2ÔO
THE MESTA
upon Mesta flocks exclusively. From about 1350 onward the
accepted definition of a transhumante or a Mesta member became
“ one who paid the royal servicio.” ɪ
But an aggressive and far sighted ruler like Alfonso XI could
not allow his exchequer to be hampered by such restrictions as
these. Revenues were too imperatively necessary for his many
activities. Most of all, the war of reconquest was being waged
with a vigor such as Spain had not known for a hundred years.
Knights from all Europe participated in the crusade which won
its greatest triumphs at Rio Salado in 1340 and at Algeciras in
1344 — victories which were not to be surpassed in splendor until
the standards of Ferdinand and Isabella were raised over the
battlements of the Alhambra on New Year’s Day, 1492. All of
this had required heavy expenditures and had left the royal
treasury sadly in need of funds. Many old taxes were there-
fore revised, extended, and applied to the purposes of the crown.
Chief among these was the alcabala, an ancient tax on sales,
which later became one of the principal sources, not only of royal
revenue, but eventually of Castilian misery and economic con-
fusion.2 As early as 1320 the contributions of the pastoral in-
1 Concordia de 1783, i, fols. 256 v-257 v.
2 The alcabala is usually believed to have been originated by Alfonso XI in 1341
in order to finance the siege of Algeciras. Cf. Schaefer, in Archivfiir Geschichle und
Literatur1 iv, p. 84; Uztariz, The6rica y Prdctica de Comercio1 p. 39; Gallardo,
Rentas Reales, i, p. 162. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence of such a tax levied
for local income as early as the eleventh century, and mentions of it occur fre-
quently from the time of Alfonso X onward; cf. Yepes, Coronica General de la
Orden de San Benito (Valladolid, 1617), vi, fol. 494; Mondéjar, Memorias del Rei
Alonso el Sabio1 pp. 295-296; Colmeiro, i, p. 472; Berganza, Antigiledades de
Espana1 ii, pp. 202-204; Llorente, Nolicias histôricas de las très Provincias Vas-
congadas, ii, p. 138; Diego Ortiz de Zûniga, Anales de Sevilla (Madrid, 1677),
pp. 179, 189; Jordân de Asso and Miguel de Manuel y Rodriguez, Instituciones
del Derecho Civil de Caslilla (Madrid, 1786), p. Ixii; Lopez de Ayala, Coniri-
buciones e Impuestos1 pp. 293, 454-456. It is evident from these citations that
the alcabala was levied on sales by the lords of various towns or by the towns them-
selves, that the returns were used usually for the construction and repair of walls
and fortifications, and that by 1325 or 1330 — more than a decade before the siege
of Algeciras — the tax had become a 10 per cent levy on sales, payable to the crown
for military preparations. The name and very probably the tax itself were of
Arabic origins. Cf. Dozy and Engelmann, Glossaire, pp. 74-75,89; Paris Bib. Nat.,
Ms. Esp. 359 — a survey of royal incomes in the sixteenth century, in which the
name is derived from el que vala, ‘ the equivalent value,’ a phrase from the request
MEDIAEVAL ROYAL SHEEP TAXES
26l
dustry to the alcabala had become apparent.1 Since this tax
would reach transactions in all local markets, it was not necessary
for the collectors of the king’s sheep servicio to pursue their
victims into the towns.2 Their royal master had in the mean-
time devised a new plan for increasing the yield from their col-
lections.
In 1343 all local montazgos or sheep tolls of towns within the
royal demesne were appropriated by the crown and called the
servicio de montazgos or ‘ subsidy of montazgos.’ This new income,
part of which was immediately used to satisfy certain royal
obligations to the Military Order of Calatrava,3 was soon merged
with the older servicio de ganados described above, and this com-
bination of royal incomes from migratory sheep soon became
known as the seruicio y montazgo.t This was the origin of the royal
sheep tax, which, as indicated above,5 has been so commonly mis-
understood and confused with the local montazgo. Since large
areas of the reconquered southern pasture lands had been re-
tained by the Christian monarchs as part of their demesne, the
local montazgos comprised in the above transfer to the crown
were very considerable.
of Alfonso XI for a subsidy or its equivalent. In Navarre the Iezda corresponded
to the alcabala: Yanguas, Dice, de Antigiiedades, ii, p. 596. On the later fluctua-
tions of the alcabala and the important part played by it in the royal revenues, see
Piernas, ii, p. 49; Colmeiro, i, pp. 472-473; Schaefer, op. cit., iv, p. 84. In the
reign of Henry III (13go-1407) the usual rate of a tenth was cut to a twentieth,
whence the name veintena, by which the alcabala continued to be known in some
parts of the country, especially in Navarre, even after the 10 per cent rate was
restored; cf. Yanguas, ii, p. 647.
ɪ Zuniga, loc. cil. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the favor of the Catho-
lic Kings and the Hapsburg autocrats brought limited exemptions to Mesta mem-
bers from all alcabalas, except those collected on their purchases and sales in their
winter pasturage during December and January. Arch. Mesta, Prov. i, ʒʒ (1495).
Other exemptions from this tax are noted in Arch. Mesta, P-ι, Parral, 1577; T-ι,
Torre de Esteban Ambran, 1551; Gallardo, Renias Reales, i, pp. 171-178; and
Berlin Kgl. Bibl., Qt. r21, Varia ad Hist. Hispaniae, no. 25 (a pamphlet on the
history of the alcabala printed in Madrid, 1765).
2 Cortes complaints in 1348 and r35r show that they still ventured occasionally
into the town markets to levy their servicio.
3 Bull. Ord. Milil. Calat., pp. 20r-202.
‘ Instances of a transitional form of the name, Servicio de monlazgo, occurred as
late as 1386: Acad. Hist., Cordova Mss. 25-1-0-14, pp. 98-101.
6 P. 254-