Povijesni prilozi, Vol. 26 No. 33, 2007.
Original scientific paper
‘Plebeian aristocrats’: the social structure of the St. Anthony Confraternity in the late medieval Dubrovnik (Ragusa)
Zrinka Pešorda Vardić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9734-0188
; Hrvatski institut za povijest
Abstract
of the most distinguished and most prestigious confraternity in the city. From its beginnings
in the mid-fourteenth century until the fall of the Dubrovnik Republic, the
St. Anthony confraternity occupied an important part of Ragusan history. Membership
in the confraternity became synonymous with the emerging class of wealthy
citizenry, also known as cittadini. Using the preserved confraternity statute and the
matriculation book (Matricula), the author analyses the social structure of the confraternity,
which also reflected the social structure of cittadini. As the research has
shown, the membership consisted of wealthy commoners (mostly merchants), foreigners
in the service of the public administration (chancellors, notaries, physicians
and teachers) as well as nobles and their illegitimate offspring. Female membership
was limited to participation in the religious aspects of the confraternity life. By contrast,
participation of wealthy commoners and nobles in the fraternity had a somewhat
political aspect. Commoners were otherwise excluded from the active political
life in the city, so the confraternity served as a kind of ‘power replacement’. The
author also addresses the issue of ‘ennobling’ of the confraternity from the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries onwards. The wealth and social prestige made the confraternity
a closed, hereditary circle that formed the secondary elite of the Ragusan society.
Keywords
confraternity; Dubrovnik; Ragusa; Middle Ages; social structure; commoners; matriculation book
Hrčak ID:
18751
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2007.
Visits: 5.343 *