ι68
THE MESTA
turies by payment of tolls and fees for protection. These regions
were now laid open by the conquering sovereigns without pay-
ment of taxes. We find, therefore, a long series of fueros and
privileges exempting the sheep of the favored towns from taxation
at the hands of local authorities.1 In all of these, as well as in
many other town charters of the same type, there was the guaran-
tee that the favored sheep were not to pay local taxes in a large
part, and frequently throughout the whole, of the realm.
Exemptions from local montazgos and portazgos were, then,
common means of rewarding the loyalty and services of cities,
monasteries, and sometimes even of individual sheep owners
among the nobility, for their aid to the crown in the work of the
Reconquest.2 The sovereigns now felt themselves capable of
issuing mandates of a more definite and comprehensive scope than
the vague and timid ones of their predecessors. The exemption
embodied in the fuero of Plasencia, for example, clearly defined
the montazgos and other local taxes in question, especially certain
tolls levied at points along the Tagus River. In most of the town
charters of this period there was the same tendency to qualify the
sweeping exemptions by specifying localities where the flocks of
the favored town were most likely to be accosted by tax collec-
tors. We have, then, a considerable body of negative, but none
the less conclusive, evidence of the early prevalence in Castile,
well before the conquests of 1212-62, of local taxes on migratory
flocks.
There are also certain positive indications of these tolls, namely
the confirmations of ancient privileges to collect such taxes from
passing sheep. Illustrations are readily found in the twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries of such royal acknowledgments of
municipal title to taxes from migrating sheep, and it is important
1 As examples of these may be mentioned the fueros and privileges of Alquesar
(1069) (Acad. Hist, Ms. 25-ι-C 9, fol. ι), Sanguesa (1122) (ibid,,p. 31, no. 58),
Carcastillo (1129) (Munoz, p. 470), Guadalajara (n33) (Munoz, p. 509), Balbâs
(1135) (Gonzâlez, vi, pp. 84-89), Toledo (1137) (Bib. Nac. Madrid, Ms. 714, fol.
10 v), and Plasencia (1170) (ibid ,fol. 183); see also Ducange, Glossarium, s.v. mon-
Ialicum (1173); and Gonzâlez, vi, p. 93 (1231)).
2 Colmeiro, ii, pp. 474-479, discusses the unequal distribution of the tax burden
as a result of the granting of such favors as these.
MEDIAEVAL SHEEP TAXES IN CASTILE 169
to observe that many of these acknowledgments were granted
long before there were any royal taxes of this type.1
The great victory of the Christians at Las Navas de Tolosa in
1212 marked the beginning of a half century of triumphs over
Moorish strongholds.2 A wide expanse of southern pasture lands
was won for the unhampered use of the flocks from the north;
though, as has been pointed out, these lands were by no means
1 The fuero of Calatayud of ɪɪʒɪ (Munoz, Coleccion, p. 463) fixed a montatico
for “ toto ganato forano . . qui post très dies Steterit in teπnino de Calatayub.”
A concession of jurisdiction over part of the revenues of Salamanca, granted by
Urraca and her first husband, Raymond of Burgundy, in the year 1140 of the
Spanish era, was accompanied by a recognition of the right to levy taxes of this
form “ in quocunque loco, vel quolibet modo.” Ducange, s.j>. montaticum. A
similar recognition was shown in an instrument of the year 1164 of the era from
Alfonso VII, ibid. The monastery of Ona received from Alfonso VIII in 1176 a
lengthy confirmation of its ancient charters, including its right to collect tolls
from passing sheep: the rate was one head from migrants passing by day and four
from those passing by night. Arch. Hist. Nac., Docs. Ona, no. 96 a. Night tolls
were invariably higher, probably in order to discourage migration when conditions
were favorable for evasions. In 1200 the bishop and chapter of the cathedral of
Cuenca were guaranteed the continuance of their long standing privilege of levying
a toll upon all sheep and cattle taken southward into the lands of the Moors to be
sold, with the proviso that the sums collected on animals which returned were to
be refunded Acad. Hist., Ms. 25-ι-C 19, fols. 483-484. This is one of the few
positive indications of regular migrations of sheep from the Christian highlands of
the north over the southern frontiers, long before the Reconquest had brought the
pasture lands of those regions under the control of the Castilian kings. Political
boundaries, even those strengthened by sharp racial and religious antagonisms,
were quite ineffective as hindrances to the activities of this industry. (See above,
p. 145, on the sheep migrations over the Pyrenean boundary.) In 1208 Valladolid
secured royal confirmation of its right to collect a montazgo of two rams from
every herd entering the jurisdiction of the city. Agapito, Priι>s. de Valladolid,
p. 28. The town of Béjar had obtained a similar recognition in 1211. Arch. Osuna,
Béjar Mss., caj. 30, nos. ι, 2, 6, confirmations of 1265 and 1314. The royal con-
firmation of the toll rates of Burgos, granted in 1237, declared that all sheep were
to be assessed according to a fixed schedule, “ even if they belonged to the king or
to the queen or to the monastery of Las Huelgas.” Acad. Hist., Ms. 12-19-1,
fols. 172 ff.
2 Chief among these may be noted the following: Alcântara (1214, regained in
that year after the loss following the first capture in 1166), Badajoz (1228), Mérida
(123°), Castell6n (1233), Cordova (1236), Valencia (1238), Murcia and Cartagena
(1243), Jaen (1246), Seville (1248), Jerez de la Frontera (1254), and Cadiz (1262),
This imposing list of notable victories reflects the vigor with which Ferdinand III
a∏d his companion conquerors swept across the plains of Andalusia and crowded
their thoroughly beaten foes behind the mountains of Granada.