Download or read book Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence written by Anthony Molho and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molho (European history, Brown U.) shows that the propertied families of late-medieval and early-modern Florence maintained their power and influence through arranged marriage and the dowry. While elsewhere in Europe the elite were toppling under the onslaught of commerce and personal freedom, in Florence they married carefully within a narrow and well-defined class, used dowries as both speculation and instruments of manipulation, and remembered every detail for a long time. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR