The Principality of Catalonia was a medieval and early modern state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. For most of its existence it was in personal union with the Kingdom of Aragon and other states, constituting together the composite monarchy known as the Crown of Aragon. It was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France to the north and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east. Its sovereign or prince had the title of Count of Barcelona. Established in the second half of the 12th century as a result of the territorial, legislative and institutional evolution of the County of Barcelona, it ceased to exist as an independent political entity after the pro-Habsburg defeat of 1714 in the War of the Spanish Succession and the subsequent suppression of the Catalan institutional system by the Nueva Planta Decree of 1716. However, it remained as a territorial division until 1833. Today, the term Principat ("Principality") is used primarily to refer to the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries.
The first reference to Catalonia and the Catalans appears in the Liber maiolichinus, a Pisan chronicle (1117-1125) of the conquest of Majorca by a joint force of Northern Italians, Catalans, and Occitans. At the time, Catalonia did not yet exist as a political entity, though the use of this term acknowledge Catalonia as a cultural or geographical entity. The counties that eventually made up the Principality of Catalonia were gradually unified under the rule of the count of Barcelona. In 1137, the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon formed a dynastic union, later known as the Crown of Aragon; however, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own political structure and legal systems, developing separate political communities along the next centuries. Under Alfons I the Troubador (1162–1196), Catalonia was regarded as a political entity for the first time in 1173, while the term Principality of Catalonia was fully formalized in 1343.
Its institutional system evolved over the centuries, establishing political bodies analogous to the ones of the other kingdoms of the Crown (such as the Courts, the Generalitat or the Consell de Cent) and legislation (Constitutions and Usatges) which largely limited the royal power and secured the political model of pactism (contractual system between the monarch and the Estates). Catalonia contributed to further develop the Crown trade and military, most significantly their navy. The Catalan language flourished and expanded as more territories were added to the Crown, including Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Athens. In the 15th century, the end of the rule of House of Barcelona (1410), serf and urban conflicts and a civil war (1462–1472) weakened the role of the Principality within the Crown and at international affairs.
In 1516, Charles V became monarch of both the crowns of Aragon and Castile, creating a personal union, the Monarchy of Spain. In 1492 the Spanish colonization of the Americas began, and political power began to shift away towards Castile. Tensions between Catalan institutions and the monarchy, alongside the peasants' revolts, provoked the Reapers' War (1640–1659), who saw the brief establishment of a Catalan Republic. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) the Roussillon was ceded to France. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the Crown of Aragon supported the Archduke Charles of Habsburg. After the surrender of Barcelona in 1714, King Philip V of Bourbon, inspired by the French model, imposed absolutism and a unifying administration across Spain, and enacted the Nueva Planta decrees for every realm of the Crown of Aragon, which suppressed Catalan, Aragonese, Valencian and Majorcan institutions and legal systems and merged them into the Crown of Castile as provinces, ending their status as states.
A distinctive Catalan culture started to develop in that period stemming from these small counties throughout the northernmost part of current Catalonia. The counts of Barcelona were Frankish vassals nominated by the Carolingian emperor, then the king of the Franks, to whom they were feudatories (801–988). In 878, Wilfred the Hairy, an ethnic Visigoth from Carcassona, count of Urgell and Cerdanya, was appointed count of Barcelona, Girona and Osona. Since then, Girona and Osona were subsumed and, over time, integrated into Barcelona, becoming the political core of the future Principality of Catalonia. Upon his death in 897 Wilfred made his titles hereditaries and thus founded the House of Barcelona, which would rule over Catalonia until the death of Martin I, its last ruling member, in 1410. Many abbeys were founded between the ninth century and the twelfth century while in the cities the episcopal seats were restored, being important artistic and intellectual centers which contribute to an important diffusion of the Romanesque art in Catalonia (monasteries of Santa Maria de Ripoll and Montserrat, collegiate church of Cardona, cathedral of Girona...) as well as to the maintenance of rich libraries nourished by Classical, Visigothic and Arab works. The scholar and mathematician Gerbert d'Aurillac (future pope Sylvester II) studied in Vic and Ripoll and knowledge of mathematics and astronomy were introduced from Arabic.
In 988 Count Borrell II did not recognise the Frankish king Hugh Capet and his new dynasty, effectively taking Barcelona out of Frankish rule. From that point on, the counts of Barcelona sometimes referred to themselves as princeps (prince), in order to show their pre-eminence and sovereignty. During the 9th and 10th centuries, the counties increasingly became a society of aloers, peasant proprietors of small, family-based farms, who lived by subsistence agriculture and owed no formal feudal allegiance. At the start of the 11th century the Catalan Counties suffer an important process of feudalization, as the miles formed links of vassalage over this previously independent peasantry. The middle years of the century were characterized by virulent class warfare. Seigniorial violence was unleashed against the peasants, utilizing new military tactics, based on contracting well armed mercenary soldiers mounted on horses. By the end of the century, most of the aloers had been converted into serfs. Under the reign of countess Ermesinde of Carcassonne (1017–1057), which received the government of Barcelona after the death of her husband the count Ramon Borrell, the disintegration of central power became evident.
The response of the Catholic Church to the feudal violence was the establishment of the sagreres (the immediate area surrounding the churches, considered sacred and free from violence) and the movement of Peace and Truce of God. The first assembly of Peace and Truce was presided by Abbot Oliba in Toulouges, Roussillon in 1027. The grandson of Ermesinde, count Ramon Berenguer I, began the codification of Catalan law in the written Usages of Barcelona which was to become the first full compilation of feudal law in Western Europe. Legal codification was part of the count's efforts to forward and somehow control the process of feudalization.
Under count Ramon Berenguer III, the County of Barcelona experienced a new phase of territorial expansion. This included the incorporation of the counties of Besalú and Cerdanya, a joint Catalan-Pisan Crusade against the Taifa of Majorca (1114) and the conquest of Tarragona (1116), restoring in the last one the archiepiscopal see of the city (1119), which was previously disbanded after the Muslim conquest. That meant the independence of the Catalan Church from the bishopric of Narbonne.
Dynastic union
In 1137 count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona received the donation of the neighboring Kingdom of Aragon from king Ramiro II of Aragon, and in 1150 married his daughter, queen Petronilla, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona and its dominions with the Kingdom of Aragon, resulting in a composite monarchy known as the Crown of Aragon. The reign of Ramon Berenguer IV saw the Catalan conquest of Lleida and Tortosa. Their son, Alfons, was the first king to rule Aragon and Barcelona together; the titles would be perpetually linked from then on. During the reign of Alfons, in 1173, Catalonia was legally delimited for the first time, while the first compilation of the Usages of Barcelona was made in the process to turn them into the law of Catalonia (Consuetudinem Cathalonie). Apart from the Usages, between 1170 and 1195 the Liber feudorum maior (cartulary containing documents of the estates of the Royal house and the other comital houses that were incorporated into it) and the Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium (chronicle describing the origins, genealogical succession, and dynastic continuity of the counts of Barcelona) were compiled and written, being considered together as the three milestones of Catalan political identity.
His son, King Peter I (II of Aragon) "the Catholic", faced the defense of the Occitan territories, acquired from the times of Ramon Berenguer I onwards, from the Albigensian Crusade. The Battle of Muret (12 September 1213) and the unexpected defeat of King Peter and his vassals and allies, the counts of Toulouse, Comminges and Foix, against the French–Crusader armies, resulted in the fading of the strong human, cultural and economic ties existing between the ancient territories of Catalonia and the Languedoc.
In the Treaty of Corbeil, 1258, James I of Aragon, descendant of Sunifred and Bello of Carcassonne and therefore heir of the House of Barcelona, relinquished his family rights and dominions in the Languedoc and recognized the Capetian king of France Louis IX as heir of the Carolingian dynasty. In return, the King of France formally renounced his claims of feudal lordship over all the Catalan counties, confirming, from French point of view, the independence of the Catalan counties already established during the previous three centuries.
As a coastal territory within the Crown of Aragon and with the increasing importance of the port of Barcelona, Catalonia became the main centre of the Crown's maritime power, promoting and helping to expand its influence and power by conquest and trade into Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Sicily.
Medieval splendour of the Principality
The Principality saw a prosperous period during the 13th century and the first half of the 14th. The population increased; Catalan language and culture expanded into the islands of the Western Mediterranean. The reign of Peter II (III of Aragon) "the Great" included the conquest of Sicily and the successful defense against a French crusade; his son and successor Alfons II (III of Aragon) "the Generous" conquered Menorca; and Peter's second son James II conquered Sardinia; Catalonia was the center of the empire, expanding and organizing it, establishing institutional systems similar to its own. Barcelona, then the most frequent royal residence, was consolidated as the administrative center of the domains with the establishment of the Royal Archives in 1318. The Catalan Company, mercenaries led by Roger de Flor and formed by Almogavar veterans of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, were hired by the Byzantine Empire to fight the Turks, defeating them in several battles. After the assassination of Roger de Flor by orders of the emperor's son Michael Palaiologos (1305), the Company took revenge by sacking Byzantine territory, and they conquered the duchies of Athens and Neopatras in the name of the King of Aragon. Catalan rule over Greek lands lasted until 1390.
This territorial expansion was accompanied by a great development of the Catalan trade, centered in Barcelona, creating an extensive trade network across the Mediterranean which competed with those of the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice. In this line, institutions were created that would give legal protection to merchants, such as the Consulate of the Sea and the Book of the Consulate of the Sea, one of the first compilations of maritime law.
At the same time, the Principality of Catalonia developed a complex institutional and political system based on the concept of pact between the estates of the realm and the monarch. Legislation (whose main piece were the Catalan Constitutions) had to be approved in the General Court of Catalonia or Catalan Courts (Cort General de Catalunya or Corts Catalanes), a parliamentary body with roots dating from the 11-12th centuries Comital Court and Peace and Truce Assemblies which, from 1283 onwards, obtained the power to pass legislation along with the monarch, being the first parliament in medieval Europe to officially receive such recognition. The Courts were composed of the three Estates organized in to "arms" (braços) and presided over by the monarch as count of Barcelona. The first Catalan Constitutions, derived from the Usages of Barcelona, are of the ones from the Catalan Court of Barcelona from 1283. The last ones were promulgated by the Court of 1705–1706, presided by the disputed Habsburg King Charles III. The compilations of the Constitutions and other rights of Catalonia followed the Roman tradition of the Codex.
In order to collect the economic donation to the Crown approved by the Courts, in 1289 it was established temporary commissions dissolved at the end of the service. However, due to the large spending on the War of the Two Peters between Aragon and Castile (1356–1369), the General Court of Catalonia of 1358-1359, presided over by Peter III (IV of Aragon) "the Cerimonious" further reinforced the commission, establishing it as a representation of deputies and auditors, the Deputation of the General (in Catalan: Diputació del General) and later often known as Generalitat, becoming a permanent body in 1376 and gaining considerable political power over the next centuries.
The second quarter of the 14th century saw crucial changes for Catalonia, marked by a succession of natural catastrophes, demographic crises, relative stagnation on the growth of Catalan economy, and the rise of social tensions. The year 1333 was known as Lo mal any primer (Catalan: "The first bad year") due to poor wheat harvest. The domains of the Aragonese Crown were affected severely by the Black Death pandemic and by later outbreaks of the plague. Between 1347 and 1497 Catalonia lost 37 percent of its population.