Keyser, Richard <br/><br/>
The Transformation of the Exchange of Pious Gifts: Moniter-la-Celle, Champagne, 1100-1350 

 -  2003.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> Using the charters of the Benedictine abbey of Montier-la-Celle, just outside Troyes in southern Champagne, Richard Keyser examines how pious giving changed between 1100 and 1350. Over this period, pious gifts became less common as a means of monastic acquisition even while the pool of donors broadened socially. As the newly popular anniversary mass became the standard form of religious reciprocity, gifts became more precise and more like binding contracts. Keyser interprets these changes as part of a transition away from a more fluid, associative form of gift exchange that prevailed through the twelfth century, and towards a more commercial type of pious giving marked by explicit, precise, and systematic reciprocity, increasing quantification, and objectification.