Gift-giving in the great traditions

The case of donations to monasteries in the medieval West

Bibliographic Data

ID4180717
AuthorsIlana Friedrich Silber (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume36
Issue2
Pages209-243
Publication date1995-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-9756 • E-ISSN: 1474-0583
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003975600007542
OpenAlexW2153518462
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited92

Focusing upon donations to monasteries in the medieval Western world, this paper expands upon extant discussions of religious gift-giving in the 'great traditions' , and of its relation to more archaic forms of gift-exchange, hitherto largely based on non-Western and mostly Asian anthropological material. While displaying many of the social functions familiarly associated with the gift in archaic or primitive societies, donations to monasteries are shown to have also entailed a process of immobilisation of wealth not extant in the gift circuit of 'simpler' societies. While donations to monasteries clearly attested to the impact of otber-wordly religious orientations, they also entailed a range of symbolic dynamics very different from, and even incompatible with, those analysed by Jonathan Parry with regard to the other-wordly 'pure' gift. The paper then brings into relief the precise constellation of ideological 'gift-theory', socio-economic 'gift-circuit', and macrosocietal context, which enabled this specific variant of the gift-mechanism to operate as a 'total' social phenomenon in the two senses of that term suggested, though not clearly distinguished and equally not developed, in Mauss' pathbreaking essay on the gift

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Extant taxon · Gift giving · Ideology · Phenomenon · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Religious Tourism and Spaces