ABSTRACT
In northern Portugal, in 999, a man called Lovesindo Abenazar raised a case with the local count against the monastery of Guimaraes; the case was over a farm, the Villa Sautello, present-day Soutelo, 5 km north of Braga. This chapter explains about northern Iberia that is northern Spain and Portugal, excluding Catalonia; the north of Iberia only, because of Muslim control of the rest of Spain and Portugal and their more limited range of contemporary records; it is therefore about Christian and Latin Iberia, a large area notwithstanding. A further twenty-one individuals, who presided over courts, are recorded as joining the judges in making judgment; these were all figures with political power – kings, counts and bishops. The ‘truth’ comments of the texts are less to do with abstract concepts of justice than with rhetoric, rhetoric of arriving at a conclusion: they are introduced as the resolution of the case is recorded.
