Metadata: Notarial District of Avila
Collection
- Country:
- Spain
- Holding institution:
- Provincial Historical Archive of Avila
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archivo Historico Provincial de Avila
- Postal address:
- Plaza Concepción Arenal. 05001 - Avila
- Web address:
- http://www.archivoscastillayleon.jcyl.es/
- Email:
- archivo.avila@jcyl.es
- Reference number:
- ES.5019.AHP/74
- Title:
- Notarial District of Avila
- Title (official language):
- Distrito notarial de Avila
- Creator/accumulator:
- Notaries districts of Avila
- Date(s):
- 1448/1911
- Language:
- Spanish; Castilian
- Extent:
- 7,352 boxes
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
This documentary fonds is made up of notarial registers authorized by public scribes and notaries that testified to the legality of public acts carried out between individuals in Avila from the mid-fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Numerous protocols were produced, but over time many have been lost and damaged. We have focused on the analysis of medieval protocols, whose identification call numbers are 411, 420 and 460 and correspond to different notaries, among whom Gomez Gonzalez (420) and Juan Rodriguez Daza (460) stand out.
The content of the aforementioned protocols, gathered in 2,104 notarial entries, provides information on social relations, council activities, and the administration of justice in Avila. The type of documents is varied: obligations and debt recognition, letters of representation, rents and leases, letters of payment and settlement, sales contracts, letters of dowry and counter-dowry, last wills, letters of obligation, donations, letters cancelling debts, inventories, and censuses. Through the reading of these texts, we know personal data about both parties to contracts, where the buildings they leased or transferred were located, where the merchandise they sold came from, who the tax-collectors of the city were, what type of loans were made, etc. Although most of the documentation concerns the Christian population, during the medieval period we find that Jews and Moors, as well as Jewish converts to Christianity, made use of the services of Christian notaries.
Concerning Jews, the type of records refers to the granting of powers of attorney, the collection of debts and loans, letters of representation, recognition of payments, appointments of arbitration judges, and rental of real estate. We can obtain information regarding the activities of Jews in Avila from these documents: in 1448, Abraham Abenxuxen participated in the sales tax farming of cloths and wool (“alcabalas”) in Avila and its municipality; in 1449, Abraham Melamed was in charge of sales tax farming of cloth; in 1450, David Abenante was the tax collector of the Salinas of Atienza; and in 1451, Yuçe Cohen participated in the sales tax farming of wine. Regarding purchases and sales involving Jews, the delivery of leather, pelts, tallow, onion, must, wool, cattle, salt, wheat and barley stand out. There is also information about the relationship between Jews and converts: Mose promised to give a counter-dowry to his son Diego, a convert, for his marriage (1449); Abraham Melamed and his brother, the convert Pedro Suarez, were business partners. The areas of preference for renting were the Mercado Chico, Caldeandrin and Puerta del Adaja, and the documentation also contains references to the location of the synagogues and the butcher shop.
- Archival history:
- The Provincial Historical Archive of Avila was founded following the directives of the November 12, 1931 Bill that established the creation of provincial archives. In 1932, contacts between the Archive and notaries of the province were established in order to start transferring the protocols to the Provincial Archive. In July 1932, 7,000 notarial files entered the archive, and their classification and description began later.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The notary is a medieval institution regulated in Castile by the Pragmatics of 1480, 1502, and 1503 and by countless subsequent provisions that managed to preserve the notarial registers. It is extremely difficult to summarize the huge number of modern provisions that have established the norms to be followed by the notarial institution and the notaries in multiple aspects: exams and appointments, bureau of titles, resignations and transference of positions, number of tasks, residence, perception of rights, personal integrity in the performance of duties, transfer of records and registers, the issue of copies, the writing of deeds, etc.
- Subject terms:
- Conversion to Christianity
- Dowry
- Financial matters
- Financial matters--Debt
- Jewish quarters
- Legal matters
- Real estate
- Ritual slaughter
- Ritual slaughter--Butchers
- Synagogues
- Taxation
- Trade and commerce
- Trade and commerce--Alcohol trade
- Trade and commerce--Clothing and textile trade
- Wills
- Access, restrictions:
- Free access regulated by the current legal environment on access to Spanish historical archives (law 16/1985 of Spanish Historical Patrimony).
- Finding aids:
- Volumes 1 and 2 of Fuentes Historicas Abulenses contain regesta of the entries of volume 420. Data on the collection are also available at the website of the Spanish National Archives (PARES).
- Links to finding aids:
- https://pares.culturaydeporte.gob.es/inicio.html
- Yerusha Network member:
- Spanish National Research Council
- Author of the description:
- Marina Girona Berenguer; ILC, CSIC; December 2019