Oporuke, oporučitelji i primatelji oporučnih legata u Dubrovniku s kraja trinaestoga i u prvoj polovici četrnaestoga stoljeća
Testaments, testators and recipients of bequests in Dubrovnik at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century

Summary/Abstract: The comparatively large number of surviving testaments written in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, kept at State Archives in Dubrovnik within the Republic of Dubrovnik archival fund, is an inexhaustible source of research material for historians. Numerous authors have used these sources and, in doing so, applied a variety approaches. It may be said that testaments as private legal documents are among the best sources for study of economic, social, legal, cultural and spiritual life in medieval Dalmatian communes. In this short piece, I hope to demonstrate how a quantitative approach to the study of information contained in the testaments of contemporary Dubrovnik residents may be profitably used to elucidate not just economic and legal facts, but also certain social processes. The analysis focuses on a small sample of 132 testaments, of the total of over 900, from this period. The examined testaments are from the following years: 1295, 1296, 1325 and 1326. In some of the analyses, data from these testaments were compared with data from testaments recorded in 1348, the year of Black Death in Dubrovnik. While it is obvious that the sample is relatively small when compared with the total number of testaments kept in the Dubrovnik archives, this study has nonetheless revealed certain changes in the distribution of bequests over the examined time period. These results should not be regarded as ‘absolute’ but they do reflect certain social, economic and organizational trends in the contemporary Dubrovnik communal social system.

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