Prácticas judiciales, transformación social y acción política en Cataluña (siglos IX-XIII)

Abstract

Using documents from the Sant Cugat del Valles and Girona archives, this paper analyzes the conflict resolution mechanisms in Catalonia between the 9th and 13th century. Focusing on the evolution of the administration of justice I point out the most meaningful changes in this period. We can differentiate five periods: 1) between the 9th and 10th century characterized by the Lex Visigothorum; 2) the first half of the 11th century characterized by the continuity and erosion of this tradition; 3) between the late 11th and the early 12th century when the ordinary justice disappeared being substituted by agreements and arbitration; 4) the second half of the 12th century when the practices of the previous period coincide with the emergence of legal processes leaded by experts on roman and feudal law; and finally 5) the 13th century characterized by the rise of the written law, the jurisdictional plurality, the creation of professional jurists, the of the regularized processes according to the «roman canonic» rules, and the importance of roman Law, with the written customs, and the consolidation of feudal law. All these changes are related to the social and political evolution: first, by disappearance of the latest vestiges of a public conception of power based on a notion of collective rights and duties, and with the creation of a feudal state. Using a class struggle point of view, I analyze the institutional conflicts among the powerful and also betwwen the powerful and the lower classes, I conclude that the gradual disappearance of the regular processes and the distrust on written law, favored an informal system which in turn lead to more personal and oppressive mechanisms of social explotation. Althought I do not ignore the class content of the «hispano.goda» traditional justice (9th to 10th century) and also of the feudal institutionalized justice (13th century) I argue that for the working classes the legal precept was always better that the manorial arbitration.