Crown of Aragon
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The Crown of Aragon is a term used to refer to the permanent union of multiple titles and states in the hands of the King of Aragon. The component realms of the Crown were never united politically except at the level of the king.
It originated in 1137, when Aragon and the County of Barcelona merged by dynastic union in the person of Alfonso II of Aragon, son of Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona and Petronilla of Aragon. By conquest and royal decree of James I, the Kingdom of Valencia (1237) and then the Kingdom of Majorca (1262) were added to the Crown. Majorca was held independently from 1276 to 1279 by James II of Majorca, but it was a vassal of the Crown after that date and until its reconquest in 1344. By grant of Pope Boniface VIII to James II, the Kingdoms of Sardinia and Corsica were added to the Crown in 1297, though it would not be for more than a century that they were brought under Aragonese control. By marriage of Peter IV to Mary of Sicily, the Kingdom of Sicily, as well as the Duchies of Athens and Neopatria, were added in 1381. The Greek possessions were permanently lost to Nerio I Acciajuoli in 1388 and Sicily was dissociated in the hands of Martin I from 1395 to 1409, but the Kingdom of Naples was added finally in 1442 by conquest of Alfonso V.
In 1479, a new dynastic union merged the Crown of Aragon with the Crown of Castile, creating what would be the Kingdom of Spain. The component titles of the Aragonese Crown as subsidiary titles of the Spanish monarch lasted through 1716, when they were abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees as a consequence of the Aragonese defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession.
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[edit] Context
The leading economic centres of this empire were whe cities of Barcelona and Valencia. Another political centre was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned in the La Seo Cathedral. Finally, Palma de Mallorca was an additional important city and seaport.
The Crown of Aragon eventually included the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, Sicily, Malta and Sardinia, and for a brief period, Provence, the Kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Neopatria, and the Duchy of Athens.
The countries that are today known as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of the South and against each other.
In the Late Middle Ages, the Aragonese expansion southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese empire focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, which completed its Reconquista in 1272, focused on the Atlantic Ocean. Aragonese mercenaries known as almogàvers 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 by some as an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, with the power to set rules over the entire sea (for instance, the Llibre del Consolat del Mar or Book of the Consulate of the Sea, written in Catalan, is one of the oldest compilation of maritime laws in the World). It was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe.
However its different territories were only loosely connected, in a manner that does not match well the traditional idea of Empire. A contemporary, the Marqués de Lozoya[1] described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralized kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents ever refer to it as an empire (Imperium or any cognate word); instead, it was considered a dynastic union of separate kingdoms.
[edit] History
The union of the territories of the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon was brought by the 1137 marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona and Petronila of Aragon. The resulting new kingdom came to be known as the Crown of Aragon. The son of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronila, Alfonso II, inherited both the titles of King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, in a style that would be maintained by all its successors to the crown. Thus, this union was made while respecting the existing institutions and parliaments of both territories.
King James I (13th century) started the era of expansion, by conquering and incorporating Majorca and a good part of the Kingdom of Valencia to the Crown. Valencia was made a new kingdom with its own institutions, and so was the third member of the crown. Majorca, together with the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon and the city of Montpellier, were given to his son James and were named Kingdom of Majorca, but these territories were reincorporated later, in 1349.
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 nobility. This process was also in under way in most of the European states that successfully transitioned from the medieval era to what was to be called the modern state (see modern era). Thus, the new territories gained from the Moors (namely Valencia and Majorca) were usually given fueros (in Catalan furs) as an instrument of self-government in order to limit the power of nobility in these new acquisitions and, at the same time, increase their allegiance to the monarchy proper. The trend in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile was similar, both kingdoms giving impetus to the Reconquista by granting self-government either to cities or territories, instead of placing the new territories under the rule of nobility.
Expansion through the Mediterranean also continued (Sicily, Minorca, Sardinia). In 1443, the Kingdom of Naples was conquered. Outside of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, the kingdoms were ruled by proxy through local elites as petty kingdoms, rather than subjected directly to a centralized government. They were more an economic part of the Crown of Aragon than a political one.
In 1410, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. As a result, by the Pact of Caspe, Ferdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty of Trastamara, received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon.
Later, his grandson King Ferdinand II of Aragon recovered the northern Catalan counties (Roussillon) which had been lost to France and also the kingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragon but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
Ferdinand married Queen Isabella of Castile in 1469; restrospecively, this is seen as the dawn of the Kingdom of Spain. At that point both Castile and the Crown of Aragon remained distinct territories, each keeping its own traditional institutions, Parliaments and laws. The process of territorial consolidation was completed when Charles I of Spain in 1516 united all the kingdoms on the Iberian peninsula minus Portugal under one monarch, thereby furthering the creation of the Spanish state, albeit a decentralized one.
The Crown of Aragon and its institutions were abolished only after the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) by the Nueva Planta decrees, under which all its lands were incorporated, as provinces, into a united Spanish administration, as Spain moved towards a centralized government under the new Bourbon dynasty. The punishments and cruelty on the territories that had fought against Philip V in the War of Succession are used by some Valencian and Catalan nationalists as arguments against modern Spain.
[edit] See also
Historical lands of the Crown of Aragon:
- County of Barcelona
- Kingdom of Aragon
- Kingdom of Valencia
- Kingdom of Mallorca
- Kingdom of Naples
- Corsica
- Kingdom of Sardinia
- Kingdom of Sicily
- Duchy of Neopatria
- Malta
Monarchs related to the Crown of Aragon:
Others:
- Union of Aragon
- Catalan Company
- Black Legend
- Catalan Countries
- House of Barcelona
- Compromise of Caspe
- Sicilian Vespers
- Spanish Empire
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Marqués de Lozoya, Tomo Segundo de Historia de España, Salvat, ed. of 1952, page 60: "El Reino de Aragon, el Principado de Cataluña, el Reino de Valencia y el Reino de Mallorca, constituyen una confederación de Estados".
