Search results for " military orders"
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From Spain to Sicily after the Expulsion: Conversos between Economic Networks and the Aristocratic Elite
2018
Abstract This article focuses on a group of conversos families from Spain, who established themselves in Palermo after the Expulsion of the Jews in 1492. There they supported financial activities of the Nazione Catalana and established strong relationships with the local aristocracy. Thanks to this alliance, they managed to avoid persecution by the Spanish Inquisition, “cleanse” their “impure” blood and reach high positions within politics and society: feudal titles, political and financial offices, habits of military orders, ecclesiastical appointments and sometimes even sainthood. Firstly, the paper will give a brief sketch of the phenomenon of conversos in Sicily as well as the activitie…
ELITES AND ECCLESIASTICAL CAREERS IN EARLY MODERN SICILY: BISHOPS, ABBOTS AND KNIGHTS
2009
Most recent research on Sicilian aristocracy in early modern age has shown how the elite of the island, while keeping its reference “ideological” models in the titled nobility of feudality, was actually a very composite social group, formed by bureaucrats, lawyers, merchants, former “gabelloti” (major tenants of estates) as well as by professionals. Moreover, joining this heterogeneous aristocratic group was increasingly linked, especially since the end of the sixteenth century, to a large availability of financial resources provided by these “new nobles”. During that period, infact, due to mounting economical troubles, the Spanish monarchy actually made a widespread use of conferring – or,…