Socios pero no parientes. Los límites de la promoción social de los comerciantes extranjeros en la Castilla moderna

Abstract

With the analysis of the family Ferro Verdín, merchants murcians of Genoese origin, we try to show that the money, in the modern Castile, was a necessary, but not sufficient element, to ascend socially. We try to check this way little importance that, in the processes of social promotion, some recent investigations have granted to the honorific factor relegated to a secondary plane, opposite to the economic factor. There are studied five generations of this family, in the course of which the Ferro, to be recognized as members of the murcian local elite, had to leave the commercial activity and adopt all the signs of identity of the above mentioned social group. The local elite was doing business with them, but it was proving to be remiss to relating with a merchants family. It would not be up to the fourth generation when they manage to connect with the highborn oligarchy: up to this moment only they manage to marry members of the intermediate strata of the oligarchy or of foreign elites. Doubt does not fit that the possession of richness facilitated, route obtaining of honors and prestigious offices, the social ascent of numerous families. But not at least in case of a family so rich and placed well in the royal administration and the Church like that she occupies us, the possession of these capitals supposed an easy and rapid integration in an elite as «traditional» as it was that of the city of Murcia.