The “veinticuatros” knights of Cordoba at the end of the seventeenth century. Wealth, duties and lineage of a powerful elite

Abstract

Within the doubtless attraction that the study of the seventeenth century rouses these days, we want to offer the view of a local work, that has been made under the particular optics of an oligarchical group: the one formed by the “veinticuatros” knights. The aim of this work is to show an integral image of the individual and the social group which they used to act in. For that reason, we analyse the means of their economy, the power that they achieved with their titles, positions, relations and their mentality, as an estate, assumed by the whole group in order to delimit, as far as possible, the ability of their great influence upon the township.