Institutional Fusion at the Corts with Limited Territorial Anchoring

The judicial integration of the various counties subordinated the county courts to the central court, the Corts. This made the Corts the most important judicial institution, one that the nobility had many incentives to attend.

Judicial activities were central to the role of the count-king across the Crown of Aragon, not just Catalonia. Rather than a roving bandit, James I was a roving judge, as were his predecessors and his European counter­parts, traveling throughout his kingdom accompanied by jurists special­izing in the multiple local laws and customs (fueros):

It “was true that I had civil and canon lawyers in my household, but that I was bound to have such lawyers by me: every king’s court ought to be accompanied by canon, civil, and fuero lawyers, for there were many law-suits in all those branches. I myself, by the grace of God, had three or four kingdoms to my share, and law-suits came before me of many different kinds. If I had not with me those who could judge and sentence such suits-at-law, it would be a shame to me and to my court, as neither I nor any layman could know all the law-writings there are in the world.”^[958]

Cases were usually heard in the small council, the curia. By contrast, a fuller meeting was held when it involved a great noble or bishop, as with the claim of a countess to the county of Urgell in 1228 or the “king’s accusation against the Viscount of Cardona for breach of a truce imposed on him in 1252” or again in 1274, against him on account of his “refusal to obey the king’s writ of summons to the host.”^[959] Cases could also involve local crimes, such as murder, where James ordered financial compensation as well as support for the widows and orphans from the incident.^[960] Failure to attend the Corts was, as in England, an act of insubordination.

The Corts also functioned as a forum where the count-prince and the Catalan nobility resolved broader rights of jurisdiction. At the great court of 1214, for instance, the count-prince was forced to accept only Catalans as vicars to administer justice.⁵⁹ This demand aimed at regulating, not rejecting, the count-prince’s authority - similar to the dynamic in Magna Carta. But nobles retained greater rights to exclude the count-prince’s agents from their jurisdictions, rendering exempted territories abodes for those persecuted by comital justice. These rights were affirmed in the Corts of 1228 and 1283, further consolidating noble power. Jurisdictional conflicts were thus recurrent.^[961]

The Corts further legislated on the rights of the nobility vis-a-vis the peasants. On this issue as well, Catalan nobles were more autonomous than English ones, as already noted (though not more than the Aragonese). As the historian Paul Freedman has argued, peasant condi­tions “may legitimately be termed serfdom.” The Corts of 1202 secured their right to “maltreat” and imprison their men (rusticos) and to deny them the right to appeal to county courts.^[962] This was the ius maletractandi, which regulated peasant servitude.^[963] These were rights English lords lost as royal courts prevailed (Part I). The count-prince therefore did not have direct control over the countryside and the rural population lacked rep­resentation independent of the towns. This urban predominance ultim­ately weakened territorial anchoring and hence the polity-wide reach of the regime.

Two more factors that were significant in the English system do not find systematic counterparts in the Catalan case: England’s relatively direct system of courts and the necessary authorization by the center for court action (the writ system of the common law). The Catalan system was less structured, with overlapping authorities between offices such as the bailiffs, the vicars, and the majordomo.^[965] In all, these differences reflect the variation in the capacity of the respective rulers to install an integrated judicial system.

Although Catalan petitions have not received systematic attention as in England, they were part of standard Corts procedure.^[966] They were also instrumental in fusing local demand with central legislation, as in England: already from 1283 it was recognized that the participation of the third estate was central and one of the most important constitutional documents, the Privilegio General, was granted in response to petitions from nobles and town representatives.⁶⁶ By the 1350s, common petitions (greuges generals') were submitted by the universitas Cathalonia, as were individual ones from all social orders.⁶⁷

The Catalan Corts thus fused judicial activities with political ones, achieving the institutional fusion that generated both greater centralization and greater robustness over time. Compellence of the nobility was key here as well, but as this was weaker than in England, urban institutions developed more independently, undercutting the long­term cohesion of the regime.

8.5