Trading in Beauty and Ugliness on the Medieval Marriage Market

This paper aims to explore from a legal-historical point of view how in the Late Middle Ages female beauty was first of all seen as a crucial economic asset, allowing families to play with an advantage on an often highly competitive marriage market. This led to major social problems affecting less-than-average looking women. Legal scholars and municipal legislators eleborated different stratagems to streghten the position of unattractive women on the marriage market. The diffusion of these stratagems in pastoral literature and in local legislation is described with special focus on late medieval Italy.