CHAPTER 7 Territory, Power and Institutions in the Crown of

Flocel Sabaté

Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Crown of Aragon appeared in a specific territory where all stakeholders —sovereign, nobles, bourgeoisie— built an identity that was reflected in an institutional structure which was, in turn, an adaptation to this specific Mediterranean context of the ideas on so- cial and political cohesion circulating around Europe at that time.

1 The Territorial Construction

In the early twelfth century, the relation between the trading cities from to Rome was close enough for them to enter into an alliance to con- quer the Muslim-held island of Majorca in 1114. This success was short-lived, as the Almoravids reconquered the island for the Muslims the following year, but long enough for a Liber Maiolichinus to be written in Pisa as a reminder of the prowess of the of Barcelona, who was defined as a Catalanicus heros, accompanied cum catalanensi.1 This Pisan is the earliest to re- flect that the various in the northeast of the were perceived as being close enough to each other socially, economically and cul- turally to merit a common coronym, . The greatest power was held by the , who was also count of Girona and Osona and, in the same twelfth century, he absorbed the counties of Besalu (1111), - Berga (1117), (1172) and Pallars Jussa (1192). All that remained out- side his jurisdiction were the counties of Pallars Sobira, Empuries and Urgell, although they were under his orbit, especially the latter two. Moreover, under the terms of his marriage in 1137, the Count of Barcelona came to rule over the , with the royal title added to that of count of Barcelona in 1162. Aragon had until then been a small mountain kingdom and had incorpo- rated Huesca, at the feet of the in 1096, but which then underwent

1 Carlo Calisse, ed., Liber Maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus (Rome, 1904), pp. 27, 83, 116 and 123.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004349612_008 Territory, Power and Institutions in the Crown of Aragon 173 a ­spectacular expansion southward over Muslim lands in the twelfth century. The most northerly Muslim capital, Saragossa, was conquered in 1118 and in 1171, it added the royal city of Teruel, next to the mountains that separated Aragon from the Muslim coast. Thus, Catalonia and Aragon had become united and grew in the twelfth century, under the same sovereign from before the middle of the century. However, this unification process happened quite separately: there was a clear differentiation between the Aragonese and Catalan nobles, the specific urban dynamics and legal formulae were different in each territory. In itself, this shows that the dynasty was not strong enough to impose unity and that the each respective societies did so in its own territory. In this con- text, there were no guarantees that the between Aragon and Catalonia would last: various feudal agreements signed with Occitanian lords in the second half of the twelfth century specified that these links would be maintained with the person who ruled Barcelona, implying that this person, in the future, may not have coincided with the of Aragon.2 The strong cohesion of the respective societies strengthened the nobles and bourgeoisie against the sovereign, who failed in his attempts to establish uni- fied fiscal and jurisdictional power over all the territories, despite using the discourses of Romanist pre-eminence. Catalonia was a jurisdictional mosaic, the result of its origin as a sum of various counties in the ninth century, the advance over the frontier in the tenth and the feudalisation of the eleventh. In Aragon in the early thirteenth century, the old system of tenencias (holdings) led to tense feudal relation between the nobles and the . Roman law assisted both sides: in alodio vel fevo became a central discussion, because the nobles understood that the sovereign had no power in the places they held alodially and not as fiefs of the king. In fact, the same grace of God that upheld the king, also upheld the nobles: “al molt amat et honrat et noble seyer en Jacme per la gràcia de Déu rey d’Aragó, de mi en Ramon de Cardona, per la gràcia de Déu vescomte de Cardona”.3 Then, the vigour of the towns and cities reinforced a strong urban elite who immediately claimed to represent their own cities and towns. They all argued their position before the monarch. In 1225, the latter confirmed the furs (or charters) of the cities of Saragossa and Jaca while he

2 Pere Benito, Pilar Sendra, Carles Vela, “Corpus documental,” in Tractats i negociacions diplomàtiques de Catalunya i de la Corona catalanoaragonesa a l’edat mitjana. I.1. Tractats i negociacions diplomàtiques amb Occitània, França i els estats italians 1067–1213, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer, Manuel Riu (Barcelona, 2009), pp. 358, 375 and 402 (docs. 80, 89 and 108). 3 “to the highly beloved and honoured and noble Lord James by the grace of God King of Aragon, from me Ramon de Cardona, by the grace of God Viscount of Cardona”. Francesc Carrerras Candi, Miscelanea histórica catalana, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1906), 2: 494.