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In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of complex human disasters, vulnerability, and resilience to explain how these famines occurred and to describe more accurately who suffered and why.Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon details the social causes and responses to three events of varying magnitude that struck the western Mediterranean: the minor food shortage of 1372, the serious but short-lived crisis of 1384–85, and the major famine of 1374–76, the worst famine of the century in the region. Shifts in military action, international competition, and violent attempts to control trade routes created systemic panic and widespread starvation—which in turn influenced decades of economic policy, social practices, and even the course of geopolitical conflicts, such as the War of the Two Pedros and the papal schism in Italy.Providing new insights into the intersecting factors that led to famine in the fourteenth-century Mediterranean, this deeply researched, convincingly argued book presents tools and models that are broadly applicable to any historical study of vulnerabilities in the human food supply. It will be of interest to scholars of medieval Iberia and the medieval Mediterranean as well as to historians of food and of economics.

In the fourteenth century, the urban council of Valencia tried to balance maintaining the secrecy of their government with a perceived need to publicise their actions. The council knew from experience that information vacuums could be dangerous. Feuds between noble groups made the urban council wary of the secret actions of council members. Food shortages and the anti-Jewish riots in 1391 also pressured the council to project a public face of action to quell urban unrest. In response, the city enacted a performative publicity: a public show of information dissemination concerning the normal operations of government that still occluded the actual discussions of the council.

In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of complex human disasters, vulnerability, and resilience to explain how these famines occurred and to describe more accurately who suffered and why. Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon details the social causes and responses to three events of varying magnitude that struck the western Mediterranean: the minor food shortage of 1372, the serious but short-lived crisis of 1384-85, and the major famine of 1374-76, the worst famine of the century in the region. Shifts in military action, international competition, and violent attempts to control trade routes created systemic panic and widespread starvation-which in turn influenced decades of economic policy, social practices, and even the course of geopolitical conflicts, such as the War of the Two Pedros and the papal schism in Italy. Providing new insights into the intersecting factors that led to famine in the fourteenth-century Mediterranean, this deeply researched, convincingly argued book presents tools and models that are broadly applicable to any historical study of vulnerabilities in the human food supply. It will be of interest to scholars of medieval Iberia and the medieval Mediterranean as well as to historians of food and of economics.

On September 18, 1374, Berenguer Catala, the majordom of the Pia Almoina in Barcelona, canceled all bread handouts for the foreseeable future. Instead, the canons began handing out small cash sums—a mere 2 denarii per person—and allowing the people in their care to search for whatever bread might be found in Barcelona. Initially, as the price of grain skyrocketed, the hospital mangers attempted to supplement the usually all-wheat bread with barley and rye, but even those grains quickly became prohibitively expensive. The city also cut off the purchase rights held by the cathedral, known as the dret de

Despite the expanding access of wealthy cities, individual access to markets remained deeply unequal. The individual ability to buy food, especially among the poor, related to one’s occupation, family ties, and social networks. In this chapter, I look at the layers of food access available to the poor, both the working poor and those deemed “deserving” of aid who survived on the pious distribution of alms. Between these two poles were a range of people who scraped by thanks to the support of family and friends, and others who fell through the support network to become “vagabonds” and undesirables. Outside

The system of food production and distribution in the Crown of Aragon could function surprisingly well, keeping people supplied with basic necessities. Effective agricultural management, economic knowledge, and integrated trade made it possible to surmount small shortages. Even so, the strict hierarchical society of late medieval Europe routinely denied resources to the needy. Almost no one thought of universal resilience as a priority, or even as a good.¹ Fluctuating agricultural, economic, and social factors created the dynamics of famine resilience and vulnerability.² The complex interaction between these forces explains why the experience of the Crown of Aragon, and to a

Within the impressive bibliography on the economy and trade in the late medieval Crown of Aragon, two underappreciated features link trade and famine. First, over the course of the fourteenth century, urban councils and jurors in the coastal cities consciously experimented with available measures for controlling their grain markets (jurors, literally jurats in Catalan, were the executive members of the city government). Urban leaders understood the complex nature of famine, which could have many causes.¹ As the jurors of Valencia declared to Johan I of Prades (1335–1414), the seneschal of Catalonia, in 1374, “This shortage has come to us

Agriculture formed the basis of both risk and resilience in the medieval food supply. Weaknesses in production and distribution usually correlate directly with both the causes of famine and how people experienced it. The desire to resist the inevitable shortage was not the only driver of agricultural choice. Farmers balanced that need with a set of decisions based on the natural conditions of their land, cultural dietary preferences, and marketability. Social norms alone could weaken resistance to shortage, especially when calculated in terms of pure calories. Symbolic, religious, and cultural factors helped guide food choice as much as risk mitigation