En la España Medieval

Social mobility in the Iberian kingdoms and the Northwestern Mediterranean during the late Middle Ages: new perspectives

2024-02-26T12:42:35+00:00

El presente monográfico tiene como objetivo abordar desde distintas perspectivas los procesos de movilidad social en los reinos ibéricos y otros territorios de la Europa meridional durante la Baja Edad Media. A través de 7 artículos por parte de autores de procedencia internacional, se analizan dinámicas, factores y vías diversas tanto para el ascenso como para el declive social, cubriendo un amplio espectro de las sociedades urbanas del periodo.

The social mobility of Arezzo economic operators after the Black Death: new data from the notarial registers of the Capitular Archives of Arezzo

2024-05-16T10:47:01+00:00

The link between economic change and social mobility is a classic research topic, but it does not lack potential for renewal: the economic and social consequences of the great plague pandemic of the mid 14th century can be studied by examining cases of social mobility in both an ascending and descending sense. The sources of Arezzo, consisting of both notarial registers and mercantile accounts, make it possible to closely follow the social paths of the economic operators of the Tuscan city: the second half of the 14th century was a period in which, alongside new poverty, new channels of social mobility also opened up, in particular the one that led a lot of merchants and manufacturers from Arezzo to establish relations with the commercial centre of Pisa. New sources from the notarial records of the Chapter Archives of Arezzo, now provide valuable additions to the existing research.

Municipal rents in private hands: a comparative approach to the indirect collection of fiscal and judicial rights in medieval Loulé and Porto (late 14th - early 16th centuries)

2024-05-16T10:46:59+00:00

By the second half of the 14^th century, leasing municipal rents to private individuals (known as tax farming) was already prevailing in most Portuguese municipalities. In this paper, we will study this system of rent collection in two urban centers: Porto and Loulé, in the period between the end of the 14^th century and the beginning of the 16^th century. In particular, we intend to determine the sociological profile of the tax farmers operating in those two urban contexts, as well as their relationship with local power and royal administration. Ultimately, we expect to identify dynamics of upward and downward social mobility linked to participation in this business, while verifying whether tax farming worked as a platform for social advancement or a consequence of already belonging to the ruling elite. In order to achieve these results, we will analyze the accounting books, and town council minutes available.

Social mobility and urban elites of the south of the Duero: from the local cavalry to the urban nobility in Salamanca (13th-15th centuries)

2024-05-16T10:46:56+00:00

The article studies the process of social transformation of the urban elite in a city in the south of the Duero, Salamanca. The transition from its condition of frontier cavalry to authentic urban nobility, with all the signs of this -mayorazgo, lineages, etc.-, and with a profile of urban patriciate, constitutes a long historical process. The study focuses on the different levers that were added to the process between the 13th and 15th centuries: war, royal privileges, the formation of lineages, control of the urban government or a regime of land ownership and uses that it gave them differential advantages over the other inhabitants.

“Pro vestris meritis et in satisfactione gratuitorum serviciorum”. Participation in naval warfare as a means of social promotion in fifteenth-century Majorca

2024-05-16T10:46:54+00:00

The aim of this article is to provide a first approach to the social, political and economic ascent experienced by some Mallorcan subjects by their participation in the Neapolitan enterprise of Alfonso the Magnanimous. Through the comparison of royal sources – mostly, fiscal records and correspondence registers – some of the Mallorcans who participated in the naval campaigns are identified, mainly those who did so through the provisioning of galleys for the war. The article analyses their contributions as well as the compensations received from the King and, as a conclusion, outlines a way of social promotion through participation in naval enterprises

Trajectories of social mobility, hierarchization and inequality. The citizenship of Saragosse during the reign of John II of Aragon

2024-05-16T10:46:51+00:00

The main purpose of this paper is to delimit individual and family trajectories of social ascent and degradation within the urban elites of Zaragoza during the second half of the 15th century. In this sense, we will describe a panoramic view of the elites of Zaragoza and analyze in detail different phenomena of social mobility within this group through the consultation of the acts of the city council of Zaragoza preserved in the AMZ. The prosopographic analysis to the records of the royal chancery preserved in the ACA, as well as to the AHPNZ funds during the decades corresponding to the reign of John II (1458 -1479), will be also applied.

Promotion in ecclesiastical careers through the diplomatic service of the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile in the Late Middle Ages

2024-05-16T10:46:49+00:00

The ecclesiastics, as servants of the Portuguese and Castilian monarchies during the late medieval period, frequently participated in the embassies they sent to negotiate with other political formations, and in some cases, they were rewarded by their monarchs with promotion in their ecclesiastical career. The analysis of the different trajectories of the Portuguese and Castilian ecclesiastics who collaborated in diplomacy will allow us to know to what extent the existence of these awards was important, and if the construction or promotion of ecclesiastical careers around the diplomatic service was common.

Writings from a Sienese Renaissance prisoner. Antonio Petrucci’s fall and his zibaldone (1461-1465)

2024-05-16T10:46:47+00:00

Urbino. November 1464. Antonio Petrucci, a preeminent Senese politician and condottiero, is still imprisoned, following his defeat at the hands of papal troops on 30 October 1461. During his captivity, Petrucci composed a Zibaldone (a commonplace book), in which he mainly copied lyrics by Latin classics and Italian poets and humanists. Petrucci’s autograph also contains a complaint against Fortune dated 10 November 1464, which is one of the last texts of the manuscript. Petrucci was certainly

not the first medieval author to reflect on human fate and the role of Fortune. On the contrary, the image of the wheel of Fortune is probably among the most iconic of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, Petrucci’s complaint is not simply a general reflection on the role of Fortune. The lamentation is chiefly the way Petrucci decided to portray his own personal fall, accusing the “very cruel Fortune” of depriving him of his “illustrious and gracious homeland”, Siena. It would be superficial to reduce the Senese’s complaint to a simple description of his misadventures, and the same is true for every document written by someone who suffered a failure. Petrucci’s case raises questions about the sources available to historians to study the history of downward mobility.

The government of Bermudo II (982-999) stands out as the most critical moment of the rebellion movements during Astur-Leonese Kingdom. The different historiographical contributions have tried to explain what kind of motivations lead to certain individuals to commit these actions, while the repressions exercised by the monarchy have barely attracted the attention of researchers because they are understood as natural cause of the punishment to the seditious. In this paper, I will try to analyse the different categories of the seditions and their consequences according to a diachronic context and to the construction of patronage networks with the purpose of confirm or deny the presumed central authority fragility image during the second half of the 10th century

2024-05-16T10:46:44+00:00

The government of Bermudo II (982-999) stands out as the most critical moment of the rebellion movements during Astur-Leonese Kingdom. The different historiographical contributions have tried to explain what kind of motivations lead to certain individuals to commit these actions, while the repressions exercised by the monarchy have barely attracted the attention of researchers because they are understood as natural cause of the punishment to the seditious. In this paper, I will try to analyse the different categories of the seditions and their consequences according to a diachronic context and to the construction of patronage networks with the purpose of confirm or deny the presumed central authority fragility image during the second half of the 10^th century

The Libro de las Tres Razones and the Aragonese Chronicles (XIVth c.)

2024-05-16T10:46:41+00:00

The article analyzes the sources, oral and written, that don Juan Manuel used to compose the Libro de las tres razones and problematizes its link with the Aragonese chronicle. Likewise, the possibilities of demonstrating, based on intratextual and documentary records, a knowledge of Don Juan Manuel on the chronicles written in the Crown of Aragon and, in particular, access to the Llibre dels feits were evaluated, text that we understand as fundamental in that it turns out the hypothext on the basis of which the first razón of the Libro de las tres razones is conformed as hypertext.

Under the protection of Mary: Captives, renegades and converts in the Milagros de la Virgen de Guadalupe and the Castilian territorial expansion in the 15th century

2024-05-16T10:46:38+00:00

This paper explores how, throughout the 15th century, the Virgin of Guadalupe was characterised by the miracle collection created in the Extremaduran monastery, as patron of the Castilian territorial expansion and especially of the inhabitants of the south, who represented the Castilian military outpost, alleviating their main concerns and facilitating the conversion of Islamic territories and their inhabitants. With this aim, it explores how the representation of captives, renegades and converts from Islam in the miracles evolved with the editorial project of the collection as a reflection of the parallel evolution of Castilian territorial interests and the emergence of a progressive need for reasserting the Castilian control of the Mediterranean.

The peoples of the Cantabrian sea in Valencia at the end of the Middle Ages: networks, mobility and permanence

2024-05-16T10:46:35+00:00

This article examines the presence and networks established by the people from the Cantabrian Sea town ports in Valencia between the 15th and 16th centuries. The origins of their arrival to the city by ship date back to the 14th century, but it became even more intense during the late decades of the Middle Ages. These biscahinos from the North of the Crown of Castile were a group composed of Biscayan, Guipuzcoan but also Cantabrian, and the people from Alava. The enormous notarial documentation from Valencia, such as the Jaume Salvador’s notarial protocols from the Archive of the Kingdom of Valencia, added to some other sources like the denizenship books (Avehinaments) provide us, through the approach of prosopography, the base to analyze the reasons behind their mobility to Valencia and their settlement, the definition of the group, their institutional organization and internal cohesion and their life in the city.

The trade with fine wools from the transhumant sheep of the Castilian district of Cuenca between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries

2024-05-16T10:46:32+00:00

The district of Cuenca was one of the four districts to which the sheepowners that were members of the Castilian guild called “Mesta” and inhabited the mountainous regions of the kingdom belonged. But sheepowners who inhabited the districts of the plains, mainly in the province of Ciudad Rea.l were also admitted as members. In this article the author pays attention to tre commercialization of the fine wools that were sold by the ranchers of the mountanious sector of the district, around the towns of Molina de Aragón and Cuenca. He differentiates berween fine wools,produced by the transhumnant cattle, and the coarse ones produced by the non transhumant herds.He informs about the different prices taht were paid for them., and rhe contract models that were employed and their relation with the prices.