{
  "id": "salarios-de-los-ministros-de-las-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The salary título of the law of the Indies: pay by thirds of the year, pay from the day you sail, full pay through illness, no advance on the royal treasury for any pretext — and no pay at all for the men who did the work under you",
  "summary": "Libro VIII, título XXVI of the Recopilación opens with ten laws on when a crown salary in America is earned and paid. Salary runs by thirds and from the day of embarkation, is withheld from the minister who does not reside, and is paid in full through illness and necessary absence \"como si sirvieran\". The same ten laws deny any salary to the deputies, notaries, bailiffs and clerks below them. Folios 581-583.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law-of-the-indies",
    "legislation",
    "legal-history",
    "recopilacion",
    "governance",
    "public-administration",
    "real-hacienda",
    "accountability",
    "corruption",
    "labour",
    "spanish-empire",
    "americas",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consignaciones-de-los-salarios-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "novenos-y-vacantes-de-obispados"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "almonedas-de-la-real-hacienda-en-la-recopilacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tribunales-de-cuentas-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "incompatibilidades-de-los-oidores-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "escribanos-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "examen-y-etica-de-los-abogados-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "abogado-y-procurador-de-pobres-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "interpretes-de-las-audiencias-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juicio-de-residencia"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "visita-de-la-tierra-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consejo-de-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "How were Spanish colonial officials in America paid?",
    "Did Spanish colonial officials get paid sick leave?",
    "Could a Spanish colonial judge take an advance on his salary from the royal treasury?",
    "When did a crown appointee's salary start on the voyage to the Indies?",
    "Who in the colonial Spanish administration was not paid a salary at all?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The code of the Spanish Indies has a título on salaries, and it runs to twenty-two laws. In the fourth impression, printed at Madrid in 1791 by the widow of Joaquín Ibarra for the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies, the heading \"TÍTULO VEINTE Y SEIS. DE LOS SALARIOS, ATUDAS DE COSTA, entretenimientos, y quitaciones\" stands three lines into the leaf printing folio 581, immediately below the close of the título on public auctions, and the título runs with twenty-two laws and a set of closing remissive notes to the second line of folio 587, where TÍTULO VEINTE Y SIETE, DE LAS SITUACIONES follows. This entry reads its first ten laws, leyes j to x, which stand on folios 581 to 583; leyes xj to xxij and the remissive notes are read separately. The running head of folio 581 still reads \"De las Almonedas.\" although título XXVI opens on that leaf, folio 582 reads \"Libro VIII. Título XXVI.\" and folio 583 \"De los Salarios.\"; the law numbering was read at band magnification and checked in sequence.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The first law fixes the pay period and makes the paymasters subject to it. Ley j, margined only \"El mismo Ordenanza de 1572\", orders the royal officers to pay all ministers and persons holding \"salarios, gages, quitaciones, ayudas de costa, por facultad, y asignacion nuestra, y tambien á sí mismos, segun y en la forma que les estuviere librado, y librare por Nos, por los tercios del año, y no ántes\". The officers who hold the chest are named in the same breath as the ministers they pay, and they are forbidden to pay themselves earlier than anyone else. The sanction is accounting, not criminal: anything paid against the order \"no se les recibirá en cuenta\", which leaves it on the paying officer's own charge at the audit.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The second law starts the salary at the quayside, not at the destination. Ley ij (Philip II, San Lorenzo, 16 June 1593) declares that persons appointed to offices for the Indies are to be paid \"desde el dia que se hubieren hecho, ó hicieren á la vela en Armada, Flota, ó Navíos, llevando el viage derecho á servir sus oficios\" — the ocean crossing itself counted as service. The same law closes the obvious abuse by tying the entitlement to the term set in the appointee's own título: no day beyond that term is to pass, \"y si pasare, no se les pague salario de lo que así excediere, sin especial Cédula, y libranza nuestra\". A man could not draw pay for dawdling in Seville or in Panama on the way.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The third law makes residence and actual service the condition of being paid at all, and it overrides the local authorities who might excuse it. Ley iij, taken from the Instrucción de Virreyes of 1595, orders that those holding salaries or ordinary entretenimientos not be paid \"si no residieren, y sirvieren sus oficios, aunque tengan licencia de los Vireyes, Audiencias, ú otros qualesquier Ministros\". It then grants the one exception in the título's own terms: viceroys and president-governors may for just cause give \"licencia para dos meses de ausencia en cada un año\", and if they give longer, the salary of the excess over two months is not to be paid. A statutory annual leave of two months, and a leave beyond it that the viceroy may grant but the treasury will not fund.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The fourth law is paid sick leave, enacted in 1557 and printed without qualification. Ley iiij, margined \"El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Emperatriz Gobernadora á 1 de Diciembre de 1557\", reads in its entirety: \"MAndamos que durante la enfermedad, y ausencia precisa por justa causa, de qualquier Ministro, goce de su salario, y se le pague como lo debia gozar, y se le habia de pagar no estando enfermo, ni ausente.\" Its rubric states the same thing more plainly still — \"Que á los Ministros enfermos, ó ausentes por justa causa se les paguen los salarios, como si sirvieran\". The entitlement is not capped in time, not conditioned on a certificate, and not limited to any rank: it is given to \"qualquier Ministro\". Read next to ley iij, which the compilers placed immediately before it, the título withholds pay from the absent official and then restores it in full to the sick one.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The fifth law forbids the salary advance and refuses in advance every excuse for granting one. Ley v (Philip II, Madrid, 26 May 1573; Philip III, 28 March 1620) orders that no viceroy, president, oidor \"ni otros qualesquier Ministros\" ask or receive from the royal treasury \"ninguna cantidad fiada, ni á cuenta de su salario, hasta que haya corrido\", and that the royal officers not pay it. The clause that follows is the unusual one: the crown wills \"que con ninguna causa, ni pretexto que ocurra, aunque sea de nuestro servicio, puedan dispensar en esto, porque lo han de executar inviolablemente, con apercibimiento, que se cobrará de los bienes de los unos, y de los otros\". The king's own service is named and excluded as a ground of dispensation, and the money is to be recovered from the private estates of both the taker and the payer.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The sixth law reserves the creation of any charge on an American treasury to the king personally. Ley vj (Philip II, Bosque de Segovia, 23 September 1565) reads in its entirety: \"EN ninguna de nuestras Caxas Reales se sitúe, ni pague salario sin licencia, y Cédula nuestra.\" One sentence removes from every viceroy, audiencia and governor in America the power to put a new salary on the royal chest.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "Three laws then take the salary away from everybody below the principal officers, and this is the half of the título that its reputation omits. Ley vij (Bosque de Segovia ordinance, cap. 8) forbids situating or paying any salary from the royal treasury to the deputies of the royal officers resident in other cities and towns of the Indies, ordering instead that for those duties \"se nombren algunos vecinos honrados, y de confianza que se encarguen de la cobranza de nuestra hacienda, y acudan con ella á los Oficiales principales del distrito\"; anything paid against the prohibition \"no se reciba, ni pase en cuenta\". Ley viiij (Bosque de Segovia 1565, Lisbon 1582, Madrid 1619) bars salaried counsel and attorneys for the treasury's own suits, bars alguaciles and porteros for the royal officers' audiencias, bars a writing clerk at royal cost for any deputy, and bars salary to men serving beyond their term \"no obstante la prorogacion, tolerancia, ó disimulacion, tácita, ó expresa\". Collection of the royal revenue in the smaller towns is thereby put on respectable neighbours for whom these laws provide no salary at all, and the litigation of the fisc on lawyers paid per case, \"por el tiempo de la ocupacion lo que fuere justo, y razonable por su trabajo, segun lo tasare la Justicia\".",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The eighth law states, in its own recital, where the unsalaried official was expected to get his living, and the answer is the parties. Ley viij (the same Segovia ordinance, cap. 5) recites that judicial autos are needed in treasury accounting, that they must pass before the escribanos de Cámara, públicos and del Número, and that those notaries \"conforme á sus Títulos, no pueden llevar derechos de lo que tocare á nuestro servicio, y Fisco Real, y los pueden percibir de las partes, conforme á los Aranceles\"; it then orders that no such notary be assigned or paid a salary, and that any already given be restored to the royal chest at once. The crown declines to pay for the paperwork its own accounting requires on the express footing that the notary may charge the private litigant instead. The fee economy that this corpus meets elsewhere in the código — in the aranceles of notaries, in prison costs, in court officers living on derechos — is here printed as the stated alternative to a salary, in a treasury law, at the crown's own initiative.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The tenth law settles what a dead judge's family is owed, and settles it narrowly. Ley x (Philip II, Madrid, 16 May 1573) orders that where an oidor, alcalde or fiscal of the audiencias of the Indies dies, the viceroys, presidents and oidores are not to take it upon themselves \"á librar, ni pagar á sus herederos el salario de todo el año, ni parte de él\", but only to allow what was earned in the minister's lifetime; \"y porque es materia de gracia, remitan la pretension á Nos, y al Consejo de Indias, para que se provea lo que fuéremos servido\". Anything beyond strict earnings is grace, reserved to the king, and widows are sent to ley 95 of título XVI of libro II, which this entry did not open. A death-in-service benefit is thereby denied as of right at the place where the family lives and made petitionable across an ocean.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Read whole, the ten laws protect the treasury against its own officers and nobody else, and they do it coherently. Pay only in arrears and only by thirds; pay the paymaster on the same terms; start the clock at the quayside but stop it if the voyage is spun out; no pay without residence and service; full pay in sickness; no credit and no advance, with no dispensation even for royal service and recovery from private estate; no new charge on any chest without a royal cédula; no salary for deputies, notaries, counsel, bailiffs, porters or clerks; and no salary to a dead minister's heirs beyond the days he lived. The word Indio does not appear in any of the ten, no provision mentions an Indian town, a tribute or a community chest as the source or the limit of a salary, and nothing in them gives any subject of the crown in America a claim against an official who is paid. This is a reading of what the ten laws contain and is offered as a reading; the título nowhere states the principle, and what the código provides elsewhere about salaries charged on Indian tribute was not opened here.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "What this entry establishes is the text of ten printed laws in the 1791 fourth impression, read from three leaves, and not what was done under them. No salary warrant, no libranza, no arancel of notarial fees, no treasury account, no claim by a sick minister under ley iiij, no proceeding against an officer for an advance under ley v and no petition by a judge's heirs under ley x appears anywhere in this corpus, so nothing here shows any of these rules applied, evaded or enforced. The cross-references these laws make to libro VIII título XXVII ley 2, to libro II título XVI ley 95, to libro II título XVIII ley 25 and to libro III título II ley 61 were not followed up, and nothing here was collated against the 1681 first impression, which this corpus also holds.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-1791-libro-viii-titulo-xxvi-salarios"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "Colonial Spanish officeholding in America is normally described through its pathologies — the sale of offices, the corregidor's business dealings, the bribe — and the law that actually governed an official's pay is quoted nowhere this corpus has been able to check. Reading the first ten laws of libro VIII título XXVI from the leaf produces a sixteenth- century employment code with terms that are specific and testable: pay by thirds of the year and never in advance; pay running from the day the ship sails, forfeited for delay beyond the term in the appointment; no pay without residence and actual service, whatever licence a viceroy may have given; two months' leave a year with just cause; and, from an order of December 1557, salary paid in full through illness and necessary absence \"como si sirvieran\", uncapped and given to any minister. It also prints the half of the arrangement that the favourable half depends on: the same título denies a salary from the royal treasury to the deputies who collected the revenue in the smaller towns, to the notaries who drew up the treasury's own papers, to the lawyers who argued its cases, and to the bailiffs, porters and clerks — and states, in ley viij's own recital, that the notary may take his derechos from the parties by arancel instead. The entry carries both, and says that in ten laws about who gets paid in the Indies no Indian appears.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-10-11",
  "media": [],
  "x": {},
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/salarios-de-los-ministros-de-las-indias",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The salary título of the law of the Indies: pay by thirds of the year, pay from the day you sail, full pay through illness, no advance on the royal treasury for any pretext — and no pay at all for the men who did the work under you",
    "description": "Libro VIII, título XXVI of the Recopilación opens with ten laws on when a crown salary in America is earned and paid. Salary runs by thirds and from the day of embarkation, is withheld from the minister who does not reside, and is paid in full through illness and necessary absence \"como si sirvieran\". The same ten laws deny any salary to the deputies, notaries, bailiffs and clerks below them. Folios 581-583.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/salarios-de-los-ministros-de-las-indias",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-11",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VIII título XXVI 'DE LOS SALARIOS, AYUDAS DE COSTA, entretenimientos, y quitaciones' — leyes j to x alone, from the third line of the printed folio 581 to the left-hand column of folio 583: ley j 'Que los salarios se paguen por los tercios del año' (margin 'El mismo Ordenanza de 1572'), ordering that the royal officers pay all ministers and persons holding 'salarios, gages, quitaciones, ayudas de costa, por facultad, y asignacion nuestra, y tambien á sí mismos, segun y en la forma que les estuviere librado, y librare por Nos, por los tercios del año, y no ántes, pena de que si faltaren á esta órden, y mandato nuestro, no se les recibirá en cuenta'; ley ij 'Que los salarios de los que fueren proveidos para las Indias, se paguen desde el dia que se embarcaren' (margin 'El mismo en S. Lorenzo á 16 de Junio de 1593'), which runs salary 'desde el dia que se hubieren hecho, ó hicieren á la vela en Armada, Flota, ó Navíos, llevando el viage derecho á servir sus oficios' and cuts it off for any delay beyond the term set in the appointee's título 'sin especial Cédula, y libranza nuestra'; ley iij 'Que no se pague salario al Ministro que no sirviere, y quando se podrá dispensar' (margin 'El mismo en la Instruccion de Vireyes de 1595'), which withholds salary and ordinary entretenimiento from those who do not reside and serve 'aunque tengan licencia de los Vireyes, Audiencias, ú otros qualesquier Ministros', and permits viceroys and president-governors to grant for just cause 'licencia para dos meses de ausencia en cada un año', the salary of any excess over two months not to be paid; ley iiij 'Que á los Ministros enfermos, ó ausentes por justa causa se les paguen los salarios, como si sirvieran' (margin 'El Emperador D. Cárlos y la Emperatriz Gobernadora á 1 de Diciembre de 1557'), whose whole text reads 'MAndamos que durante la enfermedad, y ausencia precisa por justa causa, de qualquier Ministro, goce de su salario, y se le pague como lo debia gozar, y se le habia de pagar no estando enfermo, ni ausente'; ley v 'Que los Ministros no reciban ninguna cosa fiada de la Real hacienda, ni salario anticipado' (margin 'D. Felipe II en Madrid á 26 de Mayo de 1573. D. Felipe III allí á 28 de Marzo de 1620. Véase la ley 2. tít. 27. de este libro, y las que allí se citan'), forbidding viceroys, presidents, oidores 'ni otros qualesquier Ministros' to ask or receive from the royal treasury 'ninguna cantidad fiada, ni á cuenta de su salario, hasta que haya corrido', with no dispensation 'con ninguna causa, ni pretexto que ocurra, aunque sea de nuestro servicio … porque lo han de executar inviolablemente, con apercibimiento, que se cobrará de los bienes de los unos, y de los otros'; ley vj 'Que no se sitúe salario sin licencia del Rey' (margin 'El mismo en el Bosque de Segovia á 23 de Septiembre de 1565'), whose whole text reads 'EN ninguna de nuestras Caxas Reales se sitúe, ni pague salario sin licencia, y Cédula nuestra'; ley vij 'Que no se pague salario de la hacienda Real á los Tenientes de Oficiales Reales' (margin 'El mismo allí, cap. 8'), which orders instead that in those occupations 'se nombren algunos vecinos honrados, y de confianza que se encarguen de la cobranza de nuestra hacienda, y acudan con ella á los Oficiales principales del distrito', any salary paid against the prohibition not to be received or passed in account; ley viij 'Que no se dé salario de la Real hacienda á los Escribanos que hicieren Autos en materias de cuentas' (margin 'El mismo allí, cap. 5'), which recites that such notaries 'conforme á sus Títulos, no pueden llevar derechos de lo que tocare á nuestro servicio, y Fisco Real, y los pueden percibir de las partes, conforme á los Aranceles' and orders restitution to the Caxa Real of any salary already given; ley viiij 'Que no se pague salario de la hacienda Real á los Letrados, Procuradores, Alguaciles, Porteros, ni Escribientes de Oficiales Reales, ni á los Prorogados' (margin 'D. Felipe II en el Bosque de Segovia á 23 de Septiembre de 1565. En Lisboa á 17 de Febrero, y 18 de Junio de 1582. Y en el cap. 2. de la dicha Cédula del Bosque de Segovia. D. Felipe III en Madrid á 16 de Enero de 1619'), which bars salaried counsel for treasury suits and orders instead that convenient persons be named and paid 'por el tiempo de la ocupacion lo que fuere justo, y razonable por su trabajo, segun lo tasare la Justicia, ó nuestros Oficiales', bars alguaciles and porteros for the officers' audiencias, bars a writing clerk at royal cost for any teniente, and bars salary to those serving beyond their term 'no obstante la prorogacion, tolerancia, ó disimulacion, tácita, ó expresa'; and ley x 'Que á los herederos, y sucesores de Oidores, Alcaldes, y Fiscales difuntos se les pague el salario por el tiempo que hubieren vivido los Ministros, y no el año, ni parte de él' (margin 'D. Felipe II en Madrid á 16 de Mayo de 1573'), which orders that only what was earned in the minister's lifetime be made good, 'y porque es materia de gracia, remitan la pretension á Nos, y al Consejo de Indias, para que se provea lo que fuéremos servido', referring widows to ley 95 tít. 16 lib. 2",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PA581"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The salary título of the law of the Indies: pay by thirds of the year, pay from the day you sail, full pay through illness, no advance on the royal treasury for any pretext — and no pay at all for the men who did the work under you"
  }
}