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In the dead of winter in the year 1313, the canon Galceran de Sacosta arrived in the village of Puigcerdà, located on the Pyrenean border between what is now Catalonia and France. Since leaving the cathedral city of Urgell in December, Galceran had spent two months traveling through dangerous mountain passes and bitter cold to remote parishes situated in the most northern region of the diocese of Urgell. On a number of occasions, the visitor found he could not conduct an inquiry into parish life because no one was present in the village to interrogate, a sign of the pastoral life of these people, who were out tending to their flocks of sheep. For the most part, however, the visitor was able to find a few villagers, who likely huddled against the cold in the parish church, to answer his questions concerning the moral behavior of the clergy and laity. In Puigcerdà, a relatively large village by Pyrenean standards, parishioners reported to the visitor that thirteen unmarried couples, including a miller, baker, and pelterer, were engaging in concubinage. In addition, six married men kept concubines, and four other villagers refused to cohabit with their spouses.1 These accounts of illicit sex and marital separation among villagers and peasants were not unusual, since people throughout the dioceses of Catalonia reported to the episcopal visitor that couples in their parishes practiced concubinage.
The prevalence of informal unions among the laity and clergy in the isolated and mountainous parishes of the Pyrenees, moreover, was not unique to this setting. Along the coast and to the south of Barcelona and north of Valencia lies the diocese of Tortosa. During the same winter months of the year 1314, the bishop Francesc Paholac conducted visitations throughout his diocese and found that the practices of concubinage and marriage desertion were commonplace among the laity. Couples like Pericó Vilalbino and Boneta in the cathedral city of Tortosa lived together for many years and had two children without legitimizing their union. In a large settlement like Morella, seventeen unmarried lay couples and five priests and their single partners engaged in concubinage. Although many of these couples were Christian, the layman Pere Çamosa was fined a hefty sum for keeping a Saracen woman and their son...