352
THE MESTA
for centuries. Nevertheless, so far as the Mesta itself is con-
cerned, it must be remembered that the various Imrestricted and
sweeping indorsements of it which were issued by the decadent
Hapsburg monarchs from 1598 to 17∞ in no way indicated its
actual status. No more precarious evidence could be cited to
prove the continued prestige of the Mesta than the grandiose
terms of a royal edict of the seventeenth century. In fact, the
significance of the migratory sheep industry was on the wane a
generation before the death of Philip II in 1598. From about
1560 onward the activities of the Mesta were less and less im-
portant in the agrarian history of Castile.
A notable feature of the Mesta was its influence upon that
fundamental characteristic of Spanish civilization, régionalisme
Orseparatism. Thiswasfarmorethanprovincialism; it meant,
in brief, the persistent devotion of each of the many geographic
or racial sections of the peninsula to the defence of its ancient
privileges and of the charters awarded to it for loyal services in the
Moorish and other wars. An occasional corrective was brought
to bear against this force of separatism by certain far-sighted
monarchs, notably Alfonso XI, whose efforts were directed
toward centralizing the life of the nation, both politically and
economically.
In such a conflict the position and importance of an organiza-
tion like the Mesta were obvious. The opposition of the towns to
the migratory sheep owners was inevitable, not so much for agra-
rian reasons, since Castilian agriculture was not vigorously de-
veloped until the last decades of the Middle Ages, as for political
and social ones. The Mesta flocks were intruders, violators of the
sacred heritage of that independence from outside interference
which had been enshrined in all town charters since the Recon-
quest. From the very beginnings of the Mesta, within a decade
after the last Moorish strongholds in southern Castile had fallen
in the triumphant crusade of 1212-62, the migratory sheep owners
became the favored wards and ultimately the valued allies —
both political and financial — of the monarchy.
The annals of the Mesta represent more than a recital of the
exploitation of the pastoral industry by strong kings, and the un-
CONCLUSION
353
hampered taxation of the flocks by grasping local officials during
the reigns of the weak ones. The policies of Alfonso XI, the
Catholic Kings, and the early Hapsburgs demonstrated that the
strength of the central government necessarily played an im-
portant part in the destinies of so centralized a body as the Mesta.
Nevertheless the development of that organization was also de-
pendent upon less obvious and more fundamental circumstances
than the greatness or weakness of certain monarchs.
In the very beginnings of settled society among the refugee
Christians in northern Spain, after the first torrent of the Moorish
invasions had subsided, the migratory shepherds were cautiously
making their way southward each autumn from their highland
homes toward the plains of the central plateau, and even into the
lands of the Moors. These wanderers were met by suspicious and
watchful officers of the border towns, and were turned back by
prohibitive penalties, or restrained by fines, which gradually be-
came standardized as fixed tolls. The theoretical authority for
these collections was in each case the local charter which em-
anated from the warrior sovereigns, the source of all power, the
symbol of law and order in the land; but the actual sanction of
such collections was, of course, the very real power of the frontier
towns and their self-assertive officers. These early taxes are of
special interest because they represent a pre-feudal impost on
movable property. Their existence may, therefore, be regarded
as an effective refutation of the view, commonly maintained, that
feudal land taxes preceded any imposts on non-real property. In
fact, feudalism and its institutions were never conspicuous in
Castile, and the fiscal history of the migratory sheep industry
in that kingdom is consequently significant as evidence that
taxes on movables often came long before, and not necessarily
as an aftermath of, the assessments on lands under the feudal
regime.
The wars of the Reconquest had brought about important
changes in the migratory pastoral industry, because the expulsion
of the Moors from large tracts of desirable winter grass lands
gave the migratory flocks new opportunities for the extension of
their movements. These new southern pastures were cleared of