39: Jofre Isaac and the Weight of Tradition (1140-1185)
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Dictionary and Thesaurus
What follows is neither a lecture nor a lecture outline, but a draft
chapter from an as yet unpublished book. The book is about the city of
Huesca, in Spain, during the twelfth century. It's not even about the
whole city, but deals with the residents of three neighboring houses
located a short distance from the cathedral. One family is the Boclones,
nine children and their widowed mother, Boneta; the second is Jofre Isaac,
a shoemaker, cobbler, and money-lender, who carries on a long campaign to
disinherit his children from his second marriage in order to pass his fine
house on to his youngest child, a son from his third marriage; and the
third are the Peitavins, an ambitious family who, over three generations,
try to gain political influence. At the end of the century, the grandson
is a counselor to the king, but is finally reduced to poverty and ends up
as a charity case in the cathedral.
It is not easy for medieval historians to write the history of a common
person doing common things, and so I wanted to share this with you. You
may find the story complex, but Jofre Isaac made it so in an effort to get
what he wanted. You may even find it boring, but the everyday lives of
common people are not usually the stuff from which motion pictures are
made. Besides, you can always click off and do something else
The Boclónes gained a new neighbor in the summer of 1147. Jofre Isaac
was an up and coming young shoemaker with a shop a short distance away, on
the Zapatería. He came from an even older Huescan family than the
Boclónes, though not of the same social circle. He was a nephew of
Isaac the shoemaker, who was in turn the son of Ium Tob the shoemaker. It
is unknown when the family converted, but it not unlikely that it was
shortly after the conquest, when a learned co-religionist of Huesca
accepted Christianity, taking the baptismal name of Petrus Alfonsus. It
seems probable that Isaac converted shortly after the Christian conquest
of the city, and a short time after the birth of his eldest son, perhaps
in order to avoid expulsion from the inner city. Although there is little
evidence concerning the status and standing of new Christians, Jofre Isaac
was not the class of person one might have expected to move into the
Houses on the Hill. A curious combination of circumstances had allowed him
to do so.
Jofre and his wife Calveta had made their start in life in 1140, when they
had purchased a modest huerto (garden or orchard) in the district
of Almeriz from a member of a Jacan family recently arrived in Huesca.
This purchase provided Jofre with additional acquaintances in Jaca. It is
quite probable that he had already come into contact with Guillem of Jaca
when Guillem, his brother Borrell, and his father-in-law Lambert were
buying up property in Huesca, and before Juan Boclón had acquired the
bulk of Guillem's property between Campaneros and the Pellicería. It
would have been in his interest to extend his circle of contacts as widely
and as quickly as possible, particularly since his family's conversion
would have would have limited his matrimonial opportunities to quite
another circle from that in which the family had previously been
established. At any rate, when Calveta died in about 1144, Jofre headed
for Jaca to acquire a new wife.
It is uncertain what influence he may have had, but he succeeded in
gaining the hand of Oropesa, the daughter of Guillem of Jaca and Doña Boneta of Jaca. Jofre gained a great deal of prestige from an alliance
with such a distinguished family and won entry into a kindred who
controlled a great deal of land in and about Huesca. He soon began to reap
the benefits of this new alliance. In August of 1146, Jofre and Oropesa
bought the equivalent of two and a third fields near Huesca for the quite
modest sum of 35 solidi. The seller was Borrel of Jaca, Guillem of Jaca's
brother and close associate. In December of the same year, they managed to
acquire a one-third interest in another thirteen fields for the reasonable
price of 150 solidi. The lands had belonged to Lambert of Jaca, and the
seller in this case was Ramón of Provins, husband of Oropesa's half-
sister, Poncia of Jaca. It is clear that Guillem's family wished to see
Oropesa well-situated, and were willing to provide the couple with good
lands in Huesca at low prices in order to give them a start in life.
It was probably early in 1147 that Guillem of Jaca died. Since Poncia, his
first wife, had died in about 1129, the time had come for their children
to divide their parents' property. There was every possibility that
Jofre's Jacan relatives might be willing to divest themselves of some of
their newly-acquired property in Huesca at bargain prices. In June of
1147, Jofre and Oropesa travelled north to Jaca and met with Oropesa's
half-sister, Boneta, the widow of Bancio Fortuñones. In the presence
of an impressive assemblage of Jacans, including the alcalde,
merino, members of the family of Guillem of Jaca, and leaders of
the shoemakers' community, Boneta and her children sold Jofre and Oropesa
their entire interest in the inheritance of Guillem of Jaca in and about
Huesca for a total of five hundred solidi. The alihala that day
cost twenty solidi, impressing the guests with the significance of the
transaction for Jofre and no doubt contributing to their impression of him
as a man of substance and dignity.
Oropesa and Jofre then returned to Huesca, where they prepared an
important event in the life of the Hill. On a day somewhat later in June,
a large crowd gathered to witness their purchase of another one-third
share in Guillem's Huescan properties from Oropesa's cousin, Ponz Guillem,
for another five hundred solidi. A thousand solidi was a considerable sum,
but the final one-third share had surely fallen to Oropesa as Lambert's
grand-daughter. The couple now owned a substantial amount of land and
rental properties. Perhaps most important from Jofre's point of view, and
certainly from the neighborhood's, he now possessed the Houses on the
Hill, the residence at the northwest corner of Pellicería and the
calle mayor, a property of great value and a residence of some
distinction. One may imagine that, from his shop down the street in the
Zapatería, he might often have coveted the status such a residence
would bring.
It was the Aragonese custom of the time to seal a contract with a
convivial meal of the witnesses and testors. The meal, called an
alihala, was supposedly intended to repay the testors and witnesses
for their time and to help fix the event in their mind, but it also served
the social purpose of bringing the buyer's friends together to celebrate a
new acquisition of property. It may be conjectured that the witnesses
gathered at the intersection of Zapatería and Pellicería to
celebrate the contract. Twenty-five solidi would have provided an
exceptionally fine meal, one that must have assumed the proportions of a
banquet. Bread and wine were provided, as was customary, but there was
also the luxury of meat. Even the canons of the cathedral chapter ate meat
only three times a week, and they were generally considered to be living
like lords. The fact that three sons of Jofre the Butcher were among the
witness no doubt assured that the meat was both good and plentiful. There
were twenty-eight witnesses and testors in the crowd, primarily
shoemakers, furriers, butchers and their sons and sons-in law, presumably
all having come to see one of their own make good.
It would appear that there may have been some sort of epidemic in Huesca
and Jaca in about 1148, for a number of prominent and active members of
the middle class, including some of the residents of the Hill, do not
appear in documents after that date. Oropesa, wife of Jofre Isaac, was
among that number. Jofre had done well during the three or four years of
their marriage. Although the charters probably fail to record the full
extent of their activities, during the last ten months of their marriage,
Jofre and Oropesa had spent some 1185 solidi and acquired eight and
two-thirds fields in the vicinity of Huesca as well as two- thirds of the
casas and shops once owned by Guillem of Jaca and his wife Poncia.
One assumes that Oropesa's inheritance brought them the other third of the
urban property and secured them the remainder of the thirteen fields once
owned by Borrell, Guillem, and Lambert of Jaca. She had also brought him
two sons, Mateo and Guillem. Jofre Isaac had become a substantial man
through his marriage to Oropesa, owner of an orchard and thirteen fields,
proprietor of a significant amount of urban rental property, owner of his
own shop and casas in the Zapatería, and resident of the
property known locally as illas casas de illo collelo, or "The
Houses on the Hill."
There is little record of Jofre's business activity for the next couple of
years except for his gaining another part of Oropesa's inheritance by
acquiring one- third of the casas built directly against the
Cathedral, property that had descended from Guillem of Jaca and Poncia. It
may well be that Jofre was in Jaca at this time, settling Oropesa's claims
to properties there and pursuing his trade among the other shoemakers of
the city. In any event, he found another Jacan bride, and was married in
March 1151 to María, daughter of don Ramón of Jaca.
María must have brought Jofre enough money for him to become a even
more substantial businessman; from the time of their marriage on, he is
recorded as the purchaser in a series of transfers of property in both
Huesca and Jaca. Between 1151 and 1169, Jofre and María spent a total
of over 2400 solidi, acquiring some fourteen fields, two city lots, the
casas and shops that had belonged to Flandina, daughter of Guillem
of Jaca, a casa in Jaca, and other assorted properties, including a
field under mortgage, a tanning pond, a vineyard, and some properties in
Barluenga. They also had a son, Ramón Aster, probably named in honor
of his maternal grandfather.
There seems to have been friction within the home between Jofre on the one
hand, and his sons by Oropesa on the other. This is perhaps to be expected
since, as the boys grew up, they would have wished at least a share of
their anticipated inheritance, most particularly since their mother was
dead. Their father had acquired substantial properties with his second
wife, all of which would go to their half-brother Ramón Aster. They
may have resented the fact that rents and renders from properties that
were their patrimony were being used to acquire more properties that would
eventually be Ramón's. In short, the income of their patrimony was
being used to enrich their half-brother. There may have been more it than
that, since Jofre showed no signs of releasing any property in Huesca to
them. He apparently tried to set the boys up in the shoemaking business in
Jaca. Mateo stayed in the city, while Guillem moved north to the French
city of Olerón to ply his trade.
As time went on, Jofre Isaac continued to acquire lands, casas, and
shops, and always seemed able to purchase these properties for cash. A
couple of documents, although not involving him directly, disclose that he
was in the business of lending money in sums ranging from ten to a
thousand solidi. His testament and some later dealings by Ramón Aster
reveals that Jofre had become the possessor of a sizable number of
mortgages. It is clear that Jofre Isaac was not simply a shoemaker and
landlord, but a money-lender on a rather grand scale. In about 1167, Jofre
apparently acquired an assistant. Pascal, son of Selvagn of Jaca, was a
shoemaker with a shop on the Zapatería not far from those of Jofre
and Ramón Aster. He first appeared as a witness of one of Jofre's
documents in 1167, and was seldom absent from Jofre's dealings thereafter.
He would play a role, and not a very lofty one, in the settlement of
Jofre's estate some years later.
On the whole, the proprietor of the Houses on the Hill became one of the
most successful of the residents of the neighborhood. The documents of the
Cathedral of Huesca, which surely provide only a partial indication of his
wealth, record his purchase of forty-two fields, as well as houses,
vineyards, and other properties. His access to ready cash meant that he
was able to buy the finest property, as the Houses on the Hill witnessed,
and presumably the most fertile lands. A part of his success was
apparently due to his unwillingness to part with property, and the sons of
Oropesa died without enjoying a single piece of their Huescan
patrimony.
Jofre apparently regarded the Houses on the Hill as his prize possession,
and very much wished to pass it on to his son, Ramón Aster, who had
stayed with him, occasionally honored him by using the name of Ramón
Jofre, had entered the shoemaking trade and occupied the shop next to him
on the Zapatería. This posed a problem, however. Jofre had acquired
the Houses on the Hill while married to Oropesa. Even if her children were
dead, that property, as well as any other property Jofre and she had
acquired together, were the inheritance of her grandchildren. As he grew
older, Jofre began to consider ways to circumvent this problem.
An opportunity arose in February of 1181. Guillem of Olerón had died
a few years before, and Jofre had renewed relationships with his grandson,
also named Guillem, in Jaca in March of 1177. It was perhaps at Jofre's
invitation that young Guillem came to Huesca. He was without property
there and presumably stayed with Jofre and Ramón at the Houses on the
Hill. From later statements by Guillem's cousin, it would appear that
Jofre and Ramón put pressure on the lad, and perhaps deceived him as
to his real prospects. At any rate, Jofre prevailed upon him to sign an
impressive document by which Guillem received two shops and a field,
Just as the boundaries define the properties on all sides, thus I give and
concede [it] to you, the aforesaid shops and the above-written field free,
quit, clear, and without encumbrances, with their entrances and exits,
complete and whole, without restriction or limitation, so that you should
have and possess it as your own property, to sell, to give away, and to do
there all things according to your wishes, you and your children and all of
your descent and posterity for ages without end, amen. ... By this
prescribed donative, I give and concede this to you with all deceit far from
my mind, so that you may have it after my death...
All young Guillem had to do in return was to approve a previous charter by
which Jofre had given the Houses on the Hill and the shops nearby to
Ramón Aster. By doing so, Guillem was to understand, he was giving up
for all time any claim that the descendants of Oropesa had to the
property.
There were numerous irregularities in this entire arrangement. In the
first place, Jofre had no right to have made a charter giving the Houses
on the Hill and the shops there to Ramón Aster, since these
properties formed part of the patrimony of the descendants of Oropesa.
Surely Jofre was aware that such a document was completely without
validity. It would appear that he had done this to put pressure on
Guillem. Second, the value of two shops and a field, even if they were
excellent properties, was not to be compared with the Houses on the Hill
and the shops and fields Jofre and Oropesa had acquired in and about
Huesca. Guillem was receiving a quite modest estate in exchange for his
half share of some of the most valuable real estate in the city. It is
difficult to understand why he would have agreed to this, since Jofre was
by now an old man, and Guillem should have realized that he would not have
to wait long to collect his inheritance. He must have been in desperate
straits to have accepted such an exchange, and, if he were, it would have
been his grandfather's duty to assist him, rather than to use his
difficulties as an opportunity to defraud him. Jofre's duplicity went even
deeper, however. The field that formed part of the price of Guillem's
expectations was one that Jofre and Oropesa had acquired together, and was
therefore part of Guillem's patrimony anyway. Guillem appears to have been
being doubly cheated. It is difficult to understand why Jofre added this
unnecessary piece of duplicity; he had many fields and could easily have
given the young man one upon which Guillem had no claim. Finally, however,
the whole arrangement was illegal. Guillem could not agree to give up the
claims of Oropesa's descendants. He could agree only to give up his own
claim, and it is questionable whether this may not simply have meant that
his cousin could have claimed the entire property in the same way that he
might if Guillem had died. Despite the shady nature of the entire
business, Jofre and Ramón found suretors willing to participate,
including Jofre's long-time associate, Pascal, son of Selvagn of Jaca.
There was one last piece of meanness involved in this affair. Jofre had
granted Guillem the two shops together with their soleros, the lots
on which they were located. There was a corral located on the property,
and Jofre apparently intended to keep the corral, even though half of it
was located on Guillem's land. Realizing that holding back this property
would endanger the entire shaky agreement, Ramón Aster promised
Guillem that if Jofre did not turn over to Guillem the half of the corral
due him,6 he would himself buy it from him at a mutually agreeable price.
There appears to be more than a little vindictiveness in Jofre's actions.
It is clear that he wished to save the Houses on the Hill for Ramón,
and was willing to cheat his grandson to do so. The pettiness of Jofre's
arrangements, however, such as using part of Guillem's patrimony to buy
his patrimony, and refusing to part with a half of a corral on a
technicality suggests that Jofre may have had a deeper and more personal
reason for wishing to see his grandson not simply defrauded, but
skinned.
Jofre had been relatively active up to this point, regularly appearing in
charters, and continuing to buy property, but does not appear in surviving
records for the next thirty months. He was now probably in his sixties and
was perhaps worn out by the constant insecurities of the money lender's
life. On the other hand, Ramón Aster does not appear in the charters
either. There was certainly no reason for them to go to Jaca, where they
would be sure to meet Berenguer, Jofre's other grandson, who would no
doubt seek to clarify the terms of his expected inheritance. On the other
hand, there seems no other reason for them to have dropped out of public
life in such a fashion. It was October 1183 when Jofre Isaac again
appeared in the documents, and the document involved was his last will and
testament.
In the end, he appears to have attempted to shortchange everyone except
himself. It was customary to give small gifts to the various chapels and
chaplains of the Cathedral, as well as to all living relatives. Jofre
contented himself with five solidi each to Chaplain Guillem Boclón,
who lived in The Mulberry Tree, next door to the Houses on the Hill, and
to Chaplain Juan Richard, who lived next door to other casas Jofre
owned in the nearby genteel neighborhood of Pedro Maza. He gave a shop in
the Zapatería, of which he owned several, to the canons of the
Cathedral. He had reared a young girl named España, perhaps an
orphaned relative, and he endowed her with a hundred solidi, and his old
shop in the Zapatería as property for when she married.
As a slight digression, España's residence with an old widower and a
young bachelor (Ramón was by now probably about thirty) was somewhat
suspicious to say the least. This is particularly true when one learns
that she had a son named Ramón. España does not seem to have
married and it is possible that her reputation was impaired to a degree
that even a dowry of a hundred solidi and a shoemaker's shop was
insufficient to repair it. At any rate, some six years later, in 1189,
when she was perhaps twenty-five years of age, we find that she had been
the amica, or girl-friend, of a certain Gastón, who was giving
her a plot of land and half a casa. The wages of sin did not appear
to have been particularly good in twelfth-century Huesca. In March 1205,
the Cathedral arranged to give land on easy terms to a group of settlers
who agreed to populate and develop the districts of Estrada and Panusa in
Igriês, about ten kilometers to the north of the city. España
was the only unmarried woman among this group. She last appears as the
owner of a casal, an unimproved building lot, in Igriês in
1212. She was now close to fifty and still unmarried. She certainly had
not prospered by her connection with Jofre and Ramón.
Even though he was presumably considering the end of his days, Jofre had
not yet given up his determination to save the Houses on the Hill for
Ramón Aster, or to keep them out of the hands of the descendants of
Oropesa, whichever was his true desire. He made specific bequests to
Berenguer and his sons, omitting mention of Guillem, whose claims he
considered already vacated.
... I relinquish to Berenguer, who was called the son of my son, the
houses that I own that were [the possession] of Juan Isaac and the five
fields that I bought from Ponz Guillem. ... and the rights that I have to
the shops and house that face the cemetery of the church of Huesca [i.e.,
the Cathedral] and the houses of Doña Pertolesa, which aforesaid houses
the children of Berenguer may hold. All this aforesaid, together with the
right that I have to the properties in Jaca which were your family's, I
release to you entirely, to be your own property. Indeed, by such an
agreement that you will have no further part in the things that I own or
that I will leave behind me after my death, neither by my right nor by right
of my son Mateo, nor shall you be able to claim a share in anything of mine
after my death, because I thus eliminate him from participation and tenancy
with the above written properties that I relinquish to him, [and] thus I
wish it to remain forever. ... All the other property that I have or possess
... I relinquish to my son Ramón that he shall have and possess them as
his own property forever.
This was a clever move on Jofre's part, but one of uncertain legality.
Berenguer had seen his father, Mateo, die before ever enjoying his share
in either the property amassed by Oropesa and Jofre, or the properties
that had come to Oropesa as her share of the properties of Guillem of
Jaca. He was himself already a grown man with children, and had gained
nothing from his own expectations. Jofre was in effect offering him a bird
in the hand, a small, but assured and immediate, estate in exchange for
the more extensive properties he could hope to gain if he could wait out
his grandfather's death. Whether this contractual arrangement,
particularly with its implicit pressure could prevail against the weight
of the customs of inheritance may have been beside the point. Jofre had
relinquished these properties to Berenguer and thus won at least a legal
claim to the rest of his property, including the Houses on the Hill, for
Ramón Aster. Should Berenguer take possession or accept the rents of
any of these properties, Ramón's claims would be greatly
strengthened. Jofre had bought Ramón the opportunity of contesting
Berenguer's rights in the court of Huesca, where, if Ramón had any
friends and ability, the matter could perhaps be spun out long enough to
wear down Berenguer's resistance and force him to a compromise that would
win Ramón the Houses on the Hill.
Jofre also provided Ramón with at least some of the resources
necessary to sustain such a strategy. He left Ramón all of his other
property, together with all his mortgages, share-cropping contracts, and,
although unexpressed, his various loans, with the proviso that Ramón
should settle all these affairs in accordance with his wishes. The nature
of these wishes was somewhat puzzling. Jofre Isaac had left two clerics
ten solidi, and a shop worth at most fifty solidi and a banquet
(convivium), costing at the most fifty solidi more, to the canons
of the Cathedral. He had left nothing for charity, public welfare, or for
his relatives of the family of Isaac. He did offer to God one thousand
masses for his soul, to be sung by the various churches of Huesca, for
which each church was to receive five solidi. This can hardly have
totalled much over a hundred solidi. In short, he had left in total less
than two hundred solidi in cash to the Church, a remarkably small sum for
a man of his assets.
It may well be that he had been suffering losses in his money lending
business. Shortly after his death, Ramón began to count up the unpaid
debts owed to his father, and a portion of this computation survives among
the documents of the Cathedral archives to indicate something of the
nature of Jofre's business. He had lent the wife of García Cipri in a
thousand solidi on her winery; she had not provided him with the wine he
should have had in lieu of interest and she had paid only ten solidi of
the principal owed. He loaned his neighbor, Boneta, wife of Galaci
Boclón, ten solidi on a ring that she held for a debt, and she had
paid him nothing. He had loaned a Saracen named Borzes seven solidi, and
fifty solidi to a Mozarab named Juan, and had been paid nothing by them.
The full list was probably much lengthier, but there is no reason to
believe that Jofre had really suffered. It rather appears that the reason
for his niggardly donations to charity may have been the same as his
opposition to giving up the Houses on the Hill, a desire to provide
Ramón Aster with as extensive an estate as possible.
A couple of years after Jofre's death, a complicating factor entered the
standoff between Berenguer and Ramón over Berenguer's inheritance.
Sometime in the winter of 1185/1186, Guillem, son of Guillem of
Olerón fell ill. For some reason, Ramón Aster was not there to
offer him aid, or perhaps Guillem blamed Ramón in part for the loss
of his expectations and preferred to do without his help. At any rate,
feeling that he was dying, he went to Jofre's old henchman, Pascal, son of
Selvagn of Jaca, whose shoemaker's shop stood nearby and who was at least
a native of Guillem's home town of Jaca. Pascal and his wife were more
than willing to take care of him, but at a price. When a person without
relatives needed permanent care because of illness, age, or disability, it
was not unusual for them to arrange for such permanent care through a
process called afilamiento. Declaring themselves without family,
they adopted a person who agreed to care for them as if for their father
or mother. Pascal managed to get such an agreement from Guillem. This made
Pascal legally Guillem's son, and thus entitled to a half share in the
patrimony of Oropesa and Jofre Isaac.
Whether Pascal had improved upon the occasion of Guillem's death to try to
gain a portion of the estate, or whether this was a means of applying
further pressure upon Berenguer to compromise, or whether Pascal had
obtained an afilamiento simply to ensure that he would not be out
of pocket for the costs of caring for Guillem and arranging for his burial
is a matter of conjecture. At any rate, it seems to have worked out well
for Ramón and Pascal. Berenguer came to Huesca in February 1186 to
retrieve the situation. He and Ramón met with Pascal, and Pascal
quoted the value of the afilamiento as 250 solidi. This was not an
extraordinarily large sum, but it was one that Berenguer was not able to
pay immediately. He could have borrowed the sum from his uncle, Ramón
Aster, but seems to have been too wary of the situation for that. Instead
he promised to pay Pascal the money in the coming month of June, and
Pascal accepted the arrangement. The fact that Berenguer had brought along
Ramón, son of the alcalde of Jaca may have had something to do
with Pascal's easy acquiescence to Berenguer's proposal.
The technicalities of this resolution of the affair were such as to
gladden the heart of anyone versed in the law of the times. Berenguer had
to acquire the afilamiento, or Pascal would have had an equal share
in the estate due Oropesa's descendants. The fact that Berenguer had to
defer payment indicates not only that he was short of cash, and would thus
become even shorter, but that his credit was low, also. No one stood
surety for Berenguer, as Pascal might have requested. The purchase of the
afilamiento placed Berenguer in the position of being the sole
heir, but the fact that he had agreed in assessing its value at 250 solidi
meant that he tacitly accepted the validity of the contract Guillem had
made with Jofre Isaac back in 1181. It would be clear to anyone that the
value of a half share in the Houses on the Hill alone exceeded 250 solidi,
but was a reasonable price for Guillem's estate of two shops with the lot
on which they stood and a field in Almeriz. If Berenguer were in the
future to argue against the power of Jofre's testament to limit his
inheritance, he could then be asked why he had been willing to accept the
legality of the contract between Jofre and Guillem. Meanwhile, the
temptation to compromise had been increased. If Berenguer took possession
of the field and two shops, he would de facto agree that
Guillem had alienated his half of the inheritance, and he could then
expect to gain no more than half of the property in descent of Oropesa.
Meanwhile, he was 250 solidi poorer. Berenguer had certainly not gained
any advantage through this complex affair.
It was perhaps the complexity of the case, coupled with the legal and
financial advantages enjoyed by Ramón and the stubbornness of
Berenguer that caused the matter to drag on for such a great length of
time. There are few records of Ramón Aster's activities in succeeding
years, but those that survive suggest that he was steadily advancing in
wealth and prestige. In 1190, Bernardo of Huesca, canon of the Cathedral,
exchanged a country house and vineyard just outside Zaragoza, for two
vineyards just outside Huesca owned by his brother Guillem of Huesca and
his wife Toda of Villanúa. As the document stated,
... I, Bernard, the aforesaid canon, give on my part as guarantors of the
security of this exchange, according to the law of the land, [and] by order
of Richard, bishop of Huesca, and of Prior Galindo of Perola, and of the
entire chapter of Huesca, don Ramón Isaac and don Bernardo of Tierz
...
It would appear that Ramón Aster's wealth, property, and the fact
that he had no descent had gained him entry as a lay canon of the
Cathedral. He had powerful support now against any claims to the Houses on
the Hill. They would eventually pass to the Cathedral, and it must be
assumed that the Cathedral would assist in establishing his clear claim to
the properties.
Another document, of December 1195, illustrates how wealthy Ramón had
in fact become and how powerful his friends were. He stood suretor for an
old friend, Guillem Peitavin, a former zalmedina of Huesca, in his
sale of properties worth almost 3,900 solidi to his son, Pedro Peitavin
and his wife, Sancha of Torres, a wealthy widow and close friend of King
Pedro II. It is clear that Ramón had both money and the friendship of
the ruling oligarchy, both secular and clerical, of the city. It was
perhaps inevitable that Berenguer of Jaca would eventually be worn
down.
In February of 1198, Berenguer and Ramón Aster finally reached a
compromise and settled their dispute of some fifteen year's standing.
Berenguer received the houses that had belonged to Juan Isaac and had been
offered him in Jofre Isaac's will. Ramón provided him an assortment
of other properties: two fields, a established vineyard, a newly-developed
vineyard, an orchard, parts of three other fields, and a one-eighth share
of the casas and three shops that had once belonged to Berenguer
Constantine. Ramón offered Juan Peitavin, perhaps the richest and
most influential member of the Huescan middle class at the time, as one of
his suretors. Berenguer's agreement was complete, although he may have
vented some lingering resentment of the fraud practiced on his cousin,
Guillem, many years before:
And by reason of this charter of partition written above, that I, Berenguer,
accept from you, the Ramón written above, of my own good will and not
through any force, nor standing with you in your house, nor in your power, I
define and relinquish to you and to all your posterity forever all
properties and all things, personal and real, whatever they might be, of the
aforesaid Mateo, my father, and from my grandparents as his inheritance, and
I define and relinquish to you that donation that was made by my father
Mateo of all the houses and shops that are on the Hill, in such a fashion
that neither I nor any of my posterity may ask anything more from you or
your regarding [the inheritance] of my father Mateo or my grandparents Jofre
Isaac and Oropesa.
It is interesting to note that Berenguer offered that same suretors as
Ramón Aster Juan Peitavin and Lorenzo Mercer suggesting that he was
without either the kinsmen or prestige to offer his own backers. Pedro of
Avenna, Justiciar of Huesca, witnessed the agreement, and the matter was
definitively settled. The long process begun by Jofre Isaac years before
was ended, and the weight of the laws and customs of inheritance had been
overcome. Ramón was left sole and legitimate proprietor of the Houses
on the Hill.
During the next few years, Ramón divided his time between Jaca and
Huesca, managing his properties with a sure hand. Generally speaking, he
leased his Jacan properties, presumably to reduce the time necessary for
him to manage them personally. He was by now approaching fifty, and the
road between Jaca and Huesca was both long and difficult. Moreover, the
bulk of his property lay in and around Huesca. One can imagine him
spending these years, the prime of his life, managing his ever-increasing
estates and enjoying the dignity he had achieved as a lay canon. From his
residence in the Houses on the Hill, he could stroll past the corner
where, sixty years before, Jofre and Oropesa had completed the purchase of
this fine property and a great neighborhood party had been held. He could
walk down the busy Zapatería, passing his father's old shop, the
shops once held by his unfortunate cousin, Guillem, and his own
establishment, where he had once cobbled shoes. After he had had his fill
of the busy life of the artisan streets, he could always return to the
Houses on the Hill, wash and dress, walk across to the chapter refectory
and, in the quiet dignity of those quarters, eat, drink, and chat with
those of his neighbors who had really succeeded in life.
After 1207, Ramón Aster, son of Jofre Isaac, disappears from
historical records, and may be presumed to have died sometime in his
mid-fifties. The Houses on the Hill became the possession of the Cathedral
of Huesca, and remained so, most probably as leased property for another
century, until they were razed to make way for the construction of the new
Cathedral and the splendid plaza that was to grace its approaches.
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