Le parrainage dans la société rurale danoise entre 1750 et 1830

In this article the history of godparenthood in Danish rural society is analyzed on the basis of 11,554 instances of godparenthood at the baptisms 1750-1830 in a local community. A variety of information about the lives of the individual inhabitants, retrieved from numerous types of historical sources, has been combined with the godparent lists, providing through the identification of the single godparents the basis for different types of analyzes of godparenthood. The author can therefore present statistical evidence of not only the evolution in the number of godparents per baptism throughout the period in question, but also the characteristics of the “typical” composition of the godparent group with regards to gender, age, civil status and geographical origin. As the database also provides information on the socioeconomic status and the familiar relations of the single individuals, it is possible to examine the importance of the godparents’ social and familiar background as well. The combined results of all the different analyzes show – on an aggregate level – that the relation between parents and godparents in Danish rural society was a relation between peers, even though a tendency towards growing social difference between parents (lower status) and godparents (higher status) seems to be detectable – and that would not be strange, given that this is in complete compliance with the general socioeconomic history of Danish rural society in the period.