Abstract
Legendary Leaders—Wilfred “the Hairy” and James “the Conqueror.” The myth of Wilfred’s life and death. The Catalan Senyera, the Estelada blava, and the Estelada vermella. The medieval and modern conquests of James I. The “precocious” democracy of the late medieval Catalans; “pactism” as a deliberative process. Nomenclature: count-kings, the Crown of Aragon, the Catalan Mediterranean Empire. Territorial divisions of Catalonia and other attacks on language and culture.
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- 1.
The Wikipedia entry “Wilfred the Hairy” (as of December 2017) tells you that “Wilfred remained obscure” until the British historian Richard Southern mentioned him in The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). That means only that he remained obscure to English-language historians. Kids trained in Catalan schools have long known Wilfred’s place in Catalan history and lore, drawing upon at least 150 years of sustained work by Catalan historians and literary specialists, who draw from texts that include the twelfth-century Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium and the fourteenth-century Crónica de San Juan de la Peña. For overviews of historical study of Wilfred and his application to Catalan identity, see Miquel Coll i Alentorn, Guifre el Pelos en la historiografia i en la llegenda (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1990), and Magí Sunyer, Mites per una nació: de Guifré el Pélos a l’onze de setembre (Vic: Eumo Editorial, 2015). The tales are told online, of course, for example on travel blogs like Ashley B., “History and Legends of Barcelona: Wilfred the Hairy,” shbarcelona.com (blog) accessed on May 1, 2017, https://www.shbarcelona.com/blog/en/wilfred-the-hairy/
- 2.
For background on the earliest elaborations of the history and legend of Wilfred, see Paul Freedman, “Cowardice, Heroism, and the Legendary Origins of Catalonia,” Past and Present 121 (1988): 3–88; and Jaume Aurell, “From Genealogies to Chronicles: The Power of the Form in Medieval Catalan Historiography,” Viator 36 (2005): 235–264, esp. 242–245.
- 3.
Pere Anguera, “Las Cuatro Barras: de bandera a señera,” Jerónimo Zurita 82 (2007): 253–272, esp. 255–256.
- 4.
For more detail, see Joan Crexell i Playà, L’origen de la bandera independentista (Barcelona: Edicions El Llamp, 1984).
- 5.
E.g., Jonathan Jarrett, “Almodis, by Tracey Warr: A Review,” A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe (blog) June 13, 2014, https://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/tag/almodis-de-la-marche/
- 6.
Donald J. Kagay, The Usatges of Barcelona: The Fundamental Law of Catalonia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) is the best overview in English.
- 7.
Damian J. Smith and Helena Buffery, The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon. A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003). This is an excellent translation, and a fantastic reading experience for anyone who wants a first-person account of the life of a medieval king.
- 8.
An image of James’s embalmed head, from the photograph taken at the 1856 autopsy originally published in Joaquim Miret i Sans, “La Cabeza del rey Jaime I de Aragón,” Revue Hispanique IX (1902): 216–219, is available as part of the Wikipedia entry for “James I of Aragon,” accessed November 1, 2017, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Momia_Jaume_I.jpg. For recent DNA reports and a contribution to the added mystery of a second body in James’s tomb, see Elmundo.es, “Podría deberse a la profanación de tumbas de 1837 encuentran dos cráneos entre los restos del rey Jaime I el Conquistador,” May 29, 2001, accessed December 1, 2017, http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2001/05/28/ciencia/991060994.html
- 9.
Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond, The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), and Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). A graphic history has recently been published by Nina Caputo, Debating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
- 10.
Pierre Villar, La Catalogne dans l’Espagne moderne (Paris: SEVPEN, 1962); Thomas N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); Michel Zimmerman, En els origens de Catalunya. Emancipació politica i afirmació cultural (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1989).
- 11.
For a well reasoned, albeit strongly partisan perspective, see Caius Perellada i Cardellach, “Corona d’Arago,” denominacio impropia de l’Estat catala medieval (Barcelona: Rafael Dalmau, 2002).
- 12.
Jaume Aurell i Cardona, Authoring the Past: History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), does an excellent job in his chapter on Desclot to lay out that chronicler’s position with respect to titles and status.
- 13.
For a recent study of the changing appreciation of medieval monarchs in the construction of Catalan identity through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Daniel Wimmer, “Catalonia: Medieval Monarchs Testifying for Democracy, Nation, and Europe,” in Transnational Histories of the ‘Royal Nation’ ed. Milinda Banerjee, Charlotte Backerra, and Cathleen Sarti (London: Palgrave, 2017).
- 14.
Alex Hinojo, “Yet another Wiki?” in What’s Up With Catalonia, 135–138, at 137.
- 15.
“Otger Cataló i els 9 Barons de la Fama,” Vegueries.com (blog), accessed on November 9, 2017, http://www.vegueries.com/ca/festes-folclore/otger: “ Otger Cataló és un símbol mític de la resistència del país a la dominació sarraïna.”
- 16.
Pere Tomic, Històries e conquetes dels reys d’Aragó e comtes de Catalunya, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Ms. 258.
- 17.
Various online encyclopedias offer weak etymologies, which, lacking more thorough research than is available at the time of this writing, should not be trusted.
- 18.
Arnau Urgell, “El Ripollès redecobreix el mite d’Otger Cataló,” Naciodigital.cat, March 3, 2012, accessed on December 1, 2017, http://www.naciodigital.cat/elripolles/noticia/17566/ripolles/redescobreix/mite/otger/catalo. Sant Joan de Les Abadesses, which claims to be the epicenter of the Count Arnau legend, has turned the legend into a cultural attraction. The town has held more than twenty consecutive annual week-long cycles of conferences, presentations, and performances related to the legend. The schedules of some of the most recent sessions of the annual event can be found online by searching Cicle de Representacions del Mite del Comte Arnau.
- 19.
The literature in Catalan on “Comte Arnau” is abundant, ranging from literary analyses to children’s books and from anthropological studies to theatrical and musical adaptations. Among the more serious historical treatments are Josep Romeu I Figuers, El comte Arnau: La formacio d’un mite (Barcelona: Ayma, 1947), and Francesc Riart I Jou, El castell de Mataplana i del Comte Arnau: una història i llegenda singulars de la Catalunya medieval (Barcelona, Signament, 1999). Josep Pla called the Count Arnau story “the greatest myth in Catalan literature,” although others would argue that the Wilfred the Hairy, Otger Cataló, and Sant Jordi myths are contenders.
- 20.
Paul Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 100. One can read Freedman’s translation of the document in Olivia Remie Constable, Medieval Iberia: Documents from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 311–312.
- 21.
John Elliott’s The Revolt of the Catalans still offers the most significant study of Pau Claris in English. Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), does a fine job of describing Claris’s role in the context of Spanish and French relations. The general interest magazine Sapiens has published several articles in recent years on Pau Claris, including Jaume Grau, “Pau Claris: Una vida amb misteris,” Sapiens 121 (2012): 54–57. The article by Jaume Grau is part of a special edition entitled Els grans herois de la nostra història. Dotze personalitats que han marcat el rum de Catalunya al llarg dels segles (The Great Heroes of our History. Twelve Personalities who Marked the Course of Catalunya over the Centuries). The twelve personalities discussed there are Wilfred the Hairy, Ermesinda of Carcassonne, James I, Ramon Llull, Peter the Ceremonious, Pau Claris, Josep Moragues, Antoni Gaudí , Francesc Macià, Lluís Companys , Pau Casals, and Mercè Rodoreda. Notice that of these twelve, five are medieval, two represent the period of the 1640s to 1714, and five are notable figures of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Vargas, M.A. (2018). Princes and People. In: Constructing Catalan Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76744-4_3
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