Castillo de Bovadilla, Politica para corregidores: the manual behind the office
The Castilian handbook that told magistrates what their office was for, read on the sheets of the Antwerp printing of 1704. Men chose a keeper of the common life and fed him so he need not feed himself; a republic with a useless corregidor is called a widow; the judge must supply in law and in fact what the poor lack; a salary kills the appetite for another man's goods. It also bars any officer from governing his home town, and a practitioner's manual of the Indies cites it by book and number.
Why this wins its question: English-language coverage of Spanish magistracy is almost entirely secondary and almost entirely about abuse: the corregidor appears as the extractive official of the encomienda literature, and the reader never sees the book that told him what his office was. This object prints that book from the sheets. It gives the theory of public office as a paid trust — men chose a keeper of the common life and fed him so that he would not have to feed himself — the pilot simile, and the sumario head that a republic with a useless corregidor is called a widow. It gives the operative duty toward the poor, the widow, the orphan and the pilgrim, with the reasons the book itself gives for it and the obligation to supply in law and in fact what they lack, and it prints, on the same page, the author's complaint that many judges are hardened and deaf to exactly that. It gives the salary rule as an anti-corruption instrument and, beside it, the rule that no officer may hold office where he is a native, which is the same doctrine read from the other end. And instead of asserting that the manual governed the Indies, it measures the Indies content of this tome — one line in the index, a page that does not match it — and then proves the book's authority in America the hard way, from a marginal citation in a practitioner's handbook of Indies commerce.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page of the printing read here announces "Politica para corregidores, y señores de vassallos, en tiempo de paz, y de guerra. Y para juezes eclesiasticos y seglares, y de sacas, aduanas, y de residencias, y sus oficiales: y para regidores, y abogados, y del valor de los corregimientos, y goviernos realengos, y de las Ordenes", Tomo primero, "Autor el licenciado Castillo de Bovadilla, del Consejo del Rey Don Felipe III nuestro Señor, y su Fiscal en la Real Chancilleria de Valladolid". Beneath the title it states that the work "Está añadida, y enmendada por el Autor, y los Indices mejorados", and, in red, that "en esta ultima impression diligentemente corregida de muchas faltas que avian en las otras impressiones, y expurgada segun el expurgatorio del año 1640". The device below carries the motto "PIETAS HOMINI TUTISSIMA VIRTUS" and the imprint reads "EN AMBERES, En casa de Iuan Bautista Verdussen, Impressor y Mercader de Libros, 1704", with "Con gracia y privilegio". The leaf gives no date for any earlier printing and this entry asserts none.
The address of the title page is the best single description of what the book is: it is written not for a prince but for the working magistracy — corregidores and lords of vassals in peace and in war, ecclesiastical and secular judges, the judges of sacas, of customs and of residencias and their officials, regidores and advocates — and it undertakes also to state the value of the corregimientos and the crown and military-order governorships. It is, on its own account, a practitioner's handbook of the office rather than a treatise on sovereignty.
Book II opens, at page 214, with the chapter "Qual deve ser el principal intento del buen Corregidor", and it grounds the office in an argument about why government exists at all. Plato, it says, gave two precepts to princes and governors in his Republic: the first, that they should care universally for the whole body of the republic, "porque el respeto y consideracion particular para con unos, no causasse olvido y daño para con los demas"; the second, that all their works and actions should be directed to the public good, "olvidados de sus comodidades". The chapter then gives the origin of rulers: when men determined to leave the solitary life and live together in political and civic community they saw that everyone is more diligent in his own affairs than in another's, that there was nobody with zeal for the public or who would labour for it, and that they went "como ovejas sin pastor"; so they chose a good man who exceeded the rest in virtue, strength and eloquence, "el qual tuviesse cuenta con la vida y conservacion de todos", and, considering that a man occupied not in his own things but in other men's could not maintain himself in his own house, "determinaron darle todos ellos de comer y sustentarle, para que no vagasse, ni se distraxesse en otras ocupaciones que las del bien y govierno publico: y este fue el origen de los Reyes". Public office is thus presented as a trust paid for so that its holder need not live off it.
The same page closes the argument with two comparisons. Judges, it says following Aristotle, should order all things to the profit of the city, "porque assi como la medicina no trae provecho alguno, sino el que haze à la sanidad del cuerpo, para lo qual es ordenada: assi del juez no se puede tomar provecho, sino el que haze al bien de todos"; and the governor should have that as his mark and end "como el Piloto, que siempre tiene la mano y el ojo despierto para aprovechar y conservar la vida de los que van en la nao".
The numbered sumario printed at the head of that chapter is blunter than the prose, and it is worth reading as the book's own summary of the duty. Among its heads: that the corregidor is called in Latin Praeses, from presidio, "que es tutela y ampara de los subditos" (9); that the best government is by peace and tranquillity rather than "con sangre y alboroto" (10); that the corregidor must consider "que no le dieron el Oficio para sus comodidades" (11); an "Exclamation del Obispo Simancas de tantos tribunales y poca justicia" (12); that many seem virtuous until their own interest is touched (17); that "Viuda se llama la Republica que tiene inutil Corregidor" (19); that "Mejor seria estar la ciudad sin Corregidor, que tenerle inutil" (20); that the corregidor is not to occupy himself in exercises unworthy of and improper to his office (24); and, as the last head, in what cases the corregidor must attend to the public good even with harm to particular persons (27).
The following chapter, at page 238, states the duty toward the weak and gives reasons for it rather than piety. The judge is to favour "à la viuda, al huerfano, al pobre, al peregrino, y à otras personas desamparadas y miserables, no solo por ser mas dignos de compassion, sino tambien por el merito de contrastar à la inclinacion natural, codiciosa de ayudar antes al rico, de quien se puede esperar algun bien, que al pobre impossibilitado de correspondencia"; and because where the justice of the two sides looks equal it may be presumed that the poor man has it and "por sus pocas fuerças no ha podido mostrarla", overborne by the resources of the rich and powerful in proving. In such a case of equal justice the judge is to despatch the poor man's causes first and summarily, "por la mayor necessidad que dello pueden tener, a la qual se deve siempre acudir primero en todas las cosas: y porque la justicia ha de ser igual y breve". The page adds the operative rule: "aun està obligado el juez à suplir por los pobres y miserables personas en el derecho y en el hecho lo que falta, y à hazer pesquisa en las causas civiles."
The counterpoint to that doctrine is printed on the same page by the same author. Although God so strictly commands judges not to accept persons in judgment, it says, "se quexa muchas vezes por la poca cuenta que tienen con los pobres, con los peregrinos, con los huerfanos y viudas, que comunmente son oprimidos de los poderosos"; and of the sacred authorities that exhort and command judges to this it says that "à las quales estan endurecidos y sordos muchos, como vemos cada dia". The manual states the failure it is written to correct, in the sentence next to the rule.
On the machinery of honest office the book is equally practical. At page 134, treating the corregidor's tenientes, it requires that the teniente be "suficientemente salariado, porque con el salario se supla el defeto de la pobreza, que los Jurisconsultos tuvieron por impedimento para usar de los dichos Oficios ... porque siendo proveydo bastantemente de salario propio, pierda la codicia de lo ageno". A sufficient public salary is presented as the instrument against corruption, and poverty in office as a disqualification because of what it makes a man do.
The same page carries the rule that cuts the other way. Paragraph 23 states that "los Tenientes no deven ser vezinos, ni naturales de los pueblos donde han de exercer los Oficios; como tampoco lo pueden ser los Corregidores, ni aun los Oydores, ni los alguaziles, sin permission del Rey, ni los Fiscales", adds that the laws prohibiting this were called by Gomezio "santissimas", and notes that there are such laws in France and in most of Italy. The principle that secured a magistrate against his own kin and neighbours is the same principle that barred the men of a place from governing it. The book states the rule in general terms for Castile; nothing in the pages opened here applies it to the Indies, and nothing is attributed to it about them.
The measure of this volume's American content is small and is worth stating exactly, because the book is often invoked as a manual of Spanish colonial government. The alphabetical "Indice" of notable things in this printing has no heading for Indias at all, and under Indios exactly one line: "Indios si gozan de la inmunidad Ecclesiastica, num.50.p.410." At page 410, which is book II chapter XIV, the printed text treats dudas XIV to XVIII of ecclesiastical asylum; the paragraph numbered 50 is duda XVII, on whether the excommunicated enjoys the immunity of the church, and the paragraph numbered 51 is duda XVIII, on whether "el Infiel, ò el Judio, que se retrae à la Iglesia con fin de gozar de la inmunidad, gozarà della", resolved by many in the negative "porque la Iglesia no defiende à los que no creyendo en lo principal, confian de lo accessorio". The index entry and the page do not match, and this corpus records the mismatch and asserts nothing about its cause; it asserts nothing, in particular, about the expurgation the title page announces.
That the book was nevertheless an authority for practitioners in the Indies is not inferred here from its reputation but read on a page. The Curia Philipica, the handbook of civil, criminal and commercial practice whose second tome is the commercial and maritime law of the Spanish Atlantic, cites it in the chapter on failed merchants: at folio 407, for the proposition that the criminal penalty of the fraudulent bankrupt proceeds also against "su muger tratante alzada", the marginal authority reads "Bobad. in Polit. lib. 3. c. 15. n. 34. 35. 36. 37." The citation is to book III, which is in the second tome of the Politica and was not opened for this entry.
The limits of this entry. Everything above is read from the Antwerp printing of 1704, which states on its own title page that it is corrected and expurgated according to the expurgatorio of 1640; no wording is attributed to any earlier printing, and no date is asserted for one. Only Tomo primero was opened, so the books on the residencia and the chapter cited by the Curia Philipica were not read. Nothing here establishes how far the practice of any corregidor matched the manual, how widely the book circulated, what the expurgation of 1640 removed, or how the doctrine of the poor as "miserables personas" was applied in any particular court. Those are questions for archival series and for modern scholarship, neither of which was reachable for this entry.