Legal Systems of the Iberian Peninsula: High Middle Ages to Late Medieval Period

Posted on Dec 13, 2024 in Law & Jurisprudence

Topic 1: Brief Definition of the Legal System Preceding the High Middle Ages

1. The High Middle Ages: History and Law

A) Visigothic Law

The Visigoths began to penetrate the Iberian Peninsula in the early 5th century and became holders of power until the arrival of Muslims in 711. Their law was based on custom and evolved from the 5th to the 7th century. They were interested in using the Roman law of the previous stage due to:

• In this law, the lawyers helped to justify autocratic forms of government (the monarch’s will is supreme law).
• Hispano-Roman majority population.

Elective monarchy was abandoned in favor of a hereditary one and was secured by the legislature of the Kings, leaving aside the more participatory forms of government. In 654, a Visigoth King, Recesvinto, enacted a set of laws that would be known as the Visigothic Code. This code contained the laws of that monarch and several standards set by previous kings.

B) Muslim Law

In the early years, the entire peninsula was under Muslim rule. Territories were gradually lost until the Reconquista ended in 1492 with the fall of Granada. This is a personal and confessional law, where the person, his origin, and religion are crucial for the application of rules. Therefore, Islamic law was to be used by persons professing that religion, while Christians under Muslim rule, the Mozarabic, had to meet certain standards of living. They could still use their own law (mostly private matters). This law was the content of the Visigothic Code, which became a static law adapted by custom, due to the absence of official channels for renewal and the lack of a political power to legislate on it. The survival of the Liber is a factor taken into account as the Mozarabic would be integrated into the different Christian kingdoms with the progress of the Reconquista.

C) The Christian Kingdoms: Reconquista and Repopulation

To understand the features of this law, the following must be taken into account:

• The destruction of the previous system.
• The birth of the different kingdoms: Asturian-Leonese, Castile, Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, etc.
• Feudalism, economic and social issues where political power was weak because the king is a noble but needs the cooperation of others, while the subjects need protection, also makes feudalism the form of organization.
• Wars, both against the common enemy and the struggles between the various Christian kingdoms, characterize this population that should be organized for a continuous struggle.

Reconquista determines the organization and problems of that society, as well as the right to regulate those problems born, both against the common enemy and the struggles between the various Christian kingdoms. This characterizes this population that should be organized for a continuous struggle. Repopulation means taking action and effect of sites from which the previous inhabitants have been expelled or have been abandoned. This leads to population groups with a preferential right. It should be noted the personalism of the legal systems of that time. As to the progress of the Reconquista, the borderlands were obtained from the Muslims and their forced resettlement to consolidate the domain. However, these were dangerous places, and these lands attracted people with different backgrounds and customs, who were attracted by the privileges granted to them in the form of more favorable rules, such as the forgiveness of crimes, tax exemptions, and autonomous organizational capacity, choosing their judges and officials, i.e., independent of the rulers, saving the fidelity they must keep to the King and his descendants. Through a town charter, settlement conditions are established. After that, its people can develop their right, a local law influenced by their origin and customs, which only affects them and can be very different from other populations.

2. Local and Territorial Rights: The Statutes and the Law

A) Right and Source of Law

The etymology comes from the Latin directus, meaning what is right. What is right did not have legal connotations. Most of the terms relating to the right come from the word jus. From it derive judge, justice, juror, etc. Its root is used clearly in the Visigothic Code. Today, the word “rights” has two meanings:

• Subjective, such as the rights of each individual, and often used in the plural.
• Objective, as an ordered set of rules and institutions, and uses the singular to refer to it.

The law has its sources, that is, first, foundation or origin:

• The usual: legal consciousness of a community seeking fairness to regulate their conflicts, and whose solutions are used repeatedly.
• The law: precept dictated by those who have the authority to legislate. Contains a term or a ban consistent with the idea of justice.
• The convention: political power was fragmented, held by the King and nobility. The law may stem from the agreement, the convention of two or more persons or entities to commit to compliance. Therefore, it is a political agreement, which originates legislation aimed at agreeing to a truce and peace, to punish certain crimes, etc. This practice will end up with great development later in the holding of meetings with the king, nobility, and clergy, where the law is agreed upon to monitor compliance.
• The verdict: The application by a judge of a custom in a dispute, and that solution became a non-written text that consolidates and serves as a precedent. The text often contains the identification of the parties involved, their names, and the circumstances of the conflict.
• Iura: are the opinions of lawyers, the doctrine. Although the High Middle Ages lacked this source, as there were no legal experts, it can be described as Atecna. The lawyer is from the Republican period in Rome and will regain importance in the 12th century.

B) Outside Manor, Feudal, and Local

The word Jurisdiction comes from the Latin word forum, which was the square where public affairs were dealt with and where praetor trials were held in Rome, i.e., the place where justice was imparted. It has several meanings:

• Objective term, some texts called followed by the name of a locality. Ex: Jurisdiction of Calatayud.
• Subjective: the law that affects a person according to their personal characteristics, living in a population, belonging to an estate or religion, etc.
• Can serve as a title to certain books, with a meaning equivalent to the right.

The Visigothic Code, when translated into medieval Castilian, was called to be tried. Another example is the Royal Charter of Alonso X. It refers to the standard applied by the court, the jurisdiction of a court.

The manorial privileges: you must first refer to the concept of master. They were people who were receiving privileges such as tax exemption or to provide certain services, different for prison crime, etc. Others were as important as the exercise of jurisdiction over their lands, though the King used to reserve some areas where he could speak the real right, as cases of negligence by the master, to hear appeals on certain topics, the exclusive judge certain crimes, etc.

The feudal privileges: This is the book containing the law governing relations between lords, normally one more powerful that grants privileges and protects, while a lower one seeking protection is subordinate to him, offering loyalty and service, advice, assistance, and help. The duties of the vassal may be:

• Help for expeditions of war, offensive or defensive.
• To attend the meetings that were convened to agree on solutions to the issues of territory, his Curia.

It can be between two nobles or between a nobleman and a King. The pledge of allegiance was spoken in a ceremony that was subject to detailed regulation.

Fuero City: contains the current law in a particular municipality. A law that was first practiced as usual and then collected in writing. It uses a safe community that loyalty to the King has independently by royal privilege that is the source of municipal courts and allows to:

• Choose a municipal office and its judges.
• Decide the principles by which disputes are settled.
• Discover what is right, what is right according to God’s will.

We classified the municipal jurisdictions:

• Be brief: they appear until the middle of the 12th century. They contain few provisions since they consist generally populated by the letter containing the initial conditions that are set to inhabit the town, plus some other privileges later. Their organization lacks a systematic, written in Vulgar Latin, but they provide security to the community. However, because of their brevity, they have large gaps and no regulation for many problems.
• Fueros widely: from the 2nd half of the 12th century and the 13th century. More broadly, written in a Romance language with pretensions to collect every right to use in their vicinity. We can distinguish characteristics that differentiate it from the jurisdiction brief:
  • It compiles the previous privilege brief, but the privileges received after this.
  • The collection of customs used.
  • Their text will take an order, though we can distinguish several: one that begins with private law matters and continues with military prosecutors.
  • From such sources, grouped first customs of the place, sentences, and rules arising by agreement.
  • Mayor technicality, are aware of the right but not lawyers.

The municipalities intend to put in writing much of the right to use, mainly due to:

• Increasing power of the king on the Peerage because, thanks to the Reconquista, large southern territories are being incorporated, and with it, his power increases. So his claim to intervene in the creation of law.
• This causes the existence of tensions between the municipality and the King, as it threatens local autonomy achieved in previous centuries.
• The arrival in the peninsula of Common Law, which justifies the Kings’ power over other political bodies.

So cities are interested in writing their right to set and submitted to the king for ratification. The real confirmation bound, and must respect, not speaking on his amendment, contradicting with subsequent actions. And bind his successors. Then open a negotiation process, the king confirmed the charter to provide a guarantee for the people, to change that King achieved the abolition of misuse of the forum, a very primitive right collides with the new ideas of justice, and rules that do not interest him politically, that you’re limited in matters of interest. With that, cities try to add an element of security for the inhabitants of the municipality since it is complete and in writing, custom written becomes law, and judges have less discretion and allows a better knowledge and use the legal background for the community.

The duties set by the charters was a local law peculiar to each city or population center, according to their circumstances, their history, and so on. Although many similarities were also because its content is copied in nearby villages, and so some families speak of privileges related to the most prestigious, the Cuenca, Avila, Teruel, Lerida, Tortosa, and so on. It is noteworthy that the texts also Catalan counties were called costums, and the collector phenomenon affects both Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia.

C) The Law

Until the 11th century, Kings legislated, only granting privileges to specific people or places. Since this century, they began to intervene to replace bad uses with good ones. Because of the influence of Common Law from the 12th century, these standards will increase. The proper place to enact the law, which attacked the creation of rules governing matters as were general military subjects, and relating to criminal justice and property, was the Curia. This is a consequence of the covenant whereby feudal nobles should the king advice, assistance, and help. We found:

• Curia Guests: consisting of members of his entourage.
• Curia full: composed of officials of the kingdom, nobles, and prelates, that is, those who share political power with the King.

In principle, the authority is the King but needs the consent of the other political powers to the effectiveness of the ordering and performing the necessary actions to do so. From this first norm, we have two examples:

• In the Jurisdiction of Leon Leon, a full curia in 1017, King Alfonso V promulgated it with effect for the whole kingdom of Leon, and the nature of the subject of the rules was generally. These are the oldest known precepts.
• In the Catalan counties, whose case is special because:
  • The brief Muslim occupation.
  • The subsequent free-domain (830-880) to respect the use of the Visigothic Code, so that gives continuity to the previous system is characterized by the importance of law as a source of law.
  • The settlement of the Count of Barcelona as the superior authority of a set of territories of feudal organization.
  • The remaining counts made an oath of allegiance.

Between 1059 and 1076, Ramon Berenguer I ruled, and during his reign, there were already central organs of government. The court takes judicial and legislative practice resumed. The result is the Usages, whose term has a customary basis.

The Usages of Barcelona

They are applied progressively to other counties. They are written in Latin and later translated into Catalan. Initially, they collected some 130 chapters on feudal, criminal, and administrative topics, but their content is increasing. We add new decrees of counts after Ramon Berenguer, decisions of the Assemblies of Peace and Truce, judgments of the curia of the count, and fragments of Common Law. The core of early medieval law is collected, while the late medieval development, it is a dynamic law. The Catalan counts began to legislate on the Visigothic Code.