[i] Medieval Spanish and Portuguese monastic history is religious history; it is social and economic history; it is the history of the rise, survival, diffusion and operation of ideas, institutions, spirituality, culture. To the myopia that results from its study as a narrowly ecclesiastical discipline corresponds an impoverished comprehension of the forces of social, structural and intellectual change below the Pyrenees which afflicts those who ignore the monastic factor or underestimate its profoundly creative role in Iberian history -- a role that commences in the Romano-Suevo-Visigothic epoch, extends with increasing force down through the long, formative centuries of the Reconquista, and reaches its resounding climax in the still imperfectly investigated movement of the Observancia and other powerful monastic revivals of the Later Middle Ages and the Siglo de Oro. Furthermore, to a degree by no means always appreciated, the narrative and documentary materials relating to Luso-Hispanic monasticism, particularly before the twelfth century, cast a revealing light (often unobtainable from other sources) upon the history, institutions, lines of cultural innovation and circulation, and factors of growth in secular no less than in religious life -- a light focused, moreover, at the vital local and regional levels where medieval society can be most meaningfully assessed.
 
It is with these general considerations in mind that in the essays here collected I have long sought to explore neglected or manifestly misapprehended problems central to reconstructing the course of Iberian monastic evolution, not by any means for the Middle Ages as a whole but at three critical stages of its earlier history. Of the thirteen studies included in this volume, ranging in date of preparation from 1941 to 1983, two (I, XIII) appear in print for the first time, although a preliminary version of Study I can be found in Classical Folia XXVII (1973), 173-185, under the title "Hispanic Monastic Pactualism: The Controversy Continues."
 
[ii] Studies I-IV scrutinize the genesis and remarkable persistence of the peculiarly indigenous tradition of Iberian pactual cenobitism from late Visigothic times to its eventual confluence, in the course of the monastic colonization of the Castilian, Riojan and Luso-Gallegan frontier lands, with the new Carolingian Benedictinism entering western Spain from Aquitaine and Catalonia in the ninth and tenth centuries. The resultant synthesis, as yet far too little acknowledged, of Hispanic and trans-Pyrenean monastic practices and liturgy I have also treated in "Salvus of Albelda and Frontier Monasticism in Tenth-Century Navarre," a paper first published in 1948 in Speculum XXIII and subsequently reprinted in my Studies in Medieval Spanish Frontier History (Variorum Reprints: London, 1982).
 
Studies V-VII examine the often misinterpreted monastic factor in the celebrated Visigothic councils of Toledo, the impact of Byzantine and Carolingian currents upon a key proto-Benedictine monastic foundation of King Alfonso III, and the Hispanic Rite setting of the Leonese-Castilian king-emperor Fernando I's death as one essential key to determining the composition of the anonymous Historia Silense.
 
Finally, six studies (VIII-XIII) treat major issues in the "Europeanizing" penetration of Cluny into Spain and Portugal between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. These seek to clarify the geography and chronology of the Burgundian monastic dependencies in the Peninsula; the administration of these possessions by the mother abbey; and the significant political as well as ecclesiastical implications of Ibero-Cluniac expansion and alliance for the history of the Hispanic Empire of the king-emperors of Leon-Castile and the separatist ambitions of the counts of Portugal, implications especially evident in the direct personal interventions and visitations of the abbots of Cluny. On these topics should also be consulted my closely related papers "Fernando I and the Origins of the Leonese-Castilian Alliance with Cluny," first published in Spanish in Buenos Aires (Cuadernos de Historia de España, XLVII-XLVIII, 1968; XLIX-L, 1969; revised English version in the Variorum volume just cited), and "A Hispano-Cluniac Benefactor in the Epoch of Navarro-Aragonese Separation: Fortún Garcés Cajal and the Founding of San Adrián [iii] de Vadoluengo (Sangüesa), 1133-1145," scheduled to appear in the forthcoming Homenaje to Prof. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz.
 
In the Additional Notes, and in Studies I and XIII, I have tried to take due cognizance of the current growing literature in the field, especially the major contributions by Pérez de Urbel, Orlandis, Linage Conde, Díaz y Díaz, Mattoso, Segl, Reilly, and others. This has compelled me to reconsider various positions I had assumed or defended on controversial issues; but while I am fully aware of the extent to which the historiography of the last several decades has extended and enriched our understanding of medieval Spanish and Portuguese cenobitism, and cheerfully acknowledge the debt I owe to my commentators for occasional corrections in matters of detail, I have not found it necessary to revise in any essential respect the fundamental theses argued in these pages. If my views do something to stimulate in the rising new generation of Iberianists a greater awareness of the many unresolved complexities of the monastic constituent in the formation of medieval Spain and Portugal, they will have served a useful purpose.
 
Over the years I have accumulated numerous obligations, only a few of which can be given individual mention. The collections of the Harvard University Libraries, the Library of Congress, the Catholic University of America and (above all) my own University of Virginia have been indispensable, while I owe many past favors to friends and colleagues, and to the staffs of the Archivo Histórico Nacional, the Real Academia de la Historia, and the Biblioteca Nacional, all of Madrid. Acknowledgment is gratefully made of the financial support of these researches by the Frederick Sheldon Fund of Harvard University and by two agencies of the University of Virginia, the Wilson Gee Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and the University Research Committee. For permission to reproduce various of these papers I would cordially thank the Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md. (II), the Jefatura de Publicaciones, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid (III, VI); Editorial Estampa, Lda., Lisbon (IV), The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. (V), the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos) (VI), the Editorial Board of Revista Portuguesa de Historia, Coimbra (IX), Dom Josep Massot OSB, editor of Studia Monastica, Abbey of Montserrat (VIII, XI), and to the Biblioteca Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, Rome (XII). [iv] Particularly appreciated in the publication of this collection have been the counsel and cooperation of Mr. John Smedley of Variorum Reprints.
 
Chiefly, I would pay heartfelt and necessarily inadequate tribute to my wife, Lucretia Caroline Ramsey Bishko, whose learning and constructive criticism have so frequently enriched the preparation of these studies, and to whom in collected form they are affectionately dedicated.
 

University of Virginia

July 1983