256
THE MESTA
secos and diezmos del mar. As the names indicate, these were ex-
port and import taxes levied by the Castiiian monarchs at the
land custom houses or puertos secos on the Aragonese, Navarrese,
and Portuguese frontiers, and at the puertos del mar or sea coast
custom stations.1 However, the export trade which was carried
on by the Mesta members was fairly limited until the fifteenth
century. Consequently, this tax did not seriously concern them,
except occasionally when it required the registration of their
flocks at the eastern and western borders in order to facilitate
their return into Castile without payment of the diezmo.i
The first assessment of a direct royal tax levied exclusively upon
sheep does not appear until the organization of the Mesta by
Alfonso X. In fact, the two events synchronize so closely that
they were undoubtedly related to each other.
The first indication of a direct tax upon transhumantes is an
allusion to a serυicio de ganados, dated 1270,3 at the very time
that the sheep owners were organizing the Mesta under the pat-
ronage of the king. The various feudal incomes of the king had
long proved inadequate. The severe campaigns of the Moorish
wars had exhausted the royal treasury. True, there had been a
series of brilliant triumphs culminating in the captures of Ba-
dajoz (1228), Mérida (1230), Cordova (1236), Murcia and Car-
tagena (1243), Jaen (1246), Seville (1248), Jerez de la Frontera
ɪ These diezmos were not introduced until after the great conquests of Ferdinand
III (1217-5 2) had made the lives and goods of Castilian merchants reasonably
safe and had given the monarchy sufficient prestige to enforce such collections at
the borders. On the origins of this tax cf. Alonso de Castro, De Potestati Legis
Poenalis (Salamanca, 1551), fol. 83. Cortes, Burgos, 1269, refers to the royal in-
come from these commercial diezmos. They should not be confused with the eccle-
siastical diezmos, which were sometimes granted to the kings by the Pope, cf. p.
242; Mondéjar, Memorias del Rei Alonso el Sabio (Madrid, 1777), p. 303 (ι273).
2 An early reference to the payment of diezmos on sheep is found in Memorial
Histirico, i, p. 321 (1276). The best discussion of this tax is in Acad. Hist., Flo-
ranes Mss., 12-24-1, B-ιo. Luis de Salazar y Castro, Hist. Genealigica de la Casa
de Lara (Madrid, 1697), iv, p. 630, gives the text of a north coast diezmo schedule
of 1272.
2 Arch. Mesta, B-ι, Badajoz, 1727, quotes a royal decree of 1270, which in-
structed “ mɪos homes que recaudan el servicio de Ios ganados en el reyno de Le6n ”
not to collect this servicio of any sheep pasturing near Badajoz. Cf. Gonzalez, vɪ,
pp. ɪ 17-118.
MEDIAEVAL ROYAL SHEEP TAXES
(1254), and Cadiz (1262). The fruits of victory had, however, to
be liberally shared with the military orders, loyal towns, and
nobles. New sources of revenue were imperative, and as a result
there was created a new form of extraordinary subsidy, called a
servicio, which was granted to the crown by the Cortes, probably
for the first time, when the eldest son of Alfonso X, the Infante
Ferdinand de la Cerda, married the daughter of St. Louis1King of
France.1 As a possible source of funds to fulfil this grant, the
rehabilitated pastoral industry was at once suggested, and the
servicio de ganados or ‘ subsidy of domestic animals ’ was levied
for the benefit of the crown treasury upon migratory flocks and
herds.
This was the first royal sheep tax to be assessed in Castile,
where flock migrations had been common for centuries but
where the great victories of 1228-62 had to be won before the
Castilian monarchs could systematically exploit the rapidly grow-
ing industry. The tax thus founded was significant quite beyond
the restricted limits of the pastoral history of the kingdom. It
was the oldest regular or permanent income of the Castilian
monarchy; the alcabala, which is usually so described,2 was not
collected as a royal tax until several decades later. This sheep
subsidy at once became a normal and not an extraordinary source
of revenue for the crown; in other words, it did not require re-
newal by a special vote of the Cortes, as did the general servicio.
Its name was altered in 1343 to servicio y montazgo, but its char-
acter always remained as Alfonso X and his fiscal officers had
originally planned. It was a permanent income payable annually
to the crown. As soon as its original pretext, the wedding of the
Infante in 1269, was over, other excuses for its assessment were
1 Cos-Gayon, Historia de la Admin. Publica, p. 13 ɪ, and Piernas y Hurtado,
Tratado de Hacienda Pübliea (ʒth ed., Madrid, 1900-01), ii, p. 48, give 1269 as
the date of the first servicio. In that year a Cortes was held at Burgos, but the
only record of it is in a privilege appearing in Salazar у Castro, Pruebas de la Hist,
de la Casa de Lara, p. 630, which mentions six servicios promised by the Cortes at
Burgos for the marriage of Ferdinand.
2 Cf. Haebler, Wirtsehajtliche Bliile Spaniens, p. 109; Uztariz, Thebrica у
Prdclica de Comercio (Madrid, 1757), p. 39. Acad. Hist., Salazar Mss., est. xo,
leg. 21 (1276) describes the “ servicio de Ios ganados que fué demandado рог toda
la tierra рог las bodas del Infante Don Fernando.”