Wills and Elites In Medieval and Early Modern Banat

The will is a document which offers a lot of information about the people who drafted it, and also about the social, economic and religious situation of that time. In the case of the medieval and early modern Banat, the testaments come only from the aristocracy. A few dozen testaments are known in connection with the territory between the Mures - Tisza and Danube, most o them belonging to the 16th-17th centuries. For the information contained, the most important wills from the Banat were drawn up by the two Margaret Gaman, aunt and nice, written in 1600 and 1637. A thorough analysis of the testaments reveals that those documents are very important in the mentality of nobles, providing us with information about inheritance, attitudes towards death, matrimonial strategies and the religion of elites of medieval and early modern Banat.