Parliament, Noble Fiscal Obligations, and Taxation
The argument in this book suggests that where institutional fusion is observed, ruler powers to compel the nobility must be higher. A key indicator was taxation of the nobility and, indeed, a main trait of the Catalan regime was that, unlike in Aragon, Valencia, and later Castile, the Catalan nobility was taxed, both the rural aristocracy and the urban patriciate,[967] though not as systematically as in England.
Accessible sources do not allow the detailed picture that was presented for the English case about taxation (or participation in judicial procedures); however, evidence about loans and debt suggests a similar pattern to England especially in the critical early institutional development of the county, despite weaker ruler powers.Catalan count-princes relied on domestic lending from powerful vasÂsals and allies. In the early period of institutional beginnings, Ramon Berenguer IV (1131-62) obtained loans by pawning county property.[968] As Bisson showed, a “striking revival of county borrowing” occurred under Peter II (1196-1213), due to military expeditions between 1210 and 1213 - with borrowing rising sixteen times over a few years. “In some years - 1204-1206, 1209, 1212 - loans must have constituted the main source of county income. The creditors were chiefly lay magnates and allies - the king of Navarre, the viscount of Bearn, the count of Urgell, plus other Catalonian barons.”[969] Unpaid loans were a recurring source of conflict.71 Most of the lenders were thus regular and important particiÂpants in the meetings of the Corts and their fiscal outlays provided them with powerful incentives to support the extension of the crown’s capacity to extract from the whole territory - echoing the Eumenes effect observed in England. Bisson finds similar incentives in Catalan bailiffs as well, who were often creditors of the king, thus explaining why they were more centralized compared to their counterparts in France.72 Later loans were raised against ordinary and extraordinary income from the realm.73 Personal ties were thus a crucial factor in securing liquidity for the crown but also in incentivizing social actors to support parliament.
Taxation, however, did not spearhead Catalan parliamentary meetings nor were the urban, mercantile groups the key actor - again as in England.
Taxes did not become central in assembly meetings until well into the thirteenth century - whereas assemblies had achieved some regularity since the 1160s. Moreover, towns did not approve taxes until even later, in the fourteenth century. Of about sixty-four meetings until 1327, sixÂteen (25 percent) dealt with taxation per se (Figure 8.3).[970] Taxation was raised more regularly after 1214 and became a major preoccupation after 1283, i.e. after a full century of meetings.[971] Coinage was a more frequent preoccupation in Aragon (in 14 percent of meetings), but in five Catalan meetings count-princes also promised not to devalue in exchange for grants by subjects. Count-princes also raised funds by alienating towns and villages, but this was mostly a later phenomenon.[972] Although these practices were more clearly a bargaining exchange between the ruler and subjects, they reflected weaker ruler powers overall; alienations, espeÂcially, decreased the landed wealth of the count-prince.Finally, explanations predicated on commercial urban groups and their bargaining power are challenged since towns had a limited role in the Corts in the century before the 1270s - less than half of the meetings had representatives (considerably less than in the whole of Aragon, where half the meetings had townsmen). Even when present, as in the Corts of 1228, only the named nobility and clergy granted the subsidy for war (though towns pledged their fleet).[973] Catalan towns were represented by the king, who was their feudal senyor.78 They participated fully after 1283, but royal enforcement of concessions to them lagged, as Bisson noted,79 as they did with Magna Carta. Moreover, it was not until the 1360s that the municiÂpal contributions were decided by all the estates together with the countÂprince, as examined in the next section.80 The prior period of comital strength was critical to this outcome.
8.6
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