The County of Manresa ( ca, Comtat de Manresa, es, Condado de Manresa) is the western extremity of the County of Osona, divided into the

Moianès Moianès () is a ''comarca'' in the centre of Catalonia, Spain. It became a comarca in May 2015, following approval in a local referendum and by the Parliament of Catalonia. Its 10 municipalities were in the comarques of Bages, Osona, and Vallès ...

and

Bages Bages () is a comarca (county) in the center of Catalonia, Spain. It includes a ''subcomarca'', Lluçanès. Industries include the mining of potash at Súria and Sallent, and the manufacture of textiles along the rivers Llobregat and Carden ...

. Through the

Reconquista The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...

, Manresa was extended as far as

Anoia Anoia () is a comarca (county) in central Catalonia, Spain, with its capital at Igualada. The comarca of l'Anoia is irrigated by the Anoia River; the leading industry is the making of paper. To the north are Solsonès and Bages, to the west, ...

Segarra Segarra () is a Comarques of Catalonia, comarca (county) in Autonomous Community of Catalonia, Catalonia, Spain, situated on a high plain. Historically, the name referred to a larger area than the current comarca. It has a continental climate, wi ...

, and

Urgell Modern-day Urgell (), also known as ''Baix Urgell'' (''baix'' meaning "lower", by contrast with Alt Urgell "Higher Urgell"), is a ''comarca'' (county) in Catalonia, Spain, forming only a borderland portion of the region historically known as Ur ...

. The castle at Manresa dates from the last quarter of the ninth century.Lewis, 131. In that period, the region, depopulated since the rebellion of Aissó in the 826, was repopulated by settlers from the overpopulated regions of Pallars and Cerdanya. The repopulated regions came under the control of Wilfred the Hairy, who gave them their ecclesiastical and political organisation. The Valle de Lord was attached to the County of Urgell and the ''

pagus In ancient Rome, the Latin word (plural ) was an administrative term designating a rural subdivision of a tribal territory, which included individual farms, villages (), and strongholds () serving as refuges, as well as an early medieval geogra ...

'' of Berga ( Berguedà) to the County of Cerdanya, but the region of the Ripollès, the Lluçanès, the Plana de Vic, and the

Guilleries The Guilleries Massif (Catalan ''Les Guilleries'') is a mountain system located at the apex of the Catalan Transversal Range and the Pre-Coastal Range. The highest point of the range is Sant Miquel de Solterra or Sant Miquel de les Formigues (1.2 ...

were structured around the city of ''Ausa'', a region which in ancient times had been ethnically distinct, inhabited by the

Ausetani The Ausetani were an ancient Iberian (pre-Roman) people of the Iberian peninsula (the Roman Hispania). They are believed to have spoken the Iberian language. They lived in the eponymous region of Ausona and gave their name to the Roman city of '' ...

. The County of Ausona was thus born and to it Wilfred attached the Moianés and Bages, which already had their own traditional capital, Manresa, which had historically been the region of the Lacetani. From the year 906, it is clear from documents that Manresa never possessed any judicial or administrative significance — it never had a

viscount A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain European countries for a noble of varying status. In many countries a viscount, and its historical equivalents, was a non-hereditary, administrative or judicia ...

— rather it was a geographical unit solely. The centre of Manresa was the ''pagus'' of the same name. The most notable difference between Manresa and the rest of Ausona was due to privileges granted by King Odo in 889 and 890 whereby he gave Manresa the right, because of its position on the front line against Moorish aggression, to build towers of defence called ''manresanas'' or ''manresanes''. Manresa fell into disuse as a term in the twelfth century, when the county was divided into veguerias.

Sources

*Lewis, Archibald Ross.
The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718–1050
'. University of Texas Press: Austin, 1965.

Notes

{{coord, 41.7282, N, 1.8263, E, source:wikidata, display=title Medieval Catalonia