Godparenthood in Eighteenth-Century Dubrovnik: Children, Parents and Godparents as Knots of Social Networks

Abstract

Data analysis of 110 baptisms from the parish registers of the City of Dubrovnik for the year 1770 is used to reconstruct godparenthood as an instrument of the families’ social betterment within community and a means of establishing ties with the individuals of considerable ‘social capital’. Correlating the data with the sources from the pre-Tridentine Dubrovnik and those from parish registers for the year 1870 on the one hand, and taking into account the results of foreign debates on this topic on the other, this article examines distinctive features of the social alliances created by godparenthood at the sunset of the Dubrovnik Republic.