Wealth of Wives - A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual

In 1415, Francesco Barbaro produced a marriage manual intended at once for his friend,a scion of the Florentine Medici family, and for the whole set of his peers, the young nobilityof Venice. Counteringthe trends of the day toward dowry chasing and dowry inflation,Barbaro insisted that the real wealth of wives was their capacity to conceive, birth, andrear children worthy of their heritage. Thesuccess of the patriciate depended, ironically, onwomen: for they alone could ensure the biological, cultural, and spiritual reproduction oftheir marital lineage. The Wealth of Wives circulated in morethan 100 manuscript versions,five Latin editions, and translations into German, Italian, French, and English, far outstrippingin its influence Leon Battista Alberti's On the Family (1434).