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The Crown of Aragon (; (アラゴン語:Corona d'Aragón), (カタルーニャ語、バレンシア語:Corona d'Aragó), (ラテン語:Corona Aragonum), (スペイン語:Corona de Aragón))〔''Corona d'Aragón'' () ''Corona d'Aragó'' (, ) ''Corona Aragonum'' ((:koˈroːna araˈɡoːnũ) ''Corona de Aragón'' ((:koˈɾona ðe aɾaˈɣon))〕 was a composite monarchy,〔 also nowadays referred to as a confederation of individual polities〔 or kingdoms〔 ruled by one king with a personal and dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy (a state with primarily maritime realms) controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean "empire" which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy (from 1442) and parts of Greece (until 1388). The component realms of the Crown were not united politically except at the level of the king, who ruled over each autonomous polity according to its own laws, raising funds under each tax structure, dealing separately with each ''Corts'' or ''Cortes''. Put in contemporary terms, it has sometimes been considered that the different lands of the Crown of Aragon (mainly the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Valencia) functioned more as a confederation than as a single kingdom. In this sense, the larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, the Kingdom of Aragon, from which it takes its name. In 1469, a new dynastic familial union of the Crown of Aragon with the Crown of Castile by the Catholic Monarchs, joining what contemporaries referred to as "the Spains"〔Henry Kamen, ''Empire: how Spain became a world power, 1492-1762'', 2002:20.〕 led to what would become the Kingdom of Spain under King Philip II. The Crown existed until it was abolished by the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1716 as a consequence of the defeat of Archduke Charles (as Charles III of Aragon) in the War of the Spanish Succession. ==Context== Formally, the political center of the Crown of Aragon was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned at La Seo Cathedral. Leading cultural, administrative and economic centres of the Crown of Aragon were the cities of Barcelona and Valencia. Finally, Palma (Majorca) was an additional important city and seaport. The Crown of Aragon eventually included the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia (until the 12th century as County of Barcelona), the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Sicily, Malta, the Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sardinia. For brief periods the Crown of Aragon also controlled Montpellier, Provence, Corsica, and the twin Duchy of Athens and Neopatras in Latin Greece. The countries that are today known as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the ''Reconquista''. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of the South and against each other. In the Late Middle Ages, the expansion of the Aragonese Crown southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, which completed its ''Reconquista'' in 1249, would focus on the Atlantic Ocean. Mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known as ''almogàvers'' participated in the creation of this Mediterranean "empire", and later found employment in countries all across southern Europe. The Crown of Aragon has been considered by some as an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, with the power to set rules over the entire sea (for instance, the ''Llibre del Consolat del Mar'' or ''Book of the Consulate of the Sea'', written in Catalan, is one of the oldest compilation of maritime laws in the world). It was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe. However, its different territories were only connected through the person of the monarch, an aspect of empire as early as Achaemenid Persia. A contemporary, the Marqués de Lozoya〔Marqués de Lozoya, ''Historia de España'', Salvat, ed. 1952, vol. II page 60: "''El Reino de Aragon, el Principado de Cataluña, el Reino de Valencia y el Reino de Mallorca, constituyen una confederación de Estados''".〕 described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralised kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents ever refer to it as an empire (''Imperium'' or any cognate word); instead, it was considered a dynastic union of autonomous kingdoms. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Crown of Aragon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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