hefirst arrival of Spaniards to the new territories in America was followed by some decades of uncertainty and insecurity. Men joined these expeditions aiming to acquire wealth and prosperity, but they had to leave their families behind in Spain, not knowing whether they would ever meet again. Many met death in the colonies, leaving heirs in the peninsula, thousands of kilometers away, unable to gain access to the assets that they legitimately deserved by testament. In order to appease the fears of these travelers and to offer a certain legal safety to their heirs, the Crown very quickly began to regulate this process. A system was established by which assets of the deceased would devolve to the new owner, assigning some of the responsibility to theCasa de la Contratación de Sevillaand some to royal officials in the West Indies. Exactly these documents composed by these officials will be the object of study of our research. Although the production of these documents must have started already at the end of the 15thcentury, the central years of the following century have been chosen as our primary source, as they offer a clearer example of the method of production. The procedure to handle the deceased person’s assets – Diligencias de bienes de difuntos in Spanish – was to collect the different public documents produced by local notaries and issued for the purpose of enforcing the last will of the deceased. Therefore, among these files we will find certified copies of testaments, inventories of goods, records of auction sales, letters of attorney, requests from individuals, and other documents that responded to the varied demands of each situation. The objective of this study, therefore, will be to scrutinize these processes, focusing on letters of testament, in order to analyze their diplomatic form and content, while keeping in mind that they are part of a regulated and structured administrative procedure. T Abstract maría luisa domínguez-guerrero 603
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=