Testamentary Bequests Research Articles

Young Romans: Status, Dress, and Gender

The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature of the evidence, we know more about the children of the upper classes than the lower, and more about boys than girls. Looking at the clothing of children presents particular difficulties precisely because there were very few garments that were specifically made for them. A comment by a Roman jurist on the nature of clothing in testamentary bequests lists first the clothing for the paterfamilias (togas, tunics, cloaks), then defines children’s clothing as: “clothes used only for this purpose, such as togae praetextae, coats, chlamydes and cloaks which we provide for our sons” (Digest 34.2.23.2). The list for sons essentially replicated the list of their father’s garments, and this idea of the child dressed in standard adult garments sized down for them is evidenced in much of the surviving iconography. The Roman wardrobe reflected that of most pre-industrial societies, in that, for most people, possessing more than one change of clothes would be a luxury. Everyday dress consisted of a tunic, which could be covered by a cloak or mantle; this outfit was worn by everyone, wealthy or poor, free or unfree, adult or child. Ancient authors were not particularly interested in their children’s clothing practices. The one exception to this would be the laying aside of the toga praetexta (the toga of childhood) and the assumption of the toga virilis (toga of manhood) as part of the transition to adulthood for male Roman citizens. Artistic representations from the private sphere or from funerary contexts are more rewarding for examining children’s clothing. Ordinary children and images of childhood are not frequent motifs in Roman public art. It is more useful to turn to private memorials, where clothed children of different ages are depicted in a range of contexts. A child could be a symbol of status; a freeborn son, in particular, would be a prestigious addition to a family. The higher social worth of boys compared to girls had an impact on their upbringing, education, and wider life experience. Another sign of the gendered view of children is that in artistic representations, boys are more commonly depicted than girls. From the first century BC, when the habit of erecting memorials became more socially diffused, children were more often included in the visual vocabulary. At first, they are normally seen included in family groups, but by the first century AD, children became subjects in their own right: on reliefs, funerary altars, and sarcophagi. In spite of memorials being related to a deceased person or persons, children were depicted as alive and healthy, and such images constitute an important source for how Roman children of various ages and social classes would have been dressed.

Should We Give Away the Annual Exclusion?

United States gift tax law imposes on the transferor a tax at rates of up to fifty percent on property transfers made during the transferor's lifetime for less than full and adequate consideration in money or money's worth. The tax is calculated on the basis of the fair market value of the property transferred, determined as of the time of the gift. The gift tax is a supplement to the federal estate tax, which is imposed on transfers of property at death at rates up to fifty percent. If there were no gift tax, the estate tax could be substantially avoided by making lifetime gifts. Neither lifetime gifts nor testamentary bequests of property are subject to income tax in the hands of the transferor or the transferee.There are several exceptions to the gift tax, one of which is the annual exclusion. The annual exclusion permits an individual to make gifts of up to $10,000 a year to any number of persons without incurring any gift tax. The annual exclusion is available only if the donee is given a present right of possession or enjoyment as to the value with respect to which the exclusion is claimed. As is demonstrated below, the annual exclusion can be used, both directly and indirectly, to permit very large amounts to escape the federal transfer tax system. Yet, at the same time, the annual exclusion is not large enough to protect some types of transfers that should be protected from gift tax. In addition, as it is currently designed and used, the annual exclusion injects vertical inequity into the transfer tax system and contributes to horizontal inequity that exists in the system.

Bidding Prayers: The Economic Vocabulary of Late Medieval European Christianity and the Experience of the Liturgy on the Eve of the Reformations

Bidding Prayers:The Economic Vocabulary of Late Medieval European Christianity and the Experience of the Liturgy on the Eve of the Reformations1 Tyler Lange Mutuum date, nihil inde sperantes. Luc. 6:35 O sacramentum pietatis! o signum unitatis! o vinculum caritatis! Qui vult vivere, habet ubi vivat, habet unde vivat. Accedat, credat, incorporetur, ut vivificetur. Augustine, Tractatus in Johannem, 26.13 (ad Jo. 6:50-52) Culpae quantitas non mensuratur ex nocumento quod quis facit, sed ex voluntate qua quis facit, contra caritatem agens. Et ideo, quamvis poena excommunicationis excedat nocumentum, non tamen excedit quantitatem culpae. Thomas Aquinas and Rainaldo da Piperno, Supplementum ad Summam theologiae, Q.21, a.3 Je deffens pareillement que nulle personne de quelque estat quil soit ne viengne a la table nostre seigneur Jesu crist ayant aulcune rancune ou haygne contre son prochain: ou se sentent estre en quelque aultre peche mortel secret ou notoyre Car en telle sorte prendre le corps de Jesu crist est recepvoir sa dampnation. Priest's Manual, Saint-Eustache, Paris BNF Latin 1216, 1530s) [End Page 19] Introduction 'Economy of salvation', 'treasury of merit', 'marketplace for merit', 'price of salvation', 'business of salvation', 'office of souls', 'management of poverty', 'accounting for the afterlife', 'moral economy or economies', 'passports to paradise', 'quantifiable religiosity'…2: theologians and historians since at [End Page 20] least Tertullianhave used 'economic' language to speak of God, salvation, and religious life. Recent contributions are no exception, whether the specific subjects are: Franciscan theologians as experts in valuation and shapers of the late medieval economic vocabulary, managing the finances of Franciscan convents; the operation of the Apostolic Penitentiary, confession and scandal, testamentary bequests funding masses, devotional indulgences, and popular piety; or governmental regulation of bread prices. Yet what do recent historians mean by using such language? For the most part, these accounts abandon former narratives of economic history in which lending, which existed in a separate, economic realm divorced from religious life, was Christianized at some point in the Middle Ages, hobbling it with the prohibition of usury from which the economy had to be liberated, most successfully in the Protestant territories of northern Europe. They do not, for the most part, revive old, anti-Catholic narratives of a commercialized, corrupt medieval Church. Instead, they, and in particular the studies of Giacomo Todeschini, Jacques Chiffoleau, and Chiffoleau's students on the 'economic vocabulary' and management practices of the Franciscan friars, offer a vision of economic life fully embedded in religious life. In fact, they show that there was no separate economic life to be disembedded from religious life because a religious language of economic ethics shaped economic life through the sermons and management practices of the friars. Franciscans became experts at valuation and valorized the circulation of economic goods, rather than hoarding or thesaurization, because the Franciscans had to manage daily life without legal property rights in accordance with St. Francis's [End Page 21] ideal of poverty, and because their subsistence—and salvation—depended on proper estimation of the necessities of life. The intellectual and practical consequences of Franciscan poverty clarify the context of the excommunications for debt that I examined in Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France, and affirm the possible implications of the practice's apparent decline from the late fifteenth century. In short, it appears that excommunication for debt manifests popular adoption of the Mendicants' encouragement of economic circulation through caritative lending: excommunication for debt treated debt not as a crime per se, but as a crime when payment was delayed or deferred against the creditor's will. Our mistake is to imagine the creditor as an oppressor: because he or she had likely extended an interest-free sales credit, the defaulting debtor was potentially behaving in an immoral manner by breaking a promise and by impeding the circulation of goods, within this economic ethics. (The situation was different for usurious loans from Christian or Jewish moneylenders.) While Franciscans were most obviously arbiters of proper economic behavior as preachers and confessors, users of late medieval church courts were also arbiters of proper economic behavior each time they sought ecclesiastical sanction against a usurer or, more commonly, a defaulting debtor. Because the practice...

“In that One the Ālif is Missing”: Eunuchs and the Politics of Masculinity in Early Colonial North India

AbstractAlthough ostensibly gendered as men and frequently maintaining independent, patriarchal households, enslaved eunuchs (khwājasarās) in pre- and early colonial regimes in South Asia were often mocked for their supposed effeminacy, bodily difference, and pretensions to normative masculinity. In the Mughal successor state of Awadh (1722-1856), such mockery grew more pronounced in the wake of growing financial demands from the British East India Company and attempts by eunuchs to alienate property with wills and testamentary bequests. Through examples of verbal derision directed at eunuchs, this essay shows that not only did ideas of normative masculinity serve as a vehicle for Awadh’s rulers to defend their sovereign authority from colonial encroachment, but that notions of normative manhood continued to inform eunuchs’ own self-perception into the nineteenth century.

„Proszę, by wszystkim moim domownikom wypłacono gaże i pensje…” – odprawa dla służby i spłata długów Armanda de Bourbon, księcia de Conti po jego śmierci

The article presents the settlements and household accounts following the death of Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, as well as testamentary and pre-mortem bequests the prince made to provide for his servants. Surviving documents show the decision taken by the executors of the last will, while the books reveal ambiguous, sometimes astonishing variation of amounts designated as wages and lifetime stipends for the prince’s domestics, as well as attest to the concern of the testator himself and his wife for the fates of people engaged in the household.

Von Hesychie zu Ökonomie: Zur Finanzierung der Wüstenklöster Palästinas (5.–6. Jh.)

Abstract Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterland were popular destinations for late antique pilgrims. The majority relied on the hospitality offered in Christian guesthouses during their visits and afterwards returned to their homes all over the late antique world. This study aims at investigating how pilgrimage hospitality in the Holy Land between the fourth and the sixth centuries functioned in general – and to what extent board and lodging provided by the mostly monastic hosts had to be remunerated through either manual labour, voluntary financial donations or testamentary bequests by the guests. It will be demonstrated that hospitality was not only a Christian virtue but also a necessary means for the monasteries to survive as it formed the financial backbone for their social and political activities in the city of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Patriarchate. This constant source of income through a permanent influx of pilgrims enabled further monastic financial investments in a growing number of guesthouses which were constructed not only on the outskirts but also in the centres of cities and towns. Soon, alterations in both the ground plans and the function of the monasteries became noticeable: The monastic institutions of the Holy Land shifted from mere clusters of cells (laurae) – which were unable to host the growing number of visitors and new novices alike – to monasteries (coenobia) with a strictly regulated communal life. The study furthermore shows that this change found support in the hagiographical literature of the age. Exhortations to demonstrate hospitality to pilgrims and to rebuild the cells into proper monasteries were often placed in narratives of divine visions or in the ultima verba or monastic testaments of famous abbots. Nevertheless, these changes were not unchallenged by monks who aimed for a more traditional lifestyle in quiet contemplation (hesychia) far away from the more economically-driven ambitions of their superiors, who, to quote John Moschus, had „lined up their bellies and purses.“

Women and wealth in late medieval Pisa (c. 1350-1420)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role played by women in inheritance practices in late medieval Pisa through an in-depth analysis of the city’s statues (Constitutum Legis) as well as a broad sample of wills dating from 1340 to 1420. To what extent could Pisan women freely own property, accumulate and transmit their wealth? How far did the situation in Pisa echo that of the north-central Italian cities where female property rights were gradually restricted and patrilineal succession reinforced? In this regard, the «Pisan model» was different from both Venetian and Florentine inheritance practices. Pisan law allowed women to inherit non-dotal assets with relative ease. Moreover, although testamentary bequests between spouses were not allowed, in their wills married men allowed a significant margin of freedom to the «widows-to-be» entrusted with managing the family estate on behalf of their children. Statutes and wills, therefore, encapsulate the different and overlapping identities of women (wives, daughters, mothers) thus enabling us to trace the profile of medieval Pisan women, who were perhaps less subjected to the male mundum than elsewhere.

An investigation into the testamentary content of Stafford wills 1761–1860

This research investigates the testamentary elements contained in the wills of Stafford residents during the period 1761–1860, a period of paradigm change which resulted in Stafford transforming from a small County Town with a population of almost four thousand in 1801, to an industrial centre of over twelve thousand by 1860. The article explores only a small portion of the testamentary content found in Stafford wills, but the results give a unique insight into aspects of life not always covered by other historical documents. Industrialisation resulted in cheaper goods being made available to more people, so the testamentary elements of Stafford wills were investigated to see if bequests of personal and household items increased. The nineteenth century also raised many social concerns, of which funerals were one. The first half of the nineteenth century was known for its extravagant and expensive funerals, so testator’s instructions were investigated to see what type of funeral arrangements were requested. The results highlight that changes cannot always be identified unless research covers a long enough timespan. Also, that despite campaigns to promote will making, in Stafford the number of testators as a percentage of the population declined in the nineteenth century. Industrialisation and the availability of cheaper goods also did not, as might have been expected result in an increase in testamentary bequests of specific ‘things’, but rather a decline. Using the preamble of a will for funeral arrangements also became less common in the nineteenth century.

"Relinquo ad ipsa tabula de argento"... La orfebrería en los testamentos catalanes de los siglos XI-XIII

Although very little Catalan metalwork from Romanesque Middle Ages remain, its importance as an artistic production and its social relevance are firmly revealed by documentary sources. This paper is specifically focused on wills from the 11th to the 13th Centuries. It analyse both legacies in metalwork and testamentary bequests for the creation of sumptuary objects, with the aim of elucidating the social and financial uses of these objects, and their role in the patrimonial transfers between secular elites and the ecclesiastical establishment of the medieval society.

Tipping the Scales in Favor of Charitable Bequests: A Critique

The public policy favoring testamentary bequests to charities is well established in the law. However, that public policy can, and does, conflict with other equally well-founded public policies. When confronted with this conflict, courts are often dismissive or even hostile towards the parties seeking to challenge a testamentary bequest to a charity. I argue that the policy favoring charitable giving has gone too far and has, in some instances, undermined other important public policies. Specifically, courts and legislators have strengthened the charitable bequest policy without giving enough consideration to other, equally important public policies. This problem is not new. History shows that similar policy conflicts have arisen periodically since late antiquity, if not earlier. The parameters of the problem, however, are somewhat new. The governing law, available technologies, and familial relationships have certainly evolved since the time of late antiquity. This article examines how the public policy favoring charitable bequests conflicts with various aspects of the equally important public policies of testamentary freedom and family protection.

La liberación de cautivos en la frontera de Granada (siglos XIII-XV)

Castile and Granada recognized the right of captives to seek salvation by fleeing. Some escapes were so unbelievable that they could only be explained by divine intercession. The ransoms were paid with money from official assistance, testamentary bequests and alms. The rents of the waqf guaranteed the payment of many ransoms on the Granadan side. Sometimes captives went back home to get the money to pay for their ransoms, leaving members of their families as hostages. Religious reasons justify the Moors’ preference for exchange of captives rather than rescuing them. The ransomers put the captive´s family in touch with his master and they tried to help both sides reach an agreement. They were expected to be honest, but some took advantage of their privileged situations to trade or to spy. Women, children and the young apostatized to improve their living conditions, although this option was more traumatic for Christians than for Muslims.

Tipping the Scales in Favor of Charitable Bequests: A Critique

This paper considers the public policy favoring testamentary bequests to charity and offers a critique of that policy.Public policy favors testamentary bequests to charity. At least, that is the claim of numerous courts and legislative bodies. The policy favoring charitable bequests may tip the scales in deciding the proper interpretation of a will or the merits of an undue influence, incapacity, or tortuous interference with inheritance claim. Paradoxically, courts and legislative bodies rarely discuss the source of this public policy. Nor do they inquire into the wisdom of the policy. They should.

Medieval concerns for soul salvation testamentary bequests to the Franciscan order in Kotor (Cattaro) 1326-1337

Analysis of the testamentary bequests that Kotor citizens made to the Fran?ciscans ad pias causas between 1326 and 1337 shows that the most common type was that of pecuniary bequests for saying masses pro remedio animae. The Franciscan played a prominent role in the shaping of devotional practices of the faithful and acted as their closest helpers through performing commemorative rites for the salva?tion of the soul after death.

Relations between the Laity and the Parochial Clergy During the Henrician Reformation: The Case of the North and West Midlands

Although the concept of anti-clericalism in the early sixteenth century has been successfully challenged, there remain the questions whether and to what extent there was dissatisfaction with the secular clergy. The comprehensive consideration of the Catholic clergy by Peter Marshall approached those issues from a variety of angles. More recently, Tim Cooper has exonerated the secular clergy of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Attitudes to the clergy in that diocese are re-examined here through a detailed analysis of testamentary bequests by the laity to the secular (parochial) clergy, from the late 1520s to 1546, throughout the various mutations in direction of the Henrician Reformation. A certain level of indifference is detected in the general paucity of death-bed considerations for the clergy.

Religion paysanne et religion urbaine en Toscane (c. 1250-c. 1450) by Charles M. De la Roncière

Religion paysanne et religion urbaine en Toscane (c. 1250-c. 1450). By Charles M. De la Ronciere. [Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 458.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Co. 1994. Pp. x, 319. $95.00.) The nine essays collected in this volume represent Charles de la Ronciere's contributions over the past twenty or so years to the field of religious history. A social and economic historian, de la Ronciere uses mostly notarial records to discover the contours of the religion lived by monks, friars, merchants, villagers, and rural folk, in thirteenth-, fourteenth-, and fifteenth-century Tuscany. The specific problems he studies are: the place of confraternities in the religious framework of Florence and cantado; the influence of the Franciscans in the Florentine countryside; the pastoral orientation of the clergy; the role of folklore in rural religious practice; and the faith of the merchant. In each study de la Ronciere explores the intersection of the institutional church and popular mentalities. Two essays in particular merit further discussion as they are illustrative of de la Ronciere's methodology and of the range of his questions. the first, L'Influence des Franciscains dans le campagne de Florence au XIV (sup e) siecle (1280-1360) (essay II, originally published in 1975), examines the depth and duration of Franciscan influence in the Florentine countryside over two generations. Analyzing naming practices and testamentary bequests, he finds that older generations included the friars only in their wills, and thereby acknowledged the friars, yet without having to incorporate them into their daily lives. Younger generations, by contrast, did just that, as they opted to name their own children after Francis and other mendicants. These differences, suggests de la Ronciere, are symptomatic of differing postures toward the rural church. Restive within an old and inflexible ecclesiastical framework, the young accepted the newer orders readily into their lives, whereas their parents and grandparents continued to endorse more heavily the old organizations in which they themselves had been raised. This is one explanation. But now, given the findings of subsequent studies on the friars in central and northern Italy, we can and should wonder what other social and political factors might also have contributed to this disparity. Still more important for de la Ronciere, though, is that these generational differences contributed to what he sees as the late and relatively weak influence of the Franciscans. …

The Decline in the Use of Latin for Will- and Testament-making in Early Sixteenth-century Bedfordshire

In recent years historians have placed increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding the contexts in which the 'reforms, reactions and reversals' of the reformation process were enacted} A stimulus to (and sometimes a product of) the development of the contextual approach to Reformation history has been a growing awareness of the significance of the beliefs and attitudes of ordinary members of sixteenth-century society. Scholars have become preoccupied with the question of whether the 'English Reformation' was the result of authoritative action from above or whether it was brought about by popular demand from below. In order to illuminate further this central question of Reformation dynamics it may be valuable to examine some of the linguistic contexts of Tyndale's great work of translating the Bible into English. Was the vulgar tongue accepted in non-scriptural ecclesiastical documents? Or did the preReformation Church attempt to maintain its authority and separateness by insistence on the universal application of Latin for Church activities? If so, how successful was the Church in that attempt and what pressures were there from the populace for change? One early-sixteenth-century ecclesiastical document which survives in sufficient numbers to be of value to the historian and which may provide some answer to these questions is the canonical will. The formularized character of late medieval wills has made their utility for historians limited and problematical, particularly where the evaluation of patterns of individual belief is concerned. However, the formal style of wills and testaments, reflecting as it does the complex mixture of canon law, common law and the principles of equity which characterized the medieval law of succession, does provide valuable evidence for the study of the tensions and changing relations between Church and laity. This paper will examine the evidence provided by the eight hundred wills and testaments recorded in the first three surviving probate registers of the court of the Archdeacon of Bedford. Willand testament-making developed from the teaching of the early Christian Church that a dying man should make atonement for his sins by devoting a portion of his worldly goods to the relief of the poor and other pious purposes.s Thus, the 'will' or 'testament' began as a form of charity which provided a motive for the right of bequest and which was closely associated with the last confession. So close was this association that an individual who died intestate was suspected of dying without the ministrations of the Church. During the medieval period the Church developed laws and institutions, administered by the Church courts, that supervised and saw to the enforcement of testamentary bequests and thus the Church became involved in the law of succession. The jurisdiction

Law No. 100 of 1985 Amending Certain Provisions of Egypt's Personal Status Laws

LDURING THE first half of the twentieth century, Egyptian supporters of legal reform in the area of personal status engaged in various activities that contributed to the promulgation of a number of statutory laws, the most important of which were Law No. 25 of 1920 and Law No. 25 of 1929 (marriage and divorce), Law No. 77 of 1943 (inheritance) and Law No. 71 of 1946 (testamentary bequests). By selecting elements from the legal doctrines of the four Sunni law schools, the framers of these laws sought to adapt elements of Islamic family law to the needs of modem times and to improve the legal status of women vis-d-vis their husbands and paternal relatives. The rise to power of the Free Officers Regime in 1952 interrupted the momentum of the movement for legal reform. Pressure for additional changes in the area of Islamic family law encountered little or no success until the accession of Sadat to the Presidency in 1971, at which time the discussions were renewed, initially without much success. Although several proposals and draft laws were debated in parliamentary committees, none was made into law. In 1979 President Sadat decided to speed up the political process by issuing an emergency decree, subsequently approved by the new Parliament, making one of the proposals law. Law no. 44 of 1979 amended the personal status laws to include many of the demands made over the course of half a century by Egyptian feminists. The new law was controversial, both for its content and because of the methods used by the Sadat regime in securing its approval. The President's wife, Jihan Sadat, alternatively was credited with, or blamed for, the passage of the law, commonly known as Jihan's Law. Critics observed that the Egyptian parliament had little choice but to ratify the Presidential Decree that preceded the proposal's enactment into law. However, in Case No. 29 of 1980 (Personal Status), the Badari Court of Summary Justice for Guardianship of the Person (Mahkama Juz'iyya li'l-Wildya

Charity and social work in Toulouse 1100-1250.

Other than the labors of the clergy, the basic resource for public charity and social work was pious giving by layfolk. During the long period from the later eleventh century until around 1250, both the forms of giving changed and the sums involved grew considerably. About the year 1100, the principal ways of financing charity and social work were the founding of charitable institutions by living people and the giving of gifts during a donor's lifetime to already existing institutions. During the twelfth century, however, as the practice of drawing testaments became more widespread, testamentary bequests became increasingly significant as a means of supporting the work of charity. Later on, during the thirteenth century, a further source of wealth was more extensively tapped than had hitherto been the case. Designed specifically for social or charitable ends, confraternities, whose members were obligated to give regularly or annually, began to play an ever more important role.