Negotiated tributes: the “questie”/subsidies of the towns of Catalonia in the first half of the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

This article examines the questie/ subsidies requested by the Catalan- Aragonese monarchs from the towns of the royal domain of Catalonia between 1309 and 1359. From the point of view of the Crown, the importance of these tributes lies in the fact that they were the monarchy’s main way of financing prior to the transcendental changes in taxation of the decades of 1350 and 1360. And, from the point of view of the towns, the necessity to negotiate with the king and his officials, year after year, the amount of the questie/subsidies due in every small city, contributed to the increasing financial autonomy of the municipalities and, beyond that, to the social and institutional coordination of that community.