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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
On 23 March 1641, just before the elaborate penitential rites of Holy Week which marked the highpoint of the ecclesiastical year and at the same time the highest prices likely to be reached by the bread of the old harvest, the knights of Granada gathered in their confraternity of ‘Charity and Refuge’ (Caridad y Refugio) and agreed to mount an enormous banquet for all the poor of the city. Over 500 paupers turned up at the Jesuit college for the occasion, where they received confession and communion before being led in procession by the knights through the streets towards the hospital of the confraternity behind the banner borne aloft by its Chief Brother, Don Diego Carrillo de Mendoza, knight of Santiago and lord of the town of Huélago. Separated into three great halls, for the men, the women and the children respectively, the 500 were waited on by knights and priests, and at the end were each given a loaf of bread and half a real. It was a spectacular performance which took place against a grim background of hardship for the city as a whole – days of rumour about devaluation of the currency, days which were to see the city fathers operating the press gang to round up holgazanes (idlers) from the taverns in order to meet the demands of the king for more troops to fight back against invasion and rebellions in Catalonia and Portugal.
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