Crown of Aragon
Crown of Aragon Corona d'Aragón ( Latin ) | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1164–1707/1715 | |||||||||||
Status | Composite monarchy[1] | ||||||||||
Capital | See Capital below | ||||||||||
Official languages | |||||||||||
Minority languages | |||||||||||
Religion | Majority religion: Feudal monarchy subject to pacts | ||||||||||
Monarch | |||||||||||
• 1164-1196 (first) | Alfonso II | ||||||||||
• 1479–1516 | Ferdinand II | ||||||||||
• 1700–1715 (last) | Philip V / Charles III[nb 1] | ||||||||||
Legislature | Conquest of the Kingdom of Naples | 1501–1504 | |||||||||
1707/1715 | |||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||
1300[4] | 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||
• 1300[4] | 1 000 000 | ||||||||||
|
The Crown of Aragon (UK: /ˈærəɡən/, US: /-ɡɒn/)[nb 2] was a composite monarchy[1] ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona and ended as a consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean empire which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy (from 1442) and parts of Greece (until 1388).
The component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king,[5] who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with each Corts or Cortes, particularly the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Majorca, and the Kingdom of Valencia. The larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.
In 1479, a new dynastic union of the Crown of Aragon with the
Context
Formally, the political centre of the Crown of Aragon was
The Crown of Aragon eventually included the
In the Late Middle Ages, the southward territorial expansion of the Aragonese Crown in the Iberian Peninsula stopped in Murcia, which eventually consolidated as a realm of the Crown of Castile, the Kingdom of Murcia. Subsequently, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, governing as far afield as Greece and the Barbary Coast, whereas Portugal, which completed its southward expansion in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known as Almogavars participated in the creation of this Mediterranean empire, and later found employment in countries all across southern Europe.
The Crown of Aragon has been considered an empire
However, the different territories were only connected through the person of the monarch, an aspect of empire seen as early as
History
Origin
The Crown of Aragon originated in 1137, when the
Petronilla's father
Raymond Berenguer IV, the first ruler of the united dynasty, called himself Count of Barcelona and "Prince of Aragon".[12]
Expansion
Alfonso II inherited two realms and with them, two different expansion processes. The
Soon, Alfonso II of Aragon and I of Barcelona committed to conquering Valencia as the Aragonese nobility demanded. Like his father, he gave priority to the expansion and consolidation of the House of Barcelona's influence in Occitania.
Alfonso II signed the
From the ninth century, the
King
The Kingdom of Majorca, including the Balearic Islands, and the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon-Vallespir and the city of Montpellier, was held independently from 1276 to 1279 by James II of Majorca and as a vassal of the Crown of Aragon after that date until 1349, becoming a full member of the Crown of Aragon from 1349.
Valencia was finally made a new kingdom with its own institutions and not an extension of the Kingdom of Aragon as the Aragonese noblemen had intended since even before the creation of the Crown of Aragon. The Kingdom of Valencia became the third member of the Crown together with Aragon and the Principality of Catalonia. The Kingdom of Majorca had an independent status with its own kings until 1349.
In 1282, the Sicilians rose up against the second dynasty of the Angevins on the Sicilian Vespers and massacred the garrison soldiers throughout the island. Peter III responded to their call, and landed in Trapani to an enthusiastic welcome five months later. This caused Pope Martin IV to excommunicate the king, place Sicily under interdiction, and offer the kingdom of Aragon to a son of Philip III of France.[16][17]
When Peter III refused to impose the Charters of Aragon in Valencia, the nobles and towns united in
When James II of Aragon[18] completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia, the Crown of Aragon established itself as one of the major powers in Europe.
In 1297, to solve the dispute between the Anjevins and the Aragonese over Sicily,
Through the marriage of
The King's possessions outside of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands were ruled by proxy through local elites as petty kingdoms, rather than subjected directly to a centralised government. They were more an economic part of the Crown of Aragon than a political one.
The fact that the King was keen on settling new kingdoms instead of merely expanding the existing kingdoms was a part of a power struggle that pitted the interests of the king against those of the existing
Personal union with Castile
In 1410, King
Later, his grandson King Ferdinand II of Aragon recovered the northern Catalan counties—Roussillon and Cerdagne—which had been lost to France as well as the Kingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragon but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
In 1469, Ferdinand married Infanta Isabella of Castile, half-sister of King Henry IV of Castile, who became Queen of Castile and León after Henry's death in 1474. Their marriage was a dynastic union[21][22][23] which became the constituent event for the dawn of the Monarchy of Spain. At that point both the Castile and the states of the Crown of Aragon remained distinct polities, each keeping its own traditional institutions, parliaments and laws. The process of territorial consolidation was completed when their grandson King Charles I, known as Emperor Charles V, in 1516 ruled over all of the kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula, save the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarve, under one monarch—his co-monarch and mother Queen Joanna I in confinement—thereby furthering the creation of the Spanish monarchy, albeit a composite and decentralized one.
Dissolution
The literary evocation of past splendour recalls correctly the great age of the 13th and 14th centuries, when Majorca, Valencia and Sicily were conquered, the population growth could be handled without social conflict, and the urban prosperity, which peaked in 1345, created the institutional and cultural achievements of the Crown.[24]
The Aragonese crown's wealth and power stagnated and its authority was steadily transferred to the new Spanish crown settled in Castile after that date—the demographic growth was partially offset by the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), Muslims (1502) and the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609).[25] It was unable to prevent the separation of Sicily and Naples due to the establishment of the Council of Italy, the loss of Roussillon in 1659 after the Reapers' War in the Principality of Catalonia, the loss of Minorca and its Italian domains in 1707–1716, and the imposition of French language on Roussillon (1700) and Castilian as the language of government in all the old Aragonese Crown lands in Spain (1707–1716).[25]
The Crown of Aragon and its institutions and public law were abolished between 1707 and 1716 only after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) by the Nueva Planta decrees, issued by Philip V of Spain.[25] The original political structure was swept away, the administration was subsumed into the Castilian laws, the states of the Crown of Aragon loss their status of separate entitites and were united formally with those of Castile to legally form a single state, the Kingdom of Spain, as it moved towards an absolutist centralized government under the new Bourbon dynasty.[25]
Nationalist revisionism
Some of the
The reprisals inflicted on the territories that had fought against
The Romanticism of the 19th century Catalan Renaixença movement evoked a "Pyrenean realm" that corresponded more to the vision of 13th century troubadours than to the historical reality of the Crown.[26] This vision survives today as "a nostalgic programme of politicised culture".[26] Thus, the history of the Crown of Aragon remains a politically loaded topic in modern Spain,[27] especially when it comes to asserting the level of independence enjoyed by constituents of the Crown, like the Principality of Catalonia, which is sometimes used [need quotation to verify] to justify the level of autonomy (or independence) that should be enjoyed by contemporary Catalonia and other territories.
Pennon
The origin of Coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon is the familiar coat of the
Institutions
As separate states united to the Crown under the aeque principaliter principle, Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia each had a legislative body, known as the Cortes in the Kingdom of Aragon (the Courts of Aragon) or Corts in the Principality of Catalonia (the Catalan Courts) and the Kingdom of Valencia (the Valencian Courts). A Diputación del General or Diputació del General was established in each, becoming known as a Generalidad in Aragon and Generalitat in Catalonia and Valencia.
From the 15th century onwards, every realm of the Crown was granted its own court of justice in the form of Royal Audience, resulting from the division of the Royal Court and the establishment of the Council of Aragon in its place. After the dynastic union with Castile and the establishment of the monarchs in that realm, the king began to be permanently represented in the realms of the Crown of Aragon by viceroys, one for each state, including Mallorca and Sardinia.
Capital
The house of the Crown was the Cathedral of the Savior of Zaragoza from Peter II (12th century).[30][31] The General Courts of the Crown (the simultaneous meeting of the Courts of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia) used to gather at Monzón (13th to 16th centuries), the remaining meetings took place at Fraga, Zaragoza, Calatayud and Tarazona. The councillor headquarters were located at Barcelona (13th to 16th centuries) and Naples during the kingdom of Alfonso V.[32]
On the other hand, the
In the early 15th century, the de facto capital was Valencia until Alfonso V came to the throne. During the 15th and the 16th centuries, the Crown's de facto capital was Naples. After Alfonso V of Aragon, Ferdinand II of Aragon settled the capital in Naples. Alfonso, in particular, wanted to transform Naples into a real Mediterranean capital and lavished huge sums to embellish it further.[35] Later the courts were itinerant[36] until Philip II of Spain. The Spanish historian Domingo Buesa Conde has argued that Zaragoza ought to be considered the permanent political capital, but not the economic or administrative capital, owing to the obligation for kings to be crowned at the Cathedral of the Savior of Zaragoza.[nb 3]
Culture
During the Crown of Aragon, the Catalan culture and language underwent a vigorous expansion.[37] During the period of trade, Occitan-Catalan contributions to Maltese occurred.[38]
King
The
As the use of Lingua Franca spread in the Mediterranean, dialectal fragmentation emerged, the main difference being more use of Italian and Provençal vocabulary in the Middle East, while Ibero-Romance lexical material dominated in the Maghreb. After France became the dominant power in the latter area in the 19th century, Algerian Lingua Franca was heavily gallicised (to the extent that locals are reported having believed that they spoke French when conversing in Lingua Franca with the Frenchmen, who in turn thought they were speaking Arabic), and this version of the language was spoken into the nineteen hundreds...[42]
The similarities contribute to discussions of the classification of the Mediterranean Lingua Franca as a language. Although its official classification is that of a pidgin, some scholars adamantly oppose that classification and believe it would be better viewed as an interlanguage of Italian.
Linguist Steven Dworkin hypothesized that Catalan was the point of entry for Mediterranean Lingua Franca terms into Spain, arguably the source of several Italian and Arabic loanwords in Spanish, citing the DCECH.[43]
Composition
The crown was made up of the following territories (which are nowadays parts of the modern countries of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, and Andorra).
Sort by "Earliest annexion" to see the states in the chronological order they were joined to the crown.
Name | Type of entity | Notes | Earliest annexion |
---|---|---|---|
Andorra | Co-principality
|
Briefly annexed by Aragon in 1396 and again in 1512 | 1396 |
Aragon | Kingdom | Joined with the County of Barcelona in 1162 to form the Crown | 1162 |
Athens | Duchy | Inherited through the Kingdom of Sicily in 1381; lost in 1388 | 1381 |
Catalonia, originally Barcelona | Principality, originally a county | Joined with Aragon in 1162 to form the Crown. Through the 12th and the 14th centuries, the County of Barcelona developed common institutions and legislation with the other Generalitat, establishing the Principality of Catalonia as a polity |
1162 |
Gévaudan | County | Inherited in 1166 by Alfonso II; lost in 1307 | 1166 |
Majorca | Kingdom | Established in 1231 by James I, including Roussillon and Montpellier, as part of the Crown | 1231 |
Naples | Kingdom | Successfully wrested by Italian War of 1499–1504; lost permanently in 1714, after the War of the Spanish Succession |
1442 |
Neopatria
|
Duchy | Inherited through the Kingdom of Sicily in 1381; lost in 1390 | 1381 |
Provence | County | Inherited with the county of Barcelona in 1162 | 1162 |
Sardinia and Corsica
|
Kingdom | In 1297 fiefdom to the Aragonese King James II, ignoring the already existing, indigenous states;[20] Aragonese conquest of Sardinia did not start until 1324 and was completed only by 1420.[citation needed ] The Corsica was never conquered durably. The kingdom was lost in 1714. |
1324 |
Sicily | Kingdom | Ruled as an independent kingdom[45] by relatives or cadet members of the House of Aragon from 1282 to 1409; then added permanently to the Crown; lost in 1713 | 1282 |
Valencia | Kingdom | Established in 1238, as part of the Crown, following the conquest of the Moorish taifa | 1238 |
Coat of arms of the kings of the Crown of Aragon
-
Coat of arms fromRamon Berenguer IV of Barcelona to Alfonso II of Aragon
-
Coat of arms from Alfonso II of Aragon to Peter II of Aragon
-
Coat of arms from Peter II of Aragon to Peter IV of Aragon
-
Coat of arms from Peter IV of Aragon to Ferdinand II of Aragon
See also
- Cortes of Tarazona (1592)
- List of Aragonese monarchs
- List of Sicilian monarchs
- Prince of Girona
- Great Catalan Company
Notes
- ^ Disputed due to the War of the Spanish Succession.
- Latin: Corona Aragonum [kɔˈroːna araˈɡoːnũː].
- ISBN 84-95306-44-1) postulates that the Crown of Aragon's political capital of Zaragoza though it was not the economic or the administrative one since the court was itinerative in the 14th century and took its start from the decrees of Peter IV of Aragon establishing his coronation there: "Pedro IV parte (...) de la aceptación de la capital del Ebro como 'cabeza del Reino'. [...] por eso hizo saber a sus súbditos que 'Mandamos que este sacrosanto sacramento de la unción sea recibido de manos del metropolitano en la ciudad de Zaragoza' al tiempo que recordaba: "... y como quiera que los reyes de Aragón están obligados a recibir la unción en la ciudad de Zaragoza, que es la cabeza del Reino de Aragón, el cual reino es nuestra principal designación—esto es, apellido—y título, consideramos conveniente y razonable que, del mismo modo, en ella reciban los reyes de Aragón el honor de la coronación y las demás insignias reales, igual que vimos a los emperadores recibir la corona en la ciudad de Roma, cabeza de su imperio. Zaragoza, antigua capital del reino de Aragón, se ha convertido en la capital política de la Corona (...)".
References
- ^ a b Fernández Albaladejo, Pablo (2001). Los Borbones: dinastía y memoria de nación en la España del siglo XVIII.... Marcial Pons Historia.
- ISBN 84-235-2506-6.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ISBN 9780595310630.
- ^ ISBN 9780521397414. Archivedfrom the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 11 October 2019.
The new kingdom of Castile had roughly tripled in size to some 335,000 square kilometres by 1300 but, at the same time, its population had increased by the same factor, from one to three millions [...] In the new Crown of Aragon of 120,000 square kilometres the population density would have been about the same for its numbers reached about 1,000,000 in the same period.
- ISBN 978-0-19-920736-7.
This group of states comprised the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, and Majorca, the principality of Catalonia, and the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne; further afield it embraced the kingdoms of Sicily and Sardinia. These states had no common institutions or bonds save allegiance to a common sovereign
- ^ Kamen, Henry (2002). Empire: how Spain became a world power, 1492–1762, 20.
- ISBN 978-0-8108-7514-2.
- ^ ISBN 978-0141007038. Archivedfrom the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Lozoya, Marqués de (1952). Historia de España, Salvat, vol. II page 60: "El Reino de Aragon, el Principado de Cataluña, el Reino de Valencia y el Reino de Mallorca, constituyen una confederación de Estados".
- ^ Bisson, Thomas N. (1986). The Medieval Crown of Aragon: a short history, chapter II. The age of the Early Count-Kings (1137–1213) (The Principate of Ramon Berenguer IV 1137–1162), p. 31.
- ISBN 84-96019-28-4. 127pp.
- ^ Payne, Stanley G. "Chapter Five. The Rise of Aragon-Catalonia". A History of Spain and Portugal. Archived from the original on 15 April 2012. Retrieved 2 July 2008.
- ^ Bisson T. N. The age of the Early Count-Kings (1137–1213) (Dynastic Policy 1162–1213), chapter II, p. 36.
- ^ a b c Chaytor, H. J. "Chapter 6, James the Conqueror". A History of Aragon and Catalonia. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2008.
- ^ Bisson 1986:67
- ^ a b Bisson 1986:87–88
- ^ Chaytor, H. J. "7, Pedro III". A History of Aragon and Catalonia. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 3 May 2008.
- ^ Not to be confused with James II of Majorca
- ^ Fatás, Guillermo; Guillermo Redondo (1995). "Blasón de Aragón" (in Spanish). Zaragoza, Diputación General de Aragón. pp. 101–102. Archived from the original on 31 January 2012.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ local possessions.
- ^ Payne, Stanley G. "Chapter Nine, The United Spanish Monarchy". A History of Spain and Portugal. Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2008.
- ^ Chaytor, H. J. "Juan II. Union of Aragon with Castile". A History of Aragon and Catalonia. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2008.
- ^ Herr, Richard. "Chapter 3, The Making of Spain". An historical essay on modern Spain. Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 17 April 2008.
- ^ Bisson, T. N. "Epilogue", pp. 188–189.
- ^ a b c d Bisson, T. N. "Epilogue", p. 189.
- ^ a b c Bisson, T. N. "Epilogue", p. 188.
- ^ "La web de la Generalitat rebautiza la Corona de Aragón como "nación catalana independiente" (in Spanish). 30 November 2012. Archived from the original on 16 November 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
- ISBN 2-86377-030-6.(in French)
- ^ "La bandera de Aragón". Autonomous Government of Aragon. 6 March 1997. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008. Retrieved 20 April 2008. Page on the official flag of Aragon and the origin of the "palos de gules" or "barras de Aragón" (in Spanish)
- ^ "Coronación real". Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-8484093572. Archivedfrom the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
- )
- ^ "Cancillería real aragonesa". Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa. Zaragoza: El Periódico de Aragón. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-84-8465-220-5.
- ISBN 88-7989-406-4
- ^ A team of investigators of the UIB directed by Doctor Josep Juan Vidal. "Felipe II, the King that defended Majorca but didn't want to recognize all its privileges" (PDF) (in Spanish). Servei de Comunicacions de la UIB. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 May 2008. Retrieved 17 April 2008.
- from the original on 2 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- ISBN 978-3-11-056574-4. Archivedfrom the original on 2 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- ^ "The Muslims of Valencia". publishing.cdlib.org. Archived from the original on 2 September 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- ^ "Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation". The Courtauld. Archived from the original on 2 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- from the original on 2 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- ^ Parkvall, Mikael (2005). Alan D. Corré (ed.). "Foreword to A Glossary of Lingua Franca" (5th ed.). Milwaukee, WI, United States. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 December 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-19-954114-0. Archivedfrom the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
- ^ Formally including Corsica, which was never conquered or controlled by the Aragonese or the Spanish.
- in 1522.
Bibliography
- Bisson, T. N. (1986). The medieval Crown of Aragon. A short history. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-820236-9.
External links