THE END OF THE HOUSE OF BARCELONAover seventy years later. Around this time the Catalan duchy
of Athens finally succumbed to pressure from the Italian mer-
cenary leader Nerio Acciaiuoli. The Mediterranean islands
proved more problematic than John apparently expected,
with a major uprising in Sardinia under the aegis of Eleonora
of Arborea, a figure who has acquired legendary stature in
Sardinia. The result was that the zone of Aragonese influ-
ence on the island shrank still further, and no longer even
included the rebellious city of Sassari. In Sicily, the hope
of securing an easy succession for Martin the Younger, as
husband of Princess Maria, faced growing opposition from
the barons, who saw the arrival of a Catalan prince as a
threat to their already extremely extensive liberties, and who
erupted in rebellion in 1393. Iti
Violent uproar was not confined to the more distant lands
of the Aragonese commonwealth. The economic difficulties
that enveloped Barcelona and the Catalan towns included
not just depopulation after repeated attacks of plague but
banking crises, the emergence of a populist opposition party,
known as the Busca, in Barcelona itself, and growing diffi-
culty in maintaining regular supplies of precious metals for
the mint, with serious effects on the health of the Catalan
monetary system. Among the rural peasantry, too, there was
agitation by the many unfree serfs jealous of the liberty of
other peasants who had managed to escape the imposition
of feudal obligations such as labour services and marriage
fines (the mals usos, or 'bad customs'). The monarchy was
generally sympathetic, now and later, to the unfree peasants,
and often showed support for the Busca against the more
patrician Biga faction that had dominated Barcelona in
the past. It is in this context that the outbreak of violent
anti:Jewish pogroms must be understood. Increasingly isol-
ated from the rest of urban society by their enclosure within
reserved areas of the city, or Calls, the Jews became the
target of fierce preaching campaigns in 1391, first of all in
southern Spain, where Ferran Martinez, archdeacon of Ecija,
led a virulent campaign which in June^1391 exploded in
anti:Jewish violence on the steets of Seville, the major centre
of Jewish population in the south of the kingdom of Castile.
- The accession of Martin I and II in Sicily has been discussed already:
see pp. 160-2 supra.