4
A trans-Pyrenean culture
The Catalan historical tradition traditionally terms the post-Carolingian lands Old Catalonia with the southern conquests referred to as New Catalonia. This tends to suggest that a true Catalonia existed in the north and a Catalan identity was incorporated into the lands liberated from Islam. A similar process occurs with the conquests of the Balearic Islands and Valencia which are deemed to form the Països Catalans, the Catalan (speaking) countries. Yet our sense of modern borders and boundaries was not shared at this time.1 It is unlikely that anything approaching national identity existed in the middle ages. Identity expressions found were rudimentary and superficial. Fluid allegiances were inevitable in a period where identity was not constructed in a national sense.2 At best we can speak of a dynastic sense of identity at the upper levels of society but this was also limited by attachment to a transnational sense of Christendom. A shared sense of religiosity is perhaps the only meaningful expression of identity that was shared across social classes. At a popular level, we cannot speak of national identity. Rather, beyond the religious expression, identity was mostly expressed in terms of attachment to locality. The state boundary that today divides France and Spain was not one known at this time. The rulers of Aragon and Catalonia held possessions north of the Pyrenees as well as relations of vassalage and commitment to an extensive territory on both sides of the Pyrenees remained strong. What in time will become the kingdom of France was still divided into a number of rival territories and there was little that was inevitable about its final formation. Equally Spain did not yet exist but by 1150, the number of kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula had fallen to five.
This period is also marked in general by ever-growing military rivalry and the dynamic of medieval Europe was expressed by a pattern of territorial conquest and expansion.3 For the emerging kingdom of Aragon, it seemed clear that in the future some kind of clash with a rapidly growing Castile was likely. Both kingdoms were in expansionary mode as was the kingdom of France which controlled over half of future French territory and shared a border with Aragon. This raises once again the continuation of a theme we have noted previously and which will continue to mark development, of Catalan territory found in an intermediate space between emerging powers, now France and Castile. In one sense, the story of Catalonia is that of compression by two greater powers. For now, however, the Catalan lands, part of the kingdom of Aragon, were in the ascendant. Catalan ambitions for territorial expansion in the southern French zone clashed with those of the territory of Toulouse. Control of the neighbouring Provence region was key to this rivalry.4 Both sides sought and obtained support from other powers, an indication that the Catalan realm was seen as a growing rival, both in terms of the acquisition of territory and in the Mediterranean. International alliances were increasingly forged.
As well as territory held across the Pyrenees, Languedoc and Provence were in the Catalan sphere of influence. The Occitan zone in particular was a centre of textile production which was an industry that gradually emerged in the greater Barcelona areas.5 In the thirteenth century, Catalan merchants traded in Languedoc and Provence. The most common trade routes were by land from Barcelona through the Pyrenees to Montpellier, and by sea from Barcelona to Marseille. The main imported product was French fabrics, of higher quality than those made in Catalonia and which were resold throughout the Mediterranean.6 Linkages between Occitania were also cultural and by means of trading where linguistic closeness facilitated communications. Cultural activity was changing and more existed outside of the Church. Occitan became the language of a new innovative musical form, of the troubadours, which introduced emotional expression in music and became popular at court and all levels of society. This form extended from northern Italy to most of the Iberian peninsula and represented a major change as being a popular cultural form that was non-religious in content.7 In the late twelfth century, this style of musical innovation was found in the Catalan lands producing Raimon Vidal, a prolific troubadour of the early thirteenth century and the most prominent of many exponents of the art.8
Occitania and the Cathars
Consolidation and indeed potential Catalan expansion in this zone saw major difficulties develop when the region became the focus of a variant of Christianity that the official Church rapidly deemed a heresy. Its participants and followers referred to themselves as Good Men and Women but their legacy has come down to us as that of the Cathars or Albigensians. Catharism greatly influenced Catalan society, especially from the second half of the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth century. Cathar doctrine described Jesus as an angel sent by God to show the path to goodness. The assertion of Jesus’s earthly nature and rejection of the Old Testament particularly affronted traditional religious opinion. Catharism tended to divide ruling elites, with local lords supportive as it eroded church influence and power. Catharism was also influential amongst the growing merchant community as it was a doctrine which encouraged trade. In fact, it seems that the doctrine found support amongst all social classes.9 The areas most influenced by the new doctrine were the lower Pyrenees, being the zone with the closest proximity to Occitania. The western Pyrenean Catalan area also became a refuge and centre of Cathar activities. Refugees from persecution and sympathisers could move freely amongst the scattered villages, circulating texts and ideas.10 The movement spread south, reaching as far as Barcelona and Lleida.
The established Church grew ever more concerned and Pope Innocent III launched a military crusade against the doctrine in 1209, which was supported by the establishment of an Inquisition. This Inquisition lasted some 50 years against a movement deemed to challenge the traditional authority of the Church. The Albigensian Crusade, which repressed Occitan Catharism, and was pursued with brutal violence, profoundly impacted Catalonia. Given the international character of Christendom, the Cathar conflict placed the kings of Aragon-Catalonia in a position where they required to choose between supporting the Papacy and their own vassals. In the first phase of the repression, the king of Aragon, Jaume, submitted to papal pressure and collaborated in the anti-Cathar policy. The next monarch Pere II (1196–1213), adopted a more pro-Cathar policy because of the position of his vassals in the Cathar area. Pere II fought against the pro-Papal forces but in 1213, not only was his army defeated but also the monarch was killed in the Battle of Muret. The defeat at Muret brought to an end a possible continuation of Catalan-Aragonese expansion in southern France.11 A later treaty saw the Aragonese-Catalan kingdom accept the abandonment of any wider claim in this zone. Whilst Catalonia retained an important zone beyond the Pyrenees, which would be held until 1659, the prospect of trans-Pyrenean expansion had to be abandoned. The monarch of Catalonia-Aragon had to look elsewhere to expand. With the north closed off for further expansion, and the west clearly dominated by Castile, Catalan expansion was reduced to southwards within the peninsula. The northern defeat also gave an impetus to imperial ambitions in the Mediterranean.
Southern Expansion
Parallel to the latter phase of the Cathar dispute, and a year before Muret, the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula combined forces and launched a large-scale offensive against the Almohads. Armies from Castile, Aragon, León and Navarre met the Almohad army at Las Navas de Tolosa in July 1212 and won an overwhelming victory. That battle marked the end of major Muslim power in the peninsula.12 This victory produced the impetus for the carve up of Moslem Spain. Both Mallorca and the southern territories such as Valencia were increasingly vulnerable due to the fragmentation of Islamic power. Territorial accumulation allowed the monarchy to buy off its nobility and assert its own dominance through new revenue accrued. The Church was also active in the process of acquisition, which allowed it to expand its zone of influence and the reach of Christendom. The Church was central to the construction of the conflict as a religious crusade.
For Aragon-Catalonia, before southern conquest could begin in earnest, the Balearic Islands were attended to. Ruled by Islam, there were seen as an impediment to Mediterranean expansion and a source of piracy and raiding on the coast. What began with Mallorca became part of a new expansive wave. Medieval warfare was often brutal and the conquest of Mallorca is a particularly notable example of extreme violence. Much of the native Islamic population was slaughtered whilst the few remaining fled to the mountains.13 The killing in the capital of the island was so great that thousands of corpses could not be buried and the victorious troops were decimated by a plague epidemic. Those not killed but captured were sold into slavery and the ultimate result was the wiping out of the native Mallorcan population.14 The previous population was substituted by colonists from Catalonia. Yet the king who carried out this ruthless conquest is seen as one of the great Catalan kings, Jaume I, who reigned for some 60 years. Due to his role in the expansion of Catalan territory and conquests, his exploits continue to be venerated and for many he remains a heroic representation of Catalan nationhood. King Jaume framed some of his own mythology of the conquest in a volume known as the Llibre dels Feyts (Book of Deeds). Written or dictated by the king, the text, written in Catalan, is likely to have been authored no earlier than 1240, some 11 years after the conquest of Mallorca in 1229 but coinciding with that of Valencia. The Llibre dels Feyts is framed today as the one of the foundational texts of medieval Catalonia.15
Conquest of Valencia
By the end of the thirteenth century, Catalan colonists formed the majority of the population of all of the Balearics, and these islands became a separate kingdom. The ruler was a member of the royal dynasty and there were even occasions of revolt against the wider kingdom. In general, however, with the position now safe along the Mediterranean coast, Catalonia pursued expansionary policies along its southern border. The ultimate outcome was the conquest of the kingdom of Valencia, known in Arabic as Sarq al-Andalus, which was one of the wealthiest southern kingdoms. The horta (market gardens) of this region was an extensive irrigated zone and the main source of wealth. The conquest of Valencia took 13 years to complete and it was framed as a religious crusade and formally proclaimed as such by the papacy.16 Following the intense violence of the taking of Mallorca, the city of Valencia chose surrender. One consequence was, unlike in Mallorca, where no Islamic population remained, in the zone of Valencia a substantial minority population of Moslems continued, lasting until its expulsion in the early seventeenth century. As in other colonial enterprises, a Christian minority was able to impose itself on a Moslem majority population and proceed towards their economic exploitation. Marriage between Christians and Moslems was prohibited and the two religious communities co-existed in an uneasy relationship with the Christians now dominant in all areas.17 Anxiety at the potential for Moslem rebellion remained a constant concern and these fears were realised at times. The Christian settlers maintained a military culture and ethos.18 Catalan became the principal language, though some of the inner zone was conquered by the Aragonese, where Catalan did not impinge. Jaume I subsequently collaborated with his Castilian counterparts in the conquest of Murcia, and Castile secured control of the conquered kingdom, according to the terms of the Treaty of Almizra of 1244, designating Murcia as future Castilian territory. Whilst this resolved for a time the frontier, and any potential clash between Castile and Aragon, armed conflict would break out in the future.
Jaume I and Catalan authority
Connections were growing between monarchies across Europe with marriage alliances increasingly common. Catalan monarchs established bonds with territories such as Hungary and the kingdom of Naples. European polities began to develop institutions starting in the medieval period, though use of the term ‘state’ should be used with care as the reach of these institutions, and associated bureaucracy, was tiny compared to that of modern states. The principal activity of these states was war and defence. Revenue raising was overwhelmingly devoted to these purposes. It was during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that Catalan institutions and its early state order took solid shape. Whilst noble rebellions had not come to an end, breaking out twice in the 1270s, the institution of monarchy was increasingly stabilised. The culmination of the reconquest contributed to the concentration of power into royal hands. With vast lands and privileges to award, royal power was strengthened. Jaume enforced his authority throughout his kingdom. The monarch acted as protector of the Church and enhanced its power to offset that of local lords.19 Under Jaume I, the monarch held extensive power in Catalonia and delegated his authority over the territory through local representatives such as mayors and officials known as veguers. One distinctive feature of the Catalan realm was a modest sharing of power between the king and the upper levels of the elites. The Catalan medieval regime was governed by a form of shared power. This has become known as pactisme. As with Magna Carta in England, this pactisme is often considered as a form of proto-democracy, but it was simply a system where the monarch was required to consult with the upper nobility and highest ranks of the Church.20 Though a natural and often ruthless authoritarian, Jaume was required to accept these modest measures and the monarchy had to rely on the Cortes to pass new laws. This pactisme occurred in other places in Europe, but it was in Catalonia (and also in England with Magna Carta) where it was more explicitly conceptualised. The Girona native Francesc Eiximenis, in his treatise Lo Crestià, outlined the moral and legal basis of shared power.21 Thus, the Catalan system was based on the cooperation between the main sectors of the ruling class, at the head of which was the king. Whilst the notion of a proto-democratic Catalonia has been exaggerated for political purposes, shared power amongst the ruling class did give a different inflection to the organisation of rule compared to that of Castile, where elites were more clearly subordinated to the monarch.
One consequence of the vast expansion of the Catalan-led realm was not just war abroad but increasing resentment in other regions at policies that seemed only to benefit Catalonia itself. Whilst monarchical power was growing, it could not be said that the nobility was fully subdued and the expansion of the kingdom produced new tensions amongst elites. Conflict emerged not only within Catalonia but also with lords in Aragon over newly acquired Valencia. Against the wishes of the Aragonese nobles, who wanted to apply to the whole kingdom of Valencia the law of Aragon, the king promulgated a new and specific one, the law of Valencia, and was the first important legal text written in Catalan. The frequent outbreaks of war became ever less popular after the completion of the Reconquest as potential beneficiaries were fewer. Simply put, there was no further land to distribute. For many in Valencia and Aragon, war was seen as being a profitless exercise which did not benefit their regions. The nobility and citizens responded by forming the Union of Aragon in 1287 where a series of demands were made to the king. The Cortes demanded a limit to the taxes the king could impose and the removal of Catalan and foreign administrators. This was a reflection that Catalonia and Aragon, in spite of their union, represented distinctive and not always compatible political traditions.22 The nobility and towns in Valencia, seeing an opportunity to expand their freedoms, formed the Union of Valencia and demanded the same privileges.
Frequently during the period from 1150 to 1400, Catalonia was at war. The waging of war, whether through conquest or expansion by sea, was a constant drain on revenue. To facilitate its collecting, a range of organisations were devised, which in time became a permanent delegation in 1359 and was called the Diputació del General or Generalitat. Contemporary Catalan identity attaches great symbolic import to the Generalitat, which is the seat of the regional government and repository of historical continuity. This new body could collect taxes and recruit soldiers in the event of an invasion of Catalan territory. These institutions and their ideological formulation are increasingly expressive of a Catalan dynastic consciousness and differentiation with evidence of a proto-national awareness amongst ruling elites. The Catalan aristocracy will become firm defenders of their privileges and potential encroachment by any ruler.
Empire
With the peninsula no longer offering new lands to conquer and with the Occitan zone now lost, the only path to growth was the sea. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Crown of Aragon became a powerful and at times feared power in the western Mediterranean. Expansion happened in phases. The acquisition of Sicily was a key development in this process. The kingdom of Naples and Sicily was in a privileged strategic position that gave it control of trade routes between the eastern and western Mediterranean, and with North Africa and the Balkans. Sicily had been under the authority of the French crown, which produced ever greater local resentment. In 1282, an event known as the Sicilian Vespers occurred and the locals massacred their French rulers in a bloody revolt. The Aragonese king, Pere III was able to claim the island by force. The initial conquest was fairly easy, but the subsequent war with France lasted for 20 years before the pope and the French monarch recognised Sicily as belonging to Aragon. It forced the Aragonese monarchy to fight continuously against a major rival and strained the Catalan economy. Over the following 150 years, the Crown of Aragon added Sardinia and the Greek duchies of Athens and Neopatria, in the fourteenth century, and of the kingdom of Naples, in the fifteenth century. Trading bases were established in North Africa, Egypt and Syria. In addition, it had its own fleet, destined to protect the Catalan coast. The Kingdom of Aragon had become a major sea power and developed a greater political and economic projection of the Crown. This expansion required the military defeat of other powers.
The rise of the mercenary
As an indication of the changing political regime, we find the use of mercenary not vassals forces for military engagements. This the monarchy found greater suited its purposes, by reducing reliability on the nobility. These paid for hire forces appeared in varying roles in wars waged over the next century. They emerged as a consequence of war with France over Sicily. France invaded Catalonia in 1285 with a force of some 20,000, yet the nobility of the provinces of Valencia and Aragon withheld military support. Girona was besieged. The situation was saved only by the arrival of Roger de Llúria, who headed the Sicilian fleet which forced a French retreat. Relentless harassment of the retreating forces was carried out. A chronicle of the time claims that 300 French prisoners were thrown into the sea. A separate group of mercenary soldiers, the Almogávars, some 6,000, under the command of the Italian Roger de Flor, were the main body of the Companyia Catalana d’Orient (Catalan Grand Company), which was contracted to support the Byzantine Empire against the Turks. However, partly due to their reckless violence and plundering, their hirers refused to pay them and the Grand Company began to conquer Byzantine territory, ending up with two duchies in Greece, including Athens which lasted some 70 years, until 1387. The fact that most settled was unusual for this type of force.23 Their conquests were independent actions and not officially under the auspices of the Aragonese kings, but they nonetheless had close ties with the Crown of Aragon. The mercenary forces of the Company and Catalan eastern expansion would be rehabilitated in the nineteenth century as a period of Catalan glory.24
Cultural splendour
With territorial expansion and conquest came the influence of Catalan high culture in Europe. For contemporary Catalonia, the thirteenth century and much of the fourteenth is seen as a golden age. Catalan led a vast colonial expansion and reached its greatest ever territorial extent. However, we should be aware that most cultural production continued to be conducted in Latin and there was little or no sense of writing in Catalan as being an act of nation making. The Catalan literary revival of the nineteenth century tended to prioritise those works written in Catalan, even if they may not have been that important at their time of writing. Certainly, important works were written by Catalans in the period, though most were not written in the Catalan language as Latin remained the form of expression of cosmopolitan literary culture shared in much of Europe. Within those caveats, we can note that Catalonia was one of the great centres of creativity including religious musical expression.25 What became known as the Catalan Atlas of 1375 was one major consequence of a sophisticated school of map makers, mostly made up of Catalan settlers in Mallorca.26
Innovation was evident in a range of thought, particularly theology and philosophy. As with all imperial projects, empire produced intellectual justification. The medieval Catalan tradition is centred on the chronicle form. The most prominent examples after the volume written by Jaume I, are by Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner, who provided elite reportage of conquest and expansion. Desclot’s chronicle is centred on the conquest of Sicily and the defence of Catalonia against French invasion. Ramon Muntaner focuses on the eastern Mediterranean, events which he also witnessed. It is Ramon Llull who stands out as the most prolific and original figure. Llull, from a family of Catalan colonists in Mallorca, wrote over 200 works. He wrote some of his philosophy in Catalan though most of Llull’s work was disseminated in Latin. After claiming he had received divine visitations, Llull became a mystic, philosopher, a missionary for the conversion of Muslims and Jews, and one of the founding figures of Catalan literature. He wrote the Libre qui es de l’ordre de cavalleria (The Book of the Order of Chivalry), probably between 1279 and 1283. It reached a wide readership in its original Catalan and was translated into French and English in later periods. Llull’s Llibre de contemplació en Déu (Book of Contemplation of God) was first written in Arabic and its themes range from scholasticism to mysticism. Like many other preachers of the time, he was also eager to convert all unbelievers, heretics, Arabs and Jews to Christianity.27 Arnau de Vilanova was another visionary figure who wrote on the arrival of the anti-Christ and the apocalypse. As well as by figures such as Francesc Eixemenis, moralist and theologian, the Catalan language was used in legal texts. From the 1320s, a poetry festival had been held in Toulouse in Occitania which in time became the inspiration for the Jocs Florals (Floral Games) held in Barcelona in 1393. This form lasted until the mid-fifteenth century. Their revival took place in the 1850s as part of the Catalanist cultural flowering.
Agriculture and the economy
In this period, over 80 per cent of the population lived tied to the land under varying obligations and were subject to the arbitrary power of the feudal lords. As the economy was growing, particularly from around 1200 to 1340, class tension between lords and peasants was mostly kept in check. This did mean that the burdens on the peasantry, whilst resented, were accepted due to a relatively benign wider context of development. The consolidation and extension of taxation was key to the development of the existing economic order.28 However, coercion also played an essential role in the economy. Laws passed in 1202 and 1283 intensified the power of the nobility over their land, to which not even the king was permitted to interfere.29 Within the Catalan and Aragonese feudal world, vassal services had spread called Mals Usos and they affected over quarter of rural communities. They outlined a range of payments and obligations ranging from compensating the lord if the peasant home burned down, dowry taxes, fees on wills and permission for the lord to appropriate land in the case of female adultery. The most contentious of all was that the farmer could not leave the land he cultivated at will. Rather if he wished to do so, a substantial fee, the remença, was required. This was a deliberate mechanism to prevent the free movement of peasants.30 This situation continued as the monarchy was unwilling to intervene as the nobility provided the revenue for ever more costly foreign wars. The peasantry was also subject to ecclesiastical authority. As the Church consolidated its authority, a range of financial obligations fell upon the peasantry, from payments in foodstuffs, donations expected for religious holidays as well as payments for rites of passage such as baptisms and funerals. These were invariably defined as ‘gifts’ to the Church.31 Even a commodity as basic as water was not free and incurred payment costs to the lord or in some cases to the monarch.32 Even so, for most of this period, there is growing trade and the exchange of products. Annual fairs and weekly markets are held in all the medium-sized cities and towns in the country and became ever more important to economic development.33
Rise of Barcelona and urban growth
Political and economic power had been consolidated under the feudal order. Though the higher and lesser nobility was unlikely to be ever more than 5 per cent of population, for hundreds of years, they had been the main owners of wealth, together with the Church. This was beginning to change as towns proved able to provide increased revenue, particularly as Catalonia projected itself overseas. The end of an era of the domination of the lordly castle was approaching. We find a growing influence of urban centres, including their capacity to impact on the rural areas surrounding them.34 The monarchy increasingly utilised the growing influence and wealth of the urban zones as a counterweight to the nobility. Previously, the two main estates, church and nobility, had been unchallenged, but increasingly the merchant class asserted their interests. In Barcelona, a new forum for elite interests was created, the Consell de Cent (the Council of One Hundred), the municipal governing body of Barcelona. Urban inhabitants had much greater autonomy and when economic conditions worsened, cities became attractive locations to escape obligations to both lords and the church. The city becomes the main place of social change whilst developments in the countryside were more halting.
In this period, we find much greater social complexity with the emergence of social actors such as guilds, artisans and merchants. It is a period when surnames are widely adopted either by trade Martell (Smith) or by locality.35 Women’s roles, however, were circumscribed by the wider context. Church narratives spoke of women as figures of danger which was combined with the evocation of Mary. Devotion to Mary became deeply embedded in Catalan culture and a way of crafting an idealised and subordinated view of women. Marriage occurred at a young age with the only real alternative for women being the convent.36 Amongst those people in the town for whom a craft can be identified as an occupation, a significant proportion were women.37 With social change came more attempts at social control. The influence of trade led to an increase in the luxury of clothing that in some cases came from Italian cities. Laws defining clothing that could be worn by social status: the sumptuous laws. Between 1345 and 1376, they were updated and each time they became ever more restrictive, especially for women, who were forbidden to wear striped, plaid or painted dresses even inside their home. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities could not allow the clothing of the lower class to match those of their social superiors and these measures even extended to merchants who were not permitted to dress as lords, no matter how wealthy they were. These laws also extended to the consumption of luxury goods and regulations on what could be worn on social occasions and festivities.38 The inhabitants of the cities had achieved independence from the lords. The urban walls that were built served as a defence, but they were also a symbol of the city’s freedom. Towns tended to benefit their residents but exclude outsiders. In 1269, for instance, Barcelona banned foreigners from settling, let alone obtaining citizenship in the city.39
Barcelona had consolidated its role as the most important of Catalan cities, its wealth based on its port status and increasingly financial role. Shipbuilding was centred in the city and expanded in line with Catalan expansion overseas.40 Before the Black Death, the population of Catalonia may have been as high as 500,000. Barcelona, the largest city by far, was approaching 40,000. This ever-growing capital and its pivotal trading role gave a special character to Catalonia and contrasted with the structure of both Castile and Portugal.41 The cities were undergoing a virtuous circle of expansion, particularly due to the rise of maritime trade, centralised in Barcelona although other lesser ports such as Roses, Sant Feliu de Guíxols or Salou also benefitted. The support of the monarchy for these activities resulted in the creation of Catalan lodges or consulates throughout the Mediterranean. The Catalan taula de canvi, founded in 1401, is now believed to be Europe’s first public bank.42 This new banking and financial system permitted the expansion of credit and spread the use of the bill of exchange which allowed for credit and other transactions. The Barcelona merchant, in contrast to the cult of individualism of the Italian city states, maintained a high degree of religiosity.43 Even so, war and commercial expansion went hand in hand. In further contrast to the culture that emerged in the case of the Italian city states, the Catalan merchant maintained a close relationship with the rural world.44
Merchants
The gradual expansion of money was one element that began to erode the feudal system.45 The expansion of the merchant class posed a challenge to the traditional order and served as a useful device for the monarchy to keep the nobility in check. Over the thirteenth century, Catalan merchants were active in Constantinople and traded in slaves, wax, copper and cotton. This trading regime was facilitated by collaboration between the monarchy and the Catalan merchant class. Trade with Morocco intensified in the late thirteenth century as it did with Egypt and Syria, in the latter case particularly focussed on spices.46 Catalonia also maintained trade relations with Bruges, London and many of the Italian city states. As early as the late twelfth century, some merchants became permanently stationed and acted as consuls to facilitate trading relations, particularly in North Africa. The consulates were a kind of small permanent embassy in various countries, intended to support Catalan expeditions. Trade of this magnitude would not have been possible without the existence of an institutional and legal infrastructure. The Consolat de Mar (1282) was a high court created in Barcelona in charge of arbitrating on maritime and commercial issues. This institution brought together the city’s shipowners and leading merchants, gradually acquired jurisdiction over the port area of the city, which it exercised it until 1714.47 Such was the status of Catalonia in this period that the Book of the Consolat del Mar became adopted through much of the Mediterranean.
Wars with Castile and internal revolts
One of the continuing goals of the Crown of Aragon was control of the western Mediterranean. To achieve this, it was also necessary to control the entire Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula. With expansion came increasing tension with Castile. Furthermore, given the growing status of both powers, their rivalry also had international dimensions. Castile was usually allied with France, as well as Rome, Genoa and Naples, territories that all had sought to control Catalan expansion in the Mediterranean. Whilst as early as the Occitan war, Catalonia had tended to align with England. This relation with England deepened through trade in the following two centuries. The first major war between Aragon and Castile took place in the context of the acquisition of Sicily in the 1280s where Castile aligned with France against Aragon. Dynastic conflict and instability within Castile contributed to war between both kingdoms breaking out in 1296. The clash within the peninsula was over the region of Murcia which was a frontier zone between both kingdoms. By 1300, internal dissension within Aragon over the conduct of the war led to peace. The Kingdom of Murcia was divided and peace between Castile and Aragon was maintained for the next 50 years.
The costs of overseas war also saw tensions due to repeated financial contributions to Mediterranean expansion. Once again both Aragonese and Valencian elites felt they were financing a conflict that seemed only to benefit the Catalan part of the kingdom. Rebellion broke out in Valencia under the auspices of the Union of the Kingdom of Valencia. Its purpose was to strengthen Valencian institutions against what was perceived as increasing royal authoritarianism. Tension within Valencia had been growing in the 1330s and a full-scale revolt occurred in 1347, which coincided with the outbreak of famine in the region. However, in contrast to the region of Aragon, this movement divided Valencian society giving the conflict the aspect of civil war. In the end, the king aided by Aragonese and Valencian troops entered the city of Valencia victorious in December 1348, after defeating the Union. Rebellion against monarchical power meant that the repression was harsh. Twenty-two leading figures of the Unionists were cruelly executed. The leading rebel Joan Sala was forced to drink molten bronze from the Union bell which had been used to call supporters.48 Though the Valencian revolt had been defeated, its harsh repression left a lingering anti-Catalan sentiment and legacy.
Internal peace had been restored but rising tensions between Castile and the Catalan monarchy, embodied in two authoritarian kings, gave the name to war between the two kingdoms as The War of the Two Peres (Peters), which lasted between 1357 and 1369. On one level, it was a personal conflict between the respective monarchs Pere el Cerimoniós of Aragon and Pedro the Cruel of Castile.49 This war was also partly an offshoot of the conflict between France and England in the Hundred Years War and occurred in a context of major societal disruption due to the ravages of the Black Death. This conflict saw the greatest losses in the territory of the kingdom of Aragon where it was mostly fought out and Castilian forces engaged in vast destruction. Whilst the end result was defeat for Castile, this was barely a victory for Aragon given the extensive material damage the war produced. Living conditions were worsened for much of the population and impact was felt in reduced Mediterranean trade. The position of the nobility was strengthened in relation to the monarchy as the king required their approval for a range of financial measures.50 The nobility remained unwilling to cede its power as the events of 1410–1413 attest.
Crisis and plague
At the end of the middle ages, Catalonia experienced, like other European countries, a sustained period of crisis. In cities there was increasing poverty, unrest and popular revolts, whilst tensions rose greatly in the countryside. This is likely to have been caused by the emergence of a colder climate that began in the 1300s. It was a period of social instability, frequent poor harvests and resultant food shortages.51 Disruption to agricultural production began from around the 1330s and continued until the 1370s, with varying degrees of intensity. Agricultural crises caused widespread hunger and a weakened condition for many. A poor harvest of 1346 was followed soon after by the arrival of the Black Death. This epidemic of bubonic plague, followed by new outbreaks in 1362 and 1371, caused a devastating impact. Population decline is likely to have been in the region of 40 per cent overall with a figure around 500,000 in 1300 declining to not much more than 293,000 by 1380. A town such as Vic, in the interior, provides an indication of the scale of loss as it did not recover its pre-plague population until the early sixteenth century.52 The consequences of greatly deteriorated economic conditions caused societal conflict in both urban and rural areas. Declines in lords’ incomes saw increased pressure on the condition of the peasantry, which some responded to by fleeing to the cities which could not cope with the influx. Those that remained sought improved conditions to their tenancy which was fiercely resisted by the lordly class. The following decades were marked by repeated conflict between lord and peasant. Reprisals and means to ensure social control were carried out against peasants seeking to break free from their domination. The seeds were being laid for peasant rebellion.
All social classes were affected by the economic consequences of the plague. As we have seen, the cost of foreign wars were but one further layer to make the situation worse. City and royal treasuries were under pressure with shortages leading to price rises. A negative spiral ensued and internal migration contributed to rising conflict in the urban areas. Revolts broke out in Barcelona and other towns in 1334 with frequent riots between 1339 and 1343. The monarchy is at the centre of a crisis and is under such severe financial stress it is unable to repay loans. The once growing banking sector began a spiral of default which affected the three main Catalan cities of Girona, Perpinyà and Barcelona over the course of the 1380s. Crisis in foreign trade saw merchants experience bankruptcy. Within the three main territories of the kingdom of Aragon, Catalonia was the region that was most affected by a combination of crises, whilst the Aragonese and Valencia regions were much less impacted. These latter two regions became increasingly important within the overall dynamic of the wider kingdom.
Anti-Jewish pogroms
The Jewish population in medieval Catalonia was concentrated in the urban zones and in towns where Jews lived, they may have been up to 15 per cent of the population. Separate quarters for the Jews were established in districts known as the Call. For a period, the monarchs of Catalonia maintained senior Jewish officials in advisory roles and even on occasion as diplomats. Following the conquest of Valencia, its Jewish inhabitants were given the same rights as the population of Barcelona.53 However, from around 1300, this benign environment for the Jewish population began to erode which had a number of causes. Anti-Jewish sentiment was increasing in many European societies. Jews had been the main merchants but their role in trade began to be challenged by the rise of a new mercantile class in the city of Barcelona. Catalan merchants came to see the Jewish traders as their direct rivals and a threat to their profits. City councils even issued proclamations that expressed public hostility to the Jews.54 The changing and worsening economic context followed by the Black Death produced a major change in attitudes towards the Jewish population. The church led a culture of persecution and priests were often the first to blame the Jews for the plague.55 In the town of Tàrrega, tensions and the search for scapegoats saw the population turn on its Jewish population in 1348. Assault on the Jewish quarter in the town led to the slaughter of possibly as many as 300 Jews. Assaults on other Jewish populations had also taken place but not on the scale of Tàrrega. Decades of relative calm now returned which was broken in the early 1390s. The crisis we have noted earlier included the collapse of banks which began to heighten popular tensions. Jewish financiers were often the most likely to see loans defaulted on. In July and August 1391, a number of assaults were attempted on the Jewish quarter of Barcelona, the largest in Catalonia. The first major attack killed up to 200 Jews, whilst the worst led to the deaths of over 400 in a series of daily assaults which the authorities were unwilling or unable to halt. Those not killed experienced public-forced conversion to Christianity. Other minor assaults on Jewish quarters in Girona and Besalú also occurred. Some modest recovery in the Jewish population did occur in later decades but in a dramatically changed context, in 1492, the Jewish population was given the choice of conversion or exile.
Martí I and the end of the Catalan dynasty
Medieval regimes usually made use of the principle that the eldest male of the royal line was first in place for the succession. The members of the house of Barcelona had succeeded each other without interruption since the founding of the dynasty by Guifré in the late ninth century. Where no male heir had been available, a brother of the dead king might be found as a replacement or another very close relative. Thus, the arrival of a son or a clear successor was pivotal to monarchical stability. Given the context, we have noted of generalised crisis of varying degrees of intensity over the course of the fourteenth century, the death of Martí l’Humà (the Humane) in 1410 with neither issue nor a clear successor led to the end of the House of Barcelona as ruling dynasty. A political crisis was now added to those of the economy and society. Two main candidates emerged: Jaume d’Urgell, who made a claim as a distant family member and last potential male heir of the house of Barcelona and Ferdinand of Antequera, member of the Castilian Trastàmara family. There are two elements to this crisis: firstly, the internal developments themselves and secondly, how they have been framed in later centuries. In one sense there was a Catalan candidate, Jaume and a Castilian one, Ferdinand. However, most Catalan elites, whether rural or urban, supported the Castilian claimant as a better candidate for their interests. The local elites saw Ferdinand as a guarantor of their privileges and the preservation of their dominant role within the Cortes and the Diputació del General. This was resolved by the convening of the rural and urban elites who chose to elect the Castilian Ferdinand as King of Aragon, in June 1412, in the so-called Compromise of Casp. The Catalan candidate Jaume d’Urgell was so unpopular that even Mallorcan representatives who supported his claim were prevented from attending. The compromise prevented civil war.56 Thus, in one sense, a blood line even if tenuous was over-ruled by a Catalan ruling class that prioritised its interests over attachment to the dynasty. A short-lived revolt by Jaume d’Urgell against Casp was unsupported by the Catalan aristocracy. This is a further confirmation that political and economic interests at the upper levels of society were not interpreted in terms that we might call national or patriotic.
Within the wider historical development of Catalonia and once the actual events became a distant memory, Casp became symbolised and ingrained as an emotional trauma. A narrative grew and was repeated of a Catalonia that might have been had not the last representative of the dynasty died without a son. Casp became interpreted as the first stage in a process of the losing of national sovereignty that would be completed by the defeat of 1714. The Catalan national revival in the nineteenth century constructed a story of medieval glory. We see this pattern in many European societies.57 This framing of Casp is also linked to the story of Catalan decline as though this decision was the precipitator of all subsequent losses, in particular, the gradual incorporation within Castile/Spain. Whilst nineteenth-century Spaniards evoked the reconquest and the era of the Catholic Monarchs as representing a glorious period in Spanish history, in Catalonia, it was the glory of the Catalan-led kingdom of Aragon at its greatest extent that was reimagined as a golden age of Catalan glory. This was a mostly sanitised version of empire though at times even the exploits of the mercenary Almogavers were celebrated as examples of Catalan heroism.
Notes
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