ABSTRACT
In Late Antiquity it became a Christian liturgical practice to pray regularly for the souls of the dead, to support the poor and to make gifts to religious institutions to ease the path of one's own soul to heaven, as well as those of the souls of the dead. The various forms of this practice, which historians group under the memoria, developed further in the early and high Middle Ages. Surviving material from the noble milieu allows one to see the degree to which noble memoria, dynastic self-consciousness and princely representation were intertwined. To illustrate that connection, this chapter focuses on two prominent examples. The first is that of the Welfs. The other case study is the Ludowings. Karl Schmid linked changes in memorial transmission with the shift of the nobility from early medieval family units to the high medieval noble dynasty with its stronger focus on the succession of generations.
