FAMILY AND COMMUNITY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN

James Casey offers an innovative study of prestige, power, and the role of the family in a Mediterranean city during the early modern period. He focuses on the structure and values of the ruling class of Granada, where a new elite consolidated its authority. The study suggests that their power was linked to the pursuit of honour, which demanded participation in the politics of the commonwealth and depended greatly on the network of personal relations which they were able to build with kinsmen, clients and patrons. It explores the way in which this system contributed to the relative tranquillity of the community during a turbulent time of religious and political change, that of the rise of absolutism and of the Counter Reformation. The book sheds new light on the nature of the early modern family and will be essential reading for historians of early modern Spain and Europe.

JAMES CASEY is Reader in History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Family in History (1989) and Early Modern Spain: A Social History (1999)

NEW STUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

Edited by

PETER BALDWIN,University of California, Los Angeles

CHRISTOPHER CLARK, University of Cambridge

JAMES B. COLLINS, Georgetown University

MIA RODRíGUEZ-SALGADO, London School of Economics and Political Science

LYNDAL ROPER, University of Oxford

The aim of this series in early modern and modern European history is to publish outstanding works of research, addressed to important themes across a wide geographical range, from southern and central Europe, to Scandinavia and Russia, from the time of the Renaissance to the Second World War. As it develops the series will comprise focused works of wide contextual range and intellectual ambition.

For a full list of titles published in the series, please see the end of the book.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN

THE CITIZENS OF GRANADA, 1570–1739

JAMES CASEY

University of East Anglia, Norwich

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521855891

© James Casey 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

ISBN-13 978-0-521-85589-1 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-85589-6 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external
or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any
content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Maps and tables

TABLES

Acknowledgements

The original idea for this project goes back to a conversation with Sir John Elliott. I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and advice he has given over many years. He, together with Helmut Koenigsberger, John Lynch and Edward Acton, was instrumental in securing the funding – a Leverhulme Fellowship, a British Academy West European Grant and an Arts and Humanities Research Council fellowship – which permitted research leave in Spain. Over the years my colleagues in the University of East Anglia, first in the School of European Studies and then in that of History, have given every support, moral and financial, to the research. It has benefited from the careful reading and suggestions for improvement of the editor of the series, Mia Rodríguez Salgado, of James Amelang and Stephen Wilson.

I can only acknowledge but never repay the debt I owe to Juan Luis Castellano and Inmaculada Arias de Saavedra of the University of Granada for all the kindnesses, both academic and personal, they have shown me over many years. Their department of early modern history has been an unfailing source of support, moral and material, for my research.

Little could have been achieved without the help of archivists and librarians, in Madrid and in Granada, whose great good will made working there such a pleasure. I am indebted in particular to Manuel Vallecillo and his successor as director of the notarial archive, Amalia García Pedraza, for the exceptional facilities they placed at my disposal. I would also like to record my thanks to Michael Watson and Isabelle Dambricourt of Cambridge University Press for carrying the present text through to publication.

Finally, to the memory of Luis García Ballester, Valencian scholar and friend who first welcomed me to Granada and there opened many doors, this book is gratefully dedicated.

Abbreviations

Map 1. The kingdom of Granada. Based on Manuel de Terán, Geografía regional de España (Barcelona 1968). Elaborated by Philip Judge of the cartographic department of the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia. The dotted line shows the approximate borders of the Moorish kingdom. Note: Cozvíjar on the map frequently referred to in my text as Villamena (de Cozvíjar).

Map 2a. The City of Granada (NW). Drawn by the architect Ambrosio de Vico (1596).