Fueros de Sobrarbe
The Fueros were said to have been issued by Christian refugees fleeing from the Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula, and enshrined the Aragonese legal custom of placing laws before kings.
[1] In the 13th century, the cities and the nobility of the kingdoms of Navarre and of Aragon started using these legendary fueros as a foundation for their own legal rights and privileges.
The first historical mention of the Fueros de Sobrarbe appears in this context, as part of a falsified version of the original city charter of Tudela backdated to 1117.
Having inherited a distant kingdom from his maternal uncle, Theobald I agreed to have the customary laws of his newly acquired realm codified, and the citizens of Tudela presented the crown with a forged version of their own city charter that mentioned for the first time the Fueros de Sobrarbe as the foundation of their historical rights.
The Fueros de Sobrarbe and their creation were described in detail by the legal historian Jerónimo Blancas in his Aragonensium rerum commentarii, first published in 1587.
[1] The significance of the Fueros de Sobrarbe lies not in their lack of historicity, but in the verisimilitude they were awarded up until the 18th century, both as the constitutional foundation of many of the institutions of the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon, and because they enshrined the legal principle of placing "laws before kings".
[1] Jerónimo Blancas, writing during the reign of Philip II, published his Aragonensium rerum commentarii ("Commentary on things Aragonese") to explain the origin, history, power and dignity of the institution of the Justicia de Aragon.
From starting war, making peace, settling a truce, or dealing with anything else of great interest, you shall beware, O King, without the consent of the council of the seniors.
Before appointing him king they demanded that he swear, among others, the following charters: that he should always improve their charters; that he should divide the conquered lands with the rich men and knights of the kingdom, and not with foreigners; that he should not appoint foreign officials; and that he should always consult his rich men before declaring war, peace or truce, or making other important decisions.
Upon acquiring the throne, Teobaldo I was forced to negotiate with the Navarrese nobility and cities the legal limits to his own authority, and agreed to have customary laws codified, an undertaking that led to the first Fueros of Navarre, sanctioned in 1238.
[17] Finally, it appears unlikely that a charter such as the Fuero de Sobrarbe, allegedly issued in the 800s to what would have then been a small rural settlement, would grant its inhabitants rights and privileges befitting 13th-century nobility and cities.
This introduction, likely based on that found in the contemporary Fueros de Tudela, describes a legendary Kingdom of Sobrarbe, combining contradictory elements, some of which could have been taken from the Liber regum.
[19] It is in the context of asserting the rights of nobility and urban corporations that the Fueros of Sobrarbe begin to be mentioned in legal documents after the 13th century, when jurists and legal historians start to use them to justify the legitimacy that certain medieval institutions of Navarre and Aragon (the Justicia, the bailiffs, the regular gathering of their respective parliaments, ...) would be justified in accordance to the (by then) lost ancient Fueros of Sobrarbe.
Chief amongst these: how could Don Pelayo have sanctioned the Fueros of a remote valley in the Pyrenees, hundreds of miles away from his own lands in Asturias, almost a century after his own death?
Likewise, the apostolic Aldebrano under whose advice the charters were said to have been drafted most likely refers to either of two obscure bishops of Tricastin (modern Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux), a minor diocesis in Occitania, the second of which was dead prior to 829.
According to Vagad, when Iñigo Arista (c. 790 – 851) accepted the crown of Sobrarbe, he offered the right to rebellion if he violated the fueros, so as to signal his intention of ruling under the law.
His successor García Jiménez avowed said right by establishing the office of the Justicia, which would have therefore existed as a safeguard against royal abuses of power since at least the 9th century.
[3] This explanation by Vagad, broadly accepted by Blancas, is problematic: Arista operated from Pamplona, and García Jiménez likely from Álava, not Sobrarbe.
When Íñigo Arista accepts the crown, he offers the right to rebellion if he violates the fueros to show that he is going to reign according to the law.
The Council thought that the work glorified too much the institution of the Justicia, and Blancas was forced to exclude the legendary oath of the kings of Aragon and the text of the Privilege of the Union.
