ABSTRACT
As some of the formulas of the earliest sanctions in charters make clear, there was an expectation that people with a case to make should make it in court. 1 There was a functioning system of judicial courts across the whole of northern Iberia, with established procedures and dedicated officers, experts, written law and scales of penalty, throughout the period under consideration; it was clearly not new when our detailed evidence begins. Toresario’s confession of failure to pay dues associated with the church of Villa Moreta in central Galicia was made in 861 before a count in a formal court; the record, which survives on a single sheet in the Lugo cathedral archive, uses formulas which are standard in confession records: already at this point there was certainly a standard way of handling and also of recording such cases. 2
