socio-Cultural Text: The Case of Late-Medieval Douai
- 13 Marriage Contracts, Liturgies, and Properties in Reformation Geneva
- Index
Summary
The dotal charter of this essay was a written deed (actum) whereby a man agreed to give a marriage gift, usually called a dowry (dos), to his betrothed. It was a northern successor to the Roman tabulae nuptiales discussed in the previous chapters, although the donor was the betrothed man and not the bride's father or parents. I shall consider the form and content of such charters in a Frankish tradition that ranged from the Merovingian period through the Carolingian period and continued into eleventh-century northern France.
One must assume that many such charters did not survive, and that what remains for us to examine is a small fraction. A dotal charter ceased to be relevant, at least in respect to the purpose for which it had been drawn up, when the dowered wife died. When a dotal charter or its content did survive, it was usually because someone put it to another use. In the early Middle Ages (roughly from the Merovingian period into the eleventh century), the content of some survived because a scribe made a revised copy to be used as a formula (i.e., a model or exemplar). Most of the dotal charters that have survived from the tenth and later centuries did so because a church or monastery retained them (usually as copies) in a cartulary, probably in view of some connection with the institution's own interests in the property.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- To Have and to HoldMarrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400–1600, pp. 114 - 164Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
- 2
- Cited by