 James, seeing that some judges ruled by Gothic law and some by Roman law, according to a tradition of "usus terrae" (local custom), approached the Catalan Courts in 1251 to establish the primacy of the Usages.Though the Usages applied legally only to the Barcelonan county, in practice they were applied to the entire Principality of Catalonia.The Usages incorporated several other competing codes of the same era