Nor was the change for them a great one. The Pyrenees made then, as they make now, no very serious difference between the languages spoken on their opposite declivities; similarity of pursuits had long before induced a similarity of manners in the population of Barcelona and Marseilles; and if the Provençals had somewhat more of gentleness and culture, the Catalonians, from the share they had taken in the Moorish wars, possessed a more strongly marked character, and one developed in more manly proportions.[490] At the very commencement of the twelfth century, therefore, we may fairly consider a Provençal refinement to have been introduced into the northeastern corner of Spain; and it is worth notice, that this is just about the period when, as we have already seen, the ultimately national school of poetry began to show itself in quite the opposite corner of the Peninsula, amidst the mountains of Biscay and Asturias.[491] [490] Barcelona was a prize often fought for successfully by Moors and Christians, but it was finally rescued from the misbelievers in 985 or 986. (Zurita, Anales de Aragon, Lib. I. c. 9.) Whatever relates to its early power and glory may be found in Capmany, (Memorias de la Antigua Ciudad de Barcelona, Madrid, 1779-1792, 4 tom. 4to,) and especially in the curious documents and notes in Tom. II. and IV. [491] The members of the French Academy, in their continuation of the Benedictine Hist. Litt. de la France, (Paris, 4to, Tom. XVI., 1824, p. 195,) trace it back a little earlier. Political causes, however, similar to those which first brought the spirit of Provence from Arles and Marseilles to Barcelona, soon carried it farther onward towards the centre of Spain. In 1137, the Counts of Barcelona obtained by marriage the kingdom of Aragon; and though they did not, at once, remove the seat of their government to Saragossa, they early spread through their new territories some of the refinement for which they were indebted to Provence. This remarkable family, whose power was now so fast stretching up to the North, possessed, at different times, during nearly three centuries, different portions of territory on both sides of the Pyrenees, generally maintaining a control over a large part of the Northeast of Spain and of the South of France. Between 1229 and 1253, the most distinguished of its members gave the widest extent to its empire by broad conquests from the Moors; but later the power of the kings of Aragon became gradually circumscribed, and their territory diminished, by marriages, successions, and military disasters. Under eleven princes, however, in the direct line, and three more in the indirect, they maintained their right to the kingdom, down to the year 1479, when, in the person of Ferdinand, it was united to Castile, and the solid foundations were laid on which the Spanish monarchy has ever since rested.