controlled the military forces, the church and the middle class), to obtain military or financial services. The economic needs justified those meetings, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a stable institution called the Corts Valencianes had already been established.

Among the meetings which were held during the reign of James I, the most important was that of 7 April 1261 in Valencia, during which the king promulgated the Furs of Valencia, a series of charters equivalent to a modern