Herilhy - Fuller

Herilhy discusses the shift from land taxes to indirect taxes, which was formed to accommodate the shift of wealth to cities and different areas than before. With the shift to the Castato, who made up a household came into question. Around 1424, the three guidelines for fiscal reform were centered largely around households, which became a more profitable basis for taxation than landholding – despite the difficulty and time commitment taxing households took. With the Castato, exempt from these taxes were blood-related dependents – such as (non-able-bodied) sons, daughters, and nieces, etcetera, who lived with the household head. However, males who were capable of working and above a certain age were taxed – seemingly a sort of household within a household, in the eyes of the government. How universal can the idea of household be in light of the institutions we have studied? Especially comparing our ideas of the household in the census to the definition of the household under the Castato, these distinctions seem to be modified for the application by different institutions, enough to keep the definition of household from being a solidly reliable one. Also, as the census brought up last week, there is a schism in the question of who else can be considered as part of a household and family: whose household are widows considered to be in? Orphans? This seems to be an issue that the Castato was not able to solidly resolve.

Also, Herilhy briefly makes a distinction between the hearth and the household, which he refrains from elaborating on (Herilhy 13). How are these different? Is the household determined by blood relationships, and the hearth more by mutual obligations people have?