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Memorial endowment
(827 words)

Memorial endowments are endowments or donations intended to commemorate the dead (Memory; Trust, charitable). A distinction is drawn between forms of individual religious and liturgical memoria (e.g. the endowment of masses, prayers, or churches) and forms of social commemoration (endowments to help the poor or fund studies). Whereas most donors in the Middle Ages were members of the high nobility and/or clergy, or of the wealthy urban elites [3]; [10], individualization and territorialization from the late Middle Ages on encouraged the emergence of wider circles of the nobilit…

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Rößner-Richarz, Maria, “Memorial endowment”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_SIM_023933>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20190801



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