Valencia - History Lab

Our Lady of the Venerable Agnesius

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:12 +0000

Juan de Juanes, a major figure of the Valencian Renaissance, was noted for his religious scenes and portraits. In this work he combines both genres. The Venerable Agnesio places the ring on Saint Agnes, in a kind of Mystical Nuptials. The centre of the picture is occupied by the Virgin and Child, surrounded by the Infant Saint John the Baptist, angels, Saints Dorothea and Theophilus. In the background, in a magnificent landscape, we can make out the figure of St George on horseback, slaying the dragon. It is a kind of Italian Sacra Conversazione, full of symbolism and great attention to detail.

The post Our Lady of the Venerable Agnesius first appeared on History Lab.

Embrace of St. Francis of Assisi to the Crucified One

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:12 +0000

Francisco Ribalta was one of the masters of the early Spanish Baroque. He was active in Valencia and was noted for his religious paintings of great mystical importance. This work is an altar painting from a disentailed Capuchin convent in Valencia. And how the exclaustrations led to the dispersion of works of art in public museums and private collections, shaped by the inheritance of the rich conventual legacy

The post Embrace of St. Francis of Assisi to the Crucified One first appeared on History Lab.

The ports of the Kingdom of Valencia (circa 1250-1520)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:14 +0000

The map shows the Valencian port line with more than 40 ports between 1250 and 1520. The seaways and ports contributed to the economic development of the region. There were 9 important ports: Valencia, Alicante, Denia, Gandía, Gandía, Cullera, Sagunto, Burriana, Castellón and Peñíscola; and smaller ports oriented to the proximity of the rural or semi-urban world. From the latter, products were shipped in kind to the city of Valencia to supply the market, or beyond the borders of the Kingdom. The maritime connection between Valencia and the towns by sea was extremely important during the second half of the 15th century, and there is evidence of the arrival of numerous cargoes in light sailing ships.

The post The ports of the Kingdom of Valencia (circa 1250-1520) first appeared on History Lab.

Places supplied with pastel (dye for cloth) in Valencia, according to transactions in the city (1452-1500)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:14 +0000

During the late Middle Ages (13th-15th centuries), pastel was one of the most widely used vegetable dyes in textile production. It was used to obtain the colour blue, but it was also used in the composition of other shades. The exploitation of pastel was widespread in several European areas, but the best and most abundant crops were concentrated at least during the 14th and 15th centuries in Lombardy and Languedoc. From both regions there were export networks to the main economic centres of the continent, among which was the city of Valencia. Here the dye arrived by land or sea and was distributed to supply both local consumption and that generated by other populations in the Hispanic kingdoms. A micro-analysis of Valencian notarial sources from the period 1452-1500 has detected two hundred pastel transactions involving Italian merchants, mostly involving the Lombard crop. Through these transactions, pastel was delivered to merchants and craftsmen in the Valencian capital itself, but also to agents in other towns in the rest of the kingdom of Valencia, Aragon and Castile. All these places are shown on the attached map. This illustration is intended to highlight not only the extent to which textile production at the time often depended on supplies from abroad, but also the links that were established at the time between international trade (which allowed contact between Valencia and Italy, for example) and regional and local trade (thanks to which certain imports were channelled to the interior of the peninsula, also for example).

The post Places supplied with pastel (dye for cloth) in Valencia, according to transactions in the city (1452-1500) first appeared on History Lab.

Fleet of Naples during the 16th century

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:03 +0000

The expansion of the existing frontiers in medieval times meant that a growing slave labour force entered into many of the labour transactions during the modern period. Naples and Valencia were two major enclaves in Europe during the 16th century where the Catholic Monarchy fixed its slave trade. During this time Naples was engaged in reinforcing its fleet in preparation for a Turkish offensive, relying on slave labour to cover many of the needs that would progressively arise.
In the Neapolitan fleet, forced labourers accounted for 74.6% of the oarsmen, slaves for 15.4% and volunteers for only 10%. The cost of the workers obliged to provide their services in different ways was determined by successive negotiation phases in which a representative of the viceroy, another of the asentista and the captain general Juan de Cardona had to reach an agreement in order to achieve a synthesis between the different parties and proposals.

The post Fleet of Naples during the 16th century first appeared on History Lab.

Executed in Valencia (1450-1500)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:56 +0000

During the modern age, punitive justice was administered both by the king’s officials and by the inquisitorial power, which had its own courts. In addition to the traditional crimes such as theft, swindling, piracy or murder, there were other types of crimes that were also punishable from the mental and material parameters of the time. It should be borne in mind that, being in a different historical moment, the social conventions on what type of conduct constituted a crime or not were also different. In this case, according to the studies of Antonio Catalá Sanz and Pablo Pérez García, the following were considered as crimes constituting the maximum penalty: heresy and blasphemy, sodomy and bestiality, crimes of lèse-majesté, rebellion, falsehood, etc. In this case, we have a graph showing those executed in Valencia over a period of 50 years during the modern age. It can be useful to bring students closer to questions related to criminality or punitive justice in other periods, highlighting the need to take into account the historical context at any given time.

The post Executed in Valencia (1450-1500) first appeared on History Lab.

Origin of the vessels that arrived at the Valencia of the Cernesio family in 1615

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:56 +0000

The Milanese merchant family of the Cernesio family managed to evolve socially during the 17th century to become nobles of the Kingdom of Valencia. Their work as wheat merchants made them well known in the main ports of the western Mediterranean, supplying several cities and almost exclusively the granaries of the islands of Sardinia and Sicily. They also traded in cloth, foodstuffs, steel and horses, among others, showing the diversification of imports that passed through the Valencian ports of the 17th century in their name.
The arrival of the Cernesio family in Valencia was due, on the one hand, to the economic possibilities of such a city, and on the other hand, to the weakness of the local commercial bourgeoisie, which was beset by continuous economic crises.
To emphasise their role in the western Mediterranean, it can be seen from the resource that more than half of the ships that arrived for them came from ports on the Italian peninsula and from the aforementioned islands of Sardinia and Sicily. The data also show the extensive commercial network that involved the Cernesio family, receiving goods from a wide number of ports influenced by the family’s friendships and even resources from their own relatives.

The post Origin of the vessels that arrived at the Valencia of the Cernesio family in 1615 first appeared on History Lab.

Women prosecuted for the crime of clandestine prostitution (1479-1518)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:20 +0000

In the 15th century, the city of Valencia was a commercial emporium and a cosmopolitan location in the Mediterranean. The commercial boom of the city, accentuated in the 15th century, also implied an increase in social and economic inequalities and therefore an increase in the population on the threshold of misery. Prostitution also obeyed these general dynamics of misery, but also an opportunity for enrichment, given that the city was a continuous flow of travellers and merchandise, as Pablo Pérez García says. Prostitution was regulated by the kings of the Crown of Aragon, creating an institutionalised building, the brothel, which was under the authority of the cities. For the study of prostitution in Valencia, we have the Llibres de Cédules and the accounting books of the urban court. However, these sources have a number of problems, such as their preservation and the lack of precision of the actors in question (Pablo Pérez García). The practice of prostitution outside the legal channels was punishable and in this sense, records are kept of women who had problems with the justice system, where they were often fined and even imprisoned. The social profile of these women who practised clandestine prostitution, according to Pablo Pérez García, was that of single/widowed women who carried out other secondary jobs such as maids, seamstresses, maids, etc.

The post Women prosecuted for the crime of clandestine prostitution (1479-1518) first appeared on History Lab.

Evolution of wheat prices in Early Modern Spain

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:46 +0000

During the Modern Age, the availability of food was, to a large extent, a determining factor in the standard of living of the population. One of the great economic efforts for most families was the acquisition of the food necessary for survival, with cereals, especially wheat, and bread, accounting for between 65 and 70% of current expenditure. Because of its importance, the demand for wheat tended to be inelastic. Consequently, changes in its price marked the rise and fall of living standards. At the regional level, the behaviour of the price of wheat showed divergences depending on whether one lived in the centre or on the coast of the peninsula. While the price fluctuation was greater in the Meseta, the coastal areas, with their international trade routes, showed less variation. Thus, throughout the modern period, Barcelona and Valencia had lower prices than in Castilla la Nueva, Segovia or León. Periods of crisis were also important. In Castilla la Nueva, price volatility conditioned the market every 9.8 years; in Andalusia every 10.6 years; in Segovia every 14.1 years; in Navarre every 36.8 years; in Valencia every 38.4 years and in Barcelona every 69 years. Climatic disturbances also affected markets with less international trade capacity. However, from the beginning of the 16th century until the end of the 18th century, the common price tended to fall in parallel with the process of integration of the peninsular markets, a process which, although timid during the first two centuries of modernity, increased with the actions of the Enlightenment reformers.

The post Evolution of wheat prices in Early Modern Spain first appeared on History Lab.

An international migration: Italians documented in notarial sources from the city of Valencia (1452-1500)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:33 +0000

From the mid-14th century until around 1500, demographic mobility throughout Europe reached very high levels in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The causes of human movements were multiple, as were the people and groups involved. In this context, the migrations that have been described as “elite” stand out, especially because they involved professionally qualified and sometimes economically solvent groups that moved even over long distances. This is the case of the economic operators of the cities and regions of central-northern Italy today, especially merchants and craftsmen, who were dispersed throughout most of the major cities of western Europe. In the Iberian Peninsula, their presence has been highlighted in centres such as Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Zaragoza, Granada, Seville, Toledo, Valladolid and Lisbon. In the specific case of Valencia, micro-analyses carried out on local notarial sources from the period 1452-1500 have detected up to 734 individuals of this origin, whose regions of origin and professions are shown in the table below. Among these individuals were those who developed a prolonged residence in the city and an intense and powerful socio-economic activity. But there were also those who only stayed sporadically in Valencia and have left scarce traces in the documentation. In any case, they are all examples of international migration, whose effects on the host society (the Valencian one, in this example) were notable for the dose of cosmopolitanism and supralocal connection they brought.

The post An international migration: Italians documented in notarial sources from the city of Valencia (1452-1500) first appeared on History Lab.