County of Pallars - Carolingian Foundations

Carolingian Foundations

The early history of Pallars, which was the easternmost extent of Basque settlement, is linked to that of its western neighbour, Ribagorza. Both territories, nominally lands of the Moors, came under the sway of the count of Toulouse perhaps as early as 781, perhaps as late as the start of the 9th century. They formed in turn a new province attached to Toulouse and therefore became Carolingian vassals.

A widely-circulated monkish account of 1078 from Alaó contains the earliest foundation myth of any of the counties of the Hispanic March. Written at a time when the independence of Pallars and Ribagorza was threatened by the hegemony recently created by the personal union of the Kingdom of Navarre and Kingdom of Aragon (1076). It records that Count Bernard and Bishop Ato, both of Ribagorza and descended by tradition from Charlemagne, spearheaded the conquest and repopulation of Sobrarbe and Pallars respectively and that the bishop held ecclesiastical rule over all three counties.

In reality, being so far from the centres of Carolingian power, it was easy for the rulers of Toulouse to act as sovereigns in Pallars and Ribagorza, granting privileges to monasteries in a style very similar to that of their own Frankish lords. Two monasteries were founded in the valleys of the two principal rivers of Pallars: Gerri by the Noguera Pallaresa and Senterada by the Flamicell on land granted by the emperor Louis the Pious himself. The revival of monasticism was largely associated with non-Frankish and especially Visigothic clergymen. Charlemagne himself, however, attached Pallars and Ribagorza ecclesiastically to the diocese of Urgell. In 817, Pallars and Ribagorza were made a part of the Kingdom of Aquitaine bestowed on the young Pepin, second son of the emperor Louis the Pious. Throughout the ninth century, the aprisio had increasingly become a principal form of land division and ownership in Pallars, which was not yet feudalised. Louis the Pious forbade the holding in beneficium of church property and by the end of the ninth century, most aprisiones in Pallars had been converted into allods: feudalism was never to take hold.