ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As a student of institutional history, I became aware many years ago of Alfonso X’s influence on the development of law and government in thirteenth-century Castile. My interest in this subject was first stirred when I encountered the writings of several eminent Spanish scholars who helped to develop the history of Spanish law as an academic discipline. The initial impetus came from the priest Francisco Martínez Marina (1754–1833), whose liberal views, formed in the post-Napoleonic era, infused his two major contributions to the history of Spanish law. His Ensayo histórico-crítico sobre la antigua legislación y principales cuerpos legales de los Reynos de León y Castilla, especialmente sobre el Código de las Siete Partidas de Don Alfonso el Sabio, first published in two volumes in 1808 and reissued in a second edition in 1834, was intended as an introduction to the edition of the Siete Partidas by the Real Academia de la Historia in 1808.1 Five years later, after the Cortes of Cádiz promulgated the Constitution of 1812 establishing a constitutional monarchy, he published his Teoría de las Cortes o Grandes Juntas Nacionales, the first significant attempt to study Spanish parliamentary history.² Both works exhibit a thorough knowledge of the narrative and documentary sources. Many years elapsed, however, before the history of Spanish law received serious scholarly attention again. Meanwhile, German scholars began to publish and subject to rigorous examination the principal sources of Roman and Germanic law, including the Liber Iudiciorum or Visigothic Code.

Influenced by their ideas and methods, Eduardo de Hinojosa (1852–1919) published his study of El elemento germánico en el derecho español and developed a new generation of scholars who continued the scientific study of Spanish legal history.³ Members of the so-called Escuela de Hinojosa, or School of Hinojosa, included Galo Sánchez (1892–1969) and Claudio Sánchez Albornoz (1893–1984), who, with others, gave further impetus to the subject by founding the Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español (AHDE) in 1924. Their publications will be cited throughout this work. I owe a special debt to two of Sánchez Albornoz’s students, Luis García de Valdeavellano (1904–85) and Alfonso García Gallo (1911–92), whose works I encountered when I first studied in Spain. The former’s Historia de España and his Curso de historia de las instituciones españolas shaped my understanding of medieval Spain and its institutional development,4 while the latter’s Manual de la Historia del Derecho Español opened up to me the legal history of Spain.⁵ Together with the many other Spanish scholars whose works are cited throughout my book, they helped my understanding of the king and his impact on the law.

Here I want to record my debt of gratitude to two colleagues and friends of many years, both now deceased. Robert A. MacDonald of the University of Richmond, whose editions of several Alfonsine legal texts are without parallel, shared with me his unrivaled knowledge of el Rey Sabio. An invitation from Robert I. Burns, SJ, of UCLA, to contribute an introductory chapter to his edition of Samuel Parsons Scott’s English translation of the Siete Partidas enabled me to explore Alfonso X’s legal achievement in detail and led me to plan the present volume.⁶ Father Burns’s introductions to each of the Partidas exhibit his characteristic wisdom and clarity of thought and have been most helpful to me.

I am also grateful to Jerry R. Craddock of UC Berkeley and Jesús Rodríguez Velasco of Columbia University who read my manuscript and offered many valuable insights.

I must also thank the British Library for permission to use the illustration of A dditional MS 20787.

I also express my gratitude to Yvonne Marchese for her photographic artistry.

During my studies of constitutional history I discovered that English historians had dubbed Edward I as the English Justinian because of the extensive statutes that he enacted. That prompted me to identify Alfonso X as the Justinian of his age because, alone among his royal contemporaries, he created a true code of law, comprehensive and systematic, on the model of Justinian’s Code.

In 1975 Cornell University Press published my first book, A History of Medieval Spain, and I am now immensely pleased that the press offers this book to the public. I very much appreciate the work of Mahinder Kingra, editor in chief, and all the editors who made it possible.