The recognition of the hidalguía during 18th Century: its reformulation as civil and political quality

Abstract

Throughout The Modern Age the hidalguía suffered a serious conceptual evolution. At the end of the Ancien Régime the loss of the medieval features and its conversion to a legal reality regulated by the State were one of the most prominent characteristics. In this research we analyze the transformational factors of the nobility in a legal statute closely regulated which was at the service of the absolutist monarchy. In order to analyze it we have chosen processes of hidalguía initiated in the Royal Chancelleries as the core idea of the research, demonstrating that, their utility was not only as instruments used to supervise the access to nobility, but, what is more, they are a form of the new identity adopted by the Bourbon nobility; the subordinate state which depends on the crown.