The Splendor and Opulence of the Past : : Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia / / Paul Freedman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Freedman, Paul,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (354 p.) :; 8 b&w halftones, 3 maps

The Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (1717–1791), a church historian and also a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia's medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy. As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar's books, essays, and transcriptions, some only recently discovered, provide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in modern Catalonia, and how a nation's past glories and humiliations can inform contemporary politics and culture.Between the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Catalonia was a thriving, independent set of principalities within what would become modern Spain. In the wake of the dismantling of its autonomy by the eighteenth-century Spanish state, Catalan scholars looked to the region's medieval independence and wealth as a means of maintaining a distinct Catalan identity and resisting Castilian hegemony. Through their writings and archival investigations, Caresmar and the canons Santa Maria de Bellpuig de les Avellanes, where he was abbot, laid the foundations for not only the scholarly exploration of the Middle Ages but also the development of Catalan national sentiment.Although the eighteenth century is often regarded as a low point for the Catalan language and culture, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past emphasizes the importance of this period's antiquarians to Catalan projects of modernization and economic progress, and links their historiography of the Middle Ages to struggles over Catalonia's relationship to the Spanish state over two centuries.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: A Catalan Monastery and Its Circle of Historians -- Chapter 1 Jaume Caresmar’s Life and Personality -- Chapter 2 Catalonia in the Eighteenth Century -- Chapter 3 The Catalan Language in an “Age of Decadence” -- Chapter 4 Bellpuig de les Avellanes before Caresmar’s Era -- Chapter 5 The Circle of Bellpuig and Other Learned Societies -- Chapter 6 Caresmar’s Works -- Chapter 7 Disamortization, War, and Neglect -- Chapter 8 Wanderings and Destruction of Libraries and Archives -- Conclusion: Medieval Catalonia and the Modern Centuries -- Appendix 1 Surviving Works of Caresmar -- Appendix 2 Works of Caresmar That Were Sent to Madrid but Never Published -- Appendix 3 Discourses by Caresmar Read to the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona -- Bibliography -- Index