The "despensero mayor de las raciones" of the Royal Household. Institucional study and documents of a curial office in the Castile of Trastámaras (1380-1456)

Abstract

This paper examines one of the leading courtiers trades arising under the administrative bureaucratic and institutional reforms sponsored by the first monarch of the House of Trastámara in Castile: the greatest steward ration of the royal household. Sustained by extensive documentation from archives, most of it hitherto unpublished, this research reconstructs the legal and operational parameters within which the new position developed from the final years of the fourteenth century through the central fifteenth century period, in which its institutional maturity is reached through the work of Juan García de Soria and his son, Luis García Morales, both officers whose courtesan paths are here described.