Getting Rich in the Middle Ages. The Path of Guilhem Rainard, Canon of Agde. Guilhem Rainard, canon of the cathedral chapter of Saint-Etienne of Agde, wrote two wills, first in 1155 and then in 1176, shortly before his death. These documents offer a glimpse at twenty-one years distance of the real estate and personal property of a canon, and allow one to understand the mechanisms through which a man of seemingly modest origins was able to enrich himself rapidly. This enrichment was the result of a favorable network of social relationships whose development followed the ecclesiastical career of Guilhem. The monetarization of exchange was accompanied by a rise in loan activities that allowed certain people to transform personal wealth into landed fortune. The study of bequests is the occasion to identify the principal stakes of the transmission of patrimony of a man who had experienced rapid social upward mobility.