Was the good king James II so good?

PalmaHe is known as the ‘wise and good king’ and, periodically, current political leaders pay tribute to him at his tomb in the Cathedral of Mallorca, in commemoration of September 12th (a date established as the new Day of Mallorca), the day he swore to uphold the island's liberties and franchises. Was he really that good, the good King James II? This is the question we ask ourselves as 750 years have passed since his coronation, around September 1276.

Of course, he was not born in Mallorca, nor did he spend much time on the Islands during his reign. Not even when he had them under his domain, which was not always the case. He came into the world on May 30, 1243, in Montpellier, in Occitania, where his father, James I, had been born, and he received the same name. He was the third son of the Conqueror and the second from his marriage to Violant of Hungary. It seems he was his mother's favorite, who had apparently set her mind on him receiving a crown.

James II became King of Mallorca by chance. As a young man, he wanted to be a friar. His father kept changing wills and making new distributions as more children were born or died. At first, he was supposed to get the kingdom of Valencia. Finally, the crown of Mallorca was created for him: a scattered puzzle that brought together the Islands, Roussillon –Northern Catalonia– and Montpellier, an inheritance from the mother of James I.

The young Jaume appeared in Mallorca in 1256, at thirteen years old, to swear as heir to the new kingdom and he did so at the church of Santa Eulàlia, in Palma. Still during the life of the Conqueror, he already took on government tasks, and it must be said that not in a very exemplary manner. Since he was short on money, he granted positions “as payment for loans contracted”, according to what Guillem Morro narrates. That generated the “furor populi Maioricarum” –you don't need to know Latin to understand it–, and his father had to intervene to calm the spirits.

The following years, the island subjects saw him at times. Until 1276, 750 years ago now, after his father had died, he was crowned: perhaps on the very day of September 12, when he swore the liberties and franchises of the kingdom, and hence why this date has been established as the Diada de Mallorca, an alternative to the traditional and historical one of December 31.

The danger of brothers-in-law

Afterwards, goodbye and good riddance. As Josep-David Garrido highlights, Mallorca, no matter how much it gave its name to this brand-new kingdom, was a peripheral territory –as always. Jaume II and also his successors preferred to reside on the continent. He held the courts in what was his capital, Perpignan, and in the process, as J. Ernest Martínez Ferrando notes, “he distributed copious privileges” among influential figures, “a good number of whom were friends from his youth”.

The ‘wise’ king did not distinguish himself by his perspicacity. It is true that he had it complicated: his domains, quite meager, lay between two powerful kingdoms: the Crown of Aragon of his brother Peter the Great, who never resigned himself to his father's partition, and the France of his brother-in-law –married to a daughter of the Conqueror– Philip the Bold. He had not been king for even two years when he let himself be entangled by another brother-in-law, Bernat Roger of Foix, brother of his wife, Esclarmonda, in a revolt of the Catalan nobility. Bernat was defeated, he reconciled with Peter the Great and the one who paid the price was the not very sensible James: he had to declare himself a vassal of his brother, he and his successors. The supposed independent kingdom of Majorca had barely lasted two years in its independence.

James found himself embroiled in one conflict after another. First in Montpellier, due to the ambitions of his brother-in-law Philip the Bold, from whom his brother, Peter the Great, had to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Later, with Peter: for having obtained the kingdom of Sicily, the pope excommunicated the king of Aragon and handed over his realm to a son of the French monarch. And here Garrido wonders if the ‘Majorcan’ monarch “had taken leave of his senses”: forgetting the promise of obedience to his brother made to his father, forgetting his status as a vassal, James, now ‘the Traitor’, allowed the French to cross his territories to obtain Peter’s domains, in exchange for keeping the kingdom of Valencia.

That behavior was not exactly chivalrous or brotherly, although Pere was not a Sister of Charity either. If the move had worked out well for him, perhaps. But it turned out disastrously. The French were defeated. And Pere, in a spectacular rage, arrived in Perpignan to demand explanations. Jaume fled through the sewers and left his wife, Esclarmonda, and their children hanging.

By order of Pere, his son and heir, the future King Alfonso the Frank, seized the Islands from him. If Jaume was so good and wise, and so beloved by his subjects, it is assumed that they would have resisted the invasion. But that was not the case, except for the mythical episode of Cabrit and Bassa at the castle of Alaró. Jaume did not recover them until 1298, when, in exchange for declaring himself his vassal again, his nephew Jaume the Just of Aragon, the next son of Pere the Great.It is supposed that a second stage of his reign began here: that of the reforming monarch who did indeed worry –it was about time!– about the Archipelago. It seems, however, that he was in no hurry. He did not return to the Islands until 1300, a year and a half after the restitution. This was the moment of the Ordinacions, a restructuring of the map of Mallorca that generated discontent –the case of Capdepera– among those who had to populate the established centers and who did not want to leave their homes. Furthermore, he overrode municipal autonomy and placed the jurors, equivalent to current councilors, under his control. Some of his reforms were not implemented until much later: this is the case of the diversion of the course of the Riera, the overflows of which –coincidentally– affected his gardens at the Almudaina.

This so-called good king granted a general pardon for the attitude of his subjects in not having lifted a finger to defend his authority against the occupation by the cousins from Barcelona, fifteen years earlier. However, they had to compensate him for that betrayal, obviously. So he established a general tax, lasting nine years, from which, of course, the usual privileged ones were exempted: nobles and clergy. Upon the expiration of the term, in 1309, and in order not to be left with an empty treasury, he established another contribution.

Increasing fiscal pressure was a common practice for James II. The transfer of assets rose from 20% to 33%. He imposed a tariff on Catalan merchants –Trump did not invent anything–, which he later had to withdraw: their 'lobby', as one would say now, was too powerful. Regarding the Jews, after having resorted to them for his need for money, he forced them to confine themselves to the City, between the Temple and the Calatrava, lest they contaminate the Christians with their heresies. For the free Muslims who still remained in Mallorca, he raised –of course!– their taxes.

From the general contribution of 1300, two-thirds of the income went to the royal heritage, and the remaining third to the expenses of the university, the island's governing entity. On what did James II spend all the money he collected? Since he was not a powerful monarch, he wanted to create that impression with sumptuous mansions. In Mallorca alone, the remodeling of the Almudaina, the Bellver castle, the residences of Valldemossa, Sineu and Manacor, and the Teix refuge. Too many spaces, truth be told, for a royal family that was practically never on the island. James II wanted these palaces, and he wanted them now: he ordered work to be done even on holidays, and this for the free men—and women—because the rest were slaves.

It is assumed that the royal house of Mallorca, due to the influence of Franciscanism, was of notorious austerity. Or perhaps not so much... He was not yet king when he already had a large service staff: knights, men-at-arms, grooms, falconers, beaters, hunters, trumpeters, squires, porters, pantlers, a cook, a butler, a bread maker—the one in charge of the bread—, a barber, a doctor, an acolyte, a chaplain, and a jester to entertain him. In 1311—the year of his death—he paid one hundred pounds for a falcon, almost what the royal lieutenant, that is, the viceroy, earned each year.

James II died in that Mallorca he visited so little on May 29, 1311. His corpse rested in a sarcophagus at the Cathedral, where it was used as a kind of tourist attraction, until its transfer to the royal chapel. Had he been an exemplary king? If so, it is disconcerting that his supposed friend and mentor Ramon Llull did not choose him as a prototype when conceiving his Rex Bellator, a warrior king who was to unite all the orders of chivalry and lead a new crusade. According to J. N. Hillgarth and Anna Alberni, Llull's candidate was another James: his nephew the Just, King of Aragon.

This was the ‘wise and good king’ James: a monarch of Mallorca who was practically never on the Islands, concerned essentially with his own interests, little or not at all loved by his subjects, whom he fried with taxes, a breaker of his commitments, a disaster in foreign policy and with a certain tendency to squander. It does not matter: he will continue to receive tributes. One must not let historical facts spoil a good cliché.

Information prepared based on texts by Josep-David Garrido i Valls, Maria Barceló Crespí, Pau Cateura, Robert Vinas, Gabriel Ensenyat Pujol, Jaume Sastre Moll, Sebastià Trias Mercant, Ana García Sanz, Ricard Urgell, J. Ernest Martínez Ferrando and Marcel Durliat.