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IMAGO TEMPORIS
Medium Aevum
I
2007
Lleida
European Union
Libro imago temporis 1.indb 1
22/09/2008 12:23:29
Editor
Flocel Sabaté
Scientific board
David Abulafia, François Avril, Thomas N. Bisson, Marc Boone, Franco Cardini,
Claude Carozzi, Enrico Castelnuovo, Giovanni Cherubini, Alan D. Deyermond,
Peter Dronke, Paul Freedman, Claude Gauvard, Jean-Philippe Genet, Jacques
Grand’Henry, Christian Guilleré, Eleazar Gutwirth, Albert G. Hauf, Hagen Keller,
Dieter Kremer, Eberhard König, Peter Linehan, Georges Martin, Valentino Pace,
Adeline Rucquoi, Teófilo Ruiz, Gennaro Toscano, Pierre Toubert, André Vauchez,
Chris Wickham, Joaquín Yarza, Michel Zimmermann
Editorial board
Julián Acebrón, Stefano Asperti, Màrius Bernadó, Hugo O. Bizzarri, Maria Bonet,
Joan J. Busqueta, Brian Catlos, Pietro Corrao, Rita Costa Gomes, Ottavio Di Camillo,
Luis Miguel Duarte, Francisco Javier Faci, Francesc Fité, Isabel Grifoll, Ariel Guiance,
Amancio Isla, Nikolas Jaspert, Henrik Karge, Peter Klein, Adam Kosto, Matías López,
Igor Philippov, Josefina Planas, Olivier Poisson, Philip D. Rasico, Jesús Rodríguez
Velasco, Karen Stöber, Xavier Terrado, Marie-Claire Zimmermann
Secretariat
Ferran Arnó, Jesús Brufal, Laia Messegué, Gemma Ortiz
Linguistic correction
Chris Boswell, Nathalie Assayag
Published by
‘Espai, Poder i Cultura’ Consolidated Medieval Studies Research Group (Universities
of Lleida and Rovira i Virgili)
www.medieval.udl.cat
© Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida, 2007
Layout: Servei de Publicacions (UdL)
Cover design: cat & cas
Printed in INO Reproducciones, SA
ISSN 1888-3931
D L: L-115-2008
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IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM
Aims to contribute to a renewal of medieval studies with particular attention to the
different conceptual aspects that made up the medieval civilisation, and especially
to the study of the Mediterranean area.
Aims to promote reflection about the Middle Ages and the ways to approach it the
period —1st part: “the past interrogated and unmasked”—; In-depth discussion of
leading research themes —2nd part: “the past studied and measured”—; including the
analysis of the ways of diffusion and popularising ideas and cultures —3rd part: “the
past explained and recreated”—.
Is offered annually as a vehicle for exchanges among medievalists all over the world,
in the context of a globalised planet, stimulated by intellectual plurality, open to debate on ideas and faithful to scientific rigour.
Will publish in the format of articles those texts that pass a rigorous evaluation with
independent and separate analyses by at least two leading experts, who are not part
of the editorial board of the journal.
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The articles published in Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum will be indexed in
the following data bases:
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Dialnet
Francis
H.W. Wilson
Index Islamicus
Indice Histórico Español
International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Periodical
Literature In The Humanities and Social Sciences
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
International Medieval Bibliography
Isoc (Cindoc)
Mla International Bibliography
Scientific Commons
Scopus
Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum has an internet home page at: www.medieval.udl.cat
Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum complies with the editorial
quality standards defined by the LATINDEX system.
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INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Editor
Flocel Sabaté. Professor in Medieval History. Departament d’Història, Facultat
de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor Siurana 1, 25003 Lleida (Spain).
Scientific board
David Abulafia. Professor in Mediterranean History. History Faculty, Gonville
and Caius College, University of Cambridge. Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TA
(United Kingdom).
François Avril. Conservator of the Department of Manuscripts. Bibliothèque
National de France. 58 rue Richelieu, 75002 Paris (France).
Thomas N. Bisson. Professor in Medieval History. Harvard College, Harvard
University. 213 Robinson, Cambridge, 02138 Massachussets (USA).
Marc Boone. Professor in Urban, Social and Political History. Department of
Medieval History, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University. Blandijnberg 2,
9000 Ghent (Belgium).
Franco Cardini. Director of Medieval Historical Research. Istituto Italiano de
Scienze Umane. Piazza degli Strozzi, 1 (Palazzo Strozzi) Florence (Italy).
Claude Carozzi. Professor in Medieval History. Département d’Histoire, Université de Provence-Aix-Marseille. 29 avenue Robert Schumann, 13621 Aix-en-Provence cedex 01 (France).
Enrico Castelnuovo. Emeritus Professor in Medieval Art History. Classe di Lettere, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa (Italy).
Giovanni Cherubini. Professor in Medieval History. Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Firenze. Via S. Gallo 10, 50129 Florence. (Italy).
Alan D. Deyermond. Professor in Medieval Hispanic Philology. Department
of Hispanic Studies and Italian, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of
London. Mile End Road, London E1 4NS (United Kingdom).
Peter Dronke. Emeritus Professor in Language and Literature. University of
Cambridge. Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QP (United Kingdom).
Paul Freedman. Chester D. Tripp Professor in Medieval History. Department of History, Yale University. P.O. Box 208324 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8324 (USA).
Claude Gauvard. Professor in Medieval History. Laboratoire de Médiévistique
Occidentale de Paris, Université Panthéo-Sorbonne (Paris I). 17 rue de la Sorbonne,
75005 Paris; Institut Universitaire de France. 103 boulevard Saint-Michel, 75005
Paris (France).
Jean-Philippe Genet. Professor in Medieval History. Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I). 17 rue de la
Sorbonne, 75005 Paris (France).
Jacques Grand’Henry. Professor of Islamic History. Institut Orientaliste, Collège
Erasme, Catholic University of Louvain. Place Blaise Pascal 1, B-1348, Louvain-laNeuve (Belgium).
22/09/2008 12:23:31
Christian Guilleré. Professor in Medieval History. Département d’Histoire, Université de Savoie. 27 rue Marcoz BP 1104, 73011 Chambéry (France).
Eleazar Gutwirth. Professor in Medieval History. Faculty of Humanities, Tel
Aviv University. Renat Aviv, 69978 Tel Aviv (Israel).
Albert G. Hauf. Professor in Catalan Philology. Departament de Filologia
Catalana, Universitat de València. Avinguda Blasco Ibáñez 32, 46010 València
(Spain); Emeritus Professor. Departament of Hispanic Studies, University of Wales,
Cardiff. 30-36 Newport road, Cardiff CF240DE(United Kingdom).
Hagen Keller. Emeritus Professor in Medieval History. Facultät fur Geschichte. Westfälische Wilhems-Universität Münster. Domplatz 20-22, D-48143 Münster (Germany).
Dieter Kremer. Professor in Romanesque Philology. Department of Romanesque
Philology, Universität Trier. Universitatsring, 15, D-54286 Trier (Germany).
Eberhard König. Professor in Art History. Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie Universität Berlin. Koserstrasse, 20, 14195 Berlin (Germany).
Peter Linehan. Professor in Medieval History. St. John’s College, University of
Cambridge. St. John’s Street, Cambridge CB2 1TP (United Kingdom).
Georges Martin. Professor in Medieval Hispanic Philology. UFR d’Etudes Ibériques et Latino-Américaines, Université Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV). 1 rue Victor-Cousin, 75230 Paris (France).
Valentino Pace. Professor in Art History. Dipartamento di Storia e Tutela dei
Beni Culturali, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia. Università degli studi di Udine. Vicolo
Florio 2/b, 33100 Udine (Italy).
Adeline Rucquoi. Director of Research, Centre des Recherches Historiques,
Centre Nationale de Recherches Scientifiques. 54 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris
(France).
Teófilo Ruiz. Professor in Medieval History and Early Modern Europe. Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles. 6265 Bunche Hall, P. O. Box
951473, Los Angeles, California 90095-1473 (USA).
Gennaro Toscano. Professor in Civilisation and Renaissance Art History. UFR
Arts et Culture, Université Charles de Gaulle (Lille III). Rue de Barreau, BP 60149,
59653 Villeneuve d’Ascq (France).
Pierre Toubert. Professor in the History of the Western Mediterranean in the
Middle Ages. Collège de France. 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75231 Paris (France).
André Vauchez. Emeritus Professor in Medieval History. Department d’Histoire,
Université Paris-Nanterre (Paris X). 200 avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre
(France).
Chris Wickham. Professor in Medieval History. All Souls College, Faculty of History, University of Oxford, The Old Boy’s High School. George Street, Oxford 0X1
2RL (United Kingdom).
Joaquín Yarza. Emeritus Professor in Art History. Departament d’Art, Facultat
de Filosofia i Lletres, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici B, Campus de la
UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain).
Michel Zimmermann. Professor in Medieval History. UFR des Sciences Sociales
et des Humanités, Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. 47 boulevard
Vauban, 78047 Guyancourt cedex (France).
22/09/2008 12:23:31
Editorial board
Julián Acebrón. Professor titular in Spanish Philology. Departament de Filologia
Clàssica, Francesa i Hispànica, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor
Siurana 1, 25003 Lleida (Spain).
Stefano Asperti. Professor in Philology. Dipartimento di studi romanzi, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”. Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma. (Italy).
Màrius Bernadó. Professor titular in History of Music. Departament d’Història de
l’Art i Història Social, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor Siurana
1, 25003 Lleida (Spain).
Hugo O. Bizzarri. Professor in Hispanic Philology. Mediävistisches Institut der
Universität Freiburg. Avenue de l’Europe 20, CH-1700 Freiburg (Switzerland).
Maria Bonet. Professora titular in Medieval History. Departament d’Història i
Història de l’Art, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Plaça Imperial Tarraco
1, 43005 Tarragona (Spain).
Joan Josep Busqueta. Professor titular in Medieval History. Departament
d’Història, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Victor Siurana 1, 25003
Lleida (Spain).
Brian Catlos. Associate Professor in Medieval History. Department of History,
University of California Santa Cruz. 201, Humanities 1, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz
CA 95064 California (USA).
Pietro Corrao. Professor in Medieval History. Dipartamento di Studi Storici e
Artistici, Università di Palermo, Via G. Pascoli 6, 90144 Palermo (Italy).
Rita Costa Gomes. Assistant Professor in Medieval History. Department of History, Towson University. 8000 York Road, Towson, Maryland 21252-0001 (USA).
Ottavio Di Camillo. Professor in European Literature and Latin Middle Age.
Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, The Graduate Center,
The City University of New York. 365 Fifth Avenue, New York 10016 (USA).
Luis Miguel Duarte. Professor in Medieval History. Departamento de História e
de Estudios Políticos e Internacionais, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto.
Via Panorâmica s/n, 4150-564 Porto (Portugal).
Francisco Javier Faci. Professor in Medieval History. Departament d’Història i
Història de l’Art, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Plaça Imperial Tarraco 1, 43005 Tarragona (Spain).
Francesc Fité. Professor titular in Medieval Art. Departament d’Història de l’Art
i Història Social, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida, Plaça Víctor Siurana 1,
25003 Lleida (Spain).
Isabel Grifoll. Professora titular in Catalan Philology. Departament de Filologia
Catalana i Comunicació Audiovisual, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça
Víctor Siurana 1, 25003 Lleida (Spain).
Ariel Guiance. Scientific Researcher. Instituto Multidisciplinar de Historia
y Ciencias Humanas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas.
Saavedra 15, 5º, 1083 Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Amancio Isla. Professor in Medieval History. Departament d’Història i Història
de l’Art, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Plaça Imperial Tarraco 1,
43005 Tarragona (Spain).
22/09/2008 12:23:31
Nikolas Jaspert. Professor in Medieval History. Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte des
Späten Mittelalters, Rurh-Universität Bochum. Universitätsstrasse 150, Gebäude
GA 4131, 44801 Bochum (Germany).
Henrik Karge. Professor in Medieval History. Institut für Kunst-und Musikwissenschaft. Philosophische Fakultät, Technische Universität Dresden. 01062 Dresden
(Germany).
Peter Klein. Professor in Art History. Zentrum für Allgemeine Kulturwissenschaften; Kunsthistorisches Institut, Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften, Tübingen
Universität. Bursagasse 1, 72070 Tübingen (Germany).
Adam Kosto. Associate Professor in Medieval History. Department of History,
Columbia University. 501 Fayer weather Hall, 2504, 2960 Broadway, New York
(USA).
Matías López. Professor titular in Latin Philology. Departament de Filologia Clàssica, Francesa i Hispànica, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor
Igor Phillipov. Professor in Medieval History. Faculty of History, Lomonosov
Moscow State University. 117571 Prospekt Vernadskago, Moscow (Russian Federation).
Josefina Planas. Professor in Medieval Art History. Departament d’Història de
l’Art i Història Social, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor Siurana
1, 25003 Lleida (Spain).
Olivier Poisson. Inspector General of Historic Monuments. Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. 10-12
rue du Parc Royal, 75003 Paris (France).
Philip D. Rasico. Professor in Spanish and Catalan. Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, Vanderbilt University. P. O. box 35-1617 Station B, Nashville, Tennessee 37235-1617 (USA).
Jesús Rodríguez Velasco. Professor in Hispanic Literature. Department of
Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Berkeley. 5317 Dwinelle, Berkeley, California (USA).
Karen Stöber. Lecturer in Medieval History. Department of History & Welsh
History, Aberystwyth University. Hugh Ower Building. Aberystwytch, Ceredigion
SY23304 (United Kingdom).
Xavier Terrado. Professor in Hispanic Philology. Departament de Filologia Clàssica, Francesa i Hispànica, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida. Plaça Víctor
Marie-Claire Zimmermann. Professor in Catalan Philology. UFR d’Études
Ibériques et Latino-Américaines, Université Sorbonne (Paris IV). 2 rue Francis de
Croisset, 75018 Paris (France).
22/09/2008 12:23:31
CONTENTS
Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum. Volume 1. Year 2007
I Part. The Past Interrogated and Unmasked
13-23
Foreign and Mediterranean: Integration and Rejection
Mohamed Tahar Mansouri
25-30
Which History for the 21st Century
José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec
31-58
Catalonia and the Midi: Sixty Years of Medieval Urban History (1946-2006)
Philip Daileader
II Part. The Past Studied and Measured
61-69
A note about the Muslim Conquest of the 7th-8th Centuries: the
Basque, Berber, Norse Viking, Norman and British “Magicians”
Míkel de Epalza
71-85
Documents of Dispute Settlement in Eleventh-Century Aragón and Navarra:
King’s Tribunal and Compromise
Takashi Adachi
87-104
Did Frederick Barbarossa Have a Mediterranean Policy?
Pierre Racine
105-119 James I and God: Legitimacy, Protection and Consolation in the Llibre dels Fets
Damian J. Smith
121-148 Cort e Palau de Rey. The Real Palace of Valencia in the Medieval Ages
Amadeo Serra Desfilis
149-176 Facing the Depredations and Fighting the Predators. Urban Castile
and the Defence of Municipal Jurisdiction in the Late Middle Ages
José Antonio Jara Fuente
177-185 The Sephardic Communities in Rome in the Early Sixteenth Century
Anna Esposito
9
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III Part. The Past Explained and Recreated
189-202 Teaching History, Learning History: a Three-Way Dialogue
Teresa Vinyoles Vidal
203-225 From Research to the Exploitation of Medieval Patrimony: the Calafell Project
Joan Santacana Mestre
Originals of the Texts not Written in English
229-237 De l’étranger et du Méditerranéen : intégrations et rejets
238-242 Qué historia para el siglo Xxi
243-249 Nota sobre la conquesta musulmana del vii-viii: els ‘mags’ bascos, berbers,
víkings escandinaus, normands i britànics
Míkel de Epalza
250-262 Frédéric Barberousse a-t-il eu une politique méditerranéenne ?
Pierre Racine
263-279 ‘Cort e palau de rey’. El Palacio del Real de Valencia en época medieval
Amadeo Serra Desfilis
280-299 Haciendo frente a las depredaciones señoriales. La defensa de las jurisdicciones
municipales en la Castilla de la Baja Edad Media
José Antonio Jara Fuente
300-306 Le comunità sefardite nella Roma del Primo Cinquecento
Anna Esposito
307-316 Enseñar historia, aprender historia: un diálogo a tres voces
Teresa Vinyoles Vidal
317-328 De la recerca a la posada en valor del patrimoni medieval: el projecte de Calafell
Joan Santacana Mestre
10
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I PART
THE PAST INTERROGATED
AND UNMASKED
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FOREIGN AND MEDITERRANEAN:
INTEGRATION AND REJECTION
Université de la Manouba
Tunisia
Date of receipt: 30th of April, 2007
Final date of acceptance: 27th of November, 2007
Abstract
Was there a Mediterranean identity in the Middle Ages? This area had been the
birthplace for outstanding ancient and medieval cultures, but where travellers felt
foreign in the midst of cultural and political fragmentations, on both the north and
south shores and within each of these. From the northern side, especially after the
12th century, the aim was to seize the Mediterranean by expelling the schismatic
Byzantines and the infidel Muslims, while in the Muslim area, the Mediterranean
was perceived more as a political and strategic construction than as a reality. It was
with the discovery of the New World that the Mediterranean, by opposition, took
up again a new common vision, which would be used to justify and legitimate de
facto situations or ones that had been experienced throughout history on one shore
or the other.
Key words
Mediterranean, Islam, Europe, Culture, Mentality.
Capitalia verba
Mare Nostrum, Mahumedana gens, Europa, Eruditio, Idiosynchrasia.
Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum, I (2007): 13-23. ISSN 1888-3931
13
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14
1. Introduction
Being foreign and Mediterranean in the Mediterranean world: this theme can
only be explored by examining the notion of positive and negative interactions
between the natives and the foreign migrants individually or in groups. It also raises
the question of a definition of Mediterraneity, a fashionable concept that is used in
many senses.
Nowadays, the Mediterranean is taking on a new colouring. It seems to be
losing its status as a natural space to become a cultural field where belonging to
this geographic area is an element of identity. This concept is understood as a
transcendental identity that is shared by various peoples. To the media, scientific as
well as non-specialized, we are faced with a current that is carried along by men and
women, cultivated and less cultivated, for whom belonging to the Mediterranean
is proclaimed loudly and often with a certain Irenism based on feelings more than
reason. We are all Mediterranean, not all in the same way or, quite simply, we are
not.
This vision of the concept of belonging to a Mediterranean world as a transcendental identity masks differences and tries to highlight the similarities.
This leads us to question the notion of Mediterranean and foreign in the Mediterranean world. Who is Mediterranean? Who is foreign in this space that extends
from the Pillars of Hercules to the gates of the Euxine Sea or the Arab Bahr buntos?
What relationship do all those who class themselves as Mediterranean have with
each other? Rejection, acceptance, is it possible to talk about a Mediterranean conscience in the Middle Ages?
The Mediterranean is a geographic space with a unique history insofar as most of
the ancient and medieval cultures were built on its shores. Ibn Fadhl Allah al-‘Umari
(1300-1348), head of chancery at the beginning of the 14th century and expert
in Mediterranean affairs due to his relationships with ambassadors and emissaries
represented powers in Mameluke Cairo, said about this sea “Know that science is
concentrated on its shores…”1
This is what gives the Mediterranean the privilege of having been, the cradle
of ancient and medieval cultures and the meeting place for different men, most
often guided by the search for gain or the desire for hegemony and domination.
The meetings came about through confrontation but, despite this, they led to —be
it only nowadays— a feeling of belonging to a Mediterranean world, even if the
Middle Ages allowed a few glimpses, a few moments of mutual recognition and acceptance of difference.
To be Mediterranean is not only to belong to this vast space that the term Mediterranean covers, it is above all being conscious of this sense of belonging. Living
there is not enough. Mediterraneity supposes the integration of geographical and
1. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed, dir. Le Maghreb et la mer. Paris: Éditions Hêterodos/Kadmos, 2000 [Mésogeios, VII (2000)]: 9.
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15
cultural factors which are both vast and diverse, different and similar, into the patterns of thougth and their application in the everyday lives of the populations.
Furthermore, we discover in the similarities of the languages and customs imposed
by the shared environment and brought about by the different forms of contact, be
they violent or peaceful, a common mark of identity that allows people to feel the
same even though they are different. Even in the absence of a feeling of unity, one
can find part of oneself in a different other. On the subject of people who live by
the sea and make a living from its resources, many Historians and researchers in
related, and even distant disciplines, agree that, “although the words often differ,
the languages of people who live by the sea have the same style of speech, the
same energy, the same conciseness […] the habit of taking the same chances, of
witnessing the same scenes, all this gave sailors from all countries the idea of the
same expressions. Poetry is one of them and its expression barely changes.”2 This
enables us to recall the similarities which marked, and still mark, the customs of
people from the Mediterranean rim, comparable techniques of going to sea in times
of calm and stormy weather, the shared fear of the sea and the frequent magical
and religious customs of coastal populations. The different Mediterranean cultures
similarly invoke the protective Saints and make them votive offerings. Are not Saint
Nicholas for the Byzantine culture, Sidi al-M’jahid or Sidi al-Mahrsi perceived as the
protectors of sailors? Waiting for fishermen to return is the same everywhere. The
symbolism of the sea in non-religious literature as well as in religious literature, for
Christians and Muslims alike, brings to mind a Mediterranean spirit that transcends
borders and cultural spheres.3
But at the same time, living on the edges of the Mediterranean does not mean
that this membership is felt everywhere and experienced in the same way. To become a foreigner, one only has to go from one zone to another. Regional specificities present a series of hurdles, such as language, customs, eating habits, religion,
economic or strategic interests, dress and its uses, the past which is divided into
the dominant and the dominated. What this means is that what is presumed to be
Mediterranean is in fact foreign to another Mediterranean. Did the people of the
Mediterranean in medieval times perceive this space in the same way?
Firstly, the different perceptions of the Mediterranean by Mediterranean people
themselves, those from its northern and southern shores, should be highlighted.
2. Augustin Jal, cited by Matvejevitch, Predrag. Bréviaire Méditerranéen. Paris: Payot, 1995: 251.
3. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Introduction”, La Méditerranée médiévale. Colloque tenu à la Faculté des Lettres de Sfax (16-18 avril 1998). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2002: 13.
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2. The Mediterranean viewed from the North4
The Mediterranean, this geographical area today claimed as an identity, is in fact
an area of conquest, if not a space of borders. This area has never been perceived in
the same way in the North as it has in the South.
In the West, reference to Mediterraneity is dependant on Roman domination.
The Romans called it —and this is significant— mare nostrum, which in the Middle
Ages became, above all after European expansion in the 12th century, “our
Mediterranean”. This, at least, is what appeared in the portolan chart from Pisa in the
12th century, the liber existencia reveriarum et forma maris nostri mediterranei5 in which
the author talks of the mare nostrum mediterraneum6 to describe the Mediterranean.
This appropriation of the Mediterranean area, started by the Crusaders, would be
continued by colonial states like the Italian fascists, who dreamed of building an
Empire identical to that of Imperial Rome.
The Romans had included the Mediterranean in their policies and had made it a
means of communication, emphasising administrative and military domination to
secure the shores. The western Mediterranean’s claim is based on this historical episode. This claim converts the Mediterranean into an object of reconquest, a means
of domination and a monopolised space. In the worst-case scenario, the Mediterranean is a frontier between the Christian World and the Islamic world, if we stop
in the medieval period. It becomes a frontier between poor and rich countries if we
place ourselves in modern times, even a protecting shield of “good” against “evil”
if we refer to its immediate reality or even a barrier against castaways fleeing from
fruitless soils in search of an imaginary, welcoming land.
Despite such considerations, the Greco-Roman world attached an instinctive fear
to the sea, essentially resulting from dangers that could threaten all who ventured
on it. Most of the expressions relating to this fear, often formulated as maxims and
adages, were analysed and presented by Jean Delumeau.7 As a result, the fear of
the sea, at least during a large part of the Middle Ages and the modern period, is
explained by the danger or the fortunes of the sea.8
Moreover, the sea is also condemned by Greek and eastern European literature.
Plato conceived of his republic being far from the sea and if that was not possible,
“truly divine legislators” were needed “to prevent it, in that situation, from allowing
in all sorts of colourful and perverted customs”.9 Christian morale saw it as a threat
4. The doctoral thesis that discusses this theme is by Mollat, Michel. L’Europe et la mer. Paris: Seuil,
1993.
5. Gautier Dalché, Patrick. Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle, le liber existencia reveriarum et forma maris
nostri mediterranei. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1995: 13, where the Muslim presence in Pisa in the
XIIth century is place in doubt.
6. Gautier Dalché, Patrick. Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle…: 20.
7. Delumeau, Jean. La peur en occident. XIVe-XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1999: 31.
8. Boiteux, Louis Augustin. La fortune de mer, le besoin de sécurité et les débuts d’assurance maritime. Paris:
S.E.V.P.E.N., 1968.
9. Cited by Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer, la mosquée et le matelot. Paris: Perrin, 2000: 469.
22/09/2008 12:23:35
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to the morality of its believers, as “the sovereign refuge for the distressed who do
not have faith.”10 The sailor is not a good citizen or a good believer like other people.
He is, in all ages, a rebel and disrespectful of social norms, even politics. Does he
not wear stripes to distinguish what he wears from others, stripes often reserved for
Cagots, heretics, prostitutes and the like?11
Despite the reprobation and fears, the Mediterranean remains a “EuropeanChristian” space even if some regions escape the systematic control of a Christian
authority. And what of the south?
3. The Mediterranean viewed from the South
In the founding texts of Islam, the Koran and the Hadith, the sea is perceived as
nourishing and beneficial because it provides resources that are fresh and thus in
accordance with the spirit of the Koran. It is also a manifestation of divine power as
God its master. It is by his grace that people sail on its liquid plains and it is by his
will that it can swallow up all the infidels and fickle-minded.12 There is therefore an
undeniable familiarity with the sea in both of these first two Islamic sources. Conversely, modern historians have often emphasised the Arab fear of the sea, explaining it as the absence “of a particular inclination for maritime activities”13, a state of
mind or mentality which kept Arabs and Berbers from being sailors and achieving
Mediterraneity.14 In Xavier de Planhol’s view, “Christianity triumphed over the sea,
Islam could not adapt to it.”15 The history of relations between Muslims and Islam
and the sea is reduced to a series of failures, refusals and missed opportunities which
led, according to the author, “to the correct admission of the intrinsic incompatibility of Islam and maritime life.”16 This series of admissions denied the Muslims all sea
practices and maritime knowledge. As a result, this is an attempt at exclusion from
10. Cited by Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer…: 468.
11. Robert, Ulysse. “Les Signes d’Infamie au moyen-âge, juifs, sarrasins, hérétiques, lépreux, cagots et
filles publiques”. Mémoires de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, s. 5th, IX/49 (1888): 57-178. Pastoureau, Michel. L’étoffe du diable, une histoire des rayures et des tissus rayés. Paris: Seuil, 1991.
12. Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer…: 16-19; Fehri, Abdelkader. “La mer dans le texte sacré: le Coran et le hadith”, La Méditerranée médiévale…: 223-245; Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Perceptions arabes
de la Méditerranée médiévale: De la maîtrise à la crainte”, Sailing ships of the mediterranean sea and the
arabian Gulf, Christos G. Makrypoulias, ed. Athens: Koweït, 1998: I, 51-63; Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed.
“Déplacement force et deportation de populations sur les frontières orientales entre Byzance et l’Islam”,
Migrations et diasporas Méditerranéennes (Xe-XVe siècles), Michel Balard, Alain Ducellier, dirs. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002: 108-112.
13. Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer…: 13.
14. Mtvejevitch, Predrag. Bréviaire Méditerranéen…: 94; See Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Le Maghreb et
la mer à travers l’histoire”, Le Maghreb et le mer, Mohamed Tahar Mansouri, dir. Paris: Hêrodotos/Kadmos,
2000 [Mésogeios, VII, (2000)]: 10.
15. Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer…: 10.
16. Planhol, Xavier de. L’Islam et la mer…: 13-14.
22/09/2008 12:23:35
18
all maritime or naval knowledge and, reading between the lines, exclusion from
any Mediterranean claim.
This point of view is largely based on the history of the conquest of Cyprus and
the second caliph’s stance on sea expeditions.
In response to a letter from Omar, who sought to ascertain the reality of the
Mediterranean, while being pressed by Mou’awiya, then governor of Syria, to order his troops to attack the island of Cyprus, ‘Amrou Ibn al’As, governor of Egypt,
answered:
“I saw a huge creature, ridden by a small creature, when it is calm, it breaks
hearts and when it moves it drives people mad. On the sea, certainty declines and
soldiers to launch onto this indomitable infidel? In the name of Allah, a Muslim is worth
doubt increases.”17 Omar’s answer was made in the light of his governor in Egypt’s
18
description
given
these words,
“Weowns.
haveIlearnt
that not
theto
Syrian
seame.”
stretmore to me and
thanwas
all that
theinByzantine
Empire
warn you
disobey
ches along the longest part of the land. It asks Allah, every day and every night, for
So, if the sea in Western Pagan and Christian literature is a source of vice and dangers,
his permission to break onto the land and submerge it. How do you expect me to
allow
to launch
In the and
name
Allah, a Musit is, soldiers
in the first
Arabiconto
texts,this
a indomitable infidel?
heretic, an infidel creature
is ofdescribed
as an
lim is worth more to me than all that the Byzantine Empire owns. I warn you not
“indomitable infidel”. It is therefore possible to perceive the existence of a certain
to disobey me.”18 So, if the sea in Western Pagan and Christian literature is a source
amount
of reluctance
thefirst
Mediterranean,
this wasanonly
temporary
not
of
vice and
dangers, ittowards
is, in the
Arabic texts,but
a heretic,
infidel
creatureif and
is described as an “indomitable infidel”. It is therefore possible to perceive a certain
theoretical. The Arabs, in their triumphant surge managed to master the sea and sail in
reluctance towards the Mediterranean, but this was only temporary if not theoreth
century.19surge
The Mediterranean
becamethe
untilsea
theand
endsail
of the
complete
the 10
tical.
The liberty
Arabs,until
in their
triumphant
managed to master
in
complete
liberty until the 10th century.19 The Mediterranean became, until the end
th
10 century an “Arab sea or Muslim lake”, indeed, to the point where Christians could
of the 10th century, an “Arab sea or Muslim lake”, indeed, to the point where Chrisnot even
“letnot
a plank
its waters”
according
to theaccording
expression
Khaldoun20
tians
could
evenfloat
“let aonplank
float on
its waters”
toby
theIbn
expression
by.
20
Ibn Khaldoun .
ϢϬΘϟϮλ ΖϤψϋϭ ϪΒϧ΍ϮΟ ϊϴϤΟ Ϧϣ ήΤΒϟ΍ ΍άϫ ϰϠϋ ΍ϮΒϠϏ Ϊϗ ΔϴϣϼγϹ΍ ΔϟϭΪϟ΍ ΪϬόϟ ϥϮϤϠδϤϟ΍ ϥΎϛϭ]
ϢϬϟ ΖϧΎϜϓ ϢϬϣΎϳ΃ ή΋Ύγ ΢ΘϔϠϟ ϩήϬχ ΍ϮτΘϣ΍ϭ ,ϪΒϧ΍ϮΟ Ϧϣ ˯ϲθΑ ϢϬϠϴσΎγ΄Α ϞΒϗ Δϴϧ΍ήμϨϟ΍ Ϣϣϸϟ ϦϜϳ ϢϠϓ Ϫϴϓ ϢϬϧΎτϠγϭ
ΔδΑΎϳϭ ΔϗέϮϨϣϭ ΔϗέϮϴϣ ϞΜϣ Ϫϴϓ ϞΣ΍Ϯδϟ΍ Ϧϋ ΔότϘϨϤϟ΍ ή΋΍ΰΠϟ΍ ή΋Ύγ ΍ϮϜϠϣϭ Ϣ΋ΎϨϐϟ΍ϭ ΢Θϔϟ΍ Ϧϣ ΔϣϮϠόϤϟ΍ ΕΎϣΎϘϤϟ΍
Ϊϗ ϦϴϤϠδϤϟ΍ ϞϴσΎγ΃ϭ...ΞϧήϓϹ΍ϭ ϡϭήϟ΍ ϚϟΎϤϣ ή΋Ύγϭ αήΒϗϭ ζτϳήϗ΃ϭ ΔτϟΎϣϭ ΓήλϮϗϭ ΔϴϠϘλϭ Δϴϧ΍Ωήγ ϭ
ΎϤϠγ Ϫϗήσ ϲϓ ΖϔϠΘΧ΍ϭ ΍ΩΪϋϭ ΓΪϋ ήΤΒϟ΍ ΍άϫ ςϴδΑ Ϧϣ ήΜϛϷ΍ Εϸϣ Ϊϗϭ ϪΘδϳήϓ ϰϠϋ ΪγϷ΍ ˯΍ήο ϢϬϴϠϋ ΖΑήο
[...Ρ΍Ϯϟ΃ Ϫϴϓ Δϴϧ΍ήμϨϠϟ ήϬψΗ ϢϠϓ ΎΑήΣϭ
However, this domination was perhaps not in their minds and in their feelings.
17. Tabari, Tarikh; Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. Chypre dans les sources arabes médiévales. Nicosie: Centre de
How didScientifique,
Muslims 2001:
in the
Recherche
29. Middle Ages before the Crusades behave towards the
18. Tabari, Tarikh; Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. Chypre dans les sources..: 30.
Mediterranean? Were they aware of belonging to this space or the feeling of taking
19. From the middle of the 10th century, the Byzantines under the reign of Nicephorus Phocas were able
to
take back certain
possession
of it? straights and dominate a large part of the eastern Mediterranean. So much so that
Nicephorus Phocas, after taking the island of Crete, said “today control of the sea is mine” (Christides,
Vassilios. The
conquest
of Crète
by the Arabs
(ca 824), a turning
pointsea
in the
betweenisbyzantium
andname
islam.
Firstly,
it is
necessary
to highlight
that this
in struggle
its entirety
given the
Athens: Akademia de Atenas, 1984).
bahr
and
historical
ArabicMeca
literature
has al-Kutub
left us with
a fragmented
picture of
20.
Ibnal-Rum
Khaldoun.
Lathat
Muqaddima.
Beyrouth:
Mu’assasat
al-taqafiyya,
1988: 254.
this space. Even when certain chroniclers wanted to claim ownership by qualifying it
with bahr al-Sham, it was only a witticism. For example, al-Zuhri (middle of the 6th/12th
century, contemporary of al-Idrissi and Abu Hamid al-Gharnati) named it “sea of Syria,
it starts beyond the Maghreb at zuqaq/ the straights that separate the country of
22/09/2008 12:23:36
19
However, this domination was perhaps not in their minds and their feelings. How
did Muslims in the Middle Ages before the Crusades behave towards the Mediterranean? Were they aware of belonging to this space or the feeling of taking possession of it?
Firstly, it is necessary to highlight that this sea in its entirety is given the name
bahr al-Rum and that historical Arabic literature has left us with a fragmented
picture of this space. Even when certain chroniclers wanted to claim ownership by
calling it bahr al-Sham, it was only a witticism. For example, al-Zuhri (mid 6th/12th
century, contemporary of al-Idrissi and Abu Hamid al-Gharnati) named it “sea of
Syria, it starts beyond the Maghreb at zuqaq/, the straights that separate the country
of Andalusia from that of the Berbers, and ends on the Syrian coast.”21 The other
zones are named bahr al-Daylam (the Caspian Sea) and bahr al-Qustantiniya (the
Sea of Marmara). However, each time that he mentions an event that took place
in the Mediterranean or on its shores, the generic name is bahr al-Rum.22 This is no
different from other sources which qualify this sea with the term bahr al-Rum or al
bahr al’Rumi.23
At no point has it born a different name. Furthermore, it has never been grouped
under a single name, but is broken up into the names bahr al-sham, bahr Ifriqiya or
bahr al-Maghrib, or al bahr al-malih in contrast with bahr al-Nil.24 That also goes for
the iconographic representations of the Mediterranean by the Arabic cartographers
who gave a picture of many seas. For example, in the Portolan charts drawn up
by Ahmed Ibn Ali al-Sharfi al-Safaqusi,25 in 1551 and in 1579, his Mediterranean
is read in pieces from a collage of maps. No single map brings together its different shores and even his world map is only a poorly crafted copy of the one drawn
up some centuries before by al-Idrissi. Other representations of this sea that we
know through chroniclers’ texts or which were in works of geography like those in
the Muqaddima d’Ibn Khaldoun (copy in the Topkapi Saray) or that of al-‘Umari
(published in facsimile by Fouad Sezguin) or that of Abou al-Abbes al-Mursi. All of
them more or less go back to al-Idrissi’s map which is a map of the world, not of the
Mediterranean. The patched map made by Muhammad b. Ahmed b. Ali al-Sharfi
al-Safaqusi in 1601, continues the Idrissian tradition.
21. al-Zuhri, Kitab. “al-Djaghrafiya, Mappemonde du calife Al-Mamun”, ed. Mohammed Hadj Sadok.
Bulletin d´Etudes Orientales, XXI (1968): 3.
22. al- Zuhri, Kitab. “al-Djaghrafiya”…: 38, 73.
23. al-Umari. al Ta’rif bi al-Mustalah al-Sharif, ed. M. Husain Shams al-Din. Dar al-kutub al-’Ilmiyah,
Beyrouth: 1988: 31, 235.
24. Our colleague and friend F. Mahfoudh, we thank for his comments. He points that it is the same in
antiquity, this is certain but with the exception of the appropriation of the Mediterranean by the Romans, making it their mare nostrum, which is not the case in Arabic literature which gives it the name
bahr al-Rum / Sea of the Rums.
25. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Un famille de cartographes”, La Méditerranée médiévale…: 263-277.
22/09/2008 12:23:36
20
It is possible to say then that the Mediterranean, from the point of view of the
East, is more a political and strategic construction than an actual reality,26 even more
so in the modern period than in the medieval period, in spite of certain contributions
from the Arabs and Muslims in terms of practical and theoretical knowledge and
savoir-faire in the field of navigation and its techniques.
4. Foreign in their space and Mediterranean elsewhere
Every traveller in the Mediterranean world was effectively a foreigner. The
medieval states had regulated journeys, granting “safe-conduct under various names:
leaves, passages, passports, salvamenta, salvaguardias, protection but also seuretés”,27
imposing on foreigners, mainly merchants, confinement to cities in particular
establishments that were reserved for them: fondouks.28 These travellers also wore
distinctive clothing and, in certain cases, could not put on the local dress necessary
for their negotiations without the authorisation of the port town.29 Treaties signed
between medieval European powers and various Muslim powers, in the East as
well as the Maghreb, emphasised the national security of the signatory states.30
Differences were highlighted, whether about identity, denomination or food. This
was valid for the Muslim world and Christian world alike. In particular, the religious
differences were highlighted all around the Mediterranean. It is therefore possible
to say that in the Middle Ages people were more aware of the differences than the
similarities. However, this was no more the prerogative of a cultural sphere than
another sphere and was also expressed within one culture or one geographic and
cultural sphere.
In the West, affiliations were first of all on a larger scale, and sometimes blurred
because they overlapped. It is necessary to distinguish the Eastern or Byzantine
Christians and their Diaspora within the Western Christian world. For example,
in Albania, the urban elite leant more towards Rome than people living in the
country, who leant more towards Constantinople. In the land of Islam, the Melkites
recognised Constantinople and fought against Rome. Elsewhere, the Jacobites were
closer to Rome than Byzantium. In addition, difference was often felt within the
same branch of Christianity: the Venetians and Genoese did not like one another
and only agreed when defending shared interests as was the case around 13501351 when John VI Kantakouzenos tried for the first time to “nationalise” —the
26. Sadok Boubaker. “La perception de la Méditerranée en Tunisie”, La Méditerranée tunisienne. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2000: 19.
27. Boiteux, Louis Augustin. La fortune de mer…: 25.
28. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Les communautés marchandes dans l’espace mamelouk”, Coloniser au
Moyen-âge. Paris: Armand Colin, 1996.
29. Cahen, Claude. Orient et Occident au temps des croisades. Paris: Aubier, 1983: 224.
30. Voir Cahen, Claude. Orient et occident…: 137; Gautier Dalché, Patrick. Carte marine et portulan au XIIe
siècle, le liber existencia reveriarum et forma maris nostri mediterranei. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1995:
13 où il est question de la présence des musulmans à Pise au XIIe siècle.
22/09/2008 12:23:36
21
term was not used at the time— trading activity and demanded the payment of
the egalitarian kommerkion. Before John VI Kantacouzenos’ decision, this tax,
paid on trading activities, reached 10% of the value of products traded by the
Byzantine merchants and 2-6% for the Western merchants. Faced with this policy
of commercial levelling which was undoubtedly the result of a realization of the
economic danger and, eventually, the political and military danger, the Genoese and
Venetians joined forces to successfully overthrow John VI Kantakouzenos. A part
from these exceptions, competition was rife between the merchants. Many times a
trading community chased out another on the dual basis of interests and affiliation!
In their negotiations with a Muslim state they often referred to the privileges granted
to another community in order to gain the same advantages.31 So the Genoese
pushed the Pisans out of the Maghrebian market little by little,32 the Venetians and
the Pisans took the place of the Amalfitans, settled at least since the 10th century in
Constantinople. The Venetians sought, in their negotiations with the Mameluke
Sultan in the middle of the 14th century, to be awarded the same privileges granted
to the Florentines and the Byzantines and dispatched an ambassador to Cairo in
1383 to ask permission to open a consulate for the Byzantine merchants, following
the example of the Genoese.33 It is possible to say, that differences were still obvious
in the national and regional area in the west. They were also a significant element
of the Byzantine political discourse which opposed the capital or the Stein Polin in
other cities or the European and Asia Minor part of the Empire.
Indeed, the Western world appropriated the Mediterranean as a shared sea
against the foreigner that was considered an adversary to be kept out: Byzantine
schismatic or heretic and Saracen infidel. The European perception of the mare nostrum was like a legacy that they did not share: this legacy could only be European
and likewise could only be Christian since the common denominator in the Middle
Ages was Christianity.
From the Muslim point of view, the Mediterranean Sea was often percieved as
fragmented and divided and in the Arab-Muslim heritage did not have the unity
that it is awarded nowadays.
Firstly, in the classical Middle Ages, that is, between the 7th and 10th centuries, the
Mediterranean was always associated with the shores that mark its boundaries. The
islands are the best example of this. The Mediterranean islands, though integrated into the Arab-Muslim sphere and the economic, political and military system,
were unable to have links between them. Sicily was attached to Ifriqiyah, as were
Kerkennah and Djerba, whereas the Balearic Islands and Cyprus were submitted
to a type of condominium system and were each attached to the nearby continent.
Crete, under Andalusian control, had formed an autonomous principality and lived
under the protection of the Abbassids. No direct link seems to have been forged
31. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Les communautés marchandes dans l’espace mamelouk”… See Wansbrough, John. “Venice and Florence in the mamelouk commercial privileges”. Bulletin of the school of
oriental and African Studies, 28/3 (1965): 504.
32. Amari, Michel. Diplomi arabi del re archivio Fiorentino. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1863-1867. See also Gautier Dalché, Patrick. Carte marine et portulan…: 12 (conflict between Genoa and Pisa in 1284).
33. Tahar Mansouri, Mohamed. “Les communautés marchandes”…
22/09/2008 12:23:36
have links between each other. Sicily was attached to Ifriqiya, just like Kerkennah and
Djerba, whereas the Balearic Islands and Cyprus were submitted to a type of
condominium system and were each attached to the continent facing them. Crete, under
Andalusian control which hadMformed
an autonomous principality and lived under the
ohamed Tahar Mansouri
protection of the Abbassids. No direct link seems to have been formed between the
22
Mediterranean islands, while, since the Crusades, they had become essential to Western
between
thesystems;
Mediterranean
islands,
despite
that, since
the Crusades,
they
navigational
obligatory
crossing
pointsthe
forfact
Genoese,
Venetian,
or other sailors.
had become essential to Western navigational systems; obligatory crossing points for
One has only
to readorIbn
Jobeir’s
account
of only
the crossing
to understand
the extent
to
Genoese,
Venetian,
other
sailors.
One has
to read Ibn
Jobeir’s account
of the
crossing
to Islands
understand
extent to
which for
the ocean-faring
islands were navigation
necessary markers
which the
werethe
necessary
markers
or even for
the
high-seas navigation or even the account of Guillaume de Nangis who accompanied
34
account
de expedition
Nangis whoagainst
accompanied
IX on his ill-fated expedition
Louis
IXof
onGuillaume
his ill-fated
Tunisia.Louis
Furthermore,
against
Tunisia.34 the political environment of the Islamic world did not seem to
favour the idea of integrating the Mediterranean world into Medieval Arab-Muslim
the political
the Islamic
world
did not seem
in
culture:Furthermore,
fratricidal struggles,
the environment
absence of anofalliance
against
a common
enemy
represented
theofCrusader.
line of defense
on theArab-Muslim
sea but on
favour of theby
idea
integratingThe
thefirst
Mediterranean
worldwas
intonot
Medieval
the continent. In most cases, the Muslim armies waited for the Crusader to land
culture:defending
fratricidal their
struggles,
absencethat
of an
a common
enemy
before
lands,the
believing
the alliance
sea did against
not belong
to them.
For
example,
Abu
al-‘Arab
Mus’ab
b.
Muhammad
al-Zubairi,
an
Arabic
poet
from
represented by the Crusader. The defensive organisation was not made in the sea but on
Sicily refused to honour an invitation from his friend the poet and prince in Seville,
the continent.“the
In most
cases,ofthe
Muslim
armies
waitedit for
the Crusader
to land
before
mentioning
difficulty
going
by sea,
because
belongs
to the Rums
and
the
35
sailors
take
considerable
risks
by
going
there,
while
the
land
belongs
to
the
Arabs.”
defending their lands, believing that the sea did not belong to them. For example, Abu
As an example, one only has to think of al-Mustansir al-Hafsi who, on Louis IX
al-‘Arab Mus’ab
b. ordered
Muhammad
al-Zubairi,
an Arabic to
poet
Sicily
who
refused
to
approach
to Tunis,
the walls
of Constantine
be from
restored
and
food
stoned
there
as a refuge.
samethe
way,
the Lusignan
campaign
against
honourtoanuse
invitation
fromInhisthe
friend
poetduring
and prince
in Seville,
mentioning
“the
Alexandria in 1365, al-Nouwairi al-Iskandarani, eyewitness to the events, left a
difficultyimage
of going
byconfrontation
sea, because between
it belongs
the Rums
sailors
pathetic
of the
thetoCypriots
and and
theirthe
allies
and take
the
35
Alexandrians.
The
Alexandrians
put
up
no
resistance
at
sea,
organising
themselves,
considerable risks by going there, while the land belongs to the Arabs.” As an
in the general confusion, on the coast and resulting in the town suffering massacres
example,
one for
onlyfive
hasdays
to think
of al-Mustancir
al-Hafsi
who commanded,
like
Louis
IX
and
pillaging
without
any defence.
They would
have to wait
until
1415
to
see to
theTunis,
Sultan
attack
and submit
it to
form, though
temporary,
going
theBarsbey
restoration
of Cyprus
the Constantine
walls
anda storing
food there
with the
of dependence. The Ottomans would submit the Cypriots and Egyptians to their
intention
of taking
refuge there.
In the
way,Itduring
thebeLusignan
campaign
against
power
from
the beginning
of the
16thsame
century.
should
noted that
sea practices
were
not always
everywhere
theal-Iskandarani,
same. Indeed,eyewitness
the Almoravids
and thehas
Almohads
Alexandria
in 1365,
al-Nouwairi
to the events,
left us a
were great sailors and ship builders, to such an extent that the Almoravid fleets
pathetic
of theGenoese,
confrontation
between
the Cypriots
and and
theireven
alliesmanaged
and the
stood
upimage
to various
Pisan and
Spanish
expeditions,
to
successfullyThe
wage
the war against
Sicilyatorsea,
theorganising
Balearic Islands
which
Alexandrians.
Alexandrians
put upNorman
no resistance
themselves,
in
they submitted to their authority. The Almohads were not lacking in Mediterranean
36 confusion, on the coast and resulting in the town suffering massacres and
the general
strategy,
their fleet so strong that their attacks were dreaded in the West and their
37
help
expected
in days
the East.
pillaging for five
without any defence. They would have to wait until 1415 to see
34 Kamal, Yusuf. Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti. Cairo and Leiden: Brill, 1926-1951: III,
34.
Kamal, Yusuf. Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti, Cairo and Leiden: Brill, 1926-1951: III:
1035.
1035.
35 Quoted by Salim A.; Abbadi, M. Al-Bahriya al-Islamiya fi al-maghrib wa al-andalous. Beyrouth: Dar al35.
Quoted by Salim A.; Abbadi, M. al-Bahriya al-Islamiya fi al-maghrib wa al-andalous. Beyrouth: 1969:
Nahda
237. al-’Arabiyya, 1969: 237.
ΐθϳ Ϣϟ ϒϴϛ ϲϨϴϋ ΩϮγϷ ΐΠϋ΍ϭ ϰγ΃ ΏΎη ϒϴϛ ϲγ΃ήϟ ϦΒΠόΗ ϻ ]
[ ΏήόϠϟ ήΒϟ΍ϭ έήϐϟ΍ ϰϠϋ ϻ· ϪΑ Ϧϴϔδϟ΍ ϱήΠϳ ϻ ϡϭήϠϟ ήΤΒϟ΍
36. Picard, Christophe. L’océan Atlantique musulman, de la conquête arabe a l’époque almohade. Paris: Maissonneuve et Larose, 1997.
11
37. Ambassador to Ibn Munqidh to the Almohad Caliph, asking for naval support against the Crusaders
in the East.
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23
One could retort that effectively, in this regard, the Muslim world was integrated
into medieval Mediterranean trade, but it must be stressed that this actual integration
was not free integration, as the trading towns on the coast of Ifriqiya like the Eastern
Syrian-Egyptian towns, were dependent, from the 12th century, on the arrival of
western fleets to sell and buy and even to go on pilgrimage.
5. Conclusion
In the Middle Ages and at the start of the modern era, the Mediterranean was
not called by that name in Arabic literature. It carried the names of its shores or
important towns like bahr Ifriqiya or khalij al-Bunduqiya, bahr al-Qustantiniya, the
Constantinople Sea or bahr tarabuls or even bahr al-banadiqa.
It only became an entity with the discovery of the New World. The term Mésogeios
that the Greeks gave it seems to have been lost during its Romanisation and the
Romans taking possession of it, which became Rums in Arabic texts. At the beginning
of the modern era, the Mediterranean becomes a something that separated Africa,
Asia and Europe due to the balance of forces imposed by the Hispano-Ottoman
confrontation and the discovery the New World. The first conquerors of the New
World would have said, after settling in the West Indies, “Until today we have not
discovered in the New World any Mediterranean like there is in Europe, Asia and
Africa …”38 The genesis of belonging to the Mediterranean and its use is questioned. Is it an
identity that is acquired and felt or an identity that is granted and earned outside
the Mediterranean world?
Mediterranean identity, if it exists, is often used to justify and legitimise situations
or indeed discounted texts:
It was used to legitimise the Crusade and the colonisation of the West coast.
It was used to legitimise the Romanity of Byzantium and justify its aspiration to
be recognised as the lone heir to the Roman Empire that had disappeared in the
West, even if only in a institutional sense until the beginning of the 9th century.
Today, it serves to justify the Arabs’ presence and past hegemony in the Mediterranean.
It is also used as a means of integration and acceptance, both culturally and politically,
by the surrounding world.
Today, all peoples living on the Mediterranean claim to be part of the
Mediterranean world “to be part of a community and a brotherhood” like Nicolas
Mystikos, Patriarch of Constantinople, had already written in a letter addressed
around 913 to the Abbasid caliph, without “living in community does not become
the greatest penance (maxima penitentia vita communis)” as the Christian expression
says.
38. Acosta, Joseph. Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias. Seville: 1590 (Braudel, Fernand. La Méditerranée
et le monde Méditerranéen au temps de Philippe II. Paris: Armand Colin, 1966: I, 94).
22/09/2008 12:23:37
22/09/2008 12:23:37
WHICH HISTORY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Spain
Date of receipt: 18th of December, 2006
Abstract
How should we approach the knowledge of the past at the beginning of the 21st
century? In recent decades, this was done by trying to reach places and perspectives until then unexplored. Now we must concern ourselves with the form of the
content of our research at a time when ideological changes have carried away many
supposed certainties. Calmness and meditation should be the foundation for the
historian’s work, far from the productive urge and the Manichaeism that history
partly took on in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century. In Spain, and to an
extent in the other countries in the European Mediterranean area, efforts must be
made to reject prejudices against the narrative, to search for a balance between local and general history and to place an precise value on the forms recently arrived
from the United States, such as formalism, deconstruction or post-structuralism.
An especially we have to overcome the aversion of certain academic circles to the
permanent opening of new ways to reform and combat the bureaucratisation of the
university system.
Key words
Historiography, Thought, Teaching, Ideologies, Ideas.
Capitalia verba
Historia, Opinio, Doctrina, Ideologia, Nociones.
25
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26
I know that fascism meant the end of clear thought and the triumph of irrationalism. I know that, without realising it, I have spent all my life embroiled in a political struggle, in which I was fighting against these things amongst shadows. From
now on, I will fight in the light. (R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography)
For some time now, we have been asking ourselves what the history the 21st
century will be. However much conservatives may deny it, each new epoch has always had a different way of viewing the past from the previous one, neither better
nor worse, only different. This, as I have stated in a book on the subject, is where
the challenge for the historian lies.1 Is it the task of the current historian to investigate what his or her predecessors have not done? It is undoubtedly so, but that is
not all. We witnessed this attitude in the mid-seventies when new formulas were
proposed in what became known as the “new history” that, sheltering behind the
French school of the Annales, took an interest in territories little or not frequented
until then, ranging from private life to mentalities, rejecting the study of events
and politics.2 This is not the way I prefer, as, in fact, I am not motivated by either
scorn or aversion for the facts, intrigues, political games or biography, but rather
I consider them to be themes related to my work. What concerns me most is the
form of the contents of our research.3 This should worry the young historians who
eagerly approach a doctoral thesis or their first monographic piece under the guidance (no doubt necessary, and nowadays more than ever) of the masters who carry
the experience of years of debate in the field of historiography. I invite you to sift
through the knowledge reached since Lucien Febvre began his famous “combats for
history” down to the latest observations in this field by Reinhart Koselleck, a true
leading light in this discipline over the last thirty years;4 and to do so with the conviction that history has more sense than ever in a world dominated by globalisation,
the difficult situation of the planet’s resources and the challenge from information
technologies that, through Internet and others, has made instant access possible to
works that would otherwise have taken months, if not years to obtain.
I belong to a generation trained to study history on two basic principles. First,
there was absolute conviction that the vital world of our youth would cease to exist
in our adulthood. In the Spanish case, this attitude was a liberation from the political environment of the time, too rigid and oppressive for the dissidents who a living
society, logically, must always have. We were also aware, and herein lies the second
principle, that the effects of the cultural changes of the seventies, with the access
to the popular values of Rock, Pop and other movements, would end up affecting
universities and academia. However, these institutions remained distant from this
1. Ruiz-Domènec, José Enrique. El reto del historiador. Barcelona: Península, 2006.
2. Carrard, Philippe. Poetics of the New History. Baltimore - London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992.
3. In the line anticipated by White, Hayden. El texto histórico como artefacto literario. Barcelona: Paidós,
2003.
4. See Kosellech, Reinhart. Futuro pasado. Para una semántica de los tiempos históricos. Barcelona: Paidós,
1993.
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27
for a time until the spirit of the age invaded the lecture halls like a gust of fresh
air where before there was only fear and an excess of bureaucracy. The historians
put themselves at the head of these two principles, and analysed them in detail,
especially when history fell on us all at the end of the nineteen-eighties, to show
us how chance sometimes shapes the destiny of a society. While we were arguing
about study plans or the qualification of a field of knowledge, the Berlin Wall was
falling and smart bombs were dropping on the streets of Sarajevo. We realised that
the happy tale that Europe would never again see wars only referred to part of
Europe, and not to our nice neighbours, our friends and relatives, who were thrust
into desperate situations. How did these events contribute to cast light on the way of
making history? We only remember the debate about the end of history generated
by Francis Fukuyama,5 that evoked a courteous, elegant and calm reply from Lutz
Niethammer in a book first published (in German) in 1989, the same year as the
fall of the Wall, and I do not believe by chance, had a resonant query as a subtitle,
Posthistoire. Ist die Geschichte zu Ende?6 The end of history and the end of historians
who were stunned by the weight of the media in those years and searching for the
illumination of study in some research laboratory. However, history is made in the
street, amongst the people, living their experiences, knowing how to respond to the
problems of each epoch. Imagining. An intellectual, not scientific, task; one that
responds to the demands of a metier as Marc Boch would say, always there in our
proposals for transformation and progress, to principals of moral conduct that make
the criticism of the sources a necessary, essential task.7 It is not a job for innocent
spirits, or the dogmatic, nor people who lean towards esoteric sects or ideological
coteries. It is a task that demands that one frees oneself of the guild temptation to
help a friend rather than the competent, the best prepared. And it is, especially, a
task that requires time.
Time, that is the question for the historian. In the world of emotional intelligence, it is said that a physicist in his or her thirties is at the end of his or her career,
and that a historian, in contrast, has not even begun it. Think about the age of the
great historians when they wrote their great works, Johan Huzinga when he wrote
The Waning of the Middle Ages, or Georges Duby on writing The Three Orders: Feudal
Society Imagined and so many others.
Time and calmness. Time to transform research into one’s own unmistakeable
language, and that language into a tale about the past. Time to repair the errors of an
excess of theory, of ideological matrices or school prejudices, or even, unfortunately,
of harshly bowing to the herd instinct. Time to forge the imagination as a constructive
element for the data that accumulates in the slow research in archives or in the field.
Time to find answers to an infinity of questions thrown at the sources, which, inert,
show their immense irony at our perplexity at not knowing how to make them
5. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992.
6. Niethammer, Lutz. Posthistoire. Ist die Geschichte zu Ende. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1989. See the English version:
Posthistoire, Has History Come to an End? London-New York: Verso, 1992.
7. Mastrogregori, Máximo. El manuscrito interrumpido de Marc Bloch. Apología para la historia o el oficio de
historiador. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995.
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28
speak more and better. History is a task that is done in the solitude of the study: it
thus needs calmness in order to find the right words, the precise notes, the way.
Thus, even if nobody, not a single person in all the world, wishes to listen,
the historian would be obliged to ask the question of why we have reached this
situation, and even more obliged to answer it, even if in doing so he or she discredits
themselves before their friends and neighbours. We live in interesting times, they
say, but the historian knows that all times are interesting. Is this epoch more intense
than Mozart’s, or that of Chrétien de Troyes, or Caesar’s, or Asurbanipal’s, or the
times of Moses? We must beware of “presentism”, the historian’s great sin.
François Hartog knew this when he wrote an excellent book whose conclusion
can be considered a starting point for everything good about this discipline: rigour,
relation, openness, ingenuity, prudence.8 But any young historian without prejudices also knows it: what we still need to learn about the past is infinitely greater
than everything stated or misstated until now. The task has just begun; it needs a
fresh push to make it attractive in form and serious in content. Open yourself to the
future world, which is fascinating, despite the terrible auguries with which some
like to announce it. We do not believe in the metaphor of the decline of the Roman
Empire nor the barbarian invasions; they are excellent ways to see personal tragedy,
but have little, or nothing, to do with the profession of historian. We believe more
in the intelligent observations by the medievalist Kathleen Biddick.9
This leads me, naturally, to the question that may be expected after the above
considerations: What can the historian say about the past that has not yet been said,
and which nobody except him or her can say?
In Spain, and I am unsure up to what point in other nearby countries, in Italy,
Portugal, France, or Germany, this question leads through our possible answers to
the three imperative demands at the start of the 21st century, three warnings of the
method that, if not overcome, would constitute a serious obstacle to the development of the historians’ profession and their involvement in the social and political
processes of the future.
1. Suppression of the prejudice that considers narration as a negative element in
access to the study of the past; delimit the criticisms poured on attempts to approach
the real world of other epochs through this modality that we call narrative history.
2. Precise setting of the balance between local and general history; let it be well
understood that proximity is not a principal of excellence, nor should the warmth
of administrative support be promoted.
3. Intellectual commitment to delimit the precise value of formalism, reconstruction, post-structuralism and other recent fashions from the university campuses in
the United States.
The old dilemma of having to do one thing or another, linked to the excuse that,
instead of the barricade, there was scientific history, and other more or less sound
speculations should not and cannot now count. They were part of the Manichean
8. Hartog, François. Régimes d’Historicité. Presentisme et expériences du temps. Paris: Seuil, 2003.
9. Biddick, Kathleen. “Bede’s Blush: Postcards from Bali, Bombay, Palo Alto”, The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, John Van Eggen, ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994: 16-44.
22/09/2008 12:23:38
29
environment of the seventies and eighties, with their proclamations in favour of
research without direct contact with other related disciplines, such as anthropology,
literary criticism, sociology, psychoanalysis or hermeneutics. Nowadays, in the first
decade of a new millennium, and after twenty years of hard debates, this posture,
like so many others that arose in the pop heat of the May ‘68, has been dispelled.
It is worth taking a look at them, evaluating their exact meaning, not only as an
analysis of a historiography, which, on one hand, is required in the modern study
plans, but also, and why not, as an expression of the personal experience of those
authors who struggled against its hegemony, these faces of the history who forged
the way to accede to the past of the 21st century.10 My aim is not to annul this
twisted crepuscular form of doing history; I only wish to show that there are other
ways, other approaches. Freedom consists of this, of preventing that other ways,
with which one does not agree, also cease to exist. I will defend them here and anywhere (even in a entrance committee for university teaching staff) although I am
convinced that they are obsolete forms whose procedures and objectives must be
improved. However, I do not wish to do to them what was done to us thirty years
ago, to kindle the bonfire on which the books and, even more so, the manuscripts
in search of publication were placed.
How many times in this country, a vast ambitious approach to the past, that
includes not only the objective world that it attempts to analyse, but also the viewpoint of the writer, was sacrificed for having sinned against the narrow academic
canon based on the bare data without relief? How many times was the bonfire lit
under a proposal for renovation that perhaps went too far but which never earned
the right to be debated under equal conditions with the rancid comments of what
has always been said about a specific question? To renovate the profession of historian is a form of optimism; only nostalgia is pessimistic, the idea that excellence was
only possible in the past is an affront to the creative imagination; and the criticism
should start right here at home, not because there are more problems here than
elsewhere, but rather because the historians’ commitment should start with their
own, with those who still believe that the good intentions of politicians will save
the future of their discipline. It is not enough to complain that each chair of history
that becomes vacant in a university is transformed into a chair of electronics or engineering, we must also examine our own limitations in depth. The success of the
great works of history among the people, even amongst the politicians, offers an image of the past. They are books about other times, written by historians who retired
before the appearance of personal computers, the Internet or the debate about the
limits of scientific knowledge. But even so, there has also been selection in this territory, and not following the universal laws that the fittest should triumph and the
most incompetent should be relegated. In history, convention, interests sometimes
triumph, not skill.
10. Ruiz-Domènec, José Enrique. Rostros de la historia. Veintiún historiadores para el siglo XXI. Barcelona:
Península, 2000.
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30
At the lowest levels of these approaches, levels we are unfortunately accustomed
to in this country, my ears still ring with rhetorical questions from other times that
contain their own answer. Listen to one that I heard from a famous historian from
this country, whose name, if you do not mind, I do not wish to remember. “What
can we do except burn this latest little book (sic) by Georges Duby (he was referring
to William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry) a vulgar novel without a scientific basis?”
This, over time, gave rise to universal maxims: Simon Schama does not know how
to write, Natalie Zemon Davis invents the situation of her characters, Jacques Le
Goff is a populariser, Peter Brown does not even exist, Paul Veyne is confused and
retrograde, and thousands of other cases that prevented great history from entering
the classrooms by the front door. Instead, it had to filter through the corridors,
through cloisters, through the cafeterias to scandalise the mandarins who could not
bear its success and tried to counterattack the publication of these works with the
creation of a network of sinecured readings where guild rights took preference over
quality.
Nowadays, does anyone doubt that the historians mentioned above, and many
others in the same line, are those who described the past with more imagination,
commitment and truth and favoured the possibilities of history continuing to
survive in our country, which tends to promote the esoteric ways with public
financing? The fact that they stood up to an epoch of bitter inquisition is a cause
for hope, given that it means that their testimony will also prosper in times of
confusion and discouragement. I place a great deal of hope in our country’s young
historians although I also distrust the impostors who wander around university
institutions to slip through the loopholes left open by a completely bureaucratised
recruitment systems that does not take the function candidates are called to fulfil
into consideration. How can it be that a curriculum of local research enables a young
person to teach a full programme of medieval history stretching from Iceland to
Syria without a solution of continuity? Would we leave the university explanation
of lung cancer in the hands of a dentist? We must keep things straight. We must trust
that common sense finally wins the day. I expect it will. I am, at least, optimist.
22/09/2008 12:23:38
CATALONIA AND THE MIDI: SIXTY YEARS
OF MEDIEVAL URBAN HISTORY (1946-2006)
Philip Daileader
The College of William and Mary
USA
Date of receipt: 29th of December, 2006
Abstract
As the Mediterranean has surged to the forefront of medieval studies, so, too,
the urban history of Catalonia and the Midi has attained an increasingly prominent
place. Urban historiography roughly tracks that of medieval history more generally
—institutional history predominated in 1940s and 1950s, followed by economic
history in the 1960s and 1970s, and then by social and cultural history from the
1970s to the present. Yet the various methodologies employed by social and cultural
historians, together with the continued presence of traditional approaches, have
helped the field to reach an enviable level of vitality. The diversity of the field,
however, calls into question the extent to which it really exists as a field.
Key words
Urban history, Economy, Bourgeoisie, Catalonia, France.
Capitalia verba
Vrbana historia, Oeconomia, Optimates, Catalaunia, Gallia.
31
22/09/2008 12:23:38
32
Philip Daileader
1. Introduction
Historiographers seeking to identity which way history is headed have two
powerful instruments at their disposal: academic prizes and academic journals. The
latter reflect the thinking of publishers and editors as they try to tap into those fields
where they anticipate the greatest demand will be; the former reflect the thinking
of historians themselves, as they identify contemporary works that seem to them to
be the most worthy of admiration and imitation. When both instruments point in
the same direction and receive confirmation from additional sources, then one can
feel confident that an important change is taking place.
Between 1986 and 1990, medieval historians found themselves confronted with
a new challenge: how to keep straight the titles of all the new academic journals devoted to Mediterranean history. The Mediterranean Historical Review published its first
volume in 1986; Mediterranean Studies did the same in 1989, followed by the Journal
of Mediterranean Studies in 1990.1 Brill Academic Publishers established its book series “The Medieval Mediterranean” in 1993; the Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, in cooperation with the Mediterranean Studies Association
(incorporated in 1994), put out the first volume in the “Mediterranean Studies
Texts and Monographs” series in 2002.
Future historiographers will likely explain this Mediterranean flood in terms of
concurrent geopolitical, demographic, and cultural shifts. The end of the Cold War,
the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the perception that the new era’s defining
conflict would be a “clash of civilizations” pitting the West against the Middle East,
turned eyes toward the long history of conflict and interaction between Christendom
and Islam —and, by extension, to the geographical area where that conflict and
interaction took place. The influx of Hispanic immigrants into the United States (the
“browning of America,”) and the sometimes fraught relations between European
natives, on the one hand, and Muslim immigrants and their descendants, on the other,
also generated increasing interest in the religiously and ethnically heterogeneous
Mediterranean world. Ideological commitments to multiculturalism, too, led
scholars to the Mediterranean. Admittedly, some commentators have queried just
how “Mediterranean” some recent Mediterranean history really is, implying that the
term is employed on occasion as an “alluring shorthand” for southern Europe.2 But
1. The idea for this essay came to me after I participated in a roundtable discussion devoted to “Urban
Culture in the Mediterranean Region and Its Place in Medieval Studies,” held at the 38th International
Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 9 May 2003. My thanks to all those who organized, participated in, and attended this roundtable. My thanks, too, to Professor Flocel Sabaté, whose
kind invitation to contribute to the inaugural issue of Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum gave me the nudge
I needed to complete the essay. Finally, I would like to thank Professors Paul Freedman and Max Turull i
Rubinat for generously sharing with me offprints of their works relevant to this essay.
On the proliferation of Mediterranean journals from the mid 1980s onward, see Alcock, Susan E. “Alphabet Soup in the Mediterranean Basin: the Emergence of the Mediterranean Serial”, Rethinking the
Mediterranean, William Vernon Harris, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005: 314-336.
2. Horden, Peregrine. “Review of Mediterranean Urban Culture, 1400-1700”. The Medieval Review. 29 January
2003. Western Michigan University, 2 November 2006 <name.umdl.umich.edu/baj9928.0301.029>. See
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Catalonia and the Midi: Sixty Years of Medieval Urban History
33
whether they see it as a marketing device or as an analytic unit, medieval historians
are happy today to describe themselves as scholars of the Mediterranean.
The history of Mediterranean Europe encompasses far more than the urban history of medieval Catalonia and the Midi. Nevertheless, on both sides of the Atlantic
Ocean, that sub-field currently enjoys a certain pride of place. In North America,
Stephen Bensch’s Barcelona and Its Rulers won the Medieval Academy of America’s
John Nicholas Brown Prize in 1999, and Daniel Smail’s Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Medieval Marseille won (among others) the American Historical Association’s Herbert Baxter Adams Prize in 2000. Smail now holds a position
at Harvard University, and Paul Freedman, another scholar who has worked in
the field, teaches at Yale University. One might also mention the numerous prizes
awarded to two recent books that, while not works of urban history per se, nonetheless were largely set in Catalan and Occitan towns: David Nirenberg’s Communities of Violence: the Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages and Fredric Cheyette’s Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadors.3 As for European interest in the
field, the “XVII Congrés de Història de la Corona de Aragó,” held at Barcelona and
Lleida in 2000, took as its theme the urban history of the Crown of Aragon between
1137 and 1716. The proceedings of that conference consist of more than 180 essays,
which comprise more than 2,600 printed pages.4
The purpose of this essay is to provide a selective historiographical survey of
Catalan and southern French urban history. By no means does this essay examine,
or even mention, every book and article of significance to the field. Space and time
limitations have led me to exclude, for example, scholarship that focuses on Jews and
Muslims, except in cases where authors have embedded that scholarship in broader
studies of Christian urban society. For some books and articles, but not others, I have
included critical reflections about their central claims. The presence or absence of
such reflections should not be taken as presumptive evidence of my broader opinion
of a book’s overall quality or merit —I have included these reflections only when
they seemed germane to the book’s historiographical significance. And, of course,
these reflections represent nothing more than one reader’s perspective. Were any of
the authors under consideration here to have written this essay, it would contain a
different set of observations.
also Horden, Peregrine; Purcell, Nicholas. “The Mediterranean and ‘the New Thalassology’”. American
Historical Review, 111 (2006): 722-740.
3. Nirenberg, David. Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996; Cheyette, Fredric L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadors. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2001.
4. El món urbà a la Corona d’Aragó del 1137 als decrets de Nova Planta (XVII Congrés de Història de la Corona de
Aragó), 3 volumes. Barcelona: Publicacions Universitat de Barcelona, 2003.
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34
Philip Daileader
2. Urban history as institutional history: the 1940s and 1950s
To make sense of recent historiographical developments, it is necessary to place
them in a broader scholarly trajectory that stretches back several generations. Specifically, we must consider briefly how urban history was practiced in the 1940s
and 1950s, a period when institutional and economic approaches to urban history
predominated. These approaches can be illustrated by considering three historians
(one Catalan, one North American, and one French) who, within a span of eight
years, each published a book that would serve as a touchstone for much of what
was to come: Josep Maria Font Rius, who published Orígenes del régimen municipal de
Cataluña in 1946; John Mundy, who published Liberty and Political Power in Toulouse,
1050-1230 in 1954; and Philippe Wolff, whose Commerces et marchands de Toulouse
(vers 1350-vers 1450) appeared in that same year.5
Font Rius’ study of the origins of municipal government in medieval Catalonia
remains an impressive achievement, and in certain respects it has not yet been
equaled. The chronological and geographical sweep of Orígenes del régimen municipal
sets it apart from most every other book that will be discussed here. Font Rius
examines the emergence and development of urban governments in all of Catalonia’s
towns during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. (Font
Rius also examines those villages that adopted forms of government modeled after
urban ones.) The massive scholarship on which Font Rius’ study rests is evident
in his 1,089 footnotes, which are filled with extensive extracts from printed and
archival sources —even today, readers can learn much simply by glancing at the
book’s scholarly apparatus. Expansive in scope, Orígenes del régimen municipal is less
broad in its methodology, because Font Rius practices an especially pure sort of
positivist institutional history. He attributes the emergence of municipal government
neither to social developments nor to any other sort of external force, but rather to
administrative imperatives: municipal governments emerged to facilitate cooperation
between royal and local officials, and the development of urban institutions reflects
an unending quest for greater administrative efficiency.
An emphasis on institutional history characterizes John Mundy’s Liberty and Political Power at Toulouse as well, as chapter titles such as “The Mid-Twelfth Century
Constitution,” “The Rise of the Consulate,” and “The Decline of the Vicar” suggest.
Like Font Rius, Mundy places his subject in a tripartite chronological schema. For
Font Rius, the three stages consisted of a premature attempt at the foundation of
urban governments during the late twelfth century, a subsequent and more successful attempt to found such governments during the second half of the thirteenth
century, and the spread of such governments to non-urban locations during the
fourteenth century. Mundy’s three-part chronology, on the other hand, covers a
5. Font Rius, Josep Maria. Orígenes del régimen municipal de Cataluña. Madrid: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Jurídicos, 1954; Mundy, John. Liberty and Political Power in Toulouse, 1050-1230. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1954; Wolff, Philippe. Commerces et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350-vers 1450). Paris:
Librairie Plon, 1954. One could, of course, name other important works from the same period, such as
Gouron, André. La réglementation des métiers en Languedoc au Moyen Age. Geneva: E. Droz, 1958.
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35
much briefer period: “an epoch” between the early twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries “in which the political form went from monarchy, through aristocracy, to
democracy.”6 Mundy’s geographical focus, needless to say, is also much narrower
than that of Font Rius.
Perhaps most importantly, Mundy tries to connect institutional development to
non-administrative forces. Mundy himself characterizes his study as “a social history of political power,” and he sees social change as the motor driving institutional
change.7 The formation circa 1150 of a land-based urban patriciate, which provided
the town with its own leadership, sparked Toulouse’s subsequent drive for liberty
from its lords. In 1202, a merchant-led “popular party” broke the landholding patrician “oligarchy,” established control of the urban government, and launched Toulouse’s attempt to conquer the surrounding countryside with the intention of eliminating tolls, promoting free trade, and opening markets to Toulousan goods.
Philippe Wolff published his seminal study of Toulouse’s merchants in the same
year that Mundy published Liberty and Political Power, yet Commerces et marchands is
a markedly different book. Because he dealt with the period from 1350 to 1450,
Wolff had available to him a richer source base. Wolff draws upon Toulouse’s administrative documents (royal charters and town ordinances), but he also makes
heavy use of notarial manuals and the economic contracts contained therein to
reconstruct what he terms the “Directions and Objects of Toulousan Commerce”
and the “Methods of Exchange.” Wolff examines the movements of foodstuffs, raw
materials, and manufactured goods between Toulouse and various parts of Europe
(including England, Spain, and Italy), and he also studies the history of currency,
credit, and transportation in order to uncover the mechanisms that made commerce
possible. After Commerces et marchands, economics would be at the center of urban
history for decades to come.
Although Wolff is able to reconstruct Toulouse’s economic history in vastly
greater detail than Mundy can reconstruct its social history, he faces the same
problem as Mundy: deciding what place to give the town’s governing institutions
in his book. Wolff does not follow Mundy and argue that institutional development
was an expression of social development. Neither does he follow Font Rius and
depict institutional development as autonomous. Instead, Wolff largely leaves the
town’s institutional history aside, and his avoidance of institutional history might
be seen as reflecting an Annaliste influence that is certainly evident elsewhere in
Commerces et marchands —indeed, Wolff’s book played a crucial role in opening the
field of urban history to broader intellectual influences. In his avant-propos, Wolff
speaks movingly of his wartime meetings and conversations with Marc Bloch.
The book’s first part is a lengthy introduction that assesses the milieu in which
the Toulousan economy operated, and in the best Annaliste tradition, this milieu is
presented in the broadest possible terms —it includes both demographic and military
considerations, especially the Black Death and the Hundred Years War, and Wolff’s
6. Font Rius, Josep Maria. Orígenes del regimen municipal…: 352-411; Mundy, John. Liberty and Political
Power…: xii-xiii.
7. Mundy, John. Liberty and Political Power…: xii.
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Philip Daileader
analysis of the Toulousan economy is attentive to geographical considerations as
well. Wolff’s chapter on “Individual Destinies,” which charts the careers of several
different merchant families and their individual members, points toward a more
richly developed social history; his chapter on “Problèmes humaines” considers the
town’s surviving late-medieval buildings and, based on information culled from
wills, the physical objects that existed inside them. Using these expressions of
material culture, Wolff strives to describe how the inhabitants of Toulouse lived and
understood their world. In this sense, Commerces et marchands is a trailblazing work
in the field of urban mentality.
One should not speak of Catalan, French, and North American “schools” of urban
history. There has been too much fruitful exchange of ideas, subjects, and methods
among scholars of all nationalities for any such schools to emerge. Nonetheless, one
can make a case that since the 1940s and 1950s, there have been Catalan, French,
and North American historiographical tendencies, many of which have their origins
in the influence exerted by the pioneering works of Font Rius, Wolff, and Mundy.8
3. Urban history as economic history: the 1960s and 1970s
The pre-eminence of institutional history in the 1940s and 1950s yielded to that
of economic history in the 1960s and 1970s. It was not simply a matter of historians
following Wolff’s lead and paying more attention to economics (trade, manufacturing,
wages, and so on). It was also a matter of historians emphasizing the explanatory
importance of economics, and treating both institutional and social developments
as the outcome of economic transformations and dislocations. Two of the greatest
products of this historiographical development are Claude Carrère’s Barcelone, centre
économique à l’époque des difficultés, 1380-1462 and Carme Batlle i Gallart’s La crisis
social y económica de Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV.9 Both Carrère’s and Batlle i
Gallart’s books argue for, or at least take as their premise, the causal primacy of
economics, and they both treat Barcelona during roughly the same period. Yet they
are hardly interchangeable. Carrère is interested in economics for economics’ sake,
and in that regard he resembles his fellow Frenchman Wolff more than Mundy or
Font Rius. Batlle i Gallart, with her somewhat more muted emphasis on economics
and her evident interest in the history of urban institutions, comes closer to her
fellow Catalan Font Rius.
8. On differences between medieval studies as practiced in North America and in Europe, see van Oostrom,
Frits. “Spatial Struggles: Medieval Studies between Nationalism and Globalization”. Journal of English and
Germanic Philology, 105 (2006): 5-24.
9. Batlle i Gallart, Carme. La crisis social y económica de Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV, 2 volumes. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973; Carrère, Claude. Barcelone, centre économique à
l’époque des difficultés, 1380-1462. 2 volumes. Paris and the Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967. For a bibliography
of Batlle i Gallart’s publications between 1955 and 2004, see “Bibliografia de Carme Batlle i Gallart”. Acta
Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia (Homenatge a la Prof. Dra. Carme Battle i Gallart), 26 (2005): 14-26.
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Based on Carrère’s systematic examination of some 4,000 notarial registers and
of the town’s administrative records (not to mention documents that he found in
royal registers too numerous to be read in their entirety), Barcelone, centre économique
provides readers with an enormously detailed reconstruction of mercantile activity.
Some 650 out of its nearly 1,000 pages are given over to a description of Barcelona’s
merchants (their legal status and organization, their commercial training and
techniques) and of the “structures” that supported their commercial activity
(the shipping fleet, the agricultural and manufacturing sectors that provided the
merchants with products to trade, the merchants’ contacts in markets throughout
continental Europe and the Mediterranean region). In the final third of the book,
Carrère argues that between 1380 and 1462, an economic crisis enveloped Barcelona
with such disastrous consequences that it ultimately resulted in Catalonia’s civil
war between 1462 and 1472, in Barcelona’s fall from major Mediterranean center
to regional capital, and in the reduction of Catalonia to a second-rank power that
could not keep up with Castile.
Using municipal tax records that reflect changing consumption levels, royal tax
records that reflect the importation and exportation of goods, price series (especially
of cloth) that Carrère uses to estimate trends in wages, as well as a slew of administrative documents in which contemporaries spoke of and reacted to their current economic situation, Carrère argues that the economic crisis moved through two main
stages. Between 1380 and 1420, Barcelona edged toward an economic crisis; during
the decade between 1420 and 1430, Barcelona moved “from a period of difficulties
that were real but not yet catastrophic, to a much more profound problem, an outright crisis.”10 The root of the problem was not demographic —despite the ravages
of the Black Death, Carrère feels that peasant immigration and the acquisition of
slaves kept the population of Barcelona more stable than one might have thought,
at least until the end of the fourteenth century. Rather, Barcelona’s difficulties from
the 1380s onward were rooted in falling wages, at least in the clothmaking industry;
in a series of banking collapses; and in bad currency. In other words, the causes of
Barcelona’s problems were financial, and what pushed Barcelona from a difficult to
a catastrophic situation was, according to Carrère, a “conjuncture internationale,” an
international financial crisis that dragged Barcelona, and with Barcelona the whole
of Catalonia, into an economic predicament that it never managed to solve during
the Middle Ages.11 The major political events and institutional reforms of the period:
the attempted reform of Barcelona’s government in the 1380s; the emergence of the
Biga and Busca factions in the 1430s and 1440s, with the former favoring the status
quo and strong money, and the latter favoring change and devaluation; even Catalonia’s civil war between 1462 and 1472, were all ultimately examples of a “rupture
of the social equilibrium,” a rupture that had been in the making ever since Barcelona entered its period of economic difficulties.12
10. Carrère, Claude. Barcelone...: 663.
11. Carrère, Claude. Barcelone…: 752.
12. Carrère, Claude. Barcelone…: 928.
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Philip Daileader
Some specific elements of Carrère’s analysis are open to question. One sympathizes
with Carrère’s statement that, if he had examined the period from 1348 to 1380 as
scrupulously as he examined the period from 1380 to 1462, he would never have
been able to finish a book that is already very long. Still, it is difficult to demonstrate
the emergence of a crisis in the 1380s without demonstrating the absence of a crisis
in the preceding decades —one wonders just how financially sound and socially
cohesive Barcelona really was in the 1350s, 1360s, and 1370s. Although Carrère
argues that low wages were an essential part of Barcelona’s problems, leading to
lower levels of consumption, he does not have records that permit him to observe
wage levels and movements directly —he extrapolates wage levels from cloth
prices, but those prices surely changed in response not just to the wage levels of
potential purchasers, but to other factors as well. The evidence for the “international
economic conjuncture” that allegedly brought Barcelona’s economy to the point of
ruin in the 1420s is surprisingly thin; in effect, the evidence consists of Jacques
Heers’ work on the economic history of fifteenth-century Genoa and some scraps of
information about Marseille.13 Yet, even though one can question when, how, and
why Barcelona fell into the difficult situation that Carrère describes, there seems
little doubt that Carrère’s assessment and description of that situation remains as
compelling as ever.
Carme Batlle i Gallart’s Crisis social y económica provides a narrative of social conflict and that conflict’s consequences for Barcelona’s institutional development. Although the author begins with an examination of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century antecedents —the first three chapters examine the revolt of Berenguer Oller in
1285, the king’s short-lived attempt to reform Barcelona’s municipal government
in 1386, and the attack against the town’s Jewish quarter in 1391 respectively—
most of the book is given over to the conflict between the Biga and the Busca parties. Batlle i Gallart narrates the rise of the two parties in the second quarter of the
fifteenth century, the Busca’s brief period in power during the 1450s, and the ways
in which the struggle between Biga and Busca contributed to the outbreak of civil
war in 1462. However brief royal support for the reforming program of Busca might
have been, that support alienated those citizens of Barcelona who supported the
Biga, especially the honrats, or rentiers, who constituted the wealthiest segment of
Barcelona’s society. Batlle i Gallart condemns the Biga and holds them responsible
for causing the confrontation between themselves and the Busca, and thereby precipitating a civil war that punished the whole of Catalonia —she characterizes the
position taken by the Biga as “arrogant” and a “defense of class interests.”14
For all of its emphasis on narrative development, policy, and municipal
government, Batlle i Gallart’s Crisis social y económica represents a fusion of the
Catalan emphasis on institutional history with the period’s emphasis on the primacy
of economics. The book started out as a dissertation written under the supervision of
Jaume Vicens Vives (and, after his death, by Emilio Sáez), who was (along with Pierre
13. Carrère, Claude. Barcelone…: 752-755.
14. Batlle i Gallart, Carme. Crisis…: 377.
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Vilar) instrumental in introducing a more structuralist and economically oriented
approach to Catalan history.15 Batlle i Gallart agrees that the Biga and Busca emerged
out of “a serious internal social crisis, which was related to an economic depression,”
and if the economic roots of that depression are not discussed in nearly as much
detail as its consequences, that is because, as Batlle i Gallart states, Carrère’s book
had already appeared during the course of her investigations, causing her to shift
her emphasis “toward the social component and toward municipal reforms.”16
Hindsight makes it clear that predicting the historiographical future is a futile undertaking. Of the historians already discussed, some stuck closely throughout their
careers to the topics and methods with which they first made their name: such is the
case with Josep Maria Font Rius.17 Some, like Philippe Wolff, moved into new fields
that might be connected in obvious ways to Occitan urban history (for example,
Wolff’s work on the history of late-medieval popular revolution), but then again,
might not be (for example, Wolff’s work on the history of language.) More often
than not, though, scholars such as Mundy, Carrère, and Batlle i Gallart changed
along with the field of urban history itself, as it moved away from institutional and
economic history, and instead came to focus increasingly on social history and the
history of urban mentalities.
4. Urban history as social history and as cultural history:
from the 1970s to the present
In the field of urban history (as elsewhere), the rise of social history has been
marked by the increasingly detailed and sophisticated study of specific segments
within urban society. This trend could be illustrated in many different ways: recent
work on slaves and slavery, especially as they existed in Barcelona, or artisans,
or the family.18 In two areas, however, social history has been exceptionally
15. On Jaume Vicens Vives, see Payne, Stanley G. “Jaime Vicens Vives and the Writing of Spanish History”. Journal of Modern History, 34 (1962): 119-134. Jaume Aurell i Cardona’s recent survey of Iberian
scholarship is useful for understanding the nature and significance of this shift: Aurell i Cardona, Jaume.
“A Secret Realm: Current Trends in Spanish Medieval Studies”. Journal of English and Germanic Philology,
105 (2006): 61-86.
16. Batlle i Gallart, Carme. Crisis…: 16, 378.
17. Font Rius, Josep Maria. “La significació de la història municipal”. Barcelona: Quaderns d’Història, 4
(2001): 9-17, defines its subject in terms strikingly similar to the ones that Font Rius had used fifty-five
years earlier in Orígines del régimen municipal.
18. On slaves: Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “Els esclaus domestics a Barcelona vers 1300”, De l’esclavitud a
la llibertat: esclaus i lliberts a l’edat mitjana (Actes del Col.loqui Internacional celebrat a Barcelona del 27 al 29
de maig de 1999), Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, Josefa Mutgé Vives, eds. Barcelona: Consell Superior
d’Investigacions Científiques, 2000: 265-296; Bensch, Stephen. “From Prizes of War to Domestic Merchandise: the Changing Face of Slavery in Catalonia and Aragon, 1000-1300”. Viator, 25 (1994): 63-94;
Hernando i Delgado, Josep. Els esclaus islàmics a Barcelona: blancs, negres, llors i turcs: de l’esclavitud a la
llibertat. Barcelona: Consell Superior d’Investigacions Científiques, 2003; Mutgé i Vives, Josefa. “Les ordinacions del municipi de Barcelona sobre els esclaus”, De l’esclavitud a la llibertat…: 245-264. On artisans:
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40
vigorous and innovative: the history of women and the history of merchants. The
latter had always figured in traditional institutional history, thanks to merchants’
overrepresentation in municipal governments; women, by virtue of their exclusion
from those same governments, were hardly to be found in works of institutional
history. Yet the surge of women to the forefront of urban social history has hardly
forced merchants out of the spotlight.19
4.1. Women
Teresa-Maria Vinyoles i Vidal’s Les barcelonines a les darreries de l’edat mitjana, 13701410, published in 1976, was a door-opening work in the history of urban women.20
Its goal is to provide basic information about the experiences of women throughout
their lifecycle: what their names most commonly were, how they dressed, and
how they were educated; what sorts of jobs they worked; how and where their
marriages took place. Information about these subjects was not abundant, which
helps to explain the brevity of Vinyoles i Vidal’s book. The text is little more than
one hundred pages long, and the same concision characterizes other important
studies of urban women by Leah Lydia Otis and Rebecca Winer, discussed below.
To create as complete a portrait as possible, Vinyoles i Vidal combines both archival
sources and literary sources, such as the sermons of Vicent Ferrer and the writings
of Francesc Eiximenis and Bernat Metge —indeed, archival and literary sources
play equally important roles in Les barcelonines, which remains exceptional in its
willingness to employ both. Yet the significance of Les barcelonines resided not so
much in its specific conclusions or in its methodology as in its very existence. The
women of medieval Barcelona, at long last, had a monograph of their own.
Bonnassie, Pierre. La organización del trabajo en Barcelona a fines del siglo XV. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 1975; Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “La família i la casa d’un draper de Barcelona,
Burguet de Banyeres (primera meitat del segle XIII)”. Acta Historica et Archaelogica Mediaevalia, 2 (1981):
69-91; Julià Viñamata, José-Ramón. “La menestralía barcelonesa del primer tercio del siglo XIV a través
de un manual notarial de testamentos”, Història urbana del Pla de Barcelona: Actes del II Congrés d’Història del
Pla de Barcelona celebrat a l’Institut Municipal d’Història els dies 6 i 7 de desembre de 1985, Anna Maria Adroer
i Tasis, ed., 2 volumes. Barcelona: Institut Municipal d’Història, 1989-1990: I, 277-292. On the family:
Michaud, Francine. Un signe des temps: accroissement des crises familiales autour de patrimonie à Marseille à la
fin du XIIIe siècle. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994; Otis-Cour, Leah. “Les ‘pauvres
enfants exposés’ à Montpellier aux XIVe et XVe siècles”. Annales du Midi, 105 (1993): 309-327.
19. In addition to the books discussed below, see: Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “Noticias sobre la mujer catalana en el mundo de los negocios”, El trabajo de las mujeres en la Edad Media hispana, Angela Muñoz
Fernández, Cristina Segura Graiño, eds. Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1988: 201-221; Batlle
i Gallart, Carme; Palomares, Marta. “La història de la dona a la Barcelona del segle XIII, segons els testaments”. Universitas Tarraconensis, 10 (1991): 13-31; Winer, Rebecca Lynn. “Defining Rape in Medieval
Perpignan: Women Plaintiffs before the Law”. Viator, 31 (2000): 165-183; Haluska-Rausch, Elizabeth.
“Transformations in the Powers of Wives and Widows near Montpellier, 985-1213”, The Experience of
Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350, Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, Adam Kosto, eds. Aldershot and
Burlington: Ashgate, 2005: 153-168.
20. Vinyoles i Vidal, Teresa-Maria. Les barcelonines a les darreries de l’edat mitjana. Barcelona: Fundació
Salvador Vives Casajuana, 1976.
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Leah L. Otis’s Prostitution in Medieval Society: the History of an Urban Institution in
Languedoc, published in 1985, similarly helped to establish the history of women
as central to the growing field of urban social history, especially in North America.
John Mundy’s frank admission in his Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars, published in 1990, reveals just how easy it once had been to write women out
of urban history: during his first examination of Toulouse’s records in 1946, he habitually excluded female first names from his transcriptions, as he did not think that
those women were likely to be of any importance.21 Mundy himself, through his
own subsequent contributions to the field, helped to fill the gap that by the 1980s
had become obvious, yet it was Otis’s work (based on a dissertation written under
John Mundy’s supervision) that marked a North American turning point.
However novel its subject matter, Prostitution in Medieval Society is written in an
idiom that even the most traditional scholars can understand and feel comfortable
with, for, as Otis puts it, “the sources available have made it [Prostitution in Medieval
Society] perforce institutional in orientation; if it must be seen as part of a larger
history, then it is a chapter in the history of urban institutions.”22 Prostitution in Medieval Society is marked by its careful, lengthy, and ultimately positivist rather than
postmodernist readings of individual documents (nearly all regulatory in nature), as
well as by its wide geographical reach. (Otis wrote the whole of the book while in
France during an extended stay there —her prolonged residence in Languedoc enabled her to work in a variety of archives and to examine prostitution in a number of
different towns and villages big and small.) In spirit and scope, Otis’ work resembles
Font Rius’, even if her subject matter is not one that he was likely to tackle.
Like Font Rius, Otis describes a general evolution of prostitution that spanned
centuries. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, prostitution was “accepted,”
while during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was “institutionalized.” Until
circa 1300, prostitution was only lightly regulated, with certain areas declared offlimits to prostitutes, or with prostitutes allowed to work only one day per week.
(In smaller towns and in villages, which could not support continuously operating
brothels, this temporal rather than spatial regulation of prostitution remained the
norm even as larger places adopted new ways of regulating the trade.) In the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, larger towns such as Montpellier and
Narbonne began to confine prostitution to specific streets (known as the “Hot Street”
in Montpellier) or individual houses. Such confinement offered prostitutes a certain
amount of protection, as any attempt to expel prostitutes from their designated
place or to injure them might be regarded as an offense against municipal or even
royal authority. It also helped to protect the prostitutes’ clients, as royal officials
were forbidden to arrest for the crime of adultery men found with prostitutes in
the designated areas (this exemption would later be lifted during the course of the
fifteenth century). The primary reason for spatial confinement, however, seems to
21. Mundy, John. Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990: ix.
22. Otis, Leah Lydia. Prostitution in Medieval Society: the History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1985.
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have been a desire to maintain public order by limiting the mayhem associated with
prostitution to a specific place that could be watched.
A similar thirteenth-century attempt to deal with some of the fallout generated
by prostitution was the establishment of “houses of repentance,” which provided
support for women who wished to leave their careers as prostitutes, either of their
own free will or because they had grown too old to support themselves financially
through prostitution. As municipalities intervened more directly in the functioning
of prostitution, they likewise took more of a hand in the establishment and operation of these “houses of repentance.” Toward the end of the fourteenth century,
towns themselves acquired ownership of brothels, farming them out to investors
who oversaw day-to-day operations. The farming out of brothels meant that brothel
management increasingly became a male rather than a female occupation (though
some women purchased the farm for brothels as well), and municipal governments
sometimes earmarked the revenue gained through brothel ownership for charitable
purposes. Their new stake in the financial success of these brothels caused towns to
stamp out with greater vigor the competition posed by unauthorized brothels and
unaffiliated individuals. The sixteenth century saw “the institution dismantled,” as
Protestant influence led town governments to close their municipal brothels.
Information about the women themselves is hard to come by in the sources.
Prostitutes seem rarely to have worked in their home towns but instead came from
elsewhere, and some of them earned enough money to make substantial bequests
in their wills. Beyond that, the prostitutes remain elusive figures. Nonetheless, Prostitution in Medieval Society reinforced the point made by Vinyoles i Vidal: the history
of urban women could and should be written.
Prostitution became a well-studied topic; by virtue of their profession, prostitutes
figure uncommonly often in charters and municipal regulations, which make them
accessible to modern historians.23 Yet prostitutes were a small subset of the total
female population, and historians found ways of studying other sorts of women as
well. John Mundy’s Men and Women at Toulouse indicated that historians could use
notarial registers to study married and unmarried women in their various occupations and vocations, and one of the most recent works to undertake this task is Rebecca Winer’s Women, Wealth, and Community in Perpignan, c. 1250-1300, published in
2006. Based largely on Winer’s examination of seventeen notarial registers (all that
survive from Perpignan for the period 1261-1287), Women, Wealth, and Community
aims to demonstrate “how a woman’s place in the religious majority or one of the
minority communities shaped her commercial and legal life.”24 Specifically, Winer
studies Christian and Jewish women in their various familial capacities (daughter,
23. On prostitution, see Reyerson, Kathryn L. “Prostitution in Medieval Montpellier: the Ladies of Campus Polverel”. Medieval Prosopography, 18 (1997): 209-228. See, too, Joëlle Rollo-Koster’s remarkable
study of the repentant prostitutes of Avignon: Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. “From Prostitutes to Brides of Christ:
The Avignonese Repenties in the Late Middle Ages”. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 32 (2002):
109-144.
24. Winer, Rebecca Lynn. Women, Wealth, and Community in Perpignan, c. 1250-1300. Aldershot and Burlington:
Ashgate, 2006: 3.
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wife, mother, and widow), insofar as those familial capacities defined their opportunities to own property and to bequeath that property to heirs. Among Christian
men and women, the dowry system was the most common; prior to marriage, the
bride’s family bestowed upon her a dowry that, augmented by the groom’s countergift, provided financial support for the couple and became the wife’s property upon
the husband’s death. The dowry system protected the family (and especially the
wife) from ruin when the husband encountered substantial economic hardship, as
creditors had no claim to any property that was considered to be part of the wife’s
dowry. The drawback for the dowered wife was that she then possessed limited
rights over the couple’s other property. A minority of poorer Christians, usually artisans, preferred the system of mig per mig, in which the husband and wife had joint
ownership of all property. Winer is struck by how relatively few Jewish women
were moneylenders and how most Jewish moneylenders were widows, which suggests that married Jewish women had limited control over property.
Winer devotes extra attention to the issues of whether and how Christian
and Jewish widows acted as legal guardians for their children. The death of a
husband and father necessitated the drawing up of a new set of familial property
relationships and responsibilities, which a notary recorded; female guardians of
fatherless children therefore appear frequently in the seventeen notarial registers.
Here the contrast between Christian practice and Jewish practice is strong. Christian
widows normally became the sole legal guardian for their children and remained
in that position unless they remarried, at which point they were supposed to (but
did not always) name a new legal guardian for their deceased husband’s children.
Jewish widows normally did not become the sole legal guardian for their children.
Generally, the legal guardianship passed to a group of individuals, some of whom
were blood relatives and some of whom were prominent community members.
Slightly more often than not, the mother was not among this board of guardians.
That is not to say that she no longer had the responsibility for raising the children
—she simply did not have the legal authority to administer the family property.
One of the great strengths of Winer’s book is her willingness to consider the histories of Jewish and Christian women together, rather than separately; equally admirable is her ability to integrate the history of Muslim women as well as the history
of the unfree, specifically female Muslim slaves in Christian households. Despite
their relatively light presence in the notarial records (there are only five recorded
sales of female Muslims in the seventeen registers), Winer makes the case that these
slaves were valued especially as wet nurses. The scarcity of such slaves put Christian servants able to nurse in a relatively strong bargaining position, which, in turn,
resulted in wages and benefits (such as unlimited access to the family food pantry)
well beyond those that a servant would expect.
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4.2. Merchants
Beginning in the 1960s, Claude Carrère and Carme Batlle i Gallart began to
examine the merchants of late-medieval Barcelona with regard to their mindsets and
material surroundings.25 The most ambitious attempt to get at how these merchants
lived and thought, though, is Jaume Aurell i Cardona’s Els mercaders catalans al quatrecents. Published in 1996, this book brings together and expands the findings that
Aurell i Cardona had described in a series of articles released during the 1990s.26
Focusing on the period between 1370 and 1470, Aurell i Cardona takes what he calls
a “cultural-anthropological” approach to the subject.27 Aurell i Cardona extracted
from Barcelona’s notarial registers some 450 wills, 80 post mortem inventories, and
80 marriage contracts involving merchants. The wills, inventories, and marriage
contracts provide Aurell i Cardona with the raw materials that he uses to reconstruct
the merchants’ world in its various aspects: how merchants lived and worked, what
they believed and valued, and how they organized themselves socially.
The result is a rich and detailed portrait. During the one-hundred-year-long
period that Aurell i Cardona examines, Barcelona’s merchants lived in families
characterized by strong nuclearity, the active involvement of women in their
husbands’ professional lives, the relatively equal distribution of inherited goods
among siblings, and, for some merchants, the ownership of a handful of domestic
slaves (mentioned in eleven of the post mortem inventories at Aurell i Cardona’s
disposal). Their houses tended to contain rooms that served their professional
needs: offices that might double as libraries, botigas where they met clients and
stored goods in transit, and cellars that provided additional storage.
As regards the merchants’ mental world, reading for pleasure and for edification
was common. About 50 percent of estate inventories name the books that were
once in the merchants’ possessions, and, as Aurell i Cardona points out, the
absence of books from estate inventories does not mean an absence of reading.
Those merchants whose estates included no books might have disposed of their
books as death approached, or have borrowed books from others. The merchant’s
library generally contained some two dozen books (the biggest library approached
sixty books) both profane and sacred —few merchants eschewed one or the other
entirely, and to the extent that any trend can be detected, it is a trend toward the
25. See, for example, Carrère, Claude. “La vie privée du marchand barcelonais dans la première moitié
du XVe siècle”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 3 (1966): 263-292; Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “La mentalitat
i les formes de vida dels mercaders catalans medievals”. Cuadernos de Historia Económica de Cataluña, 21
(1980): 81-94; Batlle i Gallart, Carme. “La riquesa de la burguesia de Barcelona: el cas d’Elisenda de
Banyeres (segle XIII)”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 32 (2002): 633-691.
26. Aurell i Cardona, Jaume. “Espai social i entorn físic del mercader barceloní”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia, 13 (1992): 253-273; Aurell i Cardona, Jaume. “Vida privada i negoci mercantil a la
Barcelona baixmedieval”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia, 14-15 (1993-1994): 219-241; Aurell
i Cardona, Jaume. “Els inventaris post mortem i la cultura dels mercaders medievals”. Mediaevalia, 11
(1994): 107-121; Aurell i Cardona, Jaume. “El process de sedentarització dels mercaders barcelonins al
segle XV”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 24 (1994): 49-65.
27. Aurell i Cardona, Jaume. Els mercaders catalans al quatre-cents. Lleida: Pagès Editors, 1996: 18-22.
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increasing popularity of religious literature as the fifteenth century progressed. In
the realm of secular literature, chivalric and heroic literature were popular, as were
Roman and Catalan legal texts (the Codex, the Digest, the Consolat de Mar, the Usatges
of Barcelona, and the Constitucions de Catalunya) —even works of canon law could be
found on the merchant’s bookshelf. Works of classical literature (Sallust, Ovid, and
Virgil, among others) could be found there, too, though to a lesser extent, which
Aurell i Cardona sees as evidence of the relatively weak presence of humanism
among these fifteenth-century merchants. Philosophical works (Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas) were even less common. There was also a smattering of medical treatises,
merchants’ handbooks, and grammatical texts. Religious texts tended to be found
in the smaller and less valuable libraries; devotional texts such as psalters of various
kinds and Books of Hours were the most popular. Somewhat less well represented
were scriptural texts (merchants showed a preference for the Sapiential Books of
the Old Testament and some or all of the gospels) and hagiographical texts. Among
early Christian authors, Boethius was the most popular, easily surpassing Jerome,
Augustine, and Gregory the Great. Among recent Catalan authors, Francesc
Eiximenis was popular, Ramon Llull less so.
In making provisions for masses to be said for their souls after their deaths, merchants revealed the intensity of their desire for salvation. Usually merchants’ wills
stipulated that the “thirty-three masses of Saint Amador” should be said for the soul
of the deceased, but it was not unknown for merchants to set aside money to pay
for literally thousands of masses to be said on their behalf in the year following their
death, or for sixty masses to be said on the actual day of death. Money could assist
the merchants’ quest for salvation in other ways: their wills contain charitable bequests that were to be used to ransom Christian captives from Muslims, to provide
dowries for women whose families could not otherwise afford them, and to provide
succor to the indigent —at the merchant’s funeral, crowds of the poor gathered in
the expectation of such bequests. The religious images with which they decorated
their houses and their propensity for remembering their confessors (nearly all mendicants, as one might expect, especially Dominicans) in their wills likewise reflect
the merchants’ deeply felt desire for heaven.
One of the criticisms often raised against cultural-anthropological studies is their
lack of interest in (the harshest critics would say, their neglect of) political history.
Aurell i Cardona, however, attempts to establish a link between his culturalanthropological examination of the merchants of Barcelona, on the one hand,
and the political fate of Catalonia, on the other. Indeed, Aurell i Cardona argues
that his study provides the answer to the central question in the history of latemedieval and early-modern Catalonia: how and why it was eclipsed by Castile.
For Aurell i Cardona, this eclipse was not the result of Castilian involvement in
the Americas, or from the economic devastation wrought by the Catalonian civil
wars in the second half of the fifteenth century. Rather, it was the result of a loss of
social cohesion among Barcelona’s merchants. In the thirteenth century, merchants
possessed a strong social cohesion, and an appetite for large risks and commensurate
rewards; those qualities, in turn, fueled Catalan expansion and made Catalonia a
Mediterranean power. In the fifteenth century, Barcelona’s merchants lost their
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Philip Daileader
social cohesion and grew timid; they could no longer formulate coherent policies to
deal with the period’s challenges, and they lacked the will and energy to carry out
such policies anyway.
To support the notion that Barcelona’s merchants lost their social cohesion
between 1370 and 1470, Aurell i Cardona studies the residence and marriage patterns
of Barcelona’s merchants. At the beginning of his period, merchants were heavily
concentrated in the quarters nearest the Mediterranean, especially the quarter of
Santa Maria del Mar. During the fifteenth century, merchants dispersed throughout
the city and migrated to interior quarters, thereby losing the cohesion that close
proximity presumably brought to them. The frequency with which the children
of merchants married the children of those following other professions further
weakened merchant solidarity. Aurell i Cardona examines marriage contracts in
which the groom, the groom’s father, or the bride’s father was a merchant, and
only in one third of such contracts were the fathers of the bride and the groom
both merchants —that is to say, more often than not, the children of merchants
married the children of non-merchants. (Usually the children of merchants married
the children of lawyers, notaries, and others involved with the law, but the children
of the wealthiest merchant families sometimes married the children of nobles and
rentiers, and the children of less wealthy merchants sometimes married the children
of artisans.) Merchants’ sons did not necessarily follow their fathers’ profession
—testamentary evidence suggests that only about one half did so. The increasing
presence of rents, land, and income generated through the financing of public debt
in their wills reflects how merchants came to prefer secure and steady revenue, and
to shun the high risks and rewards of commercial activity.
Aurell i Cardona’s attempt to link his cultural-anthropological analysis of Barcelona’s merchants to the political history of Catalonia is ingenious and imaginative
—perhaps too much so. To make that link, Aurell i Cardona must make two leaps,
and not all those who read this book will want to make those leaps alongside its
author. The first leap is from the behaviors he describes (residential and marital
dispersion, land acquisition) to the consequences he infers (loss of social cohesion
and economic dynamism). There may well have been a loss of social cohesion and
confidence among Barcelona’s merchants in the fifteenth century, but the wills, inventories, and marriage contracts that Aurell i Cardona masterfully mines for data
about family relations, housing, reading, and prayer, might not be the best place to
look for that loss of cohesion and confidence. Those documents, after all, show merchants doing most everything but the one thing that defined them as merchants:
trading. Nor do those documents say much about the merchants’ political activities,
and it is in the merchants’ commercial and political dealings that we are most likely
to find confirmation or refutation of Aurell i Cardona’s argument that Barcelona’s
merchants lost confidence in themselves. The second leap involves the jump from
the plight of Barcelona’s merchants to the plight of Catalonia as a whole. Like Batlle
i Gallart before him, but for different reasons, Aurell i Cardona is tough on the merchants of fifteenth-century Barcelona, but even under the best of circumstances,
could they have managed to formulate and enact any set policies that would have
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saved Catalonia from the challenges posed by demographic regression, absentee
monarchs, the struggle between peasants and nobles over the end of serfdom, and
the rise of Castile?
To raise questions about the link between merchant mentality and the political
history of Catalonia is not, however, to raise questions about the book as a whole,
which should be regarded as a tour de force. In addition to giving us a sound overview of the historiography and many instructive comparisons between Catalan and
Italian developments, Aurell i Cardona has given us a comprehensive picture of
how merchants lived in the period from 1370 to 1470. His book is the benchmark
against which all similar studies will henceforth be measured.
4.3. Urban space
Daniel Smail’s Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille,
published in 2000, encapsulates two important historiographical developments. The
first is the increasing importance of urban space as an object of study; the second is
the application of a foregrounded theoretical framework to the historical record. The
first trend is a trans-Atlantic one: Catalan and French scholars have been as eager
as North American ones to explore the nature of urban space, even if European
scholars have tended to focus their attention on actual physical space, while North
Americans have shown more of an interest in mentally constructed space.28 The
second trend is largely North American; European scholars have generally not made
extensive, or at least explicit, use of theoretical material.
On the face of it, the idea of applying the techniques of literary and cultural
studies to the documents preserved in late-medieval notarial registers might seem
dubious. Presumably scholars interested in the study of discourse would find little
worthwhile in the formulaic accounts of mundane economic transactions that fill
those registers. Smail’s Imaginary Cartographies puts that presumption to the test. The
book blends a conventional quantitative approach to the notarial registers with what
is, by the standards of urban history, an unconventional theoretical framework,
derived from such staples of late-twentieth-century graduate-level historiography
courses as Roland Barthes, Maurice Halbwachs, Peter Sahlins, Benedict Anderson,
Mary Douglas, and James C. Scott, among others. The result is a sophisticated book
of enormous creativity, and one might even say audacity.
From the seventy-two notarial registers that survive (out of, Smail estimates,
eight hundred that might once have existed) for the period from 1337 to 1362, as
well as from other supporting documents, Smail reconstructs the “mental maps”
of the inhabitants of late-medieval Marseille; to put it another way, he wants to
28. Cuadrada, Coral; López, María Dolores. “L’organització de l’espai urbà: Barcelona al segle XIII”.
Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 26 (1996): 879-908; Reyerson, Kathryn L. “Public and Private Space in
Medieval Montpellier: the Bon Amic Square”. Journal of Urban History, 24 (1997): 3-27.
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Philip Daileader
know how those inhabitants thought of space.29 Based on the ways that contracts in
notarial registers describe property sites, Smail postulates the existence of multiple
“linguistic communities,” three of which are the focus of the investigation: public
notaries, seigneurial officials, and “non-noble speakers of Provençal.” Membership
in these communities was not exclusive —an individual could easily belong to all
three simultaneously, and every public notary almost certainly was also a non-noble
speaker of Provençal. What defined these communities was “their tendency to share
certain cartographic conventions.” Their members spoke of and presumably also
imagined space in distinctive ways, employing one or at most two of the four major
“cartographic templates” that obtained in late-medieval Marseille. Those templates
were based on either 1) streets and plazas; 2) “islands,” or city blocks, bounded by
a series of streets or perhaps the town walls; 3) vicinity, which might perhaps best
be understood as a neighborhood, a “space of sociability” whose precise boundaries
were not defined in terms of specific streets; or 4) landmarks, which might be a
church, an oven, or even the house of a well-known citizen.30 Public notaries, the
first of Smail’s three linguistic communities, favored the first template; seigneurial
officials favored the second; “non-noble speakers of Provençal” favored the third
and fourth, which were in fact very similar, as often the identity of a vicinity was
rooted in the presence of a specific landmark. (Smail distinguishes between the
two on the basis of prepositional usage: “Typically, one lived at or in a vicinity. In
contrast, one lived next to, across from, close by, under, or above landmarks.”)31 A
notary would describe a house as being “on the moneychangers’ street,” a seigneurial
official would describe that same house as being “on the moneychangers’ island,”
and “non-noble Provençal speakers” would say that the house was “in the Change”
(Cambio).
To establish links between linguistic communities and cartographic templates,
Smail quantifies. From the notarial registers, Smail has extracted “932 distinct
property conveyances with legible site clauses.”32 In 58.3 percent of these property
conveyances, notaries identify the location of property via the streets with which
the property was in contact; in 16.6 percent of the cases, via “islands” and their
various linguistic equivalents; in 16.4 percent of the cases, via vicinities; and in 8.7
percent of the cases, via landmarks. Of these figures, the one that Smail finds most
striking is the first: in nearly three fifths of site clauses, notaries identify locations
by referring to streets. Smail also argues that these four cartographic templates
were not static: “a fairly rapid and unscientific sampling of 269 site clauses drawn
from the casebooks of twenty different notaries active between 1445 and 1455
reveals that usage of streets and similar open spaces had increased by some fifteen
percentage points.”33 Soundings in the notarial registers of the sixteenth century
29. Smail, Daniel L. Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and identity and Late Medieval Marseille. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000: 8-9.
30. Smail, Daniel L. Imaginary Cartographies…: 11-13.
31. Smail, Daniel L. Imaginary Cartographies…: 14.
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suggest further extension of the notarial template, which slowly triumphed over
other ways of defining space.
As for why notaries but not others favored the street template, Smail offers
a number of possible reasons. Perhaps it was because notaries lived scattered
throughout Marseille and lacked their own vicinity. Perhaps it was because of the
peripatetic nature of their profession —more often than not, notaries traveled to
their clients, and thinking of space in relatively precise, street-based terms would
have helped notaries to locate their clients efficiently. Notarial documents required
specificity: “The legal nature of their acts demanded a certain degree of precision and,
hence, the notarial gaze tended to petrify the landscape.”34 “Non-noble speakers of
Provençal” adopted the notarial conception of space by virtue of the sheer number
of “cartographic conversations” in which notaries and their clients were necessarily
involved. Ultimately, the spread of the notaries’ preferred street-based conception
of space paved the way for the relatively precise systems of classification preferred
by modern states.
The challenge for Smail is to demonstrate that notaries, when identifying locations
via adjoining streets, were imposing their own cartographic template on the parties
to the land conveyance. Without direct access to the verbal exchanges between
notaries and those who were employing them, how can we know that notaries
were putting words in the mouths of others, and that those parties had actually
described the locations in terms of islands, vicinities, or landmarks?
Smail maintains that it is indeed possible to prove that their clients spoke of space
differently than the notaries themselves wrote about it, thanks to “a register of
accounts kept, in Provençal, by one of Marseille’s confraternities, the confraternity
of St. Jacques de Gallicia, between the years 1349 and 1353.”35 This register,
according to Smail, was not written by notaries: “its peculiarly angular handwriting
is typical of literate merchants or artisans, not notaries.” Three scribes are named in
the text as having written at least a part of it —the professions of the scribes are not
given, but on the basis of a prosopographical register that he compiled for Marseille,
Smail suggests that they were a merchant, a baker, and a laborer. Artisans figure
prominently among the confraternities’ officers, and of the 560 members whose
names are inscribed, 177 are identified by their trade. For all of these reasons, Smail
opines that the register is uniquely valuable: “the addresses found in this Provençal
register are the closest approximation we have to what people actually said in the
fourteenth century when asked by a notary to name a place of domicile or identify
a house site…The confraternal register of the hospital of St. Jacques de Gallicia is
extraordinary because it reveals a Provençal and artisanal cartography unmediated
by notaries and their Latinate norms.”36 Members of this confraternity identify
their place of domicile with reference to streets 13.3 percent of the time and with
reference to vicinities 54.3 percent of the time —these percentages are roughly
35. Smail, Daniel L. Imaginary Cartographies...: 73.
36. Smail, Daniel L. Imaginary Cartographies…: 143-144, 157, 160.
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Philip Daileader
the opposite of what Smail found in the notarial registers. As for how a substantial
number of street-based identifications wound up in this confraternity register
without notarial intervention, their presence “indicates, I would argue, that the
notarial street-based template was beginning to infiltrate the ordinary cartographic
grammar of Provençal speakers.”37
The existence of the four cartographic templates seems to have been demonstrated
fully. The relationship between the four cartographic templates, on the one
hand, and the three linguistic communities, on the other, is not so certain. Not
all readers will be willing to accept with great confidence the paleographical and
prosopographical evidence adduced to demonstrate that the confraternity register
has not been mediated by notaries at all. Even if one accepts that the register was
written by “non-noble Provençal speakers” who were not notaries, and even if one
accepts that the scribes composing the register simply wrote down addresses exactly
as the confraternity members spoke them, the question remains: should one expect
that an artisan about to sell or buy a house or some other property site, and an
artisan about to join a religious confraternity, would have described the location of
the place in question in the same way on both occasions? Smail’s answer is yes; as
regards the addresses in the confraternity register, “there is no particular reason to
think that Provençal speakers would have used dissimilar terms when defining or
thinking about property sites.”38
Some readers, however, might well imagine a particular reason why “non-noble
speakers of Provençal” would have used dissimilar terms when identifying a place
of residence upon joining a religious confraternity, on the one hand, and when
buying or selling a piece of property, on the other. Buyers and sellers had their
own compelling reasons for describing property sites relatively precisely in acts
of property conveyance, giving specific street locations and identifying bordering
properties rather than just naming a nearby landmark: sellers to avoid giving
away more than what the buyer had paid for, buyers to make certain that they
received nothing less than what they had paid for. While it is possible that the
majority of “non-noble speakers of Provençal” thought and spoke about space in
the same way on very different occasions, no matter how inappropriate or inimical
to their own interests, it is also possible (and some readers will think it more likely)
that “non-noble speakers of Provençal” possessed sufficient agency to draw upon
various cartographic templates according to what seemed most advantageous to
them in any given situation. If the latter is a possibility, then the link between
particular geographical templates and particular linguistic communities, even ones
as amorphous as “non-noble speakers of Provençal,” remains hypothetical —and
the same would then have to be said of the links between a distinctly notarial way
of thinking about space and the bureaucratic practices of the modern state.
Imaginary Cartographies sits outside the urban historiography of Catalonia and the
Midi. It engages neither with the works of Mundy, Font Rius, Wolff, Batlle i Gallart,
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and Carrère, nor with the issues with which those historians grappled. The works
of Noël Coulet and Louis Stouff (discussed below) appear in Imaginary Cartographies
simply as sources of incidental information. Yet this historiographical disengagement
can and should be construed positively: so original is Smail’s approach that he can
hardly be faulted for failing to engage other meridional urban historians. Smail
quantifies, as Wolff and Aurell i Cardona had done, but he also moves beyond
quantification by taking a group of seemingly jejune geographical descriptions,
identifying patterns within them, and unpacking the unstated assumptions behind
them.
That Smail’s Imaginary Cartographies has opened up a fruitful new field is suggested
by Joëlle Rollo-Koster’s article “The Politics of Body Parts: Contested Topographies
in Late-Medieval Avignon.”39 Here Rollo-Koster integrates high ecclesiastical and
political history (specifically, the Great Papal Schism and the French subtraction of
obedience from the Avignon papacy between 1398 and 1403) with a theoretically
informed analysis of “the utilization of space as an apparatus of power.” The French
withdrawal of support created a fluid and uncertain situation within the town, and
as a result its topography changed: “traditional space and monuments…fell into
disfavor, while new space…assumed new symbolic meaning…and new monuments
and urban areas established a new core.”40 Specifically, areas to the south and east
—away from the papal palace— assumed a new importance between 1398 and
1403. Mendicant convents located there became “new centers of power for the king
of France, his family, rebellious cardinals, and citizens at large.”41 The corpse of Pope
Clement VII was reburied there in 1401; the tomb of cardinal Jean de la Grange, who
had supported the French king’s withdrawal of support for the Avignon papacy, was
built there between 1394 and 1402, a visual expression of French royal authority;
and supporters of Benedict XIII were executed, dismembered, and their extremities
put on display in that part of the town. But Rollo-Koster’s analysis extends past the
description of movement toward the south and east; it also contains sophisticated,
anthropologically influenced readings of the symbolism inherent in, for example,
the dismemberment of bodies and the physical display of limbs.
It is too soon to say how important the theoretically informed history of urban
space will eventually be for the field of urban history more generally, but given its
reception thus far, one suspects that its impact might be prove to be quite substantial.
4.4. Institutional and economic history: whither or wither?
Although up to this point this essay has stressed how much has changed since
the 1940s and 1950s, we must also take into account areas of continuity, as well as
39. Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. “The Politics of Body Parts: Contested Topographies in Late-Medieval Avignon”.
Speculum, 78 (2003): 66-98.
40. Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. “The Politics of Body Parts”…: 66-67.
41. Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. “The Politics of Body Parts”…: 98.
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those areas where continuity and change have blended. Economic history continues
to be practiced in a manner much like Carrère’s, as in Damien Coulon’s recent study
of late-medieval Barcelona’s commenda contracts and what those contracts reveal
about Barcelona’s trade with Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, and as in David Abulafia’s
work.42 The field of urban institutional history, too, is still tilled. Although Pierre
Racine recently deplored the state of medieval urban institutional history in France,
medieval historians there and in Catalonia remain committed to the study of urban
institutions, examining them in ways that Font Rius would find familiar.43 André
Castaldo’s work on Agde; Josefa Mutgé Vives’s work on Barcelona; Max Turull i
Rubinat’s work on Cervera and, in collaboration with Jaume Ribalta Haro, on
Tàrrega; Christian Guilleré’s work on Girona; Jacqueline Caille’s work on Narbonne;
and Albert Rigaudière’s work on Saint-Flour all represent significant, “traditionalist”
contributions to the history of urban institutions, as do the writings of André
Gouron.44 Even Toulouse, the object of John Mundy’s work, has had its institutional
history scrutinized and interpreted anew by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic:
Christopher Gardner in North America and Judicaël Petrowiste in France.45
Yet the study of institutional history has not been unaffected by recent trends in
social and cultural history. If anything, the integration of social and cultural history
has contributed to the continuing vibrancy of institutionally oriented studies,
by giving historians new and different ways of approaching their subjects. This
“hybrid” institutional history tends to be written by North American historians,
while the “purer” form of institutional history tends to be written by Europeans.
This distinction between North American and European historians is by no means a
strict rule: Flocel Sabaté has shown an anthropological sensibility in studying urban
participation in royal funeral ceremonies, and in showing how that participation
42. Coulon, Damien. Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient au Moyen Age: un siècle de relations avec l’Egypte
et la Syrie-Palestine (ca. 1330-ca. 1430). Madrid-Barcelona: Casa de Velázquez-Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, 2004; Abulafia, David. A Mediterranean Emporium: the Catalan Kingdom of Majorca. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994; Abulafia, David. Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100-1500.
Aldershot and Brookfield: Variorum, 1993.
43. Racine, Pierre. “Où va l’histoire urbaine?” Le Moyen Age: revue d’histoire et de philologie, 106 (2000):
383.
44. Castaldo, André. Seigneurs, villes et pouvoir royal en Languedoc: le consulat medieval d’Agde, XIIIe-XIVe
siècles. Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1974; Mutgé Vives, Josefa. La ciudad de Barcelona durante el reinado de Alfonso
el Benigno. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1987; Turull i Rubinat, Max. La
configuració juridical del municipi baix-medieval: règim municipal i fiscalitat a Cervera entre 1182-1430. Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 1990; Turull i Rubinat, Max; Ribalta Haro, Jaume. “‘De voluntate universitatis’:
la formació i l’expressió de la voluntat del municipi (Tàrrega, 1214-1520)”. Anuario de Estudios Medievales,
21 (1991): 143-231; Guilleré, Christian. Diner, poder i societat a la Girona del segle XIV. Girona: Ajuntament
de Girona, 1984; Caille, Jacqueline. Hôpitaux et charité publique à Narbonne au Moyen Age: de la fin du XIe à
la fin du XVe siècle. Toulouse: Privat, 1978; Caille, Jacqueline; Reyerson, Kathryn L. Medieval Narbonne: a
City at the Heart of the Troubador World. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005; Rigaudière, Albert. SaintFlour, ville d’Auvergne au bas Moyen Age: étude d’histoire administrative et financière, 2 volumes. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1982; Gouron, André. “Les consuls de Barcelone en 1130: la plus ancienne organization municipale a l’ouest des Alpes?” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 60 (1991): 205-213.
45. Petrowiste, Judicaël. “Le consul, le comte et le marchand: commerce et politique à Toulouse au seuil du
XIIIe siècle”. Annales du Midi, 117 (2005): 291-321; for Christopher Gardner’s work, see below, note 47.
22/09/2008 12:23:44
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expressed both the solidarities and the divisions within urban society; Christopher
Gardner’s work on the consulate of Toulouse, by way of contrast, is more in the
classic institutional mould, as are Paul Freedman’s articles on the consulate of
Vic.46
Nonetheless, the distinction still holds good more often than not, and it is probably rooted in the audiences for which each group is writing. For French and Catalan
audiences, the significance of local urban institutional history needs no explanation
or justification —everyone feels the significance of his or her own history to be evident. North American audiences, on the other hand, might not have any personal
connections to, or inherent and natural interest in, places such as Barcelona or Marseille. To satisfy that audience, the North American historian usually tries to have
a hook, and often it is a methodological one. For Perpignan, there is True Citizens:
Violence, Memory, and Identity in the Medieval Community of Perpignan, 1162-1397 which
attempts to link the study of urban institutions to the study of collective memory,
and to show how collective memory shaped institutional development.47 For Barcelona, there is Stephen Bensch’s Barcelona and Its Rulers, 1096-1291.48
The aptly named Barcelona and Its Rulers is concerned not so much with the
development of Barcelona’s urban institutions as with the formation of Barcelona’s
patriciate, the ruling class that would people those institutions. As such, it as
perhaps as much a social as an institutional history, but Bensch firmly places the
development of Barcelona’s patriciate within the institutional development of
Catalonia as a whole. Relations between Barcelona’s patriciate, on the one hand,
and the counts of Barcelona and the kings of Aragon, on the other, loom large
in Bensch’s story. The twin pillars of Bensch’s argument are that 1) Barcelona’s
patriciate took shape at a relatively late date, during the period 1140-1220, and 2)
Barcelona’s patriciate developed its identity not through acts of defiance against its
rulers, but through acts of co-operation with those same rulers. Before the period
1140-1220, economic growth was too uneven and too oriented toward “a local
market-oriented agriculture and a tributary, frontier economy driven by the success
of Catalan arms in extending an extortionate protectorate over the petty princes of
al-Andalus” for a commercially oriented economy or a distinctly urban ruling class
46. Sabaté, Flocel. Cerimònies fúnebres i poder municipal a la Catalunya baixmedieval. Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, 2003; Gardner, Christopher. “Négocier le pouvoir: Toulouse et son gouvernement sous les Capétiens (vers 1200-vers 1340)”. Annales du Midi, (forthcoming); Gardner, Christopher. “Vengeance, Exacted
or Suppressed, as a Means to Establish Universitas: Evidence from Toulouse, 1120-1230”. Proceedings of the
Western Society for French History, 33 (2005): 1-20; Freedman, Paul. “An Unsuccessful Attempt at Urban
Organization in Medieval Catalonia”. Speculum, 54 (1979): 479-491; Freedman, Paul. “Another Look at
the Uprising of the Townsmen of Vic (1181-1183)”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia (Homenatge
al Dr. Manuel Riu i Riu, vol. I), 20-21 (1999-2000): 177-186. Also of note is Sabaté, Flocel. “Les factions
dans la vie urbaine de la Catalogne du XIVe siècle”, Histoire et archéologie des terres catalanes au Moyen Age,
Philippe Sénac, ed. Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 1995: 339-365
47. Daileader, Philip. True Citizens: Violence, Memory, and Identity in the Medieval Community of Perpignan,
1162-1397. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
48. Bensch, Stephen. Barcelona and Its Rulers, 1096-1291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Philip Daileader
to emerge.49 An especially difficult economic period, combined with an especially
tumultuous and disordered period in Catalonian history between 1040 and 1060,
caused Barcelona’s nobles to absent themselves from the city —the low profile of
nobles in its subsequent history would be one of Barcelona’s distinctive characteristics.
Between 1140 and 1220, however, the economic situation changed. A new phase
of economic growth began, presenting inhabitants of Barcelona with new economic
opportunities. Certain families began to underwrite the activities of the counts of
Barcelona and their expansion into the Mediterranean, to take positions in royal
service, to invest in land near Barcelona rather than deep in the hinterland, and to
participate in long-distance commerce —these families would become the core of
Barcelona’s patriciate. Barcelona’s communal institutions emerged in the second
half of the thirteenth century, only after the patriciate’s gestation.
Whether the twelfth-century co-operation evident between Barcelona’s emerging
patriciate and its rulers can be extended to other cities remains an open question that
would be interesting to pursue —after all, Barcelona is the seat of the county, and
the strong comital presence there might be expected to pull that city into a trajectory
different from that followed by other Catalan urban centers. Sadly, that question
can probably never be answered, as no other town has the sort of records that
Barcelona has for the twelfth century. Certainly Barcelona’s communal institutions
developed after the period that Bensch has identified as formative for the city’s
patriciate, but one might question whether individual acts of co-operation between
patricians and rulers were the primary cause for the emergence of Barcelona’s
communal institutions, or precluded collective acts of defiance. Still, both of the
book’s main contentions appear to be amply demonstrated, and Bensch’s study of
the formation and emergence of Barcelona’s patriciate is impressive and persuasive.
By tracking down charters scattered among various holdings, Bensch has amassed
an enormous amount of information about the economic activities of Barcelona’s
leading elements. Bensch’s patriciate is not an abstract, ahistorical category; it is a
collection of individuals whose precise financial dealings Bensch has been able to
recover, and one of the great strengths of Bensch’s book (which, I might add, is
unusually well written), is this emphasis on historical specificity.
An instructive example of how traditional approaches have changed as a result
of broader historiographical trends is the work of Kathryn Reyerson on Montpellier.
Reyerson’s Business, Banking, and Finance in Medieval Montpellier, published in 1985,
examines both the economic and social aspects of its subject matter for the period
between 1293 and 1348. Reyerson demonstrates that lending and borrowing
were frequent at all social levels. As one would expect, Jews (until their expulsion
from the Kingdom of France in 1306), merchants, and money changers were the
primary lenders (with many Christian lenders identified as “Lombards,” which is
to say, resident Italians); nevertheless, women and working men of virtually every
occupation were active in smaller-scale credit transactions. Only nobles held aloof
from this lending activity (at least, to the extent that the notarial registers record
49. Bensch, Stephen. Barcelona and Its Rulers…: 396.
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55
said activity). The bulk of Reyerson’s study, though, is concerned with the formal
aspects of borrowing, lending, and depositing money: the types of partnerships that
merchants formed (the comanda and the societas) and the terms on which money
was lent (loans might have to be repaid on demand, and generally fell due on
important religious feast day; often the borrower had three to six months to repay,
unless he or she had borrowed money from a Jewish creditor, in which case he
usually had nine months to a year to pay; and interest rates seem to have varied
between 15 and 20 percent).
Seventeen years later, Reyerson produced another book-length study taking as its
subject commercial activity in medieval Montpellier. The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries
of Trade in Medieval Montpellier expresses dissatisfaction with traditional approaches
to medieval economic history, especially approaches that look at the Middle Ages
in order to discover practices that were “harbingers of things to come.”50 Instead
of detailing the formal elements of contracts, Reyerson now looks at people and
relationships. Specifically, Reyerson wants to examine a set of little-studied individuals
whose place in commercial networks was nonetheless essential to their functioning:
notaries, innkeepers, and brokers, whose knowledge of the economic environment
made them invaluable intermediaries who put purchasers and sellers in touch
with one another and who facilitated the movement of goods. Such individuals
do not figure as prominently in notarial records as the merchants themselves, and
so, in order to tease them out from a reticent historical record, Reyerson narrows
her focus, drawing heavily from a single, unusually rich notarial register, which
records the business contracts of the Cabanis family between 1337 and 1342. No
one would mistake The Art of the Deal for a work of cultural anthropology, but its
emphasis on the personal over the contractual and on the informal over the formal
is noteworthy.
4.5. Roads not taken
Historiographical essays, when speaking of older works, tend to focus on those
that are directly related to current scholarship, whether as an inspiration and a
model, or as a foil. Discussed less often, but still worthy of consideration, are those
works that in hindsight appear as outliers, unique products of a specific period and
circumstances, but seemingly without progeny. In the field of urban history, two
such books are Louis Stouff’s Arles à la fin du Moyen Age and Noël Coulet’s Aix en Provence: espace et relations d’une capitale (milieu XIVe siècle-milieu XVe siècle), published in
1986 and 1988 respectively.51 These works are of the highest scholarly quality, and
the reasons why they are without successors have little to do with their intrinsic
50. Reyerson, Kathryn L. The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier. Leiden: Brill,
2002: 2.
51. Stouff, Louis. Arles à la fin du Moyen Age, 2 volumes. Aix-en-Provence: Publications Université de
Provence, 1986; Coulet, Noël. Aix-en-Provence: espace et relations d’une capitale (milieu XIVe siècle-milieu XVe
siècle), 2 volumes. Aix-en-Provence: Publications Université de Provence, 1988.
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Philip Daileader
value. In historiography, timing is everything, and these books happened to appear
at a time when both historiography and the structure of French postgraduate education were shifting in different directions.
The two books share much in common: their massiveness (each book is over one
thousand pages in length, with roughly five hundred pages of text and five hundred
pages of notes); their origins as thèses d’état researched over the course of nearly
three decades; their focus on Provençal towns; and their emphasis on the connections between towns and the surrounding countryside, especially the role of agriculture in urban economies. These similarities owe a great deal to the fact that both
Stouff and Coulet were students of Georges Duby, who taught at Aix-en-Provence
during the 1950s and 1960s and retained close ties to that place even after taking a
position at the Collège de France in Paris. Stouff’s Arles and Coulet’s Aix-en-Provence
resemble Duby’s influential La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise,
which reconstructs, with a specificity and level of detail that was unprecedented
at the time of its publication in 1953, the economic and social history of one highmedieval region, and which would inspire many other similar regional studies written during subsequent decades.52
Stouff’s study of Arles, based on an exhaustive examination of hundreds of
notarial registers compiled before 1450, on a selective examination of the hundreds
of notarial registers that survive from 1451-1475, and on charter evidence as well,
attempts to provide a snapshot of Arles as it existed between 1425 and 1450.
Stouff describes, in staggering detail, the town’s economic functions, with much
attention given to the role of land ownership —the second of the book’s two parts
is called Une ville de la terre, and in his conclusion Stouff speaks of his hope that he
has demonstrated “that the true originality of Arles resides in this contradiction
between its grandiose pretensions and its peasant nature” (“sa grandeur et son
aspect paysan”).53
Two years later, Coulet published his study of Aix. It, too, is based on an
exhaustive reading of the town’s surviving notarial records for a relatively brief
period (in Coulet’s case, from 1380 to 1400); it, too, focuses largely on the economic
function of the town with a strong emphasis on the relationship between Aix and the
surrounding countryside. The reconstruction of that relationship, in fact, comprises
most of the book.
There have been studies of the relationship between town and countryside since
the appearances of Stouff’s and Coulet’s books, but there have been no similarly
massive studies of towns based on the complete reading of notarial registers drawn
52. Duby, Georges. La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise. Paris: Armand Colin, 1953.
For two important, but very different, assessments of Duby’s work on the Mâconnais and its subsequent
influence, see Bisson, Thomas N. “La terre et les hommes: a Programme Fulfilled”. French History, 14 (2000):
322-345; Cheyette, Frederic L. “Georges Duby’s Mâconnais After Fifty Years: Reading It Then and Now”.
Journal of Medieval History, 28 (2002): 291-317.
53. Stouff, Louis. Arles…: 319, 481.
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57
from a period of time lasting a single generation.54 The reasons why there would
not be another “urban Mâconnais” are numerous. By the time that Stouff’s and
Coulet’s books appeared, the outpouring of regional thèses inspired by Duby’s work,
by then more than thirty years old, had just about run its course, and changes in
French graduate education during the 1980s meant that the production of onethousand-page-long theses researched over a period of several decades was no
longer mandatory. Furthermore, while Stouff’s and Coulet’s works showed that
Duby’s work could be used as a model for urban history, they also showed the
limitations of that model. Duby provides not a snapshot but rather a full-length
film full of development, twists, and turns, which he could do because he had a
manageable number of documents with which to study a two-hundred-year-long
period. The huge number of documents in the archives of late-medieval Arles and
Aix meant that historians would have to limit themselves to a much smaller time
period if they were to recapture the local economy and society in their totality. As
a result, while these books might match Duby’s in its breadth, they could not hope
to match it in its dynamism.
5. Conclusion
Convivencia rules among the urban historians of medieval Catalonia and the Midi.
The increasing diversity of approaches and subjects has not touched off polemics
between those who tend toward traditionalism and those who trend toward experimentation. Historians might disagree over specific points, but without dismissing
out of hand the projects that their colleagues are pursuing.
On the other hand, success generates its own problems. Increasing geographical
and topical specialization has driven the field. Historians have tended to specialize
in the histories of individual towns, and when studying those towns, have tended to
exploit one type of source (notarial registers, say, or charters), to the substantial or
complete exclusion of others. This narrowness of focus has resulted in a much more
complete and nuanced picture of social organization and institutional development;
it also augments efficiency and productivity, and helps to prevent duplication of effort.
Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that increasing specialization is ultimately
responsible for the lack of interest in defining what, if anything, is specifically urban
about urban history. One misses Philippe Wolff’s ability to draw upon notarial
and charter evidence with equal authority and consequence; one also misses the
geographical sweep of Font Rius’ Orígenes del régimen municipal. By failing to take a
more comparative, or at least expansive, approach, historians are probably missing
out on insights and findings that cannot be gained when every town, or every
54. For example, Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France: Provence and Languedoc, 1000-1500,
Kathryn L. Reyerson, John Drendel, eds. Leiden: Brill, 1998.
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Philip Daileader
document series within each town, is examined in isolation. In theory, one should
be able to take all the individual studies and extract from them the material with
which to construct a narrative much like the one that Font Rius offered, only richer.
In practice, that synthesis, if anyone ever dares to undertake it, will be difficult to
achieve. History remains as much an art as a science, and each historian frames
questions and handles evidence in ways that are personal and idiosyncratic, thus
making explicit comparison and integration hard. Only infrequently have historians
offered explanations for the same phenomena in such a way that readers can
decide for themselves which explanations seem to be the most convincing.55 For the
most part, readers have to content themselves with an appreciation of each book’s
individual achievement, while wondering if the whole will ever be greater than, or
even equal to, the sum of its parts.
55. See, for example, the differing ideas of Josep Maria Font Rius, André Gouron, myself, and Max Turull
i Rubinat on the origins of the consulate in Catalonia: Font Rius, Josep Maria. “Génesis y manifestaciones
iniciales del régimen municipal en Catalunya”. Miscellanea Barchinonensia, 16 (1967): 67-91; Gouron,
André. “Diffusion des consulats méridionaux et expansion du droit romain aux XIIe et XIIIe siécles”.
Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 121 (1963): 26-76; Daileader, Philip. “The Vanishing Consulates of Catalonia”. Speculum, 74 (1999): 65-94; Turull i Rubinat, Max. “Universitas, commune, consilium: sur le rôle de
la fiscalité dans la naissance et le développement du Conseil (Catalogne, XIIe-XIVe siècles)”, Excerptiones
iuris: Studies in Honor of André Gouron, Bernard Durand, Laurent Mayali, eds. Berkeley: The Robbins Collection, 2000: 637-677.
22/09/2008 12:23:47
II PART
THE PAST STUDIED
AND MEASURED
22/09/2008 12:23:49
22/09/2008 12:23:49
A NOTE ABOUT THE MUSLIM
CONQUEST OF THE 7TH-8TH CENTURIES:
THE BASQUE, BERBER, NORSE VIKING,
NORMAN AND BRITISH “MAGICIANS”
Míkel de Epalza
Universitat d’Alacant
Spain
Date of receipt: 15th of November, 2006
Abstract
A brief presentation of new research into the Arab term of madjûs (‘magician’), that
comes from the name for religious characters in pre-Islamic Persian Zoroastrianism,
but which is sometimes found in Arab texts applied to “ethnic” minorities in contact
with Islam in the Muslim west. Some texts are analysed and the evolution of the
word is studied. It appears that it was only related to Zoroastrianism to deal with
populations that were neither Muslim, Christian, Jewish nor idolaters. This was a
category of people who the Muslim political powers, in their early conquests, in the 7th
and 8th centuries, attributed a juridical status of “protected by Islam” (ahl al-dhimma)
of second class, as they had no prophet, holy book or religious heads of religions
revealed by God. The article analyses the documented situations in the Muslim
west and its Atlantic coasts (Basques, Berbers, Vikings, Scandinavians, Normans and
British), and in the conquest of Christian Lleida, in Visigothic Hispania.
Key words
Muslim conquest, magicians, Persians, Christians, Basques, Vikings, Al-Andalus.
Capitalia verba
Mahumedana dominatio, Magi, Persae, Christiani, Vascones, Ascomanni, Arabica Hispania.
61
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Míkel de Epalza
The term Madjûs was applied many centuries before Islam to the Zoroastrian
priests of the Sassanid Persian Empire and, after the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia and the highlands of Iran, the Persians of this religion also used this name for
some “ethnic groups” in contact with the Muslim west, especially for some mountain Basques in the northern Iberian Peninsula, mountain Berbers in the Maghreb
and the Norse Viking, Norman and British sailors who pillaged the Atlantic coasts
of Al-Andalus and the Maghreb and reached the Mediterranean coasts of these two
countries. It is a subject that touches on three continents, “from the (Arabian or
Persian) Gulf to the (Atlantic) Ocean” as the Arabs usually describe the area where
their language was spoken, obviously alongside other languages. It is “the setting,
the so-called Mediterranean or, perhaps better, south European, setting” to which the
journal Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum, “is linked”.
This theme of conquest, especially in the early centuries of the Islamic Empire
(7th-8th centuries), is exceptional and minor. However, it was run along political
lines similar to those of the Muslim conquest of most of the politically and religiously fairly Christianised Mediterranean territories of the old Roman Empire. That
is why we compare the elements of the judicial situation of the madjûs with the
example of the conquest of the city of Lleida, in modern-day Catalonia, a situation
very well summarised by Professor Flocel Sabaté1.
This research, begun for a local or regional congress in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Álava,
Spain, 1984)2, has recently culminated in a well-documented and elaborated
hypothesis or thesis3, whose main conclusions are presented here. It is an analysis
of a form of Muslim conquest on the western edge of the Muslim empire, of
integration of populations that were not socially or religiously structured
like the Christians. Although these were minorities, the political action of the
Islamic authorities to integrate them into Muslim society or conquer them can
be compared with how the same authorities had treated the mainly Christian
populations of the old Roman Empire, especially in the Visigothic Kingdom of
Toledo half a century earlier.
1. See, towards the end of this article, Sabaté, Flocel. Història de Lleida. Alta edat mitjana. Lleida: Pagès
editors, 2003: 16-17.
2. See Epalza, Míkel de. “El derecho político musulmán y su influencia en la formación de Álava (siglos
VIII-XI)”, La formación de Álava. 650 Aniversario del Pacto de Arriaga (1332-1982). Comunicaciones. VitoriaGasteiz: Diputación Foral de Álava/Arabako Foru Aldundia, 1985: 303-313; also published in Estudios de
Deusto, XXXII/2, fasc. 73 (1984): 505-518 [Homenaje al profesor Mañaricúa, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto:
I, 505-518].
3. See Epalza, Míkel de. “Los madjûs (‘magos’): un hápax coránico (Q.22:17), entre lo étnico y lo jurídico, hasta su acepción en Al-Ándalus”, Estudios coránicos y lingüísticos en honor del profesor Julio Cortés
Soroa, Miguel Hemando de Larramendi, Salvador Peña, eds. (in print). See also Epalza, Míkel de; Valle de
Lersundi, Joaquín del. “Vascos y árabes, en el siglo VIII y en el XX. Historia e historias”. Hesperia. Culturas
del Mediterráneo, 6 (2007): 123-153; Epalza, Míkel de, “Nota en homenaje a la 9ª edición de ‘El Corán’
de Julio Cortés (2005)”. Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas, XLI (2006): 85-97, publications
that revolve around the Basque Arab scholar and excellent translator of the Qur’ân into Spanish (Bilbao,
1924).
22/09/2008 12:23:49
A note about the Muslim Conquest of the 7th-8th Centuries
63
This hypothesis from nearly a quarter of a century ago has been reworked, revised and documented enough to be presented as a scientific thesis4. It is multidisciplinary research to the extent that there are few 8th century sources (in Arab,
Latin, etc.,) and these are not very varied (Qur’ân, chronicles, geographic, juridical,
theological, and of Muslim politics and later Christian reactions). Firstly, an attempt
must be made to integrate all this information logically and relatively coherently
and to try to understand the term Madjûs in its true sense, with an explanation that
does not exclude any of these sources, and is always open to new documentation
and new papers.
The research arose from a conjunction of two studies: 1) an outstanding wellknown Arab text about an early expedition to conquer Álava in 767, related implicitly to the use of Madjûs (“magicians”) applied to the Basques, and 2) a study in
Muslim theology and Arab philology of the different meanings that the Arab word
Madjûs had acquired since its Persian origins.
1) The above-mentioned text, by the Al-Andalus historian Ibn-‘Idhârî (8th-9th
centuries) was presented at the local congress in Vitoria-Gasteiz by professor María
Jesús Rubiera Mata, from the University of Alicante. It describes an expedition in
767 against Álava and the primitive Castile (âraba wa-l-qilà) by Badr, the governor
of Zaragoza, appointed by Ảbd ar-Rahmân I, the first Umayyad sovereign of AlAndalus, who had come to power in Cordoba ten years earlier (756).
According to the study by María Jesús Rubiera, under the Umayyad emirs in
Cordoba, there was a notable shift in Moorish policy in Al-Andalus. While the
conquerors of Hispania in 711 worked to consolidate the territory seized from the
Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo (an eminently political conquest), the Umayyads tried
to control (mainly fiscally) the whole Peninsula, especially the independent zones
that the previous governors had neglected. That explains Badr’s expedition to the
north, which travelled up the Ebro valley. Here is the translation of the text:
In the year 150 [of the Hegira, 767 on the Christian calendar] Badr went on an
asseifa [military expedition] to the thagr [military frontier of Islam] and reached
Álava, which he conquered: Álava paid him the djizia.
Badr ordered all the men from that area to be examined and the most intelligent
to be selected, and those in whom bad intentions were found in the thagr, he took
with him.5
Rubiera calls attention to the fact of conquest that meant establishing the obligation
to pay the djizia tax, an emblematic political show of sovereignty, that established a
4. This was begun at the local or regional congress in Vitoria-Gasteiz with two complementary publications, the paper by Rubiera de Epalza, María Jesús. “Álava y los alaveses en los textos árabes”, La Formación de Álava… Ponencias, 1985: 385-593, and the communication mentioned above by Epalza, Míkel
de. “El derecho politico musulmán y su influencia en la formación de Álava”, La formación de Álava…
Comunicaciones, 1985: 303-313.
5. Rubiera de Epalza, María Jesús. “Álava y los alaveses”...: 387. Arab text by d’Ibn ‘Idhari. Al-Bayân AlMugrib, ed. Lévi-Provençal. Beirut: s.d.: 11, 54.
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Míkel de Epalza
stable situation with views to the future, as the inhabitants of that region could then
be required to meet the payments more or less constantly and could be sanctioned
with punitive expeditions and pillage, as a fine for non-payment if they failed to
comply with this obligation, as happened to the Alavese with the expedition of
792.
The professor also emphasised that “the men of that region” were represented
by no other political or religious authorities, as was the case with other similar
expeditions known from that time against populations north of Al-Andalus. In
accordance with other Christian and Moorish documents, she deduced that the
western Basques, those in Álava, were still not Christian and owed no allegiance to
any other Christian authority in the region (the sovereigns of Asturias or Navarre).
In my paper in that congress6, I defined the political and religious significance
of this text in greater detail. I wrote what Muslim theology understood by madjûs despite not using the word. It was a name applied to the western Basques in
other Arab chronicles, known through the research by Dozy7 and presented by
Melvinger8, implicitly expressed here by Ibn-‘Idhârî and his sources.
In fact, this text does not state that the people of Álava were Christians or that
their lay or religious authorities had established a pact with the Moors to pay the
djizia tax, as a similar text states about the inhabitants of a town in the Granada/
Elvira region in the same epoch9. It simply states that they would submit themselves to paying this tax, like the others “protected” by Islam (ahl adh-dhimma, “the
protected people”, under Moorish power, or People of the Book (ahl al-Kitâb) meaning Christians or Jews). However, the text adds that “Badr ordered the men of the
region to be examined”.
This test or “exam” (imtihân), that was an “exam, inquiry or investigation” to find
out if they were really Christian or Jews or not, was a Muslim technical, juridical or
theological formula that describes the procedure for recognising the communities
of madjûs as integrated and autonomous within the structure of Islamic society and
Islam itself and the varied make-up of the Muslim Empire. This juridical-political
reality can be seen in the jurist Al-Balâdhurî (a 9th-century Arab historian)10, when
he mentioned the formula for the submission of the madjûs in Yemen and Bahrain
6. See Epalza, Míkel de. “El derecho político musulman”…: 308-309. The 1984 study was extended
in perspective and presented in homage to professor Clelia Sarnelli Cerqua on 28th March 2001 (unpublished) in the Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, in French, and it upheld the same theses as
this current study under the title “Note sur la catégorie socio-religieuse de madjûs appliquée à des nonChrétiens et non-Juifs à Al-Andalus, à l’époque omeyyade”.
7. See Dozy, Reinhart P. “Les Normands en Espagne”, Recherches sur l’histoire et la literature de l’Espagne
pendant le Moyen-Age. Paris-Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1881 (3rd ed.): 250-271.
8. In Melvinger, Arne. “Al- Madjûs”. Encyclopedia of Islam. Leiden-Paris: E. J. Brill – G-P. Maisonneuve &
Larose SA, 1986: V, 1114-1118. See below at the end of this article.
9. See Rubiera de Epalza, María Jesús. “Álava y los alaveses”…: 387.
10. See Becker, Carl H. [Rosenthal, Franz]. “Al-Balâdhurî”. Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden-Paris: E. J. Brill,
1991: 1. 1, 1000-1002, and Büchner, V. F. “Madjûs”. Encyclopédie de l’Islam. Leiden-Paris: E. J. Brill, 1960:
III, 102, reproduced in Gibb, Hamilton A. R.; Kramers, Johannes Hendrik, eds. Shorter Encyclopaedia of
Islam. Leiden-London: E. J. Brill, 1961: 298-300.
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65
in the times of the Prophet, on the southern and eastern edges of the newly-born
Muslim Empire and its conquests, the juridical antecedent of the religious (and
thus, juridical) statute of all the madjûs. This doctrine, with the texts from the
respective hadiths (sayings, facts and consents of the Prophet) about the expeditions
to conquer Yemen and Bahrain, is found especially in the classical treatise about the
status and obligations of the dhimmî-ns, by the theologian and jurist, Ibn Qayyim
al-Djawziyya (Damascus, 8th and 9th centuries)11. The medieval texts are from a
late date, but reliable enough in their traditional nature, if they are minimally and
thoroughly linked to modern textual criticisms of each literary genre which they
are included in.
2) The Persian word that has given English magians, magicians and wise men12, in
Catalan mag and màgic, in Spanish, mago13, and in Arab, madjûs14, has undergone
two great semantic transformations extensions in Arab.
The first extension of the meaning, from a stage, or epoch, when the Persian
word had the original sense of ‘priest’ or ‘pontiff’ in the Zoroastrian faith and doctrines, in their different languages (see, six centuries before Islam, the well-known
Wise Men [“Magi”, “the Magi” of the Gospel according to Matthew 2, 1-12], in
Greek in the original, but with an underlying strata of Aramaic) would become a
collective noun to describe all Zoroastrians and their beliefs and worship (madjûs
and madjûsiyya). This semantic extension undoubtedly contributed to the passage
from the Qur’ân (Q. 22:17) that mentions the madjûs as a group of believers in God,
but who “associate God with, or place other divinities beside him” (Qur’ân, sura or
chapter, 22 “The hajj pilgrimage”, aleya or verse 17):
11. See as-Sâlih, Subhî. Ibn Qayyim al-Djawziyya. Ahkâm ahl al-dhimma. Beirut: 1981, 2nd ed.: diverse origins of Muslim doctrine, about the Christians and Jews, the Madjûs and the “worship of idols” —‘abadat
al-awthân, ‘abadat al-asnâm- (I, 1-3, 6-7, 9-10); about the association of trade with Jews and Christians,
and also with Madjûs, especially when it is a question of usury or the purchase of wine and pork (I,
271-273; II, 271-273); about hiring to Jews, Christians and Madjûs, all considerd as people under protection
—ahl adh-dhimma- (I, 317-338); about questions of marriage, before and after conversion to Islam (I,
317-338); about other questions of marriage, in which neither the madjûs, nor the idolators are considered ahl al-Kitâb (People of the Book), given that the Prophet had authorised Muslims to demand the
“protection” tax from the madjûs (I, 391-400); about the prohibitions of marriage with madjûs women
and sharing food sacrificed by madjûs, as they had no Holy Book (II, 343-436).
12. Referring to the evangelical characters in the infancy of Jesus.
13. Diccionario de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Real Academia Española (22nd ed.), 2001: II, 12: “Dícese
del individuo de la classe sacerdotal en la religió zoroástrica. 2. Dícese de la persona versada en la magia o que la practica. 3. Dícese de los tres reyes que fueron a adorar a Jesús recién nacido. 4. Persona
singularmente capacitada para una actividad determinada”, Obviously this presentation only uses the
word in the first sense and as the translation of the Arab notion of madjûs, which it is aimed to determine exactly.
14. See dictionaries and encyclopaedias: Cortés, Julio. Diccionario de árabe culto moderno. Árabe-español.
Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1996: 1058: “madjûs (col.) magos, mazdeistas: madjûs mazdeista, zoroástrico,
mazdeista, zoroastriano: madjûs mazdeismo, zoroastrismo”; Darrow, William R. “Magians”. Encyclopaedia
of the Qur’ân, J. D. MacAulife, ed. Leiden-Briton: E. J. Brill, 2003: III, 244-245; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd
English and French edition and the old 1st edition, the articles from which about Islam as a religion have
been reproduced by Gibb, Hamilton A. R.; Kramers, Johannes Hendrik, eds. Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam.
Leiden-London: E. J. Brill, Lucas & Co., 1961.
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Míkel de Epalza
66
Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associate (others with Allah)—surely Allah
will decide between them on the day of resurrection; surely Allah is a witness over
all things!15
In this list of religious groups that will judged in the Muslim Final Judgement,
the groups are named for their beliefs, especially for their monotheist faith, but
their other beliefs are not described, nor are their leaders mentioned, especially the
Zoroastrian madjûs. The name is applied to all the faithful from this community,
who are given the status of dhimmî-ns through the payment of the specific tax of
djizia, like the Christians or the Jews. It is the only explicit or nominal mention of
the madjûs in the Qur’ân.
The second extension of the meaning, from the general application to all
those Persians who believed in the Zoroastrian religion, considered as a set of Persians faithful to this belief (obviously differentiated from the Christians, Jews and
the Muslim converts and their descendants, who also lived in Persian society), to
the extension of this title of madjûs to many peoples and ethnic minorities who were
still not Christian on the edges of the Muslim Empire in the 8th century, and not
only to the mid-7th century Persians, who, with their enormous population mass,
had provoked this political and theological solution, which arose from the same
Muslim tradition based on the Qur’ân.
This hypothesis or way of arranging the documented data rationally makes it
easier to understand the doubts or divergences found among four Arabist and
Islamic scholars (J. F. Büchner, M. Morony, A. Melvinger and W. R. Darrow) who
wrote the articles “Madjûs” and “Al-Madjûs” in the prestigious English-language
encyclopaedias, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam and the
15. “Koran” Digital Libarry Productions Service. 1996, University of Michigan. 2007 <www.hti.umich.edu/
cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=512697>. The Catalan version in the original arabic text is:
El dia de la Resurrecció dels cossos
Al·là, Déu, farà veure molt clarament les diferències
entre els creients, els musulmans
i els qui han judaïzat,
els sabeus
els cristians
els majús
tots els qui han posat amb Déu Al·là altres deïtats.
Al·là, Déu és sempre un testimoni molt fefaent de totes les coses!
For the justification for this typograhic and expansive layout of the literary, clear and precise translation
of the Qur’an text, see Epalza, Míkel de. L’Alcorà… i cinc estudis, 5th study, about the principals of this
translation of the Qur’an into Catalan in Epalza, Míkel de. “El Corán y sus traducciones: Algunos problemas islamológicos y de traducción, con propuestas de soluciones”, El islam plural, Maria-Àngeles Roque,
ed. Barcelona: Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània-Icària, 2003: 379-400; Epalza, Míkel de; Forcadell,
Josep; Perujo, Joan M. El Corán y sus traduciones. Estudios y propuestas. Alacant: Universitat d’Alacant, 2007
(in print).
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67
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ân16. Summing up this research, Morony and Darrow only
mention the beliefs and practices of Zoroastrianism from an ethnologic point of
view with no mention of the juridical and political dimension that had been put
forward in part by the Muslim law specialist, R. Brunschvig. Melvinger mentions
this, but rejects it. Only Büchner mentions it and follows it as shown by the text
reproduced below.
For the juridical-religious and non-ethnic application of the Arab epithet of madjûs to Basques, Berbers, Vikings, Normans and Britons we rely on J. F. Büchner’s
conclusion:
The name Madjus has also been extended to peoples who have nothing to do with
Zoroastrianism, but who, being neither Jews nor Christians, nor Muslim converts,
had to be treated for practical purposes as dhimmis paying the djizya. This was
done in North Africa and Spain by the Madjus of al-Awzâ’î and by the Mâlikites
and the Hanafites on the strength of the tradition that the Prophet had accepted
the djizya from the Madjus in Bahrain. So the Berbers were considered as Madjus,
and also were the Scandinavians who raided the Spanish coast since 844 and with
whom occasional peace treaties were concluded.17
With an example a contrario, or at least, a diverso, the policy of conquest and
integration of new territories and peoples into the Muslim Empire can be better
understood: the Muslim policy of conquest and integration of Lleida, resumed by
professor Flocel Sabaté18.
In this context, the limited dimensions of the city of Lleida and its position encouraged the reaching of a pact of submission (‘ahd) that formally allowed the ruling groups to maintain their property and their initial pre-eminence in exchange
for accepting a fiscal dependence that thus guaranteed an initial stability under the
Islamic peace and protection (aman). The payment of a personal capitation in money and in kind (jizia) even allowed their own religious beliefs to be observed. In
fact, the bishops normally had notable weight among the local authorities that negotiated with the invaders, as they themselves promoted in the majority of places.
These advantages and the fear of the newcomers justified the willingness to make
pacts. The fear of reprisals was in their souls and also in the reminders. Immediately after Lleida, the Islamic troops reached Tarragona, where the population, who
opted not to pact, met a very different fate. In contrast, the agreement reached in
Lleida was soon sanctioned with the arrival, behind the Berbers advance guard, of
the Arab army under Mussa.
16. See full bibliographic references in the entries under the names of these authors, in other footnotes
by the different authors, and comments where they contrast their diverse opinions, in Epalza, Mikel de.
“Los madjûs (‘mags’): un hápax coránico (Q. 22:17), entre lo étnico y lo jurídico, hasta su acepción en
Al-Andalus”, Estudios coránicos y lingüísticos en honor del professor Julio Cortés Soroa, Miguel Hernando de
Larramendi Salvador Peña, eds. (in print).
17. Büchner, V. F. “Madjus”. Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Johannes Hendrik
Kramers, eds. Leiden-Londres: E. J. Brill, 1961: 298.
18. Sabaté, Flocel. Història de Lleida. Alta edat mitjana. Lleida: Pagès editors, 2003: 32-103.
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Míkel de Epalza
After having analysed the process of “conquest” or insertion into Muslim society
of the Madjûs and with a synthesis on the process of conquering a small Romanised
and Christianised city on the plain (as was the case of Lleida), it is easier to understand how the Basque Madjûs agreed a pact with the Moors, but with the difference
that, while the people of Lleida were Christians, the Basques had no clear beliefs nor
Christian political or ecclesiastical authorities, like those of Asturias or Navarre. That
obviously raises the fascinating subject of the degree of influence that Muslim political law had on the rapid total Christianisation of the Christian mountain kingdoms
in the north of the Iberian Peninsula or the rapid and almost total Islamisation of
the territories that came directly under the Muslim power of Al-Andalus. However,
to clarify whether this theme was linked to the rapid disappearance of the Madjûs
from the north of the Iberian Peninsula is beyond the reach of this simple note.19
To conclude this brief presentation we shall indicate that the main contributions
to this study can be summed up in different themes, some specific or local and others, general:
It states that the phrase from the Arab text by Ibn-‘Idhârî links the action of the
expedition by the governor Badr to Álava and Castile in 767 to the act of conquest
or integration of a local populace in the Cantabrian region, namely the “Basques
of Araba/Álava or the Gorbea mountains” which explains the later denomination
of Madjûs applied to the Basque groups in some texts from Arab sources. They are
not related to the Persian “mags” by any of the three ethnic traits (beliefs, worship,
language), but rather by the juridical status of Madjûs, second-class dhimmî-ns in
Muslim society.
It confirms with an Arab-Muslim text that at that time the population of Álava
and the primitive Castile (Al-Quilà) did not come under the Asturians of the Kingdom of Oviedo or the Navarese of the Kingdom of Pamplona and had no outward
sign of Christianity (beliefs, worship and Christian political or religious authorities
or structures).
The agreement to pay the emblematic tribute of the djizia and the transfer of
hostages is evidence of the integration of that region and its inhabitants into the
Islamic society under the political jurisdiction of the governor of the region of AlThagr al-A’là (the ‘frontier’ or ‘higher march’), based in Zaragoza, and the emir of
Al-Andalus in Córdoba. These peacefully agreed links, which brought them into the
orbit of the Muslim world was broken some years later and, under Muslim policy in
the Iberian Peninsula, this break would justify the punitive expedition of 792.
The analysis of this text allows the political-religious charge of this Islamic title
of madjûs to be better understood, applied to both Persian Zoroastrians and the
Basques, Berbers, Norse Vikings, Normans and British. They were linked by the
same political-religious status in their integration into Muslim society but not by
similar ethnological characteristics (beliefs, worship, customs and culture).
19. See an extensive study and bibliography on this theme in Epalza, Mikel de. “Félix de Urgel: influencias
islámicas encubiertas de judaismo y los mozárabes del siglo VIII”. Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia,
22/2 (1999-2001): 31-66.
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69
In a more general way, this small study shows that, in their conquests in the
West, the Muslim authorities of Al-Andalus followed political-religious norms and
guidelines from the East rather closely, from the model government by the Prophet
and his successors, the caliphs of Medina and, more directly, the Umayyad caliphs of
Damascus. This normative came to be more widely imposed with the installation of
the Umayyad dynasty in the independent Emirate of Al-Andalus in Córdoba, with
high civil servants from the administration in Damascus.
It can be observed that, methodologically, the multi-disciplinary analysis and
knowledge of the linguistic and social context enables significant information to be
extracted from texts that a superficial view could consider anodyne or irrelevant,
such as some texts analysed during this research. These include the one by Ibn‘Idhârî about the 767 expedition, the extract from the Qur’ân about the Madjûs,
those of the four modern Arabist scholars from the first and second editions of the
Encyclopaedia of Islam, about the Madjûs in general and the Andalusians, Maghrebins,
Norse Vikings, Normans and British in particular.20
20. Anyone interested in knowing more about the sources and the nuances of this research still in print
can find it in Epalza, Míkel de. “Los madjûs (“magos”): un hápax coránico (Q.22:17), entre lo étnico y lo
jurídico, hasta su acepción en Al-Ándalus”, Estudios coránicos y lingüísticos en honor del professor Julio Cortés
Soroa, Miguel Hernando de Larramendi, Salvador Peña, eds. (in print). See also recent collective book of
Boyer, Régis, dir. Les vikings. Premiers Européens VIIIe-XIe siècle. Les nouvelles découvertes de l’archéologie. Paris:
Autrement, 2005.
22/09/2008 12:23:51
22/09/2008 12:23:51
DOCUMENTS OF DISPUTE SETTLEMENT IN
ELEVENTH-CENTURY ARAGÓN AND NAVARRA:
KING’S TRIBUNAL AND COMPROMISE
Takashi Adachi
Hirosaki University
Japan
Date of receipt: 2nd of December, 2006
Abstract
Whether it could keep the social order or not, making private agreements is thought
to be a clear sign that the placitum as public justice was absent or lost its authority and
organization around the year 1000 and afterwards. In Aragón and Navarra, however,
the king’s tribunal usually intended to pass a clear-cut judgment throughout the
eleventh century. If the king decided to have the litigant parties make an agreement,
he personally or the lower branches of his barones referred a case to arbitration. Even
if the level of organization of where agreements were actually made seems to be far
removed from the placitum, it was a strategy of the Navarro-Aragonese judicial system
in order to keep the authority of the king’s tribunal while meeting the needs of the
society.*
Key words
Aragón, High Middle Ages, Feudalism, Nature, Institutions, Politics.
Capitalia verba
Aragonia, Primum Medium Aeuum, Feudi, Natura, Institutiones, Politica.
71
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Takashi Adachi
In his pioneering study of the judicial system in the Mâcon region, Georges Duby
described as follows the process in which the authority of the placitum that counts
presided over declined rapidly around the year 1000. Bishops, abbots and lay lords,
who had been regular attendants at the count’s tribunal, disappeared from there
around 1030, and even strengthened their own jurisdictional power by taking over
the lower branches of the public judicial system. In this process, the placitum, which
lost its authority and essential function, could not pass a clear-cut judgment in
conformity with law, and finally changed to become a tribunal of arbitration in which
the disputants were at most merely encouraged to reach private agreements1.
Pierre Bonnassie, also, in his synthesis on Catalonia at the millennium, offered
a more radical argument that follows in part that given by Duby. The Catalan judicial system, in which judges, experts in the Visigothic Law, originally could pass
a judgment based on the written law, stopped functioning properly around 1020
and afterwards. Magnates took justice into their own hands rather than turning to
the placitum, no longer respecting judges or the written law, and often resorted to
violence or private agreements. Bonnassie argued that the fact that documents in a
new style called convenientia increased rapidly in this period was a sign that placitum
had been replaced by convenientia, private or feudal compromise2.
On the other hand, some Anglo-American scholars tend to suggest that there
was not such social crisis as the ‘feudal anarchy’, by regarding compromise as an
effective way of settling disputes and keeping peace. Patrick Geary insisted that
the social order was kept by private agreements on the basis of custom or morals
like amor and amicitia, if the judicial system was entirely lost. Moreover, he said,
while coercive judgment based on law cut the social relation between disputants
by defeating one side, compromise could control everlasting and structuralized
* Abbreviations: CSJP: Ubieto, Antonio. Cartulario de San Juan de la Peña, 2 volumes. Valencia: Anúbar, 19621963; CS: Ubieto, Antonio. Cartulario de Siresa. Zaragoza: Anubar, 1986; CDSAF: Canellas, Ángel. Colección
diplomática de San Andrés de Fanlo (958-1270). Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico”, 1964; DML:
Martín, Ángel J. Documentación medieval de Leire (siglos IX a XII). Pamplona: Diputación Foral de Navarra,
1983; CDCH: Durán, Antonio. Colección diplomática de la catedral de Huesca, 2 volumes. Zaragoza: Escuela
de Estudios Medievales-Instituto de Estudios Pirenaicos, 1965-1969; DSRI: Salarrullana, José. Documentos
correspondientes al reinado de Sancho Ramírez, desde 1063 hasta 1094. I: documentos reales. Zaragoza: Pedro Larra,
1907; DSRII: Ibarra, Eduardo. Documentos correspondientes al reinado de Sancho Ramírez, desde 1063 hasta 1094. II:
documentos particulares. Zaragoza: Pedro Larra, 1913; CDSR: Canellas, Ángel. La colección diplomática de Sancho
Ramírez. Zaragoza: Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País, 1993; CDPI: Ubieto, Antonio.
Colección diplomática de Pedro I de Aragón y Navarra. Zaragoza: Escuela de Estudios Medievales, 1951.
1. Duby, Georges. “Recherches sur l’évolution des institutions judiciaires pendant le Xe et le XIe siècles
dans le sud de la Bourgogne”, Seigneurs et paysans. Hommes et structures du Moyen Âge II. Paris: Flammarion,
1988: 190-278; Duby, Georges. La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la régions mâconnaises. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.,
1988: 89-108.
2. Bonnassie, Pierre. La Catalogne de milieu du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle. Croissance et mutations d’une société, 2 volumes. Toulouse: Publications de l’Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1975-1976: I, 183-202; Bonnassie,
Pierre. “Du Rhône à la Galice: Genèse et modalités du régime féodal”, Structures féodales et féodalisme dans
l’Occident méditerranéen (Xe-XIIIe siècles): Bilan et perspectives de recherches. Rome: École française de Rome,
1980: 17-44; Bonnassie, Pierre. “Les conventions féodales dans la Catalogne du XIe siècle”. Annales du
Midi, 80, (1968): 529-559.
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Documents of Dispute Settlement in Eleventh-Century Aragón and Navarra
73
conflicts by readjusting and renovating former relationship3. Stephen D. White also
argued that the parties attained to compromise of their own accord in order to
restore amicable relationship, though he appreciated the function of the State and
law more than Geary4.
Nevertheless, as Dominique Barthélemy has already pointed out5, we should not
pass over an insolvable problem concerning the relation between the public order
and private agreements. If they played an important role in keeping peace, the
concept ‘feudal anarchy’, in fact, does not make sense. However, if it did not take
place actually, we cannot easily explain the reason why the public justice happened
to be lost or didn’t have practical effect. This contradiction seems to arise from the
assumption that compromise is legal and institutional deviation from the right practice of the public justice which should pass a clear-cut judgment based on law, and
the tribunal in which compromise is practiced can be no longer called that public6.
In Aragón and Navarra, the public tribunal often forced the parties to reach a
compromise (convenientia, conventio, concordia, pactum), while imposing a penalty for
breaking agreed promises7. The practice that the public tribunal mediates a compromise no doubt derived from Visigothic justice, as stipulated in a provision promulgated by King Egica, in which the king or the judges permit the parties to conclude convenientia unless it is regarded as being legally harmful; though its primary
purpose is to prohibit them to make extra-judicial agreements8. However, though
recognizing the significance of this clause, Roger Collins considers it as the sign of
the lack of law and the weakness of the public authority which could not pass a
clear-cut judgment9. Thus, in this article, I would like to think of compromise as not
3. Geary, Patrick J. “Vivre en conflict dans une France sans Etat: typologie des mannismes des conflits
(1050-1200)”. Annales ESC, 41-5 (1986): 1107-1133.
4. White, Stephen D. “‘Pactum…Legem Vincit et Amor Judicium’. The Settlement of Disputes by Compromise in Eleventh-Century West-France”. The American Journal of Legal History, 22, (1978): 281-308.
5. Barthélemy, Dominique. “La mutation féodale a-t-elle eu lieu?” Annales ESC, 47-3 (1992): 772-774.
6. Wickham, Chris. “Land disputes and Their Social Framework in Lombard-Carolingian Italy, 700-900”,
Land and Power. Studies in Italian and European Social History, 400-1200. London: British School at Rome,
1994: 252-255.
7. Contrary to the traditional ways of understanding, Carlos Laliena Corbera supposes that such a practice represents the transcendent power of the Navarro-Aragonese Kings. Laliena Corbera, Carlos. La Formación del Estado Feudal. Aragón y Navarra en la época de Pedro I. Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 1996: 272-277; Laliena Corbera, Carlos. Pedro I de Aragón y Navarra (1094-1104). Burgos: La Olmeda,
2000: 197-208.
8. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges, Legum Sectio I, Leges nationum Germanicarum, t. 1, Leges Visigothorum,
II. 2. 10. The term “convenientia” has many meanings besides compromise. Adam J. Kosto listed various
examples meaning oral or written agreement, penalty clause on a violator and judicial or extra-judicial
compromise to settle disputes; Kosto, Adam J. “The Convenientia in the Early Middle Ages”, Medieval
Studies, 60 (1998): 25-26; Kosto, Adam J. Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia. Power, Order, and the
Written Word, 1000-1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2001: 43-52. Paul Ourliac, enumerating many
examples in Languedoc as well, considered all of them as peculiar custom in the period without law;
Ourliac, Paul. “La ‘convenientia’”, Etudes d’histoire du droit medieval. Paris: Picard, D.L, 1979: 243-252.
9. Collins, Roger. “Visigothic Law and Regional Custom in Disputes in Early Medieval Spain”, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986: 104.
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Takashi Adachi
the sign of the collapse of public judicial system but its strategy selected according
to circumstances in order to keep the social order, by studying the system of the
kingdom of Aragón-Navarra in the eleventh century. This essay shall in part shed
light on the relation between State and society in this period that has hardly ever
received much attention.
*
The Navarro-Aragonese documents of dispute settlements are replete with freeformed descriptions, almost like narratives, involving all the process from the causes
to the results of disputes. If it took several trials to settle a suit, scribes minutely
recorded the whole sequence of events in a single document. This feature is quite
different from Visigothic judicial documents that survive in Formulae Visigothicae or
the Liber Iudicum: sententiae (letters of judgment), conditiones sacramentorum (written oaths), mandata iudicis (court orders of execution), libelli acusatorii (letters of
complaint), etc10. However, these Visigothic documents have not survived in the
Navarro-Aragonese archives.
Both Roger Collins and Juan José Larrea suggest that the Navarro-Aragonese
scribes, who inherited more or less the Visigothic legal tradition, but were of lower
cultural level in both writing and using documents, did not issue documents for
each trial, but wrote all the circumstances together in a single document after the
end of the whole process11. The fact that the beneficiaries’ scribes often wrote judicial documents at this time might in part justify such an understanding. In Collins’
argument, this way of writing and preserving the account assured the beneficiary’s rights when the loser went to tribunal once again12. Nevertheless, we should
remember that only those documents that monasteries needed to preserve have
survived today, because most of them have only survived in a cartulary form.
Before the year 1000, the form of judicial documents is quite different from land
donation or sale charters, which retained the Visigothic formulae more firmly13. It
begins with the invocation and a peculiar opening formula, originally used in the
Navarrese court14: hec est carta/carta rememorationis/memoria quam X feci or hec est carta/
memoria de X15. A free-formed description of disputes, usually written in the third
person and the past tense, follows, with ‘curse clauses’ increasing in private charters
10. Canellas López, Ángel. Diplomática hispano-visigoda. Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico”,
1979: doc. no. 24 (s. VI), 38 (560-590), 93b (603, VIII), 104 (630, XI, 30), 111 (638, I, 9), 120 (642-653),
143 (672, IX, 1), 145 (673), 146 (circa 673), 147 (673, X?), 154 (673-680), 155 (680, X, 14), 221, 222,
223 (s. VIIex), 230 (752-731); Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum Sectio V, Formulae, Formulae Visigothicae, doc. no. 32, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43.
11. Collins, Roger. “Visigothic Law“...: 97-104; Larrea, Juan J. La Navarre du IVe au XIIe siècle. Peuplement et
société. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université, 1998: 270-278.
12. Collins, Roger. “‘Sicut lex Gothorum continet’: Law and Charters in Ninth and Tenth-Century León
and Catalonia”. English Historical Review, 100 (1985): 494-495.
13. CS, doc. no. 2 (828-833), 3 (h. 850), 4 (840-867), 8 (933), 9 (941). Also see Formulae Visigothicae...:
doc. no. 1, 7, 24, 36, 41, 44, 45; Canellas López, Ángel. Diplomática...: doc. no. 62, 63 (588-601), 217, 219,
220 (s.VII).
14. DML, doc. no. 1 (842), 8 (970-972), 9, 11, 12 (991): Larrea, Juan J. La Navarre...: 278.
15. CSJP, doc. no. 7 (893), 18 (948).
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75
also after 95016. This is followed by the list of the witnesses’ names and the dating
clauses.
However, in the eleventh century, scribes changed the opening formula as follows: if the recipient of the donated property finished by winning his case, they
wrote a formula such as: hec est carta donationis or hec est carta donationis vel corroborationis/confirmationis17. We sometimes find an opening phrase such as hec est carta
difinitionis, evacuationis vel recognitionis18. Such a document is the loser’s renunciation
of claim on the donated property. When the disputants finally reached a peaceful
agreement, scribes often changed the opening title to carta conventionis/ convenientiae/
concordiae19.
I wish at this point to offer by way of illustration some documents that consist
of two clearly separate sections. A document of the Aragonese monastery of San
Juan de la Peña, dating from 1049, contains a description of dispute concerning the
possession of the monastery of Santa Eufemia de Biniés, and a post-obitum donation
charter which the loser’s daughter and her husband addressed to the monastery of
San Juan20:
De Sancta Eufimia de Biniesse et eius scedula. (=Rubric in San Juan’s cartulary)
Fuit quidam monacus in cenobio Sancti Iohannis nomine Sanctius, ex vico qui
apellatur Biniesse, in cuius termino edificavit ipse ecclesia in honore sancta Eufimie, quem secum subdidit sub dicione abbatis domno Paterno predicti cenovii.
Postea vero domna Galga, ex regione Ipuzkoa, rogavit abbatem eius ut eum dirigeret
ad suam regionem, ubi erat ipsa. Et posuit eum domno Sancio in monasterio
Sancti Salbarotis de Ippuzka. At ille, ubi venit, oblitus professionis sue, imposuit
sibi nomen abbatis sine iussione sui abbatis; et abstulit prefatum monasterium
suum Sancta Eufemia de Sancti Iohannis, et possuit eum in Sancti Salbatoris,
prevaricatus ordinem regularem, quia inlicitum est monaco sine sui abbatis iussum
aliquid dare vel accipere. Tamen postea, penitentiam ductus, reconciliabit se suo
abbati, et ad oram obitus sui, qui illi evenit in iam dicta Sancta Eufemia, iussit
defunctum portare ad Sancti Iohannis; et reduxit illuc Sancta Eufemia quod ita
factum est.
Mortua est et suprafata domina Galga, et succesit in loco eius filia illius domna
Blasquita et senior Sancio Fertungonis suus vir; volueruntque educere Sancti
Iohannis. Et non prevalerunt, quia resistitit eis abba domno Blasco de Sancti
Ihoannis. Set quia erant et ipsi traditi de Sancti Iohannis, dedit eis de sua volumtate
supradictus Blasco abba Sancta Eufimia monasterium, ut tenerent tamtum in vita
sua, et amplificarent illum in suvstantia, tam in terris quam in vineis, pascuis, aquis
16. CSJP, doc. no. 18 (948); del Arco, Ricardo. “El Archivo de la Catedral de Jaca”. Boletín de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 65 (1914): 49-51.
17. CDSAF, doc. no. 18 (1035, X, 27); CSJP, doc. no. 72 (1038), 79 (1042), 119 (1055); CDSR, doc. no.
80 (1085); CDCH, doc. no. 24 (1062).
18. DML, doc. no. 157 (1097); CDPI, doc. no. 60 (1099, III).
19. DSRII, doc. no. 85 (1076-1085, III, 1), 77 (1092); DML, doc. no. 127 (1088, II, 5), 142 (1094, I-V);
CDCH, doc. no. 56 (1093, VIII, 25); CDPI, doc. no. 43 (1098, I, 5).
20. CSJP, doc. no. 98 (1049).
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et pecoribus et iumentis. Et post obitum eorum reverteretur ad Sancti Ihoannis, ut
ipsi teneantque eum iure perpetuo.
Facta kartula era .T. LXXX. VII., regnante in Aragone rex Ranimiro, et in supradicto monasterio abba domno Blasco, episcopo domno Garsea in Aragone.
In Dei nomine. Hec est carta quam facio ego domina domina Blasquita de Sancta Eufemia,
quam tenui pro manu de abbate don Blasco et de illos seniores de Sancti Iohannis cum sua
hereditate de terris et vineis. Pro anima mea et de meo seniore Sancio Fertungonis et de meos
parentes, redo illam ad Sanctum Iohannem, ut neque ego, nec ullus de mea tribu, requirat
illam, ut abstrahat illam de Sancti Iohannis. Et illu malquelo de saso et illut aliut malquelo
de Sancta Cruce de Tolosana, de post meos dies, pono illos ad Sancti Iohannis, ut non ex
parentella nostra, neque ullus abstrahat illos de Sancti Iohannis; et sunt fermes Mango
Garcianes de Vinies et Garsea Fertungones.
In this document, the section of the post-obitum donation charter is shown in italics,
and is the outcome of the agreement made after the dispute.
We also have a document in which the scribe only added a description of dispute
dating from 1050 to an adoption charter written three years earlier21:
In Dei nomine. Hec est carta quod ego Garcia Tiliz facio ad vos domo meo regi domno Ranimiro
Sancioni regis filio, propter que veni ad pauperitate vel ad necessitate et non inveni nec filios
nec alia generatione qui mici adiuvasset aut bonum fecisset, nisi fuit pietas Dei; et venit in
corde omni mei regi domni Ranimiri, et prendibit eum pietate de me, et non pro me facto,
sed pro Dei amore fecit mici bonum et dedit mici kaballos et victum sibe vestitum et omnia
que fuit mici necesse. Et dimisi filios et toto alios, et volebam eum profilgare in omnia que
abevit et illo dimisit mici que me abuisse illo alio. Et dono adque profilgo iam nominato rege
domno Ranimiro in meos usque nos in villa que dicitur Ibarduesse vel in omnia que ibi abeo
ex mea pertinentia [...] cum illo alode profilgo eum in villa que nuncupant Savinenianeco
et in Sancti Vincenti, sic in mesquinos quam in tota mea pertinentia que habeo et possideo,
ut abeat totum hoc supra nominato inienuo et aveat et posideat illo iure perpetuo, tam ille
quam filii sui et omnis generatio illius cui ille eam dimiserit. Et ego predictus Garcia Atiliç,
qui hanc cartam profilgationis rogabi facere et de manu mea confirmabi et posui firmes ut
firma permaneat hanc scribturam sicut superius est scriptum.
Facta carta in era T. LXXX. V.
Et hec sunt nomina corum de ipsos firmes id sunt senior Sancio Galindç firme, senior Ato
Galindiç firme, senior Sancio Garceiç de Spondelas firme, senior Scemeno Garceiç dominator Sos id est teste, episcopo domno Garsea teste, abbate domno Velasco teste, senior Enneco
Sangez de Arruesta teste, senior Lope Garceiç in Aguero teste, senior Fortunio Acenariç de
Luar teste, Garcia Lopeç de Berne firme, Fortunio Garcianes de Biniessi teste.
Post facta hanc cartam venit filio de Garsia Tiliç, Acenar Garceiç, alio die de Sancta
Maria, in Sirasia, et demandabat suas villas iam dictas ad iam dicto rege pro dotem
matris sue currente era T. LXXX. VIII.; et levabit se Garcia Atiliç otore (?) super
rege, et posuit fidiatore de lege ad suo filio Açenar Garceiç; et ipse filius posuit ad
rege fidiatores senior Enneco Lopez et senior Lope Garceiç pro se et suos germanos
et sua matre, quod amplius non rancurent ipsas villas ad predicto rege, nec ad filios
suos.
21. CSJP, doc. no. 95 (1047).
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77
In this case, the section of carta profilgationis, adoption charter, shown in italics,
with which García Tiliz commended himself and his properties to the king, Ramiro
of Aragón, in 1047, is chronologically the cause of a claim which Aznar Garcés,
García’s son, in fact made against him three years later.
The scribes in Navarra, who from the first made themselves more familiar with
the opening formula than those in Aragón, invented such titles as carta rememorationis sive recognitionis/definitionis or carta rememorationis vel convenientiae/concordiae.
Several judicial documents, which have survived in San Salvador de Leire’s monastic cartulary, consist of the rememoratio section (description of dispute), and then
the recognitio/definitio or convenientia/concordia section, respectively22. Did they try to
convert a judicial record into a charter form, or only insert a description of dispute
into a charter? Whichever is the more probable, they gave writing a charter priority;
if various public documents were issued for each trial, they would not feel the need
for keeping all of them.
Most of our judicial documents related to disputes over landed property classified
as ‘civil’ cases in the modern judicial system. The ‘criminal’ cases leave few traces
in documents except for indirect mentions. For example, a document, dating from
1062, was only preserved because it is a donation charter in which García Aznárez, who killed a horse in the possession of the magnate, Sancho Galíndez, aitan of
King Sancho Ramírez, donated to him a piece of vineyard in place of paying 100
solidi as compensation23. The reason why few records of ‘criminal’ cases are handed
down must be explained as follows: as Collins says, judicial documents were generally written and preserved by beneficiaries’ scribes in this period. However, if the
king merely punished a criminal with a fine or whipping and he did not donate to
an accuser something as compensation, a beneficiary who needed to preserve his
documents would not in theory exist though scribes of tribunals issued some documents. Many recent scholars tend not to make a distinction between the ‘civil’ and
the ‘criminal’ because the parties generally intended to make an agreement even
in case of crime such as murder or theft in this period24. However, if they cannot be
distinguished strictly, it may be because documents which related to the ‘criminal’
were not preserved except for the cases settled by agreement.
*
Two thirds of eleventh-century judicial records contain the descriptions of disputes settled in the king’s tribunal. The frequency and the regularity with which it
was held are not ascertained. As for places where it was usually held, for example,
22. DML, doc. no. 127 (1088, II, 5), 142 (1094, I-V); CDPI, doc. no. 60 (1099, III), 108 (1102, I, 27), 118
(1102), 119 (1102), 146 (1094-1104).
23. CDCH, doc. no. 24 (1064). In another donation charter dating from August 3 of 1061, a woman,
whose husband was killed, donated land property to King Ramiro I. Her motive of donation was for
judicial meeting (pro uno plecto) held in the presence of the king. This donation reminds us of iudicatum
stipulated in the Visigothic law, though it is, of course, doubtful that such an institutionalized judicial
fee was still retained in this period. CSJP, doc. no. 165 (1061, VIII, 3). As to iudicatum, see Leges Visigothorum...: II, 1. 26.
24. Davies, Wendy; Fouracre, Paul, eds. The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986: 4.
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we can cite the villages where disputed properties were situated or churches or
monasteries around there, castri where the king lodged and principal monasteries such as San Juan de la Peña where they regularly visited and accepted their
complaints, etc. Wherever it took place, a regular attendance was convoked there
throughout the eleventh century.
The litigants were usually summoned in the presence of the king and his barones,
magnates of the kingdom (coram rege domno…et de suos barones), and also judged by
law and their judgment (pro lege et iudicio de rege domno…et de suos barones, to which
the phrase et de suos iudices was sometimes added)25. It is unclear how prelates such
as bishops or abbots participated in judicial administration because they did not appear in these formulae and were rarely listed as regular attendants.
Barones, called seniores more generally, began to appear in the king’s tribunal of
Navarra and to be mentioned in the dating formula of documents from the second
half of the tenth century26. However, it is from the 1020s, under the reign of Sancho
III, the king of Navarra, that we are able to grasp their social status concretely. Carlos Laliena Corbera explains that a group of barones who possessed several castles
granted as honores by the king came to gain power in the process of the expansion
of the kingdom and the reorganization of the frontier defenses against al-Andalus,
while referring to this phenomenon as the ‘revolución silenciosa’27.
It is unquestionable that Laliena expresses here the concept of the ‘révolution
féodale’ accompanying the collapse of the public power and the formation of feudal
order in his mind. In the 1020s, however, we only count six barones belonging to
four families related to the king’s own and eight castles which they possessed in
the frontier28. It hardly changed after the independence of the kingdom of Aragón
in 1035. Moreover, while castles barones possessed increased drastically after the
Aragonese conquest began in 1080s, most of them were controlled by descendants
of the initial families almost exclusively29. The first thing we should not overlook
25. CSJP, doc. no. 73 (1039), 79 (1042), 95 (1047), 113 (1054), 174 (1035-1064); DSRII, doc. no. 85
(1076-1077).
26. Ubieto, Antonio. Documentos reales navarro-aragoneses hasta el año 1004. Zaragoza: Anubar, 1986: doc.
no. 50 (971), 51 (972), 54 (978), 59 (985), 64, 65 (988-989), 67 (991), 71 (992), 74 (996), 75 (997).
27. Laliena, Carlos. “Una revolución silenciosa. Trasformaciones de la aristocracia navarro-aragonesa
bajo Sancho el Mayor”. Aragón en la Edad Media, 10-11 (1993): 481-502; Laliena, Carlos. La formación del
Estado feudal...: 72-75.
28. Six barones of the 1020s were as follows: Jimeno Garcés whose grandfather was Ramiro Garcés regulus de Viguera, younger brother of King Sancho Garcés II, and who became titled aitan of Ramiro I, the
king of Aragón, later; besides him, brothers Fortún, Ariol and Lope Sánchez, Lope Iñíguez and Jimeno
Iñíguez. Eight castles they possessed were Atarés, Uncastillo, Ruesta, Sos, Boltaña, Cacabiello, Loarre
and Agüero.
29. In the second half of the eleventh century, a few new families appeared in the group of barones besides the early families: for example, in the 1080s, brothers Sancho and Pepino Aznárez, of which the
former possessed Senegüé and Perrarúa, the latter Alquezar and Aragüés del Puerto each other in a short
period. As to those families, adding the toponyms of both their native place and castles they possessed,
scribes used to write their names such as: senior Sancio Acenarez de Viescasa in Senebue. CDSAF, doc. no. 72
(1083, I, 11). However, it is only for several years that they could possess honores and their sons could
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is the fact that they continued to participate in the king’s tribunal throughout the
eleventh century.
Judges, iudices in Latin or alcaldes which derived from al-qādī, Islamic judges,
constantly appeared in our judicial documents. The above-mentioned formula
testifies that they participated in judgment passed by the king and his barones. The
alcalde himself rarely inquired into a case transferred from the king’s tribunal under
the name of the king30. However, it is unclear that they were experts in the Visigothic
Law who could preside over the tribunal and give decisions independent of the
royal authority. For example, when a dispute over San Juan’s pardina near Javierre
happened in 948 the two iudicantes Aragone who ordered witnesses to swear an oath
with the King of Navarra were his barones31. In the eleventh century, also, we can
merely find out alcalde in Aragone belonging to the group of barones32 or merino iudex
who must concurrently hold merinus33, except for examples of monacus et iudex who
seemed to be more familiar with the law than lay judges34.
How were decisions given by the king’s tribunal composed of the king, his barones
and judges titled seniores or merini? When all the attendants unanimously decided
to dismiss plaintiff’s claim in the tribunal of King Sancho Ramírez in 108535, we
don’t know what kind of law was applied on that occasion. The term lex included in
the above-mentioned formula often had the same meaning as iudicium. Moreover,
unlike scribes of Catalonia or León who explicitly cited provisions of the Visigothic
Law with the formula sicut lex Gothorum continet, the Aragonese scribes merely used
the phrase sicut est lege de terra and it is not ascertained what the details of lex de terra
were36.
Nevertheless, the king’s tribunal faithfully followed Visigothic procedures
throughout the eleventh century. A series of procedures, opened with a summons
never inherit them. See Ubieto, Agustín. Los “tenentes” en Aragón y Navarra en los siglos XI y XII. Valencia:
Anubar, 1973.
30. CSJP, doc. no. 73 (1039). In this judicial meeting, alcalde Sancho Alarico had three witnesses take an
oath and dismissed defendant’s claim.
31. CSJP, doc. no. 18 (948). As to pardina see: Ubieto, Antonio. “Las pardinas”. Aragón en la Edad Media,
7 (1987) : 27-37; Larrea, Juan José. “Moines et paysans: aux origines de la première croissance agraire
dans les Haut Aragon (IXe-Xe siècles)”. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 33 (1990): 219-239.
32. CDCH, doc. no. 22 (1062).
33. CDPI, doc. no. 14 (1094, X-XI).
34. CDPI, doc. no. 14 (1094, X-XI).
35. CDSR, doc. no. 80 (1085).
36. Serrano, Manuel. “Notas a un documento aragonés del año 958”. Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, VI (1928): 255 (958). Collins supposes that the citation of the Visigothic Law in Catalonia and León
does not mean that the cited law was practically applied but that the right procedures were followed
according to the law. Collins, Roger. “‘Sicut lex Gothorum continet’...: 494. As to the Catalan texts, see
Zimmermann, Michel. “L’usage du droit wisigothique en Catalogne du IXe au XIIe siècle: approches d’une
signification culturelle”. Mélanges de la Casa de Velazquez, IX (1973): 233-281. Recently, Jeffrey A. Bowman insists that Churches, resorting to count’s power and the expertise of judges-clerics, selectively and
strategically used rules culled from the Visigothic Law, the Frankish Law and the Canons. Bowman, Jeffrey Alan. Shifting Landmarks. Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2004: 35-55.
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to plaintiff and defendant, which the inquiry on the parties, the examination of
witnesses, the procedure of proof and the pronouncement of sentence succeeded
in turn, are hardly different from what was described in sixth-century formule of
sentence, except for the citation of the Visigothic Law37. It is documentary evidence
that was seen as the most trustworthy38. Oaths were also imposed if no one could
bring forward documentary evidence or its genuineness was doubted39. Judging
from the fact that the forgery of charters was found out in the king’s tribunal of
108840, documentary and oral evidence must have been complementary to each
other. Moreover, in 1076 and 1085, having inhabitants give testimony, the king and
all other attendants of the tribunal surveyed each boundary disputed on the spot;
this procedure derives from several provisions of the Visigothic Law, too41. Finally,
no example of the ordeal of hot iron, boiling water or duel adopted practically was
known in the eleventh century42.
Once they are adopted, one party inevitably loses his suit. Thus, when the tribunal intended to have the parties make an agreement, the procedure of proof
sometimes dared not to be followed43. However, the King’s tribunal usually passed
a clear-cut judgment except for disputes over tithe between the bishops of JacaHuesca and monasteries, as we shall see later. In fact, monasteries often gained their
own cases, which must be due to not their political and social power but the nature
of transmitted documents most of which they wrote and preserved.
On the other hand, it seems that the ‘criminal’ cases were usually settled in the
way of punishment on the accused by the king rather than agreement between
the parties on their own initiative. When the king granted his own lands to nobles
or Churches, his scribes sometimes specified in donation charters that they were
what he had confiscated for some crimes ex-proprietors had committed: murder,
37. Formulae Visigothicae...: no. 40.
38. CSJP, doc. no. 14 (928); CDSAF, doc. no. 18 (1035, X, 7); CDCH, doc. no. 56 (1093); DML, doc. no.
142 (1094, I-V); CDPI, doc. no. 14 (1094, VIII-XI), 60 (1099, III).
39. CSJP, doc. no. 14 (928), 73 (1039), 85 (1044), 106 (c. 1053), 174 (1035-1064); CDSAF, doc. no. 25
(1038-1049); Serrano, Manuel. “Notas a un documento”...: 255 (958). The law of King Chindasvint
prohibits swearing an oath except when the criminal prove his innocence. Leges Visigothorum...: II, 1. 25.
However, in both the Visigothic period and ninth and tenth-century León and Catalonia, it was often adopted as the way of proof in the ‘civil’ case. Collins, Roger. “‘Sicut lex Gothorum continet’”...: 494-496.
40. DML, doc. no. 127 (1088, II, 5).
41. DSRI, doc. no. 154 (1075-1076); CDSR, doc. no. 80 (1085). Before the year 1000: CSJP, doc. no. 7
(893), 12 (921, X, 1), 14 (928), 18 (948); Serrano, Manuel. “Notas a un documento...”: 255 (958). On the
settlement of boundary disputes in the Visigothic Law, see Leges Visigothorum...: X. 3. 1- 3. 5.
42. In the privileges King Sancho Ramírez granted to Cathedral of Jaca in March of 1079, trial by the
ordeal of hot iron was permitted to adopt against usurpers of its lands. CDCH, doc. no. 41 (1079, III).
However, all the same judicial privileges included in eleventh-century documents like San Juan’s own
are thought to have been falsified in the twelfth century. Ramos, José María. “La formación del dominio
y los privilegios del monasterio de San Juan entre 1035 y 1094”. Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español,
6 (1929): 33-39.
43. Serrano, Manuel. “Notas a un documento”...: 255 (958); CDCH, doc. nº. 56 (1093, VIII, 25).
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theft, adultery and the conversion to Islam44, as to which, except for the last, the
Visigothic Law stipulates that he who commits it shall deserve capital punishment
or whipping45. In his study of the judicial system in tenth-century Asturias-León,
José María Mínguez explains that the phenomenon that these severe punishments
gave way to the confiscation of land was due to a kind of agreement between kings
or counts who were eager to acquire lands whose value increased in the economic
growth and the criminals who wished to avoid the execution, which is no longer
distinguished from the ‘civil’ case, and, far from that, cannot be regarded as the
public justice because it was based on private agreement between them46. However,
taking the fact that only the king could act like that into consideration, it does not
mean the collapse of the public judicial system but mere modification of the form
of punishment.
*
As mentioned above, the king’s tribunal basically intended to pass a clear-cut
judgment except for disputes over tithe between the bishops of Jaca-Huesca and
monasteries, whose cause goes back to the ninth century. It was not until the
foundation of the bishopric at Jaca in 1076 and the unification of both bishoprics
of Jaca and Huesca conquered in 1096 that the bishops’ power was established.
Although the bishops of Aragón constantly appeared in ninth —and tenth— century
sources, they were bishops in name only and most of parish churches and their tithes
were possessed by monasteries. In the tribunal King Sancho Ramírez presided over
in 1093, exhibiting a donation charter dating from 922 by which the bishop Ferriolo
had donated all parish churches and their tithes in Echo valley, the monastery of
San Pedro de Siresa claimed its rights over them against Pedro, the bishop of Jaca.
The king, however, thought that this case would not be bonum contentionem and did
not accept that charter as proof; he had them make an agreement (conuenientia,
concordia), and then both parties divided up the revenue of tithes47.
Disputes of this kind became more serious in the twelfth century and were, if anything, particular ones due to the king’s ‘Europeanization’ policy. In the second half
of the eleventh century, while establishing the bishopric at Jaca and reorganizing its
diocese, the king who became feudatory to the Pope introduced Cluniac monastic
reform and had to protect monasteries’ vested rights48. The king, on the other hand,
44. Murder: CSJP, doc. no. 81 (1043); DSRI, doc. no. 7 (1073). Plunder of twelve cows by a shepherd:
Archivo Municipal de Huesca, R-1, letra visigótica (1048); adultery: CDPI, doc. no. 8 (1090); the conversion to Islam: CDCH, doc. no. 40 (1077).
45. As to punishments against murderer, see Leges Visigothorum...: VI. 5. 1- 5. 21; thief: III. 4. 3 et 4. 9;
adultery: VII. 2. 13 et 2. 14.
46. Mínguez, José María. “Justicia y poder en el marco de la feudalización de la sociedad leonesa”, La
gustizia nell’alto medioevo (secoli IX-XI). Settimane 44. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’ Alto Medievo,
1997: I, 530-546.
47. CDCH, doc. no. 56 (1093, VIII, 25). The donation charter dating from 922 which San Pedro monastery tried to present is copied in its own cartulary: CS, doc. no. 7 (922).
48. King Sancho Ramírez appointed his brother García the first bishop of Jaca for the purpose of keeping his influence over the bishopric, which undoubtedly went against the then movement of Gregrian
reform. However, expanding his episcopal power drastically, García was dismissed by the king around
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founded the monastery of Montearagón, a capella regis under his direct control, near
Huesca and reorganized old monasteries into its priories, which provided hostes and
supplied war expenditure in expanding warfare against Islam, while granting many
parish churches and their tithes to them49. Because the king’s policy would be denied whichever had precedence, there was no other way of settling such disputes
than dividing up their rights by agreements anyway.
In Aragón and Navarra, dispute settlements by compromise are grouped into two
types as follows: first, the king personally referred a dispute to arbitration after his
tribunal tried it and passed a clear-cut judgment; second, after the king’s tribunal
did the same, the king decided to transfer the case to the lower branches of the judicial system and it was arbitrated there.
In the former, the dispute around 1080 between Sancho, the abbot of San Juan
de la Peña, and Galindo Dacones, his maioral, is very interesting. Galindo got married
with the former abbot’s excusata and then was appointed his maioral in Lecueita.
However, he suddenly began to claim that nothing could be charged but cauallaria
after Sancho was installed as new abbot. Although accused in the king’s tribunal
and ordered to be San Juan’s mezquinus, serf, he did not accept this judgment and
forfeited all his tenures as a result. When Galindo begged the abbot for mercy later,
they reached a compromise in the presence of the king, and he was permitted
to possess his confiscated tenures again as long as he could fulfill cauallaria or a
substitute charge as he claimed first50. Similarly, in a dispute over terminus between
1083. The successor, Pedro, appointed to be new bishop by the cardinal and Frotard, the abbot of SaintPons de Thomières, caused many disputes because of trying to take churches belonging to monasteries
and lay lords into his own hands. Laliena, Carlos; Sénac, Philippe. Musulmans et chrétiens dans le Haut
Moyen Age: aux origines de la reconquête aragonaise. Paris: Minerve, 1991: 100-105. On the other hand, the
leader of Cluniac monastic reform in Aragón was the monastery of San Juan de la Peña whose cartulary
contained a lot of Papal and royal privileges. Nevertheless, most of judicial privileges are thought to
be falsified in the twelfth century when the monastery disputed with the bishop of Jaca-Huesca many
times. Ramos, José María. “La formación del dominio”…: 33-39. King Pedro, in his letter addressed to
Pope Urban II around 1095, reported that not only monasteries but also lay lords and knights who had
to throw themselves into the warfare against Islam were obliged to lose their own properties in disputes
with the bishop of Jaca-Huesca. CDPI, doc. no. 21 (1095).
49. In 1074, King Sancho Ramírez founded the monasteries of San Pedro and Santa María as capella regis
inside of the castles of Loarre and Alquézar respectively, and annexed the monastery of San Andrés de
Fanlo to the former. CDSAF, doc. no. 61 (1074, VI, 27). San Pedro de Siresa was reformed into capella
regis in 1082. CS, doc. no. 13 (1082, IX, 4). When the monastery was founded inside of the castle of
Montearagón near Huesca in 1093, three monasteries, Loarre, Fanlo and Siresa, were annexed to it.
Utrilla, Juan F. “La Zuda de Huesca y el monasterio de Montearagón”, Homenaje a don José María Lacarra
de Miguel en su jubilación del profesorado. Zaragoza: Anubar, 1977: I, 285-288; Esco, Carlos. El monasterio de
Montearagón en el siglo XIII. Huesca: Ayuntamiento de Huesca, 1987: 17-21. The royal privileges granted
to Montearagón in 1099 ordered that all its villains bear hostes by order of royal officers and the monastery itself supply two mules for conveyance in kings’ expedition, while all its own vested rights was
confirmed except for judicial privileges such as calumpina. CDPI, doc. no. 62 (1099, II).
50. DSRII, doc. no. 85 (1076-1085): “mortuo autem abbate domino Belasio et ceteris abbatibus qui post
eum fuerunt, fecit se contrario de Sancto Joanne, et dixit quod nullo servitio non debebat facere Sancti
Johanni pro illa sua radice de Lecueyta, nisi solumodo cauallaria, et proclamauit ad judicium abbas
dominus Sancius et prior dominus Galindo, simul cum illo, denante rege domino Sancio et suos barones
ad Sanctam Crucem; et pro iudicio de rege et de suos barones achalzauerunt illum pro suo mesuquino;
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inhabitants of Equíroz and the monastery of San Salvador de Leire in 1099, the
former begged the king for arbitration after losing the suit in the king’s tribunal, and
then they agreed to divide up the rights to use it in the presence of the king51.
The second type of dispute settlement testifies to the function of lower tribunals.
Before the year 1000, we find descriptions of tribunals that the count of Aragón and
the bishop of Pamplona presided over respectively by order of the king52. Moreover,
dispute settlements at judicials tribunals and barones’ one, where the transferred
cases from the king’s tribunal were settled alike, were also recorded in eleventhcentury documents53. Above all, baronial tribunal was often held when the king
decided to make the disputants reach compromise again after the king’s tribunal
delivered clear-cut judgment.
For instance, the dispute over tithes between the monastery of San Andrés de
Fanlo and two inhabitants of Avellada started at King Ramiro’s tribunal around
1046. These latter tried to prove their own right by oath, but were accused of perjury and lost the suit consequently. After that, however, in the tribunal which comprised senior Fortún Garcés who possessed Nocito, Jimeno, the abbot of San Urbez
de Nocito and several land lords of Grasa, the parties made a convenientia and divided tithe in half54. Moreover, in 1098, the inhabitants of Garde disputed over the
right to elect a priest of the village church with the monastery of San Salvador de
Leire and its priory, San Martín de Roncal. When the predecessor of King Pedro I
granted San Martín monastery to Leire, the inhabitants suddenly refused to accept
a priest elected by San Martín. Being inquired in King Pedro’s tribunal at Huesca,
they stated that it was because San Martín substituted the familiar Visigothic liturgy
for the Roman as soon as it became Leire’s priory. They were sentenced to accept a
priest elected by San Martín, adopt the Roman liturgy and pay a fine of 1000 solidi
to Leire. The King, however, ordered them to make bonam concordiam in the tribunal of senior Lope López possessing Ruesta and Roncal valley. As a result, the par-
et quia neguerat quod Sancto Johanni seruire non debebat, iudicauit rex vt tollerent ei quidquid habebat
in Lecueyta… et sic fecerunt et abstulerunt illi totum… Postea, uero, videns Galindo Dacones se malum
deuenisse, penitens venit ad pedes de illo abbate cum multis deprecatoribus, rogas vt sui misereretur et
reddere sibi quidquid abstulerat, et seruiret ei sicut seriuire debebat. Tandem abbas flexus precibus restituit ei omnia quae ei abstulerat sub hac conditione, vt possideret in vita sua et faceret suo seruitio Sancto
Johanni sicut debebat facere. Post obitum, vero, eius, filiis eius si voluerint seruire Sancto Johanne secundum quod abbati vel senioribus placuerit, habeant illas casas vel illas terras et… Si autem noluerint
filii eius seruire Sancto Joanni, haec haereditates ab integro sit Sancto Jaonnis. Facta est autem haec
conuentio in atrio Sancti Joannis, in praesentia domini reges Sancii”.
51. CDPI, doc. no. 60 (1099).
52. CSJP, doc. no. 14 (928), 18 (948); Serrano, Manuel. “Notas a un documento”...: 255 (958).
53. See note 29.
54. CDSAF, doc. no. 25 (1038-1049): “Et habuit pletum illo abbate domno Bancio pro illa decima denante
rege Ranimiro in Nocitu, et dederunt iurare ii vicinos de Avellana pro illa decima, unus Garcia Arioli et
alius Daccu Date, et non potuerunt iurare pro mentira; et venerunt ad convenientia in sancti Martini devante senior Fortunio Garcez qui tenebat Nocitu, et illo abbate domno Eximino de sancti Urbicii et senior
Lope Enneconis de Grassa et de suos filios et senior Garcia Lope de Grassa, et de devante totos vicinos de
Portiella et de Bentue et de Avellana: dederunt firmes illos Avellana pro illa decima... ad illo abbate. Et
dedit illo abbate dompno Bancio firmes ad illos de Avellana pro illa medietate de decima...”.
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Takashi Adachi
ties reached an agreement on various rights of tithe, the election of priests and the
mill, and so on, and omnes meliores homines of the village swore to keep fraternitates et
amorem et confirmationem with the monasteries55.
King’s tribunal usually intended to give a clear-cut decision as above. However,
when the king preferred to submit disputes to arbitration after that, he personally
had the parties compromise without calling his tribunal or barones’ tribunal to arbitrate disputes on behalf of the king’s own; which was indeed a strategy the NavarroAragonese judical system elaborated in order to readjust the relation between the
disputants, while flaunting the authority of the king’s tribunal that could pass a
coercive judgement at any time.
Nevertheless, although compromise was a way of reproducing friendly relations
between the litigants without defeating one side, there also must have been winner and loser in disputes settled by compromise. In the above-mentioned case of
1098, San Salvador de Leire and the inhabitants of Garde made a deal behind the
flowery words emphasizing their friendship excessively. The fine of 1000 solidi the
king’s tribunal imposed on the inhabitants was demanded to pay again when they
made a compromise in the barons’ tribunal. Although having petitioned the abbot
to exempt half of the fine successfully, they had to guarantee him of payment of
another half by nominating their warrantors56. Thus compromise had to be paid for
in this case.
If victory or defeat was merely concealed, the problem is how agreements could
be kept so that disputes would not recur. The following two cases tell us the complicated way of having the parties keep agreements:
Firstly, in the aforesaid dispute settled around 1046, two inhabitants of Avellada, who lost the suit in the king’s tribunal, made an agreement with San Andrés
monastery in the baronial tribunal held at the church of San Martín de Nocito. The
parties designated warrantors to each other so that nobody would break their agreement. Nevertheless, senior Fortún Garcés, the president of tribunal, ordered that
violators pay a fine of 60 solidi to San Martín church, and wine, meat and wheat to
all the inhabitants of Portiella, Bentué and Avellada attending there as witnesses57.
Remarkably, the baronial tribunal supported by the royal authority imposed a penalty relying on witnesses’ ‘consensus’.
Secondly, we cite an example of extra-judicial agreement between San Salvador
de Leire and Aznar Garcés in 1094. The origin of the affair is that in compensation
for his horse which died in Leire’s service, Aznar Garcés, who possessed its villa
Villatuerta, demanded another one and the exemption of angarias for four years
55. CDPI, doc. no. 43 (1098, I, 5). King’s tribunal also imposed a fine of 1000 solidi on inhabitants of Sieso
who unjustly elect a priest of the village church belonging to the monastery of Montearagón. CDPI, doc.
no. 62 (1099, III).
56. CDPI, doc. no. 43 (1098, I, 5): “Prefatus autem abbas Regimundus habebat super illos homines de
Garde calumniam mille solidorum per iudicium regis et rogaverunt eum propter quingentos solidos et
propter alios quingentos dederunt ei fideussores et fermes de vanetta”.
57. CDSAF, doc. no. 25 (1038-1049): “pro tali conveniencia: ut qui istum pletum voluerit disrumpere
pariet lx solidos ad sancti Martini et ad illos de Portiella, et de Avellana et de Bentue, nietro de vino et
carnero et formata de pane”; see note 54.
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85
which was to be discharged, in effect, by his dead horse. He claimed again and again
sheltering behind a land-possessing contract and only after the fourth negotiation
and agreement was this dispute settled as a result. Interestingly, in the third
agreement, the monastery ‘released him from a fine of 60 solidi which he had to
pay to the king’, that is, exempted him from a fine which was to be imposed if they
disputed in the king’s tribunal, by not accusing him58. This testifies that not only
could king’s tribunal pass a foreseeable judgment but its authority was strategically
used even in extra-judicial agreement.
As above, a penalty depending on witnesses’ ‘consensus’ was imposed in the
baronial tribunal held by order of the king, while the ‘authority’ of the king’s tribunal was used as the way of producing the legal force of private agreement. This
odd reversal of roles was caused by a strategy elaborated by the king’s tribunal. The
king’s tribunal indirectly participated in arbitration because it decided to transfer a
case to the lower tribunals. However, the fact was thoroughly concealed as the first
case tells us. Therefore, the purpose of its strategy was to show off the authority of
the king’s tribunal which could always pass a coercive judgment by concealing the
fact that it participated even in arbitration while meeting the needs of the NavarroAragonese society.
*
In conclusion, it is worthy of note that: 1) few judicial documents, which beneficiaries’ scribes tended to write in this period were preserved except for the cases
settled by agreement with which some land properties were transferred; 2) agreement itself was actually made in much less organized tribunals than that of the
king, which indirectly participated in arbitration. It is, therefore, natural that both
the authority and the level of organization of where the litigant parties reached
an agreement should seem to be far removed from those of the placitum as public
justice. However, it does not necessarily mean its absence but the diversification of
justice, only a part of which eleventh-century judicial documents let us see.
58. DML, doc. no. 142 (1094, I-V): “Postea fecit eos concordare senior Acenar Lupiz de Uillatorta, in tali
modo ut reddidisset ipsum triticum abbati, et amplius non requisisset supradictum cavallum nec angalias
suas neque supradictum uinum, nec aliquid de supradictus querelis, nec ipse nec uxor sua supradicta
nec aliquis in eternum... Similiter ipse abbas definiuit supradictas querelas, et absoluit eum prefatum
Acenarium de. LX. solidos quos debebat dare regi”.
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22/09/2008 12:23:55
DID FREDERICK BARBAROSSA HAVE
A MEDITERRANEAN POLICY?
Pierre Racine
Université Marc Bloch (Strasbourg ii)
France
Date of receipt: 29th of January, 2007
Abstract
In the course of his thirty-eight year reign, between 1152 and 1190, Frederick
Barbarossa made six expeditions to Italy, occupying him for fifteen years; he also
headed a Crusade to recover Christ’s Tomb from 1189 to 1190. Almost half of his
reign was thus taken up by affairs concerning the Mediterranean regions, to such an
extent that it is right to ask whether there was on his part a veritable Mediterranean
policy, centred above all around Italy. In an age when the peninsula continued to
enjoy its position at the heart of the Mediterranean basin, as it had at the time of
the Roman Empire, the question of the role played by this geographic area in the
thoughts and actions of Frederick Barbarossa, who tried to restore the Empire to
some of the splendour recreated in 962 by Otto I, has to be asked.
Key words
Mediterranean, Sicily, Italy, Germany, Politics.
Capitalia verba
Mare Nostrum, Sicilia, Italia, Germania, Politica.
87
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Pierre Racine
At the time of Frederick Barbarossa1, Italy was shared out between three large
dominant political authorities: the Kingdom of Italy in the North, in the centre, the
Patrimony of St. Peter, to the South the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, to which we
must add the republic of Venice, which freed itself from Byzantine sovereignty, and
some episcopal seigneuries in the North (Trento, l’Aquila)2. If the Normans with the
Hauteville dynasty liquidated Byzantine possession of Southern Italy, the Byzantine
Emperors, though weakened, were no less determined to regain a foothold in Italy
by putting pressure on Ancona, a town on the Adriatic.3 The Venetians established
a leading commercial position for themselves in the Byzantine Empire, particularly
in Constantinople itself, jealous, moreover, of their rival maritime cities in the Kingdom of Italy, Pisa and Genoa.4 The economic and political problems thus became intertwined with relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Italian peninsula.5
One town in Italy enjoyed enormous prestige from a political as well as a religious point of view; Rome, capital of Christianity, even if it seemed to have been deposed from the position it had held in the age of the Roman Empire.6 It was still the
city where Saint Peter, whom Christ had named as his successor at the head of the
Christian assembly, the Church, had been martyred and where Saint Paul, Apostle
to the Gentiles, who contributed to the expansion of Christianity outside the world
he was born into, the Jewish world, was also martyred.7 Since 1054, the Christian
world was torn apart, Christ’s humble tunic had been lacerated, and Constantinople
was rising up against Rome, its patriarch and the Emperor called for close coopera1. The reign of Frederick Barbarossa has given rise to a number of historiographic works. A report on
his deeds was recently drawn up during two large conferences held on the anniversary of his death in
1990, one in Rome, the minutes of which were published by the Bollettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per
il Medioevo, (abbreviated from now on as B.I.S.I.M.E.), 96 in 1990 under the title “Federico Barbarossa
e l’Italia nell’ottocentesimo centenario della sua morte”, edited by Isa Lori Sanfilippo, the other in
Reichenau, at the Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte in Constance, headed by Alfred Haverkamp, the
minutes of which appear in n. 40 of the Vorträge und Forschungen collection entitled: Friedrich Barbarossa.
Handlungsspielräume und Wirkungsweisen des staufischen Kaisers. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1992.
The two works allow us to take stock of current knowledge on the reign of Frederick Barbarossa. On the
history of the Empire between its birth in 962 and the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, see the work by
Cuvillier, Jean Pierre. L’Allemagne médiévale. Naissance d’un Etat (VIIIe-XIIIe siècles), 2 volumes. Paris: Payot,
1979: I, 127-327; Rapp, Francis. Le Saint Empire romain germanique. Paris: Tallandier, 2000: 41-160.
2. See the map in Galasso, Giuseppe, dir. Storia d’Italia. Turin: Utet, 1984: IV, 113, and the chapter by
Manselli, Raoul. “L’Impero, il papato ed il regno di Sicilia. I Comuni”, Storia d’Italia...: 93-115.
3. Ostrogorski, George. Histoire de l’Etat byzantin. Paris: Payot, 1971: chap. 5.
4. Gracco, Giorgio; Ortalli, Gherardo, dirs. Storia di Venezia. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana “Giovanni Treccani”, 1995: II.
5. The overlapping of economic and political problems, inevitable in relations between the West and the
Orient in the Middle Ages, is obvious in the works of Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire de la domination
normande en Italie, 2 volumes. Paris: Libraire A. Picard et fils, 1907. And above all Lamma, Paolo. Comneni
e Staufer. Ricerche sui rapporti fra Bisanzio e l’Occidente nel secolo XII. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il
Medioevo, 1955-1957: II (“Studi storici”, 14-18, 22-25).
6. Giardina, Andrea; Vauchez, André. Rome, L’idée et le mythe. Du Moyen Age à nos jours. Paris-Rome: Grand
Livre du Mois, 2000.
7. On Saint Peter, see the article by Félix Christ in vol. 13 of the Encyclopaedia Universalis: Christ, Félix.
“Saint Pierre”. Encyclopaedia Universalis. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France, 1968: 50-51, and on
Saint Paul Baslez, Marie-Françoise. Saint Paul. Paris: Fayard, 1991.
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89
tion at the very heart of religious questions, the basis for what has been called Caesaropapism.8 In the middle of the 12th Century, when Frederick Barbarossa took the
throne of the Western Empire, was the rupture between the oriental and western
Church definitive? In the middle of the 12th century, when Frederick Barbarossa
was stepping up to take the throne of the Western Empire, was it possible to find
a middle ground for these divergent points of view, particularly on problems that
weighed heavily on one world or the other?9
Just as Rome was the capital of Christianity, it was also the site of the imperial
coronation.10 It was in Rome that Charlemagne was crowned in 800,11 it was again
in Rome that the coronation of the reforming Emperor Otto I took place in 962.12
The reformed Empire was subject to election by the German Princes. The successful
candidate became King of the Romans, but accession to the throne could only be
made after coronation by the Pope. The negotiations between the German Princes
were often indispensable, as the rule of unanimity was provided so that the elected
candidate was proclaimed, before the coronation ceremony could take place.13 It is
however certain that the Pope had a decisive role to play in agreeing or not agreeing
to the pretender to the imperial throne. Between the Pope and the Emperor, since
the Investiture Controversy, there was an ideological dispute that centred on the
question of which one, of the spiritual authorities or the secular authorities, should
play the leading role as head of the Christian Church.14 Saint Bernard, in line with
Gregorian reform, developed the theory of the two swords, the sword of secular
authorities in the service of the spiritual authorities, and the popes, above all the
Cistercian Eugenius III, made particular reference to it.15 The popes, who had a
8. Dagron, Gilbert. Empereur et prêtre. Etude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
9. The rupture of 1054 had taken place while the papacy and the Byzantine Empire were allied against
the Normans who had embarked on the conquest of southern Italy. It had little impact in the West, all
the more so as the channel between the two worlds was still a long way off being crossed. Pope Urban II
had thought about coming to the rescue of the Byzantines, under attack by the seldjûqides Turks, around
the time that he decided to call the West to Crusade: Carile, Antonio. “Le relazioni tra l’Oriente bizantino
e l’Occidente cristiano”, Il concilio di Piacenza e la Crociate. Piacenza: Tip. Le. Co. Editore, 1996: 19-39. A
rift was emerging during the second and third Crusades, only to become definitive with the events of the
fourth Crusade in 1204: Brand, Charles M. Byzantium confronts the West (1180-1204). Cambridge (Mass.):
Harvard University Press, 1968.
10. Dupré Theiseder, Eugenio. L’idea imperiale di Roma nella tyradizione del Medioevo. Milan: Istituto per
gli studi di politica internazionale, 1942; Schramm, Percy Ernst. Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, 2 volumes.
Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1929.
11. Folz, Robert. Le couronnement impérial de Charlemagne (25 décembre 800). Paris: Folio Histoire, 1964.
12. Folz, Robert. La naissance du Saint Empire. Paris: Marabout, 1967 quote on page: 193 the text from the
Annales of Flodoard: The King Otto went peacefully to Rome; received courteously, he was elevated to the honour
of the Empire (year 962).
13. Mitteis, Heinrich. Die deutsche Königswahl. Brno: Rohrer, 1943; Schmidt, Ulrich. Königswahl und Thronfolge im 12. Jahrhundert. Cologne-Vienna: H.Böhlau, 1987 (Beihefte zu J.F. Böhmer; Regesta imperii, 7).
14. See the events of the conflict in the textbooks by Haverkamp, Alfred. Aufbruch und Gestaltung. Deutschland,
1056-1273. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1984 and by Keller, Hagen. Zwischen regionaler Begrenzung und universalem
Horizont. Deutschland in Imperium der Salier und Staufer, 1024 bis 1250. Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1990.
15. The theory of the two-edged sword is described by Saint Bernard, particularly in his work De
consideratione.
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Pierre Racine
significant interest in the continuation of the elective system for accession to the
Imperial throne, were those who in a way confirmed the election of the German
Princes, at the same time as, from a secular point of view, they wanted the emperors
in their service.
Since the time of Charlemagne, the popes made constant reference to a text that
came to justify their secular pretensions in the Italian peninsula, the Donation of
Constantine.16 They thus claimed the territories stretching from the Roman Campania to the ancient Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna. They also made a claim to
the inheritance of Countess Matilda of Canossa.17 Without a direct heir, she had at
first written a will in which she left her lands to the papacy, then subsequently to
the empire, hence a dispute as to who should inherit her lands which were scattered over Lombardy and Tuscany, between fiefdoms and the free lands, in large
part along the road, from the Brenner Pass, headed towards Tuscany and Rome via
Verona and Bologna. This road, the iter romanum, was fundamental to those seeking
the Imperial Crown in Rome.18
The iter romanum crossed the kingdom of Italy from north-east to south-west,
while another great road, the via francigena from the Great Saint Bernard Pass
to the valley of the Po through Aosta, Ivrea, Vercelli and Pavia led the western
pilgrims to the crossing point of the river at Piacenza and from the Apennines to
Monte Bardone (nowadays the Pass of Cisa) towards Tuscany and Rome.19 So, the
Kingdom of Italy, heir to the Kingdom of Lombardy and of the Carolingian regnum
Italiae, presented a particular face compared to highly feudalised Western Europe.20
Italy was a world of cities, which, through the setting up of city councils, had more
or less liberated themselves from central authority.21 When Frederick Barbarossa
arrived in Italy for the first time, accompanied by his uncle, Otto, Bishop of Freising,
the latter described his astonishment at the urban world, unheard of in German
countries.22 At a time when the Church managed to more or less to curb violence
within Western Christianity by the Christianisation of the knighting ceremony,23
the Bishop remarks his amazement at seeing the knight’s baudrier or shoulder
16. On this subject, see the article by Guyotjeannin, Olivier. “Donation de Constantin”. Dictionnaire historique de la papauté, Philippe Levillain, dir. Paris: Fayard, 1994: 581-583.
17. Overmann, Alfred. Gräfin Mathilde von Tuszien. Ihre Besitzungen. Geschichte Ihres Gutes von 1115-1230 und
Ihre Regesten. Innsbruck: Ver. Der Wagner’shen Universitäts-Buchlandlug, 1895. Italian translation: La
contessa Mathilde. Rome: Vallechi, 1990.
18. Schrod, Konrad. Reichsstrassen und Reichsverwaltung im Königreich Italiens. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer,
1931.
19. Stopani, Renato. Le vie di pellegrinaggio del Medioevo. Gli itinerari per Roma, Gerusalemme, Compostela.
Florence: Le Lettere, 1991: 13-20 and 79-88, 97-108; Racine, Pierre, dir. Piacenza ed i pellegrinaggi lungo la
via francigena. Piacenza: Tip.Le.Co, 1999.
20. Milza, Pierre. Histoire de l’Italie. Des origines à nos jours. Paris: Fayard, 2005: chap. V, VI.
21. Menant, François. L’Italie des Communes (1100-1350). Paris: Belin DL, 2005: chap. 2.
22. Freising, Otto de. “Gesta Friderici imperatoris”, ed. Franze-Josef Schmale. (Ausgewählte Quellen zur
Deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters, Freiherr von Stein Gedächtnisausgabe, 17). Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der
Wissenschaften, 1965: 306-313.
23. Duby, George. Qu’est-ce que la société féodale? Paris: Flammarion, 2002: 1071-1087.
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91
strap given to commoners, and stigmatizes the consuls as being disobedient to their
sovereign.24
The Kingdom of Italy therefore included a geographic region where an active
commercial and industrial life was developing, where nobles from the surrounding
countryside were establishing themselves in the towns and most often participated
directly in economic activity by investing their revenues from the land in commercial
companies.25 The best-known example, apart from the maritime towns (Genoa,
Pisa, Venice) is provided by Piacenza, where the cotton industry was booming
(manufacture of fustians). This had established relations with the port of Genoa,
where its merchants directly participated in Mediterranean trade, distributing
and selling industrial products from their town.26 The first merchant consuls from
Piacenza in Genoa came from noble families who participated directly in the
city council.27 These city organisations were rich in capital, in revenue from the
production and sale of industrial products and from the land that they owned. The
Po valley was without a doubt the richest region and the most evolved from this
point of view within the Kingdom of Italy, positioned as it was between the two
great ports of Genoa and Venice, while Pisa, facing particular difficulties due to the
rivalry between the two cities, tried hard to become the outlet for Tuscany.28 The
merchants of Lucca, for example, since the reign of Frederick Barbarossa preferred
to go through Genoa rather than Pisa because of territorial disputes between the
two cities, despite their proximity to each other.29
The territorial disputes between these cities regarding their dominance in the
immediate surrounding area, their interests, were numerous and incessant.30 The
city councils intended to dominate the roads that criss-crossed the area assuring the
24. “And so that they are not lacking in forces to oppress their neighbours, they do not think it inappropiate to allow young men from lower classes, even some artisans who work in contemptible manual
professions, to gird the knight’s baudrier…” text by Otto of Freising (see note 22) translated and quoted
by Menant, François. L’Italie des Communes…: 17.
25. Lopez, Roberto Sabatino. Naissance de l’Europe. Paris: Armand Colin, 1962 talked about “gentlemen
merchants” in northern Italian towns.
26. The first document concerning the presence, dated chronologically, of people from Piacenza in Genoa
involves the repayment of a loan made by the town council of Piacenza to the Genovese in 1147, while
at war in Spain against the Muslims in Almeria. The Genovese town council pays its debt of 8510
pounds 10 deniers in 1154 (without doubt including interest), in merchandise (cotton, spices, salt):
Codice diplomatico della Repubblica di Genova, 3 volumes. Rome: C. Imperiale di Sant’Angelo, 1936 (F.S.I.,
77-79-80): I, n. 254.
27. The two merchant consuls mentioned in the text discussed in the previous note are two capitanei,
Guglielmo Siccamilica and Riccardo Surdo.
28. Pisa barely managed to capture any of the traffic linked to its neighbouring lands in Tuscany: Herlihy, David. Pisa in the early Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968 (Italian trans. Pisa nel
Duecento).
29. Del Punta, Ignazio. Storia illustrata di Lucca. Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2006: 74; Del Punta, Ignazio. Mercanti
e banchieri lucchesi nel Duecento. Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2004: 23-25.
30. Racine, Pierre. “Ville et contado dans l’Italie communale: l’exemple de Plaisance”. Nuova Rivista Storica, 61 (1977): 273-290; Maire Vigueur, Jean Claude. “Les rapports ville-campagne dans l’Italie communale: pour une révision des problèmes”, La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’Etat moderne. Paris: CNRS,
1988: 21-34.
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indispensable supply of fresh foodstuffs and industrial products to the inhabitants.
Thus, Piacenza pitted itself against Pavia and Cremona, Bergamo against Brescia,
Milan against Como, and Pavia against Cremona. Of these towns, the one that
distinguished itself for its dynamism and industrial and commercial importance was
Milan.31 This large city, the most heavily populated of all of them, was severely
restricted as it had no access to the sea, either by river in the direction of Venice or
overland to Genoa, due to Pavia’s hostility. Thus, the Milanese sought to connect
themselves through the Oglio, a tributary of the Po, but this went through Cremona,
or by way of the river that crossed a canal connecting Olona, passing through the
city, or the Lambro, another tributary of the Po,32 but they met with hostility from
the people of Lodi whose town they razed to the ground in 1111.33 The inhabitants
of Lodi rebuilt their town and did not hesitate to complain about the Milanese at
the Diet of the King of Germany in Constance in 1153, at which time Frederick
was preparing his expedition to receive the Imperial crown.34 From then on, the
Sovereign found himself embroiled in Italian affairs, which fell to him to sort out,
and whose understanding of which, if anything, was very basic.
At the time of Frederick Barbarossa’s coronation, when he was preparing to go
to Rome to receive the Imperial crown, his attention was drawn by the problems
in Italy. Otto of Freising’s text says that most of his knowledge of Italian affairs was
cursory to say the least.35 The decline of the public authorities in Italy occured at a
time when the Emperors had great difficulty in making themselves heard in Germany as well as in Italy.36 In Germany the Welf-Staufen rivalry raged, above all
since the Salien dynasty had left an ally of the Welf family on the throne. Lothar
of Supplimburg, who had succeeded Frederick Barbarossa’s uncle, Conrad III, who
31. Grillo, Paolo. Milano nell’età comunale (1183-1276). Istituzioni, società, economia. Spoleto: Centro Italiano
di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001.
32. This canal, called Vettabia, is mentioned by the chronicler Landolfo: M. G. H., SS; VIII, 61.
33. Ripalta, Pietro da. Chronica piacentina, ed. Mario Fillià, Claudia Binelli. Piacenza: Tip.Le.Co, 1995:
67: Anno Domini MCXVI (undoubtedly an error by the chronicler) de mense maii, civitas Laude capta fuit a
Mediolanensibus.
34. The chronicler of Lodi, Otto Morena started his chronicle at the Diet of Constance: Das Geschichtswerk
des Otto Morena und seine Fortsetzer über die Taten Friedrichs in der Lombardei, ed. Ferdinand Güterbock. Berlin: Weidmann, 1930 (M. G. H., Scriptores rerum germanicarum, n.s. 7). On the Diet of Constance and the
treaty which is concluded there between the Pope and Frederick, see Engels, Odilo. “Zum Konstanzer
Vertrag von 1153”, Deus qui mutat tempora. Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters. Festschrift
A. Becker zu seinen fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag. Sigmaringen: J.Thorbecke, 1987: 235-258. The text of
the treaty has been published: M. G. H. “Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae”, Die Urkunden
Friedrich 1, ed. Heinrich Appelt. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1975: 1, n. 52. (Abbreviated to
DF1 from now on).
35. See note 22.
36. On this subject, see the textbooks mentioned in footnote 14. The struggle between the Welf and the
Staufen which erupted in Germany in 1125, on the extinction of the Salian dynasty, on the one hand
meant unrest in Germany and on the other, consequently the impossibility of the Emperors taking action in Italy.
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93
had become tangled up in German affairs and the Second Crusade and had not even
been able to go to Rome to receive the Imperial Crown.37
It is not however the Pope’s appeal that had been lacking. The coronation of
Lothar of Supplimburg had taken place under humiliating circumstances for the
Sovereign, obliged to pay homage to the Pope,38 and the scene had been immortalised by a fresco in the church of Saint John Lateran where an Emperor was represented on his knees before the Pope. Another German sovereign humiliated before
the Pope after the act of penitence in Canossa? Such a scene does not fail to touch
people. But the Pope himself felt far from ease in the capital where a town council
was in the process of forming,39 where the heretical rhetoric of Arnold of Brescia
flourished, denouncing the Church’s riches.40 Already Pope Eugenius III had contacted Conrad III to ask him not only to come and be crowned Emperor but also to
liberate the Roman Commune.41 Alas for the Pope, Conrad III was unable to make
the journey to Rome before his untimely death.
Following his election, Frederick found himself confronted by Italian affairs, and
obliged to answer the growing insistence of the Pope’s pleas to come and restore
order to Rome.42 It must also be observed that Frederick, in accordance with the
doctrine of his uncle Otto of Freising, had to reconcile Church and Empire in such
a way that the City of God dreamed of by Saint Augustine, could become a reality.43
For Otto of Freising, the Emperor had to be the protector of the Church and it came
down to him to impose peace within Christianity. Pope Eugene III, on failing to
summon Conrad III, could only hope that his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, elected
King of the Romans, would later receive the Imperial Crown in Rome.
So, this first voyage to Italy, which would expose the Emperor to the realities
of his Kingdom, had to have heavily influenced the evolution of his reign. For
Frederick, going to Italy first of all meant making a pact with the Pope who was in
the grip of the Roman population, with the support of the King of Sicily and the
Byzantine Emperor. This was the aim of the Peace of Constance in 1153, through
which it was agreed that to secure the Imperial crown, Frederick would promise not
to make any agreements with the people of Rome, no more than with the King of
37. Conrad III had definitely decided to go to Rome the day after his return from his Second Crusade,
but died before he could.
38. Haverkamp, Alfred. Aufbruch und Gestaltung: Deutstland, 1056-1273. Munich: C.H Beck, 1984: 130.
39. Maire Vigueur, Jean Claude. “Il Comune romano”, Roma medievale, André Vauchez, dir. Rome-Bari:
Laterza, 2001 (Storia di Roma, dall’Antichità ad oggi, t. 2): 117-158 shows that the revolt of the Romans
in 1143 only made them continue the movements which led the Roman population to set up a town
council in imitation of the town councils of northern Italy.
40. Frugoni, Arsenio. Arnaud de Brescia dans les sources du XIIe siècle. Paris: Les belles lettres, 1993 (French
translation of the Italian book edited in 1955).
41. See note 37.
42. See note 34 for the agreement between the Pope and the Emperor during the Diet of Constance.
43. Hashagen, Justus. Otto von Freising als Geschichtsphilosoph und Kirchenpolitiker. Leipzig: Akademia Verlag, 1900; Hofmeister, Adolf. “Studien über Otto von Freising. I – Der Bildungsgang Ottos von Freising”.
Neuues Archiv, 38 (1911): 101-114. On the popularity of Augustinianism in the Middle Ages, Arquilliere,
Henry-Xavier. L’augustinisme politique. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1955.
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Pierre Racine
Sicily.44 Similarly, he promised to make no concessions to the Byzantine Emperor
in Italy, and to expel him from the peninsula should he invade. The initial facts of
Frederick’s first voyage to Italy were contained in a pact that bound him to the Pope
in exchange for his coronation as King of the Romans, and against the King of Sicily
and the Byzantine Emperor, adversaries of the Pope.45
In the course of his first expedition to Italy, did Frederick, King of the Romans
and claimant to the Imperial Crown, have a veritable political programme, as many
historians have suggested?46 This programme would have relied on his domination
of Christianity, which would have submitted to him. Yet, if we trust what it is possible to gather from his education, he does not seem to have been educated in a way
fitting to someone taking up the reigns of Empire. He was first and foremost trained
to be a knight and to understand society of his time in the hierarchised form of the
feudal system.47 His uncle, a Cistercian monk who became Bishop, was able to give
him a worldview based on the way clerics of the Gregorian reform saw the world.48
Nothing had truly prepared Frederick to brave the Italian world that he came to
travel through and discover. There were too many differences between German
skies and Italian skies for the New Emperor to be able to understand what separated
the Kingdom of Germany from the Kingdom of Italy.
There was however a principle that the Emperor was never to abandon at any
point in his exploits, honor imperii.49 It was by combining this principle with a certain
pragmatic vision of reality that his reign would unfold. Frederick was fully aware
of how his government should be, his rank, and his place within Christian society.
All of his decisions were guided by the respect for a principle elevated to the rank
of the basis for all he did, and he was also encouraged by certain advisers, his main
one, undoubtedly, being Rainald von Dassel, his chancellor, Archbishop of Cologne,
who without a doubt, in the name of Imperial honour, pushed him to take serious
decisions with both fortunate and unfortunate consequences.50
It was clear from his remarks and from his uncle Otto of Freising’s account of
his observations, that arriving on Italian soil, he, the German aristocrat could not
but be surprised. It was up to him to restore order, re-establish royal authority; an
44. See note 34.
45. Clementi, Dione. “The relations between the Papacy, the Western Roman Empire and the Emergent
Kingdom of Sicily and South Italy, 1050-1156”. B.I.S.I.M.E, 80 (1960): 191-212.
46. This is the case for Pacaut, Marcel. Frédéric Barberousse. Paris: Fayard, 1990; and Münz, Peter. Frederick
Barbarossa. A study in medieval politics. London: Cornell University Press, 1969.
47. See the portrait of Frederick painted by Cardini, Franco. Il Barbarossa. Vita, trionfi e illusioni di Federico
I impératore. Milan: Mondadori, 1985: 71-87.
48. See note 43.
49. Görich, Knut. Die Ehre Friedrich Barbnarossas. Kommunikation, Konflikt und politisches Handeln im 12.
Jahrhundert. Darmstadt: WBG, 2001; Rassow, Peter. Honor imperii. Die neue Politik Friedrich Barbarossas.
Durch den Text des Konstanzer Vertrags ergänzte Neuausgabe. Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1961 (taken from a text
which appeared in 1941).
50. Grab, Walter. “Studien zur geistigen Welt Rainalds von Dassel”. Annalen des historischen Vereins für
den Niederrhein, 71 (1969): 10-36; Kluger, Helmut. “Friedrich Barbarossa und sein Ratgeber Rainald von
Dassel”. Geschichte in Köln, 44 (December 1998): 5-22.
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enormous task. His first two Italian expeditions, the first for his coronation, the
second occurring in the same way between 1158 and 1162, are significant for his
commitment to re-establish his authority. This is symbolised by the decisions that he
tried to impose in the course of two significant Diets, two large assemblies of German
aristocrats and representatives of the Italian nobility as well as the cities, held at the
gates of the city of Piacenza, on a large site between the river and its tributary the
Nure, upstream from the city, at Roncaglia.51 Constitutions of this sort were more
postulates than actual applicable decisions. During the first expedition, the first
constitutions formed a basis upon which the Sovereign built his administration and
above all involved the fiefdoms.52 A major issue tackled by the Kingdom of Italy’s
administration was the relationship between the sovereign and the cities. This was
not the case in 1158.53
During the first expedition in 1154, Frederick made contact with the Doctors
of Law from the Bologna schools, who were in the process of restoring the great
principles of Roman law to their rightful place of honour in public and private
law.54 The Roman laws, collected in the Justinianic Code and their mention in the
Pandects, affirmed royal sovereignty.55 In 1158, the Archbishop of Milan, presenting
the future imperial decisions in his opening speech at the Diet of Roncaglia, was able
to say, “What pleases the Prince, has the authority of the law”.56 The Emperor had
not had time in 1154, or did not feel himself sufficiently well informed to confront
the realities of the Kingdom of Italy. In 1158, he was assisted by four jurists from
Bologna whose mission it was to introduce him to the list of laws (regalia), which.
in accordance with Roman law. should be returned to him.57 Therefore, a very
long list of laws had to be drawn up, affirming his authority over the streets, rivers
and navigable waterways, in the ports, taxes and tolls, minting of coins and their
51. Nassalli Rocca, Emilio. “La dieta di Roncaglia del 1158 nei cronisti medievali italiani”. Archivio storico
per le provincie parmensi, s. 4, XII (1958): 51-78.
52. DF1, n. 90. Haverkamp, Alfred. Herrschaftsformen der Frühstaufer in reichsitalien, 2 volumes. Stuttgart:
Hiersemann, 1970-1971: I, 51, 344, 364, 366, 271, 373, 435.
53. DF1, n. 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242.
54. Stelzer, Winfried. “Zum Scholarenprivileg Friedrich Barbarossas (Authentica Habita)”. Deutsches Archiv, 34 (1978): 123-165. The author believes that the meeting between Frederick Barbarossa and the
jurists from Bologna was the origin of the Habita constitution, the first legal document recognising the
law schools of Bologna; he dates the constitution 1154 whereas the traditional date given by most historians is 1158.
55. Appelt, Heinrich. “Friedrich Barbarossa und das römische Recht”. Römische Historische Mitteilungen,
5 (1961-62): 18-34, reproduced in Woof, Günther, ed. Friedrich Barbarossa. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftl,
1975: 55-82 (Wege der Forschung, 300).
56. Quod principi pla cuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum unum imperium et potestatem concessit,
quoted by Cardini, Franco. Il Barbarossa…: 200 and note: 373.
57. During the Amalfi siege in 1138, the Pisans got their hands on the Pandects, a collection of decisions made by Roman jurists compiled by order of Justinien, and had brought the manuscript back Pisa,
where a rival law school to the one in Bologna was flourishing. Although Pisa was still a town loyal to its
Emperor, it was the Bologna jurists, more assertive than those in Pisa, that Frederick contacted: Cardini,
Franco. Il Barbarossa...: 201-204. The author believes that the decisions of 1158 are an Imperial response
to the Dictatus apae by Gregory VII.
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distribution, the collection of fines, the administration of vacant and confiscated
goods, removals, taxes for royal expeditions, the power to appoint magistrates,
the right to build palaces in the cities, ownership of the mines, revenues from the
fishermen’s catches and the salt works, the crime of lese majesty, the appropriation
of treasure from public and church lands.58
All these rights had in various ways been usurped by the city councils that had
purely and simply appropriated them, more often than not at the expense of the
bishops to whom the Ottonian sovereigns had granted them.59 The list having been
drawn up, the Emperor declared that he accepted that the royal prerogatives could
be exercised by those who were able to justify them by written text, if not, he demanded that they be returned. These laws were not only theoretical, but also had
an undeniable financial aspect, to the extent that a historian thought it credible
that an annual revenue on the order of 300,000 marks in silver, the equivalent of
about a tonne of silver, had to be given to the Emperor.60 In terms of politics, Frederick Barbarossa’s Italian policy from then on appeared to be not only theoretical in
nature, but also financial.61 This is how Frederick’s politics emerged, from the German’s he demanded men for his army and his expeditions to Italy, and from the Italians, particularly the city-dwellers, he asked them to provide him with the money
necessary for the treasury’s needs, none of which was meant for Germany.
The first Diet of Roncaglia had, in 1154, attempted to rebuild a feudal system,
which had been seriously neglected by the city councils. A new constitution in
1158 banned the alienation of fiefs, and the Sovereign reclaimed the granting of
public office, duchies, marquisates, and earldoms for himself.62 A vassal of a vassal
who offended the Lord would be deprived of his fiefdom. Frederick thought he had
thus restored order within the kingdom; on the one hand forcing the Communes to
restore usurped royal law, on the other hand restoring feudal society and his place
and rank within the kingdom’s society. Postulates, we have said, were the theoretical decisions behind the constitutions that were difficult to apply. They required the
Sovereign to have a sufficient army, an indisputable authority to bring the urban
organisations back into the fold, which, it was decided would not be allowed to
58. DF1, n. 237.
59. The Ottonians had delivered diplomas to the Bishops of Lombardy and Emilia: Dupré Theseider,
Eugenio. “Vescovi e città nell’Italia precomunale”, Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel Medioevo (secoli IX-XIII).
Padua: Antenore, 1964: 55-109; Fumagalli, Vito. “Il potere civile dei vescovi al tempo di Ottone I”, I
poteri temporali des vescovi in Italia e in Gremania nel Medioevo, Carlo Guido Mor, Heinrich Schmidinger, dirs.
Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979: 77-86; Keller, Hagen. “Zur Struktur der Königsherrschaft im karolingischen
und nachkarolingischen Italien”. Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 47
(1967): 123-223.
60. Cardini, Franco. Il Barbarossa…: 206.
61. The financial aspect of Frederck Barbarossa’s politics was highlighted by Haverkamp, Alfred.
Herrschafsformen… (see note 52) and Brulh, Carlrichard. Fodrum, gistum; Servitium regis. Studien zu den
Wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Königstums im Frankenreich und in des nachfrankischen Nachfolgestaaten
Deutschalan, Frankreich und Italien vom 6. Bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts, 2 volumes. Cologne-Vienna:
Böhlau Verlag, 1968 (Kölner Historische Abhandlungen,14).
62. DF1, n. 242.
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continue, as the example of Milan shows, which had to bow to the Imperial force
twice, in 1158 and 1162.63
The Italian peninsula showed itself to be a veritable hornets’ nest for the Emperor.
His imperial honour was satisfied by the Constitution of Roncaglia and above all
the affirmation of his Sovereign rights as too by his success in tackling Milan. The
Italian communes seemed to admit defeat after the razing of Milan in 1162, but
there remained for the Emperor the Roman problem. The agreement signed for
the Imperial coronation in 1153 had originally worked well, and had at the very
least enabled Frederick’s imperial coronation. Frederick had agreed to consent to
no arrangements with the Sicilian sovereign and the Byzantine Emperor in Italy.
However, the Pope, dissatisfied that Frederick was not more firmly committed to reestablishing his power in Rome following his coronation, and aware of the danger
that he as an Emperor could possibly be confronted with, decided to negotiate
with the Sicilian sovereign, William I, successor to the Kingdom’s founder, Roger
II. He therefore signed the Treaty of Benevento in 1156. The Pact of Constance
was shattered.64 The agreement between the Pope and the Emperor was unable
to last after the incident at the Diet of Besançon in 1157. The Pope conceded that
unfortunate translation of the term beneficium as “fiefdom”, instead of the desired
“Empire” consciously or unconsciously by Rainald von Dassel, had made the
emperor seem like a vassal.65 Cardinal Rolando Bandinelli, papal legate, then made
his pronouncement against Rainald. The conditions of Frederick’s Italian policy
were to be profoundly transformed with the election Rolando, who took the name
Alexander III, to the papal throne.66 His rival, the antipope Victor IV, turned to
the Emperor, who acknowledged him as the only legitimate Pope, and Frederick
intended to impose him on Christianity by installing him in Rome, where, moreover,
the unrest caused by a population dissatisfied by the papal administration continued
to rage.67
The situation that emerged from the papal schism led Alexander III to move closer to
the King of Sicily and the Byzantine Emperor, who because of his Italian policy relied
on the Adriatic port of Ancona.68 Certainly since 1162 and the terrible punishment
63. The defeat is particularly highlighted by the chronicler Otto and Acerbo Morena in their chronicle
(see note 34).
64. M. G. H. Legum sectio IV, Cons itutiones et acta pubblica, ed. Lothar Wieland. Hannover: Hahn, 1893: 588;
Acta sicula: Pactum Beneventanum inter Hadrianum IV et Wilhelmum I regem; Houben, Hubert, “Barbarossa
und die Normannen. Traditionelle Züge und neue Prospektiven imperialer Suditalienpolitik”, Friedrich
Barbarossa. Ahndlungsspielräume…: 112. On the events leading up to the Treaty of Bénévent in June 1156,
see Maccarone, Michele. Papato e Impero. Dalla elezione di Federico 1 alla morte di Adriano IV (1152-1159).
Rome: Lateranum, 1959; Deer, Josef. Papsttum und Normannen. Untersuchungen zu lehnrechtlichen und
kirschpolitischen Beziehungen. Cologne-Vienna: Böhlau, 1972: 247-253.
65. On the Besançon incident, Heinemeyer, Walter. “Beneficium” non feudum sed bonum factum. Der
Streit auf den Reichstag zu Besançon, 1157”. Archiv für Diplomatik, 15 (1969): 155-236.
66. On the figure Alexander III, see Pacaut, Marcel. Alexandre III. Etude sur la conception du pouvoir pontifical
dans sa pensée et son œuvre. Paris: Vrin, 1956; and Baldwin, Marshall. Alexander III and the twelth Century.
New York: The Seabury Press, 1969.
67. On Roman unrest, see note 39.
68. Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire… : II, 301; Lamma, Paolo, Comneni… : I, 109-115.
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Pierre Racine
inflicted on the Milanese, the Lombard Communes under the yoke of the podestà
regime that the Emperor imposed on them.69 When Frederick Barbarossa tried to
establish his pope in Rome in 1167, he was able to go through Lombardy without
encountering any serious resistance, despite the muffled discontent of the population
faced with the arrogance of the podestas.70 Nonetheless, he avoided passing through
the eastern part of the Paduan plain where an association of hostile towns had grown
up under Verona’s lead.71 Honor imperii gave him the power to make himself the
master of Rome and to install his pope, while the candidate elected by the majority
of the Cardinals, Alexander III, had had to leave the capital of the Christian world to
place himself, at first, under the protection of the King of Sicily, then subsequently,
the King of France.72 Frederick had not been able to convince Louis VII and his
rival Henry II Plantagenet to acknowledge Victor IV or his successor following the
failure of the negotiations at Saint Jean de Losne.73 Frederick successfully reaching
Rome, was able to install his pope, but the weather turned against him and led to the
outbreak of an epidemic, very probably gastroenteritis, which decimated his army.74
The Lombard towns, on hearing news of the disarray of the Imperial army, founded
the Lombard League, which united with that of Verona.75 Great rivals of Milan,
such as Cremona, called on their allies to participate in rebuilding the city, thanks to
grants that the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnena, granted them. Honor imperii
was scorned, on the one hand by the difficult conditions in which the Emperor
69. The day after the sacking of Milan, Frederick Barbarossa, on the advice of Rainald von Dassel, appointed podestats at the head of the Lomabardian cities: Ludwig, Christoph. Untersuchungen über die
frühesten “Podestates” italienischer Städte. Vienna: Universität Wien, 1973.
70. Güterbock, Ferdinando. “Alla vigilia della lega lombarda. Il dispotismo dei vicari imperiali a Piacenza”. Archivio storico italiano, 95/1 (1937): 188-217 and 95/2: 64-77, 181-192. The article was the subject
of another publication in Florence in 1938.
71. Our knowledge of the League of Verona is unfortunately weak, limited to the Liber pontificalis, 3
volumes, ed. Louis Duchesne. Paris-Rome: E. de Boccard, 1955: 411: pro importabilibus malis Veneti cum
Veronensibus, Paduanis, Vicentinis et cum tota sibi adiacente Marchia occulte se convenerrunt et super tantis oppressionibus diutius conferentes, tandem pariter iuraverunt quod salvo impérii antiquo iure nihil amplius facerent
predicto imperatori nisi quod ab antiquis antecessoribus, Carolo uidelicet atque aliis orthodoxis imperatoribus constat
exhibitum. On the League of Verona, see Fasoli, Gina. “La Lega lombarda. Antecedenti, formazione, struttura”, Probleme des 12. Jahrhunderts. Constance-Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1968: 151 (Vorträge und
Forschungen, 12); Oppl, Ferdinand. Stadt und Reich im 12. Jahrhundert, 1125-1190. Cologne-Vienna-Graz:
Universität Wien, 1986: 360 (Padua): 469-470. (Verona).
72. The King of Italy let Alexander III have four galleys to enable him to win Narbonne then the Kingdom of
France where the King, followed by his English counterpart had taken his side: Liber Pontificalis...: II, 404.
73. Schmale, Franz-Josef. “Friedrich 1 und Ludwig VII. In Sommer des Jahres 1162”. Zeitschrift für
bayerische Landesgeschichte, 31 (1968): Beck, 315-368; Schuster, Bern. “Das Treffen von Saint Jean de
Losne im Widerstreit der Meinungen. Zur Freiheit der Geschichtsschreibung im 12. Jahrhundert”.
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 43 (1995) 211-245.
74. Herde, Peter. “Die Katastrophe vor Rom im August 1167. Eine historische epidemiologische Studie
zum vierten Italienzug Friedrichs 1 Barbarossa”, Sitzungsberichte der wissenschaftlichen Geselschaft qan der
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt/main. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991: 139-166.
75. Fasoli, Gina. “Federico Barbarossa e le città lombarde”, Scritti di storia medievale, Francesca Bocchi,
Antonio Carile, Antonio-Ivan Pini, eds. Bologna: La fotocromo emiliana, 1974: 229-255; Vismara, Giulio.
“Struttura ed istituzioni della Lega lombarda”, Popolo e Stato in Italia nell’età di Federico Barbarossa. Alessandria e la Lega lombarda. Turin: Deputazione di storia patria, 1970: 291-332.
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had to leave Italian soil to take refuge in the Kingdom of Burgundy, on the other
hand by the creation of a town whose name sounded like an insult to the Emperor,
Alexandria, named after his great enemy Alexander III, and elevated to the rank of
diocese some years after it was founded.76
With this front formed by Pope Alexander III, with Manuel Comnenus who
returned to Italian soil through the port of Ancona, the King of Sicily, and the Lombard
League, Frederick Barbarossa’s authority in Italy was seriously undermined. It is well
known that the Emperor, even after his defeat at Legnano in 1176, succeeded after
a fashion to get himself out of the tight corner that he had got himself into.77 It is
nonetheless true that the circumstances had changed. Manuel Comnenus had been
defeated by the Turks at Myriokephalon.78 And Alexander III, without abandoning
the Lombard alliance, made up with the Emperor in Venice in 1177.79 Honor imperii
was in part salvaged, the Emperor had avoided being humiliated before the Pope in
Venice, as Lothar III had been previously, and his excommunication was revoked.
The six-year truce, agreed to by the Lombard League, which the communes had
broken loose from, who, like Pavia and Cremona, no longer supported Milanese
imperialism, was signed in 1183. The Emperor, at the Peace of Constance, succeeded in
safeguarding his honour but had to acknowledge the autonomy of the communes,80
to be called from that point on city-states,81 though still under theoretical imperial
76. Pistarino, Geo. “Alessandria nel mondo dei Comuni”. Studi Medievali, s. 3, 11 (1970): 1-101; Pistarino,
Geo. “Alessandria de tribus locis”, Cultura e società nell’Italia medievale. Studi per Paolo Brezzi. Rome: Istituto
Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo,1998: II, 697-715.
77. On the Battle of Legnano, which made a big impact in the Italian sphere, see Martini, Giovanni. “La
battaglia di Legnano: la realtà e il mito”. Nuova Antologia, 111 (1976): 357-371.
78. Lamma, Pietro. Comneni…: II, 281: il disastro di Myriokephalon è veramente più grave, certo più pesante di
Legnano per Barbarossa.
79. Brezzi, Paolo. “La pace di Venezia del 1177 e le relazioni tra la repubblica e l’impero”, Venezia dalla
prima Crociata alla conquista di Costantinopoli del 1204. Florence: Sansoni editore, 1960: 49-70; Schmale,
Franz-Josef. Der Friede von Venedig. Bochum: 1981; Althoff, Gerd. “Friedrich Barbarossa als Schauspieler?
Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Friedens von Venedig (1177)”, Chevaliers errants, demoiselles et l’autre.
Festschrift für Xenia von Etzdorff, Trude Ehlert, dir. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1998: 3-20; Laudage,
Johanne. “Gewinner und Verlierer des Friedens von Venedig”, Stauferreich im Wandel. Ordnungsverstellungen und Politik vor und nach Venedig, Stephan Weinfurter, dir. Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2002:
1107-1130.
80. On the Peace of Constance, see the volume of minutes from the scientific conference that was held
to commemorate the event: La pace di Costanza. Un difficile equilibrio di poteri fra società italiana ed Impero.
Bologna: Studia testi di storia medievale, 1984. See the text of the agreement in Il Registrum del Comune di Piacenza, 5 volumes, Ettore Falconi, Roberta Peveri, eds. Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1984-1997: I, n. 163
with an introduction and commentary by E. Falconi. The same author has contributed an important
study on documents linked to this text: “La documentazione della pace di Costanza”, Studi sulla pace di
Costanza. Milan: Deputazione di storia patria per le province parmensi, 1984: 21-104; Haverkamp, Alfred. “Der Konstanzer Friede zwischen Kaiser und Lombardenbund”, Komunale Bündnisse Oberitaliens und
Oberdeutschland im Vergleich. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1987: 11-44 (Vorträge und Forschungen, 33).
This latter author offered a new interpretation of the event and the circumstances surrounding it. On the
consequences of the Peace of Constance in Italian History, Racine, Pierre. “La paix de Constance dans
l’histoire italienne: l’autonomie des Communes lombardes”. Studi sulla pace...: 223-248.
81. Delumeau, Jean Pierre. “Communes, consulats, et la city republic”, Mondes de l’Ouest et villes du monde.
Regards sur les sociétés médiévales. Mélanges en l’honneur de A. Chédeville, Catherine Laurent, Bernat Merdri-
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protection because the consuls received their investiture from the Emperor or his
representative and an imperial court continued to judge cases that were worth more
than 25 Imperial pounds. The city of Alexandria was founded again by the Emperor
and given the name Caesarea.82 Imperial politics led to the fragmentation of the
Kingdom of Italy into city-states and the Constitutions of Roncaglia, which were
only postulates to justify royal sovereignty, and could only be applied with great
difficulty.
Illusions within disillusion, such was the evolution of Frederick Barbarossa’s
Italian Policy between 1154 and 1183.83 The sovereign, a German aristocrat, did
not understand the essence of the urban bodies that he had to confront. After the
initial euphoria of the years 1158-1166 came the period of the Legnano disaster
and the Emperor had to demean himself, stooping to negotiate with his adversaries
from the Lombard League. All that Frederick Barbarossa had done in Italy had at
first been oriented towards satisfying honor imperii, it did not constitute a veritable
Mediterranean policy. The Emperor was first and foremost interested in assuring
his domination in the Kingdom of Italy as he was in affirming before the pope his
universal secular power. He intended, all the more so in this last case, to allege in
view of the Byzantine Emperor that he was the only true heir to the Roman Empire,
and Rainald von Dassel saw the French and English sovereigns as kinglets only
(reguli).84
That is not to say however that a certain type of Mediterranean policy did not enter
into his relations with the Sicilian sovereigns, who were being called on to claim the
Byzantine heritage and demonstrate their pretensions to the Byzantine throne.85
They were certainly vassals of the pope, but proclaimed themselves nonetheless the
protectors of a Lord who had great difficulties within his administration in Rome
and his territories of the Patrimony of Saint Peter.86 Frederick Barbarossa must have
been aware of the position of the Sicilian Kings in relation to his Italian policy. On
several occasions, he wanted to invade the kingdom of Sicily. He had long viewed
the King of Sicily to be a usurper, even a tyrant.87 He had believed that he could
make the most of the revolt of the Sicilian barons, linked to the murder of Maio de
gnac, Daniel Pichot, eds. Rennes: Presses universaitaires de Rennes, 1998: 491-509.
82. It is the name given to the town in the Peace of Constance (see note 80).
83. Engels, Odilo. Die Staufer. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 19987 observes on page 75 that the Roman catastrophe of 1167 was the reign’s pivotal moment: (die wohl folgenreichste Wende in der Politik Friedrich Barbarossas). It led to a progressive reorientation of the Emperor’s policy on Southern Italy: Lamma, Paolo.
Comneni…: I, 283.
84. This is how he treated these sovereigns during the meeting with Saint Jean de Losne (see note 73).
85. Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire… does not fail to highlight this aspect, even before the establishment
of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.
86. These four Sicilian galleys which carried Pope Alexander III, in hiding from the lands of the Kingdom
of Sicily, to France: Terracinum perrexit, ibique invenit quattuor galeas egis Sicilie optime preparatas, quas illuc
ad eius servitium destinaverat: Boso. “Vita Alexandri”, Liber pontificalis, ed. Louis Duchesne. Paris: Boccard,
1955: II, 404 (note 72). Chalandon, Ferdinand. Histoire…: II, 294.
87. Freising, Otto de. “Gesta Friderici...”, II, 11: 300: pro Guilelmo siculo, qui patre suo Rogerio noviter defuncto
successerat, utriusque imperii invasore…
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Bari for invading the kingdom in 1160, moreover with the full support of Manuel
Comnenus.88 But launching an expedition against the kingdom required the
support of a fleet that the Emperor did not have. Also in 1162, he had negotiated
with Pisa as he had with Genoa, by offering them very significant trade privileges
in the case of victory.89 The Italian cities had agreed to provide the Emperor with
contingents for the invasion of the Kingdom (Brescia, Piacenza, Cremona, Ravenna
and Lucca).90 The expedition could not take place as Frederick was called to the
Kingdom of Burgundy to negotiate with the King of France at Saint Jean de Losne.
The expedition of 1167 was not only destined to occupy Rome, but to continue as
far as the Kingdom of Sicily, as the chronicles of Romuald of Salerno and the Annals
of Pisa by Bernardo Maragone say.91 The catastrophe that Frederick’s army suffered
in 1167 put an end to any attempts to invade Sicily.
The politics of the Emperor towards the King of Sicily gradually changed in the
1170s. Already the chancellor, Christian de Mainz, had been persuaded to negotiate
with the Sicilian King in 1173. When the possibility of a marriage between a daughter
of the Byzantine Emperor and the Emperor’s eldest son arose, the Emperor declared
that he was ready to sign a permanent peace treaty with the Sicilian sovereign.
The pope standing in the way of the prospective marriage would not agree to it,
and the attempted rapprochement was aborted. With the Peace of Venice, the
rapprochement between the Emperor and the Sicilian sovereign92 was confirmed.
From then on, the wheels of a prospective marriage of Henry to a Sicilian princess
were put in motion.
The last expedition by Frederick to Italy in 1184, which clashed with the Pope’s
determined opposition to acknowledge the hereditary nature of the Imperial Crown
in the Staufen family,93 nonetheless resulted in what may seem like a coup de théâtre
88. Freising, Otto de. “Gesta Friderici...”, IV, 84: 704-706. Lamma, Paolo. Comneni…: II, 56-57.
89. DF1: II, n. 356. Abufalia, David. The Two Italies. Economics relations between the Norman Kingdom of
Sicily and the Northern Communes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977 (Cambridge Studies in
Medieval Life and Thought, s. 3, vol. 9). Codice diplomatico della repubblica di Genova…: I, n. 279, 280, 282;
Pistarino, Geo. “Commercio e communicazioni tra Genova e il Regno normanno-svevo all’epoca dei due
Guglielmi”, Potere, società e popolo nell’età dei due Guglielmi (Atti delle quarte giornate normanno-sveve). Bari:
Centro di Studi Normanno-Svevi, 1981: 233-236.
90. M. G. H., SS rer. germ., Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. Georg Waitz, 1880: 112: Feria secunda Paschae Pisani fidelitatem imperatori iuraverunt et expeditionem ei facere promiserunt in Apuliam, in Calabriam, in Siciliam,
in Sardiniam, in Corsicam et ersus Costantinopolim… Feria tertia Brixienses similia imperatori iuraverunt. DF1, n.
362, n. 369, 372, 375.
91. Salernitani, Romualdi. Chronicon, ed. Carlo Alberto Garufi. Bolonia, 19352 : Rerum Italicorum Scriptores Nuova Edizione: VII/1: 255. Maragone Bernardo. Annales Pisani, ed. Michele Lupo Gentile. Bolonia,
1936 : Rerum Italicorum Scriptores Nuova Edizione: IV/2: 41.
92. Salernitani, Romualdi. Chronicon… Interea praedictus cancellarius ex mandato imperatoris nuntio ad Willelmum Sicilie regem transmisit suadens et postulans, ut, ipse, imperatoris in uxorem accepta, cum eo pacem perpetuem
faceret et ipsi se amivaliter couniret.
93. If there was a change in Frederick Barbarossa’s policy regarding the Kingdom of Sicily, it should be
pointed out that the King of Sicily, William II, had come the day after the Peace of Venice, wanting to
play a role in protecting Christians in the Holy Land who were under pressure from the Turkish advance
and, from that time on, turning his back on the Byzantine alliance: Houben, Hubert. “Barbarossa und
die Normannen”, Friedrich Barbarossa. Handlungs spielräume…: 123-127. On the marriage of Henry and
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Pierre Racine
with the engagement of Frederick’s son Henry to Constance, daughter of the late
Roger II of Sicily, aunt of William II, announced in Augsburg in October 1184. Was
the pope surprised? He nevertheless allowed the marriage to take place, believing
that it presented no danger to his territories. Are we to believe that this was a
Machiavellian calculation on Frederick Barbarossa’s part, who would thus have
been able to make his son heir to the Sicilian throne? This would without a doubt
be a misunderstanding, as William II, who had married an English princess about 10
years his junior, was in the perfect position to produce an heir. It was nonetheless
true that after the marriage, the Sicilian monarch had to name his aunt as heir
in case no children were produced from his union with Joan of England.94 It was
nonetheless Frederick Barbarossa’s masterstroke that enabled him to eventually
foresee Southern Italy’s unification with the Empire, a goal pursued, alas in vain,
by Otto II and that no Emperor had been able to attain. The marriage allowed the
Emperor to establish a friendship with the Sicilian royal family, and therefore gain
an ally likely to put pressure on the pope. It was the reversal of Frederick’s policies
during his expeditions to Italy, that at least until the 1170s had been met with
hostility from the King of Sicily.
Did Frederick also have the Crusades in mind when he made an alliance with
the King of Sicily through the marriage of his son Henry? In 1184, Pope Lucius
III had admittedly called on Christians to concern themselves with the difficult
situation of the eastern Latin states confronted by the advance of Saladin. But
between the pope and the emperor, it does not seem that the question of a new
expedition to save the Holy Land was discussed. The disaster of Hattin in 1187,
then the loss of Jerusalem profoundly affected the Christian West.95 The popes
once more called Western Christians to reconquer Jerusalem, which Saladin had
just taken. Frederick put himself forward to lead the new Crusade. He had resolved
the affair in Germany of Henry the Lion, his cousin, who had despoiled his duchies
in Saxony and Bavaria,96 and the Peace of Constance had ruled in favour of his
interests in Italian affairs.97 Frederick, after meticulous planning of the military
operation, finally decided to take the overland route, despite the offer made to
Constance: Baaken, Gerhard. “Unio regni ad imperium. Die Verhandlungen von Verona 1184 an die
Eheabredung zwischen König Heinrich VI und Konstanze von Sizilien”. Quellen und Forschungen aus
italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 52 (1972): 219-297; Wolter, Heinz. “Die Verlobung Heinrichs VI
mit Konstanze von Sizilien im Jahre 1184”. Historisches Jahrbuch, 105 (1995): 163-182.
94. M. G. H. SS, t. 19: Annales casinenses: 314; San Germano Richard de, Chronica, ed. Carlo Alberto Garufi
Bolonia, 19372: Rerum Italicorum Scriptores Nuova Edizione: VII/2: 6, quo etiam procurate factum est, ut
ad regis ipsius mandatum omnes regni comites sacramentum praestiterint, quod si regem ipsum absque liberis mori
contingeret, a modo de facto regis tamquam fideles ipsi sue amite tenerentur dicto regi Alemannie viro eius.
95. On the repercussions of the Battle of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem, see Richard, Jean. Histoire des
Croisades. Paris: editions Fayard, 1996: 228-229.
96. Heinemeyer, Karl. “Der Prozess Heinrichs des Löwen”. Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte, 117 (1981):
61-71; Althoff, Gerd. “Die Historiographie bewältigt. Der Sturz Heinrichs des Löwen in der Darstellung
Arnolds von Lubeck”, Die Welfen und ihr Barunschweiger hof im hohen Mittelalter, Bernel Schneidmüller ed.
Wiesbaden: Jarhundert, 1995: 163-182.
97. See note 80.
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103
him by the King of Sicily to give him a fleet to get to the Holy Land from Southern
Italy.98 His army’s march through the Danube valley, where they took the same
route that he had taken at his uncle’s side for the Second Crusade, turned out to be
very difficult. Despite the agreements made with the Byzantine Emperor, pillagers
constantly hounded the army of crusaders, attacking above all their supply lines.
Anti-Byzantine feeling was developing within his army’s ranks to the point that
the Byzantines thought an assault on their capital by the Crusaders was possible.
Did Frederick Barbarossa himself think about a similar attack and even of taking
the place of the Byzantine Emperor? No document, no account by any chronicler
supports such a hypothesis for these days, as the emperor found himself nearing
the walls of Constantinople. It is, however, certain that between the two emperors
a climate of defiance and suspicion reigned. Frederick went on Crusade more for
the sense of chivalry than a real intention to establish himself in the Orient. Of
course, he planned to reconquer Jerusalem, but did he intend to wear the crown
of the Frankish Holy Land? The untimely death of the Emperor, who drowned in
the Selif River, makes this question impossible to answer.99
Six expeditions to Italy, one Crusade: it seemed that the Sovereign had no other
real goals except to strengthen his honor imperii. No plans were made for domination
of the Mediterranean area. Pursuing a large-scale Mediterranean policy was not at
the heart of the Emperor’s designs when he restored royal authority to the Kingdom
of Italy, assuring his sovereignty there and affirming his position with regard to the
papacy. Faced with the King of Sicily, faced with the Byzantine emperor, Frederick
never had any plans in mind other than enforcing his sovereignty within the
peninsula. The King of Sicily was an enemy when he protects the pope, but the
emperor managed to make him an ally after the Peace of Venice. The Emperor’s
expeditions to Italy were linked first and foremost to spreading his imperial
honour. At a time when Saladin was systematically conquering the Holy Land,
it is in the name of his imperial title that he decided to take up the cross. Honor
imperii, the sense of chivalry, drove him on; his piety commanded him to head
the new expedition. If we talk of a particular Mediterranean policy on Frederick
Barbarossa’s part, we ought to trace it back to the Emperor’s keen sense of duty
as universal emperor at a time when the Italian peninsula was at the heart of
Mediterranean history. The German aristocrat that he was, he did not cease to was,
98. The sources on the Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa were collected in a volume by Chroust, Anton.
Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs 1. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlug, 1928 (M. G.
H. Script. rer. Germ., n.s. vol. 5). They were used extensively by Eickhoff, Ekkehard. Friedrich Barbarossa
im Orient. Kreuzzug und Tod Friedrichs 1. Tübingen: Verlag Ernest Wasmuth, 1977 (Istambuler Mitteilungen. Beiheft 17.) and more recently by Hiestand, Rudolf.” ‘praecipua tocius Christianismi columpna’.
Barbarossa und der Kreuzzug”, Friedrich Barbarossa. Handlungs speilräume...: 51-108; and Cardini, Franco.
“L’imperatore annegato ed altri principeschi incidenti in Terra Santa”, I Re nudi. Congiure, assassini, tracolli
ed altri imprevisti nella storia del potere. Atti del convegno della Fondazione E. Franceschini (Certosa del Galluzzo 19
novembre 1994), Glauco Maria Cantarella, Francesco Santi, eds. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto
Medioevo, 1996: 39-87.
99. As the chroniclers report, Frederick’s death profoundly affected the Crusaders. Arnold de Lubeck,
the author of the Chronica regia Coloniensis, and the French, Italian, and English authors of annals and
chronicles do not fail to remind readers of the events of 1190.
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Pierre Racine
deeply immersed in the rules of feudal society.He was not in a position to act in
Italy where he did not have the support of the German princes, more interested in
the colonisation of eastern Slavic lands, and indifferent to the thought of an actual
Mediterranean policy supporting the Emperor.
22/09/2008 12:24:01
JAMES I AND GOD: LEGITIMACY, PROTECTION
AND CONSOLATION IN THE LLIBRE DELS FETS
Damian J. Smith
Saint Louis University
USA
Date of receipt: 8th of January, 2007
Abstract
This article is an examination of the nature of the relationship between James I,
king of Aragon (1213-76) and God. The source is the king’s autobiography, called
the Llibre dels Fets or Book of Deeds, where he relates the partnership between himself and the deity in the conquests of Majorca and Valencia and the reconquest of
Murcia. An in-depth analysis of the Llibre reveals how the circumstances of James’s
life pushed him beyond the norm in his reliance on God’s protection and how he
manipulates what he considers God’s will to fulfill his own designs.
Key words
Power, Monarchy, Language, Literature, Crown of Aragon
Capitalia verba
Potentia, Regia potestas, Lingua, Litterae, Corona Aragoniae
105
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Damian J. Smith
When future historians look back upon our times, not least among the resources
available to them for its study will be the personal accounts of political affairs written by those who were at the very centre of events. They will be able to consult Mahatma Gandhi’s Experiments with Truth, Mandela’s Long Road to Freedom, Gorbachev’s
Memoirs and so forth, and while being properly cautious of their source, they will
no doubt appreciate that, as with all sources, however problematic they may be, it is
always a boon to have them there.1 What the medievalist might give for Living History by Eleanor Aquitaine or perhaps Arnau Amalric’s provocative Hereticcatcher! The
Christian world of the Middle Ages lacked such gems but, it should be remembered,
we do possess a remarkable Catalan text, usually now called the Llibre dels Fets or
Book of Deeds, the author of which, beyond a reasonable doubt, was a Christian king,
James I of Aragon, the “Conqueror”.2
In his Llibre, an essentially militaristic work, James described in great detail many
of the major events in which he was involved during his sixty-three year reign; most
notably, the conquests of the kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia and the reconquest
of the kingdom of Murcia. But, at the same time, he left us a picture of his times
and, albeit often unwittingly, an intimate self-portrait, an image of himself, reflected
through his work. As Bisson has remarked, “No king in history ever revealed himself better to posterity”.3 And in revealing himself, James, at the same time, revealed
his relationship with God. For it can also certainly be said that no king ever revealed
his god better to posterity and it is that relationship we examine in this article.
It is important to emphasize, before advancing, that there is little doubt among
the scholarly community today that the authorship of the Llibre dels Fets pertains to
the king. Nobody but James himself could be the author of this work. The arguments
against another possible author, arguments so well elaborated by Ferran Soldevila,4
are very strong indeed. Who else could the author be? Why would they have written
the work? Why would they have written as if they were the king himself? Who
would have had sufficient knowledge of the details of James’s life? Who would have
had the imagination? But the arguments in favour of James are equally strong. The
Llibre dels Fets demonstrates a very detailed knowledge of all of the king’s military
campaigns and the political events of the king’s adult life “dovetailing exactly with
the mentality in much of the king’s independent documentation”.5 Events are seen
almost entirely from what would have been James’s own perspective. For one
1. Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand. The Story of my Experiments with Truth. London: Beacon Press, 1993;
Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom. London: Abacus, 1995; Gorbachev, Mikhail. Memoirs. London:
Banton Books, 1997.
2. The best edition is Llibre dels Fets del rei En Jaume, 2 volumes, ed. Jordi Bruguera. Barcelona: Barcino,
1991. Modern translations into Catalan and English are: Llibre dels Fets de Jaume I, trans. Antoni Ferrando,
Vicent Josep Escartí. Barcelona: Afers, 1995; The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon, trans. Damian Smith,
Helena Buffery. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003(heareafter BDJA).
3. Bisson, Thomas. The Medieval Crown of Aragon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986: 84.
4. Soldevila, Ferran. Les quatre grans croniques. Barcelona: Editorial Selecta, 1971: 36-37.
5. Burns, Robert Ignatius. “The Spiritual Life of James I the Conqueror, king of Aragon-Catalonia,
1208-1276: portrait and self-portrait”, Jaime I y su época (ponencias). X Congreso de Historia de la Corona de
Aragón (Zaragoza, 1978). Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1979: 1, 328.
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James I and God
107
telling example among many, in the Majorca campaign we read of the death of the
Montcadas at the battle of Porto Pí only after the battle is over, when James receives
news of their deaths, and there is no account of their heroic performance in the
battle, since James did not e it.6 There is a justification of the actions of the king,
which nobody but the king need justify. Thus, most revealingly, James’s labours
much on the embarrassing failure of his expedition to the Holy Land in 1269-70,
which another author would have passed over quickly as uneventful and irrelevant.7
The Llibre dels Fets reveals feelings that only the king could have felt. There is an
adoration of James’s mother, Marie of Montpellier and an ambivalent attitude to
his father, Peter II (hero of Las Navas, villain at Muret, and bad husband to Marie)
which another author even one trained in psychology, would not capture.8 There
are many intimate memories of events (for instance, the indignation of his first
wife at James’s adopted plan for her escape from the Aragonese nobles; a mother
swallow who had nested on James’s tent; a night spent sweating at Puig when his
knights were ready to abandon him and the Valencia campaign).9 Throughout the
text there is an easy familiarity with the rulers and major figures of James’s reign.
It is perhaps also necessary to say a few words about the construction of James’s
work and its purpose. When the Llibre was written remains a subject of great debate
and a great amount of further study is still needed to resolve this matter. The work
may have been undertaken at various times of the king’s reign. It has been suggested
that the initial impetus was perhaps provided in the 1230s by demands for the king’s
personal account of the conquest of Majorca,10 of which the troubadours sang, no
doubt stories already being told, with additions, by those who had participated. It
has been argued that the stories of the Valencian campaign were probably told in
the 1240s and early 1250s and then, after a long gap, James returned to his stories
towards the very end of life (in the last years probably being aided in the writing
of the text by Bishop Jaime Sarroca of Huesca, either his son or more probably son
of the king’s half-brother, Pere del Rei).11 There was a long gap between 1245 and
1264 when James related nothing except, briefly, the campaigns against al-Azraq.
But it may well be more reasonable to argue, as Cingolani has done recently, that
6. Llibre, chs. 63-5; Asperti, Stefano. “Il re e la storia: proposte per una nuova lettura del ‘Llibre dels feyts’
di Jaume I”. Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte, 3 (1984): 276.
7. Llibre, chs. 63-5; Smith, Damian. “Guerra Santa y Tierra Santa en el pensamiento y la acción de Jaime
I de Aragón”, Guerre, religion et idéologie dans l’espace méditerranéen latin du XIè au XIIIè siècle, Daniel Baloup,
Phillippe Josserand, eds. Toulouse: CNRS-Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2006: 305-321.
8. Contrast the very brief chapter 6 of the Llibre on Peter II and the extensive praise of the saintly Marie
in chapter 7.
9. Llibre, chs. 23 (wife), 215 (swallow), 237 (Puig).
10. Coll i Allentorn, Miquel. “Llibre dels Feits”. Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana. Barcelona: Enciclopedia Catalana. 1987: 14, 71.
11. BDJA: 7, 15; Asperti, Stefano. “Indagini sull’ ‘Llibre dels Feyts’ di Jaume I: dall’originale all’archetipo”.
Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 33 (1982): 269-85; Pujol, Josep. “Cultura eclesiàstica o competència retòrica? El
Llatí, la Bíblia i El Rei En Jaume”. Estudis Romànics, 23 (2001): 147-172, successfully refutes the idea of an
ecclesiastical author for the whole of the text put forward in Riera, Jaume. “La personalitat eclesiàstica
del redactor del ‘Llibre dels Fets’”, Jaime I y su época. X Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón. Comunicaciones, 3, 4 y 5. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1982: 575-589.
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Damian J. Smith
the whole work is constructed at the end of James’s reign since there is no evidence
it was written before and some early events mentioned, which do not appear to
have an immediately logical place in the work, such as the Aragonese revolt of
1227, the war in Urgell in 1228, and the negotiations with Sancho VII of Navarre
relate to political problems which again pressed in the final years of his reign and
which he must have suspected his successors would have to deal with.12 The Llibre is
then not a response in origin to the Majorca campaign but rather to the king’s failed
expedition to the Holy Land, and to the histories that were beginning to press upon
the lands of the crown from outside, particularly the De rebus Hispanie of Archbishop
Rodrigo of Toledo, and the Crònica de Espanya, first translated into Catalan sometime
between 1269 and 1277.13
The format the king chose owed something to the troubadours, something to
Christian Gestes and perhaps a little to consciousness of the Arab world where rulers
customarily set down what they had been able to achieve thanks to divine assistance.
The majority of the participants in the Majorca campaign were Catalans and James
chose Catalan as the language for his work.14 It is important for the present topic
that it is remembered that James narrated his stories (his work is a succession of
stories about his reign rather than in the traditional style of a chronicle) in diverse
sessions to knights of his household, while a scribe wrote everything down in
shorthand.15 As James’s court was itinerant, it is quite possible that sometimes he
had many documents to hand which could aid his memory and at other times very
few. Where James was and to whom he was speaking will have had an affect on the
nature of how he told his stories. That is, not only is it probable that which tales he
told and how he told them depended on which members of particular noble families
were present when he was telling them, but the religious flavour of the text would
depend on where he was telling the tale and whether there were important clerics
present or not. For instance, when a Saracen significantly helped James in the early
stages of the Majorca campaign, James related, “So acted that angel that God had
sent us… and when I say angel I mean the Saracen, who was so good to us that
we took him for an angel, and for that reason we say he was like an angel”. It is
not difficult to imagine that after the initial words James looked up to see a bishop
or an abbot frowning at him and thus checked his remarks and proceeded more
cautiously.16 This is speculation, of course, but it is hopefully a reminder of how
12. Cingolani, Stefano. La Memòria dels Reis: Les quatre grans Cròniques. Barcelona: Base, 2007: 31-74; Cingolani, Stefano. Jaume I: Història i mite d’un rei. Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2007.
13. Cingolani, Stefano. La Memòria dels Reis...: 77-78; on the later part of James’s reign and relations in
Urgell, Navarre and with the Aragonese nobles, the best work remains Soldevila, Ferran. Pere el Gran, 2
volumes. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1995.
14. On some occasions James inserts words from languages other than Catalan to indicate that the speaker
is talking a language other than Catalan. See Badia, Antoni M. Coherència i arbitrarietat de la substitució
lingüística dins la “Crònica” de Jaume I. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1987.
15. Llibre, ch. 69; Asperti, Stefano. “Indagini”...: 271.
16. Llibre, ch. 71. The timing of the construction of James’s work should certainly be a focus of attention
when the celebrations for the 800th anniversary of his birth arrive in 2008.
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109
important it is for us to examine further in the years to come the historical contexts
of the construction of James’s stories.
The purpose of the king in composing the Llibre dels Fets was, as is said in the
preface of the work (which, even if it may possibly be influenced by Bishop Jaume
Sarroca in style, reflects the general spirit of James’s work)17 so that other kings
would see what James had been able to achieve with God’s help.18 The kings in
question were most likely to be James’s successors (and were —the book had no
wide distribution outside the family circle) and James expected the book to be
read out loud to them.19 The work is then something of a guidebook for how to
rule and no doubt inserts some political events because they were problems James
expected his successors would have to deal with and where the crown had claims
to defend. The work, as has been said, functions as propaganda, education and
legitimization.20
Were it not that James had placed the whole objective of his work as glorifying
God we might see the relationship between James and God as an inappropriate
subject. Though he was quite surrounded by saints, both in his family and in his
entourage, James stood defiantly untainted by virtue.21 A serial adulterer, he tried
to have his common law wife, Teresa, put away, claiming she was a leper, so that
he could marry his beautiful mistress, Berenguera, an incestuous union which
Clement IV declared “antagonistic to God, abominable to the angels, and monstrous
to men”.22 Vindictive to his children, when his heir Prince Peter had his rebellious
illegitimate half-brother, Fernando Sánchez de Castro, drowned in the Cinca,
James commented, “This greatly pleased us when we heard it”.23 Merciless to those
whom he felt had betrayed him, he chopped out Bishop Berenguer of Girona’s
17. BDJA: 15, note 1.
18. Llibre, ch. 1
19. Llibre, ch. 69; Pujol, Josep. “The Llibre del Rei En Jaume: A matter of style”, Historical Literature in
Medieval Iberia, Alan Deyermond, ed. London: Queen Mary and Westfield College: 1996: 35-37.
20. Badia, Lola. “Llegir el Libre del Rei Jaume”. Serra d’Or, 385 (1992): 55; Llibre dels fets de Jaume I, trans.
Antoni Ferrando, Vicent Josep Escartí...: 9-10; Rubiés, Joan Pau; Salrach, Josep. “Entorn de la mentalitat i la ideologia del bloc del poder feudal a través de la historiografia medieval fins a les quatre grans
cròniques”, La formació i expansió del feudalisme Català: Actes del col·loqui organitzat pel col·legi universitari de
Girona (8-11 de gener de 1985), Jaume Portella i Comas, ed. Girona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Col·legi Universitari de Girona, 1986: 506
21. By far the best analysis of the king’s character is Burns, Robert Ignatius. “The Spiritual Life of James
the Conqueror, King of Arago-Catalonia, 1208-1276”. Catholic Historical Review 62 (1976): 1-35. James’s
relations included Ferdinand III, Louis IX and Elizabeth of Hungary and his associates Ramon de Penyafort, Bernat Calvó, and Pere Nolasc.
22. Chamberlin, Cynthia. “The ‘Sainted Queen’ and the ‘sin of Berenguela’: Teresa Gil de Vidaure and
Berenguela Alfonso in documents of the Crown of Aragon, 1255-1272”, Iberia and the Mediterranean
World of the Middle Ages, Paul Chevedden, Donald Kagay, Paul Padilla, eds. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995:
1, 303-321; Documentos de Clemente IV (1265-1268) referentes a España, ed. Santiago Domínguez Sánchez.
León: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de León, 1996: 163 (nº 56).
23. Llibre, ch. 550; Soldevila, Ferran. Pere el Gran. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1995: I, 376-7.
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Damian J. Smith
tongue, because he had reproached him.24 Vicious to his enemies, he planned siegeoperations so that missiles missing a castle would hit where the Muslim women and
children were standing and his best-loved tactic in war was to ravage crops in order
to produce famine.25
Nevertheless, James was neither the first nor the last to believe that, given the
wider scheme of things, such foibles mattered little. Examples, ancient and modern,
leave us in no doubt that political leaders can well reconcile terrible acts of carnage
with a profound love of their deity. And James became profoundly convinced (a
conviction no doubt early nursed into him by the protecting Templars and the ecclesiastics of his Minority council) that from before birth, through travails, until death,
his life was conceived as part of the divine plan, guided and protected by God, Who,
at vital moments, intervened in support of him. James, seeing these clear signs of
God’s love, submitted his will to that of God, to Whom he dedicated all his military
service against the Moors, and composed his Llibre “so that all men may recognize
and know, when we have passed from this mortal life, the deeds that we have done
with the help of the powerful Lord, in Whom is true Trinity”.26
To begin, the story of James’s conception is one of the most popular in all Catalan
literature and, lovingly embellished by the chroniclers Desclot and then more so
Muntaner has James’s father, Peter II, very much in the dark, tricked into sleeping
with his estranged wife, Marie of Montpellier, furtively substituted into his bed in
place of his mistress by the wiles of the good men of Montpellier.27 But this is some
distance from James’s own less earthy account of his own beginnings. For James, after his grandfather, Alfonso II, had reneged on a promise to marry Eudoxia, daughter of the Emperor Manuel, in what “would seem to be the work of God”, his father,
Peter, had then married the daughter of Eudoxia, Marie, because “Our Lord wished
that the original promise…should be fulfilled”. This was, for those who read James’s
text, to be wondered at —“a miraculous thing”.28 Since Peter and Marie “did not
greatly care for each other”, James’s birth “came about through God’s grace” and
it was “the will of God we were born into this world”. Peter II was persuaded by
one of his nobles to go to Mireval where Marie was staying. “That night when they
were both at Mireval, Our Lord willed that we should be conceived”. Our Lord then
willed that James would be born at Montpellier, on Candlemas’ eve (1208). His
birth was accompanied by “good signs and happenings”, too numerous for all to be
24. La documentación pontificia de Inocencio IV (1243-1254), ed. Augusto Quintana Prieto. Rome: Instituto Español de Estudios Eclesiásticos, 1987: I, 319-320 (nº 304); Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón, ed. Ambrosio
Huici, Maria Cabanes. Valencia: Anúbar, 1976-82: II, 228-230 (nº 432-433), 240-241 (nº 443-444); Paris,
Matthew. English History, John Allen Giles, trans. London: H. G. Bohn, 1853: II, 189.
25. Llibre, ch. 194; Kagay, Donald. “Army Mobilization, Royal Administration, and the Realm in the Thirteenth Century Crown of Aragon”, Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the middle ages, Paul Chevedden,
Donald Kagay, Paul Padilla, eds. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995: II, 95-115.
26. Llibre, ch. 1.
27. Crònica de Ramon Muntaner, ed. Vicent Josep Escartí. Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1999:
chs. 3-5; Crònica de Bernat Desclot, ed. Miquel Coll. Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990: ch. 4; Riquer, Martí de.
Llegendes històriques catalanes. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 2000: 49-103.
28. Llibre, chs. 2, 5, 7.
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James I and God
111
mentioned. Immediately carried to Notre-Dame-des-Tables, the clergy by chance
sang the Te Deum as he arrived at the porch. When he arrived at Saint-Firmin, they
were singing Benedictus Dominus. His mother “rejoiced at all the good signs”, ordered twelve candles made of equal measure, each bearing the name of an apostle,
and had all lit at the same time. The candle of St James “lasted a full three fingers
breadth longer than the others” and, by God’s grace, he had the name James.29
Besides the evident Marian devotion (both to his mother and to the mother of
Christ), these initial passages of the king, looking back upon his earliest years are
concentrated on how God’s special design and protection were concentrated on
creating in him a man superior to other men. Whether or not James knew the
actual history of the marital alliances of his grandfather Alfonso II is unclear. In
reality Alfonso II married Sancha of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII of CastileLeón in 1174.30 It appears that subsequently, perhaps to cement an alliance with
Frederick Barbarossa, a marriage was arranged between Alfonso’s brother Ramon
Berenguer, count of Provence and Eudoxia, daughter of a nephew of the Emperor
Manuel Comnenus. But when she arrived, Raymond refused her, possibly due to an
alteration in the crown’s relationship with Barbarossa, though she was nevertheless
married to William VIII of Montpellier, an ally of Alfonso II.31 But what mattered
to James was that his own birth had been part of God’s grand design, that God’s
guiding hand righted a wrong and legitimated his role above all other men, through
the superior quality of his birth. When James is born the clerics of Montpellier, the
elite of the church, bear witness to the greatness of the occasion by singing the Te
Deum —the hymn of thanksgiving in which not only the clergy but the apostles,
prophets and martyrs give thanks to the Lord for what he has done— give thanks to
the Lord for the birth of James. Other clergy then sing the Benedictus Dominus Deus
Israel. It is worth remembering how it continues:
Quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebi suae/ et erexit cornu salutis nobis in domo David
pueri sui/ Sicut locutus est per os sanctorum, qui a saeculo sunt, Prophetarum ejus/ Salutem
ex inimicis et de manu omnium qui aderunt nos.32
The clergy announce what James in his autobiography will adamantly maintain
—that he is a chief part of God’s plan for the redemption of the Christian people
and will deliver them safely from the hands of their enemies in the form of the
Muslims of the Balearics and southern Spain. And if God at the outset legitimizes
29. Llibre, chs. 5, 48. See Soldevila, Ferran. Els primers temps de Jaume I. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis
Catalans, 1968, ch. 1.
30. Alfonso II, rey de Aragón, conde de Barcelona y marqués de Provenza. Documentos (1162-1196), ed. Ana
Sanchez Casabón. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1996: 161.
31. Vajay, Szabolcs de. “Eudoquia Cómnena, abuela bizantina de Jaime el conquistador”, Jaime I y su época
(ponencias). X Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón (Zaragoza, 1978). Zaragoza: Institución Fernando
el Católico, 1979: I, 147-165; Aurell, Martí. Les Noces del Comte: Matrimoni i poder a Catalunya (785-1213).
Barcelona: Omega, 1998: 405.
32. The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual, ed. J. Dukes. Leeds: Laverty & Sons, 1955: 96 (Te Deum), 1700
(Benedictus Dominus Deus).
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this special role, then God also legitimizes James’s rights as king of Aragon, which
had probably at some points, particularly in his early years, been placed in question due to the rumour of the improbability of Peter II being James’s father given
Peter’s well-known antipathy towards James’s mother Marie.33 But this union too
was part of God’s plan. As the conception of Christ had been part of the divine plan,
now also, in a lesser manner, the conception of James is part of that design. And not
only does God legitimize James as his special leader of the Christians and as king of
Aragon, but God also legitimizes James’s claims to Montpellier, claims which had
been hotly disputed since his youth, with the viscounts of Montpellier, the consuls
of the city, and at times, the kings of France, seeking to undermine his position.34
But God wills that James is born in Montpellier, of Marie of Montpellier, and, as he
also takes care to remind us, the pope (Innocent III) had confirmed that this was so
and that her rivals in Montpellier were not children of a legal marriage.35 God and
his apostle, Innocent III, for James the best pope of his era, legitimize all aspects of
James’s rule.36
If initially God’s chief role was to legitimate, then in the next stage of life he
serves as protector of the young child and the youth beset by evil forces. When
James was in the cradle, someone threw a rock down at James through a trapdoor,
but God wished to protect him so he did not die. James never tells us who it was.
Possibly we are supposed to suspect supporters of William IX of Montpellier or even
members of James’s own family but the very vagueness of the threat reminds the
audience that everybody but God was against the boy king.37 After the death of his
father at Muret,38 (and neither there nor anywhere in his work does James mention the subject of heresy or heretics),39 during his long and troubled minority,40 it
was the Lord who made him prevail against “the bad men” who came against him
and by the age of twenty, fighting in the county of Urgell, James was already deeply
conscious of being God’s lieutenant.41 As James grows up, his relation with God
33. The suggestion comes from Riquer, Llegendes històriques, page 51 since In June 1209, Peter II had
concluded an alliance with Sancho VII of Navarre naming his brother Alfonso as his heir without any
mention of James at all. Conversely Marie of Montpellier named James as her heir in July 1229. Lacarra,
José María; González Anton, Luís. “Los testamentos de la reina María de Montpellier”. Boletín de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 177 (1980): 678-83.
34. Baumel, Jean. Histoire d’une seigneurie du Midi de La France, II: Montpellier sous la seigneurie de Jacques le
Conquérant et des rois de Majorque. Montpellier: Causse, 1971.
35. Llibre, ch. 4.
36. Llibre, ch. 10.
37. Llibre, ch. 5; Bernat Desclot (ch. 4) also reports this and says the force of the blow was such as to
break the cradle. Desclot comments that the identity of the perpetrators of the crime was uncertain but
he believed it to be the work of James’s relatives, who hoped to have his lands for themselves.
38. Alvira Cabrer, Martín. El Jueves de Muret: 12 de septiembre de 1213. Barcelona: Vicerectorat de Cultura
de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2002: 330-52.
39. A point well made by Homet, Raquel. “Caracteres de lo político en el Llibre dels Fets de Jaime el Conquistador”. Res Gesta, 32 (1993): 175.
40. Soldevila, Ferran. Primers Temps...; Smith, Damian. “Pope Innocent III and the Minority of James I”.
Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 30/1 (2000): 19-50.
41. Llibre, chs. 35 (lieutenant), 57 (bad men).
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James I and God
113
changes. He is no longer a boy. He has both rights from God and responsibilities to
God. And equally his people have responsibilities to him as their God-given king.
When Aragonese forces move against him during the revolt of 1227, Pedro Pomar
advises James to flee. The king responds:
Don Pedro Pomar, we are the king of Aragon and the kingdom is ours by right,
and those who come against us are our subjects and in coming to fight us they do
what they ought not to do, since we defend what is right and they do wrong; and
so God must help us. And while we live, we shall not abandon this town and shall
defeat them. Thus, on this occasion we will not follow your advice.42
God must defend the king not only because he is king and he is attacked by
people who are his subjects (so much so that “we dare not enter the cities that God
has given us”) but because he is right and defends right.43 This is even clearer in the
king’s defence of Aurembiaix in the dispute for Urgell. “God has set you in His place
to maintain just law”, Guillem de Cervera reminds the king on Aurembiaix’s behalf
and James, more legally-minded than is often noted (and, of course, long associated
with Ramon de Penyafort) also puts into the mouth of the Bolognese trained expert
in Roman law Guillem Sasala his own sentiments:
God, my lord, has put you in His place, so that you may give justice and reason
to those who cannot find either; and the countess requests that you defend her
rights’.44
The defence of right, particularly the right of a widow such as Aurembiaix, was
a God-given duty of the king but he had another major role and this would now
come to the fore and remain for the rest of the reign. He must not only defend but
also attack the enemies of the faith and expanded the boundaries of Christendom.
Looking back, probably from the vantage point of old age, it seemed evident now
to James that all until now had been a preparation for James’s part as the instrument of the Lord in war. So it pleased the Lord to assemble the Barcelonan Cort of
1228, which decided on the conquest of Majorca.45 In the crossing to Majorca, when
storm clouds gathered, it was through the virtue of God, and the intercession of the
Virgin Mary, that the Provençal wind forced the fleet to land at Palomera rather
than Pollença.46 At the siege of Palma, divine guidance stopped the initial Muslim
surrender terms from being accepted, and God willed that the Christians would be
strengthened and the Muslims weakened. When the city was captured, “Our Lord
42. Llibre, ch. 29.
43. Llibre, ch. 31.
44. Llibre, chs. 34 (Guillem de Cervera), 35 (Guillem Sasala).
45. Llibre, ch. 52. The king puts the thought into the mouth of Archbishop Aspàreg of Tarragona.
46. Llibre, chs. 57-8. On the campaign, see Santamaria, Álvaro. “La expansión político-militar de la
Corona de Aragón bajo la dirección de Jaime I”, Jaime I y su época (ponencias). X Congreso de Historia de la
Corona de Aragón (Zaragoza, 1978). Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1982: III, 91-146.
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Damian J. Smith
had arranged it that all the men of the army found so much to take that it was
unnecessary to fight among themselves”. God had done James such grace that he
had given him a kingdom inside the sea, “a thing that no king had ever achieved
before”. When James returned to protect Majorca in 1231 and there was a good sea,
he has Berenguer Sesposes say to him, “that God loved us so much that we could
cross the sea in wooden clogs”. God made Majorca prosper and by His grace Saracen
galleys that attacked Majorca received more harm than they could do.47
We must reemphasize that this all seemed very clear to the king as he looked
back. Given his tremendous success it had become increasingly obvious that all
was done through God’s will. But there are reasons to think that James was not
quite as concentrated on Divine Providence in 1228/9 as he thought he had been
( or liked to think he had been) when he reflected on the matter later on. In the
lawsuits (1255-71) involving the question of the bigamous Count Àlvar of Urgell
and his wives, where claims to land given at the conquest of Majorca were being
disputed, six witnesses were called to give evidence concerning the Barcelonan Cort
of 1228 where the land divisions had been arranged. One witness remembered that
James had delivered a speech saying that the king of Majorca had captured a ship
belonging to his men and that James had sent his scribe “Jascquius” to the king to
demand its restitution. The king of Majorca refused and James said he had called the
Cort together to decide upon the manner in which he should respond and ultimately
it was decided that James should go with his army to capture the city and land of
Majorca. The recollections of this witness (P. de Castronolo, a citizen of Barcelona)
contrast sharply with the king’s account of his own speech though it finds echoes in
the account of Desclot.48 James mentions the incident of his stolen boat later on his
story but not in relation to the Cort.49 In the construction of his history, for James the
Cort was a divinely arranged moment for uniting all his people under him. It is again
a reminder that in James’s reconstruction of his life his relationship with God is
perhaps a little more to the fore than it was at the time of the events he describes.
This may also be the case with James’s contention that God directed him away
from contesting the succession in the kingdom of León, when in reality on the
death of Alfonso IX, the temptation of a marriage with Alfonso’s daughter and a
faraway kingdom was easily outweighed by prospects to the immediate south.50
To what extent James felt at the time that he was being divinely guided we cannot
really know but when looking back it was certain to him that God willed that he
47. Llibre, chs. 80 (surrender terms), 88 (unnecessary to fight), 105 (kingdom in the sea), 116 (wooden
clogs), 125 (Saracen galleys). On the military tactics adopted by James in the campaign, see Ribas de
Pina, Miquel. La Conquista de Mallorca pel Rei en Jaume I: Estudi Tècnic Militar. Mallorca: Imprenta Mossèn
Alcover, 1934.
48. See Kagay, Donald. “The emergence of ‘Parliament’ in the Thirteenth-Century Crown of Aragon: A
View from the Gallery”, On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan,
Donald Kagay, Theresa Vann, eds. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999: 226, 235.
49. Llibre, ch. 77; BDJA: 100, note 110.
50. Llibre, ch. 106. See Engels, Odilo. “El rey Jaime I y la política internacional del siglo XIII”, Jaime I
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