Spain

The distinction of classes was far sharper in Aragon than in non-feudal Castile and Leon. Predial slavery, which had disap peared in Castile and Leon in the 13th century, existed unmodified in Aragon, and in its worst form, down to the Bourbon dynasty. Freedom was confined to the citizens of the towns which had charters—called in Aragon the Universidades—the nobles, the gentry and the Church. The Catalans attained emancipation from feudal subjection by a succession of savage peasant revolts in the 15th and 16th centuries. In Valencia emancipation was finally brought by a measure which in itself was cruel—the expulsion of the Moriscos in the 17th century. The landlords were compelled to replace them by free tenants. The prevalence of predial slavery in Aragon and Valencia can be largely explained by the number of Mudejares, that is Mohammedans living under Christian rule, and of Moriscos—converted Mohammedans.

Christianization of Spain.

The Jews, who had suffered cruelly from the brutal fanaticism of the Almoh5,des, had done a great deal to forward the conquest of Andalusia. They were re paid by the confidence of the king, and the period which includes the reign of Fernando and lasts till the end of the 14th century was the golden age of their history in Spain. In 1391 the preach ing of a priest of Seville, Fernando Martinez, led to the first gen eral massacre of the Jews, who were envied for their prosperity and hated because they were the king's tax collectors. But the history of the persecution and expulsion of the Jews is the same everywhere except in date. The story of the Mudejares and Moriscos is peculiarly Spanish. Forced conversion prepared the way for expulsion, which came in the reign of Philip III. (1598– 1621). In the majority of cases the conversion had occurred so long ago that the memory of the time when they were Moham medans was lost, and multitudes of the children of Mudejares re mained. The Mozarabes again—the Christians who had always lived under Mohammedan rule—were an element of importance in mediaeval Spain. They had learnt to write in Arabic, and used Arabic letters even when writing Latin, or the corrupt dialect of Latin which they spoke. The Mozarabes were treated under the kings of the reconquest as separate bodies with their own judges and law, which they had been allowed to keep by the Muslim rulers. That code was the forum judicum of the Visigoths, the fuero juzgo, as it was called in the "romance" of later times and in Castilian. The Mozarabes brought in the large Arabic element, which is one of the features of the Castilian language.

Problem of the Unification of Spain.

The work of politi cal unification was essentially more difficult than the christianiza tion of Spain. The Galician who spoke, and still speaks, a lan guage of his own, was profoundly separated from the Andalusian. The Basque, who till much later times practically included the Navarrese, was a man of another nationality and another speech from the Castilian. And what is true of Castile and Leon applies equally to Aragon. Aragonese, Catalans and Valencians were as different as Galicians, Basques, Castilians and Andalusians. Ara gon spoke a dialect of Castilian. Catalonia and Valencia, together with the Balearic islands, spoke, and speak, dialects of the southern French, the so-called Limos& though it was not the language of the Limousin. High mountain barriers and deep river courses

had separated the Spaniards locally. They were more subtly and incurably separated by traditional and legal status. Under the Crown of Castile all the territory was either abadengo, realengo, salariego, behetria, or it belonged to some town, big or little, which had its carta pueblo or town charter, its own fuero (forum) or law. Abadengo was land of the Church, realengo domain of the Crown, salariego land of the nobles. Behetria is less easy to trans late. The word is the romance form of benefactoria. Behetrias, called "plebian lordships," were districts and townships of peasants who were bound to have a lord, and to make him payments in money or in kind, but who had a varying freedom of choice in electing their lord. Some were described as "from sea to sea, and seven times a day," that is to say they could take him anywhere in the king's dominions from the Bay of Biscay to the Straits of Gibraltar, and change him as often as they pleased. Others were de linage, that is to say, bound to take their lord from certain lineages. Their origin must probably be sought in the action of communities of Mozarabes, Christians living under Muslim rule as rayahs, who put themselves under Christian chiefs of the early days of the reconquest for the benefice of their protection. They were mainly in old Castile. By the end of the middle ages they had disappeared. The chartered towns, in Spain east and west, were practically republics living under their own carte pueblo with their own fuer° or law. All charters were not granted by the king. Many of them were given by nobles or ecclesiastics, but re quired the confirmation of the king. And in this country, where all was local law usage and privilege, where uniformity was un known, all charters were not held by towns. In many cases the serfs in the course of their struggle for freedom extorted charters and fueros. The greater chartered towns had their surrounding comarcas, answering to the "county" of an Italian city, over which they exercised jurisdiction. In time the villages dependent on a chartered city, as they grew to be towns themselves, fought for, and in many cases won, emancipation, which they then sought to have confirmed by the king and proceeded to symbolize by setting up their own gallows in the market-place. The Church had won exemption from the payment of taxes by no general law, but by particular privilege to this or that chapter, bishopric or monastery. The nobles claimed, and were allowed, exemption from taxation. Church and nobles alike were for ever extending their borders by purchase, or trying to do so by force. They conferred their ex emptions on the land they acquired, thus throwing the burden of taxation on the towns and the non-nobles with increasing weight. But there was in reality no sharp division except in the smaller and feudal portion—called Aragon for convenience—and save as be tween Christian and non-Christian, noble and non-noble. The necessities of the reconquest made it obligatory that all the dwellers on the frontier should be garrison. Hence they were not only encouraged but required to possess arms. Those of them who could provide themselves with a charger, a mail shirt, a spear and sword were ranked as milites—and the miles was a caballero.