Social networks in late medieval Luebeck.

摘要

In medieval Lubeck, as in other places, a will was a private matter which was closely integrated into various aspects of public policy and procedure. While such documents were primarily addressed towards the pragmatic problems of managing and distributing an estate, they also expressed many elements of the city's ideology, including the protection of group rights and an atmosphere of voluntary cooperation to promote common interests. This ideology drew upon the traditions of Germanic customary law within the city's historical context and its position of leadership within the German Hanse.; The present study has been based upon 308 surviving wills which were produced in Lubeck between the years 1450 and 1452, representing a group of 281 individuals between 18 and 84 years of age, from different occupations and family backgrounds, including two women. In order to develop a detailed profile of each person included in the study, and to examine the complex social and economic relationships among the members of the group, information from the wills was combined with published and unpublished material in the city's debt book and property registry to produce a database containing almost 100,000 names and other descriptive material. A specialized search engine based upon the methodology of social network analysis was written to perform prosopographical analysis and generate a set of links between the individuals and the documents in which they appeared.; Taken individually, the wills offer a description of the character, economic status and family structure of single households in medieval Lubeck. But when they are examined as a group and placed within the context of other social and economic activity in the city, they reveal a principle of reciprocity and a variety of business and fiduciary relationships which illustrate a long collective history of partnership, trust and cooperation among testators. This suggests that writing a will was not the work of an isolated individual seeking only to control the devolution of testamentary assets, but rather the work of a group seeking to protect the interests of the larger community as well as those of the immediate family. The testament is thus an especially significant expression of the culture and ideology of medieval Lubeck.