A powerful elite in the Valencia of Charles II

With the present research we intend to make an approach to the biographies and the ecclesiastical and political careers of a powerful social group not approached by the historiography until now and to establish a preliminary study that settles future investigations on the importance of the cabildo for the political, cultural and economic life of the city and kingdom of Valencia and its use as a means of social promotion by the incipient bourgeoisie of the city. In the following pages we propose a systematic study of the main members of the Valencian chapter during the decades of 1680 and 1700, that is, the last two decades of the foral existence of the kingdom of Valencia, as several aspects converge in them that make them particularly interesting: the academic environment of the city marked by the novatores, the ease of social promotion through the granting of titles of nobility at a time of need for the monarchy, the division between Bourbon and Austracists at the dawn of the succession conflict and the evidence of the limits of the estamental society and its systems of representation, present in these last decades of the functioning of the institutions of the kingdom of Valencia.