[35] Just as our knowledge of the subsequent historical development of Galicia-Portugal predisposes us to doubt the viability of that kingdom in 1066, our similar awareness of the historical role of Castilla in the Iberian peninsula causes us to exaggerate the importance of the latter kingdom in the same period. The Castilla of 1066 was not even remotely comparable in extent to the present-day region of Castilla la Vieja. This modern designation encompasses the whole eastern half of the watershed of the Duero River and stretches southward down to the slopes of the Guadarrama Mountains and westward to Avila, Segovia, Valladolid, and Palencia. It is essential to remember, then, that the realm inherited by Sancho II was scarcely a third that size.

The actual limits of the kingdom of Castilla in the second half of the eleventh century are well indicated, as we shall see later, by the objects of the surviving charters of its king between 1065 and 1072. The chief recipients of the royal favor were the monasteries of Oña, San Millán, Cardeña, Arlanza, and Silos. The southernmost of these is Silos, itself only forty kilometers southeast of Burgos and the same distance northwest of the upper Duero. A detailed analysis of the place names mentioned in these royal charters of donation fails to reveal any evidence that the effective limits of Sancho II's possessions and power extended much farther south than the watershed of the Arlanza River or any farther west than the point at which that river flows into the Pisuerga near Palenzuela.⁽¹⁾ Similarly, when Sancho II endowed what he intended as the major episcopal see of his kingdom on March 18, 1068, the choice did not fall on Burgos, watered by the Arlanzón River which runs south and west on the way to its union with the Arlanza. Instead, Sancho II chose the ancient see of Oca, whose site in the hill country [36] northeast of Burgos is again approximately forty kilometers from Burgos and overlooks the Oca River, which winds north and east toward the Ebro River in the upper Rioja. The geographical jurisdiction for the new see, reflected in the place names of the charter, reinforces the evidence of the charters of the monasteries as to the real boundaries of Castilla at that time.⁽²⁾

Sancho II's kingdom was, therefore, centered essentially in the hilly country north of Burgos and in Asturias de Santillana, in the same sort of country to the northeast, east, and southeast of that city also, and in the sheltered upper reaches of the rivers Arlanzón and Arlanza. Less than a third of it consisted of the meseta, rolling gently down from Burgos toward the Pisuerga River at Melgar de Fermental and Palenzuela. From its hillsides, it overlooked as much the whole course of the upper Ebro River as it did the meseta, dominated by his brother, Alfonso VI, in León. Geography as well as family feeling would at first incline his ambitions to aggrandizement at the expense of the kingdom of Navarra and the taifa of Zaragoza rather than of León.

That such a policy indeed dominated the first years of Sancho II's reign is indicated as well by the names associated with his court. Some twenty individuals confirmed at least three of the ten genuine charters that survive. Of this number, I have not been able to identify securely more than eight. However, these eight all seem to have interests and holdings in the north and northeast of the kingdom. Their family prospects would seem to have been oriented toward the expansion of the realm down toward the valley of the Ebro as well.

The only one of these magnates who confirmed all ten genuine charters was Diego Alvarez. He was associated with the district of Oca, to the northeast of Burgos, which looked down toward the monastery of Oña and the valley of the upper Ebro. At some point he married the daughter of Jimeno López, who dominated most of Alava and Vizcaya in the neighboring kingdom of Navarra.⁽³⁾ The Alvar Díaz, who confirmed three of Sancho's charters, was probably his son who succeeded him at Oca.⁽⁴⁾
The brother-in-law of Alvar Díaz was that García Ordóñez, who confirmed three of the charters also.⁽⁵⁾ The latter was early associated [37] with Pancorvo in the northeastern Bureba, which bestrode the pilgrim road leading up from Miranda del Ebro in the upper Rioja. The father of García Ordóñez, Ordoño Ordóñez, who had been an alférez of Fernando I, also confirmed five of these charters.⁽⁶⁾

Three of the other persons confirming Sancho's charters were members of the house of the Lara who at this time seem to have been ensconced primarily about the headwaters of the Ebro and in Asturias de Santillana.⁽⁷⁾ The leading member of the family, Gonzalo Salvadórez, confirmed nine of the ten charters. His brother Alvar Salvadórez confirmed eight. Yet another of the clan, Muño González, who was particularly associated with Asturias de Santillana, confirmed four charters.⁽⁸⁾ These documents seem to indicate clearly that the membership of Sancho II's curia reflected, and we presume shared, the early predisposition of that king toward expansion of the realm to the east and northeast.

The same observation cannot be made of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid, who confirmed six of the ten charters. Vivar del Cid lies but nine kilometers north of Burgos, and the meseta may well have beckoned to one so born. Nevertheless, legend and subsequent historiography have much exaggerated the role of el Cid, even during the reign of Sancho II. Menéndez Pidal himself draws back from the most obvious excesses of the legend.⁽⁹⁾ Notwithstanding, he has accepted so much of it, on primarily literary grounds, that something of a reevaluation must preoccupy any historian of the epoch.

To begin, the date of birth of Rodrigo Díaz is obscure, which is not remarkable for the period. Menéndez Pidal places it about 1043, which would seem generally reasonable, if that hero participated, and was armed, in the battle of Graus of 1063 as asserted by the Historia Roderici.⁽¹⁰⁾ The same source goes on, however, to assert that el Cid was the alférez, or military leader, of the armies of Sancho II, and this assertion, although hallowed by subsequent repetition in the epic literature, must [38] be rejected.⁽¹¹⁾ In marked contrast to the contemporary documents of Alfonso VI, the charters of Sancho give no evidence of either a majordomo or an alférez in the retinue of the latter. This situation is probably yet another indication of the smaller extent and the more primitive organization of Castilla. In any event, the evidence of the contemporary documents is to be preferred to the poets account of at least eighty years later.

Although, as has been noted, Rodrigo Díaz confirmed some 60 percent of the charters of Sancho II, his position in the royal court was most certainly of the second rank at best. For a young man, perhaps twenty-two in 1066, family influence would have been an all important consideration until sheer ability could make itself felt. Working again with the genealogy given in the Historia Roderici eighty years later, Menéndez Pidal has traced the family as best can be.⁽¹²⁾ El Cids father, Diego Laínez, was not a court figure, there being but one known document in which he is found in the company of Fernando I or indeed anywhere at all.⁽¹³⁾ The paternal grandfather, identified by the Historia Roderici, Laín Núñez, did confirm five documents of Fernando I. The maternal grandfather of this genealogy, Rodrigo Alvarez, may be the person who confirmed two of the charters of Sancho II. About a maternal great uncle, Nuño Alvarez, nothing very useful can be said since there are at least three persons of that name who figure in the documents and, in any event, no one of that name ever confirmed a document of Sancho II.

The documentary evidence adduced here suggests that the court of the king of Castilla was dominated by the three great families of the Alvarez, the Ordóñez, and the Lara. All three had already been prominent in the reign of Fernando I. All three would have been inclined, by the location of their holdings, toward a policy of expansion northeast and east into the valley of the Ebro. Even if we accept the late genealogy of the Historia Roderici at its face value and Diego Laínez as a historical figure, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar can have played but a small role in deciding [39] the policy that governed the initiatives of Sancho II's kingdom during the period between 1066 and 1072. The great role assigned to el Cid by Menéndez Pidal can only be sustained by ignoring the charters of Sancho and giving full credit to the much later assertions of legend and story.⁽¹⁴⁾

The history of the kingdom of Castilla just after 1065 was also determined directly by the legacy of Fernando I. As we have already seen, that monarch left to Sancho the hegemony over Navarra and Zaragoza that the former had established. It was a legacy that required attention. The ambitions of Aragón, the fiasco of Barbastro in 1065, the effective hegemony of Toledo over Valencia, all followed by the death of Fernando on the very heels of his victorious eastern campaign of 1065, invited a contest of all against all in the Iberian northeast in which Sancho II could hardly fail to be a participant.

The early chroniclers tell us nothing of the reign of Sancho II before his attack on Alfonso VI. Only in the late twelfth century do we get an account, in the Crónica Najerense, of a Castilian attack on Zaragoza, which events then pass into the general historiographical tradition of the realm through the Primera crónica general of the late thirteenth century. But the Cronica Najerense already was borrowing from the literature of the twelfth century, and neither the Carmen Campidoctoris nor the Historia Roderici mentions such an attack. When Menéndez Pidal recounts as history a siege of Zaragoza by Sancho II in the summer of 1067, he is relying primarily upon the Primera crónica general of the thirteenth century and an even later fifteenth-century Jewish source.⁽¹⁵⁾

More recent opinions of historians have tended to be divided as to the historicity of this campaign.⁽¹⁶⁾ Nevertheless, given the general dispositions of the new realm of Castilla, I am inclined to accept such a war as probable. That al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza should have ceased to pay the annual parias on the death of Fernando and the division of his realm is likely. That Sancho II should have fought to regain those revenues, so important to a kingdom as small and poor as his own, is just as likely.

Unfortunately, the documents themselves furnish no notices that would help to illuminate the episode. The only charter of Sancho dated in 1066 cannot be accepted as of that date.⁽¹⁷⁾ Just so the charter to San [40] Millán de La Cogolla, dated January 18, 1067, is actually that of January 18, 1070.⁽¹⁸⁾ The first credible document of Sancho II is a grant to the monastery of Silos, not far from Burgos, on April 16, 1067.⁽¹⁹⁾ The king may have been at Silos but it is impossible to be sure. In any event his sister, Elvira, confirmed. His second charter of the year dates to December 11, 1067.⁽²⁰⁾ It was granted to the monastery of Oña on the northeastern frontier of his realm, and again we cannot be sure that he was actually at that monastery. All that can be said is that a summer campaign against Zaragoza could easily have been fought between the issuing of the two diplomas.

Again following the Primera crónica general, Menéndez Pidal accepts the historicity of the "War of the Three Sanchos" and suggests that it occurred in August and September of 1067.⁽²¹⁾ While the evidence is very late in this case as well, again it is entirely within the range of probabilities that Sancho García IV of Navarra and Sancho Ramírez of Aragón would have been concerned over Castilian pressure on Zaragoza and the latters designs on Navarra as well. One tradition credits the leadership to the Aragonese king who led the counteroffensive against Castilian forces around Viana in Navarra and routed them. The Primera crónica general, however, awards the victory to Sancho II.⁽²²⁾

Like Menédez Pidal, I am inclined to accept the probability of at least a modest Castilian success. The pattern of Sancho II's known activities form late 1067 seems to indicate security in his own domains and the confidence to undertake actions of widening scope.

One indication of his success is that his charter to the monastery of [41] Oña in December 1067 was confirmed by the magnate who held the Trespaderna district on the east bank of the upper Ebro in which the donated lands were located.⁽²³⁾ The adherence of a powerful noble in this border district with Navarra suggests wider recognition of his effective authority there. A second indicator is Sancho's decision to define newly, formally, the jurisdiction of the ancient see of Oca, the only one within his domains. The charter of March 18, 1068, was a renewed challenge to Navarra, whose control of much of the northeast of Castilla went back to the exactions of Sancho el Mayor, Sancho II's grandfather.⁽²⁴⁾ García Sánchez III's foundation of the see of Nájera in the Rioja in 1052 probably had the control of those lands as at least part of its rationale.⁽²⁵⁾ As we shall see, Sancho II's pressure on Navarra would continue, and his policy was carried to a triumphant conclusion by his brother, Alfonso VI, when he was able to annex the Rioja in 1076.

Vigor displayed against Zaragoza, Navarra, and Aragón, even if the results of such action were modest, would have had wider implications in northern Spain. One must assume at all times some movement of the discontented and ambitious from one brothers court to anothers as circumstances and opportunity indicated. Sancho's display of energy in 1067 may account for the fact that it was in his charter of January 1, 1068, that the name of García Múñoz first appeared.⁽²⁶⁾ It does not seem possible to discover such a name among the then important nobility of Castilla, but it will be recalled that this was the name of that powerful Portuguese noble all of whose estates had been appropriated by García of Galicia-Portugal in early 1066. Another name, which appears for the first time in a Castilian context with this same charter, is that of Fernando Pérez. Prior to this date the name is associated with León as it will be again after Sancho's death. It may be evidence of some flow of Leonese malcontents toward the latters court. The charter itself is a grant of property and the right to repopulate in the area of La Rebolleda [43] near the upper Pisuerga River, and hence the Leonese border, given to Vermudo Gutiérrez.

The charter that Sancho II granted to Bishop Jimeno of Oca on February 8, 1068, is unexceptionable, and neither of the above names appears among the confirmations.⁽²⁷⁾ In the following month, though, both García Muñoz and Fernando Pérez were associated with the charter of restoration to Oca mentioned above in another context.⁽²⁸⁾

The battle, or border skirmish, of Llantadilla on July 19, 1068, perhaps should be attributed to friction between Sancho II and Alfonso VI occasioned by the growing ambitions of the former. The earliest source for this clash is the chronicle of Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, who must have himself known of it only from current stories or those of his youth. Already it has been turned into a kind of judicial duel in which the winner will receive the kingdom of the loser. Pelayo tells us only that Alfonso lost and returned to León but, nevertheless, did not forfeit his kingdom.⁽²⁹⁾ We need not accept the literary embellishments that had already developed, but the event itself seems historically probable. The Crónica Najerense, which dates the skirmish, and then only by year, itself is of late twelfth-century provenance.⁽³⁰⁾ It is the Annales Complutenses, perhaps datable to the mid-twelfth century or slightly later, that supplies the day and the month.⁽³¹⁾ Again Menéndez Pidal follows the late thirteenth-century tradition of the Primera crónica general when he associates el Cid with this battle.⁽³²⁾

Llantadilla was a hamlet some ten kilometers to the southwest of Melgar de Fernamental and only about two kilometers west of the Pisuerga River, the boundary of the two kingdoms. The location does not suggest a major penetration of the others realms by either ruler, and Alfonso VI may not even have been present if the date is accurate. On July 7, 1068, he issued a charter which seems, from the presence of the abbot and prior of Sahagún, to have been issued in or around that [44] monastery.⁽³³⁾ On July 20, 1068, supposedly the day after the battle, his alférez confirmed a private donation to the same monastery.⁽³⁴⁾ The likelihood, then, is that the tradition has magnified a local border incident into a portent of the later and truly important battle which was to cost Alfonso VI his crown.

After this skirmish, Sancho of Castilla eludes our surveillance for something like nine months. None of his charters has survived from this period, and the chronicles have nothing to report. It is probably safe to assume that Sancho's interests were absorbed by events in the northeast for the next two years. Sometime in 1068 Sancho Ramírez of Aragón took the remarkable step of commending himself and his tiny realm to the pope.⁽³⁵⁾ The political reasons behind such an action cannot be discerned, but they are probably to be related to the threat of alliance against him by his neighbors, Sancho García IV of Navarra and al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza. Such an alliance actually was concluded in April 1069, and al-Muqtadir, at least, successfully took the field against the Aragonese in the fall of that year.⁽³⁶⁾ The alliance of a realm tributary to him, Zaragoza, and a kingdom marked as future prey by Castilla, Navarra, was necessarily of concern to the Castilian monarch. He could not have afforded to remain either indifferent to or uninvolved in these maneuvers.

For the entire year of 1069, however, but one of his documents, a charter to the monastery of Arlanza, survives and is dated April 22.⁽³⁷⁾ The most that can be said is that Sancho gave the monastery some possessions located high in the watershed of the river of the same name and thus near the borders of Zaragoza. Sancho's next surviving charter is a grant to the monastery of San Millán de La Cogolla on January 18, 1070.⁽³⁸⁾ That the Castilian king should have been patronizing that great and favorite monastery of the kings of Navarra is significant indeed. It demonstrates the growth of his power in the northeast, for San Millán sits on the far side of the Sierra de la Demanda on the Cárdenas River flowing down toward Nájera, favored residence of the Navarrese kings [45] in this period. It is indicative as well of the substance of his ambitions in regard to the kingdom of Navarra.⁽³⁹⁾

The continuing preoccupation of Sancho with aggrandizement at the expense of the Navarrese is also reflected in his charter to the monastery of Oña, dated April 27, 1070. Again it would seem that expansion along the line of the Ebro River was his guiding policy at this particular period. But that he designated that monastery as his final resting place somewhat later in the year, on August 26, 1070, should be regarded with skepticism as should the charter that asserts it.⁽⁴⁰⁾ It is more likely that subsequent events were to give rise to the document than that those events were in part determined by it. The grant of April 27, however, shows the Castilian kings interest in repopulating the area near Miranda del Ebro. Sancho's favor to Oña continued into the following year when he made it yet another trustworthy grant, this one dated merely to 1071.⁽⁴¹⁾

A further initiative, and one of an entirely different order, that Sancho of Castilla seems to have taken in late 1070 or early 1071 was to marry. All of the sons of Fernando I were of more than marriageable age before the formers death, but one can imagine that the old king would not have wished to have any of his children complicating the problem of inheritance and succession by marrying during his lifetime. Royal marriage was always a matter of royal policy with the gravest of political implications for the future of the dynasty. After his demise in 1065, however, it is most curious that only Sancho among his male heirs seems to have taken such a step. Surely, to most of the politically ambitious magnates of the realm of León-Castilla the division of the realm among Fernando's three sons must have seemed a decision likely to be reversed at any time by the actions of any one of them. The permanence of that decision must then have been the center of speculation and of political maneuvering from at least the moment at which it became operative in December 1065.

In such a situation the heirs of Fernando were faced with a variety of choices which must often have preoccupied them already from 1066. As roughly equal rivals, a good marriage would provide that considerable increment of strength always resulting under the monarchy from the promise or fact of a male heir with its resultant expectations of stability and continuity in dynastic policy. But whom to marry? The choice could only fall on a daughter of one of the great noble houses of [46] the realm of course. But to intermarry with a noble family whose own center of power lay within the confines of ones own realm after 1065 was to accept implicitly the permanence of that division. The political stability it would have effected would have been self-limiting and restrictive at the same time. None but the most politically naive would have read it as anything but an acceptance of the status quo that would jeopardize freedom of action in the face of possible future opportunities. Inevitably it would sacrifice potential support in the realms of ones brothers.

At the same time, even to attempt to contract a marriage alliance with an influential noble house whose predominant holdings lay within the territories assigned to one or the other of ones brothers would have been tantamount to a declaration of war. None of the fraternal rivals could have tolerated a bid for support within his own lands which such a marriage would inevitably have constituted no matter how solemn the assurances to the contrary. At the same time that it made war imminent, the proffered marriage would have weakened the brother undertaking it within his own kingdom by disappointing those noble houses confirmed in their present allegiance precisely by the possible prospect of a royal alliance for their own family.

The best alternative by far was to seek a bride, royal or noble in lineage, from abroad or from another of the Christian principalities of the northeast. Although the prospect of such a marriage would inevitably have disenchanted some of the magnates of ones own kingdom, that loss would also have been offset by the promise of a male heir and by the rise in royal prestige inseparable from the recognition implied in its successful negotiation. It is likely, then, that all of the brothers were engaged in the exploration of such a possibility from the time of the death of their queen-mother Sancha in late 1067 if not from the very beginning of their respective reigns.

The only one of the three brothers who was to be successful in this sort of quest, however, seems to have been Sancho of Castilla. Though there is no subsequent record of her existence, two charters of 1071 make mention of his wife. One of these is a royal charter to a Castilian noble, dated March 26, 1071.⁽⁴²⁾ The second is a private charter to the monastery of Arlanza, dated May 10, 1071.⁽⁴³⁾ Both charters agree that the name of his wife was Alberta, which suggests an extrapeninsular origin for her since that name was virtually unknown in Spain at the [47] time. Some distorted reflection of this marriage may be reflected in the late twelfth-century chronicle which gives a fantastic account. According to this late source, the fiancée was the legitimate daughter of García Sánchez III of Navarra and was on the way to Castilla when she was abducted and raped by her illegitimate half-brother Sancho. The bastard then took refuge with al-Muqtadir of Zaragoza and his uncle, Ramiro I of Aragón. Sancho II of Castilla is related to have attacked both, and Ramiro of Aragón lost his life in the resultant battle of Graus, here dated to 1070.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Though the latter tale is clearly literary in inspiration, the cumulative evidence for Sancho's nuptials is nevertheless strong.

But the name Alberta furnished by the documents militates against the probability of a Navarrese ancestry for his bride. Two modern Spanish historians have argued that Alberta was, in fact, the daughter of William the Conquerer of England.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Beyond the sources already given, they have adduced the testimony of William of Poitiers that Sancho and his brother García of Galicia were rivals for her hand, but Sancho prevailed after defeating his younger brother in early 1071.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Unfortunately, as seen in the preceding chapter, the defeat of García by Sancho did not occur in 1071 but in 1072. Moreover, William I of England did not have a daughter named Alberta but rather one called Agatha.⁽⁴⁷⁾

William of Poitiers was roughly a contemporary of the events he narrated, but there is another tradition of about the same antiquity that relates a different tale. This is the anonymous vita of Count Simon of Crépy, who died at Rome, after having become a monk, between 1080 and 1082. Here the contenders for the hand of Williams daughter are Alfonso VI and Robert Guiscard.⁽⁴⁸⁾ It is this tradition that seems to have been accepted in the first half of the twelfth century by William of Malmesbury and by Ordericus Vitalis, who make Alfonso VI the suitor but agree that Agatha died before she could be married to him.⁽⁴⁹⁾ [48] Moreover, each of these historians makes Alfonso king of Galicia, which he would have been after 1072, but the text of Ordericus seems to indicate that the betrothal took place after the death of Williams son, Richard, which Douglas places about 1075.⁽⁵⁰⁾ There thus seems to have been an ultimately unsuccessful search for a English bride by Alfonso VI in the period following the death of Sancho of Castilla in late 1072.

The ancestry of Alberta thus remains uncertain. Her fate after her royal husbands death is simply unknown. But certainly, in the largest sense of the word if not the more precise one, Sancho II had bested his rivals and brothers in the quest for a suitable and prestigious spouse by the beginning of 1071. By that time, as the preceding chapter makes clear, García of Galicia was hardly in a position to react strongly to his brothers coup. On the other hand, Alfonso of León may be assumed to have smarted under the setback, and the event probably worsened relations between him and Sancho.

The brothers rivalry may have been increased by Sancho's activity, shown in his charter of March 26, 1071, in actively seeking the repopulation of that portion of his realm on the Pisuerga River that bordered the territories of Alfonso VI.⁽⁵¹⁾ It was most certainly exacerbated by the latters growing designs on the realm of Galicia held by García. By the late spring of 1071 those ambitions had, as shown in the preceding chapter, largely reached fruition. Menéndez Pidal believed that the aggression against the kingdom of García was concerted and that Alfonso VI was present in Sancho's court for that purpose when the Castilians charter of March 26 was issued. Neither assumption is tenable.⁽⁵²⁾ Instead, Alfonso VI's assertion of control over virtually all of Garcías realm gravely prejudiced Sancho's own ambitions and demanded a response. There was indeed a meeting of the two kings in November 1071, or at least of their representatives, at the court of Alfonso VI.

The record of this meeting is constituted by two surviving documents. The first is a private charter, issued on November 18, 1071, by Mumadona Gudestéiz. It was confirmed by Bishops Pelayo of León and Bernard of Palencia and the alférez of Alfonso VI, making it likely that it was issued at the latters court. In addition, the final protocol recognizes Alfonso as king of León and also Sancho as king of Castilla.⁽⁵³⁾ Such acknowledgment of the Castilian king is otherwise unknown in Leonese documents of the period. A few days later, on November 23, 1071, [49] the same individual makes a donation to Bishop Muño of Burgos, which is also confirmed by bishops Pelayo of León and Bernard of Palencia. Here the final protocol recognizes Alfonso as reigning in León and Galicia and Sancho as ruling in Castilla and Galicia.⁽⁵⁴⁾

There could be, in the nature of things, no equality in real authority of the two brothers over the realm of the dispossessed García whatever the nominal terms of the condominium obviously negotiated. Alfonso's lands adjoined Galicia and Portugal. Sancho's lands lay far distant from them with Alfonso's intervening. The accord was bound to break down and perhaps was merely a temporary expedient from the beginning. All outstanding issues were to be decided on the field of battle.

The decisive battle of Golpejera, which gained the kingdom of León and subsequently that of Galicia-Portugal as well, for Sancho of Castilla seems to have been fought in early January 1072. The record is remarkably obscure nevertheless. The best evidence is that supplied by an anonymous author writing some fifty-five or more years later who said that Sancho ruled León exactly eight months and twenty-five days until his death on October 7, 1072.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Presumably he was calculating from Sancho's coronation in the city of León, which would thus have taken place on January 12, 1072. The battle itself would then have taken place some days earlier, certainly later than Alfonso VI's charter of December 21, 1071.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Perhaps it could have been as early as January 4, 1072, when a document of the Castilian monastery of Oña cites Sancho as regnant in Castilla, León, and Galicia although the text of the document itself merits little faith.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Other surviving sources constitute a morass of conflicting dates.⁽⁵⁸⁾

[50] Golpejera itself is approximately thirty kilometers west of the Pisuerga River, which up to that time had formed the boundary between León and Castilla. Its location suggests that the aggressor was Sancho II, confirming the impression given by virtually all of the sources as well as the political logic of the situation as it had developed. The Castilian monarch had no doubt struck directly along the old Roman road leading from Burgos to León. Of the details of the battle itself we can form no useful picture. The "Historia Roderici" made the Cid Sancho's alférez in the battle, and the later epic material elaborated accounts that are dramatic rather than necessarily military in character.⁽⁵⁹⁾

The best and earliest account of Bishop Pelayo says merely that Alfonso was defeated and led in chains to Burgos, later to be sent into exile in Toledo. Sancho proceeded to the royal city of León to crown himself, perhaps because the bishop of that city refused to perform what was his customary function for new Leonese monarchs.⁽⁶⁰⁾

By early January 1072 the settlement imposed by Fernando el Magno before his death had been completely overthrown. Sancho had yet finally to eject his brother García from his refuge in the south of the county of Portugal and to force that brother too into exile. Nevertheless, the hegemony among rough equals clearly implicit in Fernando's choice of Alfonso as king of León had been destroyed. Garcías too hasty attempts at the organization of his kingdom of Galicia-Portugal had invited Alfonso of Leóns successful assertion of power in the west. Sancho's predictable reaction to Alfonso's growing power, supported perhaps by his own success in securing foreign recognition, had led him to reverse his initial policy of expansion to the east and northeast for Castilla. Instead he had reunited his fathers realm under his sole control by the early spring of 1072.

[51] His triumph at Golpejera may well have enhanced the position of the Cid in his counsels. Perhaps the literature that gives that hero the predominate role in effecting this success has its kernel of truth. But the warrior of Vivar, a noble of middling rank at best, brought little help to the new king of all León-Castilla but the force of his own character and his undoubted military abilities. The old great families of Castilla, each inevitably disappointed in his choice of a foreign bride and each with its own ambitions in the east, would be of limited help in securing his power in the center and west of the peninsula.To consolidate what he had won on the field of battle would require delicate accommodation with the magnates of León, Asturias, Galicia, and Portugal. At the same time Sancho would have to secure the support of his sisters, the other living members of the dynasty, and of the powerful ecclesiastical hierarchy of the realm which was so predominantly non-Castilian. To understand his failure, one must turn to an examination of the realm of León which he had so abruptly seized.

1. Luciano Serrano, ed., Cartulario de Arlanza, p. 145, n. 3, identified the "Sancto Stephano de Extremo" of Sancho's charter of Apr. 22, 1069, as San Esteban de Gormaz. In the same editors Colección diplomática de San Salvador de El Moral (Madrid, 1906), p. 9, n. 46, he identified the "Sancto Stefano de Extremo" of Sancho's charter of March 18, 1068, as Doruelo, just to the east of the upper reaches of the watershed of the Arlanza River. This latter identification seems the more likely to me.

2. See preceding note.

3. Agustín Ubieto Arteta, "Aproximación al estudio del nacimiento de la nobleza aragonesa (siglos XI y XII): Aspectos genealógicos," in Homenaje a Don José María Lacarra de MigueI en su jubilación del profesorado, vol. 2 (Zaragoza, 1977), pp. 18 and 44.

4. Gregorio de Balparda y las Herrarias, Historia crítica de Vizcaya y de sus fueros, vol. 2 (Bilbao, 1933-34), pp. 259.

5. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1:50, n. 1.

6. Ibid. 2:713.

^7. Balparda, Historia de Vizcaya 2:277.

8. Ibid., pp. 278-79.

^9. España del Cid 1:125-27.

10. Ibid., 682-83. Menéndez Pidal has edited and published the Historia Roderici, pp. 904-70. For this episode, see p. 920. Menéndez Pidal dated the oldest, extant ms. of the Historia to the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth and the composition itself to sometime in 1110, but he almost invariably overestimated the age of the texts with which he worked. More recently Antonio Ubieto Artera, "La 'Historia Roderici y su fecha de redacción," Saitabi II (1961): 241-46, has established that it was composed between 1144 and 1147. The same author also argues for the birth of el Cid about 1054, but the argument seems immaterial to our concerns. El 'Cantar de mio Cid, p. 177.

11. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:920. See also María Eugenia Lacarra, El poema de mío Cid: Realidad histórica e ideología (Madrid, 1980), p. 107. A poem written perhaps only twenty years subsequent to the events, the Carmen Campidoctoris, says Rodrigo held a "principatum. . . prime cohortis," a more ambiguous terminology. It is edited by Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:876-84.

12. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:919-20 and 677-82; 1:123-25.

13. Oct. 29, 1047. Pub. Luciano Serrano, ed., Becerro gótico de Cardeíia, pp. 180-82. This is a private donation confirmed by the king. It is not above suspicion on diplomatic grounds and is perhaps a later refoundation of the document dated Nov. 14, 1058, in Francisco de Berganza, Antigüedades de España 2:431. In the latter version the name of Diego Laínez does not appear at all.

14. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1:156-57.

15. Ibid. 1:159-61, and 2:694-95.

16. Lacarra, Historia del reino de Navarra, p. 125, accepts it. Turk, El reino de Zaragoza, pp. 101-105, does not.

17. Aug. 26, 1066. Alamo, ed., Colección de Oña 1:85-87. Sancho II supposedly designated the monastery of Oña as his final resting place and authorized it to repopulate around the village of Piérnigas in the Bureba. At best this is an improvement on the charter of Aug. 26, 1070, which is virtually identical except that the privilege to repopulate is drawn in more general terms in the latter. Ibid., pp. 94-97. I regard it as improbable that Sancho made such a designation of his burial place at all and that both charters were forged after his actual interment at Oña. The likely model for both grants was the much humbler grant of the right to repopulate only granted to Oña on Apr. 27, 1070. Ibid., pp. 93-94. See also the notice in ibid., p. 98, dated to Apr. 27, 1071. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1:153, accepted the charter of Aug. 26, 1066, as genuine.

18. The former is noted in Joseph de Moret, Annales del reyno de Navarra, vol. 2 (Pamplona, 1766), pp. 36-37. A facsimile reproduction of this work appeared in Bilbao, 1969. The full text of this charter, dated to Jan. 18, 1070, is given in Luciano Serrano, Cartulario de San Millán de la Cogolla (Madrid, 1930), pp. 204-205.

19. Marsus Férotin, Recucil des chartes de lAbbaye de Silos, pp. 15-17. The editor located the donation of a deserted monastery of "Sancta Maria de Mambulas, quod est super Mambulas et sub Penna Alva situm, in terminum de Mambulas decurrens iuxta albeus Dorius," near Tudela de Duero scarcely thirteen kilometers from Valladolid. I would suggest that a location near the Sierra de las Mamblas is a more likely reading.

20. Alamo, Colección de Oña 1:90-92.

21. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 1: 161-64, and 2:696-98.

22. Menéndez Pidal, ed., Primera crónica general 2:496-97.

23. "Flaino Oriolez nominator Tetelie cf." Read "dominator." See note 20.

24. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:22-34. A late copy, unknown to Serrano, exists in BN, Manuscritos, 720, fol. 200r-v, and yet another copy apparently in the archive of Calahorra, see Fernando Bujanda, "Archivo catedral de Calahorra," Berceo 27 (1965): 434. Copies with variants have been published in Prudencio de Sandoval, Historia de los reyes de Castilla y de León (Pamplona, 1634), p 73; in Berganza, Antigrüedades de España 1:346; and in Juan Loperráez Corvalán, Descripción histórica del obispado de Osma (Madrid, 1788), 1:68. The opinion of Julio González, "La Extremadura castellana al mediar el siglo XIII," Hispania 34 (1974): 284, that it signals the recovery of the lands down to the Duero is based on misidentification. See note 1.

25. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 1:244-47.

26. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 351, no. 2, an original; pub. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:21-22.

27. Serrano, Becerro de Cardeña, p. 160. Berganza, Antigüedades de España 2:435, listed Bishops "Bernaldus, Petrus, and Gomessanus" as confirming, but they are likely the result of later interpolation.

28. See note 24. The confirmation of Alfonso VI of León was added later as Serrano rightly observes.

29. Sánchez Alonso, ed., Crónica del Obispo, p. 77

30. P. 110. The anonymous author here seems to be largely following Bishop Pelayos chronicle.

31. "Era MCVI die IV feria XIV kal. augusti." ["Wednesday, July 19, 1068."] Ambrosio Huici Miranda, ed., Las crónicas latinas de la Reconquista vol. 1 (Valencia, 1913), p. 48. Unfortunately for complete precision, July 19, 1068, was not a Wednesday but rather a Saturday.

32. España del Cid 1:166 and 2:701-702.

33. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 882, nos. 16 and 17; and AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 172r.

34. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 882, no. 19 and AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 91r.

35. Paul Kehr, "¿ Cómo y cuándo se hizo Aragón feudatario de la Santa Sede?" EEMCA 1 (1945): 301-304.

36. Turk, Reino de Zaragoza, pp. 107-108. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, pp. 68-76, would redate the battle of Graus and the death of Ramiro I of Aragón to 1069, making Sancho Ramírez merely heir and associate to that time. The attempt is ingenious and valiant but the evidence of the great bulk of contemporary documents is against the revision.

37. Serrano, ed., Cartulario de Arlanza, pp. 144-47.

38. See note 18.

39. For a full discussion see García de Cortázar, Dominio de San Millán, pp. 171-72.

40. See note 17.

41. Alamo, Colección de Oña, pp. 99-100.

42. Serrano, Becerro de Cardeña, pp. 242-44. Though some aspects of this charter of Sancho raise questions, there would seem to be no reason why a later interpolator would have invented a wife for him.

43. Serrano. ed., Cartulario de Arlanza, pp. 151-52.

44. Crónica Najerense, p. 110.

45. F.R. Cordero Carrete, "De los esponsales de una hija de Guillermo el Conquistador con un rey de Galicia," CEG 7(1952): 55-78; and Atilano González Ruiz-Zorrilla, "Sobre la Restauración de la diócesis de Braga en 1070," HS 10(1957): 431-42.

46. "Gesta Willelmi," PL 149:1245. "Hispaniae reges duo germani audita ejus magnitudine natam ejus in matrimonium cupientissime petierunt."

47. David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (Berkeley, 1964), pp. 391-95.

48. "Vita beati Simonis," PL 156:1215. "Pro filia mea rogaturi diu mecum conversati sunt, regis Hispaniarum Anfursi [sic] et Roberti principis Apuliae."

49. William of Malmesbury, "Gesta Regum Anglorum," PL 179:1253. "Alterius, quae Aldefonso Galliciae regi par nuncios jurata virgineam mortem impetravit a Deo." Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, vol. 3, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Ox ford, 1972), p. 114. "Porro Agatha regis filia, quae prius fuerat Haraldo desponsata, postmodum Amfursio [sic] regi Galliciae per procos petenti missa est desponsanda."

50. William the Conqueror, p. 394.

51. See note 42.

52. See chapter 2, notes 59 and 60.

53. AHN. Códices, 989B, fol. 56r-v.

54. See chapter 2, note 69.

55. "Chronicon Compostellana," ES 20:610.

56. "AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 68r.

57. Alamo, ed., Colección de Oña 1:101-102. It is a private document in which Sancho appears in the nominative case in the intitulatio granting permission to an individual to make a grant to the monastery. I cannot recall another example of such a procedure in this period.

58. "Alfonso is cited as regnant in León on Feb. 22, 1072, AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 125v-126r, pub. Romualdo Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782, reprinted León, 1982), pp.72; on June 27, 1072, Augusto Quintana Prieto, ed., Tumbo viejo de San Pedro de Montes (León, 1971), pp. 107-108; July 30, 1072, cited, Vicente Vignau, Indice de los documentos del monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1874), p. 252; on Aug. 21, 1072, Ubieto Arteta, ed., Cartulario de Albelda, pp. 131-32, and Eliseo Sáinz Ripa, ed., Colección diplomática de las colegiatas de Albelda y Logroño, 924-1399, vol. 1 (Logroño, 1981), pp. 29-30; on Aug. 25, 1072, Braga, Arquivo Distrital, Liber Fidei, ff. 102r-103v, and repeated ff. 112v-113 r; and finally on Aug. 6, 1072, as reigning in both León and Castile, José María Lacarra, ed., Colección diplomática de Irache (Zaragoza, 1965), pp. 64-66.

But Sancho is given as reigning in León on Jan. 26, 1072, AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 110r; on Feb. 19, 1072, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, ed.. Documentos lingüísticos de España, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1966), p. 15, n. 3; on May 11, 1072, María Luisa Cabranes Catalá, "Un documento en escritura visigótica en el archivo de Valencia," AL 35 (1981): 193-99; on May 12, 1072, AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 104r; on May 25, 1072, Braga, Arquivo Distrital, Liber Fidei, fol. 113r-v; and finally on May 27, 1072, Berganza, Antigüedades de España 2:438.

Few of these documents can be rejected out of hand, but most seem to be copies of a later date and consequently subject to error especially in the daring. It seems unlikely that the tangle they create will ever be entirely resolved. The much later Crónica Najerense, p. 111, and the "Annales Complutenses," Huici, Crónicas latinas, p. 48, place the battle on July 15, 1071, which is utterly irreconcilable with the whole documentation of the period.

59. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:920. The literary account is most fully presented in Menéndez Pidal, ed., Primera crónica general 2:502-503.

60. Sanchez Alonso, ed., Crónica del Obispo, pp. 77-78.