Merindad

The merindad is a type of Spanish jurisdiction , inherited the Moyen-âge, and particularly established in Navarre and Old woman-Castille. The term appears with the Xe century at the time of the organization of the county of Castille by Ferdinand González de Castille. Merindades are described in the " Becerro de Behetrías" under the reign of Pierre Ier de Castille. The original cradle of Castille still bears the name of the Merindades of the province of Burgos.

The merindad, a territory

With the Middle Ages, the merindad indicates before a whole territory, a district located around a city or of an important borough, enjoying the statute of villa . This territory (more or less vast, according to the cases), in addition to the city-center, gathered arable lands, wood, but also of the villages ( aldeas , which could be simple hamlets), which profited from a statute lower than that of the villa , their inhabitants not having the same rights as those of the villa , which bore the name of vecinos . It returned in the city-center to direct and defend the interests of the merindad.

The Navarre, for example, was divided into six merindades : Pampelune, Sangüesa, Olite, Tafalla, Tudela, and Saint-Jean-Foot-of-Port (the latter having been detached at the time of the annexation of the Navarre by the Castille in 1512). They always exist as historical territorial divisions, replaced out of legal matter by the districts ( partidos judiciales in Spanish).

The merindad, an administrative and legal jurisdiction

To the territory of the merindad corresponds a clean jurisdiction, of type administrative and legal. This jurisdiction was directed by a merino , also called merino menor , kind of judge to which corresponded primarily the legal authority, but which could intervene in other fields. Its function was also called merindad .

The merino menor was named by the merino mayor , was chosen and named by the king, and who had administrative and legal capacities much wider. The territory of its jurisdiction was more or less vast, according to the number and the size of the merindades which composed it. Some exerted their authority on only one province, it is often the case in the north of the peninsula where territorial parcelling out and the diversity of the right, two characteristics inherited the long centuries of the Early middle ages during which the royal authority had evil to contain the centrifugal forces exerted by the aristocracy, and even clergy. In the grounds reconquered as from the 11th century, the Castilian kings and léonais could organize more with their suitability the new territories, and thus tried to operate a legal unification on these spaces lately attached to their crown. The merino mayores exert then often on the totality of a kingdom: Tolède, Murcie, Seville, etc

The noble ones and the clergy escaped their influence of course, because they enjoyed exclusive legal statuses, in spite of the attempts of the king Alphonse X to subject them in a certain manner to common justice. The king exerted nevertheless his judicial power on all, and the most litigious cases arrived to the court, where the monarch judged in last spring, and this, for all, noble, clerks…

The juridico-territorial configuration of the merindad forms part of the medieval Iberian legal system, which did not know the most succeeded forms of feudality, though this question animates the specialists since glosses. At all events, the merindad seems to have to be regarded more as a jurisdiction registered in a legal framework clearly dominated by the royalty, and escaping the influence seigneuriale, and this, to differing degree, according to the times and the areas.

See too

Merindades of the Community Forale de Navarre

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