[114] The Montcadas were influential figures in Catalonia between 1175 and 1230. As confidants and lieutenants of count-kings and as important territorial lords, they extended the prestige that Guillem Ramon [II] Seneschal had acquired for their lineage. Unlike the preceding half-century, when Guillem Ramon dominated the family, there was a proliferation of Montcada family members of rank and importance in these years. The change coincided with an evolution in kinship structures in the north of France toward the establishment of satellite houses around ancestral residences.⁽¹⁾ But because of the Great Seneschal's spectacular success in extending his family's territorial lordship to reconquered Catalonia and Béarn, the Montcadas, unlike their northern French counterparts, were able to found new branches and improve their status in society without impoverishing the family's central domains.

The new mutual interdependence of the Montcadas and their lords, the count-kings, was demonstrated in the period 1175- 1230. This was no longer a time of feudal revolution as had erupted in the eleventh century, nor was it a period of solitary individualism like that which had marked some moments in the career of the Great Seneschal. It was rather an era in which Montcada interests were increasingly integrated with the political, financial, and administrative [115] affairs of the count-kings. More than ever, the history of individual Montcadas was influenced by historical factors of regional significance.

At the end of the twelfth century, the focus of the count-kings of Catalonia moved increasingly to the north and east. Following a long period of rivalry with the kings of Castile and Navarre, the house of Barcelona now had to defend its interests in Languedoc and Provence. The count-kings also opened channels of communication to the eastern Mediterranean in this period; but they gave little attention to the Muslim south. Ultimately, the Albigensian Crusade and its aftermath eliminated any hope of establishing Catalonia-Aragon as the preponderant monarchy in the Midi and from the 1220s on the political interests of the house of Barcelona shifted away from Languedoc and Provence to focus first on the Balears, then on Valencia, and then on the Mediterranean as a whole.

In this decisive phase of Catalonia's history, the Montcadas were secondary actors in the major events that shaped the future of the Barcelona dynasty. As a rule they supported the count-kings -- participating in their political initiatives in the eastern Mediterranean, joining their military intervention in Languedoc, and guaranteeing institutional continuity before Jaume I had come of age -- primarily because this seemed the wisest policy for them. But in certain matters of self-interest, they did not hesitate to work against their prince. In the end, the Montcadas' independence had little effect on the direction of Catalonian history in this period. But the family contributed moments of drama to a historical scenario of considerable dimension.

Following the Great Seneschal's death, the job of maintaining continuity in Montcada influence on the Catalonian political scene fell to his second son, Ramon de Montcada [I]. Ramon, who was by then associated with the lordship of Tortosa-Lleida, assumed his father's role of confidant to the young count-king, Alfons I, in 1173. He was succeeded as lord of Tortosa-Lleida in 1190 by his son Ramon de Montcada [II], and a second son, Guillem Ramon [III], inherited the title of seneschal (see Chart 1).

The major portion of the Great Seneschal's inheritance, however, had been destined for his eldest son, Guillem de Montcada [II], lord of Montcada and Vic, and husband of Maria, viscountess [116] of Béarn. But Guillem's death in 1172 prevented him from transmitting this heritage to his sons. The Great Seneschal, their grandfather, approved a division in his testament of 1173 whereby the eldest son of Guillem and Maria, Gastó, would receive the viscounty of Béarn as an inheritance. The Montcada patrimony would go to the second son, Guillem Ramon de Montcada [I].⁽²⁾ This division created Béarnese and Catalonian branches of the family for a time, but they were reunited in 1214 after Gastó had died without leaving heirs (see Chart 2).

The marriage and knighting of Alfons I, just a year after the Great Seneschal's death in 1173, liberated the young count-king in theory from control of his regents. But he did not seek complete independence from these barons. Indeed, the history of the Montcadas provides evidence of continuity between the two periods of Alfons's rule: one of the individuals who now actively supported the count-king both in Catalonia and in Languedoc- Provence was Ramon de Montcada [I], lord of Tortosa-Lleida and heir to his father's office of seneschal.

The seneschalcy bequeathed by Guillem Ramon [II] to his second son in 1173 was not an office per se. No discernible duties distinguished the incumbent from any one of a number of other barons who appeared frequently in the retinues of the counts of Barcelona.⁽³⁾ It was, rather, a title that Guillem Ramon [II] had assumed during his father's lifetime and that was also attributed, like a patronymic, to his brother Ot. Guillem Ramon [II]'s sons used "de Montcada" in place of this paternal name, a practice that continued even after Ramon de Montcada, the only living heir of sufficient [110] age and experience to counsel Alfons, had replaced his father in the royal entourage.⁽⁴⁾ One of Ramon's major contributions was to support Alfons's continuing struggle to maintain financial liquidity, which resulted from his frequent and costly interventions in the political affairs of Languedoc and Provence into the late 1170s. Alfons's efforts were aimed at combating the initiatives of Count Ramon V of Toulouse, who remained until 1176 a persistent adversary in the politics of the Midi.⁽⁵⁾ His involvement extended Ramon de Montcada's role at court from companion, knight, and counselor to financial adviser and co-signatory.

But the count of Toulouse was only one source of political concern to Alfons and his court in the 1170s. The western Mediterranean bristled with the rivalry between Genoa and Pisa. Their competition centered in part on the Provençal littoral, where both vied for commercial advantage. The Genoese, stronger than their Tuscan adversaries, had not only obtained from Alfons in 1167 the renewal of preferential trade statutes, they had agreed on a method for discharging the longstanding debt of the house of Barcelona. But that settlement, concluded in Provence in the presence of Guillem Ramon Dapifer,⁽⁶⁾ was short-lived: the Genoese in 1171 cast their lot with the count of Toulouse in a twenty-nine-year pact directed against Pisa.⁽⁷⁾ Three years later, Count Ramon of [120] Toulouse offered them further concessions in return for aid against Alfons.⁽⁸⁾ This move raised the possibility of a new friendship between Alfons and Pisa.

An alliance with Pisa was concluded by Alfons at Tarascon in January 1177. Ramon de Montcada was absent from the entourage at the time.⁽⁹⁾ He became involved in the consequences of the agreement, though, in October, when he led a contingent of six Catalan barons to Pisa. There he borrowed 300 pounds of silver in deniers, no doubt for the count-king, and promised to acquit the debt at Constantinople seven months later with a payment of 416 Byzantine hyperperos.⁽¹⁰⁾ Ramon then returned to Catalonia and in late November joined Alfons at Tortosa for the dedication of the cathedral.⁽¹¹⁾

Ramon's role in the financial affair of Pisa was probably not yet concluded, however, for sometime before the first of May 1178 his name figured prominently in a convention between Alfons and one Trepelezino. This undated document seems to have been written after the loan of the silver and before the appointed date for its repayment, since it refers to the "trip that Trepelezino is making with Ramon de Montcada in two galleys to Constantinople" and to a date (the calends of May) coinciding with the due date of the loan.⁽¹²⁾ One purpose of the journey may have been to repay the obligation; but the agreement extended beyond that concern. In it Alfons guaranteed Trepelezino 5,000 sols of Melgueil for the trip, in addition to expenses (to be paid by Ramon de Montcada) for a one-month period of service to Alfons in Constantinople. Trepelezino would also receive 2,000 perpies if some profit were made; but in any case he would receive his stipend. If the money given by the Byzantine emperor should not suffice, then Trepelezino would be paid from the money that Ramon de Montcada would receive from the curia of the emperor or from moneys that might be earned on the trip to or fro. Further, Trepelezino was to be compensated by the following Christmas, or he would receive [121] as "hostages" Ramon de Montcada, Arnau de Vilademuls, Ramon de Vilademuls, Guillem Gros, Ponç de Mataplana, and Pere de Cervelló in Marseilles. Finally, the document reported that Ramon de Montcada had sworn "to maintain and defend Trepelezino and all his associates to the best of his ability."

One conclusion that can be drawn from these bits of information is that Alfons commissioned a specialist in international trade to ply the Mediterranean in order to raise capital and repay debts. This conjecture can neither be proved nor disproved through evidence available in the document, though some explanation of the sort is required to explain how Alfons would acquire the credit necessary to make payments, share profits, and maintain a third party in his service in the capital of Byzantium for a month or more. To be sure, products including textiles, wine, and salt did flow to Constantinople from the western Mediterranean.⁽¹³⁾ Although they were typically moved on the merchant ships of Genoa and Pisa, vessels from other ports could compete for the trade. It was to Marseilles that the count-king would have hostages report in case of unmet obligations to Trepelezino; so might that city have served as a terminal point for his operations? The role of Ramon de Montcada in this affair is the subject of further speculation. A confidant of Alfons with prestige of his own, Ramon could represent the political interests of Barcelona in the court of the emperor.⁽¹⁴⁾ Ramon's revenues as a baron of independent means could stand as collateral along with those of other leading magnates when the count-king's credit wore thin. In addition, Ramon may have been responsible for Trepelezino's protection and perhaps his supervision--both crucial to the success of the mission.

Ramon de Montcada's role in the affair of Constantinople, whatever its primary focus, reflected the widened scope of political and economic affairs that concerned advisers to the count-king of Barcelona in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The fact that [122] Ramon was given these responsibilities is eloquent testimony for Alfons's confidence in this successor of the Great Seneschal. No less significant is Ramon's repeated appearance in documents promulgated by Alfons. Besides charters to lords and vassals in Languedoc and Provence,⁽¹⁵⁾ these documents included two charters concerning the fiefs of the viscount of Castellbò;⁽¹⁶⁾ a lifetime grant to the Aragonese baron Pedro Jiménez;⁽¹⁷⁾ a number of donations to ecclesiastical institutions;⁽¹⁸⁾ and a charter of population and franchise in favor of the inhabitants of Santpedor.⁽¹⁹⁾ These subscriptions suggest that Ramon de Montcada acted in many instances as a principal adjunct or minister of Alfons. Another document from the period confirms this impression: an account rendered by Ramon de Montcada of the amounts spent on behalf of the count-king for horses, and of other payments made to knights in Alfons's name.⁽²⁰⁾

Ramon's death during 1190 left a void in the entourage that was not filled until mid-point in the reign of Pere I, when Montcadas were again frequently present in the court of the count-king. Did Montcada influence ebb during the last half-dozen years of Alfons's reign? The titles of a small group of new men of modest origins, upon whom Alfons relied increasingly during this period, are revealing. Among them was Ot de Isla, whose subscription first surfaced in 1185 in a convention between Alfons and Richard, Count of Poitou.⁽²¹⁾ Ot appeared four years later as "vice-seneschal" in a franchise charter granted by Alfons, and again in two of four subsequent documents issued up to 1192.⁽²²⁾ By 1194 the same title [123] had been attributed to one Arnau de Sadaone.⁽²³⁾ In the following year he appeared as maiordomus in one of Alfons's documents issued in Tortosa.⁽²⁴⁾ Meanwhile, in 1190, a commendation of fiefs by Alfons was subscribed by Guillem de Riudeperes, "seneschal."⁽²⁵⁾

Though the identity of these men is not certain, it seems clear from other documents that Ot de Isla and a Guillem de Isla, probably brothers, circulated in both royal and Montcada administrative circles.⁽²⁶⁾ There is little evidence to indicate their social origins, but it can be assumed that they belonged to the burgeoning ministerial class of the late twelfth century. As such they would have been respected for qualities such as reliability and administrative acumen; but these traits would not have compensated for their lack of noble blood. Far from competitors to the Montcadas, these men were simply working royal officials whose use of the title "seneschal" attested at most to a link with the Montcada family. In fact, these attributions of the title were ephemeral, and no one else was called seneschal until Guillem Ramon [III] reestablished the title as a Montcada patronymic in 1209.

The Great Seneschal left the lordships of Montcada-Vic to his grandson, Guillem Ramon de Montcada [I]. Still a legal minor, this son of Guillem de Montcada [II] became the ward of his uncle Ramon de Montcada [I], with whom he probably spent most of his adolescence.⁽²⁷⁾ The wardship ended either by 1184, when Guillem Ramon was cited with Ramon de Montcada as one of the lords of Bernat de Rocafort,⁽²⁸⁾ or by the following year, when the young heir appeared for the first time married to Guilleuma de Castellvell.⁽²⁹⁾ From then on he appeared in documents independent [124] of his uncle, as in 1187 when he authorized the monastery of Sant Llorenç del Munt to acquire a small allod in Vacarisses.⁽³⁰⁾ In the years following these acts, a growing number of documents record Guillem Ramon's first initiatives as lord of Montcada. They show that his focus was primarily on administering lordship and utilizing property in the Montcada patrimony. But these documents are also revealing for what they do not show: there is no mention of regular or even occasional appearances of the Great Seneschal's grandson and heir at court. The causes for this absence may explain in part the motivation behind Guillem Ramon's most notorious deed, the brutal murder in 1194 of his wife's uncle, Berenguer de Vilademuls, archbishop of Tarragona.⁽³¹⁾

The crime was described by Pope Celestine III in a vividly detailed letter to the suffragan bishops of the archdiocese.⁽³²⁾ The letter stopped short of imputing a motive to Guillem Ramon for his betrayal, but it emphasized the seriousness of the crime by alluding to the special protection that was merited by the archbishop from a man attached to him through both family bonds and feudal obligations.⁽³³⁾ Such ties, if not ruptured by declared hostilities, should have prevented the spilling of noble blood by a social equal. This murder could not be explained as a senseless act of violence committed in momentary rage, for it was clearly premeditated. But why?

The theories proposed by historians were patently inadequate until Miquel Coll i Alentorn published his study of the "legend" of Guillem Ramon de Montcada in 1957.⁽³⁴⁾ Drawing upon the scholarship of Martín de Riquer,⁽³⁵⁾ Coll i Alentorn established a background [125] for the crime that focused on partisan strife within the baronage of Catalonia. Around 1190, Guillem Ramon had aligned himself with the party of the viscounts of Cabrera and Castellbò, which was opposed by Alfons and his allies and counselors. This allegiance perhaps influenced the count-king to look the other way when the viscount of Cardona violently repossessed a castle that Guillem Ramon had recently delivered in surety to Alfons -- leaving the young lord of Montcada holding the bag.⁽³⁶⁾

The dispute apparently revolved around a 2,000-morabetin loan made by the Great Seneschal to the viscount of Cardona, who had given in pledge the castle of Brull in Osona. The castle had come to Guillem Ramon by his grandfather's will in 1173 and remained in his control until the viscount, protesting that his debt had been fully satisfied, seized the pledge. Not one to leave his honor unavenged, Guillem Ramon attacked the fortification, possibly late in 1190.⁽³⁷⁾ These events may be reflected in provisions of two feudal agreements reached that year. The first, concluded with Pere de Lluçà, promised aid to Guillem Ramon against any person except Alfons or the bishop of Vic.⁽³⁸⁾ It no doubt preceded the hostilities and inaction of Alfons, for by November 1190, in a similar pact with Bernat de Freixanet, the lord of Montcada was demanding aid "against the king and queen and against all men and women except us and our allies."⁽³⁹⁾ This alliance may well have coincided with his offensive against Brull. In any case, military action was over by April 1191, when Guillem Ramon formalized his reconciliation with the bishop of Vic, who had objected to the recruitment of his men for the cavalcade.⁽⁴⁰⁾

[126] This episode was but one manifestation of the struggle of the king and his supporters against the Cabrera-Castellbò party. The party included, in addition to Guillem Ramon de Montcada, the troubadour Guillem de Berguedà, who in 1190 had discovered that "the king did not welcome him in his company, and not because of any wrong or guilt on his part, but because the king thought it pleased the archbishop."⁽⁴¹⁾ Thus Archbishop Berenguer de Vilademuls "appeared in the eyes of the partisans of the Cabrera-Castellbò band as the principal inspiration in royal politics."⁽⁴²⁾ It was against him that the group directed its wrath during the next two years, when the struggle reached its most intense stage. This animosity may have been exacerbated by a cool reception given to Guillem Ramon de Montcada at Narbonne in February 1194 when he made a rare appearance in the count-king's entourage.⁽⁴³⁾ For on the sixteenth day of that month, he retaliated against the prelate "in a desperate reaction...which represented the climax of a terrible dispute."⁽⁴⁴⁾

There is no surviving record of a reaction in Catalonia to the assassination of Archbishop Berenguer other than the letter of Pope Celestine. The letter suggested that Alfons had been remiss in not prosecuting the guilty parties. But Alfons had his own formula for dealing with his adversaries. His plan was first to neutralize the two leaders of the opposition group, a tactic that succeeded at Poblet in August 1194, when he accepted the submission of both Ponç de Cabrera and Arnau de Castellbò.⁽⁴⁵⁾ He was more circumspect with Guillem Ramon, neither moving decisively against him nor welcoming him to the fold of the reconciled.

Guillem Ramon remained undisturbed in Catalonia during this period, appearing in September at Santes Creus, where he and [127] Guilleuma exchanged manses with the abbot. This act was a sequel to a donation of 1189 in which the couple had endowed a priest-monk to celebrate daily masses for them.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The income received from the two manses had been insufficient, and Guillem Ramon now exchanged a more opulent one for one of the original two granted. The document secured the monastery's possession of the manses without obligation "except for the prayers and benefits which they make in the house of God, in the participation of which we await eternal salvation through God's mercy."⁽⁴⁷⁾ This transaction demonstrates that Celestine's injunction for ostracism remained a dead letter, even within the spiritual community, three months after he had demanded immediate action from Catalonian churchmen; and it suggests that there was little if any pressure on Guillem Ramon to remain in seclusion. Further, there is evidence of royal complaisance toward Guillem Ramon as late as mid-November, when Alfons, en route to Girona from Lleida, personally approved the lord of Montcada's grant of a manse adjacent to the villa of Vic "in the lordship of the lord king and church of Vic."⁽⁴⁸⁾ From evidence in the archives, therefore, it appears that Guillem Ramon led a normal life for at least ten months following his assassination of Berenguer de Vilademuls.

The picture changed around the first anniversary of the crime, when Guillem Ramon began an exile that continued with only brief interruptions until his brother Gastó's death in 1214. Taking leave of his wife, Guilleuma, Guillem Ramon borrowed 100 sols from Ponç d'Alest in the court of the heir-apparent, Pere.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Then he disappeared. During the next nineteen years he returned only twice to Catalonia, for periods of up to six months each, and three times to Aragon. Whether because of this separation or as a result of disagreements that may have erupted before he left, Guillem Ramon never reunited with his wife, who nonetheless continued for seven years to call herself Guilleuma de Montcada.⁽⁵⁰⁾ By 1202, [128] however, her patience or loyalty exhausted, she had wed Aimeri, the new viscount of Narbonne, and she remained in Languedoc until their separation in 1208. Guilleuma then returned to Catalonia, where she appeared frequently in documents with her son Guillem de Montcada [III] as Guilleuma "de Castellvell."⁽⁵¹⁾

Ramon de Montcada [II] remained largely absent from the councils of Pere I during the first half of the count-king's reign. He suddenly reappeared in the royal entourage in 1206, traveling with Pere in Aragon that spring.⁽⁵²⁾ Ramon joined Pere's expedition to Provence, where he may have spent most of the year.⁽⁵³⁾ From there he returned to Catalonia and to business in Tortosa, while Pere traveled within Catalonia during 1207 in the company of others.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The count-king and his baron were reunited in Lleida by year's end.⁽⁵⁵⁾ From that time, Ramon was regularly present when Pere's council attended to political developments in Lleida and in the county of Urgell.

[129] The county of Urgell had been unsettled politically at least since the reign of Alfons I. At that time, Ramon de Montcada [II] had supported Count Ermengol in his conflict with Viscount Ponç de Cabrera.⁽⁵⁶⁾ But the tensions had continued, reaching a new peak by 1208, as Count Ermengol neared death. Like his father, Ramon de Montcada [II] supported Pere I's efforts to curtail the ambitions of the viscount of Cabrera, a sure competitor with the house of Barcelona for the succession to Urgell. To forestall Cabrera advances, Pere -- accompanied by Catalan and Aragonese counselors, including Ramon de Montcada -- promised Countess Elvira, Ermengol's wife, aid against all her enemies and protection for the property allocated to her by wedding contract.⁽⁵⁷⁾

The situation in Urgell brought Ramon de Montcada to Lleida often, beginning in August 1208, when he was present for the redaction of Ermengol's will.⁽⁵⁸⁾ In 1209 Ramon introduced his younger brother, Guillem Ramon [III] Seneschal,⁽⁵⁹⁾ to the court. Guillem Ramon soon became a participant in the alliance of the count-king and the Montcadas with the count of Urgell.⁽⁶⁰⁾ He appeared [130] with Ramon in November 1209, when Pere confirmed Ermengol's pledge to Guillem de Cervera of castles in the region.⁽⁶¹⁾ After Ermengol's death, he figured in a marriage agreement concluded by Pere and Elvira in which the countess, with the advice and consent of Ramon de Montcada and other barons, gave her daughter Aurembaix in marriage to Pere's son Jaume, with the county of Urgell as dowry. In return, Pere gave his son as groom and a wedding donation of the county of Pallars and other districts, receiving Elvira in homage "with joined hands." For greater security, Pere offered the oaths of a number of his faithful, Aragonese and Catalan, including Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal.⁽⁶²⁾

If the accords of Pere and Elvira were intended to bring peace and stability to the region, these objectives were thwarted a year later, when Pere concluded a new marriage pact that promised his son to the daughter of Albigensian Crusade leader Simon de Montfort and placed the boy in the crusader's care.⁽⁶³⁾ This action apparently raised sufficient doubt in the mind of Viscount Guerau de Cabrera and his followers about Pere's commitment to Elvira and the house of Urgell that by summer 1211 the viscount had resumed military action against castles held by supporters of the countess. But his campaign failed, and Pere captured him in September at the castle of Llorenç.⁽⁶⁴⁾ A short time later, probably at Lleida, the viscount agreed to deliver to Hug de Torroja and Guillem Ramon Seneschal his castles of Montsoriu, Montmagastre, Ager, Pinyana, and Finestres if he had not appeared before Pere by 1 February 1212 to make amends for his deeds.⁽⁶⁵⁾ This settlement anticipated a pact reached six years later between the young Jaume I and Guerau de Cabrera. Both accords brought to a temporary halt hostilities that threatened to disrupt not only the interests of Aurembaix in the honor of Urgell, but also those of Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal.

[131] Guillem Ramon Seneschal's role in the conflict with Guerau de Cabrera demonstrates how quickly this Montcada associated himself with a certain area of royal policy that was particularly important to himself and his brother. From the moment he joined Pere's entourage in 1209, Guillem Ramon regularly appeared with the count-king in his dealings in western Catalonia; and perhaps it was in that region that Pere paid him for these services -- a hypothesis  reinforced by the seneschal's oath to uphold the franchises and immunities of the inhabitants of Agramunt confirmed by Pere in 1210.⁽⁶⁶⁾ In any case, once Guillem Ramon and Ramon de Montcada had participated in Pere's hostilities against the Moors of Valencia, staged from Aragon in the summer of 1210, the two remained almost constantly in the count-king's entourage when he was in Catalonia.⁽⁶⁷⁾ In 1212, a long royal stay in Aragon separated the Montcada brothers from Pere until early June, when a combined Catalan-Aragonese force departed for Toledo and a rendezvous with the Moors at Las Navas de Tolosa. The only two charters extant from the campaign do not bear the Montcadas' subscriptions.⁽⁶⁸⁾ But they may have participated in the winning battle because both were with Pere when he launched that expedition from Lleida and when he returned through Tamarit.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Pere did not remain in Catalonia following his return from Las Navas de Tolosa but continued to Aragon, where he again showed approval of his young seneschal's actions. Whether as a reward for valor in the recent campaign or for some other merit, he gave Guillem Ramon the hand of his legitimized daughter Constança in a marriage celebrated at Pratella near Taúst on 7 November 1212.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Pere also gave Guillem Ramon rights to the castles and towns of Serós, Aitona, and Soses in the Segrià, and concluded an [132] additional pact with Guillem Ramon and his brother Ramon that provided for the disposition of this honor if Constança were to die without legitimate heirs from the marriage.⁽⁷¹⁾ Guillem Ramon then granted as a wedding gift to Constança his rights in the castles of Aitona and Soses plus the castle of Malpartit, the town of Poal, and the tower of Montcada (near Lleida). The act was endorsed by Ramon de Montcada, "elder brother" of the seneschal.⁽⁷²⁾ The wedding dossier was completed six days later at Alagón, when Pere exchanged other towns and castles for those of Serós, Aitona, and Soses until such time as he or his successors could regain them from those who currently held them.⁽⁷³⁾ From there the party continued to Saragossa, where Guillem Ramon and Ramon de Montcada subscribed two of Pere's acts before he once again turned his attention to polities in Languedoc.⁽⁷⁴⁾

The Montcada family had had a special stake in the regional affairs of Languedoc ever since Maria de Béarn, wife of Guillem de Montcada [II], had become viscountess. After a brief period of rule by Maria, the viscounty devolved in 1173 to her eldest son, Gastó de Montcada. Gastó became viscount apparently not by election but by hereditary succession.⁽⁷⁵⁾ During his youth, he governed [133] as the ward of an Aragonese baron long familiar in royal circles, Pelegrín de Castillazuelo.⁽⁷⁶⁾ No longer a ward either by 1178 or by 1182,⁽⁷⁷⁾ Gastó did homage to Alfons I at Huesca in 1187, promising to be his good and faithful vassal and auxiliary against all but the count of Poitou.⁽⁷⁸⁾ As the years passed, Gastó maintained friendly relations with the king of Aragon, who in 1192 granted him the hand of the heiress of Bigorre, Peronella, the young daughter of the count of Comminges.⁽⁷⁹⁾ The marriage was celebrated a few years later, and though it did not produce children for Gastó, it did bring the county of Bigorre into the orbit of the viscounty of Béarn for a time.⁽⁸⁰⁾

Throughout Pere I's reign, Gastó supported the count-king through service at court and at least once through a loan of money.⁽⁸¹⁾ He also sided with Pere in his opposition to Simon de Montfort and the Albigensian Crusade.⁽⁸²⁾ Though he was absent when the count-king fell at Muret, Gastó was later called to account for misdeeds committed during the wars that subsequently engulfed Languedoc. The viscount's conduct -- which he later admitted was prompted "by the instigation of Satan" and which was serious enough to warrant several excommunications -- led him to [134] donate the villa of Sainte Marie to the church of Oloron in the hope that the bishop would relax his sentence.⁽⁸³⁾ He apparently succeeded, for he appears to have been reconciled with the church by the time of his death, around mid-1214.⁽⁸⁴⁾ At that time he made a will leaving the viscounty to his brother, Guillem Ramon de Montcada [I].⁽⁸⁵⁾

During his nearly two decades of exile, Guillem Ramon de Montcada played virtually no role in the internal affairs of Catalonia, though he did appear occasionally in the court of Pere I in Aragon. In 1205 Guillem Ramon returned from a trip to England. In April of that year he appeared at Huesca, where he acknowledged a debt to Bernat Andreu of 7,200 sols of Barcelona, loaned for his journey.⁽⁸⁶⁾ The acknowledgement was made in the presence of the count-king, for whom Guillem Ramon had perhaps traveled to England. Guillem Ramon's trip may have been related to a meeting that Zurita reported between Pere and the English king John Lackland at Jaca in early August 1206.⁽⁸⁷⁾ In April of that year Guillem Ramon had again been present in Pere's entourage, this time at Alfocea (near Saragossa), where he subscribed the donation of Castelldans to Guillem de Cervera.⁽⁸⁸⁾ Shortly thereafter, Guillem Ramon must have traveled into Catalonia nearly to Barcelona, because his subscription appeared on two documents issued after one ordained by Pere in Montblanc and before one dated in Barcelona.⁽⁸⁹⁾ Guillem Ramon apparently appeared in Pere's entourage for the last time in 1208, when he was with Pere again in Aragon.⁽⁹⁰⁾ A year later he was back in Catalonia for a stay of perhaps as long as six months, this time on personal business, while his cousins Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal attended [135] Pere's court.⁽⁹¹⁾ But by 1209 a new Montcada family member had assumed a role in royal affairs: Guillem de Montcada [III], Guillem Ramon de Montcada's son, who would reach a position of influence in Catalonia unrivaled by anyone in his family since the Great Senesehal.

The earliest known contact between Pere I and Guillem de Montcada [III] came in 1202 in Montpellier, when the count-king commended to the young baron the castles of his personal inheritance. Pere stipulated that Guillem would continue to hold them after his father's death as fiefs in service to the counts of Barcelona, and he noted that the pact had been confirmed by a ceremony of homage.⁽⁹²⁾ Not until several years later did Guillem de Montcada begin to appear regularly in Pere's entourage. This occurred during a lengthy struggle between Guillem and the bishop of Vic over lordship in the city of Vic.⁽⁹³⁾ Guillem, who was first attested in the royal court at Jaca with his father in 1208, increased his attendance on the count-king during the following year, especially during Pere's journeys in Catalonia.⁽⁹⁴⁾ In 1209 he subscribed six royal documents, including two that directly concerned Pere's debts and a third that exempted the monastery of Sant Cugat from royal taxation.⁽⁹⁵⁾

In 1210 and 1211 Guillem de Montcada was more visible [136] in royal affairs in spite of his repeated excommunication by the bishop of Vic and in spite of Pere's order -- at the request of churchmen -- that any man who remained excommunicated for more than four months would be fined 100 sols and barred from public office for a year.⁽⁹⁶⁾ In these two years Pere spent more and more time in Aragon, Languedoc, and Provence; and Guillem's role in the count-king's administration, particularly in Catalonia, grew accordingly.⁽⁹⁷⁾ One piece of evidence for this is the record of settlement following a "broken peace" between the abbot of the monastery of Sant Benet de Bages and Pere Ferran and Ferrar de Aldarellis.⁽⁹⁸⁾ The document was issued in the name of Pere de Bassia, "vicar of the lord king," Guillem de Montcada, and Guillem de Copons "on behalf of the lord king and the elected vicars." This phrase implies that the two barons were performing an administrative function for Pere in his absence that may well have been concerned primarily with royal finance.⁽⁹⁹⁾

Guillem probably continued in this role throughout 1212 in Pere's absence from Catalonia. For unlike his cousins Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal, Guillem de Montcada did not appear once that year in Pere's entourage, and he almost certainly did not accompany the count-king to battle at Las Navas de Tolosa. He did rejoin his cousins and Pere in Languedoc in early 1213, though, and he was present when Pere joined with the counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges and the viscount of Béarn to shield Occitania against an obdurate stance taken by the Council of Lavaur.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ But by 1213 it was clear that a political solution [137] was not to be found to the Albigensian problem, and both sides prepared for the military confrontation that resulted in Pere's death at Muret and the subjugation of the Midi by crusader forces from northern France.

The aftermath of Muret brought with it a new ascendancy for members of Guillem de Montcada's family. Guillem himself was spared the common disgrace of defeat and flight from the battlefield of Muret because he and Count Nunyo Sanç of Roussillon had commanded a separate armed contingent, arriving late, for which Pere had refused to wait.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Guillem, with other leading magnates of Catalonia and Aragon, eventually became one of the primary architects of a conservative baronial policy that sought to revitalize a body politic deprived of its natural leader, and to do so in a manner that would derive the most benefits for its more important members.

After Muret, one of the first impulses of Guillem de Montcada and other magnates must have been to loosen the hold of Simon de Montfort on the young count-king, Jaume I. But the crusader, [138] Jaume's intended father-in-law, refused to relinquish his guest. A group of churchmen and barons departed to negotiate his liberation with Innocent III.⁽¹⁰²⁾ Another group, headed by Guillem de Montcada, Nunyo Sanç, and Guillem de Cardona, engaged the forces of Simon de Montfort in lower Languedoc.⁽¹⁰³⁾ This campaign continued during the winter of 1213-14 until the pope ordered Montfort to release Jaume to his Catalonian and Aragonese barons and appointed an emissary to supervise the establishment of a ruling council for Jaume. It seemed that the barons' demands were satisfied, and by April Guillem de Montcada and others were witnessing acts of the emissary, Pierre de Douai, who arranged for Jaume's delivery from Carcassonne in May 1214.

This moment of success for the magnates of Catalonia and Aragon may have been followed by a temporary setback for Guillem de Montcada as Pierre de Douai prepared to escort the young count-king to his homeland. Was it as soon as May and June 1214 that groups of "ins" and "outs" began to form within the ranks of the leading Catalan barons? Did the papal emissary aggravate partisanship by excluding from his council Guillem de Montcada, the son of an unrequited assassin and a chronic thorn in the side of the bishop of Vic? Or did the opposition to Guillem de Montcada come mainly from Jaume's great-uncle Sanç, the temporary governor of Provence and recently named "procurator," or lieutenant, for the count-king?⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ In either ease, Guillem de Montcada appears to have suffered an eclipse in influence that lasted well beyond the proclamation of a general peace and truce for the land, and that was redressed only when his father, Guillem Ramon de Montcada (now viscount of Béarn), reappeared in Catalonia.

After an absence of nearly twenty years, Guillem Ramon de Montcada returned to Catalonia soon after he inherited the viscounty of Béarn.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ His long absence made him an outsider to the [139] circle of barons now in the confidence of the procurator Sanç. But the estrangement ended peacefully when Sanç and his son Nunyo Sanç, count of Roussillon, contracted a treaty of peace and friendship with Guillem Ramon, his son Guillem, and his ally Guillem de Cervera on 26 October 1214 in Barcelona.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Each side promised to observe peace with the principals of the other side and their friends, and to defend their persons and property "save...the rights, fidelity, and dominion of our illustrious lord King Jaume." This last phrase provides the key to the significance of the document. The treaty, beyond defining spheres of influence in Bigorre and Béarn, rectified a political imbalance by readmitting the Montcadas to the ruling council of the realm.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

In the year that followed the conclusion of peace with Sanç and Nunyo Sanç, Guillem Ramon de Montcada led a normal baron's life, tending to financial and other matters and giving every impression of having made his repatriation a success.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ But the success was mitigated as long as he was not reconciled with the Holy See. Without such absolution the proscription against him in Catalonja continued, and the burden of the crime could still be felt in a period when papal dispositions had the force of law in the Crown of Aragon.

Guillem Ramon decided to end his spiritual impairment by [140] "proceeding to the threshold of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul." Before departing for Rome in late September 1215, he dictated a will in which bequests were lavished upon nine monasteries, three cathedral churches, the Templars and the Hospitallers in Catalonia, and five churches and one monastery in Gascony.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ He arrived in Rome probably before Christmas. The three prelates delegated by the pope to receive his confession and grant absolution imposed a significant but not intolerable penance.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Guillem Ramon was first to journey to Tarragona, to expiate his crime publicly and do homage to the archbishop and chapter, to whom he was to pay an annual rent of twenty pounds of silver. Second, he was to go on crusade to the Holy Land for five years accompanied by two hundred knights and thirty artillerymen and archers. Third, he was to fast on Fridays, and on Mondays and Wednesdays in the forty days before Christmas, except when on crusade. Fourth, he was to wear hair garments constantly except when asked by his wife to perform conjugal duties. Finally, he could redeem any Monday or Wednesday fast by caring for five paupers, and the prelates approved in advance any further remissions that other bishops might make. Given Guillem Ramon's desire to free himself from the wrath of the church, it is likely that he at least did homage to the archbishop of Tarragona upon his return to Catalonia.⁽¹¹¹⁾ But eight years later he acknowledged that he had not gone on crusade to the Holy Land, and compensated for this default with an additional donation to the Knights Templar.⁽¹¹²⁾

When Guillem Ramon returned from Rome in 1216 to resume his career as viscount of Béarn, the political constellation around Jaume had changed appreciably. Guillem Ramon de Montcada and Count Nunyo Sanç were still allies. Beyond their lordships of Roussillon and Béarn they shared a common enemy, Simon de Montfort, and a common interest in securing a favorable marriage [141] for the widowed countess of Bigorre. Relations were strained between a group of other barons, including Guillem de Cervera, one of the original ambassadors to Rome after Muret, and the procurator Sanç, whose interventionist sentiments toward Languedoc and Provence seemed dangerous in light of the pope's continued support of Simon de Montfort. The barons tried to dilute Sanç's authority, and Guillem de Cervera went to Rome to try to obtain Innocent's assistance. On 23 January 1216 Innocent responded to the entreaties of "those who cherish the good of the kingdom" by naming seven counselors to help Sanç deal on Jaume's behalf with the kings of Navarre and Castile, with other princes, and with further weighty matters.⁽¹¹³⁾ Among the counselors from Catalonia were Guillem de Cervera and Viscount Guillem de Cardona, both allies of Guillem de Montcada.

Not long after Guillem Ramon de Montcada's return from Rome to Catalonia, his son and heir assumed a greater role in regency polities. In the months following the naming of the papal counselors,⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Guillem de Montcada became an active member of a coalition of barons who sought increasingly to control the movements and policies of their young lord. Their efforts led to a declaration signed in September 1216 at Montsó by which Archbishop Espàreg of Tarragona, Pedro Ferrández de Albarracín, Jimeno Cornel, Guillem de Cervera, Viscount Guillem of Cardona, and Guillem de Montcada placed Jaume under their "protection, defense, custody, and counsel." They promised to advise him in all his affairs, for his benefit and for the benefit of his realm, his knights, and his subjects, in good faith and without fraud according to their best knowledge.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ Further, each promised that he would not remove Jaume from the others, on pain of being branded a traitor. They did homage to the count-king "by mouth [142] and hands," swearing on the cross of the Lord and four gospels that they would assist him, "save the [rights] of the procurator, lord Count Sanç, as long as he administers well, and save the rights of Guillem de Cervera."⁽¹¹⁶⁾ The document was witnessed by members of the military orders and by Aragonese and Catalan barons including Ramon de Montcada and "Guillem Ramon de Montcada."⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Suggesting dramatically as it does that the procurator was in danger of losing control over the political forces arrayed against him, this document is important for its evidence both of wider baronial support in the party opposing Sanç, and of the coalition's accelerated intervention in regency affairs.⁽¹¹⁸⁾

The coalition of counselors regarded Sanç's interventionist policy as ill-considered and the declaration of September 1216 suggests opposition to it. Events of that autumn confirmed this opposition. The allied barons, or at least some of them, were concerned about the dangers of openly associating with the resistance against Simon de Montfort -- who since his victory at the Fourth Lateran Council had reached a peak of power by concluding a marriage alliance for his son with the countess of Bigorre.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ The barons approved a plan that would simultaneously demonstrate their control over Jaume's movements and attenuate Sanç's power base in Provence. Though evidence for the scheme remains sparse, some records do exist, and these yield at least a hypothesis for the group's actions. The first part of this evidence was assembled by Soldevila, who drew upon statements in the "Llibre dels feits" and the data given in a charter issued by Jaume on 11 November 1216 [143] at Lleida.⁽¹²⁰⁾ The rest is in another document that was committed to an archive in Lleida five days later.⁽¹²¹⁾

According to Soldevila, Jaume appeared in Lleida, where he addressed a charter to the cathedral chapter of Tarragona, sealing the document with the seal of his cousin Ramon Berenguer because he did not have his own. The occasion for this unexpected journey from Montsó, according to evidence provided by the "Llibre dels feits," was connected to the removal of the boy-count Ramon Berenguer to Salou for repatriation to Provence -- a move designed to erode Sanç's influence as regent there. The persons behind these clandestine movements of young princes and their companions away from Montsó are suggested in the document of 16 November 1216. In it, Ramon de Montcada recorded his sale for 2,500 morabetins of an annual rent of 200 morabetins from the castle and villa of Ascó. The sale was made to Guillem de Montrodó, master of the Temple; Bernat de Claret, preceptor of Gardeny at Lleida; Bernat de Aguilella, preceptor of Montsó; and Bernat de Campanes, preceptor of Miravet and Ribera. Subscribed by Ramon de Montcada, his brother Guillem Ramon Seneschal, and Ramon's son Guillem, the donation was witnessed by Pierre de Toulon, iuris consulti, Arnau de Miravé, Fole de Ponts, the priest Arnau Pinol, Pere Celiardi (Cellers?), Bernat Celiardi,Friar Bernat de l'Albagés, and Pere de Ripoll. The scribe was Arnau Bonet. So the provincial master of the Temple, the tutor of Jaume I, and the preceptor of Montsó, as well as two other Templar officials, were present at Lleida five days after Jaume put his cousin's seal to a charter for churchmen in Tarragona.

Is it not likely that the child assigned to their charge was among this congregation of Templar officials at Lleida? If so, this may well have been the occasion on which Ramon Berenguer was spirited away to Provence, as recorded by Jaume in the "Llibre dels feits." This hypothesis is strengthened by one of the subscriptions on the charter of 16 November, that of Pierre de Toulon, iuris consuiti. Who could this be but an official of that Provençal city, sent to the frontier of Catalonia to fetch the young count?

Three conclusions can be reached concerning Jaume's exit [144] from Montsó. First, it appears to have taken place with the full cooperation of the Templar hierarchy, particularly those who made the purchase from Ramon de Montcada. (These were the same Templars who had witnessed the September declaration by the group of six.) Second, it may not have violated the September accord because it is possible that none of the six actually escorted Jaume from Lleida in the absence of the others. Third, a Montcada could have been involved, since both Ramon de Montcada and his brother Guillem Ramon Seneschal were present in Lleida at the same time as Jaume's Templar tutors. From these conclusions, it is a logical shift to the hypothesis that the six sworn counselors and their allies acted in collusion with the Templar leadership to assure their control of the count-king and to diminish Sanç's power. But the evidence is not conclusive.

If this action was in fact designed to weaken Sanç's influence in the regency court, it may only have succeeded temporarily. By June 1217 Sanç had recovered the initiative and was presiding over an assembly of the Cort of Catalonia at Montsó from which a number of his leading adversaries were absent.⁽¹²²⁾ In addition to followers of Ferran, abbot of Montearagón and Jaume's paternal uncle, these included Guillem de Montcada. Present, on the other hand, was that ardent supporter of Sanç's policy of vengeance in Languedoc, Guillem Ramon de Montcada. And his party prevailed for the moment, as the viscount of Béarn and other Catalans led contingents to aid Toulouse and won the battle of Salvetat, enabling the count of Toulouse to enter his city on 13 September 1217.⁽¹²³⁾

The allies' victory in the Pyrenees established a period of uneasy truce in the court of Jaume. Both Guillem Ramon de Montcada and Guillem de Montcada were now around Sanç, the latter [145] listed along with the "papal counselors" as a counselor of Jaume.⁽¹²⁴⁾ The voices of the dissident group, if not audible before, almost surely became more strident as word arrived of Honorius's bull warning Catalans that to rise against Montfort was equivalent to rebelling against God. But the admonition came too late, for allied forces had repulsed attacks by Simon's brother and his son against Toulouse and had killed them both. The news of their deaths sent tremors to Catalonia, where Jaume's counselors braced for the inevitable fulminations of the Holy See. Two bulls of December 1217, one directed against Sanç, and the other against Jaume, threatened a crusade against Catalonia and provided the necessary impetus to transform political opposition into resistance.⁽¹²⁵⁾

In the wake of the two papal pronouncements, Sanç's opponents rushed to surround Jaume. Braving Sanç, who threatened war, Jaume's counselors kept their charge at Montsó until spring 1218, when they decided to end his wardship, induct him into knighthood, and initiate him into the affairs of his realm.⁽¹²⁶⁾ Jaume journeyed to Saragossa with his counselors and then returned to Catalonia in early June.⁽¹²⁷⁾ It was there that he learned of the death of Simon de Montfort. Sanç's followers were left without any further objective to pursue in Languedoc and Jaume's counselors now could disavow interventionism and promote Sanç's removal as procurator, as a sign to Rome of the regency's new orientation.⁽¹²⁸⁾ Sanç's retirement, accomplished by early July, cleared the way in the following year for papal protection to be extended to Jaume. Further, it led to recognition of the authority of the baronial party in Catalonia to which Guillem de Montcada belonged.

Although Sanç's fall in fortune ensured the success of Guillem de Montcada's party, it also affected the political influence of Guillem Ramon de Montcada, one of the chief proponents of the policy of revenge against Montfort. The viscount of Béarn, no longer appreciated in the count-king's entourage, left the administration [146] of his Catalonian patrimony to his son Guillem and concentrated his energies on affairs in his Pyrenean lordship, where events turned more favorably for him.⁽¹²⁹⁾ From his vantage point in Béarn, Guillem Ramon witnessed the ultimate defeat of Simon de Montfort. As the wages of his opposition to the crusader, he earned a papal admonition to either heed the authority of the church or face excommunication.⁽¹³⁰⁾ Accommodation with the church could be obtained,⁽¹³¹⁾ freeing Guillem Ramon for the administration of his viscounty, a task which he pursued earnestly for the last four years of his life.

Largely because of his contributions -- real or supposed  --  to the institutional history of Béarn, the reputation of Guillem Ramon de Montcada among post-Renaissance historians of that country has been exemplary. Pierre de Marca credited him with the institution of the twelve jurats or curial barons in Béarn (1220), as well as with confirmation of the customs of the Vall d'Ossau (1221).⁽¹³²⁾ Though it is said that the Béarnese had resisted the viscount's twelfth-century predecessors,⁽¹³³⁾ they saw these two measures as a reinforcement of their independence; thus the viscount was perceived as a model lord in the minds of future generations. Although his acquiescence to the two institutions cannot be denied, it is probable that they had deeper roots than in the approbation of this transplanted Catalan lord, who in fact grafted his authority onto existing foundations.⁽¹³⁴⁾ Among these infrastructures [147] was a curia of barons, operative by 1215. Guillem Ramon entrusted to them and the bishops of Oloron and Lescar the administration of his viscounty during lengthy absences.⁽¹³⁵⁾ Guillem Ramon's reliance upon the prelates and nobles of Béarn was clear by 1224, when he gave them wide responsibility for executing the provisions of his will, which included maintaining peace with the church and neighboring princes and administering his incomes until his heir arrived.⁽¹³⁶⁾ The confidence apparently was not misplaced: after Guillem Ramon's death, around mid-1224, and his burial in the church of Sainte Marie d'Oloron, the Béarnese remained faithful to their viscount by patiently awaiting the arrival of his son, Guillem de Montcada.

Though in 1219 Guillem de Montcada's succession to the viscounty of Béarn was still several years distant, his leadership role in Catalonia clearly matched or exceeded that of any other magnate, viscount, or count in the region except Jaume himself. Since October 1217 he had appeared in documents with the title of "counselor," and he continued to be cited thus after Sanç's withdrawal as procurator: at Tarragona in July and at Lleida in September and October 1218.⁽¹³⁷⁾ And despite the fact that Pope Honorius's bull of July 1219 did not name him as a "primary administrator" of the realm  -- a distinction reserved for four of the six original "papal counselors"⁽¹³⁸⁾-- by July 1219 Guillem had obtained the influential position of procurator for King Jaume throughout Catalonia.

Guillem de Montcada's new position as procurator was first attested in a document of July 1219 in which the count-king's bailiff, [148] Perfet, ceded an annual rent of 2 sols to the monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès. This was done "on behalf of and by mandate from the lord king and for the remedy of the soul of the same lord king, and [that] of his father, and also by mandate of the said Guillem de Montcada, procurator of the lord king."⁽¹³⁹⁾ Guillem may have owed his position to a decision reached the previous September at an assembly of magnates in Lleida, and his responsibilities almost certainly mirrored those attributed to Guillem de Cervera in Montpellier. The documentation of this period shows Guillem de Montcada serving in various capacities. Within the curia, for instance, he and Arnau de Castellbò counseled Jaume in the granting of fiefs to Guillem de Mediona in May 1219.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ In January 1222 he approved, with Nunyo Sanç, the settling of royal debts to Guillem de Cervera under a formula proposed by Ramon de Montcada and two others.⁽¹⁴¹⁾ Outside the count-king's entourage, he arbitrated a case between two barons concerning the guard and income of the castle of Aitona.⁽¹⁴²⁾ And he was intermediary in a convention against Gauçbert de Palau that was made by the counts of Roussillon and Empúries.⁽¹⁴³⁾ These cases prove that Guillem's role was more than simply one of several counselors who frequented the court of the count-king.

Jaume's absence from Catalonia for long periods in 1219 and 1220 meant that Guillem de Montcada had ample occasion to act on his behalf. His influence as procurator was particularly significant in the realm of fiscal policy, where he seemed to exercise sole discretion at least in some areas. It was he alone who leased the veguerie of Barcelona to Bernat Barutí for a five-year term, receiving from the new vicar a payment of 5,000 sols of Barcelona. The proceeds were to acquit Jaume's obligations, "all of which in Barcelona we are held to repay for him," including 3,500 sols to a certain Guillem of Genoa and other debts.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ The capital that Guillem de Montcada raised with this transaction probably underrated the value of Jaume's income from the veguerie, however, because three months later Guillem acknowledged a new payment by Bernat [149] Barutí of 500 sols, which the vicar similarly would recover from revenues collected by his office.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ Were these acts mainly the result of Guillem de Montcada's initiative, or was he simply an agent implementing decisions reached earlier in consultation with Jaume's other counselors? There is reason to believe that Guillem did improvise in his administration, for only two months later Jaume's  counselors in Aragon established a new fiscal policy, under which a Templar brother had complete responsibility for collecting and disbursing comital funds in Catalonia.⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ The motivation for this change is not known, but its effect was to lessen Guillem de Montcada's control of Jaume's purse strings in Catalonia. In the future he would share this control with others.

The Templar brother's administration of the count-king's Catalonian estates did not bring Guillem de Montcada's role as a counselor in fiscal matters to an end. He continued in Jaume's entourage, generally with Bishop Berenguer of Barcelona, Nunyo Sanç, and Count Hug of Empúries. He thus appeared with the count-king in Barcelona in September 1221, when Jaume issued a charter ordering his bailiffs and vicars not to help a certain Ramon de Cordeles and his son, who sought to escape the jurisdiction of the monastery of Sant Benet de Bages. He used the occasion to remind his officials that they were obliged "because of [their] royal office to serve and defend" the monastery and its goods.⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ Guillem also participated in court actions relating to finances during Jaume's stay in Catalonia. In December 1221 he appeared with Nunyo Sanç as "procurator of the lord king" in a tax exemption granted to the Hospitallers.⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ In January 1222 he witnessed a grant of water rights in Barcelona to Bernat de Sant Andreu for 50 morabetins, and he was present when the bishop of Vie granted temporary permission to Jaume to operate a money changing table at Vic.⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ Moreover, Guillem profited from the decision by Jaume's [150] counselors to debase the denier of Barcelona. In an account of a new minting from the period 22 August to 30 October 1222, he is identified along with Nunyo Sanç as one of a group who benefitted most from the coining of the doblenc.⁽¹⁵⁰⁾ This group probably supported an attempt to fix the price of the new coin (which contained only 50 percent as much silver as its predecessor) at 67 percent of the former coin's value for old contracts and 75 percent for new ones. On the open exchange, the doblenc was to sell for the price it could fetch, which ensured its prompt devaluation to half the value of the old denier.⁽¹⁵¹⁾

Beyond financial affairs, Guillem de Montcada had a clear influence on Jaume's life during his youth and on court politics of that period. According to the chronicle that Jaume wrote in later years, the decision to marry the young count-king to Elionor of Castile was made by Jimeno Cornel and Guillem de Cervera, Jaume's "senior counselors," and Guillem de Montcada. Their hope was for an heir at the earliest possible moment, to ensure that "el regne no eixís de la natura."⁽¹⁵²⁾ The Montcada family was represented at the wedding, which was in February 1221 at Agreda, in Aragon, by Guillem Ramon Senesehal.⁽¹⁵³⁾ But Jaume was too young to provide an heir and the marriage did not guarantee the desired stability in his realm. Jaume became the object of conflicts between opposing factions in Aragon.⁽¹⁵⁴⁾ Before long there was a new scission in the unity of his baronage, and this time it was the result of the actions of Guillem de Montcada.

Unlike most earlier splits within the royal entourage, the conflict that divided Guillem de Montcada and Nunyo Sanç in summer 1222 soon polarized leading barons in both Catalonia and Aragon. A trivial incident apparently touched off the quarrel, which mushroomed into a war that had as its objective preeminent [151] status in Jaume's regency council.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ The conflict began in Jaume's entourage when Nunyo Sanç refused to give a hunting bird to Guillem de Cervelló, a friend of Guillem de Montcada. The Montcada lord, affronted by this, ignored Jaume's order not to act aggressively and entered Roussillon with his allies taking one of Nunyo Sanç's castles "with sword and shield" and attacking Perpignan.⁽¹⁵⁶⁾ Thus the gauntlet was thrown for a confrontation between Guillem and Jaume himself.

The campaign against Nunyo Sanç's possessions in Roussillon, prepared and executed over the fall and winter of 1222-23, provoked a split not only between Guillem de Montcada and Nunyo Sanç's defender Jaume, but also between Jaume and Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal. Faced with opposition from the Montcadas, Jaume inclined toward rapprochement with Guerau de Cabrera. The first evidence of their reconciliation came in a pact of December 1222 that was almost certainly concluded before the start of the fighting against Nunyo Sanç, because the pact still acknowledged the rights of Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal to fiefs in the county.⁽¹⁵⁷⁾ The language of a new convention between Jaume and Guerau, barely four months later, revealed what had happened in the interim. In that pact, dated at Huesca on 19 April 1223, Jaume gave Ramon and Guillem Ramon five weeks "to repair wrongs with us concerning the county of Urgell." Should they fail to do this, the count-king would give Guerau full license to seize and occupy the county and, on payment of 2,000 morabetins, would aid him in its recovery. Guerau agreed in return to be faithful to the count-king and to aid him "in the war which you have or are about to have with Guillem de Montcada and Arnau de Castellbò and their allies."⁽¹⁵⁸⁾

The war soon escalated. Jaume retaliated against Guillem for the campaign in Roussillon by taking 130 fortifications from him, his family, and his allies. Aided by Count Sanç, Nunyo Sanç, Ferran, [152] Pedro Ahones, Atón de Foces, Artal de Luna, and others of the royal household of Aragon, a total of 400 knights, Jaume besieged the castle of Montcada in September 1223. Inside the castle were 130 knights: Guillem de Montcada, Pedro Cornel, Rodrigo Lizana, Valles de Antillón, Bernat de Santa Eugènia, and others.⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ Jaume, his forces arrayed before the castle, asked whether Guillem would yield to him "power" over the castle. "Willingly," said the Montcada, "had you asked me in another manner." Noting the damages inflicted in this first assault, Guillem refused to cede the fortress to Jaume, who maintained his siege for three months until lack of provisions ended it.⁽¹⁶⁰⁾

Not long thereafter, Guillem de Montcada left Catalonia for Provence, where he renewed his ties with Count Ramon Berenguer of Provence and concluded an alliance with Count Thibault of Champagne.⁽¹⁶¹⁾ He had returned by June 1224, when he appeared in Jaume's court accompanied by his Aragonese ally Pedro Cornel and by Trencavel, viscount of Béziers.⁽¹⁶²⁾ With his hand now strengthened, Guillem was able to reach a favorable conclusion in August to his long-simmering dispute with Bishop Guillem de Tavertet of Vie. The issue in this case, the bishop's refusal [153] to accord the Montcadas a greater share of lordship rights and revenues in Vic, had led Guillem to ravage episcopal lands during the years 1205-1210. In the settlement, Guillem was provided with an increased share of the revenues of lordship in Vic, and the Montcadas were established as effective co-lords with the bishops.⁽¹⁶³⁾ The summer's activity preceded a new round of political maneuvering within Jaume's entourage that bore fruit for Guillem by October 1224.

The conflict between the Montcadas and Jaume entered its third year in autumn 1224, when Ferran's partisans joined the Montcadas against Sanç and his son Nunyo Sanç. The allied parties agreed to negotiate an end to the wars that were oppressing the king and his realm. Stating as their objectives the reform of the realm and the dismissal of incompetent members of Jaume's council, they agreed to resolve their problems peacefully and to protect the king.⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ The allied barons surrounded Jaume at Alagón and reached a peaceful reconciliation with Nunyo Sanç and his partisans. That group in turn agreed to detain Jaume for three weeks at Saragossa, where Guillem de Montcada pressured him for reparation of the damages done the preceding year in Catalonia. Guillem argued that the sum he asked was great to him but small to Jaume. The count-king replied that he had suffered what he deserved, and that no payment should be made. But Guillem prevailed, extorting from Jaume the promise of 20,000 morabetins. After this triumph, his party was in a position to divide the honors of Aragon more to its liking.⁽¹⁶⁵⁾

The events of March 1225 in Saragossa handed to Guillem de Montcada, his cousins, and his allies the decisive victory that had eluded them since their break with Jaume in 1222. The count-king's entourage, cleansed of Montcada opposition, returned to Catalonia in April, and at Tortosa Jaume announced his intention [154] to take up arms against the Muslims.⁽¹⁶⁶⁾ These were the first stirrings of a late summer campaign against Peníscola, probably encouraged by Ramon de Montcada or his cousin Guillem.⁽¹⁶⁷⁾

In the meantime, the royal party proceeded to Barcelona, where Guillem de Montcada established his claim of 20,000 morabetins, to be taken from comital revenues in the bishoprics of Barcelona, Vic, and Girona, in the royal levies known as the bovatge and monedatge, and in the parias of Islamic Spain. These moneys were to be paid half to him and half to others named by him. One-third of the latter portion would go to his mother, Guilleuma de Castellvell.⁽¹⁶⁸⁾ These payments, followed shortly by Guillem's sale of the castle of Sant Marçal to Ramon de Plegamans for 2,000 masmodines,⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ must have eased the financial burden incurred in his three years of opposition to Jaume. But his good fortune stopped at that point for the moment, when the expedition he had advised against Peníscola collapsed. After nearly two months of siege, Jaume's troops were forced to abandon their hopes of winning new lands from the Muslims.⁽¹⁷⁰⁾

For the next two years the site of Jaume's political troubles shifted to Aragon, where he found himself embroiled with both magnates and municipal authorities. These conflicts may have hastened a rapprochement between the count-king and Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal and an accommodation with Guillem de Montcada, who received Jaume's approval of a peace settlement with Ramon Folc de Cardona that favored the Montcada side.⁽¹⁷¹⁾ Soon thereafter Guillem received royal consent [155] to distribute to four allies 40,000 sols that he held as a pledge from Jaume.⁽¹⁷²⁾ But the harmony was more apparent than real: Guillem soon joined townsmen of Saragossa, Jaca, and Huesca and a group of Aragonese barons who opposed Jaume's authority.⁽¹⁷³⁾

The conflict simmered throughout the winter of 1226-27. Jaume went to Huesca to hear complaints of the townsmen and narrowly eluded being retained against his will by the municipal authorities.⁽¹⁷⁴⁾ When the allied barons learned that Jaume had escaped, they decided to abandon their alliance with the towns, and arranged a meeting with Jaume at Alcalá.

The barons' complaints were resolved in this single encounter. The first to address Jaume's party was the royal great-uncle, Ferran, who stated that the war troubled the group and that they wanted to serve their lord. He beseeched Jaume to grant clemency, both to him on grounds of common blood and to Guillem de Montcada "because there is no king of Spain who has a more honored vassal than you do in him, nor one who could serve you so well.⁽¹⁷⁵⁾ Guillem de Montcada then spoke to Jaume:

Lord, the debt that I hold to you, no man in the world knows better than you, for your lineage, that of the count of Barcelona by name, has made our very lineage. And I by the grace of God have more than others, since I have the wealth of Béarn in Gascony, which none of the others has, and all that which I have or could have I will place in your service. And that which I will do, God who knows all things knows that I will try to work for your profit and honor. Moreover, since I see that I don't please you, I don't please myself, and hold myself for the error which I have done, and therefore I beg your mercy that you pardon me and the others who have been in this affair, because know that I will never again make war against you, for I consider you for such that you would not do wrong to me, my friends or relatives. And when you should do it, I will come to you with love and entreating, and with the good service which I will do for you. This is how I shall serve you.⁽¹⁷⁶⁾

The peace of Alcalá endured in the years ahead, and Guillem de Montcada turned for a time to the closer management of his own affairs. By late summer 1227 he was in Béarn, and he remained there well into 1228.⁽¹⁸⁰⁾ By September 1228 Guillem de Montcada, Ramon de Montcada, and Guillem Ramon Seneschal⁽¹⁸¹⁾ were reunited in Jaume's entourage at Lleida to consider what steps to take in a claim of Aurembaix, heiress of the last Ermengol of Urgell.⁽¹⁸²⁾ When her adversary, Guerau de Cabrera, ignored a court summons, Jaume's entourage decided to send out a force against him. Guillem de Montcada, his son Gastó, and Ramon de Montcada participated in the campaign, which restored lost castles to Aurembaix in less than a month.⁽¹⁸³⁾ It also gave Jaume a new victory to take to Barcelona, where in December 1228 he presented his proposal for an even more impressive conquest.

Jaume's plan to expel the Saracen "nations" from the Balearic [157] islands was unveiled in November 1228 at Tarragona, following the return of his entourage from western Catalonia. Although it was proposed for Jaume's glory and for the profit of the conquering army, its purpose in fact transcended those objectives. This higher purpose was revealed by Jaume in December at a Cort assembled in Barcelona. There, in a speech recalling the troubled days of his youth, the count-king revealed his vision of a great drive of national unity around a common goal. He asked three things of the delegates assembled there: peace at home, war in Mallorca, and counsel from those present.⁽¹⁸⁴⁾

The response Jaume received from the three estates was positive. The archbishop of Tarragona, speaking for the clergy, promised counsel. Guillem de Montcada responded for the nobles and on his own behalf, saying that this would be a great and noble venture, and "moreover we say before all, that the counsel will be such, that you should take it and we give it." A positive response then came from a representative of Barcelona. The three separate groups then caucused privately, and the nobles expressed their sentiment, through Count Hug of Empúries, that they owed cooperation to Jaume as compensation for the trouble they had caused him earlier.

With everyone reassembled in the Cort, Guillem de Montcada took the floor. He stressed loyalty to the count-king and promised fulfillment of the three requests. He volunteered a levy of the bovatge "as a gift, because already another time you have taken it by right, just as it is customary that kings take it one time; beyond this we give it to you by our grace and love so that you may do well your deeds." Guillem then pledged to serve Jaume with four hundred knights until the conquest had been completed. Nunyo Sanç pledged one hundred knights and the count of Empúries sixty. Hug remarked that "even though God has made me count of Empúries, Guillem de Montcada is the best man of our lineage, and the most noble, because he is lord of Béarn and Montcada, which he holds from you, and of Castellvell, which is his allod, and I confirm the words he has spoken."⁽¹⁸⁵⁾ Other decisions of the [158] Cort concerning the expedition, including how the conquered spoils were to be divided,⁽¹⁸⁶⁾ appear in charters.⁽¹⁸⁷⁾ Preparations were now complete for the campaign that was scheduled to begin from Salou in the last week of May.

When the winds finally blew favorably in September 1229, the armada, which had been ready for weeks, prepared to sail for Mallorca. Guillem de Montcada was in the leading ship; his cousin Ramon de Montcada, following in a galley from Tortosa, would be among the first to land. The barons decided to disembark at Portopí. As the flotilla arrived, the bishop of Barcelona spoke, helping to fire the spirit of crusade that was to lead the Christian forces to victory. Guillem de Montcada joined in the Eucharist, offered on his ship, "and with knees flexed received his Creator, weeping, with tears falling down his face." As leaders of the flotilla, Guillem and Ramon received the full brunt of Saracen resistance in the opening battle and were killed. Word of their deaths brought tears to the eyes of Jaume, their king and erstwhile companion.⁽¹⁸⁸⁾

1. On the significance of this point for the development of an ideology of nobility, see Georges Duby, Les trois ordres ou l'imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris, 1978), pp. 355-56 (English trans. by Arthur Goldhammer, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined [Chicago, 1980], p. 296).

2. "Casa," pp. 137-39.

3. The count-kings of the period did have domestic officials, including a "botellarius" who is known to have purchased wine for Alfons I in Vic (ACV C.6 Eps. 1:83), but these figures only rarely appear in the sources.

4. Ramon de Montcada had joined his father in the royal court before 1173. His subscription appeared in five donation charters from 1164 to 1167 in Tortosa (ACT Cart. 6, 6r-v:8; ACA Cart. Tortosa, 73v:238; ACA Alfons I:32, 59; ACT Cart. 8, 141r-v: 87), four fiscal and administrative acts from 1169 to 1172 (ACA Alfons 1:67, 75, 104; GP 205-06:335), two confirmations of conventions between Alfons I and Alfonso of Castile (ACA Alfons I:85; LFM 1:45-47:32), and one commendation (LFM 2:191-92:681). In 1173 Ramon was one of twelve barons to join Alfons in affirming a peace and truce charter for Catalonia (Constitutions y altres drets de Cathalunya, 3 vols. [Barcelona, 1704], I:546-49). He also subscribed two charters delivered in Jaca in Nov. 1169 (which did not bear the subscription of Guillem Ramon Seneschal) in favor of the Templars (ACA Alfons I:72; ACA Cart. Gardeny, 14r-v:14).

5. During the mid-1170s Ramon de Montcada attended two meetings with Montpellier merchant creditors to retire obligations made earlier and to renegotiate debt repayment schedules (ACA Alfons I:140, Ext. inv.:3627); and he subscribed royal charters establishing rent farms and assigning property as collateral for loans (ACA Alfons I:166, 199, 200).

6. ACA Alfons I:42.

7. Jordi Ventura i Subirats, Alfons el Cast (Barcelona, 1961), pp. 127-28.

8. Ibid., pp. 160-64.

9. Two documents containing his subscription indicate that he was tending to affairs in Tortosa in mid-Dec. 1176, though by Mar. 1177 he had rejoined the count-king in Provence.

10. ACA Alfons I:227.

11. ACT Cart. 6, 3v-5r:5.

12. ACA Alfons I, Ext. inv.:2621.

13. Charles Diehl, Byzantium: Greatness and Decline (New Brunswick, N.J., 1957), p. 88.

14. This is the only documented trip of a Montcada to Constantinople. Ventura, in Alfons el Cast, p. 155, hypothesized that the arrangements to marry the emperor's daughter Eudoxia to Alfons had been made by Guillem Ramon Dapifer and Guillem de Montpellier, or at least by the Catalano-Occitan faction in Alfons's court.

15. Documents not previously cited include LFM 2:343-44:870; a donation cited by Miret y Sans in "Itinerario...Alfonso," BRABLB (1903-04), 2:397; and ACA Alfons 1:488.

16. LFM 2:128-29:621, 2:129-31:622.

17. ACA Alfons I:493.

18. ACA Alfons I:135; CP 177-78:292, 200-01:328.

19. CPFC 1:254-55:183. Font Rius cited reasons to date the charter just prior to 1192. His suggestion of 1190-1192 should be amended to 1190 or before, as Ramon de Montcada [I] died in 1190. The autograph signature on the original parchment (ACA Alfons I, Ext. in : 2604) belongs unmistakably to this Ramon and not to his son.

20. I am grateful for this reference to Thomas N. Bisson, who publishes the document (ACA Ext. mv. 3444) in his Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings, 1151-1213 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983).

21. ACA Alfons I:387.

22. ACB Lib. ant. 4:119r-v:312 (Mas 12:52-53:2201); ACA Alfons I: 620, 641, as "vice-seneschal," and ACA Alfons I: 557, 629.

23. ACA Alfons I:684.

24. CPFC 1:277-78:202.

25. ACA Alfons I:545.

26. ACA Alfons I:386, 398, 526, 694.

27. The will gave Ramon de Montcada control of the inheritance until Guillem Ramon came of age, as well as lifetime rights to the castle of Montcada. After age twenty, Guillem Ramon was to hold his patrimony in fief from his brother, Gastó, viscount of Béarn.

28. ACV C.6:1215.

29. The marriage of Guillem Ramon and Guilleuma de Castellvell had occurred by 1185, when they joined Ramon de Montcada in subscribing a grant of workshops (fabricas) at Vacarisses and Rellinars (ACA Alfons I:393).

30. ABC 2838 4-v-3.

31. Future legends about the family resulted from the association of Guillem Ramon de Montcada with his grandfather, Guillem Ramon [II] Seneschal. The potential for confusion of the names was evident by the first quarter of the thirteenth century, when a copyist in Tortosa, familiar with the figure of Guillem Ramon de Montcada (whose notorious deed was recorded in church annals there, in ACT Cart. 8, 157v-59v: 100), attributed to the Great Seneschal the appellation "de Montcada." It was a singular lapse.

32. Published in VL 19:305-08:40.

33. Guillem Ramon was considered to have been the archbishop's "man," or vassal ("proprius homo fuisset archiepiscopi").

34. See his account in Llegenda, pp. 36-37.

35. El trovador Guilhem de Berguedán y las luchas feudales de su tiempo, Libros raros y cuiosos, vol. 11 (Castellón de la Plana, 1953). Compare Riquer's more recent work, Guillem de Berguedà, 2 vols. (Abadía de Poblet, 1971), esp. 1:125-31.

36. Guillem Ramon was left with "la buesch'en l'oill," according to a line from the "Sirventes ab razon bona," written between 1187 and 1190 by Guillem de Bergueda. The troubadour, an ally of Arnau de Castellbò, parlayed this incident into a criticism of Alfons. See Riquer, Trovador, pp. 20-21, and Guillem de Berguedà, 1:125-31, 2:173-81.

37. Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, pp. 39-41.

38. ACA Archivo Castelldosrius: 17.

39. ACA Archivo Castelldosrius: 18.

40. Riquer, Trovador, p. 24 and n. 1. Pasqual, in "Sacra," 1:297:39¹, cited the document recording the reconciliation as existing in the archive of the "Mensa episcopalis, Vich, cajón 9, legajo del título 'Variorum feodorum," n. 41¹.

41. Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, p. 39, citing lines from Guillem de Berguedà's "Un sirventes ai en cor a bastir" (published by Riquer, Trovador, pp. 37-38 [and Guillem de Berguedà, 2:182-91]). Riquer cites an alliance of 1190 against the viscount of Castellbò made with the approval of Berenguer, Archbishop of Tarragona (Trovador, p. 12, a source identified by Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Alfonso," BRABLB [1903-04], 2:451, as ACA Alfons I:547).

42. Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, p. 39.

43. CP 162-63:267.

44. Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, p. 41.

45. Ibid., and Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Alfonso," BRABLB (1903-04), 2:467.

46. LlB 332:331.

47. LlB 380-81:379.

48. ACA Alfons I:694.

49. ACA Alfons I:688.

50. It is doubtful that a divorce was ever granted to the couple, because Guillem Ramon's will of 1215 spoke of Guilleuma as his wife. Their estrangement is indicated, however, both by the testimony of charters and by Guillem Ramon's mention of a concubine, Navarra, and her four children. Might the name of this companion and the debt he owed her in sols of Morlaas suggest that Guillem Ramon's years of exile were spent in the western Pyrenees, perhaps in his brother's viscounty of Béarn?

51. Guilleuma's separation from Aimeri had occurred by 1208, when she reappeared in Catalonia. On 25 Jan. 1208, Guilleuma was called "Guilleuma de Castellvell, viscountess of Narbonne" (ACA Pere I:283), but she dropped the title of viscountess in subsequent documents (e.g., ACA Pere I:295, 296, 332, and 2 of appendix, all from 1208-09). Guilleuma did not marry again, and she lived in Catalonia until her death in 1227. By 1217, Aimeri had taken as a second wife Marguerite de Marly or de Montmorency. He died in 1239. On Aimeri see Claude Devic and J.-J. Vaissete, Histoire générale de Languedoc, rev. ed., vol. 6 (Toulouse, 1879), pp. 210-11, 714-15, and passim.

52. ACA Pere I:228 and a document of 27 May 1206 cited by Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:377.

53. That Ramon expected to go on the expedition is known from a will he ordered written on 17 June 1206 (AHN SS Creus, carpeta 2771, n. 10).

54. Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:435-40.

55. ACA Pere I:274.

56. ACA Alfons I:432, 507.

57. ACA Pere I:289.

58. ACA Pere I:303. Other documents from 1209 also record his presence there: Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:498; ACA Pere I:314, 315, 337, 338, 346.

59. Guillem Ramon [III] Seneschal was the second son of Ramon de Montcada [I], who died in 1190, and a grandson of the Great Seneschal. He apparently inherited the seneschalcy from his father, who designated Guillem Ramon's elder brother, Ramon de Montcada [II], as unique heir in Tortosa-Lleida. Guillem Ramon was probably born near the end of Ramon's life, for the only mention of him before 1209 is in property alienations, where he is identified as the brother of Ramon [II] (ACA Arm. 11:1967 [11 June 1202] and ACA Pere I:277⁴ [22 Dec. 1207]). With only a few exceptions -- six from 1209 (ACA Pere I:314, 315, 337, 338; CSC 3:392-93:1274, 3:394:1275) and one from 1216 (ACA Jaume I:66) -- the new seneschal was never referred to in original documents as Guillem Ramon de Montcada. He was known instead as Guillem Ramon Seneschal, like his grandfather and great-grandfather (who were not Montcadas by birth). This convention made the distinction easy between the seneschal and his older cousin Guillem Ramon de Montcada [I], the assassin of Berenguer de Vilademuls and the future viscount of Béarn.

60. This alliance actually included other magnates on the count-king's and the Montcada's side such as Guillem de Cervera and, for the time being, the viscount of Cardona, who was also interested in the outcome. But the count-king and the Montcadas had leading roles in the lordship of the border region of Urgell and especially of Lleida, the primary focus of Cabrera aggression.

61. ACA Pere I:346.

62. ACA Pere I:378, which follows the dating (Feb. 1210) suggested by Ferran Soldevila in Els primers temps de Jaume I, Institut d'estudis catalans, Memòries de la secció històrico-arqueològica, 27 (Barcelona, 1968), p. 25.

63. See Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 20-24.

64. ACA Pere I:404¹, a document of surrender by Guerau (text in Catalan).

65. ACA Pere I:404², a convention (in Latin) attached to the bottom of 404¹. A separate copy of this document, also undated, exists as ACA Pere I, Ext. inv: 3652.

66. CPFC 1:322-24:231, a document witnessed by Ramon de Montcada.

67. There were appearances in 1210 at Teruel, Aragon (ACA Pere I:369, 386), Flix (ACA Arm. 4:1), Agramunt (ACA Pere I:373 dupl.), and Lleida (Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB [1905-06], 3:518-19); also in 1211 at Lleida(ACB Lib. ant. I:191:519 [Mas 12:167-68:2448]; ACA Pere I:385; Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB [1907-08], 4:22; ACT Cart. 3, 103r- 04v, ACB Lib. ant. 1:192:521 [Mas 12:168-69:2451], Tarragona (ACA Pere I:397), and again at Lleida (CPFC 1:326-28:234).

68. Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1907-08), 4:33.

69. ACA Pere I:425, 427.

70. Costança was born out of wedlock before Pere's marriage to Maria in 1204. See Bofarull, Condes, 2:229-31, and ACA Pere I:430.

71. ACA Pere I:430; 431.

72. ACA Pere I:432.

73. ACA Pere I:433.

74. ACA Pere I:434,435.

75. In one tradition (according to Pierre de Marca) that was handed down over generations and alluded to in the preface to the customs of Morlaas, Gastó's accession was attributed to an election by Béarnese who traveled to Catalonia in 1173, following three years of rebellion, to choose a new viscount from among the children of Guillem and Maria. The delegates found the two sons asleep; they chose Gastó because, unlike Guillem Ramon, he slept with his hand open, which they interpreted as a sign of liberality (Histoire de Béarn [Paris, 1640], p. 485). But the story is plausible only if one adopts a much later chronology for Guillem de Montcada's marriage and the birth of his children (i.e., 1170-72; cf. Miret y Sans, "Casa," p. 194). Another reason why hereditary succession is more likely than election is the fact of Maria de Béarn's disappearance as viscountess from documentation after 1173, the year of Gastó's accession to lordship in the viscounty (in an act cited by Marca [p. 487] with the date 1174, "presidente in Bearno vicecomite Gastone Iuniore de Montcada, anno secundo").

76. Pelegrín is cited in numerous acts of the 1170s alongside Gastó. One document of 1176 was issued "by the consent of Gastó with Pelegrín de Castillazuelo," another from Jan. 1178 "with Gastó ruling [principante] in Béarn under Pelegrín de Castillazuelo" (Marca, Histoire, p. 490).

77. The 1178 date may be preferable, since the later of two known documents of that year does not mention a role for Pelegrín de Castillazuelo. Instead it bears as an element of its date (1 June 1178) the mention "Gastone vicecomite filio Mariae dominante in Bearno" (Marca, Histoire, p. 489). These data suggest that Gastó came of age in the first half of 1178. In 1180 he made a donation as viscount of Gavardan to the priory of Gabarret in Gascony (ADP-A E 1 f° 348v). But he was independent at the latest by 1182, when he confirmed the privileges of the monastery of Grandselve (Marca, pp. 442-43), because this kind of act normally belonged to the early years of a reign.

78. LFM 1:28-29:20.

79. LFM 1:29-31:21.

80. A nuptial mass was said on 1 June at Muret by Bernat, abbot of Grandselve, in a year not given in the documents. From the dates of the various ecclesiastical officials mentioned, however, Marca concluded that the earliest possible date for the marriage was 1196 (Histoire, p. 501).

81. Court service: "Casa," p. 198, citing ACA Pere I:111. In 1209 Pere acknowledged a debt to Gastó of 50,000 sols of Morlaas (ACA Pere I:361).

82. See his charter of allegiance to Pere I dated 27 Jan. 1212 in Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, vol. 216 (Paris, 1855), cols. 848-49.

83. Marca, Histoire, pp. 529-30.

84. See the letter of Innocent III in Jan. 1214 instructing his legate to reunite Gastó and the count of Comminges with the church after "receiving guarantees," in Migne, Patrologiae...latina, vol. 216, cols. 958-59.

85. The document apparently has not survived, though its existence was attested by Guillem Ramon de Montcada in an act of 1224.

86. ACA Pere I:211.

87. Anales 2:52:144.

88. ACA Pere I:228.

89. Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:377-78.

90. Guillem Ramon de Montcada and Guillem de Montcada signed a charter of franchise from customs and tolls granted by Pere to the inhabitants of Jaca on 17 June (Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:444.

91. In June 1209 Guillem Ramon raised 7,500 sols of Barcelona by selling his castle of Lliça to Ramon de Subirats (ACB Div. C/d/3968, carpeta 5). In Nov. he approved the sale of a house in his Vic lordship to a third party (ACV C.7:38).

92. MH 1395:494.

93. The outcome is discussed below. For a fuller analysis, see my "Tactiques politiques."

94. In the period 1209-1213 Guillem de Montcada subscribed seventeen royal documents, fourteen of them in Catalonia. By contrast, during the same period his cousins Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal appeared in forty-six royal charters, of which twenty-eight were issued in Aragon or western Catalonia.

95. ACA Pere I:323, 334; CSC 3:396: 1278. Three other appearances in Pere's court in 1209 are attested in ACT Cart. 3, 66v-68r; Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1905-06), 3:500; ACA Cartes reales anteriores a Jaime I, caja única: 26. For further comment on Guillem de Montcada's role in the financial affairs of Pere I, see Thomas N. Bisson, "Las finanzas del joven Jaime I (1213- 1228)," in X Congreso de historia de la Corona de Aragón: Zaragoza, 1976 (Saragossa, 1980), pp. 172-79.

96. Document cited by Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," in BRABLB (1907-08), 4:22.

97. Guillem's subscription appeared on two documents from 1210, ACA Varia 2:74r-v and ACA Pere I:372 (Montsó and Lleida), and three from 1211: B.Alart, Privileges et titres relatifs aux franchises, institutions et propriétés communales de Roussillon et de Cerdagne, pt. 1 (Perpignan, 1878), pp. 96-99 (Perpignan); ACT Cart. 8, 131v-32r:78, and ACB Lib. ant. 4:184:436 (Mas 12:166-67:2446) (Barcelona); and ACA Pere I:392 (Vic).

98. Archive of the monastery of Montserrat, ser. Sant Benet de Bages: 1869. My thanks to Thomas N. Bisson for sharing this document with me.

99. The king's agents acknowledged receipt of 20 sols of Barcelona as compensation for the broken peace.

100. Guillem's subscription appeared on royal documents issued in Jan., Feb., and Apr. 1213 at Toulouse, Perpignan, and Barcelona, respectively (Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB (1907-08) 4:93; CPFC 1:333-36:238; ACB Lib. ant. 1:192-93:520, 522 [Mas 12:204-06:2532, 2533]. Ramon de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal continued to accompany the count-king throughout 1213, subscribing charters at Barcelona in Apr. (ACB Lib. ant. 1:192-93:520, 522, 523 [Mas 12:204-06:2532, 2533, 2534; AMT Priv. I:1) and at Lleida from late May to mid-June (ACA Arm. II:2413; Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB [1907-08], 4:102; ACT Cart. 3, 92v-93v). On 22 Aug., at Huesca, Pere made Guillem Ramon Seneschal "guarantor" of a promise to the archbishop of Tarragona, evidence that Guillem Ramon was present in Pere's entourage (Miret y Sans, "Itinerario...Pedro," BRABLB [1907-08], 4:103). It is likely that Ramon de Montcada was also with the count-king then and that they all crossed the Pyrenees together. Unless the two left Pere to join the forces of Guillem de Montcada and Nunyo Sanç, it can be assumed that they were at Muret and that they, with others, escaped death by fleeing the battlefield.

101. "Llibre dels feits del rei en Jaume," ed. Ferran Soldevila, in Les quatre grans cròniques (Barcelona, 1971), ch. 9, p. 6.

102. For details of this embassy and other facets of the period's history that are treated only summarily here, see Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 53ff. and passim.

103. "Llibre dels feits," ch. 10, p. 7.

104. Sanç's appointment, sanctioned by Pierre de Douai, was probably made at the general Cort held in August at Lleida; see Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 67-84.

105. He first appeared as viscount in a document of 26 Oct. 1214, but his brother's death probably occurred a few weeks or months before. Marca, citing a document from the cartulary of the church of Oloron (Histoire, pp. 529-30), suggested 1215 as the year of Gastó's death, but this is probably the date of transcription of the charter and not its date of issue.

106. ACA Jaume I:26, published by Soldevila (Primers temps, pp. 101-02), who erroneously gives the date as 26 Oct. 1215.

107. The document continues after the initial settlement to delineate an agreement whereby Nunyo Sanç, son of the procurator and count of Roussillon, and Guillem Ramon de Montcada promise mutual aid and defense regarding Bigorre and Béarn. This is treated by Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 91-93, who discusses the act in relation to the proposed marriage of Nunyo Sanç to the widow Peronella of Bigorre (Guillem Ramon's sister-in-law) as the principal interest of the document. Three weeks after concluding his pact with Nunyo Sanç, the new viscount of Béarn and his ally Guillem de Cervera subscribed a treaty of peace and friendship with Peronella. The date of that document, preserved in the original at Pau (ADP-A E 288), is clearly 1214 and not 1215 as reported by Marca (Histoire, pp. 535-36).

108. He is attested in Dec. (ACV Masies de Voitregà, an uncatalogued parchment of 1 Dec. 1214); Jan. (ACA Jaume I:31); Feb. (ACA Jaume I:32, 33); Aug. (ACB Div. A:265); and Sept. (ACA Jaume I:50, 51).

109. AHN SS Creus, carpeta 2776, n. 14.

110. The prelates' dispositions are published in VL 19:304-05:39. The document is undated but had to fall between 1213 and 1219 (see Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, p. 47). Coll i Alentorn's suggestion of mid-1216 (ibid.) can be amended definitively to late 1215 or early 1216, when Guillem Ramon was in Rome.

111. His presence is again attested there from Feb. to Apr. 1216 (ACA Jaume I:53, 58; Coll i Alentorn, Llegenda, p. 46).

112. Marca, Histoire, pp. 561-62.

113. Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 96ff., suggests that the inspiration for this council came not from the barons but from Sanç, who thought his political designs in Languedoc would risk less ecclesiastical retribution if coordinated by a council of papal appointees. This is an interesting construction, but it cannot be proven given the evidence available. One objection to it as a hypothesis is that it attributes unusual cunning and foresight to Sanç while crediting the members of the opposition party with little perspicacity.

114. The term is Soldevila's. It serves well to distinguish those named by the pope from those added later.

115. ACA Jaume I:66.

116. Ibid; italics mine. Concerning the rights of Guillem de Cervera, see Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 109.

117. The subscription of this "G. Raimundi de Montecatano" should refer to Guillem's father, the viscount of Béarn. But the fact that the title of viscount is not used and the position of the name following that of Ramon de Montcada lead me to believe that this is actually a reference to Guillem Ramon Seneschal. Moreover, if the name did refer to the viscount, this would have been his only known appearance in Catalonia from Apr. 1216 to June 1217 -- a period that, I believe, he spent in Béarn.

118. Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 108.

119. The marriage was celebrated on 13 Nov. 1216 while Guillem Ramon de Montcada and Count Nunyo Sanç of Roussillon were successfully resisting Montfort attacks at Lourdes. See ibid., p. 110.

120. Ibid., pp. 111-16.

121. A copy is in ACA Cart. Gardeny, 2v:4.

122. Important achievements of this assembly of barons, churchmen and municipal representatives were the approval of the tax known as the bovatge; the reconciliation of Guerau, viscount of Cabrera, with Jaume and his pro-Urgell allies (Guillem de Cervera, Ramon de Montcada, and Guillem Ramon Seneschal); and a renewal of peace and truce statutes. See Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 132-33 (document published in Huici, 1:18-23:2--document n. 1 in the original edition of Huici, hereafter given in brackets following the document number of the new edition).

123. See Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 139-40.

124. Huici, 1:29-30:5[4].

125. Soldevila, Primers temps, pp. 140-45.

126. Ibid., pp. 145-46. Among those present with Jaume at Montsó in Jan. 1218 were Guillem and Ramon de Montcada (ACA Reg. 310, f°43).

127. Huici, 1:32-33: 7[6], 1:33-35:8. Jaume's party included Guillem de Montcada.

128. Soldevila, Primers temps, 147-49.

129. Except for brief appearances in Catalonian documents in early 1218 (ACA Jaume I:8612) and in Feb. 1219 (ACV C.6, "Pergamins datats"-- notation of this document made possible through the courtesy of the late Eduard Junyent), Guillem Ramon is not attested south of the Pyrenees during the period 1218-1224.

130. Document of 24 Nov. 1218, cited by Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 162.

131. In Feb. 1224 Guillem Ramon entreated his heir "and all others who are about to succeed in the interim" to affirm an oath of peace to the archbishop of Auch "just as is contained in the apostolic rescript," which Guillem Ramon recognized and affirmed. See document in Marca, Histoire, pp. 561-62.

132. Ibid., pp. 537, 548-50. See also Pierre Rogé, Les anciens fors de Béarn: Etudes sur l'histoire du droit béarnais au moyen age, Université de Toulouse, Faculté de droit (Toulouse, 1907), p. 73.

133. Marca, Histoire, p. 536.

134. The authors of a recent study of the for (customary law) of Oloron suggest that the bourgeois of this city fabricated fourteen of the twenty-five legal articles and had them approved by an unwary Guillem Ramon de Montcada in 1220 or 1221. See Jacques Dumonteil and Bernard Cheronnet, Le for d'Oloron (Oloron, 1980 [1981]), pp. 30-31 and passim.

135. AHN SS Creus, carpeta 2776, n. 14.

136. These arrangements were dictated in a document written at Oloron on 17 Feb. 1224, shortly before the viscount's death. The document is published in Marca, Histoire, pp. 561-62).

137. Huici, 1:39-40:10[7], 1:41-42:11[9], 1:42-44:12[I0I0], 1:44-46:13[10], 1:46-48:14[11], 1:48-50:15[12], I:50-51:16[13].

138. Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 165.

139. Joaquím Miret y Sans, Itinerari de Jaume I "el Conqueridor" (Barcelona, 1918), p. 33.

140. Huici, 1:54-55:19[15].

141. Ibid., 1:75-77:33[20].

142. ACB Div. C/d/1818, capsa 17.

143. ACA Jaume I:146.

144. ACA Jaume I:138.

145. ACA Jaume I:139.

146. Huici, 1:60-61 :23[16]. The Templar almost certainly was Gaucelm, preceptor of the Templar house at Palau-solità, who in Feb. 1223 received an accounting of three months' minting of the new debased sol of Barcelona.

147. ACA S. Benet: 653. The original charter is extant, but it escaped the notice of Miret y Sans. The data it provides helps fill a large gap in Jaume's itinerary: 1 July at Daroca to 30 Nov. 1221 at Girona. See Miret y Sans, Itinerari, p. 38.

148. Huici, 1:73-75:32[1013].

149. ACA Sentmenat: Index 8, n. 33; Huici, 1:86:35[22].

150. ACA Jaume I:207.

151. Joaquím Botet y Sisó, Les monedes catalans, vol. 2 (Barcelona, 1909), pp. 38-39.

152. That "the kingdom does not vanish from nature" ("Llibre dels feits," ch. 18, p. 10).

153. Huici, 1:65-67:27[19].

154. Chronic strife among Aragonese bands led Soldevila to conclude that "during this time it can be said that Jaume was not, especially in Aragon, the king of the land, but rather the king of parties, first of one, then of another" (Primers temps, p. 176).

155. In "Llibre dels feits" (ch. 20, p. 11), the chronicler remarked that after Jaume's marriage "each of the ric-hòmens (leading barons) struggled to become Jaume's closest adviser."

156. Ibid., chs. 20-21, pp. 11-12.

157. Huici, 1:92-95:39[25]. In the document Jaume recognized Guerau as "Count of Urgell."

158. Ibid., 1:102-03:43[27].

159. A mid-October convention between Jaume, Guerau de Cabrera, and Ramon Folc de Cardona identified Guillem de Montcada, Ramon de Montcada and his son Guillem, Guillem Ramon Dapifer, Ramon de Cervera and his son Jaume, Guillem de Cervelló and his son Guerau, Ramon Aleman, Guillem de Claramunt, Guillem de Tarragona, and Guerau d'Aguiló as barons "insurging against [the count-king], warring unjustly against him and his kingdom, and refusing to accept his rights." Published by Joan Serra y Vilaró, "Don Jaume lo Conqueridor y en Guerau de Cabrera," in BRABLB (1907-08), 4:304-05; date corrected by Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 209.

160. "Llibre dels feits," ch. 21, pp. 11-12. Years later, Jaume's respect for the impregnability of the fortress gave rise to this tribute in his chronicle: "And the castle of Montcada is such, that having good fortifications, if there is no hunger, it cannot be taken by any host, because they have sufficient water in the side of the castle from a fountain that springs up on the northern side, and no man can take the fountain unless he take the castle" (ibid.).

161. ACA Jaume I:223; Marca, Histoire, p. 568. The alliance was drawn up on 11 Apr. 1224.

162. Guillem de Montcada suddenly appeared in a document of 19 June 1224 from Escatrón, along with Pedro Cornel and Trencavel (who had perhaps accompanied Guillem from Languedoc). It was Trencavel's first appearance in the court of Jaume. See Miret y Sans, Itinerari, pp. 49-50.

163. ACA Jaume I:239. See also my "Tactiques politiques."

164. Anales, 2:80:244-45.

165. "Llibre dels feits," ch. 21, pp. 12-13; ch. 22, pp. 13-14; ch. 24, p. 14. Bisson, in "Finanzas," p. 178 suggests that Guillem de Montcada's demand for 20,000 morabetins from Jaume "may be understood as the settlement of old claims left over from unpaid debts long antedating the recent war, for Guillem later spoke of the resources on which the grant was assigned as pledges." Such advances could have influenced Guillem's selection as procurator in Old Catalonia.

166. Huici, 1:139-44:67[42]. Those present for the confirmation included Guillem de Montcada, now viscount of Béarn, Ramon de Montcada, and Guillem Ramon Seneschal.

167. Soldevila, Primers temps, p. 223.

168. ACA Jaume I:256.

169. ACA Jaume I:259.

170. Of five documents dated during this siege, which lasted from 13 Aug. to 21 Sept., four are donations of anticipated spoils subscribed by Guillem de Montcada, Ramon de Montcada, and Guillem Ramon Seneschal. A fifth, destined for the bishop of Tortosa, was witnessed by Ramon de Montcada (Huici, 1:147-48:70[1016]; 1:148-51:71 [44]; 1:151-52:72; 1:153:73 [1017]; 1:132-33:62).

171. The brothers' subscriptions appeared on royal documents from Lleida in Apr. 1226 (Huici, 1:158-59:77) and from Barcelona later that month (Huici, 1:161:79[47]) and in early May (Miret y Sans, Itinerari, p. 61); the accommodation with Guillem Ramon in a document from late May (Huici, 1:164-70: 82 [50]).

172. ACA Jaume I:296.

173. ACA Jaume I:308, 309, 310.

174. "Llibre dels feits," chs. 30-32, pp. 18-20.

175. Ibid., ch. 33, p. 20.

176. Ibid., ch. 33, pp. 20-21.

177. DI 6:90-95:15.

178. Huici, 1:180-82:91, 1:183-84:92.

179. "Llibre dels feits," ch. 33, p. 21.

180. Marca, Histoire, p. 572.

181. The chronicler of the "Llibre dels feits" refers here (ch. 34, p. 21) to the last known appearance of Guillem Ramon Seneschal, who seems to have died in 1228. Miret y Sans noted that Guillem Ramon made out a will in 1227 "and must have died soon afterwards" ("Casa," p. 141). I have been unable to locate the will.

182