Occupation, Family, and Inheritance in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona: A Socio-Economic Profile of One of Europe’s Earliest Investing Publics

Abstract

This article aims to provide a snapshot of the Barcelona urban elite during a crucial phase in the city’s transition to early modernity – the decades after the Black Death. Between 1356 and 1375, the Crown of Aragon, of which Barcelona was the principal city, was locked in a doubtful struggle with Castile over Aragon’s very independence. During the war, the financial officers of King Pere III of Catalonia-Aragon (1336–87) perfected a unique public debt system, and a cornerstone of this system was a debt instrument known as a violari. By paying high interest rates of over 14 percent per annum, from government tax revenues, the violari became an attractive investment opportunity for burghers, urban clerics, and some nobles, both male and female. Certain unusual characteristics of the violari make it a useful way to study interpersonal connections amongst elites. First, purchasers had to name a designated heir in the event of their own demise. Secondly, many purchasers bought violaris as a means of providing income to family members and other trusted relations. By studying the violari-buying elite from a combination of economic, social, and political angles, several interesting observations can be made regarding the role played by urban elites in the late medieval and early modern state-building process. The obvious strength of public support for the violari goes a long way towards explaining the strength of the Catalan-Aragonese fiscal system in the later fourteenth century, and indeed, towards explaining the Crown’s territorial expansion in the western Mediterranean, which continued through the fifteenth century. The voluntary nature of the purchases suggests that Catalonia-Aragon might be seen as one of the first territorial states to undergo a ‘financial revolution’ – seen by economic historians as a hallmark of modern state-building. At the local level, the wealth of different occupational groups can be estimated, and their political ambitions therefore thrown into greater relief. The near absence of noble investors and the presence of several urban clerics tell us much about the relations between the three ‘estates’ at this period in Barcelona’s history. The presence of many women, both widows and wives, as both purchasers and beneficiaries, paints a surprisingly egalitarian picture of female economic agency; furthermore, it appears as though nuclear family structures and property strategies predominated over ‘clan’ or ‘patrilineal’ structures commonly seen in Italian historiography. Distinct patterns of wealth allocation are also discernible amongst male and female investors.