47 Ingesman 1978; he also compared other clerical testaments in Denmark. 48 Fritz 1993; she reckons half a dozen women who gave and about the same number who got books. 49 Ferm 2021, pp. 755–767. 50 See articles in Nordin 2022. 51 For England see Goldberg 1994 about lay people, and Erler 2002 who discusses women and reading in relation to testaments, pp. 68, 74–76. 52 Myrdal 2014, pp. 226–228. testaments as a source for everyday life testament by a canon at the cathedral in Lund, and especially how he distributed his collection of about 30 books, nearly all to other clerics.47 The will was from 1404, which was the peak period for Danish testaments with many objects. Birgitta Fritz tried to highlight that women owned books in the period of large testaments, but was only able to adduce a few testaments.48 A significant contribution came in 2021 when Olle Ferm quantified all testaments in the period 1240–1380, with 386 books. Donors and recipients were overwhelmingly from the religious sphere. Of the beneficiaries only about four percent were lay people, and more than half of the books went to Church institutions.49 Inthe 15th century the domestic production of books increased, and sources other than wills indicate that more laypeople, also women, acquired books at the end of the Middle Ages.50 Testaments have been used to show the increased importance of book production in the rest of Europe for a non-clerical market in the Late Middle Ages.51 Precious metals. The last category is objects of gold and silver, especially gold rings and silver cups. These were the most common objects among those made of precious metals. Gold rings seem to have been almost totally reserved for the upper classes. It was a gift that could be given to men as well as women, but to relatives and other close persons of high status. For instance, Bengta, a woman from the middle rank of the nobility, in her rich testament from 1338 gave eleven gold rings, all of them to relatives, but none to the many servants and others she also mentioned in her last will.52 We find the same pattern in other testaments. The powerful Mats Kettilmundsson in his testament from 1326 gave gold rings to the king, the archbishop, and to his own wife, but not to anyone else of the about one 378
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