Dowries in Greece: dowry contracts in Ioannina during the early twentieth century

ABSTRACT

A puzzling gap exists in the current literature concerning the triad of the endower-bride-groom and the connections between their professions, their places of residence, and the possible existence of hypergamy in Epirus and especially in the region of Ioannina during the early twentieth century. This paper provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of dowry contracts to offer a novel examination of the associations among these factors. It analyzes 209 marriage contracts from 1926 to 1932, derived from the previously unpublished archives of Nikolaos K. Efthymiadis and Georgios K. Gastis, notaries of the city of Ioannina. A noteworthy finding was the preference of parents to provide cash for endowment (61.2% of the total dowry value); however, land, houses and movable goods were also important parts of dowry. We also observed a tactic designed to facilitate the family’s social advancement through hypergamy; across each professional stratum of the endowers, total dowry value was significantly higher when the receivers came from higher education strata. Patrilocality/patrivirilocality seemed also to prevail as a post-marital settlement pattern. This article points out the value of interdisciplinary research on dowry agreements; history, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, statistics, and sociology could be valuable assets in such an exploration. Future comparative studies on archival materials should address geographical, chronological, and cultural variability.

KEYWORDS:

• Dowry
• Ioannina
• statistical analysis
• hypergamy
• endowment

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, we would like to warmly thank Professor Neni Panourgiá; without her scientific guidance and dedicated involvement in every step of the process, this paper would never have been accomplished. We are also indebted to the support, encouragement, and useful comments provided by Professors, Anna Mandilara and Katerini Liampi (Department of History and Archaeology, University of Ioannina) throughout the entire process of researching and writing this study. We would also like to express our great appreciation to Professor Emeritus of Anthropology Peter Allen (Rhode Island College) for his valuable and constructive suggestions during the development of this research, as well as his instructions regarding the relevant literature. His willingness to give his time so generously has been very much appreciated. Finally, we would like to thank Eirini Tzanaki who was always willing to help and give her best suggestions throughout the historical aspects of our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. In our material 20 cases were noted where the dowry contract was signed after (and not before) the wedding; Efthymiadis: 1534, 2237, 3574, 4311; Gastis: 1711, 1832, 1926, 2133, 2421, 3436, 3439, 3654, 3976, 4405, 4425, 4472, 5059, 5416, 5610, 6699.

2. In ethnology, the opposite is called hypogamia (hypogamy); marriage between people of the same social status is called homogamia (homogamy). For further discussion, see Pannof and Perrin (1973, p. 137).

3. ‘Under diverging devolution, the property of an individual is not retained within the unilineal descent group of which he is a member, but is distributed to children of both sexes and hence diffused outside the clan or lineage’ (Goody, 1987, p. 7).

4. The Constitution of 1927 (3rd of June) was the first Greek constitutional text that protected marriage and family (Article 24).

5. Hexabiblos law book by Harmenopoulos was applied also regarding dowry (Poligenis, 1891, pp. 79–80). The Legal Order of Eastern Continental Greece held in Fokida (1821) decided that the current legislation would rely on the laws of Byzantine Empire and specifically Hexabiblos by Harmenopoulos. The First National Assembly of Epidaurus (1822) composed the first Greek Constitution which supported the previous Legal Order of Eastern Continental Greece; the Second (1823) and Third (1827) National Assemblies also confirmed the above decision. Hexabiblos was replaced by the Civil Code of 1940 which took effect in 1946 (Maurer, 1976, p. 90).

6. According to Bourdieu (1976, 1986, 1990), marriage strategies can be one element of a system of biological, cultural, and social reproduction by which a group encourages the next generation to follow ‘the rules of the game.’

7. In patrilocality, newly married couples reside with the groom’s parents (Casselberry & Valavanes, 1976, p. 223; Gallant, 2015, p. 193). In patri-virilocality newly married couples reside near the groom’s parents (Gallant, 2015, p. 193). In matrilocality, newly married couples live with the bride’s parents (Casselberry & Valavanes, 1976, pp. 215–216; Gallant, 2015, p. 193). In matri-uxorilocality, newly married couples live near the bride’s parents (Gallant, 2015, p. 193). In uxorilocality, newly married couples live in household owned/inherited by the wife (Gallant, 2015, p. 193).

8. The city of Ioannina during our period under study had 20,765 inhabitants (Greek Census of 1920).

9. Only three notarial archives have been rescued from the period under study in the Historical Archive of Epirus, namely those by Nikolaos K. Efthymiadis, Georgios K. Gastis and Dimitrios Ch. Liaskos.

10. Because the total dowry value deviated from normality (as attested by the Shapiro–Wilk test), non-parametric tests (Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon test for independent samples, Kruskal–Wallis test, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient) were performed, as they do not rely on the assumption of normal data distribution.

11. In our study, we categorized the professions of the endowers and receivers into sectors. The primary sector included professions related to land (e.g. farmer, fisherman, shepherd, forester). The secondary sector included professions involving manufacturing and processing of raw materials (e.g. blacksmith, silversmith, weaver, carpenter). The tertiary sector included professions offering public service (e.g. private officer, postman, private collector, driver). Higher education included academic professions (e.g. doctor, teacher, pharmacist, lawyer). Finally, we included housemistress (oikodespoina, οικοδέσποινα) as a separate category involving needs of the house; the terms we found were: household occupation (oikiaka epangellomenē, oικιακά επαγγελλομένη, n = 40), dealing with the household (oikiaka ascholoumenē, οικιακά ασχολουμένη, n = 18), housemistress (oikodespoina, οικοδέσποινα, n = 7), or women occupation (gynaikeia epangellomenē, γυναικεία επαγγελλομένη, n = 2).

12. A woman dedicated to taking care of the house and the family; a housewife.

13. Median regression analysis is a model used in non-normal data to evaluate the simultaneous effects of more than one factor (in our case, endowers’ profession and hypergamy) that may modify the variable of interest (in our case, dowry value). Statistical analysis was conducted with STATA/SE version 13 (Stata Corp., College Station, TX, USA).

14. We noted 23 cases in which this was not the first marriage either for the bride or for the groom. Specifically, 17 cases about second marriage for the groom (Efthymiadis: 322, 738, 1544, 1582, 1904; Gastis: 2421, 2499, 2789, 3822, 3892, 3933, 4319, 4405, 5292, 5294, 5658, 5659), one case about second marriage for the bride (Efthymiadis: 528), one case about second marriage for a widowed bride (Efthymiadis: 4502), two cases about second marriage for a widowed bride and second marriage for the groom (Efthymiadis: 1782; Gastis: 2974), one case about third marriage for the groom (Gastis: 4425) and one case about second marriage for both parties (Gastis: 4472).

15. Illiteracy seemed to affect women mainly.

16. The difference pertained to the stamp duty.

17. The transition from the label ‘Kingdom of Greece’ to ‘Hellenic Republic’ was found in dowry 322 (24th of December 1926). In Greece, the proclamation of the Republic was voted in the fourth Constituent Assembly (25th of March 1924) and was ratified by referendum on the 13th of April 1924. Therefore, most likely, our notary used stamps with the old label.

18. Like Singer, e.g. dowry contracts 1582, 2581, 2833, 3677, 3778, 4133, 4258, 5170, 5812.

19. According to the Bank of Greece, the total amount of dowry corresponds to €1,722,292.41, of cash to €1,054,881.98, real estate to €377,197.83 and movable goods to €290,212.60 in October 2016 rates. These amounts are the results of Domestic Inflation Developments based on the Consumer Price Index which is published by the Hellenic Statistical Authority.

20. According to the dowry contracts, both parents were not present at the time of drafting; the bride endowed herself. However, we do not know why her parents or brothers and sisters were not present (for instance if the bride was an orphan and had to endow herself).

21. Friedl (1965, p. 54) described a similar patrilocal case in which the bride’s parents were not required to provide a house as part of their daughter’s dowry.

22. An interesting reference about land given as wedding gift in Athens and the Mesogeia region was provided by Professor Neni Panourgiá, describing the incorporation of the Panourgiás land into the Hassiôtēs property through intermarriage (1995, pp. 64–85).

23. For a report focusing on movable goods in Thessaly, Peloponnese, and Central Greece, consult Sanders (1962); for Mykonos (Stott, 1973, pp. 126–127); for Corfu (Couroucli, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1994), Pelio (Béopoulou, 1989), Vergina (Damianakos, 1989), Karpathos (Vernier, 1984, 1991), Syrrako (Kautatzoglou, 1997) and Argos (Karouzou, 1998).

24. For an extensive study about secondary sector in Ioannina during 1914–1935, see Anastasopoulos (2001, 2007).

25. The pattern of ‘self-endowment’ documents was the same as dowry contracts; the difference pertained to the participation of the bride as the sole endower. However, as declared in the limitations, dowry contracts did not contain information about kinship including the number of male relatives around to possibly endow the bride. Although ‘self-endowment’ documents seem akin to what today we call ‘prenuptial agreement’, the latter often contain detailed obligations and terms about marital property as well as marriage dissolution scenarios that are not present in dowry contracts.

26. The psychokorē was never a property holder, even during marriage, because her wage was transferred directly from the endower to her future husband (Kalpourtzi, 1987, pp. 89–90). This tactic emerged in various areas, including Naxos, and Mykonos (Doxiadis, 2010, p. 247) during the end of the nineteenth century. The term psychokorē in the context of dowry contracts was also present in Dimitsana during the end on the nineteenth century. The endowment of a psychokorē seemed to function in a dual manner. The daughter, or housemaid, was often financially bound to the adoptive parent, namely the father, as her employer and required his permission to cut off this bond. The adoptive father also granted permission for marriage. This permission meant that he also could stop any economic relationship with his daughter. Papataxiarchis (1995, pp. 109–142) noted a similar case in Lesvos during the nineteenth century. Adoptive parents had a moral obligation to support and endow their parakores (or psychokores). Adoptive daughters represented an alternative form of patronage, as they could ensure domestic supply and fill the gaps of childlessness (Handman, 1993, p. 203; Sant Cassia & Bada, 1992, pp. 149–154, 191); according to Goody, adoption was also a strategy of heirship (Goody, 1983, pp. 72–73, 101).

27. Unfortunately, we do not have at our disposal dowry contracts endowing animals in a time frame within a few days apart. An example is dowry contracts 3892 (6.2.29), 4406 (10.9.29) and 2248 (7.10.29) where farmers endowed a cow costing 1000, 500 and 7000 drachmas, respectively.

28. Eleonora Skouteri–Didaskalou (1984) observed that the content of the endowment was transformed by the emergence of cash dowries, which was important for weddings.