[314] In any consideration of the character, and the necessarily related matter of the government, of the towns of León-Castilla during this period it is customary to distinguish between those of the trans-Duero region and those of the older, more settled parts of the realm. The former, which will be considered first in this chapter, are usually described as essentially frontier fortresses whose populations were mainly dependent on stockraising and to a lesser extent on local agriculture. Such commercial development as they displayed was secondary at best and often in the hands of minorities of Jews and Muslims.⁽¹⁾

The government of these towns is also described as distinctive. We have already seen in the preceding chapter the dearth of evidence for the ordinary officialdom of territorial government such as is found north of the Duero. There are no counts discernible, nor castellans, nor, except at Toledo and Salamanca, bishops until they begin to be provided late in the reign. Instead, for the most part, the government of the towns constituted the territorial government too, as the alfoz, or surrounding countryside subject to it, stretched out almost endlessly into the meseta. This town government is regarded as unique, with the town council, under the crown, and its officers as the central instrument of political authority.⁽²⁾

This general description, as it pertains to the reign of Urraca, needs substantial modification. The difficulty is with its details, which more recent scholarship has called increasingly [315] into question. These details have been elaborated largely by close textual analysis of the surviving fueros, or charters, of the towns, an attractive, indeed almost irresistible process, for the fueros address the subject of government fairly directly rather than incidentally or obliquely as do the private and ecclesiastical documents. In addition, the latter have often been inaccessible even when preserved. Generally speaking, private documents of the eleventh and first quarter of the twelfth century are scant for the trans-Duero region.

Still, it has been a long time since it was pointed out that originally the fueros were never complete law codes, that they grew by accretion and deletion according to political and legal necessity, and that the texts that remain are late ones with a tangled manuscript tradition.⁽³⁾ The full implications of these facts, however, have only rather recently begun to be demonstrated in a series of intensive studies of the fueros of Medinaceli, León, Sahagún, and Toledo.⁽⁴⁾ The result is that major dating problems confront almost every particular provision in the fueros, and thus the question of the development of town government institutions simply cannot [316] rely, for chronological purposes, on examination of them alone. For this reason, the attempt to detail here as much as possible of town government in the trans-Duero during the reign of Urraca relies principally on the documents of the time, with attention to the fueros themselves only when they clarify conditions.

The survey begins with Toledo because of its transcendent position as the old Visigothic capital. The city was almost unique among the towns of the region, however, for it had a long-established bishopric that exercised the ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the times. In addition, Archbishop Bernard enjoyed the prestige of a long and close association with the crown in the person of Alfonso VI, then with his daughter Urraca, and finally with her son Alfonso Raimúndez. When present in the city he must have been the chief royal officer there in fact if not in title. His secular influence would have also been bolstered, as was that of any bishop ordinarily, by the likelihood that he was, as bishop, the single largest landholder inside and outside the town after the crown itself.⁽⁵⁾ Because considerable portions of that property were likely to be held as cotos, or immunities, he wielded secular authority within their confines as well.

Until the death of Alvar Fáñez in the spring of 1114, this powerful and able noble would have had the ultimate disposition of the military forces of the city, and for three years afterward the influence of Alfonso of Aragón seems to have prevailed in the city and region.⁽⁶⁾ But after Alfonso Raimúndez entered the city in the late fall of 1117, the "Anales toledanos" credits Archbishop Bernard with the leadership of their forces in 1118.⁽⁷⁾ It is likely that, in the name of the king, he was thereafter the ordinary leader of the Toledan host, as were so many archbishops of that city subsequently.

So far as the internal government of Toledo is concerned, [317] the archbishop does not appear explicitly as either its señor or royal governor, in any document known to me. Nor does it appear from any document of Alfonso VI or Urraca that the city was governed by a council, or concejo. Perhaps no single council could have coped with the affairs of the variegated communities of Muslims, Jews, Mozárabes, Castilians, and French that composed Toledo's population. Of these, the Mozárabes and the Castilians had their own fueros, guaranteed by royal charter. Whether all did we simply do not know.⁽⁸⁾ The single fuero for all the inhabitants supposedly issued by Alfonso Raimúndez on November 16, 1118 is a later production from a private source that imitates chancery norms of a variety of periods.⁽⁹⁾

It is likely that civil authority in the city was subdivided among a variety of royal officials of whom the archbishop may have been one. There is good evidence late in the reign of Alfonso VI for a "princeps toletane militia," and this officer perhaps also wielded civil authority.⁽¹⁰⁾ This title does not appear during the reign of Urraca but it is certainly the dignity held by Alvar Fáñez down to 1114.

That the crown held a number of palaces in Toledo and its immediate environs is well known.⁽¹¹⁾ These would normally have been under the care of a royal merino, who might well have had civil jurisdiction as was the case almost everywhere. Such was certainly the case in the reign of Alfonso VI, for there is evidence of the position of "Toletanorum populi iudex atque prepositus," and "prepositus" is often a synonym for "merino."⁽¹²⁾ But no such term appears for the reign of Urraca.

[318] The most prominent official in Toledo during the latter's reign is the alcalde. Two documents show that one Ramiro Froilaz held that position in 1123 and 1124.⁽¹³⁾ González Palencia identified no less than seven individuals who were alcaldes between 1114 and 1125, although some of these may have had jurisdiction solely among the Mozárabic community in Toledo.⁽¹⁴⁾ In 1115 it appears from a private document that the Castilians in Toledo had their own judge.⁽¹⁵⁾ But the usage, borrowed from Islam, of the term Zahlmedina as the equivalent of "alcalde" during the reigns both of Alfonso VI and of Urraca, strengthens the belief that the city had one justiciar whose authority was citywide and superior.⁽¹⁶⁾

In fact we shall probably not be far from the mark if we posit that the city had one royal alcalde, or judge, and five other alcaldes, one for each of the five major communities of the town, and that the jurisdiction of the former began where the rights of the crown or intercommunity concerns were involved. It is certain that each group of inhabitants had its own legal usages and customs, whether or not guaranteed by formal royal fuero, but some provision was needed for affairs that transcended their particular interests. It seems [319]equally likely that all these judges were appointed by the crown, although the advice of Archbishop Bernard would have been sought and perhaps also usually determined the result. In the selection of an alcalde for one of the particular groups, some advice would probably have been solicited from its members simply as a practical device.

There is also some indication that the major towns of what may be roughly styled the alfoz of Toledo had their own alcaldes. Madrid did in 1123.⁽¹⁷⁾ One is cited for Oreja in 1115.⁽¹⁸⁾ Finally, Talavera de la Reina seems to have had an alcalde in 1118.⁽¹⁹⁾ Again, these officials were probably chosen by the crown on the advice of the archbishop of Toledo and the local communities. Given the conditions of the age, virtually all such officials must have been selected from the most important men of the local community, who would often have had to support their authority with their own resources because the ability of the crown to assist them was so limited in the trans-Duero.

If the sources for Toledo are scant, those for the episcopal cities of Ávila and Salamanca are virtually nonexistent. Both were repopulated by Urraca's first husband, Count Raymond, about 1100, but Ávila is invisible in the documents until its bishop appears in 1121. The earliest records of the cathedral there begin only with the reign of Alfonso VII, and the chronicle of the city is late and the early material in it legendary.⁽²⁰⁾

[320] The bishops of Salamanca are well recorded for the reign of Urraca, appearing in some twenty-seven documents. Urraca, however, made no surviving grant to Salamanca, which lay in an area contested with her half sister Teresa of Portugal. The cathedral archives of that town contain only five documents from the period prior to March 1126, and the fuero of Salamanca, in the form in which it survives, is a much later product.⁽²¹⁾

From the charter of Count Raymond of Burgundy to Bishop Jerome of Salamanca in 1102 it appears that the city was then a señorial town.⁽²²⁾ That is, it was subject to the authority of Raymond along with Ávila and Zamora in a virtual appanage of the crown that stretched from the Bay of Biscay and Galicia down to the Guadarramas. Purportedly, at the death of Raymond in 1107 Salamanca and Zamora passed into the control of Bishop Jerome in secular as in ecclesiastical affairs, but there is good reason to suspect the charter of Alfonso VI that informs us of the grant.⁽²³⁾

[321] During the early part of the civil war in the reign of Urraca, between late 1109 and 1112, Count Henry of Portugal seems to have controlled Salamanca and Zamora. After his death in April 1112 his widow, Teresa, certainly contested the area with Urraca. When Alfonso Raimúndez was installed in Toledo in December 1117 with his mother's blessing, control of Salamanca also passed to the young king.

The authority of any of these successive sovereigns in the city may have been either direct or indirect. We simply do not know whether they did indeed establish señorial power of the bishop there, ruled through a more immediate creature of the crown, or transferred the "honor" to a secular señor. There is a tradition that the last of these options prevailed but no hard evidence.⁽²⁴⁾ The few relevant documents extant mention neither concejo nor alcaldes, so we remain ignorant also of the sort of subordinate instrumentalities that must have been employed.

Zamora, though just north of the Duero and thus technically within the old kingdom of León, obviously shared a common history with Ávila and Salamanca. Its development during the reign of Urraca is similarly obscure. Before the death of Bishop Jerome of Salamanca in 1120 it was an eccíesiastical dependency of that city.⁽²⁵⁾ In regard to secular authority there, what has been said above of Salamanca can be applied equally to Zamora until 1117, when we find a royal castellan of Urraca in Zamora.⁽²⁶⁾ Given the frontier status of the town it seems unlikely that civil and judicial authority were separated from military authority. There are, however, no subsequent notices of a royal castellan in Zamora during the reign of Urraca. Yet the city remained under her ultimate control.

Once again, the problem of determining how the city was governed is a result of the scarcity of surviving records. With a few exceptions, the documents of Zamora begin in the reign [322] of Alfonso VII.⁽²⁷⁾ As early as 1094, Count Raymond of Burgundy had granted a so-called fuero to the nobles of a suburb of Zamora, but it takes the form of a series of personal exemptions rather than of a municipal charter. Although mention is made of a merino, a vicar, and judges, it is impossible to tell whether these are comital or local officials, rural or urban.⁽²⁸⁾

The next notice of city affairs comes in 1124, when Urraca ceded to Bishop Bernard of Zamora a tenth of the royal revenues there.⁽²⁹⁾ The implication seems plain that the city was under direct royal control and that no señor, secular or ecclesiastical, intervened. Again no concejo or alcalde is mentioned. This status continued into the reign of Alfonso VII, for in 1132 he made a similar grant and exempted the clergy of Zamora from all lay jurisdiction.⁽³⁰⁾ There is still no mention of subordinate officials of any sort nor of a council even though the town was prosperous enough to be the site of a royal mint and of a toll station. There was a famous royal castle in Zamora, and the likelihood is that its castellan governed the town, with the informal cooperation of Bishop Bernard from 1120.

Deep in the central trans-Duero, just twenty-five kilometers north of the Somosierra pass over the Guadarramas, is Sepúlveda. For more than a century before the fall of Toledo[323] in 1085 it had been the advance post of the Christian Reconquista. Its famous fuero of Alfonso VI, dated November 17, 1076, has also been the subject of the most intensive study, and Sepúlveda has been the linchpin for elaboration of the theory of town government as practiced beyond the Duero from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries.⁽³¹⁾

The town had no bishop. Surviving documents tell us that Alfonso VI granted land in the area to the Castilian monastery of Silos in 1076.⁽³²⁾ It certainly had a royal castle, but information about their castellans is scant. The castle was held by one Diego Téllez, a merino, about 1086.⁽³³⁾ In 1122 it was in the hands of Jimeno Jiménez, who held it for Alfonso of Aragón.⁽³⁴⁾ These three notices are the only ones that survive before well into the reign of Alfonso VII except for the fuero itself.

The earliest copy of the fuero that survives is a product of the latter twelfth century.⁽³⁵⁾ It bears also the confirmation of Alfonso of Aragón and of Urraca, which could have been done only in 1110. Bearing in mind that the documents of Alfonso VI have not been edited or even studied in any systematic way, it seems to me that the copyist had before him at least one genuine document of Alfonso VI. The initial protocol, for example, is familiar, as is the final subscription of Alfonso. The presence of Queen Agnes, whose history is otherwise not well known, is reassuring, as is the subsequent [324] confirmation by both Alfonso of Aragón and Urraca of Castilla. The confirmation by either separately would have had more authority in the late twelfth century.

Nevertheless, some diplomatic aspects of the copy are troubling. The various elements of the charter are not in the usual order. The signatories to it witness rather than confirm, which latter is usual. Should these departures be credited to scribal liberties and "improvements," or is something more serious indicated? There is at least one clear evidence that more than one document is being employed to make the copy: in the third section, Alfonso again appears in the nominative to grant specific boundaries to the men of Sepúlveda. This section is separately witnessed by four different nobles.⁽³⁶⁾ Diplomatically such a practice is without precedent.

The possibility of interpolation thus cannot be ruled out and I am inclined tentatively to believe that, rather, it is indicated. The document as we have it, then, testifies to a real royal recognition of the fueros of Sepúlveda by Alfonso VI in 1076 and the subsequent confirmation of his action by Alfonso of Aragón and Urraca in 1110. But the probability of the interpolation of the original charter raises major problems in the dating of substantive elements. For our purposes, it means that the town may have been governed by a concejo, with its own proper officers in the alcaldes, judges, and sayones, as early as Alfonso VI or as late as the latter twelfth century. The total evidence for the period of Urraca suggests that the men of the towns of the meseta beyond the Duero enjoyed a substantial amount of practical autonomy. But the question whether, during the reign of Urraca, the crown had formally recognized the auctoritas as well as the potestas of the town seems for now to remain open.

Fifty kilometers southwest of Sepúlveda is the city of Segovia. Like the former, Segovia is located just north of another pass through the Guadarramas, called Navacerrada. Alone among the cities of the trans-Duero, to our knowledge,[325] Segovia twice rebelled against the authority of Urraca. The first rising occurred in the spring of 1114 and resulted in the death of Alvar Fáñez and the transfer of allegiance to Aragón. The second came in the early summer of 1118 when Urraca herself was in the city during a campaign to oust Aragonese authority in the trans-Duero. The restoration of the episcopate there in 1120 was at least in part due to Urraca's need to bolster her authority in Segovia. Even so, as late as December 1122 Alfonso of Aragón issued a charter of donation to its bishop.

For our purposes the charter is particularly important, for it gives notice of a concejo functioning in the city with legal authority at least to convey land.⁽³⁷⁾ But again, except for this useful bit of information, the record of the times is quite scant. No earlier royal grants to Segovia are known. Given the geographic position of the town, it is most likely that there was a royal or señorial castle there on the site of the present, much later, royal palace. Military authority was probably in the hands of its castellan, but he had at least to share civil jurisdiction with the concejo and between 1114 and 1118 may have been driven out and replaced by a delegate of the revolutionary town. In 1122 he was again replaced by Jimeno Jiménez, castellan of Alfonso of Aragón.⁽³⁸⁾ In 1123 Urraca's first and only charter to the church of Segovia confirmed the grant made by the town council to its bishop but makes no mention of any town or royal officials there.⁽³⁹⁾ It seems probable, therefore, that a town council continued to be recognized by the crown in Segovia, although[326] its powers would now have been confined by the presence of a bishop from 1120 and a restored royal castellan from as early as 1118.

Some fifty kilometers north of Segovia, in the señorial town of Cuéllar, there is notice of a document of 1110 in which Count Pedro Ansúrez made a donation of land jointly with the council of that town.⁽⁴⁰⁾ If it can be credited, we have at least two instances of town councils in the trans-Duero during Urraca's reign regardless of the problems of the fueros as texts.

Two other cities of the region deserve brief mention. The fortress town of Sigüenza, at the eastern end of the Guadarramas astride the old road from Zaragoza to Toledo, fell to Urraca in January of 1124. Of her provisions for its life as a Christian town, we have only her charter to its bishop. She gave him a tenth of the tolls and the proceeds of the alcabala in Atienza and Medinaceli, captured about the same time.⁽⁴¹⁾ The implication is that Sigüenza was a royal town. Later in the same year, in a diploma of Alfonso Raimúndez, the picture becomes clearer. The young king added to the revenues of Sigüenza's bishop and spelled out the process by which they would be provided him. Therein it becomes clear that the king would have both a royal alcalde and a royal merino in the city.⁽⁴²⁾ But there is no mention of a concejo.

As for Medinaceli, it apparently had been given a fuero by Alfonso VI after he had reconquered it from the Murâbits in 1104. Sometime after the Christian rout at Uclés in 1108 the city had been regained by the Muslim and passed again into the power of Urraca only in 1124. The fuero, sometimes attributed to Alfonso of Aragón, is the only document for [327] the city of the period, and it survives only in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century copies.⁽⁴³⁾ If the texts are to be accepted as faithful copies rather than as a composite of earlier and later provisions that portray the government of the town in the late eleventh century, then Medinaceli had a concejo whose officers were a judge, alcaldes, and at least one sayon. Moreover, the concejo itself is portrayed as establishing the fueros with the consent of King Alfonso. Even if we discount the lateness of the copies of the fuero, they reflect a remarkable sophistication and a startling confidence in the ability of what must have been a relatively small minority of Christians in a still predominantly Muslim town to rule themselves on the edge of a hostile frontier. In such a form it is difficult to accept them as truly applying to the Medinaceli either of Alfonso VI in 1094 or of Urraca in 1124.

The fueros mention a royal merino, and other sources say that Count Pedro González of Lara held Medinaceli in 1110.⁽⁴⁴⁾ In allowing these latter features, certainly we are on firm ground.

North of the Duero, however, in the older territories of León-Castilla, there were a variety of other towns. They lay for the most part along the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim road that stretched from the Pyrenees through Burgos to Santiago de Compostela. Between these two cities lay Sahagún, León, Astorga, and Lugo. Far to the north of that highway, [328] which enriched and invigorated the cities through which it passed, lay the old royal city of Oviedo. South of it were Palencia, Valladolid Orense, and Túy. All but two of these cities had been the longtime seats of bishoprics, which added to their prosperity and importance. Sahagún had grown up around the primary royal monastery of Sahagún, and Valladolid had been founded by the powerful house of Pedro Ansúrez. The documentation of their respective histories is fuller, but it is still almost always only the charters of their ecclesiastical establishments that have survived from this period. What studies of the towns do exist are usually chronicles with an ecclesiastical viewpoint. These must serve to cast some light upon their government.

Burgos is a starting point even though Urraca's control of the town was fitful. After her break in 1110 with her husband, Alfonso of Aragón, the fortunes of war determined who actually dominated the city. Urraca took it in 1113 but lost it again in 1114. Assuredly, local forces played some part in determining who ruled there at any given time just as they did at Segovia far to the south. Likewise, disputed episcopal elections, which resulted in the practical suspension of episcopal authority in the city between 1114 and 1117 and again from late 1118 until 1124, must also have exerted pressures upon municipal institutions.

To be sure, whether León or Aragón held the loyalty of the city, the royal castle that loomed over the town on the Arlanzón always meant that the crown enjoyed at least military authority in the city. As to civil authority, the crown had recognized the customs of Burgos prior to 1085.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The [329]execution and enforcement of those laws remained, however, the prerogative of a royal judge, or iudex, chosen from among the citizens. On July 20, 1118 Urraca issued a diploma to the men of Burgos in which she agreed that the person chosen would not be compelled to serve against his will.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Her son later included the same provision in his confirmation of the privileges of the city.⁽⁴⁷⁾

The evident unpopularity of the position argues the difficulty of exercising the royal authority in the city. In 1113 the fact that the citizens, including the Jewish colony, favored Urraca against the Aragonese was regarded as worthy of mention by the author of the "Historia Compostelana."⁽⁴⁸⁾ A little later, the same source tells us, the burghers of the city, especially the French among them, pressed successfully for a conference to arrange a reconciliation of the royal couple.⁽⁴⁹⁾ The conference failed, of course, but the initiatives of the townsmen remained strong. Two letters of Pope Paschal II in 1115 cite the objections of the people of Burgos to their having been ignored in the selection of a new bishop for the city.⁽⁵⁰⁾

None of these sources mentions a concejo of the city, but there is evidence nonetheless that one existed. A private document of August 29, 1113 is witnessed by "toto concilio de Burgos."⁽⁵¹⁾ It was probably through this body, given the disruption of royal authority by civil war, that the men of Burgos[330] appeared so prominently in the affairs of the time. Still, there are no traces of "popular" officials at the time, and the royal judge and royal castellan must have been the most influential members and the presiding officers of the concejo.

The custom of Burgos and the authority of its judge extended also over a fair number of villages of the surrounding countryside. This alfoz was not a solid, territorial block of land, however, but rather islands in a welter of other jurisdictions.⁽⁵²⁾ Given no mention of a separate royal merino in Burgos during this period, it is likely that the administration of royal property in both the city and its alfoz fell within the competence of the royal judge as well.

Contemporary documents indicate that the government of the royal city of León discussed in the preceding chapter, was fairly similar. Like Burgos, León had its royal castle-palace, and a good number of the names of its castellans are known.⁽⁵³⁾ In León royal property was separately administered by a royal merino and again we know some of their names.⁽⁵⁴⁾ A wider authority, in the form of a countship of the city or the entire terra of León, seems to have been an occasional, emergency phenomenon.

The parallelism of government at León and Burgos is evident in the existence not only of its own customs, or fueros, but also of a concejo legally recognized by the crown. The confirmation by Urraca of the fueros of León in 1109 was addressed to it. No officials of the concejo are apparent in the documents of the time, so perhaps the royal merino in the town served as its presiding and executive officer; but the concejo's right to constitute special commissions for at least one legal purpose seems demonstrated in Urraca's confirmation.⁽⁵⁵⁾[331] Without doubt, the authority of this council was circumscribed by that of the royal merino over royal property in the city and by that of the bishop over the large holdings of that see.

Nevertheless the concejo not only had achieved legal recognition in the city but had extended it into the countryside as well. Another charter of Urraca confirming the fueros of "vos homines de Legionense terra et de Carrione" should not be read as pertaining to a separate set of customs.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Their extension is yet to be determined precisely, and the discussion of the alfoz of León by Estepa Díez should be modified in view of the fact that she seems not to know this document.⁽⁵⁷⁾ As at Burgos, it was not a solid block of territory but instead islands of jurisdiction sharing the countryside with the authorities of the kings, bishops, monasteries, and señores.

Nevertheless, this royal recognition of the concejo's authority seems to have been sufficient to secure the steadfast allegiance of the burghers of León to Urraca throughout her reign, in contrast to what happened at Burgos, Carrión, Castrojeriz, Sahagún, and less seriously elsewhere. Alfonso of Aragón was never able to secure the support of the [332] townsmen there as he did at these other places,⁽⁵⁸⁾ and we cannot be sure that the unsuccessful attack of her enemies on the royal fortress there in 1119 was the work of the burghers. It seems more likely that it involved a faction of the nobility.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Despite the diverse population of the city -- a condition that it shared with most towns of the pilgrimage road -- which included Mozárabes, Franks, and Jews, the arrangements outlined above seem to have contented the townsmen. In addition, the obvious attractions of León's status as the royal city would have predisposed the Leonese to cooperate with the crown.

Farther west, at Astorga, whence the Camino de Santiago passes up into the mountains of Galicia, the state of affairs is almost impossible to determine. At Burgos and León the cathedral documents are so voluminous that they have not yet been adequately studied; at Astorga almost none of them survived the Napoleonic invasion. To be sure, the city had its bishop with the usual ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions. Whether it had a royal castle-palace and castellan is impossible to say. There is reference to an old tower in the city in this period.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Perhaps this fortress was held not by the crown but by Count Froila Díaz of Astorga, who was given property in the city by Count Henry of Portugal and the Infanta Teresa when they briefly held the city in 1112.⁽⁶¹⁾

Comital jurisdication within a city proper, however, was a rarity and the surviving notices do not make it clear whether Froila was count of more than the terra of Astorga. So, too, [333] notices of a merino in Astorga are almost nonexistent and ambiguous.⁽⁶²⁾ All that can be said with assurance is that, whatever its government, the city was steadfastly loyal to Urraca. In 1110 it refused to accept Alfonso of Aragón.⁽⁶³⁾ By late 1111, at the nadir of Urraca's fortunes, it was briefly in the hands of Count Henry of Portugal.⁽⁶⁴⁾ In 1112 it withstood a siege by the king of Aragón and thereafter remained, apparently contentedly, in her hands.⁽⁶⁵⁾

From Astorga the pilgrimage road passed up into the mountains and arrived at the hilltop fortress town of Lugo. Here Urraca had her own chaplain installed as bishop by the Council of Palencia in 1113, and the town served as one of the great pillars of her strength in Galicia until the end of the reign. Prior to 1113, in the confused days of 1110-1111 the town had supported the cause of Alfonso of Aragón, according to the "Historia Compostelana"; its author, verbally flays the guilty without precisely identifying them.⁽⁶⁶⁾ It has been often assumed that the burghers of Lugo were supporters of Alfonso on the model of those of Sahagún, but no evidence exists for such an assertion. It was the bishop of Lugo who was deposed in 1113, although the charges against him seem to have been left at something like negligence.⁽⁶⁷⁾

Urraca's concern to have a staunch supporter in her bishop there is even more understandable given the fact that Lugo was a señorio. That is, at least from 1089 the bishop was the sole secular authority of the town.⁽⁶⁸⁾ There was no royal [334]castle in the town, and no royal or municipal officials can be documented for the reign of Urraca. Government by the bishop and his officials does not seem to have occasioned popular unrest, as it did later in the century. Although the city served as a market for the surrounding hill country and had its own mint in addition to the proceeds of the pilgrimage traffic, then as now its development was limited by its upland isolation.⁽⁶⁹⁾ At the time, the episcopal power was likely to appear as protective instead of oppressive to the small burgher community.

In a twelfth-century town ruled by its bishop, the cathedral chapter performed something of the mediating and advising function of a concejo. During this period its canons were usually drawn from the major families of the town and its surrounding countryside and provided, severally, a voice for those interests within episcopal councils. When circumstances were favorable they even chose their bishop, although the crown tended more and more to make him a royal appointee. Additionally, the increase in the power of the cathedral chapter over the resources of the church, so marked in this period, made the chapter also a partner in the government of the town where the bishop was its señor and its pastor.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Indeed, the major contest came in the countryside. There episcopal authority over the alfoz of the town led to a series of clashes with Count Rodrigo Vélaz of Lemos-Sarria.⁽⁷¹⁾ Because [335] Urraca needed the support of both the count and the bishop, she could not effectively decide matters between them.

At the end and as the goal of the pilgrimage lay the city of Santiago de Compostela, about whose government and vicissitudes we know a great deal more than we do of Astorga or Lugo. Its bishop and then archbishop, Diego Gelmírez, was one of the great political forces as well as one of the great churchmen of the reign. From the biography that Gelmírez inspired, the "Historia Compostelana," and the documents of the shrine of Saint James much can be gleaned.

There was no royal palace in or near the city of the saint. When necessary, the episcopal palace seems to have been pressed into service for royal functions.⁽⁷²⁾ Nevertheless the crown was not without representatives in the city. As early as 1096 one Pelayo Gudestéiz appears in a charter of Count Raymond as "iudex regius loci sancti."⁽⁷³⁾ In a private document of 1113 he is again cited as "iudex."⁽⁷⁴⁾ In all likelihood he is the same person identified in 1109 and 1110 as a strong supporter of Urraca and therefore an opponent of Bishop Diego Gelmírez, Count Pedro Froilaz, and the party of the child Alfonso Raimúndez in those years.⁽⁷⁵⁾ His continuance as royal judge in Compostela, despite the oscillations of royal policy due to the continuously changing factional scene in Galicia, is yet another indication of Urraca's real power in that province.

Pelayo Gudestéiz was not the sole royal judge in Compostela during this time. As early as 1105 one Pedro Daniélez appeared as "iudex" in a charter of Count Raymond.⁽⁷⁶⁾ In 1112 he appeared as "iudex magni palatii" in a document [336] of Urraca and in 1115 as "canonicus et iudex publicus" in a document of Bishop Gelmírez.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Judges appear also in 1125, taking an oath to observe the customs of the city.⁽⁷⁸⁾

It has been asserted that these judges were four in number, that they were subordinates of the chief executive of the city, the villicus civitate, and that both he and they were named by Gelmírez.⁽⁷⁹⁾ The documents, however, do not support so simple an interpretation of the facts. The account in the "Historia Compostelana" does not identify the judges of 1125 or give their number, nor does it state that they are subordinate to the villicus. It identifies them as the archbishop's judges. The most likely resolution of the difficulty is that there were both royal and episcopal judges in the city with differing jurisdictions.

The villicus himself probably had judicial as well as executive functions, although the account does not make that entirely clear, for the rigorous separation of the two was unknown at the time. Of this latter official we have no independent record. The "Historia Compostelana" tells us that Muño Gelmírez, brother of the bishop, had held the post and that, in the rebellion of 1117, another named Diego Strabo held it.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Both were killed in that rebellion. Whereas the bishop held the señorial authority of the city,⁽⁸¹⁾ the villicus was the instrument through which he ordinarily exercised it. In this instance the latter was not, however, a military dignity, for we find Gelmírez himself leading the forces of his señorio when they were called out.⁽⁸²⁾

The villicus also in all likelihood was somewhat the agent of the concejo of the city as well as of its bishop, for the [337] concejo participated in the government of Compostela. Its existence is cited as early as 1095 in a judicial capacity.⁽⁸³⁾ Otherwise, it can be detected in operation only during the revolutionary circumstances of 1116. The "Historia Compostelana" informs us that the political initiative was taken by a conspiracy among the powerful of the city.⁽⁸⁴⁾ When, however, they wished to take legal control of the city they had to resort to another vehicle.⁽⁸⁵⁾

The "Historia Compostelana" styles this body a "conventus" of the clergy and people rather than a "concilium."⁽⁸⁶⁾ It should probably be understood to mean a concejo rather than an assembly of the entire populace. The revolutionary aspect consisted both in its direction by the leaders of the conspiracy rather than by the bishop, who was ordinarily its presiding officer, and in its functioning at all in his absence.⁽⁸⁷⁾

Another instance of the operation of such a body is to be seen in the events surrounding the oaths of 1125. On that occasion the events occurred in the presence of the "optimatibus [338] cleri atque populi illius civitatis in unum convocatis," but Gelmírez clearly both had summoned them and was the directing spirit. The men of Compostela ratified the actions, however. Also, the ordinary participation of the cathedral chapter in the secular authority of a bishop who was also señor is implied by the fact that the senior canons also gave their adherence to the agreement.⁽⁸⁸⁾ This entire episode also indicates that the successful episcopal and royal reaction against the rebels of 1116-1117 did not entail a structural change in what had been, and continued to be, the ordinary government of the city.

Gelmírez's señorio extended beyond the limits of the city itself and the laws governing the city and the countryside were distinguishable. In his legislation of 1113 the city is excepted, but the concejo appears to have shared in his authority over the rural districts as well.⁽⁸⁹⁾ Again, the Friday courts held at the episcopal palace to serve the rural populace also might be presided over by bishop, judges, or canons.⁽⁹⁰⁾ The statutes themselves deal with a variety of civil, economic, religious, legal, and fiscal matters.

Although the great dignity of the church of Santiago and the extraordinary forcefulness of Gelmírez made this case somewhat special, it would be a mistake to conceive the alfoz of Compostela as a solid block of territories either. The grant by Urraca in 1112 of all the royal lands between the Ulla and Tambre doubtless made the "honor" of Santiago more homogeneous than most, at least in that particular area.⁽⁹¹⁾ But islands of personal jurisdiction remained even there, and elsewhere the lands of Santiago were widely scattered.

Away from the bustling cities of the pilgrimage road, were [339] two other cities of Galicia, hard by the border of modern Portugal. Túy and Orense were not infrequently controlled by the Infanta Teresa, but León finally managed to retain them despite the fact that both were better oriented by geography to a north-south trade than to an east-west one. The critical factor was the loyalty of their bishops, both of whom had been appointed by Alfonso VI and survived through the reign of his daughter. Alfonso was bishop of Túy from 1097 to 1131 and Diego was bishop of Orense from 1097 to 1132.⁽⁹²⁾ Both towns seem to have been episcopal señorios.

Túy was ruled by its bishop from 1095, when Count Raymond granted an extraordinarily well-defined immunity to the see that would have had that effect. Urraca granted but one generous charter to its bishop in 1112 that sheds no further light on the status quo.⁽⁹³⁾ The documents of the period provide no notices of a concejo in the town or of subordinate officials, either episcopal or royal. Presumably the bishop's household or the cathedral chapter would have furnished such merinos or judges as were necessary to the life of a frontier town with a small, regional trade.

A charter of Alfonso VII in 1142 spelled out the episcopal jurisdiction over the town. The cathedral chapter was associated with the bishop, the latter was given the right to appoint judges, and the authority of the episcopal merino was recognized: A royal fortress that Alfonso said he had caused to be built in the town was also surrendered to the prelate.⁽⁹⁴⁾ The wording of Alfonso's charter raises the question of how absolute the episcopal authority had in fact been heretofore. Considering the difficulty of enforcing royal authority in that remote area during the reign of Urraca, however, it is justifiable [340] to conclude that the bishop was the real señor of the town during our period. By virtue of the charter of Count Raymond and subsequent grants, the bishop's writ ran in most of the immediately surrounding countryside as well.

Orense, like Túy, is the site of a cathedral whose documents have been largely unresearched.⁽⁹⁵⁾ Two currently known documents serve to establish and define the episcopal authority over the city and its environs. In 1122 Bishop Diego, with the consent of the clergy and people, issued a fuero to its citizens. This action associated the canons of the cathedral with the bishop and was done with the joint permission of Urraca, Alfonso Raimúndez, Teresa of Portugal, and Count Fernando of Limia.⁽⁹⁶⁾ No concejo is explicitly mentioned, but we should so understand the reference to clergy and people unless the inhabitants were issuing a fuero to themselves. No subordinate officials are named but their employment is clearly envisioned by the fuero.

When in 1131 Alfonso VII recognized by charter that the city was "in dominio et obsequio episcopi et canonicorum" he was apparently confirming an arrangement already sanctioned [341] by his predecessors.⁽⁹⁷⁾ No royal castle is known to have existed in the city, and the documents currently known provide no evidence of royal officials there during Urraca' s reign that would point to a different conclusion. The extent of the alfoz of the city has not yet been the object of study.

The organization of government in the only city of Asturias at the time, Oviedo, is more analogous to the pattern in Burgos or in León than to that in Galicia. The old royal city of the north for the entire reign of Urraca had as its bishop Pelayo, appointed in the time of Alfonso VI and unswervingly loyal to his daughter. Bishop Pelayo not only was an important political figure and a chronicler of Alfonso VI but also worked to make Oviedo a pilgrimage center on the model of Santiago de Compostela, based on its large collection of relics. Historians are still trying to isolate the forged and interpolated documents produced in his chancery from the genuine ones,⁽⁹⁸⁾ but he enjoyed considerable success in promoting the continued vitality of the city and its church.⁽⁹⁹⁾

Despite its preoccupation in Castilla, Galicia, and Toledo, the crown maintained a strong presence in Oviedo. There was a royal palace there, and the names of two of the merinos who looked after royal interests and properties in the city have survived.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ The evidence points also to the existence of [342] a subordinate, or submerino, who assisted in royal administration.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Finally, we have the names of two judges, and although they are not explicitly called royal judges, the context suggests that they were just that.⁽¹⁰²⁾

These two judges, appearing in the same document, reveal a further distinction in jurisdiction, one of them being styled "judge of those Franks." It seems that in Oviedo, as in Toledo, the Franks had a separate official if not a separate set of customs. Such a division does not seem to have retarded the appearance of a concejo of the entire city. In particular, references to such a body are prominent in the documents of the monastery of San Vicente. In 1114 a sale of property was consummated "nos in concilio legenter audivimus de manus nostros roboravimus."⁽¹⁰³⁾ Another sale of 1115, even more significantly, "in concilio fuit rovorada ante Christovalo Iohannes," suggests that the royal merino was the chief officer of the concejo.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

As in other cities of the time, the bishop would have had a formidable authority not only as prelate, but also as royal appointee and counselor and as landlord and immunist in [343] most episcopal lands. It does not appear, however, that he was señor of the city, and the purported donation of such an authority in 1112 by Urraca must be rejected as an interpolation to a royal charter of more limited scope.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

The other example of an episcopal señorio outside of Galicia exists at Palencia. That city, thirty-five kilometers south of Carrión de los Condes on the banks of the Río Carrión, had purportedly held that status since the time of Alfonso VI. As usual with such jurisdictions, there is no evidence of a royal castle, castellans, or officials in the city in the documents of the period. Again, as we have seen, its bishop was one of the staunchest supporters of Urraca.

The best evidence for episcopal control there is flawed, however. Alfonso VI's charter of March 31, 1090 reads "ut nulius morator seu habitator intra ambitum Pallentia vel circitum, cuius cumque conditionis aut generis vel ministerii aut legis sit, alium dominum habeat vel habere possit nisi solum Pallentinum episcopum et canonicos...." That is straightforward enough, but the language of the document is precocious for the period and the alfoz delineated is enormously extended to include even Arévalo, Olmedo, Tordesillas, and Simancas. There are also diplomatic problems with the document, and I have reluctantly concluded that it is a forgery based on a genuine charter of Alfonso.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾

[344] The question then becomes to what extent the forger was deliberately falsifying the situation of 1090. It is possible that his main concern was with establishing the enormous extent of the alfoz of Palencia and that the original charter did establish a more modest señorio of the bishop and canons. The problem is complicated by the fact that the documents of the cathedral of Palencia are presently uncatalogued and that the documents themselves are not arranged strictly chronologically.

Fortunately, there are two late copies of papal bulls of the period that confirm the possessions of the bishopric of Palencia, among which are mentioned "ipsam Palentiae civitatem sub iure ac dominio possidendam sicut a regibus data et concessa...."⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ These are reinforced by a private document of the early reign of Alfonso VII that cites "petrus episcopus in palencia et senior in magaz."⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ The latter also mentions a merino and a sayon for Palencia, who are no doubt episcopal rather than royal officials. The cumulative evidence seems to justify the assumption that Palencia was an episcopal town.

Forty kilometers southwest of Palencia on the bank of the Río Pisuerga, about fifteen kilometers before that stream enters the Duero, lay Valladolid. This town was the foundation of Count Pedro Ansúrez. Its size is hard to estimate for this period, but the consecration of its church in 1095 had drawn a great concourse of the ecclesiastics and secular magnates of the realm. On that occasion Count Pedro not only richly endowed the collegiate church and its abbot but also granted it an immunity and a barrio, or district, within the city itself. From this text it appears that the city already had a concejo and a comital merino and sayon who were presumably the [345] former's presiding and executive officers.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Given that they were specifically denied jurisdiction within the ceded barrio, the city must have consisted of at least two jurisdictions from this time on.

One suspects that the authority of the collegiate church and its abbot tended to grow in Valladolid both through pious grants and through its concern with more local matters than occupied the count. By 1100 the church had come to the direct attention of Alfonso VI, who made a grant to it. This document was confirmed by "Munio Didaz, Merino Regis."⁽¹¹⁰⁾ The same figure appeared again the following year as confirmant of an exchange of property between Santa María de Valladolid and the monastery of San Zoil in Carrión."⁽¹¹¹⁾ It is possible that the growing importance of Valladolid was leading to at least a partial substitution of royal for comital authority there or that the crown was concerned with the power of Count Pedro generally, for in this period the name of Muño Díaz appeared as merino in Saldaña and Carrión too, where the count's writ also ran.

The authority of the church of Valladolid would also have been enhanced by Count Pedro's long absence from the realm during the years 1103-1109, and in 1110 Urraca granted to it lands previously held by the count.⁽¹¹²⁾ Nevertheless, the count [346] continued to be a patron of Santa María de Valladolid and in his donation of 1114 one "Dominico Belaskiz Maiorino" appears, although whose official he was is not clear.⁽¹¹³⁾ The count's final donation the following year adds no information about jurisdictions, but two private documents of almost the same time were witnessed by an alcalde.⁽¹¹⁴⁾

Pedro Ansúrez died in late 1117 or 1118 but his heirs continued to be prominent in the affairs of the realm.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ It is likely that the señorio of Valladolid continued in the family, although we do not know who inherited it. No royal castle was built in the town, and the abbot of the collegiate church did not possess the prestige that would have allowed the usurpation of the señorio. The divisions of Urraca's reign may have allowed the growth of the concejo's powers under these circumstances.

Finally, one other spot on the pilgrim road to Compostela needs some brief consideration. It was not a city boasting an episcopate like the others; rather, its center was the royal abbey and pantheon of Sahagún. The rich documentation of that monastery is bolstered by a chronicle of an anonymous contemporary, who detailed the revolt there against abbatial authority in the years 1111-1117. In both the relative fullness of information and the fact that both were ecclesiastical señorios that experienced popular revolt against the prevailing condition, Sahagún parallels fairly closely Santiago de Compostela.

Royal favor, the prestige of the monastery itself and its [347] location on the pilgrim road had combined to make it a center of a diverse population by the late reign of Alfonso VI, who established the authority of its abbot, according to "Las crónicas anónimas."⁽¹¹⁶⁾ The author does not say when the latter event took place. Various documents of the monastery would have it as early as 1085 or 1087, but it has been adequately demonstrated that these are later forgeries.⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Since there were a royal palace, baths, and mill there as late as 1093, it is most unlikely that the grant of Alfonso VI antedated that year.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ On the other hand, abbatial authority had been established by 1096, in which year that prelate issued a fuero to the inhabitants.⁽¹¹⁹⁾

Abbatial authority over the village probably continued until the reign of Urraca, for in 1110 the abbot issued a rather generous fuero to another dependency.⁽¹²⁰⁾ Moreover, it was the abbot of whom the burghers of Sahagún asked permission to fortify the village in 1110.⁽¹²¹⁾ During the years 1111 to 1114, although the chronological record is never completely [348] clear, the town was most often in the hands of a castellan of the king of Aragón, but this was a wartime innovation.⁽¹²²⁾

It is clear during this period that the burghers of the town were quite capable of corporate action, but although a hermandad, a conspiración, and a conjuración are all mentioned, a concejo never is.⁽¹²³⁾ When the town returned its allegiance to the abbot his confirmation of a new fuero, drawn up by the burghers themselves, was eagerly if unsuccessfully sought but again there is no mention of a concejo nor, for that matter, of any of the charter's provisions.⁽¹²⁴⁾

When the abbot had regained full control of the town in the fall of 1116, Urraca explicitly confirmed the abbatial señorio there.⁽¹²⁵⁾ Again there is no mention of a concejo in that document, but there is such a mention in a similar charter of Alfonso Raimúndez to Sahagún three years later. Unfortunately, the latter should be regarded as a later reworking of Urraca's grant.⁽¹²⁶⁾ The authority of the abbot apparently remained unmodified until the death of Urraca at least, for as late as 1125 he issued a fuero to the men of Sahagún in his own name and that of the monks, though "concessione regine."⁽¹²⁷⁾[349] Occasional references to vicars or provosts in some of these documents do not make clear whether monastic or town officials were involved, but the former seems more likely.

On the basis of this survey of the documentary evidence, the most appropriate generalization is that the ordinary form of municipal government in the realm of León-Castilla during the reign of Urraca was government by royal castellan, alcalde, or iudex. The examination also indicates that these three were not necessarily distinct offices in the minds of contemporaries.

This type of government did not prevail only in three of the most important cities of the realm's heartland, at Burgos, León, and Oviedo. It was typical also of the new, imperial city of Toledo on the Tajo. In the trans-Duero it predominated as well whenever royal authority could be made effective there, as at Zamora from 1117, at Segovia from 1118, and at Sigüenza and Medinaceli from 1124.

The next most important type of municipal government was episcopal rule. In the western province of Galicia bishops governed the diminutive frontier towns of Túy and Orense, the hill town of Lugo, and the prosperous pilgrim center at Santiago de Compostela. The same was true of Palencia in Castilla.

Of the machinery of government at Ávila, Salamanca, and Astorga, too little is known to characterize it. The same is true of tiny Burgo de Osma, if that outpost bishopric can really be characterized as a town during this period.

Royal and episcopal government, however, should not be too sharply distinguished. At Santiago de Compostela a royal judge had some jurisdiction even within an episcopal señorio, and this arrangement very likely had parallels elsewhere. No jurisdiction of the period was monolithic in respect of persons or of property. More important, bishops were, for all practical purposes, nominated by the crown and their ties [350] to it remained very close, as a study of royal charters indicates. By the same token, even in a royal town the bishop was as much a counsellor of the crown as any castellan, probably as great a landlord and immunist, and possessed an extensive ecclesiastical jurisdiction as well. Few really important matters can have been decided against his advice.

Alternative forms of government in important towns are few. Sahagún was ruled by the monastery's abbot, but his relationship to the crown was closer even than that of most bishops. Valladolid and the smaller Cuéllar stand alone as sizable towns in the hands of a great noble, and Pedro Ansúrez was most closely related to the crown. Only Sepúlveda offers the possible example of a town governing itself. Even Carlé, who accepts its fuero as a contemporary document, hesitates before drawing such a conclusion.⁽¹²⁸⁾

On the other hand, the concejo seems to have been a fairly generalized subordinate institution of government in the reign of Urraca. In royal towns one existed at Burgos, León, Oviedo, Segovia, Sepúlveda, and Medinaceli. There is no evidence for one at Toledo, Zamora, or Sigüenza. In episcopal towns a concejo is documented for Compostela and probably Orense but not for Túy, Lugo, or Palencia. As for the other towns, Valladolid and Cuéllar had councils under Pedro Ansúrez but Sahagún seems to have had none.

The subordinate officialdom of the towns cannot be grouped in any finally convincing pattern, although this may be a function of the character of the sources or of the latter's near absence at times. At Toledo there was an alcalde whose jurisdiction appears to have been superior, with other alcaldes who were judges only for the Castilians and Mozárabes, respectively. In other words, the cultural diversity of the population, with some groups certainly possessed of their own fueros, forced an elaboration of officials. Something similar occurred in Oviedo, which had two judges, one of them for [351] the Franks. But there is no such diversification at either León or Burgos, both of which had cosmopolitan populations.

At Oviedo too there is clear evidence for a hierarchy of officials, with a merino and a submerino, and also convincing evidence that the merino functioned within the concejo. From Compostela there is evidence only that more than one judge existed in the town and that there was also a villicus civitate, but the subordination of the former to the latter is only inferential.

It is tempting to relate, then, greater complexity of administration to the size of the town, but from León we know only one merino and from Burgos only one judge. Both towns must have been comparable in population to Oviedo and Compostela. Little Túy furnishes evidence of a plurality of judges and a merino but the evidence is from the 1140s. Sigüenza had an alcalde and a merino, Palencia a merino and a sayon, and Valladolid an alcalde merino, and sayon. Finally, although it would be pleasant to be sure that during Urraca's reign castellans were always vigorously distinguished from merinos, and merinos from alcaldes or judges, the documents do not inspire any such certainty. Instead, the one constant reminder, in particular, is that all such officials were both administrators and judges.

1. Luis García de Valdeavellano, Historia de España de los orígines a la baja Edad Media, 2d ed. (Madrid, 1955), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 190. See also José Luis Martín, La península en la Edad Media (Barcelona, 1976), p. 370.

2. Martín, Península, p. 371.

3. Eduardo de Hinojosa y Naveros, "Origen del régimen municipal en León y Castilla," Obras, ed. Alfonso Garcia-Gallo (Madrid, 1974), 3:290-293, published initially in La administración: Revista internacional de administración, derecho, economía, hacienda, y política 28 (1896):417-438.

4. Alfonso García-Gallo, "Los fueros de Medinaceli," AHDE 31 (1961):9-16, and idem, "El fuero de León," AHDE 39 (1969):5-171. The latter article was the subject of an impassioned rebuttal by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, "El fuero de León," León y su historia 2 (1973):11-60, who argued that the archaic language of many of the provisions of the fuero of León demonstrated the integrity of its transmission from the early eleventh century. It seems to me that not even Sánchez-Albornoz would hold that the fuero was absolutely without interpolations, that he ignores García-Gallo's observations about its diplomatic form, and that only the use of archaic language in every section would preserve the fuero from doubts as to the date of any given provision.

Even more recently, the same analysis has been applied by Ana María Barrero García, "Los fueros de Sahagún," AHDE 42 (1972):385-597, and again by Alfonso García-Gallo, "Los fueros de Toledo," AHDE 45 (1975):341-458.

5. Julio González, Repoblación de Castilla la Nueva, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1975), 1:110-117.

6. Ibid., pp. 105-108.

7. Ibid., p. 134.

8. García-Gallo, "Fueros de Toledo," pp. 346 and 408-427.

9. Ibid., pp. 351-360.

10. March 19, 1101; published in García-Gallo, "Fueros de Toledo," pp. 459-461, a charter of Alfonso VI. June 22, 1103; AHN, Sección de Códices, 987B, fol. 14, also a royal charter. May 8, 1107; AHN, Códices, 987B, fols. 51v-52r, a royal charter.

11. González, Repoblación, 1:110.

12. March 19, 1101 and June 22, 1103; see note 10.

13. November 29, 1123; AHN, Códices, 987B, fol. 10: "urbis alcaldus." November 30, 1123; ibid., fol. 11: "toletanus alcaidus."

14. Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII (Madrid, 1930), introductory volume, pp. 218-219. For a useful discussion of the terms alcalde and juez see Luis García de Valdeavellano, Historia de las instituciones españolas (Madrid, 1968), pp. 544-545, and, in more detail, Nilda Guglielmi, "La figura de juez en el concejo," Mélanges offerts à René Crozet (Poitiers, 1966), 2:1003-24. But the extent to which distinctions made in later law and fueros can be projected back to early twelfth-century usage of these terms is problematic, to say the least.

15. March 1115; AHN, Códices, 996B, fol. 99r: "iudex castellanos martino garciaz."

16. February 13, 1099; AHN, Códices, 987B, fols. 13v-14r: "Johannes zahalmedina de toleto cf." This charter of Alfonso VI is dated in the chartulary to 1095 but is really four years later. May 8, 1107; see note 10: "Fernando alfonso zarb al midinae cf" March 1115; see note 15: "alcalde Johannus casalmedina" November 29 and 30, 1123; see note 13. Both mention in the text "si alcadius si zahlmedina...."

17. November 29, 1123; see note 13: "Menendus Bofinus regie economus et de maierit alcaidus cf."

18. March 1115; see note 15: "alcaite aurelia Genesius."

19. November 20, 1118; AHN, Códices, 987B: "Gomez Nunez alcayt de talavera cf." This charter of Alfonso Raimúndez is dated to 1128 in the chartulary, but the confirmation also of Bishops Jerome of Salamanca and Raymond of Osma makes 1118 the better date.

20. Amparo Hernández Segura, Crónica de la población de Ávila (Valencia, 1966), has edited the text of this thirteenth-century romance. Diego de Colmenares, Historia de la insigne ciudad de Segovia, 2 vols. (1637; reprint, Segovia, 1969-70), 1:214-215, treated much of this material as historical in his seventeenth-century work. Enrique Ballesteros, Estudio histórico de Ávila y su territorio (Ávila, 1896), pp. 100-136 and 223-226, still did in the late nineteenth. A single document of 1103, published in Luciano Serrano, ed., Cartulario de San Millán de La Cogolla (Madrid, 1930), pp. 294-295, portrays the men of Ávila acting as a group. Julio González, "La Extremadura castellana al mediar el siglo XIII," Hispania 127 (1974): 300-301, accepts it as evidence of a concejo there.

21. Florencio Marcos Rodríguez, ed., Catálogo de documentos del archivo cathedralico de Salamanca, siglos XII-XV (Salamanca, 1962), pp. 9-10. Américo Castro and Federico de Onís, eds., Fueros leoneses de Zamora, Salamanca, Ledesma, y Alba de Tormes (Madrid, 1916). The last of these texts dates from the reign of Alfonso VII and the others are even later. Rafael Gibert, "El derecho municipal de León y Castilla" AHDE 31 (1961):706, dates the fuero of Salamanca to Alfonso VI but is simply wrong.

22. June 22, 1102; AC Salamanca, cajón 6, legajo 1, no. 5. The count was certainly disposing of ordinarily royal revenues: "Damus vobis ex omni tertia parte salamantine civitatis census...."

23. December 30, 1107; AE Salamanca, no. 1, and AC Salamanca, cajón 16, legajo 1, no. 30. None of these are originals, and some interpolation is obvious. Alfonso himself is twice referred to as of "sanctae memoriae" and Maurice, then bishop of Coimbra, confirms as archbishop of Braga. Even if the text were accepted, it would be difficult to read it as conferring full secular authority in Salamanca, although it would doubtless have done so in Zamora.

24. See ch. 10, note 96.

25. See ch. 8, note 67.

26. See ch. 10, note 90.

27. There is as yet no printed catalog of its cathedral archive, which is also very difficult of access. In consequence, recourse is to the microfilm copies of the cathedral documents in the collection of the Archivo Histórico Nacional.

28. See ch. 1, note 36. Gibert, "El derecho municipal," p. 705, believes Zamora had a fuero from at least 1062 from a reference in a charter of Fernando I of that date. The reference may as easily be to the "customs" of the city as to a formal document, however. On the other hand, his appeal to a more precise reference in a charter of Alfonso VII, dated February 2, 1129, suffers the problem that the particular provision is in old Spanish rather than Latin.

29. See ch. 9, note 60.

30. September 2, 1132; AC Zamora, legajo 8, no. 8, and Tumbo negro, fol. 20.

31. Emilio Sáez et al., Los fueros de Sepúlveda (Segovia, 1953). Not only the fuero of Alfonso VI but also its diffusion, refoundation, and translation into the Romance are treated. The work elaborates not only a picture of town government but also an argument for the distinctive origins of Castilian as against Leonese law. It is also the foundation for tracing Castilian movement southwest into the trans-Duero.

32. August 20, 1076; Emilio Sáez, ed., Colección diplomática de Sepúlveda (Segovia, 1956), pp. 3-7.

33. 1086; ibid., pp. 10-11: "senior Didaco Telliz dominante Septempublica."

34. 1122; ibid., pp. 11-12: "Senior Enneco Simeonis dominas Secobie et Septem publice et toti Stremature."

35. November 17, 1076; Sáez et al., Fueros de Sepúlveda, pp. 45-51.

36. Ibid., p. 46.

37. See ch. 8, note 55: "Dono et omnibus confirmo illam haereditatem quam dedit concilium de Segovia Deo et Sanctate Marie et supradicto episcopo...." Colmenares, Historia de Segovia, 1:217-218, printed an undated document of the cathedral archives that portrays the concejo making a much wider grant. He dated it to 1115, but Bishop Peter was not consecrated until 1120 and the language is very precocious for the time. I suspect it is a subsequent elaboration departing from Alfonso's charter.

38. See note 34.

39. See ch. 5, note 77 for this and the identical charter of Alfonso Raimúndez: "Hereditatem quoque quam dedit ei conssilium de Secovía...."

40. Colmenares, Historia de Segovia, 1:216.

41. February 1, 1124; Toribio Mingúella y Arnedo, Historia de la diócesis de Sigüenza y de sus obispos (Madrid, 1910), 1:347-348.

42. November 1, 1124; ibid., pp. 349-350: "...omnibus que ad regem pertinent vel ad ejus alcaidum sive marinum que multa sunt...postea alcaidus vel regios marinos novem partes parciantur et mittant in regalibos officiis sive operibos."

43. García-Gallo, "Fueros de Medinaceli," pp. 9-16, attributes the first grant to Alfonso VI; Lacarra and Menéndez Pidal believe it was Alfonso I of Aragón. There are two texts. One, in Romance, is that attributed simply to "Alfonso"; Tomás Muñoz y Romero, ed., Colección de fueros municipales y cartas pueblas (Madrid, 1847), pp. 433-443. The other, in Latin, is a grant by Alfonso I of Aragón to the town of Carcastillo in Navarra of the fueros of Medinaceli; ibid., pp. 469-471. This second is a composite with a long list of particulars clearly added to an earlier, much simpler document. The two copies often diverge in text. On these difficulties, see also González, Repoblación, 2:57, n. 242. There is a document of Sigüenza, dated April 1125, in which the latter's bishop mentions a concejo in Medinaceli; Mingüella y Arnedo, Historia de Sigüenza, 1:350.

44. See ch. 10, note 100.

45. February 22, 1085. On this date Alfonso VI had extended the application of those customs, or fueros, to a village outside the city; published in Luciano Serrano, El obispado de Burgos y Castilla primitiva desde el siglo V al XIII, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1935), 3:63-65. That the fuero remained in force can be seen from a similar grant of Alfonso VI on March 19, 1103, published in Julián García Sáinz de Baranda, La ciudad de Burgos y su concejo en la Edad Media, 2 vols. (Burgos, 1967), 2:403-405, under the date 1073; but the citation of Isabel as Alfonso's queen indicates that 1103 is the preferable reading.

46. García Sáinz de Baranda, Burgos, 2:412: "Unos ex vobis esset meus jodex....Ab hac die nullus sit meus judex nisi et sua propria volutate."

47. Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros, p. 266. The charter is dated to July 12, 1124, but the citation of Berengaria as queen means that it must date from 1127 or later.

48. Enrique Flórez, ed., ES, vols. 1-27 (Madrid, 1747-72), 20:157.

49. Ibid., p. 164.

50. See ch. 8, notes 22 and 23.

51. Published in Serrano, Obispado, 3:142-143. Unfortunately the document survives only in a thirteenth-century copy. Because the witness of the concejo appears last it is just possible that it confirmed the document later. However, a rural concejo concerned with the transfer also appears earlier in the list of witnesses.

52. On this general phenomenon, see María del Carmen Carlé, "La ciudad y su contorno en León y Castilla," AEM 8 (1972-73):69-103; for Burgos in particular, idem, Del concejo medieval castellano-leones (Buenos Aires, 1968), pp. 166-167.

53. See ch. 10, note 102.

54. See ch. 10, note 105.

55. September 10, 1109; Manuel Risco, ES, vols. 28-42 (Madrid, 1774-1801), 35:414-415: "vobis Legionensi Concilio, clericis et laicis....Veniant duo verissimi Christiani et duo Judaei et apretient laborem illius recte et juste et dato praetio reddat laborem et domum domino soli." Carlos Estepa Díez, Estructura social de la ciudad de León (León, 1977), pp. 456-458, believes that the evidence justifies only the assertion of the existence of smaller, multiple, neighborhood or commonity councils in and around the city until early in the reign of Alfonso Raimúndez, but he overlooks the charter of Urraca.

Again I prefer to draw here on the contemporary documents and to disregard entirely the famous early eleventh-century Fuero de León because of the very serious qoestion of its later interpolation, raised by García-Gallo. See note 4 and Gibert, "El derecho municipal," pp. 697-698. Amando Represa, "Evolución urbana de León en los siglos XI-XIII," León y su historia 1 (1969):243-282, is concerned largely with the urban geography of the city.

56. September 29, 1109; Risco, ES, 35:416-417.

57. Estructura social, pp. 459-464.

58. In the spring of 1112 León had an Aragonese garrison, but it was installed by force and could not maintain itself through the summer. See Julio Puyol y Alonso, ed., "Las crónicas anónimas de Sahagún," BRAH 76 (1920):339 and 347-348. Neither the accounts of the time nor the documents support Carmen Estepa Díez, "Sobre revueltas burguesas en el siglo XII en el reino de León," AL 55-56 (1974):294-295.

59. See ch. 4, note 67.

60. Justiniano Rodríguez Fernández, Las juderías de la provincia de León (León, 1976), p. 64.

61. March 1, 1112; Rui Pinto de Azevado, ed., DMP (Lisbon, 1958), 1:37-38.

62. See ch. l0, note 132.

63. Puyol y Alonso, "Las crónicas anónimas," BRAH 76 (1920):246.

64. See ch. 2, note 104.

65. See ch. 2, note 17.

66. Flórez, ES, 20:121.

67. Ibid., pp. 182-183. The real grievance against him may have been not that he supported Alfonso of Aragón in 1110-1111 but that he supported Alfonso Raimúndez in 1111-1112.

68. July 25, 1089; AHN, Códices, 1.196, Tumbo viejo de Logo, fols. 104v-l05r, published in Antolín López Pélaez, El señorío temporal de los obispos de Lugo, 2 vols. (Coronna, 1897), 2:115-118. Unfortunately the original has not been preserved and the copy does not contain the list of confirmants.

The style of the document indicates that it was prepared outside the royal chancery but its outright rejection is not warranted by present knowledge. Carlé, "La ciudad," p. 85, and Concejo, p. 277, accepts both the document and the fact. In respect to Lugo, she follows the authority of Manuel Pérez-Villamil, "El señorio temporal de los obispos de España en la Edad Media," BRAH 68 (1916):361-390.

69. The concern evidenced with the protection of the market is also perhaps testimony to its vulnerable location. October 6,1102; AHN, Códices, 1.196, fol. 16. April 9, 1106; ibid., fol. 16v. January 21, 1108; ibid., fols. 16v-17r.

70. In Lugo that cooperation achieved formal acceptance. See Carlé, Concejo, p. 269.

71. See ch. 8, note 16.

72. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:120-121.

73. August 21, 1096; Flórez, ES, 18:340-342.

74. October 3, 1113; ARG, Documentos particulares, no. 27. The last document in which he appears is May 31, 1124; published in Antonio López Ferreiro, Historia de la Santa Apostólica Metropolitana Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela, 11 vols. (Santiago de Compostela, 1898-1911), 4:7-9 app.

75. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:96-98 and 130-136.

76. December 16, 1105; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:61-63 app.

77. May 9, 1112; AHN, Códices, 75B, fol. 80r. April 15, 1115; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:102-103 app.

78. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:410-413.

79. Carlé, Concejo, p. 268, and Gibert, "El derecho municipal," p. 699.

80. Flórez, ES, 20:215 and 232-233.

81. In 1116 Urraca instructed the burghers to respect their bishop "nec auferrent ei jura vel potestatem suae civitatis"; ibid., p. 223.

82. Ibid., pp. 325 and 443-444.

83. September 24, 1095; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:37-38 app: "postulaverit veritatem ab episcopo vel assenioribus huius loci coram omni concilio et idoneis testibus."

84. Flórez, ES, 20:215-216: "faciunt quamdam conspirationem quam vocant germanitatem." Luis Vázquez de Parga, "La revolución comunal de Compostela en los años 1116 y 1117," AHDE 16 (1945): 685-703, is more a paraphrase of the HC account than an analysis of the events.

85. Ibid., p. 217: "Praedicti conspiratores adjuncto sibi clero et populo...renovant leges et plebiscita, assumunt sibi dominum totius urbis....Episcopos vero contentos sola umbra nominis, et pro tempore cedens, quanquam non laudet opera et consilia eorum, non tamen vituperat: sufficit ei vocari dominus et de quibusdam se consuli ab his conspiratoribus, extra namque civitatem tantum dominium solitum habebat. Ceterum in civitate neque res, neque tempos exigebat, exercere dominium."

86. Ibid., pp. 219-220: "Clerum et populum in conventum absente episcopo vocabant, leges et judicia pertractabant....Quadam die clero et populo vocato in conventum...."

87. The regular existence of a concejo that could become such a vehicle of popular feeling has been seen as obviating the need for some other institutionalization of a commune within the Iberian peninsula. Jean Gautier-Dalché, "Les mouvements urbains dans le nord-ouest de l'Espagne au XIIème siècle: Influences éstrangéres ou phénomènes originaux?" CH 2 (1968):61-64.

88. Flórez, HC, ES, 20:411-413.

89. Ibid., p. 176: "cum ejusdem sedis canonicorom judicio ceterorumque nobilium virorum consilio praedecessorum statum relegendo ad protegendum populum, ad exhibendam justitiae normam in toto honore B. Jacobi excepta Compostellana urbe...."

90. Ibid., p. 179: "in praesentia pontificis, jodicum, et canonicorum."

91. May 14, 1112; published in López Ferreiro, Historia, 3:79-80.

92. Richard A. Fletcher, The Episcopate in the Kingdom of León in the Twelflh Century. (Oxford, 1978), pp. 48-51.

93. February 11, 1095 and April 28, 1112; Pascual Galindo Romeo, Túy en la baja Edad Media (Madrid, 1950), pp. iii-vi, publishes these documents from copies in the cathedral archive and accepts their implications. Carlé, "La ciudad," pp. 84-85, also accepts them.

94. August 1142; published in Flórez, ES, 22:266-268.

95. The collections of neither cathedral have been included in the microfilm collection of the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, and both are somewhat difficult of access, although the canon-archivists of each are most willing to be of help once the researcher appears on the scene. The scholarly archivist of Orense has managed to get some catalogs of his archive into print; Emilio Duro Peña, ed., "Catálogo de documentos reales del archivo de la catedral de Orense (844-1520)," Miscelánea de textos medievales (Barcelona, 1972), 1:9-145, and Catálogo de los documentos privados en pergamino del archivo de la catedral de Orense, 888-1554 (Orense, 1973).

96. Published in Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros, pp. 499-500: "Una cum consensu cleri et plebis...collectione favore reginae dominae Urrache, nec non filii ejus regis Adefonsi, et reginae T., et comitis Ferdinandi Limiam regentis...in praesentia episcopi seu canonicorum...episcopo et canonicis vel ei qoi easdem vices obtinuerit." The undated document is assigned by Doro Peña, Catálogo de documentos privados, pp. 17-18, to 1122 and styled an original. I believe 1122 is the most likely date, but on paleographic grounds I would say the document is a copy of the late twelfth century.

97. May 15, 1131; published in Muñoz y Romero, Colección de fueros, pp. 501-502: "antecessorom meorum consuetudinem non irrationabiliter sequens."

98. See Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, El libro de testamentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Rome, 1971). Fortunately a wide basis for comparison has been established by the editions of Santos García Larragueta, ed., Colección de documentos de la catedral de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1962); Antonio C. Floriano Combreño, ed., Colección diplomática del monasterio de Belmonte (Oviedo, 1960); Pedro Floriano Llorente, ed., Colección diplomática del monasterio de San Vicente de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1968); and by the older work of Luciano Serrano, ed., Cartulario de monasterio de San Pelayo y Vega de Oviedo (Madrid, 1927).

99. Santos García Larragueta, Sancta Ovetensis (Madrid, 1962), pp. 22, 25, and 81.

100. December 22, 1113; published in Floriano Llorente, Colección de San Vicente de Oviedo, pp. 235-236: "maiarino Ecta Ordogniz." June 17, 1114; ibid., pp. 236-237: "Christovalo Johanes maiorino in Ovedao." February 27, 1115; ibid., pp. 242-243: "Cristbal Ibanez merino in palatio." March 8, 1115; ibid., pp. 244-245: "Xristorclo Johanes maiorino in palacio." April 30, 1123; ibid., pp. 264-266: "Chrisroforus Iohannis maiorinos in Oveto." In this latter form again on June 6, 1123; ibid., pp. 269-270.

101. February 27, 1115: "Vermudo Cidiz, sobmerino de Cristobal Ibanez." March 8, 1115: "Vermudo Cidiz, rnaiorino so mano de Christovalo Johanes." See preceding note. These are rare notices of this office, which might more often be styled simply "vicar," but both documents are originals.

102. June 17, 1114: "Robert iudice de illos francos. Monio Sarasin iodice...." See note 100.

103. June 13, 1114; Floriano Llorente, Colección de San Vicente de Oviedo, pp. 236-237.

104. March 8,1115; ibid., pp. 244-245. Two other documents of the cathedral of Oviedo are granted "in presentia bonorum hominum," which may be taken to indicate the concejo as well. December 25, 1111 and May 26, 1120; published in García Larragueta, Colección de Oviedo, pp. 344-345 and 364-365. All these documents are originals.

105. March 12, 1112; García Larragoeta, Colección de Oviedo, pp. 345-347. For a detailed critique of this charter see Fernández Conde, Libro de testamentos, pp. 354-361.

106. AHN, Sección de Microfilmas, Palencia, rollo 1.658, no. 9; published in Pedro Fernando del Pulgar, Historia secular y eclesiástica de la ciudad de Palencia (Madrid, 1680), 1:123-125. It must be remembered that the charters of Alfonso VI have neither been edited nor studied. Moreover, the scribe has executed a brilliant copy of the chancery hand of Alfonso's notary, Pelagios Erigiz. Unfortunately he did not take the same care with Pelagius's seal, and the notary does not otherwise appear in the royal chancery before 1096. The royal armiger, Gómez González, also does not regularly appear before 1093 and the bishop of Burgos confirms as the bishop of "Oca," an apparently deliberate attempt at archasim. Pulgar's seventeenth-century history of the city accepts all documents uncritically, including this one.

107. March 25, 1116, Paschal II; AHN, Microfilmas, Palencia, Armario 3, legajo 10, rollo 7, fols. 37v-38v. November 29, 1125, Honorius II; ibid., fols. 38v-39v.

108. May 13, 1128; AHN, Microfilmas, Palencia, rollo 1.642, no. 5.

109. May 21, 1095; published in Manuel Mañueco Villalobos and José Zorita Nieto, eds., Documentos de la Iglesia Colegial de Santa María de Valladolid, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 1917-20), 1:24-54, from two exemplars with the full texts of each and copious notes: "ad Abbatem Dompnum Salturn et collegio clericorum, qui ibidem sunt constituti, unum barrium in Valleoliti" (p. 25). "Et non habeat licentiam nostro Maiorino vel Sagione aut illo Concilio" (p. 27).

110. Ibid., pp. 62-63.

111. Ibid., pp. 67-71: "Muniu Didaz, Maiorinos."

112. Ibid., pp. 85-87, dated to January 7, 1111, but in this version no reference is made to the earlier ownership of the lands, and Raymond, not Pedro, is given as bishop of Palencia. December 15, 1110; AHN, Microfilmas, Palencia, armario 3, legajo 14, no. 4, has both the reference and the correct confirmation of the bishop of Palencia.

113. September 18, 1114; Mañueco Villalobos and Zurita Nieto, Documentos de Valladolid, 1:95-98. September 17, 1114; ibid., pp. 91-92 and 95-97, is another donation by the count to the church, and there are more grounds to be suspicious of the two documents than just their chronology. The merino does not confirm the earlier one.

114. 4 June 27, 1115; ibid., pp. 106-107. February 4,1115; ibid., pp. 99-102: "Oveco Alkaede testis." May 1, 1115; ibid., pp. 103-105: "Oveco Alkaede confirmans."

115. Justiniano Rodríguez Fernandez, Pedro Ansúrez (León, 1966), pp. 55-57.

116. Puyol y Alonso, BRAH 76 (1920):118.

117. November 25, 1085; AHN, Sección de Clero, carp. 885, nos. 15 and 16; published in Romualdo Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782), pp. 482-484. May 14, 1087; AHN, Clero, carp. 942, no. 15, and carp. 885, no. 20; Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 484-486. Both documents exist only in later copies. Their lack of credibility has been demonstrated by Barrero García, "Fueros de Sahagún," pp. 393-401.

118. November 22, 1093; AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 4; Escalona, Historia de Sahágun, pp. 493-494.

119. April 1,1096; published in Escalona, Historía de Sahagún, p. 497.

120. June 6, 1110; AHN, Clero, carp. 893, no. 4; Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 507-508. This document has been regarded as another fuero to Sahagún itself, but Barrera García, "Fueros de Sahagún," p. 393, argues that it has been misunderstood. Two other private donations to Sahagún during the last year of the reign of Alfonso list three royal merinos without specifying their area of jurisdiction. Because both are documents produced at court, they do not necessarily indicate royal authority operative at Sahagún itself. September 4, 1108; AHN, Códices, 989B, fol. 80r. March 27, 1109; AHN, Clero, carp. 892, no. 21.

121. Poyol y Alonso, "Las crónicas anónimas," BRAH 76 (1920):243-244.

122. Ibid., p. 340: "fueron quitados del poder de los monjes e fueron puestos so el señorio e poderio del dicho Sanchianes."

123. Ibid., pp. 245 and 353.

124. Ibid., p. 404, and 77 (1921):56-57.

125. October 15, 1116; AHN, Clero, carp. 893, no. 16; Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 512-513: "Ita ut nullus majorinus, nullus sajo intra villam vel intra cautum Sancti Facundi aliquid regale ios aot negotium exerceat....."

126. October 8, 1119; AHN, Clero, carp. 893, nos. 22 and 23; Escalona, Historia de Sahagún, pp. 514-515: "Postea vero si placuerit Abbati et Senoribus de toto concilio...." The diplomatic of the charter is such that it could hardly have been a chancery product, and substantial portions of the language are identical to that of the charter of Urraca. The copying can hardly have been the other way, for the subsequent prestige of a charter of Urraca would have been superfluous compared to that of a charter of Alfonso. Moreover, the political position of Alfonso in 1119 hardly admitted of such an important grant, and Alfonso's charter increases the share of the revenues of the mint there over what had been stipulated by the queen.

127. March 19, 1125; AHN, Clero, carp. 894, nos. 14 and 15.

128. Carlé, Concejo, pp. 41-42.