La qüestió imperial en el pensament polític de la Catalunya moderna: història d'una absència

The political thought of Early-Modern Catalonia has been usually studied from the constitutionalist perspective, often in opposition to the ‘imperial’ concerns of the court. This article attempts to widen the analysis with a preliminary study of the imperial theme in the Crown of Aragon, and in particular its Catalan dimension. Although this theme was quite obviosuly of secondary importance in the thought of the period, this very marginality requires an interpretation, given the well-known importance of the role of Catalans in the medieval expansion of the Crown. After discusssing a number of uses of the concept of empire in the Renaissance, especially in Charles V’s Spain, the article analyses the ‘imperial deficit’ of the Crown of Aragon as it was reflected in historiographical production and debates, with special reference to their medieval sources and contexts.