[247] To some extent, every Castilian archive is a judicial archive. Hardly a church, important family, cofradía, hospital, municipal corporation, or other institution failed to keep track of its lawsuits and other legal business; consequently, most of the nation's archives contain copies of a wide variety of legal documents, including transcripts of lawsuits and other legal actions. Many family archives, such as that of the marquis of Castelar (which houses the papers of the important Chumacero y Carrillo family), are comprised almost entirely of this kind of documentation. Most of Castile's municipal archives also have at least one section devoted exclusively to the pleitos in which the municipal corporation was involved.

Somewhat different are the archives generated by Castile's law courts and legal tribunals. Castile's notarial archives contain copies of wills, testaments, donations, and various kinds of commercial contracts that frequently found their way into the courts. Documents kept by the law courts themselves are much more limited in scope. Normally, they comprise administrative papers relating to the history of the court in question together with another, usually far larger, section devoted to the lawsuits and other legal business over which the court presided. In the past, research in many of these collections was hampered by short working hours and the lack of modem catalogs and guides, but in recent years working conditions have improved [248] remarkably. This appendix, drawn largely from my own experience, is intended to serve as an introduction to these archives; it is not meant to be a definitive guide.

As in the rest of Catholic Europe, each of Castile's dioceses maintained its own ecclesiastical court. Nominally under the direction of the bishop, these tribunals were usually administered by the vicar general or his lieutenant, and their area of competence was limited to that set forth in the canon law. Although they were immensely powerful in the Middle Ages, much of their jurisdiction was gradually eroded by the rise of secular justice. Even so, church courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries continued to hold sway over a wide variety of persons and disputes. Ecclesiastics and other persons who enjoyed the protection of the fuero eclesiástico, such as university students, were exempt, at least in the first instance, from secular justice. This privilege gave such persons the right to bring their cases, both civil and criminal, to an ecclesiastical court. They had the right to appeal the initial decision of these tribunals to the court of the metropolitan bishop, then to that of the papal nuncio, and, eventually, to Rome. By means of a procedure known as the via de fuerza, however, many of these cases, especially felony cases and others involving a layman not covered by the fuero, were directed to the attention of secular courts, usually one of the royal audiencias. Nevertheless, at one stage or another, most cases involving a churchman wound up in an ecclesiastical court, thus making the archives of these tribunals invaluable for a study of the Castilian clergy. Unfortunately, these collections have not yet been systematically explored for this purpose.

In addition to disputes involving the clergy, church courts had jurisdiction over other matters of church business, including the sacraments. Such authority gave vicars the right to preside over questions of legitimate and illegitimate birth, marital disputes, annulments, and [249] divorce. R. H. Helmholz, in his Marriage Litigation in 15th Century England (Cambridge, 1974), has demonstrated that such cases can be used for the study of family history, although historians in Spain have yet to exploit the riches of these archives for this purpose. The lawsuits stored in the archives of the church courts are equally useful for the study of clerical taxation, the ownership of church property, and the role of the church in community life, although, once again, historians have been slow to use them to explore such topics. One reason is that access to these collections, which normally form part of the archivo diocesano, is not always easy. Hours are short (usually no more than four hours a day) and modern catalogs few. Two exceptions are Candido Maria Ajo González de Rapariegos, Inventario general de los archivos de la diócesis de Avila (Madrid, 1962), and a number of useful catalogs, published by the diocese of Cuenca, including one to its valuable collection of inquisitorial documents. In contrast, the vast archives of the archdiocese of Seville, which are open only two hours a day, have no published catalogs and guides. The archives of the archdiocese of Toledo are equally inaccessible to the general public.

Histonans are more fortunate, however, with regard to the archives of the judges (jueces del estudio) responsible for university students. These are generally accessible because they form part of Castile's numerous university archives. The records of Valladolid's juez de estudio, for example, are fully indexed and are now housed along with the Archivo Histórico y Provincial de Valladolid. They provide an interesting slant on university life although the contents of this and similar collections remain practically unknown.

The same is true of the archives of the papal nuncio. This collection, located in Madrid, contains copies of cases on appeal from the diocesan courts. Much of the archive has been lost or destroyed, but its contents have yet to be fully explored. For more on this collection, see Guiá de los archivos de Madrid (Madrid, 1952), and José Maria Marqués, "Indices del archivo de la nunciatura de Madrid." I: Vols. 1-102 (1664-1754), Anthologia Annua 22-23 (1975-76):691-853.

[250] A judicial archive of another sort is that of the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1484 with the express purpose of extirpating heresy from the dominions of the Spanish crown. Initially, the Holy Office focused its attention upon Castile's large converso population, but the activities of the entire Old Christian population soon fell beneath its scrutiny and purview. Its judges, famous for their censorship of books and university instructors, also presided over matters of blasphemy, bigamy, "palabras escandalosas," sodomy, and other forms of "heretical" behavior. In many cases, the jurisdiction of the Holy Office conflicted with that of the diocesan courts, and there were also frequent clashes with the king's magistrates, many of whom adjudicated cases the inquisitors claimed for their own. Such competition was particularly evident with respect to persons charged with blasphemy, slander, bigamy, sodomy, and other sexual "crimes." So confused was the dividing line between inquisitorial justice and that of secular courts that any statistical study of crime that fails to take into account both sets of courts must be regarded as incomplete. For a glimpse of the extent to which one royal court intervened in cases that ought to have come before inquisitorial courts, see the records of the alcaldes de crimen attached to the chancillería of Granada, fragments of which can be found in the AGS: CC, leg. 2731.

With the exception of the records of the tribunal of Cuenca, which are located in the diocesan archives of Cuenca, the surviving trial records and relaciones de causas (case summaries) of cases tried by the Holy Office are located in the AHN: Inquisicíon. Most have been indexed according to tribunal, and those adjudicated in the tribunal of Toledo are cataloged in the volume Catálogo de los causas contra la fe seguidas ante el tribunal del santo oficio de la Inquisición de Toledo . . . (Madrid, 1903). A recent study utilizing Toledo's records is Jean Pierre Dedieu, "Les inquisiteurs de Tolede et la visite du district," Mélanges de la Casa de Valázquez 13 (1977):235-56. See also Bartolomé Bennassar, L'Inquisition espagnole XVe-XIXe siécle (Paris, 1979).

[251] Immortalized in Cervantes's Don Quijote, these judges policed the roads, villages, and countryside of Castile. Initially a municipal creation, these alcaldes were given new powers, especially in criminal matters, by Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, the archives of the Hermandad are dispersed, but a broad sampling of the cases dispatched by these judges may be found in the AHN: Diversos. These cases, most of which originated in the villages of New Castile, include a wide variety of offenses but especially incidents of abduction, arson, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and the like. Together they provide an interesting, although admittedly distorted, picture of village life in the sixteenth century. This collection of cases is complemented by that in the Archivo Municipal de Talavera de la Reina, where the main archives of the Santa Hermandad are located. Other papers belonging to the Hermandad can be found in the municipal archives of Toledo. Marvin Lunenfield, The Council of the Santa Hermandad (Miami, 1970), provides an institutional history of the Hermandad during the reign of the Catholic kings, but his study makes no attempt to examine the cases these judges tried.
 

Prior to the eighteenth century, Castile's village and municipal courts made little effort to maintain archives. The widespread use of oral as opposed to written justice in these lesser tribunals is one reason, resort to the residencia another. Once a judge was declared innocent of wrongdoing, he probably disposed of his papers. The magistrates [252] appointed to administer justice on seigneurial estates followed similar practices. As a result, it is very unlikely that we shall ever be able to reconstruct the dockets of the hundreds of courts of first instance that once dotted the Castilian countryside. To some extent, however, the work of Castile's alcaldes ordinarios and alcaldes mayores can be reconstructed from residencia reports, many of which are still extant. Those of alcaldes in villages belonging to one of the Military Orders are located in the AHN: Ordenes Militares. Similar reports exist for seigneurial judges. The Archivo de los Duques de Frias for example, contains residencias for alcaldes in Briviesca, Pedraza de la Sierra, and other towns that belonged to the constable of Castile, and a thorough search of other private family archives is certain to produce more documentation of this sort. The one lesser court that has kept its papers is that administered by Toledo's fiel del juzgado, a tribunal that heard cases on appeal from alcaldes in the villages belonging to the Montes of Toledo. The criminal cases tried by this magistrate have been studied extensively by Michael R. Weisser, "Crime and Subsistence: The Peasants of the Tierra of Toledo, 1500-1700" (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1972); I employed the civil cases that came before in this magistrate in chapter 3.
 

The judicial records of these important royal magistrates have also disappeared although the possibility of discovering the papers of a particular corregidor in a private family archive still remains. Once again, the best way to approach the day-to-day work of these magistrates is through their residencia reports. AGS: CR contains such records for the sixteenth century. For the seventeenth century, see AHN: Cons. References to the residencia reports employed in this study can be found in the notes to chapters 3 and 5. Equally valuable is the long report prepared by a certain Fray Francisco de la Trinidad for Prince Philip in 1555. To be found in AGS: CC, leg. 2713, this document examines the performance of corregidores stationed in [253] Andalusia, La Mancha, and New Castile. See also the visitas of the adelantado mayores of Burgos, Campos, and León located in the AGS: CC, leg. 2767.

ROYAL AUDIENCIAS AND CHANCILLERÍAS

The archives of this court, the smaller of the crown's two chancillerías, are housed together with the Archivo Histórico y Provincial de Granada in a building not far from the ancient site of the chancillería itself. Unfortunately, many of its key administrative papers, including the invaluable Libros de Acuerdo, have been lost. Also missing are the bulk of its criminal cases (pleitos criminales). Better preserved are the pleitos civiles, many of which have been cataloged in alphabetical order according to name of the plaintiff. There is, however, no [254] guide to respondents or inventories to give an indication of the order in which the lawsuits originally came to the court.

This archive, after years of deterioration and neglect, has recently been remodeled and refurbished and its contents decently housed. Far larger and better preserved than its Andalusian counterpart, the collection is divided into nine different sections: Pleitos Civiles, Procesos Criminales, Pleitos de Hidalguía, Pleitos y Procesos de Vizcaya, Reales Cartas Eecutorias, Reales Provisiones, Papeles de Gobierno, Documentos Notables y Especiales, and Libros de Acuerdo y Gobierno.

The best introduction to this collection is Maria Soledad Arribas González, Los fondos del archivo de la real chancillería de Valladolid (Madrid, 1971). Also useful are Alfredo Basanta de la Riva, Los archivos de Valladolid (Madrid, 1921), and Marcelino Asenjo Espinosa, "Funcionamiento y organización de la real chancillería de Valladolid," Hidalguía 9 (1961): 397-694, and Maria de la Soterraña Postigo, Historia del archivo de la real chancillería de Valladolid (Valladolid, 1979). The archive, however, has published only a few detailed catalogs to its various sections, the best of which is Alfredo Basanta de la Riva, Archivo de la real chancillería de Valladolid. Sala de hijosdalgo. Catálogo de todos sus pleitos, expedientes, y probanzas, 4 vols. (Valladolid, 1920-22). Otherwise, researchers interested in the contents of this collection must rely upon unpublished inventories available only in Valladolid.

For the purpose of this study, I used the chancillería's Libros de Acuerdo, complete for the years after 1548. These volumes record the chancillería's official correspondence and give a yearly listing or nomina of the tribunal's officials along with another nomina of the advocates registered to plead before it. Even more valuable were summaries of lawsuits contained in the archive's reales ejecutorias and reales provisiones. Admittedly, these represent only a small proportion of the cases originally filed in this tribunal, but they are organized in chronological order and thus permit systematic investigation. Neither the ejecutorias nor the provisiones, however, are cataloged. Even more difficult to work with are the transcripts of lawsuits brought to the chancillería. Stored in more than thirty thousand legajos, these cases are so organized that sampling by year, by district, or by type of dispute was impossible. Shortages of money and staff have not [255] allowed the archive to prepare more than a handful of modern inventories. It is necessary, therefore, to rely wholly upon ancient inventories kept by the chancillería's scribes, many of which are misleading. The lawsuits listed in these inventories give an indication of who was suing whom, but no dates or summary of the purpose of the lawsuit are provided. It is almost impossible to find a particular lawsuit or to pinpoint cases brought by a single individual or town unless one is prepared to spend months laboriously searching these old inventories. For this reason, the historical value of the lawsuits housed in this archive has yet to be fully appreciated.

It is worth repeating at this point that much of my information concerning the history of the chancillería of Valladolid and the other audiencias has been derived from the records of the royal visitations housed in the AGS: CC, leg. 2711-67, 2804-7. Admittedly, these records highlight what was wrong with the crown's tribunals, often ignoring what was right, and therefore provide a somewhat distorted picture of the nature of administration of justice in sixteenth-century Castile. A careful reading of these materials, however, is useful in developing an understanding of the way these tribunals actually worked.

With the exception of the Council of State, which was strictly a policymaking body, each of the king's councils in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had important adjudicative duties to perform. The Council of War, for example, presided over cases brought by persons protected by the fuero militar, and the Council of the Indies was the court of last resort for cases on appeal from the audiencias of the New World as well as Seville's Casa de Contratación (House of Trade). Similarly, the Contaduría Mayor de Hacienda, a branch of the Council of Finance, was established in 1554 to resolve lawsuits and other matters relating to the administration, collection, and payment of royal taxes. Staffed by letrados, this tribunal's jurisdiction grew steadily in the course of the Habsburg era. The history of the contaduría as a [256] court of law, however, remains to be written despite the fact that its archives, which are virtually complete, are cataloged and readily available in the AGS.

Another council with its own jurisdiction was that of the Military Orders. The councillors appointed alcaldes and corregidores in towns situated on lands belonging to one of Castile's Military Orders and also reviewed cases on appeal from these lesser tribunals. Records of these cases, both civil and criminal, are housed in the AHN: Ordenes Militares and are cataloged in an excellent card index. See also Archivo histórico nacional. Guía de la sección de ordenes militares, ed. Aurea Javierre Mur and Consuelo G. del Arroyo (Madrid, 1950).

Even more extensive than the jurisdiction of the councils noted above was that of the Royal Council of Castile. As mentioned in chapter 3, the history of this council as a judicial body remains to be written even though its archives, particularly for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are relatively complete. The lawsuits and other legal business it dispatched during this period can be found in the AHN: Cons. For the purpose of this study, I relied heavily upon the inventories produced by the council's escribanos (libros 3189-3256). Also useful is the volume Consejo de Castilla, índice de los pleitos sobre mayorazgos estados y señorios (Madrid, 1927).

Prior to the seventeenth century, however, the docket of this council is difficult to reconstruct. At the AGS, for example, the papers of only two of the council's six offices of escribano survive. These are located in the Section Consejo Real and are relatively well indexed. In addition to lawsuits, these papers, together with those housed in the AHN, contain numerous residencias of the crown's corregidores. For an introduction to the contents of this, as well as other sections of the AGS, see Angel de la Plaza, Archivo gen eral de Simancas. Guía del investigador (Valladolid, 1962).

One other judicial archive worthy of note is that of the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte. These judges were responsible for the administration of justice in the royal court. Most of their time was spent on matters of criminal justice, but they also possessed limited authority over minor civil cases. Their papers, housed in the AHN, are invaluable for the study of crime in Castile and provide an especially interesting slant on the history of Madrid, beginning in 1561. The contents of these papers may be approached through the volume Consejo de Castilla. Sala de alcaldes de casa y corte. Catálogo por materias (Madrid, 1928).