ABSTRACT
Testaments as historical sources offer important information on the history of the family and of collective mentalities. When individuals drew up testaments, they assumed control over the distribution of their worldly assets as well as over the details of their burial and the precise amounts to be spent on commemoration rites. Thus, seventeenth and eighteenth-century individuals attempted to monitor the moment of death and ensure their place in the family's memory. Analyzed in the context of their production, last wills and testaments allow the historian to reconstruct family relations, especially in those cases where, for various reasons, the natural perpetuation of family lineage (from parent to offspring) was disrupted. The present study focuses on cases where testators did not have direct heirs. From the angle of the period's testamentary practices, three solutions were available: (1) reciprocal husband-and-wife wills; (2) adoption; and (3) endowments to churches or monasteries.
