Historian Josep Maria Salrach, a great medievalist, dies

BarcelonaJosep Maria Salrach, one of the great medievalists of Catalonia and Europe, has died in Barcelona at the age of 80. He had been in poor health for some time, but remained active until the very end. On April 8, he attended the presentation of the collective book "The Book of the Year" at the CCCB. The memory of the Catalans, directed by his colleague and childhood friend Borja de Riquer, an event during which Salrach gave a brilliant brief analysis of mythification in history. He had been hospitalized in recent weeks. His death occurred yesterday, Monday, as announced by his family on Tuesday.

Emeritus professor at the UPF, he is one of the leading experts on the formation of the Catalan nation around the year 1000. His work has provided continuity to that of the great medievalists who have contributed to the country's historiography, with figures such as Ramon d'Abadal, who in 1920 promoted the magnum opus Carolingian Catalonia, which Salrach has continued with Gaspar Feliu. In a recent interview with ARA, the now deceased historian lamented precisely that he would not be able to complete this task: "I would like to finish it, but I won't be able to. The work has been passed down from one generation to the next: a century to publish all the Catalan documents prior to the year 1000. Catalonia has many, and more will appear, especially in the archives."

Salrach, the great Catalan reference for studies on the Middle Ages, leaves behind an extensive and solid body of work and a long list of disciples. A member of the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC), where he was recently honored, he was also a beloved and respected figure, affable in nature and with close connections both in France, where he had studied and taught, and in the United States, where he had particularly cultivated a friendship with the historian Paul Freedman.

His titles include The national formation process of Catalonia (1978); the second volume (on the process of feudalization) of the History of Catalonia (1987) directed by Pierre Vilar, with whom he had also had a close relationship; Medieval history of Catalonia (1998), written jointly with his first wife and fellow medievalist Mercè Aventín; Catalonia at the end of the first millennium (2000); and a very interesting mature work, outside of his strict specialty: World Hunger, Past and Present (2009).

Passionate, endowed with a great capacity for work, rigorous and meticulous, he came from a modest family of farmers from Llinars del Vallès, with an invalid father, and was able to study in Barcelona thanks to his uncle, the sculptor and collector Frederic Marès, who paid all his expenses until he graduated from university.

Gentle in speech and writing, he has left us a scholar, teacher and researcher who also took special care of high-level dissemination: first, as a young man, as the author of encyclopedias for Salvat Universal – a task that gave him great expository and synthesis skills and allowed him to learn to write in Catalan – and later, through his own and collective works. In fact, he was currently involved in a history of Catalonia aimed at a foreign audience: he was in charge of the medieval section, Riquer of the contemporary section, and Joaquim Albareda, with whom he also maintained a close relationship, of the modern section.

His generosity and mastery, always accompanied by a gentle smile, have seduced and catalyzed the work of colleagues, disciples, and editors for decades. "The medieval history of Catalonia and the Països Catalans is written today as Salrach taught us," proclaimed Antoni Furió in January at the tribute at the IEC.

Aside from Abadal and Pierre Vilar, he also considered Ferran Soldevila, Jaume Vicens Vives, and, more recently, Josep Fontana as intellectual references. And among his French colleagues, Guy Bois, a communist militant and historian, Michel Vovelle, a leading historian of mentalities, and Pierre Bonassie, a Marxist humanist whose influence led him to write a history of world hunger, stood out. In fact, Salrach, ideologically, moved within the triangle of Catalanism, Marxism, and Christianity.

Of a conciliatory nature, he had been particularly interested in the medieval Catalan tradition of pact-making, whose origins he traced back to the 11th and 12th centuries. In fact, for the past 15 years he had been part of a research group dedicated to compiling Catalan documentation on justice and conflict resolution in Catalonia between the 9th and 12th centuries. "In the 9th and 10th centuries," he said, "problems large and small were resolved through justice in accordance with a Romano-Visigothic legal code and the professionals who applied it. This was happening in the Carolingian era. It has been said that it then collapsed and a period of anarchy set in. But now we know that not everything collapsed. The notion of the public good did not disappear. Nor did the notion of how justice was administered. More pacts were made, both by nobles and individuals." And bringing the reflection to the present, he concluded: "If we look closely, good politics is dialogue and pact. This also happened in the Trial: it started from a dialogue that turned out to be impossible."

Emotional and humble, on the day his colleagues paid tribute to him, he said goodbye with a nostalgic self-portrait: "I still see myself as the child I was seventy years ago, a child who has done his homework." Of course he has done it, the homework of a great historian.