Cistercian monasteries of Galicia during the final stages of the Ancien Regime

Abstract

In Spanish historiography it is often assumed that ecclesiastical institutions, and especially monasteries, were destitute by the time of the disentailment and exclaustration or expulsion of religious orders in 1835. This has been generally assumed to be due to the fact that there was widespread tenant opposition to paying land rents after the Spanish War of Independence and the Cadiz Cortes or parliament. However, an examination of the detailed accounting of the Cistercian monasteries of Galicia, which were numerous and even opulent at that time, indicates that the Bernardian monks reached the time of exclaustration with almost full income from the rents in kind stipulated in the foral land tenancy or foro contracts. Still, a detailed analysis of the financial situation of these institutions reveals a tendency for both income and expenditures to decrease after the eighteenth century. In a good number of cases these religious institutions had to rely on various forms of funding to face their more or less serious financial deficits. Nevertheless, a careful study of the financial registries and records of the expenditures for court cases indicate that the cause of the lack of financial liquidity was not actually due to extensive labourer resistance to paying the foral taxes or the tithes, but instead arose from other fiscal, political and contextual factors, which all came together to affect the balance of income and expenditures in these monasteries.