The Story of Majorca and Minorca

Majorca has a very interesting history under its Aragonese princes, and a history which has been well told by those princes themselves and by a loyal vassal who was a diligent seeker after truth. But to understand it we must turn first to the gorges of the Pyrenees and the ports of Catalonia.

By the middle of the eighth century the Moors had overcome Spain up to the Pyrenees, and established their rule and their religion in all parts of the country. But there they had to stop. They could not subdue the mountaineers of Asturias and the Basque provinces. Strong in their almost inaccessible valleys in the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, the ancestors of the nobles of Aragon also held their Moslem enemies at bay. Wild as those valleys were, they were beautiful and productive. Evergreen oaks clothed the lower slopes, succeeded by pine forests, and still higher up are the bushes and trees of box so characteristic of the Pyrenees. The mountaineers had their flocks and herds, crops of barley and oats, and abundance of timber. But there was a long struggle before them.

The little kingdom of Navarre was founded by Garcia Jimenes as early as 758, and Louis, the son of Charlemagne, drove the Moors out of Barcelona and established a Christian country there about fifty years afterwards. At length the kingdom of Aragon was founded by Ramiro I., a son of the King of Navarre, and Buesca was taken from the Moors and became the first capital of Aragon. Then the great Alonso, surnamed ‘El Batallador,’ having firmly established his power in the plains, drove the Moors out of Zaragoza in 1118, which was thenceforth the capital of Aragon.

The marriage of Petronilla, the heiress of Aragon, with Raymond Berenger, the Count of Barcelona, raised the kingdom to a position of importance among the nations of the Middle Ages. The Counts of Barcelona during three centuries had ruled over a maritime people of great energy. These rulers were, for the most part, capable men, whether in war or peace. The Berengers were great warriors. It is related that the first of the family passed his hand, covered with blood, down the face of his golden shield after a battle, and ever afterwards the arms of Barcelona, granted by the Emperor Charles the Bald in 873 and eventually adopted by Aragon, were or four pales gules. The old arms of Aragon were a cross of St. George between four Moors’ heads. They were quartered with those of Barcelona after the union; but latterly those of the Counts of Barcelona only were used. Sicily was per saltire the arms of Aragon (Barcelona) above and below, imperial eagles dexter and sinister. As rulers of a maritime and commercial people, the Counts were not found wanting. Count Raymond, called the ‘Old,’ gave the Catalans a code of laws and began the cathedral at Barcelona, and his successors fostered the rising importance of Catalan enterprise.