The Territorial Policy and "Crisis" Facing Sant Cugat Monastery in Catalonia during the First Half of the Eleventh Century

Abstract

Sant Cugat del Valles, a Benedictine monastery in Catalonia (northeastern Spain), established large estates throughout the country of Barcelona, under both the direct and indirect protection of the Carolingian kings and the counts of Barcelona, especially at the end of the tenth century. The well-know ecclesiastical lord of early medieval Catalonia is supposed to have declined in the face of what is referred to as "mutation" or "revolution foedale," which the phenomenon of expanding castle-based lordship apparently caused during the first half of the eleventh century, sweeping aside much of the institutional structure of Visigoth public law, on which the authority of the local counts had been based. This paper explores this "crisis" from the standpoint of the monastery's territorial policy. To begin with, conflicts that occurred between San Cugat and local secular lords over castles and it territory (castrum) on the southeast border of Barcelona country (marca comitatus Barchinonennsis) have been regarded as starting point of the monastery' s decline, but in fact resulted from its rather high-handed claims basad on the Carolingian charters and Liber iudiciorum. During its disputes with secular lords, San Cugat began utilize Carta de Poblacion, or Carta Puebla, which the ruling class (kings, counts, secular and eccelesiastical lords) issued in order to encourage colonization of foreign territories. However, the move was probably not aimed at the colonization of Muslim-held lands or seignorial management in the economic sense, but rather at gaining political and military cooperation from secular lords, especially the local upstarts. On the other hand, San Cugat also seemed to enjoy close ties of cooperation with a particular magistrate in the region. There for, by forming partnerships with powerful local laymen monastely attempted to cope with the troublesome situation in which it had found itself by through the public courts and by its own device.