[317] The text of this letter was preserved in a cartulary of St. Martin's at Tours copied between 1132 and 1137, which was destroyed in 1793. All modern printed editions descend from a copy of the letter made for the seventeenth-century antiquary André Duchesne. The text contains some obvious corruptions, but we cannot tell whether these originated in the seventeenth century, or in the twelfth, or at some earlier stage of the manuscript tradition.⁽¹⁾ The techniques of palaeography, in short, are of no assistance to us. Neither are those of diplomatic. For the letter is unique among early Spanish royal documents; there is nothing with which we may compare it. All other of Alfonso III's surviving documents are charters which are in some way beneficial -- diplomas granting lands or privileges, precepts relating to title, records of lawsuits, confirmations of rights or properties. No correspondence of any Leonese-Castilian king has survived from before the twelfth century, with the single exception of the letter under consideration here. Lacking a sample of similar documents for comparative purposes, we can undertake no diplomatic tests. The enquirer who wishes to establish whether or not the letter is authentic can do no more than look hard at what it says and ask himself whether it seems plausible. Very well: so what does it say?

King Alfonso, styling himself 'king of Spain' (rex Hispaniae),addresses and greets the clergy of St. Martin of Tours. He has received their letter (literas), carried by Mansio and Datus to archbishop (sic) Sisnando, and delivered by Sisnando to him. He is grieved to learn of the recent Viking attack in the course of which St. Martin's church was burnt. But he rejoices to hear of the work going ahead at Tours [318] to restore and fortify the church; is comforted, too, by the news of the miracles worked at St. Martin's shrine. Concerning the imperial crown made of gold and precious stones, fitting to his dignity, which they have again (rursum) referred to, urging Sisnando to persuade the king to buy it, he is willing and grateful to do so. He will arrange for a journey by sea (navalis remigatio) to be undertaken between us (reading nos instead of vos) and our friend Amalvinus duke (sic) of Bordeaux. In May of this present year, 906 AD (sic), his ships with members of his household will make their way to Bordeaux. Would the clergy of Tours please send the crown in the care of their own envoys so that it will reach Amalvinus count (sic) of Bordeaux by the middle of May. Then let two or three of their own people return with the king's messengers, and the crown, by sea from Bordeaux to Spain. He tactfully intimates that the church of Tours will be well rewarded. Would they also be so good as to send any written accounts of the posthumous miracles of St. Martin; for as yet he possesses only an account of the miracles worked by Martin during his lifetime. He can offer in return a work devoted to the lives of the holy fathers of Mérida, which he believes (reading rememoror for remoror) may not be known at Tours. They have asked which apostle's tomb it is that exists in Spain. Let them know that it is the tomb of St. James the son of Zebedee. His body was borne to Galicia after his death and buried there, as many trustworthy authorities (multae veridicae historiae) attest. Miracles are worked at his shrine. Should they wish to know how he was martyred, and how and when brought here for burial, the letters (epistolae) of our archbishops (sic) and the accounts (historiae) of our church fathers will tell. There is not time to include these writings in his letter; but when their representatives come here they will hear and see for themselves. They have asked how far from the sea the tomb is, and exactly where. Sail to the confluence of the rivers Volia (sic: presumably the Ulla) and Sar at Bisria.⁽²⁾ From there to the old (reading veteris for vestrae) see of Iria in the church of Sta. Eulalia it is ten miles; and thence another twelve to the tomb of St. James.

[319] Four arguments have been adduced against the authenticity of this document. First, it has been held that the king's title is anachronistic. Alfonso III normally styled himself, in his charters, simply Adefonsus rex. To some enquirers it has seemed that the more elaborate title used in the letter -- which runs, in full, Adefonsus pro Christi nutu at que potentia Hispaniae rex -- is in itself enough to brand the document as spurious. On the other hand the emergence of wide territorial claims and of imperial pretensions at the Asturian court can be dated to the latter part of Alfonso III's reign; and a fundamental feature of the Leonese imperium of the tenth and eleventh centuries was precisely the claim that the king of León was emperor of all Spain (imperator Hispaniae).⁽³⁾ Alfonso III himself had already been heralded in 883 as the ruler predestined with God's help to unite all Spain under his rule: gloriosus Adefonsus in omni Spanie regnaturus.⁽⁴⁾ With notions of this sort gaining currency in court circles, the elaborate royal title of the Tours letter seems more acceptable.

Second, some scholars have found it difficult to accept as authentic a document which refers to Sisnando as an archbishop. But here too the difficulty may plausibly be explained away. One possibility is that the original text spelt the word episcopus with a dipthong -- æpiscopus, a usage which can be found in original Spanish documents of this period⁽⁵⁾ -- and that the earliest scribe to copy the text at Tours incorrectly expanded what he took to be an abbreviation. Another possibility is that there occurred a different kind of error. The copyist of the Tours cartulary was working after the see of Compostela had been raised to metropolitan status in 1120: a slip of the pen, conscious or unconscious, by which the document was brought to reflect the ecclesiastical realities of his own day is not to be ruled out. It would be foolish to reject the letter on such a ground as this.

[320] Thirdly, the dating of the letter by the year of the Incarnation has aroused suspicions; for Spanish documents of this period were normally dated by the Spanish Era. But need it? The Spaniards were not ignorant of Anno Domini dating. It was used, for example, in the document recording the conscration of the new church at Compostela in 899. The clergy of Tours, however, may well have been ignorant of the Spanish Era. (The greatest computist of the early middle ages, Bede, seems not to have known of it.) Surely it is intelligible that the king should have used a system of dating to which his correspondents were accustomed.

The fourth objection to the authenticity of the Tours letter is more formidable. The passage in it relating to St. James, it has been argued, is dependent on a version of a document known as the Epistola Leonis Papae. The letter attributed to one of the popes named Leo gives an account of the translation of the body of St. James from Jerusalem to Galicia. It survives in three different, apparently successive, redactions which were first satisfactorily distinguished by Duchesne.⁽⁶⁾ The earliest of them, redaction A, survives in a single copy, inserted by a writer who was trying to imitate the contemporary Visigothic script of Spain into a manuscript of the abbey of St. Martial at Limoges, probably at some point in the latter half of the tenth century.⁽⁷⁾ There is reason to suppose that the letter was originally composed in Spain, presumably by someone connected with the cult of St. James. But we do not know who he was nor, more importantly, when he did his work. The second redaction, B, survives in a single twelfth-century copy.⁽⁸⁾ It purges A of its grosser legendary matter, improves its barbarous grammar and works into its text the entry relating to St. James in the ninth-century martyrologies. The third redaction, C, does not here concern us -- Duchesne argued that the letter of Alfonso III to the clergy of Tours was dependent on redaction B; and that redaction B was composed after -- perhaps long after -- the year 906: ergo, the Tours letter (or at [321] least that part of it relating to St. James) cannot be what it purports to be, a letter composed at the bidding of Alfonso III and sent to the clergy of Tours in 906.

Attentive scrutiny of the texts, however, fails to yield results so clear-cut as Duchesne maintained. The passage concerning St. James in the Tours letter is dependent on material which is common to redactions A and B, with the exception of certain turns of phrase in redaction B which are lifted from the ninth-century martyrologies; and there is no way of showing that the Tours letter's dependence is not rather on redaction A -- plus -- martyrologies than (as Duchesne argued) on redaction B. It is true that we cannot establish with certainty that the martyrologies were known in the Asturian kingdom in the time of Alfonso III. However, as we saw in chapter III, the editor of one of the most important of them, Usuard of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, had himself travelled in Spain before the publication of his work in about 865, where he had been in touch with the adherents of the cult of St. James. It may be that martyrologies lurk behind the Passiones mentioned in ninth- and tenth-century inventories of books in Galician libraries.⁽⁹⁾ Conceivably they were the veridicae historiae referred to by king Alfonso III. It would be a little surprising if such works were not known in his kingdom. As for the date of the composition of redaction A of the Epistola Leonis, we have absolutely no means of establishing it. The text could have been composed a century or more before the unique surviving copy was committed to writing at Limoges. Duchesne's argument cannot be decisively refuted: but we may justifiably return a verdict of not proven.

So much for the arguments against the authenticity of Alfonso III's letter to the clergy of Tours. They turn out upon inspection to be far from conclusive. Those in its favour, to which we must now turn our attention, seem to me strong; though here too, it must be confessed at the outset, they are not decisive. We are invited to suppose that the letter was concocted by person or persons unknown, somewhere (it is to be presumed) in France or Spain (perhaps [322] more probably the former), at some point before the compilation of the Tours cartulary in the 1130s. What can we say in answer to this case?

First, and most fundamentally, there could be no conceivable motive for forgery. Second, the historical detail, where we can check it, is correct. Tours was attacked by the Vikings in 903 and St. Martin's church burnt. In the years immediately following, archbishop Hebemus rebuilt the church and the city. It is very likely, though it cannot actually be proved, that the clergy of Tours would have had an object in their treasury which could be described as a corona imperialis, and that they might seek to dispose of it to a royal purchaser at a time when they needed funds. The most convincing piece of detail concerns Amalvinus, duke (or count) of Bordeaux. He is a very shadowy figure indeed. Only a single other reference to him has survived to attest his existence. A charter passed at Bourges in 887, a sale of land in the Limousin by Eudes count of Toulouse to archbishop Frotaire of Bordeaux, was witnessed by Amalvinus comes.⁽¹⁰⁾ His was hardly a name which would have readily occurred to our hypothetical (and motiveless) forger. Third, although the author of the letter describes with some precision -- and in so doing displays a familiarity with the coastal topography of Galicia which might be considered surprising if he worked in France -- the site of Santiago de Compostela, he does not refer to it eo nomine. The name, in this form, became widely current from the second quarter of the eleventh century. It did not exist in the time of Alfonso III. Fourth, some of the Latin terms used seem (to my inexpert eye) to have rather an early tenth-century 'look' than an eleventh or twelfth: for instance, apex, gerulus, ratis or virtutes.

There is finally -- and for me most convincingly -- a ring of authenticity about much of the text, hard to pin down, but which is such as to inspire confidence. The degree of fuss about the journey, the strong implication that such a journey, with so precious a cargo, would be both difficult and dangerous -- this seems plausible at a time when the Vikings dominated the western seaways. Or again, consider the books mentioned in the letter. The king's reference to [323] a work containing accounts of miracles worked by St. Martin during his lifetime is presumably to the Vita by Sulpicius Severus. We can show that this work was known in the Asturian kingdom at this time -- hardly surprisingly, for it was the most famous piece of hagiography in western Christendom. Alfonso III himself possessed a copy, which he gave to the church of Oviedo in 908.⁽¹¹⁾ The other work to which the king referred was the seventh-century Vitas sanctorum patrum Emeretensium. Now this was a work which never circulated widely even within Spain. Indeed, its latest editor knows of only one reference to it in any medieval text -- and that reference the very one we are discussing, in Alfonso III's letter.⁽¹²⁾ Its citation there strikes a strong, clear note in favour of the letter's authenticity.

Alfonso III's letter to the clergy of Tours is certainly a very odd document. Odd enough to be credible? yes -- though this, on its own, is a hazardous argument. There seem to me to be powerful reasons for accepting it for what it purports to be. Naturally, one's, impressions are subjective. They can be nothing else, given the impossibility of applying to it the usual tests. At any rate, I am prepared to trust it.⁽¹³⁾

1. For a guide to editions and modern discussion see García, DRG, no. 99. I have worked from the text in LFH II, ap. xxvii, pp. 57-60.

2. The last passage is very corrupt; only the general sensse is intelligible.

3. For the imperium of the Leonese kings see R. Menéndez Pidal, El imperio hispánico y los cinco reinos (Madrid, 1950); A. Sánchez Candeira, El 'regnum-imperium' leonés hasta 1037 (Madrid, 1951).

4. Crónica Profética, ed. M. Gómez Moreno, 'Las primeras crónicas de la Reconquista: el ciclo de Alfonso III', BRAH 100 (1932), 562-628, at p. 623.

5. For example, in an original royal charter of 7 March 918: L. Barrau-Dihigo, 'Chartes royales léonaises 91 2-1037', Révue Hispanique 10(1903), 350-454, no. ii.

6. L. Duchesne, 'Saint Jacques en Galice', Annales du Midi 12 (1900), 145-79.

7. A. Mundó, 'El códice Parisinus lat. 2036 y sus añadiduras hispánicas', Hispania Sacra 5 (1952), 67-78.

8. Escorial L. iii. 9, fo. 40; best edition in Z. García Villada, Historia eclesiástica de España (Madrid, 1929-36), I. pp. 369-70.

9. M. R. García Alvarez, 'Los libros en la documentación gallega de la alta edad media', Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 20 (1965), 292-329.

10. C. Higounet, Bordeaux pendant le haut moyen age (Bordeaux, 1963), p. 43.

11. A. C. Floriano, Diplomática española del período astur (Oviedo, 1949-51), II, no. 192: the text of the charter has been tampered with but the list of books seems genuine.

12. Vitas sanctorum patrum Emeretensium, ed. and trans. J. N. Garvin (Washington, 1946), p. 1, and cf. also p. 448.

13. So was Carl Erdmann, though I did not discover this until long after I had independently formed my own conclusions: see his Forschungen zur politischen Ideenwelt des Frühmittelalters, ed. F. Baethgen (Berlin, 1951), pp. 31-3. I am comforted to find myself in such distinguished company.