|
|
|
PDF
|
|
Type:
|
Working Paper |
|
Author:
|
Hoffman, Philip T. |
|
Date:
|
1981 |
|
Agency:
|
Divsion of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA |
|
Series:
|
Social Science Working Paper, no. 393 |
|
URI:
|
https://hdl.handle.net/10535/5700
|
|
Sector:
|
Social Organization |
|
Region:
|
Europe |
|
Subject(s):
|
inheritance
women
|
|
Abstract:
|
"This paper employs maximum likelihood methods to analyze the
increase in pious bequests in early modern French wills. Other
historians have described the rise of pious bequests in wills, but no
one has used multivariate statistical methods to explain the phenomenon. It turns out that at any level of wealth pious bequests rose over the course of the seventeenth century and that the bequests,
were most pronounced among the literate and women. The paper argues
that the increase in pious bequests was mark of growing support for
the Counter Reformation, which attracted an inordinate number of supporters in educated circles and in the female population."
|