testaments of noblewomen in the holy roman empire dispositions providing for the distribution of personal property after death.10 In terms of absolute numbers, the surviving wills of late medieval German nobility lag behind those of bourgeois or ecclesiastical origin.11 Although the percentage of noblewomen who once made wills may have been higher than in other social groups,12 not all of them left a written testament, assuming the freedom to make a will and the possibility of regulating the disposition of personal property and the preparation for the afterlife in other ways. To give a few examples: Of all the early and high medieval Roman empresses, only two wills are known, those of Angilberga and Constance.13 The 21 Roman queens between 1250 and 1500 also only left two wills. Of the ten late medieval countesses Palatine of the Rhine, four testaments are preserved, and of the 22 duchesses of Austria and countesses of Tyrol between 1200 and 1400, ten wills survive (see Table 2). This also suggests that empresses and queens were less likely to make wills than duchesses and countesses.14 References to once-existing wills can be found in charters, accounts, letters, historiographical texts, or other sources.15 10 In this study a broad definition of ‘testament’ is adopted, using both ‘testament’ and ‘will’ as generic terms for various dispositions relating to property and inheritance made in provision for the event of death, which mainly consist in donations proanima. Cases not fitting the definition above have not been considered, such as Reichgart of Jülich, duchess of Bavaria (1335I 3; ed.Oefele 1763, p. 164); Maddalena Visconti, duchess of Bavaria (1395 XII 3; ed. Antenhofer 2021, pp. 399f); Elizabeth of Nuremberg, countess Palatine of the Rhine and Roman queen (1405 IX11; Amberg, StA, Fürstentum Obere Pfalz, Registraturbücher 19, fol. 273v–275r); Elisabetta Visconti, duchess of Bavaria (1417IV4; ed. Antenhofer 2021, pp. 426f); Elizabeth of Nuremberg, countess of Wurtemberg (1421 V 15 and 23; ed. Zeiler 2023, nos. 1.1 and 1.2). 11 Gerlich 1984, p. 395. 12 Hörmann 2023, p. 31. 13 Ed. Falconi 1979, pp. 49–58 no. 20 (877III); the lost will of Constance has been partially reconstructed in Kölzer 1990, pp. 279–281 no. 71 (1198XI 5). 14 The same applies to male rulers in the Holy Roman Empire. See Schlögl 1976; Gerlich 1984, p. 395. Of the 13 Roman kings from the 13th to the 15th centuries only six wills are known. See Heimann 1989, p. 276. 15 Deperdita include, but are not limited to, the cases of Elizabeth of Tyrol-Gorizia (†1313) (oral will?), Adelheid of Braunschweig (†1320) and Beatrice of Savoy (†1331), see Hörmann 2023, p. 529, n. 775; Elizabeth of Henneberg (first will, c. 1361), see Stillfried et al. 1857, no. 488; Barbara of Sachsen-Wittenberg (†1465), see Zeiler 2023, p. 359, n. 1014; 58
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