298
THE MESTA
The Roman migrants of southern Italy found their winter
pasturage in the state lands of Apulia. A large part of the mi-
gratory herds belonged to the sovereign, and this, together with
the payments of crown imposts by private sheep owners, brought
the whole industry into a well regulated organization under im-
perial patronage. Some of the pasturage belonged to the stock-
owners, and some was rented from private individuals, but by
far the greater part was state land which was leased through con-
ductor's or agents. This feature of the crown ownership of most
of the pasturage continued to characterize the Apulian pastoral
industry throughout its later history, from its mediaeval reorgan-
izations under Frederick II and the Aragonese down to the re-
form period of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan sovereigns
and Murat.1
In the south of France, both in the migrations toward the Alps
and up into the Pyrenean valleys, the flocks were not favored by
any helpful royal patronage and had to depend largely upon the
common lands of upland communities. These pastures were
opened to them by agreements with the towns of the mountain
valleys — the cartas de pax of Béarn, the facerias of Basse-
Navarre, and the traités de lies-passeries of other pasturage
regions.2
In contrast with this local control of Pyrenean pasturage on
the north slope, the Navarrese pastures on the southern side of
the ridge were largely within the demesne of the crown,3 and the
pasturage laws, were, therefore, quite like those of ancient and
mediaeval Apulia. The kings of Navarre were thus in a position
to exert unusual influence upon the pastoral industry in their
realm; and the significance of this fact did not escape the watch-
ɪ Cf. pp. 154 ff.
2 Cf. pp. 142-146, notes.
3 See above, pp. 158,159. Further details with references to the early Navar-
rese laws may be found in Yanguas, Dice. Antig. Navarra, i, p. 85, and ii, p. 414;
also in the Fueros de Navarra (Pamplona, 1818), pp. 167 fi., and in Alonso, Reco-
pilaci6n y Comentarios de Ios Fueros y Leyes de Navarra (Madrid, 1848, 2 vols.), i,
p. 287 (restrictions against tenants outbidding each other; cf. Castilian posesi6n,
below, pp. 322 ff.); ii, p. 216 (reservation of dehesas de bueyes or ox pastures); ii,
p. 270 (limitation of cultivation in open land of the sierras or mountain ridges);
ii, pp. 273-282 (Bârdenas, the royal pasturage district).
EARLY PASTURAGE PROBLEMS 299
ful eyes of Ferdinand and the other sixteenth-century Spanish
autocrats, who came in close touch with Navarrese affairs.
The situation in Aragon was also quite like that in southern
Italy; in fact, the Aragonese had some two centuries of experi-
ence with the same problem in their Italian possessions. Such
sheep owners’ charters as those granted by the Aragonese kings
in I г 20, and after, to the Casa de Ganaderos or ‘ Stock Owners’
House ’ of Saragossa, had given the recipients the usual vague
privilege of “ Imrestricted pasturage in all parts of the realm.” 1
In spite of this more or less theoretical concession, which the
Casa seldom attempted to enforce literally, the extraordinary
vigor and vitality of local privileges and institutions in Aragon
forced the migrants to depend largely upon the wooded crown
lands or monies realencos, in which successive kings had granted
them exceptional liberties.2 The most formidable of these local
obstacles in the way of the Saragossan flocks were the jealously
guarded pasturage rights and agreements of the four great
Comunidades or town leagues of Calatayudj Teruel, Daroca, and
Albarracin, whose lands for centuries comprised nearly a quarter
of the kingdom of Aragon.8 The feeling between these leagues
and the Saragossan migrants was always hostile; and although
the herdsmen of either party occasionally rented pasturage from
the other, such arrangements were made only under financial
necessity, or, more frequently, when the land required fertiliza-
tion.4 Even then the whole transaction was carefully regulated
by various ordinances. One of the most prevalent of these re-
ɪ Arch. Casa Ganaderos, Saragossa, leg. 138, no. ι. When James I and his
Aragonese troops conquered Valencia, similar privileges were bestowed upon the
sheep owners of that region. Branchat, Derechos y Regalias . . . de Valencia, iii,
pp. 1-4; Cohneiro, i, p. 293; Acad. Hist., Mss. Privilegios de las Iglesias, 25-1-
C ɪo, fol. 50 (a similar edict in favor of sheep owners of Alquezar, near Huesca,
1228).
i Ordenanzas de la Casa de Ganaderos (Saragossa, 1817), tit. 10; Brit. Mus.,
Ms. 8702, fols. 33-36 (1229).
’ See below, pp. 415 fl., for references to the printed ordinances of these co-
munidades. The best historical account of the latter is in an unpublished manu-
script by Tomiis Barrachina, of which an eighteenth-century transcript is in the
possession of the present writer.
* Costa, Colectivismo Agrario (Madrid, 1898), p. 402.