Dominated by jurists favouring royal absolutism, the bureaucracy of the Crown of Aragon became highly complex. Peter IV carefully structured the administration around four principal officials—the chancellor, the chamberlain, the mayordomo, and the mestre racional (chief financial officer). The employment of nonnatives in administrative positions was vigorously opposed in each of the federated states. Although Peter IV abolished the Aragonese union, the justicia, who were appointed and removed by the king at will, continued to adjudicate lawsuits concerning the nobility.
As his father’s lieutenant, the king’s oldest son usually was appointed procurator general for all the realms. A procurator or governor-general permanently represented the crown in Valencia and Majorca, which the king visited only occasionally. A vicar or justicia also acted in the name of the crown in the towns, which enjoyed a greater degree of self-government than before. Executive authority in Barcelona was entrusted to a council of five who were responsible to a larger consell de cent, or council of 100.
The fundamental law for Catalonia and Majorca continued to be the Usages of Barcelona, and in 1251 James I pledged that Roman law would not supplant them. He provided the newly conquered kingdom of Valencia with the Fori Regni Valentiae (1240), a code of law largely Roman in substance. In 1247 he promulgated the Code of Huesca, a compilation of the customary law of Aragon; the code, which originally defined Aragon’s territory, came to embody the criminal and civil legal code in Aragon. As new laws were added, the Aragonese legal code was reorganized as the Fueros de Aragón, which included the Code of Huesca and the General Privilege, in the 15th century.
A vigorous parliamentary structure emerged in the Crown of Aragon. Each of the peninsular states (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia) had a parliament, and the king occasionally assembled a general parliament of all three. The development of Catalan constitutionalism received a strong impetus from two significant pledges made by Peter III in the Corts (parliament) of Barcelona in 1283. He declared that he would convene an annual Corts “to treat of the good estate and reformation of the land” and that he would not make any general statute for Catalonia without its consent. The Corts did not meet annually thereafter, but the constitutions and capitols de Corts enacted during these meetings testify to its legislative role. The parliaments in Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia also voted on taxes. Not trusting the monarchy, the Catalans established a commission to control the collection and disbursement of taxes authorized by the Corts. In the late 14th century this commission, known as the Diputació del General de Catalunya or simply the Generalitat, became permanent. When the Corts was not in session, the Generalitat represented the Catalan community and defended Catalan liberties against royal encroachments. Early in the 15th century similar agencies were established in Aragon and Valencia.
The Aragonese economy was dominated by agriculture and pasturage. A numerous class of Mudéjares, Muslims living under Christian rule and retaining many of their own institutions, farmed the land in lower Aragon and Valencia. The main industry in the Catalan towns, where a strong guild organization developed, was the manufacture of woollen cloth. Barcelona and Valencia—trading with Tunis, Alexandria, Sicily, Sardinia, the Holy Land, and the Black Sea area—ranked among the major Mediterranean seaports. To represent their interests, Catalan merchants and consuls resided in many of the principal African ports. Catalan maritime law, compiled about 1370 in the Llibre del consolat de mar (Book of the Consulate of the Sea), enjoyed wide European recognition and usage.
Following the havoc caused by the Black Death, recurrent social and economic crises disturbed the peace and provoked the massacre of the Jews in Valencia and other cities in 1391, as well as other violent acts. Financial uncertainty, the failure of many private banks, and the decline of trade in the later 14th century compounded problems. In Barcelona the agitation of the popular party (the Busca) against the ascendancy of the wealthy urban aristocracy (the Biga) helped to foment the Catalan revolt against John II. Hoping to win their liberty, the serfs, or payeses de remensa, joined the rebellion. Aragonese culture
Culture flourished in the Crown of Aragon in the late Middle Ages. After James II founded the University of Lledia (Lérida) in 1300—the first in Aragon—other universities were established at Huesca, Barcelona, and Zaragoza. Two Dominicans—St. Raymond of Penyafort (died 1275), a great canonist, and St. Vincent Ferrer (died 1419), a preacher of exceptional eloquence—were outstanding representatives of the university tradition. Several works of history, generally regarded as gems of Catalan literature, helped to shape the vernacular as a literary language: The Chronicle of James I, purportedly written by the king himself; Bernat Desclot’s Chronicle of the Reign of King Peter III; Ramon Muntaner’s Chronicle, reporting the adventures of the Catalan Company; and the Chronicle of Peter IV, of which the king claimed to be the author. Ramon Llull (died 1315), who was equally facile in Latin, Catalan, and Arabic, was the most prolific writer of the times. Primarily an active propagandist concerned with the recovery of the Holy Land and the conversion of the Muslims, Llull also was a philosopher, theologian, and mystic. Among his principal writings were the romantic Book of the Lover and the Beloved, Blanquerna, and Book of the Order of Chivalry. Lo Crestià, an encyclopaedic work dealing with moral and political theory, was the best-known work of Francesc Eiximenis (died 1409). The poet Ausiàs March (died 1459) explored the psychological dimensions of love. Joseph F. O'Callaghan Muslim Spain The conquest
In the second half of the 7th century ce (1st century ah), Byzantine strongholds in North Africa gave way before the Arab advance. Carthage fell in 698. In 705 al-Walīd I, the sixth caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, the first great Muslim dynasty centred in Damascus, appointed Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr governor in the west; Mūsā annexed all of North Africa as far as Tangier (Ṭanjah) and made progress in the difficult task of propagating Islam among the Imazighen. The Christian ruler of Ceuta (Sabtah), Count Julian (variously identified by the Arab chroniclers as a Byzantine, a native Amazigh, or a Visigoth), eventually reached an agreement with Mūsā to launch a joint invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (see also North Africa; Islamic world).
The invasion of Spain was the result both of a Muslim readiness to invade and of a call for assistance by one of the Visigothic factions, the “Witizans.” Having become dispossessed after the death of King Witiza in 710, they appealed to Mūsā for support against the usurper Roderick. In April or May of 711 Mūsā sent an Amazigh army headed by Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād across the passage whose modern name, the Strait of Gibraltar, derives from Jabal al-Ṭāriq; in July they were able to defeat Roderick in a decisive battle.
Instead of returning to Africa, Ṭāriq marched north and conquered Toledo (Ṭulayṭulah), the Visigothic capital, where he spent the winter of 711. In the following year Mūsā himself led an Arab army to the peninsula and conquered Mérida (Māridah) after a long siege. He reached Ṭāriq in Toledo in the summer of 713. From there he advanced northeast, taking Zaragoza (Saraqusṭah) and invading the country up to the northern mountains; he then moved from west to east, forcing the population to submit or flee. Both Mūsā and Ṭāriq were recalled to Syria by the caliph, and they departed in 714 at the end of the summer; by then most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim control.