La administracion señorial en la Galicia moderna

Abstract

The patrimonies of rentier institutions and houses had both material and nonmaterial components. In the Early Modern period, señoríos constituted systems of power and social control, in that their holders were able to use mechanisms of developing a nerwork of dependencies through the appointment of people to various positions, the presentation of candidates for ecclesiastical posts, the partial or total pardoning of debts and the support of pious works of a charitable or educational character. This situation, and the extraordinary extension of the seigneurial regime in Galicia, which affected 90% of the inhabitants, make it interesting to understand the administration of noble estates. This was characterized by having a very limited group of professionals at the top, at the head of which was the general administrator or alcalde mayor, and at the bottom a dense network of dependents with political, legal or fiscal functions, public and private functions often being entrusted to the same person. This network of officials was complemented by the ecclesiastics owing their positions to the holder of the señorío; their role was less well defined but key to seigneurial strategy. In the second half of the eighteenth century, an incipient professionalization of the administration of the seigneurial estates occurred, due to the growing number of lawyers in the local jurisdictions, but this process was interrupted by the decree of 1811 that abolished the señoríos and deprived the nobility of one of its sources of power and social control.