THE MESTA

the rise of a closely unified national sheep owners’ organization
out of the fiscal machinery of the central government ? In a
word, does the financial history of the Mesta enable us, through
the use of its abundant source materials, to explain and perhaps to
answer the questions suggested by the fiscal aspects of the same
industry in other lands ?

CHAPTER IX

MEDIAEVAL SHEEP TAXES IN CASTILE

Early local taxes. The montazgo and the porlazgo. Effect of the Moorish wars.
Beginning of large scale sheep migrations, standardized taxation, and fixed toll
points.

After the disaster at the Guadalete in 711 and the flight of
Roderic’s battered warriors into the mountains of Asturias, there
followed three disordered centuries of uncertainty for the fugitive
bands of Christian refugees, centuries of intermittent conflict
either with the infidel invaders to the south, or with one another.
The events of this turbulent formative period, especially those
concerned with so unwarlike a subject as the present one, left but
scanty records, and even these are swept aside by some authori-
ties as spurious.¹ Whether this conclusion is accepted or not, it is
interesting to observe that the few documents purporting to give
evidence on the taxation of migratory sheep in this early period
all bear a striking resemblance to the first records of the same prac-
tice in other lands. These early financial obligations of the Castil-
ian flocks were local tolls, as were the first taxes paid on migrants
elsewhere; but in Castile the evidence supplements with many
new and important data the oldest documents found in other
countries. Although the obscurity which clouds these opening
centuries may detract from the value of the documents, the fact
remains that their chief features accord in every way with the
well authenticated source materials of other lands. They carry
the origins of this form of local taxation back into the traditional
beginnings of Castilian history.

The earliest of these records, like those in some of the regions
already considered, appear in the form of royal exemptions from
ɪoeal sheep taxes. The practice common in all parts of mediaeval
Europe of granting special privileges and immunities from such

¹ Notably L. Barrau-Dihigo of the Library at the Sorbonne.

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