[54] In the mid-sixteenth century Philip II received so many complaints about the local administration of justice in Seville that he sent three royal judges to replace judicial officers of the city council. The first action of the new royal judges was to sentence on the steps of the Cathedral a merchant who had gone bankrupt, losing the estates of several other people. Significantly, this man was sentenced to hang, not by the traditional order of the chief justice of the city council but by order of the king. ⁽¹⁾

Royal justice, of course, was not new to Seville. A favorite legend of the city described the justice of Peter I, who was King of Castile from 1350 to 1369. Known in history as "Pedro the Cruel," this eccentric ruler liked to wander the streets of Seville disguised as a common citizen, defending the humble against the proud. When he heard that a priest who had murdered a shoemaker was excused by an ecclesiastical court with only a twelve-month suspension from his sacerdotal duties, Peter decreed that henceforth any tradesman who killed a priest would be punished merely by losing the exercise of his trade for twelve months. ⁽²⁾

Both of these accounts illustrate how rulers have used justice as an instrument of power, but their descriptions of royal justice differ considerably. Peter I was presented as a champion of the common people, meting out justice directly, insisting [55] that it should be applied equally to privileged groups and common people. Philip II, on the other hand, carried out justice through a bureaucracy that he had appointed and imposed on Seville. He sent nobles from other parts of Spain to reform the local administration of justice. In addition, his justice was not directed against privileged groups immune to ordinary law but against a merchant who had cheated several people and fallen into bankruptcy.

It is true that Philip II was a very different person from Peter I, but personality cannot explain all the differences in their styles of justice. More significant are the changes in Castile and Seville between the fourteenth century of Peter I and the sixteenth century of Philip II, illustrating that justice was functioning within a specific social context. When early modern Seville became the site for the royal agency to control trade with the Indies, it also became a focus of royal concern. Local traditions of justice waned as royal influence grew, and the crooks who were prosecuted for crimes and the lawmen who administered justice increasingly reflected royal concerns. A discussion of crime and justice in this city reveals, above all, changing power relations that directly involved the underworld.

LAWMEN

The administration of justice in Seville had a long tradition of conflicting, overlapping jurisdictions that became even more complex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the early sixteenth century conflicts in the administration of justice stemmed from the bitter rivalries between powerful aristocrats, such as those of the Guzmán and Ponce families who took opposite sides in the local Comunero rebellion in 1520 and 1521. Members of both of these families held the office of chief justice for Seville at various times. Nobles who received offices from the Crown often received the privilege to name lesser judicial officers. When the Duke of Alcalá bought the office of alguacil mayor in 1589, he bought with it the right to name the assistant to this office, the warden of the Royal Prison, several magistrates in Triana, and several judicial officers [56] in charge of handing over prisoners. ⁽³⁾ Nobles used their control of these judicial offices to acquire more power and supporters in the local rivalries.

Royal unification introduced another pattern of conflict in the administration of justice when Ferdinand and Isabella revived a medieval brotherhood, the hermandad, placed it under the central direction of a Crown-appointed bishop, and charged it to maintain order among feuding nobles and local factions. The Duke of Medina Sidonia and other powerful nobles tried to keep this central law enforcement agency out of Seville because they feared that it would limit their own privileges. In addition, they disliked the annual levy of 18,000 maravedís for every one hundred residents that was imposed on the nobility to finance it. Ferdinand and Isabella persevered, however, and the Santa Hermandad became an institution of justice in Seville with its own court, law officers, and prison.

Inevitably, there were many cases of overlapping jurisdiction between the city's courts and that of the Santa Hermandad. In 1597 a woman was captured by the Santa Hermandad for stealing in the fields, but the city's ordinary justice also claimed jurisdiction over her. A dispute arose over how she should be executed because the Santa Hermandad and the city followed different practices. Evidently the forms of local justice prevailed, for she was taken to be hanged in the Plaza de San Francisco rather than killed in the field, as the Santa Hermandad proposed; Moreover, the procession taking her to the gallows was led by the Pendon Verde, a green flag captured from the Moors and used as a local symbol in contrast to the royal flag. ⁽⁴⁾

Local resistance to the Santa Hermandad developed into a broader resistance to the Crown's increasing attempts to influence local administration of justice. The tradition of some royal supervision over local government was long-established, but royal reforms in the last half of the sixteenth century greatly strengthened the position of the Crown in the local administration [57] of justice. Charles I revived the custom of appointing a committee of local officials to oversee the city's government, and he tightened royal control through the audiencia, a royal court in Seville. By a decree of January 10, 1556, this court was reduced to six judges and a chief judge (regente), and it was given major judicial jurisdiction for Seville and the surrounding area within a radius of five leagues. These judges were to be appointed by the Crown and could not be natives of the city. All civil cases were to go to the audiencia, and criminal cases were to be judged by the alcaldes mayores of the city council. In cases of jurisdictional dispute, the regente was to settle the question with the oldest judge and alcalde mayor. ⁽⁵⁾

Philip II further strengthened the royal audiencia as the seat of judicial power in Seville. Irritated by the growing number of complaints about local judges, he abolished the judging functions of alcaldes mayores and substituted three crown-appointed judges who were to be non-local nobles. ⁽⁶⁾ The rivalry among local nobles provided Philip with an excuse for assuming more control over justice in Seville, a lesson that alerted the nobles of the city council. When the alguacil mayor of the city complained in 1566 that the sheriffs of the audiencia were usurping his position, taking the fees that he should receive for confiscating arms or attaching property for debts, the city council agreed to stand firmly with him. The Crown backed down and ordered the audiencia to respect the jurisdictions of the city government. In 1573 and again in 1579 Philip II prohibited the audiencia from meddling with city ordinances relating to granaries, bread, the slaughterhouse and meat markets, prices, the administration of the city's estates, expenditures, bills of exchange, and elections. The audiencia was to act only when some person claimed that the city had wronged him. ⁽⁷⁾

Conflicts between royal and local judicial officials continued, however, magnified by the Crown's increasing commercial [58] interest in Seville. The Crown established a mint, a customs house, and the Casa de Contratación to regulate trade with the Indies. Each of these institutions had its own sheriffs and guards. The Casa had its own judicial system and prison.

Much to the consternation of Seville's oligarchy, the Crown sold increasing numbers of offices. The city council wrote to Philip II in 1586 complaining that their building was not even large enough to hold all the new officers he had appointed. In 1589 city council members were alarmed by rumors that Philip II planned to create the new office of alguacil mayor of the audiencia, and nine years later they complained that rich merchants were buying up noble titles and offices. Money spoke more loudly than complaining letters, however, and Philip II was grateful for the 7000 ducats he received for each office of veinticuatro, as well as the 170,000 ducats he received for the office of alguacil mayor. ⁽⁸⁾

Despite complaints from local nobles about the increasing numbers of officials, they must have recognized the need for more judges and constables as the population mushroomed and regulations multiplied. The growing numbers of judges, lawyers, scribes, inspectors, and constables had certain interests in common. Their offices and livelihood depended to some extent on the existence of crime in the city, and the position of each of them depended upon preserving the existing social order. As the city's fortunes declined in the seventeenth century, their security became more precarious. Creditors would pay the customary fee to a sheriff for confiscating a debtor's property, but who would pay the sheriff's fee for confiscating illegal arms? During epidemics and famine, lesser officials often abandoned their offices. A witness to the 1652 bread riot wrote that the sheriffs were "invisible" and the offices of the city at a standstill. ⁽⁹⁾

[59] The quality of officials decreased as their numbers grew during this period. Some flagrantly misused the powers of their offices. In 1636 the city council drew up sixteen complaints against one magistrate, Roque Simon. Witnesses testified that he had caused many people to be arrested and imprisoned for his "own particular ends" and only on his own authority. He had taken merchandise by force and would only pay his own price for food. He had arrested a baker because, he said, the baker was cheating him with his prices, but the assistant to the mayor rushed to the aid of the baker and had Roque arrested. Many people testified that he had insulted them and imposed huge fines on them. Witnesses described his "scandalous living" and accused him of residing unmarried with a woman. Although he defended himself and his crusades against retail cheaters and criminals, his case was decided from the moment it was learned that he had also insulted judges of the city. ⁽¹⁰⁾ The judicial bureaucracy could tolerate many failings among its members, but certainly not that.

Improper conduct among judicial officers and local nobles permitted even more royal intervention in local justice. When two local nobles fought in 1628 over the protocol of placing a chair, the regente ordered both men under house arrest, and the Crown sent a special justice from Madrid to try the case. ⁽¹¹⁾ The brutal behavior of arresting officers who broke into houses and injured suspects prompted the Crown to impose further control over local justice. When a person broke a law for which there was only a pecuniary penalty, judges were directed to send for the accused and order him to pay the fine. Only if he refused to pay was he to be imprisoned, and then he was to be taken without breaking down the door of his house. ⁽¹²⁾ Finally, the audiencia wrote to the king in 1678 that its own judicial officers had to make the rounds of the city because local officials had left them to lawyers and sheriffs who were unable to stop the repeated robberies and scandalous murders. City residents lived in "notorious danger" with no security in their homes, lives, or estates, the judges wrote, and added pointedly that in [60] 1556 the Crown had taken away some of the legal jurisdiction of local justices who were not carrying out the obligations of their office. ⁽¹³⁾

Other conflicts arose from the overlapping jurisdictions between secular and ecclesiastical courts. Secular authorities had long chafed at the fact that clerics were usually immune to secular justice and that ordinary criminals could find asylum from them in churches. Ferdinand and Isabella sent to the city in 1493 an ordinance prohibiting anyone from harboring fugitives from royal justice in churches. Complaining that criminals sometimes escaped royal courts by declaring they were clergy, the Crown also ordered the city to draw up a list of those who claimed they were clergy, together with the crimes they had committed and the testimony against them. ⁽¹⁴⁾

The question of asylum sometimes created a great public uproar. In 1582 Francisco de Castillo killed another man in a quarrel and fled to the nearest church, San Jorge. Unfortunately for him, a justice of the audiencia who was passing through the church spied the fugitive and dragged him outside. He was sentenced immediately to hang within twenty-four hours. Pedro de León protested that this speed would not give him time as chaplain to prepare the man for communion. While others died of old age in prison, waiting for sentence, this man had been summarily sentenced because the audiencia realized there were questions of its jurisdiction over a man found in church. The judge remained adamant, but while the chaplain was walking with the victim to the gallows, some kind people found the widow, who agreed to pardon the killer of her husband for a payment of 200 ducats. However, this pardon required assent from the audiencia, and the condemned man had to proceed to the gallows. Just as the hangman was setting the noose about his neck, a roar went up from the crowd. A messenger arrived with the news that the audiencia had agreed to commutation. The fugitive could be returned to the church where [61] he had sought refuge, the judges agreed, because his crime had not been "perfidious" and, therefore, the secular authorities lacked the right to capture him in a church. ⁽¹⁵⁾

Jurisdictional disputes between Church and secular authorities were probably all the more conspicuous because these two groups usually agreed on matters of justice. Clergymen arrested for serious crimes were often tried by an ecclesiastical court, defrocked, and then turned over to secular authorities for execution. When a clergyman was arrested with a layman in 1623 for killing a sacristan and his brother, the clergyman was tried by ecclesiastical courts, and the layman by the secular courts. Both were hanged by the secular authorities, although the clergyman was first publicly defrocked in the square before the archbishop's palace. After they were hanged, the head of the layman was cut off and placed in the house where he had murdered the men. The clergyman was merely cut down from the gallows and buried in the monastery of San Lorenzo. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Both secular and Church authorities had agreed that these men should be punished, and they had also agreed that the procedure for punishment could vary slightly.

As asistente at the end of the sixteenth century, the Count of Puñoenrostro wanted to enforce secular laws more stringently, especially at the expense of pretentious churchmen. Once he met a beautiful young woman in an inn and asked her what she was doing there. She told him that she had come there "looking for her life" after she had been seduced and abandoned by a canon of the Cathedral. The Count summoned the canon to appear before him the next day. Arriving in style on the back of a fine mule, the canon first denied the story and then admitted it. He agreed to pay the girl one hundred ducats, but the Count told him that he would keep his mule as security until the canon brought the money to him for the girl. The canon had no recourse but to set off on foot to get the money, and the Count had the satisfaction of giving a lesson in humility to this churchman. ⁽¹⁷⁾

[62] The Inquisition added another dimension to the jurisdictional disputes between secular and Church authorities. Technically, it was an institution independent of the Church, promoted by the Crown to prosecute false Christians and heretics. In fact, the Inquisition was not limited to matters of spirit. It was empowered to confiscate the property and titles of accused apostates and heretics, and it could demand that prisoners of secular justice be turned over to its courts for examination on matters of faith. In addition, it could excommunicate secular authorities who denied the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. In 1655, for example, two men were arrested for committing thefts up and down the Guadalquivir River. When they were sentenced to death, the Inquisition demanded to examine them on spiritual matters. The sheriff believed the Inquisition was more interested in the property of his prisoners than in their faith. He refused to release the prisoners to the Inquisition and posted guards around them. Enraged, the Inquisition arrested the sheriff and excommunicated two secular officials. The thieves were finally hanged, a year later. ⁽¹⁸⁾

During the early modern period the Inquisition grew in independence as its bureaucracy and financial transactions increased. Because it had to pay increasing numbers of its own officials, it could justify keeping larger amounts from the property it confiscated. In addition, the Holy Office had to keep money from the confiscations to pay the expenses of keeping prisoners and of presenting autos de fé. Sometimes the Holy Office concealed confiscations, thus adding to its financial independence from the Crown. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Privileges claimed by officials of the Inquisition could lead to disputes with secular authorities. Inquisition officials declared that they had the right to carry weapons and were exempt from inspection of goods or papers that they carried through [63] the city gates. They also claimed that their houses were exempt from entry and search by secular officials, for they frequently detained prisoners in their houses and wanted to maintain secrecy about them. In 1540, however, the Inspector General of the Inquisition wrote the Sevillian Inquisition to rebuke them for allowing murderers to enjoy asylum in the Castle of Triana. He directed that the gates of the castle be kept shut so that criminals could not find refuge there. Inquisition officials also agreed to let secular authorities enter their houses to pursue fugitives whom they had just seen committing a crime. ⁽²⁰⁾

In the atmosphere of jealousy over serious jurisdictional disputes, some squabbles erupted over trivial matters. In 1637, for example, a great uproar ensued when an Inquisition official refused to help some judges of the audiencia dismount from their carriage, which had just broken down. Furious, the judges fined him 200 ducats. The Inquisition asked them to explain this fine, and the asistente and his justices jumped into the fray. They sent fifty soldiers to the houses of the Inquisition to support them while they confiscated property to cover the fine. The Inquisition thundered back with excommunications of six judicial officers. Nine days later, however, the order came from Madrid to cancel the excommunications and lower the fine to fifty ducats. ⁽²¹⁾ Evidently, both royal and Inquisition officials in Madrid recognized the advantages of preventing an open rupture.

Although the Inquisition later opposed royal power, it helped to buttress the Crown in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because all officials and nobles had to pledge an oath of obedience and assistance whenever an Inquisitor came to set up a tribunal, the Inquisition could weaken local independence and impose more central authority. A royal decree of 1523 prohibited any municipality or other group from passing laws that would limit the Inquisition. The Crown seemed willing to tolerate a more independent Holy Office if it could limit the independence of local nobles and was willing to undertake tasks as mundane as prosecuting counterfeiters. In a decree of 1627 that conferred this task on the Holy Office, the Crown acknowledged [64] the criticism that the Inquisition was being used "more for reasons of State than for those of the faith." It added, however, that leaders of the Inquisition had agreed that counterfeiting was not only harming Spain, but "enriching and increasing the power of the enemies of God and of men in common offense against the Catholic cause." ⁽²²⁾

Justice in early modern Seville was administered by a coalition of local nobles, royal officials, rising bureaucrats, Inquisition officials, and churchmen. They generally agreed on how to administer justice to people as flagrantly criminal as underworld murderers and highway robbers. The underworld in this sense unified the coalition. Their squabbles over prestige and jurisdiction sometimes masked a genuine power struggle, however, and they freely used the administration of justice to extend their own powers. This reinforced the underworld's cynical view that justice was not a blindfolded lady holding a scales, but a wanton woman whom they could woo and use. Again and again underworld people used the conflicts within the judicial establishment for their own purposes-for example, when they shouted atrocious blasphemies in the Royal Prison, hoping to place themselves in the hands of the Inquisition and thus escape the secular authorities. ⁽²³⁾

Underworld people found many opportunities for profit in the city's system of justice, for the proliferation of judicial offices resulted in a great confusion of responsibility and a decline in the character of judicial officials. Some lower judicial officers became identified very closely with professional criminals. ⁽²⁴⁾ One city lawyer described the profitable practice by which an unscrupulous lawyer would take a constable and a scribe to arrest an unsuspecting citizen, who would then agree to pay the lawyer to defend him. ⁽²⁵⁾ Not many people in the underworld were equipped to act as lawyers, but many were prepared to work as paid false witnesses for corrupt lawyers and judges. A few could even pose as Inquisitors empowered to [65] arrest people and confiscate their goods. One false Inquisitor at the end of the sixteenth century had his own band of bogus sheriffs. Before he and his lieutenants were found out, they had escaped to the Indies. ⁽²⁶⁾

The old system whereby one constable was elected from each parish to work under the chief constable in patrolling the city had the advantage of providing law enforcement officers who were easily recognizable and accountable to the people of their neighborhoods. This relationship changed as a result of the growing need for constables in the sixteenth century. By the end of this century the original twenty constables were no longer elected but were nominated by the Crown. One chronicler said that so many more judicial officers were now appointed that the city was full of them. ⁽²⁷⁾ The status and authority of law enforcement officers fell as their numbers grew, and this happened when the city and Crown were trying to reserve to their law enforcement officials the exclusive right to use violence. The underworld found many ways to exploit this problem and involve constables in crime. In Cervantes' story Monipodio reminded his fellow criminals of the importance of keeping the constable's friendship. ⁽²⁸⁾ Fictional accounts of constables implicated in crime are substantiated in many actual cases, such as that of the alguacil mayor condemned for murdering his wife in 1597, and the constable arrested with a group of highway robbers in 1615. ⁽²⁹⁾

In addition to exploiting city justice, underworld people performed roles that helped to complement the city's imperfect system of justice and defuse the tensions arising from it. Like the men whom Cervantes described in Monipodio's organization, [66] they were hired to "settle old scores," to impose a justice more swift and certain, more in tune with traditional concepts of honor than the "legality" of the city's courts. They also acted as vigilantes in executing their own kind of justice, a role performed by a gang called the Esquiveles, who killed a man in 1628 for insulting a woman. ⁽³⁰⁾

By the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the condition of justice in Seville had provoked many complaints. One citizen wrote a scathing description of his city in which there was

no administration of justice, rare truth, little honor and fear of God, and less trust; neither does anyone attain his rights without buying them or collect his estate without giving a tenth to the receiver . . . here there are no whippings unless one lacks a bodyguard, nor are people condemned to the galleys unless they lack arms; neither does anyone appear delinquent unless he is without money and can't pay scribes, lawyers, and judges. For six years I have not seen a thief hung in Seville, nor will such a thing be seen, since there are swarms of them like bees . . . the majority in Seville are bullies, pimps, false beggars, ruffians, assassins, moneylenders, hucksters, vagabonds that scrape a living from Mohammed and from those that play and rob in gambling houses and at gaming tables, for we pass from 300 gambling houses to 3000 brothels. ⁽³¹⁾

CROOKS

Available evidence is inadequate for a statistical study of crime and criminals, but it provides rich details about the people most likely to be branded criminals in early modern Seville. The overwhelming majority of people punished for crimes were young and middle-aged males. Some women were whipped and publicly humiliated for retail cheating, one was hanged for causing a "respectable woman" to have an abortion, and a few were executed for theft, adultery, killing their husbands, or other murders. Law enforcers usually went after male violators, however, an indication that women violators appeared less threatening, perhaps better constrained by marriage, convents, or social mores.

Germanesca ballads and picaresque novels of this period emphasize the youth of their criminally inclined antiheroes. Rinconete and Cortadillo were only teen-agers in Cervantes' story, although their criminal companions were somewhat older. Unfortunately, statistics do not reveal the ages of most criminals. Pedro de León did not record the age for each of the people he attended as prison chaplain between 1578 and 1616, but he did note sixteen cases in which the offender was between sixteen and twenty years, or a "youth," and he recorded one case in which the offender was sixty years old. The only juveniles younger than sixteen years who appear in criminal records are accomplices in sodomy.

Most criminals were native to Spain. ⁽³³⁾ Of the 309 people whom Pedro de León attended before their executions, only one was a gypsy, seventeen were foreigners, and forty-two were Moriscos, Negroes, or mulattos. One reason that Moriscos do not figure more prominently in crime is that they were expelled from Spain in 1609. Another reason is that the Inquisition could go after many as heretics or false Christians. Societies with agencies to enforce religious orthodoxy do not [68] have to rely solely on criminal prosecution to attack enemies. Many accounts of criminals do not mention any profession or occupation other than the crime for which they were prosecuted. Pedro de León's list includes two oil merchants and the son of a wealthy merchant. Other sources report lawyers who were convicted of crimes. ⁽³⁴⁾ Two schoolmasters were convicted of sodomy, and soldiers who had deserted their companies were sometimes turned over to civilian authorities who prosecuted them for rape, theft, highway robbery, and murder. ⁽³⁵⁾ Clerics who committed especially heinous crimes were defrocked and turned over to secular authorities for punishment. Pedro de León attended only seven condemned clerics between 1578 and 1616, one for forgery, one for murder, and the others for sodomy. Condemned clerics appear more frequently in city and ecclesiastical records in the seventeenth century, especially for sodomy and counterfeiting. ⁽³⁶⁾

Many people convicted of crimes were poor. Pedro de León wrote with great sympathy of the numbers of men imprisoned for debts, and he tried to convince creditors to write off these debts or accept a lesser amount in payment. ⁽³⁷⁾ Sometimes wealthy benefactors paid off debts for these prisoners before they died from illness or malnutrition in the prison. Poverty undoubtedly drove some people to commit theft. The chief justice (regente) reported a great number of thefts in 1639, and he attributed many of them to the economic hardships suffered because the fleet from the Indies had not yet arrived. ⁽³⁸⁾

The system of justice ensured the more stringent prosecution of poor people because it permitted the purchase of pardon for some crimes from the person who had been harmed. Highway [69] robbery and treason were excluded from this system, but widows and mothers pardoned the murderers of their husbands or sons in exchange for a payment. Not all recorded criminals were poor, however; some were nobles, and some quite wealthy. Authorities made examples of some nobles to restrain others from committing the same crimes. Usually these people had been accused of murder or sodomy.

The offense most likely to receive capital punishment was murder, accounting for 104 of the 309 cases in Pedro de León's list. Some murders were committed in conjunction with theft, highway robbery, passion, or "other crimes." Murders considered most serious involved highway robbery or adultery. Others resulted from brawls, vendettas, and the use of hired killers to settle old scores. One man was hanged for "imagined murder" after he had plotted to kill his master with poison. ⁽³⁹⁾ Murder threatened not only the Crown's ability to preserve law and order, but also its attempt to monopolize all forms of violence. The Crown had long forbidden commoners to walk the streets of Seville armed with anything other than a small knife. Pointing out the threats to the city and Crown from armed ruffians, the Crown increased penalties for violation of arms regulations. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

The city government was not willing to give the Crown exclusive power to decide who should carry arms. In the sixteenth century the council decided that city residents who went to work at night or before the sunrise should be permitted to carry arms and that the arms previously taken from them should be restored. ⁽⁴¹⁾ Moreover, city government distributed arms to nobles and citizens to hand out to their families and "entirely satisfactory neighbors" during political uprisings. In 1642, for example, the city council distributed arms throughout the parishes during an uprising set off by the presence of many Portuguese in Seville. ⁽⁴²⁾

Traditionally, nobles had the right to enter Seville's city hall [70] bearing arms, but Philip II succeeded in reserving this privilege for nobles who made handsome loans to him. In a letter of April 21, 1570, Philip II granted to Juan Gutierrez Tello the right to enter the city hall with "sword and dagger," stating that this was the privilege he customarily granted to those who loaned him 8000 ducats for one year without interest. ⁽⁴³⁾

Even though both the Crown and city government tried to limit arms-bearing, they were unable to control violence. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Pedro de León found widespread violence in Seville which neither the Crown-appointed asistente nor the city's sheriffs could control. Everyone in the city feared the "famous" thugs, and every feast day or Sunday was marked by murders and casualties. Boys came by the scores to settle grievances from the week past. Gang fights continued despite efforts of the authorities to stop them, "such was the strength of this barbarous people, indomitable and irrational." When the priest was able to divert some of the boys to the Jesuits' house, he collected from them slings, knives, skewers, small shields, and "other warlike instruments." ⁽⁴⁴⁾

One reason that violence continued in Seville was that so many people claimed the right to bear arms that city officials must have found it impossible to enforce the prohibition on weapons. Men who had been in the army frequently drifted into Seville, still wearing the sword that was once the symbol of prestigious employment. Many guards were employed in Seville's customs house, markets, mint, and prisons, and all of these men were armed.

Ironically, the city's and Crown's attempts to limit arms encouraged the development of an illegal violent elite. If ordinary citizens were forbidden to carry arms, they would look to the thugs and ruffians who were willing to carry out violence for them. These hired bullies and killers could command a higher price as the severity of law enforcement against them increased. Men resisting arrest directly challenged the government's attempt to monopolize violence. The famous ruffian Damián de Carmona resisted so vigorously that he was subdued only after a pitched [71] battle with one hundred lawmen. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ After he was hanged for murder, his hands and head were cut off and displayed to warn other ruffians of the consequences of defying authority.

Theft and highway robbery were the next most commonly prosecuted crimes after murder. Some thieves were whipped or exiled from the city, but those who were suspected of committing several thefts were executed as "famous thieves." House-breaking, horse theft, and other simple forms of theft by individuals were not prosecuted as often as highway robbery, a crime that seriously threatened the efforts of the Crown to preserve order and control violence on the roads of the empire. The implication of a city sheriff in one of the highway robbery gangs intensified Crown reluctance to leave law and order to local authorities. Moreover, highway robbery interfered with the activities of wealthy merchants who provided the major tax base for the Crown. When one highway gang nabbed 15,000 ducats in merchandise and money in a single attack, the Crown suffered not only a blow to its political authority, but also a severe loss in taxable wealth. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

Another reason why highway robbery was taken so seriously is that it was usually carried out by gangs. Pedro de León reported that many active gangs of highwaymen met in the little food stands along the river in Seville to plan their attacks on travelers taking the roads out of the city. These gangs and other thieves' organizations would have been too visible in rural villages, but they easily blended into the crowds of the city. Population growth in Seville promoted anonymity and weakened traditional social restraints, so that groups of young thugs felt much freer to bully, terrorize, and rob. One historian has interpreted these offenses as collective retorts to society. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

The high proportion of people executed for sex crimes is [72] striking. Pedro de León reported two cases of adultery, two of bestiality, four of rape, and fifty-two of sodomy. The far greater number of sodomy convictions implies that these offenses were reported more often than rape or adultery and that they were considered more serious. The method of execution supports this conclusion, for sodomizers were executed by burning, while rapists were hanged. One man convicted of bestiality was burned, while the burro that was his partner in this offense was hanged. In 1604 authorities burned for sodomy an old street vendor of Triana, "fat, deaf, and blind," hardly a threatening figure. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Sodomy had traditionally been treated as a sin against nature, but its criminal prosecution in this period suggests that it was also an offense to the political order. The prevailing moral system controlled female sexuality through convent, marriage, or licensed brothel; but sexuality in men was not so neatly contained. Evidently their deviant behavior could not be treated as merely a sin, a problem between man and God. It was considered an offense against the moral order that was imposed by an alliance of the Crown, Church, and city oligarchy.

Crimes of fraud account for many prosecutions in this period, particularly frauds against royal prerogatives. Two oil merchants, for example, were accused of cheating on the royal tenth taken from all oil sold in the city. A clergyman was hanged for forging royal decrees, and another man was executed because he used fraudulent playing cards. His crime was not an offense against a gambling ethic so much as a violation of the royal monopoly on playing cards. Violators of price ceilings were vigorously prosecuted, for they were not just cheating city residents, they were challenging the right of the city government to set and enforce price ceilings. Forgers of letters of credit and other commercial papers also challenged the commercial order. They had to be stopped if the city oligarchy was to establish a climate in which merchants and shippers could do business together.

There is evidence that commercial crimes increased in the seventeenth century. One reason is that the Crown began to require the use of stamped paper in this period, and forgery of [73] stamped paper became a rather common white collar crime, often carried out by clergymen. During this century, the Crown also decreed the frequent restamping of coins. Counterfeiting thrived, and the problem became so grave that the Crown sent a special judicial officer to Seville in 1641 to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters. Among those he arrested were several lawyers and  the chief assistant to the head of the city council. Many people were imprisoned, and almost all of them, under torture, confessed to the crime. Twenty-five were sent to the galleys, and six were hanged. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Economic distress increased the numbers of people who were willing to risk counterfeiting. In 1652 some poor people with only a few reales desperately restamped them to show higher denominations. The royal prosecutor hanged one man who had restamped seven reales. ⁽⁵⁰⁾

Prosecutions for smuggling also increased in the seventeenth century, reflecting an increasing economic distress and a growing royal determination to control trade. The customs house of Seville was finished in 1587, and all merchandise entering the port was required to pass through it. More than 250 people worked here as receivers, administrators, guards, scribes, stampers, and wardens. Surrounded by wealth and paid small salaries, these officials were excellent targets for people willing to pay bribes in order to "facilitate" the importing of merchandise. For these small officials, many boatmen and sailors, smuggling was an ordinary way to increase their incomes. ⁽⁵¹⁾

Royal officials especially considered smuggling a serious crime, and the Crown frequently urged customs officials to prosecute offenders more vigorously. In 1638, for example, Philip IV directed a royal judge in Seville to prosecute very severely certain men accused of smuggling tobacco into the city. ⁽⁵²⁾ Smuggling in [74] the eyes of the Crown was much more serious than simply evading a tax at the city gates; not only was it a violation of royal directive, a challenge to royal efforts to use commerce for its own benefit, but it threatened royal income, for the Crown received hundreds of thousands of ducats by granting the right to collect import duties. If smugglers were not prosecuted, the privilege would have no economic value and no one would be willing to buy it from the Crown. Despite royal severity, this crime flourished. City records describe a well-organized group in the mid-seventeenth century that dealt only in contraband, led by "princes of the blood" and several lesser nobles. ⁽⁵³⁾

The acts defined as crime were those which posed a challenge to the social order. Authorities in sixteenth-century Seville considered murder, moral crimes, and highway robbery to be the most serious challenges. Later in the seventeenth century, commercial crimes of counterfeiting and smuggling became particularly serious. The prosecutions reveal an on-going struggle in power relations in the city between armed men and government officials who wanted to control violence; a struggle between sexual deviants and an oligarchy that wanted to preserve its position through enforcing a moral order; a conflict between a revenue-seeking Crown and city residents who wanted to evade import duties and monetary devaluation.

Underworld people were useful in these struggles. On the one hand, they personified crime and provided a target against which royal officials, city notables, and lowly residents could unite. On the other hand, they buffered some of the antagonisms built into the system of justice. They acted as the hired thugs, pimps, and smugglers so useful to many city residents. Crime was not a monopoly of the underworld, for seemingly respectable citizens and underworld people alike found that certain crimes were useful and profitable, and they often found that they could work together. Citizens unwilling to break laws could use people of the underworld who were willing to commit crimes for a price. The partnership was not always easy, but it persisted, and it fed on the tensions between local traditions of justice and the definitions of crime which increasingly reflected royal interests.

1. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:511.

2. Albert F. Calvert, An Historical and Descriptive Account of "The Pearl of Andalucia" (New York, 1913), p. 41.

3. Ortiz de Zuñiga, 4:574.

4. Morgado, p. 190. Guichot y Parody, 1:177. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 229. The Pendon Verde is discussed as a popular symbol in Chaves, p. 29, and Guichot y Parody, 2:16-17.

5. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: De los fieles executores," folios 47-48. Ortiz de Zuñga 4:513-515. Guichot y Parody, 2:39-48.

6. Guichot y Parody, 2:38.

7. Ibid., pp. 65-66. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 2, No. 17. Guichot y Parody, 2:81-86.

8. AMS, Papeles Importantes, Siglo XVI, Tomo 12, No. 13. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 2, No. 19. Santiago Montoto, Sevilla en el Imperio, Siglo XVI (Sevilla, 1937), pp. 60-61. Ortiz de Zuniga, 4:574.

9. "Casos del tumulto de Sevilla de 22 de mayo del año de 1652," Papeles varios, BC, 83-7-14, folios 18 1-182.

10. AMS, Papeles Importantes, Siglo XVII, Tomo 3, No. 17.

11. Algunas memorias, BC, 84-7-2 1, folios 228^v.-229.

12. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: De las alcaldes de la tierra," folio 53.

13. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 31, No. 24.

14. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: De los que deven gozar la Corona," folio 68.

15. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 75.

16. "1616-1634," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11.

17. Ariño, pp. 52-55.

18. Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folio 205^v.

19. "Relacion de la translacion de la imagen," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-13, folio 159, lists the great variety of Inquisition officials; Kamen, Inquisition, p. 195, discusses the costs of autos. Henry C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (New York, 1922), 1:328-334, reports on concealment of confiscations from the Crown.

20. Lea, pp. 422-423.

21. Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 206^v.-207.

22. Quoted in Domínguez Ortiz, Estamento, pp. 232-233.

23. Pedro de Leon, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 22.

24. Petrovitch, p. 195, discusses this problem.

25. Cristóbal de Chaves, "Relación de las cosas de la cárcel de Sevilla y su trato," Papeles del Conde del Aguila, AMS, Tomo B-C, Part II.

26. For false witnesses, see Alemán, also quoted in Pike, Enterprise, p. 36. Pedro de León describes a false inquisitor in his Compendio, Part II, Chapter 26, folios 197-198.

27. Morgado, pp. 183-184. The old system of elected constables in each neighborhood is in AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: Del alguazil mayor, y de los otros alguaziles."

28. Cervantes, "Rinconete," p. 102.

29. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 302. Another example is in Ariño, pp. 42-45, who discusses the 1597 arrest and trial of an alguacil mayor for murder.

30. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," Tomo 20, folio 22. Cervantes, "Rinconete," pp. 115-116. Julian Pitt-Rivers found a similar contrast between traditional popular concepts of honor and state-imposed legality in a twentiety-century Spanish village. See his The People of the Sierra (Chicago and London, 1971), pp. 129-130, 159; also his essay "Honour and Social Status," in Peristiany, ed., pp. 30-31.

31. Porras de la Cámara, quoted in Domínguez Ortiz, Orto, p. 68.

32. "Informe de las Jurados de Sevilla a Felipe IV," quoted ibid.

33. See the excellent study in I. A. A. Thompson.

34. "Algunas cosas notables sucedidas en Sevilla," BC, 84-7-19, folio 101.

35. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 112.

36. See for example, Joseph Maldonado Danila y Saavedra. "Tratado verdadero del motin que hubo en esta ciudad este alto de 1652," BC, 84-7-21, folio 133^V.

37. Pedro de León, Part II, Chapter 5, folios 118-120.

38. Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, "Documentos para la historia de Sevilla," Archivo Hispalense, Series 2, 32-33 (1960), 73-74.

39. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 72.

40. Guichot y Parody, 1:372. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: De los vandos y armes y de los omes de mal vivir," folios 62-63.

41. AMS, Archivo General, Sección 1, Carpeta 25, No. 220.

42. "Algunas memorias," BC, 84-7-21, folio 261^V.

43. Quoted in Fernandez Melgarejo, B.C. 84-3-42.

44. Pedro de León, Part I, chapter 3, folios 6-9.

45. Ibid., appendix 1 to Part II, Case 207.

46. Ibid., Cases 207, 213, 214, 300, 301, 302, 304.

47. For a higher visibility of crime in rural areas, see William A. Christian, Jr., Person and God in a Spanish Valley (New York and London, 1972), p. 163. Yves Castan, "Mentalités rurale et urbaine a la fin de l'Ancien Régime dans le ressort du Parlement de Toulouse d'après les sacs a procès criminels (1730-1790)," in Abbiateci, et al., p. 165, discusses crime as a collective retort.

48. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 13. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," No. 1.

49. "Diferentes casos," Memorias eclesiásticas, BC, 84-7-19, folios 215^V-216^V.

50. See the letter from Fray Juan de los Santos of Seville, April 23, 1652 in the appendix of Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Alteraciones andaluzas (Madrid, 1973), pp. 205-207.

51. Cf. Cal Winslow's discussion of smuggling in Douglas Hay, et al., Albion's Fatal Tree; Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), pp. 149-150.

52. AMS, Archivo General, Sección 1, Carpeta 148, No. 211; and Carpeta 10, No. 169.

53. Domínguez Ortiz, "Documentos," pp. 74-75.