A Defence of Osona at Lleida

So, where are, or rather were, we now? On inspection, actually, almost immediately I had survived the 2017 IMC I was away again on a jet-plane. This time it was to a place I’d never been, the city of Lleida, and what was taking me there was that I was on the panel examining one of the city’s university’s doctoral students, Elisabet Bonilla Sitja.

Within volum 1 of Calaix 6 of the Arxiu Capitular de Vic

This situation had been some time in the building, in fact. I first met Elisabet when I was in Oxford, when she did a term visiting so as to work with Chris Wickham, and at that point it became clear to each of us that we were perhaps the only people in the world who cared about trying to do something new with the charters at Vic, as seen above. At that stage she was still working on her MA thesis, which went well, and when I next ran into her, in Barcelona as documented here, she asked then if I would be willing to be on her thesis panel when it came to it, as she and her supervisor thought that having one foreign scholar who could speak for her in the English-speaking world would probably be useful, and so did I, so I said yes.¹ And now, finally, that obligation had come due and so there I was in Lleida, having spent the interlude between then and Leeds reading a thesis as carefully as I could in the time available…

Cover of Elisabet Bonilla Sitja, ‘Percebre i relacionar-se en els comtats d’Osona i Manresa durant la primera meitat del segle X’ (Ph. D. thesis, Lleida, 2017).

Now as you may remember I was by now just about not a stranger to doctoral examination, but only in the UK, where the system is quite different from that in Catalonia. In the UK, there is one examiner from the home institution and one from outside, they independently read the thesis and reach a decision on it pending the viva voce (i. e. oral) examination, meet to compare notes and then examine the candidate in person to be sure that it is in fact their work and to establish whether they can explain or defend the weak or curious bits, and on the basis of that the final recommendation is made. In Catalonia, instead, firstly everything is much more public. This panel was three people, and I have since been on one of five, and while they do make the final decision in private between themselves, before that happens each member makes a speech about the thesis, raising all the questions they want, to a gathering of the department and whomever the candidate has invited, and then the candidate has to give a speech in return, the actual defence, and then they make the decision and announce it. This all takes a while. There is also a secret ballot over whether the thesis passes summa cum laude—unless everyone votes in favour, it doesn’t. It’s a little arcane compared to the British experience, at least if you’re working in your fourth language, and pretty gruelling for the candidate, I’d imagine, especially as at least in Catalonia the candidate is then supposed to buy the panel lunch! Elisabet managed that last obligation by having her family bring in a huge and generous cold collation and set it up in a seminar room, which was fine by me, but before we’d got that far I had had to ask what the heck was going on in any of three languages several times.

This was the first picture I took in Lleida, which gives you an impression of a city under work… More on this next post, but here is some scene-setting

But I managed, and of course Elisabet passed, since we all agreed that the thesis was excellent.² And it also gave me the chance to meet my co-markers, Jordi Bolòs i Masclans, the internal for Lleida, and Aymat Catafau of Perpignan, both of whose work I had used a lot of before this time and both of whom were extremely nice and generous.³ It also left me with most of a day spare in Lleida, indeed, and that will generate a photo post that’s coming up next. But mainly it was a development step, in which I learnt a new process, made better contacts in my area of study and got to feel like a professional and expert for a while, and also help someone who deserved it, so I recount it with happiness even now. It all went well and as it should have gone.

---

1. That thesis being Elisabet Bonilla Sitja, ‘Aproximación al estudio de la vida y mentalidad altomedieval: La Plana de Vic, 872-936’ (M. A. thesis, Universitat de Lleida, 2011).

2. And that thesis being Bonilla, ‘Percebre i relacionar-se en els comtats d’Osona i Manresa durant la primera meitat del segle X’ (doctoral thesis, Universitat de Lleida, 2017), online here.

3. To pick but one piece each, Jordi Bolòs, ‘Paisatge, poblament i societat a Catalunya entorn de l’any 1000’ in Imma Ollich i Castanyer (ed.), Actes del Congrés Internacional Gerbert d’Orlhac i el Seu Temps: Catalunya i Europa a la fi del 1r. mil·leni, Vic-Ripoll, 10-13 de novembre de 1999 (Vic 1999), pp. 254–283, and Aymat Catafau and Claudie Duhamel-Amado, ‘Fidèles et aprisionnaires en réseaux dans la Gothie des IX^e et X^e siècles : Le mariage et l’aprision au service de la noblesse méridionale’ in Régine Le Jan (ed.), La royauté et les élites dans l’Europe carolingienne (début IX^e siècle aux environs de 920) (Villeneuve de l’Ascq, 1998), pp. 437–465, have both been common cites of mine for quite a while.