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Jordan Voltz

Short Reflection Paper #2

Group C

Prof. Garceau

10/14/13

The Statutes of Leon and Girona – Christianity and Personal Justice

In the statutes of Leon and Girona, drafted within the same year, there is a marked interest in the

protections and limitations of the church as well as the re-establishment of a system of personal justice.

In the openings of the Statutes of Girona, extensive detail is given to the protection of church-

owned grounds from violence. Specifically, the Statutes are designate the penalties inherent from looting

the church during a war. This is established a number times throughout the first 4 statutes and the

punishment for doing so is left up to bishop. Unsurprisingly, committing this crime is considered

sacrilege and Alfonso also extends this protection of physical wealth to the trappings of newly raised

religious orders of monk-knights. These monk-knights were raised to fight against Muslims, however the

inclusion of them in these statutes suggest that they weren’t fighting strictly Muslims and that opposing

armies looting their corpses may have been an issue. In this light, it’s fairly obvious that with the amount

of strife in these lands during this time that the sacking of churches was an issue. Furthermore, it was

likely that this sacking was mainly performed by other Christians, since Alfonso assigned a Christian-

centric religious connotation (sacrilege) to the crime of church-sacking. Since a Muslim would not

recognize the authority of the church in these matters, declaring this act sacrilegious would only affect

Christians who accepted the authority of the church. The only statute in the Statutes of Leon that pertain

to the church says, “I […] forbid any man who has property under my authority from giving it to a

religious order.” In this statute, we see Alfonso attempting to directly limit the power of the church in

Leon. These statutes demonstrate that Alfonso was largely concerned with attempting to keep the power

of the church as stable as possible in these times, preserving them when necessary and placing limits on

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their power when necessary. These statutes depict the developing role of the Christian religion in the 12th

Crown of Aragon- as a stabilizing force in the society.

Another topic that is touched upon in both of these statutes is that of personal justice and the

power of judgment borne by the King. The Statutes of Leon opens with Alfonso declaring, rather

emphatically, that he will not sentence someone to a punishment for a crime before he has summoned

them to his court. This trend of a judging King assuring his populace that justice will be carried out

continues in the third stature in which he assures his populace that he, or any judge that he has appointed,

will hear any grudge or complaint levied against anyone else. In this light, these justices can be seen as

extensions of the King’s judgment (although it may not have followed so in court) and as a reassurance

that the King is personally adjudicating the affairs of his populace. Furthermore, since the King is seen to

be approved by God, it therefore follows that the intent of these statutes is to give the image that God is at

the center of the legal system and that he will indirectly judge you for your secular crimes as well as your

religious sins. This reinforces the theory that Christianity in 12th century Crown of Aragon was used as a

stabilizing force in a time period that was wracked with war and chaos.

The question that can be inferred from this is, “With religion serving as a tool for the stabilization

of the lower classes and perhaps the nobility, how did the clergy perceive the authority of the ‘God count-

king’ Alfonso who also acted in his secular interests and put a limit on the church’s power in Girona?”