THE MESTA
i54
and highways used by the migrating sheep.1 For this service the
herdsmen were naturally understood to be under a financial obli-
gation to the government. Consequently certain state sheep
taxes were devised, a special sheep magistracy was created in
192 B.c. or thereabouts, and sharp distinctions were intro-
duced in the Sempronian laws between assessments on pastoral
and on agricultural lands. Incidentally it may be noted that
whenever public lands found their way into the hands of private
individuals, the fees or taxes previously paid to the state for their
use by the flocks were converted into regular rentals paid to the
new owners.2 During the first century b.c. the censors were
leasing tracts of public pastures to publicani, who sublet them to
sheep owners upon payment of a Scriptura or head tax on the
animals. This toll was collected at wayside stationes, which were
the predecessors of the dogana of the Middle Ages and modern
times. Under the later empire the scriptura became the pensio, a
fixed charge for the privilege of grazing on imperial lands.3 By
the twelfth century this tax was being administered under the
direction of the balivus ciυitatis, a state officer who usually sup-
plemented his fixed income from the tax by illicit bargains with
sheep owners for more pastures than could be secured through
strictly legal channels.
The royal sheep taxes of modern times in southern Italy are
thought by some to have had their origins in the operations of the
messari, or lessees of royal tolls, under Frederick II in the thir-
teenth century.4 It is more probable, however, that the respon-
sibility for these taxes is to be found in the close political tie be-
tween Aragon and Italy. Alfonso I of Naples (1435-58) as
ɪ H. F. Pelham, Essays (Oxford, 19n), pp. 300 S. The Licinian law of 367 b.c.
had laid the groundwork for legislation on the use of public pastures by private indi-
viduals. Acquisition by conquest of large tracts of public lands where the migrants
had previously been accustomed to feed and to pay local taxes probably brought
about this step by the state.
2 Ibid., pp. 3°3~3°4∙
3 Codex Theodosianus, vii, 7; Codex Justimanus, xi, 60, cited by Pelham. At-
tention will be called later in this chapter to the analogy between these stationes and
the Castilian puertos reales, where the Mesta paid its annual taxes to the crown.
4 Sombart, Die romische Campagna (Leipsic, 1888), pp. 43-48, 83-87; Bertaux
and Yver, “ LTtalie inconnue,” in Le tour du monde, 1899, pp. 272-274.
Sheeptaxesinthemediteriianeanregion 155
Alfonso V, ‘ the Magnanimous,’ of Aragon was intimately ac-
quainted with the affairs of the Saragossan Casa de Ganaderos.
He was undoubtedly the one who erected upon the ruins of the
old Roman Stationes an elaborate system of toll houses —■ the
so-called tribunale della dogana della mena dette pecore di Puglia —-
for the assessment of the sheep that frequented the pastures of
Apulia.1 Under this organization bridge tolls were regulated, the
Iratturi, or sheep walks, maintained, and resting places and winter
pasturage in public lands carefully administered. In exchange
for these services, the sovereign was paid eight Venetian crowns
for every hundred migrating sheep.2 By 1500 the income from
this source was of such proportions that Louis XII of France and
Ferdinand III of Naples (II of Aragon) made careful stipulations
as to its division. The subsequent attempt of the French to stop
the migrating flocks at San Severo roused the Spaniards and was
one of the causes for the launching of those memorable Italian
campaigns of the ‘ Great Captain,’ Gonsalvo de Cordova, and his
famous Spanish infantry.
In the eighteenth century the tolls on migrating sheep had
become “ one of the richest mines of wealth belonging to the
crown of Naples.” 3 In fact, the long continuance of an organized
pastoral industry in southern Italy is to be explained to a con-
siderable extent by the large revenues which it brought to the
crown. The Infante Charles of Naples began here in the middle
of the eighteenth century the same reforms which he was later, as
Charles IIÏ of Spain, to inaugurate against the Castilian Mesta.
He announced his readiness to forgo the immediate profits of
this tempting revenue in order to build up a firmer, though for a
long time much less lucrative, type of rural economy. This
declaration he proceeded to make good by the establishment of
agricultural colonies in the pasture lands. With much of the
l Swinbume, Travels in the Two Sicilies (London, 1783-85, 2 vols.),i, pp. 140
ff.; Craven, Excursions in the Abruzzi (London, 1838, 2 vols.), i, pp. 264-270.
2 In 1556 this figure was raised to twelve crowns, and in 1709 it was further in-
creased to thirteen ducats and twenty grana.
s Swinbume, op. cit. He gives the following as the royal returns from this tax:
1536, 72,214 ducats; 1680, 155,863 ducats; 17∞> 272,077 ducats; τ730, 235,072
ducats; 1780, 4∞,0∞ ducats.