The Justicia de Aragón (; ; ; Justice of Aragon) is the name of an important public office that existed in the Kingdom of Aragon from the beginning of at least the 12th century until 1711, and again from 1982 onwards.
The Justicia was the most prestigious and powerful office of the Kingdom of Aragon aside from the kingship itself. The task of the incumbent was to ensure that the laid down rights (Fueros) and the customary law of the land were observed. The Justicia had extensive judicial and executive powers, and acted as a zealous counterbalance to royal authority within the Crown of Aragon. The Justicia was also speaker of the yearly meeting of the Cortes de Aragon (the Aragonese parliament), was charged with the swearing-in of new monarchs, and could veto any action by any official (including the king himself) if the Justicia deemed it to be against the Fueros of Aragon. The office was abolished in 1711 when the Nueva Planta Decrees unified the Spanish monarchy, but was reinstated in 1982 with the passing of the Statute of Autonomy of the Autonomous Community of Aragon of 1982. Its modern duties are those of a regional ombudsman.
History
Origins of the Office Since at least the 15th century, the origins of the office of the Justicia have been used to explain why royal authority in Aragon was so tightly bound by a set of legal traditions that the Justicia was charged with overseeing. Broadly speaking, there were two largely compatible theories regarding the origins of the office of the Justicia, both of which placed its origins at the onset of the kingdom of Aragon itself.
Iñigo Arista and the first Justicia The first theory can be traced back to the scholarly work of Martin Sagarra. Sagarra is believed to have been a legal scholar active either in the 1270s or in the 1340s. In his Glossa de Observantis Regni Aragonum (written in 1450–1458), the legal historian Johan Antich de Bages claims Martin Sagarra himself had been Justicia sometime between Fortún Ahe, said to have held the office either in 1275 or 1276, and Pedro Martínez de Artasona, who is known to have served as Justicia in the Cortes of Aragon held in 1281. As a legal scholar, Martin Sagarra apparently penned a historical account of the office of the Justicia which Antich de Bages quotes from liberally. This work by Sagarra is now lost, but it apparently claimed that the office of the Justicia had been created at the same time as the kingship itself. Sagarra traced back the office of the Justicia to the reign of Iñigo Arista (c. 790–851), who according to him had only accepted his election as king of Pamplona under the condition that a judge be elected to adjudicate any disputes that may arise between the king and his subjects. This judge would be the original Justicia. Furthermore, according to Sagarra, Arista promised the king would never abolish the office of the Justicia, and that if any monarch did so, its vassals had the right to depose him and elect a new king, even if the latter were a pagan. Antich de Bages then elaborates that this ancient right was abolished in the Privilege of the Union of 1347 (a charter negotiated by Peter IV of Aragon). According to Antich de Bages, this privilege allowed royal subjects to rebel if the king violated the charters and customs of Aragon and, for this reason, Peter IV had ordered all traces of it be destroyed. In fact, Peter IV himself is famously said to have torn a copy of these ancient charters with his own dagger once the Privilege of the Union of 1347 was passed. It is for this reason that Ralph Giesey believed that Sagarra must have written his work after 1348, and that what he was describing was not some ancient rights, but the customary law of his time, which had been just been codified and modified by the Privilege of the Union of 1347. However, at least one copy of these ancient charters survived, which was studied first by Gualberto Fabricio de Vagad (active in the 1450s) and ended up in the hands of legal scholar Jerónimo Blancas in the 16th century, and was eventually rediscovered in the 19th century.
The legendary Fueros de Sobrarbe as a legal basis
The second theory regarding the origin of the office of the Justicia was first spelt out by Gualberto Fabricio de Vagad (active in the 15th century), who linked the Justicia to the fabled Fueros de Sobrarbe (Charters of Sobrarbe), a legendary compilation of legal traditions linked to the Sobrarbe, a valley in the Pyrenees that was the starting point from which the Aragonese monarchy began its expansion against the Arabs in the 11th century. The Fueros of Sobrarbe allegedly predated by several centuries the formal establishment in 1035 of the Kingdom of Aragon itself, and Vagad and Jerónimo Blancas used the Fueros to justify the extensive authority of the office of the Justicia, and the existence of many of the Aragonese institutions.
It is generally believed that neither the Kingdom of Sobrarbe nor its legendary Fueros ever existed, and that at best they were used in subsequent centuries to justify customary law and medieval institutions, and at worst they were blatant fabrications.Morales Arrizabalaga, Jesús, «Los Fueros de Sobrarbe como discurso político. Consideraciones de método y documentos para su interpretación», Huarte de San Juan. Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, 1 (1994), pp. 161-188. The cartulary of the Fueros de Sobrarbe themselves, if there ever was one, was already lost by the time they began to be used to justify certain limitations to royal authority, but the Fueros themselves gave legal grounds to force the monarch of Aragon (and in parallel, the king of Navarre) to grant the nobility and cities of its territory vast freedoms, including legal rights and tax and military exemptions. The specific contents of the Fueros weren't even spelt out clearly until the 1580s, when Jerónimo Blancas elaborated a set of six charters in latin, but for centuries before this, the Fueros had used to justify the subordination of the aragonese crown to the laws of the land ("laws before kings"), the right of Aragonese freemen to ignore or "rebel" against royal orders deemed illegal either by the recipient himself or, once the institution was firmly established, by the Justicia, thereby enshrining a pervasive legal principle in most of the Iberian peninsula, including the crowns of Navarre and, to some extent, of Castile. This also granted certain tax exemptions and to refuse to partake in wars taking place outside the crown of Aragon's own territories. It is in this context of asserting the rights of nobility and urban corporations that the Fueros of Sobrarbe begin to be mentioned in legal documents after the 13th century, when jurists and legal historians start to use them to justify the legitimacy that certain medieval institutions of Navarre and Aragon (the Justicia, the beyle, the regular gathering of their respective parliaments,...) would be grounded in the (by then) ancient Fueros of Sobrarbe.Ramos Loscertales, José María, «Los fueros de Sobrarbe», Cuadernos de Historia de España, 7 (1947), pp. 24-66. Reimpr. Institución Fernando el Católico, Zaragoza, 1981, pp. 34-37.
All historical mentions to the Fueros de Sobrarbe prior to the 1200s are subsequent fabrications, likely stemming from a late 1230s manipulation of the city charter of Tudela, originally issued c.1120 but manipulated in the 1230s.Arrechea Silvestre, Horacio, «Algunas correspondencias entre el fuero de Estella y el fuero de Tudela», Segundo Congreso General de Historia de Navarra, 2, Conferencias y comunicaciones sobre Prehistoria, Historia Antigua e Historia Medieval. Príncipe de Viana, Anejo 14, LIII (1992), pp. 315-324. During the reign of Sancho VII the Strong (1157-1234), the city of Tudela in Navarre had seen its territory dwindle in favour of the king, who resided in the city, and the corporation of the city had also seen many new taxes levied to fund Sancho VII's campaigns and court.Orcástegui Gros, Carmen: «Tudela durante los reinados de Sancho VII el Fuerte y Teobaldo I», Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón, 10 (1975), p. 63-80 (especialmente, p. 64). At the death of king Sancho VII, the throne of Navarre was inherited by his nephew Teobaldo I (1201-1253) of the House of Champagne. Taking advantage of the dynastic change, some time after 1234 the city of Tudela would have manipulated its own charter at several points so as to assert its rights and weaken royal authority. Because the new monarch lacked a firm power base in his new kingdom and was more focused on defending the regency of queen Blanche of France than on his Navarrese affairs, Teobaldo I agreed to quickly settle all disputes between the crown and cities of Navarra, and in 1237 confirmed the (now) manipulated charter of Tudela.Orcástegui Gros, Carmen: «Tudela durante los reinados de Sancho VII el Fuerte y Teobaldo I», Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón, 10 (1975), p. 63-80 (especialmente, p. 64). The chief manipulations concerned the claim that upon being granted, the charter of Tudela had inherited the Fueros de Sobrarbe (which included, amongst other things, the right for the city to appoint its own Justicia to veto royal orders and assert its rights), and the tax exemptions and extensive territorial rights the charter supposedly granted to Tudela.Arrechea Silvestre, Horacio, «Algunas correspondencias entre el fuero de Estella y el fuero de Tudela», Segundo Congreso General de Historia de Navarra, 2, Conferencias y comunicaciones sobre Prehistoria, Historia Antigua e Historia Medieval. Príncipe de Viana, Anejo 14, LIII (1992), pp. 315-324.
Proofs of the fabrication include the fact that the original 1119-1124 charter of Tudela is lost, and all extant copies are dated after 1234;Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17-19. the fact that the charter is postdated to 1117 (the year Tudela was conquered from the Arabs), but that subsequent mentions suggest the original charter could only have been granted between 1119 and 1124; the fact the charter uses the royal title Aldeffonsus, rex Aragonie et Nauarre ("Alfonso, king of Aragon and Navarre"), which only began to be used half a century after the reign of king Alfonso himself, in fact during the reign of Sancho VII the Strong;Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17-19. and the fact that amongst the extensive territorial rights the charter supposedly granted Tudela there are certain towns and valleys that were still under Arab control in 1117, such as the towns Corella and Cabanillas, the latter of which were in fact granted their own independent charters in 1120 and 1124.Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17-19.