Spiritual Kinship and the Baptismal Name in Traditional European Society

The history of spiritual kinship in pre-industrial Europe is a virtually uncharted field. In view of its importance in many contemporary southern European and Latin American communities, it has been assumed that its role in western society in earlier times was even more significant. Unfortunately the bonds established at baptism (between godchild and godparent, between godparent and natural parent, and between godchild and certain other participants) brought no property rights and entailed no legally enforceable obligations, and accordingly were seldom recorded. In this paper it is proposed to assemble such documentation as has been found on spiritual kinship in western Europe between the fifth and the eighteenth centuries. More specifically, it is intended to draw attention to some late medieval English evidence linking spiritual kinship with patterns of personal nomenclature, which might well prove valuable to an understanding both of this interesting institution and of other aspects of traditional European society.