Noble Income in Sixteenth-Century Castile: The Case of the Marquises of Mondéjar, 1480-1580.

This article focuses on the decline of noble income in Spain during sixteenth-century with investigating the income of the estates of the marquises of Mondéjar during 1480-1580. The decline of the real incomes of the Castilian nobility has been one of the few points of certainty in the debate over the causes, extent, and effects of the sixteenth-century price rise. According to the author, the lack of researches and literature concerning this issue is particularly serious because the nobility were the great agricultural landlords of the country and the Spanish economy was essentially agricultural. Two aspects of the Mondéjar estate have wide implications for the nobility as a whole. First, in tracing a specific set of archival documents through a century of administration and litigation, it becomes apparent that the functions of three legal instruments common to all noble estates have not been clearly understood. Second, the archival evidence for the income and expenditures of the Mondéjars shows that their real income did not decline during this period.