Women in medieval dalmatian towns’ confraterities

In this paper, the author deals with the presence of women in confraternities in medieval Dalmatian towns. Even though primarily male in membership, confraternities also regularly accepted sisters or ‘sestrime’ most commonly as parts of spiritual gifts. Women were regularly excluded from the organs of confraternity administration except for the confraternities with exclusively female membership. In more recent times, the participation of female membership increased in modern confraternities as did the amount of provisions which regulated the position of sisters. These provisions were contained in confraternity statutes which were called matrikule.