Royal Taxation and Noble Income in Castile (c. 1250-c. 1350): the situados in the Normative Texts

Abstract

The number of fiscal sources dating before 1400 that have survived in Castile is scarce, but some extant documents from the reign of Sancho IV attest to the importance of the rent payments made by the Royal Treasury to the nobles already at the end of the thirteenth century. They were the main beneficiaries of the royal taxation, as the chronicles also report. We do not know, however, how the system worked, how it was managed, nor who was in charge. In this article, we will study the information provided by normative texts: the Alfonsine legal codes (Fuero Real, Espéculo, and Siete Partidas), law compilations (Fuero Viejo and other texts) and Cortes records. None of them offers a global regulation individually, but an overall perspective is obtained from the joint consideration of the partial evidence each provides.