The royal judgment against Joan’s mother, which obliged her to live enclosed in a room on bread and water until her death, was pronounced in 1330 by Alfonso the Third against a woman by the name of Eulàlia, consort of one Juan Dosca.
The author in no way shares the opinions about women or peasants expressed throughout this noveclass="underline" nearly all of them have been faithfully copied from the book written by the monk Francesc Eiximenis, approximately in the year 1381, entitled Lo crestià.
As occurs with the marriage between Mar and Felip de Ponts, in medieval Catalonia rapists could marry their victims, even if the abduction had been a violent one, thanks to the Usatge “Si quis virginem.” This was not true in the rest of Spain, which was governed by the legal tradition of the Visigoths in the Fuero Juzgo, which prohibited it.
The violator’s duty was to provide the woman with a dowry so that she could find a husband, or to marry her himself. If she was married, she was treated as an adulteress.
No one is sure whether the episode in which King Jaime of Mallorca tries to abduct his brother-in-law Pedro the Third, which fails because a friar who is close to Pedro hears details of the plot during confession (helped in the novel by Joan), actually happened or not. It may well have been invented by Pedro the Third as an excuse for the legal action taken by him against the king of Mallorca, which ended with his requisitioning his kingdoms. What does appear to be true is King Jaime’s demand to have a wooden bridge built to link his galleys, anchored in the port of Barcelona, with Framenors convent. Perhaps this served to arouse King Pedro’s imagination to invent the plot mentioned in his chronicles.
The attempt to invade Barcelona by Pedro the Cruel of Castille is described in minute detail in Pedro the Third’s Crónica. The buildup of land along the Barcelona coast meant that its earlier harbors could no longer be used, with the result that the city was defenseless against natural phenomena and enemy attacks. It was not until 1340 that, during the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a new, more adequate port was built.
The sea battle took place as Pedro the Third describes it, and the Castillian fleet was prevented from gaining access to the city because a ship—a carrack, according to the medieval chronicles of Capmany—was grounded on the offshore tasques (sandbanks) to halt their advance. It was during this battle that the first references are made to the use of artillery—a bricola mounted on the prow of the king’s galley—in naval warfare. It was not long before ships, which until then had been used chiefly as a means of troop transport, were equipped with heavy cannons, changing the whole concept of naval battles. In his Crónica, Pedro the Third delights in the way that the Catalan host ranged on the shore, or in the numerous small craft that set out to defend the capital mocked and insulted Pedro the Cruel’s army. He considers it, together with the effective use of the bricola, as one of the main reasons why the king of Castille was forced to reconsider his plans to invade Barcelona.
In the revolt of Plaza del Blat during the first so-called bad year, when the citizens of Barcelona demanded they be given grain, the leaders were given summary justice and hanged. For plot reasons, I have placed these executions in Plaza del Blat. It is also true that the authorities thought that a simple oath could help put a stop to the hunger.
Another person who was executed, in the year 1360, was the money changer F. Castelló. As stipulated by law, he was beheaded outside his countinghouse, close to what nowadays is Plaza Palacio.
In 1367, after being accused of profaning a host and having been locked in the synagogue without food or water, three Jews were executed on the orders of infante Don Juan, King Pedro’s deputy.
Jews were strictly forbidden to leave their houses during the Christian Holy Week. They were also ordered to keep the doors and windows of their homes closed so that they could not see or interfere with the numerous processions. Even so, Easter saw an increase in the fears of the Christian fanatics, and accusations of the celebration of heretical rites also grew at a time of year that the Jews came to have just reason to fear.
Two main accusations were made against the Jews during Easter: the ritual murder of Christians, and especially children, in order to crucify and torture them, drink their blood, or eat their hearts; and the profanation of the host. Both of these were commonly seen as designed to re-create the pain and suffering of Christ believed in by the Catholics.
The first known accusation of the crucifixion of a Christian child comes from the Holy Roman Empire in Würzburg, Germany, in 1147. As was so often the case with accusations against the Jews, popular feeling led to similar charges quickly spreading throughout Europe. Only a year later, in 1148, the English Jews in the city of Norwich were accused of crucifying another Christian boy. From then on, accusations of ritual murder, usually during Easter and often involving crucifixion, became widespread: Gloucester, 1168; Fulda, 1235; Lincoln, 1255, Munich, 1286 ... Hatred of the Jews and popular credulity were so strong that in the fifteenth century an Italian Franciscan friar, Bernardino da Feltre, predicted that a Christian child was to be crucified: an event that actually happened in Trent, where the little boy Simon was found dead on a cross. The Catholic Church beatified Simon, but the friar went on “prophesying” further crucifixions, in Reggio, Bassano, and Mantua. Simon was a martyr of fanaticism rather than faith, but it was not until midway through the twentieth century that the Catholic Church finally annulled his beatification.
One occasion when the Barcelona host was summoned—although this took place in the year 1369, later than I have situated it in the book—was against the village of Creixell, when the local lord prevented the free passage and grazing of cattle headed for Barcelona, where by law the animals had to arrive alive. The seizure of animals was one of the main reasons why the host was called upon to defend the city’s privileges against other towns and feudal lords.
Santa Maria de la Mar is without doubt one of the most beautiful churches to be found anywhere. It may lack the monumentality of others built at the same time or later, but its interior is filled with the spirit with which Berenguer de Montagut sought to infuse it: the people’s church, built by the people of Barcelona for Barcelona, is like an airy Catalan farmhouse. It is austere, protected, and protecting, and the light of the Mediterranean sets it apart from any other church in the world.
According to the experts, the great virtue of Santa Maria is that it was built over an uninterrupted period of fifty-five years. This means it benefits from a unified architectural style, with few elements added on, making it the leading example of Catalan Gothic. As was usual at that time, and in order not to interrupt the religious services, Santa Maria was built on and around the former construction. Initially, the architect Bassegoda Amigó placed the original church on the corner of Calle Espaseria. He calculated that the new church had been built in front of the old one, farther to the north, with what nowadays is Calle Santa Maria between them. However, when a new presbytery and crypt were being built in 1966, the discovery of a Roman necropolis underneath Santa Maria led to a modification of Bassegoda’s original idea. His grandson, also an architect and expert on Santa Maria, asserts that the successive versions of Santa Maria were always built on the same spot, one on top of the other. The Roman cemetery is said to have been where the body of Santa Eulàlia, patron saint of Barcelona, was buried. As described in the novel, her remains were transferred by King Pedro from Santa Maria to the cathedral.