Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (33 page)

The marriage of 1112, celebrated in Arles on 3 February, exemplifies the complex ramifications of medieval matrimonial politics. The bride, Douce or Dulçe, an only child, had inherited Provence from her mother. But she had also inherited the lands of her late father, Gilbert de Gévaudan, viscount of Millau. This meant that her Catalan husband took possession of both Gévaudan (in the wilds of what is now the
département
of Lozère) and Millau (where the impressive viaduct now stands on Autoroute 9). The bishop of Mende, dismayed, invited the king of France to keep the Catalans out. His initiative enabled the French to stake their very first claim to a piece of Languedoc. Eventually, Aragon sold both Gévaudan and Millau to the French in 1225.
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But that was not the end of it. Gilbert de Gévaudan had also possessed the title to a district on the borders of the Auvergne and Rouergue, known in French as
Le Carlat
and in Catalan as
Carlades
(now in the
département
of Cantal). So Gilbert’s Catalan son-in-law collected the Carlat as well, passing it on to his heirs and successors. In 1167 the Carlat was handed in fief to the counts of Rodez, who paid their feudal dues either to Barcelona or to Perpignan for 360 years.

And so the saga went on. One of the two children of Ramón Berenguer I and Douce de Provence was a girl known after her father as Berenguela de Barcelona (1116–49). She, like her mother, grew up to become a hot property, and in 1128 was married off to Alfonso VII, king of Castile. Hence, the progenitors of the royal houses both of Castile and of Aragon-Catalonia were all direct descendants of Douce de Provence.
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Cerdanya, in contrast, passed to Barcelona through death as opposed to marriage, after a long independent career. Its central feature is a high plateau on which the only modest town, Puigcerda, would be built. In the era of post-Carolingian fragmentation, the seat of its counts was at Ripoll, south of the Pyrenean ridge, and, like neighbouring Urgell and Rosselló, it shook off the overlordship not only of the Franks but also of all its local rivals. Its most famous count, Guifré El Pilós (Wilfred the Hairy, d. 897), sought the protection of the papacy, and had the distinction of founding the bloodline from which the House of Berenguer in Barcelona traced its origins.
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The later counts of Cerdanya absorbed the adjacent district of Besalú, but in the early twelfth century they ran out of heirs, and in 1117 the last of them willed his inheritance to his relatives in Barcelona. From then on, for 542 years Cerdanya and Besalú furnished the central section of the natural ramparts of northern Catalonia.
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Prior to the Union, the flag of the County of Barcelona had consisted of four red horizontal stripes on a gold field. After the Union, this same flag often served for the whole state. The royal standard, in contrast, displayed a crowned shield quartered with the arms both of Aragon and of Catalonia. The usual regal style read ‘
Dei Gratia Rex Aragonensis, Comes Barchinonensis et Marchio Provinciae
’ (‘By God’s Grace, king of Aragon, count of Barcelona and marquis of Provence’). A name for the combined realm did not at first exist. But, from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, the
Corona aragonensis
, the ‘Crown of Aragon’, appeared with increasing frequency, and there is every reason for modern historians to use it.

Ruling dynasties provided the threads of ownership and political control which help explain the intricate territorial jigsaw of medieval Europe. They lived by the generally accepted principles of property, inheritance and war, by feudal concepts of jurisdiction based on landownership, and by a political order run by an elaborate hierarchy of lords and vassals. They acquired their lands and titles by marriages, by legacies and bequests, by purchases, by conquest and, occasionally, by donations. They lost them by deaths in the family, by adverse legal judgments, by sale or by military defeat. They defended them with their retinues of knights, with the blessings of a deferential clergy and with whole benches of lawyers.

As suggested elsewhere, the dynastic agglomerations of the medieval period may best be understood by analogy to the international corporations of later times.
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In a sense, the kingdom-county was a political business, and ‘Aragon’ was a famous brand. The business relied for protection on its military arm, but its main assets lay in land and in the money raised from fees and taxes. Each constituent territory enjoyed a large measure of self-government, where the nobles formed a local executive class running the subsidiary firms. The
Corts
, or assemblies, which the nobles dominated, formed the boards of the subsidiaries. By convention, it was the dynasty which supplied the top managerial elite – the CEOs – who were enhanced by regal status and who could move, as circumstance demanded, from firm to firm, from country to country. One should not forget that the Aragon-Barcelona ‘Company’ came into being in the first place through the fortuitous merger of 1137.

Contiguity is an issue. The County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Valencia, which were joined to Aragon in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively, came to be seen as constituent elements of the Crown’s heartland, the main parts of the ‘inner empire’, which may be distinguished from the ‘outer empire’ overseas. Yet historians face a very real problem in categorizing Aragon’s far-flung lands. In recent times, they have frequently talked of the ‘Aragonese Empire’ or the ‘Aragon-Catalonian Empire’. Scholastic arguments which crankily complain that the Aragonese example did not resemble the ancient Roman Empire or the modern British Empire are not helpful. These unhistorical terms do serve a purpose. For, though the Crown of Aragon was dynastic in origin and decentralized in nature, it formed more than a mere ragbag of accidental possessions. It constituted a long-lasting political community with a common allegiance, common traditions, common cultural proclivities and strong economic ties.
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How one classifies it is of secondary importance. In the opinion of a scholar whose main focus lies in the Golden Age of all-Spain, it was ‘one of the most imposing states of medieval Europe’.
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The heirs and successors of Alfonso II and I descended in the male line for ten generations. To complicate matters, they all boasted an Aragonese-Spanish name in addition to their Catalan name, and were separately numbered according to the Aragonese and Catalan styles. Their sobriquets were written in dual Aragonese and Catalan forms:

Throughout this very long time, the royal domain never ceased to expand. Indeed, there was no period between the twelfth and the late fifteenth centuries when Aragon’s ‘empire’ was not either swallowing new lands or busy digesting them. In the decades following the Union, several pieces of valuable real estate were obtained. While waiting to marry Queen Petronilla, Ramón Berenguer El Sant battled the Moors incessantly and in 1148 took control both of Tortosa in the south and of Lleida (Lérida) in the north-west. Rosselló fell into the hands of his son and Montpellier into the lap of his grandson.

Rosselló held onto its independence for fifty years longer than Cerdanya. But it was taken over in 1172 in exactly the same way. It occupied an area of great strategic importance, commanding not only the easiest passage of the Pyrenees along the old Via Augusta, but also the transverse trade route between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. It possessed a valuable port at Colliure (Collioure), and an important line of fortified castles including Perpinya (Perpignan), facing Languedoc. Three ancient
comarcas
or ‘districts’ functioned: El Conflent centred on Prada (Prades) in the valley of the Têt; Vallespir in the valley of the Tech; and, in the upper valley of the Aude, the subalpine district of Capcir.

Rosselló’s five centuries in the principality of Catalonia were characterized by its role as the north-eastern bulwark of the Aragonese-Catalan heartland. It repeatedly held the line against France. During the Albigensian Crusade against the heretical Cathar sect of the early thirteenth century, which brought the French into Languedoc, it stood firm against the awesome might of Carcassonne. It also provided the usual entry point of French armies into Iberia. On one notorious occasion, it was betrayed by an abbot who personally told the French king how to penetrate the defences:

Four monks, who were from Toulouse and were in a monastery near Argeles, went to the King of France, and one of them was the abbot. And he said to the King of France: ‘Lord, I and these other monks are natives of your country and your natural subjects. If it is your pleasure, we shall show you where you can pass. Let one of your
rics homens
go at once with a thousand armed horse, and with many men afoot… to make roads. And, in advance of them, some thousand foot-soldiers could go… so that those who are making the roads need not desist from their work. And thus assuredly, Lord, you and all your followers will be able to pass over.’ And the King of France said: ‘Abbot, how do you know this?’ ‘Lord,’ said he, ‘because our men and our monks go to that place every day to get wood and lime. And this place, Lord, is called the Pass of Manzana. If you enquire of the count of Foix, who knows this country well, you will find it is so.’ Said the King of France: ‘We fully trust you; and tonight, We shall do all that is necessary…’
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This was not the first and certainly not the last time that French forces were seen in Catalonia. But they rarely prospered. On this occasion, returning to France, the French king died at Perpinya.
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Montpellier, a close neighbour of Nîmes and Arles, lay on the far side of the plain of Languedoc, 80 miles beyond Rosselló. It was the only major city of Languedoc-Septimania which had no Roman origins, but grew round a fortified hill whence the inhabitants sheltered from Saracen raids. It developed as a dynamic commercial centre due to the proximity of the Rhône valley and the frontier of the Holy Roman Empire; and in this respect it was not surpassed until the rise of late-medieval Marseille. Its famed schools of law and medicine were well established by the mid-twelfth century, and its reputation was boosted by the tolerance shown to Muslims, Jews and Cathars.

Montpellier’s link with the Crown of Aragon was created in 1204 by the marriage of King Pedro II to the local heiress, Dame Marie de Montpellier. The city with its large taxable wealth made up the bride’s dowry. Its place in Aragonese history, however, was cemented for being the birthplace of Marie’s son, Jaime El Conquistador, ‘the Conqueror’. In 1208, his mother was staying in her hometown when her pregnancy was announced:

And the notables of Montpellier disposed that [no one] should leave the palace, neither the Queen, nor they nor their wives, nor the damsels present, until nine months should be accomplished… And so all together, they remained with the Lady Queen very joyously. And their joy was greater still when they saw that it had pleased God… that the Queen grew bigger. And at the end of nine months, according to nature, she gave birth to a beautiful and fine son, who was born for the good of Christians, and more particularly for the good of his peoples… And with great rejoicing and satisfaction they baptised him in the church of Our Lady Saint Mary of the Tables in Montpellier, and they gave him, by the grace of God, the name of En Jaime, and he reigned many years and obtained great victories and gave great increase to the Catholic Faith and to all his vassals and subjects.