Perspectiva socio-económica del clero secular en la Valencia del Siglo XV,

Abstract

This Dissertation tries to fill up the emptiness which exists in the research of the late medieval Valencian clergy as a social class. The period selected runs among the most part of the fifteenth century, a moment plenty of changes to the Valencian eclessiastical organization, whose members took an important role in that organizations development throughout this period. The sources to achieve this target are amply, from economical sources, which allow us to obtain a strong knowledge of the Valencian clergy and its social position, to the internal documents from the Valencian church organization, which help us a lot in the following the traces of the Valencian clergymen professional career. We also used to work with the council documents of the Valencian Municipal Archive, which complementing quite well the image of the clergymen. Besides, we have been working with other sources, such as particular documents, Law codes, and literary writings, which added remarkable stuff, especially regarding to the daily life of the Valencian clergy. We have been used a prosopographical method, which has allowed us to work precisely with all this information. The final result can be observed in around the biographies we have written from most of the Valencian clergymen. Thus, the clergy appears to us like the final result of some contradictory elements, especially between the daily life of its regular development and the plans of future which the same clergy had itself. These projects tried to increase much more the differences in which the clergy supported its outstanding collective reputation in the society, such as the religious and spiritual control. But the main difficult to get these plans was the crush among this new model of sacred clergy and the former ways of the clergymen, which deriving the situation in a bad image of the clergy, plenty of wicked features and bad habits. Nevertheless, the prosopographical method has made us able to know how many clergymen there were in Valencia, as well as the social and professional development of its members, the main features of its composition, its economical situation, its familiar origins, its cultural level, etc.