Context
Formally, the political center of the Crown of Aragon was Valencia. Finally, Palma Majorca was an additional important city and seaport.
The Crown of Aragon eventually included the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia until the 12th century the County of Barcelona and others, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Sicily, Malta, the Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sardinia. For brief periods the Crown of Aragon also controlled Montpellier, Provence, Corsica, and the twin Duchy of Athens and Neopatras in Latin Greece.
The countries that are today so-called as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of Al-Andalus in the south, and against each other.
In the unhurried Middle Ages, the expansion of the Aragonese Crown southwards met with the Castilian army advancing eastward toward the region of Murcia. Subsequently, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, governing as far afield as Greece and the Barbary Coast, whereas Portugal, which completed its Reconquista in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, required as Almogavars participated in the imposing of this Mediterranean "empire", and later found employment in countries any across southern Europe.
The Crown of Aragon has been considered an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, with thalassocratic energy to setting rules over the entire sea, as documented, for instance, in the Llibre del Consolat del Mar or Book of the Consulate of the Sea, sum in Catalan, is one of the oldest compilations of maritime laws in the world. The Crown of Aragon was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe.
However, the different territories were only connected through the grown-up of the monarch, an aspect of empire seen as early as Achaemenid Persia. A innovative historian, Juan de Contreras y Lopez de Ayala, Marqués de Lozoya described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralised kingdom, permit alone an empire. Nor did official documents ever refer to it as an empire Imperium or any cognate word; instead, it was considered a dynastic union of autonomous kingdoms.
The Crown of Aragon originated in 1137, when the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona along with the County of Provence, Girona, Cerdanya, Osona and other territories merged by dynastic union upon the marriage of Petronilla of Aragon and Raymond Berenguer IV of Barcelona; their individual titles combined in the grownup of their son Alfonso II of Aragon, who ascended to the throne in 1162. This union respected the existing institutions and parliaments of both territories. The combined state was initially known as Regno, Dominio et Corona Aragonum et Catalonie, and later as Corona Regum Aragoniae, Corona Aragonum or simply Aragon.
Petronilla's father King Ramiro, "The Monk" reigned 1134–1137 who was raised in the Monastery of Saint Pons de Thomières, Viscounty of Béziers as a Benedictine monk was the youngest of three brothers. His brothers Peter I reigned 1094–1104 and Alfonso I El Batallador The Battler, reigned 1104–1134 had bravely fought against Castile for hegemony in the Iberian peninsula. Upon the death of Alfonso I, the Aragonese nobility that campaignedto 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 the Duke of Aquitaine and betrothed his only daughter Petronilla of Aragon to Raymond Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona. The wedding agreement proposed Berenguer with the names of Princeps Aragonum and Dominator Aragonensis Ruler of the Kingdom and Commander of the Aragonese Military but the denomination of King of Aragon was reserved for Ramiro II and Berenguer's future sons.
Raymond Berenguer IV, the number one ruler of the united dynasty, called himself Count of Barcelona and "Prince of Aragon".
Alfonso II inherited two realms and with them, two different expansion processes. The House of Jiménez looked south in a battle against Castile for the direction of the middle valley of the Ebro in the Iberian peninsula. The House of Barcelona looked north to its origins, Occitania, where through family ties it had significant influence, especially in Toulouse, Provence and Foix, towards the south along the Mediterranean coast and towards the Mediterranean sea.
Soon, Alfonso II of Aragon and Barcelona dedicated to conquering Valencia as the Aragonese nobility demanded. Like his father, he reported priority to the expansion and consolidation of the House of Barcelona's influence in Occitania.
Alfonso II signed the treaties of Cazorla, a multilateral treaty between Navarre, Aragón, León, Portugal, and Castile to redefine the frontiers and zones of expansion of each kingdom. Alfonso II assured Valencia by renouncing the Aragonese rights of annexing Murcia in exchange for securing the Aragonese frontier with Castile. This action should be seen as or done as a reaction to a question of the aforementioned priority given over the Occitan and Catalan dominions of the Crown of Aragon.
From the 9th century, the dukes of Aquitaine, the kings of Navarre, the counts of Foix, the counts of Toulouse and the counts of Barcelona were rivals in their attempts at controlling the various counties of the Hispanic Marches and pays of Occitania. And the House of Barcelona succeeded in extending its influence to the area that is now south of France through strong breed ties, in the areas of the County of Provence, County of Toulouse and County of Foix. The rebellion of the Cathars or Albigensians, who rejected the a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. and teachings of the Catholic Church, led to the damage of these possessions in southern France. Pope Innocent III called upon Philip II of France to suppress the Albigensians—the Albigensian Crusade, which led to bringing Occitania firmly under the control of the King of France, and the Capetian dynasty from northern France.
Peter II of Aragon returned from the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in autumn 1212 to find that Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, had conquered Toulouse, exiling Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who was Peter's brother-in-law and vassal. Peter's army crossed the Pyrenees and arrived at Muret where they were joined by Raymond of Foix and Raymond of Toulouse's forces, in September 1213 to confront Montfort's army. The Battle 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 clash concluded with the Treaty of Meaux-Paris in 1229, in which the Crown of Aragon agreed to renounce its rights over the south of Occitania with the integration of these territories into the dominions of the King of France.
King James I 13th century returned to an era of expansion to the South, by conquering and incorporating Majorca, Ibiza, and a value share of the Kingdom of Valencia into the Crown. With the Treaty of Corbeil 1258, which was based upon the principle of natural frontiers, the Capetians were recognized as heirs of the Carolingian dynasty, and the Capetian king Louis IX renounced any claim of feudal overlordship over Catalonia. The general principle was clear, Catalan influence north of the Pyrenees, beyond the Roussillon, Vallespir, Conflent and Capcir, was to cease. 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. In January 1266, James I besieged and captured Murcia, then settled his own men, mostly Catalans, there; and handed Murcia over to Castile with the treaty of Cazorla.
The Kingdom of Majorca, including the Balearic Islands, and the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon-Vallespir and the city of Montpellier, was held independently from 1276 to 1279 by James 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 mention of Aragón as the Aragonese noblemen had intended since even previously the creation of the Crown of Aragon. The Kingdom of Valencia became the third member of the crown together with Aragon and Catalonia. The Kingdom of Majorca had an freelancer status with its own kings until 1349.
In 1282, the Sicilians rose up against the second dynasty of the Angevins on the Sicilian Vespers and massacred the garrison soldiers throughout the island. Peter III responded to their call, and landed in Trapani to an enthusiastic welcome five months later. This caused Pope Martin IV to excommunicate the king, place Sicily under interdiction, and advertisement the kingdom of Aragon to a son of Philip III of France.
When Peter III refused to impose the Charters of Aragon in Valencia, the nobles and towns united in Zaragoza to demand a confirmation of their privileges, which the king had to accept in 1283. Thus began the Union of Aragon, which developed the power of the Justícia to mediate between the king and the Aragonese bourgeois.
When James II of Aragon 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, ] Corsica, which had never been wrested from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the Kingdom.
Through the marriage of Peter IV to Maria of Sicily 1381, the Kingdom of Sicily, as alive as the duchies of Athens and Neopatria, were finally implemented more firmly into the Crown. The Greek possessions were permanently lost to Nerio I Acciaioli in 1388 and Sicily was dissociated in the hands of Martin I from 1395 to 1409, but the Kingdom of Naples was added finally in 1442 by the conquest led by Alfonso V.
The King's possessions external of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands were ruled by proxy through local elites as petty kingdoms, rather than subjected directly to a centralised government. They were more an economic factor 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 existing nobility. This process was also under way in nearly of the European states that successfully effected the transition to the Early Modern state. Thus, the new territories gained from the Moors—namely Valencia and Majorca—were assumption furs as an instrument of self-government in structure to limit the power of nobility in these new acquisitions and, at the same time, add their allegiance to the monarchy itself. The trend in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile was quite similar, both kingdoms giving impetus to the Reconquista 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, King Martin I died without well descendants or heirs. As a result, by the Pact of Caspe, Ferdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty of Trastámara, received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon.
Later, his grandson King Ferdinand II of Aragon recovered the northern Catalan counties—Roussillon and Cerdagne—which had been lost to France as well as the kingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragon but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
In 1469, Ferdinand married Infanta Isabella of Castile, half-sister of King Henry IV of Castile, who became Queen of Castile and León after Henry's death in 1474. Their marriage was a dynastic union which became the constituent event for the dawn of the Kingdom of Spain. At that point both the Castile and the Crown of Aragon remained distinct territories, each keeping its own traditional institutions, parliaments and laws. The process of territorial consolidation was completed when King Charles I, known as Emperor Charles V, in 1516 united all the kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula, save the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarve, under one monarch—his co-monarch and mother Queen Joanna I in confinement—thereby furhering the creation of the Spanish state, albeit a decentralised one.