What is TESTAMENT?

TESTAMENT has a twofold overarching goal:

• to provide high-level interdisciplinary training for PhD researchers in social history and law (legal history), and
• to develop—together with supervisors and associated partners—a model to analyse dynamics of freedom and oppression in the transgenerational post-mortal transfer of patrimony, while making lesser-known sources and insights accessible beyond academia.

Why last wills?

Legal techniques such as donationes mortis causa, fideicommissa, and last wills (testamenta) enabled intergenerational estate planning in Roman law and the later ius commune. These tools were widely used across social groups, while other norms and institutions limited freedom to dispose of property after death. TESTAMENT studies how these tensions appear in legal debates and—especially—within historical practice documented in archives, courts, and legal literature.

Timeframe & geography

The project focuses on the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period (15th–17th centuries). Case studies are located in regions often described as a “periphery” of the ius commune tradition across Western, Central, and Eastern Europe (including the Low Countries; the Kingdom of Poland; the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the Lands of the Bohemian Crown; Saxony; and Brandenburg).

Shared methodological foundations

All PhD projects work with archival material and engage with issues such as source selection, documentary typology, historical criticism, and (where relevant) textual criticism. The programme emphasises transregional and comparative perspectives to support the development of a shared model.