Pious Legacies of Professors and their Families in Trecento Bologna

Shona Kelly Wray traces how Bolognese university law professors used their education, power, and wealth to become key players in the town’s politics and economy. Linked to aristocratic families through marriage, they were the preferred ambassadors for Bologna’s rulers, whether communal or signorial, and popular arbiters and testamentary executors for the townspeople. This paper brings the sacred into the secular world of fabulous wealth, knowledge, and power by examining pious and charitable bequests in the testaments of professors in the faculties of Law, Arts, and Medicine.