Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 45681
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Bartolus of Sassoferrato , , , Angelus de Ubaldis, , Julius Kirshner and Osvaldo Cavallar
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Testamentary and Intestate Succession
  • Source: Jurists and Jurisprudence in Medieval Italy: Texts and Contexts.  Edited by Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner .  University of Toronto Press, 2020.  Pages 773 - 799. Available with a subscription from JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctv179h1fw.50
    and from De Gruyter: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487536336-011
  • Description: Four documents are translated:
    43.1. Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Last Will (1356)
    43.2. Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Consilium on Succession in stirpes or in capita
    43.3. Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Consilium on Succession by Line of Descent
    43.4. Angelus de Ubaldis, Consilium
    In his will Bartolus provides for his wife, specifies dowries for his daughters and names his two sons as his universal heirs. If his sons were to die, his brother would inherit and if he too would die, Bartolus's daughters and nephews were to receive half the estate while the rest went to his brother's daughters. This is in line with his consilia in which Bartolus protected the rights of wives and daughters. In the two consilia translated here Bartolus addresses cases in which a woman dies intestate (43.2) and a man, also intestate (43.3), has a maternal line of descent which determines the outcome. In the final document Angelus considers a case in which a mother, sister and paternal uncle claim inheritance from a deceased child. The jurist determined that the uncle had bare ownership of the goods involved while the mother had lifetime usufruct. In this way Angelus maintained that the prestige and wealth of the predeceased father's family would remain intact.
  • Article Type: Translation
  • Subject (See Also): Children Family Husbands Inheritance Law Wives Wills
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: Italy
  • Century: 14
  • Primary Evidence:
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  • Table:
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: Nanzan University [Cavallar]; University of Chicago [Kirshner- Emeritus Professor]
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2020.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 9781487507480 (print); 9781487536336 (online)