County of Conflent

The County of Conflent or Confluent was one of the Catalan counties of the Marca Hispanica in the ninth century. Usually associated with the County of Cerdanya and the county of Razès, and was located to the west of Roussillon. It largely corresponded to the modern comarca of Conflent.

In Roman times Conflent was a pagus (district) dependent on Ruscino, the nucleus of later Roussillon. After the Christianisation of the fifth century, Conflent became an archdiaconate of the Diocese of Elne. Historically, the western border of Conflent has been that between the dioceses of Elne and Urgel in the plain of Perxa. To the west of the boundary was Cerdanya. Conflent went through a Visigothic and then a Moorish phase before it was reconstituted as a county by the Franks. It was initially attached to the County of Razès and the Barcelona.

Conflent was one of the last Catalan counties to see widespread grants of aprisiones, which were not commonplace until the 890s.Serfdom, though less common there than elsewhere, existed in Conflent in the late ninth century.

Until 870 Conflent was also attached to the counties of Urgell and Cerdanya, but in that year Charles the Bald granted it to Miro the Elder, who already governed the Capcir and Fenouilledès. Under Miro's governance the monastery of Sant Andreu d'Eixalada (which was destroyed in a storm in 878) was replaced by the new foundation of Sant Miquel de Cuixà. When Miro died Conflent passed to his brother Wilfred the Hairy. Under Wilfred's heirs the nominal authority of the Carolingian monarch was disregarded and Conflent was ruled as a family possession. Already in the reign of Charles the Bald much of the royal fisc in Conflent had been granted away. Throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries, Conflent was attached to Cerdagne, which was almost always more prominent.

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