Count Ramon Berenguer I of Barcelona

  General Notes:

He promulgated the earliest versions of a written code of Catalan law, the Usages of Barcelona.

Born in 1024, he succeeded his father, Berenguer Ramon the Crooked in 1035. It is during his reign that the dominant position of Barcelona among other Catalan counties became evident.

Ramon Berenguer campaigned against the Moors, extending his dominions as far west as Barbastro and imposing heavy tributes (parias) on other Moorish cities. Historians claim that those tributes helped create the first wave of prosperity in Catalan history. During his reign Catalan maritime power started to be felt in Western Mediterranean. Ramon Berenguer the Old was also the first count of Catalonia to acquire lands (counties of Carcassonne and Razés) and influence north of the Pyrenees.

Another major achievement of his was beginning of codification of Catalan law in the written Usatges or Usatici of Barcelona which was to become the first full compilation of feudal law in Western Europe. Legal codification was part of the count's efforts to forward and somehow control the process of feudalization which started during the reign of his weak father, Berenger Ramon. Another major contributor was the Church acting through the institution of the Peace and Truce of God. This established a general truce among warring factions and lords in a given region for a given time. The earliest extant date for introducing the Truce of God in Western Europe is 1027 in Catalonia, during the reign of Ramon Berenguer the Old.

Ramon Berenguer I together with his third wife Almodis also founded the Romanesque cathedral of Barcelona, to replace the older basilica presumably destroyed by Almanzor. Their velvet and brass bound wooden coffins are still shown in the Gothic cathedral which replaced Ramon Berenguer's building.

Ramon married Almodis de la Marche, daughter of Count Bernard de la Marche I and Amélie, circa 1053. (Almodis de la Marche was born circa 1020 and died on 16 Oct 1071.)

  Marriage Notes:

She was still Pons' wife in April 1053, but shortly thereafter Almodis was abducted by Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona. He kidnapped her from Narbonne with the aid of a fleet sent north by his ally, the Muslim emir of Tortosa. They married immediately (despite the fact both of her previous husbands were still alive) and they appear with their twin sons in a charter the next year. Pope Victor II excommunicated Almodis and Ramon for this illegal marriage until 1056. Together they produced four children