The Judicial Backdrop: Saragossa and the Three Justice Systems

Abstract

The city of Caesar Augusta was founded in around 14 BC by the emperor Augustus on the ruins of the ancient Iberian city of Salduie. Later dubbed ‘the most noble, most loyal, most heroic, ever heroic, most beneficent and immortal city of Saragossa’², it is today the very embodiment of uninterrupted historical continuity, having survived sieges, warfare and many another misadventure over the centuries. From its very foundation it was designed to be a special enclave, with an unmistakably colonizing mission. Its geographical position at the heart of the Ebro basin, where the Ebro itself meets the Gállego and the Huerva, with a fourth river (the Jalon) not far distant, made it the obvious local ‘capital’ of an extensive territory: the place to which all roads led. As a centre of, initially, Romanization, and then Christianization, it also became an innovative and pioneering cultural hub.³

A number of citizens were recently appointed to see and ordain the statute which it appeared was necessary in order to deal with witches.¹