The Formulary of Marculf and strategies for transferring goods in the Merovingian period

• Grant number: 15/13326-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2015
• Effective date (End): March 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Cândido da Silva
• Grantee: Karen Torres da Rosa
• Supervisor: Alice Rio
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: King's College London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/26762-4 - Strategies for transferring goods in Merovingian wills (from the sixth to the eighth centuries), BP.MS

Abstract

This project is part of a master's thesis to be defended at the Universidade de São Paulo. Under the supervision of Professor Alice Rio, I will study early medieval gifts and testaments at King's College London in order to analyze the legal practice pertaining to the transmission of wills in Gaul from the sixth to the eighth centuries.To understand how the Gallic society of the period of interest regarded the transmission of wills, to compare this regard with what we can find in Merovingian testaments, and to understand how the latter could be used as a means of transferring goods in the Early Middle Ages, one must study the legal formulae made by scribes. These documents were based on chartae and served in their turn as bases for other documents. The formularies, or collections of formulae, are important to understand how testaments and the transmission of wills were viewed by early medieval society.In this research I will focus on the different models of testaments found in the Formulary of Marculf, comparing them with surviving Merovingian testaments. This analysis will be complemented by a bibliographical review on gifts, the transmission of wills, legal practice etc., in order to illuminate how testaments, and the strategies for transmission of wills they embody, change over time and space.