The new Royal Hospital, relaunched as general hospital, offered bread alms, gave medical and spiritual care for patients with bubo and took care of demented persons. This work was carried out by officers from the old hospital of the Alhambra who found in the new outbuildings their last resort. Visitors administered an institution very committed to patronage and patronage subordination dynamics, according to the professor of the department of Pathological Anatomy and Science History of the University of Granada José Valenzuela Candelario, in a research work carried out within the framework of a project financed by the State Office for Higher Education and Scientific Research.
The work, titled “e sumptuous and magnificent Royal Hospital of Granada (II), Officers and servants in a general hospital (1526-1535)”, has been published in “Dynamis” by the University of Granada. The study analyses, in the first place, the foundation process in Granada of the hospitals of the Alhambra and of the Kings and their later centralization from the end of the second decade of the XVI century. The activity of the court, provisionally settled in Granada in 1526, provided the economic resources to support the autonomy of the relaunched Royal Hospital outside the city and the continuation of the construction works.
A key piece in power dynamics
“Once the first objective was achieved −says professor Valenzuela−, its administrators continued the work of extending the significance and scope of the royal institution, a material and symbolic effort connected with its proclaimed sumptuous and magnificent nature. The Royal Hospital Real was certainly another piece in the chessboard of the city, where the elites fought to gain control of the government of the main institutions, a way of strengthening and supporting their own patronage networks”.
The study aspires to lay the foundations for a future research work that includes in a more explicit way power, sociability and social conflict dynamics and reviews the form of curative actions −physical and spiritual− offered by the royal institution.
Reference: Prof José Valenzuela Candelario
Dpt. of Pathological Anatomy and Science History
Phone number. 958 243 045 (direct) / 243 512 (department) E-mail. jvalenz@ugr.es
