The final component of Castile’s legal culture and one that was also instrumental in promoting litigation in the sixteenth century was the Habsburg monarchy, the institution chiefly responsible for the administration and enforcement of law. Cerdan de Tallada recognized the importance of the monarchy in this respect when he wrote that “the improper administration of justice” was one reason why “lawsuits were multiplying,” but his interpretation of the relationship of political power to litigation was wrong. Litigation is more of a response to strong than to weak government, and it especially reflects a regime committed to what is commonly known as a rule of law. When government is weak, power divided, and the enforcement of judicial decisions haphazard, litigation is likely to diminish in relation to other modes of dispute settlement, including personal reconciliation, out-of-court arbitration, and feud. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ The interregnum lasting from the death of Queen Isabella in 1504 to the victory of Charles V over the Comunero rebels in 1521 was an epoch of precisely this sort. After the defeat of the rebels, however, the new king quickly set about restoring royal authority, devoting special attention to the development of strong legal institutions in an attempt to implement an effective rule of law.

The underlying aim of Charles’s policy was to promote royal absolutism and, specifically, to increase the power of royal tribunals vis á vis those of the municipalities, the nobility, and the church. But Charles, schooled in the teachings of Erasmus, also believed that power had to be tempered with justice, the highest of all temporal virtues and one without which no Christian monarch in the sixteenth century could presume to rule. This justice was that of natural law, and, in Castile, was popularly defined as “not hurting anyone, rendering unto each what is rightfully his, rewarding good, punishing evil, and guarding the faith.” ⁽⁶⁰⁾ Justice also implied peace, whereas its opposite, injustice, the equivalent of crime, banditry, feud, contempt of authority, and the abuse of office, implied chaos or the conditions under which an individual’s “natural” rights could not be guaranteed. So defined, justice in the sixteenth century was a scarce commodity indeed, but first Charles and later Philip II, in accordance with the traditional Castilian monarch as the giver of laws and guardian of justice, worked hard to become a rey justiciero in more than name alone.

When Charles first visited his Castilian realms in 1518, he found his kingdom in disarray. The era since the death of Isabella in 1504 had been one of lawlessness and feud, much of it precipitated by nobles seeking to exploit the weakness of the monarchy during the regencies of Ferdinand and Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros to their own advantage. Royal jurisdictions had been usurped by powerful nobles, and many municipalities suffered from similar losses, but in the absence of strong royal authority little could be done to bring the guilty to justice. Many of the crown’s corregidores were in the pay of wealthy nobles, and the two chancillerías had fallen prey to private interests as well. Even the Royal Council lost much of its creditability and power because of the close ties of its members with the landed aristocracy. ⁽⁶¹⁾

In protest, the cities represented in the Cortes complained about the lack of justicia, urging the new monarch to set matters right. But when Charles first arrived — young, ungainly, speaking no Castilian, and surrounded by Flemish advisers with little feeling or concern for Castile’s domestic troubles — nothing was done. Matters finally grew to a head at the Cortes of the following year. The cities pressed their cause, but Charles, interested only in money and hurried for time, did not listen, and even before his ship embarked from La Coruña in the spring of 1520, most of the cities of the central meseta, including Toledo, Segovia, and Valladolid, were openly in revolt. By refusing to respond to the grievances presented in the Cortes, Charles, in Castilian eyes, had ignored his responsibility to provide justicia. The Capítulos de Tordesillas, a series of reform proposals subsequently compiled by the leaders of this revolt, made this point clear: by failing to correct the abuses that the Cortes had previously outlined, Charles had failed as a rey justiciero. ⁽⁶²⁾

That the monarchy finally defeated the Comunero revolt with the help of Castile’s aristocracy at the battle of Villalar in April 1521 is a well-known fact, but the accounts of this rebellion often omit mention of how Charles hastened to meet many of the rebels’ central demands . By the early 1520s, Charles himself recognized the importance of Castile’s resources, both human and financial, to the success of his European ventures; consequently, he moved quickly to pacify his troubled realm. Save for the execution of the revolt’s leaders, about one hundred in total, treatment of the rebels was extremely conciliatory. ⁽⁶³⁾ And at the Cortes of 1523, a meeting pointedly held in the Comunero stronghold of Valladolid, Charles listened to petitions that differed little in substance from the Capítulos de Tordesillas . The Comuneros had insisted that Charles reside in Castile; the Cortes asked the same, ⁽⁶⁴⁾ and it is probably no coincidence that, to avoid adding fuel to the revolt’s still smoldering ashes, Charles remained in the kingdom from 1522 to 1529, the longest he ever remained continuously in any one of his many realms. Similarly, the Comuneros had requested that Charles remove his Flemish advisers from Castillan posts; again the Cortes echoed this demand, and the emperor responded by “castilianizing” his governments appointing two of his Castilian advisers, Francisco de los Cobos and Juan de Tavera, archbishop of Seville, to key administrative positions. ⁽⁶⁵⁾

59. Sicily provides a good example of how centuries of weak and divided government in the interior of the island led gradually to the emergence of mafiosi, private warfare, and persistent feud. See Henner Hess, Mafia and Mafiosi: The Structure of Power (London, 1973), esp. pp. 14-17. A more theoretical approach toward the conditions that abet the emergence of feud is offered by Leopold Pospíšil, Anthropology of Law: A Comparative Theory (New York, 1971), p. 8.

60. Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla, Política para corregidores (Madrid, 1597), Libro II, cap. ii.

61. Detailed studies of this turbulent epoch in Castilian history are relatively few. See John H. Elliott, Imperial Spain (London, 1963), pp. 126-49, and J. H. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1516 (Oxford, 1978), 2:585-604, for two general accounts. Another slant is provided by Helen Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350-1550 (New Brunswick, 1979), chap. 7. For a local study, see Stephen Haliczer, “Political Opposition and Collective Violence in Segovia, 1475-1520,” Journal of Modern History, on-demand supplement, abstract in 48 (Dec. 1976).

62. The definitive account of this revolt is Joseph Pérez, La révolution des ‘Comunidades’ de Castille(1520-21) (Bordeaux, 1970), although José Ignacio Gutiérrez Nieto, Las comunidades como movimiento anti-señorial (Barcelona, 1973), offers another, more recent interpretation. The Capítulos de Tordesillas are published in Juan Maldonado, La revolución comunera (Madrid, 1975), Appendix.

63. See Pérez, pp. 583-634.

64. CLC, vol. 4: Cortes de 1523, pet. 2, p. 365.

65. Ibid., vol. 4: pet. 4, p. 366.