King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family, and War

By Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln, Damian J. Smith and 9 more

King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family and War brings together a diverse group of scholars whose work concerns the reign of Alfonso VIII (1158–1215). This was a critical period in the history of the Iberian peninsula, when the conflict between the Christian north and the Moroccan empire of the Almohads was at its most intense, while the political divisions between the five Christian kingdoms reached their high-water mark. From his troubled ascension as a child to his victory at Las Navas de Tolosa near the end of his fifty-seven-year reign, Alfonso VIII and his kingdom were at the epicenter of many of the most dramatic events of the era.

Contributors: Martin Alvira Cabrer, Janna Bianchini, Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., Miguel Dolan Gómez, Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Kyle C. Lincoln, Joseph O’Callaghan, Teofi lo F. Ruiz, Miriam Shadis, Damian J. Smith, James J. Todesca

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9780823284153

Martín Alvira Cabrer

Martín Alvira Cabrer is Associate Professor in the Department of Medieval History at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. His works include Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: Idea, liturgia, y memoria de la batalla (Madrid, 2012) and Muret 1213: La batalla decisiva de la Cruzada contra los Cataros (Barcelona, 2008), as well as the edition of the documents of Peter II of Aragon (6 vols., Zaragoza, 2010).

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ALFONSO VIII: AN INTRODUCTION

Teofilo F. Ruiz

Born in November 1155, the son of Sancho III of Castile-León and Blanche of Navarre, Alfonso VIII ascended to the throne in 1158 on the death of his father. His minority was a troubled period. Noble factions fought for control of the regency, seeking to appropriate as much of the royal prerogatives and domain as possible. In twelfth-century Castile, two great noble factions, the Castro and the Lara, dominated the political life of the realm.¹ This was especially the case during a royal minority. In the absence of a strong king, these noble lineages or clans exercised a great deal of influence on the political life of the realm. Their vast possessions, large number of vassals, armed retinues, and connections to lesser noble families and to the royal house itself often made them regard the Crown as something that they ought to control or that was within their reach. The Castro and the Lara fought for control of the regency of Alfonso VIII, and although the Castro prevailed in armed conflict, the regency eventually fell into the hands of the Lara. Alfonso VIII grew therefore under the heavy burden of his noble regents.

External pressure and threats paralleled internal conflicts. Alfonso VIII’s uncles, Ferdinand II of León (1157–1188) and Sancho VI of Navarre (1150–1194) also saw their nephew’s minority as a golden opportunity to claim Castilian lands on the frontiers of their respective kingdoms.² But once he came of age and assumed control of his kingdom, it took Alfonso VIII a great deal of his adult life to recover the lands illegally seized by his uncles and to diminish the influence of noble factions. It is no coincidence that Alfonso VIII’s greatest triumphs and his most successful period came after the demise of his two contentious and ambitious uncles. But threats came from other sources. By the middle of the twelfth century, the Almoravids fell to the rising Almohad power. Emerging from the mountain areas of the region which is today Morocco, the Almohads conquered most of North Africa and Andalusia from the Almoravids and the kings of taifas. By the second half of the twelfth century, the Almohads built an expansive and successful Western Mediterranean empire. In many respects, Alfonso VIII’s reign would be defined by his defeats at the Almohads’ hands and by his eventual victories over them, culminating with the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.³

The great victory at Las Navas however was still very much in the future. In mid-twelfth-century Castile, it would have been hard to imagine that such success was possible or that the young boy, held securely in the hands of his Lara relatives, would grow to be one of the greatest kings in medieval Castilian history. His wise policies for the internal governance of the realm, military successes, matrimonial alliances with royal houses outside Iberia, sponsoring of significant landmarks in Castile’s architectural history, and efforts to create sites of memory for Castile’s royal house, certainly justify Alfonso VIII’s reputation and his claims to a distinguished place among Castilian monarchs. In many respects, this volume, addressing neglected aspects of Alfonso VIII’s rule, is a timely contribution to our understanding of Alfonso VIII and his era. In the pages that follow, I would like to do two things: (1) to note the canonical and recent historiography of his reign; (2) to briefly outline some of the salient moments and deeds of his long rule.

Already close to six decades since its original publication in 1960, Julio González’s monumental study of Alfonso VIII’s reign, El reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, provides a careful narrative of the kingdom’s political life.⁴ González’s work was doubly important not only because it offered the first scholarly monograph on the king since the Marquis de Mondéjar’s study in 1783, but because the 1960 edition included two substantial volumes of documents (at a time when Spanish archives were not always easily accessible) to illustrate the history of the period and González’s interpretations of Alfonso VIII’s policies.⁵ More, however, was needed that fitted the thematic and methodological concerns of the early twenty-first century.

There have certainly been a large number of articles written on the king or on aspects of his rule and cultural program. A great deal of attention has been given to the king’s interaction with the military orders, his role in the Reconquest, his distinguished and very accomplished family, and, most of all, to his signal victory at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.⁶ What is clear from the scholarly attention the king and his family have received is that Alfonso VIII played a pivotal role in the history of the realm. This role was not limited to his military conflict with Islam in southern Iberia, but was equally important in diverse (but intertwined) aspects of Castile’s social and cultural life. What were the contributions of Alfonso VIII to the realm and to Castilian society? Was his reign a watershed in peninsular and Western European medieval history?

Until his signal victory at Las Navas in 1212, Alfonso VIII, once he reached his majority, toiled unceasingly to restore his royal domain and Castile’s jurisdiction. He also sought to tame the high nobility. All these efforts were centered on, and given legitimacy by, his campaigns to stop Almohad advances, to expand Castilian presence in the region of New Castile, and then to defeat his Muslim adversaries. As some of the excellent articles in this volume show, developments in the chancery, diplomatic efforts, and the issuing of charters or fueros (municipal law) to reconquered towns—the most impressive of them the Fuero de Cuenca (1189)—represented a comprehensive effort to secure the primacy of the Crown within Castile and of Castile within the peninsula.

First, once he assumed power, Alfonso VIII began a well-plotted policy of recovering lands alienated from the Crown during his minority. Either through military action or through diplomacy (the intervention of the English King Henry II on behalf of his son in law was crucial), Castile recovered most of the lands usurped by Navarre in the rich region of the Rioja. Moreover, as Simon Barton has shown, the reign of Alfonso VIII was critical in the remaking of noble houses and their relationship with the king. The emergence of primogeniture, the growing consolidation of aristocratic and bourgeois property, and the close relation between the high nobility and the court transformed the ties between the Crown, noble houses, and cities. Depending on royal largesse until the mid-twelfth century, the advance of the royal-led Reconquest offered the high nobility unique opportunities on the frontier in terms of new lands, ransom, and booty. Wealth came from the hands of the king, often binding the high nobility to royal leadership.⁷

Second, during the latter half of the twelfth century, a nascent royal bureaucracy expanded the king’s power and the Crown’s presence in the realm. Bureaucratic procedures formalized the Crown’s relations with diverse social groups. In this respect, the beginnings of the meetings of the Cortes, or proto-Cortes, the so-called Curia Plena, under Alfonso VIII (with recorded meetings after his majority in 1178, 1182, 1184–1185, 1187, and 1188) attest to the role in which formalized gatherings (which now began to include, besides representatives of the high nobility and the clergy, urban procurators) created a new sense of the connection between Crown and Kingdom. In this respect, the mentioned Fuero de Cuenca represented a watershed in the legal history of the realm. The Fuero de Cuenca, officially given to the newly conquered city of Cuenca (one of the strategic keys to New Castile), was later given (with small modifications) to other newly conquered towns on the frontier, including Alarcos, Iniesta, and Baeza, among others. Alfonso VIII’s active legislative program and the granting of fueros to new settlements served as a model for the large number of charters issued by Ferdinand III (his grandson) and for those of Alfonso X (his great-grandson).⁸

Third, after his successful efforts to restore his rule over the Rioja and to gain the support of the high nobility, the king turned his attention towards the struggle against the Almohads. It was, however, not an easy road. His capture of Cuenca in 1177 and his incursions south of the Tajo in the 1180s were somewhat eclipsed by the crushing defeat he suffered at the hands of the Almohads at Alarcos in 1195. Although this defeat did not mean the loss of Cuenca or of other significant and strategic strongholds along the shifting frontiers between Islam and Christianity, Alarcos brought the Almohads to the southern outskirts of Toledo and represented a significant threat to the realm. It was when faced by these challenges that Alfonso VIII proved his worth.⁹

Although he failed to convince his cousin, former son-in-law, and frequent antagonist, Alfonso IX of León, to join in an anti-Almohad alliance, Alfonso VIII’s diplomatic skills, family connections, and the new interest of the Roman Church under Innocent III to fight enemies on the home front allowed him to forge and lead a broad coalition against the Almohads. The king of Navarre, Sancho VII, the ruler of the Crown of Aragon, Peter II, French knights, and the Iberian peninsular military orders joined forces on what was one of those rare peninsular examples of a fairly united front against Islam. On July 16, 1212, a large international Christian army, under the leadership of Alfonso VIII, inflicted a crushing blow, capturing a great deal of the Almohad treasure, as well as the green silk banner that may still be seen at Las Huelgas of Burgos.¹⁰

The Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa has long held a central place in the history of late medieval Castile. That emphasis is very much justified. If from the collapse of the Caliphate at Córdoba in the 1030s onwards the relations between Muslim and Christians had oscillated between Christian advances and Muslim counterattacks, Las Navas de Tolosa opened the door for Christian hegemony in the peninsula. Even though there were some Muslim attempts to reverse the outcome of Las Navas de Tolosa (the invasions by the Marinids, above all), the fate of the peninsula was, for all practical purposes, decided in favor of the Christians. It is not a coincidence that Alfonso VIII’s grandson, Ferdinand III (1217–1252) carried out successful campaigns in Andalusia that culminated with the capture of Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248, while in the eastern parts of the peninsula, James I of Aragon (1213–1276) conquered Valencia and its kingdom in 1238.¹¹ But when the Christians gained the upper hand, there were also consequences that went beyond the territorial gains. Harsh measures against Muslims, along with vitriolic discourses and representations of Muslims and Jews, resulted from Christian hegemony with after-effects that shaped the social history of peninsular kingdoms until the early modern period.

Fourth, Alfonso VIII’s close association with the nascent military orders in the peninsula, one of the central topics of this book, had significant consequences for his reign and for the realm. His donation of Uclés as the Castilian headquarters to the recently founded military order of Santiago served important strategic purposes. Together with the king’s ties to the military orders of Calatrava and Alcántara (the later originally connected to the Leonese monarchy), Alfonso VIII obtained a great deal of the military muscle needed to contain and, eventually, defeat the Almohads. Moreover, the spiritual connection that Alfonso VIII established with the military orders and with new Cistercian foundations enhanced the king’s prestige and his claims to spiritual charisma. Claims to the sacred through his pious works, crusades, and efforts to reconquer lands in the hands of Islam are of great importance when one considers that Alfonso VIII, like his father, eschewed coronation and anointment, legitimating his power and claims to the throne through his military role and his relations to the Church and crusading orders.¹²

Alfonso VIII’s notable success in brokering matrimonial alliances (for himself and for his children) played a significant role in his diplomatic efforts to ensure Castilian superiority in the peninsula and peace with his neighbors. It was also crucial for his long-standing efforts to organize a broad coalition against the Almohads. In many respects, his great victory at Las Navas de Tolosa resulted from the king’s adroit use of his family in diplomatic initiatives. While the Caliphate held sway over the peninsula (until the 1030s), northern Christian kings often sent their daughters and sisters to Córdoba to placate Muslim animosity or to gain Muslim support in their internecine conflicts with other Christian realms. After the collapse of the Caliphate, as Lucy Pick has shown, the Asturian-Leonese monarchy kept royal daughters and sisters close to home in the first half of the twelfth century rather than deploying them in the marriage and diplomatic market. Early twelfth-century rulers chose to have their daughters and sisters become sacred women, with all the religious advantages that these claims to sanctity provided for their rule.¹³

Nothing could differ more from these policies than Alfonso VIII’s approach to his daughters. His skilled use of marriage for political ends was novel in terms of peninsular marriage practices and foreshadowed new policies of diplomacy and marriage alliances that became common among later Castilian kings. Rather than choose a local noble woman as a consort, as was often the case in an earlier period, Alfonso VIII sought an alliance with England. He married Leonor, the daughter of Henry II of England and of the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine. In doing so, he gained a good marriage partner but also the support of England in his Rioja claims. That the English crown held control of the region of Aquitaine was another plus. He also sought an alliance with the empire, promising his daughter Berenguela to Conrad, the son of Frederick I, the German emperor. Although the marriage came to naught, it showed Alfonso VIII’s ambitious reach and wish to expand Castilian interests in wider European circles. When the engagement with Conrad fell through, Berenguela was soon afterwards betrothed to Alfonso IX. Although the pope eventually annulled the marriage on grounds of consanguinity and although Alfonso IX proved to be a thorn in the side of the Castilian king, the marriage bore great advantages to Castile, as Ferdinand III (the son of Alfonso IX and Berenguela) inherited León in 1230 upon the death of his father. That year, the two kingdoms were united, not to be separated again.¹⁴

Berenguela had an illustrious career as queen (both of León and of Castile), as she inherited Castile after the death of her brother Henry I. This was followed swiftly by her own resignation on behalf of her son Ferdinand. Yet, another daughter, Blanca (or Blanche in France) was married to the French king, Louis VIII. Regent for her son Louis IX (Saint Louis), Blanche holds a special role in the history of Capetian kingship.¹⁵ Her policies during her son Louis’s minority went a long way towards building France into the hegemonic realm in Western Europe, but her marriage also cemented a long tradition of Castilian-French alliances. A third daughter, Urraca, became queen of Portugal, while Leonor (d. 1244), named after her mother and grandmother, married James I, the iconic king of the Crown of Aragon. In many respects, Alfonso VIII worked to perfection marriage alliances to foster peaceful relations between the Iberian kingdoms and to do the same with his two closest neighbors, France and England. We will have to wait until the rule of the Catholic Monarchs at the end of the fifteenth century for similarly ambitious diplomatic initiatives, founded, as Alfonso VIII’s were, on marriage alliances. That Alfonso VIII’s daughters, certainly Berenguela (1179/1180–1246) and Blanche (1188–1252), lived long lives and, far more importantly, were exceedingly capable and forceful political figures only enhanced the long reach of Alfonso VIII’s legacy. In Castile, that legacy would be carried even further by the military successes and political reforms of his grandson, Ferdinand III.

One could not be married to the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England without some understanding of the importance of memorializing one’s royal line or the significance of sponsoring religious establishments and new architectural initiatives. Of these initiatives the foundation of Santa María la Real de las Huelgas in Burgos, sponsored by Alfonso VIII at the request of his wife in 1187, was indeed the king’s most significant attempt to create a royal pantheon and site of memory for the Castilian monarch. A Cistercian monastery by 1199, Las Huelgas had come into being in imitation of the royal abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud (near Chinon) where Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, and their son Richard the Lion-Heart were buried in a clear attempt to create a Plantagenet site of memory. In that sense, as Fontevraud sought to shift the association of the English Monarchy with Canterbury or York to a site in Angevin France, Las Huelgas also aimed at creating a royal pantheon (Alfonso VIII, his wife, royal children, and other members of the royal house were buried there) in opposition to the long-held prestige of the basilica of St. Isidore in León. In addition, Alfonso VIII founded a hospital, adjacent to Las Huelgas. The Hospital del Rey also associated Las Huelgas with the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela, making Burgos, now the putative capital of Alfonso VIII’s realm, one of the most significant stops along the pilgrimage road. It is also important to emphasize that Las Huelgas and the Hospital of the King were built in the French Gothic style. As such, they introduced into Castile a successful architectural style clearly associated with the Castilian royal house. Las Huelgas remains one of the most representative (and beautiful) early Gothic buildings in all of Castile.¹⁶

In 1212, fresh from his victory at Las Navas, Alfonso VIII founded a studium generale at Palencia. The first university founded in the Iberian Peninsula, the university at Palencia had a short life, but its foundation is a reminder of Alfonso VIII’s interest in the cultural revival and the formalization of education sweeping Western Europe. The king paid for the import of scholars from other parts of Europe to serve as the first instructors. Distinguished and influential clergymen traced their intellectual heritage to Palencia. At the same time, the king, probably under the influence of his wife, welcomed troubadours and lyrical poets from other lands. The late twelfth century also marked the high point of the collaboration between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars in the translation and transmission of Greek classical texts (and of their Muslim and Jewish commentators). These cultural exchanges had a seminal impact on the development of culture throughout Western Europe.¹⁷

Having provided this brief overview of Alfonso VIII’s role in the development of Castilian and European society, I wish to say that I am deeply honored and flattered to have been asked to write this short introduction for a collection of such insightful and important contributions to a new understanding of Alfonso VIII’s reign. The present collection’s ambitious reach and broad appeal presents novel and complex interpretations of Alfonso’s reign. A reading of these articles reveals several important themes. First, the thorough and well-researched articles by Joseph O’Callaghan and James Todesca address important topics in the administrative and economic history of late twelfth and early thirteenth-century Castile. Miriam Shadis and Janna Bianchini’s incisive treatments of family, property, and gender provide a sophisticated, original, and much-needed reexamination of Alfonso VIII’s time. The role of the military orders and of religious warfare (or crusades) is examined in several carefully done and excellent articles. The contributions of Sam Conedera, Carlos de Ayala Martínez, and Miguel Gómez, demonstrate the importance of both the Reconquest and the formation of the military orders in the overall history of the realm and, specifically, the role of the military orders in the great victory at Las Navas de Tolosa. Closely related to the question of crusade and the antagonism with Islam are the contributions to the history of Alfonso’s relations with the outside world. Damian Smith’s insightful article on Alfonso VIII’s relations with the papacy connects with the king’s crusading efforts. Similarly, Martín Alvira Cabrer’s contribution to our knowledge of the diplomatic exchanges between Alfonso VIII and Peter II, king of the Crown of Aragon, opens new vistas on the diplomatic efforts that led to an international alliance in the early thirteenth century. In addition, Kyle Lincoln and Thomas Burman’s articles show rich aspects of the episcopate during Alfonso VIII’s reign and of the always complex web of relationships between Islam and Christianity in late twelfth and early thirteenth-century Castile.

Taken together these studies show us convincingly that Alfonso VIII was one of the most accomplished and successful rulers in the long and, oftentimes, troubled history of Castilian kings, providing vivid testimony that the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (coinciding with Alfonso VIII’s rule) represented a pivotal period in the history of the realm.

NOTES

1. Simon Doubleday, The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Simon Barton, The Aristocracy in Twelfth Century León and Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

2. Peter Linehan, Spain 1157–1300: A Partible Inheritance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 24–35.

3. Amira K. Bennison, The Almoravid and Almohad Empires (New York: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); Allen Fromherz, The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013).

4. Julio González, El reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, 3 vols. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1960) (hereafter González, Alfonso VIII).

5. Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia Peralta y Mendoza, Marqués de Mondéjar, Memorias historicas de la vida y acciones del rey D. Alonso el Noble, octavo del nombre (Madrid: Imprenta de Antonio de Sancha, 1783).

6. See most recently, Carlos Estepa Díez, Ignacio Álvarez Borge, and José Maria Santamaria Luengos, eds., Poder real y sociedad: Estudios sobre el reinado de Alfonso VIII (1158–1214) (León: Universidad de León, 2011); Esther López Ojeda, ed., 1212, un año, un reinado, un tiempo de despegue, XXIII Semana de Estudios Medievales; Nájera, del 30 de julio al 3 de agosto de 2012 (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2013).

7. See Marie-Claude Gerbert, Les noblesses espagnoles au Moyen Age: XIe–XVe siècles (Paris: Colin, 1994), 14–115; Isabel Beceiro Pirta and Ricardo Córodoba de la Llave, eds., Parentesco, poder y mentalidad: La nobleza castellana, siglos XII–XV (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1990); Barton, Aristocracy in Twelfth Century León and Castile; Teofilo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 87–109.

8. See Gonzalo Martínez Díez, Curia y cortes en el reino de Castilla in Las cortes de Castilla y León en la edad media, 2 vols. (Valladolid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), vol. 1, 105–45. On the Fuero de Cuenca and its impact see, Rafael de Urueña y Smenjaud, ed., Las ediciones del fuero de Cuenca (Madrid: Imp. de Fortanet, 1917). There is an English translation with a very useful introduction by James F. Powers, The Code of Cuenca: Municipal Law on the Twelfth Century Castilian Frontier (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

9. Ignacio Alvarez Borge, Cambios y alianzas: la política regia en la frontera del Ebro en el reinado de Alfonso VIII de Castilla, 1158–1214 (Madrid: CSIC, 2008); Ricardo Andrés Izquierdo Benito, Francisco Ruí Gomez, eds., Alarcos, 1195: Actas del Congreso Internacional Commemorativo del VIII Centenario de la Batalla de Alarcos (Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1996).

10. Francisco García Fitz, Castilla y León frente al Islam: estrategias de expansión y tácticas militares (siglos XI–XIII) (Sevilla: Universidad de León, 2005); idem, Las Navas de Tolosa, (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2012); Martín Alvira Cabrer, Las Navas de Tolosa 1212: idea, liturgí a y memoria de la batalla (Madrid: Silex, 2013).

11. Joseph O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

12. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, 133–50; Sam Zeno Conedera, Ecclesiastical Knighthood: The Military Orders in Castile, 1150–1300 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016); Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Órdenes militares, monarquí a y espiritualidad militar en los reinos de Castilla y León (ss XII–XIII) (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2015).

13. Lucy K. Pick, Her Father´s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017); Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

14. Janna Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009).

15. Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

16. It is important to note the establishment of similar monasteries called Las Huelgas throughout Castile by succeeding rulers, above all in Valladolid. On Las Huelgas of Burgos see: Antonio Rodríguez López, ed., El real monasterio de las Huelgas y el Hospital del Rey, 2 vols. (Burgos: Imprenta y Librería del Centro Católico, 1907); José Manuel Lizoain Garrido, ed., Documentación del monasterio de las Huelgas de Burgos, 6 vols, in Fuentes medievales castellano-leonesas, eds. J. García, F. Javier de la Peña, et al. (Burgos: Editorial garrido, 1983–). On the history and art historical significance of Las Huelgas de Burgos: María Pilar Alonso Abad, El Real Monasterio de las Huelgas de Burgos: historia y arte, (Burgos: Cajacirculo, 2005).

17. See Adeline Rucquoi, Education et societé dans la péninsule ibérique medieval, Histoire de l’education 69 (1996): 3–36; eadem, Las utas del saber: España en el siglo XII, Cuadernos de historia de España 75 (1998–99): 41–58. See also, Margarita Torremocha Hernández, El estudio general de Palencia: Historia de los ocho siglos de la Universidad española (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2012).

CHAPTER ONE

IDEAS OF KINGSHIP IN THE PREAMBLES OF ALFONSO VIII’S CHARTERS

Joseph F. O’Callaghan

Royal charters have certain stereotypical forms: invocation, preamble, intitulation, salutation, disposition, subscription, sanction, date, witnesses, and so forth. Oftentimes the reader quickly passes over some of that introductory apparatus in order to get to the substance of the charter. Nevertheless, those elements, especially the preambles, however brief they may be, often express ideas of kingship. Rather than comment on all of the more than nine hundred surviving charters of Alfonso VIII of Castile (1158–1214), my purpose is to direct attention to those preambles and other ancillary components that reveal certain essential monarchical concepts.¹

THE CHANCERY

In his study of Alfonso VII (1126–1157), Alfonso VIII’s grandfather, Bernard Reilly, commented that the chancery was the one undoubted institution of government. If not strictly a department of government in the modern sense, the chancery of León-Castilla can lay fair claim to being the oldest institution of royal, central government, after the office of king itself. ²

The chancery was responsible for writing, sealing, and registering all royal charters.³ Under the direction of the chancellor, notaries wrote the charters or directed scribes to do so. A number of the royal notaries had the title of magister which indicated that they were university graduates and probably had studied civil and canon law and theology. Some of them may have been among the sapientes that Alfonso VIII summoned from France and Italy to staff his newly founded University of Palencia.⁴ While they may have presented the concepts expressed in the preambles—in some instances following the chancery practice of previous reigns, especially that of Alfonso VII⁵—we can be sure that the king, the juridical person in whose name the charters were published, adopted those ideas as his own.⁶

Pilar Ostos Salcedo divided the history of Alfonso VIII’s chancery into four periods corresponding to the terms of the chancellors who presided over the office.⁷ After an uncertain start, Raimundo (1161–1178) emerged as the first chancellor. During those early years, Master Hugo (1165), Martín Fernández (1168–1169), and Guillermo de Astafort, archdeacon of Toledo (1178), also briefly appeared as chancellors. In the second period (1178–1182), Pere de Cardona, a Catalan jurist, was essentially an absentee, who spent much of his time in the service of Pope Alexander III. Elected archbishop of Toledo in 1180 and named a cardinal by Lucius III, Pere died before he was consecrated.⁸ His successor as chancellor was Gutierre Rodríguez Girón (1182–1192). He was followed by Diego García de Campos (1192–1214), who had studied in Paris and authored Planeta, a work of moral and theological reflection.⁹ Although the king entrusted the office of chancellor in 1206 to Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, Diego de Campos and his successors continued to do the day-to-day work of administering the chancery.¹⁰

The task of drawing up a royal charter was usually executed by notaries acting on the chancellor’s command. The principal notaries were: Pedro de Santa Cruz (1167–1178); Master Juan (1176–1181); Master Geraldo, canon of Cuenca and archdeacon of Palencia (1178–1184); Master Mica (1183–1197);¹¹ Domingo, abbot of Valladolid (1197–1210); Pedro (1198–1204); and Pedro Ponce (1210–1215). Two of them stand out above the rest, namely Master Geraldo and Master Mica. The former apparently was a Lombard, who, according to Ostos Salcedo, had a major role in organizing the chancery and giving regular form to chancery documents. At the close of his career, he may have directed the cathedral school of Palencia as magister scolarum. His term of service overlapped briefly with that of the famoso Maestre Mica, as Ostos Salcedo called him. In addition to his beautiful calligraphy, Mica brought greater simplicity to chancery formulas and greatly reduced the number of preambles.

Royal documents may be classified as privileges or charters, depending on the solemnity of the subject matter. Some privileges were marked with a cross in a circle (privilegios signados) while others had a wheel (rueda) with the king’s name encircling a cross (privilegios rodados).¹² The names of prelates and nobles confirming the document were listed, but they were not necessarily present when it was drawn up. Some charters (cartas) granted property or other rights and usually were followed by the list of confirmants. Other shorter charters were mandates ordering that some action be taken.

The number of documents with a preamble (arenga) was comparatively small. The preamble alerted the reader to the purpose of the charter but also was intended as a captatio benevolentiae, that is, an attempt to catch the reader’s attention in a positive way. Pablo Martín Prieto grouped the themes of the preambles under these headings: (1) the king, protector of the Church; (2) rewards for services rendered; (3) almsgiving or charity; (4) the written document as a safeguard against the loss of memory; and (5) confirmation of privileges.¹³

The importance of the chancery in maintaining a public record of royal acts that would serve as the foundation of institutional memory was also recognized. In addition to issuing his own charters, the king confirmed those of his predecessors, lest their memory be forgotten. Ecclesiastical institutions were especially attentive in having the king confirm charters and privileges issued by his predecessors. Charters granted landed estates, rights of pasturage, fisheries, tax exemptions, new fueros, and other privileges, and determined municipal boundaries. When an original document was drawn up, a copy was written in the royal register. The registers, unfortunately, were lost many, many years ago. As a consequence, one is now dependent on the originals or copies preserved in diocesan, monastic, noble, and municipal archives. The reason for making a written record was expressed simply in a charter given to the monastery of El Moral in 1175: those things done by kings should be confirmed in writing lest they be forgotten with the passage of time.¹⁴ That language was used with many variants over subsequent years. However, in 1193 when Diego de Campos was chancellor, a more verbose explanation was introduced:

We arm ourselves against the many snares of age with the bulwark of the written text (chirograph). Indeed antiquity, the mother of forgetfulness, becomes a stepmother due to the elusiveness of memory, and those things that were established today may perhaps vanish tomorrow, unless they are solidified with the benefit of a charter.¹⁵

Why the need for a written record? At times bishops, monks, nobles, townsmen, and others asserted claims to property or rights counter to the claims of others. Both sides might call upon the king to resolve their dispute. The presentation of an original document given by the king or an earlier concession confirmed by him was the best means of justifying one’s claim. An original charter or a copy could be authenticated by comparing it with the text in the chancery register. In effect, the written record, in the form of an original charter bearing the royal seal and the notation in the royal register, was the best safeguard against fraudulent or erroneous claims and facilitated the work of the king and his court in rendering judgment. In 1196, for example, when a dispute between the monasteries of Ibeas and San Juan de Burgos against the town of Santa Cruz de Juarros was argued in the royal court, the bishop of Osma publicly read certain privileges in curia coram rege and, on that basis, the king and his judges pronounced judgment.¹⁶

REX DEI GRATIA

The royal intitulation following the preamble identified the king, justified his right to rule, and mentioned his kingdoms. The usual intitulation was this: Aldefonsus Dei gratia rex Castelle et Toleti. The royal claim to rule by the grace of God implied that the king owed his position, not to any human element or factor, but rather to God alone. That idea derived from St. Paul’s remark in 1 Corinthians (15:10), by the grace of God I am what I am and the statement in the Epistle to the Romans (13:1): Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. The king recalled the principle that all power is held to be from God when he gave an estate to the monastery of Sacramenia in 1174.¹⁷ In the following year he affirmed that the hearts of kings are known to be in the hand of God and he added that, without engaging in the works of mercy, he would not have an earthly kingdom or gain a heavenly one.¹⁸ That statement is taken from Proverbs (21:1): Like a stream is the king’s heart in the hand of the Lord; wherever it pleases him, he directs it. In theory then, he was responsible only to God, though no contemporary stated that explicitly.

In most of his charters Alfonso VIII proclaimed himself rex Castelle et Toleti—king of Castile and Toledo—the two kingdoms he inherited from his father, Sancho III (1157–1158). In the early years of his reign, however, the chancery employed a diversity of formulas: king of Toledo and Castile; king of Castile, Extremadura, and Toledo; king of Castile; and in some instances no kingdom was mentioned. From the late 1170s onward he was ordinarily described as king of Castile and Toledo.¹⁹

Of particular interest are those charters of the 1160s and 1170s that identified him as rex Hispanie, rex Hispaniarum, or rex Hispanorum. The title rex Hispaniarum or king of the Spains ultimately derived from the Roman division of the Iberian Peninsula into two provinces, namely Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. Usage of that title was an assertion of authority over all the peninsular realms, Christian and Muslim. The immediate antecedent of that was the coronation in 1135 of Alfonso VII as imperator Hispanie—emperor of Spain.²⁰ When he divided his realms between his sons Sancho III of Castile and Ferdinand II of León (1157–1188), he failed to establish which of them would inherit his imperial status. After his brother’s death, Ferdinand II had no hesitancy in calling himself rex Hispanie or rex Hispaniarum, probably in imitation of the German king who was entitled rex Romanorum before his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. In 1158, the expectation that Ferdinand II would assume the crown of the Hispanic empire was expressed by a notary in Lugo who referred to him as nondum imperator.²¹ Alfonso VIII’s sporadic usage of the same titles clearly was intended to challenge his uncle’s claims to peninsular ascendancy.²² Although he abandoned that usage after 1175, he was able to assert his superiority over his nephew, Alfonso IX of León (1188–1230), who accepted knighthood from him and kissed his hand in vassalage in 1189. For two years thereafter the dating clause of Castilian royal charters commemorated that event.²³ The imperial aspirations suggested by the titles imperator Hispanie or rex Hispanie were not forgotten by Alfonso VIII’s grandson Ferdinand III (1217–1252) and his great-grandson, Alfonso X (1252–1284). The former wished to be crowned as emperor but decided that "it was not the time to do