68
THE MESTA
of Henry I of England or to the constructive regime of Philip
Augustus of France.
On the other hand the detailed annals of the Castilian entre-
gador, which we are about to examine, reveal the striking possi-
bilities of such itinerant magistracies from the point of view of
strong kingships and centralized administration. The history of
the entregador suggests pertinent queries on the pastoral and
judicial evolution of rural England and France which have yet
to be answered. What part did the itinerant officers have in the
administration of the sheep industry in those kingdoms ? What
did their operations mean to royal prestige, to the exchequer, and
to the general welfare and agrarian economy of the realm ?
Of the numerous corps of officials around whom the Mesta
slowly crystallized as a unified national institution, perhaps the
most important, and certainly the most conspicuous, from the
very beginning of his office under Alfonso the Learned down to
its closing years, was the alcalde entregador, or ‘ judge of awards.’
This itinerant judicial and administrative officer formed the
means of contact between the Mesta and the outer world. He
was its shield of defence in the earlier centuries of its growth, its
sharp weapon of offence and power in the period of its suprem-
acy under the first Hapsburgs, and in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries the heavy, useless weight which chiefly caused
its discredit and decline, leading finally to its extinction.
In order that we may be better able to understand this Castil-
ian office, let us turn to other lands for a brief preliminary con-
sideration of some foreign types of itinerant magistrates for flocks
and herds. The pastoral industry in all the Mediterranean
peninsulas tended to assume certain common characteristics.
This was true largely because of similar conditions of climate
and of topography, which brought about the ancient custom of
annual migrations between winter pastures in the lowlands and
summer encampments in the highlands. Chief among these com-
mon customs were the use of fixed routes reserved for the semi-
annual migrations,1 the communal ownership or regulation of
l See above, p. 18.
ORIGINS OF THE ALCALDE ENTREGADOR
69
pasturage, and the traditional hostility between herdsmen and
husbandmen, which resulted in the creation of specially delegated
judicial officers for the protection of the former.
The organization of the migratory pastoral industry was older
and much more carefully worked out in Italy and Spain than in
the eastern peninsula. Among the Romans there was a detailed
and well adjusted system for regulating the semiannual sheep
migrations during the age of Cicero and Varro, and indeed for
some centuries before their time.1 Provision was made for road-
side pasturage and particularly for the use of large tracts of public
lands as grazing grounds. What is of importance for us in the
present connection, as early as 192 b.c. the practice was observed
of assigning a special magistrate to the southern pasturage dis-
trict to keep order there and to look after the public domain.
There was also a praetor to supervise the calles or routes used by
the herds.2 These practices of the migratory sheep industry were
not in the least interrupted by the fall of the Roman empire.
They were continued during the Middle Ages and in the thirteenth
century were, in fact, drawn together by Frederick II into a well
regulated, centralized organization.3 In the later Middle Ages
this body came to the attention of the Aragonese rulers of south-
ern Italy, who recodified its laws and gave it the name of Dogana
della mena delle pecore di Puglia.i It is significant that the chief
of this institution, the ‘ magnificent doganiere,’ bore a striking
resemblance to the justicia of the Casa de Ganaderos of Saragossa,
the ‘ house of the cattle owners,’ which Aragon had known since
l H. F. Pelham, Essays (Oxford, 19n), p. 303.
’ Ibid., pp. 302, 306. References on this topic from Strabo, Varro, Columella,
and other classical writers may be found in Pauly-Wissowa, Encyclopddie, iii
(Stuttgart, 1895), col. 289.
• Sombart, Die rðmisehe Campagna (Leipsic, 1888), pp. 43-48, 83-87; Huillard-
Bréholles, Hist. Diplomat. Frid. Il, iv, pt. ι, p. 159; and Bertagnolli, Vicende dell’
agra in Ilalia (Florence, 1881), p. 244.
4 Bertaux and Yver, “ L’Italie inconnue,” in Le tour du monde (1899), pp. 272-
274. Craven, Excursions in the Abruzzi (1838), i, pp. 266-270. Swinburne, Travels
in the Two Sicilies (1783), i, pp. r40-143, deals particularly with the fiscal aspects
of the institution in the sixteenth century. According to Dominicus Tassonus,
Observationes Jurisdictionales (Naples, 1716), pp. 130-131, the name Dogana and
possibly the institution itself had Norman origins. Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae,
ii, col. 525, gives a more nearly correct Saracen derivation of the name.