ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the shamefaced poor among the highest social stratum-the nobility. Charity targeting unmarried noblewomen as a discrete social group was seen as early as the sixteenth century. The relationship between donation and property, between giving and having was of central importance for the Church, the state, and the individual in early modern times, the Middle Ages and today. The first charitable foundations had simply been named after the geographical site of the manor, but during the eighteenth century, the names of such places alluded to their function as convents for noblewomen. The residents of the foundations were unmarried noblewomen, both widows and daughters from the nobility and widows who had been assigned status within first five ranks as a result of their fathers' and husbands' service to the king. Good deeds, such as donating to pious causes, were the fruits of faith that gave hope for Christians to receive the grace of God on the final day.
