[136] The crucial institution within which the decisions were made, on the remarriage of the king, the substitution of liturgies, the repopulation of the trans-Duero, and the regulation of the border territories, was the royal curia. There the high politics of the realm were expressed and embodied, for we should not forget that politics there were, although the procedures familiar to us are almost totally lacking. The theory of the monarchy provided for neither politics nor procedure but only a divinely anointed man whose actions had the force of law. Yet a thriving ground for politics existed in the interval between the royal wish and the royal act.

No medieval king was so stupid as to imagine that every wish could be translated into act or that every act would enjoy the obedience of his subjects. Whatever theory told him, experience counseled caution, moderation, and persistent search for that happy formulation that elicits compliance because in it grudging consent and the fear of authority combine in roughly equal measure. A king knew that rebellion was always possible. Worse yet, he knew that he was unable to enforce compliance ordinarily for the means of coercion available to him were so few. "I obey but I do not comply" is a modern Spanish expression but assuredly it would have moved Alfonso VI to somewhat rueful mirth.

The arena wherein a medieval king sought to find if not consensus at least sufficient real consent for effective action was the royal curia. That body, however, was so loosely formed and consequently so imperfectly recorded that abstract description of it yields only the most nugatory understanding. It is far better to discover it portrayed in the record created by one of its parts, the royal chancery.

In the period from August 1076 through September 1086, the royal chancery of León-Castilla produced some forty-five genuine royal acts that are still preserved in major part. These acts may be divided by type into the charter, the agnitio or record of a judicial decision, and the royal confirmation of a private document or an earlier royal document.⁽¹⁾ [137] The functional distinction of these three was already extant in the reign of Fernando I so that the Alfonsine chancery is, in its practice, a traditional body. Of major importance for our purposes here are the thirty charters whose lists of confirmants have been preserved.

These charters reflect the chancery itself, first of all, as again a traditional body that still employed the Visigothic script in its documents. The diplomatic of those documents may be described as regular but hardly as standardized or uniform in the strict sense. As mentioned in chapter 6, at the beginning of this period in 1077 chancery practice changed the ordinary institution of the king and regularly used henceforth the style of "imperator totius hispaniae." Also noticeable in this period is a greater continuity in chancery personnel and perhaps an increase in their number although the chancery had by no means become a department in the ordinary sense of that word, for no hierarchical organization can be detected. Twelve different clerks, ordinarily styling themselves notaries, prepared royal charters in this period but two of them prepared sixteen of the thirty.

These two, Juan Baldemírez and Alfonso Ramírez, would both have substantial careers as royal notaries, each exceeding ten years in length. But the chancery had not yet become a road to royal preferment and the future of neither man can be determined after they leave that office. Their origins are similarly obscure, and no cathedral clergy seems to have been a training ground for chancery officials as that of Santiago de Compostela was to become in the time of Queen Urraca (1109-1126) or as Toledo was in the reign of Alfonso VII (1126-1157). The diplomatic practice of both men is quite similar but nonetheless distinguishable even as is their handwriting.

This chancery records the existence of a curia regis in its acts which was composed, in the first instance, of the dynastic family. Alfonso's two consorts of the period, queens Inés and Constance, do not appear very frequently, one or the other being recorded as present in only ten of the thirty charters. Doubtless that poor showing results from their questionable status between 1077 and 1081 and Gregory VII's challenge to the second marriage. The king's two sisters, infantas Urraca and Elvira, were more prominent during this period and confirmed sixteen charters.

Quite as regularly a part of the curia by reason of their office were the majordomo and the alférez. During the ten years now under consideration [138] these officers appeared in fifteen and eighteen charters respectively. Neither office disposed of a department or staff that can be detected in the documents of the time. If the majordomo had some responsibility for the revenues of the fisc the latter must have been so decentralized in its control as to not have demanded the attention of more than a casual clerk or two at the royal level. The alférez can be assumed to have been simply the leader of the royal bodyguard at most times.

The alternation of these titles or honors between the magnates of León and Castilla continued in practice. The Castilian Pedro Moréllez had been majordomo from the preceding period and held that office at least until November 5, 1078.⁽²⁾ By April 7, 1079, the Leonese Pelayo Vellídez had replaced him and would serve until late 1086.⁽³⁾ Similarly, in the position of alférez, the Leonese Fernando Laíñez continued from the earlier period until at least October 17, 1077.⁽⁴⁾ By January 29, 1078, the mantle had fallen on the Castilian Rodrigo González, who wore it as late as June 9, 1081.⁽⁵⁾ He was the young scion of the Lara family later to be famous during the reign of Queen Urraca as the brother and ally of her lover. To him, in turn, succeeded the Castilian Rodrigo Ordóñez as early as July 15, 1081, who then continued in the office for the remainder of this period.⁽⁶⁾ The latter was the brother of García Ordóñez, then count in Nájera, son of Ordoño Ordóñez who had been alférez under Fernando I, and brother-in-law of the powerful Castilian magnate Alvar Díaz.⁽⁷⁾

The comital dignity, on the other hand, did not necessarily imply membership in the curia. Of the twenty-two individuals who bear that title in one or the other document of this period, only eight are found in the royal presence with any regularity. Chief among these, as might be expected, is the great Leonese magnate Pedro Ansúrez, who confirmed thirteen of thirty diplomas. A friend of Alfonso from his youth and constant attendant since his restoration, Count Pedro is early associated in the documents with the countship of Carrión de los Condes midway on the "Camino de Santiago" between Burgos and León.⁽⁸⁾ The [139] family estates were clustered about Carrión on the pilgrim road which was the great east-west artery of the realm. Late in this period, Pedro Ansúrez will be found in command of the key fortresses of the line of the western Duero: Tordesillas, Toro, and Zamora.⁽⁹⁾

His brother, Count Diego Ansúrez, confirmed only seven charters of the period, but that is a reflection of the latter's probable death about 1082, for his last appearance in the documents is in late 1081. From September 30, 1075, and perhaps earlier, he had held the countship of Astorga, the point at which the great pilgrim road begins its climb into the mountains of Galicia.⁽¹⁰⁾

Next most frequent after Pedro Ansúrez among the magnates of the court is Count Martín Alfónsez. He confirmed ten charters. He also was a companion of the young Alfonso and a constant attendant since then. This Leonese noble was not yet regularly associated with a territorial jurisdiction.

The nobility of Castilla was strongly represented at this level only by Count Gonzalo Salvadórez of Lara, who confirmed eleven charters before his death in the disaster of Rota in 1083. At this time the interests of the house were concentrated to the north and northeast of Burgos and perhaps were just beginning to develop about Lara itself.⁽¹¹⁾ As we have seen, the Castilian house of the Ordóñez gained in influence after 1080, but before that time its presence at court was irregular. The patriarch of the house, Ordoño Ordóñez, seems to have died sometime in 1073. Rodrigo Ordóñez confirmed four charters in the years 1075 to 1077 but then does not reappear at court until May 1080. His brother, García, confirmed no royal documents between 1074 and 1080 when he appears as count in Nájera. Except for the Lara and the Ordóñez, Castilla was virtually unrepresented at court.

Surprising during this period is the strength of Asturias there. Count Pedro Peláez, who had held that rank since late in the reign of Fernando I, confirmed eight charters. His jurisdiction lay in western Asturias about Tineo and the monastery of Corias.⁽¹²⁾ Confirming nine charters was Count Muño González, the master of Asturias de Santillana in the [140] east. This magnate descended from the old comital house of Asturias and was related to the Lara as well.⁽¹³⁾ Central Asturias was represented by Count Rodrigo Diaz, who confirmed seven charters and attained comital rank first in 1080 at the same time as did his brother Fernando Díaz, who confirmed three charters. Through Fernando, who was son-in-law of Count Múño González, the brothers were also related to the Lara.⁽¹⁴⁾

The only magnate of Galicia who figures regularly in the royal court is Count Rodrigo Muñoz, who confirmed eight royal diplomas. He had appeared in the charters of García of Galicia but apparently rallied early to the cause of Alfonso VI. Rodrigo Múñoz also came from a comital family.⁽¹⁵⁾

The unexpectedly strong influence of the mountain province of Asturias in the curia regis is paralleled by some equally significant changes in the ordinary clerical complement of that body. Given the geographical configuration of the kingdom and the past testimony of royal charters, we should expect that the bishops of the meseta sees would prove to be almost constantly present. It is not surprising then that the bishop of León should have confirmed fifteen or the bishop of Burgos thirteen royal charters. But it is not merely coincidental that the bishop of Palencia confirmed more than any other single person, including the royal infantas, or eighteen out of thirty diplomas. The preeminence of that bishop over the bishop of the royal city of León is suggestive.

Although we cannot know why such preeminence should have been the case, undoubtedly it reflects the greater personal confidence of Alfonso VI in the aged Bishop Bernard of Palencia. In addition, however, it surely registers the growing importance of Palencia, only forty-five kilometers north of the Duero, to a monarch increasingly preoccupied with the task of repopulating the trans-Duero. The city and see of León was 125 kilometers north of the old frontier river and was beginning to be somewhat remote by comparison. The see that Alfonso wanted to erect into an archbishopric in 1080 was probably Palencia, and despite papal reservations about the fitness of the nominee the king seems to have carried out his plan.⁽¹⁶⁾ Between late 1082 and the middle of 1085 [141] no fewer than six documents from six different churches cite Bernard of Palencia as an archbishop.⁽¹⁷⁾ Even given the fact that not all of these documents are beyond reproach the concurrent testimony seems overpowering. Scribal error or borrowing is simply not adequate to account for it.

There are, of course, no papal bulls preserved that relate to such an action, which may mean that Alfonso was never able to secure the approval of Rome. Yet one must keep in mind the disarray of the papal chancery in the later years of Gregory VII's pontificate and the almost interregnum that followed it. By the time Urban II succeeded in 1088, Alfonso had long been willing to forget the abortive Palencia experiment in favor of a restored archbishopric of Toledo and the rejuvenated papacy to ignore it as never having been canonically sanctioned. The retreat was made even easier by the death of Bernard of Palencia, most probably in 1085.⁽¹⁸⁾

[142] The confidence of the king in Bernard of Palencia was also reflected by making him the administrator of the diocese of Astorga in the years 1080-82 as we shall see. Alfonso also seems to have managed the selection of another cleric in whom he had confidence as Bernard's successor. A royal charter of March 31, 1090, refers to Bishop Raymond as "magistro meo."⁽¹⁹⁾

The ascendancy of Palencia was accompanied by the eclipse of the diocese of Astorga. Quite at odds with past practice, the bishop of the latter see confirmed but five royal charters of the period. Moreover a private charter of May 25, 1082, informs us that "Bernaldus, quasi episcopus in astoricense sedis. Pro id dicimus quasi, quia per cupiditate mala duas sedes habet: astoricense et palentie, perdicionis anime sue. Jan sunt duo annis qui depositus est Petrus episcopus de ipsa sede astoricense ab ipso principe."⁽²⁰⁾ In all probability, then, Bishop Pedro of Astorga was deposed at the Council of Burgos in the spring of 1080 where he last figured in a royal document.⁽²¹⁾ In the late summer of 1082 a new bishop was chosen for Astorga for another notice of August 13, 1082, tells us of "Ansemundus electus in pontificalis hordo in Astorica."⁽²²⁾ Again Alfonso VI had selected a cleric of his own curia for the [143] episcopate as Bishop Osmundo himself will later testify.⁽²³⁾ Under this favorite the see of Astorga would be restored to a place of prominence at court.

Indeed, during these years between 1076 and 1086 Alfonso had the opportunity to replace all of the bishops of the episcopal sees of the meseta, if not as dramatically as at Astorga. Bishop Jimeno of Burgos died on March 17, 1082, and was succeeded by Bishop Gomez in the same year.⁽²⁴⁾ Nothing is known of the antecedents of the new bishop, but his subsequent role at court indicates that he was manifestly acceptable to Alfonso VI. A few years later, in 1085, Bishop Pelayo of León also died.⁽²⁵⁾ Over the space of the next half year, one Sebastián appears as bishop-elect of that see but is finally replaced there by a Bishop Pedro.

Sebastián had been the abbot of the Castilian monastery of Cardeña, and one can hardly see his installation in the see of León as the result of any but a royal initiative.⁽²⁶⁾ His ultimate rejection therefore underlines the homely truth that even the royal will must sometimes be frustrated. The winner, Bishop Pedro, who perhaps had replaced Sebastián as early as April 8, 1086, was Leonese and hence more acceptable to local interests.⁽²⁷⁾ His subsequent prominence at court, however, seems to indicate that he was acceptable to the king as well.

Alfonso also had the opportunity to decide the selection of two more bishops during this period. In the east at Calahorra a Bishop Sancho [144] replaced Muño about 1080 but nothing can be determined about the circumstances.⁽²⁸⁾ Clearly though, the king could not have been indifferent about the choice of an incumbent in that crucial frontier diocese. In the west the bishopric of Coimbra had been restored although at what date we do not know. Perhaps it coincided with Alfonso's drive to repopulate the trans-Duero beginning in late 1076 for the Portuguese hill town was the extreme western bastion of the Christian frontier. In any event, a Bishop Paternus seems to have appeared there as early as November 20, 1078.⁽²⁹⁾ Unfortunately the document that describes the Mozarab Count Sisnando's journey to Zaragoza to find a suitable bishop, which emphasized the king's approval, is not to be trusted.⁽³⁰⁾ No bishop was unimportant to the crown but, for the working of the curia, it must be stressed that the four bishops of the meseta together confirmed royal charters almost twice as many times as did the ten other bishops combined.

Finally, it is worth noting in this survey of the membership of the royal curia that three magnates were quite often at court although they held no office there nor were they counts. The most frequent of all was Diego Alvarez, the lord of Oca and relative by marriage to the Jiménez lords of the Basque country, who confirmed ten royal charters. Alvaro González, another Castilian, confirmed eight. Diego González confirmed seven, and he too was a Castilian.

From the foregoing consideration it becomes obvious that the royal court, the essential instrument of government, varied in size and that such variation was often purposeful. In other words, the crown conferred more widely in matters of great import. The resultant general curia was recognized in the practice of the reign even if it had not yet found its reflection in the language of the age.⁽³¹⁾ If we take as a rough gauge that such a general court is an assemblage that includes at least five of the fourteen bishops of the realm, it is possible to identify six [145] such general curias during the ten years being considered. That is better than an average of one every two years but they did not meet so evenly. Rather, four of them are bunched toward the end of the period between late 1082 and 1085. Taking as a given that such a great curia dealt with crucial matters that affected the reigning dynasty itself, war and peace, and concerns general to the entire reign, it then becomes possible to reconstruct a bit more of the politics of the period.

Sometime in the fall of 1077 Alfonso's court included at least the bishops of León, Palencia, Burgos, Lugo, and Santiago de Compostela, his two sisters, eight counts, and two of the three Castilian magnates mentioned above.⁽³²⁾ This was the minimum attendance for one cannot rule out the presence of others not invited to confirm a royal charter to a rather obscure Galician monastery. We may fairly suspect that the concerns of this general court were, not necessarily in the order of their importance to that body, the royal decision to put away Queen Inés and seek a second wife, the adoption of the imperial title to meet the papal claim to suzerainty in the peninsula, the continuing problem of the introduction of the Roman liturgy, the decision to repopulate the trans-Duero, and the problems growing out of the annexation of the Rioja. It may also have been this council that approved the restoration of the bishopric of Coimbra.

Such an agenda provided a wide range for a great variety of disagreements, and it seems that more rather than less tension resulted from the meeting. In fact it is entirely probable that an opposition coalesced around these questions which came to amount, at least in Alfonso's eyes, to a conspiracy. The evidence is largely indirect, but it is unusual that the royal alférez, Fernando Laíñez, who last appears in that capacity in this curia, never proceeds to greater honors as was customary. Rather, later evidence tells us that he was banned by the king. That fact is even more curious since the magnate was distantly related to the royal house.⁽³³⁾ We have seen in the preceding chapter the absence of the Castilian Ordóñez family from court in 1078 and 1079 and the possible exile of García Ordóñez, together with some of his Riojan supporters, in Granada in 1079. Missing from court as well during 1078 are counts Muño González and Pedro Peláez of the region of Asturias. Finally, the established curial bishop, Pedro of Astorga, confirms just one royal charter between the summer of 1077 and the spring of 1080.

These absences may all be coincidental but I suspect instead that they [146] reflect a serious opposition to Alfonso VI in powerful court circles. Such opposition could easily have been based on a valid disagreement over the wisdom of a royal remarriage or Alfonso's tactics in dealing with other papal demands. It might just as easily have been founded on personal disgruntlement over the implications of the liturgical change or dissatisfaction with the distribution of the spoils of the Rioja. More than likely the opposition shared all of these elements as well as a perception that papal intervention, so active since 1076, could provide an opportunity for a move against the king. Such hopes were usually vain in the history of the medieval monarchy unless another member of the royal dynasty could be enlisted to give them legitimacy. The distant royal descent of Fernando Laíñez would probably not have sufficed for that purpose. But Count Pedro Peláez, Bishop Pedro of Astorga, and Fernando Laíñez shared one common characteristic: all held lands uncomfortably close to the royal castle of Luna far up on the Orbigo River where Alfonso's brother García had been incarcerated since 1073.

If my suspicions are correct and Alfonso VI was faced with a serious opposition after 1077, the king yet managed to outmaneuver and outbid it. He was able to secure the support of the papal legate, Cardinal Richard, in 1078 and 1079. He pressed ahead successfully with the marriage negotiations in Burgundy. Alfonso's energetic actions in the trans-Duero in 1078 and in the Tajo valley in 1079 reinforced the prestige of the crown at a critical point. His otherwise inexplicable trip to Asturias in the full winter of 1079 and just before the latter campaign makes good sense only as an attempt to rally support there. But for a time in the late winter and early spring of 1080 Alfonso did lose the crucial support of the cardinal-legate.

The king regained the assistance of Cardinal Richard before real harm could be done by agreeing completely to the implementation of the Roman liturgy and by sacrificing his agent, the monk Robert, who had apparently made himself personally odious to the legate, at Sahagún. But Alfonso made full use of his advantages. The new queen, Constance of Burgundy, was probably pregnant and the succession problem on its way to a solution. At least no one could prove that it was not. The king seems to have distributed those honors which only he could bestow with the kind of generosity that elicits support. Rodrigo Muñoz of Galicia had succeeded to the countship by March 12, 1079.⁽³⁴⁾ Rodrigo Díaz and his brother Fernando, both of Asturias, began to appear as counts at the same time as did García Ordóñez in the spring of 1080. In fact the general curia of May 8, 1080, has all the appearances of [147] a great festival of reconciliation. The king had either outflanked or divided his opponents and so triumphed.

The document that records this great curia was issued by the king in his name and that of his new queen, Constance of Burgundy. It records the approbation of the papal legate, and it was confirmed by Alfonso's two sisters, by thirteen of the fourteen bishops of the realm, and by seventeen counts.⁽³⁵⁾ As related in chapter 6, the king had satisfied the legate, and eventually Pope Gregory VII, by implementing the Roman liturgy and replacing Robert of Cluny with Bernard at Sahagún. The question of his marriage to Constance was left in friendly hands for resolution. Doubtless these terms, accepted formally by the pontiff in 1081, had been approved already by this curia. The problem of the Rioja was met by entrusting it to García Ordóñez. Other opponents who had perhaps offended too severely were now subject to royal punishment. Fernando Laíñez may have been banned at the curia itself, and Bishop Pedro of Astorga, although he confirmed the document mentioned, became the object of a speedy judicial process probably initiated there and was deposed shortly thereafter, his see entrusted to Bishop Bernard of Palencia as administrator.

As with the deposition of Bishop Pedro of Astorga, so for some of the other ecclesiastical questions that constituted part of the essential business of the curia regis no documents exist that would prove that the papacy either was informed of or reacted to what had transpired. So far as we can tell not just the erection of Palencia into an archbishopric but the restoration of the bishopric of Coimbra and the selection of new bishops at León, Palencia, Burgos, and Calahorra all took place in complete independence of the papacy. If we are faced with mere lacunae in the records there are an impressive number of them. Possibly Cardinal Richard had been taken completely into camp and was prevailed upon to regularize all such decisions of king and curia. Certainly by 1084 communications with Gregory VII would have been so bad, given the deterioration of the papal position in Italy and Rome vis-à-vis the Emperor Henry IV, that an ad hoc disposition of almost any urgent matter could be justified.

While the traditional practice of the Leonese monarchy had been to dispose of such church matters as of only local interest, Alfonso would have recognized by 1080 that the pure continuance of such a policy was to invite challenge from the reformed papacy. Surely he enjoyed the [148] discomfiture of Hildebrand and the freedom of maneuver it allowed, but the king was likely to have sought the forms of the new regularities to adorn his decisions. A case in point here was the visit of Abbot Bernard of Sahagún to Rome in 1083. Gregory VII's letter which it occasioned has been preserved and its provisions are striking. Sahagún is taken directly under the papal protection, it is exempted from the jurisdiction of any other bishop, its abbot will be consecrated by the pope, and the monastery will pay a perpetual tribute of two solidi annually to Rome.⁽³⁶⁾

None of this was thinkable except on the advance permission of king and curia. Indeed the papal action is represented as a response to the requests of Bernard and of "karissimi filii nostri regi A." The evidence is then that Alfonso sought to retain and use the new connection with Rome for his own purposes at least and that the papacy continued on good terms and in communication with León-Castilla into 1083. Himself faced with a supremely dangerous challenge in Italy, Gregory VII may have tacitly acquiesced in what was transpiring in the Iberian peninsula on the eminently respectable grounds that there is no case if there is no complaint.

The remaining five general curias are celebrated, one each in 1082 and 1084, two in 1085, and one in early 1086. Since their concerns were largely focused about the reconquest of Toledo their treatment is best left until the history of that enterprise is treated. What deserves separate consideration here is the general character of the royal court under Alfonso VI insofar as that character can be reasonably inferred.

The most outstanding feature of the curia regis as it has appeared in preceding chapters is its vigorous movement through the realm. Although the royal retinue returns regularly and often to its obviously preferred base, the area about the city of León and the monastery of Sahagún, it is typically an itinerant court. Although one generally asserts that fact about medieval royal courts, I believe that the full implications of that condition have seldom been developed because the documents do not focus on the condition itself. Nevertheless to ignore the essential background of royal government in the eleventh century is to fail to appreciate fully its difficulties, its substance, and certainly its style.

Consider the period between January and late May of the year 1075. In that space of time, the documents reveal, the royal court traveled from the city of León or its environs to Santiago de Compostela in [149] Galicia, thence to Oviedo in Asturias, then back to León, and from there to Burgos in Castilla, and finally back to Sahagún. For present purposes, at least, that is as far as we shall pursue it. By the shortest routes feasible and measuring largely in airline distances, the court had thus traversed an absolute minimum of 1,144 kilometers or 686 miles in a period of five months. A relatively modest addition of an extra kilometer, or mile, of actual travel for each five straight-line kilometers yields a more accurate portrayal of the distance at 1,363 kilometers or 823 miles. Such statistics reveal that the royal court must have been almost continuously on the road during those five months. To appreciate what such statistics meant, one must look more closely.

A royal charter of Alfonso VI, dated only to January 1075, puts the curia in Santiago de Compostela.⁽³⁷⁾ But the shortest practical distance between León and the shrine city of Saint James is 360 kilometers. If we estimate the best speed possible to a royal court encumbered by two- wheeled carts for its necessary baggage at about 23 kilometers a day, then the curia had traveled continuously for sixteen days to complete the journey.⁽³⁸⁾ Therefore if it had left León after the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, as seems likely, it would have arrived in Santiago by January 25 at the earliest. A three-week stay in that town would have restored bodies and spirits and have permitted a departure on February 17, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

Lent was the fitting season for the most trying journey of all that year. Certainly a stay in Lugo would have been in order early in the march and especially if the court had not tarried in that hilltop city on its way west. But then the turn north to the coast and east along the Bay [150] of Biscay to Oviedo offered only the wildest country and the fewest amenities of the entire journey. Something like thirty days to cover the 350 kilometers from Compostela would not have been unreasonable and would also have brought the court into Oviedo by March 18.

Since a royal document places the court at Oviedo on March 27, 1075, it was probably there for both Palm Sunday on March 29 and Easter on April 5.⁽³⁹⁾ That the party would have been in condition to leave as early as March 28 is hard to imagine, and they could not have left the day following Palm Sunday without committing themselves to Easter on the road, which would have been unthinkable.

The court may be presumed to have left Oviedo one or two days after Easter. The journey through the Cantabrians by the pass of Pajares traversed the highest ground of the entire trip, 1,366 meters. Still the total distance from Oviedo to León is a short 119 kilometers, and the court could have reached the latter by April 13. A royal charter places it there on April 19, 1075.⁽⁴⁰⁾

Alfonso VI could easily have spent better than a week in León and still have completed the seven day journey to Castrojeriz where the next charter put him on May 1.⁽⁴¹⁾ Another two days' journey would have carried them easily to Burgos. There we may presume that the court would have spent better than a week for reasons largely political. Departing even on the Friday after Ascension Thursday, which that year fell on May 14, the royal party could have returned to Sahagún before May 22. A final royal charter places the court there on that date.⁽⁴²⁾ Doubtless they celebrated Pentecost Sunday at that royal monastery on May 24, 1075, in a fitting fashion.

Having described the itinerary of the curia, we can now turn to its makeup during its travels. The documents already mentioned provide us with a startling point. In addition to Alfonso himself, infantas Urraca and Elvira appear in the documents of Santiago and Castrojeriz and Urraca also in that of Oviedo. The bishop of Palencia also appears in all three, but the bishop of León is missing from that of Oviedo so that he and Infanta Elvira may have returned directly from Santiago to León and rejoined the curia there. The bishop of Santiago may also have accompanied them, or alternatively the court, for he too will be present at Castrojeriz. Since our present interest is in numbers, we simply project that one of the royal sisters and two bishops were with the court at all points in its journey. So were the majordomo and the alférez [151] as well as royal notary Juan Baldemírez. In addition, there seems to have been on the average one count on each leg of the trip, although not always the same one of course. The royal court then numbers an absolute minimum of eight people who are visible in the documents.

To this assemblage of notables we must add a chaplain, a doctor, a bard, a jester, a falconer, a master of hounds, two squires, and three body servants for the king himself. To the infanta we must allow two maids and two servants and to the two bishops, a cleric, two servants, and a groom apiece.⁽⁴³⁾ The majordomo and the alférez might make do with a squire and two servants each. The notary would have his clerk. The count might be expected to have two servants and two squires. These thirty-four attendants bring the court to forty-two in number.

The military escort must have added another 120 persons. This is an estimate, to be sure, but a reasonable one given the necessities of royal safety and royal prestige in the eleventh century. Since the ordinary unit, or squadron, of mounted warriors on the battlefield of the time seems to have numbered about forty-five, we should expect that the royal bodyguard would have roughly that strength. It was, after all, the nucleus of the royal army of the time. Moreover, if we estimate the average garrison of the various castles of the region's nobility to be passed along the route at twenty men-at-arms, prudence suggests that the royal bodyguard be kept at twice that number at least. This is especially true since the hardships of travel were likely to reduce the number of effectives at any given moment. Then too, great magnates such as the Lara count, Muño González, or the Leonese count, Pedro Ovéquez, would have required another fifteen horse of their own to demonstrate the proper respect for the king's well-being and honor, not to mention their own status in the realm. And each of these sixty knights would travel with his own groom or squire to tend his primary mount, his remount, his armor, and his own personal gear. The escort thus swells the company to 162.

But there is yet another element of the itinerant court still to be counted. The necessity and makeup of what we may call general support personnel is deducible both from what has already been said and from some reflection on the character of northern Iberia in this epoch. The kingdom of León-Castilla north of the Duero was roughly the size of the kingdom of England. A generous estimate would put its population [152] at 1.5 million in the latter half of the eleventh century.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The overall population density at these figures would be twelve people per square kilometer or about roughly the same relation of land to inhabitants as in present-day Oklahoma. In such a society the numbers of the court would surely exceed the total population of most of the farming hamlets through which it was to pass. Only in the major towns of the itinerary we have traced -- Astorga, Lugo, Santiago de Compostela, Oviedo, León, and Burgos -- could the court have reasonably expected to find facilities for housing, feeding, or bathing more than 150 persons at one time.

Even in those towns all available resources would be strained by a royal visit. If we follow the methodology developed by Josiah Cox Russell for estimating town populations, we arrive at figures that are probably high for cities with old Roman walls whose precincts they were still trying to fill out in this period.⁽⁴⁵⁾ At most I would allow that León, Astorga, and less probably Lugo, had populations of about 2,000 people. Santiago de Compostela had a population of 1,500 at most, and Oviedo about the same.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The very irregular plan of Burgos makes estimate more like pure guesswork, but something hike 1,000-1,200 people seems safe. In what passed for the major cities of the realm, then, the simultaneous arrival of more than 150 people would have created truly formidable problems of logistics.

Of course the royal court was even larger than that figure precisely because it must include also those additional numbers of hands and mouths that made it largely self-sustaining in its passage through the countryside. Since the royal entourage numbered in itself between two and four times the adult population of such villages and monasteries as it was likely to happen upon, it must be prepared to maintain itself for weeks at a time.

[154] In the first analysis that meant shelter. Since this is a winter journey, tents would have to have been provided for each of the major figures of the court. The temperatures at this season varied between zero and ten degrees celsius and rain was frequent. At higher altitudes subfreezing temperatures and snow had to be expected. A minimum of nine tents would be needed if the household of the king himself required two, which seems altogether likely. And each tent would require in turn a cart to transport it and a carter to manage the cart. As for the mere knights we do not know if the age disposed of anything so portable, albeit uncomfortable, as the United States Army shelter-half, but we may presume that some sort of protection from the elements was packed, along with his armor, on the spare horse of each. Lesser folk would have slept in their cart or under a neighbor's.

Sustenance is second only to shelter, and it seems likely to me that it would have taken a minimum of six cooks to feed a company of this size in the fields as it were. Each cook of course required a helper and a cart to transport his utensils. The cart we may surmise to have been driven by the helper. In addition there must have been two water carts and their drivers even though the region is generally well-watered during the winter months. At a hogshead of water per cart, that is scarcely more than two days' supply at a liter a day per person for drinking, cooking, and washing. Wine was an even more basic necessity, and one more difficult to replenish, so we should allow for fifteen winecarts at a capacity of a hogshead apiece. This calculation approaches the niggardly for it provides a mere ten days' supply at the average ration of only a liter and a half each day.

The size of the court, as we envision it, also suggests that six more carts and carters must be added for dry provisions. Since we may also presume that the tastier provender walked along behind the procession, we must then allow for a cattle drover and a shepherd attached to the court. Reasonable prudence would also suggest something on the order of another six carts with fodder for the animals for it was winter and, especially in the higher altitudes, it would be necessary to supplement whatever was otherwise available for such a large number of livestock. Yet six more carts would have carried dry firewood for, although the area through which they were passing was well wooded, this was the rainy season.

A number of other special functions would have required their cart as well. Should we not suppose a portable altar? Stephen I of England had one although it was carried rather on two pack horses.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Again no [155] well-ordered troupe of this size can have ventured far in the eleventh century without that jack of all trades, the armorer-blacksmith. If pots and armor were to be repaired, horses and mules shod, and swords and lances sharpened as the need arose, we must include him, his helper, and his cart. Finally, should we not conclude that even so early in the growth of the medieval monarchy, the notary needed some sort of cart for his records and the materials of his trade?

If all this reflection seems well grounded, the conclusion we reach is that the traveling court of Alfonso VI in the winter and spring of 1075 probably consisted all told of 226 persons, 51 carts, more than 200 head of horses, mules, and jackasses, and a small herd each of cattle and sheep at its very smallest, and may often have swollen by as much as a quarter of its size.⁽⁴⁸⁾ It is also likely that pilgrims, merchants, casual travelers, and a variety of hangers-on would have loosely attached themselves to the royal caravan for the protection and company it afforded.

The approach of this monster procession creeping slowly through the countryside must have filled the inhabitants of the tiny villages, the abbots of modest monasteries, and the bailiffs of royal estates along its path with forboding if not with despair. For as it ground forward lamed horses, mules, and asses must be replaced along with broken carts and smashed cartwheels. So must the cows and sheep sacrificed to ravenous appetites. Above all, the wine carts had to be replenished lest tempers turn sour. Even trees and windfalls had to be stripped or gathered up to refill the wood carts that guaranteed roast meat, hot cakes, and occasionally warm loins. One must conceive cooks, grooms, drovers, and carters spreading over the countryside about their essential tasks of replenishment, sometimes paying and sometimes not, but in any event leaving the scant surpluses of eleventh-century larders and flocks sadly depleted and their owners contemplating with dismay the endless time before the next harvest, the next vintage, or the next foaling.

Law and custom provided for this essential activity of course. Bailiffs [156] of royal estates everywhere owed their local surplus to the crown and were probably notified of the court's approach. Those bound to the king by a personal relationship, and there must have been few who were not, through one link or another, owed hospedaje and yantar. But who, in the practical order, could have been able to lodge and feed so many? Inevitably these dues were commuted in rough and ready bargaining into beasts furnished, wine supplied, carts requisitioned, and above all, one thinks, forage and firewood. Never could this bargaining have been one of equals because the shadow of the king fell over all of it. One comes to understand the avidity with which cleric and noble sought exemption from the duty of hospitality which otherwise seems petty and churlish to the modern mind.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Looking back from the threshold of the thirteenth century, Walter Map recorded that the entire process was splendidly handled in the time of Henry I of England. "He planned most carefully beforehand, and made previous announcement of his journeyings and stopping places, the number of days and the names of the towns, so that anyone whosoever would be able to know, without possibility of mistake, the manner of his life month by month." But retrospect is disarming. When Walter came to speak of Henry II, whose court he knew personally, the reality is differently rendered. "He traveled incessantly and in stages intolerable, like a public carrier, and, in this matter, he showed scant consideration for his retinue."⁽⁵⁰⁾ In fact the absence of an articulated hierarchy of public authority, regular communication, and standardized procedures made planning on the scale necessary to lodge and provision the court impossible outside of the towns. The essence of planning must have consisted in keeping the court in motion so that its demands would fail piecemeal over as many little hamlets as possible and so be rendered tolerable. The benefits that this splendid assemblage conferred would have been largely limited to an occasional royal benefaction, the quality of the fights it generated, the public executions it sometimes mandated, and the quantity of the ordure it scattered behind it through the fields.

But if the rural peasantry experienced the hardships of an itinerant royal court but once and briefly, the courtiers lived that difficult life almost constantly. How did one cope with that great concomitant of consciousness, boredom, as the carts sped along at their twenty-three [157] kilometers a day in good country? Those of the party who were mounted, and could make twice that speed unhindered, were free to hunt the fields and woods which teemed with game and the skies filled with birds. Humble folk were usually occupied helping along the carts which strained on steep, uphill gradients and were, so far as we know, unequipped with brakes for the long, downhill ones.

One hopes that our ancestors' appetite for the hunt was insatiable for these conditions of almost continuous travel permitted little else. Reading would have been next to physically impossible even if warriors were so inclined. Alfonso VI as king was the model of the court and there is no reason to believe that he was even literate. No more were his contemporaries, William the Conqueror, William Rufus, or Henry I of England, nor was Philip I of France.⁽⁵¹⁾ Leisure in the proper sense was itself hard to find amidst the daily necessities of eating, sleeping, breaking camp, making camp, and keeping warm in between. Only the fall of night brought it finally, but even then to an assemblage whose culture was almost exclusively oral and physical.

The endless fascination of politics, and its handmaid, gossip, must have helped relieve the tedium. After all, there was no point in the journey that was not the objective in the political sense as well as a way station. Almost every nightly camp must have seen some local abbots, magnates, counts, castellans, judges, or estate bailiffs riding in to show their loyalty to the king, to report on law and order or to request advice, and above all to render accounts of their varied stewardships. Given the isolation in which everyone ordinarily lived, such visits provided some diversion and variety to visitor and camp alike. Even so, the political business was a game for the king and his most immediate advisers only.

For the greater part of the encampment amusement would have to have been self-provided. In an entourage so largely male the opportunity for nocturnal romance was surely limited. So the hours before bed were largely filled with the anecdotes of the days hunt, with reminiscences of old hunts and of old battles, and doubtless with more formal tales of the heroes and battles of old. Some of these tales would have been set to music, and music and song furnished their diversion as well. These would have been supplemented by fabliaux natural to a rural society and the scatological tales characteristic of camp life in every age. The less social could always resort to dicing and board games, including even chess for the truly sophisticated of the highest circles. The [158] younger and more energetic found outlet in athletic feats and mock contests at arms.

Yet it is not unrealistic to think that sooner or later the best stories, songs, and games became as stale as the bread and the abrasiveness of camp life turned sham contests into minor bloodletting. The royal party was too strong to be attacked so that the excitements of slaughter, rapine, and plunder were denied it. One must have daydreamed of the next town; of Lugo, Santiago de Compostela, Oviedo, León, Burgos, places where a man could get out of the everlasting saddle and the ever present rain and cold. There he could sleep under a real roof, gorge himself at a proper feast, drink himself into a complete and utter stupor without thought of the morrow's ride, with luck even wench a little before losing consciousness entirely, and get a bath. Nor, one thinks, would the daydreams of the court ladies or clerics have been very different.

Under such circumstances the tenor of court life tended to be rough, coarse, and violent. The courtier lived in the open and as a result smelled of horses, woodsmoke, and himself. That life was a short one, for life in the open takes its toll surely and with deadly efficiency, and full of action and transiency. The sheer physical hardship of constant exposure to the elements and the strains of continual movement inexorably put a premium on the simplest and most basic human needs: a warm, dry bed, a full stomach, and the escape from its grinding round of existence offered by the relaxation derived from alcohol and the momentary exhilaration of sexual indulgence. Ordinary conversation was dominated by that experience also. It ran to battles and animals, to camp life and countryside, to anecdotes of cadging, petty theft, and casual rape: rather more to horse colic than to contemplation and to litters more than letters.

To be sure, this tone was moderated somewhat by those who were in the camp but not of it, as it were. The infantas and the ladies of their household, unless they were complete viragos, and the bishops and their clerics both represented different styles of existence.⁽⁵²⁾ They were, however, a minority in that milieu, and the king himself belonged three-quarters to their rivals. Nor could their relatively exalted stations shield them entirely from the numbing privations of the itinerant existence. Another style of life was also possible to the court when it settled [159] down, as it usually did, in or about León or Sahagún for the months of December through March. The comforts of the stable life and the intellectual and aesthetic stimulations of the liturgy offered alternative visions of the good there just as they did in the two- or even three-week stays in the larger towns during the traveling seasons.

Nonetheless my judgment is that the mentality of camp life must have predominated over that of the settled life during the reign of Alfonso. In a realm the size of León-Castilla, without regular communications and lacking a governmental structure in the modern sense, the court had to travel fairly continuously if any sort of political cohesion was to be maintained. A king who ceased to travel risked ceasing to be king, and the constitution that could endure the strain of continuous travel became a prime condition of successful rule. In León-Castilla that general condition of the eleventh-century monarchy was exacerbated by the Reconquista. Every year the courtier had not only to follow Alfonso about the peaceful countryside but also must follow him on campaign almost as often. Toledo was 400 kilometers southwest of León, Badajoz 500 kilometers, Córdoba 650 kilometers, Sevilla 750, and Granada 800 kilometers. These campaigns or raids to the south were marked by the same conditions of constant travel. Yet they were even more grueling, of course, by virtue of the constant presence of danger, the hostility of the countryside and the absence of friendly towns, and finally by the enormously swollen size of the party, which was army as well as court. That very size exacerbated every problem of supply and replenishment.

We should not expect then that the court of Alfonso VI resembled the sophisticated and knowledgeable court of Alfonso X, even on a smaller scale. Shaped by a rural environment of scarcity and privation, itself impermanent, the eleventh-century curia sustained a culture that was overwhelmingly physical and oral. The abilities it prized were those of the warrior and the hunter still. Even its aesthetic perceptions were ordered toward feats of horsemanship, and of arms, and of the mastery of nature. Of all the bishops who served in the royal court at one time or another only Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo can be reliably associated with an intellectual achievement in his own right. Years after the death of Alfonso, Pelayo was to continue the chronicle of Sampiro through the death of his royal master.

Over and above physical attributes, the court prized the practical intellect. Memory contained both the body of law to be administered and the body of religious doctrine to be received. Memory preserved the heroic past and thereby legitimated ones claims of the present. Rhetoric commanded assent at least occasionally and, up to a point, logic [160] could resolve conflicts and conflicting alternatives. Writing was an arcane skill, associated with clerical status, and chiefly important as a method of keeping records.

In such a setting innovation could not be pursued or justified in terms of an abstract conception or ideal. A novel course of action desperately demanded by changed circumstances could only become the basis of policy if it could be disguised or misrepresented as traditional and customary. In brief, the intellectual tools with which the eleventh-century monarchy functioned were as rude as its institutional and military ones. In monasteries and cathedral schools around Europe another more critical intellect was already stirring, and perhaps some of Alfonso's own prelates had been formed in such a mold. So far as the record would seem to show, however, its day was not yet. Even the great revolutions carried through by the Cluniacs and the Gregorians were largely presented by their protagonists as the validation or restoration of the traditional. The historian must remember, when he evaluates the policies that emerged from the curia of Alfonso VI, the possibilities that were imaginable and the possibilities that were workable for the men of that milieu.

1. The fuero was not yet formally distinct from the charter, in my opinion. For this point and all others in the following remarks see my "The Chancery of Alfonso VI," pp. 10-11.

2. See chapter 7, note 29.

3. Ibid., note 32. He is likely that Leonese magnate who appears in April 27, 1068. AC León, Códice 11, fol. 124r-v, and also in Carlos Estepa Díez, Estructura social de la ciudad de León, siglos XI-XIII (León, 1977), p. 257.

4. See chapter 7, note 17.

5. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 884, no. 5; copy in Códices, 989B, ff. 68v-69r; and chapter 7, note 63, respectively.

6. AHN, Clero, Códices, 989B, ff. 20V-21r.

7. Serrano, El Obispado de Burgos 1:346 and 3:127-28, n. 1

8. Feb. 17, 1074. AHN Clero Carpeta 883, no. 16.

9. May 6, 1085. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 885, no. 13. Probably his command of Zamora at least dates from prior to Apr. 27, 1084. Ibid., no. 4. His isolated appearance in that post as early as June 24, 1074, is dubious. AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 537v, with date of July 5, 1074. Pub. Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, p. 473, with the earlier date from a now lost source.

10. Quintana Pristo, ed., Tumbo viejo de Montes, pp. 109-10. The notice in BN, Manuscritos, 4.357, fol. 42v, dated to June 18, 973, should probably be redated to 1073.

11. Balparda, Historia crítica de Vizcaya 2:277.

12. Floriano Cumbreño, Estudios de historia de Asturias, p. 130.

13. See Apr. 24, 1074. Pub. Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Vicente, pp. 80-82; and Balparda, Historia crítica de Vizcaya 2:278-79.

14. See May 8, 1080. Chapter 6, note 66. Also Apr. 17, 1097. Pub. Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, Isabel Torrente Fernández, and Guadalupe de la Noval Menénedez, eds., El monasterio de San Pelayo de Oviedo, vol. 1 (Oviedo, 1978), pp. 27-29, for the marriage relationship.

15. Floriano Cumbreño. ed., El Libro Registro de Corias 1:553.

16. See chapter 6, note 69.

17. May 27, 1081-82. AHN, Códices, 105B, ff. 67r-68r, dated erroneously to 1063. October 21, 1082. Pub. Maximinos Arias, "El monasterio de Samos durante los siglos XI y XII,, AL 37 (1983): 64-66. There is another copy unknown to Arias in an unpublished manuscript of the Acad. Hist., Manuscritos, 9-27-2-E-50. Santiago Estefanía, "Memorias," pp. 181-84. May 27, 1084. A C Palencia, Armario 3, legajo 1, no. 8. This is clearly a forgery. There is also a copy on paper dated May 31. Another copy, Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-16, ff. 220r-221v. Pub. Fernández de Pulgar, Historia de Palencia 2:150-12, and Fernández de Madrid, Silva Palentina 3:50-51. June 17, 1084. Pub. Manuel Mañueco Villalobos and José Zurita Nieto, eds., Documentos de la iglesia colegial de Santa María la Mayor de Valladolid, vol. 5 (Valladolid, 1917), pp. 1-6. Dec. 5, 1084. BN, Manuscritos, 9. 194, fol. 96r-v; Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-22, fol. 54r-v. Pub. Quintana Prieto, Obispado de Astorga, pp. 597-98, from yet another copy. July 5, 1085. Vignau, ed., Cartulario de Eslonza, pp. 362-63.

18. The date of his death is confused. His successor, Raymond, first appears on September 14, 1084. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 885, no. 9; but the document is false as the dates of the majordomo and the alférez given as confirming cannot be reconciled. Raymond first reliably appears in the royal charter of Feb. 18, 1085. AHN, Códices, 1.197B, ff. 16r-20V, and 82r-86r, dated to Feb. 27; 1.195B, ff. 16r-17v; BN, Manuscritos, 752. ff. 83v-84v; and 9.194, ff. 82r-86r, and fol. 97r-v; Acad. Hist., Catedrales de España, Astorga, 9-25-1-C-2, ff. 29r-31v, ff. 173v-176v, dated to Feb. 15, and ff. 224v-227r; Colección Salazar, 0-22, fol. 15, and 0-24, ff. 9v-10v. Pub. Rodríguez López, Episcopologio asturicense 2:525-30; and Quintana Prieto, Obispado de Astorga, pp. 599-600. Bernard reappears in a private donation of March 29, 1085. AC León, Códice 11, fol. 90r-v; pub. ES 36:72-74 append. The copyist was trying to solve the same problem when he added the misleading "in Palentine Bernardus episcopus qui antea Remundo vocabatur." Interspersed with reliable notices of Raymond the name of Bernard continues to appear. July 1, 1085. See note 17. Nov. 25, 1085, and May 14, 1087. Both forgeries of Sahagún. See Barrero García, "Los fueros de Sahagún," pp. 393-401. Apr. 25, 1087. AHN, Códices, 1. 595B, fol. 66r-v; BN, Manuscritos, 752, ff. 82r-83r, and ff. 134v-136r, and 9.194, ff. 98r-99v; Acad. Hist., Catedrales de España, Astorga, 9-25-1-C-2, ff. 32r-35r; Colección Salazar, 0-22, ff. 16r-17r; 0-24, ff. 7r-9r, and 64v-66v. Pub. ES 56:475-74; Muñoz y Romero, ed., Colección de fueros municipales, pp. 321-23; Rodríguez López, Episcopologio asturicense 2:531-35; Quintana Prieto, Obispado do Astorga, pp. 602-604; and Duro Peña, "Catálogo de documentos de Orense" 1:15-16. These late copies alternate between the names of Bernard and Raymond. In any event, the document is a forgery. The names of the bishop of Lugo and the alférez are wrong, the language is anachronistic, and the diplomatic impossible.

19. This detail of the charter, which otherwise has problems, may be authentic. See Reilly, León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, pp. 343-44.

20. Quintana Prieto, ed., Tumbo Viejo de Montes pp. 119-20.

21. May 8, 1080. See chapter 6, note 66. There are later notices of him but no original documents, and the notice of the compiler of San Pedro de Montes can hardly have been invented. Cf March 31, 1081. AHN. Códices. 989B, fol. 193r. July 15, 1o81. Ibid., ff. 20v-25r, with the name of the royal alférez given incorrectly. Apr. 2, 1083. Ibid., fol. 108r-v, where the name of the alférez too would be anachronistic. Dec. 20, 1082. García Larragueta, ed., Colección de Oviedo, p. 255, in a document which has been interpolated at least. See Fernández Conde, El Libro de Testamentos, pp. 285-87. On the other hand, Bernard was cited as bishop in Astorga in an original document on Nov. 22, 1080. AC León, no. 263.

22. Quintana Prieto, ed., Tumbo Viejo de Montes, p. 121. A possibly garbled document of Feb. 15, 1083, has "episcopus Parnaldus in astoricens sede." BN, Manuscritos, 9.194, fol. 95r. Quintana Prieto, Obispado de Astorga, p. 443, knows an inscription that shows Osmundo consecrating a church on Oct. 2, 1082. He also believes the bishop was of French extraction and accompanied Queen Constance to Spain. Ibid., p. 440. Fletcher, Saint James Catapult, p. 51, suggests that Osmundo may have come from the district of Boulogne. Nov. 28, 1080. AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 538r, is a document of Sahagún which I regard as unreliable precisely because it cites Osmundo as bishop in Astorga.

23. Feb. 15, 1086. AC Burgos, Vol. 34, fol. 39r; pub. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:72-74. The bishop makes a donation of property given to him by Alfonso "cum essem clericus in domo sua."

24. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 1:310 and 325.

25. He confirmed Alfonso's charter to Burgos of Feb. 22, 1085. Pub. Serrano, Obispado de Burgos 3:63-70, from the copies in the cathedral archives. Other copies exist in BN, Manuscritos, 720, ff. 227r-228v, and 5.790, ff. 55r-52r; Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, 0-57, ff. 693v-694v, and ff. 711v-713v. Pelayo also appears in a private document of Eslonza, dated July 1, 1085. but it is probably not reliable (see note 58), and in another of Sept. 30, 1085. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 959, no. 19. He confirms once again, in the royal charter of Nov. 25, 1085, but this is clearly a forgery. See note 18.

26. For the identification, see Salustiano Moreta Velayos, El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña (Salamanca, 1971), pp. 155-56. Sebastián appears in two private documents of Eslonza dated Dec. 30, 1085. AHN, Clero, Carpeta 959, nos. 20 and 21. He confirms another private document dated simply to 1086. Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán, pp. 261-64. However, he confirms merely as "electus" in the original document of Feb. 15, 1086. See note 23. October 20, 1086, AHN. Códices, 989B, ff. 35v-36r, is his last recorded appearance.

27. García Larragueta, Colección de Oviedo, p. 263. However, see preceding note. June 16, 1086. AC León, Códice 11, fol. 152r-v, also was confirmed by Pedro. His next appearance is on Dec. 18, 1086. See chapter 10, note 13. For Pedros family, see Estepa Díez, Estructura social de León, p. 288.

28. "Calahorra," DHGE 11 (1949), cols. 305-306. The most recent student of the subject affirms that the sees of Nájera and Calahorra were united during this time. Saínz Ripa, Colección diplomática de Albelda y Logroño, p. 9. The documents known to me personally would support such a conclusion.

29. PMH 1, Diplomata, pp. 340-41. The editor believed the document to be an original.

30. Apr. 13, 1086. AHN, Lisbon, Cabido da Sé de Coimbra, Maco 1, documentos particulares, no. 20. Pub. PMH 1, Diplomata, pp. 392-93. For a critique, Pierre David, "Regula Sancti Augustini, à propos d'une fausse chartre de fondation du chapitre de Coimbre," RPH 3 (1947): 27-39.

31. These and the following remarks presume my findings in León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, pp. 252-59. Evelyn S. Procter, Curia and Cortes in León and Castile, 1072-1295 (Cambridge, 1980), has some useful discussion in his early portions but must be used with caution because of the author's limited familiarity with the documents.

32. See chapter 7, note 17.

33. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Historia y epopeya (Madrid, 1934), pp. 89-94, has examined the evidence and the relationships.

34. See chapter 7, note 31.

35. See chapter 6, note 66. This is the last confirmation by Bishop Pedro of Astorga. Quintana Prieto, Obispado de Astorga, pp. 420-25. is misled by the false charter of Nov. 25, 1080.

36. Pub. Leo Santifaller, ed., Quellen und Forschungen zum Urkunden- und Kanzleiwesen Papst Gregor VII (Rome, 1957), pp. 243-46, from the original in the AHN. An early copy not listed by the editor is AHN, Códices, 988B, fol. 4r-v.

37. See chapter 5, note 61.

38. The question of travel times in the medieval period needs badly to be refined. One starts with the data for walking rates. Foot soldiers in good condition can make forty kilometers a day carrying their own basic gear over level ground. A sustainable speed over a number of days is no more than twenty-four kilometers a day and that on good ground. Bachrach, "The Angevin Strategy of Castle Building," p. 542, argues that thirty-five to forty kilometers a day is the limit for mounted troops. He also states that oxcarts reduce the speed of a mixed force to but fifteen kilometers daily.

Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem ed. and trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York, 1948), p. 35, envisions daily journeys averaging forty-seven kilometers in a trip from Metz to Klosterneuburg. That seems very optimistic, and John W. Nesbitt, "The Rate of March of Crusading Armies in Europe," Traditio 19 (1963): 181, strikes an average speed of twenty-three kilometers a day for a mixed force. That is the figure I have decided is most realistic for roughly similar terrain in Iberia.

Small parties of horse who could command remounts naturally made much better time, and Alfonso VI is once said to have traveled from Sahagún to Toledo in three days, a rate better than one hundred kilometers per day, in the face of a grave emergency. Menéndez Pidal, ed., Primera crónica general 2:541.

39. Garcia Larragueta, Collección de Oviedo, pp. 219-21.

40. See chapter 5, note 64.

41. Ibid, note 65.

42. Ibid, note 66.

43. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 thought it necessary to restrict archbishops to a maximum retinue of fifty horse during their canonical visitations and mere bishops to a maximum of thirty. Josiah Cox Russell, Twelfth Century Studies (New York, 1978), p. 45. They are not likely to have brought such numbers to a royal progress, however.

44. Russell, Medieval Regions, p. 178, puts the entire population of the Christian north at one million about A.D. 1000. My figure, then, is probably somewhat high.

45. Ibid, pp. 188-89. He calculates on a basis of 120 people to the hectare of enclosed land.

46. Estepa Diaz, Estructura social de León, p. 140, estimates population there at only 1,500 in A.D. 1100. Astorga had a population of but 2,500 in the sixteenth century. Valentín Cabero Diéguez, Evolución y structura urbana de Astorga (León, 1973), p. 29. The old Roman walls have survived at Lugo in their complete circuit and García Alvarez, Galicia y los Gallegos 1:163-72, has based a population of 3,000 about A.D. 1000 on its thirty hectares. When I last visited Lugo, however, there was still much undedicated space within the walls. Santiago de Compostela had a walled area of eleven hectares in 1100 if my analysis of the road grid of the present-day old city is accurate. Eloy Benito Ruano and Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, Historia de Asturias: Alta Edad Media (Vitoria, 1979), pp. 252-53, give 3,000 as the population of Oviedo in the twelfth century.

47. Albert C. Leighton, Transport and Communication in Early Medieval Europe (New York, 1972), p. 26. Bishop Diego Gelmírez had his own, which he lost in a campaign in 1110. "Historia Compostelana," ES 20:105-106.

48. I am assuming that the mule and the horse had replaced the ox as the draught animal in such groups by the late eleventh century. Otherwise it is impossible to account for the speed that such groups averaged since the best speed of the ox as a draught animal seems to have been about eleven kilometers per day. Leighton, Transport in Early Medieval Europe, p. 161. I also assume that two-wheeled carts were normally used because unlike pack animals they need not be completely unloaded every night, they can also be pressed into service as temporary shelter, and they would have been much more manageable in mountainous terrain than four-wheeled wagons as the pivoting front axle seems not yet to have been known. See the discussion in ibid., pp. 118-21.

49. A contemporary description for Spain of such depredations is unknown but roughly contemporary England furnishes accounts which may also be assumed for Spain. See Frank Barlow, William Rufus (Berkeley, 1983), p. 135.

50. De Nugis curialium, trans. Frederick Tupper and Marbury Bladen Ogle (London, 1924), pp. 294-95 and 298.

51. Barlow, William Rufus, p. 21.

52. C. Stephen Jaeger, "The Courtier Bishop in 'Vitae' from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century," Speculum 58 (1983): 291-325, develops at some length the possibility of the episcopal courtier as the predecessor of the knightly one. Questions of the particularity of the German development, or literary as against historical reality, and of chronology leave fertile ground for controversy.