Ad populandum licences and charters from Lorenzana monastery. A contribution to the corpus of Galician rural charters

Abstract

The knowledge of the intense process of social and economic re-organization produced since mid 13th century in eastern Marina (Galicia) relies on the abundant number of fueros of the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Meira. However, it can be argued that -due to the random path of its funds-, the remarkable documentary set of the Benedictine monastery of Salvador de Vilanova de Lorenzana (which is, to a certain extent, a replica of the previous one) has remained unnoticed. The known references, besides their unavoidable fragmented nature, frequently include transcription and date flaws that come to twist their testimonial usefulness. The work, resulting from a complex heuristic task in several fields, has allowed to add three items to the twelve already conserved under the signature of Lorenzana’s National Historical Archive, and offers the transcription of 15 documents (12 of them unpublished), gathering the remarkable and eloquent set of fueros and population charters with which the monastery documented its population policy. A typological approach is also provided.