Aragonese people

“ Their, energies had been devoted to furthering the welfare of their people. Under the Aragonese monarchs the progress of the united province still continued, and Collioure, the port of Perpignan, became a centre of Mediterranean trade. But the country was destined to pay the penalty of its position on the frontiers of France and Spain in the long struggle for ascendancy between these two powers. ”

“ And, although the social history of Aragon, like that of other countries in this rude age, is too often stained with deeds of violence and personal feuds, yet the state at large, under the steady operation of its laws, probably enjoyed a more uninterrupted tranquillity than fell to the lot of any other nation in Europe.
The Aragonese cortes was composed of four branches, or arms; [28] the ricos hombres, or great barons; the lesser nobles, comprehending the knights; the clergy, and the commons. The nobility of every denomination were entitled to a seat in the legislature. ”

“ The commerce and wealth of the country now fell into the hands of the Jews, who came over in great numbers from Aragon. For a long time the industrious people lived, hated it is true, but unmolested, in their own quarter of the city. ”

“ You know the ancient privileges enjoyed by Aragon, privileges of which the Aragonese are so jealous that a King of Castile may not assume the title of King of Aragon until, bareheaded, he shall have received from the Grand Justiciary of Aragon the following admonition: “We, who are of equal worth and greater power than you, constitute you our king on the condition that you respect our privileges, and not otherwise.” ”

“ The Christians had taken advantage of the continual divisions which prevailed among their former conquerors. Alphonso the Chaste, king of Asturia, a valiant and politic monarch, had extended his dominions and refused to pay the tribute of the hundred young maidens. Ramir, the successor of Alphonso, maintained this independence, and several times defeated the Mussulmans. Navarre became a kingdom, and Aragon had its independent sovereigns, and was so fortunate as to possess a government that properly respected the rights of the people. ”

“ The creations of the Moors in Spain form the most remarkable chapter in human art. To me, Spain has been a new discovery; a sudden revelation of a world within a world; the monuments of an extinct or departed race standing alone in a desert. The generation that now possesses the soil has nothing of the genius or taste or spirit of the barbaric tribes that were once their masters. And the Alhambra at Granada, the Mosque at Cordova, and the 4Alcazar at Seville, look like the wrecks of a stranded empire, whose people live only in their glorious ruins. ”

“ In the city swarms a hungry, ragged people, more often than not without shoes, yet one and all with the proverbial haughty pride and somber mood of Aragon in face and bearing, stiff-shouldered, bristling with a touch-me-not-with-a-pole expression. Here, too, may still be found, especially among the peasants from the further districts, the old provincial costume,--knee breeches, a jacket reaching barely to the waist, and a red cloth wound about the head. ”

“ It had been impossible, despite laws and penalties, to prevent the intermingling of the races: all that we certainly know is that the inhabitants of Galicia, Asturias, Viscaya, Navarro, and Aragon have always exhibited the characteristics of a hardy, fighting, pushing race, as distinguished from the Andaluces, the Valencianos, the Murcianos, and people of Granada, in whom the languid blood of a Southern people and the more marked trace of Arabic heritage are apparent. ”

“ So great was the craze for poetry and for glittering entertainments and a lavish display of wealth, that Don Jayme felt called upon to take some restraining measures. Aragon, as well as Castile, was filled with the wealth of captured Moorish cities, there was a new sense of national security with each successive Christian victory, luxuries of all kinds were being brought within the reach of the people as the result of a newly aroused spirit of commercialism, and, all in all, to a warlike king, the situation was fraught with danger. ”

“ The land of Aragon is so poor and barren, that perchance her sons and daughters might all long since have forsaken their churlish, niggard-handed mother, and finally renounced her, but that she gives them liberty. Even in our oath of allegiance we tender no slaves' submission to oppression. ”

“ The little kingdom of Navarre was founded by Garcia Jimenes as early as 758, and Louis, the son of Charlemagne, drove the Moors out of Barcelona and established a Christian country there about fifty years afterwards. At length the kingdom of Aragon was founded by Ramiro I., a son of the King of Navarre, and Buesca was taken from the Moors and became the first capital of Aragon. Then the great Alonso, surnamed ‘El Batallador,’ having firmly established his power in the plains, drove the Moors out of Zaragoza in 1118, which was thenceforth the capital of Aragon. ”

“ It has been already noted that eastern Spain was feudal. Therefore the distinction of classes was far sharper in Aragon than in non-feudal Castile and Leon. Predial slavery, which had disappeared in Castile and Leon in the 13th century, existed unmodified in Aragon, and in its worst form, down to the Bourbon dynasty. When we are told of the freedom of Aragon, it is well to remember that it was enjoyed only by the small minority who were personally free and also privileged: by the citizens of the towns which had charters—called in Aragon the Universidades—the nobles, the gentry and the Church. ”

“ Beggar women, rag-pickers, ladies of wealth, cankerous old men, merchants, city sports, lawyers--Saragossa is the one city of Spain where even men go to church--every grade and variety of Aragonese pressed close upon the heels one of another, each bowing down as he passed to kiss the hole deeper into the pillar. At bottom the difference is slight indeed between the religion of the Spaniard and that of the Hindu. ”

“ In institutions, Aragon proper must be distinguished, throughout this period, from the Catalonian region of the greater kingdom of Aragon. Social differences were much more marked than in León and Castile, for there was an excessively privileged feudal nobility, which had a despotic power over the servile classes; the movement for emancipation from slavery and serfdom belongs to a much later time. Lords had a right even to kill their serfs. ”

“ Aragon, a country of plains surrounded by mountains, is an inland province, and its inhabitants have remained for the most part herdsmen, agriculturists, and soldiers. Catalonia, on the other hand, possesses an admirable seaboard. Its natural wealth, joined to favourable geographical position, has developed commerce with neighbouring countries, and more especially with Roussillon and Languedoc. Indeed, seven or eight centuries ago, the Catalans were Provençals rather than Spaniards, and in their language and customs they were closely related to the people to the north of the Pyrenees. ”

“ Intellectual Culture.
The political institutions of Aragon, although bearing a general resemblance to those of Castile, were sufficiently dissimilar to stamp a peculiar physiognomy on the character of the nation, which still continued after it had been incorporated with the great mass of the Spanish monarchy.—It was not until the expiration of nearly five centuries after the Saracen invasion, that the little district of Aragon, growing up under the shelter of the Pyrenees, was expanded into the dimensions of the province which now bears that name. ”

“ This alludes to a dispute between the Spanish government and the Aragonese, which had continued from the days of Charles V. The Aragonese claimed either that the king himself should reside among them, or be represented by some person of the royal blood. Charles V. appointed, as viceroy of Aragon, his uncle, the Archbishop of Zaragoza, and then Don Fernando de Aragon, his cousin. Philip II. appointed a Castilian to that dignity. ”

“ THE Crown of Aragon comprised the so-called kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the principality of Catalonia, the counties of Rosellon and Cerdana, and the Balearic Isles, with the outlying dependencies of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Although marriage had united the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, the particularism born of centuries of rivalry and frequent war kept the lands jealously apart as separate nations and Ferdinand ruled individually his ancestral dominions. ”

“ We passed out of the church, which now seemed laden with an atmosphere of human sorrow and suffering, glad to escape to the free air and pure skies of heaven. From the Cathedral Square we turned into the narrow streets with their great grey palaces and enormous courtyards all full of suggestions of the past centuries. But the mighty have fallen: Aragon has not escaped decline any more than the rest of Spain. ”

“ Sere towns lie in the sere waste. The houses are clay. There are wooden doors, but windows of glass are still rare. The peasant chooses the desert bottom for his house. South and north rise the walls of the Sierras, naked as flint: and the winds sweep through his narrow passage, bringing the rigor of the rocks into the air he breathes.
This low tier of the world of Aragon has no clement weather. It has no spring and no autumn. Winter is a rigid siege: summer is fire. When the weather shifts between the seasons, the winds make a runway of the valleys. Frost, flame, storm are the angry cycle. ”

“ The hardihood and spirit which the Aragonese, the Castilians, and the other nations of the peninsula had acquired during centuries of free institutions and successful war against the Moors had not yet become obliterated. ”

“ Not content with having dismissed the spirits of their foes to another world, these kingly Aragons must needs have, close by the scene of their continual sports and labours, so many secret pleasure chambers into which they could withdraw at leisure moments and gaze in rapture on the very features of the enemy whose turbulence was stilled and whose wits would never be turned against his king again. ”

“ The few refugee nobles and Perez thereupon prevailed upon Henry IV. to send a body of Béarnais troops into{236} Aragon, but the Aragonese joined with Philip’s troops to expel them, and nothing serious came of the attempt. Some of the higher nobles of Aragon died mysteriously in the dungeons, and seventy-nine citizens were condemned to be burnt alive in the market-place of Zaragoza. ”

“ Aragon is only beginning; Portugal has not even begun. ♦History of Castile and Aragon.♦ Of these three, Castile was fated to play the same part that was played by Wessex in England and by France in Gaul, to become the leading power of the peninsula. Aragon, when her growth had brought her to the Mediterranean, was to fill for a long time a greater place in general European politics than any other Spanish power. The union of Castile and Aragon was to form that great Spanish monarchy which became the terror of Europe. ”

“ The King of Arragon mean time, so far from sharing the prejudices against the Jews, applied to them for instruction in many matters of learning and science: the great and learned men amongst the Spaniards also encouraged and admired them; but the people, and the ignorant and ill-educated among the clergy, hated and despised them, and would gladly have destroyed them altogether.
In the middle of the century, Alphonso the Tenth, who was then King of Castile, encouraged all learned men, whatever might be their religious opinions ”

“ The Inquisition had existed in the kingdom of Aragon since the thirteenth century, but Ferdinand now introduced the Castilian body. In 1485 the Inquisition became a single institution for all Spain, although it was not until 1518 that this became definitive. The new organization had not been welcomed in Castile, but it found even less favor in Aragon, not only because of its excessive pretensions and rigors, but also because it superseded the traditional Aragonese Inquisition, was in the hands of Castilian “foreigners,” and interfered with business. ”

“ In this, as well as in the liberality of his religious sentiments, he may be compared favorably with his celebrated countryman Mariana, who, educated in the cloister, and at a period when the nation was schooled to maxims of despotism, exhibits few glimpses of the sound criticism and reflection, which are to be found in the writings of his Aragonese rival. ”

“ Courting an alegra señorita, whether of Aragon, Catalonia, or Valencia, was the duty of every lad, albeit the fair one jokingly called it “pelando la pava” (plucking the turkey) . The royal romance was a charming example for all and sundry, and many an amorous French troubadour had his wings cut by Prince Cupid and never went home again at all, and many a glee-maiden, to boot, plucked a “turkey” of Aragon!
King Juan threw himself unreservedly into the arms of his merry Minerva-Venus Queen: no doubt she “plucked” him thoroughly! A “Court of Love” was established at Zaragoza. ”

“ The fact is that Spain suffered much more from internal disorders than from foreign levy. The chief occasion of her troubles was the presence among her people of a large body of Moors, hated both for their race and for their religion. With the capitulation of Granada, the enjoyment of Mohammedanism was guaranteed to the Moors, but this tolerance only lasted for six years, when a decree went out that all must be baptized or must emigrate from Andalusia. In Aragon, however, always independent of Castile, they continued to enjoy religious freedom. ”

“ A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands out in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus the Ebro flows through Aragon, among woods of silver birch and poplars, and plantations of olives and vines and maize; but on either side appears the barren country of perfectly bare reddish or brown hills of crumbling earth, like great sand-dunes, without a plant, curiously folded and scored by rushing water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs. The villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great distance are scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-side. ”