Introduction

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides a background of Jaume Caresmar and his fellow canons at Santa Maria de Bellpuig de les Avellanes. These historians reclaimed Catalonia’s past and attempted to ensure its progress in the Age of Enlightenment. Indeed, the story of the Bellpuig antiquarians has implications for the historical and cultural situation of Catalonia, a territory that enjoyed immense power and prestige in the Middle Ages, but whose autonomy in the modern era has often been repressed and its cultural identity ignored by the Spanish state. Members of the Bellpuig circle were interested in the Middle Ages in part because of their concern for the history of the church, but also because the centuries between Charlemagne and the Spanish arrival in the New World formed a period of efflorescence and power for the territory whose major city, Barcelona, was among the great actors in Mediterranean trade, war, and political influence. In addition to Caresmar and his associates and the evolution of Catalonia’s national identity, the book also considers the loss and survival of medieval records.