Padrinazgo bautismal y parentesco espiritualmodelos y experiencias en la Cantabria moderna

Resumen

This PhD thesis puts its focus on the inner workings of the mechanisms that regulated social exclusion and inclusion dynamics within and outside communities throughout the study of a link such as baptismal godparenthood, which originated in spiritual kinship, in the context of Early Modern Cantabria. The analysis portrays the contrast product of the disparities between the normative frame articulated by synodal regulations and the actual practices -approached via an extensive body of baptismal records-. This exercise reveals tensions around the religiousness model after the Council of Trent alongside the great flexibility that godparenthood as a sociorreligious institution possessed. The patterns hereby obtained show how elements such as family, a common place of origin or social status had different weight in deciding whom would be assigned with the role of godfather or godmother. An ambivalent relationship was established between these different sets of social links according to personal interests of the actors involved in the decision-making process. The variations which have been detected were subject to the particularities of each community analyzed, such as the property of the existing means of production, as well as social structure and economic dynamism, diverse situations which allow for the devise of valid comparisons between different geographical contexts from Europe and America during the period here considered.