anja thaller role,47 for which they could receive legacies or other remuneration. The formula may include a warning about the executor’s responsibility to God or at the Last Judgement. The other contents of testamentary dispositions can be broadly categorized as provisions for the salvation of the soul, practical matters, and property distribution. Dispositive verbs include ‘order’, ‘create’, ‘make’, ‘give’, ‘donate’, ‘leave’, or ‘bequeath’.48 The dispositions tend to focus on donations proanima, such as offerings for anniversaries of the testatrix and family members and donations for masses, prayers, eternal lights, candles, and occasionally also altars. Some wills provide for charitable gifts to hospitals and the poor. Obligations to undertake pilgrimages can be found very rarely (no. 34, 36). Other bequests may not be explicitly memorial, but can be motivated by personal affection or a desire to provide for children, relatives, or trusted persons, including domestic servants. The order of bequests to institutions and individuals may vary, with legacies to religious institutions usually listed first and followed by those to lay people, but also vice versa. Bequests to named individuals are more common than those to the household as a whole.49 The single dispositions are usually quite brief, resembling lists or inventories, and cover financial assets, possessions such as relics, clothing, headgear or other accessoires, jewellery silverware and cutlery, as well as other valuable household items such as books or even entire room furnishings, but also animals.50 47 Rare examples of servants as executors: Elizabeth of Görlitz in 1451 appointed a chamberlain, aKüchenschreiber, who kept the accounts of the money spent on the court kitchen, and a confessor (no. 25). Ten years later, Elizabeth of Waldeck appointed her brother, her confessor, a bailiff, and her servant as executors (no. 27). 48 E.g. schaffen, ordnen, setzen, wollen; facere, ordinare, legare, dare, donare. 49 Similar results are obtained by Hörmann 2023. 50 For the material culture, see Antenhofer 2021. Books are hardly mentioned in wills, not least because they were considered household items and usually not explicitly specified. See e.g. Clanchy 2018, p. 90; Spieß 1998, p. 95. Books are referred to in no. 13: all our books (alliu unsreu půech); no. 34: all our prayer books (alle unser betbucher); no. 44: my golden psalter (mein guldin psalter). Margaret of Savoy (†1479) left all of her books to her son, as mentioned in his receipt. See most recently Thaller 2023, pp. 91f. 65
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