I swear…. Catalan oath

01/10/2023 1 Comment
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I swear….

In the 12th century, Catalans already had a well developed sense of identity and pride.

This ancient Catalan oath of allegiance was sworn by the leaders of the council  to theI swear.... monarch of Catalonia and Aragon..

We…..
who are as good as you
swear to you,
who are no better than we,
to accept you as our king and sovereign lord,
provided you observe all our liberties and laws;
but if not, not.

(“Nós,
que valem tant com vós
per separat,
i junts més que vós,
us investim sobirà i us jurem lleialtat per tal que ens protegiu,
i treballeu pel nostre progrés,
i si no, no”.).

Truth or legend? Who knows….but we can certainly imagine some of the locals we know here in Catalonia taking this oath very seriously indeed!

Comments

  1. Never existed something called kingdom of Catalonia, therefore never existed a Catalan king. That oath you mention here is the Oath the Noblemen of Aragon requested the to be King of Aragon to swear. It was not originally written in Catalan, which is just one of the tongues spoken in the Crown of Aragon (which included the kingdom of Aragon, several Catalan counties and possessions in Valencia, Mallorca, Naples, Sicilia and many other land posts all over Europe in the current states of France, Italy and Greece), this oath was written in one of the several languages that derived into what nowadays is called Aragonese. Furthermore, that Oath is just a legend and it is believed to have been written several centuries after the Crown of Aragon stopped existing to remark how noble this kingdom was, probably the major kingdom that ever existed in the Mediterranean Sea that brought the most modern Government Systems at the time. If it had not been absorbed into Castilia by the marriages of Kings and Queens at that time, it might have dramatically change the History of Humanity by consolidating a huge and powerful country that would have extended thru the South of France, Italy, Greece, all the Mediterranean major islands and Eastern Spain. Aragon would now be a powerful country, and given their clear nature of domination of the seas, they would have probably led the discovery of America and Western and Eastern Indias. So, this is how important this Oath of the Kings of Aragon was.

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