The component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king,[5] who ruled over each autonomous state according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, and dealing separately with eachCorts orCortes (parliaments), particularly in the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, and theKingdom of Valencia. The larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.
Formally, the political centre of the Crown of Aragon wasZaragoza, where kings were crowned atLa Seo Cathedral. The 'de facto' capital and leading cultural, administrative and economic centre of the Crown of Aragon wasBarcelona,[7][8] followed byValencia.Palma (Majorca) also functioned as an additional important city and seaport.
In the Late Middle Ages, the southwardterritorial expansion of the Aragonese Crown in the Iberian Peninsula stopped in Murcia, which eventually consolidated as a realm of theCrown of Castile, theKingdom of Murcia. Subsequently, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, governing as far afield as Greece and theBarbary Coast. In contrast, Portugal, which completed its southward expansion in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known asAlmogavars participated in the creation of this Mediterranean empire, and later found employment in countries all across southern Europe.
The Crown of Aragon has been considered an empire[8] which ruled in the Mediterranean for centuries, withthalassocratic power to setting rules over the entire sea, (as documented, for instance, in theLlibre del Consolat del Mar orBook of the Consulate of the Sea, written inCatalan, is one of the oldest compilations ofmaritime laws in the world).
However, the different territories were only connected through the monarch's person. A modern historian, Juan de Contreras y Lopez de Ayala,marquis of Lozoya, described the Crown of Aragon as being more like aconfederacy than a centralised kingdom.[9]
Petronilla's fatherKing Ramiro, "The Monk" (reigned 1134–1137) who was raised in the Monastery of Saint Pons de Thomières,Viscounty of Béziers as aBenedictine monk was the youngest of three brothers. His brothersPeter I (reigned 1094–1104) andAlfonso IEl Batallador (The Battler, reigned 1104–1134) had fought against Castile for hegemony in the Iberian peninsula. Upon the death of Alfonso I, the Aragonese nobility that campaigned close to him feared being overwhelmed by the influence of Castile. And so, Ramiro was forced to leave his monastic life and proclaim himself King of Aragon. He married Agnes, sister of theDuke of Aquitaine and betrothed his only daughterPetronilla of Aragon toRaymond Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona. The wedding agreement provided Berenguer with the title ofPrinceps Aragonum andDominator Aragonensis (Ruler of the Kingdom and Commander of the Aragonese Military) but the title of King of Aragon was reserved for Ramiro II and Berenguer's future sons.
Raymond Berenguer IV, the first ruler of the united dynasty, called himself Count of Barcelona and "Prince of Aragon".[12]
Alfonso II inherited two realms and with them, two different expansion processes. TheHouse of Jiménez looked south in a battle against Castile for the control of the middle valley of the Ebro in the Iberian peninsula. TheHouse of Barcelona looked north to its origins,Occitania, where through family ties it had significant influence, especially inToulouse,Provence andFoix, towards the south along theMediterranean coast and towards theMediterranean sea.
Alfonso II signed thetreaties of Cazorla, a multilateral treaty betweenNavarre,Aragon,León, Portugal, andCastile to redefine the frontiers and zones of expansion of each kingdom. Alfonso II assuredValencia by renouncing the Aragonese rights of annexing Murcia in exchange for securing the Aragonese frontier with Castile. This action should be seen as result of the aforementioned priority given over the Occitan and Catalan dominions of the Crown of Aragon.[13]
Peter II of Aragon returned from theBattle of Las Navas de Tolosa in autumn 1212 to find thatSimon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, had conqueredToulouse, exiling CountRaymond VI of Toulouse, who was Peter's brother-in-law and vassal. Peter's army crossed thePyrenees and arrived atMuret where they were joined by Raymond of Foix and Raymond of Toulouse's forces, in September 1213 to confront Montfort's army. TheBattle of Muret began on 12 September 1213. The Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan forces were disorganised and disintegrated under the assault of Montfort's squadrons. Peter himself was caught in the thick of fighting, and died as a result of a foolhardy act of bravado. Thus, the nobility of Toulouse, Foix and other vassals of the Crown of Aragon were defeated. The conflict concluded with the Treaty of Meaux-Paris in 1229, in which the Crown of Aragon agreed to renounce its rights over the south ofOccitania with the integration of these territories into the dominions of theKing of France.
KingJames I (13th century) returned to an era of expansion to the South, by conquering and incorporatingMajorca,Ibiza, and a good share of theKingdom of Valencia into the Crown. With theTreaty of Corbeil (1258), which was based upon the principle of natural frontiers,[14] theCapetians were recognised as heirs of theCarolingian dynasty, and the Capetian kingLouis IX renounced any historical claim of feudal overlordship over Catalonia. The general principle was clear, Catalan influence north of the Pyrenees, beyond theRoussillon,Vallespir,Conflent andCapcir, was to cease.[14] James I had realized that wasting his forces and distracting his energies in attempts to keep a footing in France would only end in disaster.[14] In January 1266, James I besieged and captured Murcia, then settled his own men, mostly Catalans, there; and handed Murcia over to Castile with thetreaty of Cazorla.[15]
TheKingdom of Majorca, including the Balearic Islands, and the counties ofCerdanya andRoussillon-Vallespir and the city ofMontpellier, was held independently from 1276 to 1279 byJames II of Majorca and as a vassal of the Crown of Aragon after that date until 1349, becoming a full member of the Crown of Aragon from 1349.
Valencia was finally made a new kingdom with its own institutions and not an extension of theKingdom of Aragon as the Aragonese noblemen had intended since even before the creation of the Crown of Aragon. TheKingdom of Valencia became the third member of the Crown together with Aragon and thePrincipality of Catalonia. The Kingdom of Majorca had an independent status with its own kings until 1349.
When Peter III refused to impose theCharters of Aragon in Valencia, the nobles and towns united inZaragoza to demand a confirmation of their privileges, which the king had to accept in 1283. Thus began theUnion of Aragon, which developed the power of theJustícia to mediate between the king and the Aragonese bourgeois.[16]
WhenJames II of Aragon[18] completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia, the Crown of Aragon established itself as one of the major powers in Europe.
In 1297, to solve the dispute between the Anjevins and the Aragonese over Sicily,Pope Boniface VIII createdex novo aKingdom of Sardinia and Corsica and entrusted it as afief to the Aragonese KingJames II, ignoring already existing, indigenous states.[20] In 1324, James II finally started to seize the Pisan territories in the former states ofCagliari andGallura. In 1347 Aragon made war on the GenoeseDoria andMalaspina houses, which controlled most of the lands of the formerLogudoro state in north-western Sardinia, and added them to its direct domains. TheGiudicato of Arborea, the only remaining independent Sardinian state, proved far more difficult to subdue. The rulers of Arborea developed the ambition to unite all of Sardinia under their rule and create a single Sardinian state, and at a certain point (1368–1388, 1392–1409) almost managed to drive the Aragonese out. The war between Arborea and Aragon was fought on and off for more than 100 years; this situation lasted until 1409, when the army of Arborea suffered a heavy defeat by the Aragonese army in theBattle of Sanluri; the capitalOristano was lost in 1410. After some years during which Arborean rulers failed to organise a successful resurgence, they sold their remaining rights for 100,000 gold florins, and by 1420 the Aragonese Kingdom of Sardinia finally extended throughout the island. The subduing of Sardinia having taken a century,[citation needed]Corsica, which had never been wrested from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the Kingdom.
The King's possessions outside of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands were ruled by proxy through local elites aspetty kingdoms, rather than subjected directly to a centralised government. They were more an economic part of the Crown of Aragon than a political one.
The fact that the King was keen on settling new kingdoms instead of merely expanding the existing kingdoms was a part of a power struggle that pitted the interests of the king against those of the existingnobility. This process was also under way in most of the European states that successfully effected the transition to theEarly Modern state. Thus, thenew territories gained from theMoors—namely Valencia and Majorca—were givenfurs as an instrument of self-government in order to limit the power of nobility in these new acquisitions and, at the same time, increase their allegiance to the monarchy itself. The trend in the neighbouringkingdom of Castile was quite similar, both kingdoms giving impetus to theReconquista by granting different grades of self-government either to cities or territories, instead of placing the new territories under the direct rule of nobility.
In 1410, KingMartin I died without living descendants or heirs. As a result, on theCompromise of Caspe, representatives from each Iberian state of the Crown, the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and the Principality of Catalonia, choseFerdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty ofTrastámara as king of the Crown of Aragon asFerdinand I of Aragon.
Later, his grandson KingFerdinand II of Aragon recovered the northern Catalan counties—Roussillon and Cerdagne—which had been lost to France as well as theKingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragon but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
In 1469, Ferdinand marriedInfanta Isabella of Castile, half-sister of KingHenry IV of Castile, who became Queen of Castile and León after Henry's death in 1474. Their marriage was a dynastic union[21][22][23] which became the constituent event for the dawn of theMonarchy of Spain. At that point both theCastile and the states of the Crown of Aragon remained distinct polities, each keeping its own traditional institutions, parliaments and laws. The process ofterritorial consolidation was completed when their grandson KingCharles I, known as Emperor Charles V, in 1516 ruled over all of the kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula, save the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarve, under one monarch—his co-monarch and mother QueenJoanna I in confinement—thereby furthering the creation of the Spanish monarchy, albeit acomposite and decentralized one.
The literary evocation of past splendour recalls correctly the great age of the 13th and 14th centuries, when Majorca, Valencia and Sicily were conquered, the population growth could be handled without social conflict, and the urban prosperity, which peaked in 1345, created the institutional and cultural achievements of the Crown.[24]
The Aragonese crown's wealth and power stagnated and its authority was steadily transferred to the new Spanish crown settled in Castile after that date—the demographic growth was partially offset by theexpulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492),Muslims (1502) and theexpulsion of the Moriscos (1609).[25] It was unable to prevent the separation of Sicily and Naples due to the establishment of the Council of Italy, the loss of Roussillon in 1659 after theReapers' War in thePrincipality of Catalonia, the loss of Minorca and its Italian domains in 1707–1716, and the imposition of French language on Roussillon (1700) and Castilian as the language of government in all the old Aragonese Crown lands in Spain (1707–1716).[25]
The Crown of Aragon and its institutions andpublic law were abolished between 1707 and 1716 only after theWar of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) by theNueva Planta decrees, issued byPhilip V of Spain.[25] The original political structure was swept away, the administration was subsumed into the Castilian laws, the states of the Crown of Aragon loss their status of separate entitites and were united formally with those of Castile to legally form a single state, theKingdom of Spain, as it moved towards an absolutistcentralized government under the newBourbon dynasty.[25]
Some of thenationalist movements in Spain consider the former kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon to be the foundation of their nations, the Catalan nationalist movement being the most prominent.Spanish nationalism, on the other hand, tends to place more importance on the later dynastic union with theCrown of Castile, considering it the origin of one Spanish nation.[citation needed]
TheRomanticism of the 19th century CatalanRenaixença movement evoked a "Pyrenean realm" that corresponded more to the vision of 13th centurytroubadours than to the historical reality of the Crown.[26] This vision survives today as "a nostalgic programme of politicised culture".[26] Thus, the history of the Crown of Aragon remains a politically loaded topic in modern Spain,[27] especially when it comes to asserting the level of independence enjoyed by constituents of the Crown, like the Principality of Catalonia, which is sometimes used[need quotation to verify] to justify the level of autonomy (or independence) that should be enjoyed by contemporary Catalonia and other territories.
The origin of Coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon is the familiar coat of theCounts of Barcelona andKings of Aragon.[28] The Pennon was used exclusively by the monarchs of the Crown and was expressive of their sovereignty.[29]James III of Majorca, vassal of the Crown of Aragon, used a coat of arms with four bars, as seen on theLeges palatinae miniatures.
As separate states united to the Crown under theaeque principaliter principle, Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia each had a legislative body, known as theCortes in the Kingdom of Aragon (theCourts of Aragon) orCorts in the Principality of Catalonia (theCatalan Courts) and the Kingdom of Valencia (theValencian Courts). ADiputación del General orDiputació del General was established in each, becoming known as aGeneralidad in Aragon andGeneralitat in Catalonia and Valencia.
From the 15th century onwards, every realm of the Crown was granted its own court of justice in the form ofRoyal Audience, resulting from the division of the Royal Court and the establishment of theCouncil of Aragon in its place. After the dynastic union with Castile and the establishment of the monarchs in that realm, the king began to be permanently represented in the realms of the Crown of Aragon byviceroys, one for each state, including Mallorca and Sardinia.
The house of the Crown was theCathedral of the Savior of Zaragoza from Peter II (12th century).[30][31] The General Courts of the Crown (the simultaneous meeting of the Courts of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia) used to gather atMonzón (13th to 16th centuries), the remaining meetings took place atFraga,Zaragoza,Calatayud andTarazona. The councillor headquarters were located atBarcelona (13th to 16th centuries) andNaples during the kingdom of Alfonso V.[32]
On the other hand, theGeneral Archive of the Crown of Aragon (originally known as the Royal Archive of Barcelona), which was the official repository of royal documentation of the Crown since the reign of James II (14th century), has its seat in Barcelona, being founded in 1318, after the unification of the documentary deposits of the Kingdom of Aragon, located in theMonastery of Santa María de Sigena, and that of the County of Barcelona, located in the house of theKnights Hospitaller of the city.[33][34]
In the early 15th century, the de facto capital was Valencia untilAlfonso V came to the throne.During the 15th and the 16th centuries, the Crown'sde facto capital wasNaples. AfterAlfonso V of Aragon,Ferdinand II of Aragon settled the capital in Naples. Alfonso, in particular, wanted to transform Naples into a real Mediterranean capital and lavished huge sums to embellish it further.[35] Later the courts were itinerant[36] untilPhilip II of Spain. The Spanish historian Domingo Buesa Conde has argued that Zaragoza ought to be considered the permanent political capital, but not the economic or administrative capital, owing to the obligation for kings to be crowned at theCathedral of the Savior of Zaragoza.[nb 3]
During the Crown of Aragon, the Catalan culture and language underwent a vigorous expansion.[37] During the period of trade, Occitan-Catalan contributions toMaltese occurred.[38]
Map of Europe and the Mediterranean from theCatalan Atlas of 1375
TheMediterranean Lingua Franca was a mixed language used widely for commerce and diplomacy and was also current among slaves of thebagnio,Barbary pirates and European renegades in precolonialAlgiers. Among the speakers who created the language, also called Sabir, were Muslims from Aragon called "Tagarins" (a term mentioned byMiguel Cervantes).[41] Historically, the first to use it were theGenoese and Venetian trading colonies in the eastern Mediterranean after the year 1000.
As the use of Lingua Franca spread in the Mediterranean, dialectal fragmentation emerged, the main difference being more use of Italian and Provençal vocabulary in the Middle East, while Ibero-Romance lexical material dominated in the Maghreb. After France became the dominant power in the latter area in the 19th century, Algerian Lingua Franca was heavily gallicised (to the extent that locals are reported having believed that they spoke French when conversing in Lingua Franca with the Frenchmen, who in turn thought they were speaking Arabic), and this version of the language was spoken into the nineteen hundreds...[42]
The similarities contribute to discussions of the classification of theMediterranean Lingua Franca as a language. Although its official classification is that of a pidgin, some scholars adamantly oppose that classification and believe it would be better viewed as aninterlanguage of Italian.
Linguist Steven Dworkin hypothesized that Catalan was the point of entry for Mediterranean Lingua Franca terms into Spain, arguably the source of several Italian and Arabic loanwords in Spanish, citing theDCECH.[43]
The crown was made up of the following territories (which are nowadays parts of the modern countries of Spain, France, Italy, Greece,Malta, andAndorra).
Sort by "Earliest annexion" to see the states in the chronological order they were joined to the crown.
Conquered by theCatalan Company in 1311; Inherited through the Kingdom of Sicily in 1381; lost in 1388.Lordship of Salona remained under the Fadrique branch of the House of Barcelona until 1394.
Joined with Aragon in 1162 to form the Crown. Through the 12th and the 14th centuries, the County of Barcelona developed common institutions and legislation with the otherCatalan counties, such as theConstitutions, theCatalan Courts and theGeneralitat, establishing the Principality of Catalonia as apolity
John II of Aragon became co-ruler of Navarrejure uxoris in 1425 and became sole ruler in 1441. After he and his daughterEleanor died in 1479, Aragon lost control again.
^Domingo J. Buesa Conde, inEl rey de Aragón (Zaragoza, CAI, 2000:57–59.ISBN84-95306-44-1) postulates that the Crown of Aragon's political capital of Zaragoza though it was not the economic or the administrative one since the court was itinerative in the 14th century and took its start from the decrees of Peter IV of Aragon establishing his coronation there: "Pedro IV parte (...) de la aceptación de la capital del Ebro como 'cabeza del Reino'. [...] por eso hizo saber a sus súbditos que 'Mandamos que este sacrosanto sacramento de la unción sea recibido de manos del metropolitano en la ciudad de Zaragoza' al tiempo que recordaba: "... y como quiera que los reyes de Aragón están obligados a recibir la unción en la ciudad de Zaragoza, que es la cabeza del Reino de Aragón, el cual reino es nuestra principal designación—esto es, apellido—y título, consideramos conveniente y razonable que, del mismo modo, en ella reciban los reyes de Aragón el honor de la coronación y las demás insignias reales, igual que vimos a los emperadores recibir la corona en la ciudad de Roma, cabeza de su imperio. Zaragoza, antigua capital del reino de Aragón, se ha convertido en la capital política de la Corona (...)".
^Jimeno Aranguren, Roldan; Lopez-Mugartza Iriarte, J. C. (2004).Vascuence y Romance: Ebro-Garona, Un Espacio de Comunicación. Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra / Nafarroako Gobernua. pp. 250–255.ISBN84-235-2506-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Collins, Wallace B. (2004).Orientation: A Journey: Trip Through Europe Asia And Africa. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 428.ISBN9780595310630.
^abReilly, Bernard F. (1993).The Medieval Spains. Cambridge University Press. p. 139.ISBN9780521397414.Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved11 October 2019.The new kingdom of Castile had roughly tripled in size to some 335,000 square kilometres by 1300 but, at the same time, its population had increased by the same factor, from one to three millions [...] In the new Crown of Aragon of 120,000 square kilometres the population density would have been about the same for its numbers reached about 1,000,000 in the same period.
^Ryder, Alan (2007).The Wreck of Catalonia. Civil War in the Fifteenth Century. Oxford University Press. p. v.ISBN978-0-19-920736-7.This group of states comprised the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Majorca, the principality of Catalonia, and the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne; further afield it embraced the kingdoms of Sicily and Sardinia. These states had no common institutions or bonds save allegiance to a common sovereign
^Kamen, Henry (2002).Empire: how Spain became a world power, 1492–1762, 20.
^Lozoya, Marqués de (1952).Historia de España, Salvat, vol. II page 60: "El Reino de Aragon, el Principado de Cataluña, el Reino de Valencia y el Reino de Mallorca, constituyen una confederación de Estados".
^Bisson, Thomas N. (1986).The Medieval Crown of Aragon: a short history, chapter II. The age of the Early Count-Kings (1137–1213) (The Principate of Ramon Berenguer IV 1137–1162), p. 31.
^Fatás, Guillermo; Guillermo Redondo (1995)."Blasón de Aragón" (in Spanish). Zaragoza, Diputación General de Aragón. pp. 101–102. Archived fromthe original on 31 January 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Jéquier, Léon (1981).Actes du II Colloque international d'héraldique. Breassone. Académie internationale d'héraldique. Les Origines des armoiries. Paris.ISBN2-86377-030-6.(in French)
^"La bandera de Aragón". Autonomous Government of Aragon. 6 March 1997. Archived fromthe original on 7 January 2008. Retrieved20 April 2008. Page on the official flag of Aragon and the origin of the "palos de gules" or "barras de Aragón"(in Spanish)
^"Coronación real".Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa. Archived fromthe original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved27 December 2017.
^Actes del cinquè Col·loqui Internacional de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes: Andorra, 1–6 d'octubre de 1979 (in Catalan). Bruguera, J. (Jordi); Massot i Muntaner, Josep. Montserrat: Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat. 1980. p. 189.ISBN8472024091.OCLC8347469.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Rodríguez, Carlos López (April 2007). Mira Editores (ed.).Qué es el Archivo de la Corona de Aragón?. Mira Editores. pp. 32–33,35–38, 41.ISBN978-84-8465-220-5.
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