Prendas y otras cauciones / Pledges and Other Securities (DCH)

No. 2025-15

English Abstract: 

 This article offers an overview of the different forms of security (pledges, pawns, mortgages, etc.) in early modern canon law in Spanish America and the Philippines. Pedro Murillo Velarde links security to a debt or obligation against which a measure of reprisal or alienation is adopted, such as eviction, vindication, or the action Serviana, among others. In secular law, security appears in relation to mortgages, royal pledges and pledges of servile labour. To these legal figures are added not only the notions of damnum emergens and lucrum cessans, but also various forms of interest-bearing transactions: sureties, bank and financial credit, guarantees, and pseudo-sureties. The article analyzes the case of the tacit legal mortgage in derecho indiano as a form of fictitious guardianship, and closes with a historiographical reflection.