72
THE MESTA
were held at such times and places as suited his convenience,
usually in the house of the organization in Saragossa. He was
required, however, to make at least one annual visit to the moun-
tain pastures in order to hear the complaints of the poorer high-
land herdsmen,1 to insure the accessibility of pastures, and to
open the cabaneras or highways for sheep.2
This Aragonese justicia cannot, however, be described as an
itinerant officer, as was the Castilian entregador, whose duties, as
we shall presently see, led him over a much larger territory and
into problems far more complex and extensive. There was an-
other vital distinction between the two. In the exercise of his
office the Castilian inflicted only pecuniary penalties, whereas his
cousin in Saragossa had full power to use the lash, mutilation,
exile, and even capital punishment, with no appeal open to the
accused. It was not until 1646 that death penalties were re-
quired to be confirmed by a higher court.3 This finality of the
justicia’s decisions gave him a distinctly higher standing than
that of his Castilian counterpart, the chief cause of whose loss of
prestige was the rise of the two appellate Chancillerias at Val-
ladolid and Granada in the later sixteenth century and after.
A further contrast is to be found in the qualifications of can-
didates for the two magistracies. It was required of the Ara-
gonese official that he be a citizen of Saragossa in full legal
standing, a stock owner with a flock of at least four hundred sheep
during the four years preceding his election, and he must at some
time have served as a lieutenant or assistant to a justicia.4 The
3 OrAinaciones delà Casa de Ganaderos (Saragossa, 1640), pp. 29-30. There were
many editions oi these ordinances, the first printed one being issued in 1462, ac-
cording to the prologue to the one of 1640. This would make it one of the first
books printed in Spain. Later editions followed in 15∞, 1589, 1640, 1661, 1671,
1686, 1717, 1805, and 1817.
2 Memorial Ajustado al Expediente introducido per el Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza
en el Pleyto . . . delà Muela . . . sobre dehesas (Saragossa, 1770), p. 19.
3 This point of superiority of the power of the justicia over that of the entre-
gador was discussed in a print oi the petition presented by the Casa against the ex-
tension of the laws of the Castilian Mesta into Aragon, which begins “ Senor,
Ios Justicia, Consejeros, Cofadres . . . de la Casa . . . ” (8 pp., n. t. p., ca.
1707)∙
4 In the eighteenth century the property qualification was raised to one thousand
head.
ORIGINS OF THE ALCALDE ENTREGADOR
73
absence of any such wise specifications in the case of the entre-
gador had much to do with the Unpopularityand inefficiency which
were so constantly apparent in the history of that office. To con-
clude this brief comparison, we may note that both of these judges
reported at the semiannual meetings of their respective organiza-
tions, to answer queries and complaints regarding their transac-
tions and sentences. The stipend of each was roughly one-third
of his pecuniary condemnations, supplemented in the seventeenth
century and after by a fixed salary.
After the middle of the seventeenth century the powers of the
Saragossan justicia were considerably modified. The change
made in 1646, providing for appeals from the death sentences im-
posed by that official, was the first of several steps to restrict his
activities. Philip V’s cedula of 13 April 1709 introduced other
limitations,1 and from that time onward the justicia served more
and more as an administrator. His jurisdiction as a judge was
checked by appeals and curtailed by assignments to local or
national officers, until by imperceptible gradations he merged
into the secretary of the present-day organization: a series of
changes which synchronize with and are strikingly analogous to
those undergone by the entregador in Castile.
The history of the justicia has been an important but almost
unknown episode in the economic and constitutional develop-
ment of the peninsular kingdoms; the points that have been
here mentioned deal only with such salient features as furnish
illustrations of contrast and comparison with the entregador.
Strongly intrenched behind the ancient privileges of the capital
of his realm, the justicia of the Saragossan sheep owners’ gild
stands beside the more noted national justicia of Aragon as
another example of that union of autocratic powers and high
responsibility which was so characteristic of certain officials in
the eastern Spanish kingdoms.
There is ample evidence of the existence of a migratory pastoral
industry in the earliest periods of the recorded history of Castile;
but previous to the founding of the Mesta, in the thirteenth cen-
tury, there is no indication of any itinerant judicial protector who
ɪ Ordenanzas de la Casa fed. of 1817), tit. 3.