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2 results

  • Chapter 5 - Sanctifying Generosity

  • Lars Kjær
  • Book:
    The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition
    Published online:
    10 August 2019
    Print publication:
    29 August 2019, pp 98-120

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 investigates how classical ideals of generosity were utilised by writers of saints’ lives in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. It focuses on the case of Thomas Becket’s literary afterlife and the ways in which hagiographers sought to reframe his reputation for largesse in a spiritual direction. The chapter concludes by looking at the influence of this model on the saints’ lives of thirteenth-century England.

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition
  • Ideals and the Performance of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300
  • Lars Kjær
  • Published online:
    10 August 2019
    Print publication:
    29 August 2019
  • This interdisciplinary study explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe. In assuming that medieval gift giving was shaped by oral 'folk models', historians have traditionally followed in the footsteps of social anthropologists and sociologists such as Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu. This first in-depth investigation into the influence of the classical ideals of generosity and gift giving in medieval Europe reveals to the contrary how historians have underestimated the impact of classical literature and philosophy on medieval culture and ritual. Focusing on the idea of the gift expounded in the classical texts read most widely in the Middle Ages, including Seneca the Younger's De beneficiis and Cicero's De officiis, Lars Kjær investigates how these ideas were received, adapted and utilised by medieval writers across a range of genres, and how they influenced the practice of generosity.