of Le Sage, though conveying there no very adequate idea of the
extraordinary functions which it assumed at the period under review.
Instead of a regularly organized police, it then consisted of a
confederation of the principal cities bound together by solemn league and
covenant, for the defence of their liberties in seasons of civil anarchy.
Its affairs were conducted by deputies, who assembled at stated intervals
for this purpose, transacting their business under a common seal, enacting
laws which they were careful to transmit to the nobles and even the
sovereign himself, and enforcing their measures by an armed force. This
wild kind of justice, so characteristic of an unsettled state of society,
repeatedly received the legislative sanction; and, however formidable such
a popular engine may have appeared to the eye of the monarch, he was often
led to countenance it by a sense of his own impotence, as well as of the
overweening power of the nobles, against whom it was principally directed.
Hence these associations, although the epithet may seem somewhat
overstrained, have received the appellation of "cortes extraordinary."
[40]

With these immunities, the cities of Castile attained a degree of opulence
and splendor unrivalled, unless in Italy, during the middle ages. At a
very early period, indeed, their contact with the Arabs had familiarized
them with a better system of agriculture, and a dexterity in the mechanic
arts unknown in other parts of Christendom. [41]

On the occupation of a conquered town, we find it distributed into
quarters or districts, appropriated to the several crafts, whose members
were incorporated into guilds, under the regulation of magistrates and by-
laws of their own appointment. Instead of the unworthy disrepute, into
which the more humble occupations have since fallen in Spain, they were
fostered by a liberal patronage, and their professors in some instances