In the late fifteenth century, Roman confraternities, especially that of SS. Annunziata, provided dowries for poor but “honest” girls. This charitable work was in response to the growing needs of a relatively defenceless segment of a society that was undergoing rapid transformation. This study of the rich holdings of confraternal archives provides insight into the increase in confratemal dowries, into how dowries were administered, into the selection of recipients, all viewed within the broader context of dotal practices in Renaissance Rome.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Esposito, A., (2025), "Ad dotandum puellas virgines, pauperes et honestas: Social Needs and Confraternal Charity in Rome in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Esposito, Anna. "Ad dotandum puellas virgines, pauperes et honestas: Social Needs and Confraternal Charity in Rome in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries." Renaissance and Reformation 30 (2): 2010. 5-18. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v30i2.11488. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.