5 - Aristocratic strategies for the preservation of family wealth

Summary

My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!

Merchant of Venice, II, viii, 15

In its feudal stati, the Neapolitan aristocracy was secure. With a minimum of expense and care, the stability of feudal revenues and of feudal rule over the università could be maintained. Even after the mid-seventeenth century difficulties, the feudal aristocracy preserved most of its powers and income and kept them well into the eighteenth century. In the fiefs, the aristocracy met with limited challenges to its position, and in most cases the vassals shared the aristocracy's tendency to follow the ways and traditions of the past. It was in the capital that the old feudal aristocracy had to face more forceful challenges to its status, due to the consolidation of Spanish rule on the kingdom. The last two chapters of this study will examine how the aristocracy responded to these challenges in its defense of family wealth and prestige, and in its relations with the state.

The main aim of an aristocratic family was the preservation of its wealth and status. Each of these two was needed to support and legitimate the other. Genealogists and others who wrote about the aristocracy in Spanish Naples saw an explicit link between social prestige and economic power.