ABSTRACT
The apparently surprising decline in Castilian examples of countergift late in the tenth century, at a time when evidence elsewhere was increasing, is more the end of a quirk in recording habit than the disappearance of a standard practice. Countergift was used to guarantee transactions that had already happened – a confirmation of gifts that had already been made, making them secure. Sureties seem to have been the mechanism for guaranteeing sale and future obligation; countergift was the mechanism for guaranteeing gift and the continuing security of past actions. There are a few clues about what might have conditioned their choice of format, always bearing in mind that far more transactions were recorded as sale than as gift/countergift. Several of the other cases of royal donations of property to aristocrats, with countergift, could be interpreted in the same way, although they lack explicit detail of background.
