[29] Martel, Forma de Celebrar Cortes, cap. 10, 17, 21, 46.—Blancas, Modo de Proceder en Cortes de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1641,) fol. 17, 18.
[30] Capmany, Práctica y Estilo, p. 12.
[31] Blancas, Modo de Proceder, fol. 14,—and Commentarii, p. 374.— Zurita, indeed, gives repeated instances of their convocation in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, from a date almost coeval with that of the commons; yet Blancas, who made this subject his particular study, who wrote posterior to Zurita, and occasionally refers to him, postpones the era of their admission into the legislature to the beginning of the fourteenth century.
[32] One of the monarchs of Aragon, Alfonso the Warrior, according to Mariana, bequeathed all his dominions to the Templars and Hospitallers. Another, Peter II., agreed to hold his kingdom as a fief of the see of Rome, and to pay it an annual tribute. (Hist. de España, tom. i. pp. 596, 664.) This so much disgusted the people, that they compelled his successors to make a public protest against the claims of the church, before their coronation.—See Blancas, Coronaciones de los Serenisimos Reyes de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1641,) Cap. 2.
[33] Martel, Forma de Celebrar Cortes, cap. 22.—Asso y Manuel, Instituciones, p. 44.
[34] Zurita, Anales, tom. i. fol. 163, A.D. 1250.
[35] Ibid., tom. i. fol. 51.—The earliest appearance of popular representation in Catalonia is fixed by Ripoll at 1283, (apud Capmany, Práctica y Estilo, p. 135.) What can Capmany mean by postponing the introduction of the commons into the cortes of Aragon to 1300? (See p. 55.) Their presence and names are commemorated by the exact Zurita, several times before the close of the twelfth century.
[36] Práctica y Estilo, pp. 14, 17, 18, 30.—Martel, Forma de Celebrar Cortes, cap. 10.—Those who followed a mechanical occupation, including surgeons and apothecaries, were excluded from a seat in cortes. (Cap. 17.) The faculty have rarely been treated with so little ceremony.
[37] Martel, Forma de Celebrar Cortes, cap. 7.—The cortes appear to have been more frequently convoked in the fourteenth century, than in any other. Blancas refers to no less than twenty-three within that period, averaging nearly one in four years. (Commentarii, Index, voce Comitia.) In Catalonia and Valencia, the cortes was to be summoned every three years. Berart, Discurso Breve sobre la Celebracion de Cortes de Aragon, (1626,) fol. 12.
[38] Capmany, Práctica y Estilo, p. 15.—Blancas has preserved a specimen of an address from the throne, in 1398, in which the king, after selecting some moral apothegm as a text, rambles for the space of half an hour through Scripture history, etc., and concludes with announcing the object of his convening the cortes together, in three lines. Commentarii, pp. 376-380.