Charters of Valencia

Codex Furs de València from the Cervelló Palace, 1329.

The Fueros de Valencia (Furs de València in Valencian), or Fueros de la Ciudad y Reino de Valencia are the set of laws that governed the Kingdom of Valencia from 1261, when James I, the founder of the kingdom, swore and promulgated them in a meeting of the Courts of the Kingdom of Valencia the same year, until 1707, when they were abolished by the Decree of Nueva Planta, in the context of the War of Succession.

History

Origin: the Costum of Valencia

Its first redaction dates back to the spring of 1239, the year after the conquest of Valencia, on the initiative of King Jaime I himself, and is called Costum ('Custom& #39;). It was initially written in Latin and at first it was applied only to the city of Valencia. Some people call "Costum" to the Valencian legal regulations before 1261, the date on which Jaime I swore it under the name of "Furs", however the preserved documentation shows that prior to that date it was called indistinctly with the forms &# 34;fueros", "customs" and even some more.

With the promulgation of the Costum by James I in 1239, the legal existence of the new kingdom was sanctioned with its own legal and legislative framework, thus putting an end to the diversity of fueros and costums from the first years of the conquest. The Aragonese lords applied the Fuero de Zaragoza in their new Valencian dominions -Jaume I himself applied it to the first city he conquered, Burriana-, while the military orders preferred the Costum de Lleida and the Mudejars they were governed by Islamic law.

According to other sources^{[citation needed]}, the first costum was promulgated by James I on March 21, 1238, in Játiva, conferring civil and criminal judges, as well as the Cambra dels Jurats de València, ('Valencia Chamber of Juries') to the city. On May 21, 1239, the first privilege appears in which the curia of Valencia is mentioned, in which it is given a place for its court. On December 29, 1239, James I granted the Justice to Valencia.

"The text of the Costum, written in Latin, took advantage of elements of local Catalan law (the Costum of Lérida), of feudal law (the Usatges of Barcelona and Liber Iudiciorum) and, above all, of Roman law (Corpus iuris civilis), exhumed by the jurists of the time, particularly those of Bologna, and much more favorable to the monarch". As the new code enshrined the power of the supported Crown and the aspirations of the new elites of the cities to the detriment of the traditional preponderance of the nobility, the latter opposed the application of the Costum of Valencia to all the kingdom defending the application of the Aragonese fueros —the king himself applied them to the new towns of Vinaroz and Villafamés.

Extension to the whole kingdom: the Furs

It seems that it was in 1251 when, inspired by the name of the Fueros de Aragón, compiled four years before, the Valencian costums began to be mentioned as fueros, after the royal order to collect all the norms that had been promulgated in the first years of Christian Valencia. In that year Jaime I ordered that the judges abide by the "fueros".

On the other hand, for a while the "costums" they depended on the will of the king who had promulgated them, and therefore could be revoked by him. The city of Valencia and some towns tried to obtain its irrevocability, for which the king was requested to swear the privileges. This finally happened on April 7, 1261. Jaime I swore in Valencia, before the Courts of the Kingdom of Valencia, the privileges of Valencia. Four days later he promulgated a privilege to the new kingdom, according to which, all the successors of the monarch also had to be sworn in in Valencia before the month of his reign was over. This subordination of the king to the Fueros supposed the constitution of the Kingdom of Valencia as a sovereign state. The text of the fueros was preserved in a register drawn up by the notary Boronat de Pña.

The privilege granted by Jaime I by which the king was obliged by him and by his descendants to swear the Furs of Valencia immediately after beginning his reign, and to convene Corts within a month it was due to the king's need for money, an amount that was mostly paid for by the city of Valencia. The amount that the king received was 48,000 salaries collected and donated by the city of Valencia, the sites and towns of the Huerta de Valencia that belonged to clerics and nobles and the towns of Castellón de la Plana, Villafamés, Onda, Liria, Corbera, Cullera and Gandía.

In those first Courts of the Kingdom of Valencia held in 1261 —which apparently were not attended by the most important royal towns of the kingdom at that time, such as Morella, Burriana, Morverdre (Sagunto), Alcira and Játiva—, the King James I extended the Costum of Valencia, known from then on as Furs de València, to the entire kingdom. In these Cortes, the legal text was translated into Romance (Valencian), in order to facilitate its understanding, and changed its original name from Costum, typical of the Catalan tradition, to Costum i>Furs, closer to the Aragonese terminology. This was possibly due to the will to counteract the influence of the Fueros de Aragón, compiled in 1247 in Huesca, which threatened to spread to the Valencian populations governed by the various Aragonese fueros. In fact, a large part of the nobility continued to cling to the validity of Aragonese law and was firmly opposed to the territorial extension of the Valencian code. Despite noble resistance, the Furs of Valencia, definitively established in 1271, would end up spreading throughout the kingdom.

In the year 1263 the Aragonese charters ruled in Cirat, in Morella, in Vallibona, in Vinaroz, Bojar and Fredes, in Villanueva de Alcolea, the Mola Escabirosa, Corachá, the Peña del Arañonal, in Castell de Cabres, Castellfort, Burriana, Benicarló, Almazora, Salsadella and Ludiente, Benasal, Albocácer, Catí, and Riu de Truites (now Villafranca del Cid).

And in that same year the Costums of Lérida ruled in Cálig, Cervera del Maestre, Rosell and San Mateo, Villafamés, Vinaroz and Cabanes. And those of Barcelona governed in Castell de Xivert, Moncada and Beniacaldim de Almenara.

The Valencian legal system was completed with the privilegis ('privileges'), promulgated directly by the sovereign on his own initiative or at the request of a party, and by the actes de cort ('acts of court'), which were agreements reached in the Corts between the Crown and one or two of the braços —not with the three, whose agreements constituted the Furs proper.

This legislation is also incorporated (or at least not repealed) by a court of Roman origin and consolidated by the Muslims, the Tribunal de las Aguas de Valencia.

In 1271 the king obliged himself not to modify the Furs in the future without the consent of the Corts, thereby sanctioning that the laws of the Kingdom of Valencia were the result of the agreement between the king and the elites of the kingdom represented in the Corts, and could not be revoked without the consent of both parties. This gave birth to pactism, which also characterized the relations between the sovereign and his vassals in the rest of the states of the Crown of Aragon, even after its dynastic union with the Crown of Castile, which gave birth to the Hispanic Monarchy.

As a sign of Jaime I's interest in the fueros, in 1270 Jaime I again ordered the judges not to abide by the decrees but by the fueros. In 1271 he reconfirmed the fueros trying to make clear his will to consolidate the new regime. Also those who adhered to the king he would forgive some outstanding debts.

A very important fact for the consolidation of the fueros was the decree that Pedro III, son of Jaime I, also swore the fueros in 1277, at his coronation. But the fact that Peter was excommunicated by the Pope had an important impact, a fact that couples the power of the kingdoms to break the vassalage tribute. That was used by Catalonia and Aragon, but especially by Valencia, to reinforce their charters and privileges. In fact, from 1283, by virtue of the Privilegium Magnum, the king could not impose new taxes without the approval of the courts. In addition, in Valencia he was granted the power to appoint consuls.

In 1283, King Pedro III authorized the installation of the Consulate of the Sea in Valencia, which was the first in Spain.

Over time, despite the opposition of part of the nobility to the privileges of Valencia and given the risk that the rest of the territory could apply the privileges of Aragon, the crown and the Valencian Courts gradually consolidated the privileges of Valencia, as norms for the entire territory of the Kingdom of Valencia. In fact, it was in the Valencian Cortes of 1329 when Burriana and Villarreal accepted the privileges of Valencia and joined the Valencian Cortes. Until then they had been subject to the Aragonese fueros.

The Conflict of 1333

In 1333 King Alfonso IV of Aragon, under the influence of his second wife, Leonor, donated the lordships of Játiva, Alcira, Morvedre (Sagunto), Alicante, Morella, Castellón de la Plana and Burriana to the infant Fernando, (son of Eleanor). This violated a promise made before the Cortes in the years 1329 and 1330. This caused a confrontation between a portion of the nobility that supported the measure and another portion together with the common people who reacted against it and in favor and defense of the fueros. The head of the jury in Valencia, Francisco de Vinatea, met repeatedly with the king and with Leonor until he obtained the annulment of the donation, with the consequent irritation of Leonor, but ending the conflict and the civil disturbances that it was causing.

War of Succession, Decrees of Nueva Planta and abolition of fueros

Following his victory over Archduke Carlos of Austria in the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain's first Bourbon king, Philip V, promulgated the Nueva Planta Decrees that put an end to the entire Valencian legal and political system. According to these decrees, officials were appointed by the king and Valencian was prohibited as the language of administration, teaching and preaching.^{[citation required]}

Considering having lost the Kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, and all their inhabitants for the rebellion they committed, [...] and touching me the absolute dominion of the so-called realms [...], for to the circumstance of being understood in the others that so legitimately possessed in this Monarchy, now is added that of the right of conquest that of them have recently made my Arms with the motive of their rebellion;[... ] I have judged convenient (this is why I wish to reduce all my kingdoms of Spain to the uniformity of the same laws, customs, and tribunals, equally all by the laws of Castile as loable and plausible throughout the Universe) to abolish and derogate entirely, as I of course give for abolished and repealed, all the so-called rules, privileges, practice and practice to here. ]

Extract from Abolition Decree of the Aragon and Valencia

Characteristics of the Fueros and their implications

The circumstances of the kingdom of Valencia forced certain special characteristics of the fueros. The ethnic adjustment (Christians, Muslims and Jews) gave rise to legal structuring problems. This, added to the king's interests in disempowering the feudal nobility, made the new Valencian legislation establish some pre-democratic formulas, with a romanist legality within a prevailing royal power. This was in contrast to the old feudal structures of the other kingdoms and crown counties. Unlike in other kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon and the rest of the peninsula, the citizens of the Kingdom of Valencia were free from the arbitrariness of the lords. The ius soli prevailed over the ius sanguinis for the first time in the kingdoms of the peninsula.

This population was also in a phase of mutual ethnic adaptation (the poble ajusdadis mentioned by Eiximenis). Little by little, this configured in the city of Valencia an urban political regime, of a city-state, mercantile, artisan and mesocratic, comparable to that of other Mediterranean cities (Venice, Genoa, etc.) that were also in effervescence. The economic-commercial facilities attracted immigrants in search of a better quality of life, and Valencia entered a phase of economic and cultural expansion, the Valencian Golden Age, which would lead to a political, literary, and artistic flourishing prior to the Golden Age. Spanish.

King Jaime I ordered the translation of the primitive version of the Costum, which was written in Latin (and which very few read and understood), as were practically all the legislative texts of the time, whether they were short or long, to romance, that is, the vernacular of the majority of its Valencian users. The translation was carried out by three lawyers at the service of the municipal council of the city of Valencia. The translation of the manuscript (now lost) from the monastery of Benifaçà dated March 31, 1261, seven days before they were approved in Cortes, has the following text as its colophon:

"Guillelmus et Vitales, illorum Bernardusque solis traslaverunt hos foros et redigerunt IN LINGUAM PLANAM LEGALITER ATQUE ROMANAM, et dominus rex laudavit, swearing ratisfi cavit. Mille ducenties decies sex cousin sub anno, et sub kalendis aprilis mensis, iste liber est scriptum. Jacobus sit benedictus."

"Guillermo and Vidal, and the companion of both Bernardo, translated these rings and put them legally in plain and Roman languages, and the lord king praised them and with oath ratified them: the year thousand two hundred first over ten times six (1261, the day before the April (31 March) this book was finished writing. Don Jaime be blessed"

The fueros also established the limits of the kingdom, until 1304 delimited by the Almizra treaty of 1244, to the Biar-Busot line and from that date, by virtue of the Torrella treaty, it would incorporate Orihuela Guardamar, Elche, Santa Pola and Novelda. This territory was the scope of application of the Valencian law that also stipulated about the currency, the measurements, volumes and weights as well as the drafting and unified dating of public documents.

Foral positions and institutions

• Diputación General del Reino de Valencia
• General Lieutenant of the Kingdom of Valencia or Virrey of Valencia.
• Government of the Kingdom of Valencia
• Courts of the Kingdom of Valencia
• Batle General del Reino de Valencia.
• Mestre Racional del Reino de Valencia
• Audience of Valencia
• Elects of the Stations
• Justice (fortal charge of Valencia)
• Jurat en Cap (Foral charge)
• Jury (fortal charge of Valencia)
• Rational (Reino de Valencia)
• Mustaçaf (Cargo foral)
• General Council (Reino de Valencia)
• Tribunal de las Aguas de Valencia

Facsimile Editions

Given the importance of the work, there are facsimile editions, the last of which was published in October 2006, and was published by the company Valenciana Ceremonial Ediciones SL., based on the original kept by the Valencia City Council. The work is accompanied by important research work carried out by numerous professors from the University of Valencia, each of them a doctor in their discipline.