ABSTRACT
The nobility The boundaries between social orders in late medieval and early modern Spain were, as pointed out earlier, permeable. This was especially so when it came to the noble estate. WeIl-to-do merchants not only claimed the status of nobility, as did the 'honoured citizens' of Barcelona and the commercial elite of Burgos, but they also fuIly shared in the lifestyle and military ethos of the Spanish nobility. At the lower end of the ladder of prestige and power, the distinctions between rural hidalgos (petty-nobles) and fairly prosperous villanos or labradores ricos (rieh farmers) were almost imperceptible. When the hidalgo Quixote argues ab out novels of chivalry with a village curate, a barber, and the university-schooled peasant bachiller Sans6n Carrasco, we witness a discussion among social equals, despite Quixote's own view of the nobility's superiority. Both clerical and noble status, or claims to such status, presented an extensive and complex range of possibilities. The few magnates (the high aristocrats or grandees) and their ecclesiastieal counterparts (the cardinals and archbishops of powerful dioceses) moved in a rarefied world to which other lesser noblemen and clergymen had access only as retainers or servants.
