Exchanges of Women: Gift Giving and Donation in Early Medieval Women’s Letters and Charters

Gift-giving has not been always a topic of interest for historians. It is only since the 1960s, and drawing upon the theories on pre-modern societies of anthropologists such as Malinowski, Mauss, and later others such as Stahlins and Godelier, that early medieval historians have begun to look at exchange of goods as a significant element in historical societies. In particular, they have embarked on an inquiry about whether or not, and to what extent, early medieval Europe was a “gift economy.” While there has been a great deal of interest in early medieval narrative sources which feature gifts, other documents very significant to the gift giving, receiving, and reciprocating—i.e. letters and charters—have instead received considerably less attention.

My paper addresses two important aspects of early medieval gift-giving. First, I consider what letters and charters of donation in general—as documents which both convey and even comment on the “moment” of exchange—can reveal about the contemporary understanding(s) of the notion of the gift in the early Middle Ages. I thus investigate to what degree letters and charters overlap in telling us about the givers’ intentions or the function of reciprocity.

Secondly, I intend to stress that early medieval women also gave and received gifts in the form of movable and immovable property. In fact, these exchanges are documented, albeit more rarely than men’s, in their letters and charters. Taking a cue from anthropological queries, my paper asks what women’s letters and charters of donation reveal to us about women’s participation in and/or exclusion from the early medieval economy of gifts. In particular, by focusing on women’s surviving letters and charters, my goal is to fully flesh out the dynamics of such gift transactions, both with respect to the social, political, economic, and spiritual exchanges in which women participated.