Kingdom of Aragon

“ 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but it found even less favor in Aragon, not only because of its excessive pretensions and rigors, but also because it superseded the traditional Aragonese Inquisition, was in the hands of Castilian “foreigners,” and interfered with business. ”

“ Valencia had been in Christian hands before: El Cid had won it rather by treachery than arms. But after the great freebooter’s death, the Moors came back. Now that Aragon sits down within its valleys, Valencia is Christian forever. It loses even its name of tributary kingdom. It becomes simply part of Aragon. Catalan blood has helped win it—for Aragon. Now Catalan, Valencian, and Castilian, led by the Great Captain of Córdoba, win Sicily and Naples—in the name of Aragon again. ”

“ The Catalans, whose important trade suffered great loss at the hands of hostile pirates, took a particularly active part in the conquest, and many Catalan knights and nobles were therefore endowed with fiefs in the islands. A matter of even greater consequence to the future of the kingdom of Aragon was James’ expedition against Valencia, which the Spaniards regarded as a sacred inheritance from the great Cid Campeador, the first Spanish conqueror. ”

“ The country was scarcely pacified from the anarchy of civil war and foreign invasion; national credit and patriotism were strained to the uttermost in what, it had become evident, must be a prolonged struggle against the Moors; the French were threatening his own loved kingdom of Aragon, and he could spare neither time nor money to regain command of the eastern Pyrenees; insidious heresy was sapping the Catholic Faith, and wide care and organization would be required for its suppression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His memoirs, written under the title of a chronicle, disclose a profound knowledge of human nature, acute observation, and a remarkable degree of literary culture, considering the advantages he enjoyed and the circumstances under which his life was passed. Powerful even in death, the provision of his will excluding females from the succession has always been sacredly observed as an inviolable part of the constitution of the kingdom of Aragon. ”

“ ARAGON, or Arragon (in Span. Aragón) , a captaincy-general, and formerly a kingdom of Spain; bounded on the N. by the Pyrenees, which separate it from France, on the E. by Catalonia and Valencia, S. by Valencia, and W. by the two Castiles and Navarre. Pop. (1900) 912,711; area, 18,294 sq. m. Aragon was divided in 1833 into the provinces of Huesca, Teruel and Saragossa; an account of its modern condition is therefore given under these names, which have not, however, superseded the older designation in popular usage.
Aragon consists of a central plain, edged by mountain ranges. ”

“ Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia, Leon, and Oviedo—later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon—were so many petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in the Arab enemy—to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly tribute—to help them against the encroachments of their brother Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called monarchs or rulers of Spain. ”

“ As long as the alliance between the King of France and the King of Aragon continues, he says, it is to be feared that the principal enemy of the Emperor and Prince Charles will triumph. For if he be assisted by France, the King of Aragon will most probably be able, not only to keep the usurped government of Castile in his own hands, and the other dominions belonging to that kingdom, as long as he lives, but also to deprive the Prince of his right of succession. ”

“ Aragon, with the kingdom of Valencia and the principality of Catalonia, occupying 15 per cent.; Portugal 20; Navarre 1; and Granada, the last stronghold of the Saracens, occupying 2. The marriage (1469) of Isabel, daughter of John II of Castile, with Ferdinand, son of John II of Aragon, united the two branches of the House of Trastamara, and merged the claims of husband and wife to the Crown of Castile. Isabel succeeded her brother, Henry IV, in 1474. Ferdinand, who had already received from his father the Crowns of Sicily and Sardinia, inherited in 1479 the remaining dominions of Aragon. ”

“ Isabel, as queen in her own right, retained the Crown patronage and revenues within Castile, but general affairs were transacted under a common seal. In Aragon Ferdinand's authority was not shared by his queen. The Spanish possessions in Italy belonged to Aragon exclusively, as America afterwards belonged to Castile. A common policy, and the vastly increased resources of a kingdom uniting under its sway 77 per cent, of the peninsula, at once gave preponderating weight at home. During the greater part of the sixteenth century Spain was the chief Power in the world. ”

“ The good King of Aragon whom men call Jaime, was wondrous brave. Day and night he bethought him by what new means he could increase the glory of the Christian faith, and lay low the power of the usurping Moor.
He called together the nobles of every degree belonging to his kingdom, the archbishops and prelates, and all the orders of knights, and summoned them to meet him in his good town of Zaragoza on a certain day. ”

“ Union of Aragon and Catalonia. This marriage united Aragon and Catalonia for ever, and marks a great step forward in the constitution of a national unity in Spain. Navarre, indeed, which had been united with Aragon since the fratricidal murder of its king Sancho in 1076, preferred to remain independent under a new ruler of its choice. It was henceforth Kingdom of Navarre. a small state lying across the Pyrenees, dependent on France, and doomed inevitably to be partitioned between its great neighbours to north and south. ”

“ For generations the principal adversary of Granada had been the kingdom of Castile, impoverished in resources, divided by faction, exhausted by warfare, weakened in authority. The union of the two great realms of the Peninsula brought into the contest the hardy population and the unimpaired vigor of Aragon. In Castile a great social and political revolution had been effected. The claims of the nobility, inconsistent with the dignity and the prerogatives of the crown, had been curtailed or abolished. ”

“ Alfonso was far-seeing enough to know the possibilities ahead, and it is easy to understand and sympathize with his rage at the mere thought of the dapper, silken Candespina. So the rebellious Urraca, with her heart full of love for Count Gomez, was married, and just before her father's death in 1109, to King Alfonso I., called el batallador [the battler] , and known as the Emperor of Aragon. This union of Castile, Leon, and Aragon would have promised much for the future, if the rulers of this united kingdom could have lived in peace and harmony together. ”

“ His paternal dominions, Aragon and Sicily, vested in default of legitimate issue in his brother Juan, king of Navarre; but he bequeathed the kingdom of Naples, his conquest, to his natural son Ferdinand.c Whatever may be thought of the claims subsisting in the house of Anjou, there can be no question that the reigning family of Aragon were legitimately excluded from the throne of Naples, though force and treachery enabled them ultimately to obtain it.
Alfonso, surnamed “the magnanimous,” was by far the most accomplished sovereign whom the fifteenth century produced. ”

“ We have seen how tenaciously the kingdoms of Aragon struggled against the evils of the system. Castile felt them equally but it had not the same institutions and could only remonstrate. The Córtes of Madrid, in 1607-8, represented that those of 1579 and 1586 had petitioned for the reform of the abuses arising from the temporal jurisdiction of the Inquisition to the great injury of the kingdom; that Philip II had promised relief, but had died without granting it, and therefore the request was now repeated in view of the increasing evils. ”

“ But the greatest benefits which James conferred upon the Aragonese nation was a law enacted in the assembly of Tarragona, by virtue of which the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the county of Barcelona, and the suzerainty of Majorca were united in perpetuity and incapable of division by will or gift, though each was to remain a kingdom possessed of its separate constitution and cortes. ”

“ Aragon did homage to Castile for her territory on the western bank of the Ebro, until the twelfth century, as did Navarre, Portugal, and, at a later period, the Moorish kingdom of Granada. [1] And, when at length the various states of Spain were consolidated into one monarchy, the capital of Castile became the capital of the new empire, and her language the language of the court and of literature. ”

“ The order was aristocratic from the first, and it soon became incredibly rich and independent. It had its collectors in all parts of Europe, who dispatched the "alms" they received to the Grand Master at Jerusalem. Towns, churches, and estates were given to the order, as well as vast sums of money. The king of Aragon proposed to bestow upon it a third of his kingdom. The pope showered privileges upon the Templars. They were exempted from tithes and taxes, and were brought under his immediate jurisdiction ”

“ The validity of this document, however, was disputed, and the claims of the Templars were successfully resisted by the nobles of Navarre; but in Aragon they obtained, by way of compromise, lands and castles and considerable dependencies, a portion of the customs and duties levied throughout the kingdom, and the contributions raised from the Moors. ”

“ We have seen the Spanish peninsula in previous ages the seat of endless strife between Saracens and Christians. Gradually the Moors had been driven back, and the little independent Christian states had been united by the fortunes of war and marriage into three—Portugal on the Atlantic coast, Castile occupying the larger part of the mainland, and Aragon, a maritime kingdom, less extensive in Spain, but extending its sovereignty over many of the Mediterranean isles, over Sicily and southern Italy. In 1469 Isabella, heiress of Castile, and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon, were wedded ”

“ While in the West the policy and valor of the Kings of Castile and Leon were gradually undermining the already shattered fabric of Moslem government, in the East the prowess of another Christian hero had begun to make serious encroachments upon the fertile and populous region extending along the Mediterranean from the Alpujarras to the borders of Catalonia. The acquisition of the latter province by the crown of Aragon at once raised that kingdom to a prominent rank among the sovereignties of Western Europe. ”

“ This was a crime against the Inquisition and Pedro Pacheco, Inquisitor of Aragon, was deputed to take his deposition; the investigation widened; all the refugees from Aragon and enemies of Pérez were heard and it was shown that the instigators of the troubles aimed at transferring Aragon to France or to found a republic, and in this were implicated the Diputados of the kingdom,{261} the jurados of Saragossa and the gentlemen who favored Pérez, including the Duke of Villahermosa, who was the head of Aragonese nobility and the Count of Aranda, the richest and most powerful noble. ”

“ When the king of Aragon, Don Jayme, reconquered a large part of his kingdom from the Moors, he divided it among the cavaliers and soldiers who had fought with him, and from that time are dated the several escutcheons which their descendants possess. The same thing was done after the conquest of Granada and Naples by the great captain. The noble house of Orange originated in a similar manner. ”

“ Aragon itself was lukewarm. The assembling of an army at Agreda under Alonso Vargas, a distinguished captain, with the pretext of an expedition to France, gave warning that revolt would be crushed with a heavy hand and both sides sought the support of the kingdom at large. In Saragossa the fuero prohibiting the introduction of foreign troops was invoked, and the new Justicia, Juan de Lanuza, was summoned by the Diputados to call the kingdom to arms to resist the contrafuero. ”

“ The men of the mountain and the desert store up great energy within their core: the outer world harries, arouses: the virgin force grows aggressive. East of Aragon are two rich and fluid lands: the Christian Principality of Catalonia, the Moorish Kingdom of Valencia. Frankish Barcelona rivals Marseilles and Venice, in ships. ”

“ 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. ”