From immunity to jurisdictional territories: the evolution of cotos in the Kingdom of Galicia

Abstract

In the Kingdom of León, cotos were spaces endowed with immunity by royal privilege. The Early Modern jurisdictional map reveals the major importance that cotos held in the territorial division of Galicia. Nevertheless, the surviving privileges of immunity are scarce, and many of them are either spurious or preserved only through indirect copies. This article seeks to assess the mechanisms and constraints that allowed medieval immunity privileges to serve, throughout the Late Middle Ages and even into the sixteenth century, as instruments for the alienation of ordinary royal jurisdiction, thereby reshaping the administrative, judicial, and municipal landscape as a result of the extensive powers conferred by civil and criminal jurisdiction with mero et mixto imperio. This study aims to demonstrate that the medieval administrative space of the northwest, far from being a static and immutable reality, underwent a continuous process of contestation and that, rather than being an order imposed from above, local agents played an essential role in its construction and reconstruction.