Marches

:For other uses, see March (disambiguation).

Catalonia and the "Spanish Marches"

:Main article: Marca Hispanica.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beyond the province of Septimania, after some early setbacks, Charlemagne's son Louis took Barcelona from the Moorish emir in 801. thus he established a foothold in the borderland between the Franks and the Moors. The Carolingian "Spanish Marches" (Marca Hispanica) became a buffer zone ruled by the Count of Barcelona, with its own outlying small separate territories, each ruled by a lesser miles with armed retainers, who theoretically owed allegiance through the Count to the Emperor, or with less fealty to his Carolingian and Ottonian successors. Each was the catlá ("castellan" or lord of the castle) in an area largely defined by a day's ride, the region dotted with strongholds becoming known by them, like Castile at a later date, as "Catalunya." Counties in the Pyrenees that appeared in the 9th century as appanages of the counts of Barcelona included Cerdagne, Gerona and Urgel.

Related Topics:
Septimania - Charlemagne - Louis - Moorish - Marca Hispanica - Count of Barcelona - Pyrenees - Appanage - Cerdagne - Gerona - Urgel

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the early 9th century, Charlemagne issued his new kind of land grant the aprisio, which redisposed land belonging to the Imperial fisc in deserted areas, and included special rights and immunities that resulted in a range of independence of action. Historians interpret the aprisio both as the basis of feudalism and in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to a depopulated border region. Such self-sufficient landholders would aid the counts in providing armed men in defense of the Frankish frontier. Aprisio grants (the first ones were in Septimania) emanated directly from the Carolingian king, and they reinforced central loyalties, to counterbalance the local power exercised by powerful marcher counts.

Related Topics:
Fisc - Feudalism - Frontier - Septimania

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But communications were arduous, and the power center was far away. Primitive feudal entities developed, self-sufficient and agrarian, each ruled by a small hereditary military elite. The sequence in Catalonia exhibits a pattern that emerges similarly in marches everywhere. The Count is appointed by the king (from 802), the appointment settles on the heirs of a strong count (Sunifred) and the appointment becomes a formality, until the position is declared hereditary (897) and then the County declares itself independent (by Borrell II in 985). At each stage the de facto situation precedes the de jure assertion, which merely regularizes an existing fact of life. This is feudalism in the larger landscape.

Related Topics:
Feudal - Feudalism

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Certain of the Counts aspired to the characteristically Frankish (Germanic) title "Margrave of the Spanish March, a "margrave" being a graf ("count") of the march.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The early History of Andorra provides a fairly typical career of another such buffer state, the only modern survivor in the Pyrenees of the Spanish Marches. There the

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Archibald R. Lewis, "The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050"