Freedman, Paul. Cowardice, Heroism and The Legendary Origins of Catalonia

The Past and Present Society
Cowardice, Heroism and the Legendary Origins of Catalonia

Author(s): Paul Freedman
Source: Past & Present, No. 121 (Nov., 1988), pp. 3-28
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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COWARDICE,
HEROISM AND THE
LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA*
Legendary
accounts of national
origins
can be found
throughout
medieval and Renaissance
Europe.
So
numerous,
so
varied,
and often
so bizarre are these stories of heroic ancestors that
they appear
to
invite
contempt
for the
apparent credulity
of their audience. Yet
such
histories,
however
fanciful,
show how
kingdoms
and
peoples
described themselves as
political
and moral communities.1 The ori-
gins
of collective virtues or liberties were often ascribed to classical
or biblical
figures.
Thus
refugees
from the
Trojan War,
Brutus and
Francus,
were credited with the establishment of
England
and France
respectively,
while from the thirteenth
century Spain
claimed both
Hercules and the biblical Tubal as founders.2 More recent
history,
from the
collapse
of the Roman
empire
to the
crusades,
also served
to
legitimate
claims to a heroic
identity.
Such elaborated or made-
up
histories were not
simply imaginative posturing
but
political
statements. Tales of the
origines gentium
reflected the
aspiration
and
self-image
of medieval nations.
In the
contemporary
world as
well,
states and
peoples
adhere to
sustaining myths
and
exaggerations
of their
origins.
The modern
nation is what Benedict Anderson has called an
"imagined political
community",
the
product
of an invented
past through
which the
nation
appears
both older and more natural or
historically
inevitable
than in fact it is.3 Such a connection between historical
myth
and
national
identity
does not mean that
history
served
merely
as rhetori-
*
This article was written
during
the academic
year
1986-7 while I was a member
of the Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton,
New
Jersey.
I
gratefully acknowledge
the aid I received from the Institute and from the National Endowment for the
Humanities.
Many colleagues
and' friends at Princeton and elsewhere
helped
me. I
am
particularly
indebted to Peter Sahlins for his advice and criticism.
See
especially
Susan
Reynolds,
"Medieval
Origines
Gentium and the
Community
of the
Realm", History,
lxviii
(1983), pp.
375-90.
2
On
Spanish legends
of
Hercules,
see R. B.
Tate, "Mythology
in
Spanish
Histori-
ography
of the Middle
Ages
and
Renaissance", Hispanic Rev.,
xxii
(1954), pp.
1-18.
Tubal was a
nephew
of Noah mentioned in Genesis x.2.
According
to
Josephus, Jewish
Antiquities, i,
124-5
(trans. Thackery, iv, p. 61),
Tubal and his
descendants,
the
"Tubalians"
(whence "Iberians"),
settled the
peninsula
after the Flood.
3
Benedict
Anderson, Imagined
Communities:
Reflections
on the
Origin
and
Spread of
Nationalism
(London, 1983), p.
15.
cal or
arbitrary superstructure masking another, deeper reality.
Patri-
otism is felt as a
metaphoric identity,
a
quasi-sacred fellowship
that
has had an obvious hold on the inhabitants of modern states. National
sentiment has demonstrated an
extraordinary
force in modern
poli-
tics, usually greater
that that of more abstract or international ideolo-
gies.
The
manipulation
of
history
in the service of the
perceived
nation reflects a
powerful,
if often
arbitrary
sense of
community
and
sacrifice.4
Feelings
of transcendent
loyalty
and the idealization of
history
have also affected
many
so-called
minority nationalities,
such
as the Scots or
Kurds,
who have not been able to form
sovereign
states in the
contemporary
world.5 This article looks at one such
minority,
the
Catalans,
and their
image
of themselves as a nation in
the middle
ages.
Catalans
comprise
a
highly
self-conscious
polity
with certain auton-
omous
rights
within the
present Spanish
state.
They
consider them-
selves the
largest
national
group
in
contemporary Europe
not
forming
an
independent country.6
At various times in modern
history, notably
under the Franco
regime,
the Catalans have been
harshly
treated
by
the Castilian-controlled
Spanish government
in the name of
political
and cultural
unity against "separatism".
In the medieval and
early
modern
period
Catalonia was a
principality
within a
group
of realms
known as the Crown of
Aragon.
Catalans dominated this
kingdom
and
its associated
territories,
which at different times included
Valencia,
Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, parts
of
Greece,
and Provence
-
areas won
by conquest
or
dynastic
union. Within this
congeries
the Catalans
identified themselves as a heroic
people
whose
conquests
were the
result of virtues inherent in their
early
medieval
beginnings.
The term "Catalans"
appeared
for the first time in the twelfth
century,7
but medieval as well as modern writers have seen the
origins
of an
independent
Catalonia in the foundation of the
county
of
4
Ibid., pp.
19-40. See also Tom
Nairn,
The
Breakup of Britain,
2nd edn.
(London,
1981), pp. 329-63,
who
emphasizes
not
only
the
power
of nationalism but the
degree
to which its success in the modern era has stemmed from the active
participation
of
the lower classes.
5
One can have national
myths
without a
corresponding
modern
political entity:
see
John
A.
Armstrong,
Nations
before
Nationalism
(Chapel Hill, 1982), esp. pp.
129-67.
6
This assertion
requires
certain
assumptions
about the Soviet Union and the
degree
to which Czechs and Serbs form
political
nations. An
English-language publication
of
the Catalan autonomous
government,
Catalonia,
ii
(Mar. 1987), p. 2,
states that
Catalan is the "most
important" European language
not
corresponding
to a modern
state.
7
On the much-discussed
question
of the
origins
of the names "Catalonia" and
"Catalans",
see Frederic Udina Martorell,
El nom de
Catalunya (Barcelona, 1961).
4 NUMBER 121 PAST AND PRESENT
THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA
Barcelona in the ninth
century.
The
Carolingian
era was
regarded
as
the crucible in which distinctive Catalan
qualities
and
corresponding
political rights
were formed. Under
Charlemagne,
the eastern
Pyrenees
and the
territory
to the south as far as Barcelona were seized
from Islamic control and
organized
as
counties, collectively making
up
what would be known as the
"Spanish
March".8 Under Charle-
magne's
successors,
these frontier counties became
increasingly
iso-
lated from the
declining
Frankish
kingdom
and
ultimately
(and
more
or less
imperceptibly) independent
from it.
By
the
early
twelfth
century
what had been a
beleaguered
frontier
had become a
prosperous group
of territories of which Barcelona was
the most
powerful.9
The
hegemony
of Barcelona was extended in
1137
by
the betrothal of its
count,
Ramon
Berenguer IV,
to
Petronilla,
the
daughter
and heiress of the
king
of
Aragon. Contemporaneous
with the union of Barcelona and
Aragon,
new territories were seized
from Islam. The
conquests
of Lerida and Tortosa in 1148-9
began
a
long period
of
expansion.
Catalan ambitions in the south of France
were frustrated at the
beginning
of the thirteenth
century,
but the
Islamic
kingdom
of Valencia was
conquered
in
mid-century
and
Sicily
was taken from the
Angevins
after the Sicilian
Vespers
of
1282. Catalans would embark on
military
adventures
throughout
the
Mediterranean
during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
While the cohesion and actual
political power
of the Crown of
Aragon
were
ultimately
less
impressive
than those of its Mediter-
ranean
rivals,
Catalans of the late middle
ages
were
vividly
aware of
a
degree
of
prowess
and success. In
1406,
for
example, King
Martin
in an address to the Catalan
parliament praised
the
loyalty,
valour
and
generosity
of the Catalans and cited the
conquests
of
Majorca
and
Sicily among
his
proofs.10
The virtues
singled
out
by
the
king
were conventions of medieval
chivalry.
Such traits
might
on occasion
be credited to entire
peoples,
but
they
were more often considered
nobles'
ideals, pertaining
to the
military
and
hereditary upper
class
more than to national character in
general.
Medieval
legends
often
8
Legends concerning Charlemagne
existed
throughout
medieval
Spain:
see Barton
Sholod, Charlemagne
in
Spain:
The Cultural
Legacy of
Roncesvalles
(Geneva, 1966).
Charlemagne
was more
important
to Catalonia than to the other Christian states of the
peninsula
because he was
regarded
as
responsible
for the creation of Catalonia. It is
worth
noting
that
although
his armies were active in what would later become
Catalonia, Charlemagne
himself never set foot there.
9
On the Catalans and medieval
Aragon,
see T. N.
Bisson,
The Medieval Crown
of
Aragon (Oxford, 1986).
10
Text in Parlaments a les Corts
catalanes,
ed. Ricard Albert and
Joan
Gassiot
(Barcelona, 1928), pp.
58-72.
5
mingle
the
supposed prowess
of entire
peoples
such as the Catalans
with older beliefs in the exclusive
privileges
and attributes of
particu-
lar orders in
society.
In the era before modern
nationalism,
ex-
pressions
of national
pride coexisted,
sometimes
uneasily,
with the
rhetoric of
valour, military piety
and other
qualities
identified with
the
nobility.
Sacrifice for the nation was itself derived from the
crusader ideals of the defence of Christendom and
partook
of the
same combination of
pious
and bellicose virtues that animated the
wars
against
Islam and was associated with the
knightly
estate.11
National sentiment in the middle
ages
did not
pretend,
as it often has
in modern
times,
to obliterate distinctions within the
polity.
Historical
tales of a
people's greatness,
linked as
they
were to chivalric
virtues,
might
in fact underline and
justify
such
distinctions,
in
particular
exalting
the
rights
of the nobles.
The foundation
legends
considered below demonstrate how social
and
political
strife influenced the sense of Catalan
identity
in the
middle
ages
and
beyond.
The
legends
idealized the Catalan
people,
but in the service of
competing groups
at a time of intense social
conflict. The heroic stories centred on the ninth
century,
when the
county
of Barcelona and its
neighbours
were formed. The
Carolingian
era seemed to mark the
political
creation of Catalonia and its distinct
virtues. Such
reassuring patriotic assertions,
directed
against
external
rivals,
are the motive for all
origines gentium
tales
throughout
medieval
and
early
modern
Europe.
But the foundation
legends
also had a
more
immediate,
internal
purpose
as well.
They
reflected the
struggles
between nobles and the
king,
and
especially
between nobles and
peasants.
The social issues found dramatic
expression
in a
humiliating
story
of cowardice in which
precisely
those conventional
qualities
of
bravery
and militant
piety
were found
wanting.
This
legend
was
designed
to
legitimate
the
oppression
of the
peasantry by
means of
an invented national
disgrace.
I
THE LEGEND OF THE COWARDLY PEASANTS
In a
fifteenth-century
Escorial
manuscript
of miscellaneous
legal
texts and
commentaries,
there are two
separate
instances in which a
supposed
refusal
by
Christian
peasants
of the
Carolingian
era to aid
'1 Ernst H.
Kantorowicz,
"Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political
Thought",
Amer.
Hist.
Rev.,
lvi
(1951), pp. 472-92; repr.
in Ernst H.
Kantorowicz,
Selected Studies
(Locust
Valley, 1965), pp.
308-24.
6 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121
liberating
Frankish armies is cited as an
explanation
for the
origin
of
peasant
servitude. One
commentary
is identified as the work of a
fourteenth-century lawyer
named Bertrandus de Ceva and the
legend
is included in his brief
commentary
on
aspects
of
customary
law.12
Elsewhere in the same
manuscript
is an
anonymous
note on
parlia-
mentary legislation
of 1283 that limited the
rights
of
peasants
to
become tenants on
royal
land.13 This
gloss
on a fundamental statute
concerning
Catalan serfdom
appears chronologically
to
precede
Bertrandus's effort because of its
generalized description
of historical
events and
vague
citation of sources which contrast with the relative
precision
found in Bertrandus.
According
to the
anonymous
author
of the earlier
work,
after the Saracens had
conquered Spain many
Christians remained as
captives
of the Muslims and cultivated the
land, subject
to harsh tenurial conditions. When the Christian armies
(who
are not further
identified)
launched a
campaign
of
conquest
and
liberation, they
called on the Christian
captives
for aid.
These,
out
of
fear,
did not
respond
to the call to
insurrection,
but the Christian
armies
prevailed
none the less. Some in the victorious forces wanted to
kill the
cowardly population
now their
captives.
Others recommended
instead that the
peasants
live under their new Christian masters
subject
to the same
degrading
conditions that
they
had been
willing
to
accept
under
Islam,
and this
policy prevailed.
The
gloss
closes
by
attributing
this
story
to ancient and reliable
(but unnamed)
sources
and invokes the words of Psalm 43: "We have
heard, O God,
with
our ears . .
.",
a text that
goes
on to describe how
"Thy
hand
destroyed
the Gentiles".
Bertrandus de Ceva tells the same
story
but with more detail. Here
it is
specifically Charlemagne
who called
upon
the
captive peasants
to rise
up
in concert with his invasion.
Charlemagne conquered
the
territory up
to the
Llobregat
river
(running
north to south on a line
just
west of
Barcelona), despite
the refusal of the Christian natives to
obey
his instructions. Here too there was a
proposal
to kill the
captives. Charlemagne, noting
that
military
men could not be ex-
pected
to cultivate the
land,
ordered instead that the
peasants
be
spared, labouring
as
captives
as
they
had under Saracen rule.
Bondage
to the land and other
arbitrary
exactions were thus attributed to
12
Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, El
Escorial, MS. d.
II.18,
fos. 118r-117"
(foliation
reversed),
ed. Paul
Freedman,
"Catalan
Lawyers
and the
Origins
of
Serfdom",
Mediaeval
Studies,
xlviii
(1986), pp.
313-14.
13
Ibid., fos. 94r-93v
(foliation reversed),
ed.
Freedman,
"Catalan
Lawyers," p.
313.
For the
legal
context for these
commentaries,
see
pp.
304-8.
7
Saracen
invention,
continued as merited
punishment by
the new
Christian
masters,
and
applied
to the descendants of the
cowardly
peasants.
14
The
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
was
widely accepted by jurists
and historians of the fifteenth
century.
Pere Tomich in his
popular
Historias e
conquestas
dels excellentissims e Catholics
Reys
de
Arago
(1438)
added a
degree
of historical
verisimilitude, making
Louis the
Pious the leader of the Christian
armies,
and
giving
814 as the date
for the events.15 In 1476 the
jurist Johannes
de Socarrats
copied
the
passage
from Bertrandus de Ceva and added a few curious details
such as the assertion
that,
in one
village
in Catalonia east of the
Llobregat,
the inhabitants were free because their ancestors had
obeyed
the
emperor's
call to arms.16
The
legend
was
extremely
useful as a
justification
for servitude at
a time when it was under sustained attack on
legal
and moral
grounds
by peasants, joined
in certain instances
by
the
royal
court. In the
last decades of the fourteenth
century,
when the
demographic
and
economic
consequences
of the Black Death of 1348 had
penetrated
rural
Catalonia, peasants
of the north and east
began
to demand the
abolition of their servile condition and of
seigneurial rights
to
levy
unjust
exactions
(the
so-called "bad
customs").17
The
subjugated
population
was known as the
peasantry
of the
remenca
or remences
(from
the
redemption payment required
for their
manumission).
They
were most numerous in the
region
known as Old
Catalonia,
east of the
Llobregat river,
thus
roughly
coterminous with the extent
of the
Carolingian Spanish
March. The
alleged Carolingian origins
of
their subordination
explained
the
geographical
limits of this tenurial
14
As a
postscript,
Bertrandus cites another
simpler explanation
for medieval servi-
tude: that the serfs were descended from those who had collaborated with Count
Julian
to call in the Saracens to overthrow the
Visigothic kings
in 711. This line of
reasoning
may
be related to a
commonplace
of
anti-Jewish
accusations of collaboration with
Islam. See Norman
Roth,
"The
Jews
and the Muslim
Conquest
of
Spain", Jewish
Social
Studies,
xxxvii
(1976), pp.
145-57.
15 Pere
Tomich,
Historias e
conquestas
dels excellentissims e Catholics
Reys
de
Arago
e de lurs
antecessors
los Comtes de Barcelona
(Barcelona, 1534; repr. Barcelona, 1886,
Valencia, 1970),
fo. 18'.
16
Johannes de
Socarrats,
Ioannis de Socarratis iurisconsulti Cathalani in tractatum
Petri Alberti . .
(Barcelona
and
Lyons, 1551), p.
501.
17
Jaime Vicens
Vives,
Historia de los
Remensas,
en el
siglo xv,
2nd edn.
(Barcelona,
1978), pp.
29-45. The "bad customs" were
seigneurial rights
to take a
portion
of
peasant property
under certain
conditions,
such as a wife's
adultery
or death without
a direct
heir,
and to receive a
redemption payment
if the
peasant
wished to leave the
land. See Wladimir
Piskorski,
El
problema
de la
significacion y
del
origen
de los seis
"malos usos" en
Cataluia,
trans.
Julia Rodriguez Danilevsky (Barcelona, 1929;
Russian
edn.
Kiev, 1899).
regime
and also
justified
a servitude of Christians
regarded
as other-
wise
incompatible
with Catalan law.18 The
king
tended to
ally
with
the remences to
support
their
agitation against
nobles and
great
ecclesi-
astical lords
during
the fifteenth
century.19
From 1462 to 1486 two
peasant
wars intertwined with bitter
dynastic
and factional
struggles.
The
resulting
Catalan civil war devastated the
country
and marked
the visible
beginning
of a
long
decline in the influence of
Aragon
and Catalonia within the Iberian
peninsula.
The war
did, however,
accomplish
the abolition of the most abusive
aspects
of the
seigneurial
regime, including
the
remenqa payments
and the "bad customs".20 It
stands as one of the few successful
peasant
rebellions in
European
history.
The
ability
of the
peasants
to end their
subjugation
was due in
part
to the moral and
legal
difficulties of their masters. It was hard to
defend an
arbitrary lordship
that affected
only part
of Catalonia and
that was
acknowledged
as
violating
the norms of
customary
law. The
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
was a
quasi-juridical argument
that
attempted
to
legitimate
servitude
by bolstering positive
law with
history, explaining
the
privileged
status of the nobles and the
subju-
gation
of the
peasantry
as the result of
contrasting
moral characters
demonstrated at the Catalan foundation.
Its usefulness
gave
this
legend
the status of a
widely
diffused
historical truth. Indeed it was so
generally accepted
in the fifteenth
century
that the
peasants themselves,
in
demanding
the abolition of
servile
institutions, put
forth an
exculpatory version, appropriating
and
changing
the circumstances of the
story
for their
argument
with
the lords. In 1448
peasants
in the dioceses of
Gerona,
Vic and
Barcelona met in local assemblies to
agitate
for the end of their unfree
personal
status and abolition of the "bad customs".
They
elected
representatives
to
organize
the collection of funds to
compensate
the
lords for their freedom. A
manuscript
in the
municipal
archive at
Gerona
reports
the
process
of
setting up
this administrative struc-
ture.21 The
king accepted
the
right
of the
peasants
to act as
nego-
18
Freedman,
"Catalan
Lawyers", pp.
288-314.
19
Vicens
Vives,
Historia de los
Remensas, pp.
37-59.
20
On the wars and the abolition of serfdom: ibid.;
Jaime
Vicens
Vives,
El
gran
sindicato
remensa,
1488-1508
(Madrid, 1954);
S.
Sobreques
i Vidal and
Jaume
Sobreques
i
Callic6,
La
guerra
civil catalana del
siglo xv,
2 vols.
(Barcelona, 1973).
21 The record of the
meetings
and of the oaths sworn in 1448 and 1449 is Archivo
Hist6rico
del
Ayuntamiento, Gerona,
Sec. XX.
2,
Libros manuscritos de temas
diversos, Carpeta 1,
MS.
8,
a
manuscript
of 1460. A
royal
order of 1447 had allowed
peasants
to
congregate
to consider abolition of the "bad customs" and to raise
100,000
Aragonese
florins: see Vicens
Vives,
Historia de los
Remensas, p.
51.
9
tiators,
but the
peasants
did not obtain concessions from the Catalan
lords in
1448,
and it was
only
after decades of war that the
syndicates
of the remences obtained the end of servitude.
The
preface
to the record of the
peasants'
oaths is a denunciation
of the
oppressive seigneurial regime
in terms of its
supposed
historical
origins.22
Christian armies
(no
leader is
mentioned)
had
conquered
Catalonia from the
"pagans". Many,
but not
all,
of the inhabitants
accepted
Christian
baptism.
Those who
through obstinacy
or
ignor-
ance
clung
to their
superstition
were
degraded
into servitude. This
was to
encourage
them to seek
baptism;
there was never
any
intention
to
perpetuate
the exactions after conversion.
Upon baptism
the former
serfs were to have been liberated and "treated in Christian fashion",
but this had not
happened. Contrary
to divine
law,
Christian
peasants
remained bound to servile
status;
thus what had
begun
as a
spur
to
conversion had become an
injustice passed
down
through gener-
ations.
The counter-claim to the
jurists' legend appears only
on this
occasion,
but
suggests
the
power
of the
legend
of the
cowardly
peasants
in
setting
the historical terms for the debate over servitude.
It also reveals the
ability
of the
peasants
to redirect the discussion to
the illicit nature of serfdom.
Accepting
the framework of the Carolin-
gian
liberation of Catalonia from the
Saracens,
the
counter-legend
made the
peasants
not Christian
captives
but
Muslims,
thus
obviating
the
charge
of
betrayal
and
putting
in
strong
terms the
indefensibility
of servitude in a Christian
society. Despite
this
attack,
and the fact
that after 1486 servitude was
abolished,
the
legend
of the
cowardly
peasants persisted
in historical works of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and
beyond, long
after it had lost its function as a
legal
justification.23 Only
at the end of the nineteenth
century
was it
22
What follows is from the MS. cited
above,
n.
21,
fo. 2r.
23
Pere
Miquel Carbonell, Chroniques
de
Espanya fins
aci no
divulgades (completed
1496) (Barcelona, 1546),
fo. 6r,
expressed
reservations over Tomich's
account, finding
no confirmation in "auctors
approuats".
It is not mentioned in
Jer6nimo Zurita,
Anales
de la Corona de
Arag6n,
i
(1562),
ed.
Angel
Canellas
L6pez (Saragossa, 1976).
Historians who
accepted
the
legend
include Gabriel
Turell,
Recort
(1476),
ed. E.
Bague
(Barcelona, 1950), p. 99; (Pseudo-) Berenguer
de
Puigpardines,
Sumari
d'Espanya
(late
fifteenth
century),
ed.
Felipe
Benicio
Navarro,
Revista de ciencias
hist6ricas,
ii
(1881), p. 360;
Lucius Marineus
Siculus,
De
primis Aragonie regibus
et eorum rerum
gestarum (Saragossa, 1509),
fo.
XII';
Francisco
Calha,
De
Catalonia,
liber
primus
(Barcelona, 1588),
fo.
4'; Hieronym
Puiades
(Geroni Pujades),
Coronica universal del
principat
de
Cathalunya (Barcelona, 1609),
fos.
359v-60r; Joan Gaspar Roig
i
Jalpi
(Pseudo-Bernat
de
Boades),
Libre de
feyts
d'armes de
Catalunya (late
seventeenth
century),
ed.
Miquel
Coil i
Alentorn,
5 vols.
(Barcelona, 1930-48), ii, pp. 52-4;
Narciso Feliu de la Pena
y Farell,
Anales de
Cataluna,
3 vols.
(Barcelona, 1709), i, p.
235;
Luis
Cutchet,
Cataluna vindicada
(Barcelona, 1860), pp.
199-201.
conclusively
refuted
by
the Russian historian Wladimir Piskorski.24
II
POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE LEGEND
Although completely
false as an
explanation
for the
origins
of servi-
tude,
the
legend may
contain recollection of actual resistance to
Frankish
rulership.25 Leaving
aside the Roncesvalles
disaster,
which
did not involve Catalonia and was
regarded
as an affair of Moors
and Franks
exclusively,
there remain two historical
episodes
that
provoked
some of the
charges
of
betrayal
and
apostasy
contained in
the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants.
The first is the
Adoptionist
heresy
that involved the
bishops
of Toledo and
Urgel
whose defiance
of Frankish
orthodoxy produced
an
exasperated response.
Charle-
magne
accused the
Adoptionists
not
only
of
heresy
but also of
ingratitude.
In his letter of 794 to
Elipandus
of
Toledo, Charlemagne
expressed
his disenchantment with the attitude of Christians
living
under Saracen rule.
Formerly, Charlemagne says,
he and his
people
had
hoped
to liberate the
Spanish
Christians from their
servitude,
but now that
they
seemed to have wandered from the truth into
heresy, they
deserved
nothing.26
A more violent conflict was the rebellion of Aizo in 826-7 in which
Christian inhabitants of the frontier allied with Muslims
against
the
Franks.27 It is
thought
that Aizo was a Saracen
hostage
who
escaped
from the Frankish
imperial
court and
inspired
an insurrection in the
region
of Vic. His
support
came from Christians
eager
to end the
Carolingian policy
of confrontation on the frontier in favour of a
24
Piskorski,
Problema de la
significaci6n, pp.
45-54.
25
On the
Carolingian
era in Catalonia: Ramon d'Abadal i de
Vinyals,
"El domini
carolingi
a la Marca
Hispanica, segles
ix i
x",
in his Dels
Visigots
als
Catalans,
2nd
edn.,
2 vols.
(Barcelona, 1974), i, pp. 139-52, originally published
in
Spanish
in
Cuadernos de
historia,
ii
(1968), pp. 33-47;
Ramon d'Abadal i de
Vinyals,
Els
primers
comtes
catalans,
2nd edn.
(Barcelona, 1965);
Odilo
Engels, Schutzgedanke
und Landes-
herrschaft
im ostlichen
Pyrenaenraum,
9-13
Jahrhundert (Muinster, 1970), pp. 1-118;
Josep
M.
Salrach,
El
procds
de
formaci6
nacional de
Catalunya, segles viii-ix,
2 vols.
(Barcelona, 1978).
26
Ed. Albert
Werminghoff (Monumenta
Germaniae Historica
[hereafter M.G.H.],
Legum,
sectio
iii,
Concilia
2, 1, Hanover, 1904), pp. 162-3;
cited
by Benjamin
Z.
Kedar,
Crusade and Mission:
European Approaches
toward the Muslims
(Princeton,
1984), pp.
5-6.
27
("Astronomus"),
Vita Hludowici
Imperatoris,
ed. G. H. Pertz
(M.G.H. Scrip-
tores, ii, Hanover, 1829), p. 630;
Annales
Regni Francorum,
ed. Friedrich Kurze
(M.G.H. Scriptores
rer.
Ger., Hanover, 1895), pp.
170-3. On the
rebellion,
see
Salrach,
Proces de
formaci6 nacional, i, pp. 73-90;
Ramon
Ordeig
i
Mata,
Els
origens
historics de
Vic, segles
viii-x
(Vic, 1981), pp.
22-4.
11
greater degree
of coexistence. The rebellion was aided
by
the
caliphate
of Cordoba and this
may
have
encouraged
later
charges
of
religious
treason.
Frankish laws and institutions offer some
background
for the
elaboration of the
legend, especially
those customs
governing
failure
to heed a
military
summons or desertion.
Ignoring
an order to
join
the
army
was a defiance of the
royal
bannum and
subjected
the
offender to the fine known as heribannum. The
Capitulary
of
Boulogne
(811)
ordered that those unable to
pay
the fine be
degraded
to
servitude, although
this was not to
apply
to their heirs.28 Desertion
from the
army (herisliz)
was
punishable by death, although
this
ultimate
penalty
was sometimes
mitigated
(as
in the famous case
against Tassilo,
duke of
Bavaria).
The
Capitulary
of
Boulogne, pre-
ceded
by
the
Capitulary
of Aachen
(810), recognized
the commutation
of the death
penalty
for herisliz into enslavement.29 This
penalty
was
levied
against
notables
expected
to serve
regularly
in the armed forces
and therefore did not
apply
to
peasants.
In the case of an
enemy
invasion, however,
a
general
call to arms would be issued
(lantweri),
to be answered
by
all able-bodied men on
pain
of death or enslave-
ment.
30
Finally,
there was a connection
recognized
between
slavery
and
capture
in
battle,
not
only
in fact but in law. One of the few
ways
in
Roman law that a free
person
could become a slave was to be taken
as a
prisoner
of war.31
Johannes
de Socarrats
referred,
in the fifteenth
century,
to the
teaching
of the
Civilians, notably Bartolus,
that
prisoners
of war taken
by
the
pope
or
emperor
become slaves.32 This
was in fact the
expectation
of Louis the Pious and his
troops,
at least
28
Ed. Alfred Boretius
(M.G.H. Legum,
sectio
ii, Capitularia Regum Francorum,
1, Hanover, 1883), p.
166
(Capitulare
Bononiense c.
1).
29
Ibid., p.
166
(c. 4).
On commutation into
slavery,
F. L.
Ganshof,
Frankish
Institutions under
Charlemagne,
trans.
Bryce
and
Mary Lyon (Providence, 1968), p.
68.
30
On lantweri,
Philippe
Contamine,
War in the Middle
Ages,
trans. Michael
Jones
(Oxford, 1984), p. 24; Ganshof,
Frankish
Institutions, pp. 60,
153. Described in the
conventus of Meersen
(847),
ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause
(M.G.H. Legum,
sectio
ii, Capit. Reg.
Franc.
2, 1, Hanover, 1897). p.
71. In two MSS. the commutation of
the
penalty
to
slavery
is
permitted using
the words of the
Capitulary
of
Boulogne
for
heribannum. Cf. Catalan
legislation
of the twelfth
century: Usatges
de Barcelona: el codi
a
mitjan segle xii,
ed.
Joan
Bastardas
(Barcelona, 1984), p. 102,
the
chapter "Princeps
namque".
31
Digest
1.5.5.1.
According
to Institutes
1.3.3,
slaves
(servi)
are so named because
military
commanders order the sale of
captives, sparing
them
(servare)
rather than
killing
them: Alan
Watson,
Roman Slave Law
(Baltimore, 1987), p.
8.
32
Socarrats,
In
tractatum, p.
366.
according
to Ermoldus
Nigellus
in his account of the Frankish
siege
of Barcelona in 801. The refusal of the Moors of the
city
to
accept
Christian
baptism
makes it
necessary,
Louis told his
troops,
to
subject
this
devil-worshipping people
to servitude in accordance with divine
will.33 In the fourteenth
century
Christian
peoples
who rebelled
against
Catalan
rule, notably
the Sardinians and
Greeks,
were rou-
tinely
enslaved
along
with Saracen
captives.34
The
jurists'
habit of
calling
the
cowardly peasants "captives"
must therefore have
implied
to readers of the time a licit enslavement in accordance with
legal
teaching, piety
and
patriotism.
The
memory
of
Carolingian
events and Frankish or Roman
legis-
lation cannot in themselves
entirely explain
the invention of the
legend.
The immediate source for the idea that servitude was first
imposed by
the
Carolingians
was
probably
the French chronicle
attributed to
Archbishop Turpin
of Rheims.
According
to the Pseudo-
Turpin chronicle, Charlemagne
called
upon
the French serfs to aid
his
expedition
to
Spain.
Those who
responded
were
given
their
freedom.35 This work was known in Catalonia
by
1173 when a
copy,
now at the Archive of the Crown of
Aragon,
was executed at the
monastery
of
Ripoll.36
A related and
perhaps
older
chronicle,
describ-
ing Charlemagne's journey
to the east to
bring
relics of the crucifixion
to
Aachen,
had the
emperor
ask the
help
of all those
capable
of
bearing
arms to assist his venture. Those who refused were fined as
serfs,
as were their
offspring.37
33
Cited
by Kedar,
Crusade and
Mission, pp. 7-8,
who also
gives
the text
(pp.
215-
16) according
to Ernst Dummler
(M.G.H.
Poetae
Latini, ii, Hanover, 1884), p.
14.
34
According
to Ramon de
Penyafort, writing
between 1222 and
1235,
there were
no Christian slaves in Catalonia:
Kedar,
Crusade and
Mission, p.
77. This was
certainly
not true in the
following century: Johannes Vincke, "Konigtum
und Sklaverei im
aragonischen
Staatenbund wahrend des 14.
Jahrhunderts",
Gesammelte
Aufsatze
zur
Kulturgeschichte Spaniens,
xxv
(1970), pp. 22-3; Josep
Maria Madurell
Marim6n,
"Vendes d'esclaus sards de
guerra
a
Barcelona,
en
1374",
in VI
Congreso
de Historia
de la Corona de
Arag6n (Madrid, 1959), pp.
285-9.
35
C.
Meredith-Jones,
Historia Karoli
magni
et Rotholandi ou
Chronique
du Pseudo-
Turpin (Paris, 1936), pp.
120-1. Several Old French translations were made
shortly
after
1200,
the
products
of aristocratic enthusiasm for ancestral
history
and chivalric
values. See Gabrielle M.
Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin,
the Crisis of the
Aristocracy
and
the
Beginnings
of Vernacular
Historiography
in
France", Jl.
Medieval
Hist.,
xii
(1986), pp.
207-23.
36
On
Pseudo-Turpin
in
Catalonia,
Adalbert
Hamel,
"Arnaldus de Monte und der
Liber S.
Jacobi",
Estudis universitaris
catalans,
xxi
(1936), pp. 147-59;
Marti de
Riquer
(ed.),
Historia de Carles
Maynes
e de Rotlla: traducci6 catalana del
segle
xv
(Barcelona,
1960), pp.
9-27.
37
Gerhard
Rauschen,
Die
Legende
Karls der Grossen im 11. und 12.
Jahrhundert
(Leipzig, 1890), p.
108.
13
If the
Pseudo-Turpin
tradition
provided
the
suggestion
for the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants,
the motive for its elaboration
lay
in
jurists'
concern to
explain
the
origins
of servitude and
justify
the
oppression
it entailed.38 Catalan
jurists
were
surprisingly uneasy
about the
legality
and
morality
of
peasant
enserfment. Servitude
was considered
contrary
to
good legal tradition,
as evident in the
persistence
of terms
describing
exactions as "bad customs" or in the
frank assertion of a
right
of
seigneurial
mistreatment
(male tractare,
ad libitum
tractare).
In 1402 the wife of
King Martin,
Maria de
Luna,
wrote to her
kinsman,
the
Avignonese pope
Benedict
XIII,
that the
oppression
of the
peasantry
was
against
God and
justice
and
brought
infamy
to the Catalan nation
(a
statement worth
contrasting
with the
king's
remarks to the Catalan
parliament
four
years later).39 Writing
in the
1430s,
the eminent
lawyer
Thomas Mieres considered the
seigneurial right
of mistreatment a violation of divine
law,
even if
permitted by
Catalan
legislation.40
Against
the
background
of such
qualms,
the
legend
of the
cowardly
peasants explained
servitude
by putting
the onus of its invention on
the Moors and
responsibility
for its
perpetuation
on the
peasants
themselves,
whose
descendants,
in a secular imitation of the
Fall,
were
punished
for an ancestral sin of cowardice: the refusal to defend
Christianity against
the infidel.
III
HEROIC LEGENDS: WIFRED THE HAIRY
It is evident that the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
is as much a
piece
of
retrospective legal justification
as it is an
origines gentium
myth.
A
history
based on events in the formation of Catalonia was
developed
to
justify servitude,
an otherwise anomalous institution.
Lawyers
of the middle
ages
and Renaissance were consumers and
inventors of historical
mythopoeia.41 They
described the
origins
of
38
Freedman,
"Catalan
Lawyers", pp.
300-8.
39
Queen Maria's remarks are
quoted
in Vicens
Vives,
Historia de los
Remensas, pp.
46-7.
40
Thomas
Mieres, Apparatus super
constitutionibus curiarum
generalium
Catholonie
(completed 1439),
2nd
edn.,
2 vols.
(Barcelona, 1621), ii, p.
513.
41 Donald R.
Kelley,
"Clio and the
Lawyers:
Forms of Historical Consciousness in
Medieval
Jurisprudence",
Medievalia et
humanistica,
new
ser.,
v
(1974), pp. 25-49;
J.
G. A.
Pocock,
The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law
(Cambridge, 1957);
Gaines
Post,
"'Blessed
Lady Spain':
Vincentius
Hispanus
and
Spanish
National
Imperialism
in the Thirteenth
Century", Speculum,
xxix
(1954), pp. 198-209,
revised
in Gaines
Post,
Studies in Medieval
Legal Thought:
Public Law and the
State,
1100-
1322
(Princeton, 1964), pp.
482-93.
political
entities or administrative
practices by positing
a
largely
imaginary
constitutional tradition. In few other
cases, however,
were
jurists responsible
for
elaborating
so
unflattering
a national
myth,
a
measure
perhaps
of the
intensity
of the attack on Catalan
seigneurial
institutions which
began
in the late fourteenth
century.
The
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
is to be understood within the context of a
more familiar literature of heroic foundation
myths.
Like the
legend
of
betrayal,
the accounts of valour were
designed
to suit immediate
political
and social
purposes.
At the same time
they
reveal medieval
assumptions
about
character, privilege
and
obligation according
to
particular images
of the
eighth
and ninth centuries.
The oldest Catalan
legends
concern Wifred the
Hairy
who ruled
Barcelona and its
neighbouring
counties from 870 to 897. Wifred is
often
regarded
in modern histories as the first
independent
count of
Barcelona,
the initiator of the
dynasty
that would accede to
kingship
over
Aragon
in the twelfth
century
and rule until 1410.42
Legends
about Wifred are therefore concerned with a
person
of real
import-
ance,
but one who is also credited with
extraordinary
(and
fictitious)
acts of both
bravery
and
loyalty.
The first
chapters
of the Gesta
comitum
Barcinonensium, composed shortly
after
1160,
contain an
account of Wifred's
career, combining genealogical
and
political
myths
and facts to
explain
the establishment of Catalonia.43
According
to the
Gesta,
Wifred the
Hairy
was the son of a
Pyrenean knight
named Wifred de Ria. The elder Wifred had been
appointed
count
of Barcelona
by
the
king
of France. He
quarrelled
with a
group
of
Frankish emissaries sent
by
the unnamed
king
and killed one of the
legates
who had insulted him
by pulling
his beard. Wifred de Ria
was then murdered
by
the Franks who were
supposed
to escort him
to trial before the
king. Young
Wifred was
brought
to the
royal
court
and the
king, regretting
the circumstances of the father's
death,
sent
the
boy
to be raised in the household of the count of Flanders. There
Wifred seduced the
daughter
of the count and was found out
by
the
countess. Wifred
promised
the countess that he would
marry
the
girl
if he succeeded in
winning
back his father's
county. Disguised
as a
42
The real
origins
of the house of Barcelona have been traced to the
early
ninth-
century
counts of Carcassone
by Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, pp.
13-27.
43
Gesta comitum
Barcinonensium,
ed. Louis Barrau
Dihigo
and
Jaume
Mass6 Tor-
rents
(Croniques catalanes, ii, Barcelona, 1925), pp.
3-6. On the
Gesta,
see T. N.
Bisson,
"L'essor de la
Catalogne: identite, pouvoir
et
id6ologie
dans une soci&et du
xii
siecle",
Annales
E.S.C.,
xxxix
(1984), pp. 459-64; Miquel
Coll i
Alentorn,
"La
historiografia
de
Catalunya
en el
periode primitiu",
Estudis
Romanics,
iii
(1951-2), pp.
187-95; Salrach,
Proces de
formacio national, ii, pp.
87-107.
15
poor pilgrim,
he returned to his homeland where his mother immedi-
ately recognized him,
the text
says,
because he had hair where other
men
usually
lack it.44 Acclaimed
by
the
nobles,
Wifred killed the
Frankish Count
Salamon,
married the Flemish
princess
and effected
a
rapprochement
with the
king
of
France, receiving
from him the
administration of the
county
of Barcelona. While at the
royal court,
Wifred was informed of a Saracen invasion of his
territory.
He asked
the
king
for
aid,
but instead received an offer that he
might
retain
Barcelona as his
hereditary dominium,
no
longer subject
to Frankish
suzerainty,
if he drove out the Saracens without Frankish
help.
Wifred led his own
people against
the Saracens and liberated the
county.
Barcelona was henceforth
legally independent.
Certain real conditions and events are woven into this
story.
Barcelona was a
Carolingian county
and Wifred's father
(whose
name
was
Sunyer)
was a count of Barcelona. Several
appeals
were made to
the Franks
against
a Saracen
invasion,
but not
during
Wifred's time:
rather a
century later,
from 985 to 988.
Beginning
in
984,
a series of
raids led
by
the
defacto
ruler of the
caliphate, al-Mansur,
devastated
Christian
Spain.45
Cities
plundered
or
destroyed
included
Salamanca,
Burgos, Leon,
Zamora and Coimbra. In the summer of 985 Barcelona
was sacked and burned to the
ground.
Its inhabitants were slain or
taken into
captivity
from which some were
ultimately
ransomed.46
Count Borrell of Barcelona
appealed
to the last
Carolingian kings
of France for
help.
There had been little contact between these
beleaguered
monarchs and the remote
province during
the tenth
century, apart
from occasional
requests by
monasteries for confir-
mation of their
privileges.47
The death of Lothair in 985 was followed
by
that of Louis
V,
the last
Carolingian ruler,
in 986. A final
plea
of
Count Borrell was delivered to
Hugh Capet
who became
king
in 987.
Early
in 988
Hugh promised
to lead an
army
into
Spain
on condition
that the count come to confirm his
fealty
in
person.48
Borrell never
44
Gesta, p.
4:
"Quem
mater
cognoscens, quod
in
quibusdam
insolitis in
corpore
hominis
partibus pilosus
erat . . .".
45
J.
M. Ruiz
Ascencio, "Campafas
de Almanzor contra el reino de
Le6n,
981-
986",
Anuario de estudios
medievales,
v
(1968), pp.
31-64.
46
Michel Zimmermann,
"La
prise
de Barcelone
par
Al-Mansur et la naissance de
l'historiographie
catalane",
Annales de
Bretagne
et des
Pays
de
l'Ouest,
lxxxvii
(1980),
pp. 191-201;
Manuel Rovira i
Sola,
"Notes documentals sobre
alguns
efectes de la
presa
de Barcelona
per
al-Mansur, 985",
Acta historica et
archaeologica mediaevalia,
i
(1980), pp.
31-53.
47
Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, pp. 249-302; Engels, Schutzgedanke
und Landes-
herrschaft, pp.
137-88.
48
Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, pp. 332-6; Zimmermann,
"Prise de
Barcelone",
p.
215.
responded
and in
any
event
Hugh
soon encountered sufficient internal
problems
for this
unlikely expedition
to be rendered out of the
question.
No further ecclesiastical
privileges
would be solicited or
received after
986,
nor would
any
further communication between
the count of Barcelona and the
king
of France
imply any political
dependence.
One
vestige
of
suzerainty
remained: the
dating
of
public
and
private
documents
by
reference to the French
king's regnal year,
a
practice stopped only
in
1180,
and even then not
totally.49
Al-Mansur's
army retreated,
not because of
any strong
counter-
force but because his intentions had been
plunder
rather than con-
quest.
The culmination of these raids would be the destruction of
Santiago
de
Compostella
in
997,
but five
years
later the leader died
and the
caliphate
fell
apart.
The balance of
power
shifted
suddenly,
so that in 1010 a count of Barcelona could
captain
an
expedition
that
plundered
Cordoba.50
Documents of the
period shortly
after 985
speak
of the destruction
of Barcelona in
apocalyptic
terms.51 Later
generations portrayed
985
as a traumatic
nadir,
but also as the
beginning
of a heroic foundation
for Catalan liberties realized three
years
later
by
the
implied
defiance
of Count Borrell in not
responding
to
Hugh's
demand for
fealty.
Interpreting
the events of 988 as an act of
independence
still con-
tinues,
as
may
be seen from official celebrations of the
year
1988 as
the millennium of Catalonia.52
The
catastrophe
of 985 contrasted with the
subsequent triumphs
of the
counts, especially
in the mid-twelfth
century
when
Tarragona,
Lerida and Tortosa were seized and the union of Barcelona with the
kingdom
of
Aragon
was consolidated. Short histories and chronicles
of the late twelfth
century
start with the
year
985 or take on a more
detailed character after that
point.53
The Gesta could not
ignore
the
Islamic
invasion,
but as a
dynastic
encomium it could not
emphasize
a disaster that took
place
so
long
after the establishment of the
ruling
family.
The Gesta conflated what occurred in 985-8 with Wifred's
49
Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, p.
339. A late
example
of
dating by
French
regnal year
is a
parchment
in Archivo
Capitular, Vic, caja 9, Perg. Obispo
Guillem
de
Tavertet, unnumbered,
dated "x kalendas
Januarii,
anno Domini
MCC, regni regis
Philipi
xx".
50
S.
Sobreques
i
Vidal,
Els
grans
comtes de
Barcelona,
2nd edn.
(Barcelona, 1970),
pp.
20-3.
51
Zimmermann,
"Prise de
Barcelone", p.
213.
52
On these
commemorations,
see the
judicious
remarks of
Josep
M.
Salrach,
"Catalunya
i Catalans des de
quan?",
Revista de
Catalunya,
xv
(Jan. 1988), pp.
35-
50.
53
Coll i
Alentorn, "Historiografia
de
Catalunya", p.
156.
17
era, thereby bringing
into
greater prominence
the heroism of the
count and
deflecting
attention from the
embarrassing implications
of
al-Mansur's
tenth-century
raids.
The
purpose
of the Gesta's first
chapters
was to exalt the count and
the
prowess
of his
people
but also to underscore the
legitimate,
constitutional circumstances of
independence. Liberty
had been won
by courage
but not rebellion. The
independence
of the
county
was
openly acknowledged,
even
offered, by
the
king
of France. The Gesta
depicted
the count as
courageous
and
resourceful,
while the Franks
were shadowed
by
the murder of Wifred de Ria and their
inability
to aid the
young
Wifred
against
the Saracens. The Franks were flawed
but
sufficiently
honourable to
recognize
the virtues of the count and
to bestow
rights
of
rulership
on Wifred's
dynasty. Carolingian prestige
therefore balanced the assertion of
independence
won
by
force.
Written
against
the
background
of
increasing rivalry
with the Ca-
petian kings
of
France,
the Gesta not
only
lauded Wifred but tended
by implication
to
praise
the
Carolingians
at the
expense
of the
upstart
dynasty.
In the
legend
the counts of Barcelona were even related
by
blood to the
Carolingians through
the
putative
alliance with the
Flemish comital
family.54
Another
way
to resolve the tension between
political legitimacy
and
independence
was
adopted by
Petrus Ribera of
Perpignan
who
wrote in
1268, approximately
a
century
after the
composition
of the
first
part
of the Gesta.55 In his Cronica de
Espanya
Petrus lauded
Charlemagne unequivocally,
in contrast to the
indecisive, anonymous
king portrayed
in the Gesta.
According
to the
Cronica, Charlemagne
began
the battle
against
the Saracens but died before he could fulfil
his intention to return to
Spain
to
complete
the work of
conquest.
Under Wifred the
fight
was
renewed,
unaided
by
the
Franks,
and
from this
point independence
was achieved in the fashion described
54
The seduction of the
princess
of Flanders is
probably
based on the historical
elopement
of
Judith, daughter
of Charles the
Bald,
with
Baldwin,
the first count of
Flanders. This meant that
Carolingian
blood
might
be said to flow in the veins of
Wifred's heirs via the
princess
of
Flanders;
thus the Flemish alliance in the Gesta was
suggested
not
only by
a historical
example
but
by genealogical purpose.
See
Bisson,
"Essor de la
Catalogne", pp.
462-3.
Compare
with the Flemish seduction
story
in
Lambert of
Ardres,
Historia comitum
Ghisensium,
ed. H. Heller
(M.G.H. Scriptores,
xxiv, Hanover, 1876), pp.
566-8. On the claims
by
northern
European
counts of the
twelfth
century
to
Carolingian blood,
Andrew W.
Lewis, Royal
Succession in
Capetian
France: Studies on Familial Order and the State
(Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p.
120.
55
Bibliotheque National, Paris,
MS.
Esp. 13,
Petrus Ribera "de
Perpinya",
"Cronica de
Espanya" (the
work was written in
1267-8;
the
manuscript
is fifteenth
century),
fos. 76V-7r. See
Miquel
Coll i
Alentorn,
"La
llegenda d'Otger
Catal6 i els
nou
barons",
Estudis
Romanics,
i
(1947-8), pp.
4-5.
by
the Gesta. Praise of
Charlemagne may
reflect the friendlier relations
with France after the
Treaty
of Corbeil
(1258)
in which Louis IX
renounced claims to
lordship
over the former
Spanish
March. In the
Cronica
Charlemagne
was an
example
to the later counts
but,
as
before, independence
was both the
product
of
courage against
the
infidel and
legitimate political
conferral.
IV
HEROIC LEGENDS: OTGER CATALO
A later and
enduring legendary cycle
concerns nobles whose resist-
ance to Islam
supposedly
antedated the
Carolingian campaigns
and
even the
very
existence of the count of Barcelona. A
group
of
legends
exalting
the Catalan
nobility
centres on the
wholly
fictitious
figure
of
Otger Catalo,
a Frankish
knight who,
with his nine noble com-
panions, began
a war
against
the Saracens after the battle of Tours.56
Otger
was
continuing
the work of Charles
Martel,
much as the count
in the Cronica de
Espanya
was shown as
following Charlemagne's
path. Otger
led his
army
across the
Pyrenees and,
after
many battles,
died before the walls of the town of
Empuiries.
The nine
companions
retreated to the
mountains, waging
a
guerrilla struggle
until
they
joined Charlemagne's army
of liberation. When
Charlemagne
consoli-
dated his
conquest
of the
Spanish frontier,
he divided the
territory
among Otger's followers,
men who bore names that would be those
of the
powerful
families of the
high
middle
ages: Montcada, Erill,
Cervera,
etc. The new realm was called "Catalonia" to commemorate
Otger,
derived as it was from his second
name,
"Catal6". This
tale of heroism and
etymology
was
politely
doubted
by
Zurita and
vehemently
denied
by Carbonell,
but received almost universal ac-
ceptance
in the sixteenth to
eighteenth
centuries. It was cited
by
scholars outside
Catalonia,
such as Lorenzo Valla in
Italy,
Gilbert
Genebrard in France and
Wolfgang
Lazius in
Germany.57
Like the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants,
the
story
of
Otger
was laid to rest
only
late in the nineteenth
century.58
56
On this
legend,
Coil i
Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp.
1-47.
57
Zurita, Anales, i, p. 12; Carbonell, Chroniques,
fo. 5'. It was also
questioned by
Joseph
Pellizer de
Tovar,
Idea del
principado
de Cataluna
(Anvers, 1642), pp. 23-8,
in
the context of his attack on the
supposed
tradition of Catalan liberties. Lorenzo
Valla,
Gesta Ferdinandi
Regis Aragonum,
ed. Ottavio Besoni
(Padua, 1973), pp. 15-16,
doubted that Catalonia was derived from
"Rogerius
Catalo". The
Otger story
was
accepted by
Gilbert
Genebrard, Chronographiae
libri
quatuor (Paris, 1580), p. 283;
Wolfgang Lazius,
De
gentium aliquot migrationibus, sedibusfixis, reliquiis, linguarumque
initiis & immutationibus ac dialectis
(Frankfurt, 1600), p.
587.
58
On its later
history,
Coll i
29-36.
19
In
part, Otger
Catalo was invented to answer the
perennial question
of the
origin
of the name "Catalonia". The
history
of
Otger
also
responded
to certain
political
conditions of the
early
fifteenth
century,
the
period
of its elaboration and diffusion.
Miquel
Coll i
Alentorn,
in his definitive
study
of the
legend,
identified a nucleus
concerning
the hero that
originated
in the thirteenth
century,
to which the
etymology
and aristocratic
genealogy
were later added.59 Its
complete
form,
and the source for
subsequent histories,
is
given
in Tomich's
Historias e
conquestas,
the same work of 1438 that
perpetuated
the
tale of the
cowardly peasants.60
While his
project
was to chronicle
the
triumphs
of the counts and
kings,
Tomich also wanted to make
conspicuous
the role of the nobles in these affairs. If one sets the
Otger legend
next to that of Wifred the
Hairy,
it is clear that the
former
emphasizes
the role of the
aristocracy
while
implicitly denying
to the counts of Barcelona
any part
in either the earliest battles
against
the Moors or the
Carolingian
establishment of the Catalan nation. In
the tale of
Otger,
Catalonia existed as a collection of baronies before
there was a count.
Otger
and his
companions fought bravely
over
one hundred
years
before Wifred. The
very
name of the
principality
commemorated its real founder and underscored its
seigneurial
ident-
ity.
A
history making
Catalonia the
product
of aristocratic heroism
reflected the discontent of the
fifteenth-century nobility
with the
Castilian Trastamara
dynasty
that ruled after 1412. Coll i Alentorn
dates the
complete
version of the
Otger legend
to between 1407 and
1431 and relates its
composition specifically
to a
pact
formed in 1418
to resist the
king.61
Whether or not this
degree
of
precision
is
justified,
the
Otger legend
in its
fifteenth-century
form served an immediate
political purpose
and identified the
grandeur
of Catalonia with its
noble families.
V
A LATER HERALDIC LEGEND
One more heroic
legend
deserves
notice, although
it
originates
in the
sixteenth
century
and not in the middle
ages.
This is the account of
how the count of Barcelona came
by
his coat of
arms,
four red bars
on a
gold
field
(or
four
pallets gules).
It was
perhaps
invented to
59
Ibid., pp. 5-26,
38-42.
60
Tomich,
Historias e
conquestas,
fos. 11r-18r.
61
Coil i
39-40.
Compare
the use made
of
Pseudo-Turpin legends
of
Charlemagne
to exalt the
thirteenth-century
Flemish
nobility against
the
Capetians: Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin", pp.
213-17.
answer the Renaissance French cult of the heraldic
fleur-de-lis,
but it follows the medieval tradition
emphasizing
both valour and
constitutional
legitimation by
the
Carolingians.62 According
to the
Valencian Pedro Antonio Beuter
(who
wrote in the mid-sixteenth
century
and
probably
made
up
the
legend),
Count Wifred assisted
the
emperor
Louis the Pious in battles
against
the Normans.63 After
distinguishing
himself in one encounter and
receiving
serious
wounds,
Wifred asked Louis for a
grant
of arms that he
might place
on the
plain gold
shield with which he had
fought.
The
emperor,
to
recognize
and commemorate Wifred's
bravery,
moistened his
right
hand with the blood from the count's wounds and made four vertical
stripes
on the
gold
surface. Some of the
chronological synchronization
was corrected in 1603
by
Francisco
Diago who,
for
example, changed
the
emperor
to Charles the Bald.64
The heraldic
myth
has
proved
the most durable of all and is
reproduced
in
many popular forms,
such as books for children. It
has maintained itself
by
reason of a certain intrinsic
appeal,
but also
because it stood within the Gesta
tradition, extolling
Wifred for his
heroism,
but in this case
directly
on behalf of the Frankish ruler.
The effect of a
primordial
act of
bravery
was transmitted
symbolically
to
succeeding
counts of Barcelona and
ultimately
to the
kings
of
Spain.
VI
THE MEDIEVAL IMAGE OF CATALONIA
All the
preceding legends identify
medieval and Renaissance Cata-
lonia in terms of an either
partially
or
completely
invented
Carolingian
past.
These histories must be taken
seriously
in relation to the
aspirations
of Catalans then and now.
Every
nation or
people
has
comforting
or heroic
tales,
some based on
fact,
some
completely
made
up;
some with
specific political purposes,
others more
hortatory
or
vaguely
evocative. The
past,
as
contemporary experience attests,
can
be
manipulated
to
yield supposed
lessons or to
support political
62
The heraldic
legend
is discussed in Frederic Udina i
Martorell,
L'escut de la ciutat
de Barcelona
(Barcelona, 1979), pp. 17-26,
based on his "En torno a la
leyenda
de las
'Barras'
catalanes", Hispania,
ix
(1949), pp.
531-65.
63
Pedro Antonio
Beuter, Segunda parte
de la Coronica
general
de
Espana y especial-
mente de
Aragon,
Cathalunfa
y
Valencia
(1551) (Valencia,
1604
edn.), p.
70.
64
Francisco
Diago,
Historia de los victoriosissimos
antiguos
condes de Barcelona
(Barcelona, 1603; repr. Barcelona, 1974),
fo. 63v.
21
arguments.65
This
specificity
of
purpose
is
clearly
evident in the
legends
of Wifred
(directed
at relations with
France), Otger (exalting
the
nobility against
the
king)
and the
cowardly peasants (justifying
servitude).
Beyond
the debates addressed
by
these
legends
one can discern
ideas and statements of
something deeper
than immediate
political
advantage.
Two elements are
present
in all the
examples:
the
legitima-
tion bestowed
by
the
Carolingian monarchs,
and the idea that
bravery
is
necessary
to win and merit freedom. The
Carolingians
are credited
in these
legends
with
establishing,
and in some sense
sustaining,
organized
Christian rule in the
Spanish
March.
Long
before the
period
in which the
legends
were elaborated there had been a
strong
sentiment of
respect
and
loyalty
towards the
family
of
Charlemagne,
despite
the difficulties created
by Adoptionism
or the rebellion of
Aizo. Monasteries solicited
privileges
from the distant
kings
until late
in the tenth
century.
Private and
public
charters continued to follow
the dates of Frankish
regnal years
and the accession of non-Carolin-
gian
rulers was
only grudgingly recognized.
Documents from the
early years
of the Robertian Eudes are dated in forms such as "in the
second
year
after the death of
Emperor Charles,
Christ
reigning,
awaiting
a
king".66
In the
reign
of the
Burgundian
Rudolf one finds
"in the first
year, King
Rudolf
reigning,
after the death of
King
Charles".67
Shortly
after the accession of
Hugh Capet
a document
from
Urgel
was dated "in the third
year
of the
reign
of
Hugh,
duke
or
king".68
Comital families claimed
Carolingian
descent
vaguely,
as
in the
Gesta,
or
directly,
as in a fabricated
genealogy produced shortly
after 1100 for the counts of Pallars and
Ribagorqa.69
A
succinct,
although
rather
late, example
of attachment to the
Carolingians
is the
cult of St.
Charlemagne
established in late medieval Gerona.70
Counties far from the
Carolingian
heartland remained
stubbornly
attached to rulers
they
never saw.71 The
paradox
is
only apparent,
because the monarchs conferred
prestige
and
rights
without
being
65
Some modern instances are
presented
in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger
(eds.), Tlhe Invention
of
Tradition
(Cambridge, 1983).
66
Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, p.
236.
67
Ibid.,
p. 265.
68
"Els documents dels
anys 891-1010,
de 1'Arxiu
Capitular
de la Seu
d'Urgell",
ed. Cebria
Baraut, Urgellia,
iii
(1980), p.
52.
69
Bisson,
"Essor de la
Catalogne", p.
459.
70
Esteve Corbera,
Vida i echos maravillosos de dona Maria de Cervellon llamada
Maria Socos (Barcelona, 1629),
fo. 16'; Jaime Villanueva, Viage
literario a las
iglesias
de
Espana,
xii (Madrid, 1850), pp.
162-3.
71 Lewis,
Royal Successio in Capetian France, p.
17.
close
enough
to demand
anything
in return. As the
Carolingians
faded,
the counts of Barcelona and their relatives in
neighbouring
counties would turn to the
papacy,
another distant numinous
power,
for confirmation of
privileges
and
authority.72
The
Carolingians
also
represented
the wider
world,
the
power
that
had
joined
Catalonia with
Christendom, ultimately (at
least
according
to historical
memory)
with
Europe.
Unlike the other
Hispanic
Chris-
tian
states,
Catalonia had been formed
by
a
degree
of outside inter-
vention. The
inspiration
offered
by
the
entirely home-grown
Reconquista
was therefore never as
pure
for Catalonia as it was for
Leon-Castile. The
expedition
of
Charlemagne
that Ximenez de
Rada,
for
example,
so
contemptuously dismissed,
would confer distinction
upon Catalonia,
which has often considered itself
spiritually
the
closest to
Europe
of the
peninsular
realms.73
During
moments of crisis the
memory
of
Charlemagne
carried
vigorous political
force. In 1641 the Catalans
attempted
to dissolve
the bond with Castile
by placing
themselves under French
lordship
"as in the time of
Charlemagne,
with a contract to observe our
constitutions".74
Napoleon's government
invoked
Charlemagne
in
1810 when
annexing
Catalonia to France.75 An
enduring
sentiment
of
European identity
can be observed in
contemporary
Catalonia. To
cite
just
one
example,
in 1985 a conference was held in Gerona on
Catalan "feudalism" in commemoration of the
1,200th anniversary
of
Carolingian occupation
of the
city.
The subtitle of the
meeting
was
"Gerona:
1,200
Years of
European
Vocation". From the ninth until
the thirteenth
century
Catalonia
may
be said to have considered itself
not
just
a frontier but Christendom's
frontier, Europe's frontier,
a
part
of the
Roman, Carolingian imperium.
This distinction has marked
off
Catalonia,
at least in its
self-image,
from the rest of
Iberia,
especially
Castile.
The second
unifying
element
among
the
legends
is the notion that
freedom is won
by heroism, along
with the
corollary
that servitude
is the
price
of fear. The idea that
liberty
is won
by
valour is
hardly
72
Abadal,
Primers comtes
catalans, pp. 302-13; Engels, Schutzgedanke
und Landes-
herrschaft, pp.
188-233.
73
(Rodrigo
Ximenez de
Rada),
Roderici Ximenii de
Rada, Toletanae ecclesiae
prae-
sulis,
opera praecipua complectens (Madrid, 1793; repr. Valencia, 1968), pp.
83-4.
74
J. H.
Elliott,
The Revolt
of
the Catalans: A
Study
in the Decline
of Spain,
1598-
1640
(Cambridge, 1963), p.
522.
75
"The French have
always
embraced and
supported you
in
your
conflicts. Charle-
magne
saved Catalonia from the
tyranny
of the Saracens":
proclamation
of Marechal
Augereau, quoted
in
Joan
Mercader i
Riba, Catalunya
i
l'imperi napolebnic (Montserrat,
1978), p.
110.
23
unique
to Catalonia. It was a tenet of chivalric literature that free
birth, nobility
and
bravery
were
aspects
of the same
thing.
As a
political statement,
freedom established
by courage
is also found in
many places:
from Otto of
Freising,
for
example,
who
reported
Frederick Barbarossa's
contemptuous response
to the Romans that
they
had forfeited their
right
to
proclaim
the
emperor by
reason of
their weakness in contrast to the
bravery
of the Germans
("Franks").76 Boncompagnus
de
Signa
claimed that the Lombards
were the defenders of
liberty
and the natural leaders of
Italy by
reason of their valour.77
Military
success and
reputation underlay
the
Castilian
monarchy, according
to Te6filo
Ruiz,
to the extent that
sacralization of the monarch
by
coronation ceremonial was
rejected
in favour of
gestures
more
explicitly exalting
force.78
What makes the Catalan
example particularly interesting
is the
internal tension reflected in its heroic histories. In the earlier Catalan
legends, notably
the Wifred
story
in the
Gesta, political independence
accomplished by
valour had to be reconciled with the other
great
virtue of
loyalty.
In the later
legend
of
Otger
Catalo and the nine
companions, courage explained
not
only
the
political origins
of Cata-
lonia but the
ordering
of
society.
The
privileges
of the fifteenth-
century
nobles came from the heroism of their
alleged
forefathers of
the
Carolingian
era. The
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
also ex-
plained
the
arrangement
of
society, serving
in effect as a
corollary
to
assertions of aristocratic virtue. The two
legends
of
Otger
and of the
cowardly peasants
form a
pair exemplifying opposed
behaviours
and social outcomes:
bravery joined
with
freedom,
cowardice with
servitude. The core of the
Otger legend may
be older than the
myth
of the
remences,
but in its elaborated
form,
as a defence of aristocratic
privilege,
it came later. It
may
therefore have answered the unfortu-
nate
implications
of the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants.
It was
certainly perceived
as an answer to the
protests
of the
peasants
and
the
support given by
the
kings
to their demands. The
prologue
to
the document
establishing
the
peasant syndicates
of 1448
attempted
a rebuttal
by denying
the crime on which aristocratic
privilege
and
peasant
subordination was
based,
but for the time
being
the two
widely accepted legends
of the
cowardly peasants
and of
Otger
76
Otto of
Freising,
Gesta Friderici I.
Imperatoris,
ed. "G. Waitz"
(B.
von
Simson)
(M.G.H. Scriptores
rer.
Ger.,
Hanover and
Leipzig, 1912), p.
137.
77
Boncompagnus
de
Signa,
Palma,
in Aus Leben und
Schriften
des
Magister
Boncom-
pagno,
ed. Carl Sutter
(Freiburg
and
Leipzig, 1894), p.
123.
78
Te6filo F.
Ruiz,
"Une
royaute
sans sacre: la monarchie castillane du bas
moyen
age",
Annales
E.S.C.,
xxxix
(1984), pp.
443-8.
overrode
objections. They
functioned
together
to
justify
the social
order
by referring
to the circumstances of Catalonia's
founding.
The
legends
elaborated both
political
and
sociological
identities. The era
of foundation saw the
beginning
of the
state,
but also the
fixing
of
class relations and Catalan character.
The interaction of these two medieval
legends
is
explicit
in Gabriel
Turell's
history Recort,
written in 1476
during
the civil war and
peasant
rebellion. Turell included both the
Otger
and
cowardly
peasants legends,
and stated in
summary
that Catalan liberties were
established
by Charlemagne
for
nobles,
not rustics.79
Legal privileges
were won
by bravery,
thus
loyalty
and valour were reconciled. These
virtues, however,
and the
liberty they procured
were limited to the
nobility.
Turell's brief statement distils several fundamental
mythic
ideals.
However
neatly
class distinctions
might
be
justified,
the social
edifice was not
entirely preserved.
Ten
years
after Recort was
written,
peasant
servitude was abolished
by
the
royal
Sentence of Arbitration
issued at
Guadalupe. Yet,
as
already indicated,
the
legend
of the
cowardly peasants
as well as that of
Otger persisted
into recent times.
In the case of the former the
peculiar
fact remains that a shameful
myth
had been invented
by
the
very
nation it
disparaged (Turell
notwithstanding,
the
peasants
too
were,
after
all, Catalans).
Peculiar but
perhaps
not
unique
-
there are some
early
modern
parallels
to the Catalan
legend
of the
peasants.
In France one finds
the belief that
peasants
were descended from the docile Gauls while
the nobles' ancestors were the Franks. This
pseudo-ethnic theory
is
first found in 1200 but was
popular only later, beginning
in the
sixteenth
century.80
It was more
thorough
than the Catalan
legends
(making
the French into two
peoples),
but less
shameful,
for
although
the Gauls were defeated
by
the
Romans,
there was no
key
moment
in which their
courage failed,
nor did
they betray
their
religion.
The
French historical
argument
was more
genetic,
while the Catalan was
more
Augustinian:
an
original
sin
punished
in a manner
affecting
succeeding generations.81
79
Quoted in Coll i
Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", p.
27: "E
aquest
es lo
principi
de les llibertats de
Cathalunya,
car no
principia
en
hbmens rustichs ni
aplegadiqos,
sin6 en alts e valerosos".
80
Reynolds,
"Medieval
Origines Gentium", p.
380.
According
to Colette
Beaune,
Naissance de la nation France
(Paris, 1985), pp. 38-40,
the distinction between
peasant
and noble ancestors was
popular only
in the seventeenth
century
and was
preceded
by
a belief in the collective
nobility
of the
French,
all of whom were
supposed
to be
of
Trojan
descent.
81
It is worth
recalling
that
Augustine
considered
slavery
an unnatural institution
resulting
from sin: De civitate
Dei,
xix.15
(ed. Hoffmann, ii, pp. 400-1).
25
There is also the well-known
English
"Norman Yoke"
theory
that
free
Anglo-Saxon England
was crushed
by
the Normans who had
brought
over
royal
absolutism and aristocratic
oppression
with their
conquest.82
This was used
by revolutionary
and
parliamentary apolo-
gists during
the seventeenth
century
and revived as a historical-
political topos
of
egalitarian thought
in the nineteenth
century.
It
reversed the Catalan
legend
in that traditions of
liberty
were
thought
to have been
suppressed by
nobles and the
king by unjust force,
not
valour. The "Norman Yoke" was a
weapon
for those who considered
themselves burdened
by
a
perversion
of
good
old
tradition,
not a
justification
for the
deprivation
of
liberty.
A third
parallel, although
somewhat
distant,
none the less
suggests
how
Christianity might
be reconciled with social
oppression.
In
sixteenth-century Spain
a series of controversies took
place
over the
subjugation
of the American Indians. The famous debates
involving
Cano,
Las Casas and
Sepfilveda
turned on Aristotelian
concepts
of
"natural
slavery" (that
some are fit
by
nature for
servitude),
but also
on whether or not the Indians
might
be enslaved as a
punishment
for
sins
against
nature.83 Enslavement would be considered licit if the
Indians had refused
Christianity
in the sense that Muslims or
pagans
in the Old World
might
be said to have
rejected salvation, having
been the
targets
of
preaching.84
But if the Indians had never had an
opportunity
to learn the truth before the arrival of the
Spanish,
how
could
they
be enslaved for their
infidelity?
The Catalan
peasants
of
the
legend
could not claim the excuse of
ignorance,
but were
they
not
being punished
for conduct that
stopped
short of
heresy
or
apostasy? They
had never
accepted
the Islamic creed nor renounced
Christianity; through
their fear
they
had
simply
failed to defend their
82
Christopher Hill,
"The Norman
Yoke",
in his Puritanism and Revolution: Studies
in
Interpretation of
the
English
Revolution
of
the 17th
Century (London, 1958), pp.
50-
122.
83
Anthony Pagden,
The Fall
of
Natural Man: The American Indian and the
Origins
of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982), esp. p. 112;
Lewis
Hanke,
All Mankind
Is One: A
Study of
the
Disputation
between Bartolome de Las Casas and
Juan
Gines de
Sepulveda
in 1550 on the Intellectual and
Religious Capacity of
the American Indians
(DeKalb, 1974).
On the
medieval, particularly canonistic, background
to these de-
bates, James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers
and
Infidels:
The Church and the Non-Christian
World,
1250-1550
(Philadelphia, 1979), pp.
132-52.
84
Mark xvi. 15-16 and
John
xv.22 could be read as
allowing
the
punishment
of
those who refused to
respond
to
preaching.
The words of Louis the Pious at Barcelona
as
reported by
Ermoldus
Nigellus (cited above,
n.
33) may
be seen in this
light.
The
development
of the belief that the crusade was licit because the infidel
rejected
the
opportunity
for conversion offered
by preaching
is discussed
by Kedar,
Crusade and
Mission, pp. 131-5,
159-89.
faith with arms.
Only
if one understood
Christianity
as a rule of
militance rather than
humility
could one condemn the
peasants.
The
legends, lauding
as
they
did the deeds
against
the
Saracens,
demanded
that belief be
proven by
violent
struggle.
It was not
only
that "Chris-
tians are
right
and
pagans
are
wrong",
as in The
Song of Roland,
but
that
liberty, courage
and faith were
joined
in a
single
virtue. This
virtue was inherent in the Catalan nation but
only through
the noble
estate.
Christianity
in this
teaching
is not
submissive;
it confers on
its adherents a conditional freedom
protected by
force. It is this
version of
Christianity
that was
rejected
in the
peasant protest
of
1448-9 in which Christian belief and
practice
were stated to be
inseparable
from
elementary liberty.
Once the Muslim ancestors of
the remences had
converted, they
should have been treated "in Chris-
tian
fashion",
not still
subjugated. Christianity
was understood in
this instance as a rule of
dignity
and
mercy
and
baptism
was
thought
to confer human or natural-law
rights.
The
interpretation
of
Christianity
was therefore crucial in
depicting
national virtue in foundation
legends.
The establishment of the
polity
was a moral and
religious
event. It has been observed that while
medieval
legends,
such as those
concerning Clovis,
saw the
founding
of nations in terms of
Christianization,
Renaissance
legends
of
origins
were constitutional
myths
of secular contracts.85 In Catalonia the
medieval
legends
combined these elements. The
origin
of Catalonia
was its
Christianization,
not
through
conversion
(as
in
France,
Hun-
gary
or
Poland)
but
by conquest,
or
reconquest,
with the
goal
of
releasing
an
already
Christian
population. Charlemagne
and his
successors served in the
legends
as
guarantors
of Catalonia's
political
and social order.
Carolingian efforts,
but
equally (if
not
more)
the
struggle by
the Catalans
themselves, brought
the
triumph
of Chris-
tianity.
The national
identity may
be said to
encompass conflicting
notions of constitutional
legitimacy, independence, Christianity
and
liberty.
At
any given
historical moment a
body
of half-formed
myths
and
truisms floats
through
a
society,
to be used for
particular purposes,
but also
embodying
in their
vague continuity
less
easily categorized
or
tangible
beliefs. National
legends
are seldom invented whole to
suit immediate needs. The Gesta
story certainly
reflects Catalan
attitudes towards the
Capetians
in the second half of the twelfth
century;
the
Otger legend
was
shaped by
anti-Trastamara sentiment
85
Ralph Giesey, If Not,
Not: The Oath
of
the
Aragonese
and the
Legendary
Laws
of
Sobrarbe
(Princeton, 1968), p.
243.
27
of the
early fifteenth-century nobility.
Nevertheless these
specific
contexts moulded traditions that
already
existed. The
Pseudo-Turpin
chronicle had been known in Catalonia for two hundred
years
before
its hint about the
origins
of servitude was
exploited.
The
long-
standing prestige
of the
Carolingians
was set to a
variety
of texts to
fit a
diversity
of intentions. The
reputation
of
Charlemagne might
be
applied
to exalt the
power
of the counts of Barcelona or the
indepen-
dence of the
nobles,
or to sanction the enserfment of the
peasants.
The
legends embody
fundamental
assumptions along
with their
immediate usefulness for
justifying politics
or
society.
Their
very
utility
comes from the
way they display
what seem self-evident truths.
In the
legends
discussed here these truths are the need to defend
Christianity
and the
winning
of freedom
by
armed
struggle. They
are ratified
by
ancient
authority
and their
betrayal
carries certain
consequences.
The
legends
are thus
something
more than credulous
fantasies; they
are also
something
other than mere assertions of
national
pride. They
reveal
images
of medieval
society
and
character,
but
applied
to a
shifting community,
not
always
to all members of
the nation. The
legends
were stories the Catalans told themselves
about themselves
(to
invoke a well-worn
formula),
but the "them-
selves"
changed
and their self-ascribed virtues exalted internal dis-
tinctions rather than
expressing
a broad sense of
unity.
Vanderbilt
University,
Nashville
Paul Freedman

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