The Splendor and Opulence of the Past

The Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (1717–1791), a church historian and a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia's medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy . As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar's books, essays, and transcriptions—some only recently discovered—provide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in modern Catalonia and illustrate how a nation's p