Medieval charters of laudatio parentum were a convention whereby a member of family expressed their approval of the alienation of land. “In theory any family member could give the laudatio, but in practice, consent was most often given by immediate family, with a strong bias towards male heirs and spouses.” Although the practice was popular between the eleventh and twelfth century, it was seldom attested in charters before the eleventh century and it begun to decline in the thirteenth century. Statistical trends derived from charters raise many questions about its reliability, particularly whether charters survival in samples were accurately recorded.

As the history of laudation parentum is subject to the various perspectives of authors focusing on different regions of France, how accurately charters were interpreted casts doubts on its …show more content…
This is mainly due to the fact that there was always the possibility of charters being burnt or lost. In addition, as charter were written in Latin, a language alien to donor’s, by monks or clerics it can be argued that the views expressed by the donor was not accounted in the procedure of alienation rather the views of the monks were represented.

As charters only provide a summary of the motivations and procedures associated with alienation, it further suggests that the statistics derived from them are unreliable. For example, as opposed to the cartulary of Saint-Aubin d’Angers, in Ronceray d’Angers there was no explanation of why Borborin sold to Ste-Marie and her nuns “the fief” . It was not driven by religious purpose of the redemption of souls, as was the motive of Runnulph and William gifts. Consequently, proposing that statistical tables showing the frequency with which alienations were made fail to indicate that not all forms laudatio were