The (; Charters of Sobrarbe) are a mythical set of charters allegedly enacted during the 850s in the Pyrenean valley of 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. Although the charters were extensively studied and exploited in later centuries, modern scholarship regards them as a fabrication.
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. The original charter of Tudela, likely issued in 1119–1121, was manipulated sometime at the beginning of the reign of Theobald I of Navarre (r. 1234–1253). 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. In 1237, Theobald I agreed to confirm this manipulated charter. Thereafter, the Fueros de Sobrarbe were included in many of the city charters of Aragonese and Navarrese frontier towns, and eventually made it to both the Fueros of Navarre (1238) and the Fueros de Aragon (1283). In both of them, the Fueros are mentioned as the historical foundation of those kingdoms and their institutions.
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. As his predecessors before him, Blancas used the Fueros as a means of justifying several aspects of Aragonese law, particularly the institution of the Justicia de Aragon and the legal precept that royal authority was bound by laws, rather than a source thereof. Modern historiography regards the Fueros de Sobrarbe themselves as a medieval forgery, and the High Middle Ages versions described by Blancas as a fabrication to which many different authors contributed over several centuries, starting in the mid-13th century with the charter of Tudela.
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".
The Fueros de Sobrarbe according to Jerónimo Blancas 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. The book, published in 1587, recounts the history of the kingdom with regard to the institution of Justice, beginning with a Kingdom of Sobrarbe which, according to Blancas, preceded the Kingdom of Aragon. A key part of the myth of the foundation of the kingdom are the fueros that the first settlers of Sobrarbe wrote during the interregnum between their fourth and fifth king, Sancho Garcés (r. 815–832 according to Blancas) and Íñigo Arista (r. 868–870 according to Blancas). According to Blancas, the Fueros de Sobrarbe were a compilation of the six basic foundational charters which king Íñigo Arista swore to abide by upon being elected as king of Sobrarbe, as a means of asserting his wish that both he and his successors would reign under the law:
To which the Arista himself added a sixth charter:
This construction allowed Blancas to take the institution of the Justicia and the fueros back to the origins of the Kingdom of Aragon, making them appear at the same time as the new king was elected.
Creation The historical and legal genealogy employed by Blancas developed over five centuries and had two main sources, the first being the Fuero of Tudela (Charter of Tudela) and the second the writings of medieval Aragonese jurists associated with the office of the Justicia de Aragon. The mythical history of early Aragón offered by Blancas, including the existence of a Kingdom of Sobrarbe and a questionable line of kings of Sobrarbe was deeply problematic even at the time, and it largely stems from an attempt by Charles of Viana at conciliating other, even more anachronistic traditions.
The Fuero of Tudela The first historical mention to the Fueros of Sobrarbe is found in the city charter that Alfonso I granted the city Tudela. The extant document is dated to 1117, the year of the city's conquest from the arabs. The original document, likely issued sometime between 1119 and 1124, is lost. The extant copies of the Fuero of Tudela begin with a remembrance of the origin of the Fueros of Sobrarbe, describing how Spain was lost and how some knights took refuge in the mountains of Sobrarbe. The knights began to argue about how to divide the spoils of their rides and, in order to avoid conflicts, they decided to ask the Apostolic Aldebrano in Rome, Lombardy and France for advice, perhaps a reference to either Aldebrannus I or Aldebrannus II, both almost consecutive bishops of the then episcopal see of Tricastin in Occitania, and the latter also an influential jurist in the court of Charlemagne. The advice was to choose a king, but to write their laws first. This is what they did, first writing their charters and then electing Don Pelayo as king. 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.
The context in which the Fuero de Tudela mentions Sobrarbe is the following:
Modern historiography regards this version, mentioning the Fueros de Sobrarbe, as a late 1230s interpolation in the now lost original charter.Arrechea Silvestre, Horacio, «Algunas correspondencias entre el fuero de Estella y el fuero de Tudela», Segundo Congreso General de Historia de Navarra, 2, Conferencias y comunicaciones sobre Prehistoria, Historia Antigua e Historia Medieval. Príncipe de Viana, Anejo 14, LIII (1992), pp. 315–324. During the reign of Sancho VII the Strong (1157–1234), the city of Tudela in Navarre had seen its territory dwindle in favour of the crown: the king resided in the city, and the corporation of the city had seen many new taxes levied to fund Sancho VII's campaigns and his court.Orcástegui Gros, Carmen: «Tudela durante los reinados de Sancho VII el Fuerte y Teobaldo I», Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón, 10 (1975), p. 63–80 (especialmente, p. 64). At the death of king Sancho VII, the throne of Navarre passed to his nephew Teobaldo I (1201–1253) of the House of Champagne. 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. Taking advantage of the dynastic change, some time after 1234 the city of Tudela would have manipulated its own charter at several points so as to assert its rights and weaken royal authority, finally reaching a settlement with Teobaldo I in 1237 that largely confirmed the manipulated charter of Tudela.Orcástegui Gros, Carmen: «Tudela durante los reinados de Sancho VII el Fuerte y Teobaldo I», Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón, 10 (1975), pp. 63–80 (especialmente, p. 64). The chief manipulations concerned the claim that upon being granted, the citizens of Tudela had inherited the Fueros de Sobrarbe (which included, amongst other things, the right for the city to appoint its own Justicia to veto royal orders and assert its rights), and the tax exemptions and extensive territorial rights the charter supposedly granted to Tudela (amongst others, jurisdiction over Cervera and Gallipienzo quoted above).Arrechea Silvestre, Horacio, «Algunas correspondencias entre el fuero de Estella y el fuero de Tudela», Segundo Congreso General de Historia de Navarra, 2, Conferencias y comunicaciones sobre Prehistoria, Historia Antigua e Historia Medieval. Príncipe de Viana, Anejo 14, LIII (1992), pp. 315–324.
Proofs of the fabrication include the confusing dating of the extant charter (later mentions suggest the charter was issued between 1119 and 1124, but the charter is postdated to 1117); that the original copy of the charter of Tudela is lost, and all extant physical copies are dated after 1234;Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17–19. the fact the charter uses the royal title Aldeffonsus, rex Aragonie et Nauarre ("Alfonso, king of Aragon and Navarre"), which only began to be used half a century after the reign of king Alfonso himself, during the reign of Sancho VII the Strong;Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17–19. and the fact that amongst the extensive territorial rights the charter supposedly granted Tudela there are certain townships that were still under Arab control in 1117, such as the towns of Cervera and Gallipienzo, and that others such as Corella and Cabanillas, known to have been coveted by the corporation of Tudela in the 1230s, were in fact granted their own independent charters in 1120 and 1124.Martín Duque, Ángel Juan, «Hacia la edición crítica del Fuero de Tudela», Revista Jurídica de Navarra, núm. 4 (1987), pp. 17–19.
Other evidence regarding the fabricated status of the Fueros de Sobrarbe are the fueros (charters) of Alquézar (1075) and of Barbastro (1100). These two townships constitute territories that were conquered and repopulated by people from Sobrarbe itself by the then nascent crown of Aragon. However, both of their charters fail to mention the Fueros of Sobrarbe, which would have been unlikely given the medieval custom of newly established territories inheriting earlier charters. The collections of rights and privileges asserted in those charters are equally dissimilar to those allegedly asserted by the Fueros de Sobrarbe, although they do grant chartership to knights and infanzones. Other nearby city charters predating those of Tudela, such as the Fuero de Estella (dated between 1076 and 1084) or the Fuero de Jaca (1063 or 1076–1077), also fail to mention the Fueros de Sobrarbe.Barrero García, Ana María, and Alonso Martín, María Luz, Textos de derecho local español en la Edad Media. Catálogo de fueros y costums municipales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Ciencias Jurídicas, Madrid, 1989, p. 447. 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.Ramos Loscertales, José María, «Los fueros de Sobrarbe», Cuadernos de Historia de España, 7 (1947), pp. 24–66. Reimpr. Institución Fernando el Católico, Zaragoza, 1981, pp. 34–37.