1 Introduction

Well-being is increasingly seen as a multidimensional phenomenon that goes beyond GDP (Deaton 2013). Subjective well-being, which results from evaluating one’s global life circumstances (Cohen and Johnson 2017), and whose main facets are emotional well-being and life evaluation (Kahneman and Deaton 2010: 16,489), has become central to research on welfare and the relationship between life satisfaction and GDP per capita a recurrent concern of economists since Easterlin’s (1974) claim that no statistically significant association could be established between them (Clark 2018). However, subjective well-being in the past has hardly been investigated (see Hills et al. 2019, as an exception).

Current studies on life satisfaction and happiness are often based on surveys and opinion polls. Unfortunately, we do not have access to this kind of information for the past, but archival documentation allows us to identify the prevailing values in those societies. In this paper, we explore subjective well-being and inequality during early modern Spain’s economic decline. In a highly religious and homogeneous society, we focus on one of its facets, spiritual satisfaction.

Spirituality and religion are positively correlated with subjective well-being. The social support that the public practice of religion provides links religiosity to happiness (Cohen 2002: 288). Moreover, religiosity influences well-being through spirituality (Sharma and Singh 2019: 126). Research finds a positive association between the social dimension of religiosity and life satisfaction across countries for the recent past (Domínguez and López-Noval 2021: 1184). More specifically, life satisfaction has been found negatively correlated with death anxiety and positively with belief in the afterlife (Cohen et al. 2005: 13).

Historical records on the sale of the Bull of Crusade provide information that reflects the values and beliefs in early modern Spain, as the purchase of the bull was associated with spiritual benefits that enhanced the well-being of the individual concerned. Specifically, spiritual satisfaction is assessed by the compliance with the religious recommendation to buy the Bull of the Crusade once a year. Its purchase carried with it a plenary indulgence that wiped out any penance due for sins previously committed and which would otherwise have to be paid for by sacrifices in this life, or in the afterlife (spending time in Purgatory). In addition, to the positive impact that social practice of religion may have had on subjective well-being, suppressing the penance would reduce death anxiety and, hence, increase life satisfaction. We argue, therefore, that the purchase of the bull represented a public practice of religion that captured people’s religiosity and belief in the afterlife and had a positive impact on their spiritual and, thus, subjective well-being.

Values are crucial in measuring subjective well-being in the past as they are today. Values changed over time though, and the frequency in the use of certain words does too. For example, terms such as pecado (sin) and penitencia (penance) appear much more frequently in printed books in Spanish during the seventeenth century than in recent times according to Google N-gram (Fig. 1). The use of the purchase of the Bull of Crusade as an indicator of spiritual well-being implies accepting that it represents an expression of widely accepted values in Hapsburg Spain. It is worth noting here that, by relying on contemporary values as a criterion for assessing subjective well-being, we preclude imposing current values and ideas on the past, as is often the case with historical research.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Source: Google N-gram https://books.google.com/ngrams/ accessed 28 January 2024

a Usage of the Term Sin (Pecado) in Spanish Printed Books, 1500–2000. b Usage of the Term Penance (Penitencia) in Spanish Printed Books 1500–2000.

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Our measure of spiritual satisfaction is the ratio of the number of bulls sold to their recipients. The bull was a fixed 2 Reales alms, an affordable price, bought by the population aged 12 and above. For the true believer, the dilemma was to pay the monetary cost and avoid penance in life or in the afterlife (in purgatory), or not to pay the 2 Reales and be exposed to penance in life or in the afterlife. Our results suggest that subjective well-being deteriorated in the in the late 1570s and 1580s and the 1640s and improved during the 1670s.

Two types of bulls were available, the regular 2 Reales bull and the 8 Reales bull, the latter intended for those wealthy and of high social status and the former for the regular individual. The ratio of 8 Reales to 2 Reales bulls sold informs on the share of the population that included itself in the top of the income distribution. In other words, it provides us with a subjective measure of inequality. Subjective inequality would have increased in the first four decades of the seventeenth century and fallen during the 1580s and early 1590s, the 1640s and, more intensively, in late 1660s–1670s. Thus, except in the 1640s, when both contracted, the gains (losses) in subjective well-being were accompanied by a fall (rise) in subjective inequality throughout the seventeenth century. Interestingly, a weak association is found between subjective and objective measures of well-being and inequality.

The rest of paper is organized as follows. Section 2 offers an overview of the Bull of the Crusade and its potential to capture spiritual satisfaction in Habsburg Spain. Then, Sect. 3 describes the origins of the bull and how it evolved to becoming the yearly alms administrated by the Monarchy under Philip II and Sect. 4 exposes how the sale of bulls was carried out. Section 5 discusses the construction of homogeneous series of bulls. Section 6 assesses subjective well-being and inequality in Spain since Philip II achieved full control of the bull. Some concluding remarks close the paper.

2 The Bull of the Crusade in the context of Habsburg Spain

The historiographical debate on the decline of Spain goes back a long way. More than 80 years ago, Earl Hamilton (1938: 169), after noting that ‘it is impossible to date with precision the beginning of economic decline,’ asserted, ‘It took Spain only a century (from the union of Castile and Aragon, in 1479, to the annexation of Portugal, in 1580) to attain political pre-eminence and only a century (from the death of Philip II, in 1598, to that of Charles II, in 1700) to fall into the rank of a second-rate power.’ Quantitative historical research, inspired by Hamilton’s pioneering work, allows us to establish a more precise chronology. After a century of sustained progress, Spain experienced economic decline from the 1570s to 1650. Thereafter it gradually recovered, but the peak per capita income of the early 1570s was not reached again until the 1820s (Prados de la Escosura et al. 2022). However, we know little about the impact of economic decline on people’s welfare.

In order to investigate subjective well-being and inequality, we have explored a source that has not been used for this purpose before, the Bull of the Crusade. This bull was an alms that, by papal concession, and subjected to renewal every six years, the Hispanic Monarchy collected annually in its domains from 1574 to the early nineteenth century. The purchase of the bull represented some material benefits but its main benefit was, by far, spiritual. By purchasing the bull, a person gained plenary indulgence that forgave all the penance after the sin, either in life or, later, in Purgatory. As a consequence, it reduced the fear of death, promoting subjective well-being.

In the Roman Catholic religion, unlike sin, which is forgiven in confession, guilt must be paid for by making a sacrifice in life or purified after death in Purgatory. The indulgence cleanses that guilt. That is, it subtracts time in purgatory if you have died or removes the need for penance if you are still alive. However, since an individual could sin again afterward, the need for indulgences always existed, so the best thing to do was to buy them every year.

A distinctive feature of the Bull of Crusade is its transversal nature. Unlike many other mercies granted by the Crown, ecclesiastical indulgences were available to anyone, regardless of their social and economic status. The bull offered spiritual graces to all in a society used to privilege as an expression of social status. Moreover, the bull presented a paradox. While the payment of taxes was considered vexatious, befitting those who could not contribute to society by prayer or the sword, acquiring the bull allowed everyone to enjoy the same graces and privileges.

Another unique feature of the bull is its broad temporal and geographical coverage. The bull was sold for more than two centuries, practically uninterruptedly, following the same rules, something exceptional in Early Modern Spain. This was certainly not the case with taxes. The second advantage is its geographical scope. Unlike other Hispanic Monarchy revenues, those of ecclesiastical origin were collected throughout its entire territory, regardless of the borders of its different kingdoms or their particular institutions and privileges. This makes the Bull of the Crusade one of the few revenues of the Royal Treasury for which homogeneous data are available for Early Modern Spain.

The bull was a cheap, fixed-price alms, equivalent to a day's work for an unskilled laborer in New Castile in 1574 (Hamilton 1934: 398), which its recipients, the population over the age of 12, bought en masse. It is our claim that the ratio of the number of bulls sold to the recipients provides a measure of spiritual well-being in a highly religious world, which we associate with subjective well-being.

The association of purchasing the bull with spiritual well-being could be challenged on the grounds that individuals may have acquired indulgences in times of hardship, in an attempt to compensate for deteriorating material conditions so that the purchase of bulls meant a worsening of subjective well-being rather than an improvement.Footnote 1 However, this does not seem to be the case. In fact, in times of hardship, i.e., wars, pandemics, economic disturbances, social turmoil, etc., the purchase of bulls declined. It should be noted that the number of bulls sold reflects the interaction between demand and supply, and its decline was often the result of a reduction in the state's ability to provide bulls to individuals.Footnote 2 However, the revenue obtained from the sale of bulls was significantly more stable than the total revenues of the Hispanic Monarchy.Footnote 3 This suggests that the state's ability to collect tax revenues was more sensitive to economic fluctuations than the sale of bulls, which was conditional on people's compliance with the Church's recommendation.

But the fact that economic, social, and political events conditioned the sell of bulls could lead to argue that, if anything, the purchase of bulls represented a measure of objective rather than subjective well-being. However, the coincidence of objective and subjective well-being at different junctures (as it also the case nowadays) does not invalidate the spiritual (and, hence, subjective) benefits provided by the bull.

One might also wonder to what extent people acquired the bull not so much because of their deeply held religious beliefs, but because of social pressure. Would people have, then, purchased the bull against their will, since its acquisition constituted a de facto tax? This is, in our view, an improbable hypothesis. Habsburg Spain was very religious society, in which the precepts and obligations of the Roman Catholic Church were obeyed by the population. As Elliot (1977: 47) put it, ‘seventeenth-century Spaniards, like their contemporaries in other parts of Europe, operated within a narrow theological framework bounded by sin and grace, punishment and reward.’ Moreover, religious dissent was very much in the minority in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Jewish and Moorish minorities had been expelled (in 1492 and 1609, respectively) and the Counter-Reformation left little room for dissention. This suggests that those who felt compelled to buy the bull against their will may have represented a tiny minority.

3 The Bull of Crusade: origins and evolution

The origin of the Crusade Bull in Spain can be traced back to the indulgences and spiritual graces that the Church granted in the Middle Ages to those who risked their lives and wealth to go and fight in the Holy Land. In time, these indulgences were extended to those who fought the infidels in the Mediterranean, including the Iberian Peninsula.Footnote 4 Those who did not go to fight could also enjoy the same spiritual graces by paying alms to help finance the war (Fernández Llamazares 1859; Goñi Gaztambide 1958).Footnote 5 Although these were spiritual benefits, the management of their sale and distribution remained in the hands of the monarchy.

This type of concession from the Church to monarchs was widespread in Europe from the eleventh century onwards, but its real boom came with the printing press in the fifteenth century. Printing the bulls on paper and hand delivering a copy to each faithful allowed them to be distributed and collected individually. The bull was personal and non-transferable because only those whose name was written on the back would enjoy these spiritual graces. The printing press facilitated the sale of bulls and made it possible to increase the collection.

The Church had been selling indulgences in Spain since the thirteenth century, ceding part of what they collected to the Crown. However, the excellent reception the population gave to the indulgences preached between 1479 and 1492 to promote the conquest of Granada aroused the monarchy's interest in controlling this income in full (Serrano and Gómez Vozmediano 2013). The Catholic Monarchs asked the Church for a monopoly on the sale of indulgences and extended their preaching to Crown of Aragon, Navarre, and the American territories (Benito Rodríguez 2002; Grossman Querol 2017; Martínez López-Cano 2013). After the conquest of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada (1492), the Spanish monarchy continued to demand the financial help of the Church: first, to keep the Turks away from their possessions in the Mediterranean, then, to stop the Berbers in North Africa and, later, to eradicate the Protestant heresy in Europe (Ulloa 1977). The Pope yielded to pressure and, in the course of the sixteenth century, ceded to the Crown part of the revenues they collected in Spain. In 1523, the kings became Masters of the Military Orders in perpetuity, acceding to all their patrimony and tithes. In 1534, this aid was consolidated into a fixed contribution destined to maintain a certain number of galleys in the Mediterranean. Pope Pius IV transformed this sporadic concession into a stable and regular transfer, the Subsidio, in 1562, which was usually renewed every five years (Catalán Martínez 1997; Navarro Miralles 1981; Ulloa 1977).Footnote 6 Five years later, in the midst of the dispute over the continuity of the Crusade Bull, the Pope added a new contribution: the Excusado. In this case, the funds would come from the tithes collected from richest household in each parish. To prevent the Hispanic Monarchy from controlling ecclesiastical taxation, the object of taxation was replaced by a fixed amount for a five-year period, renewed in the same way as the Subsidio (Carpintero Aguado 1989).Footnote 7 These two contributions, Excusado and Subsidio, plus the Crusade contribution, constituted the revenue known as the Tres Gracias (Three Graces) in the Monarchy’s annual budget.

Unlike in England and the rest of Europe, where the sale of indulgences was suppressed by Pope Pius V (1567), it was consolidated in Spain. Despite widespread criticism of the Crusade Bull from the beginning of the sixteenth century, sparked by Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses (1517), all attempts to put an end to it came up against the strength and diplomatic influence exercised by Philip II in defending it. The Turkish threat, the need to form the Holy League, and pay for the subsequent Battle of Lepanto were arguments skillfully used by the King of Spain to persuade the Pope to grant the bull again.

From 1574 onwards, the bull became valid annually, which increased its collection and attracted the interest of many financiers to take over its management.Footnote 8 In addition, the Crown managed to extend the number of years of each papal concession from three to six years, and competition from other types of bulls was definitively eliminated (Ulloa 1977: 575) (Fig. 2).Footnote 9

Fig. 2
figure 2

Source: Archivo General de Simancas

Imagen of a Bull of the Crusade.

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For the Monarchy, the Crusade Bull was always an extraordinary revenue because it never ceased to be a temporary ecclesiastical concession (Álvarez Nogal and Chamley 2014: 198).Footnote 10 For this reason, its highest official was always a cleric, the General Commissioner of the Crusade, although its organization was subordinate to secular royal officials and bankers linked to the Crusade and Finance Councils.

4 Selling the Bull of the Crusade

As an alms whose collection was ceded by the Church to the Hispanic Monarchy, it was always managed separately and independently from the rest of the royal revenues. The Monarchy sought the most efficient way of doing so, trying to minimize administration costs. The formula chosen, which was common in some taxes, was to place their distribution in the hands of agents, who had to bear the initial costs of printing and distributing the bulls and transfer the proceeds to the royal coffers after deducting their commission, approximately 10 percent of the total collected. If all the other management costs are added up, the preaching of the bull accounted for 20 to 25 percent of the proceeds.

These intermediaries, generally bankers, were named Treasurer General of the Crusade. Their relationship with the Monarchy took the form of a contract known as a ‘Asiento de Cruzada,’ valid for the duration of the papal concession and renewable if complied satisfactorily. The Treasurer General resided in Madrid and depended on the Crusade Council, but had the power to appoint the treasurers for each diocese. At the end of his contract, he delivered a report with the number of bulls sold in each diocese.

The Royal Treasury outsourced the management, but reserved for itself the task of supervision. The Contaduría Mayor de Cuentas, the institution in charge of auditing all those who handled the Monarchy's money, meticulously checked the quality of the management and handling of the money collected. The royal officials compared the information provided by the Treasurer General, first against his contract and then against the reports of the Crusade accountants. The result of this accounting review was then transmitted to the Crusade and Treasury councils.

The Monarchy established the sale procedure, but the Treasurer General was in charge of implementing it. Every year he was given instructions which he had to apply rigorously.Footnote 11 The organization of the Crusade Bull is a reflection of the administrative functioning of the Royal Treasury, which demonstrates the high degree of institutionalization achieved. An efficient procedure was sought to eliminate fraud in the sale of indulgences.Footnote 12 The preparation of reports in triplicate, together with registers, made it possible to control the sale and collection of alms. The continuous intervention of notaries to monitor and attest to the acts carried out reveals the Crown's interest in taking care of every detail of the process. The organization of the sale and control of the bulls was improved during the first two-thirds of the sixteenth century, taking definite shape from 1571 onwards, to remain practically unchanged until 1850.

Four types of Crusade Bulls were sold every year: vivos (the living), difuntos (the deceased), composición (damage compensation) and, since 1625, lacticinios (lacticinium, for clerics only). The most important and most widely sold bull, on which our research focuses, was the one for vivos (the living), intended for the entire population, with the exception of children and the extremely poor (pobres de solemnidad), as well as the Moorish (moriscos).Footnote 13

As the bull of vivos was an alms, in principle the price of the bull could not be assessed and the amount was to be left to the discretion of the person acquiring the bull. However, the Crown needed to be able to estimate its return and decided to establish a price that was affordable for all and that could also be paid in a flexible manner, so that no one would be excluded. In the asiento signed in 1518, the price of the bull for the living and the dead was set at two silver Reales.Footnote 14 This price remained unchanged ever since.Footnote 15

When in the seventeenth century the vellón (copper coin) came into circulation, the General Commissioner forbade its use to purchase bulls, always requiring payment to be made in silver. However, when it was realized in 1624 that a significant part of the population did not have access to silver coins, the Crown, at the request of the Treasurer General, allowed the most popular bulls, those of vivos (the living) and difuntos (the diseased) to be paid in vellón, with a premium to cover the cost of the exchange to silver (Lanza García 2020b). The premium fluctuated over the years, depending on the devaluation of the vellón coin on the market, in most cases between 18 and 30 percent of its value in silver, but on specific occasions, such as in 1627 and 1628, the premium reached 50 percent.Footnote 16

Furthermore, at the express wish of Pope Pius V, from 1571, the bull of vivos (the living) had two different prices, depending on the income of the person acquiring it, 2 and 8 silver Reales.Footnote 17 The 8 Reales bull (bull of the illustrious’) was intended for those with greater wealth and social status. So that there could be no doubt, preachers had to explain in their sermons which the main recipients were, although they could be purchased by anyone who wished to do so:

‘cardinal primates, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and abbots who have episcopal jurisdiction and dukes, marquises, counts, major commanders, priors of the order of San Juan, Viceroys, captains general, and ambassadors and presidents and those of the councils and mayors of the house and court of his Majesty and judges of the Chancellery and royal audiences and mayors and prosecutors of the same, and accountants and lieutenants and auditors, and prosecutors of the Treasury and accounts, and his Majesty's secretaries, and inquisitors and commanders, commissioned of all military orders and lords of vassals, and the wives of the seculars of all the aforementioned states, even if they are widows’.Footnote 18

Albeit the Crusade Bull was not a tax but an alms that was paid voluntarily, this did not prevent the Royal Treasury from organizing the sale of bulls so that they could reach the entire population and thus maximize its revenue. To this was added the social pressure exerted by the local authorities and the residents themselves to ensure that no one was left without purchasing their annual bull (Fernández Chaves 2009; Ojeda Nieto 2000). The fact that the price was not so high,Footnote 19 nor was resistance to acquiring it, explains the success of the bulls from the point of view of the collection. Aside from specific conflicts, the fact is that the Crusade Bull always enjoyed a wide and solid demand among the population, reflected in a wide extension of sales among the local population (Mejía Asensio 2002).

5 Constructing a Yearly Bull Series

Most of the works published on the Crusade Bull between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries focus on justifying its existence with the intention of promoting its sale. Some publications explain its administrative organization, the legal and canonical aspects or the pontifical concessions themselves, but they barely deal with its economic and social dimensions (Argomanas 1535; Fernández Llamazares 1859; Forcelledo 1833; Goñi Gaztambide 1958; Pérez de Lara 1733; Rodríguez Lusitano 1618) with the recent exception of Lanza García (2020b). Also recently, after compiling the number of bulls sold annually in the seventeenth century, Ojeda Nieto has used these figures to obtain population estimates (Ojeda Nieto 2000, 2004, 2006).

In our research, we use information on the number of bulls sold yearly between 1574 and 1700 from the accounting documentation on the Crusade kept in the Archivo General de Simancas. Gathering data on the bulls sold at the regional level has been a challenge, involving reading and checking more than 24,000 pages of accounting books and ancillary documents. The most important material used to construct the series of this research comes primarily from the Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), sections of Consejo de Cruzada, Contaduría Mayor de Cuentas, and Tribunal Mayor de Cuentas.

Every year, the accountants of the Royal Treasury checked the number of bulls that had been sold during the previous year in each territory, cross-checking the information provided by the general treasurer with that offered by the printers and the receipts of the private treasurers who were in charge of collecting and distributing them. Each printed copy was tracked, ensuring that, if it had not been sold, the bull had been destroyed. In compiling the data provided by the documentation, we have checked that they coincide with reports that were handled by all the bodies involved in the management.Footnote 20

The Bull of the Crusade was collected throughout the Hispanic Monarchy territory, as those revenues from ecclesiastical origin, representing one of the few revenues of the Royal Treasury for which homogeneous data are available for the whole of Spain in the Ancien Régime, including, therefore, not only the Crown of Castile but also the Crown of Aragon and the kingdom of Navarre.Footnote 21

The Bull of the Crusade presents some shortcomings as a source. One of them is the risk of fraud. However, unlike the case of taxes, in which it was mainly the taxpayers who committed it, in the case of the bull, fraud was committed by those who managed its sale. Selling bulls without declaring them to the Crown represented a net profit, either for the monks in charge of the printing, or for the bankers in charge of the sale and distribution. Yet the purchaser of the bull could only enjoy the plenary indulgence of the bull if the alms were paid by its beneficiary, so there was no point in stealing bulls as they would have no religious value whatsoever. Throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, the Monarchy improved the system of sale and its administrative control so by the time our research begins, 1574, the improvement has already taken place. The centralization of the sale process was more efficient than that applied in the collection of many taxes.

In order to derive the actual number of bulls sold in each territory each year, we have relied on the general treasurer’s reports to the accountants of the Royal Treasury. We faced two options: collecting the totals presented in the yearly summary reports, or compiling individual bulls printed for each bishopric and subtracting the unsold bulls. We chose the latter. The sum of the bulls sold in each territory provides the total for each kingdom and, then, for Spain as a whole. An obstacle results from the fact that as an ecclesiastical source, the bull reflects the territorial demarcations of the bishoprics which do not always coincide exactly with the civil, administrative division. So it is necessary to adjust the information from the religious provinces to the geographical definition of civil administrative provinces (see the Online Appendix on the construction of the series).

A breakdown of total bulls by the Crowns of Aragon and Castile and the Kingdom of Navarre (Fig. 3a) shows that the main contribution over time came from Castile and that Aragon’s share fell from 1641–1652.Footnote 22 A look at the regional composition of bulls in the Crown of Aragon reveals the sharp contraction in Catalonia from 1641, especially deep up to the early 1650s (Fig. 3b). In the Crown of Castile, Old and New Castile and Andalusia appear as the main contributors. (Fig. 3c).

Fig. 3
figure 3

a Bulls Sold Breakdown: Crowns of Aragon and Castile and Navarre 1574–1700. b Bulls Sold Breakdown: Crown of Aragon, 1574–1700. c Bulls Sold Breakdown: Crown of Castile, 1574–1700. Source: See the text

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The expansion of the sale of bulls in the Crown of Aragon was much more intense than in the Crown of Castile between 1574 and 1625, especially in Catalonia and Valencia. However, when the Catalan Revolt started in 1640, sales collapsed almost entirely in this region as most of the warfare took place in the Crown of Aragon. Sales in the Crown of Castile were not affected by the conflict, except on the border with Portugal because of warfare, but to a lesser extent, and in Andalusia as the result of a severe plague in the late 1640s.

The debasement of the vellón currency in the Crown of Castile affected the sale of bulls at different junctures during the seventeenth century, especially in the early 1620s and 1660s. The Crown of Aragon had a different monetary system from the Crown of Castile and did not suffer the effects of monetary alterations as shown by the collapse of value of the Castilian Real de vellón in terms of silver. However, although the Valencian Sueldo remained relatively stable, the Catalan Sueldo collapsed during the Catalan Revolt (Fig. 4). Nonetheless, the Bull of the Crusade remained reasonably affordable, as its price ranged from half a day's wage to a day's wage for an unskilled worker during the period under consideration (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: Feliu (1991), I, 19–21

Real de Vellón Depreciation in Terms of Silver: A Comparison. Note: Silver grams per Real de vellón and per Valencian and Catalan Sueldo.

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Fig. 5
figure 5

Source: See the text and López Losa and Piquero Zarauz (2021, Online Appendix)

The Bull Price Relative to the Unskilled Daily Silver Wage

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More informative is the comparison between the regional distribution of bulls and population at different benchmarks. The distribution of bulls broadly matches that of the population (Table 1). However, the share of bulls for the Crown of Aragon is smaller than that of the population, especially by the mid-seventeenth century (see their differential in cols. VII-IX). The Catalan Revolt (1640–1659) mainly accounts for the shrinkage of bulls sold in the Crown of Aragon, also negatively affecting the sale of bulls in the Balearics. In the Crown of Castile, it is worth noting the comparatively lower share of bulls in Asturias, the Canaries and, especially, Galicia, which evidences the obstacle that distance, scattered settlement, and rugged terrain represented for their sale.

Table 1 Regional shares of total population and bulls sold, 1591, 1646, and 1700 (%)
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6 Assessing subjective well-being and inequality

6.1 Subjective well-being

We have previously argued that the contrast between the number of bulls sold and of its potential recipients is informative about individuals’ subjective welfare. Given its affordable price, we can presume that practically all of them bought the bull in ‘normal’ times, so the number of bulls sold moved in line with the population. However, this required an efficient distribution network and purchasing power on the part of the population. It is also to be expected, then, that the number of bulls sold would decrease during phases of economic hardship, social unrest, and political turmoil, as well as during episodes of warfare on Spanish soil. Famines and pandemics had an impact on the sale of bulls, but also on mortality, so bulls and population may have moved in parallel during these outbreaks.

In order to compare the number of bulls and recipients, we should previously estimate the latter, namely, the population aged 12 and above. Alas, population series by age cohorts are not available. The only yearly figures are those for the New Castile population aged 15 to 50, from 1586 onwards (Reher 1991), although it is possible to compute the population 15 years and above from late eighteenth-century population censuses. Thus, according to the population censuses for 1768, 1787, and 1797, the share of the population 15 years and above varied within a narrow range, 64.41–67.24 percent, with 65.87 percent as the average; this figure is practically identical to the average share of the population aged 15–50 in New Castile over 1586–1700, 65.54 percent (with a standard deviation of 0.0264). These highly coincidental ratios reinforce the widely accepted view that, in pre-industrial societies, the age structure of the population was relatively stable.Footnote 23

Figure 6 compares the number of bulls sold and our estimates of population age 15 and above (that is, 0.6587 × total population) during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, showing that their levels are close (with averages of 4.187 and 4.388 million, respectively) and confirming the compliance with the Church’s recommendation to purchase the bull. It can be observed that they match each other’s trends but also exhibit substantial discrepancies in the short and medium run, with periods in which bulls fluctuations are more intense.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Source: See the text and Online Appendix Table A1

Total Bulls Sold and Population Age 15 and Above, 1574–1700.

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We carry out a comparison between the normalized figures (that is, expressed relative to the average from 1574–1700) for the total of bulls sold and the total population in order to avoid the potential bias that errors made in estimating the population level could introduce.Footnote 24 Figure 7 presents the natural logarithm of the ratio of total bulls to population (both normalized) that, we argue, provides a measure of spiritual well-being from 1574–1700. It can be observed that it deteriorated in the late 1570s and 1580s and, then, rose to reach a stable plateau from the early 1590s to the early 1630s, a collapse in the 1640s followed. After the late 1650s recovery, a new rise led to a peak in the 1670s. Then, the early 1680s contraction gave way to stability until the end of the century. We can identify 1575–1586, 1606, 1626, 1641–1650, and 1684 as years of low subjective well-being (defined as those of more than 5 percent negative change), while 1602 and 1670–1682 emerge as years of high spiritual well-being (more than 5 percent positive variation).

Fig. 7
figure 7

Source: See the text

Subjective Well-being: Ratio Total Bulls Sold to Population (normalized logs).

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Let us take a look at the context in which spiritual well-being rose and fell and see to what extent it matches critical junctures. Needless to say, there is strong possibility that objective and subjective well-being coincide in time as economic performance had an impact on both of them.

Famine mortality episodes, usually the result of pandemics and bad harvests, have been identified and dated (Pérez Moreda 2017).Footnote 25 Our measure of spiritual well-being shows that its decline in 1606, 1647–1650, and 1684 coincided with mortality bouts. The fact that spiritual well-being only fell in a few famine mortality episodes lends support to the intuition that the numbers of bulls sold and the population moved in line during these outbreaks.

Internal political turmoil and war on Spanish soil occurred during the seventeenth century's central decades. The Catalan Revolt (1640–59), both a domestic conflict in Catalonia and a conflict between Catalonia, France, and the Spanish Monarchy, and the early phase of the Portuguese War of Restoration (1640–1668) coincided and surely contributed to the contraction of spiritual well-being.

The spiritual well-being contractions in 1575–1586 and 1626 do not match either famine mortality outbreaks or war on Spanish soil. Its fall during 1575–1586 coincides, however, with the years in which the consequences of the credit crisis provoked by the Monarchy were deeply felt. The King maintained a parallel negotiation with the cities and international bankers. The goal was to obtain a higher fiscal contribution from the cities and much better conditions in the short-term loans from the bankers. Before starting a ruthless negotiation, the King decreed the stop of all payments to his bankers, freezing credit markets in the Crown of Castile (Álvarez Nogal and Chamley 2016). As a result, commercial networks were shattered for months, even years, with devastating economic and social effects.

The contraction of 1626 took place at the time of market disturbances, due to the monetary policy alterations, which surely affected the distribution of bulls. The Monarchy’s decision to substitute copper (vellón) for silver coinage had harmful effects on trade and public confidence. The public rejected the fiat currency when they realized that by minting these new coins, the Monarchy aimed to obtain extraordinary short-term revenues rather than facilitate market transactions. This provoked a surge in the silver premium and drove up copper prices. The Monarchy provoked strong market disturbances by resorting to tax inflation and drained much of the silver in circulation since 1600. The request of the Crusade’s general treasurer to be allowed to accept payments for the bull in copper coins (1624) exemplifies the scarcity of silver in circulation. The price of silver skyrocketed, and, by 1628, the Monarchy was forced to reduce the face value of all copper coinage by 50 percent, causing substantial losses to coin holders, mainly tax collectors and merchants (Hamilton 1928). We find, however, a weak negative association between spiritual well-being and the depreciation of the Real de vellón (Figure A3). Furthermore, no association is observed between our measure of subjective well-being and the relative cost of the bull in terms of the unskilled day wage (Figure A4).

What is the background for the episodes of spiritual well-being improvement in 1602 and 1670–1682? Between 1599 and 1601, an intense plague affected Old Castile with particular intensity, but also spread to the rest of Spain. Cities such as Santander, Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos, and Segovia registered record death numbers. Trade, including the distribution of bulls, came to a standstill. The year 1602 was one of recovery. The end of the war and conflict in Catalonia (1659) and along the border with Portugal (1668) resulted in stability unknown since 1640 which facilitated an expansion of the sale of bulls across the board from 1670–82, led by Galicia and Andalusia in the Crown of Castile and by Catalonia and Valencia in the Crown of Aragon.

Nonetheless, a pressing question remains: is there really an association between subjective well-being and GDP per capita? At odds with Easterlin’s (1974) claim of no relationship between GDP per capita and well-being, Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) found a log-linear relationship between them that did not diminish as average income rose. A more nuanced view suggests a diminishing association between the two dimensions as per capita income increases (Kahneman and Deaton 2010; Layard et al. 2008). And Proto and Rustichini (2013) observe a hump shape relationship, with a positive association at lower income levels that flattens and even becomes negative as average incomes reach higher levels.

Thus, in our case, given the comparatively low average income levels in Habsburg Spain, we should expect a positive association. However, our estimates reveal a weak association that becomes negative as average incomes get higher (Fig. 8). If the unskilled wage rate substitutes for per capita income in this comparison, the result is an ever weaker relationship but with a positive sign (Figure A5 in the Appendix).Footnote 26

Fig. 8
figure 8

Source: See the text

Subjective Well-being* and GDP Per Capita (normalized, logs), 1574–1700. Note *Ratio Bulls to Population (normalized).

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6.2 Subjective inequality

Inequality was perceived as very high by contemporary political writers. In an influential book, González de Cellorigo (1600, p. 54) claimed,

‘Our republic has come to be an extreme contrast of rich and poor, and there are no means of adjusting them one to another. Our condition is one in which there are rich who loll at ease or poor who beg. We lack people of the middle sort, whom neither wealth nor poverty prevents from pursuing the rightful kind of business enjoined by Natural Law’ (cited in Elliot 1961, p. 66, his translation).Footnote 27

The distinction between bulls of two different prices: that of 2 Reales, intended for the ordinary people, and 8 Reales for those of higher social status and wealth, allows us to ascertain how many chose to buy one type of bull or another. It should be stressed that, apart from the social and religious pressure exerted on the well-to-do to buy the 8 Reales bull, there was no effective control of who complied with the Church’s recommendation. The ratio between the number of 8 Reales and 2 Reales bulls sold offers a measure of how unequal the society was in people’s eyes. In fact, this ratio may be interpreted as a subjective measure of the concentration of income at the top of the distribution.

Unfortunately, unlike the top income share literature for the modern era (Atkinson et al. 2011), we lack information on the distribution of income by income bracket for late sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain, so we cannot estimate the share of income accruing to the 1, 0.1, or 0.01 percent. Only by the mid-eighteenth century, based on the Cadastre of Ensenada (c. 1752), it is possible to derive social tables ranking social groups from poorest to richest with their shares of population and average incomes to compute inequality measures. In the mid-eighteenth century, inequality levels were similar to those of England and France (Álvarez Nogal and Prados de la Escosura 2013; Hoffman et al. 2002) but higher than in present-day Spain. Even for comparatively egalitarian Old Castile, the Gini ranged from 0.4–0.6, while Madrid, the capital city, was close to 0.8 (Álvarez Nogal and Prados de la Escosura 2007: 346; Nicolini and Ramos Palencia 2016: 760).

The ratio of 8 Reales to 2 Reales bulls sold provides a lower bound estimate of the income concentration at the top of the distribution since the income of those purchasing the ‘bull of the illustrious’ was way higher than the average income.Footnote 28 For example, in the mid-eighteenth century, in some small towns in Old Castile, 8 percent of the total income accrued to the top 1 percent richest, and, in Madrid, the top 0.02 percent received 9.2 percent of total income.Footnote 29

The evolution of the ratio between bulls sold of 8 and 2 Reales, expressed as a percentage, is offered in Fig. 9.Footnote 30 We observe a decline in inequality during the 1580s and early 1590s and a rising trend during the first four decades of the seventeenth century.Footnote 31 Inequality contraction in the 1640s led to a recovery in the 1650s. Inequality initiated a sustained decline in the mid-1660s that lasted until the late 1670s. A rise of inequality in the 1680s gave way to a phase of mild decline until the break of the War of Spanish Succession, with levels of inequality comparable to those of a century earlier.

Fig. 9
figure 9

Source: See the text

Subjective Inequality: Ratio between 8 and 2 Reales Bulls, 1574–1700 (%).

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How does our measure of subjective inequality compare to its objective measure? The Williamson Index, the ratio of GDP per person to the average wage, provides a crude measure of inequality. Its rationale is that it compares the middle of the distribution—as GDP results from the sum of returns to all factors of production (land, labor, and capital) and is divided by the total population—to the bottom since wage rates represent the return to raw labor by day or week. Both variables are expressed in current prices relative to a given period (1790–1799 = 100). In Fig. 10, we plot subjective and objective inequality measures and observe some positive matching between them, so we can suggest that the subjective perception of inequality was not at odds with its objective assessment.

Fig. 10
figure 10

Source: text and (Prados de la Escosura et al. 2022)

Subjective Inequality (%)* and Nominal Williamson Index (1790–1799 = 100). Note *Ratio between 8 and 2 Reales bulls sold.

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Lastly, we have contrasted our results for subjective well-being and inequality. A cursory glance at Figs. 7 and 9 reveals that they provide a mirror image during the seventeenth century with phases of improving spiritual well-being matching those of declining subjective inequality, but for the 1640s, when both contracted simultaneously. Such a coincidence reinforces the robustness of our results. In Fig. 11, we extend the exercise and compare pairs of values of subjective inequality and spiritual well-being. It can be observed that as subjective well-being improves (values with a positive sign on the right-hand side of the diagram) subjective inequality declines.

Fig. 11
figure 11

Subjective Inequality+ vs Subjective Well-Being**, 1574–1700. Note.+ Ratio 8 and 2 Reales bulls sold; **Total Bulls to Population (normalized, logs)

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7 Concluding remarks

In this paper, we have addressed the impact of Spain’s economic decline on subjective well-being and inequality and in order to do it we explore a source never used for such a purpose: a religious alms, the Bull of the Crusade, that provided spiritual comfort to those who purchased it and that, in a deeply religious society, represented an improvement in spiritual well-being.

We found that our measure of subjective well-being deteriorated during the late sixteenth century and the 1640s and improved in the 1670s, while, according to our estimates, subjective inequality deepened during 1600–1640 and fell in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Hence, except for the 1640s, subjective well-being and inequality appear to be inversely correlated during the seventeenth century, with improving (deteriorating) subjective well-being usually accompanied by declining (improving) subjective inequality. Moreover, we also observed a weak association between subjective and objective measures of well-being and inequality.