Usages of Barcelona
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Usages of Barcelona (original name: Usatges de Barcelona), were the customs that form the basis for the Catalan constitutions. They are the fundamental laws, and basic rights of the Catalonia, dating back to their codification in the twelfth century.
The Usages combined fragments of Roman and Visigothic law with the resolutions of the comital court of Barcelona and the religious canons of ecclesiastic synods. The first Usages were compiled and codified by Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona (1035 – 1076), to repair the deficiencies of Gothic law. However, the evidence for Ramon's work dates from the codes of James the Conqueror of a later date (reigned 1213 – 1276). James, seeing that some judges ruled by Gothic law and some by Roman law, according to a tradition of usus terrae (local custom), approached the Corts in 1251 to establish the primacy of the Usages of Barcelona. Though the Usages applied legally only to the Barcelonan county, in practice they were applied to the entire Principality of Catalonia.
The Usages of Barcelona converted themselves into the basis upward Catalan and were the basis of other usages:
- Usages of Girona
- Customs of Lleida
- Customs of Tortosa
- Right of Valencia
- Franqueses of Majorca
- Chapter of Athens (and Neopatria)
The oldest manuscript containing the Usages dates from the end of the XXII century. Between the XV and XVIII centuries, go himself fact several compilations upward Catalan where the Usages of Barcelona appeared in the face of the Constitutions, although these had a superior rank. With the decrees of New Plant the Usages continued essentially in force, but fossilized with value of own right and overcome with time by new unifying laws.
