ABSTRACT
Iberian nobilities, and especially their lower ranks, experienced greater social mobility and expansion in the early modern period. The growth in the number of secular clergy was another measure of the positive resonance of Trent in Iberian societies, which was a major reason behind the greater uniformity of religious practices and of social disciplining. Horizontal solidarities articulated geographic spaces and interests of different social strata, becoming an essential sphere in the symbolic representations of the Iberian societies. The majority of the Iberian population lived outside the largest urban settlements, in small towns and villages. The sixteenth-century price inflation of agricultural staples drew many peasants into the urban-based market economy, and patterns of debt-financed investment and consumption that proved to be unsustainable in the long term. Rural society—and Iberian society in general—was highly mobile, judging by the motley procession of itinerant merchants, pilgrims, bandits, and vagabonds crossing paths with the famously errant Don Quixote.
