El sistema beneficial en la Barcelona del segle XIV. La conjunció de la religiositat, l'economia i l'art

Abstract

The ecclesiastical benefice was a legal body, valid for perpetuity, whose aim was to finance the daily celebration of the cult in a specific alter, erected under the same invocation as the saint to whom the benefice was dedicated. This required its founder to name a priest exclusively dedicated to liturgical celebration at that alter, that would for ever guarantee a private income for him and his successors. It was also necessary to have Access to a chapel where the alter that would be linked to the benefice could be erected, and adviseable for the alter piece to visualize the life and miracles of the saint that was being revered. In XIVth century Barcelona, within a context of the city's global renovation, there took place the gradual demolition of the cathedral and the three great Romanesque parish churches and their replacement by new Gothic temples. The financial difficulties faced by these works resulted in the ecclesiastical authorities deciding to grant each new chapel to the person who wished to fund a benefice in it, in exchange for a substantial donation. In this way, whilst the private income assigned to the benefice, obtained via numerous systems, linked it to the economic functioning of its surroundings, the financing of the chapels and alter pieces linked them to artisteic advancement by name. Thus, the interest of the benefice is not only situated in the legal framework of the cult's celebration, but in its representation of such important and different phenomena such as piety, economy and art.