[95] The two kings might claim, each in his own way, the title "emperor of culture." Their literary remains are by themselves impressive, as we have just seen for Catalonia. But lyrics and letters alone cannot characterize the cultural contributions of these many-sided monarchs. Both strongly fostered universities and the study and application of Roman Law in their realms. James's reign and patronage deserve a chapter in the history of philosophy (Llull), of medicine (Vilanova), of Western contacts with Islam (Ramon Martì, the Dominican schools of Arabic, the translations of Vilanova), of technology (paper manufacture, mill power, hospitals), and Jewish learning (Moses b. Nahman, Ibn Adreth). The cultural contributions by Alfonso the Learned, both personal and indirect, far outshine those of James; in our own day, a small army of scholars is absorbed in probing and assessing his variegated achievement.

Alfonso's incredible intellectual grasp encompassed such diverse interests as the mystical and physical properties of stones, the Gallegan verses of the Cantigas, the Alfonsine astronomical tables and their translation into Castilian, and the study of games. Probably more than any other repository of the past, the Escorial Library remains the place where one can best sample the remarkable extent of his sponsorship. Here the manuscripts that are the product of his time continue to open to us the world in which he lived, through their stunning illustrations. The interplay of Islamic and Christian cultures in that milieu is visible to us -- as thoughtful figures[96] still concentrate on their chessboards and musicians perform with viols, bells, horns, bagpipes, harps, organs, and rattles in one Cantigas manuscript, while Muslims and Christians involve themselves in street life, miracles, and battle vividly presented in another. The scrutiny and calculation of heavenly motions that would so typify the West find some of their origin in yet another set of illustrations.

At first glance it might seem improper to discuss the grim business of war in the presence of the enriched cultural life the two kings encouraged. But the arena of war was very much a part of that extensive body of interests possessed by the two monarchs. One of the Cantigas manuscripts and its illustrations fairly bristles with combat and its attendant aspects. Swords, knives, spears, lances, javelins, and maces, along with the shields and assorted body accouterments designed to protect the individual from the onslaught of this grisly array of weaponry, fill the pages of a manuscript devoted to stories of the Virgin, a mute testimony to the contemporary view that even these barbarous endeavors could be dedicated to God and his saints. Cities stand besieged beside the armies that would batter their walls, assault their towers, and terminate the lives of many of their citizens. Encounters of both individuals and massed armies take place in vivid colors, where blood-red has a particular prominence. Nor should such seeming incongruity surprise us, for the efforts of James to carve out his kingdom by victories over Spanish Muslims, and of Alfonso to maintain the realm built by his father Fernando III, required nothing less than a well-developed royal skill in waging war. It is most fitting that we remember them as their contemporaries did, not only as patrons of culture but as warrior-crusaders.

Tempting as it is to dwell upon the rich culture fostered by these men, it is the warrior roles of Alfonso and James that absorb us here. My own studies in the development of municipal military activity, and its impact on peninsular life in the central Middle Ages, lead me to examine royal policy as it affected the military role of towns in their respective kingdoms. In an age that did not offer large standing armies at the disposal of rulers, the growth and development of a municipal [97] military capability was crucial in constructing a military establishment able to conquer and hold territory. In this regard, both Alfonso and James were continuers rather than creators. The origins of royal encouragement for municipalities to evolve military establishments, in order to hold and advance the frontier, go back at least to the eleventh century both in Castile and in the realms of Aragon. Each ensuing period presented its particular challenge in the form of revived taifa or breakaway Islamic states, periodically revitalized by the infusion of Almoravids and Almohads from North Africa. Leonese-Castilian and Aragonese kings therefore had to adjust their military machinery, to meet ever-changing needs of the threat from the Islamic south and from their own mutual competitiveness. The most basic task assigned to the towns was to populate and hold the territories assigned them. Nonetheless, they soon proved capable of launching small independent campaigns outside their own lands and of supplementing, sometimes rather substantially, the royal hosts for major campaigns with offensive and defensive objectives. Municipal militia contingents were present at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), in the capture of Cordova (1236) and Seville (1248), and in the contemporary Valencian campaigns, to cite only the principal endeavors of which we have a record. Supplementing the chronicle accounts are the numerous municipal documents, especially the fueros and furs and the cartas pueblas, which specify the nature of the municipal military requirement and the methods by which it was to be fulfilled.

By the later twelfth century, the tendency to organize and consolidate municipal law, including its military aspects, had led to the development of large collections of municipal regulations gathered into charters, which were awarded to a series of towns in a manuscript grouping often referred to as a "family." One such group that matured in the twelfth century in the Iberian Cordilleran frontier of Castile and Aragon, as I have argued elsewhere, was shared by both kingdoms and is known as the Cuenca-Teruel family. ⁽¹⁾ By means of contemporary [98] chronicles and municipal documents it is possible to establish the outlines of municipal military capability and the contribution it made to the growing kingdoms. Conversely, it is also possible to suggest the nature of the impact of continuing military service on town residents and their way of life.

In observing this pattern of municipal military endeavor, one also perceives important differences emerging between Aragon and Castile. These differences reached a crucial stage in the reigns of Alfonso X and James I. James's reign clearly marks that point in the evolution of the Crown of Aragon where peninsular expansion came to its natural termination. For Castile, Alfonso's reign also clearly marks the point where continuance of his kingdom's remarkable expansiveness to the south was blocked for nearly two centuries by challenges that overmatched royal capabilities. In such an age of transition the municipalities, and the policies of Alfonso and James toward them, offer indications of the kinds of stress and change encountered by the towns. They also present aspects of the two kings as warrior-monarchs that can assist in evaluating performance in these roles.

In many ways Castile presents a complex set of problems for municipal military evolution. Alfonso inherited a vastly expanded realm at his father's death in 1252. Both the reuniting of Castile and León under Fernando III in 1230 and the headlong rush from the central meseta into Andalusia with the conquests of Cordova, Jaén, Murcia, and Seville had expanded the kingdom with an incredible period of growth. At the outset of his reign, Alfonso's southern frontier reached from the mouth of the Guadiana in the west to the port of Alicante in the east. The entire Muslim frontier was now encompassed within the Castilian state. Since Fernando had acquired his conquests piecemeal, and had devoted the bulk of his energies to further expansion rather than to the internal organization of Castile, Alfonso had before him the dual task [99] of internal consolidation and frontier expansion against Nasrid Granada. One method of pursuing these goals was the creation of a body of law -- the Siete partidas code -- by which his entire realm might be governed. This was destined to remain nothing more than a kind of "constitution under glass" for the next century. Meanwhile a far more basic and confusingly diverse resource would have to be used: the assorted regional fueros of the kingdom.

There were at least three fuero traditions to which Alfonso could have turned in building a basis for municipal laws and customs of a more general nature. Clearly the king did not regard combat with the Muslims as a thing of the past, so he granted fueros with military-service requirements throughout his state. The most extensive statement of such requirements made before his time had appeared in the Cuenca-Teruel family of charters in the reign of El Sabio's great-uncle Alfonso VIII, toward the end of the twelfth century. This set of laws had then spread rather widely as far west as Plasencia and Béjar in that reign; but its primary concentration had been south and west from the Iberian Cordillera across eastern Castile, La Mancha, and upper Andalusia. ⁽²⁾ While it appears that Alfonso X gave copies of this fuero to Ciudad Real in 1255, to Requena in 1257, and to Almansa in 1265, in none of these cases does the text survive. ^{(3) Alfonso does not seem to have [100]} been favorably disposed toward the Cuenca pattern. He even attempted to supplant the 1236 version given by Fernando III to Baeza, before reversing himself in 1273 and restoring it there. ⁽⁴⁾ Beyond this, there is no record of his assigning the Cuenca model anywhere, although it reappeared after his reign. A second family of extended fueros emerged in the Leonese kingdom between 1208 and 1210 at Coria, and at four Portugese frontier castle towns then in control of Alfonso IX of León. This same fuero was granted to Cáceres in 1230 and to Usagre in 1242. ⁽⁵⁾ Alfonso X would make no use whatsoever of this model, and the Coria pattern therefore became extinct.

Fernando III had originated a new model for frontier charters, less extensive in its military law than had been the case in Cuenca or Coria, when he granted a fuero to Cordova in 1241. Some of this law had its origin in a body of municipal precedents tied to the assorted fueros of Toledo, going back to the early twelfth century, a system of law that García Gallo has argued was intended as a royalist counterpoise to the more liberal pattern of Cuenca-Teruel. Cordova, however, was to contain provisions related to military service not found in the earlier Toledan precedents. Charters ostensibly modeled on the new Cordova charter were granted to Mula in 1245 and [101] Cartagena in 1246; and in one of his last acts Fernando III granted it to Carmona in May 1252. ⁽⁶⁾Of this group of charters, the first at Cordova and the last at Carmona were the most extensive, particularly in the added provisions concerning military law.

The more extensive Cordova-Carmona version, apparently created for the Andalusian frontier, did find some favor with Alfonso X, who in 1252 gave it to Alicante, the port city that anchored his Murcian frontier with Aragon. Alfonso awarded it to Lorca in 1271, the fortress town astride the main road from Granada into Murcia. ⁽⁷⁾ One could say that Alfonso's military policy for the towns of his kingdom began with the extension of this charter family in its Cordovan variant, first awarded by him five months after his father's death. What does it tell us of Fernando's and Alfonso's municipal-military frontier policy? To begin with, it shows that the social fluidity of municipal warfare was to be maintained, inasmuch as peones (meaning both a basic freeman status and a class that fought on foot in town warfare) had the right to acquire the urban-aristocratic ranking of caballero by purchase of the proper horse, arms, and landholdings (heredades). The ability to move from peón to caballero class, through the acquisition of a horse and a willingness to fight on its back, had been an [102] ongoing feature of peninsular warfare during the early Middle Ages. It is interesting to see the process still potentially at work in the Andalusian and Murcian frontier -- given the strong indications in the north that stratification into a social and economic classes was beginning. ⁽⁸⁾

Familiar restrictions were also included against taking arms and horses into Moorish territory; and concern is evident for the protection of royal and municipal standards during apellidos (emergency assemblies for the defense of the town) and cabalgadas (mounted raiding forays). The standards, along with the keys to the gates of the town and the town seal, were to remain in the possession of the juez (the chief administrative official of the town), who was instructed to be well armed on such occasions and even to include a mail coat for his horse. ⁽⁹⁾ This concern derives from the high symbolic value placed on royal and town standards, which were a natural target in combat and on which bounties were often placed. All castles won by municipal militia were to be handed over to the king, although at Carmona and Lorca (both with charters given late in the reigns of their respective monarchs) such castles could be reawarded to the takers after the death of the ruler. ⁽¹⁰⁾ The Cordova group of charters also included a hint of the frontier instability that must have been much on the mind of ruler and subject alike, considering the unhappy possibility that Muslims might retake lands wrenched from them. A law insured that should residents lose heredades to Moorish counter-conquest, once the land had been retaken the original owners could expect to have their holdings restored. ⁽¹¹⁾

Finally, there was concern over matters regarding the caballero class and its legal standing, a concern that would be echoed repeatedly in Alfonso's charters. To receive the tax exemptions that went with municipal knightly status, the caballero was required to reside in town and to inhabit a house [103] in the villa with his wife and children. When a caballero passed away, his horse and arms, the prime qualifications for his class status in the town as well as his military value to the king, were to be passed to his sons (or to his parents if no children existed). His wife was to maintain caballero rank during widowhood; any male children would also receive the benefits of that status until old enough to serve in their own right. ⁽¹²⁾  To be sure, much of this caballero law derives from the older municipal tradition of the later twelfth century in León-Castile. But the repeated stress on this maintenance of status and arms during the course of Alfonso's rule suggests an area of concern on the part of the king. This will require further examination, after we have seen more of his municipal military legislation.

While Alicante's  fuero saw Alfonso move in the direction of older municipal law, the task left by his father to organize and synthesize the widely spread territories of his kingdom soon intruded upon Alfonso's legal conceptions. Doubtless already contemplating with his legists the compilation of the vast  Siete partidas code that lay a decade into the future, Alfonso in 1255-56 opened a dramatic new initiative in municipal law with the widespread imposition of a unified municipal code. This pattern was frequently identified by the editors of the Memorial histórico español as the Fuero real. I will do so in this study only to give these fueros an identifiable group name, not to suggest that there was a necessary relationship between these charters and the independent code of that name, or any relationship to the Espéculo as suggested by García Gallo. By 1256 versions of this new pattern, with laws pertaining to military service, were given in a broad stroke to the meseta towns of central Castile -- including Burgos and Buitrago in the far northeast; Arévalo, Avila, Cuéllar, and Peñafiel north of the Central Sierras; Atienza east of Madrid; and Trujillo in Extremadura. An amplification of these laws appeared at Escalona in 1261, and then at Madrid in 1262. These amplifications [104] were added to the fueros of Avila and Cuéllar in 1264 while a further and very interesting amplification was given to Madrid in that same year.

Presumably this pseudo-Fuero real pattern represented the direction of Alfonso's municipal thinking, as well as an effort to unify the diverse regional traditions of town law that had emerged during the preceding centuries of the Reconquest. For a monarch bent on consolidating the loose-knit institutional state that was the result of two centuries of expansion, these regional diversities were intolerable. Besides the inequity of laws differing from town to town, there was a problem in attempting to build a system of law from established fueros such as Cuenca when no single body of tradition, no matter how well written, could easily be applied outside of the area where it had germinated. As a solution to the problem of diversity, Alfonso's prototype law encountered mixed results at best. Valladolid received the amplified fuero in 1265; and aspects of its military requirements are to be found in the  fuero received by Murcia after its restoration in 1266, and at Requena in 1268. Alfonso had acquired a significant number of distractions by this time, however, and there is little indication that he pursued the imposition of the  Fuero real any further for the remainder of his reign. In fact, as noted earlier, he was persuaded to remove this type of charter at Baeza, restoring the older Cuenca-format fuero in 1273.

In terms of content, and the indications the Fuero real offers about the future thrust of Alfonso's urban military policies, the 1256 versions reveal a blend of old and new law. To secure their normal rights, caballeros were required to reside in town from eight days before Christmas until eight days after the Sunday before Lent, maintaining a house in which their wives and children stayed during that period.(13)Requiring [105] residence was not a new concept; it had some frequency in Leonese municipal law at the beginning of the century. Specifying the time period was something else; it had only appeared once before, where duration but not the particular point in the year was indicated. ⁽¹⁴⁾ More interesting was the specification of caballero weapons, again not new as a concept but with a list of required weapons and armor longer than any that had appeared before. The horse had to have a value of thirty maravedís or more; and the properly equipped mounted warrior required a shield, a lance, a metal helmet, a sword, and a mail body jacket (loriga), with padded jacket beneath (perpunt), along with arm and thigh protectors (brofuneras). ⁽¹⁵⁾The list suggests a sense of experience with combat hazards, especially in the case of the padded jacket beneath the mail coat, not only for comfort but to avoid the ever-present danger of blood poisoning when metal came into contact with an open wound. Just as significant, this long and [106] detailed list invites one to ponder at least two possibilities: that the urban knightly class had been turning out in recent decades ill equipped and ill prepared to fight; and that a reason for such concern about the battle safety of caballeros was that there were simply not enough of them to meet military pressures and needs envisioned by Alfonso for the remainder of his rule.

The Fuero real charters took care to assure the continuance of knightly status for the widow when her husband died, and for her children as well until the males were old enough to serve. ⁽¹⁶⁾ This was in keeping with intensifying efforts on the part of that class to make permanent its social and economic prerogatives. To make service in the royal hueste a bit more attractive, during the years that the town concejo took its municipal contingent on campaign with the king it was freed of the census tax known as the marzadga, ⁽¹⁷⁾ The status of caualero fijosdalgo was also granted to men who had the proper horse and arms, in Alicante and in Cartagena in 1257, and to archers and ship captains as well; but what constituted "proper" equipment was not specified in either grant. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Beyond this remarkable attempt in the Fuero real to find some kind of universal formula for municipal law, the period from 1256 to 1261 was marked only by a handful of royal fueros, which offered some military service exemptions here and additional requirements there. These represented a scattered application of older municipal law, which gave little hint of the major program on which Alfonso had embarked. (19) Not until the [107] 1261-65 period do we see the outlines of a renewed effort in the approaching shadow of the Murcian revolts.

In 1261 the town of Escalona west of Madrid received the first in a new group of charters related to the Fuero real. It contained all the military references typical of the grants of 1256, as did the fuero granted to Madrid one year later. There were, however, some interesting changes in emphasis. First, the period of residence seems to have been extended to the feast day of John the Baptist (24 June), making the caballero dwelling-time in the town approximately a half year. Second, there was a notable swing toward extending the exemption list a caballero might claim. In Burgos, Buitrago, and Peñafiel caballeros gained tax-exempt status for their bread suppliers, millers, gardeners, those who took care of their children, and assorted livestock tenders. To this list Escalona and Madrid added beekeepers and household managers. The caballeros were also to have a certain number of random exemptions, to be given to those whom they chose, acquired through military service and provision of equipment. Two such excuses were gained for service in the royal hueste, three more could be had for the provision of a field tent, and five could be gained for bringing a horse-loriga (mail covering for a horse). ⁽²⁰⁾

This stress upon exemptions is reminiscent of a trend in [108] twelfth- and thirteenth-century Leonese law, which appears to have been migrating now into Castile. The town of Sanabria in northwestern León bordering on Galicia received a fuero in 1263 that, while it bore no other connection to the Fuero real family, indicates the continued survival of the liberal Leonese tradition of random dispensations granted from military service. ⁽²¹⁾ In April 1264 two towns that had already received a version of the royal fuero were granted supplementary charters offering curious additions in caballero obligations regarding military service. Avila could now extend the random tax exemptions of the knightly class to bread suppliers, as well as to minor brothers and nephews. These were valid until such male relatives were old enough to serve in their own right^{. (22)} Cuéllar, while lacking this law, did note the right of justifiably excused caballeros to maintain their class status and thereby be free of the fonsadera penalty-fee for failing to serve in the hueste. ⁽²³⁾ Neither Avila nor Cuéllar were given any of the equipment exemptions seen at Escalona and Madrid, but a new element does turn up in both fueros, in an extended law discussing the inheritance of horse and arms. Henceforth the horse, and those arms that rendered the caballero capable of giving military service and of maintaining his status, were to be inherited by the eldest son and not made available for the normal estate division among all relatives. ⁽²⁴⁾ In the same year that these amplifications of the Fuero real were received in Avila and Cuéllar, a similar body of law was given by Alfonso in an ordenamiento for the towns of the reino of Extremadura, including the provisions against dividing up a caballero's horse and arms, the widow's right to continued caballero status, and the special tax exemption for service in the hueste. ⁽²⁵⁾

[109] This concern with the municipal vecino and his arms reached its fullest development with a charter given to Madrid in August 1264. In this instance the persons involved were not referred to as caballeros or peones, but simply as pecheros or taxpayers. Probably both classes were being treated together, since the required weapons list (typical of the Fuero real listing for caballeros) included the right to substitute a crossbow (ballesta) for the lance and a mountaineer's long knife (cuchiello serranil) for the sword. Since the lance and sword were quintessential knightly weapons, while the crossbow and the knife tended to be considered weapons of infantrymen, the two groups are almost certainly gathered here under the name of pecheros. To make the crossbow substitution, Alfonso stipulated that the archer be able to pull the bow well. The unitary inheritance of weapons by the eldest son was reiterated here again -- with the added stipulation that if the eldest son already had the necessary weapons, the deceased vecino's armament should still be kept together and inherited en bloc by the next eldest son.

While this revived interest in the peones is noteworthy, more revealing is the elaboration of how weapon-possession was to be verified. There were to be no armaments borrowed from another, nor any on which debts were pledged. Money was not an acceptable substitute for weapons. To assure that all these conditions were being met, moreover, the required arsenal of the pecheros had to be placed on display twice annually in the plaza of the town, so that weapons might be inspected. Inspection times were mid-March and Michaelmas in late September, a kind of before and after check for the campaign season. At least one other city began such inspections at about this time: Seville used the nearby Campo de Tablada as its inspection site. ⁽²⁶⁾

[110]

 

---

Valladolid did receive a fuero in this pattern in August 1265, which included a statement of the caballero's required horse and arms together with a number of the other military status laws that derive from the original 1256 charter and its later amplifications. But its charter lacked a specific period for retaining a populated house in town, a unitary law of weapons inheritance, or any reference to the weapons inspection required a year earlier in Madrid. ⁽²⁸⁾ This was the first suggestion of a drifting away from specificity, which stood in sharp contrast to the pre-1205 policies. Another important opportunity passed by when Alfonso was able to resettle the city of Murcia, in May 1266, and to grant the former Islamic vassal city a royal charter. The outline of the Fuero real was there, with its requirement of an inhabited house peopled by the family of the caballero or peón, and with the stipulation that these two classes have appropriate weapons; but again no time frame was noted, and now mandated weapons were not listed. Alfonso gave a similarly unspecified set of requirements to Elche's knights and infantrymen in 1267. ⁽²⁹⁾ By 1268 all of [114] Requena's residents were given town-residence exemptions if they performed fortification maintenance on the town walls and regional fortifications; caballeros with an inhabited house (again without a cited period) did not need to perform even that chore. ⁽³⁰⁾ Escalona received a supplement to its charters in 1269 that seemed a step backward from its earlier Fuero real regulations of 1261. The specific period of domicile residence and the weapons lists were no longer stated, although possibly the former specifications were still assumed. ⁽³¹⁾

After this point, the fueros and their content thin out considerably. The Cortes at Jerez in 1268 did consider the price of arms in the kingdom, but such an elaborate and expensive kind as to have little implication for the average municipal militiamen. ⁽³²⁾ Another set of laws on aspects of military service, as distinct from exemptions from service, appears in 1273. The caballeros of Cáceres were to receive their tax exemptions without having the appropriate horse and arms, as reward for their past service against Granada; Seville's caballeros had an unspecified list of arms granted; and Baeza had her Cuenca-model restored.⁽³³⁾ While Baeza's restored fuero contained the ample body of militia laws of the Cuenca format, it nonetheless represented a defeat for Alfonso. It probably replaced a Fuero real model he had imposed earlier, and thus it marked another victory of territorial over national law.

The last suggestion of any backbone in the royal municipal military policy comes at Aguilar de Campo in 1277: any money gained through military service by the caballeros had to be returned if the knight had attempted to serve without proper equipment, and had to be paid back double if he resisted the penalty. ⁽³⁴⁾ It seems unlikely that Alfonso would [115] have been in any position to enforce such a provision by 1277. His endeavors on all fronts were in the process of disintegration, in the face of aristocratic revolts on behalf of his son Sancho. The king was soon forced to call on Islamic support in trying to put down the incipient insurrection in his realms, a step that certainly obviated any further development in a unified military policy for his towns. The Siete partidas offered indications of his program in its ample sections on military law, but lack of opportunity to promulgate the code left all this in the realm of theoretical consideration. The towns were already going their own way.

With the decline of a centrist initiative from the king after 1265, the independent municipal activity typical of the earlier Reconquest reappeared, with indeed a certain amount of royal encouragement. While the towns of the meseta pressed to lighten their military obligations, and to solidify the aristocratic class that had developed in the frontier wars, the towns on the new frontier represented what was left of the combat burdens and profits. Lorca especially was able to consolidate its position during and after the Muslim revolts. The town concejo acquired the castles of Puentes and Feli, and secured an exemption from the one-fifth royal booty-tax in 1265 during the height of the Murcian revolt. It received the Cordova-pattern fuero of 1271, with its right to reoccupy any castle captured and given to the king at the conclusion of Alfonso's reign, and also acquired the castle of Celia from the king in 1277. ⁽³⁵⁾ Once Murcia was taken, it too began to develop a substantial base for independent action, receiving its rather nonspecific Fuero real charter in 1266. In 1267 it gained the [116] right to control the roads in its vicinity, and to have the villages of Mula and Molena Seca serve in the hueste under its standard. ⁽³⁶⁾

Allowing such towns to gain these measures of local security certainly served the purpose of making them more independent militarily, but it augured badly for the future of royal control in the area. Once Arcos de la Frontera was restored to Christian control in 1268, it was allowed to limit its hueste service south of the Guadalquivir River -- a problem if Alfonso ever required their assistance in the central kingdom, as he soon did. ⁽³⁷⁾ Meanwhile the towns were showing strong indications of collective response to the growing disorders in the realm. The Andalusian cities of Cordova, Jaén, Baeza, Úbeda, Andújar, San Esteban, Iznatoraf, Quesada, and Cazorla formed a hermandad for mutual defense against the Muslims in 1265, including efforts to settle local internal disputes. There were some very harsh fines for those who provoked disorder, wished to pass through their territory illegally, or refused to cooperate in joint military endeavors. ⁽³⁸⁾ This kind of joint alliance reappeared among the same Andalusian frontier towns in 1282, when the towns were prepared to defend themselves against either Alfonso or his rebellious son Sancho. ⁽³⁹⁾ These were not the first such brotherhoods among [117] frontier towns in the Castilian Reconquest, and they were not destined to be the last. Alfonso's failure had meant the revisitation of the past upon himself and his successors.

In the Crown of Aragon, on the other hand, one might judge from some recent scholarship that little attention needs to be given to examining municipal military service. A good deal of attention has gone into the evolution of Catalan and Aragonese feudalism; but the most recent survey of Reconquest military history passed over any reference to the municipal militias of the Crown of Aragon, while giving substantial coverage to those of Castile. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ No one can blame King James for this imbalance of coverage, for his chronicle or Llibre dels feyts carefully records their participation in his victories, especially in the campaigns leading to the capture of Valencia. In point of fact, like Alfonso, James was the heir of a municipal military tradition in the history of upland Aragon proper. In its own way this tradition was as complex as that which developed in the Castilian meseta, and it too found its roots in the eleventh century. Elsewhere I have attempted to depict its evolution in the decades preceding the accession of King James, especially the part of it that derived from the upland hills, valleys, and sierras of the Iberian Cordillera. ⁽⁴¹⁾ The culmination of this tradition and its military laws ripened in the same Cuenca-Teruel fueros already mentioned for Castile. (42) But unlike Cuenca with its large family of imitators spreading into New Castile, La Mancha, and upper Andalusia, Teruel's extended fuero found its way to only one other town in upland Aragon, where it was awarded to Albarracín around the time of its conquest in 1220. ⁽⁴³⁾ This sharp contrast [118] to the extensive spread of the highly similar fuero of Cuenca generated by the same regional traditions as Teruel, poses one of a series of questions about the differences in municipal military tradition between Castile and the Crown of Aragon. These differences have a very direct bearing on the manner in which Alfonso and James would try to use such forces.
It can be argued that the towns of eastern Castile that received the Cuencan charter represented the directions in which frontier resettlement moved from the Cordillera, dominated by the very great importance of cattle migration and grazing areas. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ On the other hand, Teruel and the other Aragonese towns of the Cordillera lacked a sufficient population base for so large a migration of people and law. Teruel, conquered in 1171, was for some time a salient in Islamic lands; even nearby Albarracín could not be taken until 1220. And the Catalan and Valencian coastal plain that lay below its piedmont settlements were not ripe for the expansion of livestock herding that had loomed so large in Cordilleran law. A more diversified and richer Mediterranean economy would have had no need for the cattle economy that dominated the meseta. Second, and at least as important, a rather different tradition of municipal military service had grown up in the eastern coastal plain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There is much evidence for growth of the municipal military tradition in the Iberian Cordillera and the upper Ebro Valley; but southeast of the Segre River it was customary for the counts of Barcelona to rely upon a more typically feudal military establishment, which was slow to draw on towns as a military resource. For example, of the 236 cartas pueblas included in the large published collection of Font Rius for Catalonia before James's reign, only fifteen deal with any mention of a specific military requirement. While there is some evidence that larger towns and cities such as Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida, and Tortosa could render some kind of military force, we have little in the way of legal records and charters to [119] inform us how they assembled their forces and by what rules they operated. The Catalan towns served their sovereign as the count of Barcelona, a relationship that bespeaks the Mediterranean coastal tradition of Catalan-southern French civilization. By its nature this did not generate the type of fuero common to the uplands. Over a century after James's death, the Onomástica barcelonesa of 1389 would indicate that a complete military muster for the districts of Barcelona existed to defend the walls; but there is little to indicate that this system survived from Count James's era. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ The generous allotments for settlements in Valencia granted to Barcelona, Tortosa, Tarragona, and even Montpellier suggest rewards for military service rendered during the conquest of the city; but the forms of military service from these towns and cities remains hidden from us.Thus James had inherited at least two differing municipal military traditions, each of which presented its own advantages and liabilities.

Before launching any of his historic campaigns, James had to bring stability to his realm, so long hampered by his minority and its attendant regency. Jaca played a large role in this work in its own region, as evidenced by pacts of peace made by the concejo of that city from 1215 to 1217, and the gratitude extended to them for this by James. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Moreover, the royal Corts of Villafranca in 1218, Tortosa in 1225, and Barcelona of 1228 all placed townsmen specifically under the protection of the royal peace. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ The towns of the upper Ebro, [120] possessing their own armies and able to act in their own behalf, on occasion took independent action to halt the disorder and lawlessness that still bedeviled James's early years. Reminiscent of a typical Castilian hermandad, Huesca, Jaca, and Zaragoza combined to deal with such problems in a pact of 1226. James apparently considered this kind of association to be as much a threat as the lawlessness that provoked it, and he chastised the three cities for taking this step in 1227. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ As late as 1238 the city government of Jaca was still attempting to ease the disruptions by passing arms control ordinances within the city. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

Once James was able to launch his first major campaign of expansion against Majorca, he could draw little upon this interior Aragonese military tradition; instead he used his Catalan feudal retinues and such military forces as the towns could grant him from the Catalan coast. In addition to Lérida on the Segre, James seems to have drawn forces from Tarragona, Gerona, and Barcelona -- or at least the episcopal clergy, deacons, and sacristans of those cities offered substantial forces. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ How much of this consisted of feudal forces under clerical control as against any available urban militiamen remains difficult to say, but the substantial number of infantrymen offered increases the likelihood that townsmen were involved. In addition to these military forces, the Catalan towns offered naval assistance, to ease the normal royal problem of going to the northern Italian towns for that kind of aid. Once the siege of Majorca had been undertaken, we hear of Léridans engaged [121] in filling the city's moat, and of the dramatic assault by some Barcelonan infantry who seized key sections of the walls as an immediate prelude to Majorca's capture. ⁽⁵¹⁾ Majorca would have offered a readily attractive objective for the Catalan towns, especially for Barcelona. The next thrust by James, however, directed at Valencia, targeted a large territorial state. Catalan resources, still committed to absorbing and settling the Balearics prize, would be insufficient for that enterprise.

For the Valencian phase of Aragonese expansion, James drew heavily on the municipal militias of the upland interior. While the Cortes of Monzón in 1236 indicated some divided thinking on the advisability of the Valencian campaign on the part of Lérida, Tortosa, Zaragoza, Teruel, Daroca, Calatayud, Tarazona, Huesca, and Barbastro who sent representations, Teruel, Daroca, and Zaragoza were destined to make important contributions. ⁽⁵²⁾ Indeed, they already had. Teruel's militia had been present for the assault on Ares and Morella in 1233; and forces from Teruel and Daroca were a part of the royal host (Catalan host, Aragonese guest and hoste) that besieged and captured Burriana in the same year, with forces from Zaragoza, Calatayud, Lérida, and Tortosa arriving after the conquest. ⁽⁵³⁾ When James moved against the key fortress overlooking the approaches to Valencia at Puig de Santa María in 1236, the militias of Teruel, Zaragoza, and Daroca volunteered for extra duty reconstructing the walls of that citadel after its capture. When the garrison suffered severe losses to the Muslim relief army that tried to retake Puig, seventy to eighty light cavalrymen from Teruel rode quickly [122] to the site on their own volition to ease the impact of this attrition. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ In addition to the militias of Teruel, Daroca, and Zaragoza available at Valencia, James received assistance from the towns of Alcañiz and Castellote, located on the Guadalope River northeast of Teruel north of the Sierra de Gúdar. On occasion municipal enthusiasm created unwanted complications at Valencia, as with the instance of James's requesting that some townsmen give over an advanced area they had taken and were eagerly subdividing among themselves. James had a far more systematic partition of Valencia and her lands in mind. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ The contemporary chronicles make it clear that James was able to harvest the fruit of the Cordilleran Aragonese municipal militias that had been planted by Alfonso the Battler and nurtured to maturity by Alfonso II at Teruel.

The most elaborate statements of military law continued to be assigned to the upland towns, starting with the consolidation of the Consuetudines of Lérida in 1228, a city on the edge of the old Aragonese reino. These statutes defined a resident as a person who had a horse, maintained his wife and family in the city, and served in the royal "army" (Latin exercitus, Catalan exèrcit, Aragonese ejérzito), another word for host service.⁽⁵⁶⁾ The surviving extended statements of military law in the period tend to concentrate on three well-established militia towns: Daroca, Zaragoza, and Jaca. Daroca was reminded of the fines to be paid by knights and infantry for missing in 1256 the defensive assembly known as apellido, and had her militia service requirement restated in 1270. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ Zaragoza was freed from mustering its militia or providing provisions for James's campaign against the Catalan revolts, but was [123] obligated to provide support for the king's wars to put down the Murcian uprisings, although assured the exactions were temporary. (58) Jaca had her obligation to serve in the royal exercitus and the mounted raiding force known as the caualcata (Aragonese cavalgada), reiterated in 1249 and 1269. (59) Maintaining this tradition would not be easy, once Aragon had conceded the occupation of Murcia to Castile, and honored that commitment by breaking the back of Murcian resistance in 1265-66. As the Catalans increased their resettlement activity in the kingdom of Valencia, and even penetrated marginally into Murcia, the southern edge of potential Cordilleran expansion was closed off, ending the two centuries' role these frontier towns had played.

Apparently the ability of the Aragonese towns to free any excess population, even to claim the substantial barrios and households in Valencia awarded to them by James in the Repartimiento, was highly limited. Zaragoza and Tarazona managed to occupy only about 40 percent of the households allotted to them, Daroca reached 34.5 percent, and Calatayud only 19.4. Teruel was the only town, Catalan or Aragonese, to reach as high as 54.7 percent occupancy; but a small district bordering between the allotments of Teruel and Daroca reached only 2 percent. The figures improve only slightly when adjusted to account for settlement by these townsmen in parts of the city not originally allotted to them. The Catalan rates and that of Montpellier were no better, in truth; but Catalans continued to be available for settlement in some numbers south of Valencia city and into Murcia, a capability apparently not equaled by the Aragonese townsmen. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ Time [124] and circumstance dictated that the Aragonese militias were increasingly to drift into the position of a reserve force, without an active part in combat or settlement.

There are indications that James and the other persons in the realms of Aragon capable of calling forth military contingents did attempt something of a militarization of the Catalan municipalities during the Conqueror's reign. Gual Camarena has studied the various patterns of municipal codes in the kingdom of Valencia, and the possible movement of upland traditions such as those of Lérida, Zaragoza, and the fuero of Aragon on to the coastal plain. Few of the charters he has grouped include towns with military service obligations, however, so his data base and mine fail to mesh effectively. ⁽⁶¹⁾ I can only base my own assumption, of an attempt to increase the number of military effectives based in the towns and villages, upon a moderately increasing number of citations of military obligations in the charters of Catalan and Valencian municipalities during James's reign. While only fifteen such references appear in the 236 documents gathered by Font Rius before the Conqueror's reign (as noted before), the ninety-one documents in the same collection dated during James's period show twenty-two such references, fifteen of which require service and seven of which give exemption from such service. The other documentary source collections corroborate this mild increase, suggesting that James was pressing all possible resources to fuel his program for southern conquest. Nonetheless, the regional territoriality of municipal law has its implications here as well as in Castile.

Unlike the extended descriptions of military service and its regulations, which typify the Cordilleran tradition and culminate at Teruel, the coastal towns and villages rarely state more than simple obligation to give the royal expeditionary service of hostis or exercitus and the mounted raiding contingents for the cavalcata, or exemption from these same services. Before 1250, eighteen of these places required such services, [125] and nine were given exemption from them. ⁽⁶²⁾ After 1251, there was a dramatic shift in favor of exemption from service, with two places required to serve, two with a requirement they were permitted to buy off, and nine given exemptions. ⁽⁶³⁾The closing of the Crown of Aragon's southern frontier, with the ceding of Murcia to Castile, might well explain this tendency; but complacency was to prove ill justified. There were still periodic internal revolts and disturbances to quell, the Murcian uprising to contend with, and threats of further large-scale rebellions by the Muslims supported by North Africa such as that which darkened James's last years. These crises generated emergency efforts by James to draw upon the old resources, confusing the king's policy on the question of pacifying his kingdom and defusing the military potential of his municipalities.

[126] Pacification and the closing of his territorial frontiers in the peninsula did not completely eliminate the need for James's municipal forces. The Murcian revolt, which had such a dramatic impact on Alfonso in Castile, found James in a cooperative frame of mind to assist his kindred monarch. During the assault on Murcia, James again exacted support and retinues from his municipal constituents. Here Tamarite and Monzón were noted especially in the king's chronicle, both of them towns in the Huesean uplands. ⁽⁶⁴⁾ The royal forces experienced considerable difficulties in keeping some of their locally recruited warriors together for such an extended campaign. This marks a decided contrast to the voluntarism so in evidence during the assault on Valencia, despite the considerable booty now being acquired that enriched various members of the victorious host. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ In 1274 there was yet another sign of slippage from the upland towns. In that year James was gathering his forces to quell the revolts of a number of Catalan nobles; and he called upon that pillar of the Valencian years, the concejo of Zaragoza, to send a contingent with three months' supplies to round out his expeditionary force. This request was dated 15 July, and the initial response must have been disappointing. On 23 July James resubmitted his request, but this time he offered to permit the Zaragozans to pay a fee of three thousand Jacan sueldos in lieu of service. James was back on 8 September to demand the fee, since the Zaragozans had rendered neither militia nor the required money. ⁽⁶⁶⁾

When a new and major uprising of the Muslims was triggered by the promise of North African support in 1276, the terminally ill James came back to the Cordilleran Aragonese one last time. Daroca was ordered to summon its militia with [127] two months' worth of supplies and to march to Teruel, where a larger force was being assembled to deal with the Valencian revolts. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ We do not know whether they ever came. With or without them, the revolt was quelled by James's son Peter the Great, to whom the peninsular segments of the realms of Aragon had now passed. At any rate, whatever slack developed among the Aragonese upland towns was probably being taken up by the Valencian levies, as the work of Father Burns would tend to suggest. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

A comparison of Alfonso and James in their respective policies toward municipal militias reveals both notable parallels and striking differences. One must take into account at the outset imperfect synchronization of their respective reigns, as well as the unequal distribution of charter and chronicle sources available for each kingdom during their reigns. Certain similarities nonetheless stand out. Both monarchs sought to amplify the militia system they had inherited -- in Alfonso's case by better unifying it, and in James's by extending it. Both rulers contended with the problem of territoriality of municipal law, which seriously complicated their tasks of unification and extension. Each encountered a set of events that constituted a turning point in his reign, and that led to change in direction of his initial policy. Each encountered the problem of atrophy among towns more distant from the frontier, in terms of their municipal readiness to serve. Finally, both left behind pent-up forces and unresolved problems with which their successors had to contend. Left with just these surface similarities, however, one would have a very distorted picture of these two rulers and their respective roles in the municipal military histories of their kingdoms.

James's reign seems even in the comparatively small area of municipal militia policy to have been the more successful. He was able to exploit this resource, when he needed it, for the conquests that gave him his formidable reputation. Once Valencia and its surroundings had been conquered, his emphasis [128] seems to have shifted from extension to exemption. Possibly he considered unwise the continued encouragement of a municipal military capability in a realm that had found its appropriate frontiers. Thereafter the town militias could only be a threat to royal authority, as they were to prove in Castile. During the brief period that James administered Murcia, as Torres Fontes has pointed out, he chose the route of aristocratic señoríos, as compared with Alfonso's implantation of municipal concejos for the potential settlement pattern. In the final analysis, James prudently backed away from the strong temptation of exploiting the Murcian revolts to reopen his frontier with Granada, thus avoiding a share of Castile's future problems. Moreover, any slackening in the militias of the reserve areas and their performance in his later years did not harm his military posture permanently. Peter the Great was able to enlist municipal support from Valencia and the other towns of the reino for the successful siege of Montesa in 1277; and as Father Burns has shown, the Muslim subjects of Valencia were going to offer their own not inconsiderable contribution to the defense of Aragon during the French invasion. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Any frustrated warriors of the realm, such as the almogàvers, would soon be provided with a larger theater of action across the Mediterranean.

The role and legacy of the other warrior king, Alfonso X, was less clear-cut and more disappointing. His frontier, unlike those of his contemporaries James and Afonso III of Portugal, remained open against the principality of Granada. While Castile's physical size and population made it ostensibly the dominant peninsular monarchy, that situation was more apparent than real. Great numbers of unassimilated Muslims in Andalusia and Murcia held, and actualized, a serious potential for revolt. The newly conquered areas had been handed over to a large extent to the military orders and the powerful nobility, leaving in isolated pockets frontier towns cut off from their brethren on the meseta. The flow of [129] frontier settlement and military preparedness in the towns had been disrupted. The northern towns increasingly concerned themselves with the employment of their military experience to defend their prerogatives individually and in collective hermandades, a turn of events that worked against the development of effective royal power. Alfonso's efforts to universalize and specify the requirements of these militias in his behalf, through the application of the Fuero real and the unpromulgated military laws of the Siete partidas, were frustrated by the Murcian outbreaks and by the distractions of his later reign. Even a splendidly wide-ranging intellect like Alfonso's was clearly being presented with an insoluble array of problems and challenges that he could not fully grasp, much less resolve. Indeed, Castile would have to await the Trastámaras, the Reyes Católicos, and even the Bourbons to settle the issue that the age had engendered.

One last contrast between Castile and the realms of Aragon needs to be noted. The halting of the Castilian frontier had much more dire economic consequences than the rounding off of the Aragonese realms. James's state was far better balanced in terms of its rural-urban economic basis, without the heavy dependence on livestock economy of the meseta. In Castile, moreover, the fueros repeatedly tell of something rarely heard about in Aragon after the twelfth century and never in Catalonia: the very great importance of booty and of the continued warfare that made acquisition of booty possible. Deprivation of this resource, resulting from stagnation of the expansive forces that had emerged in Alfonso's reign, produced internal frustrations, which failure to absorb the economy of Islamic Andalusia did nothing to alleviate. Small wonder that these towns, armed and frustrated as they were, made royal authority difficult to exercise and contributed to the civil wars that marred the reigns of Alfonso and his successors. Similarly the two centuries of deferred booty-gathering, in a militant society with a narrow-based economy, had their effect when the collapse of Granada and the opening of a New World renewed the opportunities for war and profit at the close of the Middle Ages.

1. James F. Powers, "Frontier Competition and Legal Creativity: A Castilian-Aragonese Case Study Based on Twelfth-Century Municipal Military Law," Speculum 52 (1977), pp. 465-87. See also the important recent article by Alfonso García Gallo, "Los fueros de Toledo," AHDE 45 (1975), pp. 407-58.

2. El fuero latino de Teruel, ed. Jaime Caruana Gómez de Barreda (Teruel 1974), ll. 426-52. El fuero de Teruel, ed. Max Gorosch (Stockholm 1950), ll. 569-625. Fuero de Cuenca (see above, chap. 3, n. 11), pp. 634-85. Les fueros d'Alcaraz et d'Alarcón, ed. Jean Roudil, 2 vols. (París 1968), vol. 1, pp. 419-55. Fuero de Huete, in the Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid: 2-7-3, Ms. 37, fols. 81v-89v. Fuero de Zorita de los Canes, ed. Rafael Ureña y Smenjaud (Madrid 1911), ll. 609-85. El fuero de Baeza, ed. Jean Roudil (The Hague 1962), ll. 670-743. "Fuero de Iznatoraf," ed. Rafael Ureña y Smenjaud, in Fuero de Cuenca above, ll. 639-712. "Fuero de Alcázar," BNM, Ms. 11543, fols. 95r-103r. El fuero de Plasencia, ed. José Benavides Checa (Rome 1896), ll. 492-541. Fuero de Béjar, ed. Juan Gutiérrez Cuadrado (Salamanca 1975), ll.893-988.

3. La fundación de Villa-Real y la carta-puebla (Ciudad Real 1971), pp. 7-14. Fueros y privilegios de Alfonso X el Sabio al reino de Murcia, ed. Juan Torres Fontes, Colección de documentos para la historia del reino del Murcia, no. 3 (Murcia 1973), pp. 83-85. Julio González, Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, 2 vols. to date (Cordova 1980ff.) vol. 1, p. 413.

4. Roudil, FBaeza, pp. 20-25.

5. El fuero de Coria, ed. José Maldonado y Fernández del Torco (Madrid 1949), leyes 112, 125, 163, 171-82, 215, 224, 234, 280-82, 328, 336, 360, 364. "Costumes e foros de Castello-Bom," PMH, leges, vol. 1, leis 108, 123, 167, 176-87, 217, 224, 232, 279-81, 327, 335, 343, 358, 373-74. "Costumes e foros de Alfaiates," PMH, leges, vol. 1, leis 119, 169, 179-92, 280-84, 342, 362, 378, 381, 392. "Costumes e foros de Castello-Melhor," PMH, leges, vol. 1, leis 126, 153-55, 284, 310-12, 316, 321, 339, 348-54, 361, 363. "Costumes e foros de Cástelo Rodrigo," ed. Luis F. Lindley Cintra, in A linguagem dos foros de Cástelo Rodrigo (Lisbon 1959), leis 3:55, 4:23-24, 5:48, 7:8, 7:18, 8:12-14, 8:18, 8:23, 8:41, 8:50-56, 8:63, 8:65. Los fueros municipales de Cáceres: su derecho público, ed. Pedro Lumbreras Valiente (Cáceres 1974), leyes 132, 165, 174-85, 217, 225, 237, 279-81, 321, 336, 344, 364, 372, 448, 475, 491. Fuero de Usagre (siglo XIII) anotado con las variantes del de Cáceres, eds. Rafael Ureña y Smenjaud and Adolfo Bonilla (Madrid 1907), leyes 134, 167, 176-88, 222, 231, 287-89, 330, 345, 353, 373, 381, 417, 471, 497. Also see Gonzalo Martínez Díez, "Los fueros de la familia Coria Cima-Coa," Revista portuguesa de historia 13 (1971), pp. 343-73, for a newer assessment of the dating and the interrelationship of this family of charters.

6. "Fuero de Córdoba," ed. Andrés Marcos Burriel in Miguel de Manuel y Rodríguez, Memorias para la vida del santo rey Don Fernando III  (Barcelona [1800] 1974), pp. 458-64. "Fuero de Carmona," in Colección diplomática de Carmona, eds. José Hernández Díaz, Antonio Sancho Corbacho, and Francisco Collantes de Teran (Seville 1941), pp. 3-8. González, Fernando III, vol. 1, p. 413. García Gallo, "Fueros de Toledo," pp. 401-6. Federico Casal, El fuero de Córdoba concedido a la ciudad de Cartagena (Cartagena 1971), pp. 23-27.

7. "Fuero de Alicante," in Estudio filológico de la versión romance de privilegios de Alfonso X el Sabio a Alicante, ed. Francisco Gimeno Menéndez (Alicante 1971), pp. 41-48, doc. 1. "Fuero de Lorca, privilegio rodado de Alfonso X otorgando fuero a Lorca," in Repartimiento de Lorca, ed. Juan Torres Fontes (Lorca 1977), pp. 76-85, doc. 15. García Gallo also notes that certain other towns in the Alfonsine period received the fuero of Cordova, namely Arcos de la Frontera in 1256, Niebla in 1263, Orihuela in 1265, and Murcia in 1266. In these instances, however, abbreviated texts survive that offer no basis for comparison of individual laws as in the cases of Cordova, Carmona,Alicante, and Lorca. Ballesteros, Alfonso X, p. 1095, indicates that Jódar also received the Lorca charter: but I have not been able to see the text.

8. FCórdoba, p. 459. FCarmona, ley 11, p. 4. FAlicante, p. 43. FLorca, p. 78.

9. FCórdoba, pp. 460, 462. FCarmona, leyes 18, 22-23, pp. 6-7. FAlicante, pp-44, 46. FLorca, pp. 80-82.

10. FCórdoba, p. 462. FCarmona, ley 23, p. 7. FAlicante, p. 46. FLorca, p. 82.

11. FCórdoba, p. 460. FCarmona, ley 13, p. 5. FAlicante, p. 43. FLorca, p. 79.

12. FCórdoba, pp. 459-61. FCarmona, leyes 8, 19, pp. 4, 6. FAlicante, pp. 42-44. FLorca, pp. 76, 78.

13. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, concediendo á la ciudad de Burgos el fuero real, y franquezas á sus vecinos," MHE, vol. 1 (1851), no. 45. "Fuero de los escusados o franquicias concedido por Alfonso X á los caballeros de Arévalo en 20 Julio de 1256," in Juan José de Montalvo, De la historia de Arévaloy sus sexmos, 2 vols. (Valladolid 1928), vol. 1, p. 266. "Fuero de Avila de 30 de Octubre de 1256," in Juan Martín Carramolino, Historia de Avila, su provincia y obispado, 3 vols. (Madrid 1872-73), vol. 1, p. 491. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, concediendo al concejo de Buitrago el fuero real y varias franquezas á sus vecinos, "MHE, vol. 1, no. 44. "Alfonso X el Sabio confirma los fueros extensos que había dado al concejo de Cuéllar," in Colección diplomática de Cuéllar (see above, chap. 3, n. 43), p. 43, doc. 16. "Privilegio de rey D. Alfonso X, concediendo á la villa de Peñafiel el fuero real, y varias franquezas á sus caballeros," MHE, vol. 1, pp. 89-90. "Fuero otorgado por Alfonso X á la ciudad de Trujillo," in Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. 430, fol. 5or. "El fuero de Atienza," ed. Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, BRAH 68 (1916), p. 267. The term cinquesma as the determinant for the closing period of residence is open to an alternative interpretation, namely as being fifty-eight days after the pre-Christmas date. Given the frequent use of holy days as legal dates and the use of one to set the beginning of the period, however, I believe the Sunday before Lent is the more likely meaning.

14. "Fuero de Ledesma," in Fueros leoneses de Zamora, Salamanca, Ledesma y Alba de Tormes, ed. Federico de Onís (Madrid 1916), l. 111. FCoria, p. 30. FCastello-Bom, p. 32. FAlfaiates, p. 21. FCastello-Melhor, p. 47. FCastelo Rodrigo, 1. 27. FCáceres, p. 31. FUsagre, p. 32. Alfaiates sought residence for two parts of the year." García Gallo noted the importance of his Toledan pattern in the formulation of some of this law during the twelfth century, in his "Fueros de Toledo," pp. 346-401.

15. FBurgos, pp. 97-98. FArévalo, p. 266. FAvila, p. 491. FBuitrago, pp. 93-94. FCuéllar, p. 43. FPeñafiel, pp. 89-90. "FTrujilio," fol. 50r. FAtienza, p. 267. Avila permits a horse of twenty maravedís or more to be used. Buitrago does not include a sword or a loriga, but substitutes a peto (chest strap for a horse) and an adarga (another type of shield). A second shield and a piece of horse harness seem illogical here when repeated nowhere else. One wonders if this is not some kind of copyist's error.

16. FBurgos, p. 98. FArévalo, p. 268. FBuitrago, p. 94. FCuéllar, p. 43. FPeñafiel, p. 90. "FTrujillo," fol. 50r. Neither Avila nor Atienza have this provision. All of the rest specify widows maintaining the status, but Arévalo and Cuéllar note that this was valid until the eldest child reached eighteen.

17. FBurgos, p. 99. FBuitrago, p. 95. FCuéllar, p. 44. FPeñafiel, p. 91. Luis G. de Valdeavellano, Curso de historia de las instituciones españolas de los orígenes al final de la Edad Media, 3rd ed. (Madrid 1973), p. 251. Arévalo, Avila, Trujillo, and Atienza lack this provision.

18. "Concesión á burgueses, marineros y ballesteros alicantinos," in Gimeno Menéndez, Estudio, pp. 52-53, doc. 4. "Privilegio rodado de Alfonso X a Cartagena: concesión del fuero de Toledo," in Fueros de Murcia, p. 54.

19. El fuero de Brihuega, ed. Juan Catalina García (Madrid 1887), pp. 122, 160, 173, 188. "Carta puebla de Requena," in Documentos para la historia de las instituciones de León y de Castilla (siglos X-XIII), ed. Eduardo Hinojosa y Naveros (Madrid 1919), p. 167, doc. 102. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, dando á la ciudad de Córdoba, 5 febrero 1258," MHE, vol. 1, no. 60. "Fuero de Orense, 1 febrero 1259," in Fueros municipales de Orense, ed. Manuel Martínez Sueiro (Orense 1912), pp. 24-26. Antonio Gómez de la Torres, Corografía de la provincia de Toro (Madrid 1802), p. 105. "Alfonso X confirma el privilegio de Alfonso VIII, expedido en Ayllón, el 8 de agosto de 1201 (1261, mayo, 9, miércoles, Sevilla)," in Colección diplomática de Sepúlveda, ed. Emilio Sáez (Segovia 1956), vol. 1, pp. 40-42.

20. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, en que designa los términos de Escalona, y concede á sus vecinos el fuero real y varias franquezas, 5 marzo 1261," MHE, vol. 1, pp. 178-80. "Varias exenciones á los caballeros de Madrid,"Documentos de León y Castilla, pp. 169-70. FBurgos, pp. 97-98. FBuitrago, pp. 93-94. FPeñafiel, pp. 89-90. The fuero of Arévalo included a four-month period in which a caballero might replace a horse that had died, while still retaining his status; this now appears at Escalona and Madrid. Arévalo also included the provision of excuses for huesten service (four), the contribution of a tent (five), and a loriga de cavallo (six). In many ways it seems to be the precursor in 1256 of this later group. St. John the Baptist's nativity was celebrated on 24 June but his beheading on 29 August. The earlier date was the more frequently celebrated in the thirteenth century, and I think June the more likely date here. FArévalo, pp. 267-68.

21. El fuero de Sanabria," ed. Cesáreo Fernández Duro, BRAH 13 (1888), p. 286.

22. Privilegio otorgado por D. Alfonso X á Avila, 22 abril 1264," in Martín Carramolino, Historia de Ávila, vol. 2, p. 492.

23. Alfonso X de Castilla, a petición de los habitantes de las villas de Extremadura, desagravia a los de Cuéllar, completando algunos de los fueros que tenían, 29 abril 1264," Colección de Cuéllar, p. 64, doc. 21.

24. FAvila 1264, pp. 492-93. FCuéllar 1264, pp. 62-63.

25. Ordenamiento de leyes para el reyno de Extremadura en Sevilla, 1264," Francisco Martínez Marina in "Cortes, ordenamientos y leyes de Castilla," Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Ms. 9-12-7, 4032, no. 4, fols. 6-7, 9 (folios not enumerated; these are my numbers, without recto or verso references).

26. "Provisión del rey D. Alfonso X á Madrid, Sevilla, 27 agosto 1264," in Documentos del Archivo general de la villa de Madrid, ed. Timoteo Domingo Palacio, 4 vols. (Madrid 1888-1902), vol. 1, pp. 59-65. Miguel Angel Ladero vuesada, Historia de Sevilla, vol. 2, La ciudad medieval (1248-1492) (Seville , pp. 143-47. Concern over lack of equipment, and reluctant concejo service, are also revealed for this period in Alfonso's chronicle (Crónica de Alfonso, chap. 10).

27. Concesión de los fueros y franquezas que disfrutaban los de Alicante, Córdoba, 25 agosto 1265," in Privilegios y franquezas de Alfonso X, el Sabio, a Orihuela, ed. Vicente Martínez Morellá (Alicante 1951), p. 28, doc. 28. "Carta abierta del rey D. Alfonso X exceptuando del todo pecho a los caballeros de Cáceres, 12 febrero 1273," in Documentación histórica del Archivo municipal de Cáceres: catálogo comentado y anotado, ed. Antonio Floriano Cumbreño (Cáceres 1934), vol. 1 (1217-1504), p. 21. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, eximiendo á los caballeros fijosdalgo de Sevilla y á los ciudadanos de ella que tuvieren caballo y armas, del servicio de moneda," MHE, vol. 1, p. 293. This does not seem to have prevented the weapons inspections in the Campo de Tablada, cited by Ladero Quesada, Historia, pp. 143-47.

28. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, concediendo á Valladolid el fuero real y varias franquezas á sus vecinos, 19 agosto 1265" MHE, vol. 1, no. 102. The editor dates this 1295; but 1265 is almost certainly the date, given the place of this document in the chronological order in the collection with Alfonso X as the grantor.

29. "Privilegio rodado de Alfonso X al concejo de Murcia, Sevilla, 10 agosto 1266," in Documentos de Alfonso X el Sabio, ed. Juan Torres Fontes, Colección de documentos para la historia del reino de Murcia, no. 1 (Murcia 1963), pp. 19-20, doc. 11. "Infante don Manuel confirma a Elche sus privilegios, concede el fuero de Sevilla y otras mercedes, Villena, 7 diciembre 1267," in Documentos del siglo XIII, ed. Juan Torres Fontes, Colección de documentos Para . . . Murcia, no. 2 (Murcia 1969), p. 32, doc. 35.

30. "Alfonso X concede tierras y exenciones á los caballeros y peones que poblasen en Requena, 1157,"Documentos de León y Castilla, pp. 166-67.

31. "Carta del rey D. Alonso X exortando á la paz al concejo de Escalona y concediéndole varias mercedes, 6 marzo 1269," MHE, vol. 1, no. 115.

32. "Cortes de Jérez de 1268," CLC, vol. 1, no. 12, pp. 70-71.

33. "Carta abierta de Cáceres, 1273," p. 21. "Privilegio de Sevilla," p. 293. See also n. 4 above.

34. "Privilegio del rey D. Alfonso X, en que condonando á la villa de Aguilar de Campo los que debia, inserta las cartas de arrendamiento de las rentas reales, 20 junio 1277," MHE, vol. 1, no. 140.

35. "Cesión de los castillos de Puentes y Felí, 1265," in Francisco Cánovas Cobeño, Historia de la ciudad de Lorca (Lorca 1890), p. 178; reprinted in Repartimiento de Lorca, pp. 57-60, doc. 2  "Privilegio de Alfonso X al concejo de Lorca, eximiéndoles del quinto de las cabalgadas, portazgo y carcelaje de cuanta ganancia obtuvieran contra los moros, 1265," Repartimiento de Lorca, p. 68, doc. 7. "Alfonso X al concejo de Lorca, concesión del castillo de Celia, 3 noviembre 1277," Fueros de Murcia, vol. 3, pp. 153-54. Torres Fontes produces a grant of the castles of Puentes and Felí to Lorca dated 28 March '257, Fueros de Murcia, vol. 3, pp. 41-43, doc. 29, which suggests the 1265 grant may have been a regrant or confirmation. Orihuela also received a castle from Alfonso X in 1268; see "Concesión de los fueros," Privilegios á Orihuela, p. 34. doc. 9.

36. "Privilegio rodado de Alfonso X a los pobladores de Murcia, 14 mayo 1266," in Documentos de Alfonso X, pp. 19-20, doc. 11. "Alfonso X a los concejos de Mula y Molina Seca, ortogando a todas las poblaciones del término de Murcia, el fuero de dicha ciudad, 7 mayo 1267," ibid., p. 39, doc. 26. "Ordenamiento de Alfonso X al concejo de Murcia, 15 mayo 1267," ibid., pp. 42-43, doc. 30. For an analysis of the defensive system in Murcia, see the comments of Torres Fontes in the same volume, pp. 65-84.

37. "Privilegio del rey Alfonso X, concediendo á los caballeros de linage que fueren á Arcos de la Frontera los privilegios de los caballeros fijosdalgo de Toledo, y á los demas caballeros y moradores las franquezas de los de Sevilla, 27 enero 1268," MHE, vol. 1, no. 109.

38. "Carta de la hermandad celebrada entre los concejos de Córdoba, Jaén, Baeza, Ubeda y otros pueblos de Andalucía, D. Diego Sánchez y D. Sancho Martínez, en defensa de la tierra y de los derechos del rey D. Alfonso X, 26 abril 1265," MHE, vol. 1, no. 101.

39. "Carta de la hermandad celebrada entre los concejos de Córdoba, Jaén, Baeza, Ubeda, Andújar, Arjona y S. Esteban, Gonzalo Ibañez de Aguilar, Sancho Sánchez y Sancho Pérez de Jodar, 10 mayo 1282," MHE, vol. 2, no. 205. "Carta de la hermandad de los concejos de Córdoba, Jaén, Baeza, Ubeda, Andújar y Arjona, Gonzalo Ibañez de Aguilar, Sancho Sánchez y Sancho Pérez de Jodar, 10 mayo 1282," MHE, vol. 2, no. 206.

40. Derek W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London 1978), pp. 80-159.

41. See n. 1 above.

42. See n. 2 above.

43. "Fragmentos del fuero latino de Albarracín," ed. Angel and Inocenta González Palencia, AHDE 8 (1931), pp. 484-95. Carta de población de la ciudad de Santa María de Albarracín, ed. Carlos Riba y García (Zaragoza 1915), pp. 179-93. Rafael Esteban Abad, Estudio histórico-político sobre la ciudad y communidad de Daroca (Teruel 1959), pp. 64-65.

44. Bishko, "Castilian as Plainsman," pp. 47-69. Also Lynn H. Nelson, "Land Use in Early Aragon: The Organization of a Medieval Society," Societas 3 (1973), pp. 115-28.

45. These are the cartas pueblas given to Barcelona (844), Cardona (986), Bell-lloch (990), Albiñana (1040), Castelló (1085), Almenar (1147), San Felíu de Guixols (1181), Puigcerdá (October 1181 and June 1182), Castellet (1194), Valle de Porrera (1201), Batea (1205), Pinell (1207), Collioure (1207), and Agramunt (1210). They are to be found in CPS, vol. 1, pp. 4-7, 14-20, 39-41, 68-69, 104-6, 225-27, 231-35, 273-74, 291-93, 301-3, 306-10, 322-24.  Onomástica barcelonesa del siglo XIV, ed. Francisco Marsá (Barcelona 1977), pp. 3-212.

46. "Carta de paz con los hombres del Valle de Echo (1215)," "Carta de paz y convenio con Lope de Arresella (1217)," and "Carta de paz con Lope Arresella y sus compañeros (1217)," in El Libro de la cadena del concejo de Jaca: documentos reales, episcopales y municipales de los siglos X, XI, XII, XIII y XIV, ed. Dámaso Sangorrín y Diest-Garcés (Zaragoza 1920), pp. 257-73. "Jaime I da a concejo de Jaca salud y confianza," ibid., pp. 309-10.

47. "Jaime I, rey de Aragón, preside cortes en Villafranca, 24 junio 1218," "Jaime I, rey de Aragón, reune cortes en Tortosa, 28 abril 1225," and "Jaime I, rey de Aragón, reune cortes en Barcelona, 21 diciembre 1228,"Documentos de Jaime I, vol. 1, pp. 35-39, 139-44, 206-7.

48. "Los jurados de Zaragoza, Huesca y Jaca pactan entre sí amistad y mutua ayuda, 13 noviembre 1226," and "Jaime I de Aragón reprueba las confederaciones, 1 abril 1227," in Colección diplomática del concejo de Zaragoza, ed. Angel Canellas López, 2 vols. (Zaragoza 1972-75, vol. 1, pp. 149-51, 154-56).

49. "Los consejeros y los prohombres de Jaca decidieron reunirse concerniente de las riñas y pendencias (1238?)," in Sangorrín, Cadena, pp. 334-36.

50. Desclot, "Crònica," chaps. 15-20. Agustí Duran i Sanpere, "Defensa de la ciutat," in Agustí Duran i Sanpere et al., Història de Barcelona de la prehistòria al segle XVI (Barcelona 1975), pp. 312-13.

51. Llibre dels feyts, chap. 73. Desclot, Crònica, chap. 47.

52. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Dos actitudes ante la reconquista de Valencia," Temas valencianos 3 (1977), pp. 3-22. Ubieto notes that while the other towns were active sooner, Barcelona and Tortosa were drawn into the Valencian campaigns after Monzón largely by their interest in the papal crusade rather than in territorial expansion. Catalan historians have not agreed with this view, and have made the case for ample interest in permanent Catalan settlement in the region. See Josep L'Escrivá, Els repobladors de València, 4 booklets (Valencia 1978-81).

53. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 157, 170-71.

54. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 211, 218.

55. Ibid., chaps. 210, 288.

56. "Consuetudines illerdenses, 1228," in Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, Viage literario á las iglesias de España, 17 vols. in 22 (Madrid 1803-52), vol. 16, pp. 178-79.

57. "Privilegio en que el rey (Jaime I) sanciona los estatutos que habían hecho entre sí los aldeanos de Daroca, 1256," in Documentos históricos de Daroca y su comunidad, ed. Toribio del Campillo y Casamor (Zaragoza 1915), pp. 35-36, doc. 11. "Privilegios y ordenanzas otorgados á los aldeanos de Daroca," Biblioteca de San Lorenzo el Real, El Escorial, Ms. J-3-21, fols. 140-44v.

58. "Jaime I de Aragón absuelve al concejo de Zaragoza de su petición de ayuda para el ejército de Cataluña previsto para el pasado año, 3 diciembre 1257," Colección de Zaragoza, p. 190. "Jaime I de Aragón concede al concejo de Zaragoza que el subsidio obtenido de la ciudad para el ejército de Murcia no dañe los derechos de Zaragoza, 16 mayo 1266," ibid.., p. 218.

59. "Carta de Jaime I de Jaca (1249)," and "Carta de Jaime I a Jaca (1269)," in Sangorrín, Cadena, pp. 367, 383.

60. Llibre del repartiment de Valencia, ed. Antonio Ferrando i Francés et al., 4 vols. (Valencia 1978), vol. 1, pp. 17-72, 323-435. María Desamparados Cabanes Pecourt, "El 'Repartiment' de la ciudad de Valencia," Temas valencianos 2 (1977), pp. 18-21.

61. Miguel Gual Camarena, "Estudio de la territorialidad de los fueros de Valencia," EEMCA 3 (1947-48), pp. 262-89.

62. Documentos de Jaime I, vol. 1, pp. 269 (Majorca fueros, 1231), 309 (Majorca privileges, 1233), 378 (Balaguer carta puebla, 1236), 243 (Valencia city privileges, 1246). CPS, vol. 1, pp. 338-39 (Puig d'Espel, Cunillera carta puebla, 1222), 414 (Prats de Molló, 1245), 415 (Castro Opol or Salvaterra, 1246). Privileges et litres relatifs aux franchises . . . de Roussillon et de Cerdagne, ed. B. J. Alart (Perpignan 1884), pp. 181-82 (Opol and Perellos, 1246). The preceding are the documents to 1251 that grant exemptions from military service. The following documents are those prior to 1252 that require it: CPS, vol. 1, pp. 343 (Agramunt, 1224), 345 (Villalba, 1224), 349 (Juncosa, Torms, Solerac, 1225), 354-55 (Bellver, 1225), 375 (Clara, 1233), 378 (Bagá, 1234), 384 (La Cenia, 1236), 403 (Santa Coloma de Queralt, 1241), 409 (Gabanes, 1243), 426 (Beniayxó, Tahalfazar, 1250), 428 (Maranges, 1250);Documentos de Jaime I, vol. 1, p. 356 (Miranda, 1235), vol. 2, pp. 122-23 (Bellver, 1243), 333 (Borriol, 1250);Privilèges de Rousillon, pp. 155-56 (Canet, 1238), 175 (Canet, 1244); F. Ortí Miralles, Historia de Morella (Benimodo 1963), pp. 517-18 (Sepúlveda fuero into Catalan lands).

63. Only Vilafranca de Conflent and Sadava are required to serve; and Vilafranca subsequently joined Almacellas as places that could pay their way out of military service. The remaining towns and cities listed below all had exemptions from military service: CPS, vol. 1, pp. 450 (Vilafranca de Conflent, 1260), 449 (Almacellas, 1260), 437 (Granollers, 1252), 439 (Berga, before 1256), 447 (Sarreal, 1259), 469 (Cervera, 1269), 488 (Vilanova, Ca Lacuna, 1274); Privileges de Roussillon, pp. 261 (Villefranche de Confluent, 1264), 215 (Perpignan, 1254); Privilegios reales concedidos á la ciudad de Barcelona, ed. A. M. Aragó and Mercedes Costa (Barcelona 1971), p. 6 (Barcelona, 1269), Código de las costumbres escritas de Tortosa, ed. Ramon Foguet and José Foguet Marsal (Tortosa 1912), 1.1.5; Colección de documentos inéditos del Archivo general & la Corona de Aragón, ed. Próspero de Bofarull et al., 41 vols. (Barcelona l847-1910), vol. 8, p. 135 (Sadava, 1263).

64. Llibre dels feyts, chap. 401, 403, 458.

65. Ibid., chap. 403. Muntaner, Crònica, chap. 10.

66. "Jaime I de Aragón, comunica al concejo de Zaragoza la rebeldía de algunos nobles catalanes y solicita su auxilio militar, concurriendo en Cervera para el día 8 de agosto, 15 julio 1274," "Jaime I comunica al concejo de Zaragoza la posibilidad de redimir su servicio militar, 23 julio 1274," and "Jaime I solicita de la ciudad de Zaragoza el abono del dinero para redención del servicio militar, 8 Septiembre 1274," Colección de Zaragoza, pp. 239-42.

67. Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona, Cancillería, reg. 39, fol. 133v (January 1276): "Orden a los oficiales de las aldeas de Daroca."

68. Burns, Islam, pp. 300-22.

69. Juan Torres Fontes, "Jaime I y Alfonso X, dos criterios de repoblación," CHCA VII, vol. 3, pp. 329-40. Muntaner, Crònica, chap. 10. Burns, Islam, pp. 291-94.