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"This paper attempts to survey lay charity through the lens of testamentary practice in Marseilles before the Black Death. The extent of evidence rests on a corpus of nearly 500 wills, mostly written by women. The greater proportion of these women originated from the urban elite, at least at the beginning of the period under consideration, at a time when the testamentary practice among men was fast penetrating the rest of society. Set against the Mendicant movement, a thriving force in the city at the end of the thirteenth century, the study of testaments and last wills leads to two major findings. Firstly, charitable donations reflected close pastoral guidance, as clearly demonstrated by the increasing recourse to personal confessors; this trend, however, was not spared by the crises that characterized the spiritual climate in the city at the onset of the fourteenth century. Secondly, it was the male elite of the city who made the most generous pledges, far beyond all other groups in society, including well-off women who preferred a viaticum that emphasized a more disincarnate form of piety carried by clergy through prayers and masses. "