Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500 By Paul Freedman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 423 arly research. But in comparison to its own sister volumes, it is somewhat disappointing. Those two volumes both show, particularly in sections by Evelyn Patlagean and André Vauchez, an attention to the practice of Christianity which is enlightening and novel as far as handbooks go. The volume under review is a bit more traditionalist in concept, albeit equally sure in execution, and nowhere in the handbook literature is the Christian east of this period treated in anything near the same depth. The completion of this trilogy marks a significant and welcome moment in the development of research tools for historians of medieval Christianity. Thomas Head Washington University in St. Louis Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500. By Paul Freedman. [Variorum Collected Studies Series.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Co. 1994. Pp. xii, 270.) Church, Law and Society in Catalonia is a collection of seventeen articles previously published in English and French in a number of different journals. Some have been revised and the bibliographies brought up to date in the present volume, and a useful index has been included. Freedman deals with three main topics relating to Catalonia: its legendary origins, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and serfdom, the latter the subject of his prize-winning monograph Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia 1 shall attempt to draw attention to the most important aspects of the collection, elaborating on those which 1 have found either especially interesting or valuable . The first seven articles refer to the preservation of Gothic influences on the Catalan Church and the way in which Gregorian reform was regarded as a threat to the independence of the Catalan monasteries of Ripoll, Sant Cugat, Sant Père de Roda, and Sant Benêt de Bages. Freedman comments that Catalonia preserved certain Gothic influences on the Church longer than elsewhere in Spain. Furthermore, disputes frequently arose over economic matters between monastic foundations and bishops or between two important sees. Such is the case in the hitherto unknown papal letters included in die volume, those of Innocent 111 and Honorius HI, regarding disputes of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the bishoprics of Vic and Tarragona and Lleida and the Seu d'Urgell. The letters are among several uncovered by die author in the Ecclesiastical Archives of Vic. Steps toward the development of an urban economy in Catalonia, Freedman suggests, can be seen as early as the twelfth century. In defiance of their overlord, the bishop ofVic, town associations requested permission to punish and imprison wrongdoers from outside the city. It is the first time that im- 424 BOOK REVIEWS portant merchant families in Vic have been identified, men who were later to become the merchant elite orprobt homines. Family-led insurrection was to become a feature of many Catalan towns in the fourteenth century, but nowhere was it more firmly entrenched than in Vic. Much of the information given on enserfment in Catalonia has since been included in Freedman's monograph, but of special interest are Articles XIII and Xrv. The legendary reason given for the servitude of peasants, "cowardice ," dates from the ninth century and is inextricably bound with the medieval image of Catalonia (Article XVI). In this collection the author explains the significance of the ius maletractandi, referring to "the privilege it conferred to mistreat peasants without just cause" (XIII, 41). Such mistreatment increased in the later Middle Ages, exacerbated by social and economic factors, and eventually led to the wars of the Remenees in the late fifteenth century. As a result of this uprising, servitude was abolished in Catalonia. Freedman compares peasant unrest in Catalonia with that in sixteenth-century Germany and concludes that the difference lies in the absence of religious motivation for the wars of the Remenees. The significance of the present volume lies in its focus on topics which were not unique to Catalonia: the relations between the Papacy and the local church, early attempts to gain redemption from overlords by both townsmen and peasants, and the role of symbolism and legend in history. By collecting these studies into an easily accessible volume, Freedman has ensured that scholars of ecclesiastical and social institutions do not overlook either his important contributions to Catalonia's early...