The economy of market-town and village hospitals in medieval Valencia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study seeks to identify the funding sources and financial management strategies employed by rural and market-town hospitals in medieval Iberia, with a specific focus on the Kingdom of Valencia during the latter Middle Ages. Recognizing the limited availability of financial records, this research integrates various types of written sources, including fourteenth-century episcopal visitation reports and fifteenth-century notarial and royal records. The article begins by dissecting the administration of hospitals in market towns and villages, delineating the unique aspects of each type of settlement. It then investigates the diverse forms of revenue on which these hospitals relied. In examining regular incomes, the study focuses on loans and rents from assets, analyzing the implications of each type. It also explores extraordinary sources of income, as well as sporadic and recurring expenditures, encompassing salaries for the hospitaller -the person who took care of the ill people in the hospital feeding them and offering them emotional support- and hospital administrator, and the provision of material and food for inpatients and livery-holders, and municipal taxes for assets. The complex economic dynamics of medieval hospital economies are also examined.