Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England
Alban Gautier
This article studies the question of Anglo-Saxon hospitality, that is, in first place, gift (from a host to guest) food, fodder, roof and bed for night or longer term. Contrary Romantic visions, it was nothing like spontaneous free practice: Marcel Mauss other anthropologists after him have shown giving receiving were obligations, compulsory acts pre-market societies. In England, hospitality always duty, strictly limited framed by custom. It may been provided single traveller, member formal informal network (particularly ecclesiastical), king his agents form pastus feorm: kind ‘guesting’ which progressively given up kings as they booked lands religious institutions. The forms beneficiaries vary, but opposition between ‘spontaneous’ feasting ‘compulsory’ guesting must not be stressed too much: binding exchange, even when assumed shape, aspect, values open practice.
Early Medieval Europe