[ix] The history of a single Catalan noble family as a topic for scholarly investigation may appear curiously anachronistic in a time when historians often attempt to explain in broad terms the history of entire social classes in certain regions at a given time. And this work would be anachronistic if it followed in the steps of the many chroniclers, apologists, and biographers who recount in annalistic form the deeds of their heroes. Instead, it seeks to integrate the specific with the general, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the Catalan nobility of the high Middle Ages.

The Montcada family earned an honored place in the history of Catalonia, Spain, and the Mediterranean during the more than seven centuries in which it flourished. In the high Middle Ages its members were lords of Montcada and archdeacons of the See of Barcelona. These individuals were succeeded by Montcada lords, seneschals, and churchmen in Catalonia, viscounts in Béarn, a queen in the kingdom of Aragon, and, in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, distinguished barons in the royal courts of Spain, in ecclesiastical office, and in letters. Such was the reputation of the lineage that Cervantes' hero included it among those considered the most venerable of Spain. When asked by the traveler Vivaldo about the "lineage, race, and family" of Don Quixote's lady, the knight replied:

She is not of the ancient Curtii, Caii or Scipios of Rome; nor of the modern Colonnas and Orsinis; nor the Moncadas and Requesenes of Catalonia, nor yet the Rebellas and Villanovas of Valencia; of the Palafoxes, Nuzas, Rocabertis, Correlas, Lunas, Alagones, Urreas, Fozes and Gurreas of Aragon; of the Cerdas, Manriques, Mendozas and Guzmans of Castile, nor of the Alencastres, Pallas and Meneses of Portugal; but of El Toboso of La Mancha, a lineage which, though modern, may yet give noble birth to the most illustrious families of future ages.⁽¹⁾

This is not the place to analyze the origins of the legend of Otger Cataló and the nine famous barons from whom, according to many Renaissance-era historians, sprang the principal noble families of Catalonia.⁽²⁾ Suffice it to say that the legend of these figures, including a baron named Dapifer de Montcada, reassured members of the noble class that their forebears had always enjoyed a privileged place in society. The story honored their descent and justified the status still accorded it by society. It is therefore not surprising that in the absence of a known early history of the Montcada family, authors of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance invented one. Portions of it survived to confuse historians for many centuries to come.

Of all the writings in the early modern period aimed at satisfying the aristocracy's need for a sense of its past, the one that perhaps contributed most to integrate fiction with historical knowledge of the Montcada family's origins was called "Genealogía y sucesión de las familias del linaje de Moncada desde su principio del año 734 hasta el año de 1620." The work baldly asserted not only that Dapifer de Montcada had arrived in Catalonia with Otger Cataló in the early eighth century, but also that he was descended from a lineage of dukes of Bavaria.⁽³⁾ The anonymous author then [xi] supplied the names of generations of purported descendants up to the eleventh century. Here was "history" tailor-made for the aspirations of its audience six centuries later. In spite of the criticism that credible seventeenth-century historians could apply to the work, the social climate favored its premises and ensured its survival. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, advances in critical thought had made possible a more accurate history. Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, marqués de Mondéjar, produced the "Historia de la casa de Moncada" probably in the early eighteenth century.⁽⁴⁾ Mondéjar rightly dismissed as fabulous the purported origins of Dapifer de Montcada and cast his net wide in search for bona fide historical evidence. His quest led to the formulation of a new theory for the early history of the Montcada family that came close to unraveling the mystery of its origins.

The importance of the marqués de Mondéjar's work lies not in his theories concerning the Montcada family ancestry, but in his realization that two lineages, not a single one, were involved: the Montcadas and the family of dapifers, or seneschals, of Barcelona. This conclusion contradicted the "facts" accepted by Dean Juan Luis de Moncada in his treatment of the early history of his own lineage. It also countered the oft-repeated statement that the family's first historical member was named Dapifer de Montcada, or at least that members of the Montcada family had held the seneschalcy in the eleventh century or before.⁽⁵⁾

Mondéjar's achievement in separating the eleventh-century history of the seneschals from that of the Montcadas was ignored by the next wave of scholars to investigate the family's history. The first major modern treatment came in 1886, when Antonio Rubió y Lluch prepared a biographical sketch in conjunction with Guillem Ramon de Montcada's election to the Galeria de Catalans Il.lustres. In his work Rubió y Lluch simply relied on the testimony [xii] of the anonymous biographer,⁽⁶⁾ and no one is known to have objected that the "Great Seneschal" did not descend from the family whose name he bore.⁽⁷⁾ At the end of the century, José Balan y Jovany stated that the title "dapifer" was used by the eldest sons of the Montcada lineage.⁽⁸⁾ A short time later Joaquím Miret y Sans also addressed the question, but only cursorily because his focus was the Montcadas as viscounts of Béarn. After presenting Mondéjar's argument, Miret y Sans adopted the majority view, establishing a point of departure for subsequent scholarship.⁽⁹⁾

The adherents of the majority view based their conclusions upon a long line of historical tradition, upon coincidence in personal name patterns, and upon the assumed reason for the twelfth-century divorce of Beatriu de Montcada and Guillem Ramon Seneschal. The majority interpretation was elaborated with care by Santiago Sobrequés Vidal.⁽¹⁰⁾ It has been further refined by the contributors of the Montcada entry in the recently published Gran enciclopedia de Catalunya.⁽¹¹⁾ As a genealogical solution, it seems to accommodate well-known facts concerning the seneschals and Montcada family members in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. But tested as a theory on data accumulated through a systematic investigation of charters in many Catalonian archives, it raises substantial problems, which have led to my conclusion that it must be discarded. It is replaced herein by a new genealogy constructed from documentary evidence.

The documentation upon which this book is based consists almost exclusively of notarial acts that must inform us, in the virtual absence of narrative accounts, not only of deeds and events, but also of motives for them and of their consequences.⁽¹²⁾ Fortunately, [xiii] parchments and cartularies recording castle enfeoffments, oaths of fidelity, feudal alliances, sales and purchases of property, accounts of justice, pious donations, and testaments abound in the civil and ecclesiastical archives of Catalonia. I have exploited this wealth by examining, one by one, documents in most archival series which might yield references to the activities of the Montcadas or the early seneschals. This involved consulting approximately fifteen thousand pieces in twelve archives in Catalonia and Madrid; these in turn provided a total of about twelve hundred documents that directly involve family members or refer to them. From these sources the history of the Montcadas has been written.

This book could not have been written without the generous assistance and cooperation of many archivists, institutions and individuals. I am most grateful for help from the Archive of the Crown of Aragon; the cathedral and diocesan archives of Barcelona, Vic, Tortosa, Girona, and Urgell; the Library of Catalonia; the municipal archive of Tortosa; the National Historical Archive in Madrid; and the departmental archives of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the Pyrénées-Orientales. For financial support I thank the Graduate Division of the University of California at Berkeley, the trustees of the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, the National Science Foundation, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. To the many professors and friends who encouraged me in this work I extend my warmest gratitude, especially to professors Howard Kaminsky, who started me off in medieval history, and Thomas N. Bisson, who completed my training and made this work possible. I wish to thank the editors at the University of California Press for their assistance. Any contorted sentences that remain are entirely my responsibility. My thanks go also to Adrienne E. Morgan, who drew the maps in this volume, and Jeannie Coffey at Gonzaga University who cheerfully typed the manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to my parents for their support and encouragement, and to my wife, Olivia, for her unflagging patience and comprehension.

1. Don Quixote, trans. J. M. Cohen (London, 1954), pp. 100-01.

2. According to this legend, the Germanic warrior Otger Cataló and his nine companions are said to have crossed the Pyrenees in the first half of the eighth century to combat the Moors. When Otger Cataló died, his leadership role passed to "Dapifer de Montcada," the founder in Catalonia of the Montcada line of barons, and ancestor of the comital lineages of Empúries and Urgell. See Antonio Rubió y Liuch, D. Guillermo Ramón de Moncada: Gran senescal de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1886), p. 6, and Fernando Valls Taberner, "El sentit alemany de la ilegenda d'Otger Cataló," in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, 1^st ser. (1930), 2:397-99.

3. Rubió y Lluch, D. Guillermo Ramón, p. 11. The manuscript history was cited again in 1901-02 by Miret y Sans in "Casa," p. 50, who noted that it was conserved at the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona. It could not be found there in 1977 and may now be lost.

4. Manuscript copies of this unpublished work exist at the Biblioteca de Catalunya (MS 2006) and in the Real Academia de Historia, Madrid (Colección Salazar y Castrón, B. 11-12).

5. Dean Juan Luis de Moncada, Episcopologio de Vich, Biblioteca histórica de la diócesis de Vich, vol. 1 (Vic, 1891), p. 399.

6. Rubió y Lluch, D. Guillermo Ramón, pp. 16-17.

7. Antonio de Bofarull y de Brocá, in his Historia crítica (civil y eclesiástica) de Cataluña (1876), had recognized that the family of seneschals did not use the name Montcada until after Guillem Ramon's marriage to Beatriu, but he did not conclude from this fact that two distinct lineages were involved. See Rubió y Lluch, D. Guillermo Ramón, p. 13 (and Bofarull, Historia crítica,2:442).

8. José Balan y Jovany, Orígenes históricos de Cataluña (Sant Cugat del Vallès, 1964), p. 463.

9. "Casa," pp. 49-51.

10. Santiago Sobrequés Vidal, Els barons de Catalunya, 3^rd ed. (Barcelona, 1970), pp. 58-59.

11. Volume 10 (Barcelona, 1977), p. 222.

12. The chronicle of Jaume I, El Conqueridor, is sketchy in detail for all but the last decade of the period treated here. The only important twelfth-century narrative, the Gesta comitum Baarcinonensium, adds nothing to our knowledge of the Montcada family history.