70
THE MESTA
the year 1218, and possibly earlier. In the Italian Dogana the
herdsmen were answerable to their officials and judges not only in
matters of pastoral concern, but in all offences against civil and
criminal law as well. This responsibility, and the form and sever-
ity of the penalties imposed, suggest the old institution of the
Aragonese conquerors’ home country.1
Charles Ill’s long Neapolitan experience with this form of
organized pastoral industry — for it was flourishing in the eigh-
teenth century, as indeed it is today in a modified form — was
of inestimable assistance to him in his great struggle with the
Castilian Mesta. One of the interesting points revealed in the
exhaustive investigations of the Mesta by his great minister,
Campomanes, was the similarity of the judicial protector of the
Italian herdsmen to the Castilian alcalde entregador. Each of
these two officers was declared to be a case of “ a grant of extraor-
dinary jurisdiction, equivalent to placing a sword in the hands
of a madman.” 2
As early as 1129 the citizens of Saragossa had been given the
right of unrestricted pasturage through Aragon. This privilege
was incorporated in a charter embodying various more or less
vague concessions of the kind commonly granted at that time to
monasteries, cities, and other contributors toward the expenses of
the war of reconquest. Toward the close of the twelfth century
a gild or fraternity of sheep owners of Saragossa was organized,
and by 1218 it had been formally recognized as the Casa de Gana-
deros.i Both the name and the organization are in existence
today, and the Casa is now as much the head of the sheep and
cattle industry of Aragon as it was seven hundred years ago. The
justicia of this body is an excellent illustration of that character-
istic union of judicial and administrative functions so often met
with in Spanish constitutional history.4 It should be carefully
1 The punishment for trespasses outside of pastures, for example, was the same
in both countries: ten years in the galleys.
2 Expediente de 1771, pt. ɪ, fol. 138 v.
’ Archivo de la Casa de Ganaderos (Saragossa), Iegajo 139, no. ι. There is a
carelessly made copy of this document in the Bib. Nac. Madrid, Ms. 8702, fols. 31-
32∙
4 Cf. the Corregidor, the local alcalde, the chief of the audiencia, and many others.
ORIGINS OF THE ALCALDE ENTREGADOR
7i
noted that this officer is not to be confused with the more widely
known national justicia of Aragon, with whom the former had no
official connection. The sheep owners’ justicia served in the dual
capacity of president or director of the gild of cattle owners of
Saragossa and as the judge in all cases in which they were in-
volved: a double function in the fullest sense, since neither of the
two positions was subordinated to the other. His jurisdiction was
recognized by the charter of 1218 in criminal cases “ involving all
thieves and marauders . . . who molest any herd from Saragossa
wherever it might be at the time.” This authorization was in-
terpreted by the Casa to be valid in all parts of the kingdom
“ whether in lands held from the crown, or from any religious
body, or from a temporal lord . . . in all things and cases con-
cerning the herds, herdsmen, and cattle owners of Saragossa.”
In г 391, on the payment of 800 florins in gold to the king, the
justicia’s jurisdiction was extended to include civil as well as
criminal cases — a most important step, which made that official
the sole judicial arbiter for one of the largest classes or groups in
the population of Aragon. The sweeping claims of these grants,
though frequently questioned, were never successfully opposed
until well into the eighteenth century. Royal confirmations were
given in 1534,1545, and 1607 / and in spite of repeated attacks by
powerful nobles and ecclesiastical organizations, the justicia’s
position was not affected.
The office of justicia was always declared to be an indispensable
adjunct to the work of the Casa: if deprived of it the gild would
have been compelled to maintain agents and attorneys in almost
every hamlet to look after the litigation brought against it before
the local justices. The peculiarities of the migratory sheep in-
dustry made necessary the creation of an unusual type of judicial
protector for the flocks; hence the justicia of the Aragonese Casa
de Ganaderos and the entregador of the Castilian Mesta. In this
connection there is, however, an important difference between the
two which should be noted. The Aragonese official’s hearings
* Manifiestaseelderechoquelieneeljusticia . . . para exercer jurisdieeiðn (Sara-
gossa, ca. 1680). Bib. Nac. Madrid, Ms. 8702, fols. 85-89, gives the texts of parts
of these documents.