[216] Two perspectives offered themselves to travellers approaching early modern Barcelona. Foreign visitors often had their first glimpse of the city as they entered its port. Others journeying along the inland roads paused on the slopes of Montjuïch, the prominence to the southwest towering over the royal highway to Castile. Both of the vantage-points revealed a city enclosed, even turned upon itself by tall and majestic walls. The nearby mountains and hills seemed to isolate Barcelona from the peninsula. In like manner, the broad expanse of water beyond its seawall evoked a sense of separation from the rest of the world. Such prospects were, of course, highly distorting. Barcelona maintained close ties not only with the surrounding countryside but also with cities throughout the Mediterranean. Still, we would do well to pause and consider Barcelona's place within the larger European context. By re-examining the city within a wider framework, a clearer image comes into focus. We see immediately that the historical developments treated in this book are to a certain degree familiar to all students of the period. Neither the "rise of oligarchy" nor the "redefinition of nobility" should prove much of a revelation to historians used to treasonous bourgeois or aristocrats in crisis. Still relatively unexplored, however, is the range of modes of oligarchical control prevailing in European cities during the early modern era--hence the value [217] of case-studies of individual polities. When inserted within the broader context of comparative urban history, the specific experience of Barcelona can illumine the evolution of social, economic, and political structures throughout the continent.

At least two distinct types of civic rule can be identified in early modern Europe. First, both chronologically and conceptually, lies the route taken by the pioneer of oligarchical control, Venice. There a serrata--literally, a "closing-off"--dramatically curtailed access to its ruling class. Beginning in the late thirteenth century, commoners were formally denied participation in local government. A closed, hereditary patriciate devised a series of intricate institutional formulae to ensure its exclusive rule over the polity. Future absorption of newcomers into this unitary "old nobility" occurred only rarely. Even then such dilution did little to alter the composition of the city's ruling class or to disturb its proverbial stability. ⁽¹⁾

The experience of Venice's most powerful rival, Genoa, offers some illustrative points of comparison. The uncertain institutional definition of its elite prior to the seventeenth century contrasted sharply with the high degree of articulation marking the Venetian patriciate. To be sure, both cities reserved their governance to members of the nobility. The Genoese regime further imitated Venice by excluding commoners from high office in 1528, and by barring liberal professionals from the civic aristocracy. Yet Genoa's inability to achieve consensus on the public definition of nobilitas--and thus of membership in the ruling class--led to chronic instability. Two contending groups of nobles, the vecchi and nuovi, vied for political preeminence. Failure to integrate aspiring newcomers into the patriciate erupted into overt constitutional crisis in the mid-1570's. Persistent division within the governing class thus permitted the artisans and [218] merchants excluded in the serrata of 1528 a dramatic if brief reentry into the political arena. A compromise was finally reached by which the newer nobles forsook their temporary alliance with the popolo for promises of fuller integration into the urban aristocracy. The path to more regular ennoblement was also cleared of some of its obstacles. As a result, a more generic "class of power" emerged, determined to avoid repetition of factional strife within the governing elite. ⁽²⁾

This tale of two cities reveals a balance of conditions influencing the common link between stability and elite hegemony. Venice achieved a high degree of stasis after establishing a sharply defined hereditary nobility, closing off access to its ruling class, and excluding the "lower" classes from participation in politics. Genoa, on the other hand, while similarly denying political rights to merchants and artisans, nevertheless fell victim to turmoil because of its nobility's very lack of definition. Ultimate resolution of the question of the admission of newcomers finally permitted the urban elite a taste of the pax civitatis enjoyed by its venerable rival. In the long run, the Venetian and Genoese patriciates achieved the common goal of stability by firmly excluding the subaltern classes from municipal government. Moreover, elite hegemony had external as well as internal consequences, in that both serrate generated sufficient political unity to preserve the cities' independence from larger territorial states until the Napoleonic era.

The Barcelona regime exemplifies an alternative approach to forging political and social stasis. There the full integration of old and new nobles, the opening of institutional channels for the regular absorption of commoners into the elite, and the continued, even augmented, political representation of a significant proportion of the "lower" classes preserved the civic peace. Barcelona achieved its impressive stability in the aftermath of the [219] revolutionary turmoil of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As we have seen, the reforms of 1490-1510 ended the unrest by merging the citizen oligarchy with the local gentry to produce a new, unified ruling class. By redefining its membership to include all urban notables, and by inventing new patterns of institutional articulation, Barcelona's elite deliberately turned its back upon the divisions and rivalries that had previously undermined its authority. Another important aspect of its recomposition was the creation of well-defined channels of social mobility. The new regime did not close off entry to the ruling class. Rather, the Barcelona elite neutralized longstanding social tensions by finding open, visible means for the gradual promotion of commoners into its ranks. Thus, by providing substantial opportunities for individual mobility, the reforms expanded the breadth of aristocratic identity while discouraging cleavages and factionalism within the governing class.

Also contributing to the success of this formula was the concession of significant--if strictly delimited--political rights to citizens outside the ruling class. As in the case of the recomposition of the urban elite, political reform resulted from a shrewd and objective appraisal of recent history. Both the monarch and his supporters recognized that the exclusionary policies of the oligarchy had been the leading cause of lower-class discontent. In stark contrast to the honored citizens' earlier monopoly over civic authority, individual merchants and master artisans now shared well-defined public roles within a limited condominium of power and prestige. The imposition of a more broadly based system of office-holding within the reformed polity nevertheless merely spread the burden of responsibility without diluting the principle--and practice--of elite hegemony.

The expansion of artisan representation in 1641 through the addition of a sixth permanent menestral Councillor highlights the uniqueness of Barcelona within the peninsular context. ⁽³⁾ Few cities [220] outside the Principality allowed tenure of high office by merchants and craftsmen. To the contrary: beginning in the later Middle Ages, most Iberian towns deliberately excluded the middle and lower classes from their governments. After 1321, only honored citizens and gentlemen could hope to become jurats in Valencia. Saragossa formally excluded the few merchants and guild masters still serving as magistrates in 1561. Artisans had even poorer luck in Castile, where urban oligarchies and royal officials reserved seats on city councils to a hereditary caste of regidores, most of noble extraction. As a consequence, upward mobility from the lower ranks--even through the familiar channel of the liberal professions--was far less in evidence. ⁽⁴⁾

Barcelona's unique position among Iberian cities, however, does not mean that it lacked analogues elsewhere in Europe. The political representation of artisans and merchants also characterized the Kleinstädte or "home towns" of the Empire and Switzerland. There municipal governments still accorded substantial voice to craft corporations and other spokesmen for the "middling classes." ⁽⁵⁾ Their "freedom and good government" delighted closet republicans like Montaigne, who took "infinite pleasure" in seeing the local innkeeper "return from a meeting of the town Council, held in a very magnificent gilded palace, where he had been presiding, to serve his guests at the table." ⁽⁶⁾ Guild representation [221] also persisted in certain Dutch cities like Leiden, where the tenacious defense of corporate privilege offset declining productivity in urban cloth industries. ⁽⁷⁾ The special achievement of cities like Barcelona was thus to reshape and fortify their ruling classes within polities that still accorded significant political rights and privileges to citizens outside the elite.

The persistent strength of corporate social and economic structures contributed to political anachronism as well. Not surprisingly, the Barcelona model--what we could label "qualified oligarchy" or "incomplete elitism"--prospered most in towns and cities enjoying a fair measure of civic autonomy. "Corporatist" politics proved much more vulnerable in cities like Florence, which by the sixteenth century had succumbed to the ruthless attentions of modernizing central states. ⁽⁸⁾ The weakness (or absence) of crown authority in areas like Catalonia, the Empire, and Switzerland allowed their "archaic" civic structures to find shelter under the sturdy umbrella of local constitutionalism. In the Catalan case, the tendency toward effective municipal independence was especially apparent in the matter of royal taxation. During the seventeenth century, Catalan town-dwellers paid far less in crown assessments than their counterparts in Castile. In fact, most royal officials showed reluctance to tamper with longstanding institutional arrangements like the de facto autonomy enjoyed by Catalan cities. These and other features distinguished Barcelona from municipalities within centralized states like France, Castile, and Tuscany, where fewer safeguards protected urban corporations from royal interference. ⁽⁹⁾

In sum: the reforms of 1490-1510 set the stage for the emergence of a cohesive yet relatively open urban elite. While the merger of Barcelona's oligarchy with the traditional aristocracy [222] was, by Iberian standards, rather precocious, it did not lack precedents elsewhere, especially among city-states in northern Italy. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Moreover, a compromise was reached by which merchants and craftsmen won continued representation in high office as well as on intermediate and lower bodies like the Council of the Hundred. This seeming "archaism" marked the outer limits to the social and cultural separation examined in the course of this book.

Only a large measure of self-assurance enabled Barcelona's patricians to respect the rules of such a game. Much more needs to be known about charity, criminal justice, and the administration of the city's food supply, as well as the elite's attitudes toward poverty and other social problems, before we can identify the precise sources of local stability. For the moment, the ease of access to the governing class and the emergence of a well-defined patrician identity appear to be the principal causes--and consequences--of elite hegemony. Thanks to them, no proud Coriolanus, too absolute a noble to plead in the marketplace, threatened Barcelona. Rather, the city's peace rested on the prudent restraints its ruling class placed upon prerogative. Perhaps the confidence born of this firm grip on power best explains why, atop the lofty citadel of the elite's world-view, doubting words were rarely spoken. 

2. Grendi, "Esempio di Arcaísmo Politico," and "Capitazioni e Nobiltá Genovese." For the 1570's crisis, in particular, see Savelli, Repubblica Oligarchica.

3. I discuss the political controversy surrounding the creation of the Sixth Councillor in my "Oligarquía Ciutadana," 16-19. The Municipal History Museum of Barcelona contains an anonymous portrait of the shoemaker Joseph  Torner, Sixth Councillor in 1671 and 1676. Its present unrestored condition prevented its reproduction in this book.

4. Lapeyre, "Organisation Municipale de Valence," 128-129; Falcón Pérez, Organización Municipal, 271; Redondo Veintemillas, Corporaciones de Artesanos, 152; and Lunenfeld, "Governing the Cities" (although cf. González Alonso, "Sociedad Urbana"). One apparent exception to this rule was Lisbon, where a special juiz do  povo represented popular interests (Hanson, Economy and Society, 51-55).

5. Walker, German Home Towns, I; Soliday, Community in Conflict; Berengo, "Città del Antico Regime," 666-680; and Howell, "Late Medieval and Early Modern City," 12. (Yet cf. Friedrichs, Urban Society, 170-179, for the virtual elimination of craftsmen from the Nördlingen city Council during the seventeenth century).

6. Montaigne's Travel Journal, 13. The town he visited was Mulhouse, in the canton of Basel. 

7. DuPlessis and Howell, "Reconsidering the Early Modern Urban Economy."

8. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus.

9. See, for example, Benedict, Rouen, 31-45; and Brown, Shadow of Florence, 177. Significantly, officials of the Council of Aragon in Madrid regarded cities with popular representation as "most difficult" because of their greater likelihood to vote against tax levies: Gil Pujol, "Cortes de Aragon de 1626," 97-98.

10. Berengo, "Città Italiana."