thérèse de hemptinne & els de paermentier Many years later, in November 1273, the aged Countess Margaret had a second will drawn up, which can technically be considered a codicil to her former testament of November 1257.63 While her initial testament of 1257 mainly focused on the ratio for the execution of her legacies and settlements of her debts in both counties, the testament of 1273 is much more detailed on the exact amounts of money to be paid to each legatee, ranging from Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys over canons regular, Franciscans and Dominicans, beguines, and hospital sisters. Interestingly, the brief codicil from February 1277 that was affixed to the charter of November 1273 expressed almost exclusively the countess’s concern for the proper execution of her last will.64 Among other things, Margaret ordered that her testamentary executors were to be taken at their word by her successors; that they were to report only once to the new count on how much they had received, from whom and where, and among whom they had distributed it; and that other than that nothing should be changed in the (previous) provisions of her will except by herself. As the need for a written record of the counts’ last wills grew from the twelfth century onwards, testaments in Flanders and Hainaut only took their official form in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. While the bequests of the earliest testaments remained general, those from the end of the thirteenth century onwards are much more detailed in their provisions.Apart from the development of their content,however,the counts 465 63 Lille, ADN, B445/1811. See note 14. In February 1278, Margaret added some supplementary provisions to her last will in a charter addressed to her daughter Mary and her testamentary executors. Lille, ADN, 31H14/219. Hautcoeur 1873, p.221, n.200. In some cases, testamentary additions or modifications were recorded in separate charters, even if they were added only a few days after the drawing of the original testament or codicil. For instance, the unusually long testament of the French queen Blanche of Navarre († 1398) is preserved in a contemporaneous copy of twenty-two folios comprising the text of a testament and two successive codicils, dated respectively 18 March 1396, 20 March 1396, and 10 September 1398. D’Anca 2024, p. 148. 64 Both the testament and the codicil are written by the same hand known as ‘scribe A’. See note 29. Conclusion
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