Coordinates: 41°39′N 0°54′W / 41.650°N 0.900°W / 41.650; -0.900

Kingdom of Aragon

From Hispanopedia
Not to be confused with Crown of Aragon.
Kingdom of Aragon
1035–1707
(as a territorial division until 1833)
Coat of arms of Kingdom of Aragon
Coat of arms
Location of Kingdom of Aragon
CapitalZaragoza
Common languagesLatin, Aragonese, Castilian
Unofficial: Navarro-Aragonese
Religion
Catholic
GovernmentMonarchy
King 
• 1035–1063
Ramiro I
• 1700–1746
Philip IV (V of Castile)
History 
• Established
November 13 1035
• Disestablished
January 25 1707
Area
123939,000 km2 (15,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1239
50,000
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
County of Aragon
County of Sobrarbe
County of Ribagorza
Bourbon Reforms

The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval kingdom born in 1035 from the union of the counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, with Ramiro I as sovereign. The kingdom later expanded southward. The territory of the kingdom currently forms the autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain.

It should not be confused with the Crown of Aragon, which also included the Principality of Catalonia and later the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Valencia, and various territories in the Mediterranean, while keeping references to the original Kingdom: «Corona regni Aragonum» (Crown of the Kingdom of Aragon), «Corona Regum Aragoniae» (Crown of the Kings of Aragon), «Corona Aragonum» (Crown of Aragon) or «Corona Regia».

From 1164 on, the Kingdom of Aragon gave rise to the Crown of Aragon, but like the other territories of the Crown, it kept its own political institutions and fueros for nearly 600 years, until the Nueva Planta decrees.

In the 15th century, after the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs, the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile came to share the same monarchs, giving rise for the first time to the Spanish Monarchy.

In 1707, in the context of the War of the Spanish Succession, King Philip V repealed its fueros, abolished the Council of Aragon and eliminated the office of Viceroy. Shortly afterward the rest of its own institutions would disappear, such as the Justicia, the Diputación or the Cortes of Aragon, and the Laws of Castile would be applied instead of the Aragonese ones. These measures meant the end of Aragon as a kingdom,[1] although it would continue to be considered a territorial division of Spain until 1833, when Javier de Burgos established the territorial division by provinces, suppressing the division by kingdoms.[2]

History

Main article: History of Aragon

Origin: The County of Aragon

Main article: County of Aragon

The marriage of Andregoto, daughter of Count Galindo II of Aragon, to King García Sánchez I of Navarre, led to the union of both political entities. The County of Aragon continued to retain a certain identity, which had been reinforced by the revival of monastic life and the organization of a diocese coinciding with the boundaries of the county.

In 1035 Ramiro, natural son of Sancho III of Navarre and baiulus of the County of Aragon, incorporated into it the counties of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, which had been under the rule of his brother Gonzalo.[3] After Sancho's death, the county split off from the Navarrese kingdom and was constituted as a separate kingdom, although under the tutelage of the Navarrese one ruled by his brother García Sánchez III.[3] Confined to the Pyrenean valleys and neighboring the more powerful Navarrese kingdom and the important Taifa of Zaragoza, the growth of the population and the hunger for land for its inhabitants drove it to expand, despite its initial military weakness.[4]

The legitimacy of the new dynasty was achieved by Kings Sancho Ramírez and Peter I by placing the kingdom under the protection of the Holy See. Thus the Kingdom of Aragon became part of the Western states. The donation of the kingdom to the Pope was made by Sancho Ramírez in 1068, in an attempt to strengthen his position against his hostile neighbors, who were at times allied against him.[4]

11th–12th centuries: Expansion of the kingdom

Ramiro I's plans for the reconquest of the lowlands were far surpassed by his immediate successors.

The King of Navarre Sancho Garcés IV was murdered by his own brother in 1076.[4] The Navarrese, not wishing to be ruled by the fratricide, chose as their king Sancho Ramírez of Aragon, cousin of the deceased, who joined the crown of Pamplona to that of Aragon. The Navarrese kingdom was divided between León-Castile and Aragon; the latter received the main territories, including the Navarrese capital, and tripled its size, although in exchange for accepting the theoretical supremacy of Castile-León.[4] To celebrate the expansion, Sancho founded the city of Jaca, where he took up residence and to which he moved the Mozarabic bishopric of Huesca (of Hispano-Visigothic liturgical tradition under Muslim rule) in 1077.[4] As he controlled the highlands bordering the Ebro to the north, he was able to undertake various raids, mainly against the Taifa of Zaragoza, and to try to expand toward the plain, chiefly along the valleys of the Aragón, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza.[5] To make up for the shortage of soldiers needed for territorial expansion, he tried to bring them from the south of France.[5] The expansion, however, was slow and was carried out especially through the conquest of strategic points, such as Graus in 1083 and Ayerbe, around the same time.[6] Advances to the south accelerated at the end of the century, both because of Alfonso's lack of support for the Zaragozans and because of the departure for the Levant of the Cid, who until then had fought alongside them.[7] In 1089, the Aragonese seized Monzón, which hindered communications between Lérida and Huesca, and in 1091 they built the castle of El Castellar, between Zaragoza and Tudela.[8] Sancho undertook the siege of the important city of Huesca (much larger than Jaca and Pamplona and probably than any peninsular city in Christian hands, except Barcelona and Toledo) in 1094, but died from an arrow wound.[9] He was immediately succeeded by his son Peter, already associated with power, who soon resumed the siege.[9]

King Peter I of Aragon (1070–1104) conquered Huesca on November 27, 1096, after defeating King Al-Musta'in II of the Taifa of Zaragoza at the Battle of Alcoraz, which was fought on November 18 of that year.[10] In 1101 he took Barbastro and Sariñena, and he took Tamarite de Litera in 1104. During this reign the Fuero de infanzones was regulated.

During the reign of Alfonso I the Battler (1104–1134), in the course of a few years, with the valuable collaboration of the feudal nobility of the south of France, the towns and districts of Tudela, Tarazona, Calatayud, Daroca and Zaragoza were conquered. After the death of his brother Peter I of Aragon, he decided to act on the Cinco Villas and in 1105 conquered Ejea de los Caballeros. The King of Zaragoza, Al-Musta'in II, decided to carry out a plundering expedition against the neighboring Christians in 1110 and ended up fighting the frontier knights at the Battle of Valtierra, where he was defeated and met his death. The capture of Zaragoza in 1118 brought about the fall of the entire Moorish kingdom, thereby radically changing the social structures and the spiritual horizons of the small kingdom of mountain people that Aragon had been until then. In 1120 the Aragonese Monarch conquered Calatayud and Daroca, granted a fuero to Soria, and that same year the Aragonese army achieved a very important victory over the Muslims at the Battle of Cutanda. In 1125 the great military expedition of Alfonso I of Aragon through Andalusia was organized, demonstrating the weakness of Almoravid power in the Levante and Andalusia. The Battler King, whose marriage to the Leonese Queen Urraca had failed, had no offspring. In his singular will, he made the military orders heirs to his kingdoms, but no one considered carrying out that will, and the Aragonese nobles, gathered in Jaca, recognized his brother Ramiro as King. For their part, the Navarrese chose García Ramírez, which brought about the separation of the Kingdom of Navarre. At that time Ramiro was Bishop of Roda-Barbastro, but he had to take the throne.

Ramiro II of Aragon (1086–1157) reigned for only three years, from 1134 to 1137. He was married to Agnes of Poitou, daughter of Duke William IX of Aquitaine. The coronation took place in Zaragoza in 1134.

Crown of Aragon

Banner and caparisoned horse bearing the heraldic emblem specific to the Kingdom of Aragon at the funeral rites for the death of Charles I of Spain. In La Magnifique, et sumptueuse pompe funèbre faite aus obsèques, et funerailles du très grand, et très victorieus empereur Charles Cinquième, celebrées en la Ville de Bruxelles le XXIX. jour du mois de décembre M.D.LVIII par Philippes Roy Catholique d’Espaigne son fils, Jérôme Cock (drawing), Jean and Luc de Dovar (engravers), Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1559, PLATE 19.[11]
Greatest extent of the Kingdom of Aragon (in purple, territories lost to the Principality of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Valencia). Map published by the Institución Fernando el Católico
"Aragonés" or silver half real of Ferdinand the Catholic. Minted in 1484 in Zaragoza (reverse with the initials I C flanking the arms of Aragon, where the C, the mint mark, refers to Çaragoça). It had the value of one sueldo jaqués, which made it the representation of the unit of the traditional Aragonese unit of account, which was never minted.
Main article: Crown of Aragon

In 1137 Ramiro II the Monk arranged the betrothal of Petronilla of Aragon to Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona. Their son, Alfonso II, was the first king to inherit the titles of King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona.

At its greatest territorial extent, the Kingdom of Aragon comprised the territories that today form the Autonomous Community of Aragon, plus a large part of the present-day province of Lérida, most of the Ebro Valley down to the sea, with Tortosa as its main coastal city, and the north of the present-day province of Castellón. This expansion was organized through the creation of the Marquisates of Lérida and Tortosa, although they were later ceded by James I of Aragon to the Principality of Catalonia.

Ferdinand II (1479–1516) married Isabella I of Castile. Their grandson, Charles I, inherited both crowns, but each kept its own laws and customs.

In 1700, with the death of Charles II, Philip of Anjou was proclaimed King of Castile and of Aragon, which provoked the War of the Spanish Succession. The Crown of Aragon sided with Archduke Charles, the other claimant. When the war ended, Philip V promulgated the Nueva Planta decrees, by which the foral institutions of the Crown of Aragon were abolished, the Crown being integrated into a modern and centralized State across most of its territory, except in the Basque Provinces and Navarre, which continued to keep their fueros. In 1711 the Captaincy General of Aragon was created.

Fueros

Vidal Mayor. 13th-century manuscript. King James I receiving from the hands of the Bishop of Huesca Vidal de Canellas the manuscript with the compilation of the Fueros of Aragon

The foral institutions of the kingdom were in constant evolution throughout its existence. It seems that the first kings of Pamplona were elected by and from among the leading barons, also called ricoshombres of the kingdom.[12] Over time the office became hereditary, but both in Navarre and in Aragon, on several occasions, when there was no direct heir, the ricoshombres, and later the Cortes, decided who should be the new king.

King Sancho the Great granted good fueros to Jaca to encourage Christians from the other side of the Pyrenees to settle in the city. Those fueros, or fueros derived from them, were later granted to other cities and towns of Aragon and were also the basis of fueros granted to towns in other kingdoms. The Fuero of Jaca was the basis of Aragonese law and became a mark of identity of the kingdom. In 1247 the first Fueros of Aragon were compiled.[13]

The Justicia of Aragon began as a judge of the Court, and in 1265 was established as judge of disputes between the nobles and the King and as President of the Cortes of the kingdom. At first he was appointed by the King from among the nobles, but the post ended up being a dignity that was sometimes held for life and hereditary, its prerogatives being curtailed in 1592 as a consequence of the Alterations of Aragon.[14]

In 1283, after King Peter III was excommunicated by Pope Martin IV for having occupied Sicily, a feudatory kingdom of the Holy See, the Aragonese oligarchy formed a confederation to limit royal power and extract new privileges. The King was forced to grant the General Privilege in what would be known as the revolt of the Union in 1283. His son James II was forced to grant the Privilege of the Union.[15] During the reign of James I various assemblies, more or less well attended, had met to resolve disputes. The Privilege of the Union required the annual convening of a court of nobles and citizens, which would come to include four estates: the ricoshombres, the infanzones and knights, the ecclesiastical authorities, and the universidades. At that time the cities, towns and communities of the kingdom were called universidades. The Cortes of Aragon were not convened with the required regularity, but over time they took control of the kingdom's taxation, granting funds to the King in exchange for the maintenance and extension of the privileges of the estates represented in them.[16]

The Diputación General of the Kingdom was born in 1363 as the body delegated by the Cortes to collect and administer taxes and duties, and to deliver the agreed funds to the King. The four estates of the Cortes were represented in it, with two deputies for each estate. Over time its powers grew as it took charge of administering the funds needed to preserve the peace and well-being of the kingdom.[17]

Ferdinand the Catholic instituted the office of Viceroy, who would exercise the royal powers when the King was absent from the kingdom, something that would happen frequently with the monarchs of the House of Austria. Under the Viceroy were the Governor, in charge of maintaining order and social peace, and the Real Audiencia, a court that dispensed justice in serious or very important cases, or those affecting individuals with special jurisdictional privileges.[18] He also established the authority of the Inquisition in the kingdom, a body that later kings used to undermine Aragonese privileges, extending its action beyond the purely religious sphere.[19]

Iberian kingdoms in 1400

Territorial organization

The oldest administrative system of the kingdom was based on the distribution of towns and lands to the nobles who took part in the conquest. The nobles could receive these honores as property or in tenancy, when the King reserved ownership but ceded their administration to the noble. Nobles could receive castles in tenancy, taking charge of keeping them garrisoned in exchange for settling and obtaining revenues from the lands they controlled.[20]

The King also granted the administration of lands and towns to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Bishoprics, archpriestships, abbeys and military orders administered and collected revenues from the honores granted to them.[21]

Over time the King began to create a network of officials to control the lands and towns directly dependent on him, called realengo. The merino was an executive, judicial and military agent of the Monarch who already appears documented in the Fuero of Jaca. The bailes began with similar powers, but ended up specializing in the management of the royal patrimony. The King granted the cities and towns of realengo fueros that specified the privileges of their inhabitants. The districts of Daroca, Teruel, Calatayud, Albarracín and others were organized into communities that sent their own representatives to the Cortes.[22] In the 15th century the territory of the kingdom was divided into eleven sobrecollidas for fiscal purposes, which were converted into veredas, with some modifications, in the 17th century.[23]

Demography

Before the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the population in what would later be Aragon was a mixture of the Iberian and Celtiberian substratum with the Roman colonizers and the Visigothic invaders, with Vascones occupying the Pyrenean valleys.[24] There was also a Jewish minority, the result of the diaspora of the 1st century. This minority, tolerated by the Romans, was being persecuted by the Visigoths in the period prior to the Muslim invasion.[25]

The Muslim invaders were not very numerous, being mainly Berbers, but also, in later waves, Arabs and Syrians. Those settled in the Ebro Valley were mostly Arabs, divided between Qaysis and Kalbis, northern and southern Arabs. The majority of the Muslim population in the area at the time of the reconquest were Muwallads, Christians converted to Islam.[26] Those Christians who did not convert, called Mozarabs, were tolerated by the Muslim rulers in exchange for the payment of special taxes.[27]

The first counts of the Hispanic March were Franks, but over time they were replaced by the local elites, Vasconic and Hispano-Visigothic. The kings of Pamplona and later of Aragon promoted the immigration of Franks and Occitans to their kingdoms, as well as that of Mozarabs. With the invasion of the fundamentalist Almohads, Jewish communities of al-Andalus also emigrated to the Christian kingdoms. After the conquest of the Ebro Valley, a considerable number of Muslims became subjects of the King of Aragon. These Muslims, called Mudéjars, formed an important part of the artisan and agricultural class of the kingdom, as reflected in the widespread Aragonese Mudéjar architecture.[28]

The 13th century was the golden age of the Jews of Aragon. The Jewish minority was eminently urban, engaging in all kinds of occupations, but standing out in medicine, administration, tax collection and moneylending. The Jews were considered property of the crown, the King providing them protection in exchange for special contributions.[29] In the same century came the arrival of Cathar refugees from Occitania, fleeing religious persecution. The situation of the Jews worsened at the end of the century due to pressure from the Catholic hierarchy, and they were barred from holding public office. Many Aragonese Jews converted to Christianity, with greater or lesser conviction, to avoid high taxes and persecution. These conversos became integrated into the Christian population, even intermarrying with noble families. This could explain the significant frequency of Jewish haplotypes in the contemporary Aragonese population.[30]

Internal conflicts, the war with Castile and above all the Black Death and other epidemics in the 14th century caused a significant decline in the kingdom's population. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs decreed the conversion or expulsion of the Jews. In 1495 a census was carried out, the fogaje of 1495, which revealed a total of 51,540 hearths in the kingdom, or about 200,000 inhabitants. Muslims were then 11% of the total population. The most populous city, Zaragoza, had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants.

In 1525 Charles I also decreed the conversion or expulsion of the Mudéjars, and most of the Muslims of Aragon were baptized in 1526. During the 16th century the total population grew by 50%, especially along the banks of the Ebro and its right-bank tributaries. Part of the growth was due to immigration from north of the Pyrenees. In the 17th century demographic growth slowed. In 1610 some 65,000 Moriscos were expelled, around 20% of the population. Other significant factors in the slower population growth were the loss of agricultural production due to the expulsion of the Moriscos and periods of drought, a plague that ravaged the kingdom from 1647 to 1654, the increase in the tax burden, and the revolt of Catalonia.[31]

In the 18th century, the War of the Spanish Succession brought a decline of around 10% in population, including the emigration of many of the residents of French origin after Archduke Charles decreed their expulsion.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Guerra de Sucesión en Aragón (1700-1715)". Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa (in español). April 25, 2011. Retrieved June 17, 2019.
  2. ↑ Guitart Aparicio, Cristóbal (1976). Castillos de Aragón I: Desde el siglo IX hasta el segundo cuarto del XIII (in español). Librería General. p. 11. ISBN 84-7778-018-2. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Reilly 1992, p. 105.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Reilly 1992, p. 106.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Reilly 1992, p. 107.
  6. ↑ Reilly 1992, pp. 107, 109.
  7. ↑ Reilly 1992, pp. 109, 112.
  8. ↑ Reilly 1992, p. 112.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Reilly 1992, pp. 112–113.
  10. ↑ Reilly 1992, p. 115.
  11. ↑ Montaner Frutos 1995, p. 185, LÁM. XVII.
  12. ↑ Zurita 1984, Libro I, cap. V.
  13. ↑ González Antón 1989, pp. 174–175.
  14. ↑ González Antón 1989, pp. 176–177.
  15. ↑ González Antón 1989, pp. 175–176.
  16. ↑ González Antón 1989, pp. 177–178.
  17. ↑ González Antón 1989, p. 178.
  18. ↑ Serrano Martín 1989, pp. 218–219.
  19. ↑ Colás Latorre 1989, pp. 224–228.
  20. ↑ Rodrigo Estevan 1999, cap. 43.
  21. ↑ Sarasa Sánchez 1999, cap. 55.
  22. ↑ González Antón 1999, capt. 48.
  23. ↑ Jarque Martinez 1999, cap. 65.
  24. ↑ Marco Simón 1989, pp. 72–74.
  25. ↑ Motis Dolader 1999, cap. 60.
  26. ↑ Cervera Fras 1999, cap. 22.
  27. ↑ Cervera Fras 1989, pp. 119–122.
  28. ↑ Ledesma Rubio 1999, cap. 32.
  29. ↑ Blasco Martínez 2009, cap. 6.
  30. ↑ Adams 2008, pp. 732–733.
  31. ↑ Salas Auséns 1989, pp. 191–197.

References

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