[53] The nobility of Catalonia was divided into three separate ranks, each with its own privileges, customs, and legal status. A handful of magnates, roughly equivalent to the grandees of Castile, presided over this social pyramid. Following the promotions of the parliamentary session of 1599, the titled nobility included one duke, one marquis, eight counts, and one viscount. These peers, led by the powerful Cardona and Queralt families, traced their ancestry back to the rics homens, or direct feudatories of the king who rose to prominence in the later Carolingian period. Slightly lower on the scale came the nobles, or aristocrats proper. This exclusive group shared with the peerage the distinctive formal address of "Don." Finally, the gentry stood at the base of the noble hierarchy. These cavallers or militars formed the single largest group within the aristocratic estate.  ⁽¹⁾

The lack of reliable tax lists or censuses from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries makes it difficult to fix the precise[54] number of aristocrats. Elliott used convocations of the Bras Militar, or Noble Estate in parliament, to arrive at the following estimates: ⁽²⁾

Date	Nobles	Gentry	Total
1518	37	451	488
1626	254	526	780

These figures highlight the persistent numerical predominance of the cavallers within the upper class throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They also underscore an important shift within the aristocracy: the dramatic expansion of the upper ranks of nobles. Significant alterations in Catalan society, politics, and the economy underlay the transformation of the structure and composition of the noble estate. Migration from the country to the city, changing rhythms of social mobility, the improved fortunes of liberal professionals, and a growing resort to rentier income contributed to the emergence of a new and powerful aristocracy within Barcelona's walls.

"Who could describe the host of illustrious nobles and citizens of this noble city of Barcelona?" Jorba, the wrangling pedant encountered above, wasted no time in answering his own question, as he reeled off a five-page list of the distinguished families whose past feats of arms and letters had conferred glory and honor upon his home town. ⁽³⁾ Nor was he the only contemporary to remark about the aristocratic tone lent the city by the Catalan nobility's penchant for urban living. In 1599, the Swiss medical student Thomas Platter credited the wealth and beauty of Barcelona to the fact that "many of [its] houses look like palaces, the [55] gentlemen of the district having neither the custom nor desire to live in the country." ⁽⁴⁾ It is of course possible to exaggerate the extent to which Catalan aristocrats had strayed from their rural origins. After all, magnates like the Duke of Cardona exercised great power in the outlying counties, while the lesser gentry continued to plague the countryside with its turbulent feuds. All the same, by the seventeenth century the center of gravity within the Catalan nobility was clearly shifting from the country to the city.

Other contemporary accounts echoed the observations of Jorba and Platter regarding the urban proclivities of the aristocracy. An anonymous manuscript from the early seventeenth century joined them in claiming that "Barcelona has a very great number of gentlemen, because the majority of Catalan nobles has established residence there." And in the mid-eighteenth century, the Audiencia encountered increasing difficulties in its search for resident nobles to serve in town governments outside the larger cities. ⁽⁵⁾ However, the absence of fiscal and demographic records such as hearth-lists and parish registers prevents our reconstructing the precise chronology or quantitative dimensions of this all-important event in the history of the Catalan ruling class. A list drawn up in 1639 in preparation for a military levy furnishes the best estimate of the minimum number of aristocrats residing in Barcelona. The 225 men named in the document included 103 nobles and 71 gentlemen--roughly a quarter of the entire Catalan aristocracy ⁽⁶⁾ If one adds to this figure the number of nobles living in smaller cities like Girona and Tarragona, it is evident that in the mid-seventeenth century the ruling class of the Principality was predominantly urban in character. ⁽⁷⁾

[56] The greater baronial lords now visited rather than resided on their estates. In turn, the violent highlands squires who strutted about in Castilian comedias faced the choice of adapting to more sedentary lives in the cities and larger towns, or of fading into relative obscurity.

Underlying this shift was the growing insecurity of the Catalan countryside. The threat was not largely physical in character, although the rising incidence of banditry during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did little to make rural life more appealing. Rather, increased economic hardship drove the rustic gentry to try to better its fortunes in the cities and towns. Regrettably, little is known of the rural history of early modern Catalonia. What evidence there is suggests that, despite the apparent juridical strength of the local seigneurial regime, by the 1620's and 1630's a host of economic difficulties--especially dwindling real income due to fixed rents and rising indebtedness-- prevented many noble families from making ends meet. The most important work to date on the early modern Catalan nobility--Eva Serra's study of the titled Sentmenat house--highlights the serious shortfall besetting this distinguished family's patrimony during the troubled decades of the early seventeenth century. ⁽⁸⁾ Meanwhile, misfortune was hardly limited to the more illustrious noble households. The crisis of the seigneurial regime appeared even more threatening at the lower reaches of the rural nobility, which included those without access to the power and influence enjoyed by relatively wealthy families like the Sentmenats.

The rampant inflation of the "long sixteenth century" contributed to the economic crisis of the aristocracy. Yet equally influential were the constraints that peasant initiative placed on seigneurial power in the aftermath of the Sentence of Guadalupe (1485). This royal edict attempted to pacify the Catalan countryside following the bitterly destructive civil wars of the fifteenth[57] century. In exchange for the confirmation of existing allodial dues and the disbanding of the leagues created to defend peasant rights, the king abolished the more abusive practices of the seigneurial regime. Even more significant were the provisions securing effective land tenure (dominium utile) for tenants holding long-term contracts. The extension of emphyteutic leaseholds beginning in the early seventeenth century further expanded the power of this class of middle-sized producers. Their role as bailiffs and middlemen for the lords not only provided increased control over sublessors and dependent farm workers, but also enabled them to challenge the seigneurial monopoly over local agricultural surplus. The consolidation during the early modern era of a class of substantial middling peasants did much to distinguish Catalonia from other areas within the peninsula. It also contributed decisively to the drift toward absentee lordship on the part of its nobility. ⁽⁹⁾

Small wonder then that, as many rural nobles forsook direct management of their estates, the chance to obtain urban offices and sinecures proved all the more attractive. Cities like Barcelona boasted a wide range of alternative sources of income for hard-pressed aristocrats. For example, the benefices and chaplaincies of its cathedral chapter afforded secure and dignified livings to some one hundred members of the local nobility. ⁽¹⁰⁾ Equally alluring were the lucrative offices of the Generalitat and the municipal administration. The public returns from these posts were in themselves quite impressive--the city Councillors, for instance, earned a respectable £600 plus expenses every year. ⁽¹¹⁾ Less visible forms of remuneration, such as the chance to profit from inside bidding for the city's grain contracts, often proved even more appealing. One aristocrat was so eager to obtain a [58] Councillorship that in 1635 he renounced his privileges of nobility in order to be included in a less restrictive scrutiny for office. ⁽¹²⁾ Granted, his was an extreme case. It nevertheless underscores the fact that the nobility's shift from rural to urban living was not solely the result of worsening conditions in the countryside. The cities exercised a powerful appeal of their own. Barcelona and other urban areas functioned as centers for borrowing and lending, markets for lucrative marriages, and venues for upper-class sociability. It was there that energetic aristocrats could put their status and privileges to best use in the pursuit of wealth, influence, and social advancement.

The number of Catalan nobles grew dramatically during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contours of this "inflation in honors" take on greater relief when set against the background of local patterns of social mobility. The marriage contracts from the seventeenth century studied above highlight prevailing tendencies in inter-generational mobility. To be sure, the limited information provided by these documents makes it difficult to trace precise changes of occupation and status. ⁽¹³⁾ The contracts do not specify levels of individual wealth beyond dowry awards, nor do they always distinguish among apprentices, journeymen, and masters within the guild regime. Nevertheless, one can accurately chart changes in occupation between grooms and their fathers at the time of marriage (Table III-1). Shifts in status can also be documented by ranking individual trades according to the categories of social standing used to determine corporate representation in the municipal Council (Table III-2).

Table III-1 Grooms and Their Father: Occupational Mobility

FATHERS	Peasant	Menestral	Artista	Merchant	Professional	Honored citizen or Burgess	Gentleman or noble	Total
Peasant	91	96	17	-	5	1	-	210
Menestral	11	190	26	-	4	-	-	231
Artista	1	2	27	2	6	-	-	38
Profession	-	-	-	-	9	-	1	10
Honored citizen or Burgess	-	-	-	-	1	3	-	4
Gentleman or noble	-	-	1	-	1	-	19	21
Total	103	288	72	9	27	5	21	525

 Source: Same as Chapter One, note 14.

Table III-2 Grooms and Their Fathers: Social Mobility

Status of fathers	Sons of lower status	Sons of same status	Sons of higher status	Total
Peasants and menestrals	-	388	53	441
Artistes (upper guilds)	3	27	8	38
Merchants	1	7	3	11
Honored Citizens and professionals*	-	13	1	14
Gentlemen and nobles	1	20	-	21
Totals	5	455	65	525

Source: same as Chapter One, note 14.
* For the equation of physicians and barristers with honored citizens, see pagges 69-71 below.

Comparision of these tables reveals a firm continuity in social status  between the two generations.  Of the seven categories analyzed, only one -- the peasantry -- witnessed a clear majority of sons exercissing different trades from those of their fathers.  Yet of  those 119 grooms, 96 or 70 percent of the cohort, had merly exchanged agricultural work for the menestralia, or lower sector of the guild regime.  The remaining members of this group includes 17 artistes or upper guild masters, 5 liberal professionals, and 1 honored citizens.  Hence even within the category exhibiting the greatest degree of "horizontal" movement the degree of "vertical" mobility was limited given the [61] equality of status between peasants and menestrals. ⁽¹⁴⁾ Moreover, the same tendency toward continuity in status is found elsewhere on the social scale. Of a total of 231 menestrals 210, or 87 percent, held the same rank as their fathers. Only 30(13 percent) achieved a higher status. The stability in social level characterizing the lower ranks also prevailed among the higher categories. From the evidence of the contracts, these latter groups experienced relatively little change in standing from one generation to another, relieved only by a slightly greater degree of upward mobility among merchants and artistes.

These figures must be treated with caution. Sources like marriage contracts minimize the extent of vertical mobility by overlooking the tendency among families unable to maintain the minimum economic level of their social rank to disappear either by emigrating or by not marrying. Furthermore, by dealing with such broad categories as "peasant" or menestral, we are unable to specify less pronounced but significant movements along the social scale. That there was often a broader gulf separating a rich peasant from a poor agricultural laborer than that between upper and lower guild masters is obscured by the use of institutional categories which mask the crucial difference that wealth could make in determining social standing. All the same, these documents suggest several conclusions. They not only confirm the overwhelming predominance of horizontal over vertical movement within early modern Catalan society, but they also reveal some interesting linkages between the two. The figures from the rural sector in particular point to a dual pattern of migration through which better-off farmers either married their younger sons to peasant heiresses, or else dispatched them to the city to apprentice in artista guilds or study for the liberal professions. Less wealthy homesteads, on the other hand, provided a steady stream of recruits to the menestralía, or contributed to the large [62] number of urban casual laborers and transients living outside the confines of the guild system. ⁽¹⁵⁾

A wide gap also separated occupational from status change. While there was a fair, even impressive, amount of occupational mobility--as we have seen, fewer than half of the grooms practiced the same trade as their fathers--the overwhelming majority of fathers and sons (87 percent) held the same social rank. Of the grooms experiencing status mobility, only 5 (1 percent) suffered a decline in standing, while 65 (12 percent) obtained a higher rank. Yet, despite the significant difference between "horizontal" and "vertical" mobility, these latter instances of upward advancement did not violate contemporary expectations regarding changes in social status. While the thirteenth-century mystic Raymond Lull castigated guild masters who forsook their trades for the rentier existence of the honored citizenry, many later writers took a less severe view of this aspiration. ⁽¹⁶⁾ In fact, they regarded gradual movement upward along the social scale as part of the natural order of urban society. In 1628 the jurist Andreu Bosch argued that cities proved especially receptive to "obtaining higher titles by many routes, for there one can rise degree by degree from the very lowest condition to the highest honor available, the rank of honored citizen or burgess." ⁽¹⁷⁾ In a similar vein his fellow barrister Aleix Tristany noted that "before obtaining their rank, many merchants had their origins in other trades in this city . . . some were menestrals, and other artistes." ⁽¹⁸⁾ Yet, while gradual upward mobility appears to have been an accepted feature of early modern society, the same cannot be said of those individuals who pressed their suit in the cursus honorum too eagerly. Hence the frequent scornful attacks in Pujades' diary on [63] those who climbed the social ladder without due regard for the general norm of one rank per generation. ⁽¹⁹⁾

A few writers upheld the caste-like character of the "three estates." Tristany, who apparently saw nothing wrong in guildsmen becoming merchants, firmly opposed the acquisition of citizen rank by the merchants themselves. He argued that such improprieties fostered "intolerable confusion . . . everyone should be content to occupy the place he now has, without aspiring to something higher." ⁽²⁰⁾ Yet, on the whole, both horizontal and vertical movement formed an integral part of contemporary attitudes toward society and the proper place of individuals within it. Not surprisingly, vertical mobility in a strongly corporate society like Barcelona possessed a well-defined and carefully graded character, with the ascent from guild to merchant to citizen matrícules bearing a closer resemblance to an escalator than to Lawrence Stone's elevators. ⁽²¹⁾ Enhancement of social status met with little opposition if it were discreet, as befitted a society that accorded much importance to maintaining visible, public distinctions between different occupational and social categories.

Mobility upward and downward apparently proved more intense among the higher reaches of the social scale. Both the upper guilds and the urban elite experienced constant turnover within their memberships. Only 2 of the 25 merchant families occupying municipal office during the 1480's were listed in the merchant registry a century and a half later. ⁽²²⁾ A similar lack of biological continuity characterized the honored citizen stratum. Of the 67 families listed in the original privilege of 1510, 39--a striking 58 percent--failed to contribute any new members to [64] the group. Nine families registered their last sons in the matrícula from 1530 to 1560; the final members from 11 other families were inducted from 1560 to 1590. Of the remaining 8 families, 6 matriculated their last sons from 1590 to 1602; the final 2 registered in 1622 and 1631. ⁽²³⁾ While it is difficult to ascertain the precise fortunes of individual citizens in the absence of detailed genealogies, comparison with later patents of nobility issued by the crown reveals the fate of three-fourths of these households. Sixteen of the original 67 families achieved gentry rank--8 during the reign of Charles V (1516-58), 3 under Philip II (1558-98), two in the reign of Philip III (1598-1621), and the remaining 3 at unknown dates. Thirteen other families went on to obtain noble status--I under Charles V, 3 during the reign of Philip II, 7 under Philip III, i during the French interregnum (1641-52), and at an unknown date. Attendance records from the annual assemblies show that 2 of the original families retained citizen rank until the final two decades of the matriculation, which ended in 1699. Thus of a total of 31 traceable families, 29 of them moved upward from citizenship to the gentry and aristocracy proper, while only 2 continued as citizens. The rest apparently emigrated or suffered biological extinction in the years immediately following the generation of 1510. ⁽²⁴⁾

The general patterns of mobility underlying the constant renovation of the upper classes serve as background for the figures on ennoblement listed in Table HI-3. This chart presents minimum estimates of letters-patent issued by the Catalan chancery from the beginning of the reign of Philip II to the abolition of aristocratic privileges in the Liberal reform of 1838. ⁽²⁵⁾ A clear [65] chronology of ennoblement emerges from these statistics. The first notable expansion in the number of patents took place immediately following the conclusion of the parliamentary session of 1599--a pattern remarkably similar to the "inflation of honors" in early modern England. ⁽²⁶⁾ The upward trend continued unabated throughout the seventeenth century, reaching a climax during the final years of the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665). Even if one subtracts the number of patents issued during the French and later Habsburg interregna, it is evident that the high point of the royal creation of nobles during the Old Regime occurred in the mid-seventeenth century. The rhythm of ennoblement slacked off under the new Bourbon dynasty, at no point recovering the intensity that marked the early years of the neo-foral period. ⁽²⁷⁾

The reign of Philip IV and the first two decades under Charles II provided ample opportunities for rapid ennoblement to those willing to place their economic and political resources at the disposal of the crown. During the middle years of the seventeenth century, the monarchy translated its pressing financial needs into the issue of an unprecedented number of awards of nobility. The government first sold patents in order to raise funds in the early 16305. As in Castile, this desperate fiscal expedient met with little success. ⁽²⁸⁾ Although these privileges were generally regarded as negotiable and thus often substituted for cash payments, few showed interest in their outright purchase. They were most often issued in the Crown of Aragon as rewards for political loyalty, such as the approval of royal legislation in parliament. As noted above, the flood of awards beginning in the 16405 represented an impoverished crown's means of compensating its followers for privations suffered during the recent [68] civil war. However, fear of the fiscal and political consequences of swelling the ranks of the tax-exempt eventually obliged the government to halt their issue. ⁽²⁹⁾

Table III-3  Ennoblement in Catalonia 1558-1838

Reign	Honored Citizens of Barcelona	Honored burgesses  Perpignan	Honored citizens other towns	Gentlemen	Nobles	Total No.	Avg. No. patents per annum
Philip II  1558-98	30	28	23	74	35	182	4.6
Philip III  1598-1621	30	24	34	82	88	258	11.3
Philip IV  1621-65	240	52	14	208	96	610	13.8
Interregnum  Louis XIII-XIV  1641-52	194	31	17	65	15	322	29.0
Charles II  1665-1700	201	-	14	150	101	466	13.4
Archduke Charles  1705-14	82	-	-	51	49	182	20.0
Bourbons  1700-1838	213	3	-	181	126	523	3.8
Total	982	138	102	811	510	2,543	9.1

Source: J.S. Amelang, "The Purchase of Nobility in Castile, 1552-1700: A Comment," Journal of European Economic History, 11 (1982), 220-221.

A recent characterization of mid-seventeenth century Bordeaux as a society where "mobility had virtually ceased" would have found scant echo in early modern Catalonia. ⁽³⁰⁾ Despite the lack of a well-defined institutional structure of ennoblement through the purchase of venal office as under the paulette system in France, during the mid-seventeenth century more Catalans obtained privileges of nobility in a shorter length of time than in any other period since the later Middle Ages. Contemporaries were well aware of the extraordinary number of privileges being awarded, and some did not hesitate to protest what they considered excessive generosity on the part of the crown. ⁽³¹⁾ All the same, royal liberality probably contributed substantially to easing tensions between the king and at least certain of his subjects in the years following the revolt of 1640. The ample opportunities for both horizontal and vertical mobility at all levels of Catalan society may well have proved one of its leading sources of stability throughout the early modern era.

The renovation of the Catalan aristocracy was scarcely limited to a mere increase in numbers. Crucial transformations in its social composition and public functions accompanied this expansion. One of the most significant of these alterations was the increased representation within all sectors of the ruling class of university-educated professionals, especially barristers. ⁽³²⁾

The number of jurists elected to honored citizenship during [69] the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provides one clear index of the growing importance of lawyers within the urban oligarchy. Slightly over one-half of all new matriculants from 1510 to 1714 held advanced degrees in law. This was a remarkably high proportion, considering the diverse social and occupational origins of the citizen oligarchy, which found recruits among merchants, physicians, notaries, and upper guild masters. The incidence of lawyers among both old and new honored citizens gives an even clearer picture of the rise of jurists within the oligarchy. Graph 2 depicts the percentage of lawyers among those attending citizen assemblies at twenty- to thirty-year intervals from 1510 to 1691. The royal privilege of 1510 included some fifteen barristers (14 percent) among the approximately 110 individuals specifically named honored citizens. This proportion tripled, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, and reached a climax during the final decades of elections when lawyers made up almost one-half of all ciutadans de matrícula. In short, jurists played an increasingly important role among the honored citizens, constituting at all times the single largest occupational group within the body of matriculants.

The participation of liberal professionals in the organs of municipal government also reflected their growing influence in urban society. As we have seen, royal policies formally permitting doctors in law and medicine to share the powers and privileges of honored citizens dated to the mid-fifteenth century. In 1447, for example, the royal council guaranteed physicians the same rights as citizens. ⁽³³⁾ Beginning in 1455, gaudints (literally, "those who enjoy" doctorates in law or medicine) won inclusion in the roster of candidates from whom were chosen the first three magistrates and the first forty-eight members of the Council of the Hundred. These were all positions formerly reserved exclusively to the honored citizenry. Members of the liberal professions thus obtained the right to compete for these posts, regardless[70]l of whether they formed part of the citizen oligarchy. ⁽³⁴⁾ While only a handful of lawyers and physicians held Councillorships from their establishment in the mid-thirteenth century to the late fifteenth century, this began to change during the sixteenth century (see Graph 3). ⁽³⁵⁾Beginning in the 1550's, the number of lawyers and physicians serving as Councillors increased steadily  until levelling off at a plateau of 35-45 percent from 1610 to 1680. Further growth in the representation of liberal professionals marked the final years of this regime, reaching record proportions during the 16908 and the first decade and a half of the eighteenth century. As one anonymous chronicler of the late seventeenth century complained, liberal professionals "have multiplied so much that today they fill almost half these posts." ⁽³⁶⁾

A significant, if somewhat less striking, reorientation of existing noble families toward the practice of law accompanied the intensified upward mobility of the city's jurists. This point deserves emphasis. The growing resort to university education [72] within the upper ranks of Catalan society was not merely the result of the absorption of lawyers and physicians within the urban oligarchy. Rather, these newcomers were joined by an expanding number of gentry and even aristocrats proper who obtained advanced university degrees. The surviving matrícula of the Barcelona criminal court reveals that during the years 1551 to 1703, some 85 of a total of 563 practicing lawyers were gentlemen and nobles. The nobility thus accounted for a full 15 percent of this wide sampling of the local bar. ⁽³⁷⁾ Other, more fragmentary evidence highlights the aristocracy's increasing involvement in the legal profession. Prominent noble houses such as the Cardona, Queralt, Erill, Fivaller, Paguera, and Xammar families all contributed sons to the bar. ⁽³⁸⁾ Symbolizing the growing predilection for legal study among the highest reaches of the aristocracy was the signature on the title-page of one of the most famous local political tracts of the seventeenth-century, D. Ramón Dalmau de Rocabertí's Fatal Omens of French Rule in Catalonia (1646). This Viscount, one of the Principality's leading peers, ended the long list of his baronies and jurisdictions by referring to himself as a "graduate in canon and civil law"--a distinction virtually impossible to find among titled nobles a mere 'century before. ⁽³⁹⁾ The causes of the growing incidence of liberal professionals within the urban nobility are varied and complex. Not least among them was the considerable intellectual prestige of the Catalan legal tradition, which provided the theoretical underpinnings [73]  for one of the most active constitutional regimes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor can one overlook the political influence accruing to jurists in early modern Catalonia. Lawyers played a crucial role not only in the municipal government of Barcelona but also in the royal administration, especially through service on the Audiencia or appellate court. Yet perhaps the most important factor influencing the nobility's resort to university study was economic. Maintenance of the family patrimony occupied a central place in elite career strategies throughout this period. It is to the intersection of economic choice and familial advancement that we must now turn our attention.

The urban economy of early modern Catalonia can be divided into two discrete spheres. The first centered around direct productive activity per se. This everyday world of industry and exchange absorbed the efforts of merchants, guildsmen and their dependents, and casual or non-artisanal laborers. The other sector embraced what historians have labelled the "proprietary system," whose mainstay was the passive administration of fixed returns from investments. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ A rentier class of honored citizens and urban nobles loomed most prominently within this sphere. To be sure, numerous points of contact linked the two sectors. However, our focus will be on the latter economy, and the changing economic base of the urban ruling class--what Fierre Vilar has labelled the "transformation of a society of entrepreneurs into a society of rentiers." ⁽⁴¹⁾ Until recently, most studies in early modern economic history have placed overriding emphasis on the role of the entrepreneur. This brief sketch seeks to redress this imbalance by examining the only apparently less [74] "dynamic" system of rents, credit, and professional services underlying the "mature economy" of early modern Barcelona. ⁽⁴²⁾

Identification with a rentier existence was a longstanding attribute of the Catalan nobility. Aristocratic "honor" centered around the ability to live off one's rents, in contrast with commoners, who engaged directly in agriculture, trade, or the "mechanical" arts. It would of course be a mistake to take these claims to economic passivity too literally. The customary social codes buttressing the nobility's rentier style of life made a fundamental distinction between direct and indirect participation in economic enterprise. Insistence by contemporaries that the public functions of aristocrats not include physical exertion or "work with their hands" should be read at face value. ⁽⁴³⁾ The system of classification informing this imagery left ample room for the upper class to engage in a variety of disguised or secondhand commercial and investment ventures. There were in fact exceptions even to this relaxed set of norms. Several honored citizens actively participated in crafts and trade, especially during the neo-foral period. As previously noted, during the later seventeenth century the royal government bestowed many privileges of citizenship upon wealthy peasants or artisans in provincial towns. While some of these fortunate individuals abandoned their plows and shops upon ennoblement, others continued to ply their trades, ⁽⁴⁴⁾ hence the references to citizens serving as merchants (1640s), silversmiths (1683), or even as bacaladeros or codfish importers (1706). ⁽⁴⁵⁾ Small wonder then that by 1681 the Noble  [75] Estate felt compelled to protest the crown's "dispatch of patents of nobility and citizenship to persons exercising mechanical arts. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Yet, these examples of direct participation by honored citizens in industry and trade were apparently exceptions proving the general rule forbidding such activities. By the early sixteenth century, the citizen oligarchy had abandoned its medieval heritage of large-scale mercantile enterprise for the rentier style of life so firmly identified with the traditional nobility. The patricians of Barcelona proved no more immune to the "contagion of rent" than did urban notables throughout the rest of Europe. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ The dictates of aristocratic comportment and the related fear of status loss through derogation left them little room for maneuver. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

The later Middle Ages set the stage for the consolidation of the "proprietary system" that served as the economic foundation of Barcelona's expanding ruling class. The depression of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries merely encouraged the elite's drift toward non-commercial investment. As the upper class increasingly resorted to fixed rents, it placed growing emphasis on monetary stability. Exporters and artisans, on the other hand, hoped to check the decline in exports through protectionism. They sought more power for the guilds, and called for the revitalization of production and trade through the twin instruments of import tariffs and monetary devaluation. Direct confrontation between these conflicting sets of interests underlay the bitter class struggle of the mid-fifteenth century. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ The eventual [76] triumph of the nobles and citizen oligarchy ensured that henceforth there would be no political tampering with the instruments and institutions of the rentier system.

The gradual contraction of Barcelona's trading area and the generally risky conditions prevailing throughout much of the Mediterranean "long century" sustained the elite's resort to the proprietary system. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ A sluggish economic climate joined rising social pretensions in encouraging the upper class to eschew direct involvement in trade in favor of less lucrative but more secure sources of income. The consolidation of the citizen oligarchy favored the transformation of wealth originally amassed through commerce into a structure of diverse investments yielding stable if lower fixed returns. ⁽⁵¹⁾ Full assumption of the rentier habits of the nobility thus represented the end-point of a fairly uniform pattern of economic activity. Individual patterns of capital accumulation recapitulated the experience of the class as a whole. The first stage of the cycle was based upon a high level of business activity, whose purpose was to generate sufficient funds to establish the income necessary to aspire to citizen status. In the succeeding phase, these activities were either abandoned or disguised through the adoption of more indirect pursuits of wealth. The fundamental aim at this juncture was not so much to expand the family patrimony as to preserve it--a difficult task even in the best of times.

What were the sources of rentier income? How did the elite secure the fixed returns that formed the backbone of this system? Early modern marriage contracts contained detailed provisions regarding the transfer of patrimonial wealth both within and between families. These notarial records constituted a binding agreement fixing the distribution of family resources among at [77]least two sets of participants. These included the houses allied by the marriage, along with the different generations within each family whose present or future transfers of property made up either the bride's dowry (dot) or the groom's dower (escreix). ⁽⁵²⁾ The act of marriage thus not only involved the transmission of economic resources from one family to another. It also required the settlement of future testatory succession with the families involved, as the dowry and escreix were almost always secured against the offspring's legacies. The patrimony was in turn distributed between a single principal heir (hereu/herera) and the other children, who were each awarded llegitimes, or equal portions of the remainder of the estate. Given the overriding need to secure future returns, upper-class marriage contracts usually contained elaborate lists of properties producing fixed rents. As such they are useful guides to the composition of elite family patrimonies.

A representative list can be found in the marriage contract drawn up in 1635 by the Audiencia judge and honored citizen Miquel Joan Magarola. ⁽⁵³⁾ Therein the magistrate settled upon his eldest son and heir Magí de Magarola approximately £1,370 in annual rents. The purpose of this donatio inter vivos was to secure the dowry of £4,000 brought by the bride, Doña Francesca de Perellòs i de Aragó, the daughter of a provincial gentleman from the nearby town of Tàrrega. Following customary practice, Miquel Joan reserved usufruct over the gift for the remainder of his life. He in turn promised the newlyweds both room and board in his house, and a yearly cash allowance of £300. Magi's settlement--which involved the transfer of most of the economic resources of his branch of the family--comprised forty-four separate [78]  items, distributed among the ten categories outlined in Table III-4.

The size of this patrimony also deserves emphasis. The effort required to amass this inheritance was obviously a considerable one. With only two exceptions, the loans, mortgages, and other investments listed in the document yielded a steady 5 percent return. The capital originally required to form this patrimony thus totalled some £30,000--an extremely large sum, even given the father's respectable professional income (£1,000-2,000 p.a.). ⁽⁵⁴⁾ The sheer size of the principal helps explain the incremental and piecemeal acquisition of the holdings, their wide geographical distribution, and Magarola's resort to a broad range of repayment mechanisms--all characteristic features of such patrimonies during this era.

Dowries played a central role within the economic life of the upper class, as bridal portions provided an important source of fixed revenue. As a consequence, many aristocratic houses sought to improve their finances by taking wives from wealthy families, often of lower social status. Moreover, dowry levels rose dramatically in the early modern period. Even taking contemporary inflation into account, during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the average dowry of an honored citizen's daughter apparently doubled from £2,000 to £4,000. This meant that a greater proportion of the elite's economic resources had to be devoted to investments producing the secured returns  [80] required by pre-nuptial contracts. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ The principal consequence of dowry inflation was to reinforce the existing tendency to divert capital toward investments yielding stable returns. In other words, as dowries grew, so did the need for annuities and long-term contracts securing the fixed revenues needed for their payment.

While changing economic circumstances fostered the upper class's growing resort to the proprietary system, the strengthening of the rentier sector in turn placed new pressures on the urban economy. Especially important was its impact on the local capital structure. The emphasis rentiers placed on security of returns encouraged reliance upon a wide range of sources of income. This led in turn to a notable dispersion of investments. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The lack of concentration of capital--more symptom than cause of the economic difficulties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--was reflected in Feliu de la Penya's 1683 project for the establishment of a trading company in Barcelona. His proposal to draw together a large number of small investments from the upper class as well as from merchants and guild masters obviously suited a capital structure whose aversion to risk fostered a marked dispersion of resources. ⁽⁵⁷⁾

Equally grave in its consequences for the urban economy was the neutralization of wealth in the complicated tangle of long-term instruments such as government bonds and annuities. The ultimate effect of the elite's predilection for rentier income was to reduce the role of capital as a dynamic force within the [81] economic life of the city. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ The need to yield secure returns literally immobilized economic resources. The upper class neutralized its economic strength in the form of low-risk investments which, while transferred with ease from one family to another, nevertheless did little to stimulate either trade or production. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

Symbolizing this "sterilization" of capital was the very prominence of Barcelona's famed Taula de Canvis, or public deposits bank. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ The annual interest of 3 percent on taula accounts represented the minimum yield on the sort of high-security returns sought by local investors. A considerable gap separated interest rates for these low-risk investments--ranging from the 3 percent bank dividend to the 5 percent standard censal rate--and the interest charged for less secure commercial undertakings. Thus in March 1606 the directors of the Merchant Consulate protested the exorbitant rates (30-40 percent) charged for mercantile ventures, and urged a maximum of 10 percent. ⁽⁶¹⁾ This episode indicates that by the early seventeenth century at least two separate channels of capitalization existed in Barcelona. The supply of capital available for secure investments had overtaken the market for high-risk commercial ventures. Worsening economic conditions thus joined aristocratic decorum to discourage entrepreneurial initiative on the part of the social class with the greatest economic resources at its disposal--the urban ruling class.

How, then, was wealth generated within the confines of the proprietary system? The few detailed account books that survive from this period reveal that the close management of investments [82] by aristocrats was not uncommon. They also suggest that certain nobles showed an active interest in agriculture and mining on their estates. ⁽⁶²⁾ The elite gained revenue from rural properties by encouraging agricultural improvement in lands not subject to the expanding regime of tenant farming. Citizens and nobles also assumed active roles as intermediaries in the sale of produce in urban areas. ⁽⁶³⁾ Yet, as noted above, aristocrats did not involve themselves in trading ventures of the sort envisioned by Feliu de la Penya. Neither did they evince much interest in direct participation in manufacture.

Indirect involvement in local enterprise, however, was a different matter. Early modern notarial documents reveal urban nobles investing capital as silent partners in both wholesale and retail trade. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ Aristocrats seeking profits greater than the 5 percent return on annuities and other fixed investments could also turn their money to account by farming out public taxes and supply contracts. Manuel Arranz's study of bids for municipal excises on goods entering Barcelona highlights substantial participation by honored citizens and gentry, who acted as guarantors of consortia competing for this monopoly. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ The 272 investors in these contracts from 1665 to 1712 included 23 honored citizens, 7 gentlemen, and 9 nobles. Together they pledged approximately £1,043,000--over 15 percent of the total guaranteed capital. Urban notables also bid for contracts for municipal supplies of grain and other staples. In 1667, for example, an honored citizen joined with a noble to provide the city with wheat and [83] rye. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ Finally, Barcelona's aristocrats invested heavily in local real estate. The catastro or tax-registry of 1716-1717 documents extensive participation by nobles in the city's active housing market. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

Yet, of all these means of earning income, only a handful did not require a considerable initial investment. Opportunities for less wealthy members of the elite to improve their families' position were in fact quite limited. There was only one sphere of lucrative endeavor in which nobles could engage without incurring the risk of status derogation--the liberal professions. The exercise of law in particular played a crucial role in sustaining the local ruling class during its transition from merchant oligarchy and feudal aristocracy to a unified civic elite. The substantial earnings accruing from legal practice and judicial service did much to compensate for the shortfall in income that aristocrats experienced during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The negative economic climate of the latter century in particular not only improved the chances of successful lawyers being absorbed into the elite. It also encouraged established nobles to try their luck at the bar. It was thus hardly a coincidence that the years of most severe economic depression--the 16305 to the 16705--witnessed a record number of both aristocratic and commoner law graduates registering for local practice. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries represented a crucial turning point in the history of the Catalan aristocracy. Increasingly unfavorable social and economic conditions encouraged [84]  the traditional nobility to forsake its rural origins for residence in nearby cities. Just as the town walls had provided military protection to newcomers during the Middle Ages, they now afforded economic shelter to an aristocracy pressed by inflation and falling seigneurial income. In Barcelona, in particular, nobles eagerly joined in pursuit of the "treasures of knowledge," hoping to garner through the practice of law the earnings needed to maintain the style of life judged proper for members of the civic elite. The main consequences of the demographic reverses and economic depression of the mid-seventeenth century were a further decline in Barcelona's commerce and industry and a corresponding strengthening of its rentier and professional sectors. Thus in many respects aristocratic investment patterns and economic behavior constituted a rational response to prevailing conditions. Finally, the decisive shift toward sources of income that were both more secure and fully compatible with aristocratic "honor" not only represented the final stage in the upper class's retreat from direct farming and commercial investment. The proprietary system also provided a meeting-ground for the gradual merger of the urban oligarchy with the traditional aristocracy--a merger born of common economic values and interests, and bound by ties of shared power and authority.

1. Pluvia, "Categorías Nobiliarias," and "Títulos Nobiliarios." It should be noted that in Catalonia the honorific title "don," which distinguished aristocrats proper from the gentry, was inherited by younger as well as eldest sons. The Castilian practice of addressing all members of the elite as "don" replaced this      usage, beginning in the eighteenth century. In this study, therefore noble (when italicized) designates a member of the specific social rank between the peerage and the gentry, whereas the unitalicized term refers more generally to all persons and things aristocratic.

2. Elliott, "Provincial Aristocracy," 129.

3. Jorba, Descripción, 26r.-28r.

4. Platter, Journal, 199.

5. "Península a Principios del S. XVII," 475-476; Torras Ribé, Municipis Catalans, 253-262.

6. A.C.A./Gen., caixa 26 (cited in Elliott, Revolt, 68). The remaining 51 names belonged to honored citizens.

7. A.C.A./Gen., caixa 26, for lists of nobles in Agramunt, Girona, Mont-blanch, and Perpignan; Junyent, "Noblesa Vigatana en 1666."

8. Serra, "Societat Rural Catalana."

9. Vicens, Gran Sindicato Remensa; Serra, "Règim Feudal Català"; Serra and Garrabou, "Agricultura Catalana."

10. A.S. V./Sac. Cong. Concilio, Relat. Dioc. ad Liminam, III A (Barcinon.), 11r. (1594).

11. Bruniquer, Rubriques, I, 77-130.

12. A.H.M.B./C-VIII, Insaculacions, I, IIr. Nobles were not the only ones eager for these offices.  For menestral resentment of exclusion from the honor and rewards accruing to permanent Councillorships,  see Corts Generals de Pau Claris, 227. Interestingly, in 1626 the Inquisition complained bitterly that    constitutional restrictions disqualifying familiars from municipal posts discouraged even "lowly persons"  from serving the Holy Office (A.H.N./Inquisición, lib. 1267, 6v.).

13. For remarks on the problems posed by similar documentary sources, see Sharlin, "Study of Social Mobility."

14. Contemporary rankings like the diocesan nuptials-tax schedule accorded the same (low) standing to menestrals and peasants. For a typical tariff, see A.C.B./ Esposalles, 48, 1r. (1575-1577).

15. Arranz and Grau, "Problemas de Inmigración." See also: Clark, "Migration in England," 70-71; and Thirsk, "Younger Sons."

16. Llull, Doctrina Pueril, 187.

17. Bosch, Títols, 370.

18. Tristany, Discurs, 9v.-10r.

19. Pujades, Dietari, III, 148 and IV, 128; A.H.M.B./Ms. A-1, 158v.-159r.

20. Tristany, Discurs, l0r. For recent studies of the social "image" of the "three orders," see Niccoli, Sacerdoti, and Duby, Three Orders.

21. Stone, "Social Mobility in England."

22. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo," 80. I am indebted to Professor Giralt for permission to consult and
                  reproduce portions of his study.

23. Matrícula dels Ciutadans Honrats.

24. The sixteen families I was unable to trace probably either emigrated from the Principality or died out during the sixteenth century. Studies of the biological "scissors" discouraging elite family reproduction include: Zanetti, Demografia del Patriziato Milanese; Litchfield, "Demographic Characteristics of Florentine Patrician Families"; and Pedlow, "Marriage, Family Size, and Inheritance."

25. For discussion of the methods used to derive these figures, see Amelang, "Honored Citizens," 262-263.

26. Elliott, Revolt, 49; Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 65-128.

27. Morales Roca, "Privilegios Nobiliarios. Dinastía de Borbón."

28. A.C.A./C.A., leg. 242 (7), 13 June 1633; Thompson, "Purchase of Nobility." During the 1630's, the government attempted to sell cavalier patents for £800, and honored citizenship for £400.

29. A.C.A./C.A., leg. 240 (16), 2 May 1692.

30. Westrich, Ormée of Bordeaux, 2-3.

31. Tristany, Discurs, iiv.

32. For a more detailed discussion, see Amelang, "Barristers and Judges."

33. Bruniquer, Rúbriques, V, 153.

34. Batlle, Crisis, II, 466-475.

35. Amelang, "Honored Citizens," 128.

36. A.H.M.B./Ms. B-44, 34v.

37. A.H.M.B./Vegueria XV, Matrícula dels Jurisperits, IX-XIV. The relatively small numbers involved do not permit a more precise chronology of nobles registering in the Barcelona court, especially since documentation is lacking for the years 1574-1605, 1640-1642, and 1654-1658. The 1660's and 1670's  apparently saw a record number of both noble and commoner matriculants to the local bar (Amelang,  "Barristers and Judges," 1,272 and 1,279).

38. Other such noble families include the Agullana, Cancer, Cassador, Copons, Despalau, Marimon, Meca, Vilaplana, and Vilossa.

39. Rocabertí, Presagios Fatales, title-page. A noble law student from Barcelona was the hero of Lope de Vega's play Los Ponces de Barcelona: Obras, VIII, 569-601.

40. Taylor, "Non-Capitalist Wealth." See also Giesey, "Rules of Inheritance," and Schnapper, Rentes au 16e Siècle.

41. Vilar, Catalogne, I, 569.

42. C.M. Cipolla coined this term in his "The Decline of Italy."

43. Molas, Comerç, 6-19.

44. In 1706 Antoni Rovira, an esparto-weaver from St. Boi, complained that the local peasant Joan Martí had hidden behind a privilege of honored citizenship to avoid returning a borrowed mule. The indignant Rovira marked that "Martí was to him a peasant and not a knight, for nobles did not plow the ground the way Martí did": A. H.M.B. /Veguería, leg. 362, 81 (2). (I am grateful to Kazuko Mitsuhata for this reference.)

45. Catalogue of Civil Suits, Audiència de Catalunya (A. C. A.); Molas, Economia i Societat, 132; A. C. A. /Gen., G-68, I, 307r.

46. A.C.A./Gen., G-68, Dietari del Bras Militar, III, 542r

47. Bennassar, Valladolid au Siècle d'Or, Chapter 8; Domínguez Ortiz, Clases Privilegiadas,  Chapter 3; Phillips, Ciudad Real, Chapter 7. Studies of European cities where merchants continued  to dominate local government include: Strauss, Nuremberg in the 10th Century; Friedrichs, Urban Society;      and Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion

48. Interestingly, the 1620s witnessed an unsuccessful movement to make wholesale trade compatible  with nobility: Wright, "Military Orders," 63.

49. Vilar, Catalogne, I, 461-520; Batlle, Crisis, I, Chapters 4-6; Bonnassie, Organización del Trabajo,  especially Chapter 5.

50. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo." See also Braudel,  Mediterranean, 865-891; Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice; and Rapp, "Unmaking of the Mediterranean Trade Hegemony."

51. See also Friedrichs, Urban Society, 142, and Burke, Venice and Amsterdam, 101-114.

52. Catalan civil law regarding marriage settlements followed the Roman custom of dos and antefactum. See Fontanella, De Pactis Nuptialibus; Maspons, Nostre Dret Familiar; and Maluquer, Derecho Civil, chap. 4.

53. A.H.P.B./Antic Servat major, Capitula Matrimonialia et Concordia 1635-37, 74r.-77v. (21 Nov. 1635)

54. Amelang, "Barristers and Judges."

55. These figures derive from the study of 33 dowries given by honored citizen fathers from 1576 to 1689 (documents in A.H.P.B.). The nominal sums were specified in fixed proportion to gold, whose price was relatively stable during these years (Elliott, Revolt, 553-554). For interesting perspectives on early modern  dowries, see: Nader, "Noble Income in l6th-Century Castile"; Chojnacki, "Dowries and Kinsmen"; and Stone,   Crisis of the Aristocracy, 632-649.

56. Vilar, Catalogne, I, 661; Ruiz Martín, "Joan y Pau Saurí"; Nadal and Giralt, "Barcelona en 1717-18," 299-302.

57. Feliu de la Penya, Fénix de Cataluña, 80-81.

58. Of course, the passive administration encouraged by the rentier system may well have aided the more prosperous peasants who could benefit from long-term contracts during years of rising agricultural prices. My discussion here is limited to the effects of this system on the urban economy.

59. Vilar, Catalogne, I, 565. For the dependence of the Valencian patriciate on censals, see Casey, Valencia, chaps. 5-6.

60. Usher, Early History of Deposit Banking, II; Riu, "Banking and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon."

61. Dietari, VIII, 263; Smith, Spanish Guild Merchant, 58.

62. Vilar, "Explotació Agrícola d'una Proprietat a la Horta de Tàrrega," in his Assaigs, 11-42; Serra, "Consideracions entorn de la Producció"; Canales, "Producció a la Comarca de La Selva"; and Vázquez,  "Aportación al Estudio de la Siderurgía Catalana."

63. Hence the entry in the account books of the Montalegre monastery noting £201 paid out for  "olive oil delivered by Francesch Mari, honored citizen of Barcelona": A.H.M.B./Patrimonial X-iy  (G), 5 March 1642.

64. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo," II, 15-16, 48, 78, and 8o; Molas, Comerç, 122-164; Martínez Shaw,  "Construcción Naval," 234-236.

65. A.H.M.B./Consell de Cent, XIII, Manuals, 1655 et seq. I am grateful to Professor Arranz for sharing  this and other references with me.

66. Giralt, "Comercio Marítimo," II, 61.

67. A.H.M.B./Cadastre, vols. 11-15. Fewer than half of Barcelona's heads of households in 1716
                actually owned the houses in which they lived: Nadal and Giralt, "Barcelona en 1717-18," 297-299.

68. Matrícula dels Jurisperits. That a record number of lawyers registered at mid-century is even more  striking, given the severe demographic losses from the siege and plague of 1651-1652. For a more detailed exposition of this argument, see Amelang, "Barristers and Judges."