Potencialidad del programa

Military justice offers an opportunity to observe one last facet of the municipal militias' impact upon the towns they served. Military punishments ran the gamut from lesser and greater fines through temporary loss of privileges up to exile, juridical mutilation and even death. Such grim subjects hold our interest because the fines, restrictions and punishments imposed for misdeeds connected with military service yield important insights into the psychology of an exposed and dangerous frontier situation. The laws of military justice embrace every aspect of militia activity: the citizen's obligation to serve when summoned; to conform to certain norms in the conduct of a campaign; to observe properly the practices vital to the security of the town; and to distribute equitably any booty taken as the result of battle. The municipal charters of Leon, Castile and Aragon render the bulk of the information, the product of their more active militia tradition. These sources can be supplemented by the great Alfonsine codes of the later thirteenth century, the Fuero real, the Espéculo and the Siete partidas.

The severity of military justice as compared to that available under civil law remains a topic of periodic discussion, made more vivid for us in the recent critiques of military conduct in the Vietnamese conflict or in the Australian film Breaker Morant which makes some telling analogies to that conflict in its own examination of the Boer War. Certainly warfare both appears to magnify the wrongness of an act unacceptable to a particular society, while at the same time multiplying the situations in which these acts are likely to occur, thus deadening our sensitivity to the increased level of violence. Another important [189] factor is the frontier. Two contrasting societies in conflict along their borders can generate sufficient violence to provoke the descriptive word "savage", as is the case with the English wars against the North American Indians which saw the non-Western opponent as "savages", here probably confusing both its primitive and its fierce connotations. Francis Jennings has argued that this frontier savagery is largely contained in the eye of the beholder, and may have involved fierce (and primitive as well, for that matter) conduct at least as frequently on the European side as the Indian. The Christian and Muslim conflict in Iberia similarly operated in a frontier situation, described alternatively as a "crusade" or "jihad", sufficiently violent in its nature to convince at least two Spanish scholars that frontier legal traditions were exceedingly harsh.(1)

It remains difficult to factor into the military justice of the Iberian militias the impact of the continual conflict along this frontier, save to argue that this incipient violence on a daily basis probably

intensified the scale of punishments in the hope of maintaining the norms of society under such pressure while deterring the most unacceptable of battlefield violations. It is significant that the sanctions examined in the present study were executed by Christians against Christians, not against differing religious groups on opposite sides during a battle. To best understand the municipal and royal perceptions of military misconduct and the levels of seriousness of these infractions, this survey will proceed from lesser sanctions and punishments to greater ones, seeking patterns in the correspondence

of the violations and levels of punishment.

Small monetary levies are the least severe forms of sanction and offer a good starting place. The fueros give indication of special concern regarding the assembly of the municipal militia and the presence of those who offer service. In one sense, wartime taxes and fines constitute a form of fiscal support for the military enterprise, lying within the option of the individual and carrying no stigma for offering

payment in lieu of service. Kings often preferred the funds to service and negotiated with towns for payment.(2) In another way, however, these levies can be seen as a kind of military sanction, since those who pay these fees do so because they take no active part in the war effort, and need to compensate those who do make such a contribution. Indeed, specific occasions existed when the taxes levied for absence from the military muster were divided among the militiamen who did serve.(3) The

unpopularity of rendering service periodically surfaced. Jaime I, for example, told of the difficulty he found in holding his troops together even with punishments he personally [190] meted out, so great was their desire to return to their harvests during the campaign to retake Murcia. There is at least one

Portuguese instance of assigning military service as a punishment for antisocial conduct in the community.(4)

Table 3 indicates the fee in lieu of service exacted for both offensive (fonsadera for fonsado, hueste, cavalgada, exercitus) and defensive campaigning (apellido) across three centuries of those municipal fueros which cite a specific fee.(5) The table indicates that the levy ran from one to ten maravedís (with a few higher exceptions), tended to be double for knights as against peones, and seemed to tax

offensive and defensive absence with rough equality. The amount of tax, levy or fine here is roughly at the same level for minor infractions committed in military situations (i.e. ten or fewer maravedís). The larger exceptions, although not always specifically noted in the text, are in all probability a collective fee taken from the entire town rather than from individuals.

Within the range of most of the non-service levies listed in Table 8-1 (one to ten maravedís), a number of smaller fees existed which could more clearly be defined as fines, exacted in connection with military activity. Quadrilleros who failed to provide animals to carry the ill, wounded or aged during campaigns forfeited one maravedí per day for each person who was inconvenienced thereby.

Watchtower guards in Teruel and Albarracín who failed to respond to calls from below while on duty paid a levy of two maravedís, and five maravedís if they began their watch late or left early.

Gatekeepers in the same towns paid five maravedís if they opened the gates during the night without proper authorization. All of these violations presumed no harm to anyone as a result, and were simple violations of everyday security procedures. Indeed, a watch supervisor (sobrevela) who covered for a sleeping sentry owed a thirty-maravedí fine to the town and lost his office for good. Similarly, if a gatekeeper allowed a criminal to pass through the gate, that portero paid the same thirty-maravedí fine to the town, lost his office, and owed double damages to any party harmed by his action.(6) Christian raiders who accidentally seized the animals of fellow residents during their rustling raids owed a fine of five maravedís for each horse or mule so taken in Calatayud, and one maravedí for each ox, cow or ass.

TABLE 3

FEES CHARGED FOR MISSING APELLIDO AND FONSADO MUSTERS