Administración económica del distrito inquisitorial de Valenciala receptoría de bienes confiscados (1482-1493)

Abstract

The doctoral thesis aims to study the receivership of confiscated goods from the Inquisition of Valencia, its bureaucratic organization and its procedures during the late Middle Ages in the Valencian society. This office was in charge of executing the sequestration and confiscation of the convicted heretics' patrimony, as well as managing and settling those goods once they were integrated in the royal treasury. Moreover, it has been analysed the institutional evolution that the Holy Office experienced during the observed period. The written source used is the accounting of this receivership included in the collection of ‘Maestre Racional’ in the ‘Archivo del Reino de Valencia’. Among the different kinds of preserved books, we can emphasize the accounts of incomes and outlays that were the aim register in the accountant work, since they summarized the management made by the receivers during the specific chronological period, wich also provided better prospects for the historical analysis in the institution. The selected chronology for the study ranges from 1482 to 1493. The former date is related to the moment when the judicial and economic system of the tribunal of the Inquisition started its activity in Valencia, and the latter describes the moment that concludes the foundational period of the office of confiscated goods. The geographical area of our study embraces the territories of the inquisitorial district in Valencia: the diocese of Valencia, the ‘ciudad y tierra’ of Teruel, the diocese of Tortosa and the diocese of Segorbe-Albarracín. The results of this investigation have been itemised in one general introduction and two big blocks. In the introduction, we tackle the current perspectives about the Spanish Inquisition with a special attention in the studies about the property of the Holy Office and the tribunal of Valencia. Moreover, we describe and explain in detail the morphological features and the content of the written source and also the methodology that has been used. Lastly, we explain the geographical area controlled by the tribunal of Valencia and the location where it applied its objectives, delimiting the area of the district and analysing the construction process. The first block deals about the internal organization and the development of the administrative system, whether it is concerned to the management of the confiscated goods or the tribunal itself. We start to analyse the different payrolls that Ferdinand the Catholic sent to the receiver of the confiscated goods of the Inquisition of Valencia and what he could have used to pay to the personnel of the organization. Hereafter, we reconstruct the personnel of the officials of the fiscal and judicial systems, that is to say, all the charges with assigned annual salaries for taking part in the different stages of the inquisitorial actions; we pay attention to the identities of the different officers and their salaries, delimiting the role of each one of them and describing the facilities they used. Finally, we dedicate one section to the receivership of fines and penances, another office that together with the receivership of confiscated goods was in charge of administering the tribunal economically. In the second part of the thesis we pay attention to the behaviour of the receivership of confiscated goods was articulated and we try to analyse their social impact. Thus, we walk the way that the suspicious' properties walked from their discovery and sequestration to their settlement, paying attention to their ways of managements. At the same time, we describe the auxiliary personnel that occasionally took part in the economic activity and received the payment according to the tasks. Finally, we focus on the methods of control subjected to the management of the successive receivers, paying attention to the different moments in the audit process and closure accounts.