Husbands, Wives, and Concubines

Emlyn Eisenach uses a wide range of sources, including the richly detailed and previously unexplored records of nearly two hundred marriage-related disputes from the bishop's court of Verona, to illuminate family and social relations in early modern northern Italy. Arguing against the common emphasis on the growth of law and government in this period, her study emphasises the fluidity of the principles that governed marriage and its dissolution, and deepens our understanding of the patriarchal family and its complex relationship with gender and status during the sixteenth century.