[129] The authors of the Historia Compostellana did not like queen Urraca. In the first place, she was a woman, and there was widespread belief that women should not and could not exercise political power. Secondly, and as we have already seen, the political situation at the time of Alfonso VI's death was unusually menacing. The problems which Urraca faced were formidable, and though they were not of her own making she tended to be blamed for them. Her predicament had something in common with that of queen Melisende in the kingdom of Jerusalem after 1131, or of Matilda the empress in England after 1135. A comparative study of these three queens would be illuminating, but this is not the place for it. Urraca was by no means devoid of the qualities of rulership. She was loyal to the memory of her father; sensible in her choice of advisers; capable of decisive action; shrewd and hard in negotiation; brave and resourceful in facing the changed responsibilities of Spanish monarchy in the early twelfth century. Yet we have to work hard to find evidence of these qualities. The hostility of the Historia -- and of other contemporary sources -- renders it difficult to get close to the queen and to arrive at a balanced assessment of her reign. Urraca has had a bad press from nearly every historian from her own day until our own. Only very recently has an attempt been made to redress the balance.⁽¹⁾

Urraca was born in about 1080, she married count Raymond in about 1092, and was widowed in 1107. There were [130] two children of the marriage, Sancha, born in or before 1102, and Alfonso, born in 1105; the latter was often referred to by his patronymic Raimúndez before his own accession to the throne. As we have seen, Urraca married again in 1109, shortly after the death of her father Alfonso VI. She reigned from 1109 until her death in 1126. The political history of her reign is exceedingly complicated. It may be divided for purposes of convenience into two roughly equal parts. The first extends from 1109 until the winter of 1116-17. These years were dominated by the failure of the Aragonese marriage and the consequences stemming therefrom, and by the pressure of the Almoravides upon the southern frontier of the kingdom of León-Castile.

Urraca's marriage to Alfonso el Batallador of Aragon was short-lived. Even before it took place it had aroused the opposition of her brother-in-law count Henry of Portugal. Soon after it had been celebrated the greatest magnate in Galicia, count Pedro Froílaz de Traba, came out against it. It was condemned by the bishops, led by Bernardo of Toledo, on the grounds of consanguinity, and they were upheld by the pope. The king of Aragon made himself unpopular in León-Castile. The royal couple may have been temperamentally unsuited to one another; and they failed to produce any children. By the autumn of 1112 king and queen had parted. Three consequences followed from the confused events of these years. The king of Aragon had gained control of much of eastern Castile: the queen wished to recover these territories, the king to retain them; the issue could be decided only by war. In Galicia a faction grouped round Urraca's infant son Alfonso Raimúndez had established a quasi-independent rule: to it we shall return shortly. Count Henry of Portugal had managed to take possession of some of the western territories of León which he governed in virtual independence. After his early death in 1112 his widow Teresa, Urraca's half-sister, inherited his position and his claims. Meanwhile, the situation on the southern frontier was perilous. The Almoravides captured Talavera in the late summer of 1109 and ravaged about Madrid and Guadalajara: it was probably at this time (though it might have been in 1110) that a famous siege of Toledo occurred. In 1110 the [131] last of the taifa kingdoms, Zaragoza, fell to the Almoravides, and a Christian army was defeated near Santarem in Portugal; the town itself was lost to the Almoravides in 1111. In 1112 Guadalajara was again attacked. In 1113 the valley of the Tagus was once more the target of the Almoravides: Oreja, Coria, Zorita and Albalate were captured; the great Christian captain Alvar Fáñez was defeated while trying to relieve Oreja; the Almoravides penetrated as far north as Berlanga, only a few miles south of the Duero. In 1114 the Toledo region was raided again, probably twice. It was not until 1115 that a Christian counter-offensive produced some successes -- three successive governors of Cordoba were defeated and killed by raiding parties from Toledo -- but these proved only temporary checks to the tide of Almoravide success. Oriel Aznárez, the governor of Toledo, was defeated in 1116, and further strong points in Portugal fell to the Moors. In 1117 Ali ben Yusuf, the Almoravide leader, himself crossed to Spain at the head of an enormous army. He besieged Coimbra for three weeks, an episode which was to be long remembered in Portuguese tradition. Coimbra survived; but the same year saw also a further reverse for the army of Toledo.

In Galicia the first reaction to the Aragonese marriage came from Pedro Froílaz de Traba. As the guardian of the child Alfonso Raimúndez he took his stand on the decisions taken at the council of León in 1107, by which the kingdom of Galicia was to go to Alfonso Raimúndez in the event that his mother Urraca should remarry: 'when he heard for certain that the king of Aragon had married the boy's mother, he rebelled against him'.⁽²⁾ Count Pedro was opposed by a faction among the Galician nobility which the Historia Compostellana refers to as a 'brotherhood' (germanitas) under the leadership of Arias Pérez. Some historians have detected here a clash of principles: 'Galician separatists' under Pedro Froílaz against 'loyalists' under Arias Pérez. But this is anachronistic. It is more likely that the divisions were drawn on regional lines. Traba country was in the extreme north-west. The members of the brotherhood [132] were for the most part drawn from central and southern Galicia.

Diego Gelmírez was presented with the first of many difficult choices which were to force themselves upon him during Urraca's reign. At the council of León Diego had been associated with Pedro Froílaz in the guardianship of Alfonso Raimúndez. But he may have felt a personal loyalty to Urraca, a respect for the deathbed wishes of Alfonso VI. Here too, local interests may have played a part in shaping Diego's decision. The brotherhood included several of Diego's vassals, powerful and (as we shall soon see) dangerous men whose wishes had to be respected. There are also signs that at this time the relations between Diego and Pedro Froílaz, normally cordial, were strained. This is a very obscure matter, but it seems that the two men had recently quarrelled over the status and patronage of a religious house at Cines, and that in a recent election to the see of Mondoñedo the candidate chosen was a man of the Traba interest who was unacceptable to Diego.⁽³⁾ Diego's reaction was the epitome of caution. After ostentatious hesitation he aligned himself with the brotherhood in opposition to count Pedro. This must have occurred late in 1109 or early in 1110.

His position shifted in the course of the year 1110.⁽⁴⁾ Several factors combined to bring about a rapprochement between Diego and the count, with the focus of their loyalties firmly upon the young Alfonso Raimúndez. The king of Aragon made his first and only appearance in Galicia. The expedition was not a success. He made himself unpopular with churchmen and laymen alike, and the only charter he granted there, to the abbey of Samos, is notable for its short and undistinguished witness-list.⁽⁵⁾ Pope Paschal II, following the archbishop of Toledo, condemned the Aragonese marriage. The signs multiplied that, even without the spur of ecclesiastical censure, the marriage could not last. In the light of these developments it must have been impossible for Diego to maintain his stance of loyalty to the political [133] arrangements which went with it. Meanwhile, the tension in Galicia between the Traba faction and the brotherhood increased; the tenuous peace snapped towards the end of the year. Pedro Froílaz succeeded in acquiring the castle of Castrelo do Miño, just to the east of Ribadabia. This acquisition, in an area far to the south of the Traba landholdings, but conveniently close to Portugal with whose count Henry he was in touch in the course of the year, was presumably intended by Pedro as the beginning of some sort of initiative against the brotherhood. Certainly it was interpreted thus. Most unwisely, Pedro installed his wife and Alfonso Raimúndez in this distant outpost. There they were besieged by the forces of the brotherhood. It was at this point that Diego Gelmírez became involved. The besieged very naturally requested that Diego, as titular head of the brotherhood, should come to guarantee articles of surrender. Diego attended only with extreme reluctance. Had he already been negotiating with the count of Traba? Very probably. At all events, the meeting at Castrelo was conducted in an atmosphere of the deepest suspicion between Diego and his nominal allies of the brotherhood. They struck after the conclusion of negotiations with the besieged in the castle. Diego, the countess of Traba and Alfonso Raimúndez were arrested by Arias Pérez.

The incident was unpleasant -- Diego was not maltreated but his travelling chapel was ransacked -- but in the longer term its effects may have been beneficial. Diego was given the best possible pretext for aligning himself with count Pedro. Released after a few days' imprisonment to negotiate with him, Diego seems to have had no difficulty in finding common ground. They agreed that they must treat with Urraca on the basis of firm loyalty to Alfonso Raimúndez. The queen was delighted. Diego threw over the brotherhood and joined the Traba camp. In a carefully staged ceremony at Compostela on 17 September 1111 the young prince was crowned and anointed king by Diego. In the banquet that followed count Pedro Froílaz acted as seneschal (dapifer), his son Rodrigo was marshal (alfericeus), another son, Bermudo, had charge of the royal cellars (vinum et siceram . . . ministran praecepit), and Munio Peláez, count [134] Pedro's son-in-law, was in charge of the food (regalis offertorius). There could have been no doubt about who was to be in charge of the new king's court. In the singsong that ended the evening's carousal we may feel sure that bishop Diego and the Traba clan bellowed most lustily what the author of the Historia Compostellana delicately referred to as 'hymns of joy'.

The events of 1109-11 have been dwelt on at some length, mainly because, thanks to the Historia, we know a good deal about them. It had not been an easy time for Diego. There had been uncertainty, divided counsels, disloyalty of vassals, oath-breaking, suspicion, deception and violence. We must not suppose that Diego's experience was unique, simply because we happen to know about it. We are presented with the familiar if pitiable spectacle of confused men trying to muddle through a crisis. As in many -- perhaps most -- political crises, the only issue at stake was survival. Diego Gelmírez was nothing if not a survivor.

The accord with queen Urraca reached in 1111, and its gradual erosion, make up the thread which will enable us to follow the labyrinthine politics of the next six years. The immediate results of the accord are clear. It gave Urraca the opportunity of tapping Galician resources in men and money for the coming war with Aragon. It effectively forestalled any intervention in Galicia nominally on behalf of Alfonso Raimúndez by the count and countess of Portugal. It strengthened Traba power in Galicia. It provided Diego with the chance to insert Compostelan clerks into the royal chancery, with all the possibilities for exerting influence that this implied.⁽⁶⁾ It gave Diego access to royal aid in suppressing Galician trouble-makers: one of its first fruits was the siege and capture of Arias Pérez at Lobeira in April 1112.⁽⁷⁾

What is less clear is the significance of the coronation ceremony of September 1111. Some have supposed that Alfonso Raimúndez was crowned king of Galicia. This seems [135] most unlikely. He is never described as such in our sources. There is no sign that he was in any sense a nominally independent ruler; for example, he did not as yet issue charters or coinage in his own name. Rather, he seems to have been elevated to the position of joint-ruler with his mother. A charter of 11 February 1111, which must have been drawn up very soon after the new accord had been reached (and well before the coronation) puts the matter thus in its dating-clause: regnante Urraka regina et filio suo parvulo Adefonso in Legione.⁽⁸⁾ After the coronation Diego and count Pedro set out for León so that there the boy and his mother could jointly receive the homage of the kingdom's leading men. As it happened they never got there, being defeated by an Aragonese army at Viadangos and forced to flee back to Galicia;⁽⁹⁾ yet the episode suggests that joint rule was envisaged. We begin to find the royal chancery, frequently though not invariably, issuing diplomas in the names of both mother and son.⁽¹⁰⁾

Harmonious co-operation was the keynote of relations between Diego and the queen in the course of the year 1112. Urraca spent most of the first half of the year in the Asturias and Galicia. From Astorga in March she went to Oviedo, and thence moved south-west to Lugo. She spent Easter (21 April) at Compostela, visited Tuy, and returned to Compostela after that. About the middle of May she moved back to Lugo, and perhaps paid a visit to the Mondoñedo area about the same time. It was a comprehensive review of her Galician provinces, and the abundant royal diplomas which have survived leave one in no doubt that her main motive was to raise men and money for the war with Aragon. At Compostela she implored the assistance of St. James, helped Diego to round up Arias Pérez and made a handsome grant of lands and privileges to the cathedral church.⁽¹¹⁾ We are not surprised to learn that this 'wonderfully fired the spirits of the clergy' to assist the queen. They gave [136] her 100 ounces of gold and 200 silver marks. The results of her efforts were eminently satisfactory. A Galician army crossed the mountains to the meseta and defeated the Aragonese at Astorga; Alfonso el Batallador fled to Carrión, pursued by the queen. Diego had accompanied the army as far as Triacastela, returning thence to Galicia to suppress a revolt which had broken out in his rear.⁽¹²⁾

Signs of strain appeared in 1113. Urraca's summer campaign was directed to the recovery from the Aragonese of the important town and fortress of Burgos.⁽¹³⁾ Diego was summoned to join the queen's army, which he did rather too slowly for her liking. While they were together in July the relations between them seem to have deteriorated. Urraca doubted Diego's commitment to her cause; he resented the presence of some of his old Galician enemies at her court. An agreement which was drawn up between them on 8 July shows that one of the divisive issues was Diego's liability for military service in the royal army. There was probably more to this quarrel than the Historia Compostellana permits us to see.⁽¹⁴⁾ In 1113 Diego made his first serious attempt to persuade the pope to raise his episcopal see to metropolitan rank. His strategy on this occasion involved reliance upon the assistance of archbishop Maurice of Braga, at a moment when the latter's relations with both the queen and archbishop Bernardo of Toledo were singularly bad. This would not have endeared Diego to Urraca. After Diego had returned to Galicia he stayed there for the rest of the year; excusing himself with an unconvincing pretext from attendance at the council of Palencia in October -- a council which was an impressive display of royalist confidence and Toledan primatial power, where the Braga party took an ignominious beating. Diego, meanwhile, was stoking up his alliance with the Trabas; it seems that count Pedro too had incurred the queen's displeasure.⁽¹⁵⁾ But oil was poured on these troubled waters. Urraca probably kept her Christmas court in Galicia, and the archbishop of Toledo skillfully [137] detached Diego from his flirtation with the archbishop of Braga.

The frail harmony between Diego and the queen was further threatened in 1114. After spending the early part of the year in Castile, Urraca travelled to Galicia in the summer. A private charter from León dated 26 July refers darkly to discordia between the queen and her son at this time.⁽¹⁶⁾ It is likely that we should connect this with what the Historia has to tell us of a plot against Diego by Urraca in the course of the summer.⁽¹⁷⁾ The queen planned to capture the bishop at Iria. He got wind of it and managed to mobilize Galician aristocratic opinion in his favour. Urraca, her bluff called, was forced to swear an oath of friendship. The most striking feature of the text of the oath was its concern with the preservation of the integrity of the honor of Santiago -- that is to say, the complex of lands and rights which made up the temporalities of the bishopric. We must conclude from this that Urraca had intended to confiscate some or all of the honor, perhaps as a ransom for Diego's release from captivity. Some indications that this was the way the queen's mind was working had already been given. A little earlier, perhaps when the court was in Galicia at the end of 1113, Urraca had claimed that three brothers who were among the clergy of Compostela were capite censos.⁽¹⁸⁾ It is not clear exactly what this claim meant, but the general sense of it was an assertion of rights over persons of servile condition. Now the three brothers in question were distinguished men, trusted members of Diego's entourage. One of them, Pelayo Bodán, had been a notary of Alfonso VI for at least ten years and had been sent on business to the papal curia. Another, Diego, had been a canon of Compostela since at least 1101 and had been sent by his bishop [138] to acquire an important privilege from Alfonso VI in 1107. As successful servants of church and state, they must have been men of substance; their family was in any case a landed one. Aided by Diego Gelmírez, they had no difficulty in rebutting the queen's claims. The interest of the incident lies in its revelation of the expedients to which Urraca was being forced by the pressures of insolvency.

But there were yet other currents playing about the events of the summer. Diego heard about the plot from Pedro Froílaz de Traba; he in his turn had heard it from the queen herself. The implication is surely inescapable that Urraca had tried to detach count Pedro from his alliance with Diego, and had very nearly succeeded in doing so. This circumstance probably explains the otherwise inexplicable oath of friendship sworn about this time to Diego by count Pedro, his wife, two of his sons and several of his prominent vassals.⁽¹⁹⁾ A pact of friendship implies recent estrangement; and the concern of the pact with the honor of Santiago echoes queen Urraca's contemporaneous oath. But this was not the only concern of the Traba oath. Pedro Froílaz and his family promised 'that we shall act according to your [i.e. Diego's] counsel and command over the raising up of the infante the lord Alfonso [i.e. Alfonso Raimúndez] and in the providing of him with lands, while we retain him in our custody'. This is a very interesting provision, and it tells us two things. The first is that Traba guardianship of the young king was being threatened, presumably by the queen who wanted her son in her own custody. The second is that some sort of political initiative was being planned by Diego on behalf of or in the name of Alfonso Raimúndez, now in his tenth year. What this was is revealed elsewhere.⁽²⁰⁾ Diego believed that 'the kingdom of Galicia should be subject to the lordship (dominio) of king Alfonso the queen's son'. This is the first occurrence of the term regnum Gallaeciae in the Historia Compostellana, and a startling revelation of the drift of Diego's plans. Alfonso Raimúndez was a king without a kingdom. Diego proposed to give him one, at his mother's expense. No wonder that Urraca had been alarmed, [139] nor that a Leonese notary should have referred to discordia between mother and son.

The sequel to these events is not known. Urraca had returned to León by October, and spent the winter in Castile. Her Christmas court may have been held at Palencia. Diego probably attended it, in itself a sign that some sort of reconciliation had taken place, and it was at Palencia on 3 January 1115 that the queen made a handsome grant of lands and churches lying a little to the south-east of Compostela to the church of St. James. (It is not impossible that the reconciliation had been lubricated by cash, that this 'grant' was in fact a concealed sale.) The words of the queen's diploma laid special stress both on her son's kingship -- 'with my son the lord Alfonso, now blessed and consecrated to the summit of the kingdom' -- and on Diego's loyalty, 'most faithful in all things to me and to my son'. These emphases recur in another grant by the queen issued towards the end of the year, on 26 November 1115.

We must not be deceived, as we may be sure that Diego was not, by these honeyed words of friendship. In the following year a further quarrel between queen and bishop took place. It proved to be an altogether more serious business for Diego. Early in 1116 Urraca heard rumours that Diego's loyalty was weakening. She hastened to Galicia and a reconciliation between the two was arranged. After this the queen went into southern Galicia to put down a baronial rebellion near the Portuguese frontier. This accomplished, she made her way back to Lobeira where Diego's enemies urged her to imprison the bishop and confiscate the honor of Santiago. To this end she tried once more to engage the help of Pedro Froílaz de Traba, and once more he managed to reveal the plot to Diego. The bishop returned to Compostela and surrounded himself with troops. A meeting was arranged between the two parties and a new peace was made. To guarantee it, Diego was to choose twenty prominent aristocrats (potentiores), ten from Galicia and ten from the rest of the kingdom, who should swear as Urraca's oath-helpers to maintain it.⁽²¹⁾

[140] The peace very rapidly broke down. Urraca made her way to Lugo and thence to León, but though constantly badgered by Diego's emissaries she failed to assemble the oath-helpers as she had promised to do. It had been stipulated that in the event of her failure to fulfil the terms Diego should have the right to declare the peace void. This he now did. The sequel was startling.⁽²²⁾ Count Pedro Froílaz and the young king Alfonso Raimúndez were absent at this time beyond the Duero. We do not know what they were doing there: it is quite likely that the simplest explanation is the most plausible, namely that after the events of the spring the count wanted to get the boy as far away as possible from his mother. At any rate, what the Historia calls a 'serious quarrel' (magna discordia) between mother and son broke out. As soon as Alfonso Raimúndez heard of the dissolution of the recent peace between Diego and the queen he approached Diego with a proposal that he should now be proclaimed king of Galicia, as was his due. Diego, perhaps with some misgivings, agreed. Count Pedro and the young king returned to Galicia and were met by Diego at Iria.⁽²³⁾ Alfonso Raimúndez was then formally conducted, as king, to Santiago de Compostela.

Urraca's response was prompt and vigorous. She dashed back to Galicia by way of  Triacastela and Mellid -- that is, along the pilgrimage road -- collecting support from the great magnates of eastern Galicia as she went, in the persons of count Rodrigo Vélaz de Sarria and count Munio Peláez de Monterroso. She made extravagant promises to Diego -- [141] Lobeira, Ferreira and Montaos -- in a bid for his loyalty to her. She encouraged disaffection in the town of Compostela, where Alfonso Raimúndez and the countess of Traba had established themselves in Diego's episcopal palace. (Pedro Froílaz was away from Compostela by now, at the head of an army, in whose ranks also the queen was busy sowing discontent.) Diego saw that the game was up. With difficulty he persuaded Alfonso Raimúndez and the countess Mayor to leave the town, and awaited the queen's arrival in trepidation. She came to Compostela, negotiations took place and a settlement was arranged. We are not told its terms, but they included the grant of a church at Caldas -- very much less than what the queen had promised -- on 18 May, which is our only secure date in this phase of the events of 1116.

The attempted coup on behalf of Alfonso Raimúndez had obviously been the work of Pedro Froílaz de Traba. Thanks to Urraca's prompt initiative it had misfired. Morally speaking, Diego had come out of it rather badly. He had abandoned the queen for the Traba faction, and then thrown over his new allies as soon as Urraca's army had appeared on the scene; despite the fact that he was acting in accordance with the plans that he had concocted with count Pedro in 1114. We already know him as a slippery customer, but he was not usually a man to give way to panic. In 1116, however, he was threatened from yet another quarter. Hitherto he had always been safe in his own city of Compostela, but at just this time a serious challenge to his authority was breaking out precisely there. The Compostela rebellion of 1116-17 will be examined in the next chapter. Here it is sufficient to say that it was led by members both of the urban bourgeoisie and of Diego's own cathedral chapter; that at least in its early stages it had the support of the queen; and that as it developed in the summer of 1116 it constituted the gravest menace not only to Diego's authority but to his very life which he ever had to face.

Diego was isolated in the summer of 1116. Pedro Froílaz had not forgiven him for his betrayal in May, and was conducting a guerrilla war against his dependants during the months of summer. The town of Compostela was slipping from his grasp. He had to establish a firmer relationship with [142] the queen. At some point in or after July he went and sought her out on the Tierra de Campos. To his relief, Urraca was prepared to treat. But she would insist this time on a more far-reaching settlement.⁽²⁴⁾

The peace which was finally made at Sahagún in October 1116 between the queen and the partisans of her son is reported at length but somewhat vaguely in the pages of the Historia Compostellana.⁽²⁵⁾ Given the authors' habit of saying as little as possible about Diego's reverses, there is some ground for suspecting that the peace of Sahagún was a triumph for the queen. It was evidently regarded as an important settlement, the first such since the death of Alfonso VI to offer any hope of lasting concord. It was to run in the first instance for three years. Its most far-reaching provision was for the division of the kingdom between mother and son. The experiment of joint rule had not worked; Alfonso Raimúndez was to be given an independent authority. Gerald of Beauvais, the author of this part of the Historia, is oddly reluctant to tell us any details about the partition. Some historians⁽²⁶⁾ have supposed that it was now, in 1116, that Alfonso Raimúndez was given a kingdom of Galicia. But had this been so Gerald would certainly have told us. In any case, in the spring of that year queen Urraca had so successfully outmanúuvred the faction which wanted precisely this that it is inconceivable that she should have conceded it during the summer. Furthermore, Urraca's dealings with Galicia during the next three years leave one in no doubt as to her continuing authority there. Alfonso Raimúndez did indeed get independent authority as a result of the negotiations at Sahagún, but altogether elsewhere, in the area referred to by contemporaries as Extrematura, i.e. beyond the river Duero, in the Toledo region. This was a master-stroke on Urraca's part, and it explains the rueful [143] silence of the Historia. For the first time Alfonso Raimúndez was detached from his Galician supporters. His new mentor would be the archbishop of Toledo -- Diego's most dangerous ecclesiastical rival -- and his new entourage would be Castilian.⁽²⁷⁾ Diego Gelmírez and the Trabas had lost the contest for custody of the young king.

Almoravide pressure on the southern frontiers of Christian Spain eased after 1117. Ali's attempt on Coimbra in that year was the last big Muslim initiative, and it failed. Hesitantly at first, but with increasing confidence, the Christian princes began to push the war into the enemy camp. The first major success was Alfonso el Batallador's capture of Zaragoza, after a seven-months' siege, in December 1118. It was very probably because Almoravide troops had been diverted to the defence of Zaragoza that the archbishop of Toledo and Alfonso Raimúndez were able to take the strong point of Alcalá towards the end of the year, thereby helping to ensure the defence of Toledo from the Almoravide salient to its north-east. The king of Aragon followed up his success by taking Tudela in 1119. In 1120 he defeated a large Almoravide army at Cutanda, and absorbed Calatayud and Daroca.

These events were watched with interest in Galicia. If they had any direct repercussion in the north-west it was probably the falling-off of Urraca's demands for money for the expenses of frontier defence. For Diego the three years following the peace of Sahagún were dominated by his final and successful negotiations with pope Gelasius II and his successor Calixtus II to have his see raised to metropolitan status. This was an enterprise in which he badly needed royal support, so he had every reason to cultivate good relations with the queen. As far as we can see, harmony was maintained. It was with royal help that the rising in Compostela was suppressed in 1117. Diego provided the queen with troops in the autumn of the same year. She paid a visit to Galicia in the summer of 1118. Diego attended her court at Burgos in the spring of 1119, and for part of the way thither she provided him with a royal escort.⁽²⁸⁾ We hear [144] of only one source of unease. Urraca is said to have forbidden Diego to attend Calixtus II's council of Rheims in October 1119.⁽²⁹⁾ But we should not make too much of this. The queen's claim that the peace of Galicia would be jeopardized by Diego's absence was no more than the truth. She may have had an eye to her half-sister Teresa, now styling herself not countess but queen of Portugal, to the south.⁽³⁰⁾ And though the pope had insisted that Diego attend the council in person, he may have been as reluctant to go as the queen was to permit him. The three-year peace of Sahagún was to expire in the autumn. How could Diego possibly absent himself from the kingdom at such a delicate moment? The Historia makes rather a song and dance about telling us that Diego had made every preparation for his journey to the papal curia.⁽³¹⁾ Perhaps it protests too much. All the more reason for suspecting that the royal prohibition may not have been unwelcome to him.

The ending of the three-year truce must have engendered uncertainties about the future and an atmosphere of suspicion. Urraca is said to have had another reason for preventing Diego from going to Rheims. 'Certain people had persuaded the queen that [Diego] wanted to go to Gaul so that he might endeavour to confer the kingdom of Spain upon king Alfonso the queen's son.' These words form the threshold for our entry into the immensely complicated happenings of the year 1120. Before trying to unravel the story it will be useful to isolate some of the underlying strands. In the first place, Diego had at last got his archbishopric; the papal privilege conferring it had been drawn up at Valence on 26 February 1120. So he was a little less dependent on royal benevolence than he had been in the years 1118 and 1119. Second, pope Calixtus II felt keenly the responsibilities of a kinsman for his nephew Alfonso Raimúndez. Of several indications of this we need cite only one example, the papal [145] bull Egregiae memoriae of 4 March 1120.⁽³²⁾ The pope insisted that the young king had been deprived of his rights by his mother and that they should be restored to him. Third, Urraca was hoping to take advantage of Aragonese preoccupation with frontier warfare and mobilize a campaign to recover the territories in eastern Castile lost to the king of Aragon back in the years 1110-12. Finally, in order to do this she needed money. She decided to seek it in the north and west of her kingdom.

In mid-April Urraca was at Astorga. Towards the end of the month she had gone to the Asturias. Thence she moved west to Galicia. She was at Compostela in the middle of June, and may have paid a visit to Braga. On 6 August she was at Samos, heading eastwards, and by the end of the month seems to have been back on the Leonese meseta. The diplomas issued by the queen in the course of this journey -- like those of 1112 -- bear witness to her preoccupation with raising money. She sold a Roman temple to the bishop and chapter of Astorga for bullion and 2,083 solidi. Samos contributed 10 marks of silver and 700 solidi. Her grants to count Suero Bermúdez, and to the church of Oviedo, were made 'in return for service' (propter servicium), a formula which may well indicate an unacknowledged sale. Her particularly lavish benefaction to the cathedral church of Santiago, made 'on account of the forthcoming wars', was reciprocated in bullion from the cathedral treasury -- a 'silver (covered?) table' (mensam argenteam)-- and cash from Diego's personal fortune.⁽³³⁾ We should note too that a captured rebel baron was released only after payment of 'massive sums of money' (pecunias immensas).⁽³⁴⁾

But there were further goings-on at Compostela. Once again there were rumours that Urraca was conspiring to arrest the archbishop (as he now was). On this occasion they were reconciled through the mediation of two French ecclesiastics, Henry, abbot of St. Jean d'Angély, and Stephen, chamberlain of Cluny. A contemporary chronicler in York recorded the vital information that in the summer of 1119 abbot Henry had been sent by the pope to escort archbishop Ralph of [146] Canterbury to the papal curia.⁽³⁵⁾ Henry would therefore have returned to the curia late in 1119. It is hard to avoid the impression that his journey to Spain must have been undertaken on the orders of pope Calixtus. Now Henry was a man of very distinguished family.⁽³⁶⁾ In particular, he was connected, albeit rather remotely, to the greatest magnate in southern France, duke William IX of Aquitaine: Henry's sister-in-law had previously been married to the half-brother of William's mother. William IX himself was queen Urraca's first cousin. It is of the utmost interest to find that William too was in Spain at this time.⁽³⁷⁾ He subscribed Urraca's diploma of 21 August 1120. This was a grant to the monastery of Cluny, and it was undoubtedly negotiated by Stephen the chamberlain. It must surely have been at about the same time that Clementia, the dowager countess of Flanders, wrote a letter of anxious enquiry about Alfonso Raimúndez to Diego.⁽³⁸⁾ Clementia was the pope's sister, aunt therefore of the young king. As so often, we have tantalizing scraps of information but no coherent narrative. It looks as though the pope -- an aristocrat of the most distinguished connections, accustomed to moving among the great on terms of easy familiarity -- as mobilizing the most powerful force available to him, not ecclesiastical censures but the network of aristocratic kin, to bring pressure to bear upon Diego Gelmírez and queen Urraca in the interests of his nephew Alfonso Raimúndez.

The agreement that was reached between Diego and the queen through the mediation of Henry and Stephen is summarized in the Historia Compostellana.⁽³⁹⁾ Its terms are [147] extremely puzzling. Urraca promised to be a faithful friend (fidelis amica) to Diego. Furthermore, she gave him the lordship of all Galicia (totius Gallaeciae dominium). On her orders Arias Pérez, Fernando Yáñez, Bermudo Suárez, Juan Díaz and other unnamed magnates (principes) of Galicia did homage (hominium) to him, placing themselves and their possessions beneath his lordship (dominio).They acknowledged him as 'their lord, their patron, their king [sic] and their prince, saving their fealty to the queen'. Nothing is reported about Alfonso Raimúndez, but that does not mean that nothing was said. We should remember that Gerald of Beauvais was chronicling Diego's achievements, not writing a political history of queen Urraca's reign. Other documents of the year 1120 show plainly that the young king continued to rule beyond the Duero.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Alfonso Raimúndez's rights under the Sahagún agreement of 1116 had been renewed if not enlarged: to that extent Henry and Stephen had faithfully carried out the pope's commission. Another omission is more surprising. The report in the Historia makes no allusion to the Traba family. Now Urraca's diploma for the church of Santiago dated 13 June was subscribed by no member of the family. Among its confirmantes were, however, the four magnates who did homage to Diego under the new agreement. These were all men who had on occasions in the past been at loggerheads with Pedro Froílaz (and also, it is only fair to state, with Diego). Diego's new position as 'lord of Galicia', whatever it really meant, was obviously intended as some diminution of the authority of Pedro Froílaz who had enjoyed the dignity of count of Galicia since 1109. Furthermore, it is only very shortly after the 1120 agreement that we find count Pedro's son, Fernando Pérez de Traba, up in arms against Diego.⁽⁴¹⁾ It appears that in 1120 -- as in 1114 and 1116 -- the queen was trying to separate Diego from his Traba allies. On this occasion she succeeded.

The latter part of the year brought a development full of menace for Diego. The projected Aragonese campaign never took place. Instead, Urraca and Alfonso el Batallador made [148] peace. The fact is referred to in an Aragonese charter of 29 December.⁽⁴²⁾ But it had evidently occurred much earlier than that, for Diego sent news of it to the pope, and Calixtus replied to him in a letter dated 19 December, denouncing it in violent terms.⁽⁴³⁾ We have another witness to tell us something of this settlement. William IX of Aquitaine returned home towards the end of the year and wrote thence to Diego in terms of anxiety, not to say panic.⁽⁴⁴⁾ He reported that Urraca and Alfonso el Batallador were intending to deprive Alfonso Raimúndez of his inheritance. Diego must look to the young man's safety. The archbishop should seek the help of Pedro Froílaz. Together let them get custody of the young king. If they feared for his safety, let him be sent by sea to William's province of Gaul. As it happened, Diego had already acted before he received William's letter. For the pope's letter of 19 December congratulated him on bringing about a reconciliation between Urraca and her son (quod pacem et dilectionem inter matrem et filium nepotem nostrum regem Hyspanie reformasti). How he did it we do not know. But it is reasonable to assume that it would have involved a rapprochement between Diego and the Trabas; in other words the undoing of the queen's machinations of the summer.

The renewal of the old alliance between Diego and the Traba family had dangerous implications for the queen. It was at precisely this period that Fernando and Bermudo, the sons of Pedro Froílaz, were beginning to fish in the waters of Portuguese politics. As early as January 1121 Fernando Pérez could be described as 'lord of Coimbra and Portugal'. From February he was regularly subscribing Teresa's charters. He must have become her lover by then, for the daughter she bore him was old enough to be associated with her father in a grant to the Traba family monastery of Jubia in 1132.⁽⁴⁵⁾ His brother Bermudo married Teresa's daughter Urraca in 1122. Now at this time Teresa had designs [149] on southern Galicia; indeed, the whole area south of the Miño and the Sil may have been under her control. If an alliance between the Trabas to the north and the Portuguese to the south were to be joined by the archbishop of Compostela and the massive resources of his see, queen Urraca would have lost all control of western Galicia from the coast of Biscay to the river Mondego.

She delivered her counterstroke in the summer of 1121.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Acting perhaps not without a sense of irony, she requested that Diego accompany her on campaign into southern Galicia -- against Teresa of Portugal. Diego was, understandably, extremely reluctant to serve. When finally compelled to do so, he tried to persuade the queen not to push the war far into Portuguese territory. From Urraca's point-of-view the campaign was a success. Teresa was chased back across the Miño near Tuy and even besieged for a time at Lanhoso. But she was in touch with Diego: it was from Teresa that he heard that Urraca planned to arrest him. Teresa's information was good. As the Galician army was returning home by way of the valley of the Limia and the monastery of Celanova, Urraca suddenly had Diego arrested at Castrelo do Miño. There were echoes of the past here, perhaps deliberately 'orchestrated' by the queen. It had been at Castrelo that Diego had been arrested in 1110, and his captor on that occasion, his old enemy Arias Pérez, was one of the queen's accomplices in 1121. Two others were Juan Díaz and Fernando Yáñez: the fact that the queen's henchmen included three of the men with whom Diego had confederated in the year before is a further indication that he had thrown them over in returning to the Traba alliance. It was in Juan Díaz's castle of Orcellón that he was held at first, and under [150] Juan Díaz's escort that he was transferred from there to Cira -- in which we might detect another grim irony, for the castle at Cira had been built not long before with Diego's permission.

The stroke misfired, though perhaps not so completely as the Historia Compostellana would have us believe. The townspeople of Compostela vigorously supported their archbishop. It may be that we should see in this the fruits of Diego's efforts since 1117 to cultivate their goodwill.⁽⁴⁷⁾ As ill luck would have it the queen's return to Compostela took place on 24 July, the vigil of the feast of St. James. On the following day all festivities were cancelled and the canons wore mourning. The town would have been full of pilgrims from near and far, of peasants from the surrounding countryside come into town for a holiday, of hucksters hoping for a good trade. Soon the town was in an uproar, and Urraca had to seek safety in the cathedral. Meanwhile her son Alfonso Raimúndez deserted her and left the town to join Pedro Froílaz de Traba. Shortly afterwards Juan Díaz, coming to Compostela to confer with the queen, was captured by the archbishop's supporters. Urraca had no choice but to release Diego. He had been in captivity for only eight days.

But Urraca had charges to lay against Diego. The Historia Compostellana never tells us precisely what they were, but they were evidently grave. Surely they were charges of treason occasioned by his negotiations with the Portuguese.⁽⁴⁸⁾ She had confiscated his castles and lands pending an accord. As ever 'thirsty for money', as the Historia puts it, she intended that any settlement should involve the payment of a huge ransom. Diego for his part was not idle. As soon as he had been released he made contact with his relative Pedro, the dean of Compostela, then studying in France. Pedro consulted the abbot of Cluny and with his assistance made his way to the papal curia, then in southern Italy, to apprise Calixtus II of these events. The pope's reaction was sharp. 'Touch not mine anointed', he quoted, and threatened [151] Urraca's kingdom with an interdict. The letters he sent may have hastened a settlement, though it was not reached without great difficulty and a near-outbreak of civil war. After complicated negotiations Urraca swore an oath of friendship to Diego and on the last day of the year restored his castles to him.

Calixtus II had addressed Urraca as illustris regina, but her son, his nephew, as strenuus et gloriosus Hispaniarum rex. The studied employment of this protocol suggests that the pope was continuing to press for some enlargement of Alfonso's authority at the expense of his mother's. It is probable that the Traba clan was doing likewise. When Urraca returned to Galicia early in 1123 she arrested Pedro Froílaz, his sons (we are not told which ones) and his wife.⁽⁴⁹⁾ It is almost impossible to reconstruct the background to this incident. We know that in January Diego presided over a council which was convened to discuss, among other things, discordia between the queen and her son.⁽⁵⁰⁾ A charter of January 1123 records that Alfonso Raimúndez was reigning as 'king in Toledo and in Galicia'.⁽⁵¹⁾ Another charter refers to Pedro Froílaz in the company of 'his king'.⁽⁵²⁾ This is not much to go on, but it is just enough to suggest another initiative on count Pedro's part to establish Alfonso Raimúndez as king of Galicia (as in 1116); and to account for the queen's vigorous action against him.

To what extent Diego was implicated is not clear. We are hardly surprised to learn from the Historia Compostellana that there was little trust between the archbishop and the queen.⁽⁵³⁾ Events followed a not-unfamiliar pattern. There [152] were accusations by the queen, the purchase of her goodwill by Diego (300 marks this time), negotiations by intermediaries, and on 27 March 1123 the swearing of new oaths of friendship.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Not long afterwards Urraca was approached by some men who were disaffected towards Diego: they offered to capture and murder him. The queen ostentatiously refused to have anything to do with them; she wanted the new peace to work.⁽⁵⁵⁾ An exchange of property between archbishop and queen in May, and the queen's instrumentality in securing the benefaction of a rich but otherwise unknown lady named Tigria Jiménez at much the same time, indicate harmonious relations.⁽⁵⁶⁾

It would appear that they remained harmonious for the remainder of Urraca's reign. The joint rule of Urraca and Alfonso Raimúndez continued, with the latter persevering in the governance of an appanage based on Toledo -- apud Toletum imperante, his own words.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Relations between mother and son were sometimes strained, but there were no further instances of magna discordia.The two sometimes issued charters jointly, and we find the son subscribing his mother's charters. They could take vigorous joint action, as when they turned upon Diego in 1124 for attempting to interfere in the affairs of the church of Toledo after the death of archbishop Bernardo.⁽⁵⁸⁾ If Alfonso Raimúndez was more active, especially from 1124 onwards, in granting charters in favour of Galician beneficiaries, this may reflect -- in so far as it reflects anything beyond the accident of documentary survival -- simply a tactful willingness on the part of the queen to allow her son a larger share of their joint authority.⁽⁵⁹⁾ In short, Alfonso Raimúndez never did become a 'king of Galicia' during his mother's reign: to that degree Pedro Froílaz had failed.

[153] Had Diego failed too? Any answer to this question will presuppose that we know what he was trying to do; and any interpretation of his actions has to be based on information provided by the Historia Compostellana. The Historia is a very full record, but for our purposes it is not full enough. We know enough of Diego's part in the politics of Urraca's reign to be certain that both those politics and the part he played in them were exceedingly complicated. The only honest course is to admit that we do not and never shall know enough to enable us satisfactorily to elucidate them.⁽⁶⁰⁾ There are many features of the Historia which render it a difficult witness to interpret. Perhaps the most trying of all is the very uniqueness of its testimony. The case may be put thus: suppose that we had a Historia Toletana commissioned by Bernardo of Toledo, or a Historia Ovetensis commissioned by Pelayo of Oviedo, would the story told by these hypothetical works have differed in kind from the narration of the Compostellana? Very probably not. To put this in a different way, the first step towards an understanding of Diego's actions may be to isolate what he had in common with his episcopal colleagues during the reign of queen Urraca.

An appreciation of queen Urraca's government must take as its starting-point the fact that she was throughout her reign short of cash. The cutting-off of the supply of parias in the last decade of the eleventh century had induced a state of what a distinguished Spanish historian has called 'endemic fiscal crisis' in the public finance of the kingdom of León-Castile.⁽⁶¹⁾ It seems clear that Alfonso VI had rashly grasped at the easy remedy for needy rulers -- debasement of the coinage.⁽⁶²⁾ Inflation necessarily followed: we are told that soldiers needed higher wages during Urraca's reign.⁽⁶³⁾ But [154] she was a ruler who had great need of soldiers for the defence of her frontiers, be it against the Almoravides or the Aragonese. Beset by such necessities, whither could she turn for the money she so desperately needed? She did what any of her contemporary rulers, similarly circumstanced, were accustomed to do -- an Alexius Comnenus, a Henry IV, a William Rufus. In the words of the Historia Compostellana, 'she stripped the churches throughout her kingdom of their gold and silver and their treasures'.⁽⁶⁴⁾ There is abundant evidence to support this assertion. Diego Gelmírez, like his fellow bishops and abbots, was concerned to protect the endowments of his see against royal depredation. Viewed from this angle, Diego's achievement was not a meagre one, though it was hard-bought.

Bishops, however, were more than just the harassed custodians of ecclesiastical endowments. Urraca's reign was notable for the number of assemblies which were held in the kingdom of León-Castile at which the principal focus of concern was the restoration of peace and order. These gatherings were convened on royal, episcopal or papal initiative, and they were attended largely, though rarely exclusively, by ecclesiastics. It is of great interest to discover that at one of them, held at Compostela and presided over by Diego, 'the peace of God which is observed among the Romans and the Franks and other nations of the faithful' was proclaimed.⁽⁶⁵⁾ These western Spanish councils of the early twelfth century were occasioned by the same sort of pressures as we can detect behind the peace-councils of eleventh-century Francia and the Spanish March.⁽⁶⁶⁾ How effective the decrees and menaces of the bishops were we cannot be sure. But that the councils were held at all is a sign that the higher clergy were taking their collective responsibilities seriously. Diego was prominent among those who shouldered the burden.

[155] Any assessment, however, of Diego as 'a bishop in politics' during Urraca's reign will need also to take account of what he did not have in common with his colleagues. He was a native of Galicia, bishop of a Galician see, minister to the shrine of an apostle who was in some eyes the special shepherd of the people of Galicia.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Contemplating his actions during Urraca's reign the historian will find it impossible to believe that for much of the time his conduct was not to some degree shaped by pressures which may loosely be described as local. So much we may sense from the record of the Historia; to substantiate it is a different matter.

Diego's first local loyalty was to the shrine and church of St. James. It overrode all others.⁽⁶⁸⁾ During the reign of queen Urraca he planned, negotiated and finally achieved the raising of the see of Santiago de Compostela from episcopal to archiepiscopal status. This was the greatest triumph of his life. It will be more fittingly examined in a discussion of his relations with the papacy: but it is important to state here that there was an intimate connection between his public conduct in the affairs of Spain during Urraca's reign and the progress of his ecclesiastical ambitions. This relationship has been very fully explored by Dr Ludwig Vones, and it is sufficient for the present to refer the reader to his work.⁽⁶⁹⁾

A second source of local pressure was represented by the Traba family. The alliance between Diego Gelmírez and count Pedro Froílaz forged in the years 1110 and 1111 endured fairly consistently for the remainder of Urraca's reign; though it had its shaky moments (1114, 1116, 1120, 1123). This is not surprising, for their common interests were manifold. They shared a responsibility for the rights of Alfonso Raimúndez, imposed upon them in the most public fashion by a king whom they had every reason to revere at the council of León in 1107. Of course, they [156] might differ as to how this responsibility should most fittingly be discharged. The count -- at least as his conduct is portrayed in the Historia -- was more willing than Diego to take political initiatives detrimental to the interests of the queen. As a corollary, it may be that Alfonso Raimúndez came to suspect that Diego was lukewarm in his cause -- a theme to which we shall return in a later chapter. But the common ground between count and bishop was too solid for these issues of ways and means to be really divisive. Another area of shared concern probably had as its focus the relationship between Galicia and the remainder of the kingdom of León-Castile. To claim that Pedro Froílaz was a 'Galician separatist' is, as has already been said, anachronistic. The political turbulence in the affairs of Galicia between 1109 and 1126 -- which we may in any case tend to exaggerate because we know so little of the other provinces of the kingdom -- was of a less dangerous order than the rebellions of the eleventh century which were glanced at in an earlier chapter. Pedro Froílaz was not like count Rodrigo Ovéquiz: he had done too well out of the new dispensation; he had too much to lose. Neither was Diego Gelmírez like Diego Peláez. The political issue in Urraca's reign was not secession but control. Nevertheless, given the fissile nature of the kingdom of León-Castile; given the pressure on the frontier, which brought fissile tendencies into the open; given the government's demands for money, necessitated by defence of the exposed frontiers: given these things, it is not surprising that resentments should have festered. So far as we know, Pedro Froílaz never took part in the warfare on the southern frontier during Urraca's reign (except possibly in 1116). Diego's quarrel with the queen at Burgos in 1113 over his obligation to perform military service is suggestive. What had Galicia to do with the defence of eastern Castile against the Aragonese? What, indeed, did Galicia have to do with the defence of the Tagus frontier against the Almoravides?

Further common ground between Diego and count Pedro may have been defined by their dealings with other prominent Galician laymen. These dealings are extremely difficult to elucidate. It is not simply that the Historia Compostellana is partisan. Its record for much of Urraca's reign was composed [157] by Gerald of Beauvais, an immigrant from Northern France. He had a low opinion of Galicians and little interest in or understanding of the network of local families round Compostella; their landholdings, their connections by neighborhood and marriage, the offices they held, the patrons they looked to, their resentments, their rivalries and their feuds. In trying to peer behind the Historia we are thrown back on the evidence of the charters, scant in number and resistant to easy interpretation. Furthermore, our concern is with men of a rather lower social rank than, say, the members of the Traba family; and those people are elusive. They are as elusive as Diego's own family. But that is precisely why an effort must be made to get at them.

Let us start with Arias Pérez, the most prominent among Diego's opponents (at least until 1121) and the one about whom the Historia has most to tell us. Indeed, he is the only one of whose character we can form some impression. Arias Pérez was active, resourceful, spirited and persuasive: 'he was so eloquent that he could turn black into white and white into black'. He was not a member of the higher ranks of the aristocracy (non fuit tamen magnae nobilitatis).⁽⁷⁰⁾ His father, Pedro Arias, could be described and could describe himself as a knight (miles) - like Diego's father Gelmirio.⁽⁷¹⁾ Of the little that we know about the father, two things are significant. The first is that he granted his share (portionem) in an estate at Villa nova to the church of Compostela. Villaneuva is a common enough place-name in Galicia, as in the rest of Spain, but it is likely that the one in question is the Villaneuva in the district of Deza only a few miles to the south-east of Compostela.⁽⁷²⁾ The second is that in 1096 Pedro Arias had subscribed a charter of Count Raymond in favor of the monastery of Carboeiro, which is also named Deza.⁽⁷³⁾ These items enable us to link him to a man named Luzo Arias. Although it is impossible to be sure of this, it is very probable that Luzo and Pedro Arias were [158] brothers.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Now Luzo (presumably from Lucius) was a most unusual name in Galicia; with its aid we may trace the family a little further. Arias Luzu, I would suggest, was the father of Luzo and Pedro Arias. He subscribed royal charters in 1066, 1071 and 1075 -- the last of them a grant to Carboeiro.⁽⁷⁵⁾ Furthermore he witnessed, possibly conducted, the survey of an estate at Pastoriza, in the parish of Brandariz, also in Deza, in 1062.⁽⁷⁶⁾ Pastoriza came into the possession of Carboeiro by the grant, already referred to, of 1096. Still using the evidence of the rare name Luzo, I would hazard the guess that a man named Leovigild Luz mentioned in the Historia Compostellana was the son of Luzo Arias and the grandson of Arias Luzu.⁽⁷⁷⁾ A genealogical tree will make these suggestions clearer. Pedro Arias, Arias Pérez and Leovigild Luz were all conspirators against Diego Gelmírez in 1110.
 

We know a little more about Luzo Arias. He held office -- like Diego -- under count Raymond. By the year 1095 possibly, by 1101 certainly, he was villicus terrae in -- of all places -- Deza.⁽⁷⁸⁾ This enables us to make a further connection. It was to Luzo Arias, as villicus of Deza, that a man named Alfonso Ramírez turned for assistance in the course of a lawsuit against the church of Santiago de Compostela at some point in the early years of the twelfth century. The Historia describes him contemptuously as a corbulo, a rather unusual word meaning 'a porter'.⁽⁷⁹⁾ But Alfonso Ramírez was no menial: together with Arias Luzu he had [159] subscribed the royal charter for Carboeiro in 1075. His claim concerned the church of Sta Eulalia de Losón, a mere three miles or so from Carboeiro; we shall return to it presently. It is possible that Juan Ramírez was the brother of Alfonso Ramírez. This Juan Ramírez was another who held office under count Raymond. He was described as a merino in 1095; in 1101 he subscribed a charter as villicus of the district of Salnés, on the south side of the Ría de Arosa.⁽⁸⁰⁾ In five charters, including the grant to Carboeiro in 1096, he subscribed alongside either Luzo Arias or Pedro Arias or both.⁽⁸¹⁾ He subscribed a further nine royal charters between 1105 and 1123. Our only other piece of information about him is of great interest: he was one of the conspirators (alongside Arias Pérez) who arrested Diego on the queen's orders in 1121.⁽⁸²⁾

In the light of Juan Ramírez's connections with Salnés as well as with Deza it is of interest to note that Luzo Arias, whose interest Alfonso Ramírez had sought in the Losón lawsuit, was married to a wife, Mayor, who possessed land in Salnés.⁽⁸³⁾ Now their nephew Arias Pérez also had interests in Salnés. An estate which he granted to the church of Compostela at some unknown date may have lain in Salnés.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Throughout Urraca's reign he showed himself particularly eager to acquire lands and castles in Salnés.⁽⁸⁵⁾ And when Diego finally managed to nobble him at the funeral of the countess of Traba in 1128 it was a church (monasterium) in Salnés, at Arcos da Condesa, that he promised to give to Santiago.⁽⁸⁶⁾

Now both Deza and Salnés were areas containing landed endowments of the church of Santiago de Compostela; in other words, sensitive areas. The church of Sta Eulalia de Losón claimed by Alfonso Ramírez was said by his Compostelan opponents to belong to the endowments of the [160] monasterium of Piloño. Piloño in its turn had been owned by Alfonso VI and his sister Doña Elvira; they had inherited it from their father Fernando I. (We should very much like to know how he had got hold of it.) Elvira had granted her share of it to Compostela in 1087, Alfonso VI had granted his share thirteen years later.⁽⁸⁷⁾ Diego's anxiety to keep hold of it is indicated by the fact that it was named in a papal privilege confirming the possessions of his church in 1110.⁽⁸⁸⁾ As for Losón, Urraca confirmed Compostelan possession of it ten years later.⁽⁸⁹⁾ Another monasterium near Piloño, though a lesser one, at Brandariz, had come into the possession of Compostela in the same way. We have already seen that Pastoriza, in the parish of Brandariz, in which Arias Pérez's family seems to have had some interest, was granted to the monastery of Carboeiro in 1096. How intriguing -- and how tantalizing -- to find that Urraca later gave some land there to the church of Santiago.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Much more might be said about Deza. Here is one last scrap of information which provides food for thought. Urraca's attack on the three brothers Bodán in 1113, referred to earlier in this chapter, occurred at a time when we are told that Arias Pérez was stirring up trouble for Diego at the royal court: and they came from Deza; their family monasterium, granted to Compostela, was probably at Bodaño.

Similar sorts of dispute over the possessions of the church of Santiago can be discerned in the district of Salnés. Early in his episcopate Diego was busying himself with the enforcement of Compostelan claims there. Cordeiro, for example, had been granted to Santiago in 1028. It was alienated by Pedro Vimara, the official who administered the honor after the deposition of bishop Diego Peláez. Diego seems to have recovered it later on, for we next hear that he had entrusted it as a fief (praestimonium) to Pedro Garcés. He [161] later deprived Pedro of it.⁽⁹¹⁾ Gogilde was another estate recovered after alienation. At some point before 1107 Diego rescued it from lay hands, and the nearby church 'from the thirsty covetousness of knights' (a sitibunda militum cupiditate).⁽⁹²⁾ He was also active in acquiring new endowments in Salnés by gift, purchase and exchange.⁽⁹³⁾

It was not only landed wealth which made Salnés valuable to the church of Compostela. The Ría de Arosa is a fine anchorage. We hear of a Norman ship blown off course by storms which put in there for shelter.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Doubtless there were many others like it. When king Sigurd the Jerusalem-Farer of Norway wintered in 'the land of Jacob' in 1108-9 it is very likely that his sixty ships were beached beside the Ría de Arosa.⁽⁹⁵⁾ The river Ulla which flows into the Ría and its tributary the Sar are navigable as far as Padrón, the port for Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims coming by sea would arrive there, and so would merchants. On their way up to Padrón they would pass Diego's castle at Torres del Oeste. There the Ría is only a bowshot wide and shipping may easily be controlled; there tolls were levied.⁽⁹⁶⁾ These were probably a very valuable asset to Diego. The English and Lotharingian merchants who were waylaid between Padrón and Compostela in about 1130 were robbed of goods valued at 22,000 marks.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Salnés, then, like Deza, was important to the church of Compostela. It is little wonder that Diego had enemies there. In 1114, it was while in Salnés that queen Urraca plotted to capture Diego and sought collaborators. In 1123 it was Diego's disinherited vassal Pedro Garcés who conspired to murder him.⁽⁹⁸⁾

The landholders and officials in Salnés and Deza and elsewhere were men of much the same social rank as Diego. Their early lives and expectations must have been very similar. Luzo Arias, Juan Ramírez and Pedro Vimara look like much the same sort of man as Diego's father Gelmirio. [162] Diego and Arias Pérez had known one another from childhood.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Some of the resentments felt against Diego are likely to have arisen from uncomplicated feelings of jealousy springing from the fact that, in that competitive society, he had done so well for himself. It is interesting that Arias Pérez's hostility to both Diego and Pedro Froílaz was allayed by marriage to the count's daughter Ildaria, probably in about 1121-2.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ It must have cost the old count some pain; he had been accustomed to dispose of his girls to husbands of altogether more exalted rank. But desperate times exacted desperate courses.

The going has been somewhat hard over the last few pages, but I make no apology for that. It might be thought that the end of a chapter devoted to the relations between Diego Gelmírez and queen Urraca would be a fitting place for some rousing words on 'the conflict between church and state' in 'the age of Hildebrandine reform'. Not so. What we can sense, if neither fully comprehend nor satisfactorily demonstrate, is a scene which was in some respects homelier than such phrases imply, but none the less fractious for that: and at this I have tried to hint. Diego moved in a very exalted world peopled by kings and queens, popes and cardinals, dukes and counts. But the world from which he came was narrow. The Galician squirearchy was a force to be reckoned with. It contained some stubborn and tenacious men, with long memories and few scruples. The politics of Galicia were charged by rivalries between families, between neighbours, between contestants for lands and offices. We shall encounter these rivalries again in the next chapter.

1. Bernard F. Reilly, The kingdom of León-Castilla under queen Urraca 1109-1126 (Princeton, 1982). This admirable study supersedes all previous literature devoted to Urraca's reign. I am grateful to Professor Reilly for very generously allowing me to consult part of his book in advance of publication. The present chapter was drafted before I had seen his work. I am relieved to find that on most essential issues we are in agreement. On the rare occasion where we disagree I have ventured to record my dissent in a footnote.

2. So the anonymous chronicler of Sahagún, in R. Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782), p. 304.

3. For Cines see HC, pp. 91-3 (=JL 5944, 6001, 6027); for the Mondoñedo election, R. A. Fletcher, 'Obispos olvidados del siglo XII de las diócesis de Mondoñedo y Lugo', Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 28 (1973), 318-25.

4. For what follows see HC, pp. 98-121.

5. R. 13 July 1110.

6. R. 19 September 1111 is the first of a long series of charters drawn up by Martin Peláez, canon of Santiago de Compostela. On the royal chancery during this period see Reilly, Urraca, pp. 205-11 and references there cited.

7. HC, pp. 126-7.

8. AHN 893/5. It is noteworthy that Urraca seems to have wanted to have her son crowned in the urbs regia of León at some point in 1110: HC, p. 98.

9. HC, pp. 121-3.

10. The earliest is R. 14 April 1111, though this may lie under some suspicion since it survives only in an eighteenth-century abstract. Several diplomas from the year 1112 were joint productions.

11. HC, pp. 124-7; R. 14 May 1112.

12. HC, pp. 128-32.

13. HC, pp. 153-70.

14. For what follows, see now Vones, Kirchenpolitik, pp. 289-343, where the background to the council of Palencia is minutely investigated.

15. HC, pp. 174-5.

16. Quoted by Reilly, Urraca, p. 98, n. 34.

17. HC, pp. 194-6.

18. HC, pp. 186-7. On the brothers Bodán see also R. 1 April 1101, 14 May 1107; Colección de Documentos de la Catedral de Oviedo, ed. S. García Larragueta (Oviedo, 1962), no. 121; J. F. Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo en el siglo XII (Rome, 1966), p. 150; Vones, Kirchenpolitik, p. 123, n. 109 and references there cited; R. A. Fletcher, 'Diplomatic and the Cid revisited: the seals and mandates of Alfonso VII', Journal of Medieval History 2 (1976), 305-37, at pp. 307-8. Their family monasterium was probably at Bodaño, in Deza: we shall return to it at the end of this chapter. (LFH III, p. 444, identified it as Budiño, but this is less plausible than Bodaño, philologically speaking.)

19. HC, pp. 189-90.

20. HC, p. 194.

21. HC, pp. 204-8. The only pointers to the chronology of these events are two diplomas for the southern Galician monastery of Poyo: R. 29 February and 31 March 1116. I would associate the first of these with the queen's military expedition. The second, to judge by its witness-list, was almost certainly issued at Compostela: half of its ecclesiastical confirmantes were members of the cathedral community. I would suggest that the reconciliation here referred to had just taken place and that the royal court spent Easter (2 April) at Compostela. The reference at HC, p. 204 to the queen's grant of Caldas before the campaign is mistaken: as we shall see, it was made in May (though it might have been promised earlier on). I have ventured to emend the praeterea of HC, p. 204, line 18, to postea. It should finally be said that there is a suspicious resemblance between the events of 1114 and 1116, but after careful examination of the texts I am satisfied that we are not confronted by a doublet.

22. HC, pp. 208-15.

23. In other words they had come by sea, which might mean with Portuguese help. It is worthy of note that count Pedro was acting in alliance with countess Teresa of Portugal later in the year: HC, p. 216.

24. HC, p. 221. I would suggest that the oaths recorded at HC, pp. 200-2 belong here. The main argument, though there are subsidiary ones as well, is that the queen's oath is dated 'in the eighth year after the death' of Alfonso VI, i.e. in the period of twelve months beginning on 1 July 1116. Clearly they have been displaced in the text as we have it, whether by accident or design.

25. HC, pp. 224-6, and note the imposing witness-list of R. 15 October 1116. It is interesting to note in passing that a bishop of Granada was present. I am less surprised at this than Professor Reilly seems to be: Reilly, Urraca, p. 115, n. 96.

26. Including myself, a few years ago: Episcopate, p. 16.

27. See for example the witness-list of his first known diploma, R. 27 November 1116.

28. HC, pp. 249-50, 269-70; R. 29 Ju1y 1118.

29. HC, p. 279 (277). Reilly, Urraca, pp. 137-9, interprets the events of 1119 rather differently.

30. On the titles of the rulers of Portugal see P. Feige, 'Die Anfange des portugiesischen Königtums und seiner Landeskirche', Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft 29 (1978), 85-436, at pp. 139-47. I am most grateful to Dr Peter Linehan for furnishing me with a copy of this important study.

31. He had intended going by sea.

32. HC, pp. 316-17 (=JL 6828).

33. HC, p. 303; R. 13 June 1120.

34. HC, p. 312.

35. Hugh the Chantor, The history of the church of York, 1066-1127 (ed. and trans. C. Johnson (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 63.

36. Henry's exotic career has been sorted out by C. Clark, '"This ecclesiastical adventurer": Henry of Saint-Jean d'Angély', English Historical Review 84 (1969), 548-60, though she was unaware of its Spanish dimension. Note that HC, p. 324 describes Henry as a contribulis of queen Urraca.

37. He had arrived in May 1120: see J. M. Lacarra, 'Documentos para el estudio de la reconquista y repoblación del valle del Ebro (segunda serie)', Estudios de Edad Media de la Gorona de Aragón 3 (1947-8), 499-727, no. 114 at p. 518. William IX and pope Calixtus II had met in May 1119, and only illness had prevented William from attending the council of Rheims: see F. Villard, 'Guillaume IX d'Aquitaine et le concile de Reims de 1119', Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 16 (1973), 295-302 and references there cited.

38. HC, p. 321.

39. HC, pp. 313-14.

40. e.g. AHN 894/3: regnante rege Adefonso in Toleto, regina Urraka in Legione.

41. HC, pp. 314-15, 444.

42. J. M. Lacarra, 'Documentos para el estudio de la reconquista y repoblación del valle del Ebro (tercera serie)', Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón 5 (1952), 55-668, no. 306, at p. 532.

43. AC Toledo, cod. 42/21 fo. 66v; cod. 42/22 fo. 48r.

44. HC, pp. 319-20.

45. Jubia Cart. no. XXXV. For further details about the Traba involvement in Portugal, see now P. Feige, 'Die Anfänge des portugiesischen Königtums und seiner Landeskirche', Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft 29 (1978), 85-436, at pp. 163-7, and references there cited.

46. For what follows see HC, pp. 315, 322-85, 841-50; the papal letters are JL 6926-30. A very different chronology has been proposed by Dr Feige and Professor Reilly, who would place the events here allotted to 1121 in the year 1120: see in particular Reilly, Urraca, pp. 144-52. I am not convinced by their arguments, and prefer the traditional chronology first worked out, like so much else in Diego's career, by López Ferreiro. Vones, Kirchenpolitik, p. 420, also follows López Ferreiro.

47. In 1120 he had secured their immunity from toll throughout the queen's dominions: R. 13 June 1120.

48. Not, I think, with the French, as López Ferreiro suggested: LFH IV, p.39, n. 1.

49. HC, pp. 382, 389.

50. HC, p. 427: Vones, Kirchenpolitik, pp. 438-41, has convincingly argued that this council should be dated 1123 rather than 1125.

51. AHN 894/5.

52. LFH IV, p. 89. I have not been able to trace this charter. López Ferreiro did not give its date, but the implication is that it was of late 1122 or early 1123. There should also be mentioned a charter which in its existing form bears the impossible date 26 September 1119 by which Alfonso Raimúndez, styling himself rex Hispaniae and acting una (cum) consensu domini Petri Galecie comitis, made a grant to the religious house of Moraime: on the problems of this charter see Reilly, Urraca, p. 140. It is noteworthy, in this context, that when count Pedro made a grant to the monastery of Jubia in 1125 the dating clause of his charter read regnante rege domino Adefonso, without reference to queen Urraca: Jubia Cart. no. xxx.

53. HC, pp. 381-2.

54. HC, pp. 382-5, 388-9.

55. HC, pp. 3 89-94. We do not know when Pedro Froílaz and his relatives were released from captivity, but they were evidently at liberty in 1124: HC, p. 414. I cannot agree with Professor Reilly (Urraca, pp. 191-2, 310, 361) that the count remained a prisoner until the queen's death in 1126.

56. R. 18 May 1123; HC, p. 387.

57. R. 6 April 1124, and the testimony of several private charters, e.g. Sobrado Cart. II, no. 342 (9 March 1125).

58. R. 10 May 1125, 2l July 1125; HC, pp. 396, 420, 421-2.

59. e.g. R. 8 April 1124, 31 May 1124, 1 June 1125.

60. My only general misgiving about Professor Reilly's otherwise excellent study of queen Urraca's reign is that he is to my mind a little too confident that the charters of the period can be made to yield a coherent political story. I find the example of king Stephen's reign a chastening one: although it is incomparably better served by the sources than Urraca's reign, there is still much that remains mysterious about the history of the period 1135-54 in England.

61. C. Sánchez Albornoz, Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas (Mexico City, 1965), p. 486.

62. HC, p. 74.

63. HC, p. 175. Already count Raymond had found it hard to pay his troops: HC, p. 61.

64. HC, p. 367.

65. HC, p. 418.

66. H. Hoffmann, Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei (Stuttgart, 1964); H. E. J. Cowdrey, 'The Peace and the Truce of God in the eleventh century', Past and Present 46 (1970), 42-67. Much material related to this theme is also to be found in the very acute study of T. N. Bisson, Conservation of coinage. Monetary exploitation and its restraint in France, Catalonia, and Aragon (c. A.D. 1000- c. 1225) (Oxford, 1979).

67. A theme enunciated several times in the so-called Codex Calixtinus.

68. Cf. the characteristically penetrating comments of R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his biographer (Cambridge, 1963), p. 128: 'To speak of these loyalties as "local" immediately gives the impression that they were rather trivial: it would be a better definition of their character to say that they were personal and sacred.'

69. Vones, Kirchenpolitik, passim, but especially ch. IV.

70. HC, p. 475.

71. He subscribed himself miles de Deza in a charter of 1115: LFH III, ap. xxxiii, at p. 102.

72. HC, p. 189: for the place-name, see Historia Compostelana, o sea Hechos de D. Diego Gelmírez, trans. M. Suárez, ed. J. Campelo (Santiago de Compostela, 1950), p. 185, n. 2.

73. R. 11 January 1096.

74. The evidence is as follows: (1) they shared a patronymic; (2) Luzo Arias gave land at Villanueva in Deza to the church of Compostela: HC, pp. 70-1 (where note that he is described as coming from the ranks of the milites as opposed to the consules and comites); (3) he and Pedro Arias subscribed next to one another in the Carboeiro charter of 1096 (also in R. 24 October 1102).

75. R. 25 June 1066, 31 July 1071 (a doubtful charter) and December 1075.

76. Carboeiro Cart., no. xxiv.

77. HC, p. 105.

78. HC, p. 62; R. 24 September 1095, 1 April 1101.

79. HC, p. 62.

80. R. 11 February 1095, 1 April 1101.

81. R. 24 September 1095, 11 January 1096, 28 March 1098, 1 April 1101, 24 October 1102.

82. HC, p. 329.

83. HC, p. 70.

84. HC, p. 188 (though there are difficulties about this identification).

85. HC, pp. 109, 131, 313, 335, 382, 443 (Lobeira); 108 (Lanzada and Torres del Oeste). The first of these was a royal castle, the others belonged to the honor of Santiago. We should bear in mind that Gelmirio, Diego's father, had been castellan of Torres del Oeste.

86. HC, p. 476.

87. R. 25 April 1087, 16 January 1100, 13 November 1100. The church was evidently a rich and important one: it is mentioned in a tenth-century charter (R. 24 May 991), and Doña Elvira's charter of 1087 makes clear that Piloño had given its name to an administrative territorium.

88. HC, pp. 85-6 ( JL 6264). Dr Vones believes that the text of this privilege has been tampered with: if this were so (and I am not convinced that it is so) the present argument would only be reinforced.

89. R. 13 June 1120.

90. HC, p. 125.

91. R. 15 November 1028, 30 December 1028; HC, pp. 18, 393.

92. HC, p. 59.

93. HC, pp. 70, 72, 174.

94. HC, p. 291.

95. Heimskringla, trans. E. Monsen and A. H. Smith (Cambridge, 1932), p. 607.

96. AHN 1749/21.

97. HC, pp. 505-6.

98. HC, pp. 194, 389-94.

99. HC, p. 107.

100. HC, pp. 389, 475-6.