Entre la teología y la labranza: el clero rural galiciano en los siglos XVI-XIX

Abstract

In Galicia, the Church possessed enormous power, not only because of the earnings they obtained, but also because they maintained a dense parish network that structured a complex territory. Since Trent, and owing to the appealing nature that an ecclesiastical career held for rural families, there was an increase in the number of clergy and their internal diversity, considering that in the eighteenth century scarcely more than a third worked as parish priests. Bishops encountered substantial difficulties to adequately reform the numerous clergy, who were attached to the values and behaviors natural to the peasant world.