Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/y7v64t5z3y
The Economic Activity of the Franciscans in Zadar in the Fourteenth Century
Sanja Miljan
; Central European University, PhD student of Medieval Studies Dept., Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
In the article, the author is presenting the economic position of Franciscans in Zadar, focusing mainly on the documents for the fourteenth century. The analysis is mostly based on the testamentary bequests from the published and hitherto unpublished notary records, which were given to the Franciscans as collective, but also to prominent individual friars from the Order. The goal of the research was to understand to which purpose friars received the bequests and how they managed them. Concerning the issue of inability of ownership of estates by the friars, normative documents were compared to the notary records of the commune, in order to see if legal regulations followed the everyday practice. Furthermore, the author enclosed the table of minimal annual incomes during the fourteenth century, in order to see what was the fluctuation of money during the said period, what was the purpose of these bequests and how these incomes were intended to be used. The bequests were divided into two main groups: “real bequests” and “requests”. The difference between the two categories is in the reciprocity, meaning that “requests” implied that friars in return for the received money or certain objects from testaments should perform a liturgical activity, such as daily masses and anniversaries or reading of Psalter for the salvation of the soul of the testator. It is important to emphasize that, even though the calculated total sum of incomes during the fourteenth century is certainly just a part of the money they were dealing with in reality, since some sums were not listed in extant testaments and depended on the verbal agreement with executors of wills, this research still provides an insight to the spiritual economy of Zaratin friars and their everyday life.
Keywords
Franciscans; last wills; economic activity; Zadar; the Middle Ages; the fourteenth century
Hrčak ID:
195436
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2017.
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