ABSTRACT
Lucia Ferrante’s essay works nicely with Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s to highlight the dynamics of changing gender and kinship patterns in a particular region. She also studies urban northern Italy, in particular sixteenth-century Bologna. But in contrast to Klapisch-Zuber, she was able to find relatively direct evidence of female perspectives and strategies regarding marriage. By the period of Ferrante’s study, the Catholic Church had begun to intervene more forcefully in family decisions about marriage. Ferrante uses church court records of cases of marriage litigation to document the clash between the private law enforced by powerful patrilineal clans and ecclesiastical law. She finds evidence of women using the church authority and institutions to support their own preferences as opposed to those of their fathers. Read alongside Klapisch-Zuber’s essay, Ferrante’s study also points to the role of changing political contexts (in this case the centuries-long struggle of the Catholic Church with secular political powers) in the evolution of kinship systems.
