RODRIGO XIMÉNEZ DE RADA

In many ways, the young Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s ambition was one of the through-lines for his whole career, but beyond the politics that commanded much of his attention as an archbishop, the ways in which Rodrigo engaged with the military affairs of the Kingdom of Castile lead to him being labelled a ‘warriorbishop’ or at least a ‘episcopal general’.

There is no evidence that the young Rodrigo had received much formal military training. We know that he was promised to a Cistercian monastery and was a monk there, but Citeaux’s monks developed a reputation for welcoming violence on behalf of the church despite their monastic vocations. There were, for instance, a number of Iberian Cistercians that seem to have openly cultivated violence in the holy wars against al-Andalus, crafting a number of narratives in Portugal that celebrated apocalyptic violence in conquest. Studying with Peter the Chanter