Note y — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 2)

Boucher supposes it to have been compiled at Barcelona about 900; but his reasonings are inconclusive, t. i. p. 72; and indeed Barcelona at that time was little, if at all, better than a fishing-town. Some arguments might be drawn in favour of Pisa from the expressions of Henry IV.'s charter granted to that city in 1081. Consuetudines, quas habent de mari, sic iis observabimus sicut illorum est consuetudo. Muratori Dissert. 45. Giannone seems to think the collection was compiled about the reign of Louis IX. 1. xi. c. 6. Capmany, the last Spanish editor, whose authority ought perhaps to outweigh every other, asserts and seems to prove them to have been enacted by the mercantile magistrates of Barcelona, under the reign of James the Conqueror which is much the same period. Codigo de las Costumbres Maritimas de Barcelona, Madrid, 1791. But, by whatever nation they were reduced into their present form, these laws were certainly the ancient and established usages of the Mediterranean states: and Pisa may very probably have taken a great share in first practising what a century or two afterwards was rendered more precise at Barcelona.