Liber feudorum maior

The prologue to the document, written by Ramon de Caldes, describes the work as being in duo volumina (two volumes), but its present division dates only from its re-binding in the nineteenth century.

The Liber feudorum Ceritaniae concentrates on Cerdany and Roussillon and may represent a failed initiative to create regional cartularies modelled on the LFM.

The Liber feudorum formae minoris is a continuation of the LFM including documents from the early thirteenth century.

[8] Accepting the prologue at face value, Francisco Miquel Rosell assumed that the work was presented to Alfonso II and that it was therefore completed before the count's death in 1196.

Thomas Bisson has argued that the work was presented to Alfonso complete in August 1194 at the same ceremony where Ponç III de Cabrera came to terms with the king.

[10] A third line of argument, pursued by Anscari Mundó, sees the LFM as complete by 1192, when the latest of its charters was issued.

Bisson connects any renewed effort on the part of Ramon de Caldes before his retirement from court in late 1194 with a series of challenges to the authority of Alfonso II.

[13] In February 1194 Berenguer, Archbishop of Tarragona, was assassinated by Guillem Ramon II de Montcada, which to Bisson indicates the weakness of the Peace and Truce of God at that time and since 1190, when the baronage had first rejected it.

[15] [H]is instrumentis ad memoriam revocatis, unusquisque ius suum sortiatur, tum propter eternam magnarum rerum memoriam, ne inter vos et homines vestros, forte oblivionis occasione, aliqua questio vel discordia posset oriri.

[W]ith these instruments recalled to mind, each person should receive his due, and that on account of the undying recollection of great matters, no dispute or conflict should arise between you and your men because of forgetfulness.

The LFM was treated by its modern editor, Rosell, as little more than a written record of the aggrandisement of the domain of the counts of Barcelona.

[18] The LFM introduced no "new principles of feudal organization", but it does represent "a more abstract notion of comital and royal power".

[20] Rather, it is a record of a vast new authority including Aragon, parts of Occitania (Carcassonne, Razès, Béziers, and the County of Provence), and all the Catalan counties, including Ausona, Barcelona, Besalú, Cerdanya, Girona, Roussillon, and Pallars Jussà, which were all possessed by Alfonso II, as well as the Empúries and Urgell, which were not.

Bisson writes that in the LFM "feudal principles, applied to serve administrative [...] needs, remained subordinated to a conception of territorial sovereignty,"[21] yet he also says that the LFM was "exclusively a land book concerned with proprietary or reversionary right [and not] concerned with any systematic effort to strengthen suzerain rights or vassalic obligations.

[25] At least two charters in the LFM were definitely from outside sources: a grant by Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona to Santa Maria de l'Estany in 1152 and a privilege of Charlemagne held at the monastery of Sant Llorenç del Munt.

Joan Ainaud dated the painting to the first quarter of the thirteenth century (after the completion of the text), but it was probably planned from the start.