Barcelona (royal)

Who he is

Name

Peter II of Aragon (Pere I, called the Catholic)

Title

King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona (Pere I in the Catalan count numbering)

Since

25 April 1196, when Alfonso II died at Perpignan

Born

1178 (some accounts give 1177); about 21 on 1 January 1200

Family

House of Barcelona; son of Alfonso II and Sancha of Castile; unmarried on 1 January 1200 (he marries Maria of Montpellier in June 1204)

Confidence

high

Standard dates. His court, officers and the queen mother's dower are in the Aragon realm record.

Overlord

None: the count of Barcelona is sovereign in Catalonia

What it holds

• Barcelona: the comital palace, the vicar's and bailiff's courts, the market and sea tolls (lleudes), the mint
• The Vallès, the Maresme, the lower Llobregat and the Penedès, with royal castles and the new town of Vilafranca
• The Conca de Barberà with the royal new town of Montblanc (c. 1163)
• The Prades mountains and Siurana, the last Muslim stronghold of Catalonia (taken 1153)
• Lordship of Tarragona and the Camp, shared with the archbishop
• The peace tax (bovatge) and the Peace and Truce of God, which the count-kings use as instruments of rule

How it was acquired

Hereditary county of the house of Barcelona. The New Catalonia march was won from the Muslims between the 1110s and 1153 (Tarragona resettled from 1118; Siurana taken 1153).

Allies and rivals

Allies: the Cervelló, the Castellvell, the Montcada of the Tortosa line, the archbishop Ramon de Rocabertí (since 1199). Rivals and problems: barons who resist the royal peace; the faction quarrel behind the 1194 murder of Archbishop Berenguer de Vilademuls (the Cabrera and Castellbò party against the archbishop's), whose killer, Guillem Ramon de Montcada, is an exile.

How things stand that morning

Peter II holds the county in full. He took power in 1196 and met his Catalan subjects in Corts at Girona (1197, where he issued a harsh edict against heretics) and again in 1198. His vicars and bailiffs run the city and the districts. Royal revenues are already being pledged to creditors, a habit that grows through his reign.

Wealth

Barcelona's market and sea tolls, the mint, bailiwick rents, salt and fishing rights on the coast, the vineyards and grain of the Penedès, the bovatge when it can be levied, the rents of the new towns.

Military

Royal castles kept by castellans (castlans) in each district; the host of barons and knights owed under the Usatges; town levies under the Peace and Truce. No standing royal fleet is attested: ships come from Barcelona and Tortosa merchants when needed.

Threats

• Private wars of the barons and the factions left by the 1194 murder
• Royal debt and pledged revenues
• Rome's pressure over heresy in the Occitan lands of the Crown's vassals

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. 1200, not pinnedPeter II goes on borrowing against royal revenues in Catalonia.Depends on: The king's spending on war, court and his Occitan affairs Stopped by: A peace and a tax granted at Corts

Later, on the likely course

1. 1202 (as usually dated)Corts at Cervera, where the barons secure the lord's right to mistreat his peasants (ius maletractandi).Depends on: The king's need of baronial support Stopped by: A stronger king or a different bargain

Places of note

• Barcelona, comital palace: Seat of the count-king in Catalonia
• Montblanc: Royal new town of the Conca de Barberà
• Siurana: Castle taken from the Muslims in 1153
• Poblet: Cistercian abbey where Alfonso II was buried in 1196

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The county's outline and the king's officers are well known in general; the march boundaries and the archbishop's share in the Camp are drawn roughly from general knowledge, not from a 1200 charter.

On the map: Drawn as the count's jurisdiction, not as land he owned. The edges with Osona near Montserrat and the line of the Gaià are approximate.

Primary sources for Aragon

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Annals of Toledo and other short Iberian annals (12th and 13th centuries; Anales Toledanos I to 1219). Florez's volume 23 gathers the short annals of the peninsula. Read online
• Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, Anonymous, probably Juan of Osma, chancellor of Castile (about 1223 to 1239). The chancellor's chronicle of Alfonso VIII's reign, detailed from the 1190s. Read online
• The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor. Read online
• Deeds of the Counts of Barcelona, Anonymous (monks of Santa Maria de Ripoll) (first version 1162 to 1184; continued in the later 13th century; final version 1303 to 1314). The house chronicle of the counts of Barcelona.
• History of the Affairs of Spain, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (completed 1243). The archbishop's history of the peninsula, written forty years on by a Navarrese who served Castile. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Pleasant Book: a Summary of the History of the Maghreb, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217). Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206. Read online
• Official Letters of the Almohad Chancery (1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir). Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections.

7 more in the sources library for France and Iberia.