Definition
In Spanish law, a form of obligation owed by the grandees and titled nobility to the crown. The term encompasses two related but distinct obligations: (1) military service rendered in person, and (2) a commuted annual monetary payment made by the grandees and nobles to the king in lieu of, or alongside, personal military service. By its later usage, the monetary payment — essentially a feudal commutation — became the more practically significant meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow term from Spanish feudal and colonial law with no meaningful presence in Anglo-American legal doctrine. A researcher encountering lanza in a Law Mind corpus document is almost certainly working with materials connected to Spanish colonial administration, Iberian feudal law, or the laws governing the Spanish nobility.
Several navigational points merit attention:
First, the dual meaning — personal military service versus monetary commutation — matters for interpreting historical documents. A reference to lanza in an early colonial context may mean the service obligation in its traditional form; a reference in later administrative or fiscal records more likely means the annual money payment. Context and date should guide interpretation.
Second, White's New Recopilación is the cited authority. Researchers should treat Burrill as a pointer to that source, not as a substitute for it. The Recopilación of Castile and related compilations are the primary legal texts governing this area.
Third, this term connects to the broader corpus of Spanish feudal obligations, including concepts like servicio, pecho, and related noble duties to the crown. Researchers working in Spanish colonial law will find lanza appearing alongside these related terms in discussions of aristocratic privilege and obligation.
Fourth, because the term has no common-law counterpart and appears almost exclusively in Spanish legal sources, it should not be confused with any English or American legal concept. Its appearance in an English-language legal text is almost always a deliberate reference to Spanish law specifically.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the sole historical legal dictionary treatment of this term in the Law Mind corpus, citing White's New Recopilación (b. 2, tit. 2, c. 2) as authority. Burrill distinguishes between the two senses of the term: the original military service obligation and the later cash payment made by grandees. The note appended to Burrill's entry signals that the monetary form was a recognized variation requiring separate explanation, suggesting the commutation had become customary enough to be treated as a semi-independent legal concept.
No other historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus address this term, and modern English-language legal dictionaries do not include it. Researchers should be aware that Burrill's treatment is necessarily thin and that the White's Recopilación citation is the underlying primary authority — anyone conducting substantive research on this term should work directly from that source and from Spanish colonial legal compilations rather than relying on the dictionary summary alone.
Jurisdictional Note
Lanza is a term of Spanish law with no direct equivalent in English common law. It is relevant primarily to research involving Iberian legal history, Spanish colonial law in the Americas, and the legal status of the Spanish nobility. It does not appear in American, English, or other civil-law traditions outside the Spanish sphere.