Cowardice, Heroism and the Legendary Origins of Catalonia

Author(s): Paul Freedman

Source: Past & Present , Nov., 1988, No. 121 (Nov., 1988), pp. 3-28
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

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 COWARDICE, HEROISM AND THE
LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA*

Legendary accounts of national origins can be found th

medieval and Renaissance Europe. So numerous, so varied, and
so bizarre are these stories of heroic ancestors that they
invite contempt for the apparent credulity of their audi
such histories, however fanciful, show how kingdoms an
described themselves as political and moral communities.1
gins of collective virtues or liberties were often ascribed to
or biblical figures. Thus refugees from the Trojan War, B
Francus, were credited with the establishment of England an
respectively, while from the thirteenth century Spain claim
Hercules and the biblical Tubal as founders.2 More recent
from the collapse of the Roman empire to the crusades, a
to legitimate claims to a heroic identity. Such elaborated
up histories were not simply imaginative posturing but
statements. Tales of the origines gentium reflected the aspir
self-image of medieval nations.
In the contemporary world as well, states and peoples a
sustaining myths and exaggerations of their origins. The
nation is what Benedict Anderson has called an "imagined
community", the product of an invented past through w
nation appears both older and more natural or historically in
than in fact it is.3 Such a connection between historical m
national identity does not mean that history served merely as

* This article was written during the academic year 1986-7 while I was
of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. I gratefully
the aid I received from the Institute and from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. Many colleagues and' friends at Princeton and elsewhere helped me. I
am particularly indebted to Peter Sahlins for his advice and criticism.
See especially Susan Reynolds, "Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community
of the Realm", History, lxviii (1983), pp. 375-90.
2 On Spanish legends of Hercules, see R. B. Tate, "Mythology in Spanish Histori-
ography of the Middle Ages and Renaissance", Hispanic Rev., xxii (1954), pp. 1-18.
Tubal was a nephew of Noah mentioned in Genesis x.2. According to Josephus, Jewish
Antiquities, i, 124-5 (trans. Thackery, iv, p. 61), Tubal and his descendants, the
"Tubalians" (whence "Iberians"), settled the peninsula after the Flood.
3 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London, 1983), p. 15.

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4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

cal or arbitrary superstructure masking another, deeper reality. Patri-

otism is felt as a metaphoric identity, a quasi-sacred fellowship that
has had an obvious hold on the inhabitants of modern states. National
sentiment has demonstrated an extraordinary force in modern poli-
tics, usually greater that that of more abstract or international ideolo-
gies. The manipulation of history in the service of the perceived
nation reflects a powerful, if often arbitrary sense of community and
sacrifice.4 Feelings of transcendent loyalty and the idealization of
history have also affected many so-called minority nationalities, such
as the Scots or Kurds, who have not been able to form sovereign
states in the contemporary world.5 This article looks at one such
minority, the Catalans, and their image of themselves as a nation in
the middle ages.
Catalans comprise a highly self-conscious polity with certain auton-
omous rights within the present Spanish state. They consider them-
selves the largest national group in contemporary Europe not forming
an independent country.6 At various times in modern history, notably
under the Franco regime, the Catalans have been harshly treated by
the Castilian-controlled Spanish government in the name of political
and cultural unity against "separatism". In the medieval and early
modern period Catalonia was a principality within a group of realms
known as the Crown of Aragon. Catalans dominated this kingdom and
its associated territories, which at different times included Valencia,
Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, parts of Greece, and Provence - areas won
by conquest or dynastic union. Within this congeries the Catalans
identified themselves as a heroic people whose conquests were the
result of virtues inherent in their early medieval beginnings.
The term "Catalans" appeared for the first time in the twelfth
century,7 but medieval as well as modern writers have seen the origins
of an independent Catalonia in the foundation of the county of

4 Ibid., pp. 19-40. See also Tom Nairn, The Breakup of Britain, 2nd edn. (London,
1981), pp. 329-63, who emphasizes not only the power of nationalism but the degree
to which its success in the modern era has stemmed from the active participation of
the lower classes.
5 One can have national myths without a corresponding modern political entity: see
John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1982), esp. pp. 129-67.
6 This assertion requires certain assumptions about the Soviet Union and the degree
to which Czechs and Serbs form political nations. An English-language publication of
the Catalan autonomous government, Catalonia, ii (Mar. 1987), p. 2, states that
Catalan is the "most important" European language not corresponding to a modern
state.

7 On the much-discussed question of the origins of the names "Catalonia"

"Catalans", see Frederic Udina Martorell, El nom de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1961

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 5

Barcelona in the ninth century. The Carolingian era was regar

the crucible in which distinctive Catalan qualities and correspo
political rights were formed. Under Charlemagne, the
Pyrenees and the territory to the south as far as Barcelona wer
from Islamic control and organized as counties, collectively
up what would be known as the "Spanish March".8 Under
magne's successors, these frontier counties became increasingl
lated from the declining Frankish kingdom and ultimately (an
or less imperceptibly) independent from it.
By the early twelfth century what had been a beleaguered f
had become a prosperous group of territories of which Barcel
the most powerful.9 The hegemony of Barcelona was exte
1137 by the betrothal of its count, Ramon Berenguer IV, to Pet
the daughter and heiress of the king of Aragon. Contempo
with the union of Barcelona and Aragon, new territories were
from Islam. The conquests of Lerida and Tortosa in 1148-9
long period of expansion. Catalan ambitions in the south o
were frustrated at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
Islamic kingdom of Valencia was conquered in mid-centu
Sicily was taken from the Angevins after the Sicilian Ves
1282. Catalans would embark on military adventures througho
Mediterranean during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
While the cohesion and actual political power of the Cr
Aragon were ultimately less impressive than those of its M
ranean rivals, Catalans of the late middle ages were vividly aw
a degree of prowess and success. In 1406, for example, King
in an address to the Catalan parliament praised the loyalty
and generosity of the Catalans and cited the conquests of
and Sicily among his proofs.10 The virtues singled out by t
were conventions of medieval chivalry. Such traits might on o
be credited to entire peoples, but they were more often co
nobles' ideals, pertaining to the military and hereditary upper
more than to national character in general. Medieval legen
8 Legends concerning Charlemagne existed throughout medieval Spain: se
Sholod, Charlemagne in Spain: The Cultural Legacy of Roncesvalles (Gene
Charlemagne was more important to Catalonia than to the other Christian stat
peninsula because he was regarded as responsible for the creation of Catalo
worth noting that although his armies were active in what would later
Catalonia, Charlemagne himself never set foot there.
9 On the Catalans and medieval Aragon, see T. N. Bisson, The Medieval
Aragon (Oxford, 1986).
10 Text in Parlaments a les Corts catalanes, ed. Ricard Albert and Joan
(Barcelona, 1928), pp. 58-72.

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6 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

mingle the supposed prowess of entire peoples such as the Catalans

with older beliefs in the exclusive privileges and attributes of particu-
lar orders in society. In the era before modern nationalism, ex-
pressions of national pride coexisted, sometimes uneasily, with the
rhetoric of valour, military piety and other qualities identified with
the nobility. Sacrifice for the nation was itself derived from the
crusader ideals of the defence of Christendom and partook of the
same combination of pious and bellicose virtues that animated the
wars against Islam and was associated with the knightly estate.11
National sentiment in the middle ages did not pretend, as it often has
in modern times, to obliterate distinctions within the polity. Historical
tales of a people's greatness, linked as they were to chivalric virtues,
might in fact underline and justify such distinctions, in particular
exalting the rights of the nobles.
The foundation legends considered below demonstrate how social
and political strife influenced the sense of Catalan identity in the
middle ages and beyond. The legends idealized the Catalan people,
but in the service of competing groups at a time of intense social
conflict. The heroic stories centred on the ninth century, when the
county of Barcelona and its neighbours were formed. The Carolingian
era seemed to mark the political creation of Catalonia and its distinct
virtues. Such reassuring patriotic assertions, directed against external
rivals, are the motive for all origines gentium tales throughout medieval
and early modern Europe. But the foundation legends also had a
more immediate, internal purpose as well. They reflected the struggles
between nobles and the king, and especially between nobles and
peasants. The social issues found dramatic expression in a humiliating
story of cowardice in which precisely those conventional qualities of
bravery and militant piety were found wanting. This legend was
designed to legitimate the oppression of the peasantry by means of
an invented national disgrace.

I
THE LEGEND OF THE COWARDLY PEASANTS

In a fifteenth-century Escorial manuscript of miscella

texts and commentaries, there are two separate instances i
supposed refusal by Christian peasants of the Carolingian

'1 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Tho

Hist. Rev., lvi (1951), pp. 472-92; repr. in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Sel
(Locust Valley, 1965), pp. 308-24.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 7

liberating Frankish armies is cited as an explanation for the or

peasant servitude. One commentary is identified as the wo
fourteenth-century lawyer named Bertrandus de Ceva and the
is included in his brief commentary on aspects of customary l
Elsewhere in the same manuscript is an anonymous note on
mentary legislation of 1283 that limited the rights of peas
become tenants on royal land.13 This gloss on a fundamental st
concerning Catalan serfdom appears chronologically to pr
Bertrandus's effort because of its generalized description of hi
events and vague citation of sources which contrast with the r
precision found in Bertrandus. According to the anonymous au
of the earlier work, after the Saracens had conquered Spai
Christians remained as captives of the Muslims and cultiva
land, subject to harsh tenurial conditions. When the Christian
(who are not further identified) launched a campaign of conqu
liberation, they called on the Christian captives for aid. Th
of fear, did not respond to the call to insurrection, but the Ch
armies prevailed none the less. Some in the victorious forces wan
kill the cowardly population now their captives. Others recomm
instead that the peasants live under their new Christian m
subject to the same degrading conditions that they had been w
to accept under Islam, and this policy prevailed. The gloss c
attributing this story to ancient and reliable (but unnamed) so
and invokes the words of Psalm 43: "We have heard, O God
our ears . . .", a text that goes on to describe how "Thy h
destroyed the Gentiles".
Bertrandus de Ceva tells the same story but with more detai
it is specifically Charlemagne who called upon the captive p
to rise up in concert with his invasion. Charlemagne conque
territory up to the Llobregat river (running north to south on
just west of Barcelona), despite the refusal of the Christian na
obey his instructions. Here too there was a proposal to ki
captives. Charlemagne, noting that military men could not
pected to cultivate the land, ordered instead that the peasa
spared, labouring as captives as they had under Saracen rule. Bo
to the land and other arbitrary exactions were thus attrib

12 Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, El Escorial, MS. d. II.18, fos. 118r-117" (

reversed), ed. Paul Freedman, "Catalan Lawyers and the Origins of Se
Mediaeval Studies, xlviii (1986), pp. 313-14.
13 Ibid., fos. 94r-93v (foliation reversed), ed. Freedman, "Catalan Lawyers
For the legal context for these commentaries, see pp. 304-8.

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8 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

Saracen invention, continued as merited punishment by the new

Christian masters, and applied to the descendants of the cowardly
peasants. 14
The legend of the cowardly peasants was widely accepted by jurists
and historians of the fifteenth century. Pere Tomich in his popular
Historias e conquestas dels excellentissims e Catholics Reys de Arago
(1438) added a degree of historical verisimilitude, making Louis the
Pious the leader of the Christian armies, and giving 814 as the date
for the events.15 In 1476 the jurist Johannes de Socarrats copied the
passage from Bertrandus de Ceva and added a few curious details
such as the assertion that, in one village in Catalonia east of the
Llobregat, the inhabitants were free because their ancestors had
obeyed the emperor's call to arms.16
The legend was extremely useful as a justification for servitude at
a time when it was under sustained attack on legal and moral grounds
by peasants, joined in certain instances by the royal court. In the
last decades of the fourteenth century, when the demographic and
economic consequences of the Black Death of 1348 had penetrated
rural Catalonia, peasants of the north and east began to demand the
abolition of their servile condition and of seigneurial rights to levy
unjust exactions (the so-called "bad customs").17 The subjugated
population was known as the peasantry of the remenca or remences
(from the redemption payment required for their manumission).
They were most numerous in the region known as Old Catalonia,
east of the Llobregat river, thus roughly coterminous with the extent
of the Carolingian Spanish March. The alleged Carolingian origins of
their subordination explained the geographical limits of this tenurial
14 As a postscript, Bertrandus cites another simpler explanation for medieval servi-
tude: that the serfs were descended from those who had collaborated with Count Julian
to call in the Saracens to overthrow the Visigothic kings in 711. This line of reasoning
may be related to a commonplace of anti-Jewish accusations of collaboration with
Islam. See Norman Roth, "The Jews and the Muslim Conquest of Spain", Jewish
Social Studies, xxxvii (1976), pp. 145-57.
15 Pere Tomich, Historias e conquestas dels excellentissims e Catholics Reys de Arago
e de lurs antecessors los Comtes de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1534; repr. Barcelona, 1886,
Valencia, 1970), fo. 18'.
16 Johannes de Socarrats, Ioannis de Socarratis iurisconsulti Cathalani in tractatum
Petri Alberti . . (Barcelona and Lyons, 1551), p. 501.
17 Jaime Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas, en el siglo xv, 2nd edn. (Barcelona,
1978), pp. 29-45. The "bad customs" were seigneurial rights to take a portion of
peasant property under certain conditions, such as a wife's adultery or death without
a direct heir, and to receive a redemption payment if the peasant wished to leave the
land. See Wladimir Piskorski, El problema de la significacion y del origen de los seis
"malos usos" en Cataluia, trans. Julia Rodriguez Danilevsky (Barcelona, 1929; Russian
edn. Kiev, 1899).

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 9

regime and also justified a servitude of Christians rega

wise incompatible with Catalan law.18 The king tend
the remences to support their agitation against nobles a
astical lords during the fifteenth century.19 From 146
peasant wars intertwined with bitter dynastic and fact
The resulting Catalan civil war devastated the count
the visible beginning of a long decline in the influ
and Catalonia within the Iberian peninsula. The war
accomplish the abolition of the most abusive aspects of
regime, including the remenqa payments and the "bad
stands as one of the few successful peasant rebellio
history.
The ability of the peasants to end their subjugation was due in part
to the moral and legal difficulties of their masters. It was hard to
defend an arbitrary lordship that affected only part of Catalonia and
that was acknowledged as violating the norms of customary law. The
legend of the cowardly peasants was a quasi-juridical argument that
attempted to legitimate servitude by bolstering positive law with
history, explaining the privileged status of the nobles and the subju-
gation of the peasantry as the result of contrasting moral characters
demonstrated at the Catalan foundation.
Its usefulness gave this legend the status of a widely diffused
historical truth. Indeed it was so generally accepted in the fifteenth
century that the peasants themselves, in demanding the abolition of
servile institutions, put forth an exculpatory version, appropriating
and changing the circumstances of the story for their argument with
the lords. In 1448 peasants in the dioceses of Gerona, Vic and
Barcelona met in local assemblies to agitate for the end of their unfree
personal status and abolition of the "bad customs". They elected
representatives to organize the collection of funds to compensate the
lords for their freedom. A manuscript in the municipal archive at
Gerona reports the process of setting up this administrative struc-
ture.21 The king accepted the right of the peasants to act as nego-
18 Freedman, "Catalan Lawyers", pp. 288-314.
19 Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas, pp. 37-59.
20 On the wars and the abolition of serfdom: ibid.; Jaime Vicens Vives, El gran
sindicato remensa, 1488-1508 (Madrid, 1954); S. Sobreques i Vidal and Jaume
Sobreques i Callic6, La guerra civil catalana del siglo xv, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1973).
21 The record of the meetings and of the oaths sworn in 1448 and 1449 is Archivo
Hist6rico del Ayuntamiento, Gerona, Sec. XX. 2, Libros manuscritos de temas
diversos, Carpeta 1, MS. 8, a manuscript of 1460. A royal order of 1447 had allowed
peasants to congregate to consider abolition of the "bad customs" and to raise 100,000
Aragonese florins: see Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas, p. 51.

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10 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

tiators, but the peasants did not obtain concessions from the Catalan
lords in 1448, and it was only after decades of war that the syndicates
of the remences obtained the end of servitude.
The preface to the record of the peasants' oaths is a denunciation
of the oppressive seigneurial regime in terms of its supposed historical
origins.22 Christian armies (no leader is mentioned) had conquered
Catalonia from the "pagans". Many, but not all, of the inhabitants
accepted Christian baptism. Those who through obstinacy or ignor-
ance clung to their superstition were degraded into servitude. This
was to encourage them to seek baptism; there was never any intention
to perpetuate the exactions after conversion. Upon baptism the former
serfs were to have been liberated and "treated in Christian fashion",
but this had not happened. Contrary to divine law, Christian peasants
remained bound to servile status; thus what had begun as a spur to
conversion had become an injustice passed down through gener-
ations.
The counter-claim to the jurists' legend appears only on this
occasion, but suggests the power of the legend of the cowardly
peasants in setting the historical terms for the debate over servitude.
It also reveals the ability of the peasants to redirect the discussion to
the illicit nature of serfdom. Accepting the framework of the Carolin-
gian liberation of Catalonia from the Saracens, the counter-legend
made the peasants not Christian captives but Muslims, thus obviating
the charge of betrayal and putting in strong terms the indefensibility
of servitude in a Christian society. Despite this attack, and the fact
that after 1486 servitude was abolished, the legend of the cowardly
peasants persisted in historical works of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and beyond, long after it had lost its function as a legal
justification.23 Only at the end of the nineteenth century was it
22 What follows is from the MS. cited above, n. 21, fo. 2r.
23 Pere Miquel Carbonell, Chroniques de Espanya fins aci no divulgades (completed
1496) (Barcelona, 1546), fo. 6r, expressed reservations over Tomich's account, finding
no confirmation in "auctors approuats". It is not mentioned in Jer6nimo Zurita, Anales
de la Corona de Arag6n, i (1562), ed. Angel Canellas L6pez (Saragossa, 1976).
Historians who accepted the legend include Gabriel Turell, Recort (1476), ed. E. Bague
(Barcelona, 1950), p. 99; (Pseudo-) Berenguer de Puigpardines, Sumari d'Espanya
(late fifteenth century), ed. Felipe Benicio Navarro, Revista de ciencias hist6ricas, ii
(1881), p. 360; Lucius Marineus Siculus, De primis Aragonie regibus et eorum rerum
gestarum (Saragossa, 1509), fo. XII'; Francisco Calha, De Catalonia, liber primus
(Barcelona, 1588), fo. 4'; Hieronym Puiades (Geroni Pujades), Coronica universal del
principat de Cathalunya (Barcelona, 1609), fos. 359v-60r; Joan Gaspar Roig i Jalpi
(Pseudo-Bernat de Boades), Libre de feyts d'armes de Catalunya (late seventeenth
century), ed. Miquel Coil i Alentorn, 5 vols. (Barcelona, 1930-48), ii, pp. 52-4;
Narciso Feliu de la Pena y Farell, Anales de Cataluna, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1709), i, p.
235; Luis Cutchet, Cataluna vindicada (Barcelona, 1860), pp. 199-201.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 11

conclusively refuted by the Russian historian Wladimir Pisko

II
POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF THE LEGEND

Although completely false as an explanation for the origin

tude, the legend may contain recollection of actual r
Frankish rulership.25 Leaving aside the Roncesvalles disast
did not involve Catalonia and was regarded as an affa
and Franks exclusively, there remain two historical ep
provoked some of the charges of betrayal and apostasy co
the legend of the cowardly peasants. The first is the A
heresy that involved the bishops of Toledo and Urgel who
of Frankish orthodoxy produced an exasperated respon
magne accused the Adoptionists not only of heresy b
ingratitude. In his letter of 794 to Elipandus of Toledo, Ch
expressed his disenchantment with the attitude of Christ
under Saracen rule. Formerly, Charlemagne says, he an
had hoped to liberate the Spanish Christians from thei
but now that they seemed to have wandered from the
heresy, they deserved nothing.26
A more violent conflict was the rebellion of Aizo in 826-7
Christian inhabitants of the frontier allied with Muslims
Franks.27 It is thought that Aizo was a Saracen hostage wh
from the Frankish imperial court and inspired an insurre
region of Vic. His support came from Christians eager
Carolingian policy of confrontation on the frontier in

24 Piskorski, Problema de la significaci6n, pp. 45-54.

25 On the Carolingian era in Catalonia: Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinya
carolingi a la Marca Hispanica, segles ix i x", in his Dels Visigots als
edn., 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1974), i, pp. 139-52, originally published
Cuadernos de historia, ii (1968), pp. 33-47; Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyal
comtes catalans, 2nd edn. (Barcelona, 1965); Odilo Engels, Schutzgedank
herrschaft im ostlichen Pyrenaenraum, 9-13 Jahrhundert (Muinster, 1
Josep M. Salrach, El procds de formaci6 nacional de Catalunya, segles
(Barcelona, 1978).
26 Ed. Albert Werminghoff (Monumenta Germaniae Historica [herea
Legum, sectio iii, Concilia 2, 1, Hanover, 1904), pp. 162-3; cited by
Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Musli
1984), pp. 5-6.
27 ("Astronomus"), Vita Hludowici Imperatoris, ed. G. H. Pertz (M
tores, ii, Hanover, 1829), p. 630; Annales Regni Francorum, ed. Fri
(M.G.H. Scriptores rer. Ger., Hanover, 1895), pp. 170-3. On the
Salrach, Proces de formaci6 nacional, i, pp. 73-90; Ramon Ordeig i Mat
historics de Vic, segles viii-x (Vic, 1981), pp. 22-4.

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12 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

greater degree of coexistence. The rebellion was aided by the caliphate

of Cordoba and this may have encouraged later charges of religious
treason.

Frankish laws and institutions offer some background f

elaboration of the legend, especially those customs governing
to heed a military summons or desertion. Ignoring an order t
the army was a defiance of the royal bannum and subjec
offender to the fine known as heribannum. The Capitulary of
(811) ordered that those unable to pay the fine be degrad
servitude, although this was not to apply to their heirs.28 Des
from the army (herisliz) was punishable by death, althou
ultimate penalty was sometimes mitigated (as in the famo
against Tassilo, duke of Bavaria). The Capitulary of Boulogn
ceded by the Capitulary of Aachen (810), recognized the comm
of the death penalty for herisliz into enslavement.29 This pen
levied against notables expected to serve regularly in the armed
and therefore did not apply to peasants. In the case of an
invasion, however, a general call to arms would be issued (lant
to be answered by all able-bodied men on pain of death or
ment. 30
Finally, there was a connection recognized between slave
capture in battle, not only in fact but in law. One of the few
Roman law that a free person could become a slave was to
as a prisoner of war.31 Johannes de Socarrats referred, in the f
century, to the teaching of the Civilians, notably Bartol
prisoners of war taken by the pope or emperor become slaves
was in fact the expectation of Louis the Pious and his troops,

28 Ed. Alfred Boretius (M.G.H. Legum, sectio ii, Capitularia Regum Fr

1, Hanover, 1883), p. 166 (Capitulare Bononiense c. 1).
29 Ibid., p. 166 (c. 4). On commutation into slavery, F. L. Ganshof,
Institutions under Charlemagne, trans. Bryce and Mary Lyon (Providence,
68.
30 On lantweri, Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Mich
(Oxford, 1984), p. 24; Ganshof, Frankish Institutions, pp. 60, 153. Descri
conventus of Meersen (847), ed. A. Boretius and V. Krause (M.G.H. Legu
ii, Capit. Reg. Franc. 2, 1, Hanover, 1897). p. 71. In two MSS. the commu
the penalty to slavery is permitted using the words of the Capitulary of Bo
heribannum. Cf. Catalan legislation of the twelfth century: Usatges de Barcelon
a mitjan segle xii, ed. Joan Bastardas (Barcelona, 1984), p. 102, the chapter
namque".
31 Digest 1.5.5.1. According to Institutes 1.3.3, slaves (servi) are so named
military commanders order the sale of captives, sparing them (servare) ra
killing them: Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore, 1987), p. 8.
32 Socarrats, In tractatum, p. 366.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 13

according to Ermoldus Nigellus in his account of the Franki

of Barcelona in 801. The refusal of the Moors of the city to
Christian baptism makes it necessary, Louis told his troops, to
this devil-worshipping people to servitude in accordance with d
will.33 In the fourteenth century Christian peoples who re
against Catalan rule, notably the Sardinians and Greeks, wer
tinely enslaved along with Saracen captives.34 The jurists' h
calling the cowardly peasants "captives" must therefore have im
to readers of the time a licit enslavement in accordance wit
teaching, piety and patriotism.
The memory of Carolingian events and Frankish or Roman
lation cannot in themselves entirely explain the invention
legend. The immediate source for the idea that servitude w
imposed by the Carolingians was probably the French chr
attributed to Archbishop Turpin of Rheims. According to the P
Turpin chronicle, Charlemagne called upon the French serfs
his expedition to Spain. Those who responded were given
freedom.35 This work was known in Catalonia by 1173 when a
now at the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, was executed
monastery of Ripoll.36 A related and perhaps older chronicle, d
ing Charlemagne's journey to the east to bring relics of the cruc
to Aachen, had the emperor ask the help of all those capa
bearing arms to assist his venture. Those who refused were fin
serfs, as were their offspring.37

33 Cited by Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 7-8, who also gives the text (p
16) according to Ernst Dummler (M.G.H. Poetae Latini, ii, Hanover, 1884
34 According to Ramon de Penyafort, writing between 1222 and 1235, the
no Christian slaves in Catalonia: Kedar, Crusade and Mission, p. 77. This was c
not true in the following century: Johannes Vincke, "Konigtum und Skla
aragonischen Staatenbund wahrend des 14. Jahrhunderts", Gesammelte Aufs
Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, xxv (1970), pp. 22-3; Josep Maria Madurell M
"Vendes d'esclaus sards de guerra a Barcelona, en 1374", in VI Congreso de
de la Corona de Arag6n (Madrid, 1959), pp. 285-9.
35 C. Meredith-Jones, Historia Karoli magni et Rotholandi ou Chronique du
Turpin (Paris, 1936), pp. 120-1. Several Old French translations were made
after 1200, the products of aristocratic enthusiasm for ancestral history and
values. See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin, the Crisis of the Aristoc
the Beginnings of Vernacular Historiography in France", Jl. Medieval H
(1986), pp. 207-23.
36 On Pseudo-Turpin in Catalonia, Adalbert Hamel, "Arnaldus de Monte
Liber S. Jacobi", Estudis universitaris catalans, xxi (1936), pp. 147-59; Marti d
(ed.), Historia de Carles Maynes e de Rotlla: traducci6 catalana del segle xv (B
1960), pp. 9-27.
37 Gerhard Rauschen, Die Legende Karls der Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrh
(Leipzig, 1890), p. 108.

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14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

If the Pseudo-Turpin tradition provided the suggestion for the

legend of the cowardly peasants, the motive for its elaboration lay in
jurists' concern to explain the origins of servitude and justify the
oppression it entailed.38 Catalan jurists were surprisingly uneasy
about the legality and morality of peasant enserfment. Servitude
was considered contrary to good legal tradition, as evident in the
persistence of terms describing exactions as "bad customs" or in the
frank assertion of a right of seigneurial mistreatment (male tractare,
ad libitum tractare). In 1402 the wife of King Martin, Maria de Luna,
wrote to her kinsman, the Avignonese pope Benedict XIII, that the
oppression of the peasantry was against God and justice and brought
infamy to the Catalan nation (a statement worth contrasting with the
king's remarks to the Catalan parliament four years later).39 Writing
in the 1430s, the eminent lawyer Thomas Mieres considered the
seigneurial right of mistreatment a violation of divine law, even if
permitted by Catalan legislation.40
Against the background of such qualms, the legend of the cowardly
peasants explained servitude by putting the onus of its invention on
the Moors and responsibility for its perpetuation on the peasants
themselves, whose descendants, in a secular imitation of the Fall,
were punished for an ancestral sin of cowardice: the refusal to defend
Christianity against the infidel.

III
HEROIC LEGENDS: WIFRED THE HAIRY

It is evident that the legend of the cowardly peasants i

piece of retrospective legal justification as it is an origines
myth. A history based on events in the formation of Cata
developed to justify servitude, an otherwise anomalous
Lawyers of the middle ages and Renaissance were cons
inventors of historical mythopoeia.41 They described the

38 Freedman, "Catalan Lawyers", pp. 300-8.

39 Queen Maria's remarks are quoted in Vicens Vives, Historia de los R
46-7.
40 Thomas Mieres, Apparatus super constitutionibus curiarum generali
(completed 1439), 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1621), ii, p. 513.
41 Donald R. Kelley, "Clio and the Lawyers: Forms of Historical Cons
Medieval Jurisprudence", Medievalia et humanistica, new ser., v (19
J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cam
Gaines Post, "'Blessed Lady Spain': Vincentius Hispanus and Span
Imperialism in the Thirteenth Century", Speculum, xxix (1954), pp. 19
in Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and th
1322 (Princeton, 1964), pp. 482-93.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 15

political entities or administrative practices by positing

imaginary constitutional tradition. In few other cases, how
jurists responsible for elaborating so unflattering a nationa
measure perhaps of the intensity of the attack on Catalan
institutions which began in the late fourteenth century. T
of the cowardly peasants is to be understood within the co
more familiar literature of heroic foundation myths. Like
of betrayal, the accounts of valour were designed to suit im
political and social purposes. At the same time they reve
assumptions about character, privilege and obligation ac
particular images of the eighth and ninth centuries.
The oldest Catalan legends concern Wifred the Hairy
Barcelona and its neighbouring counties from 870 to 897
often regarded in modern histories as the first independen
Barcelona, the initiator of the dynasty that would accede t
over Aragon in the twelfth century and rule until 1410
about Wifred are therefore concerned with a person of rea
ance, but one who is also credited with extraordinary (and
acts of both bravery and loyalty. The first chapters of
comitum Barcinonensium, composed shortly after 1160,
account of Wifred's career, combining genealogical an
myths and facts to explain the establishment of Catalonia.43
to the Gesta, Wifred the Hairy was the son of a Pyren
named Wifred de Ria. The elder Wifred had been appoi
of Barcelona by the king of France. He quarrelled with
Frankish emissaries sent by the unnamed king and killed o
legates who had insulted him by pulling his beard. Wif
was then murdered by the Franks who were supposed to es
to trial before the king. Young Wifred was brought to the r
and the king, regretting the circumstances of the father's
the boy to be raised in the household of the count of Fland
Wifred seduced the daughter of the count and was found o
countess. Wifred promised the countess that he would mar
if he succeeded in winning back his father's county. Dis

42 The real origins of the house of Barcelona have been traced to the
century counts of Carcassone by Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, pp. 1
43 Gesta comitum Barcinonensium, ed. Louis Barrau Dihigo and Jaum
rents (Croniques catalanes, ii, Barcelona, 1925), pp. 3-6. On the Ge
Bisson, "L'essor de la Catalogne: identite, pouvoir et id6ologie dans u
xii siecle", Annales E.S.C., xxxix (1984), pp. 459-64; Miquel Coll i A
historiografia de Catalunya en el periode primitiu", Estudis Romanics, ii
187-95; Salrach, Proces de formacio national, ii, pp. 87-107.

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16 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

poor pilgrim, he returned to his homeland where his mother immedi-

ately recognized him, the text says, because he had hair where other
men usually lack it.44 Acclaimed by the nobles, Wifred killed the
Frankish Count Salamon, married the Flemish princess and effected
a rapprochement with the king of France, receiving from him the
administration of the county of Barcelona. While at the royal court,
Wifred was informed of a Saracen invasion of his territory. He asked
the king for aid, but instead received an offer that he might retain
Barcelona as his hereditary dominium, no longer subject to Frankish
suzerainty, if he drove out the Saracens without Frankish help.
Wifred led his own people against the Saracens and liberated the
county. Barcelona was henceforth legally independent.
Certain real conditions and events are woven into this story.
Barcelona was a Carolingian county and Wifred's father (whose name
was Sunyer) was a count of Barcelona. Several appeals were made to
the Franks against a Saracen invasion, but not during Wifred's time:
rather a century later, from 985 to 988. Beginning in 984, a series of
raids led by the defacto ruler of the caliphate, al-Mansur, devastated
Christian Spain.45 Cities plundered or destroyed included Salamanca,
Burgos, Leon, Zamora and Coimbra. In the summer of 985 Barcelona
was sacked and burned to the ground. Its inhabitants were slain or
taken into captivity from which some were ultimately ransomed.46
Count Borrell of Barcelona appealed to the last Carolingian kings
of France for help. There had been little contact between these
beleaguered monarchs and the remote province during the tenth
century, apart from occasional requests by monasteries for confir-
mation of their privileges.47 The death of Lothair in 985 was followed
by that of Louis V, the last Carolingian ruler, in 986. A final plea of
Count Borrell was delivered to Hugh Capet who became king in 987.
Early in 988 Hugh promised to lead an army into Spain on condition
that the count come to confirm his fealty in person.48 Borrell never
44 Gesta, p. 4: "Quem mater cognoscens, quod in quibusdam insolitis in corpore
hominis partibus pilosus erat . . .".
45 J. M. Ruiz Ascencio, "Campafas de Almanzor contra el reino de Le6n, 981-
986", Anuario de estudios medievales, v (1968), pp. 31-64.
46 Michel Zimmermann, "La prise de Barcelone par Al-Mansur et la naissance de
l'historiographie catalane", Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, lxxxvii (1980),
pp. 191-201; Manuel Rovira i Sola, "Notes documentals sobre alguns efectes de la
presa de Barcelona per al-Mansur, 985", Acta historica et archaeologica mediaevalia, i
(1980), pp. 31-53.
47 Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, pp. 249-302; Engels, Schutzgedanke und Landes-
herrschaft, pp. 137-88.
48 Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, pp. 332-6; Zimmermann, "Prise de Barcelone",
p. 215.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 17

responded and in any event Hugh soon encountered suffici

problems for this unlikely expedition to be rendered
question. No further ecclesiastical privileges would be s
received after 986, nor would any further communicati
the count of Barcelona and the king of France imply an
dependence. One vestige of suzerainty remained: the dating
and private documents by reference to the French king's r
a practice stopped only in 1180, and even then not totall
Al-Mansur's army retreated, not because of any stron
force but because his intentions had been plunder rather
quest. The culmination of these raids would be the dest
Santiago de Compostella in 997, but five years later the
and the caliphate fell apart. The balance of power shifted s
so that in 1010 a count of Barcelona could captain an exped
plundered Cordoba.50
Documents of the period shortly after 985 speak of the d
of Barcelona in apocalyptic terms.51 Later generations port
as a traumatic nadir, but also as the beginning of a heroic
for Catalan liberties realized three years later by the impli
of Count Borrell in not responding to Hugh's demand f
Interpreting the events of 988 as an act of independenc
tinues, as may be seen from official celebrations of the ye
the millennium of Catalonia.52
The catastrophe of 985 contrasted with the subsequent triumphs
of the counts, especially in the mid-twelfth century when Tarragona,
Lerida and Tortosa were seized and the union of Barcelona with the
kingdom of Aragon was consolidated. Short histories and chronicles
of the late twelfth century start with the year 985 or take on a more
detailed character after that point.53 The Gesta could not ignore the
Islamic invasion, but as a dynastic encomium it could not emphasize
a disaster that took place so long after the establishment of the ruling
family. The Gesta conflated what occurred in 985-8 with Wifred's

49 Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, p. 339. A late example of dating by French

regnal year is a parchment in Archivo Capitular, Vic, caja 9, Perg. Obispo Guillem
de Tavertet, unnumbered, dated "x kalendas Januarii, anno Domini MCC, regni regis
Philipi xx".
50 S. Sobreques i Vidal, Els grans comtes de Barcelona, 2nd edn. (Barcelona, 1970),
pp. 20-3.
51 Zimmermann, "Prise de Barcelone", p. 213.
52 On these commemorations, see the judicious remarks of Josep M. Salrach,
"Catalunya i Catalans des de quan?", Revista de Catalunya, xv (Jan. 1988), pp. 35-
50.
53 Coll i Alentorn, "Historiografia de Catalunya", p. 156.

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18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

era, thereby bringing into greater prominence the heroism of the

count and deflecting attention from the embarrassing implications of
al-Mansur's tenth-century raids.
The purpose of the Gesta's first chapters was to exalt the count and
the prowess of his people but also to underscore the legitimate,
constitutional circumstances of independence. Liberty had been won
by courage but not rebellion. The independence of the county was
openly acknowledged, even offered, by the king of France. The Gesta
depicted the count as courageous and resourceful, while the Franks
were shadowed by the murder of Wifred de Ria and their inability
to aid the young Wifred against the Saracens. The Franks were flawed
but sufficiently honourable to recognize the virtues of the count and
to bestow rights of rulership on Wifred's dynasty. Carolingian prestige
therefore balanced the assertion of independence won by force.
Written against the background of increasing rivalry with the Ca-
petian kings of France, the Gesta not only lauded Wifred but tended
by implication to praise the Carolingians at the expense of the upstart
dynasty. In the legend the counts of Barcelona were even related by
blood to the Carolingians through the putative alliance with the
Flemish comital family.54
Another way to resolve the tension between political legitimacy
and independence was adopted by Petrus Ribera of Perpignan who
wrote in 1268, approximately a century after the composition of the
first part of the Gesta.55 In his Cronica de Espanya Petrus lauded
Charlemagne unequivocally, in contrast to the indecisive, anonymous
king portrayed in the Gesta. According to the Cronica, Charlemagne
began the battle against the Saracens but died before he could fulfil
his intention to return to Spain to complete the work of conquest.
Under Wifred the fight was renewed, unaided by the Franks, and
from this point independence was achieved in the fashion described
54 The seduction of the princess of Flanders is probably based on the historical
elopement of Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, with Baldwin, the first count of
Flanders. This meant that Carolingian blood might be said to flow in the veins of
Wifred's heirs via the princess of Flanders; thus the Flemish alliance in the Gesta was
suggested not only by a historical example but by genealogical purpose. See Bisson,
"Essor de la Catalogne", pp. 462-3. Compare with the Flemish seduction story in
Lambert of Ardres, Historia comitum Ghisensium, ed. H. Heller (M.G.H. Scriptores,
xxiv, Hanover, 1876), pp. 566-8. On the claims by northern European counts of the
twelfth century to Carolingian blood, Andrew W. Lewis, Royal Succession in Capetian
France: Studies on Familial Order and the State (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 120.
55 Bibliotheque National, Paris, MS. Esp. 13, Petrus Ribera "de Perpinya",
"Cronica de Espanya" (the work was written in 1267-8; the manuscript is fifteenth
century), fos. 76V-7r. See Miquel Coll i Alentorn, "La llegenda d'Otger Catal6 i els
nou barons", Estudis Romanics, i (1947-8), pp. 4-5.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 19

by the Gesta. Praise of Charlemagne may reflect the friendlier r

with France after the Treaty of Corbeil (1258) in which L
renounced claims to lordship over the former Spanish March. I
Cronica Charlemagne was an example to the later counts b
before, independence was both the product of courage agai
infidel and legitimate political conferral.

IV
HEROIC LEGENDS: OTGER CATALO

A later and enduring legendary cycle concerns nobles who

ance to Islam supposedly antedated the Carolingian campa
even the very existence of the count of Barcelona. A group o
exalting the Catalan nobility centres on the wholly fictitious f
Otger Catalo, a Frankish knight who, with his nine nob
panions, began a war against the Saracens after the battle of
Otger was continuing the work of Charles Martel, much as th
in the Cronica de Espanya was shown as following Charl
path. Otger led his army across the Pyrenees and, after many
died before the walls of the town of Empuiries. The nine com
retreated to the mountains, waging a guerrilla struggle u
joined Charlemagne's army of liberation. When Charlemagne
dated his conquest of the Spanish frontier, he divided the ter
among Otger's followers, men who bore names that would
of the powerful families of the high middle ages: Montca
Cervera, etc. The new realm was called "Catalonia" to comm
Otger, derived as it was from his second name, "Cata
tale of heroism and etymology was politely doubted by Zu
vehemently denied by Carbonell, but received almost univ
ceptance in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It was
scholars outside Catalonia, such as Lorenzo Valla in Italy
Genebrard in France and Wolfgang Lazius in Germany.57
legend of the cowardly peasants, the story of Otger was laid
only late in the nineteenth century.58

56 On this legend, Coil i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp. 1-4

57 Zurita, Anales, i, p. 12; Carbonell, Chroniques, fo. 5'. It was also quest
Joseph Pellizer de Tovar, Idea del principado de Cataluna (Anvers, 1642), p
the context of his attack on the supposed tradition of Catalan liberties. Lo
Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, ed. Ottavio Besoni (Padua, 1973),
doubted that Catalonia was derived from "Rogerius Catalo". The Otger
accepted by Gilbert Genebrard, Chronographiae libri quatuor (Paris, 15
Wolfgang Lazius, De gentium aliquot migrationibus, sedibusfixis, reliquiis, ling
initiis & immutationibus ac dialectis (Frankfurt, 1600), p. 587.
58 On its later history, Coll i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp

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20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

In part, Otger Catalo was invented to answer the perennial question

of the origin of the name "Catalonia". The history of Otger also
responded to certain political conditions of the early fifteenth century,
the period of its elaboration and diffusion. Miquel Coll i Alentorn,
in his definitive study of the legend, identified a nucleus concerning
the hero that originated in the thirteenth century, to which the
etymology and aristocratic genealogy were later added.59 Its complete
form, and the source for subsequent histories, is given in Tomich's
Historias e conquestas, the same work of 1438 that perpetuated the
tale of the cowardly peasants.60 While his project was to chronicle
the triumphs of the counts and kings, Tomich also wanted to make
conspicuous the role of the nobles in these affairs. If one sets the
Otger legend next to that of Wifred the Hairy, it is clear that the
former emphasizes the role of the aristocracy while implicitly denying
to the counts of Barcelona any part in either the earliest battles against
the Moors or the Carolingian establishment of the Catalan nation. In
the tale of Otger, Catalonia existed as a collection of baronies before
there was a count. Otger and his companions fought bravely over
one hundred years before Wifred. The very name of the principality
commemorated its real founder and underscored its seigneurial ident-
ity. A history making Catalonia the product of aristocratic heroism
reflected the discontent of the fifteenth-century nobility with the
Castilian Trastamara dynasty that ruled after 1412. Coll i Alentorn
dates the complete version of the Otger legend to between 1407 and
1431 and relates its composition specifically to a pact formed in 1418
to resist the king.61 Whether or not this degree of precision is justified,
the Otger legend in its fifteenth-century form served an immediate
political purpose and identified the grandeur of Catalonia with its
noble families.

V
A LATER HERALDIC LEGEND

One more heroic legend deserves notice, although it origi

sixteenth century and not in the middle ages. This is the
how the count of Barcelona came by his coat of arms, fou
on a gold field (or four pallets gules). It was perhaps
59 Ibid., pp. 5-26, 38-42.
60 Tomich, Historias e conquestas, fos. 11r-18r.
61 Coil i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp. 39-40. Compare
of Pseudo-Turpin legends of Charlemagne to exalt the thirteenth-cen
nobility against the Capetians: Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin", pp. 213-17

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 21

answer the Renaissance French cult of the heraldic fleur

but it follows the medieval tradition emphasizing both va
constitutional legitimation by the Carolingians.62 Accordin
Valencian Pedro Antonio Beuter (who wrote in the mid-si
century and probably made up the legend), Count Wifred
the emperor Louis the Pious in battles against the Normans.63
distinguishing himself in one encounter and receiving
wounds, Wifred asked Louis for a grant of arms that he migh
on the plain gold shield with which he had fought. The empe
recognize and commemorate Wifred's bravery, moistened
hand with the blood from the count's wounds and made four v
stripes on the gold surface. Some of the chronological synchr
was corrected in 1603 by Francisco Diago who, for example, c
the emperor to Charles the Bald.64
The heraldic myth has proved the most durable of all
reproduced in many popular forms, such as books for chi
has maintained itself by reason of a certain intrinsic appeal, b
because it stood within the Gesta tradition, extolling Wifred
heroism, but in this case directly on behalf of the Franki
The effect of a primordial act of bravery was transmitted sym
to succeeding counts of Barcelona and ultimately to the
Spain.

VI
THE MEDIEVAL IMAGE OF CATALONIA

All the preceding legends identify medieval and Renaissan

lonia in terms of an either partially or completely invented Ca
past. These histories must be taken seriously in relation
aspirations of Catalans then and now. Every nation or pe
comforting or heroic tales, some based on fact, some complet
up; some with specific political purposes, others more hort
vaguely evocative. The past, as contemporary experience attes
be manipulated to yield supposed lessons or to support p

62 The heraldic legend is discussed in Frederic Udina i Martorell, L'escut d

de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1979), pp. 17-26, based on his "En torno a la ley
'Barras' catalanes", Hispania, ix (1949), pp. 531-65.
63 Pedro Antonio Beuter, Segunda parte de la Coronica general de Espana
mente de Aragon, Cathalunfa y Valencia (1551) (Valencia, 1604 edn.), p. 70.
64 Francisco Diago, Historia de los victoriosissimos antiguos condes de
(Barcelona, 1603; repr. Barcelona, 1974), fo. 63v.

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22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

arguments.65 This specificity of purpose is clearly evident in the

legends of Wifred (directed at relations with France), Otger (exalting
the nobility against the king) and the cowardly peasants (justifying
servitude).
Beyond the debates addressed by these legends one can discern
ideas and statements of something deeper than immediate political
advantage. Two elements are present in all the examples: the legitima-
tion bestowed by the Carolingian monarchs, and the idea that bravery
is necessary to win and merit freedom. The Carolingians are credited
in these legends with establishing, and in some sense sustaining,
organized Christian rule in the Spanish March. Long before the
period in which the legends were elaborated there had been a strong
sentiment of respect and loyalty towards the family of Charlemagne,
despite the difficulties created by Adoptionism or the rebellion of
Aizo. Monasteries solicited privileges from the distant kings until late
in the tenth century. Private and public charters continued to follow
the dates of Frankish regnal years and the accession of non-Carolin-
gian rulers was only grudgingly recognized. Documents from the
early years of the Robertian Eudes are dated in forms such as "in the
second year after the death of Emperor Charles, Christ reigning,
awaiting a king".66 In the reign of the Burgundian Rudolf one finds
"in the first year, King Rudolf reigning, after the death of King
Charles".67 Shortly after the accession of Hugh Capet a document
from Urgel was dated "in the third year of the reign of Hugh, duke
or king".68 Comital families claimed Carolingian descent vaguely, as
in the Gesta, or directly, as in a fabricated genealogy produced shortly
after 1100 for the counts of Pallars and Ribagorqa.69 A succinct,
although rather late, example of attachment to the Carolingians is the
cult of St. Charlemagne established in late medieval Gerona.70
Counties far from the Carolingian heartland remained stubbornly
attached to rulers they never saw.71 The paradox is only apparent,
because the monarchs conferred prestige and rights without being

65 Some modern instances are presented in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger
(eds.), Tlhe Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
66 Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, p. 236.
67 Ibid., p. 265.
68 "Els documents dels anys 891-1010, de 1'Arxiu Capitular de la Seu d'Urgell",
ed. Cebria Baraut, Urgellia, iii (1980), p. 52.
69 Bisson, "Essor de la Catalogne", p. 459.
70 Esteve Corbera, Vida i echos maravillosos de dona Maria de Cervellon llamada
Maria Socos (Barcelona, 1629), fo. 16'; Jaime Villanueva, Viage literario a las iglesias
de Espana, xii (Madrid, 1850), pp. 162-3.
71 Lewis, Royal Successio in Capetian France, p. 17.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 23

close enough to demand anything in return. As the Caro

faded, the counts of Barcelona and their relatives in neigh
counties would turn to the papacy, another distant numinous
for confirmation of privileges and authority.72
The Carolingians also represented the wider world, the powe
had joined Catalonia with Christendom, ultimately (at least ac
to historical memory) with Europe. Unlike the other Hispanic
tian states, Catalonia had been formed by a degree of outside
vention. The inspiration offered by the entirely hom
Reconquista was therefore never as pure for Catalonia as it
Leon-Castile. The expedition of Charlemagne that Ximenez
for example, so contemptuously dismissed, would confer disti
upon Catalonia, which has often considered itself spiritu
closest to Europe of the peninsular realms.73
During moments of crisis the memory of Charlemagne
vigorous political force. In 1641 the Catalans attempted to
the bond with Castile by placing themselves under French
"as in the time of Charlemagne, with a contract to obser
constitutions".74 Napoleon's government invoked Charlem
1810 when annexing Catalonia to France.75 An enduring se
of European identity can be observed in contemporary Catalon
cite just one example, in 1985 a conference was held in Ge
Catalan "feudalism" in commemoration of the 1,200th ann
of Carolingian occupation of the city. The subtitle of the mee
"Gerona: 1,200 Years of European Vocation". From the nin
the thirteenth century Catalonia may be said to have consider
not just a frontier but Christendom's frontier, Europe's fron
part of the Roman, Carolingian imperium. This distinction has
off Catalonia, at least in its self-image, from the rest of
especially Castile.
The second unifying element among the legends is the notio
freedom is won by heroism, along with the corollary that ser
is the price of fear. The idea that liberty is won by valour is
72 Abadal, Primers comtes catalans, pp. 302-13; Engels, Schutzgedanke un
herrschaft, pp. 188-233.
73 (Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Toletanae eccles
sulis, opera praecipua complectens (Madrid, 1793; repr. Valencia, 1968), pp.
74 J. H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Sp
1640 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 522.
75 "The French have always embraced and supported you in your conflict
magne saved Catalonia from the tyranny of the Saracens": proclamation o
Augereau, quoted in Joan Mercader i Riba, Catalunya i l'imperi napolebnic (M
1978), p. 110.

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24 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

unique to Catalonia. It was a tenet of chivalric literature that free

birth, nobility and bravery were aspects of the same thing. As a
political statement, freedom established by courage is also found in
many places: from Otto of Freising, for example, who reported
Frederick Barbarossa's contemptuous response to the Romans that
they had forfeited their right to proclaim the emperor by reason of
their weakness in contrast to the bravery of the Germans
("Franks").76 Boncompagnus de Signa claimed that the Lombards
were the defenders of liberty and the natural leaders of Italy by
reason of their valour.77 Military success and reputation underlay the
Castilian monarchy, according to Te6filo Ruiz, to the extent that
sacralization of the monarch by coronation ceremonial was rejected
in favour of gestures more explicitly exalting force.78
What makes the Catalan example particularly interesting is the
internal tension reflected in its heroic histories. In the earlier Catalan
legends, notably the Wifred story in the Gesta, political independence
accomplished by valour had to be reconciled with the other great
virtue of loyalty. In the later legend of Otger Catalo and the nine
companions, courage explained not only the political origins of Cata-
lonia but the ordering of society. The privileges of the fifteenth-
century nobles came from the heroism of their alleged forefathers of
the Carolingian era. The legend of the cowardly peasants also ex-
plained the arrangement of society, serving in effect as a corollary to
assertions of aristocratic virtue. The two legends of Otger and of the
cowardly peasants form a pair exemplifying opposed behaviours
and social outcomes: bravery joined with freedom, cowardice with
servitude. The core of the Otger legend may be older than the myth
of the remences, but in its elaborated form, as a defence of aristocratic
privilege, it came later. It may therefore have answered the unfortu-
nate implications of the legend of the cowardly peasants. It was
certainly perceived as an answer to the protests of the peasants and
the support given by the kings to their demands. The prologue to
the document establishing the peasant syndicates of 1448 attempted
a rebuttal by denying the crime on which aristocratic privilege and
peasant subordination was based, but for the time being the two
widely accepted legends of the cowardly peasants and of Otger
76 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, ed. "G. Waitz" (B. von Simson)
(M.G.H. Scriptores rer. Ger., Hanover and Leipzig, 1912), p. 137.
77 Boncompagnus de Signa, Palma, in Aus Leben und Schriften des Magister Boncom-
pagno, ed. Carl Sutter (Freiburg and Leipzig, 1894), p. 123.
78 Te6filo F. Ruiz, "Une royaute sans sacre: la monarchie castillane du bas moyen
age", Annales E.S.C., xxxix (1984), pp. 443-8.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 25

overrode objections. They functioned together to justify t

order by referring to the circumstances of Catalonia's foundi
legends elaborated both political and sociological identities.
of foundation saw the beginning of the state, but also the fix
class relations and Catalan character.
The interaction of these two medieval legends is explicit in Gabriel
Turell's history Recort, written in 1476 during the civil war and
peasant rebellion. Turell included both the Otger and cowardly
peasants legends, and stated in summary that Catalan liberties were
established by Charlemagne for nobles, not rustics.79 Legal privileges
were won by bravery, thus loyalty and valour were reconciled. These
virtues, however, and the liberty they procured were limited to the
nobility. Turell's brief statement distils several fundamental mythic
ideals.
However neatly class distinctions might be justified, the social
edifice was not entirely preserved. Ten years after Recort was written,
peasant servitude was abolished by the royal Sentence of Arbitration
issued at Guadalupe. Yet, as already indicated, the legend of the
cowardly peasants as well as that of Otger persisted into recent times.
In the case of the former the peculiar fact remains that a shameful
myth had been invented by the very nation it disparaged (Turell
notwithstanding, the peasants too were, after all, Catalans).
Peculiar but perhaps not unique - there are some early modern
parallels to the Catalan legend of the peasants. In France one finds
the belief that peasants were descended from the docile Gauls while
the nobles' ancestors were the Franks. This pseudo-ethnic theory is
first found in 1200 but was popular only later, beginning in the
sixteenth century.80 It was more thorough than the Catalan legends
(making the French into two peoples), but less shameful, for although
the Gauls were defeated by the Romans, there was no key moment
in which their courage failed, nor did they betray their religion. The
French historical argument was more genetic, while the Catalan was
more Augustinian: an original sin punished in a manner affecting
succeeding generations.81
79 Quoted in Coll i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", p. 27: "E aquest es lo
principi de les llibertats de Cathalunya, car no principia en hbmens rustichs ni
aplegadiqos, sin6 en alts e valerosos".
80 Reynolds, "Medieval Origines Gentium", p. 380. According to Colette Beaune,
Naissance de la nation France (Paris, 1985), pp. 38-40, the distinction between peasant
and noble ancestors was popular only in the seventeenth century and was preceded
by a belief in the collective nobility of the French, all of whom were supposed to be
of Trojan descent.
81 It is worth recalling that Augustine considered slavery an unnatural institution
resulting from sin: De civitate Dei, xix.15 (ed. Hoffmann, ii, pp. 400-1).

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26 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

There is also the well-known English "Norman Yoke" theory that

free Anglo-Saxon England was crushed by the Normans who had
brought over royal absolutism and aristocratic oppression with their
conquest.82 This was used by revolutionary and parliamentary apolo-
gists during the seventeenth century and revived as a historical-
political topos of egalitarian thought in the nineteenth century. It
reversed the Catalan legend in that traditions of liberty were thought
to have been suppressed by nobles and the king by unjust force, not
valour. The "Norman Yoke" was a weapon for those who considered
themselves burdened by a perversion of good old tradition, not a
justification for the deprivation of liberty.
A third parallel, although somewhat distant, none the less suggests
how Christianity might be reconciled with social oppression. In
sixteenth-century Spain a series of controversies took place over the
subjugation of the American Indians. The famous debates involving
Cano, Las Casas and Sepfilveda turned on Aristotelian concepts of
"natural slavery" (that some are fit by nature for servitude), but also
on whether or not the Indians might be enslaved as a punishment for
sins against nature.83 Enslavement would be considered licit if the
Indians had refused Christianity in the sense that Muslims or pagans
in the Old World might be said to have rejected salvation, having
been the targets of preaching.84 But if the Indians had never had an
opportunity to learn the truth before the arrival of the Spanish, how
could they be enslaved for their infidelity? The Catalan peasants of
the legend could not claim the excuse of ignorance, but were they
not being punished for conduct that stopped short of heresy or
apostasy? They had never accepted the Islamic creed nor renounced
Christianity; through their fear they had simply failed to defend their

82 Christopher Hill, "The Norman Yoke", in his Puritanism and Revolution: Studies
in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century (London, 1958), pp. 50-
122.
83 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins
of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982), esp. p. 112; Lewis Hanke, All Mankind
Is One: A Study of the Disputation between Bartolome de Las Casas and Juan Gines de
Sepulveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians
(DeKalb, 1974). On the medieval, particularly canonistic, background to these de-
bates, James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian
World, 1250-1550 (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 132-52.
84 Mark xvi. 15-16 and John xv.22 could be read as allowing the punishment of
those who refused to respond to preaching. The words of Louis the Pious at Barcelona
as reported by Ermoldus Nigellus (cited above, n. 33) may be seen in this light. The
development of the belief that the crusade was licit because the infidel rejected the
opportunity for conversion offered by preaching is discussed by Kedar, Crusade and
Mission, pp. 131-5, 159-89.

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 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 27

faith with arms. Only if one understood Christianity as a

militance rather than humility could one condemn the peasan
legends, lauding as they did the deeds against the Saracens, de
that belief be proven by violent struggle. It was not only tha
tians are right and pagans are wrong", as in The Song of Rola
that liberty, courage and faith were joined in a single virt
virtue was inherent in the Catalan nation but only through th
estate. Christianity in this teaching is not submissive; it conf
its adherents a conditional freedom protected by force. It
version of Christianity that was rejected in the peasant pr
1448-9 in which Christian belief and practice were state
inseparable from elementary liberty. Once the Muslim anc
the remences had converted, they should have been treated "i
tian fashion", not still subjugated. Christianity was under
this instance as a rule of dignity and mercy and baptism was
to confer human or natural-law rights.
The interpretation of Christianity was therefore crucial in d
national virtue in foundation legends. The establishment of th
was a moral and religious event. It has been observed tha
medieval legends, such as those concerning Clovis, saw the fou
of nations in terms of Christianization, Renaissance legends o
were constitutional myths of secular contracts.85 In Catal
medieval legends combined these elements. The origin of C
was its Christianization, not through conversion (as in France
gary or Poland) but by conquest, or reconquest, with
of releasing an already Christian population. Charlemagne
successors served in the legends as guarantors of Catalonia's p
and social order. Carolingian efforts, but equally (if not m
struggle by the Catalans themselves, brought the triumph of
tianity. The national identity may be said to encompass con
notions of constitutional legitimacy, independence, Christiani
liberty.
At any given historical moment a body of half-formed myths and
truisms floats through a society, to be used for particular purposes,
but also embodying in their vague continuity less easily categorized
or tangible beliefs. National legends are seldom invented whole to
suit immediate needs. The Gesta story certainly reflects Catalan
attitudes towards the Capetians in the second half of the twelfth
century; the Otger legend was shaped by anti-Trastamara sentiment
85 Ralph Giesey, If Not, Not: The Oath of the Aragonese and the Legendary Laws of
Sobrarbe (Princeton, 1968), p. 243.

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28 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

of the early fifteenth-century nobility. Nevertheless these specific

contexts moulded traditions that already existed. The Pseudo-Turpin
chronicle had been known in Catalonia for two hundred years before
its hint about the origins of servitude was exploited. The long-
standing prestige of the Carolingians was set to a variety of texts to
fit a diversity of intentions. The reputation of Charlemagne might be
applied to exalt the power of the counts of Barcelona or the indepen-
dence of the nobles, or to sanction the enserfment of the peasants.
The legends embody fundamental assumptions along with their
immediate usefulness for justifying politics or society. Their very
utility comes from the way they display what seem self-evident truths.
In the legends discussed here these truths are the need to defend
Christianity and the winning of freedom by armed struggle. They
are ratified by ancient authority and their betrayal carries certain
consequences. The legends are thus something more than credulous
fantasies; they are also something other than mere assertions of
national pride. They reveal images of medieval society and character,
but applied to a shifting community, not always to all members of
the nation. The legends were stories the Catalans told themselves
about themselves (to invoke a well-worn formula), but the "them-
selves" changed and their self-ascribed virtues exalted internal dis-
tinctions rather than expressing a broad sense of unity.

Vanderbilt University, Nashville Paul Freedman

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