Visitas y visitadores en municipios de la Orden de Montesa tras su incorporación a la Corona

Resumo

The incorporation into the Crown of the mastership of the military Order of Montesa during the last stages of the reign of Philip II brought about a gradual institutional homologation of the municipalities that made up the mastership with those that madeup the traditional royal estate in the kingdom of Valencia. One of its first manifestations was the introduction of the system of inspection visits, to be carriedout by commissioners appointed through the Council of Aragon; in addition to the gradual introduction of electoral systems of insaculation for the provision of town council offices. This paper focuses on the significance of the visitation procedure inthe newly incorporated municipalities throughout the Habsburg period. The reconstruction of the list of towns visited (just over twenty), and the dates on which they were visited is completed with that of the institutional profile of the commissioners (around a dozen) in charge of carrying out these inspections, which shows their frequent simultaneous status as royal officials and, at the same time,servants of the Order. It also deals with questions relating to the instigators of the visitations, their objectives, their involvement in the factionalism in which the localruling groups were sometimes immersed, and the controversies that arose betweenvarious commanders and the Order's lieutenants general (appointed by the king) overthe power to order visitations. This shows how the Crown used this instrument torein force its capacity to intervene at the local level and thus extend its dominion overthe different territories that made up this plural monarchy