[xxiii] This book is a study in the formation of class consciousness. It analyzes the world-view of an early modern urban patriciate, especially in relation to questions of class identity and political dominance. In particular I focus on the ways in which the emergence of a new, unified ruling class transformed elite perceptions of socio-political organization and hierarchy. The links between patterns of social change and the cultural expressions of class relations constitute the principal subject of this inquiry. I also seek to provide a case-study in the consolidation of elite hegemony during a crucial period in the evolution of Mediterranean cities. While concentrating on Barcelona, I have tried to frame my arguments with a comparative perspective in mind. I hope the reader will thus gain a sense of the extent to which the evolution of a single city can serve as a model against which one can test the urban history of early modern Europe as a whole.

My more specific aim is to locate the socio-political matrix of the term "culture" itself by tracing its expanding role in both the perception and reality of early modern class relations. The word cultura and its cognates loom large in our everyday vocabulary of description and assessment. Yet how, when, and above all why this came about is a problem historians have yet to explore. "Culture" is, to be sure, a notoriously imprecise concept; like the apostle, it is all things to all men. In the eyes of many it denotes the last, beleaguered redoubt of humane letters. Matthew Arnold, to cite but one example, penned one of the most eloquent statements of this view. In his hands, "culture" served as an emotive rallying cry for the defense of class privileges threatened by a rising tide of social change. Beginning in the same period, however, anthropologists and others among the more relatively minded fashioned and diffused a strikingly different interpretation. To them "culture"--or more properly [xxiv] "cultures" refers to the plurality of values,beliefs, and patterns of behavior of human beings within a much wider range of social and ethnic groupings. Needless to say, this broader definition has yet to find more general acceptance. The colloquial, almost normative usage of the term still evokes a highly static notion of refinement, learning, and/or good taste. For most members of our society, "culture" is a mark of distinction, an alien symbol of rank and privilege. Its deprivation constitutes one of the many "hidden injuries of class."

The following investigation into the pre-history and subsequent evolution of the vocabulary and beliefs of a ruling class is an exercise in what is known, for better or worse, as the "history of mentalities." While I share with others certain reservations about this term, I fully agree with those who argue that economic, social, and political realities cannot be understood without reference to mental structures. I have analyzed these latter constructs, however, as a historian, and can only hope that my relentlessly unliterary approach to literature will not prove too suspect to neighbors in other disciplines.

Any study of the fortunes of an entire class should devote equal attention to economic, social, and political factors. Its goal must be to capture the elusive quarry of "total history." Such brave words, however, afford scarce comfort to the practicing historian, who in the course of archival work is obliged to impose certain limitations upon the scope of research. The choices shaping the contours of these simple annals of the powerful deserve brief mention here. First, I am aware of the need for more extensive discussion of the economic basis of class relations. This book had, in fact, its distant origins in a proposed thesis on economic ideologies in seventeenth-century Barcelona. However, I arrived there to find serious problems regarding local economic documentation. Barcelona lacked reliable tax-lists or estimates of wealth prior to the eighteenth century. There were few private archives for the study of early modern elite families, while similar documents within the notarial archive were much too dis-[xxv] persed for efficient use. Finally, few secondary studies on the Catalan urban economy existed to guide my undertaking. It became immediately apparent that the sort of patient, methodical reconstruction that the study of the Barcelona economy deserved was not a realistic possibility for anyone with fewer than a dozen years to spend in the archives. I therefore narrowed my focus to a single social class--hardly a small enterprise in itself--and limited my economic research to the rentier patrimony of the elite. I cannot pretend that this choice was out of harmony with my original interest in the study of mentalities. I nevertheless regret the deficiency, and hope that future studies on Barcelona's economy will appear to confirm or contradict my findings.

The case of the political activities of the urban elite, which are dealt with only in passing in this book, presented a similar problem. Clearly the manipulation of power constitutes an important issue for anyone writing the history of a ruling class. However, here too a dearth of documentation hampers analysis of municipal administration. Both of the leading sources for the study of early modern civic politics--the detailed internal deliberations of government bodies (traditionally the principal source of historians of the Florentine regime) and the diaries of participants in the local political system (used effectively by Robert Finlay and Edward Muir in recent studies of Venice)--are generally lacking in the case of Barcelona. With patience and effort someday a thorough study of early modern Catalan urban politics may be written. Unfortunately, if my experience is any guide, much patience will be needed.

Rather different conditions influenced my decision not to undertake a prosopography of the Barcelona elite. An abundance of notarial records permits reconstruction of the family structures, inheritance patterns, and material culture of the local ruling class. However, the haphazard commission and organization of this archival embarrassment of riches prevented my obtaining a statistically significant sample. I quickly found myself facing an all-or-nothing proposition: either to undertake an exhaustive [xxvi] prosopographical analysis involving years of research, or to avoid lines of argumentation whose full verification depended on such a study. I opted for the latter, in the belief that the travail required to produce a collective biography of these dimensions simply was not worth it. Although I wound up reconstructing more genealogies than I care to remember, I remain convinced that this decision was the correct one.

So much for past choices; what of the future? This book represents the initial contribution to a more general study of the history of the social and political functions of "culture." Like a Golden Age play, the script is divided into three acts, and uses a Spanish city for its backdrop. At the beginning of the piece, the lights come up on a stage crowded with many masters and few servants; rich costumes and elaborate posturing betray the players' membership in the elite. At this point the appearance of other citizens is more fleeting; their voices, to the extent that they are heard, sound from offstage. At the beginning of the second act, however, the noble protagonists slip into the wings after a seventeenth-century artisan steals the show by writing a chronicle of his own life. The diary of the tanner Miquel Pa-rets--the theme of my next book--contains precious (and sobering) insights into how members of the "lower" class viewed the elite pretensions to cultural superiority portrayed in the opening scenes. Following his tragicomic soliloquy, the chorus returns to the fore-stage. The final act explores the ambivalent stance toward cultura among anarchists and other working-class militants from the later nineteenth century to the Spanish Civil War. In short, I have written the present book as a prolegomenon to a more extensive project of research and revision. As with other first acts, its purpose is to set the stage by introducing the characters and getting the action underway. The sympathetic onlooker may choose to withhold judgment until the lights come up again.