258 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINbut in practice, as far as the documents reveal, only the successful
party in the dispute seems to have produced any witnesses at all. This
may have been thanks to the procedure whereby they were first re-
quired to swear on the altar, on relics and on the four Gospels before
giving their testimony. Trials appear to have been held in churches
and were presided over by the count assisted by a panel of about half
a dozen judges and in the presence of a similar number of 'good
men'. In many instances the parties to a dispute were represented by
advocates of their own choosing called mandatarii. In some cases, and
particularly in criminal trials, the ordeal was employed. In this, and
in the resolution of civil disputes, the procedures laid down in the
Visigothic law were followed, and in some of the documents the spe-
cific texts of the Forum Iudicum relevant to the issue are cited.
The importance given to the use of written records in these cases
is notable, and is a reature or the legal procedures or not only the
counties of Catalonia but also of the Asturian and Leonese kingdoms.
In terms of the quantities of original documents preserved, as op-
posed to later copies in cartularies, the holdings of the modem Catalan
archives are much richer than those of their counterparts elsewhere
in the Iberian peninsula, and are amongst the finest and most sub-
stantial of any part of Europe. A case that illustrates both this atten-
tion to documents and written title to land, and also the use of
witnesses for the resolution of disputes, comes from the archives of
the monastery of Cuxa (now lost). In 878, when the monastery of St
Andrew at Eixalada was destroyed by flood, one of its former patrons,
realising that his deed of gift had thus been lost, attempted to repos-
sess some land he had previously granted to the house. Witnesses
who could testify that to their knowledge the disputed estate had
been in the hands of the monks prior to the flood secured judgement
in favour of the monastery. This case ended with the defendant signing
an 'evacuation', a formal renunciation of the false claim by its author,
which bound him and his heirs not to resurrect it at any future point.^58 ·
The administrative division of Carolingian Catalonia into a series
of counties, some of very small size, was maintained in the tenth
century, though some new units were also created. The counties were
ruled in a number of combinations by various branches of the family
of Wifred I, the senior line of which retained Barcelona and the title
of Marchio, which seems to have implied a supervisory power over
other counties not ruled directly. The count-marquesses of Barcelona
enjoyed not only a pre-eminence of prestige but also some measure