History of Catalonia: Encyclopedia II - History of Catalonia - From late antiquity to feudalism

History of Catalonia - From late antiquity to feudalism

History of Catalonia - Visigothic and Muslim rule

The Crisis of the Third Century affected the whole Roman Empire, and gravely affected the Catalan territory, where there is evidence of significant levels of destruction and abandonment of Roman villas. This is also the period of the first documentary evidence of the arrival of Christianity. While archaeological evidence shows the recovery of some urban nuclei, such as Barcino (later Barcelona), Tarraco (later Tarragona), and Gerunda (later Girona), the previous situation was not restored: the cities became smaller, and constructed defensive walls.

In the 5th century, as part of the invasion of the Roman Empire by Germanic tribes, the Visigoths led by Ataulf, installed themselves in Tarraconensis (410) and when in 475 the Visigothic king Euric formed the kingdom of Tolosa (modern Toulouse, France), which incorporated the territory that is now Catalonia. The Visigoths dominated the territory until the beginning of the 8th century, first from Toulouse and later from Toledo. In 718, the Muslim conquest of Spain reached the northwestern part of the peninsula and made incursions into Septimania, a process that took place with few major battles in this region, one of the most notable being at Tarragona.

History of Catalonia - Carolingian conquest

Within a century, the Catalan regions were conquered by the Franks as part of the Carolingian reaction against the Moorish advances. In the last quarter of the 8th century, the Franks pacified Septimania and conquered the Pyrenean portion of Catalonia extending their power as far as Girona. Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from the Moorish emir in 801, ultimately forming a frontier zone at the rivers Llobregat, Cardener, and the middle branch of the river Segre. This borderland between the Franks and the Moors became known as the Marca Hispanica (Spanish Marches), a buffer zone ruled by the Count of Barcelona, with outlying small separate territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor, or (with less fealty) to his Carolingian and Ottonian successors.

This new Frankish territory was first organized politically into different counties (in the narrow sense of the word: the ruler of each took the title of count). At the end of the 9th century, the Carolingian monarch Charles the Bald designated Wilfred the Hairy — a noble descendant of a family from Conflent and son of the earlier Count of Barcelona Sunifred I — as count of Cerdagne and Urgell (870); after Charles's death (877), Wilfred became count of Barcelona and Girona (878) as well, which brought together the greater part of what was to become the Catalan territory, and although on his death the counties were divided again among his sons, except for one brief period Barcelona, Girona, and Osona continued to be unified under one count.

History of Catalonia - The rise and fall of the aloers

During the 10th century the Catalan counts became increasingly independent of the Carolingian power, which the count Borrell II made official in 987 when he failed to swear fealty to Hugh Capet, the first Capetian monarch. In those years of the formation of the Catalan counties, the population of the territory began to increase for the first time since the Muslim invasion. During the 9th and 10th centuries, Catalonia increasingly became a society of aloers, peasant proprietors of small, family-based farms, producing little more than subsistence, and owing no formal feudal allegiance.

The 11th century was characterized by the development of feudal society, as the miles formed links of vassalage over this previously independent peasantry. The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent class warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utlizing new military tactics, based on contracting well armed mercenary soldiers mounted on horses. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into vassals.

This coincided with a weakening of the power of the counts and the division of the Spanish Marches into more numerous counties, which gradually became a feudal state based on complex fealties and dependencies. From the time of the triumph of Ramon Berenguer I over the other Catalan counts, the counts of Barcelona stood firmly at the peak of a web of fealty, tying all the Catalan counts to their crown.

History of Catalonia - First references to the name Catalonia

In this new feudal state, each miles was the castlà ("castellan" or lord of the castle) in an area largely defined by a day's ride, the region dotted with strongholds becoming known by them, in an etymology parallel to Castile at a later date, as "Catalunya" or "Catalonia".

The term Catalonia is first documented in an early 12th-century oath to Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, in which he is referred to in Latin as catalanicus heroes, rector catalanicus, and dux catalanensis, and also the name Catalania (Catalonia) is found. In it catalanenses (Catalans) appears opposite gots ("Goths"), referring to the people of what is now southern France.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "From late antiquity to feudalism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki