The Past and Present Society

Cowardice, Heroism and the Legendary Origins of Catalonia

Author(s): Paul Freedman
Source: Past & Present, No. 121 (Nov., 1988), pp. 3-28
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650909
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 COWARDICE, HEROISM AND THE
LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA*

Legendary accounts of national origins can be found throughout

medieval and Renaissance Europe. So numerous, so varied, and often
so bizarre are these stories of heroic ancestors that they appear to
invite contempt for the apparent credulity of their audience. Yet
such histories, however fanciful, show how kingdoms and peoples
described themselves as political and moral communities.1 The ori-
gins of collective virtues or liberties were often ascribed to classical
or biblical figures. Thus refugees from the Trojan War, Brutus and
Francus, were credited with the establishment of England and France
respectively, while from the thirteenth century Spain claimed both
Hercules and the biblical Tubal as founders.2 More recent history,
from the collapse of the Roman empire to the crusades, also served
to legitimate claims to a heroic identity. Such elaborated or made-
up histories were not simply imaginative posturing but political
statements. Tales of the originesgentiumreflected the aspiration and
self-image of medieval nations.
In the contemporary world as well, states and peoples adhere to
sustaining myths and exaggerations of their origins. The modern
nation is what Benedict Anderson has called an "imagined political
community", the product of an invented past through which the
nation appears both older and more natural or historically inevitable
than in fact it is.3 Such a connection between historical myth and
national identity does not mean that history served merely as rhetori-
* This article was written
during the academic year 1986-7 while I was a member
of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. I gratefully acknowledge
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 OriginesGentiumand 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, ImaginedCommunities:Reflectionson the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London, 1983), p. 15.
4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

cal or arbitrarysuperstructuremasking 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 extraordinaryforce in modern poli-
tics, usually greater that that of more abstractor internationalideolo-
gies. The manipulation of history in the service of the perceived
nation reflects a powerful, if often arbitrarysense 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.
Catalanscomprise a highly self-conscious polity with certain auton-
omous rights within the present Spanish state. They consider them-
selves the largest national group in contemporaryEurope 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. Catalansdominated 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 Breakupof 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 beforeNationalism (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" and
"Catalans", see Frederic Udina Martorell, El nom de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1961).
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 5
Barcelona in the ninth century. The Carolingian era was regarded as
the crucible in which distinctive Catalanqualities and corresponding
political rights were formed. Under Charlemagne, the eastern
Pyrenees and the territory to the south as far as Barcelonawere seized
from Islamic control and organized as counties, collectively making
up what would be known as the "Spanish March".8 Under Charle-
magne's successors, these frontier counties became increasingly iso-
lated from the declining Frankish kingdom and ultimately (and more
or less imperceptibly) independent from it.
By the early twelfth century what had been a beleaguered frontier
had become a prosperous group of territoriesof which Barcelonawas
the most powerful.9 The hegemony of Barcelona was extended in
1137 by the betrothal of its count, Ramon Berenguer IV, to Petronilla,
the daughter and heiress of the king of Aragon. Contemporaneous
with the union of Barcelona and Aragon, new territorieswere seized
from Islam. The conquests of Lerida and Tortosa in 1148-9 began a
long period of expansion. Catalan ambitions in the south of France
were frustrated at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but the
Islamic kingdom of Valencia was conquered in mid-century and
Sicily was taken from the Angevins after the Sicilian Vespers of
1282. Catalanswould embark on military adventures throughout the
Mediterranean during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
While the cohesion and actual political power of the Crown of
Aragon were ultimately less impressive than those of its Mediter-
ranean rivals, Catalans of the late middle ages were vividly aware of
a degree of prowess and success. In 1406, for example, King Martin
in an address to the Catalan parliament praised the loyalty, valour
and generosity of the Catalans and cited the conquests of Majorca
and Sicily among his proofs.10 The virtues singled out by the king
were conventions of medieval chivalry. Such traits might on occasion
be credited to entire peoples, but they were more often considered
nobles' ideals, pertaining to the military and hereditary upper class
more than to national character in general. Medieval legends often
8
Legends concerning Charlemagne existed throughout medieval Spain: see Barton
Sholod, Charlemagnein Spain: The Cultural Legacy of Roncesvalles(Geneva, 1966).
Charlemagne was more important to Cataloniathan to the other Christian states of the
peninsula because he was regarded as responsible for the creation of Catalonia. It is
worth noting that although his armies were active in what would later become
Catalonia, Charlemagne himself never set foot there.
9 On the Catalans and medieval Aragon, see T. N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of
Aragon (Oxford, 1986).
10 Text in Parlaments a les Corts catalanes, ed. Ricard Albert and Joan Gassiot
(Barcelona, 1928), pp. 58-72.
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 attributesof 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 obliteratedistinctions 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 Barcelonaand its neighbours were formed. The Carolingian
era seemed to mark the political creation of Cataloniaand its distinct
virtues. Such reassuring patriotic assertions, directed against external
rivals, are the motive for all originesgentiumtales throughout medieval
and early modern Europe. But the foundation legends also had a
more immediate, internal purpose as well. They reflectedthe struggles
between nobles and the king, and especially between nobles and
peasants. The social issues found dramaticexpression 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 miscellaneous legal
texts and commentaries, there are two separate instances in which a
supposed refusal by Christian peasants of the Carolingian era to aid
'1 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought", Amer.
Hist. Rev., lvi (1951), pp. 472-92; repr. in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Selected Studies
(Locust Valley, 1965), pp. 308-24.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 7

liberating Frankish armies is cited as an explanation for the origin of

peasant servitude. One commentary is identified as the work of a
fourteenth-century lawyer named Bertrandus de Ceva and the legend
is included in his brief commentary on aspects of customary law.12
Elsewhere in the same manuscript is an anonymous note on parlia-
mentary legislation of 1283 that limited the rights of peasants to
become tenants on royal land.13 This gloss on a fundamental statute
concerning Catalan serfdom appears chronologically to precede
Bertrandus's effort because of its generalized description of historical
events and vague citation of sources which contrast with the relative
precision found in Bertrandus. According to the anonymous author
of the earlier work, after the Saracens had conquered Spain many
Christians remained as captives of the Muslims and cultivated the
land, subject to harsh tenurial conditions. When the Christianarmies
(who are not further identified) launched a campaign of conquest and
liberation, they called on the Christian captives for aid. These, out
of fear, did not respond to the call to insurrection, but the Christian
armies prevailed none the less. Some in the victorious forces wanted to
kill the cowardly population now their captives. Others recommended
instead that the peasants live under their new Christian masters
subject to the same degrading conditions that they had been willing
to accept under Islam, and this policy prevailed. The gloss closes by
attributing this story to ancient and reliable (but unnamed) sources
and invokes the words of Psalm 43: "We have heard, O God, with
our ears . . .", a text that goes on to describe how "Thy hand
destroyed the Gentiles".
Bertrandus de Ceva tells the same story but with more detail. Here
it is specifically Charlemagne who called upon the captive peasants
to rise up in concert with his invasion. Charlemagne conquered the
territory up to the Llobregat river (running north to south on a line
just west of Barcelona), despite the refusal of the Christian natives to
obey his instructions. Here too there was a proposal to kill the
captives. Charlemagne, noting that military men could not be ex-
pected to cultivate the land, ordered instead that the peasants be
spared, labouring as captives as they had under Saracenrule. Bondage
to the land and other arbitrary exactions were thus attributed to

12 Real Biblioteca de San

Lorenzo, El Escorial, MS. d. II.18, fos. 118r-117"(foliation
reversed), ed. Paul Freedman, "Catalan Lawyers and the Origins of Serfdom",
Mediaeval Studies, xlviii (1986), pp. 313-14.
13 Ibid., fos. 94r-93v
(foliation reversed), ed. Freedman, "CatalanLawyers," p. 313.
For the legal context for these commentaries, see pp. 304-8.
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 conquestasdels excellentissimse 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 Socarratscopied 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 remencaor 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 Carolingianorigins 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 collaboratedwith 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 conquestasdels excellentissimse CatholicsReys de Arago
e de lurs antecessorslos Comtesde Barcelona (Barcelona, 1534; repr. Barcelona, 1886,
Valencia, 1970), fo. 18'.
16 Johannes de
Socarrats, Ioannis de Socarratis iurisconsultiCathalani 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 problemade la significaciony del origen de los seis
"malosusos"en Cataluia, trans. Julia Rodriguez Danilevsky (Barcelona, 1929; Russian
edn. Kiev, 1899).
 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 9

regime and also justified a servitude of Christians regarded as other-

wise incompatible with Catalan law.18 The king tended to ally with
the remencesto support their agitation against nobles and great ecclesi-
astical lords during the fifteenth century.19 From 1462 to 1486 two
peasant wars intertwined with bitter dynastic and factional struggles.
The resulting Catalan civil war devastated the country and marked
the visible beginning of a long decline in the influence of Aragon
and Catalonia within the Iberian peninsula. The war did, however,
accomplish the abolition of the most abusive aspects of the seigneurial
regime, including the remenqapayments and the "bad customs".20 It
stands as one of the few successful peasant rebellions in European
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 arbitrarylordship 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 guerracivil 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.
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 remencesobtained 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 perpetuatethe exactions afterconversion. Upon baptism the former
serfs were to have been liberated and "treated in Christian fashion",
but this had not happened. Contraryto divine law, Christianpeasants
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 frameworkof the Carolin-
gian liberation of Catalonia from the Saracens, the counter-legend
made the peasants not Christiancaptives 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, Chroniquesde Espanyafins aci no divulgades(completed
1496) (Barcelona, 1546), fo. 6r, expressed reservationsover Tomich's account, finding
no confirmationin "auctorsapprouats". 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 GabrielTurell, 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 regibuset eorumrerum
gestarum (Saragossa, 1509), fo. XII'; Francisco Calha, De Catalonia, liber primus
(Barcelona, 1588), fo. 4'; Hieronym Puiades (Geroni Pujades), Coronicauniversaldel
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.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 11
conclusively refuted by the Russian historian Wladimir Piskorski.24

II
POSSIBLEORIGINSOF THE LEGEND
Although completely false as an explanation for the origins of servi-
tude, the legend may contain recollection of actual resistance to
Frankish rulership.25Leaving aside the Roncesvalles disaster, which
did not involve Catalonia and was regarded as an affair of Moors
and Franks exclusively, there remain two historical episodes that
provoked some of the charges of betrayal and apostasy contained in
the legend of the cowardly peasants. The first is the Adoptionist
heresy that involved the bishops of Toledo and Urgel whose defiance
of Frankish orthodoxy produced an exasperated response. Charle-
magne accused the Adoptionists not only of heresy but also of
ingratitude. In his letter of 794 to Elipandus of Toledo, Charlemagne
expressed his disenchantment with the attitude of Christians living
under Saracen rule. Formerly, Charlemagne says, he and his people
had hoped to liberate the Spanish Christians from their servitude,
but now that they seemed to have wandered from the truth into
heresy, they deserved nothing.26
A more violent conflict was the rebellion of Aizo in 826-7 in which
Christian inhabitants of the frontier allied with Muslims against the
Franks.27 It is thought that Aizo was a Saracen hostage who escaped
from the Frankish imperial court and inspired an insurrection in the
region of Vic. His support came from Christians eager to end the
Carolingian policy of confrontation on the frontier in favour of a
24
Piskorski, Problema de la significaci6n,pp. 45-54.
25 On the Carolingian era in Catalonia: Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, "El domini
carolingi a la Marca Hispanica, segles ix i x", in his Dels Visigots als Catalans, 2nd
edn., 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1974), i, pp. 139-52, originally published in Spanish in
Cuadernosde historia, ii (1968), pp. 33-47; Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, Els primers
comtescatalans, 2nd edn. (Barcelona, 1965); Odilo Engels, Schutzgedankeund Landes-
herrschaftim ostlichenPyrenaenraum,9-13 Jahrhundert (Muinster, 1970), pp. 1-118;
Josep M. Salrach, El procdsde formaci6 nacional de Catalunya, segles viii-ix, 2 vols.
(Barcelona, 1978).
26 Ed. Albert
Werminghoff (Monumenta GermaniaeHistorica [hereafterM.G.H.],
Legum, sectio iii, Concilia 2, 1, Hanover, 1904), pp. 162-3; cited by Benjamin Z.
Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approachestoward the Muslims (Princeton,
1984), pp. 5-6.
27
("Astronomus"), Vita Hludowici Imperatoris,ed. G. H. Pertz (M.G.H. Scrip-
tores, ii, Hanover, 1829), p. 630; Annales Regni Francorum, ed. Friedrich Kurze
(M.G.H. Scriptores rer. Ger., Hanover, 1895), pp. 170-3. On the rebellion, see
Salrach, Proces de formaci6 nacional, i, pp. 73-90; Ramon Ordeig i Mata, Els origens
historicsde Vic, seglesviii-x (Vic, 1981), pp. 22-4.
12 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

greaterdegree 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 for the
elaboration of the legend, especially those customs governing failure
to heed a military summons or desertion. Ignoring an order to join
the army was a defiance of the royal bannum and subjected the
offender to the fine known as heribannum.The Capitularyof Boulogne
(811) ordered that those unable to pay the fine be degraded to
servitude, although this was not to apply to their heirs.28 Desertion
from the army (herisliz) was punishable by death, although this
ultimate penalty was sometimes mitigated (as in the famous case
against Tassilo, duke of Bavaria). The Capitulary of Boulogne, pre-
ceded by the Capitularyof Aachen (810), recognized the commutation
of the death penalty for herislizinto enslavement.29This penalty was
levied against notables expected to serve regularlyin the armed forces
and therefore did not apply to peasants. In the case of an enemy
invasion, however, a general call to arms would be issued (lantweri),
to be answered by all able-bodied men on pain of death or enslave-
ment. 30
Finally, there was a connection recognized between slavery and
capture in battle, not only in fact but in law. One of the few ways in
Roman law that a free person could become a slave was to be taken
as a prisoner of war.31Johannes de Socarratsreferred, in the fifteenth
century, to the teaching of the Civilians, notably Bartolus, that
prisoners of war taken by the pope or emperor become slaves.32This
was in fact the expectation of Louis the Pious and his troops, at least

28 Ed. AlfredBoretius(M.G.H. Legum,sectioii, Capitularia RegumFrancorum,

1, Hanover,1883), p. 166 (CapitulareBononiensec. 1).
29 Ibid., p. 166 (c. 4). On commutationinto slavery,F. L. Ganshof,Frankish
Institutions underCharlemagne, trans.Bryceand MaryLyon (Providence,1968), p.
68.
30 On lantweri,PhilippeContamine,Warin theMiddleAges,trans.MichaelJones

(Oxford,1984),p. 24; Ganshof,FrankishInstitutions, pp. 60, 153. Describedin the

conventus of Meersen(847), ed. A. Boretiusand V. Krause(M.G.H. Legum,sectio
ii, Capit.Reg. Franc.2, 1, Hanover,1897).p. 71. In two MSS. the commutation of
the penaltyto slaveryis permittedusingthe wordsof the Capitularyof Boulognefor
heribannum. Cf. Catalanlegislationof the twelfthcentury:UsatgesdeBarcelona: el codi
a mitjanseglexii, ed. JoanBastardas(Barcelona,1984),p. 102,the chapter"Princeps
namque".
31 Digest1.5.5.1. Accordingto Institutes 1.3.3, slaves(servi)areso namedbecause
militarycommandersorderthe sale of captives,sparingthem (servare)ratherthan
killingthem:Alan Watson,RomanSlave Law (Baltimore,1987),p. 8.
32
Socarrats,In tractatum, p. 366.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 13

according to Ermoldus Nigellus in his account of the Frankish siege

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

33 Cited
by Kedar, Crusadeand Mission, pp. 7-8, who also gives the text (pp. 215-
16) according to Ernst Dummler (M.G.H. Poetae Latini, ii, Hanover, 1884), p. 14.
34
According to Ramon de Penyafort, writing between 1222 and 1235, there were
no Christian slaves in Catalonia: Kedar, Crusadeand Mission, p. 77. This was certainly
not true in the following century: Johannes Vincke, "Konigtum und Sklaverei im
aragonischen Staatenbund wahrend des 14. Jahrhunderts", GesammelteAufsatze zur
KulturgeschichteSpaniens, xxv (1970), pp. 22-3; Josep Maria Madurell Marim6n,
"Vendes d'esclaus sards de guerra a Barcelona, en 1374", in VI Congresode Historia
de la Corona de Arag6n (Madrid, 1959), pp. 285-9.
35 C. Meredith-Jones, Historia Karoli magni et Rotholandi ou
Chroniquedu Pseudo-
Turpin (Paris, 1936), pp. 120-1. Several Old French translations were made shortly
after 1200, the products of aristocratic enthusiasm for ancestral history and chivalric
values. See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin,the Crisis of the Aristocracy and
the Beginnings of Vernacular Historiography in France", Jl. Medieval Hist., xii
(1986), pp. 207-23.
36 On Pseudo-Turpin in Catalonia, Adalbert Hamel, "Arnaldus de Monte und der
Liber S. Jacobi", Estudis universitariscatalans, xxi (1936), pp. 147-59; Marti de Riquer
(ed.), Historia de Carles Maynes e de Rotlla: traducci6catalana del seglexv (Barcelona,
1960), pp. 9-27.
37
Gerhard Rauschen, Die Legende Karls der Grossenim 11. und 12. Jahrhundert
(Leipzig, 1890), p. 108.
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 libitumtractare).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).39Writing
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 backgroundof 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 is as much a
piece of retrospective legal justification as it is an originesgentium
myth. A history based on events in the formation of Catalonia was
developed to justify servitude, an otherwise anomalous institution.
Lawyers of the middle ages and Renaissance were consumers and
inventors of historical mythopoeia.41 They described the origins of
38 Freedman,"CatalanLawyers",pp. 300-8.
39
QueenMaria'sremarksarequotedin VicensVives,HistoriadelosRemensas, pp.
46-7.
40 ThomasMieres,Apparatus curiarum
superconstitutionibus generalium Catholonie
(completed1439),2nd edn., 2 vols. (Barcelona,1621),ii, p. 513.
41 DonaldR. Kelley, "Clioandthe Lawyers: Formsof HistoricalConsciousness in
MedievalJurisprudence", Medievaliaet humanistica,new ser., v (1974), pp. 25-49;
J. G. A. Pocock, TheAncientConstitution and the FeudalLaw (Cambridge,1957);
GainesPost, "'Blessed Lady Spain':VincentiusHispanusand SpanishNational
Imperialismin the ThirteenthCentury",Speculum, xxix (1954),pp. 198-209,revised
in GainesPost, Studiesin MedievalLegalThought: PublicLaw and theState, 1100-
1322 (Princeton,1964),pp. 482-93.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 15

political entities or administrative practices by positing a largely

imaginary constitutional tradition. In few other cases, however, were
jurists responsible for elaborating so unflattering a national myth, a
measure perhaps of the intensity of the attack on Catalan seigneurial
institutions which began in the late fourteenth century. The legend
of the cowardly peasants is to be understood within the context of a
more familiar literature of heroic foundation myths. Like the legend
of betrayal, the accounts of valour were designed to suit immediate
political and social purposes. At the same time they reveal medieval
assumptions about character, privilege and obligation according to
particular images of the eighth and ninth centuries.
The oldest Catalan legends concern Wifred the Hairy who ruled
Barcelona and its neighbouring counties from 870 to 897. Wifred is
often regarded in modern histories as the first independent count of
Barcelona, the initiator of the dynasty that would accede to kingship
over Aragon in the twelfth century and rule until 1410.42 Legends
about Wifred are therefore concerned with a person of real import-
ance, but one who is also credited with extraordinary(and fictitious)
acts of both bravery and loyalty. The first chapters of the Gesta
comitumBarcinonensium,composed shortly after 1160, contain an
account of Wifred's career, combining genealogical and political
myths and facts to explain the establishment of Catalonia.43According
to the Gesta, Wifred the Hairy was the son of a Pyrenean knight
named Wifred de Ria. The elder Wifred had been appointed count
of Barcelona by the king of France. He quarrelled with a group of
Frankish emissaries sent by the unnamed king and killed one of the
legates who had insulted him by pulling his beard. Wifred de Ria
was then murdered by the Franks who were supposed to escort him
to trial before the king. Young Wifred was brought to the royal court
and the king, regretting the circumstances of the father's death, sent
the boy to be raised in the household of the count of Flanders. There
Wifred seduced the daughter of the count and was found out by the
countess. Wifred promised the countess that he would marry the girl
if he succeeded in winning back his father's county. Disguised as a
42
The real origins of the house of Barcelona have been traced to the early ninth-
century counts of Carcassone by Abadal, Primerscomtescatalans, pp. 13-27.
43
Gesta comitumBarcinonensium,ed. Louis Barrau Dihigo and Jaume Mass6 Tor-
rents (Croniques catalanes, ii, Barcelona, 1925), pp. 3-6. On the Gesta, see T. N.
Bisson, "L'essor de la Catalogne: identite, pouvoir et id6ologie dans une soci&etdu
xii siecle", Annales E.S.C., xxxix (1984), pp. 459-64; Miquel Coll i Alentorn, "La
historiografiade Catalunyaen el periode primitiu", EstudisRomanics,iii (1951-2), pp.
187-95; Salrach, Proces de formacio national, ii, pp. 87-107.
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 rapprochementwith 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.
Barcelonawas a Carolingiancounty 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.45Cities plundered or destroyed included Salamanca,
Burgos, Leon, Zamoraand 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.47The 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 estudiosmedievales,v (1968), pp. 31-64.
46 Michel Zimmermann, "La prise de Barcelone par Al-Mansur et la naissance de

l'historiographie catalane", Annales de Bretagneet 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 historicaet archaeologicamediaevalia, i
(1980), pp. 31-53.
47
Abadal, Primerscomtescatalans, pp. 249-302; Engels, Schutzgedankeund Landes-
herrschaft,pp. 137-88.
48 Abadal, Primerscomtescatalans, pp. 332-6; Zimmermann, "Prise de Barcelone",
p. 215.
 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 17

responded and in any event Hugh soon encountered sufficientinternal

problems for this unlikely expedition to be rendered out of the
question. No further ecclesiastical privileges would be solicited or
received after 986, nor would any further communication between
the count of Barcelona and the king of France imply any political
dependence. One vestige of suzerainty remained: the dating of public
and private documents by reference to the French king's regnal year,
a practice stopped only in 1180, and even then not totally.49
Al-Mansur's army retreated, not because of any strong counter-
force but because his intentions had been plunder rather than con-
quest. The culmination of these raids would be the destruction of
Santiago de Compostella in 997, but five years later the leader died
and the caliphate fell apart. The balance of power shifted suddenly,
so that in 1010 a count of Barcelona could captain an expedition that
plundered Cordoba.50
Documents of the period shortly after 985 speak of the destruction
of Barcelona in apocalyptic terms.51 Later generations portrayed 985
as a traumatic nadir, but also as the beginning of a heroic foundation
for Catalan liberties realized three years later by the implied defiance
of Count Borrell in not responding to Hugh's demand for fealty.
Interpreting the events of 988 as an act of independence still con-
tinues, as may be seen from official celebrations of the year 1988 as
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 comtesde 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.
18 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121

era, thereby bringing into greater prominence the heroism of the

count and deflecting attention from the embarrassingimplications of
al-Mansur's tenth-century raids.
The purpose of the Gesta'sfirst 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 Frankswere flawed
but sufficiently honourable to recognize the virtues of the count and
to bestow rights of rulership on Wifred's dynasty. Carolingianprestige
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 Carolingiansat 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
Charlemagneunequivocally, in contrastto 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 comitumGhisensium,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 Successionin 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.
 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 19

by the Gesta. Praise of Charlemagnemay reflectthe friendlierrelations

with France after the Treaty of Corbeil (1258) in which Louis IX
renounced claims to lordship over the former Spanish March. In the
Cronica Charlemagne was an example to the later counts but, as
before, independence was both the product of courage against the
infidel and legitimate political conferral.
IV
HEROIC LEGENDS: OTGER CATALO
A later and enduring legendary cycle concerns nobles whose resist-
ance to Islam supposedly antedated the Carolingian campaigns and
even the very existence of the count of Barcelona. A group of legends
exalting the Catalan nobility centres on the wholly fictitious figure of
Otger Catalo, a Frankish knight who, with his nine noble com-
panions, began a war against the Saracensafter the battle of Tours.56
Otger was continuing the work of Charles Martel, much as the count
in the Cronica de Espanya was shown as following Charlemagne's
path. Otger led his army across the Pyrenees and, after many battles,
died before the walls of the town of Empuiries.The nine companions
retreated to the mountains, waging a guerrilla struggle until they
joined Charlemagne'sarmy of liberation. When Charlemagneconsoli-
dated his conquest of the Spanish frontier, he divided the territory
among Otger's followers, men who bore names that would be those
of the powerful families of the high middle ages: Montcada, Erill,
Cervera, etc. The new realm was called "Catalonia"to commemorate
Otger, derived as it was from his second name, "Catal6". This
tale of heroism and etymology was politely doubted by Zurita and
vehemently denied by Carbonell, but received almost universal ac-
ceptance in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. It was cited by
scholars outside Catalonia, such as Lorenzo Valla in Italy, Gilbert
Genebrard in France and Wolfgang Lazius in Germany.57Like the
legend of the cowardly peasants, the story of Otger was laid to rest
only late in the nineteenth century.58
56 On this legend, Coil i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp. 1-47.
57
Zurita, Anales, i, p. 12; Carbonell, Chroniques,fo. 5'. It was also questioned by
Joseph Pellizer de Tovar, Idea delprincipadode Cataluna (Anvers, 1642), pp. 23-8, in
the context of his attack on the supposed tradition of Catalan liberties. Lorenzo Valla,
Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, ed. Ottavio Besoni (Padua, 1973), pp. 15-16,
doubted that Catalonia was derived from "Rogerius Catalo". The Otger story was
accepted by Gilbert Genebrard, Chronographiaelibri quatuor (Paris, 1580), p. 283;
Wolfgang Lazius, De gentiumaliquotmigrationibus,sedibusfixis, reliquiis,linguarumque
initiis & immutationibusac dialectis (Frankfurt, 1600), p. 587.
58 On its later history, Coll i Alentorn, "Llegenda d'Otger Catal6", pp. 29-36.
20 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 121
In part, Otger Catalowas 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 aristocraticgenealogy were later added.59Its 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 aristocracywhile implicitly denying
to the counts of Barcelona any part in either the earliest battles against
the Moors or the Carolingian establishment of the Catalannation. 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.61Whether 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 originates in the
sixteenth century and not in the middle ages. This is the account of
how the count of Barcelona came by his coat of arms, four red bars
on a gold field (or four pallets gules). It was perhaps invented to
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 the use made
of Pseudo-Turpin legends of Charlemagne to exalt the thirteenth-century Flemish
nobility against the Capetians: Spiegel, "Pseudo-Turpin",pp. 213-17.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 21
answer the Renaissance French cult of the heraldic fleur-de-lis,
but it follows the medieval tradition emphasizing both valour and
constitutional legitimation by the Carolingians.62According to the
Valencian Pedro Antonio Beuter (who wrote in the mid-sixteenth
century and probably made up the legend), Count Wifred assisted
the emperor Louis the Pious in battles against the Normans.63 After
distinguishing himself in one encounter and receiving serious
wounds, Wifred asked Louis for a grant of arms that he might place
on the plain gold shield with which he had fought. The emperor, to
recognize and commemorate Wifred's bravery, moistened his right
hand with the blood from the count's wounds and made four vertical
stripes on the gold surface. Some of the chronological synchronization
was corrected in 1603 by Francisco Diago who, for example, changed
the emperor to Charles the Bald.64
The heraldic myth has proved the most durable of all and is
reproduced in many popular forms, such as books for children. It
has maintained itself by reason of a certain intrinsic appeal, but also
because it stood within the Gesta tradition, extolling Wifred for his
heroism, but in this case directly on behalf of the Frankish ruler.
The effect of a primordial act of braverywas transmittedsymbolically
to succeeding counts of Barcelona and ultimately to the kings of
Spain.

VI
THE MEDIEVALIMAGEOF CATALONIA
All the preceding legends identify medieval and Renaissance Cata-
lonia in terms of an either partiallyor completely invented Carolingian
past. These histories must be taken seriously in relation to the
aspirations of Catalans then and now. Every nation or people has
comforting or heroic tales, some based on fact, some completely made
up; some with specific political purposes, others more hortatory or
vaguely evocative. The past, as contemporary experience attests, can
be manipulated to yield supposed lessons or to support political

62
The heraldiclegendis discussedin FredericUdinai Martorell,L'escutdela ciutat
deBarcelona(Barcelona,1979),pp. 17-26,basedon his "En tornoa la leyendade las
'Barras'catalanes",Hispania,ix (1949), pp. 531-65.
63 PedroAntonioBeuter,Segunda partede la Coronica
generaldeEspanay especial-
mentede Aragon,Cathalunfa y Valencia(1551)(Valencia,1604edn.), p. 70.
64 FranciscoDiago, Historiade los victoriosissimos
antiguoscondesde Barcelona
(Barcelona,1603;repr. Barcelona,1974),fo. 63v.
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 Carolingianmonarchs, and the idea that bravery
is necessary to win and merit freedom. The Carolingiansare 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 Carolingiandescent vaguely, as
in the Gesta, or directly, as in a fabricatedgenealogy produced shortly
after 1100 for the counts of Pallars and Ribagorqa.69A succinct,
although ratherlate, example of attachment to the Carolingiansis 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.), TlheInvention of Tradition(Cambridge, 1983).
66
Abadal, Primerscomtes 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 maravillososde dona Maria de Cervellonllamada
Maria Socos (Barcelona, 1629), fo. 16'; Jaime Villanueva, Viage literarioa las iglesias
de Espana, xii (Madrid, 1850), pp. 162-3.
71 Lewis, Royal Successio in Capetian France, p. 17.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 23
close enough to demand anything in return. As the Carolingians
faded, the counts of Barcelona and their relatives in neighbouring
counties would turn to the papacy, another distant numinous power,
for confirmation of privileges and authority.72
The Carolingians also represented the wider world, the power that
had joined Cataloniawith Christendom, ultimately (at least according
to historical memory) with Europe. Unlike the other Hispanic Chris-
tian states, Catalonia had been formed by a degree of outside inter-
vention. The inspiration offered by the entirely home-grown
Reconquista was therefore never as pure for Catalonia as it was for
Leon-Castile. The expedition of Charlemagnethat Ximenez de Rada,
for example, so contemptuously dismissed, would confer distinction
upon Catalonia, which has often considered itself spiritually the
closest to Europe of the peninsular realms.73
During moments of crisis the memory of Charlemagne carried
vigorous political force. In 1641 the Catalans attempted to dissolve
the bond with Castile by placing themselves under French lordship
"as in the time of Charlemagne, with a contract to observe our
constitutions".74 Napoleon's government invoked Charlemagne in
1810 when annexing Catalonia to France.75 An enduring sentiment
of European identity can be observed in contemporaryCatalonia. To
cite just one example, in 1985 a conference was held in Gerona on
Catalan "feudalism" in commemoration of the 1,200th anniversary
of Carolingianoccupation of the city. The subtitle of the meeting was
"Gerona: 1,200 Years of European Vocation". From the ninth until
the thirteenth century Cataloniamay be said to have considered itself
not just a frontier but Christendom's frontier, Europe's frontier, a
part of the Roman, Carolingianimperium.This distinction has marked
off Catalonia, at least in its self-image, from the rest of Iberia,
especially Castile.
The second unifying element among the legends is the notion that
freedom is won by heroism, along with the corollary that servitude
is the price of fear. The idea that liberty is won by valour is hardly
72
Abadal,Primerscomtescatalans,pp. 302-13;Engels,Schutzgedanke undLandes-
herrschaft,pp. 188-233.
73
(RodrigoXimenezde Rada),RodericiXimeniide Rada, Toletanae ecclesiae
prae-
sulis,operapraecipuacomplectens (Madrid,1793;repr.Valencia,1968),pp. 83-4.
74
J. H. Elliott, TheRevoltof theCatalans:A Studyin theDeclineof Spain, 1598-
1640 (Cambridge,1963),p. 522.
75 "TheFrenchhavealwaysembraced andsupportedyou in yourconflicts.Charle-
magnesavedCataloniafromthe tyrannyof the Saracens":proclamation of Marechal
Augereau,quotedin JoanMercaderi Riba,Catalunya i l'imperi
napolebnic(Montserrat,
1978), p. 110.
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.77Military 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 arrangementof society, serving in effect as a corollary to
assertions of aristocraticvirtue. 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 FridericiI. 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 LebenundSchriftendesMagisterBoncom-
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.
 THE LEGENDARYORIGINSOF CATALONIA 25
overrode objections. They functioned together to justify the social
order by referring to the circumstances of Catalonia'sfounding. The
legends elaborated both political and sociological identities. The era
of foundation saw the beginning of the state, but also the fixing of
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 Charlemagnefor nobles, not rustics.79Legal 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 afterRecortwas 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 Catalanwas
more Augustinian: an original sin punished in a manner affecting
succeeding generations.81
79 Quotedin Coll i Alentorn,
"Llegendad'OtgerCatal6",p. 27: "E aquestes lo
principide les llibertatsde Cathalunya,car no principiaen hbmensrustichsni
aplegadiqos,sin6 en alts e valerosos".
80 Reynolds,"MedievalOrigines Gentium",p. 380. Accordingto ColetteBeaune,
Naissancede la nationFrance(Paris,1985),pp. 38-40,the distinctionbetweenpeasant
and noble ancestorswas popularonly in the seventeenthcenturyand was preceded
by a beliefin the collectivenobilityof the French,all of whomweresupposedto be
of Trojandescent.
81 It is worthrecallingthat Augustineconsideredslaveryan unnaturalinstitution
resultingfromsin: De civitateDei, xix.15 (ed. Hoffmann,ii, pp. 400-1).
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 aristocraticoppression with their
conquest.82 This was used by revolutionaryand parliamentaryapolo-
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.84But 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 Puritanismand Revolution:Studies
in Interpretationof the English Revolutionof the 17th Century(London, 1958), pp. 50-
122.
83
Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The AmericanIndian and the Origins
of ComparativeEthnology(Cambridge, 1982), esp. p. 112; Lewis Hanke, All Mankind
Is One: A Study of the Disputation betweenBartolomede Las Casas and Juan Gines de
Sepulveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the AmericanIndians
(DeKalb, 1974). On the medieval, particularly canonistic, background to these de-
bates, James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyersand Infidels: The Churchand 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, Crusadeand
Mission, pp. 131-5, 159-89.
 THE LEGENDARY ORIGINS OF CATALONIA 27
faith with arms. Only if one understood Christianity as a rule of
militance rather than humility could one condemn the peasants. The
legends, lauding as they did the deeds against the Saracens, demanded
that belief be proven by violent struggle. It was not only that "Chris-
tians are right and pagans are wrong", as in The Song of Roland, but
that liberty, courage and faith were joined in a single virtue. This
virtue was inherent in the Catalan nation but only through the noble
estate. Christianity in this teaching is not submissive; it confers on
its adherents a conditional freedom protected by force. It is this
version of Christianity that was rejected in the peasant protest of
1448-9 in which Christian belief and practice were stated to be
inseparable from elementary liberty. Once the Muslim ancestors of
the remenceshad converted, they should have been treated "in Chris-
tian fashion", not still subjugated. Christianity was understood in
this instance as a rule of dignity and mercy and baptism was thought
to confer human or natural-law rights.
The interpretationof Christianitywas thereforecrucial in depicting
national virtue in foundation legends. The establishment of the polity
was a moral and religious event. It has been observed that while
medieval legends, such as those concerning Clovis, saw the founding
of nations in terms of Christianization, Renaissance legends of origins
were constitutional myths of secular contracts.85 In Catalonia the
medieval legends combined these elements. The origin of Catalonia
was its Christianization, not through conversion (as in France, Hun-
gary or Poland) but by conquest, or reconquest, with the goal
of releasing an already Christian population. Charlemagne and his
successors served in the legends as guarantorsof Catalonia'spolitical
and social order. Carolingian efforts, but equally (if not more) the
struggle by the Catalans themselves, brought the triumph of Chris-
tianity. The national identity may be said to encompass conflicting
notions of constitutional legitimacy, independence, Christianity and
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-Trastamarasentiment
85
RalphGiesey,If Not, Not: TheOathof theAragonese
andtheLegendary
Lawsof
Sobrarbe(Princeton,1968),p. 243.
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 Cataloniafor 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 Charlemagnemight 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.
VanderbiltUniversity,Nashville Paul Freedman