Poročne matične knjige kot vir za preučevanje dinamičnih in strukturnih vidikov urbanih migracij
Marriage Registry Books as a Source for Investigating the Dynamic and the Structural Aspects of Urban Migrations

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the influx of population in cities on the basis of ecclesiastical marriage registry books. This historical source can be of help when researching pre-modern migrations, where appropriate population and marriage statistics is missing. It has proven useful especially for the 18th century, sometimes in combination with other sources concerning marriage, such as celibacy statements of the newly wed or the notarial marriage contracts, as well as death registry books. Marriage registry books contain data on the regional provenance of the newly wed, as well as a series of social-demographic, professional, and other data that can serve as a basis to distinguish between the newcomers and the native population, as well as to assess the dynamics, consistency, structural features, and certain other cultural and behavioural patterns of the foreign population in a long-term perspective. Marriage data cannot be used in order to calculate accurately the range of migration or to draw detailed conclusions on all its characteristics. However, in absence of other documentation, it is a type of source that can be used, despite its insufficiencies, to extract a series of useful indications for evaluating the importance of migrations, their geographic and structural constants, and their change over time. The article presents the characteristic of the source, the possibilities and methodological aspects of its use, as well as the limits of data reliability and questions related to their interpretation. These issues have been shown in detail on the example of Trieste in the 18th century, when the city went trough a period of fast demographic growth and profound social change owing to a massive influx of population from its ethnically and culturally different hinterland. In this case, the source has proven useful, especially when presenting the centuries-long dynamics of immigration, the geographic origin, and the gender structure of the newcomers, as well as the formation of urban social reality, including the mixing of various foreign components and the local population, evident from an analysis of endogamy and exogamy.

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