La transmission du patrimoine : Byzance et l’aire méditerranéenne, table ronde au Collège de France (24-25 nov. 1995)

This collection brings together twelve contributions presented at the symposium held in November 1995 at the Collège de France's Fondation Hugot on the theme of "Byzantium and the Mediterranean area: the transmission of heritage". The perspective is interdisciplinary: social history, the history of law and the history of ideas. Half of the articles focus on Byzantine inheritance practices: the divergent devolution of property and, in particular, the much-debated problem of the relationship between dowries and inheritance are re-examined, at different times in Byzantium and in different milieus (aristocracy, peasantry). A study of Christian foundations in the Byzantine world and another on waqfs in Islamic lands highlight convergences: by modifying the status of patrimonial assets, the charitable purpose makes it possible to escape the constraints of ordinary inheritance law. As far as Muslim law is concerned, the development of this restrictive regime (with the "science of compulsory shares") is reconsidered, and placed in the political and social context of the post-prophetic period. In the West, in addition to the revival of the testament stricto sensu from the 12th century onwards, the diversity of social practices and their evolution are the focus of three articles: in southern Italy, the complexity of devolution cannot be summed up in a distinction between areas of Roman, Byzantine or Lombard law; in Sicily, marriage patterns with dissimilar patrimonial implications coexist in the same city; the diversity of strategies is found in the Catalan nobility, where the growing importance of vassalage ties also influences the transmission of property.