Search

This article presents new data on the kingdom of Aragon's issue of sovereign debt 25 years earlier than the point at which there is routine documentation. The primary focus of this study is to examine how the representative institutions of this territory within the Crown of Aragon undertook the task of raising capital in financial markets. Contrary to a well-established historiographical perspective, this inland kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula and a supra-local political body called the Diputación employed advanced financial instruments that were used in major cities along the Mediterranean coast, and managed to attract investors. A chronological survey is undertaken of the evolution of this debt and how it shaped the kingdom's relationship to the monarchy, seeking to meet royal demands for extraordinary funding. This study of the management of public debt sheds light on deep structural changes that encompassed fiscality, the creation of new institutions and self-government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines relations between the Catalan-Aragonese and the Sardinians, between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, encompassing the integration of Sardinia first into the Crown of Aragon and then into the Crown of Spain. There was a political minority in the Giudicato of Arborea, a polity that was the last institutional heir to the ancient Arconate/Giudicato of Sardinia. This group was probably part of the oligarchy of the Giudicato; from the 1380s to the 1410s, it tried to overthrow the government of the Bas Serra dynasty and return to the allegiance of the kings of Aragon. It has been argued that the population of Arborea supported the policy of war against the Aragonese kings led by the judges of Arborea until the disappearance of the Giudicato. The political and social dynamics within Arborea and between the Giudicato and the Aragonese kings demonstrate the role of the discourse of the political minority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 9 July 1391, a mob assaulted the Jewish quarter of Valencia, killing and forcibly converting its inhabitants. This attack, one of many across Spain that summer, is much debated as a turning point in medieval Jewish history, but little attention has been paid to the role of the urban government. This article shows how the city council of Valencia shaped its narrative of the assault to further its goals for urban reform. In 1391, the Valencian council was in the midst of a reform initiative informed by the principles of Christian urban planning in Francesc Eiximenis’Regiment de la cosa pública. Thejueriawas seen as an impediment to reform. The council’s retelling of the 1391 attack shifted responsibility onto the Jews and thejueriaitself, considered a block to public order in the city. This laid the groundwork for the council’s solution: the removal of thejueriafrom Valencia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1412 Sicily lost its independence and became part of the Crown of Aragon. To rule the island, the new monarchs developed a system of long-distance government, through the action of local viceroys. But how did this system work in practice? This article engages with the lively historiographical debate about late medieval Sicily and more generally the Aragonese conglomerate by examining the series oflibri quictacionum(‘books of quittances’) produced by the financial office, theConservatoria regii patrimonii. It shows that the management of information – by means of a new genre of documents, an innovative record-keeping system and an apparatus of marginal annotations – became crucial in establishing effective government at a distance and in strengthening royal control over Sicilian institutions and officers. Moreover, these books and the documents they encompass highlight the social dynamics of the island and the emergence of an urban class: the Aragonese promoted the inclusion of the principal members of the latter into central government by granting them offices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commerce and notarial writing were closely related activities for the Mediterranean world of the thirteenth century, and both were integral to rural commercial communities by the last decades of the century. The transformation of thescribaniaof Santa Coloma de Queralt from proto-notarial to professional notarial institution during the second half of the thirteenth century demonstrates the changes in the process of written documentation and the growth of commercial activity as sophisticated economic and political development occurred in many areas of rural Catalonia. The professional notarial scribes of the period provided administrative services in many different arenas, but more significantly provided a reliable means – accurate, flexible and legal – of monitoring the commercial transactions they recorded for their customers. The value of professional notarial writing helped create and further the increased commercial activity of the period within the Crown of Aragon. While scholars have long considered this process in major urban centres, it was also a significant factor for rural communities in Catalonia, which utilised and benefited from regular access to professional writing for the necessities of daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This article examines how settler conditions on formerly Muslim-ruled land in the area known as New Catalonia (in north-eastern Iberia) changed as the territory was consolidated by Christian landlords and migrants from the north, and increasingly buffered from the border with Islam by conquests against Muslim Valencia over several generations following its conquest in the mid-twelfth century. Most landlords responded to the conditions of the local land market, but there is little evidence that the region as a whole, or even favourable sub-markets, experienced a straightforward trajectory from liberal to heavier tenant obligations. While lords in Old Catalonia are known to have limited peasant mobility from the later twelfth century in order to diminish an exodus to territory with more franchises in New Catalonia, lords in New Catalonia from the early thirteenth century were not able to respond to a similar extent to the territorial offerings in northern Valencia. Their overall ability to erode or reformulate exemptions and other privileges was checked by customary practice, insufficient settlement density and increased regulation which accompanied a rise in royal administrative capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]