Wilfred the Hairy
Wilfred remained obscure until drawn into the historians' net by Sir Richard Southern, in The Making of the Middle Ages, 1953.
[5] Thus, as a descendant of Sunifred and his brother, Sunyer I, count of Empúries and Roussillon (834–848), Wilfred is considered to be a member of a Bellonid dynasty by Ramon d'Abadal and other historians.
Later, at an assembly at Attigny in June 870, Charles the Bald made their cousins, Wilfred the Hairy and his brother Miró (known as the Old), counts of Urgell and Cerdanya, and Conflent, respectively.
After becoming Count of Urgell and Cerdanya in 870, Wilfred received the counties of Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú in 878 from the Carolingian king of France, Louis the Stammerer.
Wilfred was thus the last count of the Hispanic March appointed by the French king and the first to pass his vast holdings as an inheritance to his sons (albeit sanctioned by the monarch[citation needed]).
Wilfred, Miró, their brother Sunifred (who became the Abbot of Arles), and Lindoí, the Viscount of Narbonne, marched against Bernard on behalf of King Charles and his son, Louis the Stammerer.
In March and April 878, they defeated the nobles loyal to Bernard, including Sigebuto, Bishop of Narbonne, and expelled all partisan priests from the church.
The land between these regions—Ripollès, Vall de Lord, Berguedà, Lluçanès, the Plana de Vic, Moianès, Guilleries, and Bages—had long been depopulated due to the rebellion of Aissó in 827, but was considered territory belonging to the Count of Barcelona since 820, when it was given to Rampon upon the death of Borrell, the first Count of Urgell, Cerdanya, and Ausona.
Wilfred embarked on the process of repopulating these territories with immigrants from the heavily populated mountain regions—Pallars, Urgell, and Cerdanya—to which people had fled in the two centuries between the collapses of Visigothic and Carolingian authority.
- needs to be checked) To Ausona, Wilfred also attached Moianés and Bagés and their traditional capital, Manresa, which had historically been the region of the Lacetani.
In 885, Wilfred designated a Viscount to control the County of Ausona in his absence as it formed the frontier with the Muslim Kingdoms to the south.
The "County of Manresa" received special attention from King Odo, granting it the privilege of constructing defensive towers in 889 and 890, although it was actually part of Ausona.
The new bishop immediately set about restoring the repopulated city and its cathedral, which had been devastated and in ruins since the last Muslim conquest and the rebellion of Aissó.
The Abbey of Sant Joan de les Abadesses was founded in the Diocese of Vic by Wilfred and his wife Guinedilda to provide for their daughter Emma, who became the community's first abbess in 899 and was given immunity from lay jurisdiction by King Charles the Simple.
Louis III received the ancient northern partitions of the Merovingian kingdom, Neustria and Austrasia (including the Lorraine).
Not wanting to crown Louis the Stammerer's remaining son, Charles the Simple, who was only five, the nobles of France looked about for a powerful man who could defend the land from the fearsome Vikings and their vicious raids on the Channel and Atlantic coasts.
At the Assembly of Ponthion (884),[citation needed] the Franks chose the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fat, who was already king of Germany and Italy.
In the great tradition of their family, Wilfred, Miró, Dela, and Sunyer II maintained their loyalty to the Carolingian monarchs until 888 and the death of Charles the Fat.
The Counts became more interested in issues that directly affected them and did not attend the Assembly of Ponthion dealing with the Viking problem, which they regarded as meaningless to their domains.
The weakening of Frankish royal authority in the Hispanic March is principally the result of the establishment of hereditary succession of the counties rather than by choice of the monarch.
Wilfred Borrell and Sunyer (oldest and youngest) ruled over Barcelona, Girona, and Ausona; Miró over Cerdanya and Conflent; and Sunifred over Urgell.
Nineteenth century European Romanticism looked to the medieval world for references and links to modern national and cultural identities, and in the context of Catalan nationalism and its search for its historical foundations in a distant and idealized past, Wilfred soon arose as a figure of independence, the de facto founder of the House of Barcelona, and, by purported extension, one of the forefathers of the latter Catalonia.
After being wounded in battle (some versions say against the Moors; others, the Normans), the Frankish king Charles the Bald rewarded his bravery by giving him a coat of arms.
The king slid Wilfred's blood-stained fingers over the Count's copper shield, and thus was the Senyera first born, with its four pallets in Gules on Or.
[6] The Gesta Comitum Barcinonensium records her father as Baldwin I, Margrave of Flanders, but this source is considered unreliable in detailing the family relations of the early counts of Barcelona.
