Monday, January 7, 2013 - Litany Lane Blog:
Revelation, First John 3:22, Psalms 2:7-11, Matthew 4:12-25, St Raymond of Penafort, Crown of Aragon, Catholic Catechism Chapter 2:1 God Comes to Meet ManGood Day Bloggers! Happy New Year, Bonne Annee!
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
Year of Faith - October 11, 2012 - November 24, 2013
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Serenity Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7.
The world begins and ends everyday for someone. We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift of knowledge and free will,
make the most of these gifts. Life on earth is a stepping stone to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Purgatory and/or Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
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December 25, 2012 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:
Our Lady came with little Jesus in her arms and she did not give a message, but little Jesus began to speak and said : “I am your peace, live my commandments.” With a sign of the cross, Our Lady and little Jesus blessed us together.
December 2, 2012 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:
Dear
children, with motherly love and motherly patience anew I call you to
live according to my Son, to spread His peace and His love, so that, as
my apostles, you may accept God's truth with all your heart and pray for
the Holy Spirit to guide you. Then you will be able to faithfully serve
my Son, and show His love to others with your life. According to the
love of my Son and my love, as a mother, I strive to bring all of my
strayed children into my motherly embrace and to show them the way of
faith. My children, help me in my motherly battle and pray with me that
sinners may become aware of their sins and repent sincerely. Pray also
for those whom my Son has chosen and consecrated in His name. Thank
you."
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Today's Word: revelation rev·e·la·tion [rev-uh-ley-shuh n]
Origin: 1275–1325; Middle English revelacion (< Old French ) < Late Latin revēlātiōn- (stem of revēlātiō ), equivalent to Latin revēlāt ( us ) (past participle of revēlāre to reveal) + -iōn- -ion
noun
1. the act of revealing or disclosing; disclosure.
2. something revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized.
3. Theology .
a. God's disclosure of Himself and His will to His creatures.
b. an instance of such communication or disclosure.
c. something thus communicated or disclosed.
d. something that contains such disclosure, as the Bible.
4. ( initial capital letter ) . Also called Revelations, The Revelation of St. John the Divine. the last book in the new testament; the Apocalypse. Abbreviation: Rev.
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Today's Old Testament Reading - Psalms 2:7-11
7 I will proclaim the decree of Yahweh: He said to me, 'You are my son, today have I fathered you.8 Ask of me, and I shall give you the nations as your birthright, the whole wide world as your possession.
10 So now, you kings, come to your senses, you earthly rulers, learn your lesson!
11 In fear be submissive to Yahweh;
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Today's Epistle - First John 3:22-4:6
22 and whatever we ask we shall receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what is acceptable to him.23 His commandment is this, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we should love one another as he commanded us.
24 Whoever keeps his commandments remains in God, and God in him. And this is the proof that he remains in us: the Spirit that he has given us.
1 My dear friends, not every spirit is to be trusted, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets are at large in the world.
2 This is the proof of the spirit of God: any spirit which acknowledges Jesus Christ, come in human nature, is from God,
3 and no spirit which fails to acknowledge Jesus is from God; it is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you have heard of; he is already at large in the world.
4 Children, you are from God and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
5 They are from the world, and therefore the world inspires what they say, and listens to them.
6 We are from God; whoever recognises God listens to us; anyone who is not from God refuses to listen to us. This is how we can distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.
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Today's Gospel Reading - Matthew 4:12-17.23-25
Hearing that John had been arrested he withdrew to Galilee, and leaving
Nazareth he went and settled in Capernaum, beside the lake, on the
borders of Zebulun and Naphtali. This was to fulfil what was spoken by
the prophet Isaiah: Land of Zebulun! Land of Naphtali! Way of the sea
beyond Jordan. Galilee of the nations! The people that lived in darkness
have seen a great light; on those who lived in a country of shadow dark
as death a light has dawned. From then onwards Jesus began his proclamation with the message, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.' He
went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing all kinds of disease
and illness among the people. His fame spread throughout Syria, and
those who were suffering from diseases and painful complaints of one
kind or another, the possessed, epileptics, the paralysed, were all
brought to him, and he cured them. Large crowds followed him, coming
from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judaea and Transjordan.
Reflection• A brief information on the
objective of the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew was written
during the second half of the first century in order to encourage the
small and fragile community of the converted Jews who lived in the
region of Galilee and Syria. They suffered persecution and threats on
the part of the Jewish brothers because they had accepted Jesus as the
Messiah and for having received the Pagans. In order to strengthen them
in their faith, the Gospel of Matthew insists in saying that Jesus is
really the Messiah and that the salvation which Jesus comes to bring is
not only for the Jews, but for all of humanity. At the beginning of his
Gospel, in the genealogy, Matthew already indicates this universal
vocation of Jesus, because being “son of Abraham” (Mt 1, 1.17) he will
be a source of blessings for all the nations of the world” (cfr. Gen 12,
3). In the visit of the Magi, who came from the East, he suggests once
again that the salvation is addressed to the Pagans (Mt 2, 1-12). In the
text of today’s Gospel, he shows that the light which shines in the
Galilee of the Gentiles” shines also outside the frontiers of Israel, in
the Decapolis and beyond the Jordan (Mt 4, 12-25). Further on, in the
Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus will say that the vocation of the
Christian community is that of being “salt of the earth and light of the
world” (Mt 5, 13-14) and he asks to love the enemies (Mt 5, 43-48).
Jesus is the servant of God who announces the rights of the nations (Mt
12, 18). Helped by the Canaanite woman, Jesus himself overcomes the
barriers of races (Mt 15, 21-28). He also overcomes the laws of purity
which prevented the Gospel to be opened to the Pagans (Mt 15, 1-20). And
finally, when Jesus sends his disciples to all Nations, the
universality of salvation is even clearer (Mt 28, 19-20). In the same
way, the communities are called to open themselves to all, without
excluding anyone, because all are called to live as sons and daughters
of God.
• Today’s Gospel describes how this universal mission is an initiative. The news of the imprisonment of John the Baptist impels Jesus to begin his preaching. John had said: “Repent, because the Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mt 4, 17). This was the reason why he was imprisoned by Herod. When Jesus knew that John had been imprisoned, he returned to Galilee proclaiming the same message: “Repent, because the Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mt 4, 17). In other words, from the beginning, the preaching of the Gospel had risks, but Jesus did not allow himself to be frightened. In this way, Matthew encourages the communities which were running the same risks of persecution. He quotes the text of Isaiah: “The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light!” Like Jesus, the communities are also called to be “the light of nations!”
• Jesus began the announcement of the Good News going through the whole of Galilee. He does not stop, waiting for the people to arrive, but he goes toward the people. He himself participates in the meetings, in the Synagogues, to announce his message. The people bring the sick, the possessed, and Jesus accepts all, and cures them. This service to the sick forms part of the Good News and reveals to the people the presence of the Kingdom.
• Thus, the fame of Jesus is diffused in all the region, goes beyond the frontier of Galilee, penetrates Judah, and reaches Jerusalem, goes beyond the Jordan and reaches Syria and the Decapolis. In this region there are also some communities for whom Matthew was writing his Gospel. Now they know that, in spite of all the difficulties and the risks, there is already the light which shines in the darkness.
Personal questions• Some times, are you also light for others?
• Today, many close themselves up in the Catholic Religion. How can we live today the universality of salvation?
• Today, many close themselves up in the Catholic Religion. How can we live today the universality of salvation?
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.
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Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane
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Saint of the Day: St Raymond of Pennafort
Feast Day: January 7
Patron Saint: Canonists, Lawyers
 |
| St Raymond of Penafort |
Raymond of Peñafort was born in Vilafranca del Penedès, a small town near Barcelona, Catalonia, around 1175. He was educated in Barcelona and at the University of Bologna, where he received doctorates in both civil and canon law. From 1195 to 1210, he taught canon law. In 1210, he moved to Bologna, where he remained until 1222, including three years occupying the Chair of canon law at the university. He was chaplain to Pope Alexander IV, and confessor of King James I of Aragon.
Raymond returned to the Iberian peninsula in 1236. Not long able to remain in seclusion, however, he was made Master of the Order of Preachers
in 1238, but resigned in 1240. It was during his tenure that he revised
the Dominican Constitutions. Having reached his sixtieth year, Raymond
retired in Barcelona.
He was instrumental in the founding of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy.[1] When approached by Peter Nolasco,
Raymond encouraged and assisted him in obtaining the consent of King
James I of Aragon for the foundation of the Order. Returning to
Barcelona in 1222, he entered the Dominican Order.
Raymond died in 1275 and was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in the year 1601. He is buried in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia in Barcelona.
Gregorian Decretals
Knowing Raymond's reputation in the juridical sciences, Pope Gregory IX summoned him to Rome in 1230 to help in the rearranging and codifying of canon law.
Canon laws, which were previously found scattered in many publications,
were to be organized into one set of documents. In particular papal decretal letters had been changing the law over the course of the previous 100 years since the publication of the Decretum of Gratian.
Being pleased with Raymond's efforts, the pope announced the new
publication in a Bull directed to the doctors and students of Paris and
Bologna in 1231, commanding that the work of Raymond alone should be
considered authoritative, and should alone be used in the schools. His
collection of canon law, known as the Decretals of Gregory IX, became a standard for almost 700 years. When Raymond completed his work, the pope appointed him Archbishop of Tarragona, but he declined the honour. Raymond followed this with the publication of a work on penitential discipline, Summa casuum, which is widely considered an authoritative work on the subject. Canon law was finally fully codified by 1917.
Conversion of Jews and Muslims
Tomb of Saint Raymond in Cathedral of Barcelona.
There, his principal aim became to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and for the furtherance of this aim he caused both Arabic and Hebrew to be studied and taught in the higher schools conducted by Dominicans, the Studia Linguarum. He also encouraged Thomas Aquinas to write his work Summa contra Gentiles.
He exercised great influence over King James of Aragon and succeeded
in persuading him to order a public debate, concerning Judaism and
Christianity, between Moshe ben Nahman, a rabbi in Girona, and Paulus Christiani, a baptized Jew of Montpellier
who belonged to the Dominicans. In this debate, which took place in the
royal palace at Barcelona from 20–24 July 1263, in the presence of the
king and of many of the higher clergy, Raymond took an important part.
He was at the head of the theologians present, and in agreement with the
king gave the rabbi perfect freedom of speech. Raymond simply observed
to Moses ben Nachman that he must not allow himself to blaspheme
Christianity, to which Moses replied that he knew what the laws of
propriety demanded. On the Jewish Sabbath following the close of the debate, the king, together with many preaching friars and other clergy, visited the synagogue. There, Raymond allegedly delivered an address on the Trinity, which Moses ben Nachman denied. He was among those who established the Inquisition in Catalonia.[2]
Feast day
His feast day was inserted in the General Roman Calendar in 1671 for celebration on 23 January. In 1969 it was moved to 7 January, the day after that of his death.[3] He is the patron saint of canon lawyers, specifically, and lawyers, in general.
References
- ^ Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-14-051312-4.
- ^ Michael Walsh, ed. "Butler's Lives of the Saints," HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 1991, pp. 7.
- ^ "Calendarium Romanum" (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), pp. 85 and 114
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.- ●▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬♥▬●▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬♥▬●▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬●
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Today's Snippet I: Crown of Aragon
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The Crown of Aragon (Aragonese: Corona d'Aragón, Catalan: Corona d'Aragó, Latin: Corona Aragonum, Spanish: Corona de Aragón)[nb 1] was a composite monarchy,[1] also referred to as a confederation of individual polities[3] or kingdoms[2] ruled by one king with a personal and dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the county of Barcelona. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy (a state with primarily maritime realms) controlling a large portion of the present-day eastern Spain and southwestern France,
as well as some of the major islands and mainland possessions
stretching across the Mediterranean as far as Greece. The component
realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of
the king, who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own
laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with
each cortes. Put in contemporary terms, the disparate lands of Aragon functioned more as a confederacy
of cultures rather than as a single country. In this sense, the larger
Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts,
the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name.
In 1469, a new dynastic familial union of the Crown of Aragon with the Crown of Castile by the Catholic Monarchs, joining what contemporaries referred to as "the Spains"[4] led to what would become the Kingdom of Spain under King Philip II. The Crown existed until it was abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1716 as a consequence of the defeat of Archduke Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Context
Formally, the political center of the Crown of Aragon was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned at La Seo Cathedral. Leading economic centres of the Crown of Aragon were the cities of Barcelona and Valencia. Finally, Palma (Majorca) was an additional important city and seaport.
The Crown of Aragon eventually included the Kingdom of Aragon, the County of Barcelona, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Sicily, Malta, the Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sardinia. For brief periods the Crown of Aragon also controlled Montpellier, Provence, Corsica, the Duchy of Neopatria in Latin Greece and the Duchy of Athens.
The countries that are today known as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of the South and against each other.
In the Late Middle Ages, the expansion of the Aragonese Crown southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, which completed its Reconquista in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known as almogàvers
participated in the creation of this Mediterranean "empire", and later
found employment in countries all across southern Europe.
The Crown of Aragon has been considered an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, with the power to set rules over the entire sea (for instance, the Llibre del Consolat del Mar or Book of the Consulate of the Sea, written in Catalan, is one of the oldest compilation of maritime laws in the world). It was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe.
However, its different territories were only connected through the person of the monarch, an aspect of empire as early as Achaemenid Persia. A contemporary, the Marqués de Lozoya[5] described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralised kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents ever refer to it as an empire (Imperium or any cognate word); instead, it was considered a dynastic union of autonomous kingdoms.
History
Origin
The Aragonese empire originated in 1137, when the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona (with the County of Provence) merged by dynastic union[6][7] by the marriage of Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona and Petronilla of Aragon; their titles were combined in the person of their son Alfonso II of Aragon,
who ascended to the throne in 1162. This union respected the existing
institutions and parliaments of both territories. Although the County of
Barcelona was the wealthier, given its position on the Mediterranean,
the combined state was known as Aragon, given its higher ranking as a
kingdom due to lineage from Imperator Hispaniae Sancho III of Navarre.[8] Also Petronilla's father King Ramiro,
known as "The Monk" for his incapacity to rule the Aragonese troops,
was the youngest brother of all three. He was raised in the Saint Pons
de Thomières Monastery in the south of France. His brothers Peter I and
Alfonso I El Batallador (The Battler) who re-conquered Murcia had
died in battle. Then, knowing nothing about war he decided to make an
alliance with his neighbour Raymond Berengar IV the Count of Barcelona.
Raymond was forced in the wedding contract to recognise Ramiro II as "My
King, My Lord, and my Father" he became part of the Aragonese dynasty.
Then Raymond was entitled as "Prince of the Aragonese" (Chief of the
Aragonese Army).
Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona, the new ruler of the united
dynasty, still called himself count of Barcelona and merely "prince" of
Aragon.[9]
Expansion
Alfonso II tried to conquer Valencia when favourable circumstances offered, but the opportunity was lost when Sancho VI of Navarre invaded Aragon. Alfonso II signed the treaties of Cazola with Alfonso VIII of Castile
in order to secure the Aragonese frontiers. The treaty also delimited
anew their zones of prospective Moorish conquest—the Kings of Aragon
were to have Valencia, leaving Murcia to Castile.[10]
From the 9th century, the dukes of Aquitaine, the counts of Foix, the counts of Toulouse and the Aragonese kings rivalled in their attempts at controlling the various pays of Occitania.
The Crown of Aragon was widespread in the area that is now south of
France, under the control of vassal local princes, such as the Counts of Toulouse. The rebellion of the Cathars
or Albigensians rejected the authority and the teachings of the
Catholic Church and led to the loss of the southern France possessions.
Pope Innocent III called upon Phillip II of France to suppress the
Albigensians—The Albigensian Crusade,
which led to bring the Occitania region firmly under the control of the
King of France, and the Capetian dynasty from northern France.
Peter II returned from Las Navas in autumn 1212 to find that Simon de Montfort had conquered Toulouse, exiling Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who was Peter's brother-in-law and vassal. Peter's army crossed the Pyrenees and arrived at Muret accompanied by Raymond of Toulouse's forces, in September 1213 to confront Montfort's army.
The Battle of Muret
began on September 12, 1213. The Aragonese forces were disorganised and
disintegrated under the assault of Montfort's squadrons. Peter himself
was caught in the thick of fighting, and died as a result of a foolhardy
act of bravado. So, the nobility of Toulouse, vassals of the Crown of
Aragon, was defeated. The conflict culminated in the Treaty of
Meaux-Paris in 1229, in which it was agreed the integration of the
Occitan territory in the French crown.
King James I (13th century) started the era of expansion, by conquering and incorporating Majorca and a good part of the Kingdom of Valencia to the Crown. With the Treaty of Corbeil (1258), which was based upon the principle of natural frontiers,[11]
French claims over Catalonia came to an end. The general principle was
clear, that Aragonese influence north of the Pyrenees was to cease.[11]
James I had realized that wasting his forces and distracting his
energies in attempts to keep a footing in France could only end in
disaster.[11]
On January 1266, James I besieged and captured Murcia, settled his own
men, mostly Catalans, there; and handed Murcia over to Castile by the
treaty of Cazorla.[12]
Majorca, together with the counties of Cerdanya and Roussillon, and the city of Montpellier, was held independently from 1276 to 1279 by James II of Majorca as a vassal of the Crown after that date, becoming a full member of the Crown of Aragon in 1344.
Valencia was made a new kingdom with its own institutions, and so was
the third member of the crown—the legal status of Majorca was not as
consistent as those of Aragón, Catalonia.
On 1282, the Sicilians rose up against the second dynasty of the Angevins on the Sicilian Vespers and massacred the garrison soldiers. Peter III responded to their call, and landed in Trapani to an enthusiastic welcome five months later. This caused Pope Martin IV to excommunicate the king, place Sicily under interdict, and offer the kingdom of Aragon to a son of Philip III of France.[13][14]
When Peter III refused to impose the Charters of Aragon in
Valencia, the nobles and towns united in Zaragoza to demand a
confirmation of their privileges, which the king had to accept on 1283.
Thus began the Union of Aragon, which developed the power of the Justícia to mediate between the king and the Aragonese rich men. [13]
When James II of Aragon—not
to be confused with James II of Majorca—completed the conquest of the
kingdom of Valencia, the Crown of Aragon established itself as one of
the major powers in Europe.
By grant of Pope Boniface VIII to James II, the kingdoms of Sardinia and Corsica
were added to the Crown in 1297, though it would not be for more than a
century that they were brought under control. By marriage of Peter IV to Maria of Sicily, the Kingdom of Sicily, as well as the duchies of Athens and Neopatria, were added to the Crown in 1381. The Greek possessions were permanently lost to Nerio I Acciaioli in 1388 and Sicily was dissociated in the hands of Martin I from 1395 to 1409, but the Kingdom of Naples was added finally in 1442 by conquest of Alfonso V.
The King's possessions outside of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands were ruled by proxy through local elites as petty kingdoms,
rather than subjected directly to a centralised government. They were
more an economic part of the Crown of Aragon than a political one.
The fact that the King was keen on settling new kingdoms instead of
merely expanding the existing kingdoms was a part of a power struggle
that pitted the interests of the king against those of the existing nobility. This process was also under way in most of the European states that successfully effected the transition to the Early Modern state. Thus, the new territories gained from the Moors—namely Valencia and Majorca—were usually given fueros—Catalan furs—as
an instrument of self-government in order to limit the power of
nobility in these new acquisitions and, at the same time, increase their
allegiance to the monarchy itself. The trend in the neighbouring kingdom of Castile was similar, both kingdoms giving impetus to the Reconquista by granting self-government either to cities or territories, instead of placing the new territories under the rule of nobility.
Union with Castile
In 1410, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. As a result, by the Pact of Caspe, Ferdinand of Antequera from the Castilian dynasty of Trastámara, received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon.
Later, his grandson King Ferdinand II of Aragon recovered the northern Catalan counties—Roussillon and Cerdagne—which had been lost to France and also the kingdom of Navarre, which had recently joined the Crown of Aragon but had been lost after internal dynastic disputes.
In 1469, Ferdinand married Infanta Isabella of Castile, half-sister of King Henry IV of Castile, who became Queen of Castile and León after his death in 1474. Their marriage was a dynastic union[15][16][17] which became the constituent event for the dawn of the Kingdom of Spain. At that point both Castile
and the Crown of Aragon remained distinct territories, each keeping its
own traditional institutions, parliaments and laws. The process of
territorial consolidation was completed when King Charles I,
known as Emperor Charles V, in 1516 united all the kingdoms on the
Iberian peninsula minus the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarve under
one monarch—his co-monarch and mother Queen Joanna I in confinement—thereby furthering the creation of the Spanish state, albeit a decentralised one.
Dissolution
The literary evocation of past splendour recalls correctly the great
age of the 13th and 14th centuries, when Valencia, Majorca and Sicily
were conquered, the population growth could be handled without social
conflict, and the urban prosperity, which peaked in 1345, created the
institutional and cultural achievements of the Crown.[18]
The Aragonese crown's wealth and power stagnated and its authority was
steadily transferred to the new Spanish crown after that date—the
demographic growth was partially offset by the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), Muslims (1502) and the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609).[19]
It was unable to prevent the loss of Roussillon in 1659, the loss of
Minorca and its Italian domains in 1707–1716, and the imposition of
French language on Roussillon (1700) and Castilian as the language of
government in all the old Aragonese Crown lands in Spain (1707–1716).[19]
The Crown of Aragon and its institutions were abolished in 1716 only after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) by the Nueva Planta decrees, issued by Philip V of Spain.[19]
The old regime was swept away, the administration was subsumed into the
Castilian administration, the lands of the Crown were united formally
with those of Castile to legally form a single state, the kingdom of
Spain, as it moved towards a centralized government under the new Bourbon dynasty.[19]
Nationalist revisionism
Some of the nationalist movements
in Spain consider the former kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon to be the
foundation of their nations, the Catalan nationalist movement being the
strongest one. Spanish nationalism,
on the other hand, places more importance in the later dynastic union
with the Crown of Castile and considers it the origin of one Spanish
nation. Historians in Spain can sometimes incur in biased revisions of
history due to that fact.
The punishments on the territories that had fought against Philip V in the War of Succession are used by some Valencian and Catalan nationalists
as arguments against the centralism of Spanish nationalism and in favor
of federalism, confederation, or even independence. Some Aragonese took
refuge in the myth of an ancient constitution dated before the
beginnings or recorded medieval time, while the Catalans remembered
their privileges, which they associated with their Generalitat and resistance to Castile.[20] Because restoration of fueros was one of its tenets, Carlism won support in the lands of the Crown of Aragon during the 19th century.
The Romanticism of the 19th century Catalan Renaixença evoked a "Pyrenean realm" that corresponded more to the vision of 13th century troubadours than to the historical reality of the Crown.[20] This vision survives today as "a nostalgic programme of politicised culture".[20]
Pennon
The origin of Coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon is the familiar coat of the Counts of Barcelona and Kings of Aragon.[21] The Pennon was used exclusively by the monarchs of the Crown and was expressive of their sovereignty.[22] James III of Majorca, vassal of the Kingdom of Aragon, used a coat of arms with four bars, as seen on the Leges Palatinae miniatures.
Institutions
Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia each had a legislative body, known as the Cortes in Aragon or Corts in Catalonia and Valencia. A Diputación General was established in each, becoming known as a Generalidad in Aragon and Generalitat in Catalonia and Valencia.
Capital
During the 15-16th century the Crown's de facto capital was Naples: after Alfonso V of Aragon, also Ferdinand II of Aragon
settled the capital in Naples. Alfonso, in particular, wanted to
transform Naples into a real Mediterranean capital, lavishing also huge
sums to embellish it further.[23] Later the courts were itinerant[24] until Philip II of Spain.
The Spanish historian Domingo Buesa Conde has argued that Zaragoza
ought to be considered the political capital, but not economic or
administrative, due to the obligation of the kings to be crowned at the Seo of Zaragoza.[nb 2]
Composition
The crown was made up of the following states (which are nowadays parts of the modern countries of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, and Andorra):
| Name | Type of entity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
 Andorra |
Co-principality | Established in 1278, briefly annexed by Aragon in 1396 and again in 1512 |
 Aragon |
Kingdom | Established in 848 as a County and, in 1035, as Kingdom, from a division of the Kingdom of Navarre |
 Athens |
Duchy | Established 1205, inherited through the Kingdom of Sicily in 1381 |
| Catalonia |
County, later Principality | Established in 801, merged with Aragon in 1162 |
 Gévaudan |
County | Inherited in 1166 by Alfonso II |
 Majorca |
Kingdom | Established in 1231 by James I, including Roussillon and Montpellier |
 Naples |
Kingdom | Established in 1282 after the Sicilian Vespers, splitting the kingdom of Sicily in two parts: insular and peninsular |
 Neopatria |
Duchy | Established 1319, inherited through the Kingdom of Sicily in 1381 |
| Provence |
County | Inherited with the county of Barcelona in 1162 |
 Sardinia |
Kingdom | Awarded to the crown by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297, including Corsica |
 Sicily |
Kingdom | Established in 1130, added to the crown in 1381; including Malta |
 Valencia |
Kingdom | Established in 1238, following the conquest of the Moorish taifa |
References
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Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One: Profession of Faith, Chapter 2:1
CHAPTER TWO, SECTION ONE
GOD COMES TO MEET MAN
50
By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works.
But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by
his own powers: the order of divine Revelation.Cf. Dei Filius DS 3015 Through an utterly
free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does
by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity
in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by
sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
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