Gift giving

The idea for this episode came from an episode on Not Just The Tutors, which is a podcast. It was discussing a display about the role of books in gift-giving during the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, and held at the Bodleian Library. When this podcast was released, some of the digital assets are still on the Bodleian Library’s website, and I encourage you to have a look at them.

Gift-giving was a hugely important social lubricant in the eras we’re interested in for Ars Magica and Magonomia. Let’s examine the process. A gift is given. The way it is given and its value matter. Once it is received, the gift creates a duty of reciprocation. This is why Hobbes said that all gifts were burdens, and gratitude in the periods we’re discussing is a terrible vice.

So the gift creates an uncomfortable tether, being the recipient of a gift, is effectively a sort of minor flaw in Ars Magica. It’s floating around waiting for a mistake to be made so that it turns into a negative reputation. In Magonomia it’s even simpler. It’s a situational hook where the sender can force a social attack with advantage.

Now let’s look at some relationships. The simplest is friendship, which in period is signalled with a continual flow of small gifts. These are as simple as food or rumours. The skill here is to know the friend well enough to give preferred food and relevant gossip. The seasonality of food though makes food gifts so common. There’s good evidence that in large parts of Europe, Bata was not a thing. Instead, there are these webs of gift debt, which are expiated through further gifts.

This creates the kinship layer of gift-giving, which is surprisingly significant, even among the well-off. Older people, like myself, were taught in school that feudalism was a structural pyramid of social ranks, but that was really a Norman custom, so it was only found in Normandy, England and Sicily. By the Magonomia period, it’s broken down so much that there are no dukes because Elizabeth kills the last Duke, and then she waits for as many earldoms as possible to die out. The factions in her court are all filial. This is one of the reasons that the Queen carefully controls the marriage market within her court.

Kinship customs are much as we’d expect, but slower than today. Gatherings, eating together, in a sort of serial progress over the course of the year, useful information passed either way within the kinship group. The big gift-giving day is New Year’s Day, which is why I’m releasing this episode today. Remember that Christmas in both the periods that we’re interested in is a 12-day long festival that ends at the Epiphany in January.

The bond of loyalty to the ruler or patron is generally expressed with gifts and advice. This is recompensated by protection and also advice, but in some cultures also gifts. Scandinavian countries and their descendants seem to favour services and advice from the person with lower status and treasure from the ruler.

By Elizabeth’s day, access to the monarch is of itself considered valuable. When she gives you a gift, that it came from the Queen is of itself a source of prestige, and so the financial disparity of your gifts to her and her gifts back to you is counted by that extra prestige, which is grateful is because she is perpetually broke. Her progress, where she visits your home, drains your supplies, drives you into debt, and then leaves, is an extension of this. Getting to bend her ear for hours is considered a gift. She can give you good advice, information and contacts, even if she has eaten your house clean with all her retainers.

At the highest level of court, gifts are used to jockey for power. The skill used in this game is so complicated that there are instruction manuals written in period. Seneca was considered an entry text to the gifting game, and his observations were themselves given as a gift. So that’s very meta, but when you’re giving that gift, it’s very important that you’re giving it to someone who is new to the game, because otherwise you’re patronising them in the modern sense, rather than patronising them in the sense that it would have been used in the time. By offering them advice, you are starting a gift-giving chain, and if they have a lower status than you, you are in a sense offering to be their mentor.

Your gift binds them to reciprocation. In the earlier sections, I’ve mentioned that goods and information are gifts, even among the rich. I’d note that this wraps around to the domestic alchemy in the Venice material that I was preparing last year, and I’m now editing this year. The recipes in these books of secrets are given as great gifts. They are, for example, a gift between Elizabeth and Catherine de Medici. They quite often discuss all kinds of cures and cosmetics, and because we use the word cosmetics in a quite shallow way in the modern period, I’d like to stress that cosmetics are considered a form of longevity potion essentially in period. To follow further, I would need to find a copy of The Gift of Narrative: Gift-giving in Early Modern
Britain, which I’m just putting here so that I flag it later.

And now a quick word for me about the future of the podcast. Hopefully, normal service will now be resumed. Apologies for skipping six weeks. A mixture of illness and a literal tornado, knocking out the power supply for 120,000 people in my state, have conspired against me. I am considering turning the podcast and the associated notes into something rather more like a fanzine for Ars Magica. If I do that, the way the podcast runs will have to change. For example, it’s more expensive, so I may have to find some I have putting in adverts. All feedback and discussion is very welcome. Please find me on the Ars Magica forum. Please don’t send me articles yet. I would like to wait until Atlas releases their open license so that we can see what’s allowed.

Happy New Year!