[93] The reconstitution of the realm of León-Castilla in the latter two-thirds of the eleventh century was but one of the local manifestations of the startling growth and vigor exhibited in the whole of western Europe during that period. Alfonso VI was the contemporary of William the Conqueror, of Robert Guiscard, and of the Emperor Henry IV. Like them, his reign was spent in a constant effort to employ the newly available resources of rising population, increasing wealth, and a curiously enhanced self-confidence. Everywhere this drive was marked by a spectacular aggrandizement at the expense of older institutions and arrangements which eventuated in the creation of an essentially new status quo.

Yet while these regional political revolutions were developing along analogous lines but largely in isolation from one another, still another revolution was taking place that would affect all of them in largely the same ways, challenging and modifying the structures that were in the process of emergence within them. Eleventh-century western European society was in ferment not only in the sphere of high politics but also in the sphere of religion. Alfonso VI was also the contemporary of Abbot Hugh the Great of Cluny and of popes Gregory VII, Urban II, and Pascal II.

Religious reform in that age had, like political revolution, autochthonous, local origins and forms, but it also possessed, or created, international centers, a striving for universal expression, and a set of widely applicable norms and dispositions. In Cluny and Rome religious aspirations found vehicles for the realization of their aims on a continental scale and provided the only general European movements of high culture during this age.

In the Iberian peninsula the emergence of a local movement for ecclesiastical reform and its gradual elaboration of contacts with the great house of Cluny preceded the reign of Alfonso VI. That much is clear. Yet the reign of Fernando I has been little studied, and religious reform could have had a much wider connotation in the eleventh century than it has for us. In that age it could mean something as simple as the reconstruction [94] of a church or the institution of the cult of a new saint, the recovery of secularized church lands or the establishment of a new juridical relationship between Christian and Jew. In Spain, specifically, it also encompassed the recovery of Christian lands long since held by the Muslim, the liberation of the Mozarab population subject to the rule of Islam, and the recreation of the Christian hierarchy of late antiquity as the Reconquista was progressively realized.

In this latter sense the conquests of Fernando I during the last decade of his realm were a religious phenomenon as well as a political one. Particularly in Portugal, where they had been most successful, they found an explicitly religious content with the reestablishment of the ancient sees of Braga, Lamego, and Túy on the part of his son and successor, García of Galicia-Portugal. Also during the period of the three kingdoms from 1065 to 1072 the same preoccupation is reflected in Sancho II's reendowment of Oca-Burgos.

Fernando el Magno supported and presided over the deliberations of the great "national" council at Coyanza in 1055 which addressed the problems of both the secular and the regular clergy. He secured the "repatriation" of the remains of Saint Isidore of Sevilla to León, and the relics of three other martyrs were rescued from the ruined city of Avila and distributed in the realm. Finally the king personally patronized the monastery of Sahagún, which was to become the pantheon of the dynasty.

To all of these measures, which illustrate well the conjunction of political and religious functions in the medieval conception of kingship, Fernando added a specific relationship with the great Burgundian monastic center at Cluny. It consisted in a very cordial relationship, which included the offering of regular prayers for the king at that abbey and his payment of an annual census in return.

It is difficult to know the full import of this arrangement, but there is no evidence to indicate that it established a formal connection between monasticism in the realm and Cluny. Moreover, the connection seems to have lapsed at Fernando's death.⁽¹⁾

[95] The profound and lasting involvement of Cluny and León-Castilla was to blossom during the reign of Alfonso VI and would influence everything from dynastic marriages to monastic liturgical practice. The origins of the renewed cooperation may be found in the intercession of Abbot Hugh the Great (1049-1109) to secure the release of Alfonso by his victorious brother Sancho in the winter of 1072.⁽²⁾ Certainly Alfonso was not long restored to power when on May 29, 1073, he bestowed on Cluny its first monastic house in the realm, San Isidro de Dueñas.⁽³⁾ Bishko believes that this donation is the first of a series whose purpose was a surrogate for the unpaid census due Cluny for the years 1073-77.⁽⁴⁾ Such motivation is indeed possible, but it need not preclude the likelihood as well that the gift was intended to encourage or reward that abbot in negotiating the betrothal of Alfonso to the daughter of Duke William of Acquitaine.

In any event, the relationship thus signalized endured and prospered over the next several years. The new Cluniac monastery at Dueñas was generously treated by a charter of February 7, 1076.⁽⁵⁾ The monastery of San Salvador de Palaz del Rey was ceded to the Burgundian house on August 27, 1076.⁽⁶⁾ That of Santiago de Astudillo joined the Cluniac ranks on January 30, 1077, to be followed by San Juan de Hérmedes de Cerrato on May 22, 1077.⁽⁷⁾ Finally, not two months later, Alfonso doubled the annual census payment to Cluny that "my father customarily gave."⁽⁸⁾ By this time, however, Alfonso VI had already come into contact with the other great new ecclesiastical power in the west.

Although the documentary record remains largely unexplored, the contact between the papacy and León-Castilla may well prove to have been earlier than commonly assumed.⁽⁹⁾ The first known papal bull directed [96] to an institution subsequently part of that kingdom was that of Clement II, dated May 23, 1047, to the monastery of Oña.⁽¹⁰⁾ The first known papal legate to visit the peninsula was Cardinal Hugh the White from 1065 to 1068, who seems to have raised questions about the Mozarabic liturgical usage with Fernando I.⁽¹¹⁾ A near contemporary account describes a commission of bishops sent to Rome with liturgical books which were examined and approved there by Pope Alexander II.⁽¹²⁾

This incident illustrates very well the character of the new relationships coming into existence between the reinvigorated monarchy, which viewed the church of the realm in part as an extension of its own authority, and the reformed papacy, striving to reinforce its moral authority with an administrative and judicial superiority over the local churches of Europe. By and large the crown was quick to see and to use the new papal prestige to reinforce its own desires and purposes. Most often, it seems to me, the several kings thus secured an important addition to their own policy and were able, by controlling the flow of information and persons to Rome, to manipulate this new instrument to their own ends. But while they possessed all of the advantages that flowed from proximity and intimate knowledge of persons and situations, they unconsciously validated an appellate jurisdiction of whose purposes and dynamic they had little understanding and for which they often had little sympathy when these affected practical decisions. The resultant misunderstanding, mutual dismay, and frequent opposition fills the pages of the history of the high Middle Ages.⁽¹³⁾

[97] In any event, communication between Rome and León-Castilla seems to have lapsed during the confusing period of the divided kingdom. The councils supposed to have been held by Cardinal Hugh at Nájera and Llantada in 1067 in the presence of Sancho II of Castilla come from a very late source and are tainted by their obvious intent of justifying the monastery of San Millán de La Cogolla in retaining the tithe from their lands against episcopal claims.⁽¹⁴⁾

When the kingdom was reunited under Alfonso VI, he certainly became aware almost immediately of both the continuity and the range of interests of the reformed papacy. Although we cannot be sure that the king received a copy of Gregory VII's letter of April 30, 1073, addressed "to all princes in the land of Spain," he would certainly have been aware of the project of a crusade to be led by Ebles of Roucy and perhaps even of the papal claim to suzerainty expressed in that missive.⁽¹⁵⁾ Nothing came of this crusading project, however.

Moreover, the Leonese monarch seems to have entered into direct relations with at least the papal legate Gerald of Ostia, for sometime in the spring of 1073 the latter excommunicated a Bishop Muño, who claimed the see of Oca-Burgos. Muño is a shadowy figure who was perhaps originally the Navarrese choice for that see of old Castilla when the area was in contention between the two realms. His condemnation could hardly have taken place without the appearance of Bishop Jimeno of Oca-Burgos before the legate to place the complaint. That Jimeno would have taken such a step without royal consent is unimaginable. On March 19, 1074, Gregory VII himself wrote to both Alfonso VI and Sancho García IV of Navarra stating that he upheld the sentence of his legate.⁽¹⁶⁾

The papal decision was doubtless gratifying to the Leonese monarch, and the awkward claim of papal suzerainty was not raised. But the pope raised again the issue of rites and launched an impassioned attack on the Mozarabic liturgy as a deviation from proper norms and a product of Priscillianism, Arianism, and the Muslim conquest. He called for the receipt of the "Romanae ecclesiae ordinem et officium" in its place. The pope also asserted that "your bishops" had already promised at the papal court to effect just that, although it is not clear that bishops of León-Castilla [98] as well as those of Navarra are meant since the letter is addressed to both monarchs.⁽¹⁷⁾

The issue was thus joined even if neither Alfonso VI nor his churchmen gave any evidence in this period of an awareness that the customary life of their church was to be altered significantly. In 1073 the bishop of the royal city, Pelagius of León, could still have written in his will that Fernando I had "advanced me" to that see, quite unselfconsciously and with no reference to pope or canonical practice.⁽¹⁸⁾ Even a century later a monastic chronicler could recopy, in the same spirit, an old notice that Alfonso VI gave Bishop Arias "the see of Oviedo" in 1073.⁽¹⁹⁾ In 1075 a dispute over diocesan boundaries between the bishops of Braga and Orense could be routinely referred to the crown for adjudication.⁽²⁰⁾ And, as we have already seen, just at this time a mixture of practicality and royal initiative was transferring an ancient episcopal see from the hill country of Oca down to the growing city of Burgos. This latter process too took place without evidence whatsoever of papal consultation or consent.

In fact early chroniclers attribute even the introduction of the Roman liturgy to the royal initiative. The chronicle of Bishop Pelayo, immediately after its account of Alfonso's imprisonment of his brother, García, tells us that the former "quickly sent representatives to Rome to Pope Hildebrand" to secure the introduction of the Roman rite.⁽²¹⁾ Even in 1073 Alfonso would have been aware of papal desires in this regard because of the events of the last year of the reign of his father and, more recently, because the Roman usage had just been introduced in Aragón [99] in 1071.⁽²²⁾ Nonetheless it is hard to believe that the papal letter of March 1074, which so carefully mentioned the acquiescence of some Spanish bishops, would have ignored such a welcome royal initiative had there been one.

Indeed everything suggests that at this point the pope was entirely unaware of this basic difference of attitudes and the resistance it could engender. By May 9, 1074, Gregory VII had changed his mind on a question that was vital to Alfonso. On that date the former wrote to the king, this time addressing him as "regi Hyspaniae," and informed him that he had lifted the excommunication of Bishop Muño and directed Alfonso to restore him to his "antiquam sedem."⁽²³⁾ The pope was vague about what see that would have been, but there is no question that his decision, if implemented, would have reversed the concentration of authority over the northern Castilian hill districts in the hands of Bishop Jimeno of Oca-Burgos, which was the aim of royal policy.⁽²⁴⁾ It would have had political and strategic no less than ecclesiastical effects. What means Bishop Muño had at his disposal to secure such a reversal of both a legatine and a papal decision is not clear. Wittingly or not, however, he had become an instrument of papal policy. Gregory's letter points out that the bishop had sworn to introduce the Roman liturgy, and it reveals that Muño had been renamed Paul, probably by papal action. The obvious reference is to the great St. Paul, generally credited in this period with the first conversion of Spain, and thus the symbolic designation of Muño as the favored papal agent was hardly to be missed by the king.

Yet Alfonso had no intention of acceding to such a papal design. Muño had returned to the peninsula by June 16, 1074, doubtless bringing the papal letter with him, when he confirmed a charter of the king to the monastery of San Millán.⁽²⁵⁾ The initial hesitation of the Leonese [100] monarch may be reflected in the charter to Oca-Burgos of July 8, 1074, which was issued by the infantas Urraca and Elvira. The charter was granted to Bishop Jimeno although the hapless Bishop Muño confirmed it, without indication of his see.⁽²⁶⁾ It seemed safer, for the moment, not to commit the king himself to open opposition to the papal decree.

Though no direct record of them remains, we can be sure that negotiations between pope and monarch ensued. By May 1, 1075, the latter felt secure enough himself to grant some sort of charter to Bishop Jimeno of Burgos, which Bishop Muño was not even allowed to confirm.⁽²⁷⁾ Over the next few years the papal protégé seems to have lived in seclusion, surely by royal direction, in the monastery of Cardeña just outside Burgos, where he confirms several private documents simply as "bishop."⁽²⁸⁾ He is conspicuously absent from royal documents while Bishop Jimeno appears in them regularly. The bargain that had been struck, at his expense, between pope and monarch is indicated in Gregory VII's letter of May, 1076, addressed to Bishop Jimeno. Preoccupied surely with his struggle with the German emperor, Henry IV, which had not yet turned clearly in his favor, Hildebrand decided to settle for the adoption of the Roman liturgy in León-Castilla, at least for the moment. It should be noted that his letter is addressed to Bishop Jimeno as "Hyspanorum episcopo"; very grand to be sure, but leaving open the question of Oca-Burgos.⁽²⁹⁾ The bishop is urged to see that the Roman rite is employed throughout Spain and Galicia. The peculiar phraseology is but one indication of the uncertainty in Rome of the politics and geography of the peninsula.

Such a compromise was acceptable to Alfonso VI as well. Probably even before his receipt of this papal letter, while he lay about Burgos in May and June of 1076 preparing for a southern campaign, he decreed the adoption of the Roman liturgy in council with his bishops. The date of the "Council of Burgos" has been much debated by historians of the question in part because of the character of the sources but rather more, I believe, because modern historians have seen the institution that is the council through the eyes of canon law and ecclesiastical practice, both of a later and more formal period. They have appreciated neither the informal practices of the eleventh century nor the looseness of its language.⁽³⁰⁾[101] As a result they have disputed about the date of a single, grand ecclesiastical "Council of Burgos" when the reality may well have been decisions made in the royal court, by the bishops then present, on one occasion and confirmed on another; both at Burgos. At least the apparent failure of any conciliar canons or acts to survive points toward that conclusion.

At any rate, the identification of 1076 as the year in which the new liturgy was introduced by the two earliest sources, each independent of the other, is conclusive when taken in context. The anonymous monk of Sahagún and Bishop Pelayo agree on that date, although unfortunately the latter erroneously associates the event with the rather later papal legate Richard of Marseille.⁽³¹⁾ But this attempt on the part of the crown to comply with papal wishes in the matter of the liturgy met with considerable opposition, as mentioned by the king in a letter to Abbot Hugh of Cluny a little more than a year later in which the king seeks the help of Hugh to arrange the despatch of a new papal legation to facilitate the transition.⁽³²⁾ The king himself may even have arranged first a judicial duel and then a trial by fire to convince some of his subjects that the substitution of rites was divinely ordained. At least the Crónica Najerense, over a century later, tells us that on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1077, a royal champion defending the Roman usage was defeated by a Castilian knight upholding the Mozarabic in a duel at Burgos, and that when ordinals representing both rites were cast into a great fire Alfonso himself had to kick the Mozarabic ordinal back into the fire from which it had had the effrontery to jump.⁽³³⁾ Alfonso was certainly at Burgos in the spring of 1077. But even if the stories are entirely [102] legendary the fact that in both of them the king is portrayed as frustrated in his intent preserves the essential truth of the situation at that time.

The source and the strength of opposition to the royal and papal wills need to be reasonably assessed. It was a clerical phenomenon to be sure, as Menéndez Pidal begins by emphasizing. But to make it a crisis of "Spanish nationalism" is simply to project the viewpoint of early twentieth-century Spain onto the late eleventh.⁽³⁴⁾ A popular phenomenon it was not. The alteration of some few rubrics of the Latin mass or a modest rearrangement of the feast days of saints would have passed quite unnoticed for those illiterate in their own tongues much less the Latin one. Even among the cathedral clergy and, above all, the monastic clergy, only the fractious and the most scrupulous of purists would have been disposed to make an issue of it, and purists are scarce in any age. The Mozarabic and the Roman rituals after all had never developed in complete independence of one another.⁽³⁵⁾ We may be quite sure that the consolidation of some of the minor clerical orders was the practical irritant. Here the loss of office and influence, and in the secular church the concommitant loss of revenues, would have offended gravely. Moreover precisely among these minor officeholders of the cathedral and the monastic clergy were to be found the relatives and clients of the nobility, some of which may be safely presumed to have been eager to impede or embarrass the royal purposes.

Certainly the king would have been disposed to override opposition of this nature in return for the secure support of the papal prestige which could be turned to his own purposes, as his letter to Hugh of Cluny in July 1077 indicates. But here, as in so many other instances, Gregory VII was to overreach himself grievously. Flushed by what was apparently a complete victory over the German emperor in early 1077, that pope despatched a new letter to the "kings, counts, and other princes of Spain" on June 28, 1077, in which he reasserted the papal suzerainty over the peninsula in the most uncompromising terms. He also announced that new legates, Bishop Amadeus of Olorón and Abbot Frotard of Saint-Pons de Thomiéres, were being sent to effect his wishes.⁽³⁶⁾ The offensive rnissive could not have reached Alfonso before [103] early August at best and would have had no chance of exacting compliance from the first moment of its composition. Its first effect must have been to give that monarch further pause in pushing on with the change of liturgies.

Before the king had even received that letter he had been continuing, obstinately, to strengthen his own position in the matter of the bishopric of Oca-Burgos. On May 21, 1077, he had arranged for the transfer of a royal monastery to Bishop Jimeno in return for the cession of an episcopally held monastery.⁽³⁷⁾ Then, on the following day, Alfonso ceded the latter monastery to Cluny.⁽³⁸⁾ Perhaps he hoped in this fashion to interest that powerful Burgundian monastery in supporting his ecclesiastical arrangements in that diocese. In any event, later in the year, and after the papal letter must have reached him, he sanctioned a major exchange of properties between the northern monastery of Oña and Oca-Burgos, which would deplete the resources of a restored bishopric on the upper Ebro and consolidate the territories of his favorite.⁽³⁹⁾ The exchange was made with the expressed approval of the monarch.

As to the matter of the claimed papal suzerainty, Alfonso VI is not known to have protested directly to Gregory VII although he may well have. Certainly the papal legates mentioned in the offending letter never entered León-Castilla although they were active in Catalonia in late 1077 and early 1078.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Rather, the pope would write to Abbot Hugh of Cluny on May 7, 1078, saying that he would send Cardinal Richard, later abbot of Saint Victor of Marseilles, to Spain on the Burgundian abbot's advice and at the request of Alfonso.⁽⁴¹⁾

But had the king of León-Castilla responded in a broader, more theoretical fashion to the papal claim of hegemony in Spain? I am inclined, at this writing, to think that he did, although the relatively informal and unstylized nature of the royal chancery practice at this time makes for a problem of some complexity. Nevertheless it appears that Alfonso VI began himself to make a formal claim to suzerainty over the entire peninsula, "imperator totius hispaniae," as a countermeasure to the papal pretensions and its accompanying strategy of dealing severally with the "regibus, comitibus, ceterisque principibus Hyspaniae."

[104] It is true that the first use of the imperial title by Alfonso VI in an original, royal diploma comes only on April 7, 1079. However an original but private charter written by the same royal notary who was responsible for the royal document of 1079 was confirmed by Alfonso as emperor on January 29, 1078, and yet another royal charter by the same notary, but this time a copy, permits us to push the employment of the imperial title back to October 17, 1077.⁽⁴²⁾ This cannot be more than ten or twelve weeks after the earliest probable date on which Alfonso could have received the papal letter of June 28, 1077. Since the first verifiable use of the imperial title by Alfonso thus follows so closely upon the papal assertion of suzerainty it is arguably a response to the latter.⁽⁴³⁾

The question of the essential novelty of the Leonese monarch's action is also controverted. It does seem safe to say that there is absolutely no evidence that his father, Fernando I, or his brothers had ever employed it. Charters of Alfonso VI himself issued before 1077 display some evidence of a tendency to attribute the imperial dignity to Fernando retrospectively, but the testimony is scattered and rests upon late copies only. Surely one should admit that the subjection of most of the Muslim taifa kingdoms to Alfonso after 1073 and the absorption of most of Navarra in 1076 would have disposed him to some new formulation of what was becoming a de facto hegemony in the peninsula. But the record, as best we can currently reconstruct it, points to the papal claim as the essential stimulus and emphasizes the novel character of the royal assertion.⁽⁴⁴⁾

[105] Exactly what the new legate, Cardinal Richard, achieved in 1078 cannot be determined. Menéndez Pidal believed that he proclaimed the official substitution of the Roman liturgy for the Mozarabic with full papal authority, but the sources on which he bases his assertion are better than a full century after the fact.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The only action of Richard during this legation of which we have any sure knowledge is his intervention in the ecclesiastical affairs of Aragón.⁽⁴⁶⁾ If indeed he took any such action it was neither the first such initiative nor the definitive one, as we have seen and will see. At best the papal legate could not have arrived in León-Castilla before about June 8, 1078, given the date of the papal letter. Even this would presume that he left Rome within two days of its having been written, was able to secure a ship at Rome for Barcelona, delayed not at all either in Catalonia or in Aragón, and made the best possible speed over that rugged country between Barcelona and Burgos which was then safe for travel by Christians.⁽⁴⁷⁾ The probabilities are all against such a combination of events, and the real likelihood is that Richard did not reach León-Castilla before the beginning of August at the earliest.

The new papal emissary may have found himself immediately entangled in the complicated matrimonial affairs of the Leonese monarch. The last appearance of Alfonso's wife, Inés, in the documents occurs on May 22, 1077. A French chronicle tells us that the king had repudiated her because of her inability to conceive a child, but it does not say when this occurred.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Such a proceeding would have been delicate since Inés was the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, whom Alfonso would not have cared to antagonize. Papal correspondence at this time makes no [106] reference to the matter though it is difficult to imagine that Cardinal Richard would not have been at least consulted.

The legate must have left Spain by early August of 1079 for he had returned to Rome before October 15, 1079. Whatever had taken place during the year of his stay was highly satisfactory to Gregory VII for on that date the pope wrote to the "glorious king of the Spanish."⁽⁴⁹⁾ Claims to papal sovereignty were not mentioned but a golden rose was despatched as a sign of favor. The king was also informed that Cardinal Richard was being sent yet a second time to treat of ecclesiastical matters. The much traveled legate could not have returned to León-Castilla much before March 1, 1080, however, for it was only on November 2, 1079, that the pope wrote to Richard consoling him for the death of the latters brother and appointing him abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles in the deceased Bernard's place.⁽⁵⁰⁾ The legate was told to proceed to Spain after he had suitably disposed the affairs of the monastery. It is likely that he spent the Christmas season at St. Victor, even though he had been urged not to delay, for he would hardly have received the letter itself before early December.

We are dependent almost exclusively on the papal correspondence for the development of the rites controversy, for the activity of Alfonso VI in this regard is exceedingly difficult to determine during the period 1078 to 1080. There is a copy of a royal charter, purportedly of 1078, issued jointly with Abbot Robert of Sahagún, which would indicate the reform of that monastery in cooperation with Cluny if it could be accepted as of that date.⁽⁵¹⁾ No less than ten documents of Sahagún, however, demonstrate that one "Julianus" continued as abbot there until at least December 10, 1079.

The coalescence of the interests and initiatives of León-Castilla, Rome, and Cluny at this time must be traced largely in terms of inference. As we have seen, Alfonso VI was, probably by this time, in search of a new wife but would not have wanted to offend the father of his former wife, Duke William of Aquitaine. Now in 1078 the new Duke of Burgundy, Hugh I, was campaigning in the peninsula.⁽⁵²⁾ Duke Hugh was the nephew of William of Aquitaine, who had married his aunt, Audearde, in 1069, and although Hugh compaigned in Aragón it is [107] possible that negotiations were initiated at this time.⁽⁵³⁾ The matter could hardly have been resolved, however, for the Burgundian duke retired to the monastery of Cluny, presided over by his cousin, Abbot Hugh the Great, in that same year.⁽⁵⁴⁾

The new Duke, Eudes I Borel, would nevertheless also have been in the same position of natural intermediary for he was brother to Hugh and thus also nephew of the duke of Aquitaine and cousin of the abbot of Cluny. There seems to have been a drawing together of all of these principals, related by blood, in 1079 with respect to their policy in the north of Spain. Sancho Ramírez of Aragón sought and obtained the betrothal of his son, Pedro, to the daughter of Duke William of Aquitaine, the second Queen Inés, who was half-sister of the former wife of Alfonso VI and also the cousin of Duke Eudes of Burgundy.⁽⁵⁵⁾ At the same time negotiations were certainly in progress that would result in the marriage of Constance of Burgundy to Alfonso VI, and she was niece of Abbot Hugh of Cluny, sister-in-law of Duke William of Aquitaine, and sister of Duke Eudes of Burgundy.

How quickly these related diplomatic initiatives found fruition is again a most confused matter. Pierre David thought that Constance and Alfonso were already married on May 10, 1079, but the charter of Alfonso to Sahagún on which he based that conclusion was issued to Abbot Robert, who was not yet the superior of that monastery.⁽⁵⁶⁾ In addition, if Constance was already queen one thinks that she would surely have been mentioned in the text or have confirmed the charter by which Alfonso VI granted to Abbot Hugh of Cluny the monastery of Santa María de Nájera on September 3, 1079.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Rather I suspect that this donation was made largely out of gratitude for Hugh's assistance on the occasion of Constances arrival in Spain. The confirmation list indicates that it was issued either at Burgos or at Nájera itself, either of which would have been a natural place to welcome the party of the prospective bride. Clearly then the Cardinal Richard would have been at [108] the Leonese court during the time in which the marriage was being negotiated but would have left it before Constances arrival.

The wedding probably took place sometime in the late fall or early winter of 1079, possibly during the Christmas festivities although it is impossible to be certain. The known documents are simply too enigmatic to be helpful.⁽⁵⁸⁾

At roughly the same season Alfonso VI was also implementing church reform along lines acceptable to himself. A private document of Sahagún dated January 22, 1080, informs us that the Cluniac monk, Robert, had become abbot of that most valued of royal monasteries.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Presumably this is the same agent of Abbot Hugh who was mentioned in a private charter of donation on August 1, 1076, and in the letter of the Leonese monarch to Hugh in July 1077.⁽⁶⁰⁾ It is reasonably certain, then, that by the time Cardinal Richard could have returned to León-Castilla its king would have had a new wife and Sahagún a new abbot.

Evidently the papal legate reacted strongly to that monarchs actions and reported his feelings to Gregory VII in the same tenor. On June 27, 1080, the pontiff wrote three letters, one to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, another to Alfonso VI, and a last to his legate, although the date of the latter two has been lost. The language of each is sufficiently opaque to have caused some problems in understanding all the factors contributing to the papal distress, but the depth of his outrage is clear enough.

Gregory requested Hugh to recall the monk Robert to Cluny and to suspend him from all ecclesiastical functions. It is unmistakable that the complaint against him was connected with the question of the Mozarabic liturgy. Robert and the king may have agreed to permit its continued usage at Sahagún in order to placate the opposition there to the installation of a French abbot. Such a concession would have constituted a dangerous precedent from the papal point of view because of the close association of that monastery with the crown. It would have signaled the kings willingness to temporize on the issue and made the subsequent [109] introduction of the Roman rite more difficult elsewhere. In addition, the abbot of Cluny is directed to see that the monks of some monastery, not specified by name. Who have been unjustly dispersed shall be allowed to return.⁽⁶¹⁾ This reference has usually been understood to mean the monks of Sahagún but it might also refer to those of Santa María de Nájera, who were replaced by Cluniacs perhaps as early as September 1079.⁽⁶²⁾ Finally Hugh is advised to inform Alfonso VI of Rome's displeasure and to counsel him to accept its leadership lest he be excommunicated and find the pope himself in Spain to enforce his will.

The papal letter to Alfonso himself is somewhat more moderate. Rather than the king himself, it rails against Robert and requests that he be returned to Cluny. Alfonso is treated as having been misled, reminded of how Rome has rejoiced in his past exemplary conduct, and warned that St. Peter too has a sword. But the missive mentions neither the matter of the rites, papal suzerainty, the abbacy of Sahagún, dispersed monks, nor even the bishopric of Oca-Burgos. Instead, it illuminates against a marriage, "illicitum conubium, quod cum uxoris tuae consanguinea inisti." It is in this regard that the obedience of the king is demanded and the wrath of the papacy threatened.⁽⁶³⁾

The woman is not mentioned but it can be no other than Queen Constance herself. Arguments have been made that it was someone in her suite or a mistress from another quarter entirely, but these conjectures founder on the language of the papal letter itself, as Pierre David long since pointed out, which refers to a marriage and not an illicit love affair. David is unquestionably correct in his analysis that Gregory VII's objection to Alfonso's marriage was based upon the relationship of Inés and Constance, who were cousins in the fourth degree, and so, in the terminology of church law, the king's second marriage was incestuous just as the papal letter states. But because David erroneously believes that he has dated Inés's death he overlooks the possibility that the pope was choosing the most efficacious means of defending the rights of Alfonso's first queen.⁽⁶⁴⁾

We cannot, of course, be sure that Inés was still alive. Nor can we be sure that the papal argument in his letter to the king was more than a [110] tactic framed to attack the monarch at a truly vulnerable point in order to secure royal complaisance on matters yet more dear to Rome. Surely the marriage to Constance would endure. But it well may be that Cardinal Richard, who could hardly have been ignorant of the marriage negotiations in 1078 and 1079 but had left León-Castilla before Constance's arrival, had been deceived or simply left in ignorance of the blood relationship it involved. On his return in February 1080 he may have discovered it or even have been informed of it by partisans or former members of Queen Inéss entourage. In any event, if we judge from the various letters of Gregory VII, the legates complaints included this unwelcome news among reports of a variety of other events equally unwelcome from the standpoint of Rome.

The sequence of events in this case illustrates well one great disadvantage of the papal reform movement in this period. Even given an active system of legates, the difficulties of travel and communication constantly left the real initiative in the hands of the monarch. The papacy found itself continually forced to try to undo one or another royal fait accompli already well established by the sheer passage of time. If Constance was married to Alfonso in the late fall of 1079, if Cardinal Richard wrote his bill of particulars in late February 1080, the pope did not learn of all this much before his letter of June 27, 1080. At best, Gregory's letter to Alfonso could hardly have arrived before the end of August, and by then apparently the new queen was with child.

These twin factors of distance and time seem also to have combined to render papal letters, impassioned though they were, totally ineffectual. Before they had been drafted, the circumstances they addressed had already been modified, at least to the extent to which they were to be altered. The letters themselves then could only have had the effect of giving additional and pointless offense.

At the time that the papal legate dispatched the report that so angered Gregory VII, he would have informed the king of the action he was taking. Perhaps that was the point at which serious negotiations had begun, for Alfonso VI was too wily a diplomat to believe that no concessions would have to be made on his part. The simplest and least painful way to indicate his own good intentions was to sacrifice his counsellor and the new abbot of Sahagún, the monk Robert. As we have seen above, the pope himself would later attack not the person of king but precisely that adviser. This step had been taken before April 24, 1080, when a private donation to Sahagún already mentions a new abbot there, one Bernard.⁽⁶⁵⁾ This gesture had little real cost to the monarch [111] since the new abbot was another Cluniac monk and confidant of Abbot Hugh the Great. In fact, Bernard was to become the lifelong associate of Alfonso and his most reliable supporter as well as the first archbishop of Toledo after 1080.

Similarly, the king was prepared to yield on the question of the liturgy so long as the papacy was willing to put its entire influence behind such a change and to drop its pursuit of other matters more important to the king. This step too had been taken, perhaps in conjunction with yet another Council of Burgos held during Lent or at Easter, which fell on April 12 in that year. The documentary record is very scanty for the spring of 1080. At any rate, on May 8, 1080, Alfonso granted a most significant charter of immunity to the abbey of Sahagún and Abbot Bernard.⁽⁶⁶⁾

The document as we have it has been the object of much tampering and must be used with caution. Nonetheless I incline to accept the fact that it was issued at a great council of the realm for it was confirmed by all thirteen of the bishops of León-Castilla as well as an equally impressive host of secular magnates. It is difficult to imagine that a forger would have gone to such lengths to validate a simple charter of immunities. The lengthy introduction to the document touches definitely on the question of the change of rites as the king writes "ut in Hispanie partibus dominio meo ab eodem commissis dignissimum romane institutionis officium celebrari preciperem." It also elaborates on the changes effected at Sahagún by the royal initiative in the words "decrevi una cum conjuge mea regina Constancia prefatum monasterium. . . reformare atque per electionem fratrum ibidem commorantium Bernardum in eodem prefato monasterio abbatem constitui in presentia Ricardi Romane ecclesie cardinalis."

Aside from this text, which forms such an unusual and extraordinary preamble to an otherwise simple charter of immunity, we have no documents that bear directly on the events of the spring of 1080 in León-Castilla. It is possible that Alfonso VI chose this means of emphasizing the importance of his own initiatives and of both implicating the papal [112] legate in them and associating his new queen with those actions and thereby enhancing the likelihood of her eventual acceptance by the papacy. A better possibility, it seems to me, is that a decision was made later at Sahagún to incorporate in a reworking of the charter a brief account of those events, the memory of which still survived in that monastery. If the latter is the case, it is well to recall that the oldest copy we have of the reworked text can be dated to the period between 1110 and 1120, when the Becerro gótico, which includes the charter, was produced.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Certainly, then, extant documents of Sahagún, as well as the memory of older monks perhaps, would have been sufficient to allow an accurate dating of what had transpired. Moreover, the text as we have it furnishes a description that is plausible in terms of the desiderata of royal policy and of the ordinary practice of the times.

The suggestion to redate this document to 1081 thus must be rejected on a variety of grounds.⁽⁶⁸⁾ A settlement had been reached which must have been at least satisfactory to both sides, and which Cardinal Richard would have communicated to the pope as soon as it was final so as to secure his approbation. The legates letter and the papal letters of late June must have crossed. Doubtless the king too wrote to Gregory VII to explain the resolution in his own terms and to suggest yet other areas in which he sought papal cooperation.

In a letter dated only to 1081 the Roman pontiff responded and gave his approval of much of what had been done.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Alfonso is addressed as the "glorious king of Spain," and the acceptance of the Roman liturgy in his kingdom is celebrated. The matters of the king's wife and of the abbacy of Sahagún are to be entrusted to Cardinal Richard and Bishop Jimeno of Oca-Burgos for a decision. Hope is expressed that Alfonso will continue to merit the honor by which Christ has raised him "super omnes Hispaniae reges," and he is thanked for his munificence to the see of Peter. Clearly the storm had passed away for the time.

There remained but one matter on which the pontiff was not ready to yield to the royal wishes, at least in all particulars. It appears from [113] the papal letter that the king had hoped to erect at this time a metropolitan see within his domains and had even chosen a candidate for that dignity. Gregory VII did not oppose the idea as such but rather suggested that the king, with the counsel of the legate and other religious men of the realm, seek a more suitable candidate.

This entire matter remains mysterious for the papal letter mentions neither the name of the candidate or the see that was to be so honored. If the reconstitution of the ancient hierarchy of the Iberian church were to be the controlling principle, there was but one see, Braga, then within Alfonso's domains that had had archiepiscopal rank in antiquity. Pierre David suggests that this was the see the king had in mind.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Certainly both Lugo and Oviedo, and perhaps even Santiago de Compostela, had ambitions of achieving archiepiscopal rank, but they lacked both the canonical precedents and, even more importantly, a central position within the realm now centered on the meseta of León-Castilla.

This last consideration would have been best met by the erection of the royal city of León to the metropolitan rank, but that see was itself entirely a creation of the Reconquista and its necessities. Five years later, of course, the solution was simple when Toledo was to be reconstituted as an archbishopric, for the see had held both that rank and the primateship for a time within the ancient Visigothic kingdom. But in 1080 even Alfonso VI could hardly have been so confident of his permanent recovery of that city and kingdom. Oca-Burgos could claim ancient foundation, but that see was neither central to the realm nor of great importance as an urban center at this time.⁽⁷¹⁾ The greatest likelihood is that Alfonso was thinking of Palencia, which was more or less in the center of the meseta, had a clear record of classical foundation, and whose bishop was a familiar of his court.

All in all the events of the years 1076 to 1080 were to have a far-reaching effect on the church of León-Castilla and, more indirectly, on the kingdom itself. Certainly they enormously enlarged and extended the already traditional ties between that monarchy and the great Burgundian order centered at Cluny. Cluniac monks began to penetrate the great abbeys of the realm and prepared the way for the eventual establishment of a chain of houses that would spread to the far west of the [114] peninsula and set a precedent for the penetration of yet a second wave of French monasticism under the Cistercians in the latter twelfth century. In addition, the subsequent transfer of the Cluniac monk Bernard from the abbacy of Sahagún to the primatial see of Toledo after 1085 would open the Spanish episcopacy itself to a host of French bishops through the cooperation of Bernard and his king over the next quarter of a century and even well beyond.

There would seem to be little reason to doubt that in the mind of the king this was one of the definitions of church reform. He was quite as likely as other monarchs of the late twelfth century to have been awed and impressed by the spiritual, intellectual, and organizational leadership that emanated from that Burgundian center. Yet he was likely, as well, to appreciate that French abbots and French bishops could be turned to peculiarly royal purposes since they had no family ties to the magnate houses of his realm and he and his dynasty were major patrons of the mother house itself. It may even be, as many modern historians have suggested, that he saw in Cluny an ecclesiastical counterweight to a too great influence of the reformed papacy in the peninsula. Here it must be remembered, however, that Cluny was never a rival to Rome, if it sometimes seems to have been a restraining and softening agent in relation to some papal initiatives and policies. That Alfonso came to appreciate this fact and sought the mediation of Cluny to negotiate those differences that he developed so swiftly with the Roman pontiffs is altogether probable. Rome itself was certainly aware of this aspect of the royal policy and was usually willing to tolerate it although occasionally impatient of the restraints it set. The reform movement after all could hardly be insensitive to the long-term beneficent results of Cluniac influences in Iberia since the effects of those influences generally ran parallel to its own desires.

At the same time the direct authority of Rome began to make itself felt in the most important of the Christian peninsular kingdoms for the first time. Although one may variously estimate the practical significance of the substitution of the Roman ritual for the Mozarabic, from this time forward the gradual advance of the former inexorably accompanied the extension and consolidation of royal power as the Reconquista progressed.⁽⁷²⁾ That necessity doubtless occasioned embarrassment and annoyance to Alfonso VI in his role as pragmatic politician, [115] but it is unlikely that he or any other layman of the times found their own spiritual life greatly hampered by it.

Of much more import was the assertion by the papacy of the right of ultimate decision on questions of administrative and judicial matters within the peninsular church, now recognized in principle. A modus vivendi in this area was extraordinarily difficult to elaborate as it was elsewhere in western Europe even if Spain saw no "Investitures" controversy such as that which wracked the empire and even England. Alfonso, like William the Conqueror, was disposed to allow the new papal claims just so long as Roman purposes coincided with his own and he was able to control the day-to-day activity of its agents. In the period of which we have been speaking, he seems clearly to have attained largely just that. The mysterious Bishop Muño of 1074 was permanently relegated to obscurity in the monastery of Cardeña, the undivided bishopric of Burgos continued as the partner of royal policy in all of Castilla, and the king obtained an abbot of his choice at Sahagún even if Bernard was not his original selection.

In that arena which we regard as purely political, if the age itself did not, the victory of the crown was yet more unequivocal. The papal claim to overlordship in León-Castilla vanished forever. Elsewhere in the peninsula, Urgel, Aragón, and later Portugal, it lingered on and was sometimes employed in the familiar European role of a weaker powers auxiliary defense against a stronger power, but its use was manipulated by the monarch rather than the papacy. The imperious necessity of the royal marriage to Constance of Burgundy triumphed, and Alfonso's daughter and successor, Urraca, would routinely style herself "domni adefonsi et constanciae reginae filia" in her charters.

Certainly such complex relationships are never finally fixed in human affairs. New problems and new opportunities would present again, on another specific terrain, the tensions between king and pope as collaborators and king and pope as rivals. In 1081, however, one thinks that Alfonso VI would have been rather more pleased with the balance then struck than would Gregory VII.

1. Much remains to be done in the investigation of the development of the church in León-Castilla in the eleventh century. Pius Bonifacius Gams, Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, vol. 2, pt. 2, and vol. 3, pt. 1 (Regensburg, 1874 and 1876), was thorough for its day but is now outdated. Zacariás García Villada, Historia eclesiástica de España, 5 vols. (Madrid, 1929-36), is invaluable but did not reach this period before it was terminated by the authors death. The latest cooperative effort, Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, ed., Historia de la Iglesia en España, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Madrid, 1982), is a disappointing resumé of old scholarship and attitudes. Even Justo Pérez de Urbel, Los monjes españoles en la Edad Media, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1933-34) needs to be revised in the light of recent scholarship. Although there is a plethora of particular studies and some attempts at more general ones of quite uneven quality, the most authoritative and knowledgeable historian of the subject is Charles Julian Bishko, "Fernando I and the Origins of the Leonese-Castilian Alliance with Cluny."

2. See chapter 4, note 66.

3. See chapter 5, note 30. Bishko, "Fernando I and Cluny," p. 18, dates this charter to Dec. 29, 1073, on the basis of much later Spanish copies.

4. Ibid., pp. 30-31.

5. See chapter 5, note 74.

6. BN, Manuscritos, 720, fol. 244r-v, and Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-17, fol. 775r-v.

7. January 30, 1077. BN, Manuscritos, 720, ff. 242r-243r, and Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-17, ff. 773r-774v. May 22, 1077. Pub. Alexandre Bruel, ed., Recueil des chartes de lAbbaye de Cluny, 4:625-26.

8. Ibid., pp. 627-29.

9. There is as yet no equivalent to the masterly studies by Paul Kehr, ed., "Papsturkunden in Spanien, I: Katalonien," Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft zur Göttingen. Philologisch-historische Klasse, N.F. vol. 18 (Berlin, 1926), and "Papsturkunden in Spanien, II: Navarra und Aragon," ibid., vol. 22 (Berlin, 1928), or Carl Erdmann, ed., "Papsturkunden in Portugal," ibid., vol. 20 (Berlin, 1927).

10. Juan de Alamo, ed., Colección diplomática de San Salvador de Oña 1:61-62. The question of the full integrity of the text aside, there is no good reason why a forger should have chosen such a relatively obscure pope or have assigned the composition of such a letter to such an unlikely place as Bordeaux unless he had such a model before him.

11. Gerhard Säbekow. Die päpstlichen Legationen nach Spanien und Portugal bis zum Ausgang des Xll Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1931), pp. 13-15. The supposed earlier legations of 1039 and 1055 are either unhistorical in the case of the former or dubious as to completion in the case of the latter. Ibid., pp. 12-13, notes 2, 3, 4, and 5. Paul Kehr, "El papado y los reinos de Navarra y Aragón hasta mediados del siglo XII," EEMCA 2 (1946): 94, n. 37, speculated that Cardinal Hugh may have been that cardinal who was said to have visited Santiago de Compostela. See Enrique Flórez, ed., "Historia Compostelana," ES 20:253, or José Campelo, ed. Historia Compostelana. p. 241.

12. The text was copied into the tenth-century "Códice Emilianese," Biblioteca de El Escorial, D.1.1., fol. 395r-396v. Though obviously the text is a partisan piece, it would have been foolish to appeal to an event that had not taken place to convince contemporaries. The account cannot be securely dated but to write it would have been pointless much after the beginning of the twelfth century. However, Pierre David, Études historiques, pp. 394-95, argues against the acceptance of this source.

13. The picture sketched by Richard A. Fletcher, The Episcopate in the Kingdom of León in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1978), pp. 25-26, that the Spanish church "had undergone a revolutionary assault from without" is a serious oversimplification in a generally very perceptive book. For a more recent qualification of his original views see his Saint James' Catapult, pp. 193-95.

14. Luciano Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán, pp. 197-98, and García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aquirre, El dominio del monasterio de San Millán, p. 313.

15. See chapter 5, note 43.

16. Erich Caspar, ed., Das Register Gregors VII, pp. 92-94.

17. Luciano Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 1:289-90, believed that the reference was to the Lenten Council of 1074 and that Bishop Jimeno of Oca-Burgos had attended.

18. "Qui me ad hunc honorem promoverat. See chapter 5, note 35. Andrés E. Mañaricua, "Provisión de obispados en la Alta Edad Media española," Estudios de Deusto 14 (1966): 61-92, has assembled a remarkable number of texts that show the secular rulers of the peninsula routinely exercising what would later be viewed as ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

19. "Dedit rex dominus Adefonsus abbati domno Ariano illam sedem de Oveto." See chapter 5, note 36.

20. See chapter 5, note 72.

21. "Tunc Adefonsus rex velociter Romam nuncios misit ad Papam Aldebrandum cognomento Septimus Gregorius; ideo hoc fecit, quia romanum misterium habere voluit in omni regno suo." Benito Sánchez Alonso, ed., Crónica del Obispo Don Pelayo, p. 80. Pelayo was widely known and was used by the thirteenth-century chronicles of Lucas of Túy, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, and the Primera crónica general. The author of the early twelfth-century chronicle of Sahagún did not know Pelayo. Still, he too credited the king with the initiative. Julio Puyol y Alonso, ed., "Las crónicas anónimas de Sahagún," BRAH 76 (1920): 114.

22. Paul Kehr, "¿Cómo y cuándo se hizo Aragón feudatario de la Santa Sede?" pp. 297-98. This is a translation of his Wie und wann wurde das Reich Aragon ein Lehen der rómischen Kirche? Sitzungsberichten der preussischen Akademie. Philologisch-historischen Klasse (Berlin, 1928). The introduction of the Roman ritual in León-Castilla has had more than its share of students over the years. Some of the more useful studies are Demetrio Mansilla, La curia romana y el reino de Castilla en un momento decisivo de su historia, 1061-1085 (Burgos, 1944), and Joseph F. OCallaghan, "The Integration of Christian Spain into Europe: The Role of Alfonso VI of León-Castile," Santiago, St.-Denis, and Saint Peter (New York, 1985), pp. 101-20.

23. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 118-19.

24. On that policy see Odilo Engels, "Papsttum, Reconquista und spanisches Landeskonzil im Hochmittelalter," AHC, 1 (1969): 40-42, and Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Episcopologio de Alava: Siglos IX-XI," HS 6 (1953): 54-55.

25. Serrano, Cartulario de San Millán, pp. 219-20.

26. See chapter 5, note 56.

27. Ibid., note 65.

28. May 12, 1076. Ibid., note 76. Aug. 1, 1076. Serrano, ed., Becerro gótico de Cardeña, pp. 239-40. Jan. 1, 1077. Ibid., p. 284. June 1, 1079. Ibid., pp. 260-61.

29. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 283-84.

30. On the question of the practice and language of the age, see my León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, pp. 251-59.

31. See note 21. The much later "Annales Compostellani" and the "Chronicon Burgense" date the introduction to 1077 and 1078 respectively, either of which is clearly too late. ES 23:321 and 309.

32. "De Romano autem officio, quod tua jussione accepimus, sciatis nostram terram admodum desolata esse, unde vestram deprecor paternitatem, quatinus faciatis ut domnus papa nobis suum mittat cardinalem, videlicet domnum Giraldum, ut ea que sunt emendada emendet, et que sunt corrigenda corrigat." Bruel, Recueil des chartes 4:551-53. The letter is undated but David, Études historiques, pp. 402-403, relates it convincingly to the Alfonsine charter to Cluny of July 10, 1077.

33. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, ed. (Valencia, 1966), p. 116. The Crónica notoriously incorporates literary materials but there is nothing inherently improbable in some sort of trial by ordeal having been assayed. The story of the trial by combat, which alone is mentioned by the later "Annales Compostellani" and the "Chronicon Burgense," may have passed into those two sources from the Najerense or directly from the literary accounts. In any event, the latter two chronicles are clearly dependent either one on the other or on a common source.

34. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 1:237-41. In addition, and as always with the author, Castilla must be the center of the story. In fact resistance seems to have been most prominent in the Rioja and in distant Portugal.

35. On this point and that immediately following see the detailed study of Roger E. Reynolds, "The Ordination Rite in Medieval Spain. Hispanic, Roman, and Hybrid," Santiago, St.-Denis, and Saint Peter (New York, 1985), pp. 131-56.

36. "Videlicet regnum Hyspaniae ex antiquis constitutionibus beato Petro et sanctae Romanae ecclesiae in ius et proprietatem esse traditum." Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 343-47

37. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:53-54.

38. See note 7.

39. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:55-59.

40. Säbekow, Päpstlichen Legationen, pp. 20-22.

41. "Sicut rex Hispaniae rogavit et vos consilium dedistis." Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 384-85.

42. For the detailed analysis of the documents on which these conclusions are based, see my study, "The Chancery of Alfonso VI," pp. 4-10.

43. In Alfonso's letter, a copy, to Abbot Hugh of Cluny on July 10, 1077, the former is styled "Hispaniarum rex." But that letter seems to have been drafted by a French monk and so the terminology may be merely descriptive. See note 32.

44. The whole question of the meaning of the imperial title, the history of its use, and the motivation of Alfonso VI in using it has been repeatedly and heatedly argued. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid 2:725-31. and more extensively in his monograph El imperio hispánico y los cincos reinos (Madrid, 1950), and Bishko, "Fernando I and Cluny," pp. 76-81, agree with my estimate of Alfonso's motivation. Other studies that examine the question and reach a variety of conclusions are Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Navarra-Aragón y la idea imperial de Alfonso VII de Castilla," EEMCA 6 (1956): 41-82; Alfonso García Gallo, "El imperio medieval español," Historia de España, ed. Florentino Pérez Embid (Madrid, 1953), pp. 308-43; Percy Ernst Schramm, "Das kastilische König- und Kaisertum während der Reconquista," Festschrift für Gerhard Ritter (Tübingen, 1950), pp. 87-139; H.E.J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), pp. 225-26; and José Antonio Maravall, "El pensamiento política de la Alta Edad Media," and "El concepto de monarquía en la Edad Media española," both in Estudios de historia del pensamiento española, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1973), pp. 35-66 and 69-89 respectively. It is well to remember that the charters of all the monarchs of León-Castilla before the late twelfth century remain unedited and that those of Alfonso VI have been systematically studied only by myself.

45. España del Cid, p. 239. The thirteenth-century continuation of the chronicle of Sahagún attributes the proclamation of the rite to Cardinal Richard but this may have been during the legates second visit in 1080. Puyol y Alonso, ed., "Crónicas anónimas de Sahagún," BRAH 77 (1921): 162.

46. Kehr, "El papado y Navarra y Aragón," p. 117.

47. A ship, coasting to avoid Muslim or Christian pirates, would have had to cover 1,000 kilometers at the minimum even if it made no intermediate calls, which is most unlikely. Nor can universally fair winds be presumed. Once at Barcelona the distance to Burgos is 500 km. as the crow flies and at least a third again longer in terms of practicable routes.

48. See note 7. The date of her death has frequently been given as June 6, 1078, based on a garbled notice in Enrique Florez, ed.. "Annales Compostellaní," ES 3:322. The date given there is actually 1098 and the reference is to her half-sister of the same name who was married to Pedro I of Aragón. For the Chronicle of St. Maixent see Alfred Richard, Comtes de Poitou 1:307-308 and n. 1. Nevertheless it seems clear that she died in Spain and was interred at Sahagún; Julio Puyol y Alonso, El abadengo de Sahagún (Madrid, 1915), pp. 17-18 and n. 1.

49. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 465-67.

50. Ibid., p. 468.

51. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 884, no. 9: pub. Escalona, Historia de Sahagón, pp. 475-76. The copyist has omitted the day and the month. Fidel Fita, "El concilio nacional de Burgos en 1080. Nuevas ilustraciones," BRAH 49(1906): 347-49, redated it to Jan. 22, 1080, on grounds that seem to me possible but not convincing.

52. Prosper Boissonnade, Du nouveau sur la Chanson de Roland (Paris, 1923), pp. 30-31.

53. Richard, Comtes de Poitou 1:307.

54. Jean Richard, Les Ducs de Bourgogne et la formation du duché du XI^e auXIV^e siécle (Paris, 1954), pp. 14-15.

55. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, ed., Colección diplomatica de Pedro I de Aragón y Navarra (Zaragoza, 1951), p. 31.

56. Études historiques, p. 389. This charter, pub. Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 476-77, from the archives of Sahagún is dated in the early chartularies of that monastery to May 14, 1080. AHN, Códices, 989B, ff. 3v-4r; and 988B, ff. 16v-17v. The legal language of the text is also anachronistic so that it has been interpolated quite extensively.

57. Pub. Rodríguez de Lama, Colección diplomática medieval de la Rioja 2:88-90; and Bruel, Recueil des chartes 4:665-68, from the copies in France.

58. Among the many questionable documents that bear on the transfer of the see of Oca to Burgos, one late copy of Alfonso VI's charter of May 1, 1075, is dated to May 1, 1079, and is said to have been confirmed at Dueñas on December 25, 1079. But Constance appears in both the text and the confirmation list as queen. BN, Manuscritos, 9.194, fol. 200r-v; pub. ES 26:458-63. I suspect that there was a genuine document of this period subsequently redrawn for other purposes. See also chapter 5. note 65.

59. "Vicem tenens Roberti abbatis." Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, p. 480. Fita, "Concilio de Burgos," pp. 346-49, also publishes this document and redates to the same day the joint charter of Alfonso and Robert of 1078. See note 51. He also redated the charter of May 10, 1079 which has a justification of the kings action and mentions Constance as queen, to Jan. 8, 1080. See note 56.

60. Bruel, Recueil des chartes 4:604-607 and 551-53 respectively.

61. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 517-18.

62. Margarita Cantera Montenegro, "Santa María la Real de Nájera: Fundación y primeros tiempos," in En la España Medieval, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1982), p. 256.

63. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 519-20.

64. Études historiques, pp. 387-90 and 413-17, and see the discussion of the scholarship on the question in the latter pages. O'Callaghan, "Integration of Christian Spain," pp. 109-11, follows David.

65. AHN. Códices, 989B, fol. 128v.

66. Ibid., fol. 1v-2r, the oldest copy, and another in 988B, fol. 16r-v. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 884, nos. 14 and 15, two twelfth-century copies. Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-22, ff. 12r-13v, a much later copy. Pub. Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 477-78. Both the language and the orthography suggest as bish a twelfth-century reworking. Also a prelate who was certainly Bishop Pedro of Braga is given as bishop of Coimbra, an error that could only have been made in the twelfth century. Alfonso's title is given simply as "rex" but the notary to whom the document is credited, Alfonso Ramírez, used rather the imperial title.  The dating formula also includes the dating by year of the Incarnation, indiction, and papal reign, which is unprecedented in Leonese chancery usage.

67. Barbara A. Shailor, "The Scriptorium of San Sahagún: A Period of Transition," in Santiago, St.-Denis, and Saint Peter (New York, 1985), pp. 55-56.

68. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 1:306-307, suggested such a redating and has been followed more recently by Rivera Recio, Iglesia de Toledo, pp. 131-32. The issue is clouded by two copies of the forged charter of Alfonso VI to Abbot Robert of Sahagún dated May 10, 1079, which bear the date of May 14, 1080. See notes 56 and 59. There is also a copy of a private charter, dated May 29, 1080. which gives Julian as abbot of Sahagún still. AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 90r.

69. Caspar, ed., Register Gregors VII, pp. 569-72. The dating formula of the letter is missing and it is the editor who dates it. A date of late 1080 or 1081 is indicated since the matters touched on would have been moot if a longer delay had ensued.

70. Études historiques, p. 423. But he considers Pedro a creature of Sancho II when the former was, as we have seen, rather the choice of García. Pedro did not play a large part at the court of Alfonso VI but he does seem to have participated in the settlement of 1080. See note 66.

71. Current historians disagree on what see Alfonso had in mind. See Rivera Recio, Iglesia de Toledo, p. 65.

72. For the examination of the circumstances of that change, see Ramón Gonzálvez, "The Persistence of the Mozarabic Liturgy in Toledo after AD. 1080," in Santiago, St.Denis, and Saint Peter (New York, 1985), pp. 157-86.