La Casa de Amarante, siglos XVI-XIX

Abstract

This work is dedicated to study the evolution of a concrete house of the middle
Galician nobility, Amarante’s House, during the Modern Age. For it, it is distributed in five
paragraphs in which the following aspects are approached: the genealogy of the holders of the house, the composition of their families —consorts and children— and their professional
lives; the origin of the patrimony, its extension during the modern epoch and the role that had
in it the aggregation of other houses and entailed estates; the administrative structure created to
manage the patrimony, its components and forms of management; the structure and evolution
of the economy, not only of Amarante’s House, but also of the set of houses and estates that
its holders were possessing in Galicia; and the holders way of life and their attitude before the
death. Between all these aspects, the analysis of the economy occupies a preferential place,
followed by the formation and extension of the patrimony and by the administrative structure
that was managing it.