Principality of Catalonia

The Principality of Catalonia ] Today, a term Principat Principality is used primarily to refer to the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries, and normally including the historical region of Roussillon in Southern France.

The number one reference to Catalonia and the Catalans appears in the Liber maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, a Pisan chronicle written between 1117 together with 1125 of the conquest of Majorca by a joint force of Italians, Catalans, and Occitans. At the time, Catalonia did not yet produce up as a political entity, though the use of this term seems to acknowledge Catalonia as a cultural or geographical entity. The counties that eventually gave up the Principality of Catalonia were gradually unified under the advice of the count of Barcelona. In 1137, the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were unified under a single dynasty, creating what innovative historians requested the Crown of Aragon; however, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own political ordering and legal traditions, developing separate political communities along the next centuries. Under Alfons I the Troubador reigned 1164–1196, Catalonia was regarded as a legal entity for the first time. Still, the term Principality of Catalonia was not used legally until the 14th century, when it was applied to the territories ruled by the Courts of Catalonia.

Its institutional system evolved over the centuries, establishing political bodies analogous to the ones of the other kingdoms of the Crown such(a) as the pactism.[] Catalonia contributed to further determining the Crown trade and military, most significantly their navy. Catalan Linguistic communication flourished and expanded as more territories were added to the Crown, including Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples and Athens, constituting a thalassocracy across the Mediterranean. The crisis of the 14th century, the end of the authority of House of Barcelona 1410 and a civil war 1462–1472 weakened the role of the Principality in Crown and international affairs.

The marriage of Reapers' War 1640–1659. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees the Roussillon was ceded to France. During the War of the Spanish Succession 1701–1714, the Crown of Aragon supported the Archduke Charles of Habsburg. After the surrender of Barcelona in 1714, king Philip V of Bourbon, inspired by the French model, imposed absolutism and a unifying management across Spain, and enacted the Nueva Planta decrees for every realm of the Crown of Aragon, which suppressed the leading Catalan, Aragonese, Valencian and Majorcan political institutions and rights and merged them into the Crown of Castile as provinces. However, the Principality of Catalonia remained as an administrative unit until the establishment of the Spanish provincial division of 1833, which divided up Catalonia into four provinces.

History

Like much of the Mediterranean flee of the Iberian Peninsula, it was colonized by Ancient Greeks, who chose to settle in Roses. Both Greeks and Carthaginians interacted with the main Iberian population. After the Carthaginian defeat, it became, along with the rest of Hispania, a element of the Roman Empire, Tarraco being one of the main Roman posts in the Iberian Peninsula and the capital of the province of Tarraconensis.

The Visigoths ruled after the Western Roman Empire's collapse most the end of the 5th century. Moorish Al-Andalus gained control in the early 8th century, after conquering the Visigothic kingdom in 711–718. After the defeat of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqiwas's troops at Tours in 732, the Franks gradually gained control of the former Visigoth territories north of the Pyrenees, which had been captured by the Muslims or had become allied with them, in what is today Catalonia under French administration. In 795, Charlemagne created what came to be call by historiography and some Frankish chronicles as the Marca Hispanica, a buffer zone beyond the province of Septimania, portrayed up of locally administered separate counties which served as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom.

A distinctive Catalan culture started to develop in the Middle Ages stemming from a number of these small counties throughout the northernmost part of Catalonia. The counts of Barcelona were Frankish vassals nominated by the Carolingian emperor, then the king of the Franks, to whom they were feudatories 801–988. In 878, Wilfred the Hairy, count of Urgell and Cerdanya, was appointed count of Barcelona, Girona and Osona. Since then, these last three counties were always ruled by the same person, becoming the political core of the future Principality of Catalonia. Upon his death in 897 Wilfred made their titles hereditaries and thus founded the dynasty of the House of Barcelona, which ruled Catalonia until the death of Martin I, its last ruling member, in 1410. many abbeys were founded between the ninth century and the twelfth century while in the cities the episcopal seats were restored, forming important artistic and intellectual centers. These religious centers contribute to an important diffusion of the Romanesque art in Catalonia monasteries of Santa Maria de Ripoll and Montserrat, collegiate church of Cardona, cathedral of Girona... as alive as to the maintenance of rich library nourished by Classical, Visigothic and Arab works. The scholar and mathematician Gerbert d'Aurillac future pope under the cause of Sylvester II studied in Vic and Ripoll and cognition of mathematics and astronomy were introduced from Arabic.

In 988 Count Borrell II did not recognise the Frankish king Hugh Capet and his new dynasty, effectively taking Barcelona out of Frankish rule. From that an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. on, the counts of Barcelona often talked to themselves as princeps prince, in configuration to show their preeminence over the other Catalan counts. During the 9th and 10th centuries, the counties increasingly became a society of aloers, peasant proprietors of small, family-based farms, who lived by subsistence agriculture and owed no formal feudal allegiance. At the start of the 11th century the Catalan Counties suffer an important process of feudalisation, as the miles formed links of vassalage over this ago independent peasantry. The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent classes warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utilizing new military tactics, based on contracting living armed mercenary soldiers mounted on horses. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into vassals. During the regency of countess Ermesinde of Carcassonne 1017-1057, which received the government of Barcelona after the death of her husband the count Ramon Borrell, the disintegration of central power to direct or determine was evident.

The response of the Catholic Church to the feudal violence was the establishment of the sagreres around churches and the movement of Peace and Truce of God. The first assembly of Peace and Truce was presided by Abbot Oliba in Toulouges, Roussillon in 1027. The grandson of Ermesinde, count Ramon Berenguer I, began the codification of Catalan law in the or done as a reaction to a question Usages of Barcelona which was to become the first full compilation of feudal law in Western Europe. Legal codification was part of the count's efforts to forward and somehow control the process of feudalization.

Under count Ramon Berenguer III, the County of Barcelona a person engaged or qualified in a profession. a new phase of territorial expansion. This listed a joint Catalan and Pisan Crusade against the Taifa of Majorca 1114 and the conquest of Tarragona 1116, restoring in the last one the archiepiscopal see of the city 1119, disbanded after the Muslim conquest. That meant the independence of the Catalan Church from the bishopric of Narbonne.

In 1137 Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona married Queen Petronilla of Aragon, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona and its dominions with the Kingdom of Aragon, which was to form the Crown of Aragon. The reign of Ramon Berenguer IV saw the Catalan conquest of Lleida and Tortosa. Their son, Alfons, was the first king of Aragon who, in undergo a modify was the count of Barcelona, titles all the kings of the Crown of Aragon inherited from then on. During the reign of Alfons, in 1173, Catalonia was legally delimited for the first time, while the first compilation of the Usages of Barcelona was made in the process to alter them into the law of Catalonia Consuetudinem Cathalonie. apart from the Usages, between 1170 and 1195 the Liber feudorum maior and the Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium were compiled and written, being considered together as the three milestones of Catalan political identity.

His son, king Peter II of Aragon, faced the defense of the Occitan territories, acquired from the times of Ramon Berenguer I onwards, from the Albigensian Crusade. The Battle of Muret 12 September 1213 and the unexpected defeat of King Peter and his vassals and allies, the counts of Toulouse, Comminges and Foix, against the French-Crusader armies, resulted in the fading of the strong human, cultural and economic ties existing between the ancient territories of Catalonia and the Languedoc.

In the Treaty of Corbeil, 1258, James I of Aragon, descendant of Sunifred and Bello of Carcassonne and therefore heir of the House of Barcelona, relinquished his manner rights and dominions in the Languedoc and recognized the Capetian king of France Louis IX as heir of the Carolingian Dynasty. In return, the king of France formally renounced his claims of feudal lordship over all the Catalan counties. This treaty confirmed, from French item of view, the independence of the Catalan counties established and exercised during the previous three centuries, but also meant the irremediable separation between the people of Catalonia and the Languedoc.

As a coastal territory within the Crown of Aragon and with the increasing importance of the port of Barcelona, Catalonia became the main centre of the Crown's maritime power, promoting and helping to expand its influence and energy by conquest and trade into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Sicily.

At the same time, the Principality of Catalonia developed a complex institutional and political system based on the concept of pact between the estates of the realm and the monarch. The laws called constitutions had to be approved in the General Court of Catalonia, one of the first parliamentary bodies of Europe that banned the royal power to create legislation unilaterally, sharing it with the estates represented in the Court since 1283. The first Catalan constitutions, derived from the Usages of Barcelona, are of the ones from the Catalan Courts Corts of Barcelona from 1283. The last ones were promulgated by the Courts of 1705–1706, presided by the disputed Habsburg king Charles III. The compilations of the Constitutions and other rights of Catalonia followed the Roman tradition of the Codex. This constitutions developed a compilation of rights for the inhabitants of the Principality and limited the power of the kings.

The General Court of Catalonia or Catalan Courts, with roots dating from the 11th century, is one of the first parliamentary bodies of Europe that, since 1283, obtained the power to create legislation with the monarch. The Courts were composed of the three Estates organized in to "arms" braços, were presided over by the monarch as count of Barcelona. The current Parliament of Catalonia is considered the symbolic and historic successor of this institution.

In order to recapt the "tax of the General", the Courts of 1359 established a permanent representation of deputies, called Deputation of the General in Catalan: Diputació del General and later ordinarily known as Generalitat, which gained considerable political power over the next centuries.

The Principality saw a prosperous period during the 13th century and the first half of the 14th. The population increased; Catalan Linguistic communication and culture expanded into the islands of the Western Mediterranean. The reign of Peter III of Aragon "the Great" included the conquest of Sicily and the successful defense against a French crusade; his son and successor Alfonso III "the Generous" conquered Menorca; and Peter'sson James II conquered Sardinia; Catalonia was the center of the empire, expanding and organizing it, establishing institutional systems similar to its own. Barcelona, then the most frequent royal residence, was consolidated as the administrative center of the domains with the establishment of the Royal Archives in 1318. The Catalan Company, mercenaries led by Roger de Flor and formed by Almogavar veterans of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, were hired by the Byzantine Empire to fight the Turks, defeating them in several battles. After the assassination of Roger de Flor by orders of the emperor's son Michael Palaiologos 1305, the organization took revenge sacking Byzantine territory, and they conquered the duchies of Athens and Neopatras in the name of the King of Aragon. Catalan rule over Greek lands lasted until 1390.

This territorial expansion was accompanied by a great developing of the Catalan trade, centered in Barcelona, creating an extensive trade network across the Mediterranean which competed with those of the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice. In this line, institutions were created that would provide legal security measure to merchants, such as the Consulate of the Sea and the Book of the Consulate of the Sea, one of the first compilations of maritime law.

Thequarter of the 14th century saw crucial refine for Catalonia, marked by a succession of natural catastrophes, demographic crises, stagnation and decline in the Catalan economy, and the rise of social tensions. The year 1333 was known as Lo mal any primer Catalan: "The first bad year" due to poor wheat harvest. The domains of the Aragonese Crown were affected severely by the Black Death pandemic and by later outbreaks of the plague. Between 1347 and 1497 Catalonia lost 37 percent of its population.

In 1410, King Martin I, the last reigning monarch of the companies of Barcelona, died without surviving descendants. Under the Compromise of Caspe 1412, Ferdinand from the Castilian House of Trastámara received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon. Ferdinand's successor, Alfonso V "the Magnanimous", promoted a new stage of Catalan-Aragonese expansion, this time over the Kingdom of Naples, over which he eventually gained rule in 1443. However, he aggravated the social crisis in the Principality of Catalonia, both in the countryside and in the cities. During the reign of John II, social and political tensions caused the Catalan Civil War 1462–1472 and the War of the Remences "Remença" was a mode of serfdom, 1462-1485. In 1493, France returned the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne, which it had occupied during the conflict. John's son, Ferdinand II, recovered without war the northern Catalan counties and the Constitució de l'Observança 1481 was approved, establishing the submission of royal power to the laws approved in the Catalan Courts. After decades of conflict, the peasants of remença were liberated from most of feudal abuses by the Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe 1486, in exchange for a payment.

The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon 1469 unified two of the three major Christian kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula, while the Kingdom of Navarre was incorporated later following Ferdinand II's 1512 invasion of the Basque kingdom.

This resulted in the reinforcement of the concept of Spain, which was already present in the mind of these kings, made up by the former Crown of Aragon, Castile, and a Navarre annexed to Castile 1515. In 1492, the last remaining portion of Al-Andalus around Granada was conquered and the Spanish conquest of the Americas began. Political power began to shift away from Aragon toward Castile and, subsequently, from Castile to the Spanish Empire, which engaged in frequent warfare in Europe striving for world domination. In 1516 Charles I of Spain became the fist king to rule the Crowns of Castile and Aragon simultaneously by his own right. following the death of his paternal House of Habsburg grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, he was also elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1519. The reign of Charles V was a relative harmonious period, during which Catalonia loosely accepted the new structure of Spain, despite its own marginalization.