1
The Origins of the Cortes,
1188--1252



[9] The distinctive development of medieval Spain, much of which was occupied for centuries by the Muslims, not only sets it apart from the states of northern Europe but also explains the early appearance of the cortes in the public life of Castile-León. This is attributable in large measure to the reconquest, the continuing struggle against Islam, and to repopulation, the concomitant task of colonizing reconquered lands. A sketch of these developments, in conjunction with political, social, and legal considerations, will assist in understanding the circumstances that gave rise to the cortes.(1)
The greater part of the Iberian peninsula remained under Muslim domination from the invasion of 711 until the middle of the thirteenth century, when only the tiny Islamic kingdom of Granada survived in tributary dependence on Castile-León. Over the course of centuries, the existence of a continually expanding frontier, with lands beyond it to be conquered and colonized, contributed greatly to the strength of the Castilian-Leonese monarchy. The kings authority rested primarily [10] upon his role as the principal military leader, charged with the task of expelling the Moors and reconstituting the Visigothic monarchy.(2)
If the survival of the kingdom depended on the king as its military champion, so too did the survival of the church. Under his direction the ecclesiastical organization disrupted by the Muslim invasion was reconstructed. From the middle of the eleventh century, the papacy began to exercise greater influence over the peninsular church, but the bishops, who were accustomed to doing the kings bidding, found it difficult to oppose him. They might grumble about royal intrusions on the liberties of the church, but unlike Thomas á Becket, the English archbishop of Canterbury, none of them ever had the courage to stand up to the king and suffer the consequences. Neither the bishops nor the pope had an adequate response to the kings claim that, as the chief defender of Christendom against Islam, he was entitled to control the resources of the church.
In the early stages of the reconquest, the monarchy also restrained members of the nobility, but as the kingdom expanded they steadily gained power. As feudal ideas permeated the peninsula in the twelfth century, the nobles were linked by vassalage to the king, and the greatest among them had vassals of their own. Unlike their contemporaries in northern Europe, who often held public offices and lands as benefices transmissible by hereditary right, the Castilian nobility was often rewarded for its services by grants of land in full ownership or by stipends (soldadas) paid from the tribute taken from the Moors. Public offices were held at the will of the crown and only occasionally passed from father to son. The nobility could now be divided into three groups: the magnates, known in the thirteenth century by the telling expression ricos hombres (rich men); the infanzones, men of notable birth but not as wealthy as the magnates; and the caballeros, or knights. As a distinct class, the nobles had a clearly defined juridical status entitling them to judgment by their peers in accordance with certain customs (fueros) and to exemption from tributes.(3)
Bishops and nobles were the kings natural counselors, but townsmen eventually came to share that responsibility. The growth of towns was a gradual process linked directly to repopulation. Colonization of the Duero valley, deserted since the eighth century, began in earnest in the late ninth and tenth centuries under the direction of the king, who claimed the right to dispose of all reconquered land. Once advanced [11] positions had been secured, efforts were made to attract settlers, usually hardy adventurers and freemen, who owned their land and were independent of every lord save the king. These essentially agricultural and pastoral settlements were not towns, but their potential for growth was realized in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as the frontier was pushed steadily southward beyond the Duero to the Tagus and then to Andalusia.(4)
In the twelfth century the population increased in both the older, more settled areas north of the Duero and in Extremadura, and the municipal structure became more complex. Although still largely agricultural and pastoral, these places assumed vital importance as sources of large, mobile, military forces. Settlers grew wealthy from booty taken in war and raids on Muslim territory, and the towns along the Bay of Biscay began to take the first steps in developing maritime trade.
For administrative purposes, the region both north and south of the Duero was organized into municipalities, each consisting of an urban center and an extensive rural area dependent on it. Within the municipal district, besides the walled town, were many villages. The municipality was directly dependent on the crown and, as such, enjoyed administrative autonomy, with its own laws, institutions, and officials. The fundamental rights, privileges, and obligations of the inhabitants were embodied in charters or fueros granted by the king. The inhabitants were guaranteed possession of their property, the right to live under one law, and the right to elect their own officials. The payment of tributes, military duties, the administration of justice, and the imposition of fines were also regulated. in many towns the king was represented by a noble (alcaide) primarily responsible for guarding the rights of the crown and defending the citadel.(5)
The principal organ of municipal government was the council or concejo, an assembly of neighbors--or more precisely, the adult male property owners living in the municipal district who were admitted to citizenship. The council assembled at the sound of a bell or horn on Sunday following mass, to deal with questions of justice, taxes, military service, the market, and the election of magistrates and other functionaries. The political and judicial head was the juez, or judge, elected by the council, usually for one year. In the administration of justice, he was aided by several alcaldes chosen annually from the parishes into which the municipality was divided. Lesser officials regulated finances, [12] inspected the market, and served as scribes, police officers, toll collectors, and guardians of woods and pastures.
In the very early stages of municipal growth, social distinctions were blurred, but they soon appeared more clearly. As certain men acquired horses, often as a result of raids upon the Moors, they became mounted warriors, or caballeros villanos, and thus were set apart from the footsoldiers, or peones. Men able to go to war on horseback, though not noble by birth, enjoyed a prestige due to their status and wealth and dominated the political life of the towns. Those living in the town proper tended to reserve public offices for themselves to the exclusion of the villagers.(6)
As a legally constituted entity of public law and administration, the municipality could buy and sell property and engage in litigation. By the early thirteenth century, municipalities were beginning to use seals, symbolic of their corporate character, to authenticate their acts.(7) In their dealings with other towns, bishops, monasteries, or military orders, municipalities were usually represented by their alcaldes or by boni homines, good men and true--that is, the most important men of the town, who often were caballeros villanos.
This municipal organization was also introduced into the former Muslim kingdoms of Toledo, Andalusia, and Murcia. Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, Murcia, and Cartagena were much more commercial and industrial than the smaller towns of León, Old Castile, and Extremadura, but their form of government was essentially the same and they also depended directly upon the crown. By contrast, the towns of northern Europe, with the exception of the communes of Flanders and the consular towns of Provence and Languedoc, had not progressed quite so rapidly toward autonomy.
In some measure, the towns of Castile-León came of age toward the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, when the king summoned them to send representatives to his council, which came to be known thereafter as the cortes.
Older historians traced the origins of the cortes directly to the Visigothic Councils of Toledo. These were essentially ecclesiastical assemblies convened by the king, who often outlined the agenda and sanctioned the canons. In day-to-day affairs kings relied on a group of court officials (officium palatinum), magnates of the palace, and members of the royal comitatus, who together constituted the aula regia, the [13] model for the kings court of the early Middle Ages. When significant matters were at issue, the king took counsel with all the great men, including bishops and governors of provinces.(8)
There is some evidence of the existence of the officium palatinum in the kingdom of Asturias, but there was no counterpart to the Councils of Toledo. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, numerous Leonese assemblies (often described as concilia) attended by the king, bishops, and magnates treated all manner of secular and eccíesiastical business. The Council held at León in 1017 by Alfonso V (999--1028) was a noteworthy example.(9)
In the second half of the eleventh century, as Christian Spain entered more fully into the mainstream of western Christendom, significant changes took place. The Council of Coyanza convoked by Fernando I (1035-1065) was in the tradition of the Councils of Toledo, but the reforms enacted heralded the beginning of the Gregorian Reform in Spain. A distinction between secular and ecclesiastical assemblies and affairs developed as papal legates convoked councils. Although kings often attended these councils, they clearly did not summon them direct their proceedings, or promulgate their decrees.(10)
In imitation of French usage, the word curia (or corte in the thirteenth-century vernacular) came into use to refer both to the kings ordinary entourage and also to a large, extraordinary assembly. A more formal structure developed around the three principal officers: the mayordomo, the alferez, and the chancellor. The mayordomo, a distinguished noble, had general oversight of the court, while the alferez, also a noble of high rank, commanded the royal armies. As the title of chancellor was accorded to the archbishops of Compostela (León) and Toledo (Castile), subordinate clerics had responsibilitiy for the day-to-day preparation of royal documents. As the same persons tended to serve for many years, experience was accumulated, continuity was given to the counsels of the king and to curial activities, and chancery documentation assumed a stereotypical form.
The courts principal function was to counsel the king on a variety of issues. Late twelfth-century charters often recorded the counsel and/or consent of the barons, nobles, princes, and counts--the chiefmen of the curia known as ricos hombres in the next century. Besides witnessing donations to churches, monasteries, and individuals (which the bulk of extant documentation records), the court also acted as a judicial [ 14] tribunal. Towns were frequent suitors, usually in quarrels over boundaries. Property disputes between clerics and laymen were also heard there, and nobles might be tried on charges of treason or negligence in administration. The kings of León claimed jurisdiction over the crimes of rape, robbery, treachery, and destruction of highways. Under the influence of Roman law, appeals to the court were encouraged.(11)
When matters of the utmost importance had to be resolved, the king augmented his curia by summoning all the bishops, magnates, and territorial administrators. The lists of those who witnessed or confirmed royal privileges, though an uncertain guide to attendance at court (especially once uniformity was imposed on royal documents in the late twelfth century), probably indicate those who would have been summoned.(12)
Church councils were now recognizably distinct from royal assemblies, but occasionally the latter were described as concilia. The royal chronicle spoke of the Council of León in 1135 when Alfonso VII (1126-1157) was crowned as emperor of Spain, but the king himself referred to it as his curia. A few years later (30 March 1144), a royal charter issued "in curiis Vallisoletanis" employed the plural form of curia to emphasize that an extraordinary assembly was being held.(13) The use of the term curia plena on four occasions emphasized the plenary character of the assembly, but this did not become common terminology. Both royal charters and chronicles speak of the curia not so much as an institution but as an extraordinary event being celebrated.(14)
There were three principal reasons why the kings of León and Castile summoned representatives of the towns to the royal court. First, by virtue of their control of vast expanses of territory equivalent in size to the counties of France or the shires of England, the towns were major elements in the administrative structure. Second, the king had need of the urban militias for the conquest and defense of lands beyond the Tagus river in the twelfth century and beyond the Guadalquivir in the thirteenth. Once the frontier was stabilized, these contingents were still needed to guard against the threat of Granada and Morocco in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Third, as ordinary royal revenues no longer sufficed to meet the needs of both war and civil administration, the crown discovered that the growing wealth of the towns, derived in part from booty taken in war, was a valuable resource that could be tapped.
[15] Roman law provided a theoretical justification for the convocation of the municipalities and the practical means to bring such a convocation about. The Reception of Roman law in the Iberian peninsula effected profound changes in the concepts of the state and justice, in the manner in which justice was administered, and in the very substance of the law. Roman law became a subject of study in the universities of Palencia and Salamanca, established respectively by Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso IX of León. At first, Italian scholars familiarized peninsular students with the principles of Roman law, but later the Spaniards also made significant scholarly contributions.(15)
References in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century charters to the "status regni" or utilitas regni" reflect the influence of Roman law on the development of the concept of the state as an abstract entity distinct from the king and the territory of the kingdom. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, these terms appear as "estado de la tierra," "pro de la tierra," "buen paramiento de la tierra," and "fecho de la tierra." Ulpians classic definition of justice as a "constant and perpetual desire to render to each man his due" (Digest, 1.1.10) was cited in twelfth-century charters, while Roman legal procedures such as inquests and appeals became an integral part of the judicial system.(16)
The principle of Roman private law, quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus debet approbari, when applied to public law, encouraged the crown to take counsel with all those who might be affected by any major decision, but how to consult with the thousands living in the municipalities who might be so affected was a serious problem. The solution was the idea of a corporation, a body of individuals who by reason of their common interests could be treated as a single juridical entity. The corporation could act as a legal person in the marketplace, in courts of law, and in public assemblies. It did so through a duly appointed representative or procurator, who received letters of procuration conferring upon him plena potestas, or full power, whereby his constituents agreed in advance to be bound by the decisions that he might make.(17)
Cathedral chapters and monasteries were among the earliest institutions to be treated as corporations and to employ procurators to represent them. From at least the second quarter of the thirteenth century, the towns of Castile and León were represented in the royal court by procurators (often described as personeros or omnes bonos) with letters of procuration delineating their authority.(18)
[16] Turning now to the participation of bishops, nobles, and townsmen in the extraordinary curia or cortes, we must establish at what point the townsmen were clearly present, which towns they represented, what powers they bore, and what business they transacted.
In three assemblies convened by Alfonso IX of León in 1188,1202, and 1208, the presence of townsmen was explicitly recorded. Faced with the problem of establishing his authority on a firm basis and correcting his fathers prodigality, he convoked a curia at León in April 1188. Together with the archbishop of Compostela and other bishops and magnates, the "elected citizens of each city" were in attendance. This is the earliest unequivocal attestation of the participation of townsmen in an extraordinary meeting of the royal court. Several years later, in March 1202, the king convened a plena curia at Benavente, attended by bishops, royal vassals, "and many men from each town of my kingdom." In February 1208, he summoned to an assembly at León bishops, barons, the chief men of the realm, and "a multitude of citizens from each city."(19) For the rest of his reign the evidence is uncertain, but it is possible that townsmen attended a plena curia held at Zamora in 1221 and the curia of Benavente in 1228.(20)
As for Castile, in the absence of explicit testimony one is left with conjecture. Alfonso VIII likely summoned the chief men (maiores) of fifty towns to a curia held at San Esteban de Gormaz in May 1187, and they may also have attended the curia celebrated at Carrión in June and July 1188.(21) In enacting an ordinance at Toledo in 1207, Alfonso VIII referred to the injury done to the "land, and to the archbishop and to the good men of my towns," but he did not plainly say that he had summoned the townsmen to his council.(22) We are on surer ground with the assembly of Valladolid in 1217 when "all who were present, both magnates and the people of the cities and towns," pledged homage to Fernando III as king of Castile. Two years later he celebrated a curia at Burgos with "a multitude of magnates, knights, and chief men of the cities." (23)
After inheriting the kingdom of León from his father, Alfonso IX, in 1230, Fernando III vigorously pressed the reconquest of Andalusia and Murcia. During those years he probably convened the bishops, nobles, and townsmen of Castile and León to consider the issues that that great military and economic effort entailed but the documentation remains imprecise. The king brought his reign and this formative stage [17] in the history of the cortes to a close when he summoned townsmen to an assembly at Seville in November 1250.(24)
The question as to which towns were summoned to the extraordinary council is difficult to answer. Alfonso IX mentioned each city and each town, but generally the texts are not precise. The list of fifty towns whose chief men perhaps attended the curia of San Esteban de Gormaz in 1187 is the only document of its kind for this period. The question, ultimately, is one that cannot be answered with any degree of certainty.
The legal status of town representatives is also uncertain, because the terminology used--"chief men," "citizens," "good men," "men of the land"--is not exact. Regulations in the fueros concerning the dispatch of agents to judicial assemblies suggest, however, that the chief men or citizens mentioned in 1187, 1188, 1202, and 1208 were the alcaldes or other elected officers of town government. Other indications are that they were from the upper stratum of urban society, the caballeros villanos. From the second quarter of the thirteenth century, when towns began to send procurators to the royal court on judicial business, it is likely that they also sent procurators endowed with plena potestas to the cortes. Their function was essentially to accept a judgment pronounced by the kings court, or to assent to a policy proclaimed by the king after consultation with the principal political elements of the realm. The legists serving the crown recognized that it was in the royal interest to insist that urban representatives were fully empowered to commit their constituents to a judgment, a policy, or a course of action.(25)
Given the growing strength and influence of the municipalities, the king was probably anxious to have their participation in matters of exceptional importance, such as the recognition of an heir to the throne, a new king, or a newly wedded queen. The chief men of the Castilian towns may have been summoned to the curia of San Esteban de Gormaz in 1187 to take an oath guaranteeing the marriage contract between Berenguela, Alfonso VIIIs heiress, and Conrad of Hohenstaufen. Witnessing their betrothal in the curia of Carrión in 1188, the chief men may also have acknowledged them as their future monarchs. Alfonso IX probably received an oath of allegiance from the bishops, nobles, and citizens of each city summoned to the curia of León in 1188, and perhaps asked the curia of Benavente in 1202 to recognize his son, Fernando, as heir to the throne. Townsmen played a large part in [18] resolving the Castilian succession in favor of Fernando III at Valladolid in 1217. Two years later they joined the celebration of his marriage to Beatrice of Swabia in the curia of Burgos; they may also have witnessed his second marriage to Jeanne of Ponthieu in the curia of Burgos in 1237, but the sources are not explicit in this matter.(26)
Before enacting laws the king traditionally took counsel with the bishops and magnates, but townsmen were now also included. In the curiae held at León in 1188 and 1208, Alfonso IX, with the counsel and consent of those present, promulgated decreta and constitutiones. The decrees of 1188 benefited the townsmen insofar as the king promised to abide by the law of the land and to repress abuses of power, but it is unlikely that they had any significant role in drafting them. The constitutions of 1208, on the other hand, primarily concerned the prelates and nobility. Alfonso VIIIs economic ordinance enacted at Toledo in 1207 was prompted by his concern for the well-being of the towns. He confirmed their charters at Burgos in 1212 and promised to reform the customs of the nobility, but the text of a royal enactment to that effect is not extant. Fernando III, after consulting the townsmen in the cortes of Seville in 1250 concerning the good estate of the realm, noted that they presented petitions to him. Convocation to the cortes thus gave the townsmen an opportunity to present their grievances to the king, but it is difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence on royal policy and legislation during this period.(27)
Sánchez Albornoz emphasized the financial needs of the crown as the chief reason for summoning townsmen to the cortes, but their role in financing the major campaigns of the reconquest is not easily determined. All the men of the realm in the curia of Benavente in 1202 granted Alfonso IX an extraordinary subsidy, known as moneda forera in exchange for his pledge not to alter the coinage for seven years, but it has yet to be demonstrated that he convened the cortes every seven years thereafter to obtain consent to this levy. Nor is there evidence that any of the other assemblies of the first half of the thirteenth century granted the king an extraordinary tax. Fernando III obtained forced loans from the towns, collected moneda, and tapped the wealth of the clergy, but there is no detailed information concerning extraordinary taxation granted by the cortes until the second half of the century.(28)
The king also summoned the townsmen to secure their enthusiastic [19] collaboration in projected military campaigns. The municipal militia forces, together with those of the nobility and the miiitary orders, formed an integral part of the royal army. Alfonso IXs promise in the curia of León in 1188 that he would not make "war or peace or treaty except by the counsel of the bishops, nobles and good men by whose counsel I ought to be guided," likely meant only that he wouid not act without seeking the advice of his usual counselors, and not that he would consuit the townsmen.(29) Although texts referring to other assemblies are insufficiently explicit, the convocation of the cortes to plan military strategy remains a matter of strong probability.
A substantial amount of judicial business was transacted while the cortes was in session. The resolution of a dispute at Benavente in 1202 between the king and the knights of the realm concerning landholding illustrates the judicial role of the curia plena. The summoning of bishops, nobles, and townsmen to the royal court facilitated the settlement of many lawsuits, as chancery documents issued during the cortes of Seville in 1250 reveal. These activities, however, usually involved only the litigants, rather than the cortes as a single entity.(30)
In the years between the curia of León in 1188 and the cortes of Seville in 1250, the royal court was transformed as representatives of the towns were summoned to join the bishops and nobles. The documentation is often exasperating in its brevity and imprecision, but it testifies to an ongoing process of growth and development. By the middle of the thirteenth century this period of tentative beginnings was over. The cortes had taken recognizable shape as an instrument that could serve the growing needs of the crown.

Notes for Chapter 1 1. Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca 197 5); Jocelyn Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdom, 125O- 1516, 2 vols. (Oxford 1976-1978).
2. Derek W Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London 1978); Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000- 1500 (New York 1977).
3. Salvador de Moxó, "La nobleza castellano-leonesa en la edad media," Hispania 30 (1970): 5-68; Hilda Grassotti, Las instituciones feudo-vasallatica en León y Castilla, 2 vols. (Spoleto 1969).
4. Sánchez Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires 1965); Salvador de Moxó, Repoblación y sociedad en la España cristiana medieval (Madrid 1979).
5. Maria del Carmen Carlé, Del concejo medieval castellano-leonés (Buenos Aires 1968).
6. Carmela Pescador, "La caballería popular en León y Castilla," CHE 33-34 (1961): 101-238; 35-36 (1962): 56-501; James F. Powers, "The Origins and Development of Municipal Military Service in the Leonese and Castilian Reconquest, 800-1250," Traditio 26 (1970): 91-111, and "Townsmen and Soldiers: The Interaction of Urban and Military Organization in the Militias of Medieval Castile," Speculum 46 (1971): 641-655. Elena Lourie, "Medieval Spain: A Society Organized for War," Past and Present 33 - 3 5 (1966): 55 -76.
7. Julio González, "Los sellos concejiles de España en la edad media," Hispania 5 (1945): 339 - 384.
8. Sánchez Albornoz, "El aula regia y las asambleas políticas de los Godos," Estudios Visigóticos (Rome 1971), 151 - 252; E. A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain (Oxford 1969), 252 - 260.
9. Gonzalo Martínez Diez, "Las instituciones del reino astúr a través de los diplomas (718-910)," AHDE 35 (1965): 59-167; Luis Vázquez de Parga, "El Fuero de León," AHDE 15 (1944): 464- 498.
10. Alfonso García Gallo, "El Concilio de Coyanza. Contribución al estudio del derecho canónico español de la alta edad media," AHDE 20 (1950): 275-633; Fidel Fita, "El Concilio nacional de Burgos en 1080," BRAH 49 (1906): 337 - 384, and "Concilios nacionales de Carrión en 1103 y de León en 1107," BRAH 24 (1894): 311-317.
11. Procter, Cana, 52 -70, 80-92, and "The Towns of León and Castile as Suitors before the King's Court," EHR 74 (1959): 1-22, and "The Judicial Use of Pesquisa (Inquisition) in León and Castile, 1157 - 1369," EHR Supplement 2 (London 1966).
12. Procter, Curia, chapter I; Agustín Millares Carlo, "La cancilleria real en León y Castilla hasta fines dei reinado de Fernando III," AHDE 3 (1926): 227-306.
13. Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, ed. Luis Sánchez Belda (Madrid 1950), 54-56; Ildefunso Rodríguez de Lama, Colección diplomática de la Rioja (923-1225) (Logroño 1976), 11, no. 107, pp. 169-170; Luis Fernández, "Colección diplomática del monasterio de San Pelayo de Cerrato," Hispania Sacra 26 (1973), no. 4, pp. 290-292.
14. Carrión 1188, Benavente 1202, Burgos 1220, and Zamora 1221. Rodrigo, De rebus Hispaniae, VII, 24, p. 166 González, Alfonso 1X, II, nos. 167, 415, pp, 236-237, 530-531; Procter, Curia,no. 1, pp. 268-269.
15. C. M. Ajo y Sáinz de Zuñiga, Historia de las universidades hispánicas (Madrid 1957-1960), I, pp. 195-201, 435-436; Obras del Maestro Jacobo de las Leyes, ed. Rafael Ureña (Madrid 1924).
16. González, Alfonso VII, III, nos. 966, 987, 1009, pp. 668-669,704-705, 736-737, and Alfonso IX, II, nos. 12, 85, 495, pp. 86, 120, 597.
17. Gaines Post, "A Romano-Canonical Maxim, Quod omnes tangit, in Bracton and Early Parliaments," in his Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100- 1322 (Princeton 1964), 162 -2 38; Marongiu, "Il principio della democrazia e del consenso (Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet) nel seculo XIV," Studia Gratiana 8 (1962): 555 - 575; José Antonio Maravall, "La corriente democrática medieval en España y la formula quod omnes tangit," in his Estudios de historia del pensamiento español. Edad media. Serie primera (Madrid 1967), 157-175.
18. Post, "Roman Law and Early Representation in Spain and Italy, 1150-1250," and "Plena Potestas and Consent in Medieval Assemblies," in his Studies, 61-160; Procter, Curia, 64-69, 87-93; Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "The Beginnings of the Cortes of León-Castile," AHR 74(1969): 1509-1512.
19. González, Alfonso IX, II, nos. 11-12, 167, 221, 662, pp. 23-27, 236237, 306-308, 737-738; CLC, I, 39-48; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1513-1523; Procter, Curia, 57-61.
20. González, Alfonso IX, II, no. 415, pp. 530-53 1; Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "Una nota sobre las llamadas Cortes de Benavente,"Archivos Leoneses 37 (1983): 97-100.
21. González, Alfonso VIII, II, nos. 471, 499, pp. 807-808, 857-863; Cbronique latine, ch. II, pp. 39-40; Rodrigo, De rebus Hispaniae, VII, 24, p. 166; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1512-1513, 1516; Procter, Curia, 74-75, 109.
22. Francisco J. Hernández will publish Alfonso VIII's ordinance of 1207.
23. Rodrigo, De rebus Hispaniae, IX,4-5, 10, pp. 195-196, 200; Chronique latine, ch. 33-35, 40, pp. 89-93, 98-100; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1525-1526; Procter, Curia, 77-78, 110-111.
24. Rodrigo, De rebus Hispaniae, IX, 18, pp. 147-148; González, Fernando III, III, no. 809, pp. 387-389; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1527-1531; Procter, Curia, no. 4, pp. 271-273.
25. O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1533-1534; Procter, Curia, 105-117.
26. O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1512-1514, 1520-1521, 1525-1527.
27. González, Alfonso IX, II, nos. 11-12, 84-85, 221, pp. 23-27, 125129, 306-309, and Fernando III, III,no. 809, pp. 387-389; Fuero viejo, 1-2; Francisco J. Hernández will publish the ordinance of 1207.
28. Sánchez Albornoz, "La primitiva organización monetaria de León y Castilla," in his Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas (Mexico 1965), 471-477; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1518-1520, 1528-1529.
29. Procter, "The Interpretation of Clause 3 of the Decrees of León (1188)," EHR 75 (1970): 45 - 54; Carlé, "Boni Homines y Hombres buenos," CHE 39-40 (1964): 133-168.
30. González, Alfonso IX, II, no. 167, pp. 236-237; O'Callaghan, "Beginnings," 1517, n. 64; Procter, Curia, 34-41, 59-69, 85-93.