[3]The eleventh century in Christian Spain was a time of precipitous, disorderly, and violent growth. Then, more clearly than at any other time, the northern half of the Iberian peninsula exhibited the same raw vitality seeking expression in new or transformed political, social, religious, and cultural forms that marked the whole of western and central Europe from Trondheim to the Tiber and from Angers to Budapest. The currents of political and economic expansion, religious reorganization, and cultural experimentation so variously reflected in the rise of the Norman empire and the German Salian monarchy, the awakening of the towns, the Cluniac and the Gregorian reorganization of the western church, and the Romanesque revolution in architecture all found echoes and analogues in Spain north of the Duero and Ebro rivers. The eleventh century provides perhaps the best commentary on the old, disputed question of the nature of the relationship of Spain to the rest of Europe.⁽¹⁾

[4]In the Spanish Christian world the immediate antecedents to this frenetic growth were somber and unpromising. That condition too is not without parallels elsewhere in Europe, but the Iberian situation was special, at least in degree. During the eighteen years between 985 and 1002 the fortunes of all the northern Christian principalities of Spain had reached their lowest ebb in a century. During that period the armies of the Caliphate of Córdoba had repeatedly defeated individual and combined efforts at defense. The Muslim general and effective dictator, Almanzor, took and sacked Barcelona, Burgos, León, Zamora, and even Santiago de Compostela in the far reaches of Galicia. The fortunes of the Christian dynasts of the north were determined from Córdoba.

This abject condition continued until 1008 under Almanzor's son and successor, Abd-al-Malik. The latter's sudden death in that year, however, together with his younger brother's attempt to usurp the office of caliph, led to the spectacular and irremediable collapse of the Córdoban caliphate. The attendant loss of political unity in the Spanish Muslim world and the rise pf the particularist states called taifas were preconditions for the renewed southward advance of the northern principalities in the eleventh century.

The phenomenon cannot, however, be satisfactorily explained in purely political terms. Even at the height of Almanzor's successes military victory had not been accompanied by effective Muslim occupation of the northern territories. Although the subject, like many other aspects of the tenth-century European experience, remains largely unexplored, it seems that the north was experiencing a growth of population that found no opposing response in the world of Spanish Islam. This increasing northern population continued to press southward along the lines of the Duero and Ebro regardless of political fluctuations. Almanzor himself [5]had had to seek military resources among the Berber peoples in North Africa to offset it in a way that prefigures the appeal of Spanish Islam to the Murâbit power a century later.

The breakup of the Córdoban caliphate and the subsequent relaxation of its pressure on the north posed with new urgency the question of who would assume the direction and gain the recognition of this growing society. Certainly the major advantages for such an undertaking lay with the dynasty of León, heir to the old myth of the Asturian crown that traced its origin to the eighth-century Visigothic kingdom, to Pelayo, Covadonga, and the initiation of the Reconquista. In the late eighth and ninth centuries the kingdom had extended its influence over Galicia, the Bierzo, León, and sometimes Castilla. Thus, it was incomparably the largest of the northern states and the one to which the still numerous subject Christians of Islamic Spain, the Mozárabs, looked as legitimate authority.

At the death of Abd-al-Malik, Almanzor's son, in 1008, Alfonso V of León was fourteen years old. In the following two decades he reorganized and rebuilt the Leonese principality. He reasserted his authority against the separatist county of Castilla and wrested from it the control of the lands between the Cea and Pisuerga rivers, what is now the province of Palencia. But having taken the offensive against Islam in the far west, he was killed while besieging Viseu some fifty kilometers south of the Duero in 1028. His son, Vermudo III (1028-1037), succeeded his father at the age of nine and for another decade political preponderance lay elsewhere.⁽²⁾

Of the other northern principalities of the peninsula, the county of Barcelona was as yet an aggregation of petty domains. Count Ramón Borrell I of Barcelona (992-1018) and his brother, Count Armengol of Urgel, had sacked Córdoba in 1010, but that was largely a plundering expedition invited by partisan strife in Andalucía. Permanent expansion southward[6] was and would continue to be blocked by strong Muslim communities at Tarragona, Lérida, Barbastro, and, above all, by the taifa kingdom taking shape at Zaragoza. For another century there was no vacuum for movement such as existed in central and western Spain between the Río Duero and the Sierra de Guadarrama.⁽³⁾

Count Sancho García of Castilla (995-1017) also had sacked Córdoba in 1009, but this too was a military adventure without fundamental significance. The organization of the taifa kingdom of Toledo, whose northeastern border would adjoin that of Zaragoza, squeezed Castilla westward against León. At Count Sancho García's death in 1017, Alfonso V of León despoiled the young Count García Sánchez (1017-1029) of the western half of his territory.⁽⁴⁾

When Alfonso V of León was killed at Viseu in 1028, the dynasty of Navarra took advantage of the opportunity. The course of the subsequent decade was unexpected, extraordinary, and of lasting significance for the evolution of northern Spain. The ruler of Navarra, Sancho el Mayor (1000-1035), at that point possessed not only Navarra but also the minuscule counties of Aragón, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza; the Basque provinces; and the upper Ebro district of Rioja down to the vicinity of Burgos itself. Count Berenguer Ramón of Barcelona (1018-1035) was his dependent. In addition Sancho's sister, Urraca, was the widow of Alfonso V of León and he himself was married to the sister of García Sánchez, the young count of Castilla.⁽⁵⁾

Following the death of Alfonso V the Castilian count negotiated a marriage contract with the sister of the young Vermudo III that would have secured the return of the lands between the Cea and the Pisuerga and thereby bolstered his [7]position in relation to both León and Navarra. Before the marriage could be celebrated, however, the young count was assassinated in the city of León in 1029.

The Navarrese king immediately claimed Castilla in his wife's name. He installed his second son, Fernando, as count and then arranged the latter's marriage to Vermudo III's sister with the same dowry of the borderlands between Castilla and León . Gradually he continued his encroachment on the domains of the young Vermudo III. In 1034 he seized control of the city of León itself, styling himself "imperator" on his coins, and forced Vermudo to seek refuge in Galicia. Then, in 1035, Sancho died and Vermudo III immediately repossessed León.

The dynastic and political restructuring of the northern principalities that was to dominate their history for the next seventy-five years now began. Of transcendent importance was the emergence of the new kingdom of León-Castilla but under the dynasty of Navarra.

The first step in this process came very quickly, when Vermudo III of León launched a campaign to recover the lands between the Cea and the Pisuerga. Fernando of Castilla, supported by the troops of his older brother, García Sánchez III, who had inherited Navarra, the Basque provinces, and Rioja from their father, defeated and killed Vermudo at Tamarón on September 4, 1037. Because the latter perished without an heir, Fernando and Sancha, Vermudo's sister, were quickly recognized in the kingdom of León and Fernando was anointed king in León on June 22, 1038.

A second, somewhat less important step was taken seventeen years later. This time Fernando responded to an invasion of his Castilian territories by his brother, García Sánchez III of Navarra. At Atapuerca on September 15, 1054 he defeated and killed the king of Navarra. Fernando proved generous in victory, allowing his brother's son, Sancho García IV, to succeed his father on the condition of becoming his vassal. Of the traditionally Castilian lands then part of [8]Navarra, Fernando required the return of only the Bureba district, on the west bank of the upper Ebro around Oña.

Nevertheless, the unchallengeable preeminence of León-Castilla among the northern Christian realms was clear. In the extreme east Count Ramón Berenguer I (1035-1076) was largely occupied with consolidating the territory of Barcelona. In Aragón the illegitimate son of Sancho el Mayor, Ramiro I (1035-1063), enlarged his inheritance by acquiring the counties of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza on the death of his half brother, Gonzalo, in 1045.⁽⁶⁾ But the great opportunities presented themselves to Fernando el Magno of León-Castilla and he proved more than able to capitalize on them.

The continuing "war of all upon all" in the world of Spanish Islam opened, by turns, two avenues of advance for Fernando I. He availed himself of both.

On the one hand, by great raids or threats of them and by supporting one Muslim faction against another, he compelled the taifas to recognize his overlordship at least to the extent of paying sizeable annual tributes, or parias. By the time of his death in 1065, Fernando had reduced the great taifas most accessible from his realm, Badajoz, Sevilla, Toledo, and Zaragoza, to tributary status. Over Zaragoza, beset by the other northern princes as well, Fernando found it necessary to establish a virtual Leonese protectorate in order to secure sole right to its tribute.

On the other hand, at limited points along the frontier it was possible to wrest discrete strategic territories from his Muslim adversaries and to garrison and repopulate them. In the west this was accomplished at the expense of Badajoz when he reconquered Lamego and Viseu in 1055 and Coimbra in 1064, driving a long Christian salient south along the Atlantic coastline from the Duero to the Río Mondego. In the east Fernando's gains were more modest. In 1060 he reconquered the fortresses of Berlanga and San Esteban de [9]Gormaz, which controlled the entry to the upper meseta of León-Castilla from either Zaragoza or Toledo and facilitated Fernando's own raids into those taifas. Together these conquests made safer the informal and gradual repopulation of the trans-Duero north of the Guadarramas, for attacks from the south were almost impossible except through the passes of the Guadarramas themselves.

The Leonese-Castilian hegemony established in the north by Fernando I was, at his death in December 1065, disrupted by the provisions of his will. Dismembering his empire, he awarded León and the parias of Toledo to Alfonso VI (1065-1109), his second son. To Sancho II (1065-1072) went Castilla and the parias of Zaragoza. García (1065-1071), the youngest, received a kingdom of Galicia and the parias of Badajoz and Sevilla.⁽⁷⁾ Not surprisingly, the next seven years were marked by fratricidal strife in which Sancho of Castile defeated and forced into exile first García (1071) and then Alfonso (1072). The assassination of Sancho before Zamora in October 1072 allowed the return of Alfonso, who, imprisoning his brother García until the latter's death in 1090, entered into the full inheritance of his father. From then until his death thirty-seven years later, Alfonso VI built steadily upon the foundations laid by his father.

Alfonso VI maintained the ascendancy of León-Castilla among the Christian principalities. The assassination in 1076 of his brother Sancho García IV furnished the occasion for annexation of Rioja and most of the Basque provinces.⁽⁸⁾ At the same time, however, Ramiro I of Aragón seized the opportunity to join the remainder of Navarra to his territories. During the years that followed, Pedro I of Aragón (1094-1104) and his brother, Alfonso I (1104-1134), made their realm the second Christian power in the peninsula by the conquest [10]first of Huesca in 1096 and then of Barbastro in 1101 at the expense of the taifa of Zaragoza.⁽⁹⁾ Just before his death, Alfonso VI arranged the marriage of his heir and daughter, Urraca, to Alfonso I of Aragón.

The county of Barcelona meanwhile experienced few permanent successes against its Muslim neighbors although its policy was often ambitious. Ramón Berenguer I (1035-1076) had unified its territories, but his inheritance of Razes, Béziers, and Agde in 1066 from a cousin in Carcassonne and the acquisition of the county of Provence in 1112 through the marriage of Ramón Berenguer III (1097-1131) tended to turn the attention of the counts northward.

The monarch of Castilla, after annexing Rioja, had turned his attention to what was to be the most significant achievement of the Reconquista in the eleventh century, the conquest of the taifa of Toledo in 1085 and the permanent reestablishment of Leonese control south of the Sierra de Guadarrama. His eventual successor was born into this climactic period.

No known chronicler recorded the birth of Urraca. Much later, in official documents, she would style herself "daughter of King Alfonso and Queen Constance." In the varied matrimonial career of her father, Constance of Burgundy, daughter of Duke Robert the Old, was the second of Alfonso's wives. The first, Agnes, daughter of Duke William VIII of Aquitaine, apparently produced no children who survived. The last mention of Agnes occurs in a donation of Alfonso VI to Cluny on May 22, 1077.⁽¹⁰⁾

[11]The first documentary notice of the new queen, Constance, occurs almost two years later in a donation of Alfonso to the church of Burgos on May 1, 1079.⁽¹¹⁾ For fourteen years she was his consort, making a final appearance in a royal grant to the monastery of Sahagún on October 25, 1093. Not quite a month later, on November 22, 1093, her husband donated a portion of her property to the same monastery, where she was interred beside Agnes.⁽¹²⁾

Alfonso's first two wives reflect the Leonese monarch's interest in securing assistance from beyond the Pyrenees for his peninsular ambitions. They also reflect the mounting impact of more general western European forces on affairs in Spain. The spreading influence of Cluny, encouraged by the dynasty of León itself; the attempted assertion of papal hegemony[12] over the peninsula; the increasing frequency of visits by papal legates; and papal interest in directing French crusading forces south toward Spain all made an alliance of the Leonese house with at least some of these foreign interests imperative. In addition to his French marriages, Alfonso also began to adopt the imperial title to strengthen his Iberian claims and position.⁽¹³⁾

This was the milieu throughout Urraca's childhood, marriage, and reign. The appearance of Constance as Alfonso's wife is closely associated with the installation of a French Cluniac monk, Bernard of Sauvetot, as abbot of the royal monastery at Sahagún in 1080. Five years later, the conquest of Toledo finally achieved, Bernard became its new archbishop and primate of Spain, and thence the chief adviser and minister of Alfonso VI and then Urraca until his death in the spring of 1125.

The Muslim reaction to the fall of Toledo and the subsequent siege by Alfonso of the great northern taifa of Zaragoza in 1086 created an even greater need for foreign assistance.[13] The taifa kings of Andalucía had appealed to the North African Murâbit Emir Yusuf, who disembarked in the peninsula in 1086. Alfonso raised the siege of Zaragoza and marched to meet this new enemy but was badly defeated at Zalaca, north of Badajoz, in October of that year. It was under these circumstances that Urraca's first husband, Count Raymond of Burgundy, joined his great-aunt, Constance, in the kingdom.

Raymond apparently journeyed to Spain in the expedition of Duke Eudes I in 1086-1087. When that enterprise foundered at the siege of Tudela, the duke and his nephew proceeded to León for a visit with Queen Constance. The cumulative documentary evidence suggests that almost immediately the count was betrothed to Urraca, then at most eight years old, and possibly was also married to her, for he begins to appear as the son-in-law of Alfonso VI in dating protocols.⁽¹⁴⁾ The early date for this marriage has been resisted largely, one supposes, because Canon law set the minimum age for marriage at twelve for women. Still, the breach of canon law in the face of dire political necessity was hardly unknown in the medieval period.

[14]Whatever the date of Urraca's marriage, by the spring of 1087 a powerful southern French nexus had formed about the throne. Alfonso had a Burgundian wife, a Cluniac primate, and a Burgundian son-in-law. It has also been asserted that his other eventual son-in-law, Count Henry of Burgundy, had also arrived at the same time as his cousin Raymond, but the documentary evidence here is much more slight.⁽¹⁵⁾

The "Chronicon Compostelanum" asserts that Alfonso had already promised his realm to Raymond, but that later testimony may reflect an understanding reached subsequently.⁽¹⁶⁾ In 1087 Alfonso would still have had reason to expect heirs from Queen Constance, and failing that, his younger brother, García, was still alive although a closely guarded prisoner. Nevertheless, the position of Raymond was from the beginning a powerful one, and the king would naturally have desired some guarantee for his responsible behavior. It is probably in this context that we should understand the purported royal choice of Count Pedro Ansúrez as a guardian for the young Urraca.⁽¹⁷⁾ If the consummation of the marriage was delayed, the presence of the young infanta in the household of this powerful and trusted Leonese magnate would prevent the too rapid growth of ambition in the Burgundian count. Thus, the influence of Raymond at this time depended almost totally on the crown and the court, for neither do his own subsequent documents indicate that he brought with him any considerable body of French warriors nor do modern investigations suggest that such an influx, of which he [15]might have been able to take advantage, occurred independently anywhere west of the Ebro valley.⁽¹⁸⁾

That the general composition of the royal court itself was far from entirely favorable to Count Raymond's advance can be discerned from the names of the magnates who confirm Alfonso's documents. Count Pedro Ansúrez had accompanied the young Alfonso into exile in 1072. Since then this magnate of Carrión and Saldaña, founder of Valladolid, had appeared constantly in the royal diplomas and would continue to do so until 1103. Most of these diplomas his brother-in-law and master of Simancas and Tordesillas, Count Martín Adefónsez, confirmed also. Then there is Count García Ordoñez of Nájera and Calahorra, constantly in the documents with Alfonso VI until 1107. From Castile came the royal standard-bearer, alférez, of these years and the subsequent count of Lara, Pedro González. Not quite so often at court was Count Fernando Díaz of Asturias, whose power lay on the other side of the Cordillera Cantábrica.

These nobles and others soon to be mentioned were a remarkably stable and enduring group about the crown, the mainstays of Alfonso VI's quite successful reign. Count Raymond, like his contemporary Rodrigo Díaz of Vivar, the Cid, would find it difficult or impossible to penetrate or alter that inner circle and its purposes. Raymond did not fail for want of trying, but his initial career was hesitant and slow to take direction.

It may be that Raymond's appointment as count in Galicia provoked the revolt there led by Count Rodrigo Ovequiz. That uprising must be dated sometime after April 25, 1087, when Rodrigo confirmed a donation of the Infanta Elvira, Alfonso VI's sister, to the church of Santiago de Compostela, and before June 18, 1088, when Alfonso VI donated his [16]confiscated possessions to the cathedral of Lugo.⁽¹⁹⁾ The twelfth-century "Historia Compostelana" relates that the intention of the rebels was to surrender Galicia to William the Conqueror. One is tempted to dismiss the notion as fanciful, but its widespread acceptance in the twelfth century merits further investigation.⁽²⁰⁾

As ever, unsuccessful rebellion offered the Opportunity to reinforce royal authority, and a strengthened royal authority meant at this point a strengthened position in Galicia for the new Burgundian count. At a subsequent council, held at the little Castilian town of Husillos near Palencia in March 1088, Alfonso reorganized much of the episcopacy in the extreme west of his kingdom. With the aid of the papal legate Richard, Abbot of Saint Victor of Marseilles, Bishop Diego Peláez of Santiago de Compostela was deposed. The bishop had perhaps been involved in the rebellion and had certainly been appointed by Alfonso's brother, Sancho II. Additionally, he may have been reluctant to accept the Roman Mass, lately substituted for the old Visigothic one.⁽²¹⁾

In his place Pedro, Abbot of Cardeña, was elected to the see of Santiago. Also at the council another Pedro appears as bishop-elect to the Galician see of Orense, and a Martin appears in the same category for the see of Coimbra.⁽²²⁾ Of the seven episcopal sees of the west, three had new bishops; only [17]Mondoñedo, Lugo, Túy, and Braga remained as yet untouched.

While Alfonso was strengthening royal power in the northwest he also maintained generally the military, diplomatic, and administrative offensive. Between 1087 and 1090, Murâbit Emir Yusuf having withdrawn to North Africa, the king harassed the eastern lands of the taifa king al-Mutamid of Sevilla from the advanced position at the castle of Aledo in Murcia. Simultaneously he attacked the Muslim territories around Calatrava in the west. Although the new pope, the Cluniac Urban II, protested the deposition of the bishop of Compostela and placed that diocese under interdict, at the same time Urban recognized Archbishop Bernard of Toledo as primate of Spain, with metropolitan powers over all sees whose ancient archbishopric had not yet been restored, and with full administrative rights in ancient dioceses reclaimed from Muslim control but whose bishopric had not yet been restored.⁽²³⁾

In 1090, however, the problems of the crown became more pressing. At a council in León in March, presided over by Cardinal Rainerius, the papal legate and future Pope Paschal II, Pedro of Cardeña, was deposed from the see of Compostela.⁽²⁴⁾ That important office would remain vacant for the next four years. At León the use of the Roman ritual was apparently reaffirmed as well.⁽²⁵⁾ Both events, however, were [18]probably overshadowed by the death of Alfonso's younger brother and longtime prisoner, García, on March 22, 1090.⁽²⁶⁾ The absence of a male heir to the dynasty would have made attention to the problem of succession unavoidable. The charter of Alfonso to the church of Palencia, dated March 31, 1090, states that it was granted on the advice of Count Raymond and Urraca, and it is possible that the marriage was formalized at that time. But the charter presents diplomatic problems, and Raymond's real prominence in the official records dates to some three years later.⁽²⁷⁾ Still, recognized or not, Raymond's position as possible inheritor of the realm in his wife's or a child's right must have been much enhanced as a result of García's death.

In the same year the Leonese monarch had to face the return of the Murâbits to the peninsula. In the summer of 1090 Alfonso found himself forced to defend the city of Toledo against Emir Yusuf. The attack was beaten off, but in its aftermath Yusuf deposed the Muslim rulers of Granada and Málaga and moved to consolidate his power in Andalucía. When he returned to North Africa, the emir left his cousin, Ben Abu Bakr, in the south. In the campaigns of 1091 the taifa kingdom of al-Mutamid fell; Córdoba, Sevilla, and Calatrava passed into the hands of the Murâbits. Lesser kingdoms -- Jaén, Almería, Denia, and Murcia -- were also subdued, and the entire south except Badajoz was consolidated in the hands of Alfonso's enemy. All northern aid [19]to Sevilla proved unavailing; the western captain, Sisnando David, died in October of that year, and in 1092 the eastern advance post at Aledo finally succumbed to a siege. By the fall of 1092 the pro-Murâbit faction had triumphed in Valencia and only the independent exertions of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar were preventing the collapse of that eastern flank of the realm.

To meet this rapidly growing threat, the king had to resort in large measure to the self-interested services of his nobles. The Murâbit victory at Zalaca in 1086 had emboldened the taifas to cease the annual tribute payments, and their lack cut very deeply into the available military funds of the crown. At the same time, in April of 1090, the king felt forced to renew his promise of an annual gift to Cluny of 2,000 gold coins.⁽²⁸⁾ He must, however, continue to exploit the unparalleled opportunity to repopulate and consolidate the 50,000 square kilometers of land between the Río Duero and the Sierra de Guadarrama, now protected by the new conquest of the taifa of Toledo.⁽²⁹⁾ This process required in turn the successful defense and population of the new realm of Toledo, of roughly the same size, between the Guadarramas and the Río Tajo.

To secure this paramount aim, the defense of the frontier was entrusted more and more to nearly autonomous magnates. In the east, Rodrigo Díaz led the resistance at Valencia as virtually an independent prince, especially after taking outright control of that city in 1094. Between Toledo and Valencia the defense was led by Alvar Fáñez, whose rise is attested by the frequency with which he now begins to confirm royal charters and by the status of folk hero that subsequent histories and annals have bestowed upon him. The center of the frontier, including the city of Toledo, was the responsibility of Count Pedro Ansúrez. He had early [20]given property in that city and was governor of Madrid in 1095.⁽³⁰⁾ North of the Sierra de Guadarrama this trusted Leonese count was also busy with the repopulation of Cuéllar. Alfonso VI chose Raymond of Burgundy for a similar role in the far west. Inevitably that decision transformed the count into one of the great magnates of the realm.

Affairs in the nascent county of Portugal, immediately south of Raymond's Galicia, had been confused since the council at Husillos in 1088, and the historians reflect that confusion.⁽³¹⁾ It has been suggested that Martin, elected bishop of Coimbra there, was the choice of the Mozárab Count Sisnando David, who had been entrusted with the southwestern frontier of the realm by Fernando I and, more recently, with Toledo itself by Alfonso VI for a brief period after its reconquest.⁽³²⁾ Apparently Martin was never consecrated, and after the death of Sisnando on August 21, 1091 the way was open for the consecration of one Cresconius as bishop of Coimbra on May 23, 1092. The new bishop was the former abbot of St. Bartholomew in Túy in Galicia. Significantly, he was consecrated by Archbishop Bernard of Toledo, Bishop Pedro of Orense, and Bishop Audericus of Túy, all of whom can be closely associated with Alfonso VI's initiatives. Count Raymond[21] found it possible to cooperate with Cresconius when his authority shortly began to expand southward.

In May of 1093 the king transferred to Raymond the cities of Lisbon, Santarém, and Cintra.⁽³³⁾ With them went the task of defending the entire southwestern frontier from the Atlantic to the Sierra de Gredos. These cities were the heart of a buffer zone ceded to Alfonso by the taifa king al-Mutawakkil of Badajoz in return for his aid against the Murâbit power.⁽³⁴⁾

But it seems unlikely that Raymond could either have defended or have been expected to defend such an advanced area from his base in Galicia, even though that province then included the portion of modern Portugal between the Miño and Limia rivers. More likely the entire west, a virtual quarter of the realm, passed under his control about this time, although the evidence for such a delegation is slightly subsequent.

At one key intermediate point, Zamora, such a transfer is suggested. Pelayo Vellitez, a longtime confidant of Alfonso and former majordomo of the court, is last mentioned as "imperante in Zamora sicut et coria" on May 18, 1092.⁽³⁵⁾ Sometime in 1094 Count Raymond granted a fuero, or local law code, to the men of a new suburb of Zamora.⁽³⁶⁾ It is not, however, until October 1, 1096 that he is formally cited as "tenente in coria et in zamorio."⁽³⁷⁾ Only with Zamora and Extremaduran Coria in his control and the kingdom of Badajoz in friendly hands was the defense of Lisbon feasible. Salamanca and Ávila were not so essential to the immediate task at hand, and his endeavor to repopulate them likely came somewhat later.

A second necessity was to have Braga in friendly hands. It [22]lay within Raymond's triangular base of power of Santiago de Compostela, Túy, and Orense in Galicia and Coimbra farther south where, since the preceding year, he could count on a friendly bishop in Cresconius. But Bishop Pedro of Braga had not appeared in royal documents as a confirmant since April 29, 1088. Apparently he had not attended the council at Husillos in 1088 although its actions affected his interests. Erdmann believed that he did attend the Council of León in 1090, where he tried without success to secure the restoration of metropolitan rank for Braga.⁽³⁸⁾

In defiance of king, council, and papal legate, Bishop Pedro then resorted to securing the recognition in 1091 of his archiepiscopal rank by the antipope Clement III, Guibert of Ravenna, and so styled himself in that year. By 1092 his actions had led to his excommunication and deposition, so that he did not take part in the consecration of Cresconius as bishop of Coimbra on May 23, 1092.⁽³⁹⁾ Already, from the end of the preceding year, Bishop Pedro had disappeared from the documents of the church of Braga and it seems had entered a monastery. But such a vacuum would have been intolerable given the military and political situation, and it is again likely that the extension of his political authority into the Braga region was necessary for Count Raymond.

This consolidation bore only partial fruit, however. At the beginning of 1094 Badajoz fell to the Murâbits and al-Mutawakkil lost his life as well as his realm. Raymond moved to defend his southernmost possessions but in November of that year was defeated when he attempted to regain Lisbon, itself captured by the Africans.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Doubtless more reverses were avoided partly as a result of the occupation of Valencia by the Cid earlier the same year and the need of his enemies to attempt its recovery.

This diversion of the Muslim offensive gave Count Raymond[23] a respite in which to organize and eventually to expand his authority and influence. At Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, the base of his power, he had administered the lands of the vacant see through his delegates Pedro Vimáraz and then Arias Díaz.⁽⁴¹⁾ By August 21, 1096 Diego Gelmírez, his notary, had become administrator and by the spring of 1101, bishop at Santiago.⁽⁴²⁾ The delicate process by which Raymond, with the aid of Alfonso and his royal bride, came to terms with the local Gallegan nobility and secured their support for his ambitions is well illustrated by his enlistment of these three men.⁽⁴³⁾

At Coimbra in 1094 Raymond had broken the power of Martin Muñiz, the son-in-law of Sisnando David, with the assistance of Bishop Cresconius. This noble fled east to join first the army of the Cid and then, after the latter's death, that of Pedro I of Aragón.⁽⁴⁴⁾ This was neither the first time nor the last that Aragón aided the opponents of Count Raymond or Alfonso VI. After his release, presumably following the Council of León in 1090, the deposed bishop of Santiago, Diego Peláez, took refuge at the court of Pedro I, from whom he received support.⁽⁴⁵⁾

In Galicia, Bishop Amor of Lugo last appears in the documents[24] in 1095. He was succeeded in that year by one Pedro. Nothing is known of the latter's antecedents but he must have been acceptable to the count, if not selected by him. The "Historia Compostelana" claims that Bishop Pedro was one of those consulted by Count Raymond about Diego Gelmírez's advancement to the see of Santiago.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Bishop Pedro also appears early as a confirmant in the count's charters.⁽⁴⁷⁾

The consolidation of Raymond's position is reflected clearly in these charters, which begin to appear regularly from 1094. He seems to have had at his disposal the resources of the entire fisc in Galicia and Portugal. On November 13, 1094 he made a grant to the church of Coimbra. On February 11, 1095 a grant to the church of Túy followed. September 24, 1095 saw him taking the merchants of Compostela under his protection. He exchanged properties with the monastery of San Lorenzo of Caabeiro on January 11, 1096. Another important Galician monastery, San Payo de Antealtaris, received a grant on April 10, 1096. By May 1, 1096 he was patronizing the greatest monastery of the realm, Sahagún. August 21, 1096 was the occasion of a donation to the see of Mondoñedo. On 28 March, 1098 he made another grant to San Payo. And finally, another charter was given to the Gallegan monastery of San Antolín de Toques on January 23, 1099.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Urraca was regularly associated with the count in these charters.

[25]That the ability to dispose of such resources might promote the coalition of a faction around his son-in-law could hardly have been missed by the king. Although not a young man, Alfonso was still vigorous and retained the overall direction of the defense against the Murâbits. The crux of the developing problem was his lack of a son. His second wife, Constance, gave him none and died in the fall of 1093. For his third wife Alfonso turned not to another French bride but to the north of Italy.⁽⁴⁹⁾ This is a significant shift from his past policy and probably represents a deliberate attempt to moderate the Burgundian influence, for it is difficult to perceive another reason for such a choice. No contemporary Italian noble of that area was capable of rendering significant military assistance, and the naval assistance so eagerly sought in Italy by his grandson, Alfonso VII, would have been pointless for Alfonso VI in 1094.

We cannot be sure how soon Alfonso initiated this course, but the negotiations were probably under way in the summer of 1094, for the new queen, Bertha, first comes to notice in a document of April 28, 1095.⁽⁵⁰⁾ His new queen bore him no children of whom record remains, but the king was still capable of generating children, as the future would show. For the moment, however, no contemporary could have been sure that she would not.

From late 1093 the king may indeed have had a son, albeit an illegitimate one. In 1092 Alfonso had taken as a mistressthe Muslim Zaida, widow of the son of al-Mutamid of Sevilla.⁽⁵¹⁾ Doubtless the arrangement was made with an eye to its political effects in Andalucía, but Zaida did bear him a son. When Sancho Adefónsez, who was to perish at Uclés in 1108, was born is uncertain. From the epitaph of Zaida, long preserved at Sahagún, it appears that she died in childbirth, though not necessarily in bearing Sancho.⁽⁵²⁾ If indeed it was his birth that is so recorded, the form of the notice gives us the choice of September of either 1093 or 1099 for the event. The date 1093 seems to fit better all the other circumstances.⁽⁵³⁾ For one thing, a date of 1099 would mean he was on the battlefield at Uclés when not yet nine years of age. If, on the other hand, he was almost fifteen, his presence there is more understandable. For another, the young Sancho begins to confirm his father's documents on January 25, 1103.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Taking the earlier date of birth would mean he began this public function in his eighth year rather than at age three. Again, the result is somewhat more convincing.

The king's taking of a mistress, the birth of a son by her, the death of Queen Constance, and Alfonso's choice of a [27]new queen remote from French influence -- all these events could not have failed to concern Count Raymond even if he had almost simultaneously come to hold the western portion of the realm. They automatically diminished his access to inheritance of the realm and would have slowed the formation of a party around him. I think it likely that one of his reactions to these changing circumstances was the "Pact of Succession" with his cousin, Count Henry. By that agreement, Raymond pledged to his cousin the realm of Toledo and one-third of its "treasure" on the death of Alfonso in return for Henry's aid in securing the kingdom of León-Castilla for himself. If unable to give Henry Toledo, he promised him the realm of Galicia instead. The agreement was negotiated with the aid of Hugh, Abbot of Cluny.⁽⁵⁵⁾

[28]The beginnings of the career in Iberia of Count Henry, brother of Duke Eudes of Burgundy, cousin of Count Raymond, and eventually husband of Alfonso's daughter Teresa, are difficult to trace. There is some scattered evidence that he may have been the son-in-law of Alfonso and count of Portugal as early as December 18, 1095. None of these documents, however, are without problems.⁽⁵⁶⁾ On the other hand, on October 1, 1096 and again on January 19, 1097 he is mentioned as count in Tordesillas, and the latter document is an original.⁽⁵⁷⁾ It is conceivable that he was count in Portugal as well, but two holdings, separated by Zamora and Coria in the hands of Count Raymond, seem unlikely. It seems rather that Henry was, at this time and perhaps somewhat earlier, in possession of the border between Raymond's western holdings and the lands of Count Pedro Ansúrez, farther up the Duero at Valladolid. Thus he was an important but modest ally.

[29]Even if the substance of such a pact could have been kept secret, Raymond was taking other initiatives that could not be. Before November 13, 1094 he had secured the election and consecration of the Cluniac monk Dalmatius as bishop of Santiago de Compostela. The episcopate of the latter was brief, but before his death after the Council of Clermont, he had secured the exemption of his see from any but Roman authority on December 5, 1095.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Alfonso VI was not likely to have opposed either of these actions openly, but that they strengthened his son-in-law more than himself was indisputable. Even as they pursued in concert their common goals -- the strength of the realm, the well-being of its church -- neither would have been unconscious of the way in which the timing and form of such moves affected his own position, its difficulties, and its opportunities.

It is in such a light that the grant to Henry of Portugal, "a flumine mineo usque in tagum,"⁽⁵⁹⁾ made by Alfonso sometime prior to April 9,1097, should be seen. If it strengthened the west of the realm in the face of the Murâbit power, it also confined the progress of Count Raymond. The elevation of Count Henry from a subordinate and ally to a major tenant of the kingdom, connected by marriage to the crown itself, inevitably created strains in his relationship with Count Raymond that benefitted the crown.

Developments within the church of the realm during this period may be seen in somewhat the same light. Along the Atlantic, Gerald was promoted to the see of Braga before July 30, 1095. At Coimbra, Bishop Cresconius died on June 29, 1098 and was replaced by Maurice.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Both new bishops were French and came out of the cathedral chapter of Toledo. In 1099 Pope Paschal II recognized the ancient claims [30]of Braga to archiepiscopal status.⁽⁶¹⁾ All these events created subtle pressures on Count Raymond, enlarged the possibilities of Count Henry, and further explain the choice of a native and Raymond's notary, Diego Gelmírez, for the see of Santiago in 1100. At the same time, the new Bishop Alfonso of Túy on the now-sensitive southern border of Galicia was a canon of the Santiago chapter.⁽⁶²⁾

These events also illustrate the complexity of the political possibilities of the realm. One must not speak facilely of a French or Cluniac party. Certainly the common backgrounds and associations with Cluny of Bernard of Toledo, Henry of Portugal, and Raymond of Burgundy, together with their undoubted status as foreigners in their new surroundings, provided a continual possibility of their pursuing common aims. But each of them also now enjoyed positions that could make them rivals as they strove to build upon day-to-day opportunities. Thus, Count Raymond could place himself at the head of Galician provincialism and also promote the ambitions of the see of Compostela and the cult of Santiago. Count Henry could make use of the particularism of Portugal and the ambitions of the see of Braga to recreate its ancient metropolitian status. Archbishop Bernard was the enthusiastic promoter of the metropolitan rights of Toledo and of the ecclesiastical ambitions of the young protégés of his chapter whom he had personally recruited in France. Severally, they had the ability as well to appeal to the international power and influence of Cluny and of the papacy, the latter under the guidance of the former Cluniacs Urban II (1088-1099) and Paschal II (1099-1118).

All such initiatives, however, if pursued too flagrantly or [31]too singlemindedly endangered the other interest of each, which would be realized best through good relations with the crown. For both Raymond and Henry accession to the crown itself, in virtue of their royal wives or on behalf of their children, was a real possibility. For Archbishop Bernard, only through the patronage of the crown could he realize the primatial claims of his see, which were as peninsular in character as the imperial title that Alfonso VI had adopted. The possibilities of cooperation with, and manipulation of, the royal power seem ultimately to have proved much the stronger.

Of none of this could Alfonso VI have been unaware. The interests of the crown were best served by establishing Henry as count of Portugal to offset Raymond as count of Galicia, and two sons-in-law were safer than one. On the whole, Bernard of Toledo was allowed to pursue his ambitions to the extent that they also served the purposes of the crown. As at Braga in 1095 and Coimbra in 1098, so in 1102 at Osma the new bishop came from the Toledo chapter.⁽⁶³⁾ Both in the county of Portugal and on the upper reaches of the Duero, bishops tied to the primate could be utilized also to serve the purposes of the crown.

In the heart of the realm, however, no such appointments were made. At Burgos, Bishop Gomez died on February 5, 1097 and was followed by Bishop García Aznárez of Navarra.⁽⁶⁴⁾ The following year Bishop Pelayo succeeded Bishop Osmundus at Astorga.⁽⁶⁵⁾ And about 1100, Bishop Martín at [32]Oviedo was followed by another Bishop Pelayo.⁽⁶⁶⁾ None of Archbishop Bernard's protégés found sees there. In roughly the same period Burgos was allowed in 1096 to secure from Rome exemption from any metropolitan authority.⁽⁶⁷⁾

The greatest positions of the royal court were also kept in native hands. Alfonso's majordomos were Fernando Muñoz from 1096 to about 1101 and Pelayo Rodríguez from about 1102 to 1107. Both seem to have been of the Leonese nobility. His alférez was Gomez González until 1099, followed by García Alvárez until 1107. Both were from the nobility of Castilla.

This careful balancing of the power and interests of the great ones of the realm became increasingly difficult for the king during the last decade of his reign. In the late fall or early winter of 1099, his Italian wife, Bertha, died and left the king still without a legitimate male heir.⁽⁶⁸⁾ During the preceding summer the death of the Cid in Valencia proved to be an irreparable loss. The hero's widow, Jimena, held out for a time but by May 1102 Valencia had to be abandoned to the Murâbits. Alfonso had hastened to the defense of the city that spring and the enemy withdrew for the moment, but the king was doubtless correct in his estimate that[33]to protect it indefinitely was impossible. Without the essentially independent troop of Rodrigo Díaz he could no more have retained Valencia than he could, at the same time, have held Toledo without Alvar Fáñez or Coimbra without Count Henry. The withdrawal is an indication of the extent of the king's reliance on his great magnates of the frontier. The loss of Valencia, however, threatened anew the entire eastern flank of the realm. Not only Valencia but Zaragoza, the last of the important taifas, might be expected to succumb to the Murâbits. The loyalty of the nobles of the east now became doubly important to the crown.

The attention of Alfonso to the east is apparent. A bishop was found for the long-projected but apparently long-neglected diocese of Osma in 1102, an outpost on the upper Duero. In 1104, seventy-five kilometers southeast of Osma Alfonso took Medinaceli.⁽⁶⁹⁾ That fortress town had long controlled the route from Zaragoza down through Toledo to Córdoba and Sevilla by the river valleys of the Jalón and the Tajo.

Under these circumstances the Leonese monarch's choice for his fourth wife fell again on a French princess, Elizabeth or Isabel. She is purported to have been a daughter of Louis VI of France, and her first appearance in the documents is on May 14, 1100.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Once again Alfonso appears to have been bidding for help from beyond the Pyrenees. Whether the new queen had ties to Count Raymond or Count Henry is not known, but both of these magnates seem to have been extending their sphere of influence eastward at this time, perhaps at the expense of Count Pedro Ansúrez.

On September 16, 1100 the name of Count Henry is associated with the Christian army defeated at Malagón to the [34]south of Toledo.⁽⁷¹⁾ To the northwest, on the best route from Zamora over the Guadarramas to Toledo, Count Raymond was almost certainly busy by this time with the repopulation of Salamanca and Ávila. Both are associated with his name although the initiation of this process cannot be dated with precision. In June of 1102 Raymond made two donations to Bishop Jerome of Salamanca,⁽⁷²⁾ another of the French clerics brought to Spain by Archbishop Bernard. He had been bishop of Valencia briefly under the Cid. These two documents represent his first appearance at Salamanca and the first datable evidence of the count's authority there. Ávila is even more of an unknown; no bishop of that town is recorded in the documents before 1121. But again, military support of and competition with his cousin would have made Raymond's operation in both places necessary by 1100.

For the winter of 1101-1102 there is also strong evidence that Count Raymond had become for the first time a regular member of the royal court. Between November 5, 1101 and June 2, 1102 he confirmed no less than six private donations to the monastery of Sahagún. The six are spread evenly over the period and indicate that he wintered at the court. Sahagún was far more than a monastery; it was the pantheon of the royal family and its favorite residence. A variety of donations attest the dynasty's extensive holdings in the area. At least through Urraca, and probably as part of her dowry, Raymond also held considerable property in the environs.⁽⁷³⁾ But there is no convincing evidence for the couple's earlier, continuing residence there.

The record suggests as well that the count not only had taken up residence at or near the court but also had come to [35]hold a commanding position in its vicinity. Five kilometers south of the monastery of Sahagún the castle of Grajal commando the approach from Palencia. From it, the journey to Sahagún is an easy one. Its command in friendly hands would have been a prime necessity for the court, resident in or near the monastery. Two separate documents of the monastery note that the stronghold was in Raymond's possession in the winter of 1102.⁽⁷⁴⁾ It is likely that it became his major residence from this point, and it was there that he was to die a little more than five years later.

Other indications of the new importance of the count are not hard to find for this period. For the year 1103 some nine donations of Alfonso VI survive. Of these, the list of confirmants has been preserved for seven. Raymond confirms all seven. Although the record is not nearly so full for any other year after 1100, the surviving documents suggest that his position at court continued strong until his death. Count Raymond does not confirm the single extant royal charter for 1104, but he does confirm three of the four known for 1105, the single charter preserved for 1106, and the two surviving charters issued before his death in 1107.

Indeed, it seems that the position of the count in the kingdom was a commanding one during these five years and made possible the elimination of an outstanding rival magnate, Pedro Ansúrez. Between November 7, 1103 and March 27, 1109 the Leonese magnate disappears from the documents of the realm. From 1072 to 1103 Count Pedro is mentioned in at least 116 documents, more often than any other person but [36]the king himself. From 1109 until his death in 1117, the count appeared in another 54 documents; no other noble, not even Count Pedro González of Lara, who was later Queen Urraca's lover and chief support in Castilla, is so frequently mentioned. During these years Pedro Ansúrez was, I believe, a political exile from the realm, residing in the small Pyrenean county of Urgel.⁽⁷⁵⁾

Count Armengol V of Urgel, who had been married to Pedro's daughter María from about 1099, died in 1102. For the next six years Pedro Ansúrez effectively ruled the county for his grandson, the future Armengol VI, who played a large part in the reign of Alfonso VII. It is possible, of course, to explain Count Pedro's absence from León-Castilla in terms [37]of family obligation; but the contrast with his chosen sphere of action before and after is striking, and Urgel offered only the most diminutive scope for his talents and ambitions.

Such a coup against an old, established member of the court and royal confidant must have had the acquiescence of the king himself. In addition, it probably required the active cooperation of Raymond's cousin, Count Henry of Portugal. There is evidence that the latter had also become a regular member of the royal court from early 1103. In that year Henry confirmed four of the seven known Alfonsine charters whose witness lists survive. His confirmations of private documents of the monastery of Sahagún indicate his ordinary presence there at least from January until spring for the years 1104 through 1107.

Although the two Burgundian counts and their royal wives may have gained the paramount interest at court, it should not be concluded that they had thereby become masters of the realm. Their influence continued to be based on their control of the west and seems not to have extended beyond it in many respects. Of the eleven charters of Count Raymond between 1102 and 1107 of which notice survives, only two concern areas other than Galicia. One, as we have seen, is a settlement of a dispute with the monks of Sahagún, in whose district he held considerable land. The other is an exchange of properties with the bishopric of Oviedo.⁽⁷⁶⁾ The remaining nine charters are ah concerned with Galicia.⁽⁷⁷⁾ [38]Moreover, from the witness lists of the charters that are more than mere notices it is obvious that the confirmants are nobles of merely regional importance from Galicia. The exception to this case is the charter granted to the church of Santiago on December 16, 1105, which is confirmed by six of the great prelates of the realm and many members of the court. But this should be credited to both the prestige of Santiago and its having been granted at the Christmas court in Sahagún rather than to the importance of Count Raymond.

Much the same can be said of the six known charters of his cousin, Count Henry of Portugal, datable to this period. There is a donation to the Cluniac priory of Charité-sur-Loire, another to the Cluniac priory of San Isidro de las Dueñas, and finally, a donation to Sahagún. The remaining three are all donations of property in Portugal to Portuguese individuals or Portuguese churches.⁽⁷⁸⁾ With the understandable exception of the grants to San Isidro and to Sahagún, [39]the confirmants to these charters are individuals with regional Portuguese interests.

Even at court not everything developed as the cousins and their royal wives would have it. From January of 1103 Zaida's son, Sancho, confirmed almost every one of his father's charters. In April 23, 1107 a private document of the monastery of Oña said that Sancho was ruling in Medinaceli, reconquered by his father in 1104.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Whatever might have been their private reservations about this development, neither man could have done anything except publicly to support it. In addition, their own claims continued to be threatened by the surprising virility of Alfonso VI. The old king and his new French queen had, by March 19, 1106, produced two surviving children.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Both were girls, the Infantas Sancha and Elvira, but might not Alfonso yet produce another male heir?

In the kingdom at large it is difficult to get a sense of very rapid or vigorous change. The departure of Pedro Ansúrez seems to have benefitted Alfonso rather than Count Raymond. A longtime servant of the crown, Muño Díaz, is given as "presiding" in the Leonese count's lands at Saldaña.⁽⁸¹⁾ Elsewhere no significant changes can be detected in [40]those who served the crown. It is perhaps ominous that Alvar Fáñez, the defender of the Toledan frontier, came no more to court in these years. That frontier appears to have been generally quiet. In those offensives large enough to find a chronicler, the initiative seems to have rested with the Christians, as in 1105 and 1106. Control of events there remained local.⁽⁸²⁾

The most portentous developments were in the east. Immediately after the murder of Sancho García IV of Navarra in July of 1076, Alfonso VI had extended his control into the valley of the upper Ebro. The remainder of that kingdom, around Pamplona, had been appropriated at the same time by Aragón. The great taifa kingdom of Zaragoza held the middle Ebro, and in 1086 Alfonso VI had been only just balked of obtaining it by the appearance of the Murâbits in the peninsula.

Unable for the time to secure that prize for León-Castilla, the king nevertheless opposed Aragonese moves to gain it. He allied himself with al-Mustain of Zaragoza in 1096 in a vain attempt to prevent Pedro I of Aragón from capturing Huesca. In 1101 Pedro I had followed up his seizure of Huesca with the capture of Barbastro. When Pedro died suddenly on September 28, 1104, he left to his heir and brother, Alfonso I el Batallador, an Aragón in a strong position to overrun the middle Ebro. In 1106 and 1107 the latter took Ejea and Tauste, thrusting a salient down to the Ebro between Zaragoza and its fortress town of Tudela. A bit later he also took Tamarite, south of Barbastro toward the town of Lérida.

The success at Tamarite carried the king of Aragón to within thirty-five kilometers of Balaguer, northeast of Lérida on the Río Segre. That fortress had been taken in the fall of 1105 by Count Pedro Ansúrez with the assistance of Count Ramón Berenguer of Barcelona. The already established marital connections between the houses of Aragón and Urgel, the desirability of military cooperation against Zaragoza, [41]and the hope of Pedro Ansúrez to be restored to his position in León-Castilla dictated an alliance whose effects would be far-reaching for the latter kingdom.⁽⁸³⁾

Given the disparity in the size and resources of the two realms, however, León-Castilla must have been badly divided for Aragón's intervention to be significant. The events of 1107 and 1108 created such conditions.

Alfonso VI continued almost until his death at age seventy-two to rule with tenacity and vigor.⁽⁸⁴⁾ In early May or late April of 1107 he held an important council of the realm at León. The "Historia Compostelana" mentions it while describing the progress of a dispute between the churches of Compostela and Mondoñedo.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Two documents almost immediately after the council imply the kind of secular decisions made there.

On May 8, 1107, at the castle of Monzón on the road to Burgos, Alfonso VI granted a charter to the church of Toledo in the presence of Queen Isabel, his son, Sancho, Count Raymond and Urraca, County Henry and Teresa, Archbishop Gerald of Braga, the bishops of León, Astorga, and Salamanca, and a host of nobles. The diploma states that it was "roborato vero in castro de monzon coram omm sue expedicionis multitudine dum attenderet ad aragon post celebratum concilium apud legione."⁽⁸⁶⁾ Not quite a week later in Burgos, on May 14, 1107, Alfonso granted a charter to the church of Santiago de Compostela, again in the presence of his queen, his son, the Burgundian counts and their wives, Archbishop Bernard of Toledo, the bishops of León, Astorga, Palencia, and Burgos, and many of the same notables. [42]The dating formula states that it was granted "quando rex de burgis egressus cum sola castellanorum expeditione super vascones et aragonenses iter direxit."⁽⁸⁷⁾

From this evidence one may deduce that the council at León was called to organize an expedition against Aragón in the spring of 1107. Perhaps, as in 1096, the Aragonese pressure on the middle Ebro was too successful for Alfonso to permit. There is no further record of this episode and it remains mysterious. The confirmations to a private document of Sahagún place most of the principals back there by June 12, 1107.⁽⁸⁸⁾

Alfonso's charter to Santiago also indicates another action taken at the Council of León. In one of the extant copies, Alfonso's son by Zaida confirms "Sancius puer filius regis regnum electus patrifactum conf." It is unfortunate that the documents involved are copies. The charter for Toledo a few days earlier has him confirm as "Sancius infans regius filius quod pater fecit cf." One of the copies of the Santiago document merely lists him as "Sancius filius regis cf." Still, it is difficult to imagine that the later copyist of this last document simply added those extraordinary words out of whimsy. Sancho was formally recognized as heir to the kingdom at the council.

All the planning of Alfonso was nevertheless set at naught by a series of events whose combined effect was to threaten [43]the realm with chaos on his death only two years later. The first of these was, taken by itself, hopeful. Between September 13 and 20, 1107 his overmighty son-in-law, Count Raymond, died on his lands at Grajal in the presence of Bishop Diego Gelmírez of Compostela, who returned with his body to the city and shrine of the apostle for the funeral rites.⁽⁸⁹⁾ On December 13, 1107 his widow, the Infanta Urraca, issued a charter in her own name.⁽⁹⁰⁾

The death of the great Burgundian who bad played so large a part in the affairs of the kingdom for almost a generation was shortly followed by another unsettling event. Alfonso VI's fourth queen died, probably early in 1108. The king would marry yet one last time in 1108. Again his bride, Beatrice, was French, and she survived the king, returning to her native country after his death. The Primera crónica general states that Alfonso had neither son nor daughter by her.⁽⁹¹⁾

Finally, on May 30, 1108 Alfonso's heir perished at the hands of the Murâbits at the battle of Uclés. The Infans Sancho had led the defense because, as the "Historia Compostelana" puts it,"Sancio scilicet...cujus custodiae secundum patris imperium Toleti dominium erat commissum."⁽⁹²⁾ With him perished a considerable number of magnates and any hope for a peaceful succession to the realm of León-Castilla.⁽⁹³⁾

1. The history of the eleventh century in Spain, like that of the first half of the twelfth century, for the most part remains to be written. It is symptomatic that in the Espasa-Calpe series, edited by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, a gap occurs between the volume by Justo Pérez de Urbel and Ricardo Del Arco y Garay, Historia de España: España cristiana, comienzo de la reconquista (711-1038), vol. 6, 2d ed. (Madrid, 1964), and the volume on the fourteenth century. In the Instituto Gallach series, Julian María Rubio et al., Historia de España, vol. 2, La alta Edad Media, rev. ed. (Barcelona, 1970), the coverage is much more general but the treatment of the non-Castilian realms is fuller.

The single most useful general history in Spanish is Luis García de Valdeavellano, Historia de España de los orígenes a la baja Edad Media, vol. 1, pt.2, 2d ed. (Madrid, 1955). More recently two brilliantly conceived surveys have appeared: José Luis Martín, La península en la Edad Media (Barcelona, 1976), and José Ángel García de Cortázar, Historia de España Alfaguera, vol. 2, La época medieval (Madrid, 1973). The best work in English is Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975).

2. For the reigns of Alfonso V and Vermudo III the best short treatment is Alfonso Sánchez Candeira, El "regnum-imperium" leonés hasta 1037 (Madrid, 1951).

3. For the development of Barcelona, see Ferran Soldevila, ed., Historia dels Catalans, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1964).

4. Justo Pérez de Urbel, El condado de Castilla, 3 vols., 2d ed. (Madrid, 1969), is the standard work on the emergence of Castilla.

5. Justo Pérez de Urbel, Sancho el Mayor de Navarra (Madrid, 1950), is one of the few studies of an individual monarch and his reign for this period.

6. José María Ramos y Loscertales, El reino de Aragón bajo la dinastía pamplonesa (Salamanca, 1961), is the essential guide.

7. García de Valdeavellano, Historia de España, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 288-289.

8. Gregorio de Balparda y las Herrarias, Historia crítica de Vizcaya y de sus fueros, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1924 and Bilbao, 1933-34), and Gonzalo Martínez Díez, Alava medieval, vol. 1 (Vitoria, 1974), treat the significance of this initiative.

9. Both brothers have been more closely studied than most other monarchs of the period; Antonio Ubieto Arteta, ed., Colección diplomática de Pedro I de Aragón y Navarra (Saragossa, 1951), and José María Lacarra, Vida de Alfonso el Batallador (Saragossa, 1971). The latter, however, is far from the full-scale biography or history that its subject deserves.

10. Alexandre Bruel, Recueil des chartes de l'Abbaye de Cluny, 6 vols. (Paris, 1876-1903), 4:625-626. Agnes's death has frequently been given as June 6, 1078, based on a garbled notice in the "Annales Compostellani," ed. Enrique Flórez, ES, vols. 1-27 (Madrid, 1747-72), 23:322. The notice more probably refers to her half sister of identical name, who was married to Peter I of Aragón. The French Chronicle of St. Maixent says that she was repudiated by Alfonso; see Alfred Richard, Histoire des comtes de Poitou (Paris, 1903), 1:307-308 and n. 1. In any event, Agnes was buried, as were three other spouses of Alfonso subsequently, at the royal monastery of Sahagún; Julio Puyol y Alonso, El abadengo de Sahagún (Madrid, 1915), pp. 17-18 and n. 1.

11. BN, Sección de Manuscritos, signatura 9.194, fol. 200, published in Flórez, ES, 26:458-463, with the date as May 1, 1075. Neither the chancery nor charters of Alfonso VI have been critically studied; consequently they must be employed with caution. Although I have done some work toward such a study it is still difficult to speak with full certainty concerning many of his charters. Constance, however, appears in four other charters of Alfonso the ensuing year.

12. October 25, 1093; AHN, Sección de Códices, 988B, fols. 17v-18r, and 989B, fol. 4v; published in Romualdo Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782), pp. 490-491. November 22, 1093; AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 4; published in Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 493-494.

Pierre David, Etudes historiques sur la Galice et le Portugal du VI^e au XII^e siècle (Paris, 1947), p. 389 and n. 2, places her death on the first of these dates, based on yet another charter of Alfonso to Sahagún, October 25, 1093; AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 7. Other copies of this document exist in AHN, Sección de Clero, carpeta 887, nos. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. The earliest of these is no. 12, a twelfth-century copy. Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 491-493, publishes it. Although Constance does not confirm this charter, she is twice associated in it with her husband, and prayers are asked for both of them.

13. What may best be called the international policy of the dynasty of Fernando el Magno has been closely explored over the years by Charles Julian Bishko, "Liturgical Intercession at Cluny for the King-Emperors of León," SM 3 (1961):53-76; "The Cluniac Priories of Galicia and Portugal: Their Acquisition and Adminsitration," SM 7 (1965):305-356; "Fernando I y los orígenes de la alianza castellano leonesa con Cluny," CHE 47-48 (1968):31-135, and 49-50 (1969):50-116; "The Abbey of Dueñas and the Cult of St. Isidore of Chios in the County of Castile (l0th-l1th Centuries)," Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel, ed. Ernesto Zaragoza and Quintiliano Tajadura (Silos, 1977), 2:345-364. Peter Segl, Königtum und Klosterreform in Spanien (Kallmünz, 1974), has enlarged on some of Bishko's findings. Older works of Paul Kehr, "El papado y los reinos de Navarra y Aragón hasta mediados del siglo XII," EEMCA 2 (1946):74-186, and Ramón Menéndez Pidal, El imperio hispánico y los cinco reinos (Madrid, 1950), and La España del Cid, 2 vols., 5th cd. (Madrid. 1956), also address the question of necessity. Although I have benefited greatly from all these studies, I remain uneasy about inferring from them the motivations and reactions of Alfonso VI, because the fundamental paleographic and diplomatic examination of his charters has not been done. The particular questions are not germane here, however, and those that are will be addressed as they arise.

14. I follow here the chronology of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 1:340-341, which seems the most reasonable construction given the current state of the evidence for the betrothal. I have examined the question of the date of Raymond's accession to the countship of Galicia in "Santiago and Saint Denis: The French Presence in Eleventh-Century Spain," Catholic Historical Review 54 (1968):472-474. To the evidence there presented I should like to add the following two references: October 28, 1086; Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar y Castro, sig. O-16, fol. 551, a late copy of a private document; and March 31, 1090; AHN, Sección de Microfilmas, AC Palencia, rollos 1.658 and 1.659, nos. 8 and 27, respectively. Additional copies of the latter document are contained in AHN, Microfilmas; AC Zamora, rollo 7.964, no. 3; and Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, sig. O-17, fols. 211r-217r; Colección de Catedrales de España, Palencia, sig. 9-25-1-C-6, fols. 24r-31r. It has been published by Pedro Fernando del Pulgar, Historia secular y eclesiástica de la ciudad de Palencia (Madrid, 1680), 1:123-125. Justiniano Rodríguez Fernández, Pedro Ansúrez (León, 1966), p. 61, n. 69, also reports that Raymond's sepulchral inscription gave Urraca's age as eight at the time of her marriage.

15. José Ramón Castro, "La reconquista de las tierras del Ebro," Príncipe de Viana 7 (1946):674-675. April 18, 1088, AHN, Clero, carp. 960, no. 2, mentions a "comite enric" in lands associated with the Leonese monastery of Eslonza. This identification has been accepted, Joel Serräo, ed., DHP (Lisbon, 1971), vol. 2 s.v. "Conde D. Henrique," but no other evidence places him in the peninsula before 1096.

16. Flórez, ES, 20:611.

17. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, ed., Primera crónica general (Madrid, 1955), 2:646.

18. Julio Gonzalez Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva, 2 vols (Madrid, 1975), 2:108. See also Antonio López Ferreiro, Historia de la Santa Apostólica Metropolitana Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela, 11 vols. (Santiago de Compostela, 1898-1911), 3:285.

19. April 25, 1087; AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fols. 34v-35r; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:25-27 app. Another copy exists in Acad. Hist., sig. 9-27-2-E-50, in a manuscript by Santiago Estefanía, "Memorias para la vida de el Rey Don Alonso primero de Castilla y sexto de León," pp. 213-214. June 18, 1088; AC Lugo, Tumbo viejo, fols. l2v-13r; published in Manuel Risco. ES, vols. 28-42 (Madrid, 1774-1801), 40:422-425.

20. Flórez, ES, 20:254. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 1:346-347, accepts the story and Atiliano González Ruiz-Zorilla, "Sobre la restauración de la diócesis de Braga en 1070," HS 10 (1957):431-442, has collected all the references.

21. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:254 and Lopéz Ferreiro, Historia, 2:554 and 3:9.

22. Luciano Serrano, El obispado de Burgos y Castilla primitiva desde el siglo V al XIII, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1935), 3:76-78, publishes the document. A new bishop-elect for Nájera, Sigefredus, also appears in the eastern portion of the realm.

23. J-W, 5367-69.Louis Duchesne, cd., Le líber pontificalis (Paris, 1886), 2:293. Demetrio Mansilla, ed., La documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio III, 965-1216 (Rome, 1955), pp. 39-41. Richard A. Fletcher, The Episcopate in the Kingdom of León in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1978), pp. 183-184, has recently maintained that the papal action in regard to the bishopric of Compostela was sought by Bernard of Toledo. It is clear that Bernard reported that action, taken at Husillos, but most unlikely that he opposed the initiative of his king, to which he himself was a party.

24. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:17-18.

25. Lucas of Túy, "Chronicon Mundi ab Origine Mundi usque ad Eram MCCLXXIV," ed. Andreas Schottus, Hispaniae Illustratae (Frankfurt, 1608),4:101, has confused this issue considerably by stating that the council mandated use of the Carolingian in place of the Visigothic script. The substance is likely to be, instead, the reaffirmation of the Roman rite but Lucas says something nearly the opposite. On liturgical grounds as well as paleographic ones, he needs correction. See David, Études, pp. 431-439.

26. Mansilla, "Formación," p. 9. The papal bull has not been preserved, but that of Calixtus II to Archbishop Pelayo of Braga in June 1121 quotes it. Carl Erdmann, "Papsturkunden in Portugal," Abhandlungen der Gesellschafi der Wissenschaft en zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, n.s. vol. 20 (Berlin, 1927), pt. 3, pp. 174-177.

27. The extant copies of the document are listed in note 14. The first of these may be an original, but until there has been a critical study of Alfonso's charters it will be impossible to be sure. Raymond confirms the charter but Urraca does not. Ferran Soldevila, Historia de España (Barcelona, 1952), 1:211, believes that the marriage took place at this time.

28. Bruel, Recueil de Cluny, 4:809-810. A Spanish copy exists in AHN, Clero, carp. 1.700, no. 13, fol. 3. For its significance, see Bishko, "Fernando I," CHE 47-48 (1968):93-99.

29. I owe the figure to García de Cortazar, La época medieval, p. 186.

30. González, Repoblación, 1:39 and 118.

31. Martin appears as "elect" in a document of Coimbra in September 1088, PMH, Diplomata et Chartae (Lisbon, 1867), p. 427; but see Gérard Pradalié, "Les faux de la cathédrale et la crise à Coïimbre au début du XII^e. siécle," Mélanges de la casa de Velazquez 10 (1974):83. On October 12, 1091 a document cites a Bishop John; PMH, Diplomata et Chartae, p. 454. The Livro Preto of Coimbra tells of his election at a council at Husillos, which has resulted in the positing of a second council in 1092 or, alternatively, John's election in 1088. Both seem unlikely. For the more important views see Fortunato de Almeida, Historia da Igreja em Portugal (Coimbra, 1910), 1:612-616; Pierre David s.v. "Coimbre," DHGE, ed. Albert DeMeyer and Etienne Van Cauwenbergh (Paris, 1956), 13:210; Avelino de Jesús da Costa, O Bispo D. Pedro e a organização da diocese de Braga, 2 vols. (Coimbra, 1959), 1:249; and Maur Cocheril, Études sur le monachisme en Espagne et au Portugal (Lisbon, 1966), pp. 110-111.

32. A. H. de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal (New York, 1972), 1:31, and Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 1:307-308.

33. "Chronica Gothorum," PMH, Scriptores (Lisbon, 1856), pp. 10-11.

34. García de Valdeavellano, Historia de España, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 374.

35. AHN, Clero, carp. 887, no. 4.

36. AC Zamora, Tumbo negro, fols. 121v-122r; published in Tomás Muñoz y Romero, ed., Colección de fueros municipales y cartas pueblos (Madrid, 1847), pp. 332-333.

37. AHN, Clero, carp. 889, no. 3.

38. Carl Erdmann, Das Papsttum und Portugal im ersten Jahrhundert der portugiesischen Geschichte (Berlin, 1928). pp. 8-9.

39. Demetrio Mansilla, "Formación de la provincia bracarense después de la invasión árabe," HS 14 (1961):8, and Costa, O Bispo, 1:248-250.

40. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 2:794.

41. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:18.

42. Gelmírez appears as his notary in a number of the count's charters. November 13, 1094; PMH, Diplomata et Chartae, pp. 484-485. September 24, 1095; AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 28v, published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:37-38 app. May 1, 1096; AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 172v-173r; published in Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, p. 506. The date, as it appears in the Becerro, is difficult. Escalona gives it as 1106, but Queen Constance is mentioned in the text and Bishop Osmundus of Astorga is a confirmant. Also, Diego Gelmírez confirms as scribe and "clericus Sancti Jacobi" For all these, 1096 is a preferable reading. August 21, 1096; BN, Manuscritos, 5.928, fol. 27; Acad. Hist., Cathedrales de España, Mondoñedo, 9-25-1-C-3, fols. 13r-14r; published in Flórez, ES, 18:340-342.

43. I have previously discussed the play of forces that surrounded the choice of Gelmírez in "Santiago and Saint Denis: The French Presence in Eleventh-Century Spain," Catholic Historical Review 54 (1968):472-482.

44. Pradalié, "Faux de Coimbre," p. 80.

45. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "El destierro del obispo compostelano Diego Peláez en Aragón," CEO 5 (1951):43-51.

46. Flórez, ES, 20:19-20.

47. On January 11, 1096, if this charter can be accepted as reliable; AHN, Clero, carp. 1.784, no. 2. Luis Sánchez Belda, ed., Documentos reales de la Edad Media referentes a Galicia (Madrid, 1953), no. 170, calls it a forgery. Manuel-Rubén García Alvárez, ed., "Catálogo de documentos reales de la alta Edad Media referentes a Galicia, 714-1109," Compostellanum 11 (1966):323, regards it as genuine. March 28, 1098, AHN, Clero, carp. 518, no. 7, is the next charter of Raymond that he confirmed.

48. No one has systematically examined the charters of Raymond. Because only twenty survive for the period from 1094 to 1107, they represent a difficult diplomatic problem. November 13, 1094; September 24, 1095; May 1, 1096; and August 21, 1096 are cited in note 42. January 11, 1096 is cited in note 47. February 11, 1095, an original; AC Túy, 4/1; also copies in 3/1, 4/4, and Becerro 1; published in Pascual Galindo Romeo, Túy en la bajaEdad Media (Madrid, 1950), pp. iii-vi. Another, later copy exists in AG Simancas, Sección de Gracia y Justicia, legajo 1.672, varios, Túy, no. 14, fols. 18v-20v.

April 10, 1096; AHN, Clero, carp. 518, no. 6. March 28, 1098; AD Santiago, Fondo de San Martín, ms. 72, a fragment of the original and a notarial copy from the sixteenth century; AHN, Clero, carp. 518, no. 7, is yet another copy but a poor one. January 23, 1099; AHN, Clero, carp. 557, no.16, an original, and no. 17, a copy.

49. Benito Sánchez Alonso, ed., Crónica del Obispo Don Pelayo (Madrid, 1924), pp. 86-87. Julio Puyol y Alonso, ed., "Las crónicas anónimas de Sahagún," BRAH 76 (1920):116.

50. AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 28v-29r.

51. González, Repoblación, 1:90-91.

52. Elías Gago and Juan Eloy Díaz-Jiménez, "Los restos mortales de Alfonso VI y de sus cuatro mujeres," BRAH 58 (1911):51.

53. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, pp. 760-764. Evariste Lévi-Provençal, Islam d'occident (Paris, 1948), pp. 139-151.

54. The charter of Alfonso VI is in the museum of the cathedral of Astorga and is an apparent original. There are copies in AHN, Códices, sig. 1.197B, fols. 230v-232v and sig. 1.195B, fols. 385r-387v; and BN, Manuscritos, 712, fol. 148. It has been published in Castilian by Pedro Rodríguez López, Episcopologio asturicense (Astorga, 1907), 2:536-538. There are earlier appearances of dubious accuracy -- January 17, 1098, AC León, nos. 997, 998, and 999 -- but the charter lists Pelayo as bishop of Oviedo, whose first appearance is in documents of 1102. May 23, 1099; AHN, Orden militar de Santiago, carp. 326, no. 1; published in José Luis Martín, Orígenes de la orden militar de Santiago (Barcelona, 1974), pp. 169-170. But the charter also lists Elizabeth as Alfonso's queen.

Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros, pp. 398-399, published a document of Alfonso VI confirmed by the young Sancho, dated January 12, 1110, which is impossible. I have tentatively assigned it to January 12, 1102.

55. The dating of this pact has been a matter of dispute from its first publication. It is published, with a résumé of the relevant literature, by Rui Pinto de Azevado, ed., DMP (Lisbon, 1958), 1:3-4 and 547-553, who refuses to assign it more closely than 1095-1107. On the other hand, Pierre David, "Le pacte successoral entre Raymond de Galice et Henri de Portugal," Bulletin hispanique 50 (1948):275-290, argued for the years 1105-1107 as a reaction to Alfonso's designation of his son, Sancho, as his successor. David also investigated minutelv the evidence for the activities in Spain of Abbot Hugh of Cluny's intermediarv, Dalmacio Geret, who is mentioned in the document. He concluded that there is no evidence for the latter's presence there before 1106. Azevado rightly questioned this argument from silence. Moreover, David had to account for the absence of any mention of Portugal in the specified arrangements on the basis that the county was held by Henry in a nonfeudal tenure. But this assertion, so dear to Portuguese historians, seems to me the weakest part of the argument. If Henry held Portugal when this highly political agreemcnt was negotiated, it seems incredible that is should not have been mentioned, even if only to exclude it expressly from the other provisions. Nevertheless, David's dating has gained great vogue. lt is followed by Marcelin Defourneaux, Les français en Espagne au XI^e et XII^e siécles (Paris, 1949), pp. 198-199; Cocheril, Études sur monachisme, pp. 122-123; and Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal, 1:38.

Recently Charles Julian Bishko, "Count Henrique of Portugal, Cluny, and the Antecedents of the Pacto Sucessório," RPH 13 (1970):155-188, has attempted to date the pact more closely to the summer of 1105. Three problems make this interesting attempt less than convincing. First, Bishko does not adequately appreciate that the mixture of Portuguese and Leonese nobles who confirm Henry's charter of January 30, 1105 can be accounted for on the basis that the count was at the Leonese court when he issued the document, itself drawn up by Alfonso VI's notary. Second, Count Raymond's charter of May 1, 1106, which Bishko uses as evidence of the resolution of the dispute between the cousins, clearly must be dated to 1096 on diplomatic grounds. There are several reasons for assigning it to 1096 but the most compelling is that Diego Gelmírez appears as the count's notary rather than as bishop of Santiago. Third, the royal charter of May 14, 1105, which places the cousins in Burgos to meet with Dalmacius Geret, has been redated from 1107 on the basis of the literary evidence of the HC.

All things considered, it seems more likely that the pact derives from the period before Henry became count in Portugal and subsequent to the death of Queen Constance and the birth of the illegitimate Sancho, both of which latter events would have severely threatened the future of the Burgundians.

56. Cf. Rui Pinto de Azevado, "Observaçóes de diplomática," RPH 12 (1969):147-167, and the same historian's treatment of the charters of Guimarães and of Constantim de Panóias in Azevado, DMP, 1:1-6 and 541-546. The confirmation by Henry and Teresa of Count Raymond's charter to Túy of February 11, 1095 is of a later date. For the latter charter, see note 48.

57. October 1, 1096; AHN, Clero, carp. 889, nos. 3 and 8. Both are private documents of Sahagún.

58. November 13, 1094; see note 42. These developments and the text of Urban II's bull are given in Flórez, HC, ES, 20:19-23.

59. From a private document of Coimbra, PMH, Diplomata et Chartae, pp. 504-515.

60. Almeida, História da Ingreja em Portugal, 1:612-614.

61. Mansilla, "Formación," p. 9. The papal bull has not been preserved, but that of Calixtus II to Archbishop Pelayo of Braga in June 1121 quotes it. Carl Erdmann, "Papsturkunden in Portugal," Abhandlungen der Gesellschafi der Wissenschaft en zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, n.s. vol. 20 (Berlin, 1927), pt. 3, pp. 174-177.

62. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:56-57.

63. The first document known to me in which a bishop of Osma appears is that of the monastery of Sahagún dated June 2, 1102; AHN. Códices, sig. 989B, fol. 88r. For the French recruited by Archbishop Bernard of Toledo and placed in the various Iberian sees, refer to Menéndez Pidal, Primera crónica general, 2:544.

64. Serrano, Obispado, 1:358.

65. Bishop Pelayo is first mentioncd in the Tumbo of Astorga on April 18,1097; Rodríguez López, Episcopologio, 2:174. There is, however, considerable evidence for the survival of his predecessor into the spring of 1098.

66. His predecessor last appears as a confirmant of a document of the Council of Palencia on December 5, 1100; AHN, Microfilmas, AC Palencia, rollo 1.658, no. 11; Acad. Hist., Colección Salazar, O-17, fols. 217r-219v, 240r-254r; published in Fernando del Pulgar, Historia secular y eclesiástica, 1:131-132, and in Fidel Fira, "El concilio nacional de Palencia," BRAH 24 (1894):221-222. But Pelayo appears in some documents as early as 1098 and the historians have solved the problem by making him an auxiliary bishop of his predecessor. I think such an explanation unlikely but it reflects the state of the study of the documents in this period.

67. Serrano, Obispado, 3:96-98.

68. The last notice of her is dated November 17, 1099, and by January 25, 1100 Alfonso refers to her death in a donation to Sahagún. November 17, 1099; AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fol. 78v, published in Fidel Fita, "Concilio nacional de Burgos en 1080: Nuevas ilustraciones," BRAH 49 (1906):361-363. January 25, 1100, AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 10v-l1r; published in Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 499-501, with a date of February 1, 1100, and in Bruel, Recucil de Cluny, 5:83-86.

69. González, Repoblación, 1:95-96.

70. Cocheril, Études sur monachísme, p. 118 and n. 171, and Juan Loperráez Corvalón, Descripción histórica del obispado de Osma, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1788), 3:9-10. There is a prior mention in a document of May 23, 1099, but there are other problems with that source.

71. González, Repoblación, 1:94.

72. June 22, 1102; AG Salamanca, cajón 16, legajo 1, no. 5, an original. There is also a copy from the thirteenth century, in AC Zamora, Tumbo negro, fol. 22.

73. As early as May 1, 1096 they had donated some of it to the monastery. See note 42. A study of the fisc lands of the dynasty remains to be done. It awaits, like most other things, a critical study of the crown charters.

74. February 15, 1102; AHN, Clero, carp. 890, no. 18, an original; and AHN; Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 56v-57r. March 6, 1102; AHN, Códices, oig. 989B, fol. 172v; published in Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, p. 502. There is another document of Sahagún that mentions Raymond as "comite in graliare," dated to January 25, 1098; AHN, Clero, carp. 889, no. 16. This is a copy, however, and I am skeptical of this isolated notice. The present castle at Grajal is a later structure whose entire interior is earth-filled almost to the level of the battlements. Its excavation might be rewarding. The character of the notices in the documents indicates that the present structure was preceded by an earlier fortification on the site.

75. An indication that the count's sojourn among the valleys of the Pyrenees might not have been purely voluntary is to be found in the thirteenth-century "De Rebus Hispaniae" of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Rodrigo claims that after the death of her father, Urraca seized the lands of Pedro Ansúrez and that her new husband, Alfonso I of Aragón, restored those lands to the count and imprisoned his wife, Opera, cd. María Desamparados Cabaneo Pecourt (Valencia, 1968), 1:147-148. The source for this story is probably literary.

The documentary record will not support the story in the form that we have it. From 1109 until his death in 1117 Pedro Ansúrez is constantly in the documents as count. He is frequently given as count in Saldaña or Carrión or Cabezón. He confirms no less than twenty-nine diplomas of Urraca herself during this period. Either Rodrigo is simply mistaken, or the incident is of the briefest duration, or the chronicler has garbled a reference to an event of the late reign of Alfonso VI in which the influence of Urraca and her husband played a principal part.

Other documents support rather the interpretation I have placed on his absence. On November 7, 1103 Count Pedro donated the church of Valladolid, which he had founded, and all its possessions to Bishop Raymond of Palencia; AC Palencia, armario 3, legajo 10, fols. 21r-22r; also Acad. Hist., Catedrales de España, 9-25-1-C-4, fols. 12r-14r. Such a divestiture was extraordinary and not likely to be voluntary. Counts Raymond and Henry confirmed it. On March 14, 1104 Pedro Sarracínez made a donation to Sahagún of property that he had been awarded by Pedro Ansúrez, acting as royal judge two years earlier, in a suit against that monastery; AHN, Clero, carp. 891, no. 11, and Códices, 989B, fol. 57. Gonzalo, the brother of the Leonese count, also disappears from the documents in 1103, to reappear only in 1110; but the record is much less full in his case.

76. February 14, 1103; AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 122v-123r. October 1103, a notice only, which Santos García Larragueta, cd., Colección de documentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1962), p. 331, regards as suspect.

77. October 6, 1102; AC Lugo, Tumbo viejo, fol. 16. October 25, 1104; AHN, Clero, carp. 1.240, no. 3, to the Gallegan monastery of Samos; it is probably an original. January 16, 1105, a notice in Prudencio de Sandoval, Antigüedad de la ciudad y iglesia catedral de Túy (Braga, 1610), fol. 109. This work was reprinted in Barcelona, 1974. Another notice with some confirmants is given in the same author's Historia de los reyes de Castilla y de León (Pamplona, 1634), fol. 95r. December 16, 1105: AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 29r; published López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:61-63 app. A copy is in AC Santiago, legajo 90, fols. 6v-8r. April 9, 1106; AC Lugo, Tumbo viejo, fol. 17v. April 9,1106; AC Lugo, Tumbo viejo, fol. 16r; published in Antolín López Peláez, El señorio temporal de los obispos de Lugo, 2 vols. (Gorunna, 1897), 2:119-121. May 25, 1106, AC Túy, legajo 5, no. 1, an original, and a copy in the Primero Libro Becerro, fol. 41, published in part by María del Carmen Pallares Méndez and Ermelindo Portela Silva, El bajo valle del Miño en los siglos XII y XIII (Santiago de Compostela, 1971), p. 119. March 17, 1107; AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 29; published in Estefanía, "Memorias," p. 235, and López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:69-70 app. September 13, 1107; AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 30r; published inLópez Ferreiro, Historia, 3:73-74 app.

78. All save one have been published in Azevado, DMP, 1:10-15. March 1100, to Charité-sur-Loire; March 21, 1101, to Sahagún; June 8, 1101, to the church of Braga; August 1, 1106, to two individual priests; and August 25, 1106, to the monastery of Lorváo. January 30, 1105; this donation was brought to light and published with extensive commentary by Bishko, "Count Henrique," pp. 158-160, who saw in it evidence of an attempt by Count Henry to bid for the support of Cluny for his designs on the Leonese throne, an initiative that eventuated in the Pact of Succession. Although it cannot be doubted that the cousins necessarily remained rivals in some sense, the record during this period seems to speak rather to their collaboration. See also my remarks in note 55.

79. "Regnante rege adefonso in toleto et in leione et in omni regno yspanio. Santius filius. eius in Medina"; AHN, Clero, carp. 272, no. 9, an original; published in Juan de Alamo, ed., Colección diplomática de San Salvador de Oña (Madrid, 1950), 1:163-164.

80. AC Oviedo, Serie A, carp. 2, no. 10, an original; and Serie B, carp. 1, nos. 19 and 20, copies; and the Liber Testamentorum, fols. 78v-79r, another copy, published in García Larragueta, Colección de Oviedo, p. 337. There is an earlier donation, also to Oviedo, which the two infantas confirm, but there are problems with its date. Dated March 16, 1103, it is given in Luis Vázquez de Parga, José María Lacarra, and Juan Una Ríu, Las peregrinaciones a Santiago de Compostela, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1948-49), 3:49-50. Ciriaco Miguel Vigil, Asturias monumental, epigráfica, y diplomática, 2 vols. (Oviedo, 1887), 1:84-85, also cites it from a document in the cathedral but gives the date as March 19, 1103.

81. June 27, 1104; AHN, Clero, carp. 891, no. 16; a private donation to Sahagún. March 29, 1107; AHN, Clero, carp. 892, no. 14; another private document of Sahagún.

82. González, Repoblación, 1:96-97.

83. Rodríguez Fernández, Pedro Ansarez, pp. 70-73 and n. 93.

84. The exact date of his birth is unknown. "Las Crónicas anónimas," ed. Puyol y Alonso, BRAH 76 (1920):120, says that he died at seventy-two and it was written by a contemporary. Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 2:735, allows him only sixty-nine years.

85. Flórez, ES, 20:78-79.

86. AC Toledo, I.12.A.1.1, a copy from the twelfth century. Also AHN, Códices, sig. 986B, fols. 51v-52r, and BN, Manuscritos, 13.093, fols. 37r-38v.

87. AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 27v, and Tumbo C, fol. 219. The second of these copies contains a more faithful text of the confirmations. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas (Mexico City, 1965), p. 480, would redate this diploma to 1105, based on the relation of some of the circumstances of its granting contained in the HC. A full reading of the latter text, Flórez, ES, 20:63-69, illustrates the shakiness of the author's chronology of this period. On the method of composition of the authors and the other conditions of the works production, see Bernard F. Reilly, "The 'Historia Compostelana': The Genesis and Composition of a Twelfth-Century Spanish 'Gesta,'" Speculum 44 (1969):78-85.

88. AHN, Códices, sig. 989B, fols. 73v-73(bis)r. Such documents were not infrequently prepared at court, however, so that it is impossible to be absolutely sure. The total known documentation for 1107 is not very full.

89. The HC, cd. Flórez, ES, 20:63-65, associates his mortal illness with the donation of the monastery of San Mamed to Santiago. That donation is dated September 13, 1107; AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 30r; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:73-74 app. Under the date of September 20, 1107 there is a notice of him in the necrology of a Burgundian monastery. Georges Chevrier and Maurice Chaume, eds., Chartes et documents de Saint-Bénigne de Dijon (Dijon, 1943), 2:198. There is a subsequent mention of him dared November 17, 1107; AHN, Clero, carp. 892, no. 20; this was accepted by Fidel Fita, "Concilios nacionales de Carrión en 1103 y León en 1107," BRAH 24 (1894):338-340. This is a copy of a private donation to Sahagún that I regard as suspect on diplomatic grounds.

90. AC Santiago, Tumbo A, fol. 30r.; published in Estefanía, "Memorias," pp. 239-240, and in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:76 app.

91. Menéndez Pidal, cd., 2:521. The documentary record is almost nonexistent for these two events. On December 30, 1107 in the presence of a great concourse of prelates, Alfonso VI made a donation to the church of Salamanca: AE Salamanca, no. 1, a contemporary copy, and AC Salamanca, cajón 16, legajo 1, no. 30, two copies of the eighteenth century; published in Bernardo Dorado, Compendio histórico de la ciudad de Salamanca (Salamanca, 1776), p. 70. The donation contains the last known notice of Queen Isabel. A private donation to the church of Astorga dated only to the year 1108, BN, Manuscritos, 9.194, fol. 103, contains the only documentary notice of Queen Beatrice. Cocheril, Études sur monachisme, pp. 118-119, believes that Beatrice was instead of the family of the Este.

92. Flórez, ES, 20:67.

93. "Et septem de magnatibus cum multis aliis ibidem occisis, occisionis locum vocaverunt Arabes Septem porcos, quem postea locum Petrus de Franco Commendator Uclensis, mutato nomine, Septem Comites appellavit"; Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, "De Rebus Hispaniae," p. 145.