THE FEUDAL DOMAIN OF PALLARS JUSSÁ (C. 1175): A RECORD OF OBLIGATIONS AND CUSTOM*

Among diverse records pertaining to the administration of fiefs in Catalonia in the later twelfth century is an undated memorial of lenures and obligations in the county of Pallars Jussá. This record has been neglected by historians of Pallars because it is not to be found in (he archives of that región. Its ideal editor would have been lgnasi Puig i Ferrete and many scholars will share my sorrow that this promising young medievalist did not live to complete his work on the early history of Pallars. The record poses problems that he could best have solved —and some that I cannot solve— but its interest for the study of feudal custom in the twelfth century is so considerable that some attempt to explain it should no longer be defferred'. As it happens the

record is preserved among the pergamins Extrainventari of the Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó (series Cancellería), a series in which Professor Frederic Udina Martorell has taken such devoted and productive interest.Dr. Udina introduced me to the ACÁ some twenty years ago and he has aided my research in many ways.The present study is offered to him in token of my gratitude.
ACÁ Extrainventari 3411 is a strip of parchment inscribed in a large clear hand characteristic of the upland counties.It contains a record of allods, manses, castles, and fiefs together with the ñames of tenants and knights holding of the count of Pallars Jussá.Someone wanted to know what the count possessed in domains and strongholds administered directly or enfeoffed or pledged and who were his chief tenants.Who needed this information?When?And why?These questions alone will occupy me here and to the extent that I can deal at all with the last of them -why the record was made-a larger problem will be suggested that must be reserved for treatment elsewhere.
Who made the record is not easy to say.The entries are almost exclusively in impersonal language that conceals the author's identity.These entries refer to the «count» (which count?), to the king, and to great and lesser tenants.Only the first entry contains clues to the author's identity, and even these clues are ambiguous.It says that Eus is an allod pledged for 320 morabetins, «& habeo potestatem de ipso /castro <£ Guitelmus d'isla erat suus solidus homo comítis» 2 .The obvious possibility is that ¡t is the count of Pallars himself who says (or is made to say) «1 have power of the castle».This possibility is strengthened when we consider alternatives.The scribe cannot have been writing in the king's ñame, for the king military obiigations in hoste regís; even in the first entry the tenant of Eus is described as solidus Maria-Mercé Cosía, I have attempted to learn whether Dr. Puig had studied the lext edited here, but without result.For comparable records, see T.N.Bis-SON, «Feudalism in iwelfth-century Catatonía», Structuresféodales el féodalisme dans i'Occidem méditerranéen (x-xm siécles).Bilan el perspectives de recherches, Bibliothéque de l'École Francaise de Rome 44, Rome 1980,  pp.173-192, at 187-188.  2 Further references to the appended record are not noted.
homo comitis.The only other possibility is the tenant Galceran de Pinos, of whom something is said below; but he, too, is mentioned only in objective terms.The most likely interpretation is therefore that a scribe writing for the count of Pallars began the record in the count's voice before deciding to represent the tenures as objective realities in third-person language.And if that is so we may further conjecture that the count in question was Ramón VI (1174-1178) 1 .Again in the first entry the imperfect form eral (above at note 2) suggests (although the phrase is not conclusive to this effect) that the scribe began by thinking of a late count historically instead of objectively.But in any case the record can hardly be much later than the time of Ramon's death, for he was the last (male) count of Pallars Jussá.Ñor can it be much earlier than about 1175, for it was only then that the king's men, fresh from their resumption of Rosselló, began to take interest in Pallars Jussá.Galceran de Pinos III was obliged to recognize before the king's court in 1180 that he had lent money to Count Arnau Mir (1112-1174), for which Tolo castle was pledged, and later to Ramón VI, for which half of the villa of Guils was pledged 1 .Now the pledge of Tolo figures in the memorial of domain, but not that of Guils, a circumstance from which we may infer that the memorial dates from early in the tenure of Ramón VI.If we may accordingly place it about 1175, we may suppose that its purpose was to establish the state of the feudal domain of Pallars Jussá at the accession of a new count following the very long reign of his father.
Such a purpose is consistent with the contents of the record.It lists some 32 places or tenures, some eighteen, named tenants, plus an indeterminate number of castellans and knights.Three general observations may be made about this ¡nformation.First, it was not intended to cover the comital domain in its entirety.
One has only to compare this memorial with the testaments of Arnau Mir of 1157 and 1171 to see that numerous tenures in the heartland of Pallars Jussá are not mentioned ¡n the later record: for example, manses al Llordá, Mur, Isona, Basturs, and Durro.Ñor is the difference simply that between manses and castles.The testaments mention castles that do not figure in the memorial, while the latter for its part refers to at least one manse or unfortifíed domain5 .Nevertheless, ít would be generally correct to conclude that the memorial is a feudal record, not a fiscal one.It is concerned above all with ihe count's military resources, with his allies and his alliances.
This point suggests a second observation.Of the 32 toponyms Usted, at least eight are locations in Cerdanya or Conflent, far to the east of Pallars Jussá.None of these places figures in the testaments of Arnau Mir; what is more, in the memoria!these places are listed first, preceding the castles of Pallars Jussá, Ribagorca, and Aragón.This fact tends to confirm our attribution of the memorial, for we know from his testament, dated 4 September 1177, that Ramón VI had holdings in Cerdanya and Conflent6 .lt is clear that Ramón had developed this eastern honor on his own; nothing was said of it in his father's second testament, one purpose of which was to define his son's right to a succession that had been devised very differently in 1157.
My third observation pertains to the structure that revealed by the memorial, lt is a complicated structure that suggests a conception of feudal order in full gestation.The basic principie is that castles and domains are held by the count or by his «sólid men».The term solidus homo may be translated as «vassal», or more exactly as «liege vassal»; but as elsewhere in Catalonia the term vassalus is not employed'.Tenures are spoken of as allods (alodium, alodio) or as fiefs (fevum), but these terms are not categorically exclusive.«Guils is a comital allod and Gui-llem Ramón holds it in fief of the count of Pallars only for his lifetime».Other mentions confirm that feva are conditional, temporary, or revocable tenures, just as they had been in the tenth century.This does not mean that baronial tenures of the count were never hereditary; it only means that such tenures were not fiefs.Cavelleriae held of the count are mentioned (as such) at Uisseí.«Solidity» could be defined collectively: the «knights of Ur are solidus of the count of Pallars for the honor they hold of him».The knights of Osséja hold of the count «in fief».
There ¡s perhaps one other form of tenure to be noted: tenure by pledge.No fewer than eleven (or one-third) of the domains were pledged for loans when our memorial was written, loans of sums ranging from 140s. to 35OOs.Now in at least one case -that of Castellons for 500 morabetins-the pledge was of many years' standing, for it figures already in the testament of 11578 .It is true that at that time Arnau Mir expressed the hope that the pledge would soon be redeemed.Yet in this case as in those of pledges held by Galceran de Pinos, it looks very much as if the commission of castles to trusted creditors may have been a useful means of securing administrative service without creating hereditary tenures.
There are signs that the custom of castles is more developed, and perhaps less flexible, in the central and Aragonese domains of Pallars.Ramón de Casserras is the count's solidus for Lascuarre and the demesne of Montannana, for which he owes the count two knights in the king's host, which he supplies at his own expense.The service of two knights figures also at Soso, Aguilar, Buil, Castigaleu, and the valley of Bardaixí; at Fantova the obligation is three knights; at Luzás, Riela, Cabanas de Ebro, and Castro it is one knight.More nearly uniform is the obligation for five castellanies of the heartland of Pallars Jussá: at Montannana, Aren, Orrit, Castissent, and Talarn the castellans each owe two knights for service within Pallars and Ribagorca, and one for the {king's) host.
The customs of Pallars Jussá thus vary according to zone.In Ramón Vt's acquisitions to the northeast, the stress ¡s on the «solid» fidelity of the count's tenants; there alone is mentioned the Catalonian custom of taking «power» of castles.The tenants include great barons, such as Galceran de Pinos and the viscount of Fenouillet, as well as local barons and knights of Cerdanaya and Conflent.These men, we may surmise, are not so much «administrative tenants» as allies of a count anxious to extend his influence in a prosperous zone whose exploitation the countking was content to leave to the Templars and other barons of tested fidelity'.Perhaps not accidentally the pledged domains mentioned in the memorial lay mostly in the eastern zone.In Aragón, on the other hand, Ramón was heir to his father's tenancies at Buil, Riela, and Cabanas de Ebro in fidelity to the king.In these places and doubtless also in the castellanies of Ribagorca, with their baronial subtenants and quotas of knights, we may discern the influence of Aragonese tenurial custom.Finally, there is an internal zone in Pallars Jussá proper where the system of quotas appears to be Aragonese, but in which the military obligation to the count is confined to Pallars and Ribagorca.
Everywhere the count is lord and overlord.He is lord of men as well as of domains.In fact, he possesses men like lands: «the knights of Uisset are the count's», and in describing the Aragonese domain the memorial lists comended men almost interchangeably with tenures of castles.Everwhere, moreover, the king is overlord: «the knights of Uisset are the count's, salva fidelitate regís», a custom of reserved fealty likewise attested in Urgell 1 ".Military obligations in Pallars and Aragón are subordinated to the king's overriding right to service in an extra-regional host.The scribe's capitalization and punctuation are mostly retained in this transcriptíon.The annotation is limited to points on which comment, query, or citations are provided.For the identifications, see Index Nominum.