Alexandre Galí and the History of Institutions and the Cultural Movement in Catalonia

In the historiography of Catalan culture, both the external continuity of the historiographical reflection and the internal discontinuity of such “reflections” are surprising. The History of institutions and the cultural movement in Catalonia (1900-1936) by Alexandre Galí is perhaps a good example of this.

Medieval Legal Realism

This is a Research Note about the ongoing Project on the semantics of pactism (pactisme) in Catalan ancient law. Pactism is the name of the legal doctrine that grounds the validity of legal provisions upon a pact-based model. It was developed as a basis for Catalan Public law in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. We present it as a medieval realism. Looking at the concomitances of 20th century legal realism and the doctrine of pactism can shed light on the emergence of early states and the construction of legal doctrines stemming from the reception of Roman law, the wide use of ius commune, and the development of case-based law and Scholastic reasoning methods. The semantics of pact-modelling processes and outcomes has yet to be established. Thus, it is also contended that Digital Humanities can offer some technological solutions to unravel underlying linguistic, cognitive and ontological patterns to understand the political culture that came out of it and developed until the 18th c. in Catalonia.

Responding Violence: The Haskamot of Barcelona and the Jewish Political Tradition

The aim of this article is to present the Haskamot of Barcelona of 1354 in their political and legal context. These agreements were a response to the difficult situation faced by the Jews of the Crown of Aragon in the 14th c., when natural and human disasters threatened the survival of their communities. The target of this project was to assemble all the aljamas of the Crown in a supra-communal assembly of representatives. The drafters also wished to achieve a number a measures from the King and the Church improving the delicate situation of Catalan-Aragonese Jewry. These Haskamot, despite they did not succeed on their objectives, are a perfect starting point for any research on the legal and jurisdictional relations between Christians and Jews.

Vives’s views on Law: Key Notions in the Aedes legum

Renaissance humanist Joan Lluís Vives (Ioannes Lodouicus Viues) explained his views on Law, its origin, its elements, and its corruption mainly in the De disciplinis (1531). However, he had already outlined some relevant key notions in early works such as the Praefatio in Leges Ciceronis (1514) and, especially, the Aedes legum (1519). The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, to provide the reader with a succinct introduction to the latter work and, on the other hand, to identify some of its key concepts and describe their meaning.

Mapping Shari’ah Normative Reasoning Concepts

Within the context of a larger project, in this paper, we discuss one-to-one mapping of the Shari’ah normative concepts of wajib, haram, sunnah, etc., with conventional normative concepts of obligation, prohibition, and permission. The goal of the mapping to gaining a better understanding of the Shari’ah normative concepts and what deontic effects they generate when applied, and what consequences can be attained through the actions as compared to the Western normative concepts. Existing literature lacks such understanding of the correspondence between the two normative systems. The mapping shows conceptual overlapping between the concepts, yet the two types of systems should be separated from each other in terms of the philosophy, context, and the consequences of the Islamic normative systems as the expression of the divine will.

Shevirat Ha-Kelim: Jewish Mysticism and the Catalan Matrix for Dialogue and Conflict

Late Medieval anti-Jewish violence is a well-known phenomenon, but its origins and institutionalization are still blurred and enigmatic. In thirteenth and fourteenth century Catalonia, the denouement of the increasing popular hostility against the Jewry was particularly dramatic. The seeds of violence were the result of a long and complex process of social, theological and political interactions. In this contribution, we will discuss the intellectual matrix of medieval anti-Semitism in Catalonia and its relationship with the rising of scholastics and with the theoretical foundations of Catalan politics. We will also approach its counterpart: the Jewish response to collective suffering.