The Kingdom of León-Castilla Under King Alfonso VI
Bernard F. Reilly
The King's Good Servants (1092-1099)
[260] One of the factors that militated in favor of Alfonso VI's retention of effective control in his sprawling kingdom was his growing rapport with the reform party in the Roman church. Under the leadership of Urban II the reformers gradually had begun to recover from the reverses of 1084 and 1085. Still the imperial claimant to the throne of Peter, Clement III or Guibert of Ravenna, remained in control of the papal city itself well into 1096. In the Germanies the Emperor Henry IV remained active and actively hostile, and after 1092 Philip I of France was gradually alienated by papal opposition to his attempted marriage with Bertrade of Montfort. The overtures of a crowned monarch willing to cooperate would henceforth find a more flexible and less doctrinaire reception at the papal court.
As always what the Leonese monarch sought was practical control of the church within the realm for himself and for his creatures, which would insure that the church's considerable resources would support the purposes of the crown. The Leonese kings had always enjoyed such a prerogative, but in this new age its exercise had to be adjusted to the claims and the developing norms of the reformers. Such a bargain was struck and, so far as we can tell, there was no pamphlet war in Spain over the respective theoretical rights of pontiff or king. Though not without some friction, a developing cooperation marked the relationship of Urban II and Alfonso VI, which each regarded, apparently, as mutually beneficial.
In 1088 Urban had recognized the restored archbishopric of Toledo and Bernard of Sauvetot as its first incumbent. At the Council of León in 1090 Alfonso had accepted with equanimity a papal legate in the land, Cardinal Rainier, the future Paschal II. Approximately two years later, on April 25, 1092, Urban had cautioned a new archbishop in the restored metropolitan see of Tarragona "episcopi Tolentano tamquam primati debeatis esse subiecti."(1) The development of a rapport seems clear, but it will find yet clearer expression in the years to come in the [261] confiding of papal legatine powers to Alfonso's confidant, Archbishop Bernard of Toledo.
When that comfortable arrangement first began has been the object of some dispute. Paul Ewald brought to light the bull of Urban II, dated only to April 25, but he assigned it to 1096, which bestowed the legateship on Archbishop Bernard.(2) A few years later Fidel Fita redated it to 1093 and recent scholarship has supported him.(3) In light of the evidence available to me at this time I would suspect that Fita was correct.(4)
The more important consideration than the exact date for our purposes is the clear evidence of a developing close cooperation between king and pope of which Bernard was the preferred instrument. In the summer of 1094 the archbishop was with Urban II in the south of France and secured from the lattcr approval of the first bishop since 1090 for the troubled see of Santiago de Compostela.(5) In March 1095 Bernard was one of the peninsular bishops who attended Urban II's council at Piacenza. From that meeting he seems to have returned to León. The greatest immediate service that the Toledan had rendered his king at Piacenza was to secure final papal recognition for the transiation of the ancient episcopal see of Oca to Burgos. The translation had been an essentially royal initiative which had been searching vainly for papal approbation from 1076. Now the question was settled as Alfonso preferred.
Bishop Gomez of Burgos, who was also at Piacenza, was certainly pleased by the action, but he also took the occasion to complain of lands held by Toledo which he asserted properly belonged to his diocese. The lands in question had been adjudged at the Council of Husillos in 1088 to belong to the unrestored diocese of Osma and so were being administered [262] by Bernard as metropolitan. The matter would be referred back to Spain for resolution, but that Bishop Gomez would have dared to raise this question at Piacenza certainly illustrates that Alfonso VI was resigned to accepting papal appellate jurisdiction over his church, at least in some matters.(6) But the king preferred that such authority be exercised in the peninsula by someone in whom he had confidence. That was to be the point of Bernard's legateship.
Although the archbishop of Toledo had returned to León after the council at Piacenza he was back in the papal presence in the fall at the Council of Clermont. This time he was accompanied by the bishops of Santiago de Compostela and Lugo.(7) Bishop Dalmacio of Compostela, perhaps encouraged by the success of Burgos in the spring, was there to seek papal recognition of the translation of his see from its ancient site at Iria Flavia. He succeeded at that and more. On December 5 1095, Urban issued a bull which not only legitimized the see's new location but also exempted it from all ecclesiastical authority but that of Rome itself.(8)
The latter action is puzzling. Certainly it can be seen as a local initiative in origin. One method of preparing for a future of increasing importance for the shrine-see was to secure freedom from supervision in the peninsula. In that sense it was perhaps a safeguard against a possible restoration of metropolitan status to the see of Braga of which Iria Flavia had been a suffragan in late antiquity. But such a change would have enlisted the sympathies of Count Raymond of Galicia only if he either had simply become a disinterested adherent of the cult of Santiago or had some advance knowledge that his western domain was to be divided, with his consin, Count Henry, receiving the southern portion including Braga. We cannot be sure of either possibility.
Alfonso VI would have been delighted with the papal recognition of the translation from Iria Flavia to Compostela. Again Urban was setting aside the prescriptive rights of tradition to acknowledge what was essentially a royal and local innovation. But how would the royal purposes be served by Santiago's exemption from the authority of the archbishop of Toledo, who had enjoyed such authority over all sees in the peninsula, whose proper metropolitan had not been restored, since 1088? The most feasible explanation of the royal acquiescence in such a step is twofold. First, the independence of Santiago de Compostela was [263] one of the concessions made by the king to Count Raymond in the fall of 1095 to assuage the political crises occasioned by Alfonso's Italian marriage and the resultant pact of succession. Second, this concession was made at least marginally acceptable to the king for when granted by the pope it would create a favorable precedent for a like exemption to the see of Burgos, which was dear to royal purposes indeed.
The third of the Spanish bishops at the Council of Clermont was Bishop Amor of Lugo. It has been asserted that this bishop sought the recognition of his authority by the bishops of Braga and Orense and that he was opposed to the restoration of Braga to the metropolitanate to which his own see itself had some pretensions. In the latter regard, Bishop Amor would have had some concerns about the exemption of Santiago de Compostela as well.(9) The sole solid piece of information that survives, however, is a bull of Urban II dated November 29, 1095, which directs the bishops of Oviedo, León, and Mondoñedo to investigate the complaint of Bishop Amor that Orense was exercising improper jurisdiction over some parishes properly pertaining to Lugo.(10)
In this instance Urban II was again exercising an appellate jurisdiction over the church of León-Castilla and that separately from his own legate, Archbishop Bernard, who might as easily have been entrusted with the task. We must presume that Alfonso VI was prepared to accept authority so exercised, especially when he could count on sensitivity to royal concerns on the part of the bishops of Oviedo and León at least.
All in all, the affairs of the king had prospered at the council and Bernard of Toledo conld return to the royal presence to report that fact and to enjoy the consequent royal favor. We find him at the royal court on March 5, 1096.(11) The archbishop was soon to find himself back in the papal court on another royal mission, however.
Yet the personal purposes of Bernard and of his see were to play an important role in that journey. As we have the story from Jiménez de Rada, who was repeating the account of a contemporary vita of his predecessor, the Toledan prelate had decided himself to go on the crusade which he had heard preached at Clermont. Doubtless he had the reluctant concurrence of the king in this resolve but, as things were to develop, his purpose was doomed from the outset. He had gone but three days' journey from Toledo, we are told, when the cathedral clergy there rose in revolt, driving out his administrators and electing [264] a new archbishop. Hearing of this, Bernard hastily returned, degraded the pretender, and introduced monks of Sahagún into the cathedral familia. Then he set out once again.
The clergy of his own church, it appears, were not to be the only ones concerned with his projected absence. When Bernard reached the papal presence, in Rome we are told, no less a person than Urban himself informed the archbishop that his proper place was in the peninsula.(12)
By May 24, 1096, the archbishop was again in France, where he assisted Urban II in the consecration of the church of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse.(13) In early July he attended the council held by the pope at Nimes as did Archbishop Berengar of Tarragona.(14) In a papal bull issued shortly thereafter the services of the Toledan to his royal master are again made clear. The bull, dated July 15, 1096, relates that Urban has been informed by Bernard that Alfonso VI was unhappy since, while Burgos lay within his domains, the episcopal dignity that had been translated to it was that of Oca, which lay within the metropolitan jurisdiction of the newly restored archbishopric of Tarragona. Burgos could thus come under the indirect control of the count of Barcelona. Urban's response was to exempt Burgos for the time being, from all save papal jurisdiction.(15) The Leonese monarch was quite satisfied with that arrangement since he understood well that temporary solutions can be frozen into permanent changes.
The remainder of the letter dealt with the still unresolved quarrel between Burgos and Toledo over the proper bounds of the former and the still unrestored bishopric of Osma administered by the latter. Here again the king had permitted Bishop Gomez to travel to the papal court and to air a quarrel between two of the most important prelates of his kingdom. We cannot be sure why Alfonso so acted, but it is worth mentioning that a papal judgment could often spare the king the necessity of offending one or the other powerful supporter.
Nevertheless, a body of legal precedent for appeal outside the kingdom by ecclesiastics was rapidly being established in these years which could be awkward if that jurisdiction were in unfriendly hands. Urban II, of course, appreciated the deference paid to his office by at least one [265] of the great monarchs of the Latin west and surely understood the permanent accretion of authority that was coming gradually into being by virtue of it. On November 29, 1096, he could gladly confirm the exemption of the greatest of royal monasteries, Sahagún, from all authority but Rome's, which had been established first by Gregory VII. His bull refers to "dilecti filii nostri aldefonis regis."(16)
After the close of the council at Nimes Archbishop Bernard took an initiative that was to have the profoundest of effects on the Spanish church of the next half century. He did not proceed to Rome with Urban II, regardless of the assertion in Jiménez de Rada, for the pontiff did not reach that city until December and by that time Bernard was back at Sahagún.(17) Instead he made a wide swing of southwestern France recruiting monks and priests for his cathedral see. Doubtless the disaffection of the Toledan clergy which he had experienced earlier in that same year dictated his course of action. But the step he took then was to resound far beyond the bounds of the see of Toledo. Over the next half century the men he enlisted that summer were to succeed to the sees of Braga, Osma, Sigüenza, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Palencia, Valencia, Salamanca, Zamora, Coimbra, and of course Toledo itself.(18) Though it could not have been foreseen at the time, the close cooperation of the primate and Alfonso VI, and indeed with his successor Urraca (1109-1126) as well, was to make the cathedral chapter of Toledo the mother of bishops in the peninsula.
The first in this long series of appointments came very quickly. If Archbishop Bernard was back at Sahagún in December 1096 as we have seen, the first of his protégés was already bishop of Braga by November 23, 1097.(19) This was Gerald, former monk of Moissac. There is a contemporary life of Gerald which confirms much of the evidence in Jiménez de Rada. It also adds the information that Gerald was consecrated at Sahagún.(20) This would likely have taken place in the late winter or spring of 1097.
The account in the "Vita beati Geraldi" stresses the authority here of the primate and the king, and indeed, in relation with the selection and [266] consecration of the bishop of Braga, it does not even mention Count Henry of Portugal or his royal wife, referring only to the petitions of the inhabitants. In this respect, the incident offers us a vivid example of the prestige enjoyed by the crown resulting from the latter's successful negotiations with the papacy and its foreign connections generally. Alfonso VI had controlled the affairs of the see of Braga continuously since forcing Bishop Pedro into retirement in 1092, and in 1097 his authority was sufficient to install there as new bishop a French monk just come to the peninsula.(21)
However, once we turn to those other developments within the realm for this period concerning which chance literary evidence is absent, the clear trail of royal influence and authority so obvious in the case of Braga becomes much more difficult to detect or to follow. Inference becomes a major tool.
If we survey the twenty-seven known charters of Alfonso VI issued between 1092 and the end of 1099 with surviving lists of confirmants, numerous changes within the kingdom are to be remarked. Not so much in the relative positions of the royal bishops, for the prelates of Toledo, Palencia and Burgos all confirm more than half the total. The bishops of León with twelve and Astorga with ten are close behind. Surprisingly Bishop Pedro of Nájera confirms ten charters and Bishop Martín of Oviedo only seven. Clearly the cathedral churches of the meseta remain the heart of the realm and central to the court. It is also worth noting that Bernard of Toledo confirmed fourteen of the twenty-seven charters despite his extensive absences from the realm in the period 1094 through 1096. The predominance of Toledo was beginning to take hold, although its archbishop was more often at Sahagún than in the city on the Tajo.
But if the relative importance of the episcopal sees was unaltered their incumbents were in fair numbers. Bishop Gomez of Burgos died on February 5, 1097, and was replaced by his nephew, García Aznaréz, already on April 14, 1097.(22) From the frequency with which the new bishop will appear in subsequent royal diplomas we may assume that the choice was satisfactory to Alfonso, but we have no detailed information of how it was made. The same is true of Astorga. The last reliable appearance of Bishop Osmundo was on May 7, 1098. By January 6, 1099, Bishop Pelayo had succeeded him through a process unknown to us.(23)
[267] By way of contrast, we are perhaps overinformed on what transpired at Santiago de Compostela, and the literary evidence must be approached with caution. The new bishop, Dalmacio, agreed upon in 1094 apparently was dead by March 16, 1096, just after returning from that Council of Clermont which had effected so much for the recognition of his church.(24) This unexpected death disrupted the fragile understandings that had allowed his appointment and left the shrine of the apostle temporarily without a prelate again. A substitute arrangement was agreed upon which made Diego Gelmírez its administrator. The choice of this significant figure was made, we are told, by Alfonso and Count Raymond at the request of the clergy and people of Compostela.(25) That the selection was made jointly is again an indication that the count by no means enjoyed complete autonomy in regulating the affairs of Galicia. Gelmírez would have been acceptable to all parties as a native of Compostela, educated at the royal court, and lately the scribe and secretary of the count. He first appears in his new capacity, even while continuing in the old one, in Raymond's charter of August 21, 1096.(26)
The sequel to this initial step is confused by several other vacancies that now occur in the episcopate of the northwest. One was in the humble diocese of Túy on the Rió Miño whose bishop, Auderico, drops from sight after County Raymond's charter to that church on February 11, 1095.(27) His successor, Alfonso, appears in another charter of Count Raymond, dated January 11, 1096, to the Galician monastery of Carboeiro. Unfortunately that charter must be redated at least to after 1099.(28) Alfonso's first dependable citation comes in an original charter [268] of Infanta Elvira dated November 11, 1099. Prudencio de Sandoval asserted that Alfonso was a monk of Sahagún, but Richard A. Fletcher suggested that he might have been an archdeacon of Túy.(29) Under the circumstances we cannot know whose influence preponderated in Alfonso's selection as bishop, but in all likelihood he was probably acceptable to both the king and Count Raymond, and perhaps to Count Henry of Portugal as well. The see lay on the border between the territories of Raymond and Henry.
Remarkably, the same situation seems to apply to the Galician see of Orense. The last known appearance of Bishop Pedro there occurs in the charter of Count Raymond of August 21, 1096.(30) His successor, Diego, also makes his debut in Raymond's charter, which I would redate from January 11, 1096, to after 1099. Bishop Diego's antecedents are likewise unknown, but again subsequent events seem to argue his acceptability to all parties.(31)
The same circumstances are repeated yet again in regard to the Galician see of Lugo. Bishop Amor still functioned there as late as September 10, 1096, as indicated by his participation in a judicial suit involving the Galician monastery of Samos. His successor, Pedro, who also first appears in Count Raymond's purported charter of January 11, 1096, had been the abbot of Samos until 1098.(32)
With the exception of the venerable Bishop Gonzalo of Mondoñedo, then, it seems that the entire episcopate of Galicia was being recast between the years 1096 and 1098. There is no indication that these changes were more than peninsular matters. If they were necessarily of interest to Alfonso VI and to Count Raymond, agreement between the two could easily be ratified by Archbishop Bernard of Toledo in his capacities [269] of primate and papal legate. The exempt see of Santiago de Compostela was another matter, however.
On May 19, 1097, Diego Gelmírez was still styling himself as "clericus et vicarius in casa domini iacobi apostoli."(33) But on Easter, March 28, 1098, when Count Raymond issued a charter to the Compostelan monastery of Antealtares, Gelmírez confirmed as "divina gratia didacus gelmirez electus honore bti iacobi dijudicans." The comital charter was issued in the midst of a great curia "ubi magnus erat conventus" in the city.(34) It was also confirmed by the bishops of Coimbra, Braga, Mondoñedo, and by bishops Alfonso of Túy and Pedro of Lugo but not by Diego of Orense. In all probability Diego Gelmírez had been elected bishop in the very assemblage on the preceding Wednesday or Thursday of Holy Week. This was a daring step for Alfonso and Raymond, but they may have been driven to it by the knowledge that the former bishop of Compostela, Diego Peláez, had renewed his attempts to secure recognition at Rome once he had learned of the death of Bishop Dalmacio.(35) When the matter was important enough, Alfonso was not loath to present the papacy with a fait accompli. Nevertheless he probably was not willing to go beyond the process of election to that of consecration itself, which the papal decree of 1095 had explicitly reserved to the holy see. The charter of Count Raymond, dated January 23, 1099, to the monastery of San Antolín de Toques, which bears the subscription "sub xpi nomine didacus iriense sedis episcopus cf. ," must be redated if it can be considered reliable at all.(36) The critical point here is that this charter is confirmed by Pelayo as bishop of Oviedo at least two years too soon.(37)
The official biographers of Diego Gelmírez will subsequently gloss [270] over much of this royal and ecclesiastical maneuvering, but they cannot entirely ignore it. They do clearly emphasize the roles of King Alfonso and Count Raymond in the process and the considerable difficulties that Gelmírez will later experience in receiving papal recognition and eventual consecration.(38)
Difficulties in the west of the kingdom were hardly over at Easter of 1098. Apparently no candidate had yet been settled upon for the bishopric of Lugo, and on June 19, 1098, Bishop Cresconio of Coimbra died, creating a second important vacancy.(39) At least in the case of the latter episcopate we can be sure of the royal predominance in the appointment. The new bishop, who first appears there on March 19, 1099, was Maurice, one of those French clerics recruited by Archbishop Bernard of Toledo during the summer of 1096.(40) Like Gerald of Braga in 1097, Maurice was probably elected and consecrated at Sahagún or at least in the royal court, and, while the assent of Count Henry was doubtless sought, there can be no doubt that the newcomer was the protégé of the primate and of the king.
More or less contemporaneous with this latter was the successful extension of the royal influence in eastern Iberia as well. From the time of the Cid's great victory over the Murâbits at Poblet in 1094 down to Rodrigo's death in 1099, relations between that Valencian princeling and his former king seem to have been good. In the realm of the historically traceable that concord is manifested principally in the installation of Jerome of Perigord as bishop of Valencia in 1098. The Christian population of that great city, the Mozarabs, had had a bishop of their own at least as late as 1092 who fled when the local opinion there turned against the alliance with León-Castilla.(41) Whether he returned after the conquest of the city by the Cid in 1094 is not known. In any event when the latter decided either to supplant him or to provide a successor to him he turned to Alfonso VI and to Archbishop Bernard and accepted from them one of the French clerics brought to the peninsula by the primate. Apparently Rodrigo Díaz expected cooperation with his old suzerain to continue and to increase.
Exactly when these exchanges took place is impossible to specify. [271] The sole documentary evidence consists of a donation to Bishop Jerome, dated only to 1098, in which the latter is already bishop of Valencia.(42) The text also asserts that Jerome has been consecrated bishop by Urban II himself. Thus, if Jerome had arrived in León-Castilla in the late fall of 1096 he might possibly have been agreed upon as a candidate by spring of 1097 and even have journeyed to Valencia by midsummer. A shipboard journey from that port to Rome and back could have been accomplished while the sailing season still endured in 1097. Nevertheless, knowledge of the proprieties and niceties that govern decision making in all ages suggests that 1098 would more likely have been the date of his actual installation in the see of Valencia if we accept the story of his consecration by Urban II. If not then Jerome's promotion to the see of Valencia would have become but one more item in the voluminous agenda that Archbishop Bernard would carry to Rome in the early spring of 1099 in home of securing papal approbation thereto.
When that plenipotentiary of the Leonese king departed for Italy is impossible to say, but even with friends at Zaragoza and Barcelona expediting his journey it must have required something like two months to travel from Sahagún to Rome. Since we are certain that the archbishop was already in Rome by May 3, 1099, those documents that purport to establish his presence still in Sahagún after March 1 or before the following July 3 must be regarded as seriously compromised.(43)
Once again the substance of Alfonso VI's desires was largely gained by the Toledan prelate. The royal selections for Burgos, Braga, Coimbra, Túy, Orense, and perhaps Lugo and Valencia met with no opposition so far as can be determined. But on the matter of Santiago de Compostela, Urban II either refused to be pressured or decided that a decent delay was in order. The decision finally setting aside the rights of Diego Peláez but authorizing only a new election was not made until [272] December 29, 1099, and then by his successor, Paschal II, as registered in letters to "Ildefonso Hispaniarum Regi" and to the clergy and people of Compostela and to the bishops of the province.(44) In the meanwhile Diego Gelmírez had set off to Rome, likely at the orders of Alfonso although the "Historia Compostelana" does not tell us this, and was there ordained a subdeacon by Paschal before April 18, 1100. Up until this time Gelmírez had not even been in major orders. Doubtless the king had requested episcopal consecration for his nominee, but Paschal held to a punctilious observance of the rules and forced what was, in fact, a new election. It took place on July 1, 1100, and not surprisingly resulted in the choice of Gelmírez.(45) The polite struggle then resumed over where and by whom the bishop-elect would be consecrated.
Even this knotty question paled into near insignificance when compared with the other sweeping changes requested at Rome in the spring of 1099. What began to be elaborated there was nothing less than an attempt to rationalize the entire structure of the church of León-Castilla. Because of the control they consistently are found to have exercised in any matter that provides the least information for examination, I presume the initiative here belonged to Alfonso VI and Archbishop Bernard, although the substance of the changes may have been under discussion with the pope since 1095 and 1096 when Compostela and Burgos were allowed to become sees directly dependent on Rome. It was in the royal interest to forestall any further multiplication of that status. So it was that on May 4, 1099, Urban II defined the suffragan sees of Toledo as also including León and Oviedo.(46) These two bishoprics had no precedent in antiquity but were essentially independent creations of the Asturian and Leonese monarchs of the early Reconquista. Now they had been indelibly recognized and brought as well under the oversight of the archbishop of Toledo. There is no mistaking where the thoughts of Alfonso and of his great servant were tending. Except for Burgos in the east and Astorga in the west, the whole ecclesiastical heartland of the realm from the Bay of Biscay to the Tajo was to be coordinated under the primate.
Probably to the dismay of king and prelate, Astorga was included in the provinces of the archbishopric of Braga, restored about the same [273] time, for Astorga had an antique past as a suffragan of the latter and the papal sense of tradition had to be accorded some deference, for the time at least. The restoration of Braga would bring the sees of the west, except for the exempt Santiago de Compostela, under the direction and surveillance of their new creature, Gerald. One need not suppose that Bernard of Toledo was entirely unambivalent about this step, which was to cause his own church so much difficulty in the long run, but local pressure was likely to have forced it in any event at some point and it was better to use the inevitable to strengthen the position, in that distant hill city, of his protégé than to lose him to a local faction.
There has been much dispute about the date of the restoration of the metropolitanate at Braga. The papal bull authorizing it is lost, and we know much of its terms only from a late bull of Calixtus II which quotes it in part.(47) A bull of Paschal II, however, which refers to the restoration of Braga as already accomplished, should probably be dated to December 28, 1099.(48) In Iberian documents Gerald is still styled himself merely as bishop in a Portuguese document of October 21, 1099.(49) On May 3, 1100, he confirms first in a charter of Infanta Urraca to the church of Pamplona with the ambiguous formula "Guiraldus Bragarensis cf."(50) By December s, 1100, however, there is no doubt for Gerald confirms a document of the Council of Palencia as archbishop.(51) In light of this information we may justifiably assume that the request for the elevation of Braga was one of the items presented to Urban II in the spring of 1099 but whose consideration was not complete before that pontiff's death on July 29, 1099, and hence was left to his successor.
[274] The papal ratification of all these changes in the Iberian episcopate and of the specification of two great ecclesiastical provinces was certainly the major business of Archbishop Bernard's mission to Rome in early 1099 but it was still not the only business. The festering dispute between Toledo and Burgos over the proper boundaries of the latter was adjudicated once again by Urban II in two bulls of May 3 and 4.(52) In the first of these the primate was directed to restore his suffragan diocese of Osma. This stricture, it seems to me, represents the first major papal initiative in the reconstruction of the diocesan structure of León-Castilla for there would scarcely have been a local interest to press for it. The papal mandate would not have been unwelcome to Alfonso, for it would tend to strengthen his own hold on the upland reaches of the Duero valley, but his compliance would mark a new advance in the assertion of Roman authority within the Leonese church.
The first of those letters tells us that Bishop García of Burgos was also in Rome with the primate. It has also commonly been accepted that Bishop Martín of Oviedo was in Rome and that he secured Urban II's confirmation of the possessions of his diocese on April 4, 1099. If that is so then the confirmation of any Iberian document by him, and probably the other two as well since it is unlikely that they traveled separately, after the beginning of February would render such a document suspect. But I have some reservations about that bull.(53) The evidence that Gerald of Braga also was in Rome at this time is dubious at best.(54)
Changes in the secular aspects of the court and realm in the period between 1092 and the end of 1099 are not so sweeping. As always the identification between the dynasty and the royal government was strong. Of our twenty-seven royal charters, the king's sisters, Urraca and Elvira, confirmed fourteen and eight respectively. The difference may be accounted for by the fact that Elvira was in bad health toward the end of the period and would die in 1099. It was probably in late fall for she was already ill on November 11, 1099, when she made some final dispositions.(55)
[275] Sometime in late 1095 or early 1096 that mysterious personage, Ermegildo Rodríguez, who had been the royal majordomo since 1086 vanishes from the documents. It is possible that he was subsequently posted to a royal office in Toledo, for the family later held land there, but we cannot be sure.(56) The documents of Toledo are very spare indeed before the second quarter of the twelfth century. Fernando Múñoz, who replaced him for the remainder of this period, was probably that Leonese noble who appears in the document of April 30, 1084.(57) No more can be said of him.
On the other hand, the position of royal alférez remained in the hands of the same family although it passed from Pedro González to his cousin Gomez González sometime in 1092.(58) Although no alternate royal post seems to have been found for Pedro at least the office of royal shield bearer continued in the hands of the Castilian Lara family, and Gomez himself was the son-in-law of the great Castilian magnate Alvar Díaz.(59) When Gomez left that post after April 3, 1099, he was replaced by the son of Alvar Díaz, Ordoño Alvarez, within the same month.(60) The former will go from alférez to count almost immediately in conformity with the usual progression.
The most striking development among the secular circles of the royal court, however, was the emergence of Count Raymond of Burgundy as a court figure. He confirmed eighteen of the twenty-seven known royal documents of the period; more than any other person. [276] Indeed, if the private documents of Sahagún that he confirmed are also taken into account, it becomes clear that Raymond spent every winter and early spring from 1092 through 1099 at the royal court save those of 1094-95 and 1095-96. By January 1098 he had developed some jurisdiction in the very heart of the Leonese realm for a document describes him then as "count in Grajal" only five kilometers south of Sahagún itself.(61) Very likely he already maintained a residence there, where he was to die in 1107.
Simultaneously his exercise of a territorial jurisdiction in the west of the peninsula is strongly delineated in his own charters, and nine of his twenty-four known grants derive from this period as well. This authority was never absolute, especially as regards the church as we have seen, and after late 1095 it ceased to include the county of Portugal and Coimbra, yet the record is impressive. If we disregard the possible grant of a fuero at Zamora in 1094, Raymond's generosity after the loss of Portugal is concentrated entirely in Galicia, excepting his charter of May 1, 1096.(62) Although he had some jurisdiction in the western trans- Duero as far south as Coria from at least 1096, there is no sign that he was active in that region until much later.
The count's charter to the church of Túy on February 11, 1095, was a grant of immunity, and in it he spoke of "my merino Juan Ramírez," indicating his possession of estates and authority in this area. The document was prepared by a Pedro Múñoz "comitis aule notarius," suggesting [277] an incipient comital court.(63) His charter to the Portuguese monastery of Montemor on February 25, 1095, was confirmed by one Fernando as comital alférez and had been prepared by Diego Gelmírez as comital "scriptor."(64) On September 24, 1095, Raymond issued a charter of immunity for the merchants of Compostela also prepared by Gelmírez.(65) His grant of May 1, 1096, if accepted for that date, was also drawn up by Gelmírez and shows Suero Núñez as alférez and as comital majordomo Count Froila Díaz, one of the great magnates of León-Castilla.(66) The donation to the church of Mondoñedo on August 21, 1096, was the work of the same notary.(67) But by the time of the charter to the Compostelan monastery of Antealtares on March 28, 1098, Gelmírez had become bishop-elect and a new notary, Nuño, had appeared.(68) The counts alférez now confirms as Suero Vermúdez, perhaps actually the same person as in May 1, 1096, above. Of all of this evidence one may say without exaggeration that Raymond exhibits already a public persona of a dimension without parallel in the period except for members of the dynasty itself
The same status will come to be an attribute of his cousin, Count Henry of Portugal, but not until 1098. The husband of Infanta Teresa confirmed only five of the twenty-seven known Alfonsine diplomas of the period, but all four of those issued in 1099. Turning again to the private documents of Sahagún, it is clear by his confirmation of them that Henry had become a regular resident at the royal court during the winter season. That will continue to be his practice down to the end of the reign in 1109. As with Count Raymond and Galicia, for Henry Portugal was a jurisdiction to be visited in the summers and exploited year round but never, in his lifetime perhaps, a place to reside.
Since he did not become count in Portugal until late 1095 or early 1096, the record of Henry's own charters is scant. Still, from his grant to Soeiro Mendes of November 23, 1097, we learn that Henry already had his own majordomo, his own alférez, and probably his own notary.(69) Moreover both this charter and that of December 9, 1097, to the church of Santiago de Compostela illustrate the fact that the count already [278] enjoyed the ordinary disposition of royal fisc lands south of the Río Miño.(70)
After Count Raymond the most visible of the court magnates was García Ordóñez, Count of Nájera, who confirmed fifteen royal charters. He was Castilian, of course, but León was also well represented at court. Count Pedro Ansúrez, as ever, confirmed twelve. He was an old, indeed the oldest associate of Alfonso at court excluding the king's sisters and the Leonese Count Martín Laiñez, who confirmed ten diplomas was a young man. Count Fernando Díaz of Asturias, who also confirmed ten, was somewhat older but still probably ten to fifteen years junior to the king. Of the other seven known counts between 1092 and 1099, six confirmed only very sporadically and were essentially local rather than court figures. The same was probably true of Count Froila Díaz, whose lands and jurisdiction lay in eastern Galicia and western León. He confirmed seven royal charters but they are spread more or less evenly over this entire time span. On the other hand, Froila Díaz also confirmed six of the nine charters of Count Raymond, and that is probably more indicative. He was a regular member rather of the entourage that gathered around the Burgundian during the latter's circuit of Galicia in the late springs and early summers.
As customary, there was also a small circle of Castilian magnates whose confirmations reveal them to have been fairly constantly in attendance on the king but who do not ordinarily boast the title of count. Of these Gonzalo Núñez, then the senior member of the Lara clan, was the most prominent, confirming twelve diplomas. His son, Rodrigo González, confirmed eight. Alvar Díaz of Oca confirmed nine. Alvar Fáñez, never a regular court figure, still confirmed six.
The royal curia so constituted regularly spent the winter season in the heartland of the kingdom about the royal monastery of Sahagún and the royal city of León. There is but one year from 1092 through 1099 when we cannot place it there. Each year from roughly the beginning of Advent through the Easter season it appears that that area was the site of a rich and varied political and constitutional as well as liturgical and social life, centering on the dynastic family and the king. Probably such a scene was replicated elsewhere in the realm, and during [279] the warmer seasons more often than the documents reveal. If we adhere to the formal criterion of the necessary presence of at least five bishops for evidence of a meeting of the greater royal curia then only three times in this period do we have evidence for such. Only the meetings in 1095 at Toledo, Valladolid, and Santiago de Compostela meet such a test. All were associated with the crisis that resulted from Alfonso VI's marriage to the Italian Queen Berta in the winter of 1094-95, the conspiracy of Raymond and Henry, and the royal progression through the realm with his new wife.
But the curia never ceased to exist. It was, in a sense, always in session because its only absolutely essential member was the king himself. For the same reason it was always the essential governing institution as well as the center of greater society, for the king was the government of the realm. Now during the period from 1092 through 1099 it is clear that this central core of the realm was undergoing substantial changes.
The nucleus of the curia itself, the dynastic family, experienced the demise of Queen Constance at the end of 1093 and the accession of Queen Berta at the end of 1094. The implications of this change in the larger world of the politics of the realm have already been examined. What it effected in the smaller world of the court we cannot really be sure. Always under the monarchy the essential function of a queen was to produce heirs. If she had a further role of influence at court, it must be as an extension of her personality and particular gifts, and the queens of Alfonso are simply unknown to us as persons. Of the six, historians have traditionally attributed significant influence only to Queen Constance, and that seems to have been a reflex of the literary development. Contemporaries did not mention it.
Other changes within the dynasty were likely much more important as they affected the day-to-day life of the court. The aging, ill-health, and finally the death of infantas Urraca and Elvira at the very end of this period first diminished and then ended the role of the king's sisters, who, the documents suggest, were usually more closely associated than the queens themselves with the business of the court. Not only had they constantly added their status to the authority of the royal charters from the very initiation of the reign but their own proper charters, extended throughout the same period, show the king's dowager sisters as the possessors of very considerable portions of the dynastic fisc and able to alienate it by their own right. The decline and final disappearance of their familiar presence and influence marked a subtle but real change in both the tenor and the polities of the court.
This transition was accompanied by the gradual rise in influence of the daughters of Alfonso, who with their husbands now became the [280] central personages of the dynasty after the king himself. Count Raymond became a constant of the winter court from 1092 forward, as did his wife Urraca. The king's eldest daughter might have been only an emergent twelve years old then, but by 1099 she would have been seventeen and a mature woman by the reckoning of the age. Count Henry does not emerge as a court figure until 1098. His wife, Teresa, must have been at least twelve by then and possibly even fifteen years old. Both daughters would shortly gain in influence by the passage of most of the fisc lands of the "infantaticum" to them at the death of their aunts. But even so the tone of the court was inevitably more altered by the passage of social arbitrage from ailing women in their sixties to vital young women not yet turned twenty. The alteration was further marked, of course, by the fact that each of the latter possessed a mature husband of independent prestige and high place in the hierarchy of the realm, that each was a potential heir of the kingdom in her own right, and that each was a possible queen mother of a future heir also. The two couples must have increasingly dominated the king's presence and the king's counsels even though, so far as one can detect, neither Raymond nor Henry brought any powerful retainers with them to court.
After these four, the most authoritative and effective members of the royal court were doubtless the bishops ordinarily in residence at it. The primate, Archbishop Bernard, by 1092 already had twelve years of experience in the realm and in royal polities. He was the indispensable counsellor of this reign and of the next as well. Bishop Pedro of the royal city of León had been in that powerful position for six years by 1092. Bishop Osmundo of Astorga, with two years more experience than Pedro, ruled an episcopal see almost as closely associated with the monarchy. Bishop Raymond of Palencia had but a year's less experience than Pedro but was personally closer to the king perhaps than any of them save Bernard of Toledo. Alfonso had called him "magistro meo" in 1090.(71) Only Burgos was affected by the loss of its old bishop, Gomez, in February 1097, but the new incumbent, García Aznárez, had the advantage of being the nephew of his predecessor.(72) The bishops would also have formed a party with a distinct training and a distinct mentality and style even if sometimes driven by conflicting ambitions in their own sphere.
Particularism and provincialism were more likely to have been marked among the court magnates. As we have seen, these were largely drawn from the great families of the meseta. Galicia furnished none, [281] Portugal none as well unless the majordomo, Ermegildo Rodríguez, were indeed from that area. The trans-Duero and the new kingdom of Toledo were too raw to aspire to such position. Asturias supplied only Count Fernando Díaz. Even Count Froila Díaz from the immediate borderlands of the west seems not to have belonged to that circle.
The Leonese nobles were dominated, as they long had been, by Count Pedro Ansúrez even though another, Fernando Muñoz, was royal majordomo from 1096. Of scarcely less distinguished a family than the Ansúrez was Count Martín Laíñez.
The Castilians at court were rather more numerous and cohesive. As we have already seen the Lara family was especially prominent in its patriarch: Count Gonzâlo Núñez, his two sons, Rodrigo González and Gomez González, who had been alférez and then became a count, and his nephew Pedro González, who had also been alférez. Through Gomez González, the Lara were related by marriage to the magnate Alvar Díaz, another long-time court figure whose son, Ordoño Alvarez, also became alférez. Finally, Count García Ordóñez of Nájera was also related to Alvar Diaz.
The old king, for Alfonso was fifty-five at the beginning of this period and sixty-two in 1099, could thus survey his own court and expect it regularly to reflect four different bodies of opinion and experience as well as self-interest. That diversity multiplied his work when they needed to be swayed to support a common action or policy with something approaching vigor, but it also provided a lever that could be applied to prevent them from coalescing on an initiative that he preferred to avoid or abort. The interests of the peripheral lands from Vizcaya to Toledo to Portugal could only be heard faintly in the clamor of the court, but the king must be mindful of them if no one else was. Finally, the future of Sancho Adefónsez, the child of Zaida, had to be nurtured and protected as the realm's only male heir grew to his sixth year. By 1099 the Italian marriage had produced not a single living issue.
1. Mansilla. ed., La documentación pontificia, pp. 52-53.
2. "Reise nach Spanien im Winter von 1878 auf 1879," NA 6 (1881): 299-300, from BN, Códices, 13.116, ff. 8r-9r.
3. "Bula inédita de Urbano II, April 25, 1093," BRAH 5 (1884): 97-103, argued that the place of issuance, "Terre maioris," was not in the vicinity of Bordeaux but rather near Benevento. Further supporting the change of date, Fita adduced the charter of Alfonso VI, dated Feb. 13, 1095, which Bernard of Toledo already confirmed as papal legate. Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo, pp. 141-43, cited the original of the bull now in AC Toledo A.6.A.1.1. and also argued that a contemporary literary source could be construed to support the presence of Bernard in Rome during the spring of 1093. Engels, "Papsttum," pp. 243-44, follows both protagonists.
4. But in no less than ten documents of 1093-1095 the archbishop never confirms as papal legate. The royal charter of Feb. 13, 1095, which Fita used as a terminus ante quem, must in fact be redated to Feb. 13, 1099, on the basis of those who confirm it. See Azevedo, "Observações de diplomática," pp. 128-40, pub. Guerard, ed., Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de Saint-Victor de Mareseille, pp. 189-90. The first use of the title by Bernard of which I am aware comes in a document of 1098. See chapter 14, notes 33 and 38.
5. See chapter 12, notes 62 through 66.
6. See the text of the papal bull in Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:92-93. Also Engels, "Papsttum," pp. 48-49.
7. Robert Somerville, "The Council of Clermont (1095) and Latin Christian Society," AHP 12 (1974): 71-73 and 87-88.
9. Costa, O Bispo D. Pedro 2:243. Ludwig Vones, Die 'Historia Compostelana' und die Kirchenpoltiik des nordwestspanischen Raumes (Cologne, 1980), pp. 80-99, for a general discussion.
10. AHN, Códices, 1.196, fol. 38v.
11. AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 138-139r.
12. "De Rebus Hispaniae," pp. 139-40.
13. Rivera Racio, Iglesia de Toledo, p. 546, who believed that he had wintered in France.
14. July 11, 1096. Célestine Douais, ed., Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de Saint-Sernin de Toulouse: 844-1200 (Paris, 1887), pp. 475-77.
15. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:96-98. Engels, "Papsttum," pp. 241-43, argues convincingly that the entire letter represented a provisional draft which was only converted into a formal bull subsequently.
16. AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 2v-3r.
17. Dec. 15, 1096, and Dec. 20, 1096. See chapter 12, note 104. Rivera Recio, Iglesia de Toledo, pp. 146-47, declines to date this episode and distrusts the source, but there is independent contemporary confirmation of parts of it and the vita of Bernard is one of the few primary sources employed in the "De Rebus Hispaniae."
18. Jiménez de Rada, "De Rebus Hispaniae," p. 140.
19. DMP 1-1:6-8, and 1-2:554-55.
20. PAH, Scriptores, p. 54. Rivera Recio. Iglesia de Toledo, p. 146, asserts that Gerald was consecrated already by April 1096 but provides no evidence for this unlikelihood.
21. See also Damião Peres, Como nasceu Portugal, 6th ed. (Porto, 1967), p. 69 and note 2.
22. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 1:349 and 358.
23. May 7,1098, AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 65r-v. Jan. 6,1099, Pub. Quintana Prieto, ed., Tumbo viejo de San Pedro de Montes, pp. 191-92. A subsequent citation of Osmundo, May 2, 1099, AHN, Clero, Carpeta 890, no. 1, is contradicted by the former and other evidence.
24. Vones, Kirchenpolitik des nordwestspanischen Raumes, p. 100, n. 2. López Ferreiro, Historia de Compostela 3:191, placed his death on Dec. 13, 1095, relying on the ambiguous passage in the "Historia Compostelana," ES 20:43.
26. See chapter 12, note 102. "Didacus Gilmiriz clericus et vicarius in ecclesia s. iacobi apostoli et notarius comitis cf."
28. Ibid., note 93. Vones, Kirchenpolitik des nordwestspanisden Raumes, p. 117, note 79, is noncommital about this charter but clearly begs the issue when he remarks that Gelmírez appears without designation of office. In fact the document reads "divina gratia didacus ecclesia sancti iacobi conf." This is the formula of an episcopal subscription, and the copyist has omitted either the word "episcopus" or "electus." Fletcher, Saint James' Catapult, p. 157, accepts it without comment.
The question will continue to be controverted because the less than two dozen extant charters of Count Raymond are of sufficiently different provenance as to furnish no grounds for a judgement on the basis of diplomatic or paleography.
29. Antigüedad de la ciudad y Iglesia catedral de Túy (1610; Barcelona, 1974), fol. 109 r. The Episcopate in the Kingdom of León in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1978), pp. 50-51, who also assigns Alfonso a beginning date of 1097 but without indicating why. See note 55 for the charter.
30. See chapter 12, note 101. An undated charter of Infanta Elvira to Orense in which no bishop is mentioned probably dates to this vacancy because Bishop Pedro of León (1087-1112) is mentioned. Pub. Colección diplomática de Galicia historica (Santiago de Compostela, 1901), pp. 11-12, and Manuel Castro y Sueiro, ed., "Documentos del Archivo Catedral de Orense," BCM, Orense 1:406.
31. See note 30. Benito Fernández Alonso, El pontificado gallego, su origen y vicisitudes, seguido de una crónica de los obispos de Orense (Orense, 1897), p. 221, asserted that he had been a canon of Compostela. He may actually have become a canon later. See ES 20:269.
32. See chapter 12, note 99, and Ernesto Zaragoza Pascual, "Un abadalogio inédito de Samos del siglo XVIII," SM 22 (1980): 316.
33. AHN, Codices, 986B, fol. 41r-v; pub. López Ferreiro, Historia de Compostela 3:40 append., and Serrano y Sanz, ed., "Documentos Celanova," pp. 39-40.
34. ADS, fondo de San Martín, ms. 72, is merely a fragment which contains the list of those who confirmed only. López Ferreiro, Historia de Compostela 3:45-46 append., published it under the date of 1100 precisely because of the way in which Gelmírez confirmed. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 518, no. 7, is a sixteenth-century notarial copy of the full text, even if somewhat corrupt. The figures of the royal court who confirmed did so later. So may have the bishops of the Túy and Lugo. See chapter 14, notes 30, 31, and 32. Nevertheless, Alfonso's agreement should be presumed and was explicitly mentioned in the "Historia Compostelana," ES 20:26-27 and 254-55.
36. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 891, nos. 16 and 17.
37. In at least eight different documents from six different churches Bishop Martín is cited up until the end of 1100. Yet a scattering of documents and notices have led historians of Oviedo to make Pelayo the auxiliary bishop of Oviedo in the later years of Martín's pontificate. There is simply no evidence that such an office existed in eleventh- and twelfth-century Spain. But see Fernández Conde, El Libro de Testamentos, pp. 37-38.
38. ES 20:23-31 and 254-5 5. Fletcher, Saint James' Catapult, pp. 107-13, tends to weigh the literary sources more heavily than the documents. Vones, Kirchenpolitik des nordwestspanischen Raumes, pp. 100-48, does the opposite.
40. Ibid., pp. 537-38. For now the best study of this worthy is Pierre David, "L'énigme de Maurice Bourdin," Études historiques, pp. 441-501, but a revised look at Coimbra and then Braga during his episcopates is surely overdue.
41. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:547.
42. José Luis Martín, Luis Miguel Villar García, Florencio Mareos Rodríguez, Marciano Sánchez Rodríguez, eds., Documentos de los archivos catedralicio y diocesano de Salamanca, siglos XII-XIII (Salamanca, 1977), pp. 79-81. This document registered as AC Salamanca, Cajón 43, legajo 2, no. 72, is at present actually displayed for the public in the Museo Diocesano of the cathedral. The editors call it an original as did Menéndez Pidal. The date is not given in the Spanish era, and the language is grandiloquent enough to raise suspicion.
43. Mar. 14-May 14, 1099. AHN, Clero. Carpeta 960, nos. 17, 18, 19, and 20. Pub. Vignau, ed., Cartulario de Eslonza, pp. 12-17, and Calvo, San Pedro de Eslonza, pp. 268-72. A closely related series of forgeries or interpolated documents purporting to be of Alfonso VI and his sister Urraca, or of the latter alone. Apr. 22, 1099. AHN, Orden de Santiago, Carpeta 326, no. 1; pub. José Luis Martín, Orígenes de la Orden militar de Santiago (Barcelona, 1974), pp. 169-70. Obviously of a later date given the reference to Queen Elizabeth in the text. Apr. 31, 1099. AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 84r-v.
46. Demetrio Mansilla Reoyo, "Panorama histórico-geográfico de la Iglesia espanola," in Historia de la Iglesia en España, ed. Javier Fernández Conde, vol. 2. pt. 2 (Madrid, 1982), pp. 613 and 623. For thirty years the author has been the foremost authority on these questions. Also J-W 5.801; pub. Paul Ewald, "Acht päpstliche Privilegien," NA 2 (1887): 220-21.
47. June 20, 1121. Carl Erdmann, "Papsturknnden in Portugal," pp. 174-77. J-W, 7.090 PL 163:1299-1300.
48. AC Toledo. Códice 42-21, fol. 64, and Códice 42-22, fol. 47; pub. Fidel Fita "El concilio nacional de Palencia en el año 1100 y el de Gerona en 1101," BRAH 24 (1894): 216-17.Yet another bull of Paschal II addressed to Count Henry of Portugal and dated to 1099 which refers to Gerald is a forgery. Erdmann, "Papsturkunden in Portugal," p. 154.
49. ABD, Liber Fidei, ff. 71v-72r. Vones, Kirchenpolitik des nordwestspanischen Raumes, p.130, n. 144, cites two Bracaran documents of March and April 1100, which cite Gerald only as bishop, but it is quite possible that the news had not reached that remote city yet.
50. Pub. José Goñi Gaztambide, "Los obispos de Pamplona del siglo XII," AA, 13 (1965): 330-32.
51. AHN, Microfilmas, Palencia, rollo 1.658, no. 11; Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-17,ff. 217r-219v and 250r-254r; pub. Fernández de Pulgar, Historia de Palencia 2:131-32, and Fita, "El concilio nacional de Palencia," 221-22. The Palencia document is not an original, to judge by the script and the orthography, and may have been interpolated but the confirmations clearly follow an authentic original. No outright forgery would reflect such particulars or knowledge.
52. Pub. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:104-107.
53. Pub. Fidel Fita, "Bulas inéditas de Urbano II," BRAH 24 (1894): 549-51, from late copies in BN and Acad. Hist.; pub. Garciá Larragueta, Documentos de Oviedo, pp. 310- 11, from the documents there only. Rivera Recio, Iglesia de Toledo, p. 152, accepts Bishop Martín's presence, as does Engels, "Papsttum," pp. 245-46.
54. It is reviewed in Vones, Kirchenpolitik des nordwestspanischen Raumes, p. 130, n. 142.
55. ASI, Reales, no. 132. Pub. María Amparo Valcarce, El dominio de la real colegiata de S. Isidoro de León hasta 1189 (León, 1985), pp. 92-93, with the bad date. An original I believe but not the work of a chancery scribe. The local catalogue erroneously dates it to 1095. The Crónica Cauriense, BN, Manuscritos, 1.358, fol. 3v, "obiit gelorira infans," whence it passed into the "Anales Toledanos." Other sources differ. See ES 23:114. But on Nov. 13, 1099. AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 35v; pub López Ferreiro, Historia Compostela 3:50-51. Elvira made another dying benefaction to that church. This last donation is dated actually to the same date in 1100 but Alfonso VI made reference to that grant in one of his own to the same church on Jan. 16, 1100. See chapter 14, note 59.
56. See chapter 11, notes 61 and 62.
57. Apr. 18, 1088. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 960, no. 2, is a private document of the monastery of Eslonza, which must be redated precisely because of its reference to him as already majordomo. Feb. 2, 1096. BN, Manuscritos, 720, fol. 226r-v, is the first secure reference. Apr. 30, 1084. AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 231v-232v; pub. Hinojosa, ed., Documentos de León y de Castilla, pp. 33-34.
58. Pedro's last appearance was Nov. 10, 1091. See chapter 11, note 53. Apr. 23, 1097. AHN, Microfilmas, AD León, Gradefes, no. 11, is probably a scribal error for "Gomez." Gomez appears early in Sept. 14, 1084, AHN, Clero, Carpeta 885, no. 9, a forgery; in Apr. 25, 1087, see chapter 10, note 20, another forgery; May 14, 1087, see chapter 8, note 18, another forgery; Mar. 31, 1090, see chapter 11, note 36, a pseudo-original; and Apr. 27, 1090, see chapter 11, note 39, a forgery. His first genuine appearance comes on Nov. 26, 1092. See chapter 12, note 44.
59. On the Lara family at this time see Moxó, "De la nobleza vieja a la nobleza nueva," p.34; Marino Pérez Avellaneda, Cerezo de Río Tirón (Madrid, 1983), pp. 176-77; and Balparda y las Herrarias, Historia crítica de Vizcaya 2:302-303.
60. Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-22, fol. 32r. Apr. 31, 1099. AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 84r-v.
61. Jan. 25, 1098. AHN, Clero, Carpete 889, no. 16.
66. Ibid., note 94. Froila Diáz confirmed as the count's majordomo as early as Nov. 13, 1094. Ibid., note 58.
69. DMP 1-1:6-8, and 1-2:554-55.
70. PMH, Diplomata, p. 515, and López Ferreiro, Historia de Compostela, 3:45-42 append. Yet such matters could still involve the attention of Alfonso himself. A rare mandatum of Alfonso to Count Henry deals with a dispute over fisc lands with the bishop of Coimbra See Antonio Brandão, Crónica do Conde D. Henrique, D. Teresa, e Infante D. Alfonso (1632; Porto, 1944), p. 56. Unfortunately, the mandatum is a chancery form that is not dated. The discovery of this document requires modification of what I said about its use in my "The Chanecry of Alfonso VI," p. 12.