The best way to read this text is as two different things at once: a 1905 local-history book by Joaquim Matas, not a medieval source itself, and a compilation that mixes archival summaries, oral tradition, topographical description, and the author’s own late-antiquarian commentary. The book was published in Olot in 1905 and is listed as a 208-page work; the current municipality of Sales de Llierca still cites it as recommended bibliography for the history of the barony.
Historically, the text sits on top of a real medieval framework. The place of Sales is documented by 979; the first lord of Sales is mentioned in 1029; the first direct reference to the castle itself is from 1129; and the barony later included Sales together with Sadernes, Gitarriu, Entreperes, Monteia and other nearby places. The transition to the Malart family in the 1360s also matches the chronology summarized in modern historical references for the castle and barony.
What makes the excerpt interesting is its split structure. The opening pages are written in a highly visual, almost romantic mode: precipices, caves, echoes, “toppled giants,” impossible paths. Then the text turns into something much drier and more archival: a catalogue of mansos with dates, obligations, redemptions, censuses, and lordly rights. That second register fits what we know about medieval Catalonia, where lords extracted income from peasants in produce, cash, and services, and where dues could include grain, wine, poultry, eggs, and technical payments such as tasca.
So, in terms of reliability, the excerpt should be divided into layers. The material about the convent of nuns, the bishop in the cave, and the “right of the first night” belongs to the realm of tradition, legend, or inherited local narrative unless one checks the underlying documents. By contrast, the notices about sales, redemptions, censuses, seigneurial dues, and named individuals look like summaries of documentary records filtered through Matas’s pen. In other words, it is valuable evidence, but not “raw” evidence; it is already an interpretation by a 1905 notary-historian.
As English, your translation is mostly strong, but several terms carry more legal weight than the current wording suggests.
1. “Notices”
This is serviceable, but “Notes” or “Historical Notes” would sound more natural in English for a title like Noticias. “Notices” feels slightly too literal.
2. “Farmstead”
This is the biggest flattening. Manso is not just a farmhouse. It is closer to “manse,” “holding,” or “dependent rural holding.” In this text, each manso is a legal-economic unit tied to dues and jurisdiction, not simply a building.
3. “Beneficial lord”
For señor útil, “beneficial lord” is awkward. A better rendering would be “beneficial holder,” “holder in beneficial tenure,” or even “usufructuary holder” depending on how technical you want to be. The point is that this is the person with the useful enjoyment of the property, not necessarily the ultimate lord.
4. “Evil customs”
This is faithful, but the reader needs to know it is a technical medieval term, not just moral criticism. “Bad customs” is closer to the literal phrase, but “evil customs” does at least signal oppression. A note is essential either way.
5. “Saving the lordship”
This is accurate in a literal sense, but idiomatic legal English would be “without prejudice to the lordship” or “while reserving seigneurial rights.”
6. “It rendered … one skin of wine at the vat”
Understandable, but clumsy. Better: “one wineskin of wine from the vat” or “one skin of wine at the pressing vat.” The wording matters because the due seems tied to the production stage.
7. “Belongs to him” in item 15
This is the most misleading phrase in the whole translation. In context, it probably does not mean modern personal ownership. It more likely means that the holding was held under Roger de Malart’s lordship. In feudal texts, “belongs” often encodes dependency, superiority, or tenure, not absolute property.
8. “Defines for” in item 31
If this comes from define/definir in the Catalan legal sense, it probably means to release, quitclaim, or settle claims, not “define” in the ordinary English sense. That one should definitely be revised.
Stylistically, the passage is very revealing. Matas writes like a man standing between archive and disappearance. He loves documentary detail, but he also writes with nostalgia and alarm: ruined towers, vanished mansos, forgotten names, old rights evaporating from memory. That lament is explicit in the line “how times have changed!” The text is not just describing medieval lordship; it is also mourning the loss of a rural world that, by 1905, already felt broken and half-erased.
There is also a clear ideological tension in the piece. On one hand, Matas reveres the old territorial order and its memory. On the other, the manse entries show a system full of subordination, censuses, marriage-entry payments, homage, and servile burdens. That makes the text useful precisely because it preserves both the romanticized memory of the landscape and the hard legal texture of feudal domination.
A cleaner overall description of the excerpt would be:
a 1905 antiquarian reconstruction of the Barony of Sales that combines local legend, landscape writing, and condensed summaries of medieval seigneurial documents.
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Broadly, the English translation is good, but it smooths over a few things that matter in a medieval Catalan record.
The biggest point is that “farmstead” is only an approximation of manso / manse. In medieval Catalonia, a manse was not just a house: it was a cultivated holding and a unit of lordly control, tied to rents, dues, and jurisdiction. That fits the wider system described for 13th–15th century Catalonia, where peasants owed lords labor, produce, and money from such holdings.
A second issue is the phrase “acknowledges before Roger de Malart that his farmstead belongs to him.” In English, “him” is ambiguous. In this kind of seigneurial formula, the likely sense is not “the farmstead belongs to Ramón de Concas,” but rather “Ramón acknowledges that the manse is held under the lordship of Roger de Malart.” In other words, this is probably a statement of dependency or tenure, not simple ownership in the modern sense. That is exactly the sort of layered lord–tenant relationship typical of Catalan seigneurial society.
The word mesada is also important. Leaving it untranslated was actually a smart choice. In Catalan seigneurial usage, mesada could refer to a specific feudal right or due, not a modern “monthly payment.” One documented example is the mesada del vi, a lord’s exclusive right to sell wine for a set period. That does not prove the same meaning here, but it shows why translating mesada too confidently would be risky. In your sentence, the safest reading is that the mesada associated with Concas belonged to the Prior of Panissars—that is, one particular right or revenue stream from the holding went to that priory.
The reference to the Prior of Panissars is historically plausible. Santa Maria de Panissars was a real priory at the Panissars pass, founded around the end of the 10th century and later linked to Ripoll, with hospital functions. So the sentence is showing a split in rights: some dues from Concas went to the castle of Salas, while another right went to an ecclesiastical institution. That kind of divided lordship is very medieval.
The list of payments is also revealing. Oats, wine, and eggs are not random details; they are exactly the sort of payments in kind one expects in a mountain seigneurial economy. A major study of Catalan fiscal records notes that dues in eggs were especially characteristic of mountain areas, and that lords commonly drew revenue in produce rather than only in cash.
The awkward bit in English is “one skin of wine at the vat.” It is understandable, but not elegant. A better English phrasing would be “one wineskin of wine from the vat” or “one skin of wine at the pressing vat.” The point seems to be that the due was taken at the stage of wine production, not just as an abstract quantity of wine.
The phrase “one egg of batllía” is the murkiest part. Batllia / batlia means the office or jurisdiction of a batlle—roughly a bailiff or local seigneurial official. So the phrase probably refers to a specific egg due attached to the bailiwick/jurisdiction, not just an ordinary egg. But here I would stay cautious: the exact legal force of that formula cannot be pinned down from this excerpt alone.
There is also a useful historical clue behind the name. In the same book, there is already a notice from 1288 of a Guillermo de Concas making an agreement over a tithe of land. That suggests Concas was already an established family or place-name before the 1342 record in your sentence.
One more thing: I would treat the text with some caution, because there may be a chronological problem in the wording you have. Elsewhere in the same source, the castle of Salas is said to have been sold to Ramón de Malart in 1360. If your sentence really says that in 1342 Ramón de Concas acknowledged rights before Roger de Malart, that may reflect an OCR slip, a transcription error, or a compression by the author rather than the exact wording of the medieval act.
A slightly more precise English version would be:
15. The manse of Concas is attested in 1342; and Ramón de Concas acknowledged to Roger de Malart that the manse was held under his lordship, that the mesada of Concas belonged to the Prior of Panissars, and that it owed to the castle of Salas two half-measures of oats, one wineskin of wine from the vat, fourteen eggs to each [lord], and one egg of batllia. It disappears in 1383. It no longer exists.
The places where I would keep brackets are [lord] and possibly even [batllia], because those are the least certain parts.
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I’m checking the historical meaning of the money term itself, because “de terno” is one of those archival expressions that can be misleading if taken literally.
Yes. In that phrase, “X sueldos y X dineros de terno” is basically a way of stating an amount of money in a specific monetary standard.
A sueldo was a unit of account made up of 12 dineros, and 20 sueldos made 1 libra. So, for example, “4 sueldos y 8 dineros” = 56 dineros in total.
The part “de terno” does not mean “in sets of three” here. It refers to the type/standard of coinage: moneda de terno or dinero de terno, a low-billon coin used in Catalonia and Aragón. The term terno / tern refers to an alloy with roughly one part silver and three parts copper, and dictionary/numismatic sources describe it as a billon coin with about a quarter silver and three quarters copper.
So when the text says something like:
“4 sueldos y 8 dineros de terno”
the cleanest English sense is:
“4 sous and 8 deniers in terno coinage”
or more plainly
“4 shillings and 8 pence, reckoned in the terno monetary standard.”
What it is doing is specifying the currency standard, because medieval and early modern documents often had to distinguish between different money systems or coin qualities in circulation.
So, in your passage, “4 sueldos y 8 dineros de terno” means:
4 sueldos + 8 dineros
counted in terno coinage
which equals 56 dineros de terno.
A good modern annotation would be:
“4 sueldos y 8 dineros de terno” = an amount stated in the Catalan-Aragonese terno currency, where 1 sueldo = 12 dineros.
The one thing you should not do is translate de terno literally as “of three” without a note. Here it is monetary jargon, not ordinary Spanish.
I can also annotate the other terms in that passage the same way, like laudemio, foriscapio, tasca, and malos usos.