Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours: Studies in Early Institutional History

MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND HER PYRENEAN NEIGHBOURS STUDIES PRESENTED TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE HISTORY OF REPR...

Author: Thomas N. Bisson

28 downloads 550 Views 22MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND HER PYRENEAN NEIGHBOURS

STUDIES PRESENTED TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE HISTORY OF REPRESENTATIVE AND PARLIAMENTARY INSTITUTIONS LXX ETUDES PRESENTEES A LA COMMISSION INTERNATIONALE POUR L'HISTOIRE DES ASSEMBLIES D'ETATS

MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND HER PYRENEAN NEIGHBOURS STUDIES IN EARLY INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

THOMAS N. BISSON

THE HAMBLEDON PRESS LONDON

AND

RONCEVERTE

Published by The Hambledon Press 1989 102 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8HX (U.K.) 309 Greenbrier Avenue, Ronceverte WV 24970 (U.S.A.) ISBN 0 907628 69 9 © T.N. Bisson 1989

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bisson, Thomas N. Medieval France and her Pyrenean neighbours: studies in early international history. 1. Feudalism — France I. Title 321.3'0944 JN2337

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bisson, Thomas N. Medieval France and her Pyrenean neighbours: studies in early institutional history. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. France - Politics and government - 987-1328 - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Finance, Public - France - To 1789 - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Catalonia (Spain) - Politics and government - Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Finance, Public - Spain - Catalonia - History - Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Aragon (Spain) - Politics and government - Addresses, essays, lectures. 6. Finance, Public - Spain — Aragon - History ~~ Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. JN2337.B58 1988 944s. 021 85-30561 Printed and bound by WBC Ltd., Bristol and Maesteg

To the Memory of WILLIAME.

LUNT

THEODOR E. MOMMSEN JOSEPH R. STRAYER

This page intentionally left blank

PREFACE The earliest of the articles reprinted here were written at a time when institutional history had fallen into neglect in France. Assemblies, some thought, must be etats - and there were surely no etats before the fourteenth century. Was it not anachronistic to insist on taxation, association and consultation in the thirteenth century and even earlier? Yet there were records of such proceedings, little exploited it seemed, and ever less so as one moved southward, to be confronted on crossing the Pyrenees with a superabundance of archival materials. Was one to pass over such records because they were reticent about families and property? The problem was how to read them without succumbing to the hardy illusion that southern peoples were more precocious in associative or administrative ways than northern ones. It became clear, more slowly than I like to admit, that southern records of power had never been studied enough in any aspect to invalidate the methods I had employed; while the new work of social historians pointed more and more clearly to a need to integrate researches into procedures, status and thought. Accordingly, these studies now seem to me to straddle the threshold, still too dimly perceived, separating early medieval structures of lordship from those of government. They have perhaps some coherence in this light. Some of the earlier work (at least) might well have been revised so as to strengthen this coherence; but there is I hope some virtue in the necessity that prevented this. Chapters 1, 9, 10, 16 and 17 deal with themes subsequently taken up in my books, but in each case the more focussed and documented treatment will be found in the articles. Among themselves, the articles overlap only in respect to Catalonia, where they treat the institution of territorial administration de novo from several points of view. Two articles appear here in English for the first time: 'The rise of Catalonia' and 'The finances of the young James I (1213-1228)'. The documentary appendix to

viii

Preface

'Feudalism in twelfth-century Catalonia', which was lost in its first printing, has been restored. Some errors have been corrected and the inconsistencies of usage reduced in number. Of full-length articles, two have been omitted. 'The military origins of medieval representation' (American Historical Review, Ixxi [1966], 1199-1218) no longer satisfies me as to its demonstration, whatever the merits of its thesis; it is easily accessible to the curious. 'Celebration and persuasion: reflections on the cultural evolution of medieval consultation' (Legislative Studies Quarterly, vii [1982], 181-204) could only have been reprinted if re-set, and it seemed best to withhold it for republication in a more developed form. Martin Sheppard has my cordial thanks for his expert and considerate editing. Brigitte Bedos and Elizabeth Brown kindly advised in the matter of reproducing the seal of Figeac. For the rest I would reiterate the gratitude expressed in headnotes to these and other persons who have aided my work over the years. Among them were three teachers who influenced me deeply. Their example and their rigour impress me ever more insistently as my ideas change. The collection is dedicated to their memory. T.N.B. Cambridge, Massachusetts May 1988

CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgements List of Illustrations

vii xi xiii

/. CONSULTATION AND REPRESENTATION 1 2 3 4 5

An Early Provincial Assembly: The General Court of Agenais in the Thirteenth Century A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, February 1228) Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements (1250-1314) The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair: Their Character Reconsidered

3 31 49 75 97

//. THE RISE OF CATALONIA 6 7 8 9 10

The Rise of Catalonia: Identity, Power, and Ideology in a Twelfth-Century Society Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia Une Paix peu connue pour le Roussillon (A.D. 1173) Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199): Dean of Barcelona and Royal Servant An 'Unknown Charter' for Catalonia (A.D. 1205)

125 153 179 187 199

x

Contents

///. COMPARATIVE STUDIES

11 12 13 14

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia (c. 1140-c. 1233) The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia and France Some Characteristics of Mediterranean Territorial Power in the Twelfth Century Les Comptes des Domaines au temps de Philippe Auguste: Essai Comparatif

215 237 257 265

IV. FISCAL EXPLOITATION AND COINAGE

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Index

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia: A Templar Account (1180-1188) 'Quanto Personam Tuam' (X 2.24.18): Its Original Significance Sur les Origines du Monedatge: Quelques Textes Inedits Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222): The Documentary Evidence The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228) Coinages and Royal Monetary Policy in Languedoc during the Reign of Saint Louis Confirmatio Monete à Narbonne au XIIIe Siècle

287 303 325 339 351 393 421 427

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The articles reprinted here first appeared in the following places and are reprinted by kind permission of the original publishers.

1 2 3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10

Speculum, xxxvi (1961), pp. 254-281. English Historical Review, xcii (1977), pp. 107-124. XHe Congres International des Sciences Historiques. Vienna, 1965 (Etudes presentees a la Commission Internationale pour I'Histoire des Assemblies d'Etats, xxxi [Louvain-Paris, 1966]), pp. 77-101. Speculum, xliv (1969), pp. 353-373. Studia Gratiana, xv (1972), pp. 537-564. Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations, xxxix (1984), pp. 454-479. This appears here for the first time in English. Structures Feodales et Feodalisme dans I'Occident Mediterraneen (Xe - XIHe Siecles). Bilan et Perspectives de Recherches (Rome: Ecole Franchise de Rome, CNRS, 1980), pp. 173-192. Droit Prive et Institutions Regionales. Etudes Historiques Offertes a Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), pp. 69-76. Law, Church and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. K. Pennington and R. Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 281-292. Etudes Presentees a la Commission Internationale pour VHistoire des Assemblies d'Etats. Album Elemer Malyusz [Brussels, 1976, Ivi), pp. 61-76.

xii

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

Acknowledgements American Historical Review, Ixxxii (1977), pp. 290-311. Speculum, liii (1978), pp. 460-478. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxxiii(1975), pp. 143-150. La France de Philippe--Auguste: Le Temps des Mutations, edited by W.C. Jordan (CNRS, Paris, 1982), pp. 521-538. Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Stray er, edited by W.C. Jordan, B. McNab, and T.F. Ruiz (Princeton, 1976), pp. 87-102. Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Toronto, 21-25 August 1972 (Vatican City, 1976), pp. 229-249. Annales duMidi, 85 no. 111 (1973), pp. 91-104. Studies in Numismatic Method Presented to Philip Grierson, edited by C.N.L. Brooke, I. Stewart, J.G. Pollard, and T.R. Volk (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 193-204. X Congresso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, ii (Zaragoza, 1980), pp. 161-208. This appears here for the first time in English. Speculum, xxxii (1957), pp. 443-469. Narbonne, Archeologie et Histoire (Montpellier, 1973), pp. 55-59.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1

Seal of Figeac( 1309)

96

2

The Organized Peace in Occitania and Catalonia

232

3

Account of France (All Saints 1221)

269

4

Miniature associated with license to fortify Urtx

284

5

The Valles of Catalonia

294

6

Account for the bailiwick of Terrassa (1191)

324

7

Coins of Barcelona

341

8

Monetary ordinances for the senechaussee of Carcassonne (1264)

392

This page intentionally left blank

PARTI

CONSULTATION AND REPRESENTATION

This page intentionally left blank

1

AN EARLY PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLY: THE GENERAL COURT OF AGENAIS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY VARIOUS accounts of parliamentary origins have drawn attention to southwestern France as the scene of a remarkably early development of town representation in feudal assemblies.1 From the latter twelfth century on, the delegates of towns sometimes joined magnates and vassals in the courts of Beam, Bigorre, and other principalities in the Gascon lands rolling down northward from the Pyrenees. That these institutions have similar features seems clear. They should be studied together, and, indeed, there is no good reason to dissociate them from the nascent Spanish Cortes of the same period. But it is also apparent that the character of these early assemblies was determined in considerable measure by local conditions,2 so that any satisfactory general treatment of the problem must be preceded by special regional studies. One district that has not hitherto received its due attention is Agenais, in the lower Garonne valley. There is mention of a "general court" of Agenais which included town deputies as early as 1182, but the history of this body has been left obscure.8 The present essay seeks to clarify and extend our knowledge of this institution and related assemblies of Agenais in the thirteenth century. I Agenais was a geographical and administrative unity in the Middle Ages. Originally the civitas, then the diocese, pagus, and county of Agen, the district was known in the thirteenth century by the somewhat interchangeable terms diocesis, abescat, terra, senescattia, and patria.* It was centered in the confluence of 1 For example, P. Viollet, Droit 'public: Histoire dea institutions politiques et odministrotives de la France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1890-1903), m, 180-181; P. Dognon,Zea Institutions politiques et administratives du pays de Languedoc du XIHe siecle aux guerres de religion (Toulouse-Paris, n.d. [circa. 1895]), pp. 196-197; L. Cadier, Les fitats de Beam depuis leurs origines jusqu'au commencement du XVI9, siecle (Paris, 1888), pp. 4-8, 18-21, 51-63. 2 See, e.g., Cadier, pp. 45-63, and, for the probable relationship with Pyrenean Spain, pp. 26-30, 53-54. 8 Local historians are wholly inadequate on the subject: J. F. Samazeuilh, Histoire de VAgenais, du Condomois et du Bazadais, 2 vols. (Auch, 1846-1847), i, 149; A. Ducom, La Commune d*Agen (Paris, 1892), pp. 68,123,130-131,145-148,152-153. Hardly better are A. Molinier, "Etude sur 1'administration de Louis IX & d'Alfonse de Poitiers (1226-1271)," in Devic and Vaissete, Histoir* general* de Languedoc, 16 vols. (Toulouse-Privat, 1872-1904), hereafter cited as H.L., vii, 509; and Dognon, Institutions, pp. 196-197. E. Boutaric, in Les premiers fitats Generaux, 1302-1314 (Paris, 1860), p. 5, and Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers (Paris, 1870), p. 530, spoke of "representative institutions" and "provincial estates" in Agenais, but his views were not founded on careful study. 4 A. Longnon, Atlas historique de la France depuis Cesar jusqu'a nos jours; Texte explicatif des planches (Paris, 1885-1888), pp. 15, 147, 231, 238, 251, 253, 256, 260; E. Jarry, Provinces et Pays de France; Essai de geographic historique, u (Paris, 1943), 1-7; Archives municipals d'Agen: Chartes d'Agen, Premier* Serie (1189-1328), ed. A. Magen and G. Tholin (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 1876), nos. 24, 60; H. Tropamer, La Coutume d'Agen (Bordeaux, 1911), p. 28; Le Livre d"Agenais, ed. G. P. Cuttino (Toulouse, 1956), no. 14, p. 33.

4

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the rivers Lot and Garonne, with Bazadais on its western border, and the diocese of Cahors (Quercy) to the east. Agenais had been a fief, or territory, of the duchy of Aquitaine, which passed under Angevin control in 1152. But subsequently, though never divided, the district had an independent existence under shifting suzerainties. In 1196 Count Raymond VI of Toulouse acquired Agenais as a dowry for his marriage to Jeanne, King Richard's sister. Raymond agreed to hold it as a fief of Aquitaine, but his successors tended to ignore feudal obligations. When Raymond VII died without male heirs in 1249, Henry III tried to recover Agenais. These efforts were no deterrent to the Capetian prince, Alfonse of Poitiers, who had married the daughter of Raymond VII, and who now proceeded to govern Agenais as a Toulousan fief. Alfonse and his wife died childless in 1271, whereupon King Philip III took possession of the region. However, by the treaty of Paris of 1259, Louis IX had recognized English rights to Agenais. Edward I recovered it in 1279 after diligent negotiations, but by this time there could be no peaceful acquiescence in a decision which served feudal right at the expense of royal and national domain. Occupied temporarily by the French in the 1290's, Agenais passed back to France again in 1324. Except for the decade 1359-1369, it remained thereafter a French possession.6 Even in the twelfth century the men of Agenais were understood to form a kind of regional community, with common rights and responsibilities. The earliest town charter, which was granted by Duke Richard to Marmande in 1182, refers to the "general custom of Agenais" for criminal penalties.6 We find many later references to privileges and obligations which the people of a given place share with other villages of the countryside.7 There was a regional law of succession, as well as feudal regulations for homage and fealty ad consuetudinem Agennensem.* A sense of community quite independent of class interests is shown by the general liability to military duty. The Chanson de la Croisade contre les Albigeois assures us that the army which rallied to support the count of Toulouse against Simon de Montfort's French crusaders in 1211 included "the whole Agenais, so that no one remained behind."9 With due allowance for enthusiastic exaggeration, this should probably be regarded as a reference to the "common" or "general army of Agenais," an institution which is often mentioned in later documents.10 In 1232 a 6

J. Andrieu, Histoire de VAgenais, 2 vols. (Paris, 1893), i, 84-41, 62-63, 66, 69-71, 75-77, 111-117, 135, 140; M. Gavrilovitch, Etude sur le Traite de Paris de 1259 entre Louis IX, roi de France, & Henri HI, roi d*Angleterre (Paris, 1899), pp. 23-24, 71-74; Cuttino, introd. to Livre dy Agenais, pp. vii-xiv; cf. P. Chaplais, "Le Traite de Paris de 1259 et 1'Infeodation de la Gascogne Allodiale," Le Moyen Age, 4e ser., x (1955), esp. 132-133, 135. • Archives Nationales, JJ. 72, no. 216, fols. 145 ff. 7 H.L., vin, 1965, no. 151; Archives historiques du departement de la Gironde, to be cited as Arch. Gir.9 i (1859), no. 182 (a register of recognitions in Agenais made in 1286-1287), 356, no. 24; 360, no. 39; etc.; also vii (1865), 67, art. 37, reference to "general costuma d'Agenes" in a late thirteenth-century charter. 8 P. Ourliac, "Note sur les Coutumes Successorales de 1'Agenais," Annales de la Faculte de Droit d'Aix, XLIII (1950), 253-258; Arch. Gir., i, 352; Livre d'Agenais, no. 21, p. 50. 9 Ed. P. Meyer, 2 vols. (Paris, 1875-1879), i, 90,11. 1943-1947. 10 Cited regularly in the recognitions of 1286, Arch. Gir., i, 352, 359, etc. (note the revealing expression of military obligation: "quando nobiles et alii de patria faciunt exereitum," 354, nos. 13, 15);

The General Court of Agenais

5

seneschal had occasion to address himself "to the barons, knights, townsmen, and the whole university of Agenais," and this corporate notification was something more than mere rhetoric. Another seneschal reported some years later that the genus of barons and knights of Agenais and the "whole people" had raised an outcry about the failure to take immediate measures against certain marauders. The feeling of regional solidarity was perhaps most fully articulated in the fealty proceedings of Edward I in 1286, when the villagers of Damazan recognized their obligation to take the oath and perform military service along with the tota communitas Agennensis.11 The general court of Agenais was one of the customary institutions of this community. An official of Philip III was reported in 1271 to have acted "juxta usum dicte terre" when he convoked barons "of the land of Agenais," knights, nobles, and town consuls to a curia generalis at Agen.12 The first evidence of the existence of the assembly is an article in the Marmande customs of 1182: "And when the prince of the land or his seneschal shall convoke his general court, some or all of the consuls, according to the order of the lord, should go to the said court for the town of Marmande, at the expense of the town."13 Forty years elapse before we find another reference to the general court. It is mentioned briefly in 1222 in a convention between two towns of Agenais;14 and it receives fuller notice in the customs of Agen in an article which, though undated, probably belongs to the third or fourth decade of the thirteenth century.15 The custumals of Fumel (1265) and Tonneins-Dessous (1301), the latter in terms repeated from the charter of Marmande, also refer to the general court.16 The earliest record of an actual session is a document of 1232. It relates that the seneschal of Agenais, on the instance of the count of Toulouse, had made an enactment concerning the bishop's right of coinage "by the consent of the barons, knights, townsmen, and the general court of Agenais."17 There may have been a Lime d'Agenais, nos. 5-11, pp. 17-20. This was an old custom: early charters refer to the army as the "ost en Agenes," Arch. Nat., JJ. 72, fol. 150 v; cf. Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 28. This institution should not be confused with the bishop's peace army; see below, n. 61. 11 C. de Saint-Amans, "De la monnaie dite arnaldese des evfcques d'Agen," Recueil des Travaux de la SocietS . . . d'Agen, vn (1855), preuves, no. 3, 614-615; Layettes du Tresor des Charles, eds. Teulet et al, 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), v, no. 672; Arch. Gir., i, 382, no. 127. It is worth notice here, and will be shown below, that these three situations can all be associated with the general court. 12 "prise de possession de PAgenais au nom du roi de France en 1271," Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen., 2e ser., xin (1897), to be cited as Saisimentum Agennense, 72. 13 "E quant lo princep de la terra o sos senescalc mandera sa cort general, lo cosselh tot o la una partida segont lo mandament del senhor deven anar en aquela court per la vila de Marmande a mession de la vila," Arch. Nat., JJ. 72 (a registral copy of the vidimus by Philip VI in 1341; another copy is in Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. n. a. franc.. 3404), fol. 150 v. 14 Charles d'Agen, no. 14. 16 Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, pp. 28, 30, art. 3, partially quoted below, n. 59. For general discussion of the texts, see ibid., pp. 5-11. 16 Arch. Gir., vii (1865), 18, art. 12; A. Lagarde, Notice historique sur la ville de Tonneins (Agen, 1882), p. 118, art. 25. 17 Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen., vii, 614-615, no. 3.

6

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

meeting of the general court in 1234,18 but no other sessions are recorded in the next fifteen years. In 1249 deputies acting for Alfonse, the new count of Toulouse, had occasion to convoke an assembly which was composed of barons and knights of Agenais, consuls of Agen, and councillors and men of bourgs, castra, and villages of the diocese.19 This gathering closely resembles that of 1271, which was explicitly termed "general court." It is amply clear, then, that the designation curia generalis^ which we find in local usage as well as in French and English documents, denotes an accepted regional institution, a body of some commonly recognized composition and function. The term was usually applied to assemblies of nobles and townsmen, which may indicate that it was the attendance of the latter which rendered a court "general." But we must not lay too much stress on the terminology, or exclude from consideration those assemblies which do not happen to be called "general courts." "Cort" or "curia," unqualified, could also mean the assembly of two orders.20 The curia generalis of 1271, made up of nobles and consuls, was also styled parlamentum.21 There were other kinds of assembly too, some limited to nobility, others to townsmen;22 we have somewhat problematical evidence of several regional meetings which may have been general courts; and we know of at least two gatherings which included men of all three orders. All of these assemblies have a common history, the explanation of which must be sought initially in a general regional tradition of community and association. General assemblies of Agenais ordinarily met under the presidency of the seneschal.23 Count Raymond VII sometimes summoned men of one or another estate in Agenais, and he may have attended the general court of 1232.24 But there is no record that Alfonse or the kings of France or England ever appeared personally in the assemblies of their distant possession. To supplement the work of their seneschals in Agenais, these rulers sometimes had recourse to special commissioners, who used the general court to carry out their instructions.25 The bishops of Agen had important seigneurial rights in Agenais, but they could not convoke the assembly on their own authority. When he wished to discuss the diocesan coinage with the men of Agenais in 1263, Bishop Guillaume III begged the seneschal to convoke "his court" for this purpose.26 The usual place of assembly was Agen, the administrative center of the dis18

See below, p. 24. Layettes, in, no. 3833. 20 Customs of Agen, art. 3 (below, n. 59); Layettes, iv, no. 4883; or even of three orders, Lime d"Agenais, no. 2, p. 8. 21 Sais. Agen., 72; and prelates were also summoned, according to one text, 85. 22 These will be studied only to the extent that they serve to further our understanding of the general court. 23 Cf. n. 13; and see Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, vn, 614-615, no. 3; Layettes, iv, no. 4883; Rdles Gascons, ed. F. Michel and C. Bemont, 4 vols. (Paris, 1885-1906), n, no. 1428. 24 Charles d'Agen, nos. 31, 32; Arch. Nat., J. 306, no. 80. 26 Layettes, in, no. 3833 (Queen Blanche, acting for Alfonse); Sais. Agen., 72, 85; Livre d'Agenais, no. 2, p. 8; cf. Arch. Gir., i, no. 181, 348-349, regarding the sessions of 1286, in which Edward I may have appeared (cf. below, p. 23). 28 Layettes, iv, no. 4883, partially quoted below, n. 132. 19

The General Court of Agenais

1

trict.27 Apparently no one place within the city was reserved. We hear of gatherings in the cathedral church, the bishop's palace, the town hall (domus communitatis), the house of the Templars, and the house and cloister of the Dominicans.28 Different sessions of the same general court might convene in different places.29 The method of summons is unknown. General patent letters or notification by word of mouth were probably most common.30 Important persons or towns may sometimes have received individual letters, but the fact that no such letter has survived seems to indicate that this was not the ordinary practice. The identity of those convoked and the nature of their attendance are larger and more important questions. To deal adequately with them it will be necessary to inquire into the genesis of the general court, which must have determined its composition. II There can be no doubt that representation in Agenais originated with the appearance of town and village delegates in an existing seigneurial curia. We do not know when this first happened. Dognon, the historian of meridional institutions, suggested that it could not have been very long before 1182, when southwestern bourgs and castra were just beginning to acquire individuality.31 This view oversimplifies a complex problem, as we shall see, but there must be some truth in it. If the lone surviving town charter affords little perspective on a period which is extremely obscure, it is at least in accord with our understanding of the emergence of the consular regime in the twelfth-century.32 And there is no reason to suppose Angevin or English, much less Capetian, influence in the beginnings of the general court. Richard simply recognized an institution indigenous to southern Aquitaine. The nobles were the basic and original element. Their simple curia continued to meet as a judicial body in the thirteenth century.33 From it, presumably, the general court derived its functions and character. The customs of Agen, written after 1221 but certainly reflecting earlier conditions, refer to the lord's cort as a tribunal with cognizance of cases involving the peace of Agenais, and composed of barons, knights, consuls, and townsmen of the diocese.34 27 See ibid., no. 4888; Sais. Agen., 72; Chartes d'Agen, no. 60. There is no certain instance of a general court held elsewhere (but cf. Livre d'Agenais, no. 17, p. 37); a meeting of Agenais nobles in 1243 took place at Castelsarrasin, on the border of Toulousain, perhaps to accommodate Raymond VII, Arch. Nat., J. 306, no. 80. 28 Layettes, in, no. 3833; H.L., vii, documents, 419-426 (not a general court); Sais. Agen., 72, 85, 87; Chartes d'Agen, nos. 60, 141. 29 As in November 1271, Sais. Agen., 72, 85-87; and August 1279, Chartes d'Agen, no. 60; Livre d"Agenais, no. 2, pp. 8-9. 30 Both are exemplified by a curious document of 1274, Recognitiones Feodorum in Aquitania . . . , ed. Bemont (Paris, 1914), no. 174, the lone surviving instrument of general summons for the Gascon seisin of Edward I; cf. Arch. Gir., i, nos. 181 (348-349), 182 (351). According to the usages of Agen, Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 28, the host was "cried" generally throughout Agenais. 81 Dognon, Institutions, p. 196. 82 Ibid., pp. 57 ff.; on the twelfth-century history of Agenais, see J. Boussard, Le Gouvernement d'Henri II Plantagenet (Paris, 1956), pp. 147-151, 228. 88 H.L., viii, no. 412,1253-1254; no. 423,1289-1292. 84 See below, p. 262, and n. 59.

8

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The attendance of nobles can best be explained in terms of the feudal obligation to counsel or suit, which each knight owes on account of his fief. Unfortunately we have no evidence of such an obligation in early times, and very little for the thirteenth century. Assembled nobles and townsmen of Agenais tendered an oath of "good counsel" as well as fealty to Edward I in 1279, but in its context this cannot be interpreted as meaning a duty of attendance.36 One man, but only one, among 159 nobles making recognitions in 1259, volunteered that he owed "court" as well as homage and knight service for his fiefs.36 The rolls of 1286 show the concern of the government for its jurisdiction, without stressing suit.37 But these acts, and others like them, invariably specify military obligations.38 Indeed, the distinction between consilium and auxilium may well have been lost in Agenais, where, as in other regions, a knightly assembly must have looked much like a knightly army. As a case in point, we may notice a political gathering in 1243 which was composed of those very nobles in Agenais who had recently supported Raymond VII in an unsuccessful revolt against the king of France.39 More will be said shortly about the military analogy. The general court was not merely the lord's assembly, however. By the middle of the thirteenth century, without losing its feudal character, it had become an institution of the countryside: it had acquired a position in regional custom such that the attendance of nobles was determined by noblesse, defined by social status and holdings, rather than by vassalage. Nobles in assembly are designated by rank as barones, milites, and domicelli of Agenais, not as vassals of the lord.40 There were many seigneurial families in the region, and the aggregate of Agenais nobles was even greater than the number of residents. The powerful lords of Albret, with holdings centered elsewhere in Gascony, had interests and possessions in Agenais which accorded them pre-eminence there. We know that they attended general assemblies of Agenais.41 For similar reasons the viscount of Lomagne and the lord of Pestillac, in Quercy, were also accounted nobles of 35

Livre
The General Court of Agenais

9

Agenais.42 The total population of nobility in Agenais was surely more than 150 at mid-century, and may have approached twice that figure. But the records are inadequate for a dependable estimate.48 Useful as they may be for other purposes, the recognition rolls of 1259, 1271, and 1286 give little precise information about allodial titles or about the status of those "partners" (parcionarii) among whom Gascon fiefs could be subdivided almost endlessly. Certain assemblies in the later thirteenth century included nearly 100 nobles.44 But the usual or traditional attendance in the general court must have been smaller than this, limited in some way to the more notable barons and knights of Agenais. We have no clear evidence of the identity and size of this group.45 The important nobles, at least, were under some special obligation to attend when summoned. They had to show cause in order to excuse failure to appear in person. In an assembly of 1263 the barons asked postponement of an important decision "on account of the absence of certain nobles who were unable to come to the said court, hindered by legitimate impediment."46 Amanieu d'Albret, "detained by arduous business," named a personal deputy for a certain assembly in 1253.47 Representation was, therefore, not unknown, and it was sometimes extended from individuals to small groups of partners;48 but attendance in person was the rule. We do not find an estate of nobility represented in the general court, though the knights of Agenais could consolidate when they had a cause.49 The summons of townsmen was founded on seigneurial rather than feudal prerogative. Nothing is said about concilium in the charters and recognitions. The latter, indeed, show plainly that towns and villages of Agenais were not vassals of the overlord. Among the numerous demesne communities which conceded seigneurial rights, dues, fealty, and military service in 1271, 1279, and 1286, not one recognized homage. Nor do the villagers indicate that service is due for fiefs and 42

Note 36 above; "Hommages . . . en 1259," 18, no. 4; 59-60, no. 1; Livred'Agenais, pp. 17,19; etc. In 1243, 29 nobles in arms, Arch. Nat., J. 306, no. 80; in 1259, 159 names of knights, domicelli, and others not called burgenses, not counting many unnamed relatives and parcionarii, "Hommages . . . en 1259," 11-62; in 1271, 92 nobles swore fealty at Agen, and we know of others who did not appear, Sais. Agen., 85-87, cf. 67, 72; a list of 1279 shows at least 118 nobles owing knight service and homage, Livre d* Agenais, pp. 17-20; the roll of 1286 includes 81 persons specifically designated as nobles, but certainly refers directly and indirectly to many more than that. On the nobility see generally Tholin, "Notes sur la feodalite en Agenais au Milieu du XIIIe siecle," Rev. de V Agenais, xxm-xxvi (1896-1899), esp. xxm, 543-546; xxvi, 64-78, 173-185; and cf.'E. Lodge, Gascony under English Rule (London, 1926), pp. 193-204. 44 Meetings of 1271 and 1286, mentioned in preceding note. The total attendance was in each case probably larger than the number of recorded names. 45 Cf. n. 43. To the military list of 1279 may be added a catalogue of 35 Agenais nobles whose service Edward I sought in 1294, E.G., in, no. 3882; but the two sets of names are not readily comparable. (An accompanying list of Gascon nobles in 1294 is marked "de curia Sancti Severi," one of the four regular courts of Gascony proper.) Twenty-two important nobles in an assembly in 1279 are known by name, but the texts indicate that the number present was larger than this, Charles d'Agen, no. 60; Livre d'Agenais, no. 2, p. 9. 46 Layettes, iv, no. 4883 47 Charles d'Agen, no. 50; a knight was represented in 1271 on account of sickness, Sais. Agen., 87. 48 Ibid., 86-87; Arch. Gir., I, 364-365, nos. 60, 63; 383, nos. 128, 130. 49 Cf. below, p. 267. 43

10

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

tenures, as do the nobles.60 The king is said to have the right of exercitus "on" the men of a given place.61 This is hardly surprising, of course, but in some respects the military service of towns in Agenais was under the influence of feudal usage in the thirteenth century. The troops of Agen, like the nobles, were obligated only for forty days a year.52 In 1271 the community of Sainte-Livrade, held in pariage by the king, recognized its obligation to furnish two knights for forty days according to the custom of Agenais.53 Not even the tiniest royal village could be called to service arbitrarily.54 Nevertheless, the town levies seem to have been predominantly extra-feudal in nature. It was the practice at Agen for heads of homesteads, or their substitutes, to serve in the ranks, and the same system doubtless prevailed elsewhere in the region,55 But the general levy was inconvenient for most purposes, and so, with the recognition of consular towns as collectivities, there developed some alternative devices of token or representative service or financial commutation. By the fourteenth century Agen had obtained a customary quota of 200 sergeants, and may sometimes have fined for military service.56 Now it is very significant that this principle was already known in 1182 when we first hear of the general court. The consuls of Marmande were obliged to take the field when the overlord called out the host. The townsmen had to finance this service, just as they had to pay the expenses of their consuls as deputies in the general court. And these two provisions occur in the same article of their charter.57 The theoretical relationship between military and conciliar activity is confirmed by later charters. We find it most explicit, and in the same context, in the customs of Fumel, which speak of the right of the local lords to tallage the villagers "per ost mandada o per cort generale."58 In these circumstances it seems likely that the general court had its origins in 50

Sais. Agen., 66-84; Livre d* Agenais, nos. 5-11, pp. 17-20, where the distinction between urban and knightly obligations is very clear in the rubrics; Arch. Gir., i, 356, no. 24; 360, nos. 39, 40; 372373, no. 89; 374, no. 96; 376, no. 103; 377-378, no. 110; 382, no. 127; 384-385, nos. 135, 136; cf. 355, no. 18; 357, no. 26. 51 Arch. Gir., i, 378, no. 110: "dominus Rex habet exercitum in dictis hominibus [of Condom] quando exercitus fit domino Agenesii in Agenesio"; cf. 360, no. 39; etc. 52 Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 28; Arch. Gir., i, 381, no. 124; 384, no. 132. 53 Sais. Agen., 77; cf. 76. 64 Arch. Gir., i, 384-385, nos. 135, 136; the formulas of 1286 invoke occasion of need (tempore necessitatis), and community of obligations, 360, no. 40; 373, no. 89; 385, no. 136; etc.; but this principle is much older, Bibl. Nat., MS. Lat. 6009, fols. 507-510; Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 28. 56 Tropamer, pp. 28, 30; Arch. Gir., i, 372-373, no. 89; Revue historique de droit franqais et Stranger, vi (1860), 440. 66 Charles d'Agen, nos. 98, 145 (p. 281); "Chartes d'Agen se rapportant au regne de Philippe de Valois," ed. Tholin, Arch. Gir., xxxui (1898), no. 48,113. The communitas Agenniwas represented in the feudal army which joined Raymond VII in swearing support to Henry III in 1242, R.G., i, no. 592; and cf. Arch. Nat., J. 1031, no. 11 (peau 19); Correspondence administrative d'Alfonse de Poitiers, ed. A. Molinier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1894-1900), n, no. 1531. Commutation of ost et chevauchee was known in Bordelais at least as early as 1208, Arch. Gir., i, no. 16. 57 Arch. Nat., JJ. 72, fol. 150v. 58 Arch. Gir., vn, 18, art. 12, with the rubric: "Cum sia facha ost e cort." Simon de Montfort's ost in 1211 was termed cort in the Chanson de la Croisad.e, I, 89,1. 1922; cf. n, 106, n. 3.

The General Court of Agenais

11

military arrangements. This hypothesis derives strong support from the important privileges of Agen, which were known throughout Agenais. They prescribe that, in the event of an issue between the overlord and a town, a general court should hear the case, if possible, before an army is summoned.59 In other words, townsmen should convene with knights as a court in disputes which may result in their convocation as an army. Further illustration of this theory may be found in an agreement of 1222 between Agen and Le Mas "for the common profit of Agenais, of the city, and of the bourgs and of the barons." The two communities recognized that quarrels between them should be in the jurisdiction of barons and consuls of regional towns.60 Interurban disputes were evidently regarded as threatening the peace of Agenais. Let us now observe that the two passages just cited seem to refer to the conciliar procedure in question as a privilege of a responsible community of Agenais. Townsmen and nobles, the former probably motivated in part by commercial concerns, and both groups burdened with a common military obligation, had developed a common interest in maintaining the regional peace. Such responsibility in the community of men of the two orders was hardly inconsistent with the feudal and seigneurial authority of the overlord, and it may have been fostered by him. Of course we must not exaggerate the strength or endurance of bonds between the estates. But the early recognition of military need by the men of Agenais must have made it easier in practice to muster the assembly. Hence the conclusion may be drawn that the early development of the general court resulted from a combination of the military obligation imposed by the overlord and military necessity recognized by the community of Agenais.61 69 Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 28 (printed from other texts by Moullie in Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen., v, [1850], 241-244; and Barckhausen, Archives municipales de Bordeaux: Livre des Coutumes [Bordeaux, 1890J, 219-220): "[Men of city and suburbs of Agen are obligated to annual ost of 40 days in the diocese.] En aital manera quel senher, si horn lo fa tort en Agenes o deforas lo meiss hebescat, deu mandar e far cridar la ost generalment per tot Agenes, e deu far assaber a Agen sobre cui volra cavalgar o metre seti: e si en alcu loc d'Agenes vol metre seti o cavalgar, lo coselhs tot prumerament avant que home d'Agen isco en ost deu enquerre lo senhor els habitans d'aquel loc. E sil senher e li habitant d'aquel loc volo far drech a esgart del senhor e de sa cort, lo senhor los deu dregh prendre. E home d'Agen d'aqui en la no son tengutz ni devo far ost al senhor sobre aquel o aquelhs, pero que sion en 1'abescat d'Agenes, que, aissi cum predigh es, volran far dregh a esgart del senhor e de sa cort, ea cals corts deu estre dels baros e dels cavoers d'Agenes e dels coselhs e dels proshomes de la ciutat d'Agen e dels bores d'Agenes: mas en autre loc que sia foras 1'ebescat d'Agenes, lo coselhs no home d'Agen no an enquesta." 60 Charles d'Agen, no. 14: "A honor de Deu trastot poderos, lo paire el fil el sanch esperit, e pel profech comunal d'Agenes, de la ciutad e dels bores e dels baros . . . . Pero si contrast fo que ja no sia, ni rancura forzia entre vos e nos, que aco fos determenad per acordir o per drech, a coneguda dels baros e dels cosels dels bores d'Agenes, [e aquo que devant lo senhor deuria anar, que per lui sia determenad]." (Done in the presence of the seneschal.) It is hard to say whether the bracketed words have the effect of a saving clause, or imply a real division of jurisdiction. 61 In the absence of evidence, we cannot link the military theory of communal foundations (C. PetitDutaillis, Les Communes frangaises [Paris, 1947], esp. pp. 103-123) with the origins of the general court. The charters of Marmande and Agen refer to the army only in judicial contexts, without suggesting any administrative policy of strengthening or extending military obligations. Certain bastides were organized for military reasons, but most such foundations belong to a period when the general

12

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Town and village representation in the assembly was apparently not enforced as an obligation. In principle, however, the summons of townsmen remained seigneurial. Most of the consulates in Agenais were directly subject to the overlord, and we do not know that places other than these were ever convoked. Mediate lords might make their own summons to the general court the occasion for taxing their peasants, as was customary at Fumel, but the regional prince had no part in that sort of local arrangement.62 The number of communities which were ordinarily represented, and their identity, cannot be determined very precisely. Only one list, pertaining to the assembly of 1279, has survived. It includes Agen, Condom, Port-Sainte-Marie, Mezin, Penne, Monflanquin, Villeneuve, Marmande, Montreal, and Tournon, but this is followed by a reference to "many other places" of the diocese of Agen.63 As we have seen, an assembly in 1249 was described as including delegates of the city, bourgs, castra, and villages; and to this may be added a directive of King Edward I in 1289 which requests the summons to a general court of "consuls of all the villages."64 But the number of chartered rural communities was increasing rapidly in the later thirteenth century, so that, by 1300, among some fifty consulates in Agenais, there were more than thirty royal towns and villages.65 One may doubt that all or even very many of them were ever represented together in assemblies. Probably the larger places sent deputies more often than the smaller ones, but there was no juridical distinction in this regard between commercial towns, castra, bastides, and villages. As the charters indicate, the representatives of townsmen in the general court were the consuls, ex officio. The customs of Agen add that "good men," meaning councillors, might also attend the assembly, and we have record that they sometimes did so.66 There were no special elections. This representation was indirect, the more so for the fact that lords, bayles, notables, or consuls themcourt was in decline. The continued activity of the general army may be one reason for the apparent atrophy of the episcopal peace machinery in the thirteenth century (cf. Arch, de Lot-et-Garonne, MS. d'Argenton [2J54], in, no. 44, 26-27; Ducom, Agen, no. 2, pp. 284-286). The bishop had his own vassals in Agenais, Ducom, p. 277, but we do not hear that he summoned townsmen. 62 Arch. Gir., vu, 18, art. 12. The villagers were then said to be "quiti de cort," meaning, literally, that they had "paid court." This is the seigneurial aid in support of feudal service, discussed by Carl Stephenson, Mediaeval Institutions: Selected Essays, ed. Bryce Lyon (Ithaca, 1954), pp. 2-4. TonneinsDessous obtained customs of Marmande from mediate lords in 1301, but this does not mean that the provision for attendance in the cort generale was honored in practice, Lagarde, Tonneins, p. 118, art. 25. In view of the military analogy, it is significant that we know of the exemption of baronial towns from the army, e.g. Caumont (1289), Bibl. Nat., MS. n. a. frang. 3391, fol. 85; Lafox was tallaged for its lords' service, customs of 1254, ed. Cabie, Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, vin (1883), 267. 63 A composite list, drawn from two documents, Charles d'Agen, no. 60 (p. 84), and Livre d"Agenais, no. 2, p. 9; the quoted formula is identical in both. «4 R.G., n, no. 1428. 66 Livre d'Agenais, nos. 6, 8, 10, pp. 18-20; "Les Coutumes de 1'Agenais: Monclar, Monflanquin (1256-70), Saint-Maurin (1358)," ed. H. Rebouis, N.R.H.D.F.8., xiv (1890), 388-397; also M. CurieSeimbres, Essai sur les miles fondees dans le sud-ouest de la France aux XIII9 et XIV9 siecles sous le nom generique de bastides (Toulouse, 1880), pp. 225-238. 66 Above, n. 59; Layettes, in, no. 3833; iv, no. 4883.

The General Court of Agenais

13

selves controlled the choice of officials in many places in Agenais.67 Of special delegates or empowered syndics in assembly we hear nothing until late in the century. Deputations were invariably from individual towns; there is no evidence that a third estate as such was represented. The practice of consular representation in the general court cannot be directly documented until 1249. But we can trace its influence, or at least find its parallel, in an earlier development of representative techniques among certain Agenais towns. A defensive league was formed in 1224 between Agen and five neighboring communities.68 From then on, townsmen of the Garonne valley frequently dealt collectively with their interests: the maintenance of free and open routes, procedures for regulating disputes, the disposition of tolls and subsidies, mutual defence, and the like. The towns were represented in these negotiations and activities by their consuls or councillors, or by individual notables.69 The first mention of corporate Romano-canonical representation among associated Agenais communities occurs in 1254, when Alfonse speaks of distributing a certain indemnity to proctors of those Garonne towns to which it was owed.70 Town and village delegates assembled on some occasions with the count of Toulouse. In 1239, when he was deeply indebted to financiers of Bordeaux, Raymond VII sought to raise revenue by imposing a toll on wine and grain passing the port of Marmande; and in the following year he levied a special taille on Garonne towns to support the work of restoring the river channel. This taille was to be assessed and collected "per consules et consilia villarum de riparia," and it seems likely that the count had consulted the consuls and councillors in this matter 71 He had imposed the Marmande toll "de consilio burgensium et proborum hominum de riparia " This evidently refers to a meeting of councillors, and perhaps consuls, and notables. They resorted to the administrative device of appointing two "good men" to act as collectors for the association of valley communities. Only the seven leading towns (whose bankers had already advanced a part of the debt and were to be repaid from proceeds of the toll) are specified: Agen, Le Mas, Marmande, Port-Sainte-Marie, Castelsarrasin, Moissac, and Montauban.72 This list includes four notable towns of Agenais, but the three last-named places were located in Quercy. There is other evidence, too, that common commercial interests centered in Agenais involved mercantile towns well outside the district.73 But none of these external towns had a place in the general court. Indeed, it is quite impossible to show that prior experience in the court had any influence in creating a sense of community among valley 67

See Dognon, Institutions, pp. 75, 80, 89; in charters granted by Alfonse and copied (for the most part) by Edward I, the lord or bayle appointed consuls, but a council for finance was chosen "by the people," e.g., N.R.H.D.F.E., xiv, 405, art. 13; xn (1888), 88-89, art. 13. 68 Chartes a* Agen, no. 16; cf. nos. 14, 15. 69 Ibid., nos. 18, 30-34, 41, 72, 77, 80. 70 Corresp. d'Alfonse, n, no. 2092; cf. below n. 85. 71 Chartes d'A?en, no. 32. 72 Ibid., no. 31. 73 Ibid., nos. 18, 41; Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1247-1858 (London, 1908), pp. 251-252; etc

14

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

towns. The only feature which the general court certainly had in common with assemblies of associated towns was the form of representation. The clergy had no regular place in the early general court. There is no mention of prelates as a group in assemblies before 1271 and the charters of customs are equally silent. Churchmen ordinarily attended assemblies as individual notables or witnesses; they never attended as representatives of clergy in Agenais. The bishop of Agen appeared frequently, and we also find evidence of abbots, cano is, archdeacons, and magistri. But the total number of different clerics whose names are recorded is very small; and it includes men of other dioceses, such as the bishops of Toulouse and Lectoure, and the abbots of Moissac and Figeac.74 The absence of the clerical estate may be viewed as a consequence of the allodial status of Agenais churches and hence, indirectly, as an indication of the feudal ancestry of the general court. It was not merely that the overlords had had little reason to consult the clergy, or that the latter, for their part, had developed no tradition or cause in common with the laity.75 More fundamental was the fact that few ecclesiastics in Agenais were vassals (or admitted that they were).76 They were far outnumbered by nobles and towns in the feudal recognition sessions of the later thirteenth century. Moreover, such rare recognitions as they made show that the higher clergy ordinarily held temporalities in free alms; they were exempt from regional military service.77 This ecclesiastical independence, hardly pleasing to a new generation of strong rulers, was challenged toward the end of the century.78 One indication of the changing policy is the appearance of clergy in the general court of Agenais. We have an unspecified and somewhat vague allusion to their presence in the assembly of 1271.79 But it is certain that prelates and chapters were summoned in 1279 to sit with nobles and town delegates in a large political gathering. In 1286 Edward I directed his officials to secure feudal recognitions from church74

Layettes, in, no. 3833; Charles d'Agen, no. 60 (pp. 84, 89); Arch. Gir., i, no. 182. Agenais was divided in loyalty — and ravaged! — in the early years of the Albigensian wars. Extraordinary taxation, when extended to clergy at all, was negotiated individually: see, e.g., Brit. Mus., Cotton. MS. Julius E. 1, fol. 39; cf. R.G., n, nos. 1610, 1793. 76 Noting the same situation in Bordelais and Bazadais, R. Boutruche, Une societi provinciate en lutte contre le regime feodal: VAlien en Bordelais et en Bazadais du XIe au XVIII* siecle (Rodez, 1947), p. 45, finds its explanation in the act of 1137 by which Louis VII, piously motivated by the Gregorian reform, had freed the episcopal and abbey churches of the province of Bordeaux (which included Agenais) from their obligations of homage and fealty. 77 Two prelates recognized fiefs in 1259, "Hommages . . . en 1259," 43, no. 14; The Gascon Calendar of 1322, ed. G. P. Cuttino (London, 1949), no. 1016; and three in 1286, Arch. Gir., I, 361, no. 45; 362-363, no. 51; 374-375, no. 97. The prior of Port-Sainte-Marie admitted obligation to fealty and exercitus in 1271, Sais. Agen., 80, but the whole act is cancelled. The abbot of Condom in 1285 owed only fealty and recognition of feudal holdings to the king, "sine alio deverio, sicut est hactenus observatum," KG., n, no. 938 (275). 78 See Boutruche, op. cit., pp. 112-113; R.G., n, no. 1428. At Agen the consuls disputed clerical immunity from common expenses for properties which had previously paid taille, Charles d'Agen, nos. 101, 102, 104-106, 108, 109, 74 (p. 122). 79 Sais. Agen., 85: they are mentioned only after "barons and knights and other nobles"; the other surviving document, p. 72, makes no reference to clergy. 75

The General Court of Agenais

15

men as well as other tenants. And three years later he prescribed a general court which was to include men of all three estates.80 Clerical attendance in these assemblies was individual; we find no evidence of the representation of an ecclesiastical estate. Deputations of religious houses were probably more common than the one surviving reference of 1&86 would indicate,81 but the parish clergy were undoubtedly ignored. The prelates were becoming identified with the nobility, and those having seigneurial jurisdiction may have been counted as barons for administrative purposes.82 A collective procuration and petition of clergy and nobles of Agenais in 1289 may have been drawn up in an assembly.83 Even in this period, however, the clergy did not always attend regional meetings.84 Procuration and the corporate representation of both towns and estates were fairly common in Gascony by the later thirteenth century.85 For the use of these devices in assembly we find evidence in Agenais dating back to mid-century. Especially notable is the case of an individual procuration which is, in fact, the only surviving mandate for an Agenais assembly in the period under study. We have already noticed this document in another connection.86 On 1 June 1253 the Gascon baron Amanieu d'Albret granted an agent potestas faciendi et ordinandi in a gathering which was to deal with a certain unspecified negocium. Besides stating that he was kept from attending personally by "arduous business," the principal obligated himself to recognize decisions made by his deputy in assembly. It is possible that in constituting his proctor the lord of Albret was complying with a governmental regulation, perhaps embodied in a summons; but it seems more likely that he was acting voluntarily. This mandate was addressed to the seneschal and barons of Agenais, consuls of Toulouse, and "other good men" subject to Count Alfonse,87 from which it 80 Charles d'Agen, no. 60; Public Record Office, Ancient Correspondence (SC 1), xiv, no. 136; Arch. Gir., i, no. 181; R.G., n, no. 1428. 81 Arch. Gir.t i, 362, no. 51, Condom the only house represented by a proctor-syndic; cf. the king's directive, 348-349; and for 1279, Chartes d'Agen, no. 60, references to chapters. 82 See next note; also Gascon Calendar, nos. 1269,1702;P.R.O., Ancient Petitions (SC 8), 262/13092. 83 R.G., n, nos. 992, 1056, 1062. 84 Livre d'Agenais, no. 17, p. 37; Chartes d'Agen, no. 141. 86 E.g., Gascon Calendar, nos. 997, 1013, 1023; P.R.O., E. 36, vol. 275, fols. 256v~257v; Chartes d'Agen, nos. 88, 89; J. Monlezun, Histoire de la Gascogne, 6 vols. (Auch, 1846-49), vi, 2, 16-18; Arch. Gir., xxvn (1892), no. 315, 373. The procuration of individual towns in Agenais was known at least as early as 1216, Chartes d'Agen, no. 4. Charters of Port and Fumel prescribe procedure for constituting syndics, Bibl. Nat., Baluze, xxvi, fol. 341/350; Arch. Gir., vn, 16, art. 5. 86 Above, p. 9 ; see next note for the text. 87 Arch. Municipales d'Agen, AA. 2 (Chartes d'Agen, no. 50): "Viris venerabilibuset discretis domino Symone Clareti, senescallo Agenni, et baronibus Agennensibus, capitulo Tolosano et aliis probis hominibus sub potestate domini comitis Pictavensis constitutis, Amaneus de Lebreto, salutem . . . . Cum, arduis negociis retardati, ad vos, quod displicet, accedere non possimus, venerabili nostro domino Arnaldo de Montepesato damus potestatem faciendi et ordinandi vobiscum, super eo negocio pro quo convenistis, quod sibi, pro nobis, videbitur faciendum, obligantes nos per presentes quod vobiscum, sicut unus de diocesi Agenni vel districtu dicti domini comitis, exequamur, secundum quod nomine nostro ordinabit dominus Arnaldus de Montepesato predictus. Datum Lingone [Langon], feria tercia post assensionem Domini, anno Domini M.CC.L.III. [1 June 1253]." Boutaric and Molinier overlooked this document, and its editors missed its significance. Regarding Albret's preoccupations,

16

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

appears that the assembly in question was not a general court.88 It was probably a special advisory session called by the seneschal to study certain complaints against the administration of the new overlord. We know of one such conference in the period 1252-1253 which was attended by consuls and notables of Agenais and men of Toulouse.89 These two descriptions may possibly refer to one and the same gathering; but if not, then the two meetings must be related. The details of the issue need not concern us here. The result of the known investigation is included in a reform ordinance which was promulgated by county investigators in the bishop's residence at Agen in the presence of four prominent nobles of Agenais. One of these four is the same person who received Albret's mandate, and he may have been acting as a proctor on this occasion. However that may be, it is important to notice that the four nobles are said to be in attendance "pro se et aliis baronibus et militibus Agennesii."90 Whether they had been explicitly summoned as delegates of an estate of nobility cannot be determined, nor can we be sure that their acquiescence was legally binding on the regional baronage. But the phraseology suggests that by this time the representation of an order in assembly was a practical possibility. This precedent had no immediate fulfillment in Agenais. In no other assembly of the thirteenth century do we find an estate represented, although there is evidence of deputations or petitions from associated men of one or more estates. A somewhat different form of collective representation may be noted in the general court of 1271. This meeting was attended by the consuls of certain towns which were the centers of local administrative districts. Included in these districts were other parishes and villages, and it is clear that the assembled consuls represented the suburban parishioners and villagers as well as their fellow townsmen.91 But this experiment was not repeated in later assemblies, a fact which may be related to the transfer of overlordship in 1279. Nor was procuration much utilized. We know of only one assembly of Agenais, that of 1286, in which see Bemont, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 1208-1265, new ed., tr. E. F. Jacob (Oxford, 1930), pp. 118-120. 88 For evidence of relations between Toulouse and Agen in this period, some of it seeming to show Agen following the lead of the consuls of Toulouse in internal matters and jurisdiction, see Charles d'Agen, nos. 3, 10, 11, 40; H.L., vii, does, 423-424. At least two consuls of Toulouse attended the general court of 1249 as witnesses, Layettes, in, no. 3833. 89 H.L., vn, docs, 421-424, an issue arising from the building of bastides, concerning which "consilliiin fuit datum a consulibus & ab aliis urbis Agennensis, presentibus nobili viro domino Sicardo Alamanni & probis hominibus Tholosanis jurisperitis & aliis etiam Condomii & Penne & Portus Sancte Marie, & de Medicino & de Grandiscastro & de Marmanda & Mansi, Agennensis diocesis . . . [who all gave counsel according to the custom of Agenais]." 90 Ibid., 419-426; cf. 426-430; Molinier, "L'Administration de Louis IX et d'Alfonse," 509, 568; and vni, 1325-1329, 2404, for reform ordinances of this period. 91 Sais. Agen., 75-82. See, e.g., the act of Port, 78-80: "Noverint universi quod convocatis consulibus ville de Portu Sancte Marie, diocesis Agenensis, pro se et universitate dicte ville et pro parrochiis et castris de honore et districtu baJulie dicte ville . . . ." The many castra, villages, and parishes enumerated were bound by the act of the consuls of Port. This matter will be treated fully and comparatively in a study, now in preparation, of thirteenth-century assemblies in southern France.

The General Court of Agenais

17

proctors and syndics certainly appeared Their attendance, even then, was surely voluntary and exceptional. One monastery sent a syndic with a mandate, several villages deputed syndics, and some proctors appeared on behalf of tenurial partners. There was no insistence on mandates.92 Romano-canonical formulas were available and understood in Agenais, but they were used in assembly without procedural meaning, as an alternative to informal representation. Ill

The general court of Agenais retained its original military and judicial character in the thirteenth century. We may cite a case of the year 1255. The seneschal had led a successful military expedition against some Gascon nobles who had done violence to "men and burghers" of Agenais. According to the act of submission, the seneschal took the field "(fecit exercitum) de consilio baronum et militum et proborum hominum dyocesis Agennensis."93 This phrase probably refers to a meeting of the general court, for the issue in question resembles that military contingency which the customs of Agen had specified as the occasion for assembly. To put it in general terms, the townsmen make of their injury a regional issue, which is discussed in plenary session, and results in the proclamation of a general army. In the circumstances it is clear that consilium means "advice" or even "judgment," but not "consent," for the military campaign was wholly to the advantage of the men of Agenais. Indeed, we know of protests in this very period against a seneschal who was hesitant in calling the army when needed.94 It would appear from the recognitions that the general army was still a flourishing institution in 1286. And when the nobles and villagers state that they will serve in the ranks when others of Agenais do likewise, we may perhaps infer that the decision was supposed to be made in assembly.95 But there is no further evidence of this in practice. Meetings of this kind must be characterized as judicial, and we know of one or two other deliberative sessions of the general court which were similar in nature.96 Of ordinary litigation there is no direct evidence, but it seems likely that the court occasionally heard major suits, perhaps on appeal. In 1270 the barons of Agenais petitioned Count Alfonse for the right to convene in general 92 Arch. Gir., i, 356, no. 24; 360, no. 40; 362, no. 51; 376, no. 103; 382, no. 127; 383, nos. 128, 130; 387, no. 145; tutors also served as representatives, e.g., 380, no. 120. 93 Layettes, in, no. 4199. One of the offenders disclaimed financial liability for the expedition because "paratus fuerit et sit stare juri, in curia dicti senescalli, omnibus de se querelantibus"; cf. H.L., vi, 844, n. 3 (Molinier). 94 Layettes, v, no. 672, the seneschal entreats Alfonse to advise him promptly in regard to the depredations of certain knights which have aroused such great indignation in Agenais "contra me quare non statim invado eosdem et eos [men of Agenais] siiniliter per se invadere non permitto, et quare non congrego excercitus contra ipsos, quod nescio consilium quod apponam . . . [dated 12561258]." 95 Arch. Gir., I, 354, nos. 13, 15; 356, no. 24; etc.; and esp. 373, no. 91, a noble's obligation to serve "quando mandatur et fit exercitus communiter in Agenezio per barones, milites et universitates diocesis Agennensis"; also Bibl. Nat., MS. n.a. franc.. 3404, fol. 199. 96 Layettes, iv, no. 4883; cf. Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, vn, preuves, no. 3, 614-615; Livre d'Agenais, no. 17, p. 37.

18

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

court four times a year, without summons, in order to hear appeals. This showed their discontent with certain novel procedures which were making it possible for the count's officials to do without the old feudal tribunal. The county parlement rejected the petition, claiming, among other things, and with some justification, that the holding of such frequent courts would be inconsistent with law and custom.97 In May 1270, in a conciliatory gesture before embarking on crusade, Alfonse conceded the right of the nobles of Agenais to be tried by their peers under the presidency of the seneschal, but he said nothing about the plenary court.98 The government was undoubtedly trying to curtail its activity, and it seems clear that from the time of Alfonse the general court was in decline as a judicial institution. This may be one reason for the apparent disinterest in procuration as a procedural device. The new administrators were apprehensive of any conceivable source of opposition to their authority. They probably felt that the assembled community was an ungainly body, hard to convoke and harder to manage, and conducive to delays, inefficiency, and injustice.99 In other ways, however, the assembly of Agenais had possibilities which did not go unrecognized in the changing circumstances of the thirteenth century. The regional government began to use it as an administrative organ, as a means of getting information about feudal holdings, of registering oaths of fealty, and of communicating policy to the generality of inhabitants. These matters were especially urgent in Agenais, where the shifts of suzerainty and absentee rule combined to engender a serious problem of loyalty. The use of assemblies in fealty proceedings first comes to our notice in the settlement after the baronial revolt of 1242.10° The defeated Raymond VII, as lord of Agenais, had to account to his own overlord, the king of France, for the misconduct of his men. By request of royal commissioners he convoked the nobles of Agenais. Twenty-seven barons, castellans, and knights of the region assembled on 7 April 1243 in the church of Notre-Dame at Castelsarrasin, where they made a formal act of submission to the king and Church.101 Since no townsmen attended, this was not a general court. Oaths are recorded individually and locally for six Agenais towns,102 but none for nobles other than those who 97

Arch. Nat., J. 1031, no. 11: "Super peticione baronum de Agennesio . . . de sexto articulo super quatuor curiis generalibus habendis in Agennesio certis temporibus sine mandate cuiuscumque et appellationibus interponendis per curiam decidendis: videtur consilio domini comitis quod curie iste non competant eis de consuetudine nee de iure . . . ." See also H.L., viu, 1352-1356; 1715-1723, Alfonse's administrative ordinances of about 1254 and 1270 (which do not mention the general court); Bibl. Nat., Doat, cxvii, fols. 266v-272v; Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, pp. 412-414, 497-501; Molinier, "L'Administration de Louis IX & d'Alfonse," pp. 520-528. The latter writers, rather vaguely and implausibly, find the influence of recent English events in the petition of 1270. 98 Bibl. Nat., Doat, cxvii, fols. 266v-272v. 99 Arch. Nat., J. 1031, no. 11; cf. P.R.O., Anc. Pet. (SC 8), 262/13092; and see below, pp. 278-279. 100 See Bemont, "La Campagne de Poitou, 1242-1243," Annales du Midi, v (1893), esp. 312-314. The following discussion is somewhat condensed from a general account of the subject which will appear in my work on meridional assemblies. 101 Arch. Nat., J. 306, no. 80 (indicated in Layettes, n, no. 3074). 102 Agen, Condom, Penne, Port-Sainte-Marie, Marmande, and Mezin, Layettes, n, nos. 3045, 3048, 3165, 3166, 3169, 3171.

The General Court of Agenais

19

met at Castelsarrasin. From this it would appear that the officials wished to deal with the baronage centrally, on a single occasion if possible, to avoid the trouble and expense of separate, local sessions such as were conducted elsewhere in the county of Toulouse for the same purpose. In fact, no comparable general gathering took place in other parts of Raymond's domains. Agenais was the only district of the county with a customary assembly, and it is very probable that the procedure there was influenced by local conditions. A further step was taken in 1249, when, on the death of Raymond VII, it was necessary to secure seisin of the county of Toulouse for Alfonse of Poitiers. The queen mother directed the proceedings in the absence of her son, who was on crusade. This time officials convoked a plenary assembly in Agenais, at Agen, and similar meetings were held in Toulousain and Quercy. These assemblies were intended to serve as a means of influencing opinion among people who were very reluctant to allow governmental authority to pass to a northern prince. For the meeting at Agen, besides summoning nobles and delegates of towns and villages, the officials produced an impressive array of witnesses, including two bishops, three abbots, some high county officials, and consuls of Toulouse.103 The session began with a public reading of the queen's mandate, which specified the rights of Alfonse, and requested his new subjects to swear their fidelity.104 The men of Agenais then deliberated among themselves. They formulated a reply which was presented to the commissioners by a certain civis of Agen. He reported that the men assembled were unwilling to perform fealty "at present," on grounds that such an act would be contrary to the Peace of Paris (of 1229), to the last will of Raymond VII, to the interests of Jeanne, wife of Alfonse, and to their liberties and customs. Whereupon the oath commission countered that nothing was being done that would conflict with the treaty of Paris, that indeed they wished the oath to be sworn with the reservation of any relevant points of that agreement. Nor would fealty contravene Raymond's testament, which made Jeanne his heiress, because the oaths were requested for Alfonse only as her consort. As for regional liberties, the assembly was informed that the commission asked for fealty with the understanding of non-prejudice. Therefore, disallowing their "frivolous excuses," and reaffirming the queen's authority to act for her sons as well as the validity of their mandate, the commissioners once more demanded the oath of fealty, under penalty of expenses, or other punishments. But the men of Agenais again refused. From an administrative point of view the assembly had been a failure. The queen's officials were obliged to go to other towns in the district to seek fealties in local sessions,105 though, to be sure, they might have done so, as a supple103

H.L., viii, no. 415,1260-1268; Layettes, in, nos. 3832, 3833. This paragraph summarizes Layettes, in, no. 3833, a remarkable but partisan notice of the contumacy of Agenais. This document is partially supplemented by the letter of Philip-the-Treasurer to Alfonse, in Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, pp. 69-77. 105 Boutaric, pp. 72-73. Philip tells us that the officials proceeded to undermine the resistance of Agenais by reaching an accord with Simon de Montfort, governor of English Gascony. The nobles 104

20

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

mentary procedure, even if they had succeeded at Agen. The real interest of the incident is political. Since the status of Agenais was quite in doubt after the death of Raymond VII, the contentions of the assembly were not wholly frivolous. The people had probably heard rumors or propaganda about reversionary rights of the king of England to the district.106 This being a matter of general regional concern, the assembled inhabitants assumed the identity of a political community. There had been no such opposition in other areas of the county. It was a peculiar tradition of common interest and privilege in Agenais which had made possible the expression of provincial suspicion and independence in assembly. The government might well be wary of allowing this to be institutionalized in the general court. The next important administrative assembly was the general court of 1271. This was occasioned by the accession of Philip III to the county of Toulouse. The procedure of seisin was more comprehensive than that of 1249; it included an inventory, accounting, and recognitions of fiefs, as well as the collection of fealties. A tour of Agenais was required to accomplish all this, but the king's officials hoped that they could give publicity to the work and get a good deal of it done in a preliminary central assembly. In convoking the general court, they may have added clergy to the usual summons of nobles and towns. It is clear, however, that they were simply utilizing the customary institution for their special purposes.107 We know of two sessions of the full assembly, which included at least ninetytwo nobles and the deputies of four towns. The royal commission was made public on 12 November, upon which, in a move reminiscent of their resistance in 1249, the men of Agenais refused to perform fealty until some royal official of the district had first sworn to respect and uphold their liberties and customs. Accordingly, a new seneschal was appointed, and he took the required oath publicly on the 14th. The commissioners were then able to obtain the fealties.108 Once again the general assembly had served as a focus for the self-assertion of the community of Agenais; but this time the government was able to have its way by making a minimal concession. These proceedings, in violation of English rights to Agenais, were not to have permanent results. Arrangements for the restoration of English suzerainty were completed in the summer of 1279, following the treaty of Amiens.109 The final formalities received publicity in what was probably the largest and most impresand townsmen left behind had continued to seek a compromise. Some representatives of the city and barons and knights of Agenais sought out the officials while they were at Penne and offered an oath in unsatisfactory form. The men of Agen remained adamant, but some of the nobles then gave in and took the prescribed oath; cf. Layettes, in, no. 3845; and Bemont, Simon de Montfort, pp. 81, n. 4; 87. 106 See Bemont, p. 81, n. 4; H.L., vm, no. 271, 887; no. 413, 1256; vi, 812, n. 1 (Molinier), 813. 107 See G. La Faille, Annales de la ville de Toulouse . . . , 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1687-1701), i, preuves, 1-51, the saisimentum roll for the county, minus that part which was printed as Sais. Agen. C. V. Langlois, Le Regne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris, 1887), pp. 169-172, overlooked the material for Agenais. 108 Sais. Agen., 72-82, 85-87. 109 Cuttino, in Livre d"Agenais, pp. ix-xiv, gives a good account of the transfer.

The General Court of Agenais

21

sive assembly of the century in Agenais. The bishop, three abbots, "other prelates and chapters," barons, knights, and nobles, in numbers considerably greater than the twenty-two who are known by name, the deputies of ten specified towns and villages and of others not named, and a "great multitude of other persons": such was the crowd which convened in the Dominican cloister at Agen on 9 August in response to a summons by French officials; and among the twenty-five witnesses to the transactions were important men from outside the diocese, including great Gascon lords, two abbots, and a bishop.110 The French agents officially transferred the direct lordship of Agenais to King Edward's uncle, William of Valence, who had been empowered as a recipient. They charged the men assembled and all other regional subjects to be obedient to the king of England and to perform fealty, homage, and their other obligations for him. The inhabitants of Agenais were absolved from their allegiance to the king of France, with the reservation of "superiority and supreme jurisdiction." Finally, the French seneschal was removed from office, and ordered to render account. A notary of Agen, by request of the royal agents, the bishop, and the whole assembly, recorded and authenticated these acts in a public instrument.111 The difficult task of obtaining fealties now fell to the English commissioner. But certain details had been disputed at tiresome length before the agreements just mentioned. There may well have been some other discussion and speechmaking in this session.112 Hence the commissioner decided to postpone the fealty work overnight. And he had another reason for doing so. The word had previously got out and circulated through Agenais that the new seneschal might be the lord of Bergerac, a disreputable man who was said to be unable even to govern himself.113 This report was not unfounded, and the commissioner himself probably favored the feared Gascon noble.114 Uneasiness was undoubtedly discernible in the assembly on 9 August. The people of Agenais could be expected to make an issue of the seneschal, as in the past, when asked to do fealty. Agen must have been an excited city that night. The next day, clergy, nobles, and consuls reassembled in the town hall. It is possible that matters threatened immediately to get out of control, for the commissioner's first act was a concession. Taking counsel "in full court" with his advisers, he announced the temporary appointment of Jean de Grilly, seneschal of Gascony, to the seneschalcy of Agenais; and Grilly was directed to swear to maintain the customs faithfully. But the men of Agenais were still dissatisfied. They now argued that it was customary for the lord to make oath in person, upon his first entry into 110 Ckartes d'Agen, no. 60; Livre d° Agenais, no. 2, pp. 8-9. Lists of reliefs and homages and military service due were drawn up at about this time; they name more than 100fief-holdersand 32 towns, but this cannot be taken as evidence for attendance; cf. below, p. 273, and n. 117. 111 Charles d'Agen, no. 60 (an original, of which Livre d* Agenais, no. 1 is a copy), pp. 84-85, 89. 112 Livre d* Agenais, p. xi; no. 2, pp. 7-8; P.R.O., Anc. Corresp. (SC 1), xiv, nos. 136, 137 (in Livre d*Agenais, pp. xix-xx). Jurisdictional questions about two bastides and the matter of Queen Eleanor's pension in Agenais were left unsettled. m P.R.O., Anc. Corresp., xiv, no. 136. 114 King Edward certainly did, Livre d'Agenais, pp. xxi-xxii.

22

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Agenais; only after he had done so should he receive their oaths. They even had a general protestacio drawn up in legal form. At this point a compromise was approved and put into effect. The new seneschal, facing the assembly, and with gospel and cross at hand, swore an oath of protection and loyalty twice, once in place of the king, and a second time as seneschal. When this had been done, the men of Agenais in turn swore fealty to the commissioner and seneschal acting for King Edward.116 In a letter to the king soon afterward, the bishop of Agen wrote that he himself had been the first to take the oath, and that the other clergy, nobles, and consuls had followed suit with great zeal and affection. But this account has little to say about the community's stand for its privileges, a stand with which the bishop evidently had little sympathy. The bishop had, in fact, profited from the occasion to gain confirmation of his lordship in Agenais. He joined the commissioner and seneschal in ordaining that the administrative organization of Agenais should remain unchanged.116 In this act and in the earlier turn of events, the assemblage had cause for relief, so that the bishop's report of its mood in doing fealty is not implausible. There is no clear evidence of further proceedings. At some time in the period of the transfer of Agenais, officials recorded the names of fief-holders who owed reliefs and of nobles and towns obligated to do homage and military service; but these lists are not precisely dated, and we cannot assign them with certainty to the assembly of 1279.117 A full inquiry into feudal holdings was undertaken seven years later when King Edward personally visited Gascony. On 12 November 1286 the king commissioned the seneschal and judges of Agenais to receive recognitions of fiefs and obligations from prelates, nobles, and towns. The commissioners began to record recognitions at Agen on the 14th, and in the next five days they collected 136 depositions from individuals and representatives. Between 18 November and the following 26 January, when they closed the record, only eight more recognitions were listed.118 It is therefore clear that the officials had issued a summons of some kind which required appearance at Agen on or soon after 14 November. Whether so billed or not, these proceedings were administered as an assembly.119 116 Ibid., no. 2, pp. 8-9. Professor Cuttino kindly answered a question about this text for me. My account attributes more importance to it than do those of Cuttino, pp. x-xi, and F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307 (Oxford, 1953), pp. 292-293. The compromise in question may not have been new in 1279; it is implied in the undated forms for oaths of Le Mas, Arch, de Lot-etGaronne, E. SuppL 1824, p. 6. 116 P.R.O., Anc. Corresp., xiv, no. 136, and cf. no. 73, both in Livre dy Agenais, pp. xix-xxii. Also ibid., no. 2, p. 8, reference to the summons of bishop, clergy, nobles, and towns, followed by mention of the protest made "per los autres prelatz, religios, baros, cavalers, cosselhs . . . , ' * without naming the bishop. 117 Ibid., nos, 4-10, pp. 13-20. 118 Arch. Gir., i, nos. 181, 182 (348-387). 118 The analogous summons in early spring 1274 of Gascon tenants to Lectoure, Rec. Feod., no. 174, provides strong support for this view. In that case, too, the delay was very brief: "veniat [each tenant] hodie vel eras per totam diem ad dominum regem, in aula episcopi Lectorensis, facturus sibi homagium etfidelitatem,et alia deveria . . . ." Other tenants were summoned to the court towns of Bordeaux and St-Sever; and cf. above n. 45.

The General Court of Agenais

23

The king himself was in Agen between 15 and £7 November 1286,120 and he may well have addressed the gathering at some point. By the later years of the century, then, the governors had utilized general assemblies for a variety of purposes. We may say that they had created new functions for the general court. For though the assembly of 1279 is only once termed "court" in several pertinent documents, and though there is no such reference for the meeting of 1286, both these assemblies resembled the general courts of 1249 and 1271; and the new uses and expanding composition might alone account for neglect of the older terminology. In any case the employment of general assemblies for the exchange of oaths had become customary. In 1299 it was said to be well known that the newly-appointed seneschal should swear protection and loyalty "to communities and barons and nobles of Agenais and they [should do the same] to him."121 That this implied the summons of a regional assembly is clear from the precedents of 1271 and 1279, and from other evidence as well.122 Along with this late development, however, there was an older and continuing tradition of oath administration in local meetings.123 The customs of Agen had provided that men of the city and the suburban jurisdiction should congregate when the overlord first appeared there to receive his oath and to offer theirs in turn. And when a seneschal was appointed, the consuls were to act as representative recipients and jurors.124 These were local privileges, which had the effect of defining the responsibilities of lord and seneschal toward people of the seigneury of Agen. The new usage, as enunciated in 1299, constituted a similar privilege for the whole community of Agenais. Now there may have been some confusion late in the century between the oath assembly of Agen and that of Agenais.125 But it appears from a curious case a few years later that the two customs remained 120 J. P. Trabut-Cussac, "Itineraire d'Edouard Ieren France, 1286-1289," Bull Inst. Hist. Research xxv (1952), 171-172. 121 Chartes d*Agen> no. 92 (p. 157): "nam notum et certum est in Agennesio quod senescallus in sui novitate, communitatibus et baronibus et nobilibus de Agennesio et ipsi vice versa teneiitur jurare eidem domino senescallo . . . ." 122 Arch. Gir.t i, 384, no. 135, consuls of Lagruere are obligated to swear a representative oath of fealty at Agen when the lord first comes to Agenais; also, for Le Mas, Arch, de Lot-et-Garonne, E. Suppl. 1824, p. 6; and Chartes d'Agen, no. 141. 123 In 1259 nobles made recognitions and fealties in sessions in the various baylies of Agenais, "Hommages . . . en 1259," 11-62; and the local assizes were evidently used for similar purposes under Edward I (see n. 125). 124 Tropamer, Coutume d'Agen, p. 26. The representative oath is described thus: "E si lo senher volia metre senescalc en Agenes, aqtiel senescalc deu jurar prumerament al coselh d'Agen per lor e per tota la universitat de la meissa ciutat e dels bores d'environ; el coselh deu jurar apres al senescalc per lor e per tota la universitat del meiss loc." 125 Lime d* Agenais, no. 21, p. 50, and Arch. Gir., i, 375, no. 97, references in 1280's to seneschal's oath to clerical tenants either separately or in plena assizia Agenni; the former document was also copied on the Gascon Rolls, jR.O., ir, no. 938, where the reading is "Agennensi" for "Agenni." Strictly speaking, the "assize" means a periodic local court held in various assize towns; see esp. King Edward's administrative ordinance for Agenais of 1289, Brit. Mus., Cotton. MS. Julius E. 1, fols. 158v-159. Professor Cuttino generously placed a transcript of this document at my disposal.

24

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

distinct, and that the strong consulate of Agen, then at odds with its lordly neighbors, was unwilling to give up its privileged individuality in Agenais. In 1311 a newly-appointed seneschal, with the later custom in mind, summoned barons and consuls of Agenais to meet at Agen. We do not know that these parties exchanged oaths, but quite possibly they did. Our only record of this occasion shows the seneschal acting under the influence of the consuls of Agen. He read to the assembly from the "Book of the Consuls," that is, he publicly recognized the old obligation recorded in the charter of Agen. Accordingly, he took oath to the consuls of Agen and they reciprocated. Presumably the latter represented suburban villagers, but they certainly had no such connection with the diocesan barons and consuls present.126 In the matters so far considered, the general assembly remained devoid of initiative or residual authority. The lord or seneschal could convoke it for reasons of custom or convenience, but neither of them felt constrained to do so. Yet the community of Agenais was capable of acquiring new rights as well as selfconsciousness. If nothing more, the customary exchange of oaths between the seneschal and men of Agenais tended to associate a privilege of the community with the assembly. A similar tendency relating to another standing issue, that of the diocesan coinage, had already gone even further. In this case the general court achieved a certain right of its own. In Agenais, as elsewhere in feudal France, the seigneur had enjoyed the privilege of altering his coinage. The money of Agen belonged to the bishop, who held it in fief from the overlord in the thirteenth century.127 And by that time, through a comprehensible but obscure evolution, the bishop was losing his right of arbitrary mutation, so disadvantageous for a trading community. In 1234, on the petition of men of Agen and barons and knights of the diocese, Bishop Raoul served public notice that he would preserve the money unchanged in weight and alloy during his lifetime.128 We do not know of an assembly on this occasion, but there may have been one. For it had already been recognized that the bishop could make only one mutation, at the time of his accession, and in 1232 Raoul's predecessor had obtained the equivalent of such a mutation with the consent of the general court of Agenais, summoned by the seneschal. The assembly granted him a twelve-penny fouage in return for confirmation of the coinage.129 We know of at least one other general court, in 1282, which approved 126 Chartes d'Agen, no. 141; cf. G. Tholin, Ville libre et Barons: Essai sur les limites de la juridiction d'Agen . . . (Paris, 1886), pp. 16-45, 73 ff. (he is not clear, p. 18, about the meeting of 1311); and Rymer, Foedera, n1, 281. 127 Gallia Christiana, 16 vols. (Paris, 1715-1865), u, inst., 431-432, the important pariage between Simon de Montfort and the bishop in 1217; Gascon Calendar, no. 1000. 128 Chartes d'Agen, no. 24 (H.L., vm, no. 303). 129 Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, vii, preuves, no. 3, 614-615, an inadequate text; the existing MS. copies are Arch, de Lot-et-Garonne, MS. d'Argenton (2J54), in, no. 33, p. 19; and, much older, new G. 2, no. 1, from which my quotation is taken: "Guillem A. de Tantalon, senescal d'Agenes, als baros e als cavalers e als borzes e a tota la universitat d'Agenes, salut et amistad. A saber vos fara que per coseil e per commandament de nostre senhor lo conte de Tolosa e per voluntat dels baros e dels cavalers e dels borzes et de la eort general d'Agenes aven establid e pausat e per lo [sic, Argenton co] que la

The General Court of Agenais

25

the same levy for the same purpose. It was said at that time that this practice was customary;130 and there are numerous references to thefouage of the money.181 This meant that the assembly had gained control of a form of seigneurial taxation. The levy of a shilling per household could be expected to bring in more than a monetary debasement, which was becoming increasingly unpopular, in any case, and difficult to accomplish. The preference for the direct tax and the limitation of episcopal prerogative are both well illustrated by a case of the year 1263. Bishop Guillaume III wanted to obtain recognition of his right to take "redemption" of the money "universally from the whole diocese of Agen," and caused a general court to be summoned for that purpose. On 23 November, after the session, he wrote to the count of Toulouse that a "great part" of the assembled barons and town deputies had acknowledged his claims, but that the barons had requested a delay on account of the absence of certain nobles. Accordingly, another assembly of barons and consuls was scheduled to meet on 3 January 1264, "to do whatever should be done about these matters."132 Unfortunately, we have no evidence on the outcome of the case. Other forms of taxation remained independent of the general court. The crusading subsidies of Alfonse were negotiated entirely at the local level.133 moneda no sia abatuda ni cambiada, car lo senhor avesque la a cofermada a sa vita com le ne [? Argenton ce ne] de rada ung fug de 1'avesquad d'Agenes .xij. d. arnaudencs los cals dont horn al sobredichs senhor avesque d'Agen . . . ." 130 Livre d'Agenais, no. 17, p. 37: "Nos Johannes . . . episcopus, notum facimus universis quod nos, ad instanciam et requisicionem senescalli vel subsenescalli Agennesii, baronum, militum, comunitatum, villarum, et plurium aliorum habitatorum, civitatis et dyocesis Agennensis, obmisimus mutare monetam nostram arnaldensem et ipsam in statu in quo est ad totam vitam nostram confirmavimus et confirmamus. Et ut hoc faceremus de voluntate omnium predictorum, fuit nobis concessum per ipsos quod . . . de quolibet foco dictarum civitatis et dyocesis semel 12 denarios arnaldensium levaremus seu levari faceremus, de illis focis et similibus, videlicet, de quibus propter causam similem per predecessores nostros pecunia levata fuit temporibus retroactis . . . ." 131 Charles d'Agen, no. 44 (p. 62), "fogatge que convenga levar per lo fagh de la moneda" (1248); Arch, de Lot-et-Garonne, MS. d'Argenton, in, no. 72, 43; new G. 2, no. 5, evidence for a fouage levied in 1292; Ducom, Agen, pp. 283-284, no. 2; etc. 132 Layettes, iv, no. 4883: "Alfonso . . . Guillelmus . . . episcopus . . . cum . . . in novitate cujuslibet episcopi quilibet de preteritis episcopis habuerit redemptionem universaliter a tota dyocesi Agennensi ne dictam monetam destrueret et novam faceret, et hoc manifestum sit lipis et tonsoribus in dyocesi supradicta, nos, cum ad dictam dyocesim de novo venimus, recursum habuimus ad dominum senescallum vestrum, supplicantes eidem quod ipse super predicto facto curiam suam convocaret apud Agennum. Quod sui gratia libentissime fecit, et nos ibidem existentes jus quod habebamus in dicta moneta et usum quern habuerant in eadem antecessores nostri baronibus et consiliis burgorum et villarum existentibus in dicta curia diligenter proposuimus, et magna pars tocius curie in presentia domini senescalli recognoverunt quod ita erat sicut nos proponebamus . . . . Verumptamen dicti barones, propter absentiam quorumdam nobilium, qui venire non potuerant ad dictam curiam impedimento legitimo prepediti, a nobis ex gratia requisiverunt quod unam diem assignaremus eis, quod et fecimus, videlicet ad diem jovis post festum Circumcisionis Domini proximo venture apud Agennum, ad quam diem dominus senescallus debet personaliter interesse et predicti barones et consules villarum et burgorum, et ibi deliberate consilio omnes predicti super requisitione nostra se promiserunt responsuros et facturos quicquid super premissis fuerit faciendum . . . ." Molinier's account of this episode, "L5Administration de Louis IX & d'Alfonse," p. 509, is extremely inaccurate. 183 Corresp. d'Alfonse, n, nos. 1532, 1840, 1962, 1968; etc.

26

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Diocesan peace taxation was supposed to be levied by house or hearth in lieu of personal service,134 but the procedure in Agenais for deciding on a peace campaign is unknown; indeed, it is not certain that such a campaign was ever proclaimed in the thirteenth century. Nor can we say definitely that any royal impositions in Agenais after 1271 were granted in regional assemblies.136 Yet financiers of that period were undoubtedly aware of the general court, as is shown by a remarkable entry on the Gascon Rolls. In April 1289 Edward I directed his seneschal to convoke a "general court of the whole Agenais," including men of all three estates, in order to secure a ten-year fouage of six pennies for the rebuilding of a bridge over the Garonne at Agen.136 Only the theory concerns us here, for we have no evidence that this projected assembly actually convened, or that a six-penny tax was imposed.137 Recourse to the general court in the "business of the bridge" seems to have been a new idea, but it might have been argued that a body which customarily approved fouage for one purpose could be convoked to grant the same kind of tax for another. The royal directive was in accord with the interests of the men of Agen. They had taken the initiative in this project for the "common utility of the whole land," and they may have petitioned the king to impose a general tax.138 Some sort of financial campaign had been under way for some time.139 In 1287 the seneschal had asked inhabitants with seigneurial jurisdiction to convoke their men in local meetings "to hear our mandate and complete the work of building the said bridge."140 We have no details of this particular scheme, but there is no indication that it was successful. The king's request for a general court should be understood as a drastic measure substituting central publicity and negotiation for ineffective local procedures. Whatever the interest of these precedents, the general court was not destined to become a constitutional body. In circumstances just like those of 1289, Charles IV in 1325 ordered a ten-year fouage in Agenais for bridge repair, but nothing was said of an assembly, and the seneschal was left free to proceed as he saw fit.141 A few years earlier Edward II had apparently dealt individually with magnates and towns of Agenais in efforts to raise a war subsidy.142 Administrative legislation may sometimes have received publicity in general assemblies 134

Ducom, Agen, pp. 284-286; Gallia Christiana, n, inst., 431-432. See Charles d'Agen, no. 59, a letter of non-prejudice for prelates, nobles, and townsmen of Agenais in common, for their grant of a crusade tax; some towns of Agenais made loans to the French in the 1290's, Comptes royaux (1285-13l£), ed. R. Fawtier, n (Paris, 1954), no. 17876; for Agen's free gift in summer 1294, see Charles d'Agen, nos. 90, 91, 94. 136 E.G., n, no. 1428. 137 For later documents, see Charles d'Agen, nos. 104, 111 (corr. 110), 120, etc. The opus pontis on the turbulent Garonne was perennial: see Labrunie, "Les Fonts sur la Garonne," ed. Tholin, Rev. de VAgenais, v (1878), 441-444; C. Higounet in Annales du Midi, LXII (1950), 351. 138 As they did in 1325, Charles d'Agen, no. 156; see also nos. 70, 77-79. 139 At least since 1286, ibid., no. 70; also nos. 77-79. 140 Ibid., no. 78; cf. Ducom, Agen, p. 75, similar activity in 1282. 141 Charles d'Agen, no. 156. 142 Rymer, Foedera, n1, 467, 475. 135

The General Court of Agenais

27

but was not issued or ratified by them.143 It is possible, however, that the community had some continuing influence in restraint of the bishop's monetary prerogatives. In 1316 men of Agen had control of operations in the episcopal mint; and it was the practice at that time for coins to be struck on the request of consuls of the city and towns of Agenais.144 But there is no mention of the general court in this matter, nor do we hear of the fouage for the coinage after 1292. The bishops were losing their coinage rights in the fourteenth century, and they probably fared quite as badly with the overlords as with the community.145

IV As a matter of fact, the general court was in full decline. We do not find the term curia generalis (or its Gascon equivalent) in reference to any session in Agenais after 1289. Moreover, few plenary assemblies to the middle of the fourteenth century, even counting administrative gatherings, bear much resemblance to those which we have described.146 There are several allusions to the general court in charters and confirmations, but these are not de novo, and the articles in question may be regarded as anachronistic.147 Though the general army survives, we no longer see it in its old connection with the court.148 As a judicial body the general court was certainly in abeyance, and perhaps had long been so, by the early fourteenth century. It appears from undated petitions of the time of Edward II that the barons wished to institute — or to revive — a high court of justice composed of nobles and town consuls of Agenais.149 Their efforts were not successful. 148

H.L , vii, docs, 419-426; Livre d'Agenais, p. xx; Brit. Mus., Cotton. MS. Julius E. 1, fols. 158159v. 144 Arch, de Lot-et-Garonne, new G. 2, no. 11 (Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, vii, preuves, no. 5, 615-616); ibid., no. 6, 616-617; Ducom, Agen, p. 148; and cf. "Chartes d'Agen," Arch. Gir.% xxxin. no. 44. 146 See Ducom, pp. 150-151; and no. 1, pp. 271-274; D. Nony, "La monnaie arnaudine: Essai de mimismatique," Annales du Midi, LXXI (1959), 10-12. 146 See below, pp. 28-9. 147 Customs of Fumel, confirmed in 1297, Arch. Gir., vii, 18, art. 12; Lagarde, Tonneins, p. 118, art. 25 (this charter contains new articles, but the one cited and many others correspond to articles in the customs of Marmande); Arch. Nat., JJ. 72, fol. 150v; "Coutumes d'Agen," ed. Moullie, Rec. Trav. Soc. Agen, v (1850), 241-244, vidimus of 1370. 148 C. Baradat de Lacaze, Astafort en Agenais, Notice historique et Coutumes (Paris-Agen, 1886), p. 200, charter of 1304; Chartes d'Agen, no. 145 (p. 281); "Chartes d'Agen," Arch. Gir., xxxin, no. 48; cf. P.R.O., Chancery Miscellanea (C 47), 26/13, art. 1, and Chartes d'Agen, no. 74, art. 1; no mention of lord's ost in the article, repeated from the Marmande charter, which speaks of the court, Lagarde, Tonneins, p. 118. 149 P.R.O., Anc. Pet. (SC 8), 262/13092 (also C 47, 25/2/31), townsmen of Agenais concerning intentions of the nobles: "Item intendunt inpetrare quod judicia que fient in Agenesio fiant de consilio et acordo baronum, militum et consulum villarum Agennesii et id in quo maior pars conveniret teneretur, quod esset contra jus et in preiudicium domini nostri Regis et terre Agennesii, pro eo quia difficiliter convenirentur et cause non possent expediri et ille qui plures haberet amicos tarn ratione nobilitatis quam pecunie et alias culpabilis evaderet qui deberet forsitan condempnari et condempnaretur eciam qui deberet absolvi." Cf. Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 30/1/27-28; Anc. Pet. (SC 8), 276/13776,13783, wherein the prelates, nobles, and others with jurisdiction request a high court composed of prelates and nobles, as, they say, "observatum fuit diutissime in patria Agenesii." Art. 7

28

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The governors had given up the general court as a customary institution. Like Alfonse, who introduced bureaucratic administration to Agenais, they were no longer interested in preserving an ungainly feudal tribunal. The summons of regional men was useful, to be sure, and officials felt free to widen it to include clergy, and to employ convocations for new purposes. By so doing, however, they undermined what little institutional identity the general court had ever possessed. Possibly the lords and seneschals recognized that a customary assembly was potentially a privileged one. They were careful to preserve their prerogative unlimited. They may have noticed how their own license had enabled the men of Agenais to gain a measure of control over the bishop's authority. Another reason for the decline of the general court was that the interests of nobles and townsmen diverged in the later thirteenth century. We still find occasional expressions of an undivided community of Agenais;160 but it became common for the different estates to deliberate separately on matters which concerned them individually. Some of the surviving petitions from men of one or more of the orders probably originated in assemblies of corresponding composition.151 On certain questions there was outright hostility between the estates. Nobles and prelates accused townsmen of usurping their jurisdictions; townsmen accused nobles and especially churchmen of evading responsibility for public works and local expenses.152 In major issues between government and nobility, such as the building of bastides and the limits of jurisdiction, the burghers were inclined to side with the former. Towns of Agenais seem to have supported Edward II faithfully, and they appreciated the advantages of efficient, nonfeudal justice. They opposed the desire of the lords to recover the jurisdiction of the general court.153 This helped to seal the fate of the old assembly. Changes in the realities of political geography were contributing to the same result. Agenais continued to have its own administration and its own assemblies in the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries;154 but in some respects its old (30/1/28) again fails to mention towns in claiming that it was an old custom that the overlord should swear to clergy and nobles of Agenais. 160 The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1954), no. 30, a deputation from prelates, nobles, and townsmen of Agenais in 1324; P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 29/8/2, a memorial of complaints against the French by nobles and towns in 1318; also 24/3/3; cf. entries in Gascon Calendar, nos. 1681, 2028, complaints "communitatis tocius Agennesii de injuriis eis [sic] factis per nobiles patrie illius," but the references are to a community of towns. 161 See, e.g., R.G., n, no. 992; P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 25/4/5 (cf. Charles d'Agen, no. 73, to be dated 1320, not 1286). As we have seen, the towns discussed their special problems at least as early as the 1220's. 152 H.L., vii, docs, 419-426; Chartes d'Agen, nos. 58, 74 (p. 122), 101, 102; R.G., n, no. 1056; m, no. 2129; P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 26/13. 153 See R.G., n, no. 992; Rymer, Foedera, n1, 361, 475; P.R.O., Chanc. Misc., 25/2/31; and see n. 149 above. 164 See Brit. Mus., Cotton. MS. Julius E. 1, fols. 158-159v; "Chartes d'Agen se rapportant aux regnes de Jean le Bon et de Charles V," Arch. Gir., xxxiv (1899), no. 78, assembly of three estates of Agenais in 1363; the distinction between Gascony and Agenais is evident in E.G., e.g., n, no. 901; in, no. 3265.

The General Court of Agenais

29

diocesan individuality was being compromised in the circumstances of general Aquitanian policy. We begin to hear of the association of men from several districts together, or from the whole duchy. In 1285, for example, prelates, nobles, and towns of Gascony and Agenais, possibly in assembly, joined in submitting to the king an advisement concerning the "liberty" of those lands.155 Assemblies of the duchy took place in the fourteenth century.156 Meanwhile the administrative sub-divisions of Agenais gained more importance. Many new baylies were formed in the time of Edward I, and periodic judicial sessions were instituted in various assize towns. The district of Agen, set apart by older custom, retained its preeminence in the fourteenth century. There and elsewhere the government used local assemblies for proclamations and for political purposes.167 V The general court of Agenais arose in the obscurity of the twelfth century from feudal, judicial, and military origins. It existed as an irregular, consultative, partially representative provincial assembly for a little more than a century. Its remarkable judicial-military function may be observed in the earliest charters, and in various other ways it gave expression to the rights of lords and the privileges of the diocesan community. The historical importance of such an institution is not lessened by the fact that it expired without acquiring lasting attributions or fixed composition. Rulers of southwestern France were not yet obliged to depend on the generosity of their subject communities, and there was no other reason for frequent sessions. The most significant aspect of the general court is the representation of towns and villages. Consular deputations ex officio became usual not only in later assemblies of Agenais and Aquitaine, but in those of Languedoc as well. Though we cannot affirm that this practice originated in Agenais, we cannot find it earlier anywhere else. Yet it is undeniable that representation in Agenais remained primitive and immature. There are only isolated instances of the representation of estates, and we do not know that procuration was ever used procedurally in assemblies. Study of the general court of Agenais provides support for the view that early assemblies in Europe were summoned for the administrative convenience of princes; it shows how assemblies could 168 P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 30/1/5, quoted by P. Chaplais, "Le duche-pairie de Guyenne: rhommage et les services feodaux de 1259 a 1303," Annales du Midi, LXIX (1957), 23, n. 83. See also Powicke, Thirteenth Century, pp. 300-304, on the administrative unity of the duchy, and on ways in which the ordinance of 1289 for Agenais required officials there to administer holdings in neighboring dioceses; see also "Chartes d'Agen." Arch. Gir.t xxxm, no. 65. 156 P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 29/8/17; "Chartes d'Agen," Arch. Gir.t xxxiv, no. 81; Bibl. Nat., Doat, cxvii, fols. 140 ff.; cf. 129 ff. 157 Chartes d'Agen, no. 82; Les Olim, ou Registres des arrets rendus par la Cour du Roi . . . , ed. A. Beugnot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1839-1848), n, 8, 13; G. P. Cuttino, "The Process of Agen," SPECULUM, xix (1944), 171, no. 1. Also P.R.O., Chanc. Misc. (C 47), 29/8/17, seneschal of Gascony in 1318 directs the consuls of Agen to summon consuls of villages of the assisiatus of Agen for the purpose of electing proctors, along with other places in the duchy, to protest against French usurpations in the English domains; and cf. War of Saint-Sardos, ed. Chaplais, no. 68 (p. 85), reference to general assemblies at Bordeaux, Marmande, and Agen.

30

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

serve purposes of centralization and publicity by enabling officials to deal directly with large numbers of tenants and subjects. Some of the most notable meetings in thirteenth-century Agenais were fealty sessions of a political nature. It is also instructive to observe how easily a customary regional assembly could gain limited financial rights. But it is only in its plenary form, and not in its changing and evanescent activities, that the general court can be related historically to the later regime d'etats. Assemblies and estates arose in many areas only at an interval after the independent development of corporate consciousness, centralization and an effective summons, and techniques of town representation. The remarkable thing about Agenais is that a representative body appeared there almost simultaneously with those requisite conditions. And Agenais was not unique in this respect. Before the emergence of French "assemblies of estates" in the fourteenth century, there is an important early history of "men of estates in assembly." It should not be neglected.

2 A GENERAL COURT OF ARAGON (DAROCA, FEBRUARY 1228)* ON 6 February 1228 (n. s.) the young King James I celebrated a 'general court' at Daroca, in the frontier-lands of lower Aragon. There in the presence of the bishops of Huesca, Tarazona and Elne, and at the king's order, the nobles and towns of Aragon solemnly performed homage and fealty to the young Alfonso, son of James and Eleanor of Castile, and recognized his legitimate title to the crown of Aragon. Held forth in the arms of the bishop of Huesca so that his hand could be kissed, the child received the promises of at least twenty-six barons and 154 'good men', knights and infanfones representing thirty communities. This dynastic event has until now escaped the notice of historians. It was recorded in a sealed charter apparently carried home from Daroca by the deputies of Lerida, where it was to be preserved in the municipal archives.1 The record was known to modern archivists at Lerida, one of whom printed it in the Catalan circular of a local geographical society in i9o8,2 but it was unknown to Zurita and to subsequent historians of Spanish politics and representation down to and including the learned Ferran Soldevila.3 Yet it is hardly a negligible document, for what it contains is nothing less than the exceptionally explicit evidence of a Cortes otherwise unrecorded which was held in the formative period of Aragonese representation. This general court met at a difficult moment for the young king. Although he had lately overcome a serious revolt in Aragon centred on the person of his uncle, the Infante Ferrando, the Aragonese magnates and towns remained disaffected over the plan to invade the Balearic Islands, which was favoured by the Catalans. * This paper was read before the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, San Francisco, 28 August 1975. 1. Archive municipal de Lerida, Privilegios reales, no. 308; see Appendix below for the text and a discussion of its equivocal date. Many years ago Sra. Concepcion Perez Perez, archivist of Lerida, made a photocopy of this piece (no easy task) for my use, and I am most grateful to her. 2. Rafael Gras, 'De historia aragonesa. Un documento curioso*. But/let/ del Centre excursionista de Lleyda, i. i (Jan. 1908), 2-10 (text, pp. 5-9). Subsequent historians would have been spared some errors about the later tradition of this assembly had they known of this work (cf. below, p. 3 8), \ but Gras said little about the circumstacens of 1228 and less still about the representativeness of the court (merely assuming that the townsmen there present were syndics). 3. In this regard the critical oversight was by Joaquim Miret i Sans, in whose Itinerari de ]aume I "el Conqueridor" (Barcelona, 1918), the text should have been noted on p. 69 (just preceding another charter from the same archive). Lately the document has been cited for its mention of men of Lerida by Josep Lladonosa i Pujol, Historia de L/eida, 2 vols. (Tarrega, 1972-5), i. 373.

32

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The Aragonese wanted to attack Valencia and they had been angered when this project was set aside in the Peace of Alcala (1227). Moreover, the king had tired of his ambitious wife, who was perhaps compromised in the recent uprising; he was probably already contemplating the divorce on grounds of consanguinity that would be approved in the following year, and he wanted to ensure that the rights of his son by Eleanor would not thereupon be jeopardized.1 It may be that the prelates thought this effort premature, for only two Aragonese bishops attended the assembly of Daroca. But it seems clear that the king used the occasion to confirm his settlements with the dissident Aragonese and to prove his good will toward their realm. There may, indeed, have been some discussion in the assembly. The professions of fidelity were made not only 'by the express order' of the king but also de communi const'Ho et tractatu. To what extent this implied an active role for the men assembled - a 'parliamentary' role, in Professor Marongiu's terms2 - is difficult to say, but I do not think it safe to assume that their position was strictly passive. The kings of Aragon had lived for generations on the closest terms with their barons and urban knights, who were their companions-in-arms in every sense.3 Moreover, recent experience showed that the magnates and knights were fully capable of independent initiatives. Some of the very men who had confederated to keep order without the king, including members of the concejos of Jaca, Huesca and Zaragoza, were present at Daroca, and there can be no doubt that James had had to negotiate with the towns as such.4 One cannot argue from the substance of our text that the phrase consilio et tractatu was a mere formality. The purpose of such documents was to record enactments, not debates, and it is altogether conceivable in the political circumstances that the court of Daroca might have broken up without taking action and so have gone unrecorded.5 The curia generalis had been convoked 1. Libre dels fey ts, cc. 25-34-, ed. Ferran Soldevila, ...Les quatre grans croniques (Barcelona, 1971), pp. 14-22; Coleccion diplomdtica del concejo de Zaragoza., i, ed. Angel Canellas Lopez (Zaragoza, 1972), nos. 54-57; Geronimo Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, ii, cc. 80-86; iii, cc. 1-3; ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, et al., 4 vols. to date (Valencia, 1967-72), ii, 243-77; iii, 11-19; Miret i Sans, Itinerari de ]aume I, pp. 46-78; Ferran Soldevila, Els primers temps de Jaume I (Barcelona, 1968), pp. 187-201, 259-72; and Histdria de Catalunya, znd edn. (Barcelona, 1963), pp. 272-85. 2. Antonio Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments, a Comparative Study, tr. S. J. Woolf (London, 1968), pp. 48-54; 'Geronimo Zurita e "las Cortes" d'Aragon', VII Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon . .., 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1962), ii. 83-97. 3. See generally Jose Maria Lacarra, * "Honores" et "tenencias" en Aragon (Xle siecle)', Les structures sociales de rAquitaine, du Languedoc et de /'Espagne au premier age feodal (Paris, 1969), pp. 143-77; and Aragon en elpasado (Madrid, 1972), chs. 1-5. 4. Canellas, Col. dipl. Zaragoza, nos. 54-57: e.g., among the barons, Ato Orella and P. Cornelii, and among townsmen, Bartholomeus Iterii of Zaragoza, Ugo Martini of Huesca and lohanes de Montbaldran of Jaca were involved in the leagues and the assembly of Feb. 1228. 5. A cort held at Monzon in 1222 is unrecorded save for a passing mention in the Libre delsfeyts, c. 20, ed. Soldevila, p. n.

A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, 1228)

33

often enough in Aragon to acquire some semblance of institutional identity, and it had dealt not only with dynastic matters but also with security, custom, politics, taxation and coinage. On several previous occasions - notably in 1164, 1197, 1217, 1218 and 1223 there had been mention of 'counsel', 'common counsel', 'full deliberation' or 'assent', and an inner group of counsellors is very early perceptible.1 In short, the 'general court' had attained a recognized place in the Aragonese constitution by 1228, which is why it was thought necessary to identify the assembly as such in the first line of the charter which issued from it. What rendered an Aragonese court 'general' was not only the importance of its business but also the size of its attendance. From at least the middle of the twelfth century, efforts had been made in Aragon and in dependent Beam to achieve massive convocations of the political notables of the land; and some of the earliest of these meetings are known to have numbered more than a hundred men.2 Still more significant is the fact that even in these early assemblies - those of Canfranc in 1154 and Zaragoza in 1164 - the scribes saw fit to differentiate the magnates of individual standing from the notables of the valleys and towns, who are grouped in the lists.3 These assemblies were not only representative of the land or realm, as the texts say explicitly, but also of administrative districts within the land. And while this does not necessarily mean that the consejos were yet being summoned as such, it does mean that the summons was being carried (and perhaps addressed) to the loyal notables in the concejos. In 1164 the men from Zaragoza, Daroca and Huesca were termed adelantados, those from Uncastillo alfaches, which suggests that they were rather more the king's agents than the towns'; yet these men were evidently thought representative of the cities, whose counsel was distinguished from that of the barons in the textual expose.* This was not yet corporate, much less procuratorial, representation, as Gaines Post rightly concluded,5 nor was it yet a representation of estates, for the 1. Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archive General de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Pr6spero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 42 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1973), viii, no. 10; Jaca: Documentos municipales (971-1269}, ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta (Valencia, 1975), no. 25; Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Coleccion diplomdtica de Jaime I, el Conquistador, 3 vols, (Valencia, 1916-22), i, no. i; Canellas, Col. dipl. Zaragoza, no. 48 (also Huici, no. 10, from a copy), and no. 52. 2. Documentos ineditos, viii, no. 10; iv, no. 81; see also Pierre Tucoo-Chala, La vicomte de Beam et le probleme de sa souverainete des origines a 1620 (Bordeaux, 1961), ch. 2. 3. In addition to texts cited in preceding note, cf. the undated list of those who did homage and fealty to Ramon Berenguer IV (ii37-?5i) 'in regno aragonensi de Jachz scilicet et de aliis castris Aragonis', Documentos ineditos, iv, no. 159. See generally Antonio Ubieto Arteta, 'Sobre demograffa aragonesa del siglo XII*, Estudios de Edad media de la Corona de Aragon, vii, (1962), 578-93, who reprints the list, 595-8. 4. Documentos ineditos, viii, no. 10. 5. Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought. Public "Law and the State, 1100-1)22 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 71-79; and see next note.

34

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

adelantados were in no purposive way distinguished socially from the other nobles. Rather, it was administrative representation of a kind wholly characteristic of the twelfth century and still too little recognized by historians: a representation by which a community tended to be identified with its leading men. There can be no reasonable doubt that townsmen continued to be summoned to Aragonese assemblies during the next halfcentury.1 But it is not until 1214 that we have further reliable evidence, and by that time at least one and possibly two important changes had occurred. A list of those who swore fidelity to the child-king James in the great cort of Lerida shows that some distinction was now being made between barons and knights, on the one hand, and rives et homines castrorum et villarum, on the other.2 And if we may believe the Libre dels fey ts, the towns as such must this time have been summoned, for it says that in addition to the prelates and rics hbmens "from each of the realms . . ., ten men from each city bearing the authority of the others' attended.3 Whether so late a source deserves credence on the matter of procuratorial powers seems doubtful, as Post observed, but when the two mentioned sources are combined with each other and with other evidence of municipal enfranchisement in Aragon,4 it becomes very probable that men of an urban estate were by this time being singled out to represent their towns. Between 1214 and 1228 the summons of towns to general courts was frequent although not invariable: municipal deputations are attested at Monzon (1217), Daroca (1223) and (probably) Barbastro (1224), but not at Lerida (1218), Huesca (1221) nor Monzon (i222).5 For none of these courts have extensive lists survived. The attendance is known only from abbreviated allusions to those who convened, treated and counselled and from the recorded witnesses. In the case of Daroca (1223), however, the witness list was pointedly divided in columns distinguishing the barons from the rives of Zaragoza and Lerida and the habitatores of Daroca; this evidence accords with the more 1. According to Zurita (who wrote in the sixteenth century using texts no longer extant), cities and towns were convoked to cortes in 1134, 1162 and 1196 (i, c. 53; ii, cc. 20, 48; ed. Ubieto, i, 208; ii, 66, 131), and the two latter convocations, at least, need not be doubted; but his description of the townsmen as procurations is certainly anachronistic. 2. Preserved among the undated parchments in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, this piece was printed by Miret i Sans, Itinerari de Jaume I, pp. 19-20, but has since been lost; the list should be compared with that cited in note 3, p. 33. 3. Libre delsfeyts, c. ii, ed. Soldevila, p. 7. 4. E.g., Ubieto, Jaca: Documentos municipals y nos. 30, 33, 34; Canellas, Col. dipt. Zaragoza, nos. 25, 27, 29, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 43; Rafael Esteban Abad, ULstudio historicopolitico sobre la ciudady comunidad de Daroca (Teruel, 1959), documentos, pp. 361-72, 377-8; Rafael Gras y de Esteva, L,a Paheria de Lerida . . . (Lerida, 1909), pp. 158-61. 5. Huici, Col. dip!., i, no. i; Canellas, Col. dipl. Zaragoza, nos. 48, 49, 52; Libre dels feyts, c. 20, ed. Soldevila, p. ii; Archivo municipal de Lerida, MS. 1376, fos. iu v H4r; Miret, Itinerari de Jaume I, pp. 47-48.

A General Court ofAragon (Daroca, 1228)

35

general allusions to make clear that the towns were being represented in these assemblies through a distinct class of persons (fives et burgenses, probi homines, cives), which strengthens the supposition that this was the case also in 1214. It is against this background that the singular value of the charter of 1228 becomes evident. Here for the first time since 1164 (in extant texts) something approximating the full attendance in a general court of Aragon was specifically and individually recorded. For reasons already stated, this attendance cannot have been altogether typical, but quite apart from the paucity of prelates mentioned, a mere glance at the enormous parchment listing some 180 names, each followed by the words iuro et hominium fatio, arouses the suspicion that such records were made only on the exceptional occasions of dynastic importance.1 By comparison with the texts of 1214, 1223 and 1224, which point to a limitation of the consultative summons to cities and 'principal towns', the attendance of men from no less than thirty places in 1228 is extraordinary and was possibly unprecedented. In fact, more than 85 per cent of those present at Daroca came from these communities, so that it looks as if the king was reaching below the class of barons on this occasion to seek his political support in the cities and towns. The deputations varied in number from 2 to 14, with the average just over 5. The larger numbers represented the cities of Lerida (14), Zaragoza (12) and, understandably, Daroca (n); the more distant upland cities of Jaca, Huesca and Barbastro sent, respectively, 6, 5 and 2 deputies; while most of the smaller contingents of 2 to 4 men came from the lesser towns of lower Aragon. The deputies of the cities, normally called probi homines, are distinguished from those of the little towns, over whose names the scribe wrote simply: IT/I sunt qui iurauerunt. . . . But regardless of the size of their community, these men were recognized as local notables, not as barons nor, as a rule, as knights. A few of them are identified as craftsmen or herdsmen,2 a few more as administrative officers: justiciars, repositarii, consuls.3 Many, perhaps most, of the deputies had experience in the government of their towns. Such was demonstrably true of the men from Lerida, two of whom were currently consuls; of those from Zaragoza, at least five can be identified in 1. Zurita may have seen a similar document for the general court of 1162, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, ii, c. 20; ed. Ubieto, ii, 66. 2. Guillelmus Santii frenarius (Zaragoza), Bela pastor (Teruel), Arnaldus pelliterius (Ayerbe), Guillelmus molinarius consul (Lerida), Martinus ferrarius (Alfajarfn). I pass over names such as Adam capatero (Epila) and S. escriuano (Aranda), which seem of more doubtful interpretation. 3. Martinus repositarius (Zaragoza), Dominicus iustitia (Pertusa), P. Uillella iudex (Calatayud), lohanes Daniel iustitia (Ricla), Dominicus alcalde (Murillo de Gallego), Raymundus Raymundi baiulus, Guillelmus de $a Mora consul, Guillelmus molinarius consul, P. Santii domini regis notarius et Arogonensis repositarius (Lerida), J. de Forton iustitia de Taust (Tauste), G. Petri iustitia (Pina).

36

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

other texts as men of local standing, and three or four as members of the ruling council.1 Many of the deputations included men with experience in previous general courts. Although the earlier lists are very incomplete, they show that at least eleven men representing six towns in 1228 had appeared for the same towns either in 1223 at Daroca or even as far back as 1214 at Lerida, and that at least two of these men - Pascual Munoz of Teruel and the venerable Bartholomeo Iter of Zaragoza - attended all three of these courts.2 There is one interesting exception to the prevailing classification of the deputies. For the town of Ejea alone, the men were styled milites et infantiones, not probi homines. An exposed place on the frontier with Navarre, Ejea had retained the military constitution characteristic of earlier Spanish concejos, an indelible stamp which survives even today in the usual name of the place: Ejea de los Caballeros. Nevertheless, the eight knights of Ejea were no less delegates than the others. They, too, swore fealty and did homage for themselves and for their whole community, to paraphrase the explicit and recurrent formula which enables us to characterize the representation in this general court more assuredly than that in any preceding assembly in Aragonese history. Here for the first time it is made clear that the men from the cities, castles and towns were obligating their communities as well as themselves. The city populations were described as 'universities', those of other places as 'councils' (i.e., concilia)-, so, for example, the probi homines of Huesca 'iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate Osce', while the men ('Isti sunt qui') of Fraga 'iurauerunt pro se et pro to to concilio de Fraga'. Accordingly, it would appear that concilium, like universitas, referred to the full local community rather than to some limited or official element thereof. But the charter itself speaks of the magnates 'et omnia concilia ciuitatum et villarum' acting 'pro se et suis uniuersitatibus', which suggests that the royal officials, at least, sometimes identified the deputations with the municipal governments as distinct from the communities, and that the deputations from concejos were less than fully representative. Moreover, the king evidently hoped that 1. For the consuls of Lerida, see preceding note, and Gras, 'Documento curioso', p. 10. For Zaragoza, Bartholomeus Iterii had been zalmedina in 1214 and 1217, deputy for the town before the king's court in 1221, and in settlement with the king in 1227 (Canellas, Col. dipt. Zaragoza, nos. 46, 50, 52, 57; Miret, Itinerari de Jaume I, p. 20); Pontius Baldouini was to be iuratus in 1239 and 1242, zalmedina in 1254 (Col. dipt, de Zarago%a, nos. 64, 65, 68, 78; see also Maria Luisa Ledesma Rubio, La encomienda de Zaragoza de la Or den de San Juan de Jerusalen en los sighs XII y XIII (Zaragoza, 1967), nos. 133-5, 266); Dominicus Iterii was deputy of Zaragoza in the confederation (Col. dipl. Zaragoza, nos. 55, 56); Guillelmus de Pambel, already prominent in 1210, was iuratus in 1239, and often associated with Poncius Baldouini (Col. dipl. Zarago^a, nos. 39, 64, 65; Ledesma, Encomienda., nos. 133, 135); for Martinus Guillelmi and Gotierro, see Col. dipl. Zaragoza, nos. 55, 56; Ledesma, Encomienda, no. 140. 2. Canellas, Col. dipl. Zaragoza, no, 52; Miret, Itinerari de Jaume /, pp. 19-20.

A General Court ofAragon (Daroca, 1228)

37

the professions made at Daroca would be multiplied elsewhere.1 Nevertheless, it would be mistaken to read too much into these inconsistencies. Concilium was simply the preferred term for the rural community even though it might and did also refer to the ruling notables. From the standpoint of the crown, the cities and concejos alike were now being regarded as collectivities, too numerous and too populous to be traversed or for their inhabitants to be enumerated individually, as had been done in the twelfth century. The only thing lacking to prove that the deputies were singly and severally representative of their communities is evidence that they were empowered syndics according to Roman-canonical procedure.2 Probably they were not so empowered. While the representative oath was thoroughly familiar in Aragon,3 municipal procuration was still uncommon. The concejo of Zaragoza had been represented before the king's court in judicial proceedings in 1217 and 1221 without the slightest indication that its agents bore full powers.4 Moreover, the very variable numbers of deputies at Daroca suggest* that the summons itself had been inexplicit about numbers, and that it had been left to the towns to determine who should represent them and on what terms. This determination would have been made diversely in the towns and cities; it would have been much influenced by the local sworn men, justiciars and consuls, some of whom came themselves; so that, whatever the form of election, the representation was in some degree ex offido in character. That some of the deputations bore credentials of varying kinds is not inconceivable, but the real sanction for the enactments at Daroca was to be the solemn evidentiary charter bearing the record in extenso of the representative oaths sworn there. It was not entirely redundant for the king to direct his other faithful men thereafter to do homage and fealty to his son according to the prescribed form. What the king needed on this occasion was influence, the example of notable men, not procedurally fortified ratification such as might expedite consent to taxation. Nevertheless, the representation at Daroca was deliberate and at least formally corporate, even if still imprecise by Roman-canonical standards.5 There remains one larger conclusion to be drawn from this assembly at Daroca. As was noted in passing, not only the barons, knights and infancones but even the good men of the cities and towns did homage as well as fealty to the prince of Aragon. This was no 1. See clause dependent on the royal signum. 2. See generally Post, Medieval Legal Thought, chs. 1-3. 3. E.g., Canellas, Col. dip/. Zarago^a, nos. 49, 52, 54. 4. Ibid. nos. 46, 50. 5. This proto-corporate representation for a political purpose is analogous to the procedures developed by the Capetian rulers in Languedoc between 1249 and 1271: see T. N. Bisson, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), ch. 4.

38

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

aberration. The Aragonese monarchy had arisen on the basis of military vassalage and tenancy, and records of the mid-twelfth century show that then, too, all free men, including those in the towns, were obligated in homage as well as fealty.1 It is true that this vassalage was more personal than tenurial, the homage a kind of extension or reinforcement of fealty, yet its effect was to preserve the traditional structure of militant kingship. Aragon was a nation of king's vassals, and for all the social differentiation that had lately occurred, she remained so in 1228. The general court of Daroca was soon overshadowed by more momentous events: the war of Urgell, the Corf general of Barcelona in which the expedition to Mallorca was approved (December 1228) and the king's public petition for the divorce in a legatine council at Tarazona (April 1229). Alfonso's legitimation in 1229 followed by the recognition of his right of succession to Mallorca as well as to Catalonia and Aragon in 1232 might have seemed to remove all cause for remembering that anxious winter day in 1228. But in 1241 the succession to Mallorca was reassigned to the Infante's half-brother Pere, and when in 1243 Catalonia was withdrawn from Alfonso's share in favour of the third son Jaume, the question arose whether Lerida and its vicinity had been included in the original grant at Daroca.2 By that time Alfonso's Castilian affinities had been confirmed as his ambitions had been thwarted, and the king took the position, a manifestly Catalan position, that the lands between the Segre and the Cinca, including Lerida, had never been included in Alfonso's portion. Dating from January 1244, this declaration refers to a 'court celebrated at Daroca' to which the king had summoned bishops, nobles and concejos of the Aragonese cities 'and among others' - as the text put it - 'men of the city of Lerida'.3 This is almost certainly the source of Zurita's assertion that Alfonso received the allegiance of the Aragonese and of *los sindicos de la ciudad de Lerida' in a cortes held at Daroca in I243.4 But Alfonso could not possibly have obtained the support 1. Cited above, p. $3, n. 3, 4. It was not usual to require homage as well as fealty in France or Catalonia, although there is some indication that Alphonse II sought to introduce the Aragonese system in Catalonia, Liber Feudorum Maior, ed. Francisco Miquel Rosell, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-7), ii, no. 793; cf. nos. 861, 869. The kings of Aragon sometimes spoke of their townsmen as vassalli, e.g., Canellas, Col. dipL Zarago^a, no. 35; Ubieto, Jaca: Documentos municipales, no. 54. 2. Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 2nd edn., pp. 285-6. 3. Archive de la Corona de Aragon, Cancillerfa, pergammos de Jaime I, no. 937 (ed. Huici, Col. dipt., i, no. 267): 'Nouerint vniuersi quod nos lacobus .. . cum ad curiam apud Darocham celebratam conuocaulssemus episcopos et nobiles et concilia ciuitatum Aragonensium et inter alios homines ciuitatis Ylerde conuocauissemus quibus pro ciuitate destinatis dedimus in mandatis ut filium nostrum Ildefonsum, si nobis superuiueret, reciperent in dominum naturalem et regem Aragonensem, quia ibi nee alibi donauimus filio nostro ciuitatem Ilerde nee territorium a Siccore usque ad Cincham nee facere proposuimus nee in animo nostro unquam gestauimus. . . .' See also Huici, no. 266; Documentos ineditos, viii, no. 42. 4. Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, iii, c. 40; ed. Ubieto, iii, 150.

A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, 1228)

39

in 1243 that he certainly obtained in 1228, nor is there any extant contemporary record of an assembly at Daroca in 1243; so that, as Rafael Gras already surmised in 1908, the king's allusions to such an event must have been to a single court held at Daroca in I228.1 What is more, one has only to glance at our record to wonder whether the king was not misrepresenting it in 1244. For it says nothing to suggest that James regarded Lerida as other than an Aragonese city in'February 1228, and it implies that the region bounded by the Segre and the Cinca was then thought to be in Aragon.2 Could this be the reason why no copy survived in the royal archives? Certainly the king had changed his mind about the political affiliation of Lerida. In this sense, too, the circumstances of 1228 had become obsolete. What has come down to us from the general court of Daroca, although it adds usefully to our knowledge of the young James Fs political behaviour, is therefore of chiefly institutional interest. It affords a precious glimpse of the growth of parliamentary and representative ideas in medieval Aragon.

Appendix The document printed below, although mutilated along two folds of the parchment so as to obscure the names of two concejos and several persons, is mostly very legible. Its date is equivocal, being given as 8 ides February 1228, era 1266, when one would expect to read 1227 for 1228 (or 1267 for I266).3 Other things equal, a mistake in the figure for the era would seem more likely than one in that for the annus Domini, and it would, indeed, square with the known political circumstances to date the assembly 6 February 1229. Nevertheless, because this date does not correspond with the king's known itinerary very well, I have preferred to assume an error in the Lord's-year date. It should be observed that the scribe, Bertrando de Villanova, was an experienced hand in the Aragonese royal chancery, and that no such equivocation occurs in his other accessible diplomas of comparable date. It was habitual in Aragonese diplomatic of the early thirteenth century to allow ample space below the king's sign for the witnesses' names to 1. Gras, 'Documento curioso', pp. 4-5. Apart from the charter of 1228, early allusions to this court may be found in Libre dels feyts, c. 140 (ed. Soldevila, p. 67); the text quoted in p. 114, n. 3 above; and probably in Zurita, iii, c. 3 (ed. Ubieto, iii, pp. 18,

215).

2. That this was not the Catalan view even then, however, is shown by the statutes of the peace of Barcelona, Dec. 1228, which define Catalonia as extending from the Cinca to Salses, Cortes de Cataluna, i. i, 112. See generally Lladonosa i Pujol, Historia de Lleida, i. 288-91, 304-8. It may be that the Leridans were summoned to Daroca on grounds of their sympathy with the Aragonese pretensions to Valencia. 3. The Florentine reckoning (from 25 Mar.) was normal in this region and period.

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

40

be written (by the scribe) in two or three or even four columns.1 The charter of Daroca clearly derived its form from this practice, even though the names subscribed were those of actors and not witnesses; in fact, the chatter promulgated in the general court of Daroca in 1223 listed the town deputies in much the same general form as in 1228. The names and formulas in 1228 were disposed in four columns immediately beneath the royal signum^ and the scribe would surely have held to this orderly arrangement had space permitted. But already in the second rank of names the right-hand column was doubled, followed by another doubling in the third rank, making six columns from there downwards. Both social logic and palaeographical considerations indicate that Bertrando recorded the professions horizontally from left to right, beginning with the nobles of independent standing, then moving on to the knights and infanfones of Ejea, to the largest contingent of townsmen (Lerida), to the next largest (Zaragoza), and so on (although the size of the deputation soon ceased to be an ordering factor). Schematically, therefore, the array of names may be represented thus:

Ai Greater nobles Bi Zaragoza

A2

Greater

A3 Ejea

A4 Lerida

B3

B4 Daroca

B5 Fariza Tauste

C3

C4 Uncastillo Murillo

C5 Barbastro Pina

C6 Epila

D5 Borja

D6 Alfajarin

nobles B2

Huesca Jaca

Tarazona Calatayud

Ci Teruel

Cz ?

Di Aranda

Dz El Castellar

D3 Luna AJquezai

D4 Ayerbe

E2

E3 Ricla

E4 Almudebar

Ei Pertusa

?Sos

Fraga Zuera

Although contrary to the norms of diplomatic editions, the names and professions are transcribed in order of horizontal rows (Ai, A2, Bi, 62, etc.), not only because this preserves the scribe's own apparent order but also because the order of columns breaks down and becomes confusing. The scribe's clear differentiation of V and Y has been followed, but not, as a rule, his less clear differentiation between T and 'j', which would have resulted in readings such as 'jnfante'. Throughout, T is preferred except, toward the end, for 'Borja', 'Alfajarino', and 'Majoral', where £ j' seems to have been intended. i. See, e.g., Canellas, Col. dipl. Zarago%ay facsimiles, nos. 8-Ti, 15.

A General Court ofAragon (Daroca, 1228)

41

Text 1228 (n. st.), 6 February. Daroca castle. James I, in a general court held at Daroca attended by the bishops of Huesca, Tara^pna and Elne, Ferrando the Infante of Aragon, the (noble?} and rich men and all the concejos of Aragon, with common counsel and discussion and upon the kings express order, has secured the homage and fealty of the Infante Ferrando to the kings son Alfonso, who is recognised as heir to Aragon. The professions in the same form of 26 nobles and 1^4 other men representing 30 cities, castles and towns are recorded below. A. Original. Parchment formerly sealed, divided by ABC DEF, partly mutilated along folds. 622 by 525 mm. Archive municipal de Lerida, Seccion i.a, Privilegios y Cartas reales, no. 308.1 a. Rafael Gras (y de Esteva), 'De historia aragonesa. Un documento curioso,' Butllett del Centre excursionista de L/ejda, i: i (January 1908), 5-9, from A.

A In Christi nomine. Manifestum sit cunctis presentibus atque futuris quod cum dominus lacobus,* Dei gratia rex Aragonensis, comes Barchinonensis et dominus Montispessulani celebraret generalem curiam in Daroca ad quam conuenerunt venerabiles patres G. Oscensis,3 G. Tirasonensis,4 R. Elenensis5 episcopi, dompnus F. infans Aragonensis6 et [nobia]les et richio homines Aragonenses et omnia concilia ciuitatum et villarum a Sichore usque Faritiam pro se et suis uniuersitatibus, de communi consilio et tractatu, de mandato expresso predicti domini Tacobi illustris regis Aragonensis bono corde et g[ratab uojluntate iuramentum fidelitatis et homagium ore et manibus IldefFonso infant! filio dicti illustris regis Aragonensis lacobi et Alienoris7 vxoris eius regine Aragonensis publice prestiterunt, ita quod si superuiueret dicto lacobo illustri regi patri suo ipsum [inc regem] reciperent et nullum alium, sicut in forma iuramenti proxime scripta plenius continetur, que talis est: Ego Ferrandus infans Aragonensis iuro per Deum tactis sacrosanctis euuangeliis et cruce mandato et uoluntate expressa domini lacobi regis Aragonensis [—]d tibi IldefFonso filio eius et dompne Alienoris regine Aragonensis vxoris eius fidelitatem et saluitatem corporis tui et menbrorum tuorum et uite tue et honoris et commodi tui, et si superuixeris memorato regi patri tuo, habebo te [—e r]egem Aragonum, et te uiuente nullum alium recipiam uel recipi consentiam in regem et a c e

Conjectural restoration. in, conjectural. Two or three words obliterated.

b d

rata, conjectural. One or two words obliterated.

1. Dorse: in fifteenth-century (?) hand: carta de lo rey en jacyne prec los bonatge de senbor et. . . arago. Later archival marks. 2. King James I 'the Conqueror* (1213-76). 3. Garcia, bishop of Huesca (1201-36). 4. Garcia Frontin II, bishop of Tarazona (1219-54). 5. Raimond IV, bishop of Elne (1225-9). 6. Ferrando, uncle of James I, Infante of Aragon, and abbot of Montearagon. 7. Eleanor of Castile, first wife of James I, divorced in 1229.

42

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

dominum dicti regni, salua in omnibus fidelitate predicti regis lacobi patris tui quamdiu uixerit, ita tamen quod te uiuente alius non possit o

institui [—]*rex. Acta sunt ista. viii. idus Februarii in castro Daroce, era .m.cc. sexsagesima sexta, anno Domini .m.cc.xx octauo, presente et iubente predicto lacobo rege Aragonensi, venerabili patre episcopo Oscensi accipiente [—]e nomine dicti Ildeffonsi infantis qui ibidem presens in brachiis dicti episcopi teneb[a]tur cuius infantis manum omnes iurantes osculabantur et ei predicta omnia promiserunt se fideliter seruaturos. Signum (monogram) lacobi, Dei gratia regis Arfagonensis, comi]tis Barchinonensis et domini Montispessulani, qui hec omnia laudamus, concedimus et confirmamus, mandantes nostris fidelibus vniuersis quod hanc fidelitatem et iuramentum et homagium fatiant domin[o] Ildeffonso filio nostro secundum forma[m superius comh]prehensam. (Ai) Ego Ferrandus infans Aragonensis iuro et hominium fatio s[ecundum —]*. Ego Blaschus de Alagone iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Ato Orella iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Blaschus Maca iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Cornilii iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Rodericus de Licana iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Garsie de Aquilari iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Artaldus de Luna iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Ato de Focibus maiordomus Aragonensis iuro et hominium fatfio]. Ego P. de Sesse iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Ferrandus de Larato iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Eximinus de Aranciello iuro et hominium fatio. (Az) Ego P. de Alcala iu[r]o et hominium fatio. Ego P. Taresa iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Fortunius Santii de Bera iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus de Montepessulano iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Petri iustitia Aragonensis iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Rotlandus Layni iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Peregrinus de Bolas iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Garsias Romei iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Egidius de Atrossillo iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Fortunius de Bergua iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Lupus Eximini de Castelloto iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Pomar iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Eximinus Romei iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Berengarius de Castel Blanc iuro et hominium fatio. (A3) Isti sunt milites et infantiones de Exea1 qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate de Exea. Ego Martinus Gil de Uno Castello iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. de [—]J iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Michael de Exea iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Dauuero iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Blaschus de Exeya iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Fortunius Lupi de Auuero iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Garsias de Exeya iuro et hominium fatio. Ego S. de Exeya iuro et hominium fatio. (A4) Isti sunt probi homines Ylerdenses qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate Ylerde.2 Ego Raymundus Petri iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus Raymundi baiulus iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus films Arnaldi Cortit iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus Sennoron iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus de $a Mora consul iuro et hominium * Two or three words obliterated. h superius com, conjectural. * Two words obliteratedy possibly formam positam.

8 Two or three words obliterated. J Space left blank.

1. Ejea de los Caballeros (provincia Zaragoza, partido judicial). 2. Le"rida (prov. and p. ).)•

A General Court ofAragon (Daroca, 1228)

43

fatio. Ego Guillelmus molinarius consul iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Petrus de Sancta Cruce iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Clauel iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus de Tarascon iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus de Monte Rubeo iuro et hominium fatio. Ego B. Balbi iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. de Sala iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Arnaldus de Solanellas iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Sand'i domini regis notarius et Arogonensis repositarius iuro et hominium fatio. (Bi) Isti sunt probi homines Cesaraugustunenses qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota uniuersitate Cesarauguste.1 Ego Bartholomeus Iterii iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Pontius Baldouini iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Dominicus Iterii iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus Santii de mansok iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus de Pambel iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus Aymerici iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Martinus Guillelmi films Arnaldi Tron iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus Santii frenarius iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Bartholomeus de Boleya iuro et hominium fatio. Ego G. de Calataiub iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Gotierro iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Martinus repositarius iuro et hominium fatio. (62) Isti sunt probi homines de Osca qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate Osce.?< Ego Vgo Martini iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Arnaldus lohanis iuro et hominium fatio. Ego B. Marquisii iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Fortunius Lupi iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Goncalbus de Burgos iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt homines de lacca qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota uniuersitate lacce.3 Ego lohanes de Montbaldran iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Vitalis de Ban cons iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes Ariel iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Guillelmus Aztorc iuro et hominium fatio. Ego [Bon1] etus de Seta iuro et hominium fatio. Ego [Domenmjge Oliuarius iuro et hominium fatio. (63) Isti sunt probi homines Tirasonenses qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate Tirasonensi.4 Ego P. Souero iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Dominicus Petri iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Michael de Roda iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes de Ribas iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Pascasius de Molina iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Rotlandus de Tirasona iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt probi homines de Calataiub qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate de Calataiub.5 Ego P. Uillella iudex iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. lohanes iustitia iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Gomez iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Dominicus iudex iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Tolosa iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Gil Gomez iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes Quarton iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes de Torrillo iuro et hominium fatio. (64) Isti sunt probi homines Daroce qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota uniuersitate Daroce.6 Ego Pascual Parient iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Gil Gordo iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Gil de Mingos iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Steuan Garson iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes Daux k de manso, added above line, doubtless to distinguish this man from another Guillelmus Santii of Zaragoza. 1 Conjectural; cf. Jaca: Documentos municipales, p. 140. m Conjectural; cf. Jaca: Documentos municipales,pp. 139., 140.

i. Zaragoza (prov. and p. JO3. Jaca (prov. Huesca, p. j.). 5. Calatayud (prov. Zaragoza, p. j.).

2. Huesca (prov. and p. j.). 4. Tarazona (prov. Zaragoza, p. j.). 6. Daroca (prov. Zaragoza, p. j.).

44

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes de Mengacho iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Marchus de dompno Nicholao iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Vincentius de Ferrarola iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Michael de Pepino iuro et hominium fatio. Ego A. de G. A. iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Mengo Martin de Daroca iuro et hominium fatio. (65) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Fariza.1 Ego Deosdado iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Tello iuro et hominium fatio. Ego D. Forton iuro et hominium fatio. I. de Petro Corinanon iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Mengo Maneres0 iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt qui iurauerent pro se et pro toto concilio de Taust.2 Ego Alaman de Fuentes iuro et hominium fatio. Ego I. de Forton iustitia de Taust iuro et hominium fatio. (Ci) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Turolio.3 Ego Pascasius Munnoz iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Eximinus de Segura iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Santius Munnoz iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Nunnus iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Andador iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Martinus de Cellalbo iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Bela pastor iuro et hominium fatio. Ego S. Guarini iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Ennego Blascho iuro et hominium fatio. (Cz) Isti sunt qui iura[uerunt pro se] et pro toto concilio [—]P Ego [—]s iuro et hominium fatio. Ego G[—] iuro et hominium fatio. Ego [—] iuro et hominium fatio. [Ego —Jon Saluatore iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Iohan[es —]nec iuro et hominium fatio. Ego D[—] iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Domi[n]icus de [Barjbastro iuro et hominium fatio. (€3) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Fraga.4 Ego B. Dalos iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Don Turol iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt homines de (Juera qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de (Juera.5 Ego Garsias de Albero iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Mez iuro et hominium fatio. Ego S. Aner iuro et hominium fatio. (C4) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Uno Castello.6 Ego Bartholomeus iustitia iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Scriuano iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Danso iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Dominicus Sellero iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Moriello.7 Ego Dominicus alcalde iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Santius de Carta Uella iuro et hominium fatio. (€5) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Barbastro.8 Ego lohanes Niger iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Dominicus Santii iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt homines de Pina qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Pina.9 Ego G. Petri iustitia iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Eximini iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Michael Santii iuro et hominium fatio. (C6) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Epila.10 Ego Stephanus del n

Possibly Cormano. P Name of this place obliterated.

° Maneres, doubtful; MS. manes.

1. Fariza, now Ariza (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Ateca). 2. Tauste (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Ateca). 3. Teruel (prov. and p. ].)• 4- Fraga (prov. Huesca, p. j.). 5. Zuera (prov. and p. j. Zaragoza). 6. Uncastillo (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Sos). 7. Probably Murillo de Gallego (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Ejea). 8. Barbastro (prov. Huesca, p. j.). 9. Pina (prov. Zaragoza, p. j,). 10. Epila (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. La Almunia de Dona Godina).

A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, 1228)

45

Espit iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Andreas de Mar in iuro et hommium fatio. Ego Eximinus de na Luga iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Adam (Japatero iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. de Garsion iuro et hominium fatio. (Di) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Aranda.1 Ego Ennego Meder iuro et hominium fatio. Ego S. Escriuano iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes Petri iuro et hominium fatio. Ego lohanes Dandieracu iuro et hominium fatio. (Dz) Isti sunt qui iurauer[u]nt pro se et pro toto concilio de Castellafr].2 Ego [—] iuro et hominium fatio. [—]Q. (03) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Luna.3 Ego Apparitius iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Egidius de Nauasa iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Fortunius de Uilla Longa iuro et hominium fatio. Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Alquecar.4 Ego Ferriz Guardiel iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Barbastro iuro et hominium fatio. (D4) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro tota vniuersitate de Ayerb.5 Ego Ferrandus Ferrandi iuro et h[ominium] fatio. Ego Andreas de Moriello iuro [et hominium f Jatio. Ego Eximinus Daysa iuro et h[ominium fatio]. Ego P. Loarte iuro et hominium [fatio]. Ego Arnaldus pelliterius iuro et [hominium fati]o. (D5) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Borja.6 Ego S. de Cesaraugusta iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Nicholaus de Tudela iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Egidius Ferrandi iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Raymundus de Borja iuro et hominium fatio. (D6) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto [c]oncilio de Alfajarino.7 Ego Gauzbertus de Calgada iur[o et hominium fatio]. E[go] B. de Alagone iuro et hominium [fatio]. Ego Martinus Ferrarius iuro et [hominium fatio]. Ego P. Ferrarii iuro et hominium fatio. (Ei) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Pertusa.8 Ego Dominicus iustitia iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Rodericus de Pertusa iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Tomasius iuro et hominium fatio. (Ez) Isti [sunt qui iurauerunt] pro se [e]t pro toto concilfio de S]os.r9 Ego [— iu]ro et hominium fatio. Ego [—]g[—] alcal iuro et hominium fatio. Ego [—Jar iuro et hominium fatio. (£3) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se et pro toto concilio de Ricla.10 Ego lohanes Daniel iustitia iuro et hominium fatio. Ego P. Calbo iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Pascasius iuro et hominium fatio. (£4) Isti sunt qui iurauerunt pro se [et pro] concilio de Almudeuar.11 Ego Dominicus Majoral iur[o et h]ominium fatio. Ego lohanes de Nasarre iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Ferrandus <1 Four or five names obliterated, save for fragments of formulas. 1 Restoration of Sos conjectural. 1. Aranda de Moncayo (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Ateca). 2. Probably El Castellar (prov. and p. j. Zaragoza, no longer a municipality). 3. Luna (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Ejea). 4. Alquezar (prov. Huesca, p. j. Barbastro). 5. Ayerbe (prov. and p. j. Huesca). 6. Borja (prov. Zaragoza, p. j.). 7. Alfajarin (prov. and p. j. Zaragoza). 8. Pertusa (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. Sarinena). 9. Probably Sos (prov. Zaragoza, p. j.). 10. Ricla (prov. Zaragoza, p. j. La Almunia de Dona Godina). I T . Almudebar (prov. and p. j. Huesca).

46

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

de Larrun iuro et hominium fatio. Ego Lupus Ferrenqui iuro [et hom]imum fatio. Sig (monogram) num Bertrandi de Uilla No[ua qui mandato] domini regis pro Guillelmo Rabatie notario suo hoc scripsit, loco, die, era et anno prefixis.

Index (Men who did Homage and Fealty) A. de G. A. (Daroca) Adam (Japatero (Epila) Alaman de Fuentes (Tauste) Andreas de Marin (Epila) Andreas de Moriello (Ayerbe) Apparitius (Luna) Arnaldus pelliterius (Ayerbe) Arnaldus lohanis (Huesca) Arnaldus de Solanellas (Lerida) Artaldus de Luna Ato de Focibus maiordomus Aragonensis Ato Orella B. de Alagone (Alfajarin) B. Balbi (Lerida) B. Dalos (Fraga) B. Marquisii (Huesca) Bartholomeus iustitia (Uncastillo) Bartholomeus de Boleya (Zaragoza) Bartholomeus Tterii (Zaragoza) Bela pastor (Teruel) Berengarius de Castel Blanc Blascho de Alagone Blaschus de Exeya (Ejea) Blaschus Ma$a [Bon?]etus de Seta (Jaca) D. Forton (Ariza) D[—] (place uncertain) Deosdado (Ariza) [Domen?]ge Oliuarius (Jaca) Dominicus alcalde (Murillo) Dominicus iudex (Calatayud) Dominicus iustitia (Pertusa) Domifnjicus de [Barjbastro (place uncertain) Dominicus Iterii (Zaragoza) Dominicus Majoral (Almudebar) Dominicus Petri (Tarazona)

Dominicus Santii (Barbastro) Dominicus Sellero (Uncastillo) Don Turol (Fraga) Egidius de Atrossillo Egidius Ferrandi (Borja) Egidius de Nauasa (Luna) Ennego Blascho (Teruel) Ennego Meder (Aranda) Eximinus de Aranciello Eximinus Daysa (Ayerbe) Eximinus de na Lu$a (Epila) Eximinus Romei Eximinus de Segura (Teruel) Ferrandus, infans Aragonensis Ferrandus Ferrandi (Ayerbe) Ferrandus de Larato Ferrandus de Larrun (Almudebar) Ferriz Guardiel (Alquezar) Fortunius de Bergua Fortunius Lupi (Huesca) Fortunius Lupi de Auuero (Ejea) Fortunius Santii de Bera Fortunius de Uilla Longa (Luna) G. de Calataiub (Zaragoza) G. Petri iustitia (Pina) G[—] (place uncertain) Garsias de Albero (Zuera) Garsias de Exeya (Ejea) Garsias Romei Gauzbertus de Calcada (Alfajarin) Gil Gomez (Calatayud) Gil Gordo (Daroca) Gil de Mingos (Daroca) Gomez (Calatayud) Gon$albus de Burgos (Huesca) Gotierro (Zaragoza) Guillelmus molinarius consul (Lerida) Guillelmus Aztorc (Jaca)

A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, 1228)

47

P. Cornilii Guillelmus de 9a Mora consul P. Danso (Uncastillo) (Lerida) P. Dauuero (Ejea) Guillelmus de Monte Rubeo P. Eximini (Pina) (Lerida) P. Ferrarii (Alfajarfn) Guillelmus de Pambel (Zaragoza) P. Garsie de Aquilari Guillelmus Santii frenarius P. de Garsion (Epila) (Zaragoza) P. lohanis iustitia (Calatayud) Guillelmus Santii de manso P. Loarte (Ayerbe) (Zaragoza) P. Mez (Zuera) I. de Forton iustitia de Taust P. Petri iustitia Aragonensis (Tauste) I. de Petro Corinano (or Cormano ; P. Pomar P. Santii domini regis notarius et Ariza) lohanes Ariel (Jaca) Arogonensis repositarius (Lerida) lohanes Dandieragu (Aranda) lohanes Daniel iustitia (Ricla) P. Scriuano (Uncastillo) lohanes Daux (Daroca) P. de Sesse lohanes de Mengacho (Daroca) P. de Sala (Lerida) lohanes de Montbaldran (Jaca) P. Souero (Tarazona) P. Taresa lohanes de Nasarre (Almudebar) P. Tolosa (Calatayud) lohanes Niger (Barbastro) lohanes Petri (Aranda) P. Uillella iudex (Calatayud) p. de [—] (Ejea) lohanes Quarton (Calatayud) Pascasius (Ricla) lohanes de Ribas (Tarazona) lohanes de Torrillo (Calatayud) Pascasius de Molina (Tarazona) lohanjes —]nec (place uncertain) Pascasius Munnoz (Teruel) Pascual Parient (Daroca) Lupus Eximini de Castelloto Lupus Ferrenqui (Almudebar) Peregrinus de Bolas Marchus de dompno Nicholao Petrus de Sancta Cruce (Lerida) (Daroca) Pontius Baldouini (Zaragoza) Martinus repositarius (Zaragoza) Raymundus filius Arnaldi Cortit (Lerida) Martinus de Cellalbo (Teruel) Martinus ferrarius (Alfajarin) Raymundus Aymerici (Zaragoza) Martinus Gil de Uno Castello Raymundus de Borja (Borja) Raymundus de Montepessulano (Ejea) Martinus Guillelmi films Arnaldi Raymundus Petri (Lerida) Tron (Zaragoza) Raymundus Raymundi baiulus (Lerida) Mengo Martin de Daroca (Daroca) Mengo Maneres (Ariza) Raymundus Sennoron (Lerida) Michael de Exea (Ejea) Raymundus de Tarascon (Lerida) Rodericus de Li9ana Michael de Pepino (Daroca) Michael de Roda (Tarazona) Rodericus de Pertusa (Pertusa) Rotlandus Layni Michael Santii (Pina) Nicholaus de Tudela (Borja) Rotlandus de Tirasona (Tarazona) Nunnus (Teruel) S. Aner (Zuera) S. de Cesaraugusta (Borja) P. de Alcala P. Andador (Teruel) S. Escriuano (Aranda) S. de Exeya (Ejea) P. Barbastro (Alquezar) S. Guarini (Teruel) P. Calbo (Ricla) P. Clauel (Lerida) Santius de Carta Uella (Murillo)

48

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Santius Munnoz (Teruel) Stephanus del Espit (Epila) Steuan Garson (Daroca) Tello (Ariza)

Tomasius (Pertusa) Vgo Martini (Huesca) Vincentius de Ferrarola (Daroca) Vitalis de Bangons (Jaca)

(Eleven other names all or partly illegible: 5 from El Castellar, 3 from ?Sos, 3 from a concejo whose name is illegible.)

3

NEGOTIATIONS FOR TAXES UNDER ALFONSE OF POITIERS Alfonse of Poitiers (1220-1271) did not greatly impress his contemporaries. The brother of two famous kings, and by disposition retiring if not sickly, he was not a man to inspire chroniclers. Yet he was the ruler himself of nearly half of France, being count of Poitiers and Toulouse, and he was at least the equal of Louis IX as an administrator. It is not entirely accidental that his routine documents survive in better order than those of Louis. These documents reveal a remarkable attentiveness to finance. Alfonse seems to have been among the first in France to recognize that the inadequacy of ordinary revenues in an age of rising prices and costly politics posed an administrative problem worth solving. It is true that his own solution was not very original. He did not so much invent new taxes as press old ones to their limits. This may be one reason why his work was poorly remembered by the later Capetians, who had to be really inventive when faced with the problem in its acute form. But Alfonse was successful for his times. He sometimes doubled his income through taxation (*). He was perhaps the first effective «fund-raiser» of the Capetian rulers (2). How Alfonse obtained consent to his taxes has not interested historians very much. The prevailing view is that the count was an autocratic character, overbearing with his subjects, insistent on his 0) This calculation, which is rough, is based on figures given by E. BOUTARIC, Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers... (Paris, 1870), pp. 275-277, 280n, 308311. (2) See generally ibid.; A. MOLINIER, «fitude sur FAdministration de Louis IX et d'Alfonse de Poitiers (1226-1271),» in [DEVIC and VAISSETE] Histoire G£nerale de Languedoc, Privat edn., to be cited as H. L., VII (1879), Notes, 462570; Correspondance Administrative d'Alfonse de Poitiers, ed. A. MOLINIER, 2 vols. (Paris, 1894-1900), to be cited as C.A., II, Introduction, v-xxv; B. LEDAIN, Histoire d'Alphonse, Frere de Saint Louis, et du Comt& de Poitou sous son Administration (1241-1271) (Poitiers, 1869). We need a modern study of Alfonse of Poitiers. The way has been prepared not only by publication of the registers (the C.A.\ but also by the brilliant new edition of the Enquetes Administratives d'Alfonse de Poitiers: Arrets de son Parlement tenu a Toulouse et Textes Annexes, 1249-1271, by P.-Fr. FOURNIER and P. GU£BIN (Paris, 1959), to be cited as E.A.

50

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

own rights and impatient of others'. What is generally known about his finance squares with this interpretation. The taxes seem to have been craftily devised to obviate the need for consultation, consisting largely of tallages and customary aids. Even with impositions that could not be defended as rightful or traditional, the count strove to avoid bargaining by alleging prior commitments. Yet the very fact that Alfonse did an uncommon amount of taxing as early as the mid-thirteenth century should be reason for doubting that the work was easy. Everywhere in western Christendom consent was arising as a practical problem quite as much as a legal one. Even when possessed of right or approval, rulers, whatever their character, found it hard to collect money, and especially when they tried to do it widely and intensively (3). Negotiation was necessary; and negotiations of any sort were likely to influence, or at least define, the institutions through which they were carried on. Alfonse of Poitiers was unquestionably a negotiator. His vast «administrative correspondence» is not just a stream of one-way orders; many of his writs, and most of the financial ones, were in response to representations made to him or his officials. The parliamentary channels therein disclosed seem to have been a little more diverse and significant than we have realized. This study cannot pretend to deal fully with Alfonse of Poitiers' finance, valuable as such an investigation would be (4). Its object is to examine the relation between imposing prince and paying subject in several of its aspects which may be thought to hold some interest for the general history of medieval representation and consent. Alfonse's main taxes fall into two groups: the early subsidies levied in his apanage lands (Poitou and Auvergne) between 1241 and (3) See the important studies by C. STEPHENSON, «The Aids of the French Towns in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,» reprinted (from Le Moyen Age, 1922) in Mediaeval Institutions, Selected Essays, ed. B. D. LYON (Cornell 1954), ch. 1; W. E. LUNT, «The Consent of the English Lower Clergy to Taxation during the Reign of Henry III,» in Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr (New York, 1931), pp. 117-169; and J. R. STRAYER, «Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair,» in Studies in Early French Taxation, with C. H. TAYLOR (Cambridge, M., 1939). (4) Pascal Guebin studied the subject, but his work has not been published, E.A.,p.v.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

51

1250, and the aids for crusade levied in the county of Toulouse as well as the apanage between 1261 and 1270 (5). Of the former we know little more than what the taxes were: namely, aids for the count's knighting in 1241, for his war in Poitou in 1242, and for his crusade and ransom in 1249 and 1250 (6). It is a safe conjecture that these impositions were justified on customary grounds, so that they were not legally subject to consent. But the negotiations over assessment and collection, especially in 1249, set precedents that were to have importance in later years, and it is unfortunate that they are so poorly recorded. The town of Riom, which contributed 4000 livres tournois for the crusade, obtained from Alfonse in 1249 a charter which guaranteed its immunity from arbitrary levies; but it seems clear that the count meant to reserve the «licit cases,» including crusade (7). This charter was probably a quid pro quo (8).In Poitou, besides the aid for crusade, Alfonse proposed to levy a hearth-tax (fouage) in the towns on condition of expelling the Jews from the region. In the end, it seems, the Jews paid more heavily to stay (9). This negotiation with the towns is quite exceptional in the annals of Alfonse; but it was to be repeated in Poitou by Philip IV, with different and unpleasant results (10). The arbitrary tallage of Jews, (5) I shall not deal with ordinary taxes, such as servile tall ages, nor with ecclesiastical concessions, nor with devices for raising money other than taxes. The latter were diverse and important in the 1260's; see, e.g., C.A., I, nos. 310, 482, 498, 865. See too, in general, J. R. STRAYER, «The Crusades of Louis IX,» in A History of the Crusades, ed. K.M. SETTON, II (Philadelphia, 1962), 490-492, 510-511. (6) BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 43-55, 61-79, 279-280; LEDAIN, Histoire d'Alphonse, pp. 4-46; C.A., I, nos. 747, 1191; STEPHENSON, Mediaeval Institutions, p. 20, and nn. (7) C.A., I, no. 747; Layettes du Trtsor des Chartes, eds. A. TEULET, et al, 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), III, no. 3755 (60a). One text of the charter for Riom bears interlinear and marginal notes to the effect that the feudal aids are reserved. (8) See Layettes, III, no. 3756, project for a charter for Pont-du-Chateau, Auvergne, at same time. Cf. C.A., I, nos. 725, 747. It is worth remarking that Riom received a second charter from Alfonse (the«Alfonsine»)in 1270, shortly after making another grant of 4000 1.1. for crusade, H. -J. RmfcRE, Histoire des Institutions de VAuvergne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1874), I, 262-263; II, 276; C.A., I, no. 756. Its first article forswears arbitrary exactions. (9) Layettes, III, nos. 3782, 3783; BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 318-320. (10) «Recueil de Documents concernant ... la Ville de Poitiers,» I, ed. fi.

52

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of which this business was an incident, had a continuous history under Alfonse. The subsidies for the new crusade projected some years later will be our chief concern, for not until the 1260's do the records become abundant (n). Officials in the county of Toulouse were required in 1261 to collect a hearth-tax in towns and villages, those subject to other lords as well as those in domain (12). Negotiations were undertaken in Agenais, then extended to Quercy and Albigeois. They continued until 1263 and 1264, but were broken off when the plans for crusade were interrupted. These being renewed in 1266, there ensued four years of almost incessant financial activity, in all of Alfonse's domains. «Subventions» or «aids» were asked of the townsmen of Poitou, Saintonge, and Auvergne, an aid from the nobles and a doubled rent from the count's tenants of Poitou, and fouages (or their equivalent in «aid») from towns and villages of Agenais, Quercy, Toulousain, Albigeois, Rouergue, and the comtat Venaissin (13). The grounds of consent to these taxes were necessarily diverse. They were never very clearly expressed. As Molinier observed, Alfonse acted as if he were unsure of his rights (14). He was content, especially in the South, to employ inconsistent arguments if they seemed likely to bring results, rather than stand on principle. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern some generally operative notions, and instructive to notice how they developed with circumstances. The directives of ca. 1261 stated that «the men of our land and prelates, chapters, monks, barons, knights and others on behalf of their men have promised)) (promiserint) to payfouage «in aid of the AUDOUIN, Archives Historiques du Poitou, XLIV (1923), 226-228, and references there; cf. STRAYER, Early French Taxation, pp. 18-19. (n) This is not just an accident of survival. Molinier has shown that it is improbable that registers were kept before 1260, C.A., II, v-vi. The fact of their compilation suggests a newly intensive administration. (12) Ibid., nos. 1962-1979. For the historical background offouages in Languedoc, see MOLINIER, in H.L., VII, 164-166, 511-519; STEPHENSON, Mediaeval Institutions, pp. 1-21. (13) BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 280-312; C.A., I, nos. 96, 323, 372, 689, 707,725,1041,1117.

(") C.^.,II,xliv.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

53

Holy Land»(15). Postponing the questions when and how this promise had been made, let us ask first what precisely, if anything, the word «promise» legally meant. To those who had promised, it presumably meant «consent» in the strict sense of the word: something that might—at least theoretically—have been withheld, thus blocking the aid. Such an understanding would have accorded with the custom of Agenais. For while the fouages and crusading subsidies of Raymond VII (d. 1249) are obscure, we know from charters and privileges that the former counts of Toulouse had not claimed them dejure (16). Did Alfonse, then, mean «consent» when he spoke of a promise? Not, it would seem, very strictly, if at all, for it was neither to his advantage nor in keeping with his experience as a northern lord, to admit that his subjects had the discretion to oppose the aid of crusade. Yet it is doubtful whether Alfonse was very interested in establishing his own right, even at this early stage (17). He specified, for use in local negotiations over assessments and payments, some arguments or procedures that were inconsistent with the claim de jure. The people were to be reminded how well the count had treated them since his accession, no impositions or gifts having been demanded. (is) /Wrf., nos. 1962-1967. (i«) See H.L., VIII (1879), 931-932; Archives Municipales of Montauban, AA. 2, fol. llv; Archives Municipales d'Agen, Chartes..., eds. A. MAGEN, G. THOLIN (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 1876), nos. 13, 46, 52; E.A., no. 123, p. 284; Layettes, III, no. 3802; MOLINIER, in H.L., VII, 515-518, cf. 165-166. Molinier argued too sweepingly that the «aide aux quatre cas» was unknown in the Midi, but I have found no early examples in Agenais. (17) The issue was not so clear, of course, as is implied in the last paragraph. One can hardly make much of the fact that Alfonse says «promittere» rather than «consentire»; the former term is even used in reference to negotiations with Toulouse, when «consent» stricto sensu is plainly meant. Cf. C.A., II, nos. 1963, 1973, 2060. Moreover, the distinction between consent in principle and consent to pay is not often explicit in the documents of 13th-century practice. Hence the «promise» might have meant either one, depending on point of view. The alleged promise «pro hominibus suis», that is, for subtenants, may have been understood as «consent» (in principle) even by the count, in the sense that, legally, negotiations with sub-tenants could not occur without leave of their lords. But such consent was specious. Lords and churches were simply allowing Alfonse to tallage their men directly, thus avoiding both paying themselves and the trouble of collecting what they owed.

54

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Then — as if this might sound too lordly — the negotiators should point out that the king and other princes had levied aids from their towns several times in late years. The latter argument goes uneasily with the first. Abandoning localism if not paternalism, it gropes toward, if not yet quite expressing, a concept of common responsibility as a justification for taxes. And it means that Alfonse is prepared to be flexible about the form and basis of the tax he is seeking. Fouage is being discussed; but the count understands that some towns prefer to render free gifts. Such offers, he instructs, may be accepted, provided that the sums for which the towns compose be at least equal to what might be realized fromfouage (18). Now the effect of such gifts was to nullify the claim to crusading subsidies as of right. Alfonse must have understood this. He was soon supplying his agents with the forms for letters of non-prejudice to the rights of towns, acknowledging that their gifts were free and spontaneous and constituted no precedent for the future (19). The ready availability of such declarations should bewarning, however, against making too much of a «right of consent» in the 1260's. Their wording was general, their character essentially negative. They were thought of as safeguards against arbitrary tallage, not as claims to be consulted about recurrent and legitimate taxation. The latter institution was still unknown. So in the absence of southern traditions of aiding lords in timeof crusade, there was no alternative to admitting that the subsidies were entirely negotiable. Political arguments came to the fore in 1267 and officials were encouraged to press them hard. Indeed, an increased stress on urgency subtly altered the nature of the appeal. The keynote, in all parts of the domains, was henceforth to be «la grant necessitez de la Terre sainte et le prochiein terme du passage» (20). Now if the «necessity of crusade» werenotinitsimplica(18) C.A., II, nos. 1962, 1968; cf. STEPHENSON, Mediaeval Institutions, p. 21. O9) C.A., I, nos. 814, 815; II, 2062; cf. 2061, and STEPHENSON, p. 23. A letter in favor of Agen had been issued as early as 1257, Archives ... d'Agen, Chartes, no. 52. Further inconsistency is evident in the orders to investigate promises or gifts made to Raymond VII for the crusade of 1248, as a possible basis for bettering the return fromfouage: see C.A., II, nos. 1974,1975. (20) C.A., I, no. 604, general instructions to all officials in May 1268; cf. nos. 323, 324, 372, 373, 545, etc. I assume that such arguments were passed on to the people, the officials having been encouraged to use all reasonable means.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

55

tions quite identical with the overriding «necessity of state», so useful to royal financiers of later generations, it was something legally akin to it (21). In practice such an appeal was hard to oppose, and it was especially conducive to that sense of common dutifulness of which there had been intimations in the previous negotiations. The count and his agents seem to have relied on it especially in the South (22), without, perhaps, fully realizing its possibilities. But in dealing with the men of Auvergne and Poitou, Alfonse could insist on the crusading subsidies as a matter of feudal right. He was tougher in his attitude there, less tolerant of opposition. Even when prior right or consent were established, and especially when merely claimed, it was difficult to collect medieval taxes. Alfonse of Poitiers experienced this difficulty acutely, for the people of his far-stretching lands were suspicious of comprehensive levies by absentee lords. The negotiations directed by the count usually assumed willingness to offer or pay, and aimed at prompt settlement of assessments and collections. Usually this was moving too fast. The method had, perhaps, the psychological advantage of putting his people immediately on the defensive, but it meant that the count had always to be prepared to backtrack, investigate, and renegotiate. And because failure to obtain payment was tantamount to failure to establish right, the negotiations for offers and payments were in effect negotiations for consent. Consent, here at the very dawning of French public taxation, is as much a practical as a legal matter; and this was to be one of its lasting features. Yet Alfonse seems to have understood that discussions about con sent and about payment ought to be different things. Indeed, his first extant directives — for Agenais, ca. 1261 — rather plainly suggest a taxing process in the two stages of preliminary consultation for approval followed by local negotiations to obtain assessments and (21) Pope Innocent III had urged the necessitas of the Holy Land and the evidens utilitas of the project in vigorous terms when calling for the crusade in 1213, Patrologia ... Latina, ed. J. -P. MIGNE, CCXVI (1855), 817-821. See G. POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought... (Princeton, 1964), p. 18, and, generally, chapters III, V, and VI. (22) xi^ count continued, however, to doubt the non-existence of customary aids for crusade; he sometimes asked officials to look for precedents, e.g., C.A,II,no. 1793.

56

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

payments. This scheme, while surely not entirely new in France, finds its first expression in these texts. Though not much used by Alfonse (23), it was to become common practice under later Capetian monarchs. By what means, then, did Alfonse win that promise to payfouage, mentioned in the directives, from clergy, nobles, «and others, on behalf of their men?» We may agree with Molinier that the reference to this agreement was vague, but it will not do to dismiss it altogether. For it has at least the importance of showing that the count, from the beginning, understood the undertakings of his magnates to be binding on their tenants. This primitive form of representation, which was proving unsatisfactory in England during these years, was not to work very well for Alfonse; lords were cautious about committing their men and willing to let them speak for themselves (24). The possibility occurs to us that the count was referring, however obliquely, to an assembly (or assemblies). The «promise» figures especially in the instructions for Agenais and Quercy, and may have been limited to them(25). Now it happens that these particular areas had traditions of consenting to impositions in general assemblies. In Agenais, at least, such bodies had voted hearth taxes (26). Alfonse certainly knew of these traditions (27). (23) See next paragraph, and for a notable instance, below, p. 89. (24) See, e.g., C.A., I, nos. 249, 255, 257, 273, 278, 339. The count had better success in this respect in Rouergue and Venaissin than in Toulousain, but nowhere were his officials spared bargaining with sub-tenants. For the English development, see LUNT, in Persecution and Liberty..., pp. 123, 126, 136-141, 154-169; M. V. CLARKE, Medieval Representation and Consent... (New York, 1964 [1936]), pp. 256-259, 265-267, 304-315; and for the persistence of indirect rural representation in France, T. N. BISSON, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), pp. 173, 175, 222-223; P. VIOLLET, Histoire des Institutions Politiques et Administrates de la France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1890-1903), III, 189-190. (25) C.A., II, xliv, nos. 1962-1967, 1973. Nos. 1965-1967 were registered with lists of officials and magnates elsewhere, to whom the letters were to be sent. In fact they probably were not sent, unless possibly to persons in Albigeois. No. 1973 contains an interesting, perhaps significant, ambiguity: for it can be read to mean that the promise was made in Agenais and Quercy. (26) BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc pp. 95-97,124-130. (27) Ibid., pp. 92-97. The count was informed of sessions of the general court of Agenais. Moreover, the bishop of Agen, who was associated in the task of collecting the count'sfouage, had an important interest in the general court.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

57

Even so, it is doubtful that the comital fouage of 1261 received its sanction in assemblies. The count had not personally visited the Midi for a decade. Had he meant to refer to meetings, whether held by himself or by his officials, it would have been advantageous to make this clear. What Alfonse had in mind, it seems likely, were the occasional unwary pledges made by individual magnates when, over a period of years, they had happened to meet the count. Some of these promises surely dated back to 1250 and 1251, when Alfonse had travelled in his new Toulousan domains upon returning from the East, and was already contemplating a new crusade (28). The burden of effective consent rested on the local negotiations. The count's commissioners, with the cooperation of the bishop of Agen, were to approach the towns in domain, beginning with those believed most likely to comply. They should negotiate with the leading men of each, and appoint ten or a dozen informed local persons to make property assessments. The count's men must total these assessments, preparing comprehensive lists for each town, and then levy the fouage accordingly; or they might, at this point, compose for at least equivalent gifts. When they have finished in one town and its district (bailliage), they should move on to another, and so proceed, not only for the count's towns, but also for those under mediate lords. Those lords must be notified, however (29). To the roving and localized procedure specified by this plan there could be no practical alternative, given the nature of the tax, which was to be based on property as well as hearths. Such an imposition is more like a royal aide than a fouage; and, indeed, the count remarks that the king taxes in this way. The object of securing maximum returns in a region of prosperous towns is at the cost of a maximum of effort. Even if towns compose, thereby gaining the right to collect as well as assess, the commissioners will have to verify the assessments in order to know whether the offers are acceptable. There can be little use here for the convocation of committed deputies. In practice the officials must have opened discussions with consuls and (28) See the itinerary compiled by FOURNIER and GU£BIN, E.A., p. xix; BouTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 78-79. (29) C.A., II, no. 1968; STEPHENSON, Mediaeval Institutions, pp. 21-22. C.A., nos. 1962-1967 seem to be the preliminary orders; nos. 1962 and 1965 claim that the count has hearth totals before starting.

58

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

notables in each place; and it depended on local custom and temper whether they were then put in touch with the mass of townsfolk in parliaments. The territorial extent of the negotiated obligation was not always clear. Protests resulted when officials attempted to collect in outlying parishes claimed by towns that had composed (30). Of actual operations in the first phase of the drive in the Midi only a few facts are known. The commissioners had difficulty following their instructions in all details, which is not surprising, but they did obtain important pledges from Agen and Port-SteMarie, and eventually realized considerable sums in Agenais, Quercy, and Albigeois (31). On different occasions the men of Agen negotiated through deputies with the officials, and with Alfonse himself (32), our first evidence of a practice that was common in later years. The commissioners seem to have bogged down in the attempt to account for all the hearths in each bailiwick, which helps to explain why the earlier campaign fell short of its goal. There is no doubt that the original goal was a coverage of the whole county of Toulouse (33). Of the later operations in the South we are much better informed. The commissioners apparently picked up the work where they had dropped it, recommencing in the Toulouse area and Rouergue in 1267, and reaching Venaissin the next year. Though the general orders issued in 1267 and after were more flexible than those of ca. (30) See C.A., I, no. 822; II, 1704; cf. I, 341. These incidents probably favored the petty imperialism of chartered communities, whose rights sometimes seemed like sheltering walls to unorganized people outside. Cf. BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, pp. 302-305; P. DOGNON, Les Institutions Politiques et Administratives du Pays de Languedoc... (Toulouse, 1895), pp. 40-41, 148-155. The crown later found it advantageous to encourage towns to represent the neighboring villages; see, e.g., «Documents ... de Poitiers,» Arch. Hist. Poitou, XLIV, 257, 335-336, 359. (31) C.A., II, nos. 1973, 1978; cf. 1976, 1977. BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, p. 280. (32) C.A., II, no. 1840; Archives...d'Agen, Chartes, nos. 53, 54; cf. above, n. 19. Agen's concession in principle dated back several years. For deputations of Najac (Rouergue) to the administrative center of Villefranche to negotiate fouage, certify hearths, and pay, in 1267, see Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. FrangaisNouv. Acquis. 10372, fols. 68-70. (33) C.A,II,no. 1967.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

59

1261 (34), the latter remained the basis of operations. There becomes apparent a tendency to set flat rates on rural hearths, averaging around ten sous, but this may have been the practice in the Agenais hinterlands, too(35)- Otherwise, no immediate change in method accompanied the subtly altered arguments. Officials traversed the Garonne and Aveyron valleys, notifying lords individually, confronting villages—including those in domain—one by one, counting hearths, assessing or composing, and sooner or later collecting (36). What was at stake in those areas alone is suggested by the fact that the correspondence refers to dealings with some fifty villages in Toulousain and eighty in Rouergue, worth potentially some 45001.1. in total subsidy. These very rough figures could possibly be doubled to account for transactions that did not happen to come to the count's attention. Yet, even assuming so considerable a sum as this, it appears that the laborious effort in the countryside was less important than the drive in the towns. Toulouse alone offered 60001.1. in 1267 (37). This came after nearly a year of discussions, and more bargaining was needed, over terms and incidence of the tax, to obtain payment (38). In Rouergue five of the larger towns were assessed for a total of about 32001.1. (39). The dealings with Millau were characteristic. A composition of 12001. had been settled well over a year before the payment was finished and letters of nonprejudice issued (40). (34) Ibid., I, nos. 238, 323, 372, 393, 604, 978, 1038. There is little evidence of fouage in Agenais and Quercy after 1266; see II, nos. 1532, 1561; E.A., no. 128, pp. 306 (153), 318 (246); Layettes, IV, nos. 5601, 5631. (35) For which we have no information. See C.A., I, nos. 177, 181, 182; II, 1688,1698; cf. BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 294-296. (36) See, e.g., C.A., I, nos. 147-149,152,233, 244, 249, 252, 253, 255, 257, 265, 267, 273,275,277,280, 319, 330, 531, 533, 537, 542; II, 1634. (37) Ibid., I, no. 325; and see next note. (38) H.L., VIII, 1560-1562; VI (1879), 893-895, nn. by A. MOLINIER; C.A., I, nos. 243,325, 341, 363, 364. See also MOLINIER, in H.L., VII, 561-566. The documents cited seem to show that Toulouse gave its consent in principle in 1266 (possibly in the Pentecost parlement; see below, p. 93), but that a specific offer came only some time later, after further negotiation. (39) C.A., I, nos. 177, 517, 545. For one of these towns, Najac, the local record of assessment and payment is preserved, Bibl. Nat., MS. Frangais Nouv. Acquis. 10372, fols. 68-70. (4<>) C.A., I, nos. 517, 545; Layettes, IV, no. 5517; H.L., VIII, 1668-1669.

60

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

These few figures may help us to understand the tendency of local negotiations elsewhere. In Poitou and Saintonge the leading towns were approached in the summer of 1267, the lords not till a year later. In Auvergne, while the towns were pressed hard for subsidies, the nobles and their villagers had the good fortune of being entirely ignored. As in Languedoc, the apanage towns were dealt with separately and, generally, in order of importance. The count tried particularly to get the larger places to set a good example for the others (41). How forcefully the demands de jure could be urged is shown by letters of October 1268, intended to expedite matters at Riom, Poitiers, Saintes, and other towns. Officials were directed not merely to request the money as a rightful aid of crusade, but to inquire «secretly» of the several hundred leading men of each town about local property values (42)! In the summer of 1268 Alfonse opened negotiations with the magnates of Poitou-Saintonge and Venaissin. And for the first time (as far as we know) his officials responded to orders by convoking assemblies. It is probably not accidental that the meetings occurred within a month of each other: one, composed of lay lords of Poitou, at Poitiers on 23 September; and a second, comprising prelates and barons of Venaissin, at Carpentras on 21 October. The gathering at Poitiers might well have soured Alfonse toward assemblies. His agents had requested the barons to offer an aid for crusade, but they had stalled with the reply that they would go before the count himself and give what they «well could.» This response Alfonse found «insufficient.» A more serious difficulty attached to the refusal of the assembly to concede what the administration had assumed: that the aid of crusade was de jure (43). So far from clearing the way to immediate collections, the barons' cooperaArchives Municipals of Millau, CC. 342, contains fragments of the graduated assessment ofafouage, possibly connected with this composition. (41) C.A., I, nos. 24, 96, 98, 112, 120, 651, 689, 973, 1131; «Documents ... de Poitiers,» Arch. Hist. Poitou, XLIV, 123-124; «Comptes et Enquetes d'Alphonse ... 1253-1269», ed. A. BARDONNET, Arch. Hist. Poitou, VIII (1879), 37 (Poitou and Saintonge); C.A., I, nos. 192,211,224,725,743, 746-749,756,1180, 1197 (Auvergne). C2) C.A., I, nos. 651,749. («) 7iW.,no.707.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

61

tion in feigning immunity left no recourse but to a time-consuming investigation of custom. Not for another year was Alfonse supplied with the report he needed. He then ordered a new negotiation with the nobles. Surprisingly enough, he left his officials free to convoke another assembly if they saw fit. He may have felt that the damage once done could hardly be repeated, and hoped that the barons might collectively capitulate as readily as they had collectively resisted. But, whatever his expectations, further disappointments in this negotiation were to follow (44). The assembly at Carpentras on 21 October 1268 has escaped the notice of historians (45). Its purpose, clearly, was to remedy the most patent defects of the method by which the villagers of Toulousain and Rouergue were being taxed. The count's officials frankly granted the assembled magnates of Venaissin their right of free consent to the crusade subsidy, no longer trusting to the old promises so easily forgotten or disputed. Thereupon the prelates and barons were induced to permit zfouage on their men at the high rate o sixteen s. on the hearth. This being nearly double the average prevailing in the other senechaussees, it appears that Alfonse was doubtful whether the rural collections then in progress would justify the expense they occasioned. If we may trust to the glimpse afforded by a single document, the assembly of Carpentras was an impressive event. The bishop of Cavaillon sought, for his consent not only a declaration of non-prejudice to his rights, but assurance that in the event of hardship his tenants should have their tax reduced (46). Villagers could scarcely have asked more of elected representatives. This assembly was followed by the usual local discussions with lords, villages, and towns. Assessments had to be made or verified, compositions to be offered, collections to be effected (47). One or two lords seem to have refused consent, whether in the assembly at Carpentras or later, we do not know (48). The count's own tenants (44) Ibid., no. 1117. Also 1041,1042,1067. (45) Which is hardly surprising, because the only record of it, in an episcopal cartulary of Cavaillon, was not printed until 1959 (E.A., no. 120). (46) Ibid.9no. 120. (47) C.A., II, nos. 1722,1725,1741,1748,1753,1774,1775,1788,1791, 17 1797,1822,1823. (48) Ibid., no. 1793; E.A., no. 128, p. 299 (89); cf. C.A., II, nos. 1723

62

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

were assessed at the supreme rate of 24 s. per hearth — surely calculated pour encourager les autres (49)! Nevertheless, the drive in Venaissin was successful: more efficient, less acrimonious, and markedly speedier than in other districts. Already by July 1269, not a year after the work began, Alfonse was in possession of reports showing compositions pledged for nearly half of the 64-odd villages, plus assessments for the rest (50). He could anticipate from this source about 7145 1.1, a sum probably not far short of the total proceed from Rouergue and Toulousain for less than half the number of villages, and probably twice what he would obtain in compositions from the leading Provencal towns (51). The preliminary assembly seems to have served a useful purpose in Venaissin. To speak of «local» negotiations under Alfonse of Poitiers is not without its hazards. It would be a mistake to suppose, or imply, that provincial and central administration were then very sharply distinct. On the contrary, the documents amply testify to the ambiguity of French government in this respect. Authority is not fully delegated. Local officials, such as seneschals, must share their prerogatives with commissioners from court, and both sets of servants are so closely scrutinized that their work may be regarded as an extension of central administration, or, indeed, of the count's personal authority. Therefore consent to taxation could not have been a wholly local business. Alfonse incessantly directed agents to keep him informed of specific negotiations and to send assessment lists and the like (52). Those being taxed needed no urging to appeal to the count (53), nor apparently did officials discourage the practice. The count was thus well placed to follow the progress of local bargaining and collections and to control these operations as he wished. His intervention, upon («) C.A,II, nos. 1732,1734, 1773, 1776; E.A., no. 123. Slightly reduced r were available for compositions, as was customary. Negotiations with Avignon took a different course: see C.A., II, nos. 1785-1787,1811. (50) E.A.,no. 123;C.A,II,no.l797. (51) I.e., Carpentras, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Avignon, and Cavaillon, E.A., no. 123 ;C. A, II, nos. 1785-1787. (52) E.g., C.A., I, nos. 348,352,546,792,907; II, 1617,1634,1734. (53) E.g., ibid., I, nos. 175,249,252; II, 1748,1791.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

63

receipt of reports or petitions, was the normal middle stage of negotiations that began and ended in the field. But it was a matter of indifference to the count where the basic decisions were made. When interested parties went to the trouble of writing or visiting him, and when he felt satisfactorily informed, Alfonse sometimes negotiated himself. Discussions with proctors of Toulouse were carried on in this way during 1266-1267 (54). And, to cite an instance relating to rural taxation, Bernard de Levazia, a squire of Rouergue, came to Alfonse in 1269 and agreed to a composition of 601.1. payable by his men, who were assessed at 108 hearths. The count, assured of the figures, had nothing to lose by settling on the spot (55). The council had an important part in these negotiations. Its members (consiliarii) not only advised the count but also received petitions and reports. Its clerks registered the count's letters and related documents. Councillors also served as collectors, or conferred with them, in the provinces. In this capacity they were investigators of right, functioning very like the enqueteurs who, for both Alfonse and the king, held local inquiries and prepared cases for those periodic sessions of council known as «parlements.» And since, likewise in both governments, parlements were meetings for accounting as well as litigation, it is hardly surprising that the parlements of Alfonse should have been much occupied with extraordinary finance during these years (56). The parlement terms — usually two weeks after All Saints, Candlemas, and Pentecost — were designated not only for central accounting but also for local bargaining and payments (57). We (54) H.L., VIII, 1560-1563; see above, n. 38. (55) C.A,II,no. 1698. (56) See BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, pp. 223-224, 373-421; MOLINIER, in H.L. VII, 527-529, and introduction to C.A., II, liv-lxvii; FOURNIER and GUEBIN, in E.A., pp. xlviii-1. There is no full study of Alfonse of Poitiers' parlements. See, however, besides the works just cited, H. G. RICHARDSON, «The Origins of Parliament^ Trans. Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., XI (1928), 166-167, 176; and, for the royal Parlement, C.-V. LANGLOIS, «Les Origines du Parlement de Paris,» Revue Historique, XLII (1890), 74-114. (57) C.A, I, nos. 131, 243, 287, 545, 934; II, 1753; etc. See also the references to parlamentum there indexed. The accounts (compoti) coinciding with parlements were scheduled to run into the week following that of parlement itself.

64

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

may assume that many comital directives dated after these festivals are based on information and petitions presented at parlement and accounting sessions (58). It seems significant, for instance, that over half of the financial directives to the senechaussee of Toulouse in 1267 were written in June and November (59). About half of those extant for Venaissin in 1269 date from Pentecost term alone (60). The financial petitions do not lend themselves to this sort of analysis, being undated in the letters that mention them. They could be presented at any time, of course, but parlement was obviously the best time. The lone surviving parlement roll records a good many of them (61). Was parlement, then, an occasion for granting taxes? The evidence is not wholly satisfactory, but the interest of the question may be sufficient to warrant some discussion. There was certainly a tendency for subsidy negotiations conducted centrally to be concentrated during parlement and accounting terms. For example, most such negotiations recorded in the fall of 1267 are dated between 10 and 28 November, very nearly the limits of the All Saints parlement. During that period, Alfonse, in his headquarters at Longpont, notes offers by proctors of at least one town and one village of Rouergue, of another village in Toulousain, As a rule officials of the apanage accounted on the fortnight, or the day after the quinzaine, that is, on parlement day; those of the county of Toulouse several days or a week later. See, e.g., ibid., I, nos. 119,146, 192, 239, 310, 320, 365, 545-547, 651, 689, 749,756,767, 973; II, 1622,1682. (58) The word «parlement» (orpallement; also parlamentum or pallamentum) never occurs in reference to current sessions; and it is quite uncommon in administrative texts dated during or after parlement terms (only about 13 such references in 74 indexed pieces referring to parlement in the C.A.). The explanation for this must be that parlement, being an occasion, is useful to date in advance, but unnecessary to mention when in course or afterwards, unless in respect to incidents, ordinances, or arrets (see ibid.,1, nos. 29, 38, 220, 590, 594, 1026). Parlement and accounts are not identical (604, 978); but the latter have not yet disengaged themselves from the former,or rather, from the consilium of which both are the occasional special sessions. The «parlement» of Toulouse in 1270 is really «consilium,» according to its records, ibid., II, no. 1406 (cf. 1067); E.A., no. 128, pp. 289, 349-350 (493-497). (59) See generally C.A.91, nos. 227-367. (60) Ibid., II, nos. 1719-1826. See below, n. 63. («) E.A.9no. 128.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

65

and by the mayor and sworn men of La Rochelle (62). Moreover, virtually all of the financial agreements known to have been made by Alfonse himself with parties of Venaissin are mentioned in letters written at Moissy soon after the Pentecost parlement of 1269. There were offers by three lords — one by proxy — and the town of Carpentras, and discussions with a village proctor (63). We need not imagine that the crusade subsidy was the only business bringing these people to court. The financial discussions were probably, in most cases, by-products of hearings on petitions or causes. Worth noticing in this connection is one of the rare surviving «parlementary» mandates. In May 1266 the city of Toulouse, having been assigned a hearing in the coming Pentecost parlement respecting privileges disputed with the count, empowered its proctors to negotiate the tax then pending as well as the appeals proper. The grant had already been requested in parley at Toulouse, but had become contingent on the satisfaction of petitions (64). The procuration (62) C.A., I, nos. 177, 181, 350, 112. See also 182, mention of an offer by the proctor of two other Rouergue villages, cancelled in register; 517, vague reference to a recent offer by Millau, in a letter dated Longpont, 26 November 1267; and 325, 529. The pieces concerning Rouergue are almost uniform with a series of very numerous letters, beginning well before All Saints, and showing Alfonse, informed of hearth counts, ordering postponements of levies and local negotiations for compositions; see nos. (181, 182, 517), 148, 149, 152, 162, 164, 168, 176, 178, 183, etc. The case of the village in Toulousain (350) differs only in the fact that neither Alfonse nor the proctor had handy a total of hearths to bargain against. How closely compoti and discussions were linked is suggested by the fact that three offers, two of them from Rouergue (one, however, noted in a cancelled copy), were recorded on 19 November, the very day scheduled for the Languedoc accounts (see nos. 143,146,148,310,320, 323,325). But the one offer recorded on 10 November cannot very well be dismissed as preceding parlement, for we know that important discussions in «council» (what may perhaps be called the «parlement council») were held on or before the llth (336); the question of Toulouse's pending grant was raised at that time (338). («) Ibid., II, nos. 1760, 1764, 1774, 1775, 1788, 1789. Pentecost fell early in 1269, on 12 May. Parlement had been scheduled for the usual fortnight following, i.e., 26 or 27 May; accounts for the apanage on the same day. But accounts for Languedoc were set for three weeks after Pentecost (2 June); and it is possible that the councillors were still holding discussions until near that date. See I, nos. 760,952,978; II, 1622,1745. (64) H.L., VIII, 1560-1561. Needless to say, the deputies are accredited to

66

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

perfectly illustrates the judicial, or quasi-judicial, route by which the taxation of towns might reach parlement. The lost mandates of 1267 and 1269 cannot have been very different. Other evidence, while supporting the foregoing observations, serves to link taxation still more clearly with parlements. The leaders of La Rochelle had decided the preceding summer to petition in the All Saints parlement of 1267; and their grant, recorded on 19 November, was one of several agreements they made with Alfonse at that time (65). With their offer, which was for 20001.1., is registered an identical but undated form for St-Jean-d'Angely, pledging 10001. t. for crusade. This act, however, is cancelled (66). Then, under date of 11 April 1268, we find a letter to the seneschal of Saintonge advising him of the count's displeasure at St-Jean for making so poor an offer as 10001.1., thus setting a bad example for other towns, etc.; and it adds that the men of St-Jean need not bother to attend the forthcoming Pentecost parlement because Alfonse has no intention of discussing this offer further (67). It is possible that the sum in question had first been offered, or sought, in the All Saints parlement of 1267, and then again come under consideration in local meetings of which the seneschal notified the count the next spring. However that may be, in April, while the impatient count wanted the grant secured locally, the townsmen were willing to wait and bargain in parlement. In September 1268 the commissioners responsible for raising the doubled rent in Poitou told the count that he could expect a response from the roturiers in the «pruichien pallement» (68). This response was not apparently to take the form of a collective deputation of the Alfonse, not to the parlement. See, too, ibid., VI, 893-895, with notes by Molinier. A similar mandate, of Agen, is extant, but lacking the connection with parlement, Archives...d'Agen, Chartes, no. 54. (65) See C.A.9 I, nos. 100 (mentioning request for delay of a payment on a debt «usque ad parlamentum nostrum Omnium sanctorum»), 109-112. The debt and the grant appear to be distinct, but the point is hardly affected if they were related. (66) Ibid.,no. 113;cf. 112. (67) Ibid., no. 689 (rubric seems accidentally mistaken); cf. 120, orders in January to collect the 20001.1. from La Rochelle. (68) 7£/W.,no.707.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

67

non-nobles (69). But it is curious to find that Alfonse himself convoked, just a few days later, representatives of another class of domain subjects — the Jews — to negotiate a new and malicious tallage. Captive 'deputies'from the apanage lands were to be brought by officials coming to account on 16 November, which was precisely the parlement day; others from Languedoc were to be brought a week later, on the accounting day for southern seneschals. But the Jews were to talk with the count (70). Parlement and accounts, coinciding as they do, are being thought of as a clearing house for fiscal negotiation. The most important piece of evidence relates to the special session of council held at Poitiers in the early spring of 1270. Seneschals in all of the domains were ordered to publicize this meeting, and another one, to follow, in Toulouse, and to make known that these would replace the usual Candlemas parlement «in France» (71). The directives for Poitou and Saintonge stated that members of the council would be at Poitiers, on 3 March, to hear and settle «causas et negocia»; and among these matters, it is made clear, was the nobles' subvention for crusade. Each seneschal must cite barons and other nobles whom he knows «ought to be summoned)) to convene then and there and respond to the count's deputies with respect to the standing request for subsidy of crusade and «proceed according to custom in this matter.» Here, then, Alfonse is certainly seeking consent in a parlement or council. It might perhaps be argued that the special session of council is merely the occasion for another provincial assembly such as was held at Poitiers a year and a half earlier. But the language paraphrased above suggests that this is not the case. The crusade subsidy is now a causa rather than a (69) Cf. ibid.9 no. 1115, notice of a petition by six parishes of Saintonge relative to the double cens, September 1269. (70) Ibid., nos. 652, 890; cf. 634, seneschal of Poitou is to report «ad parlamentum nostrum, quod erit in crastino instantis quindene Omnium sanctorum [16 Nov. 1268], cum ad nos [Alfonse] veneritis pro vestris compotis faciendis»; also 707,752. This business with the Jews is discussed further below. It is pertinent here to remark that we have a roll of routine fines («finaciones) facte ... in parlamento Omnium sanctorum, anno Domini M°CC°LX°nono...,» Layettes, IV, no. 5600. (71) C.A., I, no. 1067; II, 1406. BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, p. 415, mistook the date of the meeting at Poitiers.

68

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

negotium; it is a dispute between count and nobles to be «heard» in court; a matter of right not of policy. Though the nobles probably did convene at Poitiers as ordered, we do not know how this issue was resolved (72). The meeting at Toulouse does not seem to have been the scene of bargaining for grants. Major negotiations in the Midi were finished by the winter of 1270; there was no need to order a summons for finance as in Poitou. But the sessions at Toulouse happen to be illuminated by a roll which lists the «cases and business)) presented, together with the decisions or assignments made by the council (73). Among some twenty items pertaining to taxation, only one could in any sense be described as a negotiation. It is the notice of a petition by the proctor for the Jews of Toulouse-Albigeois, who sought — though unsuccessfully — the remission of 3001.1. on a large offer previously made to the seneschal (74). The other financial items, mostly private and municipal petitions about levies or immunities(75), have at least the interest of illustrating the sort of information, now lost to us, on which Alfonse had based many an order in recent years. They confirm us in thinking that the negotiators)) in previous parlements had usually been petitioners too. The evidence reviewed above supports the conclusion that consent to taxation was sometimes obtained in parlements held by Alfonse. Parlement was not the usual occasion for basic bargaining but a convenient supplementary device. And if the count did not often summon people to parlement for fiscal reasons, it does not follow that he did not wish to do so. Summonses to distant places were contrary to custom and unpopular (76). Quite properly speaking, (72) C.A., I, no. 1067; Layettes, IV, no. 5659. See also C.A., I, no. 1066, regarding other financial dealings with the nobles of Poitou. The count continued discussions with Poitevin towns that spring, but probably as he passed through them, E.A., p. xlviii, and n. 5. (73) Archives Nationales (Paris), J.1031A, no. 11, edited in E.A., no. 128, pp. 289-354. This is the earliest extant record of the proceedings in a French parlement. C4) Ibid., no. 128, p. 321 (262). C5) Ibid., no. 128, pp. 297, 306-307, 316, 318, 320-323, 331-332, 341, 345, 351. (76) See Layettes, IV, no. 5659, Alfonse (at Poitiers, in March 1270) grants the Poitevin nobles non-prejudice to their rights for past citations to France.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

69

parlement was a court of last resort. For it seems clear that parlementary discussions of finance, as distinct from accounting, were judicial in nature. As such they perfectly reflect what was going on locally. Throughout the domains, even in areas where the count had assumed to have custom on his side, the negotiations tended to be reduced to inquiries of right (77). They were the work of a form of administration still incompletely distinct from justice. A consideration of the representation diversely employed casts further light on the nature of these negotiations. The government of Alfonse of Poitiers is not yet much concerned with the ways in which authority is delegated. Procuration, according to the formulas of Roman-canonical procedure, is much in evidence, as we have seen. Nobles, prelates, towns, even villages, deal with the count or his agents by proxy (78). On the other hand, consuls or notables without full powers can speak for towns; and villages are not rarely «represented» informally by their lords, as was traditional (79). Though lords who stood for villagers were commonly doing no more than protecting their own rights, they sometimes made themselves spokesmen for their tenants. However exercised, this prerogative of lordship suffered at the hands of the count's officials, who not only dealt directly with sub-tenants, sometimes without consulting lords, but also began at last to insist that authority be delegated from below. Two financial petitions «on behalf» of villages were rejected in the council at Toulouse in 1270 on the ground — or pretext — that the nobles who presented them lacked mandates (80). Were it not for this last fact, we should be inclined to doubt that (77) See, e.g., C.A., I, nos. 172, 244, 249, 339, 536, 707, 934; II, 1359, 1702, 1790-1791 ;E.A,nos. 123; 128, pp. 297(76), 306 (156), 316 (226). The references to consilium or colloquium usually have to do with administrative consultations among the count's own officials, e.g., C.A., I, nos. 153, 158, 267,275, 352, 547,739; II, 1853. (78) H.L., VIII, 1560-1561; C.A., I, nos. 177, 181, 350, 529, 1163, 1191; II, 1369,1652,1719,1722,1732,1760,1789,1826; E.A., no. 128, p. 297 (69). (79) H.L., VIII, 1562-1563; C.A., I, nos. 533, 542; II, 1764, 1774, 1775,1822; E.A., nos. 120; 128, pp. 306 (156), 316 (226). (*°) E.A., no. 128, pp. 299 (89), 307 (160).

70

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Alfonso's officials had any use whatever for full powers as a device for expediting consent to taxation. For there is little else to show that they did, although they surely understood the mechanism (81). The numerous references to proctors are not very helpful because the powers borne by these agents are unspecified. Yet the argument from silence would be especially dangerous here. It is precisely in the itinerant proceedings, of which little direct evidence remains, that comital officials might have found powers of attorney most useful. Quite possibly the local work did see some development in the use of procuration in taxation. That this was apparently not the case in the central operations confirms the conclusion that consent in parlement had but secondary importance. None of Alfonse's fiscal assemblies was a truly representative body. Prelates and nobles merely «spoke for» rightless men;towns deputed singly, if at all. Whatever the procedure, in fact, the count dealt with people individually. Having the time and energy to treat each village as a special case, he did little to encourage the formation of large-scale communities. If four barons of Comminges consolidate to oppose thefouage on their men, or if six parishes of Saintonge petition together against heavy-handed collections of the doubled rent, these are but the ephemeral expressions of local convenience (82). There is an exceptional case to be noted, however. It concerns, significantly, the lone group of people who were at once entirely in the count's mercy and well worth bargaining with. The Jews on domain, associated by necessity, had been tallaged as a community from the earliest period of Alfonse's rule (83). A shared and self-administered liability had become customary. This entailed representation and the election of assessors to distribute the burden among individuals (84). In 1268 the usual pressure was increased. Jews were jailed (81) See ibid., no. 128, p. 321 (262); C.A., I, nos. 918, 919, 963; II, 2092. And on plena potestas and consent, POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, chapter III. O2) C.A,II,no. 1365;!, 1115. (83) «Comptes d'Alfonse de Poitiers (1243-1247),» ed. A. BARDONNET, Arch. Hist. Poitou, IV (1875), 18,40, 81,162,170,174,182,193,198,205; Layettes, III, no. 3783. (84) These facts I infer from references given in nn. 83, 85, and 89. See, too, BOUTARIC, Louis et Alfonse, p. 327.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

11

their property and securities impounded (85)« And it was in these circumstances that in October of that year Alfonse ordered each seneschal to send to the accounts of All Saints «two imprisoned Jews from among the richer Jews... in order to fine with us for all Jews of your senechaussee» (86). However ludicrous this scheme for consent to spoliation may seem, it is plausible that the count should have thought it expedient to order central convocations of men through whom an unusual and dire obligation could be corporately administered. And it is probable that one or more of these meetings did occur. In December heavy fines were ordained for the Jews of Poitou, Saintonge, and Auvergne, the very districts that had been summoned to appear on 16 November (87). As for the gathering of deputies from the Midi, scheduled for 23 November, all we know is that the Jews of Rouergue allegedly promised 12001.1. on some indefinite date in the Ile-de-France (88). The viguerie of Toulouse, though summoned to this second session, was assigned a fine in the ordinance for the apanage lands. So there must have been some response from the South; but the count apparently decided to delay levies on most of the Jews in the county of Toulouse until he knew more about their wealth. Seneschals of the county negotiated separately with their Jewish communities in 1269 and 1270 (89). The taxation of Alfonse of Poitiers was a work of its times. Not only were the impositions of accustomed sorts, but the attitudes of the count continued to be characteristic of his baronial status. His insistence on personally controlling the negotiations in all aspects surely marks the prebureaucratic age. His efforts constantly betray a seigneurial point of view, a paternalism that seems incompatible with true bargaining and consent. And yet, determined though he was to have his way, Alfonse was equally determined to have hi (85) BOUTARIC, pp. 320-333; C.A., I, nos. 646, 647, 652,709,888, 890 (86) C.A., I, nos. 652,890. (87) Ibid., no. 658;cf.652. (88) Ibid., II, no. 1629, directive to seneschal of Rouergue, 26 March 1269, rejecting a reported grant ofJ 000 1.1. because it is 2001. less than the Jews of Rouergue coffered at La Ferte Alais.» (89) Ibid., nos. 1213, 1427, 1629, 1759, 1808;£.A,no. 128, pp. 297 (70), 321 (262); cf. C.A., I, nos. 943,970; II, 1304.

72

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

way conceded. He was, indeed, a conventionally just ruler, undoubtedly influenced by his brother Louis, whose reputation for justice he knew at close hand. This is why the negotiations for taxes were an endless series of hearings and investigations of right; on any comparable scale they would have swamped a later ruler. It is significant that conditions still permitted such a procedure. Unlike the kings who followed, Alfonse could afford to negotiate with a senechaussee or a town for two or three years if necessary. These points are perhaps in need of emphasis because in other and more obvious respects Alfonse seems to be in advance of his times. The resourceful casting about for ways and means — of which the abuse of the Jews is an instance —, the selective use of assemblies, the relentless pressure for payment, the implication that taxes justified by necessity are a common responsibility: these things inevitably remind us of Philip the Fair. The parallels are not without significance. For it seems clear that Alfonse (and Louis IX), despite the traditionalist character of their politics, were hastening the day of public taxation when they sought to make the aid of crusade a general financial obligation. Philip III and his successor, continuing the trend, were in a sense building on this precedent when they tried to «cash in» on extended military obligations (90). It should be noticed, however, that Alfonse had encountered peculiarities of the French constitution which were too deep-rooted to change in the course of a generation, even of a generation so marked by political reorientation as was the last quarter of the thirteenth century. This circumstance accounts for some of the parallels noted above. Like the kings who came after him, Alfonse had to deal with people standing in the most diverse relations to himself and each other. There was neither precedent nor advantage in trying to gain approval and payment from vassals, townsmen, villagers, and Jews in any standard way. One approach will do for Rouergue, another is needed in Poitou. The only uniform certainty is that, whatever the condition of right, custom, or preliminary consent, much local (90) See H. S£E, Les Classes Rurales et le Regime Domanial en France au Moyen Age (Paris, 1901), pp. 591-593; STRAYER, in History of the Crusades, II, 490-492, 510-511; BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, pp. 265-281; .SPRAYER, Early French Taxation, pp. 44-58. Knights who took the cross were exempt from Alfonse's financial aids, e.g., C.A., I, no. 1180.

Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers

73

bargaining will be required. Provincial institutions were lacking — with the curious exception of the Jewish communities — through which representative promises could be made effective. The usefulness of general assemblies was therefore limited. They could serve for explaining taxes and for seeking general expressions of approval, but they could not replace discussions in township and village. Alfonse occasionally employed assemblies in this way, although not, on the whole, to such advantage as his successors, whose appeals were more intensely political in nature. This episode in Capetian finance has also the interest of illustrating an early stage — and one that is especially characteristic of France — in the development of representation and consent as related concepts. It is the stage in which representation and consent have become relevant without yet being valued. The business of the count is to collect money by any means; that of his subjects to avoid paying. The latter seem hardly more interested in a «right of consent» than is the count in expediting negotiations through collective responsibility or powers of attorney. Judicial plena potestas has not yet made the leap from court to assembly. Important signs of change were not lacking, to be sure; but the concepts in question were to mature less easily in France than in England. One of England's advantages was that she could settle quite early on parliament as a place in which to concentrate representatives and institutionalize consent. Although this development was still incomplete in the 1260's, France in the same period was just starting to experiment. It is a matter of significance for comparative history that parlements had a part in these experiments (91). But some of the constitutional factors that were to prevent an evolution in France like that across the Channel were becoming apparent as early as the days of Alfonse of Poitiers; and it is unlikely that the Parlement of Paris was ever thereafter as active in financial consultation as the parlement of Alfonse had been. France was already diverging from England in its parliamentary experience. (91) Not only the parlement of Alfonse, but also that of Paris: see BISSON, p. 272, and especially STRAYER, Early French Taxation, pp. 77-80. In 1310 Philip IV proposed to convoke proctors to a Parlement to consent to the aid profilia maritanda.

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 3

P. 51 note 7, add: For mention of 4000 1. for crusade see Les Olim, ou registres de arrets..., ed. A. Beugnot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1839-1848), i, 406. P. 70 note 83, add: And see generally Gerard Nahon, "Les juifs dans les domaines d'Alfonse de Poitiers, 1241-1271," Revue des Etudes juives, cxxv (1966), 167211.

4

CONSULTATIVE FUNCTIONS IN THE KING'S PARLEMENTS (1250-1314)* THE early history of the Parlement of Paris has never occasioned such intense scholarly debate as that of the English parliament. For those who knew how exclusively a court of law the Parlement was to be, its first extant records held few surprises. Charles-Victor Langlois was able to dispose of the subject, it seemed, in a magisterial essay published as long ago as 1890, and the scholars who supplemented his account naturally stressed the judicial work of Parlement.1 Thereafter Parlement tended to be overlooked in those broader discussions of mediaeval consultation in which its English analogue had a favored place. Yet from these discussions there developed new perspectives having potentially useful applications to the nascent Parlement. The view that organized assemblies originated as judicial institutions has been modified, partly through the demonstration that politics, whether disguised or not, did after all find some outlet in thirteenth-century courts and assemblies, and partly through the realization that mediaeval justice was something more flexible and comprehensive than the justice of modern times.2 Moreover, the comparative * The substance of this article was presented at the meeting of the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, at Stanford, California in August 1967. For helpful criticism I thank Professors John F. Benton, Elizabeth A. R. Brown, and Gavin I. Langmuir; and for support of research in 1964-65, when some of the material was located, I thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1 Ch.-V. Langlois, "Les origines du Parlement de Paris," Revue Historique, XLII (1890), 74-114. See also Paul Guilhiermoz, Enquetes et proces: etude sur la procedure et le fonctionnement du Parlement au XIVe siecle . . . (Paris, 1892); Gustave Ducoudray, Les origines du Parlement de Paris et de la justice aux XIlie et XIVe siecles (Paris, 1902); Felix Aubert, "Nouvelles recherches sur le Parlement de Paris: periode d'organisation (1250-1350)," Nouvelle Revue Historique de Droit Fran^ais et fitranger, xxxix (1916), 62-109, 229-290; XL (1917), 48-72, 181-208. 2 For the older view see F. W. Maitland, introduction to Memoranda de Parliamento, 1305 (London, 1893); C. H. Mcllwain, The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy (New Haven, 1910). Among recent works, see J. R. Strayer, The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis (Cambridge Mass., 1932), p. 12; Bertie Wilkinson, Studies in the Constitutional History of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 2d ed. (Manchester, 1952), especially chapters 1 and 2. See also Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 1100-1322 (Princeton, 1964), ch. 3 (first published in 1943), and cf. G. I. Langmuir, "Politics and Parliaments in the Early Thirteenth Century," Etudes sur Vhistoire des assemblies d'etats (Etudes presentees a la commission Internationale pour Vhistoire des assemblies d'etats, xxix) (Paris, 1966), 47-62 and "Justice in early English parliaments," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxvii (1954).

76

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

method has been employed to suggest that the differentiation between Parlement and parliament was less marked in early times than had been supposed.3 My purpose here is to reconsider the early history of Parlement from these lately developed points of view: to focus on what French historians speak of as "extra-judicial attributions" and to inquire whether parlements facilitated the representation of such general interests of society as would subsequently find their usual expression in alternative central assemblies and Estates. In thus dealing with Parlement as an assembly, I do not mean to imply that it was the only kind of general assembly in later thirteenth-century France, much less to minimize its role as a court of law. These points, on the contrary, are well established; and indeed the essentially judicial nature of the early Parlement is in some respects confirmed by what follows. Parlements4 were the periodic meetings of king's counsellors who displayed especial competence and loyalty in handling the "cases and affairs" that came before the king in swelling volume after about 1250.5 Whatever the disposition of these matters, they had first to be discussed, to be "talked about," so that the term parlamentum (or pallamentum; vernacular: parlement, pallement) was no less applicable to these sessions than to the less specialized assemblies which it continued to denote. The prelates, knights, and clerks of parlements were committees of the undifferentiated curia regis. These men are referred to as consiliarii throughout our period, a fact which should immediately caution us against interpreting their judicial qualifications too narrowly or exclusively. Despite their modified responsibilities — though perhaps we should only say that they worked harder rather than differently than before — , these were the old "court men" (curiales) who not only judged but also advised, deliberated, responded, and ordained. The Olim are full of allusions to these parliamentary 3 H. G. Richardson, "The Origins of Parliament," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., xi (1928), 137-183; Strayer, Administration of Normandy, pp. 16-17, and "Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair," in Studies in Early French Taxation, with C. H. Taylor (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 78-79. Cf. Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, Histoire des institutions fran^aises au moyen age, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1957-62), u, 431-447 ("Les attributions extra-judiciaires du Parlement"); cf. 578-581. 4 In so far as convenient I shall speak hereafter of "parlements" in the particular or the plural rather than of "Parlement." The latter form, while familiar, implies a conception of the institution — that of a standing commission instead of an assembly — still not wholly appropriate to the period before the 1290's and a conception that it is my purpose to test. Cf. Jules Viard, "La cour et ses "parlements" au XIVe siecle," Bibliotheque de Vficole des Charles, LXXIX (1918), 62-65. Readers should bear in mind that in the period under consideration the term curia often means "court-in-parlement"; see, e.g., Textes relatifs a Vhistoire du Parlement depuis les origines jusqu'en 1314* ed., Ch.-V. Langlois (Paris, 1888), nos. 70, 88, etc.; Les Olim, ou registres des arrets rendus par la cour du roi . . . , ed., Arthur Beugnot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1839-48), passim. This is true despite the fact that the curia remained organically distinct from parlements: see the works by Jules Viard cited above and below, note 53. The relation between the curia regis and parlements cannot, save incidentally, be studied here. 6 See generally Langlois, "Les origines du Parlement"; Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions, u, 332-508.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

77

techniques, which were readily adapted to the jurisprudence of the new court.6 Beaumanoir bears witness to the conflation of functions when he speaks of certain appeals as passing "to the council in the king's court in the parlement."7 Nevertheless, considered as specialized sessions of counsellors, parlements were not much like assemblies and they became less so with time. We catch glimpses of great men in occasional attendance but it was surely the regular members — men such as Eudes Rigaud, Pierre des Fontaines, and Julien de Peronne — who dominated the routine activities. As sessions lengthened, the bureaucratic character of the organization was accentuated and the magistri tenentes parlamentum were officially constituted in departments. On the other hand, sessions continued to be held, probably in every parlement, in which the masters and clerks were joined by other magnates and royal officials and even by the king. An appeal from the count of Flanders' court in 1290 was attended by King Philip IV, the archbishop of Rouen, the bishops of Paris, Orleans, and Terouanne, the elect of Senlis, the duke of Burgundy, the count of Ponthieu, the abbot of Moissac, "many archdeacons and other clerks of comparable rank, and many other clergymen, barons, knights, baillis, and others of the king's council to the number of sixty and more." While some of these persons may have participated in the judgment as peers of the principal and others as masters holding parlement, the assemblage as a whole appears to have had a testimonial rather than active role.8 The baillis as a group, as in other such lists, seem to be auditors, receiving the decisions of the parlement for local promulgation and enforcement. Then there were events or enactments occurring "in full parlement" (in plena parlamento or in plena curia), where again the public or testimonial function seems paramount. No very large assembly need be inferred from these terms; perhaps they usually denote open or formal sessions as distinct from the routine hearings of lesser pleas and reading of testimony. Both the lists of names and the references to "full parlements" sound a slightly archaic note as they occur in the Olim. They generally turn up in connection with issues of lordly privilege and with recognitions, guarantees, homages, and fealties performed in the king's court.9 For other kinds of putatively extra6 Guillaume de Nangis, Vita sancti Ludovici, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet and others, 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), to be cited hereafter as H.F., xx, 400; Langlois, Textes, nos. 24, ZGbis, 56, 80, 111; Olim, i, 432, 446, 643xx, 667vi, et passim; Actes du Parlement de Paris . . . (to 1328), ed., Edgard Boutaric, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863-67), I, no. 2715E. 7 Philippe de Beaumanoir, CoutumesdeBeauvaisis,ed.,Amedee Salmon, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899-1900), n, ch. Ixv (441). Cf. Fleta, ii, 2, edd., H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, 2 vols. (London, 1955), n, 109. 8 Olim, n, 300-301vi (Langlois, Textes, no. 104); "Huic judicio presentes fuerunt . . . [the list as given in text]"; cf. Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions, n, 335. 9 Olim, I, 486vi, 694xxxv, 707xxvi, 747xx, 758xvi; n, 75xii, 177xix, 218xlv, 265i, 517ix, et passim', "Essai de restitution d'un volume des Olim perdu . . . ," ed., Leopold Delisle, in Boutaric, Actes du Parlement de Paris, I, no. 18; Langlois, Textes, nos. 24, 27, 38, 40, 86, 117; cf. nos. 66, 74, 76; Paris, A(rchives) N(ationales), J.631, no. 10. In 1280 a Master Anselm was convicted of defaming the dean and chapter of Laon "in pleno pallamento, domino Francorum rege cum suis baronibus residentibus in eodem et audientibus . . . ," and elsewhere, "Pieces inedites relatives a 1'histoire de Laon au

78

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

judicial activity, such as legislation and diplomacy, the matter of attendance is even more problematical owing to the limitations of the parlement registers. So we must ask not only whether parlements were assemblies themselves but also whether they provided, or coincided with, occasions for more general assemblies and consultations. It is well to remember that the dates or terms of parlements corresponded at least roughly to those of the old festival courts, in which consultative activity of all kinds took place. The king's "three courts" mentioned in twelfth-century texts seem to have occurred traditionally in late spring (Pentecost), late fall (Christmas), and late winter (Easter).10 Now it is true that the earliest parlements were held more frequently than this and were not pegged to Christmas and Easter. The preferred dates in fall and winter were All Saints and Candlemas (or their octaves) which, when taken with Pentecost, as was the practice of parlements from 1262 to 1276, afforded a more nearly even distribution of meetings during the year.11 Probably this revised periodicity derives from administrative reforms that can be traced back to 1190. Philip Augustus had provided for the holding of courts at Paris thrice yearly at evenly spaced intervals during his absence on crusade. These courts were evidently intended to synchronize with the auditing of accounts from administrators of the domain; and the accounts, at least, seem to have been submitted on this basis from 1202 at the latest, the terms being the octaves of the feasts of Ascension (or Pentecost, three days later), All Saints, and Candlemas. Moreover, it should be remembered that in 1190 the local officials had been expressly required not only to render fiscal account but also to answer in the courts for their affairs (negotia). This obligation was ripe for renewal by the 1240's. The reform of local administration was one of the chief motives for establishing periodic parlements in France just as it was in contemporary England.12 Thus, by the middle of the thirteenth century the king's courtiers met "in the accounts" and "in the parlements" at about the same seasons of the year, when they were joined by their dispersed members and local officers concerned with justice and administration. That these were also occasions for broadly political counsels would therefore seem likely a priori, and the presumption is supported by the famous Moyen-Age," ed., Henri Cherrier, Bulletin de la Societe academique de Loon, xxxm (1910), 161-162. For plenum parliamentum in England, see Wilkinson, Studies in Constitutional History, ch. 1. The Norman Exchequer seems to have retained its character as a deliberative council of magnates more fully than parlements: see Ordonnances de Vfichiquier de Normandie aux XIVe et XVe siecles, ed., F. Soudet (Rouen-Paris, 1929), pp. xii-xiii, xvii. 10 Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed., H.-Frangois Delaborde and others, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1916-66), I, no. 53, discussed by Richardson, "Origins of Parliament," 152. Cf. Cartulaire normand . . . , ed., Leopold Delisle (Mtmoires de la societe des antiquaires de Normandie, 2e ser., vi) (Caen, 1852), no. 200. 11 See Langlois, Textes, pp. 230-232. 12 Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed., H.-Franc.ois Delaborde, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882-85), i, 101, 103; Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, Le premier budget de la monarchic franqaise: le compte general de 1202-1203 (Paris, 1932), p. 6; Leon L. Borrelli de Serres, Recherches sur divers services publics du XIHe au XVIIe siecle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1895-1909), i, 289-297; Richardson, "Origins of Parliament," 155-156.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

79

remark of the Dominican Humbert of Romans, to the effect that great kings of his day customarily held parliaments at appointed times every year so that the more important public affairs might be resolved upon deliberation with the magnates, that account (ratio) might be rendered by the king's ministers, and that legislation for the realm might be made.13 Let us now turn to the detailed evidence of parlements. THE LATER YEARS OF LOUIS IX (ca 1250-1270)

For people other than the king's clerks, the term "parlement" continued to be associated with general assemblies. Archbishop Eudes Rigaud, who had attended the periodic court sessions for some years, first refers to one as a parlement at Pentecost 1258. Then in the very next month he mentions an occasion when "many prelates of France" went to Paris "to parlement," and while it is not beyond doubt that this was a parlement in the newly-restricted sense, we know that sessions of court were also held in July in 1255 and 1256; and the second of these was called the "parlement of Magdalene" (22 July) by a royal accountant.14 Nevertheless, the term had yet to acquire special meaning for Eudes. His journal's next allusion to a parlement occurs only six sessions later, in November 1259, when a judicial parlement nearly coincided with a major political assembly. Thereafter the archbishop normally attended the parlements of Candlemas, Pentecost, and All Saints (or Martinmas) and referred to them as such, but not the sessions following the Nativity of the Virgin (8 September). The latter sessions seem to have been discontinued after 1261 (as had those of July after 1258), having perhaps been poorly attended by the magnates.15 Parlements could not be held in the absence of the king and his 13

Humbert de Romans, De eruditione praedicatorum, n, ii, c. 86, ed., Marguerin de La Bigne, Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum . . . , 27 vols. (Lyon, 1677), xxv, 559, as cited by Richardson, "Origins of Parliament," 150, who successfully defends Humbert's authority (150-151 and notes) against Borrelli de Serres, Recherches, i, 337. The latter sought to deny all connection between parlement and accounts (compoti), but I would go further than Richardson in suggesting that such a view is anachronistic for parlements of the first generation (ca 1250-78). Parlements were still occasions rather than organized assemblies, occurring usually in the same city as the accounts at about the same seasons; thus in a general sense Humbert's word ratio was applicable to either administrative review (which certainly took place in parlements) or accounts. See below, p. ?82»; and cf. T. N. Bisson, "Negotiations for Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers," Xlle Congres International des Sciences Hixtoriques: Etudes presentees a la commission internationale pour Yhistoire des assemblies d'etats, xxxi (Louvain, 1966), 91-97 ; see above, chapter 4, 63-9. 14 See Eude Rigaud, Registrum visitationum archiepiscopi rothomagensis . . . , ed., Theodose Bonnin (Rouen, 1852), pp. 30ff, 308-312 (Langlois, Textes, no. 29); cf. Chronique anonyme, H.F., xxi, 131. The Olim record four parlements in 1258, including Pentecost and the octaves of the Virgin's Nativity (15 September). For the July sessions, see Textes, no. 26fo>, H,F., xxi, 353 ff. Eudes was surely slow in picking up the new usage, for the bishop of Amiens had spoken of going "ad parlamentum installs Parisius" as early as February 1252, Cartulaire de Vabbaye Saint-Corneille de Compiegne, ed., E. Morel, 2 vols. (Compiegne, 1904-09), n, no. 604; cf. Langlois, Textes, nos. 22, 24. 15 Registrum, pp. 348-349, 359, 368, 378-379, 392, 403, 415-416, 421, 462, 492-493, 502-503, 509510, 520-521, 531, 538, 546, 561-562, 590, 614-615; Langlois, Textes, pp. 230-231. Cf. Richardson, "Origins of Parliament," 160.

80

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

advisers,16 a fact that suggests their continuing importance as occasions for consultation. It may be significant that Eudes Rigaud began to refer to parlements as such in 1258 and 1259. There was much talk in England about parliaments (parleamenta, parlemenz), and indeed in them, during these years, and it was precisely in the late spring of 1258 that Englishmen first proposed to hold three parliaments at fixed times each year.17 The archbishop of Rouen, as a trusted adviser to Louis IX and one who was to have a major part in the negotiations over the Treaty of Paris, was in a good position to hear of these developments because he was present at the Pentecost parlement when English delegates arrived to negotiate the treaty. This parlement was still in session when on 28 May Louis IX agreed to preliminary terms at the Temple.18 French counsellors spoke out strongly against the treaty, as Joinville twice recollected,19 but probably at some later stage of the negotiations and quite possibly in the meetings where they were concluded. A year and a half elapsed before the king of England arrived in Paris for the final promulgation of the treaty. The great assembly of 4 December 1259, in which Henry III, as duke of Aquitaine, did homage to Louis IX, was attended not only by prelates and barons of both realms, including Eudes Rigaud who, in fact, presided over the formalities, but also very probably by some of the counsellors, litigants, and petitioners who had been in town for the Saint Martin's parlement.20 We know from financial statements prepared in 1260 that the towns of Chauny, Rouen, Poissy, and Asnieres had deputies in this parlement, and that the three men from Chauny, at least, were still at Paris in December.21 In this instance it is especially pertinent to speculate whether the Saint Martin's parlement22 and the assembly that followed — or rather, assemblies, for we should not overlook the throng that witnessed the ceremonial arrival of Henry III on 26 November23 — were thought of as the separate sessions of a single great occasion, of a single "parlement," in 16

See Olim, i, 154, 398; cf. Richardson, 158, for the situation in England. Richardson, 155, 172-173; William Stubbs, Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History . . . , 9th ed., rev. H. W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1913), pp. 370, 383. 18 Registrum, pp. 308-309; Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, ed., Alexandra Teulet and others, 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), m, nos. 4416, 4417, 4420; Pierre Chaplais, "The Making of the Treaty of Paris and the Royal Style,'-' English Historical Review, LXVII (1952), 239-242; and generally Richardson, "Origins of Parliament," 163. 19 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed., Natalis de Wailly, 2 ed. (Paris, 1874), chs. 14, 137 (pp. 38, 374). 20 Majus chronicon temovicense, H.F., xxi, 769; Adam de Clermont, Flores historiarum, ibid., 78; Eude Rigaud, Registrum, p. 349 (which gives the date as 3 December); Layettes, in, nos. 4564-66; Michel Gavrilovitch, Etude sur le traite de Paris de 1259 . . . (Paris, 1899), pp. 34-35; Chaplais, "Making of the Treaty," 247. 21 The men from Chauny heard their case against the bishop of Noyon decided against them, Layettes, in, no. 4609, and Olim, i, 92iii; also Layettes, in, nos. 4591, 4594, 4629. 22 Olim, i, 91, 458, indicate arrets "in pallamento Omnium Sanctorum" and enquetes "in parlamento Beati Martini Hyemalis," and, while unlikely, it is possible that these were different parlements; cf. Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, nos. 373-397. 23 Registrum, p. 349; Gavrilovitch, p. 35. 17

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

81

fact. One witness or contemporary spoke of Henry III as coming "to parliament" (ad! Parliamentum) at the "summons" of the king of France and as ap pearing (after delays to hear mass in every church he passed) before the king and the "other peers" of France "in parliament" or "in the location of the parliament." This sounds like the language of procedure, as if the Martinmas parlement were still in session or were called back into session. On the other hand the anecdote also mentions negotia in Parliamento tractandaf* a phrase suggestive of the political activity that we know took place, and in the same vein we may observe that some judicial decisions of the Martinmas parlement were recorded as having been reached "by common counsel" (de communi consilio),25 an expression at no time common in the Olim. So whether these sessions overlapped or were thought distinct, they functioned diversely and they could each be called "parlement" (or "parliament"), In an assembly at Paris on 24 or 25 March 1267 the king took the cross, followed by his son Philip and others. Though the gathering is described as a parlement by two Norman chroniclers, it occurred a little too late for us to regard it as coinciding with the parlement on the octaves of Candlemas recorded in the OKra.26 But there can be little doubt that the following parlement, on the octaves of Pentecost, opened in the presence of many who had convened on Pentecost Sunday in a traditional ceremonial court of exceptional splendor. The prince Philip had been knighted together with more than fifty other nobles of the realm, and additional pledges to crusade were obtained. Lasting almost a week, the lavish festivities may have been calculated to help win over the aristocracy to a renewed crusading policy they disliked.27 Another illustration of how such occasions afforded opportunity for negotiating as well as litigating may be found in the records of a compromise between the king and the bishop of Macon over rights in Macon county. The sealed agreement, dated Paris, June 1267, together with the mandate by which the bishop carried his chapter's consent "to court," were deposited in the Tresor des Chartes.28 Still another coincidence of parlement and assembly, and one perhaps even more precise, oc24

"Historiola de pietate regis Henrici III," ed., E. A. Bond, Archaeological Journal, xvii (1860), 317-319. The evidence of this curious tale cannot be reconciled with that of the Olim quite so easily as Richardson seems to assume, "Origins of Parliament," 161, for Eudes Rigaud's journal, though showing the archbishop at Paris until 9 December, makes no reference to pallamentum after 23 November. 25 Olim, i, 458i,ii, baronial cases; cf. 462ix, reference to specialized counsel. 26 Primat, Chronique, tr., Jean du Vignay, H.F., xxm, 39; Joinville, ch. 144 (p. 396); Chronicon rotomagense, H.F., xxm, 340; Chronicon Normanniae, ibid., 217; Registrum, 566-573, Eudes Rigaud not in the Candlemas parlement but at Paris 20-29 March. 27 Langlois, Textes, p. 231; Registrum, p. 580; Guillaume de Nangis, H.F., xx, 428; Chron. Norm., ibid., xxm, 218; "Expensa in militia domini Philippi . . . ," ibid., xxi, 393-397; J. R. Strayer, in A History of the Crusades, ed., Kenneth Setton, 2 vols. to date (Philadelphia, 1958-62), n, 508-510. 28 Layettes, iv, nos. 5285, 5294. The mandate, dated 28 May 1267, refers to the bishop's trip "pro negocio homagii comitatus Matisconensis et aliis ecclesie nostre . . . negociis in curia vestra expediendis . . . ." No record of the affair in the Olim', cf. 1,126iii, ISlxii, 722xx. Also Layettes, iv, no. 5289; A.N., JJ.30, no. 414.

82

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

curs in the following winter when in the Candlemas parlement at Paris the king and his pledged nobles swore to depart on crusade two years hence.29 That Louis IX employed parlements and conjoint assemblies for promoting what he conceived to be the general interest is especially evident in his legislation on the administration of towns and monetary policy.30 The communes had become corrupt, insolvent, and incapable of managing their own taxes or sustaining those now required by the king. Thanks to the reconstruction by Borrelli de Serres, we can discern, as so many stages, how the king imposed a central financial audit upon some thirty-five communes in 1259-60, how unforeseen difficulties arose when the first ill-organized statements were presented, and how, after another year of muddling on the basis of an unworkable directive, in 1262 the king issued the revised legislation which has survived.31 The "good towns" of France and Normandy were required to hold their annual mayoral elections on 29 October, and the mayors, mayors-elect, and treasurers must then appear at Paris on 18 November to render account of receipts and expenses before the king's deputies ad compotos. In the case of the Norman towns, three local nominees for mayor were to present themselves on the same day to the king, who would make the final choice. Now it seems likely that these dates were chosen with the parlement as well as accounts in mind. By 1260 Martinmas (11 November) or the octaves of All Saints (three days before) were becoming the usual days for the opening of parlements, with the accounts a week later.32 If the king was to see his townsmen at fixed times each year, a date in parlement term, when he would necessarily be on hand, was a good time to choose. Moreover, the king knew that the towns would be sending men to parlements anyway, for they had lately been doing so to excess; article four in the ordinances of 1262 sought to limit the extravagance of trips to court pro negociis ville, and there is no dearth of specific evidence that such activity occurred in parlements.33 The holding of municipa elections on 29 October allowed time for the preparation of the "estates" of finance and other cases and business, and for travel to Paris, before the opening of parlement and accounts. In the efforts to promote the royal coinage and standardize monetary exchange, the men assembling in parlements had a certain role. Two ordinances 29

Chron. Norm.. H.F., xxm, 220, Cf. Olim, I, 707xxvi,xxviii, references to engagements in plena curia. 80 This circumstance may be accidental; the deplorable state of the ordinances in manuscript obscures the early history of French legislation. See Ch.-V. Langlois, Le regne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris, 1887), pp. 295-296. 31 Borrelli de Serres, Recherches, i, 95-107; Layettes, in, nos. 4583, 4591-4599, 4609-4614, 4621, 4625, 4627-4636, 4643-4645, 4654-4655, 4662; iv, nos. 4692, 4695; Documents sur les relations de la royaute awe les villes en France de 1180 a 1314, ed., Arthur Giry (Paris, 1885), nos. 33,34,37. 32 Langlois, Textes, pp. 229-230; cf., for parlements of Alfonse, (above, "Taxes under Alfonse of Poitiers," 63-4., See also Olim, i, 732xxi, 885x. 33 Giry, Documents, nos. 33, 34; and see Layettes, in, nos. 4591, 4594, 4609, 4610, 4629; Olim, i, 482xvii, 484i.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

83

on the coinage were promulgated in parlements in 1265.34 One of these, marking the settlement of a dispute between the king and the bishop of Paris, is known to have received "the counsel of many prelates and other good men."*6 How indistinct, we are reminded, was the borderline between ordinance and judgment, between council and court! The confusion of functions may also be observed in the tendency for great causes in parlements to assume political dimensions, a most striking feature of the reign of Louis IX. From the celebrated trials of Enguerran de Couci and the claim by the archbishop of Reims to the wardship of Saint-Remi, both of which were heard in 1259, quite possibly in the same parlement, it is not hard to understand why the kings continued to reserve such issues for days when the great men would be on hand.86 Louis IX had little sympathy for the principle of peerage, to which the lord of Couci and the archbishop unsuccessfully appealed, but it was important for the other magnates to learn the facts and see for themselves at first hand that justice could be done by the king's men of whatever station. The personal impact of Saint Louis in cases like these can hardly be exaggerated. If a community of the realm failed to develop in France as it did in England, it was partly because a shrewd king — as politic as he was just — took advantage of his barons when they overplayed their common hand. It was also because the prelates and barons did not usually cooperate in projects of general interest.37 Separately, the upper estates did find occasion to press regional and local issues in parlements, the clergy especially so. In 1258 the Norman bishops petitioned for relief from encroachments on their dignity and jurisdiction and the decisions on their articles appear to be the only extant record of the Martinmas parlement in that year.38 In the parlement of Candlemas 1266 the entire clergy of the diocese of Angoule'me complained that the count of Angoul£me had debased his coinage to the damage of all in the region.39 As for lay lords, we find petitions from knights of the bailliage of Vermandois and the castellanies of Lorris and Etampes, the two former petitions concerned with poijfts of regional custom and that of the knights of fitampes with the responsibility for the cost of cases appealed from assizes to parlements.40 Cases like these presumably originated in local assemblies, synods, or courts, 84

Olim, i, 608xvii (Langlois, Textes, no. 44); Ordonnances des roys de France . . . . ed., Eusebe de Lauriere and others, 22 vols. (Paris, 1723-1849), i, 95. 36 Langlois, Textes, no. 44. 36 See Primal, Chronique, tr., Jean du Vignay, H.F., xxm, 16: 'V. . le [roi] fist prendre le seigneur de Couci, et non pas par les pers ne par les chevaliers, mes par les valles de la sale; et fist mener au Louvre en prison et le fist la garder, et li establi jour quant touz les barons du royaume y seroient"; see also Langlois, Textes, nos. 32, 32&w; Olim, i, 454-455xviii; and Edmond Faral, "Le proees d'Enguerran IV de Couci," Revue Hist. Droit Frangais et fitranger, 4e ser., xxvi (1948), 213-558. 37 Cf. Olim, i, IGOiii, 474i. 38 Ibid., 59-68; cf. 976-980; and see too 570ix,xi, 571xii, 573xvii, 624xviii; Joinville, chs. 13, 135, 136 (pp. 36, 368, 370). 89 Olim, i, 638-639xii. 40 Ibid., lllxx, 158viii, 807xxi.

84

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

and they must have been brought to parlements by delegates or royal officials. For lack of evidence these points are obscure, but we have at least one early example of the process. In October 1263 the bishop-lord of Gevaudan convoked his vassals in hopes of getting their support against royal policies that were limiting his authority. The assembled men appointed two proctors to handle their affairs in the king's court.41 Baillis and seneschals probably came to parlements prepared to discuss regional problems as well as to present cases and to answer for their administration. But this quasi-representation of local royal jurisdictions was as yet little developed.42 As for townspeople, we have already had occasion to observe that their trips to Paris — preferably at municipal expense — had become fashionable in the days of Louis IX. A swelling stream of individuals and deputies brought the petitions and pleas of local communities to court. The earliest extant registers of municipal finance, whose first entries date back to this period, routinely refer to deputations to Paris from places as distant as Najac-en-Rouergue and Riom-en-Auvergne. It seems likely that business in parlements was the purpose or result of many of these trips, although this is not usually explicit in the early references from the South.43 For the North we can be more certain: the fortunate survival of communal accounts for 1259-60 enables us to identify no fewer than about twelve deputations in three or four parlements of that year.44 By coincidence the first municipal procurations mentioned in the Olim date from 1259 and 1260 — from Charlieu and Figeac, in the Midi — ,45 but the rules of the court relative to procuration were still in gestation, and great diversity in the form of urban representation continued to prevail. The attendance of mayors and counsellors was required in November, as we have noted; echevins, consuls, and town clerks also served.46 This sort of ex officio representation was probably customary in negocia ville. However intent upon local interests and privileges, the towns must have gained some sense of their common condition from this frequent concentration of representatives. They learned that royal impositions, clerical immunities, 41

A.N., J.894, no. 9, testis 43 (eyewitness): ". . . ordinaverunt duos procuratores per quos expedirent negocia sua in curia regis. . . ." See also A(rchives) D(epartementales), Lozere, G.783, cited by Charles Poree, Etudes historiques sur le Gfoaudan (Paris, 1919), pp. 503-504; and for the background, T. N. Bisson, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), pp. 111-122. Some consequences of this deputation are perhaps to be discerned in Olim, i, 232iv, 262ix, decisions of parlements at Pentecost 1266 and octaves of All Saints 1267; see too 1003, n. 112, 913,lxxvi. 42 See, e.g., Olim, i, 614-616v,vi; Langlois, Textes, no. 54. Until 1303 these officials were eligible to be counsellors, Textes, no. 121 (cf. no. Ill), but most of them probably sat apart from the counsellors in full sessions of parlements. 43 Paris, B(ibliotheque) N(ationale), ms n. a. fr. 10372, fol. 177; A(rchives) M(unicipales), Clermont-Ferrand, CC.154, fols. 41v, 49v. The latter reference (49v) shows that Riom certainly had deputies in a parlement of 1268. For explicit record of representatives in parlements of the 1270's, see B.N., ms n. a. fr. 10372, fol. 89v; A.M., Montauban, AA.2, fol. 23v. 44 Layettes, in, nos. 4583, 4591, 4594, 4609-4611, 4629, 4633, 4645, 4655. 45 Olim, i, 457-458xxv, 487-488xii. 46 E.g., ibid., 487xii, 652vii, 768i; Layettes, in, no. 4629.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

85

and resistance to their claims of autonomy were widespread afflictions. The northern towns probably continued to present their accounts at Paris until at least 1281,47 and there was surely some discussion of taxation in these sessions, especially when new impositions were proposed in 1267. The discussions and trials of monetary rights at Paris cannot have failed to interest the mercantile towns, and since delegations of men from Paris, Provins, Orleans, Sens, and Laon participated in making the monetary ordinance of March 1263 at Chartres, it is possible that townsmen also helped in the legislation on coinage issued during the next two years, including that known to have been promulgated in the All Saints parlement of 1265.48 Perhaps the most suggestive indication of the concentration of general urban interests occurs in the parlement of September 1260: It pleased the lord king that the mayor of Senlis, who was the first to speak on this, and the other mayors of good towns should have rights of justice over Jewish converts in their towns. . . . 49

In effect, if not by design, the mayor of Senlis seems to have represented other towns as well as his own in a parlement. What we find in the reign of Louis IX, therefore, is that parlements have occasionally the composition and function of councils or assemblies, or that they nearly coincide with such meetings; that administration and justice continue to be closely associated in parlements or in parlement terms; and that even in the judicial work already recognized to be the essential function of parlements there is a certain de facto representation of social or regional interests and local communities. THE REIGNS OF PHILIP III AND PHILIP IV (1270-1314)

By 1270 or so the consultative and administrative activities of parlements were settled in forms that were to persist into the fourteenth century. A few examples will suffice. The spring parlement of 1271 coincided with Philip Ill's return from crusade, and the king himself attended. The session opened in conjunction with a ceremonial court on Pentecost "according to the regal custom," and several days later the counsellors of parlement were again joined by magnates when the king of Navarre, as count of Champagne, recognized the terms of his homage to Philip.50 A parlement was in session on 20 February 47

See Borrelli de Serres, Recherches, i, 105. Olim, i, ISlxii, 232iv, 608-609xvii, 638-639xii; Ord.f i, 92-95; cf. 94 with H.F., xxi, 354. 49 Olim., i, 482xvii (Giry, Documents, no. 35). I have been unable to determine how this case reached parlement. 60 Olim, i, 374-383, 851-866; Guillaume de Chartres, De vita . . . regis. . . Ludovici, H.F., xx, 39; Chron. Norm., ibid., xxm, 221; A.N., JJ.30, no. 414, cited in H.F., xxi, 424, n. 1, letter of recognition dated "Parisius, in pleno parlamento, mense Junio," with a long list of magnates present (Pentecost fell on 24 May); Langlois, Philippe HI, pp. 54-55. For evidence of other sessions coinciding with major festivals see Langlois, Textes, nos. 90, 91; cf. 97; Acies et comptes de la commune de Provins de Van 1271 a Van 1330, edd., Maurice Prou and Jules d'Auriac (Provins, 1933), pp. 69, 98; H.F., xxn, 759-760. 48

86

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

1284 when a general assembly at Paris was induced to support the crusade against Aragon; and the designs of Charles of Anjou on the lands of Alfonse of Poitiers were disallowed in an exceptionally full session of parlement ten days later.51 Under Philip the Fair the troubled Flemish diplomacy occasioned several enlarged parlement sessions of a political nature.52 The peerage continued to have its place in parlements that heard great causes, though seemingly with lessened political import.53 Both kings promulgated general ordinances in parlements. But it is no easier than it was for the reign of Louis IX to attribute certain constitutional meaning to such consultations. We hear of a statute made in 1279 by the king and barons in a parlement and of an ordinance in 1287 "made by us and our council at our order," and the latter ruling, having to do with burgage tenures, was confirmed with revisions in the All Saints parlement of 1295, "in the presence of the whole parlement."54 These references are consistent with Beaumanoir's statement that new etdblissements should be made only "par grant conseil,"55 but there is no reason to suppose that "great counsel" could be had only in parlements or, for that matter, only in large assemblies. Administration continued to be supervised by the counsellors in parlements or in times of parlement. Baillis and seneschals came to Paris as auditors and litigants, occasionally still as counsellors themselves, and parlements were usually in session when they or their deputies accounted at the Temple, only a few minutes' distance from the council chamber. The king's expedition to Foix having prevented the meeting of a parlement in 1272, judgments were made in the accounts and registered in the next parlement; and again in 1283 some of a parlement's work was done in the accounts.56 That the personnel of one department could so readily do the work of another reminds us that the curia regis retained its identity in the background. On the other hand, this kind of coordination seems already to be exceptional under Philip III and must 61

Langlois, Philippe HI, pp. 149-151, 175-176; Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 537; cf. nos. 527-547; Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, nos. 2485-2509B. 62 Frantz Funck-Brentano, Les origines de la guerre de cent ans: Philippe le Bel en Flandre (Paris, 1897), pp. 144-145, 181-189, 491-494, 545-546, 599-600, 614-621; Continuatio of Guillaume de Nangis, H.F., xx, 591. More is said about this matter below. 53 Paul Viollet, Histoire des institutions politiques et administratives de la France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1890-1903), in, 301-308, 313-314; "Rouleaux d'arrets de la cour du roi au XHIe siecle," ed., Ch.-V. Langlois, B.fi.C., XLVIII (1887), 184; Langlois, Textes, no. 128 (p. 194); Funck-Brentano, as cited in n. 52; cf. p. 619, and his "Les pairs de France a la fin du XHIe siecle," Etudes d'histoire du moyen age dediees a Gabriel Monod (Paris, 1896), pp. 351-360; and Jules Viard, "La cour (curia) au commencement du XlVe siecle," B.E.C., LXXVII (1916), 84-86. 54 Chron. rotom., H.F., xxm, 342; Giry, Documents, no. 47. See also Ord., i, 296, 299-300, 303-305, 316-317, 322-324, 456-458, 510-511, 517-518; Olim, n, 100k, lOSxxxii, 188,1 (Langlois, Textes, no. 79), 269viii,ix, 278xi (cf. xii-xiv), 311i, 373x, 405xv; Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, nos. 1998A, 2222B, 2316D, 2782B (Textes, no. Ill; Ord., i, 320); Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 213; and generally Langlois, Philippe III, pp. 285-303. 65 Beauinanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, n, ch. xlix (264). 56 Olim, i, 396-398; Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 521. See also Olim, i, 837-838,lv, a case of 1270; Registres du Tresor des Chartes, i (Regne de Philippe le Bel), ed., Robert Fawtier (Paris, 1958), nos. 1738, 1759.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

87

have become inconvenient when parlements and accounts were reorganized by Philip the Fair. Parlements continued to be the more flexible body or occasion. The local administration of justice and finance retained a place in parlements in some ways to be discussed below.57 Turning finally to the suitors, we find after 1270, as before, a scattering of deputations from communities of regional or provincial scope. The assembled bishops of the province of Narbonne agreed to send two of their number to a parlement in 1279 to protest against abuses in royal administration, and the bishops of Bordeaux petitioned another parlement to similar effect two years later. There may have been even wider clerical constituencies behind some petitions presented to Philip the Fair, but the evidence is not conclusive; nor did all such requests come to parlements.58 In 1278 the viscount and nobles of Narbonnais sought remedy in a parlement against breaches of custom in the seneschal's military summons. And in 1308 the barons and nobles of Gevaudan employed a proctor in a parlement to press their case against the pariage of Mende.59 As for the towns, there was associative action through proctors from towns and villages of Quercy in a parlement of 1281, and similar action was planned in 1309; mercantile towns of the Garonne valley were represented in parlements during the 1280's; and Flemish towns acted together in numerous parlements during the reign of Philip the Fair.60 It was as custodians of the regional interest in the bishop's coinage that the towns of Quercy proceeded in 1281, much as the clergy of Angouleme had once acted in respect to their count's coinage. Associated Jews of the senechaussees petitioned in the king's parlements as they had done in those of Alfonse of Poitiers.61 The represented 67 Borrelli de Serres, Recherches, i, 334-368, proved that accounts were distinct from parlements. But parlements were better organized at Paris before 1296 than he allowed (347-351), having a customary council chamber possibly as early as 1268 (Layettes, iv, no. 5393) and certainly by 1281 (Langlois, Textes, nos. 80, 87), and the coincidence of parlements and accounts more frequent (349350). What broke the rapport was the lengthening of parlement sessions and the setting of dies (see below, p. 366); but even while being replaced by receivers in the accounts, baillis and seneschals remained busy in parlements, as did other officials. See below, at note 74; and Textes, nos. Ill, art /'; 121, art. 16; Felix Aubert, Le Parlement de Paris de Philippe-le-Bel a Charles VII. . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1886-90), i, x, n. 1; also n, 193; Comptes royaux (1285-1311+), ed., Robert Fawtier and Francois Maillard, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953-56), n, nos. 20502-20503; Documents relatifs an comte de Champagne et de Brie, 1172-1361, ed., Auguste Longnon, 3 vols. (Paris, 1901-14), in, 28-29, 51, 87-88, 95-96, 100. 68 Claude Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoire generate de Languedoc, nouv. ed., 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904), to be cited as H.L., ix, 66; Langlois, Textes, no. 80, and see no. 107; also Olim, n, 167 xxxvii; Ord., i, 334-335, 340-344, 403-405. 69 Langlois, "Rouleaux d'arrets," B.&.C., XLVIII, 184; Lettres de Philippe-le-Bel relatives au pays de Gtvaudan, edd., Jean Roucaute and Marc Sache (Mende, 1896), no. 23 (67-69); cf. 202-208, list of nobles; see also Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 797; Fawtier, Registres, i, no. SWbis. 60 Olim, n, 186xlv; Fawtier, Registres, r, no. 819; Roles gaseous, edd., Francisque Michel, Charles Bemont, and Yves Renouard, 5 vols. to date (Paris, 1885-1962), n, nos. 672, 762, 921; Olim, n, 394xix; Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, pp. 181-186, 493-494 (c.f H.F., xx, 591); Annales gandenses, ed. and tr., Hilda Johnstone (London, 1951), pp. 85, 89-94; Anciennes chroniques de Flandre, H.F., xxn, 400. 61 Langlois, "Rouleaux d'arrets," 1-99r'cf. above, "Taxes under Alfonse," 67-71. A "procurator communitatis judeorum regni nostri" took the king's side in disputes of 1306 concerning the jurisdiction over Jews in a southern localii/y, Olim, in1, 180xlii,xliii.

88

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

communities varied considerably in stability and cohesion. In some cases they consisted merely in groupings of individual procurations.62 We have now to notice some changes that occurred in the generation after 1270. In general, it appears that as parlements were confirmed in their judicial specialization, they lost some of their original importance as occasions for consultation. The coincidence of assemblies and parlements became increasingly accidental as parlement sessions became fewer and longer.63 The small council outside of parlements gained in autonomy as it got busier, while new political urgencies prompted the summons of great councils and assemblies that were as unrelated to the old festival occasions as they were to parlements. At the core of such assemblies was the curia or small council but not the parlement. Nevertheless, when the clerks keeping the Olim spoke of the curia as meeting "in the parlement," as they often did after 1300,64 they seem still to have been thinking of parlements as periodic occasions, such as could be used by the curiales as they saw fit; and it must be remembered that parlements, still (with the accounts) the only prescribed central meetings in France, continued to hear issues that were political in nature while judicial in form. The great causes arising from conflicts of interest in Gascony enabled parlements to assume a decisive role in Anglo-French diplomacy.65 The troubles in Flanders, which occasioned assemblies in parlements, had the added interest of involving the "great towns" of Flanders as a kind of proto third estate.66 And as communities and individuals resorted more and more often to empowered deputies, parlements regulated the formalities of procuration in courts.67 It may therefore be said that the evolution of consultation and representation in parlements occurred within an increasingly circumscribed procedural framework. Even so there were two general developments of considerable importance after 1270, and these remain to be discussed. The first was the scheduling of parlements in special "days" (dies, jours) for the despatch of business from the bailliages, senechaussees, and principalities of France. It was a convenience for litigants, petitioners, and officials to know just when the court would be prepared to receive them. The procedure by dies senescalliarum et balliviarum was already in effect by 1278, when it was char62 Philip IV tried to break the Gevaudan association of 1308 by referring their case to the seneschal and requiring them to express themselves individually, Roucaute, Lettres, no. 23; cf. Fredric Cheyette, "Procurations by Large-Scale Communities in Fourteenth-Century France," SPECULUM, xxxvn (1962), 18-31. 63 See, e.g., Olim, m1, 607-610c; cf. 580,lxxv-613ciii. 64 Ibid., n, 459, 461, 479, 482, 486, 492, 502, etc. 65 Langlois, Philippe III, pp. 217-225; Yves Renouard, in (Lot and Fawtier) Histoire des institutions, i, 171; Langlois, Textes, nos. 68, 88, 92-93, 98-99, 996is, 101, 103, 105 (17), 127, 128 (pp. 193194); and cf. Pierre Chaplais, "Le duche-pairie de Guyenne: 1'hommage et les services feodaux de 1259 a 1303," Annales du Midi, LXIX (1957), 5-38. 66 Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 648; Olim, n, 291,ix, 394-395xx,xxi,xxii, and references in note 60 above; and see Jan Dhondt, " 'Ordres' ou 'puissances': I'exemple des etats de Flandre," Annales: Economies — Socifaes — Civilisations, v, (1950), 289-298. 67 See Langlois, Textes, nos. 62, 100, 102, 103, 107.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

89

tered, so to speak, in the ordinance on parlements which also sought to ease the burden on the central court by extending the jurisdictions of baillis and seneschals.68 Almost simultaneously the organizing of commissions of parlement at Toulouse, after the example set by Alfonse of Poitiers a decade before, provided the people of Languedoc with an alternative to the long trips to France; likewise the Norman Exchequer and the reorganized Jours of Troyes brought the officials of parlements to those neighboring provinces.69 These changes seem not to have greatly limited the flow of men to Paris, and by siphoning off the more routine cases at law they presumably increased the relative concentration of significant affairs in parlements. For alongside the occasional represented communities already noticed, there now appeared loose clusters of provincial men — prelates, barons and knights, townsmen, the deputies of persons, chapters, abbeys, and towns, lawyers and proctors — all gathering on their appointed days not only to pursue individual cases and business but also, in effect, to represent conditions in Vermandois or Touraine or Auvergne before the king's council meeting in parlement or in time of parlement.70 The significance of this kind of concentration can only be appreciated when it is remembered that there existed no other mechanism of representative central consultation in the later thirteenth century. When it was a question of ordaining about coinage or Jews or foodstuffs or taxation, the king and his advisers needed to know more than could be learned incidentally in their occasional meetings with the great men. They needed not only the detailed evidence of problems or abuses but also a sense of local opinion. And while information could be obtained in the provinces, the counsellors must have found it convenient to verify reports and learn at first hand in time of parlement. It is difficult to get very close to these quasi consultations of the "days," veiled as they are in the summary accounts of the Olim and perhaps not usually recorded at all. The following examples are typical and suggestive. "Upon the instance of many," the king regulates the brewing of beers in Normandy (1272).n "Having heard the petition of the count of Champagne's men" that the king's Jews be driven from the county, the parlement rejects their case (1281).72 The seneschal of Beaucaire is to summon Italian merchants for the day of his senechaussee to attend the drafting and authentication of an act authorizing them to land in France only at 68

Ibid., nos. 67, 72 (cf. Guilhiermoz, Enqueues et proces, pp. 600-610), 73; cf. Guillaume du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, ed., Felix Aubert (Paris, 1909), pp. 13, 33-34. In 1280 Edward I likewise tried to limit the hearing of routine petitions in parliaments, text cited by William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England. . . , 3 vols., n (4th ed., Oxford, 1896), 276. 69 Langlois, "Les origines du Parlement," 101-102; Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions, n, 469-470, 472-474, 490-491, supplemented (and corrected) by John F. Benton, "Philip the Fair and the Jours of Troyes," in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History vi, (1969), 281-344. 70 See Strayer, Administration of Normandy, pp. 16-17, 37-40; Henri Waquet, Le bailliage de Vermandois aux XIIle et XIVe siecles . . . (Paris, 1919), pp. 53-54, 63-66; Beaumanoir, Coutumes n, ch. xxxviii (82), ch. xxxix (115), ch. Ixi (400); Langlois, Textes, no. 125; fimile Chenon, Les jours de Berry au Parlement de Paris de 1255 a 1328 (Paris, 1919); and examples cited in next paragraph, 71 Olim, i, 904, Ik; cf. 554ix. 72 Ibid., n, 185xlii.

90

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the port of Aigues-Mortes (1294).w A more strictly administrative consultation may be recognized in royal letters of 1288 requiring baillis and seneschals, or their sufficient deputies, to appear on their next day in parlement "to account" (computaturi) for their work in implementing new statutes relating to the Jews.74 An important function in these gatherings was the settling of points of regional custom raised by petitions or causes. The king's rights over the nobles and towns of Auvergne were persistently at issue after about 1275; and in 1281 it was ordained in parlement, "upon the appeal of many men from the Mountains of Auvergne and upon hearing our battli's report," that that region should be ruled by customary law.75 Another example, and a remarkable one, may be found hi connection with the disputed succession to Artois in 1318. Robert of Artois was to receive the county of Beaumont-le-Roger in Normandy if he would give up his claim to Artois, but royal commissioners engaged in a preliminary survey of Beaumont found themselves in doubt as to the customary procedure of evaluating rights to lands in that area. To decide the matter, they convoked twenty Norman notables as a jury in the palace of Paris, and it was explained that these notables were available because "they had come to the parlement to have counsel on another cause."76 In short, whereas the sessions of Toulouse and Troyes "deconcentrated" without "decentralizing" the administration of justice,77 the dies in parlements resulted in centralized provincial assemblies, if that expression be permitted. More exactly, parlements became the composite of two assemblies: the standing curial element still occasionally afforced by magnates in large numbers, and the successive conventions of suitors and officials which constituted a kind of continuous review of the provincial affairs of the realm. The latter were not strictly assemblies, of course, since they were not convoked as such, but their routine recurrence may have been one reason why central representative bodies seldom met in mediaeval France.78 The other important development after 1270 was the appearance of taxation as a subject for adjudication in parlements. The aids for knighting the prince 73

Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, no. 2859C. See also Delisle, Cartulaire normand, no. 864. B. N., Collection de Doat, xxxvii, fol. 195, ed., Gustave Saige, Les juifs de Languedoc anterieurement au XlVe siecle (Paris, 1881), p. 220. 75 Olim, n, 196xxviii; see also I, lllxx; n, 84xxvi, 307xxi, 4S4xi, 591-592,liv; in1, 176xxxvi; Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, no. 2052C; Delisle, "Essai de restitution," nos. 569, 592, 593; Langlois, Textes, no. 58; Philippe III, pp. 291-293. 76 J. R. Strayer, "Economic Conditions in the County of Beaumont-le-Roger, 1261-1313," SPECULUM, xxvi (1951), 277-279, 287 note 12, citing B.N., ms fr. 8764, fol. 1. 77 To borrow Langlois' expression, Philippe HI, p. 311. 78 A study of the custom and practice of summons to parlements and assemblies would be rewarding. In both kinds there w.ere direct orders from the king and indirect ones through officials. See Langlois, Textes, nos. 71, 81, 83, 116; A.N., J.631, no. 10; H.L., x, 276vi; Olim, n, 278xiv, 508vii; Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, I, nos. 2858, 2859, 2859C; Delisle, "Essai de restitution," no. 724. (cf. Nicolas Brussel, Nouvel examen de I'usage general des fiefs en France. . . , 2 vols. [Paris, 1750], i, 250); Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, pp. 144-145; Documents relatifs aux etats generaux et assemblees. . . , ed., Georges Picot (Paris, 1901), nos. 1-3; Beaumanoir, Coutumes, i, ch. ii (esp. 59-60): Guillaume du Breuil, Stilus curie parlamenti, iii, 19. 74

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

91

Philip and for the crusade of 1270 were raising issues as early as the All Saints parlement of 1268, and there was much discussion of these taxes in parlements of 1270 and 1271.79 In 1272, the war of Foix resulted in the first serious efforts to widen the incidence of military obligations and collect money from those who failed to answer the summons to arms. Amid a flood of complaints, numerous cases were heard in parlements, especially in that of All Saints 1272.80 The "army of Navarre" in 1276 occasioned similar expedients and complaints, though with less apparent repercussion at Paris, possibly because it was becoming clear that parlements were not disposed to admit local immunities.81 The knighting aid for Philip the Fair (1285) and the diverse taxes for military purposes after 1290 left surprisingly few traces in the records of parlements, but one or two of these traces are interesting; and the aid for the marriage of the princess Isabelle (1308) certainly exercised the king's court and sometimes parlements.82 To all appearances, parlements were concerned with these taxes only as a court of law. General consent was normally obtained in great councils, which may sometimes have coincided with parlements or have included the masters holding parlement; but there was no constitutive and representative assembly of parlement for the purpose. Negotiations for payments usually took place locally and even the disputes which routinely resulted were often settled by royal officials in the provinces.83 But the questions of right posed by the fiscal cases reaching parlements sometimes entailed larger questions of policy or were compromised in rather pragmatic ways. In dealing with the appeals of this or that town, parlements invariably referred to the aid or duty as having been imposed upon other towns as well, or they invoked the "general custom of the realm," a vague conception in many areas of a recently-assembled country that lacked a great charter; on the other hand, local claims of customary immunity had little chance unless they were substantiated by charters.84 In effect, the counsellors of parlement were promoting a sense of common obligation in those reasonable contingencies from which assertions of immunity might seem irresponsible if not illegal. It is true that the court occasionally decided in favor of local immunities. A touch of 79 Olim, i, 732xxii, 794x, 804-805xvii, 810-811xxx, 828-829xxxii, 832xliii, 848-849xxviii, etc. See generally Carl Stephenson, Mediaeval Institutions: Selected Essays, ed., Bryce Lyon (Ithaca, N.Y., 1954), pp. 26-86. 80 Olim, i, 882-883H, 886-889, 899-903, 916,lxxxii, 939xxxv; as late as 1282 cases were still being debated, Lettres incites de Philippe le Bel, ed. Adolphe Baudouin (Paris, 1887), annexes, no. 7 (234-235). 81 Olim, n, 82xix, 84xxvi, 97xxxiv, lOOx, 345xxvii; B.N., ms. n. a. fr. 10372, fol. 113v; on these wars see generally Langlois, Philippe III, pp. 59-63, 95-104. 82 Olim, n, 245xviii, 249iv; Boutaric, Actes du Parlement, i, no. 2859A; Olim, n, 374xiii, 397ii, 411xxii, 412xxiv,xxvi, 435xiii; Fawtier, Registres, i, no. 819; Olim, n, 508vii, 514-515vi, 589i, 607608xxi; in1, 37xlix, 38,liv, and references below; see generally Strayer, "Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair," in Studies in Early French Taxation. 83 See Strayer, "Consent to Taxation,'5 pp. 21-22, 26-27, 31-33, 38-40, 46-52, 59-72, 85-94; Bisson, Assemblies in Languedoc, pp. 271-285. 84 Olim, i, 832xliii, 848-849xxviii,xxix, 916,lxxxii.

92

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

caution was needed to maintain respect for the king's charters; but even in these cases there were often reservations or special circumstances.85 The evidence suggests, moreover, that parlementary investigations of right became, in effect, or eventuated in, negotiations for payments. The Candlemas parlement of 1271 not only rejected charter-based pleas by Bourges, Dun-le-Roi, and Issoudun, but assessed these towns for specific sums. Issoudun, at least, had its proctors in the court, and these deputies must have functioned like negotiators as well as attorneys.86 At Martinmas 1270 the men of four places in the castellany of Nogent-le-Roi protested against the first knighting aid and at Pentecost 1285 they opposed the second in company with other "good towns" of Orleanais, Gatinais, and the bailliage of Gisors.87 In the parlement of All Saints 1285 twelve towns of the Ile-de-France presented their "reasonings" as well as charters.88 Though the clerks of the Olim were not as a rule very explicit about procedure, it seems probable that these towns were usually represented directly at Paris. And the more often that townsmen in parlements heard their privileges discounted in favor of common responsibilities, the more politically efficacious such sessions were likely to be. The knighting aid of 1285 also occasioned a proposal for a general summons to parlement. Faced with resistance in Rouergue from lords whose subjects were asked to pay, Philip IV directed his seneschal to levy only from immediate tenants until further notice and to summon to the next Martinmas parlement "for the day of your senechaussee all those who shall have wished to oppose the subsidy."89 During the All Saints term of 1295 the king obtained consent to quadrennial tenths from two major abbeys of Languedoc acting through proctors at Paris, but in this instance we cannot be sure that the negotiations took place in parlement.90 In the fall of 1297, a war year in which no parlement was held, an executive council at Paris (the presidentes Parisius) arranged a hearth tax with proctors representing Albi and several villages in the senechaussee of Carcassonne.91 Then in 1309 no fewer than forty-four towns and nine abbeys of 85 Ibid., 887-888xxii, 889xxvii-xxviii, 899-900x1 v, 902,lii-liii; n, 82xix, 249iv. In the two latter cases the parlement noted that the king's rights were in pariage with clerical lords; in another it was said that the men were dispensed "ad presens." 86 Ibid., i, 848-849xxviii-xxx: "taxatum fuit per curiam . . ."; cf. n, 84xxvi. 87 See ibid., i, 832xliii; n, 245xviii. 88 Ibid., 249iv. 89 B.N., Doat, CLXXVI, fol. 243rv; cf. 250rv. These copies are undated and present critical problems which cannot be examined here. The former certainly relates to the knighting aid and probably belongs to the period (December) 1285 to 1287. 90 A.N., J.1035, nos. 40, Wbis (Moissac); J. 342, nos. 2, 2&w (Figeac). The grants are dated 30 October and 4 December; the mandates are judicial in form, for use in the king's court. The town of Provins was busy in the "Parlement d'iver" of 1295, an imposition of 1060 1 being among the topics in question, Actes et comptes . . . de Provins, p. 95. See also Comptes royaux (1285-131Ji), i, nos. 404-406, negotiations between the king and a proctor of Prouille for the double tenth, October 1298. For hints of arguments from public law in parlements of the 1290's see Olim, 11, 405xv, 412xxvi, where necessitas regni and defensio regni are mentioned in decisions favorable to the king's war effort. 91 H.L., x, preuveSy 345-346; see also Maurice Jusselin, "Les "Presidenz a Paris" au temps des derniers capetiens," B.E.C., xcn (1931), 277-284.

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

93

Quercy and Guyenne, the archbishop of Bordeaux, the bishop, dean, and chapter of Angouleme, and nobles of twenty-seven castellanies of Saintonge had proctors at the king's court seeking relief from the aid pro filia maritanda; and this time, even though the central negotiations were under way in early fall, before the parlement term, the government was apparently thinking of the forthcoming winter parlement as the terminus ad quern for adjudicating or compromising the issue.92 Some towns of Auvergne were summoned to parlements in 1308 and 1309 probably to discuss the marriage aid; Montferrand, for one, certainly appeared in a parlement.93 And it is quite clear that by the end of the year 1309 the king was thinking of parlement as a body wherein consent might be centrally and definitively obtained. A form letter was registered in the Olim directing baillis, in the event of the failure of local negotiations with ecclesiastical tenants, to order the appointment of proctors having "full power to hear and accomplish what our court shall ordain in the matter." These proctors were to bear the "privileges or reasons" for resisting the aid and to appear in the next parlement on the day of their bailliage.^ What might result from such a procedure is suggested by the ruling of the parlement in 1310 that all laymen subject to the Norman clergy were bound to pay the aid.95 Henceforth negotiation outside of parlement must have seemed the more prudent course to all save those utterly assured of their immunity as individual persons, churches, or towns. It seems likely that many of the municipal deputations to Paris recorded after 1290 were concerned with fiscal negotiation and compromise rather than immunities, though the latter were again in question at the very end of the reign. Some of these matters came to parlements but by no means all.96 Conceivably, parlements ceased to hear tax cases other than those coming by the way of litigation proposed by the king in 1309. The following conclusions result from this study. First, although parlements 92 Fawtier, Registres, i, nos. 819, 8l9bis. The king, having offered the alternatives of litigating, petitioning for his grace, or compromising, granted a month's delay, till 15 November; the parlement opened on 30 November 1309. 93 Inventaire-sommaire des archives communales anterieures a 1790. Ville de Clermont-Ferrand, ed., A.-V.-E. Teilhard de Chardin, 2 vols. (Clermont-Ferrand, 1902-22), i, 363-364. 94 Olim, n, 508vii; the passage continues: "et le plus sagement et cautement que vous pourrez, faites et pourchassiez que leurs diz procureurs aient plain et general povair de greer, acorder et acomplir ce que noz genz voudront ordener et acorder amiablement avec euls de ceste chose . . . ." Cf. Strayer, "Consent to Taxation," pp. 78-79. 95 Olim, n, 502-503H. 96 C. H. Taylor, "Assemblies of Towns and War Subsidy, 1318-1319," in Studies in Early French Taxation, pp. 159-162, and note 114; cf. Andre Artonne, Le mouvement de 131k et les chartes provinciales de 1315 (Paris, 1912), p.j., no. 2, pp. 164-165. See also Actes et comptes . . . de Provins, pp. 82-83, 227, 228, 234, 241; Archives administratives de la mile de Reims, edd., Pierre Varin and L. Amiel, 10 vols. (Paris, 1839-53), i2, 1051; Archives Historiques de la Saintonge et de VAunis, xii (1884), 69-71; Archives Historiques du Poitou, XLIV (1923), no. 154 (238); A.M., Narbonne, AA.106, fol. 66v; H.L., x, 345-346; A.D., Aveyron, 2E 178, no. 2, fols. 49v, 57v, 70v, 73; A.M., Clermont-Ferrand, CC.159, fols. 49, 50v, 53; A.M., Martel, fols. 89r, 90v; B.N., Doat, CXLVI, fols. 64-65v; Langlois, Textes, no. 119 (cf. Actes et comptes . . . de Provins, pp. 63-64, 95).

94

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

retained an assortment of consultative functions — political, constitutive, administrative — even while evolving into the settled court revealed by the Stilus curie parlamenti, the idea that parlements were assemblies for these purposes seems to have declined from the time of Louis IX. In parlements was the court97 or council98 but not normally the great council, which is indeed less perceptible as such in France than in England; one could do homage in parlements or approve or promulgate ordinances, but it does not appear that the occasional plenary sessions in every parlement had anything like the representative character of those in contemporary English parliaments. What survived in France from the pivotal 1250's and *60's was the faint impress of an archaic tradition of periodic councils and the strong impress of a justiciar-king who demonstrated once and for all that the administration of justice did not necessitate general convocations, impractical even had they been desired. The inheritance of Englishmen from Henry III and the Provisions of Oxford could not have been the same; politics consorted insistently with justice in a land that had been better organized and worse governed than France; parliament remained an assembly as well as a court. Secondly, it follows that the consultative activities of the early parlements of Paris are best interpreted in the context of justice and that to speak of "extrajudicial attributions" prior to 1314 is anachronistic. To say this is not to deny that judicial practice often served political ends, perhaps increasingly so under Philip the Fair.99 But it is uniformly right and custom that concern parlements, even when peerage or diplomacy or taxes are involved; these interests are none the less significant historically for having been comprehended within an older, less restricted conception of justice than had come to prevail across the Channel. Nor is it difficult to interpret the ordaining power of parlements in this way, for court decisions surely created law in the thirteenth century. Perhaps the only public issue in which policy intruded perceptibly on right was taxation. But people must have tired of seeking costly legal remedies so often withheld, while royal officials resorting to more emphatic and novel political arguments to justify new taxes preferred other forums to parlement. Even the "compulsory arbitration" proposed for a parlement in 1310 seems political only in an essentially procedural sense: the king's men will negotiate but they will also ordain. The older scholarship was therefore correct in stressing the judicial nature of parlement, even if it did not always allow for the full dimensions of justice. It might be said that the Maitland-Mcllwain interpretation applies better to parlement than to parliament. Finally, and possibly most in need of stress, is the constitutional role of early parlements. The petitionary procedure was in some ways as important for France as for England, however its history may have differed in the two 97

E.g., references in note 64, above. E.g., Arresta communia scacarii: Deux collections d'arr&s notables de I'Echiquier de Normandie de la fin du Xllle siecle (1276-1290. 1291-1294), ed., Ernest Perrot (Caen, 1910), pp. 75-76. 99 Cf. Langmuir, "Politics and Parliaments," 57-62, but see also Lot and Fawtier, Histoire des institutions, n, 506-508; cf. also 431-447. 98

Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements

95

countries. It helped to render parlements a passively representative institution, an outlet not only for the kind of individual expression once entertained by the enqueteurs, whose commissions were now ceasing to be satisfactorily remedial, but also — and more significantly — for newly defined issues of a quasi-public character: stability of coinage, conduct of local officials, policy toward Jews, taxation. Issues like these, revealing new and widened spheres of interest, found outlets in associations of that bewildering diversity so typical of Old France: clergy of a province or diocese, nobles of a castellany, or towns of a river valley. No doubt the judges could not always be depended upon to uphold right when it conflicted with the king's interest, but the proportion of such cases among those of general concern should not be exaggerated. Even under Philip the Fair procedures of court were probably more important than representative assemblies for constitutional expression. Most Frenchmen who lived in or remembered the days of "good King Louis" were content with parlements as they were, and on the whole, it seems, they had reason to be so. ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 4 P. 371 at note 93, add: For an earlier example see Robert Mignon, Inventaire d'anciens comptes royaux ..., ed. Ch.-V. Langlois (Paris, 1899), no. 1432 (1293).

Seal of Figeac (1309), as reproduced from the matrix, showing consuls seated in council and (reverse) a town with its portal, wall, and towers. Archives Nationales, J. 356, no. 8 (described by Louis Douet-d'Arcq, Collection de sceaux, 2 vols [Paris, 1863-7], ii, no. 5824; and by Brigitte Bedos, Corpus des sceaux frangais du moyen age, /. Les sceaux des villes [Paris, 1980], no. 280). Photograph by Archives Nationales.

5 THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES OF PHILIP THE FAIR: THEIR CHARACTER RECONSIDERED* The national assemblies convoked by Philip the Fair may surely be counted among the more familiar events of French history. Unforgettable scenes come to mind: Pierre Flote prodding the crowd gathered in Notre-Dame-de-Paris to hostility against the pope in April 1302; or the king rising imperiously from his place before the town deputies assembled in the palace of Paris in 1314 to observe the effect of Enguerran de Marigny's appeal for military aid; and if the convocation at Tours in 1308 left no such colorful memorial, its occasion — the condemnation of the Templars — and its vast size — possibly a thousand persons attended — mark it as one of the most spectacular assemblies of the Middle Ages (1). These meetings have long been regarded as the first " Estates General ". They were much studied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially with respect to their origin and juridical character, their function, and their representative elements (2). But in our century this scholarly interest has declined. French historians were distracted by their discovery that these assemblies, like so many later ones, were devoid of constitutional powers, and in recent years they have added little to our knowledge of the subject (3). American writers, seemingly more interested in (1) For the assembly of 1302 see primarily Documents relatifs aux £tats generaux et assemblies r&unis sous Philippe le Bel, ed. GEORGES PICOT (Paris, 1901), nos. 5, 7; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, ed. H. GERAUD, 2 vols. (Paris, 1843), i, 314-315; cf. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France (to be cited as H.F.), 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), xx, 584n585; for that of 1308, Continuation of Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G£RAUD, i, 365 (H.F., xx, 597); PICOT, Documents, nos. 657-1076 (there was, however, a notable speech by Guillaume de Plaisians, cited below, note 80, before a second session of this assembly at Poitiers); and for that of 1314, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. JULES VIARD, 10 vols. (Paris, 192053), vin, 299-301 (quoted below, note 32). Among vivid secondary accounts, see JULES MiCHELET, Histoire de France, nouv. edn., 15 vols. (Paris, 1861-63), in, 63-67, 74-77, 128-129; GEORGES PICOT, Histoire des Etats generaux, 2e edn., 5 vols. (Paris, 1888), i, 21-26; ROBERT FAWTIER, UEurope occidental de 1270 a 1380: Premiere partie... (Paris, 1940), 253-258. (2) See the bibliography in PAUL VIOLLET, Droit public. Histoire des institutions politiques et administrates de la France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1890-1903), in, 245-246. (3) See, e.g., EDGARD BOUTARIC, Les premiers £tats glneraux, 1302-1314 (Paris, 1860)

98

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

consultation and representation than their colleagues in France, have done good work beginning with Mcllwain's remarkable chapter on "Medieval Estates ", published in 1932, but their studies, mostly rather specialized, have not dealt with all aspects of the general assemblies held in the early fourteenth century (4). There remains a good deal to be learned about the summons and direction of these assemblies, about their relation to other forms of consultation, about the men who attended them, and about the nature of representation in them. The meaning and use of procuratorial powers carried by representatives have come into question largely thanks to the illuminating inquiries of the scholar to whom this volume is dedicated (5). We need, above all, some more comprehensive study that would place these assemblies squarely in their social and political setting: in short, the good history of Philip the Fair that remains an urgent requirement of scholarship. Only through an historical approach, HENRI HERVIEU, Recherches sur les premiers £tats giniraux et les assemblies representatives pendant la premiere moita du quatorzieme siecle (Paris, 1879), esp. pp. 69-110; Cn.-V. LANGLOIS, £tats giniraux in La Grande Encyclopidie, 31 vols. (Paris, 1886-1901), xvi, 510-512; ROBERT FAWTIER, Parlement d'Angleterre et £tats giniraux de France au moyen age in Comptes-rendus de rAcadimie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1953), 275-284; and the work of LOT and FAWTIER cited in note 7 below. Neither JACQUES CADART, Le rigime electoral des £tats giniraux de 1789 et ses origines (1302-1614) (Paris, 1952) nor CLAUDE SOULE, Les £tats giniraux de France (1302-1789): itude historique, comparative et doctrinale (Etudes prisenties a la Commission Internationale pour VHistoire des Assemblies d'Etats, xxxv) (Heule, 1968) says much about Philip IV's assemblies. Valuable monographs on provincial Estates have not ceased to appear; and we may anticipate a stimulus to scholarship on French representative institutions in BERNARD GUENEE, UOccident aux XlVe et XVe siecles: Les Etats (Paris, 1971). (4) C.H. MclLWAiN, Medieval Estates in Cambridge Medieval History, ed. J.B. BURY and others, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 1911-36), vn, chapter 23 (see esp. pp. 682-691); C.H. TAYLOR, Some New Texts on the Assembly of 1302 in Speculum, xi (1936), 38-42; The Assembly of 1312 at Lyons-Vienne in Etudes d'histoire didiies a la mimoire de Henri Pirenne par ses anciens ileves (Bruxelles, 1937), 337-349; Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv (1939), 275299 (esp. 285-287); Assemblies of Towns and War Subsidy, 1318-1319 in J.R. STRAYER and C.H. TAYLOR, Studies in Early French Taxation (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), esp., 109-111, 144-174; (C.H. TAYLOR) The Composition of Baronial Assemblies in France, 1315-1320 in Speculum, xxiv (1954), 433-459; J.R. STRAYER, Consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair in Studies in Early French Taxation (cited above), esp., 64-94; GAINES POST, " Plena Potestas " and Consent in Medieval Assemblies: A Study in Romano-Canonical Procedure and the Rise of Representation, 1150-1325 in Traditio, i (1943), 355-408 (see esp. 368-380, 383-408), reprinted with revisions in (POST) Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State, 11001322 (Princeton, 1964), chapter 3 (esp. pp. 108-123, 127-162). (5) GAINES POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, chapters 1-4.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

99

by avoidance of an anachronistic preoccupation with the rights and organization of assemblies, can we hope to reach conclusions of interest to the wider history of early representative institutions. No one can pretend to satisfy these larger needs in a brief essay. In what follows I wish simply to suggest some considerations relating to the forms of assembly, to representation, and to the usage " Estates General " in the early fourteenth century — considerations that may help us to an improved conception of French consultation in one of its critical phases.

To begin with, it may be well to bring the celebrated convocations of Philip the Fair into better relation with other types of assembly at the turn of the fourteenth century. Something like this was attempted by Henri Hervieu nearly a century ago (6), and more recently by Robert Fawtier in his chapter on " the control [of the monarchy] by assemblies ", but I doubt whether either scholar cast his net widely enough. Why Fawtier did not, although writing as lately as the 1950's, may be inferred from his lingering allegiance to the institutionalist standpoint so long preferred by French historians. After calling attention to two other forms of consultation besides the familiar assemblies, his conclusion seems to miss the mark: " II n'y a point 1& de controle, mais il pourrait eventuellement y avoir les origines d'un controle " (7). Constitutional criteria are of little use for understanding the parliamentarism of Philip the Fair. It is possible, in fact, to distinguish at least five kinds of general assembly in addition to the large gatherings of men from the estates. First, there occurred aristocratic ceremonial courts in keeping with ancient Capetian tradition (8). These were still

(6) HERVIEU, Recherches sur les premiers £tats generaux, chapter 4, esp. pp. 71 "110. (7) FERDINAND LOT and ROBERT FAWTIER, Histoire des institutions franchises au moyen dge, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1957-62), n, livre 5 (" Le contrdle de la royaute" "), chapter 1 (" Le contrdle par les assemblies "), 547-557. (8) For general courts held on the major Christian feasts,, see ACHILLE LUCHAIRE, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers capetiens (987-1180), 2e e'dn., 2 vols. (Paris, 1891), i, 254-265. The practice of convoking three such courts a year (normally at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas), perhaps never rigidly observed, is believed to

100

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

popular as outlets for chivalric energies and as spectacles. The grand Pentecost festival of 1313, wherein the king wore his crown, knighted great lords, and renewed his promise to go on crusade, was noticed by all the chroniclers; and we cannot doubt that Philip had his political uses for so costly an occasion when war was threatening (9).

have broken down in the 13th century; but great ceremonial courts continued to be held ad hoc, often on festival days, to crown princes, knight vassals, take the cross, and the like. To cite but a few notable examples, Prince Louis (VIII) was knighted in a lavish court at Compiegne on Pentecost 1209, Guillaume le Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti, no. 149, in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton..., ed. H.-FRANCOIS DELABORDE, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882-85), i, 226; Alfonse of Poitiers and many other lords were knighted in the " great court " of John the Baptist 1241 at Saumur, EDGARD BOUTARIC, Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers... (Paris, 1870), 43-46, and for expenses of this festum milicie, see H.F., xxu, 616-622; there are many other examples down to 1285. Philip IV's chief ceremonial courts were as follows: Occasions Coronation

Dates Reims

Places 6 January 1286

Muster

Compiegne

Pentecost 1297

Canonization of Louis IX

St-Denis

26 August 1298

Main sources H.F., xxi, 405; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, ed. GERAUD, i, 267 (H.F., xx, 571); expenses in H.F., xxn, 492. G. de Nangis, ed. GERAUD, i, 299 (H.F., xx, 579). G. de Nangis, i, 305 (H.F., xx, 580); Miracles de SaintLouis, H.F., xx, 189; Comptes royaux (1285-1314), ed. ROBERT FAWTIER, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953-56), i, 20 (361). Jean de St-Victor, Memoriale historiarum, H.F., xxi, 644.

Christmas 1304 King's "feast", attended Pontoise by "almost all the French nobility" 17 May 1306 Paris Jean de St-Victor, ibid., 646. Translation of Louis IX's relics to the SainteChapelle Boulogne 25 January 1308 Ibid., 650; Anciennes chronMarriage of king's iques de Flandre, H.F., xxi, 397. daughter to Edward II Pentecost 1313 Paris Documented in note 9. Knightings, etc. Financial records of the reign show that although knightings occurred at various times, they were especially numerous at Pentecost and other holiday seasons, H.F., xxu, 492, 759-760, 563; FAWTIER, Comptes royaux, n, nos. 23952, 27616-27646. (9) Anciennes chroniques de Flandre, H.F., xxu, 399: " Le roy Phelippe fist a ung jour de la Penthecouste 1'une des plus grans festes quy oncques feust faitte ou roiaulme de France, et y fist semondre tous les haulz barons de son royaulme... ". Also Jean de St-Victor, ibid.,

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

101

Secondly, there were military assemblies, notably the musters of armies. Because these became almost annual events after the outbreak of war in 1294, their cumulative effect in acquainting large numbers of laymen with the political-legal doctrines of the emergent national state must have been considerable. Summonses and exhortations incessantly pressed the urgency of public defense (10). Local men and mercenaries, sometimes forming representative or token contingents from towns, repeatedly journeyed to Reims or Arras or the borders of Gascony. The magnates who led these armies were summoned from " general purpose " chancery lists which probably served also for the convocation of political assemblies, and letters of convocation to fight and to treat were drafted on similar forms (11). Chroniclers conxxi, 656-657; Chronicon sanctae Catherinae de Monte Rotomagi, ibid., xxn, 408-409; Grandes Chroniques de France, vin, 287-288; and many others. The fuller accounts stress the magnificence of the occasion. For the knighting subsidy of 1313, see Inventaire d'anciens comptes royaux dresse par Robert Mignon..., ed. Cn.-V. LANGLOIS (Paris, 1899), nos. 5, 1585-1611; and STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 80-81, who also brings out the threatening circumstances. The court of 1313 was in pointed contrast to that held at Boulogne in mid-winter 1308 (see preceding note), which had heralded the most recent attempt to levy a feudal aid. (10) See generally FAWTIER, L'Europe occidentale de 1270 a 1380, 178-186, 314-325, 347-354; FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO, Les origines de la Guerre de Cent Ans. Philippe le Bel en Flandre (Paris, 1897), 167n-168, 173n-175, 237, 333, 404-411, 430-433, 458-465, 633-634, 655-656; POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, chapters 5-8, 10, esp. pp. 435-453; and for summonses, CLAUDE DEVIC and J.-J. VAISSETE, Histoire generate de Languedoc..., ed. AUGUSTE MOLINIER and others, 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904), x, preuves, 292, 294ii, 320xxix, 400-403; LEON MENARD, Histoire civile, ecclesiastique et litteraire de la ville de Nismes..., 1 vols. (Paris, 1744-58), i, preuves, nos. 113 (138), 118 (141-142), 121 (144-145); n, preuves, no. 3 (11); Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisieme race, ed. EUSEBE DE LAURIERE and others, 22 vols. (Paris, 1723-1849), i, 369-372, 373-374, 383-385; Archives nationales, JJ 35, nos. 5, 21; Archives departementales, Lozere, G 27. (11) Archives municipals d'Agen. Chartes, premiere serie (1189-1328], ed. A. MAGEN and G. THOLIN (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 1876), no. 98; Actes et comptes de la commune de Provins de ran 1271 a ran 1330, ed. MAURICE PROU and JULES d'AuRiAc (Provins, 1933), 163-170, 195; Archives municipales, Cajarc, EE 53; " Notices et extraits de documents inedits relatifs a Thistoire de France sous Philippe le Bel ", ed. EDGARD BOUTARIC, Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Imperiale..., xxa (1862), 156-157, 214-216; H.F., xxm, 788-792, 801-806. Writs of summons cited in preceding note may be compared with political summonses in Arch, nat., JJ 36, no. 69; PICOT, Documents relatifs aux premiers Etats generaux, nos. 1, 9, 22, 659, 660. For the significance of chancery lists, see TAYLOR, Composition of Baronial Assemblies in Speculum, xxix, 451-453, who is as cautious as he is suggestive, and more generally T.N. BISSON, The Military Origins of Medieval Representation in American Historical Review, LXXI (1966), 1216-1217.

102

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

tinned to refer to armies as if they were assemblies (12). Since armies usually formed in the summer, the ceremonial courts of late spring were convenient occasions for arousing martial ardor. Such was the case in 1313, while the army of 1297 against Flanders was described as having its rendez-vous in the Pentecost court at Compiegne (13). Differentiated and transformed, the chivalric courts and hosts of Philip the Fair still bore marks of their common descent from the Mayfield. Thirdly, we may distinguish the large royal councils consisting of prelates and lay lords meeting ad hoc with the king and his inner advisory staff. These are the most common type of central assembly in the government of Philip the Fair and the type most continually important in a constitutional sense. Meeting often enough to attain some measure of deliberative autonomy, they come nearest to fitting Professor Marongiu's specifications for " parliaments " among Philip's assemblies (14). Their usual function was to deliberate on weighty issues of policy and taxation (15). They must sometimes have coincided with festival

(12) E.g., Anciennes chroniques de Flandre, H.F., xxn, 381, the Flemings after Courtrai (11 July 1302) heard " comment le roy de France faisoit la plus grant assemble que jamais il se fist pour venir sur eulz a main armee... ". Cf. citation in next note. (13) Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, ed. G£RAUD, i, 299 (H.F., xx, 579): " Philippus rex Franciae magno exercitu congregate comitem Flandriae Guidonem debellaturus, apud Compendium, in die sancto Pentecostes, fratrem suum Ludovicum comitem Ebroicarum, et Ludovicum consanguineum suum, filium Roberti comitis Clarimontis, cum centum viginti aliis novos milites fecit. Inde in Flandriam profectus, terrain comitis, omnia devastando, peragrans... [he besieged Lille three weeks later] ". (14) ANTONIO MARONGIU, II parlamento in Italia nel media evo e neWeta moderna (Milan, 1962), chapter 2; tr. and abridged by S.J. WOOLF, under title Medieval Parliaments: A Comparative Study (London, 1968), part 2. (15) A discriminating study of these assemblies of magnates would be valuable. Unhappily, the evidence is scarce and equivocal. References in ordinances to counsel with prelates and barons often leave us in doubt whether that counsel was obtained from the king's usual advisers or from men in an enlarged assembly especially convoked; the dates of such consultations are not usually specified; nor is there much information about the range of summons or the considerations that affected the number and identity of persons to be convoked. TAYLOR'S Composition of Baronial Assemblies is again of fundamental utility; see esp. p. 453. For the council and counsel under Philip the Fair, see LOT and FAWTIER, Histoire des institutions, n, 76; J.R. STRAYER, Philip the Fair — a " Constitutional" King in American Historical Review, LXII (1956), 18-32; and see also PAUL LEHUGEUR, Philippe le Long, roi de France, 1316-1322. Le mecanisme du gouvernement (Paris, 1931), 115-141.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

103

courts (16). They seem to have been, or to have become, distinct from sessions of the " great council " — that is, of the magnate advisers who routinely attended the king (17) — and to have The following are certain or probable references (excluding unqualified allusions to the council or great council) to central assemblies of prelates and barons: Dates Main sources Places Ordonnances, xn, 333-334, cited by Paris before 7 January 1296 STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 48. Paris Codex diplomaticus Flandriae inde 21 January 1297 ab anno 1296 ad usque 1325..., ed. THIERRY DE LIMBURG-STIRUM, 2 vols. (Bruges, 1879-89), I, 146-149. Paris 15 January 1299 Ibid., 269-272. October 1301 Gallia Christiana..., 16 vols. (Paris, Senlis 1715-1865), xm, instrumenta, 107115. Ordonnances, i, 347-348. before 25 August 1302 Paris (?) PICOT, Documents, no. 9. Paris December 1302 (summons dated 1 December) Ibid., no. 13 (this possibly corres12 March 1303 Paris ponds to the consultation indicated by Ordonnances, i, 369-372; see STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 59). PICOT, Documents, nos. 14, 15, 52; Paris 13-15 June 1303 cf. Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. GERAUD, i, 335-336 (H.F., xx, 588). Chateau-Thierry Ordonnances, i, 383-385, 408n-409 5 October 1303 (Arch, nat., J 384, no. 1 an original), cited by STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 65-66. Ordonnances, i, 391-392. Toulouse 20 January 1304 Le dossier de raffaire des Templiers, before 14 September 1307 Paris (?) ed. and tr. GEORGES LIZERAND (Paris, 1923), 20, 22. Texts cited and printed by TAYLOR, Lyon and Vienne February-March 1312 The Assembly of 1312 in £tudes d'histoire... Pirenne, 337-349; Ordonnances, i, 505. MENARD, Histoire de Nismes, n, Pontoise 24 June 1313 preuves, no. 3 (11). Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. Paris 1 August 1314 VIARD, vm, 299-301. St-Ouen pres Paris Ordonnances, i, 539-540. 5 October 1314 (16) See note 8, above. (17) See Ordonnances, i, 347-348, 446-447, 475-476, 536-538; cf. Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, xx*, 209-213, and citations in note 15, above.

104

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

been convoked only when a broad representation of authority was desired or thought tolerable. Professor Strayer has drawn attention to an illuminating incident in October 1303, when a pathetically small gathering of prelates and barons approved onerous terms of military service for the following year; the government found it prudent to apologize for not having summoned " all our prelates and barons of the realm ", a failure it laid to the urgency of the kingdom's need (18). Yet for most purposes the king seems to have regarded his council alone as adequately representative of the realm. The persistently critical problem was that of making the approval of magnates, whatever their numbers, binding on the country at large. While probably justified by custom, the reliance on aristocratic assemblies was too poorly related to the elevated demands of an embattled state to work very well after about 1300 (19). Fourthly, there were convocations of men from one or another single order of society, notably of clergy or townsmen. These assemblies, well adapted to express the interests of class and often including representative elements, looked more to the future than the past. The development of a privileged point of view was especially marked in the clerical meetings. Although the king obtained some apparently unconditional grants of subsidy in 1297, 1298 and 1299, at other times — as in 1295 and 1303 — political conditions enabled the assembled clergy to drive good bargains (20). In 1294 and perhaps again in 1304 the government resorted to provincial councils when there seemed reason to anticipate united resistance in central ones (21). Moreover, the relatively developed consultative institutions of the Church facilitated the activity of a lobby at the king's court: the royal ordinances resulting from ecclesiastical petitions were in effect

(18) STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 65-66 (texts cited in note 15). (19) Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. AMADEE SALMON, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899-1900), n, 261-265 (cap. XLIX, nos. 1510-1515); STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, passim; and for assemblies of magnates under Philip III, Cn.-V. LANGLOIS, Le regne de Philippe III le Hardi (Paris, 1887), 288-290. (20) STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 28-36. For a royal convocation of prelates early in 1300, see Formulaires de lettres du XIle, du XHIe du XIVe siecle, ed. CH.-V. LANGLOIS, Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, xxxiv1 (1891), no. 17 (21-22). (21) See STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 25-28, 38-42.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

105

counselled by the clergy (22). Neither nobles nor towns were so politically influential when convoked especially or by themselves. The usual assemblies of nobles were the courts and musters already noticed. Central assemblies of towns had their chief significance in a different respect. It is in the convocations of townsmen " cognizant in the matter of coins ", in 1308 and 1314, for instance, but with precedents dating back to Louis IX, that we first find counsel (as distinct from authority) clearly associated with the representative principle (23). Could it have been established that the urban class was useful for its expertise as well as its power — as was at least a little better recognized in England at the time (24) —, a more stable and permanent broadening of the political community might have been achieved. Finally, although the category is less distinct, we may speak of financial, diplomatic, and political negotiations conducted in the parlement of Paris, or under the influence of its procedure, usually through instructed representatives (25). The utility of judicial devices to Philip the Fair's political administration is nicely illustrated by the protracted efforts to achieve settlement in Flanders with the count and Flemish towns beginning in 1296 (26) and by the discussions with churches, nobles, and towns

(22) Ordonnances, i, 318-320, 331-335, 344-345, 348-350, 402-406. Most of these were ordinances for provincial clergies. In general, JEAN GAUDEMET in (Lox and FAWTIER) Histoire des institutions, in, 324-335. (23) Ordonnances, i, 93-94, 449-450, 454-456, 548-549; cf. 519-524 (cited below, p.108); PAUL GUILHIERMOZ, A vis sur la question monitaire donnas aux rois Philippe le Hardi, Philippe le Bel, Louis X et Charles IV le Bel in Revue Numismatique, 4e ser., xxv (1922), 75-76; xxix (1926), 96-98. Monetary consultations were not the only assemblies of towns under Philip the Fair. The study of central meetings remains problematical; see TAYLOR, Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv, esp. 285-287. The history of provincial meetings remains to be studied; for the Midi see provisionally T.N. BISSON, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), 281-288. See, also, below, 115. (24) See May McKisACK, The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1932), 6-9, 100-102, 126, 131-133; BERTIE WILKINSON, Studies in the Constitutional History of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 2d edn. (Manchester, 1952), chapter 3. (25) I have attempted a somewhat detailed study in Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements (1250-1314) ; above, chapter 4, 75-95. (26) Les Olim, ou registres des arrets rendus par la cour du roi..., ed. ARTHUR BEUGNOT, 4 vols. (Paris, 1839-48), n, 394-396; Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. GERAUD, n, 346 (H.F., xx, 591); Annales Gandenses, ed. and tr. HILDA JOHNSTONE (London, 1951), 85, 89-90, 93,

106

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

about taxation, especially about the subsidy for Princess Isabella's marriage, from 1307 to 1310 (27). At one point the king was certainly thinking of parlement as an occasion when representative consent to taxation might be obtained. Early in 1310 a form letter was registered in the Olim directing baillis, in the event of the failure of local negotiations with ecclesiastical tenants, to order the appointment of proctors having " full power to hear and accomplish what our court shall ordain in the matter". These proctors were to bear the " privileges or reasons " for resisting the aid of marriage and to appear in the next parlement on the day of their bailliage (28). As long as the government persisted in thinking of taxes as a (non-negotiable) right, which it did naturally in the case of a feudal aid, parlement was a more appropriate central forum than the assembled nation. Careful attention to the procuratorial powers employed in these judicial negotiations is the best approach to understanding the use of procuration in the general assemblies (29). And one has only to think of the everyday work in parlements to realize that the representation of chapters, convents, and towns before the king cannot have been altogether new in April 1302 (30). Considered against this background, the large assemblies of Philip the Fair stand out more distinctly than ever in their specialized character. The convocations of 1302 and 1308 were thoroughly political rallies of the nation on very exceptional issues for which existing means of consultation seemed inappropriate. Organically they may be regarded as extensions of the afforced councils that met upon written summons; but in

96; FUNCK-BRENTANO, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, 144-145, 229-230, 491-494, 497, 510-513, 516, 532-541, 545-553, 601, 631. Philip convoked assemblies of Flemish men toward the end of his reign. (27) Arch, mun., Cahors, BB 6; Registres du Tresor des Chartes: I, Regne de Philippe le Bel, ed. ROBERT FAWTIER (Paris, 1958), nos. 819, Sl9bis, 830 (Ordonnances, I, 453), 860, 886; Olim, n, 508vii. (28) Olim, n, 508vii; STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 78-79; BISSON, Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements, above, 93. (29) See ELIZABETH A.R. BROWN, Philip the Fair, " Plena Potestas " and the " Aide pur Fille Marier " of 1308, printed in Representation in Theory and Practice: Historical Papers read at Bryn Mawr College, April 1968 (Etudes presentees a la Commission Internationale pour VHistoire des Assemblies d'Etats, xxxix). (30) See above, 83-4, 87-93.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

107

militancy and numbers they resembled armies almost as well as courts or councils and it is conceivable that the lists from which they were convoked had their basis in military administration. They were not, grosso modo, deliberative bodies but passively consultative ones, more old fashioned in this sense than the councils. Political models were furnished by the papacy: the royal summons of 1302 followed by two months Boniface VIIFs convocation of a general council challenging the French monarchy and the king's men cannot have forgotten the impact of the Jubilee in 1300. Less distinctive is the assembly of June 1303, which has sometimes been called an Estates-General because one chronicler was impressed by its size and said that representative elements attended. In fact the king seems to have convoked clergy and nobles, but not primary communities, on a scale comparable to that of April 1302, and then to have settled for a disappointingly mediocre gathering, perhaps no more than an enlarged council, in his quest for renewed support against the pope (31). Finally, it becomes more difficult than ever to interpret the assembly of 1314 as comparable to those of 1302 and 1308. Only the drama of Marigny's speech, it seems, saved it from oblivion; and the local fame of that event caused the scribe of Saint-Denis to give an account sufficiently detailed to suggest that the gathering was in fact a convention of cities of the realm combined with, yet distinct from, a middle-sized council of barons and bishops (32). We are reminded not so much of (31) HERVIEU, Recherches sur Us premiers Etats generaux, 76-79; MC!LWAIN, Medieval Estates in Cambridge Med. Hist., vn, 687-688; PICOT, Documents, xiv-xviii. The chief sources are Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G£RAUD, i, 335-336 (H.F., xx, 588); PICOT, Documents, nos. 14-19, 22, 52; nos. 23-51 give some idea of the range of the prior summons and the number of defections in the response. (32) Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. VIARD, vm, 299-301: " Et en cest an [1314], ...le premier jour d'aoust, Phelippe le Biaux, roy de France assambla a Paris pluseurs barons et evesques; et enseurquetout, il fist venir pluseurs bourgois de chascune cite du royaume qui semons y estoient a venir. Adonques yceulz, ou palais de Paris venuz et assambles le jour dessusdit, Engerran de Marigny... monta, de son [the king's] commandement en i eschaufaut avec le roy et les prelaz et les barons qui ylec estoient sur ledit eschaufaut scant, et en estant monstra et manifesta, aussi comme en preschant au peuple qui ylec estoit devant 1'eschaufaut, oyant touz les prelaz dessus diz, la complainte le roy, et pourquoy il les avoit fait ylec venir et assambler... [he then spoke of Paris as the traditional place of aid and counsel for the king of France and explained the new needs in the war against Flanders] Pour laquelle chose, yceli Engerran requist pour le roy aux bourgois des communes qui ylec estoient

108

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

1302 or 1308 as of 1312, when cities were convoked to Lyon and Vienne, apparently to meet magnates already attendant on the king in connection with negotiations with the pope (33), and of 1313, when the "good towns" were represented with prelates and barons in an expanded session of the king's council to deliberate on the coinage (34). Experimentation with the summons was characteristic of these difficult later years of the reign. Why this was so can only be understood with reference to the problem of representation.

The great assemblies of 1302 and 1308 were certainly marked by progress in the practice of representation (35). Orders for deputies ad hoc from towns, monasteries, and chapters encouraged the holding of elections on a scale then unprecedented in France. In earlier provincial assemblies such " primary " communities had usually been summoned and represented through their ruling officials (36). Moreover, some of the convocation forms now required that deputies be furnished with mandates of full power (plena potestas), in accordance with Roman-canonical procedure, assambles, qu'il vouloit savoir lesquiex li feroient aide ou non a aler encontre les Flamens a ost en Flandres. Et lors, ycelui Engorran, ce dit, si fist lever son seigneur le roy de France de la ou il seoit pour veoir ceulz qui li voudroient faire aide... ". (33) TAYLOR, The Assembly of 1312 at Lyons-Vienne in Etudes d'histoire... Pirenne, 337-341; Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv, 286-287 and notes; BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 288n. (34) Ordonnances, i, 519-524 (June 1313): " ...Scavoir faisons a tous que sur ce appelle avecq nous nostre Conseil, & les maistres de nos monnoies grant plente de bonnes gens de bonnes Villes de nostre Royaume, sages & esprouvez en telles choses, avons entraitie deliberation & accord, & fait certaines Ordennances... ". The date can be fixed as prior to 9 June by a directive to the seneschal of Beaucaire, Bibliotheque nationale, ms. latin 11016, fol. 178; so, since Pentecost fell on 3 June, it seems altogether probable that this assembly coincided with the great Pentecost court of 1313. See also Ordonnances, i, 525-526, 527-531, 532-533, 536-538. HERVIEU, Recherches sur les premiers £tats generaux, 101-104, thought that a second, more general assembly dealt with the coinage later in 1313, one which he regarded as " incontestablement une assemblee d'Etats gen6raux "; but the ordinances cited above only show some reconsideration (undated) in the council, prompted by representations from experts on coinage. (35) The best analysis is still that of MC!LWAIN, Cambridge Med. Hist., vii, 684-691. (36) E.g., in Languedoc, T.N. BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 90-91, 151-152, 183, 222-223.

The General Assemblies of Philip the fair

109

and large numbers of empowered proctors appeared before the king and his officers in 1302, 1303, and 1308 (37). Evidently the king was seeking something more than a merely administrative representation. Then, in 1308, bishops were given the alternative (to appearing in person) of joining with comprovincials, in clerical assemblies scheduled two weeks ahead of the assembly at Tours, to elect one of their number " who will represent the place of all and have the full power of all " (38). Few such elections were held, but in the province of Reims, at least, religious corporations were included with the prelates in a common procuration for the general assembly (39). Moreover, in Champagne and the Ile-de-France the castellany or prevote was recognized to be a local unit of representation and deputies were sometimes appointed by the assembled vills (40). Then in the proceedings at Tours the king permitted all townsmen except those from administrative chefs-lieux to return home at a certain point, a permission that rendered these " chief " deputies representative of other towns of their districts, if only for the purpose of justifying impositions in support of their expenses (41). So it appears that the king was seeking a more effectively binding kind of representation than in the past and that he was prepared to broaden the constituencies. Yet on further study this evidence of progress is somewhat compromised. It is true that in 1302 and 1303 the government seemed insistent on full and binding powers from communities represented by proxy. The summonses were explicit to this

(37) Documents, nos. 1-3, 5; MAURICE JUSSELIN, Lettres de Philippe le Bel relatives a la convocation de VassembUe de 1302 in Bibliotheque de VEcole des Chartes, LXVII (1906), 470471; TAYLOR, New Texts on the Assembly of 1302 in Speculum, xi, 39-42. For the assemblies at Paris, Montpellier, Nimes, and Carcassonne in 1303, see PICOT, Documents, nos. 11, 74, 75, 77, 81, 82, 84-91, 93, 94, 100-123, 137, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148, 152-156, 158, 163, 164, 167177, 185-186; and for Tours in 1308, nos. 657, 658, 666ff. (38) PICOT, Documents, nos. 658, 662; Le Livre de Guillaume le Maire, ed. CELESTIN PORT (Paris, 1877), 389-391. (39) PICOT, Documents, no. 747. (40) Ibid., nos. 820, 830, 907, 920, 925, 928-931, 934, 935, 941, 948, 959, 967, 969, 970, 981: cf. nos. 836, 863, 915, 916, 926, 945, 966, 998, and TAYLOR, Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv, 286 note 2. (41) PICOT, Documents, no. 1076; Arch, mun., Montpellier, Armoire G, Caisse 6, no. 3398, ed. TAYLOR, The Assembly of 1312 at Lyons-Vienne in Etudes d'histoire... Pirenne, 349.

110

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

effect, and such procurations as have survived were inspected and sometimes rejected as insufficient (42). Yet in 1308, even though towns all over France delegated proctors, there is no good indication that royal officials had requested their appointment nor that they examined their mandates when deputies arrived (43). Nor would this have been the first time when formal procurations to a French assembly were gratuitously presented by communities. Proctors of churches and towns had appeared in assemblies of the senechaussee of Carcassonne in 1271 and 1275, probably to the surprise of the king's agents, whose letters of convocation had made no provision for mandates (44). Now it is hard to see what the king wanted from his towns in 1302 that he did not also need in 1308. Conceivably the prospects for support seemed more doubtful in the former year than the latter; and admittedly the notion of the endangered status regni, legally implying a responsibility to come to the king's aid, was more stressed on the occasion of the earlier meeting. But these circumstances served chiefly to dramatize the obligation to attend, which was expressly stated to be rooted in fealty " and whatsoever bond... " (45); they had no necessary bearing on the form of representation. It is worth asking, indeed, why the king or his advisers felt that procuratorial representation was necessary on either occasion. In practice if not in law these centralized uproars against the pope and the Templars presented problems unlike those in a central negotiation of taxes. Political consent was less likely than financial consent to become the object of a concretely legal enforcement. What was needed above all in 1302 as in 1308 was the attendance of prestigious persons and communities in large numbers. And prestige could not (as it cannot) be fully represented. The clerical and temporal

(42) In addition to citations in note 37, see Pi COT, Documents, nos. 146, 148, 152, 155, 156, 158, 169. (43) Ibid., nos. 660-661, 817-1075; cf. no. 1076, and TAYLOR, The Assembly of 1312, 349. Prelates and nobles also deputed proctors, PICOT, Documents, nos. 666ff, although religious communities alone had been invited to appoint them, nos. 657-659. (44) BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 208, 210, 216, 223-228, 323-325. The summons for the second of these assemblies explicitly required personal appearance of lords, prelates, and magistrates, 223-224. Also 99-100, possibly a similar situation in Agenais in 1253. (45) PICOT, Documents, no. 1; cf. nos. 657-660. See also nos. 5, 6.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

111

magnates, summoned to appear in person, in many instances appointed proctors, and these proctors frequently functioned to excuse rather than to represent their principals (46). As for the towns, it was made clear that the king wanted " notable and experienced " men in 1302 (whatever their powers) and men "strong in fervor for the faith" in 1308 (47). Some help in resolving these difficulties may possibly be found in a consideration of the national scope of these assemblies. Scholars have often spoken of the convocation of 1302 as having been in some novel sense representative of the nation (48). Indeed, it can hardly be doubted that so massive and inclusive a gathering felt itself to be virtually the expression of the nation's will. The summons of 1302 alluded to the "arduous business" as affecting all inhabitants even though not all were summoned or directly represented. And in 1308 the idea that all the nation acted through an assembly was explicit in words attributed to Guillaume de Plaisians in his speech to the pope: " And so, most holy father, appeal the king of France and all prelates, chapters, barons and all peoples of the whole kingdom of France, who [Pccme] before you, some in person, some through representation, namely through their proctors and syndics... " (49). (46) The response to the summonses of 1302 is poorly documented, but there may have been a better personal attendance in April 1302 than in the all too numerous assemblies that soon followed. Excuse-procurations proliferate in 1303 and 1308: see ibid., nos. 22ff, and MCILWAIN, Cambridge Med. Hist., vn, 687-688; PICOT, Documents, nos, 74, 78-80, 83, 96-99, 137, 142, 144, 147, 149-151, 159-162, 165, 166, 178-183; and for 1308 nos. 657-659, 667, 673, 674, 685, and others; nos. 785, 790, 791, and others (impossible to cite all the texts for 1308 because Picot failed in many items to give the full formulas from which the nature of the procuration may be deduced). The written adhesions to the project of 1303 for a council against the pope, PICOT, Documents , nos. 123, 189ff, reveal a better adaptation of procuratorial authority to the political exigencies; but the collection of these statements only revealed how unsatisfactory or how incomplete had been the response in assemblies. Much is explained by the pragmatism of the king's work in 1302 and 1303. For a more technical interpretation of the procuratorial formulas of 1302, see BROWN, Philip the Fair, " Plena Potestas " and the " Aide pur Fille Marier", cited above, n. 29. (47) PICOT, Documents, nos. 1, 660. (48) HERVIEU, Recherches sur les premiers Etats generaux, 69-71; PICOT, Documents, vm; MCILWAIN, Cambridge Med. Hist., vn, 686; EDWARD P. CHEYNEY, The Dawn of a New Era, 1250-1453 (New York, 1936), 85. (49) PICOT, Documents, no. 1; HEINRICH FINKE, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols. (Munster, 1907), n, 145-146.

112

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The sense that these great assemblies virtually represented the nation was characteristic. It betrayed, if only by implication, the inadequacy of great councils for some political purposes. But it was neither new nor concrete. Had not the great men always represented their tenants? The summons of more men than usual made the assemblies more representative of the nation in a certain general sense, but the extended summons in these instances, while exercising the existing communal constituencies in unprecedented numbers, made no contribution toward a national electoral constitution. On the contrary, in a different conservative perspective, as also in a corporate one, the larger the convocation the less representative its character. The assemblies of Paris and Tours must have seemed to many to be virtually convocations of the kingdom: that is, gatherings of all "political individuals " of the realm. Professor Post has pointed out the hint of quod omnes tangit... in the words statum... contingentibus of the French writs, words probably not yet fixed in chancery usage and so not taken for granted; and we recall that the Roman law maxim had been quoted verbatim in the summons, only seven years before, to the largest of English medieval parliaments. Procurations and narratives as well as writs bespeak an impulse that was individualist and aggregative rather than corporate and representative (50). Towns and churches as well as prelates and nobles were convoked as individuals. When, therefore, it came to deciding whether the voice of a town were better represented ex officio or ad hoc, royal administrators were perhaps simply irresolute. Jurists of the time maintained that for some

(50) FAWTIER came close to such a view, without elaborating, in Histoire des institutions, n, 553. Of the events in 1302-03 he wrote: " Ce n'etait point, comme on 1'ecrit souvent, par erreur, les premiers Etats Generaux; c'etait mieux que cela, une consultation directe de 1'opinion publique en France, sans intermediate, on pourrait presque dire au suffrage universel ". It was reported early in 1308 that the king " avia asignat dia a tots los barons e prelats e universitats de sa terra a aver ab eyls conseyl e parlament . . . ", FINKE, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, u, 127; cf. 123. For quod omnes tangit. . ., see POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, chapter 4, esp. pp. 165-166. In a memoir of about 1308, inciting the pope against the Templars, we read: " quos omnes tangit negocium, omnes ad fidei deffensionem vocantur ", ed. BOUTARIC, Notices et Extraits, xxa, 186. Professor GERARD E. CASPARY, in a major study of kingship in relation to the two laws, still in manuscript rightly stresses that quod omnes tangit referred to individuals and " was basically foreign to the majority principle and the rules of corporate consent ".

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

113

purposes townsmen could be legally represented by their magistrates (51); on the other hand, elections might have been thought useful for arousing local feeling. Abbeys and chapters were summoned through both prelates and proctors in 1302 (52). Probably nothing better demonstrated the impossibility of assembling the realm than the attempt to do so in 1302. Languedoc posed the chief problem. Distant and populous, foreign in language and outlook, it was hardly yet integrated in the kingdom whose obligations weighed heavily upon it. Few men from Languedoc seem to have appeared in the meeting at Paris in April 1302 (53). Southern prelates responded poorly to the renewed summonses in 1303 and it is significant that the king soon thereafter resorted to itinerant operations, including provincial assemblies in the Midi, in his continuing effort to obtain massive, as distinct from representative, support (54). Nevertheless, the behavior of clergy, nobles and towns in responding as orders when they assembled in 1302 (55), and the presumable tendency for their responses to be influenced by their leading men, cannot have failed at last to evoke some recognition of the possibilities in collective action through representation. The possibilities became more apparent in 1308. Once again the summons was comprehensive; but the disadvantages of so massive a central convocation seem plainly reflected in the belated resort to a virtual representation of towns, including some in furthest Languedoc; and perhaps even more impressive is the proctorial representation of two or three clerical provinces as such (56). The deputations from castellanies, on the other hand, are less (51) BEAUMANOIR, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, i, 82 (cap. iv, no. 157); Responsa doctorum Tholosanorum, ed. E. MEIJERS (Haarlem, 1938), 213, 216; JEAN FAURE, Commentaria in quatuor libros institutionum (Lyon, 1593), 621. (52) JUSSELIN, Lettres de Philippe le Bel relatives d la convocation de 1302 in Bibl. "Ecole Charles, LXVII, 470-471. (53) See ibid., 469 note 1; PICOT, Documents, nos. 1-3, the summons was received in Montpellier barely three weeks before the assembly met. (54) PICOT, Documents, nos. 9ff; BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 276-280; STRAYER, Consent to Taxation, 66; Normandy and Languedoc in Speculum, XLIV (1969), 3, 9-10. The king himself made a trip to Languedoc in the winter of 1304, when the province was said to be seriously disaffected. (55) PICOT, Documents, nos. 5-8; but cf. no. 4, the prelates of Tours make notice of their own counsel. (56) References above, notes 38, 39, 41.

114

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

significant than at first sight appears. Of some twenty-six instances or possible instances among 258 surviving procurations from towns, all were from northern rural districts in which tiny places, if any at all, would have had to be summoned (57), and only six of these texts refer certainly to elections by a " community " of the district (58). In at least two castellanies the vills appointed deputies individually (59), while in some, perhaps most, of the twenty-six districts, the constituency cannot have been larger or more extensive in territory than that of a good sized town (60). Taken together with the other evidence of delegation in 1308, we must still conclude that change has been minimal. The largest assemblies of Philip the Fair, all things considered, were not very representative bodies. Better evidence of royal efforts to effect a manageable representation of the realm through its wider communities can be found in the later assemblies of towns. In 1312 and probably in (August) 1314 too, diocesan laymen were understood to be virtually present in the persons of assembled city delegates (61). What had been an expedient in 1308 seems to have gained recognition as a practical policy in the smaller assembly of 1312, a development that derives heightened interest from the circumstance that the assembly of Lyon, in its function as well as its conjunction with a council in a neighboring city, was nearly a repetition of the assembly of Tours. On both of these occasions, widened constituencies had probably seemed a solution to the problem of keeping the assemblies in session for extended periods of time. Towns from the whole realm, including Languedoc, were represented at the king's summons in 1312 and 1314. A list relating to the monetary consultation of 1314 is especially significant as revealing a far wider selection of towns than the handful of bonnes villes of Languedoil whose specialized counsel had been sought a half century before (62). (57) References above, note 40. (58) PICOT, Documents, nos. 820, 907, 930, 931, 969, 981. (59) Ibid., nos. 941, 967; cf. nos. 945, 998. (60) See, e.g., ibid., no. 948. (61) TAYLOR, The Assembly of 1312 in Etudes d'histoire... Pirenne, 341-349; Grandes Chroniques de France, vm, 299-301 (partly quoted above, note 32). (62) GUILHIERMOZ, Avis sur la question monetaire in Revue Numismatique, 4e se*r., xxix, 96-98; cf. Ordonnances, i, 93-94.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

115

It is interesting, though by no means certainly important — given the unsatisfactory state of our information — that we hear nothing explicit about procuration in these assemblies of towns. The summons of 1312 specified consuls, mayors " and other administrators of cities ", or their " solemn messengers ", while the records of 1313 and 1314 refer to townsmen "wise" or " skilled in the matter of coinage " or " sufficient " (63). Since the question at issue in 1312 was practically the same as that in 1308 and since counsel alone was required in 1313 and 1314, it is tempting to infer that the government was learning to distinguish between the appropriate applications of consultative and binding representation. For evidence of a consistently practiced representation of regional communities of nobles or towns, we do best to look at records of the king's court. The magnates of Anjou and Maine appealed against the attempt of Count Charles to collect a marriage aid in 1301 (64). The consulates of Rouergue sent a proctor to " France " in 1304, though for what purpose we do not know (65). In 1309 the nobles of Gevaudan acted through a deputy in parlement to protest against .the pariage between the king and the bishop of Mende; they also started a suit in the seneschal's court using carefully drawn procurations (66). And between 1307 and 1311 the towns and villages of Quercy associated in large numbers to pursue financial negotiations and other interests with the king and the pope (67). Even the villages of northern castellanies were experienced in associative action before the king's court (68). It is clear that Roman-canonical powers were regarded (63) TAYLOR, The Assembly of 1312, 346; Ordonnances, i, 519, 525, 532, 548-549. The nuncii solempnes of the summons were certainly not equivalent to syndics and probably not to proctors; cf. POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, 40-42, 104-105, with D.E. QUELLER, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1967), chapter 1, and pp. 57-59. (64) Arch, nat., J 178 B, no. 61; JOSEPH PETIT, Charles de Valois (1270-1325) (Paris, 1900), 288-291. (65) BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 285, where some related evidence is also cited. (66) ROUCAUTE and SACHE, Lettres de Philippe-le-Bel relatives au pays de Gevaudan, no. 23 (67-69); cf. pp. 202-208; Arch, dep., Lozere, G 872 (my thanks to Professor Strayer for this reference). (67) Arch, num., Cahors, BB 6; FF 15 (copy in Bibl. nat., Doat, cxix, 23v-26); FAWTIER, Registres de Philippe le Bel, nos. 819, S\9bis; Arch, nat., J 356, nos. 1-14. (68) See, e.g., Olim, i, 832xliii, and generally BISSON, Consultative Functions in the King's Parlements, above, 87-93.

116

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

more intently in these activities than in the general assemblies. Procuration was used with full awareness of its procedural meaning by the legal specialists who handled the appeals from Anjou and Quercy; the mandates borne by the lords of Gevaudan in 1309 were actually challenged; and much interest was shown in those carried by deputies of the count and great towns of Flanders during the interminable negotiations with the king and in his court. In all these activities, however, the constituencies appear to be aggregative rather than corporate (69). They are composed of individuals appointing deputies in common, not of estates. However such appointments were made, this was not a very useful model for elections to large assemblies. On the other hand, despite the particularist terms of their procurations, the deputies of associated nobles and towns may sometimes have presumed or been encouraged to speak for their regions or districts, especially when they might derive political or fiscal advantage from doing so. In Quercy the consuls of Cahors had traditionally represented men of the entire diocese in issues of public interest (70). And in 1294 an attempt was made by Agen and Condom to recover expenses for their mission " for the common utility of the city and diocese " of Agen from all townsmen of the region, very much as the king was later to do with his city delegations to Tours and Lyon (71). The practice of representation in the assemblies of Philip the Fair, however limited, was based upon the precedents of provincial practice. The term " Estates General" as applied to assemblies of Philip the Fair, although much criticized, is apparently so useful that it persists even in the best scholarship. These consultations were indeed the first of a long series of national or central assem(69) On corporate procuration, see POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, chapter 1, esp. pp. 39-43; cf. generally FREDRIC CHEYETTE, Procurations by Large-Scale Communities in Fourteenth-Century France in Speculum, xxxvn (1962), 18-31. (70) BISSON, Assemblies in Languedoc, 127-129. Professor TAYLOR, The Assembly of 13129 344n, long ago pointed this out and hinted at its implications. See also his Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv, 286 note 2, 287. (71) Assemblies in Languedoc, 287.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

117

blies attended by men and communities of the three great orders of French society. And the recurrence of royal assemblies so composed surely has its historical significance even if the later assemblies themselves were too few, too slightly institutionalized, and usually too lacking in " generality " to bear their traditional designation comfortably (72). But it will not do to argue from the mere presence of elements of the estates in royal assemblies, much less to suppose that such a presence was necessarily a representation of estates (73). On that basis almost any large assembly becomes an assembly of Estates, and any hope of distinguishing between phases in the early history of French representative institutions is frustrated. A more promising approach is to ask what medieval men understood by " estates " as a term applied to assemblies. It seems probable that they commonly understood the term to denote associative political interests, differentiated along class lines, and capable of being represented as such. Now when a chronicler tells us of the dauphin-regent causing " une convocacion de tous les trois estas du royaume de France " in 1356, we may reasonably infer that people then understood that interests of general and collective kinds could be represented, and even, perhaps, render his phrase as " an assembly of the general estates of the realm " (74). But the truth is that this understanding was new in France in the middle of the fourteenth century (75). It developed at a time when assemblies were ceasing to be unique events entirely at the king's discretion, when the men of estates

(72) MCILWAIN, Medieval Estates in Cambridge Med. Hist., vii, 684-695; FAWTIER, Parlement d'Angleterre et Etats generaux de France in Comptes-rendus, Acad. Inscrip. BellesLettres, 1953, 278; A.R. MYERS, The English Parliament and the French Estates-General in the Middle Ages in Album Helen Maud Cam, n (Studies presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, xxiv) (Louvain-Paris, 1961), 144-149; P.S. LEWIS, Later Medieval France: the Polity (London, 1968), 329-345. (73) As did HERVIEU, Recherches sur les premiers Etats generaux, 2-4, 17, 25, 58, 62, 71ff. (74) Les Grandes Chroniques de France: Chronique des regnes de Jean II et de Charles V, ed. ROLAND DELACHENAL, 3 vols. (Paris, 1910-20), i, 74. (75) Cf. ibid., 55-61; GEORGES DE LAGARDE, La structure politique et sociale de VEurope au XIVe siecle in U organisation corporative du Moyen Age a la fin de VAncien Regime (Etudes. Comm. Internal. Hist. Assemblies d'Etats, in) (Louvain, 1939), esp. pp. 102-117; £MILE LOUSSE, La soci&U d'Ancien Regime..., nouv. edn. (Etudes... Comm. Internal. Hist. Assemblies d'Etats, vi) (Louvain, 1952), chapter 4. I hope to develop this point more fully elsewhere.

118

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

were gaining self-consciousness and leverage from circumstances seriously affecting their interests. Assemblies were beginning to act through spokesmen and committees of estates, beginning to be recognized as a means of expressing the permanent interests of the nation. For the reigns of the later Capetian kings, on the other hand, neither official nor narrative sources employ the term " estates " (status, estats, etats) to describe assemblies or those attending assemblies. Status, in normal political usage, is still limited to meaning " condition " (or " welfare "), as in the " estate of the realm" mentioned in the summonses of 1302 (76), or in the striking " generalis status Ecclesie " (also, " li generaux estats de 1'Eglise "), found in reports to the pope about the assembly of Paris (77). Chroniclers and others spoke of Philip IV's assemblies as composed of clergy, nobles, and towns (78), not of the " estates " in which those individuals had shares or rights or obligations; and there is little indication that the royal government thought of them otherwise. Was there no sense, then, in which the estates of France were represented in the assemblies of Philip the Fair? This is a more difficult question. We must allow for the possibility that people were not yet articulating a concept that was already understood in practice. In fact the evidence reveals two or three incidents in these assemblies that appear to foreshadow the collective behavior characteristic of the future Estates General. In 1302 the clergy, nobles and towns separated to deliberate, and they drafted separate responses to the pope. From these letters, however, it seems that political divergencies were quite as pronounced between cleric and layman as between the three orders; whether clergymen, nobles and burghers had any sense of representing their estates is wholly unclear (79). More remarkable (76) PICOT, Documents, nos. 1, 9-11. (77) Ibid., nos. 5 (p. 8), 6 (p. 14). Cf., on status, POST, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought, 12-24, 241-301, and passim. (78) See, e.g., Continuation of Chronicon Rotomagensis, H.F., xxm, 346; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, ed. GERAUD, i, 314-315 (H.F., xx, 584n-585); Cont. of Landulf de Columna, Breviarium historiarum..., H.F., xxm, 197; Cont. of Geraud de Frachet, Chronicon, H.F., xxi, 30; Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G&RAUD, n, 365 (H.F., xx, 597); Grandes Chroniques de France, vm, 299-301. (79) PICOT, Documents, nos. 5-8; cf. no. 4; and cf. Guillaume de Nangis, e"d. GERAUD, i, 314-315 (H.F., xx, 584n-585).

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

119

is the evidence from 1308, when Philip moved the assembly of Tours to Poitiers to support his charges against the Templars before the pope. Although it cannot have been easy to hold together so vast a gathering, independent reports of the proceedings at Poitiers do not suggest any drastically reduced attendance. Some prelates and barons seem to have excused themselves through proctors, some lesser urban deputations may have melted away, but there were surely no elections by the estates as such at Tours (80). Nevertheless, the assembled men at Poitiers were represented as orders through the spokesmen who followed Guillaume de Plaisians to the podium. First, the archbishops of Narbonne and Bourges spoke for the clergy; "then for the barons arose a certain person " whose name is not given; and then a certain citizen of Paris for the French tongue [i.e., for the lands thereof] and a certain citizen of Toulouse for Toulouse and Montpellier and all of Languedoc appealed in vernacular for the despatch of this matter... (81).

This account, besides illustrating once again the popular awareness that the nation was virtually represented, puts into sharp focus the practical division between Languedoil and Languedoc that was so plainly to influence the form taken by the Estates General. It confirms in more explicit terms what had already been suggested in the procedures of 1302: that the assembled men of estates were, if not yet so called, on the verge of becoming the Estates of France. Lest this interpretation be thought to underestimate the place of estates in the national assemblies of Philip the Fair, we must again advert to the prevailing circumstances. The events just described, historic though they may appear in retrospect, were in some ways awkward improvisations. Neither

(80) The king of Aragon's ambassador gave two circumstantial accounts, ed. FINKE, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, u, 134-135, 140-150; there is also a draft of Guillaume de Plaisian's speech, ibid., 135-150 (also ed. and tr. GEORGES LIZERAND, Le dossier de I'affaire des Templiers, 110-124). The session was independently recorded in Annales regis Edwardi primi. Fragmentum (III), in Chronica monasterii S. Albani, ed. H.T. RILEY, Rolls Series, xxvin* (London, 1865), 492-497, without reference to the speeches on behalf of nobles and towns. (81) FINKE, Papsttum und Untergang, n, 147-148.

120

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

in composition nor in experience were the estates of French society yet very adaptable to nation-wide assemblies in the early fourteenth century. The status of towns had not merely to be expressed in different vernacular languages, but was surely in the control of bonnes villes whose political awareness set them as far above the villages as the dukes of the second estate towered over the donzels. Philip the Fair's reduction of the urban summons to cities did not prevent his successors from experimenting with the convocation of larger numbers of towns, perhaps because it had developed that no leading town, or towns, could represent the mass of towns in fiscal or military consultations (82). In August 1314 the other delegations are said to have followed the lead of Paris, but the Parisian spokesman on whom the king relied was not their deputy, much less, it seems, that of places not convoked. The nobilities under Philip the Fair were even more provincial than the towns, acutely sensitive to their own diversities in custom and status. The account of their representation at Poitiers was noticeably, perhaps significantly, perfunctory. Standesgefiihl was probably more nearly national in the clergy than in the other principal orders, for apart from the uniformities of language, privilege, and the ubiquitous resistance to clerical pretensions to fiscal immunity, the French church came under nation-wide constraints in 1296 and after. Yet even the clergy probably thought of the province, of the archbishop's council, as the widest sphere of ordinary activity. It is not by chance that the best defined constituencies in assemblies of Philip the Fair were at once the smallest and the most experienced, and that units of direct representation were only gradually and slightly enlarged down to 1314. The lack of effectual estates in any but provincial configurations was one reason why meaningful consent to taxation could only be obtained locally under the last Capetian rulers (83). Moreover, if estates we must have, let us recognize that (82) TAYLOR, Assemblies of French Towns in 1316 in Speculum, xiv, 275-299; Assemblies of Towns and War Subsidy, 1318-1319 in Studies in Early French Taxation. (83) See generally STRAYER and TAYLOR, Studies in Early French Taxation; and for a helpful account of provincial interests and alignments, ANDRE ARTONNE, Le mouvement de 1314 et les chartes provinciates de 1315 (Paris, 1912). By the foregoing remarks I do not mean to imply that the " national " estates ever became effective organs.

The General Assemblies of Philip the Fair

121

the number three has no especial sanctity for Philip the Fair or for those who reported his assemblies. Men are said to convene from not merely one, two, or three orders, but even four or more. The continuator of Guillaume de Nangis listed theologians and lawyers as participants in the large assembly at Paris in June 1303, and these elements must have seemed as distinctive in their juridical status as any present (84). In 1317 the professors of Paris were called into the assembly which approved the accession of Philip V to the throne (85); and it is tempting to imagine that some of the lawyers who represented southern towns in 1308 enjoyed a professional convention (or academic reunion) with their northern colleagues (86). Yet even in this connection it bears repeating that what impressed contemporaries about these assemblies was not so much their representative nature as their spectacular comprehensiveness. " All barons and knights and magistrates of the whole kingdom of France with all the greater and lesser prelates ", say the chroniclers of Saint-Denis in reference to the assembly of 1302, and other accounts are to like effect (87). In the convocation of June 1303 the continuator of Guillaume de Nangis enumerated no less than eleven categories of men and communities, from " prelates " to " serious persons " (88). It is preferable, therefore, to speak of " men of estates " instead of " estates " alone as constituting the general assemblies of Philip the Fair. For in most respects the term " Estates General" is misleading and to use it without vigilance as to its implications is to obscure a distinctive historical phase in the rise of French representative institutions.

(84) Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G&RAUD, i, 335-336 (H.F., xx, 588). They had probably attended the assembly of 1302 as well: see PICOT, Documents, nos. 5, 6; cf. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G&RAUD, i, 314, and note 3 (H.F., xx, 584, note 5). (85) Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G£RAUD, i, 434 (H.F., xx, 617). (86) See PICOT, Documents, nos. 1019, 1027, 1031, 1038, 1039, 1047, 1056, 1061, 1065; cf. nos. 983, 991, 1018 (lawyers represent Bourges, Nevers, and La Rochelle). (87) Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G£RAUD, i, 314n (H.F., xx, 584n); Grandes Chroniques de France, vm, 198; Guillaume d'ficosse, Chronicon, H.F., xxi, 204; see also 19n; BERNARD GUI, Flores chronicarum, H.F., xxi, 713. (88) Cont. Guillaume de Nangis, ed. G&RAUD, i, 335-336 (H.F., xx, 588).

122

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Historians have appreciated the novelty of these assemblies better than their complexity or their relation to the past. Change is more perceptible than continuity and the profoundly altered political circumstances of Philip the Fair's reign explain much that was significant in his parliamentary practice. His large assemblies were indeed a new venture in national consultation, and they did mark the introduction of explicitly representative elements into central political assemblies. Their unprecedented size may have found resonance in a timely evocation of quod omnes tangit... But they were compounded, diversely and spontaneously, of customary forms of assemblage and representation. Unwieldy, experimental, they were a peculiar species of the old genus " consultative assembly ". The direct representation of religious communities and towns, marked by a somewhat inconsistent employment of Roman-canonical procuration, was better established than virtual representation, although neither practice — nor procuration, for that matter — was new. The resort to constituencies wider than city limits was a progressive but still uncommon expedient. The larger assemblies, already prone to divide into estates and to act as such, were nevertheless traditionally aggregative in forms of summons and attendance. In sum, the characterization is mixed. The reign of Philip the Fair, like those of his contemporaries in England, was a transitional epoch in the history of representative institutions. As in England, the kings of France continued to convoke men in appropriate forms other than massive parliaments. The dramatic self-assertion of estates in the provincial leagues of 1314 together with the continued experimentation in consultation with representative elements under Philip V probably had more influence on the Estates-General than the stark and curious events of 1302 and 1308. Where the latter most resembled the Estates — for example, in the practice of individual summonses and attendance — the general assemblies of Philip the Fair had been, themselves, least original. These assemblies seem to have been as much like the particularist provincial consultations of the thirteenth century as the nascent Estates-General of the midfourteenth.

PART II

THE RISE OF CATALONIA

This page intentionally left blank

6

THE RISE OF CATALONIA: IDENTITY, POWER, AND IDEOLOGY IN A TWELFTH-CENTURY SOCIETY* The study of medieval Catalonia has suffered from two distracting tendencies. On one hand, the insistence on a historic patriotic identity to serve modern political needs focussed scholarly attention on the origins of national autonomy in the ninth and tenth centuries and the glories of Mediterranean leadership and of political liberties in the later Middle Ages. On the other hand, the facts of dynastic association with Aragon and the beginnings of trans-Pyrenean expansion as a bi-regnal phenomenon drew interest away from Catalan experience per se in the twelfth century, although that period was arguably critical for its development. The two tendencies could be confused, for it was surely for political (or nostalgic) reasons that some Catalan historians have insisted on I'engrandiment occitanic or " the Pyrenean unity " as the main theme of the late twelfth century. And that confusion entailed another, for it was left unclear whether dynastic expansionism should

* I wish to thank Professor A. M. Mund6 for help on this theme during many years, although he bears no responsibility for opinions expressed here. With the same reservation I also thank Professors J. H. Elliott, Bernard Guenee, and E. F. Irschick for useful criticism. The abbreviations are: ACA = Arxiu de la Corona d'Arag6 (Barcelona); CC = Catalunya carolingia, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, 2 vols. in 4 parts (Barcelona: Institut dEstudis Catalans, Memories de la Seccid Histdrico-arqueologica, 2, 14, 15; 1926-55); DI = Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archive General de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascar6 et al, 42 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1973); EEMCA = Estudios de EdadMedia de la Corona de Aragon, 10 vols. to date (Zaragoza, 1945-75); ES = Espana sagrada . . . , ed. Henrique Florez et al., 58 vols. (Madrid, 1747-1918); FAC = Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings (1151-1213), ed. T. N. Bisson (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1984); Gcb = the early version (or its continuations) of the work cited on p. 155 and in note 27; LFM=Liber feudorum maior. Cartulario real que se conserva en el Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Francisco Miquel Rosell, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-7); VL = Jaime and Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espana, 22 vols. (Madrid, 1806-1902).

126

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

be thought of as something distinct from Catalonian (or Aragonese) interests.1 One consequence of these tendencies and confusions is that we know far less about Catalonia in her age of early growth and vigor than about her origins and destiny. No period of Catalan history (or Aragonese) remains so little investigated as the two generations following the dynastic union with Aragon in 1137; this is the one period altogether overlooked in the major new researches associated with the names of Vicens Vives and his pupils, Vilar, and Bonnassie; and in the case of Catalonia the institutional foundations that fall between the conquests of Ramon Berenguer IV and Jaume I are to this day all but unknown. 2 For such an oversight there can be no simple explanation. The scholars just mentioned and others as well have found excellent reasons besides patriotic ones for choosing the subjects they have investigated. But it is difficult to believe that historians of Catalonia would have neglected the twelfth century if they had considered the matter of national formation to be a problem of that period; if they had not presumed, however inadvertently, that the processes by which peoples of the east Pyrenean counties first became conscious of their cultural and patriotic identity were already far advanced before the union—so advanced that one might well speak, for example, of the land joined to Aragon in 1137 as "Catalonia" (instead of the county of Barcelona). Such a presumption is not altogether mistaken, as we shall see; but it is certainly problematical. No research, to my knowledge, has yet tested it from evidence of the later twelfth century, and it is the purpose of this article to do so. A word about terminology may first be in order. By " identity " I mean 1

See Ferran Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1934-5; 2d ed., 1962-3); Jordi Ventura, Alfons 'el Cast', el primer comte-rei (Barcelona, 1961). For stress on 'national' origins, see Joseph Calmette, Etudes medievales (Toulouse, 1946), pp. 142-55; and J. M. Salrach i Mares, Elproces de formacionational de Catalunya (segles VIII-IX), 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1978). See also Lluis Nicolau d'O\\ver,L'expansiode Catalunya en la Mediterrania oriental (Barcelona, 1926; 3d ed., 1974), and Jose Coroleu e Inglada and Jose Pella y Forgas, Las cortes catalanas (Barcelona, 1876). E. H. Spicer," Persistent Cultural Systems. . . " Science c\\\iv (1971), 798, suggests that the modern "Catalan system emphasizes . . . certain social and political institutions that have become symbolic of the particular kind of opposition which has characterized Catalans and Castilians." 2 The one major exception concerns towns, thanks to J. M. Font Rius, Origenes del regimen municipal de Cataluna (Madrid, 1946); Cartas de poblacidn y franquicia de Cataluna, 2 vols. in 3 parts (Madrid-Barcelona, 1969-83). Perhaps the most stimulating treatment of the wider contextual problems posed by the present study is Pierre Vilar, La Catalogne dans I'Espagne moderne. Recherches sur les fondements economiques des structures nationales, 3 vols. (Paris, 1962), i, 131-97. See also Jaime Vicens Vives, with Jorge Nadal Oiler, An Economic History of Spain, tr. F. M. LopezMorillas (Princeton, 1969), parts 2, 3 (but I have also in mind major works by Ch.-E. Dufourcq, Carme Batlle i Gallart, Claude Carrere, and Mario del Treppo on the late medieval economy); and Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du X* a la fin du Xfsiecle: Croissance et mutations d'une societe, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1975-6).

The Rise of Catalonia

127

nothing more recondite than such traits and traces of collective awareness (and self-awareness) and of associative interest as point to political or national solidarity. Some such solidarity may be imputed to the earliest phase of eastPyrenean autonomy, but identity is not the same thing as autonomy. A sense not a condition, it cannot have been achieved absolutely, nor yet by juridical degrees, but must be imagined to have arisen circumstantially, perhaps not altogether consciously—and, in any case, slowly. Far from being measurably " complete " in 1100 or 1137, the impulses and processes of Catalonian identity were only then coming to first tentative expression; they were to be profoundly stirred and accelerated by the conquests and foundations of the early count-kings (c. 1148-1213). To learn what contemporaries thought about these events may help us to see more clearly how they thought about themselves and what that thought meant. I

PRECEDENTS Catalonia was among those lands where the nation came before the state. There can be little doubt that in some sense the Catalan " nation " antedated the twelfth century.3 The distinctive language later called " Catalan " is among the earliest vernaculars well attested in historical records; we have a good deal of it from the tenth century, although the first extant literary texts in Catalan date from two hundred years later. While linguists debate the formative influences, they agree that the " pre-literary " language had already in remote times some of the structural characteristics and geographical distribution of historical Catalan.4 Yet there is no reason to believe that this precocious community of language in the eastern Pyrenees implied any clear sense of ethnic identity, or that this factor would ever have counted for much without other circumstances. In southern France a similar language did nothing to foster political coherence until the thirteenth century, when it was too late. Nevertheless, it is surely significant that the uni-lingual territory comprising Roussillon, Cerdanya, and lands mainly east of the Noguera and lower Ebro valleys, corresponded to the zone of a new custom of power and security in the eleventh century. Pierre Bonnassie has shown how the breakdown of an 3

See, e.g., Santiago Sobreques Vidal, Els grans comtes de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1961); Bonnassie, La Catalogne, ii, especially chs. 13-15; Sa\T3ich,Formatid national, ii; Michel Zimmermann, "Aux origines de la Catalogne. Geographic politique et affirmation nationale," Le Moyen Age Ixxxix (1983), 5-40. On nation and state, see Bernard Guenee," Etat et nation en France au Moyen Age," Revue Historiqueccxxxvii (1967), 17-30. 4 A. M. Badia i Margarit, Laformacio de la llengua catalana. Assaig d'interpret acid historica (Barcelona, 1981); review by Joan Bastardas in Serra a"Or (May 1982), 35-6.

128

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

ancient public order based on Visigothic law (and Prankish administration) in the years 1020-1050 resulted in a feudal order in which the castles were distributed among the elite lineages bound to one another and to the counts of Barcelona, Cerdanya, Besalu (etc.) by conventions of homage and fealty. To some extent this custom of castles may have spread to (or, more likely, in) neighboring societies, but there must have been something peculiarly Pyrenean-local about it by the early twelfth century when Italians and other foreigners first spoke of " Catalans " and of Catalania—that is (if the most plausible etymology is correct), of (men from) the land of the castellans (castlans). Whether this perception implied any other cultural dimension of social identity is doubtful. Neither the judges nor the monks, to mention but two characteristic groups, were yet visibly regionalist in interest or affiliation in the eleventh century.5 It remains to mention the political antecedents of Catalonian identity, which are important but easy to misinterpret. Believing that national consciousness originated in the confrontation of Goths and Franks, Joseph Calmette asserted that the commission of part of the Gothic march to Bernard of Gothia in 865 marked the " birth of Catalonia."6 Subsequent scholars led by Ramon d' Abadal firmly disposed of these ideas, but even they have been tempted to view the accession of Guifre the Hairy to an aggregate of east Pyrenean counties in the 870s as the " foundation of a national dynasty."7 So it ultimately proved to be, but only in a distant retrospect with changed meaning. Neither Guifre I (878-897) nor subsequent princes of the Spanish March ever controlled all the counties that would later form Catalonia. On the other hand, well attested events in the tenth century—the shaking of the king's commission of counts and unaided resistance to the Moors—resulted in what Abadal termed "the progress toward sovereignty." By the end of the tenth century the descendants of Guifre were not only independent of the Prankish

5 Bonnassie, La Catalogue, ii, chs. 9-15; cf. his " Du Rhone a la Galice: genese et modalites du regime feodal," Structures feodales et feodalisme dans I'Occident mediterraneen (Jf-XIIf siecles) . . . (Rome: Collection de 1'fecole frangaise de Rome 44, 1980), pp. 17-55; A. M. Mundo, " Monastic Movements in the East Pyrenees," in Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Noreen Hunt (London, 1971), pp. 98-122. For early allusions to catalan-i (~enses), Catalania, etc., see Liber Maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, ed. Carlo Calisse (Rome, 1904), lines 249, 565. 766. 786. 1148. 1180,1406,1735,1949,2110,2580,2864,3073,3272; LFM,i\, no. 832 (to be dated 1107; cf. Federico Udina Martorell, "Catalufia y su cor6nimo, asi como el etnico 'Catalan', aparecen en el siglo XI," EEMCA, vii [1962], 549-577; Bonnassie, La Catalogue, ii, 804 note 47. 6 Calmette, Etudes medievales, p. 151. 7 Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, Els primers comtes Catalans, 2d ed. (Barcelona, 1965); Salrach, Formacio nacional, ii; Michel Zimmermann, "Origines et formation d'un fitat Catalan (801-1137)," mHistoiredela Catalogue, ed. Joaquim Nadal Farreras and Philippe Wolff (Toulouse, 1982), pp. 237-255.

The Rise of Catalonia

129

8

king de facto but formed a patrimonial condominium comprising Cerdanya, Besalu, Barcelona, and Urgell, not to mention dependent counties (such as Girona and Osona), bishoprics, and abbeys (such as Vic and Ripoll). Toward the year 1000, moreover, scribes in these counties began to refer to Hispania and Francia as regions distinct from their own lands, thus marking a new stage of geopolitical awareness related to independence.9 Under Ramon Borrell (992-1018) Barcelona achieved the hegemony due the best endowed and most vulnerable of the counties; yet throughout the eleventh century political life (if that is the right expression) continued to be ordered within blocs of counties with few ties to counter their geographic diversity. Only after 1050 do we meet with a series of events, continuing into the twelfth century, that heralded an extra-comital unity. The first of these was the vigorous resistance to rebellious castellans by Ramon Berenguer I of Barcelona (1035-1076). By establishing his lordship over a mass of castles, some of them outside his own counties, this count laid the foundation for a territorial protectorate linked to the custom of castles already mentioned. Second, the restoration of a metropolitan church at Tarragona signalled a radically new affiliation of reformed sees throughout the east Pyrenean counties, although it may be doubted that this enterprise nurtured by Pope Urban II and his successors had much effect before the time of Archbishop Oleguer (1118-1134). Third, and more portentous, was the dynastic resumption of the counties of Besalu in 1111 and Cerdanya in 1118. By negotiating these successions with his childless cousins, Ramon Berenguer III (1086-1131) demonstrated a shrewd grasp of the potentialities of territorial leadership. No less indicative, finally, were this same ruler's initiatives outside the aggregated counties. He acquired lower Provence by marriage (1112) and employed knights and mariners from far and wide to attack Majorca in 1114, when he was spoken of by the Pisans as "Catalan leader."10 So it was symptomatic that men began to be identified with a pan-comital homeland in the years after 1100. The qualifier catalanus, perhaps first useful in borderlands north of the Pyrenees, soon became a patronymic, although instances remain rare past 1150. Foreigners, at least, perceived a distinctive people, a people who, for their part, began to recognize the count of Barcelona as a territorial ruler. Ramon Berenguer III may have been the first of his line to conceive of his pan-comital power in dynastic terms, for while Provence 8

" Sovereignty " is too strong a term. Early regnal chronologies suggest an almost unwavering fidelity to the Prankish kings: cf. Michel Zimmermann, " La prise de Barcelone par Al-Mansur et la naissance de Thistoriographie catalane," L'historiographie en Occident du V au XV siecle... in Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de I' Quest, Ixxxvii (1980), 191-218, at pp. 202-03; and for a chronology as reworked in the twelfth century, ACA, MS Sant Cugat 63, fol. 232v (ed. Federico Udina Martorell, El archive condal de Barcelona en los sighs IX y X. . . [Barcelona, 1951], p. 53). 9 Zimmermann, " Aux origines de la Catalogne," 22-24. 10 Sobreques Vidal, Els grans comtes, chs. 3-5; Bonnassie, La Catalogne, ii, chs. 13-16; Liber Maiolichinus, as cited in note 5.

130

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

passed to his second son, he bequeathed Besalu and Cerdanya to his principal heir, as if these were not also acquets.11 No doubt other forces, such as kinship and marriage in the aristocracies, were at work to bind the old counties. Michel Zimmermann speaks justly of the " affirmation of Catalan identity " in the early twelfth century.12 But it seems clear that in this period what mattered most were the initiatives of the counts of Barcelona. Here, however, qualifications are in order if we are not to exaggerate or misconceive this incipient catalanism. Very little had yet occurred to confirm the tendencies I have sketched. Ramon Berenguer III himself moved cautiously, discouraging Alfonso the Battler's designs on Moorish Tortosa, but holding to the old and lucrative policy of treating with the weakened emirate of Tortosa and Lleida.13 His acquisition of Catalan-speaking counties remained very incomplete. No fewer than five other counts were his peers, those of Roussillon and Urgell beingpotestates in their own right, while the county of Tarragona (bequeathed to his heir) was but a half-baked figment of an unsecured frontier. It goes without saying that no government yet existed for the aggregated counties, which continued to be exploited through patrimonial castellans and bailiffs virtually unsupervised. Forty years after its acquisition nothing had been done to reorganize or integrate the old comital domain of Besalu; and as late as c. 1175-1185 some villagers of the Ribes valley alleged that the count-princes had never bothered to collect from them since the annexation of Cerdanya in 1118!14 While the count of Barcelona lived by alliance with lesser baronial lineages and the control of castles, it is far from clear that the structure of fidelities created by Ramon Berenguer I survived de facto in the 1130s. In no meaningful sense was there yet a " Catalan state ", whatever the implications of Ramon Berenguer Fs feudal policy;15 and in the absence of any contemporary evidence except nomenclature it would be mistaken to insist on the Catalans' own sense of cohesion, dynastic pride, or nationhood at the accession of Ramon Berenguer IV.

II

THE AGE OF RAMON BERENGUER IV (1131-1162) Under this ruler came changes that began to resonate in Catalan-speaking society in new ways. In 1137 Ramon Berenguer IV engaged himself to 11

LFM, i, no. 493. Histoire de la Catalogue, pp. 267-70. 13 Bonnassie, La Catalogue, ii, 870. 14 FAC, ii, nos. 1 K, 55. The plea was less naive than it seems, for others were assuredly imposing on the villagers in the ruler's absence. See also i, 71-75. 15 On this point I differ with Bonnassie (La Catalogue, ii, 705-11), observing, however, that he speaks reservedly of" 1'etat feodal" as a metaphor and not as a thesis. 12

The Rise of Catalonia

131

Petronilla, the infant heiress of Aragon, thereby resolving the inscrutable crisis created by the Battler's bequest of his kingdom to the military Orders. Every step was duly taken to render this event consequential: the Orders were compensated, the pope was placated, the marriage was consummated (in 1149) and sons to ensure the succession were born in 1152 and after. Ramon Berenguer IV allied with Alfonso VII of Castile, and having gained supporters of his own with prestigious expeditions against the Moors of Murcia and Almeria, he easily conquered Tortosa(l 148) and Lleida and Fraga(l 149), and in the following years cleared Moorish combatants out of the massif of Siurana. He thus established something like a Christian frontier with Aragon—a critical step in the defining of territorial Catalonia. In 1151 he surveyed the fiscs of his old counties, probably in order to draw on them more productively for credit. He fought in Provence to secure the integrity of this cadet dependency.16 For all these successes Ramon Berenguer IV made no overt move to alter his status in Catalonia or to favour his homeland. Styling himself " prince " in Aragon, he remained " count of Barcelona " even after his conquests greatly expanded his county to create what would a century later be called " Mew Catalonia." His eldest son was named Pedro, according to Aragonese custom; his second son Ramon, according to Barcelonan; but when the latter succeeded his father in 1162 his name was changed to the Aragonese Alfonso. These facts testify to the count-prince's own attitude—officially impartial—to his newly associated domains. Was such an attitude acceptable in his inherited lands? It was one thing to annex a county like Provence, which could only be a dependency; quite another to acquire a prestigious kingdom of foreign language and custom. Those with a stake in dynastic success might even have feared that the rulers would lose interest in their paternal heritage, a royal lineage inevitably being thought nobler. As it happened, those with arguably the most at stake in dynastic success—the monks at Ripoll—expressed themselves at this juncture with a new message of unmistakable pertinence. Founded by Guifre I near the intersection of the original counties, Ripoll was the necropolis of the early Catalan counts. From at least the early eleventh century the monks had produced annals drawn from calendars and king-lists, and from the later eleventh century these annals were diffused to at least three other religious centers: Roda in Ribagorca, Saint-Victor of Marseille (with

16

There is no thorough study of this reign. For documented accounts, see P. E. Schramm in Enric Hague, J.-F. Cabestany, and Schramm, Els primers comtes-reis. Ramon Berenguer IV, Alfons el Cast, Pere el Catblic (Barcelona, 1960), eh. 1; Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 2d ed., chs. 7, 8. On the survey of 1151, FAC, ii, no.l; i, 25-49. The charters of R.B. IV are uncollected, but many are printed in /)/, iv.

13 2

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

which Ripoll was affiliated from 1071 to 1172), andTortosa.17 Now the earlier entries of these records may be said to commemorate the doings of the counts (together with other events) without celebrating them. They betray the Carolingian ties of Guifre's house; moreover, as Zimmermann has shown, they place the capture of Barcelona in 985 in a starkly enlarged perspective suggesting the heroism of rulers who overcame unaided so great a peril. In earlier versions, at least, the Capetian kings are not even mentioned. But it is only in the early twelfth century that the deeds of counts of Barcelona begin to loom large in them; and by that time those deeds were beginning to be noted by clerks in Urgell, Roda, and perhaps Sant Cugat, as well as at Ripoll.18 The capture of Majorca in 1115 evidently figured at once as a separate annal. It was noted, without mention of its leader, in a laconic compilation of Urgell that ends with the death of Ramon Berenguer III.19 It next appears, this time precisely dated (6 February 1114 o.s.), as the first of four anniversaries recorded possibly at Sant Cugat late in 1149 or soon thereafter, of which the others are the captures of Almeria (17 October 1147), Tortosa (31 December 1148), and Lleida and Fraga (23 October 1149).20 With the conquest of Siurana in 1153 yet another resounding annal was added and in that form we have a chronicle composed in Ribagor^a in 1154 as well as a new list of annals composed before 1162 and preserved at Sant Cugat.21 The chronicle of Ribagorca marked a first uneasy step toward converting a codified memorial of conquests into an epic celebration of the conqueror. Its perspective was that of a remote borderland of Catalan-speaking counties and Aragon where the conquest of Lleida had come as a traumatic jolt. Not only was the see of Lleida restored at the expense of Roda, but the virtual autonomy of Pallars and Ribagorca was threatened by the success of one who had so commendably usurped their anti-Moorish destiny. In 1154 a monk of Alao set down the record—a swan-song—of the old counts and bishops. Here 17 See above all Miquel Coll i Alentorn, "La historiografia de Catalunya en el periode primitiu," Estudis Romanics, iii (1951-2), 139-96. Also Zimmermann, "La prise de Barcelone "; and Andre Wilmart, " La composition de la petite chronique de Marseille jusqu'au debut du Xlir siecle (Regin. Lat. 123.)," Revue Benedictine, xlv (1933), 142-59. On Ripoll, see Ramon d'Abadal, "La fundaci6 del monestir de Ripoll," Analecta Montserratensia, ix (1962), 25-49 (reprinted in his Dels visigots als Catalans, ed. Jaume Sobreques i Callic6, 2 vols. [Barcelona, 1969-70], i, 485-94), and L'abat Oliba, bisbe de Vic, i la seva epoca, 3d ed. (Barcelona, 1962). 18 " Chronicon alterum Rivipullense," VL, v, 244-6;" Chronique de Marseille," ed. Wilmart, "La composition," 149; "Alterum chronicon Rotense," VL, xv, 333-5; " Chronicon Dertusense II", VL, v, 236-8; " El cronico de Sant Cugat," ed. Miquel Coll i Alentorn, Analecta Montserratensia, ix (1962), 257. 19 Incorporated in " Memoria renovata comitum et episcoporum Ripacurcensium," ed. Ramon d'Abadal, CC, iii1, 26. 20 "El cronico de Skokloster," ed. Miquel Coll i Alentorn, Miscellania historica catalana (Homenatge al Pare Jaume Finestres, historiador de Poblet [+1769]) (Poblet: Scriptorium Populeti 3, 1970), p. 146. 21 " Memoria renovata," ed. Abadal, CC, iii1,24-6;" El cronic6 de Sant Cugat," ed. Coll i Alentorn, 257.

The Rise of Catalonia

133

the five conquests of Ramon Berenguer IV are represented with at least grudging admiration; here that ruler is represented for the first time as successor to the kings of Aragon.22 To appreciate the tone one must understand that this work was based on two prior genealogies, dating from c. 1078 and 1099-1104, in which the counts of Ribagorca-Pallars figure as allies and even (from the second genealogy) as descendants of the Carolingians in their struggle against the Moors.23 If Aragonese expansion had seemed to jeopardize hopes of a multi-comital monarchy centered at Roda, the thrusts of Ramon Berenguer IV had dashed them forever. Another anonymous voice from Ribagorca threw off all restraint, praising the " count of the Barcelonans " as a radiant victor over gentile enemies of the faithful, and " penetrating the royal throne " as " prince of the Aragonese, duke of Tortosa, [and] king of the Lleidatans."24 At Ripoll the annals of conquest were incorporated together with new elements in eulogies of Ramon Berenguer IV dating from soon after his death on 6 August 1162.25 The new elements were his seizing of numerous villages (pppidd) along the (lower) Ebro from the Saracens and his founding of up to 300 Christian churches in the frontier. An independent reworking of the enlarged tradition in ringing rhymed Latin verse likewise appeared in the afterglow.26 But the literary monument of this flurry of commemorative writing was the early version of the genealogy commonly known as the Gesta comitum Barcinonensium (hereafter Gcb).27 What its editors call chapter 5 of this version is devoted entirely to Ramon Berenguer IV. He is spoken of in the perfect tense; his death in Provence, the return of his body to his patria, and his " honorable " burial at Ripoll are 22 " Memoria renovata," 24-6. For the title (fully cited, note 19), see Coll i Alentorn, "La historiografia," 176; for the background, ibid., 173-9; Ferran Vails i Taberner, " Els comtats de Pallars i Ribagorca a partir del segle XI," Obras selectas de Fernando Valls-Taberner, 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1952-61), iv, 125-205; Abadal, CC, iii1. 23 Ed. Abadal, CC, iii1, 17-21. 24 VL, xv, 173: " . . . Tracta cadunt septies (septa) gentilium/solidantur signa fidelium/per te Chomes Barchinonensium./Idem Princeps Aragonensium/Dux Tortosae, Rex Illerdensium/penetrastiregale soliuni./PsallatDeocelimilicia. . . ."Is there a hint here that one imagined a new monarchy over Aragon and Catalan lands together? Lleida would have been—as later in the Crown of Aragon—the central city. See also Dolores Porta, " El poema de Roda en honor de Ramon Berenguer IV," Argensola, xi (1960), 297-310. 25 ES, xliii, 466; " El cronico de Sant Cugat," ed. Coll i Alentorn, 258. See also the epitaph edited by Lluis Nicolau d'Olwer, " L'escola poetica de Ripoll en els segles X-XIII," Institut dEstudis Catalans. Seccio historico-arqueologica, Anuari, vi1 (1915-20), 36. 26 Ed. Nicolau d'Olwer, "L'escola poetica de Ripoll," 36-8 (from fol. 109r of the manuscript cited in next note). 27 Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), MS latin 5132, fols. 23v-24v; ed. Louis Barrau Dihigo and Jaume Masso Torrents under title of Gesta comitum Barcinonensium (Barcelona: Croniques catalanes, ii, 1925), pp. 3-12. By " early version " I refer here to chapters 1-8, regarding those following (at least) as continuations. On this work see chiefly Coll i Alentorn, "La historiografia," 187-95.

134

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

recorded. The bulk of the chapter is a glowing dilation upon his acquisition of Aragon, his five famous conquests of prior annalistic tradition, plus his seizure of villages and foundations of churches, as lately added to that tradition. The only new element is the notice of the count-prince's recent campaigns in Provence, a notice so detailed that we may suspect the writer knew of it at first hand. If this chapter could be taken by itself it would pose no problem. But it occurs as a well integrated continuation in a unique early manuscript, which may be a holograph, of a genealogy that begins with the foundation of the dynasty. So that, unless we suppose that the early chapters long antedate the continuation, we must regard the whole compilation through chapter 8, which necessarily antedates 1184, as reflecting contemporary attitudes in the great count's circles or, at any rate, at Ripoll. In fact, it is all but certain on external and internal grounds alike that chapters 1-4 as we have them only briefly antedated chapters 5-8, although they could have been written before the count's death. And the message of all those chapters taken together enlarges significantly on that of the annals embroidered in chapter 5.28 The Gcb begin with an almost perfectly fanciful tale about Guifre I's ancestry and accession to the county of Barcelona (chapters 1, 2). They continue with a contrastingly sober genealogy of Guifre's family and its posterity carried down through nine generations to the mid-twelfth century (chapters 3-8). The sources of all these chapters are said explicitly to be oral and documentary, and we know from the Brevis historia of Ripoll, composed in 1147 to bolster claims of fiscal immunity, 29 how efficiently the monks could draw on their own archives. Throughout the early chapters the counts of Barcelona hold center stage. At the end of chapter 3 the writer abandons the generations of Besalu and Urgell for that of Barcelona, " whose worthier and longer posterity still perseveres ", to return to the former only in chapters 6-8 composed after 1162. About the earlier counts the record is clear (and anecdotal) but hardly more emphatic than the early annals. Guifre's union of counties had broken up by the year 1000, and while other lines survived, only Barcelona was called to dominate. The volume rises with Ramon Berenguer I, " who was called the Old One, to whom twelve kings of Spain are said to have paid tribute", and becomes fortissimo with Ramon Berenguer III. His exploits are fully recounted, including that of ruling five counties (Barcelona, Provence, Millau, Cerdanya, and Besalu) and that (not least) of begetting the fourth Ramon Berenguer, count of Barcelona.30 All of this rings of the heady years after about 1150. It is the story of the great count-prince's ancestry reconceived by the writer in strictly dynastic terms. It enlarges on the deeds of only those counts who meant most to such a 28

For chapters 1-5, see MS latin 5132, fols. 23v-24v; Gcb, pp. 3-9. Petrus de Marca, Marca hispanica . . . (Paris, 1688), Appendix, no. 404 (cols. 1295-1301). 30 MS latin 5132, fols. 23v-24v; Gcb, pp. 3-12. Millau figured in the inheritance of Dolca of Provence. 29

The Rise of Catalonia

135

conception, the first and the last (at different moments, Ramon Berenguers III and IV), holding to a genealogical format, stressing the patrimony of a main line, and mentioning women only in relation to the counts they married or had for fathers. It is a story, above all, of political restoration.31 Only with the annexations of Besalu and Cerdanya, at once fortuitous and deliberate, could a revival of Guifre I's patrimony be envisaged as a desirable goal of dynastic policy. And that was a goal only Barcelona could reasonably hope to achieve. So to imaginings about a new Hispanic monarchy the monks of Ripoll counterposed the glory of Guifre I's lands and posterity. Were not counts who received the tribute of kings and crushed the Saracens virtually kings in their own right? This theme was sounded less subtly in the mythical prologue to the Gcb. Guifre, it related, was the son of a knight of Conflent (named Guifre of Ria) who obtained the county of Barcelona from the king of the Franks but then was killed in Gaul in brawls with Prankish warriors. At the king's bidding the boy Guifre was sent to the court of the count of Flanders. There he impregnated the count's daughter, and having sworn to the girl's mother that if he recovered his ancestral honor of Barcelona he would marry the girl, he was packed off to his homeland in disguise. Recognized by his mother " from his having hair where other men have none ", he was reconciled with the ever faithful magnates, slew the Gallic count Salomon of Barcelona, " and so he obtained his county from Narbonne to Spain." Guifre then married the Flemish princess as promised and was reconciled with the king, who invested him with his honor. While at the king's court, Guifre got word that the Saracens were invading the land. He appealed to the king for aid, but got only the king's promise that if Guifre himself could expel the Saracens, the honor of Barcelona would devolve for all time to his dominium and that of his family, " for before then that county had been given to no one by inheritance, but only to such and for such time as the king of the Franks had wished." Accordingly, Guifre convoked Gallic warriors and " drove the Saracens from all his borders as far as Lleida " and assumed dominion over his recovered honor. " This is how the honor of Barcelona passed from the royal power into the hands of our counts of Barcelona."32 Not quite all of this is imaginary. We have seen that Guifre the Hairy's dynasty did, indeed, rule counties of the Spanish March from the end of the ninth century. It is partly true that the original inheritance extended " from Narbonne to Spain." And it is a truth chronologically displaced that at one time a count of Barcelona, vainly seeking aid from a king of the west Franks, was left to repel Moorish invaders on his own—this happened a century after Guifre's time, on an occasion mentioned (and correctly dated: 985) later in the 31 Or more exactly, of a political and ecclesiastical restoration, for there was mention of the recovery of the bishopric of Tortosa: "sedem episcopalem post quadringentos annos restituit." But the idea of restoration was set in different perspectives, of which the political one was perfectly new. See Zimmermann, " Aux origines de la Catalogne," 11 (and note 20), 36-40. 32 Gcb, pp. 3-5.

136

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Gcb. Moreover, the stress on honor, investiture, fidelity, and clashes with Franks seems to preserve authentic traditions of the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet the story as a whole, even if not invented by the compiler of the Gcb, can hardly antedate the twelfth century. It comes from a time when Guifre I had to be thought of as founder of his dynasty because he was the first known to have ruled united counties of the Spanish March. It comes from a time when the county of Barcelona could be thought to stretch from Narbonne to Lleida. And it must come from a time when relations with the rex Francorum had again become problematical. The successes of counts of Barcelona recorded by the Gcb coincided with the revival of royal power in France. This revival had its reverberations in all the dynastic principalities outside Capetian Francia: in Toulouse, in Auvergne and Aquitaine; in Blois-Champagne, Burgundy, and Normandy; in Flanders. Already in the time of Louis VI the border wars with Normandy and intrusions into the succession to Charles the Good of Flanders presaged a more active insistence on royal suzerainty, and by mid-century the newly expanded Angevin confederation contributed to a Capetian alliance with Champagne as well as to administrative advances that could only seem threatening to other principalities. Conversely, the consolidation of comital power in the old Spanish March plus the acquisition of a right of succession to the kingdom of Aragon, reminiscent of similar aggrandizements envisaged in Aquitaine and achieved by Normandy, would have distressed any in the king's circles who still thought of kingship in Carolingian terms or could imagine it in feudal terms. We do not know very well how Ramon Berenguer IV got along with Louis VII, but he could have learned of Louis' new interests in the Midi when the two met at Jaca late in 1154, and it may be significant that Ramon left the tutelage of his son to Henry Plantagenet in 1162.33 Had it not been for conflict with the count of Toulouse, anti-Capetian sentiment in the Pyrenees might have been less veiled in these years. These circumstances help to explain the Gcb's insistence on the honorial independence of Barcelona. They explain the anti-Frankish bias of the prologue (such as it is) if, for " Prankish ", we read " Capetian." But they do not fully explain why a fabulous biography for Guifre the Hairy was required or when it was invented. What now seems clear is that we must distinguish between the tales of independence and dynastic ancestry. Only the former had some basis in fact; but we do not know whether the compiler of the Gcb was the first to associate it in fictional and anachronistic form with the tale of 33 Joaquim Miret i Sans," Le roi Louis VII et le comte de Barcelone a Jaca en 1155," Le Moyen Age, 2d series, xvi (1912), 289-300; LFM, i, no. 494. On the Capetian king's policy in the South see Marcel Pacaut, Louis VIIet son royaume (Paris, 1964), pp. 81-4; T. N. Bisson, " The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia, ca. 1140-ca. 1233," American Historical Review, Ixxxii (1977), 295-6. On the principalities of France, K. F. Werner, " Konigtum und Fiirstentum im franzosischen 12. Jahrhundert, Probleme des 12. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Vortrage und Forschungen, xii, 1968), pp. 177-225, (tr. Timothy Reuter, The Medieval Nobility. . . [Amsterdam, 1979], ch. 8).

The Rise of Catalonia

137

Guifre. Ramon d'Abadal and Miquel Coll i Alentorn agreed in regarding the ancestry tale as a prior element composed at Cuixa—this would account for the naming of Guifre of Ria—in the early twelfth century, although Coll would place it after 1127 for reasons connected with his view of the purpose of the tale.34 According to Coll, it was the Flemish crisis of 1127 that suggested to a Catalan monk perusing " some old Prankish chronicle " a useful analogy between Baldwin Iron-Arm, the famous adventurer-founder of the Flemish comital house, and Count Guifre of the Spanish March. Natural sympathy for Flanders in the struggle against increasing royal power would have induced him to represent a count of Flanders as the father-in-law of Guifre the Hairy, and so on.35 Vague though it may seem, there is nothing implausible about this hypothesis. It suggests a reason as well as an approximate date of origin for the Flemish element in the Gcb's story. As it stands, however, it fails to explain convincingly why a Flemish seduction was needed in the Gcb. Surely some less arbitrary means of expressing anti-Capetian sentiment could have been found if wanted. A deeper reason for this episode may therefore be suggested by the circumstantial resemblance between the seduction of the Flemish princess by Guifre I (of Barcelona) and that of Judith by Baldwin I of Flanders. Was not a daughter of a count of Flanders to be regarded a descendant of Prankish kings, even if no one remembered that the ancestor was Judith's father, Charles the Bald? So the episode provided the counts of Barcelona with a Carolingian ancestry at a time when such a tie was becoming useful as a sign of exalted nobility.36 Other Carolingian ties might have been found or imagined, but none so famous or so well chosen to escape suspicion in the South. In fact, as Georges Duby has shown, the old Carolingian homelands of the North were especially fertile in the production of elite genealogies in the twelfth century. 37 That monks in the venerable monasteries of the Pyrenees should have read in such works or have heard of them is hardly surprising. It was not so much the " old Prankish chronicles," one suspects, as the ideological metamorphosis of their contents toward 1100-1150 that proved influential, however indirectly; and in such circumstances the events of 1127 could well 34

Abadal, Els primers comtes Catalans, p. 14; Coll i Alentorn, " La historiografia," 190-1. 35 Coll i Alentorn, p. 190. See also Vails i Taberner, "La llegenda de Guifre el Pilos," Obras selectas, iv, 254-5. 36 The story of Judith was known, directly or indirectly, from the Annales de SaintBertin, ed. Felix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard, and Suzanne Clemencet (Paris, 1964), sub anno 862, pp. 87-8. On the interest in Carolingian affiliations, see A. W. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian France: Studies on Familial Order and the State (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 33-4, 47-8, 105ff. 37 Georges Duby, " Remarques sur la litterature genealogique en France aux XI* et XlFsiecles," Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des seances de I'annee 1967 (avril-juin) (Paris, 1967), pp. 335-45 (reprinted in his Hommes et structures du moyen age [Paris, 1973], ch. 16; tr. Cynthia Postan, The Chivalrous Society [London, 1977], ch. 10).

138

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

have been the catalyst as Coll suggested. Perhaps the earliest known deformation of political tradition that could have influenced the writer at Ripoll may be traced to Anjou. The Fragmentum historiae Andegavensis, composed in 1096, reads curiously like the Gcb in respect to the origin of the honor of Anjou, defense against pagans, and receipt of the honor " not from the family of the impious Philip [scil., I of France], but from that of Charles the Bald . . ,"38 There is at least one other curious detail that links the ancestral episode of the Gcb with northern milieux of genealogical composition. The story of Guifre's seducing the count of Flanders' daughter is echoed in the memorial of the dynastic counts of Guines by Lambert of Ardres. In quite the same way as Guifre the Hairy in Barcelona, so the son born of an illegitimate union between the upstart Sifred and Eltrudis, daughter of Count Arnoul the Great, becomes the progenitor of the house of Guines. In both cases the young men are depicted as knightly adventurers welcomed by their lord-count of Flanders in his court. The coincidence of these episodes cannot be accidental. Although Lambert wrote as late as 1194, it seems unlikely that he knew the Gcb or even, for that matter, the detached tale of Guifre of Ria. I should prefer to think of the seduction-episode as a commonplace in northern tradition long before Lambert wrote, perhaps ultimately derived from romanticized retellings of Flemish dynastic descent from Baldwin Iron-Arm and his Carolingian princess, and diffused southward through aristocratic and monastic channels in the twelfth century.39 The hint at Carolingian descent would have echoed with older strains of legitimist thought in the Pyrenees. Could the monks have been ignorant of the claims put forward for the counts of Ribagorca toward 1100?—or of those (more dubious) to justify Aragonese pretensions to Cerdanya and Urgell a century earlier? The dissemination of the " matter of France ", hastened by events such as the siege of Barbastro (1064), could only have fostered such claims.40 But the context of the literary celebration of power was so enlarged in the twelfth century that we may wonder whether the tale of Flemish descent had any practical utility for a dynasty with so much better credentials. One of the problems posed by the Gcb is whether it had any official 38 Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou et des seigneurs d'Amboise, ed. Louis Halphen and Rene Poupardin (Paris, 1913), pp. 232-3. 39 Lamberti Ardensis historia comitum Ghisnensium, ed. Johannes Heller, Monu Germaniae historica, Scriptores, xxiv (Hanover, 1879), 550-642; see esp. pp. 557-8. See also Georges Duby," Structures de parente et noblesse dans la France du Nord aux XIe et XII e siecles," Hommes et structures, pp. 278-82; " Remarques sur la litterature genealogique," ibid., pp. 292-7 (Chivalrous Society, pp. 143-6, 153-7). 40 "Cronic6 II d'Ala6," ed. Abadal, CC, iii1, 20; Genealogies of Roda ed. J.-M. Laccara, "Textos navarros del C6dice de Roda," EEMCA, i (1945), 242; cf. Coll i Alentorn, " La historiografia," 174-5. The ensenhamen of Guerau de Cabrera suggest familiarity with chansons de geste in Catalonia toward 1160 (ed. Martin de Riquer, Les chansons de geste francaises, 2d ed., tr. Irenee Cluzel [Paris, 1957], pp. 332-54).

The Rise of Catalonia

139

character or whether, as seems more likely, it was a gratuitous effusion— officieux rather than officiel, in the distinction of Bernard Guenee.41 There is no evidence that the early version ever circulated beyond Ripoll, where it was continued and, much later, revised and copied. Apart from wider public anxieties, there must have been motives internal to Ripoll. Hoping for their great count's body, they may have felt threatened by the comital endowmen of Cistercians at Poblet and Santes Creus (1150-1153) in the newly opened frontier; they were certainly distressed a generation later when Alfons I belatedly rejected Ripoll in favor of burial at Poblet; yet so far as we can tell from the Gcb it was not until the author's own time that the monks had seen fit to insist that Ripoll—the burial place of the dynastic founder—was the dynastic pantheon.42 Only then had it become necessary to do so. Only then could it be imagined that the dynasty was inherently territorial, the prestige of all of Guifre's successors redounding to the glory of the " longer and worthier posterity" of Barcelona. The finished Gcb, for all their literary learned character, could have been used for ritual recitations over Ramon Berenguer IV's tomb, possibly in anniversary celebrations, or in the court of Alfons I.43 Notwithstanding the new stress on quasi-regalian dynasticism, the Gcb and other memorials hold to a traditional view of their society. A new power has arisen, but Ramon Berenguer IV is another Guifre in the old counties; an expanded Barcelona might be called patria, but not yet Catalonia. Such a view was congruent with the neo-Carolingian implications of the ideology and perhaps also with the count's own thinking (which was surely known at Ripoll). But in one practical respect it was outmoded, for it was clear to his jurists if not also to Ramon himself that his expanded authority implied a principate in Catalan-speaking counties, including those held by other counts, equivalent to that in Aragon. The Usatges of Barcelona, a collection of laws dating from about 1150 and purporting to supplement the Visigothic law, come as close to defining a Catalan kingdom as any expression in the twelfth century. Reflecting Romanist ideas, they prescribe a territorial principate of

41 See Bernard Guenee, Histoire et culture historique dans I' Occident medieval (Paris, 1980), pp. 337-8. 42 Gcb, p. 15: "Sepulturam patrum suorum relinquens [Alfons I], Populeto se tumulari precepit;" and Pere Pujol i Tubau," Mudanca en 1'eleccio de sepultura del rei Alfons I," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, vii (1913), 86-7. Also Gcb, pp. 5-8: the only burial at Ripoll before 1162 mentioned by the Gcb is that of Bernat Tallafer of Besalu in 1020 (c. 6, p. 10), but this continuation post-dates 1162. We know otherwise of burials there, from Guifre I to R.B. Ill; see Nicolau d'Olwer, " L'escola poetica de Ripoll," 27, 35-6. 43 One recalls how political mythology and ritual are demonstrably linked in other traditional societies. See, e.g., Bronislaw Malinowski, " Myth in Primitive Psychology," in Magic, Science and Religion . . . (Garden City, n.d.; first published 1926), pp. 100-26; Romila Thapar, " Origin Myths and the Early Indian Historical Tradition," History and Society: Essays in Honour of Niharranjan Ray, ed. D. Chattopadhya (Calcutta, 1978), pp. 271-94.

140

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

public security (the Peace and Truce, monopoly of fortifications), coinage, and criminal jurisdiction in resoundingly regalian terms.44 Yet the ruler himself was cautious about this principate. Many articles reserve rights of lordship to potestates, a vague term doubtless meant to placate the old aristocracy of counts and viscounts. More remarkably, Ramon Berenguer IV not only failed to sanction the Usatges himself—we know them only as an unofficial compilation for the use of judges—but allowed them to be attributed to Ramon Berenguer I and his countess Almodis, before whose assembled magnates the Usatges are said to have been promulgated. This was a plausible act of political deception. Ramon Berenguer I and Almodis were known to have legislated, and some measures of theirs have been detected in the Usatges as we have them.45 They would have been remembered as genial disciplinarians by a baronage little disposed to concede their insistence on the right to take "power" of castles. The new code laid claim to expanded jurisdictional powers that could be expected to strike the old nobles as autocratic innovation. So for the laws as for the dynasty a mythical ancestry was invented. Curiously enough, this myth, too, was incorporated in the early Gcb, although the story is told there with details that point to an independent tradition concerning eleventh-century legislation.46 Innocent or otherwise, the mention of usatges in the Gcb could only have abetted the new juristic propaganda. Ill

FIRST FULFILLMENTS (1162-1213) After the death of Alfonso VII in 1157 Ramon Berenguer IV was the greatest ruler of Spain. Ever energetic and expansionist, he can hardly have worried about his titles in his last years, so it is not surprising to find one eulogist 44 Usatges de Barcelona, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals and Ferran Vails Taberner (Barcelona: Textes de dret catala, i, 1913); T. N. Bisson, "The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia, and France," Speculum, liii (1978), 465-8; A. M. Mundo, "Fragment d'una versio catalana antiga del 'Libre Jutge'," Miscellania Aramon i Serra . . . , 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1978-84), iv, 155-193 (a remarkable study). 45 The revised dating was suggested by Ramon d'Abadal in 1963 (cf. his Pere el Cerimonios i els inicis de la decadencia politico de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1972; first published in Spanish in Historia de Espana, ed. Ramon Menendez-Pidal, xiv [Madrid, 1966]), pp. 65-70. See also Bonnassie, La Catalogue, ii, 711-28; and Joan Bastardas i Parera, Sobre la problematica dels Usatges de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1977). 46 Gcb, c. 4, p. 7: " Hie [R.B. II] coram Vgone cardinali et legato Romano, intra palatium Barchinonense, quedam iura et sanctiones instituit que Vsaticos nuncupant, quorum exemplaria per uniuersam regionem nostram hactenus leguntur et obseruantur." The erroneous attribution was corrected to R.B. I, apparently by the first scribe himself, and in this form the story passed into the revised Gcb (p. 32).

The Rise of Catalonia

141

calling him "Aragonese king" and another recalling his prestige among kings, including Louis VII.47 When he died unexpectedly, his eldest surviving son Ramon was still years short of majority. The boy fell naturally into a tutelage of counsellors from both his lands, including his (Aragonese) mother and his uncle Ramon Berenguer of Provence. While changing his name to Alfonso, their policy was to preserve the dynastic impartiality affected by the late count-prince.48 There was no insistence on a Catalonian identity to match that of Aragon. In the (posthumous) testamentary conditions of Ramon Berenguer IV the executors (chiefly Catalans) spoke of the "Aragonese and Barcelonan magnates of the land " and ratified the bequest of Cerdanya to the second son Pere, while the " honor of Aragon and Barcelona " passed to the principal heir.49 Alfons I (Alfonso II in Aragon, 1162-1196) grew up in the habit of dealing with the people but not the lands of his joint inheritance. But his assumption of the royal title implied a compromise with ambiguous consequences. It implied the precedence of Aragon at least to the extent of the king's taking an Aragonese dynastic name while retaining the title of count of Barcelona; so it made sense that his marriage (to Sancha of Castile) and his knighting in 1174 were celebrated at Zaragoza.50 On the other hand, it must have encouraged the magnates of his court—and it was a single court—to think of the Catalan-speaking counties as integral to a new dynastic monarchy. In one respect this notion was quietly realized from the early days of the reign, for we find that agents in the counties as well as in Aragon were regarded as the " king's " men (styled baiulus domini regis, etc.).51 It would be 47

ES, xliii, 466, Nicolau d'Olwer, " L'escola poetica de Ripoll," 36-8: " N magnus rex Francorum/mir[abatur] et Anglorum,/Huic favebat Alemannus,/ Dextram dabat Toletanus." 48 The reigns of Alfons I and Pere I, like that of R.B. IV, have yet to be studied in depth. Many of their records remain unpublished. In addition to Antoni Rovira i Virgili, Historia national de Catalunya, 1 vols. (Barcelona, 1922-34; new ed. by Jaume Sobreques i Callic6, 1975-80), iv, part 6, ch. 1, and Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 2d ed., chs. 9,10, one may consult Jordi Ventura, Alfons 'el Cast', and Pere elCatolici Simo de Montfort (Barcelona, 1960), although I believe that his conceptions of " Pyrenean unity " embracing Occitania and of" Catalan expansion " are misleading. J.-F. Cabestany says next to nothing of Alfons's work in Catalonia, (Bague, Cabestany, and Schramm), Els primers comtes-reis, pp. 55-99. 49 LFM, i, no. 494. 50 ACA, Cancelleria, pergamins Alfons 1,146; Ger6nimo Zurita y Castro, Anales de la Corona de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1562-80; new ed. modernized and annotated by Antonio Ubieto Arteta et al., 5 vols. to date [Valencia, 1967-75]), (libro) ii (c.) 33. We have no record of a coronation, but the ceremonious publication of R.B. IV's will at Huesca in October 1162 was attended by " many . . . magnates both Aragonese and Barcelonan " (cited, note 49; Zurita, ii.20). 51 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 396, 407; Arxiu Diocesa, Girona, Pia Almoina 57; Archives Departementales, Pyrenees-Orientales, B 7 (3 viii 1173); LFM ii, no. 661; El "Libre Blanch " de Santas Creus (cartulario del siglo XII), ed. Federico Udina Martorell (Barcelona, 1947), nos. 185, 204; FAC, ii, no. 156; see also nos. 15, 16, 20-2.

142

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

anachronistic to imagine that this practice was unpopular. If a scribe resisted here or there, it must have been chiefly from inertia or ignorance.52 What is more remarkable is that continuators of the Gcb writing toward 1200 thought easily in terms of a federative monarchy under Alfons I. They stressed his alliances and exploits in Spain and especially his Provencal interests and Occitanian wars (which could perhaps be imagined to restore Ripoll's political centrality); they spoke of (Catalan) counties being " added to his kingdom," and observed that " he ruled all his kingdom [meaning all his dynastic lands] while he lived."53 Similarly, the Liber domini regis (this is the cartulary we know as the Liberfeudorum maior) opened with copies of" instruments of the kingdom of Aragon " before moving on to charters of the (Catalan) counties and then of Carcassonne and Provence.54 King and kingdom thus remained ambivalent concepts, referring either to Aragon alone or to AragonCatalonia-Provence; and the confederate realm remained divisible. The multiple intitulature survived. In 1187 the king-count-marquis could contemplate leaving the kingdom of Aragon and the county of Barcelona to different heirs.55 But the federative leanings in dynastic circles did nothing to check tendencies toward self-conscious Catalan identity. The political consolidation of Catalan-speaking lands continued with the annexations of Roussillon in 1172 and Pallars jussa in 1192; and when the son of Pere I (Pedro II in Aragon, 1196-1213) was betrothed to the heiress of Urgell in 1209, only Pallars sobira and Empuries among the old Catalan counties remained independent of the king.56 It became useful to refer to the king's barons (and others) as catalani and aragonenses.51 As the king's scribes adopted the usage, allusions to the agglomerated counties as Cat(h)alonia multiplied. In 1174 Alfons I specified donations to his wife in regno Aragonis and in Catalonia', and while in this marriage gift Roussillon was spoken of as distinct from Catalonia (as so often in later history), we know from charters of the Peace and Truce that Roussillon was regarded administratively as part of Catalonia in the later

52

ACA, Monacals, Sant Benet de Bages, 465, act of 1166 by the abbot and " Raimundus Arberti baiulus comitis et Sancti Benedict!," cf. pergamin 461, a royal instrument of 1163 alluding to "baiulus regis" in the same region. 53 Gcb, pp. 13-15. 54 LFM, i, 1-2, and rubrics and instruments printed thereafter. 55 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 454. Alfons I assumed the additional title " marquis of Provence" in 1166. 56 LFM, ii, nos. 792,793,763 (Roussillon); ACA, perg. Alfons 1627 (ed. Ferran Va i Taberner, " Els origens dels comtats de Pallars i Ribagorsa," Estudis Universit arts Catalans, ix [1915-6], 64-5 [Obras selectas, iv, 158-9]) (Pallars jussa); ACA, perg. Pere I, 343, 344 (ed. Diego Monfar y Sors, Historia de los condes de Urgel, 2 vols. [Barcelona: DI, ix, x, 1853], i, 440-3) (Urgell). 57 FAC, ii, no. 22\ DI, viii, no. 13; A. J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragon (London, 1973), pp. 370-1.

The Rise of Catalonia

143

twelfth century.58 As for the troubadours, they spoke readily of Catalans, Catalonha, etc., distinguishing men of Catalan speech from those of Aragon or Provence or Lombardy.59 Beneath the changing usage lay far reaching changes in the social order. As the population grew and spread south and west, the old comital geography lost meaning. Settlers from Girona, Osona, Urgell, and Barcelona brought their habits and speech to Tortosa and Lleida, which ceased to be regarded as exotic duchies or marches, although it must not be forgotten that Moorish peasants and artisans continued to outnumber the Christians in much of the old frontier. The newcomers created a distinctive world of tenurial freedom, and if they knew already the distinction between New and Old Catalonia articulated in the thirteenth century, they experienced nonetheless an overriding bond of culture. To foreigners the prosperity of Barcelona city must have seemed most characteristic of an identity associated with language and demeanour, although it is hardly before the 1220s that we can discern the citizens claiming to speak for a territorial interest. What continued to be called the " custom of Barcelona," usually with reference to the hereditary tenure and " power " of castles, came to mean the custom of Catalonia. Moreover, the recognition of this custom may have been connected with an increasing resort to the vernacular in courts, for we know that toward 1180 a Catalan version of the Visigothic law was in use by the judges. The coinage of Barcelona, protected by the Usatges, circulated throughout Catalonia as those of annexed counties were superseded and disappeared,60 becoming, so to speak, the first institution of the new principality. What actuated these tendencies—and was to prove a decisive influence in the making of Catalonia—was the institution of territorial government by Alfons I and his courtiers. In this matter we see them, not always very clearly, dealing with distinctly Catalan realities. We see them dissatisfied with exploitative rule by local alliance and credit. W£ see them trying to implement

58 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 146; PL, xx, 228-9; ES, xlii, 310-16; Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1920), i1, 55-75 (see esp. p. 72; cf. pp. 56, 63, 68). 59 Les poesies de Peire Vidal, ed. Joseph Anglade, 2d ed. (Paris, 1923), XI 33, XLII 33; Giraut de Bornelh (quoted in Martin de Riquer, " La litterature proven^ale a la cour d'Alphonse II d'Aragon," Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale, ii (1959), 186); Bertran de Born (quoted in Riquer, 189, 193). See also La Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, ed. Eugene Martin-Chabot, 3 vols. (Paris, 1960-1), i, 71, 135, 141; ii, 7, 13, 237; iii, 45. 60 See above all Font Rius, Cartas de poblacion de Cataluna. For the custom of Barcelona, ACA, perg. Alfons I, 515; Los documentos del Pilar, siglo XII, ed. Luis Rubio (Zaragoza, 1971), no. 199; LFM, i, no. 188; for the forum et consuetude Catalonie, Marti Aurell i Cardona, "Le personnel politique Catalan et aragonais d'Alphonse I" en Provence (1166-1196)," Annales du Midi, xciii (1981), 137 note 63. Also Mundo, " Fragment d'una versio catalana del * Libre jutge'," 173; and for coinage, T. N. Bisson, Conservation of Coinage . . . (Oxford, 1979), ch. 4.

144

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

principles of the Usatges for the first time—and creating a Catalonian baronage in the process. Their most important decision was that made in 1173 to transform the old diocesan peace and truce into an instrument of regalian administration. The adaptation was first effected in Roussillon following the annexation of that land, and was then extended to the rest of the count-king's Catalan domains, doubtless upon the urging of Archbishop Guillem de Torroja, in the statutes of Fondarella. The latter enactment defined the principality geographically for the first time as extending " from Salses as far as Tortosa and Lleida with their hinterlands." It confirmed the public-legal implications of the Usatges just when the law of the judges of Barcelona was becoming the law of Catalonia; it imposed on the barons and castellans of Catalonia (and not only those commended personally to the king) a specifically custodial and deliberative function, for it was they who were required to confirm and observe the statutes; and it inaugurated a tradition of associative legislation that would be institutionalized a century later in the Corts.61 Yet the Peace enacted in 1173 was substantively archaic: injunctive and normative, it retained the bishop's share in the jurisdiction while lacking mechanisms of enforcement. What rendered it effective was a supplementary decision—this must have been taken toward 1173-1178—to reform the old secular vicariate, and to entrust to vicars once again firmly subordinated to the (count-) king the administration of the Peace. The vicars and bishops were empowered to convoke house-holders of the diocese to combat malefactors. The remodelled vicars, chosen generally from among knights without ties to the old castellan lineages, became the first efficient agents of local administration in Catalonia. By the early thirteenth century their functions were becoming territorial as their powers expanded from police to fiscal and military supervision.62 The reform of the vicariate coincided with a reorganization of the comital administration of castles. Alfons I reacted vigorously against the pretensions of third- and fourth-generation castellans to exploit their strongholds independently. At Fores on the old Barcelona frontier the castellans were totally out of control in 1178 when the king's men induced them to accept a rewriting of the original convention of 1038, thus restoring the king's overlordship.63 In 1180 Alfons sued Pere de Lluca for power of access to the 61

Cortes de Cataluna, i1, 55-62 (and 62-280); T. N. Bisson, " Une paix peu connue pour le Roussillon (A.D. 1173)," Droit prive et institutions regionales. Etudes historiques offertes a Jean Yver (Rouen, 1976), pp. 69-76. 62 The reform of the vicariate may be inferred from Cortes de Cataluna, i1, 55-62, 65-8 (articles 3, 4, 10-12, 19), 68-71 (arts. 4, 5), and from a proliferation of written procedures in the names of vicars (e.g., ACA, perg. Alfons I, 709; Arxiu Diocesa, Barcelona, perg. Santa Anna [8 vi 1190]. See provisionally the documented list of vicars in FAC, i, 251-258. 63 LFM, i, nos. 257, 258, 266-8, 277-80, 292; Font Rius, Cartas de poblacion de Cataluna, i2, 749-50; Els castells Catalans, 6 vols. (Barcelona: Dalmau, 1967-79), iv, 237-8.

The Rise of Catalonia

145

castles of Lluca and Merles, and when Pere claimed that these castles were allods for which neither his father nor his grandfather had ever given power, the king drew upon records " from his archive " to prove that Pere's ancesto Guisald de Lluca had held them in fealty from Ramon Berenguer I.64 Now the count-king could not have won these cases if his archives, here mentioned as such for the first time, had not been classified according to lineages and castles. And there is reason to believe that this classification had been undertaken as lately as the months just preceding the cases of Fores and Lluca. Directed by Ramon de Caldes, dean of Barcelona cathedral, the work culminated a decade later in the compilation of the vast cartulary of conventions and oaths that we know as the Liber feudorum maior.65 Yet a third considerable reform in these years was that of the fiscal service. By the time Alfons I came of age the survey of comital domains executed in 1151 was out of date, while his courtiers were losing control of bailiffs who were all too often creditors to the king. Here again the responsibility fell to Ramon de Caldes, often working in association with the scribe Guillem de Bassa and, in later years, with Templars from Palau de Plegamans. Updating the inventories, auditing the accounts rendered periodically by the bailiffs, these agents effectively replaced the disorderly reliance on credit with a direct management of domains. Their system was severely tested under Pere I, who was incapable of living within his means, but survived to compete with the traditional reliance on credit in the court of Jaume the Conqueror.66 One need not exaggerate the effectiveness of these reforms to appreciate their significance. Royal finance remained dynastic and itinerant, without treasury or budget. The courtiers who supervised vicars and bailiffs were untitled and omnicompetent. They were trying to organize a local administration without a central one. The king's rule in Catalonia (as in Aragon) remained highly personal. But it is clear that the political theory of the Usatges and of the Peace together with the territorial consolidation of Catalonia required the delegating and specializing of powers that would progressively and inevitably be institutionalized. So while the old curial title of" seneschal" became hereditary and honorific in the Montcada family, ministerial functions in diplomacy, justice, and finance evolved in the count-king's Catalonian counsels among the more enterprising and affluent knights or burghers, such as Bertran de Castellet in the time of Ramon Berenguer IV or 64

LFM, i, no. 225. The other records adduced (nos. 222-4) were preserved and copied together in the LFM. 65 FAC, i, 95-97. See also Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, "A propos de la " domination " de la maison comtal de Barcelone sur le Midi francais," Annales du Midi, Ixxvi (1964), 315-45 (reprinted in Catalan in his Dels visigots als Catalans, ii, 281-309); below, p. 173; A. M. Mundo, "El pacte de Cazola del 1179 i el 'Liber feudorum m a i o r ' . . . , " Jaime ly su epoca, 1 y 2(Zaragoza: X Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, 1980), pp. 119-29; " Fragment d'una versio catalana del' Libre Jutge'," 189. 66 FAC, i, chs. 3, 4.

146

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Guillem Durfort in that of Pere I, but especially among the secular clerks and scribes through whose labors professional literacy became indispensable to government. In this sense Ramon de Caldes and his associates were not so much the reformers as the founders of public administration in Catalonia. These institutional tendencies sat poorly with the military elite of the old Catalan lands, the one element of society that had ceased to prosper in the later twelfth century. The great conquests of Ramon Berenguer IV assumed a new meaning as regretted glories. Alfons I did not lack energy, he made demonstrations against the Moors in his early years, but his campaigns in Navarre and Occitania were hardly productive of spoils. He is said to have lifted a siege of Valencia in 1172 in return for tribute, and there is good evidence that his regent-counsellors preferred to promote settlements on the Aragonese frontier than to lead military expeditions.67 No campaigns of Alfons I figured in contemporary annals of his lands; on the contrary, it was symptomatic that the old annals of conquest were continued in or near Barcelona with additions to the old regnal chronologies and notices of the current or imposed value of the coinage. In this way was recorded a conciliar decree of 1180 requiring scribes to substitute the year of the Incarnation for the French regnal year, thus confirming the principate implied in other policies of 1173-1 ISO.68 Dissatisfaction with the slackened pace of anti-Moorish expansion may perhaps be discerned in the apparition of a pseudo-Alfonso the Battler in Aragon toward 1174. To discredit him the king felt it necessary to draw public attention to his great-uncle's tomb at Montearagon in 1175. The impostor seems to have fled to France, for we find Alfons appealing to Louis VII in 1178 or 1179 to punish him; and the annal of Teruel that records his execution by hanging " before the city of Barcelona " in 1181 suggests that the affair had

67

Zurita, Anales, ii. 25, 29, 30, 32, 35, recording campaigns to Murcia, Valencia, Cuenca, etc., from 1166 to 1172 or later. Some historians have made much of this record, e.g., Riquer, "La litterature provencale," 180; but his source (Miguel Gual Camarena, " Precedentes de la Reconquista valenciana," Estudios Medievales [Valencia, 1952], 189-201) is more cautious; and Ubieto Arteta (ed. Andes, ii, 299-306) has shown the inadequacy of Zurita's evidence for these campaigns. 68 Marca hispanica, col. 755; Coll i Alentorn, " El cronico de Skokloster," 145-6; " El cronico de Sant Cugat," 258;" La historiografia," 162-8; Philip Grierson, " Notes sobre les primeres amonedacions reials a Barcelona: els termes bruneti, bossonaya i el Chronicon Barcinonense," Symposium Numismdtico de Barcelona, ii (1979), 278-87. On the decree of 1180 (Marca hisp., 758; " El cronico de Skokloster," 146), see Michel Zimmermann, " La datation des documents Catalans du lXe au XII* siecle: un itineraire politique," Annales du Midi, xciii (1981), 374-5.

The Rise of Catalonia

147

69

repercussions in Catalonia, too. Indeed, we know surely that it did, for the troubadour Bertran de Born alleged that Alfons had hanged his predecessor, and speculated that King Sancho (VI) of Navarre had a better title to Aragon than the rei apostitz Alfons(o II). Guiraut del Luc not only echoed the calumny toward 1190-1194, but also charged Alfons with infamous dealings with the infidel and with crypto-Moorish habits.70 The case of the false Alfonso probably helped to revive designs against Valencia and Majorca in 1178-1179, but nothing came of these campaigns except the treaties by which Castile and Aragon staked out their zones of future conquest.71 For it was at this moment that the submission of Viscount Roger II of Beziers to the countking reopened the war with Toulouse that had seemed settled in 1176, a war less of fighting than of negotiating that could hardly have interested the barons as much as the king's family. Alfons I persisted to the end in his dream of conquering Valencia—but that was all.72 It looks as if the events of the 1170s had hastened a profound change in the structure of power in Catalonia. Influenced by his prelates, the king ceased to share the exploitative ethos of his barons just as he came of age, substituting a political conception of territorial order for the traditional dynamic of expansionist aggression. While the count of Urgell might be persuaded to institute a Peace and Truce for his lands (1187) in conformity with the statutes of Fondarella,73 it was more difficult to win compliance from the lesser barons and knights organized for the very kinds of violence prohibited by the statutes. Nor were these men educated for such compliance. Prelates like Archbishop Guillem de Torroja, whose predecessor had been murdered in 1171, must have urged all magnates to ratify the statutes under oath, but there is no reason to believe that these campaigns met with much success. Viscount Ramon Folc JII of Cardona subscribed the Peace of 1173 only to be murdered by Guillem de Bergueda three years later, throwing his lands into such chaos that the abbot

69 The early sources are: Lamberto and Ramon de Huesca, Teatro historico de las Iglesias del Reyno de Aragon, 9 vols. (Pamplona, 1780-1807), vii, 674; Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), xvi, 71 (nos. 223-4); and "Fragmentodeunosviejosanales (1089-1196)," ed. A. C. Floriano, Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, xciv (1929), 153-4; plus echoes in the troubadours noted below. See also Antonio Ubieto Arteta, " La aparicion del falso Alfonso I el Batallador," Argensola, ix (1958), 29-38. 70 Texts quoted by Riquer, " La litterature provengale," 191-5. Riquer argues for a pro-Occitan politics in the association of troubadours with Alfons I, but makes no mention of what appears to me an anti-pacifist tendency in the polemical sirventes. 71 LFM, i, no. 35; Gual Camarena, " Precedentes," 200, 204-6, 228. 72 Abadal, " La ' domination' de Barcelone sur le Midi" (Dels visigots als Catalans, ii, 281-309); LFM, ii, nos. 854-65, 867-8; Gual Camarena, "Precedentes," 228-31. 73 Arxiu Parroquial, Ager, perg. 1563 (ed. Eduardo Corredera, El archivo de Agery Caresmar [Balaguer, 1978], pp. 234-8: also ed. Ferran Vails Tsiberner,RevistaJuridica de Cataluna, xxxiv [1928], 354-6, from a late copy).

148

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of Cardona could not attend a synod in Urgell.74 Even more notorious was the murder of Archbishop Berenguer de Vilademuls, another proponent of the Peace, by Guillem Ramon de Montcada, himself a sometime ally of Ramon Pole's murderer, in 1194.75 Could the king and the clergy prevail over truculent magnates devoted to personal vengeance and rural plunder? The political effect of the statutes was to drive a wedge between those barons who felt an overriding loyalty to the king and those who felt threatened by the Peace. This issue precipitated what can only be called a constitutional conflict, the first in Catalonia's history. The struggle is poorly known, for it left no trace in the annals and the statutes were contrived to hide it, but it lasted for a quarter of a century and exerted a powerful influence on the rise of legislation and taxation in Catalonia. Its early phases are especially obscure. It seems that some barons claimed exemption from the statutes of Fondarella on grounds that they had not consented or sworn to them; but that a more formidable opposition arose from the allegation that the statutes were in conflict with the Usatges. The statutes should not derogate from the Usatges in respect to procedures over the possession of castles, the magnates insisted (among other things) in the summer of 1188 at Girona, a point that the king accepted in order to secure confirmation of the programme of Fondarella together with additions relative to enforcement. This must have been a stormy session that satisfied no one. But it was an historic occasion, for by securing the king's promise to appoint none but Catalans as vicars " from Salses to Tortosa and Lleida " the barons were in effect acting for the first time as a national opposition.76 It was followed by a yet stormier meeting at Barcelona where Alfons was forced to give up his Peace and Truce entirely. The king then prepared a revised text he judged consistent with the traditional Peace as codified (clumsily) in the Usatges together with additions devised to maintain the executory force of the statutes of Girona while associating the barons in the work of enforcement. This text was published at Barbastro in November 1192, apparently without general consultation, but with an address extended, for the first time, to the " good men and people of the cities and towns " as well as the barons and knights of Catalonia.77 But the struggle had already spread to other fronts. For the barons to 74

Cortes de Cataluna, i1, 61; Martin de Riquer, Guillem deBergueda, 2 vols. (Poblet: Scriptorium Populeti 5, 6, 1971), i, 56-8, who cites the obituary of Cardona and the Vida of Guillem that speak of the event, but can only speculate as to its cause. 75 Miquel Coll i Alentorn, La llegenda de Guillem Ramon de Montcada (Barcelona, 1958). 76 Cf. the statutes of 1173 (Cortes de Cataluna, i1, 55-62) with those of 1188 (pp. 63-8); see esp. p. 67, arts. 15, 16, 19. Note that the statutes of 1188 refer to tractatus et deliberatio at Girona, but were passed at Vilafranca del Penedes in a form lacking baronial ratification. 77 Ibid., 68-71.

The Rise of Catalonia

149

contend that their lordships were immune from the Peace was to encourage the king to expand his own claims of lordship and over-lordship. The suits against rebellious castellans were part of this campaign, and so, too, we may conjecture, were Alfons's interventions in the wars of Urgell (1186-1194). Although these wars remain poorly understood, they cannot have been motivated solely by personal grudges. They were in some measure the opposition of upland against lowland, for the king's domains and allies were concentrated in the old coastal counties. Guillem de Bergueda deplored royal expansion into the Bages and spoke bitingly of the ret de Barcelona. Persistently the king sought—and won—recognition of his suzerainty, first from Ermengol VIII of Urgell, later from the viscounts of Cabrera and Castellbo.78 But not even the king could hope to control the " power" of all the castles, and the dangers of excessive insistence on his personal lordship became apparent during the reign of Pere I. At Barcelona in 1200, then more emphatically at Cervera in 1202, the barons set about once again to amend the statutes so as to exempt from the Peace the men and animals of lords not personally commended to the king. Although by this time the royal vicars had gained full control of enforcement of the Peace, their sphere of operation had been reduced in practice to the comital-royal domains. In 1202 the barons spoke of the " Peace and Truce of the lord-king " as if the Peace had become a seigneurial institution.79 The conflict was further complicated by fiscal issues. Like the barons the kings suffered from the constriction of military opportunity. Alfons I retained a costly entourage and his son tended to extravagance. But their fiscal resources were limited to ordinary revenues and tallages from or upon men of their domains, to tolls, and to the proceeds of coinage; they lacked the right of northern lords to levy aids on fiefs. In 1173 Alfons I made the Peace of Fondarella the occasion for imposing a general tax on Catalonia. This imposition, first called bovaticum (bovatge) in an account of c. 1174-1175, cannot have been successful. It was a novelty almost everywhere in Catalonia, justified only by a remote and dubious precedent in Cerdanya, and in 1188 the king promised not to levy it again.80 But this promise, which in any case may have been jettisoned with the other statutes of Girona, did not bind Pere I, who imposed the bovatge anew at his accession. Meanwhile, Alfons I had attempted to manipulate the coinage of Barcelona for profit, and Pere I imposed a " redemption of the money " to compensate for his confirmation o the coinage in 1197.81 These taxes together with other novel exactions 78

Guillem de Bergueda, ed. Riquer, ii, 174, 202-6 (Sirventes XX, XXIII). Cf. i, 131-45; Ventura, Alfons 'el Cast', pp. 228-9, 245; Jaime Caruana, "Itinerario de Alfonso II de Arag6n," EEMCA, vii (1962), 271; LFM, i, nos. 412-14;F,4C,i, 118-119; cf. ii, nos. 99, 100. 79 Cortes de Cataluna, i1, 72-88. See also FAC, ii, no. 109, mention of a pledge " de pax" in a vicar's account of 1204. 80 FAC, ii, no. 27; i, chs. 3, 4; Cortes de Catalufia, i1, 67, art. 18. 81 FAC, ii, nos. 105, 115, 130; Bisson, Conservation of Coinage, pp. 85-7.

150

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

deepened the existing unrest and led to a new confrontation between the king and his magnates. The details of this encounter, too, are poorly recorded. All we know is that by an act attributed to him in March 1205 at Girona, Pere I solemnly renounced the new taxes, retaining only customary impositions on his own domains. He promised to reserve appointments of vicars for Catalonian knights who were to be chosen " with the counsel of great and wise men of the land;" the vicars must swear to govern lawfully. He also promised to maintain the coinage of Barcelona stable for his lifetime, and to refrain from exacting ransoms of the coinage or the peace. These engagements were incorporated in a charter—indeed, a magna carta, which, like other " great charters " of its day, was secured by oaths of the king's barons—directed to the clergy, magnates, knights, and good men " of all Catalonia."82 Had these concessions taken effect the struggle would have ended in a compromise not unlike that reached in the amended statutes of the Peace seventeen years before. In fact, the articles on vicars and bovatge in 1205 were probably patterned on baronial petitions first accepted at Girona in 1188. But there is no evidence that the charter of Girona was ever promulgated, let alone observed. Ever more urgently in need of money, Pere I not only imposed a new money-tax on both of his lands in November 1205, but also debased the coinage of Barcelona without notice in 1209. He borrowed heavily. He taxed ecclesiastical lands, not always with prior consent, before giving way to a better organized opposition of prelates assembled in March 1211 at Lleida, where he granted individual charters of nonprejudice.83 So the initiative remained with the king. The instituted Peace, however truncated, survived baronial dissidence to become the basis of Catalonian public order in the later Middle Ages. From this first adminstrative institution of Catalonia sprang the assemblies, legislation, taxes, and collective interests that helped knit a new and enduring political entity. The bovatge became a customary accession tax thanks to King Pere's insistence, while the coinage, protected by the Usatges and the precedent of 1205, could only be ransomed with consent. As in contemporary England the baronial representation of society was hardly yet an issue, let alone privileged. While the king and prelates insisted—often vainly, no doubt—on the adhesion of all magnates, they settled for that of a few and faced the factional opposition of others pretending to defend Catalonian custom. One must recognize this incipient political identity without exaggerating its intensity or cohesiveness. It was not exclusive. It represented a direction, not an end. While assemblies like those at Girona in 1188 and at Poblet in 1194 point 82

Arxiu Diocesa, Girona, cartulary * Carles Many', fol. 65 (another copy in Arxiu Capitular, Girona,' Llibre verd', fol. 213v), ed. T.N. Bisson, " An' Unknown Charter' for Catalonia (A.D. 1205)," Album Elemer Mdlyusz, Szekesfehervdr 1972 (Brussels, 1976), pp. 61-76. 83 Zurita, Anales, ii.52; '* Chronicon Barcinonense," in Marca hispanica, col. 755; FAC, ii, no. 135; i, 133-142.

The Rise of Catalonia

151

forward to the Catalonian Corts, so too convocations such as at Huesca in 1162 and Lleida in 1214 anticipate the general Cortes of the associated realms.84 The new political idea of Catalonia co-existed with the dynastic idea of a joint monarchy—of a Corona de Aragon—so prudently nurtured in the king's court from the early days of the union.

At some moment in the 1170s—that critical time when the past was needed in a new way to put right the present—an elderly clerk of the court at Barcelona was asked by Alfons I to justify the latter's dynastic right to Carcassonne. It was a case, like those of Fores and Lluca, that required the precision of original records, but it was a more complicated case pointing even more urgently to the need of classifying those records, and in the end the clerk had to rely too much on his own recollection of what courtiers of Ramon Berenguer IV had said to get it all straight. One of his errors, however, is of interest to us alone. He said that Ramon Berenguer " the Old," while leaving Carcassonne to his elder son, " bequeathed Catalonia to his two sons ... as you can see i [his] testament." Now that testament of 1076 survives (thanks to the work of these clerks) and what it really says is that Ramon Berenguer I left to his sons " all his honor," including the cities, counties, and bishoprics of Barcelona, Girona, Osona, etc.85 In speaking of that complex as Catalonia, Alfons's clerk became unwittingly the first modern historian of his homeland. His mistake is as pardonable as it is understandable—we make it all the time ourselves, and for the same good reason, that in a matter like this the purist avoidance of anachronism often creates more problems than it solves. There are senses having to do with language, exposure to the Moors, dynastic community, and feudal custom in which we may reasonably speak of the origins of Catalonia in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Soon after 1100 foreigners began to refer to " Catalans " as if they were a recognizable people. In the middle of the twelfth century the conquests of Ramon Berenguer IV, his acquisition of Aragon, and his claim to princely authority inaugurated a new process of political formation. But as perhaps also in other principalities of old Frankland, the prevailing ideology was cautious, even regressive. The voices that began to sound from within the society told—somewhat diversely, depending on their locations and anxieties—of dynastic antiquity, of fidelity to (or even descent 84

Zurita, Andes, ii.20 (based on LFM, i, no. 494); Cortes de Cataluna, i1,63; LFM, i, no. 413; AC A, perg. Extrainventari 3131 (which lists magnates and towns of Aragon and Catalonia, as such, at Lleida, 1214). See also Abadal, Pere el Cerimonios, pp. 61-78. 85 The memorial is presently ACA, perg. R.B. IV extrainventari 2504 (formerly Alfonso I, 730, ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, Los condes de Barcelona vindicados . . . , 2 vols. [Barcelona, 1836], ii, 119-21). See also Abadal, "La 'domination' de Barcelone sur le Midi," 318-320 (Dels visigots als Catalans, ii, 284-6).

152

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

from) the line of Charlemagne, of reconstruction of the Spanish March. Not until the next generation—and chiefly after 1175—do we find another ruler and his court explicitly recognizing a pan-comital entity, beginning themselves to call it Catalonia, and bestowing government upon it. In so doing, only then, they parted ways with other principalities that were falling into feudal subjection to Capetian France. Moreover, they provoked a baronial reaction in which the self-justifying experience of solidarity was dramatically enlarged. The charters of 1192 and 1205 were signposts of this newly envisaged cohesion. The cultural and political identity of Catalonia was thus first realized at the very moment when the old counties ceased to be a frontier. The coincidence was not accidental. One protected refugees, and restored their lands, according to the traditional outlook; one governed Catalonia. The nation was on its way to becoming a state. Whether Catalonia was a kingdom was not an issue because her ruler was a king who treated her like a kingdom. The annalists and singers saw that, at least. Much later Jaume I would call Catalonia " the best realm [regne] of Spain, the most honorable and the most noble,"86 and while not all would have agreed with him, none would have misunderstood him. The time for such partiality still lay ahead (although not far ahead) in 1200. Catalonian identity was neither fixed nor complete on the eve of new and transforming conquests, nor was there anything inevitable in its tendency. But it had crossed an historic divide. What Alfons I and his curial servants well understood at this critical stage of early national formation is that a realm must be governed before it can be led.

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 6 P. 143 note 58, add: On systematising, see also ACA, Cancelleria, perg. Extrainventari 3411 (Pallars, 1175-1178).

86

Llibre dels feits, c. 392.

7 FEUDALISM IN TWELFTH-CENTURY CATALONIA* The regime of fiefs and commendation in medieval Catalonia, long obscured by the superabundant documentation to which it gave rise, has ceased to be mysterious. Thanks to the research of Pierre Bonnassie, we now understand, better perhaps than for any land south of England, how and why conditional tenures proliferated in the Spanish March in the eleventh century; and the principles and practice of this transformation seem incomparably clear.1 Let us recall the main features. The Catalonian fief originated as an administrative tenure of fiscal land in a structure of public authority which persisted strongly until the 1020s. At that point the weakening of comital government coincided with the growth of a military class and the multiplication of castles to bring on a generation of disorders. Only after perilous conflicts did Count Ramon Berenguer I (1035-1076) succeed in restoring territorial order by establishing a network of allied clients in a sufficient number of castles to ensure that no focus of opposition could prevail against him. But his means to this end were virtually borrowed from his rivals. To establish his lordship he imposed convenientiae on families in possession of castles on terms which ensured the count's overriding right to commandeer the castles at will (potestas, iratus et paccatus)\ the lord of castles did homage, swore fealty, and promised to serve the count in military, consultative and ceremonial functions; and the revenues were divided. But the accumulation of castles by the lineages meant that the typical master of a fortress was not the count's commended man but the latter's deputy (the castla). This circumstance was so striking, indeed, that toward 1100 foreigners began to speak of the region where it prevailed as the " land of the castlans "-or " Catalonia." Although the castla was normally a subtenant, Ramon Berenguer I character* The abbreviations are: ACA: Arxiu de la Corona d'Arag6; AC: Arxiu Capitular; AD: Archives Departementales; ADM: Archive Ducal de Medinaceli (Seville); LFM: Liber feudorum maior, ed. Francisco Miquel Rosell, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947); R. B.: Ramon Berenguer. 1 Pierre Bonnassie, " Les conventions feodales dans la Catalogne du Xf siecle,"Le.s structures sociales de I'Aquitaine, du Languedoc et de I'Espagne au premier agefeodal (Paris, 1969), pp. 187-210;La Catalogne dumilieuduX* alafinduXf siecle. Croissance et mutations d'une societe, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1975-1976).

154

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

istically exacted oaths of fidelity even from these men, thus establishing direct as well as indirect lordship over them. Meanwhile, the fief (fevum, cavallarid), comprising lands and revenues dependent on castles, became the habitual form of remuneration for castlans and knights, who not only fought in the lord's wars but enforced his newly arrogated banal power over peasants. These practices spread with little delay to episcopal domains. Such was the system well established in Catalona by 1100. It was to persist for many generations. But the conditions of its persistence began to change in the twelfth century in ways that inevitably affected its historical identity. Not until then did experience determine to what extent the customs of commendation and enfeoffment would be appropriated to serve the needs of an expansionist monarchy. It was then, as elsewhere, that these customs were first codified in written law. And it was only then that the social and cultural impact of the new institutions became fully clear, revealing patterns of conservatism, innovation, external influence, and regional differentiation. So to the revolution succeeded an evolution. It is a major subject which deserves its just treatment when the history of Catalonia in the twelfth century—still, perhaps, a grand inconnu—is written from the archival sources. My purpose in these pages is necessarily more limited: it is simply to delineate some general tendencies of this evolution and to propose some tentative explanations for them. I. Castles The castle remained fundamental to the new order of power in the twelfth century. It was to manage the castle that the written sanctions of convention and oath became customary in the eleventh century,2 and these forms were multiplied routinely thereafter. Especially the oath, which was required every time a new man took charge of a castle. A large number of castellans' oaths has survived—in a provisional sample of some 2000 documents for the years 1101-1213, drawn chiefly from the counties and dioceses of Old Catalonia,31 count about 200—but it is clear that this survival is very incomplete. No less than 31% of this sample relates to Cerdanya-Bergueda alone, where, to be sure, the castles were unusually numerous. What may be more significant is that most of the oaths in this sample date from the earlier twelfth century (or, at any rate, from before 1162): some 73% of all oaths and no less than 82% (33 of 40) of the oaths sworn to the counts of Barcelona. It looks as if there was some neglect on the part of the sons or successors of castellans, and perhaps by their overlords as well, to observe or insist upon this obligation. 2

See Paul Ourliac, " La•' convenientia'," Etudes d'histoire du droit prive offertes a Pierre Petot (Paris, 1959), 413-422; Bonnassie, Catalogue, ii, 566-574; " Conventions feodales." 3 The collections are chiefly: ACA, pergamins of the Cancelleria; AC Barcelona, Girona, La Seu d'Urgell, Solsona, Vic; ADM, Secciones Ampurias, Cabrera y Bas, Conca de Odena, Moncada; printed and unprinted sources for Poblet; L/M and other published collections cited below.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

155

The conventions are more resistant to this sort of analysis, for they were a more flexible form of record. But they, too, decline in numbers between 1162 and 1213, especially those cast in what may be called the classic eleventhcentury form.4 Moreover, of the categories of convenientia discovered by Bonnassie, only that binding lord and castla remains common.5 At the highest level of power conventions between comital lineages become infrequent: they are still to be found in Roussillon and Empuries, but the counts of Barcelona resorted to them only to end a conflict and to renew old conventions with Empuries (1128,1138) and to settle with the counts of Urgell and with Pon? Ill de Cabrera (1148, 1185-1196).6 Conventions between families persist at a lower social level, indicating the continued organizing of allodial castles,7 but these records survive too erratically to admit of secure generalization. This institutionalizing of the convention and oath tended to perpetuate the conditions in which the eleventh-century counts had first mastered the castles. It meant that rights over property took precedence over personal dependence. The fealty of the oath was, for most purposes, a fidelity with respect to the castle.8 As for homage, while this was often mentioned in the convention and was undoubtedly celebrated together with the oath, it was not usually recorded in writing nor otherwise, so far as we know, much insisted upon. Nor was the man who performed it yet very distinct in records of the early twelfth century: he was called homo, orfidelis homo, but seldom called vassallus.9 As a rule commended men were identified by their tenurial or social status: magnates, barones, castellani, milites, cavallarii, feudatarii; and their lords (seniores), of whom we hear so often in their wills, were primarily lords of their castles and fiefs.10 Could it be that vassalage, unnourished by any native epic tradition, was still thought incompatible with a baron's freedom in Catalonia? This would probably be too extreme a conclusion. There was no reluctance on 4

Cf. Bonnassie, " Conventions feodales," pp. 204-208. E.g., LFM, i, no. 349. 6 E.g., LFM, ii, nos. 700, 704, 736; ADM, Ampurias, legajo 6,591;LFM, ii, nos. 523, 527, 535; i, nos. 161,412; ACA, perg. Alfons 1,455,507; ADM, Cabreray Bas, leg. 234, 7. 7 E.g., ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 92, 123; R. B. IV, 286, 339, 346; Alfons I, 343; AC Solsona, calaix 8, 671. 8 LFM, ii, no. 714 (1125):" Hec est conveniencia que ego Guillelmus Raimundi facio tibi Guifredi, comes Rossilionensis . . . quia ego fidelis ero tibi de castro de Rechesen. . . ." The oaths sworn by knights for fiefs have not generally survived in writing. 9 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 136; R. B. IV, 1,22,44; Alfons I, 273,433; LFM, i, nos. 161, 305, 416; ii, nos. 511, 691, 787; Joan Serra Vilaro, Baronies de Finds i Mataplana. Investigacio als seus arxius, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1930-1957), i, 45; Jaime Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espana, 22 vols. (Madrid, 1803-1852), xix, 297-298. 10 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 92,99,144,162; R. B. IV, 180,357; Alfons 1,377,608; Pere I, 237; ADM, Conca de Odena, leg. 3, 43; LFM, i, no. 142; Joaquin Miret y Sans, Investigation historica sobre el vizcondado de Castellbo . . . (Barcelona, 1900), apendice 10, p. 365; Serra Vilaro,Baronies, i, 46, 48-51; Jaime SantacanaToTt^Elmonasteriode Poblet (1151-1181) (Barcelona, 1974), apendice 46, p. 490-493. 5

156

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the part of commended men to submit to additional lords, which is why reservations of fealty, or more often ofsolidantia—the Catalonian equivalent of liegesse—became common in the twelfth century.11 But these relationships were invariably motivated by prospects of reward. Moreover, the aristocratic homages of this period often served less to establish vassalage than to secure conventions,12 so that the very form of the convention—virtually a treaty redistributing power over property—may have hampered the lord's ambition to impose an effectively personal domination on his barons and castellans. The stress on property may help to explain why the castles mentioned in conventions and oaths were seldom called fiefs. Strictly speaking they were not fiefs but the lord's allods, in which a conditional command (castellanid) and dependent tenures (feva.feudd) were created. It is true that this conceptual purity was violated early and often: for example, in 1077 the count of Pallars obtained the castle of Mur perfevum, and there are other such cases in 1111, 1117 and thereafter.13 Nevertheless, the rule held firm throughout the twelfth century, and was applied in New Catalonia as in Old, that fiefs were dependencies of castles. In 1118 Ramon Berenguer III commended the castle of Corbins to Arnal Berenguer de Anglerola, giving him " in fief [perfevum] two-thirds of the honor and rents and usages which pertain to the castle."14 In 1194 Pere Ramon de Taradell and others granted Taradell castle to Guillem de Eures "and he gives him the fiefs pertaining to the aforesaid castle."15 Innumerable instances could be cited. The distinction between castle and fief is well recognized in the Usatges of Barcelona and survives in the Commemorations of Pere Albert.16 It may seem puzzling that the castle resisted feudalization in this way. A lord could hardly commend a castle to a second man while leaving its castellania in the hands of a first. But a lord could well take " power " of a castle without disturbing its endowment, which ordinarily lay outside the walls. According to Usatge 30 the taking of power or seizure of fiefs were alternative procedures against contumacious castellans (or castlans). But the acceptance of a castle subject to the condition of the lord's potestas effectively distinguished such a tenure from that of fiefs. So the castle, as regulated by convention and oath, remained curiously impervious to the new social tendencies. Fiefs sprang up about it and its

11

ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 155; R. B. IV, 112,284; AC Solsona, cal. 8,671; AC Vic, cal. 6, 1925; ADM, Conca de Odena, leg. 3, 43; Santacana, Poblet, apen. 46, p. 492. 12 Cf. Bonnassie, Catalogne, ii, 775-776; and see below, at notes 83, 86. 13 LFM, i, nos. 69, 92; AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (castle of Guardia, 1154; 7 iii 1171). 14 LFM, i, no. 166. 15 AC Barcelona, pergamins Diversorum C (c), capsa 7, 344 (17 v 1194). 16 Usatges de Barcelona, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals and Ferran Vails Taberner (Barcelona, 1913), chapters 29, 30; Commemorations de Pere Albert, ed. Josep Rovirai Ermengol (Barcelona, 1933), pp. 152, 159, 162.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

157

17

possessors did homage and fealty for it; yet it was not itself a fief, sauf exception, nor was its tenant so much a vassal as an ally.18 It is worth recalling in this connection that the great collection of conventions and oaths compiled in the 1190s by order of Alfons I was not known as Liber feudorum until the fourteenth century, when the distinction between castle and fief had been lost. The administrators of the twelfth century sought to preserve the castle even against its own enfeoffed tenants as a unit of public or allodial order.19 II. Fiefs. In practice, however, the castle had long since become the keystone of an extensively feudalized society. Fiefs (fevd) are mentioned in enormous numbers in records from almost every part of Catalonia, often as a form of tenure distinct from allodial,20 sometimes as dependencies of castles held by castlans or knights.21 But the " knight's fee " (cavallarid) could be distinguished from thefevum22 The cavallaria was technically a sub-infeudated unit of the castellania, which the castla held immediately from a higher lord. In the twelfth century the castlcfs endowment was often termed cavallaria or fevum23 probably because the contingents of enfeoffed knights were being stabilized in dependence on the castle or the lord in place of the castla'24 perhaps also because the value of the cavallaria tended to increase in this prosperous age when knighthood was becoming respectable. In 1116 a cavalleria newly created by aprisio in the Valles was evaluated at 15 morabetins per year; and at Vic in 1149 the castla's fief was a cavalleria of which one-half was evaluated at 5 morabetins.25 At Creixell in 1207 a 17

E.g., LFM, i, nos. 342, 349; ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 91; Alfons I, 18 dupl., 523, 613, 721 dupl. 18 ADM, Conca de Odena, leg. 6, 284 (17 ix 1191): " . . . ego Raimundus de Odena soluo, comendo atque laudo uobis Geralde de Cardona ipsum castrum de Odena et castrum de Rabinad cum ipsis feudis . . . Preterea ego Guillelmus de Cardona [Geralda's husband] uenio ad amiztates cum te Raimundo de Odena et tu mecum et conuenio . . . quod faciam tibi dari ipsam potestatem de iamdictis castris. . . ." 19 Cf. Usatges de Barcelona, chapter 73 (Rochas namque). 20 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 233 (ed. Francisco Monsalvatge y Fossas, Noticias historical, 26 vols. [Olot, 1889-1915], xv, 339-340); R. B. IV, 1, 35, 89, 138, 143, 180, 216, 265; Alfons I, 236, 273; Pere I, 20, 351; AC Girona, " Llibre gran de sacristania," fol. 35 (ed. Jaime Marques Casanovas, " Coleccion diplomatica del linaje de Llers," Anales del Institute de Estudios Gerundenses, xix [1968-1969], 225-226); AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xiii (5 vi 1200); Viageliterario, xvii, apen. 50,319-321;LFAf, i, no. 339. 21 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 144,186; R. B. IV, 1,18; Alfons 1,44,69,96,258; Pere 1,262; Viage literario, xiii, apen. 29, 269-270; LFM, \, nos. 186, 344; ii, nos. 520, 527. 22 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 221, 235. 23 E.g., AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (c), carpeta 2, 103 (2 i 1139); 'Libri antiquitatum,' fol. 66, no. 142; ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 162, 205, 235; R. B. IV, 221. 24 E.g. ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 186; R. B. IV, 1, 68, 244; Serra V\\2n6, Baronies, i, 46; LFM, i, no. 344 (5 vii 1159): " . . . et dono tibi [R. B. IV to Berenguer de Guardia] ipsos milites cum ipsis fevis quos habere debent in supradicto castro de Guardia." 25 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 192; R. B. IV, 221.

158

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

cavallaria was defined as a fief plus one-third of the domain (dominieatura) in fiefs and bailiwicks.26 Thefevum was an even more variable unit. Usually land, such as manses, it could also be shares of fiscal revenue, such as from coinage, or agrarian produce.27 It could range in value from a tithe to a castellania. In 1132 the comital domains of Prats-de-Mollo constituted afevum, as did those in the valley of Ribes in the 1160s.28 Enfeoffed churches became exceptional in the twelfth century, except perhaps in Empuries and Roussillon;29 and although the terms on which bishops or abbots commended chaplaincies required service and fealty, such grants were not generally called fiefs.30 Money-fiefs had become uncommon, save in the old form of administrative shares in revenues. Whether military or otherwise, tenure of a fief normally entailed service, an obligation that might be evaluated or even pledged by itself.31 We know relatively little about the transfer or revocation of fiefs in the twelfth century.32 The tendency for such tenures to become hereditary, at least in the male line, certainly persisted, and we know of some grants in perpetuity.33 The number and diversity of recorded fiefs suggests that Catalonia—like some regions north of the Pyrenees34—became progressively more feudal in the twelfth century. How far did the movement go? This question cannot yet be answered definitively. But there is already evidence enough to justify caution. For one thing the wills continue to distinguish clearly between allodial and feudal land,35 a sign that the pressures of lordship had not resulted in confusing the two forms of tenure. Allods could be granted in fief without

26

ACA, perg. Pere I, 262. E.g., ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 233,279; ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9,930;LFM, ii, no. 52 (cf . ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 83); AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 50 (12 xii 1182). 28 LFM, ii, no. 529; ACA, Cancelleria, perg. extrainventari 3281 (carpeta 358). 29 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 143; AC Solsona, cal. gran 2, 11; ADM, Ampurias, leg. 930; AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 57 (2 i 1203). 30 AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (10 vii 1179; 18 vi 1180); ACA, perg. Pere 1,330; cf. R. B. IV, 3 s. d. 31 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), cap. 26, 3628 (6 ii 1202); AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (4 iv 1175); ACA, perg. Alfons 1,535; Pere 1,182 (1204): " . . . inpignoramus tibi . . . totum ipsum seruicium quod nobis debes facere pro isto nostro feudo quern emisti. . . ." For a hereditary feudum "sine . . . seruitio et sine hominiatico," see AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (c), cap. 7, 340 (14 iii 1194). 32 But cf. below, pp. 189-90. 33 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (c), cap. 7, 340 (14 iii 1194); AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 42 (" ca. 1140 "); Joaquim Miret y Sans, Los vescomtes de Bas en la ilia de Sardenya . . . (Barcelona, 1901), apendix 7, pp. 139-140; cf. LFM, i, no. 427; ii, no. 714. 34 See generally Robert Boutruche, Seigneurie etfeodalite. . ., 2d ed., 2 vols. (Paris, 1968-1970), ii, 276-296. 35 E.g., ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 35, 89, 138, 182,216; Cartulario de " Sant Cugat" de Valles, ed. Jose Rius Serra, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), nos. 1172,1219. To be sure it is possible that some feudal land was claimed as allodial in such records. 27

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

159

36

ceasing to be known as allods. Moreover, a considerable number of men of military status made no allusion to fiefs in their wills,37 and while this may only mean that they claimed no hereditary title to feudal land, it also prevents us from imagining that knights and castellans regularly aggrandized their fiefs. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that the banal seigneury so productive of fiefs in the eleventh century continued to expand markedly in the twelfth. Sales of land, although relatively reduced in number, persisted in the dioceses of Barcelona, Girona and Vic to the end of the twelfth century;38 nor were allodial castellanies unknown as late as 1200.39 Peasant tenements were being feudalized in many parts of Old Catalonia—in Bergueda, the domains of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, Empuries and Roussillon, for example—although not very rapidly or completely.40 But there is no sign of the process on lands of Santa Cecilia d'Elins (Urgell)41 nor on those of the Templars anywhere in Catalonia.42 Even on the relatively densely populated lands of Sant Cugat, where vulnerability to attack had promoted the military organizing of numerous castles, the affrontations of land conveyed by charter or testament show that fiefs remained far less numerous than allods in the twelfth century.43 By any test peasant fiefs in the frontier lands were all but unknown. The only fiefs (so-called) at all common in New Catalonia were the military tenures associated with castles, such as at Turlanda.44 But the organizing of cavallariae in this region was neither uniform nor swift, perhaps in part because conditions there were unfavorable to the imposition of exploitative castellanies on the Old Catalonian model.45 36 Viage literario, xiii, apen. 29, 269-270 (testamentary conditions of Bishop Bernat of Girona): " . . . Arnallus Guillermi de Cartiliano habeat alodium de Caseles per Guillermum Umberti ad fevum per ipsum castrum Gerundelle." See also ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 155; Alfons I, 236; and J. F. Benton, "Two Twelfth-Century Latin Charters from Rural Catalonia in the Lea Library," The Library Chronicle, xxviii (1962), 23 (Ms. Lea 89; 18 iv 1170), affrontations near Corr6 d'Amunt" in alodio fevi." 37 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (c), cap. 2, 496 (15 iii 1132); Cartulario de "Sant Cugat", iii, no. 817; ACA, perg. Pere I, 1. 38 See above, note 3. For Barcelona I count 360 such acts for the period 1131-1213, of which 241 (or 67%) postdate 1161. For Vic, 128 sales for the years 1131-1200, of which 85 (66%) postdate 1161; similar figures for Girona. 39 ACA, perg. Pere I, 25 dupl., 96. 40 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 279 (Monsalvatje, Noticias historical, xv, 354, no. 2228); Alfons I, 596; LFM, i, nos. 476,784; Serra Vilar 6, Baronies, i, 45; ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 930, 974. 41 AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. Santa Cecilia d'Elins. 42 This observation is based chiefly on ACA, perg. R. B. IV, Alfons I; and Gran Priorat de Catalunya, armari 11 (Gardeny). 43 Cartulario de " Sant Cugat", iii, nos. 804, 808, 811,816, 819-820, 824, 827, 830, 839-840, 970, 1013, 1063, etc. 44 LFM, i, no. 263. See generally Jose-Maria Font Rius, " La comarca de Tortosa a raiz de la reconquista Christiana (1148). . . ," Cuadernos de Historia de Espana, xix (1953), 104-117. 45 Cartulari de Poblet, ed. Joan Pons i Marques (Barcelona, 1938), nos. 156, 222, 223. Cf. LFM, i, no. 244, nofeva dependent on the castle of Flix, which is itself afevunr, cf. also nos. 167, 258, 263.

160

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Clearly, then, the proliferation of fiefs knew some limits in the twelfth century. One reason for this, I believe, is that Catalans had not entirely lost sight of the fiscal origin of fiefs. In 1133 when Ramon Berenguer IV commended the castle of Cornelia de Terri together with its "fevum comitale which the lord of the said castle is accustomed to have from the count's hand," his language evoked the old notion that dependencies of a castle were carved from public land.46 The distinction made in 1143 between the "fief of Sant Marti [Sarroca]" and " all other fiefs from allods [etc.]" may point to the same conceptual tradition.47 This continuity does not mean that all such grants were delegations of public authority; far from it! Nor was it incompatible with the general tendency for fiefs to become hereditary. It meant that people continued to think of fiefs as benefices and not as property. The old word beneficium was still used in the twelfth century, generally in contexts suggestive of the conditional nature of grants.48 The distinction between allod and fief persisted strongly, as we have seen, and fiefs could not, as a rule, be sold or alienated. Nor was the distinction between office (or function) and endowment altogether forgotten. Guillem Ramon III de Montcada was said in the 1150s to have received a "fief or benefice" from Ramon Berenguer IV in return for custody of the $uda of Tortosa.49 And survey of fiscal domains of Old Catalonia in 1151 shows the bailiffs and vicars holding manses and agrarian renders pro fevo from the count of Barcelona, although their functions (and so, necessarily, their fiefs, too) were revocable.50 The baiulia, a tenure itself as well as an exploitation, and the vicariate (vegueria) were only very exceptionally enfeoffed in the twelfth century.51 This survival (or perhaps, in some respects, revival) of fiscal-beneficial conceptions may help us to understand why feudal-vassalic terminology was slow to find its place in aristocratic thinking. The society of fiefs in twelfthcentury Catalonia was mainly a lower-class mix of knights, castlans, peasants and servants, and while the milites were the most numerous, the grant of fiefs to administrators can hardly have been a novelty. Knighthood was becoming a status as well as a profession, as we learn from Usatge 9 among other records, but it was not yet a self-conscious nobility in the twelfth century. Garrison 46 Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 42 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1973), iv, no. 4. Cf. Serra Vilaro, Baronies, iii, 109note-110, allusion to "antiques census in feudum comitalem" in Fumanya (Bergueda); and generally Jose-Maria Font Rius, "Les modes de detention de chateaux dans la " Vieille Catalogne " et ses marches exterieures du debut du IX* au debut du XF siecle," Structures sociales, pp. 63-72; Bonnassie, Catalogne, i, 209-211. 47 ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 155. 48 AC Vic, cal. 6, Episcopologi, i, 40; Viage literario, xix, apen. 40. 305; L/M, i, nos. 371, 465. 49 LFM, i, no. 465. 50 ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 233 (no. 1A-CEHJ-Q, mFiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings (1151-1213), ed. T. N. Bisson, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1984); Alfons 1,359. 51 LFM, ii, no. 509; Miret, Vescomtes de Bas, apen. 7, pp. 139-140.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

161

horsemen still infrequently styled themselves miles in their charters and wills,52 and less still could so demeaning a title have appealed to the older comital aristocracy. As for the solemnity of homage and fealty for fiefs and cavallariae held of castlans and the quality of the vassalage thereby established, these matters are very poorly documented. But here again the tenurial aspect must have been paramount, for the fiefs, and therefore the knights themselves, pertained to the castle, not to the castla.53 III. Powers So the castle and the fief continued to be radiators of power and service in the twelfth century. A new society had arisen about them—the castlans and knights—and it was to these men that most people in Catalonia became subject for protection and justice. But this was no simple prolongement of the " first feudal age," for the new military society was by no means autonomous. It was on the initiative of the higher powers—chiefly the old territorial aristocracy—that the convention and oath had proliferated as a means of securing strategic control of castles. The territorial consolidation of Catalonia, which had begun with Ramon Berenguer I's adroit domination of castellans and castlans, continued and came to a spectacular climax in the twelfth century. To what extent was this a feudal-vassalic process? A. Persistence of Public Territorial Structures The formation of Catalonia was, in many respects, a political restoration. It was a re-aggregation of the old counties of the Spanish March, as the author of the Gesta comitum barcinonensium perceived. Besalu was annexed in 1111, Cerdanya in 1118, Roussillon in 1172; and the process continued with Pallars Jussa (1192) and (temporarily) Urgell (1209).54 Now one might suppose that these cessions were escheats, in the (northern) feudal sense of the word. But there is no evidence that this was the case. In each instance the devolution was prepared by political negotiation and, in most instances, was effected by testament. Indeed, it could hardly have happened otherwise for, although the counts of Urgell, Cerdanya, Besalu, etc., had performed fealty (and presumably homage) to the counts of Barcelona,55 they had not done so for their counties as such. There may even have been some reluctance to admit that their castellanies were fiefs, forfeva, as we have seen, while regarded as appropriate endowments for knights, castellans, and

52

E.g., ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 46, 117; Pere I, 401; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C(c), cap. 2,496 (15 iii 1132). But a lady who inherited a castellany was expected to marry a knight, ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 162 (1144). 53 See ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 927; LFM, i, no. 307, homages of milites; and for dependence on castles, references in note 24, above. 54 See Santiago Sobreques i Vidal, Els barons de Catalunya, (Barcelona, 1957), pp. 10, 13, 23-24, 29, 35, 73-76. 55 Cf. Bonnassie, Catalogue, ii, 698-701.

162

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

administrators, could hardly be so for counts whose power was " by God's grace."56 The county, like the castle, had resisted feudalization.57 It was in relation to the county as a public-territorial structure that circles of commended men and fiefs continued to be perceived. When Ramon Berenguer III acceded to the county of Cerdanya (1118), the " magnates and knights of the whole county" not only swore fealty for the castles but associated with the new count and the bishop of Elne to establish a statute of peace; and the " barons of the county of Roussillon " did much the same in 1173.58 In 1128 Pong Hugof Empiiries, as part of a settlement of conflicts with the bishop of Girona, promised Ramon Berenguer III that he would revoke the fiefs granted to three comtors of the county of Besalu and release them from homage and fealty. This convention is one of the most remarkable surviving testimonies to the continued solidarity of the county as a preserve of the old aristocracy: the comtors of Besalu were not to hold fiefs of other counts nor would the count of Empiiries seek clients in the counties of Besalu or Girona.59 In Urgell the comtors were still an elite group among comital feudatories in the later twelfth century.60 In Cerdanya the " knights of the viscount," who were commended together with their fiefs to Pere Ramon de Castellbo in 1134, remained visibly a unit of endowed service in transactions by King Alfons I (1177, 1188).61 It was in Cerdanya, too, that Ramon Berenguer I's conception of security based upon professions of fealty from the castlans survived best. Oaths from Cerdanya are found not only at the change of dynasty in 1117, but also after the accessions of Ramon Berenguer IV and Alfons I. But this tradition was dying out. With the exception of Cerdanya (after 1162) and possibly Roussillon (after 1172), there is no indication that the rulers sought systematically to record the fealties for castles.62 56

E.g.,L/M, ii, nos. 515, 517; ADM, Ampurias, leg. 10, 1125. In 1151 Count Gaufred of Roussillon received his son's homage for the promise of succession to that county. In the time of Alfons I royal advisers supposed that the county and city of Carcassonne had formerly been held as a fief from the county of Barcelona, Pr6spero de Bofarull y Mascar6,Los condes de Barcelona vindicados, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1836), ii, 119-121. The viscounty of Barcelona was termed/evww in 1110 (LFM, i, no. 339), but probably in a sense analogous to castlania. 58 LFM, no. 691, and pp. 405-406 for oaths sworn between 1117 and 1131; nos. 763, 793; T. N. Bisson, " Une paix peu connue pour le Roussillon (A. D. U13),"Droitprive et institutions regionales. Etudes historiques offertes a Jean Yver (Rouen, 1976), pp. 73-76. 59 LFM, ii, no. 523. 60 AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (18 vi 1180); ACA, perg. Pere I, 251. See also Guillem de Bergueda, ed. Martin de Riquer, 2 vols. (Poblet, 1971), ii, 186 (xxi.2). 61 LFM, ii, nos. 616, 621, 652. 62 LFM, ii, 405-406, 412, 414-415, 419. Few undated oaths other than those recorded in the LFM survive today in originals. In Cerdanya the salue fldelitates of certain castlans, meaning presumably the count-king's right to reservations or immediate professions of fealty, survived until 1198, when Pere I surrendered them to Arnal de Castellbo on condition ofretainingpotestas, ACA, perg. Pere 1,42; cf. Alfons I, 496; LFM, ii, no. 622. 57

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

163

In fact, the counties of Besalu and Cerdanya tended to lose their administrative autonomy toward 1150, much as Girona and Osona had done a century before. The count of Barcelona ceased to style himself count of Besalu (etc.); moreover, he granted fiefs in one county to barons in another. 63 This does not mean, however, that the feudal institutions of county and viscounty were simply to be replicated in a new omni-comital unity. Not only was the resumption of Old Catalonian counties still incomplete but with the conquests of Tortosa and Lleida a vast new western frontier had to be organized. Ramon Berenguer IV's response to this situation was at once pragmatic and traditional. He commended the western lands to his allies in the conquest as if he alone were their natural lord; he enfeoffed major administrative rights in Tortosa to Guillem Ramonilllde Montcada 64 and in Lleida to Ermengol VI of Urgell;65 but he did not erect these cities into counties. As late as 1150 there was to be no feudalizing of the county qua county because the prince himself intended to be the only count. Feudal principles, applied to serve administrative as well as military needs, remained subordinated to a conception of territorial sovereignty derived from the historic role of the counts of Barcelona. That such a conception indeed motivated Ramon Berenguer IV is strongly suggested by other considerations. First, there is the famous observation in the first chapters of the Gesta comitum barcinonensium, composed probably at Ripoll in the third quarter of the twelfth century, that the honor of Barcelona had devolved for all time to the dominium of Guifred the Hairy and his descendants by virtue of Guifred's (sic) success, unaided by the king, in expelling the Saracens " from all his land."66 It is clear that these chapters of the Gesta were written to justify Ramon Berenguer IV's achievements. Secondly, we must not overlook the Peace and Truce of God. Although the old statutes of diocese and county remained legally in force during the middle decades of the twelfth century, they were not renewed or confirmed. Very likely Ramon Berenguer IV anticipated an early occasion for promulgating the statutes in a new form designed to apply generally in all of his counties. Such an occasion arose early in his son's reign when the county of Roussillon devolved upon Alfons I. The significantly revised statutes for Roussillon issued at that time served as the model for the great charter of Fontaldara (1173), the first of a new series of peace-statutes to be observed in the whole range of lands stretching from the castle of Salses, at the northeastern limit of 63 LFM, ii, nos. 520, 525, 527, 529, 535; Documentos ineditos, iv, no. 34; ACA, pe extrainventari 3281. 64 LFM, i, no. 465; cf. nos. 462,464, which raise some question whether the grant wa originally feudal. Cf. Documentos ineditos, iv, no. 22, Tortosa had been granted prospectively to Guillem de Montpellier per fevum in 1136. 65 Ibid., no. 161, convention of 25 May 1148 in which the city of Lleida is ceded per fevum. Tarragona was sometimes spoken of as a county (LFM, i, no. 530), but was not enfeoffed as such. 66 Gesta comitum barcinonensium, ed. L. Barrau Dihigo and J. Masso Torrents (Barcelona, 1925), chapter 2, p. 5.

164

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the Catalan speech, to the western borders of the new frontier. In these statutes as in their prototypes the count (now also a king) is the guarantor of a public security based on common, extrafeudal obligations.67 Given these circumstances it cannot be accidental that a similar conception of comitalregalian authority is to be found also in the Usatges of Barcelona. B. The Usatges of Barcelona This compilation dates in its first extended form from the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV, probably about 1150.68 It was intended to codify the new customs of fiefs and castles together with new judicial procedures for use in the courts. But it ranges beyond these matters to define a comprehensive law of property, status and public security sanctioned by the count or prince (princeps). It requires the service of all men in time of general war or invasion and guarantees the protections of the Peace and Truce. Violations of the Peace or of the law of fortifications or of the coinage are in the jurisdiction of the prince and his court.69 It is a thoroughly regalian, even Romanist, programme which surely reflected attitudes of the triumphant Ramon Berenguer IV himself. Its "feudal articles," moreover, can only be understood within this regalian context. They regulate fidelity, obligations of and successions to fiefs, recovery of castles, wardships and the like, but they make no attempt to derive a political theory from these customs. Castlans and knights are no different from other free men in respect to the fundamental public obligations mentioned above. Nor do the specifically feudal articles make overriding provision for the rights of the prince-count: there is no insistence on prerogative wardship, no mention of other aids and incidents of fiefs such as might be engrossed by an overlord. The silence of the Usatges about reliefs confirms other evidence that Catalonian lords had not learned to think of their fiefs as fiscal units. While tending to reinforce the discretionary rights of lords against vassals, the feudal-vassalic provisions make little distinction between the count of Barcelona and other " solid" lords.70 Nevertheless, these provisions do have some political implications, for they seem to show an interest on the part of the powers to systematize 67 Bisson, " Paix peu connue pour le Roussillon"; Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1920), i:l, 55-62. The generality of the new statutes had, in a sense, been anticipated in the Usatges of Barcelona, articles 60ff., 97. 68 Ed. Ramon d'Abadal and Ferran Vails Taberner (Barcelona, 1913) in its earlier Latin form; for the Catalan form, see Usatges de Barcelona i Commemorations dePere Albert, ed. Josep Rovira i Ermengol (Barcelona, 1933). The introductions to both these editions have been superseded by Bonnassie, Catalogne, ii, 711-728 (building on late work by Abadal himself); and Joan Bastardas i Parera, Sobre la problematica dels Usatges de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1977). [See now the critical edition Usatges de Barcelona. El codi a mitjan segle XII. . . , ed. Joan Bastardas (Barcelona, 1984).] 69 Ed. Abadal and Vails, articles 61-66, 68, 93-95, 97, 123. 70 Ibid., articles 23, 26, 29-44, 46-48, 50, 57, 67, 71, 81, 115, 132, 135, 136.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

165

commendation and feudal obligations. They point clearly to a hierarchy of feudatories comprising knights at the bottom, vasvessores (who correspond to the castlans, as Bonnassie has shown), comtors, viscounts, and culminating in the count.71 According to article 48 the count could require written professions of fealty from men—" from viscounts down to inferior knights " —holding directly or indirectly of him. But this reservation of fealty, which seems to reflect the policy of Ramon Berenguer I,72 is as far as the Usatges go in exploiting the concept of hierarchy to the ruler's advantage. The concept was limited both in theory and in practice. It was more a matter of social and legal status than of dependence, for in reality knights and castlans held of the count as well as of comtors and viscounts. And it was a hierarchy of commended men, not of fiefs, for like other records the Usatges do not speak of offices and functions as fiefs. But the most significant limitation of the Usatges in this regard is that they make no place for counts except at the top of the hierarchy.73 This was a prudent reservation, which saved the rights of the counts of Urgell, Roussillon, and Empuries in a way characteristic of Ramon Berenguer IV. He laid claim to leadership of Catalonia not as the lord of counts but as princeps\ the feudal hierarchy of the county is subordinated in the Usatges to the regalian principate of Catalonia. C. The Transformations The achievement of Ramon Berenguer IV was thus to consolidate the new feudal order within a monarchy based on a revival of the territorial power hitherto claimed by the counts. The continued devolution of counties in the half-century after his death (1162-1213) proved the soundness of his political vision.74 But it also posed difficult administrative problems. As opportunities for conquest slackened a multiplied aristocracy once again threatened the ruler's mastery of castles and his enforcement of public order. If the countking could not effectively replace the counts in the management of their counties, then he must organize new institutions for Catalonia as a whole. Nor were lesser lords altogether spared these problems. It is in the responses to this challenge that we see most clearly the transformations in twelfth-century feudal practice. (1) In the first place, the king became more interested in acquiring vassals. As the conventions defining rights over castles decline in number, the numbers of simple concessions of fiefs or of protectorates increase both relatively and 71

Ibid., articles, 4, 5, 8-10, 23, 25, 31, 48, 93; Bonnassie, Catalogue, ii, 798. Bonnassie, Catalogue, ii, 696-698. 73 E.g., ed. Abadal and Vails, arts. 25,48. It is true that article 23 might be construed otherwise, but cf. art. 48 and numerous articles referring to the princeps. 74 It is hardly necessary to point out the contrast between this success and the incessant troubles of the Occitan policy. Only the Provencal marriage (1112) provided a secure base north of the Pyrenees; elsewhere there was lacking institutional support for the vassalic lordship which the counts of Barcelona tried to impose. See generally Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, " A propos de la ' domination' de la maison comtale de Barcelone sur le Midi fran9ais," Annales du Midi, Ixxvi (1964), 315-345. 72

166

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

absolutely. Peasants and knights converted their allods into censives and, in Old Catalonia, into fiefs;75 and even when feudal status is not expressly indicated, the commendation sometimes entailed homage as well as fealty.76 To some extent this change reflects recognition of the conquering ruler's prestige (although the count-king was not the only beneficiary), but the phenomenon was also related to the ruler's heightened appreciation of the political value of vassals. Early in the twelfth century it had been the habit for lords of towns and valleys to secure professions of fealty alone—surely the continuation of ancient Germanic custom—from their men.77 But when Roussillon passed to the lordship of Alfons I, the inhabitants of Perpignan and the county performed homage as well as fealty, and this practice, probably influenced by Aragonese custom, is attested thereafter in Urgell as well as in Occitanian dependencies of the count-king.78 Contemporaries spoke of it as " natural lordship," meaning territorial domination.79 As a result the number of men holding as direct vassals of the king must have been dramatically increased, even though it can hardly have been supposed that the vassalage of an individual townsman was worth that of a castellan or knight. We are entitled to conclude that the addition of homage to the fidelity traditionally required of free men indicates heightened respect for the human solemnity of vassalage. The term " vassal" (vassallus) is more frequently used in reference to tenants great and small in the later twelfth century and after.80 Alongside the written oath of fealty (sacramentale) there now appears the charter of homage-and-fealty, placing new stress on the tenant's personal submission.81 That homage was viewed a reinforcement of fidelity is suggested

75

E.g., for censives or protectorates, ACA, perg. Alfons I, 106, 120, 276, 278, 324, 345, 475, 609, 686, 693; AC Vic, cal. 6, 366; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C, cap. 7,335 (24 xi 1193); LFM, i, nos. 309, 367; ii, no. 512; and for fiefs, ACA, perg. Alfons I, 596; Monsalvatje, Noticias historicas, xv, 354 (no. 2228); LFM, i, no. 375; ii, nos. 784, 795, 800. 76 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 244; LFM, i, nos. 456, 530; ii, no. 804. 77 Privilegis i ordinacions de les vails pirenenques, ed. Ferran Vails Taberner, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1915-1920), ii, apendix 2, 288-289; Z>7, viii, 35-36. The custom persisted: ACA, perg. Alfons I, 470-472; LFM, ii, no. 861. 78 LFM, ii, nos. 763, 793, 869; ACA, perg. Pere I, 238-240, 356, 440; and T. N. Bisson, "The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia and France," Speculum, liii (1978), 469. 79 The archbishop claimed homage and fealty from inhabitants of Tarragona and its camp', but when a knight sought exemption from this obligation (apparently alleging the king's overriding lordship) in 1206, Pere I confirmed the archbishop's right to "hominium et fidelitatis juramentum, sicut fidelis vassallus suo naturali domino debetur prestare," Viage literario, xix, 294-297; Emilio Morera y Llaurado, Tarragona Christiana. . . , 2 vols. (Tarragona, 1897-1899), i, apendice, xxxvii-xxxviii, nos. 40,41. See also ADM, leg. 234 (Cabrera y Bas), 7 (= LFM, i, no. 415). 80 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 369, 433; Pere I, 71, 75, 118, 312. 81 E.g., LFM, ii, nos. 753, 756; apendice, no. 170; cf. ACA, perg. Alfons I, 103.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

167

82

by allusions to the " fidelity of homage." What may be called the " homage of security " likewise becomes more common,83 doubtless an outgrowth, like the charter of homage and fealty, of the ordinary sacramentale which secured conventions. These devices of homage and vassalage were increasingly evident in aristocratic relationships. Although not strictly a " feudal" class, the counts and barons continued to function through networks of clientage and alliance in which personal fidelity remained as elusive as it was critical.84 To a knight or castlan homage implied submission and obedience, to a baron it meant fidelity. But the sirventes of Guillem de Bergueda suggest that toward 1190 vassalatge was already regarded an honorable estate among the great men,85 who can hardly have failed to admire the faithful dependence of their own castlans and knights. Could this sentiment be exploited by the powers without some willingness on their part to relax their hold on baronial castles or otherwise to increase their rewards? We still know too little about the wars of the late twelfth century to be sure. Certainly baronial homages—and castles—remained a matter of convenient solidarity, of deliberate and often temporary policy.86 (2) Secondly, we find a new interest in the management of fiefs. So long as the conventions and oaths were fresh it had seemed superfluous to list a count's castles.87 But conventions, which were seldom revised in the twelfth century, soon lost their utility as indicators of a castle's value in dominicatura and fiefs; nor did the formulaic oath compensate in this respect, which is surely one reason why it survives in diminished numbers from the later twelfth century. One solution to this problem was to require recognitions of fiefs from new tenants, such as were to become common in southern France in the thirteenth century, and it may not be accidental that the best early Catalonian evidence of this practice comes from lands bordering Occitania.88 Another 82

AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (12 iii 1168): " . . . faciant nobis omnes castellan! fidelitatem hominii." That the concept of fidelity had come to imply homage is shown by the expression hominium fidelitatis, AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (26 vii 1170); ADM, Cabrera y Bas, leg. 234, 7; LFM, i, no. 416; cf. AC Vic, cal. 6, 2463. 83 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 86, 93, 721 dupl.; Pere I, 49; AC Vic, cal. 6 Pere I obtained the homage of Pere de Torrezela and Pone Guillem in return for his promise of military aid; the pact itself was their fief (ACA, perg. Pere I, 145)! 84 See Bonnassie, Catalogue, ii, 775, and plate (at 776-777) from theLiberfeud Cerritanie. The artistic renderings of vassalic attitudes in the Libri feudorum reflect conditions of c. 1200. 85 Guillem de Bergueda, xi. 4 (ed. Riquer, ii, 108); see also iv. 2 (ii, 56); xxi. 4 (ii, 188) 86 Ibid., xvii. 5 (ed. Riquer, ii, 148): "Tot atrestal en tal amor/com de vassal e de segnor,/tolc mi castel de Monmajor/a mon baron, . . ."; and references in note 83 above. 87 For an exceptional listing of the count's castles in Osona, see LFM, ii, no. 505. 88 AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (7 iii 1171); AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 57 (2 i 1203); ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 927. The scriptura recognitions, attested for a like purpose in 1111 (ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 143), does not seem to have been the diplomatic source of this evolution.

168

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

way was to record or to create fiefs independent of castles with a view to providing more flexible or convertible resources for the support of administrative or military services. The survey of comital domains in 1151 affords an early illustration of this policy, which may have been initiated by Ramon Berenguer IV;89 there survives an inventory (c. 1162-1165) of fiefs created from comital domain in the valley of Ribes;90 and the loss of all but one of Alfons Fs registers has surely deprived us of more material of this kind. But the best extant surveys of fiefs emanate from the castellan class, which continued to dominate most of the feudal land. In Roussillon a divided succession to the castellany of Saint-Laurent (-de-la-Salanque) toward 1140 was the occasion for an inventory of knights enfeoffed there. The record lists some twenty-four knights holding nine fiefs from one or the other of the new lords, and it reveals some concern to prove the legitimacy of successions to these fiefs extending back two or even three generations.91 In Empuries a survey of fiefs held of Bernat de Monells when he became a knight of the Temple about 1179 shows even more clearly the influence of systematic administrative thought. It lists twenty-six tenants, of whom the majority were enfeoffed knights owing service in arms for thirty days, while others were peasants owing albergae for manses. At least one of the knights held a rear-fief reserving his fealty to Bernat, who, in turn, recognized that he held the toll of Monells in shares from the bishop of Girona and the king.92 Other records from the archives of Monells show honorial land being converted into fiefs, as were some peasant tenures for the services of alberga, a tendency likewise visible in Roussillon.93 The multiplication of service tenures in the great political-military corridor of the eastern Pyrenees surely explains this new species of administrative record. (3) Finally, the administration of castles was reformed in the time of Alfons I. By the second half of the twelfth century three or four generations had passed since Ramon Berenguer I had first exacted oaths from the castlans. But there were simply too many castles for this practice to remain a reliable means of confirming the count's allodial title, which is one reason why, in spite of Usatge 48, it was generally given up in the twelfth century. As early as 1113 Ramon Berenguer III had been obliged to renounce his lordship of the castellans of Arraona because " the writings of oaths [were] lost through carelessness."94 As time passed the power of other castles—and not only of 89 ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 233; and see above, p. 163, for enfeoffments atTortosaand Lleida. 90

ACA, perg. extrainventari 3281; see also extrainv. 3441 (cf. LFM, ii, no. 580). AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 42; cf. LFM, ii, no. 752. 92 ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 930: " [In] Dei nomine. Ego Bernardus de Monellis . . ideo facio breue rememoria [. . .] de feuis quos ego teneo pro dominis meis et alii tenent per me. Primum, recognosco. . . . " I quote from the transcription by Maria Isabel Simo Rodriguez, to whom I am grateful for facilitating my research. 93 ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 928, 965; cf. 924, 930; AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 50 (12 xii 1182). 94 ACA, perg. R. B. Ill, 174. 91

169

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia 95

those belonging to the count-king—was likewise lost or threatened. The problem was not so much whether sacrament alia could be found for every castellan in line of succession but whether the terms of the original concession could be learned from existing conventions and oaths. This problem could only be solved by reorganizing the comital archives. In 1180 Alfons I sued Pere de Lluca, castellan of Lluca and Merles, for the potestas of those castles. Pere contended that they were allods for which neither his father nor his grandfather had ever given power, and that he possessed them by testamentary conveyance. But the king adduced the sacramentale sworn by Guisald de Lluca more than a century before, together with other records dating from 1018 to 1023; and when Pere de Lluga objected that Guisald's oath was neither dated nor subscribed, the king easily proved that oaths of that form had formerly been customary, citing " other similar oaths produced from his archive."96 Now the king's victory in this case would have been impossible if his archives—here mentioned as such for the first time, it is often pointed out97—had not been classified according to castles or lineages. What has not been noticed is that this classification may then have been very recent: indeed, if I am not mistaken, it probably occurred during the preceding two years. For in a remarkable document dated 9 June 1178 the king's notary Guillem de Bassa acknowledged receipt from a Jewish moneylender of an enormous bundle of the king's parchments, listed, in no particular order, as conventions, oaths and charters, and including many of the fundamental records of castles in Old Catalonia.98 It is difficult to believe that such a pledge can have been made from an archive organized to protect the king's rights; its redemption was symptomatic. Very likely Guillem de Bassa and Ramon de Caldes set about then and there to do the work that culminated fifteen years later in the great cartulary subsequently known as the Liber feudorum maior." The lessons learned from this work and from the lawsuits over castles undoubtedly help to explain why the king laid more stress on vassalage and replaced undated oaths with dated charters of homage and fealty in the later twelfth century. The bishops, who had generally been more careful in such 95 The problem became general toward 1175-1180; see, among many examples, Cartulario de " Sant Cugat", iii, no. 1134; ACA, perg. Alfons I, 144 (castles of Sant Cugat and the count of Urgell). 96 LFM, i, no. 225. The other records adduced (nos. 222-224) were preserved and copied together in the LFM. 97 E.g., by J. Ernesto Martinez Ferrando, Guia del Archive de la Corona de Aragon (Madrid, 1958), p. 8. 98 ACA, perg. R. B. IV, 258. Mis-dated in the nineteenth-century reorganization of the archives, the document was first recognized by Professor A. M. Mundo, who will publish it with an index of the records it lists. 99 For the administrative reforms of these years, see T. N. Bisson, " Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-c. 1200): Dean of Barcelona and King's Minister," Law, Church and Society, Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 281-292.

170

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

matters, having fewer castles, did much the same, sometimes under similar threats from their castlans.100 But it would be mistaken to look for any new principles of feudal organization in the Liber feudorum maior. It relied on the old order of counties, then fading from memory, as the only practical means of locating the castles which were (at least, for Catalonia) its chief subject. It was so fundamentally a collection of the older conventions and oaths that its rubricators regularly mis-labelled as such the newer charters of cession and homage and fealty that it included.101

So at the close of the twelfth century Catalonia could be called a " feudal monarchy"—a realm whose ruler exploits feudal and vassalic rights systematically to increase his power—only in a severely qualified sense. There had been some evolution, to be sure. Reservations of fealty to the king had become more common; the number of king's vassals had greatly increased; the means of assuring feudal or castral services had been improved. A little more often (but still rarely, and perhaps chiefly in the west) castles were granted as fiefs;102 in 1207 Arnal de Castellbo received the comtoria of Tatis in fief from the count of Urgell.103 But these exceptions cannot shake our conclusion that the higher offices and functions continued to resist feudalization down to 1213. The king had great vassals, but great fiefs—and accordingly lucrative incidents thereof—remained unknown. No hindrance of custom or dignity prevented the count-king from doing homage himself for certain fiefs held of his prelates.104 In fact, the customs of fiefs and commendation, widely observed in practice and codified in the Usatges of Barcelona, were only marginally influential in the governments rebuilt in twelfth-century Catalonia. Feudatories certainly served in their lord's courts, as required by innumerable conventions. But such courts were powerless to make law; the higher ones were dominated by experts in a written custom favorable to princely authority; and the countking's general court achieved prestige in the later twelfth century chiefly as a 100

The bishops continued to exact written oaths for their castles (e.g., AC Vic, cal. 6 2592; Episcopologi, i, 51; AD Pyrenees-Orientales, G. 23, fol. 5V; they survive for every diocese), but had more difficulty than the king, or perhaps were more assiduous, in enforcing their due service. For Vic see cal. 6, 1746, and Arxiu de la Mensa Episcopal x, 6; also Paul H. Freedman, The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (New Brunswick, 1983), ch. 4; and for Urgell AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (26 vii 1170; 7 iii 1171; 19 iv 1174; 16 iv 1181; 19 viii 1186; 8 iii 1187; 4 iii 1192). 101 E.g., LFM, i, nos. 240, 341. 102 E.g., AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (1154; 28 xii 1173);LFAf, i, nos. 169, 24 244, 348, 372. 103 AC A, perg. Pere I, 251. 104 LFM, i, nos. 247, 254; Documentos de Jaime I de Aragon, ed. Ambrosio Huici Miranda and Maria Desamparados Cabanes Pecourt, 2 vols. to date (Valencia, 1976), i, no. 55.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

171

territorial assembly maintaining the traditional solidarity of the county. 105 The revival or extension of the old administrative fief granted from fiscal land in the time of Ramon Berenguer IV was of a piece with the regalian policy of that ruler. For the most part fiefs remained an institution of the lower military order, with some tendency to proliferate among peasant tenures of Old Catalonia. Although the status of knights had come to seem distinctive in practice, custom, and ceremony, knighthood was slow to attain recognition as a uniformly honorable status. The old nobility, sustained by the revival of comital power, remained active in government. But it was enjoined by Usatge 93 and the vicarial organization of the peace in the later twelfth century from exercising criminal justice or fortifying against the ruler's will,106 hindrances which explain some foreign enterprises and revolts in the later twelfth century and the relentless pressure for new conquests thereafter. An institutional evolution, the organizing of feudal-vassalic practices in twelfth-century Catalonia was also a cultural phenomenon of diffusion and diversity: of aristocratic forms—convention and oath—penetrating the lower classes even as the revival of law and administration led to their replacement by judgments and charters. Of administrative forms in lateral diffusion: from the capbreu of peasant tenures to the inventory-charter of fiefs.107 Of the contamination of forms: charters called conventions, and even conventions called oaths!108 There was some influence of foreign usage: the concept of vavassor, probably from Italy, helped to articulate the social differentiation required by the new legal procedure;109 the wordfeudum, common only in the northern zones at first, but rapidly diffused in Catalonia;110 the description of magnates as vassals, perhaps owing something to French (or FrancoCastilian) usage;111 or the tell-tale substitution of the word richomo for homo

105

See, e.g., LFM, i, nos. 225,253,416,455; ii, nos. 681,735; Cortes de Cataluna, i: 1, 62-63, 90-95; Ferran Soldevila, Els primers temps de Jaume I (Barcelona, 1968) pp. 83-84. 106 Cortes de Cataluna, i: 1,63-88; Jesus Lalinde Abadia, La jurisdiction real inferior en Cataluna (" Corts, veguers, bailies") (Barcelona, 1966), pp. 69-75. 107 Cf. ADM, Ampurias, leg. 9, 924, 930; LFM, ii, no. 707. 108 LFM, no. 739 (1164): " Hec est conveniencia inter Guillelmum, vicecomitem de Castro Novo, et Girardum, comitem Rossilionensem . . . Actum est hoc sacramentale . . ."; cf. no. 736. 109 Usatges de Barcelona, ed. Abadal and Vails, arts. 4, 5, 25. 110 E.g., AC Vic, cal. 6, 1925; AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii (1154); ADM, Moncada, leg. 21, 4; ACA, perg. Alfons I, 535, 596, 670; Pere I, 1, 251; LFM, ii, nos. 650, 651. 111 Cf. Viage literario, xvii, apen. 53, 326; Jose-Luis Martin Rodriguez," Un vasallo de Alfonso el Casto en el reino de Leon: Armengol VII, conde de Urgel," VHCongreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1964), ii, 229-233.

172

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

in a convention from Empuries in 1170.112 Catalonia was a thoroughfare in the twelfth century. Yet she remained in important respects a conservative provincial society, transformed, no doubt, yet not overwhelmed by a feudalism distinctively her own.

112

ADM, Ampurias, leg. 6, 530.

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

173

APPENDIX 1 1113, 26 November Ramon Berenguer HI, count of Barcelona, absolves the castlans of Arraona from oath and homage, having lost the parchments recording their professions. AC A, perg. R. B. Ill, 174. Original, parchment. 97 X 245 mm. Dorse: Notation (s. xii) effaced. 2 ArnV. de Ena sach G. No. 734. Ne per incuriam pereat quod perire non debet, idcirco ego Raimundus Berengarii Barchinonensis comes ad noticiam omnium hominum deducere uolo quod fuit non minima altercacia [sic] inter me et Ricardum Guilelmi de Barchinona de quodam castro Arraona.1 Super quo uidelicet castro sacramenta et hominaticum a castellanis eiusdem castri per scripturas suscepi a Gaucefredo Sancte Columbe et Raimundo Gauceberti,3 que sacramentorum scripture per incuriam perdite cum eas nullo modo inuenire potuissem absoluo predictos castellanos Gaucefredum uidelicet et Raimundum Gauceberti a sacramento et ab ominatico quod mihi pro eodem castro fecerunt sine engan. Et in ea fidelitate uolo eos permanere cum Ricardo eorum domino quam antea quam sacramenta mihi facerent erant. Et hoc uera fide eos soluo nulla in eis pro hoc mihi cauillacione reseruata. Actum est hoc .vi. kalendas Decembris, anno .vi. regni Leodyci regis. S +2 Raimvndi comes. + Reimundus Barchinonensis episcopus.3 S -f Dorcha de Castel uil. S + B. Bernardi senescalco. S + B. Bernardi de Barchinona. S + Arnalli Adaldi. S + Arnalli subdiachoni qvi hoc scripsit cum literis rasis et emendatis die et anno qvo svpra.

a

berti, corrected over erasure. 1 2 3

This castle formerly stood just north of Sabadell (pr. Barcelona). Points of sign possibly autograph. Sign and subscription autograph.

174

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

2 [? c. 1140] Record of knights holding fiefs from the lords ofSaint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque. AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 42. Original, parchment. 157 X 282 mm. No early endorsements. Ed.: Bernard Alart, " Cartulaire roussillonais," La Semaine Religieuse, 1885-71886, pp. 367-368, no. 131. Hec sunt nomina militum qui tenent feuum per seniorem de Sancto Laurencio.1 Inprimis Poncius Bernardi de Tazun. Cab de Elna tenet ilium feuum quern Poncius Adalberti uetulus dedit ad patrem de Cab et non fuit umquam de eius auo neca pater eiusdem aui tenuit umquam. Petrus et Arnaldus de Corniliano, Petrus Bernardus de Pug ultrer tenet .ii. feus, ilium qui est ad Pug ultrer teneat per Gilelmum, alium abeat per Raimundum. Raimundus Sinfredi de Maioles, Bertrannus et Bertrannus consobrinus eius ambo de Uilla longa, Guilelmus, Gualter et Petrus Gilelmi et Raimundus frater eius de Uilla longa, Berengarius de Guardia, Gumbaldus et Rafardus de Torrilias, Raimundus de Petralata, Gilelmus de Paliol tenet .ii. feus, unum teneat per Raimundum, alium per Gilelmum. Filius de Ermengaldob Mage tenet feuum et de ipso feuo debet ipse abere tres partes et senior quartam. Poncius Guitardi dedit feuum ad Gilelmum Raimundi de ludeges et retinuit sibi ut homines qui sunt de eodem feuo operent in ipso castro et gueitent, sicuti alii homines qui sunt de castro. Et quando opus fuerit prestent asinos et boues. Raimundus Rigualdi et Renardus de ludeges: iste supradictus Renardus teneat suum feuum per Gilelmum. Osten de Ribes altes, Gilelmus Raimundi de Sancto Ypolito, Gaucbertus Reqni, Bernardus Raimundi, Renardus de Sancto Laurencio. Omnes feui supradicti exceptis illis que sunt nominatim de Gilelmo, sint de fratre eius Raimundo. Omnia autem que Poncius Guitardi in suo testamento minime ordinauit in hac carta, sicut melius potuit, emendauit. Mandat et ordinat ita honorem suum, ut si unus ex filiis suis, Raimundo uidelicet et Gilelmo, obierit antec alium sine filiis legitimis, remaneat omnisd onor eius ad alium qui superuixerit. Si uero ambo obierint sine filiis remaneat omnis onor ad Bernardum Clem fratrem eorum. Si autem isti tres fratres mortui fuerint sine filiis remaneat omnis onor ad nepotes eorum. Et bat dimitit ad matrem supradictorum fratrum ad omnem uoluntatem suam faciendam et sit domina omnis onoris in omni uita sua. a nec,followed by tenuit, cancelled. b Added in contemporary superscript: Raimundus Berengarius de Perpiniano teneat suum feuum per Gilelmum. c ante,followed by four or five letters, erased. d omnis, superscript. 1

Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, ch.-l. c.).

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

175

3 1170, 1 January Recognition in the form of a convention by Dalmau, viscount ofRocaberti, to Hug III ofEmpuries, of obligations for his honor, such as a richomo owes to his lord. ADM, Ampurias, leg. 6, 530.* Original, parchment. 150 -f 83 mm. No early endorsements. Hec conueniencia quam ego Dalmacius, uicecomes Rocabertini, films Ermessendis femina, facio tibi Vgoni comiti, filius Brunissendis femine. Conuenio namque tibi per istum honorem de Rocabertino quern pater meus Gaucfredus dimisit mihi caualcadas et sequimens et pliues et ostaticos et omnes seruicios que richomo debet facere domino suo et ut teneam te per meum meliorem seniorem. Facta conueniencia kalendas lanuarii, anno .xxxiii. Ludouici regis iunioris. S -f num Dalmacii qui hanc conuenienciam feci et firmaui firmarique rogaui. S + num Guilelmi de Rupiano. S -f num Ademari. S + num Bernardi de Nauata. S + num Berengarii de Petraincisa. + Mironis iudicis.2 + Petrus presbiter qui hoc scripsit sub die et anno quo supra. 1

Transcribed here by the kind permission of: Sr. Joaquin Gonzalez Moreno, Archivero of the ADM; Dr. Luis Nuftez Contreras; and Sta. Maria Isabel Simo Rodriguez. 2 This sign and subscription autograph.

4 1171, 7 March Guillem de Belera gives power of the castle ofFarrera together with a manse to Bishop Arnau of Urge!I; receives back the castle in fief; and does homage and fidelity to the bishop, making special reference to Ramon de Castellbo. AC La Seu d'Urgell, perg. s. xii. Original, parchment. 171 x 102 mm. Dorse: notations of (?) s. xiii, effaced; and s. xvi and later. In Dei nomine. Ego Guilelmus de Belera dono tibi domino meo A. Urgellensi episcopo et successoribus tuis potestatem in kastello de Ferrera1 et unum mansum in eodem kastello cum omnibus que inde debent exire in propriam dominicaturam tuam. Et accipio per manum tuam predictum kastellum in feudum et facio tibi hominium propriis manibus et constituo ut successores 1

Farrera de Pallars (pr. Lleida, p. j. Sort).

176

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

mei faciant similiter successoribus tuis et conuenio tibi in fide mea et hominatico quod tibi feci quod ego et successores mei donemus tibi et successoribus tuis potestatem de predicto kastello irati siue paccati sine ullo malo ingenio per quantas uices requisieritis a nobis per uos et per nuncios uestros et iuuabimus te et successores tuos fideliter et sine omni engan tenere et defendere honorem Beate Marie pro posse nostro cum hominibus meis de Ualle ferraria. Si quis hoc euertere temptauerit non ualeat set in duplo componat. luro ego Guillelmus de Belera tibi domino meo A. Urgellensi episcopo quod, sicut superius est scriptum, sic uita comite fideliter tibi et successoribus tuis attendam per Deum et hec sancta et quod non faciam placitum uel treguam cum Raimundo de Kastelbo sine tuo consilio. Actum est hoc nonas Marcii, anno incarnacionis Christi. ifi.&lxX. Sig+2 num Guilelmi de Belera qui hoc fecit et firmauit scribi firmarique rogauit. Sig + num Raimundi de Belera fratris iamdicti Guilelmi. Sig 4- num Bernardi de Belera similiter fratris eius. Sig 4 num Petri de Uilamur. Sig 4 num Berengarii de Cardos. Sig 4- num Guilelmi Urgellensis ecclesie cantoris. Sig 4- num F. Anauensis archidiachoni qui hoc rogatus scripsit et suo assueto signo corroborauit die et anno quo supra. Sig 4 num Raimundi de Gurb. 2

Lower right-hand quadrant marked in autograph.

5 1198. 31 March. Tarragona Pere I, king of Aragon and count of Barcelona, cedes the salue fidelitates of castles held of the king by Arnau de Castellbo, reserving potestas of those castles and conventions made by ancestors of the present parties. ACA, perg. Pere I, 42. Original, parchment, divided by AB CD EF GH; now mutilated. 273 4 241 mm. Dorse: 16 arm1, de Urgell, sach N. N? 223. Indicated: Joaquin Miret y Sans, " Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna, II en Aragon (1196-1213)," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, iii (1905-1906), 154. Manifestum sit omnibus tarn futuris quam presentibus quod ego Petrus, Dei gratia rex Aragonensis et comes Barchinonensis, dono/et concedo tib[i] ono et tuis omnibus successoribus in perpetuum illas fidelitates que appellantur/'salue fid<elitates' tuo>rum uidelicet castrorum que tume, ita quod castlani qui ipsas fidelitates tenent et/qui solittestatem michi de ipsis castris sint liberi et absoluti a me et a meis de predictis saluis/fidelitatibus et eas sicut michi dare tibi teneantur. Tali pacto et condicione quod tu et tui de predictis cas/tris detis michi et meis

Feudalism in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

177

potestatem irati siue paccati quocienscumque demandata aut requisita fuerit uobis aut/uestris per me aut per nuncium meum, saluis tamen illis semper conuenienciis que facte fuerunt condam inter meos/et tuos antecessores et inter te et predictum patrem meum, excepto hoc predicto donatiuo saluarum fidelitatum/quas, ut superius dictum est, in perpetuum dono et concede. Data Terrachone per manum Petri de Blandis/notarii domini regis .ii. kalendas Aprilis et mandato eius scripta a Guilelmo anno Domini .rn. £. xc. vfii. Signum 4- Petri regis Aragonensis et comitis Barchinonensis. Signum 4- num Sancie regine Aragonensis/comitisse Barchinonensis et marchionisse Prouincie. S 4- num Bernardi de Portella. S 4- num Raimundi Gaucerandi. S + num Vgeti de Mataplana./S 4- num Dalmacii de Crexello. S 4- num Raimundi de Castro uetulo. S 4- num Petri de Mediano./ Sig [manual sign] num Petri de Blandis qui supradicta mandato domini regis scribi fecit mense et anno quo supra.

6 1203, 2 January. Castellnau Pere de Domenova recognizes his fief held of viscount Guillem of Castellnou, comprising the churches of Ille, Vinca, Ropidera, Espira, Estoher, Seners, Mosset, Fulha, Nyer, and the village of Crou. AD Pyrenees-Orientales, B. 57. Original, parchment, divided by ABC— ?V. 44 4- 470 mm. Torn. Dorse: 240a. In Dei nomine. Notum sit cunctis presentibus atque futuris quod ego Petrus Domenoue recognoscho omne feuum quod teneo per Guilelmum uicechomitem Castri noui, scilicet ecclesiam Sancti Stephani de Insula1 et ecclesiam de Niciano2 et ecclesiam de Rupidera 3 et ecclesiam de Aspirano4 et ecclesiam de Astouer5 et ecclesiam de Seners6 et ecclesiam de Moseto7 et ecclesiam de Folano8 et ecclesiam de <En>ner9 et uillam de Cruce.10 Et istud recognitum fuit factum in aula Castri noui11 in presencia Arnalli Sancti 1

Ille-sur-Tet (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Vinca). ? Nefiach (ar. Perpignan, c. Millas). 3 Roupidere (northwest of Ille; see note 1). 4 Espira-de-Conflent (ar. Prades, c. Vin£a). 5 Estoher (ar. Prades, c. Vinca). 6 Seners (ar. Prades, c. Vin£a, com. Estoher). 7 Mosset (ar. and c. Prades). 8 Fuilla (ar. and c. Prades). 9 Nyer (ar. Prades, c. Olette). 10 Crou (near Matemale, ar. Prades, c. Mont-Louis). 11 Castellnou (ar. Perpignan, c. Thuir).

2

178

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Martini et Petri de Rodes et in presencia Poncii de Uerneto et Raimundi de Castro Rosilionis et Arnalli de Mudazos et Bernardi Castri noui et Guilelmi de Uallicrosa qui hoc uiderunt et firmauerunt pro iussu Petri de Domenaua. Actum est hoc .iiii. nonas lanuarii, anno ab incarnacione Christi .rri.&c.tfi. Philippo rege regnante in Francia. Sig + num Petri Domanaue qui hanc cartam scribere iussi, firmaui testesque firmare rogaui. Raimundus Sancte Marie presbiter rogatus ac iussus hanc cartam scripsit die et anno [manual sign] quo svpra. 7 [c. 1200-1205] Gomball de Besora and his in-laws Hug de Mataplana and the latter's son swear security to the king and homage to Pere the sacristan of Vic acting for the king with respect to a settlement imposed on Gomball by the king's court. AC Vic, cal 6, 2463. Original, or early copy, parchment. 150 X 7130 mm. luro ego Gonballus de Bisaura meis propriis manibus super quatuor euangelia tibi Petro regi Aragonensi domino meo et facio inde hominium Petro sagriste Vici loco domini regis quod quando cumque dominus rex ueniet uersus Cataloniam et erit ab Illerda usque ad Salses et uocauerit me per se uel per nuncium suum uel per literas suas statim ueniam apud Uicum et non inde exiam de ipsa uilla meis pedibus uel alienis donee faciam finem Bernardo Ermengaudi de capcione mea, sicut ipse rex mihi mandauerit cum curia sua, uel ibo ad te ubi cumque fueris infra hos fines ad faciendum predictum finem, ut superius dictum est. Et si, quod absit, hoc non atenderem sicut superius dictum est, persona mea et omnes res mee tam mobiles quam inmobiles uenirent in manu tua ad faciendam tuam uoluntatem. Ego Ugo de Mata plana magor et minor conuenimus et iuramus proprii [sic] manibus super quatuor euangelia tibi regi Petro3 domino nostro et facimus inde hominium Petro Uicenssi sacriste loco domini regis quod totum hoc, sicut superius dictum est, atendamus et atendere faciamus iam dicto Gonballo sine omni ingenio quod si non fecerimus nos et omnes res nostre tam mobiles quam inmobiles ueniant in potestate tua ad faciendam tuam uoluntatem. Et quando cumque adduxerimus et miserimus iam dictu[m] Gonbal in manu tua ad faciendum et complendum iam dictum finem, ut superius est compreensum, statim simus abssoluti a iam dicto sacramento et hominio et firmancia. a

Petro, superscript.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: p. 168 note 89: 'perg. R.B. IV 233' is now printed in Fiscal accounts of Catalonia under the early count-kings (1151-1213), ed. T.N. Bisson, 2 vols. (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1984), ii, no. 1.

8 UNE PAIX PEU CONNUE POUR LE ROUSSILLON (A.D. 1173) Le texte dont il est ici question n'est pas, il faut 1'avouer, abso lument inconnu. II a ete public par D.M.J. Henry en 1835 parmi les preuves de son Histoire de Roussillon, et cet auteur l'a justement reconnu comme le prototype des statuts de paix et de treve promulges a la suite par le comte-roi Alphonse Ier pour toute la Catalogne1. Cependant M. Henry, jugeant 1'accession d'Alphonse en 1172 comme catastrophique pour le Roussillon, n'a pas tente de caracteriser cette paix effectivement feconde de sa patrie et sa negligence devait se montrer contagieuse. Bernard Alart, sans avoir non plus etudie la filiation des statuts roussillonais, les a declares posterieurs a ceux de Fontaldara pour la Catalogne, dont ceux-la auraient ete la copie; et Topinion d'un tel erudit que la paix de Roussillon « n'etaient en somme qu'une espece de reconnaissance des pouvoirs du nouveau souverain 2 » ne semble pas avoir ete contestee. Brutails a son tour s'est contente de mentionner les deux chartes de 1173 sans se prononcer sur le rapport existant entre eux3, mais si je ne me trompe pas, les historiens de notre siecle, y compris les Catalans, n'ont attribue aucune importance aux instituts de paix et de treve pour le Roussillon de 11734. 1 Dominique Marie Joseph Henry, Histoire de Roussillon comprenant I'histoire

du royaume de Majorque, 2 vols. (Paris, 1835) I, preuves, n° 9, pp. 508-513 ; et pp. 80-81. A parler strictement, les statuts decides a Fontaldara en 1173, Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Catalufia, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1920), 1: 1, 55-62, ne s'appliquaient qu'aux domaines Catalans d'Alphonse : c'est-a-dire, a la Catalogne moins les comtes de Pallars et d'Urgell. 2 Bernard Alart, Privileges et litres relatifs aux franchises... de Roussillon et de Cerdagne..., (Perpignan, 1874), p. 53. 3 J.-A. Brutails, Etude sur la condition des populations rurales du Roussillon au moyen age, (Paris, 1891), pp. 291-292, note. 4 II n'y en a de mention ni dans les histoires de Roussillon par Calmette et Vidal (1931) et par Durliat (1969), ni dans celles de la Catalogne par VallsTaberner et Soldevila (1922-1923) et par Soldevila (1934; 2* ed., 1963), ni dans Jaime Caruana Itinerario de Alfonso II de Aragon, Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragon, vn (1962), pp. 138-145. Eugen Wohlhaupter, Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte der Gottes - und Landfrieden in Spanien, (Heidelberg, 1933), pp. 80-81, ne les a pas connus.

180

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Or cette pax et tregua de Roussillon etait un acte de politique bien delibere. Elle fut promulguee lors d'une troisieme visite (en moins de dix mois) du nouveau seigneur a Perpignan, a peu pres certainement en mai 11735, dans une assemblee conjointe de la cour du roi et des magnats du Roussillon. Elle represente un programme de securite publique qui etait traditionnel en Roussillon, programme que les prelats de la region avaient sans doute recommande a Alphonse des son arrivee a Perpignan au temps de la mort du comte Guinard II en juillet 1172. Pas moins de dix des quinze statuts (a savoir, les nos 1-4, 6-9, 11, 14) derivent de la tregua et pax de Toulouges (1062-1066) dont une copie (ou 1'original ?) se trouvait dans les archives des comtes de Roussillon au xne siecle6. Mais la reorganisation de ces articles en conjonction avec d'autres nouveaux en 1173 avait abouti a un texte sans precedent connu au xne siecle. L'article 10 (Vomeres) rappelle la charte Cunctis pateat, une paix pour la Cerdagne promulguee en 1118, mais la correspondance n'est que generate7. L'article 12 (Vias publicas) fait penser aux Usages de Barcelone; mais on n'y en trouve pas la source ni meme de vrai analogue, et Vias me semble plutot appartenir au meme courant de reglementation routiere dont provient une clause de la paix pour TAragon de Tan 1164 8. II est impossible de rapprocher la paix et treve de Perpignan de Fensemble des Usages, qui paraissent de plus en plus clairement avoir ete le travail d'un compilateur pendant le regne de Raimond Berenger IV (vers 1150)9. Done la decision en 1173 consistait a remettre en vigueur les statuts de Toulouges : c'est-a-dire, a retablir un ordre public dont le comte (-roi) et Feveque seraient les garants. Rien de moins surprenant, car si les comtes Gausfred III (1113-1164) et Guinard II (1164-1172) n'avaient pas cesse d'admettre la force theorique des vieux statuts, ils avaient, selon toute apparence, neglige de les confirmer, ou meme, plus 5 Voir Caruana, Itinerario, pp. 133-134, et 138. 6 Liber Feudorum Maior... (= LFM), ed. par Francisco Miquel Rosell, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1945-1947, II, n° 708; pour la date, voir Hartmut Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 98-99. La copie du LFM porte, a la fin, un serment jure par le comte Gausfred III (1113-1164) a 1'eveque Pere I« d'Elne. 7 LFM, II, n° 691 (= 1'usage n° 172, Usatges de Barcelona, ed. par Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals et Ferran Vails Taberner, Barcelona, 1913, pp. 91-93). 8 Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon, ed. par Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 41 vols., (Barcelone, 18471910), VIII, pp. 36-41 ; voir p. 37 : Similiter si aliqua persona... treguas meas et paces christianorum seu sarracenorum infregerit et caminos meos et stratas et ea que a me consilio nostre curie affidata fuerint depredaverit... 9 Ferran Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya, 2* ed., (Barcelona, 1963), pp. 107-108 note; communications inedites de Ramon d'Abadal, et surtout la these de Pierre Bonnassie, actuellement sous presse.

Une Paix Pen Connue pour Le Roussillon, (A.D. 1173)

181

grave, de les faire executer. Le testament de 1172 montre que Guinard avait ete lui-meme parmi les violateurs de la paix10. Son pere n'avait pu proteger le littoral des pirates vers 113511, et les chartes de la generation suivante parlent des guerres des barons du Roussillon - des Saint-Laurent et des vicomtes de Tatzo, par exemple - comme d'evenements frequents. Le desordre rural a persiste dans ce coin a la fois prospere et anarchique, et il est significatif que les seuls articles entierement neufs en 1173 aient etendu la protection du clerge et des eglises aux domaines des Templiers et des Hospitaliers et aux salvetats du diocese d'Elne 12. Des fideles de Guinard II qui ont jure fidelite au roi en juillet 1172, nous trouvons bon nombre comme signataires-jures des statuts de 117313. Dans ces circonstances, il me semble hors de tout doute raisonnable que les statuts de Perpignan ont precede ceux de Fontaldara. Pourquoi le roi et ses prelats auraient-ils impose une paix particuliere dans le Roussillon apres 1'institution d'une paix pour tous ces domaines, y compris le Roussillon ? C'est le changement de regime en Roussillon qui a fourni 1'occasion d'une telle ordonnance, dont le besoin etait manifeste, et qui en a produit le module. On s'explique que le texte de Fontaldara soit un peu plus developpe que celui de Perpignan, bien que les modifications soient legeres. Et les statuts pour le Roussillon presentent une anomalie qui peut nous aider a comprendre pourquoi on a voulu faire generaliser 1'ordonnance au dela du Roussillon sans delai. La paix institute a Perpignan s'appliquait dans les limites du comte de Roussillon, « et de plus » (uel alias) dans celles de tout 1'eveche d'Elne. Mais les deux districts ne coi'ncidaient pas parfaitement. Le dioc&se s'etendait en dehors du comte et notamment vers le Vallespir et le Conflent-Cerdagne14. Or, en 10621066, on avait indique tous ces pagi, car tandis que Tinitiative etait alors celle de 1'eveque d'Elne, les comtes de Besalu et de Cerdagne y assistaient comme pouvoirs interesses. Mais, au xne siecle, le comte de Barcelone a successivement remplace les comtes de Besalu et de Cerdagne, de sorte que 1'accession d'Alphonse Ier au comte de

LFM, II, n° 792. Henry, Histoire de Roussillon, I, pp. 67-68. N°s 5 et 15. Voir LFM, II, n°s 792, 793 ; voir texte au-dessous. Sur statuts, voir aussi Alart, Privileges, p. 53 note. 14 Jacques de Font-Reaulx, Structure du diocese d'Elne presentation d'une carte, dans Federation Historique du raneen et du Roussillon, XLII* Congres (Perpignan-1969) pp. 25-29 (je n'ai pas vu la carte).

10 11 12 13

les signataires des au moyen-dge avec Languedoc Mediter(Montpellier, 1970),

182

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neigh bours

Roussillon a effectivement consolide ses domaines dans les PyreneesOrientales. Done au moment du renouveau de la paix diocesaine d'Elne, le comte-roi se trouvait avoir besoin de la collaboration des autres eveques dans ses comtes limitrophes ; et nous pouvons imaginer sans difficulte que tant lui que les prelats, comprenant que les domaines royaux etaient devenus a peu pres de meme extension que la langue catalane, auraient decide d'imposer leur paix-et-treve regionale dans toute la terre princiere, « de Salses jusqu'a Tortosa et Lerida avec leurs frontieres 15. » A la collaboration d'un comte avec un eveque a succede celle du roi avec tous les eveques. Rendue superflue, semblet-il, par les statuts de Fontaldara, la paix de Perpignan est devenue la paix de la Catalogne a Finstant ou 1'agglomeration progressive des comtes de la Marche d'Espagne a paru suffisamment avance pour pouvoir se concevoir comme une principaute. Sous I'administration d'un prince vigoureux, les defauts d'une structure purement normative de la paix se revelent. Les statuts de Gerone (1188) seront plus explicites a propos des moyens et des sanctions : Teveque peut convoquer une armee diocesaine afin d'obtenir la soumission d'un condamne impenitent, et on en deduit qu'Alphonse a fait racheter la « paix des betes », exaction vraisemblablement excusee par les necessites de la paix, bien que fort impopulaire16. Mais c'est surtout 1'emergence du viguier (vicarius regis) comme gardien de la paix en 1188 qui nous frappe17. Recevoir les accusations et coordonner les proces avec 1'eveque : ces taches etaient pratiquement au-dela de la competence des bailes (baiuli), simples agents domaniaux, qui sont seuls nommes dans les statuts de 1173 ; nous savons d'ailleurs qu'Alphonse Ier comptait de plus en plus sur les viguiers pour restreindre les tendances violentes de sa noblesse. Passe 1173, les statuts vont refleter une administration active, souple et, sur tel ou tel point conteste - ils vont quitter le cadre de Toulouges 18. On peut done decrire les provisions de Perpignan de 1173 comme la premiere forme de la derniere adaptation de la tregua et pax primitive de la Catalogne. 15 Cortes de Cataluna, i: 1, 56. 16 Ibid., 66-67 (arts. 10, 18); T.N. Bisson, Sur les origines du monedatge: quelques textes inedits, ci-dessous, 92-3. 17 Cortes de Cataluna, 1: 1, pp. 64-67 (arts. 3, 4, 10, 12, 19). 18 Les statuts seront normalement pour toute la Catalogne. Mais sous le r£gne particulier de Nunyo Sanche en Roussillon, on trouve une fois encore une paix et treve epour le diocese d'Elne (2 octobre 1217), Luc d'Achery, Spicilegium..., 2 ed. par Etienne Baluze et Edmond Martene, 3 vols., (Paris, 1723), III, 587-588. Ce texte derive des statuts de Perpignan.

Une Paix Pen Connue pour Le Roussillon, (A.D. 1173)

183

Pour 1'edition, j'ai pu collationner la transcription d'Henry (a), prise sur un manuscrit perdu (C)19, avec une copie apparemment anterieure conservee aux Archives de la Couronne d'Aragon (B). Ni Tune ni 1'autre de ces versions n'est complete : celle de Barcelone est abregee au commencement et a la fin, celle d'Henry devient negligente vers la fin, ne donnant que les noms des barons roussillonnais qui ont sans doute fait leurs signes sur 1'original, et ont probablement jure aussi (la formule qui hoc iuro accompagne les noms dans les statuts de Fontaldara). On peut se demander si B n'est pas le travail d'un scribe de Barcelone, car non seulement il a omis les noms des signataires, mais encore la sedes de Barcelone aussi bien que celle d'Elne avaient Sainte Eulalie pour patronne; mais, sur cette derniere question, 1'etat abime du papier ne me permet pas une reponse definitive20. En depit de leurs defauts, les deux copies semblent passablement correctes. J'ai prefere 1'orthographie de J3, et, souvent, ses lectures. En cas de divergence entre B et a, j'ai consulte le texte imprime des statuts de Fontaldara pour les articles pareils.

TEXTE 1173. Perpignan Alphonse II, ayant delibere avec ses conseillers, d'autres magnats de sa cour et les barons du comte de Roussillon, ordonne des statuts de paix et de treve pour le Roussillon. A. Original perdu. B. Copie abregee, du dernier quart du xue siecle ou du commencement du xme, sur papier, 187x200 mm., Archivo de la Corona de Aragon (= ACA), Cancillerir pergaminos de Alfonso I, 148. C. Copie dans «un manuscrit du xnie siecle, provenant de Saint-Martin du Canigou, » selon D.MJ. Henry, Histoire du Roussillon..., 2 vols., (Paris, 1835), II, 509 note, aujourd'hui perdu. D. Copie du xixe siecle par Prospero de Bofarull, « Traslado de las escrituras... del Senor Dn. Alfonso I de Cataluna y II de Aragon...», ACA, d'apres B. a. Henry, Histoire du Roussillon, n, preuves, 508-513, d'apres C.

19 M. Francis Denel, Directeur des Services d'Archives des Pyrenees-Orient ales, a cherche ce manuscrit de ma part, mais sans succes. Qu'il veuille bien trouver ici 1'expression de mes sinceres remerciements. 20 Voir le texte a la note du paragraphe 14, ligne 5.

184

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours Ba

5

10

15

20

25

30

Divinarum et humanarum rerum tuitio ad neminem magis quam ad principem pertinet, nihilque tarn proprium esse debet boni ac recti principis quam injurias propulsare, bella sedare, pacem stabilire et informare et informatam subditis conseruandam tradere, ut de eo non incongrue dici et praedicari possit quod a principe regum dictum est: « per me reges regnant et potentes scribunt justiciam * ». Eapropter nos lldefonsus, Dei gratia rex Aragonum, comes Barchinonae et Rossilionis et marchio Provinciae, publicae utilitati totius terrae nostrae consulere et prouidere satagens et intuit! divini numinis tarn ecclesias quam reiigiosas personas cum omnibus suis rebus nostrae protectionis praesidio uallare ac perpetuo munire cupiens, anno ab incarnatione Domini m°. c°. lxx°. iii0., habito apud Perpinianum super hoc tractatu et deliberacione cum uenerabilibus uiris Willelmo Terachonensi archiepiscopo apostoiice sedis legato2, et B. Barchinonensi episcopo3, et Guillelmo Jordan! Elnensi episcopo4, omnibus baronibus comitatus Rossilionis nee non et aliis quam pluribus magnatibus siue baronibus curie mee quibus unanimiter omnibus iustum et equum uisum est et comuni utilitati expedire ut in comitatu Rossilionensi quern per Dei gratiam adepti sumus uel alias in toto Elenensi episcopatu pax et tregua instituatur et nefanda raptorum et predonum audacia exterminetur, predictorum omnium assensu et uoluntate, omnibus tarn laicis quam clericis qui in praedicto episcopatu degere noscuntur treuam et pacem secundum formam infra positam et praescriptam tenenda[m] et conservanda[m] iniungo, meque ad obseruandam et in eos qui earn uiolauerint uindicandum alligo et astringo. [1.] Inprimis igitur cum predictorum episcoporum et aliorum baronum consilio ecclesias omnes et earum cimiteria quia special! hominum censura in bonis Dei intelliguntur sub perpetua pace et securitate constituo, ita quod nullus eas uel earum cimiteria uel sacraria in circuitu cuiuscumque ecclesie constitute inuadere aut infringere presumat nichilque inde abstrahere atemptet, feriendis huius statuti temeratoribus, pena sacrilegii eiusdem loci episcopo inferenda et satisfaccione dupli dampni quod fecerit ei qui passus est prestanda. [2.] Ecclesias quoque incastellatas sub eadem pacis et tregue deffensione constituo, ita tamen quod si raptores uel fures in ecclesiis predam uel alia maleficia agregauerint, querimonia ad episcopum et ad me siue baiuium meum deferatur et ex tune nostro iudicio uel quod commissum fuerit emendetur uel a pace predicta ecclesia sequestretur. [3.] Dominicaturas quoque canonicorum sub eadem pacis securitate constituo simiii pena eminente eis qui eas inuadere presumpserint.

35

40

[4.] Set et clericos, monachos, uiduas et sanctimoniales eorumque res sub eadem pacis defensione nostra auctoritate constitutes nemo aprehendat et nichil eis iniurie inferat nisi in maleficiis inuenti fuerint. Si quis in aliquem istorum manus iniecerit uel aliquid abstulerit, ablatum in duplum restituat et de iniuria nichilominus iudicio episcopi satisfaciat et sacrilegii penam episcopo dependat. [5.] Emunitates quoque templi et hospitalis Iherosolimitani nee non et aliorum locorum uenerabilium cum omnibus rebus suis sub eadem pacis defensione et pene interminacione pariter cum clericis et ecclesiis constituo. [6.] Villanos et villanas et omnes res eorum tarn mobiles quam se mouentes, uidelicet boues, oues, asinos uel asinas, equos uel equas ceteraque animalia siue sint apta ad arandum siue non sub pacis et tregue securitate constituo, ut nullus eos capiat uel alias

1 2 3 4

Voir. Prov. vm. 15-16. Guillaume de Torroja, archeveque de Tarragone de 1172 a 1175. Bernard de Berga, eveque de Barcelone de 1172 a 1188. Guillaume Jourdain, eveque d'Elne apres 1164 a 1186.

Lin. 9 post m° inc. B \\ 13 quam om. a \\ 17-19 omnibus tarn... iniungo om. B || 18-19 conseruanda et tenenda a \\ 19 mihique et B \\ 22 quae a \\ 24 uel a || 29 congregauerint a \\ 30 deferant a \\ 32 securitate a: tregua B \\ 37 aliquod a \\ ablata a \\ 44 instituo a.

Une Paix Pen Connue pour Le Roussillon, (A.D. 1173)

185

in corpora proprio in rebus mobilibus uel immobilibus dampnum inferat nisi in maleficiis inuenti fuerint uel in cauaicadis cum dominis uel aliis ierint.

5

[7.] Preterea sub eadem pene interminacione prohibeo ut ullus in predicto episcopatu predam facere presumat de equabus, mulis, mulabus, uaccis, bouis, asinis, asinabus, ouibus, arietibus, capris, porcis, siue eorum fetibus. [8.] Neque uillanorum mansiones aliquis diruat uei incendat uel aliis ignem ad incendum subponat.

10

15

20

25

30

35

[9.] Terras in contencione positas nullus uillanus laboret postquam inde comonitus fuerit ab eo in quo iusticia placiti non remanserit. Si uero ter comonitus fuerit et postea laborauerit et propterea inde dampnum susceperit, non requiratur pro pace fracta, salua pace bestiarum in usum laboracionis deditarum et eorum qui eas gubernauerint cum omnibus que secum portauerint. Nolo enim quod propter rusticorum contumaciam aratoria animalia deprehendentur, inuadantur uel disperdantur. [10.] Vomeres et alia aratoria instrumenta sint in eadem pace, ut ille uel ilia qui cum supradictis animalibus arauerit uel eas gubernauerit uei ad eas confugerit cum omnibus que secum portauerit uel habuerit eadem pace muniatur. Et nullus homo ea animalia pro pliuio uel aliqua occasione capere uel rapere presumat. Si quis contra huiusmodi constitucionem comiserit damnum componat illi cui malum fecerit infra, xv. dies simplum, post xv. dies duplum, praestandis insuper. LX. solidis episcopo et michi ad quos querimonia fracte pacis et tregue dinoscitur pertinere. [11.] Si quis autem fideiussor extiterit, si fidem non portauerit de suo proprio, pignoretur, seruata pace bestiarum in usum laboracionis deditarum, nee pro pace fracta habeatur. Si uero infra primos xv. dies temerator constitute pacis et tregue simplum non emendauerit, postea ut dictum est dupplum prestet, ita quod medietatem istius duppli habeat querelator et alteram medietatem episcopus et ego, qui ad hanc iusticiam faciendam predicto episcopo adiutor extitero. Insuper si post taxatos xv. dies per me uel per episcopum uel per nuncium uel per nuncios nostros idem temerator commonitus dampnum non emendauerit, exinde ipse malefactor et complices sui coadiutores et consiliatores eius a predicta pace et tregua separati intelligantur, ita quod malum quod propter hoc illatum fuerit non requiratur pro pace et tregua fracta, seruata tamen pace animalium et instrumentorum aratoriorum. Sed si malefactor et adiutores eius iamdicto querelanti ullum malum fecerit, emendetur etiam pro pace fracta. [12.] Uias publicas siue caminos uel stratas in tali securitate et proteccione pono et constituo, ut nullus inde iter agentes inuadat uei in corpore siue in rebus suis aliquid molestie inferat, pena lese maiestatis imminente ei qui contra fecerit post satisfaccionem dupli de malefactis et iniuria dampnum passo prestitam. [13.] Idem autem omnibus contradico generaliter atque prohibeo quod animalia aratoria nulla racione nee etiam pro delicto domini depredari quis uel pignorare audeat.

5 Pia (Pyr.-Or., arr. Perpignan, c. Perpignan-ouest). 6 Llo (PyivOr., arr. Prades, c. Saillagouse). 7 Domanova (Pyr.-Or., arr. Prades, c. Vinca).

1 maleficio a \\ 2 aut aliis a \\ 4 bobus a \\ 6 aliquas a om. B \\ uel aliis, ad nocendum, ignem subponant a \\ 9 fuerit et om. a \\ 10 et om. B \\ 15 ut uel ilia B || 16 sub eadem pacis tregua B \\ 17 si quis alt. caput. inc. B \\ 18-20 malum fecerit... pacis et legi nequit B \\ 20 infracta a \\ tregue B : trevae a \\ 22 seruanda B \\ 26 si prae a \\ 32 etiam a: et B \\ 36 contra B : contra hoc a \\ 37 passi praestitam a passo prestitum B \\ 38 idem B : illud a \\ interdico a \\ 39 etiam B : et a || aliquis vel a.

186

5

10

15

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neigh hours

[14.] Preterea illud constituendum atque firmiter obseruandum censuimus sub eadem pace et tregua dies Dominicas esse festiuitates omnium apostolorum, aduentum Domini usque ad octabas Epiphanie quando festum sancti Hylarii celebratur et Quadragesimam usque ad octabas Pasche, diem quoque Ascensionis dominice nee non festum Rentecost[?es] cum octabis suis et .iii. festiuitates sancte Marie et festiuitatem sancti lohanis Baptiste et sancti Michaelis et Omnium Sanctorum et sancte Eulalie que est [15.] Saluitates quoque tocius episcopatus Elnensis tarn nouas quam antiquitus constitutes sub predicta pace et securitate ponimus et constituimus Ego lldefonsus, Dei gratia rex Aragonensis, comes Barchinonensis et marchio Prouincie, pro amore Dei et subditorum meorum utilitate, iuro per Deum et hec sacra sancta euangelia quod prescriptam treguam et pacem firmiter tenebo et obseruabo et teneri et obseruari ab omnibus meis uoio atque precipio. Quod si quis infregerit non habebit meum amorem sed sub aquindamento erit quousque supradicto modo restituat quod rapuerit vel infregerit. Ermengardus de Verneto. Berengarius de Orie. Berengarius de Caneto. Guillelmus de Apiano5. Raimundus de Tacidone. Raymundus Ermengaudi de Villarasa. Gausbertus de Castro novo. Guillelmus de Sancto Laurentio. Bernardus de Alione 6 . Guillelmus Bernardi de Paracols. Guillelmus de Sancta Columba. Bernardus Bertrandi de Domonova7. Raymundus de Castello-Rossilione.

1 constituendum est a || 3 quando... celebratur om. a \\ 4 festum om. a sanctum B \\ 4-5 Pentecoste a, dernier es lettres illisibles, B || 5 et sancte Eulalie suivi de 3 ou 4 mots, pour la plupart illisibles, (peut-etre caput sedis (? Barchinonensis), om. a \\ 10 sancta quatuor a \\ 14 infregerit omnia predicta B, qui se termine id.

9 RAMON DE CALDES (c. 1135-1199) DEAN OF BARCELONA AND KING'S MINISTER

The man who compiled the Liber feudorum maior in the last decade of the twelfth century is not unknown to history. His proud and graceful prologue dedicated to King Alphonse II (I in Catalonia) surely stamps him as a person of character and culture, and it is accompanied in the manuscript by a famous miniature showing him seated beside the king in the act of selecting the parchments that were to be transcribed in the cartulary. The production of the Liber feudorum was a lustrous event in the administrative history of the Crown of Aragon, an undertaking for which Ramon de Caldes, dean of the cathedral church of Barcelona, has always shared the credit with the king who commissioned it. * Nevertheless, surprisingly little else is generally known about him. Only the most elementary facts of his ecclesiastical career have been culled from the great cartulary of the see of Barcelona, or more exactly, from the summary analyses of its contents published in 1914—15. There it appears that Ramon de Caldes became associated with the cathedral community of Barcelona about 1155, was dean of the chapter from 1161 or 1162, and died in 1199 or soon thereafter. 2 He was thus contemporary with Alphonse I (reigned 1162—96); the work for which he is well known came late in their careers; so that it would seem worth asking what had happened in the years before the Liber feudorum was compiled to draw Ramon into the king's confidence. This question seems not to have been asked by historians, or at any rate, it has not been answered. Yet it proves to be the critical question for enlarging our comprehension of Ramon de Caldes, for it naturally draws our attention to the royal archives, where the key to his career—a rather considerable career in administrative history—is certainly to be found. 1. See Archive de la Corona de Aragon (hereafter AC A), Cancilleria, Registro 1; also Reg. 4; ed. Francisco Miquell Resell, Liber Feudorum Maior. Cartulario real que se conserva en el Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945—47; hereafter LFM), I: vii—viii, 1-2, and plate 1; also Josep Gudiol i Cunhill, La Miniatura catalana (Barcelona, 1955), pp. 139-40, who refers to Eduardo Gonzalez Hurtebise, in Suplemento al Boletin de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos (1919), p. 474, which I have been unable to see. There are recent sketches of Ramon de Caldes's career in Diaionari biograftc. 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1966-70), I: 394; and (by A. M. Mundo) Gran Enciclopedia catalana, 8 vols. to date (Barcelona, 1970-75), IV: 137. 2. Arxiu Capitular de -Barcelona (hereafter ACB), Libri antiquitatum (hereafter LA), as registered by Joseph Mas, Notes historiques del Bisbat de Barcelona. 13 vols. (Barcelona, 1906— 21), xi (part of series entitled Rubrica dels Libri Antiquitatum de la Seu de Barcelona): nos. 1730, 1742, 1850; xn. nos. 2312 and following; cf. the sketches cited in n. 1.

188

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Ramon's homeland was the Valles Oriental, a fertile rolling valley some twenty kilometers north of Barcelona. He must have been brought up at Caldes de Montbui, for his parents had their estates there, and his proper name was invariably Raimundus de Calidis. An ancient thermal station, Caldes had become a prosperous market town in the twelfth century. 3 It was also an important administrative center, for the count of Barcelona had some twenty-five manses there, together with important economic and judicial rights, when his domain was surveyed in 1151. A comital bat lie ("baiulus"), or bailiff, held a major share of these rights in fief, and his presence, in the name of Ramon Berenguer IV, the conqueror of Tortosa and Lleida, would have been an appreciable factor in the communal life of Caldes during Ramon's youth. 4 And it seems as certain as such things can be, in the absence of explicit testimony, that this experience made its mark on Ramon, for the bailiff of Caldes at that time was none other than his own father. Of this man, named Porcell—"Porcellus, baiulus comitis," as he was often recorded—we know two facts which help us to characterize the family's fortune. First, he (and his wife) purchased the honor, consisting of houses, lands and orchards adjoining the market of Caldes, which was subsequently to be his son Ramon's inheritance. 5 Besides his allods and feudal holdings Porcell evidently had liquid assets. Secondly, Porcell was an ambitious man. His encroachment on a neighbor's field, although he tried to justify it in the name of the count, was condemned by a panel of "good men" in 1149.6 It seems likely that Porcell's wealth was of recent acquisition, much of it perhaps derived from the proceeds of his office. Ramon's mother, named Maiencia, is more obscure. Hers may have been the religious influence, for it was she, not Porcell, who consented to the major benefaction of property at Caldes which attended Ramon's acceptance in the chapter of Barcelona in 1156.7 Ramon had at least two brothers: Porcell, sometimes called "Porcelletus," probably to avoid confusion with the father, and later to be 3. On Caldes (de Montbui; not to be confused with Caldes de Malavella, likewise an old thermal place and comital center), see Encyclopedia catalana. iv: 139—40; or Diccionari nomenclator de Pobles i Poblats de Catalunya. 2nd ed. (Barcelona, 1964), p. 75; and Enric MoreuRey, La Rodalia de Caldes Montbui. Repertori historic de Noms de Lloch i de Noms de Persona (Barcelona, 1962), esp. pp. 50-51; Moreu-Rey, Caldes de Montbui, Capital degana del Valles (Barcelona, 1964). The "mensura de Calidis" is mentioned, e.g., in ACA, Gran Priorato de Cataluha, l a , Arm. 1 (Barcelona), no. 167. 4. ACA, Cancilleria, pergaminos of Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (no. l.B in a forthcoming edition cited below, note 34). 5. ACB, LA, in: fol. 75rv, no. 20'1 (Mas, XI no. 1742). The honor, which came to be called "de sancta Susanna," was considerably developed during Ramon's lifetime; it passed to his nephew Porcell de Caldes after the canon's death (ACB, perg. Diversorum B.280 [7. VI. 1202]). That Ramon's father was identical with Porcell the bailiff is proven by comparison of the property described in LA, ill: no. 201 with that described in text cited in next note. 6. ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 218. 7. ACB, LA, in: fol. 75rv, no. 201 (Mas, xi: no. 1742). Porcell the elder was probably still living then (see below, note 21).

Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199)

189

8

known as "Porcellus de Calidis"; and Bernat. Both men were to distinguish themselves, and Bernat pursued a career closely parallel to Ramon's. Of the known brothers, only Porcell remained independent of the church, so it may be that he was the eldest.9 The date of Ramon's birth can only be conjectured from the earliest records of his association with the canons of Santa Creu and Santa|Eulafia of Barcelona in 1155—56. He must at that time have been nearly twenty. He is first recorded on 22 May 1155, as signatory to a major charter of ecclesiastical endowment by the bishop of Barcelona, which was promulgated in the presence of the cardinal-legate Jacintus and the archbishop of Tarragona.10 He was not yet then a canon, his formal profession, accompanied by the donation already mentioned, coming only a year later.11 Even then he probably remained a layman. His unqualified subscription "Raimundus de Calidis" persists down to the summer of 1161, only a year before his first extant signature as "Raimundus levita atque decanus," the title he was to retain for the rest of his life. 12 Conceivably he assumed the clerical estate, if he ever did, only at the time of his promotion to the deanship.13 Certainly Ramon de Caldes never advanced beyond the minor orders. Since there is no evidence that he interested himself in pastoral affairs, it seems clear that his administrative talent together with his family's generosity and influence accounted for his early promotion. 14 The only thing certainly known about his activity as a young canon is that he learned the notary's art. Already in 1159 he wrote a very correct instrument defining a major privilege in Roussillon for Ramon Berenguer IV.15 Having probably received his first instruction from the clerks associated with his father's administrative work at Caldes, he gained valuable experience in the company of expert scribes in the chapter of Barcelona. But there was no lack of notaries in the episcopal and comital services, and Ramon seems never to have devoted himself routinely to writing charters.16 8. Both are mentioned as Ramon's brothers in LA, ill: no. 201, although the copyist evidently altered the order ofsigna to the lost original. 9. He presumably inherited the allodial land, but I have found no evidence on that. For the documentation, see n. 21. 10. ACB, i: fol. 122, no. 307 (Mas, xi: no. 1730); ed. Sebastian Puig y Puig, Episcopobgio de la Seek ban immense (Barcelona, 1929), Apendices, p. 422, no. 78. 11. ACB, LA, m: no. 201 (Mas, xi: no. 1742). 12. Documents registered by Mas, xi: nos. 1767, 1772, 1828, 1831, 1835, 1850; also nos. 1863, 1913, 1948, etc. 13. Dr. Eduard Junyent argues, on the basis of his thorough knowledge of the archives of Vich, that the designation "levita" invariably attached to lay administrators of clerical communities. 14. Caldes de Montbui was a parish of Barcelona, and there is other evidence, too, of episcopal interests there (e.g., ACB, perg. Diversorum B. 1 3726 [ 1 l.XI. 1149]). 15. LFM, ii: no. 804. 16. E.g., Pon<; de Osor and Pere de Corro. In his mature years, however, he always insisted on writing his own subscription in distinctive capital lettering, followed by asignum derived from the old SS(orsubscripsit), e.g., ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 256, 301, 315.

190

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Accordingly, the main tendency of Ramon de Caldes's career was hardly fortuitous. He was born to the princely service; or, more exactly, his generation was, for his brothers, too, served the count-kings and the see of Barcelona. Their preferment must, at first, have owed as much to their fidelity as to their talents. But we must understand that theirs was no provincial family. In the middle of the twelfth century, the Valles Oriental was still a central domain of the counts, astride the main routes to their ancestral counties of Vic, Girona, and Cerdanya, and better supplied than Barcelona. In addition to his manses at Caldes de Montbui, Ramon Berenguer had extensive holdings, together with a palace then ceded to the queen, at Sant Pere de Vilamajor, where, in a record of 1157, Porcell de Caldes can be glimpsed on comital business.17 The relative economic importance of this region was to decline during the reign of Alphonse I, who had the wealth of New Catalonia—a "great western" frontier—to exploit.18 But the horizons of the Caldes family expanded apace with the king's. Bernat, who was a royal notary from at least 1167 and had joined his brother as canon of Barcelona in 1171, acquired a canonry at Lleida at about the same time;19 and in the course of the next decade Bernat and Ramon both acquired houses at Lleida.20 Only Porcell de Caldes remained in his homeland, where he evidently raised a family. 21 His son Arnau\followed his uncles' path into the 17. ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (no. L4 iin edition cited below, note 34); perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, sin fecha 16. For the background, see Anscari M. Mundo, "Domains and Rights of Sant Pere de Vilamajor (Catalonia): A Polyptych of c.950 and c. 1060,"Speculum xux(1974), 238-57. 18. The qualification is important, for the Templars of Palau solita, some five kilometers south of Caldes, were to become the chief institutional creditors of the kings in the later twelfth century, a relationship undoubtedly fostered by the Caldes family; see provisionally T. N. Bisson, "Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia: a Templar Account (1180— 1 188)," Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer. ed. W. C. Jordan, Bruce McNab and T. F. Ruiz : (1976), below, ch. 16.1 See generally Jose Maria Font Rius, Cartas de Poblacion y Franquiciade Cataluna. I: pts. 1 and 2 (Madrid-Barcelona, 1969). 19. For Bernat'searly charters, see, e.g., LFM, ii: nos. 794, 681, 682; I: no. 484; cf. Archive Historico Nacional (Madrid), Clero (Poblet), carpeta 2006, no. 13 (written by B. de C., scriba regis. possibly before 1167); his later charters asscriba regis are too numerous to cite. For the canonries, see ACB, LA, ill: fol. 75v, no. 202 (Mas, xi: no. 1948); perg. DiversorumC, capsa 6.227 [30.IV. 1173]; Arxiu Capitular de Lleida, Llibre vert, fols. 33v-34r. On 17 April 1185 Bernat sponsored the entry of his nephew Guillem de Caldes (son of Porcell the younger?) to the chapter of Lleida, endowing him with operatoria in Almacelles (AC Lleida, Llibre vert, fol. 34r). 20. ACB, perg. Diversorum B.672 (l.IV. 1182); or LA, i: fol 179, no. 475 (Mas, XI: no. 2101); ACA, Gran Priorato de Cataluna, Cartulary of Gardeny, fols. 87v—88r. 21. He is the most problematical member of the family. If his father had died by 1156 (as Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes, p. 170, assumes), then he succeeded his father as bailiff (ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 326; and cf. the dubious text printed by Moreu-Rey, pp. 100— 101). I think it more likely that the son continued to be known as "Porcellet[us]" and as "Porcellus" (or "Purcellus," or "Porcelletus") "de Calidis" after 1156 because his father survived for some time: ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, sin fecha 16; perg. Alfonso I, 43, 127, 141; Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Valles, ed. Jose Rius Serra, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945—47), HI: no. 1079; Biblioteca de Catalunya, pergamins Miret i Sans, 2169; Mas, xi: nos. 1742, 1838,

Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199)

191

chapter of Barcelona, where he was to be dean, in his turn, in the early thirteenth century; his initial endowment consisted of his uncles' houses at Lleida. 22 Ramon de Caldes was faithful to his responsibility in the chapter. For more than a decade after his promotion he is visible only as signatory to episcopal and capitular documents. 23 Many of these had to do with fiscal rights and endowments, which may suggest that his specialty in that work developed during these years. And there is one solid indication to that effect. In December 1177 Ramon and Bernat de Caldes acted together asprepositi for October, that is, as superintendents of capitular supply according to the monthly division of responsibility then being organized in the cathedral churches of Catalonia. 24 This is one of the earliest allusions to this institution in the chapter of Barcelona; and since such work fell plainly under decanal supervision, it looks as if Ramon was a founder of the prepositurae at Barcelona. 25 On the other hand, the silence of royal documents should not cause us to imagine that Ramon's interest in the royal government was interrupted. Very little evidence of local administration in Catalonia has survived from the early years of Alphonse I; we do not even know with certainty who succeeded Porcell the elder as bailiff of Caldes. Down into the 1170s one Bertran de Caste let, who had supervised the comital domains under Ramon Berenguer IV, remained influential in royal finance, although not with conspicuous success, for the young king contracted heavy debts at this time. 26 1920, 2049, 2074, 2093, 2098; xii: nos. 2714, 2722. The "Porcellus" (unqualified) who was active in the Valles Oriental, although perhaps indistinguishable from the father in 1158 (ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 322) can surely be identified with the younger Porcell in later years (perg. Alfonso I; 77 [Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes, Ap., no. 25], 300, 531); he may have travelled with the king as a young man (LFM, II: nos. 870, 898, 899). He had probably died by 1202 when his late brother's endowment was returned to the family by the chapter (ACB, perg. Diversorum B.780 [7. VI. 1202]); the "Porcellus de Calidis" who benefitted from that cession, if indeed Porcell III, was the brother of Arnau de Caldes, canon of Barcelona, and of Guillem de Caldes, canon of Lleida (above, note 19, and Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes, Ap. no. 29). 22. ACB, LA, i: fols. 180v-181r, no. 479 (Mas, xi: no. 2098); fol. 89, no. 210 (Mas, xii: no. 2216); perg. Diversorum C, capsa 7.388, 389 (4.V. 1198), Diversorum B.774 (13.III. 1212); LA, i: fol. 398, no. 1119(Mas, xii: no. 2518); Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes, Ap., no. 29. 23. ACB, LA, texts registered by Mas, xi: nos. 1860, 1882, 1883, 1894, 1900, 1913, 1948, 1980, 1986, 2006, 2021,2023,2034, 2069. 24. ACB, LA, iv: fol. 163, no. 382 (Mas, xi: no. 2034). 25. The origins of this institution are in need of study. They are probably connected with the effort to fix agrarian dues on the kalends rather than on feast-days; thus we find Ramon and Bernat de Caldes, prepositi of October in 1177, acting together again in 1180 (or 1181) in an episcopal concession of land for which the render was due on 1 October (ACB, perg. Diversorum B.654 [16.III. 1180]; Mas, xi: no. 2069). See also perg. Diversorum A.2397 (21.III. 1177); Mas, xi: no. 2018; LA, I: fols. 353-54, nos. 1012, 1013 (Mas, xi: nos. 2028, 2029). The prepositurae mensium were certainly present in the 1180s (LA, ill: fol. 121, no. 313, i: fol. 98, no. 235; Mas, xii: nos. 2121, 2138). 26. ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233, 347, apendice 9, sin fecha 16; perg. Alfonso I, 200. For evidence of debts, perg. Alfonso I, 126, 140, 171.

192

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Only in the later 1170s do we begin to find traces of an orderly recording of the king's feudal and fiscal rights, and it can hardly be accidental that Ramon de Caldes reappears in these documents in a perceptibly influential role. The evidence falls into two categories. Some of it shows Ramon, "levita atque decanus," subscribing to major administrative enactments relating to the royal domains. The earliest of these records date from 1178—79. On 18 December 1178 Ramon attested the king's purchase of Castellgali for 250 morabetins, one of the largest expenditures of its kind known for the entire reign. 27 The castle in question dominated the pass from the lower Llobregat valley into the Bages region, where royal authority was to increase dramatically in the next two decades. A few days later Ramon signed a privilege for Santes Creus by which the king ceded the service, house and obligations of a man in each of four towns: Lleida, Tortosa, Besalu and Hix. 28 The monks needed servants not only in the burgeoning frontier cities, but also in the uplands of old Catalonia, where their sheep grazed in summer; and among the signatories to this privilege only Ramon de Caldes is likely to have known just what rights the king had to confer in the four places specified. Then at Tarrega, on 1 January 1179, Ramon was listed first among the signatories to a charter securing the engagement of the men of the nearby castle of El Mor to provide the king with thirty measures of wheat and thirty of barley—a major supply for a frontier stronghold—in return for the royal protection; among others, the bailiff of Tarrega attended, and there can be no doubt that the problem of redefining domain rights collectively had been discussed there. 29 From this time on, Ramon de Caldes often figured in conventions and settlements relating to castles and domain rights. It was in work of this sort that he became familiar with the royal archive, which is first mentioned as such in 1180, and of which his selection was to form the Liber feudorum maior. 30 Nevertheless, his role in the great cases—those issues of title to castles which were then urgently demonstrating the need of such a compilation—must not be exaggerated. Some important cases were resolved without his recorded intervention in the 1180s, nor did he regularly serve as judge or assessor in issues of right. 31 More typical of his secular work in this period are the king's strictly fiscal transactions: for example, his purchase of milling rights together with a manse at Terrassa in 1189, and his commendation of 27. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 256 (LFM, i: no. 199). 28. El "Llibre Blanch" de Santas Creus (Cartulario del Siglo XII), ed. Federico Udina Martorell (Barcelona, 1947), no. 211. See also Manuel Riu, Formation de las Zonas de Pastos veraniegos del Monasterio de Santes Creus en el Pirineo, durante el Siglo XII (Santes Creus, 1962). 29. LFM, i: no. 168. 30. Ibid., no. 225; Archivo de la Corona de Aragon. Guia abreviada (Barcelona, 1958), p. 8. 31. LFM, i: nos. 225, 400; ii: no. 621; ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 352, a settlement in the Bergueda (28 October 1183), which did not involve the king, is more nearly akin to the accounting discussed below; it is one of the few surviving documents written in Ramon de Caldes'sown hand.

Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199)

193

32

mills at Sant Feliu de Llobregat in 1190. Even in charters relating to great tenures, the nature of Ramon's involvement may be inferred from detailed fiscal stipulations, such as the reservation of a manse and its services to the king in the enfeoffment of Pierola castle in 1190.33 Our impression of Ramon's administrative qualifications, as derived from the royal charters, is overwhelmingly confirmed by a different category of evidence: the financial accounts rendered by bailiffs of the royal domains in Catalonia.34 Beginning about 1178, Ramon de Caldes frequently served as auditor for the bailiffs. He received their statements of receipts from rents, impositions, agrarian dues and fines, of payments on their farms, and of expenses; verified these statements by reference to inventories of the king's domains; and recorded the estates of account as these were acknowledged in periodic sessions of account ("computa").35 Ramon was not alone in this responsibility: the king himself sometimes participated, as did other officials, including certain bailiffs. But from about 1186 the dean seems to have been in charge of the accounting, if not, indeed, of the entire domain administration. Between 7 May 1186 and 27 April 1194 he appears (in extant texts) no less than 33 times as recipient of the accounts, usually accompanied by the king's scribe, Guillem de Bassia. In 1191 Ramon and Guillem were procuratores domini regis in Catalonia for the purpose of recovering debts to the king from the estate of a deceased bailiff.36 During these years of Ramon's incessant fiscal service, the written accounts of the bailiwick ("summe computorum") assumed a regular form of impressive lucidity. It is in this financial work that we perceive Ramon de Caldes most clearly. Here he not only subscribes, he acts, and something even of his manner of action comes through. We see him judging whether certain expenses claimed by the bailiff of Barcelona should be allowed or not. 37 We see him disturbed by the rumor that the bailiff of Cervera and Tarrega has falsified his favorably balanced account, and imposing an equitable adjustment to remove "bad suspicion."38 We hear of his receiving silver money from bailiffs to whom the king had advanced the equivalent in gold during travels in Aragon.39 32. LFM, i: no. 376; ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 560. 33. LFM, i: no. 348; cf. no. 266. 34. This neglected documentation is edited and studied in my \Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the early Count-Kings (1151-1213), 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1984). See also the sketch by Antonia M. Arago Cabanas, "La Institucion 'baiulus regis' en Cataluha, en la Epoca de Alfonso el Casto," VII Congnso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1962), m: 137-42. 35. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 253, 292, 310, 315, 414, 418, 435, 442, 443, 476, 478 dupl., 485, 521, 519, 526-528, 537, 543; perg. Pedro I, 48, 8; perg. Alfonso I, 550, 568, 579-581, 588, 592, 603, 652, 662, 674, 672, 678. 36. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 579. 37. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 435. 38. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 448. 39. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 526.

194

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

We can almost reiterate his firm questions to the bailiff of Vich, who was obliged to insist that he had received nothing from pleas and sales in 1188— 89.40 Above all, we sense a certain modesty or discretion in his proceeding: although the dean's name always precedes these of his fellow assessors, he never appears to act arbitrarily. When his associate is absent, the record carefully notes the "presence" of some other royal dignitary, and there is also mention of local panels of inquiry appointed to determine the truth in points at issue between the king and his bailiffs. 41 Ramon de Caldes was certainly not the creator of this procedure of account. He must often have thought of his father as the bailiffs came before him, for the inventories of comital domains and isolated accounts surviving from the 1150s and 60s reveal a fiscal structure already substantially like that of the 1180s.42 Moreover, there was some continuity of personnel and office from the time of Ramon Berenguer IV. Just as Ramon seems to have taken over Bertran de Castellet's function, so his associate, the royal scribe Guillem de Bassia, succeeded the scribe Domenech, who continued active in accounting until about 1182.43 Accounting remained closely tied to the chancery work; a computum of 1180 was recorded in the presence of no less than five royal scribes: Domenech, Pon£ de Osor, Guillem de Bassia, and the brothers Caldes.44 Ramon may have written accounts or fiscal memoranda himself, for he retained a practiced hand into the 1180s, but none of the extant manuscript computa can surely be traced to his pen.45 What Ramon de Caldes contributed to the Catalan fiscal administration was a sense of bureaucratic order. Under his direction the written accounts became a distinct and efficient species of charter. 46 Moreover, so many more of the king's copies survive from his time (1178—94), and their numbers and regularity decline so perceptibly thereafter, that it looks as if he and Guillem de Bassia took some unusual interest in preserving them. 47 This presumption is strengthened by our certain knowledge of Ramon's familiarity with the royal archives. Although not explicitly so called in our documentation until 1207,48 the accounts ("compoti") were already an office with its own 40. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 527: "Interrogatus de placitis et de tercio si inde habuerit aliquid, afflrmavit nichil inde in dicto anno habuisse." 41. E.g., ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 526, 527, 579, 588. 42. ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233, 347. 43- ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 347; perg. Alfonso I, 253, 310; Joaquim Miret y Sans, "Pro sermone plebeico," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona XIII (1913), 114-15. 44. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 310. 45. Cf. perg. Alfonso I, 352, which he certainly wrote, with, e.g., no. 526, or with Alfonse I, extrainventario 2612. 46. This point is developed, together with others in this paragraph and the next, in the introduction to Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia. \ 47. There are some forty-three accounts for the years 1178—94, as compared with eleven for the period 1196-1213. 48. ACA, perg. Pedro I, 246.

Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199)

195

records in the 1180s; and the dean was quite conceivably the organizer of the fiscal archive just as he was that of the general treasury of charters from which the Liber feudorum maior was compiled. Our grasp of Ramon's administrative achievement would be strengthened if we knew more about the balance of the royal accounts in the 1180s and '90s. But the system, at its best, did not allow for central budgeting or balancing, nor can we fully reconstruct the king's account from records of his receipts, purchases and debts. One significant fact does appear, however: it is that the records of massive debts on the count-king's part, which are all too frequent in the 1150s, '60s and '70s, thin out in the 1180s, and practically disappear in the years of Ramon's fiscal supervision. 49 The disruptive practice of pledging entire bailiwicks to great creditors seems to have been reversed in the years 1186—94, when most of the known debts were for modest sums advanced by the bailiffs themselves.50 Even for pledged bailiwicks, Ramon de Caldes received accounts, such as those for Asco and Tortosa (1189), then in the hands of the Templars.51 It is true that the relative solvency attained by King Alphonse in this period soon collapsed, for reasons that have not yet been made clear; but the circumstances suggest that Ramon de Caldes had been a sound administrator of the royal finances. Such was the man to whom the king entrusted the vast work—"ordained in two volumes," as Ramon explained, "because, owing to its excessive ponderosity, it could not be compiled in one"—which was later to be known as the Liber feudorum maior, one of the first great registers of a European monarchy. 52 The work must have been all or nearly done by the early months of 1196, for it was presented complete to the king, who died on 25 April of that year; and much of it, at least, must have been done after August 1194, when Ramon subscribed to the record of a major feudal settlement that was included in the register.53 The fact that Ramon's last extant account dates from April 1194 gives added reason to think that he devoted full attention to the compilation during the months thereafter. 54 Although the dean referred to a specific verbal command by the king, it is difficult to believe that the work had not been long contemplated. Perhaps the precipitating event was the conclusion of a war with Pone, de Cabrera in charters of August 1194 which were almost the latest instruments included. 55 The settlement was reached in a great court ("plena curia") held at 49. This assertion is based on an analysis of texts too numerous to cite here. Cf., however, ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, Apendice 9; perg. Alfonso I, 58andextrainv. 3627; with perg. Alfonso I, 389,435, 519. 50. E.g., perg. Pedro I, 8; perg. Alfonso I, 568. 51. Perg. Alfonso I, 519. 52. LFM, i: 1 (quotation in note 71). 53. Ibid., 1-2, and no. 413. 54. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 678. 55. LFM, linos. 412-414.

196

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Poblet, in the company of most of the prelates and major barons of Catalonia. Ramon attended, too, and it is tempting to imagine that he received the command then and there. The king's power over infeudated castles had been the major problem not only of the war just ended but also, in a way, of the reign as a whole. It was explicitly to ease the resolution of such issues that the king had ordered the compilation, Ramon observed, with only a passing hint at a less juristic motive in his reference to the "eternal memory of great things."56 The Liber feudorum was, in obvious ways, a very different kind of enterprise from the financial work that had lately occupied its compiler. Yet it was organized territorially, just as was, undoubtedly, the registral inventory of the direct domain over which Ramon de Caldes must often have pored, and like that register it at first bore the title Liber domini regzs.57 Was this older register—possibly the first of the great series of paper registers of the Crown of Aragon, but lost at an early date—also the work of Ramon de Caldes? If so, and it is not unlikely, then his achievement in creative administration was even greater than has generally been recognized. The dean had remained active in his chapter and had continued to reside in Barcelona during these later years.58 Although he sometimes travelled out to the bailiwicks of New Catalonia, which he and his brother had helped to organize, and to Poblet, he does not seem to have accompanied the king on his distant travels. 59 But his capitular work can only be described as routine. His fiscal expertise remains perceptible in the documents he subscribed, as does his loyalty to the canons and his relatives.60 Although little is known of his estate, for his will seems not to have survived, he was certainly a man of means. In 1190 he purchased for 750 sous the major part of a vineyard near Barcelona, which he then donated to the chapter in augmentation of his ne56. Ibid., 1: "Viva expressistis voce, vos habere votum et desiderium ut omnia instrumenta propria et inter vos vestrosque antecessores ac homines vestros confecta, et in ordinatione confussa, sub uno redigerentur volumine, turn propter subiectorum scilicet utilitatem, ut, his instrumentis ad memoriam revocatis, unusquisque ius suum sortiatur, turn propter eternam magnarum rerum memoriam, ne inter vos et homines vestros, forte oblivionis occasione, aliqua questio vel discordia posset oriri." 57. Ibid.; for the lost Liber domini regis. mentioned in at least twenty-three accounts, see, e.g., ACA, perg. Pedro I, 8; Alfonso I, 485. There is also mention of the "quaterniones" kept by the bailiffs for their purposes. That Ramon de Caldes was familiar with paper registers is rendered the more likely by the circumstance that his associate Guillem de Bassia wrote his will (June 1195) "in quodam libro de paperio," ACB, LA, II: fols. 434—44v, no. 121 (Mas, xn: no. 2276). 58. His house in Barcelona was the site of at least one accounting session, ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 519. 59. ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 568; LFM, I: no. 266; Udina, "Llibre Blanch" de Santas Creus, no. 512\Cartulari de Poblet—, ed. Joan Pons i Marques (Barcelona, 1938), no. 298. I have not traced him farther east than Perpignan (LFM, II: no. .792), the most remote bailiwick of Old Catalonia. 60. ACB, LA, as registered by Mas, xii: nos. 2170, 2174, 2194, 2211, 2216, 2218, 2227, 2234, 2261, 2268, 2269, 2273, 2275, 2277.

Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199)

197

61

phew's endowment; and his bounty likewise supported another nephew, Berenguer.62 Ramon seems to have retired from the king's service in 1196, for there is little evidence that he served the new ruler, Peter I (1196-1213). The dean's old colleague Guillem de Bassia, having bequeathed a fine robe to Ramon, had died in November 1195.63 During 1196—97 Ramon continued busy in the chapter, sometimes in association with Arnau de Caldes (whose interests were to be more strictly ecclesiastical than his uncle's). 64 Ramon must have been in failing health by 1198, when his familiar subscription disappears from extant documents. 65 Of his death, which probably occurred in the late summer or early fall of 1199,66 we know nothing. There is something imposing about the tall, canonically garbed figure, subtly larger, subtly more central, than the king seated to his right, who faces us in the great miniature which adjoins Ramon de Caldes's prologue to the Liber feudorum maior. The appearance befits the man we know from his work. In a land where church and state had not parted ways, he had made his career in his bishop's see and his reputation in the king's service. Practical, faithful, judicious, his private life apparently untouched by scandal or crisis, he was a respectable, and respected, man. Had he some sense of achievement at the end of his life? Perhaps he indulged himself a passing thought of his career as a whole when, with correctly restrained pride, he wrote of the laborious completion of his enormous cartulary. 67 The royal service, which he had known from childhood, was his real vocation. He was not so much a political adviser as an administrative expert. "Politics" was for the baronial class in Catalonia, and Ramon de Caldes knew his station. He was a jurist only in the least technical sense: knowing the value of evidence obtained by prudent inquiry, he judged accordingly as the king's chief accountant. His early efforts were devoted to his capitular 61. ACB, LA, i: fol. 89v, no. 212 (Mas, xn: no. 2211); fol. 89r, no. 210 (Mas, xii: no. 2216). The property was at Albedon, which I have been unable to locate, but which was certainly a domain of the bishop and chapter of Barcelona (cf. perg. Diversorum A.2292a, b [15.III. 1158]; Mas, xi: no. 1777; Udina, "Llibr* Blanch" de Santas Creus, nos. 166, 318). 62. ACB, LA, i: fol. 89, no. 211 (Mas, xii: no. 2277). Was Berenguer Arnau's brother? He was active in affairs of his bishop and chapter after his uncle's death, Biblioteca de Catalunya, perg. Miret i Sans, 2927; Mas, xii: nos. 2353, 2355, 2367, 2377, 2391, etc. 63. ACB, LA, n: fols. 43r-44v, no. 121 (Mas, xii: no. 2276). 64. Mas, xn: nos. 2269, 2273, 2275, 2277, 2278, 2296. 65. His last registered subscription is ibid., no. 2312 (29 July 1199). 66. The terminus ad quern is July 1202, when the late dean's endowment at Caldes was reassigned (ACB, perg. Diversorum B.780 [6. VII. 1202]); but his successor as decanus is already mentioned on 6 November 1199 (Mas, xii: no. 2316). 67. LFM, i: 1-2: "Inde est quod michi vestra dignata est mandare et iniungere magnitudo, ut hoc opus, licet viribus meis impar, inciperem, inceptum complerem, et ad optatum deducerem efFectum . . . opus incepi, inceptum ordinavi, ordinatum per duo volumina, que in uno pro nimia ponderositate redegi non poterat, divisi, divisum perclaros titulos distinxi, distinctum fine felici consumavi. Nee ad iactantiam loquor, sed ad maioris veritatis evidentiam. . . . "

198

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

administration, which he probably helped to reorganize. He reformed the royal fiscal service—this was his major accomplishment—and he seems to have had some responsibility for the dawning practice of fiscal enregistration in Catalonia. He was the first great archivist of the Crown of Aragon. Devoted to his homelands, which attained the territorial limits of historic Catalonia just during his lifetime, Ramon de Caldes never aspired to international recognition. He can hardly have been tempted to compare himself with St. Thomas Becket, whose cult he saw spreading in Catalonia (where the murder of archbishops was then likewise an appalling reality).68 His culture, like that of his chapter, was a trifle provincial and very traditional. Perhaps Ramon came to realize this, for as a professional scribe he cannot have failed to notice the influx of Romanist formulas during his last years,69 when, moreover, Arnau de Caldes, with his uncle's evident approval, undertook seriously to study the Roman law.70 Ramon's had been an older way. He was one of those devoted secular clerks, more often obscure than otherwise, upon whom rulers of his age everywhere relied to build their authority. He was a founder of royal government in Catalonia.

68. On the murders in Catalonia, see Puig y Puig, Episcopo/ogio. pp. 166, 172; Miquel Coll i Alentorn, La Llegenda de Guillem Ramon de Montcada (Barcelona, 1958). Ramon de Caldes attended the endowment of an altar dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury in the cathedral of Barcelona on 29 December 1186 (ACB, LA, i: fol. 350, no. 999; Max, XH: no. 2174); he would surely have known of the cult at Terrassa, where a fresco depicting the martyrdom of Thomas, and dating from these years, can still be seen. 69. E.g., ACA, perg. Pedro I, 16. 70. ACB, LA, I: fol. 74rv, no. 167 (Mas, xii: no. 2261), Ramon witnessed his nephew's recognition (June 1196) that he held for life his cathedral church's collection ofCoae, Digest, Novels and Institutes. None of these codices survive in the modern capitular collections of Barcelona; nor do we know of canonist mss. of Barcelona antedating the thirteenth century. Arnau's acknowledgement of "omnes libros legum qui sunt et pertinent predicte ecclesie" probably refers only to the Corpus luris Civilis. Cf. Scrinium VII (1952), pp. 10-11; Puig y Puig, Episcopo/ogio. p. 174.

10 AN "UNKNOWN CHARTER" FOR CATALONIA (1205) The text which forms the subject of this report is, if I am not mistaken, printed here for the first time. A charter of Peter I (II in Aragon, 1196-1213) dated Girona, 22 March 1205, it is preserved in two cartularies of the cathedral church of Girona in copies that are possibly independent of each other and of which the earlier dates from the first half of the thirteenth century (1). Jaime Villanueva mentioned the document, without specifying his source, in 1850 (2). Joaquim Botet y Siso summarized it in 1908 in his valuable inventory of the cartulary "Carlesmany", but could cite no other mention than Villanueva's and no edition (3). Joaquin Miret y Sans had overlooked it in preparing his Itinerario of Peter I, published together with the inventory by Botet y Siso (4); and if it has been printed since 1908, that fact has eluded not only my own research but also that of the recent writers on Catalonia in the time of Peter I. Ferran Soldevila said nothing about it as late as 1964 in his notable study of the bovatge (5), although, as will be seen, the text in question is critical for that subject. (*) Arxiu diocesa, Girona, Cartoral major ("Carlesmany"), fol. 65; Arxiu capitular (Girona), "Llibre vert", fol. 213v. I wish to thank Mn. Tomas Noguer y Musqueras, archdean and archivist of the diocese, and Mn. Jaime Marques Casanovas,! canon and archivist of the cathedral, for graciously admitting me to their collections. That an original, or more nearly original copy, of the charter survives, perhaps among the unclassified parchments of the chapter and diocese, is not improbable; it does not figure among the privileges withdrawn to constitute an accessible portfolio in the capitular archives. See below, p. 211. (2) Jaime VILLANUEVA, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espafia, 22 vols. (Madrid, 1806-1902), xiii, 158. C3) Joaquim BOTET Y Siso, "Cartoral de Carles Many", Bo/etzn de la Kea/ Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, iv (1907-1908), 322, no. 346. (4) Joaquin MIRET y SANS, "Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Catalufia, II en Aragon", B.R.A.B.L.B., iii (1905-1906), 366-367. (5) Ferran SOLDEVILA, "A proposit del servei del bovatge," Anuario de Estudios medievales, i (1964), 573-584. See also IDEM, Historia de Catalunya, 2a ed. (Barcelona, 1963); Percy E. SCHRAMM, Joan CABESTANY, E. BAGUE,

200

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

That scholars have generally ignored this piece may have something to do with its predominantly fiscal content. Peter I was hard pressed for money during much of his eventful reign; he issued numerous privileges or renunciations, some of which read, at least partly or superficially, like the one that concerns us. Moreover, the fact that our text was apparently preserved in but a single town is consistent with the silence kept by contemporaries (6), whose recorded notice would surely have interested historians. Yet one has only to read Peter's privileges in the wider political perspective of their epoch to suspect that this one was exceptional. With due reservation, I believe that the charter of Girona may properly be classed in that select category of exceptional pieces known as "charters (or "great charters") of liberties". The text opens with abbreviated clauses of invocation and patent notification. Under his usual titles — king of Aragon, count of Barcelona and (now) lord of Montpellier—, Peter confesses that he has instituted and collected new tolls or forcias, salt-duties (salinas\ exactions, commutations of hospitality (albergas), tallages (questias) in grain, coin "or other things", in Catalonia. All of these he now absolves, terminates and renounces to God, the churches, the clergy and all their men, to magnates and other knights and to other good men (probis hominibus] "of all Catalonia," promising never again to do or to allow these things. He reserves the right to impose tolls on merchants and foreigners entering Catalonia, as well as to collect tallage and alberge in his own domains and in places where these were customary obligations. He promises not to appoint vicars save from among knights of Catalonia and "with the counsel of magnates and wise men of that land"; these vicars are to swear to adminster the land legally, to maintain the "common justice" and right and custom of the land and to refrain from imposing new exactions or tallages; nor are vicars (if this be the correct interpretation of a corrupt Els primers comtes-reis (Barcelona, 1960); Jordi VENTURA, Pere el Catblic i Simo de Montfort (Barcelona, 1960); and the general histories of Spain by Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta and Luis Garcia de Valdeavellano. (6) These suspicious facts are dealt with below.

201 Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205 phrase) henceforth to collect the tercium from knights in causes of debt. Finally, Peter promises that he will not alter the coinage of Barcelona "in all my life," nor permit it to be diminished, "nor shall I cause it or the bovaticum afterward to be redeemed"; and he directs that the coinage be preserved in the same state and value for at least one year after his death. The king makes known that he has required the barons Gaufred de Rocaberti and Ramon Galceran de Pinos to secure by their oaths, which are duly recorded, his pledge in regard to the tolls on salt, the coinage and the bovatge. Given at Girona on ii kalends April in the Lord's year of 1204 (22 March 1205), the charter was ordered by Joan de Berix, king's notary (7); there is no mention of a seal. As witnesses it lists Arnau de Castellbo, Pere de Torroella, Hug de Mataplana (the elder), Guillem de Canet and Bernat de Portella. This text incorporates some of the elemental features of contemporary charters of liberties (8). It is an instrument of comprehensive social and territorial scope, addressed to clergy, lay magnates and "good men" of all Catalonia (9). It purports to remedy grievances fiscal, administrative and judicial, and it stresses administrative reform. While it answers to popular interest and common utility, it betrays an emphatically aristocratic initiative (10). It provides, like other such privileges, for "great counsel" (n) : in this case, for the consultation of (7) It is not clear whether he or a scribe unnamed wrote the charter. Not to name the scribe following the words "mandato ipsius scripta" would have been irregular, but not suspicious, in Peter's chancery. Cf., e.g., Arxiu de la Corona d'Arago, Cancelleria, pergamins Pere I, 87 and 201, charters "per manum Johanis de Berix," in which the scribes who wrote them are identified, with Cartulaire general de Ford™ des Hospitallers de S. Jean de Jerusalem (1100-1310), ed. Joseph DELAVILLE LE ROULX, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894-1901), i, nos. 1023, 1040. (8) See generally fimile LOUSSE, L,a Societe d'Ancien Regime, 2e ed. (Louvain, 1952), pp. 45-46, 270-342; J. C. HOLT, Magna Carta (Cambridge, E., 1965), pp. 20-22, and passim. (9) Cf. HOLT, pp. 175-182, 184. (10) Cf. ibid., chapters 3-7. (**) Cf., e.g., the English Magna Carta (1215), chaps. 12, 14; "Golden Bull" of Hungary (1222), c. i, ed. Werner NAF, Uerrschaftsvertrage des Spatmittelalters (Bern : Quellen zur Neueren Geschichte, no. 17, 1951),

202

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

magnates and wise men in the appointment of local administrative officers; and the latter must be of knightly (that is, noble) status. Moreover — once again, characteristically —, these knight-vicars must be natives of the land (12). Finally, just as King John swore to observe the terms of the Magna Carta of 1215 or Andrew II of Hungary the Golden Bull in 1231 (to cite no other instances) (*3), so in 1205 Peter I had caused his charter for Catalonia to be secured under oath. Not least among its resemblances to other charters of liberties is the historical individuality of the Catalan text. As Professor Holt has rightly stressed, one must not seek verbal parallels or filiation between charters which invariably refer to common general conditions in the peculiar terms of their immediate settings (14). Fully to explain such records requires little less than writing the history of government in the lands of their pertinence, and in this, again, our Catalan charter is no exception. But it would be inappropriate here to undertake a study, however much needed, that would easily require several hundred pages. For the moment I can only attempt to delineate the basic problems to which the king appeared to respond and to probe the circumstances surrounding the genesis and untimely demise of his engagements. These inquiries will disclose some untypical features of Peter's charter and will help to explain its obscurity. The charter of Girona may be interpreted as reflecting abuses in taxation, administrative practice, justice and coinage. Still more abstractly, these alleged abuses can all — except, on the whole, the appointment and conduct of vicars — be regarded as fiscal in nature. Now there can be no doubt that Peter I had in reality been squeezing his material resources. On the one hand, he had grandiose schemes and expeditions to pay for. In the two years before March 1205 he had travelled incessantly; he had married Marie de Montpellier (June 1204), planned to p. 7; Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Leonj de Castilla, 5 vols. (Madrid, 18611 903)3 i> 4°> art« 4 (statutes of Leon, 1188). O2) Cf. HOLT, Magna Carta, p. 67. C3) Ibid., p. 67. (*4) Ibid., pp. 67-68.

Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205

203

invade Mallorca, and visited Rome where, in November 1204, he was ceremonially crowned by the pope, to whom he engaged to pay a yearly tribute of 250 mazmudins (L5). He was renowned for his largesse (16). On the other hand, he had inherited a chaotic administration of finance which he did little to improve. His father's will had tied up ordinary revenues, amounting to some 100,000 sous in Catalonia alone, to pay alms and foundations (17). Some of Alphonse Fs debts burdened Peter for years (18). And Peter himself was so "courteous'' and "affable", according to the L/ibre dels feitsy that he impoverished his income and domains (19). He, too, relied upon loans that had to be secured and repaid against profits of a diminished estate; he sold privileges, especially at the start of his reign (20), and he undoubtedly imposed new tolls and tallages. For the exactions we have not merely the king's unequivocal assertion (if, indeed, it was his) in the charter of Girona, but also the record in other renunciations and admissions (\ 21/• ). And for two of these exactions — the abuse (15) MIRET Y SANS, "Itinerario del rey Pedro I," B.R.A.B.L.B., iii, 270-284, 365-367; Geronimo ZURITA, Anales de la Corona de Aragon (ia ed., 6 vols., Zaragoza, 1578-1585), libro ii, cap. 51, ed. Antonio UBIETO ARTETA et al. (Valencia, 1967), pp. 138-143. (16) L/ibre dels Feits, cc. 6, u, ed. Ferran SOLDEVILA, Les quatre grans crbniqms (Barcelona, 1971), pp. 5, 7; Gesta comitum barcinonensium, c. 25, ed. L. BARRAU DIHIGO and J. MASSO TORRENTS (Barcelona, 1925), pp. 50,

i38.

(17) Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archivo general de la Corona de Aragon^ ed. Prospero de BOFARULL Y MASCARO, 41 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1910), iv, 395-411. According to "Une chronique latine inedite des rois de Castille (1236)," ed. Georges CIROT, bulletin hispanique, xiv (1912), 355, Peter could not finance his military support to Castile in 1196. The fiscal administration of Alphonse I and Peter I is examined in an edition of their accounts that I have prepared. (is) E.g., A.C.A., perg. Pere I, 204. (19) L/ibre dels Feits, c. 6, ed. SOLDEVILA, p. 5. (20) E.g., A.C.A., perg. Pere I, 84; Pere BOFILL Y Boix, "Lo castell de Gurb y la familia Gurb en lo segle xine," ler Congres d'Historia de la Corona d'Arago, ii (Barcelona, 1913), 701^703; Liber Feudorum Maior, ed. Francisco MIQUEL ROSELL, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), ii, nos 797, 801, 802. (21) E.g. Arxiu municipal, Vic, priv., ix, no. 172 (Jurisdictions i privilegis de la ciuiat de Vich, ed. Eduard JUNYENT [Vich, 1969] no. 57); A.C.A., pergs. Pere I, 265-268.

204

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of coinage and of bovatge — the charter of Girona affords such explicit notice as to illuminate a whole scene in Catalan constitutional history that has been enveloped in darkness. It is usually, if not always, held that the monedatge — the Catalan imposition to secure the stability of coinage — originated in Peter Ts proclamation at Huesca in November 1205, of which Zurita alone preserved the record (22). But if Zurita meant to say — and conceivably he did not — that the money tax was unknown before November 1205, then he was mistaken, and so too were all the historians who followed his lead. For the charter of Girona speaks incontrovertibly of the money tax, although not, it is true, of monedatge; and once this imposition has been recognized behind the unfamilar terminology, we shall possess the key to other evidence that has been ignored. Having promised not to alter the coinage nor to allow it to be debased, Peter adds : "nor shall I cause it or the bovatge afterward to be redeemed \deinde redim]". Now it can be shown that in Aragon, at least, Peter and his father had, indeed, strengthened the coinage after debasing it; as for Catalonia, while Peter seems to have held the silver of Barcelona steady for some time (23), he certainly collected a redemptio monete (precisely so called) at Vic during his first year (24), and (22) ZURITA, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, ii, 52; ed. UBIETO et. al., pp. 144-145. Later writings cannot all be cited here; see, e.g., Ignacio de Asso y del Rio, Historia de la economia politica de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1798; reed. Jose Manuel CASAS TORRES, 1947), p. 293; Victor BALAGUER, Historia de Cataluna, n vols. (Madrid, 1885-1887), iii, 143; Felipe MATEU Y LLOPIS, "Super monetatico o morabetino ...," Melanges offerts a Rene Cro^et ..., 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), ii, 1115. (23) These assertions will be justified more fully elsewhere. See, provisionally, Coleccion diplomdtica de la catedral de Huesca, ed. Antonio DURAN GUDIOL, 2 vols. (Zaragoza, 1965-1969), i, nos. 357, 359, 361, 368, 370; cf. nos. 379, 393, etc.; Papstttrkunden in Katalanien, ed. Paul KEHR, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1926), ii, no. 238; Decretales Gregorii IX, ii. 24.18 Quanta personam tuam\ and Joaquim BOTET Y Siso, Les monedes catalanes, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1908-1911), ii, 31-36. (24) A.C.A., perg. Pere I, 26 (March 1197; ed. T. N. BISSON, "Sur les origines du monedatge : quelques textes inedits," see below, part IV, chapter 17, 333; ind. JUNYENT, Privilegis de Vich, no. 51) : "... Sciendum autem uolo esse preterea presentibus et futuris quod redemptionem hanc monete quam in uilla Uici inpresenciarum accepi piopter ingruentem necessitatem

Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205

205

if the clergy in other towns had had the wit to demand a charter of nonprejudice, we should probably have record of the tax elsewhere in Catalonia. But it is the coupling of coinage and bovatge as objects of ransom in 1205 that most significantly clarifies the background. The bovatge was still, in 1205, what it had ordinarily been in the past : the "peace of beasts", or "of draft-animals", in the language of the peace-legislation. To redeem the bovatge was to secure this peace, to provide for its maintenance (25); and in Cerdanya such an imposition had been decreed as early as 1118, in the charter Cunctis pateat, when Ramon Berenguer III succeeded to that county (26). Now what is most interesting about Cunctis pateat is that it defined a peace that shelters the coinage as well as oxen and plowmen. The men of Cerdanya were required to pay, once only and for his lifetime, for their count's confirmation of the coinage as well as for his peace (27). Ransom of coinage and peace, upon accession, to hold for life : — the anticipations of 1205 are too striking to be accidental. Nor is this the only reason for assuming the remembrance of Cunctis pateat (28), which was then taking its place among the written Usatges of Barcelona. Only the conexercitus sarracenorum numquam amplius in casu consimili exigam uel exigere faciam nee a meis successoribus umquam ... exigatur uel demandetur neque in preiudicium predicte ecclesie possit aliquando uenire ..." (25) See Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragony de Valenciay principado de Catalma^ 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1922), i1, 65-67 (Girona, 1188), arts. 5, 6 (pax bestiarum), and 18 : "... promittimus quod de cetero non aliquid exhigamus occasione bovatici vel constitute pacis ab iliquibus hominibus constitutis a Salsis usque Ilerdam et Tortosam et in suis finibus"; also 73, art. 4 (Barcelona, 1198); 79-81, arts. 6-8 (Barcelona, 1200); and see also 84, art. 16 (statutes of 1200), in which Peter I says he has collected a redempcio of the peace. (26) Liber Feudorum Maior, ii, no. 691; cf. Ferran SOLDEVILA, "Servei del bovatge," Anuario de Ustudios medlevales^ i (1964), 575-576. (27) Professor SOLDEVILA appears to have missed this point, "Servei del bovatge," 575 : "Ramon Berenguer III ... va prometre no alterar el valor de la moneda, si li era pagat el bovatge." That the imposition was not yet called "bovatge" may have been, as Soldevila perceptively remarks, 576, an indication of its novelty; but it must also have been because this first known "ox-tax" was also a "money-tax." (28) See texts cited in notes 24 and 25.

206

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

stitutional balance of its elements was altered in the charter of Girona. Peter renounced the redemptions while confirming the coinage; and in promising to stabilize the money until at least a year after his death, he implied that its ransom could only be justified as an accession tax — as in Cerdanya in 1118 and at Vic in 1196. The administrative issues dealt with in 1205, although a little harder to explain in the present state of our knowledge, were likewise the result of recent experience. As far back as 1188, Alphonse I had promised to appoint none but Catalans as vicars, making no reservation as to their status or the mode of appointment (29). Whether, in the meantime, he and his son had been favoring foreigners will only become clear from detailed study of their officials; but it can be said at once that the vicars, who administered the territorial peace and whose jurisdiction was expanding in the time of Peter I, were commonly chosen from a class of notables beneath the rank of knights. They might be townsmen or experts in fiscal administration or Jews, and they were disposed to prefer the king's interest to that of the barons (30). As for the vicar's oath, that was said to be customary in 1214 (31). Quite likely (29) Cortes de Aragon j de Cataluna^ i1, 67, art. 19 : "Promittimus quod non const!tuamus in tota supradicta terra vicarium nisi Cathalanum." (30) Ibid., 65-67 (Girona, 1188), 69-70 (Barbastro, 1192), 74-75 (Barcelona, 1198), 80-84 (Barcelona, 1200), 87-88 (Puigcerda, 1207); Joseph MAS, Notes historiques del bisbat de Barcelona, 12 vols. (Barcelona, 1906-1915), xi, nos. 2356, 2416, 2490, 2496, 2477, 2509. Berenguer Bou, Examen and Guillem Balb were certainly townsmen, e.g., A.C.A., perg. Alfons I, 709; Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Valles, ed. Jose Rius, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), iii, no. 1230; E/"Libre Blanch" de Santas Creus..., ed. Federico UDINA MARTORELL (Barcelona, 1947), nos. 238, 344. Petrus de Medina, "uicarius barchinonensis" in 1205, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" iii, no. 1260, was a creditor and royal accountant, A.C.A., pergs. Pere I, 58, 77, 102. Astrugus, "vicarius regis" in 1197, was surely a Jew, Arxiu capitular, Vic cal. 6, no. 51; he was called "subvicarius" in April 1202, A.C.A., perg. Pere I, 131. See, generally, Jesus LALINDE ABADIA, L,a jurisdiction real inferior en Catahma ("Corts, Veguers, Battles") (Barcelona, 1966), pp. 68-69. (31) Cortes de Ar'agony de Cataluna, i1, 92 (Lleida, 1214), art. 9 : "... Procurator autem Cathalonie in singulis civitatibus vel Episcopatibus vicarium idoneum illis Cathalanum constituat, qui juxta formam consuetam inferius

Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205

207

it antedated 1205, without always having been administered or observed. Now, in all of this, there is nothing implausible or suspicious. To judge from its substance, the charter of Girona reflected interests — strongly but not exclusively aristocratic — such as might well have been expressed by the very men who are listed as jurors for the king's faith and witnesses. It is difficult to see why they, or the notary, or others not named, would have wished to forge such a charter at the time; so sweeping and consequential an enactment, if spurious, would have been hopeless then and for years to come. On the other hand, a forger of much later date would have had to exercise superfluous skill to write of the coinage and bovatge in terms that must have become anachronistic only a year or two after their purported date (32). Would a forger of any date have neglected to include the king's highly imitable monogram ? Yet it must be admitted that our text is as suspect in form and tradition as it is impeccable in content. The absence of the royal subscription tells both ways. Not a single prelate is mentioned, something scarcely less peculiar. Had this charter gone into general effect, even briefly, it would surely have left some traces in ecclesiastical collections other than those of Girona, if not also in the statutes or Usatges. Could it be that the king did, in fact, make the engagements recorded in the text, only to suppress them — perhaps through destruction of the originals — before these engagements became generally known ? But in that case, again, we should expect to find the king's monogram in the copies. A more likely explanation is that what we have is the copy (or copies) of a finished draft scriptam pro deffendenda pace prestabit publice juramentum ..." [the forma juramenti does not appear in the printed text]. (32) The term "redemptio," in relation to coinage and peace, disappears just when, between 1205 and 1210, "monetaticum" and "bovaticum" become the usual terms for these impositions. In reference to taxes, the latter words are altogether exceptional (in extant texts) before 1205; only the bovaticum can be certainly documented as such : in an undated allusion to a collection in the time of Alphonse I, A.C.A., perg. Alfons I, extrainv. 2612; and in a notice dated 1200 of a collection in the diocese of Vic, to be studied and printed elsewhere.

208

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

that was repudiated before it was authenticated. There was, in all probability, precedent for such a repudiation, as we shall see. In that case — but perhaps, indeed, in any case — the charter as we have it may be held to reflect a genuine current of baronial reformist thought dating from early in 1205. It is the initiative that is hardest to reconstruct. The names of the barons do not seem helpful, although it can be said that they were those of men belonging to the proudest Catalan aristocracy, and that at least one of these barons — Pere de Torroella — was a major creditor of the king (33). Now we happen to know that King Peter was in need of cash in late March 1205 (34), so that conceivably one or more of these lords had made his generosity contingent upon royal concessions. If that is what happened, it appears that an alternative, more consistent with custom and equally expedient, was decided upon : namely, that the king should seek local grants of subsidy in return for the issuance of local franchises. Less than two weeks after the recorded engagements of Girona, Peter confirmed the privileges of Vic in a charter for which the bishop and townsmen paid him 42,000 sous bare., much the largest receipt known for the king in 1205 (35). So high was this price that we are entitled to suspect that it bought not only the confirmation (dated 4 April 1205) but also the king's pardon for the timely violence committed by men of Vic at the fair of Moia recorded in another charter of April 1205 (36). The confirmation, and probably the remission as well, took place at Vic, a day's journey from Girona; both acts were attended by three (the same three) of the seven barons said to have participated in the engagements of Girona. One of those missing was Pere de Torroella, although he held a castle near Vic in pledge from the king. (33) See generally Santiago SOBREQU£S i VIDAL, Els barons de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1957), pp. 50, 56-57; entries in Dictionari biografic, 4 vols. (Barcelona : Albert!, 1966-1970); and for Pere de Torroella, BOFILL Y Boix, "Lo castell de Gurb," op. tit., note 20, 701^703. (34) See next note. (35) Arxiu municipal, Vic, priv., ix, no. 172 (JUNYENT, Privilegis de Vic, no. 57). (36) Arxiu capitular, Vic, cal. 37 QUNYENT, Privilegis de Vich, no. 59).

209 Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205 The draft charter may also have aroused suspicion in its structural singularity. It was a composite of two forms that must have been familiar to scribes of the king and the bishop of Vic. One was the charter of franchise, always individual and local; the other was the written confirmation of coinage, by which the king or bishop engaged under oath to hold the coinage stable for life, in accordance with Catalan custom. In 1174 the bishop of Vic had ceremonially promulgated such a charter, while (in the same year) King Alphonse I had rejected the draft of one (37). It is not unlikely that the faithful and experienced bishop Guillem de Tavertet (1195-1233), who surely knew of the texts of 1174 and who was to receive the expensive privilege of April 1205, advised the king against accepting the hybrid thrust before him at Girona (38). The traditional Catalan conveyance for regional privilege, as distinct from local, was not the charter but the legislation of the peace and truce. Never the work of barons alone, the issuance of statutes of the peace always associated prelates with barons, on occasions made well known in advance. Even those contented with the draft-charter might have preferred to see its provisions incorporated in the peace statutes of some future general cort. It is worth noting that the first extant provisions for appointing native Catalans as vicars and against impositions to secure the bovatge or peace occur in successive articles of the statutes of Girona in 1188 (39), the text of which may have been handy to those who drafted the charter, also (probably) at Girona, in 1205. On the other hand, if Cunctis patent could have been interpreted as excessively restricting (37) A.C.A., perg. Alfons I, extrainv. 2602 (printed by BOTET Y Siso, Les monedes catalanes, iii, 240, from a later copy) and perg. Alfons I, 160, ed. BOTET Y Siso, i, 211-212 QUNYENT, Privilegis de Vich, no. 39). My study of these texts will appear elsewhere. (38) Yet the form, or the need for such a form, did not wholly disappear. The charter for the townspeople of Agramunt, issued in 1210 after Peter acquired the county of Urgell, included a confirmation of the local coinage among other provisions that resemble those of the abortive charter of Girona; and the former charter, too, was confirmed by two Catalan barons under oath, Documentos ineditos, viii, 106-109. (39) Cortes de Aragon y de Cataluna^ i1, 67, arts. 18, 19.

210

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

royal rights of coinage, another reason for the king's objection to the terms of 1205 becomes apparent. How Peter I managed to preserve his prerogatives after 1205 is another story. It was said after his death that he took oath at Barcelona to renounce new tolls (40), but we do not know just when this happened, nor do Peter's later charters or accounts or peace legislation contain very much to indicate compliance with the terms of 1205 (41). On the contrary, the tradition represented in Cunctispatent suffered explicit rejection in the proclamation of Huesca, which was followed not only by collections of monedatge and bovatge in Catalonia but also by mutations of the coinage of Barcelona (42). Reaction, such as it was, came only after his death. The solemn constitucio pads et treuge that was issued at Lleida by the legate-guardian for the child James I in 1214 effectively instituted or confirmed the former provisions for vicars' oaths and the abolition of new tolls; it reserved moderate tallages on places in the royal domain, and kept silence, apart from stigmatizing counterfeiters, about the stability of coinage or the bovatge (43). Issued with the counsel of prelates "and other prudent men," and submitted for the sworn ratification of lay lords, townsmen and villagers, this ruling "for reforming the tranquillity of all Catalonia" might almost be taken for a "great charter" itself. Yet it was a statute in form, and it was in no sense a charter of liberties. It revealed the persistence of a not inflexible yet fundamentally conciliar tradition of peace-law; a tradition in which privileges or concessions might receive expression, but in which security, obligations and jurisdiction were foremost — and in which the barons, never perfectly adjusted to the (40) Ibid., 94, art. 17. (41) The privileges for Girona dated 13 June 1206 (Girona : Arx. cap., "Llibre vert," fols. 3V-5; ed. Ferran VALLS-TABERNER, "Els antics privilegis de Girona i altres fonts documentals de la Compilacio consuetudinaria gironina de Tomas Mieres," Estudis Universitaris Catalans, xii [1928], 178-180) were strictly local or diocesan; they betray no significant correlation with the events of March 1205. (42) See, provisionally, BISSON, "Sur les origines du monedatge" below, chapter 17, 329-32, 335-8.

(43) Cortes de Aragon j de Cataluna, i1, 90-95.

Unknown Charter for Catalonia, 1205

211

peace, could participate only so long as they had no collective interest to prefer. In such company, the charter of Girona could find no place. It betrayed baronial dissatisfaction with the administration of the peace in its content as well as its form. More modest and more partisan than the statutes, it was a charte manquee, an "unknown charter". Yet it was a charter of liberties; and its very existence shows that the tensions resulting from exploitative government in monarchic-aristocratic polities were to be found in Catalonia as elsewhere in the incipient thirteenth century. It epitomized, better than any other surviving Catalan text, the constitutional issues of a critical reign in the rise of the Crown of Aragon. TEXT 1205 (n. st.), 22 March, Girona. Peter I (II in Aragon) enfranchises clergy, magnates and good men of Catalonia from specified novel exactions, while reserving tolls on foreigners; promises to appoint vicars from among Catalan knights and to cause the vicars to swear to administer the land lawfully ; exempts knights from payment of the tercium in causes of debt; and pledges to secure the coinage and the bovatge, gratis, for his lifetime. His word as regards certain items is pledged by two barons. A. Original lost ( ?). B. Copy, first half of i3th century : Girona, Arxiu diocesa, Cartoral major ("Carlesmany"), fol. 65. — C. Copy of later i3th century : Girona, Arxiu capitular, "Llibre vert," fol. 213V. Indications : VILLANUEVA, Viage literario, xiii (1850), 158; BOTET Y siso, "Cartoral de Carles Many" Boletin de la Real A.cademia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, iv (1907-1908), 322, no. 346. In Christi nomine. Sit notum cunctis quod ego Petrus, Dei gratia rex Aragonum,a comes barchinonensis et dominus Montispessulani, confitens me instituisse et accepisse in Cathalonia leudas nouas siue forcias et salinas, exactiones, albergas et questias bladi uel peccunie uel aliarum rerum, omnia supradicta penitus absoluo, diffinio et omnibus euacuo Deo et ecclesiis, episcopis et religionibusb clericis et eorum omnium \sic\ hominibus et proceribus et aliis militibus et aliis probis hominibus tocius Cathalonie, ut numquam de cetero hoc faciam in terra predicta neque ab aliquo fieri permittam.c Retineo autem leudas nouas si uoluero in mercatoribusd et hominibus extra terram meam illuc uenientibus et retineo questias et albergas6 in propriis1 dominicaturis meis et in locis quibus mihi debentur ex debito. Promittog etiam quod non instituam in ipsa terra aliquos

212

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

uicarios nisi milites et de ipsa terra et cum consilio magnatum et sapientum illius terre. Qui uicarii iurent ut legaliter tractent terram et communemh iusticiam et ius et consuetudinem terre bene seruent1 et quod non faciant ibi amodo aliquas nouas exacciones uel questas \sic\9 secundum quod suprascriptumi est. Mando etiam quod in causis dek debitis tercium de cetero a militibus.1 Promitto similiter quod monetam barchinonensiumm in tota uitan mea non mutem nee deteriorari permittam0 nee faciam ipsumP uel bouaticum deinde redimi. Volo etiam et instituo quod post obitum meum hec moneta duret et perseueret in eodem statu et ualore et non mutetur per unum annum. Sciendum tamen est quod hoc instrumentum facio iurare Gaufridum de Rochabertino,2 R.Q Gaucerandi3 super animam meam in salinis tantummodor et in moneta et bouatico. Et ego Gaufridus8 de Rocabertino* et Raimundusu Gaucerandi in animam domini regis iuramus quodv sicut scriptum est dominus rex obseruabit et faciet obseruari. Datum apud Gerundam, .xi. kalendas Aprilis, per manum lohanis de Berix domini regis notarii et mandato ipsius scripta, sub anno Domini millesimo ducentesimo quarto. Testes huius rei sunt Arnallus de Castro Bono,4 P.w de Torrozela,*5 Hugo de Matha Plana maior,*6 Guillelmus de Caneto,7 Bernardus de Portella.8

a

Aragon C. - - bLeg. religiosis ?~ni (in religionibus) written over erasure C. — cpermitam C. — dmerchatoribus C. — ealberigas C. — fpropiis C. — ^Promito C. — hcomunem C. — ^eruet C. — Jsupradictum C. — kde added B. — Evidently corrupt; perhaps leg. quod in causis de debitis non debent accipere uicarii tercium... The early annotation in B reads: non debent uicarii tercium accipere a militibus. — mLeg. barchinonensem. — ndebitis tercium de ... barchoninensium in tota om. C. — °permitam C. — Pipm C.t leg. ipsam. — QRaymundum C. — rtamen C. — 8Gaufredus C. — tRochabertino C. — uRaymundus C. — vet C. — wPetrus C. — xTurricella C. — Vmajor C. 1

Rubrics : difinitio regis, B; Diffinicio facta de non recipiendo nouas leudas, C. Marginal annotations of s. xiii in B : non debet accipere rex leudas nouas nee salinas nee sxactiones uel albergas, questias bladi uel peccunie uel aliarum rerum. non debet instituere dominus rex uicarios nisi milites et de ista terra cum consilio magnatum et sapiencium. quod debent iurare uicarii. non debent uicarii tercium accipere a militibus. 2

Jofre II, viscount of Rocaberti (1181-1212); a faithful companion of Peter I, he died in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. 3 Ramon Galceran, baron of Pinos from about 1197 until about 1226. 4 Arnau, viscount of Castellbo (1185-1226). 6 Pere de Torroella, Catalan vassal of Alphonse I and Peter I; died before 1208. 6 Hug de Mataplana, the aged father of the Catalan baron of the same name who served Alphonse I and Peter I and was a noted troubadour. 7 Guillem de Canet, baron of Roussillon and frequent companion of Peter I. 8 Bernat de Portella, Catalan vassal of Alphonse I and Peter I.

PART III

COMPARATIVE STUDIES

This page intentionally left blank

11 THE ORGANIZED PEACE IN SOUTHERN FRANCE AND CATALONIA (c. 1140-1233) IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL POWER in southern France and Pyrenean Spain, the turn of the thirteenth century seems to mark a forbidding divide. For more than a hundred years castle-based elites had flourished in dynastic or military alliances of bewildering mutability, weakening the ancient solidarities of Carolingian territorial order. Principalities had arisen or persisted but these were dynastic combinations lacking administrative institutions capable of welding disjointed lands into effective political units. Much of this was now to change. The old houses of Toulouse and B£ziers-Carcassonne together with the trans-Pyrenean designs of the Aragonese-Catalan dynasty collapsed in the Albigensian crusades. As early as 1212 Simon de Montfort organized a quasicolonial government for lower Languedoc based largely on the baronial custom of "France near Paris"; the county of Toulouse was to succumb more gradually but no less inevitably to the rule of ambitious Frenchmen in the next generations; while the fiscal insolvency of Peter of Aragon, followed by his untimely death on the battlefield of Muret (1213), obliged his successor James the Conqueror to found his new imperialism against less dangerous Mediterranean neighbors upon an improved politics and finance. Historians have understandably stressed the hard new realities of this spectacularly changed world. Whatever their sense of the cultural losses, they have made no claims for a native political order proven incompetent by the test of war. The persistent disorders of the later twelfth century, in Catalonia as well as in Languedoc, only seemed to confirm other evidence of a considerable political failure on the part of contemporary Mediterranean regimes.1 Based on a paper presented to a symposium in honor of Joseph R. Strayer at Princeton University on March 31,1973. Abbreviations: ACP — Recueil des actes des comtes de Provence appartenant a la maison de Barcelona. Alphonse II et Raimond Berenger I', ed. Fernand Benoit, a vols. (Monaco, 1925), 2; HL = Claude Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoiregenerate de Languedoc . . . , new ed., 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904); LTC — Layettes du Tresor des Charles, ed. Alexandre Teulet et al. 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909); PL — Palrologiae cursus completes . . . latmae, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64). The terms "Occitania" and "Occitan" are sometimes used in reference to lands of southern France extending beyond yet not exclusive of the historical "Languedoc." 1 For prevailing views, see Edgard Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers . . . (Paris, 1870), 13-40; Auguste Molinier, "£tude sur {'administration feodale dans le Languedoc (900-1250)," in HL, 7. esp. 142-45, 147 n. i, 150-52, 155 ff., 191-213; Molinier, "fctude sur 1'administration de Louis IX & d'Alfonse de Poitiers (1226-1271)," in HL, 7: 462-63, 466-67; Yves Dossat, "Le comt£ de Toulouse et la feodalit£

216

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The trouble with this perspective, for all its merits, is that it has distorted our understanding of meridional government in the age before the Occitan crusades. It has disposed us to imagine a feudalism in Mediterranean lands that was somehow inferior to that of the tough northern barons and knights. But external danger was one thing, internal security quite another. Contemporaries in southern France and Catalonia had no idea of the political disasters which lay ahead, and if their leaders do not seem to have insisted on vassalic fidelities or feudal obligations to combat disorder, it may have been because they had other means. Although no thorough investigation of these societies has yet been made, it is becoming increasingly clear that feudalism developed too late in the South entirely to replace the older structures of territorial power, and that its political significance can easily be exaggerated. Even in Catalonia, where a thoroughgoing custom of vassalic fidelity and fiefs had evolved by uoo, there is little indication that the counts of Barcelona sought to systematize this custom to the advantage of central authority, as did some "feudal monarchs" in northern Europe. On the contrary, the Usatges of Barcelona are primarily a regalian code in which the definition of obligations for the maintenance of public order has little to do with the law of fiefs.2 Harder to exaggerate, accordingly, is the political significance of the peace movements. In Catalonia the counts and prelates had for generations relied upon the statutory order of the Peace and Truce of God to supplement the guarantees of vassalic conventions, and these efforts, plainly visible in the Usatges, were renewed in the reigns of Alphonse II (1162-96) and Peter II (1196-1213). The former instituted vicars as secular judges of the peace in collaboration with the bishops, and peasant militias to enforce the peace in the dioceses; moreover, he and his son collected compensations for the maintenance of the rural peace and of the stability of coinage. And since criminal justice in Catalonia remained poorly distinct from the jurisdiction of the peace, it can be said with little exaggeration that the constitutional order of the realm was basically the statutory structure of the peace.3 languedocienne a la veille de la croisade albigeoise," Revue du Tarn, new ser., 9 (1943): 75-90; Pierre Timbal, Un conflit d'annexion au moyen age: {'application de la coutume de Paris au pays d'Albigeois (Toulouse-Paris, 1950); Philippe Wolff, Histoire du Languedoc (Toulouse, 1967), chs. 5, 6; Ferran Soldevila, Histbria de Catalunya, 2d ed. (Barcelona, 1962-63), chs. 9-12, and esp. page 243; and J. R. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades (New York, 1971), ch. i (esp. pages 4-5, n). However, A. R. Lewis, "The Formation of Territorial States in Southern France and Catalonia, 1050-1270 A.D.," Melanges Roger Aubenas (Montpellier: Recueilde Memoires et Travaux publie par la Societe d'Histoire du Droit . . . des Anciens Pays de Droit fccrit, 9, 1974), 507-09, stresses institutional continuity and even "a more centralized, feudalized control" at the turn of the twelfth century. The recent work most helpfully related to the subject of this article is Paix de Dieu et guerre sainte en Languedoc au XIII" siecle (Toulouse: Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 4, 1969), wherein the complications of religious and political problems in the generation before the crusade are well stressed. For other pertinent work on the Peace, see note 4. 2 See generally filisabeth Magnou-Nortier, La societe laique et I'eglise dans la province ecclesiastique de Narbonne . . . de la Jin du VIIT a la Jin du XF siecle (Toulouse, 1974); and cf. Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du A* a la Jin du XI* siecle . . . , 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1975-76), esp. 2, chs. 9, 11-13. For Catalonia, my observation is based on the redating of the Usatges to the mid-twelfth century by Ramon d'Abadal and Bonnassie (see Catalogne, 2, 711-28) and on a comparative study of feudal monarchies presented before the Mediaeval Academy of America in April 1975 and now being prepared for publication. 3 Cortes de los antiguos reinos de A ragbn y de Valencia yprincipado de Cataluna, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1922), 1:1, 55-88; Eugen Wohlhaupter, Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte der Gottes- und Landfrteden in Spanien (Heidelberg, 1933), sections 8-10; Sister Karen Kennelly, "Catalan Peace and Truce Assemblies," Studies in Medieval Culture, 5

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

217

Now an order of this general description was not simply a renewal of the ancient institutes of the Peace and Truce nor was it unique to Catalonia. It was imposed in southern France and, indeed, in some parts of the North and of Spain, only in the second half of the twelfth century, with a few (but remarkably few) anticipations before that; it represented a major associative effort to remedy the weakness of lay powers in dealing with violence in much of the South; and its influence was to survive the Albigensian crusades. It marked a significantly new stage in the evolution of the medieval Peace: the stage in which the maintenance of security is made to rest on the instituted obligations in service and money of the regional community.4 To make this point clear, it will be necessary to refer to what appear to be the earlier perceptible structures of the Peace of God. THE DISORDERED SOCIETIES OF THE TENTH CENTURY had inherited—and increasingly ignored—the prescriptions for territorial security recorded in Germanic codes and capitularies.6 Only in England were these prescriptions maintained in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In West Frankland, despairing clergymen assumed not only the burden of restoring the Carolingian institutes of peace and justice no longer enforced by the kings, but also that of pacifying the brutalized populations whose leaders were wrecking the county. And the instrument of pacification was found in the cult of relics. Writing of the lay saint Gerald, who had brought a relic of the True Cross to Aurillac, Saint Odo of Cluny observed, "The inhabitants of that region had truly ferocious habits, but gradually by his example and the reverence they have for the holy man they seem to be gentler. When they make any agreement or solemn oath in law, they have the relic brought by some monk or cleric. . . ."6 In such ways the strongly penitential faith of the monks was propagated even in remote localities and peasants were associated with magnates in the moving experience of mysterious power. In the Limousin, the "pact of peace and justice" was to be linked with the devotion to Saint-Martial, and there is ( ! 975) : 4 I ~ 5 I > Jesus Lalinde Abadia, La jurisdiccibn real inferior en Cataluha . . . (Barcelona, 1966), 70-72; T. N. Bisson, "An 'Unknown Charter' for Catalonia (A.D. 1205)." Album Elemer Malyusz (Brussels: Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, number 56, 1976), 61-76 ; above, chapter 10, 199-212, and below, 235. \ 4 A similar thesis was advanced many years ago by Georges Molinie, L'Organisationjudiciaire, militaire et fmanciere des associations de la paix. Etude sur la Paix et la Treve de Dieu dans le Midi et le Centre de la France (Toulouse, 1912), esp. 32-40. But Molini£'s evidence was very incomplete; moreover, it was badly pressed to argue the existence of fully organized associations of the peace. Roger Bonnaud-Delamare had little difficulty refuting Molinie on this point, "Le legende des associations de la paix en Rouergue et en Languedoc au debut du XIII6 siecle (1170-1229)," Bulletin philologique et histonque . . . du Comite des Travaux histonques et scientifiques (1936-37), 47-78; but neither he nor subsequent historians seem to have recognized the merit of Molinie's underlying perception, which was discredited with the rest. Cf, e.g., Sister [Karen] Kennelly, "Medieval Towns and the Peace of God," Medievalia et Humanistica, no. 15 (1963): 35-53 (esp. 40, 42): E.g., Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, 2 vols. (Hanover: Monumenta Germamae Histonca, Legum Sectio II, 1883-97), i: nos. 68, 69, 77; 2: no. 267. On the origins of the Peace of God, see Hartmut Hoffmann, Gottesfnede und Treuga Dei (Stuttgart, 1964), chs. 1-4. 8 PL, 133: 700-01; I follow the translation by Gerard Sitwell, St. Odo of Cluny . . . (London, 1958), 177.

218

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

record of such incidents scattered from the upland churches of south central France to Flanders and Normandy.7 What was thus manifested, from the present point of view, was a characteristic associative structure that may be called the "sanctified peace."8 Monastic in inspiration, it was based on the shared religious emotion of the united estates of people, vented in waves of popular enthusiasm most apparent in the 9905, 10208, and 10305. It was not altogether devoid of institutional consequence, for it was on occasions such as have been mentioned that oaths to the peace were first sworn, although it is by no means clear that the oath was routinely administered to all who attended reliquary ceremonies. But this structure, or experience, was inherently unstable. The sworn men were hard to control, especially when mobilized: the excesses of the archbishop's throng in Berry (ca. 1038), to take a famous instance, can only have confirmed the natural suspicions of magnates and knights.9 Incidents rather than institutes, recorded exclusively in monastic or episcopal narratives and sermons, the sanctified peace waned after 1050 or so, although it had a fitful recurrence here and there, notably in the uplands of southern France, in the twelfth century. Very different in character and influence was the instituted peace. To restore peace, as the leaders of the movement had soon recognized, was, in some fashion, to make peace, to legislate, so that the ceremonial affirmations of the peace soon came to be accompanied by written definitions according to episcopal models. "This peace," say the statutes, or "this truce and peace,"10 and progressively the territorial incidence of the statutory peace was laid down. Now for the making of such regulations, which are silent about ceremony, there could be no place for the common folk, who were before long also being exempted from the oaths of peace. The negative, injunctive language of such oaths was irrelevant to those who were to be protected, and the definitions of limited or just war that can be extrapolated from the written oaths that have come down to us read like a clerical lesson to the nascent order of knights in the eleventh century.11 But not even the knights were to have much part in founding the peace. The lay men associated with the bishops and abbots were usually princes (principes) or magnates, those who alone besides the king had the regalian powers that the prelates were committed by their formation to uphold. 7 Ademar de Chabannes, Chromque, book 3, ch. 35; ed. Jules Chavanon (Paris, 1897), 158; and generally Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 18-20, 25-31, 40, 51-53, 134-35, 143~44> 167. 8 The phenomenon has been much discussed: see, e.g., Carl Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1935), 66-67; Bernhard T6pfer, Volk und Kirche zur %rit der beginnenden Gottes/riedensbewegung in Frankrewh (Berlin, 1957); H. E. J. Cowdrey, "The Peace and the Truce of God in the Eleventh Century," Past and Present, no. 46 (1970): 44-53; as well as Hoffmann, as cited in note 7. 9 Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 105-07; the incident is reinterpreted by Guy Devailly, Le Berry du Xe siecle an milieu du Xlll* . . . (Paris-La Haye, 1973), 145-48. 10 E.g., J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 31 vols. (Florence-Venice, 1759-98), 19: 593-96; Hoffmann, 260-62. 11 E.g., C. J. Hefele, Histoire des conales . . ., tr. Henri Leclercq, 10 tomes in 20 vols. (Paris, 1907-38), 4:2, 1409-10; Christian Pfister, Etudes sur le regne de Robert II le Pieux (996-1031) (Paris, 1885), Ix-lxi; and see generally Georges Duby, "Les laics et la paix de Dieu," reprinted in Hommes et structures du moyen age (ParisLa Haye, 1973), 231-37.

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

219

It was no purpose of the early instituted peace to replace existing institutions of justice and police (such as they were). Neither courts nor taxes for the peace are mentioned in extant statutes of the Aquitanian councils, nor apparently in those which spread from diocese to diocese, perhaps as far as Ausona, with the encouragement of Robert the Pious in the 10205 and 10305; not even the specification in these statutes of episcopal jurisdiction with spiritual sanctions over the "broken peace" was altogether new.12 Only in the council held by Duke Guilhem V at Poitiers some time before 1015 do we find an army of enforcement being instituted, yet even there the thrust of the legislation was to oblige the "princes"—that is, the rulers of the counties—to do justice themselves, or through their judges, over violators of churches.13 Thereafter, the only armies mentioned (and very rarely) in statutes or oaths are the regalian or vassalic forces that existed independently of the peace.14 The hostages exchanged by magnates upon confirmation of the peace15 evidently grew out of the customary practice in judicial (or quasi-judicial) concords by which private wars were ended. Since the peace in this form— structurally traditional—was no threat to regalian power, was if anything a form of reinforcement of it, we can easily understand why the princes of Flanders, Normandy, and Barcelona promptly followed the lead of Guilhem V. In their hands the written peace began to change in diplomatic form, but in substance and coverage it remained surprisingly faithful to the clerical models.16 The instituted peace seems to have lost impetus in the later eleventh century. While the synodal statutes remained theoretically in effect and were reconfirmed here and there, their principal defect now became clear: lacking explicit provision for temporal support, they could only be enforced where prelates and lay lords were disposed to act in harmonious determination. The obvious remedy for this defect lay in extra-statutory contrivances, of which some important examples are attested: the bishop's militia in the North and East,17 judges of the peace in Gevaudan,18 taxation to support the peace in Perigord (and possibly Berry),19 and the occasional administration of oaths to 12

See Hoffmann, Gottesfnede, ch. 4, and 20-21, 260; cf. 22, 245-46. Only the failure of the secular jurisdiction would be cause for reconvening the magnates as an army, Mansi, 19: 267-68: ". . . princeps veljudex, ipsius rei aut justitiam faciat aut obsides perdat; et sijustitiam facere non potuerit, convocet principes et episcopos qui concilium instituerunt et omnes unanimiter in destructionem et confusionem ipsius pergant. . . . " 14 Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, 4:2, 1409; Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 261. For a good example in the diocese of Urgel (ca. 1104), see Petrus de Marca, Marca hispamca . . . (Paris, 1688), appendix, no. 333: the count of Pallars promised the bishop "ut si quis treguam Dei vel pacem infregit aut infregerit, toto posse, tota voluntate per se & per suos adjutorium Episcopo tamdiu impendat donee per districtionem ad satisfactionem seu ad justam emendationem veniat." 15 E.g., at Poitiers, early eleventh century, Mansi, 19: 267-68. 16 Hoffmann, Gottesfnede^ chs. 9, 10; Wohlhaupter, Gottes- und Landfrieden in Spanien, 65-101. For some characteristic texts, see LTC: i, no. 22; Hoffmann, 260-62; Cortes de Cataluha, \ :i,_49-5i_,_55-62. 17 Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 104-10, 176, 197; Hugues de Flavigny, Chronicon, ed. G. H. Pertz, M.G.H., Scriptores, 7 (Hanover, 1848): 477-78. 18 Clovis Brunei, "Les juges de la paix en Gevaudan au milieu du XIe siecle," Bibliotheque de I'Ecole des Charles, 109 (1951): 32-41. 19 Hoffmann, 90-106; cf. below, page 300, at note 56. (The instituted redemption of the rural peace in Cerdanya is dealt with below; Hoffmann to the contrary notwithstanding, p. 119, nothing comparable is attested in Catalonia until late in the twelfth century.) 18

220

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the barons in Burgundy, Berry, and Beam.20 With the preaching of the First Crusade, the Peace was revived in both its sanctified and instituted forms, but apart from extending the Truce to all of France, the statutes of Clermont (1095) made no institutional innovation.21 Nevertheless, the pontifical effort to mobilize a Christian community in peace surely helps to explain why the synodal statutes of Rouen (1096) prescribe a general oath to the peace by all men aged twelve or over, and why this oath provides for their military aid. A nearly identical provision occurs in the legatine statutes of Auch (ca. 1140), where, as in the Norman text, it is associated with conventional definitions of the Truce and Peace such as could be found in papal legislation.22 The first known efforts to institute general oaths and armies for the peace seem thus to have been connected with the disciplinary promotions of the reformed papacy, but there is no reason to suppose that these supplementary institutes were yet very common, much less commonly observed, during the earlier twelfth century. In much of the North and South the older structure of obligations, partly statutory, partly customary, continued to prevail: territoriality, engagements of the regional elites, and the independent jurisdiction and enforcement by lay authorities. These are precisely the characteristics of the remarkable "peace for the whole realm" constituted by King Louis VII at Soissons in June 1155 and sworn by the "baronage" of France. Not until then could a Capetian monarch, his vision of the old Frankish kingdom restored by the laborious pacification of its petty lordships, have realistically taken this path boldly marked out by the great dukes and counts.23 Now AS IT HAPPENED—and surely not accidentally—Louis VIFs constitution nearly coincided with a revival of the peace movement in southern France and Spain. The pontifical interest as reaffirmed by the Second Lateran Council had found local expression not only at Auch, but also in the Maconnais and at Narbonne in the 11405 and early 11505. In 1154 the king had made pompous journeys in Spain, where he had taken a wife and visited Compostella,, and he cannot have been ignorant of efforts by the cardinal-legate Jacintus to promote the Truce and Peace in the peninsula.24 Returning via Occitania, Louis 20 Hoffmann, 102-03, !33-34- Only for Berry is there evidence pointing to the early establishment of a military-fiscal obligation for the peace, and even in this case it is not clear whether the custom dates back to the famous communia of 1037 or was established only much later: cf. Hoffmann, 105-15, and Devailly, Berry, 142-48, 489-91. 21 Decreta Claromontensia, ed. Robert Somerville, The Councils of Urban 77, i (Amsterdam, 1972): 73-74, 94, 103, 108, 116, 124, 143; Erdmann, Kreuzzugsgedanken, 311 ff. 22 Albert Vermeesch, Essai sur les ongines et la signification de la commune dans le Nord de la France (XI* et XIP siecles) (Heule: Studies presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, 30, 1966), 48-57; and see below at note 24. 23 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), 14: 378-88; and see generally Aryeh Grabo'is, "De la treve de Dieu a la paix du roi: £tude sur les transformations du mouvement de la paix au XII e siecie," Melanges offerts a Rene Crozet. . . , ed. Pierre Gallais and Y.-J. Riou, 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), i : 585-96. Possibly, however, the Peace of Soissons had a precedent early in the reign of Louis VI: Ivo of Chartres, ep. 258 (PL, 162: 259), cited and well interpreted by Graboifs, 588.The latter sees the Peace of Soissons as the culmination of a half-century's efforts by Louis VI, Suger, and the popes to exploit the Truce of God to the advantage of the realm; cf. below, page | 235. Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. Joseph Alberigo et al., (3d ed., Bologna, 1973), 199 (canons 11, 12); Hoffmann, Cottesfnede, 121, 139; for activity at Narbonne, see below; and for the texts on Spain, Carl

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

221

had visited bishops' churches; he may have witnessed a settlement of hostilities between the viscountess and the legate-archbishop of Narbonne (January H 55)> and his peace for the realm should not be dissociated from the circumstance that between 1155 and 1174 most of the bishops (and several abbots) in the province of Narbonne sought and obtained the king's protection together with his recognition of their tenure of regalian rights.26 Moreover, a new fact has come to light, in a privilege for the Templars first printed in 1972, which renders these connections the more likely. On April 27, 1155 Pope Adrian IV confirmed what was described as an institutio.ofthe peace and truce that had been decreed by Archbishop Arnaud I of Narbonne (1121-49) with the counsel and consent of the lay magnates of his province, but without mention of any suffragan bishops.26 This enactment secured for the Templars of (apparently) the whole province a major role in peacekeeping together with a fiscal endowment pegged to that role; the king must have heard about it when he passed through, and it is hardly far-fetched to speculate that the bishops had misgivings about it. In the event, this singularly valuable privilege was to be confirmed by Adrian himself between 1157 and 1159, by Alexander III on at least five occasions between 1162 and 1176, and by Clement III in 1190, when it was extended to the county of Provence in a major assembly; nor was this the limit of its influence.27 Meanwhile, institutes of peace were introduced in the city of Elne (i I56), 28 in the heartlands of the county of Toulouse (about 1163),29 in the dioceses of Comminges (117o)80 and Rodez (probably 1169 or i i7o), 31 and confirmed in the dioceses of B£ziers (ca. Erdmann, Das Papsttum und Portugal im erstenjahrhundert der portugiesischen Geschichte (Berlin, 1928), 55-58; and Ferran Valls-Taberner, "Ein Konzil zur Lerida im Jahre 1155," Papsttum und Kaiser turn. Forschungen . . . Paul Kehr zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht, ed. Albert Brackmann (Munich, 1926), 364-68. 25 HL, 4: 230; and texts registered by Achille Luchaire, fctudes sur les actes de Louis VII (Paris, 1885), nos. 339> 34°> 355' 3^6, 367, 379, 387-89, 446, 456, 461, 649. There was also an important privilege for the bishop of Mende in 1161 (no. 452); among episcopal privileges, only that for Agde postdates 1161. 26 Papsturkunden fir Tempter und Johanmter, ed. Rudolf Hiestand (Go'ttingen: Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften . . . , Philologisch-historische Klasse, 3d ser., no. 77, 1972), no. 27, discussed further and quoted below,\ p. 225. Hiestand expresses the view that this was not "einen eigentlichen Gottesfrieden, sondern . . . einen besonderen Schutz fur die Viehhabe und die Ackerbestellung, wie aus dem Text deutlich wird." To define the "real peace of God" in this way is surely to misunderstand the historical nature of the phenomenon: a spontaneous evolution of specific protections, diversely expressed, and sanctioned by lay and clerical authorities. 27 Ibid., no. 27 (pp. 233-34); see also no. 218, and cf. Catalogue des actes des comtes de Toulouse. Volume 3. Raymond V (1149-1194), ed. E.-G. Leonard (Paris, 1932), no. 135. 28 Bibliotheque nationale, Collection Moreau, 68: fols. 1-2, 4~5v (from lost cartulary of Elne; also in Baluze, 108: 83~84v), printed incompletely by Auguste Molinier, HL, 5: 1190-92; cf. cols. 1184-85. 29 HL, 5: 1270-71,iv; cf. i270,iii (see Actes de Raymond V, nos. 27-30), Count Raimond V refers to "pacem quam ego in Tolosae & in Albiae episcopatu mittam," June 1163, following his peace settlement with the viscount of Beziers. 30 Papsturkunden in Frankreich. Volume 7. Gascogne, Guienne und Languedoc, ed. Wilhelm Wiederhold (Berlin: Nachtnchten von der komglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1913), no. 80, papal confirmation to bishop and clergy of Comminges of protection for oxen and ox-herds; one measure of harvest-grain (messis) per yoke payable to Templars, 10 May (1170). Some of the background is provided by Charles Higounet, Le comte de Comminges de ses origines a son annexion a la couronne, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1949), i : 48-60. 81 Gallia chnstiana . . . , 16 vols. (Paris, 1715-1849), i : instrumenta, 51-52, papal confirmation of a "peace" for all property and persons established by bishop of Rodez "consilio abbatum, praepositorum et archidiaconorum tuorum et baronum terrae," together with Count Hugues II of Rodez; provision for taxation of those with churches or other property; 1166-70. See also Roger Bonnaud-Delamare, "Une bulle d'Alexandre III en faveur de la paix (1170)," Annales du Midi, 51 (1939): 68-86.

222

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours 32

11 yo) and Albi (11gi ),33 in the county of Roussillon (1173),34 and possibly in the diocese of Mende (ca. i lyo). 36 A remarkable constitution for the peace in Bordelais was promulgated in the name of King Richard I between 1189 and 1195.38 Across the mountains Alphonse II imposed the peace in Aragon in 1164 in the presence of prelates, including the master of the Templars, of barons, and of the deputies of six towns;87 and in Catalonia, where he progressively improved his control of the Pyrenean counties, he drew on the reinstituted peace of Roussillon (mentioned above) to initiate a new series of sworn statutes of peace and truce (Fontaldara 1173, Gerona 1188, and thereafter) to apply almost everywhere in Catalonia.88 In Urgel, the only major Catalan county still independent of the count-king, the institutes of 1187 were clearly influenced by the royal program.89 It was in these statutes, supported by the popes, that the Catalonian peace assumed the administrative order already mentioned. And from the eastern borders of Aragon to Perigord and to Provence the movement persisted vigorously in the early thirteenth century.40 One has only to juxtapose the statutory evidence of this development to see how novel it was. For the first time, institutions specific to the Peace were routinely provided for: oaths to uphold the peace, armies of enforcement, taxation to support such armies or to compensate the victims of violence, officers to police the peace. For all of this there were precedents in the impulses of the preceding century, and the oaths and armies, at least, had occasionally figured in the old statutes; but none of these practices had been effectively secured in the instituted peace. Whereas the old oaths had been purely negative, the new ones, such as were prescribed in the statutes of Elne (1156) and Tarascon (1226), included positive commitments to serve in the peace-force and to pay the peace-tax.41 Moreover, the legislators of the twelfth 32 HL, 8: 275-76, bishop of B£ziers has convoked viscount "& milites terrae . . . & pacem conjurare fecimus"; the archpriest is directed to obtain oaths of parishioners and to oblige them "ad sequendum pacem & cogendum illos, qui earn infregerint, apud Sarzac a nobis commoniti, quandocumque vocati fuerint." Those who fail to pay Templars their due "pro pare bovum" are excluded from protection; ca. 1170. Magnou-Nortier, Soaet'e la'ique et I'eglise, 526-27 and note 17, mistakes both the date and the significance of this text; the reference to the Templars' right invalidates her date of 1128 (cf. below, page 225). 33 Gallia chnstiana, i : inst., 6-7 (Leonard, Actes de Raymond V, no. 144), Count Raimond V and bishop of Albi, "consilio domini Rogeri Biterrensis vicecomitis, et Sicardi, vicecomitis de Lautrec, & Albiensium baronum, et illustrium virorum, in Albiensi diocesi pacem constituerunt," for the support of which the count and bishop are to receive one setter of grain per plow animal and graduated payments in coin for horses or asses; 1191. 34 T. N. Bisson, "Une paix peu connue pour le Roussillon (A.D. 1173)," Droit prive et institutions regionales. ktudes histonques offertes a Jean Tver (Paris, 1976), 69-76, reformulation of eleventh-century statutes of Toulouges; see above, chapter 9, 179-86. 86 See below, page 229. 38 Cartulaire de I'eglise collegiate Samt-Seunn de Bordeaux . . . , ed. J.-A. Brutails (Bordeaux, 1897), no. 204. 87 Coleccibn de documentos ineditos del Archivo general de la Corona de Aragbn, ed. Pr6spero de Bofarull y Mascar6, 42 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1973), 8: 36-41. The peace was not, however, to be so influential in Aragon as in Catalonia. 38 Cortes de Cataluna, i : i, 55 ff.; Bisson, "Paix pour le Roussillon," above, 181-6. 39 "Pau i treva del comtat d'Urgell en 1187," ed. Ferran Vails Taberner, Revista Juridica de Cataluna, 34 (1928): 354-56; Odilo Engels, Schutzgedanke und Landesherrschqft im ostlichen Pyrenaenraum (p.-/^- Jahrhundert) (Munster: Spanische Forschungen der Gorresgesellschaft, id ser., 14: 1970), 267. 40 Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 76-112; ACP, nos. 57, 102; LTC, 2: no. 3412; T. N. Bisson, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, 1964), ch. 3. 41 Cf., e.g.t Hefele-Leclercq, Conciles, 4:2, 1409-10, with HL,^: 1190-92, and with ACP, no. 102, art. 25. The oaths of Rouen and Auch (above, page22(|) are the first known to refer to a peace-force; that of Elne

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

223

century freely widened the scope of the peace. The security of peasant property, having been recognized as a disaster-area, was made a special department of the peace in Catalonia, where it was known as the "peace of beasts" (pax bestiarum or bovaticum\ Catalan: bovatge), and in the province of Narbonne; an old tendency to shelter coinages under the Peace was confirmed; while from the time of the Third Lateran Council (i 179) the popes, in promoting their "business of the peace and faith," encouraged the faithful to think of heretics as violators of the peace.42 Now a structure of power with these attributes looks for all the world like a public and utilitarian order answering to regional needs at the expense of privilege. In 1173 Alphonse II spoke of providing for the "public utility of all my land" when he established the peace and truce from Salses to the TortosaLerida line, and his language perpetuated in secularized form the Carolingian usage of the old synodal texts.43 German scholars have not hesitated to interpret such Catalonian institutes as Landfrieden, nor can it be doubted that these laws of the peace differed categorically from the customs of fiefs.44 Yet if we ask how contemporaries regarded the newly institutionalized peace, we shall find that the Catalonian program was in one critical respect—its fiscal basis—less progressive than the diocesan program across the Pyrenees. Toward 1205 some Catalan barons, among other complaints about royal administration, charged that the count-king had demanded payments in return for maintaining the rural peace and a stable coinage. Now this might seem on its face a negligible complaint; yet the remarkable fact is that the king's men seem to have admitted its force, not so much by their action—for the remedial charter by which we know of these events seems not to have been promulgated—as by their language. This charter itself referred to the impositions as "ransoms" of the peace and the coinage: "nor shall I [Peter II] cause it [the coinage of Barcelona] or the bouaticum . . . to be redeemed."46 Was there no utilitarian claim, then, for these taxes? Evidently not, for the kings themselves were used to speaking of the bovatge, like the monedatge, as a ransom, Peter II having done so even when most desperately in need of new fiscal resources.46 And, in fact, Peter was true to tradition, because we happen to know that the Catalonian levy for the peace had originated as a ransom—as a sale, in other words, not as a tax. The redemptions of coinage and of bovatge first appear in a charter of 1118 according to which Ramon Berenguer III, represents the earliest such oath certainly indigenous to the South; while the Cartulaire de Betters: Livre noir . . ., ed. J.-B. Rouquette (Paris-Montpellier, 1918), no. 223, preserves an undated oath (1160-67) of the older type but associating heresy with other violations of the peace. 42 T. N. Bisson, "Sur les origines du monedatge: quelques textes inedits," below, chapter 17, 325-32 *, Alberigo, Conciliorum decreta, 222, 224 (chs. 21, 22, 27). 43 Cortes de Cataluna, i : i , 55-56. 44 The latter, to be sure, were partly codified in the Usatges; but even there they are perfectly distinct from regulations of the peace and truce. See, e.g., Usatges de Barcelona, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals and Ferran Vails Taberner (Barcelona: Textes de dret catala, i : 1913), arts. 5-26, 60-66, 133. 45 Ed. Bisson, 'An Unknown Charter for Catalonia', above, 212:*'Promitto similiter quod monetam barchinonensium [sic] in tota uita mea non mutem nee deteriorari permittam nee faciam ipsum [sic] uel bouaticum deinde redimi." Bouaticum has here its original meaning of "peace of beasts"—the rural peace. 46 See below, chapter 17, page 333; Cortes de Cataluna, i : i, 84, art. 16.

224

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

upon his succession to the county of Cerdanya, instituted his peace and his coinage (of Barcelona) in that county; it was stipulated that in return for this peace and for his promise to hold the coinage stable, he was to collect for this one time a tribute assessed on persons, oxen, and plows.47 Now in this form the bovatge-levy was a better bargain for the mountaineers than for their prince. Even had the charter become a precedent, it could only have cost the knight or the peasant household a sou or two once a generation to obtain solemn guarantees of the rural peace. Yet when subsequent counts of Barcelona tried to invoke this precedent throughout their domains, they encountered the resistance of people who apparently contemplated no worse alternative. Peter II cannot have forgotten that already in 1188 his father had been obliged to renounce exactions "on the occasion of the bovatge or of the constituted peace from any men settled [in Catalonia]."48 This personal engagement did not prevent Peter himself from imposing the bovatge, nor perhaps from justifying it as an accession-tax; for by that time the old charter for Cerdanya (known as Cunctis pateat} had very probably been incorporated in the Usatges of Barcelona.49 But it looks as if most Catalans thought that the levy for the peace was virtually a seigneurial exaction, hardly more tolerable than the arbitrary protection-money collected by northern lords from helpless peasants.50 Why was this so? The most likely explanation is that the twelfth-century counts of Barcelona had failed to establish any cogent justification for the peace-tax. Powerful rulers committed by the early statutes to the maintenance of the peace, they retained the right to convoke the free men in times of military need, and we know from an inventory of comital domains made in 1151 that this military obligation was commutable at a stiff rate.61 Nevertheless, it appears that the need for an institution reserved for peace-keeping, such as was then being devised in Occitania, was increasing in the time of Alphonse II, for in the very assembly in which he renounced the bovatge, that king prescribed the rural militia based on unpaid service from the manses which was to be, in fact, the principal institutional component of the reorganized Catalan peace.62 In short, the peace-tax in Catalonia was premature and too severely restricted to be adaptable to the needs arising after 1150. Meanwhile, the knights Templar in southern France had acted more cannily than Ramon Berenguer III. For it was almost certainly on their initiative that toward (probably) 1145-47 Archbishop Arnaud I of Narbonne, together with Counts Alphonse-Jourdain of Toulouse and Hugues I of Rodez, Viscount Roger of Carcassonne "and other noble men of that land," instituted a peace and truce for peasants, oxen, and other farm animals, in return for 47

Liber Feudorum Motor, ed. Francisco Miquel Resell, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-47), 2: no. 691. Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 67, art. 18. Usatges, art. 172; the terminus a quo for this article may be set at about 1150. 60 Cf. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1954-76), v. salvamentum. 61 Archive de la Corona de Arag6n, Cancilleria, pergaminos Ramon Berenguer IV, no. 233 (B). 62 Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 66, art. 10; 69-70, art. 5. The militia of the manses, also attested in Andorra (Privilegis i ordinacions de les vails pirenenques, ed. Ferran Vails Taberner, 3 vols. [Barcelona: Textes de dret catala, Volume 2, 1915-20], 3: no. 3) may have been descended from older comital authority. 48 49

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

225

which the Templars were to receive an annual payment of one setter of grain per plow: at current local values and, counting only the first year, roughly twice the amount of the levy in Cerdanya a generation before. This constitution was to be made public in each parish and to be guaranteed by prelates and princes, who were to appoint ''suitable persons" in each castle-town and village to collect the revenue. 53 The endowment seems to have been the extension of a similar privilege, also dating from the pontificate of Eugene III (1145-53), applied to oxen placed explicitly under the Templars' protection; the more sweeping privilege was sanctioned by Adrian IV in 1155, as we have seen, but the older one was not forgotten and was to be instituted in Comminges in i lyo. 64 In some way, it is clear, the Templars—a specialized militia Chnsti—were being represented as guarantors of the rural peace. This was a doubly appropriate role, for we know that the maintenance of the old Peace and Truce had seriously deteriorated in coastal Languedoc and Roussillon during the second quarter of the twelfth century, and that the Templars in particular had suffered serious damage in their rapidly growing patrimonies.55 Nor could the bishops effectively oppose the Templar ambitions. Among the royal privileges for southern sees issued between 1155 and 1174, only one (that for Uzes) reserved the bishop's right to proceeds of a tax for the peace,56 a fact which suggests that the idea of such a tax was still uncommon when the instituted peace was revived in the Midi. The most interesting 69 Hiestand, I'apsturkunden fur Tempter, no. 27, to prelates, princes, andfideles: ". . . Et quidem frater noster Arnaldus Narbonensis archiepiscopus consilio et assensu illustrium uirorum A(defonsi) comitis Tolosani, Hugonis comitis Rutenensis, Rotgerii uicecomitis Biterrensis necnon aliorum nobilium uirorum illius terre, pro reuerentia ac sustentatione eorundem militum hanc institutionem in suis partibus firmauerunt: boues et omnia aratoria animalia, bubulci quoque omnisque apparatus arantium animalium necnon homines et bestie,, qu^ semina uel aratrum ad campum detulerint, omni tempore sint secura . . . [provisions for anathema, including interdict on communities failing to make due restitution] Pro unoquoque etiam aratro sextarium frumenti eisdem militibus annualiter persoluatur. Et quoniam nostri officii est ea, que ad pacem atque securitatem fidelium pertinent, constituere et firmare, eandem treuguam atque institutionem auctoritate apostolica confirmamus et, ut earn per uestras parrochias nuntietis atque id ipsum a uestris parrochianis fieri faciatis et pariter obseruari, in peccatorum uestrorum remissionem uobis iniungimus. Studii autem uestri sit, ut per singula castella uel uillas idoneas personas ad recolligendos eosdem redditus uestro auxilio per eorundem militum dispositionem statuatur, que, nimirum eandem helemosinam fideliter colligat et cum omnibus rebus suis sub eiusdem pacis et treugue Dei defensione consistat. . . . " Overlooked by the older historians, this allusion to an assembly is not perfectly clear. Roger I (d. 1150) was not viscount of Beziers, but of Carcassonne, although such a slip could easily have been made in the papal chancery several years after his death, when his brother Raimond-Trencavel of Beziers had succeeded him. An occurrence after 1148 or 1149 is rendered unlikely by the references to Archbishop Arnaud (d. 1149) and Count A(defonsus) of Toulouse, who died in the Holy Land in 1148 (although Raimond V's brother Alphonse styled himself count of Toulouse in 1154, HL, 4: 226). It is singular that so important an event should have left no other trace in the records, and the possibility of some misrepresentation in the privilege of 1155 cannot, perhaps, be entirely excluded. 54 Wiederhold, Papsturkunden in Frankreich, 7, no. 80. 55 Jaime Villanueva, Viage literano a las iglesias de Espana, 22 vols. (Madrid-Valencia, 1803-52), 6: 340-41 (synod of Narbonne, to be dated ca. 1140, HL, 3: 717; 4: 227); HL, 4: 230; and 5: 1172: by his will of April 1154, Viscount Raimond-Trencavel renounced "mala quae ego feci cum mea cavalgada in Rossilono domibus Templi & domibus Hospitalis, quod homo redrecet eis ad suam mercedem, & infractiones quas ego in eadem terra ecclesiis cum eadem cabalgata, quod homo redrecet eis cum laudamento episcopi de Helna. . . . " See generally Cartulaires des Templiers de Douzens, ed. Pierre Gerard and Elisabeth Magnou (Paris, 1965). 66 ///>, 5: 1201. In Perigord a "conuiuium pro pace observanda" payable by peasants is attributed to Bishop Guillaume de Nauclars (1123-37) by me Fragmentum de Petragoncensibus episcopis . . . , ed. Philippe Labbe, Novae biblwthecae manuscript[orum] librorum tomusprimus [secundus] . . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1657), 2: 738-39.

226

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

known precedent for the Templar tax was the imposition of one morabetin, or less according to ability to pay, levied on the faithful of the province of Narbonne by a council in 1140 to help the bishop of Elne redeem Christians captured by the Saracens in destructive raids on Roussillon.67 The Templars cannot have forgotten that it was Archbishop Arnaud who had ordered this payment when they approached him a few years later with their own financial scheme for his province. But their endowment was otherwise very different from the ad hoc ransom. To all appearances, it was thus the Templars of Occitania who initiated the regime of regulated and recurrent taxation for the peace over extended territories. How well the Templars used this revenue is more doubtful. It may have been their failure to justify the endowment, which was probably inadequate in any case, that caused the bishops together with the successors of the lay princes who had formerly approved it to resort to stronger measures between 1163 and 1191. The payment to the Templars is confirmed in the peace of Beziers (ca. 1170) but seems to bear no relation to the sworn service in the bishop's militia there specified;68 by 1191 in Albigeois the annual setter of grain survives only vestigially as part of a complex assessment in which the Templars no longer have a share.69 It was in the peace for Rouergue instituted probably in 1169 or 1170 that the administration and function of the peace-tax, here termed commune, were first articulated: the levy is a kind of insurance fund, from which those who contribute are to be indemnified in case of theft or destruction.60 The compensum . . . pro pace of Uzes presumably had the same function; and the commune of Bordelais (1189-95) certainly did.61 The tax in 67

Villanueva, Viage literario, 6: 340-41; HL, 4: 227. HL, 8: 275-76 (partly quoted above, note 32). Callia chnstiana, i: inst., 7: ". . . Ad adjutorium istius pacis, dabitur Raimundo comiti et episcopo pro animalibus cujusque aratri, sestarium annonae, et pro uno quoque saumario duodecim denarii Albiensis monetae, et sex pro asino vel asina. De animalibus vero quae signa pacis portaverint, non poterit aliquis pro debito vel fidejussione vel aliquo delicto pignorationem facere, nisi specialiter ea sibi a domino obligata fuerint." 80 Ibid., inst., 51 (with variants from Recueil des historiens, 15: 886-87): ". . . Ad hujusmodi vero pacis et securitatis sustentationem et defensionem, statutum est ut abbates, archidiaconi, archipresbyteri, monachi, canonici, priores et omnes clerici, qui proprias ecclesias regunt, milites quoque et mercatores atque burgenses, qui facultatibus abundaverint et omnes etiam homines, tam clerici quam laici, qui habuerint par bourn, seu aliorum animalium, cum quibus arare possint, sive amplius habuerint, vel qui habuerint summarium, equum scilicet vel equam, mulum vel mulam, quae ad portanda onera locent, duodecim denarios ruthenenses, sive alios tantumdem valentes, donent. . . . [mention of lesser graduated payments]. Commune autem istud per singulas parochias debet reddi, cum scripto unius parochianorum, quem capellanus cum consilio sui archipresbyteri, et voluntate suorum parochianorum elegerit; et in die statuta ab ipso parochiano et cum eodem scripto ad Ruthenensem ecclesiam deferatur. Quisquis autem res suas amiserit, postquam commune, sicut praedictum est, solvent, in integrum restituatur; si tamen certam personam, quae res sibi ablatas habeat, vel locum ubi sunt poterit denuntiare, sin autem minime. Si vero inimicos villas vel oppida depraedari, vel diruere forte contigerit, res quidem mobiles emendabuntur de communi, sed damna rerum immobilium non restituentur, nisi quantum a malefactoribus poterit recuperari. Clerici vero qui proprias ecclesias non habent, nisi par bourn habuerint, non cogantur dare, si nolint; sed non dato communi, si forte res suas perdiderint, eis nequaquam emendabuntur. . . . " 91 HL, 5: 1201; Archives departementales de la Gironde, G 1030, fol. 75v (Brutails, Cartulaire de SaintSeurin, no. 204): " . . . Pro vero pace tenenda dederunt domino regi commune barones et omnes alie gentes usque ad septem annos, primo tamen anno senescallie G. de Cellis non computato propter paupertatem gentis; sed a [festivitate] sancti Michaelis que erit in secundo anno senescallie, reddetur commune per septem sequentes annos. Commune vero tale est: quodlibet par bourn cum bubulco reddet .xii. denarios; similiter villanus, si sibi bubulcus fuerit et alium bubulcum non habuerit, reddet .xii. denarios pro se et 58 88

221 The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia Albigeois was vaguely termed "aid of the peace" in 1191, but we know that in Quercy the proceeds of such levies were being used from about this time to pay wages to fighting men as well as amends,62 and it was a tax of precisely this description that became customary in Albigeois and was legislated in the legatine council of Montpellier in I2I5, 6 8 whence it passed to Provence.64 Accordingly, these fiscal obligations, unlike the bovatge, could be defended on utilitarian grounds. They resembled the tallage then being instituted in many towns for wall-building, paving, and the like: for example, the levy on property for the fortification of Le Caylar (near Lodeve) in 1158, from which "proctors for the public work" were to be supported for five years.86 But the diocesan peace was organized more comprehensively and less definitely than the urban utilities: it required certain annual payments for uncertain contingencies and made no effective provision for responsibility or accountability. The results were not everywhere satisfactory. Exemptions from the levy were being granted as early as 1199 in Rouergue.66 In Perigord the commune, although still associated with the peace, was already defined as a customary hearth tax when Capetian authority was recognized at Puy-Saint-Front in I246.67 In Albigeois the men of Gaillac complained in 1252 that the funds had been misappropriated and that the tax was unjustified in times of peace and order. Their allusion to the maxim cessante causa debuit cessare effectus, while surely tendentious, implied their inability to conceive of the maintenance of order as a public necessity.68 It continued to be harder to institute offices than obligations. Meanwhile, events had taken a curiously different turn in Catalonia. There the count-kings managed to convert the old and unpopular ransom of the bobus suis. Omnis homo duodecim annorum et supra qui possit habere viginti solidos de mobili reddet .xii. denarios; si vero non possit, reddet .vi. denarios, si habeat unde possit . . . [lesser graduated assessments] . . . Item, qui commune do mini regis recipiet faciet indici per parrochias ut ad septem dies persolvatur; . . . Item si aliquis illorum qui commune reddiderit aliquid perdet quod per domini regis iusticiam non reddatur, de communi domini regis ei emendabitur, ut tamen habere possit duos legitimos homines et cappellanum testes sui dampni. . . . " 62 See quotation in note 59; Archives nationales, J 896, no. 33, ed. Edmond Albe, Cahors: Inventaire . . . des Archives municipales. Premiere partie, XIIIe siecle (1200-1300) (Cahors, n.d. [1915]), results of a royal enqutte dating from the 12505, e.g., p. 46: "i. Prior Caturcen., juratus et interrogatus de levatione communis in Caturcinio, dixit quod ipse, tempore episcopi Geraldi qui decessit quadraginta anni sunt et amplius, vidi bis commune levari, dicens quod pro pace servanda in diocesi levabatur, auctoritate episcopi, cum voluntate baronum et magnarum villarum, et inde fiebant emende et dabantur stipendia militantibus . . . Dixit etiam quando aliquid erat residuum de communi episcopus inde retinebat et distribuebat inter barones et pacificatores sive paciarios [Albe mistakenly reads pactarios]." M HL, 8: 1311; Mansi, 22: 948, ch. 39: "Si pax fracta fuerit ab iis qui sunt intra terminos pacis, debet pax fracturam pacis quaerere utroquo gladio; & si non poterit recuperare, debet emendare de compenso vel de nova collecta: de quo compenso, seu nova collecta, si compensum non sufficit, debent expensae fieri equitibus qui cum armis pacem sequuntur." The counts of Toulouse insisted on a half-share of the compensum pacis in the dioceses of Viviers (1215), Agde (1224) and Albi, HL, 8: 665, 802, 1310-12. 64 ACP, no. 57, art. 9; no. 102, arts. 7, 27. 68 LTC, i, no. 150. w Documents sur I'ancien hbpital d'Aubrac, ed. J.-L. Rigal and P.-A. Verlaguet, 2 vols. (Rodez: Archives historiques du Rouergue, 4, n; 1913-17), i: no. 12. 97 LTC, 2: no. 3412. It seems likely that in Perigord as elsewhere the peace was organized in the later twelfth century, although the possibility remains that the commune was descended directly from the early twelfth-century conuiuium (see above, note 56). *8 HL, 8: 1310-12; Bisson, Assemblies in Languedoc, no.

228

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

peace into the first statewide subsidy in their history. Peter II not only ignored the draft-charter of 1205 but increased the rates of assessment in the levies to secure the peace and the coinage.69 Whether he violated the principle of redemption-upon-accession is less clear, for we have no proof in extant texts that the same men had to pay these impositions more than once during his reign. Peter certainly imposed the bovatge in the diocese of Vich upon his accession: a remarkable summary of account dating from 1200 shows proceeds amounting to nearly 20,000 sous.70 In 1210 a bovatge in Cerdanya and Roussillon netted more than five times that much, and other bovatges were levied or contemplated in Peter's last years.71 Now it cannot be ruled out that some part of these impositions was devoted to peace-keeping. The principle of redemption persisted, as we have seen, and if the vicars were paid salaries, the bovatge would have seemed an obvious source of support. But the diocesan peace-army was not paid as such, and Peter's more urgent needs undoubtedly lay elsewhere. He not only inherited choking debts from his father but lost no time committing himself to expensive enterprises in war and diplomacy.72 During the first decade of his reign, the redemptions were his major source of extraordinary revenue, and his only taxes at all comprehensive in incidence. In 1197 the bishop and chapter of Vich received a charter of nonprejudice for their contribution to the "redemption of the coinage" which the king had collected in that town "on account of the urgent necessity of the Saracen army" (that is, of the Christian campaign to avenge Alarcos).73 It looks as if the promise to secure the coinage no longer sufficed to justify the levy; negotiation was now required and with the appeal to "urgent necessity" the nature of the payment was profoundly altered. Almost certainly the same or a similar ulterior urgency motivated the collection of bovatge that was accounted in 1200. Moreover, a bovatge in 1211 was occasioned by the crusade that was to culminate in Las Navas de Tolosa, according to a lost text cited by Zurita; while in 1210 the cattle-tax was identified or confused with the money-tax in Cerdanya (as it had been almost a century before), that is, with an imposition that was now certainly a subsidy.74 So it happened that in Catalonia the purchase of peace became a tax for war. In a sense, this change was consistent with the enlarged ecclesiastical conception of the "business of the peace and the faith," but it is unlikely that 69 For the money-tax, see Geronimo Zurita, Amies de la Corona de Aragbn (ist ed., 1578-85), book 2, ch. 52; ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta and Maria D. Perez Soler, 3 vols. in 4 to date (Valencia, 1967-72), 2: 144-45; for the bovatge, citations in notes 70, 71. Analysis of the bovatge accounted in 1210 suggests that either the strictly agrarian assessment (on animals and tools) was increased over that of n 18, or, more likely, a new and more comprehensive property assessment (such as Zurita mentions for the money-tax) was devised to tap urban prosperity. 70 Archive capitular, Vich, mensa episcopal, register "Variarum rerum," no. 35. 71 Bisson, below, chapter 17, 335-8 (nos. 3, 4); Zurita, Anales, book 2, ch. 69 (ed. Ubieto, 2: 210). 72 Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, Los condes de Barcelona vindicados . . . , 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1836), 2: 216-27; Soldevila, Histbna de Catalunya, 217-30. 73 Bisson. below, chapter 17, 333-4 (no. 1); Zurita, Anales, book 2, ch. 48 (ed. Ubieto, 2: 132). 74 Citations in note 71.

229 The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia this coherence was so well grasped in Catalonia as it would have been in Languedoc, where the papal agents were more deeply engaged in the struggle against heresy.76 Whatever the disposition of its proceeds, the bovatge was not to attain a place in the institutionalized Catalonian peace, being sanctioned only—and ambiguously—by the usatge Cunctis pateat. The original features of the Catalonian program were, therefore, limited to the diocesan army and the vicarial jurisdiction; and both of these institutions had evolved easily from older regalian practices in Catalonia. IN FACT, FOR ALL THE IMPROVEMENTS WROUGHT by Alphonse II, the Catalonian peace retained its traditional prescriptions and obligations more completely than the organized peace north of the Pyrenees: the old schedule of trucedays, restitution by convicted violators without provision for a compensatory fund, and the reservation of episcopal, baronial, and royal jurisdiction. On this last point the institutes of Bordelais and Provence were most nearly comparable; it was in the more central and southern Occitan dioceses less firmly governed that appointed men usually called paciarii formed new courts as well as militias, and this institution was to be adopted in Provence as a last resort in case of the failure of other jurisdictions. 76 Although it is likely that the princes of Bordelais, Languedoc, and Provence swore to uphold the peace in their founding assemblies, as the king and the barons certainly did in Catalonia, it was only in Languedoc and Provence, so far as we surely know, that oaths were required from all men of legal age,77 creating structures of allegiance irrelevant or antithetical to the abrasive groupings of petty lordships. Conceivably, the common oaths should be connected with the old sanctified peace which, having never affected Catalonia, resurfaced in upper Occitania around the shrines of Rocamadour and Saint-Privat in the third quarter of the twelfth century, 78 and had a famous renewal in Velay after the poor carpenter Durand's vision of the Virgin Mary in 1182. In the case of Gevaudan, where the miraculous invention of Saint-Privat about 1170 was clearly associated with local conflict, we may have an exceptional example of institutes founded or confirmed in enthusiasm. By the "golden bull" of 1161 Bishop Aldebert III (1151-87) had obtained the king's confirmation of his regalian authority; 79 no other statutes of peace for the diocese of Mende are extant; and while there is scattered evidence of earlier associative activity, it looks as if the measures of episcopal pacification so well attested in the thirteenth century derived chiefly 75 See M.-H. Vicaire, " 'L'Affaire de paix et de foi' du Midi de la France (1203-15)," Paix de Dieu et guerre sainte en Languedoc, 102-27. 76 See further below, pages, 231-2. 77 Mansi, 22: 948, art. 37; ACP, no. 57, arts, i, 2; no. 102, art. i; cf. Vermeesch, Origmesde la commune, 52. There is no evidence that the oaths of Elne were imposed on men outside the city. 78 See Les Miracles de Notre-Dame de Roc-Amadour au XII* siecle, ed. Edmond Albe (Paris, n.d.), 281-84; cf. Chromque de Robert de Tongm . . . , ed. Leopold Delisle, 2 vols. (Rouen, 1872-73), 2: 23-24; and below, note 88. Also Les Miracles de Saint Pnvat . . . , ed. Clovis Brunei (Paris, 1912), 132-33; cf. xxxii-xxxvi, and 105. 79 LTC, r. no. 168; Chromcon breve de gestis Aldeberti, ed. Brunei, Miracles de Saint Privat, 133; and for the setting, P.-A. Sigal, "Le culte des reliques en Gevaudan auxXI 6 et XII e siecles," Cevennes et Gevaudan . . . (Mende: Federation Histonque du Lsinguedoc . . . , 1974), 103-15.

230 Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours from the energetic program of Aldebert III. The better known case of 1182 in Velay reveals a characteristically enhanced potential for organization, but also the dangers of the sanctified peace. Within a year or so sworn collectives careless of seigneurial prerogatives were spreading to neighboring regions, sprouting uniforms and taxes, but rapidly losing the support of constituted authorities who alone could have secured their effective and lasting influence.80 The statutes of Montpellier (1215) perfectly evoke the seigneurial reaction, prohibiting "conjurations and conspiracies,"and permitting only such urban confraternities as are approved by lords or bishops "for urgent necessity or evident utility"—these in a provision immediately following the institutes of peace.81 Associations of the countrysides, suspect as shelters for heretics or brigands, were more often the target than the creation of the approved oaths of peace. This is one reason for doubting whether the human structures resulting from the statutory oaths in Languedoc were full-fledged associations. For Roger Bonnaud-Delamare, who emphatically rejected the idea of organizations bound by oaths, the "peace" (pax) of the Occitan texts was simply the ultraliturgical program of the Church, the "state of peace" which could be enjoined, constituted, accepted, or violated—could even, in Bonnaud's view, help lords against rebellious vassals. Being cast out of the peace (extra paceni) upon refusal to swear the peace could not refer to an association, as Georges Molinie had thought, because in that case a pre-existent community for which we have otherwise no evidence would have to be postulated. Like the taxes and peace-keepers, the oaths were an institution of the peace but not of an association.82 This conclusion is generally supported by the texts, including the statutes of Bordelais and Provence which Bonnaud-Delamare ignored. The statutes of Tarascon (1226) include the form of the sacramentwn pads, which makes clear that the approved ceremony was not a social compact but an individual commitment, however it might be multiplied. 83 This was, of course, one of the oldest customs of the Peace of God, in respect to which the only formal innovation in the institutes of Auch, Elne, Beziers, etc., had been to make specific or written provision. The peace remained in some sense the object of personal fidelity, such as kings had been in the past; this is why the device REX had given way to PAX (or PAS) on coins minted in Beam, Toulouse, Rodez, and possibly Roussillon from the end of the eleventh century, and on an obol minted as late as about 1215 in the name of Simon de Montfort, for whose subjects, encouraged by the prelates, the notion evidently retained its force.84 80 Geoffrey de Vigeois, Chromque, in Recueildes historiens, 18: 219; Chronicon anonymum Laudunense in ibid., 705; HL, 6: 106-09. 81 Mansi, 22: 949-50, art. 45. The prohibition was to be reiterated in later statutes, ACP, no. 57, art. 5; no. 102, art. 14; Mansi, 23: 203, art. 38. 82 Bonnaud-Delamare, "Legende des associations de la paix," Bull. phil. et historique, 1936-37, 47-65. 83 ACP, no. 102, art. 25. 84 See Adrien Blanche! and Adolphe Dieudonne, Manueldenumismatiquefrancatse, 4 vols. (Paris, 1912-36), 4: 32, 90, 226, 235, 350; see also J.-F. Lemarignier, in (Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier) Histoire des

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

231

But the mechanisms of vigilance and extra-judicial constraint, about which Bonnaud had less to say, were unmistakably associative in some ways, and were among the more original elements of the organized Occitan peace. The parishioners of Beziers had not only to swear the peace but to be prepared upon summons to enforce it. Although rarely attested in the twelfth-century statutes, similar militias must have been known in most of the dioceses of Occitania: we catch glimpses of them in the Toulousain (before 1200), in Comminges (1203), then in Quercy, Agenais, Gevaudan, Velay, and (perhaps) Vivarais in subsequent thirteenth-century texts which point to traditional usage; in Agenais the episcopal militia was known as the communia.*6 The best evidence comes from Gevaudan, where the enquetes beginning in 1269 produced a mass of testimony relating to the organized peace before it was superseded by the royal government. There the popular element of the peacearmy was known as the pax, an unambiguous fact which undermines Bonnaud-Delamare's otherworldly rendering of that word in like contexts.86 It can no longer be maintained that the pax which was to aid lords against insurgent vassals was solely spiritual; moreover, the formulary oath in the statutes of Tarascon speaks of the obligatory corps of enforcement as the peace to be "followed," an expression (sequi pacerri) already employed in the directive of Beziers (ca. nyo). 87 If the peace was not always quite an association, fidelity to it unquestionably entailed an associative obligation as a last resort;88 and the paciarii who swore "faithfully to administer the peace and all that pertains to the peace"89 can hardly have avoided thinking of themselves as custodians of a communal interest. First attested in the early thirteenth century, their office (as it was called in Gevaudan) was to receive complaints, to warn violators to make amends, and, if necessary, to summon the army of enforcement. By 1210 they had become instruments of the conciliar program of pacification in lower Languedoc; in August 1214 the council of Lerida made detailed provision for their popular election with episcopal consent in the cities of Catalonia; and in January 1215 the council of Montpellier defined institutions franchises au moyen age, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1957-62), 3: 51-52; and cf. Bonnaud-Delamare, "Bulle d'Alexandra III," 77, 80-81, who suggests that the PAS of the deniers of Rodez was a trinitarian motto derived from the exegesis of Atto of Vercelli and Rufinus (PL, 134: 554-55; 150: 1594): P(ater) A(lpha) X = Spiritus sanctus; hence X becomes S). 85 Bisson, Assemblies in Languedoc, 103, 111-14, 125, 132-34. To evidence cited there, add LTC, 5: no. 135, a concord involving knights of Villemur-sur-Tarn (arr. Toulouse): ". . . Violencia nulla facta sit habitantibus infra terminum, nisi pro Treva Dei et pace ejusdem treve et pacis . . . . " 86 Bisson, 112-16 (based chiefly on Arch, nat., J 894, no. 9); cf. Bonnaud-Delamare, "Legende des associations," 52-53. May not the pax at Villemur (preceding note) also have been a militia? 87 Mansi, 22: 948-49, arts. 39, 40; ACP, no. 102, arts. 19, 25; cf. above, notes 32, 63. 88 ACP, no. 102, arts. 5, 25. In at least one remarkable instance, the "pacis confederatio et amoris concordia et reformatio" sworn at Rocamadour by the barons of Quercy and by deputy consuls of Cahors and Figeac in February 1233 (Archives municipales de Cahors, AA i), there can be no doubt that a palpable association was created. Obligated to mutual aid and defense for eight years, this confederation was analogous to the temporary statutes for Albi and Bordelais (and Soissons), which are not explicitly called associations; but its immediate ancestry should probably be sought in the pacts of security or concord such as were spreading among commercial towns of the Garonne valley, e.g., Archives municipales d'Agen. Charles. Premiere sene (1189-1328), ed. Adolphe Magen and G.-E. Tholin (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 1876), nos. 14-16, 18, 26; cf. nos. 20, 21. 89 ACP, no. 102, art. 26.

232

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

their function in articles that were to be adopted by Raimond B£renger V in Provence.90 According to the statutes of Montpellier and Provence, the majores paciarii were to hold public sessions or hearings annually during the first days of May.91 In Provence these "greater peace-keepers" were identified in 1226 as the count for the "whole county" and the bishops for the dioceses, together with two or three barons chosen by each bishop with the count's consent; the structure must have been substantially the same in Languedoc, at least after

,2,5."

90 The first dated allusions to paciarii (or papers} seem to be about 1210-11, LTC, i: no. 935; Guillaume de Tudele, La Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, ed. Eugene Martin-Chabot, 3 vols. (Paris, 1931-61), i: 150; but they may have been known earlier in Quercy and Gevaudan, Bisson, Assemblies in Languedoc, 113-15, 125. See also Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 92, art. 9; Mansi, 22: 947-49, arts. 33, 34, 36, 40, 42; ACP> no. 57, arts, i, 6, 7; no. 102, arts. 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 23, 25, 26, 29. 91 Mansi, 22: 949, art. 42: "Statuimus insuper, ut singulis annis in principio Maii conveniant majores paciarii, & querimonias pacis expediant; & si aliquis articulus dubitationis occurrat, ilium prout viderint expedire declarent," Cf. ACP, no. 102, art. 10. ACP, no. 102, art. 28: "Dominus vero comes Provincie in toto comitatu suo et terra sua major est paciarius constitutus; et in singulis episcopatibus, archiepiscopus vel episcopus locorum, cum uno vel cum

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

233

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ALBiGENSiAN WAR enabled the pope, or more exactly, his legates to assume direction of the organized peace. As early as 1208 Pierre de Castelnau had secured Peter IPs participation in a conjuration "of peace" against the heretics by the magnates of eastern Occitania.93 The councils of Lerida and Montpellier were both led by the astute cardinal-legate Petrus Beneventanus who, rinding James I (1213-76) a child in tutelage and Raimond VI, the counts of Comminges and Foix, and Simon de Montfort all appealing to the pope, was tempted to impose independent ecclesiastical mechanisms of authority from the Rhone to the Ebro. This is surely why some institutions hitherto known only in Languedoc—not only the paciarii but also the general oath, now carefully distinguished from the conspiratorial oath— were legislated at Lerida in I2I4. 9 4 The interest of the Holy See derived, of course, from long-standing advocacy of the Peace and Truce. But it should not be imagined that the institutes promulgated in 1214 and 1215 were invented by the popes any more than were those of the preceding generation. As prescribed in the Second and Third Lateran Councils the pontifical program of the Peace was limited to defining the truce and enjoining bishops to help one another, and as late as 1195 the prelates of Narbonne province who assembled with the legate Michael, while confirming the peace "formerly sworn by will of the lord count of Toulouse," simply reiterated the old general precepts.95 It seems to have been between then and the outbreak of war in 1209, and without apparent urgings from the papacy, that the taxation pioneered by certain bishops and the Templars became general in the dioceses of upper and western Occitania. In the province of Narbonne the program of 1215 may be regarded as the extension and elaboration of the peace first instituted by the archbishop and the princes toward 1145, anc^ while the legates continued to insist on this program in the Midi, they made no effort to impose it elsewhere. Probably they recognized its practical limitations. Heresy aside, the kinds of violence to which the institutes were opposed were like a wind-blown grass fire. Everything depended on effective local initiatives, and not even these could prevent the ravages of needy or feuding knights or mercenaries. The Brabangons had already done their damage in Limousin when at Easter 1192 duobus de baronibus, quos ipse deputaverit ad hoc eligendos, requisita comitis voluntate." This system was slightly modified from the article of 1222, no. 57, art. 7: "Sint autem paciarii in singulis episcopatibus episcopus et unus de baronibus episcopatus, arbitrio ipsius comitis et episcopi eligendus." That no such article was included in the statutes of Montpellier points to de facto episcopal control in 1215, when the problem of higher secular authority was still unresolved in Languedoc. 93 Petn Vallium Sarnan monachi hystoria albigensis, ed. Pascal Gue"bin and Ernest Lyon, 3 vols. (Paris, 1926-39), i: 30 and note i. In 1211 the convention providing for the consuls of Montpellier to swear to the lord-bishop of Maguelone to maintain "pacem et pacis statuta" was confirmed by the legates, LTC, i : no. 960. For the general situation, see £lie Griffe, Le Languedoc cathare de ugo a 1210 (Paris, 1971), part 2. 94 Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 90-95, esp. art. 9. On the assembly of Lerida, see Ferran Soldevila, Els primers temps de Jaume I (Barcelona, 1968), 67-84. 96 Mansi, 22: 667-71; cf. Alberigo, Conciliorum decreta, 199-200, 221-22, 224-25. The council of 1195 alluded to a recent confirmation in the presence of the legate Michael at Saint-Gilles of the "pax in tota Narbonensi provincia" formerly sworn by the count of Toulouse, an act not catalogued as such by Leonard, Actes de Raymond V, and possibly other than the mstitutio pacis of ca. 1145-47.

234 Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours an aroused populace led by the bishop and viscount of Limoges routed them in battle.96 Few such direct accounts have survived for Occitania and Catalonia; and while the narrative sources clearly suggest that the proliferation of remedial institutes answered in reality to worsening conditions toward 1165-70 and 1208-14,97 there is no hard evidence to show how regularly they were invoked or administered. The retrospective testimony for Gevaudan and Quercy does prove recurrent activity, but in both regions supplementary measures were required by the 12303. Everywhere the greater aristocracy felt threatened. The Catalonian program had had to be trimmed in the time of Peter II to meet the objections of the barons whose freedom it curtailed,98 and the legate Petrus surely heard protests at Lerida in 1214. It had required a sort of conceptual mutation—and dissociation from the peace!—to reinterpret the bovatge as justified by public necessity. In Languedoc, by a process just the reverse of what happened in Catalonia, a tax that had originated as a communal utility was threatening to become a seigneurial exaction. Everywhere the reinstituted peace retained traces of an older clerical inspiration, the ''business of Jesus Christ, who is the author of peace," as the prelates put it in 1215." In church law the decretalist title De treuga etpace remained limited to the general precepts of Innocent II and Alexander III;100 nor did the Catalan-born canonist Ramon de Penyafort in his own writings think to include obligations of the peace among the impositions for public utility. It was the crusade and national war, not the peace, that would entice political thought across the threshold of a new world. NEVERTHELESS, THE MEN OF THE ORGANIZED PEACE built well. Their sworn statutes, themselves derived from private concords, furnished the procedural model for some forms of territorial legislation in the thirteenth century, notably for the statutes of Pamiers in 1212, perhaps also, via the northern experience, for contemporary Capetian etablissements.101 Their assemblies, very unlike feudal courts in this respect, were characteristically representative of the land, which thus retained its public and political identity;102 and it was 96 Chromques de Saint-Martial de Limoges, ed. Henri Duples-Agier (Paris, 1874), 190; see also 193, a similar incident in 1203. The continuing insecurity of church property in the province of Narbonne in the n8os is shown by Epistolae pontificum Romanorum ineditae, ed. Samuel Loewenfeld (Leipzig, 1885), nos. 368, 377. 97 The main texts are cited in Assemblies in Languedoc, 102-03. For the earlier troubles in Narbonnais and Roussillon, see above, page 300, and for a good account of problems in a neighboring diocese, see Andr£ Castaldo, L'eglise d'Agde (Xe-XlHf siede) (Paris, 1970), 57-94, 156-71. "This is evident not only from the draft-charter of 1205 but also from new articles in-the statutes of peace, e.g., Cortes de Cataluna, m, 80 art. 7, 82 art. n, 84 art. 16, 86-87 arts, i, 2, 5. 99 Mansi, 22: 947, art. 32. 100 Decretales Gregoni IX, 1.34; cf. ordinary gloss (as in ed. Lyon, 1553, 268), and Damasus, Summa decretalium, Rome, Biblioteca Casanat., MS. 1910, fol. 7&v. Canonist discussion tended to focus on the problem of just war in relation to the Peace and Truce, Hoffmann, Gottesfriede, 231-43. 101 Cf. ///,, 8: 625-35, with Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 55-61 (Fontaldara, 1173) w*tn respect to solemn diplomatic forms and the confirmatory oaths; these procedural forms persist in subsequent Catalonian statutes and probably influenced those of Peter IPs nephew Raimond-Berenger V in Provence. But the nature of such relationships, in the North as well as the South, is in need of further study. 102 See, e.g., the charter Cunctispateat (\ \ 18), Liber Feudorum Maior, 2: no. 691: Count Ramon Berenguer III and the bishop of Elne, "consilio et iussione magnatum et militum tocius comitatus Gerritanensis atque Confluentis, mittimus pacem in predicto comitatu . . ."; and the territorial assembly persists not only in

The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia

235

almost exclusively to corts of the peace—first in Aragon, then in Quercy, Catalonia, and probably elsewhere in the South—that the "good men" of towns and villages first came to be summoned to assemblies thereby rendered more socially representative, assemblies in which the men of the great estates of society had their first parliamentary experience.103 Already before 1200 the plena curia104 of Catalonia had become the customary occasion for the issuance of statutes of the peace and truce, a legislative tradition which was long to persist in the mature Corts of the later Middle Ages. The vicars retained charge of a higher royal jurisdiction that continued to administer the statutory and customary peace;105 and the introduction of peace-keepers (paciarii) from Languedoc in 1214 was to have some influence on the organizing of elected urban magistracies in Catalonia.106 In France, on the other hand, the great peace of 1155 was not renewed. It expired at a time when lay jurisdictions were developing a new theory of high justice107 and were coming into conflict with the courts Christian. The old association of lay and clerical authorities in the remedy of disorder could not be maintained where higher secular powers claimed a monopoly of regalian rights. Even so, Philip Augustus could grant or renew charters of urban peace that were, in their way, quite as territorial and nearly as institutionalized as any southern statutes.108 And his royal descendants would profit from the institutes of peace that they liquidated—or rather, resumed—as they came to govern in the South. For it was the bishops, notably in Gevaudan and Quercy, who had exploited the peace to rebuild the regalian power now reclaimed by Catalonia, as shown by the statutes of 1173 and after, but also in Occitania, as shown by the more fragmentary records of 1145-95 often cited above. 03 Bofarull, Documentos ineditos, 8: 36-41; Bisson, Assemblies in Languedoc, 125; cf. 103, 114-15, 133-34; Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 90-95, plus the list (now Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, pergaminos Extrainventario 3131) of those attending the cort of Lerida, 1214, reprinted from Joaquim Miret y Sans' transcription by Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume /, 83-84; and generally E. S. Procter, "The Development of the Catalan Corts in the Thirteenth Century," Homenatge a Antoni Rubib i Lluch. Miscellania . . . , 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1936), 3: 528-36. 104 For early evidence of this term, see Marco, hispamca, app., no. 431; Liber Feudorum Motor, i : nos. 225, 416; 2: no. 681; Cortes de Cataluna, 1:1, 62-63. 105 This was confirmed in 1214, when the vicar's function was redefined (Cortes, 1:1, 92, art. 9), making him the king's coadjutor of the newly-constituted paciarii. 106 See J. M. Font Rius, Origenes'del regimen municipal de Cataluna (Madrid, 1946), 316-25, 479. The municipal government in some places, notably Lerida and Tortosa, was later known as paena. The convention of 1211 at Montpellier, LTC, i : no. 960 (see above, note 93) suggests that the consuls there were already paciarii in all but name. On the other hand, the delayed institution of consulates in Albigeois, Quercy, and Gevaudan may have been related to the strength of the organized peace as well as to the retarded influence of Roman law: cf. Andr£ Gouron, "Diffusion des consulats m£ridionaux et expansion du droit remain aux XII e et XIII e siecles," Bibl. EC. Charles, 121 (1963): 26-76. 107 Or repressive justice; cf. A. C. F. Koch, "L'origine de la haute et de la moyenne justice dans 1'ouestet le nord de la France," Revue d'Histoire du Droit, 31 (1953): 420-58, with the critique by Bernard Guenee, Tnbunaux et gens de justice dans le bailliage de Senlis . . . (Paris, 1963), 79-81. 108 Ch. Petit-Dutaillis, Les communes franchises. Caracteres et evolution des ongmes au XV1IP siecle (Paris, 1947), 83-103; and see also Paul Viollet, Droit public. Histoire des institutions politiques et admimstratives de la France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1890-1903), 3: 55-56; Kennelly, "Medieval Towns and the Peace of God," 44-53; and Vermeesch, Ongmes de la commune. In Burgundy the peace sworn by the magnates in 1153 was renewed at least once in later years, Cartulaire de Saint-Vincent de Macon . . . , ed. M.-C. Ragut (Macon, 1864), cclviii-cclix; PL, 200: 249; in Berry, where the precedents had been very strong, the archbishop's peace, including a sworn commitment to "follow the communta," persisted in the thirteenth century, Hoffman, Cottesfnede, 106-15; Devailly, Berry, 490, but cf. 381-445, and see also next note.

236

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours 109

the king. The organized peace was the dominant if not quite the only coercive structure in much of Languedoc during the troubled generation of the Albigensian crusades. Firmly continuous with the novel impulses first perceptible in the third quarter of the twelfth century, it persisted in upper Occitania well into the reign of Louis IX, it faded more rapidly in lower Languedoc, where royal government was instituted as early as 1226, and it ceased to be legislated in southern France after 1226 (Provence) and 1233 (Toulouse and Quercy).110 The organized peace can perhaps be regarded as the final expression of a basically Carolingian form of government. For all its pragmatic originality, i preserved the old condominia of higher clergy and baronage which, as we are now learning, had survived the age of ecclesiastical reform.111 It flourished only where older notions of fidelity and property had survived or where lay powers had failed the Carolingian tests. It was adaptable to regimes feudal, patrimonial, allodial, or urban, which it purported to secure, not replace. The southern military aristocracies might grumble about its restrictions, as did the Catalan barons under Peter II, but they had no thought of overturning it, for they had never imagined a feudalism either productive or destructive of public order. 109 I attempted to make this clear in Assemblies in Languedoc, 112, 115, 118-21, 124, 233; for the senechaussees of lower Languedoc, see HL, 8: 1422-26, 1705-06. Royal authority had penetrated too early and too often in Berry and Auvergne for the organized peace to develop the autonomous strength it had in some southern dioceses of the province of Bourges; that the kings understood the geopolitical circumstances is made perfectly clear by the "golden bull" for Gevaudan, 1161 (LTC, i: no. 168): "Tota terra ilia [Gevaudan] difficilima aditu et montuosa, in potestate episcoporum semper extiterit, non tantum ad faciendam ecclesiasticam censuram, sed etiam ad judicandum in gladio super illos quos culpa sua monstrabat sic redarguendos." 110 The statutes of Toulouse, chiefly concerned with heresy, merely allude to the peace as still in force, HL, 8: 963-69; for the new temporary confederation in Quercy, see above, note 88. 1 * See Magnou-Nortier, Soci'ete laique et I'eglise, chs, 3, 4, 6, arid 550-64; cf. Bonnassie, Catatogne, i : ch. 2. As Bonnassie shows, Catalonian public structures were in most respects less influenced by Prankish than by Visigothic law, but the higher ecclesiastical order was subject to Narbonne in the generations when the (Carolingian) peace movement spread to Catalonia Breaches of the peace were to be prosecuted "utroque gladio," according to the council fathers in 1215, Mansi, 22: 948, art. 39.

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 11 P. 306 note 85, add: see also Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. H.-Fr. Delaborde et al., 4 vols. to date (Paris, 1916-1980), no. 1571.

12

THE PROBLEM OF FEUDAL MONARCHY: ARAGON, CATALONIA, AND FRANCE* FEUDALISM is an old and stubborn interest of American medievalists. Among the founding members of the Mediaeval Academy (to go back no further), C. H. Raskins showed what the obligations attached to fiefs contributed to the building of sturdy Norman governments; C. H. Mcllwain attributed to feudal tenure a considerable influence in the rise of European constitutionalism; while Carl Stephenson, addressing himself to the institutional significance of vassalic-feudal relations, concluded (consistently with Haskins and Mcllwain) that "feudalism was not of necessity anarchic." That such distinguished scholars as these came to agreement on the potentially constructive function of feudalism was neither accidental nor unimportant. They were building on an illustrious tradition in European scholarship which, in the work of their contemporaries Guilhiermoz, Mitteis, Ganshof, and Bloch, was being reinterpreted in similar ways, and they stimulated some of their ablest students to persist in the serious study and teaching of a subject which is today familiar to every American student of medieval history.1 Familiar but, all too often, terrifying. Even if we succeed in getting freshmen to see the difference between a fief and a fife, even if we get so far as distinguishing between a vassal and a peasant (that distinction so badly muddled by Marc Bloch's Feudal Society, surely one of the most dangerous books ever put into the hands of American students), a deadly quagmire still lies ahead: that of saying what feudalism was, or rather (since medieval people neglected to define it) what it is. A learned American historian has recently discovered something less than perfect agreement among modern scholars as to which definition is correct, a discovery which cannot help but arouse our suspicion about the doctrines being professed in their classrooms. * Read at the fiftieth annual meeting of The Mediaeval Academy of America in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 19 April 1975. For helpful criticism I am indebted to several friends and colleagues (who otherwise bear no responsibility for my conclusions): Professors John W. Baldwin, Robert J. Brentano, Fredric Cheyette and Joseph R. Strayer. 1 See Charles H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, Mass., 1918); Charles H. Mcllwain, "Medieval Estates," The Cambridge Medieval History 7 (Cambridge, 1932), ch. 23; idem, The Growth of Political Thought in the West . . . (New York, 1932), ch. 6 and pp. 388-389; cf. idem, Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern, rev. ed. (Ithaca, 1947), chs. 4, 5; Carl Stephenson, "The Origin and Significance of Feudalism," American Historical Review 46 (1941), 788-812, esp. 808-812 (reprinted in Mediaeval Institutions, Selected Essays, ed. Bryce D. Lyon [Ithaca, 1954], pp. 205-233, esp. pp. 229-233); Paul Guilhiermoz, Essai sur les origines de la noblesse en France au moyenage (Paris, 1902); HeHrich Mitteis, Lehnrecht und Staatsgewalt (Weimar, 1933); Marc Bloch, La societe feodale . . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1939-1940), trans. L. A. Manyon as Feudal Society (Chicago, 1961); F. L. Ganshof, Qu'est-ce que lafeodalite (Brussels, 1944; 3d French ed., 1957), trans. Philip Grierson as Feudalism, 3d English ed. (London, 1964). Many other modern works on feudalism, some of them very important, could, of course, be listed.

23 8

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

But historians' definitions need not get in the way of historical realities, and feudalism is after all so congenial a tyrant that I have to wonder whether Professor Brown will have any more success deposing him than had Maitland or Richardson and Sayles.2 Some of the very historians who can be convicted of originality in their definitions of feudalism have made the most valuable contributions to our knowledge of the institutions so imperfectly denoted by the term, or by any one term. Nor is this a paradox, for even if historians have trouble agreeing on conceptual or sociological definitions,3 they do not ordinarily make the mistake of relying on such definitions in their research, for they have no disagreement over the elemental subject matter of feudalism — namely, vassals, lords of vassals, and fiefs — a definition itself, this list; not a very illuminating definition, to be sure, but a very practical one. On this definition, but for that matter on most others, too, there now seem to have been a number of different "feudalisms" or feudal "structures" of society and power in the European west, and the historian's task is to describe the function of lordship, vassalage, and the fief as so many changing and measurable variables in a total historical experience in which they were more or less, but always differently, important. The need for such an approach is illustrated by the study of medieval kingship. With the increased stress on statebuilding by historians of the past generation, feudalism became nearly synonymous with "feudal monarchy." This term, already used by John La Monte in reference to the crusader kingdom,4 was rendered familiar by Charles Petit-Dutaillis's La Monarchic feodale en France et en Angleterre . . . (1933), a book which was soon translated into English with the title Feudal Monarchy . . . and which has been widely read. But Petit-Dutaillis meant nothing very specific by his title: his object, as he said, was "to study the development of the . . . monarchy in the framework of feudalism."5 Like other historians he was inclined to regard "feudal forms" or "principles" as either retardants or implements of royal power, depending on their nature, and he thought it axiomatic that the Capetians were suzerains of the territorial princes of France from the time of their accession in 987. With him, as with almost everyone else, Ferdinand Lot's 2 Elizabeth A. R. Brown, "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe," American Historical Review 79 (1974), 1063-1088; see pp. 1063-1067 for works of Maitland, Richardson and Sayles. 3 Such as those of Bloch (a form of society) or of Stephenson and Strayer (a form of government). 4 John L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100 to 1291 (Cambridge, Mass., 1932). 5 Charles Petit-Dutaillis, La Monarchie feodale en France et en Angleterre, Xe—XIIIe siecle (Paris, 1933), trans. E. D. Hunt as The Feudal Monarchy in France and England from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century (London, 1936); see Monarchie feodale, pp. 1-3, 5 (Feudal Monarchy, pp. 1-3, 7). Sidney Painter, The Rise of the Feudal Monarchies (Ithaca, 1951), was hardly more precise on this point, either in his definition (p. 4) or in his treatment. Some influence of the familiar general concept may perhaps be discerned in Hans Kammler, Die Feudalmonarchien: Politische und wirtschafthch-soziale Faktoren ihrer Entwicklung und Funktionsweise (Kdln, 1974), a sociological study which is, unfortunately, of little use for the historical problem as I conceive it.

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

23 9

conception of the French constitution as fundamentally feudal reigned supreme, and it was perhaps symptomatic of the master's state of mind (or of what some imagined it to be, for I have it on good authority that the story is apocryphal) that when sought out by an American graduate student claiming to have been sent by the duke, Lot is said to have replied that if Haskins was the duke, he (Lot) was the king. Now the fault of this system lay not so much in its doctrine as in its rigidity. Lot had indeed shown, as against Jacques Flach, that the principle of royal suzerainty survived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.6 What he had not done was to analyze the practical and conceptual characteristics of this suzerainty or to appreciate its obvious limitations; nor were PetitDutaillis or Robert Fawtier thereafter to investigate how (or whether) the earlier Capetian kings conceived of feudal lordship as a political or administrative resource.7 Nevertheless, the later work of Louis Halphen and Marc Bloch showed their awareness of what needed to be done, and J.-Fr. Lemarignier can even be credited with making a major contribution to our understanding of this problem.8 Outside France Walther Kienast's book on the subject oath, Bryce Lyon's on the fief-rente and the demonstrations by F. L. Ganshof and J. R. Strayer of structural changes in feudalism have likewise reduced our ignorance while sharpening the focus.9 All of this recent work, today supplemented by a remarkable new literature on the provincial societies of West Frankland,10 has contributed to the review of the nature and 6

Ferdinand Lot, Fideles ou vassaux? Essai sur la nature juridique du lien qui unissait les grands vassaux a la royaute depuis le milieu du IXe jusqu'd la fin du XHe siecle (Paris, 1904); cf. Jacques Flach, Les Origines de I'ancienne France . . . , 4 vols. (Paris, 1886-1917). 7 Petit-Dutaillis, as cited in note 5; Robert Fawtier, Les Capetiens et la France: Leur Role dans sa construction (Paris, 1942), trans. Lionel Butler and R. J. Adam, The Capetian Kings of France. Monarchy & Nation (987-1328) (London, 1960), together with Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, Histoire des institutions francaises du moyen age, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1957—1962), volume 2. 8 Articles by Louis Halphen collected in A travers Vhistoire du moyen age (Paris, 1950), part 5 esp. articles 3, 4, and 7, the latter entitled "La place de la royaute dans le systeme feodal," first published in 1932-1933; Bloch, Societe feodale; and Jean-Fr. Lemarignier, Recherches sur I'hommage en marche et les frontieres feodales, Travaux et Memoires de 1'Universite de Lille, nouv. ser. Droit et Lettres 24 (Lille, 1945), and Le Gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capetiens (987-1108) (Paris, 1965). 9 Walther Kienast, Untertaneneid und Treuvorbehalt in Frankreich und England: Studien zur vergleichenden Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Weimar, 1952); Bryce D. Lyon, From Fief to Indenture: The Transition from Feudal to Non-Feudal Contract in Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); Ganshof, Feodalite (Feudalism), part 3; Joseph R. Strayer, "The Two Levels of Feudalism," Life and Thought in the Early Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Hoyt (Minneapolis, 1967), pp. 51-65; and idem, "The Development of Feudal Institutions," Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society, ed. Marshall Clagett, Gaines Post and Robert Reynolds (Madison, 1961), pp. 77-88. The two latter essays are reprinted in Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History: Essays by Joseph R. Strayer (Princeton, 1971). 10 Of these works, the most important, in my judgment, for the enhancement of our knowledge of vassalic and feudal institutions are Georges Duby, La Societe aux Xle et XHe siecles dans la region maconnaise (Paris, 1953; repr. 1971); Jean-Fr. Lemarignier, as cited in note 8; Robert Fossier, La Terre et les hommes en Picardie jusqu'd la fin du XIHe siecle, 2 vols. (Paris-Louvain, 1968);

240

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

purpose of royal lordship over vassals and fiefs which follows here. My discussion is limited concretely to France and the incipient Crown of Aragon, affording a comparison which, since it is not to be found in the existing scholarship, may help to put some relatively familiar French circumstances in a fresh light. Let us begin with Aragon, that landlocked Pyrenean realm which had originated in the Spanish Reconquista.11 In 1137 the monk-king Ramiro betrothed his heiress daughter to Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona, thereby launching the dynastic union of Catalonia and Aragon. Renouncing his own authority, the king ceded to the prince consort Ramon "all men [homines] of the aforesaid kingdom [Aragon] under homage and oath, that they may be faithful to you concerning your life and your body . . . and all the kingdom. . . ,"12 Did this act mean what it seems to say: that all free men13 of Aragon were the king's vassals (obligated to homage as well as to fealty)? Almost certainly it did mean virtually that. The strongest reason for supposing so is that we possess a list of some 450 Aragonese men who did perform fealty and homage to Ramon Berenguer IV; their names are grouped according to some eleven castle towns, and while we cannot imagine that this list refers to all the free men of these places, much less of the remote hamlets, it does have every appearance of answering to the prescribed right of the count-prince to obtain the homages and fealties of "all men" in Aragon.14 It is true that this list is confined to Old Aragon and the adjacent frontier to the west and south, but this is no reason for doubting that other such circuits for other groups of Aragonese communities were made or intended; on the contrary, we have also the form of the oath of fealty sworn by "all the burghers of Huesca" in 1137. Nor can it be doubted that the Aragon envisaged in the act of cession was any less extensive than Olivier Guillot, Le Comte d'Anjou et son entourage au Xle siecle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1972); Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, La Societe laique et Veglise dans la province ecclesiastique de Narbonne . . . de la fin du VIIIe a la fin du Xle siecle (Toulouse, 1974); and Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du Xe a la fin du Xle siecle: Croissance et mutations d'une societe, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1975-1976). 11 On the early history of Aragon, see Jose Maria Lacarra, Aragon en elpasado (Madrid, 1972), pp. 13-83; " 'Honores' et 'tenencias' en Aragon (Xle siecle)," Les Structures sociales de VAquitaine, du Languedoc et de VEspagne au premier age feodal . . . (Paris, 1969), pp. 143-177. 12 Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archive general de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 47 vols, to date (Barcelona, 1847-1974), 4:no. 24: "Et comendo tibi [Ramiro to Ramon Berenguer] omnes prephati regni homines sub hominio et juramento ut sint tibi fideles de vita tua et de corpore tuo et de omnibus membris que in corpore tuo se tenent sine omni fraude et decepcione et ut sint tibi fideles de omni regno pretitulato et universis omnibus ad illud regnum pertinentibus salva fidelitate mei et filie mee." 13 It seems clear that we must interpret the omnes . . . homines as exclusive of rural subtenants and mudejar farmers who did not bear arms, although they too (as was customary elsewhere) must have been regarded as fideles de . . . regno. To a degree still incompletely elucidated, although by a process understood in general terms, the nonmilitary class in Aragon was losing its liberty as it expanded in the twelfth century. 14 Documentos ineditos, 4:no. 159; see also no. 25, and Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Sobre demograffa aragonesa del siglo XII," Estudios de edad media de la Corona de Aragon 7 (1962), 578-59

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

241

the full range of lands formerly subject to Alphonse I "th« Battler" (11041134); a baronial custom evidently applicable uniformly to the enlarged Aragon had been redefined at Zaragoza in 1134, and the towns of Old and New Aragon were already associated in the earliest well-recorded general assembly of Aragon (1164).15 Moreover, the presumption that the king was already entitled to vassalic professions from all the Aragonese freeholders is supported by dramatic evidence from the early thirteenth century. At a great court held at Daroca in 1228, King James I secured for his infant son the homage and fealty of the magnates and leading townsmen of Aragon, the latter performing these acts for themselves and for all the other men of no less than thirty towns.16 Despite the representative form of these acts, which undoubtedly diluted the effect of the homage, the obligation clearly lay on the individual townsman, not on the town as such. Thus in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries Aragon was, at least in theory, virtually a nation of king's vassals. This theory evidently arose from two traditional Aragonese circumstances: the king's overriding protectorate of the realm, and the ever increasing number of political-military tenancies granted directly in homage and fealty by the triumphant kings of the Reconquest.17 The sovereign of such a small and embattled land, formerly a count himself, whose power had been constructed on personal fidelities, could still reasonably expect to hold the hands of every free man on the occasions of his courts and expeditions, and the fundamental obligation thus recognized was military. But these homages were personal, not tenurial; only a limited effort was made to proportion obligatory service to the size and value of holdings or property, nor had the king any other rights over his commended men capable of being attached to land. On the other hand, there had emerged as early as 1100 two privileged classes among the free men of Aragon, the infanfones and barones, and to some of these men the kings granted lands together with administrative rights which bear some analogy to the fiefs of other regions. These tenancies, known as honores, are remarkable in two respects, as Lacarra has shown. First, the king reserved an important share of their fiscal proceeds, normally one-half; and second, the honor reverted to the king's domain upon the death of its tenant.18 The honor regis was virtually public land, its integrity unimpaired by its partial and temporary delegation to men who were barons in a primordial sense of the word: close personal associates of their lord. In short, geographical and military circumstances, not to mention the 15

Documentos inecUtos, 4:no. 25; Lacarra, " 'Honores' et 'tenencias' en Aragon," pp. 176-177; Documentos ineditos, 8:no. 10. A general court had been held at Borja (south of the Ebro) in 1134, Geronimo Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, 1, c. 53; ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta and Maria Desamparados Perez Soler, 4 vols. to date (Valencia, 1967-1972), 1:208-209. 16 Thomas N. Bisson, "A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, February 1228)," English Historical Review 92 (1977), 107-124; above, chapter 2, 31-48. 17 In addition to works cited in note 11, see Agustin Ubieto Arteta, Los "tenentes" en Aragon y Navarra en los siglos XI y XII (Valencia, 1973). 18 Lacarra, " 'Honores' et 'tenencias' en Aragon," pp. 147-177.

242

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

extraordinary vigor of her twelfth-century rulers, enabled Aragon to combine the advantages of elemental vassalic loyalty and a strong sense of public order. To say of such a land that it was incompletely feudalized would be to miss the point. The striking thing about Aragon is that its vassalic obligation was territorialized, to the king's advantage, before any tendency for commended men to confuse conditional holdings with allodial, or otherwise to aggrandize rights in land, could become customary. It was characteristic that when the viscounty of Beam passed under the tutelage of Aragon in 1154, the prince-count Ramon Berenguer should have asked for (or, at any rate, have received) the homage and fealty of all the men of the viscounty acting explicitly for themselves and for the others not present in the ceremonial assembly.19 Vassalage in these lands — the pre-existent and natural condition of the king's territorial order — may have been little more than a reinforcement of fidelity, but it implied a systematic structure of power untroubled by the anomalies of private or fragmented right. It implied subjection. Turning next to Catalonia, the picture there is more complicated. The Prankish March of Spain had formerly been divided into some nine counties, and while the counts of Barcelona had clung to the claim and the appearance of primacy, their power had been gravely challenged from within as well as without in the eleventh century. It was only in circumstances like those in contemporary Normandy — a desperate struggle by Ramon Berenguer I against the viscounts and greater castellans (1040-1060) — that the dynasty of Guifred the Hairy succeeded in maintaining its territorial principate. By the early twelfth century, when Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona inherited the counties of Besalii and Cerdanya and led the first expedition against the Moors in the Balearic Islands, a nation, already spoken of as Catalonia and looking to Barcelona for its law, was forming around his dynasty.20 This political success was compounded of extraordinary personal leadership, wealth derived from Moorish tribute, and the control of castles. But it did not achieve a monopoly of castles, nor was it very systematically feudal. Although Pierre Bonnassie has described the new order imposed by Ramon Berenguer I as an "etat feodal," the feudal component, strictly speaking, was still less important than the vassalic. For while a "hierarchic des hommages" does, indeed, become perceptible by 1100, there was no hierarchy of fiefs, so that the homages of the great men had to be renewed in every generation for the prince to retain his authority. 21 The eleventh-century principate having been a family condominium of counties loosely and personally tied by conventions, Ramon Berenguer I vigorously reimposed and strengthened 19

Documentos ineditos, 4:no. 81. Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, Els primers comtes Catalans, 2d ed. (Barcelona, 1965); Santiago Sobreques i Vidal, Els grans comtes de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1961); Bonnassie, Catalogue. 21 Bonnassie, Catalogue, 2, ch. 13, esp. pp. 686, 705-711. 20

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

243

these conventions after 1060;22 but neither he nor his successors attempted to redefine the counties themselves as feudal tenures. On the contrary, their objective was to resume direct control of the counties the better to preserve the old structure of public honors and courts; this territorial reconstruction of the old Spanish March, already far advanced by 1118, was virtually complete by the century's end.23 On the other hand, the eleventh-century counts of Barcelona, competing freely for warriors among the seething military clienteles of a dangerous and rewarding frontier, contributed powerfully to the feudalizing and fortifying of the rural settlements. Their cbnditional grants of castles not only greatly expanded the class of tenants-in-chief but provided a counterpoise against the powerful viscounts, who survived in every county. The magnates so rewarded typically held their castellanies "in fief" (per fevum) according to obligations military, consultative and ceremonial created by homage and fealty. Their homage was emphatically tenurial. Yet their tenures were significantly restricted, as a rule. The castles were to be restored upon the prince's demand, even castles whose castlans did homage and fealty to intermediate barons; the counts habitually reserved criminal justice together with a portion of the other fiscal rights (these rights to be administered by officers other than the castle-holders); and the concessions were seldom made hereditary. In short, these enfeoffments can be regarded as administrative acts. Some of the grants, if not most, were conceived as having been made from new or eminent domain as distinct from the old comital honors, some of which, for their part, in a way of which we know very little, may have been granted in fief to the older comital aristocracy known from the mid-eleventh century as comtores. Certainly the newly built Catalonia knew feudal administrators in a precise sense.24 Now the scene I have just sketched is consistent with the famous legal compilation known as the Usatges of Barcelona, but it does not — and cannot — depend on the Usatges. For in one of the most important new revisions in medieval Hispanic studies, we have been brought to understand that the Usatges (with very few exceptions) date not from the eleventh century, as they purport, but from the middle of the twelfth. Produced at the behest of the 22

This is one of Bonnassie's important discoveries, ibid., pp. 698-701. After the acquisition of Pallars jussa (1192) by the count-king Alphonse I, only Urgell and the. minor counties of Pallars sobira and Empuries remained independent of the house of Barcelona. 24 For illustrative texts, see Liber Feudorum Maior, ed. Francisco Miquel Resell, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947; to be cited asLFM), l:nos. 40, 45, 114, 151, 165, 166, 171, 174, 179, 186, 227, 232, 255, 265, 282, 301, 451, 485, etc. But the sketch given in this paragraph must be regarded as provisional. A thorough study of the unprinted and undated parchments in the chancery series of the Archive de la Corona de Aragon together with those in the LFM is needed to clarify the main characteristics and tendencies in comital grants from the mideleventh to the mid-twelfth century. On the comtores, or comtors, see now Bonnassie, Catalogue 2:785-797, together with the references assembled in the Glossarium mediae latinitatis Cataloniae . . . , ed. Mariano Bassols de Climent et al., 7 fascicules to date (Barcelona, 1960-1976), fasc. 5 569-571. 23

244

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

powerful Ramon Berenguer IV, probably in the heady days when Tortosa and Lerida were conquered, they are the work of a compiler reorganizing older compilations together with new legislation; and although the extent of his revisions remains unclear, the political conceptions of the composite Usatges must be reassessed accordingly.25 The victories of Ramon Berenguer IV and his father, like those of the eleventh century, had been fashioned from vassalic services which were rewarded by grants of fiefs. It is in the Usatges, if anywhere, that we might expect to find evidence of a systematizing or extending of vassalic and feudal principles to the prince's advantage. What, in fact, do we find? We find something quite different. There are, indeed, articles (famous articles) relating to vassalic fidelity and obligations, to wardships, to recovery of castles, to successions to fiefs; we can, indeed, speak of the Usatges as a feudal code, or more exactly, as a law of fiefs, something made necessary, in the words of article 81, because the Visigothic law had nothing to say about homage.26 But the striking thing about these articles, from the point of view taken here, is that they make no overriding provision for the rights of the prince-count (princeps): there is no insistence on prerogative wardship, no mention of aids and incidents such as might be engrossed by an overlord; nor would the reserve of fealty as specified in article 48 have been of much use to a "power" who still (ca. 1150 or before) lacked authority in the counties of Empuries, Pallars, Roussillon and Urgell.27 The strictly feudal or vassalic provisions, although they tend to reinforce the discretionary rights of lords as against vassals, make little distinction between the count of Barcelona and other "solid" (that is, liege) lords. Their effect is to establish a custom applicable to all lords, vassals and fiefs. But the Usatges are not solely, are not even primarily, I think, a feudal code. They are a regalian code, and the regulation of homages and fiefs is merely one element in a rather comprehensive law of property, status, and public security. And it is precisely in the nonfeudal provisions for public order that we find the legal and theoretical assertions of princely authority in Catalonia. All men, not merely vassals, have the solemn obligation to aid the prince in time of general war or invasion. All men — nobles, nonnobles, merchants — are under the Peace and Truce, whose guarantor is the count or prince. All men, without exception, are bound to negotiate or fight with 25 The new dating was proposed by Ramon d'Abadal in late work. It has been resourcefully confirmed by Bonnassie, Catalogue 2:711-728, and now, with important qualifications, by Joan Bastardas i Parera, Sobre la problematica dels Usatges de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1977). 28 Usatges de Barcelona, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals and Ferran Vails Taberner, Textes de dret catala 1 (Barcelona, 1913), articles 23, 26, 29-44, 46-48, 50, 57, 67, 71, 81, 115, 132, 135, 136. 27 Ibid., art. 48: "Omnes homines a vicecomitibus usque ad inferiores milites eorum honorem tenentes debent ad potestatem jurare fidelitatem et suum honorem per sacramentale scriptum, illi videlicet de quibus potestas voluerit." As Bonnassie suggests, this article recalls the effort of Ramon Berenguer I to secure himself against multiple castle holders by requiring direct professions of fealty from the castlans, Catalogue 2:696-698.

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

245

Saracens according to the prince's direction. The prince (or count) alone can fortify, punish high crimes or delegate these powers, or confirm the Peace and Truce. Violations of the Peace, of the law of fortifications or of the coinage, are in the jurisdiction of the prince and of his court, for in the ringing words of article 66: "faith and justice and peace and the truth of the prince, by which the whole realm is governed, are worth the realm and more than the realm."28 In twelfth-century Catalonia no seigniorial jurisdiction was yet exclusive or thoroughgoing, no lord could lawfully withdraw his men from the protection and demands of the prince. The vassalic and feudal structures, military and economic, were adjuncts to an authority built theoretically upon Romanist fidelity and majesty. The great prince-counts were grafting a Prankish (or neo-Frankish) custom of fiefs onto Roman-Visigothic principles of public order. These rulers continued to think of feudal grants as conditional rewards made from public domain, and such grants could be made at all levels. In 1148 the powerful count of Urgell received major fiscal and administrative rights in Lerida per fevum from Ramon Berenguer IV, a decisive incentive for his aid in that city's impending reconquest; and in 1151 an inventory of the prince's domains in his six counties of Old Catalonia shows the bailiffs in some places holding their manses or food-renders pro fevo comitis.29 In neither case, however, was real autonomy or judicial power assigned. The law of fiefs remained a part of public administration. In the next two generations this monarchical structure was badly threatened. With the aristocracy multiplying and the conquests slackening, it became difficult once again to control the castles or to enforce public order. To deal with these problems, three kinds of remedy were attempted, and it is in these attempts that we can see most clearly the singular blend of regalian and feudal principles that marked the Catalonian constitution. First, the efforts of third- and fourth-generation castellans to turn remote castles into allods were countered by firm judicial actions based directly on the written conventions preserved in the count-king's archives; and it was very certainly in order to secure the ruler's interest in these cases that the great cartulary later to be known as the Liber Feudorum Maior was compiled at the king's order in the 1190s.30 But the Liber Feudorum was exclusively a land book concerned with proprietary or reversionary right, and there is no reason to suppose that it was connected with any systematic effort to strengthen suzerain rights or vassalic obligations. On the contrary, it shows the count-prince doing homage for certain fiefs to his prelates at the very time when the king of France was contriving to avoid such acts.31 Secondly, ™Usatges, arts. 61-66, 68, 93-95, 97, 123. 29 LFM, l:no. 161; Archive de la Corona de Aragon (hereafter ACA), Cancilleria, pergaminos Ramon Berenguer IV, 233. 30 LFM, Irnos. 225, 243, 483; 2, no. 511; ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 359, 629; cf. Ramon de Caldes's prologue to the LFM, 1:1, and no. 253. 31 LFM, l:nos. 247, 254. See also Documentos de Jaime I de Aragon, ed. Ambrosio Huici Miranda and Maria Desamparados Cabanes Pecourt, 2 vols. to date (Valencia, 1976), l:no. 55.

246

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Alphonse I (1162-1196), following his father's example in Aragon, tried to increase the number of vassals holding directly to the crown. When the men of Perpignan submitted to him upon the death of the last independent count of Roussillon in 1172, they did homage as well as fealty, and the same thing seems to have happened at Melgueil and elsewhere.32 Within Catalonia more and more minor knights or free men converted their allods into fiefs held in homage and fealty of the count-king.33 On the other hand, and this is my third point, the ruler continued to rely upon and strengthen his regalian powers, much as defined in the Usatges, for the maintenance of order and justice. His great curia was not so much a vassalic assembly as a territorialpublic one; his legislation, growing out of (and outgrowing) the Peace and Truce of God, applied from 1173 on to a Catalonia so-called within definite physical boundaries; his taxation, deriving from sovereign powers to protect and defend, differed profoundly from the feudal aids of northern custom; and his criminal jurisdiction and enforcement was entrusted to agents, called vicars, responsible only to the king.34 The only thing lacking to this regalian order was the political support of the barons whose freedom it curtailed, a critical defect that probably goes far to explain the new Catalan imperialism of the thirteenth century.35 Down past 1200, however, Catalonia remained more feudal and less vassalic than Aragon. By no means all the free peasants who sought the royal protection became vassals holding in homage and fealty, nor were military tenures confused with agrarian ones in the old Catalan lands. The higher feudal order remained chiefly a system of public and revocable rewards having little to do with police, justice, and finance, which continued to be organized on regalian or public principles. It was in some respects a deeply conservative system of government, preserving (or reviving) some of the characteristics discovered in much earlier periods by Archibald Lewis, Elisabeth MagnouNortier, and Pierre Bonnassie; how such a structure survived or was reconstituted after the great social upheaval of the eleventh century is not the least 32 LFM, 2:nos. 793, 801, 869, 870 (despite the criticism of Federico Udina Martorell, Estudios de edad media de la Corona de Aragon 7 [1962], 573, I think it likely that no. 869 dates from the time of Alphonse I); LFM, l:no. 167; cf. 2:nos. 854, 862. 33 LFM, linos. 87, 201, 402, 456, 483; ACA, perg. Alfonso I, 134, 222; cf. LFM, l:nos. 309, 401. 34 LFM, l:nos. 225, 413; 2:no. 681; Thomas N. Bisson, "Une paix peu connue pour le Roussillon (A.D. 1173)," Droit prive et institutions regionales: Etudes historiques offertes a Jean Yver (Paris, 1976), pp. 69-76; "The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia ca. 11401233," American Historical Review 82 (1977), 291, 297-299, 302-304; Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1922), 1, part 1, pp. 55-95; cf. Usatges, art. 124; Jesus Lalinde Abadia, La Jurisdiccion real inferior en Cataluna ("Corts, veguers, batlles") (Barcelona, 1966), pp. 69-75. The vicars of the peace may sometimes have held fiefs — this is not yet clear—but they were certainly removable. 35 See Thomas N. Bisson, "An 'Unknown Charter' for Catalonia (A.D. 1205)," Album Elemer Mdlyusz: Etudes presentees a la Commission Internationale pour I'Histoire des Assemblies d'Etats 56 (1976), pp. 61-76. For a reassessment of thirteenth-century policy, see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean. Empire, 1229-1327, English Historical Review, Supplement 8 (1975).

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

247

of the problems which Dr. Bonnassie's masterly work has posed for historians of twelfth-century Catalonia.36 And so we arrive at the case of France. How did the early Capetian kings conceive of their suzerain rights over vassals and fiefs and how far did they rely on these powers in their exercise of authority? These questions are much harder to answer than those for Catalonia and Aragon. Early Capetian France came in poorly assorted sizes and shapes: it was either the dynastic homeland (the Ile-de-France) or the greater West Prankish realm. And for neither of these regions do we have such evidence as for the Pyrenean realms: no formulations of feudal or regalian custom, no assertions or recognitions of comprehensive suzerain rights, and astonishingly few records concerning the tenure of royal fiefs. On the other hand, all the appearances are such as to suggest that the early Capetians were thoroughly cognizant of their suzerain powers — having first risen to power with the support of local military clienteles, they can have had no illusions about the need of vassal warriors. Ferdinand Lot, to repeat, demonstrated the persistence of royal primacy over the great princes; and we know from early eleventh-century records that Robert the Pious tried to reserve his discretionary powers over the great fiefs. In any case, we also happen to know that Philip Augustus lost some of his records on the battlefield of Freteval in 1194, so that we must be cautious with any argument founded on our lack of feudal records before that time.37 Nevertheless, for all of the evidence that Capetian France arose "in the framework of feudalism," as Petit-Dutaillis put it, I believe there is good reason to doubt that she was yet a very "feudal" monarchy in the twelfth century, to doubt whether the kings at that time, whatever their notion of suzerainty, tried seriously to exploit rights over vassals and fiefs. For one thing, on close inspection, it seems that Lot was by no means so completely right in his dispute with Flach and others as was once thought. Much of Lot's evidence dates from the later twelfth century and after.38 In the evidence f ,r the earlier period, there is no very continuous tradition of homage or service of the great vassals. Moreover, there is almost no evidence of any kind for the holding of duchies and counties, as such, as fiefs. Olivier Guillot has shown that for some time in the eleventh century, the count of Anjou was the king's vassal not for the county but for a few petty lands; Professor Duby has remarked the same thing of the county of Macon well into the thirteenth century; while Professor Lemarignier has contended that the very idea of a 36 In addition to the works cited above in note 10, see Archibald R. Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050 (Austin, 1965). The princely exploitation of regalian and feudal right in twelfth-century Catalonia resembled that in Provence: see now Jean-Pierre Poly, La Provence et la societefeodale, 879-1166: Contribution a I'etude des structures dites feodales dans le Midi (Paris, 1976), pp. 318-364. 37 Lot, Fideles ou vassauxf; Fawtier, Capetiens, pp. 11, 62, 66-67 (Capetian Kings, pp. 7, 61, 65-66). 38 Lot, Fideles, pp. 17, 46, 81, 129, 171. 175, 201-213.

248

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

hierarchy of fiefs culminating in the king was new in Suger's day.39 What is more, the demonstration that the princes sometimes performed military service for the king does not in itself prove that they were vassals, for service remained the fundamental obligation of all free men, including bishops, who almost never performed homage after 1100 but did provide military support. The earlier kings had continued to regard all magnates of the greater realm as \he\rfideles bound to serve in time of necessity (as in 1124), but they seem to have made little effort to insist on their contingents of knight service or on their homage as a condition of obtaining such contingents. Even in the case of undoubted homages, as Lemarignier once again has shown, not all such acts implied effective subordination to the crown. The duke of Normandy's vassalage was usually celebrated in the borderlands of Normandy and France — that is, it had the effect of a treaty or pacification, not unlike the vassalic conventions between the kings and greater barons in the Hispanic realms. Lemarignier speculates that such "homages of peace," whether performed en marche or not, may have been more common in the eleventh and twelfth centuries than we yet know.40 Another way of getting at Lot's problem is to analyze the royal enactments catalogued by Luchaire. Now this information is subject to the reservation that it comes mostly from ecclesiastical archives; not surprisingly it shows the kings approving concessions by his vassals from which, sooner or later, churches benefitted. But two significant facts that are independent of the bias of the sample also emerge: first, the astonishing infrequency with which the fiefs of great vassals are mentioned, and, second, that of the very few acts showing the kings in a position of control over fiefs of any size, most postdate 1165. In general, of more than 1400 acts of Louis VI and Louis VII, I count at most about twenty (less than 2%) that could possibly be construed as showing these kings actively engaged with the vassalage or fiefs of their men at any level.41 39 Guillot, Comte d'Anjou, 1:16-20; Duby, Societe . . . mdconnaise, 1st ed., pp. 549-550, 553-554 (repr., pp..414, 417); Lemarignier, Gouvernement royal, pp. 171-176. For the case of Flanders see Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon . . . , ed. Henri Pirenne (Paris, 1891), c. 106. 40 Lemarignier, L'Hommage en marche, esp. ch. 3, and pp. 177-180. The point had been anticipated by Flach, Origines de I'ancienne France, 1:151, and by Pierre Petot in works cited by Lemarignier. Cf. Pierre Bonnassie, "Les Conventions feodales dans la Catalogne du Xle siecle," Structures sociales, pp. 187-219. 41 Achille Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros: Annales de sa vie et de son regne (1081-1137) (Paris, 1890), no. 136; Etudes sur les actes de Louis VII (Paris, 1885), nos. 147, 195, 353, 419, 437, 537, 540, 556, 613, 628, 636, 722; Monuments historiques: Cartons des rois, ed. Juk > Tardif (Paris, 1866), nos. 431, 507, 511, 582, 609, 638, 654, 656, 680. (A few charters overlooked by Luchaire are conveniently listed by Eric Bournazel, Le Gouvernement capetien au Kile siecle, 1108-1180: Structures sociales et mutations institutionnelles [Paris, 1975], p. 4, note 8; these do riot affect the statistical pattern.) What is known of the king's passivity in Berry (below, at note 46) supports this point. Undoubtedly, more records of great fiefs would have survived had the royal and baronial documents of this period been better preserved, but it seems to me quite as dangerous to assume that the lost feudal records of ca. 1150 were like those of 1200 as to assume that those of the former surviving tell the whole story. See further, below, at notes 51, 52.

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

249

But the strongest reason for doubting that the occasional homages of the princes signified an effective feudal policy is of a quite different kind: namely, the a priori circumstance that the Prankish realm had long since ceased to have any common law of fiefs. Whatever the great lords may have done when, from time to time, they assembled with the king, it is extremely unlikely that they seriously thought of legislating for the benefit of their suzerain the rules by which they themselves were consolidating their principalities.42 Political realities dictated alliances between the king and one or more of the major vassals, not the harmonious solidarity idealized (and perhaps lamented) by the Roland poet, and it is chiefly the incongruity of the nascent territorial customs that prevents us from thinking that the king's great curia normally functioned as a feudal court for greater France under the early Capetians. If the king was to establish his right to reliefs, wardships, and aids over the greater fiefs, it would have to be through favorable political circumstances (as in Flanders in 1128) or by dint of intermarriage (Champagne, 1160), but above all, by the energetic prosecution of justice. It is in this perspective, I believe, that the famous campaign of Louis VI against Auvergne should be interpreted. The king, it is often pointed out, by accepting the duke of Aquitaine's plea that the case be remitted to the ducal court, acknowledged that Auvergne was a rear-fief of the crown.43 What seems to me more significant is that the king had at first dealt with the issue as a regalian, not feudal, matter, and that it was very much to his advantage to settle on terms that secured to him the effective vassalage of Aquitaine. If not therefore in greater France, at least in the Ile-de-France we might expect to find Louis VI and his son pursuing a vigorous feudal policy. The former won his fame by overcoming the castellans of his domain, and by the second half of the twelfth century — not unlike the counts of Barcelona in Catalonia — the kings were in direct control not only of most of the counties but also, apparently, of many castles scattered about their compact domain. But what, precisely, were the terms on which the castellans held the French strongholds? We do not know, and our ignorance, indeed, is so nearly perfect that we are entitled to suspect that the terms of custody were not ordinarily put in writing. Moreover, since we do know that some royal castellans were being paid salaries in 1202,44 it is quite possible that Capetian administrators had long since decided to distinguish the dynastic castellanies held in hereditary homage, like that of the Montforts, from delegated castellanies which, since fiefs were becoming hereditary, were perhaps intentionally nonfeudal. It may even be that the prevotes, for the same reason, 42 On this point, the work of Karl F. Werner is illuminating: "Konigtum und Fiirstentum im franzosischen 12. Jahrhundert," Problems des I2.jahrhunderts, ed. Theodor Mayer, Vortrage und Forschungen 12 (1968), pp. 177-225. 43 Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet (Paris, 1929), ch. 29, pp. 234-241; Kienast, Untertaneneid, pp. 31-32; Andre Bossuat in (Lot and Fawtier) Institutions franfaises 1:105; Ganshof, Feudalism, 3d English ed., p. 161. 44 Ferdinand Lot and Robert Fawtier, Le Premier Budget de la monarchie franfaise: Le Compte general de 1202-1203 (Paris, 1932), facsimile of Brussel edn., pp. cxlv, clxxv.

250

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

were nonfeudal. If so (and perhaps even if not), an important difference from Catalonia appears. There was no uniform custom of castles in the Ile-de-France during most of the twelfth century. Owing to bad experience with enfeoffed castles, the king was reluctant to grant out his recovered castles, although it seems clear that in some cases, notably that of Montlhery, the castellans supervised the custodial service of enfeoffed knights. The Prankish principle of revocable administrative fiefs granted from fiscal land, still alive in Catalonia, has disappeared in twelfth-century France.45 Thus the Capetian king, while undoubtedly a lord of vassals in his homeland as well as in the realm, derived little leverage from these lordships. He took few initiatives outside the Ile-de-France, preferring to await rather than to create his opportunities (as Guy Devailly has recently made clearer than ever).46 He continued to rely heavily on regalian principles for the exercise or prescription of his powers. It should not be assumed that the police campaigns of Louis VI were manned entirely by vassals. Suger makes clear that the king activated these contingents on the basis of his protectorate of the peace, and we know that the general peace for the realm sworn by the magnates at Soissons in 1155 derived from a standing ecclesiastical program quite independent of feudal realities. When the bishops of Languedoc sought the king's confirmation of their regalian rights between 1155 and 1161, they were recognized to be fideles or even subjects of the king, not vassals.47 Only with the reign of Philip Augustus does something like a sustained effort to exploit vassalic or feudal obligations become visible in French royal practice. This observation should no longer seem unfamiliar to students of medieval France: it was anticipated on some points by Petit-Dutaillis, and its general tenor has lately been taking its place in the French textbooks.48 But the contrast with previous reigns has still not been sufficiently stressed, nor 45

Or at least has been weakened or deformed: we still know too little about the fiefs assigned on revenues to be conclusive on this point. On local administration, see generally Henri Gravier, Essai sur les prevots royaux du XIe au XIVe siecle (Paris, 1904); Marcel Pacaut, Louis VII et son royaume (Paris, 1964), ch. 5; and Bournazel, Gouvernement capetien, esp. pp. 83-90. 46 Guy Devailly, Le Berry du Xe siecle au milieu du XIHe: Etude politique, religieuse, sociale et economique (Paris-La Haye, 1973), pp. 381-413. 47 Suger, Vie de Louis VI, ed. Waquet, ch. 2, pp. 14, 16; ch. 15, p. 88; et passim; Aryeh Grabois, "De la treve de Dieu a la paix du roi: Etude sur les transformations du mouvement de la paix au XIle siecle," Melanges offerts a Rene Crozet . . . , ed. Pierre Gallais and Yves J. Riou, 2 vols. (Poitiers, 1966), 1:585-596; texts assembled by Luchaire, Actes de Louis VII, nos. 339, 340, 355, 366, 367, 379, 387-389, 446, 452, 456, 461, 649. 48 See Petit-Dutaillis, Monarchiefeodale, pp. 204, 208, 242-249, 336-348 (Feudal Monarchy, pp. 184, 187, 216-222, 301-311), and Les communes franfaises: Caracteres et evolution des origines au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1947), pp. 103-116 (in which pages, however, the authors fulminations against Carl Stephenson should be disregarded). See also Guy Fourquin, Seigneurie etfeodalite au moyen age (Paris, 1970), pp. 94-97, 100-110; tr. Iris and A. L. Lytton Sells as Lordship and Feudalism in the Middle Ages (New York, 1976), pp. 96-99, 101-111; Jean-Fr. Lemarignier, La France medievale: Institutions et societe (Paris, 1970), ch. 7. Pacaut seems to think that Louis VII undertook to exploit his suzerainty, Louis VII, pp. 36, 41, 55, 161, but his evidence seems inconclusive to me.

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

251

have the changes under Philip Augustus been thoroughly studied. One hindrance to general recognition of the point has probably been the old doctrine — not altogether mistaken but to this day never critically examined — that Philip Augustus presided over a de-feudalizing of royal administration.49 In fact, the reformed prevbts, whatever their former nature, and the salaried baillis were instrumental in the king's new feudal policy. As for the contrast between the earlier and later twelfth century, this is consistent with the recent findings of Robert Fossier for Picardy, where feudalizing was very retarded and where certain obligations, including some attached to fiefs, such as castle-guard, suggest the persistence of public modes of authority.50 For Philip Augustus the salient facts are these. There is a dramatic increase, both relatively and absolutely, in the numbers of extant charters defining the king's rights over major vassals and major fiefs. Of some 1400 royal documents now in print for the years 1180 to 1215, almost 100 (or about 7%) belong in this category,51 and these figures, more than three times greater than those for the preceding two reigns together, would be more than doubled if we were to include all the grants of knights' fiefs and money fiefs which attended the conquest of Normandy. These acts not only show the princely vassals, including the counts of Champagne and Flanders, coming firmly under the king's control, but they show major barons from the South and Southwest commending themselves to the king. Counting the lesser commendations, there is a spectacular increase in the number of royal tenants-in-chief after about 1190. Once again the import of the statistics must not be exaggerated. Many of the acts counted above (roughly 70 of the 100) were preserved only in the registers and the Tresor des Chartes, which were created in Philip's time. Yet it is difficult to escape the conclusion that such repositories were required precisely because then, for the first time, the records of homages and fiefs were being multiplied routinely. While we can reasonably suppose that some of Louis VII's "feudal documents" are lost, it seems clear that they were lost in large measure because that king had not sought to register or exploit them as did his son.52 49 See, e.g., Fawtier, Capetiens, pp. 169-171 (Capetian Kings, pp. 175-177); Bryce Lyon and Adriaan E. Verhulst, Medieval Finance: A Comparison of Financial Institutions in Northwestern Europe (Providence, 1967), pp. 92-94. 50 Fossier, La Terre et les hommes en Picardie 2:546-552, 668-677. 51 Recueil des actes de Philippe Augusts, roi de France, ed. H.-Francois Delaborde, Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Jacques Monicat, and Jacques Boussard, 3 vols. to date (Paris, 1916-1966), l:nos. 7, 8, 71, 121, 139, 155, 172, 186, 217, 240, 262, 277, 376, 401, 413, 422, 445, 449; 2:nos. 479, 485, 499, 501, 517, 519, 542, 548, 566, 577, 581, 587, 588, 606, 608, 621, 633, 678, 710, 722, 723, 761, 775, 788, 799, 803, 807, 827, 829-831, 837, 839, 856, 860, 863, 875, 885, 895, 899, 902, 905, 920, 937, 939; 3:nos. 1021, 1035, 1045, 1088, 1128, 1131, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1206, 1212, 1223, 1227, 1251, 1259, 1268, 1269, 1296, 1309, 1313, 1321, 1324, 1331, 1340, 1348, 1365. 52 Professor Baldwin wisely cautions that "we know Philip [Augustus] as a feudal king because it was he that began to collect the evidence, and because it survived." But, for all we know, it may also have been because it was Philip who began to make the evidence, and fortunately it is not necessary to rely on the facts of survival alone to conclude that this was probably the case.

252

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

On closer analysis, other interesting tendencies appear. In his acts involving the great vassals, Philip was plainly trying to redefine as fiefs the counties and duchies as such, or at least to make it clear that the region (terra), such as Flanders, was held of the crown.53 This effort was surely related to the sudden appearance of vast reliefs demanded by Philip for successions to the principalities, and there are some indications that it met with resistance. In dealings with great vassals in positions of strength, such as the counts of Toulouse (before 1200) and the duke of Burgundy, the king's scribes content themselves with vague references to theirfeoda held of the king.54 There seems to have been an attempt to get the bishops to do homage as well as fealty to the king, and at least two southern bishops did homage between 1204 and 1212 from motives of alliance or protection.55 There was mounting interest in systematizing the king's superior lordship: liege homages to the king proliferate56 (although I would not overrate the importance of this in an age when the plurality of lordships has got quite out of hand), reservations of the king's fealty become normal;57 more important, the king regulates the obligations of rear vassals, and commits them to the guarantee of his pacts with great vassals;58 and most important, in this connection, the king is at pains to negotiate with lesser lords to divest himself of vassalic obligations attached to newly acquired lands. As Halphen pointed out, the theory of the king as vassal to no one dated back at least to 1124, but the common practice based on it began only with Philip Augustus. In 1213 the king's inability to do homage to other lords was said to be the "usage and custom" of the French kingdom, an observation which illustrates yet another important tendency: the establishment of a general custom of fiefs including obligations — knight service, reliefs, wardships, and aids— which, as Ganshof and Strayer have stressed, were structurally disposed so as to benefit the superior lord most.59 53 Actes de Philippe Auguste, 2:no. 799: "comes Helias Petragorensis fecit nobis hominagium ligium de toto comitatu Petragorensi . . ." (May 1204); 2:no. 862, county of Aumale (Dec. 1204); 3:no. 1206, bishop of Cahors "de comitatu et civitate Cadurci" (Oct. 1211); 3:no.l268, county of Perigord (Nov. 1212); 3: no. 1302, county of Flanders (May 1213); cf. 3:no. 1021. Also Rigord, Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, ed. H.-Francois Delaborde, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882-1885), l:ch. 50, p. 77; ch. 107, pp. 132-133; ch. 129, p. 146; ch. 138, pp. 151-152. 54 Petit-Dutaillis, Monarchic feodale, p. 208 (Feudal Monarchy, p. 187); Actes de Philippe Auguste, l:no. 413; 2:nos. 485, 588; cf. Claude Devic and Jean-J. Vaissete, Histoire generate de Langaedoc . . . , new ed. by Auguste Molinier et al., 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904), 8:684-685. 55 Actes de Philippe Auguste, 2:no. 865; 3:no. 1206; cf. 3:no. 987. See also Leopold Delisle, Catalogue des actes de Philippe-Auguste . . . (Paris, 1856), no. 1748. 56 Actes de Philippe Auguste, l:nos. 139, 240, 399; 2:nos. 519, 551, 560, 581^692, 875, etc. 57 Ibid., l:nos. 277, 361; 2:nos. 837, 875; this phenomenon may be connected with the king's effort to obtain fealties from townsmen, e.g., Delisle, Catalogue des actes de PhiUppe-Auguste, nos. 1878, 1879, an effort greatly expanded in succeeding reigns. 58 Actes de Philippe Auguste, 2:nos. 761, 803; 3:nos. 1137, 1313, 1314; Layettes du Tresor des Charles, ed. Alexandre Teulet et al., 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), l:nos. 412, 502, 578, 581-587, 978-981, 1062. 59 Actes de Philippe Auguste, lino. 139; Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, l:no. 1053; Halphen, "La royaute dans le systeme feodal," A trovers I'histoire du moyen age, pp. 268-271; Ganshof, Feodalite

The Problem of Feudal Monarchy

253

Something of the deliberateness but also of the limits of these tendencies is suggested by the administrative memoranda prepared by chancery clerks of Philip Augustus in the years after 1204. What the earliest lists seem to show is that prior to the conquest of Normandy the king had no handy means of verifying or co-ordinating the services due from his immediate vassals and castellans. There is little in the famous Register A (1204-1212) of much use for such a purpose, apart from two Norman lists of knights' fees, one of which long antedated the conquest.60 Even if comparable records for Capetian domains had been among those lost in 1194, it is hard to see why it should have taken royal officials until the very last years of Philip's reign to reproduce them. The truth is that no effort to apportion services or dues from fiefs had ever been made in the Ile-de-France: the incomplete and inconsistently organized records for this region such as are preserved in Registers C (1212-1220) and E (1220-1224) have all the marks of laborious novelty.61 Not all of these texts are Norman in form— those which characterize the vassalage more than the tenure seem, if anything, to have some affinity with the early lists for Champagne,62 which was virtually administered by Philip Augustus during the minority of Thibaut IV (12011222) — but the Norman influence must have been paramount. The Norman lists together with many dozens of enfeoffments according to Norman custom to knights serving in the conquest represent the bulk of the strictly feudal documentation in Register A, which was thus not so much a definitive book of fiefs as a working book of obligations. In other words, the administrative interest in feudal obligations (so far as this can be measured from the known registers) remained primarily a Norman phenomenon in the triumphant but still dangerous years just after 1204, its concern being to secure the substructure of Norman military tenures while the baronial level was unsettled. By the 1220s this urgency had diminished, and fiscal motives had everywhere come to the fore. By concentrating on the aids and incidents of vassalage, the king's men compensated for the lack of quotas from knights' fiefs in the Ile-de-France, Vermandois, and Berry.63 (Feudalism), part 3, chs. 3, 4; Strayer, "Development of Feudal Institutions," Twelfth-Century Europe, pp. 80-83 (Medieval Statecraft, pp. 80-83). 60 Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Martin Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), to be cited as HF, 23:693-699, 705-714; see also 714-716, 719 (Norman and Breton lists), 722-723 (the Prisia servientum and other brief Capetian lists relating to services of horse and carts). See, on the Norman lists, Frederick Maurice Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 1189-1204 . . . , 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1961) pp. 271-275; and Joseph R. Strayer, The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), pp. 56-62. For all that relates to what Delisle termed Scripta defeodis, the critical edition of the registers of Philip Augustus now in preparation by John W. Baldwin, Franchise Gasparri, and Michel Nortier will be of great importance. What is argued in this paragraph and the next may be regarded as hypotheses to be tested in the thoroughgoing analysis of feudal society which this edition will make possible. 61 HF, 23:686-693, 720-722. The fullest of these records for non-Norman lands are associated with the review of Normandy made after 1220, ibid., 608-675. 62 Compare, e.g., ibid., 671-676, 721-722, with Documents relatifs au comte de Champagne et de Brie, 1172-1361, ed. Auguste Longnon, 3 vols. (Paris, 1901-1914), 1:1-132. 63 See generally the lists in Registers C and E, as ed. mHF, 23:608-681, 686-693, 716-722. It

254

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

As for the early lists of cities, castles, great lords, castellans, vavassors and communes, these are more problematical. They represent a first approximation in defining an enlarged, postconquest France, and while their interest is thus political, their purpose was chiefly military.64 The difficulty lies in deciding how far they were determined by feudal, how far by regalian conceptions. Despite its inconvenience for my argument, I think it safest to assume that the cities and prelates, if not also the communes, figure there as bound to the crown in fealty alone; but the influence of feudal thinking is betrayed in the rubric which speaks of the cities as in the king's domanium, and may also be discerned in the listing of communes together with castellans and vavassors. As Petit-Dutaillis showed, there is some striking evidence assimilating the services and aids of communes to those of vassals, and I need only add here that the best of this evidence dates from the reign of Philip Augustus.65 Is it surprising that this feudalizing of royal power should have occurred under the first Capetian king who vigorously aggrandized his realm? Lords were supposed to fight and to reward and so, for the first time since the great Charles (with whom Philip was often compared), Frenchmen had a king to whom they could respond as a lord as well as a protector. For this reason, too, the long delayed recognition of a ius feodale for greater France was now fulfilled: if King John could not resist a judgment on a point of law so widely impressive, what lesser prince could? Nor could Philip, for his part, abrogate the provincial laws of fiefs applicable in Artois, Berry, and Normandy; he had not only to secure the strategic castles bordering these areas but also the services owed to the suzerains he replaced. Only in the late twelfth century, in short, were the invigorating conditions of early Aragon and Catalonia (not to speak of Normandy, etc.) approximated in Capetian France, making possible the active feudal policy66 that seems to me the essential attribute of feudal monarchy. Philip Augustus was, in that sense, the first feudal king in France. So conceived, the problem of feudal monarchy is to explain how the rulers of the later feudal age adapted vassalic and feudal principles to their residual structures of higher authority, to analyze the mix of feudal and regalian resources in those critical generations when the precedents for effective royal power were hardening into law. These are not arbitrary questions, unless one preconceives that no such distinction was possible in will be seen that the information recorded was of a kind helpful for exploiting the feudal contingencies for fiscal purposes. 64 Ibid., 681-684 (Register A, fols. 6, 60). Cf., too, on this matter, Charles T. Wood, "Regnum Francie: a Problem in Capetian Administrative Usage," Traditio 23 (1967), 117-147, who, however, does not cite these lists for regnum or domanium. 65 Petit-Dutaillis, Communes francaises, pp. 103-116; see also, e.g., Actes de Philippe Auguste, 2:nos. 800, 803; 3:nos. 1282-1284; cf. Sidney R. Packard, "The Norman Communes Once More, 1189-1223," American Historical Review 46 (1941), 340-342. My own argument in no way implies a thoroughgoing characterization of the communes, Norman or otherwise. 66 That is, of a monarchy intentionally, not accidentally, feudal.

77z e Problem of Feudal Monarchy

255

the twelfth century. They are not useless questions, for upon their answers depends our estimate of the influence of feudal law on basic institutions of the later medieval states: on finance, justice, and consultation, for example. From the comparisons I have sketched, we may at least find it easier to understand why royal taxation arose in some measure on feudal foundations in France and on non-feudal ones in the Crown of Aragon; or why the kingdom of Aragon, erected as a nation of tenants-in-chief without the self-regulating mechanism of a hierarchy of fiefs, might prove vulnerable to coalitions of frustrated magnates once the dangerous discipline of the frontier had weakened. And we can appreciate why the insistence on vassalage alone, without any corresponding effort to define rights over tenures, could be no more than a limited monarchical resource at best. The Aragonese and Catalan rulers resorted to homage and fealty much as the tribal kings had done before them: as adjuncts to a royalist protectorate well defined in public law. The Capetians, having first known the perils of such a structure, had no choice but to exploit the law of fiefs built up systematically and laboriously from below. The Capetian arrangement, more pervasively "feudal" in a precise sense of that word than the Catalan, was not less insistent on the traditional obligations of the free man which it continued to secure via the reserve of fealty or the direct professions of fealty by townsmen which corresponded to the homages-and-fealties demanded in the South; moreover, the regalian or sovereign conceptions would easily intrude upon, or evolve from, the feudal ones in the thinking of Philip Augustus's successors. One had to be flexible about these things, not too fussy about how it all fitted together — the lawyers of the thirteenth century would take care of that!67 But the smooth theories of that age must not be allowed to obscure those pragmatic conjunctures of the twelfth century which determined that no two monarchies would be equally or identically feudal.

67 See, e.g., Li Livres dejostice et de plet, ed. Pierre N. Rapetti (Paris, 1850) 1:13-16, 66-67; and Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Amedee Salmon, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899-1900; with Commentaire historique etjuridique, ed. Georges Hubrecht, 1974), 1, 11:322: ". . . toute la laie juridicion du roiaume est tenue du roi en fief ou en arriere fief"; and, in general, the review article by Jean-Fr. Lemarignier, "Autour de la royaute francaise du IXe au XHIe siecle," Bibliotheque de VEcole des Charles 113 (1955), 5-36.

This page intentionally left blank

13 SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDITERRANEAN TERRITORIAL POWER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY THERE is a new interest in Mediterranean studies among medievalist historians these days. Everywhere younger scholars whose masters tilled the heavy soils of northern institutional history are flocking southward. One of my friends speaks of "the ethnic revenge of the Mediterranean"; another colleague, with genial but enthusiastic malice, hopes to "bring down the medieval establishment and eclipse northern Europe." This is dangerous company, as I am sure you will agree; yet for all my sympathy for this seditious rhetoric, I have no fears for the safety of the North. It was no accident that political and constitutional historians worked first and perhaps best on countries like France and England, where the fundamental human problems of reconciling authority, order, and liberty were most successfully and enduringly solved. No indigenous Mediterranean monarchy achieved the power of the Normans, the Angevins, or the Capetians before the sixteenth century; moreover, as the mere recital of these names reminds us, some of the more remarkable southern successes—such as the kingdom of Sicily—were decisively influenced from the North. No historical revisionism seems likely to trouble our well-founded sense of northern precedence in medieval state-building. But the long shadow of the North has obscured the recognition of some peculiarly southern initiatives in political organization. I have in mind not so much the city-states, which some will naturally think the most typical form of Mediterranean polity; nor yet the developed monarchies of Castile, Aragon, Sicily, and Naples, the histories of which are vast subjects still very incompletely explored. Instead I wish to examine a much more limited question: what were the original characteristics of the territorial governments which emerged between the Ebro valley and central Italy from about 1050 to 1200? Without yet being dependent on or even seriously influenced by northern dynasties and their devices, these governments faced problems then common to much of Europe. Thanks to recent research, the southern responses to these problems have become clearer, making it possible to discern some distinctive characteristics in Mediterranean institutional organization.* 1 This study—an essay in synthesis which, however, makes no pretence to completeness—is concerned chiefly with Catalonia, Occitania, and Provence, and peripherally with Aragon

To begin with, let me mention three elementary facts about the regions of this inquiry. First, all of them had known some form of territorial government in the early Middle Ages. Second, all were regions subject at one time to Roman law. And third, all of them suffered a thoroughgoing breakdown of territorial order in diverse periods extending from the late ninth century to the mid-eleventh. This last circumstance was of profound importance, for it was a process that effectively obliterated the territorial-Roman order that had preceded it. Thus in the Italian Lazio the old regime of publicly guaranteed peasant propriety collapsed in the harsh scramble of a new military class to fortify its proliferating lordships (incastellamento). In Provence the old Prankish judicial order persisted until about 1000, in Catalonia until about 1040, at which points the militarization of these lands rapidly transformed their societies. Meantime, and Latium. It is based on, or departs from, the results of several new works, above all: Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogue du milieu du Xe a la fin du XI* siccle. Croissance et mutations d'une societe (2 v., Toulouse, 1975-1976) ; Jean-Pierre Poly, La Provence et la societe jeodale, 879-1166. Contribution a I'etude des structures dites jeodales dans le Midi (Paris, 1976) ; Pierre Toubert, Lcs structures du Latium medieval. Le Latium meridional et la Sabine du IX* sidcle a la fin du XIP siccle (2 v., Rome, 1973). Likewise pertinent is Structures jeodales et jeodalisme dans I'Occident meditcrraneen (X'-XIIT sic des) t the proceedings of an international conference to be published by the ficole Francaise de Rome in 1979. Unfortunately too little is known of the early county of Comminges for the valuable work of Charles Higounet, Le comte de Comminges de ses origines a son annexion a la couronne (2 v., Toulouse, 1949), to be of much use for the present purpose. By "territorial government" I refer to the methods of mastering or controlling or securing peoples settled on lands of at least the extent of counties, lands typically comprising several or many cities. I am not, however, much concerned with the dynastic formation of territorial states, for which one may consult Charles Higounet, "Un grand chapitre de 1'histoire du XII e siecle: la rivalite des maisons de Toulouse et de Barcelone pour la preponderance meridionale," Melanges d'histoire du moyen age dedies a la memoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1951), pp. 313-322; and A. R. Lewis, "The Formation of Territorial States in Southern France and Catalonia, 1050-1270 A.D.," Recueil des Memoires et Travaux publie par la Societe d'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des Anciens Pays de Droit ftcrit 9 (1974), pp. 505-516. The problem, as I conceive it, has little to do with princely expansionism as such, although its investigation may help to clarify some inherent limitations of the "states" Lewis discusses.

258

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the higher authorities—the popes in Lazio, the counts in Provence, Catalonia, and Aragon—strove to effect a new territorial consolidation, not so much by resisting this militarizing, let alone restoring the old order, as by subordinating the new castellan aristocracy, The most successful exponent of this policy was Count Ramon Berenguer I of Barcelona (1035-1076), whose achievement quite matched that of his contemporary Duke William I in Normandy.2 These facts are now well known through the work of Bonnassie, Poly, Toubert, and Duby.3 But the institutional consequences of the massive social change are not yet very clear. Did the territorial authorities salvage absolutely nothing from the ancient administrative and legal order? And if that is the case (but, indeed, in any case), how did their new principalities differ from those of the North, which likewise emerged in the militarized wreckage of Prankish territorial government? The first of these questions obliges us to admit at once that there was, in fact, some institutional continuity. In central Italy nonfeudal forms of tenure for three life-times could still be found in the twelfth century. * In Cerdanya Visigothic agents of judicial administration (saiones) were active at least as late as 1151, while in many parts of Catalonia judges continued to administer the Roman-Visigothic law of property.5 Yet it is doubtful whether continuities such as these had a vital place in the administrative schemes of the new princes; they were vestiges, not unlike the scabini in the North, although less transformed. In fact, so much of the old written codes had been substantive and procedural rather than administrative that they are of little help in explaining the offices of twelfth-century government. The importance of this juridical continuity is not so much institutional as conceptual: it helped to perpetuate the notions of public responsibility and territoriality, and these notions, however weakened or degraded they may have been in meridional practice, 2 Bonnassie, Catalogne 1: chapters 1-4; 2: chs. 9-15; Toubert, Latium, 1: chs. 4, 5; 2: chs. 10, 11; Poly, Provence, chs. 1-5; part 2, chs. 3, 4. 3 In addition to works cited in note 2, see Georges Duby, "La diffusion du titre chevaleresque sur le versant mediterraneen de la Chretiente latine," in La noblesse au moyen age, XP-XV* siecles. Essais a la memoire de Robert Boutruche, ed. Philippe Contamine (Paris, 1976), pp. 39-70. * Toubert, Latium 1: pp. 516-531; 2: pp. 1103ff. 5 Archivo de la Corona de Aragon (hereafter, ACA), Cancilleria, pergaminos Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (N, P) ; Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Voiles, ed. Jose Rius Serra (3 v., Barcelona, 1945-1947) 3: nos. 808, 809, 817, 822, 865, 890, 895, and passim; Jean Bastier, "Le testament en Catalogne du IX' au XII* siecle: une survivance wisigothique," Rpvue historique de Droit franfais et etranger, 4th ser. 51 (1973) : pp. 373-417. Cf., however, Michael Zimmermann, "L'usage du droit wisigothique en Catalogne du IX* au XII* siecle: approches d'une signification culturelle," Melanges de la Casa de Velazquez 9 (1973) : pp. 233-281, esp. pp. 277-281.

had much more completely disappeared in the North. By "territoriality" in this context I refer primarily to the characteristic independence of the law and its administrators from the ruler, a circumstance which effectively placed the notaries and judges of Catalonia and Provence beyond the control of the counts.6 It was the persistence of human communities living by the Visigothic law of property and marriage, for example, that helped define the geographical extent of the counties re-grouped under the name of "Catalonia" in the twelfth century. Now if notaries and judges were regarded as servants or executors of the law and not as delegates of the ruler, their status may have been comparable to that of the groups of notables who composed the public courts or assemblies which, in most of our regions, persisted to about the year 1000. In the eleventh century the function of these assemblies changed, but in many instances their territorial, or representative, character persisted. 7 Assemblies of the Peace and Truce held in Catalonia, Occitania, and Provence afford the best illustrations; for example, in 1118 Count Ramon Berenguer III and the bishop of Elne established a peace in Cerdanya "by the counsel and directive of the magnates and knights of the whole county of Cerdanya and Conflent." The representation of the county in this way is one of the more distinctive traits of the new Mediterranean order after 1100, for although the Peace Movement was also known in the North, its assemblies there, increasingly dominated by powerful lay rulers, soon lost their territorial character. 8 Thus the persistence of the territorial peace, analogous to that of the written law and guaranteed by the higher clergy and laity, points to a profound limitation of the princely prerogative in some regions. Having failed to check disorder, lay rulers acquiesced in the transfer of the initiatives and resources for security to the control of the regional community. But tiie Peace and Truce were correlative to the new militarism, the tenacity of the former indicative of the brutality of the latter; and it seems clear that the 6 This observation may well require modification with further research. For Provence, see Roger Aubenas, Etude sur le notariat Provencal au moyen age et sous I'Ancien Regime (Aix-en-Provence, 1931) ; I know, of no comparable works for Occitania or Catalonia. For Italy, see Toubert, Latium 1: pp. 121-132; and Huguette Taviani, "Le pouvoir a Salerne . . . ," in Structures feodales. 7 See A. R. Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050 (Austin, 1965), chs. 11, 18; filisabeth Magnou-Nortier, La societe laique et I'eglise dans la province ccclesiastique de Narbonne (zone cispyreneenne) de la fin du VHP a la fin du XP siecle (Toulouse, 1974), pp. 521-534. The whole matter is in need of further study. * T. N. Bisson, "The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia, ca. 1140-ca. 1233," American Historical Review 82 (1977) : pp. 290-311; the text of 1118 is quoted at p. 309, note 102.

Mediterranean Territorial Power in the Twelfth Century political beneficiaries of the regional accords which from time to time dampened the smoldering local violence were the great lay powers themselves. It was precisely in those regions—the county of Toulouse, the viscounty of Beziers—where the rulers and the magnates allowed this tradition to lapse that Occitan authorities seemed most conspicuously weak on the eve of the Albigensian crusades. Only in Catalonia did the count (-king) seek energetically to control the judicial, military, and fiscal institutions that had evolved in the Peace and Truce; and his success in this effort helps to explain why he had become the most powerful territorial ruler between Italy and the Ebro by the close of the twelfth century. 9 The Peace thus served in some regions to preserve the idea of an ordered territorial society under the protection of the count. But this idea must have seemed increasingly remote from the realities of secular administration, if indeed "administration" is the right word for the exploitation of persons, castles, and other patrimonial wealth that characterized Mediterranean governments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In Occitania and Provence the ancient public or fiscal domains had been mostly dissipated by the twelfth century; in Catalonia and Aragon, where they survived better, their importance was relatively diminished by the opening of frontier lands disposed of, in fiercely competitive circumstances, by the counts or kings. Everywhere the ruler's domains were reorganized around castles; everywhere market rights and tolls formed a considerable element of the domain —in Provence, indeed, they were much more important than rural lands; everywhere the multiplication of tenures owing hospitality (alberga) bore witness to the enlarged knightly "companies" that attended the itinerant prince or his greater vassals. 10 Given the prevailing dynamics of power, the problem for such rulers was not so much how to administer their lands as how to retain them or increase them. As far as we can tell, the chief concerns of the courts of Barcelona, Toulouse, and Provence were for many generations dynastic and political: questions of marriage, of alliance, of rewards for military fidelity. If Barcelona tended to gain at the expense of Toulouse, it was because her rulers had an incomparable source of revenue in her frontier and her "manifest destiny'' against the Moors; their highly sustained capacity to reward prowess and fidelity, which secured the ser9 Ibid., pp. 291, 302-304; and evidence presented in T. N. Bisson, Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early CountKings (1151-1213), forthcoming. 10 Catalogue des actes des comtes de Toulouse. III. Raymond V (1149-1194), ed. fimile-G. Leonard (Paris, 1932); Poly, Provence, pp. 77-99, 112-129, 172-181, 204-209; Bonnassie, Catalogne 2: chs. 13-15; Liber instrumentorum memorialium. Cartulaire des Guillems de Montpellier, ed. Alexandre Germain (Montpellier, 1884-1886), nos. 249-251, 261, 264, 268, 276, 280, 300-302.

259

vice of the lords of Montpellier among other great families, was a decisive cause of Catalan political expansion down to 1213. To retain the fidelity of other lineages and of equestrian fighting men, the ruler had to share his power with them: that is, to distribute his castles. In Catalonia the castles were ceded to barons or greater knights on terms of sworn fealty, the promise to restore the castles upon the ruler's demand "in anger or contentment," and the cession of a share of the revenues. But the greater of these concessionnaires were hardly administrators—the more realistic share of the revenues was surely the tenant's rather than the count's—nor were these castles normally fiefs as such; even when a lesser class of castellans was established in fealty to the territorial lord, it was not the castle but the appurtenant lands (castlania) that were ceded in fief. Yet the castle was progressively assimilated to the fief, which at the higher levels, at least, was becoming hereditary by the early twelfth century, and this development probably hampered the ability of Ramon Berenguer Fs successors to manage the castles as a delegated territorial administration. Castles were built or acquired, ceded or exchanged, less for fiscal reasons than for strategic reasons of baronial or military support. " Such, at least, was the situation in Catalonia, which we now know best. In Occitania, where the lay archives have mostly disappeared, we are left to imagine a very similar custom of castles. The counts of Toulouse seem to have had great difficulty controlling enough well-distributed castles to secure the vast domains to which they laid claim; 12 the viscounts of Beziers were relatively better off within more compact domains, and it has lately been argued that their locations were determined less by agrarian than commercial considerations.13 In Provence, where the churches and fortified cities of the Rhone valley were fundamental resources, the rural castles 11 Pierre Bonnassie, "Les conventions feodales dans la Catalogne du XI e siecle," Les structures sociales de I'Aquitaine, du Languedoc ct de I'Espagnc au premier age feodal (Paris, 1969), pp. 187-219; idem, Catalogne 2: chs. 13, 14. See the latter work, pp. 687-711, for the nucleus of comital castles assembled in the 1060s; by the early twelfth century the control of vicarial castles was already in difficulty, Liber fcudorum maior, ed. Francisco Miquel Resell (2 v., Barcelona, 1945-1947) 1: no. 382; and see also the wills of Ramon Berenguer III and Ramon Berenguer IV, nos. 494, 495. 12 This observation is an impression based on the texts gathered by Claude Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoire generale de Languedoc . . . , ed. Auguste Molinier and others, (16 v., Toulouse: Privat, 1872-1904) 5; and Leonard, Catalogue des actes . . . Raymond V. 13 Fredric Cheyette, 'The Castles of the Trencavels: a Preliminary Aerial Survey," in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. W. C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, T. F. Ruiz (Princeton^ 1976), pp. 255-272.

260

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

were relatively less important to comital power, alThis is not the place to discuss this curious problem though not differently managed.14 in the history of feudalism; we must content ourselves In Aragon, on the other hand, the honors centered with its pertinence to administration. In Catalonia, on castles and cities remained revocable units of local the earliest known fiefs were administrative tenures military and fiscal authority throughout the twelfth held of public authorities. "Feudal" land was fiscal century. Ceded to the king's companions in arms, land, as Bonnassie has shown. 17 During the eleventh these more nearly represented a deliberate effort to century, as the aggressive, exploitative tendencies of organize the castellan aristocracy as a territorial ad- the castle-holding aristocracy blurred the old distincministration than anything we find to the east of tion between delegated authority and property, many Aragon. This does not mean, in my view, that Aragon of the old fiefs passed into the patrimonies of lay lords was administratively more advanced than Catalonia and the church; simultaneously, as lordships prolif(in at least one sense this could not have been the erated, benefices granted from patrimonial land came case, for the early constitutional structure was better to be termed fiefs.18 Nevertheless, the original conpreserved in Aragon than elsewhere), but rather that ception of the fief, which I think may safely be termed the conqueror-kings of Aragon had maintained better the Prankish conception, did not disappear in Catacontrol of their less numerous and less prosperous lonia; and this continuity points to one of the most baronage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.15 striking characteristics of twelfth-century MediterIn Catalonia, therefore, and to degrees less clear in ranean government that we have to notice. Occitania and Provence, it was not so much the The survival took two forms. In one case it reprearistocratic order as the Peace and Truce which per- sented an adaptation of the old function of fiefs to the petuated the ancient conceptions of public administra- new military circumstances. The castellanies orgation. Pierre Bonnassie has described the new feudal- nized in the eleventh century were subdivided into ism of the eleventh century, which rested on the coer- benefices for knights (Latin singular: caballaria, cive exploitation of peasants, as a radical break with cavalleria). This organization was customary, althe past. Yet in some ways even the disintegrative though not universal, by the twelfth century. It was new customs of lordship were continuous with much associated with the promotion of the knights from older institutions, and had, accordingly, some points solely coercive functions to consultative and judicial of affinity with the Peace of God itself. In the first ones as well.19 Such, at least, was the norm; but place, the written oaths which once littered the even on the least flattering view of the role of knights, archives of Mediterranean castles were directly de- their endowments were formally analogous to those scended from the oaths of fealty formerly required formerly made from fiscal land for administrative purof freeholders before the public courts. The essence poses—and, to repeat, they were known as "fiefs" of these acts continued to be the negative engagement (jeva). In the other case, we seem to have a virtually to refrain from injuring another party or violating an unchanged survival of public administrative concepagreement; and it was only gradually with the mili- tions from the tenth century. When the patrimony tarizing of society that positive engagements to ser- of the count of Barcelona was surveyed in 1151 a vice and aid crept in. Second, the characteristic asso- number of his bailiffs and vicars held manses or other ciation of these oaths with conventions serving to con- landed rights "in fief of the count" (pro jevo comitis) ; clude disputes or hostilities as well as to reorganize that is, while their functions (or "offices") were preproperty or to establish alliances was structurally sym- sumably regarded as responsibilities rather than remetrical with the multilateral accords effected by the wards, their fees for service took the form of landed sworn statutes of the Peace. Oaths to the peace, endowments called fiefs. This practice seems to have too, derived their form from the ancient oath of fidel- been common on the comital domains. 20 ity. Of course, the significance of a persistent notarial To grasp its significance, we must consider more formula must not be exaggerated. But it looks as if generally the landed and economic resources, especially the South was home to a strongly subsistent norm of 17 Bonnassie, Catalogue 1: pp. 209-214. personal honor, however the social function of that is Ibid. 2: pp. 554-560, 746-764. 19 norm might change. And this observation is supUsatges de Barcelona, ed. Ramon d'Abadal i Vinyals and ported by another fact that has been clarified in recent Ferran Vails Taberner (Barcelona, 1913), c. 9; Glossarium mediae latinitatis Cataloniae . . . , ed. M. Bassols de Climent, scholarship: the characteristic divorce between oaths J. Bastardas, and others (Barcelona, 1960), to word and fiefs in meridional practice. 1G caballaria; Bonnassie, Catalogne 2: pp. 749-752. On this 14

Poly, Provence, pp. 286-359. J. M. Lacarra, " "Honores" et "tenencias" en Aragon (XT' siecle)" Structures socialcs, pp. 143-186. 16 Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, "Fidelite et feodalite meridionales d'apres les serments de fidelite (Xe-debut XIP siecle)," Structures socialcs, pp. 115-142; Bisson, "Organized Peace," pp. 293, 297-298. 15

point the Catalonian evidence supports J. R. Strayer, "The Two Levels of Feudalism," in (idem) Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History . . . (Princeton, 1971), pp. 63-76, on the progressive education of knights in governmental service. Cf., however, below, p. 149. 20 AC A, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (no. 1A-CEHJ-Q in my Fiscal Accounts).

Mediterranean Territorial Power in the Twelfth Century those other than castles, of territorial rulers. For it is in this regard that the problem of distinguishing between nsc and patrimony, or between administration and exploitation, is most challengingly posed. But it must be admitted at once that for most of the regions here in question we know too little of the routine practice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries to make discriminating comparisons. We do know that, in respect to judicial and economic rights over rural tenants or freeholders, the concept of bajulia was widely prevalent. This concept was inherently ambiguous: it meant protection or administration of persons or groups incapable of securing themselves. To hold a bajulia (or bailiwick), while theoretically a responsibility, was customarily and practically a reward in itself, a license to exploit the weakness of those over whom such power was exercised. 21 Accordingly, it is very difficult to say whether the bailiffs (baiulus; Occ.: baile; Cat.: battle) of the counts of Barcelona, Toulouse, and Provence functioned differently from those of barons, knights, or churches. As the distinction between fiscal and patrimonial land weakened, any landlord might be tempted to bully his peasants; a critical determinant of the quality of supervision in these circumstances would have been the conscience of the lord or his bailiff. A related factor would have been the variable concern to deal rationally or systematically with the domain so as to maximize i,ts productivity. 22 Now conscience and reason cannot have been monopolies of the greater lords; but insofar as peasants, artisans, and traders were concerned with protection—simply the security of life and produce—they must have retained an instinctive preference for the lordship of public authorities. In an astonishing recitation of the terrors visited upon some villages near Girona by his vicar toward 1150, the count of Barcelona was told, as if it were something unheard of, that his peasants were fleeing to the protection and domains of other lords.23 21 Auguste Molinier, "fitude sur 1'administration feodale dans le Languedoc (900-1250)," in Histoire generate de Languedoc 7, pp. 197-199; Magnou-Nortier, Societe Idique et I'eglise . . . de Narbonnc, pp. 191-195; Poly, Provence, pp. 113, 122, 203, 306; Bonnassie, Catalogue 2: pp. 597-598, 707, 761; Higounet, Comminges 1: pp. 212-216. 22 Here a number of related problems must be left unexamined, such as the relation between reserves and tenures, and the comparative chronology of exchange. See generally Georges Duby, "Le budget de 1'abbaye de Cluny entre 1080 et 1155. Economic domaniale et economic monetaire," Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations 7 (1952) : pp. 155 171 (reprinted in Homines et structures du moyen age [ParisLa Have, 1973], pp. 61-82) ; idem, Guerriers et paysans, VIIXII* siecle. Premier essor de V economic europeenne (Paris, 1973), pp. 237-260 (translated by H. B. Clarke, The Early Growth of the European Economy. Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century [London, 1974], pp. 211-232). 23 ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, extrainventario 2501.

261

In fact, there is good reason to believe that Count Ramon Berenguer IV (1131-1162) was even then coming to think of the aggregate of his direct domains in terms of systematic organization. It is not so much the making of his inventory for Old Catalonia that proves this, for most other landlords from the Ebro to Italy were also provided with written censiers from time to time. 24 The importance of the survey of 1151 is that it brings together the memorials (cotnemorationes) for each domain in a single record of nearly uniform categories. It reveals a fiscal supervisor for the count determining comital rights in consultation with bailiffs and notable men from the communities, a procedure that can hardly have been designed to promote the arbitrary tendencies of the bailiffs. Here we can safely speak of "public" or "fiscal administration." Among the rights managed by the count's vicars and bailiffs were justice and protection, markets and tolls, military obligations, etc., many of whi were preeminently those rights of public or regalian authority inherent in the comital office. And as we have seen, the fiefs with which some of the local agents were rewarded were fiscal and administrative in nature, not patrimonial—no mere vestige, in this case, but a vital survival, or revival, of the old public order. The count sought to control his domain resources and to profit from them in accordance with custom and reason.25 How widespread in the South such a conception of territorial administration may then have been we do not yet know. The censiers of Occitania seem to me too fragmentary to be helpful for this purpose.26 It is likely that urban justice, rents, and tolls were relatively more important in Occitania and Provence than in Catalonia, a circumstance that would have required a different, although not necessarily less systematic, method of control. The censiers of Montpellier dating from the end of the twelfth century indicate some serious interest to reorganize, perhaps even to estimate, urban revenues.27 Yet when all is said, there remains some reason to question whether territorial rulers anywhere in the South, including Catalonia, thought of the normal returns of fiscal or patrimonial land as a resource of such value or potentiality as to require its direct and systematic management. To understand this point, it is necessary to consider 24 The coordinated editing and study of these texts is one of the major requirements of scholarship devoted to the administrative history of these Mediterranean lands. 25 T. N. Bisson, Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, ch. 2, and Documents, no. 1. 26 Such as those in Cartulaire des Guillems, and those registered in Layettes du Tresor des Charles, ed. Alexandre Teulet and others (5 v., Paris, 1863-1909), 1.

27 Cartulaire des Guillems, e.g., nos. 258-304; cf. A. R. Lewis, "The Guillems of Montpellier: a Sociological Appraisal," Viator 2 (1971) : p. 164.

262

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the position of Count Ramon Berenguer IV more carefully. When his survey of Old Catalonian domains was made in 1151, he was a conquering hero. Prince of Aragon since 1137, victor in the immensely rewarding campaigns of Tortosa and Lerida (11481149), he was a king in all but name, and it was probably at this very time that his court produced a codified law for Catalonia that stressed his regalian authority. 28 From the conquests of cities and castles and from the tribute of cowed Moorish rulers, Ramon Berenguer disposed of incomes that exceeded, and perhaps even dwarfed, his rural revenues in Old Catalonia. On the other hand, his expenses rose to unprecedented amounts as his campaigns continued numerous and costly and his retinues grew larger. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Ramon Berenguer IV borrowed money heavily and repeatedly, from creditors strewn from Tortosa to Genoa. And to secure these loans, the count habitually pledged his domain revenues, and not infrequently those in Old Catalonia. It looks as if one reason for surveying those domains, in 1151 and thereafter, was to determine their value as security for loans to meet immediate expenses. From 1151 until the 1180s it was normal for bailiwicks of Old Catalonia to be held in pledge for credit. 29 The lenders were not only great men or institutions, such as barons or the Templars. Many were local men of Catalonia—entrepreneurs, Jews—who administered the pledges themselves. They assumed some of the functions of the bailiff and, indeed, not infrequently were, or became, bailiffs themselves. This being so, the amounts promised or advanced by competitors in the market for bailiwicks have some of the characteristics of loans; if the price were paid in advance, there was little to distinguish it from a loan. The cost of these debts was undoubtedly high, for even when the contract was not effectively a mart-gage (by which the revenues of the pledge were received as pure profit), the creditor was entitled to pocket revenues in addition to those which were stipulated toward reduction of the debt (vif-gage).30 Whatever

the form of the contract, the collector was unlikely to view his task as a public or even a paternal responsibility. For a generation after 1150 there is little evidence of administrative accounting other than for the count's (after 1162, the count-king's) debts. Only toward 1180 do we begin to find a more systematic effort to control the work of bailiffs. The accounts presented by the latter continue to have affinities with those of credit, but the records that have come down to us show that Alfons I (Alfonso II in Aragon, 1162-1196) had repaid most of his accumulated debts by 1190, so that for some time the majority of bailiwicks were administered directly to the king's profit. This change has the appearance of a real administrative reform, for which Ramon de Caldes, dean of the chapter of Barcelona and fiscal expert in the count-king's service, was chiefly responsible. In this period the old surveys of Catalonia were revised, or more likely replaced with registers by reference to which the accounts now periodically rendered by bailiffs could be verified. 31 But in the reign of Pere I (Pedro II, 1196-1213) this reformed fiscal order collapsed under new financial pressures. Again the bailiwicks were pledged, sometimes now on the crushing terms of mort-gage; and this chaotic finance was to be the unlucky Pere's bequest to his son Jaume I the Conqueror (1213—1276). Again it was to take years to liquidate the crown's debts. 32 By the time of Jaume's first great conquests (12291238), some balance in assets and liabilities had been restored. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the direct administration of domains was then resumed as if normal in Catalonian government. On the contrary, it seems clear that that system, favored by the Templars who had been put in charge of the boyking's finance, had aroused the disfavor of the barons and eventually of the young king himself, their protege. Administration by credit was to remain a deeply characteristic institution of the Crown of Aragon. 33 Associated with baronial ambition and avarice, it perpetuated an old strain of indifference to the central control of castles and domains.

28 Ferran Soldevila, Historia de Catalunya (2d ed., Barcelona, 1963), chs. 7, 8. 29 The evidence is collected and interpreted in Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia (forthcoming). For some illustrative texts, see ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233; perg. extrainv. 3218; perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, apendice 6, 347, apendice 9, extrainv. 2502, extrainv. 3441; perg. Alfonso I, 25, 58, 60, 67, 105, 126, 140, 179, 200. 30 This practice would seem to have been liberal in comparison with Latium, where the mort-gage alone was common in the twelfth century, Toubert, Latium 1 : pp. 608-619. A "custom of pledges" developed there in the later twelfth century. For our other regions, the history of credit is still little explored. For Occitania, see J. de Malefosse, "Contribution a 1'etude du credit dans le Midi aux X e et XP siecles. Les suretes reelles," Annales du Midi 63 (1951) : pp. 105-148. For Catalonia: Jose Enrique Ruiz Domenec, "Introduccion

al estudio del credito en la ciudad de Barcelona durante los siglos XI y XII," Miscellanea Barcinoncnsia no. 42 (1975), pp. 1-17; and Bonnassie, Catalogue 1: pp. 399-409. 31 Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, ch. 3, and Documents; and T. N. Bisson, "Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-c. 1200) : Dean of Barcelona and King's Minister," in Lazv, Church, and Society. Essays in Honor of Stcphan Kuttncr, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), above,pp. 187-8. 32 T. N. Bisson, "Las finanzas del joven Jaime I (12131228)," forthcoming in X Congreso dc Historia de la Corona de Aragon. 33 See Bisson, "Finanzas del joven Jaime I,"; David Romano, "Los funcionarios judios de Pedro el Grande de Aragon," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 33 (1969-1970): pp. 5-41; J. N. Hillgarth, The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean Empire, 1229-1327 (London, 1975), pp. 5-8.

Mediterranean Territorial Power in the Twelfth Century

263

Perhaps enough has now been said to permit some comparative observations about Mediterranean governments in the twelfth century. The first thing we have learned, and not the least important, is that despite certain residual structures they had in common, such as Roman law, the lands here considered were in other respects so different as to defy easy generalization about them all. The Lazio, even though it became dependent on papal authority, was too lacking in natural unity to be very comparable to our other regions. The institutions of Aragon were determined more by a subsistent territorial constitution and less by baronial and dynastic politics than those of Catalonia, Occitania, and Provence. Nor did the Roman law, in its diverse customary forms, have much influence on political and administrative structures before the thirteenth century, when some elements of the revived law of Justinian began to influence procedure and political theory in South and North alike. What unquestionably did affect Mediterranean governments was the rise of a new military aristocracy in the eleventh century, but that phenomenon was in no way peculiar to the South. These difficulties notwithstanding, three points stand out as broadly distinctive in the Mediterranean political experience. First, there was a certain persistence of public territorial order, much more pronounced than in northern France 34 where the new feudal governments ignored or obliterated old political boundaries, leaving it to provincial custom and administration to create new ones. The natural enclosures of the Pyrenees—Andorra, Cerdanya, upper Beam— cradled human communities which resisted seigneurial aggression in the eleventh century, and which maintained some measure of autonomy or authority even when they were finally absorbed into larger states. In some parts of the Mediterranean lowlands the county was rescued, so to speak, by a renewed alliance of higher lay and clerical powers which established a statutory territorial peace wherein the notions of public or associative obligations and of assembly were preserved or revived. These tendencies were strongest in the shadows of the Pyrenees, weakest near the Rhone; but even in Occitania it was exceptional for public authority and major justice to devolve below the level of the viscounty.35 In Aragon (and New

Catalonia) the cohesion promoted by the perilous but rewarding frontier enabled the ruler to maintain firm control of newly acquired lands. In Italy the revival of imperial power resulted in the subordination of judges and notaries to the ruler, a practice which spread to Catalonia (via Provence?) toward 11851190. In the second place, the survival of notions of public or territorial interest inhibited the emergence of feudalism as a political structure. 3G There was no development of aids and incidents attendant upon fiefs such as the greater northern lords employed to build their power in the twelfth century. Those who held by military tenure owed services, to be sure: hospitality, the surrender of castles on demand, expedition and army, attendance in courts. But one cannot argue that these services formed the basis of a new administrative order. In Catalonia, which is best documented, the service of court was not so much deliberative as supportive and ceremonial, and the same was probably true in Occitania and Provence; in any case, the later Corts of Catalonia, like the "general courts" of Aragon and Agenais, derived not from feudal courts but from the traditional territorial assembly. 37 In fact, it is impossible to distinguish the higher feudal order of Catalonia and Occitania very sharply from the old public one. Fiefs had originated in the South as revocable grants from fiscal land, and the administrative tenures on twelfth-century Catalonian domains still retained this character; moreover, the feudal oaths and conventions evolved from traditional forms of security and conciliation. Can one speak realistically of "feudal government" in the South at all ? 38 Only with serious reservations which do not apply in the North. And perhaps only as a social phenomenon, as a matter of status. The castles of the new warrior class were fundamental units in the new territorial order of Mediterranean lands as they were also in the North. But the principles of administration were only lightly touched by the new customs of feudal inheritance associated with these castles. Finally, the evidence for the administration of comital domains in Catalonia reveals some ambivalence between impulses to manage directly and systematically and to exploit indirectly through creditors. The latter practice seems to me more characteristic

34 This territorial order was in some respects analogous to that which survived from the Prankish period in medieval Germany, where, moreover, the concept of territorial peace was to have an important revival in the twelfth and thirteenth •centuries. This similarity suggests another reason for caution in attributing southern territorial order to the persistence of Roman laws. 35 See Magnou-Nortier, Societe Idique et I'eglise . . . de Narbonne, pp. 519-533. It should be evident that I agree with Mme. Magnou-Nortier's thesis on this major point. But I also think that a thorough investigation of twelfth-century justice would be required to confirm it. In any case, I see

nothing seriously to the contrary in Fredric Cheyette's stimulating argument that "normative justice" had largely disappeared in the twelfth-century Midi, "Suum cuique tribuere," French Historical Studies 6 (1970) : pp. 287-299. 36 The southern customs of partible inheritance must likewise have limited the stability of feudal units. 37 Bonnassie, Catalogue, 2: pp. 769-771; cf. Poly, Provence, pp. 160-171, 346-359; and, for Latium, Toubert, Latium 2: pp. 1143-1153. 38 This question will derive added force, I believe, from the proceedings of the colloquium on Structures feodales et jeodalisme dans L'Occident mediterraneen.

264

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of southern than of northern French administration, but we do not yet know how widespread it was. It may have been facilitated by the well-developed practice of the land-pledge in Mediterranean regions. Compared with the Angevin or Capetian monarchic^ the southern governments do not appear manifestly weaker (or stronger) in these characteristics, merely different. The setbacks suffered by Catalan and Occitan rulers at northern hands in the thirteenth century were the result of political, personal, and dynastic failures, not of institutional ones. Nor were meridional institutions at once swept away as Capetian authorities took hold in Occitania and Provence; if Languedoc provided the model for a more profes-

sional justice in France, as Professor Strayer has argued, it was not only because of the revived Roman procedure but also because the strong traditions of public justice and the Peace had withstood the pressures of a multiplied patrimonial aristocracy. In fact, the Peace Movement became better organized and better endowed in the later twelfth century, and survived to become the basis of a new regalian order in some parts of southern France. The eclectic originality of Mediterranean territorial governments would not easily be effaced. 39 39 1 acknowledge with thanks the helpful suggestions of Professors Reinhard Bendix and Joseph R. Strayer.

14 LES COMPTES DBS DOMAINES AU TEMPS DU PHILIPPE AUGUSTE: ESSAI COMPARATIF*

On a beaucoup ecrit sur radministration fiscale en France au xne siecle. II a ete constate depuis longtemps que 1'apparition de PEchiquier en Normandie (sous Henri I€r) et celle des roles de compte pour les prevotes et les bailliages de France (vers 1200) ne furent pas sans rapport de 1'une a Pautre. Depuis les recherches de Stapleton, de Delisle, et de Borrelli de Serres (sinon deja depuis celles de Brussel), tout le monde est d'accord pour y voir la preuve de tournants decisifs dans 1'histoire administrative de la France du Nord : reforme fiscale (dans les deux cas) — voire, centralisation — afin de mieux controler et meme d'augmenter les rendements du domaine1. Plus recemment la publication presque integrate du « Gros Brief » de 1187 a conduit a des conclusions analogues pour la Flandre 2. Quant a la monarchic frangaise, personne n'a doute non plus que ce fut le grand Philippe Auguste lui-meme qui a preside a ce changement. Non seulement les plus *. Je tiens a remercier les professeurs Robert-Henri BAUTIER et John W. BALDWIN de leurs conseils precieux. M. BALDWIN m'a genereusement communique certains textes transcrits d'apres le Registre A. 1. Nicolas BRUSSEL, Nouvel examen de Vusage general des fiefs en France..., 2 vol. (Paris, 1727; reimpr. 1750); Thomas STAPLETON, Magni rotuli scaccarii Normanniae sub regibus Angliae, 2 vol. (Londres, 1840-1844); Leopold DELISLE, Des revenus publics en Normandie au douzieme siecle, dans EEC, t. X-XII (1848-1852); Leon L. BORRELLI DE SERRES, Recherches sur divers services publics du X1W au XVir siecle, 3 vol. (Paris, 1895-1909). Si Ton accepte que Richard d'llchester a reorganise la comptabilite normande vers 1176-1180, la coincidence chronologique devient plus frappante : voir F. M. POWICKE, The Loss of Normandy, 1189-1204..., 2e ed. (Manchester, 1961), p. 54. Des ouvrages subsequents sont cites par la suite. En dernier lieu : C. W. HOLLISTER et J. W. BALDWIN, The Rise of Administrative Kingship : Henry I and Philip Augustus, dans American Historical Review, LXXXIII (1978), p. 867-905. 2. Adrien VERHULST et Maurits GYSSELING, Le compte general de 1187, connu sous le nom de « Gros Brief»... (Bruxelles, 1962). On ne connait actuellement rien de comparable pour I'Empire.

266

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

anciens documents connus de la comptabilite royale datent de son regne, mais nous avons dans sa fameuse ordonnance de 1190 un article qui se presente comme 1'expression personnel^ du jeune roi en precisant un mode de reddition de comptes evidemment mieux regie qu'auparavant. On a done eu pleinement raison de concevoir 1'histoire de la comptabilite de Philippe Auguste sous la rubrique des « Nouveaux moyens du gouvernement », optique dont Pinteret s'est trouve renforce par la decouverte d'un fragment de compte inconnu pour 1'annee 1221 et par les etudes que viennent de publier a son sujet Michel Nortier et John Baldwin3. II est cependant a penser que, en insistant sur la nouveaute, on a quelque peu fausse la perspective de nos connaissances. Insistance justifiee, je le repete, mais qui a pu nous distraire de tout ce qui ne concerne pas les buts financiers de la nouvelle comptabilite. Quoi qu'il en soit, les historiens n'ont que rarement envisage Padministration fiscale de Philippe Auguste comme le sujet per se propose pour ce Colloque, sujet le plus attrayant, d'ailleurs, pour en arriver aujourd'hui aux fondements d'une connaissance comparee de la gestion fiscale en Occident vers 1150-1200 4. II nous faudra dans ces pages, non seulement evoquer une litterature particuliere sur les origines des services financiers de la monarchic franchise, mais surtout essayer de preciser les buts des gens des comptes sous Philippe Auguste en soulignant quelques problemes suscites par un nouvel examen des documents.

I. — LES SOURCES DE NOS CONNAISSANCES Quels sont ces documents ? II y en a deux, d'importance capitale, qui sont connus de tous : 1'ordonnance de 1190, deja citee, et les comptes des prevotes et des bailliages de 1202-1203. A la veille de son depart en croisade Philippe Auguste prescrit que ses revenus et versements obligatoires (omnes redditus nostri et servitia et obventiones) soient apportes aux receveurs deputes a Paris aux fetes de la Saint Remi, de 3. Ferdinand LOT et Robert FAWTIER, Histoire des institutions jrangaises au moyen age, 3 vol. (Paris, 1957-1962), t II, p. 183-189; Michel NORTIER et J. W. BALDWIN, Contributions a Vetude des finances de Philippe Auguste, dans EEC, CXXXVIII (1980), p. 5-33. 4. Bryce LYON et A. E. VERHULST, Medieval Finance. A Comparison of Financial Institutions in Northwestern Europe (Providence, 1967). Je citerai aussi (comme « FAC ») mes propres recherches pour une edition des comptes fiscaux de Catalogne («Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia») sous les premiers comtes-rois (1151-1213).

Les Comptes des Domaines

267

la Chandeleur et de PAscension; le «clerc du roi» Adam doit y assister pour ecrire les recettes (eas scribet)\ on ordonne la procedure d'encaissement5. Ce systeme aura ete conserve apres le retour du roi en 1191 : les termes de gestion sont toujours en 1195 (au moins, pour certaines villes) ceux qui avaient ete presents en 11906. Puis en 1202-1203 nous voyons le terme de la Saint Remi remplace par celui de la Toussaint, et les bourgeois de Paris par les Templiers, dans le grand role des prevotes et des bailliages sauve des flammes de 1737 par 1'edition admirable de Nicolas Brussel7. Ce texte est le monument par excellence de 1'ancienne comptabilite fran^aise, non seulement le premier compte de sa categoric conserve, mais 1'unique exemplaire parvenu jusqu'a nous des comptes unis pour les trois exercices d'une seule annee. Brussel 1'a etudie surtout pour ses donnees administratives; Borrelli de Serres en a fait la premiere etude serieuse comme type de texte comptable; et Lot nous a donne une reedition scrupuleuse du texte de Brussel aussi bien qu'une etude penetrante sur le precede de compte dont le document porte temoignage8. "Lot a conclu que ces comptes representent fidelement le vieux domaine en sa totalite, bien qu'ils contiennent aussi des comptes particuliers pour les operations militaires et que la totalisation des recettes et des depenses soit faite en rapport de versements extraordinaires de telle maniere (et avec un si fort exces de recettes) qu'elle nous suggere un motif surtout financier pour sa confection9. Faute de 1'original du texte, F. Lot ne s'est guere prononce sur sa forme . Mais il y a d'autres comptes de Philippe Auguste a signaler, et de plusieurs sortes. On conservait autrefois les roles de bailliages de 5. Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. par H.-Fr. DELABORDE, Ch. PETIT-DUTAILLIS, Jacques MONICAT, Jacques BOUSSARD et Michel NORTIER, 4 vol. (Paris, 1916-1979) [cite ci-apres: Recueit\, t. I, n° 345. 6. Ibid., t. II, n° 495 (charte de Montdidier, 1195); voir cependant, t. I, n° 406. 7. Usage general des fiefs, t. II, Chartes... [etc.], p. cxxxix-ccx; reproduction photographique dans Ferdinand LOT et Robert FAWTIER, Le premier budget de la monarchic fran$aise. Le compte general de 1202-1203 (Paris, 1932). 8. Usage general des fiefs, t. I, livre 2, ch. 33; Recherches sur divers services, t. I, p. 12-18; Compte general, cite (n. 7). 9. Compte general, p. 1-79. C'est un defaut de cette remarquable etude qu'on n'a pas cherche systematiquement dans les chartes de Philippe Auguste les correspondances avec les comptes. VERHULST a rejete la conclusion que les' comptes de 1202-1203 renferment «all the revenues of the French king» (Medieval Finance, p. 46); mais LOT n'a pas parle de «tous les revenus » mais des « recettes et les depenses du domaine direct tout entier » (p. 53). Si par « domaine direct» LOT voulait dire circonscriptions foncieres, il avait probablement raison. Restent cependant deux questions: (1) savoir quels comptes pour 1202-1203 n'ont pas ete annexes aux peaux cousues (voir plus bas, p. 525); (2) savoir jusqu'a quelle proportion les recettes et les depenses en 1202-1203 suffisent a satisfaire les obligations (surtout celles en nature) des agents et du roi (comparer, par exemple, la charte pour Sens de 1189-1190 (Recueil, t. I, n° 280) avec le compte pp. CL : 2, CLXXX : 2.

268

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

la Chandeleur 1212 (n. St.), de fevrier 1218, de mai 1219, de 1220, et de 1222 10. II y a le compte fragmentaire de la Toussaint 1221 public actuellement par M. Nortier, qui s'est revele comme notre plus ancien exemple d'une classe de comptes sommaires appeles « Comptes generaux d'exercice » par Borrelli de Serres11. II y a un fragment de compte de 1'hotel du prince Louis pour la Chandeleur 1213, le plus ancien exemple, celui-ci, de la classe de Dona et harnesia, egalement caracteristique par la suite12. II y a enfin quelques comptes du chambrier Eudes pour les bijoux du roi en fevrier 120613. Ces comptes, meme ceux qui sont perdus, ajoutent beaucoup a ce que nous savions du role de 1202-1203. II est clair que les comptes de§ bailliages sont devenus reguliers apres la conquete de la Normandie; aussi pouvons-nous, peut-etre, conclure que les roles autrefois conserves n'etaient pas cousus, du moins pas toujours ? Les comptes de la Chandeleur 1213 et de la Toussaint 1221 nous suggerent que deja sous Philippe Auguste les comptes des prevotes et des bailliages ne suffisant plus par eux-memes, on aurait finalement voulu dresser la balance des recettes et des depenses de maniere plus sommaire. Remarquant lui-meme 1'absence des expensae pour 1'Hotel du roi en 1202-1203, Ferdinand Lot avait estime de fagon plausible que 1'excedent des recettes avait probablement suffi pour couvrir les depenses de I'Hotel14. Quant au compte de la Toussaint 1221, on a pu 1'utiliser, par comparaison avec les comptes et Magna recepta pour 1217 et pour d'autres exercices posterieurs, pour estimer qu'entre 1203 et 1221 Philippe Auguste avait fait passer ses revenus d'environ 115,000 1. p. a environ 203,000 (soit de 76 %) 15. Estimation plausible, a mon sens, et compatible avec les eloges de Guillaume le Breton et de Conon de Lausanne a la fin du regne; n'oublions pas que d'importantes augmentations du domaine direct — et par 1'addition de nouvelles prevotes, et par 1'accroissement des fermes — sont deja anterieures a 1202-1203. Je suis moins certain que John Baldwin, d'ailleurs, que les Magna recepta 10. Selon BORRELLI DE SERRES, Recherches sur divers services, t. I, p. 13, 18. Cependant, John BALDWIN me signale qu'il n'a pas pu verifier toutes ces citations de BORRELLI. 11. NORTIER, Finances de Philippe Auguste, 16-21; BORRELLI DE SERRES, Recherches, t. I, p. 55-89. 12. Ed. par Robert FAWTIER, dans Le Moyen Age, t. XLIII (1933), p. 238250. 13. Bibliotheque du Vatican, MS. Ottoboni 2796 (Registre A), fol. 5 r°, 12 r°-v°. Doit-on ajouter un fragment de compte de prevote cite (d'apres Bibl. nat., Grenier 245, fol. 29) par BORRELLI DE SERRES, t. I, 35 (note) ? Je n'ai pu le verifier. 14. Compte general, pp. 132-133. 15. BALDWIN, Finances de Philippe Auguste, p. 21-28. L'auteur trouve modeste cette accroissement par rapport avec les estimations des contemporains.

Account of France (All Saints 1221)

270

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

soient absolument complets. Prenons, par exemple, les revenus de la monnaie. On n'en trouye presque aucune mention en 1202-1203 16, aucune en 1221, ni d'ailleurs dans les comptes posterieurs qui ont servi pour la restitution des lacunes dans celui de 1221. Et pourtant il faut placer le monnayage de Philippe Auguste parmi ses ressources fiscales les plus importantes, assez importantes sans doute pour qu'il ait ete constitue en ministeriwn distinct des prevotes, mais dont les profits doivent etre comptes incontestablement parmi le revenu annuel «ordinaire». En 1298-1299 Philippe le Bel tirait de sa monnaie plus de 50% de son revenu global estime : temps exceptionnel, bien sur, mais meme si nous estimons le monnayage de Philippe Auguste a environ 5-10% de ses recettes, cela ferait un compte considerable a y ajouter17. A-t-on reellement voulu signifier par (les ?) « grandes recettes » une totalisation complete du royaume ? Sinon, on pourrait mieux comprendre la difference entre les estimations de Conon de Lausanne (438,000 1. p) et de Baldwin (203,102 1. p)18. Mais la legon essentielle du nouveau comte de 1221 est ailleurs. C'est que, comme John Baldwin 1'a bien dit19, ce document nous montre forcement que les clercs de Philippe Auguste ont eprouve I'insuffisance des comptes des prevotes et des bailliages comme instrument budgetaire. Cela ne veut pas dire que les comptes de 1202-1203 et d'autres pareils ensuite n'etaient jamais utilises pour estimer grosso modo la balance des recettes et des depenses; mais leur raison d'etre etait autre. Pour bien comprendre ce point, il nous faut prendre un petit detour d'explication. J'ai enumere ce qui peut passer pour les comptes fiscaux connus de Philippe Auguste : au total, une dizaine de comptes dont huit sont distribues des avant 1223 dans les trois classes de documents qui seront les plus repandues sous Louis IX et Philippe le Bel. Mais 1'enumeration, 16. LOT et FAWTIER, Compte general, p. 71-72. 17. Jean FAVIER, Philippe le Bel (Paris, 1978), p. 151. Le monnayage de Barcelone, qui valait plus de 1 100 1. au comte-roi Pierre Ier en 1211 (Th. N. BISSON, Conservation of Coinage... [Oxford, 1979], p. 99, etait certainement moins lucratif que celui de Paris. 18. Deux corrections resultent de la publication du compte de 1221 : (1) Ce n'est pas ici «la plus ancienne mention » du produit du fouage normand (NORTIER, Finances de Philippe Auguste, p. 13), car nous avons celle du role de 1184 (STAPLETON, t. I, p. 110; BISSON, Conservation of Coinage, p. 25-26). (2) Par contre, la recette de fouage de 1221 (15, 384 1.1.) est tellement superieure a celle de 1184 (env. 6800 1.1) qu'elle m'oblige a abandonner 1'hypothese de STAPLETON et de BRIDREY que cette recette de 1184 fut totale. II est meme possible que ce montant de 6 800 1. doit etre corrige en le divisant par 4 (soit 1 700 1. andeg.: voir POWICKE, Loss of Normandy, 2* ed., p. 188-189). De nos deductions sur la population de la Normandie (BissoN, p. 25 n-26; NORTIER, p. 13-14), celle de M. NORTIER est done la bonne. 19. BALDWIN, Finances de Philippe Auguste, p. 22-23.

Les Comptes des Domaines

271

telle quelle, n'est pas complete. Laissons de cote pour 1'instant la question du caractere des documents fiscaux perdus dans la catastrophe de Freteval en 1194. II reste toute une autre categoric de textes comptables, celle designee par Borrelli de Serres comme «pieces auxiliaires », et dont la Praia servientum de 1194-1204 est bien connue. C'est que pour Borrelli ces listes et d'autres, telles qu'elles sont conservees dans les registres, ne sont pas des « comptes » proprement dits; il les a decrit vite, et personne apres lui n'a voulu revenir sur la question du caractere des plus anciens documents connus de la comptabilite frangaise 20. Une simple constatation nous montrera pourtant que cette question n'est pas sans consequence. On sait que la Prisia servientum correspond, a quelques differences pres, a une liste de versements faits par les communes, les villes et les abbayes qui se trouvait jointe aux comptes de 1202-1203. Borrelli de Serres, suivi par Edouard Audouin, a demontre d'apres ces textes que le service des sergents etait rachete pour 3 1. chacun, en plus d'environ 13 1. par charrette pour tous les 50 sergents21. Or, les deux textes sont parfaitement distincts Tun de 1'autre par leur forme. La Prisia de 1194, meme dans ses additions, est normative, injonctive; la liste des sergents de 1202 est descriptive, probatoire. Doit-on done conclure que la Prisia est un etat et Servientes un compte ? Oui, si Ton veut — mais a condition de n'y pas trop insister. Car en substance comme (nous allons le voir) par leur fonction, les deux listes sont pareilles. Certains des articles sont pratiquement identiques : comparez, par exemple, la ligne « Checiacum... (etc.) » dans les deux textes. Ayant donne leurs quittances pour les versements en 1202, les gens des comptes auraient pu se servir de leur compte pour verifier le montant des rachats de service militaire. Inversement, la Prisia, elle, n'est pas sans presenter toute ressemblance avec un compte; du moins, a-t-elle ete commencee comme tel, puisqu'elle porte a la fin des summae pour les sergents et pour 1'argent tels qu'ils avaient ete totalises en 1194 mais sans les revisions posterieures 22. 20. BORRELLI DE SERRES, Recherches sur divers services, t. I, p. 90-94; il est vrai que 1'auteur a longuement repris le sujet des prisees, p. 467-527. 21. Ibid., p. 467-504; Edouard AUDOUIN, Essai sur I'armee royale au temps de Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1913), p. 7-34. La Prisia est publiee dans Rec. des hist, de France, t. XXIII, p. 722-723, et par AUDOUIN, p. 123-129; Servientes (d'apres BRUSSEL, t. II, p. CXLVHI-CXLIX, reproduit par LOT et FAWTIER, Compte general) se trouve aussi dans AUDOUIN, p. 135-140. Voir aussi LOT, Compte general, p. 15-20. 22. John BALDWIN montre (« La decennie decisive: L'importance des annees 1190-1203 pour le regne de Philippe Auguste », dans Revue historique, CCLXVI, 24, 1981, p. 311-337) que la Prisia a ete entreprise comme instrument budgetaire pour une armee permanente organisee en raison de la guerre normande. Dans leur forme et leur fonction, les devis pour les fortifications (Registre A, fol. 66 v°, 92 r°-94 r°; Registre C, fol. 2 v°) ne sont pas sans analogic avec la Prisia.

272

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Or, cette assimilation des etats domaniaux et des comptes fut parfaitement normale a 1'epoque. En Catalogne les premiers « comptes » pour les domaines des comtes-rois parvenus jusqu'a nous (1157-1158) ne sont pas autre chose que le remaniement d'inventaires 23. En Flandre comme en Catalogne, les comptes des annees 1180 font allusion aux reliquats plus ou moins a la maniere d'inventaires24. II faut admettre que pour les besoins fiscaux du xn€ siecle les etats de droits (au sens plus general du mot: censier, capbreu, etc.)25 etaient tout aussi bien des comptes — comptes, en effet, de caractere fondamental — que les etats de recettes et de depenses. Pour le regne de Philippe Auguste il ne suffit pas d'insister sur les grands comptes nouveaux sans considerer aussi les petits comptes anciens. Car ces derniers (ou, du moins, leur influence) ont persiste un peu plus qu'on ne 1'a pense. La Prisia servientum n'en est nullement le plus typique. C'est au contraire un etat supplemental pour determiner une obligation renouvelee pendant les premieres annees de la guerre normande; sous son aspect financier il pourrait meme etre qualifie de premier des grands comptes existants de Philippe Auguste. Et si les scribes ont trouve utile un tel etat des villes, ils ont certainement eu besoin aussi des inventaires du domaine foncier. Et nous avons, en effet — conserve dans le Registre A et toujours peu etudie — un certain nombre de tels documents. Leopold Delisle en a public ceux qui concernent les prevotes normandes, a savoir: Anet, Pacy, Breval, Evreux, Vernon, Meulan et Gisors; on y trouve aussi un resume des echoites dans le Vexin. Mais il y en a 26 autres, pour: Bapaume, Peronne, Athies, Boucly, Clery, Cappy, Amiens, Beauquesne, Hesdin, Montreuil, Roye, Montdidier, Mery, Rocquencourt, Choisy, Compiegne, Corbeil, Melun, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Fossemore, Lixy, Checy, Voulx, Flagy, Lorrez-le-Bocage et le Chatelet-en-Brie 26. On ne saurait tenter ici une etude administrative de ces documents 27. Remarquons toutefois qu'ils appartiennent surtout aux prevotes ajoutees au vieux domaine royal et situees a sa peripherie; quelques-unes se trouvent dans les terres normandes conquises entre 1194 et 1200, d'autres dans les terres artesiennes et flamandes acquises entre 1180 23. Archives de la Couronne d'Aragon (— AC A), Chancellerie, parchemins Extrainventari 3477, 3218; voir aussi 3132, parch. Raimond Berenger IV, 347, et Bibl. nat, Ms. lat. 5132, fol. 104 v° («FAC», n08 5, 7, 18, 10, 12). 24. VERHULST et GYSSELING, « Gros Brief», p. 53-54, 141-193; ACA, pa chemins d'Alphonse I er , 435, 528, etc. («FAC », n os 60, 74, etc.). 25. J'emploierai le mot «etat» par la suite comme terme generique : voir, en general, Robert FOSSIER, Polyptyques et censiers (Turnhout, 1978). 26. Registre A, fol. 86 r°-89 r°; Cartulaire normand..., ed. par Leopold DELISLE (Caen, 1852), n° 1079. 27. Le professeur BALDWIN 1'a promis dans son travail en preparation.

Les Comptes des Domaines

273

et 1191, d'autres encore (comme Corbeil et Melun) dans les terres assignees en douaire a la reine-mere Adele; d'autres enfin (Lixy, Checy, Voulx, Flagy, Lorrez) en Senonais ou le roi n'en avait le dominium qu'en pariage 28. Plusieurs de ces prevotes — celles des lisieres normandes et flamandes — ont compte en 1202-1203, mais on ne trouve que difficilement des correspondances entre les donnees des etats et des comptes29; la majorite de ces domaines ne figurent pas comme prevotes du roi en 1202-1203. Pourquoi avons-nous ces etats et non pas d'autres pour le domaine central ? Parce que, selon toute vraisemblance, ces derniers ont ete perdus sur le champ de Freteval. II n'y a aucune mention de tels documents par la suite, ni dans le Registre A, ni dans les chartes, ni dans Brussel. Par contre on ne peut guere nier que parmi les archives perdues en 1194 se trouvaient surtout des pieces fiscales. Guillaume le Breton le dit formellement: « amisso ibidem sigillo et libellis computorum fisci » (Gesta Philippi, c. 74); « nee parcit raptor... Scripta tributorum fiscique cyrographa... » (Philippide, IV, vers 543, 546)30. Probablement voulaitil dire que des comptes stricto sensu y furent saisis; mais que par scripta tributorum Guillaume designait des etats de domaine me semble hors de doute quand il parle, un peu plus loin, des efforts faits par les gens du roi pour reconstituer ses archives : « ... sed scripta quibus prenosse dabatur / Quid deberetur fisco, que, quanta tributa, / Nomine quid census, que vectigalia, quantum / Quisque teneretur feodali solvere jure, / Qui sint exempti... / Qui sint vel glebe servi, vel conditionis, /... / Non nisi cum summo poterit rescire labore » (Philippide, IV, vers 561569) 31. Voila un beau resume (a quelques exceptions pres) du Registre A, quelle qu'ait ete la forme du travail de restitution anterieure a 1204 32. La question nous interesse parce que, comme nous avons vu, le Registre A tel que nous 1'avons ne renferme pour les prevotes que cette petite gerbe d'etats exceptionnels dont j'ai parle plus haut. 28. L'etat pour Lorrez, ou «non habet rex nisi medietatem », prouve que LOT s'est trompe en identifiant Lorriacum avec Lorrez-le-Bocage (Compte general, p. 52-53, 263). Je crois que toutes les references du compte de 1202-1203 se rapportent a Lorris-en-Gatinais. L'erreur semble remonter a BRUSSEL, Usage general des fiefs, t. I, 439; elle se trouve aussi dans Henri CLAVIER, Essai sur les prevots royaux du XI* au XIVe siecle (Paris, 1904), p. 183. Comparez BORRELLI DE SfiRRES, Recherches, t. I, p. 473, 475. Voir aussi Recueil, t. II, n°951. 29. Voir, par exemple, les etats pour Anet, Pacy, Evreux, Bapaume, Amiens et Hesdin; sur Bapaume et Hesdin, voir aussi le «Gros Brief», p. 159-160, 164-165; sur Evreux, STAPLETON, Magni rotuli, t. II, p. 462-463. 30. Ed. par H.-Fr. DELABORDE, CEuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, 2 vol. (Paris, 1882-1885), t. I, p. 197; t. II, p. 119. 31. Ibid., t. II, 120. 32. Voir H.-Fr. DELABORDE, Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, 5 vol. (Paris, 1863-1909), V. p. v-vi; comparez Michel NORTIER, ci-dessus, p. 435-443 (cf. p. 451).

274

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

A-t-on done On aurait raison plus directement premieres annees

effectue une restitution des etats du domaine central? d'en douter. Pour en juger mieux il faut examiner le systeme de compte tel qu'il fonctionnait dans les du roi Philippe Auguste.

II. — VERS UNE NOUVELLE STRUCTURE DE COMPTABILIT^ (1190-1202) Avant 1'ordonnance de 1190 la gestion ordinaire du fisc ne nous est guere connue. Que le senechal (ou le clerc du chambrier ait conserve sa surveillance sur les prevotes ou que le roi ait compte lui-meme avec ses prevots — et ni Tune ni 1'autre de ces possibilites n'est a exclure — on doit supposer que les comptes ont ete rendus dans une cour ambulante. Ainsi les gens de Compiegne gagnerent Passurance en 1186 de n'etre pas mandes hors de leur ville pour compter33. L'exemple prouve, par contre, que 1'usage de convoquer les prevots pour compter — soit aux chateaux d'etape, soit a Paris — avait commence. Aucune des autres communes n'a regu une telle concession comme celle de Compiegne, concession sans doute devenue lettre morte des 1190. L'ordonnance de cette annee suivie de la decision de laisser vacante la senechaussee a la mort de Thibaut V (1191) montre que des gens plus specialises en matiere fiscale — tel, Adam le clerc — sont entres en fonction. Mais quel est precisement le changement auquel ils auraient du presider ? L'etablissement d'un bureau de comptes a Paris ? - d'un tresor qui y serait fixe ? - d'une preuve ecrite des comptes ? On peut admettre sans difficulte que la decision de centraliser le tresor (ou une partie du tresor) chez les Templiers de Paris fut definitive 84. Nous allons voir que le compte sommaire ecrit fut aussi une innovation. Quant au bureau, le probleme est plus complexe. Philippe Auguste, de retour de la croisade, a-t-il jamais compte - lui ou les gens de sa cour itinerante - avec les agents du domaine ? Sinon, comment expliquer la perte de ses documents fiscaux loin de Paris en 1194? Admettons notre ignorance. Ce qui me semble le plus vraisemblable, toutefois, peut etre formule dans 1'hypothese suivante : apres des 33. Recueil, t. I, n° 168. 34. Voir en general Leopold DELISLE, Memoire sur les operations financieres des Templiers, dans Memoires de I'lnstitut... Academie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres, vol. xxxm (1889), p. 40-41.

Les Comptes des Domaines

275

hesitations, le desastre de Freteval a precipite la decision d'etablir 1'audition des comptes definitivement a Paris35. Parmi les documents perdus en 1194 il y avait, en effet, un certain nombre de comptes rediges par Adam le clerc36, qui les avait soumis au roi, mais aussi - et surtout - des etats du vieux domaine. Or il est probable que ces etats, ou quelques-uns d'eux, dataient du regne de Louis VII, et plus que probable que des qu'on a commence a ecrire les comptes du tresor ils seront devenus inutiles. Car ils n'etaient que tres imparfaitement adaptes au bouleversement actuel de la structure fiscale. Les prevotes continuaient de croitre en valeur37, rendant necessaire la revision presque annuelle des listes de cens, de champarts, etc. On etait en train d'organiser les fermes des prevotes, dont les totaux fixes (mais aucunement inflexibles) pourraient facilement etre portes et utilises en tete du parchemin sur lequel les comptes etaient ecrits. On etait en train d'instituer les bailliages, inconnus des vieux inventaires. On a quelque reflet de ces problemes dans les etats conserves dans le Registre A 38 , tous rediges, semble-t-il, entre 1193 environ et 1206, et sans doute differents des etats perdus. Dans celui pour Anet, par exemple, se dessine parfaitement 1'effort pour delimiter les collectes du prevot et du bailli; dans celui de Compiegne (exceptionnel d'ailleurs) 1'evaluation se borne a deux revenus apparemment ajoutes a la ferme stipulee en 1186. A Montdidier on avait conserve une liste des obligations dont la ferme communale avait ete determinee en 1195; 1'etat dans le Registre A ne lui ajoute que tres peu (peut-etre des recettes du prevot en sus de la ferme ?). II faut conclure que ces etats n'ont pas ete compiles pour constituer les fermes, leurs totaux etant normalement bien inferieurs aux fermes connues de 1202-1203, mais pour suppleer aux donnees desormais fixees dans les comptes courants, soit ceux du roi, soit ceux des apanages. Nous voyons done en quel sens les comptes des prevotes et des bailliages, tels qu'ils nous sont connus a partir de 1202, furent une innovation en France a la fin du xne siecle. Ils ont effectivement remplace les etats comme instrument de controle sur le domaine royal. C'est la leur caractere original. Recevant les rapports des prevots (ou des communes) et des baillis, les scribes du roi les ont recapitules 35. Deja en 1192 on trouve payable a Paris a la huitaine apres la Toussaint les gttes de Noyon selon le taux commue (160 1.) toujours valable en 1202-1203 (Recueil, t. I, n° 406; Compte general, p. CXLIV : 1). 36. Voir sur Adam, parmi d'autres documents relatifs a des hommes d'administration nommes par le roi en 1190, Recueil, t. I, n° 390 (1191). 37. Par exemple, le rendement de Senlis a augmente de 34% entre 1173 et 1202 (Recueil, t. II, n° 706), celui de Chaumont-en-Vexin de 60 % entre 1202 et 1205 (ibid., n° 907; Compte general, p. CXLIII : 1). 38. MS. Ottoboni 2796, fol. 86 r°-89 r°.

276

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

en des etats-sommaires au moment des versements au tresor; ils ont totalise ces comptes individuellement (non pas globalement); eux (ou d'autres) ont fait coudre - plus tard, et pas toujours - les peaux des trois exercices, en y ajoutant eventuellement d'autres comptes particuliers39. La cour pouvait ainsi savoir tout 1'essentiel enregistre dans les etats - et de fagon plus souple. II n'y avait plus qu'a inventer un moyen pratique pour faire entrer les recettes et depenses extraordinaires, simple probleme de technologic administrative, deja resolu, d'ailleurs, en Angleterre et en Normandie. Ce qui reste plus difficile a decider, faute des originaux des plus anciens documents fiscaux, c'est jusqu'a quel point le nouveau precede de compte d'exercice a entraine des changements dans la comptabilite des prevots. Qu'etaient, precisement, ces libelli computorum et fisci cyrographa disparus en 1194, dont parle Guillaume le Breton? Comptes d'exercice selon 1'ordonnance de 1190? Vraisemblablement. Comptes anterieurs ? - preuves de depense par les prevots ? Voila le probleme. On ne saurait soutenir e silentio que les prevots n'ont jamais compte par ecrit avant 1190. Encore en plein xm* siecle nous serons a ce sujet dans une ignorance presque totale. Les comptes de la chambre de 1206 revelent une formule ecrite dont on peut facilement imaginer 1'analogue dans la surveillance traditionnelle du domaine. Mais des qu'on a centralise 1'audition des rapports, le caractere des comptes particuliers a du changer. Ils seraient devenus ancillaires, simples listes, imaginons-nous, des recettes et depenses selon 1'ordonnance de plus en plus regulier des comptes du tresor40. On ne s'attendrait pas a la survivance de tels materiaux. Or il est permis de douter que les comptes de prevot anterieurs aient ete bien differents. Qu'un precede regulier par ecrit n'ait laisse aucune epave dans les archives, aucune trace dans les chartes et les chroniques, cela me semble presque inconcevable. Et il ne faut pas en crediter le seul silence, nous le verrons. Force m'est done d'imaginer un controle surtout oral, fonde sur les etats de domaine et des memoranda informes. Tel fut le systeme que les gens des comptes de Philippe Auguste ont modifie a partir de 1190-1194.

39. Sur la confection des roles, voir Robert FAWTIER, Comptes royaux (1285-1314), 3 vol. (Paris, 1953-1956), t. Ill, p. xxm-xxvm. 40. Voir J. R. STRAYER, The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), p. 35-37.

Les Comptes des Domaines

277

III. — LES CIRCONSTANCES La France fut la derniere des monarchies dont nous ayons les documents a adopter une comptabilite centralisee pour le tresor. Les echiquiers et sans doute aussi les pipe rolls d'Angleterre et de Normandie remontent au premier quart du xne siecle au plus tard; le rekeninge de Flandre n'est posterieur que d'un demi-siecle au plus41. Mais si la France fut la derniere, c'est parce qu'elle fut la derniere a en avoir besoin. Plus riche au total que ses voisins du Nord bien que moins douee de revenus monnayes (avant 1204), elle pouvait tolerer une exploitation du fisc moins etroite qu'ailleurs. Les systemes de Normandie et de Flandre devaient etre connus en France des avant 1190, mais il ne fut pas question d'imiter ces systemes. Le « Gros Brief » de 1187 est trop sensiblement distinct dans sa structure pour nous faire permettre d'imaginer une filiation directe entre ce type et les roles fran^ais; on peut dire la meme chose des comptes normands qui precederent la conquete 42. Les roles de tous ces pays refletent une structure de gestion fiscale tres repandue au Nord : structure caracterisee par le fermage des revenus ordinaires, par Pinsistance sur le controle des recettes et des depenses locales, par une tendance a distinguer entre 1'ordinaire et 1'extraordinaire 43 . Mais une telle structure depend beaucoup des gens qui la dirigent, et nous n'avons pas suffisamment d'information sur la societe des comptes, faute de documents, ni sur les attitudes de ces gens envers le domaine. A 1'extreme on peut supposer que le rapport entre le senechal de France (ou le roi) et ses prevots etait fonde sur la confiance personnelle plutot que sur la precision des comptes au xne siecle, la fonction de ce rapport etant plutot d'exploitation que d'administration, tandis qu'en Flandre la delegation des comptes au chancelier et aux notaires aurait du donner une impulsion precoce vers une comptabilite reguliere et chiffree. En France une telle comptabilite ne nous est visible qu'aux annees 1190 quand, en pleine conjonction avec 41. Voir John LE PATOUREL, The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), p. 148-155, 173-174; VERHULST et LYON, Medieval Finance, p. 36-38. 42. Voir les editions citees dans ks notes 1, 2, 6; en outre, BALDWIN, Finances <Je Philippe Auguste, p. 22 et note 4. 43. On n'a pas assez etudie la gestion fiscale des rois capetiens au xn° siecle. Surtout les tendances et la chronologic du fermage des prevotes restent a elucider. Voir, cependant, GRAVIER, Prevots royaux, p. 3-36; LOT et FAWTIER, Histoire des institutions, t. II, 140-141; Marcel PACAUT, Louis VII et son royaumc (Paris, 1964), p. 139-160.

278

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

la reforme des prevotes et I'mstitution des baillis, elle se revele parmi les innovations (stricta sensu) les plus importantes de Phliippe Auguste 44. Structure domaniale, done; circonstances particulieres selon les pays. II reste a souligner une influence sur la nouvelle comptabilite au Nord aussi generate que profonde : la croissance demographique. C'est cela, somme toute, qui a amene la defaite definitive de la notion carolingienne d'un domaine statique. Defaite, par consequence, des polyptyques ou des censiers, qui ont fini par demander des modifications - surtout des additions - presque tous les ans. Les comptes du xne siecle ont commence, si je ne me trompe, comme des etats dynamiques a reprise annuelle. On sait qu'en Flandre les comptes de certains receveurs s'appelaient breve (-id) des 1120-1140 environ, au plus tard; or ces comptes etaient dans le meme rapport avec les comptes generaux (connus plus tard sous le nom de grate brieven) que les brevia du ixe siecle avec les descriptiones ou plenaria45. Ailleurs on a laisse tomber la terminologie carolingienne au xne siecle 46. Dans son excellent expose sur les Polyptyques et censiers, Robert Fossier ne mentionne aucun etat de domaine pour les monarchies anglo-normande, flamande, et frangaise depuis le Domesday Book jusqu'a la fin du Moyen Age. L'etude annoncee, dans la meme serie, sur Les comptes publics nous montrera sans doute jusqu'a quel point une nouvelle comptabilite annuelle a remplace le controle plus statistique par le moyen des inventaires dans ces royaumes 47. Ce sont ces caracteres de la comptabilite communs aux pays du Nord qui nous incitent a souligner une comparaison insolite avec la Catalogue. Contraste frappant! Pour la Catalogue il y a une survivance de comptes domaniaux des comtes-rois aussi luxuriante que celle du Nord est mince. Nous y trouvons plus d'une centaine de comptes et d'etats pour les seules annees 1150-1213 - et presque tous en sont

44. Pour ce changement social en ce qu'il concerne le monnayage, voir mon Conservation of Coinage, p. 162-165, mais ce probleme aussi est a approfondir. Pour le regne de Louis VII voir en dernier lieu: Eric BOURNAZEL, Le gouvernement capetien au Xll9 siecle, 1108-1180... (Paris, 1975), p. 161-178. 45. «Gros Brief», p. 42, 88; FOSSIER, Polyptyques et censiers, p. 25-33. Uemploi du mot ratio dans le « Gros Brief» est symptomatique d'une mutation d'esprit au temps de la centralisation des comptes en Flandre. 46. Sauf en Catalogue, ou les mots brevis et caput brevis se sont generalises pour designer toute espece de chartes normatives ou descriptives. 47. L'effet de la croissance economique sur 1'administration des domaines de Cluny a ete bien etudie par Georges DUBY, Hommes et structures... (Paris, 1973), ch. 2, 4; voir aussi Robert FOSSIER, infra, p. 624-631. Pour FEmpire, rappelons le curieux etat des services ed. par Aloys SCHULTE, Das Verzeichnis der koniglichen Tafelgiiter und Servitien von 1064-1065, dans Neues Archiv, XLI (1918), 571-578, et dont la date est discutee (voir H. H. KAMINSKY, dans Deutsches Archiv, xxix, 1973, 163-196, qui le place en 1131-1132 environ).

Les Comptes des Domaines

279

conserves en originaux48. Ces documents prouvent que dans les annees 1140-1162 le comte-prince Raimond Berenger IV (1131-1162) a surtout fait valotr son vieux domaine comme gage pour ses emprunts d'argent. Les preteurs ont regu soit des domaines entiers comme baiuli comitis, soit des revenus particuliers a percevoir sur les bailies49. Politique d'exploitation, c'est clair, au temps des conquetes dans la Nouvelle Catalogue, mais caracteristique d'une gestion fiscale decentralisee, qui a continue jusque vers 1178-1180. A cette epoque Alphonse Ier (11621196) institua une reforme par laquelle 1'exploitation indirecte par les creanciers fut remplacee par une administration directe par les bailes. Cette reforme fut de courte duree, il est vrai: elle echoua sous Pierre Ier (1196-1213), grand gaspilleur d'argent, qui a effectivement restaure 1'ancien systeme de gestion par le recours au credit 50. Ce sont les sommes des comptes (summae computorwri) des bailes passes devant les gens du roi dans les annees 1178-1194 qui forment la categoric typique de ces anciens comptes Catalans 51. La comptabilite catalane est surtout celle des bailes, decentralisee toujours et sans rapport avec le tresor. Comptabilite ecrite : nous possedons non seulement les etats des domaines et des comptes, mais aussi des chartes de commission aux bailes - epaves, d'ailleurs, d'une documentation autrefois incomparablement plus abondante. La conclusion s'impose que c'est le notarial qui a determine la forme des comptes et la structure de la procedure. Les comptes et maints capbreus aussi sont des chartes (ou des notices), souvent en forme de chirographe. Tandis qu'en France les rencontres entre prevots et deputes aux comptes sont demeurees longtemps orales, done parfaitement soumises aux influences centralisatrices, en Catalogue les scribes ont effectivement confere une solennite rituelle aux redditions de compte les plus locales. Systeme maladroit, a Pinconvenient duquel les gerants ont tente de remedier vers les annees 1180 par le recours a 1'enregistrement des etats de domaines et de comptes et par 1'institution d'archives fiscales. Ces innovations n'ont cependant pas reussi a alterer la primaute structurelle de la baillie, ni a lui substituter une perspective globale du domaine, Mais si Ton n'est pas arrive a employer les comptes comme moyen d'accroitre le domaine, c'est que - comme en France jusqu'au temps de Philippe Auguste - les comtes-rois n'en ont pas eprouve le besoin. Les croissances demographique et economique, bien qu'importantes, n'ont jamais provoque les memes bouleversements que dans le Nord : on aurait pu 48. Voir au-dessus, note 4. Les documents sont conserves, pour la plupart, aux ACA, serie Chancellerie. 49. «FAC», n<>« 1-14, 140-143. 50. Ibid., n°s 32-138. 51. Ibid., n<* 32-98.

280

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

continuer a se fonder sur les etats de domaines en vendant les bailies. Pierre Ier, face aux depenses urgentes, loin de developper son administration ordinaire, 1'a rejete impitoyablement en faveur du recours au credit, au monnayage, et aux impots extraordinaires 52. Meme au Nord, la defaite des inventaires ne fut pas totale, bien sur. En rapport avec celle de la population, 1'expansion administrative du xin€ siecle en France aurait entratne le propos, sinon de retablir les censiers perdus, au moins de donner plus de souplesse a la stricte totalisation portee sur les roles. La comptabilite deviendrait de plus en plus liee aux buts financiers. On connait le splendide etat du domaine produit par (ou pour) Julien de Peronne pour le bailliage de Rouen (1261-1266)53. Mais il est loin d'etre certain que meme en ce temps-la un tel travail fut normal. Le scribe du registre semble s'etre servi plutot des roles de PEchiquier que d'etats de domaine pour faire ses comparaisons comme preuve d'accroissements 54. Au temps de Philippe Auguste on ne s'appliquait pas encore a chercher en dehors des roles pour une plus-value du domaine : c'est un temps ou le domaine suffit. La constitution et 1'emploi des etats, tels qu'ils etaient, seront desormais passes de la cour (ou du Temple) aux baillis, dont les enquetes seront restees decousues aussi longtemps que les clercs des comptes ne les auront pas presses. Ce qui nous reste plus problematique c'est de savoir jusqu'a quel point on a pu se passer d'etats pour les prevotes, pour les bailliages et pour les senechaussees annexees au domaine de France entre 1202 et 1223. Pour la Normandie, en dehors des prevotes de la frontiere, nous sommes obliges d'imaginer, faute d'archives, que 1'Echiquier a pu maintenir son controle sur le vieux domaine. Mais le roi a infeode des terres a lui devolues, assez librement pour nous suggerer que ces infeodations fussent motivees par des raisons administratives aussi bien que politiques55. En Poitou, Philippe Auguste a donne en fief non seulement les prevotes mais la senechaussee ellememe, exemple frappant de la nouvelle feodalisation par laquelle le roi conquerant a erige une structure originate de pouvoir extra-domanial r>6. A-t-on laisse a de tels feudataires la tache de reorganiser les 52. Ces problemes sont abordes dans 1'introduction aux « F A C » . 53. J. R. STRAYER, The Royal Domain in the BailHage of Rouen (Princeton, 1936; reimpr. avec corrections, Londres, 1976). 54. Ibid., p. 5 n. 6, et (par exemple) p. 63 : «La mare du pare n'estoit pas es roules » et au marge : « n'est pas en ferme... N'estoit pas en ferme*, etc. Le professeur STRAYER croit cependant a Texistence d'inventaires anterieurs; et les references aux mules et aux fermes pour la Normandie ne sont evidemment pas conclusives pour mon interpretation. 55. Recueil, t. II-IV, actes des annees 1204 et suivantes, enquetes du Registre A; BRUSSEL, Usage general des fiefs, t .1, 446. 56. Recueil, t. II, n 08 829, 839, 926; Th. N. BISSON, The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia, and France, dans Speculum, t. LIII (1978^; ci-dessus, 247-56 (surtout, 250-4).

Les Comptes des Domaines

281

domaines de province ? Symptome d'inflexibilite de la comptabilite des Templiers ? - ou plutot de 1'impossibilite d'insister sur des versements a Paris par les baillis eloignes ? On salt, de toute fagon, qu'au xme siecle les comptes d'exercices restent fondamentalement les compoti Franciae. II n'est guere besoin d'insister sur la comptabilite comme phenomene humain de tous les temps. Technique pour faire valoir un bien, elle se presente selon des modalites diverses, tant sociales que mentales, tant politiques qu'economiques, les unes plus determinatives que les autres au gre des circonstances. Cela justifie toute tentative de 1'etudier du point de vue comparatif; de la, cependant, la difficulte du sujet et 1'insuffisance irremediable de nos connaissances. L'interet de 1'histoire de la comptabilite au xne siecle est celui d'un changement fondamental de technique dans toutes les societes d'Occident57 - et d'un changement qui dans le cas de la monarchic franchise se situe, semble-t-il, justement sous le regne de Philippe Auguste. Et pourtant, que savons-nous de ces gens des comptes ou de leurs attitudes, soit en matiere de domaine, soit quant aux methodes de leurs predecesseurs de la cour ? Finalement, il peut sembler impossible de decider si la structure revelee par le **61e de 1202-1203 fut la consequence d'une evolution ou d'une revolu* tion. Car la France est, de tous ces pays pour lesquels nous connaissons 1'existence de comptes, le plus pauvre quant a leur survie documentaire. Soulignons le fait: aucun des premiers textes connus de la nouvelle comptabilite jran$aise ne nous est parvenu en original58! Curieuse ironie, alors : nous sommes beaucoup mieux renseignes sur la reforme fiscale effectuee sous Alphonse Ier en Catalogue que sur celle qui a suivi en France, bien que celle-la fut, de toute evidence, la moins chargee de progres, et certainement la moins durable des deux. C'est justement cette penurie documentaire qui nous oblige a faire des conjectures sur le rapport entre les derniers etats et les premiers comptes domaniaux connus de Philippe Auguste, rapport sur lequel la conjoncture socio-economique et le temoignage de Guillaume le Breton sont fort suggestifs. Doit-on insister sur le fait que les vieux etats du domaine ont ete reconstitues malgre le parfait silence sur eux 57. L'importance de 1'essor d'une mentalite arithmetique pour revolution de la comptabilite est bien soulignee par Alexander MURRAY, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), ch. 7, 8. Mais le probleme ne me semble pas exclusivement celui de «numeracy». On a certainement additionne avec 1'aide de Fabaque en France avant de se decider a s'adresser systematiquement au domaine. 58. Faut-il faire exception pour les comptes de la Chambre dans le Registre A, fol. 5 r°, 12 r°-v° ?

282

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

des chartes et des comptes ? Perte de registres (ou d'etats) rediges apres 1194? C'est possible. Mais il est de bonne methode de chercher une autre explication de ce silence, explication dont je ne dissimule pas le caractere hypothetique. (N'oublions pas que presque tout argument concernant les comptes de Philippe Auguste est, de necessite, conjectural). Passe 1202, les textes, bien que toujours peu nombreux, suffisent neanmoins pour nous montrer deja en usage le systeme de comptabilite ordinaire en France, dont la maturite au xme siecle a ete magistralement decrite par Robert Fawtier59. C'est la decouverte des Magna recepta de 1221 qui nous permet de comprendre comment les clercs des comptes ont vite appris a varier leurs moyens selon leurs buts; elle est peut-etre meme la preuve d'une nouvelle fonction de revision des comptes a 1'echelon superieur par des clercs hors du Temple; elle permet en outre une reinterpretation des comptes de 1202-1203 comme instrument de controle principalement sur le domaine. On ne saurait nier tout motif financier, meme en 1202, pour la comptabilite domaniale, mais ce n'est qu'avec les Magna recepta (qui ne donnent pas peut-etre toutes les recettes) que ce motif domine. Ce qu'on a entrepris sous Philippe Auguste fut done une reorganisation du domaine - d'un domaine qui s'accroit - en tous les sens. Si notre perspective en reste indistincte, c'est que les objets de compte aussi bien que les moyens etaient alors en pleine transformation. Distinguons, certes, entre les comptes d'exercice, fruit d'une specialisation des fonctions au Temple, et les listes de la chancellerie - mais ne distinguons pas trop. Etats de domaine, sommes de recettes et de depenses, enquetes sur les droits feodaux : tous etaient des comptes au temps de Philippe Auguste, et bien que de plus en plus orientes vers les besoins financiers, tous etaient pratiquement des comptes de controle et de verification. La reforme de la comptabilite fut non seulement liee a celle des prevotes, elle fut peut-etre meme la consequence de celle-ci. Ainsi nous trouvons les nouveaux agents du domaine agissant comme comptables eux-memes : tel le senechal Guillaume des Roches, qui doit lever la taille du roi en Anjou, Maine, et Touraine « per legitimum compotum et scriptum 60 ». La Catalogne a deja ses receveurs speciaux pour de tels impots61 mais elle manque toujours de 1'equivalent du senechal ou du bailli frangais; en France, on le voit, 1'evolution d'une comptabilite extraordinaire provient d'une reorganisation des fonctions doma59. Histoire des institutions frangaises, t. II, p. 183-200; Comptes royaux, t. Ill, Introduction. 60. Recueil, t. II, n° 829. 61. Archives episcopates de Vich, «Llibre de pergamins », xi, 35 («FAC», n° 105).

Les Comptes des Domaines

283

niales. Cela vaudrait la peine de rechercher dans quelle mesure 1'esprit de remede judiciaire a contribue aux reformes fiscales (au sens le plus general). Un tel esprit est bien documente pour la nouvelle comptabilite de 1178-1194 en Catalogne; et la comme dans les pays du Nord les agents domaniaux ont paru aux comptes presque comme defendeurs. Revenons enfin au roi Philippe : «... justement appele 'Auguste' ab aucta republica. Car il ajouta a son royaume tout le Vermandois que ses predecesseurs avait perdu longtemps auparavant et bien d'autres terres; d'ailleurs, il augmenta enormement les revenus royaux 6 2 ». Ne doutons pas qu'une comptabilite plus efficace a contribue a cet accroissement des revenus. Mais 1'accroissement avait certainement precede les reformes fiscales. Ces mots de Rigord furent ecrits avant 1204, et ce qu'ils veulent dire tout simplement c'est que les revenus ont cru parce que le royaume a cru. On aurait pu le dire a fortiori a la fin du regne. C'est la croissance du domaine, au fond, qui a rendu inutile un controle seigneurial statique et 1'a fait remplacer par une comptabilite souple, digne d'un royaume grandissant.

62. Rigordi liber, prologue (ed. DELABORDE, t. I, p. 6).

Miniature (c. 1194-6?) associated with license to fortify Urtx (Pyrenees-Orientales) granted by Alfons I to Galceran de Urtx. 'Liber feudorum maior', Arxiu de la Corona d'Arago, Cancellaria, Registre 1, fol 69va. Photograph Arxiu Mas

PART IV

FISCAL EXPLOITATION AND COINAGE

This page intentionally left blank

15 CREDIT, PRICES AND AGRARIAN PRODUCTION IN CATALONIA: A TEMPLAR ACCOUNT (1180-1188)

On October 8, 1180 the Templars of Palau-solita,1 in the Valles north of Barcelona, lent Guillem de Torre and his wife Estefania 120 morabetins, for what purpose we do not know. The debtors pledged revenues from their lands in the vicinity of Palau toward repayment, making allowance for a deduction in grain to compensate the Templars for their labor, and in associated acts of piety Guillem willed his body, horse, and arms to Palau and donated his tithe on their local demesne to the brothers of that house.2 The written evidence of these events would hardly call for comment were it not for the survival of a much more singular text: a record of receipts on the de Torres' pledge for the years 1181 to 1188.3 This document is illuminating in form as well as in content. It was drawn up and 1 For the early history of this house, see Joaquim Miret y Sans, Les cases de Templersy Hospitalers en Catalunya. . . (Barcelona, 1910), pp. 39-40,162-165; Els cast ells Catalans, ed. Rafael Dalmau, 3 vois. to date (Barcelona, 1967-1971), II, 93-98; and A. J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Arag6n (London, 1973), pp. 50,88-91,96,100. "Palau-solita" is said to be the traditional name for this place (Diccionari nomenclator depobles ipoblats de Catalunya, 2d edn. [Barcelona, 1964], p. 283), but the text printed below has "Palacii salatani," a form attested in other texts, and modernized by Miret y Sans as "Palau Salata," Cases de Tempters, p. 167; see also p. 163. 2 Arxiu de la Corona d'Arag6 (to be cited as AC A), Cancelleria, pergamins Alfons I, 300; the debemus reads in part: "propter quos inpignoramus uobis omne nostrum directum tocius decimi parroechie Sancte Marie de Palacio salatan cum nostris pariliatis quas ibi habemus simul cum nostro molendino de Lizano cum omnibus suis necessariis et instruments, tali pacto ut teneatis ita quod omnia expleta cpmputetis et recipiatis pro istis .cxx. morabetinis tantum quod bene sitis paccati. Et computetis blad sicuti uenundetur de festo Sancti Michaelis usque ad festum Omnium Sanctorum. lamdictas pariliatas laboretis bene et mittatis omne semen. In tempore messium leuate inde semen, leuato semine, accipite uos medietatem pro uestra laboracione; alteram medietatem tocius blad computate in persolucione morabetinorum. . . . " Guillelmus de Turre (or Torre), a substantial proprietor of the Valles from a family of Caldes de Montbui or its near vicinity, can be traced back at least to 1171 in documents of Sant Cugat and Palau, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Valles, ed. Jose Rius Serra, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), III, no. 1079; ACA, perg. Alfons I, 300, 329, 462, 531, 534, extrainv. 2607; Miret, Cases de Tempters, p. 164. Other citations are provided by Enric Moreu-Rey, La rodalia de Caldes de Montbui. Repertori historic de noms de Hoc i de noms de persona (Barcelona, 1961), p. 223 (and he prints perg. Alfons I, 531, Apendixs, no. 28). 3 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 508; printed below, pp. 322-4.

288

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

preserved in ways that enable us to characterize the accounting in relation to general tendencies in Catalan fiscal administration. And it records yields and prices for a short run of consecutive years with an exactitude that is exceptional in extant texts relating to agrarian management in the age of the reviving economy. I. Accounting The text appears to be the work of a single scribe who divided the accounts for 1181, 1182, 1183, 1184, 1185, and 1186 into as many clearly marked paragraphs. But his script is so even and continuous that it cannot have been done sporadically or annually as the collections were made. It must rather have been done all, or mostly, at once; and the state of the final entries is such as to suggest that the record was substantially a summary of the accounts drafted in 1186 in preparation for a final settlement with Guillem de Torre. The entry for 1185 is followed by information about seeding of a kind that had become irrelevant to the preceding paragraphs, or had been forgotten, but that might have been useful to the brothers in 1186 as evidence supporting their reports of yields. Next comes an account of proceeds and marketing5 for 1186 which can safely be assigned to the later months of that year (but prior to December 14), and it was then, I imagine, that the greater part of the parchment was inscribed. The final lines, beginning with a reference to a meeting of the debtor and his creditors on December 14, 1186, are visibly an addition to the preceding script, probably in the same hand, cast in the descriptive terms of a third party (possibly the echo or copy of a separate charter?), and lacking the indications of paragraphs characteristic of the bulk of the text. Whatever the expectation in 1186, some 30 morabetins remained on account a year or more later, and at that point our record ends. There is no reason to doubt that a debt so steadily and speedily reduced was soon discharged,5 but when and how it was discharged cannot be determined. Why, then, is our record of the debt incomplete? The most likely answer is that the scribe ran out of space, for in fact the text runs 4

The pricing in the account certainly appears to refer to marketing, but may sometimes indicate evaluation for credit to the account; see below. 5 This presumption would be strengthened if the debtor or his son (who bore the same name) could be identified with the Brother Guillem de Torre who was preceptor of the Templars at Miravet in 1198, Cartas de p oblation y de franquicia de Cataluna, ed. Jose Maria Font Rius, 1 vol. in 2 parts (Madrid-Barcelona, 1969), no. 208; but this identification is doubtful. I have failed to trace Guillem senior with certainty later than 1188 (ACA, perg. Alfons I, 462; final entry of account).

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

289

almost to the bottom of the parchment. The final transactions, if not left unwritten, could well have been noted on another parchment (but they do not appear on the extant instrument of pledge). For it is very clear that the text, which bears neither marks of cancellation nor the marginal lettering of a chirograph, was intended to have the diplomatic character of a memorandum or brief; its opening words - "this is a commemoration of debt. . ." place it unmistakably in the category of inventories or notices (commemorationes, brevid), Carolingian6 in ancestry, of which innumerable Catalonian examples survive. But the commemoration of proceeds from a pledge, unlike inventories of domain, became useless once the debt was liquidated. It is much easier to understand why most such vestiges perished than why one should have survived. In fact, this one seems to have survived only by chance. It had presumably been cast aside when its blank dorse was used to inscribe a charter of pious donation by which members of the Montreal family entered into confraternity with the Templars of Palau on March 5, 1189. But this explanation encounters a curious difficulty. The charter, unlike the account, was a chirograph cut off from its mate through lettering at the top; since both sides of the parchment were inscribed in the same direction, this must mean that the record of account which concerns us was originally written on the lower portion of a long strip of parchment. It is hard to see why the scribe would have begun his record on the lower part of such a strip if the upper part were still blank. The reasonable inference must be that our text began where it did because the space above was already filled. Filled with what? With other administrative memoranda, or with draft material? Quite conceivably, but another possibility suggests itself. Apparently the space above the text of the account was approximately equal to the space in which it was written, because the chirograph on the reverse, which occupies almost exactly the same space as the account on the obverse, begins on the same line as the account. This suggests that the account might have been undertaken as a chirograph, that our text might have been the duplicate of an upper copy that vanished with the archives of the house of Montreal. Such a project would understandably have been abandoned when the scribe realized that he had underestimated the space he needed. These are not idle speculations. In the very years when the 6 Cf., e.g., ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233, which begins: "Hec est comemoratio totius ipsius honoris . . ."; or the "carta et rememoratio" of Templar rights in Cerdanya (ca. 1184), ed. Joaquin Miret y Sans, "Pro sermone plebeico," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, VII (1913), 163-164, 169.

290

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

brothers of Palau were collecting on their pledge, royal administrators with strong associations in the society around Palau were recording local receipts in forms and sessions that bear significant analogy to procedures of account for debt.7 In some cases, Templars themselves had effectively become, or replaced, royal bailiffs when the king assigned domanial revenues in pledge for repayment of money borrowed from the Temple.8 To maintain his credit with the Templars if not also to benefit from their fiscal wisdom, Alphonse I employed Brothers Pon? Azemar from 1184 to 1191 and Guerau de Caerci, a former preceptor 9of Palau, from 1191 to 1194 as associate auditors of royal accounts. Now, for the king's purposes, it became the practice in the 1180's to summarize local receipts - year by year, as a rule, but sometimes after two or more years - in authentic chirographs. These summae computorum were normally more condensed than the account of Palau, and the reckoning of marketable produce was only one element of their contents; yet in one respect they resemble our record. They invariably refer to sessions of review such as was indicated at Palau in 1186, and do so in quite similar descriptive language. This consideration lends support to the possibility that the commemoration of Palau was intended to be completed as a chirograph proving repayments as well as the final settlement of the debt.10 In that case, there were two records (if not certainly two sets of chirographs), for the Templars' copy of the written statement of debt has survived; but here again the analogy holds, for the royal bailiffs commonly held chirographs stating the terms on which they exploited the domain.11 Nevertheless, in the absence of conclusive evidence, this hypothesis remains doubtful. The document of Palau was begun as a memorandum, it survived as such, and for all of its external 7

Fiscal accounts of Catalonia under the early count-kings (1151-1213), ed. T. N. Bisson (Berkeley, 1984; to be cited as FAC), I, chs. 2, 3. 8 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 200, extrainv. 2613, extrainv. 2616. 9 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 361,360,416,435,453,579,588; perg. Pere 1,48,8; perg. Alfons I, 568, 580,581, 592, 603,652,662,674,672,678. It may be added that the Templars were entitled to a tenth of royal, revenues, Forey, Templars in the Corona de Aragoii, p. 22, and references; but the history of this revenue in the later twelfth century remains obscure. 10 The absence of alphabetic lettering at the top is indecisive in this regard. Such lettering might have been added only after the texts were complete; or, indeed, might have been omitted altdgether. See ACA, perg. Alfons I, 300; also perg. Pere I, 206, 203, unmarked records of a royal bailiffs accounts for the honor of Bergueda (1203-1204). The central accounting (no. 203) before the comendator of Palau (among other officials) strikingly resembles the entry for 1186 in the account of Guillem de Torre's pledge; of the former text, two copies must have been needed. 1 * Examples of debeo are very numerous; for one, see Coleccion de documentos ineditos del Archive general de la Corona de Aragon, ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 41 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1910), iv, no. 111. For sales or contracts of bailiwicks, see, e.g., ACA, perg. Alfons I, 25, 292.

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

291

peculiarities, that could have been its only purpose. Commemorations, although they often took the form of charters, were not normally chirographs, and there survives at least one other account associated with Palau that appears not to have been duplicated by cutting.12 The computations required of men handling five different measures and at least four denominations of money cannot have been simple. There was real need of annotation and recopying as financial work became more exacting in the later twelfth century, and the Templars - with their reserves in cash and their capability of accepting agrarian produce in vif-gage - may have been instrumental in devising forms of accounting appropriate to marketing. Their summaries of exchange in the vicinity of Palau, remarkably clear and regular, are not alone in suggesting this. A very similar notation appears on the dorse of a statement of account for the royal bailiwick of Tarragona in 1184: the sale of grain left13 on account was ordered, it says, by the Templar Pon? Azemar. The calculations of the accountants of Palau present difficulties independent of the form of the record (see Tables). With one exception - the evaluation of the somada at (apparently) 18d. in 1184 - their prices were all expressed in terms of the quarter (quarterd), a dry measure that was demonstrably the eighth part of the sestar (sextarius).14 The quartana mentioned in 1186 must have been the fourth part of the quarter, for on that supposition the computation for that year can be verified with an error of only one denier.15 But for the punera, evidently some other small portion of the quarter, we are left in 16the dark, probably because of a mistake in the reckoning for 1185. It is likewise the resistance of certain calculations to verification that prevents us from certifying the exact ratio of the medala and the obolus to the denarius and to each other. Probably the two former were identical. The entry for 1181 12

ACA, perg. Pere I, 203 (see note 10). ACA, perg. Alfons I, 361. Cf. no. 200, receipts on royal pledges to the Templars were noted on the record of debt. 14 Entries for 1181,1183,1187-1188, and see Table l.Cf. Charles du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et inflmae latinitatis, new edn., 7 vols. (Paris, 1840-1850), v. quartarium, for a quarter that was % the sextarius. 15 This is the only evidence I have yet found clearly defining the Catalonian quartana and distinguishing it from the quartern. Cf. ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233, passim; extrainv. 2502; and accounts of Alfons I, such as those cited above, note 9. 16 Table 2; cf. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1954-), v. pugneria, where Du Cange's slender evidence is cited. Thepuniera may be found in Rius, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" in, nos. 1128,1218; thepojeria in Cartulaires deDouzens, ed. Pierre Gerard and Elisabeth Magnou (Paris, 1965), A, no. 202. Thepunera must have been a very small measure because the reckoning for 1183 can be verified without allowing for the single punera of lentils mentioned in that year. Cf. J. A. Brutails, Etude sur la condition des populations rurales du Roussillon au Moyen Age (Paris, 1891), pp. 58-59. 13

292 France and her Pyrenean Neighbours affords some warrant for assessing the medala at half of the denier.17 That the accounting was measured down to these fractional coins is a mark of the thoroughness with which the work was done. But the statements for three, possibly four, of the seven years cannot be precisely verified. An error of 3s. 4d. appears in the receipts reported for 1182; this is compounded by a miscalculation of the balance for 1183; and so forth. These errors can neither be reconciled nor explained away. They cannot be attributed to hidden interest charges, for several of the statements are correct as they stand; moreover, the tendency of the discrepancy is generally in favor of the debtor. Nor is it possible to determine where all the mistakes lie, for the information needed to reconstruct the account is not quite complete. The price of millet in 1184 was omitted, although it can be deduced with fair probability, and it is not altogether certain that the price of milled grain that year was identical with that of other harvested grain. What is more serious, the ratio of the punera is neither given nor deducible from the stated receipts, nor is the price of the morabetin indicated for 1185 and 1186. The receipts stated in both sous and morabetins for 1186 can only be reconciled (approximately) on the assumption that the morabetin had fallen to 6s. 2d. or 3d.; yet on that assumption one arrives at a final balance almost 10s. lower than that stated. If I am not mistaken, it proves useless to emend the stated figures selectively.18 But if the receipts and balances are recalculated, with estimates as needed, it becomes evident that the final balance cannot have been at variance with the given figure by more than a few deniers or, at most, a few sous. The accounting, after all, was almost as accurate as it was precise. II. Economic Conditions Guillem de Torre's holding, or so much of it as was pledged, comprised fields directly exploited (laboratio) and proceeds from a mill and from a tithe. Of peasants on these lands the mention of tithe alone affords a hint; the Templars controlled the "working" 17

On the maille and the obol, see Niermeyer, Lexicon, v. medala, obulus; Novum glossarium mediae latinitatis ab anno DCCC usque ad annum MCC, fascicule MeabilisMiles (Copenhagen, 1961), v. medalia\ Felipe Mateu y Llopis, Glosario hispdnico de numismdtica (Barcelona, 1946). 18 It is for this reason that I have not attempted to calculate the balances of 1186 and 1187-1188. E.g., if it is assumed that the price of the morabetin in 1186 was 6s. 3d. and that the punera was reckoned at !/5 quartera, then a final balance of 28 mo. 6s. 2d. can be computed - or 9s. 1 Id. less than the stated balance. If the price of the morabetin in 118 was 7s. and the punera is disregarded (cf. note 16), then we arrive at a final balance of 30 mo. 3s. 2d.m. - or 3s. Id.m. more than the stated balance, etc.

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

293

closely19 and doubtless shared in it. The planting was chiefly in grain, with the coarse winter crops by far the most important. There was a good market for feed-grains in this region of mounted knights and royal servants. Whether oats (avend) was among the grains designated by the term cibaria, as it certainly was in the Conflent a generation before and perhaps quite generally in Catalonia,20 cannot be affirmed, but it is not unlikely. The reference of cibaria (or civadd) to animal food, and specifically to fodder for horses, is well attested in Catalonian sources.21 From the allusion to 22 the mill at Parets, just east of Palau, it can be inferred that some of the fields in barley or spelt were located between two main roads leading north. Of wine (or grapes) we hear only of 17 deniers' worth in 1184,23 of millet only a half quarter, for which no price is given, in the same year, and of24pigs and poultry, amply indicated in other records of the Valles, nothing at all. So in spite of the indication that laboratio, mill, and tithe produced virtually the same crops, we cannot be sure that Guillem's cultivation was perfectly representative of the regional economy. The produce de minuturis (1184), which cannot be identified, undoubtedly figured in the tithe, as it did at nearby Terrassa.25 The changing states of the economy are summarized in Tables 1 and 2. We find, for example, that in 1181 the brothers of Palau harvested 11 sestars iy 2 quarters of grain, half in barley and half in spelt, according to the measure of Sabadell, the market-town close by; that the sale of barley and spelt fetched respectively 2y2s. (or 30d.) and 20d. per quarter in that year; and that counting a payment by Bernat de Plegamans26 of 6 mo. at the time of reckoning and with 19

More preponderantly so than meets the eye, for the Templars must have routinely understated receipts in bladum (see note 2). 20 AC A, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (text 1M in FAC)\ s.f. 16; and references in note 21. 21 Glossarivm mediae latinitatis Cataloniae, 6 fascicules to date (Barcelona, I960-), cols. 493-496, v. cibaria, cibata. 22 According to the statement of debt (above, note 2) the mill was at Llica (de Vail), two kilometres north of Parets. 23 The saumata, or saumada de vindemia, figures also in records of the Templars of Douzens, Gerard and Magnou, Cartulaires deDouzens, A, nos. 5, 83. It seems necessary to assume that the price de uindemia was expressed per somatam, for only on that assumption can a plausible price for millet (13d.) be deduced. 24 E.g., ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (B and Q). 25 Perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233 (Q): the count has 3/4 "de decima, preter terciam partem quam Sanctus Petrus in minuturis ipsius decimi [sic] accipit. . . . " 26 Bernardus de Plicamanibus, possibly the son of Berenguer, can be traced in numerous local texts from the 1160's to at least 1187, ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 326; perg. Alfons I, 77 (these pieces are printed by Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes de Montbui, Apendixs, nos. 22, 25); perg, Alfons I, 383,462, extrainv. 2607; Rius, Cartulario de "Sant Cugal" in, nos. 1066, 1079, 1108; for the family, see Moreu-Rey, p. 133.

The Valles of Catalonia

295

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

the price of the morabetin then at 7s., the Templars recovered 32 mo. 4s. 5d. 1 medaia, leaving a balance in the debt of 88 mo. less 4s. 5d. 1m. Eleven eighty-one proved to be a good year for these farmers. Although the total accounted harvest of 89 y2 quarters of grain was only one percent larger than that of 1182, the next best year, the sales of that grain brought in nearly twice as much money. The difference, of course, lay in the prices: 2y2s. per quarter of barley in 1181,16d. in 1182; 20d. per quarter of spelt (or c/fcaria) in 1181,12d. in 1182. Although the rates in 1181 seem to have been abnormally high, the pronounced fluctuation in the prices of marketable crops is the most salient economic fact revealed by the accounts (Figure 1). TABLE 1 Year

Crop

Seed Sown

Total Receipts in Crops

Specific Receipts in Crops

Price of Crops per Qt.

1 1 sestars, 1 1/2 quarters grain (89 y2qts.)

44 3/4qts. 44 3/4qts.

20d

2 y2s.

1181

Barley Spelt (or cibaria)

1182

Barley Cibaria Wheat (frumentum)

88qts.

44qts. 41qts. 3qts.

16d. 12d. 3s.

1183

Barley Lentils Cibaria

50qts. 1 punera

3sests. 2qts. Ipun. 3sests.

18d. (?18d.) 12d.

13qts. 4qts. 5qts. Iqt. 7

18d. 22d. 13d. 3s.

1184

Barley Lentils H Cibaria Wheat (triticwn) Sr « De minuturis (3s. 7d.m.) Barley > .„ Cibaria \mi11 Barley Wheat (frumentwn) Millet De uindemia

llqts. 19qts. 8 y4qts.

(18d.) (13d.) (18d.) (3s.) 13d. 18d. (per somadd?)

66 y4qts. 1 !/2 somada

4 y^ts.

y2qt.

1 l/2 somada 7qts. less l/2 pun. 16qts. Ipun. 14 y2qts. 17 y2qts.

28d.

17 y2qts.

1 Iqts. 1 quartana 6qts. 1 quartana

2s. 2d. 17d.

4sests. (32qts.)

4sests.

lOd.

Wheat (triticum)

1185

De leguminis B*rley } mill Cibaria \

1186

Wheat (triticum) Peses

11871188

Barley

55qts. 1 y&un.

6 y2qts. 2 '/2qts.

15d. 13d. 9d.

296

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours TABLE 2 Price of Morabetin

1181

7s.

Stated Recovery in Money 32mo. 4s. 5d.m.

Calculated Recovery, Money

(120mo.) 87mo. 2s. 6d.m.

(120mo.) 87mo. 2s. 6d.m.

15mo. 3s. 8d.

71mo. 5s. lOd.m.

71mo. 2s. lid.

62mo. 5s. lOd.m.

61 mo. 4s. lOd.m.

47mo. 6s. 3d.

46mo. 4s. 3d.

7s.

16mo.

1183

7s.

9mo.

9mo.

104s. 7d.m. (including 3s. 7d.m. de minuturis) said to equal 15mo. 2s. 7d.

104s. Id. (including 3s. 7d.m. de minuturis) plus? [?104s. 7d.m.] equals [14mo. 6s. 7d.m.]

68s. 6d.m. said to equal lOmo. 3s. 6d. less 3m.

[65s. 2d.]] pun. or | dis[9mo. 2s. j regard2d.] ) ed

7s.

(?7s.)

[38mo. 4s. Id.]

(?6s. 6d.)

[lOmo. 2d.]

[37mo. 6s. Id.]

(?6s. 2d.)

[lOmo. 3s. lid.]

j

(?7s.)

[65s. 7d.] pun. or [9mo. 2s. ''/jqt. 7d.] [65s. 4d.] pun. or [9mo. 2s. 5 4d.]

1185

'y qt.

[lOmo. 7d. (pun.

y3qt.).] [lOmo. 5d. (pun.

(?6s. 6d.)

Stated Balance

32mo. 4s. 5d.m.

1182

1184

Calculated Balance

[37 mo. 2s. 4d.] [38mo. 3. 8d.]

37mo. less 22d.m.

[38mo. 3s. lid.] [37mo. 5. 8d.] [37mo. 5s. 10d.]

Ysqt).]

1186

?

33s. 3ob.

33s. 2d.m.

?(see notes 16,18)

33mo. 3s.m.

11871188

8s.

26s. 8d.

26s. 8d.

?(see notes 16,18)

30mo. Id.

The price of barley varied from a maximum of 30d. in 1181 to a minimum of lOd. in 1188, and averaged around 16d. for the other four years. Feedgrain (cibaria, identified with spelt in 1181) ranged from 20d. per quarter in 1181 to 12d. (1182-1183), and the finer wheats (frumentum, triticuni), which were not mentioned in 1181, fluctuated from 2 to 3s. per quarter. Leguminous crops (lentils, de leguminis) varied from 22d. (1184) to 15d. (1185). These movements of agricultural prices conform to a tendency widely apparent in the medieval West.27 Local demand was 27 See Georges Duby, L'Economic rurale et la vie des campagnes dans I'Occident medieval, 2 vols. (Paris, 1962), 1,232-235; tr. CynthiaPostan, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (London, 1968), pp. 135-136. The evidence for Spain in our period has not yet been marshalled, but see Jaime Vicens Vives, An Economic History of Spain, tr. Frances M. Lopez-Morillas (Princeton, 1969), pp. 138-152.

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

297

relatively steady, local supply very variable. Communications and trade could not altogether compensate for the vagaries of weather and soil. Barley sold for 16d. and wheat for 2s. per quarter around Tarragona in 1184 when the same crops were at respectively 18d. and 3s. per quarter in the Valles.28 Whether the prices indicated by the account of Palau were affected by fluctuations in the coinages is more difficult to say. The deniers of Barcelona seemjo have been circulating in issues of slightly different weight toward 1184-1185,29 but the sou of account stood at 7 in terms of the morabetin for 1181 to 1184 and possibly till 1186. Its slippage from 7 to 8 in 1187 or 1188 looks like a local aberration, for other records show the sou of Barcelona holding firm at 7 to the morabetin (and 44 to the mark) down into the 1190's.30 If the account is not misleading in this respect, the planting in grain may have been over-intense. The production of barley, spelt (or cibarid), and wheat totalled 89 % quarters in 1181,88 in 1182, fell to 48 in 1183, rose to nearly 62 in 1184, but then dropped to 38 (1185), 11 (1186), and 32(1187-1188). Moreover, as the proceeds in cash continued to plummet in 1183, there appeared traces of a more varied cultivation: the 2-plus quarters of lentils harvested in 1183 rose to 4 quarters in 1184, when millet, wine, and other items unspecified were also marketed or credited, and 31to 16 quarters 2 punerae in 1185. In 1186 the brothers tried peas. But in none of these years did the revenues from vegetables significantly reward these efforts, remaining below, generally much below, one quarter of the declining overall income from the pledge. Our sense of the difficulties in exploiting the pledged lands would be confirmed if the remarkable indication of yields from seed in 1186 could be accepted as stated. In that year the Templars are said to have sown l2l/2 quarters of peas and harvested 6l/4 quarters; and to have sown 6 /2 quarters of wheat (triticum) and harvested 11% quarters. These returns - less than 3:1 for peas, and not even 2:1 for wheat - are not very impressive. So far as we know, peas had not been sown in the years preceding; moreover, if the one half "of all 28

ACA, perg. Alfons I, 361. For fluctuating prices offrumentum and barley aro Nimes toward 1182, see Claude Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoire generate de Languedoc. . . , new edn., 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904), v, 30. 29 El "Llibre Blanch" de Santas Creus. . . , ed. Federico Udina Martorell (Barcelona, 1947), nos. 259, 278; Rius, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" in, nos. 1152, 1159; ACA, perg. Alfons I, 408. 30 The account of Palau gives no price for the morabetin in 1185 and 1186, but ACA, perg. Alfons I, 417, shows it at 7s. in 1186. See also perg. Alfons I, 567, 635; Chronicon Barcinonense. . . , ed. Jaime and Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espana, 22 vols. (Madrid, 1806-1902), vm, 230. 31 Or peses\ but I cannot render this word securely.

298

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours Figl

blad" reserved for the Templars in the contract of debt may be taken strictly, the figures for peas would appear to be gross. On the other hand, the receipts in triticum (a form of bladwri) were probably understated by a factor approaching one-half, according to the stipulation, so that the true yield of wheat in 1186 may have been around 3{/2:l. But even that figure, perhaps comparable to prevailing yields on some domains of Cluny toward 1150 although considerably poorer than what was thought reasonable in northern Europe in the next century,32 could help to explain why wheat remained a minor item in the cultivation of the pledged honor, justified only by its relatively high price. No doubt the yields for all these crops were somewhat variable. Of rotation or fallow, there is no direct evidence; but it may be significant that the production of 32

Duby, Economic rurale, I, 185-187; Country Life, pp. 99-100; idem, Guerriers et paysans . . . (Paris, 1973), p. 223.

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

299

wheat rose slightly from 1184 to 1185 while that of barley and cibaria fell sharply, that in 1186 wheat was the only grain crop reported, and that in 1187-1188 we hear only of barley. It was a reluctant, poorly fertilized soil that the Templars of Palau had to work and they seem to have pressed it hard, perhaps a little too hard. If the 6 mo. paid by Bernat de Plegamans in 1181 had continued forthcoming, the entire debt might have been erased in six years. It is true that the brothers were dependent on market conditions not - or certainly not entirely - in their control, yet i may be that their account conceals speculative operations in their favor. Although the harvests were evaluated annually for credit toward repayment, it is by no means clear that the receipts so credited were realized from sales. Marketing must have been the normal recourse, at least in the good years, but there was nothing to prevent such a well-endowed community from withholding extraordinary receipts in dry produce33 in hopes of the higher prices that would enable them to realize their interest on the loan. The account of Guillem de Torre's pledge thus provides useful glimpses of early fiscal accounting and of local economic conditions in the days when the Templars were estabishing their reputation in finance.34 Settled in a mature agrarian society35 increasingly remote from Saracen dangers, the brothers of Palau moved as easily in their little fields and markets as on the highways that linked them with Barcelona and the wider horizons of church and state. They were in the business of farming, among other enterprises, and their capital wealth as well as their acceptance of farmlands in pledge point to their success in that business. Their role in the royal administration of the Corona deAragon, and probably that of their Order in general, was firmly rooted in local experience.

33

That the brothers of Palau could store grain, and sell from reserves is suggested by an account of 1207, ACA, perg. Pere I, 261. 34 See generally, Forey, Templars in the Corona de Aragon, chap. 9; Maria Vilar Bonet, "Actividades financieras de la orden del Temple en la Corona de Aragdn," VHCongreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1962), n, 577-585; and (with little reference to Spain) Marie Luise Bulst-Thiele, "Templer in koniglichen und papstlichen Diensten," Festscrift Percy Ernst Schramm, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1964), I, 289-308. 35 It may be noted, in addition to evidence cited in notes 2 and 26 above, that Arnau, the priest of Santa Maria of Palau who served as guarantor to the debtor in 1186, can be traced back into the 1160's, ACA, perg. Alfons I, 43, 126 (the latter ed. Moreu-Rey, Rodalia de Caldes de Montbui, Apendixs, no. 26), 164. On settlement and resettlement in this region, see Rius, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" I, II, passim; cf., for the region just to the east, Anscari M. Mundo, "Domains and Rights of Sant Pere de Vilamajor (Catalonia): a Polyptych of c. 950 and c. 1060," Speculum, XLIX (1974), 238-257.

300

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours Text 1181 - 1187-1188. (Palau-solita.) Accounts by the Templars of Palau-solita for receipts from land given in pledge for the repayment of 120 morabetins loaned to Guillem de Torre. ACA (Barcelona), Cancelleria, pergamins Alfons I, 508. Parchment. 430 X 188 mm. Script effaced in several places.1

Hec est commemoratio de debito quod G. de Torra2 debet domui milicie,3 scilicet .c.xx. mobetinos de quibus in primo anno .rfi.S.hdx.I. recepimus de pignore ipsius .xi. sextarios et una quartera et media de blato medium ordeum et medium espelta ad mensuram Sabbatelli,4 et erat precium ordei unius cuiusque quartera .ii. solidos et medium et de cibaria .xx. denarias. Et sic sumus paccati de iamdicto debito de .xxx.ii. mobetinos et .iiii. solidos et .v. denarios et medaia cum illis ,vi. mobetinis quos Bern, de Plicamanibus5 ei dimisit in tempore redimendi, et erat precium mobetinum in hoc anno .vii. solidly. Et sic restat de iamdicto debito ad hue .Ixxxviii. mobetinos minime .iiii. solidos et .v. d. et medaia. Et in secundo anno recepimus de ipso pignore Guillelmi de Torra .xliiii. quarteras ordei et de cibaria .xl. una quartera et de frumento .iii. quarteras ad iamdictam mensuram Sabbatelli, et erat precium ordei .xvi. denarius et de cibaria .xii. denarios de unaquaque quartera et de frumento .iii. solids de unaquaque quartera. Et sic sumus paccati in hoc anno de .xvi. mobetinos de iamdicto debito, et erat precium mobetinum in hoc anno .vii. solids. Et restat sic de iamdicto debito ad hue .Ixx.ii. mobetinos minime .iiii. solidas- et .ii.a medales. [Et] in tercio anno .m.c.lxxx.iii. recepimus de ipso pignore G. de Turre .iii. sextarios ordei [et] .ii. quarteras et una puneradelentiles, et erat precium .xviii. denarii de unaquaque quartera et de cibari[a] .iii. sextarios, et erat precium .xii. denarii. Et sic sumus paccati de iamdicto debito in hoc anno de .x. mobetinos, et erat precium mobetinos .vii. solidos. Et sic restat de iamdicto debito ad hue .Ix.ii. mobetinos minime .ii. solidos et .iii. medales. Anno .ift.&.hdbc.ilii. recepimus de ipso pignore G. de Turre in quarto anno de decimo .xiii. quarteras ordei et de lentiles .iiii. quarteras et de cibaria .v. quarteras et de tritico una quartera et de minuturis .iii. solidos et .vii. denarias et medaia, et de molendino in hoc anno recepimus .xi. quarteras ordei et de cibaria .xviiii. quarteras, et de laboracione .viii. quarteras ordei et quartam partem unius quartere et de frumento .iiii. quarteras et media et de

Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia

301

mil media quartera et de uindemia .i. somada et media quam se uendidit .xviii. denarios1, et in hoc anno erat precium ordei uniuscuiusque quartera .xviii. denarioy et de tritico .iii. solids et de cibaria .xiii. denarii et de legumina .xxii. denarii. Et sic sumus paccati in hoc anno inter omnibus rebus de .c.iiii. solids et de .vii. denarii et medala, et erat precium mobetinws .vii solid0s. Et sic sumus paccati de .xv. mobetinos et .ii. solids et ix. denarios, et sic restat de debito .xlvii. mobetinos minime .ii. solids et .ix. dtnarios. Anno .rfi.£.hdx$. recepimus de pignore G. de Turre de laboracione .vii. quarteras tritici minime media punera et de leguminis .xvi. quarteras et puneras .ii. et de molendino de Parietes6 recepimus .xiiii. quarteras ordei et media et de cibaria .xvii. quarteras et media, et precium erat de tritici unius cuiusque quartera .ii. splido? et .iiii. denarii et de leguminis .xv. denarii et de ordei .xiii. denarios etb de cibarie .ix. denarios1. Et sic sumus paccati in hoc anno de ,lx.viii. solids et .vi. denarii et medala, quod faciunt .x. mobetinos et .iii. solidos et .vi. denarktf minus .iii. medales. Et sic restat de debito ad hue .xxx.vii. mobetinos minime .xxii. denarius et medala. In hoc anno seminauimus in honore G. de Turre .ii. quarteras et media de peses. In isto anno .vi. quarteras et media de tritici seminauimus. In anno incarnacionis Domini .rfi.£.hdx$i. recepimus de ipsa laboratione G. de Turre quam propter pignus laboramus .xi. quarteras tritici et una quartana, et est precium .ii. solidoset .ii. denarios, et recepimus de peses .vi. quarters et .i. quaratana, et est precium .xvii. denario? de uniuscuiusque quartere. Suma istorum numorum est .xxx.iii. solids et .iii. oboles, et ad hue restat de debito .xxxiii. mobetinos et .iii. solids et .iii. denarios-. Anno ab incarnacione Domini .rfi.8.1xix.$i., xviiii. kalendas lanuarii conuenit G. de Turre domui milicie Templi et fratri G. de Cerdanola7 ceterisque fratribus in domo Palacii8 manentibus iiii. sextarios ordei ad mensuram legitimam Sabatelli ad terminum primo ueniente festo Sancti Felicis lerunde9 pro debito quod eidem domui debet, scilicet .xxx.iii. mo. et .iii. solidas et .iii. denarios. Supradictos .iiii. sextarios ordei debent accipere in paga computando c ut melius uendider[it] inter festum sancti Michaelis et Omnium 10 Sanctorum, unde est fideiussor Arnallus sacerdos Sancte Marie Palacii salatani.d'n Et in .viii. ann recepit domus Palacii .iiii. sextarios ordei, et est precium .x. denarios uniuscuiusque quartere. Suma istorum numorum est .xx.vii. solidos minus quatuor denari^, et erat precium mobetini .viii. solids, et ad hue restat de debito .xxx. mobetinos et .i. denariwm.

302

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

a Possibly et .iii.; one stroke effaced. b .Ix.viii., final strokepossibly added. c Doubtf reading. d salatani, final two letters in superscript.

1

Dorse: inscribed as indicated above, p. 311. In the transcription of the account I have consistently extended the abbreviations sol. and d. in the (incorrect) accusative forms that seem to betray the habits of common speech. There is ample justification for this in the text itself, where, on the other hand, no nominative or ablative forms for these terms are indicated where required. My extensions are italicized only for such words and letters as could be thought doubtful. To avoid confusion I have not italicized (other) vernacular, or possibly vernacular, forms: medales, oboles, peses (?), quarters, ann (for annol). 2 Guillem de Torre; see above, p. 309, note 2. 3 I.e, of Palau-solita, today Palau de Plegamans (part. jud. Sabadell; pr. Barcelona); see above, p. 309, note 1. 4 Sabadell (com. Valles Occidental; pr. Barcelona). 5 Bernat de Plegamans; above, p. 315, note 26. 6 Parets del Valles (part. jud. Granollers; pr. Barcelona). 7 Guillem de Serdanyola, preceptor of Palau from 1181 to 1199. 8 Palau; see note 3 to text. 9 1 August 1187. 10 Between 29 September and 1 November 1187. 11 On Arnau the priest of Santa Maria of Palau, see above, p. 321, note 35.

16 'QUANTO PERSONAM TUAM' (X 2.24.18): ITS ORIGINAL SIGNIFICANCE* Among the more noted canonist texts is a letter dated 5 April 1199 by which Innocent III responded to an appeal of Peter II of Aragon to be absolved from his incautious oath to preserve his predecessor's coinage unaltered. The pope alluded to the evil counsel on which the king had allegedly acted to confirm the coinage "without the consent of the people," and to the scandal aroused by a "fraudulent" coinage of diminished weight. But he pointed out that in this case interpretation rather than absolution was required. For if the king had sworn in the belief that the coinage was good, then the oath should hold firm; but if, less happily, he had confirmed a coinage he knew to be false, then his oath was null, and he was to do penance under the direction of the bishop of Zaragoza. In either case, the king must invalidate the diminished coinage and reissue the best money of his father's reign.1 On this occasion the pope was intervening, by right of his jurisdiction over oaths, in a basic matter of temporal constitutional right. Since neither the popular interest in coinage nor the pontifical power of dispensation were as yet decided issues in legal discussion, it is hardly surprising that Quanta personam tuam should have attracted the attention of the decretalists. The letter was incorporated in the Third Compilation (1210) under the title De iureiurando* whence it passed into the Liber extra. It elicited commentaries from Johannes Galensis, Laurentius, Vincentius Hispanus and Tancred, among other glossators of the Third Compilation.3 Their somewhat repetitious contributions were largely adopted by Bernardus Parmensis, whose ordinary gloss expanded upon them without altering their stress on the grounds for papal * This paper is based on studies of coinages and taxation in medieval France and Spain to be developed more fully elsewhere. For indispensable help I am indebted to Professor Stephan Kuttner and his associates in the Institute of Medieval Canon Law. 1 Decretales Gregorii IX ( = X) 2.24.18, where the text is incomplete; other editions and mentions listed in the full text given by Demetrio Mansilla, La documentacidn pontificia hasta Inocencio III, 965-1216 (Rome: Mon. Hisp. Vaticana I, 1955), no. 183; no. 184 is an analysis of the pope's letter of same date to the bishop of Zaragoza, printed below, Appendix I, where the original of Quanto is discussed. 2 2.15.4, ed. Aemilius Friedberg, Quinque compilationes antiquae . . . (Leipzig, 1882), p. 115. 3 See Stephan Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik (1140-1234), pp. 355-368.

304

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

absolution. It was not until about 1250 that an influential canonist undertook to explain the word irrequisito assensu populi. Innocent IV argued that a monetary debasement injurious to the people could only be sanctioned with the consent of the magnates, quia negotium regis negotium universitatis reputatur? this opinion was taken over by Hostiensis, who interposed new contexts and contingencies,5 by Johannes Andreae6 and by other canonists. Dealing with mutations in their monetary as well as legal aspects, these mature commentaries have special importance for the study of economic and constitutional doctrines.7 On the other hand, the question of dispensation from oaths did not cease to interest the later canonists, and recent historians have continued to stress that question.8 But Quanto remains much less familiar as a letter than as a decretal. From what circumstances in Aragon had Peter II appealed to the pope ? How was Innocent I IPs response related to antecedent papal pronouncements on coinage or oaths? Were there recent precedents in Spain? Such questions do not seem to have bothered the early decretalists any more than their modern successors. Yet an attempt to answer some of them9 — to establish the historical setting of Quanto — will not be without interest for explaining an unnoticed tendency of the early glosses, and it will indicate the importance of the letter for the constitutional history of Aragon. The pontifical interest in coinage was certainly not new in 1199. It can be traced back at least as far as the First Lateran Council (1123), which had provided for the excommunication of counterfeiters and knowing dealers in

4 Innocentius IV, . . . In V. libros decretaliam commentaria (Venice, 1570), 2.24.18 (p. 343). These later commentators, together with modern historians, overlooked Johannes Galensis on 3 Comp. 2.15.4, v. populi; see below, pp. 311, 317. 5 Hostiensis (Henricus de Segusio), In primum (secundum . . . etc.) decretalium librum commentaria, 6 vols. (Venice, 1581; reprinted, 6 vols. in 2, Turin 1965), 1,130rv. 6 loannes Andreae, In quinque decretalium libros novella commentaria, 7 vols. (Venice, 1581; reprinted, 7 vols. in 4, Turin, 1963), II, 189A-190AB. 7 See, e.g., fimile Bridrey, La theorie de la monnaie au XIVe siecle. Nicole Oresme: d'histoire des doctrines et des fails Economiques (Paris, 1906), pp. 317-334; Jean Ibanes, La doctrine de Vlglise et les realites economiques au xme siecle (Paris, 1967), pp. 49-53. Professor Gerard E. Caspary has made a valuable study of the constitutional theory stemming from Quanto, which it is to be hoped will soon be published. 8 See, e.g., J. Brys, De dispensatione in iure canonico . . . (Bruges, 1925), pp. 220-221; Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: the Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge, E., 1955), pp. 89-91; Ludwig Buisson, Potestas und Caritas: die pdpstliche Gewalt im Spatmittelalter (Koln-Graz, 1958), pp. 290-293. 9 As regards oaths, I shall limit the discussion to the specific category of sworn confirmations of coinage.

'Quan to Personam Tuam'

305

false coin.10 In stigmatizing such persons as "oppressors of the poor" and "disturbers of the city," the council fathers implicitly associated the sound coinage with public order, an association that had already been explicit in the Spanish March for a century. For example, in his synodal statutes of c. 1033, Bishop Oliba of Vich had extended sanctions against violators of the peace to those who counterfeited or debased coins;11 and a number of subsequent records show that coinages in Catalonia were sheltered under the Peace of God.12 It must be stressed that these early clerical pronouncements characteristically envisaged the money as subject to violence and fraud.13 They were intended not so much to discourage rulers from altering their currencies as to oppose counterfeiting or the abuse of coins by their users. The same impulse is visible in the earliest known papal directive relating to a lay ruler's coinage. Some time between 1125 and 1129, Honorius II wrote to his vassal Bernard IV of Melgueil to order that the latter's money be minted only at Melgueil, that "in making the money you add nothing false," and that he cause it to be made as in the time of Calixtus II.14 This letter poses problems that cannot be dealt with here, but two points require notice. First, while in its context the allusion to falsitas evokes the sense of monetary fraud that had recently found expression in the Lateran Council, Honorius II was clearly taking a stand against a ruler's manipulating his coinage. The pope may, indeed, have thought of mutation as something fraudulent; at any rate, there is nothing to indicate that he imagined circumstances in which a coinage could justly be debased. Second, because we know that in 1125 Bernard IV had sworn before papal judges-delegate to maintain his coinage intact,15 it is possible that the pontifical surveillance of sworn confirmations had an early test in these events. Yet Honorius made no allusion 10 Conciliorum cecumenicorum decreta, ed. Joseph Alberigo et al , 3d ed. (Bologna, 1972), pp. 192-193, c. 13 ( = Mansi XXI, 285, c. 15). 11 Jaime Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias de Espafla, 22 vols. (Madrid, etc., 18031852), VI, 308-309; see generally Hartmut Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei (Stuttgart, 1964), p. 76. 12 See, e.g., Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragdn y de Valencia y principado de Catalutia, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1920), I1, 25 (c. 67); Liber Feudorum Maior . . ., ed. Francisco Miquel Resell, 2 vols. (Barcelona 1945-1947) II, no. 691. 13 For the legal background see Peter Herde 'Romisches und kanonisches Recht bei der Verfolgung des Falschungsdelikts im Mittelalter', Traditio, 21 (1965), 291-302, 319ff. 14 Bullaire de I'eglise de Maguelone, ed. Jean-Baptiste Rouquette and A. Villemagne, 2 vols. (Montpellier, 1911-1914), i, no. 24; Regesta pontificum romanorum ed. P. Jaff6 and W. Wattenbach, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1885-1888), i, no. 7345. 15 Liber instrumentorum memorialium. Cartulaire des Guillems de Montpellier, ed. Alexandre Germain (Montpellier, 1884-1886), n° 61.

306

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

to an oath in his letter, nor does the existence of the letter imply a new or renewed oath, for it is evident that the pope was acting in this case as temporal lord of the seigneury of Melgueil. More immediately linked with Quanta was a sequence of events in Spain. In 1155 the cardinal-legate Jacintus celebrated a council at Lerida in which provision for the coinage figured among exhortations for the holy war and statutes of the peace. The emperor — that is, almost certainly, Alphonse VII of Castile (1126-1157) — was directed to establish his coinages at good weight and quaternal alloy (i.e., 4 d. fine silver) and to confirm it on this standard for his lifetime. Counterfeiters were to be excommunicated and to suffer corporal punishment, with the bishops receiving the tithe of confiscated coin and chattels from the ruler.16 Here, more explicitly than in the events at Melgueil, we find the pontifical authority in support of the sworn confirmatio monetae. Once again the mutation of coinage is contextually associated with counterfeiting, although not necessarily confused with it. It is unlikely that Jacintus (much less Adrian IV) initiated these monetary provisions, which conform to and conflate measures favored by Catalan bishops from the early eleventh century, and of which there were precedents as recent as 1118 in Cerdanya and 1129 in Castile.17 But the legate's subsequent interest in the ethics of coinage surely owed something to the program of 1155. On his second legation to Spain (1172-1174), Jacintus convoked another council at Lerida; again the coinage must have been discussed, for while many of the provisions of 1155 were reissued, those relating to coinage were dropped.18 This decision probably signified a change in tactics rather than in policy. The terms of 1155, whatever their effect in the past,19 answered poorly to conditions after the death of the last emperor of Spain. In the 1170's new rulers in Castile, Leon and Aragon-Catalonia were regulating their currencies, and settling, it seems, on the very standard urged in 1155. Bishop Pere de Redorta, of Vich, who had attended both of the mentioned councils of Lerida, confirmed his own money at a quaternal alloy in December 1174.20 Moreover, both the bishop of Vich and the cardinal-legate attended 16

Ferrari Valls-Taberner, ' Ein Konzil zu Lerida im Jahre 1155', Papsttum and Kaisertum: Forschungen . . . Paul Kehr zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht, ed. Albert Brackmann (Munich, 1926), p. 368;Papsturkunden in Spanien... 2: Navarra und Aragon (Berlin, 1928), II, no. 76. 17 References in note 12, and Mansi XXI, 386. 18 Text in Espana sagrada, ed. Henrique Florez et al., 58 vols. (Madrid, 1747-1918), XLVIII, 301-307; cf. XLVII, 150-152. See also Johannes Leineweber, Studien zur Geschichte Papst Colestins III, (Jena: diss., 1905), pp. 26-32. 19 This problem and others relating to the subject of these paragraphs are treated more fully in my current study of coinages and taxation. 20 Joaquim Botet y Siso, Les monedes catalan.es, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1908-1911), I, apendix 1, 211-212.

'Quanta Personam Tuam9

307

King Alphonse II in January 1174 when, on the occasion of his knighting and marriage, the young sovereign proclaimed a new quaternal coinage in Aragon.21 In these circumstances, it looks as if the prelates of Aragon and Catalonia were substituting some less pretentious exhortations for the monetary provisions of 1155. Jacintus, at least, had reason to be cautious. The papacy had more important concerns with Alphonse, who for his part was reluctant to submit to the sworn confirmation of coinage. No such act is mentioned in January 1174, nor did the king confirm his silver of Barcelona even when, at about the same time, he was explicitly urged to do so.22 That the bishop of Vich was among those who made this request may reasonably be conjectured, but it is no less clear that the clergy as a whole was acting with restraint. Alphonse seems to have confirmed his coinage of Aragon for the first time toward 1181-1182.23 This event, of which no direct evidence survives, followed a debasement; and it was when the king decided to restore the quaternal money some years later that he did what no Spanish ruler had done before in a matter of monetary prerogative: he appealed to the pope. Evidently the basis for his appeal was the oath of confirmation from which he now needed dispensation.24 And the pontiff to whom he appealed was none other than the aged Jacintus, recently elected as Celestine III, whose knowledge of Spanish monetary politics dated back some 35 years. Pope Celestine's letter Cum utilitas publica25 (4 September 1191) significantly anticipated Quanta personam tuam. Alphonse was authorized to strengthen his coinage provided that he "promise again under the religious obligation of the oath" (sub religione iuramenti regia eminentia repromittat) that he preserve the quaternal coinage inviolate. A tenth of the profits of coinage was reserved for the Templars, a provision that rendered explicit a royal obligation that dated back nominally a half-century. During his long career Jacintus had zealously promoted the crusade in Spain, and the association of that impulse 21

' Documentos para el estudio de la numismatica navarro-aragonesa medieval (2a. serie)', ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Publicaciones del Seminario de Arqueologia y Numismatica aragonesa 2 (Zaragoza, 1953), 95, no. 33; Jaime Caruana, ' Itinerario de Alfonso II de Arag6n,' Estudios de Edad media de la Corona de Aragdn, 7 (1962), 145-146. 22 Archivo de la Corona de Arag6n (= A. G. A.), Cancilleria, pergaminos de Alfonso I, extrainventario 2602; Botet y Sis6, Les monedes catalanes, III, apendix, 240. 23 Coleccidn diplomdtica de la catedral de Huesca, ed. Antonio Durin Gudiol, 2 vols. (Zaragoza, 1965-1969), I, nos. 357, 359, 361, 368, 370; cf. nos. 379, 393; A. C. A., perg. Alfonso I, 442; and text cited in note 25. 24 Could it also have been recognition of the old papal lordship of Aragon that induced Alphonse II and his son Peter to appeal to popes ? If so, the parallel with the case of Melgueil is arresting, but the evidence is inconclusive. 25 A. C. A., Cane., Registro 309, fol. 11; ed. Paul Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien . . . 1: Katalanien (Berlin, 1926), II, no. 238.

308

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

with his interest in a secure coinage surfaced again in 1191 as it had done in 1155. Yet it is not surprising that Cum utilitas publica failed to interest the decretalists. It did not directly allude to the dispensing power on which it was based, much less interpret that power. It somewhat vaguely linked "public utility" with "compendious piety" as a reason for favoring the king's appeal, without quite making these imperatives the justification for renouncing an oath. If the king as well as the pope thought of a reinforcement of the coinage as a "useful" or popular enactment, then it was one easily consistent with the doctrine that licit oaths might be commuted into commitments of improved substance.26 In consequence of this dispensation, Alphonse probably did restore his quaternal coinage in Aragon. But he certainly debased the money again some short time before his death ( ? 1194-1196); and it was this newly diminished coinage that, according to Quanta, Alphonse's son Peter II was induced to confirm under oath upon his accession in the spring of 1196. It is possible that Peter's price for that hurrried confirmation was a levy of the "money-tax," which was certainly collected in Catalonia at that time.27 But of that Innocent III said nothing and probably knew nothing. What he did say surely reflects the king's tendentious account of the confirmation. Nevertheless, Quanta bears the record of two important circumstances of which we should otherwise be ignorant. First, it places Peter's sworn confirmation of the coinage in conjunction with an Aragonese project to aid the king of Castile in avenging the defeat administered by the Moors at Alarcosin 1195, a conjunction reminiscent of the contingency so persistently envisaged by Celestine III. This time, however, the crusade was launched while an ill-advised confirmation proved untenable (and it may be added that we have no knowledge of Celestine'shand in these events). Second, the letter Quanta implies that a party of Aragonese notables together with the king himself believed, or pretended, that the opinion of a few advisers was insufficient to sanction a confirmation of the coinage.28 26

E. g.,X 2.24.3 Pervenit ad nos; cf. Decretum C.22 q.4, and Ramon de Penyafort, Summa . . . de poenitentia et matrimonio . . . (Rome, 1603), pp. 94-95 (i. De iuramento). See generall Walter Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (London, 1966), pp. 67-68; and Piero Zerbi, Papato, impero e "Respublica Christiana" dal 1187 al 1198 (Milan, 1955 ), pp. 148-150. 27 T. N. Bisson, 'Sur les origines du monedatge: quelques textes in6dits,' Annales du Midi, 85; below, 327-8, 333. Bridrey's assertions on this point, La thtorie de la monnaie, pp. 320321, are seriously misinformed. 28 '. . . Ex tenore siquidem litterarum tuarum et plurium prelatorum necnon et aliorum multorum in tuo regno consistentium nobis innotuit, quod cum adversus inimicos christianitatis, qui pre magnitudine sue potentie terram Hispanie tune temporis occupabant, in auxilium karissimi in Ghristo filii nostri [Alphonsi] Castelle regis illustris cum armatorum multitudine festinares, quidam consiliarii tui quinimmo potius deceptores tuum animum in-

'Quart to Personam Tuam'

3 09

Was it they who suggested that the consent of the people was necessary? In any case, whether Innocent III added or simply reproduced the substance of the words ut iurares irrequisito assensu populi, he was clearly stating facts (as he understood them), not principle. And his record is consistent with what little is otherwise known of the Aragonese constitution at the end of the twelfth century. The magnates of Aragon cannot have liked the repeated manipulations of coinage by rulers whose political ambitions lay in distant lands. In November 1197 their approval was meticulously noted in a decree by which Peter II reserved exclusive currency for his money in Aragon.29 In Catalonia, as they probably knew, the confirmatio monetae had become understood to require a public and solemn ceremony. Quanta personam tuam is, therefore, quite as informative as a historical record as it was original as a decretal. It illuminates a considerable event in Aragonese political experience. Nevertheless, as regards papal policy toward coinage, it proposed little that was new. With antecedents dating back many decades in Spain, it maintained a position virtually identified with that veteran of Spanish affairs who preceded Innocent III in the Holy See. And, in fact, Qudnto marked the end of the sequence of events that began in 1155 just as surely as it provided the text for a new tradition in political theory. For Peter II, although he renewed ancient precedent in doing fealty to Innocent III in 1204,30 was not again to allow his monetary practice to be influenced by the pope. In 1205 he publicly imposed the money-tax upon Aragon and Catalonia,31 an act presumably accompanied by assurances that the coinages would be held stable; and while Zurita preserved a tradition of resistance to the levy in Aragon, there is no evidence that Innocent III took notice, not even when — after 1209 — Peter manipulated the coinage of Barcelona again. Many decades were to pass before a pope would have another occasion to rule on the validity of monetary enactments in Aragon. Poorly known even in Spain, the circumstances of Quanta soon faded from common memory. Not even the early commentators spoke of the exchange between king and pope as a familiar event. And as a decretal, under its title De iureiurando, the text evoked much less interest in its reference to monetary confirmations in particular than in that to oaths in general. Thus, the question duxerunt, ut iurares, irrequisito assensu populi, usque ad certum tempus patris tui conservare monetam, que tamen circa mortem ipsius fuerat legitimo pondere defraudata . . .' Mansilla, La documentacidn pontificia, no. 183. 29 El Libro de la Cadena del concejo de Jaca . . ., ed. Damaso Sangorrin y Diest-Garc6s (Zaragoza, 1920), pp. 183-185. 30 Mansilla, La documentacidn pontificia, no. 307. 81 Ger6nimo Zurita y Castro, Anales de la Corona de Aragdn, 6 vols. (Zaragoza, 1578-1585), libro ii, c. 52 (ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta et al., 4 vols. to date, Valencia, 1967-1972, n, 144-145).

310

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

arising from the word dbsolui was chiefly whether vows and oaths could be dispensed at all (even by the pope): this Huguccio had denied, but most canonists admitted dispensation in case of "intolerable scandal" or when a misguided vow threatened to become a "bond to iniquity."32 More significantly related to the background of events were the discussions of the debased coinage and the king's guilt. Laurentius Hispanus, followed by other decretalists, seized upon Innocent's word defraudata to cite Digest and Code on penalties for counterfeiters: those who falsify the coinage of the king or emperor (or of the prince, in the version of Johannes Teutonicus) are to be burned; as for those who clip or mutilate coins, the free man is tossed to the beasts while the slave — presumably less lucky — suffers the "ultimate punishment".33 Less academic was the interpretation of patris (Peter had been admonished to restore a coinage of legitimate weight sub nomine patris tui). Vincentius Hispanus pointed out that it must be the king's father's coinage because that was the coinage stipulated in the forma iuramenti. But (so Johannes Galensis and others) would not a coinage so reformed effectively render "the king himself a counterfeiter?" For in coinage the "public form" as well as the weight and quality is critical. Nevertheless, the pope's injunction is justified. For whereas the terms of the solemn oath are to be observed, the legend of the coin is likened to that upon a funerary monument; it has the nature of an artistic creation, in which the painter or poet has some margin of license.34 In short, the early commentators think of the debased coinage of Quanto as a kind of counterfeit or fraud, subject to the correction traditionally meted out to individuals who abused a legitimate coinage. Their authorities afforded no examples of rulers debasing public currencies. Not only did most of them overlook the words assensu populi, in which their successors would find justification for certain kinds of mutations, but they imagined no economic or 32

Apparatus of Laurentius to 3 Comp. 2.15.4. MS Karlsruhe Aug. XL, fo. 166, and other MSS; see below, pp. 316-20 for subsequent commentary. Johannes Galensis (below, p. 243) had cited G. 22 q.4 c.22 Inter cetera, a letter of St. Augustine which (as transmitted by Gratian) was evidently the source of Innocent IIFs expression iniquitatis vinculum. See also Franz Gillman, 'Des Johannes Galensis Apparat zur Compilatio III in der Universitatsbibliothek Erlangen', AKKR, 118 (1938), 214. 33 Citations and texts in Appendix II, below. Bridrey, La theorie de la monnaie, p. 324, sees ' quelque chose de nouveau' in the allusion to a ' defrauded' coinage of legitimate mintage, a view which seems to me inconsistent with the precedents and context of Quanto; not surprisingly, Bridrey says nothing about the early glosses on defraudata. For the early history of these penal regulations, see Philip Grierson, 'The Roman Law of Counterfeiting', in Essays in Roman Coinage presented to Harold Mattingly, ed. R. A. G. Carson and C. H. Sutherland (Oxford, 1956), pp. 240-261. 34 Below; Appendix II, esp. pp.;317, 319. Cf. Bernardus Parmensis on X 2.24.18, in Decretales Gregorii IX (Lyon, 1553), pp. 487-488, and Appendix III.

'Quanta Personam Tuam'

311

public necessities that might conceivably enlarge the scope of ethical monetary policy. Only Galensis noted the word populi, which reminded him of Cod. 5.59.5.2 (quod omnes langit), among other passages, but his brief gloss seems to have been forgotten at once; nor was an anonymous Romanist treatment of the liability of counselors for fraudulent advice to prove influential in the subsequent tradition of our decretal.35 In discussing oaths these decretalists fixed on their putative solemnity and immutability, not (despite the mention of the forma iuramenti) on the likely substance of a monetary oath, in which the right of mutation was, in fact, normally reserved in some form. Yet it does not follow that these more or less archaic interpretations were irrelevant to the tenor and background of Quanto. Had not the events themselves given expression to a similar conception of coinage? It was in the context of monetary fraud that the clergy had first taken notice of mutations of coinage in Languedoc and Spain. Not only the conciliar provision of 1155 but also the Catalonian oaths of confirmation dating from 1174 dealt easily with counterfeiting and mutations together. Moreover, the whole tendency of the oaths (sworn or projected) was conservative;36 it was not that mutations were to be effected only upon consultation with the people, but that they were to be renounced as completely as possible. In fact, the reticence of most early decretalists about assensus populi may have been truer to Innocent Ill's meaning than the flights of Innocent IV and the rest, for it is by no means clear from Quanto that its author was saying that a ruler should consult his people when he wished to alter the coinage. All he said directly was that Peter II had been induced to confirm a weakened coinage without popular approval. The decretal avoided giving the impression that the solution of the problem might be a new mutation; it urged the restoration and conservation of Alphonse's legitimate and confirmed coinage. There may be some comparable significance in the fact that the coinage of Vich, having been confirmed by ' ie bishop in 1174, was minted without alteration (even in monograms and legends) for many decades after Pere de Redorta's death in 1185.37 As late as a century thereafter, Pope Honorius IV could "prohibit the frequent mutation of coinages" in vSicily in terms almost identical with those that became customary in twelfth-century Catalonia.38 35

Appendix II, pp. 321, 326. In addition to texts cited in notes 20 and 22, see T. N. Bisson, 'An "Unknown Charter" for Catalonia (A. D. 1205)' to appear in proceedings of the convention (at Sze'kesferhe'rvar) of the International Commission for the History of ... Parliamentary Institutions; and Coleccidn de docamentos ineditos del Archivo general de la Corona de Aragdn, ed. Pr6spero de Bofarull y Mascaro, 41 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1910), VIII, 106-109. 37 See Botet y Siso, Les monedes catalanes, I, 171-185. 38 Text cited by Ibanes, La doctrine de Veglise et les realties economiques, p. 52 (and verified from its source). 36

312

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

So in monetary theory as well as in political circumstance, Quanta and its early commentators looked to the past. Their traditionalism stands out starkly when viewed against the economic changes of the age. Neither conservation nor confirmation of coinage seem to have interested the merchants and bankers of Italy or Champagne or Flanders, where the changers had little trouble in coping with the instability or diversity of currencies. On the contrary, the practical issue that first provoked lawyers and theologians to deal squarely with mutations of coinage was one quite as likely to arise in the agrarian sector as in the urban. That customary renders or repayments of debt should not be allowed to cause injustice in consequence of altered currencies was a doctrine taught in Italy and at Paris in the later twelfth century.39 Innocent III probably learned it in the schools and he certainly applied it in his own decretals;40 but it was not strictly relevant to the problem dealt with in Quanta. Only the parallel citations (to reprobata and diminuta) of Ulpian on repayments in bad coin and of Urban III on pensions betray the momentary notice of one jurist.41 Yet that doctrine, at least in the form espoused by Peter the Chanter, implied or prefigured a conception of mutation at once economic and just — somewhat, perhaps, as interest and profit were coming to be distinguished from usury.42 And if theologians and lawyers were beginning to justify mutations of coinage, it is safe to suppose that they were anticipated by rulers themselves. This is one reason why the confirmatio monetae failed to secure an unequivocal place in the written custom of Catalonia, and why it endured elsewhere in but vestigial or altered forms.43 It was from the vein of Romanist thought relating to intrinsic value and payments rather than from the misleading asides of Quanta personam tuam that a later generation of canonists would see how to deal more flexibly and tolerantly with mutations. Only then could it be fully grasped that mutations and mutilations of coinage were quite imperfectly analogous things.

39

See chiefly Walter Taeuber Geld and Kredit im Mittelalter (Berlin 1933) pp. 104-148, 232-234, 311-314, 328-330. See also John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: the Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1970), i, 243-244; II, 175. 40 X 3.39.20 Olim causam, 26 Cum canonicis; Taeuber, pp. 107-113. 41 Bamberg, MS canon. 19, fo. 161ra; below, p. 247. 42 See John Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (London, 1969), pp. 62-70. 43 T. N. Bisson, 'An 'Unknown Charter* for Catalonia'; and 'Confirmatio monele & Narbonne aii xm e siecle', Narbonne: Archtologie et histoire, 3 vols. (Montpellier: F£de"ration Historique du Languedoc mediterranean et du Roussillon, 1973), II, 55-59.

'Quan to Personam Tuam'

313

APPENDIX I ORIGINALS OF 'QUANTO PERSONAM TUAM' AND 'Ex TENORE LITTERARUM' An original of Quanta personam tuam together with one of the executory letter to the bishop of Zaragoza (Ex tenors litterarum) is preserved in the Archivo de la Corona de Arag6n (Barcelona).1 Although apparently unprinted as such, the former differs so slightly from the text given by Mansilla2 that it need not be printed here. The dorsal address is: 'illustri regi aragonensi,' and — as happened also in the enregistered copies — the name or initial of the king was left blank.3 The original was a closed letter, unsealed. There is only one alteration, and it is worth noticing. Where Mansilla (and, with inconsequential variants, editors of the decretals) give (my italics): '. . . mandamus ut reprobata moneta que a legitimo pondere fuerat diminuta, alia sub nomine patris tui moneta cudatur, quam ad legitimum pondus reducas, secundum eum statum quern temporepatris tui habuit meliorem, ita quod et antiqua moneta que ab illo statu falsata non fuerat, cum ea pariter expendatur, per quod et dispendium vitari poterit . . .', the original reads 'minime' instead of 'pariter' This change was certainly made after the document left the papal chancery. It is written over an erasure in perceptibly darker ink. Apparently someone wished to remove all possible justification for the continued circulation of any old coinage, even one of legitimate weight; and such a motive can plausibly be attributed to the court of Peter II. Conceivably the new king had already recalled his father's coinages without exception, or wished to reserve his freedom to do so. However that may be, the alteration was inconsistent with the pope's intention and it is not likely to have been introduced very long after the original itself was written. The executory letter, likewise dated 5 April 1199, has the same form, nearly identical wording (mutatis mutandis) and appears to have been written in the same hand, as the original of Quanto. Indicated by Miquel Rosell and by Mansilla, it has not heretofore been printed. 1199, 5 April. Lateran Pope Innocent III directs the bishop of Zaragoza to hear the king of Aragon's confession and to prescribe the penance in case the king's oath to conserve his father's coinage was knowingly false. Archive de la Corona de Arag6n, Bulas, Inocencio III, leg. 3, no. 3. Parchment letter formerly closed ; partly mutilated. 192 x 359 mm.4 1

A. C. A., Bulas, Inocencio III, leg. 3, no. 4. Parchment, 234 x 302 mm. Indicated by Miquel Rosell, Regesta (fully cited below), no. 46. 2 Mansilla, La documentacidn pontificia, no. 183. 3 The same blank appears in the letter Cum te tanquam, dated 2 September 1198, A.C.A., Bulas, Inocencio III, leg. 3, no. 1. More surprising is the omission of the name of Alphonse VIII of Castile (1158-1214) in the original letters of 5 April 1199. 4 Dorse: '. . . episcopo cesaraugustano pro illustri rege aragonensi.' In much later hands: 'S. Arm.1 de Tarracona, sach 0'; 'N°. ii3.'

314

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours Indicated : Francisco J. Miguel Resell, Regesta de letras pontificias del Archive de la Corona de Aragdn . . . (Madrid, 1948), no. 45 ; Mansilla, La documentacidn pontificia, no. 184.

Innocentius episcopus seruus seruorum Dei venerabili fratri cesaraugustano episcopo salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Ex tenore litterarum karissimi in Ghristo filii nostri Petria illustris regis aragonensis et plurium prelatorum necnon et aliorum multorum in eius regno consistentium nobis innotuit quod cum ipse aduersus inimicos christianitatis qui pre magnitudine sue potentie terram Hispanie tune temporis occupabant in auxilium karissimi in Christo filii nostri Alphonsi" Gastelle regis illustris cum armatorum multitudine festinaret, quidam consiliarii sui quin immo potius deceptores ipsius animum induxerunt, ut iuraret inrequisito assensu populi usque ad certum tempus patris sui conseruare monetam que tamen circa mortem ipsius fuerat legitimo pondere defraudata. Quoniam autem eadem moneta est adeo diminuta et minoris ualoris effecta, quod graue propter hoc in populo scandalum generatur, rex ipse quod egerat indiscrete discrete cupiens reuocare ac necessitati populi satisfacere ab obseruatione iuramenti predicti ex quo sibi et regno suo metuit graue periculum imminere postulauit suppliciter a nobis absolui. Super quo diligens indagator ueritate comperta potuisset facile intueri quod non tarn erat absolutio necessaria quam interpretatio requirenda, quoniam cum iuramentum fecit, monetam aut falsam aut l(egi)timamc esse credebat. Si falsam, iuramentum fuisset illicitum et nullatenus obseruandum, et pro eo ipsi esset penitentia iniungenda, cum iuramentum vt esset iniquitatis uinculum non fuerit institutum. Si uero ipsam legitimam esse credebat, iuramentum licitum fuit et usquequaque seruandum. Verumptamen si dictum regem conscientia sua remordet quod monetam ip(sam)d in prestatione iuramenti crederet a legitimo pondere diminutam, uolumus et mandamus quatinus confessionem illius audias et de illicito iuramento canonicam ei satisfactionem indicas. Datum Laterani, nonas Aprilis, pontificatus nostri anno secundo. APPENDIX II GLOSSES TO 3 GOMP. 2.15.4 'QUANTO PERSONAM TUAM' Transcribed below are the glosses to Quanta personam tuam in its earliest edition as a decretal. In order to distinguish the derivative material from that which seems original to each commentator, I have enclosed the former in halfbrackets, with annotation to indicate the provenance.1 No attempt has been made to establish the original texts critically; I have relied upon a few accessible manuscripts, referring to alternative readings chiefly to verify scribal slips or to clarify poorly legible passages. The apparatus has been reduced to the minimum consistent with reasonable fidelity to these few manuscripts. The legal sources have been noted only for.the material represented as original, to which the reader may refer to identify citations in the derivative glosses. a

Petri 0/77. MS.

1

The material gathered under no. 6 is presented differently for reasons given below.

* Alphonsi om. MS.

c

egi del. MS.

d

sam del. MS.

'Quan to Personam Tuam'

315

It appears from this juxtaposition that the most inventive, or least influenced, of the several commentators (disregarding those represented in Layers 1 and 2 of Bamberg MS canon. 19)2 were Johannes Galensis and Laurentius Hispanus. Neither one drew upon tl*e other in discussing this decretal, and the glosses of both were adopted by Vincentius Hispanus, Johannes Teutonicus, Tancred and their successors. The Welshman, however, was less influential than the Spaniard. While the latter's annotation proved fundamental to the subsequent tradition of Quanta, the former's contribution, including his gloss to populi, was mostly forgotten. Nevertheless, it was Galensis who initiated the subtle argument, with allusions to Horace and the Roman law, to the effect that a king who confirmed his predecessor's coinage as his own might be exempt from the charge of counterfeiting. The present material is too limited to justify conclusions as to how these decretalists drew upon each other. But we can safely distinguish between textual corruption and the reworking of received glosses. For example, the substitution of euidentem for cudentem (glosses to cudatur, below, nos. 2, 3 and 5), or of forma pura for forma publica (glosses to Cesaraugustano episcopo, no. 3; and to sub nomine patris, nos. 4, 5), can only be explained as scribal errors. On the other hand, the version of Teutonicus replaces monetam regis uel imperatoris with monetam principis (defraudata, no. 4; cf. eod. v., nos. 2, 3), an alert and plausible revision that was to be adopted by Bernardus Parmensis. A glance at the texts as set forth below suggests, indeed, that Teutonicus did more rewriting — and to good effect — in the older matter than the others. Tancred seems to have drawn directly on Laurentius, but to have used material from Galensis and Vincentius Hispanus, in his very eclectic gloss to nomine, primarily as it was transmitted by Teutonicus. The attributions of the glosses require several remarks. The gloss to credimus under Johannes Galensis (below, no. 1) is ascribed to Vincentius in Melk MS 333, fo. 186rb, and its authorship (at least), on the basis of the present MSS, remains in question. While the MSS used for Laurentius bear no sigla, all of his glosses (as in no. 2) are ascribed to him ("La." or "Lau.") in Vatican MS lat. 1377, fo. 116 (Tancred; below, no. 5), in Bamberg MS canon. 19, fo. 160v, and in Melk MS 333, fo. 186rab.3 Vincentius' gloss to cudatur is accompanied by the siglum "Vin". even though it seems to have been taken unchanged from Laurentius.4 Teutonicus, however, reworked the gloss to defraudata, based on Laurentius, which carries the former's siglum. The original gloss to satisfactionem in Teutonicus (no. 4) is ascribed to Teutonicus in Vatican MS lat. 1377 (Tancred; below, no. 5).

2

Cf., however, the discussion at p. 316 below. This observation is consistent with Knut W. Norr, 'Der Apparat des Laurentius zur Gompilatio III', Traditio, 17 (1961), 542-543; see also Gaines Post, 'The So-Called LaurentiusApparatus to the Decretals of Innocent III in Compilatio III', The Jurist, 2 (1942), 1-29; and generally, Antonio Garcia Garcia, Laurentius Hispanus. Datos biogrdficos y estudio critico de sus obras (Rome-Madrid, 1956). 4 Cf. Franz Gillmann, 'Johannes Galensis als Glossator, insbesondere der Compilatio III', AKKR, 105 (1925), 531 n. 3 (cited by Post, The Jurist, 2, 11 n. 28). 3

316

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The scribes of these MSS were not always consistent in connecting the glosses with texts. For example, Galensis' comment on absolutio is attached to defraudata in MS Munich 3879 and to requirenda in MS Bamberg canon. 20 (Vincentius); nor are these the only misplaced glosses derived from Galensis: see, notably, no. 3 (Vincentius). The glosses of Bamberg MS canon. 19, represented also in Paris MS lat. 3932 and given below in no. 6, require separate notice. As is well known, three layers of glosses are perceptible in its folios devoted to the Third Compilation, and all three appear in the margins of its version of Quanta personam tuam.5 The third, the Apparatus of Tancred, corresponds to the text of Tancred given below (no. 5), and is accordingly omitted as such. The first consists of parallel citations immediately adjoining the words in question; it bears no sigla, and is very independent of the other glosses in its choice of references. The second has been the subject of controversy, Gillmann professing to see in it the work of Laurentius, and Post giving strong reasons for doubting that attribution.6 Their problem is illustrated in the three glosses of that layer which pertain to Quanta personam tuam. None is signed, but two of these glosses very significantly resemble the corresponding section of the identified commentary by Laurentius.7 Both seem, if anything, more personal and didactic in tone than the known Laurentius; both, if anything, less polished. So far as it goes, this evidence might point to an early, or alternative, version by Laurentius himself, yet one could almost as easily imagine another decretalist expounding Laurentius in this way. The third gloss of Layer 2 should probably not be attributed to Laurentius. Having to do with the liability of counselors (ad v. consiliarii) mostly on the basis of Roman law, it is unrelated to other early discussions of Quanta persanam tuam. It belongs among those glosses that Post suggested might have been the work of Silvester, for it contains the words 'Sed illud ita exaudi . . .',8 and this expression, whatever its significance, does not appear in any other early gloss to our decretal. Since the siglum S. is lacking in the MSS consulted, the authorship 5 See Franz Gillmann, Des Laurentius Hispanus Apparat zur Compilatio III auf der staatlichen Bibliothek zu Bamberg (Mainz, 1935); Kuttner, Repertorium der Kanonistik, p. 359; and works of Norr and Post cited in note 3. 6 Gillmann, Des Laurentius Hispanus Apparat; and articles by Gillmann and Post cited by Post, 'The So-Galled Laurentius-Apparatus', The Jurist, 2 (1942), 1-3. In the latter article, Post reviewed the discussion, and raised the possibility of attributing Layer 2 to Tancred. 7 So much so that I have felt free to omit the annotation for these glosses. Gillmann, Des Laurentius Hispanus Apparatt pp. 49-50, gives some of the matter from Layers 2 and 3 to 3 Comp. 2.15.4. But he weakens his own case by misreading (p. 50) the phrase : 'Quod s.(cil.) h.(oc) non posset papa. . . .' When these abbreviations are expanded: 'secundum Huguccionem,' the correspondence of this gloss with the Laurentian matter will be found striking. 8 Gaines Post, 'Some Unpublished Glosses (ca. 1210-1214) on the Translatio Imperil and the Two Swords % AKKR, 117 (1937), 414 n. 1, 422-423; cf. 'The So-Called LaurentiusApparatus', 23-24, and n. 52.

317

'Quan to Personam Tuam'

of this gloss cannot be said to be decided. But the gloss is distinctive in form and content, probably the only extant contribution of its author to the commentary on 3 Comp. 2.15.4. 1. JOHANNES GALENSIS (Mu = Munich, MS 3879, fo. 197vab) defraudata:* Idest necessario requirenda, quia in uno casu non indigebat ea, quia non erat obligatus, vt. .xxii. q. iiii. Vnusquisque, Inter cetera;1 Institutionibus, de inuti. sti. § Quod turpi ex causa;2 in alio casu eab indigetur, ut patet infra eodem capitulo.c Posset tamen hie propriam sequi conscientiam, arg.xi. q. iii Senti, Inter uerba;3 .xxii. q. iiii. Innocens4 in fine; ff. de pre. sti. In pretoriis.5 Istud tamen est uerius quod non potest, ne idem sit accusator iuramenti sui et iudex. iiii. q. iiii. Nullus unquam, Nullus introducatur;6 supra de elec. Venerabilem libro eodem.7 Quia nemo est sibi iudex competens, ff. de iudiciis Si alter.8 populi: A quo approbari debuit quod ipsum tangit, di. Ixi. Nullus inuitis;9 C. de auctoritate pre. 1. vltima;10 ff. de adop. Nond ita.11 defraudata:e Vnde iuramentum fuit nee discretionem habuit comitem, .xxii. q. ii. Animaduertendum.12 super: Hie incipit respondere. non credimus : Supra di. Ixxxvi. Si quid uero;13 G. qui mili. pos. Super seruis.14 nullatenus: Supra xxii. q. iiii. per totum.15 penitential Supra eodem titulo c. vltimo in fine libro i.16 institutum : Supra xxii. q. iiii. Inter cetera.17 Sed ut fidem faceret non credenti, supra xxii. q. i. Ita ergo.18 seruandum : Supra eodem titulo Si uero aliquis libro i.19 Sed nonne mentietur inscriptio monete noue? Immo et ipse rex falsi penam meretur, vt ff. ad 1. cor. de fal. Falsi.20 Quia moneta tria exigit, ut ff. de contrahen. empt. et uen. 1. i.21 Solutio: non fit inscriptio semper in moneta ut ei fides adhibeatur, ut hie, sicut nee in sepulcro, vt C.f de religiosis Monumentorum.22 Immo est quedam quasi pictura, unde in ea larga est licentia iuxta illud, 'pictoribus atque poetis quelibet audiendi semper fuit equa potestas. *23 Cesaraugustano episcopo: Tantum recepto isto mandato nisi aliud inducat extrema necessitas, arg. supra de con. di. iiii. Sanctum est baptisma.24 Alias requisita absolutione a domino papa uidetur quod alius ad aliam faciendam manum non possit extendere, arg. supra de of. le. Licet libro eodem.25 a

leg. necessaria f discrete. S. Mu. 1

b

non ea Mu.

c

titulo Mu.

d

leg. Nam

e

leg. in-

2 3 4 C.22 q.4 cc.8, 22. Inst. 3.19.24. C.ll q.3 cc.51, 55. C.22 q.4 c.22. 6 7 8 Dig. 46.5.9. G.4 q.4 cc.1,2. 3 Comp. 1.6.19 (X 1.6.34). Dig. 5.1.17. 9 10 n 12 D.61 c.13. Cod. 5.59.5.2. Dig. 1.7.39. C.22 q.2 c.2. 13 14 15 16 D.86 c.23. Cod. 12.33.6. C.22 q.4. 1 Comp. 2.17.11 (X 1.11.8; 17 18 19 C.22 q.4 c.22. C.22 q.l c.5. 1 Comp. 2.17.4 (X 2.24.8). 2.24.12). 20 21 22 23 Dig.. 48.10.13. Dig. 18.1.1. Cod. 3.44.6. Cf. Horace, Ars poetica ix: Pictoribus atque poetis quodlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas, cit. Gillmann, 24 25 AKKR, cxviii (1938), 200. De cons. D.4,36. 3 Comp. 1.19.3 (X 1.30.5). 6

318

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

2. LAURENTIUS HISPANUS (Ab = Admont, MS 55, fo. 153rab; Me = Melk, MS 333, fo. 186rab; K = Karlsruhe, MS Aug. XL, fo. 166rbva). defraudata : Qui falsat monetam regis uel imperatoris exuritur, C. de falsa mone. 1. ii.1 Qui alterius ciuitatis punitur capite, G. eodem 1. i.2 Sed et ille qui nummos radit uel tingit,a si liber est, datur ad bestias; si seruus ultimo supplicio afficitur, ff. ad 1. corneli. de falsis Quicumque nummos.3 absolui: Absoluere quidem potest papab quemlibet a sacramento ex iusta tamen causa, puta ob scandalum intollerabile, uel si malum exemplum in multos prorogetur, claue tamen discretionis precurate.0 Hoc tamen negat Huguccio,4 et omnia iura que dicunt uel innuunt papam absoluere posse a sacramento uel intelliguntur a sacramento de inlicito uel potius sunt radenda quam legenda, quia in his que sunt de iure naturali, ut uoto, iuramento, secundum eum papa non dispensat, quod non admitto. cudatur: Tria sunt specialia circa cudentem falsam monetam: quia quilibet tenetur ad eius accusationem, et quia condempnatus de hoc crimine non appellat, et quia punitur etiam ignorans ille in cuius predio fabricatur. Hec omnia habes G. de falsa moneta 1. i.5 Ille autem qui nummos radit uel tingit, si liber, ad bestias datur; si seruus ultimo supplicio afficitur, ff. ad 1. corneliam de falsis Quicumque nummos.6 3. VINCENTIUS HISPANUS (B = Bamberg, MS canon. 20, fo. 132rb; G = Graz, MS 138, fo. 177rva; Vb = Vatican, MS lat. 1378, fos. 45vb-46ra). defraudata: rQui falsat monetam regis vel imperatoris exuritur, C. de falsa mo. 1. ii. Qui alterius ciuitatis punitur capite, G. eodem 1. i. Set et ille qui nummos radit uel tingit,a si liber est, datur ad bestias; si seruus ultimo supplicio afficitur, ff. ad 1. corneliam de falsis Quicumque nummos. absolui: Absoluere quidem potest papa quemlibet a sacramento ex iusta causa, puta ob scandalum intolerabile, uel si malum exemplum in multos prorogetur, claue tamen discretionis precurate.b Hoc tamen negat H., et omnia iura que dicunt uel innuunt papam posse absoluere a sacramento uel intelliguntur de illicito uel potius sunt radenda quam legenda, quia in hiis que sunt de iure naturali, ut uoto, iuramento, papa secundum eum non dispensat,"1 supra de resti.spo. Litteras libro eodem;1 infra de statu. mo. Gum ad monasterium,2 quod non admitto.0 Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Laurentio r

super quo: Hic incipit respondereJ requirenda: rldest necessario requirenda, quia in uno casu non indigebat ea, quia non erat obligatus, ut xxii. q. iiii. Unusquisque, Inter cetera; Institutionibus de inutilibus stipulationibus § Quod turpi ex causa; in alio casu indiget absolutione, ut patet infra eodem titulo J a

tangit K. * tangit GVb.

1

b

papa om. AbK. b preeunte BG.

c

precedence AMe. quod non admitto om. G.

c

2 3 4 Cod. 9.24.2. Cod. 9.24.1. Dig. 48.10.8. Huguccio, Sum/net decre5 6 torum, C.15 q.6 c.2 Auctoritatem. Cod. 9.24.1. Dig. 48.10.8. 1 3 Comp. 2.6.3 (X 2.13.13). * 3 Comp. 3.27.2 (X 3.35.6).

'Quan to Personam Tuam'

319

*1: rSupra di. Ixxxvi. Si quid uero; G. qui mili. pos. Super seruis.1 institutum:e rSupra eodem titulo c. ultimo in fine libro i."1 seruandum:* rSupra xxii. q. iiii. Inter cetera. Set ut fidem faceret non credenti, supra xxii. q. i. Ita ergo.1 Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Johanne Galensi

r

cudatur: Tria sunt specialia circa euidentem* falsam tnonetam: quia quilibet tenetur ad eius accusationem, et quia de hoc crimine condempnatus non appellat, et quia punitur etiam ignorans ille in cuius predio fabricatur. Hec omnia habes G. de fal. mo. 1. i. Ille autem qui nummos radit uel tingit, si liber est, datur ad bestias; si seruus ultimo supplicio afficitur, ff. ad 1. cor. de fal. Quicumque nummos.1 Vin. Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Laurentio

Cesaraugustano episcopo:h Quia in forma iuramenti expressum fuit. rSed nonne mentietur inscriptio monete noue? Immo et ipse rex falsi penam meretur, ut ff. ad 1. cor. de fal. Falsi. Quia1 in rmoneta tria exiguntur:1 quantitas, materia, forma publica, rut ff. de contrahen. emp. et uen. 1. i. Solutio: non fit inscriptio semper in moneta ut ei fides adhibeatur, ut hie, sicut nee in sepulcro, G. de religiosis monumentorum. Immo est quasi pictura quedam, unde in ea larga est licentia iuxta illud, 'pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi1 semper fuit equa potestas 'J Arg. est hie quod si de tempore suo dat episcopus canonicis ut eligant, canonici non suo iure eligunt set iure episcopi,* sicut hie moneta filii tempore facta patris est. Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Johanne Galensi

4. JOHANNES TEUTONICUS (Aa = Admont, MS 22, fo. 181r; Mu = Munich, MS 3879, fo. 197vab second layer). defraudata: rQui falsat1 principis rmonetam exuritur, G. de falsa mo. 1. ii. Qui1 autem rciuitatisn monetam falsat rcapite punitur, G. eodem 1. i. Set1 qui rradit uel tingit nummos si est liber datur ad bestias; si1 est rseruus ultimo supplicio1 punitur, rff. ad 1. cor. de fal. Quicumque nummos.1 Et rsunt1 hec rtria speciali quia quilibet tenetur ad1 huius criminis Taccusacionem;1 item quod rcondempnatus non appellat;1 item quod rpunitur etiam1 licet rignoreta ille in cuius pr cuditur moneta. Adb rhec habes G. de falsa moneta 1. i.1 Io.c Verba uncinis inclusa: ex Laurentio absolutio: Licite enim dico papam posse absoluere a iuramento ex causa aliqua, vt .xv. q. vi Auctoritatem, Alius,1 licet H. contrarium dicat.2 Io.d interpretation Interpretandum enim est iuramentum et .restringendum ad licita,6 vt supra eodem capitulo i.,3 vt ibi dixi. Io.f d

e f leg. non credimus. leg. penitentia. leg. institutum. * leg. cudentem h cum Laurentio supra, p. 244. leg. patris. * quelibet addendi Vb ; quemlibet audendi G. * episcopi Vb ; archiepiscopi BG. a b c ingnoret AaMu. vt Aa. lo om. Mu; dupl. Aa. * lo. om. Aa. e f ad illicita Mu. lo. om. Aa. 1

3

2 G.15 q.6 cc.2, 3. Huguccio, Summa decretorum, C.15 q.6 c.2 Auctoritatem. 3 Comp. 2.15.1 (X 2.24.16).

320

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

non credimus'.g Simile viii. q. iii. Talia.4 sub nomine pair is: Hoc ideo rquia in forma iuramentf1 hoc rfuit expressum.1 Sed rnonnen tune rmentitur inscriptio monete? Immo rex"1 est falsarius, r ff. de falsah Falsi. Quia in moneta tria exiguntur: quantitas, materia et forma publica, ut ff. de contrahen. emptione 1. i.1 Respondeo: quia1 rnon semper inscription! monete fides adhibetur, sicut nee sepulcri, G. de religiosis Monumentorum. Immo est pictura^ que Qargam1 habet rlicentiam^ secundum hoc, 'pictoribus atque poetis,' et cetera, licet sit arg. contra xxiiii. q. ii. Sane.5 lo.i satisfactionem: Pro temerario iuramento infligitur penitentia unius anni, vt .xxii. q. iiii. Qui sacramento. Set pro transgressione iuramenti imponitur septennis penitentia, vt .vi. q. i. Quicumque6 et xxii. q. i. c. ultimo.7 Verba uncinis inclusa: ex Vincentio et Jo. Galensi [obseruandum: Si. xxii. q. iiii. Si aliquid.k8] [iniquitatis: Si. xxii. q. iiii. Inter cetera;9 supra eodem titulo Ad audientiam.110] 5. TANCRED (Va = Vatican, MS lat. 1377, fo.?116; Vc = Vatican, MS lat. 2509, fo. 196vb). defraudata: rQui falsat monetam regis uel imperatoris exuritur, G. de falsa moneta 1. ii. Qui alterius ciuitatis punitur capite, G. eodem 1. i. Sed eta ille qui nummos radit uel tingit, si liber est, datur ad bestias, si seruus ultimob supplicio afficitur, ff. ad 1. cor. de falsis Quicumque nummos."1 La. absolui: rAbsoluere quidem potest papa quemlibet a sacramento ex iusta causa tamen, puta ob scandalum intolerabile uel si malum exemplum in multos prorogetur, claue tamen discretionis"1 precedente rHoc tamen negat H. et oninia"1 quecumque rdicunt uel innuunt papam absoluere a sacramento posse uel intelligantur de illicito uel potius sunt radenda quam legenda, quia in his que suntc de hire naturali, ut uoto, iuramento papa non dispensat, quod non admitted La. Ego dico quod dominus papa dispensare potest in uoto, ut supra de uoto c. ultimo libro i.1 et infra de uoto Magne deuotionis,2 et dispensat in iuramento, ut .xv. q. vi. Auctoritatem,3 et in omnibus aliis dispensare potest que iure positiuo illicita sunt, ut .viiii. q. iii. Guncta,4 saluo et .xxv. q. i. § ultimo.5 T. Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Laurentio interpretatio: rlnterpretandum est iuramentum et restringendum ad licita,"1 vt supra eodem titulo libro eodem. non credimus: rSimile .viii. q. iii. Talia.^ Textus uncinis inclusus: ex Jo. Teutonico h k * absolutio Aa. leg. falsis. * quod Aa. J lo. om. Aa. gl. (aucx toris incerti) om. Mu. gl. (auctoris incerti) om. Mu. b c » et om. Va. si seruus ultimo] sed si seruus est ultimo Va. que sunt om. Va

4

8

4

5 8 7 G.8 q.3 c.l. C.24 q.2 c.6. C.6 q.l c.18. C.22 q.l c.17. 9 10 C.22 q.4 cc.6, 16. C.22 q.4 c.22. 3 Comp. 2.15.3. 1 2 3 1 Comp. 3.29.2 (X 3.34.2). 3 Comp. 3.26.3 (X 3.33.7). C.15 q.6 c.2. 5 C.9 q.3 cc.17, 18. C.25 q.l c.16.

'Quart to Personam Tuam'

321

nomine: rHoc ideo quia in forma iuramenti hoc fuit expressum. Sed nonned tune mentiretur inscriptio monete? Immo1 uidetur quod rrex ipse falsarius1 esset, rut ff. ad 1. cor. de falsis Falsf1 nominis, et supra de his que fiunt ab episcopo sine consensu capituli6 Quanto libro i.6 rQuia in moneta tria exiguntur: quantitas"1 ponderis, rmateria et forma publica,* ut ff. de contrahenda emptione 1. i."1 Ad hoc frespondeo"1 quod rnon semper inscriptioni monete fides adhibetur, sicut nee1 inscriptioni Hsepulcri/1 ut rG. de religiosis et sump. fu. monumentorum. Immo pictura est que largam habet licentiam. Semper1 enim fas fuit rpictoribus atque poetis1 nouitates inuenire, licet sit arg. contra .xxiiii. q. ii. Sane. lo. Immo si fur ex auro uel argento monetam. publicam faciat falso, eo punito pecunia in thesauro publico^ conseruatur, ut i. q. i. Quod quidam.7 T. Verba uncinis inclusa: ex Jo. Galensi et Vincentio mediante Jo. Teutonico

obseruandum: rSupra xxii. Q. iiii. Si aliquid1. iniquitatis: rSupra xxii. q. iiii. Inter cetera; supra eodem titulo Ad audientiam.1h Ex Jo. Teutonico

r

cudatur: Tria sunt specialia circa cudentem falsam monetam: quia quilibet tenetur ad eius accusationem, et quia condempnatus de hoc crimine non appellat, et quia punitur etiam ignorans1 ille in cuius predio fabricatur. Hec omnia habes G. de falsa mo. 1. i/1 La. Ex Laarentio r

satisfactionem: Pro temerario iuramento infligitur penitentia unius anni, ut .xxiiii. q. iiii. Qui sacramento. Sed pro transgressione iuramenti imponitur septennis penitentia, ut .vi. q. i. Quicumque et .xxii. q. i. c. ultimo.1 lo. Ex Jo. Teutonico

6. Auctores incerti (Ba = Bamberg, MS canon. 19, fos. 160vb-161ra; P = Paris, MS lat. 3932, fos. 143vb-144ra). First Layer (Ba) consiliarii: Supra di. Ixxxvi. Tanta,1 ff. mandati 1. ii. in fi.2 et le. Si re §Si tibi.a3 ff. de regulis iu. Consilii.b4 ff. de furtis Qui seruo § Sed si alius.5 inter'pretatio: vt no. Supra eodem c.c c. i,6 infra eodem Ad nostram.d7 regia: G. de ueteris numismatis ete po. 1. i., ii. ete iii., libro xi. 8 Supra xxii. q. iiii. In malis, incerte;19 Si aliquid.s10 reprobata: ff. de pigner. ac. Eleganter § Qui reprobos.11 ff. Si cum autem.d12 diminuta: Extra ii. de censibus. Querelam.d13 d

e f nonne] ne Va. nomini(s) et consensu capituli om. Vc. pura g h Va. puro Va libro eodem ad. Vc. * si ignorant Va. a b c § Si tibi o/n. Ba. ff. de regulis iu. Gonsilii om. Ba. leg. t. d e f g Gl. om. P. et om. P. incerte] leg. incaute. S. xxii. Si aliquid om. P. 6

7 1 Comp. 3.9.5 (X 3.10.5). C.I q.l c.97. 2 3 4 5 D.86 c.24. Dig. 17.1.2. Dig. 17.1.6. Dig. 50.17.47. Dig. 6 7 8 47.2.36. 3 Comp. 2.15.1. 3 Comp. 2.15.7. Cod. 11.11.1, 2, 3. 9 10 u 12 C.22 q.4 c.5. G.22 q.4 cc.6, 16. Dig. 13.7.24.1. non inueni; 1S fortasse Dig. 46.3.50 Si cum aurum. 2 Comp. 3.25.3. 1

322

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Second Layer (Ba) conseruare1*: Quod s. h. non posset papa, sicut nee in uoto, cum hec sint quasi1 de iure naturali. Sed in utroque* dico papam dispensare ex iusta causa. falsam aut: Sed qua pena tenentur falsatores monete? Distin.: quia si falsat alicuius ciuitatis monetam capite punitur, vt G. de fal. mo. 1. i. Si uero regis uel imperatoris uiuus exuritur, C. eodem 1. ii. Uel die quod si fundat nummos exuritur,k ut le. iam dicta. Si uero tingit uel radit, tune si est liber, datur ad bestias; si est1 seruus, ultimo suplicio afficitur, vt. ff. ad 1. cor. de fal. Quicumque nummos. Quod uerum est nisi suffragio iuste penitudinis iuuetur, vt ff. eodem. Qui falsam. Resp. i et no. tria specialia circa hoc, nam quilibet tenetur talemm accusare. Item non appellat de hoc crimine dampnatus. Item confiscatur predium ubi cuditur falsa moneta, licet dominus ignoret, vt G. de fal. mo. 1. i. consiliarii tui: Sed nonne isti consiliarii obligantur? Distingue: quia si non est consilium fraudulentum non obligat, vt ff. mandati 1. ii in fi,14 nisi ubi alias non erat facturus vt ff. eodem si remunerandi Si tibi.15 Si uero est fraudulentum est obligatorium vt ff. de re. iu. Gonsilii.16 Uidetur tamen quod nee tuncn esset obligatorium, vt Institutionibus de obli. que ex delic. nascun. § At ubi ope.17 Sed illud ita exaudi quod non tenetur ei cui scil. furtum est factum nisi ut iteretur° tamen ei cui dedit consilium fraudulentum de dolo, vt ff. de dolo Et eleganter § vlt. et 1. sequent!.18 Et hoc uerum est quia datur de dolo accio, nisi dolus cadat in certum nomen maleficii ut furti uel serui corrupti, vt ff. de seruo corrupto 1. i Persuadere;19 ff. de furtis. Qui seruo § Sed si alius,20 et 1. in furti § Ope.21 Quod iure canonico teneatur consiliarius habes Ixxxvi. Tanta nequitia.22 APPENDIX III AFTER THE THIRD COMPILATION To move from the foregoing glosses to the ordinary gloss on the Liber Extra is to see how little Bernardus Parmensis added to the traditional commentary on Quanto personam tuam. He took over the Laurentian matter on fraud and absolution (defraudata, absolui), adding to the discussion of absolui some supporting references to the law of vows (some of which sought to reconcile the disagreement over papal dispensation between Huguccio and "the others");1 he h

k n

conseruare] reuocare P, leg. absolui. * quasi om. Ba. * utraque Ba. l m vt C. de fal. nummos exuritur om. P. est om. Ba. tales P. tune om. P. ° ut iteretur] ut ij. tenetur P, fortasse leg. ut teneretur.

17 15 16 Inst. 4.1.11 med. Dig. 17.1.2. Dig. 17.1.6.4. Dig. 50.17.47. 19 20 21 Dig. 4.3.7.10, 4.3.8. Dig. 11.3.1.3. Dig. 47.2.36. Dig. 47.2.50.1. 22 D.86.24 1 Decretales Gregorii IX, 2.24.18 (ed. Lyon, 1553), p. 487 (I pass over the analytical introduction): absolui: '. . . vt in voto & iuramento, papa non dispensat. ar. ad hanc opinionem infra e.c. & si Ghristus (X 2.24.26). vbi dicitur: redde domino iuramenta tua. quasi similem interpretationem habes infra eo. petitio (X 2.24.31) & infra de voto, magnae (X 3.34.7). vbi dicitur vouete & reddite. . . . Vbi vero aliquis vouet vel iurat, & ilia licite vel honeste 14

18

'QuantaPersonam Tuam'

323

virtually reproduced Tancred's comment, derived ultimately from Galensis, on patrism, and he suppressed all other glosses except that of Teutonicus to iniquitatis, which he abbreviated. So published, the ordinary gloss significantly resembled the mature apparatus of Vincentius to X 2.24.18,2 which itself held true to the commentaries on 3 Comp. 2.15.4 that have been examined. Other early commentators on Quanta personam tuam preserved the usual stress on the casus moralis, and did so even as they departed from the paths marked out by their forerunners. There is little (if anything) directly pertinent to our text in the early decretalist summae? while the doctrine of Johannes Hispanus de Petesella under De iureiurando appears remarkably consistent with Quanta which, however, it does not explicitly cite.4 Petrus de Sampsona and Goffredus Tranensis, on the other hand, provided fresh commentaries on X 2.24.18. Goffredus bridges the generation between the early decretalists, whose work he drew upon, and the mature works of Innocent IV and Hostiensis, who cited him; yet his ideas, too, were traditional.5 Petrus de Sampsona, however, was altogether independent of the discussions of 3 Comp. 2.15.4 in his brief commentary.6 His interest in the monetary problem and in the nature of the dispendium resulting from a debased coinage foreshadow the extended economic and constitutionalist discussions of the great decretalists whose work was to attribute to Quanta personam tuam a significance much enlarged from that of the letter in its early history.7

seruari possunt, nee subest causa, papa ilia immutare non potest. & sic intelligebat H. & in hoc alij non discordant. Et sic etiam intelliguntur ilia verba, vouete & reddite domino iuramenta vestra. & est ar. ad praedic. xxv. q.j. § vlt. versi. ipsi namque soli (G.25 q.l c.16) & c. & ff. de vul. & pup. substi. ex facto (Dig. 28.6.43). Hie vero non fuit necessaria absoluti sed interpretatio secundum quod sequitur in litera, & secundum interpretationem debet seruari quia fuit legitimum iuramentum.' 2 Paris (B.N.), MS lat. 3967, fo. 97rb-va. 3 I have examined those of Ambrosius and Damasus. 4 Johannes Hispanus de Petesella, Summa decretalium Gregorii IX, Vatican, MS lat. 2343, fo. 180v: '. . . Est in summa notandum quod si capitulum uel episcopum (sic) uel princes (sic) secularis prestat sacramentum in dapnum (sic) ecclesie uel regni, tale sacramentum non est dicendum sacramentum sed periurium et ideo non obseruandum, vt infra eodem Sicut nostris et capitulo Intellecto (X 2.24.27, 33).' The cited chapters deal with oaths injurious, respectively, to a church and a kingdom. 5 Goffredus Tranensis, Apparatus in decretales Gregorii IX, Vienna, MS lat. 2197, fo. 61rb-va. 6 Petrus de Sampsona, Lectura decretalium, Vienna, MS lat. 2083, fo. 26v. I quote only the comment on dispendium: ' Idest dampnum tui populi et iuramentum de seruanda moneta patris tui.' 7 Bernardus de Montemirato ('Abbas Antiquus') merely summarized 2.24.18 in his Lectura super decretalibus, Vatican, MS Borgh. 231, fo. 70rb.

Account for the bailiwick of Terrassa, 1 July 1191, showing subscriptions of Ramon de Caldes, Guillem de Bassa, and Guillem de Caerci. Arxiu de la Corona d'Arago, pergamins Alfons I, 588

17 SUR LES ORIGINES DUMONEDATGE: QUELQUES TEXTES INEDITS*

Les historiens se sont fies, sans exception semble-t-il, a Zurita pour fixer 1'origine de 1'impot dont le paiement devait assurer la stabilite des monnaies en Aragon et Catalogne. C'est, en effet, le savant auteur des Andles de la Corona de Aragon qui, au xvr siecle, a decrit les provisiones de Huesca de noverabre 1205 comme 1'acte1 constitutif du fameux monedaje (lat. : monetaticum; cat. : monedatge) . LIB, documentation de Zurita a malheureusement disparu de bonne heure, mettant les auteurs modernes dans 1'obligation de le croire sur parole. Et il faut avouer que le temoignage de Zurita etait si circonstaneie, si plausible (car il n'a pas seulement evoque les besoins financiers et d'autres nuevas eocacciones du roi Pierre I" — Pierre n en Aragon — mais a meme donne des details sur 1'assiette de la taxe) que ses successeurs n'ont pu hesiter a y voir erI'etablissement du tribut si bien atteste a partir du regne de Jacques l . Nombreuses sont ces mentions du monedatge\fondee& sur 1'autorite de Zurita : de Feliu de la Pena et Asso au xvm* siecle, ou de Salat et Balaguer au xixe, jusqu'a Rovira, Mateu y Llopis et Soldevila de nos jours, pour ne citer que celles-la2.

** A mes amis de Vich, Msgrs. Eduard Junyent, Miquel S. Gros et Antoni Pladevall, en temoignage respectueux. Je tiens a remercier M. et M me Leon Pressouyre de leurs conseils pour 1'expression frangaise de ma pensSe. 1. Geronimo ZURITA, Anales de la Corona de Aragdn (lre edition, 6 vol., Zaragoza, 1578-1585), n, 52; nouv. ed. par Antonio UBIBTO ARTETTA et autres, ii (Valencia, 1967), 144-145. J'emploie toujours le mot « monedatge» comme traduction catalane de monedaje (dans Zurita) ou de monetaticum dans les textes. 2. Narciso Feliu DB LA PE^A Y FARELL, Anales de Cataluna ...,,3 vol. (Barcelona, 1709), n, 17-18; Ignacio de Asso y del Rio, Histdria de la economia politica de Aragdn (Zaragoza, 1798; nouv. ed. par Jos6 Manuel CASAS TORRES, 1947), p. 293; Josef SALAT, Tratado de las monedas labradas en el principado de Cataluna ..., 2 vol. (Barcelona, 1818), i, 17; Victor BALAGUER, Historia de Cataluna, 11 vol. (Madrid, 1885-1887), in, 143; Antonio ROVIRA I VIRGILI, Histdria nacional de Catalunyaf 7 vol. (Barcelona, 1922-1934), iv, 461; Felipe MATETJ Y LLOPIS, « Super monetatico o morabetino ...», Melanges offerts a Rene Crozet ..., 2 vol. (Poitiers, 1966), 11, 1115; Ferran SOLDEVILA, Histdria de Catalunya, 2° ed. (Barcelona, 1963), p. 228.

326

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Dire que ces auteurs ont erre serait excessif. En Aragon, je n'ai pu trouver qu'une seule allusion a 1'imposition dont il est ici question avant 1205. H y a une exemption du monetaticum dans la charte de 1179 par laquelle Alphonse II a confirme le temporel de la nouvelle maison cistercienne de Casbas8. Mais cette charte a ete incontestablement remaniee, comme Tont ete d'ailleurs d'autres documents aragonais qui parlent de monetaticum (ou de moravetwws)*. En Catalogue, 1'emploi du mot monetaticum pour designer un tribut semble tout aussi exceptionnel sinon inconnu avant 1205. Je ne le releve que parmi les clauses de cession ou d'exemption dans deux chartes, Tune de 1155, 1'autre de 1203; et toutes les deux me paraissent douteuses5. De toute fagon, ni en Aragon ni en Catalogue on ne trouve de temoignage direct sur la perception de I'impot dit monetaticum jusqu'au decret du monedaje (soit monetaticum) en novembre 1205, qui d'ailleurs ne constitue pas en lui-meme la preuve qu'une levee ait ete effectuee a cette date. H est done reste naturel de reserver pour le paiement qui assure la stabilite monetaire le mot (monetaticum) qui en est devenu Texpression habituelle. Mais parler ainsi n'a-t-il pas conduit a oublier que le rapport entre les termes juridiques et) les reaiites qu'ils designent peut avoir une histoire fort differente de son destin ? En Catalogue, du moins, il parait que le monedatge, comme on y appelait Timpot en langue vulgaire, n'etait pas aussi original dans la pratique que dans le vocabulaire. On ne peut nier que le monedatge avait pour but d'assurer la monnaie en poids et aloi; des textes posterieurs sont formels a ce sujet6, tandis que le mot monetaticum (quelquefois, monedaticum) s'appliquait en extension de sa signification originale : a savoir, « seigneuriage »7. Or la premiere mention d'un tel impot en Catalogue se trouve non pas en 1205, ni meme en 1179, mais beaucoup plus tot : dans la charte promulguee par le comte Raimond Berenger HI lors de son avenement au comte de Cerdagne en 1118. Non seulement ce comte s'y engageait a « mettre

3. Documentos de Casbas ed. Antonio UBIBTO (Valencia, 1966), n° 8. Mais cette piece est une copie non authentique de la deuxieme moitie du xine siecle. 4. Coleccion diplomdtica de la catedral de Huesca, ed. Antonio DURAN GUDIOL, 2 vol. (Zaragoza, 1965-1969), i, n° 48; Coleccijn diplomdtica de Pedro I de Aragdn y Nawarra, ed. Antonio UBIBTO ARTBTA (Zaragoza, 1951), n° 52 (ce document, qui pretend etre de Tan 1098, parle de moravetimis, terme de beaucoup posterieur a 1205). Voir aussi Archivo de Casbas, cajon 10, n° 16. 5. Texte cite par Jose Maria FONT Rius, Carias de poblacidn y franquicia de Cataluna, i (Madrid - Barcelona, 1969), 2e partie, 780 n (mais il s'agit d'une copie posterieure sur papier); Archives departementales des Pyrenees-Orientales, B 8. Une critique detaillee des documents cites aux notes 3, 4 et 5 sera publiee ailleurs. 6. Par exemple, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Cancilleria, pergaminos Jaime I, 184, 226; ed. Ambrosio HUICI MIRANDA, Coleccion diplomdtica de Jaime I, el Conquistador, 3 vol. (Valencia, 1916-1922), i, n os 20, 33; A.C.A., Cane., Registro 22, fol. 105-106 ed. (de maniere peu satisfaisante) par HUICI, i, n° 153. 7. Voir Jan F. NIERMBYER, Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus (Leiden, 1954....), ), p. 703; Pierre de MARCA, Marca hispanica ... (Paris, 1688), appendice, n° 283.

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

327

une paix de bo&ufs... et de paysans » en Cerdagne; mais encore il y confirmait sa monnaie sous serment, promettant ne pas la muter pendant toute sa vie. Pour compensation definitive, le comte Raimond demandait le paiement de 12 deniers par attelage, 6 d. par homme, et 3 d. par charrue ou outil8. Peut-on pr£tendre que ce texte soit inconnu ? Au contraire, il a £te vite faineux; tout le monde y recommit 1'Usatge Cu/nctis pateat. Mais parmi les commentaires des historiens, je n'en ai releve aucun mettant en rapport I'impot signale dans ce document avec le monedatge, ni le considerant comme la premiere manifestation de 1'institution connue plus tard sous le nom de monedatge. H n'est pas jusqu'au regrette prof esseur Soldevila, qui en discernant Torigine du bovatge dans cette charte de 1118, n'ait omis d'y lire un etat ancien du monedatge de la meme fagon9. En fait, la charte Cunctis pateat est la cle de voute pour interpretation de toute une histoire peu connue des confirmatfones monete en Catalogne au xiie siecle, comme j'espere Tavoir demontre dans une etude plus longue a paraitre prochainement. Pour ne traiter ici que de I'impot lie a ces confirmations, ce qu'il faut rappeler de la charte de 1118, c'est qu'elle parle d'une levee en forme de bovatge, a ne payer qu'une fois, lors de 1'avenement du prince, en vue d'assurer la stabilite de la monnaie sa vie durant. Impossible de rapprocher ce paiement du seigneuriage du comte et de ses monnayeurs; ce n'est pas un monetaticum, a parler strictement, ni meme une taxe du tout, mais une sorte d'achat de marchandise morale et politique. On pourrait bien le decrire comme un rachat : rachat non seulement de la securite des montagnes mais aussi du profit qu'eut entraine la ou les mutations auxquelles on renonce solennellement. Comme tel, il se trouve analogue aux rachats de gite ou de servitude personnelle dont parlent si souvent les textes Catalans10. Et pourquoi ne pas rappeler, d'autre part, les redemptiones monete attestees comme telles dans 1'Be-de-France a partir des annees 1137-113811 ? Considerons maintenant un texte beaucoup plus obscur que la charte Cunctis pateat. C'est egalement une charte octroyee a Tavenement d'un souverain : la confirmation par le jeune Pierre Pr des privileges de Teglise de Vich en mars 1197 (n. st.); conservee en original aux Archives de la Couronne d'Aragon et 12en copies aux archives de la cathedrale de Vich, elle est restee inedite . Vers la fin du dispositif, apres des clauses assez normales, le comte-roi ajoute qu'il renonce pour tout

8. I/iber Feudorum Ma&or, ed. Francisco MIQUBL ROSELL, 2 vol. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), n, n° 691. 9. Ferran SOLDBVILA, « A proposit del serve! del bovatge », Amiario de Estudios medievales, I (1964), 573-584. 10. Voir Eduardo de HINOJOSA, El regimen senorial y la cuestidn agraria en Cataluna durante la edad media (Madrid, 1905), pp. 137, 212-213. 11. Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisi&me race, 22 vol. (Paris 1723-1849), xi, 188; Eugene BIMBENET, « Examen critique de la charte octroyee par le roi Louis VII aux habitants d'Orleans, en 1'annee 1137», M6moires de la 8ociet^ d'agriculture, des sciences ... d'OrUans, 2* ser., xn (1874), 67. 12. A.C.A., Cane,, perg. Pedro I, 26 (ci-dessous, textes inedits, n° 1).

328

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

temps a « ce rachat de la monnaie » (redempcionem hanc monete} qu'il vient de recevoir dans la ville de Vich en raison de la necessite urgente creee par la guerre centre les Sarrazins. A vrai dire, ce passage n'a pas echapp£ & 1'interet des erudits en histoire et en numismatique. Joaquiin Botet y Siso voulait y voir une allusion & une saisie temporaire de la monnaie episcopate par le roi1*3 et 1'opinion du savant historien Catalan a ete retenue par Jaime Lluis y Navas Brusi, avec la reserve que le roi, qui « essaye de s'approprier la monnaie de Vich..., dut se contenter de certains benefices sur la fabrication >14. Mais il n'y a rien dans la charte, ni meme parmi les donnees relatives & la monnaie de Vich, pour justifier ces assertions. Au contraire, il me semble evident que c'est la monnaie royale dont parle Pierre, et que par « ce rachat de la monnaie», le roi designe Fimpot qui vient d'etre recueilli a Vich15 (et tr&s probablement aussi dans d'autres villes catalanes). Nous savons qu'en Aragon du moins, le jeune Pierre s'engageait, en 1196 ou 1197, a conserver intacte la derniere monnaie de son pere, bien qu'il fut trop indigent pour payer son propre secours militaire au roi de Castille16. Les circonstances politiques s'accordent avec les termes de la charte pour nous permettre d'y voir une allusion au rachat de la stabilite monetaire. H est vrai que les mots « en raison de la necessite urgente de 1'armee des Sarrazins » (propter ingruentem necessitates exercitiis sarrcwen&rum) semblent indiquer que le roi avait dft chercher une meilleure justification que celle du rachat monetaire pour son impot. Mais on peut facilement comprendre que le peuple Catalan aurait resiste a toute tentative pour invoquer comme un precedent au debut d'un regne la charte Cunotis pateat. Et le monedatge devait etre justifie a 1'avenir (comme, d'ailleurs, le bovatge) par les exigences politiques ou militaires17. Doute-t-on encore du sens de redemptio monete f Voici un autre texte peu connu & interroger. C'est une charte par laquelle le roi Pierre, le 22 mars 1205 a GSrone, semble renoncer & toutes nouvelles exactions et promettre de reformer Tadministration des viguiers. Vers la fin, on y lit : « semblablement, je promets que pendant toutie ma vie je ne change« rai pas la monnaie barcelonaise ni ne permettrai de la deteriorer ni ne

13. Joaquim BOTET Y Siso, Les monedes catalanes, 3 vol. (Barcelona, 19081911), i, 17L 14. Jaime LLUIS y NAVAS BRUSI, « Le droit monetaire dans la region de Vich pendant la reconquete espagnole ... », Revue nuanismatique, 5^ s6r., xvni (1956), 227-228. Pareille interpretation dans Felipe MATBU Y LLOPIS^ « El « ius monetae» en el obispado y condado ausonense (siglos ix a xiv) », Nwmario hispdnico, m (1954), 187. 15. Deja au xvir1 siecle, Juan Luis de MONCADA, sans remarquer le caractere de I'impot, avait lu ce texte ainsi, Episcopologio de Vich..., ed. par Jaime COLLEL, 3 vol. (Vich, 1891), I, 522. 16. Decretales Gregorii IX, ii.24.18 Quanta personam tuam; « Une chronique latine inedite des rois de Castille (1236) », ed. Georges CIROT, (Bulletin hispanique, xiv (1912), 355. 17. Voir, par exemple, Arxiu municipal de Lleida, privilegis, n° 33 (27 octobre 1254); ZURITA, Anales de la Corona de Aragdn, n, 69, ed. UBIETO ARTETA, IT, 210;<*SoLDEvn,A, A proposit del servei de bovatge;'579-580.

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

329

ferai ensuite racheter la [monnaie] ni le bovatge [nee faciam vpsam uel bouaticum deinde recttmi]. De plus, je desire et etablis qu'apres mon deces cette monnaie durera et perseverera dans le meme etat et valeur et qu'elle ne sera pas mutee pendant un1 an ». Ces engagements sont jures pour le roi par deux barons Catalans *. Que cette charte ^'inspiration evidemment aristocratique, n'ait jamais et6 conclue n'enleve rien & son intSret. Car, comme je le montre ailleurs19, elle est incontestablement une ebauche par laquelle nous est conserve ndelement le souvenir d'un courant d'opinion reformatrice en 1205. Tel quel, ce document fait inferer que le roi Pierre, sinon & coup sur son pere, avait impost des rachats de la monnaie comme, egalement, du bovatge. Elle confirme done notre interpretation du langage, identique, de la charte de 1197 : les deux documents, en fait, s'6clairent Tun 1'autre. Ajoutons que I'impot dit bovatge, lui aussi, est attest^ dans les annees immediatement anterieures & 120520. L'existence, done, de cette ebauche de 1205 — cette « unknown charter » — nous autorise & croire & la persistence des notions de Cunctis pateat : rachat (a renoncer) et de la monnaie et de la paix, confirmation viagfere, sous serment, de la monnaie; reserve du droit princier d'effectuer, apres un delai convenable ,une seule mutation des especes (ou de la faire racheter ?). Mais en mars 1205 on etait & la veille de 1'etablissement du monedatge. Les provisiones de Huesca (novembre 1205), dont parle Zurita, constituaient le desaveu royal de toute une tradition catalane relative a la confirmation et au rachat de la paix et de la monnaie21. Car il est certain que le roi Pierre a fait imposer le monetaticum (eo nomine) en Catalogue en suite de son decret. Nous trouvons trace de levies en 120722 et 1209 ou 1210; et au printemps 1213 — soit quelques mois avant Muret — on aurait envisage une autre perception. En ces circonstances, on peut imaginer sans difficulte pourquoi le nom de I'impdt — dont la nature resta surement la meme23 — fut change. Parler du monetatiawm, c'6tait voiler la notion impopulaire de rachat

18. Arxiu diocesa, Girona, cartoral «Carlesmany», fol. 65 (ci-dessous, textes inedits, n° 2). 19. T. N. BISSON, *An « Unknown Charter » for Catalonia (A. D. 1205) », a paraitre parmi les travaux du Congres de Szekesferhervar de la Commission Internationale pour 1'Histoire des Assemblies d'Etatsj; above, pp. 199-212. 20. Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragdn y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 26 vol. (Madrid, 1S96-1922), 11, 67, art. 18 (Gerone, 1188); 84, art. 16 (Barcelone, 1200); A.C.A., Cane., perg. Alfonso I, extrainventario 2612; MON CADA, Episcopologio de Vich, i, 531-532. 21. LSemptio monete de Leon de 1202, Cdrtes de los antiguos reinos de Leon y de Castilla, 5 vol. (Madrid, 1861-1903), i, 44, tres analogue au rachat monetaire en Catalogne, est pourtant, sans les textes utilises par ZURITA, tres difficile a rapprocher des redemptiones ou monetatica de la Couronne d'Aragon avant le temps de Jacques !•* 22. A.C.A., Cane., perg. Pedro I, 271; pour les autres levies, voir la suite. 23. Voir ce qui suit. II est vrai que 1'expression « redemptio» devient rare; mais elle ne disparait pas entierement : par exemple, A.C.A., Cane., perg. Jaime I, 184 (ed. HUICI, Coleccidn diplomdtica, i, n° 20).

330

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

sous le manteau d'un terme plus neutre sinon plus legitime qui signifiait profit ordinaire de la monnaie. C'etait abandonner le pretexte de ne pas repeter les mutations ou leurs compensations. Done, en 1205, il n'y a pas innovation, mais nouvelle voie. Plusieurs documents eclairent renchainement des f aits24. Cependant, pour 1'instant je ne m'attacherai, par rintermediaire de deux textes inedits, qu'a un seul fait remarquable, qui me parait demontrer combien forte etait restee en Catalogue la tradition attestee par Cunctis pateat; et cela en depit de la renonciation de la charte de Gerone ou de la proclamation de Huesca. C'est le fait que le monedatge, tout en demeurant tres etroitement lie au bovatge dans les privileges a partir de 1205, s'est trouve identifie avec le bovatge dans deux mentions (sur quatre connues) des levees du monedatge entre 1207 et 1208. Lie 30 decembre 1210, a Perpignan, Ramon de Manresa presenta devant les gens du roi ses comptes pour des25 perceptions diverses a Gerone et en Cerdagne, Conflent et Roussillon . Le texte, avec une clarte parfaite, renferme quatre categories de perception ou de depense : a savoir, celles 1. pro facto taridarum; 2. de bouatico Cerritanie, Confluentis et Rossilionis; 3. de questia Genmde; et 4. de justiciis Ville Franche Confluentis et de Tuhir. Mais tandis que les categories (1), (3) et (4) se repetent partout, sans changement, celle qui se refere au bovatge (2), apres deux reprises, s'altere en remplagant le mot bovaticum par monetaticum, toujours dans le meme rapport avec les autres comptes. Ainsi, a la suite de : Summa autem maior et ultima bouatici fuit inventa... in qua swmma continentur qumque milia solidi de questia Gerunde et mille ducenti solidi de iusticiis Ville Franche et de Tuhir, on lit : Sic ergo facta coUatione receptionwm et expensarum monetatici et denariorum Gerunde et Ville Franche et de Tuhvr... et, un peu plus bas, facta itaque computatione diligenter de taridis et monetatico et denariis Gerunde et Ville Frcmche et de Tuhir... Evidemment, on pourrait objecter que ces mentions ne confondent pas le monedatge et le bovatge; mais d'apres le contexte — que le lecteur veuille bien verifier par lui-meme — je ne doute pas qu'il s'agisse d'une seule levee sous deux noms. S'il en est bien ainsi, peut-on expliquer cette ambiguite ? Remarquons, d'abord, que si les provisiones de Huesca ont suscite en Catalogue le mecontentement qui est atteste en Aragon, ce qui est probable a priori, on aurait pu attendre des gens du roi un effort pour negocier leur perception comme coutumiere, si possible, mais, de toute fagon, comme bien fondee. Or, il s'agit d'une perception en Cerdagne, Conflent et Roussillon —• c'est-a-dire, les memes regions (sauf la derniere) ou le premier rachat (connu) de la monnaie a ete, en 1118, presente aussi comme un rachat de la paix. Qui souhaitait acheter ou la bonne monnaie ou le bovatge {au sens de « paix des betes ») par un seul paiement aurait pu s'executer un peu plus volontiers, se sentir un peu mieux servi, en sachant obtenir les deux choses a la fois. Mais il y a une autre 24. Sujet de mon etude, precitee, a paraitre. 25. A.C.A., Cane., perg. Pedro I, apendice 3 (ci-^dessous, textes inedits, n° 3).

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

331

ambiguite a remarquer : que le bovatge puisse etre un impot non seulement en raison de son objet mais aussi de sa forme. L'impot decrit par Cunctis pateat taxe les bceufs aussi bien que les homines et les outils. Et le monedaje decrit par Zurita, qui « se repartio por razon de todos los bienes muebles y raices que cada uno tenia »26, ne pourrait-il pas aussi taxer les boeufs dans les montagnes catalanes ? La repartition d'un tel impot n'est pas sans rapport avec celle indiquee par le Modus colligendi Iwvaticwm, in tota Catalonia, qui date de Tan 1277. Et tout independamment des comptes de Ramon de Manresa, nous savons qu'un « bovaje» (terme employe par Zurita) a27ete leve en 1209 a 1'occasion des mariages des sceurs du roi Pierre . La conclusion me semble s'imposer : les commissaires Catalans en 1209-1210 ont parle indifferemment du monedatge ou du bovatge parce qu'ils ont demande Targent sous Tun ou I'autre pretexte selon les lieux, ou bien — comme en 1118 — sous les deux a la fois. Cette interpretation, si elle n'est pas absolument confirmee, est du moins curieusement conforme au temoignage des chartes de privilege dans lesquelles le roi renonce a la fois, quelquefois en conjonction textuelle, au bovaticum et au monetaticum2*. Et ces privileges euxmemes trouvent echo dans un texte — notre dernier document — du plus haut interet pour 1'histoire monetaire et fiscale de Pierre I"29. Les barons Dalmau et Guillem de Creixell s'engagent, le 8 mai 1213, a rembourser a 1'abbe Pere de Sant Joan de les Abadesses la somme de 118 1. melg., soil) 94 1. 8 s. bar. « de cette bonne nouvelle monnaie ». Ils avaient regu cet argent en especes, comptees en marcs, de 3 d. fin (ternales), de senarii (soit « sixiemes ? » — ou quelque sorte d'oboles ?), de 2 d. de fin (d^wpleni) et de 4 d. (de quaterno); leur calcul en nouvelle monnaie de Barcelone donne la proportion : 15 d. melg. pour 12 d. (nouv.) bare.30 Mais ce qui nous frappe, c'est le mode de remboursement. 26. ZURITA, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, n, 52; ed. UBIETO ARTETA, n, 144^145. 27. Jaime VILLANUBVA, Viage liter'ario a las iglesias de Espana, 22 vol. (Madrid, 1806-1902), xvii, 260-261: « ... Dentur nobis pro pare bovum octo solidi ... Pro exaderiis et bordariis vel scimplicibus ministralibus unusquisque del duos solidos ... De rebus mobilibus duodecim denarii pro ...»; ZURITA, Anales, n, 69, ed. UBIETO ARTETA, n, 210. 28. Par exemple, A.C.A., Cane., pergs. Pedro I, 315, 416, 434, 435; Registro 310, fol. 37, 69. 29. Arxiu de Sant Joan de les Abadesses, pergamins, s. xm (8 des ides mai 1213; ci-dessous, textes inedits, n° 4). 30. Ce document atteste parfaitement la confusion monetaire qui a resulte de raffaiblissement des especes barcelonaises a partir de 1209. D'abord, il connrme le fait, mis en doute par BOTET Y Siso (Monedes catalanes, 11, 34, 38) que la monnaie doblench date du regne de Pierre Ier, et done ne peut etre la creation de son flls. Peut-on 1'identifier avec la moneta de Bossonaya, signale par le Chronicon barcinonense, ed. Henrique FLOREZ, Espana sagrada ,.., 58 vol. (Madrid, 1747-1918), xxvin, 332, a 1'annee 1209 ? Ou, comme il me semble plus probable, ne doit-on pas voir dans cette derniere la monnaie dite ternalis (3 d. de fin) ? D autre part, comment parler du senarius comme 1'equivalent du doblench, etant donne que notre scribe de mai 1213 distingue Tun de I'autre ? Pour senarius, Felipe MATEU Y LLOPIS, Glosario hispdnico de numi&mdtica (Barcelona, 1946), p. 186, ne peut citer que des allusions de

33 2

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

L'abbe est autorise & percevoir son argent « des premieres recettes du bovatge et du monedatge » (de denarUs primis bouatici et monetatici}, comme il lui convient. n parait done : 1. qu'on a pens£ a repeter la lev£e du monedatge (ou & en 6tendre 1'incidence ?), peut-etre en rapport avec le nouveau renforcement mon£taire qui est signal^; 2. que 1'abbe a reQu le controle de la perception; 3. qu'une fois encore, on a envisage un monedatge comcidant avec le bovatge dans sa forme ou dans son objet. Voila done ces quatre textes inedits du regne de Pierre P*. Us meritent — du moins les trois derniers — des commentaires plus pousses, qui ne pouvaient trouver place dans la perspective de cette 6tude. Contentons-nous pour 1'instant de conclure que Ton ne saurait plus parler, sans faire de reserves explicites, de l'6tablissement du monedatge en 1205. Ce qui 6tait alors neuf en Catalogue c'6tait le mot, non la chose. Le roi, presse par la n6cessite, semble avoir renonc6 & la tradition par laquelle la monnaie avait et6 associee & une paix (y avail trouve asile, pour ainsi dire) & ne renouveler qu'une fois par r&gne. Mais il s'est plu & perp6tuer cette confusion entre monedatge et bovatge ou se manifeste Torigine montagnarde du premier.

beaucoup posterieures. S'il signifle une monnaie a 6 d., ou aurait-on pu trouver en Catalogue et dans les environs, a 1'epoque, un tel argent La monnaie de Toulouse 6tait alors bien connue comme septena. On ne saurait douter, de toute fagon, que les mutations sous Pierre Ier ont ete effectuees sans revocation des vieilles especes, en depit du fait que les pieces actuellement connues ne correspondent pas tres bien aux donnees textuelles (indication de refontes posterieures ?). Voila toute une serie de questions a proposer aux numismates, dont les etudes recentes me paraissent laisser toujours a desirer en ce qui concerne Thistoire monetaire de Pierre Pr; voir, cependant, Octavio GIL FARR^S, « Sobre los dineros barceloneses de Jaime I y Jaime II. Una rectiflcacion monetaria», Numario hispdnico, m (1954), 41-54, et Id., « The Billon Dineros of Barcelona», Seaby's Coin and Medal Bulletin (1957), pp. 292-294.

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

333

Textes Inedlts 1. 1197 (n. st.), mars. Pierre I (II en Aragon) confirme a Veglise, a I'eveque et <w chapitre de Vich leurs possessions, droits, libertes et privileges concedes par son pere et par d'autres ancetres. II assure que le recent rachat de la monnaie, paye par les habitants de Vich pour les exigences de la guerre contre les Sarrazins, ne servira pas de precedent ni ne fera tort aux privileges de I'eglise de Vich. A. Original, jadis soelle, sur parchemin, de 445 X 243 mm, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Cancilleria, pergaminos Pedro I, 26 (1). — A*. Original (? — signale comme tel par 1'Index des parchemins episcopaux de Vich; actuellement inaccessible parmi des pieces brulees en cours de restauration). B. Copie, Arxiu episcopal de Vich, pergamins, Llibre iv, 5. — C. Copie du 23 decembre 1277, Arxiu capitular de Vich, calaix 9. Analyses : MIRET y SANS, « Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Cataluna, II en Aragon », Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, in (1905-1906), 85-86; Eduard JUNYENT, Jurisdiccions i privilegis de la ciutat de Vich (Vich, 1969), n° 51. Ad noticiam presentium et futurorum perueniat quod ego Petrus, Dei gratia rex aragonensis et comes barchinonensis, pro celestis libertate regni umiliter adhipiscenda et ob remedium anime mee meorumque parentum, laudo, concedo et confirmo per me et per meos successores in perpetuum Deo et ecclesie ausonensi et tibi G.- eiusdem episcopo et toti capitulo possessiones omnes et facultates ,iura, libertates atque regalia que uos uel antecessores uestri tempore meo uel patris mei domini Ildefonsi comendabilis memorie uel antecessorum meorum uel aliorum quorumlibet principum possedistis aut possidetis aut iuste et rationabiliter adquisiuistis, ita dumtaxat quod nulla les.one uel molestia contaminata semper in pace permaneant et quod uos et uestri successores ea omnia in ea qua consueuistis libertate possideatis et tranquillitate. Concedo necnon uobis et uestris successoribus in perpetuum et sine dolo inuiolate corroboro et confirmo omnia ilia priuilegia et instrumenta que ab inclito patre meo et ab antecessoribus eius et a me uel ab aliis quibuslibet principibus uobis et ecclesie ausonensi concessa sunt et corroborata. Sciendum autem uolo esse preterea presentibus et futuris quod redemptionem hanc monete quam in uilla Uici inpresenciarum accepi propter ingruentem necessitatem exercitus sarracenorum numquam amplius in casu consimili exigam uel exigere faciam, nee a meis successoribus umquam aliquo tempore uobis aut uestris successoribus exigatur uel demandetur, neque in preiudiciirm predicte ecclesie possit aliquando uenire, neque uobis aut uestris successoribus possit aliqua ratione obesse. Vt itaque et concessio et confirmacio hec rata stabilis et inconuulsa sine fine permaneat, mea auctoritate corroborata est hec presens pagina et sigilli mei impressione obnixe confirmata, anno Domini millesimo centesimo nonagesimo sexto, mensis Marcii. 1. Au dos : « Carta qua rex petrus confirmauit ecclesie uici sua priuilegia > (s. XHI); « 9 Armari de Vich Sach A. N. 89 »; etc. 2. Guillem de Tavertet, eveque de Vich de 1195 a 1233.

334

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Signum+Petri, Dei gratia regis aragonensis et comitis barchinonensis. [premiere colonne] S+num Guillelmi de Cardona3. S+num Bernardi de Portella*. S+num Blasconis Rumeus. [deuxieme colonne] S+num Raimundi Gaucerandi«. S+num Dalmacii de Crexello?. S+num Petri de Alcalanos. [troisieme colonne] S+num Vgonis de Mataplana^. S+num Guillelmi de Ceruilipneio. S+num Raimundi de Boxadosn. Signum+Iohannis beraxenssia, domini regis notarii*i2. S+num Guillelmi Durfortisbis. Sig+num Petri de Blandis notarii domini regis qui mandato eius supradicta scripsit, mense et anno quo supra. 2.

1205 (n. St.), 22 mars. Gerone. Pierre I (II en Aragon) exempte le cterge, les barons et chevaliers, et les prud'hommes de Catalogne des nowoeaux impots specifies, sauf les peages sur les etrangers; il pramet de ne nommer comme viguiers que des chevaliers Catalans, qui seront tenus de jurer qu'ils gouverneront legalement la terre; il exempte les chevaliers du tercium dans les proces pour dettes; il confirme, pour sa vie la monnaie et le bovatge. Ses promesses a Vegard des salinae, de la monnaie et du bovatge sont jurees par deux barons. A. Original perdu (?). B. Copie de la premiere moitie du xnr s., Arxiu diocesa de Girona, Cartoral major (« Carlesmany »), fol. 65. — C. Copie, deuxieme moitie du xine s., Arxiu capitular de Girona, « Llibre verd », fol. 213 v. a. T. N. BISSON, * An « Unknown Charter» for Catalonia (A. D. 1205), a paraitre parmi les travaux du Congres de SzekesferhSrvar de la Commission Internationale pour 1'Histoire des Assemblees d'Etats; ci-dessus, pp. 199-212. Analyses : VILLANUEVA, Viage literario, xin (1850), 158; Joaquim BOTET y, Siso, Cartoral de Carles Ma.ny,'Boletln de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, iv (1907-1908), 322, n° 346. a

Signe et souscription probablement autographes. — bSigne et souscription autographes. 3. Guillem, vicomte de Cardona de 1177 jusque vers 1226. 4. Bernat de Portella, fldele Catalan d'Alphonse I et de Pierre I. 5. Blasco Romeu, fidele aragonais d'Alphonse I et Pierre I. 6. Ramon Galceran, baron de Pinos de vers 1197 jusque vers 1226. 7. Pour Dalmau de Creixell, voir ci-dessous, p. 337, note 24. 8. Pedro de Alcala, fidele aragonais de Pierre I. 9. Hug de Mataplana, fidele Catalan et troubadour d'Alphonse I et Pierre L 10. Guillem de Cervello, fidele Catalan de Pierre I et Jacques I. 11. Ramon de Boixadors, chevalier Catalan. 12. Joan de Berix, notaire du roi souvent mentionne, figure dans bien des chartes relatives a la Vieille Catalogne, dont celle de Gerone de mars 1205 (voir n° 2, ci-dessous), sous Pierre I. 13. Guillem Durfort, ministre favorise et competent des rois Alphbnse I et Pierre I, se specialise en finance. Voir notre texte n° 3, pp. 335-6; MONCADA, Episcopologio de Vich, I, 531-532.

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

335

(De cette charte, publiee ailleurs en ce moment, je ne donne ici, en plus du re"sum6, que les clauses qui intSressent la discussion des pages prec6dentes) : ... Promitto similiter quod monetam barchinonensium* in tota uita mea non mutem nee deteriorari permittam nee faciam ipsumb uel bouaticum deinde redimi Volo etiam et instituo quod post obitum meum hec moneta duret et perseueret in eodem statu et ualore et non mutetur per unum annum. Sciendum tamen est quod hoc instrumentum facio iurare Gaufridum de Rochabertino14, R. Gaucerandi15 super animam meam in salinis tantummodo et in moneta et bouatico...

3. 1210,

30 decembre. Perpignan

Ramon de Manresa a rendu ses comptes devant Columba, notaire du roi> et d'autres gens du roi, parmi beaucowp d'autres encore, pour les reoettes du fait des navires, du bovatge ou monedatge de Cerdagne, Conflent et RoussiUon, de la taille a Crerone, et des justices de Villefranche-de-Conflent et Thuir. lyautres cowvptes ayant ete regies, Ramon doit payer au roi la somme de 1370 s. 3 d. A. Parchemin en forme de charte-partie, 196 X 339 mm, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Cancilleria, pergaminos Pedro I, apendice 3. Anno ab incarnatione Domini millesimo ducentesimo decimo, tercio kalendas lanuarii, in villa Perpiniani, ego Columbus notarius domini regis mandato eiusdem recepi computum de Raimundo de Minorisa in presentia Guillelmi episcopi ausonensis16, Guillelmi Durfortis17, Berengarii de Olzina notarii domini regis, Guillelmi de Villa de Cols, lohanis Raimundi et Vitalis Escapath et multorum aliorum de omnibus que receperat pro facto taridarum et de bouatico Cerritanie, Confluentis et Rossilionis quod dictus Raimundus de Minorisa collegit et recepit pro domino rege anno Domini millesimo ducentesimo nono et de quinque milibus solidis quos recepit de questia Gerunde et de mille ducentis solidis quos receperat de justiciis Ville Pranche Confluentis et de Tuhir18. Et fuit inuentum per iustum computum quod R. de Minorisa receperat pro facto taridarum mille sexcentos septuaginta quinque morbetinos et* mille mazmutinos que omnia leuauerunt decem et septem milia et centum quinquaginta quatuor solidos et duos denarios ,ita scilicet quod mille .Ixx.v. morbetini fuerunt computati ad septenum solidum et .ii. denarios et .dc. mobetini fuerunt computati ad septenum solidum et mille mazmutini ad quindenum solidum et .iii. denarios19. Et sic fuit summa denariorum decem et septem milia et centum quinquaginta quatuor solidi^et .ii. denarii. Et fuit inuentum quod expensa taridarum fuit decem et septem *Corr. barchinonensem. — b(7orr. ipsam. 14*. Jofre II vicomte de Rocaberti' (1181-1212), ftdele de Pierre I, mort a LAS Navas de Tolosa. 15. Voir dessus, p. 334, note 6. 16. Voir p. 333, note 2. 17. Voir p. 334, note 13. Guillem Durfort s'interesse progressivement aux affaires du Roussillon, devenant chatelain de Collioure vers 1207, Jose Maria FONT Rius, Cartas de poblacion y franquicia de Catalufia, I, Madrid - Barcelona, 1969, premiere partie, n° 223. 18. Thuir (dep. Pyrenees-Orien'tales, arr. Perpignan, ch.-l. de Canton). 19. Ces valeurs sont assez normales pour 1'epoque.

336

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

milia quingenti uiginti octo solidi. Et sic debuit dominus rex Raimundo de Minorisa de facto taridarum trecentos septuaginta tres solidos. Summa autem maior et ultima bouatici fuit inuenta per iustum computum centum et tresdecim milia et nongenti septuaginta quatuor solidi et tres denarii, in qua summa continentur quinque milia solidi de questia Gerunde et mille ducenti solidi de iusticiis Ville Franche et de Tuhir. Summa uero eorum que dederat Raimundus de Minorisa, sicut scriptum est per grossum et minutum, et ostendit albaranos : centum duodecim milia ducenti triginta unum solidos. Sic ergo facta collatione receptionum et expensarum monetatici et denariorum Gerunde et Ville Pranche et de Tuhir, est adinuentum quod debuit Raimundus de Minorisa domino regi mille septuagentos quadraginta tres solidos de quibus leuauit Raimundus de Minorisa trecentos septuaginta tres solidos quos ei debebat dominus rex de facto taridarum, ut supradictum est. Facta itaque computatione diligenter de taridis et monetatico et denariis Gerunde et Ville Franche et de Tuhir et factis hinc inde deductionibus, prout debuit fieri, est adinuentum ad ultimum quod Raimundus de Minorisa debet domino regi mille trecentos septuaginta solidos et .iii. denarios. Est autem certum quod in hoc computo est paccatus Raimundus de Minorisa de tresdecim mitfbus et sexcentis nonaginta septem solidis et nouem denariis quos domina regina Sicilie20 expendit in Caucolibero21 et de tribus milibuset quadringentis solidis quos persoluit pro ostatico Bernard! de Belloc et de trecentis solidis pro mula quam habuit Guillelmus de Paba et de septingentis solidis pro equo quern habuit Betxaironus et de trecentis solidis quos dominus rex dedit ei pro emenda unius muli quern amisit apud Melguirium22. Est autem certum quod in hoc computo non fuit computata expensa quam dominus rex fecit modo apud Caucumliberum in presenti mense Decembri. Datum per manum Columbi notarii domini regis loco, die et anno prefixis. Signum-j-Petri, Dei gratia regis aragonensis et comitis barchinonensisb. Guillelmus ausonensis ep!scopus+°. S-fnum Guillelmi Durfortis0. Siigr-f-num Berengarii de Olzina, notarii domini regisc. Sig-fnum Columbi domini regis notarii qui computum recepi et albaranum feci et scribi iussi presentibus supradictis loco, die et anno prefixis4. Ego c Johannes Raymundi testis subscribo . 4.

1213, 8 mai. Dalmau de CreixeU et GvMem de Creixell reconnaissent lews dettes envers Vabb& Pere du cowvent de Sant Joan de les Abadesses, dont Us regoivent des esp&ces de denominations dwerses, pour un montant de 94 1. 8s. bare, de la nowvelte monnaie. Renongtmt entre cmtres a I'excepa mille sexcentos ... morbetinos et, ajoute d'une encre plus forte qui semble identique a cells des souscriptions de Guillem Durfort et Berenguer de Olzina. — bLa souscription royale et celle de Columba, toutes les deux de la main du dernier, paraissent avoir ete ecrites d'une autre plume que le reste du texte. — C8igne et souscription autographes. — *Voir la note b. 20. Constancy, soeur de Pierre I, qui epousa Frederic II de Hohenstaufen en 1209. 21. Collioure (dep. Pyrenees-Orientales, arr. Ceret, cant. Argeles-sur-Mer). 22. Melgueil, aujourd'hui Mauguio (dep. Herault, arr. Montpellier, ch.-l. de canton).

Sur Les Origines du Monedatge

337

f

tion de l argent non paye, Us awtorisent I'abbe a reprendre son argent sur les premieres recettes du bovatge et du monedatge. Gwtt&m ^oblige pour I'observatton fiddle des t&rmes. A. Original en parchemin, 295 X 299 mm, Arxiu de Sant Joan de les Abadesses, per gamins s. xm^s. Sit notum cunctis quod ego Dalmacius de Crexello24 et Guillelmus de Crexello*5 recognoscimus mutuo numerando recepisse a uobis domino Petro28, Dei gratia Sancti lohannis abbati, centum viginti .ii. marchas et tres vncias minus unum ternalium de terno, et viginti sex marchas et dimidiam senarii, et vndecim marchas et unam unciam et dimidiam dupleni, et quadraginta .it marchas minus unam unciam de quaterno. Et recognoscimus uobis debere pro terno duodecim solidos pro una quaque marcha, et de senario quinque solidos pro marcha, et de dupleno octo solidos pro marcha, et de quaterno sexdecim solidos pro marcha, denariorum scilicet malgoriensium; et sunt centum decem et octo libras malgorienses, qui faciunt nonaginta et .iiii. libras et octo solidos barchinonenses istius bone monete noue, ad rationem scilicet de quindecim* malgorienses pro duodecim barchinonensibus, de quibus omnibus recognoscimus nos a uobis bene esse paocatos, renunciando excepcioni non numerate peccunie et non tradite rei. Quos quidem omnes denarios conuenimus bona fide et stipulantib promitimus uobis domino abbati uel pro ntilitate uestra hoc requirentibus reddere et persoluere de denariis primis bouatici et monetatici, si-cut colligere et recuperare uolueritis, ad uestram uoluntateir et amonicionem. Si uero in aliquo deficeretis in nobis quin recuperabitis prefatos omnes denarios et aliquid inde uobis deffuerit, statim incontinenti paccemus et compleamus uobis quicquid minus fuerit ad recuperandum sine omni dilacione. Quod nisi fecerimus ego G. de Crexello iamdictus conuenio uobis domino abbati iamdicto bona fide et per firmam et sollempnem stipulacionem, promittoc et eciam per hominaticum et sacramentum unde uobis teneor quod ad decem dies postquam per uos uel per nuncium uestrum inde amonitus fuero teneam uobis obstaticum in quocumque loco uolueritis, ita quod non recedam nee exeam inde meis pedibus siue in alienis donee prius sitis paccatus de toto supradicto auere sine omni diminucione ad uestram uoluntatem et sine omni decepcione, obligando me et omnia mea mobilia et inmobilia ubique aliquo modo mihi competencia uel competitura uobis et quibus uolueritis uel pro utilitate uestra petentibus, prout melius dici uel intelligi potest ad uestrum comodum, renunciando omni iuri omnique accioni omnique beneficio et auxilio omnium legum. Ego uero Dalmacius de Crexello recognosco tibi Guillelmo de Crexello quod prefatum debitum debes a quindecim, corrige sur rature. — bstipulanti, lecture douteuse. — c promitto, ecrit au-dessus de ligne. — *Lettres allongees, pen lisibles; Msgr. Gros suggere d'y lire [GUIT]ARDUS. — °Lettres effacees.

23. Au dos : (a) Si quis inspexeris hanc cartam cave ne amitas earn quiet in cartuario Dalmacn de Crexel est quedam carta pignoraticia honoris de Tregura quern habebat in pignore ipse D. de Crexello. Vnde st aliquis petebat aliquid in Tregurano pro eadem carta pignoraticia et ecclesia Sancti lohannis petat per hanc presentem cartam peccuniam istam que in eadem continetur, en ecriture du xine siecle, contemporaine de celle du document, ou posterieure de quelques ans. (b) Dalmacius de Crexello et Guillelmus de Crexello ..., de la main de 1'abbe Miquel Isalguer du xv« siecle; texte efface et a peu pres entierement illisible. (c) n° 23, d'une main de la fin du xvmc siecle. 24. Fidele d'Alphonse I et Pierre I (voir dessus, p. 334), Dalmau de Creixell est devenu celebre pour son commandement et son courage aux campagnes de Las Navas et de Muret. 25. Guillem de Creixell, frere de Dalmau, et egalement fidele d'Alphonse I et Pierre I. 26. Pere de Soler, abbe de Sant Joan de 1'an 1203 jusqu'a septembre 1217.

338

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

dicto domino abbati per me et ego conuenio te inde deffendere et eicere sine dampno et grauamine quod inde tibi non contingat bona fide et in uerbo ueritatis. Actum est hoc .viii. idus madii, anno Domini .m. cc. terciodecimo. Sig-j-num Dalmacii de Crexello. Sig+num Guillelmi de Crexello qui hoc firmamus firmarique rogamus. Sig+num Arnalli de Paleria. Sig+num Guillelmi Umberti. Sig-j-num Geralli Guiloni. Sig+num Stephani de Ulmis. [...]* ARDUS Sancii qui hoc scripsi cum litteris rasis et emendatis in septima linea in loco ubi dicitur « quindecim» et suprascriptis in terciadecima in loco ubi dicitur « promitto », die et anno quo su-f-pra. [...]« RDUS Stephani levita et publicus scriptor Grerunde subscribo+.

18 COINAGES OF BARCELONA (c. 1209-1222) THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE* The early thirteenth century was an eventful time in the monetary history of Catalonia. After an extended period of stability, the quaternal silver (i.e. containing four pence in the shilling and so one-third fine) of Barcelona was debased by Pere I (Pedro II in Aragon) in 1209, then restored three years later, only to be altered again under Jaume (Jaime) I beginning in 1222. Moreover, these mutations followed, and in one case coincided with, levies of the money-tax (monetaticum\ Cat.: monedatge), an imposition originally devised to compensate the ruler for maintaining his coinage stable. There is no lack of evidence that these events occasioned public concern in Catalonia.1 The evidence is chiefly documentary. As for the coins, while the extant diners and obols have been satisfactorily classified, they are not very abundant nor do they correspond to all the coinages known from written sources.2 Thus we lack specimens of Pere I's doblench coinage, which can hardly have tempted hoarders and which must speedily have disappeared. What the texts have to say, often with enticing precision, is more interesting, but also more difficult to interpret. One problem has been that the early narrative evidence was so garbled in its transmission as to obscure the true chronology * It is an unusual pleasure to dedicate this study to Philip Grierson, who has helped me during many years, and whose incisive new work on the present subject renders my contribution virtually an essay in collaboration. I also wish to thank Dr Anna M. Balaguer and Rev. Dr Josep Baucells i Reig for timely and expert cooperation. Abbreviations ACA: Arxiu de la Corona d'Arago ACB: Arxiu Capitular de Barcelona ADB: Arxiu Diocesa de Barcelona. The numismatic terms are conveniently collected in F. Mateu y Llopis, Glosario hispdnico de numismdtica, Barcelona 1946. i On these matters see generally Joaquim Botet y Siso, Les monedes catalanes. Estudi y descriptio de les monedes carolingies, comtals, senyorials, reyals y locals propries de Catalunya (hereafter Monedes catalanes) i-m, Barcelona 1908, 1909, 1911: n, 23-39; Octavio Gil Farres, 'The billon dineros of Barcelona. Their origin, evolution and end', Seaby's Coin and Medal Bulletin 1957, 192-198, 290-294, 338-342; T. N. Bisson, Conservation of coinage: monetary exploitation and its restraint in France, Catalonia, and Aragon (c. A.D. woo - c. 1225) (hereafter Conservation), Oxford 1979, 74-119; and Philip Grierson, 'Notes sobre les primeres amonedacions reials a Barcelona:

els termes "Bruneti", "Bossonaya" i el Chronicon Barcinonensi" (hereafter 'Bruneti') [/°] Symposium Numismdtico de Barcelona (27 y 28 de febrero 1979) n, Barcelona 1979, 278-287. 2 AloTss Heiss, Descripcion general de las monedas hispano-christianas desde la invasion de los Arabes i-m, Madrid 1865,1867, 1869: ii, 68, nos. 1-4; 69, nos. 1-2; Botet, Monedes catalanes i, Barcelona 1908, 73-77, nos. 22-46, and pp. 87-89; 11, 29-30, nos. 159-160; 35-36, nos. 161-162; Jaime Lluis y Navas Brusi, 'La moneda "nova" barcelonesa de Alfonso I', Numario hispdnico x 1961, 123-126; Grierson, 'Bruneti'.

340

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of coinages and monetary decrees. This problem has lately been solved t>y Professor Grierson.3 But it remains difficult to reconcile the information on monetary values provided by certain other sources, the more so because the archival records of the period have been very incompletely explored from this point of view. Some new texts relating to these coinages have recently come to light, and it is my purpose in these pages to show what the documentary evidence now available seems to tell us about monetary practice and policy in early thirteenth-century Catalonia.

I The most extended and circumstantial accounts of the recoinages under Pere I and his son are found in two late sources: the Chronicon Barcinonense (hereafter CB)* and the Rubriques de Bruniquer.b The CB, which dates from the early fourteenth century, refers to coinages from 1200 to 1258 in a curious jumble of entries which may be classified as follows: (i) a first annal pertaining to the 'coinage of Barcelona which was called bruna' which-was circulating in 1200 and lasted until 1209'; (2) four entries mentioning in chronological order the recoinages of 1209, 1213, 1222 and 1258; (3) three dated decrees relative to the value of coined silver in 1213 and (apparently) 1222-3. Now of these entries all but the first may be spoken of as ' hard information' based on prior records of the coinage and the notariate; at least one such record, an account of proceeds from the recoinage of 1222, survives today. The first entry, however, seems to be a contrivance from memory or imagination. Lacking concrete information on the old money prior to the recoinages which chiefly interested him, the annalist called it bruna so as to contrast it with the bossonaya struck in 1209, and assigned it an approximate date (1200), not of its issuance but when 'it was circulating'.6 Now this vague annal was surely the source (or was related to a source) of Bruniquer's assertion that 'en lany 1200, lo Rey Namfos principia, y scampa moneda apellada Bruna, e valia lo march de argent en Barcelona 63 sjpus], e dura la dita moneda nou anys'. But it should be observed that Bruniquer, who wrote late in the sixteenth century, was at once more vague and more precise than the CB: he mistakenly says that Alfons I (i 162-96) was still reigning in 1200 and he asserts that silver was then valued at 635. to the mark. What is more, Bruniquer alludes to two other coinages prior to that of 1209: one in 1137, when (he says) Ramon Berenguer IV struck a 'moneda menuda apellada mancussos' of which there were 57 to the mark of silver; the other in 1185 when 'the count of Barcelona' issued 'altre moneda menuda apellada Bussana', of which there were 51 to the mark of silver.7 The precision of these references, it now becomes clear, is spurious. While it is not inconceivable that Count Ramon Berenguer IV (1131-62) struck a new coinage in the 3 Cited in n. i. 4 Of various editions the most reliable is the first, by Baluze, in Petrus de Marca, Marca hispanica... (hereafter Marca hispanica), Paris 1688, col. 755. On the genesis of the CB see Miquel Coll i Alentorn, 'La historiografia de Catalunya en el periode primitiu', Estudis Romanics ill 1951/52, 154-173 especially at 167; and for the chronology of its monetary entries, Grierson, 'Bruneti'.

5 [E. G. Bruniquer] Rubriques de Bruniquer. Cerimonial dels magnifies consellers y regiment de la ciutat de Barcelona i-v (hereafter Rubriques de Bruniquer), Barcelona 1912-16, iv, 129-130. 6 Baluze, Marca hispanica, col. 755: 'Anno Domini MCC. currebat Barchinonae moneta quae dicebatur bruna, & duravit usque in anno M cc ix.'

7 Rubriques de Bruniquer iv, 129.

Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222)

341

year of his accession to the principate of Aragon, this can hardly have been a gold coinage (mancusos) valued at 57 to( the mark of silver! As for the entry of 1185, which mentioned an unspecified 'count of Barcelona', it confirms our impression from the entry for 1200 that Bruniquer was poorly informed about the count-king Alfons I. And in this case again the asserted equivalence is dubious: a coinage at 515. to the mark of silver would, indeed, have been slightly weaker than the diners otherwise known to have circulated in this period, but it would have been stronger than the supposed mancusos of 1137, and much stronger than the bossonaya of the early thirteenth century.8

diner

obol

diner

PERE I

PERE I

JAUME I

(Fitzwilliam Museum: Grierson Collection)

So it looks as if Bruniquer, like the CB, really knew very little about the coinages prior to those of 1209 to 1222. It was this new epoch of recoinages that concerned these chroniclers. The Rubriques become more detailed regarding monetary events starting in 1210, which are set forth in two classes of entries corresponding to those of the CB already mentioned: (i) the recoinages of 1213 and 1222 (Bruniquer omits the bossonaya coinage of 1209, and he adds a recoinage in 1214); (2) valuations of coinage relative to the mark of silver. But while the mentions of recoinage partly duplicate those of the CB, the valuations of Bruniquer are much more detailed than his predecessor's. From March 1210 to February 1212 Bruniquer lists prices of the mark for every two or three months, resulting in an index beginning at 555. (March-May 1210), rising steadily to reach 69 by summer 1211, jumping to 90 in November 1211, then falling back to 84 for the period December 121 i-February 1212, when this series concludes. A second series of valuations 8 Moreover, there is good contemporary evidence that a new coinage valued at 44$. to the mark began to circulate in 1183 or 1184 (Bisson, Conservation, 87; in support of the point argued there and at 78 n. 2, see now M. Crusafont i Sabater, 'L'obol de Barcelona d'Alfons I, i llegenda "ANF REX " no existeix', Gaceta Numismdtica no. 48 1978, 33-41). It was one of numerous parchments referring to this coinage in 1187 that an acquaintance of Guillem de Vallseca possessed in the fourteenth century, see Josef Salat, Tratado de las monedas labradas en el principado de Cataluna i, Barcelona

1818, no. Vallseca's often-quoted allusion to moneta uneta, which 'in anno domini 1180 currebat... in Barcinone et cucurrit multo tempore et valebat marcha argenti quadraginta quatuor solidos' (Botet, Monedes catalanes n, 23) is much improved by Professor Grierson's emendation to [br]uneta in Grierson,' Bruneti', but remains poor authority for the date of the coinage at 445. Was Vallseca thinking of the parchment of 1187 mentioned above? See n. 17 below. For mancusos, see, however, Botet, Monedes catalanes I, 65-66.

342

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

is appended to Bruniquer's mention of the new coinage of 22 March 1213: 915. in March, 108 in April, rising to 142 in October and reaching 180 in November 1213-February 1214 when, Bruniquer adds in a reference unique to his account, a new coinage was issued at 645. to the mark. 9 It is tempting to reject Bruniquer's independent figures out of hand. Once again his chronology is confused, as he seems to make Pere I (who reigned from 1196 to September 1213) responsible for a new coinage in 1214. Not one of his valuations corresponds to those provided by the CB for 21 April 1213, 2 August (1222) and 2 January (1223); and in the one case where he prices a new coinage in terms of the mark - the doblench of 1222-he is quite wrong.10 Nevertheless, it is most unlikely that Bruniquer simply invented those valuations. The ones for 1210-1212 correspond at least approximately to some of those otherwise known for the coinage of these years, as we shall see. Moreover, the spiralling tendency of these prices plausibly describes the short-run situation of markets in which the more reliable older coins were being driven out of circulation. The real problem, then, is not so much the accuracy of Bruniquer's valuations as the monetary and commercial circumstances they illustrate. From what kinds of records, made for what purposes, do they derive? II

These questions take us back to the contemporary sources for the recoinages of 1209-22. They are chiefly of two kinds: records of the mint and notarial instruments specifying payments in sales or repayments of loans. But it seems clear that there once existed documents of a third kind: decrees or conventions stipulating the value of coinage(s) in circulation. The CB alludes to three such decrees, all now lost, but presumably in the king's name.11 And there survives the royal confirmation of a vicarial ordinance concerning the currency of doblench money late in 1222.12 Now it is probably not accidental that the first known decrees of this kind in Catalonia nearly coincided with the new coinages of altered intrinsic value beginning in 1213. There had been no such declaration, so far as we know, when the steeply reduced bossonaya was struck in 1209; this was a surreptitious mutation, which soon caused confusion on the exchanges as payers tried to settle obligations in the new coins without adjustment. In these circumstances, failing a royal remedy - and Pere I was in desperate financial straits at this time13 - the changers and notaries had to fend for themselves. It was surely they who prevailed on the king to sanction reasonable prices for the recoinage beginning in 1213; and it was in earlier records of their informal agreements, I suspect, that Bruniquer's valuations had their origin. One of these agreements, or something akin to them, has survived in the archives of 9 Rubriques de Bruniquer iv, 129-130. 10 That is, at 44.5. (instead of 885.) to the mark. I accept Professor Grierson's revised dating of the entries for 2 August and 2 January. 11 For example, the first of these reads' xi. KaL Madii anno M cc xili.fuit injunction omnibus Notariis Barchinonae quodponerent in cartis adxLiv.ff. marcham argenti\ Baluze, Marca

hispanica, col. 755. 12 Archives municipales de Perpignan, AA, 9> fol. 2rff. (see Appendix, Document 2 above). 13 T. N. Bisson, 'Las finanzas del joven Jaime I (1213-1228)' (hereafter 'Jaime I'), X Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon, Zaragoza 1980, 161-208.

Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222)

343

the cathedral chapter of Barcelona.14 It is a memorandum of adjusted values in the newly debased coinage, evidently intended to serve as a guide for the settlement of obligations undertaken in 1211 and the early months of 1212. It may be interpreted tentatively as follows: Debts contracted before John the Baptist (24 June) 1211 are to be repaid at the rate of 605. per mark (instead of 445., the standard for the old quaternal money). Debts contracted between 24 June and Christmas 1211 are to be repaid at the rate of $d. for every 2d. stipulated (or in other words, presumably, at 66s. to the mark). Debts contracted since Christmas 1211, however, may be repaid diner for diner,15 for these contracts are understood to be established in the new prevailing coinage. Quaternal diners and diners of Melgueil are equivalent, rated at 335. to the mark (but this ratio is probably mistaken, having perhaps been derived by halving the ratio established above for the diners circulating after 24 June I2H). 16 Fixed renders in morabetins - this item and the rest seem to belong early in 1212 - are worth 145. in diners (or just twice their former value); renders in diners are likewise to be doubled. The two final entries related to obligations in morabetins and mazmudins, and in marks and biscanii in silver. These are to be settled in the gold or silver units stipulated in order to avoid the uncertainty of their exchange value in diners, With this text we come to solid ground. What it lacks in perspective it makes up in first-hand detail. Despite some obscurities or imperfections, it provides the earliest extant evidence that the new money circulating in 1211-12 was a doblench coinage: the values in customary renders long paid in quaternal diners have been doubled. Within its more limited period, moreover, the contemporary memorandum substantially confirms Bruniquer's valuations: Memorandum Date

Bruniquer Value 605.

I2II,

before 24 June

I2II-I2I2,

24 June-25 December [66s.] after 25 December [885.]

Date March-May June-October November I 2 I I - I 2 I 2 , December -February I2II,

Value 66s. 695. 905. 845.

Finally, when read together with Bruniquer, the memorandum supports the deduction drawn above from the later sources (although it does not, of course, prove it) that as late as 1212 the king had still made no public pronouncement relative to the debased billon. That is why the two records correspond only approximately, reflecting diversely timed local reactions to a common tendency in monetary exchange at Barcelona. That 14 ACB, pergamins Diversorum C (d), capsa 20, 2350 (1211). (see Appendix, Document i above). 15 Immediately following this entry, on its own line, are the words 'argentum. cxl solid '. These can hardly be taken with the words just preceding: see Appendix, Document i, n. i above. As a valuation for diners, the figure tallies for neither quaternai nor doblench coinages mentioned immediately below, nor does it correspond to the evidence of the CB or Bruniquer. Possibly it refers to a temporary local price of silver

and so is inconsistent with other entries; or else - incomplete (partly erased?) or mistaken - it refers to the value of obols in the new coinage (for which see text of 8 May 1213, ed. T. N. Bisson, *Sur les origines du monedatge: quelques textes inedits' (hereafter ' Monedatge'}), Annales du Midi LXXXV 1973, 102-104; discussed by Grierson, 'Bruneti'. 16 Or conceivably the error is simply a scribal slip: one cipher appears to be effaced, and the number 'xxxxiiij' may have been intended.

344

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

is why neither record explicitly arrives at 885. to the mark for the new coinage: in the absence of official notice, who could yet be sure that the new coinage was precisely one-half of the old in intrinsic value? That public uncertainty persisted can be demonstrated in another way. Had the king declared his recoinage publicly there would surely have been some repercussion in the bullion clauses of notarial instruments, probably quite generally in Catalonia, but surely in those of Barcelona and its near vicinity. Now it is true that stipulations of evaluation or alternative currency had become remarkably inflexible, virtually formulaic, in Catalonian notarial practice toward 1200. But that is largely because the coinages had, in fact, remained tolerably steady since the n8os; in these circumstances, few thought it necessary to verify actual rates of exchange, which probably varied little from the conventional 44?. to the mark.17 The latter value continued to be stipulated in 1209, I2I° and 1211 when the debased coins passed into circulation.18 Nevertheless, there appear clear signs of uneasiness in the instruments of these years. In April 1209 (or perhaps more likely 1210: the date is effaced) the word quaternus makes its appearance to describe the silver of 4 good coinage of Barcelona.. .current at Barcelona' in which a loan of 1,5005. is to be repaid.19 In March 1211 (new style) King Pere was obliged to promise a major creditor repayment at the rate of 505. to the mark ' if... the coinage of Barcelona should be diminished in weight or alloy', a stipulation which, if conservative by comparison with the values then indicated by our other sources, suggests that the formulaic evaluation was losing its validity.20 Then, in the latter months of 1211 and in 1212, if my sample of charters is not misleading, the old evaluation of 445. to the mark abruptly disappears,21 not to be seen again until the restoration of the quaternal money in 1213.22 This change is too marked to be altogether fortuitous. The monetary confusion of these months is apparent in the resort of royal financiers to valuations in the coinage of Melgueil.23 Perhaps Bruniquer was not wildly astray when he recorded valuations for 1212 soaring from 915. to as high as 1805. to the mark; the latter figure would have corresponded roughly to the obol of the new bossonaya, called senarius in a text of 1213. Meanwhile, iy Botet, Monedes catalanes n, 23-28. In a sample of some 1,300 documents from the years 1184-1209-about 800 from the chancery series in the ACA plus some 500 pieces, mostly from Barcelona and its environs, preserved in the archives of the chapters and diocese of Barcelona - the designation of 445. to the mark is almost invariable. For a rare (possibly mistaken) exception see ACA, pergamins Pere I, 30 (435., 31 July 1197). 18 For example, ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 12, 840 (15 i 1208); cap. n, 631 (i ii 1209); Div. A, 1201 (8 i 1209); Div. B, 604 (15 ix 1210); ACA, perg. Pere I, 352, 381, 382; ACB, Div. c, cap. 24, 3237 (4 vi 1211); cap. 24, 3263 (13 iv 1211); ADB, pergamins Santa Anna, 250 (11 iv 1211). ACA, perg. Pere I, 398, which gives 885., was mis-dated 1211 (as Botet suspected, Monedes catalanes n, 34 n. 2); it should be placed c. 1231.

19 ACA, perg. Pere I, 320. 20 ACA, perg. Pere I, 384. 21 The sample consists of 58 instruments for the year 1212 drawn from the ACA, the ACB, and the ADB, of which at least fifteen (26%) involve sales, pledges or settlements. 22 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 2, 8, 12; ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 21, 2627 (27 vm 1213); cap. 13, 1044(6 vi 1214); cap. 14, 1258 (n vi 1214); etc. 23 ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 9, 315 (17 m 1213); seeiabove, chapter 17, 337. A systematic review would probably reveal increased use of gold coins during these years, among which may be noted the * macemutinas bonas in auro contrafactas de tallio miralmuminini\ ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 8, 132 (11 ix 1213); cap. 18, 2023 (4 n 1215); see O. Gil Farres n. i above, 342, who places this coinage much later in the reign of Jaume I.

Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222)

345

the evaluation of the new diners at 885. was slow to make its appearance. It first occurs, to my knowledge, in an instrument dated 20 August 1213, some months after the public proclamations that attended the restoration of the quaternal money.24 Only then, perhaps, was it officially acknowledged, or unofficially recognised, that the bossonaya diners should circulate at just half the value of the quaternal coinage.

Ill Some further information on the chronology and volume of the recoinages may be had from records of accounting for the king. On 30 November 1212 the Templars of Palau-solita, near Barcelona, acknowledged receipt of 8,8705. from Pere the moneyer for their share of proceeds of coinages extending from 9 February 1209 (n. st.) to 25 November 1212.25 On 4 July 1213 the same parties accounted for 26 /. 195. id. for the fortnight 9-23 June just past; and on 10 September, for 1475. for the fortnight 18 August to i September.26 The first of these records is the most illuminating, for it purports to summarise no fewer than nine accounts (albarana; these are now lost) during a long period of minting. Such a summary is most likely to have been required at the point when a given coinage could be thought complete and so be reviewed as a whole; so that it is tempting to conclude that the Templar account of November 1212 refers comprehensively to the new bossonaya coinage. This would have begun in February 1209 (n. st.) and, because the Templars' share was a tithe of the profits,27 would have amounted to some multiple of 88,7005. - perhaps, by analogy with evidence of the coinage of 1222, when the king's share varied between 16% and 30% of the coinage, to several hundred thousand sous (or several thousand marks). Such a chronology and volume seem consistent with the other evidence reviewed above: by 1211 at the latest the debased coins would have been circulating in sufficient quantity to cause disturbance, while debtors if not the mint itself substituted or exchanged the new doblench for quaternal diners. Far to the north the abbey of Sant Joan de les Abadesses had accumulated more than eleven marks in doblench and 26| marks in obols thereof (senarii), doubtless from renders by its tenants, by the spring of 1213.28 As for the accounts of summer 1213, these surely refer to the quaternal recoinage which, according to the CB, was proclaimed on 22 March 1213 (n. St.). In fact, the minting had commenced (or was anticipated) some days earlier, for an account by royal financiers on 17 March 1213 (n. st.) engages a sum of 8,0005. 'of diners of the good new money current at Barcelona'.29 Presumably the initial issues were very abundant, especially if the mints had been closed since the preceding autumn; but the Templar accounts available only for June 1213 and after point to modest and variable output: the profits were 5,3935. lod. for one fortnight, 1,4705. for a second. Yet another account for the Templars' tithe, badly mutilated but referring to an early winter fortnight probably in 1214 or 1215, indicates revenues of something over 2,7505.30 24 ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 3, 3055 (20 vm 1213). 25 ACA, perg. Pere I, 436. Botet, Monedes catalanes n, 33, mentions this text and the two cited in next note, but he mis-dates all three. 26 ACA, perg. Pere I, 445, 455.

27 Botet, Monedes catalanes n, 32; A. J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragon, London 1973, 22. 28 See above, 337. 29 ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 9, 315 (17 m 1212). 30 ACA, perg. Extrainventari, 3199.

346

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Fragmentary though they are, these figures tend to confirm the evidence of charters that the restoration of quaternal money was rapidly and smoothly accomplished. The evaluation at 445. to the mark, enjoined upon notaries on 21 April, was re-established in practice during the months following;31 hoarded diners came back into circulation. Thus restored, the quaternal coinage lasted until 1222, in February of which year (n. st.) Jaume I once again replaced it with a doblench coinage. This recoinage is documented by a remarkably detailed account, dated i February 1223 (n. st.), covering meltings and strikes from 22 August to 23 December I222.32 Professor Grierson has analysed the numismatic data of this text, so that I can limit myself here to two brief observations. First, it appears that a total of 2,059 unalloyed marks were minted during the four months in question, which suggests a considerably larger volume of new coin in 1222 than is known for the recoinage which began in 1209 and which seems not to have been attended by demonetisation. Second, the record of 1223 is not, strictly speaking, an account of the moneyers but rather of their auditors: Gaucelm the Templar and Colom, a canon of Barcelona. Like the analogous Templar records of the coinage of 1209-12, it alludes to accounts of the mint which are lost. That the text of 1222-3 is so much more detailed is explained by the fact that the auditors of that time were not simply accounting for a tithe but acting as superintendents of the young Jaume I's fiscal receipts and using the mint of Barcelona as a centre for disbursements.33 The moneyers themselves were paymasters.34 On 28 December 1222 Jaume I confirmed the terms on which the vicar of Barcelona had ordained the replacement of quaternal money by doblench. The date of the vicar's ordinance is not given, but it can hardly have preceded the injunction of 2 August 1222 (if that was, indeed, its date) whereby silver, according to the C/?, was priced at 755. This means that the royal confirmation was at least the fourth in a series of regulations pertaining to the recoinage decreed in February 1222. In it the king not only established the doblench at 88s. to the mark but also, in a startling clause, required that debts contracted before the recent recoinage be settled in the new diners at the rate of i8d. dobl. to i2d. quaternal. Because the evaluation of the old diners at 445. was explicitly cited, this regulation was blatantly partial to debtors, among whom the king himself was easily the most conspicuous. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that administrators struggling to redeem the badly encumbered royal estate were manipulating the coinage to this end.35 31 Baluze, Marca hispanica, col. 755; ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 21, 2627 (27 vm 1213); cap. 18, 1873 (4 XH 1213); cap. 24, 3174 (19 xii 1213). 32 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 207; ed. Botet, Monedes catalanes in, 240-243. As Grierson observes, 'Bruneti', 283, there has been some confusion about the date of this text and of the recoinage to which it refers. 33 This and related matters are discussed in chapter 19 below, pp. 351-91. 34 Pere' the moneyer' had probably performed a similar function a decade before: see ACB, Div. A, 145 (26x11 1211); Div. c (d), cap. 23, 3013 (24 vi 1212); cap. 22, 2719 (4 i 1213). See also Div. c (d), cap. 12, 849 (17 vm 1222)

for payments in the mint. 35 Archives municipales de Perpignan, AA. 9, fol. 2 r ff. (see Appendix Document 2 above); Grierson, 'Bruneti', 283-284; Bisson, 'Jaime I', 171-192, The chronology of the recoinage now seems clear: see, for example, ACA, perg. Jaume 1,138,141,164,191,209; but it should be pointed out that there is a discordant allusion to coinage at 885. to the mark as early as 12 March 1220 (new style), Joaquim Miret Y Sans and Moi'se Schwab, 'Documents sur les juifs Catalans aux XIe, XIF et XIII 6 siecles', Revue des Etudes Juives LXVIII 1914,81-82.1 have been unable to verify the date of this text, cited as no. 952 in the Santa Anna collection.

Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222)

347

IV

What we learn by combining the documentary evidence may therefore be summarised as follows. There were three recoinages (or mutations of coinage) at Barcelona from 1209 to 1222: one beginning probably in February 1209 and lasting until late in 1212; a second beginning in the third week of March 1213 and continuing until 1222; and a third beginning in February 1222. It was Pere I in 1209, not his son Jaume as traditionally believed, who first instituted the doblench coinage. But the mistaken tradition arose from an important difference in historical policy, for whereas Jaume I re-introduced the doblench by public proclamation in 1222, his father had initiated his diminished coinage surreptitiously. No wonder that Pere's coinage was called bossonaya - billon, or coin of reduced or minimum value - for it only slowly became clear, and without help from the king, what its exchange value was. By 1212 the game was up. Whatever advantage the indebted king may have realised was dissipated in a soaring exchange rate and increasing unpopularity. The critical change of policy occurred early in 1213 when it was decided not merely to restore the quaternal coinage but also to sanction publicly its value in exchange. Both events, as it turned out, had their price. The restoration of the good old coinage seems to have been made the excuse for imposing the money-tax (monetaticum), the anticipated proceeds of which were assigned in two remarkable accounts of March and May I2I3. 36 Now there was some precedent in Catalonia for such an imposition on the occasion of a newly acceded sovereign's confirmation of the coinage, but such conditions were lacking in early 1213 and there is good reason to believe that the new tax was thought no less arbitrary than the bad coinage it presumably redeemed.37 As for the royal sanction of exchange rates, the issue here was more subtle and no less consequential. Until 1213, as far as we know, values in exchange had not been ordained but settled by market forces and convention. This practice, which worked well enough in times of monetary stability, was ill suited to the problems that arose after 1209. Unfortunately, we do not know in precisely what form the king (or other authorities?) directed the notaries to prescribe the quaternal coinage at 445. to the mark on 21 April 1213. But at some time between then and 1222 a new sort of ordinance was devised which significantly strengthened the king's interest in monetary policy. If the king could impose a value on his coinage, he could choose to do so with a view to his own fiscal advantage instead of to market conditions. The 'mutation of imposed value' was already a matter of concern around Barcelona in 1218, and the royal ordinance of 28 December 1222 proves that the fears were justified.38 Those who felt threatened, moreover, were a more concentrated and more urban social element than the old territorial communities formerly identified with the principle of an indefinitely stabilised coinage. It is no accident that the recoinages of 1209-22 were documented and remembered chiefly as an episode in the history of Barcelona. The control of exchange rates became the main issue underlying these events.

36 ACB, Div. c (d), cap. 9, 315 (17 m 1212); above, 336-8. 37 See generally Bisson, Conservation, 50-64,

87-104, and especially 116-119. 38 Bisson, Conservation, 118-119.

348

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours APPENDIX DOCUMENT I [1212]

Memorandum of monetary values for the settlement of contractual and fixed obligations in recent months ACB, pergamins Diversorum c (d), sala 2, capsa 20, 2350 (1211). Original, parchment. 90 x 141 mm. No dorsal marks. De debitis que in pignoribus uel sine pignoribus debentur ante festum sancti lohanis Babtiste quod | fuit celebratum in anno . m • ?c • xi • persoluantur singule marche argenti pro | singulis .lx. solidis. De debitis que in pignoribus uel sine pignoribus deberentur a predicto festo sancti lohanis Babtiste | usque ad proximum preteritum festum Nathalis Domini persoluantur tres pro duobus. | De debitis que in pignoribus uel sine pignoribus debeantur a predicto festo Nathalis Domini | persoluantur denarii pro denariis. | Argentum .cxl. solid. 1 | Malgurienses et moneta de quaterno ad . xxx< . >ii. | Mobetini censuales xiiii. solid. | Denarii censuales in duplum. Mobetini qui debeantur persoluantur in auro sed omnes mazmutini generaliter recipiantur | postquam fuerint auri fini et r[ecti] ponderis. | Marche et bisancii argenti qui debeantur persol | uantur in argento.2 1 2

This entry and the preceding seem clearly distinct; otherwise they would have been written on the same line. See n. 2 below. This final entry was squeezed into the space left to the right of the words '...denarii pro denariis | argentum .cxl.solid' | above.

DOCUMENT 2 122(2], 28 December. Calatayud. Jaume I, king of Ar agon, count of Barcelona, and lord ofMontpellier, confirms a statute by the vicar of Barcelona, requiring that contracts henceforth specify doblench diners at 88s. to the mark instead ofquaternal at 445.; that debts established in quaternal coinages before the recent recoinage be settled at the rate of l8d. dobl. to I2d. quat.; and that debts contracted in quaternal coinages since the recoinage be settled at i6d. dobl. to I2d. quat. The ordinance is imposed on all Catalonia under penalty. A. Original lost. B. Copy of s. xv ('Livre des Monnaies'), Archives municipales de Perpignan, AA. 9, fol. 2rv-1 C. Copy of s. xv, ACA, Cancelleria, Registre 2, fol. I35 rv . 2 D. Copy of s. xv, ACA, Registre, 2, fol. I37 rv . 3 Indicated: Botet, Monedes catalanes H, 38-39, from C or D. Of the manuscript copies, B figures in a register of monetary documents made by Jaime Garcia, keeper of the king's archives, at the request of the syndics of Perpignan toward 1453-58. C and D are related to (and perhaps copied from) B, for all three copies mistake the date as 1221 (although C was corrected by Pere Miquel Carbonell, referring to Garcia), and C and D are associated with monetary texts likewise associated with B. The present text is based on B, with significant variants from C and D. lacobus, Dei gratia rex Aragonum,a comes Barchinone et dominus Montispessulani, fidelibus suis vicario et probis hominibus et toti populo Barchinone salutem et gratiam. Fidelitatis vestre nuper receptis litteris cognouimus euidenter quod super facto monete ad commodum terre nostre fecistis salubriter constitutum vt in cards contractuum

Coinages of Barcelona (c. 1209-1222)

349

poneretur * valente marcha argenti octuaginta et octo solidos de duplenco' vbi antiquitus ponebatur 'valente marcha argenti quadraginta et quatuor solidos barchinonenses de quaterno' et ne contractus fierent ad aurum vel argentum vel malguirenses sed ad istam monetam solummodo de duplenco. Et quodcumque debitum de priori moneta vel malguirensi debebatur priusquam hec videlicet cuderetur soluantur . xviii. b denarii de duplenco pro. . xii. c de quaterno. Et quodcumque deberi incepit ex eo tempore et citra soluantur . xvi. d de istis pro . xii. e de antiquis. Et campsores cambiant prout potuerint. Et qui debet aurum vel argentum soluat secundum quod continetur in instruments publicis creditorum. Nos igitur prudenciam et legalitatem vestram plurimum comendantes, licet quibusdam videatur quod in quibusdam de premissis capitulis aliqui contra iusticiam aggrauantur, constitucionem predictam sicut bona fide et ad vtilitatem terre noscimus esse factam auctoritate regia confirmamus et presenti priuilegio comunimus, statuentes sub pena corporum et vniuerse substancie subditorum quod hoc statutum obseruent fideliter si penam premissam voluerint euitare, mandantes firmiter baiulis, vicariis et vniuersis iudicibus terre nostre vt eandem constitucionem faciant obseruari et secundum earn determinent questiones. Datum apud Calataiub . v° kalendas ianuarii, anno Domini millesimo . cc™° vicesimoprimo.e Sig [5/g«]f num lacobi, Dei gratia regis Aragonum, comitis Barchinone et domini Montispessulani. Ego Dalmacius hoc scribi feci mandate domini regis pro Berengariog Barchinonensi [fol. 2V] episcopo, domini regis cancellario, cum litteris suprapositis in septima linea vbi dicitur 'cambiant', et hoc [sign] feci. a

Aragonum EC, Aragon D. b .xviii. CD; decem octo B. e .xii. CD; duodecim B. d .xvi. CD, sexdecim B. e vicesimoprimo] corrected secundo C. f Sign om .B. * Berengario] R° BC; prouidente D.

1

2

3

Confirmacio del senyor rey en Jaume primer del statut e cot ordonat per lo vaguer e prohomes de la ciutat de Barchinono sobre la forma dels pagaments fahedors de moneda doblencha nouament instituhida ab la moneda vella de quoern (fol. i v , early gloss). Aquesta moneda quaterna comenfa de correr en temps del rey en Pere primer qui comenfa a regnar en Tony de la incarnacio .m° .c° . xcvi°. E dura fins en Tany . m° . ccmo . xxi°. en lo qual temps regnaue lo rey en Jaume primer fill del dit rey en Pere (fol. 2r, early marginal gloss; by Jaime Garcia?). Moneda doblench (early marginal gloss). Confirmatio statutifacti de moneta de duplenco et quod pro ea soluatur ac in contractibus indefiat mentio (fol. I35r, contemporary rubric). Notations by Pere Miquel Carbonell, archivist of the Crown of Aragon under Ferdinand the Catholic, who corrects the mistaken year date. Confirmat dominus rex lacobus constitucionem factam de moneta de duplenco et quod in solucionibus darentur .xviii. denarii de hac moneta duplenca pro .xii. denariisde moneta quatterna($o\. I37 r , contemporary rubric.) Notations by Pere Miquel Carbonell.

This page intentionally left blank

19 THE FINANCES OF THE YOUNG JAMES I (1213-1228)* In famous passages of the Libre delsfeyts, James the Conqueror observed that his father Peter had been so generous as to give away most of the revenues of his domains, that all of his revenues in Aragon and Catalonia had been pledged to Jews and Saracens, and that of 700 knights' fees, the king's estate had been reduced to some 130. As a child at Monz6n James had once gone hungry: " si era la terra destrolda e empenyorada!"1 No one who has read the records of the early thirteenth century can doubt that this indictment had some basis in fact. The royal finances were certainly strained when the ambitious Peter II met his untimely death at Muret in 1213, and many years were to pass before James achieved some degree of financial security. One of his first campaigns—the ill-advised siege of Peniscola—was probably motivated in some part by fiscal need; and debts of his father were still outstanding on the eve of the conquest of Majorca, a triumph in which the work of fiscal reconstruction may be said to have been completed.2 James I was more fortunate than his father, and probably, even as a young man, more prudent. But this does not mean that his administrative methods were different, nor does the Libre dels feyts pretend that they were. On the contrary, the narrative and archival sources alike tell us that to make sense of the Conqueror's finance one must understand that of his father; and the lack of any intensive investigation of the administrative archives of the Crown of Aragon at the turn of the thirteenth century must be one of the reasons why this aspect of the early years of James I has been neglected by historians. * Abbreviations: ACA: Arxiu de la Corona d' Arag6; AC: Arxiu Capitular; AD: Arxiu Diocesa; AHN: Archivo Hist6rico Nacional; AM: Arxiu Municipal. Texts printed in Appendix are marked by asterisk (*). 1 Llibre delsfeits, chapters 6,11; ed. Ferran Soldevila,. . .Les quatre grans croniques (Barcelona, 1971), pp. 5, 7. 2 For the early years of James I, see Salvador Sanpere y Miquel," Minoria de Jaime I. Vindicaci6n del procurador Conde Sancho, anos 1214-1219," Congresd'Historiade la Corona d'Arago dedicat al rey en Jaume I y la seva epoca, 2 vols. and plates (Barcelona, 1909-1913), ii, 580-694 (a work to be used with caution); and Ferran Soldevila, Els primers temps de Jaume I (Barcelona, 1968). For unpaid debts of Peter II in 1227, Francisco de A. de Bofarull y Sans, " Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 855.

352

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Neither Sanpere i Miquel nor Miret i Sans nor Soldevila3 was much interested in financial administration. But there is a further problem. The documentation is very fragmentary and, therefore, difficult to interpret. Two whole classes of record, the accounts of bailiffs and collectors, have virtually disappeared, making it necessary to rely heavily on the evidence of credit, of which the origins and liquidation are seldom known to us. Indeed, the nature of the surviving evidence is not the least of the problems facing the historian of James I's finance, and more work will have to be devoted to the royal chancery during the years separating the Liber Feudorum Maior from the first extant registers of the Conqueror before we shall have a solid basis for the administrative history of the early thirteenth century. Accordingly, the present study makes no pretense to finality. Its purpose is simply to raise certain questions adaptable to the evidence presently available about James I's progress toward fiscal viability. These questions have chiefly to do with the resources, the personnel and the organization of finance. I We must renounce at the outset all hope of reconstructing a balance of financial accounts for the early thirteenth century. Neither for Aragon nor for Catalonia had Peter II or James I or the latter's tutors any dependable means of reconciling income with 'expenditures over any considerable period. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a crude test of the Libre*s allegation of Peter's profligacy by reference to extant records of royal revenues and borrowing. For the years 1207 and 1208 these records suggest no marked imbalance between unborrowed revenues and credits.4 But in 1209 the known receipts fall far short of the (roughly) 570,000 sous known to have been advanced by some eleven great creditors.5 This discrepancy may have been reduced in the following years when the coinage of Barcelona was debased and a monedatge collected, yet it was characteristic that the receipts for monedatge 3

Works cited in note 2; also Joaquim Miret i Sans, Itinerari de Jaume I " el Conqueridor" (Barcelona, 1918). 4 Privileges et litres relatifs aux franchises, institutions et proprietes communales de Roussillon et de Cerdagne. . . , 7* partie, ed. Bernard Alart (Perpignan, 1874), pp. 91-92; ACA, Cancelleria, pergamins de Pere I, 259, 265-268; AD, Girona, cartulari "Carles many," fols. 51-52; AC, Vic, calaix 37, privilegis, no. 68; AM, Tarragona, pergamms (28 iii 1208); Joaquin Miret y Sans," Itinerario del rey Pedro I de Catalufta, II en Arag6n (1196-1213)," Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, iii (1905-1906), 444; Coleccidn de documentos ineditos delArchivo General de la Corona de Aragon. . . , ed. Prospero de Bofarull y Mascar6, la epoca, 42 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1973), viii, 102-105; cf. ACA, perg. Pere I, 271,275, 301; Miret, " Itinerario del rey Pedro I," 440; Cartulaire general de I'ordre des Hospitallers de S. Jean de Jerusalem (1100-1310), ed. Joseph Delaville le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894-1901), ii, no. 1319. 5 AM Tarragona, pergamins (23 i 1209); AM Cervera, pergamins (22 i 1209); ACA, perg. Pere I, 324, 334; cf. AHN, Clero, Poblet, carpeta 2097, 1; carpeta 2099, 7; ACA, perg. Pere I, 313, 316, 323-325, 345; Gran Priorat de Catalunya armari 28, 104; AD Barcelona, pergamins de Santa Anna, "Documents reials, s. xiii" (2 ix 1209).

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

353

in Roussillon and Cerdanya, amounting to some 107,000 s. b(arc.), were more than offset by the expenses reported by the collector.6 In 1212 the known debt once again soared over 200,000 s. at a time when we have no record of extraordinary receipts; this was the year of Las Navas de Tolosa, when Peter's success might have been expected for once to match his ambition.7 And in 1213, when he restored the quaternal coinage in return for a new levy of monedatge, his known debts once again exceeded income, possibly by a large margin.8 These incomplete figures, to repeat, have no value in themselves. If we could be sure that the king's ordinary revenues remained intact, the deficits just mentioned might well seem negligible. But the fact is quite otherwise. One has only to list the castles, towns, villages, bailiwicks and revenues known to have been pledged to great creditors from 1208 to 1213 to obtain stunning confirmation of James' complaint that his father had virtually given away his lands. In Aragon nineteen such domains had been assigned, wholly or in part, including some of the most important towns, such as Zaragoza, Calatayud and Daroca.9 In Catalonia the situation was even worse: at least 34 places were mortgaged during these years, plus an undisclosed number of towns and villages in Cerdanya, Conflent and Roussillon, which had been ceded en bloc in 1211.10 Of the major Catalonian bailiwicks (Barcelona, Lleida, Girona, Vic, etc.), few if any were left untouched. Not all of the income from these domains was lost, it is true. Whenever possible the king's pledges were to be accounted in sortem, that is, the lender was to repay himself from proceeds of the pledged lands. But since Peter was incapable of living within his ordinary means during these years, the assignment of such large portions of his estate for indefinite periods seriously curtailed his resources and his credit. Moreover, some of these loans were very 6 Josef Salat, Tratado de las monedas labradas en el principado de Cataluna. . . , 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1818), ii, instr., no. 3; Chronicon barcinonense, inEspanasagrada. . . , ed. Henrique Florez et al., 58 vols. (Madrid, 1747-1918), xxviii, 332; T. N. Bisson," Sur les origines du monedatge: quelques textes inedits," Annales du Midi, Ixxxv (1973), 101-104; AC Barcelona, perg. Diversorum C (d), capsa 9,315 (17 iii 1212); ACA, perg. Jaume I, 35. 7 ACA, perg. Pere 1,444; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 9, 315 (17 iii 1212); capsa 23, 3013 (24 vi 1212); capsa 14, 1264 (6 xii 1212). 8 Eduard Junyent, Jurisdictions iprivilegis de la ciutat de Vich (Vich, 1969), no. 73; Enrique Mut Remola, La vida economica en Lerida de 1150 a 1500 (Lerida, 1956), documentos, no. 13; ACA, perg. Pere 1,436, 445,455; cf. perg. Pere 1,448,449; AHN, Clero, Poblet, carpeta 2110,4,10; T. N. Bisson, " Coinages of Barcelona (1209-1222): the Documentary Evidence," in Studies in numismatic method presented to Philip Grierson, ed. C. N. L. Brooke et al. (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 197-199. 9 ACA, perg. Pere I, 301, 325, 361, 397,441,448,449; Documentos de Sigena, i, ed. Agustin Ubieto Arteta (Valencia, 1972), nos. 60, 62; AHN, Poblet, carpeta 2099, 7. 10 ACA, perg. Pere I, 316, 323, 324, 334, 340, 377, 384, 392; AHN, Ordenes Militares, Azcon, leg. 186, 2, 3; Clero, Poblet, carpeta 2097, i; carpeta, 2099, 7; AD Barcelona, perg. Santa Anna, "Documents reials, s. xiii," (2 ix 1209); Bisson, "Origines du monedatge" 101-102.

354

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

expensive. When Guillem de Cervera renewed a loan of 21,500 morabetins in 1209, he charged the king 20% per annum after a delay of six months, when he was to assume royal domains extending over much of New Catalonia in pledge.11 With other creditors—the king of Navarre, the viscount of Bearn, the count of Urgell, and Arnau de Foixa—the cost was even higher: if the repayment were delayed beyond a short first term, they were to collect the proceeds of domains without reducing principal.12 Even the revenue from extraordinary taxes was pledged during this time,13 a fact which shows not only that the domain alone could not absorb the advances but that some of these loans remained outstanding beyond their prescribed terms. Thus the observation of the Libre dels feyts is largely confirmed by contemporary records: the king's finance was in a state of crisis when Peter II set off on his final trip to Occitania in September 1213. In fact, the only point that remains doubtful is whether the Jews and Saracens had really so preponderant a hold on the royal domains as James I later claimed. The great creditors of Peter's last years were mostly Christian magnates, so far as we know. Some of the bailiffs were Jews,14 but a bailiff did not necessarily hold his charge in pledge. On the other hand, it is quite possible that in the confusion after Peter's death a number of the Christian creditors refinanced their loans with Jews and Saracens; this would help to explain why so little evidence of Peter's loans survived in the royal archives for the years of his son's minority, and also why the cardinal-legate Pierre de Douai, in organizing the regency, had provided that the Jews and Saracens should answer for the king's debts before the master of the Templars.15 However that may be, it is certain that the recovery of pledged crown domains was a major preoccupation of the new government. The most expeditious means would have been general taxation. But the late king himself had been taxing heavily, and in the general court of Lleida (1214) the Catalan cities obtained a respite from impositions until the childking reached the age of puberty. Nevertheless, voluntary subsidies for the 11 AHN, Clero, Poblet, carpeta 2099, 7. Nor was this the limit of his credit; he also held an important share of the revenues of Tortosa and Benifallet, AC A, perg. Jaume I, 39. 12 ACA, perg. Pere I, 316, 325,361; AD Barcelona, perg. Santa Anna," Documents reials, s. xiii" (2 ix 1209). 13 Bisson, "Origines du monedatge" 102-104; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 9, 315 (17 iii 1212); ACA, perg. Jaume I, 35. 14 E.g., Perfet, bailiff at Barcelona in 1211, 1215 and sometimes thereafter, who certainly made loans to Peter, Arxiu de Sant Pere de les Puelles, pergamins, 130; AC Barcelona, "Libri antiquitatum," iv, fol. 214, nos. 486, 487 (Joseph Mas, Notes historiques del bisbat de Barcelona, 13 vols. [Barcelona, 1906-1921], xii, nos. 2579, 2580); Bofarull, " Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 855. But his terms of tenure are not known. 15 Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume I, pp. 58-59, 85-86, 100-101. What is more, as we know from at least one spectacular instance (below,p.357),Jewish credits could be simply confiscated by the crown—a form of inheritance tax.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

355

redemption of pledges were encouraged, while " moderate" questie were authorized for the same purpose in the pledged castra and villages themselves.16 The results of this program cannot have satisfied the regents, who probably sought some stronger sanction from Rome. Early in 1216 Pope Innocent III directed that a subsidy for the redemption of pledges be collected in the cities of Catalonia and Aragon alike.17 Meanwhile, efforts were undoubtedly made to secure the remission or reduction of holdover debts; thus we know that Guillem Durfort excused half of the 60,000 s. b. still payable to him after King Peter's death, while the church of Tarragona remitted its entire outstanding credit, more than 6,000 morabetins, in return for the confirmation of its privileges.18 The royal estate itself was severely curtailed. The only new loan known for the time of Count Sanc's regency (1214-1218) was that of 3,500 maravedis by Ximenes Corneli to support an embassy, consisting of one Aragonese and one Catalan baron, to represent the regents in the Fourth Lateran Council.19 But it is not necessary to suppose, with Soldevila, that every last denier went into the redemption of pledges. One reason why Aragon became James' first home was that, in the redistribution of honors required by the custom of that land at the accession of a new king, it was possible to draw on the revenues of those honors. The loan by Ximenes Corneli was secured on four castles of Aragon, at least one of which had formerly been pledged by Peter II. Taxation was required precisely because the income from unpledged or recovered domains went to cover current expenses; one such domain was Montpellier, and the purpose of the papal directive cited by Soldevila was not to place the whole burden of the king's maintenance on the people of that city but only to ensure that they contributed their share.20 By 1218, when Count Sane relinquished his custody of the realms, the first signs of fiscal recovery were evident. The king was now itinerant. Already in June 1217 he had made a profitable settlement with Guerau de Cabrera relative to the county of Urgell; and the generous pension granted to Sane when he retired—15,000 s. per annum from the revenues of five castles in Aragon, and 10,000 s. from the revenues of Barcelona and Vilafranca—proves 16

Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y principado de Cataluna, 26 vols. (Madrid, 1896-1922), i:l, 95, art. 20. 17 Demetrio Mansilla, La documentation pontificia hasta Inocencio III (965-1216) (Rome, 1955), no. 538; Francisco J. Miquel Rosell, Regesta de letras pontificias del Archivo de la Corona de Aragon . . . (Madrid, 1948), no. 69. 18 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 8, 4129 (12 v 1218)*; Soldevila,Primers temps de Jaume /, pp. 183-184. Another important example may be found in the will of Countess Elvira of Urgell (26 viii 1220), ACA, perg. Jaume I, 148. 19 Geronimo Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, 1. ii, c. 67; ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta et al., 4 vols. to date (Valencia, 1967-1972), ii, 2Q3;Documentos ineditos, vi, no. 10.20 Soldevila, p. 87. Already in the marriage-pact with Amicia(1211), the revenues of Montpellier had been assigned to the child-king James, ibid., pp. 20-22.

356

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

that the crown had regained some working room in both realms.21 By 1221 three more Aragonese castles that had been pledged by Peter II, and six Catalan domains, were back in the king's hands, only to be granted out in sponsaliciwn to James' Castilian bride Eleanor.22 Indeed, it was symptomatic of the improved circumstances that the young king could contract debts on his own as he came of age.23 Nevertheless, major debts of his father remained to be settled.24 We have one good illustration of the way in which the repayments were handled. In February 1219 Guillem de Cervera acknowledged the late king's debt of 45,000 s. to Raimon Bega and his son Pone, citizens of Montpellier, and assigned to them a yearly pension of 1000 s. on the royal revenues of silver and tolls at Montpellier.25 Guillem well knew from his own experience how to counsel patience in this matter! The surer means of liquidation continued to be taxation. In addition to the levy in Catalan cities ordered in 1216, the Catalan barons and clergy assembled at Monzon in June 1217 approved a bovatge for their land.26 This must have been justified as an accession-tax, and it is hard to believe that the redemption of pledges was not its chief object; but apart from the easing of the crisis already mentioned, we have no evidence of the disposition of the levy. In Aragon, on the other hand, the money-taxes (monetatica), imposed at Lleida in 1218, at Huesca in 1221 and at Daroca in 1223 were certainly advertised as means of reducing the inherited debt.27 To what extent their collection in fact served that purpose we do not know. In Catalonia, where the monedatge had been neither levied nor approved as late as 1221, the king debased the coinage of Barcelona in 1222, with profitable results.28 The prospect of this event cannot have pleased the creditors. Obliged in January 1222 to renegotiate King Peter's debt to Guillem de Cervera, James 21 Documentos de Jaime I de Aragon, ed. Ambrosio Huici Miranda and Maria Desamparados Cabanes Pecourt, 3 vols. to date (Valencia-Zaragoza, 1976-1978), i, nos. 2, 14. 22 "Recull de documents inedits del rey En Jaume I," ed. Eduart Gonzalez Hurtebise, Congres, ii, 1184-1185; cf. Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume /, p. 188. 23 E.g., Joseph Gudiol y Cunill," Les bregues sobre lo senyoriu de Vich en temps del Rey En Jaume I," Congres, i, 208, no. 2. See generally, for this period, Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume /, pp. 157-201. 24 See, e.g., Documentos de Jaime I, i, nos. 33, 57, 118; ACA, perg. Jaume I, 118*, 271*. 25 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 118*. 26 Zurita, 1. ii, chapter 69; ed. Ubieto, ii, 210. 27 Coleccion diplomdtica del concejo de Zaragoza, ed. Angel Canellas Lopez, vol. i and album (Zaragoza, 1972), i, nos. 48,49, 52; no. 52 (Daroca, 18 iii 1223) concludes: 44 Nos etiam lacobus rex predictus confitemur totam pecuniam de predictis monetaticis acceptam, esse conversam in nostris pignoribus redimendis, et ad nostrum comodum et profectum." For evidence of the first of these levies, see AHN, C6dices, 471 (" Cartulario magno"), fol. 107, no. 102. 28 Joaquim Botety Siso,Lesmonedescatalanes. . . ,3 vols. (Barcelona, 1908-1911), ii, 38; Congres, i, 208, no. 2; and ACA, perg. Jaume 1,207. The latter, discussed further below, is a summary account for the recoinage, dated 1 February 1222-1223; also ed. Botet, Monedes, iii, 240-243.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

357

and the queen granted Guillem the right to the Templars' and Hospitalers' shares " of the redemption or mutation of the coinage."29 By 1225 the crown's new creditors were collecting the bovatge or monedatge in their pledges of Catalan lands, the former by virtue of the authorization of 1217, the latter in consequence of the Aragonese grants of 1218-1223 and only in the borderlands where the coinage of Jaca circulated.30 There were other royal impositions in Catalonia during these years,31 although—with one remarkable exception—their purposes elude us. In 1227 the nephews and designated heirs of Perfet the bailiff were obliged to petition the king for permission to succeed to their uncle's property; and the price of James' permission was the remission of the total royal debt outstanding, amounting to 11,362 1/2 s.b. (quaternal), some of which dated back to Peter's reign.32 Royal borrowing from the Jews remained a form of tallage!

II On 19 July 1220 the twelve-year-old James I acted on the advice of his instituted counselors and of the master of the Temple to provide for the orderly administration of his domains in Aragon and Catalonia. Addressing himself to the knights, vicars, bailiffs, moneyers and others who might see his letter, he appointed one brother of the Temple in each realm to supervise the accounting, the collections of revenues and the redemption of pledges. They were to have authority to replace " negligent, useless or tepid " agents in the localities; they were to collect the Templars' customary tenth of all revenues. And they were to have the prompt cooperation of local authorities in lawsuits arising from this administrative work. The supervisor for Aragon was not specifically named on this occasion; that for Catalonia was to be one " brother G."33 This is the single most important fiscal text surviving from the early years of James I. It was issued at a difficult moment. Caught up in a partisan struggle between Aragonese factions, the king was engaged in an unsuccessful siege of the stronghold of Albarracin, on the Castilian frontier. With new expenses mounting during the king's prolonged stay in Aragon, there was danger that 29

Documentos de Jaime 7, i, no. 33. Was it perhaps still undecided whether to redeem or to alter the coinage? 30 AC A, perg. Jaume I, 256,* 271,* 276, 288 (the two latter in Documentos de Jaime 7, i, nos. 75, 79); cf. 297. The history of these taxes is examined in my " Origines du monedatge" 91-98; and in Conservation of Coinage: Monetary Exploitation and its Restraint in France, Catalonia and Aragon (c. A.D. 1000-c. 1225) (Oxford, 1979), chapter 3. 31 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 186, 253, allusions to royal questie\ cf. Documentos de Jaime 7, i, no. 81. 32 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 326; ed. Bofarull, "Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 854-856. 33 Documentos ineditos, vi, no. 12. For the circumstances, Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, pp. 171-186.

358

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the tasks of administrative recovery which had been entrusted to the Templars in 1216, and especially the work in Catalonia, would be interrupted. It was quite certainly the Catalan Templars, supported by their compatriot, the Master-General Guillem de Montrodon, who had urged the king to give definitive sanction to an arrangement which threatened to collapse as the king came of age.34 That is why the pontifical council, on the eve of its dispersal, was invoked in the preamble, and why the Catalan supervisor was named then and there. Brief though it is, this document provides the most explicit description of the structure of Aragonese-Catalan fiscal administration that we have for the early thirteenth century. It shows that the offices and procedures of the domanial agents had survived intact from the twelfth century. And it enables us to connect the office of fiscal supervision with changes dating from the reign of Peter II. The latter institution too, at least in Catalonia, was of twelfth-century ancestry. As early as the time of Ramon Berenguer IV a knight named Bertran de Castellet had been entrusted with precisely the sort of work prescribed for the Templars in 1220.35 His function devolved upon Ramon de Caldes, the dean of Barcelona cathedral, during the reign of Alphonse II, and then passed in the 1190's, by stages not altogether clear, to the Templars of Palau-solita.36 As an order established in Spain the Templars had, of course, been major creditors to the count-kings in the twelfth century; their tithe of royal revenues was among their oldest privileges;37 but a main reason for this choice of Palau seems to have been its convenient proximity to Barcelona. Scribes of Barcelona were regularly associated in their accounting. In the last years of Peter II, the brothers of Palau were not only auditing the accounts of Catalan bailiffs but also supervising the coinage of Barcelona,38 and it is clear that this arrangement continued into the reign of James I. Records of the coinage show Pere the moneyer responsible to the comendator of Palau in 1222-1223 just as

34 Little is known about the work directed by Guillem de Montrodon. A native of the plain of Vich, he was a creditor of Peter I when he joined the Templars in 1203. His first commands were at Huesca and Gardeny, and he became Master General in 1213 or 1214. See AC A, perg. Pere I, 158; A. J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Arag6n (London, 1973), pp. 420, 430, 433. 35 ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 233, 347; perg. Alfons I, 200; studies cited in next note. 36 These statements are documented in my edition of Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings (1151-1213), 2 vols. (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1984), i, chapters 2, 3; see also T. N. Bisson, "Ramon de Caldes (c. 1135-1199): Dean of Barcelona and King's Minister," in Law, Church, and Society. Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. K. Pennington, R. Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 281-292. 37 Forey, Templars, pp. 22, 120, 123, 346-350. 38 ACA, perg. Pere I, 203, 261, 324, 436, 445, 455. See also Joaquim Mirety Sans, Les cases de Templers y Hospitalers en Catalunya aplech de novesy documents historichs (Barcelona, 1910), p. 167.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

359

39

he had been in 1212-1213. The " Brother G." appointed to the supervision of administration in Catalonia in 1220, of whom it was said that the king's late father had been very fond, was almost certainly a brother of Palau. He was not necessarily a " fra Guillem," as Soldevila supposed. It is highly probable that he was Gaucelm, preceptor of Palau and later of Huesca, who was responsible for two of the very few important accounts known to us between 1223 and 1227.40 His associate in these accounts was the canon (of Barcelona) Colom, who had been king's notary and a ranking fiscal specialist already under King Peter.41 In both realms the Templars served as deposit bankers and paymasters as well as accountants.42 But their authority was limited in two ways, if we may judge from the evidence for Catalonia. First, certain territories and domains were effectively beyond their control. The county of Urgell was administered by Guerau de Cabrera, those of Cerdanya, Conflent and Roussillon by Nunyo San$; Montpellier by Guillem de Cervera. Within the direct royal domain, while the Templars undoubtedly accounted for some of the pledged bailiwicks, those held by certain great creditors were probably incorporated with baronial domains in such a way as to render external supervision difficult. Ramon Folc de Cardona and Guillem de Cervera each exploited important royal lands contiguous with their own: the former held Piera, Manresa and Tagamanent; the latter, at least eleven bailiwicks in the Conca de Barbera.43 In the second place, the inability or unwillingness of the Templars to match the barons in the dispensation of new credit44 diminished their influence on administrative policy in general. Reconstitution of the king's domains was not the first priority for the barons, some of whom, moreover, may have resented the Templars' intrusion upon functions traditionally 39

ACA, perg. Jaume 1,207 (Botet, Monedes, iii, 240-243); cf. perg. Pere 1,436,445, 455; and AD Barcelona, perg. Santa A n n a , " . . . Privilegis reials fins a Ferran VII" (28 xi 12[2]2)*. 40 Botet, Monedes, iii, 240-243; Bofarull, "Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 855; Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, p. 185; Forey, Templars, pp. 439, 433 (Forey, however, mistakenly reads " Gaucelinus " for " Gaucelmus "). A less likely but still conceivable candidate would be Brother Guerau, who was an accountant under Peter II and served briefly as comendator of Palau in 1224, ACA, perg. Pere I, 436, 445; Forey, p. 439). 41 ACA, perg. Pere 1,265-268, 271, 334, 377; perg. Jaume I, 117; Bisson," Origines du monedatge" 101-102. 42 ACA, perg. Pere I, 382; and see Forey, Templars, pp. 346-348; and Maria Vilar Bonet, " Actividades fmancieras de la orden del Temple en la Corona de Arag6n," VII Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragdn, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1962), ii, 582-583. 43 AHN, Clero, Poblet, carpeta 2099, 7; Documents de Jaime 7, i, nos. 33, 88. By 1225 Guillem de Cervera was certainly administering his pledges directly, ACA, perg. Jaume I, 271.* 44 The only direct evidence of a loan de novo that I have found for our period is in 1227, an advance of only 4000 s. iacc, which the Templars were to recover from revenues worth 500 s. per annum over eight years, AHN, C6d. 471, p. 106, no. 101, cited by Forey, Templars, p. 351. Cf. Miret, Itinerari de Jaume I, pp. 33-34.

360

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

reserved for the nobility of court. Two of these barons, Guillem de Cervera and Guillem de Montcada, had lately assumed control of major administrative functions and revenues when the Templars secured their fiscal commission: the former at Montpellier, the latter in Catalonia. These facts have been too little noticed by historians, and their background requires some explanation. There is no evidence that Count Sane, as procurator, had been very actively engaged in local administration, nor, significantly, that he had advanced money to the young king. His son, Nunyo Sane, lord of Roussillon since 1213, was to act as financier to the king in the 1220's, but he is not known to have done so before he purchased Collioure from the daughter of the late Guillem Durfort in 1218.45 Now this event, as it happens, affords a key to our problem. The death of Guillem Durfort (71215-1217) had deprived the crown of its single most influential administrator-financier in Catalonia. Associated as early as 1190 with Ramon de Caldes for the audit of bailiffs' accounts, Guillem seems to have replaced Ramon as the king's ranking expert on the Catalan domains even as the more routine accounting was being assumed by the Templars of Palau.46 He was involved in the administration of extraordinary taxes, having been chief accountant for the bovatge in 1200, and he took particular interest in the Roussillon, obtaining the castellany of Collioure in 1206 or 1207. Extant accounts from 1207, 1210 and 1212 suggest that he functioned in those years as paymasteraccountant for the king's travels and embassies in Roussillon and Occitania.47 His credits against the king, amounting to 60,000 s. at the time of his death, as we have seen, seem to have been secured on his holdings in Roussillon, where he must have known Nunyo Sang well. He also knew Guillem de Cervera and Guillem de Montcada: the former was probably a kinsman of his son-in-law, and, what is more significant, both men had been associated with Guillem Durfort in the accounting for King Peter.48 Of Guillem de Cervera's work at Montpellier, we have only one record, dated 10 February 1219; it is the assignment of a pension to two creditors of Peter II which has been mentioned. This text contains a singularly solemn recitation of its author's credentials: he was consiliarius by appointment of Innocent III', procurator by authority of the magnates of the king's lands " for treating and carrying out the lord king's business in the territory of Montpellier"; and he bore the "plenitude of royal power to administer the lord king's business at Montpellier and especially this present matter and 45

AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 8, 4129 (12 v 1218)*. ACA, perg. Alfons I, 543; perg. Pere I, 102, 323, 334. 47 AC Vic, Mensa episcopal, xi, 35; Bisson, " Origines du monedatge" 101-102, no. 3; ACA, perg. Pere I, 271, 377; Cartas de poblacion yfranquicia de Cataluna, ed. Jose Maria Font Rius, 2 vol. in 3 parts (Madrid-Barcelona, 1969-83), i:l, no. 223; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 9, 315 (17 iii 1212). 48 Guillelma (Durfort) was the wife of Berenguer de Cervera, AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 8, 4129 (12 v 1218)*. For the accounting with Guillem Durfort, see ACA, perg. Pere I, 271, 323, 334, 377, 392. 46

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

361

49

certain others." Now a commission derived from the powers of king, magnates and counselors was most likely the work of an assembly; and the occasion which perfectly fits the description was the assembly at Lleida in September 1218. There the boy-king, acting on the advice of Sane, who had lately resigned his procuracio, of the pontifical advisers and of the "barons and magnates . . . and good men and wise " of both realms, confirmed the privileges of Montpellier.50 It was time to deal with other royal interests there—the revenues and unpaid debts clearly among them—and Guillem de Cervera was appointed procurator to manage them. Was Guillem de Montcada likewise appointed at this time? Son of Guillem Ramon (I, of Beam) and of Guillelma de Castellvell, and third in line of succession to the viscounty of Beam, Guillem de Montcada (d. 1229) was occupied as a young man with affairs in his family's homelands (Valles, Osona).51 He served King Peter faithfully in the campaigns of 1212 and 1213, and although not among the pontifical counselors of the child-king James, he became progressively more influential in the latter's affairs. And it was certainly he (not his father, as has sometimes been thought) who appears in July 1219 with the title procurator domini regis.52 As Soldevila well observed, Guillem de Montcada was in some sense the successor to Count Sane, although certainly not a papal appointee (having actively opposed the pontifical settlement in Languedoc). In light of what we know of Guillem de Cervera's commission, it becomes very probable that Montcada received a comparable charge in the assembly of Lleida in September 1218. His titles varied. His most nearly regular function was as consiliarius for Catalonia, together with Bishop Berenguer of Barcelona, Viscount Arnau de Castellbo and others, in 1218-1219.53 On 8 July 1219 he acted as cognitor cause in a dispute over the castle of Agudes (Maresme); the case had been appealed from a vicarial court, so it looks as if Guillem was serving on this occasion as a superior judge.54 In May 1220 he took " the place of the lord king" in the

49

ACA, perg. Jaume I, 118*. Claude Devic and J. J. Vaissete, Histoire generate de Languedoc. . . , 16 vols. (Toulouse: Privat, 1872-1904), viii, 714-715. See also Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, who points out that San? advised at Lleida, but no longer as procurator, a fact consistent with the description of Guillem de Cervera's powers. 51 Joaquim Miret y Sans, " La casa de Montcada en el vizcondado de Beam," Bol. RealAcad. Barcelona, i( 1901-1902), 230-245,280-289; Santiago Sobreques i Vidal,£/r barons de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1957), pp. 102-103; Bonaventure Pedemonte i Falguera, Notes per a la historia de la baronia de Castellvell deRosanes. . . (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 136-165; and especially John C. Shideler,^ Medieval Catalan Noble Family: the Montcadus, 1000-1230 (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1983). The local involvement is clear from the accounts in which he participated, cited above, note 48. 52 Cf. Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, pp. 159-160. The text was quoted by Miret, Itinerari de Jaume 7, p. 33, without specifying the source. 53 Documentos de Jaime 7, i, nos. 5, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 19. 54 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 17, 1218 (8 vii 1219). 50

362

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

disposition of the vicariate of Barcelona.55 Accordingly, his description as procurator domini regis in 1219 was not only appropriate to his work, it may have been the echo of a delegation of authority parallel to that of Guillem de Cervera in Montpellier. Montcada's zone of authority was Old Catalonia, where he served as an administrative lieutenant. Neither he nor Guillem de Cervera was exclusive successor to Count Sang; instead the latter's vast sphere of responsibility had been divided in such a way and at such a time as to make it appear that the baronial lieutenants, including Nunyo Sane, were as much the successors to Guillem Durfort as to Count Sane. The work of Guillem de Montcada was, in fact, chiefly financial and fiscal. In June and July 1218 he was among the counselors who advised the king in confirmations of privileges in return for major fiscal concessions: the remission of 6000 morabetins that Peter II had owed to the church of Tarragona and the recovery of extensive rights of hospitality in the Llobregat, the Valles and the Maresme formerly granted to Guillem Durfort.56 In July 1219 he and the king were said to have ordered the bailiff Perfet to give to Sant Cugat two s. of annual revenue that had been reserved to the king.57 But the most remarkable of this series of records is the act of 5 May 1220 in which Guillem de Montcada, "habentes in hoc locum domini regis per instrumentum publicum," granted the vicariate of Barcelona to Bernat Baruti for the year ending on 23 June 1221 in recompense for Bernat's loan of 5000 s.b. in quaternal coin. It was made clear that Guillem had borrowed this money in order to repay the king's debts. Bernat was to recover his loan, his expenses and the vicar's customary tenth from the revenues of the vicariate.58 Now Bernat Baruti (Bernardus Barutini) was another old hand in Catalonian royal finance. A native of Vic, he (or possibly a like-named kinsman?) had been bailiff of Vic as early as 1189.59 Subsequently he was associated with the Montcadas of Vic, becoming virtually their financier in the early years of James I.60 Bernat's receipt of the vicariate was not, however, purely venal, for he had had judicial experience in the service of Guillem de Montcada,61 who had himself acted as a superior judge, as we have seen. Strictly speaking, the vicariate was granted by virtue of Montcada's delegated royal authority, as recorded in a " public instrument" which has not survived but which probably dated from the assembly of Lleida in September 1218. But in truth the king's authority alone was a poor guarantee for the vicar's recovery of his advance, for besides the vicariate itself, little remained to offer 55

ACA, perg. Jaume 1,138:*". . . nos Guillelmus de Monte catano habentes in hoc locum domini regis per instrumentum publicum. . . ." 56 Documentos de Jaime 7, i, nos. 10, 11. 57 Miret, Itinerari de Jaume /, p. 33. 58 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 138.* 59 ACA, perg. Alfons I, 527. 60 ACA, perg. Pere I, 424; perg. Jaume I, 32, 122, 128. 61 Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Valles, ed. Jose Rius Serra, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1945-1947), iii, no. 1290; cf. no. 1297.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

363

Bernat save what Guillem de Montcada himself held in pledge. So to secure the transaction Montcada committed the rights, as pledged to himself and to Arnau de Castellbo, upon " all the revenues . . . from the city of Tarragona as far as Clusa (usque ad Closam)"—that is, virtually all the lowlands of Catalonia as far north as the border of Roussillon. No matter how we interpret this allusion to a lost text, it looks as if Guillem de Montcada had come into direct possession of a major portion of the crown's revenue in Catalonia.62 The origin and history of this pledge are obscure. It would seem to have been the security for an extraordinarily large advance for which no obvious reason, given the known circumstances, suggests itself. What is clear, in any case, is that Montcada's administrative authority was technically independent of his securities held of the king: the revenues of the vicariate and those of Guillem's pledges were distinct. Even if his public authority had been limited to disposal of the vicariate of Barcelona, which is improbable, the extent of his administrative rights must have been vast. Quite possibly the young king, preoccupied with the Aragonese baronage, had simply assigned the whole vicarial administration for Old Catalonia to Guillem de Montcada.63 But because a commission of this scope was bound to be profitable to its recipient, it would surely have been the consequence, in large measure, of Montcada's largesse. That Guillem de Montcada did, in fact, hold a commission of such description becomes clearer from records of the following years. In February 1221 we find him borrowing 2270 s.b. from Pere Pone of Besalii, of which 1720 s. were designated " for the utility and business of the lord king " and the remainder for Guillem's own use. The repayment was to be made " from the vicariate and the tallages of Besalii."64 The vicariate of Barcelona continued in the hands of Bernat Baruti well past its first appointed term, then passed to another man without any sign of disorder.65 In the meantime Guillem drew income from the coinage of Barcelona in consequence of conventions with the king (possibly but not certainly those already mentioned), and he borrowed from the moneyers.66 For the period 22 August to 30 October 1222 he collected the same amount (140 marks, or, at the rate stipulated, 10,500 s. dobl.) as did Nunyo Sang, which suggests that these payments were some portion of the compensations instituted for men regarded as having equivalent lieutenancies. Although Guillem's interest in monetary policy is 62

AC A, perg. Jaume I, 138.* Clusa (today 1'Ecluse, on the main pass, just north of Le Perthus) lay on the border between Roussillon and the Catalan counties to the south; the men of Collioure sought via their privilege of 1207 to divert traffic from the " caminum de Clusa " to the coastal road of Collioure and Banyuls, Font Rius, Cartas de poblacion, i:l, no. 223. 63 On the vegueria of Catalonia, see generally Jesus Lalinde Abadia, La jurisdiction real inferior en Cataluna (" Corts, Veguers, Batlles") (Barcelona, 1966). 64 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 164.* 65 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 175, 209. 66 Botet, Monedes, iii, 240-243; AD Barcelona, perg. Santa Anna, " . . . Privilegis reials fins a Ferran VII," (28 xi 12[2]2).*

364

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

harder to discern, he seems to have done what he could to help the king profit from the newly instituted doblench coinage in 1222.67 In 1223 Guillem's activity was interrupted by his unexpected war with Nunyo Sans, in the course of which the Montcada lands were devastated by royal forces in Nunyo's support. In retaliation Guillem seized Terrassa and Arbos, although he failed in the attempt to take Piera, a royal domain pledged to his enemy Ramon Folc de Cardona. The cause of such a conflict surely lay deeper than the dispute over a falcon recalled by theLibre delsfeyts. Was it not very likely a rivalry over personal advantage in the king's service? In a remarkable chapter, the Libre records the curious end of these hostilities early in 1225: how Guillem demanded that the king pay him 20,000 morabetins for damages, how the king resisted but then relented, and how, as the king and queen departed, the Infant Ferran, Nunyo San? and Guillem de Montcada arrogated to themselves the disposition of the honors of Aragon.68 That the king retained a bitter memory of these events is clear from his story. He had become engaged in a damaging war between two of his chief administrators, who at the end had taken advantage of him. But the concession of 20,000 morabetins can only be understood in light of the services previously rendered by Guillem de Montcada. It may, indeed, have been partly the settlement of old claims left over from unpaid debts long antedating the recent war, for Guillem later spoke of the revenues on which the grant was assigned as pledges. Moreover, the assignment of these revenues must have been comparable to that of his former commission: recorded in a text of 1 June 1225 which, as Soldevila observed, perfectly confirms the story in the Libre delsfeyts, it was one-half of the king's revenues in the dioceses of Barcelona, Vic and Girona, plus half of the proceeds from monedatge, bovatge and the paria of Spain.69 Nevertheless, there are indications that Guillem de Montcada's fiscal authority had been sharply reduced. To be entitled to a share in revenues, no matter how large, was not to control those revenues or the appointments of those who dispensed them. Guillem no longer supervised the vicariates. On the contrary, the king now seventeen and experienced beyond his years, chose this time to take personal command of public order in Catalonia: he convoked a general court at Tortosa where, possibly in the absence of Guillem de Montcada, he reconfirmed the statutes of the peace and truce and sought aid for a campaign against the Moors.70 Moreover, Guillem was no longer capable of supporting the king financially, his war with Nunyo San? having 67

See Gudiol, " Senyoriu de Vich," Congres, i, 208, no. 2; Documentos de Jaime I, i, no. 33. 68 Llibre delsfeits, chapters 20-24; ed. Soldevila, pp. 11-14. 69 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 256;* cf. perg. 296,* 297. Also Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, pp. 203-219. 70 Cortes de Cataluna, i:l, 102-112; Llibre delsfeits, chapter 25; ed. Soldevila, pp. 14-15.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

365

71

been very costly. Other Catalan barons did better. James continued to borrow from Ramon Folc and Guillem de Cervera, for example, but these men made no claim to public authority in Catalonia.72 The king now certainly dealt directly with the bailiffs, and presumably with the vicars as well.73 Nevertheless, his continued preoccupation with Aragon prior to the war of Urgell in the later months of 1228 necessitated the appointment of one Berenguer Guillem as " lieutenant of the lord king in all Catalonia," of whose responsibility for finance, however, we are not informed.74 By this time the leading expert on the Catalan domains and, in that sense, the real successor to both Guillem Durfort and Guillem de Montcada was Ramon de Plegamans, who was " vicar and bailiff of Catalonia " during the king's absence on the campaign of Mallorca in 1229, and who remained a trusted lieutenant thereafter.75 His long career had begun under Peter II, whom he served as vicar of Barcelona and then as vicar and bailiff of Roussillon-Cerdanya, and he had continued active as vicar of Barcelona and creditor under the young James I.76 The lower administration remained a more stable element in Catalonia.77 Appointments of bailiffs were not necessarily affected by assignments from the revenues they collected. The bailiffs might even survive the king's pledge of entire bailiwicks, although it seems likely that creditors such as Guillem de Cervera or Ramon Folc de Cardona sooner or later appointed their own men.78 But the loss of the bailiffs' accounts to the Templars makes it difficult to say how much continuity of personnel there had been from the days of Peter II. All we can reasonably conclude is that the bailiffs tended to be creditors of the king, as in the past; that terms were short, although they might be renewed; and that among those who were reappointed, family, wealth and loyalty 71 No further loans to the king are known. For evidence of Guillem's difficulty, see ACA, perg. Jaume I, 258, 259, 262, 300, 301, 398. Guillem had become viscount of Beam upon his father's death in 1225, and he was again in conflict with the king as participant in the leagues of Aragon in 1226. 72 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 271,* 342 (Documentos de Jaime 7, i, no. 88), 371 (Documentos, i, no. 118). 73 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 282, 387, 286 (also in Liber Feudorum Maior. . . , ed. Francisco Miquel Rosell, 2 vols. [Barcelona, 1945-1947], ii, no. 518). 74 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 328, 330. 75 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 387, 414 (Documentos de Jaime 7, i, no. 141), 808; Rius, Cartulario de " Sant Cugat", iii, no. 1351', Llibre dels feits, chapter 106; ed. Soldevila,p. 56. According to Desclot, Llibre, chapter 30 (ed. Soldevila, p. 426), Ramon organized the provisioning of the expedition to Majorca. 76 ACA, perg. Pere I, 85, 324; AC Barcelona, " Libri antiquitatum," i, fol. 363, no. 1037; fol. 254, no. 689 (Mas, Notes historiques, xii, nos. 2438, 2460); Font Rius, Cartas de poblacion, i:l, no. 237; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 9, 315 (17 iii 1212); capsa 12, 859 (4 v 1218); ACA, perg. Jaume I, 123. 77 See generally Antonio Maria Arag6 Cabaftas, " La institution * baiulus regis' en Catalufla, en la epoca de Alfonso el Casto," VII Congreso deHistoria de la Corona de Aragon, iii, 137-142. 78 For one clear example of this, see ACA, perg. Jaume I, 271.*

366

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

probably counted as much as competence. Durfort, who was a bailiff of Barcelona in 1208,1211,1213 and 1222, was a nephew of Guillem Durfort and a creditor to the king;79 and the Pere Roig (Petrus Rubei) who was bailiff of Vilamajor in 1222 was surely related to the Pere Roig who had held the same post almost forty years before.80 Nevertheless, literary or administrative aptitude could lead to promotions in the king's service: such is surely the explanation for the preferment of the Durfort family. Bernat Durfort followed his great uncle's path into the king's court, where he was an auditor of accounts, and was styled scriptor rationis, in 1225.81 Certain notaries figured regularly in the accounts, as in the past; the preeminence of Colom in this function has already been mentioned.82 The fiscal organization of Aragon in the 1220's can be dealt with more briefly. No baronial administrator in that realm seems to have achieved the status of Guillem de Montcada in Catalonia, possibly because the king spent more time and borrowed less money there. The Infant Ferran evidently aspired to such influence in 1225, to judge from the story in the Libre delsfeyts, but with this exception he was no more conspicuous in the despatch of fiscal affairs than several other notables of the king's Aragonese court.83 The Jewish physician Azach (d. before 1224) had an administrative role, but whether this included finance is not clear.84 The repositarii seem to have functioned like the greater creditor-bailiffs of Catalonia. Possibly the central administration of finance was better organized than in Catalonia, for the Libre refers very precisely to Aragonese honors and knights' fees.85 On the other hand, we know much less about the procedures of local account. The Aragonese do not seem previously to have recorded the statements of bailiffs and merini, and the 79

AC Barcelona, " Libri antiquitatum," fol. 278, no. 748 (Mas, xii, no. 2414); perg. Div. A, 145 (26 xii 1211); perg. Div. C (d), capsa 12, 849 (16 viii 1222);* ACA, perg. Pere I, 324, 438. 80 ACA, Monacals, Sant Cugat, 608; Cancelleria, perg. Alfons I, 315; AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 22, 2676 (10 viii 1222). 81 I assume that he was the son of Durfort the bailiff; see ACA, perg. Jaume I, 258, 276, 359; Bofarull, "Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 855. 82 For Colom, see above, note 41; other scribes specialized in finance were Pere de Bages and Guillem de Olesa, e.g., ACA, perg. Extrainventari 3199; perg. Jaume I, 138,* 139.* 83 E.g., Arnaldo de Luna, maiordomus of Aragon; Bondia repositarius of Aragon; Ato de Foces, maiordomus of Aragon; Peregrine de Bolas, maiordomus curie nostre (in 1225); Pedro Sanchez, repositarius of Aragon, Documentos de Jaime I, i, nos. 38,39,46, 75; Fritz Baer, Die Juden im christlichen Spanien, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1929-1936), i, Urkunden und Regesten, no. 85. 84 Soldevilla, Primers temps de Jaume 7, pp. 100-101; ACA, perg. Jaume I, 238 (Documentos de Jaime 7, i, no. 59); cf. AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 22, 2699 (12 viii 1224). See also David Romano, " Los funcionarios judios de Pedro el Grande de Arag6n," Boletin Real Acad Barcelona, xxxiii (1969-1970), 28-29. 85 Llibre dels feitsy chapters 11, 24; ed. Soldevila, pp. 7, 14; see also Soldevila, Primers temps de Jaume 7, pp. 100-101.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

367

86

loss of the Templar records merely confirms our ignorance. We do not even know certainly which Templar assumed the direction of Aragonese accounting prescribed in 1220. It was possibly Pone Marescalc, lieutenant of the Master of Spain and comendator of Monzon, who advised on the coinage in 1218;87 whoever he was, his successor may have been Brother Gaucelm, who moved from the command of Palau to that of Huesca in 1224, and who was no less active in the royal accounting of Aragon than he had been in that of Catalonia.88 In Aragon as in Catalonia certain scribes became specialized in finance: notably, Guillermo Rabacia and Pedro Sanchez.89 In both realms there was a tendency for local offices to expand or to be compounded with other functions. Already under Peter II, chief bailiwicks were held together with vicariates—and not only by Ramon de Plegamans—, a practice which proves the subordination of administrative order to fiscal convenience.90 Some bailiffs advanced from local work to roving commissions or service at court. Durfort was active in Roussillon as well as bailiff of Barcelona;91 and Berenguer the bailiff sometimes worked at court.92 The bailiff Bondia, who had rights on the king's mills of Barcelona, was repositarius in Aragon in 1225, as also was the notary Pedro Sanchez, who later helped to finance the campaign of Majorca.93 The fiscal administration remained unspecialized. Ill In spite of this characteristic confusion of function, we may well be left with the impression of fiscal activities taking place on two levels: above, the itinerant magnates, including the king himself, borrowing freely for immediate needs and repaying from the proceeds of lands, offices and taxes not otherwise appropriated; below, the more nearly routine administration of pledged and unpledged domains entrusted to the Templars. This impression, while not altogether false, as we shall see, is inexact. The Templars had been vested with the responsibility for all accounting in 1220, not just that for the domain, and we know that they audited the great creditors as well as the bailiffs and 86

Some evidence of excessive zeal in the Templars' administration of Azco may perhaps be found in Canellas, Celection diplomdtica de Zaragoza, i, no. 50. 87 Ibid., i, no. 48; Forey, Templars, p. 436. 88 Forey, p. 433; Bofarull, " Jaume I y los judios," Congres, ii, 855. 89 Canellas, Coleccidn diplomdtica de Zaragoza, i, nos. 50, 52 (144); Documentos de Jaime /, i, nos. 75, 141. 90 ACA, perg. Pere I, 186; Rius, Cartulario de "Sant Cugat", iii, nos. 1273, 1276; Font Rius, Cartas de poblacion, i:l, no. 237. 91 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. A, 145 (26 xii 1211); perg. Div. C(d), capsa9,315 (17 iii 1212). 92 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 22, 2699 (12 viii 1224); capsa 11, 783 (30 x 1225); ACA, perg. Jaume I, 256.* 93 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 22, 2699 (12 viii 1224); Baer, Juden, i, Urkunden, no. 85; Documentos de Jaime /, i, nos. 75, 141.

368

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

moneyers. The king, for his part, sometimes accounted directly with local agents, in Aragon as early as 1220 and 1222.94 Is it possible, after all, to speak of a single system of coordinated royal finance in the 1220's? In approaching this question, the distinction between finance and accounting must be kept clearly in mind. The Templars, we have observed, did much of the accounting for the boy-king but little of the financing. Their primary mission was to liberate the royal domain, and even if this had been their only purpose, they would have wanted to audit the accounts " from everyone,"95 for only so could they have hoped to ascertain, however crudely, the terms on which the king could safely borrow. Without the Templars, on the other hand, the king and his fiscal lieutenants had no adequate means of estimating the general state of the royal finances. Their ready resources were scattered over far-flung territories, their needs urgent and often unpredictable. Accordingly, if system there was in the king's fiscal affairs, it was connected with the work of account: although it was not necessarily a "Templar system," the Templars would have been its foremost exponents. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure that the Templars themselves had the means to coordinate, let alone control, the royal finances as a whole. Apart from the commission of 1220, the evidence of such an intention is purely circumstantial and it is limited to Catalonia. There, already a generation before, the administrators of the count-king's domains had employed registers of revenue and expense and had preserved the accounts rendered periodically by the bailiffs; by the early thirteenth century the "accounts" (compoti) were regarded as an office in which the Templars functioned together with other courtiers expert in finance.96 On the other hand, nothing is said of a fixed locale for this office, the lack of which could, in turn, explain why the history of the fiscal archives remains so obscure in this period. Conceivably the old registers had already been lost; none are known to us for the period 1213-1228 other than the (lost) minute-books of the moneyers.97 Hence we are quite in the dark as to the materials Brother Gaucelm and his associates had to work with in the 1220's. Certainly they used albarana, which, although likewise mostly lost, are mentioned profusely in the extant accounts;98 yet it is not clear that the Templars systematically collected these documents. The only contemporary fact which could conceivably point to their interest in the more general state of finance is to be found in the Templars' record of the recoinage of Barcelona in 1222, which was expressly linked to a certain comprehensive account (in illo albarano magno) dated Lleida, 8 September 1222. 94

ACA, perg. Jaume I, 155; Documentos de Jaime /, i, nos. 38, 46. Documentos ineditos, vi, no. 12: " . . . tarn in pignoribus extrahendis quam in compotis ab omnibus recipiendis. . . ." 96 Bisson, " Ramon de Caldes," pp. 283-287; and the edition cited above, note 36. 97 One such is mentioned in ACA, perg. Jaume I, 207 (Botet, Monedes, iii, 241). 98 E.g., Botet, Monedes, iii, 240-243; Bofarull, "Jaime I y los judicjs," Congres, ii, 854-856; Documentos de Jaime /, i, nos. 38, 46, 75. 95

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

369

Nevertheless, a close reading of this account suggests more modest objectives. Executed with the moneyers of Barcelona by Brother Gaucelm and the canon Colom on 1 February 1223, this text summarized the accounts of meltings, remintings, balances in minted and unminted silver and payments made from these balances, for three successive periods extending from 22 August to 23 December 1222. It reveals an enormously profitable operation of coinage, leaving large balances in the king's favor from which pensions and expenses could conveniently be paid. Some of the payments had been ordered by the king himself; others, including the large regular allotments to Guillem de Montcada and Nunyo Sane, had doubtless been stipulated by charter; all had been effected and itemized by the moneyers themselves, and were simply re-written in the new record." What we have here, then, is a summary of account—or rather, in this case, of several accounts—of receipts and payments drawn from a major source of royal revenue. It was not a " local" account: the coinage of Barcelona was probably the richest single domain resource still directly exploited by the king,100 and the recorded payments benefitted persons and institutions throughout Catalonia. It was designed not only to secure the king from fraud in the mint but also to determine what obligations had been met and what funds remained for disposal. It could be employed to update or correct the " great account" of Lleida, and so to contribute to a new reckoning of assets and liabilities for an extended territory, possibly even for Catalonia as a whole. Such summaries of account were not new in 1222. Perhaps ultimately of Moorish origin, they had developed in Catalonia from the sessions of reckoning for bailiwicks, which were sometimes spoken of as summe computorum themselves.101 From the time of Peter II we possess examples of the more comprehensive sort made, in one case, by the self-same Colom later associated in the Templar accounting, and in other cases to record the Templars' rights on the coinage of Barcelona.102 Invariably descriptive and orderly in form, these documents lend themselves easily to mathematical summary. They were probably the most typical records of account used by the 99 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 207 (Botet, iii, 240-243). See also Philip Grierson, " Notes sobre les primeres amonedacions reials a Barcelona: els termes 'Bruneti', 'Bossonaya' i el Chronicon Barcinonense", Symposium Numismdtico de Barcelona; ii (1979), 278-287. 100 A curious proof of this assertion may perhaps be found in ACA, perg. Jaume I, 286 (Liber Feudorum Maior, ii, no. 518), the king's purchase of the castle of Bassegoda (Garrotxa) together with its deposits of silver, iron, copper, lead and tin. The instrument was the lone addition to the Liber Feudorum between 1200 and 1235; nor do we know otherwise of other purchases of Catalan castles by the young James I. 101 E.g., ACA, perg. Alfons I, 253, 292; the subject is examined in detail in my Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, i, chapters 2-4. 102 ACA, perg. Pere I, apendix 3 (ed. Bisson, " Origines du monedatge" 101-102, no. 3); also perg. 271, 324, 436, 445, 455.

370

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Templars in our period.103 Another means of theirs was to attend sessions of account between bailiffs and royal creditors and to take informal note of the results. In these cases the primary accountants were not the Templars; but even in these cases the latter seem to have been interested in the state of accounts in which large transfers of royal revenue were involved. A good example of this practice is the reckoning for Ramon de Plegamans' receipts from the bailiff Durfort of revenues from the mills of Barcelona and the bailiwicks of Gava and Viladecans, which took place in the presence of Gaucelm, comendator of Palau in August 1222.104 So in spite of its fragmentary state, the evidence shows that the Templars sought to rationalize, to control, the fiscal administration. Doubtless they could not approximate balances of indebtedness, income and expenditures with validity for all the royal domains, but they could expect to establish periodic estates, or reviews, of regional finance adequate to facilitate decisions about borrowing, taxing and refinancing. The very forms of their extant accounts suggest that they regarded the direct exploitation of the king's domains as a commendable norm; not only from fidelity but also from conviction they labored to restore it. Nor were they alone in this effort. Pope Innocent III had confirmed the initiatives by the regents to redeem the pledges, and the young king and his lieutenants themselves worked to that end.105 Yet there is reason to question their motives. James' baronial advisers, and therefore the king himself, took no visible interest in fiscal administration. When they spoke of redeeming pledges in the 1220's, it was probably because the king's credit was momentarily jeopardized. It is inconceivable that Ramon Folc de Cardona and Guillem de Cervera would have been left for so many years in control of royal lands stretching from the Valles to Tarragona if that arrangement had not been found convenient by all concerned. When the boy king contemplated his domain wealth, he thought not so much of administration, still less of reform, as of taxation and conquest. In large measure, it may be said, the young James I financed by credit, not by account. Instead of paying from ordinary income, or securing advances proportioned to certified sources of revenue, he pledged indefinite future revenues to those capable of paying his current expenses. Precisely this is what

103 £f j N Bisson, "Credit, Prices and Agrarian Production in Catalonia: a Templar Account (1180-1188)," in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, ed. W. C. Jordan, Bruce McNab, T. F. Ruiz (Princeton, 1976), pp. 87-102. 104 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 12, 849 (16 viii 1222).* 105 Citation in note 27 above; see also AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 8, 4129 (12 v 1218);* ACA, perg. Jaume I, 138;* Gudiol," Senyoriude Vich," Congres, i, 208-209, no. 2; cf. Documentos de Jaime /, i, no. 33. When the Templars of Monzon obtained Castel Ceboller (Castejon del Puente) from the king in 1219, it was not for a loan but for an annual pension of 1000 s., Miret, Itinerari de Jaume /, pp. 33-34.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

371

happened at Lleida in the later months of 1222; and in this case, for once, our records are ample enough to justify pausing over them. The king's entourage had run up bills amounting to 16,223 s. iacc., which were paid by the bailiff, Ramon Ramon, who received a charter of pledge; but when the bailiff then incurred additional expenses on the king's account, he insisted on a new reckoning which showed a total credit of 2173 1/2 morabetins. Acknowledging this in a charter issued at Daroca on 10 December 1222, the king promised to repay "in gold as soon as we find convenient," but he also confirmed Ramon's tenure of the bailiwick of Lleida, committing all of its revenues to redemption of the debt.106 Did this arrangement suffice to free the king's account? Not at all. When the next review took place, at Lleida on 11 July 1223, the existing debts had, indeed, been impressively reduced (from 2173 1/2 to 524 1/2 morabetins), but the bailiff had incurred new expenses and obligations on the king's account totalling 200 morabetins and 1300 mazmutins, which, put in common terms, was only some 2100 s. iacc. less than the sum (16,515 s.) of the original debts. As a result the overall debt had actually increased. Accordingly, the pledges were augmented: the bailiwicks of Almacelles and Tarrega, which had sometimes been administered together with Lleida, were added to the bailiwick of Lleida, to be collected in sortem debiti, while certain other revenues of Lleida were to be the bailiffs clear until the next 1 January.107 We then lose track of this account for two years. And when it reappears in November 1225, the debt, so far from having been liquidated, had grown many times larger. In a solemn accounting session attended by several fiscal experts, the bailiwicks of Lleida, Almacelles and Tarrega were reassigned to Ramon Ramon together with the proceeds of the coinage de millarensibus and of the monedatge of the diocese of Lleida.108 And that is the last we hear of the matter. Now it would be mistaken to suppose that this was the exceptional case of a debt gone bad. On the contrary, it seems to have been a quite tenable debt, which was evidently being accounted by the bailiff from year to year; and while it had at least twice been steeply increased by drawing on the pledges for current royal expenses (in 1225 explicitly for the siege of Peniscola), there was nothing to prevent its being rapidly reduced whenever the king chose to restrain his demands on Lleida. It is true that the king had engaged not to tap the pledged revenues in all three of the albarana, but the bailiff was free to dispense him from this stipulation. These records demonstrate the pivotal position of Lleida: an aggregate of royal bailiwicks straddling the border between Catalonia and Aragon and kept in the direct domain, we may 106

ACA, perg. Jaume I, 204 (Documentos, i, no. 38). ACA, perg. Jaume I, 216 (Documentos, i, no. 46). 108 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 276 (Documentos, i, no. 75). There was evidently a mint for the millareses at Lleida; see Joaquin Botet y Sis6, "Nota sobre la encunyaci6 de monedes arabigues pel rey Don Jaume," Congres, ii, 945-947. 107

372

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

suppose, primarily to maintain the king in that critical region.109 The bailiff was acting—and apparently continued to act, for he was still in office in February 1228110—as a kind of treasurer-accountant for sources of direct income perhaps equalled only by Barcelona, but unlike that for the coinage of Barcelona, his accounting took the form of advances against the king's credit—of " deficit financing," as we might say. And it seems clear that this mode of financing was usual. Practically all of the extant financial engagements have the form of recognitions of debt. Some have already been mentioned, such as the commission of the vicariate of Barcelona in 1220, but there are many others. In the fall of 1222, just when the bailiff of Lleida was financing the king, the repositarius of Aragon was making large advances to Guillem de Montcada, who was thus adding his credit to the king's for common purposes.111 In April 1225 the repositarius Bondia borrowed 8600 s. iacc. from Nunyo Sane: and since Bondia promised to serve personally as hostage at Collioure in the event repayment was delayed beyond Pentecost, it looks as if the debt was simply a device for covering a temporary shortage of funds in Aragon.112 All of these loans were manifestly for the " king's business," yet for all of them the security was primarily the personal credit of individuals other than the king. This heavy reliance on credit is not difficult to explain. The absence of a central treasury and the dispersal of the king's fiscal resources made local shortages of funds inevitable; yet those resources remained so ample—and seemed to the aristocratic supporters of a vigorous young ruler so potentially capable of enlargement—as to lend a spurious confidence to those entering into engagements of loan and pledge. This is why the barons were prepared even to assume the king's debts on their own account.113 Moreover, the institution was highly respectable: it was, indeed, the traditional system of finance in the Spanish March. Accounting of credit is amply attested in the records of Ramon Berenguer IV and Alphonse II before we find the first traces of domain accounting, nor was the practice confined to the princes.114 Domains were regarded not as inalienable public properties but as patrimonies which could be parcelled in pledge just as easily as by testament. In fact, the 109

For the equivocal position of Lleida and its Aragonese tendencies in the 1220's, see Josep Lladonosa i Pujol, Historia de Lleida, 2 vols. (Tarrega, 1972-1975), i, 298-301, 304-306, 373-374; and T. N. Bisson, " A General Court of Aragon (Daroca, February 1228)," English Historical Review, xcii (1977), 114-115 ; above, pp. 38-9. 110 Raymundus Raymundi baiulus was among the deputies of Lleida at Daroca in February 1228, Bisson, "General Court," 118.;above,p. 42. 111 AC A, perg. Jaume I, 200;* see also 202.* 112 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 250 (Baer, Juden, i, Urkunden, no. 85). 113 E.g., ACA, perg. Jaume I, 138,* 164;* Documentos de Jaime /, i, nos. 88, 141. 114 E.g., ACA, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, apendix 3, sense data 15; Documentos ineditos, iv, no. 86; ACA, perg. Alfons 1,13,46,48,60,67,94; Miret, Cases de Templers, p. 107; etc. For the origins, some useful observations will be found in Jose Enrique Ruiz Domenec," Introducci6n al estudio del credito en la ciudad de Barcelona durante los siglos XI y XII," Miscellanea Barcinonensia, xiv, no. 42 (1975), 1-17.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

373

devices of regular fiscal accountability which first come into view in the time of Alphonse II were profoundly influenced by the prevailing methods of credit. The early commissions of bailiwicks are indistinct from pledges, the farm paid in advance being virtually a loan; and the bailiffs under Alphonse II and Peter II, notably the Jewish ones, were often creditors of the king.115 Thus the pledges to the bailiff of Lleida in 1222, 1223 and 1225 were old-fashioned in form. Even the newer forms of summary accounting were influenced by the system of personal credit. When Durfort d'Espiells effected payments to royal servants in Roussillon in 1213 on condition of reimbursement from the monedatge, the agreement was put in the form of a private credit to his uncle Guillem Durfort, who made himself personally accountable for any deficiency in the tax revenues.116 Similarly, Guillem de Montcada's grant of the vicariate of Barcelona in 1220, while outwardly an administrative commission of public authority entrusted to Montcada, was legally a personal pledge for which the advance payment was an undisguised loan.117 Accordingly, these two systems of finance—the traditional method of ad hoc personal credit against patrimonial securities (or even hostages) and the better organized practice of direct fiscal administration—were neither incompatible nor exclusive. They necessarily coexisted, the latter having developed from the former; both were systems of account. Nevertheless, there is reason to postulate some tension between them during the early years of James I. The excessive reliance on credit by Peter II during the years that were unexpectedly his last led to a reaction among the regents and the Templars, so that from 1214 to 1218 the campaign to recover the royal domain must have been very pronounced. The evidence suggests that the Templars then pressed the importance of direct accountability by the bailiffs according to the reform procedures developed in the later twelfth century but badly compromised already in Peter's reign. But their work could only thrive on restraint; and as the king came of age and the influence of the baronage increased, the older system of credit financing reasserted itself strongly. Once the bulk of the pledges in the hands of the Jews had been recovered, anxiety about the domain slackened; the warrior-king, impatient to do battle against the Saracens,118 seemed a better and better risk to the barons, whom James, for his part, was content to employ as caretakers of his domains. Only with the conquests of Majorca and Valencia would the situation change decisively. James then faced the challenge of administrative work for the first time, not only in his new lands but also in his homelands. By the 1240's many of the Catalan bailiwicks were again functioning under the king's direct authority; by 1253-1257 the first of the extant chancery registers show a revived interest in 115

ACA, perg. Alfons I, 25, 58, Extrainventari 2624; Documentos ineditos, iv, no. I l l ; cf. perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, 347. 116 AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), capsa 9, 315 (17 iii 1212). 117 ACA, perg. Jaume I, 138.* 118 As early as 1219, as Soldevila has stressed, Primers temps de Jaume 7, p. 169.

374

France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

central accounting for the domains; and the institution of theProcuracio reial in Roussillon (1263) confirmed the tendency.119 Thus the early years of James I were a critical time in the administrative history of the Crown of Aragon—indecisive, to be sure, but critical nonetheless. While the royal finance continued to be patrimonial, private, sometimes even venal, in character and operation, forces were at work to give it some semblance of public or even bureaucratic status. Only the barest traces of these efforts have survived for our scrutiny, but their significance should not be overlooked. They represent the historical link between the impulses of fiscal innovation dating from the reign of Alphonse II and the organization of a permanent structure of accounting by James the Conqueror. On the other hand, we can better understand why this administrative evolution was more retarded in the Crown of Aragon than in Capetian France or in England. The old system of finance by credit was not only congenial to political and geographical circumstances, it was firmly rooted in written law and notarial practice. Its prevalence and adaptability obscured the perception of any clear alternative. The baronial estate could still afford the inefficiency of exploiting lands without having to manage them—and it was the barons' interests that largely determined the history of finance in the early years of James I.

119

Which is not to say that the profound influence of credit accounting soon disappeared. Cf., e.g., Documentos de Jaime /, in, no. 557; and ACA, Registre 9, fol. 30r, with Bofarull, " Jaime I y los judios," Congres, ii, 865-871. See generally Romano, ** Funcionarios judios de Pedro el Grande."

The Finances of the-Young James I (1213-1228)

375

APPENDIX 1 1216, January 23. Lateran. Pope Innocent III requests the men of cities, castles and towns of Aragon and Catalonia to provide aid, in the hands of the Master of the Templars, for the redemption of the king's pledges. A. AC A. Cancelleria, Butlles, Innocent III, leg. 3, 26. Parchment, 171 x 174. Two perforations on fold, together with contemporary notation: Roff. Erasures and corrections; effaced on folds. Indications: August Potthast, Regesta pontificum romanorum inde ab a. post Christum natum MCXCVIII ad a. MCCCIV, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1874-1875), i, no. 5182 (from Theiner, Vetera monumenta, c. 65, no. 67); Francisco J. Miquel Resell, Regesta de letraspontificias del Archivo de la Corona de Aragon... (Madrid, 1948), no. 69; Demetrio M.msiHa, La documentation pontificia hasta Inocencio III (925-1216) (Rome: Monumenta Hispaniae Vaticana, Registros, i; 1955), no. 538 (citing "Reg. Vat. 8A, fol. 95 [43] rubricela")- Numerous citations, from Potthast, in secondary works. Innocentius episcopus seruus seruorum Dei dilectis filiis vniuersis ciuibus et hominibus castrorum et villarum per Aragoniam et Cathaloniam constitutis salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Cum salus populi pax et honor de tranquillp et benedisposito domini sui pendeat principatu nosque diligent! sollicitudine intendamus ut cum. omni prouidentia et cautela statu rite disposito terre uestre per dilectum filium lacobum natum clare memorie. P. regis aragonensis gubernari ualeat regnum uestrum utiliter et prudenter expedit et oportet ut ad hoc plenius prosequendum consilium impendatis et auxilium oportunum. Cum igitur taona plurima Aragonie ac Cathalonie ad dictum lacobum pertinentia, sicut accepimu[s], sint pignori obligata quod multum impedit et retardat terre uestre profectum et idem regis filius in etate adhuc tenera constitutus non ualeat commode terre sue negotia procurare, vniuersitatem uestram rogamus attentius et monemur a quatinus ad absoluenda pignora supradicta per manus dilecti filii. [G] . magistri domus militie Templi in Yspania cui sollicitudo huiusmodi est commissa oportunum subsidium ministretis liberaliter et libenter, ita quod a nobis et aliis possitis exinde merito commendari. Datum Laterani, x kalendas Februarii, pontificatus nostri anno octauodecimo. a G om. MS.

376

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours 2

1218, 12 de mayo. Guillelma, daughter of Guillem Durfort, sells to Nunyo Sanq, lord of Roussillon, Conflent and Cerdanya, her rights to Collioure, the vail of Banyuls (-sur-Mer) and Taxo in exchange for the town of Thuirplus 400 marks. Some of her rights having been held in pledge from the king for 60,000 s.b., of which Guillem Durfort had remitted 30,000 s. in his will, the transaction is, in effect, the assumption of a royal debt by Nunyo Sanq. A. Original lost. (Parchment.) Sealed by Nunyo Sane,. B. Copy, from A, 24 October 1220, AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 8, 4129. Parchment, 500 x 340 mm. C. Copy, from A, 13 June 1237, AC Barcelona, perg. Div. A, 1425. Parchment, mutilated, 407 x 514 mm. D. Copy, from A, 25 February 1241, AC Barcelona, perg. Div. C (d), carpeta 5, 3979. Parchment, 400 x 260 mm.

B and BCD Hoc est translatum fideliter factum a quodam instrumento per alphabetum diuiso et etiam sigillo domini Nunonis [Sancii] series cuius sic se continet. In Dei nomine. Notum sit omnibus hec audientibus quod ego domina Guillelma quondam filia Guillelmi Durfortis per me et per omnes meos presentes ac futuros non ui metu ue compulsso non dolo uel fraude inducta sed bona fide cum hac present! carta perpetuo ualitura, consilio et uoluntate ac laudamento mariti mei Berengarii de Ceruaria et aliorum amicorum meorum, dono inter uiuos et uendo et laudo firmiterque concedo atque in present! irreuocabiliter trado uobis domino Nunoni Sancii, Dei gratia domino Rossilionis, Confluentis aet Cerritanie, et uestris et cui uolueris ad omnes uestras uoluntates omni tempore faciendas totum quicquid habeo uel habere debeo in castro et villab de Cauquolibero et in eius terminis tarn in mari quam in terra in omni adiacencia Beate Marie eiusdem castri et omnia alia iura mini ratione dicti0 castri pertinencia, sicut melius dictus pater meus Guillelmus Durfortis ex donatione domini Petri quondam bone memorie regis Aragonensis adquisiuit et sicut melius in instrumento adquisicionis inde facto continetur, et sicut melius ipse pater meus ab eodem domino rege habebat in pignore pro .Ix. milibus solidorum barchinonensium, sicut melius et plenius in instrumento pignoraticio continetur, ex quibus .Ix. milibus solidorum pretaxatus pater meus dimisit domino regi .xxx. millia solidorum. Amplius etiam dono et uendo per me et per omnes meos uobis et uestris omnia mea iura et uoces et rationes que habeo et habere debeo in valle de Bainulis de mariptimo in omni adiacencia Beati lohanis eiusdem vallis ratione successionis patris mei iamdicti, quod castrum de Cauquolibero et dictam vallem de Bainulis cum omnibus suis iuribus et pertinenciis, sicut melius dictus pater meus quocumque titulo habebat et habere debebat michi in suo ultimo testamento, de quo testamento uobis translatum trado. Sicut superius est dictum, sic uendo et dono uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis omnia mea iura et dominia que habeo et habere debeo rationee successionis dicti patris mei in dicto castro et villad de Cauquolibero et in omnibus suis terminis et pertinenciis tarn in mari quam in terra et in valle de Bainulis de mariptimo et in omnibus eius terminis et in omni predicta adiacencia totum integriter ac generaliter cum ingressibus suis et egressibus et cum terminis et pertinenciis et cum omnibus in se habentibus, sicut melius et plenius intelligiuel dici potest ad

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

377

utilitatem uestram et uestrorum. Pro hac autem venditione et donation© quam uobis et uestris facio profiteer me a uobis habuisse et accepisse villam uestram de Toyrio cum omnibus suis tenedonibus et pertinenciis et amplius .cccc. marchas argenti fini recti pensi Perpiniani, renunciando exception! ville non accepte et non appensi et traditi argenti. Et illi legi qua iuuantur qui ultra dimidiam iusti precii decepti sunt similiter renuncio. Cedo etiam et dono uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis ad omnes uestras uoluntates omni tempore faciendas omnes acciones et exceptiones et iura que ad uersus aliquas personas pro predictis omnibus habeo uel habere aliquo modo debeo. Promitto etiam uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis f quod nichil feci uel decetero faciam quominus hec omnia uobis ualeant uel infringi possint, quod si forte feci uel facerem pro infecto habeatur et nullas prorssus uires aliquo tempore habeat. Nam in present! de omnibus supra dictis honoribus et iuribus ad eosdem honores pertinentibus uel pertinere debentibus me denudo et uos et uestros et quos uolueritis prorssus inuestio omnia uero superius scripta, pro ut melius et plenius intelligi uel dici possunt, ad utilitatem uestram et uestrorum. Ego dicta Guillelma per me et per omnes meos laudo et confirmo uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis et quod contra nunquam ueniam uel ueniri faciam P|er me uel per aliquam interpositam personam bona fide per g stipulationem uobis promitto et omni iuri diuino et humano scripto uel non scripto generaliter uel specialiter mini competenti uel competituro ad hec infringenda uel aliquod hhorum predictorum, uel si ego pretaxata Guillelma me tueri possem, quia in potestate uiri sum constituta, uel quia permissum est mulieribus ignorare iura, ex certa sciencia renuncio et ita totum ut in hac carta continetur me obseruaturam bona fide per stipulationem promitto et etiam corporaliter per Deum tactis sacrosanctis quatuor euuangeliis sponte iuro. Hec omnia supradicta, prout melius et plenius intelligi uel dici possunt, ad utilitatem uestram et uestrorum ego prenominatus Berengarius de Ceruaria maritus dicte Guillelme per me et per omnes meos laudo et confirmo uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis et quod contra hec omnia supradicta uel aliquod horum predictorum nunquam ueniam uel ueniri faciam per me uel per aliquam interpositam personam fide per stipulacionem uobis promitto et etiam corporaliter per Deum tactis sacrosanctis quatuor euuangeliis sponte iuro, renuncians scienter et consulte omni iuri diuino et humano scripto uel non scripto generaliter uel specialiter mihi competenti uel competituro ad hec infringenda uel aliquod horum predictorum. Iterum sit omnibus manifestum quod nos dominus Nuno Sancius, Dei gratia, dominus Rossilionis, Confluentis et Cerritanie, per nos et per omnes nostros bona fide et sine omni enganno cum hac eadem publica scriptura perpetuo ualitura damus et tradimus tibi prenominate Guillelme et tuis et cui uolueris ad omnes tuas tuorumque uoluntates omni tempore faciendas propter uendicionem et donacionem quam nobis, sicut superius continetur, fecisti villam nostram de Toyrio cum omnibus suis tenedonibus et pertinenciis, cum hominibus nostris et feminis ibidem presentibus ac futuris, cum mansis, mansatis, casis, casalibus, ortis, ortalibus, arboribus fructiferis, infructiferis, campis, vineis, heremis, condirectis, censibus, usaticis, quistis, toltis, forciis, alberguis, iusticiis, firmanciis, acapitis, foriscapiis, tenementis1, seruiciis, dominiis, adempriuis, quartis, quintis, agrariis, paschuis, garriguis, planis, montanis, et cum omnibus aliis hie expressis uel non expressis nobis in dicta villa et in eius terminis et in omni parrochia eiusdem uille scilicet Sancti Petri accidentibus et pertinentibus siue ullo modo competituris totum integriter ac generaliter cum ingressibus suis et egressibus et cum terminis et pertinenciis et cum omnibus in se habentibus sine omni tuo tuorumque enganno et sine ullo malo ingenio

378

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

absque aliqua retencione quam ibi non facio, preter ostes et caualcades' quas apud nos retinemus et quod de dicta uilla possimus guerreiare et pacem facere si de aliis villis nostris guerram seu pacem faceremus, ita tamen quod nos uel baiulus siue vicarius noster uel aliquis pro nobis non possimus cogere homines dicte uille nos aut bailum uel uicarium nostrum sequi sed tu uel baiulus tuus ad ammonicionem nostram et nostrorum absque omni dolo illos cogatis nos sequi et baiulos et vicarios nostros. Et si contigerit aliquem dictorum hominum penam prestare eo quod nollet exire tu uel tuibaiuli habeatis illam penam. Et nos promittimus te iuuare et tuos contra quamlibet personam nolentem a te uel a tuis directum accipere si in dicta villa et eius terminis dampnum fecerit et illud emendare tibi noluerit. Quam villam cum omnibus suis iuribus et tenedonibus et pertinenciis f aciemus te et tuos habere et tenere possidere in pace omni tempore. Et si forte contigeritk quod aliqua persona in dicta uilla uel in 1 eius terminis tibi uel tuis aliquid uel totum abstulerit uel euicerit propter quam uiolenciam et iuris euictionem si aliquid tu uel tui perdideritis promittimus uobis restituere quicquid inde perdideritis, obligando tibi et tuis omnia bona nostra habita et habenda et specialiter castrum et villam de Cauquoliberom et redditus ipsius, ita tamen quod de redditibus ipsius castri tarn terre quam maris habeas singulis annis .ii. millia solidoruni barchinonensium bonorum uel .xl. marchas argenti fini recti pensi Perpiniani, si hec moneta barchinonensis fuerit de lege uel penso diminuta, tamdiu quousque dicta villa de Toyrio cum suis tenedonibus et pertinenciis sit tibi et tuis plenarie restituta. Et quod ita hec omnia supradicta et singula tibi et tuis fideliter attendamus, compleamus et obseruemus et contra nunquam ueniamus uel ueniri faciamus aliquo ingenio occulto uel manifesto bona fide per stipulacionem sollempnem tibi et tuis promittimus et etiam corporaliter per Deum tactis sacrosanctis quatuor euuangeliis sponte iuramus. Ad ultimum sit omnibus certum quod ego pretaxata Guillelma per me et per omnes meos uendo et dono et laudo uobis domino Nunoni Sancio et uestris et cui uolueritis pro supradicto precio totum quicquid iuris habeo et habere debeo racione successionis dicti patris mei in villa et terrisn et militibus et hominibus de Tacione. Verumtamen si aliqua euictio uel uiolencia tibi domino Nunoni uel uestris in supradictis que uobis uendo f acta fuerit de ilia euictione uel uiolencia ego uel mei uobis uel uestris nos teneamur, scilicet de aliqua euictione uel uiolencia castri de Cauquolibero0 et uallis de Bainulis et honoris de Tacione. Quod est manifestum. Actum est hoc .iiii. idus May, anno incarnationis Domini .m°.cc°.xviii°. Sig + num Guillelme. Sig + num Berengarii de Ceruaria eius mariti. Sig -f num domini Nunonis Sancii, qui ita omnes insimul hec omnia firmamus firmarique rogamus. Sig + num Raimundi Rotgerii, Dei gratia comitis Fuxensis. Sig + num Guillelmi de Aniorto. Sig + num Bernard! Ermengaudip de Freixeneto. Sig + num Raimundi de Papiolo. Sig + num Berengarii de Cantalupis Elenensis archidiaconi. Sig + num Petri de Centillis sacriste Barcrinonensis. Sig + num Bernard! de Monte regali. Sg + num Berengarii de Crassa maioris. Poncius de Baiolis scriptor publicus uice Berengarii de Crassa publici notarii Perpiniani hoc scripsit et hoc sig -f num fecit. Berengarius de Grassa publicus scriptor subscripsit et hoc sig [signum manuale, copied] num fecit. Sig [Sig. man.] numl Raimundi presbiteri *. [Sig. man.'] num Guillelmi de Chanale presbiteri . Signum + Arberti presbiteri 1. Sig [Sig. man.] Guillelmi presbiteriJ 1. Sig [Sig. man.] num. Bernard! de Corbera Barchinone ebdomedarii . S + Guillelmi de Mata de petra. S + Rostani de G. de Ceruaria. S + Petri de Deo nos huic translate presentes ad fuimus testes. Sig [Sig. man.] num Guillelmi subdiachoni notarii. Sig + num Petri Vives qui hoc translatum fideliter scripsit precepto G.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

379

subdiachoni notarii cum litteris dampnatis in linea quarta et appositis in undecima et emendatis in sextadecima et rasis et emendatis in undevicesima et appositis et rasis et emendatis in tricesima prima et appositis in quadragesima prima, viiii0. kalendas Nouember, anno .m°.cc°.xx°. a omnique B. * in villa BC. o Durifortis DC. d in villa B. e Quauco liberp B. * ualeat D. e et D. h et quia D. i doubtful reading BCD 3 caualcadas D. * contingent D. 1 in om. CD. m Quaucolibero B. a terminis D. o Quauquolibero B. P Ermengaldi CD. 1

Sign and subscription autograph. 3

1219, February 10. Montpellier. Guillem de Cervera, king's procurator in Montpellier, recognizes a debt by the late King Peter II to Raimon Bega and his son Pong Bega amounting to 45,000 s., and assigns toward repayment 1000 s. each year on the revenues of silver and tolls of Montpellier. A. ACA, Cancelleria, perg. Jaume I, 118. Parchment, divided at top by ABC.... 259 x 265 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Prospero de Bofarull y Mascaro, "Traslado de las escrituras en pergamino pertenecientes al Reynado del Sr. Don Jayme 1°. . .," fols. 133v-135, ACA. Manifestum sit omnibus tarn presentibus quam futuris quod ego Guillelmus de Ceruaria lacobo, Dei gratia regi Aragonensi, comiti Barchinonensi et domino Montispessulani, ab Innocentio papa tercio consiliarius constitutus et comunicato consilio magnatum terre domini regis, habito etiam diligenti tractatu procurator constitutus ad tractanda et gerenda negocia domini regis in partibus Montispessulani, tributa et mini concessa regie plenitudine potestatis in negotiisa domini regis partium Montispessulani tractandis et specialiter in hoc presenti negotio et quibusdam aliis per dominum regem et per suos et per me confiteor et recognosco quod inclite recordations dominus P., Dei gratia illustris rex Aragonensis, pater dicti domini lacobi regis, ut patet per publicum instrumentum mandato predict! regis factum atque sigilli sui munimine roboratum, debebat quadraginta et quinque milia solidorum tibi Raimundo Bega et Poncio Bega filio tuo quos ad usus suos necessarios et ad euidentem eius utilitatem mutuastis, ut predictum instrumentum plenius dinoscitur apparere. Vnde cum publicum sit et manifestum quod maxima dampna et incomoda sustinuisti quia de predictio debito non fuerit tibi in aliquo satisfactum et etiam cum ad hoc speciale habuerim mandatum, constituo et assigno tibi dicto Raimundo Bega et Poncio filio tuo et uestris mille solidos melgorienses annuatim percipendos de redditibus et prouentibus esmeri argenti et maiorum lesdarum pertinentibus in Montepessulano ad dominum regem, quos mille solidos singulis annis de predictis redditibus habeatis et percipiatis plenarie et sine aliqua diminutione tamdiu donee in toto dicto debito uestro quadraginta quinque milium solidorum sit uobis plenarie et integre satisfactum. Et uolo et iubeo ac firmiter statuo ut uiri omnes et singuli qui pro domino rege erunt baiuli maiores in Montepessulano prout quilibet eorum locauerit uel uendiderit predictos redditus scilicet esmerum et maiores lesdas iniungat conductoribus uel emptoribus eorum ut de locario seu precio quod pro illis dare debebunt persoluant tibi R. Bega et Poncio filio tuo annuatim quamdiu dictos redditus tenebunt mille solidos et ipsos emptores seu conductores dictorum reddi-

380

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

tuum faciant uobis obligari in dictis mille solidis uobis annuatim reddendis et persoluendis quamdiu diu dictos redditus tenebunt. Hec omnia uniuersa et singula sine omni dolo et fraude per dominum regem et per suos et per me laudo et concede et firmiter perpetuo irreuocabiliter obseruari uolo. Et habito insuper a domino lacobo. Dei gratia rege Aragonensi, special! mandate, presentem paginam sigilli sui maioris pendentis uolo robore confirmari. Acta sunt et laudata hec omnia apud Montempessulanum in estari P. Raimundi et Olrici fratris eius, anno dominice incarnationis millesimo ducentesimo octauodecimo, quarto idus Febroarii, in presentia et testimonio B. de Centellis, B. Uacca, Berengarii Lanberti, lacobi Lumbardi, lohanis Luciani, Stephani de Conchis. Ri. de Conchis, lohanis de Orllaco iuuenis, P. Guntardi, G. Stephani, Arnaldi de Quatuor quasis, P. Baldohini, R. Karizom, G. Karizom, Rostagni de Sancto lohane, Petri Gandalrici et lacobi Laurencii notarii public! Montispessulani qui hec scripsit rogatus a partibus [Sig. man.]. a

in negotiis. dupl. MS. 4

1220, May 5. Barcelona. Guillem de Montcada, king's lieutenant, grants the vicariate of Barcelona to Bernat Barutifor the period extending to 24 June 1221. He acknowledges receipt of 5000 s.b. (quaternal), which have been used to repay royal debts, and credits Bernat for the tatter's obligation for 100 morabetins owed by Pere Gruny to the heirs of Arnau Umball (a former vicar of Barcelona) for the vicariate. Bernat is to recover his advance from revenues of the vicariate, deducting the customary tenth for his labor and deducting expenses. Any insufficiency in these revenues is to be recovered from the king's pledge to Guillem de Montcada and Arnau de Castellbo of revenues from Tarragona usque ad Clusam; or ultimately, if necessary, from Guillem's own property. Should Bernat so desire, he may have a sealed charter from the king and his counselors confirming the agreement. The "good men" of Barcelona are enjoined to recognize the grant of this vicariate as if from the king. A. ACA, perg. Jaume 1,138. Parchment, 291 x 503 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslados," fols. 156v-158v, ACA. In Dei nomine. Sit omnibus notum quod nos Guillelmus de Monte catano habentesa in hoc locum domini regis per instrumentum publicum ex eius parte damus tibi Bernardo Berutino et tuos usque ad primum festum uenturum sancti lohanis Babtiste et ab eodem festo usque ad unum annum primum uenturum totam vicariam barchinonensem ac de omni episcopatu barchinonensi ad habendum et tenendum totam predictam vicariam integriter et uiriliter per totum spacium tocius predict! termini ut melius unquam tenuit et habuit aliquis vicarius Barchinone sine omni contrarietate alicuius persone. Concedimus siquidem et recognoscimus in veritate mutuo a te recepisse quinque millia solidorum barchinonensium ualenti marcha argenti xliiii solidorum. Et quia inde bene paccati sumus et in debitis domini regis de quibus in Barchinona prout tenebamur omnino soluisse, scilicet Guillelmo lanuensi tria millia et quingentos solidos et in aliis debitis domini regis, renunciamus omni excepcioni non recepte pecuniequos siquidem quinque millia solidos ex parte domini regis damus

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

381

tibi et tuis et cui uel quibus uolueris ad habendum et plenarie recuperandum in omnibus et vniuersis exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus predicte vicarie, concedentes etiam tibi et tuis quod amore et precibus nostris fideiussisti Petro Grunio pro centum morabetinis de quibus ipse heredibus Arnaldi Vmbaldi tenebatur racione predicti Arnaldi Vmbaldi pro facto videlicet vicarie. De qua siquidem fideiussione conuenimus te et tuos inde bene obseruare ab omni dampno et grauamine, ita specialiter quod si dampnum, grauamen uel missionem inde te uel tuos oportuerit sustinere uel illud debitum aut partem ipsius debiti paccare statim habeas et recuperes plenarie in omnibus dictis exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus ipse dicte vicarie te primo paccato ex predictis quinque millibius solidorum. Obligacio autem predicte vicarie ita sane tibi et tuis intelligatur quod dominus rex nee aliquis nomine suo nee nos nee aliquis nomine nostro nee etiam aliqua viuens persona non possimus te uel tuos remouere nee iactare a predicta vicaria nee possesionem tuam in aliquo perturbare tarn per totum spatium tocius supradicti termini quam etiam ultra predictum terminum donee plenarie inde bene uoluntati tue inde bene sis paccatus tarn ex predictis quinque millibus solidorum quam etiam de predictis centum morabetinis si eos paccabis quam de solucione aliqua si ratione predicte fideiussionis te uel tuos oportuerit facere, leuato tamen primo tibi et tuis retrodecimo quod de dictis exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus habeas ad omnem tuam uoluntatem faciendam pro labore illius vicarie, et deductis omnibus missionibus quas pro dicta vicaria aliquo modo facies, tu et tui inde crediti uestro simplici sermone sine placito et sacramento et sine teste ac sine testium produccione. Conuenimus quoque tibi et tuis bona fide sine omni dolo dictam vicariam cum omnibus et uniuersis suis exitibus et redditibus ac prouentibus facere, tenere, habere, possidere ac expletare secure et potenter contra omnes personas per totum spatium tocius predicti termini et ultra predictum terminum tandiu donee predicta solucio, ut superius est distincta, tibi et tuis su facta. Et ut firmins sis inde securus damus tibi uel tuis ad habendum et plenarie recuperandum totum illud quod a dictis exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus supradicte vicarie tibi uel fuerit ablatum uel diminutum in omni illo pignore a domino rege nobis et Arnaldo de Castro bono obligate in omnibus exitibus ipsi pertinentibus a ciuitate terrachonensi usque ad Clusam, ut melius et plenius in forma instrument! a lohane Egidio scripti continetur, ita specialiter quod nos uel aliqua persona per nos uel nomine nostro non tangemus nee tangi faciemus aut tangi permitemus gratis uel ui in predicto pignore donee plenarie uoluntati tue bene sis pacatus ex omni supradicta solucione. Et si forte quod absit tibi uel tuis aliqua fuerit faeta contradiccio in predicto pignore ita quod non ualeas habere dictos exitus predicti pignoris ex quibus tibi facere possis predictam solucionem statim habeas et recuperes plenarie in nobis et in omnibus nostris rebus mobilibus et immobilibus in quibus melius accipere uolueris cum omni dampno et grauamine quod inde te uel tuos oportuerit sustinere vos inde crediti uestro simplici sermone sine placito et sacramento et sine omni calumpnia, conuenientes autem et per sollempnem stipulacionem promitentes tibi et tuis quod quando uolueris faciemus fieri tibi et tuis instrumentum a domino rege confectum et firmatum et ab eius consiliatoribus et a manu ipsius notarii scriptum et a sigillo suo munitum in quo hec omnia predicta et singula tibi et tuis firmiter conlaudabunt. Mandamus etiam ex parte domini regis omnibus probis hominibus barchinonensibus quod dictam vicariam te et tuos regere iuuent et gubernare in suo bono riguore et ualore et teneantur tibi et tuis racione predicte vicarie prout ex auctoritate domini regis nobis tenentur per totum spatium tocius predicti termini. Et ut hec dicta et singula bonum habeant valorem seu riguorem omni auxilio ac beneficio legum et decretorum et omni consti-

382

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

tucioni noue et ueteri et omni etiam iuri ciuili publico uel priuato comuni uel singular! siue canonico quod contra te uel tuos aliquo modo ualeamus introducere scienter et consulte et ex certa sciencia quantum ad hoc penitus renunciamus. Data Barchinone, .iii. nonas Madii, anno Domini .m°.cc°. vigesimo. ISig. man.] Guillelmus de Montecatano1. S + num Guillelmi Ermengaudi. S + num Berengarii Gerardi. S + num lohanis Espiarii. S + num Bernardi ballistarii. S ISig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii.2 Sig + num Bernard! de Grua qui hoc scripsit precepto Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii cum literis suprapositis in linea una ubi scribitur "tes" et rasis et emendatis in quarta et in quartadecima linea, die et anno prefixis.

a habentes, tes in superscript. 1 2

Sign and subscription possibly autograph. Sign and subscription autograph. 5

1220, May 8. Guillem de Montcada recognizes that Bernat Baruti has paid Berenguer Sunyer 500 s. b. (quaternal) which the latter was entitled to collect on revenues of the vicariate of Barcelona; this sum is added to the amounts stipulated in document no. 4 for the vicariate. Further, Guillem pledges his own pledges in the Girones for Bernat's obligation on Guillem's behalf to repay Guillem Genoves 400 s. on next 29 September. A. ACA, perg. Jaume 1,139. Parchment, 164 x 327 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 158v-159v, ACA.

Sit omnibus notum quod ego Guillelmus de Monte catano concede et recognosco tibi Bernardo Barutino et tuis quod Berengario Sunnario paccauisti quingentos solidos barchinonenses valenti marcha argenti xliiii. solidos quos habebat in vicaria barchinonensi quos dictos quingentos solidos assigno tibi et tuis ad habendum et recuperandum in omnibus exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus illius vicarie, pacatis tamen primo tibi et tuis illis quinque millibus solidis qui iam in solucione dictorum exituum reddituum ac prouentium per instrumentum publicum tibi sunt assignati et paccatis similiter tibi et tuis centum morabetinis si forte eos paccabis Petro Grunio cui pro me causa fideiussionis teneris. Et si forte, quod absit, aliqua forcia a uel violencia tibi uel tuis fuerit facta in dictis exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus ante quam suma predicte pecunie tibi uel tuis soluatur habeas totum illud quod tibi uel tuis ad soluendum remanserit in illo pignore a domino rege mini obligato in exitibus suis, videlicet sibi ubique pertinentibus a ciuitate terrachonensi usque ad Clusam, ut in instrumento a domino rege firmato et a lohane Egidio scripto continetur. Si uero forte in predicto pignore aliqua fuerit tibi uel tuis facta contradiccio ita quod non possis habere predictam sumam pecunie totum illud quod ad soluendum remanserit habeas et recuperes plenarie in me et in omnibus rebus meis mobilibus et immobilibus in quibus melius accipere uolueris sine placito et sacramento et sine teste ac sine testium produccione. Confiteor etiam et recognosco tibi et tuis quod amore et precibus meis obligauisti te debitorem Guillelmo lanuensi in quatuor centis solidis in primo f esto uenturo sancti Michaelis paccandis quos dono et assigno

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

383

tibi et tuis ad habendum et recuperandum in omnibus exitibus, redditibus ac prouentibus mihi aliquo modo pertinentibus et pertinere debentibus in Gerundense, ita quod ego nee aliqua persona meo nomine in predictis exitibus non accipiemus aliquid donee solucio dictorum .cccc. solidorum tibi uel tuis sit facta. Et si aliqua contradiccio tibi uel tuis fuerit facta totum illud quod ad soluendum remanserit habeas in supradicto pignore a domino rege mihi obligate et in omnibus aliis meis rebus mobilibus et immobilibus in quibus melius accipere uolueris sine placito et sacramento et sine aliqua calumpnia. Actum est hoc .viii. idus Madii, anno Domini .m°.cc°.vigesimo. ISig. man.] Guillelmus de Montecatanol qui hoc laudo et firmo. S + num Guillelmi Ermengaudi. S + num Berengarii Gerardi. S \_Sig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii2. Sig + num Bernard! de Grua qui hoc scripsit precepto Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii cum literis suprapositis in linea quarta ubi scribitur "aliqua forcia", die et anno prefixis. a aliqua forcia, superscript. 1

2

Sign and subscription possibly autograph. Sign and subscription possibly autograph. 6

1221, February 11. Guillem de Montcada recognizes his debt of 2270 s. b. (quaternal) to P(ere) Ponq of Besalii. Of this total, 1720 s. have been designated for the king's "utility and business," and the rest for Guillem's own use. The amount designated for the king has been spent on expenses at Besalit, on pledges at Peralada, and for expenses at Banyoles, among other items; it is to be recovered from the vicariate and tallage of Besalii. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 164. Parchment, mutilated and effaced. 278 x 183 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 183v-184v, ACA. Notum sit cunctis quod ego Guillelmus de Monte catano confiteor et recognosco a te P. Poncio nomine mutui manuleuasse duo milia et ducentos solidos barchinonenses monete quaternalis ualenti marcha argenti .1. solidi de quibus septuaginta confiteor ad vtilitatem et negocia domini regis manuleuasse .m.dcc.xx. solidos predicte monete et reliquos confiteor in meos proprios usus utiliter conuertisse et inde de omnibus confiteor me esse paccatum et a te manu ad manum numerando integriter recepisse, excepcioni non numerate pecunie renunciando, quos .m.dcc.xx. solidos predictos certum est tibi solui debuisse de vicaria et chestis Bisulluni quod non est factum nee completum de aliquo. Vnde ego predictus G. de Montecatano predictos .m.dcc.xx. solidos et reliquos omnes tibi predicto P. Poncii uel quibus iusseris conuenio bona fide et per sollempnema stipulacionem soluere et reddere omni ocasione et dilacione excepcioneque remotis ad tuam voluntatem quacumque hora a te uel tuis fuero inquisitus. Et si pro defectu huius tocius debiti dampnum uel grauamen siue missiones aut destrix feceris ullo modo totum tibi et tuis restituam tuo piano uerbo et sine sacramento et teste et scripto promitens etiam ut vno die uel una hora illos non teneam ullo modo uel aliqua racione ultra tuam voluntatem postquam a te fuero postulatus et inde te accipio in fide Dei et mea et ego teneor et ipsi qui locum meum tenuerint tibi et tuis in soli-

384

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

dum de omnibus teneantur et inde se non possint excusari ulla racione. Et propter hec omnia atendenda oblige tibi omnia bona mea honorem et auer mobilia et immobilia et bestias meas cuiscumque pili sint ubicumque malueris ocupare in pace uel extra pacem in villa et in camino et quecumque sint et ubicumque sint, renunciando omni iuri et decreto et consuetudinario scripto uel non scripto et usatico et legi f acte uel f acture mini competent! uel petituro et tibi in aliquo nocituro huius predict! debit! de quo tibi principalis debitor sum. Fit suma .mm. cc.lxx. solid! prenominate monete. Actum est hoc .iii. idus Pebruarii, anno Domini .m.cc.xx0. Et est certum quod ego dictus G. de Monte catano de illis .m. dcc.xx. solidis predictis recepi per dominum regem in expensis Bisulluni .dc.viii. solidos, et ad Petralatam in pignoribus .c.xl. solidos, et ad Balneolas .c.xxx. solidos et .dl. solidos in vno equo ad opus regis et .ccc. solidos in uno equo quern ipse dedit G. de Callers. \_Sig. man.] Guillelmus de Montecatano1. Sig + num B. de Bosco. Sig + num Perpiniani Nagrassa. Sig + num Bertrandi de Monteainola. Sig + num P. de Schala. Sig + num. Poncii Seguinl. Sig ISig. man.] num Bernard! de Prato public! scriptoris Sancti Petri de Bisulluno qui hoc scripsit. a sellempnem, MS. 1

Sign and subscription possibly autograph. 7

1222, August 16. Ramon de Plegamans recognizes that in the presence of Gaucelm, comendator of Palau, he has accounted with Durfort, bailiff of Barcelona, for 11,400 s. b. of the new coinage, which are the equivalent of the 6000 s. melg. which Ramon was entitled to collect on the mills of Barcelona; also for the 52 marks of silver owing to Ramon for his purchase of the bailiwicks of Gava and Viladecans. The account for the mills is settled, the bailiff paying 6000 s. in cash and promising 5400 s. from the sale of the revenues of the mills for the period to 1 September 1223, of which amount, however, Ramon remits 400 s. Ramon acknowledges an additional amount he owes from revenues of the mills for the chapel. A. AC Barcelona, perg. Diversorum C (d), capsa 12, 849. Parchment, divided at top by ABC DBF GHI, effaced. 110 x 204 mm. Omnibus sit manifestum quod ego Raimundus de Plicamanibus confiteor et recognosco tibi Durforti baiulo Barchinonensi quod in presencia Gaucelmi domus milicie de Palacio comendatoris mecum uenisti ad sumam de .xi. millibus .cccc. solidorum barchinonensium nouorum, scilicet de ipsis sex millibus solidorum malgoriensium quos habebam in molendinis barchinonensibus et de ipsis .Iii. marchis argent! quas habebam uoce mee empcionis in baiulia de Gauano et de Villa de Canibus. De quibus .xi. millibus .cccc. solidorum paccauisti mihi in moneta .vi. millia solidorum et .v. millia .cccc. solidorum in uendicione exituum [m]olendinorum barchinonensium quern mihi facis usque ad kalendas September et ab illis kalendis usque al vnum annum primum uenturumsicut in meo instrumento continetur et ita in hunc modum sum bene paccatus de predictis .xi. mi-

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

385

llibus .cccc. solidorum et debeo tibi restituere siue dare de empcione pre-a dictorum molendinorum tantum .cccc. solidos quos de present! tibi dono. Preterea debeo paccare censum capelle quern recepit domus Sancte Eulalie per recepcionem quam faciam de exitibus molendinorum in hoc medio mense, scilicet usque in kalendas September. Actum est hoc .xvii. kalendas September, anno Domini .m°.cc°. vicesimo secundo. S + num Raimundi de Plicamanibus qui hoc laudo et firmo. Signum [Sig. man.'] Bernard! de Artes.1 S + num Bernardi ballistarii. S + num Petri de Cutina. S [Sig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii qui hoc albaranum scribi fecit et clausit die et anno prefixis et cum literis suprapositis in linea octava. a

quos de present! tibi dono, superscript (line S). Sign and subscription autograph.

1

8

1222, September 24. \Guillem de Montcada ^recognizes his debt of 3000 s. iacc. to Ramon the repositarius, which is to be repaid by next 1 November. If the repayment is delayed beyond that date, Guillem is responsible for expenses or injuries incurred by Ramon on account of the delay. Any money which Guillem's squire, Arnau Roig, can obtain in Aragon will be paid to the creditor without difficulty. Brother Gaucelm is witness. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 200. Parchment, 282 x 223 mm. Slit-cancelled. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull) "Trasladoi," fols. 226-227, ACA. Notum sit cunctis quod ego Guillelmus de Montecatano per me et meos debeo uobis Raimundo repositario et uestris tribus milibus solidis denariorum iachensium quos omnes bono amore et sine aliqua usura mihi acomodauistis unde sum bene uestri pacatus mee uoluntati, ideoque renuncio exception! non numerate pecunie et doli, quos omnes lam dictos tria milia solidos iachensium melioris monete curribilis Ylerde pani et uino saluos in terra intus Ylerdam in posse nostro conuenio uobis dicto creditor! et uestris requirentibus pro bono uestro soluere fideliter in proximo festo Omnium Sanctorum sine omni contradicto et prolongamento. Et si prolongauero uobis uel uestris dictam pecuniam de statute termino in antea omnem dampnum et grauamen et missionem et expensam quod feceritis quocumque modo propter meam dilationem bona fide mea promito uobis et uestris restituere et perficere omni uestre bone recognicioni et sine omni uestro uestrorumque inganno et contradicto. Et ex omni hoc negocio sitis creditia uestro simplici uerbo sine iuramento et testibus et placita et bello ad maiorem cautelam uestram et uestrorum. Ego prefatus Guillelmus de Montecatano omnia prescripta et singula promito uobis Raimundo repositario et uestris et cui uolueritis attendere et complere in fide et legalitate mea, ut superius continetur, sine omni uestro enganno et uestrorum. Et uolo et mando Arnaldus Rubeus armiger meus quod omnes denarios quod possit congregare in partibus Aragonis statim tradat uobis et uestris omnes insimul sine ullo uinculo et contradicto ullius persone per fidem quam mihi debet. P Quod est actum .viii. kalendas Octobris, anno Domini .m°.cc°.xx°. secundo.

386

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

LSig. man.] Guillelmus de Montecatano 1. [Sig. man.] fratris Gaucelmi qui testis sum 2. Sig ISig. man.] num Bernard! Durfortis3. + scripta libens ista Petrus confirmo sacrista.2 Testium. Johannes de Osoha scripsit et hoc sig + num fecit. a Possibly creditus. 1

2 3

Sign and subscription possibly autograph. Sign, subscription and additional words autograph. Sign and subscription autograph. 9

1222, December 1. Guillem de Montcada owes Ramon the repositarius 1000 morabetins without interest, which he promises to repay at Pentecost 1223. If Ramon then grants an extension, the interest will be 20 morabetins per months (or 24% yearly); and in case of such delay Guillem will be subject to service as hostage. He swears to the terms and presents eleven men of Vic as sureties. The king's need and the remedies of laws are renounced as obstacles to the repayment as stipulated. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 202, Parchment, 314 x 582 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 227r-230v, ACA. In Christ! nomine. Sit notum cunctis quod nos Guillelmus de Montecathano debemus tibi Raimundo repositario et tuis et cui uelis mille moabatinos bonos nouos anfussinos in auro sine enganno rectos et recti pensi quas in auro et non rem pro re nee in denariis uel aliis rebus de te concedimus habuisse et recepisse et concedimus quod eos nobis mutuauisti sine aliquo lucro ficto uel manifesto. Sed quia inde bene paccati sumus et est nobis plenarie inde satisfactum exception! renunciamus peccunie non numerate et doli, vnde conuenimus et legali stipulatione promittimus tibi et tuis pro tuo bono petentibus uel cui uelis paccare hoc totum debitum in primo festo Pentecostes saluum in terra intus ciuitatem Ylerde. Et si deinde nobis hoc debitum uolueritis alongere conuenimus dare tibi et tuis pro lucro in vnoquoque mense viginti moabatinos auri et pensi curribiles anfussinos. Et de alongamento sit in tua uel tuorum uoluntate. Si autem non paccauerimus tibi uel tuis dictos mille moabatinos in festo Pentecostes dicto primo uenturo conuenimus tibi legitime stipulanti quod statim qua hora uelis sine aliqua denuntiatione a te nobis facienda nos in propria persona a tenebimus tibi obstaticum in ciuitate Ylerde infra terminos constitutes in quibus tenentur obstatica et solent teneri in eadem ciuitate uel f aciemus tibi uel tuis teneri obstaticum in eodem termino et loco a duobus militibus quos tu uolueris uel tui uoluerint ex hiis scilicet Poncio de Uultrera, Bernardo de Valle uiridi, Hugone de Mata plana, Berengario de Rosanis, Guillelmo de Monte regali et Bernardo de Manleuo, ita quod si ipsos duos milites quos tu elegeris uel tui elegerint de predictis sex nos possemus nos tibi submittere dicto obstatico morte uel uita eorum uel aliquo manifesto esse alios duos quos uolueris tu uel tui uoluerint ex [elisdem sex militibus statim miserimus in ipso obstatico nisi numquid tenuerimus tibi uel tuis obstaticum in persona propria, ut superius est distinctum. Et conuenimus et promittimus tibi quod nullum ingenium uel fraudem aliquam aut uerborum subtilitatem tibi non introducamus nee introduci faciamus quominus nos tibi teneamus dictum obstaticum in persona propria uel faciamus tibi illud obstaticum teneri a duobus militibus de pre-

387

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

dictis sex quos tu elegeris uel tui elegerint, prout superius est distinctum, promittentes tibi a nobis legitime stipulanti quod ex quo nos tenuerimus dictum obstaticum quod conuenimus tenere, sicut dictum est. uel dicti milites duo illud tenuerint nos non procedamus uel ipsi duo milites non procedant ultra terminos infra quos tenetur et solet teneri obstaticum in ciuitate Ylerde nee ultra aliquem eorum terminorum propriis scilicet pedibus uel [...]nis per terram uel aquam aliquo modo uel ratione quousque tibi uel tuis paccauerimus dictos mille moabatinos saluos in terra in ylerdensi ciuitate et lucrum similiter ibidem salua in terra. Cursus autem lucri non remaneat pro tenore obstatici, nee tenor obstatici pro cursu lucri. Ad maiorem uero securitatem iuramus in anima nostra per Deum et hec sancta Dei quatuor euuangelia manibus nostris corporaliter tacta quod hec que dicta sunt et scripta compleamus attendamus et obseruemus tibi Raimundo repositario et tuis et quod de aliquo predictorum nos non alongemus nee sustineamus alongari precibus uel mandato domini regis uel domine regine uel archiepiscopi uel alterius persone nisi quantum tu uel tui uolueritis nos alongare gratuita propria uoluntate. Verumptamen si aliquam in hoc fecerimus transgressionem aut in nobis falleris de aliquo horum que superius sunt notata damus tibi pliuios datores et principales paccatores Arnaldum de Cloquerio et Berengarium de Besora nepotem lohanis de Maioles et Thomam Spagneolumb et Raimundum Gayol et Bernardum de Boscho et Berengarium de Boscho fratrem eius et Raimundum de Yla et Bernardum de Bages et Ferrarium Mir et Petrum Fini et Raimundum de Urriols qui sunt omnes de villa Vici qui cum nobis et sine nobis predicta tibi et tuis compleant et attendant. Nos itaque prenotati scilicet nos Guillelmus de Montecathano in religione sacramenti predict! et nos dicti f[idei]ussores et principales paccatores conuenimus quisque pro toto tibi Raimundo repositario et tuis et cui uelis predicta omnia et predictorum singula attendere et complere obligantes t[ibi] et tuis personaliter quisque per se in toto nosmetipsos et bestias nostras equitandas et araturas et alias bestias nostras magnas et paruas et uniuersas res nostras alias mobiles et immobiles et se mouentes de quibus omnibus et singulis tanta accipiatis, uendatis uel inpignoretis uestra propria auctoritate non expectata iudiciali sentencia sine f atigatione nostra uel curie uel alterius persone et sine denunciatione nobis uel alii facienda quousque de toto predicto debito et lucro et dampno et grauamine quod inde sustinueris tu uel tui bene sitis paccati et sit inde tibi et tuis plenarie satisfactum ad tuum saluamentum et sine tuo dampno, sic quod super quantitate et qualitate dampni et grauaminis et de aliis prenotatis credatur tibi et tuis planis uerbis sine placito et sacramentoc et sine testis uel testium productione ac sine aliqua calumpnia. Ne uero ratione alicuius coti quod dominus rex fecerit usque nunc uel decetero facturus sit uel quolibet etiam modo alio nos possimus excusare uel assequi quod tu Raimundus repositarius uel tui debeatis accipere denarios uel alias res per moabatinos nee possimus nos excusare ratione consuetudinis barchinonensis uel modis aliis ad restaurandum, dampnum et grauamen nee possimus nos Guillelmus de Montecathano nos excusare aliquo modo predictis fideiussoribus ad attendenda et complenda tibi uel tuis omnia predicta nee possimus etiam nos dicti fideiussores et principales paccatores nos excusare uel differre pro dicto Guillelmo [de] Montecathano uel ex nobis alter pro altero uel aliquis pro aliquo uel pro aliquibus Cc]um d quisque nostrum in solidum teneatur in hiis omnibus complendis et attendendis. Renunciamus nos omnes certificati et ex certa scientia quantum ad predicta omni coto facto uel faciendo a domino rege et omni institucioni ab eodem facte uel faciende et barchinonensi et alii consuetudini et omni iuri canonico ac ciuili comuni ac singular! scripto et non scripto siue consuetudinario et generaliter omni iuri promulgate uel promulgando. Actum est kalendas Decembris, anno Domini millesimo .cc. vicesimo secundo. ISig. man] Guillelmus de Montecatano.1

388

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

ISig. man.'] num. Durfortis baiuli domino regis. S [Sig. man.] num Poncii de Serriano notarii. S + Berengarii de Besora. S + Raimundi Gayolis. S + Raimundi de Urriols. S + Thome Spagneoli. S + Raimundi de Yla. S + Bernard! de Bigis. S + Bernard! de Boscho.6 S + Berengarii de Boscho. S + Petri Fini. [.Sig. man.] Arnaldi de Clochario. Ego Ferrarius Mironis qui hoc firmo ISig. man]. Nos omnes qui predicta concedimus et confirmamus et laudamus in omnibus et per omnia, prout superius sunt scripta. S [Sig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa notarii. Sig + num Arnaldi de Cuguciis. Sig 4- num Petri Viues. Sig [.Sig. man.] num Petri de Bages notarii qui hoc scripsit cum litteris emendatis in linea quarta ubi scribitur "propria persona" et in undecima ubi scribitur "et Thomam Spagneolum" et in vicesima prima ubi scribitur "Bernard! de Boscho", die et anno quo supra. a b et Thomam Spagneolum, propria persona, corrected (line 4). c over erasure (line 11). Ne vero, conjectural reading. da [c] urn, doubtful reading. e Bernard! de Boscho, over erasure (line 21).

1 Signs and subscription possibly autograph.

10 1225, June 1. Barcelona. Guillem de Montcada, Viscount of Beam, provides for the distribution of 20,000 morabetins assigned him by the king on one-half of the royal revenues in the dioceses of Barcelona, Vich and Girona, and of the bovatge, monedatge and the paria of Spain. His mother, Guillelma de Castellvell, is to have 3300 morabetins assigned chiefly on one-half of the revenues of the mills of Barcelona; an additional 6700 morabetins is to be paid to others unspecified; while Guillem is to have 10,000 morabetins for himself. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 256. Parchment, 218 x 301 mm. C. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 297v-298, ACA. Cum dominus rex assignaret nobis Guillelmo de Montecatano, Dei gratia vicecomiti bearnensi, vigintimilia morabetinorum habenda et recipienda in medietate omnium exituum, reddituum ac prouentuum ipsi aliquo modo pertinencium in episcopitibus Barchinone, Vici et Gerunde, et in boutico et monetatico et etiam in paria Yspanie, sicut continetur in instrumento nostro ab eo nobis confecto, et nos debeamus recipere .x. milia morabetinorum de suma illorum .xx. milia morabetinorum, et diuideremus inter quosdam alia .x. milia morabetinorum, concedimus et recognoscimus uobis domine Guillelme de Castro ueteri venerabili matri nostre quod in illis .x. milibus morabetinis que diuisimus habetis tria milia .ccc. morabetinos que uobis assignamus habenda et plenarie recuperanda in medietate omnium exituum, reddituum ac prouentuum molendinorum Barchinone et in medietate omnium aliorum exituum, reddituum ac prouentuum et bouatici et monetatici siue parie Yspanie, ita expresse ut de ilia mea medietate illorum exituum, reddituum ac prouentuum bouatici, monetatici atque parie Yspanie fiant due partes quarum nos habebimus vnam partem et inter uos et alios a nobis assignatos habebitis aliam partem cuius partis uos habebitis terciam partem et alii residuas duas partes et recipiatis tandiu dictam medietatem predictorum molendinorum et terciam partem illius medietatis de predicta mea medietate, sicut superius est distinctum, donee sitis paccata de suma illorum trium milium .ccc. morabetinorum. Item promitimus uobis dare tria milia solidorum de primis accidentibus que in predictis episcopatibus nobis proueniant aliquo modo, tarn de bouatico

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

389

quam de monetatico quam in aliis modis. Datum Barchinone kalendas lunii, anno Domini .m°.cc°. vicesimo quinto, et mandato nostro scripta. [Sig. man.] Guillelmus de Montecatano.i fist column] S + num Guillelmi de Rosanis. S + num Raimundi de Solario. S + num Bernard! de Castro episcopal! iunioris. [2nd column] S + num Petri de Castlarino. S + num Berengarii baiuli. S + num Raimundi de Plicamanibus. S [Sig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa public! barchinonensis notarii.2 S + nvm Amati de Grua qui hoc scripsit mandato G. de Ollesa public! barchinonensis notarii die et anno quo supra. 1. Sign and subscription possibly autograph. 2. Sign and subscription autograph. 11 1225, September 12. Guillem de Cervera sells to Nicholas Roig and Guillem de Riufrigid all his rights on Sarral, Fores, Savalla, Dez fenoil, mansus domini regis, Conesa, Turlanda, Anguera. Laroupra, Olers and Cabra, as these are held in pledge from the king for yearly payments of 1000 morabetins for five years beginning on 29 September 1225. Provision for adjustment in case of bad weather is added. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 271. Parchment, divided on right by ABC ABC ABC. 174 x 296 mm. B. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 314-316, ACA. Manifestum sit omnibus hominibus quod nos Guillelmus de Ceruaria per nos et omnes nostros cum hoc present! istrumento vendimus ac corporaliter tradimus uobis Nicholauo rubeo et Guillelmo de Riuo frigido et uestris cui uel quibus uolueritis omnes exitus et rendas quas nos habemus uel habere debemus aliquo modo in castrum et villam de Zareal et in castrum et villam de Fores et in castrum et villam de Zaueilla et in castrum et villam dez Fenoil et in mansum domini regis et in castrum et villam de Quonessa et in castrum et villam de Turlanda et in castrum et villam de Angueria et in dominium de Laroupra a et in castrum et in villam Dolers et in castrum et uillam de Cabra. Omnia predicta et singula vendimus ac tradimus uobis prenominatis Nicholauo rubeo et Guillemo de Riuo frigido et uestris, scilicet cum questiis, toltis, monedaticis et bouaticis, adrempriuisi ouis, traginis, placitis et firmamentis et cum omni ussui hominis et feminis se pertinentibus et cum pleno iure et posse, scilicet dominicaturis, pratis, nemoribus, pascis, ven[...]ibus,b erbaticis, firiis et mercatis, aqueductibus et reductibus et cum omnibus seruiciis realibus et personalibus, sicut meliu habemus et habere debemus cum carta firmata mei pignoris facta a domino rege continetur. Ita scilicet vendimus uobis prenominatis Nicholao rubeo et Guillelmo de Riuo frigido et uestris quod uos et uestri faciatis nobis et nostris de festo proximo Sancti Michaelis mensis September usque ad unum annum .m. morabetinos anfossinos bonos boni auri rectique pensi et de legitima solucione, et de inde pro unoquoque anno detis nobis et nostris .m. morabetinos de festo in festo Sancti Michaelis mensis September usque, v. annos completos. Et ita nos et nostri faciemus uobis et uestris omnes exitus et redditibus de predictis castribus et uillis et de predictis dominicaturis habere, tenere, possidere in pace et faciemus uobis et uestris bonam et legalem guirenciam contra omnes per-

390

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

sonas et conuenimus uobis quod usque in finen dictorum .v. annorum non possumus uobis uel uestris dictis renditibus auferre nee uos uel uestri aliquo modo nobis dimittere usque in finem dictorum .v. annorum. Nos siquidem Nicholaus rubeus et Guillelmus de Riuo frigidus quisque in solidum per nos et omnes nostros renunciantes omni beneficio diuidende accionis conuenimus uobis domino Guillelmo de Ceruaria et uestris soluere predictos morabetinos pro constitutis terminis et conuenimus bona fide quod aliquo modo de prefato negocio non dimiteremus nee dimittere ualeamus et in hoc renunciamus omni iuri quod nobis iuuare posset. Et insuper obligamus uobis et uestris pignori et returno omnia nostra mobilia et inmobilia habita et habenda uestro bono utili intellectui et uestrorum. Et insuper nos siquidem Nicholaus rubeus et Guillelmus de Riuo frigido conuenimus uobis domino Guillelmo de Ceruaria omnia predicta et singula atendere et seruare sub fide et homagio quam uobis facimus in present! ore et manibus prestita et iuramus sub periculo anime nostre predicta omnia et singula atendere et seruare, sic nos Deus adiuuet et hec sancta quatuor euangelia coram posita. Sciendum uero est quod nos Guillelmus de Ceruaria promitimus uobis prenominatis [Ni]cholao rubeo et G. de Riuo frigido quod si forte quod absit infra predictorum .v. annorum habuerit nebulam uel penam nos G. de Ceruaria resiciemus uobis ad nostram cognicionem. Quod est actum .ii. idus September, anno Domini .m0.cc0.xx°v0. S + num Guillelmi de Ceruaria quibus firmo et concedo. Testesque firmare rogo. S + num Petri aragonensis. S + num Raolfi prioris Scale Dei. S + num Bertrandi capellani de Zarael teste firmamenti domini G. de Ceruaria. S + num Nicholai rubei. S + num Guillelmi de Riuo frigidi qui hoc firmamus et concedimus testesque firmare rogamus. S + num Bernardi de Tores. S + num lohanni trompador. S + num Maia trompador testis. Sciendum est quod nos G. de Ceruaria recipimus istos morabetinos annuatim de ilia solucione .mm. morabetinorum et .m. marcharum argenti quas dominus rex nobis facere debet, sicut in nostris cartibus continetur.0 Sig + num Guillelmi Raimundi scribe qui hoc scripsit. Sig + num lacobi, Dei gratia regis aragonensis, comitis barchinonensis et domini Montispessulani, qui predicta omnia laudat, concedit et firmat. aa Possibly Larouiaa. b ventibus, MS; possibly venationibus. c Sciendum est. . continetur, added to completed charter. 12

1226, June 1. Guillem de Montcada, Viscount of Beam, assigns 40,000 s. b. (doblench) distributively to four barons: 8000 s. each to Guillem de Cervello, Guerau de Cervello, and Ramon Alaman, and 16,000 s. to Ferrer de Sant Marti. The money is to be collected on Guillem de Montcada's pledges, as held from the king for 20,000 morabetins in the dioceses of Barcelona and Girona, in pro-rated payments over four years. A. ACA, perg. Jaume I, 296.1 Parchment, divided at top by AB CD EF GH. 185 x 311 mm.— A . ACA, perg. Jaume I, 296 duplicat. Parchment, divided at top by ABC.... 186 x 298 mm. Probably the mate of A. Mutilated. B. Copy of 21 April 1235, ACA, perg. Jaume I, 296 triplicat. Parchment, 196 x 188 mm- C. Copy, s. xix, Bofarull, "Traslado," fols. 412-413, ACA.

The Finances of the Young James I (1213-1228)

391

A Sit omnibus notum quod nos Guillelmus de Montecatano, Dei gratia vicecomes bearnensis, damus et concedimus uobis Guillelmo de Ceruilione, Geraldo de Ceruilione, Ferrario de Sancto Martino et Raimundo Alamando quadraginta millia solidorum barchinonensium istius monete valente marcha argenti .Ixxxviii. solidorum, que ita diudimus inter vos: Guillelmus de Ceruilione habeat .viii. millia solidorum et Geraldus de Ceruilione .viii. millia solidorum et Geraldus de Ceruilione .viii. millia solidorum et Raimundus Alamannus .viii. millia solidorum et Ferrarius de Sancto Martino .xvi. millia solidorum, que omnia .xl. millia solidorum assignamus uobis in illis pignoribus que nos tenemus de domino rege in episcopatibus Barchinone et Gerunde per .xx. millia morabetinos,a sicut in carta nostra continetur, tali videlicet pacto quod quolibet anno satisfaciatis uobis de decem millibus solidorum. Nominatim vos Guillelmus de Ceruilione habeatis uestra .viii. millia solidorum in pignoribus que iam tenetis in episcopatu Barchinone, scilicet in Villa francha et Gauano et Foniculariob et in aliis locis, sicut in uestra carta continetur, et satisfaciatis uobis quolibet anno istorum quatuor annorum primorum venturorum de .ii. millibus solidorum; et vos Geraldus de Ceruilione habeatis uestra. .viii. millia solidorum in pignoribus episcopatus Gerunde et satisfaciatis inde uobis quolibet anno istorum quatuor annorum de .ii. millibus solidorum; et vos Raimundus Alamandus habeatis uestra .viii. millia solidorum in pignoribus episcopatus Gerunde et satisfaciatis uobis quolibet anno istorum quatuor annorum de .ii. millibus solidorum; et vos Ferrarius de Sancto Martino habeatis uestra .xvi. millia solidorum in pignoribus episcopatus Barchinone et Gerunde et satisfaciatis inde uobis quolibet anno istorum quatuor annorum primorum venturorum de .iiii. millibus solidorum de quibus recipiatis mille et d. solidos in exitibus de Calidis et .ii. millia .d. solidos in pignoribus episcopatus Gerunde. Actum est hoc kalendas lunii, anno Domini millesimo .cc°.xx°. sexto. [Sig. man.'} Guillelmus de Monte catano.1 Sig + num lacobi, Dei gratia regis aragonensis, comitis barchinonensis et domini Montispessulani, positum per manum Guillelmi Rabaza notarii sui mandato ipsius in Barchinona, die et anno prefixis l_Sig. man.]. Huius rei testes sunt: fist column] de Monte regali. P. de Olorda. F. de Turriliis. ;[2nd column] B. de Turricella. Geraldus de Blancha forte. G. de Vru[.]o.° [3rdcolumn] Poncius de Uultrera. Berengarius de Castro uetulo. G. de Meldana.d S ISig. man.] nvm Guillelmi de Ollesa public! barchinonensis notarii qui hanc cartam scribi fecit et cum sua manu clausit, die et anno prefixo. a

morbos, A; morabetinos, A1. b Feniculario, A 1 . c Possibly Vrugo, A; name effaced, A1. d Meldano, A1.. 1 Sign and subscription possibly autograph.

Monetary ordinances for the senechaussee of Carcassonne in 1264. Archives Municipales de Narbonne, AA 105, fol. 52v

(See page 413)

20 COINAGES AND ROYAL MONETARY POLICY IN LANGUEDOC DURING THE REIGN OF SAINT LOUIS1 AT the accession of Louis IX in 1226 and the institution of royal government in Languedoc, the king's money was hardly known in those extended territories which lay between English and Imperial holdings in southern France. The inhabitants of that region, indeed, were still inclined to look upon France proper, to the north, as a foreign land. Half a century later, however, the royal penny had become a widely used currency in Languedoc. This development, with an accompaniment of definite royal policies toward the seigneurial coinages, is an important aspect of that process whereby the larger part of Languedoc, notably the county of Toulouse and its dependencies, became in fact as well as in right subject to the crown. The more interesting historical problems relate to the shifting fortunes of the feudal coinages, the nature of the changes effected by the king's administration, and the part played in this development by Alfonse of Poitiers, a "baron" of the blood royal.2 When it happened in 1212 that the elder Simon de Montfort, in consequence of his efforts and leadership in the early Albigensian campaigns, gained papal and royal recognition as count of Toulouse, the first step toward a new political order was accomplished in Languedoc. At the time of his ouster the hereditary count, Raymond VI, held titular control of the Quercy, the Rouergue, the Agenais, the Albigeois, the viscounty of Nimes, and the marquisate of Provence, while the count of Foix, the viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, and to a lesser degree the lord of Montpellier (the king of Aragon), recognized the overlordship of Toulouse. The failure of Amaury de Montfort to maintain his father's conquests and the suspect orthodoxy of the dispossessed but resourceful heir of Raymond VI led to the successful invasion of Languedoc by Louis VIII in 1226. The young Raymond VII, submissive by necessity, was permitted to retain his inheritance, but at the price of very considerable concessions to the king. By the terms of the treaty of 1229 the duchy of Narbonne,3 the viscounty of Nimes, and that part of the Albigeois which lay to the south of the Tarn, were irrevocably united to the 1

The writer wishes to acknowledge a grant by the American Numismatic Society, before whose summer seminar this paper, in its original form, was presented on 23 August 1955. He is indebted to Professors Joseph R. Strayer and T. E. Mommsen for suggestions and criticism; any errors that may be present are, of course, his own. Note: Dates throughout are new style. Names for the coinages are anglicized or given in French or Latin according to the dictates of general usage. 2 The technical difficulties, particularly regarding the derivation of coin types and standards of monetary weight and alloy, which beset the numismatist of feudal Languedoc cannot be considered here, aside from such general remarks as contribute to understanding the historical matters under discussion. See in general F. Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales de France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1856-62), n; A. Blanchet, A. Dieudonne, Manuel de numismatique franchise, 4 vols. (Paris, 1912-36), n, iv, 221-226, 234-247, and the works cited there. * Little more than a title; the viscounts and archbishops shared territorial rights in Narbonne.

394

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

royal domains. More important to the crown in the long run was the provision of the treaty by which Raymond VII pledged his remaining rights to his daughter, who was betrothed to Alfonse, the young king's brother;4 Alfonse was subsequently to become the last independent count of Toulouse. Royal government began at this time in two large administrative districts, the sen&chauss&es of Beaucaire and Carcassonne. The senechals, military, judicial, and financial agents of the crown, with their subordinates, the vicars, supervised the royal mints in their districts and they were responsible for the enforcement of royal regulations relating to the coinages. Of the two royal monetary systems in thirteenth-century France — the parisian, confined mainly to the north and east, and the toumois, which was widely used in the west — only the latter was extended into Languedoc. Pennies, shillings, and pounds, as everywhere in the West, made up the system of account, but until 1266 silver pennies and half pennies (oboles, or mailles) were the only circulating specie. The well known toumois coins of Louis IX were in appearance virtually the same as those of his father. They bear the legends, obv. LVDOVICVS REX; rev., TVRONVS (variant, TVRONIS) CIVI, with a castle-like structure in the field. The fleur de lys, already the well recognized symbol of the monarchy, does not appear in the design, but is characteristic of the local types of Nimes and Arras, and of the gros tournois* By the mediaeval reckoning of fine silver content in fractions of twelve (deniers de loi), the toumois were at a standard of three and three-quarters d. (or slightly less than 4/12 fine),6 which is to say that, like so many debased seigneurial coins of the period, they were a "black" money. They were cut at a ratio of 217 to the royal marc of Troyes,7 a relationship also expressed as 58 shillings-worth in fine silver. This standard was not markedly different from that of several contemporary seigneurial coinages, from which the royal money was distinct, however, in its characteristic design and in its more effective administrative control by the king. In order to understand the background of royal monetary politics in Languedoc, it will be useful to consider in some detail the organization, minting, and distribution of the coinages with which the toumois were placed in competition. During the first half of the reign of Saint Louis some seventeen principalities in Languedoc enjoyed the regalian jus monetae, which had passed by grant and by 4 For the most extensive text of the treaty see Layettes du Tresor des Chartes, edd. Teulet, Delaborde, Berger, Delaborde, 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), n, 147b-152a. 5 Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, u, 227, figs. 70-71; G. Pierfitte, "Monnaies des comtes de Toulouse," Revue Numismatique, 4th ser., xjotvm (1935), 61. The Nimes type is discussed below. 6 "Fine" silver in the case of royal coins usually was one twenty-fourth alloy, known as argent-le-roi. It is not always possible to tell whether pure silver or some such alloy is implied hi texts referring to the fine content of coins; see Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, n, 34. In referring to the alloy of coins it is customary to give only the fractional numerator; thus, e.g., 4 d.=4/12 fine silver. 7 On the problem of the ware, its origins, relationship with the Carolingian livre, and the technicalities of its weight and alterations, see P. Guilhermoz, "Note sur les poids du moyen age," Biblioiheque de I'ficole des Chartes, LXVII (1906), 161-233; 402^450; A. Dieudonne, "Les poids du moyen age et la numismatique d'apres une etude publiee en 1906," Le Moyen Age, 2d ser., XXH (1920), 157173 (esp. 162 S.). A fraction of the livre (one-half the so-called "strong livre"), the marc came into common use in France in the early twelfth century. See n. 28 below.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

395

usurpation to the descendants of the local agents of Carolingian administration in the ninth and tenth centuries.8 The coinage of Toulouse was one of the leading currencies in Languedoc in this period and was in some respects typical of the others. The coins struck at Toulouse by Raymond VII (1222-1249) cannot be distinguished from those of his father, and it is possible that the latest known type of these famous tolzas dates from the middle twelfth century. Characteristic of this type is the legend RAMON COMES, encircling a large cross; the reverses are commonly inscribed TOLOSA CIVI, around a field where appear enigmatic symbols most probably to be interpreted as spelling the word PAX.9 This word is clearly inscribed on certain Toulousan coins of the late eleventh century, undoubtedly in reference to the peace movement which, as one of its principles, encouraged the minting of good money.10 A half penny of Simon de Montfort, who occupied Toulouse for several months in 1215, is extant and bears the same inscription.11 The cross, the abbreviated CIVITAS, and the reference to the peace, are clear evidence that the bishops of Toulouse had shared in the coinage. Their rights, however, were entirely lost by the early years of the thirteenth century.12 The coinage was long maintained at a relatively high weight and fineness. Known in the twelfth century as moneta decena (ten-twelfths fine), it became officially septena in 1178 by act of Raymond V. In the case of Toulouse these fractional designations appear to have described the weight of the coins as well as their fine silver content.13 The septena remained legally unchanged during a period 8

By the eleventh century the regal imprint on the coins had largely disappeared or been transformed. It is well understood, by the testimony of types, that numerous seigneurial coinages were derived from that of Toulouse; see Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 239, 243; Chalande, "Monnaies baronales & episcopates de la province de Languedoc," in Claude de Vic, J. J. Vaissette, Histoire generate de Languedoc (hereinafter cited as H.L.), 16 vols. (Toulouse, 1872-1904), vn, 390-391. Royal charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, confirming seigneurial rights of coinage, were a mark of the completeness of the change, but also heralded a new period and the start of a reverse development. 9 See Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales, 11, pi. Ixxxi, 4. But cf. the discussion by G. Pierfitte, "Monnaies," Rev. Num., xxxvin, 48-49. Pierfitte seems to disregard the perhaps too ingenious explanation of Louis Blancard, "Nouveau classement des monnaies Languedociennes," Memoires de VAcademie des Sciences, Bettes-Lettres, et Arts de Marseille, 1888, pp. 99-105, who thinks the symbols have a double significance, relating not only to a personal name — perhaps VGO — but also to amounts of seigneuriage. 10 A valuable suggestion by John H. Mundy, Liberty and Political Power in Toulouse, 1050-1230 (New York, 1954), p. 28. 11 Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 235. 12 See texts of 1205 and 1222, Cartulaire du Bourg, in R. Limouzin-Lamothe, La Commune de Toulouse et les Sources de son Histoire (1120-1249); Etude historique et critique suivie de V edition du cartulaire du consulat (Toulouse-Paris, 1932), pp. 403-404, 421-422. Faced by a strong, independent town organization and a powerful seigneur, the temporal authority of the bishop was very weak. See Mundy, Liberty and Political Power in Toulouse, pp. 80-82. 13 Professor Mundy, ibid., p. 240, n. 73, doubts that the term decena expressed any notion more precise than one of fitness or suitability. This argument does not account for numerous, and parallel, references to coins octena, e.g., H.L., v, 735 (1095), and septena, e.g., Limouzin-Lamothe, Commune de Toulouse, p. 403 (1207); see also P. Guilhermoz, "De la taille du denier dans le haut moyen age," B.E.C., LXXXIV (1923), 267. Mundy's citation from the Cartulaire de VAbbaye de Saint-Sernin de

396

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

when the royal coinage of Tours was already at a standard of four-twelfths or three and three-quarters fine. Their taitte to the marc was normally 26 shillings of Toulouse,14 and thus the Toulousan penny was worth approximately two pennies of Tours. In 1205 Raymond VI lost his right to change the coinage, promising the churches, consuls, and people of Toulouse not to alter the septena. His son made a similar promise in 1222, but in that troubled period he seems not to have had confidence in his ability to maintain a stable coinage.16 References to the later coinage of Raymond VII are vague, but there is some evidence for a change in standard about the year 1240.16 The one other coinage controlled directly by Raymond VII was that of the marquisate of Provence, which had its origin in the twelfth century.17 It was of little importance in the era of Louis IX. Both coinages were continued in new series by Alfonse, who reduced the alloy to the point of approximate equivalence with that of other seigneurial and royal pennies. From the vicecomital mints of Beziers and Carcassonne came pennies similar in types, weight, and fineness18 to those of Toulouse. It is not certain whether the bishops shared in the rights to these coinages. No coins later than the period of Raymond Roger (1194-1209) are known to numismatists. His successor, Raymond Trencavel II (1209-1247), fought a losing battle with the Montforts for control of Carcassonne and it is in this period that the end of the seigneurial series must be placed. The coinage of Albi was shared by the count of Toulouse, probably from the later twelfth century, with the bishop and viscount.19 The several varieties of "raymondins," as the pennies were called, cannot be assigned to specific dates or rulers before June 1248, when Count Raymond VII, Sicard Alaman, Raymond's chief minister, and the bishop of Albi divided among themselves the rights to the moneta ramundensium Albiensis. They stipulated that coins were to be struck, when needed, at Chateauneuf de Bonafos, which Raymond had granted in fief to Sicard in 1241 on condition that he build a castle or town there.20 The pennies minted under this arrangement can be easily identified.21 The "episcopal" cross Toulouse, ed. C. Douais (Toulouse, 1887), which reads: "Hec moneta fuit decena in argento et pondere," was discussed by Guilhennoz in the article just cited, 267-268. His conclusion, namely, that the coinage so described was ten-twelfths that of a fictive, perhaps once real, coinage in weight as well as in alloy, appears reasonable. Cf. Pierfitte, "Monnaies," Rev. Num., xxxvm, 59. 14 See H.L., vm, 499, ii (1207), 797 (1224); Layettes, n, 136a (1227), 511a (1248). On the marc see n. 28 below. 15 Documents of 1224, 1227, and 1243, cited n. 14. 16 Layettes, n, 437b. 17 See Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 151, and fig. 86. 18 Ibid., 239-240; Guilhennoz, "Taille du denier," B.E.C., LXXXIV, 268-269; they were 8 d. fine in the twelfth century. See Poey d'Avant, Monnaies fMales, n, pi. Ixxxiv, 11; Ixxxv, 9-12, for reproductions of the later coins. 19 See Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 238. 20 H.L., viu, 1245-47; vi, 727; Clement Compayre, Etudes historiques et Documents inidits sur I'Albigeois, le Castrais et I'ancien dioctse de Lavaur (Albi, 1841), pp. 312-313. 21 They were known as "raymondins of Bonafos" (Ramondenx Bonafossenx); see Un Cartulaire et divers actes des Alaman, des de Lautrec et des de Levis . . ., edd. £. Cabie, L. Mazens (Toulouse, 1882), p. 96.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

397

and the legend R BONAFOS are prominent features of their design. Degenerate letters in the obverse field, less legible than the corresponding symbols of Toulousan pennies, have, like the latter, been read as PAX.22 The raymondins were probably approximately equivalent to tournois in value.23 Although the seigneurial series continued through the reign of Louis IX, the mint of Albi-Bonafos was not very productive under the administration of Alfonse.24 In the Agenais, a dowry which came with the English wife of Raymond VI, the count of Toulouse retained his suzerainty over a coinage which was exploited solely by the bishops of Agen in the thirteenth century. The coins were known as "arnaldins," after several of the bishops, and in the time of Alfonse they were slightly inferior in value to royal pennies,25 The old seigneurial mints of Melgueil and Narbonne continued in activity throughout the thirteenth century. In consequence of the Albigensian crusade the count of Melgueil in 1215 was dispossessed of his holdings, including mint rights, which were granted by Innocent III to the bishop of Maguelonne. As seigneuriage the lord and consuls of Montpellier reserved a certain number of coins from each emission, but the bishop retained the greatest share throughout the century. There was no other coinage in Montpellier until 1273, when James I of Aragon instituted a gros money of fine silver. The coinage of Narbonne was originally the sole property of the viscount, but in 1215 the rights were divided by Aimery III, intuitu pietatis, with Archbishop Arnauld Amaury. Melgorian pennies, which were imitations of certain coins of Narbonne, bore the name Raymond, after an early viscount of Narbonne. The reverse type of the "melgorian," four ringlets with the name of Narbonne, was until 1215 characteristic of coins of the latter city. The distinguishing feature of the Melgorian penny was the peculiar disjointed cross in the obverse field.26 After 1215 a key, symbolic of archiepiscopal authority, was represented on the coins of Narbonne.27 22 Chalande, "Monnaies baronales," H.L., vn, 415; Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 238. In contrast to the situation at Toulouse, the bishop of Albi was a powerful temporal lord. 23 The texts are not informative on this point. However in 1278 raymondins were at an alloy of 8f, and 74f shillings-worth to the marc; see P. Guilhermoz, "Avis sur la question monetaire donnes aux rois Philippe le Hardi, Philippe le Bel, Louis X et Charles le Bel," Rev. Num., 4th ser., xxv (1922), 178, n. 1. In a charter granted by Sicard Alaman to the inhabitants of Chateauneuf de Bonafos in 1256, they were termed gros with respect to pennies of Cahors, worth two of the latter (Compayre, Albigeois, p. 320). In this period caorsins were approximately half the tournois in value; see Edgard Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers . . . (Paris, 1870), p. 214. 24 See ibid., p. 215; between All Saints 1255 and the feast of St Michael 1259 only 39 livres were struck, and there was little subsequent activity. 25 Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 221-222, and fig. 121; A. Vuitry, Les Monnaies et le Regime montiaire de la monarchic jeodale de Hugues-Capet a Philippe-le-Bel (987-1285) . . . (Paris, 1876), p. 65, and n. 2. 26 See in general, on the coinage of Melgueil, A. Germain, "Memoire sur les anciennes monnaies seigneuriales de Melgueil et de Montpellier," Memoires de la Sodete Archeologique de Montpellier, m (1850-54), 133-255, also plate, 1-4; cf. Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales, n, pi. Ixxxv, 14-20. The represented coins are undated; presumably designs changed little. See also G. Amardel, "Un denier inedit d'Aimeri III, vicomte de Narbonne," Rev. Num., 4th ser., xxi (1917-18), 47. 27 See Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 243; Poey d'Avant, Monnaies ffodales, n, pi. Ixxxii, 19, 21. In 1242 the archbishop complained that Viscount Amaury IV had forcibly seized the former's share of the rights; in 1266 the two lords were again contesting the moneta (H.L., vi, 745, 897).

398

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries pennies of Melgueil were coined at a ratio of approximately 50 shillings-worth to the marc of Montpellier or Narbonne, a standard of monetary weight in very common use in Languedoc.28 Early in the twelfth century they were eight d. fine and equivalent in value to pennies of Narbonne.29 Subsequent mutations cut the value of both coinages approximately in hah*, that of Narbonne declining the more rapidly. In 1156 the penny of Narbonne was four-fifths the melgorian in value, a ratio which had decreased to three-fourths by the middle of the thirteenth century,30 when melgorians were normally at a fineness of four d. or a little less. In weight and alloy, therefore, the Toulousan penny (26 s. to the marc; 7 d. fine, until 1249) was worth approximately two pennies of Melgueil, with respect to which it was, in fact, regarded as a gros coin.31 Principally because of a decline in weight the melgorian during the reign of Louis IX tended toward equality in standard with the royal penny of Tours (58 s. to the marc; 3f d. fine). The alloy remained unchanged, at least de jure, but in 1261 the value of the Melgorian shilling relative to the marc fine was fixed at 60.32 Late in 1265 the viscount of Narbonne contracted for a coinage at a fineness of three and a hah* and, by weight, 25 s. 8 d. to the alloyed marc (or 88 s. to the marc fine).33 The coins struck at Cahors and Rodez throughout the thirteenth century were somewhat similar in appearance.84 This may be accounted for in part by the fact that at one time both counties had been connected with Toulouse. The bishop controlled the coinage of Cahors, but the rodan&is was largely, if not en88

The texts do not often specify which marc is meant; see, e.g., ibid., vm, 460, i, 462, iv, 471, iii, relating to period 1199-1201, and indicating that little if any difference was recognized. See Cartulaire de la seigneurie de Fontjoncouse, ed. G. Mouynes (1876), pp. 13-14, for ratio of 48 s. Melgueil to the marc of Narbonne; H.L., vm, 520, 50 s. Melgueil to the marc of Montpellier (1204). The marc of Millau was certainly identical with that of Montpellier (thirteenth century coutumes, M. A. F. de Gaujal, Etudes historiques sur le Rouergue, 4 vols. [Paris, 1858-59], i, 286), that of Beziers probably so (Cartulaire de Beziers: Livre Noire de Beziers, ed. J. Rouquette [Paris-Montpellier, 1918], p. 450). Documents of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries indicate a variation of 47? to 52 s. Melgueil to the marc, the round number 50 being most common; see, e.g., H.L., v, 1122; VHI, 460, i, 462, iv, 580, i. The widely employed marc of Cologne also found its way into Languedoc, being utilized in the thirteenth century at Agen, Toulouse, Tournon, etc.; see Guilhermoz, "Remarques diverses sur les poids et mesures du moyen age," B.E.C., LXXX (1919), 77-78. Generalizations on the relative values of the different coinages in Languedoc are offered in this paper largely on the basis of the fact that there was little difference between the various marcs; according to the researches of Guilhennoz the marc of Montpellier bore to the marc of Troyes the relationship 85:87, while the ratio between the marcs of Cologne and Troyes was 15:16. See, on these points, his "Note sur les poids," B.E.C., LXVH, 187-189, 205, and n. 2; "Taille du denier," ibid., LXXXIV, 271. 29 See ibid., 269. 80 Inventaire-Sommaire des archives departementales . . . (hereinafter cited as I.S.A.D.), Aude, Series G-H (Carcassonne, 1900), G. 7, p. 14; Inventaires des archives communales . . . (hereinafter cited as I.A.C.), Narbonne, Annexes de la Serie AA, ed. Mouynes (Narbonne, 1871), p. 50. 81 Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 243; see documents of 1207, 1224, 1227, 1243, cited above, n. 14. 82 The Melgorian obole was of lower silver content (3 d. fine). See Germain, "Memoire," M em. Soc. Archlol. Montpel, m, 189-190. 88 1.A.C., Narbonne, Annexes de la Serie AA, p. 92. 84 Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales, n, pi. Ixxxvii, 8-11; Ixxxvi, 19-23.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

399

tirely, the possession of the count of Rodez.36 The "caorsins" were the more important of the two monies. Of very low worth they were evaluated by Alfonse at one-half the pennies of Tours.36 Rodanois were regarded in the later thirteenth century as a money equivalent, or alternative, to caorsins.87 The mint of the small, related seigneurs of Anduze-Sauve and Roquefeuil was located at Sommieres, on the river Vidourle. Their pennies, one-half the tournois in value,38 were known as "bernardins" and "raymondins." Featured in their distinctive but not dissimilar designs were the large letters B and R.39 These coins continued to be struck until about 1240. Finally, five episcopal coinages, all in varying degree obscure during the reign of Louis IX, may be mentioned summarily. The powerful bishops of Mende, who were counts of the Gevaudan, maintained an independent coinage throughout the century. Their pennies bore the name of Saint Privatus, with mitred head and cross.40 The bishops of Viviers had received their coinage originally by imperial concession. The thirteenth century, however, witnessed the gradual absorption of the diocese into the French sphere of influence. Although pennies of Viviers were apparently struck in the time of Louis IX, detailed knowledge of the seigneurial series is possible only from the reign of Philip the Fair.41 Royal charters regulated the episcopal coinages of Lodeve (1210, 1285) and Uzes (1211, 1255), but no coins of more recent date than the first years of the thirteenth century are known from these mints.42 Proverbially small in size and value, the pennies of Le Puy, or pougeoises, were by no means least in importance in Languedoc.43 The mint rights were held in pareage by the viscounts of Polignac and the bishops of Le Puy from 1173 until 1248, when the viscount sold his share to the chapter. The legends and types of the surviving coins are in many instances undecipherable.44 Until the last years of the reign of Louis IX, the pougeoises were of such low alloy as to be almost pure copper. They became synonymous throughout France with the quarter penny.45 85

The bishop of Rodez had certain rights in 1214, H.L., vin, 655. Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 214. 37 Layettes, m, 518b; J. Malinowski, "Notice sur les monnaies des ev£ques et des consuls de Cahors frappees sous la troisieme race des rois de France," Revue de VAgenais, n (1875), 296. For figures on the fluctuating weight and alloy of these coinages toward the close of the reign of St Louis, see ibid., 271; Guilhermoz, "Question monetaire," Rev. Num., xxv, 178, notes 2, 8. 38 See below p. 462. They were equal in value and interchangeable; cf. Querimoniae Alestensium, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France (hereinafter cited as H.F.), various edd., 24 vols. (Paris, 1738-1904), xxiv, ed. Delisle (1904), 401, D. 39 Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales, n, pi. Ixxxvi, 8-8. 40 Ibid., pi. Ixxxvi, 16-18. 41 See Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 246, fig. 141; 247. 42 I.S.A.D., Gard, Series G-H, Suppl. (Nimes, 1916), G. 1631, p. 89; see Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 240, 245; Poey d'Avant, Monnaies feodales, n, pi. Ixxxvi, 9-11. 43 See, in general, P. Olivier, "Les Monnaies feodales du Puy," Rev. Num., 4th ser., xxx (1927), 44 170-217; xxxi (1928), 83-100, with plate. Ibid., 193. 46 Ibid., 203-204; according to a charter of Alfonse of 1253, four pougeoises were worth one toulousan. In a contract of 1269 podienses nigri were prescribed, at an alloy of 2}, 1381 shillings-worth in the marc of fine silver (their taitte was 26 s. to the marc-weight of alloyed metal) (ibid., xxxi, 86), 36

400

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

The patterns of distribution of these seigneurial coinages, or the particular regions of Languedoc in which they circulated, can be more clearly determined than the administration of the mints. Texts which refer to a particular kind of money are, of course, extremely numerous.46 A brief analysis based upon a sampling of them will suffice for purposes of the present inquiry. Until the middle of the thirteenth century no coinage was so widely used in Languedoc as the Melgorian. In Montpellier and its environs, from Beziers to the Vidourle, it was virtually unrivalled.47 Payments for sales and services,48 loans,49 customary rents,60 and seigneurial dues,61 were all made in money of Melgueil. The apparent quiescence of the nearby episcopal mint of Lodeve in this period may have been due in part to this veritable flood of melgorians. In the eastern parts of the senSchaussee of Beaucaire, likewise, the values of rents and dues were frequently expressed in terms of money of Melgueil.62 In the region about Sommieres, Nimes, and Beaucaire, however, these coins were no longer in common use.53 The principal circulating specie there were the raymondins and bernardins of Sommieres, pougeoises, and the episcopal pennies of Mende and Vienne.64 To judge from the record of the enqueteurs of 1247-1248, the raymondins were the most commonly used pennies in the vigueries of Nimes, Beaucaire, and Sommieres until about 1240,66 whereas in the district of Alais the bernardins shared their supremacy.66 Melgorians continued in use in Alais and farther to the north until late in the century.67 The black pennies of Le Puy were 48

There is no need for special citation of the host of surviving contracts, donations, recognitions of rents and revenues, etc., which specify that the coinage in question should also be "current" (moneta current, percurribilis, etc.) in a particular area. In an age when transactions, as well as coinages, were relatively localized, there was no concept of widespread "legal-tender" to ensure acceptability of coins. 47 There are rare references to money of Beziers, e.g., H.L., v, 1449, clxxxv; H.F., xxiv, 347, H, I. With regard to the diocese of Agde, the agreement of 1150 between viscounts Raymond Trencavel and Bernard Atto (of Nimes) that "nee aliam monetam ibi faciant, sed moneta Biterrensis currat pro totum Agathensem" remained a dead letter (H.L., v, 1123; for use of melgorians there, see 1315-25). See generally Querimoniae Carcassonensium, Biterrensium, 1247-1248, H.F., xxiv, 299385, on the predominance of money of Melgueil in the whole area. 48 Ibid., 364, H, 366, A, c, H-I, 375, A-B, 381, F. 49 Ibid., 336, H-I, 361, G-H. 60 Ibid., 354, K, 624, K. 61 Ibid., 325, Q, 326, o, 356,1, 374, c, 644, i, 645, A. For examples of customary tallies evaluated in money of Melgueil, see 869, B-C, 612, H-I. » For examples of 1243 and 1266 see I.S.A.D., Gard, Series G-H, Suppl., H. 788, pp. 59-60; H. 888, p. 218. 53 Occasional mention of melgorians at Remoulins, Sommieres, Nimes, and Psalmody is cited in Robert Michel, L* Administration royale dans la senechaussee de Beaucaire au temps de Saint Louis (Paris, 1910), app. m, p. 326. 54 On the latter coinage see Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 161-164, and figs. 91-93. 66 H.F., xxiv, 420, B, F, 421, B, F, H, etc.; 444, A, 445, o, etc.; 430, H, 439, F. Note also 412, F, 427, A, 431, E, 439, G, where extortions by royal officials between 1226 and 1243 in shillings "raimundencium tune currentium" are reported. 66 Ibid., 393, F, H, j, 400, A, 395, F, 398, B, 401, D, etc. 67 Michel, Beaucaire, p. 326; I.S.A.D., Lozere, Serie G, n (Mende, 1890), G. 1935, p. 104.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

401

more common in Alais than in the southern vigueries,6* and were the predominant currency in the Velay, and possibly the Rouergue.59 The moneta viannensis was widely used in the same regions. The mendois circulated in the Gevaudan,60 where money of Le Puy must also have been very common. The coins of Melgueil were not unknown in the Rouergue,61 and they were well recognized and "current" in the Albigeois. In August 1239 Philippe de Montfort, lord of Castres, promised the bishop and chapter of Albi to continue to pay a certain rent initiated by Simon de Montfort in 1212, amounting to twenty pounds of Melgueil.62 A house was sold at Castres in 1271 for 26 pounds in the same currency.63 Only malgoyrencs are mentioned in the monetary tariffs of the charter of coutumes granted by the viscount of Lautrec to the inhabitants of Paulin in 1253.64 Raymondins of Albi also circulated extensively in the Albigeois, but not much more so than the melgorians.66 According to the agreement of June 1248, between the count of Toulouse, the bishop of Albi, and Sicard Alaman, their coins were to circulate and to be accepted "comuniter ab omnibus" in the dioceses of Rodez and Cahors as well as in the Albigeois.66 If there was a leading seigneurial penny in that region it was the caorsin. Rents, pecuniary amends, and sales were frequently stipulated in money of Cahors in such places as Albi, Cordes, Gaillac, Candeil, Villefranche, and Penne.67 Pennies of Rodez, which circulated in the Rouergue with the pougeoises,** were also used in the Albigeois, probably more so in the later years of the period.69 Seigneurial pennies of Toulouse were somewhat less common in the Albigeois,70 but they were the leading currency in the valley of the Garonne, from Moissac M

H.F., xxiv, 392, H-K, 897, J-K, 398, B-H, etc.; cf. 405, J. Cartidaire des Templiers du Puy-en-Velay, ed. A. Chassaing (Paris, 1882), pp. 28, 30, 35-36, 3941, 44, 61; I.S.A.D., Haute-Loire, Serie H, Suppl. (Le Puy, 1931), IB. 282, pp. 50-51; IB. 289, p. 54; IB. 300, p. 58. See examples of its use in the Rouergue, Cartulaire de I'abbaye de Bonneval en Rouergue, edd. P. A. Verlaguet, J. L. Rigal (Rodez, 1938), pp. 126, 140, 163, 177, 198. 60 Michel, Beaucaire, p. 326. 61 Cartidaire . . . de Bonneval, pp. 129, 137. 62 H.L., vi, 646. 68 1.S.A.D., Tarn, Series G-H (Albi, 1915), H. 419, p. 344. 64 Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 341-342. See also H.L., v, 1341, Ixix, 1345, Ixxxviii, etc. 66 See, e.g., Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 398-399, 313-320, 160, vii; H.L., v, 1344, Ixxxv. 66 Ibid., vm, 1246. 67 See, e.g., Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 337, 398-399, 406-407; H.L., v, 1346, xciv; vi, 697; I.S.A.D., Tarn, Series G-H, G. 562, p. 173; H. 627, p. 422; Correspondance administrative d'Alfonse de Poitiers, (hereinafter cited as C.A.), ed. A. Molinier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1894-1900), n, No. 1859. The caorsin was unchallenged in the Quercy; see Malinowski, "Monnaies . . . de Cahors," Rev. Agenais, n, 268, 270. 68 See Cartulaire . . . de Bonneval, pp. 134, 145, 170, etc. 69 At Caylus one Bego de Maresta in November 1267 complained of spoliation by the count's bayle of 9 pounds "ructenensium" (C.A., i, No. 494). Alfonse complained in 1270 that money of Rodez and Cahors circulated in the Albigeois and elsewhere to his prejudice (ibid., n, No. 1603). 70 In the coutumes of Saint-Sulpice, 1247, fines and amends are in tolzas (Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 455-458); see also coutumes of Saint-Urcisse, 1256, in filie Rossignol, Monographies communales ou Etude statistique, historique et monumentale du departement du Tarn, 4 vols. (Toulouse, 1864-66), iv, 71-75; also H.L., v, 1539, v. 69

402

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

to Comminges.71 Particularly in the western and southern sectors, however, the toulousans shared leadership, both as a coinage and as a money of account, with the moneta morlanensis of Beam, in this period somewhat superior to tournois in intrinsic value.72 At Pamiers and Lezat payments for sales and rents were invariably in one or the other of these coinages.73 The toulousans "invaded" the upper country of Comminges, particularly after 1240, where they long remained predominant.74 Money of Morlaas was in use also in the Agenais, where the local arnaldins were the principal currency throughout the thirteenth century.75 In the Lauragais and the regions bordering on the territory of the HauteGaronne, the ubiquitous money of Melgueil was commonly used in sales, settlements, and loans.76 Even in Narbonne it was the leading currency.77 A council of Narbonne in 1246 ruled that Jewish families in the ecclesiastical province, extending to Perpignan, should pay six pennies of Melgueil to their local curate every Easter.78 At Fontjoncouse melgorians were in common use until midcentury.79 A few "foreign" coins, in addition to the monies of Morlaas and Vienne, circulated in Languedoc. They were principally Spanish pieces, introduced in the Midi in the period of Alfonse II of Aragon (1162-1196), who possessed Provence, Roussillon, and considerable domains in the Rouergue and Gevaudan. Among them were gros coins of gold, known variously as "alfonsins," "marabotins," and "crosats," which were evaluated in 1268 at 63^ to the marc of Troyes.80 Sterling pennies of England, of considerably greater intrinsic value than most contemporary French coins, were common currency in Gascony, and were not unknown in Languedoc.81 Toward the east the Provencal regales of Marseille and the 71

Ibid., vm, 752, iii (L'Isle Jourdain, 1228); v, 1624, Ivii (Pamiers, 1272); vi, 879 (Mas-Grenier, 1265); see also vm, 1081-83, 1110-11, etc. Many thirteenth-century coutumes published by Ramiere de Fortanier, Charles de Franchises du Lauragais (Paris, 1939), give evidence of the prevalence of toulousans in the Lauragais; see, e.g., pp. 120-121, 132, 295, 607-610, 703, 705. 72 The mint was at Morlaas. On this coinage see Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 89-90, and fig. 43; also table below, p. 463. The money of Morlaas was quite as widely used in Gascony as was the Melgorian money in Languedoc. 73 H.L., v, 1619, xxxii, 1621, xlv, 1624, Ivii, 1787, cccciv, 1797, cccclii, 1790, ccccxvii, ccccxviii, ccccxx, etc. 74 Charles Higounet, Le Comte de Comminges de ses origines a son annexion a la Couronne, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1949), n, 489. 75 See, e.g., Archives municipales d'Agen, Charles, Premiere Serie (1189-1328), edd. A. Magen, G. Tholin (Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 1876), Nos. xxiv, xl, xlix; C.A., i, No. 440; n, No. 1419; etc. 76 E.g., at Montolieu, 1229-1260, Cartulaire et Archives des communes de Vancien diocese et de Varrondissement administralif de Carcassonne, ed. A. J. Mahul, 7 vols. (Paris, 1857-82), i, 89-90, 92-93, 96; at Prouille, 1235,1.S.A.D., Aude, Series G-H, H. 341, p. 331. 77 For instances of its use at Narbonne, 1220-1275, see generally H.L., v, 1605-08; cf. I.A.C., Narbonne, Annexes de la Serie AA, pp. 49-58. 78 C. J. Hefele, Histoire des Conciles d'apres les documents originaux, tr. H. Leclercq, 11 vols. (Paris, 1907-52), v, ii, 1698, ch. 42. 79 Cartulaire . . . de Fontjoncouse, pp. 17-19, 65-66. 80 Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 219. Certain fixed revenues were sometimes satisfied by the payment of one such coin. See, e.g., Cartulaire . . . des Alaman, p. 92; also Compayre, Albigeois, p. 383. 81 C.A., i, Nos. 320, 323, 366; cf. Compayre, Albigeois, p. 180. See, regarding literary references, Urban T. Holmes, Jr, "Coins of Old French Literature," SPECULUM, xxxi (1956), 316-318.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

403

episcopal pennies of Valence, were probably in limited use.82 By the middle years of the thirteenth century it is likely that, to some extent, several of the seigneurial currencies are mentioned in the texts merely as monies of account. This point has been anticipated above with reference to the coinages of Toulouse and Morlaas; in Languedoc this was .almost certainly true in the case of the money of Melgueil as well. Old seigneurial dues and customary tariffs, mentioned or confirmed long after their institution, could be and undoubtedly were paid frequently in other coinages whose value in terms of Melgorian money would have been well known.83 This was probably the situation in the senechaussee of Beaucaire and in the Albigeois, where equivalences between baronial coins were well established.84 The money of Cahors was also in sufficiently wide use to be recognized very probably as constituting a system of account. The distribution of these various seigneurial pennies can be partially explained in terms of their values with respect to one another.85 The tendency of coins of relatively low intrinsic value to change hands rapidly must have been a factor contributing to the widespread circulation of melgorians, pougeoises, and caorsins. Melgorians passed out of common circulation, however, in the vigueries of Sommieres, Nimes, and Beaucaire, where the local raymondins and bernardins were of considerably less value. In the same region the royal enqueteurs received numerous complaints of extortion by the king's officials of coins of Vienne, which were only slightly less valuable than tournois.** At a legal fineness of four d. melgorians were probably approximately equivalent in value to the raymondins of Albi, but it is notable that the caorsins, so widely used in the Albigeois, were only about one-half their value. Similarly the relatively high quality of toulousans may well have been a reason for their restricted use in the Albigeois. Several reasons may be offered for the prevalence of toulousans in the Garonne valley. For one thing certain texts suggest that an effort was made to preserve a stable rate of exchange between Toulousan and Melgorian pennies.87 With a fixed and accepted ratio the latter were less likely to drive the toulousans from the field. Secondly, the regular standard or "face value" of these coins, legally unchanged since 1178, was probably by the time of Louis IX in excess of their actual or intrinsic value. Mediaeval pennies had a tendency to decline from their 82

The senechal of Carcassone in 1264 evaluated them at f the tournois; see table below, p. 441. However the absence of the qualifying phrases "in pecunia numerata," e.g., Cartvlaire de Maguelone, edd. J. Rouquette, A. Villemagne, 4 vols. (Montpellier, 1912-24), n, 618, or "in solidos denariorum," e.g., H.F., xxiv, 378, J, can hardly be regarded as evidence that pennies of Melgueil are not intended. 84 The references to moneta biterrensis cited above, n. 47, may well belong in this category. In June 1298 a rent of four pennies of Melgueil was included in the sale of a certain property near Cordiere, in eastern Languedoc, price of which sale being 60 shillings tournois, I.S.A.D., Gard, Serie E (Nimes, 1894), E. 272, p. 212. 86 Where possible fairly precise figures have been cited above for the standards of the coinages. No dogmatic or exact deductions can be made from them, of course. 88 About mid-century they were t the pennies of Tours, in 1268, f (Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, iv, 163). 87 The,instruments cited above, n. 14, have in common the formula "solidos Tolosanos bonos vel Melgorienses duplos." 83

404

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

declared standards, and it is not easy to suppose that one of such relatively high value as the toulousan could be maintained without mutations over so long a period. However that may be, Alfonse, early in his administration of Toulouse, lowered the weight and alloy for his new series of seigneurial pennies. This may help to explain the extended use of toulousans in the county of Comminges in the second half of the thirteenth century. Just how long the old coinages of Carcassonne and Beziers continued at their originally high weight and alloy is not known, but it is certain that they were almost totally displaced from common circulation by the lower quality melgorians. In the early years of royal administration, from 1226 to about 1240, the circulation of tournois money in Languedoc gradually increased. Philippe de Montfort and the bishop of Albi made a transaction in 1231 involving a sum of 200 pounds tournois.** In a charter granted to Lautrec by viscount Sicard de Lautrec in the following year payments and tariffs in tomeses are specified; and in 1235 we find record of a sale made at Prouille for 41 shillings of Tours.89 In 1247 the provincial chapter of the Dominicans required that the convents of Languedoc should support their students in tournois, an indication that the system, if not the coins themselves, was in general use in the Midi.90 There was as yet, however, no determined royal policy that payments by and to royal officials should be made in the king's money. An annual taille of 200 pounds of Melgueil was imposed on the rebellious town of Limoux in 1226,91 and there are many other indications that before 1247 royal officials dealt in various ways in the senechaussee of Carcassonne in money of Melgueil.92 In fact the problem for the king in this period was to provide a sufficiency of royal specie to ensure its common use, and in order to accomplish this it was necessary to establish royal mints in Languedoc. The yoke of the king's administration in Languedoc was a heavy one, as the querimoniae of 1247H18 reveal only too clearly. Trencavel's revolt in 1240 and Count Raymond's two years later found strong support in a subject population which knew few concessions for its loyalty. But the issue was decided in favor of the king, with similar consequences in both royal senechauss&es. The viscounties of Carcassonne and Beziers passed to the direct control of the Crown in 1247; and Louis IX made a royal stronghold of the city of Carcassonne. The support tendered the revolt by the small but powerful baronage of eastern Languedoc 88 89

102.

H.L., v, 1342, Ixxii. Compayre, Albigeois, p. 495; I.S.A.D., Aude, Series G-H, Add. (Carcassonne, 1925), H. 474, p.

90 Ada Capituhrum Provincialium Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum: Premiere Province de Provence, Province Romaine, Province cFEspagne (1839-1308), ed. C. Douais (Toulouse, 1894), p. 31; the injunction is repeated in many succeeding chapters; see, e.g., pp. 33, 40, 44-45, 48. 91 H.L., vin, 1391-92. 92 H.F., xxiv, 345, J, 366, E, 373, G, 382, H, i. There are many instances in the querimoniae of extortions in money of Melgueil. In one notable case it is clear that an alms in tournois, granted early in the reign to one Johannes de Burgis, had been regularly paid for 15 years in "melgorienses, et ita diminuitur helemosina domini regis per augmentum monetae, quod est de turonensi usque ad melgoriensem, . . . " (ibid., 366, G-H).

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

405

led to the wholesale confiscation of their rights and properties by the king. Pierre Bermond VII of Sauve was forced to surrender Hierle, with its rich mines of copper and silver in 1243,93 and five years later, in 1248, the barony and mint of Sommieres, which he shared with Bernard of Anduze, was also ceded to Louis IX.94 The king established two royal mints certainly, and probably a third, in this turbulent period. One was at Nimes and commenced operations in 1239 or 1240,95 while that of Sommieres was active probably from the time of its cession to the king.96 In both these mints the conventional and standard pennies of Tours seem to have been issued.97 But it appears that a special penny of Nimes, with a local type, was created. One such coin is known: obv., LVDOVICVS REX, with great fleur de lys; rev., NEMAUSI CIVI, with cross and twofleurs de lys. The French numismatist Lafaurie describes this as a gros coin, worth two pennies of Tours; in design it certainly seems to have been the model for the "gros toulousan" of Philip III.98 The question arises whether coins of this type are to be identified with the nemausenses which were in common circulation in Nimes and Beaucaire from about 1240 and which were so often mentioned in the querimoniae." It has been supposed that the nemausenses were simply tournois minted at Nimes,100 and indeed there is evidence that, at least until 1253, Nimes pennies were tournois in weight and alloy.101 But the description "Nimes money" (moneta nemausensis) suggests that the king had a local type from the outset, perhaps not different 98

In general, however, the mines of Languedoc do not appear to have been serious objects of royal policy in the reign of St Louis. Other important silver mines were located at Villemagne, diocese of Beziers, Largentiere, hi the Vivarais, and Orzals, in the Rouergue., As suzerain of the Rouergue Alfonse entered upon treaties to gain profits from Orzals (Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, pp. 208209). 94 On these points see Michel, Beaucaire, pp. 124-125, 138-140. 96 Ibid., p. 328, n. 2. 96 Perhaps even earlier. The royal coinage at Sommieres is first mentioned in 1264-65; see n. 163 below, and Les Olim: Registres des arrets rendus par la cour du Roi, ed. A. Beugnot, 4 vols. (Paris, 1839-48), i, 602. But the remarkable increase in circulation of tournois in the vigueries of Alais, Beaucaire, and Sommieres (H.F., xxiv, 400, K, 401, E, 496, F, 499, E, 422, F, 440, A, etc.), combined with certain doubts whether conventional tournois were produced in quantity at Nimes, suggest the early operation of the mint at Sommieres. Detailed knowledge of this mint, important in the financial operations of Philip the Fair, seems to be available only from a period late in the century; see F. de Saulcy, "Sur les ateliers monetaires royaux, qui ont fonctione dans le Languedoc, depuis Philippe III jusqu'a Francois ler inclusivement," H.L., vn, 438. 97 For evidence of a tournois coinage at Sommieres, see n. 163 below; there is no mention of a local type. 98 Jean Lafaurie, Les Monnaies des rois de France (Paris, 1951), pp. 25-26; cf. Blanchet, Dieudonne, Manuel, n, 229. 99 H.F., xxiv, 420, G, H, J, 423, B, i, 424, A, 454, D-F, etc. 100 Michel, Beaucaire, p. 327, n. 8. He cites, n. 11, from the Memoire relatifau pareage de 1307 conclu entre Veveque Guillaume Durand II et le roi Philippe-le-Bel (Societe d'Agriculture, Sciences & Arts de la Lozere, i, Mende, 1896), p. 307, which refers to the bishop's attempt to prohibit the "cursum turonensium nemausensium et alterius monete regis per Gaballitanum." But cf. ibid., pp. 354-355, where turonenses and nemausenses are certainly distinguished. 101 Layettes, m, 188b.

406

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

from that of our surviving specimen.102 There are other indications that tournois and nemausenses were, at least in some respects, distinct from one another. A sale for "centum libras nemausensium" and a request for a payment of "viginti et quatuor libras turonensium" were mentioned in a single deposition in 1248.103 In another case a lady named Beatrice complained to the royal enqueteur that one of the vicars of Nimes had extorted fifteen shillings of Nimes from her because she had required a payment from a certain man in money of Nimes and had refused his proffered payment in tournois.10* Possibly the nemausenses were (or were thought to be) of better weight and alloy,105 but it is doubtful that true gros coins were struck so early. The best explanation would appear to be that, while ordinary pennies of Tours may have been minted at Nimes, a new penny with a local type, but differing only slightly if at all in quality from toumois, was issued there and passed into circulation. The establishment of these mints introduced the first concentrated effort on the part of the royal government to drive from circulation the seigneurial coinages of a particular locality. The raymondins, bernardins, viennois, etc., were much used until about 1240, the tournois relatively little. Within a decade this situation had been virtually reversed.106 About the year 1245 it was publicly prohibited at Beaucaire to use any coinage there other than that of Nimes.107 Many complaints of monetary exactions after 1239 specify money of Tours or Nimes.108 Carcassonne became the third royal mint in Languedoc. It is first mentioned in an arbitrage of April 1253,109 but like Sommieres, probably began to operate almost from the time of its conquest. The earliest royal legislation relating to the coinages in the senechaussee of Carcassonne dates from July 1247.110 Its effect was to endorse vigorously the use of royal money in that district. The mint at Carcassonne was still active in 1265,111 but meanwhile, about the year 1264, still another royal mint had been established at Saint-Antonin.112 This strategically 102

Nemausensis implies a legend such as NEMAUSI, for tournois, raymondins, bernardins, etc., derived their names from characteristic legends and types. 103 H.F., xxiv, 502, G-H. 104 Ibid., 419, H-I. From the judgment in the case (H.L., vn, Enqueteurs royaux, 135) it seems that the issue concerned the relative, perhaps shifting, values of the coinages: "Injunctum fuit Ricardo notario, qui remanserat loco Micahelis de Caslarii, nomine dicti Micahelis, quod reddat dicte Beatrici XV sol. Nem., secundum quod tune valebant infra festum purificationis beate Marie." The vicariate of Michael de Castlario is dated 1248-1248 (Michel, Beaucaire, app. v, p. 336). 105 The texts just cited, n. 104, cannot be pressed too far in support of this view; there is little other evidence. However, at some time between April 1243, when Oudard de Villers became senechal (Michel, Beaucaire, p. 334), and 1247, when depositions were brought against him, 20 pounds of Nimes were regarded as equivalent to 50 pounds of raymondins (H.F., xxiv, 436, H). A normal exchange ratio of 2 to 1 was established in this period between raymondins and tournois. 106 Relevant citations in n. 96 above. 107 H.F., xxiv, 508, i, j. 108 Ibid., 394, B, 414, A, 419, o-i, 496, F, 499, B, etc. 109 H.L., vm, 1320. 110 Ibid., 1195, xv. This document is discussed in greater detail below, pp. 409-10. 111 Layettes, iv, 90a. 112 H.L., vm, 1503. Boutaric (Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 211, n. 3) thinks 1263; Molinier (C.A., n,

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

407

located town, bordering on the Quercy and the Rouergue,118 was the seat of an old viscounty whose title had passed to the king in 1229. The inhabitants of the locality, a prey to the depredations of the count of Toulouse, aroused the attention of the government sufficiently for the king to order in May 1247 that it be administered henceforth as part of the senechaussee of Carcassonne.114 Regular tournois pennies were issued both at Carcassonne and at Saint-Antonin.116 Thus after the final setback of baronial opposition in the 1240's, and with the establishment of royal mints in the political centers of four conquered viscounties,116 the way was well prepared for the extensive circulation of the king's money in Languedoc. From this time forward royal officials themselves set an example for the governed, assigning rents and revenues, paying wages, and making payments for purchases of various kinds, in tournois.111 Crown politics in Languedoc received an additional impetus in this important decade when, on the decease of Raymond VII in 1249, Alfonse brought the county of Toulouse into the royal family. The administration of Alfonse, carried out in the reorganized comital s6n6chauss6es of Toulouse-Albigeois, Agenais-Quercy, the Rouergue, and the comtat Venaissin,118 cleared the way for the extension of direct royal authority over Toulouse when he died in 1271. Distinct royal policies toward the coinages featured the second half of Saint Louis' reign. Aside from the persistent promotion of the use of royal money, an effort which was made throughout the kingdom, three general rulings seem to have had particular importance in their application to Languedoc. First, the principle was laid down that royal coins should be current everywhere, while seigneurial coins should be restricted in circulation to their issuing principalities. Secondly, the government made an effort to establish fixed exchange rates between royal and seigneurial coinages. Thirdly, imitations of foreign, particularly Islamic, coins were prohibited. An important royal ordinance, rendered at Chartres in March 1263,119 officially inaugurated the first of these policies. It contained an important and relevant corollary, namely, the prohibition of seigneurial coins similar in appearance to those of the king. By this Louis recognized No. 2034) says about 1264. The latter date is preferable, if a document dated 26 January 1264 is taken into account. In it are mentioned, with the omission of Saint-Antonin, the mints of the king, Alfonse, and Charles of Anjou in Languedoc and Provence (Layettes, iv, 90a.). 118 The Quercy had passed by treaty to the king of England in 1259 (ibid., m, 487a-489a). 114 H.L., vi, 786, n. 2 (Molinier). 116 Ibid., vin, 1503; Layettes, m, 188b; there is no mention of a local type at either place. 116 Technically, Anduze-Sauve was a seigneury, but had been quite as strong and independent as Carcassonne, probably more so than Nimes and Saint-Antonin. 117 Michel, Beaucaire, piece justif. No. 48, p. 451 (senechal of Beaucaire by royal order assigns bishop of Nimes a revenue of 20 1. tournois, 1269); H.L., v, 1468, liv (senechal of Carcassonne by royal order assigns a revenue of 10 1. tournois to chapter of Saint-Nazaire, 1248); ibid., 1489, civ (senechal assigns a rent of 13 s. tournois to bishop of Carcassonne, 1257); ibid., vm, 1362, xvii (wages to soldarii in the castra, senechaussee of Carcassone, being paid in tournois, 1255); ibid., 1509-10 (sale to king by former viscount Trencavel of a castle in the Razes, for 6101. tournois, 1263). 118 A. Molmier, "fitude sur 1'administration de Louis IX & d'Alfonse de Poitiers (1226-1271)," ibid., vn, 490-491; Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 142. 119 Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisieme race, 21 vols. (Paris, 1723-1849), I, 93-94.

408

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

publicly that the confusion of a baronial with a royal penny would tend to favor and to extend the general circulation of the former, which was of course not at all his official intention. It may also be regarded as a contemporary indication of the generally recognized supremacy of the king's coinages. To appreciate the main reasons for this prohibition, however, we must refer to the Toulousan coinage of Alfonse. Soon after succeeding to their domains and privileges, the king's brother initiated a seigneurial coinage wholly unlike the traditional and accepted moneta septena of the Raymonds. In design the new pennies were similar to Alfonse's Poitevin coinage, which was being altered in the same period in such a way as to resemble the tournois closely.120 The first toulousans bore the types, obv., ANFOS COMES, with cross; rev., TOLOSA CIVI, in three lines.121 Soon there followed a significant change. Pennies and half pennies of the same design were issued, but with the addition of a decorative fleur de lys in the second segment of the field cut by the cross.122 Then, from 1251 to about 1262, Alfonse's mint at Toulouse issued toulousans which were in virtually all respects imitation tournois; the designs: obv., A. CO. FILIVS REG, with cross; rev., THOLOSA CIVI, with the characteristic "castle" of Tours.123 It is not difficult to imagine how these features might easily have led the casual user to mistake such pennies, especially when blackened and battered, for tournois. These different toulousans — certainly at least the latter variety — were tournois in standard as well as in design.124 But it was their similarity in appearance to royal pennies which caused friction. Undoubtedly Louis IX had these coins in mind when he published the ordinance of 1263. The toulousans specifically, along with poitevins and certain coins of Provence, were termed "counterfeits" of royal pennies in 1265.125 Probably because of their greater abundance, the king took a more drastic step with regard to the poitevins when in 1263 he ordered the mint at Montreuil-Bonnin to be closed altogether.126 At Toulouse, in addition to the objectionable "tholosani simplices," gros pennies of Toulouse were being minted; presumably the ordinance did not apply to them.127 The 120

Notably by the addition of the "castle" design, and by the adoption of the tournois standards. See Pierfitte, "Mommies," Rev. Num., xxxvm, 60-61, and pi. iv, 11-12. 122 Ibid., pi. iv, 13-14. 128 Ibid., pi. iv, 15. 124 Layettes, in, 188ab. 126 Ord., i, 95. 126 C.A., n, Nos. 1999-2001. From the royal letter of 21 June 126S (No. 1999), it is apparent that there had been an earlier prohibition. 127 Pierfitte, "Monnaies," Rev. Num., xxxvm, pi. iv, 17-18. The type was taken from ti^ Design of Erbert of Mans. It included an inconspicuous fleur de lys but not the castle. The grossi Tholosani were prescribed already in the contract of 24 July 1253 (Layettes, in, 188ab) so they can hardly have been instituted in consequence of the prohibition of 1263 (Pierfitte, "Monnaies," Rev. Num., xxxvm, 61). However there is extant a form letter of Alfonse, July 22 of an uncertain year, 1263-66, addressed to his senechals, requiring that they take counsel "cum probis, sapientibus et discretis viris . . . ut melius poteritis . . . super grossis monetis novis cudendis in terris nostris, ami videlicet et argenti, . . . " ["Mandements ineclits d'Alfonse de Poitiers, comte de Toulouse (1262-1270)," ed. A. Molinier, Annales du Midi, xn (1900), 319.] The piece is interesting as an indication of Alfonse's recognition of the efficacy of consultation with the community on matters of general concern; the new coinage, however, seems not to have materialized. 121

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

409

"castle" type was also characteristic of Alfonse's new coinage in the Venaissin (the old marquisate of Provence). It is perhaps not without significance that that mint does not appear to have been productive after 1263.128 Alfonse wished to see his coins circulate generally with those of the king. Unwilling to be regarded as just "another baron," he looked upon his relationship to the king as reason for special privileges. On several occasions he refused to perform feudal homage for rights and properties which, as count of Toulouse, he held of ecclesiastical lords, regarding such an act as degrading for so great a seigneur.129 In a charter granted to his minters at Toulouse in 1251, Alfonse's senechal, in clear recognition of his master's purpose, promised among other things to exclude from circulation the old (septend) money of Toulouse, and all other coinages, except those of the count and the king.130 Several years later Alfonse requested the senechal of Carcassonne to promote the circulation of his Toulousan coins in royal territories, "just as he permitted those of the king to be current in his own lands."131 The pretensions of Alfonse notwithstanding, the ordinance of 1263 was directed as much to him as to any other baron. It made explicit for Languedoc what had been implied in the rulings of circa 1245 and 1247, mentioned above.132 The absolute prohibition of any but royal money in Beaucaire was possible because no seigneurial coinages remained legally existent in that locality. It may be that similar rulings were made at Nimes and Sommieres for the same reason. In its positive aspect the royal injunction for the senechaussee of Carcassonne of July 1247 reflects in part the same principle: the king's money must circulate throughout the bailiwick. This brief but important document has been wrongly interpreted, however, as a prohibition of seigneurial coinages/;133 it reads as follows (italics mine): Ludovicus, &c. J. de Cranis senescallo Careassone . . . . Mandamus vobis quatinus per totam balliviam vestram inhibeatis firmiter, ne aliquis aliquam monetam quam nostram capiat, nisi pro quanta valebit.m 128

Poey d'Avant, Monnaies fSodales, n, pi. Ixxxi, 20-21. Information regarding the mint is not lacking (see, e.g., Layettes, iv, 89ab), but there is no evidence for a continued coinage; cf. Blanchet, Dieudonn£, Manuel, iv, 151; Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, pp. 191, 206-208. 129 The question arose with reference to the bishop of Albi and the abbot of Gaillac; see H.L., vi, 909, n. 2 (Molinier); Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 382-388. 130 Layettes, m, 139a. 131 H.L., vi, 852. 132 Maurice Prou, "Esquisse de la politique monetaire des rois de France du Xe au XIII6 si&ele," Entre Camarades (PubliS par la SocietS des Anciens Sieves de la Faculte des Lettres de rtlniversitS de Paris, Paris, 1901), p. 81, suggests that the principle dates from the reign of Philip Augustus. The confinement of a seigneurial coinage to its issuing principality was probably implied in royal charters such as that granted to the bishop of Lodeve in 1210 (italics mine): "donavimus & concessimus . . . specialiter jus faciendi monetam regia authoritate, quae accipitur per totum episcopatum Lodovensem, . . . " (Gattia Christiana . . . , various editions, 16 vols. [Paris, 1715-1865], vi, Instrumenta, 284). Beugnot's contention, Essai sur les Institutions de Saint-Louis (Paris, 1821), p. 239, that this policy was initiated by Louis VIII in 1226 is unsupported. Cf. n. 144 below. m By p Guilhermoz and A. DieudonnS, "Chronologic des documents monetaires de la numismatique royale des engines a 1330 et 1337," Rev. Num., 4th ser., xxxn (1929), 218. 184 H.L., vra, 1195, xv.

410

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

This does not exclude the use of such recognized coinages as those of Narbonne and Rodez, either within or outside their seigneurial boundaries. It suggests that non-royal coins are to circulate, if at all, only at true exchange values, based on their intrinsic worth.135 If such a regulation was sent also to the senechal of Beaucaire, as Michel supposes,136 it must have been similar in character, making allowance for the coinages of Melgueil, Mende, and Le Puy. The continued circulation of Melgorian money in the region of Lozere caused Louis IX to prohibit its use there in 1265.137 Alfonse was not an obstreperous baron. In response to the king's order he had his offending coin types discontinued. If he promoted the use of his own coins, his administration served also to extend the circulation of royal money. Early in 1267 he received a complaint that his senechal for the Rouergue had prohibited the use of any coinage but tournois in the town of Millau.138 Learning that caorsins alone were circulating there, Alfonse himself directed that both his own and the king's coins should be used in Millau.139 There had apparently been orders prior to 1265 to the effect that no money but the count's should circulate in Toulouse,140 but it is unlikely that they were repeated afterward. In this period the king's ruling was also being recognized in the more independent sections of coastal Languedoc. On behalf of the king, Pope Clement IV in 1266 confirmed the right of the bishop of Maguelonne to strike coins in his episcopal territories, provided that they should not circulate in the royal domain.141 Early in the next year the senechal of Carcassonne accused the inhabitants of Narbonne of using coins prohibited by the latest royal ordinance, that is, coins other than local or royal.142 He was undoubtedly referring to melgorians. The same principle was invoked in connection with the clarification of the king's status in Sommieres, where Louis IX had replaced the local seigneurs. There he is expressly called "principalis dominus," a designation suggestive of that notion of regal overlordship which was being effectively urged by the crown in many parts of France in the later thirteenth century.143 In 1265 a knight named Pierre du Cros, who had shared in the seigneuriage on the coinage of Anduze before 1248, sought the restoration of his rights on the new coinage. He argued that the king was the "successor" of Bernard of Anduze, but the parle185 Precedents for this nisi clause may be found in Nicolas Brussel, Nouvel Examen de Vusage general desfiefs en France, pendant les Xle, Xlle, XIHe et XIVe sidcles . . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1727), I, 198-199. 186 Beaucaire, p. 328, n. 3. 187 Ibid., p. 328. 188 C.A., i, No. 131. 139 Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 214; cf. C.A., i, No. 137. 140 Articuli Civium, ca 1265 (ibid., n, No. 2058, p. 572). 141 Germain, "Memoire," Mem. Soc. Archtol. Montpel., in, 159. 142 Olim, i, 1012, n. 141. The ordinance was probably that of late 1264, Ord., I, 94-95; cf. below n. 154. 148 In reference to the king's suzerainty, the phrase came into use in Languedoc in the period of the crusade, with the submission of the feudatories; see, e.g., H.L., vni, 793, 822, iv.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

411

ment denied his claim, referring to the king as "principalis dominus, non . . . successor ipsius Bernardi." The distinction is clearly demonstrated by the statement that the king's money should be current throughout the realm while Bernard's was restricted to his own lands.144 Determined opposition to the increasing circulation of the king's currency and to the st*;pra-seigneurial implications of royal overlordship was offered by the bishop of Mende in these years. By the treaty of Corbeil in 1258146 title to the viscounty of Grezes had passed from King James of Aragon to the king of France. The arrival of royal administrators in the G6vaudan led to friction between the crown and the bishop of Mende, who was still the most powerful seigneur in the region. A compromise was reached in 1266, but disputes continued on a number of points until the celebrated par&age of 1307.146 The situation with regard to the coinages was a principal bone of contention. The senechal of Beaucaire prior to 1266 had confiscated the episcopal jus monetae, at the same time making efforts to extend the circulation of tournois into the bishop's domains.147 Finding his title valid, the Pentecost parlement of 1266 restored to the bishop his right to strike coins which should circulate in his diocese.148 But he was not satisfied with that privilege alone. We learn from the Memoire relating to the pareage that the bishop, "ratione majoris dominationis et regalium," had prohibited the use of royal money in the Gevaudan.149 This the crown was unwilling to accept. The bishop of Mende might have his own coinage, but by no appeal to regalian prerogative could he now assume a position in his own realm equivalent to that of the king in his. To facilitate the wider circulation of royal money the king's administration, as a second general policy, tried to establish regular exchange rates between royal and seigneurial coinages. The importance, in this respect, of the royal directive of July 1247 has already been suggested. It takes on the appearance of a preliminary strategem when read in the context of the crown's persistent campaign to promote royal currencies at the expense of seigneurial. Two considerations restrained the king from prohibiting absolutely, in a given area, the use of any but royal money. First, there was his policy, just discussed, of permitting certain seigneurs with traditional rights to have their propre monoye, which should circulate in their lands. Secondly, the king seems to have realized that the lack of royal specie made it sometimes impracticable to deny completely 144 Olim, i, 602: "Rex . . . facial ibi monetam suam Turonensem, cursualem per totum regnum et non monetam Renundinorum et Bernardinorum, que erat moneta ipsius Bernardi et habebat cursurn suum tantummodo per terrain suam." It is difficult to say whether this means that it was government policy prior to 1248 that raymondins and bernardins should circulate only in Bernard's lands, or whether that principle, made so explicit in 1263, was here being read back into the earlier situation. 145 Printed in Layettes, m, 405b-408a. 146 Jean Roucaute, La Formation territoriale du domaine royal en Gevaudan (1161-1307) (Paris, 1901), pp. 40-56. 147 Olim, i, 232; Memoir e relatif au pareage, pp. 354-357. 148 Olim, i, 282; cf. Memoire relatif au pareage, pp. 15, 307. 149 Ibid, pp. 307, 354-357, 388. This fact takes on added interest in the light of arguments in the Memoire to the effect that the bishop might be considered rex in episcopatu suo. See esp. p. 531.

412

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the use of seigneurial coins. To understand how the king utilized exchange rates to further his purposes both these points must be kept in mind. Royal money changers and tabulae cambii seem first to have been established in the district of Beaucaire in the 1240's.160 The fact that from this time on no seigneurial coinages were existent or entitled to circulate there suggests why the prohibition of the use of such coins in Beaucaire of about 1245 was apparently unconditional.161 The activity of two new royal mints in this region, furthermore, is reason to think that there was enough royal specie to satisfy the normal conditions of commerce and local trade. The records show that exchange ratios were well established between the disappearing baronial coins and royal currencies.152 In 1254 the king's enqueteurs were evaluating the old bernardins and raymondins at just one-half the money of Tours.153 It appears, therefore, that the royal money changers in the senechaussee of Beaucaire were, in effect, calling in the now unlawful seigneurial pennies. They were selling tournois and money of Nimes for bernardins, raymondins, pougeoises, etc. Late in 1264, about a year and a half after the legislation of Chartres, the king directed a second monetary ordinance to the whole kingdom.154 It prescribed that no other coinages should henceforth be used except tournois, parisis9 or loevesiens™ the latter worth half the pennies of Paris. Just as in the Carcassonne ruling of 1247, however, and probably for the same reason, a palliative qualification was added. In this case the king explicitly cited popular complaints that there was not enough circulating tournois and parisis. He therefore provided fixed exchange rates between tournois and four widely used currencies, the nantois of Brittany, angevins, gros pennies of Le Mans, and English sterling money. Why were these rates established? Clearly as a temporary concession to those who held, and were accustomed to dealing in, these baronial coinages, and in anticipation of a not-distant time when the growing supply of royal currencies would render the latter supreme. The setting of ratios between the permitted coinages and tournois specifically, rather than with other seigneurial monies, reveals that the purpose of the legislation was to publicize and encourage the use of royal money. It was not a question in this case of terminating once and for all the circulation of seigneurial coins. Not only was it explicitly stated that the four specified currencies should circulate at the fixed rates of exchange,156 but the king provided as usual that seigneurial coins as well as royal were permissible within the domains of the issuing lords. Furthermore, a wholly different ordinance, enacted in the parlement of All Saints 1265, was required to prohibit 180

See Michel, Beaucaire, p. 328, n. 1, and references there. N. 107 above. 162 H.F., xxiv, 391, i, 397, F, 424, c, 436, H, etc. 163 Michel, Beaucaire, piece justify No. 20, p. 411. 164 Ord.t i, 94-95. It is there dated 1265, but is specifically referred to by the senechal of Carcassonne in an ordinance which was certainly drafted late in 1264; see n. 158. 156 Episcopal half-pennies of Laon; see Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis (Paris, 1840-50), ad verb, "moneta." 166 «Et veut que icelles monoyes queurent ainsi par sa terre, par tel prix devant dit, tant comme il 1'y plaira." (Ord.t i, 94.) 151

413

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

completely the circulation of sterling pennies, "save at the weight and value of the silver."167 Lacking particular application to Languedoc, the royal ordinance of 1264 required implementation there. This was soon supplied by the senechal of Carcassonne in an important and detailed administrative ruling.168 According to this, no person, from the Friday after the following Epiphany (1265, N.S.), was to buy or sell in any but tournois or other royal or permitted monies.169 Trade for the king's currency was to take place at the royal exchange tables now established in the towns of each viguerie. The senechal also reproduced the modus cambiandi from the royal ordinance just discussed. This was hardly a concession to the inhabitants of his district, however, for none of the four coinages permitted by the king was used to any appreciable extent in Languedoc. In addition, and on the basis of local inquiries, the senechal appended an elaborate schedule of exchange rates, designating most of the seigneurial coinages which might still be found in Languedoc. In every case the coinages were established in ratios with tournois, as is shown in the following table: Seigneurial Pennies Melgueil

In grosso) Cahors Toulouse (tholosani albi) Morlaas Clermont LePuy Other coins circulating with latter Vienne Valence Marseille (regales)

14

(23s.) 25 12

Tournois 12

(20s.) 12 18

15i

12

15

12

IB? "fors & pois & 4 la valiie de 1'argent." (ibid., 95). Two considerations suggest that this saving clause, in appearance very like that of the Carcassonne ordinance of 1247, reflected a different policy: (1) This was a clearly defined prohibitive statute, referring specifically to one coinage previously admitted at fixed exchange rates. (2) There is no reference in the senechal's ordinance of 1264, about to be considered, to any previous prohibition of seigneurial coinages in the s6n£chauss6e of Carcassonne, where, as noted above, several coinages were entitled to circulate. 168 The text is preserved only in an undependable contemporary copy, Municipal Archives of Narbonne, AA. 105, 5th thai., fol. 52V; it was published, not without errors, by Mouynes in I.A.C.. Narbonne, Annexes de la Serie AA., pp. 91-92. Though undated, the ordinance can be assigned to November or December 1264, by reference to a royal mandate, also relating to the coinages, of 5 October 1264, a very bad copy of which appears on the same folio. The writer hopes to set forth the proof for this relationship, too long to be included here, in a separate study of the chronology and texts of several monetary documents of this period. Subsequent references to the ordinance are to the MS. 169 The phrase occurs in two forms: (1) "nisi cum turonensibus vel pare monetam (sic)"; (2) "non habens turonenses vel parem." "Par moneta" should probably be translated "like money," in reference to local varieties such as that of Nimes, or even perhaps to royal parisis. A misreading by the copyist of abbreviations for "parisiensibus" and "parisienses" is also possible; but if so the word "monetam" in the first phrase above would seem redundant.

414

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

This seems to have been the first official recognition that, although approximately equivalent to tournois in legal standard, the melgorians had declined in intrinsic worth.180 The evaluation of the caorsins was almost precisely that which is found in the accounts of Alfonse, namely, two to one.161 The general term tholosani albi was certainly intended to include the new gros toulousans, and very likely the old toulousans of the Raymonds as well. The ratios here established may be regarded as a fair approximation of their contemporary value relative to tournow.162 Just which pougeoises could have been exchangeable at the rate of 15 J to 12 tournois is not clear, but they were certainly neither the old "black" pennies nor gros coins. This was a period of monetary experimentation at Le Puy, however, and it can only be conjectured that the ordinance referred to some relatively new episcopal coinage. The senechal apparently did not intend that these coins should actually circulate in his district, in the same sense that the king, in his basic ordinance, allowed the use of certain non-royal coinages in the whole realm. At least he did not reproduce in his directive the royal provision to that effect. His object was to promulgate the king's policy and at the same time, taking account of local conditions, to carry it a step further. No claim is admitted, in his otherwise detailed ordinance, that there was an insufficiency of royal currency in the senechaussee. Three royal mints, including one at Carcassonne, had now operated in Languedoc for nearly twenty years, and it is likely that by this time tournois money was available in quantity.163 In view of the royal principle that seigneurial coins should not circulate outside their issuing principalities, there may be some significance in the fact that none of the coinages included in the tariff of rates was admissible in the senfohaussee. By the same token the money of Narbonne, which lay within the senechal's jurisdiction, was, possibly intentionally, omitted from the list. But the latter was an unimportant coinage of limited circulation; and in general there is insufficient evidence to insist on the point. However there is nothing in the ordinance to suggest continued toleration of the seigneurial coinages. The intended policy was evidently to drive the named coinages out of 160 The querimonia of Johannes de Burgis, cited above, n. 92, suggests that this was the case even in the early years of the reign. What (little) we know of then* standards (see p\ 3 88 above) would seem to imply a reverse relationship between these coinages. Possibly the melgorians were minted de facto below their legal standard. 181 Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 214. 162 On the standard of the gros toulousan see Layettes, m, 188b. Mouynes, both in his edition (cited above, n. 158) and in I.A.C., Narbonne, Serie AA (Narbonne, 1877), p. 102, interpreted the phrase "tholosani albi et morlani" to mean that coins of Albi, as well as toulousans and morlans, were included in the ratio. But (1) coins of Albi were never called albi or albienses, and (2) a ratio of 12 ordinary toulousans and raymondins of Albi to 18 tournois would have been impossible. The writer is indebted to Professor Philippe Wolff of Toulouse for the suggestion that "albi" should be read as an adjective, which solves the problem. 168 The king apparently made this point in his directive to the senechal dated 5 October 1264 (see n. 158). The text is not clear, but the intent was apparently to discourage the use of Melgorian money; "et hoc publice in senescallia vestra preconitzari faciatis, cum nos monetam Turonensem apud Sumidrium cudi faciamus, quod vos credimus non latere."

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

415

circulation in the senechausseG of Carcassonne. The money changers were designed to function much as they had in Beaucaire some years earlier. In its broad aspects the local ordinance hardly differed from that of the king. Both discouraged the use of non-royal coins but promised a fair rate of exchange. The general effect of the senechal's legislation was to publicize further the money of Tours and to enhance the prestige of the crown. The vicars were directed to promulgate the king's monetary ordinances before assemblies of townsmen in the centers of the vigueries and to inform the people where the exchange tables were to be located. The ordinance marked a real effort to standardize and unify monetary practices in a large sector of Languedoc. As for Alfonse, the fact that he never gave up using the tournois system in his domains164 leads us to agree with Boutaric that his policy "resulted in facilitating transactions and creating new links between his subjects and those of the king of France."165 It is easy to understand that Louis IX had no objection to his brother's use of the royal standards, a step toward monetary uniformity for the whole kingdom. The third royal policy, that of prohibiting the use of foreign coins or their imitations, came to be applied particularly in consequence of some monetary activities of the bishop of Maguelonne. In 1263 the bishop ordered that certain coins called "millarets" should be minted.166 Very like Islamic dirhems, in badly inscribed Arabic, these coins were undoubtedly intended to facilitate trade in the Mediterranean.167 Saint Louis was unable to act directly in this matter because the county of Melgueil was still under the suzerainty of the pope. It is probable, however, that the pious, crusading king had the millarets in mind when he discussed the status of Melgueil with Clement IV in 1266. The latter at that time assured Louis that the papal overlordship was justified by tradition.168 Late in 1266 a pontifical bull was addressed to Berengar of Fredol, bishop of Maguelonne, ordering him to cease producing coins bearing the name of Muhammad. The prohibition was made in the name of God and the pope, but Clement implied also that if the bishop were having the coins struck on royal territory, he was acting in disobedience to the king.169 Similar coins were circulating in neighboring areas. Saint Louis wrote to Alfonse about coins produced in the Venaissin on which appeared the name 164 In addition to evidence cited above, see C.A., I, Nos. 567, 674-575. In 1267 Alfonse's senechal for the Venaissin was ordered to contract for local gros tournois, each to be worth 12 pennies of the "parva moneta." See also Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 187. 165 Ibid., p. 222. 166 See the instrument in Germain, "De la monnaie mahometane attribuee a un ev&que de Maguelone . . . ," M6m. Soc. Archeol. Montpel, m, 697-702. 167 See L. Blancard, Le Millares (Marseille, 1876), pp. 24-26. Little is known about these coins, which by certain accounts seem to have been worth slightly more than three pennies of Melgueil (Germain, "Monnaie mahometane, "M6m. Soc. Archeol. Montpel., in, 691, n. 1). les Germain, "Etude historique sur les comtes de Maguelone, de Substantion et de Melgueil," ibid., 601-604. 169 Germain, "Memoire," ibid., 160; Germain also quotes part of the text, "Etude," ibid., 605, n. 1.

416

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

"perfidi Machumeti," described as "pn>pheta Dei."170 In July 1267 Alfonse directed his senechal for the Venaissin to prohibit the manufacture of "moneta Milliarrensis."171 Only the month before Alfonse had been informed that minters on the island of Oleron were striking "falsam monetam Sarracenorum," and had deputed his senechal of Saintonge to put an end to the activity.172 Meanwhile royal officials were busy watching for the millarets. In 1269 the senechal of Carcassonne confiscated "quamdam summam Milliarensium prohibitorum" from the lord of Mirepoix.173 In its larger context this whole episode is illustrative of a conflict between the traditionalist idealism of a saintly king and pope and the economic expediency of nascent commercial interests in southern France. In these various monetary policies Alfonse played a distinctive role, but one not always easy to interpret. As has been pointed out, Louis IX looked with disfavor on his brother's use of royal coin types, but this procedure was not intended by the count as an act of opposition. Its purpose was to advance his own prestige. This it had in common with his other policies, whose net effect appears to have been favorable to the crown. He adopted, and thus helped to extend, the royal tournois system in order to share some of the advantages which the king was deriving from it. Alfonse promoted the use of the king's money as well as his own. A close look at this phase of his monetary activity reveals no consistent policy however. In the administrative correspondence he is to be observed prescribing the payment of revenues and wages sometimes in toulousans,174 more frequently in money of Tours.175 Alfonse seems to have regarded his own money as tournois, at least in his earlier years as count of Toulouse, and it is likely that many sums expressed in shillings and pounds (money of account) of Tours were actually paid in pennies of Toulouse. On the other hand the extensive correspondence relating to the fouage of 1267 "por le secors de la Terre seinte" pictures Alfonse as more interested in receiving an intrinsically valuable currency than in promoting his own coinages; here the effect was very favorable to the king's money. It is clear that by this time the toulousans had declined in value relative to tournois.176 The royal money of Tours and Paris was invariably specified in the directions to the senechals because there was general confidence in its uniformity and value. When payments were not obtainable in the royal coinages, the collectors were to receive other currencies, or even plate metal, at the most favorable exchange possible.177 170

Quoted in Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 217, n. 2. C.A., i, No. 556. 172 Ibid., No. 695. 173 Olim, I, 316-317. 174 C.A., n, Nos. 2106-08. 176 Ibid., Nos. 1518, 1572-73, 1584, 2065, 2093. 176 Money of Toulouse is generally prescribed only as an alternative currency in place of tournois; see, e.g., ibid., i, Nos. 243, 323. In the first of these Alfonse tells the senechal of Toulouse (May, 1267) that the fouage must be paid in tournois and exchange expenses must be borne by his subjects. A petition by the men of Montesquieu, dated 30 June 1267, requested "quod nos [Alfonse] ab ipsis pro dicto focagio monetam Tholosanam recipiamus, . . . (ibid., No. 280). See also H.L., vin, 1564-65. 171

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

417

Royal coins were circulating almost everywhere in Languedoc by 1270. For large scale external and royal transactions the tournois system was in use even in Montpellier, Narbonne, and other relatively independent areas.178 In the senechaussee of Beaucaire the local coinages of Sommieres had been effectively driven from circulation. Documents of this region dating from the later years of the reign reveal that tournois were used in transactions of all kinds.179 Despite encroachments of royal officials on the seigneurial prerogatives of the defiant baronage farther to the north, however, there is no doubt that mendois and, particularly, pougeoises continued to circulate there in greater quantity than toumois™ But the influence of royal monetary policy is discernible even there, for the appearance of a beautiful gros penny at Le Puy followed closely Saint Louis' creation of the gros tournois in 1266.181 In the county of Melgueil, still independent of royal government, and in the regions about Montpellier, melgorians continued in common use.182 It is impossible now to estimate the effect of royal policies in eliminating this tenacious coinage from circulation in central and western Languedoc. The texts continue to refer to sums in melgorians (primarily rents and customary revenues) in Carcassonne, Beziers, Lagrasse, Narbonne, and Fontjoncouse, but tournois money was beginning to circulate there too.183 Pennies of Narbonne continued in use in the Narbonnais, where no very extensive royal authority was exercised until late in the century.184 In the Toulousan Comminges tournois came into use in external transactions and county finance from about mid-century, but, as in Toulouse and surrounding localities, did not completely replace tolzas and morlans in local exchange.186 In 177 C.A., i, No. 328; cf. Nos. 243, 421. Alfonse felt that it was not unreasonable to require payment in tournois in view of the number and proximity of the king's mints: "Et semble que vos devriez trover assez tornois, quar nostre sires li rois de France a fet forgier puis n anz en ca tornois a Borges, a Senz, a Tors, a Paris, a Seint Anthonnin et en la seneschauciee de Biauquaire . . . par quoi il est plus de tornois que il ne seut, et sont plus espanduz, et en doit Ten plus trover . . . " (No. 823). 178 The inhabitants of Montpellier promised James of Aragon 60,000 s. tournois, in support of his trip to the Holy Land, in 1269 (H.L., vi, 915); similarly, in April 1270, Louis IX acknowledged a gratuitous gift of 1000 1. tournois made by the inhabitants of Narbonne "pro subsidio . . . passagii transmarini." (ibid., vm, 1671, iv). See also Cartulaire . . . de Bonneval, pp. 180, 195. 179 I.S.A.D., Gard, Serie E, E. 320, p. 243; E. 131, p. 118; E. 292, p. 223; Series G-H, H. 888, p. 218; Serie H (Mende, 1877), H. 63, p. 19; H.L., vi, 868, 837. Many other instances could be cited. 180 I.S.A.D., Lozere, Serie G, n (Mende, 1890), G. 1899, p. 96; G. 1984, p. 115; G. 2030, p. 124; G. 2852, p. 292; Serie H (Mende, 1904), H. 462, p. 186. isi Olivier, "Monnaies . . . du Puy," Rev. Num., xxx, 180. 182 See, in general, Cartulaire de Maguelone, n, in, for this period. 183 H.L., v, 1462-74, 1487-92, 1423-41; "Documents relatifs a la seigneurie de Boussagues (Herault) de la fin du Xlle au milieu du XlVe siecle," ed. F. Pasquier, Bulletin de la SoriMt Archeologique, Scientifique, et Litteraire de Beziers, 3d ser., in (1899), 259; H.L., v, 1670, 1673-74; vra, 252-254; I.A.C., Narbonne, Serie AA, AA. 103, p. 58; AA. 104, p. 90; AA. 2, p. 2; AA. 99, pp. 22, 32; AA. 104, p. 91. 184 Ibid., AA. 99, p. 32; AA. 103, pp. 56-57; H.L., v, 42, 44; vm, 218-219; see Richard W. Emery, Heresy and the Inquisition in Narbonne (New York, 1941), p. 108. 188 Higounet, Comminges, n, 490-491; I.S.A.D., Aude, Series G-H, H. 322, p. 297.

418

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

the Albigeois and Agenais toumais took its place as a standard medium of exchange alongside the seigneurial raymondins and arnaldins.186 At the close of the reign, however, tournois were still running a poor third in the Rouergue, behind the pennies of Rodez and Le Puy.187 The positive accomplishment of Louis IX was to introduce money of Tours into Languedoc and to lay a firm foundation for the supremacy of royal currencies there. After his death the course of monetary politics changed in one important respect, however, for King Philip III succeeded to the county of Toulouse. Thus the seigneurial coinage of Toulouse became a royal money, a fact which undoubte^lly has much to do with the continued use of tolzas in the fourteenth century.188 Under Louis IX the greatest progress occurred in the central parts of the senechaussees of Carcassonne and Beaucaire. There four royal mints were established and the baronial coinages of Sommieres, Beziers, and Carcassonne were terminated. Every sector of Languedoc, however, had in some degree felt the effect of royal monetary policy by the year 1270. In extending the currency of royal money while restricting that of seigneurial, and by demonstrating explicitly that he was no mere "successor" in principalities annexed by the crown, the king's administrators did much to further the process of centralization and the influence of regal authority. There can be no doubt that they recognized the value of a uniform royal coinage for impressing upon its users their common nationality. It is particularly in this respect that royal monetary policy differed from that of the seigneurs, who were motivated primarily by local commercial needs and personal profits to strike and promote their coins. But we find something of his proverbial morality and a logical, traditionalist attitude toward the barony and regalian privileges in Saint Louis' administration of the coinages. This point will need little elaboration after what has been said above. The important ordinance of 1263 abolished no rights, being intended only to secure the general use of royal money, while restricting reasonably the circulation of entitled seigneurial coinages. Thus the bishop of Mende regained his confiscated coinage by decision of parlement in 1266. The prohibition of foreign coins followed rather from motives of piety and traditionalism than from the economic considerations which later induced Philip the Fair to take similar steps.1*9 Even in this sphere baronial rights were respected. The Candlemas parlement of 1270 adjudged that the millarets seized by royal officials should be restored to the lord of Mirepoix, an inquest having determined that the prise occurred within his lands.190 Had occasion arisen, we may be sure that Louis would have acted in Languedoc, as 186

See Compayre, Albigeois, pp. 379-382; £. Rossignol, Etude sur Vhistoire des institutions seigneuriales et communales de Varrondissement de Gafllac (Tarn) (Toulouse, 1866), p. 52; Archives Municipales d'Agen, Charles, No. xlviii; C.A., I, Nos. 440, 446, 499; n, Nos. 1430, 1611. 187 Cartulaire . . . de Bonneval, pp. 180, 195, 203; 208-210; 179, 198, 213; I.S.A.D., Aveyron, Serie G (Rodez, 1934), G. 10, p. 3; G. 501, pp. 208-209; G. 518, p. 218. 188 See Philippe Wolff, Commerces et Marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350-vers 1450) (Paris, 1954), p. 324. 189 A. Vuitry, Les Monnaies sous Philippe le Eel et ses troisfls, 1285-1328 (Paris, 1879), pp. 10, 28. 190 Olim, i, 316-317.

Monetary Policy During Reign of Saint Louis

419

he did elsewhere, to prevent abuses of the seigneurial right to alter the coinage.191 In general it may be concluded that Saint Louis' monetary policies in Languedoc were timely and realistic. In this task as in others his was a clear step forward for the monarchy.

191

The bishop of Clermont, having debased his money and excommunicated those who refused to accept it, was in January 1270 rebuked by the king, who ordered the practice to cease, under threat of confiscation of the temporalities (Boutaric, Saint Louis et Alfonse, p. 428; see also p. 216, and n. 3). Louis VIII had established an important precedent for the crown against malpractices of this nature when, in 1225, he secured a guarantee from the bishop of Meaux that four months' notice should be given prior to any mutation of the coinage; see Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Etude sur la vie et le regne de Louis VIII (1187-1226) (Paris, 1894), p. 380.

CORRIGENDUM In Chapter 20, read Guilhiermoz (for Guilhermoz) and Nunes (for Nimes) throughout.

This page intentionally left blank

21 CONFIRM A TIO MONETE A NARBONNE AU XIIP SIECLE

Le 22 novembre 1265, le vicomte Amauri I, agissant en reponse aux prieres des consuls de la Cite et du Bourg de Narbonne exprimees en « parlement general convoque dans sa cour », a jure de « maintenir et conserver pendant toute sa vie » sa nouvelle monnaie ; de plus, il a confirme la monnaie narbonnaise recemment faite par son pere 1 . II n'est pas de mon propos de tenter ici une explication complete de ce texte curieux, encore peu connu. Du cote numismatique, on peut remarquer qu'il distingue deux emissions monetaires dont la deuxieme, du moins, etait le travail du vicomte seul sans egard aux droits de 1'archeveque. Cette nouvelle monnaie (monetam narbonesam quam de novo faciebat) s'identifie, sans aucun doute, avec celle de 3 d. et maille d'argent fin dont la publication, par le viguier du vicomte et en presence des memes consuls, est signalee sous la date de 13 decembre 1265 (soit trois semaines apres la confirmation). 2 Pourquoi ne pas rapprocher cette monnaie si bien decrite des pieces connues au nom d'Amauri seul ? 3 D'autre part, et plus difficilement, il faut preciser le rapport entre ce monnayage de la fin de 1265 et 1'ordonnance par laquelle le senechal, 1'annee auparavant, avait proscrit I'emploi des monnaies dans la senechaussee de Carcassonne sauf la tournoise ou par(lisiensis} moneta 4. Pourquoi cette ordon1. Anno... [10 des calendes de decembre 1265] dominus Amalricus, Dei gratia vicecomes et dominus Narbone, vocato portamento generali in curia sua, et ibi, ad preces et instanciam Guillelmi Ramundi de Montepessullano, Poncii Alarosii, Bertrandi Stephani et Ramundi Lumbardi, consulum civitatis Narbone, Petri Arnaldi de Naissa, Boned Contastini, Guillelmi Arnaldi de Trularibus, Bernardi Faidia, Bernardi Revelli et Ramundi Andorra, consulum burgi Narbone, et tocius populi Narbone tarn civitatis quam burgi, juravit monetam narbonesam quam de novo faciebat in manu dicti Poncii Alarosii et earn manutenere et conservare in omni vita sua, et eciam confirmavit monetam narbonesam per dominum Aimericum, patrem suum condam, nuper factam, Arch. mun. Narbonne, AA. 109, fol. 34; ed. par T.N. BISSON, Assemblies and Representation in Languedoc inthefiThirteenth^Century (Princeton, 1964), p. 313. 2. Ville de Narbonne. Inventaire des archives oommunales anterieures a 1790. Annexes de la Serie AA, ed. par Germain MOUYNES (Narbonne, 1871), n° 53 (p. 92). 3. Voir Faustin POEY D'AVANT, Monnaies jeodales de France, 3 vol. (Paris, 1856-1862), ii. 266; ou Claude DEVIC et J.-J. VAISSETE, Histoire generale de Languedoc..., ed. Privat, 16 vol. (Toulouse, 1872-1904; a citer ci -apres comme H.L.\ vfz, Notes, 401, n" 23; et, en general, les articles de Gabriel AMARDEL dans Bulletin de la commission archeologique de Narbonne, annees 1906-1907, 1916-1918. 4. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 52 (p. 91-92); cf. aussi T.N. BISSON, «Coinages and Royal Monetary Policy in Languedoc during the Reign of Saint Louis », dans Speculum, XXXII (1957), 447-448, 462-465; et « A propos d'un registre municipal de Narbonne. Notes sur la chronologic des ordonnances monetaires de Louis IX (1263-1265) », dans Annales du Midi, LXXII (1960), 83-88.

422

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

nance n'a-t-elle pas fait mention de la monnaie narbonnaise ? Pouvons-nous conclure que le senechal etait content de la voir circuler en dehors de la vicomte de Narbonne et dans toute la senechaussee ? Plus vraisemblablement il lui a semble impossible de preciser les valeurs de change d'une monnaie peu connue en dehors du Narbonnais et dont plusieurs emissions etaient alors courantes. Une frappe bien annoncee a 3-1/2 d. et 25-3/4 s. au marc allie n'aurait-elle pu avoir le but de concurrencer les deniers de Tours ou de Melgueil, monnaies legerement superieures en titre, dans le Midi royal ? 5 Questions a poser aux numismates. Mais questions egalement politiques. Car tandis que la propagation de la monnaie royale menace les seigneuries du vicomte et de 1'archeveque de Narbonne, les evenements de novembre et decembre 1265 semblent nous reveler une collusion du vicomte et des consuls aux depens des droits monetaires de 1'archeveque. Or on sait, par des documents cites par Dom Vaissete, que 1'archeveque Maurin (1262-1272) et Amauri tombaient en disaccord au sujet d'un nouveau monnayage prevu en juillet 1265 6. Et le role des consuls etait alors en question. Car il parait que dans une premiere convention entre 1'archeveque et le vicomte, on a neglige de demander le conseil des consuls ; sur le refus des derniers de recevoir cette monnaie, I'official de 1'archeveque les a excommunies7. On pourrait supposer que les deux seigneurs ont resolu leurs querelles sauf sur la question de la participation des consuls, et qu'enfin le vicomte a decide d'agir lui-meme de concert avec les consuls. Mais, des le printemps de 1270, la situation change : c'est maintenant 1'archeveque qui frappe sans observer, selon le fils du vicomte, les conditions par lesquelles Amauri I a pretendu reserver son droit preeminent sur le monnayage local 8. A la mort d'Amauri vers la fin de 1270, 1'archeveque Maurin (ou, en son absence en croisade, ses agents) se trouvaient libres de negocier exclusivement avec les consuls de la Cite et du Bourg sur le renouvellement de la monnaie a 3 d. et maille et 25 s. 8 d. au marc (c'est-a-dire, de celle qui avait ete promulguee par le vicomte et les consuls en decembre 1265) 9. Vraisemblablement, Maurin n'en a change alors que le type, acte simplement politique 10. Voila les circonstances. Revenons maintenant a 1'acte de confirmation de novembre 1265. Pourquoi le vicomte Amauri s'est-il soumis a un tel serment ? Qu'a-t-il promis, precisement ? Et quelle etait la nature de Pinteret dans la monnaie demontre par les consuls et le peuple de Narbonne ? Ce que le vicomte a promis, pour commencer avec la moins difficile de ces questions, c'est de ne changer, sa vie durant, sa nouvelle monnaie, ni de revoquer celle de son pere, toujours courante. Bien que le texte ne le dise pas expressement, cela signifie que la monnaie ne serait pas mutee en aloi, poids ou type n. Autrement dit, aucune nouvelle monnaie ne serait mise en circulation par la voie d'echange obligatoire. Or, si en 1265 les deniers d'Aimeri III (1194-1238) etaient encore courants 12 , il semblerait qu'une entente analogue de celle de 5. Voir J.-Adrien BLANCHE! et Adolphe DIEUDONNE, Manuel de numismatique jrangaise, 4 vol. (Paris, 1912-1936), II, 223-224. L'ordonnance de Philippe III de decembre 1275, expediee au senechal de Carcassonne (G. MOUYNES,% Ville de Narbonne. Inventaire... Serie A A [Narbonne, 1877], p. 61) semble repondre a de tels problemes (inter alia). 6. H.L., VI, 897; voir aussi VII, Notes, 401, note 1. 7. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 55 (p. 92-93). 8. Bibl. nat., Fonds Doat, t. 50, fol. 261-262V; voir aussi la note lucide de Germain MOUYNES, Narbonne. Inventaire... Serie AA, p. 43, qui lit 1'histoire de ces evenements un peu differemment. 9. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 65 (autre version : Arch, nat., J. 308, n° 79), 66-68 (pp. 100-103). 10. Cf. H.L., VII, Notes, 401-402, n os 24, 25, 27, 28. 11. Par analogic d'autres chartes de confirmation monetaire, signalees dessous. 12. Sur ce monnayage, voir Gabriel AMARDEL, « Un denier inedit d'Aimeri III, vicomte de Narbonne », dans Revue numismatique, 4e serie, XXI (1917), 45-52

Confirmatio Monetae

423

1265 fut coutumiere a Narbonne. En fait, nous n'entendons pas dire de 1'exploitation de la monnaie narbonnaise qu'elle fut abusive pendant les deux ou trois premieres generations du xme siecle. Nous savons, d'autre part, que les consuls, qui ont sollicite la confirmation de novembre 1265, avaient egalement demande du vicomte un nouveau monnayage quelques mois auparavant, en disant que c'etait la pratique de ses predecesseurs de frapper monnaie en presence d'un besoin evident 13 . Dans ces circonstances on ne peut que croire a 1'assertion des consuls en 1271 selon laquelle non seulement Amauri I mais d'autres vicomtes avant lui avaient jure le serment monetaire devant les consuls 14. C'est done une politique traditionnelle et conservatrice qui a ete reprise dans la charte de novembre 1265. L'interet des consuls etait, en cette matiere, parfaitement representatif du sentiment general a Narbonne. Car les consuls qui y sont nommes comme petitionnaires — tel le venerable Pons Alaros, qui a re?u le serment — n'etaient pas visiblement hommes de faction ou de 1'interet economique associe ou specialise 15. Et 1'acte a eu lieu « en parlement general », devant la masse des hommes de la Cite et du Bourg. Sans doute le vicomte a insiste pour en faire la semonce, ayant convoque 1'assemblee in curia sua, mais peut-on imaginer, d'autre part, que cette semonce ait deplu aux consuls ? Au contraire, cette matiere monetaire etait par excellence chose publique, comme cet etablissement d'environ 1230 ratifie en parlement non propter conjurationem vel pro confratria mais pro comunitate ville et consulatu 16 ; ou comme 1'interpretation de la coutume Si aliquis decesserit ab intestato discutee et approbee en 1259 en parlamentum generale tocius ville en presence d'au moins deux des notables qui vont assister a la confirmation de 1265 17. Eire arrive a distinguer 1'utilite du parti de celle du public (ce qu'ils ont fait, remarquons-le, en langage ordinaire, sans echo du droit romain) etait parmi les accomplissements les plus frappants du gouvernement consulaire a Narbonne au xiif siecle. C'est pourquoi le droit des consuls (de la Cite) de convoquer eux-memes le peuple a ete etabli en consequence d'une enquete rigoureuse en 1254 18 ; et pourquoi les consuls, conseils et peuple assemble ont forge, au cours des annees suivantes, des spheres de droits en autorite administrative assez exceptionnelles pour leur temps 19. Notre interpretation de 1'influence consulaire — generale, traditionnelle — en cette matiere monetaire semble confirmee d'une autre maniere. Comme formalite sacramentelle sinon egalement comme charte ecrite, la confirmatio monetg n'etait pas nouvelle en 1265. Rien de semblable, il est vrai, ne se trouve dans les archives anterieures de Narbonne : mais non seulement il s'agit d'une ceremonie non necessairement decrite, mais encore ces archives sont pauvres en documents monetaires de toutes sortes avant les annees soixante. Et des confirmations tres analogues a celle de Narbonne en 1265 avaient eu lieu dans d'autres villes de Languedoc, notamment a Toulouse en 1205 et de nouveau en 13. H.L., VI, 897.

14. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 66 (p. 101). 15. Guiilelmus Ramundi de Montepessulano etait deja consul de la Cite en 1242, et encore en 1253 (Richard W. EMERY, Heresy and Inquisition-in Narbonne [New York, 1941], p. 28; H.L., VIII, c. 1094); Poncius Alarosii, consul de la Cite en 1243, et souvent ensuite (R.W. EMERY, Heresy, p. 28); Petrus Arnaldi de Naissa, mentionne en 1236 et 1243, baile de 1'archeveque en 1252-1257, etait consul du Bourg en 1261 et souvent ensuite jusqu'en 1279 (Emery, Heresy, p. 48 note 110, pp. 160-161, n° 65; H.L., VIII, c. 1108; Arch. mun. Narbonne, AA. 101, fol. llvff.). 16. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 42 (p. 66); voir le texte entier de cette enquete remarquable, a laquelle Guillem Raimon de Montpellier, consul de la Cite, etait partie, pp. 65-72. 17. Ibid., n° 50 (pp. 89-91). 18. Ibid., n° 42 (pp. 65-72); voir aussi 1'ordonnance arbitrale du 12 novembre 1270, Ville de Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie BB, ed. par Germain MOUYNES, 2 vol. (Narbonne, 1879), II, n° 1 (pp. 1-6), n° 4 (pp. 7-9). 19. Voir (provisoirement) mon Assemblies in Languedoc, pp. 232, 305-309.

424

Medieval f ranee and her Pyrenean Neighbours

1222; et a Cahors, d'abord en 1211 ou 1212, mais aussi plus recemment, en 1251 et meme encore a peu pres simultanement avec 1'acte narbonnais de novembre 126520. Dans tous ces cas 11 s'agissaii d'une confirmation de la monnaie locale, sur 1'instance des consuls et citoyens (et quelquefois d'autres, aussi), viagere et juree, par le seigneur ayant droit ; dans tous ces cas, 1'influense ecclesiastique liee a la solennite sacramentelle se montrait forte. D'autres elements peuvent y figurer, bien sur : en Quercy, la promesse par 1'eveque Guillem IV en 1212 a coute aux bourgeois 10000 sous et le texte renferme des prescriptions relatives au cours legal des monnaies ; a Toulouse comme en Quercy, les chartes sont plus explicites que celle de Narbonne en leurs mentions du poids et de 1'aloi des monnaies jurees. Mais pour 1'essentiel, c'est evidemment une famille caracteristique a laquelle appartient la confirmation monetaire de Narbonne de 1265. Famille indigene au Languedoc ? Probablement pas ; ou, du moins, pas languedocienne seule. Car les premieres confirmationes monetg et les plus nombreuses, dans lesquelles se trouvent les elements remarques dans tous les textes etudies sont de Catalogne. Et la pratique de la confirmation juree pour la duree d'une vie y etait vieille d'au moins deux generations meme en 1174, quand 1'eveque de Vich s'engageait a ces memes conditions devant une assemblee generale qui en sa composition et son caractere anticipe sur celles de Toulouse ou de Cahors ou de Narbonne 21 . De plus, comme je tente de le montrer ailleurs, 1'influence morale de 1'eglise reformee se revele forte dans tout ce developpement ; on pense a la monnaie comme matiere sujette a la fraude. Bien sur, je ne peux insister sur une filiation precise entre ces chartes monetaires. L'influence catalane sur une ceremonie aussi tardive que la premiere connue a Narbonne n'aurait pu etre qu'indirecte ; des chartes narbonnaises anterieures auraient pu etre elles-memes inspirees par les evenements de Toulouse, bien que, d'autre part, les liens entre la Catalogne et Narbonne soient restes etroits jusqu'en plein xme siecle. II suffit, pour 1'instant, d'avoir etabli un cadre historique et regional pour la confirmation juree de la monnaie a Narbonne. La tradition y persiste apres 1265. En 1305 aussi bien qu'en 1271 on parle du serment monetaire des seigneurs de Narbonne comme coutumiere 22 . Mais que le contenu du serment soit reste intact, rien de plus douteux. En effet, 1'engagement jure par les procureurs de 1'archeveque le 17 fevrier 1271, toujours sur 1'instance des consuls, etait assez different : beaucoup plus detaille, il ne faisait pas de reservation viagere (ou, du moins, pas explicitement), mais surtout il envisageait la possibilite de mutations futures 28. La nouvelle matiere du serment ne prouve nullement que 1'ancienne etait alors oubliee. Mais le changement n'etait certainement pas fortuit ou inaper^u par les consuls. Au contraire, ces derniers ont decide, de concert avec les gens de 1'archeveque, d'avoir egard au besoin eventuel des nouveaux deniers (sans revoquer les anciens) ou de renouvellement monetaire. En face des nouvelles exigences economiques, le vieux serment a paru insufTisant, archai'que. On ne craignait plus des manipulations arbitraires d'une monnaie longtemps assez ferme ; les consuls, ayant obtenu 20. Arch. mun. Toulouse, AA, 1, n° 72, ed. par Roger LIMOUZIN-LAMOTHE, La commune de Toulouse et les sources de son histoire (1120-1249)... (Toulouse-Paris, 1932), pp. 403-404, 421-422; Bibl. nat., Fonds Doat, t. 118, fols. 7-8v, 124-125v, et Guillaume de LACROIX, Series & acta episcoporum cadurcensium... (Cahors, 1617), p. 87; Arch. mun. Cahors, DD. 1 et DD 5 (cf. Arch. mun. Montauban, AA. 2, fols. 45v-46). Je prepare une etude generale sur ces documents et d'autres pareils en France et Espagne. 21. Liber Feudorum Maior, ed. par Francisco MIQUEL ROSELL, 2 vol. (Barcelona, 19451947), II, n° 691; Arxiu de la Corona d'Arago, Cane., pergamins d'Alfons I, 160, ed. par Jaquim BOTET y Siso, Les monedes catalanes, 1, 211-212. 22. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n° 66 (p. 101); Bibl. nat., Fonds Doat, t. 51, fol. 247v-248; Jean REGNE, Amauri II, vicomte de Narbonne (1260 ?-1328)... (Narbonne, 1910), p. 177. 23. G. MOUYNES, Narbonne... Annexes de la Serie AA, n" 65 (pp. 100-101); cf., pour 1305-1306, n° 135 (p. 215) et Bibl. nat., Fonds Doat, t. 51, fol. 247-249, 251v-261v.

Confirmatio Monetae 1'influence preponderate, pouvaient se comporter plus flexiblement dans leur politique monetaire, pouvaient mieux representer les interets d'une ville tres commer?ante dont les gens commencent a mieux comprendre la nature economique de la monnaie. Done le principe de confirmatio monetg — profondement populaire, voire moral — nous est revele a Narbonne en 1265 a Taube de sa transformation. Mais il y persiste jusqu'a la disparition de la monnaie narbonnaise au xive siecle.

This page intentionally left blank

INDEX Entries for certain proper names that occur in variant forms are grouped; for example, ARNALDUS-ARNALLUS-ARNAU, BERENGARIUS-BERENGUER. The abbreviations are: abt. = abbot; abp. = archbishop; ar. = arrondissement, b.= bailiffs); Ben. = Benedictine; bp. = bishop(s); bwk. = bailiwick; c. = canton or coinage; ch.-l. = chef-lieu\ Cist. = Cistercian; com. = comarca\ ct. = count(s); ctess. = countess; cty. = county; dep. = departement', k. = king(s); p.j. = partit (or partido) judicial; pr. = provincial Pyr.-Or. = Pyrenees-Orientales; q. = queen; v. = vicar; vet. = viscount; vcty. = viscounty.

A.deG. A, 44 abacus, 28In Abadal (i de Vinyals), Ramon d', 128, 137, 216n, 244n accounts, (accounting, accountability), 63, 67, 78, 79n, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 368; compoti, 63n, 65n, 67n, 82, 194, 282, in: Aragon, 366-7, Catalonia, 145, 193-5, 27880, 287-302, 330, 335-6, 352, 360, 365, 366, 370, 373, Flanders, 265, 272, 277, 278, France, 265-8, 270, 276-8, 281, 282, 414; of coinage, 340, 345, 346, 347, 368-9; terms of, 267 Adam, k's clerk, 267, 274, 275 Adam (apatero, 35n, 45 adelantados, 33, 34 Ademarus, 175 administration, 86-87, 95, 144, 168, 174, 202, 253-4, 352; concept of, in South, 259, 261, 263, 370; by credit, 262; of towns, 82 Adrian IV (pope, 1154-9), 221, 306 Agde (dep. Herault, ar. Beziers, ch.-l.c.), peace-tax in, 227n Agen (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ch.-l.), 3, 5, 6—7, 12, 13, 16, 18n, 19, 20-3, 25n, 26, 27, 54n, 116; bp., diocese of, 3, 12, 22, 25, 56n, 57, 397; c. of ('arnaldins'), 24-5, 397, 402, 418; consuls of, 14n, 24, 27, 29n; customs of, 7, 10, 11, 12, 23; taxation of, 58 Agenais, 3-30, 393, 397, 402, 418; communitas of, 28n; custom of, 4, 8, 10, 16n, 20, 53; general: army of, 4, 11, 17, court of, 3-30, 56; peace of, 11, 231; taxation in, 52, 55, 56, 58,59 Agramunt (pr. Lleida, com. Urgell, p.j. Balaguer), charter of (1210), 209n Agudes (Maresme), castle of, 361 aids, 54, 57, 249, 252; and incidents, 244, 263; customary or feudal, 12n, 50, 51, 53, 61, 72, 90-1, 92, 101; for crusade, 51-5, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 72, 90, 91, 47\n;profilia maritanda, 93, 106,115 Aigues-Mortes (dep. Gard, ar. Nimes, ch.-l.c.), 90

Aimery III, vet. ofNarbonne (1194-1238), 397 422 Alais, see Ales Alaman de Fuentes, 44 Alarcos, battle of (1195), 228, 308 Alart, Bernard, 179 albaranum (-a), 345, 368, 385 Albarracin (pr. Teruel), siege of (1220), 357 Albedon (near Barcelona), 197n alberga(e), 168, 200, 211, 259 Albi (dep. Tarn, ch.-l.), 92, 231n, 401; bp. of, 226n, 231n, 396, 401, 404, 409n; c. of, 226n, 396-7, 401, 403, 414n, 418; vet. of, 396 Albigensian crusades, 14n, 215, 216, 217, 233, 236, 259, 393, 397 Albigeois, 393, 401, 403, 418; Jews of, 68, peace of (1191), 222, 226-7; taxation in, 52, 58, 227 Albret, lords of, 8. See also Amanieu Ales (dep. Card, ch.-l. ar.), 400, 401 Alexander HI, pope (1159-81), 221, 234 alfaches, 33 Alfajarin (pr. and p.j. Zaragoza), 40, 45 Alfons I (Alfonso II, k. of Agaron, ct. of Barcelona, 1162-96), 131, 139, 162, 163, 166, 168, 169, 179-82, 184, 187, 191, 203, 209, 224, 229, 243n, 246, 262, 333, 372, 402; administrative reforms of, 279, 281, 290, 358, 373, 374; knighting, marriage of, 307; monetary policy of, 307, 308, 326, 340; peace-statutes of, 222, 223; reign of, 14152, 216 Alfonse of Poitiers (1220-71), ct. of Toulouse (etc.), 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 25, 86, 87, 89, 393, 394, 396, 404, 405n, 407; monetary policy of, 397, 399, 408-10, 415, 416; taxation of, 49-73 Alphonse-Jourdain, ct. of Toulouse (1112-47), 224, 225n 'alfonsins', 402 Alfonso I, 'the Battler', k. of Aragon (110434), 130, 131, 146, 241; pseudo-Alfonso, 146-7

428

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Alfonso VII, k. of Castile (1126-57), 131, 140, 306 Alfonso VIII, k. of Castile and Leon (11581214), 308n, 314, 328, 333 Alfonso (of Castile), Infante (d. 1260), 31, 38, 41, 241 allod(s), 156, 158-9, 160, 166, 169, 188, 246; alodium de Caseles, in alodiofevi, 159n alloy (of coins), 394, 396, 397, 398, 399, 403, 404, 405, 422, 424 Almacelles (pr. and pj. Lleida, com. Segria), 190; bwk. of, 371 Almeria (pr.), expeditions against (1147), 131, 132. Almodis, ctess, of Barcelona (d. 1071), 140 Almudebar (pr. and p.j.), 40, 45 alodium, see allod(s) alongamentum, 386 Alphonse, see Alfonse Alquezar (pr. Huesca, p.j. Barbastro), 40, 45 Amanieu d'Albret, 8n, 9, 15, 16 Amatus de Grua, 389 Amaury de Montfort, 393, 3% Amicia, 355n Amiens (dep. Somme, ch.-l.), 272, 273n; bp. of, 79n Andorra, 224n, 263 Andreas de Mar in, 45 Andreas de Moriello, 45 Anduze-Sauve (Anduze: dep. Card, ar. Ales, ch.-l.c.), c. ('bernardins') of, 399, 400, 403, 406, 410, 412; lords of, 399, 407n, 417 Anet (dep. Eure-et-Loir, ar. Dreux, ch.-l.c.), 272, 273n, 275 'angevins', 412 Angouleme (dep. Charente, ch.-l.), clergy of diocese of, 83, 87, 93; c. of, 87; ct. of, 83, 87 Anguera (pr. Tarragona, com. Conca de Barbera, p.j. Montblanc), 389 Anjou, 138, 282; c. of, 412; ct. of, 247; magnates of, 115, 116 annals, 131-34, 146, 340 Anselm, Master, 77n apanage lands, 50, 51 Apparitius, 45 aprisio, 157 Aquitaine, 4, 7, 29, 136; duke of, 249 Aragon, 31, 41, 126, 133, 136, 138, 143, 193, 355, 385; administration, government of, 258, 260, 263, 365-8; c. of, 304, 307, 308, 309, 357, 387; custom of, 166, 355; estates, leagues of, 241, 357, 365n, 373; frontiers of, 131, 132, 133n, 146, 259, 371; general courts of, 263, (1228), 31-48; honours of, 364; k.,

kingdom of, 119n, 141, 142, 145, 147, 151, 215, 341, 393, (feudal monarchy), 240-2, 254; money-tax (monedaje) of, 309, 325-38; New Aragon, 241; Old Aragon, 240; peace (1164) of, 180, 222, 235; regnum Aragonis, 142; repositarius of, 35n, 372; revenues, taxation of, 351, 353, 355, 357-8 aragonenses, 142 Aranda (de Moncayo, pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Ateca), 40,45 Arbertus presbiter, 378 archives, 273, 275; of ct.-k. of Barcelona, 145, 169, 187, 192 aristocracy, see nobility Ariza, see Fariza armies, 4, 11, 17, 101, 144 armiger, 385 Arnal Berenguer de Anglerola, 156 'arnaldins' (arnaudencs), see Agen, c. of ARNALDO-ARNALDUS-ARNALLUSARNAU Arnaldus pelliterius, 35n, 45 Arnallus subdiachonus, 173 Arnau, vet. of Castellbo (1185-1226), 162n, 170, 176, 201, 212, 361, 363, 380, 381 Arnallus Adaldi, 173 Arnau, priest, 299, 301 Arnau de Caldes, 190, 191n, 197, 198 Arnaldus de Cloquerio (Clochario), 387, 388 Arnaldus de Corniliano, 174 Arnaldus Cortit, 42 Arnaldus de Cuguciis, 388 Arnau de Foixa, 354 Arnallus Guillermi de Cartiliano, 159n Arnaldus lohanis, 43 Arnaldo de Luna, maiordomus of Aragon, 366n Arnaldus de Montepesato, 15n Arnallus de Mudazos, 178 Arnallus de Paleria, 338 Arnaldus de Quatuor Quasis, 380 Arnau Roig, 385 Arnallus Sancti Martini, 177 Arnaldus de Solanellas, 43 Arnaldus Tron, 43 Arnau Umball, v. of Barcelona, 380 Arnaud I, abp. of Narbonne (1121-49), 221, 224, 226 Arnoul the Great, ct. of Flanders (918-65), 138 Arraona (formerly near Sabadell, pr. Barcelona), castle, 168, 173 Arras (dep. Pas-de-Calais, ch.-l.), 101; c. of, 394 Artaldus de Luna, 42 Artois, 90, 254, 272

Index Asco (pr. Tarragona, com. La Ribera d'Ebre, p.j. Gandesa), 195, 367 Asnieres (dep. Eure, ar. Bernay, c. Cormeilles), 80 assemblies, 56, 57, 70, 72, 77, 88, 94; at or of: Agenais, 3-30, Aragon, 31-48, 241, Carcassonne (1303), 109n, Carpentras (1268), 61, Lleida (1214), 151, 210, Lyon (1312), 108, Montpellier (1303), 109n, Nimes (1303), 109n, Paris (1267), 81, (1302), 97, 107, 110, (1303), 109n, (1314), 97, Perpignan (1173), 180, Poitiers (1268), 61, Provence (1190), 221, Tours (1308), 97, 109, 110, 119; in towns, 415, 421, 424; military, 10-11, 101-2, 107, of: clergy, 109, men of estates, 104-5; peace, 222, 229, 234-5, 258, towns, 114, 115; powers of, 97, 99; territorial, 263. See also general court. assensus populi, see consent assessments, 57, 60, 61, 62 assizia, plena assizia Agenni, 23n Astrugus, vicarius regis, 206n Athies (dep. Pas-de-Calais, ar. Arras), 272 Ato de Focibus maiordomus Aragonensis, 42 Ato Orella, 32n, 42 attendance, 8, 9, 34, 35, 77, 78, 84, 222, 263 Atto of Vercelli, 231n Auch (dep. Gers, ch.-L), legatine statutes of, 220, 222n, 230 Audouin, fidouard, 271 Aumale, cty. of, 252n AurembiaixofUrgell(d. 1231), 142 Aurillac (dep. Cantal, ch.-L), 217 Auvergne, 50, 90, 136, 236n, 249; Jews of, 71; taxation in, 50, 52, 55, 60, 71; towns of, 90 93 auxilium, 8. See also aids avena, 293. See cibaria Avignon (dep. Vaucluse, ch.-L), 62n Ayerbe (pr. and p.j. Huesca), 40, 45 Azach, physician, 366 B. de Alagone, 45 B. Balbi, 43 B. de Bosco, 384 B. de Centellis, 380 B. Dalos, 44 B. Marquisii, 43 B. de Turricella, 391 B. Uacca, 380 Bages (com.), 149,192 bailiff(s), 182, 188, 245, 260, 261, 279, 352, 357, 365, 370-1, 384, 388; accountability of, in Catalonia, 193-5, 196, 290; creditor-bailiffs,

429 429

366; Jewish, 354, 367. See also baillis, baiulus bailiwicks, 158, 367, 371, 384. See also baiulia. baillis, 84, 86, 251, 280 bailliage(s) 83, 275, 280 baiulia (bajulia), 16n, 160, 261 baiulus(-i), 42, 378; comitis, 279; baiuli maiores, 379;regi5;141, 142n Baldwin I 'Iron-Arm', ct. of Flanders (d. 879), 137, 138 Baldwin, J.W., 266, 268 Balearic Islands, see Majorca Banyoles (pr. and p.j. Girona, com. Girones), 383, 384 Banyuls-sur-Mer (dep. Pyrenees-Orientales, ar. Ceret, c. Cote Vermeille), 363n, 376, 378 Bapaume (dep. Pas-de-Calais, ar. Arras, ch.-L c.), 272, 273n Barbastro (pr. Huesca, p.j.), 34, 35, 40, 44; court of (1192), 148; siege of, 138 Barcelona (provincial capital), 143, 146, 391; assemblies at, (1190?), 148; (1200), 149; b., bwk. of, 193, 353, 366, 367, 384; bp. of, 189; c. of, 149, 201, 202, 210, 245, 270n, 331, 337, 339-49, 352-3, 363, 367, 368, 369, (new c. of) 384; capture of (985), 132; chapter of, 187, 189, 191, 342-3, 378; ct(s). of, 128, 129, 132, 134, 136, 151, 154, 155, 160, 161, 163, 165, 181, 188, 190, 216, 219, 224, 242, 243, 249, 258, 259, 261; cty. of, 129, 134, 135, 142, 143, 151, 210, 215; custom, law of, 143, 144; diocese, see of, 188, 272, 355, 367, 370, 384, 388; dynasty (see also ct(s),) of, 135-9; "good men' of, 380; v., vicariate of, 365, 372, 380-2; vcty. of 162n. See also bossonaya, bruna, confirmation of c., doblench, quaternal, ternal barley, 293, 295, 297, 299; ordeum, 300, 301; price of, 296, 297 barons, 11, 167, 261, 359; of: Albigeois, 222n, Aragon, 260, France, 216, 220, Roussillon, 184; barones, 8, 241; custom of, 241 Bartholomew iustitia, 44 Bartholomews de Boleya, 43 Bartholomeo Iter, of Zaragoza, 32n, 36, 43 battles, of: Alarcos (1195), 228, 308; Muret (1213), 215, 329, 351; Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), 228, 353 Bazadais, 4, 14n Beam, 3, 33> 220, 263; c. (morlanensis, morlans) of, 230, 402, 403, 413, 417; vet. of, 354,361,388,390-1

430

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Beatrice, 406 Beaucaire (dep. Card, ar. Nimes, ch.-l.c.), 400, 406, 412, 415; seneschal, senechaussee of, 89, 394, 400, 403, 404, 407n, 410, 411, 417, 418 Beaumanoir, Philippe de, 77, 86 Beaumont-le-Roger (dep. Eure, ar. Bernay, ch.-l.c.), cty. of, 90 Beauquesne (dep. Somme, ar. Amiens, c. Dollens), 272 Becket, Saint Thomas (d. 1170), 198 Bela pastor, 35n beneficium, 160. See also fief(s) BERENGARIUS-BERENGUER Berenguer, b., 367, 389 Berengarius de Besom, 387, 388 Berengarius de Boscho, 387, 388 Berenguer Bou, 206n Berenguer (de Caldes), 197 Berengarius de Caneto, 186 Berengarius de Cantalupis Elenensis archidiaconus, 378 Berengarius de Cardos, 176 Berengarius de Castel Blanc, 42 Berengarius de Castro uetulo, 391 Berengarius de Ceruaria, 377 Berengarius de Crassa tnaior, 378 Berengarius de Crassa publicus notarius Perpiniani, 378 Berengarius Gerardi, 382, 383 Berenguer de Guardia, 157n Berengarius de Guardia, 174 Berenguer Guillem, 365 Berengarius Lanberti, 380 Berenguer de Olzina, k's notary, 335 Berengarius de Orle, 186 Berengarius de Petraindsa, 175 Berengarius de Rosanis, 386 Berenguer Sunyer, 382 Berenguer de Vilademuls, abp. of Tarragona (1174-94), 148 Bergerac (dep. Dordognc, ch.-l. ar.), lord of, 21 Bergueda, 154, 159, 160n, 192n; account of honour of, 290n 'bernardins', see Anduze BERNARD-BERNARDUS-BERNAT Bernardus ballistarius, 382, 385 Bernard, lord of Anduze, 405, 410-11 Bernardus senescalcus, 173 Bernardus de Alione, 186 Bernardus de Artes, 385 Bernardus de Bages (Bigis), 387, 388 Bernardus de Barchinona, 173

Bernat Barutf, 362, 363, 380-3 Bernardus de Belera, brother of Guillem de Belera, 176 Bernardus de Belloc, 336 Bernat de Berga, bp. of Barcelona (1172-88), 184 Bernardus Bertrandi de Domonova, 186 Bernardus de Boscho, 387, 388 Bernat de Caldes, canon of Barcelona and Lleida, 189, 190, 191, 194 Bernardus de Castro episcopali iunior, 389 Bernardus Castri noui, 178 Bernardus Clem, 174 Bernardus de Corbera Barchinone ebdomedarius, 378 Bernat Durfort, 366, 386 Bernardus Ermengaudi, 178 Bernardus Ermengaudi de Freixeneto, 378 Bernardus Faidia, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 42 In Bernardus de Grua, 382, 383 Bernard de Levazia, 63 Bernardus de Manleuo, 386 Bernat de Monells, 168 Bernardus de Monte regali, 378 Bernardus de Nauata, 175 Bernardus Parmensis, 303, 315, 322 Bernat de Plegamans, 293, 299, 300 Bernat de Portella, 177, 201, 212, 334 Bernardus de Prato publicus scriptor Sancti Petri de Bisulluno, 384 Bernardus Raimundi, 174 Bernardus Revelli, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 421 n [Berna?]rdus Stephani levita et publicus scriptor Gerunde, 338 Bernat Tallafer, ct. of Besalu (988-1020), 139n Bernardus de Tores, 390 Bernardus de Valle uiridi, 386 Berry, 218, 219, 220, 236n, 248n, 253, 254; communia in, 235n Bertran de Castellet, 145, 191, 194, 358 Bertrando de Viflanova, 39, 46 Bertrandus capellanus de Zarael, 390 Bertrandus de Monteainola, 384 Bertrandus Stephani, consul of city of Narbonne, 421 n Bertrannus consobrinus (of another Bertrannus) de Villa longa, 174 Bertrannus de Uilla longa, 174 Besalu (pr. Girona, com. Garrotxa, p.j. Olot), 192, 363, 383; comtors of, 162; cts. of, 128, 129, 134, 181; cty. of, 129, 130, 135, 161, 163, 242; vicariate of, 383, 384

Index cartularies, see 'Carlesmany', Liberfeudorum maior Casbas (pr. Huesca, p.j. Jaca), 326 Caseles, allod of, 159n 'cases and affairs', 67—8, 76 Caspary, G. E., 304n castellan(s), 129, 144-5, 147, 149, 154, 159, 161, 166, 168, 169, 215, 242, 249, 250, 258, 259, 260; castlani, 176; castlans, 128, 153-7, 160-2, 165, 167, 168, 170, 173, 243, 244n castellany(-ies), 109, 113, 161, 249-50, 260; castellania, 156, 158 Castellar, El (pr. and p.j. Zaragoza), 40, 45 Castellbo (Vila i Vail de Castellbo, pr. Lleida, p.j. La Seu d'Urgell), vet. of, 149 Castellgali (pr. Barcelona, com. Bages, p.j. Manresa), castle of, 192 Castellnou (Castmm nouum: dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, c. Thuir), vet., aula of, 177 Castelsarrasin (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne, ch.-l. ar.), 7n, 13, 18-9 Castile, 147, 203, 306 castla, see castellan(s) castlania, 162n, 259 castles, 168, 170, 208, 259, 263; administration of, 144-5, 167-70, 192, 249; custom of; 128, 140,156,164,171, 245, 250,254; in: Aragon, 240, 355, 356, Catalonia, 128, 129, 154, 155, 156, 161, 162, 243, France, 254, Languedoc, 396, 407n; 'power of, 140, 143, 148, 153, 156, 168-9, 175, 196, 243, 244, 259, 263; type of, on coins, 408. See also castmm Castres (dep. Tarn, ch.-l. arr.), 401; lord of, 401 castrum (-a), 176; Gerundelle, 159n. See also castles, kastellum Catalan (language), 127, 164 Catalans, 143 catalanus (-1), 129, 142 Catalonia, 125-52, 210, 233, 293; accounting in, 278-80, 282-3; administration, government in, 144-50, 152, 191, 192-5, 202, 216, 257, 259, 263, 272, 306, 309, 364, 365-7, 368, 370; barons of, 144, 146-50, 200, 206, 208, 211; bps., of, 306; Cat(h)ahnia, 142, 151, 153, 178; Catalonha, 143; charter for (1205), 199-212; c. in (see also Barcelona), 305; confirmation of c. in, 424; Corts of, 151, 196, 235; custom, law of, 143, 144, 150, 151, 312; domains, revenues of, 351, 353—4, 356, 357, 364, 385; feudalism in, 152-78, 242-7, 254; national identity in, 126-30, 141, 152, 242, 258; Peace and Truce in, 179, 215-36; principate in, 164-5; social change in, 143;

431

taxation in, 149-50, 308, 325-38, 354, 355; territorial extent of, 182; townsmen of, 375. See also New Catalonia, Old Catalonia Caumont (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne, ar. Castelsarrasin, c. Saint-Nicolas-de-la Grave), Catalonia, 125-52, 210, 233, 293; accounting in, 278-80, 282-3; administration, government in, 144-50, 152, 191, 192-5, 202, 216, 257, 259, 263, 272, 306, 309, 364, 365-7, 368, 370; barons of, 144, 146-50, 200, 206, 208, 211; bps., of, 306; Cat(h)alonia, 142, 151, 153, 178; Catalonha, 143; charter for (1205), 199-212; c. in (see also Barcelona), 305; confirmation of c. in, 424; Corts of, 151,196, 235; custom, law of, 143, 144, 150, 151, 312; domains, revenues of, 351, 353—4, 356, 357, 364, 385; feudalism in, 152-78, 242-7, 254; national identity in, 126-30, 141, 152, 242, 258; Peace and Truce in, 179, 215-36; principate in, 164—5; social change in, 143; taxation in, 149-50, 308, 325-38, 354, 355; territorial extent of, 182; townsmen of, 375. See also New Catalonia, Old Catalonia Caumont (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne, ar. Castelsarrasin, c. Saint-Nicolas-de-la Grave), 12n Cavaillon (dep. Vaucluse, ar. Apt, ch.-l. c.), 61n, 62n; bp. of, 61 caualcadae, cavalgada, 175, 225n cavallaria, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161 Caylar, Le (dep. Herault, ar. Lodeve, ch.-l. c.), 227 Celestine III, pope (1191-8), 307, 308, 309; legateJacintus, 189, 220, 306, 307 censiers, 261,272, 278 censives, 166 census, 160n Cerdanya, 127; administration of, 353, 359; castellans, of, 154; cts. of, 128, 129, 162, 181; cty. of, 130, 134, 135, 138, 141,161, 163, 190, 242, 263; lordship of, 376-8; memorial of Templar rights in, 289n; monedatge'm, 352-3; peace-tax in, 149, 180, 205, 206, 224, 228, 258, 326-7, 330, 335-6, saiones in, 258 Cervera (pr. Lleida, com. Segarra, p.j.), assembly at (1202), 149; b. of, 193 cessante causa debuit cessare ejfectus, 227 Champagne, 109, 249; ct. of, 85, 251; lists of vassals of, 253 changers, 312, 412 Chanson de la Croisade, 4 chansons de geste, 138n Charles IV (k. of France, 1322-8), 26

432

Medieval France and her Medieval Neighbours

Betxaironus, 336 Beziers (dep. Herault, ch.-l. ar.), 400, 417; bp., diocese of, 222n, 405n; c. of, 396, 400n, 403n, 404; peace of, 221-2, 226, 230, 231; vets., dynasty of, 215, 222n, 259, 393, 396, 404. See also mark(s) Bigorre, 3 billon, see bossonaya biscanii, 343 bladum, 298. See also wheat Blanche of Castile, q. of France (1223-6; d. 1252), 19 Blaschus de Alagone, 42 Blaschus de Exeya, 42 Blaschus Mafa, 42 Blasco Romeu, 334 Bloch, Marc, 237, 238n, 239 Blois-Champagne, 136 Bondia, b. and repositarius, 366n, 367, 372 Bonetus Contastini, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 42In [Bonjetus de Seta, 43 Boniface VIII, pope (1294-1303), 97, 107, 118, 119 Bonnassie, Pierre, 126, 127, 153, 155, 216n, 242, 244n, 246, 247, 258, 260 Bonnaud-Delamare, Roger, 217n, 230, 231 bonnes villes, 114, 120 Bordeaux (dep. Gironde, ch.-l.), 13, 22n; abp. of, 93; province, provincial bps. of, 14n, 87 Bordelais, 226; institutes of peace in, 222, 226, 229, 230, 231 n Borja (pr. Zaragoza, p.j.), 40, 45; general court of (1134), 241n aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bossonaya (c. of Barcelona), 331, 340, 341, 344, 347 Botet y Siso, Joaquim, 199, 328 Boulogne (-sur-Mer, dep. Pas-de-Calais, ch.-l. ar.), lOln Bourges (dep. Cher, ch.-L), 92; abp. of, 119, 218 bovatge, see bovaticum bovaticum (bovatge), 149, 150, 199, 207n, 210, 223,227, 228, 229, 234, 356, 357, 364, 388, 389; confirmation of, 205, 223; of 1200, 360; origins of, 200, 205-6, 224, 325-38; redemption of, 200, 201, 205, 223, 224 Brabancons, 233 Breval (dep. Yvelines, ar. Mantes-la-Jolie, c. Bonnieres-sur-Seine), 272 breve(-ia), 278, 289 Brevis historia (1147), ofRipoll, 134 Brittany, c. of, 412

Brown, E. A. R., 237, 238 bruna (c. of Barcelona), 340 Brunissendis, mother of Hug III of Empuries, 175 Brussel, Nicolas, 265, 267, 273 Brutails,J.-A., 179 budget, 270 bullion clauses, 344 Burgundy, 136, 220; duke of, 77, 252 'business', 'arduous', 111; 'of the peace and faith', 223. See also negotia Cab de Etna, 174; pater de, 174 caballaria, cavalleria, 260 Cabra (del Camp, pr. Tarragona, com. Alt Camp, p.j. Vails), 389 Cabrera, vet. of, 149 Cahors (dep. Lot, ch.-l.), bp. of, 252; c. ('caorsins') of, 397n, 398-9, 401, 403, 410, 413, 414, 424; consuls of, 116, 231n; diocese of, 401 Calatayud (Calataiub: pr. Zaragoza, p.j.), 40, 43, 349, 353 Caldes de Malavella (pr. Girona, com. Selva, p.j. Santa Coloma de Farners), 188n Caldes de Montbui (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Occidental, p.j. Granollers), 188, 287n; mensura de Calidis, 188n; b. of, 189-91 Calixtus II, pope (1119-24), 305 Calmetter Joseph, 128 Candeil (Ben., Albigeois), 401 Canfranc (pr. Huesca, p.j. Jaca), 33 canon law, 303—23; canonist doctrine of: mutations of c., 311, oaths, 311, 317 'caorsins', see Cahors capbreu, 272 capitularies, 217 capitulutn (consuls), of Toulouse, 15n Cappy (dep. Somme, ar. Peronne, c. Bray-surSomme), 272 Carcassonne (dep. Aude, ch.-L), 142, 151, 162n, 396, 404, 417; assemblies of: (1271), 110, (1303), 109n; bp. of, 407n; c. of, 396, 404; mint of, 406; senechaussee of, 92, 394, 404, 406, 407, 409, 412, 413, 415, 416, 418, 422; vcty. of, 404, 407n Cardona (pr. Barcelona, com. Bages, p.j. Berga), abt. of, 147-8; vet. of, 147 'Carlesmany' (cartulary of Girona), 199 Carolingians, administration of, 128, 395; descent from, 133, 137, 138; institutional order of, 215, 217, 236 Carpentras (dep. Vaucluse, ch.-l. ar.), 62n, 65; assembly (1268) at, 60-1

Index Charles of Anjou, ct. of Anjou, Provence; k. of Sicily (d. 1285), 86, 407n Charles the Bald, k, of West Franks (840-77), 137, 138 Charles the Good, ct. of Flanders (1119-27), 136, 137 Charles of Valois (d. 1325), 115 Charlemagne, k. of Franks and emperor (768814), 254 Charlieu (dep. Loire, ar. Roanne, ch.-l. c.), 84 charters, 91, 92, 194, 291, 326, 344, 371; of: liberties, privileges, 201, 202, 205, 326, 327 -8, 333, 334-5, non-prejudice, 54, 61, 68n, 205, 228, urban peace, 235; charter of Girona (1205), 150, 199-212, 327, 328-30, 334-5 Chartres (dep. Eure-et-Loir, ch.-l.), ordinance of (1263), 85, 407, 408, 412 Chateauneuf de Bonafos (Albigeois), c. of, 396 -7 Chateau-Thierry (dep. Aisne, ch.-l. ar.), great council at (1303), 103n Le Chatelet-en-Brie (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ar. Melun, ch.-l. c.), 272 Chaumont-en-Vexin (dep. Oise, ar. Beauvais, ch.-l, c.), 275n Chauny (dep. Aisne, ar. Laon, ch.-l. c.), 80 Checy (dep. Loiret, ar. Orleans, c. Saint-Jeande-Braye), 271,272, 273 chesta, see questia chirograph, 289, 290 Choisy-au-Bac (dep. Oise, ar. Compiegne, c. Compiegne-Nord), 272 Chronicon Barcinonense, 340—2, 345 chronology, 146 cibaria, 293, 295, 297, 299, 300, 301; prices of, 296 Cistercians, 139 Clement III, pope (1187-91), 221 Clement IV, pope (1265-8), 410, 415 clerks, of towns, 84 Clermont (-Ferrand: dep. Puy-de-D6me, ch.-l.), bp. of, 419n; c. of, 413, 419n; statutes of (1095), 220 Clery-sur-Somme (dep. Somme, ar. and c. Peronne), 272 Cluny (dep. Saone-et-Loire, ar. Macon, ch.-l. c.), monastic administration at, 278n, 298 coinage, 5, 33, 83, 85, 89, 105, 108n, 140, 146, 158, 291-2, 297, 306, 339; expertise on, 108n; gold, 341, 343, 37\;gros, 397, 398, 406, 408, 415n, 417; law of, 164; manipulated, 150; medala (maille), 291, 292, 295, 300, 301, 394; obols, 394; of account,

433

394; records of, 342; revenues of, 149, 150, 280, (in France), 270; sheltered under Peace, 223, 230, 245; stability of, 95. See also confirmation, exchange (rates of), mark(s), mutation(s), recoinages; Agen, Albi, Anduze, Angouleme, Anjou, Aragon, Barcelona, Beam, Beziers, Brittany, Cahors, Catalonia, England, France, Jaca, Lodeve, Marseille, Melgueil, Mende, Montpellier, Narbonne, Nimes, Paris, Poitou, Provence, Le Puy, Rodez, Roquefeuil, Toulouse, Tours, Urgell, Uzes, Valence, Venaissin, Vic, Vienne, Viviers; 'alfonsins', 'angevins', 'arnaldins', 'bernardins', bossonaya, bruna, 'caorsin', 'crosats', dirhems, doblench, mancusi, mazmudins, mendois, millarenses, millarets, morabetins, morlanensis, nemausenses, pougeoises, 'raymondins', regales, rodanois, sterling, tolzas, tournois coins, 291-2, 297, 339; legends on, 230, 394, 395, 399; of: Albi, 396-7, Melgueil, 397, Rodez, Toulouse, 230, Tours, 394; types of, 394, 395, 397, 399, 406, 408, 409, 415-6, 422. See also medala, obol(s) Coll i Alentorn, Miquel, 137, 138 Collioure (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Ceret, c. Argelessur-Mer), 336, 360, 363n, 372, 376 colloquium, 69n Cologne (Koln, Nordrhein-Wesfalen), mark of, 398 Colom (Columbus), canon of Barcelona, k's notary, 335, 336, 346, 359, 366, 369 Columbus, see Colom Commemoracions ofPere Albert, 156 commemorations, 291; commemoratio-nes, 289, de debito, 300 Comminges, 70, 225, 233, 402, 404, 417; peace in, 221, 231 communes, 254 commune (peace-tax), 226; pro pace servanda, 227n commune consilium, see consilium communia, in:Agenais, 231, Berry, 235n community, 114; of: Agenais, 11, realm, 83; communitas: Agennensis, 5, Agennesii, 28n, Agenni, lOn, judeorum, 87n, ville, 423 compensum: pads, 221n, pro pace, 226 Compiegne (dep. Oise, ch.-l. ar.), 272, 274, 275; court at, 102 Compostella (Santiago de Compostela: La Coruna, p.j.), 220 compotus-i, see accounts

434

Medieval France and her Medieval Neighbours

computum-a, 193, 194 comtoria, of Taus, 170 comtors, comtores, 162, 165, 243 Conca de Barbara (com.), 359 concejos, 32, 33, 36, 37, 41, 43-5. See also concilium concilium-a (concejo, 36, 37, 41, 44, 45 Condom (dep. Gers, ch.-l. ar.), lOn, 12, 18n, 116; abt., monks of, 14n, 15n Conesa (pr. Tarragona, p.j. Montblanc), 389 confirmation of coinage, 209, 303, 305—12, 396; at: Barcelona, 150, 201, 205, 209, 307, 309, Narbonne, 421—5; confirmatio monetae, 306, 309, 312, 327, 421-5 Conflent, 135, 181, 293, 353, 359, 376; peacetax in, 330, 335-6 conjuration(s), 230, 233 Conon de Lausanne, 268, 270 consent, 5, 17, 33, 91, 93, 104, 110, 148; assensus populi, 304, 309, 310, 311, 314; on monetary matters, 303, 304; to taxation, 106, 150, (of Alfonse of Poitiers), 49-73. See also counsel conseruare monetam, 309n, 312, 421n conservation of coinage, 309n, 312 consilia villarum de riparia, 13 consiliarius-i, 63, 76, 314, 322, 360, 361 consiliatores, 381 consilium, 8, 9, 13, 17, 27n, 69n, 176; consilio et iussione magnatum . . . , 234n; consilium magnatum . . . , 212, 379; de communi consilio, S\,-ettractatu, 32, 41 Constanca, q. of Sicily (d. 1223), 336 constituciopads et treuge (1214), 210 consuetudo terre, 212 consuls, 12, 13, 24, 42, 43, 57, 84, 115, 424; of: Agen, 6, Agenais, 7, 11, 16, 21, 25, 27, Lagruere, 23n, Lerida, 35n, 36n, Marmande, 10, Narbonne, 421, Toulouse, 15, 19; representation by, 69 consultation, 98, 106, 122, 201, 408n; in Catalonia, 148-9 conuenientiae, see conventions conventions, 153, 155, 156, 161, 162, 167, 170, 171, 243, 260; of homage, fealty, 128; conuenientiae, 153, 155 conveyances, 159 copper, 405 Corbeil (Corbeil-Essonnes: dep. Essonnes, ar. fivry, ch.-l. c.), 272, 273; Treaty of (1258), 411 Corbins (pr. and p.j. Lleida, com. Segria), 156 Cordes (dep. Tarn, ar. Albi, ch.-l. c.), 401 Cordiere (? eastern Languedoc), 403n

Cornelia del Terri (pr. and p.j. Girona, com. Girones), castle of, 160 Corro d'Amunt (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Oriental, p.j. Granollers), 159n cort, 6, lOn; cortgenerate, 10, 12n, 209, (d'Agenes), 24n, (of Barcelona), 38; great corts of Lerida, 34, 235n Corts, 144, 151, 235; in Catalonia, 144, 14851, 263 Cortes, 3, 38, 151 council(s), 114; and court, 83; general, 107, (First Lateran, 1123), 304, 305; (Second, 1139), 220, 233; (Third, 1179), 223, 233; (Fourth, 1215), 355; (1303), 11 In; great-, 88, 90, 94, 102-3; k's, 86, 88, 94; of: Alfonse of Poitiers, 63, 65n, 67, 68, 69, Lerida, (1155), 306, 311, (1173), 306, (1214), 231, 233, 234; peace, in: Aquitaine, 219, lower Languedoc, 231, Montpellier (1215), 227, 231, 233; provincial, 104 councillors, counsellors, 13, 84, 89 counsel, 8, 21, 33, 81, 83, 86, 105, 150, 200, 210, 211, 258, 422; and consent, 221; evil-, 303; expert-, 114, 408n; grant conseil, 86; 'great counsel', 201, 212 counterfeiters, 304, 306, 310; counterfeiting, 311,318,319,321 courts, 94, 235; ceremonial, 99-100, 102, 108n; festival, 88; feudal, 249; general court(s). See also curia. credit, 143, 145, 150, 195, 262, 279, 280, 287302; of ct.-k, 190, 191, 352-85; finance by, 370 Creixell (pr. Girona, com. Alt Emporda, p.j. Figueres), 157 'crosats', 402 Crou (dep Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. MontLouis), uilla of, 177 Crown of Aragon, 151 crusades, 100, 228; first, 220, third, 274; seventh (1267-70), 81, 82; against Aragon, 86; in Spain, 307, 314. See also aids fuda, of Tortosa, 160 Cuixa, see Sant Miquel de Cuixa culture, of fiefs and vassalage, 171-2 Cum saluspopuli (1216), 375 Cum utilitaspublica (1191), 307, 308 Cunctis pateat (charter of Cerdanya, 1118), 180, 205, 209, 210, 223-4, 229, 234n, 306, 326-7, 328, 329, 330, 331 curia, 6, 7, 25n, 88; generalis, 5, 6, 18n, 27, 32, 41; great curia: in Catalonia, 246; in France, 249; (in) plena curia, 77, 82n, 195-6, 235; curia: mea, 184, regis, 76, 86, Sancti Severi, 9n.

Index See also courts curiales, 76, 88 currency (of coinage), 400—7; of account, 403 custom, 33, 72, 87, 90, 94; baronial, 241; of: fidelity and fiefs, 216; 'France near Paris', 215; 'general custom of the realm', 91. See also aids D. Forton, 44 D[-] (of an uncertain place), 44 Dalmau, vet. of Rocaberti (1166-81), 175 Dalmau de Creixell, 331, 334, 336-8 Dalmacius de Crexello, 177 Damazan (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Nerac, ch.-l.c.), 5 Daroca (pr. Zaragoza p.j.) 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 43, 353, 371; general court of (1228), 3148, 241,372n 'days' (dies), seeparlement(s) debt(s), 343, 344, 379, 380, 383, 385; of Alfons I, 203, Pere I, 203, 208, 228 decretalists, 303 Decretals of Gregory IX, see Liber Extra defensio regni, 92n Delisle, Leopold, 265, 272 denarius-i, 291, 300, 301; denarii Albiensis monetae, 226n Deosdado, 44 descriptiones, 278 Devailly, Guy, 250 Dezfenoil (com. Conca de Barbera), 389 diplomacy, 78, 86 dirhems, 415 dispensation (papal power of), 303, 307, 308, 318, 320, 322 doblench (c. of Barcelona), 331, 337, 339, 342, 343, 346, 349, 364, 390-1 domain, fixed, 278 domanium, 254 [Domenjge Oliuarius, 43 Domesday Book, 278 domicelli, 8, 9n Dominicans, of Agen, 7, 21; provincial chapter of, 404 dominicatura-e, 158, 211 Dominicus alcalde, 35n, 44 Dominicus index, 43 Dominicus iustitia, 35n, 45 Domi[n]ici4s de [Barjbastro, 44 Dominicus Iterii, 36n, 43 Dominicus Majoral, 45 Dominicus Petri, 43 Dominicus Santii, 44 Dominicus Sellero, 44

435

Don Turol, 44 Dona et harnesia, 268 Dorcha de Castel uil, 173 Duby, Georges, 137, 247, 258 Dun-le-Roi (Dun-sur-Auron: dep. Cher, ar. Saint-Amand-Montrond, ch.-l. c.), 92 Durand (poor carpenter of Velay), 229 Durfort (d'Espiells), b. of Barcelona, 366, 367, 370, 373, 384, 388 ebdomedarius, 378 echevins, 84 £cluse, L' (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. and c. Ceret), 363, 380, 381 Edward I, k. of England (1272-1307), 4, 5, 7n, 8, 12, 13n, 14, 22, 26, 29, 89n Edward II, k. of England (1307-27), 26, 27, 28 Egidius de Atrossillo, 42 Egidius Ferrandi, 45 Egidius de Nauasa, 45 Ejea de los Caballeros (pr. Zaragoza, pj.)» 36, 40, 42; milites et infantiones of, 42 Eleanor of Castile, q. of Aragon (d. 1244), 31, 32, 41, 356, 357 elections, 82, 108 Elne (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. and c. Perpignan), archdeacon of, 378; bp. or see of, 31, 41,162, 183, 225n, 226, 234n, 258; diocese of, 181, 184; peace of, 221, 222, 229n, 230, (diocesan), 182, 184 Eltrudis, 138 Empuries, ct. of, 162, 165; cty. of, 142, 155, 158, 159, 168, 172, 243n, 244 enfeoffments, 241, 243, 253 England, 56, 150, 217, 257; sterling c. of, 402, 412 Enguerran (IV) de Couci (d. 1311), 83 Ennego Blascho, 44 Ennego Meder, 45 enquetes, 400, 403, 404, 412 ensenhamen, see Guerau de Cabrera Epila (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. La Almunia de Dona Godina), 40, 44 Ermengaldus Mage, son of, 174 Ermengardus de Verneto, 186 Ermengol IV, ct. of Urgell (1102-54), 163 Ermengol VIII, ct. of Urgell (1184-1209), 149 Ermessindis, mother of Dalmau of Rocaberti, 175 escheats, 161 Espira-de-Conflent (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Vinca), church of, 177 estar, 380 estate(s), 9, 11, 16, 28, 29, 30, 34,120-1; 'estate

436

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

of the realm', 118; men of, 113, 115, 116, 121; representation of, 113; status, estats, etats, 118. See also 'Estates General', status, trois estas 'Estates General', 97, 99, 107, 112n, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122; provincial estates, 98n Estefania, 287 Estoher (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Vinca), 177 £tampes (dep. Essonne, ch.-l. ar.), knights of castellany of, 83 etats, see accounts, estate(s) Eudes Rigaud, abp. of Rouen (d. 1276), 77, 7980, 81n Eugene HI, pope (1145-53), 225 £vreux (dep. Eure, ch.-l.), 272, 273n Ex tenore litterarum (1199), 313-4 exactions, 200, 211. See zhofordae Examen, 206n exchange (rates) of coinages, 331, 337, 346, 347, 348-9, 397, 398, 399, 402, 403, 406n, 407, 410, 415n, 422; royal policy of, 411-5 Exchequer, of Normandy, 78n, 89, 265, 280; rolls of, 280 excuse-procurations, 111, 119 exercitus, 10 Exitninus de Aranceillo, 42 Eximinus Daysa, 45 Eximinus de na Lu$a, 45 Eximinus Romei, 42 Eximinus de Segura, 44 expertise, 105, 115, 206; in c., 108n, 115 F. Anauensis archidiachonus, 176 F. de Turriliis, 391 Fariza (Ariza: pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Ateca), 40, 41, 44 farm(s), 373; of privates, 275, 277 Farrera de Pallars (pr. Lleida, p.j. Sort), castle of, 175-6 Fawtier, Robert, 99, 239, 282 fealty, fidelity, 14n, 20, 30, 31, 37, 38, 41, 110, 128, 164, 190, 252, 254, 255; custom of, 216; in: Aragon, 240, 241, 242, 255, Catalonia, 153, 244, 246, 255, 259; oaths of, 20, 21, 36, 154, 155, 157, 161, 162, 165, 166, 181, 260; reserve of, 168, 170, 244, 252; to the peace, 230. See also fidelitas Ferran, Ferrando, Infant of Aragon (d. 1242), 31,41,42,364,366 Ferrandus Ferrandi, 45 Ferrandus de Larato, 42 Ferrandus de Larrun, 45—6 Ferrarius Mir(o), 387, 388

Ferrer de Sant Marti, 390-1 Ferriz Guardiel, 45 festival courts, see courts feudal: court, 249; custom, 10, 151, 153; monarchy, 136, 170, 237-54, 280; obligation, 8; tenure, 237 feudalism(s), 236, 237-55, 257, 260, 263; definitions of, 238; in: Aragon, 240—2, Catalonia, 153-78, 216, 242-7, France, 247-54, 280. See also feudal feudum-a, see fiefs fideles, 248, 250 fidelitas, jidelitatis juramentum, 166n; fidelitas hominii, 167n. See also fealty, fidelity, 'salue Jidelitates' fidelity, see fealty, fidelitas fief(s), 8, 9, 14n, 18, 20, 22, 238, 239, 240; cties., duchies as, 4, 247, 252; customs of, 216, 237, 244, 245, 247, 249, 252, 254, 255; distinct from allods, 160, 246;feoda, 252; feudum-a, 156, 157n, 158n, 160n, 171, 175; feus, \14;fevum-a, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159n, 160, 161, 162n, 163n, 168n,174,177, 243, 245, 260;fevum comitale, 160; held by peasants, 159; heritability of, 158; hierarchy of, 242, 248; in: Catalonia, 153, 154, 155n, 156, 157-63, 166, 168, 170, 171, 177, 188, 193, 243, 244, 250, 259, 260, France, 247, 280; management of, 167-71, 251; obligations of, 241, 242, 243, 244; recognitions of, 20, 167; rear-fiefs, 168; tenants of, 22 Figeac (dep. Lot, ch.-l. ar.), 84; abt. of, 14; deputy consuls of, 23In finance, 280, 352-4, 373; distinct from accounting, 368 firmamentum, 390 firmancia, 178 fiscal; abuses, 202; administration, 260—3, in Catalonia, 145, 191-8, 287-302, 351-91, France, 49-73, 265-83; supervision, 358-67 fisci cyrographa, 273, 276 Flach, Jacques, 239, 247 Flagy (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ar. Melun, c. Lorrez-le-Bocage-Preaux), 272 Flanders, 86, 88, 102, 135-8, 218, 219, 249, 251, 252, 272; accounting in, 265, 272, 277, 278; ct. of, 105, 251; ct's court of, 77; cty. of, 249, 252 Flix (pr. Tarragona, com. la Ribera, p.j. Gandesa), castle of, 159n Flote, Pierre, 97 fogatge see hearth-tax(es) Foix (dep. Ariege, ch.-l. dep.), ct. of, 233, 393;

Index war of, 86, 91. Fondarella, Fontaldara (pr. Lleida, com. Segria, p.j. Lleida), statutes of (1173), 144, 147, 148, 149, 163, 179, 181, 182, 183, 222 Fontjoncouse (dep. Aude, ar. Narbonne, c. Durban-Corbieres), 402, 417 forciae, 200, 211 Fores (pr. Tarragona, corn. Conca de Barbera, p.j. Montblanc), 144, 145, 151, 389 Fortunius de Bergua, 42 Fortunius Lupi, 43 Fortunius Lupi de Auuero, 42 Fortunius Santii de Bera, 42 Fortunius de Villa Longa, 45 Fossemore (northern France), 272 Fossier, Robert, 251, 278 fouage, see hearth-tax(es) Fraga (pr. Huesca, p.j.), 36, 40, 44; conquest of (1149), 131, 132 Fragmentum historiae Andegavensis, 138 France, 136, 217, 257, 393; baronage of, 220; c. of, 270; feudal monarchy in, 247-54; k. of, 245; Peace and Truce in, 220, 221, 235; royal domain in, 267, (revenues of), 268, 278, 279, 280; southern, 167, 217, 224, and passim Francia, 129 Franks, 128, 135; administration of, 257, 258 fraud, canonist discussion of, 318, 319; monetary, 303, 305, 369 frenarius, 43 Freteval (dep. Loir-et-Cher, ar. Vendome, c. Moree), battle of (1194), 247, 271, 273, 275 frumentum, see wheat Fuilla (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. and c. Prades), church of, 177 'full power', see plena potestas Fumanya (pr. Barcelona, com. Bergueda, p.j. Berga, ajuntament Figols de les Mines), 160 Fumel (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Villeneuvesur-Lot, ch.-l. c.), customs of, 5, 10, 12, 15n

G[ ] (of an uncertain place), 44 G.A., A.
437

Gaillac (dep. Tarn, ar. Albi, ch.4. c.), 227, 401; abt. of, 409n Ganshof, F. L.,237, 252 Garonne (river), 26; mercantile towns of, 87; valley of, 13 Garsias de Albero, 44 Garsias de Exeya, 42 Garsias Romei, 42 Gascony, 3, 8, 9, 17, 21, 22, 29, 88, 101, 402 Gatinais, good towns of, 92 Gaucbertus Req[ui]ni, 174 Gaucefredus Sancte Columbe, 173 Gaucelm, Templar, 346, 357, 359, 367, 368, 369, 370, 384, 385 Gaucfredus (Jofre I, vet. of Rocaberti, c. 1147— 66), 175 Gaufred de Rocaberti, see Gaufridus Gaufridus de Rochabertino (Jofre II, vet. of Rocaberti, 1181-1212), 200, 212, 335 Gausbertus de Castro novo, 186 Gausfredlll, ct. ofRoussillon (1113-64), 162n, 180; Guifredus comes Rossilionensis, 155n Gauzbertus de Canada, 45 Gava (pr. Barcelona, com. Baix Llobregat, p.j. Hospitalet), bwk. of, 370, 384 genealogies, 137; of EastPyreneancts., 133—9; of Ribagorca, 132-3 general court(s), of: Agenais, 3-30, 263, Aragon, 31-48, 263, peace, 209, 235; at: Monzon (1217), 356, Lerida (1218), 356, 361, 362, Huesca (1221), 356, Daroca (1223), 356, Tortosa (1225), 364, Daroca (1228), 31-48, 372n. See also assemblies Genoa (Liguria, pr.), 262 Gerald of Aurillac (Saint, d. 909), 217 Geralda de Cardona, 157 Geraldus de Blancha forte, 391 Gerallus Guiloni, 338 Gerundella, castle of (Girona), 159n Gesta comitum Barcinonensium, 113—40, 142, 161, 163 Gesta Philippi, see Guillaume le Breton Gevaudan, 88n, 234, 399, 401, 402, 411; barons, nobles of, 87, 115, 116; bp.-lord in, 84, 235, 411; golden bull of (1161), 221n, 229, 236n; peace-institutes, militia (pax) in, 219, 231 Gil Gomez, 43 Gil Gordo, 43 Gil de Mingos, 43 Gillmann, Franz, 316 Girardus comes Rossilionensis (Girard II, ct. of Roussillon, 1164-72), 171n Girona (provincial capital), 143, 159n, 208,

438

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Girona (provincial capital), 143, 159n, 208, 210n, 261; bwk. of, 353; bp. of, 162, 168; charter of (1205), 150, 199-212, 228, 327, 328-30, 334-5; church of, 199, 207; cty. of, 129, 151, 162, 163, 190; diocese of, 159, 364, 388, 390-1; questia of, 330, 335, 336; revenues of, 388, 390-1; statutes of (1188), 148, 149, 150, 182, 209, 222 Girones, 382, 383 Gisors (dep. Eure, ar. Les Andelys, ch.-l. c.), 272; 'good towns' ofbailliage of, 92 glosses, 303; to 3 Comp. 2.15.4 (Quanta personam tuam), 315—22 Goffredus Tranensis, 323 gold (c.), 341, 371; mancusi, 341 'Golden Bull' of Hungary (1231), 202. See also Gevaudan Gomball de Besora, 178 Gomez, 43 Goti(albus de Burgos, 43 'good men', 235 'good towns', 82, 92 Gotierro, 36n, 43 government, in South, 216, 393,394; instituted in Catalonia, 143-50; territorial, 257-64 grant conseil, see counsel Gras y de Esteva, Rafael, 31, 41 Grezes (dep. Lozere, ar. Mende, c. Marvejols), vcty. of, 411 Grierson, Philip, 340, 341n, 346 gros (c.), see coinage; gros toumois, 415n, 417 'Gros Brief (Flemish account of 1187), 265, ' 277 Gualter (de Villa longa), 174 Guardia (La Guardia de Montserrat: pr. Barcelona, com. Anoia, p.j. Igualada), castle of, 157n Guenee, Bernard, 139 Guerau (III) de Cabrera (vet. of Cabrera, d. before 1165), ensenhamen of, 138n Guerau (IV) de Cabrera (vet. of Cabrera, ct. of Urgell, d. 1229), 355, 359 Guerau de Caerci (Templar), 290 Guerau de Cervello, 390-1 Guifre (Guifred) 'the Hairy', ct. in Cerdanya, etc. (878-97), 128, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 163; dynasty of, 242 Guifre of Ria, 135, 137, 138 Guifredus comes Rossilionensis, see Gausfred III Guillelma, 360, 376 Guillelma de Castellvell, 361, 388 GUIL(L)ELMUS-GILELMUS-GUILHEMGUILLAUME-GUILLERMUS Gilelmus, 174

Guilelmus, 177 Guillaume III, bp. of Agen (1247-63), 6, 25 Guillem IV, bp. of Cahors (1208-34), 424 Guilelmus Urgellensis ecclesie cantor, 176 Guilhem V, duke of Aquitaine (995-1029), 219 Guillelmus molinarius consul, 35n, 43 Guillelmus presbiter, 378 Guillelmus subdiachonus notarius, 378 Guillelmus vicecomes de Castro novo (Guillem IV, vet. of Castellnou, c. 1151-c. 1164), 171n Guillem (V), vet. of Castellnou (c. 1193-c. 1249), 177 Guillem A. de Tantalon, senescal d'Agenes, 24n Guillelmus de Aniorto, 378 Guillelmus de Apiano, 186 Guillelmus Arnaldi de Trularibus, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 42In Guillelmus Aztorc, 43 Guillem Balb, 206n Guillem de Bassa (Bassia), 145, 169, 193, 194, 196n, 197 Guillem de Belera, 175 Guillem de Bergueda (d. 1192-6), 147, 148, 149, 167 Guillelmus Bernardi de Paracols, 186 Guillaume le Breton, 268, 273, 276, 281 Guillem de Caldes, canon of Lleida, 190n, 191n Guillem de Canet, 201, 212 Guillelmus de Cardona, 157 Guillelmus de Cardona (Guillem, vet., 1177-26), 334 Guillem de Cervello, 334, 390-1 Guillem de Cervera, 354, 356-7, 359, 360, 365, 370, 389-90; consiliarius, procurator, 360, 361, 362, 379-80 Guillelmus de Chanale presbiter, 378 Guillem de Creixell, 331, 336-8 Guillem Durfort (d. c. 1217), 146, 334, 335, 355, 360, 362, 365, 373, 376; daughter (Guillema) of, 360, 375; nephew (Durfort) of, 366 Guillelmus Ermengaudi, 382, 383 Guillem de Eures, 156 Guillelmus lanuensis, 380, 382 Guillaume Jburdain, bp. of Elne (after 1164— 86), 184 Guillelmus de Mata de Petra, 378 Guillem de Montcada, vet. of Beam (1225-; d. 1229), 363; fiscal commissioner in Catalonia, 360, 361, 365, 366, 369, 372, 373, 380-4, 385, 386, 388-9, 390-1; procurator domini regis, 361, 362 Guillelmus de Monte regali, 386 Guillelmus de Monte Rubeo, 43

Index Guillem (VI) de Montpellier (1 121-49; d. 1162), 163 Guillem de Montrodon, Master-General of Templars, 358 Guillelmus de ga Mora consul, 35n, 42 Guillaume de Nangis, continuator of, 121 Guillaume Nauclars, bp. of Perigueux (1123— 37), 225n Guillelmus de Ollesa notarius, 366n, 382, 383, 385, 388; publicus barchinonensis notarius, 389, 391 Guillelmus de Paba, 336 Gilelmus de Paliol, 174 Guillelmus de Pambel, 36n, 43 Guillelmus Rabatie (Rabacia, Rabaza) notarius, 46, 367, 391 Guillelmus Raimundi, 155n Guillelmus Raimundi scriba, 390 Gilelmus Raimundi de ludeges, 174 Guillem Ramon HI de Montcada (Seneschal c. 1090-1173), 160, 163 Guillem Ramon (de Montcada, vet. of Beam, 1214-24), 148, 361 Guillelmus Ramundi de Montepessullano, consul of City of Narbonne, 421 n, 423n Gilelmus Raimundi de Sancto Ypolito, 174 Guillem de Riufrigid, 389, 390 Guillaume des Roches, 282 Guillelmus de Rosanis, 389 Guilelmus de Rupiano, 175 Guillelmus de Sancta Columba, 186 Guillelmus de Sancto Laurentio, 186 Guillelmus Santiifrenarius, 35n, 43 Guillelmus Santii de manso, 43 Guillem de Tavertet, bp. of Vic (1195-1233), 209, 333, 335 Guillem de Torre, debt of, 287-302 Guillem de Torre, preceptor of Miravet, 288n Guillem de Torroja, abp. of Tarragona (11724), 144, 147, 184 Guillermus Umberti, 159n Guillelmus Umberti, 338 Guilelmus de Uallicrosa,l7S Guillelmus de Villa de Cols, 335 Guillelmus (de Uilla longa), 174 Guilhiermoz, Paul, 237 Guillot, Olivier, 247 Gurnard II, ct. ofRoussillon (1164-72), 180, 181 Guines, cts. of, 138 Guiraut del Luc, 147 Guisald de Lluca, 145, 169 [Guit]ardus Sancii, 338 Gumbaldus de Torrilias, 174

439

Guyenne, 92—3 Halphen, Louis, 239, 252 Haskins, C. H., 237, 239 hearth-tax(es), 51, 52, 56, 58-9, 61-2, 92, 227; fogatge, 25n;fouage, 24, 25, 26, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58n, 60n, 61,70, 416 Helias, ct. of Perigord, 252n Henry I, duke of Normandy, k. of England 1100-35), 265 Henry H, k. of England, duke of Aquitaine, etc. (1154-89), 136 Henry III, k. of England (1216-72), 4, lOn, 80, 81, 94 Henry, D.M.J., 179, 183 heretics, 223, 230, 233 Hervieu, Henri, 99 Hesdin (dep. Pas-de-Calais, ar. Montreuil, ch.-l. c.), 272, 273n Hierle (Languedoc), 405 Hispania, 129 Hix (dep. Pyr.-Or. ar. Prades, c. SaillagouseLlo), 192 Holt, J. C., 202 homage(s), 8, 9, 14n, 21, 22, 31, 36, 37, 38, 41, 85, 94; and fealty, 31,128, 157,166, 169, 241, 246, 255; en marche, 248; in: Aragon, 240, 241, 242, Catalonia, 153, 155, 156, 161, 162, 166, 167, 170, 242, 244, 246, France, 249, 251, 252; liege, 252. See also homagium, hominagium, hominaticum, hominiaticum, hominium homagium, 41 hominagium, ligium, 252n hominaticum, 173, 176; ominaticum, 173 hominiaticum, 158n hominium, 42-5, 166n, 175, 178, 240n; fidelitatis, 167n homo, I55;jidelis homo, 155; homines: de lacca, 43; de Pina, 44; de £uera, 44 honor(s), in Aragon, 260, 355, 364, 366; of Bergueda, 290n Honorius II, pope (1124-30), 305 Honorius IV, pope (1285-7), 311 Horace, 315 hospitality, 259, 263, 362 Hospitallers, 181, 184, 225n; rights on c., 357 hostages, 219 Hostiensis, 304, 323 Huesca (provincial capital), 40, 43, 240; assemblies, courts at (1162), 151, (1221) 356; bp. of, 31, 41; men of, 32n, 33; provisions of (1205), 204, 210, 325, 329, 330; Templars of, 359, 367 Hug HI, ct. of Empuries (1153-75), 175

440

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Hug de Mataplana (Ugo, Hugo de Mat[h]a piano), 178, 334, 386; maior, 201, 212 Huguccio, 310, 318, 322 Hugues I, ct. of Rodez (1135-P55), 224 Hugues II, ct. of Rodez (c. 1155-1208), 221n Humbert of Romans, 79 /. (].) de Forton iustitia de Taust, 35n, 44 /. de Petro Corinano, 44 lacobus Laurencii notarius publicus Montispessulani, 380 lacobus Lumbardi, 380 ideology, 151 Ile-de-France, 109, 247, 249-50, 253, 327; towns of, 92 incastellamento, 257 infangones (infantiones), 31, 37, 241; infantiones de Exea, 36, 42 Innocent II, pope (1130-43), 234 Innocent III, pope (1198-1216), 55n, 203, 355, 370, 397; his letters: Cum salus populi, 375, Ex tenore litterarum, 313—4, Quanto personam tuam, 303-23 Innocent IV, pope (1243-54), 304, 311, 323 interest, 354, 386 inventories (fiscal), 272, 275, 280; memorials, 261. See also survey (s) IOHAN(N)ES, see also JOHANNES lohannes trompador, 390 lohanes Ariel, 43 lohanes Dandiera^u, 45 lohanes Daniel iustitia, 35n, 45 lohanes Daux, 43 lohanes Egidius, 381, 382 lohanes Espiarii, 382 lohanes Luciani, 380 lohanes de Maioles, 387 lohanes de Mengacho, 44 lohanes de Montbaldran, 32n, 43 lohanes de Nasarre, 45 lohanes Niger, 44 lohanes de Orllaco iuuenis, 380 lohannes de Osoha, 386 lohanes Petri, 45 lohanes Quarton, 43 lohanes de Ribas, 43 lohanes de Torrillo, 43 Iohan[es-]nec, 44 Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, L' (dep. Vaucluse, ar. Avignon, ch.-l. c.), 62n Issoudun (dep. Indre, ch.-l. ar.), 92 Italy, merchants of, 89 iudex, 43 iuramentum, 314, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321;

Jidelitatis, 41. See also fealty iusfeodale, 254, 273 iustitia, 43, 44, 45; Aragonensis, 42 Ivo, bp. of Chartres (1090-1116), 220n J. de Forton, see /. de Forton Jaca (lacca: pr. Huesca, p.j.), 32, 35, 40, 43, 136; c. of, 357, 385 Jacintus, cardinal-legate, see Celestine III Jaime Garcia, 348 James (Jaume) I 'the Conqueror', k. of Aragon, ct. of Barcelona (1213-76), 31-5, 37-9, 41-2, 145, 152, 210, 215, 233, 241, 262, 325, 411; finances of, 351-91, 417; monetary policy of, 339, 346, 347, 348-9, 356 Jaume, see James Jean, bp. of Agen (1282-92), 25n Jean de Grilly, seneschal of Gascony, 21, 22 Jeanne (of England), 4 Jeanne (of Toulouse, d. 1271), 19 Jews, 87, 89, 90, 95, 169, 206, 262, 402; b., 354, 357, 373; communitas judeorum regni nostri, 87n; converted, 85; creditors of ct.kings, 351, 354, 357; taxation of, by: Alfonse of Poitiers, 51, 67, 70-1, 72, James I, 357 Jofre, see Gaucfredus, Gaufridus JOHANNES-JOAN, see also IOHANES Joan de Berix, k's notary, 201, 212, 334 Johannes Andreae, 364 Johannes de Burgis, 404n, 414n Johannes Galensis, 303, 310, 311, 315, 316, 317, 323 Johannes Hispanus de Petesella, 323 Joan Ramon, 325; testis, 336 Johannes Teutonicus, 310, 315, 319, 323 John, k. of England (1199-1216), 202, 254 Joinville, Jean de (d. 1317), 80 Jours of Troyes, 89, 90 judge(s), 258, 263, 361, 362; judges-delegate, 305 Judith, 137, 138 Julien de Peronne, 77, 280 Junyent, Eduard, 189n juramentum, 240n jurisdiction, 11; criminal, 140, 246; episcopal, 219; lay, 235. See also justice justice, judicial functions, 17, 75, 76, 83, 86, 90, 94; criminal, 171, 243; high, 235. See also jurisdiction justicia-e, in Roussillon, 330, 335, 336 justiciars, 35 kastellum, 175 Kienast, Walther, 239

441

Index king-lists, 131, 146 kingship, 238 knighthood, 160, 171 knighting, 81, 100; aid of, 91; of Alfons I, 141, 307 knights, 154, 157, 159, 161, 166, 167, 171, 215, 218, 253, 260, 261; knights' fees, 253, 351, 366; of: Catalonia, 200, 206, 212, France, 216, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, 168, 174; retinues of, 259; service of, 8, 248, 252 laborado, laboratio, 292, 293, 300, 301 Lacarra,J.M.,241 Lafox (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Agen, c. Puymirol), 12n Lagrasse (dep. Aude, ar. Carcassonne, ch.-l. c.), 417 Lagruere (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Marmande, c. Le Mas-d'Agenais), 23n Lambert of Ardres, 138 La Monte, John, 238 Landfrieden, 223. See also Peace and Truce Langlois, Ch.-V., 353 Languedoc, 29, 113, 114, 119, 229, 232, 234, 236, 250, 361; coinages, monetary policy in, 311, 393-419; government in, 215; Peace and Truce in, 216, 218, 225 Languedoil, 114, 119 Laon (dep. Aisne, ch.-l.), 85; c. of, 412; dean and chapter of, 77 Largentiere (dep. Charente-Maritime, ch.-l), mine of, 405n Rochelle, La (dep. Charente-Maritime, ch.-l.), 65, 67, 121n Laroupra (?-Conca de Barbera), 389 Lauragais, 402 Laurentius (Hispanus), 303, 310, 315, 316, 318, 322 Lautrec (dep. Tarn, ar. Castres, ch.-l. c.), vet. of, 401, 404 law, Germanic, 217. See also canon law lawyers, 121 Lazio (Italy), 257, 258, 263 leagues of: Agenais, 13, Aragon, 365n Le Caylar, see Caylar Lectoure (dep. Gers, ar. Condom, ch.-l. c.), bp. of, 14, 22n legislation, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86; in Catalonia, 139 _40, 144, 148, 150, 209, 246; of peace, 218; on coinage, 346-9, 406, 407, 408, 410n, 411, 412, 413, 415, 421 legumes, 295; price of, 296 Lemarignier, J.-Fr., 239, 247, 248 lentils, 295, 297; price of, 296

Leon (kingdom of), 306 Le Puy, see Puy Lerida, see Lleida leudae, see tolls Lewis, A.R.,246, 257n Lezat (Lezat-sur-Leze, dep. Ariege, ar. Pamiers, c. Le Fossat), 402 libelli computomm, 276;fisci, 273 liber domini regis, 196. See also Liberfeudorum maior Liber Extra (Decretals of Gregory IX, 1234), 234,

303, 322-3

Liberfeudorum Cerritanie, 167n Liberfeudorum maior, 142, 145, 157, 167n, 169, 170, 187, 192, 195, 245, 352; called liber domini regis, 196 Liber delsfeits (feyts), 34, 203, 351, 352, 354, 364, 366 Limoges (dep. Haute-Vienne, ch.-l.), bp. and vet. of, 234 Limousin, 217, 233 Limoux (dep. Aude, ch.-l. ar.), 404 lists, chancery, 101 Lixy (dep. Yonne, ar. Sens, c. Pont-surYonne), 272, 273 Lizanum (Valles), mill of, 287n Lleida (Ylerda, Lerida: provincial capital), 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42,130,143,163,192,368, 369, 385, 386; accounts at, 371; assemblies, cortsof, (1211), 150; (1214), 34, 151, 210, 231, 233, 235n, 354, (1218), 356, 361, 362; bwk. of, 353, 371-2, 373; Caldes family at, 190, 191; conquest of (1149), 131, 132, 163, 244, 245, 262; geo-political position of, 371 Llobregat valley, 192,362 Lluca (pr. Barcelona, com. Osona, p.j. Berga), 145; castle of, 151, 169 Lluis y Navas Brusi, Jaime, 328 Lodeve (dep. Herault, ch.-l. ar.), 227, 409n; c. of, 399, 400 Lomagne, vet. of, 8 Lombardy, 143 Longpont (dep. Essonne, ar. Palaiseau, c. Montlhery), 64 lordship, customs of, 260; 'natural', 166; over vassals, 238, 240; 'solid', 244 Lorrez (Lorris-en-Gatinais, dep. Loiret, ar. Montargis, ch.-l. c.), 273n;kts. ofcastellany of, 83 Lorrez-le-Bocage-Preaux (dep. Seine-etMarne, ar. Melun, ch.-l. c.), 272, 273 Lorris, see Lorrez Lot, Ferdinand, 238, 239, 247, 248, 267, 268, 273n

442

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Louis VI, k. of France (1108-37), 136, 220n, 248, 249, 250 Louis VII, k. of France (1137-80), 136, 141, 146, 220, 248, 251, 275; Spanish marriage of, 220 Louis VIII, k. of France (1223-6), 393, 409n, 419n; prince Louis, 268 Louis IX, k. of France (1226-70), 4, 49, 72, 80, 81, 82, 83, 105, 236; administration of Languedoc, 393, 404; monetary policy of, 393-419 Luchaire, Achille, 248 lucrum fictum uel manifestum, 386 Luna (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Ejea), 40, 45 Lupus Eximini de Castelloto, 42 Lupus Ferrenqui, 46 Lyon (dep. Rhone, ch.-L), assembly at (1312), 103n, 108, 114 Lyon, B.D., 239 Mcllwain, C.H.,98, 237 Macon (dep. Saone-et-Loire, ch.-L), bp. of, 81; cty. of, 81,247 Maconnais, 220 magistri tenentes parlamentum, 77 Magna Carta, 202 Magna recepta, 282 Magnou-Nortier, Elisabeth, 246 Maguelonne (dep. Herault), bp. of, 233n, 397, 410, 415 Maia trompador, 390 Maiencia, 188 Maine, 282; magnates of, 115 maiordomus, curie nostre, in Aragon, 366n; Aragonensis, 42 Maitland, F.W., 238 Majorca (Mallorca), 38, 129, 132, 147, 203, 242; conquest of (1229), 351, 365, 373 mancusi, see gold mandate(s), see procurations Manresa (pr. Barcelona, com. Bages, p.j.), 359 Mans, Le (dep. Sarthe, ch.-l.), c. of, 412 manse(s), 158,160,168;at:CaldesdeMontbui, 188, 190, Terrassa, 192. See also mansus. mansus, 43, 175; domini regis, 389 maravedis, 355 Marchus de dompno Nicholao, 44 Maresme (com.), 361, 362 Maria de Montpellier, q. of Aragon (d. 1213), 202 Marigny, Enguerran de, 97, 107 mark(s), 394n; of: Beziers, Cologne, Millau, Montpellier, 398 and n., Troyes, 394, 398n, 402; values of, 341, 343, 344, 349, 380, 382, 383,391,396,422

markets, 259, 261, 299 Marmande (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ch.-l. ar.), 4, 10, 12, 13, 16n, 18n; customs of, 5, lln Marongiu, Antonio, 32, 102 marriage, law of, 258 Marseille (dep. Bouches-du-Rhone, ch.-l.), c. of (regales), 402, 413 Martinus ferrarius (?Ferrarius), 35n, 45 Martinus repositarius, 35n, 43 Martinus de Cellalbo, 44 Martinus Gil de Una Castello, 42 Martinus Guillelmi filius Arnaldi Tron, 36n, 43 Mas (d'Agenais), Le (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Marmande, ch.-l. c.), 11, 13, 16n, 22 Maurin, abp. of Narbonne (1262-72), 422 mayors, 84, 115 mazmudins (mazmutini), 335, 343 measure(s), 291-2; of Sabadell, 293, 300 Meaux (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ch.-l. ar.), bp. of419n medala, medaia, (maille; half-denier), 291, 292, 295,300,301,394 Medieval Academy of America, 237 Melgueil (Mauguio: dep. Herault, ar. Montpellier, ch.-l. c.), 246, 306, 336; c. of ('melgorians'), 305, 331, 337, 344, 348, 349, 384, 397, 398, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 410, 413, 414, 415n, 422; ct., cty. of, 397, 415,417 Melun (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ch.-L), 272, 273 memorials, see inventories Mende (dep. Lozere, ch.-L), bps., diocese of, 221, 222, 229, 399, 411, 418; c. of(mendois), 399, 400, 401, 410, 417, 4lS;pariage of, 87 mendois, see Mende Mengo Maneres, 44 Mengo Martin de Daroca, 44 merchants, 11, 13, 200, 211; of Italy, Champagne, Flanders, 312 merini, 366 Merles (Santa Maria de Merles: pr. Barcelona, com. Bergueda, p.j. Berga), castle of, 145, 169 Mery (Mery-sur-Oise? dep. Val-d'Oise, ar. Pontoise, c. Taverny), 272 Meulan (dep. Yvelines, ar. Mantes-la-Jolie, ch.-L c.), 272 Mezin (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Nerac, ch.-L c.), 12, 16n, 18n Micahel de Caslarii, v. of Nimes (1243-8), 406n Michael, legate, 233 Michael de Exea, 42 Michael de Pepino, 44 Michael de Roda, 43 Michael Santii, 44

Index military: elite, 146; list, 9n; obligations, 91, 261; orders, 131 (see also Hospitallers, Templars) milites, 8, 36, 160, 161, 174, 386; of: Agenais, 17, Exea, 42; terrae, 222n militia, episcopal, 219, 228, 231; of peace, 219, 222, 224n millarenses, 371; millarets, 415, 416, 418; moneta Milliarrensis, 416 millarets, see millarenses Millau (dep. Aveyron, ch.-l. ar.), 59, 410; cty. of, 134; mark of, 398 mills, at: Barcelona, 367, 370, 384, Llica (de Vail), 292, 293, 295, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, 193 millet, 292, 293, 297 mints, 405, 407n, 408 minuture, 293, 296, 301 Miravet (pr. Tarragona, com. la Ribera, p.j. Gandesa), Templars of, 288n Mirepoix (dep. Ariege, ar. Pamiers, ch.-l. c.), lord of, 416, 418 Miret i Sans, Joaquim (Joaquin), 199, 352 Miro index, 175 Mitteis, Heinrich, 237 Modus colligendi bovaticum in tota Catalonia, 331 Moia (pr. Barcelona, com. Bages, p.j. Manresa), fair of, 208 Moissac (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne, ar. Castelsarrasin, ch.-l. c.), 13, 401; abt. of, 14, 77 Moissy (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ar. Meluh, c. Brie-Comte-Robert), 65 Molinie, Georges, 230 Molinier, Auguste, 52, 53n monedaje, see monetaticum monedatge, see monetaticum moneta; decena, 395; octena, 395n, septena, 395—6, 408, 409; viannensis, 401 monetary: consultation, 114; fraud, 311; policy, 82; values, 297, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345, 346, 349, 380, 382, 383, 391, 396, 406n, 422.

See also exchange monetaticum (monedaje, monedatge), 204, 207n, 210, 352, 353, 356, 357, 364, 371, 373, 388, 389; monedaje, 325, 326, 331; monedatge, 339; monetatica in Aragon (1218—21), 356; origins of, 204-6, 325-38 money, see coinage; money-fiefs, 158; moneytax, 308 money-fiefs, 158 money-tax, 149-50, 204-5, 207n, 223, 228; in: Aragon, 309, 356, Catalonia, 308, 309, 339,

443

347; origin of, 325—38. See also monedaje, monedatge, monetaticum, redemption moneyers, 327, 357, 363, 368, 369 Monflanquin (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Villeneuve-sur-Lot, ch.-l. c,), 12 Monmajor (Montmajor: pr. Barcelona, com.aaaaa Berga), castle of, 167n Montauban (dep. Tarn-et-Garonne, ch.-L), 13 Montcada (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Occidental, p.j. Sabadell), family of, 145, 362. See also Guillem de, Guillem Ramon Montdidier (dep. Somme, ch.-l. ar.), 272 Montearagon (pr. and p.j. Huesca), 146 Monte regali, . . . de, 391 Montesquieu (-Volvestre: dep. HauteGaronne, ar. Muret, ch.-l. c.), 416n Montferrand (dep. Puy-de-D6me, commune Clermont-Ferrand), 93 Montfort (castellan family of), 249 Montlhery (dep. Essonne, ar. Palaiseau, ch.-l. c.), castle of, 250 Montpellier (dep. Herault, ch.-l.), 356, 361, 380, 400, 417; assembly at (1303), 109n; censiers of, 261; c. of, 397; consuls of, 233n, 397; council of (1215), 227, 230, 231, 232; domain, administration, revenues of, 355, 356, 359, 360, 362, 379-80; lords of, 259, 393, 397; mark of, 398; procurator in, 379-80 Montreal (dep. Gers, ar. Condom, ch.-l. c.), 12 Montreuil (dep. Pas-de-Calais, ch.-l. ar.), 272 Montreuil-Bonnin (dep. Vienne, ar. Poitiers, c. Vouille), mint of, 408 Monzon (pr. Huesca, p.j. Barbastro), 34, 351; assembly of (1217), 356; comendator of Templars of, 367 Moors (Saracens), 128, 130, 131, 135, 143, 146, 147, 151, 163, 226, 228, 242, 245, 259, 328,

333, 364, 373; accounting by, 369; creditors, 351, 354; tribute of, 262; victory of Alarcos of (1195), 308 Mor, El (pr. Lleida, comp. Urgell, formerly a castle near Tarrega), castle of, 192 morabetins, 285, 292n, 295, 300, 301, 343, 402; mentioned, 354ff.; moravetinus, 326; morbetini, 335; price of, 297, 300 Morlaas (dep. Pyr.-Atlantiques, ar. Pau, ch.-l. c.), c. (morlanensis), of, 402. See also Beam morlanensis, see Beam mort-gage, 262 Mosset (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. and c. Prades), church of, 177 mudejars, 240n Mundo, A.M., 169n Mur (pr. Lleida, comp Pallars Jussa, p.j.

444

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Tremp), castle of, 156 Murcia (pr.), 131 Muret (dep. Haute-Garonne, ch.-l. ar.), battle of (1213), 215, 329, 351 Murillo (de Gallego? pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Ejea), 40,44 Murray, Alexander, 281n mutation(s) of coinage, 210, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 330, 342, 356, 396, 398, 419n, 422; canonist doctrine of, 311; of'imposed value', 347 myths, of ancestry, 135-40 Najac-en-Rouergue (dep. Aveyron, ar. Villefranche-de-Rouergue, ch.-l. c.), 58n, 84 Narbonnais, 234n; vet. and nobles of, 87 Narbonne (dep. Aude, ch.-l. ar.), 220, 402, 410, 417, 421; abp. of, 119, 221, 225n, 226, 397, 422, 424; c. of, 397, 398, 410, 414, 417, 421, 423; confirmatio monete at, 421-5; consuls of, 421, 422; duchy of, 393; province of, 87, 221, 223, 226, 233, 234n; vet. of, 397, 398, 421, 422; viscountess (Ermengarde) of, 221 nation, 127, 152 Navarre, 36, 146; army of, 91; k. of, 85, 354 Navas de Tolosa, Las, battle of (1212), 228, 353 necessity, 234; necessitas, lOn, 328, 333, -regni, 92n; of crusade or Saracen war, 54, 55n, 228, 230, 328, 333 negotia, 78; domini regis, 379; in Parliamento, 81; ville, 82, 84; causes, 90 negotiations, political, 105; for taxes, 49-50, 62-9, 91, 92, 93. nemausenses (c. of Nimes), 405, 406 Nevers (dep. Nievre, ch.-l.), 121n New Catalonia, 131, 139, 159, 163, 190, 259, 263, 354 Nicholas Roig, 389, 390 Nicholaus, dompnus, 44 Nicholaus de Tudela, 45 Nicianunt (Nefiach? dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, c. Millas), church of, 177 Nimes (dep. Card, ch.-l.), 400, 409; assembly at (1303), 109n; bp. of, 407n; c. of, (nemausenses}, 394, 405, 406; prices at, 297n; vicar, viguerie of, 403, 406; vcty. of, 393, 407n nobility, 8, 9, 160; old nobility (aristocracy) in Catalonia, 140, 161, 171 Nogent-le-Roi (dep. Eure-et-Loir, ar. Dreux, ch.-l. c.), castellany of, 92 non-prejudice, see charters Normandy, 136, 218, 219, 237, 242, 273, 280;

bps., clergy of, 83, 93; conqtiest of, 251, 253, 254, 258, 268, 272; custom of, 253; duke of, 248; Exchequer of, 265; knights' fees in, 253 Nortier, Michel, 266, 268 notariate, 258, 260, 263, 279, 340, 342, 344 notaries, 189, 366; notarius, 378, 385, publicus barchinonensis, 389, 391, publicus Montispessulani, 380; publicus scriptor, 384. See also scribes Noyon (dep. Oise, ar. Compiegne, ch.-l. c.), bp. of, 80 Nunnoz, 44 Nunyo Sang (Sanche, d. 1241-2), 182n, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 369, 372, 376-8 Nyer (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Olette), church of, 177 oath(s), 8, 23, 24, 37, 161, 167, 169, 170, 171, 200, 202; canonist discussion of, 311, 317; of: confirmation of c., 303, 310, 311, 421, 424, fealty, 18, 21, 22, 35, peace, 218, 219-20, 222, 229, 230, 233, 260. See also sacramentale, sacramentum oats, 293 obligations, 9; military, 241; vassalic, 244 obol(s) (half-denier), 291, 394; oboles, 301; of Simon de Montfort, 230 obstaticum, see ostaticum Occitania, 142, 146, 166, 167, 220, 224, 226, 229, 231, 233, 234, 258, 259, 263, 354, 360; policy toward, 165n Odena (pr. Barcelona, com. Anoia, p.j. Igualada), castle of, 157 Odo of Cluny (Saint, d. 942), 217 Odo of Lomagne, 8n office, ofpaciarii, 231 Old Catalonia, 143, 146, 154, 159, 163, 166, 169, 171, 196n, 262, 362; survey of, 245; vicariate in, 363 Oleguer, abp. of Tarragona (1118-34), 129 Oleron (He d', dep. Charente-Maritime, ar. Rochefort), minting at, 416 Olers (or Dolers"?: pr. Tarragona, com. Conca deBarbera), 389 Oliba, bp. of Vic (d. 1046), synodal statutes of, 305 Olim (Les), 76, 77, 78, 79n, 81, 84, 88, 89, 93 Olricus, 380 ominaticum, see hominaticum operatoria, 190n orders, see estate(s), trois estas ordeum, see barley ordinance(s), 85, 86, 94, 104; administrative (1190), 266, 274; on c., (1222), 342, 346, 347,

Index 348; (1247), 409-10, 411, 412, 413n; (1263, Chartres), 407, 408, 412; (1264)v410n, 412, 413-5, 421 Orleans (dep. Loiret, ch.-l. dep.), 85; bp. of, 77 Orleanais, 'good towns' of, 92 Orzals (Rouergue), mine, 405n Osona, 143, 151, 167n, 219, 361; cty. of, 129, 163 ost et chevauchee, lOn; expedition and army, 263; ostes et caualcades, 378 ostaticum, 336; obstaticum, 386 Osten de Ribes altes, 174 Oudard de Villers, seneschal of Beaucaire, 406n P. de Alcala, 42 P. Andador, 44 P. Baldohini, 380 P. Barbastro, 45 P. Calbo, 45 P. Clauel, 43 P. Come/n' (Cornilii), 32n, 42 P. Danso, 44 P. Dauuero, 42 P. Eximini, 44 P. Ferrarii, 45 P. Garsie de Aquilari, 42 P. de Garsion, 45 P. Guntardi, 380 P. lohanes iustitia, 43 P. Lodrte, 45 P. Mez, 44 P.
445

287, 299n; Templars of (fiscal work), 190n, 287-302, 358-9, 360, 369-70, 384 Pallarsjussa, cts., cty. of, 132, 133, 142, 156, 161, 219n, 243n, 244 Pallars Sobira, 142, 243n, 244 Pamiers (dep. Ariege, ch.-l. ar.), 402; statutes of (1212), 234 papacy, 131, 233, 258, 307; promotions of peace, 220; pontifical council, 358 pareage, seepariage Parets (Parietes: Parets del Valles: pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Oriental, p.j. Granollers), mill off, 293, 301 (cf. 293 n. 22) paria, of Spain, 364, 388 pariage (pareage}, 24n, 92n, 273, 399; of Mende (1307), 115,411 Paris, 78, 84, 85, 86, 119; accounts at, 267, 274; assemblies at, (1302, 1314), 97, (1303), 121; c. of, 394, 412, 413, 416; great councils at (1296-1314), 103n; palace of, 90; Peace of (1229), 19; (1259), 80; receivers at, 266-7 parlamentum (parliamentum, pallamentum; pallement), see parlement(s) parleamenta, see parliaments parlement(s), 59n, 63, 64, 73, 87, 115, 411, 418; coincidence with assemblies, 78, 80, 81, 82, 85, 88; commissions of, 89; consultative function in, 75-95, 105, 106; dates of, 78-9, 82; dies in, 87n, 88-90, 106; fiscal negotiation in, 64—9;pallamentum (pallement), 64n, 76; parlamentum (parliamentum), 6, 63n, 76, 77, 79n, 80n, 81; parlamentum generate tocius ville, 423; parlement general of Narbonne, 421, 423; inpleno parlamento, 77, 85n; plenum parliamentum, 78 parliaments, of England, 75, 76, 80, 94; parleamenta, parlemenz, 80 Pascasius, 45 Pascasius de Molina, 43 Pascasius Munnoz (Pascual Munoz of Teruel), 36,44 Pascual Parient, 43 pastor, 44 patria, 133 Paulin (Paulinet: dep. Tarn, ar. Albi, c. Alban), 401 pax, bestiarum, 233 (see also peace); ettregua, 180, 184; conuiuium pro pace, 225n; peace-militia in Gevaudan, 231 PAX, monetary device, 230, 395, 397 peace, in Agenais; 'peace of beasts', 182, 205, 223 (pax bestiarum, 233); taxation for, 26 Peace: of Alcala (1227), 32; Paris (1229), 19, (1259), 80

446

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Peace and Truce (of God), 140, 142, 144, 145, 147-50, 163, 164, 171, 210, 225, 230, 233, 234n, 364; assemblies, associations of, 217n, 258; c. under, 305; diocesan peace and truce, 12n, 144, 163; in: Catalonia, 216-7, 244-5, 246, 259, 260, France, 220, 250, Roussillon, 179-86, Urgell (1187), 147; 'instituted peace', 215-36; 'sanctified peace', 218, 220, 229, 230; taxation for, see bovaticum. See also PAX, pax, peace, tregua, treva peas, 295, 297, 29S;peses, 301 peasants, 166; free, 246; militias of, 216; tenures of, 168, 171 PEDRO, see PETRUS peers, 77; peerage, 83 Pemscola, siege of (1225), 351, 371 Penne (dep. Tarn, ar. Albi, c. Vaour), 401 Penne (d'Agenais: dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Villeneuve-sur-Lot, ch.-l. c.), 12, 16n, 18n, 20n Peralada (pr. Girona, com. Alt Emporda, p.j. Figueres), 383-4 PERE, see PETRUS Peregrinus de Solas, 42; Peregrine de Bolas, maiordomus curie nostre, 366n Perfet, b., 357, 362 Perigord, commune of, 227; peace and taxation for peace in, 219, 222, 225n Peronne (dep. Somme, ch.-l. ar.), 272 Perpignan (dep. Pyr.-Or., ch.-l.), 166, 180, 246, 378; bwk. of, 196n; statutes of, 180-6; syndics of (s.xv), 348 Perpinianus Nagrassa, 384 Pertusa (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Sarinena), 40, 45 peses, see peas Pestillac (Quercy), lord of, 8 PETER, see PETRUS Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, 238, 239, 247, 250, 254 petitions, 28, 84, 89, 90, 104; procedure of, 94-5 Petronilla, q. of Aragon (c. 1136-73), 131, 240; her palace at Sant Pere de Vilamajor, 190 PETRUS-PEDRO-PERE-PETER-PIERRE Pere I, bp. of Elne (1113-29), 180n Peter (Pere; Peter III, k. of Aragon, etc., 127685), 38 Peter II (Pere I, Pedro II, k. of Aragon, ct. of Barcelona, 1196-1213), 142, 145, 150, 162n, 176-7,197, 216, 233, 234, 236, 361; chancery of, 201n; charter for Catalonia (1205), 199212, 223, 228, 327-9, 334-5, 358; chancery of, 201n; fiscal management of, 202-8, 215, 224, 228, 262, 270n, 279, 325, 351-4, 356, 360, 365, 369; monetary policy of, 303, 304, 308, 309, 311, 314, 325-38, 342, 344, 347, 349

Pedro (problematic first son of Ramon Berenguer IV), 131 Pere (third-or second?-son of Ramon Berenguer IV), 141 Petrus aragonensis^ 390 Pere, moneyer, 345, 346n, 358 Petrus presbiter, 175 Pere, sacristan of Vic, 178 Petrus sacrista, 386 Pere Albert, see Commemorations Pedro de Alcala, 334 Petrus Arnaldi de Naissa, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 421n, 423n Petrus de Bages (Pere de Bages), 366n, 388 Petrus Beneventanus, 233 Pierre Bermond VII, lord of Sauve (d. c. 1254), 405 Petrus Bemardus de Pug ultrer, 174 Petrus de Blandis notarius domini regis (Pere de Blanes), 177, 334 Pierre de Castelnau (d. 1208), 233 Petrus de Castlarino, 389 Petrus de Centillis sacrista Barcrinonensis, 378 Peter the Chanter, 312 Petrus Corinano, I. de, 44 Petrus de Corniliano, 174 Pere de Corro, 189n Pierre du Cros, 410 Petrus de Cutina, 385 Petrus de Deo, 378 Petrus de Domenaua (Pere de Domenova), 177, 178

Pierre de Douai, cardinal-legate, 354 Petrus Fini, 387, 388 Pierre des Fontaines, 77 Petrus Gandalrici, 380 Petrus Gilelmi (de Villa longa), 174 Pere Gruny, 380-1,382 Pere de Lluca, 144-5, 169 Petrus de Mediano, 177 Petrus de Medina, v. of Barcelona, 206n Pere Miquel Carbonell, 348, 349n Pere Pong of Besalu, 363, 383 Pere Ramon de Castellbo, 162 Pere Ramon de Taradell, 156 Pere de Redorta, bp. of Vic (1147-85), 306, 307,311 Petrus de Rodes, 177 Pere Roig, b. of Vilamajor, 366 Petrus de Sampsona, 323 Pedro Sanchez repositarius, 366n, 367 Petrus de Sancta Cruce, 43 Pere de Soler, abt. of Sant Joan de les Abadesses (1203-17), 331, 336-8

Index Pere de Torrezela, 167n Pere de Torroella, 201, 208, 212 Petrus de Uilamur, 176 Petms Vives (Viues), 378, 388 Philip I, k. of France (1060-1108), 138 Philip II 'Augustus', k. of France (1180-1223), 78, 235, 247, 409n; accounting under, 26583; feudal policy of, 250-4, 280; regnans in Francia, 178 Phillip III, k. of France (1270-85), 4, 5, 20, 72, 81,85,90,405,418 Philip IV 'the Fair', k. of France (1285-1314), 51, 72, 77, 86, 98, 399, 405n, 418; c. of, 270 Philippe de Montfort, lord of Castres, 401, 404 Philippide, see Guillaume le Breton Picardy, 251 Piera (pr. Barcelona, com. Anoia, p.j. Igualada), 359, 364 Pierola (pr. Barcelona, corn. Anoia, p.j. Igualada), castle of, 193 PIERRE, see PETRUS pigs, 293 Pina (pr. Zaragoza, p.j.), 40, 44 pipe rolls, of England, Normandy, 277 pirates, 181 Pisans, 129 Plaisians, Guillaume de, 111, 119 pledge(s), 169, 262, 351, 353, 354, 362, 364, 371, 383, 389, 390-1; indistinct from commissions, 373; redemption of, 355, 356, 375 plena, see assizia, curia, potestas plenum, see parlernent(s) Poblet (Cist.: pr. Tarragona, com. Conca de Barbera, p.j. Montblanc), 139; cort or plena curia at (1194), 139, 150, 195-6 Poissy (dep. Yvelines, ar. Saint-Germain-enLaye, ch.-l. c.), 80 Poitiers (dep. Vienne, ch.-L), assembly at (1308), 119; councils at, (before 1015), 219, (1270)), 67; taxation of, 60 Poitou, 67, 280; c. of, 408; Jews of, 71; nobles and towns of, 68n; taxation in, 50, 51, 52, 55, 60, 66, 71 police, 219; of peace, 222 policy, 102; on c., 407-16, 418 Polignac (dep. Haute-Loire, ar. Le Puy, c. Le Puy-Nord), vets, of, 399 politics, 33, 75, 78, 79, 81, 86; political rallies, 106 Poly, J.-P., 258 polyptychs, 278 PONg-PONCIUS-PONTIUS Pone, 356, 379-80

447

Pone III, vet. of Cabrera (c. 1180-99), 155, 195 Poncius Adalberti uetulus, 174 Pone Ademar, Templar, 290, 291 Poncius Alarosii, consul of Narbonne City, 421n, 423 Poncius de Baiolis scriptor publicus, 378 Pontius Baldouini, 36n, 43 Poncius Bernardi de Tazun, 174 PoncGuillem, 167 Poncius Guitardi, 174 Pone Hug I, ct. ofEmpuries (1116-54), 162 Pone Marescalc, Templar, 367 PoncdeOsor, 189n, 194 Poncius Seguini, 384 Poncius de Serriano notarius, 388 Poncius de Uerneto, 177 Poncius de Uultrera, 386, 391 Pont-du-Chateau (dep. Puy-de-D6me, ar. Clermont-Ferrand, ch.-l. ar.), projected charter for, 51 n Ponthieu, ct. of, 77 Pontoise (dep. Val-d'-Oise, ch.-L), great council at (1313), 103n population, increase of, 278, 279 Porcell de Caldes (Porcelletus, Porcellus de Calidis), 188-9, 190 Port-Sainte-Marie (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Agen, ch.-l. c.), 12, 13, 15n, 16n, 18n, 58; prior of, 14n Post, Gaines, 33, 34, 316 potestas, 34, 178; of castles, 153, 156, 157n, 162n, 169, 175-7 ;faciendi et ordinandi, 15; 'full power', 93, W6', plain et general povoir, 93n; plena potestas, 73, 108 potestates, 130, 140 pougeoises, see (Le) Puy poultry, 293 power, see potestas Prats-de-Mollo (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Ceret, ch.-l. c.), 158 prepositi, of months, 191 prerogative wardship, see wardship prevot(s), 251, 275, 276, 277 prevote(s), 109, 249, 270, 272, 273, 276; farms of, 275, 277 prices, 288, 292, 293, 296-7 princes (principes), 218, 219; in France, 249 principalis dominus, 410, 411 principalities, 258; as fiefs, 252 Prisia servientium (1194-1204), 271, 272 privilege(s), 11; of: Agde, 221n; Mende (1161), 221 n, 229, 236n; Pere I, 200, 201, 203, 208, 210n, 228; Tarragona, 355; Templars (1155), 221,225n

448

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

probi homines, 13, 15n, 35, 36; Cesaraugustunenses, 43; Daroce, 43; de: Catalaiub, 43, Osca, 43; dyocesis Agennensis, 17; of: Barcelona, 381, Catalonia, 200, 211; Tholosani, 16n; Tirasonenses, 43; Ylerdenses 42. See also proshomes. proctors, 13, 16, 17, 64, 65, 70; 'for public work', 227; in: assemblies, 109, 110-11, 119, parlements, 87, 92-3, 106; of: Jews, 68, Toulouse, 63; procurator, 379; 'solemn messengers', 115. Procuracio reial, 374 procuration (empowered representation), 15, 18, 29, 69, 70, 73, 84, 87, 88, 98, 109, 111, 113, 115, 116, 122. See also potestas. procurations (mandates), 17, 65, 67, 81, 87, 88, 110, 114; of excuse, 111 professors, of Paris, 121 property, law of, 258 proshomes, lln. See also probi homines Prouille (dep. Aude, commune Fanjeaux), 404; proctor of, 92n Provence, 62, 131, 133, 134, 142, 143 247n, 402, 407n; c. of (marquisate), 396, 408; cts. of, 141, 258, 259, 261; cty. of, 129, 131, 134, 165, 221; marquisate of, 393, 396; peace movement in, 222, 229, 230, 232, 236; territorial order in, 257, 259, 263 provinces, clerical, represented, 113 Provins (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ch.-l. ar.), 85, 92n Provisions of Oxford, 94 Psalmody (Ben.: dep. Card, ar. Nimes, c. Aigues-mortes), 400n public: order, in Aragon, 242; 'public utility', 308 Pug ultrer, 174 punera, 291, 292, 295, 300, 301 Puy, Le (dep. Haute-Loire, ch.-l.), bps., chapter of, 399; c. of (pougeoises), 399, 400-1, 403, 410, 412, 413, 414, 417, 418 Puymirol (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Agen, ch.-l. c.), 16n Puy-Saint-Front (Perigueux), 227 Quanto personam tuam (X 2.24.18), 307; glosses to 3 Comp. 2.15.4, 314-22; original significance of, 303—23 quartana, 291, 295,301 quarter (quartern), 291, 293, 295, 296, 297, 300, 301 quaternal (c. of Barcelona), 331, 337, 339, 340, 343, 345, 346, 353, 362, 382, 383 quaterniones, 196

Quercy, 4, 8, 13, 19, 92-3, 234, 235, 236, 393; confirmation of c. in, 424; peace in, 227, 231, 235; taxation in, 52, 56, 58; towns of, 87, 92-3, 115 questia-e, 200, 203, 211, 355, 357n, 389; Gerunde, 330, 335, 336; chesta of Besalu, 383. See also tallage(s) quodomnes tangit. . . (Cod. 5.59.5.2.), 112, 122, 311 R. de Conchis, 380 R. Karizom, 380 Rabinad (Rubinat: pr. Lleida, com. Segarra, p.j. Cervera), castle of, 157 Rafardus de Torrilias, 174 RAIMUNDUS-RAIMOND-RAMON (etc.) Raimond V, ct. of Toulouse (1148-95), 221n, 226n, 395 Raymond VI, ct. of Toulouse (1195-1222), 4, 233, 393, 396, 397 Raymond VII, ct. of Toulouse (1222-49), 4, 6, 7n, 8, lOn, 13, 18, 19, 20, 53, 54n, 393; c. of, 395, 396, 397, 408; daughter of, 394 Raimundus, 174 Raymundus filius Arnaldi Cortit, 42 Reimundus Barchinonensis episcopus (1108-15), 173 Raimundus frater (Petri Gilelmi) de Uilla longa, 174 Raimundus presbiter, 378 Ramon repositarius, 385, 386 Raimundus Sancte Marie presbiter, 178 Ramon Alaman, 390-1 Ramundus Andorra, consul of bourg of Narbonne, 421 n Raimundus Arberti baiulus comitis et Sancti Benedicti, 142n Raymundus Aymerid, 43 Raimon Bega, 356, 379-80 Raimundus de Belera, brother of Guillem de Belera, 176 Ramon Berenguer I, ct. of Barcelona, etc. (1035-76), 129, 130, 134, 140, 145, 151, 153, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168, 242, 244n, 258, 259 Ramon Berenguer HI, ct. of Barcelona (10861131), 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 139n, 156, 161, 162, 165n, 168, 173, 205, 223, 224, 234n, 242, 258; his charter of 1118, 326 Ramon Berenguer IV, ct. of Barcelona, prince of Aragon (1131-62), 130-6, 139-40, 141, 145, 146, 151, 160, 162, 163, 164-5, 168, 171, 180, 191, 194, 244, 245; administration of, 188, 189, 190, 261, 262, 279, 372, (in Aragon), 240, 242, 246; monetary policy of, 340-1

Index Ramon Berenguer, ct. of Provence (1144-66), 141 Raimond Berenger V, ct. of Provence (120945), 232, 234n Raimundus Berengarius de Perpiniano, 174 Ramon de Boixadors, 334 Raymundus de Borja, 45 Ramon Borell I, ct. of Barcelona, etc. (9921018), 129 Ramon de Caldes, dean of Barcelona cathedral, 145, 146, 169, 187-98, 262, 358, 360; subscription of, 189; (with G. de Bassia) procurator(es) domini regis in Catalonia, 193 Raimundus de Castro Rosilionis, (Raymundus de Castello-Rossilione), 177-8, 186 Raimundus de Castro uetulo, 177 Raymundus Ermengaudi de Villarasa, 186 Ramon Pole II, vet. of Cardona (c. 1155-75), 147, 148 Ramon Pole (III, vet.) of Cardona (c. 1226-33), 359, 364, 365, 370 Ramon Galceran (baron of Pinos, c. 1197—c. 1226), 200, 212, 334, 335 Raimundus Gauceberti, 173 Raimundus Gaucerandi, 111 Raimundus Gayol, 387, 388 Raimundus de Gurb, 176 Raimundus de Kastelbo, 176 Ramundus Lumbardi, consul of Narbonne city, 421 n Ramon de Manresa, 330, 331, 335-6 Raymundus de Montepessulano, 42 Raimundus de Odena, 157n Raimundus de Papiolo, 378 Ramon de Penyafort, 234 Raimundus de Petralata, 174 Raymundus Petri, 42 Ramon de Plegamans, 365, 367, 370, 384, 389 Ramon Ramon (Raymundus Raymundi baiulus), b. of Lleida, 35n, 42, 371-2 Raimunudus Rigualdi, 174 Raimundus Rotgerii, ct. of Foix (1188-1223), 378 Raimond-Roger, vet. of Beziers (1194-1209), 396 Raymundus Sennoron, 42 Raimundus Sinfredi de Maioles, 174 Raimundus de Solario, 389 Raimundus de Tacidone, 186 Raimundus de Tarascon, 43 Raimond-Trencavel I, vet. of Beziers (115067), 225n, 400n Rairnond Trencavel II, vet. of Beziers (120947), 396

449 Raimundus de Urriols, 387, 388 Raimundus de Yla, 387, 388 Ramiro, k. of Aragon (1134-7), 240 Raolfus prior Scale Dei, 390 Raoul, bp. of Agen (1233-5), 24 'raymondins', see Albi, Roquefeuil Razes, 407n rear-fiefs, see fiefs Rechesen (pr. Girona, com. Selva, near la Jonquera), castle of, 155n recoinages, 340, 341, 345, 346, 347, 368 redemption of coinage and/or peace, 25, 149, 204-5, 223, 228, 328, 329, 333, 335; redempdo (redemptio] monete, 204, 207n, 328, 333 regales, see Marseille regalian power (or order), 219, 221, 229, 235, 244-6, 247, 250, 254, 261 registers, 145, 368; of: James I, 352, 373; Philip Augustus, 253-4, 271, 272, 273, 275, 282 rei de Barcelona, 149 Reims (dep. Marne, ch.-l. ar.), 101; abp. of, 83; province of, 109 Reimundus, see RAIMUNDUS rekeninge, 277 relics, cult of, 217-8 Renardus de ludeges, 174 Renardus de Sancto Laurencio, 174 renunciations (of exceptions in Roman law), 381, 383, 385, 386, 387, 390 reliefs, 21n, 22, 164, 249, 252 Remoulins (dep. Card, ar. Nimes, ch.-l. c.), 400n repositarius(-i), 35, 43, 366, 372; Arogonensis repositarius, 35n representation, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 29, 33, 73, 88; administrative, 34; by: lawyers, 121; lords, barons, 56, 150; ex officio, 12, 84, 108, 109, 113, 115, 231n; of: Jews, 71, (men of) estates, 16, 88, 115-6, 117, 118, 119, 235, 241, towns, 3, 5, 36, 37, 58, 69, 80, 84, 87, 92, 93, 113, 222, 235, villages, 235; Roman-canonical, 13, 17, 69, 73; virtual, 112, 113, 114. See also procuration revenues, in: Aragon, 351; Catalonia, 351—6, 362, 363, 364, 365, 370, 388; Montpellier, 356; of c., 345 rex in episcopatu suo, 41 In Ribagorca, chronicle of, 132; cts., cty. of, 131, 132, 133, 138 Ribes valley, 130, 158, 168 Ricardus notarius, 406n Ricardus Guilelmi de Barchinona, 173

450

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Richard I, k. of England (1189-99), 4, 222; duke of Aquitaine, 4, 7 Richardson, H. G., 238 richio homines, of Aragon, 41 richomo, 171, 175 Ricla (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. La Almunia de Dona Godina), 40, 45 rics homens, 34 Riom (dep. Puy-de-D6me, ch.-l. ar.), 51, 60, 84 Ripoll (Ben: pr. Girona, com. Ripolles, p.j. Puigcerda), 163; commemoration at, 133—9; monks of, 129, 131, 132, 139, 142 Robert the Pious, k. of France (996-1031), 219, 247 Robert of Artois (d. 1318), 90 Rocaberti, honor of, 175 Rocamadour (dep. Lot, ar. Gourdon, c. Gramat), 229, 231n Rocquencourt (dep. Yvelines, ar. Versailles, c. Le Chesnay), 272 Roda (Ribagorca), 131, 132 rodanois, see Rodez Rodericus de Li^ana, 42 Rodericus de Pertusa, 45 Rodez (dep. Aveyron, ch.-l.), c. of (rodanois), 230, 231n, 398-9, 401, 410, 418; ct. of, 221n, 399; diocese of, 401 Roger, vet. of Carcassonne (d. 1150), 224 Roger II, vet. ofBeziers (1167-94), 147, 222n Roland (Song of), 249 Roman law, 112, 139, 257, 258, 263, 310, 311, 312, 315; books of, 198n; political theory of, 164, 245 Rome, 203 Roquefeuil (dep. Card), c. ('raymondins') of, 399, 400, 403, 406, 412, 417; lords of, 399 Rostagnus de Sancto lohane, 380 Rostanus de G. de Ceruaria, 378 Rotlandus Layni, 42 Rotlandus de Tirasona, 43 Rouen (dep. Seine-Maritime, ch.-l.), 80, abp. of, 77; synodal statutes of (1096), 220, 222n Rouergue, 63, 92, 227, 393, 401, 402, 405n, 418; consulates of, 115; Jews of, 71; peace of (1169-70), 226; senechaussee, of 407, 410; taxation in, 52, 56n, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65n, 71 Roupidere (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades), church of, 177 Roussillon, 127, 155, 158, 159, 161, 168, 189, 225n, 226, 234n, 360, 367, 402; administration, revenues of, 353, 359, 374 (procuracio real); assembly, peace-statues of (1173), 163, 17986, 222, 225; barons, clergy of, 184; c. of,

230; ct., cty. of, 130, 142, 144, 163, 165, 166 180, 244, 246; lordship of, 360, 376; monedatge in, 352-3; peace-tax in, 228, 330, 335-6 Roye (dep. Somme, ar. Montdidier, ch.-l. c.), 272 Rubriques de Bruniquer, 340-2, 343, 344, 345 Rufmus, 23In S. Aner, 44 S. de Cesaraugusta, 45 S. Escriuano, 35n, 45 S. de Exeya, 42 S. Guarini, 44 Sabadell (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Occidental, p.j.), measure of, 293, 300 sacramentale-ia, 166, 167, 169, 171n. See also oath(s) sacramentum-a, 173, US', pads, 230. See also oath(s) SAINT-SAINTE. See also SANCTASANCTUS-SANT Saint-Antonin (Tarn-et-Garonne, ch.-l. c.), 406, 407 Saint-Denis (Ben: dep. Seine-Saint-Denis, ar. Bobigny, ch.-l. c.), chronicles of, 107, 121 Saint-Esteve of Ille-sur-Tet (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Vinca), 177 Saint-Jean-d'Angely (dep. Charente-Maritime, ch.-l. ar.), 66 Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, ch.-l. c.), barons of, 181; castellany of, 168, 174 Saint-Martial, 217 Saint-Nazaire (Carcassonne), 407n St-Ouen (pres Paris (Saint-Ouen: dep. SeineSaint-Saint-Denis, ar. Bobigny, ch.-l. c.), great council at (1314), 103 Saint-Privat (Gevaudan), 229; coin-type of, 399 Saint-Remi (Reims), 83 St-Sever (dep. Landes, ar. Mont-de-Marsan, ch.-l. c.), 22n Saint-Victor (Marseille), 131 Sainte Eulalie (Elne), 183 Sainte-Livrade (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Villeneuve-sur-Lot, ch.-l. c.), 10 Saintes (dep. Charente-Maritime, ch.-l. ar.), taxation of, 60 Saintonge, 66, 67, castellanies of, 93; Jews in, 71; seneschal of, 416; taxation in 52, 60, 70, 71 Salomon of Barcelona, 135 Salses (dep. Pyr-.Or., ar. Perpignan, c.

Index Rivesaltes), castle of, 163 salt-taxes (salinae), 200, 201, 211 Saluatore, [?]on, 44 saluejidelitates, 162n, 176 saluitates, 186; salvetats, 181 SANg-SANCHA-SANCHO-SANTIUS Sane, ct. of Provence (1181-5; d. 1223), regentprocurator (1214-8), 355, 360, 361, 362 Sancha (of Castile), q. of Aragon, etc. (d. 1208), 141, 177 Sancho VI, k. of Navarre (1150-94), 147 Santius de Carta Uella, 44 Santius Munnoz, 44 Sancta Eulalia (Barcelona?), domus of, 385 Sancta Susanna, honor de, 188n Sanpere y Miquel, Salvador, 352 Sant Benet de Bages (Ben.: pr. Barcelona, com. Bages, p.j. Manresa), 142n Sant Cugat (Ben.: pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Occidental, p.j. Terrassa), 132, 362 Sant Feliu de Llobregat (pr. Barcelona, com. Baix Llobregat, p.j.), mills at, 193 Sant Joan de les Abadesses (Ben.: pr. Girona, com. Ripolles p.j. Puigcerda), 159; loan by abt. of, 331, 336-8, 345 Sant Marti Sarroca, 160 Sant Miquel de Cuixa (Ben.: dep. Pyr.-Or., near Codalet), 137 Sant Pere (Ben.: Besalu), 384 Sant Pere (Terrassa), 293n Sant Pere de Vilamajor (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Oriental, p.j. Granollers), 190; b. of, 366 Santa Cecilia d'Elins (Ben.: com. Alt Urgell), 159 Santa Creu and Santa Eulalia (Barcelona), 189 Santes Creus (Cist.: pr. Tarragona, com. Alt Camp, p.j. Vendrell), 139, 192 Santa Maria de Palacio (Palau-solita, parish of, 287n; priest of, 299n, 301 SANTIUS, see SAN£ Saracens, see Moors Sarral (pr. Tarragona, com. Conca de Barbera, p.j. Montblanc), 389; Zarael, 390 Sarzac (Pnear Beziers, dep. Herault), 222n saumata (saumada), 293n; somada, 291, 295, 301 Savalla (pr. Tarragona, com. Conca de Barbera, p.j. Montblanc), 389 Sayles, G.O.,238 scabini, 258 Scala Dei (Escaladei: Carthusian: pr. Tarragona, com. Priorat), 390 scribe(s), 288, 316; fiscal, 366n, 367; of Barcelona, 358

451

scriptor rationis, 366 seigneuriage, 326, 397, 410 seisin, 19, 20 senarius (coinage), 331, 337, 344, 345 senechaussee(s), 280; of: Beaucaire, 394, 400, 404, Carcassonne, 394, 404 Seners (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Prades, c. Vinca), church of, 177 seneschal(s), 84, 86; of, Agenais, 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, France, 277 senior, de Sancto Laurencio, 174; seniores, 155 Senlis (dep. Oise, ch.-l. ar.), 275n; bp.-elect of, 77; great council at (1301), 103n; mayor of, 85 Senonais, 273 Sens (dep. Yonne, ch.-l. ar.), 85 sequimens, 175 sextarius, 291, 293, 295, 300, 301 sheepherding, 192 shillings, 394 ships, 330, 335, 336 Si aliquis decesserit (custom of Narbonne), 423 Sicard, vet. of Lautrec, 222 Sicard Alaman, 396, 397n, 401 Sicard de Lautrec (vet., d. 1234), 404 Sicily, 257, 311 Sifred, 138 silver, 356, 369, 379; mines of, 405 Silvester, 316 Simo Rodriguez, Maria Isabel, 168n Simon de Montfort (d. 1218), 4, lOn, 24n, 215, 230, 233, 393, 401; c. of, 395 Simon de Montfort (d. 1265), 19n sirventes, 147n, 167 Siurana (pr. Tarragona, com. Priorat, p.j. Falset), 131, 132 Soissons (dep. Aisne: ch.-l. ar.), peace of (1155), 220, 231n, 250 soldarii, 407n Soldevila, Ferran, 199, 205n, 325, 327, 352, 355, 359, 361, 364 solidantia, 156 somada, see saumata Sommieres (dep. Card, ar. Nimes, ch.-l. c.), 400, 409, 410, 417; mint at, 405, 406, 414n, 418 Sos (pr. Zaragoza, p j.), 40, 45 sovereignty, 129n; ideas of, in Catalonia, 13940, 144, 163, 164-5, 244-5, 246. See also regalian power Spain (Yspania), 388 Spanish March, 128, 136, 151, 153, 242, 243, 305, 372 spelt, 293, 295, 297

452

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Stapleton, Thomas, 265 state, 127, 152 status. . ., 112, 118, \2Q; generalisstatusEcclesie, 118; -regni, 110. See also estate(s) Stephenson, Carl, 237, 238n Stephanus de Conchis, 380 Stephanus del Espit, 44—5 Stephanus de Ulmis, 338 sterling, c., see England Steunan Garson, 43 Stilus curie parlamenti, 94 Strayer, J.R., 104, 238n, 239, 252, 264 subdiachonus, 378 Suger (abt. of Saint-Denis, d. 1151), 248, 250 suit, 8 suitors, in parlements, 87—8 summa(-e) computorum, 193, 279, 290, 369 Summa maior et ultima bouatici, 336 summons, 7, 12, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 33-8, 67, 68, 98, 101, 107, 109-13, 115, 120, 231; custom of, 90n; general, 92; military, 87, 91 survey(s), of Catalonian domains (1151), 145, 160, 168, 188, 224, 245, 260, 261, 262; of fiefs, 168, 171 suzerainty, 393; of: ct-k. in Catalonia, 149,165, 242, 244, 245, k. of England, 20, k. of France, 136, 152, 239, 247, 249, 410, 411, pope, 415 Symo Clareti, sensechal of Agen, 15n syndics, 13, 17, 37 Tagamanent (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Oriental, p.j. Granollers), 359 faille, see tallage(s) tallage(s), 50, 51, 149, 210, 357; for urban utilities, 227; of: Besalu, 383, 384, Jews, 67; taille(s), 13, 14n, 400n, 404; tolte, 389 Tancred, 303, 315, 316, 320, 323 Taradell (pr. Barcelona, com. Osona, p.j. Vic), 156 Tarascon (dep. Bouches-du-Rhone, ar. Aries, ch.-l. c.), statutes of (1226), 222, 230, 231 Tarazona (Tirasona: pr. Zaragoza, pj.)> 40, 43; bp. of, 31, 41; council of (1229), 38 Tarragona (Terrachona; provincial capital), 166n, 177, 363, 380, 381; abp. of 144, 184, 189, 370; account of, 291; camp of, 166; church of, 129, 355, 362; cty. of, 130, 163; prices at, 297 Tarrega (pr. Lleida, com. Urgell, p.j. Cervera), 192; b. of, 192, 193; bwk. of, 371 Tatzo (Taxo: dep. Pyr.-Or.), 376, 378; vets, of, 181 Taus (pr. Lleida, com. Alt Urgell, p.j. Seu

d'Urgell), comtoria of, 170 Tauste (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Ejea de los Caballeros), 40, 44 taxation, 85, 89, 90-1, 92, 95, 102, 104, 370; for: crusade, 26n, 416, peace, 216, 222, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 233; in: Agenais, 14n, 25, 26, Aragon, 33, 355, Catalonia, 148, 14950, 200, 202-6, 210, 246, 280, 354-7, 360; France, 282; of Alfonse of Poitiers, 49-73 See also aids Tello, 44 Templars, 110, 119, 145, 159, 168, 190n, 195, 221, 222, 224-6, 233, 262, 367; accountants at Paris, 267, 274, 280, 281, 282, 346, 365; fiscal work for James I, 357-60, 368, 373; master of, 354, 357, 367, 375; of Agen, 7, Douzens, 293n, Huesca, 359, 367, Palausolita, 287-302, 345, 358, 360, 365, 369, 370, Roussillon, 181, 184; rights of on c., 307, 345, 357, 358, 369 tenants-in-chief, 243, 251, 255 tenth, 307, 380. See also tithe tenure, 253; tenurial freedom, 143 tercium, 201, 334 ternal (c. of Barcelona), 331, 337 Terouanne, bp. of, 77 Terrassa (pr. Barcelona, com. Valles Occidental, p.j.), 192, 198n, 293, 364 Teruel (pr. and p.j.), 40, 44, 146 theologians, 121 Thibaut IV, ct. of Flanders (1201-22), 253 Thibaut V, ct. ofBlois (1152-91), seneschal, 274 Third Compilation (of decretals, 1210), 303; glosses to, 314-22 Thoma Spagneolus, 387, 388 Thuir (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, ch.-l. c.), 376, 377, 3>7S;justicie of, 330, 335, 336 tithe, 158, 292. See also tenth tolls, 149, 200, 203, 210, 259, 261; at Montpellier, 356, 379; leudae, 211 tolte, see tallage(s) tolzas, see Toulouse Tomasius, 45 Tonneins-Dessous (dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ch.-l. c.), customs of, 5, 12n Tortosa (pr. Tarragona, com. BaixEbre, p.j.)> 130, 143, 163, 192, 195, 262; church of, 132, 135n; conquest of (1148), 131, 132, 163, 244, 262; $uda of, 160; general court of (1225), 364 Toubert, Pierre, 258 Toulouges (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. Perpignan, c. Perpignan-5), tregua et pax of (1062-6), 180

Index Toulousain, 19, 56n, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65n; peacemilitia of, 231 Toulouse (dep. Haute-Garonne, ch.-l. dep.), 16, 19, 67, 410; assemblies at, 67, 68, 89, 90, 103n; bp. of, 14, 395; c. of, 395-6, 398, 403, 404, 405, 408, 409, 410, (tolzas), 395, 401n, 403, 417, 418, (confirmation of), 423-4; coins of, 230, 405, 408, 413-4; cts. of, 136, 147, 227n, 233, 252, 259, 261, 397, 401, 407; cty. of, 19, 20, 51, 52, 57, 58, 71, 136, 215, 393, 407, 418, (peace in), 221, 236, 259; representation of, 119; senechaussee of, 64, 68, 407, 461 n; taxation of, 59, 63, 65; viguerie of, 71 Touraine, 282 Tournon (d'Agenais: dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ar. Villeneuve-sur-Lot, ch.-l. c.), 12 Tours (dep. Indre-et-Loire, ch.-l. dep.), assembly of (1308), 97, 109, 114; c. of (tournois), 403—22 passim, (gros tournois), 415n, 417, (torneses), 404; prelates of, 113n towns, assemblies: in, 58, of, 105, 114, 115; in parlements, 84-5; of Agenais, 231 n; people of, 166, 206; representation of, 57-60, 84, 235 tractatus, 41, 379; et deliberacio, 184 treaties, of: 1229, 393, 394, Corbeil (1258), 411, Paris (1259), 4, 80 tregua, 176; etpax (etc.), 180, 182, 219n Trencavel (Raimond-Trencavel II, 1209-47), vet. of Beziers, 404, 407n Tresor des Chartes, 81, 251 treuga etpace, de (decretalist title), 234 treva Dei etpax, 231 n; treua etpax, 184 tribute, 203 triticum, 295, 297, 298, 300, 301. See also wheat trois estas, 117; three orders, 117, 118. See also estate(s) trompador, 390 troubadours, 147 Troyes (dep. Aube, ch.-l. dep.), mark of, 394, 398n, 402 Truce, see Peace and Truce Turlanda (com. Segarra), castle of, 159, 389 Vgetus de Mataplana, 177 Ugo (Vgo) Martini, 32n, 43 Ulpian, 312 Uncastillo (pr. Zaragoza, p.j. Sos del Rey Catolico), 33, 40, 44 vniuersitas, 42, 43, 45 Urban II, pope (1088-99), 129 Urban III, pope (1185-87), 312 Urgell, c. of, 209n; comtors of, 162; cts. of, 129,

453

134, 147, 155, 165, 170, 245, 354; cty. of, 130, 132, 138, 142, 143, 148, 159, 161, 166, 234n, 244, 355, 359; peace-statutes of (1187), 222; wars of, 38, 149, 365 urgency, 104, 228, 230. See also necessity Usatges of Barcelona, 139-40,143,144,145,148, 150, 156, 160, 164-5, 168, 170, 180, 205, 207, 216, 224, 229, 243-4, 246, 262, 327 usaticum, 384 utility, 234, 363, 383; evidens utilitas, 55n Uzes (dep. Card, ar. Nimes, ch.-l. c.), 225; c. of, 399; peace-tax of, 226 Valence (dep. Drome, ch.-l.}, c. of, 403, 413 Valencia (provincial capital), 32, 146, 147, 373 Valles, 157, 293, 361, 362, 370; prices in, 297; Valles Oriental, 188, 190 Vallespir, 181 Uallisferraria (Farrera de Pallars: pr. Lleida, com. Pallars Sobira, p.j. Sort), castle of, 176 vassal(s), 165,166,171, 238, 240, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 254; lists of, 253; of: bp. of Agen, 12n, ct.-k, 170; rear-vasssals, 252; vassalus, 155, 166 vassalage, 8, 38, 155, 156, 161, 166, 167, 169, 238, 242, 244, 253; vassalatge, 167 vavassor(s), 171, 254; vasvessores, 165 vegueria, see vicariate Velay, 229, 230, 401; peace-militia of, 231 Venaissin, c. of, 409; comtat, 409, 415; taxation in, 52, 56n, 58, 61, 62, 65; senechaussee of, 407, 416 Vermandois, 253; kts. of, 83 Vernon (dep. Eure, ar. £vreux, ch.-l. c.), 272 Vexin, 272 viannenstSi see Vienne Vic (Vich: pr. Barcelona, com. Osona, p.j.), 159n, 178, 206, 207n, 362, 386; b. of, 194, 362; bwk. of, 353; bp. of, 209, 228, 424; bovatge of, 228; c. of, 306,307, 311; cty. of, 190; diocese of, 129r 1S9, 228, 364, 388; Montcadas of, 362; privileges of, 208, 3278, 333-4; revenues of, 388 vicar(s), 144, 148, 149, 150, 211, 246, 260, 357, 365, 415, 421; as judges of peace, 216, 235; in Languedoc, 394, 406; oath of, 200, 206, 210, 211, 212; of Barcelona, 342, 346, 348; to be Catalonian knights, 200, 206, 212; vicarius, 182, 378 vicariate, 160,171,182, 328, 334, 363, 364, 367; of Barcelona, 362, 363, 372, 373, 380-2, Besalu, 363; vegueria, 160; vicarial court, 361; vigueries, 400-1, 403, 405n, 413, 415 Vicens Vives, Jaume, 126

454

Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours

Vidourle (river), 400 Vienne (dep. Isere, ch.-l. ar.), assembly at (-1312), 108; c. of (viannensis), 400, 401, 402, 403, 406, 413 vif-gage, 262, 291 vigueries, see vicariate Viladecans (pr. Barcelona, com. Baix Llobregat, p.j. Hospitalet de Llobregat), bwk. of, 370, 384 Vilafranca del Penedes (pr. Barcelona, com. AltPenedes, p.j.), 148n, 355 Vilamajor, see Sant Pere de Vilamajor Vilar, Pierre, 126 Villanueva, Jaime, 199 Villefranche (d'Albigeois: dep. Tarn, ar. Albi, ch.-l. c.), 401 Villefranche-de-Conflent (dep. Pyr.-Or., ar. and c. Prades),>sfideof, 330, 335, 336 Villefranche (de-Rouergue( dep. Aveyron, ch.-l. ar.), 58 Villemagne (dep. Herault, ar. Beziers, c. SaintGervais-sur-Mare), mine of, 405n Villemur-sur-Tarn (dep. Haute-Garonne, ar. Toulouse, ch.-l. c), knights of, 231n Villeneuve (sur-Lot: dep. Lot-et-Garonne, ch.-l. ar.), 12 Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (dep. Yonne, ar. Sens, ch.-l. c.), 272 vills, 109, 114, 115 Vincentius de Ferrarola, 44 Vincentius Hispanus, 303, 310, 315, 316, 318, 323 Visigoths, 128; law of, 128, 139, 143, 236n, 244, 258 Vitaliz de Ban^ons, 43

Vitalis Escapath, 335 Vivarais, 405n; institutions of peace in, 227n, 231 Viviers (dep. Ardeche, ar. Privas, ch.-l. c.), bps., diocese of, 227n, 399; c. of, 399 voluntas, 227n Voulx (dep. Seine-et-Marne, ar. Melun, c. Lorrez-le-Bocage), 272, 273 war, just, 234n; subsidy for, 26. See also taxation wardship, 164, 244, 249, 252; prerogative wardship, 244 weights, 394, 396, 398, 404, 405, 422; 424; see also mark(s) West Frankland, 247 wheat (frumentum), 295, 297, 300; price of, 296. See also triticum William I, duke of Normandy (1035-87, 258 William of Valence, 21 wine, 293, 297 Ximenes Corneli, 355 yields, of crops, 297-9 zalmedina, 36n Zarael, see Sarral Zaragoza (Cesaraugusta: pr., p.j.), 32, 33, 35, 40, 43, 141, 241, 353; bp. of, 303, 314 Zimmermann, Michel, 130, 132 Zuera (pr. and p.j. Zaragoza), 40, 44 Zurita, Geronimo, 204, 228, 309, 325, 329, 331

Studies in Medieval History

Read more

Pestilence in Medieval & Early Modern English Literature (Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 23)

Read more

Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain)

Read more

Narrative And History in the Early Medieval West (Studies in the Early Middle Ages 16)

Read more

Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

Read more

Neighbours

Read more

Early Music History: Volume 14: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music

Read more

Fashion in Medieval France (Gallica)

Read more

Fashion in Medieval France (Gallica)

Read more

Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France

Read more

Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History)

Read more

Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France

Read more

Studies in the History of Medieval Science

Read more

Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (History Series, 42)

Read more

Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500-1620 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

Read more

Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500-1620 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

Read more

Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations

Read more

Blood and Violence in Early Modern France

Read more

Medieval France An Encyclopedia

Read more

Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France

Read more

Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 20)

Read more

Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion)

Read more

Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)

Read more

Mozarabs in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Read more

Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England

Read more

Holiness and Politics in Early Medieval Thought

Read more

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series)

Read more

Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (Studies in Medieval History and Culture)

Read more

Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (Studies in Medieval History and Culture)

Read more

Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1389 (Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 18)

Read more

Recommend Documents

Studies in Medieval History

THE HASKINS SOCIETY JOURNAL STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY The Charles Homer Haskins Society Officers and Councillors fo...

Pestilence in Medieval & Early Modern English Literature (Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 23)

PESTILENCE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE VOLUME 23 ii STUDIES IN MED...

Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain (Studies in the Early History of Britain)

...

Narrative And History in the Early Medieval West (Studies in the Early Middle Ages 16)

KATERN 1 Ordernr. 060784 N ARRATIVE AND H ISTORY IN THE E ARLY M EDIEVAL W EST Page 1 Ordernr. 060784 STUDIES IN ...

Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY Editors J. H. ELLIOTT OLWEN HUFTON H. G. KOENIGSBERGER Renaissance and Revol...

Neighbours

Early Music History: Volume 14: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music

EARLY MUSIC HISTORY Studies in medieval and earlv modern music Edited by iain Fenlon E A R L Y M U S I C H I S T O R Y...

Fashion in Medieval France (Gallica)

Gallica Volume 3 Fashion in medieval France Gallica ISSN 1749–091X General Editor: Sarah Kay Gallica aims to provid...

Fashion in Medieval France (Gallica)

Gallica Volume 3 Fashion in medieval France Gallica ISSN 1749–091X General Editor: Sarah Kay Gallica aims to provid...

Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France

CULTURE, POWER AND PERSONALITY IN MEDIEVAL FRANCE This page intentionally left blank CULTURE, POWER AND PERSONALITY...