Placing sons and daughters in the church: Strategies used by the gentry of Central Catalonia to maintain social status in the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

This study analyses strategies for placing sons and daughters used by Notaries, Doctors of Law and Honorary Citizens of Manresa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Reconstructions of several family trees show that all of the sons, except the heir, went into the church and many of the girls remained single or went into convents. The consistency of this behaviour has led to an interpretation in terms of how these families maintained their social status, given their particular way of gaining access to resources. This study traces the way the younger generations entered the church and how they returned resources to the families they came from. Celibacy excluded many sons and daughters from inheriting the family patrimony and opened the way to combining patrimonies with other families. This happened if the heir had no children and the inheritance went to the eldest daughter married to the heir of another family. Combining patrimonies was one of the strategies used to deal with the problem of declining incomes suffered by these families.