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territory and people aided the creation of the Catalan state
in the 10th Century. In 778 AD Charlemagne, future emperor of
the Occident, son of the King of the Franks, Pépin le
Bref, and founder of the Carolingien dynasty, organised the
area into counties. The Marca Hispanica and other parts of the
Pyrénées were to anticipate a push by the Arabs
like that of 711 AD. The homogenous nature of the region enticed
the Emperor Louis le Pieux, Charlemagne’s successor, to establish
a structure of five counties, prefiguring the future Catalonia.
Named by the Emperor, the counts, whose titles were hereditary,
organised lands and populations which were at that time distancing
themselves from the authority of the declining Carolingienne
dynasty. In the spirit of the time the Count of Barcelona declined
the guardianship of the Carolingienne’s Marca hispanica and
took his independence from the successor, King Hugues Capet
in 988 AD. Now divorced from Latin, the Catalan language was
spoken at court during this period.
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| Catalan
King, Jaume I |
North
of the Pyrénées, North Catalonia was named Comtats
del Rosselló and was ceded to Barcelona by their last
count, Girart II in 1172 AD: this was the birth of Catalonia.
The villages developed and benefited from the association with
the bigger towns, such as Perpignan, the first Catalan town
to be self-administered in 1197. This period was nevertheless
marked by violence and the Church, in its’ important role, put
in place an innovative peace measure: Pau i Treva de Déu
(Peace and the Truce of God) in 1027 at Touloges in North Catalonia.
After this first organisation, Catalonia enlarged to the west.
In 1137 with the alliance between the Count of Barcelona and
the King of Aragon’s daughter unifying Catalonia and Aragon,
then Valencia and the Baleares Islands in the following century.
This Catalan state took possession of some of the regions of
Languedoc and Provence but this extension was annulled by the
Treaty of Corbeil in 1258, in which the Catalan King, Jaume
I and the King of France, Louis XI fixed the Catalan-French
border on the Cobieres mountain range.
Covering
800 kilometres from north to south, the Catalan territory was
decentralised, starting in 1263 North Catalonia benefited from
the autonomy offered by the royal right of proxy – Rosselló
i Cerdanya.
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