The Constitution of Monastic Patrimony in Fourth- and Fifth-Century Gaul

Abstract

This article analyzes the formation of monastic patrimony in fourth- and fifth-century Gaul. The main thesis advanced here is that such patrimony was constituted only slowly and discontinuously. Firstly, I argue that there was not, in Salvian of Marseille’s Books of Timothy to the Church, a strategy of ecclesiastic enrichment from which monasteries could have benefited. Secondly, I point out that monastic patrimony was legally independent from ecclesiastic patrimony. And, thirdly, I suggest that donations to monasteries were almost always modest. It is only in the second half of the fifth century that great donations became more frequent.