Historia. Instituciones. Documentos (Dec 2010)
Indicio del ámbito doméstico regio en las Chancillerias y Audiencias: los Porteros de Cámara (Siglos XVI-XVII)
Abstract
The jurisdictional activity of the King of Castile originally took place in the intimacy and privacy of the Cámara Real, or Royal Chamber. The spread of this activity throughout the kingdom, through the Chancelleries and Courts of Law (Audiencias), has been widely recorded by historians, but little attention has been given to its domestic origin. The presence of porteros de Cámara in the Chancelleries and the Courts in Valladolid and Granada and in the Royal Council (Consejo Real) is a reminder of this origin. Their presence expressed in itself, and metaphorically, not only a oneness between the king’s place of residence and the rest of his territory, but also put on the same legal level the Council (Consejo) and the Courts of Law, in accordance with the complex administrative system in the late Middle Ages. In short, the presence of porteros de Cámara in the Chancelleries and Courts of Law symbolized the original link that had existed between the legal activities of the king and his most private circle and which had been broken when access to the Court had been granted to a wide range of his subjects.
