Ecrire sa mort, decrire sa vie: Testaments de laics lausannois (1400-1450) (review)

A study of 180 wills and codicils from citizens and established residents of Lausanne in the first half of the fifteenth century, Écrire sa mort, décrire sa vie argues that elite lay persons made use of "les actes de dernières volontés pour manifester avant tout son individualité, pour marquer son status social dans un dernier geste «autobiographique» qui lui permet de sortir de la norme" (p. 189). The study proceeds along two lines. The first provides statistical analysis of the last wishes of 139 lay persons (81 men and 58 women), revealing their social locations, choices of burial place, and the range of their pious bequests. The shorter second section discusses five wills in some detail to highlight the individuality of the testators. Full text editions of sample wills are provided in Latin with French translations.

These testators were individuals of significant social standing, including literate professionals, merchants, artisans, and their wives or widows. Although economic times were hard, the range of choice and degree of specification of burial place, funeral arrangements, and pious bequests increase with economic and social status.

These wills seek to meet three overarching goals—peace among those left behind, burial near relatives, and post-mortem intercessions. When the transfer of goods contravenes custom, ensuring peace becomes very important. For example, the pious widow Anthonia makes her will in the hope that "toute discorde et toute rancœr cessent entre mes parents et amis," even as she gives virtually all of her wealth to the church. Burial places are specified in 99% of the wills, requesting, in increasing order of prestige, the parish, a mendicant house, and the cathedral. In each case, burial inside the church is a more elite choice than cemetery burial.

Those who choose burial in the parish cemetery do not make bequests outside the parish in their wills. Those buried inside the parish church or elsewhere make a range of pious donations. The most exhaustive list comes from Christophe Gilliz, an apothecary, who asks to be buried in the Dominican church. He makes donations to the Dominicans, Franciscans, a local hospital, his own priest, his parish, a convent of Cistercian nuns, a leprosarium, and a house of recluses. Thus Masses and prayers for his soul will come from a variety of spiritually potent sources, including the clergy and the poor.

Lausanne's lay testators are quite locally focused. They choose burial near home; their pious bequests benefit local clergy, religious institutions, and the known poor. This is a departure from the wider geographical horizon found in fourteenth-century wills, and Lavanchy interprets this as the start of the trend toward civic charity that characterizes the early modern period.

This volume is a significant contribution to the growing body of material on the late medieval laity. Lavanchy is willing to raise speculative questions and interpretations of the wills, but she is careful to acknowledge the limitations of what the texts themselves confirm. Overall, one gains the impression of late medieval lay people increasingly taking charge of their own affairs in both the temporal and the spiritual realms.