Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms 9781501714344

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 HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

n

GE N D E R , P OW E R , AND RELIGION IN THE EARLY SPANISH K I N G D O MS

Lucy K. Pick

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2017 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2017 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pick, Lucy K., 1966– author. Title: Her father’s daughter : gender, power, and religion in the early Spanish kingdoms / Lucy K. Pick. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017025818 (print) | LCCN 2017027015 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501714337 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501714344 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501714320 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Upper class women—Spain—History—To 1500. | Women and religion—Spain—History—To 1500. | Monarchy—Spain—History—To 1500. | Sex role—Spain—History—To 1500. | Power (Social sciences)—Spain—History—To 1500. | Women— Spain—History—Middle Ages, 500–1500. | Spain— History—711–1516. Classification: LCC HQ1147.S7 (ebook) | LCC HQ1147.S7 P53 2017 (print) | DDC 305.40946/0902—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025818 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cover illustration: Urraca, daughter of Ferdinand I. Santiago de Compostela, library of the cathedral, Coruña, Spain. Album / Art Resource, NY.

For my father, in memory, from my sister and me

 Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments Abbreviations

xi

xiii

Introduction

1

1. Visigothic Inheritance, Asturian Monarchy

21

2. Virgins and Martyrs

62

3. Networks of Property, Networks of Power

104

4. Memory, Gift, and Death

169

Looking Forward, Looking Beyond Works Cited Index

267

247

227

 Figures

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Map of the Iberian Peninsula Eleventh-century kings of León and Castilla Royal succession in the Asturias Visigothic succession according to Asturian historiography Plaque with the Journey to Emmaus and Noli me tangere Urraca Fernández’s diploma restoring the see of Túy Detail of Urraca Fernández’s diploma Relationships among nobles in Urraca Fernández’s diploma for Túy Tenth-century Leonese genealogy Abbess Guntroda and the Leonese royal family Abbess Guntroda and Rodrigo Velásquez Puerta de San Esteban, Great Mosque of Córdoba, and north door of San Martiño de Pazó Map of places named in Elvira Fernández’s will of 1099 Reliquary casket of Saints Adrian and Natalia Arca Santa of Oviedo Chalice of Urraca Fernández

xvi 4 46 53 100 109 110 121 125 127 133 140 165 187 189 199

ix

 Ack nowledgments

This book is the product of inspiring reads, late-night conversations, fortuitous archival discoveries, enlightening conference presentations, and many hours of patient friends taking time to read my work and think through it with me. All this has left me debts of gratitude that I gladly acknowledge. My first thanks are due to the faculty reading group I joined in 2004, which included, over time, Daisy Delogu, Lisa Voigt, Rebecca Zorach, Nicole Lassahn, and Cecily Hilsdale, and which later morphed into the Pre-Modern Body Project, expanding to add Niall Atkinson, Ryan Giles, Aden Kumler, and Jonathan Lyons. All contributed their knowledge and counsel to sections of this book. Daisy wins the prize for reading the whole thing, and Cecily wins another for getting me to read Annette Weiner and teaching me how to take photographs of buildings. The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) at the University of Chicago provided generous financial and logistical support for the Pre-Modern Body Project. My service as the interim faculty director of CSGS while I put the finishing touches on this book was possible only because of our wonderful staff, Gina Olson, Sarah Tuohey, and Tate Brazas. Friends at my usual institutional home, the Divinity School, kept me pointed in the right direction and inspired me to think in new ways about the role of religion in medieval culture. I am grateful to the dean, Richard Rosengarten, for his many years of support and for making possible the lovely image on the cover. Special thanks are due to Bruce Lincoln, whose reading of a languishing part of this project encouraged me to keep going. Parts of this book began life as a string of conference talks. I am especially grateful to Susan Boynton at Columbia University; Suzanne Conklin Akbari at University of Toronto; Bretton Rodriguez at Notre Dame; and Therese Martin at CSIC, Madrid, for inviting me to speak at their institutions. Miriam Shadis and James D’Emilio both graciously read chapter 3, and I benefitted greatly from their wisdom and expertise. Early research for this project was undertaken in Spain through the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation (now, Hispanex). The librarians and xi

xii

A C K N OW L E D G M E N TS

archivists at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Archivo Historico Nacional, Universidad de Salamanca, El Escorial, British Library, San Isidoro de León, and the cathedral of León generously gave me access to their materials. Particular thanks are due to Avelino Bouzón Gallego, the canon archivist of the cathedral of Túy. He not only gave me permission to use photographs of its splendid charter; he also, as parish priest of San Bartolomeu in Rebordáns, the eleventh-century church that was its original cathedral after the see was refounded by Urraca Fernández, unlocked the church for us and showed us its marvels, including the Roman tiles in the crypt. I am grateful to Peter Potter, who saw the potential in this project, and to Mahinder Kingra, who picked it up for Cornell University Press. The book is better for the suggestions made by the two readers for the press, who read with care and generosity. Bethany Wasik, Susan Specter, and Julie Nemer have done everything they could to make sure the book is beautiful and free of errors—I take responsibility for any that remain. Bill Nelson produced the lovely maps. The photograph of Urraca Fernández’s chalice is in this book only thanks to the patience and tenacity of Robbi Siegal at Art Resource. I want to thank my mother, Sheila O’Connor, for her pride in me, which has never wavered since the day I was born. She taught me to believe that what I could accomplish was limited only by my imagination. My sister Deedee is my best friend and my biggest cheerleader, as I am hers, and the love of her and her family, Thomas, Evie, and Willem, propels me. I thank my son, Leo Allen, who makes everything worthwhile, and my husband, Michael Kremer, who makes everything easy. Finally, I recall my father, Michael Pick, who died in 1987 and in whose memory I offer, with my sister, this book as a gift. May his memory be a blessing.

 A bbrevi ati ons

AC ad Seb. AHN Alb. AM BC BL BN BnF BU CCCM CD León CEISI CSIC MGH PL PMH RAH Rot. UNAM

Archivo Capitular ad Sebastianum Archivo Histórico Nacional de España Albeldense Archivo Monástico Biblioteca Capitular British Library Biblioteca Nacional de España Bibliothèque nationale de France Biblioteca Universitaria Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de León (775–1230) Centro de Estudios e Investigacíon San Isidoro Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas Monumenta Germaniae Historica J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina Portugaliae monumenta historica: Diplomata et chartae Real Academia de la Historia Rotense Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

xiii

 HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

Pravia

N

Lugo Oviedo Cangas de Onís GALICIA AS T U R I AS Pamplona Santiago de LEÓN Compostela Oña NAVARRA Eslonza León Orense Burgos Sahagún Celanova Cardeña San Martiño de Pazó Túy C AS T I L L A Covarrubias

Santa Cruz de la Serós ARAGÓN

Sant Joan de les Abadesses CATALUNYA

Braga

Barcelona

Toledo

Dénia

AL-ANDALUS Córdoba Sevilla 0 0

Figure 1.

Map of the Iberian Peninsula

50 100

100

150 mi 200 km

Introduction

On June 13, 1071, royal daughter Urraca Fernández refounded the bishopric of Túy on the banks of Miño river in the far west corner of what had been her father’s kingdom. The diocese had been vacant for decades after the depredations of Viking raiders along the Atlantic coast. “All-powerful Maker of all things, strong King of the ages,” her diploma begins, addressing God as supreme male monarch. This leads into a narrative of the destruction of the see of Túy: “From the report of ancients, we know that all Spain was held by the Christians and adorned by bishops in ecclesiastical sees in every province. A short time later, with sin ever-growing, the sea coast was overthrown by the race of the Vikings, and the bishop of the see of Túy, who held rule in that place, was taken by those enemies, and all his people captured. Some were killed; some were sold. The city was reduced to nothing, and remained widowed and miserable for many years.” After this lengthy exordium, which imagines Túy in losing its bishop as a woman who has lost her husband, Urraca donated a series of properties to Túy and its new bishop that would provide the see with a landed economic base and fund the construction of a new cathedral.1

1. M. Rubén García Álvarez, “El diploma de restauración de la sede de Túy por la infanta Urraca,” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 17 (1962): 289–92. All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 1

2

INTRODUCTION

The charter was confirmed by bishops, abbots, and other clergy, counts, royal officials, and her brother, Alfonso VI (1065–1109). Her refounding of Túy recalls earlier royal diplomas, such as that in which her ancestor, King Alfonso II (791–842), refounded the see of Oviedo in 812 or, more recently, one in which another brother of Urraca, Sancho II, king of Castilla (1065– 1072), restored the see of Oca.2 Urraca Fernández’s charter belongs to a specific political context. While Sancho II ruled in Castilla and Alfonso VI ruled in León since their father’s death in 1065, a third brother, García, held sway in Galicia, the western kingdom where Túy was located. Beset by rebellious local nobles, García’s rule over his allotted kingdom was never fully secure. His final known act as king was to begin the process of restoring the see of Túy by making his own donation to its bishop on February 1, 1071, four months before his sister Urraca completed that task. Unlike her charter, García’s gift was meager and poorly subscribed.3 Between that date and Urraca’s own gift, his siblings relieved him of his kingdom, putting it under the joint rule of Alfonso VI and Sancho II.4 Urraca’s charter to Túy represented her own acceptance of the new state of affairs in Galicia. By what authority did she, a woman, perform this public act, restoring the bishopric of Túy? Urraca was neither married to a king nor the mother of a king too young to rule and so serving in his stead. Rather, she was childless and unmarried, a “servant of God,” as she declares in this diploma.5 Her involvement in the refounding of Túy, an act with both political and spiritual ramifications, neither at this level seen traditionally as the domain of women in this period, is startling to us. Equally startling is the fact that her activities do not seem to have surprised her contemporaries. Urraca begat a long medieval and post-medieval literary tradition of ballads and romanceros that explained her unusual role in her father’s and brothers’ kingdoms as a function of her supposedly uniquely aggressive and bold

2. Antonio C. Floriano, Diplomática española del periodo astur (718–910) (Oviedo: La Cruz, 1949), 1: 111, no. 24; José Manuel Garrido Garrido, ed., Documentación de la catedral de Burgos (804–1183) (Burgos: Ediciones J. M. Garrido Garrido, 1983), no. 19. 3. Alexandre Herculano, Portugaliae monumenta historica: Diplomatae et chartae (Lisbon: Typis Academicis, 1857) [henceforth PMH], I: no. 494. 4. Alfonso VI and Sancho II are described as jointly reigning in Galicia in a private charter dated November 1071. On the dating of these events, see García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 277–85. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, influenced by a later literary and historiographic tradition that sees Sancho II as wholly wicked, argued that the demotion of García happened at his instigation; La España del Cid (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1969), 169–71. Bernard Reilly argues the prime mover was Alfonso; The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 29–32. 5. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290.

INTRODUCTION

3

personality. They describe her as a charismatic figure: passionate, seductive, manipulative, a cruel temptress, and treacherous and murderous because of her presumed role in the eventual death of her brother, Sancho II. She was even accused of committing incest with Alfonso VI, of marrying him and becoming his queen as a way retaining power when he took sole control over their father’s empire.6 Nonetheless, Urraca’s role cannot be explained by recourse to a narrative of an exceptional personality who was able to transcend the usual gender roles, the traditional medieval explanation for women who exercised power beyond expectations and one still evident in popular biography,7 because we see her younger sister, Elvira Fernández, occupying the same kind of political space as Urraca. And we cannot account for the activity of these women simply by arguing that it comes during a moment of particular stress and division. Urraca and Elvira continued to appear at the side of their brother Alfonso VI, confirming his documents and supporting his policies, as well as issuing documents of their own, after he claimed sole rule over the whole of his father’s kingdom in 1072.8 Urraca and her siblings were all the children of King Fernando I (1037– 1065) and Queen Sancha (d. 1067) of León-Castilla (figure 2). Urraca was the eldest, born before her parents attained the throne.9 Fernando I made provisions to divide the kingdom upon his decease among his three sons and gave all the monasteries of the kingdom to his two daughters, “in which they might live all the days of their life without the bonds of marriage.”10 The bequest to his two daughters begins to explain Urraca’s gift to Túy. Granting 6. Teresa Catarella, “Doña Urraca and Her Brother Alfonso VI: Incest as Politics,” La corónica 35 (2007): 39–67; Erik Ekman, “‘Morir vos queredes, padre’: Doña Urraca in the Spanish and Portuguese Romancero,” La corónica 35 (2007): 69–81. 7. María Isabel Pérez de Tudela y Velasco takes this approach to Urraca, attributing her involvement with her brother’s reign to her nature as “una mujer de personalidad acusada, carácter resuelto y mente lúcida.” “El papel de las hermanas de Alfonso VI en la vida política y en las actividades de la corte,” in Estudios sobre Alfonso VI y la reconquista de Toledo, vol. 2 (Toledo: Instituto de Estudios Visigótico-Mozárabes, 1988), 177. Compare the popular biographies written about Eleanor of Aquitaine: Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four King. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (New York: Ballantine, 2001). 8. Of the 134 royal charters that Alfonso issued between the beginning of his reign and 1101 (when the sisters were deceased), one or another or often both of them together confirmed 78; Andrés Gambra, Alfonso VI: Cancillería, curia, e imperio (León: CEISI, 1998), 1: 487. 9. Justo Pérez de Urbel and Atilano González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense (Madrid: CSIC, 1959), 184. 10. “In quibus vsque ad exitum huius vite absque mariti copula viuerent.” Ibid., 204–5. Not “until they should marry,” as Reilly interprets this phrase; Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 14. “Genitor meus, rex domnus Ferdenandus per scripturam concessit mihi Geloira et ad germana mea domina Vrracha predictum monasterium sancte Eolalie de Fingon cum cunctos monasterios regni sui per omnes prouincias et regiones.” AHN 1043B, fol. 69r. Carlos Reglero de la Fuente nuances what is meant by all the monasteries of the kingdom; he does not discuss the Lugo

INTRODUCTION

4

Vermudo II

Elvira Menéndez

Vermudo III

Sancha

Sancha

Urraca Fernández Figure 2.

Alfonso V

Sancho II

Elvira García

Elvira

Teresa

Fernando I

Alfonso VI

García

Elvira Fernández

Eleventh-century kings of León and Castilla

the monasteries of the kingdom to the daughters provided them with a significant and substantial territorial and economic base that spanned all three kingdoms given to the sons. The sisters were lords of these monasteries, not the possessions of them. This kind of inherited property constituted a good part of the material resources held by all the women studied in this book. Urraca made the grant to Túy, one that dwarfed the earlier one given by García, because it was she, not any of her brothers, who had the resources to do so. The sisters were not the only royal daughters of the early Spanish kingdoms who could draw on resources such as these to act politically. Their role foreshadowed that of their great-niece, Sancha Raimúndez (d. 1159), the unmarried daughter of Queen Urraca, who appeared regularly beside her younger brother Alfonso VII (1123–1157), supporting his rule.11 And Urraca and Elvira Fernández were preceded by their own female ancestors, also unmarried, who maintained a prominence that demands exploration. These earlier women include Urraca and Elvira’s own great-aunts, who, like them, were the daughters and sisters of a king; Elvira Ramírez, the sister of Sancho I (956–958 and 960–966), who ruled for Sancho’s minor son on his death;12 document, however; “Omnia totius regni sui monasteria: La Historia Legionense, llamada Silense y los monasterios de las infantas,” e-Spania 12 (2012), doi:10.4000/e-spania.21775, 1–4. 11. Luisa García Calles, Doña Sancha, hermana del emperador (León: CEISI, 1972). 12. Lucy K. Pick, “Dominissima, prudentissima: Elvira, First Queen-Regent of León,” in Religion, Text and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honour of J. N. Hillgarth, ed. Thomas E. Burman, Mark Meyerson, and Leah Shopkow (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), 38–69 ; Roger Collins, “Queens-Dowager and Queens-Regent in Tenth-Century León and Navarre,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John C. Parsons (New York: Palgrave, 1993), 79–92.

INTRODUCTION

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Jimena Ordóñez, the aunt of Elvira Ramírez, who confirmed the documents of her royal father; and all the way back to Adosinda in the distant eighth century, the daughter, sister, and half-sibling of kings. Adosinda passed the throne to her husband, and when he died, she became a consecrated widow and ensured that her nephew could take the throne. Nor were active royal sisters and daughters confined to the kingdom of León-Castilla. Closely contemporary with Urraca and Elvira Fernández was their cousin, Countess Sancha Ramírez, also the daughter and sister of kings. After her husband died, she remained closely associated with the rule of her brother Sancho I (1063–1094) and frequently confirmed the diplomas of her nephew Pedro I (1094–1104).13 The daughters and sisters of counts in the Iberian peninsula likewise possessed lordship over religious property and large domains within their own families, which brought them influence akin to these royal daughters. More consideration needs to be given to what structures, roles, and people constituted the ruling system of these realms; how it varied in the Iberian peninsula, across Latin Christendom, and over time; and in what ways power was articulated through it.14 As is evident from the sources cited in the preceding paragraphs, some of these women have received the attention of individual studies of their actions and roles. Taken separately, however, it is too easy to view each as an anomaly, and her activities and power as exceptional, founded in personal charisma or particular circumstances. Studied as a group, however, it becomes clear that these women were as integral a part of the ruling system as the king, his wife, his eldest male heir, and the male nobility, figures who have received somewhat more attention. In this book, I consider the evidence for the actions of royal daughters of early medieval Iberia, a place that they, especially those from the kingdoms of León and Castilla, at the heart of this study, would have known as Hispania (Spain), from the Roman name for the peninsula.15 Focusing

13. Marina González Miranda, “La condesa Doña Sancha y el monasterio de Santa Cruz de los Seros,” Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón 6 (1956): 185–202; Rose Walker, “Sancha, Urraca, and Elvira: The Virtues and Vices of Spanish Royal Women ‘Dedicated to God,’” Reading Medieval Studies 24 (1998): 113–38. 14. One notable article that considers many of the same women I discuss here as a group to uncover some of the structures that explain their power is Maria do Rosário Ferreira, “Entre conselho e incesto: A irmã do rei,” e-Spania 12 (2011), doi:10.4000/e-spania.20879. Although I came across her article late in the preparation of this book, we share attention to the matrilineal roots of these women’s role in the kingdom. 15. “Yspania” in the Historia silense, a chronicle written a decade or so after Urraca Fernández’s death, most likely in her principal holding, the monastery of San Isidoro in León, by an author who knew her; Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 8; Simon Barton and Richard

6

INTRODUCTION

attention on their roles, possibilities, and limitations compels us to reevaluate medieval gender norms and their relationship to power. At the same time, understanding the forces that brought these women the power they held, and how those forces could change, requires us to rethink medieval power structures as a whole and results in a fresh understanding of monarchical power, its extent, and its means of deployment in medieval Europe. These power structures were multiple. They stemmed from different and sometimes competing sources of power, such as property, gender, charisms of royalty or nobility, religious authority, military command, and family dynamics, and they interacted in varied ways. Each consisted of a set of rules or cultural norms—procedures, metaphors, scenarios, and assumptions that are applied in the enactment or reproduction of social life—as well as actual resources, both human and material, such as the monastic property possessed by the women at the heart of this study.16 One key power structure for these women was the religious role they fulfilled within the kingdom, which in turn shaped their place within the royal family. This role and the norms that governed it, and the massive property they held because of it, intersected with other notions, such as ideas about the family and the importance of lineage, matrilineal traditions in the region in which they emerged, and customs about inheritance, to create the sometimes contradictory forces that organized their lives. They were members of a larger group that included the king himself, the rest of the royal family, senior nobles and churchmen, and others, who all participated in power structures of their own. We discover a corporate monarchy involving networks of power in which royal women had a central position. What does it mean to say that women such as Urraca and Elvira Fernández were powerful, and what is the relationship of power to other notions, such as authority and agency? One influential approach has been to expand the notion of power beyond that of simple public authority, investigating instead the capacity of medieval women “to act effectively, to influence people or decisions, and to achieve goals.”17 In effect, this redefines power as agency, which implies the existence of an agent, an acting subject. But this poses a problem for medievalists because we are told by experts in other periods that the Middle Ages was a time of limited or rare subjectivity. Christianity, it is Fletcher, trans., The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 12–16. 16. William H. Sewell, “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992): 1–29. 17. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 1–2.

INTRODUCTION

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argued, is the means by which individuality emerged in the medieval West, in reaction to and rejection of holistic society, but in the Middle Ages, this was as yet an otherworldly individuality, existing in relationship to God and His vicars on earth, and then only insofar as it rejected the world. It was not yet the full flourishing of the individual in the world; for that we have to await the Renaissance and the Reformation.18 The medieval subject, we are told, was only the Christian subject; that is to say, only in his or her filial relation to God can we identify individual subjectivity, a sense of a self, in the Middle Ages. And even these subjects were not yet autonomous but instead found their full realization only through the Church.19 This may explain why some of the most interesting and ground-breaking theoretical work on the agency of medieval women has hitherto been done not about women in their relationship to political power but, rather, in their capacity as Christian speaking subjects, especially as mystics who wrote (or who were written for). It is in their articulation of a legible, speaking self, an Ego that exists in relation to God in whose image they were created, that we find medieval, even female, subjects. Agency is implicitly defined as the ability to write or, at least, to compose text. This explains the anxiety expressed in some studies about who exactly was responsible for composing the works that appear under their names—the women or their male amanuenses.20 When women do not themselves write—but are written about— they vanish, at least under this perspective.21 It is perhaps no coincidence that medieval historians, whose power and prestige depend on our ability to produce written texts under our names, define this act of writing as the apex of agency. But it should perhaps caution us that we may be projecting

18. Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 95; Louis Dumont, “A Modified View of Our Origins: The Christian Beginnings of Modern Individualism,” in The Category of the Person, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 93–122; Françoise Meltzer, For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 127–28; Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1–3. 19. On the notion that the Christian pastor, unlike the Greek leader, cares for each individual and not just the flock as a whole and on the consequent emergence of the Christian self-examining and self-aware subject, see Michel Foucault, “Omnes et Singulatim: Toward a Critique of Political Reason,” in Power, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: New Press, 2001), 308–11. 20. Compare the anxiety over female voice and agency as expressed in writings by and about female mystics in Catherine M. Mooney, “Voice, Gender, and the Portrayal of Sanctity,” in Gendered Voices, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 1–4. 21. For example, Elizabeth L. Clark, who declares that in Gregory of Nyssa’s portraits of his sister Macrina, she “is not herself a teacher of wisdom, but a trope for Gregory.” “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’” Church History 67 (1998): 27.

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INTRODUCTION

anxieties about our own sense of self-worth and fears of a lack of agency onto the past. Moreover, there is another medieval figure apart from the speaking Christian to whom modern scholars are willing to ascribe subjectivity and agency, albeit implicitly, namely the medieval king. Narratives of medieval political history can read like royal biographies in which all attention is placed on the king, and his strength or weakness as king is measured by how well he managed to exert his will because modern scholars emulate Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne22 in attributing all the events of the reign of their subject to his agency. Scholars who may not think of themselves as caring much for ideas such as subjectivity but are interested, rather, in institutions such as lordship, equating it with power,23 seem in search of a figure with a will and the means to exert it, who can serve as an acting subject within our modern understanding of subjectivity. Their longing for this individual acting subject obscures the contributions of others to his rule, including the contributions of medieval women. Was lordship something a woman could ever possess in the Middle Ages? Georges Duby argues that, because of their inability to wield the sword, women lacked the ability to command and punish: “By nature, because she was a woman, the woman could not exercise public power. She was incapable of exercising it.”24 Duby’s exclusion of women from public power relies on assumptions about the ubiquity and fixity of the public and private spheres, gendered respectively male and female, that are highly problematic. He articulates these assumptions in the foreword to the first volume of his History of Private Life: At all times and in all places a clear, commonsensical distinction has been made between the public—that which is open to the community and subject to the authority of its magistrates—and the private. In other words, a clearly defined realm is set aside for that part of existence for which every language has a word equivalent to private, a zone of immunity to which we may fall back or retreat, a place where we may set aside arms and armour needed in the public place, relax, take our ease, and lie about unshielded by the ostentatious carapace worn 22. Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz. MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum 25 (Hanover: Hahn, 1839), 122–42. 23. For example, Thomas N. Bisson, “Medieval Lordship,” Speculum 70 (1995): 753; Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3. 24. Georges Duby, “Women and Power,” in Cultures of Power, ed. Thomas Bisson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 73.

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for protection in the outside world. This is the place where the family thrives, the realm of domesticity.25 Or, as he put it more succinctly when writing about women and power, “Private life was women’s business.”26 The division of power into public (or male) and private (or female) spheres is one way that historians have accounted for powerful medieval women, in arguments that kings held public power while queens held private power through their roles as the wives and then mothers of kings. The source of power for both kings and queens derived ultimately from genealogy in this view, from their lineage. When queens exercised something like public power, it was by means of this private role, in a transfer of private power to the public sphere, for example, when they acted as regents for minor children.27 But these explanations do not account for cases in which the woman in question was not the wife of a king but the daughter or sister. Likewise, a sharp distinction between public and private is not a very useful way of differentiating power in the Middle Ages, a period when what we now think of as public and private were thoroughly interpenetrated. Public and private are discursive categories that make an argument for who has the right to what kind of power and where, and they have a history that must be interrogated, not assumed.28 Numerous scholars depict women exercising something that looks an awful lot like public power, including military command, in different times and places during the Middle Ages,29 and in this study, I expand that picture. 25. Georges Duby, A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. Paul Veyne (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), viii. 26. Duby, “Women and Power,” 80. Compare Kimberley LoPrete, “Women, Gender, and Lordship in France, c. 1050–1250,” History Compass 5–6 (2007): 1924–26. 27. Duby, “Women and Power,” 69–85; Georges Duby, “Private Power, Public Power,” in A History of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1988), 3–7; John M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 404. Pauline Stafford moves some of the queen’s “natural” activity to the public sphere and suggests the fluidity of the terms public and private, querying but ultimately not rejecting the clear distinction between public and private spheres; Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 60–61, 119–22, 141, 159, 161; Pauline Stafford, “Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), 8–9 (on Wallace-Hadrill); Pauline Stafford, “Portrayal of Royal Women in England, Mid-Tenth to Mid-Twelfth Centuries,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John C. Parsons (New York: Palgrave, 1993), 145. 28. Compare Janet L. Nelson, “The Problematic in the Private,” Social History 15 (1990): 355, 363–64; Janet L. Nelson, “Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages.” in The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 218. 29. For example, David Hay, The Military Leadership of Mathilda of Canossa, 1046–1115 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).

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But force, or the threat of force, is not the only channel through which power can flow. Power resides in influence, in the ability to grant or withhold material benefits or rewards, and in the leveraging of traditions, norms, and social expectations, all channels that were accessible to the women in this study.30 The question is not whether women exercised power; it is how and why. These women are frequently given the title domina in contemporary documents, a term that requires interpretation. For Duby, the noble woman’s title of domina (lady) was an honorific derived from her husband’s status as dominus (lord),31 and indeed in English, lady carries connotations of this derived status along with implications of passivity and gentility, none of which have much bearing on these women, who did not derive power from their husbands and were anything but passive. Accordingly, I leave the title untranslated and gloss it as referring to female lordship. Moreover, the lordship of the king needs to be complicated further. The fantasy of autonomy and illusion of independence for the royal dominus elide the king’s participation in a host of networks of relationship, networks that combine to support his power. As Norbert Elias has shown for a later period, even in the age of absolutism, kingly power, although represented as a gift from God alone, depended in fact on the working in concert of a whole court of people, drawn together in networks of interdependencies, in which the king himself was likewise enmeshed.32 Medieval kings likewise relied on a range of people, including nobles and ecclesiastics as well as members of their own family, to exert authority, that is to say, power that was socially sanctioned.33 Power should not be thought of as a substance or a property, a thing; rather, it is most usefully understood as the relationship between individuals that allows some to determine the conduct of others.34 Theresa Earenfight suggests that monarchy must be always be construed as a multiplicity of different power relations that are not independent of each other. Monarchy is not simply rule by one person; it is both a political structure in which multiple actors have roles, albeit unequal ones, and also a “powerful kin group organized as a dynasty.” The relationship of king to queen, she argues, is that of an unequal political and dynastic partnership whose nature varies in different times and places, and this is true for the king’s whole family.35

30. Moisés Naím, The End of Power (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 23–24. 31. Duby, “Women and Power,” 69. 32. Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 3–4. 33. On authority and power, see Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 161. 34. Foucault, “Omnes et Singulatim,” 324. 35. Theresa Earenfight, Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), xii. See also Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe (New York:

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It is misguided, then, to imagine the king as the ultimate free, sovereign subject with perfect agency and to measure everyone else’s power according to this yardstick. Everyone, from the king to his daughters and sisters to the meanest slave, was constrained by the structures in which each lived, by the networks of people in which they were enmeshed, and by the access to resources and the norms and discourses that shaped their roles. The key is to identify the multiple and sometimes contradictory structures that shaped their lives, to explore how they interpreted and mobilized the resources available to them, and to uncover how they transposed and extended into new contexts the norms that bound them. These new contexts allowed them to leverage and so reshape their position in the networks to which they belonged. We can locate the agency of these women, and find possibilities for change in their capacity to interpret, mobilize, and transpose within structures that are processes, not static fixed entities.36 One of the structures through which monarchical power was wielded is the family, and this fact makes the question of how gender affects and structures these networks of power pressing. A court has women as regular members of it in a way that other spaces of power, such as a battlefield, might not.37 Attention to gender is a crucial part of the organization of hierarchy, and gender is one of the primary fields through which and by means of which power is expressed. Notions of gender are connected to theories about power, whether attention to gender is explicit (e.g., in laws saying that women are not allowed to rule) or implicit (e.g., in rhetorical strategies suggesting power is inherently masculine). The ways that women are represented (and the places where they are ignored) in different media belong to discourses about what power is and who holds power. They are part of the fictions that naturalize power as inherently belonging to the king. As Joan Scott puts it, “Hierarchical structures rely on generalized understandings of the so-called natural relationships between male and female,” understandings that are historically constructed, discursively produced, and thus subject to change and transformation.38 Several exemplary studies provide useful models for understanding how gender helped structure medieval networks of power. Constance Brittain

Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 25; Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 24. 36. Sewell, “Theory of Structure,” 4, 16–20. 37. Rita Costa Gomez, The Making of a Court Society, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 57. 38. Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986), 1073.

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Bouchard’s Those of my Blood provides evidence for networks among the noble families of France and Germany, and her understanding of the way these networks were moderated and affected by gender suggests new ways of thinking about the Iberian royal families. For Bouchard, the medieval noble family was not a self-evident unit but, rather, a construct in a state of flux. Who was considered a member of one’s family was constantly subject to reinterpretation and redefinition. A family consisted of a fluid set of relationships, a network of kinship links, whose meaning was different for each of its members. For instance, to a man, his wife might be something of an interloper and a newcomer to the family. That man’s son, however, will consider his own mother an integral part of his lineage.39 Bouchard demonstrates that to understand the workings of powerful families we must investigate the roles women played in them. A powerful family is not something that can be understood from simply looking at its male members, even though the autonomy and power of its male heads may be what initially draws our attention. Looking at where women fit into Iberian royal families does not merely add new actors to the stage; it changes the way we view early Iberian power, monarchy, and family as a whole. Bouchard finds the power of a man’s wife increases toward the end of her period.40 I suggest that, in fact, this wife’s power may have come at the expense of the man’s aunt, sister, or daughter. Janet Nelson pays welcome attention to the roles played by Charlemagne’s sisters and daughters, as well as his wives. She presents evidence for what we find in a slightly later period in León and Castilla—sisters who had leading roles in religious life, daughters who remained single but were deeply embedded in the rituals of court life, and women who made up liturgical networks linking heaven and earth through their prayers. Charlemagne’s own sister, Gisela, was the abbess of Chelles, which was not only a site for learning and manuscript study but also a center of the royal religious cult and, at the same time, a political center from and to which both news and the powerful traveled.41 Nelson shows that the powers wielded by royal women such as Charlemagne’s daughters depended on the individual’s location in the whole network of the court. From the emperor’s perspective, what power they held stemmed solely from their relationship to him and was dependent on his

39. Constance Brittain Bouchard, Those of My Blood: Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 2–3. 40. Ibid., 133–34. 41. Janet L. Nelson, “Gender and Genre in Women Historians of the Early Middle Ages,” in The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 191–92.

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survival. But from the perspective of the members of the court who desired access to the emperor, their power was enormous: they had intimate access to their father that other courtiers could only dream of; they became crucial channels of patronage and information; and by choosing sides or bestowing favor, they could shape politics. As dependent daughters, they were the one group Charlemagne could count on to be totally loyal to him.42 Kings in Spain likewise extended their power beyond their own reach by means of family members—their unmarried sisters and daughters, who, because they were unmarried, owed their only allegiance to them. Gayle Rubin has emphasized the notion that marriage is a form of gift exchange in which women are used to create relationships between men.43 The transactional nature of medieval royal marriages to create alliances and “weave peace” is evident and explicit. But what does it mean when a king such as Charlemagne or Fernando I chose to receive women as wives but did not “gift” his own daughters, when he received women as gifts but did not himself make such gifts? What did he, and the women, gain and lose? Annette Weiner has critiqued the views of Rubin and others who view marriage as a relationship between men in which women are simply objects to be exchanged, arguing that what we interpret as a norm of reciprocal giving, in which one woman is exchanged for another, is simply one strategy for dealing with what, for her, is the more basic problem of keeping-whilegiving. Weiner identifies a class of possessions that she describes as inalienable. These are objects that are symbolically invested with more authority and information about identity, kinship, and political history than other kinds of possessions. They are unique, like a crown. The possession of such a charged object and the meanings it carried created difference and hierarchy, not equivalence, and what Weiner calls cosmological authentication of the power of its owner; therefore, its owner would go to great lengths to avoid giving it away. The reciprocal exchanges that anthropologists and historians have paid so much attention to are, in her view, always made in reference to and in awareness of those inalienable possessions that are not being exchanged. Thus, reciprocity is always motivated by its opposite: the desire to keep something back.44 Giving is easy to do; keeping what you have is much harder. So, for instance, however much land a king grants his followers 42. Janet L. Nelson, “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of a Monstrous Regiment?” in The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 232–42. 43. Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex,” in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 116–18. 44. Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) 4–5, 10, 14, 41–43.

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INTRODUCTION

in return for whatever loyalty or service he might receive from them in return, he avoids at all costs granting them the land that makes him king (i.e., granting land to them in the way he holds it that makes him king). Their exchanges with him are always made in full awareness of exactly what he will not give away, and the difference between him and them that what is kept behind both creates and demonstrates. For a king who is in control of what he gives, his gifts do not diminish what he holds but, rather, the reverse, as Stephen White shows, paraphrasing from the prose Launcelot, “Always give plenty and you will have plenty to give for everything you give will remain in your land and the wealth of many other lands will come to you.”45 I argue that, like land and crowns, the daughters that kings did not give away in marriage alliances were inalienable possessions. As we see throughout the course of this book, these daughters carried the symbolic markers of lineage, sacred authority, memory, and gift that are characteristic of inalienable possessions and that served as part of the cosmological authentication that helped authorize the rule of their fathers and brothers. Although Weiner herself does not talk about people as inalienable possessions, my identification is supported by the way she links human with cultural reproduction as the same kind of activity. Women worked in both spheres, and this provided them space and authority in political hierarchies, as for instance, when a queen gave birth to royal children. As people, not objects, these women did not, however, operate in the same way as a feather cape or a reliquary chest. These women were themselves also capable of both keeping and giving, and they did so in their own interests and in the interests of their family, using donation to deploy memory and compensate for death. Weiner’s ethnographic study, done on a very different place and time than my own historical investigation, was motivated by some of the same paradoxes and questions. We both observe the undeniable presence of women exerting authority in societies in which the norm of reciprocity would teach us that they should be reduced to trade objects, and we share suspicions of the way the acceptance of the norm of reciprocity has reified and gendered public and private as male and female, respectively. We both locate the source for some of the power we see women possessing in the bond between brother and sister, and in the way that this bond gave a brother some access 45. Stephen D. White, “Service for Fiefs or Fiefs for Service,” in Negotiating the Gift, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte no. 188, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Berhard Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoek &Ruprecht, 2003), 74. On land in the Middle Ages as an inalienable possession, see Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, “The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding and Political Power: A Comparative Approach,” in Medieval Transformations, ed. Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 126.

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to the sacred that he would not have without her, a bond that persisted after marriage for the women whom Weiner studied and that did not have to compete with a sister’s marriage in my study. The connection these royal daughters and sisters had with the sacred was a key part of their roles. The properties these women held were not simply villas and vineyards, units of economic production; rather, they were monasteries and churches, institutions with a specifically religious role, symbolism, and history, and which together supported the authority of the king and the kingdom. These ecclesiastical properties inherited by the daughters formed what would come to be known by the twelfth century as the infantazgo, a collection of religious institutions held by and passed down to royal daughters and sisters who lived unmarried. Patrick Henriet, who has done the most thorough investigation of this phenomenon thus far, dates the origins of this phenomenon to the tenth century, but as we will see, its origins are older and may date as early as Adosinda in the ninth century.46 Some scholars view the infantazgo primarily as an economic and legal institution, a type of lordship designed to preserve royal property within the family and allow royal daughters to remain unmarried, but Henriet correctly identifies a sacred dimension to the role of these women, although he does not elaborate on what this was or what its origins might be.47 What that religious role was, how it connected to the property they held, and what kinds of authority and agency it might have given these king’s daughters and sisters deserves further exploration. In my view, the infantazgo is best understood not simply or primarily as a legal category of property or as a construct of ownership created by the king to allow him to exert control. Rather, it should be seen as another part of the inalienable possessions of the royal family, whose possession by its likewise inalienable royal daughters provided part of the sacred support—Weiner’s cosmological authentication—of royal rule. This support was located in the meanings and values ascribed to their religious role, that is, in the virginity

46. Patrick Henriet, “Deo votas. L’infantado et la fonction des infantes dans la Castille et le León des Xe–XIIe siècles,” in Au cloître et dans le monde, ed. Patrick Henriet and Anne-Marie LeGras (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), 189–201. Others who have discussed the infantazgo include Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 31–32, 62–66; García Calles, Doña Sancha, chap. 3; Carlos Reglero de la Fuente, “Los testamentos de las infantas Elvira y Sancha: Monasterios y espacios de poder,” in Mundos medievales: Espacios sociedades y poder, ed. Beatriz Arízaga Bolumburu, Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea, Dolores Mariño Veiras, Carmen Díez Herrera, Esther Peña Bocos, Susana Guijarro González, and Javier Añíbarro Rodríguez (Santander: PUbliCan, 2012) 1: 835–48. 47. Henriet, “Deo votas,” 191; Martin, Queen as King, 31–32, 63; Georges Martin, “Le testament d’Elvire (Tábara, 1099),” e-Spania, 5 (2008), doi:10.4000/e-spania.12303, 7; Reglero de la Fuente, “Testamentos de las infantas,” 5–11.

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INTRODUCTION

they preserved, the patronage they practiced of religious institutions, the prayer life they followed, the gifts they gave, and the functions all these were believed to serve in the kingdom. The notion that the involvement of women in religious life can confer on them some kind of power is contentious. Religion, insofar as it is gendered as female by scholars and thus described as private, is not taken seriously as a source of political power. Moreover religious ideas and practices are often viewed as providing a passive rather than active contribution to the construction of royal power: a queen might enact her power through patronage of religious institutions, for instance, but that patronage is not the source of her power.48 Religious devotion, and the perceived connection to the divine that prayer fosters, is not itself generally considered a source of political power but, rather, a reflection or performance of power derived elsewhere, notably from the queen’s association with the king. Matters are viewed quite differently when the male counterpart of these royal women is considered. The sacred king of the early Middle Ages, “by nature an individual man . . . by grace, a Christus, that is, a God-man,” as conveyed in the twelfth-century Norman Anonymous, was presented as wedding in himself the power of the prince and the power of the pastor.49 The notion of sacral kingship, which presented the power of the king as issuing from divine sanction, was one of the useful fictions that confirmed the king’s status as a subject with agency by concealing the networks, partnerships, and relationships on which monarchy depended.50 It allowed the king to assert himself as uniquely powerful against those who would compete with him, be it members of his family, male and female; his nobles; or his clergy. It is up to the historian to uncover these fictions and reveal the networks of relationships that created and allowed power. A king whose power was contingent, resting on sacred authorization that came from outside himself as well as on a web of relations and exchanges, along with dynastic and genealogical accidents and formulations—as was always the case—does not, perhaps, fulfill our longing for a fully realized independent medieval subject, but it does better reflect medieval reality. León-Castilla has always been thought to be deficient as an “unsacred monarchy,” in the words of Teofilo Ruíz. Its kings, at least after 1157 (the end of the reign of Alfonso VII), made little or no appeal to the sacred dimension 48. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 156, 161. 49. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 46; Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 782–83. 50. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 46–48; Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, trans. Éva Pálmai (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 57–61.

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for support of their activities because they eschewed the traditional features of sacral kingship, notably the practices of anointing, coronation, and thaumaturgic healing that we see in the contemporary English and French monarchies.51 Royal legitimacy was founded in León-Castilla, according to Ruíz, not in theology and religious ritual but in military power, its expression and representation.52 Even before 1157, the kings of the Asturias and León made infrequent recourse to the practices of anointing and coronation because kings, quite understandably, avoided practices that would make them dependent on the Spanish Church instead of the other way around.53 Anointing was only one potential element that could support the sacrality of a monarchy, however. Sacral monarchy was underpinned by a wide variety of royal cultural practices—patronage of religious communities, church building, and relic collection, as well as public rituals and processions—and by claims of special status for members of the royal family beyond the king.54 In what follows, I argue that we have been looking in the wrong place for holy power in Spain and the authentication it provided. The notion of a sacred king itself was not an uncomplicated description of reality but, rather, a narrative articulated through a range of media and an argument for a unitary, all-encompassing male ruler that competed with claims of royal women across Europe to have strength in this domain. In León and Castilla, it was the daughters and sisters of kings who took on the sacred sphere through practices of prayer, gifts, and associations with monastic communities and who gained power from the actions they performed and the connections they developed. The traces of their activity are preserved in chronicles and cartularies; in the manuscripts they patronized and the precious objects they produced, used, and gave; in law, literature, and liturgy; and in the places they 51. Teofilo Ruíz, “Unsacred Monarchy: The Kings of Castile in the Later Middle Ages,” in Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages, ed. Saul Wilentz, 109–44 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985). Compare Américo Castro, La realidad histórica de España (Madrid: Editorial Porrúa, 1962), 369–72; José Maravall, La oposición politica bajo los Austrias (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974), 157–58; José Nieto Soria, Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla (siglos XIII–XVI) (Madrid: Eudema, 1988); Peter Linehan’s review of Nieto Soria, “Iglesia y poder real en Castilla: El episcopado, 1250–1350. Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla (siglos XIII–XVI): Jose Manuel Nieto Soria and José Manuel Nieto Soria” [review] Speculum 65 (1990): 469–72; Lucy K. Pick, “Sacred Queens and Warrior Kings in the Royal Portraits of the Liber Testamentorum of Oviedo,” Viator 42 (2011): 51–52. 52. Ruíz, “Unsacred Monarchy,” 114–26. 53. Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 56–58, 122–24, chap. 5. 54. Patrick Corbet, Les saints ottoniens (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbeke Verlag, 1986), 242–49; Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, 115–22; Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London: Arnold, 1979), 78–79, 84–85; Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination (London: Harvey Miller, 1991), 1: 61.

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lived. I consider this evidence, from the time of the Visigoths and the Muslim Conquest of 711 until the time when a royal daughter, Queen Urraca, began her rule in her own right in 1109, in a series of chapters arranged thematically. In chapter 1, I explore the background of why royal women in León-Castilla had access to their particular clusters of resources and norms. Visigothic inheritance patterns, which allowed male and female children to inherit equally, help explain their command of economic resources. But Visigothic notions of monarchy, which explicitly excluded the king’s nuclear family from power, do not provide a model for the post-Conquest Christian kingdoms. Who the ruler was depended first of all on lineage, a lineage system in which patrilineal descent struggled with and eventually defeated an older system of descent through the king’s daughter. The king’s daughter was taken out of the line of succession and directed instead toward religious life, in which she gained different kinds of powers. Her father married the daughters of rivals but refused to give these men his own daughters in return. From the ninth to the eleventh century, the daughters of this line of kings were kept in the lineage, becoming consecrated virgins rather than marriage partners. In chapter 2, I examine the roots of the religious structures that allowed these royal women to cultivate strong networks of power, exploring in different contexts the relationship between virginity and martyrdom. I review the history of consecrated virginity and explore the influence of the teachings of Ambrose on female virginity and Leander of Seville on women’s monasticism in Spain. Hagiographies of martyrs and saints were also used to support or constrain the roles of royal women. I conclude the chapter by exploring what we can learn about the meaning of royal female consecration from the objects and images produced for their use. As I explore in chapter 3, royal daughters created their own networks of patronage, piety, and influence through the property holdings they had and by means of the gifts they gave and the favors they offered. I rely on the considerable documentary evidence of their activity in charters and cartularies to explore the human networks of power established by these women and to map their power across the kingdom, both in relationship to the male networks of power deployed by their respective kings and spatially across the territory of the kingdom. Moreover, only when we consider also how these royal daughters were also linked to other women can we fully understand not only the extent and limits of their own power but also how the entirety of the monarchical system in which they all lived functioned. In chapter 4, I consider two popular themes in recent scholarship—giftgiving and family memory—and how they were deeply intertwined in the

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actions of the royal daughters of León-Castilla. Medieval memorial practices never existed solely for their own sake; memory was always allied to power, worldly and divine, with the former seen as an extension of the latter. The founding of a monastery embodied the practice of keeping-while-giving; daughters and property and objects were given to God, and simultaneously they were kept for the use and benefit of the family. In founding such institutions, they sought to secure permanence in a world that was constantly subject to change and decay. Memory of the dead, which combined the custody of their remains and intercessory prayer for their souls, promised future membership for its members in the kingdom of Heaven. The women, the monasteries, and the royal bodies in their custody were all material expressions of keeping, but the most the women could do was bear a vision of permanence in a social world always in flux. This they did in part through their own gifts. I consider the relationship among memory, gift, and death through a discussion of the objects and books donated by eleventh-century royal women. What, if anything, changed for royal daughters when one of them, Queen Urraca, became queen in her own right in 1109? To what extent can we find their roles mirrored in royal women across contemporary Europe, or is Spain, as the travel posters used to suggest, just “different?”55 In the conclusion, I address both these questions. First, I survey the fate of later medieval royal daughters in all the Iberian kingdoms. Although most of these women did marry, they retained something of the charism of rulership possessed by their female ancestors. Moreover, the notion of a royal daughter committed to a religious life, in which she possessed a religious community continued to persist. Second, I extend my survey to contemporary royal women outside the Iberian peninsula, arguing that the roles of royal women in Iberia have parallels to the notions about royalty, femaleness and sacrality found at this time elsewhere in Europe: in Anglo-Saxon England and especially Ottonian Germany. We find both typological similarities and direct connections between royal daughters in León-Castilla and their peers in Germany. Power in the early Spanish kingdoms, and indeed throughout the medieval world, worked through networks of relationships. The king may have been the apex or focal point of the network, but for his power to be exercised, it had to be shared. Ruling over large and disparate territories, the king used his sons as lieutenants. In this book, I show that he also used his daughters and sisters, who were more dependent on the king than his sons and thus also more loyal and useful. Their material holdings in various parts 55. Linehan, History and the Historians, 192.

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of the kingdom enhanced the royal power base and provided key resources at specific moments for royal policies. And their landed wealth was wedded to notions of these women as conduits to the sacred, as intercessors for the dead, and as the loci for prayer and penance on behalf of the royal house that made them not only powerful but indispensable.

 Ch ap ter 1 Visigothic Inheritance, Asturian Monarchy

Written law and local customs were among the sources both of the material resources possessed by the royal daughters of early medieval Spain and of the norms under which they lived. By examining ideas about succession and inheritance in the Visigothic and early Asturian kingdoms, we discover what opportunities and rights women held as daughters and, especially, as royal daughters. We find that the Visigoths, with their ideal of an elected monarch, dealt poorly with the problem of the king’s family and provided no formal role to the king’s daughter. The situation is very different when we look to the supposed successor of the Visigoths, the kingdom of Asturias, which formed north of the Cantabrian mountains after the Muslim Conquest of 711. In the earliest decades of that kingdom, the king’s daughter had a central role in the royal succession. As newer ideas of patrilineal succession gained strength, the king’s daughter was directed toward religious life, through which she acquired new and different kinds of powers. Although Visigothic ideas about the monarch and his family left little mark on the later kingdoms, Visigothic laws of inheritance proved both enduring and advantageous for royal daughters. Daughters had the same rights to inherit their parents’ property as sons did. Although parents could favor one child with a bigger share than the rest, they could not disinherit any of their children, except as a consequence of physical attacks or 21

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calumnies directed by their progeny on their own persons. This allowed single royal women to amass material wealth that enhanced their influence in the kingdom. The historical backdrop of this chapter is the Visigothic kingdom of Spain in the late sixth and seventh centuries, and the early Christian kingdoms, especially the Asturias, in the eighth and ninth centuries that emerged in the north of the peninsula after the Muslim Conquest. The Visigoths came onto the world stage in the fourth century, when they began to pressure the eastern Roman Empire to allow them to settle in its territory. As a result of contact with the empire, they converted to Arian Christianity. Under Alaric I, they were responsible for the sack of Rome in 410. Pressure from other groups pushed them into the Iberian Peninsula, Roman Hispania, where they created a kingdom that was dominant in the region, forcing out first the Germanic kingdom of the Sueves in the northwest and then the Byzantines, who had conquered part of the southeast peninsula in the sixth century. They reigned there until the Muslim Conquest in 711. In 589 under King Reccared, the Visigoths converted to the Catholicism of the local population that they ruled. One of our best sources for the history of the Visigothic kingdom in the seventh century is a series of church councils called by individual kings. These attempted to present an image of the kingdom as unified, strong, and Catholic, an image modeled by Isidore of Seville’s History of the Goths, which concludes in 615. Other sources belie Isidore’s picture of unity and suggest a regionally fragmented kingdom, which may account for the rapid success of the Muslim Conquest after 711. Once the Visigothic king was defeated, local powers came to their own accommodations with the new reality of Islamic rule.1 The new Muslim rulers had as much difficulty exerting hegemony over the regions of Hispania as the Visigoths before them. Small Christian polities emerged quickly in the eighth century in the Cantabrian Mountains and in the valleys of the Pyrenees, the latter supported eventually by the Carolingians. One group, centered first at Cangas de Onís, then at Pravia, and finally at Oviedo in the Asturias, constituted itself as a kingdom, and by the late ninth century at least, it claimed to be the successor kingdom to the Visigoths. Whether this claim was based in historical fact or was simply a rhetorical move to legitimize the power of this nascent kingdom as it began to push south of the mountains to confront the Muslims has been the subject

1. Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Visigoths in History and Legend, Studies and Texts no. 166 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), 48–51.

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of a historiographic argument that continues to this day.2 In this chapter, I contribute to this debate about Visigothic continuity, agreeing with those who see a broad discontinuity between the Visigothic and Asturian monarchies but recognizing both the persistence of features of Visigothic rule (e.g., legal norms such as inheritance) and the power of the myth of the Visigoths. Claims to be the direct successors of the Visigoths were used by the Asturian rulers to lend legitimacy to their own authority, with consequences for the role of the royal daughters.

Visigothic Royal Succession The Visigothic kings of Catholic Spain were, in theory at least, elected, chosen by a council of the “best men” of the kingdom and from that council. The principle of an elective monarchy is thought to reach back into a distant Germanic past and remained the ideal until the Muslim Conquest in 711. This theory of elected monarchy, in which monarchs were chosen from a pool of candidates acceptable because of their birth, existed in tension with a reality that P. D. King calls an occupative throne. Rulers were, in fact, made most often in one of three ways: by the prior association of the next ruler with a current one; by the designation of the previous king; or, most problematic of all, by usurpation. King suggests that hereditary claims were de facto what most often made a king in the seventh century, noting that, of the eighteen rulers from Leovigild (d. 586) to Roderic (d. 711), eight followed relatives and four others were considered usurpers. He concludes that little was left of a true elective monarchy.3 But Philip Grierson, based on the same evidence, concludes the opposite. He notes that, between Amalric II (d. 531), the first Visigothic king whose kingdom was centered wholly in Spain, and 711, there were twenty-two kings from fifteen different families, suggesting that the hereditary principle was weak. Grierson argues that, because of the large number of families that provided kings, the Gothic aristocracy in Spain remained strong enough to prevent any single line from ever mounting a lasting claim to be the rightful stirps regia. Maintaining the myth of an elective monarchy was a way that this aristocracy could prevent one family from gaining permanent control, even if what was called an election might simply

2. Ibid., x–xi, 55, 73–78. For a recent view that stresses continuity, see Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration: L’idéologie du royaume d’Oviedo-León (VIIIe–XIe siècles) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 45–50. 3. P. D. King, Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 24, n. 3.

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be the post facto recognition by the nobles and bishops of the kingship of a magnate who had deposed and assassinated his predecessor.4 The first Catholic Visigothic king, Reccared (d. 601), inherited the kingdom from his father, Leovigild, in 586. Reccared famously adopted Catholic Christianity, eschewing the Arianism of his father, and formalized this shift at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. Liuva, Reccared’s son, although still a minor, was made king on Reccared’s death, but he was deposed and assassinated by Witeric, a noble. Another noble, Gundemar, in turn assassinated Witeric, and on his death, Sisebut was “called to the royal summit [regali fastigio evocatur],” according to Isidore, in a phrase that hints at election.5 Sisebut’s son, Reccared II, ruled for only a few days after his father’s death, and we cannot but suspect foul play. Next, Suinthila, a noble, “received the sceptre by divine grace,” as Isidore vaguely puts it in a phrase that does not contradict the possibility of some kind of election or popular agreement among the magnates.6 During his lifetime, Suinthila attempted to associate his young son Ricimir with his rule to ensure the youth’s succession, but this was unacceptable to the Iberian magnates. Sisenand led a popular rebellion that led to his election as king in Zaragoza. Moreover, under Sisenand’s rule, the canons of the Fourth Church Council of Toledo in 633, called by the king under the aegis of Isidore of Seville, put in writing for the first time the tradition that Visigothic kings be elected.7 This principle was a small part of a much longer canon, the final one of the council, that addressed the problem of disloyalty and rebellion against the person of the king. It condemned under pain of excommunication those who swore loyalty to the king and then broke their oaths, and it declared that the deposed Suinthila and all of his family were to be shunned and might not receive honors. It equated rebelling against the king with rebellion against God, stating that if the people wanted God’s favor, they must keep the promises made to the king. No one should presume to seize the throne, no one should excite civil discord among citizens, and no one should plot the death of the king. “But after the king has died peacefully, the leaders of the people with the priests should establish the successor to the realm in common council.”8 4. Philip Grierson, “Election and Inheritance in Early Germanic Kingship,” Cambridge Historical Journal 7 (1941): 13–14. 5. Isidore of Seville, Chronica minora, vol. 2: Historia Gothorum, ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894), 60, p. 291. 6. Ibid., 62, p. 292. 7. José Orlandis, El poder real y la sucesión al trono en la monarquía visigoda, Estudios Visigóticos no. 3 (Rome: CSIC, 1962), 80–87. 8. José Vives, ed. and trans., Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos (Barcelona: CSIC, 1963), IV Tol. 75, pp. 217–21.

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On Sisenand’s death in 636, the provisions of this canon were followed, and Chintila was chosen to be Sisenand’s successor. The Fifth and Sixth Councils of Toledo, held during his reign, upheld the elective principle sanctioned by the Fourth Council. The Fifth Council declared that anyone who seized the throne, who was neither chosen by election nor of noble Gothic descent, would be deposed and anathematized; the Sixth Council forbade tyrants, tonsured religious, those of servile birth, and those who were not Goths by birth or custom from taking the throne.9 But this did not stop Chintila from wanting to have his own son succeed him, and he associated his son Tulga with his rule to help ensure the boy’s succession. Moreover, these same two councils sought to extend the protection offered in the oath sworn to the king to his children as well, provisions probably intended to ensure that Tulga’s succession would take place without difficulty.10 But it was in vain: Tulga was tonsured and deposed on his father’s death, and the magnate Chindasuinth took the throne and subsequently purged the aristocracy of any possible rivals. Once he became king, Chindasuinth, like Chintila, wanted his son to succeed him, and he likewise made his son, Reccesuinth, his coruler to ensure his son’s succession after his death in 649. Reccesuinth was the first king’s son since Reccared died in 601 to successfully rule after his father, and although Reccesuinth attained the throne through his father, the succession of Wamba, who came after him took place as a consequence of an election that was the model of rectitude.11 José Orlandís speculates that Reccesuinth may have had no children of his own.12 After he became king, Wamba was temporarily incapacitated—poisoned, as the later legend relates, by a herbal drink fed to him by Ervig, a member of his court.13 While incapacitated, Wamba was enrolled as a penitent and tonsured, rending him unfit for rule, and Ervig claimed the throne.14 Ervig married off his daughter Cixilo to the noble, Egica, and promised to nominate him as the next king as long as he swore an oath to protect Ervig’s family. Egica’s son, Witiza, ruled jointly with his father and continued to rule after Egica’s death around 702.15 We might think that the hereditary principle 9. Ibid., V Tol. 3, p. 228; VI Tol. 17, pp. 244–45. 10. Ibid., V Tol. 2, p. 227; VI Tol. 16, p. 243. 11. Julian of Toledo, Historia Wambae, in Opera, ed. Jocelyn N. Hillgarth (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 2: 218–19. 12. Orlandis, Poder real, 87–92. 13. Crónicas asturianas, ed. Juan Gil Fernández and Juan I. Ruíz de la Peña; trans. José L. Moralejo. (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1985) [hereafter Crónicas asturianas], 116. 14. Orlandis, Poder real, 95–98. 15. Chronica Muzarabica, in Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, vol. 1, ed. Juan Gil (Madrid: CSIC, 1973): 37, p. 29.

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had finally triumphed. But on Witiza’s death, Roderic, the last Visigothic king of Spain, “rebelliously seized the kingdom at the instigation of the senate,” displacing Witiza’s sons.16 Although this is described as a rebellious act, Roderic’s selection sounds most like an election by the palatine officials. Roderic’s own rule ended in 711 with the conquest of Spain by the Muslims. Egica and Witiza’s line stands as the enemy of Roderic’s rule, and in Christian chronicles written in both Muslim and Christian Spain, Witiza’s relatives and descendants were accused of helping the Muslims take over Spain.17 It is evident from the foregoing that the system of royal succession that a noble wanted depended on where he stood in relation to power. Aspiring nobles supported the preservation of the notion of election, the theory that the right man to be king ought to be selected from a group of his peers. A usurping tyrant who was successful became a legitimate monarch, chosen by the people, at least until he was displaced by another. But a noble who became and remained king, inevitably wanted his own son to succeed him. Because there was no official way to ensure inherited succession, such a king would attempt to force the issue by associating his son with his own reign, in the manner of the Roman emperors.18 But no reigning king ever went so far as to challenge the principle of election itself and shift officially to patrilineal, inherited succession. Elective monarchy may have been a myth, but it was a myth that kings, nobles, and bishops took pains to preserve. The myth of election detached the king from his peers, the leading nobility of the realm from whom he came and to whom his family was supposed, in theory, to return on his death. He was not the first man of a larger royal family but stood alone, and whatever notions of sacred kingship there were attached to the individual king and not to any particular family line. What sanctioned the king’s sacrality was not some mystical right arising from a claim of divine descent but the tacit acquiescence or express will (more often the former) of the people.19 Moreover, in recognizing a particular candidate as king, the people were thought to be merely ratifying a choice already made by God—the king was king “by the grace of God,” and his duties were both worldly and divine.20 The Third Council of Toledo under the newly Catholic Reccared described the dual character of the king, sacred and secular. King Reccared was “most 16. Ibid., 43, p. 31. 17. Ibid., 45, p. 32; Crónicas asturianas, 163; Abilio Barbero and Marcelo Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en la península ibérica (Barcelona: Crítica, 1978), 203–4. 18. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 193. 19. Grierson, “Election and Inheritance,” 22. 20. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 197.

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glorious, pious, and faithful to God” and the “most holy” and “most religious prince.” He was raised up to be king by God, and because of this, he owed his people both right governance and the requirement that he himself follow the true faith: Although all-powerful God has placed us at the head of the kingdom for the sake of the people, and has committed the governance of many peoples into our royal care, nevertheless we remember that we are bound by our mortal condition, and that we are unable to merit the happiness of future blessedness, unless we esteem the cult of true faith and please our Creator by the creed of which he is worthy. On this account, the higher we are raised over our subjects by royal glory, the more we ought to be forethoughtful of those things that belong to God.21 We have a suggestion here of what will develop fully in the later Middle Ages—a king with two bodies, one representing the office to which he is raised; the other representing his mortal, human body, in which he will have to answer to God about how well he served his office.22 The Visigothic king was sacred because he was the king, because of the office he held. He was not the king because he belonged to a sacred family. Without an ideal of a holy stirps regia, the Visigoths developed other ways to reinforce the sacred status of the king. The king’s temporal power was buttressed by the oath of fidelity sworn to him by the leading men of the kingdom; they swore it directly to the king and indirectly to God, who had made him king. This oath was already in place by the time of King Sisenand, as references to it in the Fourth Council of Toledo make clear.23 In addition, the king’s sacral legitimacy was demonstrated by his anointed status, on the model of the Old Testament kings.24 The first confirmation we have that the Visigothic kings were anointed comes from the reign of King Wamba, but the practice may have begun earlier.25 The Fourth Council of Toledo quotes verses from the Bible that use the anointed status of the king to enhance prohibitions against rebellion against his authority and attacks on his person:

21. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, III Tol., p. 109. 22. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 7. 23. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 126–28; Céline Martin, La géographie du pouvoir dans l’Espagne visigothique (Villeneuve d’Ascq, France: Septentrion, 2003), 353–61. 24. José Orlandis, “El rey visigodo católico,” in De la antigüedad al medioevo (Avila: Fundación Sánchez-Albornoz, 1993), 58. 25. Julian of Toledo, Historia Wambae, 2–4: 218–20.

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“Touch not my anointed” (Psalms 105:15), and “Who shall put forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?” (I Samuel 26:9).26 The ideal of an elective monarchy, the selection of one single man who was raised up from among his peers to embody all monarchical power, to serve at once as Catholic monarch, anointed of the Lord, vicar of God, and apostolic king,27 left little room for the king’s daughter or, indeed, any other person in his family. Indeed, during this period, there is little evidence for a “royal family,” properly speaking. Even if early Germanic kings were once elected on the basis of their membership in a few select lineages, this was based on a story projected into the past about a king’s ancestors and did not concern his direct descendants or their own progeny.28 It was an ideal that denied the procreative labor of the king’s wife by negating the work of biological reproduction as a source of power for the future.29 In reality, of course, kings had families, and they sought to protect them and ensure their good fortune after their own deaths. We have already seen that Visigothic kings attempted, with only occasional success, to associate their sons with their rule and that Chintila sought to extend the protection afforded to him to his progeny as well. When the heir of a king’s body was the same person as the successor to his throne, this highlighted a confusion between the king’s personal property, transmitted to his heirs by the laws of inheritance, and the realm he possessed as king, which was to be passed intact to the next king. What parts of what the king held, as a king and as a man, were he allowed to give and what parts were he required to keep to pass on to the next king? One of the few successful successor sons, Reccesuinth, who inherited his crown from his father Chindasuinth, was forced to deal with this at the Eighth Council of Toledo, summoned by him in 653. In a somewhat awkward formulation that sought to balance the fact of his father’s role in his succession with the necessity for the succession to be a product of God’s will, the bishops reminded Reccesuinth that, even though he had been associated with his father’s rule by his father’s decision while Chindasuinth was still living, it was still divine power that had raised him up

26. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, IV Tol. 75, p. 217. P. D. King uses this to argue that Sisenand was the first king to be anointed, rejecting earlier arguments that Reccared had been anointed; Law and Society, 48, n. 5. 27. Orlandis, “Rey visigodo católico,” 58–61. 28. As early as Tacitus, Germania, in Dialogus; Agricola; Germania, trans. Maurice Hutton (London: William Heinemann, 1914), 7: 274–75. Grierson is highly skeptical that the Visigoths ever had an ancient stirps regia, viewing the Balts as an invention to match the Ostrogoth Amals; “Election and Inheritance,” 11. Barbero and Vigil disagree; Formación del feudalismo, 187. 29. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 2–3.

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and subjected that which his father had given him to his rule.30 The tenth canon of the council limited the election of the monarch to the high clergy and the palatine nobility.31 The final section of this council discussed a problem that is endemic to a system of monarchy in which the king’s successor is not necessarily the same person as his heirs. The bishops in council complained that previous kings had enriched their personal patrimony by taking what was not theirs and passing it along to their children on their deaths, rather than to their royal successor. Kings were able to accumulate property because of their position as kings, not because of their persons, and these properties were to remain with the office that had acquired them: “What kings accumulate should be left to the kingdom.”32 Again, we have a distinction between the office of the king and the temporary holder of that office, and between the different kinds of possessions that the king possessed.33 The council declared that all the properties and goods conquered by his father, Chindasuinth, while king, should now belong to Reccesuinth, not as his personal property inherited from his father but, rather, in Reccesuinth’s capacity as successor to the royal patrimony. That is, although Chindasuinth and Reccesuinth held the same lands and goods, they did so as occupiers of the same office, not as father and son.34 The only exceptions were those possessions acquired by Chindasuinth before he became king, which all his children, including Reccesuinth, might divide according to the laws of inheritance. It is noteworthy that Reccesuinth ratified these provisions of the council only in a limited sense, not mentioning the election of the monarch and redefining Crown property to mean, not whatever he did not possess when he became king (as the council wished) but only whatever the king did not bequeath in his will.35 The life of the progeny and spouse of a Visigothic king was not easy or secure once that king died because of the dissociation of the king’s family from his office as king. We have already seen that Chintila sought to use the Fifth and Sixth Councils of Toledo to protect his progeny but without success. In the waning years of the Visigothic kingdom, first Ervig and then Egica, his successor and son-in-law, attempted to secure the position of their 30. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, VIII Tol., p. 261. 31. Ibid., VIII Tol. 10 p. 283. 32. Ibid., VIII Tol. p. 291. 33. On the way this provision entered the common European repertoire of thinking about kingship through its appearance in the pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, see Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 58–59. 34. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, VIII Tol., p. 292. 35. Ibid., VIII Tol., pp. 293–96; Joaquín Martínez Pizarro, The Story of Wamba: Julian of Toledo’s Historiae Wambae regis (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2005), 26–31.

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families after their death, introducing for the first time a description of them as a royal family (prolis regiae or semen regium). At the Thirteenth Council of Toledo in 683, Ervig got the bishops and magnates, “both present and absent and those who are to come in future times,” to swear an oath to protect the king’s wife, sons, and daughters and all their spouses, including those whom they would marry in the future. The litany of what they swore not to do reveals much about the precarious position of a deceased king’s family. They promised, on pain of anathema, not to plot against them; kill them with a sword or by any other means; give aid or advice to those who would despoil them; forcibly tonsure the men or drive the women into religious life; or, without cause, punish them by exile or mutilation.36 It is striking that the fourth canon makes clear that the council accepted the oath to protect the king’s family only out of gratitude for the king’s actions protecting the Church in the three previous canons (decided the previous day) and not because of any special status, political or sacred, that the king’s family was thought to possess.37 Every time this oath of protection of the king’s family was repeated, at the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Councils of Toledo under Egica in 693 and 694, it was framed in the same manner, as a way of thanking the king for his beneficent rule, especially regarding his treatment of the Church.38 The protection was not that owed to a holy stirps regia but, rather, that extended by the Church to the weak and vulnerable because of the request of their friend, the king, because of his special office and the way he conducted himself in it. We have seen that Ervig married his daughter to Egica and made Egica swear to protect her and the rest of his family on his death in exchange for his succeeding to the kingship. Ervig married his daughter to the man he expected to be named king as a form of protection for her; Egica did not become king as a consequence of being married to the king’s daughter. Shortly after Egica claimed the kingdom in 687, he attempted to undo his promise to his predecessor. At the Fourteenth Council of Toledo in 688, Egica claimed that the oath he had sworn to Ervig on behalf of his family was in conflict with the oath he had sworn as king to protect the kingdom and that he could not rightly serve the kingdom without breaking his oath to Ervig. Likewise, he asked that the fourth canon of the Thirteenth Council, which protected the king’s family, be reevaluated. The council, however, rejected his pleas. It agreed that the good of one family could not be set above the

36. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, XIII Tol. 4, pp. 420–21. 37. Ibid., XIII Tol. 4, pp. 419–20. 38. Ibid., XVI Tol. 8, p. 503; XVII Tol. 7, p. 533.

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good of the kingdom, but it also stated that there was nothing in the promise of protection of Ervig’s family that set the family apart or exempted its members from due process of law. It merely protected them from malicious attacks.39 Egica did not give up, however, and got the Third Council of Zaragoza in 691, a regional council without the status of those held at Toledo, to accept a canon declaring that, once a king had died, his widow was not permitted to marry anyone else, even the next king, and that she was to put off secular dress and enter a monastery. This canon was directed at Ervig’s widow, Queen Leovigoto. The stated excuse for this canon, which directly contradicted the Thirteenth Council of Toledo, canon 4, was fear of insult to the woman who had stood at the head of the kingdom, although no doubt in reality it stemmed from the same hostility to his predecessor’s family that had motivated Egica to seek to repudiate the rest of the protections offered to them.40 Despite his resistance to Ervig’s attempts to protect his family. Egica sought the same protections for his own family, recapitulating canon four of the Thirteenth Council at his Sixteenth and Seventeenth Councils, although, tellingly, in these later versions the queen was not among those who could not be forced to enter religious life. The other innovation he made was to require that in all the churches, on every day except Good Friday, prayers must be given and offerings dedicated to the king’s family.41 As we can tell from Egica’s attention to the fate of his father-in-law Ervig’s queen, the role of the queen under a theoretically elective monarchy was ambiguous. Protecting the men of the king’s family from forced tonsure was a way of preventing them from being automatically ruled out as possible successors to the king; this was the case with the deposition of King Wamba after his illness and tonsure because a tonsured man could not be king. Preventing queens from remarrying by sequestering them in religious life stopped them from playing a role in the royal succession. We know little of the Visigothic queens in the period after the Visigoths accepted Catholic Christianity. Reccared’s queen, Baddo, was present at the Third Council of Toledo and accepted the profession of the orthodox faith after her husband.42 We know that the mother of Reccared’s short-lived son, Liuva, was ignoble,43 Chindasuinth’s queen, Reciberga, was named by Eugenius of Toledo in her epitaph, and we learn of Ervig’s Leovigoto and 39. Ibid., XV Tol., pp. 464–69; E. A. Thompson, The Goths in Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 242–43. 40. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, III Zar. 5, pp. 479–80. 41. Ibid., XVI Tol. 8, p. 503–7; XVII Tol. 7, pp. 532–34. 42. Ibid., III Tol., p. 116. 43. Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, 57, p. 290. It seems unlikely this was a child of Baddo.

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Egica’s Cixilo through efforts at the councils to diminish their reach, but other queens did not leave so much as their names behind. They were not mentioned in Visigothic law; they did not, apart from Baddo, appear at councils; and unlike their Asturian and Leonese successors, they did not confirm documents.44 Queens had no formally or even customarily defined role in the Visigothic kingdom, but in practice, the fear that they could play a part in the succession was well founded. In the historiography of the period, in John of Biclar’s Chronicle, Isidore of Seville’s History of the Goths, and the Chronicle of 754, marrying the queen of your predecessor was the way both to symbolize and instantiate your own control over the kingdom.45 This was true when Athaulf seized Galla Placidia, the emperor’s daughter, after the sack of Rome in the fifth century;46 it was true when Audeca seized the kingdom of the Suevi in Galicia by force and took Siseguntia, the widow of King Miro, as his wife in the sixth century;47 and it remained true when ‘Abdal-‘Azı¯z married the widow of the last Visigothic king and made the daughters of other magnates into his concubines in the eighth century.48 It is no wonder that Egica was so threatened by a widowed Queen Leovigoto that he rushed her into a convent.

Visigothic Inheritance The male children of Visigothic kings were in a strange dual position. As the sons of a king, they could have no secure expectation they would succeed their father in that office. But as the sons of one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom, they had rights under Visigothic law to inherit a share of their father’s riches, the same rights as any child of a parent in the kingdom. As we have seen, this caused the bishops during the reign of Reccesuinth to attempt to distinguish sharply between the property of the king as officeholder and his property before he attained the throne. Moreover, Visigothic women shared the same rights of inheritance as their brothers, something that had consequences for later Asturian and Leonese royal daughters. Although the Visigothic norms of royal succession went into abeyance after the Muslim Conquest, their laws of inheritance, which dictated in their simplest form 44. Orlandis, Poder real, 103. 45. Lucy K. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles: From John of Biclar to Pelayo of Oviedo,” La corónica 32, no. 3 (2004): 230–33. 46. Isidore of Seville, Historia Gothorum, 18–19, pp. 274–75. 47. Julio Campos, ed., Juan de Biclaro, obispo de Gerona (Madrid, 1960), 92. 48. Chronica Muzarabica, 51, pp. 35–36.

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that all children should inherit equally from both of their parents, affected not only inheritance practices but also the royal succession in the Asturian and later Leonese kingdoms after the Muslim Conquest in 711 and the subsequent creation of Christian kingdoms in the north. These rights are detailed in the Visigothic law code, the Liber iudiciorum, promulgated by Chindasuinth in a now-lost version, expanded by Reccesuinth, and finally reissued by Ervig in 681 for the last time before the collapse of the Visigothic kingdom. It continued to be copied long after the conquest, and it maintained its influence throughout the peninsula, even after the eighth-century Muslim invasion, including its sections on women, marriage, property, and inheritance.49 Ervig added a few of his own laws to the code of his predecessors, but most of its contents were earlier laws either in original or revised form.50 Book four of Ervig’s code concerns inheritance, and it opens by describing the seven grades of relationship through which property was inherited. This section presents a distinctive understanding of what constituted an individual’s family, privileging direct ancestors and descendants but including also siblings and cousins, and including both the maternal and paternal lines. The parents, father and mother, and the children of either sex stood in the first degree of relationship to each other. The second degree consisted of the grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings. The third degree brought in the great-grandparents and great-grandchildren, as well as both paternal and maternal aunts and uncles, in ever-widening circles.51 The most striking and, for this study, important principle of Visigothic inheritance law comes immediately after the discussion of the degrees of relationship, with its emphasis on broad cognatic lineage. It is that sisters were entitled to inherit property equally with their brothers if either of their parents died intestate.52 That daughters had the same rights of inheritance as sons was so important that the principle is restated in a later article: “It is wholly just that those whom nearness of nature associates, the order of hereditary succession may not divide.”53 Children inherited separately from

49. More of its thirty-nine manuscripts date from the ninth century than any other, and the majority cluster in the ninth through twelfth centuries; Karl Ubl, ed., “Leges Visigothorum,” Bibliotheca legum [database], 2017, http://www.leges.uni-koeln.de/en/lex/leges-visigothorum/. Wendy Davies suggests that the practices of family property in the tenth century deviated from Visigothic norms in many respects, but this is not my impression with respect to the laws I discuss here; Acts of Giving (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 65–66. 50. King, Law and Society, 20. 51. Karl Zeumer, ed., Leges Visigothorum, MGH Leges 1 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1902), IV.1.1–7, pp. 171–73. 52. Ibid., IV.2.1, p. 174. 53. Ibid., IV.2.9, p. 177.

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both parents; that is, in theory at least, their father’s property was divided when he died whether their mother was living or dead, and likewise their mother’s property on her death. There was no discrimination with respect to age or sex. All offspring, male and female, old and young, received an equal share. Children inherited only from their own natural parents, however, not from step-parents. In the absence of children, those who belonged to the next grade of relationship inherited. Only if there was no living relative within the seven grades did a spouse inherit.54 Except in certain specific cases, such as the wife’s dowry or gifts that her husband had given her, property did not legally cross the marital bond. A bride’s property did not become her husband’s, nor did his property become hers. In practice, however, the children might choose to keep all their parental property intact after a parent’s death, and the marital property might be, and probably most often was, administered as one unit.55 These provisions applied to those dying intestate. But even those who took the trouble to make testaments could not overly favor one child at the expense of the rest. The Visigothic code contains a long section that urges parents to treat all children fairly. No more than one-third of an individual’s possessions might be specially bequeathed to one child, which means that parents were not allowed to disinherit any of their children, male or female, unless there was just cause and that therefore all children had expectations of inheriting from each of their parents. Moreover, no more than one-fifth of a legacy could pass to a body outside the kin structure, whether to churches, to freedmen, or to anyone else.56 This no doubt accounts for the many place names in Spain that include some form of Quintana or Quintanilla—they reflect one-fifth of someone’s estate bequeathed to a single holder, most likely a church or monastery.57 Marriage involved a betrothal and the payment of a dowry by the groom for his bride. The groom had to receive permission from the bride’s parents before the betrothal could occur. If the father was dead, the mother had control over whom her sons and daughters might marry, except that a son could marry whomever he wished once he reached majority. Then, a dowry,

54. Ibid., IV.2.5, p. 175; IV.2.11, p. 177. 55. King, Law and Society, 237. 56. Zeumer, Leges Visigothorum, IV.5.1, pp. 196–97. 57. Thomas Glick suggests such place names reflect Berber settlements in the heart of Old Castile and are derived from Berber kinship structures, in which tribes are divided into fifths; Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 139. it is hard to explain, however, why a name derived from a Berber tribal fifth would have been Latinized. See also Davies, Acts of Giving, 76–79.

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which could total no more than one-tenth of the groom’s possessions, must be agreed on. The groom could not give his bride any other gifts until the marriage had lasted one year, unless he was in danger of imminent death. When a woman died, her children inherited this dowry or it reverted to her husband if they were childless.58 After one year of marriage, spouses might freely confer property on each other, but all donations were to be formally recorded in writing. A wife could not encroach on gifts given to her husband by the king, except insofar as what was given by the king formed part of her dowry. The same was true for her husband. After her husband died, a widow enjoyed usufruct over a substantial portion of her husband’s property but ownership of only a limited part. She kept her dowry, but if she had children, she was permitted to dispose freely of only one-quarter of it. She had the use of the remaining portion of the dowry for as long as she lived. Likewise, she could dispose of only one-fifth of the gifts she had received from her husband. If a widow remained unmarried, she received the use of a portion equal to that which her children inherited from her husband’s estate. She had to use her portion responsibly, or her children could lodge a complaint against her. When she died or if she remarried, that portion reverted to her children. She could remarry anyone she liked, but she had to wait a year before doing so.59 If her husband died leaving young or unmarried children, she had the responsibility and right to manage their inheritance until they came of age or married. As a reward for her efforts, she retained the use of their legacy until that day.60 Property that she herself acquired either through inheritance from her own family or independent purchase before or during the marriage remained her own. What implications did these laws have for those who were bound by them? First, because estates were partitioned among the heirs and any individual could acquire land from several sources, those who held property could exercise rights over a confusing allotment of chattels and far-flung parcels of land. Because husbands and wives usually did not inherit from each other, marriage was not the most effective way of accumulating blocks of property. If one’s wife died childless, the property that she brought into the marriage reverted to her parents. If she had children, her property was divided more or less evenly among them, with the Church perhaps receiving a share. Only if she had but one child did her property and that of her husband pass on intact.

58. Zeumer, Leges Visigothorum, III.1.5, pp. 127–29; III.1.7, p. 130; III.2.8, p. 138. 59. Ibid., III.2.1, p. 133; IV.2.4, p. 182; IV.5.2, p. 198; V.2.3 and V.2.4, p. 211; V.2.7, p. 216. 60. King, Law and Society, 242–43.

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Because individuals were as likely to inherit from their mother as from their father, these inheritance laws reinforced the importance of the matriline, even within a patriarchal, patrilineal system. Women who married did not leave their own families behind and become dependent on their husbands but, rather, preserved expectations of inheriting from their own families and potentially needed to cooperate with their siblings over the administration of inherited property. Sons and daughters might inherit as much or more from their mother’s family as from their father’s, affecting their own ideas of what constituted their family. All of this meant that a woman’s connections and roles as sister and daughter could remain as crucial to her, even after marriage, as her connections as wife. When Dhuoda, a ninth-century Carolingian laywoman, wrote to her son that he should pray for his ancestors, she listed only the relatives through his father (her husband), and her reason was that it was from them that her son would inherit.61 But reality was very different for the Visigoths and their successors. Visigothic law gave women a great deal of power and freedom in theory. An unmarried woman was under the care of her parents, and although he had no legal right, a married woman’s husband might have exercised de facto control of her property with her consent.62 But a widow with young children or, more important for this study, a woman who had never married with a substantial personal inheritance had the real ability to run her own life and those of the people dependent on her. P. D. King argues that this law improved the status of women compared to earlier Roman and Germanic sources. Departing from Germanic law, women were now permitted to inherit. Similarly, the Roman preference for inheritance by agnates had largely disappeared.63 Visigothic inheritance laws were, however, at odds with the norms of Visigothic royal succession. Nonetheless, it is not surprising that nobles who became king wanted their children to inherit the crown and the lands they had acquired through being king in the same way they would have inherited if their father had not become king. Visigothic children had an expectation of inheriting what their father possessed, an expectation that was met with increased resistance when their father was king.

61. Dhuoda, Manuel pour mon fils, ed. Pierre Riché, trans. Bernard de Vregille and Claude Mondésert (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1991), VIII.14, pp. 318–21; X.5, pp. 354–55. 62. King, Law and Society, 236. 63. Ibid., 223. On the exceptional nature of women under Visigothic law compared to the rest of Europe, see Lisa M. Bitel, Women in Early Medieval Europe 400–1100 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 161–64.

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Family Structure in Northern Spain The Asturian kingdom was formed in the Christian north after the conquest of Spain by the Muslims in 711. When we examine the principles of succession that allowed kings to succeed to the throne in the Asturias, we find that the Visigothic ideal of election played only a theoretical post facto explanation in a system that was not elective at all. Instead, well into the ninth century there was a struggle between two different systems: one that favored patrilineal succession, possibly influenced by Visigothic inheritance law, and another that Abilio Barbero and Marcelo Vigil identify as a local indigenous tradition of succession through the matriline. In this system, power and property were passed between men as a consequence of the women they married, that is, from the husband of the mother to the husband of the daughter. Barbero and Vigil describe this as a form of matrilineal succession that is debased or transitional from the more classic, at least in theory, form of inheritance from mother to daughter or, as is more commonly found in practice in matrilineal societies, from maternal uncle to nephew. They find this system reflected in the early Asturian royal succession in the roles played by several women of the royal family in the royal succession, notably Ermesinda, the daughter of Pelayo; Adosinda, the daughter of Alfonso I; and the mysterious bride of Nepotianus.64 Barbero and Vigil’s hypothesis about the endurance of matrilineal inheritance in the north of Spain into the post-Conquest period is part of a larger argument they make about the persistence of pre-Roman cultural forms in the Asturias after the fall of Rome and through the Visigothic period and the Muslim Conquest. They accept the existence of a line of settlements fortified and garrisoned by the Romans from the first century CE connecting communities such as Astorga and León, south of the great wall of mountains that defines the Asturias, and protecting the more Romanized south from the less civilized Basques and Cantabrians to the north. They argue that the integration of tribal societies in the north into the Roman model was only late and partial, and that those who lived where the early Asturian kingdom would eventually be founded, at Cangas de Onís, preserved their tribal and clan structures.65

64. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 327–30. For a very different reading of the evidence, see Armando Besga Marroquín, Orígenes hispano-godos del reino de Asturias (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2000), 460–74, who argues that these women played a role only when a man of a suitable age in the male line was absent. 65. Abilio Barbero and Marcelo Vigil, “La organización social de los cántabros y sus transformaciones en relación con los orígenes de la reconquista,” in Sobre los orígenes sociales de la reconquista (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974), 144–45, 155, 188–92.

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Barbero and Vigil cite the Geography of Strabo (64/63 BCE–ca. 24 CE) as testimony of the matrilineal inheritance practices of the northern Iberians. “It is the custom among the Cantabrians for the husbands to give dowries to their wives, for the daughters to be left as heirs, and the brothers to be married off by their sisters. The custom involves, in fact, a sort of womanrule,” Strabo writes, before concluding for his Roman audience, “but this is not at all a mark of civilization.”66 Epigraphic evidence from funerary stellae in northern Spain, usually dated to around the third century, confirms for them Strabo’s statements about matriarchal culture in northern Spain. One group of epitaphs is associated with the Vadinenses, whom Barbero and Vigil view as a tribal group formed after the Roman conquest with a range that originated in the region around Cangas de Onís, the first capital of the postConquest Asturian kingdom, and spread to the south side of the Cantabrian mountains. Many stones also describe the deceased as avunculus (maternal uncle) to the person who placed the stella, the commemorator. Succession from maternal uncle to nephew is a classic feature of matrilineal societies.67 The second group of epitaphs comes from Peña Amaya/Monte Cildá, and here almost none of the stellae indicates paternal filiation; most show relationships between mothers and children, describing families in which the mother was at the center of the family and revealing, to Barbero and Vigil, the persistence of direct mother-to-daughter matrilineal succession.68 Since Barbero and Vigil wrote, their views have come under increasing scrutiny and revision.69 One extreme position reprises the traditional themes of Iberian historiography and suggests that, far from retaining indigenous social and cultural forms, the Asturias was thoroughly Romanized and then Visigothicized; the first Asturian king, Pelayo, was a Visigoth, and the Asturian monarchy represents a continuation of the Visigothic kingdom.70 Scholarly consensus has solidified, however, around a more moderate position 66. Ibid., 146–51; Strabo, Geography, trans. Horace Leonard Jones and John R. Sitlington Sterrett (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), III.17–18, pp. 110–15. 67. David Schneider, “The Distinctive Features of Matrilineal Descent Groups,” in Matrilineal Kinship, ed. David Schneider and Kathleen Gough (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 29. 68. Barbero and Vigil, “Organización social de los cántabros,” 157–80; Abilio Barbero de Aguilera, “Pervivencias matrilineales en la Europa medieval: El ejemplo del norte de España,” in La condicion de la mujer en la Edad Media: Actas del coloquio celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez, ed. Yves-René Fonquerne and Alonso Esteban (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1986), 215–16. 69. For example, Luis Ramón Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas sobre el origen del reino de Asturias (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2001), 15–17. 70. The most extreme version of this view is represented by Julia Montenegro and Arcadio del Castillo, “Pelayo y Covadonga: Una revisión historiográfica,” in La época de la monarquía asturiana (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2002), 111–24; Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration, 45–50, 126. Besga Marroquín, does not deny the possibility of indigenous survivals in the

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that argues Roman influence throughout the peninsula was pervasive, although with varying intensities and effects in different regions. The idea of a limes, or frontier, separating a ferocious, unpacified, tribal north from a fully Romanized south has been utterly rejected.71 Instead, the north is seen as renouncing armed resistance and accepting Roman domination by submitting to Roman financial demands in the form of taxes and the census, and by accepting the military levy.72 The central Asturias, including the Roman city of Gijón and the area around what is now Oviedo, was the most Romanized area, and it is where the greatest number of remains of Roman villas can be found. The region around Cangas de Onís, where the Asturian kingdom emerged, was less culturally influenced by Rome.73 Most scholars see room beneath the broad umbrella of acceptance of Roman overlordship for the peoples in the north to preserve indigenous social and cultural structures, and they argue that suprafamilial structures such as lineages and clans remained important.74 Along with preserving their traditional extended family kinship structures, the northerners also kept traditional forms of land tenure and pasturage, and preserved their indigenous religious traditions, with Christianity arriving in the region only relatively late. None of this was incompatible with Roman rule; nor did it represent resistance to Rome.75 In reaching this consensus, scholars for the most part rely on archaeological and epigraphic evidence. They are rightly wary of the

north but highlights, rather, the Hispano-Gothic features of the new kingdom to critique the arguments of Barbero and Vigil; Orígenes hispano-godos, 17–34. 71. Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 97–99, 198–201. 72. Pablo C. Díaz and Luis R. Menéndez Bueyes, “The Cantabrian Basin in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries: From Imperial Province to Periphery,” in Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives, ed. Kim Bowes and Michael Kulikowski (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 273; Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 170–71. 73. Miguel Calleja Puerta and María Soledad Beltrán Suárez, “El espacio centro-oriental de Asturias en el siglo VIII,” in La época de la monarquía asturiana (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2002), 76–77; María Jesús Suárez Álvarez, “La monarquïa asturian. Nuevos perspectivas de interpretación,” in La época de la monarquía asturiana (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2002), 205–6; Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 197. 74. María Cruz González and Juan Santos, “Prologo,” in Las estructuras sociales indigenas del norte de la Península Iberica, ed. María Cruz González and Juan Santos, 7–10 (Vitoria, Spain: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1993); Francisco Beltrán, “Parentesco y sociedad en la hispana celtica,” in Las estructuras sociales indigenas del norte de la península iberica, ed. María Cruz González and Juan Santos (Vitoria, Spain: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1993), 84–90. 75. Díaz and Menéndez Bueyes, “Cantabrian Basin,” 272–73; Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 213–16. Evidence for the Christianization of the north is patchy and allusive before 711. Francisco Javier Fernández Conde surveys what is available and concludes nonetheless that the north must be considered Christian by 711; “Cristianización y symbología del poder en la época de la monarquía asturiana,” in La época de la monarquía asturiana, ed. Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 263–94 (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2002).

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textual evidence, such as Strabo’s discussion of northern Celtic matriarchy, correctly seeing him as an unreliable source motivated by his desire to show the enemies of Rome as barbaric and peculiar, and badly in need of Roman civilizing might.76 Despite this valuable revision, however, there is relatively little direct engagement with the evidence for Barbero and Vigil’s thesis of matrilineal inheritance or with its important consequences for interpreting succession in the early Asturian monarchy. The notion of a matrilineal northern Spain suffers from being too closely associated with the discredited social evolutionary theories of Lewis H. Morgan, who saw matrilineality as an early stage of all world societies, before they transitioned from barbarism to patrilineality and civilization, and also from being founded in the unreliable testimony of Strabo.77 Luis Rubio Hernansáez attempts to avoid Morgan’s evolutionary theories by founding Asturian matrilineality in local conditions of closely related women, living near each other and cultivating their lands, while their husbands were pastoralists, absent for much of the year.78 Only one scholar, Francisco Javier Lomas, has reprised Barbero and Vigil’s matrilineal theories in their entirety.79 Others who discuss the epigraphic evidence cited by Barbero and Vigil dismiss their conclusions that it shows matrilineal tendencies, citing a study of part of this evidence, the Vadinenses stellae (previously discussed) by Mariá Cruz González and Juan Santos.80 These stellae contain funerary epitaphs in Latin that name the commemorator who erected each stone in the nominative case and the deceased in the dative case. Some stones are decorated with horses, rosettes, arches, or swastikas. The main conclusion of the study is that the Vadinenses did not expand their range from the Cangas de Onís area southward of the Cantabrian mountains, as Barbero and Vigil suggest, but, rather, had their origins in the south and moved north to Cangas de Onís. González and Santos list the family relationships named on the stellae and note that the most common relationship mentioned is that of father

76. Juan Santos, “Communidades indigenas y administración romana el en norte del península ibérica,” in Las estructuras sociales indigenas del norte de la peninsula iberica, ed. María Cruz González and Juan Santos (Vitoria, Spain: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1993), 185. 77. Beltrán, “Parentesco y sociedad,” 78. 78. Luís Rubio Hernansáez, “Los astures y los inicios de la monarquía astur,” Antigüedad y Cristianismo 14 (1997): 300–304. 79. Francisco Javier Lomas, “Estructuras de parentesco en la sociedad indígena del norte peninsular hispánico,” in Las estructuras sociales indigenas del norte de la peninsula iberica, ed. María Cruz González and Juan Santos (Vitoria, Spain: Universidad del Pais Vasco, 1993), 117–37. 80. María Cruz González and Juan Santos, “La epigrafïa del conventus Cluniense. I. Las estelas vadinenses,” Memorias de Historia Antigua 4 (1984): 85–111; Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 206.

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and that filiation is commonly indicated by the use of a patronym. They do note four references to maternal uncle (avunculus), all of which come from the southern group of stones, and they raise the possibility that these might reflect matrilineal inheritance, as Barbero and Vigil argue; however, they ultimately conclude that the stellae reflect an essentially patrilineal system in which men of different lineages became linked when one married the sister of another.81 González and Santos list the different family relationships named on the stellae in their study, but at the same time, they ignore the genders of the deceased and the commemorator. To understand the gender systems that shaped their society, it matters whether an individual was identified by a patronym—but it also matters whether the individual commemorators and deceased were men or women, and what the relationship was between the commemorator and the deceased. When we compare the genders of deceased and commemorators in the southern and northern group of Vadinense stones, we see that the presence of women in these epitaphs is markedly higher in the northern zone around Cangas de Onís than in the south.82 In addition, there are far fewer epitaphs that identify patronyms in the north: only five of thirteen in the north compared to thirty-four of forty-seven in the south. Moreover, recognition of paternal filiation is not incompatible with matrilineal inheritance.83 Using these epitaphs to uncover the endurance of indigenous culture in northern Roman Spain is a difficult art. When they reflect a characteristically Roman value, such as the use of a patronym, is that a reflection of the real adoption of Roman family structures or is it an attempt by the indigenous commemorators to represent the deceased whom they honor as Romans by describing themselves in a Roman way, or both? These are inherently Roman artifacts, inscribed in Latin, used primarily by indigenous elites to show their assimilation, at least in part, to Roman legal and memorial customs. Like other epitaphs throughout the Roman world, however, they reveal important information about how people were bonded to each other. Commemorating the deceased was the duty of his or her heir, so the relationship of the commemorator to the deceased is a legal relationship that reveals how inheritance patterns worked, and shifts in these patterns across different parts 81. González and Santos, “Epigrafïa del conventus Cluniense,” 92–93. 82. Of the forty-seven inscriptions in the south, there are two female and thirty-three male commemorators, and three female and forty-three male deceased. Of the thirteen legible inscriptions in the north, there are four female and nine male commemorators, and five female and eight male deceased. 83. Ladislav Holy, Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship (London: Pluto Press, 1996), 45–46, 106.

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of the empire are significant.84 Thus the relative prevalence of men who commemorated their maternal uncles over men who commemorated their fathers can reveal the degree of matrilineal inheritance in a given area. The family member who felt the strongest duty to remember the deceased might be the one to offer a commemorative epitaph. In the case of young children, commemoration by their parents shows bonds of family affection.85 When we cast our net more broadly to include as many of the epitaphs of northern central Spain as possible, including not only the Vadinenses epigraphs studied by González and Santos but also the Monte Cilda/Peña Amaya group discussed by Barbero and Vigil, and others cited in Carmen García Moreno’s study of the region, we have a group of ninety-six inscriptions, a database large enough to support certain generalizations.86 These stellae reveal the exceptionally prominent role of women and of the extended families of woman within family structures in the north of Spain, distinguishing this society sharply from the rest of Spain and from the rest of the Roman Empire. When Richard Saller and Brent Shaw studied funerary epigraphy across the Roman Empire, they discovered the extraordinarily great importance of the nuclear family: fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. Members of the nuclear family of the deceased account for some 75–90 percent of all commemorations, depending on the region of the empire. In all of Spain, they account for 83 percent of all commemorations, with 17 percent of all commemorations coming from the extended family and from nonfamily heirs, slaves, and freedmen. The extended family (uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc.) represents fewer than 5 percent of all commemorations. They find an unusually high preponderance of women in the inscriptions from Spain, which they attribute to the role of matrilineality in property devolution there.87 In the epitaphs I studied, this pattern is born out, with 42 percent involving women, or women and men together, and 58 percent involving only men. In seventy-one of the ninety-six epitaphs from north-central Spain, we can identify a relationship between the commemorator and the deceased. 84. Elizabeth A Meyer, “Explaining the Epigraphic Habit: Evidence of Epitaphs,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 78–82. 85. Richard P. Saller and Brent D. Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers, and Slaves,” Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984): 126–27. 86. For my data, I use the epitaphs itemized by Carmen García Moreno, Población y poblamiento en hispania romana: El conventus cluniensis (Valladolid, Spain: Universidad de Valladolid, 1975) as 61, 68, 133–35, 177–99, 200–201, 204–24, 227–32, 234–45, 248–57, 280, supplemented by those itemized by González and Santos, “Epigrafïa del conventus Cluniense,” as 16, 23, 29, 31, 41, 46, 47, 50, 53, 58, 61–62, that García Moreno does not include. 87. Saller and Shaw, “Tombstones,” 134–39, 148.

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Women commemorated their husbands and husbands their wives in equal numbers, although the absolute numbers are small.88 Fathers and mothers commemorated their daughters and sons in equal numbers, suggesting the high worth of both sexes: fathers commemorated their sons six times and commemorated their daughters also six times; mothers commemorated each five times. By far the most striking result, however, is the larger role played here by extended family, specifically uncles, than in any other place in the empire. Extended family accounts for only 5 percent of all commemorations in Spain, but in the north, they account for 13 percent. Men and women commemorated their avunculus (mother’s brother) on five occasions, and two other commemorations involve uncles and nephews without specifying whether the relationship was through the male or female line. One man commemorated his maternal aunt, and another man remembered his cognatus (an unspecified relative). González and Santos argue that dedications to maternal uncles were not as common as have been described, but here we see that they form a significant subset of the commemorations in the north. Further, they had argue that the references to maternal uncles are intended to name a bond not between two people who think of their relationship as one between a man and his maternal uncle (a matrilineal relationship) but between two people who think of that relationship as one between a man and the brother of his father’s wife, that is to say, a patrilineal relationship between men.89 Indeed, men in patrilineal societies can form strong bonds with their maternal uncles. But these bonds are usually characterized as inherently affective and personal, in contrast to the bonds a man has with his father and his father’s family, which are public or jural.90 Epitaphs are both public and jural records, and those from northern Spain show men and their uncles linked in public, legal relationships. The distinction between patrilineal and matrilineal inheritance is not that the husband and father has a central role in the former and no role at all in the latter. The distinction is that in the latter a woman, as wife, sister, and or mother, is the key pivot point of the relationships among her husband, son, and brother. In northern Spain, where bonds formed between men according to their relationship to a particular woman, we are in a very different system than one in which a son inherits from his 88. Six wives commemorated their husbands, compared to three husbands who commemorated their wives. In all of Spain, 112 husbands commemorated their wives, and 98 wives commemorated their husbands. By way of comparison, in Gallia Narbonensis the numbers were seventy-one husbands and forty-seven wives; ibid., 148. 89. González and Santos, “Epigrafïa del conventus Cluniense,” 92–93. 90. Holy, Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship, 45–46.

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father and his mother is merely a vessel for his production. Northern Spain was as different in its family structures from the rest of the Roman Empire as early Asturian royal successory practices were from those in, say, the Carolingian Empire, in which sons or grandsons followed their father or grandfather in order.

Asturian Royal Succession There is very little concrete evidence, either documentary or archaeological, about Asturian society during the Visigothic period, between the withdrawal of Rome and the Muslim Conquest in 711. Roman Gijón was abandoned and was not reoccupied until the installation of a Muslim governor after the conquest. Some Roman villas show continued occupation, but it is hard to determine whether they were occupied and exploited in the same way they had been.91 Scholars reasonably posit an unequal society of regional groups ruled by local chieftains (potentiores). In this reading, Pelayo, who legendarily instigated resistance against Muslim rule by defeating the Muslims at the battle of Covadonga and who founded the Asturian royal house, was one such local chieftain.92 Our main source of evidence for the successory norms for the generations following Pelayo is a collection of chronicles written in the late ninth and tenth centuries. The earliest of these is the chronicle of Albelda (Albeldense), a work that blends geographical and cultural information with histories of the Romans, Visigoths, and Asturian rulers, along with information about the Muslim Umayyad dynasty. The Chronicle of Alfonso III dates from only a few years later and exists in two versions. The Rotense version is now generally accepted as being prior to the ad Sebastianum (also known as the Ovetense) version.93 They all reflect the preoccupations of their late ninth- and tenthcentury authors and compilers, most notably in a neo-Gothicizing thrust that gets stronger over time, intended to make the kingdom of the Asturias look like the natural successor to the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo. The chronicles project conscious attempts to link the kingdom to a Visigothic past, from the time of Alfonso III backward onto the early Asturian kingdom.94 This is 91. Calleja Puerta and Beltrán Suárez, “Espacio centro-oriental,” 75–80. 92. Menéndez Bueyes, Reflexiones críticas, 241; Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 300. For a very different view, see Deswarte, De la destruction à la restauration, 126. 93. On the dating and order of the chronicles, see Juan Gil Fernández, “Introducción,” in Crónicas asturianas, ed. Juan Gil Fernández, José L Moralejo, and Juan I. Ruíz de la Peña (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1985), 33–36, 38–41; Hillgarth, Visigoths in History and Legend, 69. 94. J. Ignacio Ruíz de la Peña Solar, “La realeza asturiana y la formulación del poder regio,” in La época de la monarquía asturiana (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2002), 164; Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 264–65.

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evident, for example, in the treatment by the different chronicles of Pelayo’s background. Each embroiders on the details of the other to enhance links between the Asturian and Visigothic kingdoms. All three agree Pelayo was a Goth, but the Albeldense indicates he was expelled by King Witiza and was in the Asturias before the Muslim Conquest; moreover, the regnal list included with this chronicle makes him a grandson of King Roderic in the direct paternal line.95 The Rotense describes him as an officer (spatarius) under kings Witiza and Roderic, who fled to the Asturias with his sister at the time of the conquest and who was elected by the Asturians in good Visigothic manner as its king; the ad Sebastianum makes him the son of Duke Fafila, who was of royal blood, and says that the Goths fleeing north, not the Asturians, elected him as their ruler.96 This neo-Gothic agenda means we have to read the chronicles with care to disentangle the different ideological strains that run through them. We must be suspicious whenever some feature of the early Asturian kingdom too perfectly mirrors Visigothic expectations. For instance, when the chronicles variously state that Pelayo, Alfonso I, Vermudo I, and Ramiro I were elected king in what, in all other respects, looks like a hereditary monarchy, we can be sure this claim to election represents a projection of Visigothic ideals rather than Asturian practice (figure 3).97 The chronicles apply their pro-Gothic ideology onto the local sociocultural substrate of the early postConquest years and interpret this context using categories and ideals inherited from the Visigoths but only imperfectly assimilated. For instance, their stress on the Visigothic lineage of the founders of the Asturian dynasty is itself very un-Visigothic. The chronicles show a far greater interest in royal lineage than is found in Visigothic historiography or makes sense under norms of Visigothic royal succession, and in this, we see the local context imperfectly assimilated to Visigothic ideals.98 When they pay attention to those who inherited because of women, something which, as we have seen, has no royal Visigothic precedent, we can conclude that we are confronting something outside their neo-Gothicizing ideology. 95. Albeldense [hereafter Alb.] in Crónicas asturianas, XVa, p. 172; XV.1, p. 173 96. Rotense [hereafter Rot.] in Crónicas asturianas, 8, pp. 122, 124; ad Sebastianum [hereafter ad Seb.] in Cronicas asturianas, 8, p. 123. Alb. XIV.33, p. 171 also makes him the son of Fafila without linking him to a royal lineage. 97. In this I disagree with Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, who, taking the chronicles at face value, argues that the Asturian monarchy was originally an elective system, modeled on the Visigoths, that transitioned into a hereditary kingship; “La sucesión at trono en los reinos de León y Castilla,” in Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las insttuciones medievales españolas, vol. 2 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976), 1112–29. 98. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 234.

Figure 3.

ADOSINDA

Royal succession in the Asturias

indicates hypothetical link

6. Silo

2. Favila

Froileuva

Children

SISTER

Munnuza

García I

Jimena

Munia

7. Mauregatus

9. Alfonso II

4. Fruela I

3. Alfonso I

Dux Pedro

10. Nepotianus

SISTER

Vimara

ERMESINDA

1. Pelayo

Ordoño II

5. Aurelius

Slave

Fruela II

13. Alfonso III

12. Ordoño I

11. Ramiro I

8. Vermudo I

Fruela

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The first woman to play a transformational role in the new Asturian kingdom was Pelayo’s unnamed sister, who, in the Rotense version, fled north with him to escape the Muslims. There the sister attracted the attention of Munnuza, the Muslim governor of Gijón. He sent Pelayo to the Muslim governor in Córdoba as his envoy, and while he was out of the way, Munnuza married the sister. This marriage, and a desire to protect the Church, motivated Pelayo to rebel against Islamic rule and defeat the Muslim army at Covadonga.99 Whether this story is historically accurate or not—and it probably is not—is not relevant. According to Barbero and Vigil, it reveals the author’s expectations of succession patterns in the Asturias. For them, Pelayo was a local chieftain who, in a matrilineal society, had power because of who his sister was. Munnuza married her to divert authority away from the local chief and toward himself, the representative of the new Muslim rule over the region. Pelayo rebelled not to preserve his sister’s honor or to save a Church as yet only weakly established but to reassert his own claims to power. Pelayo was king because he was his sister’s brother, and Pelayo’s son, Favila, succeeded his father because he was the brother of Pelayo’s daughter, Ermesinda.100 With Ermesinda, a new lineage is introduced. Pelayo, ruling in Cangas de Onís, married her to Alfonso, son of Pedro, the “dux” of the Cantabrians, and the father and son-in-law fought many successful battles together. Alfonso became king after Favila’s death, despite the fact that Favila had children of his own,101 because of his marriage to Ermesinda. In the regnal list of the Codex de Roda, Alfonso is described as being part of the lineage of Pelayo, which was only true because of his marriage to Ermesinda.102 He also fought many successful battles assisted by his own brother, Fruela.103 Who this Dux Pedro might have been is a matter for conjecture. The ad Sebastianum makes him a descendant of the Visigothic kings, Leovigild and Reccared.104 He may have been a Visigothic official who, at least before the conquest, controlled the provincial capital of Amaya and the region from the Rioja to north of the provinces of Burgos and Palencia (south of the Cantabrian mountains).105

99. Rot. 8, pp. 122, 124. 100. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 338–39. 101. From the testimony of the inscription of the church of Santa Cruz in Canga de Onís; Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, Asturias en el siglo VIII: La cultura literaria (Oviedo: Editorial Sueve, 2001), 32. 102. “Adefonsus gener Pelagii.” Alb. XVa, p. 172. 103. Alb. XV.3, p. 173; Rot. 11–13, p. 130, 132; ad Seb. 11–13, pp. 131, 133. 104. ad Seb. 13, p. 131. 105. Luís García Moreno, “Estudios sobre la organización administrativa del reino-visigodo del Toledo.” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 44 (1974): 138–40.

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Whatever his origins, his lineage appears to be organized under patrilineal lines, and for the next century or so, the succession to the Asturian kingdom was a competition between the patrilineal expectations of Pedro’s lineage and the matrilineal expectations of Pelayo’s.106 Moreover, it is a patrilineal lineage of the type we would expect from Visigothic inheritance norms, in that, whatever the wishes of the eldest brother, the other siblings in the family expected to receive an inheritance and a share of rule. We can see this negotiated in a positive form in the way Alfonso I fought alongside his brother, Fruela. Less happy sibling rivalries also persisted. Alfonso I was succeeded by his son, Fruela I, but to keep power for himself, Fruela I killed his own brother, Vimara, “on account of envy of his rule,” and then was himself murdered.107 Although the combined lineage of Pelayo and Pedro eventually defeated, or at least rechanneled, matrilineal claims, it did not succeed in making the succession of the eldest brother to his father’s office automatic and uncontested, as we have seen in the discussion in the introduction about Urraca Fernández’s three brothers and their battle to control the throne. The origins of the next king, Aurelius, are a bit of a mystery. The Rotense describes him as Fruela I’s “confrater”; the ad Sebastianum makes him the son of Alfonso I’s brother, Fruela; and the Albeldense, the oldest source, gives him no genealogy at all.108 During his rule, a man named Silo married Adosinda, the sister of Fruela I, and on Aurelius’s death, Silo “with her” obtained the kingdom, reigning for nine years.109 The Albeldense defines her in terms of her relationship to her brother, rather than her father, and this may reflect the matrilineal origins of her power to affect the succession. We might also describe her as Ermesinda’s daughter. The Rotense varies here slightly, saying that it was after Aurelius’s death that Silo married Adosinda, whom it describes as the daughter of Alfonso I but also relates that “on account of this thing” he took up the kingdom.110 The ad Sebastianum agrees that Silo became king because he married Adosinda.111 Aurelius and then Silo succeeded Fruela I, despite the fact that Fruela, like Favila before him, had children of his own. One of these children, the future Alfonso II, lived with Silo

106. This is recognized by Deswarte, although, because he believes the Asturians inherited their notion of a hereditary monarchy from the Visigoths, he sees the whole project as a clear case of continuity from the Visigothic period; De la destruction à la restauration, 127. See also Ferreira, “Entre conselho e incesto,” 44–53. 107. Alb. XV.4, p. 174. 108. Alb. XV.5, p. 174; Rot. 17, p. 136; ad Seb. 17, p. 137. 109. Alb. XV.6, p. 174. 110. Rot. 18, p. 136. 111. “Eo quod Adosindam principis filiam sortitus esset coniugem.” ad Seb. 18, p. 137.

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and his aunt, Queen Adosinda, governing the palace in Pravia where they held their capital “because Silo had no son from his wife.”112 Silo’s death created a major turning point. Up to this point, both Ermesinda and Adosinda had been able to transmit the throne to their husbands. Because Adosinda had no child of her own, she, along with the maiores of the palace, chose her nephew Alfonso. But his paternal uncle, Mauregatus, an illegitimate son of Alfonso I by a slave woman, a woman whose lineage was not worthy of producing a king, seized rule. In the competition between patriline and matriline, the patriline won for a time. Alfonso fled to live with the relatives of his mother, the Basque Munia, in Alava, a return to the matrifocal home. Mauregatus was succeeded by Vermudo I, a nephew of Alfonso I and the son of his brother Fruela. Vermudo reigned only three years before voluntarily giving up his throne for Alfonso II to return and claim it. Alfonso II established his own capital at Oviedo.113 The charter in which he endowed Oviedo is (as mentioned in the introduction) at once a legal testament, brief chronicle, and theological document. The chronicle section begins with the defeat of the Visigothic king Roderic at the hands of the Arabs and says that God raised up Pelayo, described as a “prince” rather than king, and gave him victory. Alfonso then traces the reign of his father, Fruela I, not through his own grandfather, Alfonso I, but through his grandmother, Ermesinda, Pelayo’s daughter.114 The turning point, however, was not the succession of the men but what happened to Adosinda. During the reign of Mauregatus, in 785 Adosinda took herself out of the royal succession by being consecrated to religious life, as we know from a letter of Beatus of Liébana.115 Mauregatus would have approved because then no one could marry her and claim the kingdom that way, but Adosinda herself may have desired it to avoid becoming a pawn of someone who would force her into marriage to acquire the throne and also to protect the rights of her nephew, Alfonso II. From this point until the end of the eleventh century, with very few exceptions to prove this rule, the royal daughters of the Asturias and its successor kingdoms of León and León-Castilla did not marry and produce children, and thus did not pass their

112. Rot. 18, p. 136. 113. Alb. XV.7–10, pp. 174–75 does not disclose the family relationships among Mauregatus, Veremudo, and Alfonso II. Rot. 19–21, pp. 136, 138; ad Seb. 19–21, pp. 137, 139. 114. Floriano, Diplomática española, 1, no. 24; Floriano discusses the authenticity of this diploma (132–41). Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 316–17; Hillgarth, Visigoths in History and Legend, 65–66. 115. Beatus of Liébana, Epistola ad Elipandum, in Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne [hereafter PL] (1862), 96: coll. 894C–895A.

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rights to their spouses and progeny. Rather, they became consecrated virgins and supported the rule of their fathers, brothers, and nephews. The failure of the last gasp of matrilineal succession illustrates how complete this transformation became. After his death in 842, Alfonso II was succeeded by Ramiro I, his second cousin. The Albeldense states that Ramiro won the kingdom by defeating Nepotianus in battle, blinding Nepotianus along with another “tyrant” and killing a third claimant.116 The two chronicles of Alfonso III state that Ramiro, whom they describe as the son of Vermudo I and thus in the direct paternal line of Dux Pedro, succeeded Alfonso II but was absent from the Asturias at the time of his predecessor’s death because he was off getting married. Nepotianus, described as a count of the palace, seized the throne, and then Ramiro defeated him in battle.117 All three chronicles, written after the triumph of patrilineal royal lineage was complete, present Nepotianus as a tyrannous usurper with no rights to the throne. Nevertheless, two regnal lists that appear in some manuscripts of the Albeldense place Nepotianus ahead of Ramiro I as a legitimate successor of Alfonso II. These lists describe him as a cognatus (a cognate or relative) of Alfonso II.118 The protagonist of a document from 863 recalls earlier receiving a document (“tessera”) from Domnus Nepotianus in Oviedo that supports his ownership of a piece of property. This demonstrates that, at one time, Nepotianus held effective rule.119 Moreover, an inscription on the city walls of Oviedo, placed there by Alfonso III and his wife Jimena to commemorate his predecessor Alfonso II, describes Alfonso III as the fourth to rule after his namesake. This makes sense only in a regnal list that includes Nepotianus as king.120 Who was this Nepotianus? The word cognatus is frustratingly unspecific, referring in its classical meaning to a blood relative on either the father’s or mother’s side. Barbero and Vigil suppose that he gained his claim by marrying a sister of Alfonso II, expecting to succeed to the throne in the same way that Alfonso I and Silo succeeded, by marrying the daughter of a king.121 Juan I. Ruíz de la Peña points out, however, that any spouse of a sister of Alfonso II

116. Alb. XV.10, p. 175. 117. Rot. 20, p. 142; ad Seb. 20, p. 143. 118. Alb. XVa, p. 172. 119. Floriano, Diplomática española, 1, no. 79; J. Ignacio Ruíz de la Peña Solar, “La monarquía asturiana (718–910),” in La monarquía astur-leonesa de Pelayo a Alfonso VI (718–1109) (León: CEISI, 1995), 91. 120. Amancio Isla Frez, “Monarchy and Neogothicism in the Astur Kingdom, 711–910,” Francia 26 (1999), 55. The inscription can be found in Juan Uría Ríu, “Cuestiones histórico-archeológicas relativas a la ciudad de Oviedo de los siglos VIII al X,” in Symposium sobre cultura asturiana de la alta edad media (Oviedo: Ayuntamiento de Oviedo, 1964), 311. 121. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 320–23.

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would be rather old in 842 if the sister were the child (like Alfonso II) of Fruela I, who died in 768. He hypothesizes that Nepotianus was a relative of Alfonso’s Basque mother, Munia.122 I would like to revive Barbero and Vigil’s hypothesis of a sister of Alfonso II, but I suggest that Nepotianus was probably this sister’s son, rather than her husband, which would make him Alfonso II’s nephew and would make Alfonso II his avunculus. As Alfonso’s nephew and count of his palace, he would have occupied the same position at court that Alfonso II himself, once count of the palace to his aunt Adosinda and her husband Silo, had occupied. Even his somewhat unusual name for the period, Nepotianus, which comes from the Latin nepos (nephew), seems designed to suggest and emphasize a relationship to an uncle.123 Might it have been chosen by a parent who was eager to make Nepotianus’s relationship with Alfonso II explicit and desirous of invoking a practice of matrilineal succession? For anyone familiar with the epic tales of early medieval Spain, it is impossible to think about Nepotianus as a possible nephew of Alfonso II without recalling the story of Bernardo del Carpio. The earliest extant witnesses to the story are three thirteenth-century chronicles of Spanish history.124 In the tale, Alfonso II is childless but has a sister who, without the king’s permission, becomes pregnant by one of his counts. Alfonso II imprisons the count and confines his sister to a monastery in a way that recalls how actual kings’ sisters from Adosinda on took religious vows, but he loves and raises the boy (her son), Bernardo del Carpio. The highly fraught relationship between the nephew and maternal uncle becomes the engine for the remaining plot developments in the story, from Bernardo’s outrage at the king’s plans to give his kingdom to Charlemagne to his rebellion against the king in the name of freeing his father. The anxiety over the place of the sister’s son in the Bernardo del Carpio narrative reflects, I suggest, memories of the transformation to patrilineal royal succession in the Asturian kingdom.125 122. Ruíz de la Peña Solar, “Monarquía asturiana,” 90. 123. Nepos can also refer to a grandson; Lidia Becker, Hispano-romanisches Namenbuch: Untersuchung der Personennamen vorrömischer, griechischer und lateinisch-romanischer Etymologie auf der Iberischen Halbinsel im Mittelalter (6.–12. Jahrhundert) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009), 761–63. 124. Lucas of Túy, Chronicon mundi, ed. Emma Falque, CCCM 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), IV.14–15, pp. 234–37; IV.20–22, pp. 244–49; Rodrigo Jíménez de Rada, Historia de rebus hispanie sive Historia gothica, ed. Juan Fernández Valverde, CCCM 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), IV.9–10, pp. 126–28; IV.15–16, pp. 137–38; Primera crónica general: Estoria de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289 (Madrid: Bailly-Bailliére, 1906), chaps. 617, 619, 621, 623; pp. 648–52, 654–56. 125. I develop this argument at greater length in Lucy Pick, “Rebel Nephews and Royal Sisters: The Tale of Bernardo del Carpio,” in Charlemagne and His Legend in Early Spanish Literature and Historiography, ed. Matthew Bailey and Ryan D. Giles (Bristol: Boydell and Brewer, 2016), 44–65.

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The tale of Bernardo del Carpio is not the only literary testament to the anxiety about the potential power of the royal sister and memory of the power of the matriline. Mercedes Vaquero suggests that medieval Spanish epic emerged in a culture dominated by the idea of lineage and that part of its role was to establish particular dynastic programs and the supremacy of one noble line over another. Further, these epics tend to emphasize the particular role of women as the transmitters of lineage and of political and territorial power. In the earliest epic traditions associated with the counts of Castilla, we see a system of indirect matrilineal succession, from uncle to nephew, via the sister of the uncle and mother of the nephew. Vaquero cites the Siete Infantas de Lara, in which the heirs of Ruy Velásquez are the sons of his sister, Sancha. Sisters are important to the royal succession in epic as well. The Poema de Fernán González and the Mocedades de Rodrigo emphasize the role of the daughter of Pelayo in transmitting the succession to Alfonso I, and both the epic and the historiographic tradition of the marriage of Queen Sancha and Fernando I recognize that it was through her that he became king of León.126 After defeating Nepotianus, Ramiro I was followed by his son, Ordoño I, who was followed by his son, Alfonso III. The patriline had defeated the matriline. Competing claims of brothers who expected to share their father’s inheritance continued, however. Alfonso III’s three sons partitioned the kingdom; their children competed with their cousins and with their own siblings for rule throughout the tenth century, and as we have seen in the introduction, Fernando and Sancha’s sons fought each other for control in the eleventh century, abetted by their sisters. The notion that the kingdom should be partitioned among all the sons of the king comes not from the norms of Visigothic royal succession but from the Visigothic laws of inheritance. These kings treated their realms as property, not as a kingdom or, at least, not as a Visigothic kingdom was ideally to be treated. Barbero and Vigil’s argument suggests the struggle between matrilineal and patrilineal succession and the defeat of the former is revealed almost unconsciously in the chronicles of the late ninth and early tenth centuries. But I argue that, at least in the Rotense, the shift from matrilineal to patrilineal expectations is deliberate and explicit. The chronicle begins not with Pelayo but with the death of the Visigothic king, Reccesuinth, and 126. Mercedes Vaquero, La mujer en la épica castellano-leonesa en su contexto histórico (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2005), 17, 76, 85–86, 95–97; Mercedes Vaquero, “Relaciones feudo-vasalláticas y problemas territoriales en el Cantar de Bernardo del Carpio,” in Charlemagne in the North, ed. Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby, and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh: Société Rencesvals British Branch, 1993), 475.

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succession of King Wamba, properly by election, in 672. In the course of describing the royal succession up to the defeat of King Roderic by the Muslims in 711, the Rotense adds genealogical information about royal lineage that can be found in no earlier sources and that reflects Asturian, rather than Visigothic, preoccupations with maternal and paternal lineages. This genealogical information is generally accepted as fact, but I propose that these links of lineage, constructed two centuries after the events they describe, were invented for an Asturian audience that needed them to make sense of the moral narrative of the collapse of the Visigothic kingdom and to explain the reasons for the rapid and thorough Muslim Conquest of the peninsula. First, King Ervig is given a genealogy (figure 4). He is the child of a Greek father, Ardabastus, and King Chindasuinth’s niece, and thus he is a member of the royal lineage through the female line. In this version, Ervig is given the whole credit for the plot to remove King Wamba by incapacitating him. Ervig, as we know from Visigothic sources, married his daughter, Cixilo, to Egica. Egica is described in the Rotense as Wamba’s consobrino (cousin), and more precisely via the maternal line, so Egica is linked through two women to the royal line. Egica repudiates Cixilo at the request of the deposed king, Wamba, but is succeeded by her son, Witiza, who rules with great wickedness against the Church, causing the fall of Spain to the Muslims. King Roderic,

Chindasuinth

Reccesuinth

Theodefred

Sibling

Chindasuinth’s niece

Ardabastus

Roderic

Ervig

Sister

Sibling

Vermudo

Cixilo

Egica

Wamba

Pelayo

Witiza

Bishop Oppa Figure 4. Visigothic succession according to Asturian historiography

Sons

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who succeeds him, is also given a genealogy. He is the child of Theodefred, son of King Chindasuinth, and thus in the direct male line. Egica had blinded Theodefred to remove him from the succession. And it is the treachery of the sons of Witiza that allows the Muslims to defeat Roderic.127 Thus we have two lineages, one patrilineal and legitimate (Chindasuinth, Reccesuinth, Theodefred, and Roderic) and one matrilineal, dangerous, and illegitimate (Ervig, Egica, Witiza, and Witiza’s sons). The Visigothic regnal list in the Albeldense extends the patrilineal line further, from Roderic through his son Vermudo to Pelayo, first king of the Asturias.128 If we accept the suggestion of the editor of the Asturian chronicles that the Rotense follows this genealogy, the famous confrontation of Pelayo with Bishop Oppa at Covadonga, where he successfully defeats the Muslims and creates his kingdom, becomes a contest between the patrilineal and the matrilineal lines.129 Pelayo has retreated with his army to the mountain cave of Covadonga, where his followers elect him as king. The Muslims chase him there and bring with them as their spokesman Bishop Oppa, who is one of the wicked sons of Witiza. Pelayo and Oppa confront each other in a debate in the climactic moment of the chronicle, as Oppa implores Pelayo to surrender: “Pelayo, Pelayo, where are you?” Pelayo, responding from an opening, said, “Here I am.” The bishop said to him, “Brother and son, I believe that it is not hidden from you how all of Spain was once governed under one command, under the rule of the Goths, and it shone above all other lands in learning and knowledge. And although, as I said, the whole army of the Goths was gathered as one, it was not able to resist the force of the Ishmaelites; how much better will you be able to defend yourself on this mountaintop? Rather, listen to my counsel, and turn your mind from this decision so that you can make use of the company of the Chaldeans and enjoy its many goods.” Pelayo refuses this temptation on the mountaintop and engages the Muslims in battle. Pelayo’s victory is complete: the Muslims are slaughtered and Oppa is captured.130 The condemnation of the matriline in the Visigothic era is explicit, and it is meant to color our reading of the Asturian succession in

127. Rot. 1–7, pp. 114, 116, 118, 120, 122. The ad Seb. omits some of the genealogical detail from its account. 128. Alb. XIV.33, p. 171. 129. Gil Fernández, “Introducción,” 65. 130. Rot. 8–10, pp. 124, 126, 128.

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the decades that follow Covadonga. The defeat of the matriline is right and proper, according to the author of the Rotense. Why was the patrilineal system able to succeed? Anthropologists traditionally argue that matrilineal systems are inherently unstable compared with patrilineal systems. In a typical matrilineal system, women are under the authority of their maternal uncles and their brothers, who rely on them to produce the next generation. But to produce these heirs, these women need to marry someone from outside the descent group; thus, the men with most authority over a woman do not include the one with sexual access to her, unlike in a patrilineal system, in which a woman’s husband is also the main authority figure. Tension can thus erupt between a woman’s husband and her brother, and different matrilineal societies give different weights to the husband’s and the brother’s authority.131 One argument suggests that matrilineal systems transition to patrilineal ones when the modes of accumulation of wealth change. When the primary unit of production is fathers and sons working together to produce wealth, the father has a greater interest in passing along his own wealth to his own son. This can occur when the conditions for producing wealth change in a society.132 We can see exactly such a shift in the emerging Asturian kingdom. In the aftermath of the Muslim Conquest and as a result of the unstable northern frontier of Islamic Spain, massive new opportunities for expansion for the Asturian kingdom were created as the kingdom moved from its enclave north of the Cantabrian mountains into the great plain to the south. The chronicles describe how the Asturian kings expanded their kingdom south. Of Ordoño I, the Rotense says, for example, “He built walls around cities deserted from antiquity, namely: León, Astorga, Túy, and Amaya. He built their gates on high ground. He filled them partly with his own people and partly with those coming from [Muslim] Spain. He waged war with the Chaldeans very often and always emerged the victor.”133 Such a king would want his own child to succeed him, and indeed, Ordoño I was followed as king by his son, Alfonso III. The kings of the Asturias and its successor kingdoms of León, and then León-Castilla, had a strong preference for not binding their daughters in marriage to outsiders, choosing instead to consecrate them to religious life. In this (as we see in chapter 2), they were imitated by counts of Castilla. When

131. Linda Stone, Kinship and Gender (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 111–12, 150; Holy, Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship, 102–3; Schneider, “Distinctive Features,” 11–15. 132. Holy, Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship, 108. 133. Rot. 25, p. 144.

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we turn to the daughters of the early kings of Pamplona and Navarra, and of the counts and kings of Aragón, we find a very different situation. What genealogies we possess indicate that the daughters of these families were predominantly used in strategic marriage alliances with their neighbors in Christian Spain and across the Pyrenees.134 These families even pursued marriages for their daughters with the Umayyad rulers of Muslim al-Andalus.135 Indeed, the families of the rulers of Navarra and Aragón, along with those of the counts of Castilla and noble families from Galicia, supplied many of the rulers of León with their own brides. Meanwhile, in the east of the peninsula, the counts of Barcelona pursued their own marriage strategies. They abandoned their earlier practice of contracting endogamous and isogamous marriage by the mid-tenth century, when they began to marry their sons to women of equal rank and to form unions for their daughters with their own viscounts. Their daughters’ marriages to men of lower rank allowed them to buttress their own power by creating networks of relationship through marriage alliances with their viscounts.136 In this practice of uniting their daughters with lower-status men of new lineages, the Catalan counts followed the emerging pattern of their peers in the rest of Europe.137 Meanwhile, the kings of León thenceforth practiced hypogamy, marriage to women of lower status. At the same time, because they did not marry off their own daughters, they were refusing to exchange women with the lesser men from whom they were receiving brides, thus successfully keeping their daughters for themselves and exemplifying their difference from these lesser men, a difference that was defined by this marriage practice. They also avoided, with one possible exception (discussed in chapter 2), giving their daughters to the Muslim lords of Spain. Exchanging women is a particular form of gift exchange that creates relationships of kinship as well as reciprocity.138 The refusal of the kings of León-Castilla to allow their own women to be exchanged created a situation analogous to one that Gayle Rubin describes among the people of traditional Tonga. In Tonga, women married up in rank; that is, families of 134. The genealogical lists in the eleventh-century Codex de Roda provide evidence for the marital strategies of Navarra and Aragón; José María Lacarra, “Textos navarros del Códice de Roda,” Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón 1 (1945), 229–45. 135. Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 26–27, 37–39. 136. José Enrique Ruiz-Doménec, “La primera estructura feudal,” Quaderni Catanesi di Studi Classici e Medievali 4 (1982), 316–31; Martin Aurell, Les noces du comte (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995), 50–53. 137. Bouchard, Those of My Blood, 22–38. 138. Rubin, “Traffic in Women,” 117.

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lower lineages sent their women to men of a higher-ranking lineage. Women belonging to the highest ranking lineage, however, were married only into the “house of Fiji [Fale Fisi],” a lineage defined as being outside the dynastic ranking system. If a chief of the highest lineage married his sister to a lower lineage, her son would outrank him and threaten his rule.139 The advantages of the marriage strategy of the kings of León-Castilla are clear if we follow Annette Parks in seeing political marriage as a form of hostage-taking. The king’s taking a wife of a lower estate becomes a surety for the good behavior and continued allegiance of her family to the king.140 There is no advantage to the king in marrying his own daughter or sister off to a neighbor and possible rival, giving that man a possible hostage. Rather than as a system of simple exchange, we should see these different marriage strategies as a competition with “winners and losers of women, more powerful and less powerful,” in which the object is to both keep one’s own women and get those belonging to other men, offering only patronage in return.141 The kings of Asturias, León, and León-Castilla engaged in what Julian Pitt-Rivers calls an aggressive marriage strategy, perhaps modeled after or influenced by the Muslim Umayyads’ own marital strategies, in which they preserved and enhanced their own position by marrying the women of their neighbors and keeping their own daughters and sisters.142 The ability of the Umayyad emirs and Christian kings to keep their daughters back in the midst of the pressure to make a reciprocal exchange affirmed their authority and difference from their rivals.143 This competition for women may explain the mysterious case of Queen Leodegundia. She is the subject of an epithalamium, or marriage song, preserved in the Codex de Roda (a manuscript that transmits the Asturian chronicles, among other texts) on the occasion of her marriage to an unnamed king of Pamplona. The poem is written on the final folio of the volume, in a different script from the rest. In the poem, she is described as daughter of a King Ordoño, both in the text and in an acrostic of the first letter of each verse, which names her as “Leodegundia pulchra Ordonii filia” (Leodegundia, the beautiful daughter of Ordoño), and much is made of her royal

139. Ibid., 144–45. 140. Annette Parks, “Prisoners of Love: Medieval Wives as Hostages,” Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 16 (1996), 61–62. 141. Julian Pitt-Rivers, The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 165. 142. Ibid., 165–67; Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 39. 143. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 43.

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lineage in the verses.144 This Ordoño is usually identified as King Ordoño I of Asturias (850–866) and sometimes as Ordoño II (914–924). Leodegundia makes no appearance in any of the genealogical sections of the Codex, however, nor is her existence otherwise attested.145 If she and her marriage are a fiction, Pitt-Rivers’s theory of competitive marriage strategies helps explain why the Navarrese responsible for the manuscript might have invented her— it added prestige to their kingdom and lowered that of León to assert that the Leonese king gave his daughter away in marriage to their own king. It is easier to change to a patrilineal system than it is to erase the memory of a moment when descent and inheritance passed via the women of a family. The strong and persistent interest we see in maternal lineage in the early medieval Iberian chronicles reflects this memory in a now patrilineal system.146 This shift would be of particular concerns to brothers, who would see the authority over their sisters passing from them to the women’s husbands. When these brothers were the sons of men from whom they should inherit in a patrilineal way, they benefited, but collective memory and awareness of the tradition of their sisters’ rights to transmit power would still worry them. This is the reason that Barbero and Vigil give for the brother-sister incest stories that surface in early Iberian historiography.147 They point to a genealogical list of the counts of Aragón, also found in the late-tenth-century Codex de Roda, which opens with a tale of violence between a husband and brother-in-law. Aznar I Galíndez, first count of Aragón in the early ninth century, had three children: Centollo Aznárez, Matrona, and Galindo I Aznárez. Matrona was married to García “the Wicked,” the son of Galindo Beloscotones. On the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the siblings “made sport of [inluserunt]” García in a granary; because of this, García, enraged, killed Centollo, repudiated his wife and married another, and claimed the county until Galindo I Aznárez managed to reclaim it from García’s son, returning it to the patrilineage of Aznar I Galíndez.148 The feast of Saint John the Baptist, the summer solstice, was a feast of fertility and sexual license in pagan Europe, and its traditions continued in folk culture into the modern period in northern Spain, as in other locations. As a feast of fertility, it promised not only human sexual reproduction but also the reproduction of the harvest, so places such as granaries could be of special 144. Lacarra, “Textos navarros del Códice de Roda,” 271–75; Madrid RAH 78, fols. 232r–v. 145. Lucien Barrau-Dihigo doubts her existence; “Recherches sur l’histoire politique du royaume asturien,” Revue Hispanique 52 (1921): 292. 146. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 245–45. 147. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 349–53. 148. Lacarra, “Textos navarros del Códice de Roda,” 240–41.

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significance.149 Ludens (playing) frequently has sexual connotations. For these reasons, modern commentators have concluded that what is being describe here is the commission of adulterous incest by Centollo and Matrona, enraging García.150 Barbero and Vigil further conclude that Centollo committed incest with his sister in what took on the guise of a ritual act, performed at the solstice, to avoid his father’s patrimony passing to her husband, as indeed eventually happened.151 Accusations of brother-sister incest were not confined to the shadowy ninth century. Barbero and Vigil cite a document of 1054 in which Fronilda, the daughter of García, king of Viguera, made a donation to the monastery of Irache and which mentions that her sister was absent “because she sinned and fornicated with her brother.”152 And Georges Cirot compares the relationship between Matrona and Centollo to another act of brother-sister incest, described in the late-twelfth-century Chronica Najerense, in which the illegitimate son of King García V Sánchez of Navarra (d. 1054) abducted his half-sister while she was on her way to be married to Sancho II of Castilla.153 The most famous story of brother-sister incest in the early Iberian kingdoms, however, is the tale that the reason the unmarried royal daughter Urraca Fernández favored her brother Alfonso VI above her other two brothers for sole rule over all her father’s domains was that the pair were incestuously in love and attempted to marry. The accusation first appears in an Arabic source, Abu Bakr ibn-Sayraf ¯ı ’s al-Anwa¯r al-Yaliyya (ca. 1130), transmitted through Muhammad Ibn Idari al-Marrakusi’s al-Bayan al-mugrib (1306), which argues that Sancho II was killed at Urraca’s instigation and that Alfonso VI committed adultery with her. It next surfaces in Juan Gil de Zamora’s De praeconibus hispaniae (1278–1282), and this author embroiders on the earlier narrative by adding that, when Alfonso VI returned to the kingdom on Sancho II’s death, Urraca insisted that he marry her. At first he refused, but after she imprisoned him, he relented, receiving Zamora from her, marrying her, and making her queen “so that by this illicit matrimony she might be able to

149. Elviro Martínez, Tradiciones asturianas (Madrid: Editorial Everest, 1985), 155–58; Julio Caro Baroja, La estación de amor (Madrid: Taurus, 1979), 127, 229–31. 150. Georges Cirot, “La chronique léonaise,” Bulletin Hispanique 13 (1911): 437. 151. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 350–51. 152. José María Lacarra, Colección diplomática de Irache (Zaragoza: CSIC, 1965), 1, no. 13; ibid., 352–53. 153. Georges Cirot, “Une chronique léonaise inédite,” Bulletin Hispanique 11 (1909): 270–71; Juan A. Estévez Sola, ed., Chronica Naierensis, CCCM 71A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), III.14, p. 171. Sancho IV of Navarra describes both members of the couple as his siblings, in José Antonio Fernández Flórez and Marta Herrero de la Fuente, eds., Colección documental del monasterio de Santa María de Otero de las Dueñas (León: CEISI, 1999), 1, no. 277.

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continue to rule and to be called by the name of queen.”154 Urraca’s crime is not merely sexual; it also involves the usurpation of her brother’s power and the murder of the eldest son of her father, his patrilineal heir. Whether these stories and hints of incestuous brother-sister relationships represent real liaisons or not, they all reflect anxiety about the brother-sister bond and the inherent power of the sister, not forgotten, to transmit rule. Fathers and brothers needed to make sure their daughters did not threaten the patriline but, rather, reinforced it. Marrying them off to the sons of another family to create an alliance, as was commonly, although not exclusively, done in the rest of Europe, was dangerous because a woman’s husband could (and did in the case of King Fernando and Queen Sancha) use her to claim the throne. The solution to this dilemma was to keep their daughters by consecrating them to religious life. This prevented anyone from marrying them to claim the throne. Is it an accident that the royal Leonese daughters who did not marry continued to be associated with Saint John the Baptist? He was one of the original patrons of the house that became the seat of their dominion in eleventh-century León. Communities of women from Galicia to Catalunya were dedicated to this patron.155 He may have acquired a particular association with virgins in Spain; he was proposed as a model of virginity in the Life of Saint Helia, in manuscripts with Spanish provenance dating from the tenth century.156 Compelled religious life had been the normal Visigothic solution for neutralizing defeated claimants to the royal throne. But for the successors of the Asturian kings, giving their daughters to God was much more than a way of warehousing these women by eliminating their role in the royal succession. The flip side of the specter of sibling incest is the enduring reality of sibling intimacy. Annette Weiner observes that women do not lose their identities as sisters when they acquire the identity of wife and that their work of biological and cultural reproduction benefits their brothers as well as their husbands.157 This was emphatically the case for those Iberian royal women who were given away to God, rather than to husbands, and so were kept inside their family. Their cultural work of prayer, memory, and counsel benefitted 154. Juan Gil de Zamora, De preconiis Hispanie, ed. Manuel de Castro y Castro (Madrid: Universidad de Madrid, 1955), 271, quoted in Catarella, “Doña Urraca and Her Brother Alfonso VI,” 41–42; Catarella outlines the genesis and development of this story. See also Ferreira, “Entre conselho e incesto,” 25–43. 155. Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 352. The royal women’s abbey of Saint-Jean in Laon, France was also dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. 156. Virginia Burrus and Marco Conti, eds., The Life of Saint Helia, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 96, 98, 102, 104. 157. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 12–17, 67.

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their brothers, whose rule they supported and validated. In this understanding, the prevalence of the sibling incest stories that surfaced in early medieval Spain reflected the real bond of sibling intimacy that existed there. By taking religious vows and exchanging the potential of worldly power for divine power, these daughters brought their families access to the sacred in a way that had been missing from the Asturian monarchy. Given to God, they themselves gave gifts that created networks to support both their own and their brothers’ power. These gifts solicited memory of themselves and their families in a way that links them to the funerary epigraphy discussed earlier in this chapter. The key to all this is the religious role they took on and the virginity they preserved.

 Ch ap ter 2 Virgins and Martyrs

With only a handful of exceptions, from the time of Adosinda in the late eighth century until the reign of Alfonso VI (1065–1109), whenever we have evidence that a king of León-Castilla had a daughter, that daughter was not married off in a strategic alliance. She was, rather, kept by her father and then by her brothers, remaining unmarried and connected to some form of religious life. These women were not, however, nuns or abbesses, bound under vows of obedience to a particular community. Rather, they seem to have lived as women vowed to chastity, committed to religious life and consecrated to God but independent and still able to control their own, at times, considerable property, much of which consisted of the monasteries given to them by their families to support their way of life.1 The property they controlled and the networks they created with it provided them with the resources to ensure their influence in the kingdom. But they also possessed the spiritual capital that came from their consecrated status, which was equally valuable for their families and which allowed them to be the appropriate custodians of family memory, imitators of the martyrs, givers of gifts, and intermediaries with the divine. The fact they were women was central, not incidental or detrimental, to their spiritual and social roles.2 1. Henriet, “Deo votas,” 195–97. 2. Compare Régine Le Jan, Femmes, pouvoir, et société dans le haut Moyen Âge (Paris: Editions Picard, 2000), 17, 89–90. 62

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A consecrated woman who was uncloistered and neither a nun nor a canoness bound to a community may seem unusual, but these royal women shared this status with women across the Europe of their day. They traced their history back to the virgins and widows of the late antique Christian world who dedicated themselves to the Church and proved exemplary models for men such as Ambrose, Jerome, and, in Spain, Leander of Seville. Widows formed their own order from an early moment in the history of the Church, serving as objects of charity and protection or as wealthy patrons and models of ascetic renunciation, such as Jerome’s Marcella, but always devoted to a life of prayer and chastity or continence.3 The fourth century was the great age of the consecrated virgin, given to God by her often wealthy parents and under the supervision of her bishop but at the same time kept in the family, remaining enclosed at home in a life of asceticism, worship, and study, where it was hoped her prayers would prove efficacious protection for the whole family. Other virgins lived in small informal groups too unstructured to be called convents.4 Their relatively unregulated way of life provoked anxiety among male churchmen, who feared occasions for sexual promiscuity and were wary of the potential of these female ascetics to channel divine power away from ecclesiastical structures. We learn most about how they lived from authors who were seeking to hedge them in by ordering them to stay inside and to have no contact with men or with women not likewise virgins or widows.5 Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), whose own sister, Marcellina, was a consecrated virgin, spoke eloquently about the power and charism that accrued to the consecrated female virgin in the late antique Mediterranean world. His treatise on virginity, written for his sister, associates female virginity with martyrdom. He wrote it for the feast of Saint Agnes and opened his work by connecting Agnes’s youthful martyrdom to her enduring virginity: “You have then in one sacrifice a twofold martyrdom, of chastity [pudoris] and of religion. She both remained a virgin and she obtained martyrdom.”6 He spoke of the benefits that accrued to parents of having their daughters

3. Jean LaPorte, The Role of Women in Early Christianity (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), 58–59; Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 147; Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God (London: Routledge, 1995), 91–93. 4. LaPorte, Role of Women, 70–73; Brown, Body and Society, 261–64; Cloke, This Female Man of God, 62–63. 5. David G. Hunter, “Clerical Celibacy and the Veiling of Virgins: New Boundaries in Ancient Christianity,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 139–40; LaPorte, Role of Women, 73–77; Brown, Body and Society, 267. 6. Ambrose of Milan, De virginibus, in PL 16: I.2, coll. 201D–202A.

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remain virgins: “A virgin is an offering on behalf of her mother, by whose daily sacrifice divine power may be appeased. A virgin, who will not request a dowry, nor abandon them by moving away, nor shame them by doing wrong, is the inseparable pledge of her parents.” Ambrose imagined his virgin as a gift to God, living in the family home, where she cost her parents little and did not disgrace their honor, aiding the salvation of her family by her prayers and through the offering of her made by her parents.7 When Ambrose praised virgins, he always had in mind female virgins who preserved the integrity of their bodies against corrupting admixture with men on the model of the Virgin Mary. In his hymn, “Veni redemptor gentium,” he calls Mary a “royal hall of chastity [aula regia pudoris],” her body a temple to be occupied only by the King of Kings, separated by a barrier from the rest of the world.8 In his treatise defending the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary, Ambrose writes, “The King of Israel Himself crosses this gate; the commander himself sits in her; when the Word was made flesh, and he dwelled in us like a King sitting in the royal hall of the virginal womb. . . . The virgin is a royal hall, who is not subject to man, but to God alone.”9 By analogy with and in imitation of Mary, a woman consecrated to virginity such as Ambrose’s sister, was herself a hall of chastity.10 The consecrated virgin was to remain at home, kept in the household, at the same time that she was herself an enclosure, a sealed dwelling space. Her presence made this home not an ordinary house but, rather, a royal abode. The prestige possessed by consecrated virgins, because of their association with virgin martyrs and with the Virgin Mary herself, became significant for the daughters and sisters of the kings I discuss in this volume. Equally important for these later royal virgins, who were custodians of physical edifices that combined monasteries, royal cemeteries, and palaces, was the way Ambrose describes Mary herself as a royal hall or palace. Ambrose’s hymn calling Mary a hall of chastity found its way into the Old Spanish liturgy, and the phrase was used by Ildefonsus of Toledo (d. 667) in his own treatise on the virginity of Mary.11 Urraca Fernández herself called Mary a virginal hall of chastity in her donation refounding the see of Túy, a charter that, as we have seen in the introduction, began by emphasizing God as King, ruling kings, peoples, and kingdoms. 7. Ibid., 16: I.7, coll. 210A. 8. Brown, Body and Society, 353–54; Ambrose of Milan, Hymni, in PL 16: IV, coll. 1474. 9. Ambrose of Milan, De institutione virginis, in PL 16: XII, coll. 339B. 10. Ambrose of Milan, Exhortatio virginitatis, in PL 16: IV, coll. 313D. 11. Breviarium Gothicum, in PL 86: coll. 114C–115A; Ildefonsus of Toledo, De uirginitate Sanctae Mariae, ed. Valeriano Yarza Urquiola, CCCM 114 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 161.

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Ostensibly for their own security but also because their independence was viewed as threatening, women in religious life were encouraged to live in a community and obedient to an abbess, under a rule such as that composed by Caesarius of Arles (d. 542) for his own sister’s community. Nonetheless, although their way of life was less well documented by contemporary sources than their cloistered sisters, women also continued to live consecrated to God in more informal arrangements. The Tenth Council of Toledo (656) required widows and virgins who wished to live continently to write or at least sign a profession of their vow and wear a habit, including a veil, that signaled publicly their desire for a life vowed to God but allowed them to remain in their own households as long as they pursued a life of asceticism there.12 The Merovingian councils likewise allowed widows and virgins to take vows of chastity and live piously in their own homes as long as nothing in their way of life gave rise to scandal.13 The Carolingians began to enforce strict claustration for women in convents. In a series of local councils between 755 and 847, mostly in bishoprics in Germany and northern France, canons enforcing strict enclosure were introduced to prevent nuns and abbesses from leaving the monastery and to prevent outsiders from entering. This must have had a chilling effect on women who lived outside a monastic setting and may have been intended to end such practices. These provisions eroded the public role of the abbess and the autonomy of the monastery, and they reduced the women’s ability to manage their own economic affairs.14 These canons, were they strictly enforced, would have made it impossible for consecrated virgins and widows to live in the informal household arrangements they had enjoyed. Outside the heartland of the Carolingian empire, however, women continued to practice informal forms of consecrated religious life in the ninth through eleventh centuries. This was the case in Spain until it was brought slowly under the religious influence of France during the eleventh century. Sarah Foot has argued that consecrated women lived outside the cloister in Anglo-Saxon England, either in their own households or at the center of small congregations, both before and after the Viking assaults of the ninth century. The presence of these independent women vowed to God provides a counterpoint to an earlier picture of a sharp reduction in the number of 12. Vives, “Concilios visigóticos,” X Tol. 5, pp. 312–13. 13. Sarah Foot cites four councils, Epaon (517), Orleans (549), Paris (614), and St-Jean-de-Losne (673/5), that discuss these women; Veiled Women (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), 1: 57–58, n. 110. 14. Jane Tibbets Schulenberg, “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience (500–1100),” in Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women I, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 56–58, 77.

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formal women’s communities in England after the Vikings. Foot’s nonmonastic communities tended to be transitory arrangements dependent on the support of a woman’s immediate kin group. The property used to support these women reverted to the kin group on their deaths; thus, these households left only accidental documentary traces.15 Eric Palazzo argues that the liturgical innovations for the consecration of widows in the tenth-century Roman-Germanic Pontifical of the Ottonian Empire were intended for widows living in a monastic community rather than in a more informal domestic arrangement, but there is no reason to assume this necessarily was the case.16 The Roman-Germanic Pontifical also contains a rite for consecrating virgins who remained in their own homes, along with its separate rite for cloistered virgins who lived in a monastery under an abbess. The presence of the former, innovative rite, the first explicitly intended for the uncloistered, suggests that these women represented a group with some significance at this time.17 The rite is absent from later Roman pontificals, however, as the status it created became increasingly disfavored during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and women seeking religious life in the Roman church were increasingly channeled into cloistered monasticism. Consecrated women outside the cloister were also present in the lands that had been part of the old Visigothic kingdom. Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier has studied women described as vowed to God (deo deuotae, sacratae, or conuersae) in documentary sources from the dioceses of Languedoc, where the Visigoths had held sway, a place where, like in Anglo-Saxon England after the ninth century, there were very few monasteries for women. Some were abbesses of family monasteries that were frequently also burial sites, but others were unmarried women living in the orbit of men’s communities or widows in a variety of different arrangements.18 Montserrat Cabre i Pairet found a similar phenomenon in Catalunya in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, where women called deovotae and deodicatae were found both living

15. Compare Foot, Veiled Women, esp. 1: 148–81; Sarah Foot, “Unveiling Anglo-Saxon Nuns,” in Women and Religion in Medieval England, ed. Diane Wood (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), 13–31. 16. Eric Palazzo, “Les formules de bénédiction et de consécration des veuves au cour du haut Moyen Âge,” in Veuves et veuvage dans le haut moyen âge, ed. Michel Parisse (Paris: Editions Picard, 1993), 35. 17. Under the rubric, “Consecratio virginum quae a seculo conversae in domibus suis susceptum castitatis habitum privatim observare voluerint.” René Metz, La consécration des vierges dans l’église romaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), 184, 218–21. Metz assumes these women represent a diminishing remnant (184). 18. Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, “Formes féminines de vie consacrée dans les pays du Midi jusqu’au début du XIIe siècle,” in La femme dans la vie religieuse du Languedoc (XIIIe–XIVe), ed. Edouard Privat, Cahiers de Fanjeaux no. 23 (Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 1988), 193–95, 203.

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in women’s monastic communities, where they were nonetheless able to administer and alienate their own property freely, and also living independently, outside of a community.19 As in Britain and Languedoc around the same time, there were very few formal monasteries for women in Catalunya (only three in the year 1000, for instance), so the existence of more informal structures is not surprising. Further west, Wendy Davies notes a distinction in the tenth-century kingdom of León between women called deo votae and those called confessae, which seems to go beyond mere scribal habit.20 It may be that the former were virgins consecrated to God and the latter were those who took on religious life after having been married. In any case, it is clear that the variety of forms of religious life open to women before 1100 in Europe deserves further study.

The Royal Women of the Early Spanish Kingdoms The religious status of the royal daughters of the kingdom of the Asturias and its successor kingdoms of León-Castilla has been described in a range of ways. The first royal daughter to enter religious life was Adosinda, who took up religious life as a widow after the death of Silo, her husband, according to the testimony of Beatus of Liébana (as I discuss briefly in chapter 1). Beatus relates, in a letter to Bishop Elipandus of Toledo about the Adoptionist Christological controversy, that he had read the letter Elipandus wrote against Beatus’s views on the subject, sent to Abbot Fidel in 785. Beatus writes, “We heard that letter written against us and our faith, broadcast publicly to the whole Asturias when the new devotion of the religious, Domina Adosinda, not the compulsion of those letters, brought us to Abbot Fidel.”21 Adosinda was not a nun or an abbess here, but a “religious.” Although she is often assumed to have lived her remaining days as a nun in Santullano in Pravia, the church founded by her and her husband Silo, there is nothing in Beatus’s succinct reference that suggests she was bound to any particular community or was anything other than a consecrated widow. The second Asturian royal daughter we know something about is Jimena (fl. 915–936), the daughter of Ordoño II and Elvira. She is usually described as a nun on the basis of a donation she made in 935, in which she described herself as living “in the monastery of ‘Satur.’” I discuss this gift and the 19. Montserrat Cabre i Pairet, “‘Deodicatae’ y ‘deovotae.’ La regulación de la religiosidad feminina en los condados catalanes, siglos IX–XI,” in Las mujeres en el cristianismo medieval, ed. Angela Muñoz Fernández (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1989), 170, 174–79. 20. Davies, Acts of Giving, 178, n. 63. 21. Beatus of Liébana, Epistola ad Elipandum, PL 96: coll. 894C–895A.

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people it brought together in great detail in chapter 3; for now, it is important to recognize that, although she lived in a monastery, this does not necessarily mean she was what we would call a nun, that is to say, a woman bound to a religious rule in a community under the command of an abbess. Jimena confirmed the document first, followed by the abbess, and then its sisters, who were each qualified as confessa. Jimena’s confirmation makes no mention of her religious status, suggesting she was not a nun among the other nuns at the monastery.22 Nor is she described as holding any religious status in the other dozen or so documents in which she appears, usually confirming her parents’ charters along with her brothers, itself an indication of her status. Still, her presence, living apparently unmarried, in a monastery suggests she may have been a consecrated virgin, and her position at the head of the confirmation list indicates she may even have been its domina, ruling the community over the abbess. As consecrated widow and virgin, respectively, Adosinda and Jimena would each have enjoyed a status that required them to remain unmarried and of modest or ascetic lifestyle but that offered them more freedom, mobility, and independence than a nun and than even the position of abbess would have permitted. Their flexible consecrated status differentiates these women from their closest parallels, the imperial daughters of the Ottonian Empire and the royal daughters of Anglo-Saxon England, who gained their own important public roles as canonesses, nuns, and abbesses in the most prominent convents of their realms. Indeed, the difference between Adosinda and her successors, and the consecrated women studied by Foot, Magnou-Nortier, and Cabre i Pairet is that the women I investigate here were royal; they were the daughters of kings. In other regions, those daughters of kings and significant nobles who were dedicated to religious life were predominantly located in monasteries or canonries, often as abbesses.23 But even here, there are exceptions. The Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Elder (899–924) had two daughters by his wife Aelfflaed who were virgins dedicated to religious life, but whereas the eldest, Eadfled, was a nun, William of Malmesbury distinguishes her from her younger sister, Aethelhild, by stating that, while Eadfled wore a religious habit, Aethelhild lived in lay attire although both were vowed

22. Emilio Sáez and Carlos Sáez, eds., Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 1996–2006), 1: no. 44. 23. Cabre i Pairet, “‘Deodicatae’ y ‘deovotae,’” 176; Magnou-Nortier, “Formes féminines,” 204– 6; Foot, Veiled Women, 1: 162–65.

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to God and “spurned the pleasures of earthy marriage.”24 This description suggests that Aethelhild was a royal daughter vowed to God but not cloistered in a monastery.25 The rite of the Old Spanish liturgy provided rubrics for the consecration of widows and virgins. The formulae that created their special status can be found in the Liber ordinum for bishops copied in 1052 at Albelda (Silos AM 4). 26 Ordo 29 of this manuscript was clearly intended for men and women who planned to embark on regular coenobitic life. It prescribes tonsure for men and vesting for women; then after prayers, antiphons, and responses, it requires the prospective religious to sign with his or her own name a profession of stability in the monastic house he or she has chosen, after which point the candidate was formally received by the abbot or abbess.27 But ordines 20–23 and 28 seem to offer women the possibility of a different status than that of solemnly professed nun in community under the obedience of an abbess. The first is a blessing for the clothing of a woman described as Deo vota (vowed to God). The second is an ordo for the blessing of consecrated virgins. Neither of these makes any mention of a community, and both could be used for consecrating kings’ daughters to independent religious life. The third, a blessing for vesting and veiling a virgin, is more ambiguous because, after the bishop veiled and blessed the virgin, she kissed his feet and then followed the abbess in order. This may be an alternative rite for consecrating a nun, or it may be a rite used for consecrating a virgin who would live in a religious house ruled by an abbess but did not promise obedience and stability to that abbess, or it may be a multipurpose rite for both kinds of vocations. Ordo 24 is intended for veiling widows and makes no reference to them living in a community.28 The career of Elvira Ramírez, the first of the royal daughters for whom we have substantial documentation, makes explicit both her peculiar religious station and her claim to power. She serves as a template for the other women whom I discuss in this chapter and the next in her role as consecrated virgin working beside her brother and his family, as custodian of family memory, 24. William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum anglorum, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 1: 198–201, cited in Foot, “Unveiling Anglo-Saxon Nuns,” 31n. 69. 25. Foot, “Unveiling Anglo-Saxon Nuns,” 26. 26. José Janini, ed., Liber ordinum apiscopal (Silos, 1991), 23. 27. Ibid., 116–17. 28. These four ordines are missing from another early episcopal Liber ordinum, Madrid RAH Emilianense 56, which does contain ordo XXVIIII; Ibid., 419–21. The Spanish ordines are distinct from those in the Roman rite; Gabriel Ramis, La consagración de la mujer en las liturgías occidentales (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1990), 154–64, 188–90.

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and in her association with martyrs.29 Elvira was the daughter of one king of León, Ramiro II, the half-sister of Ordoño III (951–956), and the full sister of Sancho I (956–958 and 960–966), as well as the aunt of Sancho’s youthful heir, Ramiro III (966–985), and ruler of his kingdom until 975. She appears for the first time in 946 at only eleven or so years of age, already called Deo vota, subscribing a royal document with her father, mother, and siblings.30 The earlyeleventh-century Chronicon of Sampiro states that Ramiro II consecrated his daughter to God and built for her the “wonderfully large” monastery of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey in León, located adjacent to the royal palace built by Ordoño II. Ramiro II and his son Ordoño III (d. 956) shared a final resting place in San Salvador under the prayerful eye of Elvira.31 She was the earliest royal daughter of this kingdom whom we know to have been charged with the duties of family memory and custody of the royal dead. Her association with a specific edifice, the palace-monastery of San Salvador, recalls Ambrose’s description of virgin daughters as royal halls of chastity, as well as the parallel he makes between virgins and buildings as containers of the sacred. Elvira is never described as the abbess of San Salvador, however, and it is most accurate to describe her as a consecrated virgin who was the domina of the monastery, its lord, who had power over the monastery both in terms of possessing its property and holding authority over it.32 The terminology was fluid, especially for communities where a woman was the domina, and especially when that woman was the daughter of a king. The royal domina could act as an abbess with or without the title, and with or without another abbess (or abbot, at least in Spain) beneath her.33 The domina held full dominion over the community and was not confined to it or bound by it. Our royal dominae amassed multiple communities, both male and female, under their lordship. Elvira remained close to her full brother, Sancho I, when he ruled the kingdom. During this period, she is described as Deo dicata (dedicated to God). Under her influence, Sancho sent emissaries to Córdoba to retrieve the corpse of the Galician youth Pelayo, martyred in 925 under ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III.34 29. Pick, “Dominissima, Prudentissima.” 30. Justiniano Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León (Madrid: Instituto Jerónimo Zurita, 1972), 657. 31. Justo Pérez de Urbel, ed., Sampiro, su crónica y la monarquía leonesa en el siglo X (Madrid: CSIC, 1952), 329–32; Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 169; Martin, Queen as King, 41. 32. On the relationship between property and authority, see Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3. 33. Ibid., 317. 34. Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 337–38. Justiniano Rodríguez Fernández assumes that Sancho’s wife Teresa prompted this mission alongside Elvira, but no contemporary evidence supports this assertion; Sancho I y Ordoño IV, reyes de León (León: CEISI, 1987), 89.

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Before the ambassadors could return to León with the body, however, Sancho I died in 966, and Elvira ruled the kingdom for Sancho’s minor son Ramiro III (d. 985) until she was supplanted by the youth’s mother in 975.35 It is likely that another monastery under the lordship of Elvira, this one dedicated to Saint Pelayo, was established when the body arrived in León after 966. We first hear of this community in 976 when, under the leadership of Gontroda “together with the community of virgins and those vowed to God in the monastery of San Pelayo in León,” the house donates land to a different monastery.36 Elvira’s own absence from the document can be explained by her fall from grace the previous year. In the eleventh century, this house existed under the joint patronage of Saint Pelayo and Saint John the Baptist, before Saint Isidore was added to its pantheon in 1063. Roger Collins argues, contrary to my position here, that Elvira was the abbess of San Pelayo and that, on the death of Sancho I, his widow Queen Teresa became a simple nun under her abbacy in San Pelayo.37 Collins relies here on an assertion by Antonio Viñayo, who in turn depends on a falsified document in which Elvira is, in any case, simply lauded for the virtue of her religious life, without any mention of San Pelayo.38 No contemporary document calls Elvira the abbess of a monastery. Evidence that Teresa was associated with the monastery of San Pelayo comes only in 996—after the supposed transfer of the house and its precious relics, to Oviedo—when she is called abbess. If Teresa was associated with San Pelayo from its founding in León, perhaps even as its abbess, there is no evidence of this.39 Elvira’s status as consecrated virgin was no barrier to her effective rulership while she reigned for her minor nephew Ramiro III; rather, it enhanced her role. Her dedication to God was frequently used as a counterpoint to her royal status in documents and in Sampiro’s Chronicon. In the latter, she is “Domna Elvira, vowed to God and most prudent,” because she kept peace with the Saracens and brought the relics of Saint Pelayo north.40 The quality

35. Pick, “Dominissima, Prudentissima,” 61; Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 339–40. 36. Emilio Sáez and Carlos Sáez Sánchez, eds., CD León 2: no. 446. 37. Collins, “Queens-Dowager and Queens-Regent,” 84–85. 38. Antonio Viñayo, “Reinas e infantas de León, abadeses y monjas del Monasterio de San Pelayo y San Isidoro,” in Semana de historia del monacato cántabro-astur-leonés (Oviedo: Monasterio de San Pelayo, 1982), 125–26, based on Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León, 2: no. 436. 39. The 976 document that first names the community does not mention her; Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León 2: no. 446. Teresa was called “Christi ancilla” in the earliest documents from Ramiro III’s reign that mention her (e.g., 2: no. 409), suggesting that Sancho I’s relict may simply have become a consecrated widow. On Teresa and San Pelayo of Oviedo, see chapter 4. 40. Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 340.

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of prudence, with its connotations of wisdom and courage, is appropriate for a ruler, and Sampiro also attributes it to her half-brother, Ordoño III.41 The charters of the period highlight the productive tension and connection between her religious and regnal powers and virtues. In León, Elvira is, “our most lordly queen, Domina Elvira, given to God” and “The domina, our most lordly Domina Elvira, given to God, whose viscera are full of the piety of the Lord and likewise of the universal Church, and who is pious and modest,” a metaphor that emphasizes her virgin body as a dwelling place for God; at Celanova, she figures as “I, the most humble and subservient Elvira, given to God in the order of religious life, child of the most lordly king” and signed the document as queen.42 This last formulation pairs the humility of her religious office with her status as a child of her royal father, something that her successors, such as Urraca and Elvira Fernández, took pains to emphasize. In a case that parallels that of Elvira Ramírez, Urraca García, the daughter of García Fernández, count of Castilla (d. 995),was not identified as the abbess of Covarrubias, the monastery founded for her in 978 by her father; however, like her royal contemporary, she is often described as the abbess in modern accounts.43 In the foundation document of the monastery, whereas Urraca is given to Christ by her parents, the monastery itself and all the properties belonging to it are given to Urraca, not the other way around. She received full lordship over Covarrrubias, including the jurisdiction to tax and govern these lands herself. She was the domina of this monastery but not, it seems, its abbess.44 She is never described as either an abbess or a nun in any subsequent document, although she is called Christi ancilla (servant of Christ) in a couple of documents, a descriptor not inconsistent with a role as secular consecrated virgin and domina of the monastery.45

41. Ibid., 332. Brunhild and Balthild, two Merovingian queens, were characterized as “prudens”; Janet L Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels, The Careers of Brunhild and Bathild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 40, n. 39; 46, n. 87. Berenguela of Castilla (d. 1237), daughter of Alfonso VIII, was called “prudentissima”; Janna Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 142. 42. Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León 2: nos. 410, 432; Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 171. 43. Manuel Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática de los condes de Castilla (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1998), 544, 550, 557–59, 578; Gonzalo Martínez Díez, El condado de Castilla (711–1038) (Valladolid, Spain: Marcial Pons, 2005), 2: 789; Henriet, “Deo votas,” 195–96. 44. Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática, no. 52; Henriet, “Deo votas,” 192. 45. Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática, no. 78; Luciano Serrano, Cartulario de San Pedro de Arlanza (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1925), no. 30.

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Also like Elvira Ramírez, Urraca García may have been involved in ruling the county of Castilla after her brother, the count, died in 1017 leaving an eight-year-old son, García Sánchez, as his heir. She confirmed two of the four extant documents from García Sánchez’s tenure as count, the second of which was issued to her at an Easter court held at her monastery. In it, she is named by the young count as “Our Domina Urraca,” and it confirms her possession of Covarrubias. It is confirmed by her sister Onega and aunt Fronilda, who were also consecrated religious. Urraca García also confirmed the possession by the abbey of Husillos of certain villas alongside the young count, as well as Sancho III of Navarra and his mother. This supports the notion that she played an important political role during the minority of García Sánchez.46 She can also be associated with an important defensive castle built some time during the tenth century, the tower of Doña Urraca in Covarrubias, according to legend named after her aunt.47 Leaving this fortress in the hands of a woman whose loyalties were all to her family had material benefits for her father, brother, and nephew. The later Anales castellanos relate that she was murdered in Covarrubias in 1039. Scholarly opinion blames her great-nephew King Fernando I of León-Castilla, who wanted to get his hands on her spiritually and politically powerful lordship, and indeed, the custody of Covarrubias eventually passed into the hands of Fernando’s daughters, Urraca and Elvira.48 The religious status of Urraca García’s niece, Tegridia, for whom Count Sancho García, Tegridia’s father and Urraca’s brother, founded the monastery of San Salvador de Oña in 1011, is somewhat less clear. Count Sancho had rebelled against his father, and perhaps it was for this reason that he chose to be remembered in death not at his father’s foundation of Covarrubias but at a new house of his own. Like his father before him, he and his wife offered their daughter to Christ and then stated that they choose her to rule “the [male] worshippers of God and all those [women] vowed to God [Dei cultores et omnes Deo deuotas].” It was a mixed community of men and women, and she was given not merely temporal rule but care over their souls, suggesting the role of an abbess, although she is never named as such.49 Determining her exact role is difficult because some early Oña charters were manipulated

46. Martínez Díez, Condado de Castilla, 657–63, 665; Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática, 543–68. 47. María Teresa Sánchez Trujillano, “Las torres de Covarrubias y Noviercas,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas, y Museos 79 (1976), 669–70. 48. José Carlos Martín, “Los Annales castellani antiquiores y Annales castellani recentiores: Edición y traducción anotada,” Territorio, Sociedad y Poder 4 (2009), 217. 49. Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática, no. 64.

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after the community became for men only to conceal the fact that a woman had ever been its head. The one subsequent fully authentic document that mentions her does not call her the abbess but only Count Sancho’s daughter.50 In Count Sancho’s other authentic documents, when he makes a donation to a monastery, he names its recipient as the abbot, suggesting that the omission of an equivalent title for Tegridia is significant.51 The original foundation charter for Oña does more than establish a monastery under Tegridia’s control. Tegridia’s parents state that they are handing over to her both their souls and their bodies after death so that she might pray to those in whose name the monastery was founded, namely Christ the Savior, the Virgin Mary, and Saint Michael, for the remission of their sins.52 This charter, which combines a monastery with a noble mausoleum and prescribes the duties of remembering the family dead to the daughter of the house, recalls Elvira Ramírez’s role at San Salvador del Palaz del Rey in León. This suggests that both García Fernández and Sancho García were, as counts of Castilla, aping the royal house of León in their foundations for their daughters. Tegridia’s role may have been modeled on that of the royal daughters, and the silence about her title may indicate that, like Elvira, she was not an abbess but possessed the monastery of Oña and ruled over it as a consecrated virgin. This theory that the Castilian counts were consciously imitating royal Leonese practice is strengthened by the fact that the patrons of Oña—Christ as Savior, Mary, and Michael—were the key patrons of the cathedral complex founded by King Alfonso II in Oviedo. The cathedral of Oviedo, dedicated to the Savior and the twelve Apostles, was flanked on its left by a church dedicated to Mary and founded by Alfonso II as a royal burial site and on its right by the Camara Sancta, the treasury, which was dedicated to the archangel Michael. Elvira Ramírez lost power when, while under her guidance, Ramiro III was defeated in a battle against the Muslim caliphate in 975. Teresa Ansúrez, the boy’s mother took Elvira’s place in the royal documents. The pair did not hold out for very long. Vermudo II (d. 999) had himself anointed at Compostela in 982 and conquered Ramiro’s kingdom by 985.53 He followed the established tradition by offering his own three daughters, Sancha, Teresa, and Elvira, to religious life. They were active during the reign of their nephew Vermudo III (1028–1037), making donations and confirming those

50. 51. 52. 53.

Ibid., no. 74. Zabalza Duque himself calls Tegridia abbess (489, 500, 509–10, 516). For example, ibid., no. 62. Ibid., no. 64. Pick, “Dominissima, Prudentissima,” 61.

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of the younger king. Their titles in these documents mark their religious and secular status. They are called “handmaidens of Christ [Christi ancille]”54 and “vowed to God [Deo uote]”55 to show their religious status. They are often named as “child of the king [proles regis],”56 and on one occasion, Teresa and Sancha are named “daughters of Vermudo, prince.”57 Their position in the family derived both from their status as the daughters of a monarch—in this case, the current king’s grandfather—and from their religious role, that is, from both their earthly and heavenly fathers. Another Sancha, the sister of Vermudo III and daughter of Alfonso V, eventually became the queen whose marriage to Fernando I united the kingdom of León and the county of Castilla to create the kingdom of León-Castilla in 1037. Her marriage makes her the only daughter of a king of Asturias or León whose wedlock we can securely document between Adosinda in the eighth century and Alfonso VI’s daughter, Urraca, in the late eleventh. Her union with Fernando truly tests the rule that kings of Asturias and León kept their daughters rather than giving them in marriage. Indeed, it was not her father who married Sancha off. Alfonso V died in summer 1028, leaving Sancha, about age fifteen; her brother, the eleven-year-old king, Vermudo III; and a second wife, not the mother of his children, Urraca García, the sister of the powerful King Sancho III of Navarra. Medieval sources agree that it was during the reign of the youthful King Vermudo that Sancha was betrothed to the likewise young and vulnerable García Sánchez, the count of Castilla who had just attained his majority and whose county, as I have previously suggested, had to that point been coruled by his aunt, Urraca of Covarrubias. García Sánchez was murdered, however, before he could marry his Leonese betrothed; his county came under the rule of King Sancho III of Navarra, and that king’s son, Fernando, and the count’s sad story became the stuff of medieval romance and legend.58 The date of the murder and the identity and politics of the killers remain in question. Gonzalo Martínez Díez suggests that it took place late in 1028 because it is only from 1029 that we have documents naming Sancho III 54. Luís Núñez Contreras, “Colección diplomatica de Vermudo III, rey de León,” Historia. instituciones. documentos, 4 (1977): no. 1; Marta Herrero de la Fuente, ed., Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún (León: CEISI, 1988), 2: no. 477; Manuel Lucas Álvarez, ed., La documentación del Tumbo A de la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela (León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 1997), no. 94. 55. Núñez Contreras, “Colección diplomatica de Veremudo III,” nos. 1, 19. 56. Ibid., nos. 2, 16, 19; Herrero de la Fuente, Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún, 2: no. 477; AHN 1043B fols. 65r–v, 68r. 57. Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 94. 58. The earliest narrative account is Estévez Sola, Chronica Naierensis, II.41 p. 148.

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ruling in Castilla. Martínez Díez’s time line assumes that Sancho III was the friend of García Sánchez, and that he, his sister, Vermudo III, and Sancha’s step-mother together planned and approved the count’s betrothal to Sancha.59 But this seems implausible: the king of Navarra had nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing his two weak neighbors to the west to strengthen themselves against him through a dynastic marriage. After the murder, Sancho III claimed Castilla via his wife, Muniadomna, who was the sister of the count, and he ruled the county until his death in 1037, even though his son Fernando had been named as count.60 The earliest source that describes García Sánchez’s death is a document of April 29, 1031, in which Toda, his paternal aunt, made a donation to the monastery of Sahagún in the names of her parents, her brother, and her nephew, “whom they killed in León.”61 Earlier, on July 7, 1029, Toda’s sister, the religious Onega, had succumbed to the new political reality, issuing a document of “profiliation” (adoption for the purposes of inheritance), designating Sancho III and his wife, Muniadomna, Onega’s niece, as the heirs to her massive property holdings in Castilla. The document names Sancho III as ruling and Fernando as count, and in this way, her property passed out of the hands of her family into that of the king of Navarra.62 Sancho III continued his encroachment westward into León, withdrawing only in 1035, after he married his daughter to Vermudo III.63 Sancho III died on October 18, 1035, and his kingdom was partitioned among his children, with his son Fernando adding the power of rule over the county of Castilla to his title of count. Fernando killed Vermudo III at Tamarón in late August or September 1037, and he was crowned king in the city of León on June 22, 1038. Fernando besieged León after the battle of Tamarón, and Count Fernando Flaínez, who is named as ruling in León for much of 1038, led the resistance against Fernando there.64 When did Fernando marry Sancha? They were not yet married as of January 20, 1036, when Sancha confirmed one of her brother’s documents.65 The Historia silense recounts that Urraca Fernández was the only one of Fernando and Sancha’s children to be born when their father was not yet king. This is usually interpreted to

59. Martínez Díez, Condado de Castilla, 2: 670–76. 60. Ibid., 2: 677–85. 61. Herrero de la Fuente, Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún, 2: no. 428. 62. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Cartulario de San Juan de la Peña, Textos Medievales 6 (Valencia: Gráficas Bautista, 1962), no. 49. 63. Martínez Díez, Condado de Castilla, 2: 705. 64. Ibid., 705–6, 727–32. 65. Herrero de la Fuente, Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún, 2: 444.

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mean that she was born before Vermudo’s death in 1037 and that Fernando and Sancha were married as early as 1032, but it may also mean that she was born before her father’s coronation in late June 1038. In the latter scenario, there was just enough time for Fernando to defeat Vermudo, besiege León, claim both the kingdom and a vulnerable fatherless and now brotherless Sancha, beget Urraca, and be crowned. There is evidence that neither her betrothal to García Sánchez nor her marriage to Fernando was part of the original program for Sancha’s life. Her especially close connection to the double house of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista in León, the community founded when Elvira Ramírez had the body of the youthful martyr Pelayo retrieved from Córdoba, provides evidence that she may have been destined for and even first consecrated to religious life. In a 1043 document, Sancha, although already queen and married to Fernando, is called the abbess of the community.66 Twenty years later, when Fernando and Sancha endowed this double community with extensive privileges and gifts, including the body of Saint Isidore, the saint who became its new patron, Sancha described a special relationship existing between herself and this house. The text shifts from the plural royal we of the rest of the diploma to the first person singular and reads, “Although I may be the Domina of this monastery, nevertheless among the sisters and the clerics I am as if one of you.”67 Although she may simply have been its lay abbess, a phenomenon common elsewhere Europe,68 her role as domina of the monastery parallels that of her consecrated ancestors and of her own consecrated female descendants, and it raises suspicions that she too may have been intended for religious life before her brother’s need to create an allegiance with Castilla as a bulwark against powerful Navarra led to her first betrothal. The penitential language of the confession in her personal prayer book, which lists, among others, the sins of pollution and fornication, if taken literally, supports the notion of a broken vow.69 If she had abandoned her vows to marry Fernando, her case would have set an Iberian precedent for Ramiro II of Aragón (1134–1157), who was

66. Martin, Queen as King, 37n. 20; María Encarnación Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León. Documentos de los siglos X–XIII (León: Universidad de León, 1995), no. 3. 67. In Martín López, Patrimonio cultural, no. 6. 68. Wood, Proprietary Church, 327–28. 69. Salamanca BU 2668, fols. 179–80. Lucy K. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal in Two EleventhCentury Royal Spanish Prayerbooks,” Traditio 66 (2011), 43–45.

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brought out of his monastery on his brother’s death to claim the throne, marry, and sire a child, before returning to the cloister in 1137.70 Sancha’s own two daughters, Urraca and Elvira Fernández, never married and followed their mother as dominae over a group of monastic communities, now grown to considerable proportions. The twelfth-century Historia silense says of Urraca Fernández, “Spurning carnal ties and the perishable garments of a husband, outwardly in secular guise but inwardly under monastic discipline, she clove to Christ as her true spouse, and throughout the term of her life, she persisted in the cherished practice of embellishing holy altars and priestly vestments with gold and silver and precious stones.”71 This passage recalls William of Malmesbury’s contemporary description of the AngloSaxon princess Aethelhild as living in lay attire although, vowed to celibacy, she, “spurned the pleasures of earthy marriage.”72 Confirming a donation of Alfonso VI in 1068, Urraca is described as “most faithful to God,”73 and in her 1071 charter refounding the diocese of Túy, Urraca calls herself “the least of the manservants or handmaidens of the Lord,” language that suggests she was a consecrated virgin, like her predecessors.74 And in Elvira’s donation to Lugo in the same year, she calls herself, “child of the king, and though unworthy and weak among handmaidens, a handmaiden of Christ.”75 These documents are all from the early part of their public careers, but a gift from Elvira to Santiago de Compostela, made toward the end of her life in 1100, also names her as “handmaiden of Christ.”76 Nevertheless, in the dozens of documents they confirmed and those they issued during the reign of Alfonso VI, they are identified not by their religious status but solely by their relationship to their royal parents and brother, in phrases such as “sister of the king,” “sister of the emperor,” child of the king,” daughter of King Fernando,” and “daughter of King Fernando and Queen Sancha.”77 What accounts for this shift? One possibility is that they had been consecrated to virginity using the rituals of the Old Spanish

70. Bernard Reilly, The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain 1031–1157 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 182–87. 71. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 122–23. 72. William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum anglorum, 1: 198–201. 73. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 4. 74. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290. 75. “Ego quidem Geloira regia prole licet et indigna et pusilla ancillarum christi ancilla.” AHN 1043B fol. 68r. The same phrase appears in a charter from Elvira dated to 1086 and copied twice, on fols. 14v and 69v, but this charter may be falsified or subject to interpolations. 76. Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 88. 77. For example, “soror regis,” “imperatoris germana,” “prolis regis,” “Fredinandi regis filia,” and “nos ambas iermanas Fredinandi regis et Sanctie regine filie.” Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1:488.

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rite, but quietly deemphasized this after the kingdom switched from that rite to the Roman liturgy in 1080, during the reign of their brother. When Alfonso VI became sole ruler of their father’s kingdom, in 1072, the kingdom became open as never before to religious influences from beyond the Pyrenees, including the Roman liturgy, which did not have the same prominent place for consecrated virgins and widows, and Cluniac monasticism, which strongly emphasized cloistered monasticism as the only possible religious path for women. Whatever their official canonical status, they preserved the same way of life as their predecessors, given to God and kept by their families, remaining celibate, remembering the dead, giving gifts, and continuing an active prayer life. By the early twelfth century, when the author of the Silense came to describe the religious status of Urraca, a woman he probably knew personally, he was faced with describing a status that had passed into abeyance and one he poorly understood. As I discuss in chapter 1, the early kings of Pamplona and Navarra, the counts and kings of Aragón, and the counts of Barcelona for the most part did not consecrate their daughters but, instead, used them to forge strategic alliances with their neighbors, including those across the Pyrenees and even with Muslim Spain. This was most likely a consequence of their relative vulnerability among the competing and ever-changing jurisdictions in that part of northern Spain in the centuries after the Muslim Conquest. Reserving their daughters for religious life—keeping them for themselves—was a luxury they could afford only in rare instances. There are some exceptions to this practice of dynastic marriage, however, and these exceptions are instructive. The closest parallel to the kind of roles enjoyed by Urraca and Elvira Fernández is their first cousin from the wrong side of the blanket, Countess Sancha Ramírez. Her father was Ramiro I of Aragón (1035–1063), the illegitimate son of Sancho III of Navarra and his mistress, Sancha de Aibar. On Sancho III’s death in 1035, Sancho’s eldest legitimate son was made king of Navarra, while Fernando, Urraca’s and Elvira’s father, became count of Castilla, and a third son ruled Ribagorza and Sobrarbe. Ramiro, the eldest but illegitimate son was given a small portion, which became in time the kingdom of Aragón. Although his heirs refer to him as king, and private charters during his reign also give him that title, Ramiro never called himself king.78 After Ramiro I’s death, Sancho Ramírez (1063–1094), Countess Sancha’s brother, ruled as king of Aragón. It is most likely that, in that very year, 78. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Orígenes de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 1991), 95, 127.

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Sancho married Isobel, the daughter of Count Armengol III of Urgel (d. 1065), and his sister Sancha married Armengol himself, whence her title of countess. We have here the sort of simple exchange of women—the king’s sister for the count’s daughter—that is absent from the dynastic politics of León. Matters changed drastically for Sancha Ramírez on the death of her spouse in 1065. She is associated with the women’s monastery of Santa Cruz de la Serós (Sorores [sisters]) for the first time in 1070 when Ramiro’s mother, her grandmother, gave her the monastery of Santa Cecilia de Aibar along with other properties, as long as on her own death she gave them to Santa Cruz. Her grandmother declared that she herself had received the monastery from the mother of her lover, Sancho III, so we can trace here property that passes from woman to woman in the royal line.79 It is likely that at this time Countess Sancha was already domina of Santa Cruz in addition to, as a consequence of the donation, Santa Cecilia.80 In 1078, she acted for the monastery of Santa Cruz in an exchange of property with the monastery of Leire, acting “with the sisters” but declaring that she had dominion over them.81 She did likewise in an exchange with San Juan de la Peña the following year, when she again specified that she acted with the consent of all the sisters. This document was also signed by the abbess of Santa Cruz, who served under the countess.82 Sancha was an important vicar for her brother, the king, in this crucial region. With no living child or husband of her own, her first loyalties were to her brother. She was domina of San Angel de Atarés, which she donated to San Juan de la Peña in 1096, and also ruled over the men’s monastery of San Pedro de Siresa from at least 1082.83 Her control over Siresa, at the head of the Hecho river, and over Santa Cruz, just south of the Aragon river, give her control over the whole Hecho valley, one of the most important valleys in the small kingdom of Aragón. Moreover, Santa Cruz controlled the northern approach to the most important monasteries in the kingdom, San Juan de la Peña, the royal mausoleum, which can still be reached by a short walk uphill from Santa Cruz. The two houses became a kind of combined 79. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, ed., Cartulario de Santa Cruz de la Serós, Textos Medievales 19 (Valencia: Gráficas Bautista, 1966), no. 8. 80. Ibid., no. 4; González Miranda, “Condesa Doña Sancha,” 188–90. 81. “Cum haberem dominatum ipsarum Christi famularum, et vellem regere illarum necessitates.” Ubieto Arteta, Cartulario de Santa Cruz, no. 8. 82. Ibid., no. 9. 83. González Miranda, “Condesa Doña Sancha,” 201; Itziar Muñoz Cascante, “Notas sobre la religiosidad de la mujer navarra: La condesa Sancha tenente del obispado de Pamplona,” in Las mujeres en el cristianismo medieval, ed. Angela Muñoz Fernández (Madrid: Asociación Cultural alMudayna, 1989), 380.

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community when Sancha donated Santa Cruz to San Juan de la Peña, analogous perhaps to the double houses of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista, later San Isidoro, in León.84 Sancha and her sisters, Urraca and Teresa, shadowier figures who both seem to have been religious at Santa Cruz, can be credited with building the existing church at Santa Cruz, with its tall tower suitable for keeping watch over the valley, and Sancha’s will left money for its construction.85 The church contains a curious room raised above the vault of the transept, accessible by a staircase from the nave. This space, an octagonal room built above the central apse, with its delicate ribs and vaulting, and four carved capitals, three with figures, is too elegant to have been intended simply as a storeroom for liturgical furniture. Clearly visible from the exterior, it would have served poorly as a bolt hole for the sisters in time of attack, even if it were accessible only by an interior ladder. It has no focal point that would indicate its primary use as a chapel. Rather, the room with its adjacent tower invites a comparison with the tower and the barrel-vaulted hall overlooking the church in San Isidoro that served as a palace hall for the royal women of León, built in the 1080s under her cousin Urraca Fernández, and I suggest that it performed a similar function, possibly in imitation of the Leonese model.86 Countess Sancha’s period of activity is contemporary with that of Urraca and Elvira Fernández, her cousins, and her role and prominence in her brother’s kingdom may have been modeled on their own activities and relationship with Alfonso VI. If we consider San Juan de la Peña and Santa Cruz together, we have a women’s community with a palace hall intended for the royal women of the emerging Aragonese royal house, along with a men’s community and a royal mausoleum that seem to mimic the double community of San Isidoro de León, with its palace and royal cemetery. The Aragonese and Leonese houses even shared Saint John the Baptist as one of their patrons. Sancha is usually referred to in documents as “countess,” “domina,” “daughter of king Ramiro and Queen Ermesinda,” or all of these. In her mode of describing herself in relation to both her royal parents, she again imitates Urraca and Elvira Fernández. In only one document is she described in religious terms, as “handmaiden of Mary, Holy Mother of God,” an interesting variation on the more usual “handmaiden of Christ.”87 The church of 84. González Miranda, “Condesa Doña Sancha,” 201. 85. Janice Mann, Romanesque Architecture and Its Sculptural Decoration in Christian Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 91–91; Ubieto Arteta, Cartulario de Santa Cruz, no. 13. 86. Martin, Queen as King, 81–83. 87. Ubieto Arteta, Cartulario de Santa Cruz, no. 9; Walker, “Sancha, Urraca, and Elvira,” 124.

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Santa Cruz was dedicated to Mary. I suspect that Sancha was a consecrated widow and that she kept quiet about this status for the same reasons that her cousins did. Like them, Sancha was instrumental in helping to bring the Roman rite and regular religious life to Aragón, two things that paradoxically left little room for independent religious such as her and her cousins. Even so, consecrated status might explain the strangest part of Countess Sancha’s career. Sancha’s second brother, García, was bishop of Jaca. Sancho Ramírez became king of Pamplona in 1076, and in 1078 on the death of Pamplona’s bishop, he made García bishop of that see as well. The two brothers had a falling out in 1082, however, and Sancho Ramírez deposed García, giving custody of the see of Pamplona to their sister, Sancha. She had charge of the see for two years, until the arrival of a papal legate in the kingdom and the naming of a new bishop of Pamplona.88 As in León-Castilla, we see how the support of a royal sister was crucial for determining the balance of power between brothers. The case of Barcelona provides a useful counterpoint to the women I have described so far. Count Guifré of Barcelona (878–897) established his son Radulf as the abbot of Ripoll and his daughter Emma as the abbess of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, nearby and in the same river valley. Jonathan Jarrett convincingly adjudicates among the documents that variously describe the foundation of Sant Joan, the first abbey for women in the region since the days of the Visigoths, where Emma appears in documents between 898 and 942.89 Early documents seem to give Emma some role in the creation of the community. A 913 oath of the inhabitants of Vall de Sant Joan swearing that Emma owned their land indicates that the patron of the community was Saint John the Baptist, the same patron, again, as in the royal communities of Leon and Aragón. It states that Count Guifré founded the house and invested his daughter, Emma, with it as its abbess. A document from 914 calls Sant Joan the monastery, “which Domina Abbess Emma built so that she might remain a preacher and praetor and bride of Christ before the face of God,” suggesting her religious and temporal leadership. Later documents, with what Jarrett views as tenth-century interpolations, state that, rather than giving the monastery to Emma or having her build it herself, Guifre instead made a gift of his daughter to the monastery. Emma was very active in expanding the territorial basis for her house, and the purchases of land she made named her as their beneficiary, although donations to the community

88. Muñoz Cascante, “Notas sobre la religiosidad,” 375–80. 89. Jonathan Jarrett, “Power over Past and Future: Abbess Emma and the Nunnery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses,” Early Medieval Europe 12 (2002), 233–34.

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usually do not mention her by name.90 Her father was buried at Ripoll, however, not at her house, and it does not seem to have played the role in family memory enjoyed by similar foundations in León-Castilla. After Emma’s death, Sant Joan lost ground, principally due to the depredations of her own large family and the competing interests of Count Guifré’s many heirs, who were counts of Barcelona, Girona, Oson, Besalú, Cerdanya, and Urgell. The next abbess of Sant Joan whose name we know is Adelaide, the widow of Emma’s brother Sunifred of Urgell, who was installed in 949 by two nephews of Emma by different brothers. Adelaide was succeeded in 955 by the widowed Ranló, niece of Count Guifre.91 The monastery continued to lose ground until it was suppressed in 1017 by a papal bull charging sexual immorality of the sisters there, at the request of Count Bernard of Besalú. Emma’s relationship to Sant Joan de les Abadesses recalls those many other royal and noble women whose families founded monasteries for them elsewhere in Europe in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, especially in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian Germany. Like them, Emma was the abbess of her community, a position that brought her power when it was in her family’s interests that the monastery be strong and prosperous but one that seems to have made the community, and the women of the family who ruled it, more vulnerable when its existence was viewed as less in the interest of the powerful men of the family. Conversely, the royal women of LeónCastilla, who were lords over their monasteries, and Countess Sancha of Aragón, whose role imitated theirs, were not dependent on the strength or even continued existence of any particular monastery they held. Their status was independent of any one monastic house, and they could use their economic holdings to supplement and reinforce what charism they possessed because of the religious position they occupied. They were placed in this position often by their fathers so that they might remember and pray for their parents after their deaths, but in life, they served as material and spiritual props for their brothers.

The Politics of Virginity The religious roles of these women, which allowed them to serve the needs of their families in ways that excluded marriage and child-rearing, had deep roots in a late antique Mediterranean Christian world that newly privileged 90. Ibid., 235–40, 251. 91. Ibid., 238, 253–55.

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the female virgin and the virtues of chastity and continence. Moreover, this world forged a link between martyrdom and the practice of consecrated virginity, as we have seen when Ambrose connects consecrated virgins to the martyr and virgin, Saint Agnes. This link between the authority of virgins and of martyrs was appreciated in the kingdom of León-Castilla, where martyred saints such as Pelayo and Argentea and the virgin daughter Constantina were used to support and constrain the roles of royal women. Like these saints, the royal daughters themselves were used as models for their successors. The life of one eleventh-century consecrated daughter, Teresa, was reinterpreted in an early-twelfth-century historical account of her life, and we can learn about the meaning of royal female consecration from her story and from the objects and images produced for the use of these women. We have already seen that the teachings of Ambrose on female virginity stress the virgin’s contribution to the well-being of the whole household, seen as both a family unit and as a physical space in which the virgin dwelt. The sacrifice of the parents and the prayers of the virgin ensured the salvation of the family, according to Ambrose, writing for his sister. Leander of Seville, another bishop with a consecrated virgin for a sister, Florentia, wrote a treatise for her called “The Establishment of Virgins and Contempt for the World,” which prefaces a rule for nuns with a treatise on virginity that dwells on the positive role a female virgin can play for her family and, especially, for her brother. Ambrose was not his only late antique model; Isidore, brother to both Leander and Florentia tells us that Hosius of Córdoba (d. ca. 359) and Severus of Malaga (fl. end of the sixth century) both wrote treatises on virginity for their own sisters.92 Leander’s treatise contains much that is conventional in late antique discussions of female virginity. The wealth of the world is juxtaposed with Florentia’s virginity and is found wanting compared with her heavenly gift.93 As in Ambrose’s treatise, virgins are viewed as offerings made to God, but Leander emphasizes that they are not given only to benefit the family but on behalf of the whole Church,94 although the virgin’s parents will gain a special

92. Leander’s title, cited by Isidore of Seville as De intitutione virginum et comtemptu mundi, recalls the title of Ambrose’s own De institutione virginis; José Madoz, “Varios enigmas de la ‘Regla’ de San Leandro descifrados por el estudio de sus fuentes,” in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, ed. Anselmo M. Albareda, vol. 1 (Vatican City, 1946), 267; Isidore of Seville, De viris illustribus, PL 83: chap. V, coll. 1086D; chap. XLIII, coll. 1105A. See also Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 108. 93. Leander of Seville, De instititione virginum et contemptu mundi, ed. Angel C. Vega (El Escorial: Typis Augustinianis Monasterii Escurialensis, 1948), 89–91. 94. Ibid., 93.

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reward because of her service.95 The regal imagery persists; Christ is her bridegroom,96 and she is compared to the king’s daughter of Psalms 44:15, awaiting her groom from within her chamber, bedecked with gold.97 The notion of a female virgin as a royal daughter who is an offering from her parents and whose way of life will serve their needs had obvious resonances for the real royal daughters of the kingdoms of early medieval Asturias, León, and León-Castilla. Leander introduced some new notions that had echoes in these later kingdoms. The idea that a female virgin, through the practice of chastity and asceticism, was able to transcend her fallen female state and become almost masculine is ancient and widespread. Leander developed this further to suggest that the marriage union of this virgin with Christ in turn serves to feminize Christ: “[Christ] deeply loves the one whom he has espoused with His own Blood. And for this, He preferred to have His Body opened by wounds through the thrust of a sword, that He might buy your purity for Himself and consecrate your chastity.”98 Christ allowed himself to be penetrated by a sword, to literally become a sword sheath, a vagina, permitting his own body to be opened so the female virgin might remain closed, intact, and unpenetrated. As we see later, this sort of play with gender roles remained characteristic of early Iberian spirituality of virginity. For Leander, there is something special about female virginity. We see this in earlier authors who, like Ambrose, invariably speak implicitly and explicitly about only female virgins when they discuss virginity, but Leander is more explicit. We know from Isidore that Leander himself was a monk and thus, like Florentia, vowed to chastity.99 Nevertheless, Leander sees Florentia’s status as virgin as different from his own, as more powerful and able in some way to redeem him. “Although I do not have within myself what I wish you to achieve, and may grieve that I have lost what I want you to keep,” he tells her about her virginity. “Yet meanwhile, I shall have some portion of forgiveness if you, the better part of our body, do not walk ‘in the way of sinners,’ if you hold most firmly to that which you have.”100 Leander, a celibate 95. Ibid., 96. 96. Ibid., 91. 97. Ibid., 106. 98. Ibid., 91. 99. Isidore of Seville, De viris illustribus, PL 83: chap. XLI, coll. 1103A. 100. Ibid., 94. Madoz points out that this passage recalls Jerome’s words to Pammachius in a letter defending himself against having exalted virginity excessively in his Contra Jovinian (Ep. 48.20): “I extoll virginity to the skies, not because I myself possess it, but because not possessing it, I admire it all the more” and sees Leander’s words as a simple performance of humility. “Varios enigmas,” 283–84.

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cleric, must have in mind differences in physiology between the male and the female virgin. The woman’s virginity seems capable of being verified and defined by an absence of penetration; all a woman needs to do to remain virgin is to remain unpenetrated. Male virginity is a far more slippery category, endangered not only by contact with women but also by sexual dreams and the involuntary ejaculations of the male body. The Old Spanish nocturnal liturgy echoes this anxiety. Each night, the monks of early Christian Spain woke to sing, “With twisted limbs weighed down by sleep, the deluded mind is benumbed in dream and in the filthy flow of semen. Pouring forth tears we beseech you, most pious father, that the filthy phantasm of lust may recede.”101 Both the words of the prayer themselves and the very act of leaving one’s warm bed in the middle of the night to pray them are intended to prevent the involuntary act they describe. In their prayer for release from this slavery to sexual behavior, they echo the optimism of John Cassian, so influential in Spanish monasticism, that individual monks might achieve purity of heart and an end to sexual temptation and the nocturnal emissions that were signs of deeper sins within the soul, warning of further work to be done.102 Cassian quotes Basil of Caesarea, “I have never known a woman and yet am no virgin (Institutes 6.19),” to suggest much the same notion that Leander expressed when he mourned his own sinfulness to his sister.103 For Leander, Christ was not only Florentia’s bridegroom; He was also her brother.104 Florentia’s relationship with her brother and bridegroom, Christ, would have very real benefits for Leander, her brother in the world. The good a virgin sister could do for her brother through the power of intercessory prayer and unblemished chastity is highlighted in this long passage: You are my shelter in Christ; you, dearest sister, are my security; you are my most sacred offering, through which I doubt not that I shall be purified of the uncleanness of my sins. If you are acceptable to God, if you shall lie with Christ upon the chaste couch, if you shall cling to the embrace of Christ with the most fragrant odor of virginity, surely when you recall your brother’s sins, you will obtain the indulgence which you request for your brother’s guilt. . . . Held thus in the Bridegroom’s embraces, you may ask and obtain pardon for

101. Jordi Pinell, “Las horas vigiliares del oficio monacal hispánico,” in Liturgica, vol. 3, Scripta et Documenta no. 17 (Montserrat: Abbey of Montserrat, 1966), 277. 102. Brown, Body and Society, 230–31, 421–23. 103. Cited by Maud Barnett McInerney, Eloquent Virgins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 62. 104. Leander of Seville, De instititione virginum, 91.

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me. Your love in Christ shall be my indulgence, and however little hope of forgiveness I have, if the sister whom I love shall be married to Christ, and, if in that terrible and dreadful judgment when there is a weighing of deeds, acts, and omissions, and I, woe is me, am forced to give an account of my own services, you will be my comfort and my solace, then, the punishment that is due me for my errors may possibly be relieved by the intercession of your chastity. By the advance of your virtue, you will defend me of my guilty deeds if you cling to Christ; and if you please Him, I shall not be weighed down by what I have done to displease Him; while He is indulgent to you, He will spare me, nor will He allow to perish a brother whose sister He has espoused.105 Florentia was a gift to God, but at the same time she was paradoxically kept for her brother’s use. Florentia was supported in her prayers for her brother by the other sisters who lived with her and by Mary herself. Leander concludes, “May this chastity which shall bring you a crown also bring me a pardon.”106 If Leander, monk and bishop, so badly needed the intercession of his virgin sister with Christ, how much more did the kings of early medieval Spain, whose position required them to commit acts of robbery and violence, need the prayers of their own consecrated sisters? In the previous chapter, I have described, on the basis of Roman epigraphy, a society in which power and property passed between men as a consequence of the women they married, in which a brother’s status depended on the man his sister married, not on his own father. Leander describes just such a relationship in the quoted passage. He is utterly dependent on his sister’s bridegroom, Christ, and relies on his sister’s intercession with her husband for his well-being. This is not to suggest that Leander’s depiction of this relationship reflects his own participation in a matrilineal society. Far from it—what we know of Leander’s background suggests that he and his siblings identified strongly as Romans, and the notion of the female virgin as the Bride of Christ whose prayers allowed her to intercede for others was a commonplace in the late antique world at least from the time of Caesarius of Arles. I am suggesting, rather, that when Leander’s notion of the spiritual value a sister had for her brother because of her heavenly bridegroom moved north to a region already attuned to the power of this sibling relationship, it fell on fertile soil and found a ready welcome among

105. Ibid., 94–95. 106. Ibid., 95.

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the kings of the Asturias who were facing the challenge of what to do with their daughters and sisters. Two manuscripts that transmit Leander’s treatise reveal the penetration and use of this text in early medieval Spain. The first is a tenth-century codex (now El Escorial a.I.13). The original core of the manuscript consists of two parts copied by different, although similar hands.107 The first part (fols. 1r–40v) begins with a monastic pact under an abbot, followed by sections taken from several monastic rules, those of Benedict, Donatus, Isidore, and Fructuosus. The second part (fols. 41r–187v) is equally monastic but gives more room to texts specifically related to women’s monasticism. These texts include, along with Leander’s treatise, Jerome’s classic letter 22 to Eustochia on virginity, as well as other letters of his to women on religious life; Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis officiis (book II, chap. 19), which concerns widows; and two lives of female saints, Constantina and Melania the Younger. The second part opens with the full version of Isidore’s Rule but in a version that is missing the two appendices on female monasticism that frequently circulate in manuscripts of his Rule. The first of these passages is chap. 77 from the Pachomian Rule, which forbids anyone but a close relation from visiting virgins consecrated to God, except under exceptional circumstances.108 The second is the eleventh canon from the Second Council of Seville, which requires that communities of virgins be administered and ruled over by monks.109 Both passages are restrictive of female monastic life, and a vigorous and independent women’s community might well wish to silently omit them from their version of Isidore’s Rule.110 A colophon on fol. 186v by the copyist of the second part of the codex confirms that it was intended for a community of women: “All those who read this codex, remember the insignificant follower and humble Leodegundia, who wrote this in the monastery of Boadilla during the reign of the prince, Alfonso, in the Era 950; whoever prays for another commends himself to the Lord.”111 This colophon, despite its apparent clarity, presents numerous

107. On the manuscripts of Leander’s De institutione uirginum, see Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, Index scriptorum latinorum medii aevi hispanorum (Madrid: CSIC, 1959), 22. My discussion of the description and contents of this codex depends on Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos en la monarquía leonesa (León: CEISI, 1983), 91–114, 374–78. 108. Isidore of Seville, Regula monachorum, in PL 83: coll. 894B. 109. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, II Sev. XI, p. 170. On the omission of these passages see Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 101, 103. 110. Felice Lifshitz identifies similar feminist editorial choices in manuscripts copied in women’s communities in early Carolingian Francia; Religious Women in Carolingian Francia (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 10, 12, 40, 193. 111. Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 107.

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challenges and has given rise to interesting speculations, alas, mostly unverifiable. The long-held view that the monastery of Boadilla must have been a dependency of Samos in Galicia is not tenable, and the codicology of the manuscript suggests it was written in the region between Burgos and the Rioja, perhaps either at the Boadilla that is near Nájera or at Boadilla de Rioseca in Palencia. No King Alfonso was reigning in era 950 (in the manuscript, DCCCCL), which translates to 912 CE. The theories that the manuscript should read era DCCCCXL, or 902 CE, during the reign of Alfonso III, or era DCCCCLXV, 928 CE, the reign of Alfonso IV, are more satisfying based on the aspect of the hands that copied the codex than the suggestion it should read era DCCCL, 812 CE, during the reign of Alfonso II.112 Most intriguing of all is the connection made by an earlier generation of scholars between the Leodegundia who copied part of the codex and the Leodegundia who was the subject of the epithalamium in the Codex de Roda on her marriage to an unnamed king of Pamplona—and whose very existence I doubt in chapter 1. Scholars who want to connect that Leodegundia to this manuscript have surmised that on her husband’s death (if she married Sancho Garcés or García Iñíguez [d. 882]) or on his entrance into a monastery (if she married Fortún Garcés, the latter’s son) Leodegundia herself took on religious life at the monastery of Boadilla and copied the manuscript.113 The evidence to confirm these hypotheses is absent. It is tempting to connect this manuscript to consecrated royal daughters, however, not only because of Leander’s Rule but also because it includes of one of the earliest versions of the life of Constantina, a text tailor-made for a royal daughter vowed to religious life. Constantina, child of Emperor Constantine himself, is the perfect paradigm of a royal daughter. Constantina appears as a supporting character in the fifth-century Passio of Saint Agnes and in the intertwined Passiones of Gallicanus and of John and Paul. The life of Constantina takes the earlier Passiones of Agnes, Gallicanus, and John and Paul; adds new material; and compiles the whole into a tale that makes Constantina the heroine.114 The life, in three parts, opens when Constantina, a young girl afflicted with leprosy, visits the shrine of Saint Agnes in Rome, the virgin saint invoked by Ambrose in his treaty on virginity. The dead saint tells Constantina to remain 112. Ibid., 108–10, 112–13. 113. Lacarra, “Textos navarros del Códice de Roda,” 271–75; Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 106. 114. It is preserved in El Escorial a.I.13 (fols. 109v–125r) and also, in whole or in part, in three more early Spanish manuscripts: El Escorial a.II.9, Paris BnF n.a.lat. 2178, and in fragments in Madrid BN 10007. Burrus and Conti, Life of Helia, 7; Joyce E. Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins (London: Verso, 1991), 60–68.

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“constant” in her faith. She is cured at the tomb and dedicates her virginity to Christ in imitation of Agnes. Gallicanus, a pagan general, asks her father for her hand and the emperor approves, but Constantina resists when she is informed of her worldly destiny. In classic hagiography of virginity, this would set the stage for the young woman to be cruelly martyred as she resists her pagan father’s will. But Constantine is a Christian, not a pagan, so instead he asks his daughter’s advice on how she may preserve her vow while allowing him not to betray his promise to his general. Constantina comes up with a plan. She sends her two faithful servants, John and Paul, to Gallicanus’s army, where they convert him to Christianity and encourage him to respect her chastity; Constantina takes Gallicanus’s two daughters, Attica and Artemisia, into her household, where she lives with 120 virgins. In its newly expanded form, the longest part of the life concerns Constantina’s efforts to educate Attica and Artemia about the truth of Christianity and the value of virginity. The girls engage in an epistolary dialog with their Christian aunt, Octavia, who nevertheless thinks they ought to be married. Constantina then plays host to a full-fledged three-day-long symposium with all the virgins, “not just noble but wise,”115 who live with her, on the nature of the highest good, which is, of course, a life of virginity. This debate brings Gallicanus’s daughters to a Christian life of virginity. Gallicanus also converts after, in a vision reminiscent of that Constantine legendarily received at Milvian Bridge, he is offered and receives divine help to reverse a losing battle once he pledges himself to God. He ends up being martyred under Constantine’s successor, Julian the Apostate, as are the loyal missionaries, John and Paul. Christian faith trumps worldly authority in a variety of ways in the life of Constantina. The powerful father, Constantine, is successfully advised by his virgin daughter, a striking role reversal that would have been welcomed by the royal daughters of northern Spain. In the words of Joyce Salisbury, “The security of Rome was to be assured, not by the marriage of the Emperor’s daughter to a strong general, but through a Christian general who received divine military help as a consequence of a virgin daughter’s intercession.”116 By the tenth century, when this life was copied, Christian kings outside León were indeed marrying their daughters off to pagan generals, that is to say, to the Muslim rulers who beset them, to preserve peace in their own realms. The Codex de Roda recounts that the daughter of Iñigo Arista, founder of the dynasty of Pamplona, married Mūsa ibn Mūsa, one of the Banū Qasī. Onneca, daughter of King Fortún Garcés (deposed 905) took as her second 115. El Escorial a.I.13, fol.113v. 116. Salisbury, Church Fathers, 64–65.

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husband the emir ‘Abd Allah (888–912) and gave birth to Muhammad. Her first husband was her first cousin, Aznar Sánchez. Both were the grandchildren of King García Iñíguez. A daughter of King García Iñíguez married Aznar Galíndez II, count of Aragon (d. ca. 893), and their daughter, Sancha, married al-Ṭawīl, the governor of Huesca between 889 and 915.117 The life of Constantina testifies that the strongest king would not give in to that temptation and would allow his daughter to remain a virgin instead, keeping her close to his side so he and his successors could listen to and heed her advice. Another interesting early Spanish manuscript that transmits Leander’s Rule is Madrid BN 112, copied in the eleventh century. In this codex, Leander’s treatise is followed by an account, presumably copied into blank pages left at the completion of Leander’s work, of the translation of the body of Saint Isidore from Seville to León in 1063. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz suggests that this is, if not the original version of the translation of the saint, at least very close to the original, and he dates it to ca. 1064 in León.118 In 1063, Queen Sancha and King Fernando brought the body of Saint Isidore to Sancha’s monastery of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista, and they put it newly under Isidore’s patronage; this is the community in León with the most interest in both Leander’s Rule and Isidore’s translation to their city. In 1064, Queen Sancha was still domina here, to be succeeded by her two daughters, Urraca and Elvira Fernández. Thus, we are able to place Leander’s text, with its emphasis on the power of the prayer of the female virgin for her family, in the midst of the most important and powerful royal virgins we know. Before Saint Isidore became the patron of the double monastery of the Leonese royal house, its most important patron was Saint Pelayo, the youthful Christian martyred by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III in Córdoba in 925. Our knowledge of the events of Pelayo’s life and death comes from a Passio written by a priest, Raguel, living in Cordóba, probably near the date of the translation of the saint’s body north.119 The saint’s life story, a tale of a youth who refused the caliph’s advances and was martyred as a consequence, has received a good deal of attention in recent years because of what it might say about medieval attitudes toward homoerotic desire. Mark Jordan, in particular, has asked that we consider what it meant for male ecclesiastics to hear the readings and sing the liturgy celebrating Pelayo’s life and death, a story of a young boy’s

117. Lacarra, “Textos navarros del Códice de Roda,” 229, 231, 243; Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 25–27. 118. Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 414–15. 119. Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, “La pasión de S. Pelayo y su difisión,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 6 (1969), 106–10.

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beauty and the illicit desires it provoked.120 That is only one part, and perhaps not even the most important, of the significance of the cult of Pelayo. For one, its treatment of same-sex love is even more complicated than Jordan recognizes. For another, the cult of Saint Pelayo was especially attractive to women’s communities, predominantly but not exclusively to the royal monastery of León, whose patron he became, a double community of women and men whose dominae were the royal women of the Leonese house. Here I ask what lessons Pelayo’s life held for royal women who chanted the same office and heard the same lectionary as the men; in the next chapter, I explore the constellation of political relationships that encouraged the royal daughter, Elvira Ramírez, to bring his body to León. Pelayo’s life follows closely the structure of the lives of female virgins of Late Antiquity who were martyred for their faith by the pagan authorities. At the same time, it is strongly inflected by the fact that Pelayo’s enemies were not pagan Romans but the Muslim overlords of al-Andalus. Pelayo’s uncle, Bishop Ermogius of Túy, was taken captive in battle against the Muslims. His young nephew replaced him as a hostage in the court of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III in Córdoba. In the Passio, Pelayo is thrown in prison, conforming to the model of virgin martyrs during the age of persecution of the early Church. One day, the physical charms of the boy are described to ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, who sends for Pelayo. The youth is dressed in regal garb and promised vast rewards of power and riches if he will only deny Christ and recognize the authority of the Prophet. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān is thus unambiguously represented as Islamic, rather than generically pagan, and the promises made to Pelayo recall as much the temptations of Christ as they do promises made to virgin girls if they would sacrifice to the emperor and take on a husband. As expected by the genre, Pelayo rejects these blandishments: “Oh King, what things you describe are nothing and I will not deny Christ. I am, was, and will be a Christian. For all these things have an end and pass in their time, but Christ whom I worship does not have an end since neither does he have a beginning.”121 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān moves to touch him playfully, ioculariter, a word with sexual connotations, and Pelayo rebuffs his advances asking, “Do you think I am effeminate like your people?”122 Pelayo then rips off the clothing he had been given and stands naked before the Muslim ruler and his 120. Mark Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 27. 121. Díaz y Díaz, “Pasión de S. Pelayo,” 115. This passage recalls the speech to her father of the early Roman martyr, Perpetua: “Ego aliud me dicere non possum nisi quod sum, Christiana.” Thomas J. Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 105. 122. Ovid uses the verb ioco as a metaphor for copulation; Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, 12; Díaz y Díaz, “Pasión de S. Pelayo,” 115.

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court, “making himself strong as an athlete on the playing field, deciding it better to die for Christ than to live wickedly with the devil and be defiled by his vices.”123 The soldier of Christ gets his wish; the rest of the text describes Pelayo’s martyrdom and the emergence of his cult in Córdoba. The queerness of this Passio extends beyond these somewhat veiled intimations of the caliph’s lust to include passages describing the very relationship of Pelayo and Christ as one between bride and bridegroom in which the boy, Pelayo, is the bride. The text describes their relationship while Pelayo is still in prison and working on a program of ascetic self-improvement: “Christ purified His vessel, preparing a worthy dwelling-place in which He might shortly rejoice as a groom and from which, crowned with holy gore, the servant worthy of honour might be united to Him and His embraces in the courts of the saints, so that, enriched more richly with a twofold crown, no less of virginity than of martyrdom, he might bear a two-fold triumph from the enemy.”124 Pelayo is later depicted as already betrothed to Christ when ‘Abd al-Raḥmān summons him. This Passio recounts more than illicit samesex desire on the part of the caliph; it describes a love triangle among three men, Christ, Pelayo, and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, in which the caliph seeks to steal away Christ’s betrothed. The caliph’s desire is not condemned because it is that of a man for another man. Rather, it is condemned as being bodily and worldly, while the love between Pelayo and Christ is spiritual and heavenly. The language of these passages—of the virgin as a vessel and a dwelling place for Christ, and of the virgin receiving Christ’s embraces as His betrothed—would be utterly unexceptional if the virgin described were a woman. We are shocked only because Pelayo was male, and when I say we, I mean we modern readers. Medieval readers seem to have had no difficulty imagining the triumph of Pelayo and Christ’s spiritual love over the caliph’s physical love. Medieval hagiography, in which women grow beards to ward off amorous intentions and in which their virtue is described as manly, allowed gender identity a malleability and flexibility that we sometimes fail to recognize. Women hearing the Passio of Pelayo were encouraged to identify with a person who was male in body, who then became feminized by the ruler’s advances, refused this feminization, and became again male, in the same way that female saints were said to become male through the practice

123. See also the moment in Perpetua’s Passio when she dreams that she fights in the arena as a man; Heffernan, Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 112. 124. Díaz y Díaz, “Pasión de S. Pelayo,” 114. This crucial passage is missing from Jeffrey Bowman’s translation in Thomas Head, Medieval Hagiography (New York: Routledge, 2001), and Jordan does not discuss it in his own analysis.

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of virtue.125 This malleability of gender identity went both ways. The same nocturnal liturgy in which monks prayed to be freed from nocturnal emissions had them also taking on the personas of the bride from the Song of Songs and of the wise and emphatically female virgins who left enough oil in their lamps that they were ready to meet Christ, the bridegroom, when He came to them.126 An image of the saint on the Lamb portal of the church of San Isidoro reveals how the royal virgins who venerated Pelayo understood him. This portal was completed by 1101 under the aegis and patronage of Urraca Fernández.127 It was intended by her to be the main doorway between the church and the city. The door is surmounted by a tympanum showing Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, a defiant gesture against Islamic claims that the child Abraham was ordered to sacrifice was actually Ishmael. Saint Isidore, the new patron of the monastery, stands on the left of the door, and Saint Pelayo stands on the right. In contrast to Isidore, with his bowl haircut and bishop’s staff, Pelayo is an ambiguous figure, his flowing, wavy locks contrasting with his sturdy form, concealed by flowing draperies. His long hair makes him look more like a young girl, unveiled and ready for marriage than like a youth. The image speaks more of gender ambiguity and the possibilities of transformation than of homoerotic desire.128 Pelayo’s story was especially appealing for women in Christian Spain because of the context of the ever-looming Muslim threat. Women in wartime are vulnerable not only to death but also to dishonor through rape, and Pelayo’s twofold victory over the Muslims—as a martyr whose death was redeemed and a virgin who preserved his honor—made him their perfect model. In a world where such dangers were omnipresent, it is easy to understand why a saint such as Pelayo would be popular and why churches and monasteries dedicated to his cult spread in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, a time of deep vulnerability in the Christian kingdoms. Constantina was a royal daughter and a virgin; Pelayo was a virgin and a martyr. In the little-known life of Saint Argentea, we find a saint who was all three: princess, virgin, and martyr. Her Passio, which tells the story of her martyrdom in Córdoba in 931, only six years after Pelayo, is found in only

125. McInerney, Eloquent Virgins, 26, 48. 126. Matthew 25: 1–13; Pinell, “Horas vigiliares,” 277. 127. Martin, Queen as King, 89–93. 128. Jordan identifies a different figure from the south portal of San Isidoro (now in the Museo de León) as Saint Pelayo; Invention of Sodomy, 26, 27. But it is more likely that this figure represents Saint John the Evangelist; The Art of Medieval Spain, AD 500–1200 (New York: Harry Abrams, 1993), 109.

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one manuscript, as a mid-eleventh-century addition to the tenth-century Passionary of the monastery of Cardeña (now London BL Add. 25600) that also includes the Translation of Saint Zoilo and the Passion of Saints Syriacus and Paula.129 The scribe of the addition worked to make it look like a continuation of the Passionary, but aspects of its script, especially its capitals, show it to be a much later addition. Cardeña, in Castilla, may have been wary of the attention that Fernando I, count of Castilla before he became king of León, gave to San Isidoro in León, when he richly endowed it and promised to be buried there. Certainly Cardeña would have supported Sancho II against his brother, Alfonso VI, after Fernando’s death. The sisters, of course, took Alfonso VI’s side. Its editor argues that it was written by a tenth-century Córdoban Christian because of the detailed nature of the narrative.130 I argue, instead, that it was written in the north and that it took a historic event and built a narrative out of it that was designed to constrain the power of royal daughters by suggesting that the proper role of royal virgins was not involvement with affairs of state but withdrawn prayer and martyrdom. Argentea’s life follows, in part, the template of the early Christian virgin martyrs. Argentea grew up in Bobastro with her father Samuel, called “king,” and her mother Columba, but from early on, we are told, she looked to the authority of another king, that is Christ, heeding the call: “Hear, daughter, and see and incline your ear and forget your people and the house of your father since the King has desired your beauty [Psalms 45:11].” Like Pelayo, she is described as a bride, “already spiritually summoned to the embraces of a divine King.”131 Argentea, also like Pelayo, despised the trappings of the world, loathing royal honors, servants, wealth, and fancy clothing, and she lived a charitable and pious life. The key moment in her life occurs when her mother dies. Her father, the king, asks her to take a more active role in the life of the palace, but she refuses, urging him instead to appoint an agent to do this work, promising that her efforts at holiness will benefit him in a different way: Is it not fitting for me, oh most faithful father, to be brought away from the ministries of kings and to retire from your command, to whose office I am connected, nay rather, to whose love? The teacher of the gentiles said, “No one fighting for God entangles himself in worldly business so that he may please Him to whom he has engaged himself [2 Timothy 2:4].” Indeed it is fitting for you to appoint an agent for 129. Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 313–14. 130. Angel Fabrega Grau, Passionario hispánico (Madrid: Instituto P. Enrique Flórez, 1953), 1: 239. 131. Ibid., 2: 382.

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your palace so that you may attain future use of my efforts, for know that I am neither able to tear myself away from the love of Jesus Christ by the power of an angel, nor by a prince of this world. I beseech only that you have built for me a secluded hospice within the confines of this palace, in which, retreating from the disturbances of this age I may freely, with girls attending me, accomplish the vow of the plan I have undertaken.132 The author of the life of Argentea has her reject a position in which she would have the kind of influence that Constantina exerts over Constantine or the kind of influence Elvira Ramírez, Urraca Fernández, and Elvira Fernández had over their brothers. Argentea’s role as virgin is only within the royal palace and the help she offers her father is purely spiritual, although the structure of her life—that of a royal daughter living consecrated in the palace—is that of the royal daughters of León-Castilla. Argentea is living this secluded life when she learns of the coming martyrdom of an unnamed holy man in Córdoba, and she vows to follow his example. She receives a message from him with a portent that she will have her wish. It is possible that we are intended to believe this is Pelayo himself. She seeks out the city of Córdoba in 928 with her brothers and fellow citizens after Bobastro is overthrown and becomes attached to a community of virgins. Meanwhile, in Gaul, a priest named Wulfurus receives a vision that sends him to Córdoba to seek out martyrdom with Argentea; once there, he is imprisoned for blasphemy. Argentea visits him frequently, and one day she is questioned by the guards: “‘Is it not true,’ they say, ‘O virago, that you are the daughter of Prince Samuel? Why do you rouse yourself to come to these thresholds? Or do you stupidly wish yourself to be joined to the death of this evildoer?’ Holy Argentea . . . professed herself not only to be the daughter of the aforementioned father, but also to be always without doubt a worshiper of the Catholic faith.”133 Argentea is a virago, a woman who acts like a man. When questioned by the judge, she testifies that she has “recently” joined the sect of the Christians, and she professes belief in the Trinity. After Argentea and Wulfurus are cruelly martyred, the Christian faithful of the town collect their bodies, placing Argentea in the basilica of the Trinity and Wulfurus in another cemetery, where they both work miracles. Who is this Argentea? Although the life makes no effort to depict her persecutors as Islamic, rather than as the ordinary pagans of earlier martyr tales, the

132. Ibid., 2: 383. 133. Ibid., 2: 386.

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dates given in the text indicate her martyrdom took place in Muslim Córdoba under ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, and her story is based, however imaginatively, on real events. Her father, “Prince Samuel” of Bobastro, is ‘Umar ibn Ḥafsūn, a muwallad (an Arabized convert to Islam) who led a revolt of the muwallads against an earlier emir of Córdoba, ‘Abd Allah (888–912). Bobastro, in the mountains of Ronda, was his base. The reasons for his revolt are still contested, but it can be explained as the attempt of a large group of those recently assimilated to Islam to attain power against the competing claims of Berbers, Arabs, and their clients.134 Ibn Ḥafsūn supposedly converted to Christianity around 898 and invented a genealogy for himself that outlines his descent from a Visigothic count named Alfonso, who shares his name with Alfonso III of the Asturias, the king who was ruling at the time of Ibn Ḥafsūn’s revolt and supposed conversion.135 He died in 917, but his sons continued fighting until Bobastro was captured by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III by 928. When the caliph visited fallen Bobastro, he ordered Ibn Ḥafsūn’s body to be disinterred and crucified at the gates of Córdoba, along with those of his sons. Outside of this Passio, there is no evidence of a daughter in the historical record. It is unlikely there was a real Argentea, at least not one whose life and death so neatly fit the conventions of the hagiography of virgin martyrs and whose life choices so conveniently restricted the role of royal virgin daughters. Argentea is likely an exemplary fiction intended to provide a point of resistance against the active royal virgins of León. Her story, built out of what could be understood in the Christian north as a remarkably successful revolt against Islam, serves as a public jab at the prominent roles of the daughters of Fernando I, and it also fills a void in the hagiography of medieval Spain. The hagiographic record of other early medieval kingdoms is full of royal saints, including royal daughters, whose piety reinforced the sacrality of their family’s rule. The life of Argentea was copied in the last half of the eleventh century. Another attempt to sacralize a royal daughter, one whose identity is more secure, comes early in the twelfth century. Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo wrote a 134. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, 188–89. Manuel Pedro Acién Almansa argues that Ibn H.afsu¯n was descended from local Visigothic nobles and that his revolt was intended to preserve their old feudal structures against the process of Islamification; Entre el feudalismo y el Islam: Umar ibn Hafsun en los historiadores, en las fuentes, y en historia ( Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 1994). For a critique of Asién’s monograph, see Maribel Fierro, “Cuatro preguntas en torno a Ibn Hafsun,” Al-Qantara 16 (1995): 221–57. 135. Fierro doubts this conversion; “Cuatro preguntas,” 245. David J. Wasserstein, however, disagrees, accepting the sources that state Ibn H.afsu¯n sought to give the impression that he had become Christian and had returned to the faith of his fathers; “Inventing Tradition and Constructing Identity: The Genealogy of ‘Umar ibn H.afsu¯n between Christianity and Islam,” Al-Qantara 23 (2002), 292, 294.

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Chronicon that relates the history of the kings of León. In it, he tells a curious story about a royal daughter from a century before (and whom we met earlier in this chapter), Teresa, one of the daughters of Vermudo II. Like the Passio of Pelayo, it involves an interchange with a Muslim ruler: After the death of her father, Teresa was given in marriage by her brother Alfonso V to a certain pagan king of Toledo for the sake of peace, although she was herself unwilling. But as she was Christian, she said to the pagan king, “Touch me not, for you are a pagan. If you do touch me, the Angel of the Lord will slay you.” Then the king laughed at her and lay with her once, and just as she predicted, he was immediately struck by the Angel of the Lord. As he felt death approaching, he summoned his chamberlains and his councillors and ordered them to load up camels with gold, silver, and gems and precious garments, and take her back to León with all of these gifts. She stayed in that place in a monastic habit for a long time, and afterwards she died in Oviedo and was buried in the church of Saint Pelayo.136 This story is a twist on the second-century martyrdom of Saint Cecilia. This bride, too, warned her husband that the angel of the Lord would punish him if he violated her virginity. Unlike Teresa’s groom, Cecilia’s desisted and was eventually martyred with her. She survived her own beheading long enough to consecrate her own house as a church.137 It is not impossible that Teresa really was married off by her vulnerable brother to a Muslim ruler and then returned home on his death to become a consecrated widow. If so, this would make her another royal Leonese daughter to be married of during a time of crisis for the realm, like her niece Queen Sancha, who married King Fernando. Simon Barton suggests she may have been married to one of the sons and successors of the war leader who ruled the dying Umayyad caliphate, al-Manṣūr (Muḥammad ibn Abū ‘Āmir al-Manṣūr), either ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar or ‘Abd al-Raḥmān, “Sanchuelo,” whose own mother was the daughter of Sancho Garcés II of Navarra.138 As we have seen earlier, some Muslim rulers in al-Andalus did take Christian brides. But even if this story does not reflect a real union, it is striking for what it reveals about a tradition of sacred power possessed by royal daughters. Its narrative evokes 136. Benito Sánchez Alonso, ed., Crónica del Obispo Don Pelayo (Madrid: Imprenta de los Sucesores de Hernando, 1924), 63–65. 137. Fabrega Grau, Passionario hispánico, 2: 26–27, 39–40. 138. Simon Barton, “Marriage across Frontiers: Sexual Mixing, Power, and Identity in Medieval Iberia,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 3 (2011), 12–17; Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 27–29, 77–80.

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two biblical stories, one from the Old and the other from the New Testament. The tale of the angel of the Lord striking the Muslim ruler of Toledo and Teresa’s subsequent permission to leave Toledo and return to León with the gold, silver, gems, and clothing of the Muslims evokes Exodus 12:22–36, in which the first-born of the Egyptians are slain while the Israelites are spared, and the Israelites are allowed to flee Egypt with the “vessels of silver and gold and very much raiment” of their captors.139 Moreover, Teresa’s command to the pagan king not to touch her—“Noli me tangere,” in the original Latin—is a quotation from John 20:17, in which Christ tells Mary Magdalene, found by him weeping in his empty tomb after the Passion, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren and say to them: I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” At the same time that Jesus rejects her touch, his words offer her an important teaching mission to the rest of the disciples and a role as witness. This passage, with its gendered relationships between Christ and the Magdalene and between the Magdalene and Jesus’s other disciples (literally “my brothers”) has been read in many ways. Some patristic authors stress a lack of faith in Mary that did not allow her to touch the risen Christ because she did not fully understand who and what he was. Mary, a woman, sees him first only because Eve, a woman, committed the first sin. In contrast, women religious in eighth-century Francia saw Mary Magdalene as a woman who understood what was before her when the apostles remained misguided, and as a model for female participation in the liturgy.140 And an early-tenth-century sermon written for Cluny, composed at the moment when Noli me tangere images became a regular iconographic motif, also presents Mary Magdalene in a more positive light. The sermon connects her background as a sinful harlot and her subsequence repentance and penitence to her ability to acknowledge the divine Christ after the Resurrection. Christ’s prohibition against touching him signals her recognition of his changed state and full nature.141 Bishop Pelayo’s account of Teresa is closely contemporary with an ivory plaque from a reliquary that illustrates John 20:17, usually, although insecurely, attributed to a workshop in León ca. 1115–1120 (figure 5).142 In the

139. Exodus 12:35. See also Julie A. Harris, “Muslim Ivories in Christian Hands: The Leire Casket in Context,” Art History 18 (1995),:213–14. 140. Lifshitz, Religious Women in Carolingian Francia, 136–37, 191–92. 141. Barbara Baert and Liesbet Kusters, “The Twilight Zone of the ‘Noli me tangere’: Contributions to the History of the Motif in Western Europe (ca. 400–ca. 1000),” Louvain Studies 32 (2007), 259–61, 272–73. 142. Art of Medieval Spain, 250–52.

Figure 5.

Plaque with the Journey to Emmaus and Noli me tangere

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org. Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.

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reliquary plaque, Christ simultaneously draws back from Mary to avoid her touch and reaches out to her with pointing fingers to give her instruction. The pair nearly touch; his right fingers graze her halo and her two hands reach forward to almost grasp the gesturing forefinger of his left hand. She is almost as tall as he is, and despite the slight bend in her knees, her posture does not match the prone position of the Magdalenes in the Ottonian versions of this scene.143 There is nothing hesitant or penitent about the Mary of the ivory, and their postures are almost an embrace, not at all a rejection. The touch Christ refuses her is replaced with speech, and this is what is emphasized in the inscription surmounting the scene, which does not read, “Noli me tangere,” but “Dominus loquitur Marie—The Lord speaks to Mary.” The inscription stresses what she receives from Christ, not what she is denied. Teresa likewise seeks to substitute instruction for touch, using her words to draw the central distinction between herself and her pagan spouse; this is not their genders but the fact that she is a Christian and he is a pagan, the same distinction drawn in the Passio of Saint Pelayo. The lesson the king refuses to learn from her words, he learns from his own illicit death-dealing touch. As he lays dying, he demonstrates, by rewarding her with treasure and sending her home, that he has understood the lesson and has, like Pharaoh after Moses successfully predicts the plagues that harm the Egyptians, become an unwilling witness to divine truth. What is perhaps most striking about Bishop Pelayo’s story is that Teresa is a failed virgin. Like the sinful Magdalene, as medieval people understood her history, Teresa has experienced sexual contact but is forgiven. Teresa is able to return to her people in León and live “in a monastic habit” the rest of her days. The Noli me tangere image covers only the bottom half of its ivory plaque (figure 5). On the top half, Jesus, dressed as a pilgrim, meets two male disciples on the road to Emmaus who fail to recognize him.144 Their inability to understand to whom they are speaking is juxtaposed with the Magdalene’s instant recognition of Christ. The two images are separated by the inscription marking Christ’s speech to her. In addition, this plaque once belonged on the same reliquary as two more scenes, once a single plaque like this one but now divided in two. What had been the top scene shows the descent from the cross, with the Virgin Mary in a prominent role, clinging to her son’s arm as Nicodemus removes the nails from his feet. The bottom scene 143. Baert and Kusters, “Twilight Zone,” 270. 144. Luke 24:13–16.

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shows Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome greeted at the entrance to Christ’s tomb by an angel, who tells them that Jesus has risen and that they should tell the disciples.145 When the two scenes were joined, the inscription “Angelus loquitur mulieribus—the angel speaks to the women” separated them, mirroring the inscription in which the Lord speaks to the Magdalene. These ivories depicting the aftermath of the Passion emphasize the special connection of women, both virgin and sexually experienced, to Christ and their particular role as witnesses who transmit His message to the world. These ivories connect directly to the values and potential of the religious role of women that produced the consecrated women of the royal house. The connection may be an immediate one—the composition of the ivory that shows the descent from the cross and the women at the tomb is very close to that of the tympanum of the south transept of San Isidoro de León, the monastery so closely associated with the women of the royal house of León. On the tympanum, the central scene of Christ being lowered from the cross, with Mary reaching out to embrace his arm with the same gesture she uses on the ivory, is flanked on the right by a scene showing the three women being shown an empty tomb by the angel. The ivories are dated ca. 1115, while the tympanum is part of a building project that took place between 1110 and 1124, during the reign of Queen Urraca, when her daughter, Sancha Raimúndez, was domina over San Isidoro, inheriting it form her greataunts, Urraca Fernández and Elvira Fernández.146 The ivories may well have been created for the monastery of San Isidoro, presided over at that time by another royal daughter, Sancha Raimúndez, the daughter of Queen Urraca. If the Passion of Argentea urges women to withdraw in silence, the ivories press them to speak. Teresa’s “Touch me not,” to the Muslim king in Bishop Pelayo’s Chronicon evokes another biblical passage, “Touch not my anointed.”147 This was among the verses cited by the Fourth Council of Toledo that used the anointed status of the king to forbid rebellion against his authority and attacks on his person.148 Here it is Teresa, the king’s daughter, who is in the position of being God’s anointed, and the reference to this verse shows how far we have come since the Visigothic period in the development of the roles of 145. 146. 147. 148.

Matthew 28:5. Art of Medieval Spain, 250; Martin, Queen as King, 115–16. Psalms 105:15. Vives, Concilios visigóticos, IV Tol. 75, p. 217.

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other members of the king’s family. Together, the story about Teresa in the Chronicon and the women on the ivory plaques show how deeply the notions discussed in this chapter—of royalty wedded to virginity, whose flip side is always the possibility of martyrdom, and the power that these confer—had been absorbed into the culture of the kingdom of León-Castilla by the beginning of the twelfth century.

 Ch ap ter 3 Networks of Property, Networks of Power

Royal daughters derived their power from an intersection of several cultural and social norms, including royal succession practices, inheritance customs, their practice of consecrated virginity or celibacy, and the way the latter gave them a kind of sacred charism. To deploy the power that these factors afforded them, they used their property and influence to maintain central positions within the networks of power that governed the kingdom, and to construct and protect networks of their own. They justified their positions in these networks by asserting their own unmediated connection to the divine and represented these networks as imitating theological hierarchies of power that were highly gendered. Moreover, these networks consisted of more than their connections to the powerful men in the kingdom. Only when we consider how these royal daughters were linked to other women can we fully understand not only the extent and limits of their own power but also how the entirety of the monarchical system in which they all lived functioned. It was a system in which powerful women’s relationships with each other changed history. The documentary record reveals the networks in which the powerful in the Middle Ages were enmeshed, the people on whom they relied for support and who in turn relied on them, and the alliances they built and maintained and on which their continued secure hold on the kingdom rested. Our evidence for all of these is found in the charters that recorded the 104

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relationships between medieval actors while they recounted property transactions, gifts, or exchanges; rights or jurisdiction granted or taken away; or the fruits of medieval justice. Each document is a snapshot of a network as it came together at a specific moment, often around particular properties or religious institutions. In the case of the latter, the document also expresses desires to connect to a network of saintly and divine patrons in heaven, in addition to the temporal powers on earth. Some parts of this network may be temporary, brought together for the particular purposes of the document, such as the witnesses who were there to later testify to their presence at the initial performance of the document. Others, such as the lists of those who confirmed royal diplomas, which included the royal family, churchmen, nobles, and royal officials, may be more or less permanent members of longlasting networks of power, identifiable over time by their central positions within the networks of the individual documents. Each documentary snapshot can thus be both considered on its own for what it says about the particular moment in time and individuals that created it and read in the context of other documents to show networks of people, growing, changing, and pursuing particular strategies. Historians no longer see these medieval charters only, or even at all, as simple legal artifacts solely intended to have evidentiary value for proving titles to property or other rights. They are now more commonly viewed as belonging to the domain of performances, that is to say, rituals denoting and demonstrating the nature and extent of royal authority—and they are at the same time performative, products of a moment in a particular political situation as well as doing something, acting, with their words and their speech. Although on the surface what they enact is the particular gift they record, even more important is how they create and define a series of relationships— between heaven and earth, between allies, against enemies, between kings present and past, and between earlier diplomas—through what is included and what is left out. They are performances that take place over time, connecting the past, present, and future. A royal diploma does not merely provide evidence for the relationships it describes; it is the moment of their instantiation in public, in a spectacle of the court.1

1. On the document as performance and performative, see Geoffrey Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), esp. 1–7. See also Marco Mostert and Paul S. Barnwell, eds., Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken, and Written Performance in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), especially the contribution by Hagen Keller, “The Privilege in the Public Interaction of the Exercise of Power: Forms of the Symbolic Communication beyond the Text,” 75–108 (originally published in German as “Hulderweis durch Privilegien: Symbolische Kommunikation innerhalb und jenseits des Textes,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38 [2004]: 309–21); Christoph Dartmann,

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To these arguments about the document as ritual performance and as performative, I add an emphasis on the document as drama and, in particular, as liturgy, the type of drama most familiar to all at this time. Like a play, a document is a performance that is very conscious of its audience, both those who are present as it is enacted and who are touched by its provisions, and a future audience of those who will hear, read, and cite it. A written document is a script forming a record of a performance that reaches a high elaboration in the royal diploma in which the content of the script can be heavily indebted to the liturgy. Documents speak in the firstperson performative statements of the dramatis personae inscribed on its parchment and even their gestures are scripted by it, notably the moment when they enact its provisions by confirming it with their own hands.2 They were read aloud, touched, displayed, and carefully preserved, they were used in later performance of the acts they contain, and they recorded a performance in a way that perpetually re-created its actions.3 As liturgy, they speak beyond the mundane secular world and appeal to divine authorization of their doings. A diploma is performative in the sense, too, that its issuer constructs his or her own identity, including gender identity, in the first-person performative statements inscribed on its parchment. A document speaks not only in its own frame; charters were composed in dialog with past documentary performances and memorialize these through citation.4 These citations are key: it is because a document iterated prior authorized and authoritative charters that it had power as a performance.5 When a royal woman issued a diploma, she used citation to perform at once both royalness and femaleness, drawing on the norms that attached to each system and thereby modulating them

Thomas Scharff, and Christoph Friedrich Weber, eds., Zwischen Pragmatik und Performanz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). On Spain, see Liam Moore, “By Hand and Voice: Performance of Royal Charters in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century León,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5 (2013): 18–32. 2. For example, “Ita manu propria signaui atque confirmaui.” García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 291. See also Georges Declerq, “Between Legal Action and Performance: The Firmatio of Charters in the Early Middle Ages,” in Medieval Legal Process: Physical, Spoken, and Written Performance in the Middle Ages, ed. Marco Mostert and Paul S. Barnwell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 59–62. 3. Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity, 34–48. 4. Keller, “Privilege in the Public Interaction,” 84. 5. “Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a ‘coded’ or iterable utterance or in other words, if the formula I pronounce . . . were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as a citation?” Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 18 (discussing J. L. Austin’s theory of performative utterances), cited in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993), 13.

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together into a “different sort of repeating” to assert an authority to speak and act where we might not expect it.6 In this chapter, I examine documents in which our royal daughters appear and those they initiate to show how these women gained, maintained, and used access to heavenly and earthly power because of the networks they found themselves in and the ones they created themselves, networks that were also performed by means of these documents. These women, consecrated to virginity, created their own networks of patronage, piety, and influence through the considerable property holdings they had and by means of the gifts they gave and favors they offered. The transactions they involved themselves in, using their property, were as much about creating relationships between themselves and others, that is, about extending and reinforcing their own networks, as they were about simply transferring title.7 They participated in human networks of power across the kingdom, both in relationship to the male networks of power used by their respective kings and spatially, across its territory. These networks were far from neutral. Like their royal brothers and fathers, the women’s participation in these networks created and supported hierarchy and relationships of dependence. It would be an impossible task to recount their every deed and connection, so here I rely on a series of case studies from the early tenth to the late eleventh centuries, designed to show that no one of these women in particular was exceptional and that the position they occupied and the roles they played were accepted parts of the monarchical system of their day. Our recognition of the importance of these networks allows us to recognize the protagonism of these royal women in the key events that these case studies describe—in the factional struggles of the tenth century, in gifts of property in the eleventh, and in the revolt of Lugo during the reign of Alfonso VI. I begin, however, by closely reading the royal diploma with which I began this book as a way of illustrating my arguments about the dramatic and liturgical quality of medieval documents and of demonstrating the way they both construct and reflect the networks through which power flows while at the same time they enact the gendered identity of their issuer, Urraca Fernández. This diploma shows in detail how a document could be used as a particular performance of power by a woman and what kinds of networks

6. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Performing Feminisms, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 271; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 139–40. 7. See also Barbara Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 48.

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it could construct through connections to property. This was the document she issued in 1071 to restore the see of Túy near the Atlantic coast, after its destruction decades earlier by Vikings, by granting it a series of properties that belonged to her.

1071: Urraca Fernández Restores the See of Túy On King Fernando’s death in 1065, the kingdom of León-Castilla was divided among his three sons: Sancho II was given Castilla, Alfonso VI was given León, and García was given Galicia, where Túy was located. Peace lasted until the death of their mother Sancha, in 1067. In 1071, Sancho and Alfonso, assisted by their sisters, Urraca and Elvira, teamed up to defeat García, who eventually fled into exile in Sevilla, and his two brothers briefly shared rule over Galicia. Urraca’s rich re-refounding of the see, confirmed by Alfonso, shows the control exerted by the siblings over this region at this time. Elvira issued a similar closely contemporary diploma for the see of Lugo, confirmed by Sancho II (discussed later in the chapter). This is the immediate historical context of the diploma. It follows one of the last known recorded acts of García, his own attempt to refound the see of Túy on February 1, 1071. It records, I argue, a drama with Urraca as its central actor, supported in her deeds by a chorus of other voices, and its content bears witness to the complex networks it brought together. It is also designed to elevate Urraca herself, while performing the political objectives of replacing King García and picking up rule from where he left off. The physical diploma, an original parchment (figure 6), serves as a kind of script, including lines, stage directions, and dramatis personae, that transmits the power of the original performance, an enduring recollection of the guarantee of the donation. It is a large object, 52 by 68 centimeters, roughly the size of a modern poster board, and thus the perfect size for public display, held up, perhaps, in the cathedral on the anniversary of its issue. Urraca’s monogram is in its exact center, reflecting her central position in its creation. The parchment is carefully prepared and it is written in a highly legible Visigothic script, with regular ligatures. All but one block of witnesses (the “testes”) and one or two words in the main body of text was written by the same scribe. It appears that the main text block and Urraca’s confirmation were written ahead of time, while the remaining blocks of confirmations, including that of Alfonso VI, were added later (figure 7).

Urraca Fernández’s diploma restoring the see of Túy, Túy AC 1/2

Used by permission of Diocese Tui Vigo, www.diocesetuivigo.org.

Figure 6.

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Figure 7. Detail of Urraca Fernández’s diploma, Túy AC 1/2 Used by permission of Diocese Tui Vigo, www.diocesetuivigo.org.

We are in a world of spoken, even sung, liturgical performance from the very outset of this document, and it gains strength from its hearers’ and viewers’ familiarity with that liturgy. The elaborate theological language of the document is among the means Urraca used to appeal to divine networks of power, and it is, Wendy Davies notes, a characteristic of pious gifts from Iberian women and a possible sign that they had a hand in the confection of their donations.8 The whole bears the imprint of Urraca’s guidance and motivating hand over a network of people embedded in a network of texts. The prose of the diploma is heavily and intentionally intertextual, quoting prior diplomas, liturgical songs, poems, and sermons and echoing commonplace phrases and snatches of verse. It draws on both liturgical forms and texts, with Urraca reciting a paraphrase of the Creed and calling on the saintly patrons of Túy in prayer in the manner of a priest. When the Latin of the diploma was read aloud, it would have been the familiar liturgical set pieces—the psalm, the Creed, the hymns—that would have been most familiar to its audience.9 This is one good reason for their use. 8. Davies, Acts of Giving, 107. 9. Moore, “By Hand and Voice,” 23.

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The protocol, which names Urraca as the issuer of the document, becomes the opportunity for a lengthy song of praise to God, which occupies about a sixth of the total text of the diploma. “All-powerful maker of all things,” she calls out to Christ the King. She, Urraca, is the speaker of this prayer, which draws inspiration from a variety of texts, although its main sources are sacred songs. The full text of this section reads: (Chrismon) All-powerful maker of all things, strong King of eternity, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, beyond time and co-eternal, governs eternally; Who in like manner rules kings and people and kingdoms; for Whom the lilies of heaven shine like a dazzling light; before Whom the Earth trembles; Whom Hell serves; Who with great power curbs the savagery of the world and the storms of the sea; to Whom the visible things yield and Whom the invisible serve; Whom they served before time; Whom we believe was born as Word from the Father, proclaimed by heavenly portents and by the annunciation of the Archangel, conceived of the Holy Spirit within the virginal hall of chastity of lofty Mary; the joy of Whose birth is praised in the heavens by the music of the heavenly ones, by the thousand-fold tongue of the highest powers, and on Earth, the cohort of all praises and gives the glory of good will; in Whose honor the cathedral see of Túy is built. I, Urraca, humble handmaiden of the manservants and handmaidens of the Lord, give eternal greetings in God to the Son of God, Amen.10 Two hymns of praise and prayer by the ninth-century Latinist and Christian apologist from Muslim Córdoba, Paul Albar, form the spine of this prayer. Albar is best known for promoting the preservation of Latin culture in Muslim Spain and for encouraging and publicizing the mid-ninth-century martyrdom movement in Córdoba, in which pious Christians sought opportunities to die for their faith at the hands of the Muslim authorities of the city and were later venerated as saints. The next table shows the borrowings by the diploma from Albar’s Carmina.11 Urraca’s direct borrowing from Albar’s text is precious evidence that Albar’s Carmina were read and used in Christian Spain. It reveals new information about the sources available to her and about her own interests. Albar’s fifth song praises God’s work as creator of heaven, earth, the seas, and hell

10. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 289. 11. Paul Albar, “Carmina,” ed. Ludwig Traube, in Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. 3, MGH Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi (Berlin, 1896), 129–30.

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(Christus) Omnipotens factor omnium rerum, Rex seculorum fortis, qui cum Patre at Spiritu Sancto Intemporalis et quoeternus eterniter regnas; Qui reges populos pariterque et regna gubernas; Cui candoris adinstar lumine clarent lilia celi, Ante quem terra tremit, cui tartara seruit; Qui rauidas magn[a] uirtute frenas mundi, Marisque procellus; cui uisiuilia cedunt Et inuisiuilia famulantur, quem ante secula famulantur. Túy AC 1/2

V O pietate bonus opifex, fulgore decorus Rex seculorum fortis, qui clare serenus Eterne regnans magna dicione potestas, Pulcrifice radians toto per mundo refulgis Qui mare, qui terras celumque et tartara tendis, Et virtute vigens signas et cludis abissos Quem res cuncta tremit queque pietate gubernas, Temperas et ravidas frenans virtute procellas, Tu rum dominus, celi qui regna potestas Et vultu placido tempestatesque serenas, Tartareas tetras dissolvis luce tenebras, Infantum linguas reddis qui pulcre solutas Et iuste reges, pariter quoque regna decoras: Tu nostras, rector, terge, sanctissime, culpas Et clemens voces has nunc tivi reddito dignas VI Lumine candoris clarent hic lilia celi Paul Albar, Carmina

and as King over all kings and kingdoms. Urraca’s own reworking, with its Chrismon opening the document, emphasizes the persona of Christ as King and author of creation, and its later evocation of Job 38:37 (“in celis concentu celestium”) reemphasizes the power of the creator. Albar took his theme for this verse from the first part of Dracontius’s De laudibus Dei, a powerful verse account of the creation of the world by a fifth-century Christian poet from Carthage.12 Albar’s Carmina survive in a single manuscript, now in Córdoba, 12. Albar directly borrows from it in his use of its phrase, “Et frenat rabidas in tempestate procellas,” a line that appears both in Dracontius’s original and in a reworked version under the name Hexameron by Eugenius of Toledo (d. 657), who presented his version to King Chindasvinth; Dracontius, De laudibus Dei, MGH Auctorum Antiquissimorum 14 (Berlin, 1905), 62–63, l. 708. Carleton Sage argues that Albar may have been inspired by the third part of Dracontius’s De laudibus dei in his Confessio, but he was unable to find a direct textual parallel; Paul Albar of Córdoba: Studies on His Life and Writing (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1943). Albar’s Vita Eulogii circulates in the same manuscript (Madrid BN 10029) as Dracontius’s Hexameron: Paul Albar, 92–97, 138, 219. Dracontius’s text is too different from the Túy diploma for it to have served as an independent source for both it and Albar’s poem.

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but Paul Ewald, followed by Manuel Díaz y Díaz, suggests that the manuscript was actually copied in the north and has compared it to manuscripts from Sahagún and Eslonza in the province of León.13 Eslonza is an intriguing possibility because this monastery was one of the dominions possessed by Urraca and was restored under her rule. This opening prayer echoes another earlier Iberian author. The first phrase of the diploma, “Omnipotens factor omnium” recalls Ildefonsus of Toledo’s opening prayer to the Virgin Mary in his treatise on her perpetual virginity.14 In this passage, Ildefonsus bears witness to God’s power as King for all ages and creator of all things; he then turns to Mary, the object of his treatise, quoting and expanding on the Archangel Gabriel’s words to the Virgin in Luke 1:28: “Behold you are blessed among women, intact among mothers, lord among maidservants, queen among sisters.” In the diploma, Urraca follows her own praise of Christ as King in the words she paraphrases from Paul Albar, with a reference to the Annunciation of the archangel to Mary and the Virgin’s conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit. In this passage, Urraca echoes the Marian hymn, Veni redemptor gentium, attributed to Ambrose and often used for the feast of the Nativity, in its description of Mary as virginal “hall of chastity.”15 Urraca’s emphasis on Christ as King of kings in this prayer diminishes the kings of this world by the comparison. It works alongside the elevation by the diploma of the Virgin Mary to raise the position of Urraca, herself, as a consecrated virgin in imitation of Mary, speaking directly to Christ. This elevates her with respect to the kings of her world, including her deposed brother García, whose own attempt to refound Túy stands in relationship to and is eclipsed by Urraca’s diploma. Urraca’s imitation of Mary puts her in a privileged relationship with Christ, and her brothers need her prayers. She uses sacred song in her diploma to leverage her own imitation of Mary to remind her hearers of the special role she holds as performer of intercessional prayer for their deceased parents and living brothers. These songs pull these diplomas toward the world of sung liturgical performance from the world of formal legal documents. When this diploma was read aloud, normally in a liturgical space, we may suppose that these sections actually would have been sung. This performance would emphasize its connection to liturgy

13. Córdoba AC 123; Paul Ewald, “Palaeographisches aus Spanien,” Neues Archiv 8 (1883): 357–60; Albar, “Carmina,” 125; Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 370–71. 14. “Erit enim hic magnus, erit hic Deus virtutum, hic rex omnium saeculorum, hic factor omnium rerum. Ecce beata tu inter mulieres, integra inter puerperas, domina inter ancillas, regina inter sorores.” Ildefonsus of Toledo, De uirginitate Sanctae Mariae, 155, ll. 26–29, based on the variant in six manuscripts that adds “omnium” after “rex.” 15. “Pudoris aula celse Marie conceptus.” García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 289.

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and sacred practice, and would reinforce the collective act represented in the document and enhance participants’ memory of it after the fact. Urraca expands from her invocation of Mary to make striking use of gendered theological language. She was the issuer and Christ himself was recipient of the diploma, not, as was more usual, the bishop and his own saintly patrons. Urraca then theologizes a divine genealogy that compares and associates Mary, Mother of God, with God the Father: “The Lord sent to his first-created people a Son born from a woman, [the Son] existed before time, begotten of the Father; and at the end of time, arisen from a Virgin without conception from a father. Both generations were miraculous; the first without a mother; the second without a father. What was born from flesh made us, what was born from a mother redeemed us. Arisen from the Father that we might be; born from a mother that we might not perish.”16 The Holy Spirit is displaced in this Trinity by the Virgin. Humankind has a worthy lineage from both sides, Urraca declares, from both God the Father and Mary our heavenly mother, as does Urraca herself, as she also reminds us, from both her father and her mother. Urraca’s source for this passage is a Christmas sermon by Augustine, in which he writes, “He is Revealer of the Father, Creator of the mother; Son of God from the Father without mother, son of man from mother without father.”17 Whereas Augustine uses a series of contrasts between high and low, including a contrast between God the Father and the Virgin Mother to heighten the paradoxical nature of Christ as both human and divine, Urraca uses this opposition in a comparative rather than contrasting way to emphasize the special and exceptional role of the Virgin Mary and the human nature of Christ as source of our redemption. A tagline from the same sermon is used in other Iberian documents, including a donation from 1043, in which Fonsina, “maidservant of Christ” gave a monastery and other possessions to the monasteries of San Juan Bautista and San Pelayo in León.18 San Juan Bautista is, of course, the monastery that would be dedicated to Saint Isidore in 1063 and, with San Pelayo, was the chief of the royal monasteries belonging to Urraca and her sister. Urraca recounts a history of the destruction of the see of Túy earlier in the century at the hands of Viking raiders:19 “The bishop of the see of Túy, 16. Ibid., 290. 17. Augustine, “Sermo 187, In natale domini,” in Sermones, PL (Paris, 1865), 38: coll. 1001. 18. “Qui conditor solis sub sole conditur.” Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 3. 19. “Leodemanorum” in the document. On the Leodemani as Vikings, see Amancio Isla Frez, La sociedad gallega en la alta edad media (Madrid: CSIC, 1992), 102.

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who held rule in that place, was taken by those enemies, and all his people captured. Some were killed; some were sold.” The bereft city is described in gendered terms as widowed and miserable for many years. It is a brief but heart-rending story, but this too is not original to this diploma. The whole account is taken from a diploma granted in 1024 by Alfonso V, Urraca’s grandfather, to the cathedral of Santiago. Alfonso’s 1024 diploma granted all of Túy and its cathedral, now devastated by the Vikings, to the cathedral of Santiago so that its bishop could create a defensive network as chief of a military March against the Normans.20 The next table compares the text of the gift to Túy to the earlier diploma from Alfonso V.21 Anticorum etenim relatione cognoscimus omnia Spania a christianis esse possessa, et per unaqueque prouincia ecclesis sedibus a episcopis preornata. Non longo post tempore, crescente omnia peccata, ad gens Leodemanorum pars maritima est dissipata, et quoniam Tudense sedis ipse aepiscopus, qui ibidem normam tenebat, cum omnibus suis ab ipsis inimicis captibus ductus fuit; alii occiderunt, alii uendiderunt necnon et ipsa ciuitas ad nihilum reduxerunt, que plurimis annis uidua atque lucubre permansit. Túy AC 1/2

Anticorum etenim relatione cognoscimus omnem Hispaniam a Christianis esse possessam et unamquamque prouintiam ecclesiis sedibus et episcopis perornatam. Post non longum uero tempus, crescentibus hominum peccatis, gens Leodemanorum pars maritima est dissipata et, quoniam Tudensis sedis ultima pre omnibus sedibus et infima erat, eius episcopus qui ibi morabatur cum omnibus suis ab ipsis inimicis captiuus ductus est, et alios occiderunt, alios uendiderunt necnon et ipsam ciuitatem ad nichilum reduxerunt, que plurimis annis uidua atque lugubris permansit. Santiago de Compostela, ACS CF 34 Tumbo A fol. 23v

This passage is not the only parallel between the 1024 and 1071 diplomas. Alfonso V’s diploma provided the initial model for Urraca’s gift, and the two diplomas stand in dialog with each other. They open using identical language.22 They use similar words to describe their royal issuers as servants of the Lord.23 Both direct their petitions to God, going above the saintly heads of the patrons of the recipient see, although Urraca’s diploma is more

20. Ibid., 102–3. 21. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290; José María Fernández del Pozo, “Alfonso V, rey de León,” in León y su historia, vol. 5 (León: CEISI, 1984), no. 32. 22. “Omnipotens factor omnium rerum, rex seculorum fortis.” García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 289; Fernández del Pozo, “Alfonso V, rey de León,” 220. 23. “Ego quidem exigua seruorum uel ancillarum Domini ancilla Orraka.” García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290. “Ego quidem exiguus seruus seruorum Domini, rex Adefonsus.” Fernández del Pozo, “Alfonso V, rey de León,” 220.

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explicitly addressed to Christ. Alfonso’s diploma cites lemmata referring to Psalms 72:12, the chant Immola deo sacrificium laudis, and the Ambrosian hymn Venite benedicti patris mei,24 putting us in the same world of sung liturgy as Urraca’s document, although her diploma develops this aspect in far greater detail, with more extensive use of liturgical prayer and song, and much more creative use of theological ideas. Even their confirmations at the bottom of the diplomas form a genealogical mirror. In 1071, Urraca’s name is followed by that of Alfonso, her brother, while in the earlier diploma, Alfonso’s name is followed by that of Urraca, his wife.25 (Recall that Alfonso V was the grandfather of Alfonso VI and Urraca Fernández.) Urraca’s diploma was intended to undo the action of her grandfather’s diploma, restoring the independence of the see of Túy from the see of Saint James and putting it on a new, more secure financial footing with an extensive series of gifts. Urraca accomplished this by making her gift an amplified echo of the earlier diploma. Diego, the bishop of the see of Santiago, was among the throng that subscribed her document, as were eleven of his clergy, who all confirmed the document in the same column.26 They certainly knew the 1024 diploma that had given their see rights over Túy, and their presence in the 1071 diploma strengthens Túy’s restoration. The reuse of formulas in successive grants from different rulers reflects not simple-minded repetition but deliberate mimesis that legitimated new rulers by connecting them to their ancestors.27 Urraca’s 1071 diploma gained legitimacy both for the gift it enacted and for the new political order it instantiated from its citation and evocation of Alfonso V’s 1024 gift. This new political order included not only Túy’s restoration at the expense of Santiago but Alfonso VI’s position in Galicia at the expense of his brother García. Urraca’s diploma is striking not only for its oral, visual, and performative qualities and for its leverage of divine power; it also gives testimony of the human networks created through its proclamation. We have already seen how it connected the see of Santiago with that of Túy. The property transfers it describes created networks between Túy and local women, with Urraca at their center. Some of the substantial properties Urraca gave to Túy came to her from the women who were named in the diploma. To pay for food and clothing for those belonging to the cathedral, Urraca gave Túy half the monastery of San Pelayo de Albeos, given to her by Domna Velasquita, 24. Fernández del Pozo, “Alfonso V, rey de León,” 220–21. 25. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 291; ibid., 222. 26. An archpriest, five priests, an archdeacon, and four deacons; García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 292. 27. Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity, 98–99.

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who had received it through inheritance. It is unclear whether Domna Velasquita retained the other half of the monastery; if so, this gift created an ongoing relationship between Túy and the monastery, through both Urraca and Velasquita, in which the monastery would provide the cathedral with goods in exchange, presumably, for some kind of protection.28 There is no indication in the document that Velasquita was an abbess, a nun, or anything other than the lay lord of this community. San Pelayo de Albeos, like the much larger and richer communities dedicated to Saint Pelayo in León and Oviedo and controlled by the royal daughters, was a community of women dedicated to the virgin boy martyr of Córdoba. Urraca also gave Túy the whole of the inheritance of Gutier Núñez that she had received from his sister, Elvira Núñez, “whatever you are able to discover by its title, just as in Limia as in Portugal, and in Valdevez, and on the banks of the Miño, here and there, except for Vilela, which lies in Valdevez, and which I Urraca gave to the see of the blessed Saint James the Apostle.”29 Urraca’s grant was vague and not very useful for establishing strict legal title over particular property, but it was extensive, and Elvira Núñez and her brother were people of considerable wealth. Elvira’s name was a common one, and the lacuna in Galician documents from the middle of the eleventh century makes it difficult to place her and her brother with security; however, based on their names and the location of their holdings, it is possible that the brother and sister were the children of Nuño Gutierrez, the fidelis of Vermudo III who received a gift from that king in 1032,30 and ultimately descended from Gutier Menéndez, the father of Rosendo, the saintly founder of the monastery of Celanova.31 She may also have been the Elvira Núñez or Muñoz, who, with her husband Munio Fernández, granted land to the monastery of Celanova in 1092.32 After describing each of these gifts, Urraca explains why she received property from each woman, using similar vocabulary: “Because I helped her always in all her causes (or cases) and whatever she said to me, I did it.”33 28. García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290. 29. M. Rubén García Álvarez, “Catálogo de documentos reales de la alta edad media referentes a Galicia (711–1109),” Compostellanum 11 (1966): 291; ibid., 291. 30. Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega, 2; Núñez Contreras, “Colección diplomatica de Veremudo III,” no. 10, p. 464. 31. Emilio Sáez, Los ascendientes de San Rosendo: Notas para el estudio de la monarquía astur-leonesa durante los siglos IX y X (Madrid: CSIC, Instituto Jerónimo Zurita, 1947), 25–27. 32. José Miguel Andrade Cernadas, O Tombo de Celanova: Estudio Introductorio, Edición, e Índices (Santiago de Compostela: Consello da Cultura Galega, 1995), no. 47. 33. With respect to Velasquita’s gift, “Pro quo adiubaui ea semper in omnes actiones suas et quicquit mici dixit et ego illam feci”; with respect to Elvira Núñez, “Pro quo adiubaui illa semper in omnia quicquit mici dixit.” García Álvarez, “Diploma de restauración,” 290–91.

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Their gift to Urraca required a kind of counter-gift of action on behalf of these women.34 Both had inherited the property that they gave Urraca, and it seems she had supported their claims to inherit and in return received from them, in gratitude or payment, a share of what they received. Naming the women in the diploma identified and created a set of linkages, a network with Urraca at the center. The diploma testifies to the links between Urraca and these women, and emphasizes her power to intercede for them effectively before the king, an intercession that recalls the emphasis on the Virgin Mary at the outset of the document, who intercedes with Christ the King. It also creates links between the cathedral of Túy and these women, members of the local elite on whom Túy must depend and with whom Túy must continue to negotiate through the person of Urraca. I have described Urraca’s diploma for Túy as having a script, stage directions, and a cast list. The subscription section of the diploma contains all three elements at the same time that it develops the network Urraca constructed through her act. The essential stage direction of the diploma is the act of confirming the document when those present place their hands on the parchment. We know how important the moment of physically raising up the parchment of the charter was because this was the moment that the creators of cartularies chose to illustrate when they copied (or invented) royal diplomas to support their claims. Tumbo A, the twelfth-century cartulary from Santiago de Compostela, illustrated its royal charters with images of the royal men and women who granted them raising the documents up in their hands. Likewise, the Liber testamentorum of Oviedo shows its royal patrons lifting up their gifts, in the form of the original parchment documents, to the altar. Their diplomas read “testamentum” so we do not miss what it is they are holding.35 It was this physical act of laying hands on the document, of raising it up, that gave the diploma force; indeed, the verbs used to refer to this act are firmare confirmare, adfirmare, or roborare, each with the connotation of strengthening what has been enacted.36 As shown in the next table, Urraca’s confirmation maintains that highly rhythmic, oral first-person voice that we have seen throughout, emphasized by her use of six first-person verbs in the past tense. Her monogram follows, a device that continued to recall her presence long after the ritual of granting the diploma was over (figure 7).37

34. 35. 36. 37.

Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, 110. Pick, “Sacred Queens,” 59. Declerq, “Between Legal Action and Performance,” 56–61; Moore, “By Hand and Voice,” 21. Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity, 37.

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Ego Orraka hoc testamentum fieri concupibi, elegi, et firmaui, et gratias pro Redemptori adclamaui, ita manu propria signaui atque confirmaui.

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I Urraca desired, chose and established that this testament be made, and I called out thanks to the Redeemer. So, did I sign and confirm with my own hand.

Túy AC 1/2

At this point, other characters were brought into the drama to confirm and support what Urraca had done. Touching the diploma was a solemn pledge that embodied the engagement voiced orally during the ritual of reading its text. The monogram of her brother, Alfonso VI, is preceded by the invocation: “Under the nourishing power of God, Alfonso the king confirms.” A similar invocation precedes the names of each of the eight bishops who confirmed next: “Under the protection of Christ. . . . Under the support of Christ. . . . Under the mercy of the Lord. . . . Under the trine and true God . . .” and so forth. When read aloud, this procession of qualities and names would have had the effect of a litany. Georges Declerq compares touching and confirming a charter to swearing an oath on the Bible, and this is oathlike language. The diploma cites the Bible and other liturgical sources; it begins with the Chrismon and verbal invocations of the divine, it contains spiritual anathemas, and its scribe was an ecclesiastic, the archpriest of Túy.38 The total list of confirmants is impressive and includes a large group of well-known bishops, abbots, and nobles. The act was also observed by an audience, individuals identified as witnesses, testes, whose names were added later in a different hand. I have already noted that members of the cathedral of Santiago consented to their dispossession by confirming the document. The six nobles who confirmed the document are Vermudo, count; Fernando Fernández, count; Pedro Ansúrez, count; Pelayo Peláez, son of the count; Martín Alfónsez, armiger of the king; and Rodrigo Ovéquiz, son of the count. Vermudo is Count Vermudo Ordóñez, a Galician count,39 and Rodrigo Ovéquiz is also Galician. Some, such as Pedro Ansúrez,40 Martin Alfónsez,41 38. See also Declerq, “Between Legal Action and Performance,” 67–68. The scribe came to Túy from the monastery of Samos, where he copied a document in 1061 (AHN 1239/13). He used the same sign for his name in the 1061 charter as appears in the 1071 diploma; Ainoa Castro, “Writing in Cursive and Minuscule Visigothic Script: Polygraphism in Medieval Galicia,” March 20, 2015, http://litteravisigothica. com/writing-in-cursive-and-minuscule-visigothic-script-polygraphism-in-medieval-galicia/. 39. Vermudo Ordóñez witnessed three diplomas between 1071 and 1072; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 608. 40. Present in ninety-six diplomas of Alfonso VI, Pedro Ansúrez was the noble closest to the king. Urraca’s diploma is the first in which he appeared as count; ibid., 1: 582–86. 41. Also one of Alfonso VI’s most reliable nobles, Martin Alfónsez appears in thirty-five diplomas until the 1090s; he was armiger in the early years of the king’s reign; ibid., 1: 565–66, 587–88.

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and Rodrigo Ovéquiz42 were closely associated with the rule of Alfonso VI and, like his royal sisters, confirmed many of that king’s documents, even though in some cases their relationship with the king did not remain smooth. All but Pelayo Peláez43 confirmed a major gift from Alfonso VI to Urraca in the region of her monastery of Eslonza later in October of the same year, a gift that rewarded her for her help in Galicia earlier in the year.44 They formed another network, one not merely of men with court connections through the ascendent king but also long-established prior to this document through a chain of marriage alliances and connections among women, as shown in the genealogical chart (figure 8). This was a closely intermarried group, connected through their relationship to two sisters, Fronilda and Elvira Peláez, daughters of Pelayo Rodríguez, a noble who rebelled against Vermudo II. Indeed, the whole group was connected to an alternative royal line than the main line of Alfonso V → Sancha and Fernando I → Urraca Fernández and Alfonso VI, the regnal line whose power and continuity is emphasized in the text of the diploma. Instead of a line descending from Vermudo II’s only legitimate son, Alfonso V, the noble signatories are connected to a legitimate daughter by Vermudo’s first and later repudiated wife, and to his illegitimate son, Ordoño Vermúdez. Their willing participation in this diploma, and then in Alfonso VI’s reign, at least partly neutralized any potential claims or ambitions they may have had in the kingdom. The lesson of this genealogical chart is that, rather than thinking of a given court as one single network, we need to think of it as multiple, overlapping, and shifting networks. These networks interpenetrated each other at many points, but we can see each as providing different ways—different channels or paths—that allowed their members influence. Power belonged to those who were best able to make use of these networks, to get those who may have had very different interests to find some moment or point of self-interest. Those who confirmed Urraca’s document did not merely confirm the gift; they also confirmed their association with Alfonso’s royal court, their recognition of its authority, and their membership in new webs of patronage and alliance.

42. Rodrigo Ovéquiz first appeared alongside Alfonso VI in Urraca’s diploma. He appeared only sporadically thereafter, and in the late 1080s, he initiated a rebellion against the king; ibid., 1: 590–93. 43. Present in eight diplomas between 1067 and 1097, Pelayo Peláez played less of a role than his brother, Pedro Peláez, who appeared in twenty or so diplomas between 1067 and 1094; ibid., 1: 588–89, 608. 44. Vicente Vignau y Ballester, ed., Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Hernando, 1885), no. 5.

Figure 8.

Rodrigo Ovéquiz

Vermudo Ordóñez

Fernando Fernández

Elvira Peláez

Martín Alfonso

Fronilda Peláez

Sancho Ordóñez

unknown woman

Onega Ovéquiz

Oveco Vermúdez

Ordoño Vermúdez

Relationships among nobles in Urraca Fernández’s diploma for Túy

Aldonza Muñoz

Vela Ovéquiz

Vermudo Ovéquiz

Jimena Peláez

Pelayo Peláez

Elvira Peláez

Elvira Suárez

Aldonza Ordóñez

Cristina Vermúdez

King Vermudo II

Pelayo Froílaz

Ordoño Ramírez de León

Queen Velasquita

Eilo Ansúrez

Justa Fernández

Fernando Flaínez

Pedro Ansúrez

Ansur Díaz

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This fact is brought into sharp relief when we compare Urraca’s gift with the failed attempt by her brother King García to refound the see of Túy a few months earlier, on February 1 of the same year. Its confirmants were few. There were no bishops who were willing to support his cause; only five abbots whose sees are unnamed and whose identities are unknown; and only three nobles. The property that the diploma granted is limited, consisting of Vilar de Mouros, across the Miño from Túy, which was the most García, without access to his sisters’ support and territorial resources, could muster.45 The ultimate purpose of Urraca’s gift was not merely to enrich Túy, and it is more than evidence for the date of García’s defeat at the hands of his brothers; it was also a performance of his defeat. Urraca’s diploma steadfastly ignores her brother’s earlier gift. Urraca had access to people and to property, in the region and beyond, that her brother García had not and, moreover, that her brother Alfonso VI had not, although they were both kings. Alfonso was able to get Urraca to connect her network to his own for reasons we cannot know in full but that may have to do both with personal affinities between the siblings and with what Alfonso could and would offer Urraca that García could not, such as Alfonso’s substantial gift to Urraca near her monastery of Eslonza later in the year.46 This shows a certain dependence of Alfonso on his sister or, perhaps better, a mutual interdependence. We can say much the same of his connections to the bishops and abbots and to the nobles who confirmed his document. He needed all of them, as they needed him. He needed Urraca to make this gift; he could not do it himself because she was the one with the property to give in this region of Galicia, where he had no base. Part of what she gave came from the monasteries she and her sister had inherited from their parents; a landed wealth that covered the whole kingdom in a way none of their brothers separately could match at that time. The other part consisted of gifts she had received from a network of women for whom she served as the effective patron and intercessor at court. We must also consider what role gender played in the formation of these networks. In this diploma, Urraca leverages her position in two kinds of networks, earthly and divine. With respect to the latter, her role in the diploma was that of mediator between those on earth and the divine heavenly hierarchy, on the model of Mary. The gendered 45. Herculano, PMH, I.2: no. 494. It is clear from the titles he used to describe himself (“Dei gratia legionensis imperii rex et magnificus triumphator”) that Alfonso VI’s confirmation of this diploma was added well after the original issue. Two of the document’s noble confirmants appear separately in King García’s diplomas in PMH, I.2: no. 451 and 474. 46. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 5.

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theological language of the diploma and its emphasis on liturgical prayer and performance were not extraneous, accidental, or incidental; they came directly from the milieu of Urraca herself, intended to recall the role of both sisters in intercessory prayer for their parents as well as the extent of their monastic network and to deploy this power in a spectacle of the court. Urraca was also embedded in secular networks of different kinds. She and her sister were part of the normal networks of the elite of the kingdom. But they were also, because of their gender, sought out by other women, such as those whose gifts to her formed the basis of the Túy diploma, as sources of protection and patronage, and these networks intersected with those of the king and the court, and also with the religious elite—the bishops and major monasteries of the kingdom. Urraca’s own power consisted in both the property she held and the divine charism of her role as intercessor, and both are deployed in this diploma to virtuosic effect. In the rest of this chapter, I use the lessons we have learned from this diploma to examine the way royal daughters, Urraca’s predecessors, created and maintained networks, beginning in the early tenth century.

Royal Women and Noblewomen in the Tenth Century: Jimena Ordóñez, Elvira Ramírez, and Abbess Guntroda Gutiérrez Urraca’s activity was not unique to her but was shared by other royal daughters and sisters of the kings of León. To demonstrate this, we begin on terrain that at first may seem unpromising, some century and a half before Urraca’s Túy document. The royal daughter Jimena Ordóñez issued only one document on her own, although between 920 and 923 she confirmed ten royal diplomas issued by her father, King Ordoño II (d. 924), and her mother, Elvira Menéndez. And the one document she did issue seems to show her as weak, not powerful, for in it she ceded her rights to a significant piece of property without appearing to receive anything concrete in return. But the connections created and represented by this charter allowed Jimena to associate herself with Celanova, one of the most important monasteries in Galicia. The later history of these connections is even more interesting. I argue that one of the signatories to her charter, an abbess from a local noble family named Guntroda Gutiérrez, formed a link between Jimena’s activities and those of her royal niece, Elvira Ramírez, and that this connection helps explain the development of the cult of Saint Pelayo in León, a cult that, as we have seen, was crucial for the self-identification of the royal daughters.

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Jimena’s charter, from January 935, explains that her royal parents gave her the villa of Villar. Her mother, Elvira Menéndez, from a prominent Galician family, was the source of the property. Jimena’s document relates that the kingdom was divided after the death of Jimena’s parents and that a brother became king in Galicia. Despite Jimena’s claim on Villar, her brother gave it to their mother’s brother, Gutier Menéndez and his wife Ilduara Ériz.47 Jimena’s charter tells this couple’s son, her first cousin Froila Gutiérrez, that she is renouncing her rights to the villa “because of the obedience and love you have for me.”48 The next year, Froila and his wife donated Villar to their brother Rosendo, later known as Saint Rosendo, for him to build a monastery there dedicated to the Savior. They announced that, although the place had been to this point called Villar, it would henceforth be known as Celanova. Thus, Jimena’s action became the seed of one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most important monasteries in early medieval Iberia. Jimena herself confirmed the gift, and the scribes of the Tumbo de Celanova, the cartulary that transmits it to us, took care to copy her name in big block letters, the only name that has this treatment in the charter.49 Whether it reflected the original parchment or was a retrospective attempt by the makers of the cartulary to stress Celanova’s royal connections, it appears to be a treatment reserved for members of the royal family.50 Jimena gave the gift that became the foundation of the monastery of Celanova during a century of growth and turmoil for the Christian kingdom. Jimena’s father moved his capital south from Oviedo in the Asturias to the city of León, giving up his palace in León to build its first cathedral. It was a century that saw the emergence of the county of Castilla as a powerful counterweight to León’s ambitions. And Galicia, where Celanova was located, was itself home to powerful noble families who jockeyed with each other for control of the region and pushed the territories controlled by the Christians south into what is now Portugal. They alternately fought against and intermarried with each other and with the royal family in its own many branches.51 Their factional struggles against each other, and against the crown, dominate the story I tell here. It is a story usually told only as a

47. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 1: no. 26. 48. Ibid., 1: no. 44. Froila was already listed as possessing Villar in a 934 reckoning of their grandparents’ property made by him and his siblings (1: no. 40). 49. In this document, we also learn that Jimena had received the property from her mother, Rosendo’s and Froila’s aunt; ibid., 1: no. 53. 50. For example, ibid., 1: 26. 51. Robert Portass tells a similar story about a slightly earlier period in “All Quiet on the Western Front? Royal Politics in Galicia from c.800 to c.950,” Early Medieval Europe 21 (2013): 283–306.

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contest between powerful men. But royal daughters and noble women were central to the struggles among their families, and I explore their relationships with dominant men and investigate their connections to each other. Who were these factions? First was the royal family, although it was hardly a unified faction, as cousin dethroned cousin in a dynastic genealogy whose details remain contested. I focus here on the lineage of Jimena’s father, Ordoño II; his powerful son, Ramiro II; and Ramiro’s two children by his second wife, Sancho I and Elvira Ramírez, a powerful consecrated virgin and Jimena’s niece, who later ruled for her own nephew, Ramiro III (figure 9). Other members of the royal family who opposed this lineage, for example, Ordoño III, Sancho and Elvira’s half-brother; Ordoño IV, who briefly dethroned Sancho I; and Vermudo II, who dethroned Ramiro III at the end of the century, received ready aid from Galician nobles wanting to expand their own independent power and who were thus themselves hostile to this lineage, especially after the death of Ramiro II. Primary among these was the second faction, the family of Gonzalo Menéndez and his mother, Muniadomna Díaz, which carved out a territory for itself in the region around Braga, in what is now Portugal. Gonzalo Menéndez’s principal local enemy was Rodrigo Velásquez, and these two often took different sides in

Ordoño II

Elvira Menéndez

Jimena Ordóñez

Ramiro II

Sancho I

Ramiro III Figure 9. Tenth-century Leonese genealogy

Elvira Ramírez

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the ongoing struggles over the crown of León, using the contest between kings as proxy for their own battles. The third prominent noble Galician faction was the family of Rosendo of Celanova. Rosendo himself tended to support the line of Ramiro II, Sancho I, Elvira Ramírez, and Ramiro III, and they rewarded Celanova handsomely for it. At the same time that Christians fought each other, they also faced a resurgent Islamic Spain to their south under a series of powerful rulers. The emirate, then caliphate, was not merely a genuine military threat; it also became a powerful rhetorical tool for Christian self-identification and legitimization. Kings and nobles positioned themselves as embattled warriors against Islam. Muslim strength was an acceptable excuse for Christian failure. This is where the recovery of the body of Saint Pelayo and the uses it was put to fits into my story, and it is the place where royal and noble women consecrated to religious life become important actors in the tale. According to the tenth-century legend, Pelayo was born in Galicia to a noble family, the nephew of a Bishop Ermogius. As we have seen in chapter 2, he was martyred in July 925 in Córdoba under ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III for resisting that ruler’s call for him to convert to Islam and enjoy the pleasures of the Córdoban court. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān had the power to destroy his body, but his physical loss was more than balanced by the spiritual victory of his martyrdom, and this was a powerful message for Christians struggling and often failing to resist their more powerful Muslim neighbors.52 The contest over which of the several Christian factions could claim Saint Pelayo’s protective mantle was won after 966, when Sancho I of León, with the advice of his sister, Elvira Ramírez, sent to Córdoba to recover the body of the deceased youth. By the time the body arrived, Sancho was dead and Elvira was ruling for his young son, Ramiro III. What happened between 925 and 966 to make the body of the dead Pelayo a desirable prize for the Leonese kingdom was a result of networks created between royal and noble woman and the uses to which they were put. One final player connects the royal and noble factions I have discussed thus far. This is Abbess Guntroda Gutiérrez, who was the first to confirm Jimena Ordóñez’s charter, after Jimena herself. She was a first cousin to Jimena and also to Rosendo and Froila through their Menéndez connections. She was daughter of Gutier Osóriz and Aldonza Menéndez, the sister of Queen Elvira and Gutier Menéndez (figure 10).53 Like Rosendo’s family, hers 52. Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus 711–1000 (London: Routledge, 2002), 100. 53. Gundtroda’s parents made a donation to Celanova in 941, which she signed as “Gunterodes abbatissa.” One of the names that follows hers is “Gilvira confessa,” who may be her sister but also may be the Elvira of Jimena Ordóñez’s document; Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 1: no. 65.

Figure 10.

Elvira Ramírez

Ramiro II

Elvira Menéndez

Diego Menéndez

Abbess Guntroda and the Leonese royal family

Jimena Ordóñez

Ordoño II

Abbess Guntroda Gutiérrez

Aldonza Menéndez

Elvira “confessa”

Gutier Osóriz

Froila Gutiérrez

Gutier Menéndez

Rosendo of Celanova

Ilduara Ériz

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also possessed property and power in the area around Celanova, and Abbess Guntroda became the best-known channel of this power, which sometimes put her in conflict with Rosendo and Celanova. She was linked by marriage to the faction of Rodrigo Velásquez, and this put her at odds with the faction of Gonzalo Menéndez and Muniadomna Díaz. Guntroda was abbess of the double monastery of San Martiño de Pazó,54 some 15 kilometers from Celanova on a height of land above the Arnoia river. Her confirmation of Jimena’s charter is followed by the confirmation of “Elvira confessa,” then three more women described as “confessa,” and five priests, including the scribe, who were probably all members of Guntroda’s community. In the charter, Jimena is described as living in the monastery of “Satur”; recall that in chapter 2, I argue that she was the domina of this house.55 Satur is probably the monastery of Santa Marina of Asadur.56 Abbess Guntroda’s participation in the Asadur gift suggests that Jimena may have been domina of both houses, which are 30 kilometers apart on the same river system. “Pazó” is short for Palatiolo (“little palace”), which is how Guntroda’s monastery is described in Latin charters.57 Jimena’s niece, Elvira Ramírez was given a monastery with the similar name of San Salvador de Palaz del Rey by her father, Ramiro II, who also confirmed Jimena’s document. The most famous monastic Palatiolum was the monastery of Pfaltzel, near Trier, founded by Adela, daughter of the Merovingian king, Dagobert II, in a lateRoman fortress.58 It is thus a name especially appropriate for a monastery with a royal daughter as its lord.59 Pazó’s members and abbess would have confirmed her charter because they stood to lose by her alienation of Villar but to gain from the association her charter eventually created with neighboring Celanova.

54. José Freire Camaniel, El monacato gallego en la alta edad media (Coruña: Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, 1998), 2: 820. 55. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 1: no. 44. 56. Following the suggestion of James d’Emilio. It is not attested to again until 1191; Freire Camaniel, Monacato gallego, 2: 615. 57. For example, Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: nos. 177, 191; Manuel Serrano y Sanz, “Documentos del monasterio de Celanova (año 975 a 1164),” Revista de Ciencias Juríicas y Sociales 12 (1929): no. 29, p. 521. 58. Franz-Josef Heyen, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerinnenklosters Pfalzel bei Trier (ca. 700–1016), Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1966), 8. Constance Brittain Bouchard disputes these Merovingian origins and makes Adela, instead, Charlemagne’s great-aunt; Rewriting Saints and Ancestors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 103. 59. Jimena and her siblings fled to Galicia when their uncle took the throne of León after their father’s death. Her fond description of Froila Gutiérrez’s obedience and love may stem from his help at this time; Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, 52.

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Abbess Guntroda herself is best known through two lengthy charters that outline her attempts, ultimately unsuccessful in both cases, to acquire and maintain control over two monasteries: Santa Comba de Bande and Santa María de Ribeira.60 Using this evidence, which issues from smaller players in the factional struggles that enveloped the region, we can see how her networks overlapped with those of the royal daughters, especially those of Elvira Ramírez, and I argue that she was instrumental in promoting the cult of the youthful Galician martyr, Saint Pelayo. We might expect the cult of Saint Pelayo to have developed first in Galicia, where legend later recorded he was born and where the uncle he replaced as hostage in Córdoba was bishop;61 however, only six Galician monasteries can be securely identified as being under the patronage of the martyr by the end of the first century after his death. Of these, three had definite links to Abbess Guntroda: San Payo (Pelayo) de Rabal, San Paio (Pelayo) de Mosteiro, and Santa María de Ribeira. In addition, one more, San Pelayo de Villar, may also be connected to her.62 In 959, Guntroda granted part of a vineyard near the monastery of San Payo in Rabal, “where you recently founded a monastery,” to Abbot Fafila and his monks.63 This was not the first of Fafila’s foundations. In 952 he founded the monastery of San Vicente under the patronage of Rosendo and Celanova. San Vicente and San Payo were less than 30 kilometers apart, along the Arnoia river. Fafila enriched San Vicente with properties near what became, seven years later, his monastery of San Payo.64 But whereas San Vicente was under the patronage of Celanova, San Payo was not and had, in fact, been established early during a ten-year period when Celanova itself was diligently attempting to buy up all the remaining land in the region

60. For more extended treatment of each document, on Santa Comba, see Carlos Baliñas Pérez, Gallegos del año mil (La Coruña: Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, 1998), chap. 8; Rodríguez Fernández, Sancho I, 40–43. On Santa María, see Emilio Sáez, “El monasterio de Santa María de Ribeira,” Hispania 4 (1944): 3–27, 163–210. 61. Christys, Christians in al-Andalus, 98–100. 62. For general bibliography on Rabal, Ribeira, Mosterio, and Villar, see Freire Camaniel, Monacato gallego, 2: 853–54, 904, 962. Freire Camaniel does not mention Pelayo as a patron of Santa María de Ribeira, but the first document we have from this community, from 1005, names the saint among its patrons; Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 3: no. 292. The remaining two, San Pelayo de César and San Paio de Piñeira, may reflect the transfer of the cult from the former to the latter. San Rosendo was an early promotor of César. I am grateful to James d’Emilio for this suggestion and also for his help identifying and untangling possible Pelagian communities. On these two, see Freire Camaniel, Monacato gallego, 2: 686, 837–40. 63. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 125, p. 108. 64. Ibid., 2: no. 95. Fafila also owned land in Fonte Cuberta and likewise near San Payo (2: no. 116).

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around Rabal.65 What is more, Guntroda’s portion came to her, she relates, from Bishop Rosendo’s uncle. That, and the timing of her donation, so close to the moment of the founding of the monastery of San Payo, and indeed our only testimony to that founding, make her appear less like a donor and more like a partner. She seems here to compete with Celanova, working to keep this territory out of the hands of Celanova by supporting the creation of San Payo. We learn of Guntroda’s association with Santa María de Ribeira and San Paio de Mosteiro from a 1005 document from the former, which has a long narrative section outlining its history and Abbess Guntroda’s connection to the community. It was a family foundation for both sexes, dedicated to Mary, the apostles Peter and Paul, Saint Pelayo, and “all the other martyrs and virgins.” Its founders left its rule to their descendant, male or female, who was “most strenuous in the service of God,” and this was their daughter, Zagraria. When some among her family spoke against her rule, she went to Domna Guntroda, “who was very strong,” put herself in her hands, and gave Guntroda a life interest in the villa of Nogueira in exchange for the abbess’s protection. Zagaria was then able to rule Ribeira “in holy fashion” until one day she went to another of her monasteries in the region of Lemos, “which they call San Pelayo,” and there she died. This monastery in Lemos is San Paio de Mosteiro.66 Guntroda, learning of Zagraria’s death, went with her brothers and sisters to Ribeira, “not to build it but to destroy it”; sacked and looted the place; and cast out its inhabitants. It remained vacant from that day, and the rest of the document describes how the heirs of the original founders got Alfonso V to take the house away from Guntroda’s own heir as abbess of San Martiño de Pazó.67 Emilio Sáez dates Guntroda’s aid to Zagaria and her subsequent takeover of the house to between 935 and 966.68 The charter that describes these events relates the perspective of the victors, and we need not accept at face value all of its claims, especially those concerning the legitimacy of Guntroda’s interest in the community. We have only the victors’ word for what 65. Ibid., 2: nos. 116, 118, 128, 131, 134–41, 143, 145–52, 161–63, 165. 66. Freire Camaniel, Monacato gallego, 2: 743. In 976, a woman named Senior gave property to a monastery in Lemos dedicated to San Miguel and San Pelayo that had been received from her brother Bishop Vimarano; their uncle, Bishop Ermogius; and his uncle, Bishop Nausto, all of Túy; Tumbo Nuevo de Lugo, AHN 267B fols. 41r–42r. This might make Senior and her brother the siblings or cousins of the deceased martyr, Saint Pelayo, but there are grave issues with this document, including its anachronistic reference to Roman and canon law. 67. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 3: no. 292, pp. 110–13; Sáez, “Monasterio de Santa María de Ribeira,” 3–16. 68. Sáez, “Monasterio de Santa María de Ribeira,” 16.

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Zagaria promised Guntroda in exchange for her protection and support. Their relationship could have been more akin to the partnership I proposed between Abbot Fafila and Guntroda and the house at Rabal. We may also ask whether, given her interest in Saint Pelayo at Rabal, it was under her influence that both Ribeira and the house near Lemos came under the patronage of Saint Pelayo. One final possible connection is the monastery of San Pelayo de Villar, given to Celanova in 972 by “Etdonem confesso, Gunterodis Deo dicata, et Seniorem diaconus.” Like Rabal and Ribeira, it was dedicated to Saint Pelayo, and like Pazó, it was dedicated to Saint Martin. It can be identified with the modern hamlet of San Paio, just north of the Miño river, near Carracedo, and thus somewhat at a distance from the center of Guntroda’s activity. There are a couple of reasons to identify “Gunterodis Deo dicata” with Abbess Guntroda. First, the charter grants numerous properties in addition to the monastery, and while not all can be identified, a good chunk of them appear to be located some distance from the monastery but in the region near Rabal where we know Guntroda maintained interests.69 It thus seems that Guntroda was once again, as it were, partners with the other two in lordship over this monastery and was adding her own properties to their gift. The second reason is the extraordinarily high stature of the signatories to the charter, although this could also be explained by the strategic location of the house, near important fisheries and several other monasteries.70 They include the Galician nobles, Rodrigo Velásquez and Ero Ordóñez, and three bishops from Galician sees. Elvira Ramírez, “Queen and servant of Christ, dedicated to God,” who had been ruling the kingdom of León since 966 for her nephew, also signed this charter, and her co-confirmants place her in Galicia at the time. If the Guntroda of the charter is our abbess, this charter would mark her connection to a second royal daughter.71 By 972, when the charter was issued, the body of Saint Pelayo had been in León for five years. But could it have been Guntroda’s longstanding interest in the saint that had spurred Elvira to seek his corpse? Elvira Ramírez had ample opportunity to meet Guntroda and learn of her interest in Saint Pelayo in person before she sought his relics from Córdoba.

69. These include “Ruuiolos” (Rubillós), “Fontanellos” (Fontelo), “Frigidaria” (Fontefría), “Faramontanos” (Faramontaos), and “Pinario” (Piñeiro). The latter two are both very common place names, although neither is present in the area around Carracedo. “Villa de Goton” may be a reference to property owned by Gotón near Rabal and sold to Celanova in 961. 70. James D’Emilio, personal communication, August 5, 2015. 71. “Gilluira regina et Christi ancilla Deo dicata.” Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 174.

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She was present at her father’s court on occasion from at least 946, when she confirmed one of his diplomas for the first time.72 She confirmed another diploma in 950, the last year of his reign, appearing named between her halfbrother Ordoño III, soon to succeed their father on his abdication in January 951, and her full brother Sancho I. Three Galician bishops; only one Leonese bishop, Rosendo of Celanova; and a number of Galician nobles, including two of Abbess Guntroda’s brothers, also confirmed the document, indicating that the court, and Elvira with it, may have been in Galicia at the time. I accept the dating of this diploma to May 18, 950, which places it close in time and probably also location to Ramiro II’s confirmation of the settlement of a dispute involving Rosendo of Celanova and heard in front of Guntroda’s same two brothers on June 13, 950.73 This document was also witnessed by Rodrigo Velásquez, the leader, as I have related, of a faction friendly to both Abbess Guntroda and to Elvira Ramírez.74 On May 18, 950, Ramiro II granted a villa to Muniadomna Díaz, his foster mother, for her double monastery of Guimarães, near Braga in Portugal, founded in memory of her deceased husband.75 Despite her connection to Ramiro II, she and her son Gonzalo Menéndez took against his two youngest children, Sancho I and Elvira Ramírez, perhaps because they were the progeny of Ramiro’s second, Navarrese wife. Gonzalo Menéndez was accused in the Chronicon of Sampiro of murdering Sancho I by poison. Gonzalo Menéndez also developed an enmity against Rodrigo Velásquez, at least in part prompted by the latter’s support of Abbess Guntroda against Gonzalo’s mother, which led to a pitched battle between these two factions in 966–967.76 The hostility of this faction to Rodrigo Velásquez and to Sancho I and Elvira Ramírez provided good reasons for Abbess Guntroda and Elvira Ramírez to recognize shared interests, and direct conflict between these factions coincided with the retrieval of Saint Pelayo’s body. These factional disputes are recounted in great detail in a 982 document in which Odoíno Vermúdez, a smaller player in these quarrels, recounted his own ongoing struggle to keep the monastery of Santa Comba de Bande from the hands of Abbess Guntroda and his donation of it in the end to

72. As “Gelvira prolis regis et Deo vota.” Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, 657. 73. Manuel Carriedo Tejedo, “El concilio de León del año 950,” Tierras de León 34 (1994): 16–18. 74. Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, 662. 75. Ibid., 666. 76. As argued by José-Luís Martín, “Pelayo Rodríguez, obispo de Santiago (977–985),” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 2 (1965), 472–72. For an opposing view, see M. Rubén García Álvarez, “La batalla de Aguioncha: Una guerra civil galaico-portuguesa del siglo X,” Bracara Augusta 20 (1967), 310–11, 323–31.

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Aldonza Menéndez

Abbess Guntroda Gutiérrez Figure 11.

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Gutier Osóriz

Ermesinda Gutiérrez

Ordoño Velásquez

Rodrigo Velásquez

Abbess Guntroda and Rodrigo Velásquez

Celanova.77 In the document, Odoíno claims that his father was pressured to grant the bishop of Santiago a charter for the house of Santa Comba in the time of Ordoño II. The king allowed his father to keep the house, but the bishop retained the charter. After Ramiro II became king, Ordoño Velásquez, Rodrigo Velásquez’s brother, put his son in fosterage with the then bishop of Santiago, so that “through falsity and wicked council,” his son might receive the charter for Santa Comba. But thanks to the judgement of God, “to whom nothing remains hidden,” the son and his parents all died. The young man’s mother was Ermesinda Gutiérrez, Abbess Guntroda’s sister (figure 11), and the abbess inherited the charter to Santa Comba, while Odoíno inherited from his father the possession of the property. This began an ongoing dispute between the two, which had farreaching effects. Abbess Guntroda took possession of Santa Comba for what would be the first of three times. Odoíno protested what he believed was his unfair dispossession before Ramiro II at a great council in León, held sometime between July 1 and October 31, 950, and thus not long after the May 18 royal diploma witnessed by Elvira Ramírez and the royal visit to Galicia, already described.78 Abbess Guntroda appears to have been present at the council herself, although one of the brothers who confirmed the May and June diplomas spoke on her behalf against the claims of Odoíno. This council provided another opportunity for her to have met Elvira Ramírez.79

77. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 191. 78. Following Carriedo Tejedo, “Concilio de León,” 26. For alternate theories of the date of the council, see pp. 4–5. 79. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 191, p. 194.

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Santa Comba was restored to Odoíno, but his troubles with Guntroda were far from over. He established a monastic community there under the rule of his mother. When she died, he put a woman named Onnega in her place, but the community complained about him to the bishop, and he lost Santa Comba again. “Seeing myself in great difficulty and not knowing what to do,” he relates, he travelled about with Onnega, living in debauchery. Eventually, he found himself at the monastery of Guimarães, where Muniadomna Díaz and her sons advised him to repudiate Onnega so he could retrieve his property and turn to monastic life. However, “while sin held lordship over me,” Guntroda sought and received Santa Comba back again on the strength of the charters she still held for it. Sancho I, king since 956, was dethroned between 958 and 960 by his cousin Ordoño IV. During this period, Odoíno tells us that Muniadomna, assisted by the counts of Galicia and the magnates of the palace, determined in council that her sons, Gonzalo Menéndez and his brother, should go to Santa Comba and expel Guntroda from it willy-nilly (“uolens nolens”). Santa Comba was returned to Odoíno, and he lived as a monk nearby in Celanova before returning to Santa Comba and living there “for many years.”80 We see in these events the emergence of the factions that dominated the region over the next decades. Muniadomna Díaz and her son Gonzalo Menéndez were on one side, supporting the claims of Ordoño IV against his cousin, Sancho I. It is after Ordoño IV temporarily defeated Sancho I that Muniadomna Díaz and Gonzalo Menéndez were strong enough to restore Santa Comba to Odoíno. Even after Sancho I regained the throne, he was not powerful enough in the region to interfere with what had become the status quo, and Odoíno kept Santa Comba during the second part of Sancho’s reign, between 960 and 966. On the other side were Abbess Guntroda and Rodrigo Velásquez. Their shared enemy made them the allies of Sancho I and his sister, Elvira Ramírez. The early-eleventh-century Chronicon of Sampiro connects the recovery of Saint Pelayo to the hostility of Gonzalo Menéndez toward Sancho I by juxtaposing these events. First, Sancho took council with his sister Elvira and sent messengers to the city of Córdoba to retrieve the body of Pelayo in 966. Then, Sampiro’s Chronicon associates the mission to retrieve Pelayo with affairs in Galicia, relating that while (“dum”) the king and his sister sent legates to Córdoba to seek peace with the Muslims and seek the body of Pelayo, Sancho left León, travelled to Galicia, and pacified the region all the way to the Douro/Duero river. When Gonzalo Menéndez heard of the king’s advance, he gathered a large army on the other side of the Douro/Duero and 80. Ibid., 2: no. 191, pp. 195–96.

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sent messengers to Sancho, refusing to pay tribute to the king. He also sent a poisoned apple to the king, and when Sancho tasted it, he felt ill and hastened back to León, where he died.81 The Chronicon continues to interweave the story of Saint Pelayo’s body with affairs in Galicia. After Sancho died, his fiveyear-old son Ramiro III took the throne with the counsel of his aunt, domina, and queen, Elvira. He made peace with the Saracens and received the body of Pelayo from them, and he buried it in the city of León. In the second year of his reign, the Vikings attacked Galicia.82 Odoíno’s involvement in the factional disputes was not over. After Sancho died and Elvira and Ramiro III took over the kingdom, Gonzalo Menéndez and Rodrigo Velásquez fought a battle near Santa Comba. Rodrigo Velásquez was defeated, and he fled to Sabucedo, about 15 kilometers north. Odoíno’s old friend Onnega went to Rodrigo Velásquez and “that slut” (“ipsa meretrix”) told him that Odoíno had helped Gonzalo Menéndez, causing Rodrigo to ravage Santa Comba and carry Odoíno off in chains. After petitioning Rodrigo for Santa Comba, Abbess Guntroda held it again for what would be the last time. These events took place in either 966 or 967, at the beginning of Ramiro III’s reign under Elvira. By December 968, Rodrigo Velásquez and Gonzalo Menéndez were sufficiently reconciled to confirm together a gift of the latter to Guimarães,83 and earlier that September, Rodrigo and Gonzalo’s son would be among those who confirmed a grant from Elvira Ramírez, Ramiro III, and his mother to the Galician community of Sobrado.84 Odoíno got Santa Comba back from Guntroda only on Rodrigo’s death, which was some time between January 977 and October 978.85 By this time, Elvira Ramírez herself had fallen from power as a result of an unsuccessful battle at Gormaz against the Muslims in 975, and she was thus no longer able to protect Guntroda’s interests.86

81. Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 337–39. The Chronicon indicates only that Sancho’s enemy was “Gundisaluus qui dux erat ultra flumen.” Justiniano Rodríguez Fernández takes this to mean that Sancho’s murderer was Gonzalo Muñoz, who ruled the area around Coimbra, south of the Duero/ Douro; Sancho I, 97–98. But on November 15, 966, Sancho I was in Gonzalo Muñoz’s territory, making a donation to Lorvão, which Muñoz confirmed; Herculano, PMH, I.1 no. 92. These were the actions of allies, not enemies. Rodríguez assumes that Sancho was north of the Duero/Douro. I think he approached the river from the south after visiting Lorvão with Gonzalo Muñoz and met his enemy Gonzalo Menéndez, whose base was in the region around Braga, encamped on the north side of the river. 82. Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 339–40. 83. Martín, “Pelayo Rodríguez,” 473; Herculano, PMH, I.1 no. 99. 84. Pilar Loscertales de García de Valdeavellano, ed., Tumbos del monasterio de Sobrado de los Monjes (Madrid: Archivo Historico Nacional, 1976), 1: no. 170. 85. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: nos. 185, 187. 86. Pick, “Dominissima, Prudentissima,” 61.

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To recapitulate, we know that by 966, when Sancho and Elvira sought the body of the martyr, Abbess Guntroda had been involved with San Payo de Rabal; probably also with the double house at Ribeira, whose patrons include Pelayo, and San Paio de Mosteiro; and possibly even with San Pelayo de Villar, if she was the Guntroda who donated it to Celanova in 972. No one in Christian Spain was more active in the cult of Saint Pelayo by 966 than Guntroda. But at the moment when the body of Pelayo was brought to León, the faction of Gonzalo Menéndez was ascendant in Galicia and the position of Abbess Guntroda and her family in Galicia was weakened. By this point, she had lost Santa Comba, and her brothers ceased to appear in documents after the early years of Ordoño III’s reign. Likewise, Sancho I’s own rule was vulnerable to the same enemy. I argue that Guntroda had a hand in introducing the idea of a Leonese cult of Pelayo to Sancho and Elvira, and in inspiring or promoting the translation of Pelayo’s body to León. For one thing, if the body was in León, it was not in Galicia, where their common enemy was dominant. For another, a peace treaty with Córdoba sealed by the retrieval of the martyred boy meant the Leonese monarchs had a freer hand to deal with rebellious nobles in Galicia. Indeed, Elvira’s rule seems to have been stronger than that of her brother.87 Retrieving the Galician saint, with the advice and counsel of the Galician Abbess Guntroda, became another weapon that Sancho I and Elvira Ramírez could use against their shared enemies, Muniadomna Díaz and Gonzalo Menéndez. My argument that bringing the body of Pelayo to León was a move in the factional struggles in the kingdom of León, intended to strengthen the side that included Abbess Guntroda and Elvira Ramírez, is supported by shifts in the saintly patronage of Muniadomna’s own monastery at Guimarães during the period. We can see a kind of saintly patron arms race between Muniadomna, on the one hand, and Guntroda and Elvira Ramírez, on the other. Ramiro II’s 950 donation to Guimarães, confirmed by Elvira, names its patrons as Christ the Savior and Mary.88 Muniadomna’s own extensive gift to Guimarães, issued on January 26, 959, while Sancho was still in exile after being driven out by Ordoño IV, lists a whole calendrical cycle of patrons, including the Savior, Mary, all twelve apostles, Paul, six bishops, thirteen martyrs, and ten virgins, all individually named.89 But in May of the same year,

87. Ibid., 51. 88. Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, 666. 89. The martyrs are Acisclus, Romanus, Valerianus, Facundus, Primitivus, Iustus, Pastor, Adrian, Julian, Sebastian, George, Felix, and Tirsus; Herculano, PMH, I.1 no. 76.

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on the very same day as Abbess Guntroda’s own gift to San Payo de Rabal, a gift to Guimarães named a far more restricted group, including the Savior; Mary; the two Spanish virgins Eulalia and Leocadia; and among the martyrs, only George and Pelayo, “with their companions, drenched in rosey gore.”90 I suggest we see here a competition for the patronage of Saint Pelayo, a competition that Elvira Ramírez won by bringing the body of the martyr to León in 966. This is the only extant Guimarães charter of this period that mentions Saint Pelayo. In 968, after the body of Pelayo was permanently lost to her, Muniadomna Díaz describes in a charter that, plagued by the Muslim threat, she built a castle to protect the monastery dedicated to Saint Mamede, and the monastery became known under the patronage of this saint. Mamede, like Pelayo, was a boy martyr, although he was urged unsuccessfully to give up his faith under the Romans of the eastern Mediterranean rather than the Muslims of Spain. Mamede appears to be a consolation prize for the loss of the prestige of Saint Pelayo.91 There is no written evidence that what seems to be Guntroda’s own original monastery, San Martiño de Pazó, ever had a dedication to Saint Pelayo, although a nearby castro had a chapel dedicated to Pelayo erected on its summit at some point. Nevertheless, the remnants of the tenth-century structure that are still incorporated in her church suggest his martyrdom in Islamic Córdoba was on her mind from an early moment, predating her involvement with other shrines dedicated to the martyr. What remains of the medieval structure in the modern church consists of two lateral walls, each punctuated in the middle by a door in the form of a horseshoe arch, and the remnants of what was once a single keyhole-style window. Located now in the west facade, the window probably was once in a now-lost western apse. Joaquín Lorenzo Fernández identifies two phases in the building of these walls; he dates the sections east of the doors to the Visigothic period but argues that the doors and the west part of the walls were the product of a reconstruction in the first third of the tenth century, during the abbacy of Guntroda.92 Lorenzo Fernández surmises that the original medieval structure consisted of a single rectangular nave with an apse at each end, like at Santiago de Peñalba, with its royal patron, Ramiro II, and at Elvira Ramírez’s own San Salvador de Palaz del Rey. Access to each apse would have been both revealed and concealed by a triumphal horseshoe 90. Ibid., I.1 no. 77. 91. Ibid., I.1 no. 97. Guimarães competed for his patronage with São Mamede de Lorvão, which, interestingly, also claimed the patronage of Saint Pelayo beginning around 970 (e.g., I.1 no. 101). 92. Joaquín Lorenzo Fernández, “La iglesia prerrománica de San Martiño de Pazó,” Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 10 (1965), 184–86.

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arch supported by capitals like the one still extant from the monastery, now on display in the Museo Arqueolóxico in Ourense.93 The two lateral doors and keyhole windows in apses at east and west would have created a play of light and shadow within the structure, producing an atmosphere of awe and distance around the altar. With doors open, the light pouring in from the sides would have shrouded each apse in darkness. The small window in the thick walls94 of the apse would have been incapable of illuminating the space and, instead, would have appeared as a brilliant sliver of light in the darkness of the apse. With doors closed, and especially at a time of day when the sun shone directly on the apse (i.e., at dawn for the eastern apse and at dusk for the western one), the nave would have been in darkness and the triumphal arch would have framed an impressively illuminated apse with its altar.95 These features place San Martiño among the tenth-century Mozarabic churches of Christian Iberia, although there is much dissent about what it means to call these buildings Mozarabic and the degree to which their horseshoe arches reflect an adoption of Islamic forms by migrant Arabized Christians. Many of these churches, including San Martiño de Pazó, had no connection to Mozarabic Christian refugees from Muslim Spain. Jerrilyn Dodds has countered the arguments that the monuments we call Mozarabic reflect an Islamicization of Christian art, proposing instead that these churches participated in a resistance to the Islamic monuments of their day by hearkening back to pre-Conquest exemplars of Christian space, using as their models buildings such as the Visigothic San Juan de Baños, in a nostalgia for a pre-Conquest Spain.96 The horseshoe arches, which to a casual observer identify these churches as influenced by Islam, have, Dodds claims, sufficient precedent in churches of the Visigothic period. Islamic influence is not, for Dodds, found simply in the relative curvature of a horseshoe arch.97 Rather, it is in its use of what she identifies as Islamic decorative features, which came to be adopted in later tenth-century churches, such as

93. Ibid., 188–90; Antología de Escultura (Ourense: Museo Arqueolóxico Provincial de Ourense, 2008), 110–12. 94. The extant walls are 63 centimeters thick; Lorenzo Fernández, “Iglesia prerrománica,” 182. 95. On the deliberate use of the play of light and dark to define sacred space in the Visigothic period, see Jerilynn D. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1990), 15–17. 96. Ibid., 48–56. Dodds identifies this as nostalgia specifically for the Visigothic past. I would expand this to nostalgia for a more generic Christian late antique past. 97. In this she differs from those who seek to define the caliphal arch by its proportions; Emilio Camps Cazorla, Módulo, proporciones, y composición en la arquitectura califal cordobesa (Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez, 1953), 15–17.

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San Miguel de Celanova and Santago de Peñalba, by artisans unable to resist the beauty of Islamic forms.98 This argument helps to account for part of what we see at San Martiño. If Lorenzo Fernández’s hypothesis about its original plan is correct—in its use of light and dark to shape space and encounter with the divine at the altar— it imitates its Visigothic neighbor, Santa Comba de Bande, which was for decades the object of Guntroda’s efforts.99 But it does not account for every feature of her church. The proportions of the horseshoe arch of the doors at San Martiño match those of the Puerta de San Esteban at the Great Mosque of Córdoba, restored in 855 in the form we see today.100 And if Dodds is right that decoration and not just proportion defines what is Islamic and what is not, even more significant is that on both the south and north doors of San Martiño de Pazó the arch of the door is inscribed within an alfiz, a rectangular molding rising from the imposts and framing the arch, again like the Puerta de San Esteban, in a style copied by later doors into the mosque (figure 12). Although we see windows in Christian Spain inscribed within an alfiz, the use of this feature to frame the horseshoe arch of a door takes us to Islamic Spain, where it became a commonplace model for framing doors, gates, and portals of all kinds.101 The doors into the Great Mosque were charged places for the Christians of Córdoba. In the ninth century, as Córdoba slipped from being a Christian city ruled by an Islamic elite to an Islamic city with a Mozarabic Christian minority, the doors of the mosque were a beautiful, tempting and dangerous entry point to a new world of opportunity and privilege for Christians who were willing to convert. It is no surprise that several of the encounters in the mid-ninth century between Christians seeking martyrdom and the Muslim authorities took place just outside the mosque.102 The door is the only part of the mosque that those who refused to enter would have 98. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology, 86–91. On the influence of hispano-Muslim art on these buildings, see also Milagros Guardia Pons, “Galicia y León en los siglos IX y X. Arte de repoblación en el noroeste y en la frontera,” in San Froilán: Culto y fiesta, ed. Francisco L. Singul (Lugo, Spain: Xacobeo, 2006), 124–25. 99. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology, 16–17. 100. That is to say, its peralte (the distance between the line where it reaches its full diameter and the bottom of the arch) is half its radius; Lorenzo Fernández, “Iglesia prerrománica,” 185; Camps Cazorla, Módulo, 71–75. 101. On the alfiz, see Artemio Manuel Martínez Tejera, “El ‘orientalismo ornamental’ de la mal llamada ‘Arquitectura Mozárabe’ en el reino astur-leonés (siglos IX–X): Inercial o inducida?” Anales de Historia del Arte 22 (2012), 230. 102. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology, 85. The martyr, Isaac of Tabanos, encountered the qadi “in forum”; Eulogius of Córdoba, Memoriale Sanctorum, in Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, vol. 2, ed. Juan Gil (Madrid: CSIC, 1973), 367.

Puerta de San Esteban, Great Mosque of Córdoba, and north door of San Martiño de Pazó

Photographs by the author.

Figure 12.

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seen, and they would have been seen not only by residents of al-Andalus but by ambassadors, travelers, captives, and even kings such as Sancho I and Ordoño IV from the Christian north. But horseshoe doors inscribed with alfíces were not found only on religious buildings in Córdoba. Excavation and reconstruction of the suburban palace Madīnat al-Zahrā’, begun by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III in 936 or 940, shows that the horseshoe arch inscribed in an alfíz was used throughout on porticos that demark and define both public and private spaces. We can surmise these would have also been found on other near-contemporary now-lost palaces and villas, including the rebuilt palace of the Visigoths next to the mosque and the Dār al-Na‘ūra, or Palace of the Waterwheel, built by ‘Abd Allah and used by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān before Madīnat al-Zahrā’ was built. Like the doors of San Martiño, but unlike the mosque doors, the arches of the doors at Madīnat al-Zahrā’ are open, defining a negative space that is itself framed by the alfíz.103 Why would Abbess Guntroda choose doors for her church that recalled the newest and most luxurious emblems of Muslim Córdoba? The Passio of Saint Pelayo (see chapter 2) shows Pelayo as both an object of and a player in a contest between the spiritual and eternal promise of Christ the King and the magnificent yet transient physical and worldly splendor of the Islamic ruler. The palaces of Muslim Spain served as beautiful and luxurious sites for the cultivation and performance of court activity as spectacle, where all the pleasures of the world were on offer, including hunting, poetry, food and drink, fragrance, singing, and music. As stages for the performance of court power, they also remained sites where official deeds were transacted, and the feasts they hosted were political events at which the power of the state was demonstrated to outsiders. Ibn Ḥayyān describes how, in 939, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III was at al-Na‘ūra when military leaders arrived in Córdoba with a hundred prisoners of war, captured in a battle on the Christian frontier. The prisoners were marched, perhaps through the kind of horseshoe porticos being built at al-Zahrā’, into the palace, where the caliph sat at a point overlooking the Guadalquivir river and watched as each was beheaded.104 The Passion of Pelayo places his confrontation with Muslim authority at one of these palaces. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān’s servants tell him of the loveliness of Pelayo, and one day, while the king was at a feast, he sent for the boy to be brought before him in the palace (“in aula regis”). The whole drama takes

103. See also Dodds on the twin doors of Santiago de Peñalba; Architecture and Ideology, 86. 104. See Glaire D. Anderson, The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), in which she recounts the story of the execution at al-Na‘ūra (3–29, 30) and the roles played by palace feasts (140–51).

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place there with the court as audience: The king offered him the wealth of the world in the midst of a scene of luxury, Pelayo rebuffed him, and the king ordered his execution, which took place right before him, still in the palace. When the king’s men failed to move the lad with torture, they were ordered to cut him to pieces with their swords and throw him in the river in a scene that recalls the historical account of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān’s watching the execution of Christian prisoners at al-Na‘ūra, with the river as a backdrop. The Islamic ruler could not know that, by bringing him to his palace and killing him, he had set the stage to allow Pelayo to enter the heavenly palace of Christ, his true King, who tells him, “Come. Take this crown which I promised to you in the beginning.”105 This story explains the doors of San Martiño de Pazó. Pelayo was brought as a young male virgin to the palace of the king, “in aula regis.” This phrase recalls the “aula regia pudoris [hall of royal chastity]” from Ambrose’s Marian hymn, “Veni redemptor gentium.” In this hymn, which is cited in the Túy charter, Mary’s body is a temple to be occupied only by the King of Kings.106 It also recalls Ambrose’s statement that, “The virgin is a royal hall [aula regalis est virgo], who is not subject to man, but to God alone” in his treatise on the virginity of Mary.107 The monastic, ideally virginal, denizens of San Martiño de Pazó (Palatiolo) also lived in a palace, the “little palace” of its name. It was a palace because it was the domain, at least in its early years, of Jimena Ordóñez, the daughter of a king. But more than that, it is a palace because once they entered through its portals, decorated as they are with reminders of the supreme worldly power, the inhabitants separated themselves from the demands of the world, and in the shadows and light of the nave and the altar they approached the heavenly Jerusalem where Christ is King. It is the caliph’s palace turned inside out. They did not enter it to find the world; rather, by entering it, they left the world to encounter the vastness of an eternal realm. Truly, the small church was bigger on the inside. Abbess Guntroda’s choice of doors is thus not the somewhat conflicted adoption of Islamic decorative form that Dodds proposes for creators of buildings such as Santiago de Peñabla, desirous of holding to their Christian identity but incapable of resisting the seduction of Islamic decoration.108 It is instead a triumphant and defiant rejection of the unquestioned earthly power of the Islamic world through the use of its own forms and the values they represent.

105. 106. 107. 108.

Díaz y Díaz, “Pasión de S. Pelayo,” 115. Ambrose, Hymnus IV, PL 16: coll. 1411. Ambrose, De institutione virginis, PL 16: XII.79, coll. 324C. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology, 91.

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It is no accident that Elvira Ramírez’s own monastery, San Salvador de Palaz del Rey, itself named for a palace and built for her by her father, also followed the Mozarabic style identified by Dodds, with, as best as we can determine from its remnants, a horseshoe arch framing its eastern apse and evidence of a western apse, like at Peñalba and in Fernández’s hypothetical reconstruction of Pazó. It is, indeed, the only royal Leonese monument to adopt this style.109 And what did Guntroda gain when Elvira Ramírez claimed Pelayo for León? Two early charters from 976 and 978 from the monastery of San Pelayo, founded by Elvira in León to house the body of the saint, name as its head one Guntroda, “confessa.”110 Guntroda is not an uncommon name. Nevertheless, the parallel between the Abbess Guntroda with interests in Galicia and the Guntroda who appears at the head of San Pelayo in León seems too great to be merely coincidence. The story of Guntroda, Elvira, and Saint Pelayo shows us that, far from being a private affair or a matter only for pious women, religion in the shape of devotion to saints was interwoven into the high politics of the kingdom, and vice versa. Pelayo is not just any saint; he is one with a special message for a vulnerable Christian kingdom, although, as Muniadomna hoped when she adopted Saint Mamede after failing to claim Saint Pelayo, if you cannot get him, another boy-martyr will serve almost as well. The documents that I have discussed here, especially Odoíno’s sad story and the account of Guntroda’s contest over Santa María de Ribeira, have received much scholarly attention. I hope the foregoing has shown, however, that only when we put all these documents together to uncover the links and networks to which they bear witness, especially those involving women, who are usually discussed only in relationship to the men in their lives rather than to other women, can we begin to understand the full significance of the events in this shadowy part of the tenth century.111 We learn that the quest to retrieve Pelayo was not simply an act of piety underscoring León’s relationship to the Muslim caliphate and defining the separation between them; it also, and perhaps even more important. was a move in the contest between different factions in Christian Spain, a move that particularly involved royal and noble women. We see that first Jimena Ordóñez and then Elvira Ramírez used their property to reinforce their connections and influence. And although Jimena Ordóñez may at first appear weak in her sole initiation of a diplomatic act, 109. Ibid., 77. 110. Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León 2: no. 446, 456. Neither charter is included in the edition of the documents of San Isidoro; Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León. 111. Indeed, we may need a Bechdel test for scholarship on medieval history; Cathy Resmer, “The Rule” [blog], August 6, 2005, http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/the-rule.

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the connection she forged between royal daughters and Celanova endured; Celanova is one of the monasteries named in Elvira Fernández’s will of 1099. Elvira Ramírez herself foreshadowed the broad expanse of properties and networks possessed by royal women in the eleventh century. The extent and range of the networks that Elvira Ramírez made use of while she was reigning for her nephew between 966 and 975 is impressive, especially compared with those of her brother Sancho I. Sancho made donations to the monasteries of Sahagún, Celanova, and Saõ Mamede de Lorvão and to powerful lay magnates, betokening a king who was insecure on his throne and used gifts to bind his supporters to him. Elvira, in contrast, made only a few simple gifts of royal property—in 968 when she granted properties and tax revenues to Rosendo of Celanova, who appeared frequently in her charters as a supporter of her actions,112 and in 971 when she made donations and restored lands to Sahagún taken from that monastery by Sancho I.113 Other grants were connected with the administration of royal justice and the settlement of disputes, as when she granted land confiscated from homicides to her follower, Aznár Puricelliz, or when she put the monastery of Rozuelo in Ardón under Aznár’s brother. Her area of active jurisdiction was wide, covering monasteries from León to Galicia. She was called on to settle disputes between monasteries and laymen, and she was not afraid to side with ecclesiastical over noble authority. This appeal to royal authority to settle disputes, and the evident success of the royal decisions, is a significant measure of Elvira’s achievements as ruler.114 The signatories to her documents show that Elvira’s rule rested on broad networks of support. The bishops of León and Astorga provided consistent backing, and it was certainly to reward them that Elvira suppressed the diocese of Simancas in 974.115 Other Leonese bishoprics whose representatives appeared intermittently include Oviedo, Zamora, and Salamanca.116 Bishops from Galicia also appeared often. Rosendo of Celanova was consistently present, and the bishops of Túy, Lugo, Orense, and Mondoñedo also put in appearances.117 Sixteen abbots confirmed the first document she issued 112. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 171. 113. José María Mínguez Fernández, ed., Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún (León: CEISI, 1976), 1: no. 261. 114. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 229. 115. Linehan, History and the Historians, 120; Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, no. 89. 116. Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León 2: no. 403; Mínguez Fernández, Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún, 1: no. 261, 272. 117. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 2: no. 171; Rodríguez Fernández, Ramiro II, rey de León, no. 89.

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when ruling for Ramiro III, although subsequent diplomas were usually confirmed only by their affected abbots.118 It would be wrong, however, to conclude that Elvira’s primary support was drawn from a clerical party.119 The magnates who appeared alongside her formed a stable group of figures whose names appeared again and again in the documents. This stability contrasts with the court of Sancho I, whose lay membership was rather more fluid,120 and with the court of Ramiro III and his mother Teresa after 975, which saw diminishing participation by both magnates and clerics before Ramiro was usurped by Vermudo II. Elvira was able to keep by her most of those who had been the supporters of her brother, to regularize their attendance at court, and to add new members to their number. Froila Vélaz was at the court of León from the days of Ramiro II, and he was a constant presence at the court of Ramiro III. The Banu Gómez family, descendants of the count of Saldaña, Diego Muñoz (d. 951), witnessed documents during the reign of Ramiro III. This family was at the heart of some of the subsequent rebellions against Vermudo II, Ramiro III’s usurper. Significant numbers of nobles with Navarrese names confirmed Elvira’s charters for Ramiro III, as they did under Sancho I and in the charters of the counts of Castilla during this period. Only a few can be directly associated with the Navarrese court, however, and the contention that the kingdom of León under Elvira was almost a Navarrese client state overstates the case.121 Elvira gained and maintained her position, at least for a time, for a series of reasons. As the daughter of a king, she ranked higher than her nephew’s mother, the queen, in the monarchical system of León in which kings married hypogamously, marrying down with the daughters of their nobles rather than with their equals or superiors. Thus, part of her power derived from her relationship to her father, brother, and nephew. This was, in part, simply practical. Forbidden from forming new networks through marriage, she could be counted on to remain loyal to the interests of her birth family. It was also a product of the charism that accrued to her because of her religious role as consecrated virgin and custodian of the family dead. Finally, as an independent property holder, she could use her lands to make connections and forge alliances, as we have seen her successor, Urraca Fernández, do a century later. She is usually described as a queen-regent by those who 118. Sáez and Sáez Sánchez, CD León 2: no. 403. 119. As Justo Pérez de Urbel does, arguing that this was a group that favored peace at all costs; Historia del condado de Castilla (Madrid: CSIC, Escuela de Estudios Medievales, 1945), 2: 638. 120. Rodríguez Fernández, Sancho I, 125. 121. Pick, “Dominissima, Prudentissima,” 53–58.

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have studied her.122 Nonetheless, this was not a term used by either her or her contemporaries. They described her by her religious status, her relationship to the men in the royal family (as daughter, sister, or aunt), and, from time to time, even during the reign of her brother Sancho I, simply as queen.

Eleventh-Century Royal Daughters: Property and Power, Rebels, and Allies Elvira Ramírez had the resources of her royal nephew to call on. Her predecessors and successors, however, relied on their personal property holdings and lordships over territory, a collective inheritance of royal daughters usually referred to as the infantazgo by modern scholars. This term and what it means need interrogation. Scholars have tended to approach the infantazgo as an institution of its own, projecting backward from the twelfth century to make assumptions about its nature and origin in the eleventh century.123 Instead, the infantazgo needs to be seen as part of the evolution of the role of royal daughters in the Christian kingdoms of Spain. Properties inherited by royal daughters were collectively called the infantazgo for the first time in 1089 by Alfonso VI, when, in the course of adjudicating in the bishop’s favor a dispute between the bishop of León and his sister, he distinguished it from the king’s own properties, the realengo.124 This 1089 document is more complicated than it first appears. In the diploma, Alfonso identifies several different types of property: royal property, or realengo; the property of his royal sisters, comprising the infantazgo and San Pelayo in León; episcopal property; abbatial property; behetrías; and any other type of heritable property. His decision forbids property from passing from one category to another. But there are problems with this document. First, despite it, property continued to pass from one type of ownership to another, for instance, every time the king or his sisters made a donation to a religious institution. Second, as Gambra notes in his edition, much of the language of the document is anachronistic, reflecting a later period. Gambra’s concern about words such as barones, grandem, baraliam, marchas, curia, and argenti should lead us to wonder whether infantazgo, which does not appear again until the twelfth century, is also an anachronistic interpolation. Notably, it does not appear in Elvira Fernández’s will of 1099, perhaps

122. Collins, “Queens-Dowager and Queens-Regent.” 123. Henriet, “Deo votas,” 189–201. Others who have discussed the infantazgo include Martin, Queen as King, 31–32, 62–66; García Calles, Doña Sancha, hermana del emperador, chap. 3. 124. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 100.

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the most complete document we have on the holdings of a royal daughter before 1100.125 Georges Martin, in his study of Elvira Fernández’s will, argues that the infantazgo was created to facilitate royal control over part of the Church. It was an integral part of the royal patrimony, was largely inalienable by the women who held it, and was possessed by them only during their lifetimes. Upon their deaths, Martin argues, it returned to the king, who was the real master of the infantazgo. His evidence for his assertion that the infantazgo was controlled by the king comes from a document from 1127 in which Sancha Raimúndez states that she received the “honor” of the infantazgo at the order of her brother, Alfonso VII, and another document from 1148 in which Alfonso VII declares that in the absence of an unmarried, good, and moral woman of his own lineage, he himself could claim the infantazgo.126 I see two problems with this approach to the role and property of these women. First, I argue that what we are dealing with is, from its origins, a group of women possessing a varied set of familial and religious roles to which property accrued, not a collection of properties organized as an institution, which attached itself to particular women. Beginning our investigation from the property obscures the direction of this relationship. Second, we must not assume that what we have evidence for in the twelfth century reflects the reality of the eleventh and earlier centuries. Rather, it seems that the documents of the twelfth century reveal a shift in the power of royal daughters by means of the institutionalization of their property and its transformation into a tool designed at that moment for the preservation of the royal patrimony. Indeed, the fact Alfonso VII had to assert his rights to the infantazgo in the absence of an appropriate female heir indicates that ultimate royal control of this property had not hitherto been the norm. That is to say, what happened in the twelfth century under Alfonso VII was something new, and the infantazgo had evolved over time into its manifestation in the twelfth century as a juridical category of property.127

125. Therese Martin, “Hacia una clarificación del infantazgo en tiempos de la reina Urraca y su hija la infanta Sancha (ca. 1107–1159),” e-Spania 5 (2008), doi:10.4000/e-spania.12163, 2. 126. Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 3–5. He cites Henriet, “Deo votas,” n. 46: “Ego sancia . . . honorem sancti Pelagii iussione fratris mei Legionensium regis domni Adefonsi regens,” and Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 44: “Et si qua mulier de progenie nostra fuerit ad quam infantagum pertineat et innupta manere et bonam et honestam uitam ducere uoluerit ipsas easdem ecclesias et canonicos ibi degentes et omnes possessiones eorum protegat et defendat ab omnibus hominibus manu teneant et in necessariis adiuuet et consilietur et nichil de suis exigere presumat. Si uero aliqua mulier talis ut supra diximus cui infantazgum pertineat superstes non fuerit rex terrae quod ipsa deberet eis supplere.” 127. Reglero de la Fuente, “Testamentos de las infantas,” 5–11, traces this evolution.

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In the rest of this chapter, I discuss the sources of the property of the royal daughters of the tenth- and eleventh-century kingdom of León, and the uses to which they put this property: what networks of relationships they forged using it, how they put it in the service of their brothers during moments of crisis, and what they received in return. We have already had a taste of this in my examination of Urraca Fernández’s gift to Túy. She had received what she gave from her parents and from two women she patronized. She then used it to support the rule of one of her brothers over the other, and she received material compensation for it in the form of a donation from the brother she helped. None of this would have happened if either brother had been the “real master” over what she possessed, even over just the part she had received from their parents. Looking at the property of royal daughters from Jimena Ordónez to Urraca and Elvira Fernández, we see these patterns repeated. Their domain came from a wide variety of sources, not limited to their royal fathers. They received it from both male and female relatives and from male and female clients, and they used it for a variety of purposes, not least of which was preserving it for their own use, a use that, by definition, leaves few traces in the sources. As we have seen, although Jimena Ordónez’s own charter describes her as receiving Villar from both parents, her confirmation of the monastic foundation reveals that it came, in fact, from her mother.128 This is not surprising because (as discussed in chapter 2) children inherited separately from their mothers and from their fathers; so, inherited property must come from one or the other, although our royal daughters often used the fiction of simultaneous and equal inheritance from both parents, most likely to recall their lineages on both sides. I also argue that, although Guntroda was abbess of San Martiño de Pazó, Jimena was its domina. Pazó was still possessed by a royal daughter over a century later. In 1063, King Fernando and Queen Sancha heard a dispute over territory between the monastery of Celanova and Suero Tetóniz on behalf of the monastery at Pazó. Suero Tetóniz acted in that regard on behalf of Queen Sancha.129 This case is an example of connections between royal daughters and particular monastic property that continued across generations and changes of dynasty without any evidence of ownership or bequest by their fathers or brothers. Another example is the relationship that Queen Sancha’s daughter, Elvira Fernández, maintained with Celanova, the monastery created from the 128. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 1: nos. 44, 53. 129. Serrano y Sanz, “Documentos del monasterio de Celanova,” no. 29, pp. 521–23.

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property Jimena gave to her cousin. The first miracle recounted in the Vita et miracula of Saint Rosendo, the monastic founder of Celanova, involves Elvira Fernández. The author, writing around 1172, recounts that he heard the story from the brothers, “who were present.” Elvira was living in the region and began oppressing the monastery and persecuting the abbot of Celanova, Pelayo, who took flight with a few followers. Elvira placed Pedro González over the community and then moved in herself, along with her knights and ladies, taking over the cloister, the refectory, and even the brothers’ dormitory. The monks prayed before the tomb of Saint Rosendo, who responded by striking Abbot Pedro dead. Elvira then sought out Abbot Pelayo and restored him to his monastery. We know from documents that Pelayo was abbot from 1073 to 1080 and again from 1083 to 1090. A document from 1081 is directed to Gonzalo, abbot of the monastery, and Pedro González. The story reflects ecclesiastical horror at the idea of a monastery controlled by the laity in the post–Gregorian reform era.130 Nevertheless, it is striking that both before and after Saint Rosendo’s intervention, Elvira acts as domina of the monastery, first removing and then restoring Pelayo to his position. Her will of 1099 granted the monastery of Celanova those possessions of theirs that she held.131 This may be the moment when Celanova passed out of royal control; Sancha Raimúndez, Elvira’s great-niece, had no connection to Celanova or, it seems, to many holdings in Galicia, where her great-aunts had been so strong.132 The royal daughters of the early eleventh century received their property from multiple sources. In 1028, during the reign of her brother, Alfonso V, Teresa, the royal daughter who was reputed in the twelfth century to have been forced to take a Muslim husband, donated to the bishop of Santiago property and a church dedicated to San Millan in León, adjacent to the royal monasteries of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista, which she had bought from Elvira Aznárez, “Deo dicata.” In exchange, she received from the treasury of Santiago a jeweled object that had been given to it by her mother, Queen Elvira, which she transferred to the twin community of San Juan Bautista and San Pelayo.133 Two years later, with her sister Sancha, she donated a villa in Galicia to Santiago, which is described as coming from their royal parents, who had purchased it in sections from its previous owners.134 130. Compare Reglero de la Fuente on the connection between Elvira and Celanova, which he does not link to the monastery’s origins in Jimena’s donation; “Testamentos de las infantas,” 844–45. 131. Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 12. 132. García Calles, Doña Sancha, hermana del emperador, 120–21. 133. Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 93. 134. Ibid., no. 94.

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Some years earlier, in 1017, Alfonso V intervened to protect his sisters’ ownership of the monastery of Santa Eulalia de Fingoy, near Lugo. This monastery had been given by its female owner, Domna Fakilo, to King Vermudo II, who in turn left it to his wife, Queen Elvira, on his death. She conceded it as a loan (“in prestamo”) to Osorio Froilaz, but he abandoned her lordship and chose another patron (“erexit sibi alio patrono”), whereupon the queen brought the case before her son, Alfonso V. The queen died before the case was concluded, and her rights in the property passed to her daughters, Sancha and Teresa Vermúdez. The case was heard before the king, his bishops, and counts in council, with Citi Donnelliz speaking for the two infantas. The king decided in favor of his sisters, and Osorio gave up the property.135 The document that records their dispute with Osorio has been used as evidence for feudalism in Spain, under the notion that the queen’s grant of Santa Eulalia looks like a benefice to a vassal, but the role of the king in this document is more interesting.136 Alfonso V protected Sancha’s and Teresa’s property here not as its ultimate owner but as their lord. He wielded justice for his sisters and Osorio Froilaz in the same way that he would for any of his subjects; there is no sense that he had a special interest in Santa Eulalia de Fingoy, or that he was the “real” owner of the property that his sisters held for their lifetimes. Sancha Vermúdez later acted as lord over this property, confirming an exchange between the abbess of Santa Eulalia and the bishop of Lugo, and engaging in a dispute with Lugo over the ownership of several servile women.137 Alfonso V intervened judicially to protect the property of his sisters, but when it came to his grandchildren through his daughter, Queen Sancha, half a century or so later, the roles were reversed. Here, at least at the outset, the sisters used their property to aid and protect their brothers. We have observed this already in Urraca Fernández’s gift to Túy, and we will see it later in a simultaneous gift that Elvira Fernández made to Lugo on behalf of another brother, Sancho II. In January 1072, Sancho II defeated his brother Alfonso VI in battle and sent him into exile. Urraca and Elvira, who appeared in documents alongside Alfonso VI throughout 1071, did not appear in the few documents of Sancho II after he defeated their brother, although a private charter to the abbey of Eslonza in May 1072, whose domina was Urraca, 135. Fernández del Pozo, “Alfonso V, rey de León,” no. 8, pp. 243–44. 136. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, En torno a los orígenes del feudalismo (Mendoza: Universidad Nacional de Cuya, 1942), I: 176–78. 137. AHN 1043B, fols. 65r–v, 68r; José Luis López Sangil and Manuel Vidán Torreira, “El tumbo viejo de Lugo (transcripción completa),” Estudios Mindonienses 27 (2011): no. 132, pp. 270–72; no. 136, pp. 278–79.

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names Sancho as ruling.138 In any case, in October 1072, Sancho was murdered by an assassin, and his brother Alfonso returned north from Toledo to take his throne. I have already discussed the legends surrounding Urraca Fernández’s involvement in Sancho II’s death and the rise of her favorite brother Alfonso VI to claim the thrones of León, Castilla, and Galicia. In the first few years following the assassination of their brother, she was one of the most prominent and important members of a network of support for Alfonso VI that included churchmen and nobles from several parts of his new kingdom. Alfonso’s first three documents after his restoration describe him as acting “together with the consent” of Urraca.139 This phrase, and the authority it afforded Urraca, is striking. In 977, after Elvira Ramírez fell from power, Ramiro III issued a diploma “with the consent” of his mother, Teresa Ansúrez, who filled Elvira’s place.140 In the twelfth century, Alfonso VII’s coruling son announced that he acted “with the consent and will” of his father. And in the thirteenth century, Fernando III issued diplomas “with the agreement and approval” of his mother, Berenguela of Castilla.141 In all these cases, the formulas seem to suggest some kind of supervisory role that, in Urraca’s case, ended once Alfonso VI had secured his hold on his kingdom. Alfonso’s other sister, Elvira, seems to have stood aloof for a few months, probably remaining in Galicia, but she was reconciled to the new order by March 1073, when she too confirmed one of her brother’s charters.142 From this point on, both sisters, Urraca somewhat more often than Elvira, frequently confirmed royal diplomas and used their own property to support his agenda. He relied on them especially in the reestablishment of religious institutions, be they bishoprics or monasteries. Their brother Sancho II had refounded the Visigothic see of Oca in 1068.143 In July 1074, Urraca and Elvira, “according to the advice and authority of our lord and brother Alfonso the king,” reestablished the see of Oca by giving it the church of Santa María in Gamonal, mills on the Arlanzon river, and the monasteries of Santa María del Valle and San Pedro de Campo in Treviño. As was the case in Urraca’s refounding of Túy, which made no mention of King García’s prior attempt

138. Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 64–65. 139. “Una cum consensu.” Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: nos. 11–13. 140. Mínguez Fernández, Colección diplomatica del monasterio de Sahagún, 1: no. 287. 141. Bianchini, Queen’s Hand, 143–45. 142. And perhaps as early as January, when she confirmed a private charter along with some of his Galician episcopal supporters; Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 70–72. For the March confirmation, see Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 16. 143. Garrido Garrido, Documentación de Burgos, 1: nos. 19–22.

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at renewal, this document did not mention Sancho’s 1068 refounding of Oca and spoke only of Oca having been “built, then destroyed by the Saracens,” presumably referring to the aftermath of the Conquest of 711. All they gave to Oca and its bishop, Jimeno, they had received from their parents, and this is why, as at Túy in 1071, Alfonso was compelled to rely on his sisters. Only they possessed the necessary property.144 In 1075, Alfonso made his own donation of a series of properties to Oca, confirmed by his sisters, and by 1081, when Alfonso gave the bishop a church he had been building in Burgos and the palace next to it that had belonged to his parents, the see of the bishopric had been moved from Oca to Burgos.145 The plot thickens, however. In 1077, Alfonso VI traded Bishop Jimeno the monastery of San Pedro de Campo in exchange for the monastery of San Juan de Hérmedes de Cerrato and claimed that Hérmedes de Cerrato had been given earlier to the bishop by Urraca and Elvira. But in 1074, Urraca and Elvira had donated not Hérmedes de Cerrato but San Pedro de Campo to the bishop. What is going on? One possibility is that the 1074 document, which is a copy in pseudo-Visigothic script, probably from the early twelfth century, has smoothed out an original, complex set of exchanges to reflect only the conclusion of these exchanges, namely, that the bishop got San Pedro. More interesting, however, is the possibility that the donations, redonations, and exchanges described in these charters were less about conclusively transferring title to property in a linear and absolute way than about establishing and maintaining networks of relationships among the different parties through property and that the donations and redonations were themselves “social gestures,” as Barbara Rosenwein has described similar gifts to Cluny,146 creating overlapping webs of connections among Bishop Jimeno, Alfonso VI, his sisters, and these monastic communities. Bishop Jimeno needed reiterated support because his hold on his see was not secure. In 1073, a papal legate excommunicated a Bishop Muño, who claimed the see of Oca-Burgos. This move must have been requested by Bishop Jimeno, with the support of Alfonso VI. But Gregory VII also used the dispute between the two would-be bishops as a lever to promote liturgical change in the peninsula. In March 1074, the pope upheld the excommunication but demanded that Alfonso VI replace the Old Spanish liturgy with the Roman liturgy in his kingdom; by May of the same year, Gregory 144. This document is often described as transferring the see of Oca to Burgos, but Burgos is not mentioned in it, although one of the properties that the sisters granted, Gamonal, is in its suburbs; ibid., 1: no. 24. 145. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: nos. 31, 74. 146. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, 142.

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rescinded Muño’s excommunication and demanded that he be given back his ancient see, noting that Muño had sworn to support the Roman rite. Indeed, Muño confirmed the July 1074 gift of the sisters to Bishop Jimeno, although without indicating his see, and the deposed Muño lived the rest of his life at the monastery of Cardeña, where he continued to confirm documents as “bishop” even though he never again claimed a particular see. As I argue in chapter 2, Cardeña was probably the place where the life of Saint Argentea, the royal virgin daughter who renounced political life in favor of seclusion and martyrdom, was composed. The life reflected a hostility toward royal daughters who interfered too much in political affairs, and perhaps Muño’s loss of the see of Burgos and exile to Cardeña was the source of that animosity. In May 1076, Gregory VII wrote to Bishop Jimeno directly and asked him to bring the Roman liturgy to the kingdom, and a couple of months later, Alfonso VI complied.147 The donations and exchanges between Alfonso and his sisters, and Bishop Jimeno may have been intended to demonstrate their ongoing support and relationship with one another in the face of opposition from both Bishop Muño and Pope Gregory VII. In this regard, it is significant that the day after receiving the monastery of San Juan de Hérmedes de Cerrato from Jimeno, Alfonso VI “with the consent” of his sisters, granted it to Abbot Hugh and the monastery of Cluny, so that it could be ruled by the customs of Cluny under a Cluniac abbot. I have argued elsewhere that Alfonso VI sought a strong relationship with Cluny to provide a bulwark against the demands of the papacy and that the property of his sisters was one of the tools he used to create this relationship.148 With these gifts, we see one particular instance of how this system worked. Rebellion in Lugo

But the best example of how the sisters used their property to aid the king in time of need comes from the aftermath of a revolt in Lugo in Galicia in 1087. The intersections of property, power, and allegiance are revealed by this episode, and as with the factional disputes of the tenth century, we see, once again, that understanding the role played by royal and noble women in times of strife is key to understanding the political history of the period. Bernard Reilly’s account of the revolt at Lugo in his study of Alfonso VI tells us as much as we may ever know about the main events of the disturbance: 147. Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 97–103. 148. Lucy K. Pick, “Rethinking Cluny in Spain,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5 (2013): 9–14.

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who led it and why, when it happened and what happened, and how it was resolved.149 Reilly argues that the rebellion took place in 1087 and 1088. Alfonso had been moving from strength to strength since he claimed his murdered brother Sancho’s kingdom in 1072 and had had his brother García imprisoned in 1073. Assisted by a core group of nobles, churchmen, and his sisters, he had reinforced his hold on the three kingdoms. He repudiated his childless wife Agnes in 1077, and in 1079, he took as his bride Constance of Burgundy, who bore his daughter Urraca in 1080. The marriage consolidated his alliance with Constance’s powerful uncle, Abbot Hugh of Cluny. And in 1085 we see him at the high-water mark of his power, after the conquest of the taifa kingdom of Toledo. But the seeds of future weakness were sown in his very success. He and Constance failed to have any more children, and by 1087, the duke of Burgundy, Constance’s nephew, and the king were negotiating a marriage between Alfonso VI’s daughter Urraca and the duke’s cousin, Raymond of Burgundy, with the implicit understanding that the latter would be Alfonso’s heir. Reilly supposes this prospect especially discomfited the Galicians and made them ponder restoring Alfonso’s imprisoned brother, García.150 Moreover, Alfonso’s victory at Toledo made the other Muslim taifa rulers realize that they would follow the same fate if they did not call in outside help. They sought the assistance of Yūsuf ibn Tāshfīn, the leader of the Almoravids of North Africa, and he crushed Alfonso’s army in the battle of Zallāqa in October 1086. The casualties may have been especially high among the Galician contingent of Alfonso’s army. One Galician count died in the battle, and the bishops of both Orense and Lugo (where our revolt later took place) disappear from the sources at this time, meaning that Lugo was without a bishop when the revolt began. Likewise, Vela Ovéquiz, the brother of Count Rodrigo Ovéquiz, the leader of the rebels, vanishes at this time, probably also a casualty of Zallāqa (see figure 8).151 We may see signs the crown was aware of disaffection in Galicia and attempted to mollify the area in two gifts granted by the king’s sisters to the bishop of Santiago. On April 25, 1087, Elvira Fernández gave Santiago and its bishop her half of the monastery of Piloño, as well as other properties, creating a partnership between the bishop and her sister Urraca, who retained her half of the property. On May 30, 1087, Urraca Fernández gave Santiago her half of Villalbín in the Campo de Toro and announced her plans to found a

149. Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 195–201. 150. Ibid., 195. 151. Ibid., 190.

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monastery there in the names of Saint Nicholas and Saint James. This gift was to take effect only on her death, meaning that the document created an ongoing partnership between the bishopric and both sisters. A large number of Galician churchmen and important lay figures signed both sisters’ documents, with plenty of overlap between the documents. Urraca’s gift upped the ante by including six Galician abbots and several of her brother Alfonso VI’s counts. Rodrigo Ovéquiz confirmed Elvira’s gift, and Rodrigo Vélaz, the son of Vela Ovéquiz, confirmed Urraca’s.152 If the gifts were meant as appeasement, they did not work. Reilly suggests that the rebellion broke out in Compostela that summer with the support of its bishop, Diego Peláez, and that Rodrigo Ovéquiz joined the rebellion with an attack on civil authority in Lugo primarily for personal interests of his own.153 The charters of donation issued by Alfonso VI to the cathedral at Lugo in the aftermath of the rebellion to mollify its new bishop for the sufferings of his see vividly recount Lugo’s plight under the rebels. These documents were, at the very least, highly manipulated for use in twelfth-century property disputes with neighboring sees, and so they must be treated with extreme caution, especially with respect to the properties they describe, but their narrative of events is plausible and useful.154 In a charter dated June 18, 1088, Alfonso VI explains that, despite having nurtured Rodrigo Ovéquiz in his youth like a son (“quem ego ut filium nutrieram”), perhaps indicating a relationship of fosterage, the count furtively invaded Lugo with his followers, killed the royal merino, and took castles belonging to Alfonso in Galicia.155 A similar charter, dated a month later, relates that Alfonso then besieged Lugo, with Rodrigo Ovéquiz inside it, and that in the course of the siege Lugo’s walls were destroyed, as well as its highest tower. The cathedral was devastated, and other churches within the walls were ruined too.156 Rodrigo Ovéquiz was defeated and exiled to Zaragoza, but he made a last stand in late spring 1088 on the northern coast of Galicia, where Alfonso VI definitively defeated him.157 The properties that Alfonso donated to Lugo in these two charters include some confiscated from the rebel count and others donated on his own account, presumably to make up for having destroyed the city of Lugo in order to save it.

152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157.

Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, nos. 85–86, pp. 219–23. Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 197. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 423–4, 2: no. 98. AHN 1043B, fols. 12v–13r; ibid., 2: no. 93. AHN 1043B fols. 13r–v; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 95. Reilly, Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 201; AHN 1043B, fol. 13r.

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The story of the revolt as I have recounted it sounds like a simple tale of a violent quarrel between a king and his nobles, with a bishop as the ultimate beneficiary, in other words, an ordinary account of political and ecclesiastical politics with men at the center. But a closer look at the documents that form the basis of what we can know about the rebellion and its aftermath reveals a striking number of women are involved in this tale. The surviving documents tell a story of duos and trios of men and women, working together. For instance, Rodrigo Ovéquiz gets all the credit for masterminding the rebellion in modern histories, but not so in the medieval documents that are our sources. Alfonso VI is quite clear about who was to blame. Rodrigo Ovéquiz did not hatch his conspiracies alone but with his mother Elvira Suárez “and their death-dealing, lying progeny, who lost and forfeited the right judgement of God through the treachery and invasion which they brought upon me and my kingdom.”158 Before their falling out, Count Rodrigo Ovéquiz had been close to Alfonso VI and appeared as a witness in royal documents, including Urraca’s gift to Túy. The count’s dispute with the bishopric of Lugo seems to have been longstanding. A 1078 agreement between Rodrigo Ovéquiz and his brother Vela, and Vistrario, bishop of Lugo, recounts that Rodrigo and Vela had usurped lands belonging to the cathedral both around Lugo and further away during the disturbed period following the death of Fernando I and the partitioning of the kingdom into three. In the agreement, adjudicated before Alfonso VI, Rodrigo and Vela recognized the rights of the cathedral to these territories and promised not to exact financial claims over these lands, which they held from Alfonso. This document was confirmed and ratified by the countess, their mother, Elvira Suárez.159 This agreement provides enough of a grievance for Rodrigo Ovéquiz against both the cathedral and the king to explain the rebellion at Lugo. But it may not have taken much of a grievance. His family had a long history of rebellion against the crown, and Elvira Suárez was connected to more than one rebel. Rodrigo Romániz, whom she calls her “auus”160 (grandfather or, more generally, ancestor), rose against Vermudo III in early 1029 and established himself in the castle of Lapio, which had been given by Vermudo II to Vermudo Vela, Rodrigo Ovéquiz’s grandfather and Elvira Suárez’s future father-in-law. From this castle, Rodrigo Romániz harassed

158. “Nam dei rebelles et mei regni fraudulatores et uite et corporis mei traditores Rudericus uidelicet Ouequiz et Geloira mater eius et illorum progenies mortifera et mentita perdiderunt et amiserunt recto Dei iudicio propter traditionem et inuasionem quam exarcuerunt in me et in regno meo.” AHN 1043B, 12v; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 93. 159. AHN 1043B, fols. 37r–38v. Gambra, Alfonso VI, no. 57, suggests, no doubt correctly, that the document, as we have it, is suspicious, although derived from an authentic agnitio. 160. AHN 1043B, fol. 15v; López Sangil and Vidán Torreira, “Tumbo viejo de Lugo,” no. 22, p. 84.

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the city and cathedral of Lugo, and after he was ousted, Vermudo III gave the castle to Lugo.161 This document names Rodrigo Romániz as the suprinus (cousin or perhaps nephew) of Suero Gundemáriz, who had also risen against Vermudo II in the early 990s and had his property confiscated and donated to Celanova.162 The wife of Rodrigo Romániz’s brother led a rebellion against Vermudo III with her children, setting a family precedent for mother-son revolts against the king.163 The notion of female family members—mothers, wives, and sisters—as fomenters of strife between men, encouraging rebellion and revolt, was a common one in Iberian historiography.164 The image of the rebellious Elvira Suárez, whispering advice into her son’s ear, fits this trope well. Whatever her personal involvement in the revolt, she and her son paid for it. Alfonso VI gave the property confiscated from them to Lugo in 1088, and in 1089, Elvira Suárez issued two charters, one with her son and one on her own, confirming these grants.165 The one issued jointly with Rodrigo Ovéquiz acknowledges their guilt for the rebellion and the invasion of the city, but the one she issued on her own merely states that she is donating her properties for the sake of her salvation and that of her parents and grandparents.166 Even so, the confiscated properties did not all immediately leave her control. A document of 1099 indicates that she retained a life interest in the villa of Milleiros just north of Lugo, which she held from the cathedral.167 Barbara Rosenwein notes that the families who stand as enemies to a religious institution are often those who, at other times, are donors to and benefactors of it. Enmity and friendship alternate in the documentary record, and this is evident in Elvira Suárez’s family’s relationship with Lugo, in which the same pieces of property were contested repeatedly during the eleventh century.168 Rosenwein’s discussion of how donation and redonation create ongoing relationships between people and religious institutions, which we observe in the donations to Oca-Burgos, is also manifested in the rebels’ gifts to Lugo and, likewise, in the relationship among the king, his sisters, and the cathedral of Lugo. In addition to the confiscated properties, Alfonso VI gave Lugo something that was not originally his to give: half of the neighboring 161. Núñez Contreras, “Colección diplomatica de Veremudo III,” no. 12. 162. Sáez and Sáez, Colección diplomática del monasterio de Celanova, 3: no. 221. 163. Núñez Contreras, “Colección diplomatica de Veremudo III,” no. 14. 164. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 230–31, 233–34. 165. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 93. 166. López Sangil and Vidán Torreira, “Tumbo viejo de Lugo,” no. 22, pp. 83–84; no. 130, pp. 268–69. 167. Ibid., no. 131. 168. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, 58.

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monasteries of Santa Eulalia and San Antonín de Fingoy.169 Previously, we have seen that Alfonso’s great-aunts, Sancha and Teresa Vermúdez, acquired Santa Eulalia from their father. San Antonín was built by the bishops of Lugo, but it later passed to Fernando I and Sancha, and was inherited by their daughters with the other monasteries they received from their parents.170 Two of the four documents that recount Alfonso VI’s gifts to Lugo in the aftermath of the rebellion indicate that he received his half of the two communities in an exchange with his sister Urraca Fernández.171 Long before the rebellion, as early as 1071, Elvira Fernández had already given her share, the other half, of Santa Eulalia to Lugo. Two versions of the donation exist in the Tumbo Viejo of Lugo; whereas the second has rightly been called a forgery because of the ahistorical account it gives of the refounding of the sees of Galicia, the first version deserves more credence.172 The document was issued during a turbulent time, on July 29, 1071, just after King García had been removed from Galicia, but before Sancho II arranged Alfonso VI’s exile in Toledo. When it is read together with Urraca Fernández’s undoubtedly authentic gift to Túy, issued only a month earlier, we see the two have much in common, and this supports the authenticity of Elvira’s gift. Both documents concern the refounding of bishoprics, and just as Urraca’s donation to Túy was confirmed by Alfonso VI, Sancho II confirms Elvira’s donation to Lugo, which was made to compensate Lugo for the restoration of the see of Orense by Sancho II. The two documents share a rich theological vocabulary. We have seen how liturgical and performance-oriented Urraca’s charter was. Elvira’s document opens with an unknown Trinitarian hymn that contains echoes of Psalm 109:3. Elvira is the “humblest maidservant of the maidservants of Christ.” Whereas Urraca directs her gift to Christ and the saintly patrons of Túy, rather than to the bishop, Elvira addresses herself in the first instance to Lugo’s patron, Mary, whom she calls “Queen of Queens, my Lord.” She beseeches Mary to intercede with Her Son, Christ, “king of the angels,” for the salvation of the souls of her parents and her own soul. The gift compensated Lugo, but Mary 169. This gift is mentioned in all four of the documents from Alfonso VI to Lugo after the revolt; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: 93, 94, 95, 98. 170. M. Rubén García Álvarez, “Los monasterios lucenses de Santalla y Santuiño de Fingoy,” Yermo 5 (1967): 55–56. 171. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: 94, 95. 172. AHN 1043B fols. 68r–68v, 68v –69v; López Sangil and Vidán Torreira, “Tumbo viejo de Lugo,” nos. 138, 139; pp. 281–87. The manuscript has “prosteterit” where we might prefer persteterit, which suggests that its thirteenth-century copyist was faced with an original in Visigothic script and confused its abbreviation for “per.” On the documents, M. Rubén García Álvarez, “La sede de Orense en el siglo XI.” Boletín Auriense 5 (1975), 235–39.

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was expected to rejoice at adding Orense to the sees she patronized.173 Just as Urraca describes Túy conquered by Vikings as “widowed,” Elvira’s Orense itself is gendered, having once been a “queen” but then becoming, like Elvira, a maidservant and subject to Lugo. Finally, the document transmits three of the four verses of the ninth-century Marian hymn “O quam glorifica luce.” This hymn celebrates Mary both as a royal daughter, descended from the lineage of King David, and as virginal mother of God.174 It is easy to see why this imagery would appeal to Elvira, leading a publicly virginal life on the model of Mary and, like Mary, a descendant of kings. Christ is King of angels, but Mary is Queen of Queens, a domina whose maternity allows her to influence Christ. The relationship between the mother and son pair of Mary and Jesus provides a model that the royal sisters could appreciate. Christ the King is the most powerful figure of the pair, in the way that King Alfonso is more powerful than his sisters. But Christ listens to Mary— one can count on that, as the text of the Lugo donations makes clear, because otherwise making donations to Lugo’s patron, Mary, would have no point. This image of a king who has to listen to his female relatives must have been very appealing to Alfonso VI’s sisters. Moreover, Mary and Christ demonstrate a “good” mother and son relationship, in contrast to what, in the future, became Elvira Suárez and Rodrigo Ovéquiz’s pernicious relationship. This developed Marian imagery appeared for the first time with Elvira’s 1071 gift but not for the last time in the Lugo documents. Elvira Fernández addressed herself to Mary and quoted the Marian hymn again in 1086, when she repeated her donation to Lugo of her half of Santa Eulalia and added to it half of the monastery of San Antonín.175 The hymn is also found in the document recording Alfonso’s July 21,1088, gift to Lugo; it is the only one of the four gifts ascribed to Alfonso that cites the hymn.176 Issued after the rebellion, it is also the only one of the four to make no mention of the 173. “Obsecro te, sancta dei uirgo, ut hec munera parua iubeas acceptare tibi digna, et oro te ne displiceat sed acceptum habeas quod feci, et de tua alia ecclesia sancta in tuo nomine facta que olim claruit in sede Auriense quod de regina facta erat ancilla et huic Lucense ecclesie subdita, et modo consenciente dominus frater meus Sancius rex per institutione episcoporum subter annotati elegimus ut sit prefata sede Auriense in tua laude et honore restaurata.” AHN 1043B fols. 68r–v; López Sangil and Vidán Torreira, “Tumbo viejo de Lugo,” no. 138, p. 283. 174. The version in the document reads, “O tu glorifica luce coruscha, styrpis dauitica regia prole, sublimis residens uirgo Maria, supra celigena etheris omnis. Tu cum uirgineo, mater, honore angelorum domina pectoris aulam sacris uisceribus casta parasti; natus in Deus est corpore Christus. Quod cunctus ueneras orbis adorat, cui nunc rite genus flectitur omne, a quo nos petimus te ueniente abiectis tenebris gaudia uite.” AHN 1043, fol. 68r. 175. This document exists in two versions; López Sangil and Vidán Torreira, “Tumbo viejo de Lugo,” no. 21, pp. 80–83; no. 140, 287–89. 176. Ibid., no. 133, p. 273.

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revolt and that granted only the other half of Santa Eulalia and San Antonín. Perhaps most interesting of all, however, the Marian hymn makes its final appearance in the Lugo documents in a gift granted by Elvira Suárez to Lugo on June 17, 1089. It was issued on the same day and contains many of the same properties as her joint gift to Lugo with her son, confessing their guilt for the rebellion, but this gift from her alone makes no mention of the revolt, although it does feature the generalized remorse and hope for intercession found in Elvira’s 1071 document. Moreover, not only does it repeat the Marian hymn from that document, it opens with the same Trinitarian hymn and follows the same general structure of the 1071 gift.177 We must be careful in drawing conclusions from the Lugo documents because they were so obviously tampered with to enhance Lugo’s rights and territory in the twelfth century, but I am tempted to see a connection among the four documents that cite the “O quam glorifica” hymn and to wonder whether we see in them Elvira Fernández’s own hand as a mediator on the model of Mary, interceding to bring Elvira Suárez back into harmony with the cathedral of Lugo and Alfonso VI. In any case, the documents that contain this hymn reflected and created a multilayered network of connections that was both material, in terms of the properties exchanged, and spiritual. The donated property did not simply pass from donor to recipient, leaving the donor’s hands without a trace; it remained a permanent physical bond linking the two. Some of it literally remained in the hands of both Lugo and Elvira Suárez, as we can see from her 1099 document describing her life interest in properties she seemed to have donated in 1089.178 Moreover, the donations not only created a spiritual bond in this world between the donor and the recipients, who were to pray for the donor but they also created a bond with the divine patrons of the community, that is to say, at Lugo, Mary, Queen of Queens and Mother of God. The documents that recount the events of the rebellion at Lugo tell us about more than the grievances of a few nobles against their king; it exposes some of the power structures at work in the kingdom and the place of women in those structures. Confirming Charters

Urraca and Elvira are both prominent in royal documentation, regularly confirming their brother’s charters in a conspicuous position in his diplomata, 177. Ibid., no. 22, pp. 83–84. 178. Ibid., no. 131, pp. 269–70.

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their names preceded only, if at all, by Alfonso’s queen. Of the 138 royal documents issued by Alfonso VI from the beginning of his reign until the sisters both vanished from the scene in 1101, Urraca or Elvira or both confirmed more than half—a total of 78 documents. Queen Constance figured in half the royal documents issued during her tenure as queen before her death in 1093, twenty-three out of forty-six (although six of these are forgeries), but she figured in only four of thirty that were issued before 1090. Queen Agnes, her predecessor, confirmed only one of twenty-five royal documents. From 1095, Queen Berta and her successor, Queen Isabel, were regularly named.179 It would be wrong, I believe, to see these confirmations by queens and sisters as empty, symbolic, or formulaic. We need to assume that everyone mentioned in a charter, whether it was a royal diploma or some other kind of document, is there for a reason. If a king could have acted alone and by so acting have his will perfectly realized, he would have. That he did not reflects his dependence on the support of those around him—his family, leading churchmen, and lay nobles—just as their presence reflects their dependence on him. If a king had his sisters or his wife confirm his documents, it was because they accomplished some work by doing so. This means that the shifts in which women confirmed documents at which times are also significant. Nobles and churchmen rebelled and fell away; Alfonso’s wives confirmed his documents with regularity only later in his reign, but his sisters appeared consistently in the confirmation lists until their own deaths. Urraca and Elvira could be relied on by Alfonso. Without spouses and children of their own, their loyalty was always, first of all, to their own lineage. And Alfonso VI, in turn, also confirmed many of his sisters’ donations and other property transactions. Carlos Reglero de la Fuente argues that Alfonso’s royal sisters held only a life interest in their property and thus needed Alfonso’s confirmation to transfer property. But this does not appear to be the case; there are many examples of transactions by the sisters that did not include Alfonso’s confirmation.180 If, however as I am suggesting,

179. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 196, 465–87. 180. For example, Santiago Domínguez Sánchez, ed. Colección documental del monasterio de Santa María de Carbajal (León: CEISI, 2000), no. 2; Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, nos. 86, 87; Garrido Garrido, Documentación de Burgos, nos. 24, 76; María Beatriz Vaquero Díaz and Francisco J. Pérez Rodríguez, eds., Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de Ourense (León: CEISI, 2010), no. 6; Andrade Cernadas, O Tombo de Celanova, no. 96; Carlos Reglero de la Fuente, ed., El monasterio de San Isidro de Dueñas en la edad media (León: CEISI, 2005), no. 34; Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 10.

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property transactions were in large part about creating and maintaining networks of power, the strongest networks were going to be those with the strongest members, and it is entirely reasonable that the sisters would prefer to have their brother included, visibly supporting their acts, just as he, likewise, often included them. It does not mean they could not alienate property without him. We do see scattered examples in which a royal daughter either received a counter-gift from someone she was giving property to or herself made a gift to an institution whose property she was donating to a third party. In 1074, Urraca Fernández granted Villarmildo to her “fidele” María Fruélaz, which she had to share with Urraca’s sister, Elvira, who owned the other half of the villa. In return, Urraca received a goshawk for hunting herons from María.181 This may have been a simple return gift in friendship and gratitude, or it may have been compensation that recognized that what she was receiving was family property, shared between the two sisters. When in 1028 Teresa Vermúdez donated property and a church dedicated to San Millan in León, adjacent to the royal monasteries of San Pelayo and San Juan Bautista, to the bishop of Santiago and received from the treasury of Santiago in exchange a jeweled object that had been given to it by her mother, Queen Elvira, and then transferred this jewel to the twin community of San Juan Bautista and San Pelayo, she may likewise have been signaling that the property she was alienating was part of a collective family holding.182 And in March 1099, Urraca and Elvira donated the monastery and lands of San Pedro in the city of León to a count and his wife. The monastery had been given by his grandmother to San Isidoro, and Urraca compensated San Isidoro by giving it her half of Otero de San Julián, a site located on a difficult section of the camino to Santiago as it entered Galicia.183 It may be significant that the last two gifts involved compensating the house of San Juan Bautista and San Pelayo, which became San Isidoro, the chief holding of the royal daughters. In no case did the counter-gift fully materially compensate for the loss of property. It is not evidence that the daughters were unable to alienate their holdings. But it may be a sign that some of their holdings had special resonance for them, supporting my argument that some of them carried more symbolic weight as inalienable possessions. A symbolic gift compensated for a symbolic loss.

181. Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección documental, 1: no. 276. 182. Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 93. 183. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 10. Martín Flaínez was count in San Julián between 1100 and 1107; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 605–6.

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The Royal Sisters and the Magnates: Elvira Fernández’s Will and Urraca Fernández’s Last Gift Urraca and Elvira Fernández created networks with others in the kingdom, relationships that were not triangulated exclusively through their brother, the king. We have already seen that Urraca received some of the property that she gave Túy in 1071 from women who expected in return to receive her protection and support, a relationship between patron and client. Throughout their careers, the two sisters created networks of relationship with women through property. In 1066, Urraca gave Santiago property in Portugal that she had received from Aurodonna Nuñez, creating a triangle among herself, another woman, and a bishopric, much as she would do again five years later in Túy184 María Fernández’s charter of perfiliation of 1070 gave family lands in Coyanza to “My domna, Infanta Domna Urraca,” and in return she expected to be under the protection (“sub uestro auxilio”) of Urraca and that Urraca would be her lord (domna) and give her mercy and help her against all others, and that María would be in her service as long as she lived.185 When Urraca granted Villarmildo to her fidele María Fruélaz in 1074, Elvira, who owned the other half, confirmed the transfer between Urraca and María, bringing the three women into union.186 And in 1099, Urraca gave, among other gifts, the monastery of San Juan in León to her own monastery of San Pedro de Eslonza, announcing that Eslonza would hold it from her just as Tota López had done, gratefully, from her hand.187 These documents of Urraca’s show her in relationships with women, reflecting most clearly an ongoing, personal bond between lord and vassal, relationships in which her brother played no role. Alfonso VI was conspicuously absent from his sister Elvira’s 1099 will, issued at her monastery of Tábara while she was “bound by a great chain of illness,” probably shortly before her death that year.188 He did not confirm it, he was not a beneficiary, and he was not mentioned in it in any other context. It was confirmed by her sister and the bishops of León, Túy, and Astorga, and in it, Elvira freely bequeathed her property to her sister, Urraca, and great-niece, Sancha Raimúndez; to various religious houses; and to lay supporters, both low and high. There is no indication that the king had any problem with his sister’s will. In January 1100, he gave Santiago half the 184. 185. 186. 187. 188.

Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 85. José Manuel Ruíz Asencio, ed., CD León 4: no. 1174. Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección documental, 1: no. 276. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 11.

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monastery of Piloño, acknowledging that Elvira’s will had granted it the other half.189 Elvira’s sister and great-niece received the lion’s share of the bequests, which they got directly from Elvira, without their passing through the hand of the king, including all the major monasteries. She bequeathed a good deal of property, including the monastery of San Pelayo of León, to San Isidoro and then gave Urraca her share of San Isidoro, as well as San Pelayo of Oviedo and Covarrubias. If the Santa Cruz that Elvira gave to San Pelayo of Oviedo was, as I have identified in on the map (figure 13), Santa Cruz in Cangas de Onís, the church founded by the second king of the Asturias and his wife, her possession of it and its donation to a monastery to be held by her sister link both of them to the earliest origins of their family line. Sancha Raimúndez received the monasteries of Tábara, Santa María de Wamba, and San Miguel de la Escalada. These were precisely the part of her holdings—what would later be called the infantazgo—that Georges Martin says were inalienable and had to revert to the king on her death.190 But Elvira’s will belies this argument. She seems motivated in her bequests not to follow some imagined law of the infantazgo for which we have no evidence but, rather, to consolidate her holdings and to pass them intact to her female family members, a common goal of many wills and one she seems to have been able to pursue freely.191 Elvira’s will granted her male vassals the horses and armor they had received from her, as well as their food for the year, and it gave her female vassals their mules. It also specified bequests to particular individuals. The number of women named in her will is significant: Domina Velasquita, who got a specific mule belonging to Martín Peláez; Elvira Nuñez; Aragonta; Elvira Fruélaz; Elvira Fernández; Maria Gonzálvez; and the unnamed wife of Fernando Fernández, who was given a separate property from that given to her husband. Some bequests in the will were connected to earlier grants by the sisters. Fernando Fernández got Elvira’s share of Villarmildo in the will, but twentyfive years before Urraca had granted her half of it (as we have seen) to her fidele Maria Fruélaz. María Fruélaz was the daughter of a count and had married Diego Peláez. One of their sons, Pedro Díaz, received the two nearby villas of Villamontán and Castrotierra de la Valduerna in Elvira’s will. Another son, Count Fruela Díaz, was also involved with the two sisters. On June 17,

189. Elvira had already, in 1087, promised Compostela this property on her death; Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, nos. 70, 87. 190. Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 10–11. 191. See Martin, “Hacia una clarificación,” 26.

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1099, Urraca and Elvira confirmed two different sales of property to Fruela Díaz and his wife, Estefanía Sánchez of Navarra.192 Fruela Díaz was a member of Alfonso’s court and confirmed many of the king’s charters, but he was not in the king’s innermost circle and was more closely attached to the king’s son-in-law, Count Raymond. Fruela Díaz’s daughter, another María Fruélaz, was described as “my client” by Queen Urraca in 1112, following in her grandmother’s footsteps of vassalage to the women of the royal family.193 Another otherwise unattested daughter may be the Elvira Fruélaz who was named in Elvira’s will.194 I speculate that Fernando Fernández was also connected to this family; in 1129, the widowed countess Estefanía granted a fuero to Villarmildo that covered the territory all the way down to the Duero river between it and Villalba, which Elvira’s will had given to her monastery of Santa María de Wamba.195 One of the few to confirm the two sales to Fruela Díaz in 1099 was Count Martín Flaínez, who, after 1090, became a constant presence in Alfonso VI’s documentation. Martín and Fruela were second cousins, with a shared greatgrandfather in Flaín Muñoz. The family had a fractious relationship with the royal family, and Martín Flaínez likewise had a prior history with the two royal sisters. His father was Flaín Fernández, who had rebelled against Fernando I, and whose father, Fernando Flaínez, had held the city of León against the king (see chapter 2). Flaín Fernández’s lands were confiscated and divided up among the king’s children. In 1071, probably in recompense for her refounding of Túy, Alfonso VI gave Urraca ownership and lordship over an extensive block of territory that had belonged to the rebel, from Cifuentes to Camporredondo, some 75 kilometers up the Esla river and beyond, near her monasteries of San Miguel de la Escalada and San Pedro de Eslonza.196 Martín’s siblings, Onnega and Fernando, rebelled against Alfonso’s rule too, and in 1097, he granted some of their possessions to the bishopric of León.197 But in March 1099, Urraca and Elvira donated the monastery and lands of San Pedro in the city of León to the count and his wife.198 Three days later, Counts Martín and Fruela confirmed another donation from Alfonso and Urraca to her monastery of Eslonza, and three months

192. Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección documental, 1: nos. 301, 302. 193. “Clientula mea.” Ibid., 2: no. 325. 194. Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 26. 195. Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección documental, 2: no. 333. 196. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 5. 197. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 141. 198. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 10. Martín Flaínez was count in San Julián between 1100 and 1107; ibid., 1: 605–5.

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later, they confirmed a major donation by Urraca to this monastery.199 These two documents share suspiciously much in common. Gambra notes anomalies in the joint charter issued by Alfonso and Urraca, and it is likely that it was forged or at least heavily manipulated on the basis of the one made by Urraca alone to Eslonza. Both diplomas include virtually identical lengthy theological protocols that reflect Visigothic rhyming hymnody.200 The protocols evoke Trinitarian themes and an emphasis on God as the creator of all things and whom all serve, which we have seen in other documents issued by the sisters but which are less evident in Alfonso’s diplomata. They both cite Job 38:7 and the hymn, “Qui expansis in cruce manibus traxisti omnia ad te,” and they address themselves to Christ, over the abbot of the monastery, as was customary in major pious donations by the sisters. They were written by the same scribe, Martín, who calls himself, in Urraca’s document, “her priest, equal in command” and calls her his lord.201 This is no doubt the same Martín, the prior of her monastery of San Pelayo in León, who wrote the donation by the two sisters to Count Martín in the same year, in which he called Urraca his lord and described himself in this original parchment charter as “submitting to her command” rather than equal to it.202 The Eslonza document, which is a copy not an original, must have changed the wording to “equal in command,” disliking the thought that a woman could be dominant over a prior. Urraca’s donation to Eslonza included, among other properties and objects, the monastery of San Juan inside the walls of León, which she had received entire from her father, Fernando I, taken from the rebel Flaín Fernández, Count Martín’s father. It also invoked her royal ancestors, as her donation to Túy had done twenty-eight years earlier. Urraca declared that the monastery had been founded by her “great-great-grandfather,” King García I (d. 914) but that it had devolved into a dwelling place for clerics and laity, and that she had received it as her hereditary allotment (“hereditario sorte,” perhaps suggesting that some of their parents’ properties had been divided among the siblings by lot). In reality, King García was not an ancestor

199. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, nos. 6, 7. 200. “In nomine sancte et individue Trinitatis/ eterni scilicet genitoris/ ante secula Deus existentis/ unigenitique redemptoris/sine initio temporum de eodem Patre eructantis/ almi adque flaminis/ ex utroque scilicet Patre et Filio equaliter ab eterno procedentis.” See also Maurilio Pérez González, “Los protocolos poéticos en la documentación medieval diplomatica,” in Dulces camenae: Poética y poesía latinas, ed. Jesús Luque Moreno, María Dolores Rincón González, and Isabel Velázquez (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2010), 441–49. 201. “Ego Martinus presbiter eius parens imperio.” Ibid; Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 153. 202. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 10.

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in the direct line of Urraca.203 Urraca appeared first as domina of the reconstituted monastery of Eslonza in 1073, when on its behalf she accepted the resolution of a property dispute between it and Sahagún. Urraca, in the 1073 charter, both heard the dispute alongside her brother, Alfonso VI, and acted as principal for Eslonza.204 It is possible to multiply these chains of connection between properties and people through many more documents, but these examples give a sense of how enmeshed the sisters were in the networks of the powerful in their brother’s kingdom. As we have seen, it is not just who you know; it is who knows you.205 And each document we have is much more than just a legal artifact; each one reveals a precious snapshot of a network that is so much larger than the buyer or grantor and the recipient, and that links all those named as present or referred to in the document, including those cited in the narratives of the history of a particular property. We have learned from these documents that women who possessed lordship, like the two royal sisters, were part of the normal networks of the elite of the kingdom. But they were also, because of their gender, sought out by other women as sources of protection and patronage, and formed their own networks, which intersected with those of the king and the court and also with the religious elite—the bishops and major monasteries of the kingdom. We have learned most of all that we cannot understand the power relationships in this place at this time if we ignore a good number of those who were involved in them.

203. Reglero de la Fuente, “Testamentos de las infantas,” 45–49. Three donations from García to Eslonza survive, although none describes him as the founder of the community; Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, nos. 1–3. 204. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 21. 205. Michael Pick, personal communication. July 10, 1987.

 Ch ap ter 4 Memory, Gift, and Death

In the previous chapter, I examined the constellations of properties and people that were linked by charters involving royal women in the tenth and eleventh centuries. These documents are not simply about people and property, however. They are also about memory and about gift, two closely allied concepts. Documents play a crucial role in memorial culture, recalling the past for the needs of the present. A diploma or charter reconstitutes the people and places described in it; the monograms of confirmants make them permanently present every time the document is viewed again.1 A document of donation recalls its donor to the saintly patrons whose intercession she wishes to solicit. Such a document does not only recount the giving of a gift; the very parchment on which the act of donation is inscribed is itself a gift, a souvenir or memory, as it were, of the moment of donation. Moreover, for the women I discuss, giving gifts and memorializing them were often gestures performed in the face of death, their own or those of their family members. They remembered their family dead with prayers and with gifts, and expected that they would be remembered in turn. Memory and gift have received a great deal of attention in the last decades from scholars of the Middle Ages. Studies of medieval memory

1. Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity, 36, 48.

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have clustered around two approaches: (1) Mary Carruthers’s investigations about the creative potential of learned medieval memory2 and (2) the ground-breaking work of scholars in Europe such as Otto Gerhard Oexle, Karl Schmid, and Joachim Wollasch, and what might be called the AngloAmerican school of Patrick Geary and Elizabeth van Houts on the social and political uses of memory, including memory of the dead, especially among the powerful in the Middle Ages.3 I suggest that a sharp distinction between learned and social memory is not useful, that the two, in fact, have many points of contact. Studies of medieval gift-giving have tended to either follow or react to the anthropological models of gift and counter-gift originally laid down by Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Claude Levi-Strauss, and others, although there has been a gentle turn by medievalists away from an anthropological broad-strokes theory of gift toward the particular and context specific.4 Attention to broad concepts such as “memory” and “gift” offers a way for medievalists to participate with those in other fields in scholarly conversations on topics of seemingly universal and transhistorical relevance while escaping the particularities of Christianity, the specific umbrella under which much medieval memorial and donative activity took place. But this approach imposes limitations. Discussions of the social uses of medieval memory tend to treat memory as an end in itself; more attention is paid to who was being remembered and what was remembered than why memory was deemed important in the first place. This last seems like a crucial question. The 2. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 3. Michael Borgolte surveys the field in Europe as it was in 2002: “Memoria. Bilan intermédiare d’un projet de recherche sur le Moyen Âge,” in Les tendances actuelles de l’histoire du Moyen Âge, ed. Jean-Claude Schmitt and Otto Gerhard Oexle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 53–69. See also Elisabeth van Houts, ed., Medieval Memories: Men, Women, and the Past, 700–1300 (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001); Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 4. Cecily J. Hilsdale’s article surveys the ways that medievalists have drawn on this material, suggests some of its pitfalls, and reviews the vast bibliography on medieval gift-giving: Cecily J. Hilsdale, “Gift,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 171–82. See also Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift, Veröffenlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte no. 188 (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), especially Gadi Algazi, “Introduction: Doing Things with Gifts,” 9, 16, 21, in which he argues that there is no one theory of gifts, that offerings are not presents, that gifts to God are not gifts to kin or gifts between states, and that gifts are not always reciprocal; François Bougard, Cristina La Rocca, and Regine Le Jan, eds., Sauver son âme et se perpétuer: Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut Moyen Âge, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 351 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005); Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre, eds., The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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study of medieval giving run into problems when faced with the widespread practice of giving pro anima (gifts to God via some religious institution for the sake of one’s soul after death). Some scholars accept as basic the norm of reciprocity as defined by the anthropologists; the notion that every gift, including pious donations, expects a counter-gift.5 Gifts pro anima were given ultimately to God and immediately to the religious institution that accepted them; in exchange, the monks, nuns, and clerics offered prayers and God granted salvation, and the material goods of the donation were transformed into spiritual ones.6 Others have questioned whether gifts pro anima can be understood as forms of reciprocal giving, arguing that, for Christians, the counter-gift of salvation so vastly outweighed the original material gift that any form of reciprocity was out of the question. These arguments are theologically based. The paired words, munus (gift) and remuneratio (counter-gift) are rarely found in theological texts. Instead, the theological grounds for giving are located in notions of gift as free charity, motivated by the love that comes from the Holy Spirit and spreads through the Christian community. Love compels ongoing exchange, but the gift itself does not compel a return gift because God cannot be bound by a human gift. God’s remuneratio (counter-gift or reward) is a response not to a material gift but to human opus (labor) on earth. Donors could, and did, hope for salvation but could not expect it.7 Eliana Magnani has argued that gifts to God surpass the bounds of reciprocity because the material donation pro anima only set in motion a process that required both the gift itself and its donor be spiritually transformed or converted to sacred use before salvation could be confidently hoped for. Material goods had to be converted into alms for

5. Philippe Jobert, La notion du donation: Convergence: 630–750 (Paris: Société les Belles Lettres, 1977), 43; Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and Gifts to Saints (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 27; Bijsterveld, “Medieval Gift,” 124, 132; Arnold Angenendt, “Donationes pro anima: Gift and Countergift in the Early Medieval Liturgy,” in The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 131–33; Wendy Davies, “When Gift Is Sale. Reciprocities and Commodities in Tenth-Century Christian Iberia,” in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 231–33; Chris Wickham, “Conclusion,” in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 244–45, 254–58. 6. White, Custom, 154–55; Michel Lauwers, La mémoire des âncetres, le souci des morts, Théologie Historique no. 103 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997), 181–85, 191–92. 7. Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, “Caritas y don en la sociedad medieval occidental,” Hispania 60 (2000): 28, 50, 55–57; Bernhard Jussen, “Religious Discourses of the Gift in the Middle Ages,” In Negotiating the Gift, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen, Veröffenlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte no. 188 (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 188–187.

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the poor, or at least for “God’s poor,” the monks of the monastery, and the donor was meant to undergo a similar spiritual transformation, assisted by the prayers of those whom he or she materially supported. These transformations from material object to spiritual good were modeled on the central transformation of the Christian faith, the transformation of bread and wine in the Eucharist.8 So which is it? Did donors think of themselves as being involved in a quid pro quo exchange with God, or were their gifts pious gestures made in hopeful insecurity with an uncertain reward? What role does memory play in this gift-giving? And death? The documents I discuss in chapter 3, most of which recorded pious donations of one kind of another, show their issuers to have at least hoped for some reward for their activity. In 1099, in one of the last documents I consider in chapter 3, Urraca Fernández granted her own monastery of San Pedro de Eslonza to God, endowed it with monasteries and precious objects, and asked Christ to “Accept from me these gifts offered to You and your apostles and consecrated in their name and Yours, and agree that You may be the mildest of judges to me, when You come as judge and judge the world with the apostles, influenced by their prayers, and that their prayer may pluck me out of the avenging flames, and purged of all fault, may bring me into the court of Heaven, Amen.”9 This passage is typical of the sentiment we might expect to see attached to gifts elsewhere in Europe at the time. Urraca certainly hoped her gifts would affect her future salvation after death, and she made clear that was why she gave them. They were “consecrated” to Christ and the apostles, suggesting the kind of transformation that Magnani has in mind. A gift must not only be given to have effect; it must be remembered, and every gift involves an act of memory. Urraca’s imperatives (“Accipe” and “concede”) required that Christ and the apostles remember her and her gift, now and at the end of time, and that the apostles pray for her. One of these was Saint Peter, who, as a patron of Eslonza, was the more immediate recipient of her gift and was thus in her particular debt for the gift.10 These words are in the imperative mood, but all the hopes for her future salvation are expressed in the optative

8. Eliana Magnani, “Transforming Things and Persons: The Gift Pro Anima in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Negotiating the Gift, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen, Veröffenlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte no. 188 (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 272–76, 284. See also Eliana Magnani, “Les médiévistes et le don,” Revue du MAUSS 31 (2008): 525–44, doi:10.3917/rdm.031.0525. 9. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. 10. On the debt of prayer saintly patrons owed to donors, see Magnani, “Transforming Things and Persons,” 280.

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subjunctive mood (“Sis,” “eruat,” and “introducat”), as wishes, not certainties or commands.11 And while this was her last recorded gift to God, it was by no means her first, and each one, in different words, expressed a similar hope for her salvation and often for her deceased parents as well. How much does one have to give God to receive a counter-gift of infinite worth? Can one ever give enough to be sure one has earned the prize? Each gift presents itself as sufficient for the reward of salvation, but that faith is belied by the next gift that follows. Finally, death, that is to say, Urraca’s prospective death and the death of the saints whose bodily relics were at the monastery and who could intercede on her behalf, is the context that haunts this donation and all others like it. The gift happens now, but the reward can only happen after its donor dies and at the end of time during the final judgement, and thus the donation spans the chasm between those two points. Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of how gifts work offers us a way out of the dilemma of understanding divine reciprocity, as some medievalists have already observed.12 Viewed from outside the giver-recipient pair, the cycle of reciprocal gift and counter-gift looks inevitable. Viewed from the perspective of the participants in the exchange, things look very different. Bourdieu recognizes that if a person gives someone a gift, the immediate return of an identical object is a refusal of the gift and that, in practice, gifts may be sometimes refused or ignored, rather than reciprocated. For a gift to be a gift, its counter-gift must be both deferred and different, and thus both time and difference are central to gift exchange. Gift exchange thrives on a mutual misrecognition between the donor and recipient of the truth of mechanical reciprocity; it is a kind of game that can only be played when both players agree to ignore the objective truth that gifts expect counter-gifts. An immediate response of a gift for a gift exposes that truth; only time elapsed between gifts and the uncertainty produced by that time allows it to be concealed and allows the game to be played.13 This is why memory and gift-giving are such closely allied processes; the time between the gift and counter-gift introduces both the possibility and necessity of memory, and the game cannot be played without it. Gift exchange creates heterogeneity and thus reifies difference and hierarchy, not equivalence. This is what Florin Curta has observed of gift exchanges between elite lay people in the early Middle Ages, which 11. On gift-giving in the optative mood, see Hilsdale, “Gift,” 178. 12. For example, Florin Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” Speculum 81 (2006): 696–97; ibid., 172. 13. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 4–6.

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were unbalanced and asymmetric. Such gift-giving was not about constructing and preserving social bonds; rather, it was a kind of “surrogate warfare” in which the powerful competed with each other for mastery, a part of the political economy, then, rather than the grounds for a gift economy.14 The rules of the gamed change little, although the ground on which it was played did, when it was God who received the gift. The distance between what the donor offered and what she hoped to receive from God after her death testified to the distance and difference between the divine and earthly spheres. The donor remained uncertain about whether the gift would be reciprocated. The time between gift and counter-gift became extended into the end of time, and the donor filled the intervening time with further gifts, ideally culminating in a grand final gesture of gift in her will at the moment of her death. Michel Lauwers has questioned the “piety” of gifts to God, noting that the people who gave to the Church were often those who pillaged it, and asks whether those who made such gifts truly believed in the power of God to reward them at some indefinite time. Lauwers takes seriously the link among gift, memory, and death, but he eviscerates them of content. Salvation drops out of his consideration, and he argues that gifts were only a social practice that implicated nobles, their deceased ancestors, and religious institutions that guarded their bodies to preserve the aristocratic hierarchy by deploying the memory of noble ancestors. Donating pro anima was a game played only by nobles, he notes, and one that was essentially about power.15 Lauwers is correct to yoke power, gift, memory, and the dead so closely together, but his skepticism about motivation seems misplaced. We know that the powerful knew these were the rules of the game and that they chose to follow them. Who is more likely to believe in the rules of the game than the one who wins by playing it? The link among gift, memory, and death is implicated in the Eucharist, at the very heart of the Christian tradition. The synoptic Gospels all tell roughly the same story of the meal of the Last Supper, but the version in Luke 22:19 is the most complete for our purpose: “And, having taken the bread, he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body which is given up for you; do this in memory of me.”16 All the elements of gift, memory, and death are here. The bread is a gift, as is Christ’s body,

14. Curta, “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving,” 697–99; Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 10. 15. Lauwers, Mémoire des âncetres, 182–86, 192. 16. In the Vulgate, “Et accepto pane, gratias egit et fregit, et dedit eis dicens, ‘Hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis datur. Hoc facite in meam commemorationem.’”

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which he gives up for them in death. They are commanded to continue to repeat this gift in what becomes the liturgy of the Eucharist and, in doing so, to remember Christ, the giver. Christ’s gift of himself is a sacrifice, a paradox of a gift because it can never be reciprocated and because it continues to the end of time, constantly calling forth gifts that can never match it. The prayer of consecration of the Eucharist, which is drawn from the biblical Last Supper accounts, in the canon of the Roman Mass avoids the language of gift. But the canon of the Mass in the Old Spanish liturgy, which would have been the familiar form to all the royal women in this study, is closer to that of the passage from Luke: “Take it and eat; this is my body which will be given up [tradetur] for you. Do this in memory of me.”17

Death and Memory in Eleventh-Century León In León-Castilla, royal daughters stood at the nexus of memory, gift, and death. They were themselves a kind of gift to God, inalienable possessions of the royal house and instances of the practice of keeping-while-giving, as described by Annette Weiner, who were not given away to other men to marry.18 The women were, instead, themselves given property, including monasteries that were also inalienable possessions because they housed both palaces and the bodies of the royal dead. There, they performed services of memory for the royal family, living and dead. We know that royal daughters were involved directly in memorial activities, at least from the moment that Ramiro II installed Elvira Ramírez in the palace-monastery-cemetery of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey, expecting her to pray for her deceased family buried there and to assist the living ruling members of her family, a recollection and assistance designed to ensure their salvation in heaven and continued power on earth. Elvira would not merely have mourned and prayed for the deceased of her family; more than likely she also tended to their physical bodies after death, preparing for burial not only her father, Ramiro II, but her half-brother Ordoño III and her full brother Sancho I.19 Elvira was also instrumental in creating and guarding a final home for the martyred Saint Pelayo, a home that became the heart of the royal infantazgo.

17. Hans Lietzmann, Mass and Lord’s Supper, trans. Dorothea Reeve (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 36–39; Marius Férotin, Le liber mozarabicus sacramentorum et les manuscrits mozarabes. 1912 (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1995), 327n. 19. 18. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions. 19. Pérez de Urbel, Sampiro, 329–30, 332, 334, 339.

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Medieval memorial practices never existed solely for their own sake; memory was always allied to power, worldly and divine, with the former seen as an extension of the latter. The founding of a monastery embodies the practice of keeping-while-giving: daughters and property and objects were given to God and were simultaneously kept for the use and benefit of the family. Such a founding sought to secure permanence in a world constantly subject to change and decay. Memory of the dead, which combined the custody of their remains and intercessory prayer for their souls, held out the promise of future membership for its members in the kingdom of Heaven. The women, along with the monasteries and royal bodies in their custody, were all material expressions of keeping, but the most they could do was bear a vision of permanence in a social world always in flux. This the women did in part through their own gifts. The monarchy at this time was necessarily peripatetic. The court and family followed the king as he moved from region to region, showing his face, subduing rebels, fighting Muslims, administering justice, and living off his revenues. The one set of people that could be guaranteed not to move was one’s deceased ancestors. Their burial in a palace-monastery-cemetery complex maintained a fixed royal presence in one location. Legitimacy came from their ability to stand for permanence, for eternity in a world of change, and from the ability of the royal family to do this better than its competitors.20 After Elvira fell from power in the 970s, the city and the kingdom of León remained weak under Ramiro III, under Vermudo II, and during the minority of Alfonso V. The campaigns of al-Manṣūr and his sons and the rebellions of nobles through the end of the millennium and beginning of the next devastated the city and made it uninhabitable by the royal family, whose court became more peripatetic than usual. Documents show that the court situated itself in Galicia or the Asturias when León was occupied by others. The twelfth-century bishop, historian, and forger, Pelayo of Oviedo, related that the people of León and Astorga, fleeing to the Asturias before the Muslim onslaught, took with them the bones of the kings and queens buried in these southern cities as well as the body of Saint Pelayo. The kings and queens were buried “with great honor” in the church of St. Mary in Oviedo, where they joined the bodies of the deceased royals who had been buried there before the capital was moved from Oviedo to León, while Saint Pelayo’s body was placed on the altar of Saint John the Baptist. He describes in great detail the layout of the tombs of the kings and their families.21 Although 20. See also Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 6–8. 21. Sánchez Alonso, Crónica del Obispo Don Pelayo, 65–68.

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most scholars accept this story without question, along with a document that purports to recount King Fernando and Queen Sancha’s participation in the translation of Saint Pelayo’s body to a new tomb in Oviedo in 1053, I am skeptical about both the document and Bishop Pelayo’s tale.22 There is no hint in the Leonese eleventh-century documents that the body of Pelayo was anywhere but in León. What the story does show is how important the custody of the royal dead and the saintly patrons of the ruling dynasty was. Bishop Pelayo took care to note the burial location of each king he mentions in his historical writing, even if he has to interpolate it into an earlier source. When Alfonso V was finally able to consolidate his hold on León, he began the work of restoring the city. He restored its walls on the lines of the old Roman fortifications, preserving the same gates. By tradition and the evidence of his epitaph, which dates from some two centuries after his death, Alfonso V rebuilt the monastery of San Pelayo and established alongside it the cult of Saint John the Baptist, first mentioned in 1028. In the eleventh century, this was a double community of male and female religious, and Alfonso’s daughter, later Queen Sancha, would become its domina.23 The king was not alone in creating a family devotional and memorial space presided over by women in the eleventh century; the powerful of the realm copied the royal model. The period between 1000 and 1050 marked a mini-explosion of such creations, some of which referred in their foundation documents to a similar process of rebuilding after the devastation by al-Manṣūr. In 1020, Bishop Nuño of León founded and endowed a monastery dedicated to San Félix, led by his sisters Onnega and Godo, both consecrated virgins, on lands he had purchased. He expressed the hope that, by this act, he would receive the intercession of the Virgin Mary, “the domina, my queen,” for his sins; on the death of Onnega and Godo, the community was to be held by the see of León. A later document calls the monastery a cemetery, suggesting it had a burial function.24 In 1023, Flora gave her family monastery of Santa Cristina to the monastery of Santiago in León. Her father and grandfather had founded the house in the tenth century, 22. I regard the 1053 document and another from 996, in which Vermudo II endowed Queen Teresa, the mother of his defeated rival Ramiro III, and her monastery of Saints Pelayo and Juan Bautista of Oviedo, as twelfth-century forgeries; Francisco Fernández Conde, Isabel Torrente Fernández, and Guadalupe de la Noval Menéndez, eds., El monasterio de San Pelayo de Oviedo (Oviedo: Monasterio de San Pelayo, 1978), nos. 1, 3. Francisco Fernández Conde and Isabel Torrente Fernández accept the 1053 document as genuine and the 996 document as heavily interpolated in the twelfth century; “Los orígenes del monasterio de San Pelayo (Oviedo): Aristocracia, poder, y monacato,” Territorio, Sociedad, y Poder 2 (2007), 191–94, 197–98. 23. Martin, Queen as King, 34–37; Lucas Álvarez, Documentación de Tumbo A, no. 93. 24. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 3: no. 770.

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and it was occupied and possessed by her and her sister, four aunts, and also her mother after her father’s death. Her father and grandfather were buried in the monastery. In the course of the Muslim attacks, the monastery was destroyed, its inhabitants were enslaved, and only her brother and her mother remained free. All but two of the women were eventually freed, and they made their ways back to León and lived in a house outside the city. After all had died but Flora, she granted it to the larger monastery of Santiago in León, bringing the bodies of her grandfather, father, and her aunt Justa to be buried in Santiago.25 And in 1042, Ordoño Vermúdez, the illegitimate son of Vermudo II and Alfonso V’s half-brother, and Fronilda Peláez, his wealthy wife (see figure 8), founded a monastery dedicated to Mary and endowed it with lands, objects, textiles, and books. It was to be held under the aegis of the bishop by a family member, their grand-daughter Marina, “so long as she persevered in chastity and in holy and monastic life under the rule of the father Benedict.”26 The most interesting of these creations may be that of Munio Fernández, a powerful noble and sometime rebel, and Elvira Froílaz, his wife, in a 1011 charter. They bought land by the walls of León, near the royal women’s community of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey and the Puerto del Arco de Rey, which included two towers of the wall. They built a sumptuous house between the towers and an enclosed courtyard with other buildings. After it was completed, they built a church in the eastern tower with two altars, one dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and the other to Mary to house a monastery for women under the rule of Domna Teresa, their daughter, who witnessed the charter with her siblings. The house is called a cemetery in the document, presumably for the future burial of the donors. The year after the founding of this community, Munio Fernández rebelled against Alfonso V, and in 991, he had rebelled against that king’s father, Vermudo II.27 Although the king had confiscated some of the possessions of his followers, the community of Saints Juan Bautista and María remained in Munio Fernández’s family. In 1044, it was in the possession of his daughter, Countess Sancha Muñoz, widowed by this time by the death of her third husband, and it was a community of both men and women.28 It later passed into the hands of Flaín Fernández, and when this noble rebelled against Fernando I, the 25. Ibid., no. 803. 26. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: no. 1002. She did not so persevere, and later she had two daughters (4: no. 1146). 27. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 3: no. 716; Mariel Pérez, “Rebelles, infideles, traditores. Insumisión política y poder aristocrático en el reino de León,” Historia, Instituciones, Documentos 38 (2011), 267. 28. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: nos. 1010, 1087.

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king claimed the monastery and gave it to his daughter Urraca, who in turn donated it to Eslonza in her large 1099 donation.29 When we add these cases to those discussed in chapter 3, the founding of Covarrubias by García Fernández, count of Castile, in 978 for his daughter Urraca30 on the model of Ramiro II’s founding of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey for his daughter, and the founding of San Salvador de Oña in 1011 by Sancho García, García’s successor as count of Castilla, for his daughter and Urraca’s niece, Tegridia,31 we see a distinct pattern. Burial location was so important that substantial resources were committed to supporting these sites, and the chronicles that tell almost nothing about their subjects tell us where they were buried. Moreover, these resources and custody of the sites were placed in the hands of women, preferably the daughters of the family. These foundations, with their palaces, monasteries, and cemeteries, and with their endowments of lands, books, textiles, and precious objects, not only imitated the royal foundations but competed with them. Each foundation was intended to authenticate and memorialize the lineage that had founded it, in competition with the king’s. The timing of Munio Fernández’s foundation in the year before he rebelled against his king makes that clear; that he named it for Saint John the Baptist may also indicate competition with the royal foundation of the same name. And when Urraca Fernández gave the monastery of Saints Juan Bautista and María in León to her own house of Eslonza, she subordinated its role in the memoria of the royal rebels Munio Fernández and Flaín Fernández to that of her own family. A similar thing happened on a grander scale in 1079 when Alfonso VI gave Santa María de Najera, the burial site of the Navarrese dynasty he had just supplanted, to Cluny in a gift confirmed by his sisters.32 As Annette Weiner explains, “Political hierarchy arises out of . . . being bold and wealthy enough to capture someone else’s inalienable possessions, embrace someone else’s ancestors, magic, and power, and then, transfer some parts of these identities to the next generation.”33 It would be unwise, however to see the religious aims that the charters of foundation express so eloquently—the fear of Hell, the urgent need for prayer, and the hunger for salvation—as merely cloaks for the struggle for power between kings and nobles. We need to pay attention to language of penance and expiation in these documents, language expressed on behalf 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. Zabalza Duque, Colección diplomática, 544, 550, 557–59, 578. Ibid., no. 64, p. 460. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 65. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 47–48.

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of those for whom entering religious life themselves was not an option in a religious world in which no other route to paradise was as secure. The ability to petition heaven through their daughters, and by so doing to defeat death itself, is both the source and expression of their power. Salvation and power were the linked goals of gift and memory beyond death. At some point, most likely when Alfonso V began to rebuild San Pelayo, royal burials stopped taking place at San Salvador de Palaz del Rey and started occurring at the royal monastery now dedicated to both Saint Pelayo and Saint John the Baptist. Two documents from 1052 refer to San Pelayo as a cemetery, and in another from 1043 a female donor describes it as the location where, “my lords” are buried, suggesting that Alfonso V and Vermudo III lay there.34 As the testimony of similar noble foundations in and around León indicates, the purpose of these foundations was to house the bodies of the dead fathers and their living daughters who would pray for them. In chapter 2, I discuss the close relationship that Queen Sancha had with the house of San Pelayo, even after she was married. In April 1063 a private charter named her and her husband: “Fernando reigning as prince in León, Sancha as queen in San Pelayo.”35 In that same year, they sent two bishops south to Muslim Sevilla to recover the body of the virgin-martyr Justa. The bishops returned, instead, with the body of Saint Isidore and in the royal diploma of translation issued by Fernando and Sancha on December 21, 1063, his body was joined to the cult of Saints Pelayo and John the Baptist, and the community was endowed richly by the king and queen with properties and liturgical objects. The pair did not promise to be buried there in this diploma, but the early twelfth-century Historia silense reports that this was the plan: Seeking an audience with the lord King, Queen Sancha persuaded him to make a church in the cemetery of the kings in Léon, where their bodies would be buried rightly and magnificently. For King Fernando had decreed that he would give his body for burial either in Oña, a place he always held dear, or in the church of San Pedro de Arlanza. But since her father, Prince Alfonso of blessed memory, rested in Christ in the royal cemetery of León as did the most serene king, Vermudo, her brother, Queen Sancha labored hard that she and her husband might be buried with them after death. Acceding to the petition of his faithful wife, the king ordered builders to work assiduously on such a worthy task.36 34. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, nos. 3–5. 35. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: no. 1126. 36. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 197–98.

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Burying her husband alongside her father and brother, and joining him there on her own death, detached Fernando from his own lineage and attached him to her own. They united with Sancha’s ancestors and with the wealthy and powerful families of León of their own day in reinforcing León as a cultic center, a city of prayer, a city of virgins, and a city of the dead. Therese Martin argues that the passage from the Silense reflects Fernando and Sancha’s replacement of Alfonso V’s brick-and-rubble church with one of stone in the 1050s.37 With its three square apses and nave with two aisles, this church, largely replaced by the Romanesque structure visible today, may have been the model for the very similar cathedral built at Túy after Urraca Fernández’s rich donation to that see in 1071, still visible as the parish church of San Bartolomeu de Rebordans. One of the capitals from San Bartolomeu depicts the presentation to Herod of the head of Saint John the Baptist, a patron of the community possessed by Urraca and her sister in León, and thus perhaps a trace of the royal female interest in the cathedral. Urraca is even better known for her building efforts at what became known as San Isidoro, after its new patron. She added what now is called the Pantheon to the west end of Fernando and Sancha’s church, and she built the vaulted palace rooms above it, beginning in the 1080s; she began work on the Romanesque church, replacing that of her parents, in the 1090s.38 At this point, we reach the reign of Alfonso VI, and royal memorial piety in León-Castilla seems to have moved decisively in the direction of favoring commemorative practices led by monks under the direct influence of Cluny. Patrick Geary has famously argued in favor of a shift over the tenth and eleventh centuries from a memorial tradition based in the family and organized by women playing an active role to a tradition in which memory was institutionalized in a male monastic context and women participated only passively, as donors. He contrasts Ottonian Germany, where imperial woman took an active role in preserving family memory in family religious institutions, much like those of León-Castilla, with France, where, under the aegis of the Cluniac reforming tradition, families began leaving the duties of memory to religious professionals.39 I have already said enough in this chapter to suggest that the role of a donor was anything but passive, but in any event, the reign of Alfonso VI during the lifetime of his sisters provides another useful test

37. She also argues that at this time the bodies of Alfonso V and Vermudo III, buried elsewhere in León, were moved to this new building, but I suspect, as already indicated, that they were already there; Martin, Queen as King, 37–42. 38. Ibid., chap. 3. 39. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 60–73.

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case for Geary’s argument. Did Cluny dominate family memoria here, and what role, if any, did that leave for the royal sisters? When Alfonso VI’s second wife died in 1093, the king made a series of grants to the monastery of Sahagún, where he buried her, eschewing the traditional family mausoleum of San Isidoro and San Pelayo in León, which was under the control of his sisters. Sahagún had been reformed to follow Cluniac custom, with an abbot from the Burgundian house, and in exchange for the king’s gifts, which his sisters confirmed, the monastery had to feed thirteen poor men daily.40 His deceased wife was Constance of Burgundy, the niece through her mother of Abbot Hugh of Cluny. When Alfonso’s third wife, Berta, died, she too was buried in Sahagún. That monastery received a donation from Alfonso and promised to feed thirteen men in her name, and Urraca Fernández likewise confirmed this donation.41 Commemorative meals for the poor were a distinctive part of the Cluniac ritual of death and mourning, and show the impact of the devotional practices of the Burgundian monastery during Alfonso’s reign.42 But there is no sign that his sisters had given up their involvement in giftgiving and memory for the family dead or that Alfonso wished them to do so. Elvira provided for Masses to be said for her own soul in her 1099 will. She gave her sister San Pelayo in Oviedo so that Urraca might have Masses said for her. These were not the only Masses she funded. She gave her merinos the responsibility for making sure the provisions of the will were fulfilled and allowed them to keep the remaining funds once they had collected enough to pay for her Masses. In an assertive fashion, she writes, “And I make these Masses for myself.” Elvira’s will did far more to promote her own memory than fund Masses for her soul, however. It also provided bequests to those closest to her—huge donations to her sister and great-niece beyond what she gave Urraca for the masses, grants to monasteries and episcopal sees, as well as a series of gifts to the individual lay people and clerics who formed part of her circle. These latter gifts ranged from the weapons and horses that she gave her male vassals to the vineyards and chest containing a portable altar, a missal, and a breviary that she gave Don Mames, probably her chaplain; the bread and wine she gave her peasants; and the horses and foals she gave her domestic servants, along with their freedom.43 All these gifts combined to 40. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: nos. 126–28. 41. Ibid., 2: no. 155. 42. Frederick S. Paxton, The Death Ritual at Cluny in the Central Middle Ages, Disciplina Monastica (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 233–34. 43. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 11; Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 22–24.

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make Elvira remembered by institutions and people of every station in her community, her memory preserved both in the document that records her gifts and in the gifts themselves. Shortly after Elvira’s death, Alfonso’s own ecclesiastical donations began to do more than express general intentions on behalf of his soul and those of his parents. In January 1100, he confirmed Elvira’s bequest in her will of half the monastery of Piloño to Compostela and added to it the other half and an additional monastery. He also required one of Compostela’s canons to offer a Mass daily for his success, during his lifetime, against the Muslims and for his soul after his death. His donation to Sahagún on behalf of the deceased Berta came in the same month. In August of the same year, Alfonso donated four monasteries in Hérmedes and another in Lebanza to the cathedral of Palencia and required that, “Just as I freely concede this gift, so too should they freely, daily and perpetually, offer Mass on my behalf ” in the cathedral and at Hérmedes and Lebanza. One of the monasteries he gave, San Juan de Hérmedes, is the same one he had given twenty years before to Cluny in the complicated four-way trade that had involved his sisters and the bishop of then Oca/Burgos (see chapter 3), and the gift he made two days later, of the monastery of Santa Eufemia de Cozuelos to the bishop of Burgos, again in exchange for Masses at the monastery and in the cathedral, reflects this complicated community of religious houses and owners.44 In the remaining years of his reign, Alfonso sponsored more Masses said in his name in other sees of his kingdom,45 and he was eventually buried in Sahagún alongside his wives, but this did not mean he had given up the conventional memorial associations of his line with San Pelayo and Isidoro in León, and the gifts to support these associations. In 1103, after both his sisters were dead, he granted this house a church, writing that, “I do it . . . because my sister Urraca was not able to.” Alfonso made this donation on behalf of his soul and of hers so that “The faithful of God whose way of life I sustain and uphold in this world, might be able to hold prayers day and night,” and that by these prayers to their saintly patrons, he might be able to dwell with them in heaven at the end of time.46 Alfonso was not replacing one form of memoria with another; rather he was participating in an expansion, or even an inflation, of memorial practices that added Masses and commemorative meals for the poor to the older practices of supporting religious foundations with gifts to gain intercessory prayers.

44. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: nos. 45, 154–55, 159–60. 45. For example, ibid., 2: no. 169. 46. Martín López, Patrimonio cultural de San Isidoro de León, no. 12.

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Artifacts of Memory Unlike for her sister and brother, there is no surviving evidence that Urraca Fernández took steps to ensure that she was memorialized after death either in prayer or through Masses, beyond Alfonso’s donation in both their names to Saints Pelayo and Isidoro. We do know she sought salvation the old-fashioned way: by making gifts to ecclesiastical institutions of property, objects, textiles, and books. Her final donation in 1099 to San Pedro de Eslonza gave that monastery to God and gave it three more monasteries. It also granted that monastery religious and liturgical objects, textiles, and books. In this section, I discuss Urraca’s practices of giving in the 1099 Eslonza donation and also in a 1073 document from Bishop Pedro to his see of León, and I expand from the objects described in those charters to discuss other gifts she made. Gifts of luxury moveables were an important way that medieval people sought to be remembered, and Urraca gave a wide array of objects to the institutions she patronized, some of which have survived and many of which have not, but all these gifts show her taking an active role in ensuring that she would be remembered before and after her death, and how she would be remembered. Urraca gave Eslonza a seven-branched silver candlestick for illuminating the altar in her 1099 donation. Seven-branched candelabra, modeled on the menorah of the Jewish Temple and created with the idea of showing that the Christian Church was the true heir to the Temple of Solomon, were used in Christian churches from about 800, but the earliest extant example is the large seven-armed bronze candelabra at Essen, donated to what was then a monastery by its abbess, Mathilda (d. 1011). That candelabra is over 2 meters tall, and resembles the style of the menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome, with the arms rising in semi-circles and ellipses from the central shaft and with candleholders that are level on the same horizontal line.47 A Cluniac chronicle recounts that, during the abbacy of Hugh (1049–1109), Cluny was given a large gilded and decorated seven-armed candelabra by “Queen Matilda.”48 Because there are no other medieval seven-branched candlesticks in Christian use, either extant or described in written sources from the Iberian peninsula, Urraca’s inspiration for her candelabra most probably came

47. Peter Bloch, “Seven-Branched Candelabra in Christian Art,” Journal of Jewish Art 1 (1974): 44–47. 48. Written during the abbacy of Jacques d’Amboise (1485–1510); Peter Bloch, “Siebenarmige Leuchter in christlichen Kirchen,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 23 (1961): 183. Bloch supposes this is the Matilda who married Henry I of England and who died in 1118, but if it were a queen of England, Matilda of Flanders who married William the Conqueror, is a more likely candidate.

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from north of the Pyrenees, from the German empire or via her Cluniac connections. The precedent of Abbess Mathilda of Essen’s candelabra is an intriguing one. The life of this Mathilda provides a useful earlier counterpoint and parallel to that of Urraca. Urraca was a royal daughter, and Mathilda was an imperial one, the grand-daughter of Otto I in the Swabian Liudolfing line, and from a family that, similar to Urraca’s, liked to consecrate its daughters to religious life and install them as abbesses in religious houses, from which they might act as the custodians of family memory and performers of intercessional prayer.49 These religious houses were central to the life of the peripatetic imperial court, much as San Pelayo and San Isidoro were in León. She was as concerned about her maternal lineage as her paternal lineage and commissioned a family history from her Anglo-Saxon royal cousin, Aethelweard.50 Mathilda may also have been a “king-maker,” as Urraca proved to be. She is said to have allied with Empress Theophanu on the death of Theophanu’s husband, Otto II, to defeat Henry the Wrangler and ensure that the young Otto III, Theophanu and Otto II’s son, was placed on the throne. We know less than we would like about Mathilda’s political clout because few documents from her time as abbess of Essen have survived. What has survived is a rich treasury of objects and books either created for her or given to her, or in her memory, and these tell us how invested she was, as Urraca was later on, in the practices of remembering and being remembered. Mathilda’s candelabra bears an inscription that memorializes her and her role in its creation: “Abbess Mathilda ordered me to be made and consecrated me to Christ,” this consecration suggesting a shift from secular to divine use.51 Its purpose may have been even more explicitly memorial because it may once have stood by her grave in the crypt. It was not the only memorial gift she gave. Probably shortly after the death in 982 of her brother, Duke Otto of Swabia, she commissioned the richly bejeweled crucifix that has become known as the Mathilda and Otto cross. An enamel plaque at the foot of the cross shows Otto handing Mathilda a processional cross, a mise-en-abyme of the donated object, which reinforces the status of the object as a gift. The image on the plaque symbolizes his transmission to her of the responsibility for upholding their branch of the family on his death. A legend on the cross

49. Johanna Maria van Winter, “The Education of Daughters of the Noblilty in the Ottonian Empire,” in The Empress Theophanu, ed. Adelbert Davids (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 87–90. 50. Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 151–152. 51. Bloch, “Siebenarmige Leuchter in christlichen Kirchen,” 104.

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reads “Mathild Abba” and “Otto Dux.”52 Also among Mathilde’s gifts was an elaborate gold casket for a collection of relics, with gems and enamel plaques, including an image of Otto II. Although no longer extant, it is described as having an inscription in dactylic hexameters recounting that Mathilde had it made on behalf of herself and Theophanu as a memorial and spiritual offering for Otto II. Abbess Matilda’s use of gifts to incite memory, especially of the dead, makes her an analog for the gift-giving activity of Urraca. Urraca also gave Eslonza a silver cross “full of holy relics” and a silver “capsulam,” a small box or reliquary.53 I connect the latter object with a silver reliquary now in the Art Institute of Chicago, which shows scenes from the passion story of Saint Adrian and his wife, Natalia, in repoussé silver (figure 14). The reasons to do so are based on her association with other contemporary objects of repoussé metal and the fact that Adrian was patron of the monastery of Boñar, one of the three monasteries Urraca gave to Eslonza in the same donation. John Williams argues for a Spanish provenance for the Art Institute casket on the basis of the popularity of the cult of Adrian and Natalia in Spain, as evidenced by Urraca Fernández’s monastery of San Adrian at Boñar and the 1099 document. Nonetheless, he dates the casket vaguely to the twelfth century and seems unaware that Urraca’s donation giving San Adrian to Eslonza also included the gift of a silver casket.54 The cult of Adrian and Natalia had been popular in the peninsula since the Visigothic period, and the Spanish Passionary has an account of the married pair that includes the scenes shown on the reliquary: Adrian, with Natalia, declaring his Christianity before the emperor; five men beginning to cut Adrian up while Natalia holds his dismembered hand; Natalia, still clutching the hand and flanked by two dismembered bodies; and, finally, Natalia and two companions taking a boat to Constantinople. Natalia is very much the center of the passion narrative of her husband, goading him into martyrdom, insisting he be killed first among his companions so he will not back out when he sees their suffering; taking custody of his hand as the rest of his body and those of his companions are taken to Constantinople; resisting remarriage with a pagan; and finally traveling to Byzantium herself, where she reunites Adrian’s hand with the rest of his body. She and the body, now intact, remain in a community of men and women dedicated to prayer and custody of the bodies of the saints.55 Dismembered Adrian is put 52. On this cross and its memorial context, see Christina M. Nielsen, “Hoc Opus Eximium: Artistic Patronage in the Ottonian Empire” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2002), 74–90. 53. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. 54. Art of Medieval Spain, 257. 55. Fabrega Grau, Passionario hispánico, 1: 210–11, 2: 266–79.

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Figure 14.

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Reliquary casket of Saints Adrian and Natalia

Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kate Buckingham Endowment 1943.65.

back together again; remembered by the community where his body resides; and remembered also in the words of the passionary, a story that promises that the dismembered fragment suggested, although not made visible, by the closed reliquary will eventually likewise be reunited. The pair were the perfect patrons for the kinds of communities of men and women—dedicated to family memory, prayer, and custody of the dead, with women taking the lead—that were favored by royalty and nobility in tenth and eleventh century León-Castilla. The reliquary itself takes the shape of a church, as is not unusual, with a tiled roof and pendant arcade in repoussé relief, its form copying in miniature a religious house that guarded a body and remembered his life. We can think of the monastery or church where this reliquary was housed as the largest of a series of nesting boxes, the house containing the body, which is located in a smaller silver house that mimics its shape. Unlike other reliquaries that take the shape of a building, which clearly give signs that they can be opened and are to be opened by means of latches and lids, the Adrian reliquary shows no means of ingress. It is designed to look impenetrable, intact, unviolated, and unviolatable. Like a virgin, the intact nature of its container can only be verified by its breach, and like the royal Spanish virgin Urraca

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Fernández, its task was to recall the dead. In fact, it can be opened from the bottom and, alas, arrived at the Art Institute empty. Urraca’s association with this casket is strengthened by the fact that this was not her only venture into repoussé metalwork. A description survives of a cross she gave to San Isidoro de León, still extant in the eighteenth century when the account was written. At the base of the cross was an image of Urraca herself in repoussé gold and an inscription, “Urraca, daughter of King Fernando and Queen Sancha gave [this]” (“Urraca Regis Fredinandi filia et Sancie Regine donavit”), which should remind of us of the inscription on the Mathilda and Otto cross. Urraca’s gift must have been a truly impressive object. The cross was about 2 meters in height and 1.5 meters in width, plated in gold and silver, and “enameled” with many large and precious stones.56 The ivory corpus presented Christ, triumphant in death. He wore a loincloth and crown, both of solid gold, two fingers thick and covered in precious stones. Although his side was pierced, he held his head aloft and gazed as if alive; his two feet were nailed to the cross separately, and he stood on a base plated in gold.57 I also connect Urraca to another example of repoussé silver, one of the most important objects of the Spanish Romanesque, the monumental Arca Santa of Oviedo (figure 15). This is an outsized reliquary with the shape and dimensions of an altar (73 by 119 by 93 centimeters), sheathed in silver, with repoussé figures on three of its four faces, all of which are surrounded by borders of decorative pseudo-kufic script.58 The front face shows Christ in majesty in a central mandorla supported by four angels and flanked by the twelve Apostles in two arcaded rows on each side and an evangelist symbol in each corner. The right face contains figures arranged in two registers. In the bottom register are eight Apostles, all labeled. The upper right has Christ standing in a mandorla supported by two angels. The upper left shows the archangel Michael battling a dragon. Among its inscriptions, one is the text of a chant for the Feast of the Ascension, attested to in two Spanish manuscripts.59 The left side shows scenes from the life of Mary in two registers.60 The upper register shows the Annunciation of the Virgin, the Annunciation 56. Therese Martin is skeptical about these dimensions; Queen as King, 68. Its scale bears comparison with twelfth-century works such as the Majestat Battló and the larger than life-size crucifix from Santa Clara de Astudillo in the Metropolitan Museum. 57. José Manzano, Vida y portentosos milagros del glorioso San Isidoro (Salamanca: Eugenio García de Honorato y San Miguel, 1732), 383. 58. For a description, see Art of Medieval Spain, 259–60. 59. “Ascendens Christus in altum, captivam duxit captiuitatem.” Toledo BC 44.1, fol. 86v, an antiphoner produced for the court of Sancho III in the 1020s; Toledo BC 44.2 fol. 109r, an antiphoner for Toledo from the late eleventh century. 60. Pick, “Sacred Queens,” 57.

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Figure 15.

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Arca Santa of Oviedo, Camara Santa, Cathedral, Oviedo, Spain

Album/Art Resource, NY. Used by permission.

to the Shepherds, and the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, while the Nativity, and the Flight into Egypt occupy the lower register. Anne, Mary’s mother, is present in the scenes of the Annunciation and the Flight to Egypt. The lid of the Arca is surrounded by an inscription in four rows that must be read as a spiral. The inscription names its makers, as well as the relics and saints contained within. The lid also bears a niello engraving showing the Crucifixion with Christ flanked by the two thieves. Mary and John stand beneath the central cross, and personifications of the sun and moon are in roundels above it flanked by angels with censers. Williams compares the bladder-shaped drapery over the midriffs of the angels on the lid to similar drapery on the Adrian casket.61 The date for this work has provoked debate. Ambrosio de Morales transcribed the inscription on the lid in 1572, when a portion of its text had already been lost.62 The Arca was badly damaged in 1934 by an explosion in the 61. Art of Medieval Spain, 257. 62. Ambrosio de Morales, Viaje por orden del Rey D. Felipe a los Reynos de León y Galicia y Principado de Asturias, ed. Enrique Flores (Madrid, 1765), 71–72; Julie A. Harris, “Redating the Arca Santa of Oviedo,” Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 87.

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Camara Santa of Oviedo, where it is still located. Manuel Gómez-Moreno, who restored it, suggests a date of 1075 for the Arca based on a diploma of March 14 of that year. The chest supposedly contains a collection of relics assembled by disciples of the Apostles in Jerusalem after the crucifixion that came to Toledo via North Africa and then were brought to Oviedo by Christians fleeing the Muslim Conquest in 711. The diploma describes the opening of the original chest of relics and the enumeration of its contents, witnessed by Alfonso VI and his sisters Urraca and Elvira, among others.63 GómezMoreno suggests that the original inscription on the lid had included the date 1075, and he supplied the date into a portion of the inscription whose text had been lost since before de Morales transcribed it.64 This diploma, however, is certainly a fake that emerged from the atelier of Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo (1101–1130, 1142–43), the noted forger.65 Julie Harris has argued, instead, that the Arca is a product of the tenure of Pelayo in the see of Oviedo and has dated it to the early twelfth century on stylistic grounds.66 When I first wrote about the Arca in 2011, I accepted Harris’s argument about its date.67 But I now think insufficient attention has been paid to the testimony of the inscription on the lid of the Arca, which, together with a new stylistic reading of aspects of the Arca, puts it in the ambit of Urraca Fernández, who was dead by the time Pelayo became bishop. The inscription credits Alfonso VI with the creation of the chest and then later associates both the king and Urraca Fernández with the Arca and the hopes for their salvation that its creation offers.68 The reference to Urraca here means that the Arca should date to her lifetime. If Bishop Pelayo had made the Arca and had wanted to antedate it to early in Alfonso’s reign, he would not have forged Alfonso’s sister’s name on it but, instead, that of one of his queens, given the

63. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 27. 64. Manuel Gómez Moreno, “El Arca Santa de Oviedo documentada,” Archivo Español de Arte 18, no. 69 (1945): 128. 65. Bernard Reilly, “The Chancery of Alfonso VI of León-Castile (1065–1109),” in Santiago, SaintDenis, and Saint Peter, ed. Bernard Reilly (New York: Fordham University Press, 1985) 7, 25n. 40. 66. Harris, “Redating the Arca Santa of Oviedo,” 83. 67. Pick, “Sacred Queens,” 56 n. 36. Raquel Alonso Álvarez, “Patria uallata asperitate moncium. Pelayo de Oviedo, el archa de las reliquias y la creación de una topografía regía,” Locus Amoenus 9 (2007–2008): 17–29, dates the arca to between 1075 and 1102; Rose Walker, “Becoming Alfonso VI: The King, His Sister and the Arca Santa Reliquary,” Anales de Historia del Arte, Volumen Extraordinario [2] (2011): 391–412, dates the arca to the late 1070s. 68. “Rex Adefonsus humili devocione preditus fecit hoc receptaculum sanctorum . . . Convenimus cum dicto Adefonso principe et cum germana letissime Urraca nomine dicta, quibus Redemptor omnium concedat indulgenciam et suorum peccaturum veniam.” Morales, Viaje, 72. Morales’s transcription is not without problems, but I rely on it here because it is the oldest reading we have, done when the inscription on the lid was more intact.

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bishop’s own deep interest in the wives of the kings in his Chronicon.69 There is no reason to insist that it was made as early as 1075, but it cannot date later than 1101, when Urraca died. There is another excellent reason to connect the Arca with Urraca, and with the silver reliquary of Saints Adrian and Natalia. After the section of the inscription that mentions Urraca, it lists a series of saints venerated in Spain whose relics were also in the Arca. The second pair of saints named are Saints Adrian and Natalia, the pair who feature on the Art Institute casket. They are somewhat less obvious candidates for mention than the others in the inscription, and it was for this reason that Morales misread them as Saints Cosmos and Damian. But Miguel Vigil Ciriaco and Ernst Hübner, who both independently recorded the inscription in the nineteenth century, read here, “A . RIANI ET NA . . . . . ,” which can only be Adrian and Natalia.70 Bishop Pelayo himself became very interested in these saints, forging a donation from Alfonso VI to Oviedo of the church of San Adrián in Tuñón and reconsecrating that church in 1108.71 But during Urraca’s lifetime, the person we can associate with the cult of Saints Adrian and Natalia is Urraca herself. Harris’s argument for a slightly later date rests heavily on the presence of Anne, the mother of Mary, in the scenes of Mary’s life. Anne is also present in the scenes of the Annunciation and the Flight into Egypt in the earlytwelfth-century paintings in the Pantheon at San Isidoro.72 Harris suggests Anne’s presence may have been influenced by controversy in the 1120s in England about the Immaculate Conception of Mary.73 Nevertheless, there is no reason to go so far afield to explain why the royal family, especially its women, might have been interested in Anne. Anne’s presence focuses interest on Jesus’s maternal line. Maternal as well as paternal royal lineage was a preoccupation for the historians who write in the early twelfth century, Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo himself and the author of the Historia silense.74 As I discuss in the next section regarding manuscripts created as gifts, the concern with lineage was of deep interest to the royal family long before the twelfthcentury historians picked it up. Royal lineage was put in parallel with Christ’s lineage, and Anne featured prominently in such accounts. The relationship 69. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 243. 70. Ernst Willibald Emil Hübner, Inscriptiones hispaniae christianae (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1871), 82; Miguel Vigil Ciriaco, Asturias monumental, epigráfica y diplomática, datos para la historia de la provincia (Oviedo: Hospicio Provincial, 1887), 15. 71. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: nos. 35, 162; Jaime-Federico Rollán Ortiz, “Correspondencias entre San Adrián de Boñár (León) y Santo Adriano de Tuñón (Asturias),” Tierras de León 103 (1998): 64. 72. Pick, “Sacred Queens,” 57n. 40. 73. Harris, “Redating the Arca Santa of Oviedo,” 90–91. 74. Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 234, 240–46.

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between Anne, the Holy mother, and Mary, the Virgin daughter, presented a useful sacred model for Queen Sancha, the devout mother, and Urraca, the virgin daughter. Further testimony that people in Christian Spain were well aware of Anne before the twelfth century comes from the Codex de Roda, copied mostly in the tenth century somewhere in the kingdom of Navarra, probably in Nájera or Pamplona. It is a compilation of texts of mostly historical interest, including Orosius’s Historia adversus paganos, and the Rotense versions of the tenth-century Asturian chronicles discussed in chapter 1.75 Eleventh-century additions to the Codex (on fol. 231r) indicate that by 1076 the manuscript was in Nájera, where it records the death of King Sancho II of Navarra, killed at Peñalén when his sister and brother forced his horse to ride off a cliff. The manuscript may once have belonged to the court of his grandfather, Sancho III “el Mayor,” who was King Fernando’s father. After 1076, it and the city of Nájera passed into the orbit of Alfonso VI of León-Castilla, and the Codex records events in that king’s reign, such as the taking of Toledo and the battle of Zallāqa.76 Folio 216v contains a text that is called “The Nativity of Holy Mary” but that is, in fact, the beginning of the Protoevangelium of James. It describes how Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, were rich but childless. Joachim gave double the required temple offering until a man named Rubim told him it was not right for him to make an offering of any kind because he had no children. The story ends with Joachim fleeing to the desert and Anne remaining in prayer and mourning, omitting the description in the Protoevangelium of Mary’s birth, her marriage, and pregnancy. This text and the royal associations of the manuscript provide early evidence of knowledge of Joachim and Anne in León-Castilla that helps explain why Anne is found on the Arca Santa of Oviedo and in the frescoes of the Pantheon of San Isidoro. Returning to Urraca’s 1099 donation to Eslonza, she also gave the monastery two veils or curtains to cloak the area around the altar, including one “wonderfully woven with a gold and silver border.”77 Scholars have suggested that gifts of textiles were especially linked to women, in part because women were stereotypically associated with their production.78 It is true that textile

75. Now Madrid RAH 78. See the careful description of the contents of the codex in Zacarías García Villada, “El códice de Roda recuperada,” Revista de filología española 15 (1928): 117–29. 76. Lacarra, “Textos navarros del códice de Roda,” 195. 77. “Auro et argento fixo mirifice textum.” Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. 78. Nicola A. Lowe, “Women’s Devotional Bequests of Textiles in the Late Medieval English Parish c. 1350–1500,” Gender & History 22 (2010): 408–9; Valerie L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), chap. 5.

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gifts in León-Castilla were most often given by noble or royal women, or male religious, not by lay men. A 1073 document from Bishop Pedro of León to his cathedral recounts gifts of cloth from four of its eight women donors, including Urraca and Elvira Fernández and their mother Queen Sancha, as well as gifts from eleven male donors, including Alfonso VI and the bishop, none of which include cloth, except for from the bishop.79 Clothmaking became associated with the Virgin Mary in the New Testament apocryphal texts that attempted to fill in the events of her earlier life. In the second-century Protoevangelium of James, Mary was one of the virgins chosen to spin the thread to make the veil for the Temple. While she was spinning in her home, the angel of the Annunciation came to her, and she conceived. Byzantine Annunciations frequently show Mary spinning with a drop spindle while Gabriel speaks to her, and this image traveled to Spain, where it was used, for instance, to illustrate the Annunciation in the earlytwelfth-century frescoes of San Pedro de Sorpe in the Catalan Pyrenees.80 Mary’s weaving reflects a transformation from material object into spiritual treasure that is akin to the transformation of the Eucharist, previously discussed as a model for how material gifts bring spiritual rewards. As Mary spun fleece into thread to make the curtain that would conceal the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of the Temple of Jerusalem, her Son, the fleecy Lamb, became incarnate, wrapped and concealed by the veil of her body. The thread she spun, which is finite, was the length of her Son’s life in earth, and when the body of the Lamb was crucified on the cross and died, the Temple veil that Mary made was rent at the very moment when the body of her Son was broken. When Urraca Fernández herself gave Eslonza a seven-branched candlestick and two veils for around its altar, she turned its church into a new Temple and modeled herself on Mary, the provider of cloth for the original Temple. Her mother, Queen Sancha, also gave a curtain for around the altar to León in 1073; the term for this in the document, “alhagara,” comes from the Andalusi Arabic, alḥajāla (“bridal veil”). Textiles were thus frequently among the donations given when religious communities were founded or endowed, where they served a wide range of liturgical and devotional functions. Those that survive, such as the fabric embroidered with birds and animals in the lid of the reliquary of Saint Isidore (ca. 1063); its silk lining of pearl-bordered roundels enclosing floral motifs; and the woven vegetal and animal motifs, bordered with Arabic inscriptions in

79. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: no. 1190. 80. Lily Arad and Montserrat Pagès, “Les pintures romàniques de Sorpe, noves interpretacions,” Miscel·lània Litúrgica Catalana 14 (2006): 27–28.

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Kufic script, that line the reliquary of Saint Pelayo (1059), bear witness to their beauty and luxury. Coming from the taifa kingdoms of al-Andalus, these were deemed worthy shrouds for the very special Christian dead.81 Written grants of textiles highlighted their provenance in the Islamic world by describing them in words of Arabic origin. Sometimes these are simply borrowed descriptive words, such as the tapete mankale (tablecloth) given by María Fruélaz in 1073 in the donation to Bishop Pedro and the see of León, where mankale derives from Andalusi Arabic, manqāli (“for the table”). Sometimes they advertise, truthfully or fictionally, an origin in a far-distant Islamic land, such as the tunicam de carchexi granted by royal daughter Elvira Fernández in the same document, where carchexi, from jashjāshī, denotes cloth of wool, cotton, or linen, usually white, from the city of Jūrjān in Iran. A Byzantine origin, real or imagined, is denoted for silk qualified by the word grecisca (“Greek”).82 The 1073 León document is an extraordinarily rich descriptive record of gifts of objects as well as of land and churches. It is not a record of gifts made on its date of issue, November 10; rather, it is a catalog of a series of donations made over time, memorialized in this document to commemorate the bishop’s restoration and rededication of the cathedral on its date of issue—indeed, at least one of the donors named, Queen Sancha, had been dead for six years by the time it was written. Bishop Pedro introduced the gifts with a narrative of the history of the cathedral through the depredations of al-Manṣūr, unrepaired to his own day, and an autobiography of his ascension to the position of bishop. He recounted that he had read the Lives of the Fathers, and as he considered in what way each of the saints was able “to please the highest Maker and obtain the rewards of life,” that is to say, salvation, he resolved to repair and embellish the cathedral for the sake of his own soul. Bishop Pedro restored the church, raising altars to Mary, San Salvador and the Apostles, and Saint John the Baptist and Cyprian, and he made palaces and cloisters, and rooms for eating, sleeping, prayer, and fostering the spiritual life of his clerics. He bought a very expensive (“magni precii”) Bible for the cathedral, as well as numerous liturgical texts; he gave crosses of gold and silver, other liturgical objects, and an extensive list of textiles that include vestments, cloths for the altar, and textiles for everyday use. Some were new, but he also tells us, “I restored many garments that were consumed by age, which cost me more than those I made new.”83 81. Art of Medieval Spain, 236–44. 82. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: no. 1190; Xaime Varela Sieiro, “Tejidos y vestimenta de providencia árabe en la documentación,” in Tejir y vestir: De la antiguëdad al Islam, ed. Manuela Marín (Madrid: CSIC, 2001), 274. 83. Ruíz Asencio, CD León 4: no. 1190.

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The gifts from other male donors were described briefly. Most were from religious associated with the cathedral and consisted of a house or a church. Gifts from Alfonso VI confirmed earlier grants of property and rights made by that king and restored a church that had passed out of the hands of the see.84 But the gifts from women were mostly of luxury objects and textiles, and these are described in detail. Moreover, many of the women had links to each other. Gifts from Queen Sancha and her daughters formed the core of the donation. Countess María (aka Maior) Fruélaz was Urraca’s fidelis (see chapter 3), to whom Urraca would give a villa the following year. Countess Muniadomna was Muniadomna Godestéiz, daughter of Teresa Muñoz, who was once the domina of the family monastery of San Juan Bautista of her father, Munio Fernández. Countess Justa was probably Justa Fernández, the mother of Pedro Ansúrez, Alfonso VI’s ally, and the sister of the rebel Flaín Fernández, whose confiscated property was given to Eslonza in 1099. Finally, Corexi was married to Justa’s cousin, Pelayo Ordóñez. The gifts from Urraca Fernández were the most extensive and show her working in concert with the bishop. In addition to a chasuble and cape, both bordered in gold, and a silk (grecisca) dalmatic, she donated a silver frontal for the altar and a cross of gold. She also gave Bishop Pedro 400 solidi of pure silver to make a cross, and a further 10 gold solidi for him to make a gold cross encrusted with gems to house a piece of the True Cross. These gifts and their provenance are described in the document twice: first when Bishop Pedro recounts what he makes with them and again when he relates Urraca’s gift of them. The coins that were used to create these two crosses were surely from Islamic Spain, part of the parías (protection money) that her brother was receiving from the Muslim taifa kings. Melting them down to make Christian cultic objects is yet another kind of transformation from material wealth to spiritual good in the course of pro anima gift-giving. Urraca also gave Bishop Pedro a “palmarius cristallinum, ” most likely a palm-size vessel of rock crystal.85 The closest parallel for this object may be the object called the Eleanor of Aquitaine vase, a pear-shaped Sasanian or post-Sasanian crystal vessel that is roughly in the shape of two palms joined in prayer. It ended up in the hands of Abbot Suger of St. Denis, who encased it in a mount of gilded silver decorated with beaded filigree, fleurons, and precious stones. An inscription around its base lists in pairs the past givers 84. See also ibid., 4: nos. 1150, 1185. 85. The Lexicon latinitatis medie aevi regni legionis interprets palmarius as a substantive formed from the adjective palmaris, “having the measure of a palm,” based on this document: Lexicon latinitatis medie aevi regni legionis, BREPOLis Database of Latin Dictionaries, 2017, http://clt.brepolis. net (accessed April 7, 2017).

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and recipients of the object, reading, “As a bride, Eleanor gave this vessel to King Louis, Mitadolus to her grandfather, the king to me, and Suger to the saints.”86 Like the coins that were melted to make Bishop Pedro’s crosses, this vessel was transformed from a Muslim gift, given by the taifa king of Zaragoza, ‘Imād al-Dawla ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Hūd (1110–1130), to William IX of Aquitaine, Eleanor’s grandfather, into a possession of the saints, a spiritual object.87 Eleanor is unusually prominent in this inscription for someone who was neither the original donor nor its final recipient. She is the first one named in the inscription, and her name, as giver, is in the nominative case, followed by that of her husband, the recipient, in the dative case. Then the inscription reverses the order of the other giver-recipient pairs, so the name of the recipient comes first, followed by the giver. This means that Eleanor and Suger’s names are those that bracket the inscription, even though both were intermediaries between the original giver and final recipient. Eleanor’s gift is usually called a vase, but in dimensions and form it resembles a rock crystal lamp now in Venice (San Marco, tesoro, no. 99).88 Rock crystal lamps were prized objects in both the Islamic world, where they were made and used to light major Islamic shrines, such as the one that shone above the head of John the Baptist in the Great Mosque of Damascus, and in Christian Europe, where they found their way from Fatimid courts to the treasuries of imperial women’s religious houses, such as Essen and Gandersheim. It may be that both Eleanor’s vase and Urraca’s palmarius started their life as lamps. The optical nature of crystal vessels, which makes them seem to hold onto light rather than allowing it to pass through, may have been seen as an appropriate metaphor for virginity.89 As lamps, they would recall the lamps of the five wise virgins of Matthew 25: 1–13, making them suitable gifts from the consecrated virgin, Urraca, or the betrothed bride, Eleanor. Their gifts of crystal can also be usefully compared to the two Fatimid-era rock crystal vessels, probably intended for cosmetic use, that were incorporated into the mid-eleventh-century Borghorst cross, donated by Abbess Bertha to her community in Germany. 86. “Hoc vas sponsa dedit Alienor regi Ludovico, Mitadolus avo, mihi rex, sanctisque Suger.” 87. Hilsdale, “Gift,” 174–76; Philippe Buc, “Conversion of Objects,” Viator 28 (1997): 100, 124– 25; George T. Beech, “The Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase, William IX of Aquitaine, and Muslim Spain,” Gesta 32 (1993): 4–7. 88. The Eleanor vase is 33.7 centimeters high and 15.6 centimeters in diameter; the San Marco lamp is 49 centimeters high and 17 centimeters in diameter; Avinoam Shalem, “Fountains of Light: The Meaning of Medieval Islamic Rock Crystal Lamps,” Muqarnas 11 (1994): 1. 89. Ibid., 2–3; Jane Anderson, “Hrotsvit in Context: Convents and Culture in Ottonian Germany,” in A Companion to Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (Fl. 960), ed. Phyllis R Brown and Steven L. Vailes (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 43–44.

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The cross was designed so that the vessels can be seen from either side. The smaller, lower vessel contains relics of saints and martyrs, and the larger one is the focal point of the cross and contains relics of the Passion (fragments of blood, sponge, and wood), wrapped in a red Byzantine textile.90 Its manufacture has been ascribed to the workshop of Essen at the time of Abbess Theophanu. The attention paid to textiles as particularly female gifts has not been paid to the association of women with gifts of vessels and dishes of various kinds and materials, such as these rock crystals. The four women who gave Bishop Pedro textiles in the 1073 León document also all gave vessels of different sizes, material, and intended uses. Urraca Fernández gave a large silver vessel (“cucuman”) and a gold vessel or crock (“tagara,” from the Andalusi Arabic, tāqra [vessel]); her mother gave a silver “cucuman” and another silver vessel intended for the Mass (“tarego”), as did Elvira Fernández, although hers was of gold. Countess María Fruélaz gave a silver platter (“messorio”) for potential table or ecclesiastical use. The association of women with vessels is persistent in medieval Iberia. One of the royal portraits in the Liber testamentorum of Oviedo (fol. 26v), created by Bishop Pelayo during the reign of Queen Urraca, shows Ordoño II (910–925) and Queen Teresa, and associates the queen with the vessels of the priest and the celebration of the Eucharist. The haloed queen and crowned king, standing in the bottom register of the folio and facing one another, together offer the bishop a charter. The bishop stands in the top register and gestures behind an altar. A deacon to the right of the bishop, holding the bishop’s crooked staff and an open book, is mirrored by the armsbearer beneath him, who holds the king’s staff and shield. To the left of the bishop, a haloed minister wipes clean the inside of a chalice with a cloth, a gesture that forms part of the liturgy of the Eucharist. Beneath him, a waiting woman stands to the left of the queen, the end of her head covering wrapped around her hand in a way that mimics how the cloth covers the hand of the minister. In her hands, she holds a large disk bisected by a cross design and a small silver basin. Possibly these were intended to represent a mirror and a small basin, which the queen could use for her ablutions, but in the illustration they mimic, both in their form and through comparison with the minister above, the chalice and paten used in the Eucharist.91

90. Ilene H. Forsyth, “Art with History: The Role of Spolia in the Cumulative Work of Art,” in Byzantine East, Latin West, ed. Christopher Moss and Katherine Kiefer (Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology, 1997), 154–55. 91. Pick, “Sacred Queens,” 63.

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A group of wall paintings in small churches in the eastern Pyrenees, all executed between the late eleventh century and 1150, show the Virgin Mary and female saints associated with a range of vessels, including chalices, dishes, and lamps. Joseph Goering has discussed these images, highlighting the depiction of the Virgin Mary bearing a shallow dish, or gradal in the local Catalan, with tongues of flame rising from it in the fresco on the apse of the church of Sant Climent de Taüll, consecrated in 1123, and has argued this was the original inspiration for the holy grail of Arthurian legend.92 The oldest of these frescoes are probably those by the man called the Master of Pedret in Sant Pere de Burgal; his donor portrait in the church of Countess Llucía de Pallars, who died in the 1090s, helps date the frescoes. In Mary’s left hand, which is covered by her mantle, she holds a vessel, which may be a chalice or a lamp, from which red flames emerge. The frescoes at Sant Quirze de Pedret were also painted by the Master of Pedret. Here, on one side of the south lateral apse, five wise virgins hold flaming lamps aloft while seated at a banquet table covered in dishware of different kinds while the five foolish virgins hold their unlit lamps dejectedly on the other side, empty vessels of oil at their feet. In the tiny church of Santa Eulària de Estaon, three female virgin martyrs wearing the crowns of their martyrdom and an uncrowned Mary stand beneath Christ in Majesty. Each of the three carries a fiery chalice-shaped vessel while Mary bears a shallow vessel emitting rays.93 These examples suggest the range of women and vessels depicted in these frescoes; by contrast, male figures are usually represented with books or scrolls, if they are shown carrying anything.94 The vessels carried by Mary, the saints, and the virgins can be thought of as the Virgin Mary herself. Mary was frequently called a vessel, a receptacle of divine grace, sealed but for the passage of the Holy Spirit at the Incarnation. All virgins, like the virgin-martyrs who accompany Mary at Santa Eulària carrying chalice-shaped objects, the wise virgins ready with oil, and the consecrated virgins of the royal family of León-Castilla, are waiting for Christ, their bridegroom, and thus can be thought of as vessels in the same way. And by extension, all women have this capacity; if they are not vessels of Christ, they are vessels of children. This helps explain why vessels of different kinds are so popular as gifts by women to monasteries and churches. 92. Joseph Goering articulates this thesis in The Virgin and the Grail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), esp. chaps. 6 and 7. 93. Ibid., 118–21. 94. One exception to this rule is Santa Maria de Taüll, which places Mary with the infant Christ in a mandorla and shows the three kings offering him vessels.

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Figure 16.

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Chalice of Urraca Fernández, Museo San Isidoro, León

Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art Resource, NY. Used by permission.

The most famous gift object associated with Urraca is a vessel, a chalice used in the celebration of the Eucharist, a gift from her to her monastery San Isidoro de León that remains at that monastery to this day (figure 16). It was reputed to once have been accompanied by a paten of equal richness, looted by King Alfonso I of Aragón, the husband of Urraca Fernández’s niece, Queen Urraca.95 The chalice consists of a sardonyx cup and dish of antique origin united with a gold fitting under Urraca’s patronage. The cup is lined with gold, and its gold rim is embellished with large pearls, gems, 95. Morales, Viaje, 385.

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and a crystal, as well as gold filigree scrollwork and beehive projections. Four gold straps anchor the cup to a gold knop decorated like the rim of the cup. Four gilt straps fasten the knop to the sardonyx dish, and the rim of the dish is framed by a miniature arcade in gold.96 The material and techniques used in the manufacture of the chalice resemble those from German imperial workshops of the mid-eleventh century. John Williams suggests that Urraca’s appreciation of imperial models was an imitation of the artistic preferences of her parents and that, although it is likely that the chalice was confected after her father’s death in 1065, it is probably a fairly early product. We have already had occasion to note that Urraca drew inspiration from the gifts of imperial women of the German dynasty. One of the “gems” that adorns the gold rim of the cup is a white glass paste masculine head, whose hair style has parallels with closely contemporary objects at San Isidoro. The intent of this head, however, is to mimic the use of antique cameo spolia on German imperial objects, such as the first century CE sardonyx Medusa-head cameo set into the shaft of the Essen cross with large enamels (Senkschmelz Cross), which the head on Urraca’s cup strongly resembles. This cross, which dates from around 1000, was another of the gifts from Abbess Mathilda of Essen to her house and was perhaps created as a processional cross to match her Cross of Mathilda and Otto. Use of spolia, such as the sardonyx cup and dish, and even the fake spolia of the paste cameo, allowed Urraca to invest the object with a lineage and genealogy, a sense of history that culminated in her own day, and that authenticated and validated the power of the giver and her family.97 An inscription in beaded gold letters around the base of the knop that reads, “IN NOMINE D[OMI]NI VRRACCA FREDINA[N]DI” (“In the name of the Lord, Urraca Fernández”), associates the chalice with our royal daughter. Like Suger’s inscription on the crystal Eleanor vase, Urraca’s inscription commemorates the transformation of the sardonyx cup and dish into a sacred object intended for the Lord and associates her with it for all time, a gift that permanently memorializes the giver. Also, like Abbot Suger and St. Denis, the recipient of his vase, Urraca had an ambiguous relationship with San Isidoro. Each donor was both giver and gift: Suger was given as an oblate to the abbey of St. Denis when he was ten years old; Urraca was, if not consecrated to God, at least set apart by her family and kept by not being given to a husband. Each one was an inalienable possession that could not be given away. And each gift was also an inalienable possession that was in fact 96. Art of Medieval Spain, 254. 97. See also Forsyth, “Art with History,” 153.

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not given away. The Louvre acquired the Eleanor vase only after the French Revolution, and the Urraca chalice is still in situ in León. Urraca’s chalice has gained notoriety thanks to recent arguments by Margarita Torres Sevilla and José Miguel Ortega del Río that the sardonyx cup used to form the chalice is none other than the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, the original Holy Grail. This attribution took León and Spain by storm, and as of this writing, the chalice has been withdrawn from display because of the huge crowds that came to see it. Needless to say, this claim is unprovable and improbable; its two advocates admit that the first mention of a cup in Jerusalem with claims to be the one from the Last Supper did not appear until around 400 CE, and even after that point, pilgrims who viewed and described it saw a very different cup from each other.98 The more interesting question is, did Urraca Fernández think her chalice was the cup of the Last Supper? The evidence suggests she did not. Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río cite two parchments that they ascribe to the fourteenth century, discovered by Gustavo Turienzo Veiga in the library of Al-Azhar in Cairo.99 The first is a short text by al-Qifṭī (ca. 1172–1248), a historian, that states that the cup that Christians say was the cup of the Messiah was found in one of the small churches in the outskirts of Jerusalem, in a church well-known for its relics of Saint James, and that the Christians believed this cup to have medicinal powers. In the year of the great famine (447 AH/1055–1056 CE) the taifa king of Denia in Spain, ‘Alī ibn Mujāhid Iqbāl al-Dawla, sent a boatload of food to the Fatimid caliph of Egypt. Having heard something of the medicinal power of the cup, al-Dawla, whom some suspected was himself Christian because his mother lived in the land of the Christians, asked the caliph if he could have it in order to give it to King Fernando of León to strengthen their friendship, for that king was ill with the stone. Knowing the infidel (Christian) guardians of the cup feared it would get into the wrong hands, a bishop from the kingdom of León on pilgrimage to Jerusalem was found to make the transfer. The document does not say whether the chalice reached Denia or, from Denia, it reached Fernando I.100 In the second document, the sultan, Salāḥ ad-Dīn (1137/1138–1193) requests 98. Margarita Torres Sevilla and José Miguel Ortega del Río, Los reyes del Grial (Madrid: Reino de Cordelia, 2014), 73, 79, 82. Adomnan, in 683, described a larger chalice in silver. Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río never explain how the single sardonyx cup they view as the original grail gained a companion in the dish that forms the base of Urraca’s chalice. 99. Ibid., 102–3, 111–12, 195–200; Gustavo Turienzo Veiga, “De dos pergaminos árabes y un cáliz supuestamente milagroso,” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid 43 (2015): 21, argues that the two documents cannot be securely dated or localized yet without further study. I am very grateful to Travis Bruce for pointing me to this article and sharing a copy of it with me. 100. Turienzo Veiga, “Dos pergaminos árabes,” 21–25.

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a shard that was removed from the chalice by the person who was to escort it to Denia be sent to him in order to cure his ill daughter.101 The authors note that the sardonyx cup of Urraca’s chalice does have a small fragment missing from its rim.102 Some parts of this story have support from other Arabic sources. Iqbāl alDawla was known for having sent wheat to al-Mustanṣir, the Fatimid caliph in 1055–1056, and the boat he sent was returned to Denia filled with precious stones, jewels, and other treasures. According to the eleventh-century Arabic Book of Gifts and Rarities, al-Dawla sent presents two more times to the caliph: pearls and silks made with gold in 452 AH/1060–1061 CE and furniture, silks, slaves, and coral in 462 AH/1070–1071 CE.103 And al-Dawla is also reputed in the Arab chronicles to have been allied with Fernando in his last military sortie against Valencia in 1065. This is plausible. They had a mutual enemy at the time in the taifa king of Zaragoza, al-Muqtadir, who would take al-Dawla’s kingdom in 1076. Fernando led a successful campaign against Zaragoza and pushed forward into Valencia. He besieged the capital and then feigned a retreat that drew the Valencians out of the city to Paterna, on the road between Valencia and Murcia, where he defeated them.104 This direction makes the most sense if he was expecting reinforcements to come from nearby Denia. But the story told by the two new documents reads like a later embroidery by al-Qifṭī, who spent some time living in Jerusalem, where he might have learned about what Christian pilgrims prized in his day. The transfer of the cup was reputed to have taken place at a time when we know there was little interest in the Holy Grail in Europe. Al-Qifṭī writes about it, however, at a time when Christian interest in the Grail was extremely high, high enough, obviously, to have influenced even a Muslim storyteller to embellish his predecessors’ histories. The main lesson we can take for certain from all this is a confirmation of what we know: I have been concentrating on gifts made to God and religious houses in this chapter, but gifts were also exchanged for diplomatic reasons, including between the Christian and Islamic world. The Eleanor vase is a case in point; its rock crystal vessel followed much the same trajectory imagined for the supposed Grail, from the Fatimid court to a Spanish taifa king, to a Christian ruler, to a religious, and finally to God. 101. Ibid., 31–34. 102. Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río, Reyes del Grial, 161–163. 103. Travis Bruce, La Taifa de Denia et la meditéranée au XIe siècle (Toulouse: CNRS, 2013), 204. 104. Alfonso Sánchez Candeira, Castilla y León en el siglo XI: Estudio del reinado de Fernando I, Rosa Montero Tejada (Madrid: Real Academia de Historia, 1999), 186–88; Reinhart Dozy, Histoire des musulmans d’espagne (Leiden: Brill, 1932), 78–79.

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As we have already seen, much of what Urraca gave—the textiles, the coins for the crosses, and the rock crystal palmarius—probably had a similar origin and trajectory. Objects from Islamic lands, when they passed into the hands of religious houses, bore a special charge and significance. The sardonyx cup and dish that became the chalice could have come from the Islamic world, even from Denia and even, ultimately, from the Fatimid court. But we know Urraca did not associate them with the cup of the Last Supper because she never made this association, and neither did anyone else. These people were not shy about proclaiming their ownership of relics, even the most outlandish ones. The Arca Santa of Oviedo was reputed to hold wood from the Cross, the garment of Christ that was divided by lot, Christ’s blood, clothing from the Virgin, some of her milk, and much, much more.105 If Urraca thought she had the cup of the Last Supper, she would have made it known. A large number of chalices decorate the Pantheon in the monastery of San Isidoro. Built under Urraca Fernández, Therese Martin attributes the magnificent paintings in the Pantheon to the time of her niece, Queen Urraca.106 Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río argue that these chalices are hidden signs of the true identity of Urraca’s chalice, visible to those in the know.107 Indeed, chalices and other vessels abound in the Pantheon. A wolf/dog drinks out of a cup held by a shepherd in the Annunciation to the Shepherds; St. Martial, described as “pincerna,” cupbearer, holds a cup at the Last Supper; and the figure of September in the calendrical cycle picks grapes and drops them into a basin with a handle. A portrait of King Fernando I and Queen Sancha beneath the crucifix includes chalices right at the heart of the Passion it displays. Fernando is attended by his armsbearer and Sancha, on the other side of the crucifix, is attended by a maidservant who bears a vessel in her hands.108 Directly above Sancha, beside the crucifix, is a chalice, possibly collecting Christ’s blood from the wound in his side. Another fresco in the Pantheon shows an unusual image of Saint Eligius, goldsmith to Merovingian kings, working on a chalice. Martin has suggested that the presence of Eligius and this chalice refers to the chalice donated by Urraca Fernández to San Isidoro and recalls her acts of patronage.109

105. Based on the inscription on its lid. Other sources make even bigger claims; Gómez Moreno, “Arca Santa de Oviedo documentada,” 129. 106. Martin, Queen as King, 69, chap. 5. 107. Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río, Reyes del Grial, 147–57. 108. It resembles somewhat the vessel borne by the Virgin Mary in the early twelfth-century church of St. Peter in El Burgal; Goering, Virgin and the Grail, 117, fig. 8; Pedro de Palol and Max Hirmer, Early Medieval Art in Spain (New York: Harry Abrams, 1966), fig. 121. 109. Martin, Queen as King, 148; Art of Medieval Spain, 254–55.

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As I have already suggested, chalices and other kinds of vessels were closely associated with women, especially celibate ones such as Urraca Fernández, and this is sufficient reason to explain both Urraca’s gift of a chalice and the proliferation of chalices and vessels in the paintings in the Pantheon of San Isidoro, the “caput” of the royal women’s holding that would become the infantazgo. There is no reason to assume these painted vessels meant that the chalice of the Lord’s Supper was believed to be kept within the walls of San Isidoro. All the chalices and vessels of San Isidoro—both those painted in the frescoes and the real one donated by the royal, virgin daughter—recall the symbolic and theological meaning of the chalice as an image of the virgin woman consecrated to God and specially dedicated to prayer. That does not mean that Urraca’s gift to León of a chalice and its lost paten, the liturgical objects so central to the celebration of the Eucharist at the center of the Mass, in which wine and bread are offered so that they may be transformed into Christ’s blood and body, did not also play on its association with the Mass. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Patrick Geary has argued that women’s exclusion from celebration of the Mass limited their ability to actively engage in memorial activity for their family. Urraca’s gift of a chalice shows us how women could get around that problem and make themselves central to the Mass and its transformative power through gift, and be remembered at the same time. Documents and objects preserve both the memory of a gift and of its donor. We are fortunate to possess some of the documents that describe Urraca’s giving, as well as some of the objects themselves. And Urraca was remembered after her death as a giver of gifts. The Historia silense, written after her death by someone who knew her personally, probably at her own monastery of San Isidoro, remembers of her that “The whole length of her life she pursued her favorite practice of adorning sacred altars and priestly vestments with gold, silver, and precious gems.”110

Manuscripts and Memory: Royal Women as Book Patrons In addition to land, churches, monasteries, objects, and textiles, donors also gave books as gifts. Bishop Pedro listed books in his 1073 donation to León, and Urraca gave a total of eleven books to Eslonza in 1099. These were a Bible; Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job and Dialogues; a Vitae patrum, a collection of saints’ lives; a Passionary; a book of Offices; Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies and Sentences; Ildefonsus of Toledo’s On the perpetual virginity of the holy Mary; a book of the prophet Jeremiah; and an “Apocalipsim,” probably a 110. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 122–23.

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copy of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse.111 None of these manuscripts survives, so far as we know, but they were all among the classic required texts of the medieval Church in León-Castilla. To study more closely the role that memory and death play in the giving of books, we have to look at the surviving manuscripts given by another royal daughter, Queen Sancha, Urraca’s mother. Some of these include the same titles that Urraca gave to Eslonza. Examining these manuscripts reinforces the connections observed among memory, gift, and death and demonstrates the importance of memory of lineage. These manuscripts also show that scholarly memory and social memory were not two separate spheres. Reflecting on the end of one’s own life, or that of a family member, and meditating on the End Times of the world could be allied parts of the same process. Queen Sancha’s manuscripts are more than beautiful objects that emphasize her status and power and that of her royal husband, Fernando. Their contents and layout underscore, in different ways, the themes of lineage, hierarchy, and inheritance that relate to the duty of remembering one’s family after death. They also feature the themes of penance and personal redemption, as well as of general eschatology and concern for the End Times of all creation, which together recall the duty of remembering both one’s own sinfulness and the future end of all humankind. This is a training of the memory for the cultivation of the devotional self. Examining the manuscripts together reveals what and who Sancha wanted remembered and why, and what this did for her. The Queen Sancha whom we know is as much an effect of the manuscripts she patronized as their cause.112 Sancha deployed the bidirectional capacity of memory in these manuscripts: she remembered others and urged memory, and she was, in turn and because of this, herself remembered. She also used these manuscripts to build and describe networks of allies, living and dead, human and divine, through the practice of memory, and her own power resided in her effective situating of herself at the center of these networks, just as it later did for her daughters. The codices served to promote and support her husband’s rule while all the while recalling its source in her father’s and brother’s kingdom. I concentrate here on four manuscripts associated with Queen Sancha: Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse; Isidore’s Etymologies; and two prayer books, both containing, among other materials, Canticles, the nocturnal office, and a litany intended to recall oneself to the saints. These

111. Vignau y Ballester, Cartulario del monasterio de Eslonza, no. 7. 112. Aden Kumler, “The Patron-Function,” in Patronage: Power and Agency in Medieval Art, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 2013), 304.

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manuscripts have received scholarly attention to a greater and lesser degree, be it for their codicology, for what they tell us about the history of Spanish manuscript illumination, or for the light they shed on Old Spanish liturgy. Examining them as a group tells us about the investment of the woman who commissioned them and used them in memory, lineage, gift, and death. The earliest and most famous manuscript of the four, a lavishly illustrated copy of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse is credited to the joint patronage of the couple and is known either as the Fernando and Sancha Beatus or as the Facundus Beatus, after its illustrator.113 Sancha’s role in its elaboration was central. Copied in 1047, it is now Madrid BN Vitr. 14–2, and its lavish use of gold and silver points to its royal patrons. Indeed, it is the only Beatus manuscript known to have issued from royal patrons, with the likely exception of the Las Huelgas Beatus of 1220, attributed to the patronage of another royal daughter, wife, and mother, Queen Berenguela of Castilla, copied as a gift to the royal monastery of Las Huelgas.114 Fernando and Sancha are named in the elaborate labyrinth page on fol. 7 that reads, “FREDENANDUS REX DEI GRATIA MEMORIA LIBER SANCIA REGINA MEMORIA LIBRI” (something like “Fernando, king by the grace of God, the memory the book; Sancha, queen, memory of the book”) written on a background of fine purple interlace.115 This labyrinth links them to each other, to memory, and to the book, although to the latter in slightly different ways: the king’s book in the nominative, and the queen’s book in the genitive, perhaps suggesting this was a gift from her to him. We have other reasons to place it closer to Sancha than to her husband. Antonio de Morales saw this manuscript in the monastery of San Isidoro in León in 1572, and it is plausible that this monastery, in 1047 still dedicated to Saints John the Baptist and Pelayo, was both the original home and possibly even the scriptorium of this manuscript.116 Most tellingly, this manuscript seems to be the source of inscriptions on the vaults of the Pantheon of San Isidoro, where in 1047 Queen Sancha was domina.117

113. Facundus is only named as the scribe of the manuscript when he is named on fol. 314, but he is usually given credit for the illustrations also, and this is the reason why the manuscript is frequently called the Facundus Beatus; for example, John Williams, The Illustrated Beatus (London: Harvey Miller, 2000–2003), 3: 35. 114. Morgan M.429; ibid., 5: 38–39; David Raizman, “Prayer, Patronage, and Piety at Las Huelgas: New Observations on the Later Morgan Beatus (m. 429),” in Church, State, Vellum, and Stone, ed. Therese Martin and Julie A. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 242–49. 115. My observations on this manuscript are based on an examination of the facsimile edition, El Beato de Liébana. Códice de Fernando I y de Doña Sancha (Barcelona: Moleiro, 1994). 116. Williams, Illustrated Beatus, 3: 34–35; Morales, Viaje, 51–52. 117. Martin, Queen as King, 141.

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An association with the royal monastery helps explain some features of the manuscript that have appeared paradoxical. On the one hand, the manuscript appears to have been commissioned by and for the royal couple and intended to reside in the royal library. On the other, the reference to memoria on the labyrinth page suggests the manuscript was a memorial gift made by Fernando and Sancha to a monastic community in advance of their own deaths to solicit prayers and remembrance for their souls. If the manuscript was intended for and remained in the community that was to become San Isidoro, both functions of the book make sense because the library held in that community was effectively a royal library. But if this association is correct, it suggests Sancha was more closely associated with the genesis of this manuscript than Fernando because her associations with this house were traditional, familial, and long-standing, while his did not fully begin until the body of Saint Isidore was transferred there in 1063, sixteen years after the manuscript was copied. Given the responsibility of royal women for devotional memory, Sancha’s initiative in this respect should not surprise us. The labyrinth folio faces an image of the divine court of Heaven (fol. 6r), the elders playing instruments in the presence of the Lamb of God, who raises an equal-armed Asturian cross, with Alpha and Omega suspended from its lateral arms, a symbolic reminder of Sancha’s ancestors in Oviedo. Around the cross is the traditional legend, “Peace, Light, Law, King [Pax, Lux, Lex, Rex].” But is the Peace, Light, Law, and King of this folio that of Christ, the King of Kings or of King Fernando? It is meant, I argue, to recall both. Temporal royal power, as expressed in the labyrinth, recalls and reminds us of heavenly divine rule. The heavenly and earthly courts are meant to flow together, the second authorized by and a reflection of the first. Why would Sancha and Fernando choose Beatus’s Commentary as their memorial gift? As a text it belongs especially to Sancha’s kingdom. Beatus was from Liébana, most of the earliest manuscripts have Leonese roots, and as seen from the Cross page, it borrows from the symbology of the Asturian kingdom. Like burying Fernando in San Isidoro, associating his memory with this object connects him to her lineage; the Castilian king has not so much conquered León by marrying Sancha as he has been subsumed by it. But the Commentary is more than a signifier of León. As a commentary on the biblical book of the Apocalypse, it is a meditation on the meaning of the End Times that urges its readers to think less about the final end of the world and more about their own particular deaths. It inspires works of recollection and memory about death and the meaning of its eschatology to that end. In this way, it unites the social work of memory with scholarly uses of its methods and techniques.

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The commentary tradition is well known for its spectacular illustrations, but the text itself has been dismissed as wholly derivative of earlier works because scarcely two of the thousand pages or so of the modern edition of the commentary are Beatus’s own work; the rest is compilation.118 This dismissal is misguided. Beatus’s choice of texts to include with his base text, Tyconius’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, reflects a deliberate, thoughtful, and creative program to use exegesis of the Apocalypse to create a primer of both theological method and dogmatic content. Beatus calls his book “the key to the library,” and its scope is wide, touching on the nature of God, the Trinity, Christ, Mary, ecclesiology, the nature of sin, repentance, and redemption—although the topics are treated seemingly randomly, in no systematic order, and often repetitively.119 His dependence on Tychonius puts him squarely in the Tychonian and Augustinian tradition of reading the Apocalypse as a book about personal, not universal, salvation history, with lessons about the individual human soul rather than as a political roman à clef about imminent future events.120 Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse provides us with a vision of the end, told in a series of episodes, each of which required interpretation and meditation. Its episodes, built on verses from the Bible, inspire the construction of mental images and produce emotional reactions that allow readers to fill in gaps and make connections. The recollection of them teaches the reader to develop a personal moral sense.121 These mental images can be based on word-pictures drawn by the text or on actual images that illustrate the text.122 Beatus’s Commentary is divided into twelve books, and each one is divided into shorter sections in which a passage (storia) from the Book of the Apocalypse is followed by an illustration and then commentary (explanatio) on both the text and illustration together. Beatus always conceived of his

118. Its most recent editor suggests, perhaps tongue in cheek, that the sole value of the text is that it transmits the lost commentary on the Apocalypse of Tyconius; Beatus of Liébana, Tractatus de Apocalipsin, ed. Roger Gryson, with Bièvre, Marie-Claire, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 107B–C (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), v; Alberto del Campo Hernández, “Introducción al Comentario del Apocalipsis,” in Obras completas de Beato de Liébana, ed. Joaquín González Echegaray, Alberto del Campo Hernández, and Leslie G. Freeman (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1995), 19. 119. Beatus of Liébana, Tractatus de Apocalipsin, prol.1.7, p. 2. 120. Beatus’s most recent editor speaks of Tyconius as having “vaccinated” the Latin Church against millenarianism; ibid., v. See also Paula Fredriksen, “Tyconius and Augustine on the Apocalypse,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) 24–29. 121. On recollection and the creation of a moral sense, see Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 19–21. On mental images and their connection to a range of emotions in a variety of texts, including Beatus’s Commentary, see pp. 130, 133, 144, 151–53. 122. Ibid., 151.

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work as including illustrations.123 At the same time, the fact that these images differ from manuscript to manuscript is not important, as long as they convey the gist or spirit of what they represent because their intent is not to depict an actual object or moment but to be used as cues for recollection.124 This organization of the text invites close reading and meditation on single segments rather than the creation of a narrative that overarches the whole text with clear lines of cause and effect. The pictures on its pages provoke emotions of fear and horror that can, in turn, paint pictures in the mind, which function as meditative gathering sites.125 It was the illustrator’s plan to affect the emotions of his viewers by what they saw. Maius, who was in charge of creating the version produced in the monastery of San Miguel de la Escalada in the mid-tenth century, now known as the Morgan Beatus, writes about his aim in its colophon (fol. 293): “As part of its adornment I have painted a series of pictures for the wonderful words of its stories so that the wise may fear the coming of the future judgement of the completion of this age.”126 Beatus himself was attuned to the visual qualities and potential of the texts he used as loci of memory, and the texts and images he added to his Tychonian base were elements that could be as readily visualized and memorized as the Apocalyptic material, such as his use of Noah’s ark.127 The eschatological contents of the commentary on the Apocalypse, with the insistence in both the text and images that its readers meditate on the horrifying prospect of the end times and the Last Judgement, make this a very suitable memorial gift.128 The colophon that dates the Fernando and Sancha manuscript to 1047 on its final folio (316r) likewise supports a closer association of Sancha than Fernando with the genesis of the manuscript. It reads, “In the era two times eighty and five since the millennium, in the reign our lord and glorious Prince Fernando, child of Lord Sancho and his wife, glorious domina Queen Sancha, child of Prince Alfonso, this book was written.”129 Fernando, the prince, outranks his own father, the lord, because of his union with Sancha and, through her, with

123. Beatus of Liébana, Tractatus de Apocalipsin, xviii. 124. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 120–21. 125. Ibid., 154. 126. “Inter eius decus uerba mirifica storiarumque depinxi per seriem ut scientibus terreant iudicii futuri aduentui peracturi seculi.” Cited in John Williams, A Spanish Apocalypse (New York: George Braziller, 1991), 225n. 4. 127. On the potential of Noah’s ark as a site of meditation, see, Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 232. 128. Oscar K. Werkmeister, “The First Romanesque Beatus Manuscripts and the Liturgy of Death,” in Actas del simposio para el estudio de los códices del “Comentario al Apocalipsis” de Beato de Liébana (Madrid: Joyas Bibliográficas, 1980) 2: 170–72, 193–94. 129. Madrid BN Vitr. 14–2 fol. 316r.

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her father. This colophon creates a kind of royal genealogy that concludes the manuscript by memorializing the dead fathers of both its donors. This expression of royal lineage at the close of the manuscript balances a representation of biblical and divine lineage found close to the beginning of the manuscript. Six folios of the manuscript (fols. 10v–17r) are taken up with genealogical diagrams that trace the descent of Adam and Eve through its culmination in Mary and Christ.130 The information is presented in a series of linked roundels connecting lines of descent and historical information located in architectural frames. These are embellished with figural illustrations of Adam and Eve (10v), Noah with two doves (11v), Abraham prevented at the last moment from sacrificing Isaac by the hand of God (13r), and the angel Gabriel gesturing to Mary enthroned with her feet on a footstool and the infant Christ on her lap holding an equalarmed Asturian cross on a pole as a processional cross (17r). This representation of Mary as the throne of wisdom becomes enormously popular in sculpture in the following century in Spain; an early model for this image can be found on a Byzantine-inspired enamel on another cross from Abbess Mathilda of Essen. Women, both daughters and wives, are indicated by the roundels of the genealogical pages, in addition to men. Aspects of secular history are also included; for instance, Magog’s roundel (fol. 11v) is accompanied by a note that it was from him that the Goths and Scythians were thought to trace their origin, and the early history of Rome is outlined in a frame (on fol. 16). The roundels are different colors to indicate different lines; for instance, Isaac’s progeny are given in red roundels, while the children of Ishmael are in yellow. Christ’s lineage is traced in a double strand of roundels beginning with King David, indicating descent from both his mother and his father, an interest in maternal as well as paternal lineage that we saw represented in the manuscript’s colophon. Joseph’s line, which is written along the top of the folios, traces his descent from David via Solomon based on Matthew 1:1–16. Mary’s line, along the bottom, uses Luke 3:23–38, tracing the descent from David by his son, Nathan, revising the biblical text to indicate that its Joseph was not the father of Jesus but the father of Joachim, who married Anne and begat Mary. In this way the diagram resolves the contradiction between the 130. Ibid., fols. 10v–17r. They follow a Cross page (6v), the memorial labrynth (7r), figures of the evangelists (7v–10r), and a fragment from a tenth-century manuscript from León that contains another version of the same kind of genealogical roundels (1r–5v). Based on its decorative features, Díaz y Díaz associates the tenth-century fragment with the Valcavado/Valladolid Beatus, which Morales also saw in San Isidoro on his visit in 1572. It may also come from a Bible; Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 429–30.

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genealogies of Luke and Matthew, both of which promise to trace Joseph’s line. This is further evidence that the role of Anne was known in eleventhcentury Christian Spain. Similar genealogical tables can be found in twenty-four surviving manuscripts, the earliest of which date from the tenth century, in a tradition that seems to radiate out from the Iberian peninsula. Ten illustrated Beatus manuscripts contain this diagram, and eighteen of the twenty-four manuscripts, including all the Beatuses, use the solution of tracing Mary’s descent via Joseph, Joachim, and Anne.131 John Williams ascribes the appearance of these diagrams in the Beatus tradition to a program of renewal that added the tables as well as evangelist portraits and illustrations to the recently added commentary on Daniel to the existing corpus of apocalyptic text, commentary, and imagery. Williams dates this moment of renewal to the mid-tenth century and ascribes it to a collaboration between the scribes Florentius of Valeranica and Maius. The latter’s Morgan Beatus, commissioned by San Miguel de Escalada, is the earliest manuscript we have that contains the innovative illustrations. Williams suggests that the genealogical roundels, as well as some of the other innovations, have as their source the tradition of illustrated Spanish Bibles and points to their presence in the Leonese Biblia Primera of 960.132 The genealogical roundels in this Bible are indeed strikingly similar to those found in the Fernando and Sancha Beatus, down to the illustration of the world as a square divided by the sons of Noah into triangles, rather than the more usual globe partitioned into segments found in the other Beatus manuscripts.133 Jean-Baptiste Piggin suggests that all twenty-four manuscripts derive from the same lost Visigothic copy and that the diagram originally existed as a continuous scroll in the late fourth or early fifth century, which was the source for the Liber genealogicus of 427.134 The same genealogical diagram is also found in the late-tenth-century century Codex de Roda, the rich miscellany of history, genealogy, and theology

131. For a useful discussion of these diagrams with a list of manuscripts that contain them, see Jean-Baptiste Piggin’s website, “Notes on the History of the Stemma,” modified April 2015, http:// www.piggin.net/stemmahistoryTOC.htm. His list of manuscripts is also available in Jean-Baptiste Piggin, “The Great Stemma: A Late Antique Diagrammatic Chronicle of Pre-Christian Time,” Studia Patristica 62 (2013), 265–66. 132. Williams, Illustrated Beatus, 1: 55–58; John Williams, “The Beatus Commentaries and Spanish Bible Illustration,” in Actas del simposio para el estudio de los códices del “Comentario al Apocalipsis” de Beato de Liébana (Madrid: Joyas Bibliográficas, 1980), 1: 207–10, 217–18; Williams, Spanish Apocalypse, 19–21. 133. AC San Isidoro 2, fol. 6v; Madrid Vitr. 14–2, fol. 12v. 134. Piggin, “Great Stemma,” 259–77.

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that I have already discussed in the context of Anne and the Arca Santa of Oviedo. It concludes, as in the Fernando and Sancha Beatus, with the infant Christ seated on the lap of his mother, herself seated on a throne (fol. 206r), although in this version, instead of the angel Gabriel, the three magi offer the infant vessels. Along with its diagram of biblical genealogy, it also contains genealogies of the king of Navarra, the counts of Aragón, Pallars, Gascony, and Toulouse, and the kings of France, along with the genealogical material from the Asturian chronicles and the Rotense version of the Chronicle of Alfonso III. As in the Fernando and Sancha Beatus, the genealogy of temporal kings and other rulers is recalled in parallel with that of Christ the King, seated on a throne, which is his mother. More unusual than the genealogy of Christ in the Beatus tradition, but also related to concerns about lineage, albeit in the secular rather than the biblical world, is the table of affinities (264v) and two chapters on family relationships (265r–266v) taken from Isidore’s Etymologies.135 This material appears in the tradition for the first time in the Morgan Beatus, where it is appended to the text of the Commentary on the Apocalypse and includes, in addition to the table of affinities and text on family and relationships, a tree of consanguinity indicating relationship to the sixth degree. The tree and the text about consanguinity that follows it is omitted from the Fernando and Sancha Beatus, perhaps because it too obviously recalled that they were illicitly related to each other through their common great-grandfather, García Fernández, count of Castilla, within three degrees of kinship. All this material on family relationships proved to be an unpopular addition to a tradition dedicated mostly to monastic contemplative audiences, and it can be found today only in the Fernando and Sancha Beatus and the Morgan and Silos Beatuses; the latter likewise omits the tree of consanguinity and the remainder of Isidore’s text on the subject. The table of affinities outlines the nomenclature of genealogical descent; that is, it indicates by what name an individual is to refer to relatives of his or her father, paternal uncle and aunt, and maternal uncle and aunt and how they are to refer to that person. The chapters from the Etymologies discuss family members and their relationships to each other, heirs and inheritance, and lineage and hierarchy within the family. This is the same kind of genealogical material that is covered in different ways both in the colophon and in the genealogical roundels of Christ. In the Etymologies, this section follows Isidore’s genealogy of languages and nations, a section on kings and military matters, and a section on citizens and governance, putting it squarely in 135. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, in PL (Paris, 1850), IX.5–6, coll. 353C–363.

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the category of temporal affairs related to the polis, seemingly far from the eschatological concerns of the Beatus commentary. Why did this material, seemingly totally unrelated to the Apocalyptic theme of the rest of the text, make its way into the Fernando and Sancha Beatus? Williams, following Neuss, suggests that it was added because of Isidore’s suggestion that the six degrees of consanguinity mirrored the six ages of the world, after which earthly time will end; however, this part of Isidore’s text is missing from the Fernando and Sancha Beatus.136 The royal couple did not need an allegorical justification to include this material. It had sufficient interest for them because of its emphasis on lineage, bonds of blood, and interrelationship in this world. The royal women, including Queen Sancha, were responsible for praying for the souls of their ancestors to whom they were linked by blood. The table of nomenclature and the text that accompanies it served as a reminder of those who must be remembered after their deaths. The memoria of the labyrinth page reflects Fernando and Sancha’s desire to be remembered after their own prospective deaths, and it equally refers to the duty they, and especially Sancha, had to remember and pray for their deceased: her father Alfonso V and her brother Vermudo III, the auunculus of her children. Vermudo III had been killed by her husband Fernando in the battle of Tamarón exactly ten years prior. Both of these men were probably buried in the cemetery that was to become San Isidoro de Léon. We have direct evidence that her dead brother was on Sancha’s mind in another manuscript she also commissioned in 1047, a deluxe manuscript primarily consisting of the text of Isidore’s Etymologies (9r–239r), which is now El Escorial &.I.3. An elegant dedicatory labyrinth (8v) names it as “Sancio et Sancia librum” (the book of Sancha and Sancho), the young Sancho II. Because he was around twelve years old when this manuscript was produced, we must assume that the responsibility for its creation goes to his mother, Sancha.137 The Etymologies was an eminently suitable present to give a young prince. A compendium of knowledge from the ancient world, it would have been a useful a teaching tool for the prince. The evidence for Sancha’s continued concern for her deceased brother comes on fol. 24r where, partly concealed in the jambs of an arch, is found the legend “Veremudo” on the left and “Vivat in Christo [May he live in Christ] amen” on the right. I argue that this refers to her brother, Vermudo III, and thus this book, like the Beatus, was a gift that served a memorial 136. Williams, Spanish Apocalypse, 211. 137. Reilly, Kingdom of Léon-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 20.

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function in addition to its educational purpose. In contrast, Manuel Díaz y Díaz has suggested that this Veremudo is the name of the scribe of this section on the manuscript. He identifies two scribes: (1) Vermudo, responsible for fols. 1–143v, and (2) Dominicus, who signs and dates a colophon on fol. 242rb, responsible for the rest.138 I am not convinced there were two scribes for the main body of the manuscript, apart from some additions to its final folio. I believe the different aspect to the script after fol. 144, which begins a new gathering, is a product of the scribe switching from using thirty-three lines to using forty-one lines, presumably to prevent the manuscript from being too large—the letter forms and ink remain identical. Moreover, a scribe’s placing his name in the ornamentation of a manuscript was unusual. I am unaware of a similar case. By contrast, Sancha had her own name placed in the ornamental initial letter of her own prayer book, suggesting a parallel for this kind of memorial placement.139 The minor texts that accompany the Etymologies maintain the themes of death and memory, and show the same preoccupation with eschatology and the afterlife that is evident in the Beatus manuscript. The manuscript is the sole witness to the correspondence between Ascaricus and Tuseredus, which is the text it opens with (1r–5r). Ascaricus was probably the bishop of that name, possibly of Astorga, praised in a letter from the Adoptionist Elipandus to Fidelus for having sent a letter to Elipandus asking for advice.140 This connection dates the two letters between Ascaricus and Tuseredus to the Asturian kingdom in the late eighth or early ninth century. There was no taint of Adoptionism in Ascaricus’s initial letter, however. His preoccupation was not with Christology but with the fate of human beings after death, including the Virgin Mary, about which, he says, there is a dispute. He asks Tuseredus to write about these questions, citing the proper authorities, so that he might learn and so that he might have a weapon to use against those who are attacking him on these subjects. Both he and Tuseredus use the language of schism and heresy to describe their opponents in this struggle over interpretation, and they use military images of towers, swords, and arrows to describe the struggles they face.141

138. Díaz y Díaz, Códices visigóticos, 381–83. 139. Salamanca, BU 2668 fol. 2r. 140. Elipandus of Toledo, Epistola Ad Fidelem, in Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, vol. 1, ed. Juan Gil, 80–81 (Madrid: CSIC, 1973); John Cavadini, The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and Gaul (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 25. 141. Ascaricus and Tuseredus, Epistulae, in Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, ed. Juan Gil (Madrid, 1973), 1: 116–24.

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The rest of the correspondence consists of Tuseredus’s reply, some ten manuscript pages long. We know nothing of Tuseredus beyond his authorship of this text, which gives no biographical details. He answers Ascaricus by explaining a series of eleven propositions.142 Using biblical quotations and patristic authorities, including Gregory the Great, Jerome, Ambrose, and Isidore, Tuseredus explains that before the Incarnation both good and evil men descended to Hell; that the souls of the good did not suffer torment there; that the Lord drew from that place only the souls of the elect, not those of the damned; that the saints who rose with Christ took up glorious, that is, spiritual bodies of that the same kind that we expect to take up in the coming Resurrection; again, that the bodies of the saints rose up glorified; that the Jerusalem to which the saints ascended was the Heavenly Jerusalem; that this Jerusalem must be understood as both heavenly and earthly; that not all but many saints whom Christ drew from Hell were resurrected in the flesh; on Apocalypse 20:5, on the first resurrection; and on John 3:13. The last proposition discussed by Tuseredus, that there is no story recounting that the Virgin Mary suffered any kind of death, is strangely not found in this section of the manuscript. The text breaks off (5r) with, “Chapter 11. On glorious Mary about whom there is no story that she was changed by any Passion or death of any kind. You will find it at the end of this book,” and sure enough the text does pick up again on fol. 239r, after the end of the text of the Etymologies. This break is especially curious because the break is followed by blank folios on 5v and 6r. It may support my contention that a single scribe copied the entire manuscript because the scribe of the correspondence was able to accurately predict that the text would be picked up again at the end of the book. The effect is that the Etymologies are bracketed at the beginning and end with Tuseredus’s discussion of death. Sancha’s concerns for her dead brother Vermudo and the fate of his soul explain her interest in this text. Its promise of a future resurrection of the glorified bodies of the saints offered her hopes for a future reunion of the siblings and encouraged her to continue to pray and to support memorial prayers and activities on his behalf. The manuscript thus not only gave the young prince a compendium of information useful to a future king; it reminded him of his duty to remember his forebears and created a network of links between the maternal uncle, Vermudo, and the nephew, Sancho, through Sancha. As I argue in chapter 1, the link between maternal uncle and nephew was a significant bond. 142. Ibid., 1: 114–16.

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The final text of the original manuscript also fits this eschatalogical theme.143 It is the text of the Sibylla Tiburtina.144 The text lists the names given to the different sibyls; it then discusses the Tiburtine sibyl, called Albunea or Cassandra in Latin, and her interpretation of a dream shared by one hundred Roman senators in the days before Christ of nine suns, each with a different aspect. The sibyl uses the suns to predict the coming of Christ; his teachings and Passion; the destruction of Rome; the vicissitudes of the medieval kingdoms; the reign of the Last Emperor, Constans; and finally the reign of the Antichrist. The passage concludes with a well-known sibylline prophecy in the form of a poem, included, among other places, in Augustine’s City of God (where it is attributed to the Erytrean sibyl), recounting the tumults of the end of the world, after which, the text concludes, “The Lord will judge according to the works of each and the impious will go to the Hell of eternal fire while the just will receive the reward of eternal life and a new heaven and a new earth and the sea will not be. And the lord will reign with the saints forever and ever.”145 The editor of the text names the two last kings before the Last Emperor in the El Escorial manuscript, identified only by their initials, as the emperors Henry II (1002–1024) and Henry III (1039–1056), the latter still ruling while the manuscript was copied.146 Their appearance in this royal text from LeónCastilla is another link between that kingdom and the German Empire, and it suggests active links between the two lands at the time the manuscript was created. The eschatological themes of this text pick up the concerns with judgement found in the text by Tuseredus that opens the manuscript. It invites meditation on the course of events surrounding the coming of the Antichrist and the final days in a way that returns us to the eschatological horizon of the manuscript of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, copied in the same year. Anke Holdenried emphasizes the way that the Sibylla Tiburtina also draws attention to the First Coming of Christ, in its “prophecy” of his advent; this aspect recalls the genealogical roundels of the Beatus

143. I exclude from consideration a brief text on the seven planets (fols. 242r–242v) that follows the manuscript colophon both because it follows the colophon and because it is in a very different, although still Visigothic, script. 144. El Escorial &.I.3 fols. 240r–242r; Ernst Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1898), 177–87. See also Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and Her Scribes (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Anke Holdenried, “The Bedan Recension of the Sibylla Tiburtina: New Manuscript Evidence and Its Implications,” in Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century, ed. Michael W. Herren, Christopher J. McDonough, and Ross Arthur (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 410–43. 145. Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, 187. 146. Ibid., 130–33.

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manuscript, which end in Christ’s birth.147 The El Escorial manuscript thus links concerns for personal salvation and the salvation of those dear to one with more generalized eschatological anxiety, and considering these two manuscripts together helps us further explain why Beatus’s commentary was a suitable text for a manuscript intended for individual and personal memory. Salvation and memory remained a preoccupation in the final two manuscripts associated with Queen Sancha, both prayer books. Fernando’s prayer book, a gift from Sancha and now in the library of the university of Santiago de Compostela BU 609 (Res. 1), contains an original core built around the Psalter and the Canticles that dates to 1055, which was expanded with additional prayers and other texts shortly thereafter. Sancha’s book, now in the collection of the university of Salamanca (BU 2668), dates from 1059 and comprises mainly the Canticles, but it also contains an addendum reflective of Cluniac spirituality that was added by Urraca Fernández, their daughter, during the period when Alfonso VI was inviting Cluniac influence to the peninsula. Normally in the Old Spanish liturgy the Psalter and Canticles appear either alone or with each other in manuscripts, without other texts, but Fernando’s and Sancha’s manuscripts both add a litany, the Old Spanish nocturnal office, the Athanasian Creed, penitential prayers, and individual texts and prayers that are particular to each manuscript.148 This additional content converts these manuscripts into a genre unprecedented in Spain but common during this period in the rest of Europe: liturgical manuscripts that combined texts used for public liturgical performance with prayers associated with private devotional practices.149 The two manuscripts reflect a preoccupation with penitence coming from the women of the royal family and a concerted effort to find effective and meaningful intercessory practices. In both manuscripts, we see Sancha ensuring that she will be remembered and that others will remember whom they ought. The manuscript produced for Fernando is in every way a deluxe manuscript with its elegant calligraphy and lavish full-page illustrations and decorated initial letters. It is a relatively large manuscript (31 by 20 centimeters), while Sancha’s is smaller (21 by 14 centimeters). The variation between the two is the difference between a manuscript that can be easily held in one

147. Holdenried, Sibyl and Her Scribes, 93–97. 148. Walter Muir Whitehill, “A Catalogue of Mozarabic Liturgical Manuscripts Containing the Psalter and the Liber Canticorum,” Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 14 (1934): 95–122. For a full discussion of these two manuscripts, see Pick, “Liturgical Renewal.” 149. Susan Boynton, “Prayer as Liturgical Performance in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastic Psalters,” Speculum 82 (2007): 896–901, with a review of the literature on libelli precum on 897–98.

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hand and one that requires either two hands or a lectern for support.150 The script of Sancha’s manuscript is careful and attractive, and its roughly fourteen or so lines per page make it easy to read. At the same time, however, the manuscript has been minimally illustrated, and only the initial letters receive any kind of ornamental treatment. These differences in format and execution may reflect a distinction between a manuscript that was as much for show as for use, Fernando’s copy, and one intended for use alone, Sancha’s. Fernando’s book is both a personal penitential prayer book and a royal, even imperial, codex. Although the format and decorative qualities of his manuscript suggest a display copy, its contents indicate that Sancha expected him to use the manuscript himself. We know that Fernando is reported to have recited one of its Canticles, number 73, in the church of San Isidoro de León as part of a ritual of penance and divestment of worldly office days before his death.151 Sancha reminded her husband of her role in creating the codex in several ways. An unusual acrostic consisting of a cross enclosed in a diamond names the book as belonging to both Fernando and Sancha (fol. 6r) “I am King Fernando’s book. I am King Fernando and also Queen Sancha’s book.”152 On its verso is the famous dedication portrait in which a figure holding the book stands between Fernando and Sancha, offering the book to the former and looking back over his shoulder at Sancha. This figure has been variously identified as the scribe, Petrus; its illustrator, Fructuosus; or even, by Francisco Prado-Vilar, as the young Alfonso VI in a precocious recognition of his future role as heir to the kingdom of León.153 I am convinced by Amancio Isla Frez’s argument that the figure is, rather, the young King David, an identification that makes a good deal of sense because it is, at heart, a Psalter. It follows shortly after a poem written by Florus of Lyons praising David as king and author of the psalms.154 150. Art of Medieval Spain, 290; Florencio Marcos Rodríguez, Los manuscritos pretridentinos hispanos de ciencias sagradas en la Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca (Salamanca: Instituto de Historia de la Teología Española, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1971), 473. 151. According to a report in Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 208. See also Charles J. Bishko, “The Liturgical Context for Fernando I’s Last Days According to the So-Called ‘Historia Silense,’” Hispania Sacra 17–18 (1964–1965), 50. 152. “FERDINANDI REGIS SUM LIBER. FERDINANDI REGIS SUM LIBER NECNON ET SANCIA REGINA.” Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz, Serafín Moralejo, María Virtudes Pardo Gómez, and María Araceli García Piñeiro, eds., Libro de horas de Fernando I de León (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1995), 78 (fol. 6r). 153. Art of Medieval Spain, 290; Francisco Prado-Vilar, “Lacrimae rerum: San Isidoro de León y la memoria del padre,” Goya 328 (2009): 205–8. 154. Ernst Dümmler, ed., “Eldrado Abbati Florus Simplex,” in Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. 2, MGH Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi, (Berlin, 1883), 549–50.

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A colophon in verse (208v) names the scribe and illustrator, and recalls that it was Queen Sancha who brought the manuscript into being: “Queen Sancha, as was her wish, made me what I am in the era one thousand and ninety, and three more. Petrus was my scribe, but Fructuosus was my illustrator,”155 Her role in the creation of the manuscript was not the only thing she wanted her husband to remember. The content she selected to accompany the Psalter and Canticles that form its core, including extra prayers, a long litany, and instructions adapted from Alcuin on how the king should read the Psalter, are highly penitential in nature. This is another kind of memory, that of recollecting one’s own sins, and offering prayer in the words of the psalms for their forgiveness. What did Fernando have to be penitential about? Following the litany and its penitential prayer, but preceding the colophon, a single folio is inserted on which, on an imperial purple background, a brief chronicle is written, listing the death dates of Vermudo II, his wife Elvira, Alfonso V, his wife Elvira, and Vermudo III (“strong fighter in war”) and the subsequent coronation of Fernando I as king in León. As related in the context of the manuscript of the Etymologies, Vermudo III was killed by Fernando I at the battle of Tamarón in 1037 and was the brother of Sancha, who produced this manuscript. This chronicle was a pointed reminder to Fernando of how much he owed to whom and why. Moreover, it was a permanent memorial of the dead rulers of León, rulers who needed the intercessory prayer of their descendants, as well as a record of the dates of their deaths, indicating when anniversary commemorations for them needed to take place. Its inclusion of their queens places attention on maternal as well as paternal lineage. The closest analog to this folio are the Carolingian and Ottonian Libri memoriales that preserve a record of the royal dead for memory and prayer.156 All those named in its list were buried in what would become the monastery of San Isidoro de León, where the bodies of Sancha and Fernando would one day rest and where they would receive prayers both from the religious of the community and from Urraca and Elvira Fernández, Sancha and Fernando’s daughters. The date of the creation of the manuscript suggests another motivation for penitence. It was copied in 1055. In 1054, Fernando killed his own brother García Sánchez III of Navarre at the battle of Atapuerca. By 1055, he was probably beginning his campaign against the Muslims at Badajoz. It was an

155. ”Sancia ceu uoluit/quod sum Regina peregit/Era millena nouies/dena quoque terna/ Petrus erat scriptor Fructosus denique pictor.” 156. For example, the Libri memoriales produced for the women’s communities of Remiremont and San Salvatore de Brescia; Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture, 77–88.

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opportune time to recall the king to his duty to remember and to ask for forgiveness for those sins a king must commit. Sancha’s own prayer book continues the penitential theme of her husband’s, and both manuscripts contain the highly penitential nocturnal office of the Old Spanish rite, included as a later addition in Fernando’s codex, perhaps after his wife’s was copied in 1059. The nocturnal office was a pivotal part of the monastic office and suggests a monasticization of prayer practice for this lay royal pair. Although these codices represent a very full tradition of the different responsories used in this office, they omit the concluding prayers found in other manuscripts. This suggests the texts were prepared not for a celebrant but for those who, like the king and queen, might want to follow along with the service and join in with the responses. Unlike some of the other Old Spanish offices, the nocturnal office retains a fairly simple and consistent structure from day to day, showing some variation on different days of the week but very little adaptation to different festal liturgical seasons and none at all to saints’ days. This relative simplicity would be easier to follow for the king and queen, neither of whom were liturgical professionals, than a rite that more fully accommodated the temporal and sanctoral cycle.157 The main reason for the inclusion of this office must be its basic message of penance, expressed both through its simple requirement to leave one’s bed in the dark and cold of the night to pray and through many of its texts. For example, the “miserationes” call five times for God to have mercy and then quote Lamentations 2:19: “Rise and give praise in the night and at the beginning of the vigils pour forth your heart like water in the sight of the Lord. Raise your hands to God for the remedy of your sins.”158 Canticles 21, 22, and 24, all confessions of sin and penance, follow this reading.159 Expanding this theme and emphasizing the importance of rising at night to confess one’s sin and ask for mercy are the “clamores”: “In the middle of the night I rose to confess to you on the judgements of your justice. The bonds of sins are wound around me, o Lord, and I have not forgotten your law. I prayed to your countenance from the bottom of my heart, ‘Have mercy on me God.’ I shouted to you, ‘O Lord,’ I said, ‘You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living. You who know the hidden deeds of everyone, cleanse me from my sin. Give me time that I might repent. I have sinned. Have mercy on me,

157. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 42. 158. Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 184 (fol. 210); Salamanca BU 2668, fol. 145. 159. Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 184–85 (fols. 210v–212); Salamanca BU 2668, fols. 145–49v.

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God.’”160 The text continues in this vein, emphasizing that the middle of the night is the right time for penance.161 The second section of the manuscript occupies its final two quires copied by three different scribe and is, in effect, a libellus precum, a collection of prayers and texts meant for the devotional use of an individual.162 The first scribe copied only the Athanasian Creed and then a second scribe copied a personal confession of sin written in the voice of Queen Sancha, which continues the penitential theme of the nocturnal office: “I confess to God, Holy Mary, and St. Michael the archangel, and all the angels and archangels, and to St. Peter the apostle and all the apostles and all the saints and to you, father, all my sins, whatever I have sinned, I, miserable and sinful Sancha through my pride: sin in thought, in speech, in pleasure, in pollution, in fornication, in consanguinity, in homicide, in perjury, in laughter, in appearance, in deed, in consent, and in all things with evil action; I seek indulgence for my sin.”163 The prayer seeks intercession and forgiveness, and is followed in the manuscript with a response from the priest asking God to forgive her sins. I suggest we take this confession seriously. I believe that Sancha’s consciousness of her own and Fernando’s sinfulness was strong, genuine, and frightening and that it motivated her sponsorship of all four of the manuscripts that I have discussed in this section. I have already argued that the added chronicle in Fernando’s manuscript preserves reminders of his murder of her brother, and Sancha’s confession may reflect her own biography too. With respect to the charge of homicide, because she shared in the spoils won by Fernando after he killed both of their brothers, the blame attaches to her as well. There is, moreover, a suggestion in the early twelfth-century Historia silense that she urged Fernando to kill his brother to avenge her own brother’s death at his hands.164 On the charge of consanguinity, she and Fernando were related within three degrees of kinship. Finally, on the charges of fornication and pollution, as I hypothesize in chapter 3, prior to her marriage to Fernando, Sancha may have been consecrated to religious life like her aunts had been and her daughters would be, and therefore she may have seen her union with Fernando as politically essential but spiritually suspect. In any case, as did all medieval figures who shared the hazardous duties of rulership, Queen Sancha had genuine reasons to be aware of her own sinfulness in a range of areas. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164.

Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 187 (fols. 215–15v); Salamanca BU 2668, fols. 163v–64. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 42–43. See my edition of this section in ibid., 59–66. Ibid., 59. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 187.

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Because of the personalized confession naming Sancha, we can date the addition of the confession and the creed to the codex to between 1059 and her death on November 27, 1067.165 The remainder of the codex, copied as an addendum by the third and final scribe of the manuscript in a much more casual, heavily ligatured Visigothic script, requires a different date. In addition to copying the remainder of the manuscript, this section made corrections to Sancha’s confession that help us date its work. Above the word “Sancia” in the confession, this new hand has written “Urracka.” This is Urraca Fernández, the oldest child of Sancha and Fernando, and thus we can date these emendations and the texts that follow the confession to after Sancha’s death in 1067, when her daughter would have inherited the manuscript. This hand has also feminized the masculine nouns of the confession, so whereas Sancha was content to call herself “peccator,” her daughter shifted to “peccatrix.” It has corrected a misplaced nominative to a dative and changed second-person plural verbs referring to the priest to whom the confession was made to the less respectful and formal singular, possibly taking the priest down a peg or two. These changes betray both a feminine self-consciousness and a degree of Latin learning. The Historia silense reports that Fernando had all his children educated in the liberal arts, in a passage taken almost word for word from Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne.166 Even if Urraca was not herself the scribe who made the changes, the impetus behind the changes must have been hers. Urraca’s addendum begins with a litany of the saints, preceded by a recitation of the seven penitential psalms (Psalms 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, and 142) and then the Kyrie eleison. There are parallels to the format for this litany at Cluny. The litany began as a form of private prayer, and Cluny’s early customaries requiring that the office of Prime be followed by the seven penitential psalms followed by a litany, as we have in Urraca’s addendum, are the first place we see the litany prescribed as part of the daily horarium of a monastic community.167 Several Iberian saints not found in Fernando’s litany are included in Urraca’s addendum. She adds Saints Claudius, Lupercus, and Victoricus, all thought to be martyred in León and whose relics her father had transferred to San Isidoro; Saint Florentia, sister of Leander, for whom he wrote the rule for nuns discussed in chapter 3 as an influence on later royal women such as Urraca; and Isidore, patron of her house of San Isidoro de León.

165. Reilly, Kingdom of Léon-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 21. 166. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 184; Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, 38. 167. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 46–48.

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Some additions reinforce a Cluniac connection. The cult of Florentia is first documented at Cluny in the Liber tramitis, a Cluniac customary copied in the mid-eleventh century for the abbey of Farfa, and may have been inspired by relics of the saint possessed by Cluny. She is paired in Urraca’s litany, as well as in the Liber tramitis and other Cluniac liturgical texts, with the little-known saint, Consortia. This legendary figure was said to be the daughter of Eucher, bishop of Lyon and her headless body was brought to Cluny at an unknown date. Her cult is documented exclusively in Cluniac liturgical manuscripts and in Urraca’s addendum.168 Saints Facundus and Primitivus, absent from Fernando’s litany, are also included in Urraca’s addendum. These saints were the ancient patrons of the monastery of Sahagún, a community that enjoyed considerable support from Alfonso VI, the brother of Urraca Fernández, and where he and his wives would be buried. Alfonso appointed a monk from Cluny, Robert, as the abbot of Sahagún before 1080, around the time he married Abbot Hugh of Cluny’s niece, Constance. On June 27, 1077, Pope Gregory VII asked Abbot Hugh to recall Robert to Cluny as a way of keeping pressure on Alfonso VI to effect the full replacement of the Old Spanish liturgy with the Roman liturgy that he had promised four years earlier, and he was replaced by another Cluniac, Bernard of Sédirac, who became the archbishop of Toledo after its reconquest from the Muslims in 1085. Sahagún conformed its liturgy and uses to those of Cluny.169 This evidence of Cluniac influence in Urraca’s addendum to her mother’s book is striking. I have argued elsewhere that, although credit for forging the connection between Cluny and León-Castilla is usually given to Fernando I, who is traditionally said to have offered Cluny a years grant of 1,000 gold pieces to pay for vestments, a grant that his son, Alfonso VI, eventually doubled, it is during the reign of Alfonso VI (not that of his father) that close connections grew between Cluny and the kingdom of LeónCastilla.170 Alfonso VI supported Cluny with money and gifts; he imported Cluniac monastic customs and desired to have Cluniac personnel reform his monasteries and rule his bishoprics. His first donation was the outright gift of the monastery of San Isidoro de Dueñas on December 29, 1073.171 The date of this grant, on the anniversary of Fernando’s death, makes clear its 168. Ibid., 48. 169. Ibid., 48–49. 170. Pick, “Rethinking Cluny in Spain,” 1–17. 171. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 2: no. 18; he gives a date of May 29, 1073, but notes that two versions of it have the December date. Charles Bishko accepts the December date, as I do, on the basis of the anniversary; “Liturgical Context,” 18.

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memorial and intercessory intentions. More donations of monasteries to Cluny followed the first. Cluniac saints were not the only influence from the Burgundian house that found its way into Urraca’s addendum. It was Cluny that established that the seven penitential psalms followed by the litany, as they appear in the addendum, were to be said after the office of Prime, which took place at dawn. These were followed, as they are in this manuscript, by a series of collects and capitella consisting of psalm verses intended for the purpose of remembering the dead, ending with the capitular office, during which, at Cluny, the names of the dead were read on their anniversaries. Ulrich of Zell, whose Consuetudines describe practice at Cluny in the 1060s, outlines the post-Prime liturgy: “After Prime, beyond the psalms I have already mentioned, follow the seven penitential psalms. After the litany, which is to be said at this moment, and before the collects which are to follow, four psalms are interposed, that is, psalms 69 [Deus in adiutorium meum intende], 120 [Levavi oculos meos], 122 [Ad te levavi oculos] and for the faithful departed, 42 [Iudica me]”; the capitular office follows afterward.172 In Urraca’s addendum, these four psalms begin after an insertion not mentioned by the Cluniac, the Carolingian prayer “Per horum omnium sanctorum,” from the Officia per ferias found in Fernando’s Psalter after his litany.173 Ulrich’s customary lists the collects and verses that follow the litany, and many of these are also listed in Urraca’s addendum.174 According to Ulrich, two collects in particular—“Deus, cui propruim” and “Pretende, domine”— were said especially for the intention of the deceased faithful, which fits with what we know about the intercessory and memorial interests of Urraca as domina with her sister over the royal cemetery, monastery, and palace of San Isidoro de León.175 Bernard of Cluny, who wrote his own Cluniac Consuetudines around 1085 to amplify and correct Ulrich’s version, states that at each hour of the daily office benefactors of Cluny, among whom Alfonso and Urraca could be counted, were remembered by the responsory “Deus, in adiutorium meum” and the collect “Pretende, domine.” Moreover, one of the collects in Urraca’s addendum, “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui facis mirabilia,” was said at Cluny for the intention of the rulers of Spain, Fernando and Sancha. The selection of these particular Cluniac liturgical 172. Ulrich of Zell, Antiquiores consuetudines cluniacensis monasterii, in PL (Paris, 1853), 149: coll. 646D–647A. 173. Díaz y Díaz, Libro de horas, 179 (fols. 199v–199bis v); Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 52–53. 174. Ulrich of Zell, Antiquiores consuetudines cluniacensis monasterii, PL 149: coll. 648D–649A; Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 64–65. 175. Ulrich of Zell, Antiquiores consuetudines cluniacensis monasterii, PL 149: coll. 650D.

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extracts was not random; the whole complex of psalms, prayers and litany emphasized the memorial, penitential, and intercessory functions for the dead that Urraca was expected to fulfill and made specific reference to the connection between Cluny and the royal house of León-Castilla. Urraca’s use of them is further evidence that the coming of Cluny altered her role in memory of the dead but by no means eliminated it.176 How might Sancha, a laywoman and a queen, and Urraca, at most a consecrated virgin but not an abbess or a nun, have used this manuscript? What kinds of models of royal prayer were available to Sancha, whose nocturnal office envisioned penitential prayer in the middle of the night, and Urraca, who expanded it to dawn with the office of Prime? Royal women had an ancient hagiographical precedent for performing penance at night. Venantius Fortunatus describes how the sixth-century Merovingian queen Radegund left the bed of King Clothar I in the middle of each night to pray in private, prostrated on a hair shirt. Radegund was included in the litany of Urraca’s addendum, although she was not named in Fernando’s litany and was remembered neither in his calendar nor in any of the other extant early Iberian calendars. In the Middle Ages, Radegund was deemed to be a suitable model for her successor queens. Several centuries later, in a life partly modeled on that of Radegund, the Ottonian queen, Matilda (d. 968) was described as participating in a nightly liturgy: “During the night, she would find some way to leave the king’s side and sneak off to the church, for she loved prayer more than her husband’s bed. Who would believe how she poured herself out in prayer while her husband was away, or how she would cling to Christ’s feet as if he was there with her, from the cock’s first crow until dawn’s first light on the morrow?”177 Mathilda’s prayer began when Sancha’s ended, at cockcrow, and continued until dawn. In both cases, Radegund and Mathilda, like Sancha, took the initiative to perform nightly prayer. Sancha’s exceptional contribution seems to have been to encourage her husband to join her by giving him his own book.178 One final example of royal female prayer involved a Cluniac connection. Odilo, the abbot of Cluny (d. 1048), wrote a life of Adelaide (d. 999), Ottonian empress and matriarch. The life emphasizes her charitable donations, especially to Cluny, and her monastic foundations, but it also underscores her own participation in personal prayer. On her deathbed, after receiving 176. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 53–54. 177. From “The ‘Older Life’ of Queen Mathilda,” Sean Gilsdorf, ed. Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 76. 178. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 54–56.

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communion and extreme unction, she asked those attending her, both clergy and laity, to recite the penitential psalms and the litany of the saints, and she joined in, “Psalming with those singing the psalms, and praying with those praying.”179 These imperial models are especially relevant, given the religious and cultural connections between the German Empire and the Spanish kingdom, made visible in some of the objects I have discussed earlier in this chapter. Sancha and then Urraca were thus joined to a broader current of royal female prayer, a current whose Cluniac strain was adopted by Urraca. Sancha, and then Urraca, used these manuscripts to strengthen a web of networks intended to buttress the monarchical rule of their family. Books linked Sancha and her husband; Sancha, her husband, and her paternal family; Sancha and her son, and her brother; Sancha and Urraca; Sancha and San Isidoro de León; and finally and above all, Sancha and God. The memory contained in them of the personal sinfulness of the family was balanced by the gift of the books, promises of prayer and remediation, and hopes for their future reward, for salvation after death. The contents of these books, all characteristic of a monastery rather than a royal family, bound their users to Heaven and urged Heaven not to forget them. Sancha stood both outside these manuscripts, supporting their creation and determining their form, and inside them, created by them, named in colophons and labyrinths and inscriptions, speaking in her Confession, and even depicted in the act of presenting one manuscript to her husband. She is difficult to forget.

179. Odilo of Cluny, “Epitaphium domine Adelheid,” in Die Lebensbeschreinbung der Kaiserin Adelheid von Abt Odilo von Cluny, ed. Herbert Paulhart (Graz: Institut fur Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 1962), 43–44, cited in, Patrick Henriet, La parole et la prière au Moyen Âge (Paris: De Boeck Université, 2000), 326.

Looking Forward, Looking Beyond

By the time both his sisters were dead, Elvira in 1099 and Urraca in 1101, Alfonso VI’s years of expansion and growth as king were already behind him.1 The triumph of Toledo in 1085 had already been followed by the devastating defeat at Zallāqa in 1086. He swiftly faced a hostile Islamic Spain newly united under the Almoravids (al-Murābiṭūn), a resurgent group emerging out of Berber North Africa that was dedicated to conquest and reformed Islam. They conquered most of the old weakened Muslim taifa kingdoms in Spain and put an end to the paria payments of protection money that had supported the Christian kingdoms for so long. What had been the kingdom of Toledo south of the Tajo reverted to Muslim control, and the city of Toledo remained a vulnerable Christian outpost. Only Zaragoza still paid tribute to Alfonso VI, and Pedro I of Aragón was steadily encroaching on that territory. At the same time, Alfonso remained successful at preventing the Almoravids from reinforcing and expanding their gains, and he was able to consolidate his hold over the Transduero region through repopulation. Alfonso’s early success at winning territory meant he had to delegate authority over the farthest reaches of his kingdom to powerful magnates 1. On the last years of Alfonso VI’s reign, see Reilly, Kingdom of Léon-Castilla under Alfonso VI esp. chaps. 15–17; Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), chap. 1.

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who were less exclusively loyal to his interests than his sisters had been. For a long time, his only legitimate child was a daughter, Urraca, born around 1080 to Alfonso and his second wife, Constance of Burgundy. In the early 1090s, she was married to Raymond of Burgundy, often called Constance’s cousin, although in fact the two were related only distantly. Her half-sister Teresa (d. 1130), born to Alfonso’s mistress, was married to Constance’s nephew, Henry of Burgundy. Alfonso delegated rule over the province of Galicia to Raymond, and he delegated the territory south of that, which would become Portugal, to Henry. Alfonso’s daughters, with their husbands, filled the places at court that had belonged to Alfonso’s sisters, but it was very different to have two unmarried sisters, who could be expected to share the king’s interests fully, at his right hand than it was to have his daughters with their husbands, who were rivals for power with each other and with the king and who had their own heirs who needed to be provided for. Teresa’s son, Afonso Henriques, who would later rule over the kingdom of Portugal, was not born until around the time of Alfonso VI’s death in 1109, but Urraca gave birth to Sancha Raimúndez around 1090 and to a son in 1105, who would become Alfonso VII. The birth of this Alfonso presented an implicit challenge to Alfonso VI’s plans to establish Sancho Alfónsez, his son by Zaida, the Muslim widow of the emir of Córdoba, born in the mid-1090s, as his heir.2 Alfonso VI’s reign marks a huge shift in the dynastic marriage strategies of the family that ruled the kingdom of León-Castilla. As we have seen, the kings of the Asturias, León, and León-Castilla preferred to marry with the daughters of neighboring powerful nobles, marrying down as it were, but they kept their daughters for themselves when at all politically possible, consecrating them as virgins and not arranging marriages for them. Alfonso radically transformed this strategy, using his own marriages and those of his children to create connections across Christian Europe and even, in the case of his union with Zaida, with Muslim Spain. In doing so, he changed the possibilities and opportunities of royal daughters in fundamental ways, bringing them in line with contemporary currents throughout Europe that used daughters in marriage alliances with friends and enemies. Although the origin of Alfonso’s brides is still in question, their foreignness is not: all came from outside the normal ambit of powerful magnates and neighboring nobles.3 None of Fernando and Sancha’s children was married at the time of the deaths of those rulers, so we can be sure that Alfonso’s

2. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 477–86. 3. On his brides, see ibid., 1: 445–77; Reilly, Kingdom of Léon-Castilla under Alfonso VI, 79, 107–8, 247, 296–98, 338–40.

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marriage strategies were his own and were probably initially devised because his neighboring rulers were the brothers with whom he was competing for power. An English tradition posits a betrothal between him and the daughter of William the Conqueror, but his first bride that we can be certain of was Agnes, the daughter of William VIII of Aquitaine in 1073 or 1074. This marriage brought him into the sphere of Cluniac influence for the first time. Alfonso repudiated Agnes, and in 1079, he married Constance, whose Burgundian family were even more closely tied to Cluny. After she died, he married Berta, a Tuscan of unknown parents; Isabel, who may be Zaida, converted and christened; and finally Beatrix, possibly of French origin.4 At the same time, he took as his mistress Jimena Muñoz, the daughter of a powerful Cantabrian noble and the sort of woman who, in an earlier age, he might have married for the sake of a relationship with her family.5 His successors also followed this practice of marrying outside the kingdom but pursuing informal relationships that were politically useful with members of the high nobility. Queen Urraca took as consort Count Pedro González de Lara, and her son, Alfonso VII, pursued relationships with Gontroda Pérez, the daughter of Asturian Count Pedro Díaz, and with Urraca Fernández of the powerful Castro family.6 Alfonso VI had at least five daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, and every single one ended up married. I have already discussed the marriages of Urraca and Teresa to competing Burgundian houses. Another daughter married Raymond IV, count of Toulouse; yet another, after her father’s death, married Roger II, count of Sicily; and only Sancha Alfónsez had a first marriage with someone in the kingdom, Rodrigo González de Lara. This marriage was organized after Alfonso VI’s death, during the reign of Queen Urraca.7 Alfonso’s practice of marrying his daughters off sharply distinguished him from his parents and from his other royal predecessors. It marks the entry of León-Castilla into a world in which the power of royal women came to depend on whom they married, above who their father or brother was, and in which women’s authority came primarily from their husbands, not from their lineage. Constance Bouchard has rejected an earlier argument

4. On the complexities of the story of Zaida, see Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 123–28. 5. José María Canal Sánchez-Pagín, “Jimena Muñoz, amiga de Alfonso VI,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 21 (1991), 21–26. 6. Reilly, Queen Urraca, 47; Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Alfonso VII, 1126– 1157 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 141. 7. Reilly, Alfonso VII, 141–41.

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that the power of women diminished between the ninth and twelfth centuries as a preference for agnatic over cognatic kin grew. She observes that the power of the elite wife increased in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.8 I add as a caveat to her argument, however, that the power of the wife increased at the expense of the sister. The shift from women as sisters to women as wives seems to have happened at slightly different times across Europe. LeónCastilla was one of the last places where the shift occurred, and it happened late enough that enough evidence has been preserved to make the earlier power of sisters more fully visible than elsewhere. But as rapidly as Alfonso VI changed royal marriage practices, the changes this created in the role of royal daughters did not mean they lost every part of the role they once held. Indeed, the twelfth century witnessed the two most powerful royal daughters up to this point in the history of León-Castilla. The first was Alfonso VI’s daughter Urraca, whom Bernard Reilly considers unique as both a woman and crowned head ruling in her own right in the twelfth century.9 After her half-brother Sancho Alfónsez was made the king’s heir and her own husband died in 1107, Urraca might have thought she would be relegated to simply holding lordship over Galicia until her son could claim it. But in 1108, Sancho Alfónsez, along with the flower of the nobility of León-Castilla, was slaughtered at the battle of Uclés by an Almoravid army. With the kingdom in disarray, and close to death, Alfonso VI chose Urraca as his new heir. Pursuing his new strategy of supporting exogamous marriage, however, he arranged for Urraca to marry Alfonso I, king of Aragón, before he died in 1109. If he had hoped that this marriage would protect her kingdom’s western flank, he would have been sorely disappointed. Faced with Alfonso I’s claims to her kingdom based on the tradition that marrying the king’s daughter gave him her domain, Urraca separated from him, not without cost. Queen Urraca inherited a kingdom whose leadership had been decimated by the defeat at Uclés two years before. Moreover, she faced rivals for power not only in the shape of her husband in Aragón and the Muslims on her southern border but also her half-sister Teresa and her husband, Count Henry, menacing from Portugal and Diego Gelmírez, bishop then archbishop of Compostela, who had the custody of her son and who fought in the name of protecting the boy’s rights in Galicia against his mother and step-father.10 She was the subject of a hostile historiography issuing from her enemies in

8. Bouchard, Those of my Blood, 133–34. 9. Reilly, Queen Urraca, 352. 10. On Queen Urraca’s reign, see ibid.; Elena Lobato Yuanes, Urraca I: La corte castellano-leonesaen el siglo XII (Palencia, Spain: Institución Tello Téllez de Meneses, 2000).

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Compostela that for many years negatively colored our appreciation of her reign. A more dispassionate view sees her as remarkably successful at mitigating her losses and in her use of diplomacy to play her enemies off against each other. By and large, her rule was accepted by the powerful of the kingdom, especially once she made it clear her son was her heir. And the country that she left her son Alfonso VII was more secure—and more securely a country—than the one she had received from her father. The Historia silense, so favorable in its evaluation of Urraca Fernández’s role and character, was written during the reign of her namesake. The tradition of powerful royal daughters in León-Castilla, the notion that royal women could be dominae, exerting lordship, and the recent positive memory of Alfonso VI’s two sisters surely played a role in the acceptance of Queen Urraca’s rule. Queen Urraca’s daughter, Sancha Raímundez, was another powerful royal daughter in twelfth-century León-Castilla.11 The oldest of all Alfonso VI’s grandchildren, she escaped his marriage strategies and lived her life on the model of her great aunts, Urraca and Elvira Fernández, although, like them, it is unclear whether she was ever formally consecrated as a virgin. It is not certain when Sancha was born, but her mother was only in her early teens when she married Count Raymond in the early 1090s. Still, Sancha was old enough to be mentioned in Elvira Fernández’s will in 1099. Elvira described herself as having raised Sancha (“mea nepta Sancia que crio”), and she bequeathed to her the ancient monasteries of Santa María de Wamba, San Miguel de Escalada, and San Salvador de Tábara, the last of which may have been in a state of ruin at the time.12 Each community traced its origins back to a foundation date in the late ninth or early tenth century. They were established in the aftermath of the drive by Alfonso III to expand into Muslim territory and to consolidate his hold over the area north of the Duero. Elvira’s bequest to Sancha connected her to the oldest traditions of the kingdom of León, and possibly to the traditional roles of royal daughters, at a time when a latter-day Alfonso, her grandfather, was pushing his own expansive efforts south of the Duero. Without a will from Urraca Fernández, we cannot be certain Sancha directly inherited all the properties held by the sisters on the death of the survivor of the pair, although this seems likely. Based on Luisa García Calles’s study of her holdings, which necessarily focuses on those she alienated, we

11. On her career, see García Calles, Doña Sancha; María Encarnación Martín López, “Colección documental de la infanta Doña Sancha (1118–1159),” in León y su historia, vol. 8, 139–345. León: CEISI, 2003. 12. Martin, “Testament d’Elvire,” 38.

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know that Sancha was very, very wealthy, even wealthier than her greataunts had been. In addition to the traditional caput of royal female holdings, the community of San Isidoro and San Pelayo in León, she had substantial holdings in León, Tierra de Campos, Zamora, Covarrubias, Bierzo, and the Asturias, as well as some holdings near Toledo. It is less certain that she maintained the presence in Galicia that her great-aunts once held.13 When Alfonso VII became king, succeeding their mother in 1126, Sancha was able to translate her wealth and her relationship with her brother into real clout within his kingdom. Bernard Reilly calls her the major figure of the kingdom, after the king. She issued seventy-six charters in her own name, something that Alfonso VII’s queens never did, and confirmed some 14 percent of the king’s diplomas. Her role was so crucial that she was given the title of queen by her brother.14 All I can do here is sketch some of the lineaments of her impact. Sancha Raimúndez is a figure who deserves attentive scholarly attention. Nonetheless, Sancha’s prominence conceals how much some things had changed by her time. Sancha herself transformed the monastery of San Isidoro and San Pelayo into a community of male canons, sending the women religious of the community to Carbajal and thus removing women from the care of her family dead in favor of priests who could say Mass.15 And however much Alfonso VII may have appreciated Sancha’s role in his kingdom, like his grandfather Alfonso VI with his own sisters, he did not wish to have his own daughters emulate her role in the kingdom. Although he followed the model of his great-grandfather, Fernando I, in partitioning his kingdom on his death between his two sons, he followed his grandfather in marrying outside his own kingdom, first to Berenguela of Barcelona and then to Rica of distant Silesia. He found royal bridegrooms for those of his daughters old enough to wed during his lifetime, marrying his daughter Constanza to Louis VII of France, Sancha to Sancho VI of Navarra, and the illegitimate Urraca to García VI of Navarra. Only Urraca, raised under the guardianship of Sancha Raimúndez, held a prominent public role through her father, when, after 1153, she supervised the kingdom of the Asturias on his behalf.16 When they laid claim to the properties still described as belonging to the infantazgo, the heritage of the royal daughters, his daughters held them as married women, and any connection to a religious role for them seems to have gone into abeyance.

13. 14. 15. 16.

García Calles, Doña Sancha, 105–21. Reilly, Alfonso VII, 139–40. García Calles, Doña Sancha, 77–80; Martín López, “Doña Sancha,” no. 44. Reilly, Alfonso VII, 19–21, 114, 118–19, 143–44.

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The memory of royal daughters with legitimate power because of their fathers survived, however, and it meant that daughters could be useful at times when sons were youthful or lacking. One royal daughter, Berenguela (d. 1246), the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castilla and queen of León through her marriage to Alfonso IX, used this memory to reknit the two kingdoms together after they had been partitioned following the death of Alfonso VII.17 Berenguela’s marriage to Alfonso IX was intended to create peace between the two kingdoms, but the marriage came to an end in 1204 when Pope Innocent parted the pair because of consanguinity, and she returned to Castilla. She served briefly as regent for her younger brother, Enrique I, after her father’s death in 1214, and when the youthful king died following an accident in 1217, she herself became heir to the throne of Castilla, which she passed to her son, Fernando III. When Fernando’s father died, Berenguela took care to ensure that he, not his older half-sisters, would inherit that throne, thus uniting León and Castilla again. She did not, however, abdicate all her powers to her son and remained, with him, queen-regnant. She retained a legitimate authority that did not depend only on her son.18 Like royal daughters before her, her power and authority were based in the lands over which she continued to hold lordship, and she continued to lend her lordship to her son, supporting his reign in a relationship of advice and counsel that might recall the way contemporaries were describing the relationship between Christ the King and his own mother, Mary Queen of Heaven, who could petition and advise a Son who granted her wishes out of the love he bore his mother.19 It also recalls the relationship of mutual support that Alfonso VI had with his sisters, although here a rhetoric of motherhood has replaced the older one of virginity and prayer as providing the basis for this relationship. Rather than being an aberration or a total innovation, Berenguela’s relationship with Fernando was a new way of expressing the power of a royal daughter, now in relationship with her son rather than with her brother, and a new way that monarchy was shared in the royal family. Berenguela remained involved with the monastic foundations of her female predecessors. She profited from her marriage to Alfonso IX of León to reconnect to the religious houses possessed by her female predecessors in this kingdom, making donations to San Isidoro in León and San Pedro de Eslonza, as well as confirming Alfonso VII’s fuero for Eslonza and taking it 17. On the career and impact of Berenguela of Castilla, see Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Bianchini, Queen’s Hand. 18. Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, 98–101. 19. Ibid., 9–10, 153, 163–64; Bianchini, Queen’s Hand, 4, 10–13.

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under her protection. Lucas of Túy reports that she built a palace for herself adjacent to the monastery of San Isidoro during her marriage to Alfonso IX and made gifts to that monastery and other churches of gold, jewels, and textiles. She also retained claims to the Castilian monastery of Covarrubias.20 Moreover, even the religious role of the royal daughter had not been forgotten during this period, and neither had the desire of the royal family to establish a place where their bodies could be kept and prayed over by the women of their own family in a location that could also serve as a court. Alfonso VIII and Leonor founded a monastery of women under the Cistercian rule called Las Huelgas at Burgos in 1187. The term used in its foundation charter to describe these women is deo dicatae (dedicated or given to God), a by-then archaic phrase that recalled the ancient tradition of the consecrated virgins of Iberia, royal and otherwise, and in particular the foundation of San Isidoro de León. It would imitate that house in its organizational structure, governed not only by an abbess but, above the abbess, by a royal domina who ruled over the whole house. Constanza, one of Berenguela’s sisters, ruled over Las Huelgas as its domina, as did another Constanza, Berenguela’s daughter, and a namesake granddaughter. Queen Berenguela herself moved into the community in 1244 and was called its domina or señora.21 Like San Isidoro, Las Huelgas contained a royal palace and also a royal necropolis, housing the bodies of its founders, Alfonso VIII and Leonor; most of their children, including Enrique I and Queen Berenguela; and other descendants of their line. In its patronage of Las Huelgas, we see that the royal family had only modified, not eliminated, the way it practiced keeping-while-giving. And like royal daughters before her, Queen Berenguela gave gifts to Las Huelgas. She has been plausibly credited with patronage of the Las Huelgas Beatus, an illustrated copy of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse like the one (described in chapter 4) created under the patronage of Queen Sancha. Berenguela’s manuscript contains the genealogical roundels and commentary on Daniel of Queen Sancha’s version. Most strikingly, its dedicatory colophon expresses an intercessionary role not for the nuns of the community where it would reside but for its patroness herself. It includes two intercessory prayers that can be found in the Cistercian Liber usuum.22 The first is for the protection of the unnamed patroness of the manuscript and the 20. Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, 74–76, 80; Bianchini, Queen’s Hand, 50–54, 162–63, 171–72. 21. Miriam Shadis, “Piety, Politics, and Power: The Patronage of Leonor of England and Her Daughters Berenguela of León and Blanche of Castile,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 204–10. 22. Raizman, “Prayer,” 235, 242–49.

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community, and the second is a variation on the prayer “Deus cui proprium,” said especially for the intention of the deceased, that was first used in LeónCastilla in Urraca Fernández’s addendum to her mother’s prayer book.23 The Las Huelgas Beatus manuscript was copied from the tenth-century Beatus associated with Tábara, one of the monasteries that Elvira Fernández gave to her great-niece Sancha Raímundez in her will. Both the foundation of Las Huelgas and the patronage of the Beatus manuscript appear to have been done in conscious imitation of the work of their royal female forebearers a century or so earlier. This family exported some of the religious charism and authority of its royal women outside the kingdom of Castilla. Berenguela’s sister Blanche, perhaps the best-known member of the family, left Spain to marry Louis VIII, who died shortly after claiming the throne of France, leaving Blanche as regent for her young son, Louis IX. Even after he attained his majority, the king and his mother worked closely together, and she guarded his kingdom when he later went on crusade. Blanche’s foundation of Maubuisson was, like Las Huelgas, a Cistercian foundation for women, and with the other communities that Blanche had a hand in building, Royaumont and Le Lys, it was a place for royal burial. Like her sister Berenguela at Las Huelgas, she retired to Maubuisson at the end of her life and was buried there, along with many of her family.24 Blanche’s only daughter, Isabelle, never married but established herself in the monastery of Poor Clares, founded for her at Longchamp by her brother Louis. She refused to be made its abbess, however, and we might call her, like the daughters of León-Castilla, Longchamp’s domina.25 A brief look at the other Christian kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula highlights their parallels with León-Castilla and also what was distinctive about that realm. Queen Urraca’s illegitimate half-sister, Teresa, was the first person to describe herself as monarch of Portugal. She fought with Urraca for greater independence and a larger share of their father’s patrimony until Urraca’s death in 1126. In 1128, she was defeated by her own son, Afonso Henriques, who took the kingdom from her and ruled independently of León-Castilla. He took care in his diplomas to emphasize that his right to

23. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 53–54, 64. 24. Alexandra Gajewski, “The Patronage Question under Review: Queen Blanche of Castile (1188–1252) and the Architecture of the Cistercian Abbeys at Royaumont, Maubuisson, and Le Lys,” in Reassessing the Role of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 214–20. 25. Sean L. Field, The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 2–3.

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be called king came from his mother, Teresa, a king’s daughter. His own four daughters—Mafalda, Urraca, Sancha and Teresa—were all given the title of queen in his diplomas, and he relied on Urraca and Teresa to help him rule after his wife’s death. Teresa was named as the coheir of his kingdom with her brother Sancho I. Sancho I’s daughters were also called queen in his documents. Some of them married, while others entered religious life. His will intended them to hold extensive territorial and domanial power after his death. Their brother, Alfonso II went to war against them over their inheritance, and they seem to have been the last generation of powerful Portuguese royal daughters.26 In all these kingdoms, kings used their nobles, sons, wives, and sometimes their daughters to maintain control over the extensive lands they ruled. In the Crown of Aragón, formed from the union of the kingdom of Aragón and the county of Barcelona in the twelfth century, this practice became somewhat formalized in the office of the lieutenant general, starting from the reign of Jaume I (1213–1276). Aragonese queens began to be named lieutenants starting in the fourteenth century, and this practice culminated in the expansive role of María of Castilla, who ruled Catalunya virtually independently during the decades-long absences in Italy of her husband, Alfonso V.27 Although María of Castilla was the daughter of a king, Enrique III of Castilla, it was through her marriage to Alfonso V and her role as wife that she won temporal power over Catalunya. The last and most famous of the Spanish medieval queens did win her kingdom through her father. The daughter of Juan II, Isabel inherited Castilla on her half-brother’s death in 1474 and ruled it independently of her husband Fernando’s Aragón. Her partisans worked hard to make her rule palatable, despite her gender, and did so using many of the tropes and themes we have seen associated with earlier royal daughters. One of these was her status as the daughter of a king. In an early sermon, Hernando de Talavera compared Isabel to an eagle, “queen of birds,” renewing Spain. The eagle was the symbol of her patron saint, John the Evangelist, and linked her also to her 26. Miriam Shadis, “The First Queens of Portugal and the Building of the Realm,” in Reassessing the Role of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 675–78; Stephen Lay, The Reconquest Kings of Portugal (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 55–59. On Queen Teresa, see Luís Carlos Amaral and Mário Jorge Barroca, A condesa-raihna (Rainhas de Portugal. Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2012). On the daughters of Afonso I, see Maria Alegria Fernandes Marques, Nuno Pizarro Dias, Bernardo de Sá-Nogueira, and José Varandas, As primeiras rainhas (Rainhas de Portugal. Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2012), 60–82. 27. Earenfight, King’s Other Body, 47–52. On María de Luna, daughter of a Castilian king and an Aragonese queen-lieutenant, see Nuria Silleras-Fernandez, Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

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father, Juan II. Her legitimate descent from her father was contrasted with accusations that her niece and rival, Juana, was not the legitimate offspring of Isabel’s half-brother, Enrique IV, who was described as both impotent and homosexual.28 The precedent for Isabel’s rule was traced back all the way to Ermesinda, the daughter of the hero Pelayo, who wrested the Asturias from the Muslims in the eighth century. And like royal daughters in the eleventh century, her power was authorized by associations made between her and the Virgin Mary. Here the point of comparison was not her virginity but her motherhood, of the nation and of her son and heir, and, as a consequence, her role in the redemption of Castilla not only from the corrupt rule of Enrique IV but also from what was viewed as an originary corruption of the realm. Just as Mary compensated for the sin of Eve, so Isabel’s rule redeemed Spain from the crime of King Roderic, when he raped the daughter of one of his counts and brought on the Muslim Conquest in 711.29 Another element of early medieval Iberian rulership that persisted was the practice of uniting a royal palace with a monastery and a mausoleum. The classic example is the edifice of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, built by Philip II in the sixteenth century as a palace, royal monastery, and necropolis. The royal bodies of the dead, entombed in its depths, continue to be inalienable possessions of the dynasty, supporting the authority of the living monarch. The monastery, however, was established for an order of male Jeronimites, and the royal daughters had no strong connection to the place. An outlet for royal women in religious life was filled by the Poor Clare monastery of the Descalzas Reales, founded in Madrid by Philip II’s sister Juana on the site of an old royal palace. She occupied the traditional role of a royal sister who supported her brother, returning from the deathbed of her Portuguese husband to serve from 1554 until 1559 as Philip’s regent while he was in England pursuing a marriage with Mary Tudor. The monastery became a home for widowed queens and royal daughters, among other elite women, and it retained close ties to, and influence in, the court.30 Monarchy in the Spanish kingdoms, both in the region and period I have studied closely in this book and more broadly, was a family affair. As Theresa Earenfight notes, the fact that monarchy is fundamentally an institution devised

28. Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Isabel of Castile,” Renaissance Quarterly 50 (2000), 38–39, 42. 29. Ibid., 50–53; Barbara Weissberger, Isabel Rules (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 39, 46, 104–24. 30. José Martínez Millán, “Familia real y grupos políticos: La princesa Doña Juana de Austria,” in La corte de Felipe II, ed. José Martínez Millán (Madrid: Alianza, 1994), 88–100; Luís Fernández de Retana, Doña Juana de Austria (Madrid: Editorial el Perpetuo Socorro, 1955), 214–20.

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for governing organized around a family has been obscured by generations of focusing only on the king.31 The king was at the apex of that family, but his security and ability to exert his authority depended not only on networks of relationship with nobles, rivals, and members of the Church but also on relationships within the family. Brothers were often the kings of rival kingdoms, created through partition by their common father, and could be serious competitors for power. Sons could be united to the rule of their fathers in co-kingship, a device that supported a smooth transition of power on the king’s death when all was well but that created powerful antagonists when conflict erupted between father and son. Wives who were the daughters of local nobles could serve as hostages for the good behavior of their fathers. When they were the daughters of powerful rulers outside the kingdom, they created long-distance relationships and allegiances, and could, like Alfonso VI’s wife Constance with Cluny, be the vector for introducing new political, religious, and social forces into the kingdom. And wives, sons, brothers, daughters, and sisters could also help kings keep control over the farther-flung parts of their domain. In this book, I have concentrated on the daughters and sisters in the royal family networks in León-Castilla because theirs was the role that has been hitherto least appreciated and understood. Daughters were able to appeal to a rhetoric of consecrated virginity or, sometimes, widowhood, and to a practice of prayer and care for the royal dead to assert the position of guardians of the sacred in the family. By giving them to God, their fathers and brothers could keep them for themselves and benefit from their prayers and their gifts. They could also benefit from the temporal authority wielded by these women. The daughters possessed domains, often connected to religious institutions over which they exerted not just possession or ownership but lordship. These unmarried, childless daughters, with loyalty only to their own family, made excellent stewards of the king. Even in later centuries, widowed daughters such as Queen Berenguela could use their authority to support their kingly sons. Multiple factors made the roles of these royal daughters and sisters possible. First of all, the large size and heterogeneous nature of the kingdom of León-Castilla made it desirable to have faithful family members to whom rule could be delegated. Between 700 and 1100, the kingdom was expanding from a tiny rump in the Asturias; south into Galicia, León, and Castilla; and then into Toledo. The king needed to be peripatetic and able to operate on many fronts. His sisters and daughters could maintain a royal presence in places he could not be. Moreover, in a rapidly expanding and underdeveloped 31. Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 25; Earenfight, King’s Other Body, 24.

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territory, land was less valuable than the people who could exploit and dominate it. Because of Visigothic inheritance laws, women, including royal women, inherited from their fathers and from their mothers in their own right, and this gave them economic leverage. When it came to the question of royal succession, the post-Conquest Christian kingdoms were influenced only rhetorically by the Visigothic ideal of elective kingship. In fact, as I have described, a pattern of patrilineal inheritance fought with and eventually succeeded against an older indigenous model of matrilineal inheritance in which the ruler’s daughter’s husband succeeded the ruler. The success of the patrilineal system meant that a new place needed to be found for the daughters who could no longer safely marry. This place was found in the Christian ideal of the virgin daughter, allied to older Mediterranean traditions of female care for and memory of the dead. The notion of the royal family itself became much more important than it had been in the Visigothic period. We see this in the emphasis on maternal as well as paternal lineage in the writings of chroniclers, from those who wrote the ninth-century histories of the Asturias to Sampiro, to Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo and the author of the Historia silense, and even to the thirteenthcentury historians, Lucas of Túy and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Last, we must ask how much the fact that these kingdoms bordered on Islamic Spain affected the roles of royal daughters. The effect seems to have been indirect but important. Islamic Spain was the source of the story of Saint Pelayo, a myth that became hugely important in the self-definition of these women. In a world in which sexual conquest could stand for political control, the unviolated king’s daughter could stand for the integrity of the whole kingdom.32 On the one hand, the specter of marriage with a Muslim haunted and colored the daughters’ resolve to remain inside their own families. On the other hand, the Islamic world was a source (mythically or actually) of the coins, crystals, and textiles the daughters transformed into spiritual goods by giving them to God. And success against Islamic Spain brought territory and treasure that could be used to found and support new religious institutions. Because of the Muslim presence, its religious frontiers, the idea of reconquest, and the place of Jews in its societies, the medieval Iberian peninsula is often configured, both by those who study it and those who work on other regions, as “different,” as if its experiences are incommensurate with what we find elsewhere in Europe. It is viewed as more properly part of the 32. On sex and rape as political dominance, see Pick, “Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles,” 230–34; Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 39.

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Mediterranean world. When it received influences from northern Europe, as León-Castilla did strikingly during the reign of Alfonso VI, it is characterized as receiving this influence passively, adopting without transformation whatever came south: Romanesque architecture, feudalism, or the papal Church. It would thus be tempting to see the role of royal daughters and sisters there as a wholly peninsular phenomenon, created by its unique conditions and history, an aberration from the normal practices of the medieval European monarchy. But a closer look indicates some parallels between the royal daughters I have discussed here and those north of the Pyrenees, suggesting that the role of these women deserves more attention across medieval Europe. Particularly appropriate are some direct comparisons between LeónCastilla and the German Empire. In chapter 4, I point to similarities between the gift-giving of Urraca Fernández and of Abbess Mathilda of Essen, not only in terms of the kinds of objects they gave, the messages they bore, and the way they looked but also in the political and religious roles of these two women in their respective realms. Because we are faced with the limited survival of objects from the eleventh century, it is difficult to know whether the artistic parallels we can see between Urraca’s gifts and the objects produced at Essen were the result of real connections between these two places or simply generic similarities that we could identify clearly as such if we had more surviving objects from different centers. Nevertheless, the similar space they occupied in their respective realms is worthy of note. Abbess Mathilda was part of a long tradition of daughters in the imperial German line who were, like their counterparts in León-Castilla, not married off to build alliances but, rather, consecrated to religious life and put at the head of religious institutions that held vast lordships and often included family necropolises. There they prayed for the salvation of their families and engaged in high politics.33 The pattern had been set by Abbess Mathilda’s great-great-great-grandfather, Liudolf of Saxony, and his wife Oda, who founded in the ninth century a community of women that became the abbey of Gandersheim, over which three of their daughters successively served as abbesses while the male heads of their family climbed the ladder from duke to king to emperor.34 We can find clear parallels between the religious world of these elite women at Gandersheim and those in the kingdom of León. I have discussed how important the life and death of Saint Pelayo, the virgin boy martyred by the caliph of Córdoba, was to the royal women of León and León-Castilla, and how they used his story of resistance to union with pagan 33. Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity, 25–28; Leyser, Rule and Conflict, 49–50, 63–67, 72–73. 34. Corbet, Saints ottoniens, 44–46, 114–16; Head, Medieval Hagiography, 237–38.

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authority as a mirror for shaping their own lives. Hrotsvita, a member of the community of Gandersheim, turned the life of this rather obscure Spanish martyr into a poem some time after 962, when Otto I became the first emperor of Germany, and dedicated it and other legends to his niece, Abbess Gerberga of Gandersheim.35 Elvira Ramírez had the body of the martyr brought from Córdoba to León in 966. That Pelayo’s story was appreciated by consecrated daughters of the royal house and dominae of the family monastery and cemetery in both León and Germany cannot be a coincidence. We know there were embassies at the time between the empire and the caliphate of Córdoba; it seems likely that these ambassadors might have visited the Christian kingdoms in the north as well.36 Otto I’s mother, Mathilda, would persuade her son to found a similar community at Quedlinburg, where she and Otto’s father would be buried and over which Otto’s daughter, another Mathilda, would serve as abbess. Quedlinburg, like the other royal monasteries, became part of the royal itinerary, a place where the peripatetic court could spend Easter, close to the bones of the imperial ancestors.37 This Abbess Mathilda supported the reign of her brother, Otto II, and served as regent for her young nephew Otto III, much as her slightly older contemporary, Elvira Ramírez of León, did for her brother Sancho I and nephew Ramiro III.38 Otto II’s daughters also followed this path: Adelheid as abbess of Quedlinburg, Gernrode, Verden, and Gandersheim; and her sister Sophia as abbess of Gandersheim and Essen. Theitmar of Merseburg recounts that during the interregnum following Otto III’s death in 1002, these two sisters and a group of Saxon nobles met at the caste of Werla and there decided to support the candidacy of Henry of Bavaria, who eventually became Henry II. This displeased Ekkehard of Meissen, one of the rival claimants for the throne, and he seized the dinner table that had been prepared in the palace for the two royal abbesses and commandeered their meal for himself and his henchmen. This story not only reveals the important role that these women had during a political turning point in the kingdom; Ekkhard’s claiming the meal given for them shows him violating and usurping something both royal and sacred.39 35. Hrotsvit, Opera Omnia, ed. Walter Berschin (Münich: Saur, 2001), 1–2, 63–77. 36. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 56–57. 37. Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity, 76–77; Corbet, Saints ottoniens, 32–33. 38. Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1991), 279; Corbet, Saints ottoniens, 70–71. Leyser, Rule and Conflict, 49. 39. Leyser, Rule and Conflict, 89–90, 94; Theitmar of Merseburg, Ottonian Germany. The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, trans. David A. Warner (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2001, V.3–7, pp. 201–10.

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The communities that these women ruled were monasteries of secular canonesses, not nuns.40 This meant the women who lived there took no vows of perpetual celibacy and they were able to live in their own homes and wear clothing of their choosing. They said the Divine office and were attended by chapters of priests, attached to their houses. These communities also possessed territorial lordships over which the abbess, or her advocate, exerted authority. Women’s religious communities in Germany benefitted heavily from the successful eastward expansion of the empire, just as their counterparts in Spain benefitted from the slow movement of the frontier with the Muslims to the south. Women’s communities in Germany were not merely a royal or imperial affair. Nobles in the tenth and early eleventh century aped their superiors, much as they did in Spain, by founding religious houses with mausoleums for their own burial for themselves and their families.41 I have discussed how being a royal daughter who was a consecrated virgin, but not a nun or an abbess connected to only one house, gave king’s daughters in Spain a flexibility they could use to their advantage. The same was true to some degree in Germany under the relatively loose rules of secular canonesses, although they were still attached to the fate of a particular house (or two or three) and their fortunes could wane when it did. Karl Leyser explains the preference that the Crown and nobility had for founding communities of women, rather than men, into which they placed their own daughters in tenth- and eleventh-century Germany as a consequence of economic and political factors. He argues there was a surplus of women among the elite of the empire because men died young in battle. He suggests these women were able to amass significant inheritances from sons who died without other issue and from other relatives and that they could use this wealth to found religious communities. They preferred to found communities for women because they could use these houses as a way of keeping their own daughters protected sexually from assault during a violent time. He also notes, with some surprise, that the same phenomenon of preferring to found religious houses for the women of one’s family, rather than for men, occurred both in Anglo-Saxon England and also under the early Franks, as if preference for religious institutions dominated by women was an evolutionary phase that each of these realms went through at an early stage in its development.42

40. Frederick S. Paxton, Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxony (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 9. 41. Leyser, Rule and Conflict, 63–67. 42. Ibid., 59–65.

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It may well have been a phase, and one that continued for somewhat longer in León-Castilla than in parts further north. Nevertheless, although Leyser’s arguments account for some of the conditions that allowed the creation of this role for royal daughters in Germany, they do not explain why these women became so powerful. It is one thing for a royal daughter to be made abbess over a well-funded warehouse and fortress of surplus women; it is quite another for that abbess to turn her community into a home for the traveling court and a center of education, for her family to choose to be buried where she is, and for her to possess the kind of authority that made her a central figure whenever the king was young or dead or far away; these features need quite a different set of explanations. Some of these explanations may be of the sort I have suggested for their counterparts in León-Castilla. Like those women, the only family that these royal abbesses in Germany had was their birth family, and their fathers and brothers could count on their loyalty. Not given away in marriage, they became the inalienable possessions of the family, bearers of the symbolic markers of their illustrious lineage in their custodianship of the myths of the family. Examples of these myths are Hrotsvita’s account of the founding of Gandersheim in the religious vision of Oda, the first mother of the Liudolfing lineage, which would give rise to the line of emperors, and her encomium to Otto I, or the two lives of Matilda, the founder of Quedlinburg, mother of the first emperor, and custodian through prayer and patronage of the well-being of the realm.43 Thus, the political authority of these abbesses helped protect the rule of their fathers and brothers, while their religious role served as part of the authentication that helped authorize it. With that last point in mind, we can evaluate their religious role against the ruler’s own connection to the sacred. The Ottonian and Salian emperors are well known for having articulated and promoted a notion of sacral kingship for themselves and an identification of their rule with that of Christ. The king, like Christ, was a gemina persona (a twinned person), whose duplication of secular and spiritual powers mirrored the twofold—human and divine—nature of Christ.44 It is worth asking whether this claim, powerfully made in ritual and represented in art was actually not the assertion of a widely accepted truth about their power but, rather, a counterclaim for sacral power that pushed back against that possessed by the royal abbesses. It was a useful fiction that offered the emperors an advantage in the competition for power, not only against their female relatives but also against the other powerful men in the 43. Hrotsvit, Opera Omnia, 271–329; Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity, 71–127. 44. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, 49.

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empire: the high clergy, magnates, and male family members with eyes on their rule. According to Patrick Corbet, the high point of attention to the cultic dynasty of the emperor’s family, especially its women, was around the 970s. Subsequently, the sacramental anointing of the new king and emperor became the key to political legitimacy, at the expense of family lineage. Anointing associated the emperor with the priesthood, and with Christ, and reduced his need to depend on the sacred authentication of his female relatives.45 We could also look backward, with Leyser, for more parallels to early AngloSaxon England and Francia. The role of Anglo-Saxon royal women in early monasticism is well known from the number of houses they founded or that were founded for them, and from the register of royal female Anglo-Saxon saints. A dynasty of royal daughters, descendants of East Anglian King Anna, led by Aethelthryth, occupied Ely in the seventh century.46 Barking, Wimbourne, Minster-in-Thanet, Repton, and others have royal female connections. The monastery of Wilton, which Elizabeth Tyler has called “the Quedlinburg of England” is a later example of a house with strong royal connections.47 Wilton was founded by the sister of King Egbert of Wessex as a convent of nuns around 800 from a college of priests that her deceased husband had established. King Alfred established a new convent on the site of a royal palace and attached it to the older foundation. King Edward the Elder’s daughters probably joined the community in the tenth century, Eadlflaed as a nun and her sister Aethelhild as a lay sister, and they were later buried there with their mother. Wulfthryth was the abbess there after being King Edgar’s consort and brought Edith, her daughter by the king, into Wilton with her. Edith shared her father, King Edgar, with two royal brothers, King Edward and King Ethelred.48 A surviving seal from the thirteenth century, which may be from her own personal matrix, shows her standing with one hand raised, the other holding a book, and around the seal is the inscription “regalis adelpha” (royal sister).49 In Merovingian Francia, where many double monasteries and houses for women were founded in the seventh century, Chelles deserves special attention. The Life of Balthild says that a community for women had been established there by Queen Chlotild, the wife of Clovis, attached to the basilica

45. Corbet, Saints ottoniens, 246–51. 46. Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 50. 47. Elizabeth Tyler, “The Vita Aedwardi: The Politics of Poetry at Wilton Abbey,” Anglo-Norman Studies 31 (2009), 153. 48. Ridyard, Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England, 140–44. 49. Thomas A. Heslop, “English Seals from the Mid Ninth Century to 1100,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 133 (1980), 4.

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of St. George. In the early seventh century, Chelles remained a royal palace as well as a religious house for women. Bede relates that Anglo-Saxon kings in the early seventh century sent their daughters there, as well as to Faremoutiers in Brie and Les Andelys, because similar religious houses did not yet exist for women in England. After 680, Queen Balthild refounded the community on a grander scale.50 It still retained a role as a royal palace in the early ninth century, when Gisela, sister of Charlemagne, was abbess. Under her rule, Chelles was a political hub, a center for royal religious cult, and a place of learning and scholarship with its own scriptorium.51 Charlemagne’s daughter Rotrude joined her aunt at Chelles, and another daughter became the abbess of Argenteuil. Under the Carolingians, Chelles was a “monastic palace,” a royal nunnery that functioned as a palace under the rule of a royal lay abbess. The wife of Charles the Bald, Ermintrude, was the lay abbess of Chelles and the king also spent time there. The women’s community at Laon, founded in the seventh century by Salaberga and dedicated to John the Baptist, became part of the dower of the wives of Carolingian kings in the tenth century, and it also housed a palace.52 It s worth considering whether the Carolingian sisters and daughters provided some kind of model for the women of León-Castilla. The royal daughter Queen Adosinda took vows as a religious in the 780s after her husband Silo died, shortly after Charlemagne’s first forays into Spain. The church of San Julián de los Prados in Oviedo, built by Adosinda’s favorite and nephew, Alfonso II, follows clear Carolingian models, breaking with Asturian and Visigothic traditions.53 Charlemagne remained inspirational for eleventhcentury rulers in León-Castilla. The prayer book that Queen Sancha had made for King Fernando was indebted to Carolingian sources, including a guide for praying the psalms composed by Alcuin for Charlemagne.54 And Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne was a source for the account of King Fernando in the Historia silense. Its author uses direct quotations from Einhard throughout, including to describe Fernando’s relationship with his children.55

50. Anne-Marie Helvétius, “L’organisation des monastères féminins à l’époque mérovingienne,” in Female Vita Religiosa between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, ed. Gert Melville and Anne Müller (Zürich: Lit Verlag, 2011), 159–61. 51. Nelson, “Gender and Genre,” 191–92. 52. Annie Renoux, “Elite Women, Palaces, and Castles in Northern France (ca. 850–1100),” in Reassessing the Role of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 745–51. 53. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology, 34–37. 54. Pick, “Liturgical Renewal,” 33, 35. 55. Pérez de Urbel and González Ruíz-Zorrilla, Historia silense, 81; Barton and Fletcher, World of El Cid, 17, 45.

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The royal women in León-Castilla who are the subject of this book are, in some ways, easier to study than their counterparts elsewhere. Their main period of activity comes somewhat later and not only more evidence but also more kinds of evidence survive from and about them. We find these women in chronicles, cartularies, and charters; in the buildings they built; in the manuscripts they sponsored; and in the objects they gave. Still, I hope the examples I have cited from Germany, Francia, and England have been enough to suggest that the roles of the daughters and sisters of royal families (and noble families) all over medieval Europe also deserve more attention. Although many of these women have been studied as individuals, during particular historical moments, or as members of specific institutions, less attention has been paid to how their role challenges our broader understanding of the times in which they lived. Too often studies of medieval women are viewed as merely tacking on an interesting curiosity that does not affect how we view the Middle Ages as a whole. People who study the ways that women, or indeed any group cast as marginal, have access to power are caught in a double bind. We are told there is not enough evidence, so we drown our readers in evidence. Then we are told we are being too specific, too particular, that we may have found one particular strong case or cases but that these cases are not saying anything that can be used more generally. Indeed, in spite of the careful and copious work done on medieval women and power in the last decades, the old master narrative of the sovereign king and the fantasy of uncomplicated male lordship have proven extremely resistant to a more nuanced understanding of how power was construed, held, and wielded in the Middle Ages. The onus is on us to make the case for new ways of looking at power in the Middle Ages. The answer to the problem of how to reveal the presence and actions of powerful women in the Middle Ages is not to make of them kings, to insist that they were as powerful as kings, or to ask why they were not as powerful as kings. Rather, we need to show that even the king was not a king in the way we popularly imagine him and desire him to be, an agent and sovereign subject in a world before subjectivity. The king held power and exerted agency because he was enmeshed in political structures that combined to place him at the apex and because he was in a particular position in a whole series of networks of people. That position could change, and it was as contingent as that occupied by any of the other players in those networks. These other players included the high clergy, powerful nobles, ambitious followers, his wife, and his sons—and often, some of those players were his own daughters and sisters.

 Wo rks C ite d Archival Sources

Córdoba El Escorial

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AC 123 a.I.13 a.II.9 &.I.3 BL Add. 25600 AHN 267B AHN 1043B AHN 1239/13 BN 10007 BN Vitr. 14–2 RAH 78 RAH Emilianense 56 Morgan M.429 BnF n.a.lat. 2178 BU 2668 ACS CF 34, Tumbo A BU 609 (Res. 1) AM 4 BC 44.1 BC 44.2 AC 1/2

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Albar, Paul. “Carmina.” Edited by Ludwig Traube. In Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. 3. MGH Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi, 122–42. Berlin, 1896. Ambrose of Milan. De institutione virginis. In Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, edited by J. P. Migne [PL], vol. 16, coll. 319–47. Paris, 1880. ——. De virginibus. In PL 16, coll. 197–243. Paris, 1880. ——. Exhortatio virginitatis. In PL 16, coll. 351–79. Paris, 1880. ——. Hymni. In PL 16, coll. 1473–1476. Paris, 1880. Andrade Cernadas, José Miguel. O Tombo de Celanova: estudio introductorio, edición, e índices. Santiago de Compostela: Consello da Cultura Galega, 1995. Ascaricus and Tuseredus. “Epistulae.” In Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum, vol. 1, edited by Juan Gil, 113–24. Madrid, 1973. Augustine, “Sermo 187, In natale domini.” In Sermones, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, edited by J. P. Migne [PL], vol. 38, coll. 1001–83. Paris, 1865. 247

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 Index

‘Abd al-Aziz, 32 ‘Abd Allah, 91, 97, 141 ‘Abd al-Malik al-Muz.affar, 98 ‘Abd al-Rah. ma¯n, “Sanchuelo,” 98 ‘Abd al-Rah. ma¯n III, 70, 91–93, 97, 126, 141–142, 240 Adelaide, empress, 225–226 Adosinda, queen, 5, 37, 48–49, 51, 62, 75, 245; consecration of, 5, 49, 51, 67 Adrian and Natalia, saints, 186–187, 191 ad Sebastianum, 44–45, 47–48, 50, 239 Aethelhild, 68–69, 78, 244 Aethelweard, 185 Afonso Henriques, king, 228, 235 agency, 6–7; of the king, 8, 11, 16, 246 Agnes, queen, 154, 161, 229 Agnes, saint, 63, 84, 89–90 al-Andalus, 56, 79, 92, 94, 98, 111, 126, 135, 137, 139, 141–142, 194–195, 228, 239, 242 Alaric I, 22 Albeldense, 44–45, 48, 50, 54, 239 Aldonza Menéndez, 126 Alfonso I, king of Aragón, 199, 230 Alfonso I, king of Asturias, 37, 45, 47–49 Alfonso II, king, 2, 48–51, 74, 89 Alfonso III, king, 44, 50, 52, 55, 89, 97, 231 Alfonso IV, king, 89 Alfonso V, king, 75, 98, 115–116, 120, 130, 149–150, 177–178, 180–181, 195, 209, 213, 219 Alfonso VI, king, 2–3, 78–79, 95, 107–108, 116, 122, 150–154, 168, 183, 190, 218, 227–232, 239–240; and Cluny, 179, 181–183, 223–225, 229, 238; and his sisters, 2, 108, 119–120, 151–153, 161, 163, 166; and incest, 3, 59–60; and rebellion in Lugo, 155–158 Alfonso VII, king, 4, 16, 147, 151, 228–232 Alfonso VIII, king, 233–234 Alfonso IX, king, 233 al-Mans.u¯ r (Almanzor), 98, 176–177, 194

Almoravids (al-Mura¯bit.u¯n), 154, 227, 230 Amalric II, king, 23 Amaya, 38, 42, 47, 55 Ambrose of Milan, 63–64, 84–85, 89, 142, 215 Anglo-Saxon England, 19, 65–66, 68, 78, 83, 242, 244–246 Anne, saint, 189, 191–192, 210–212 anointing, 17, 27–28, 102, 244 Aragón, 58, 79, 236 Arca Santa, 188–192, 203, 212 architecture, 81, 137–143, 181 Argentea, saint, 84, 94–97, 102, 153 Arian Christianity, 22, 24 Arlanza, monastery of, 180 Armengol III, count, 80 Ascaricus and Tuseredus, Letters, 214–216 Astorga, 37, 55, 144, 163, 176 Asturias, 21–22, 38, 49, 57, 67, 75, 176, 228, 232, 237–238; as heir to Visigothic kingdom, 22–23, 44–45 Athaulf, king, 32 Audeca, king, 32 Augustine of Hippo, 114, 216 Aurelius, king, 48 Austin, J. L., 106n5 avunculus (maternal uncle), 37–38, 41, 43, 51–52, 55, 213 Baddo, queen, 31–32 Balthild, queen, 244–245 Barbero, Abilio, 37–42, 47, 50, 52, 58–59 Barcelona, counts of, 56, 79 Basil of Caesarea, 86 Basques, 37 Beatrix, queen, 229 Beatus of Liébana, and consecration of Adosinda, 49, 67; Commentary on the Apocalypse, 205–209, 211, 216–217, 234. See also Fernando and Sancha Beatus; Las Huelgas Beatus; Morgan Beatus; Silos Beatus; Tábara Beatus

267

268

INDEX

Bede, 245 Berenguela of Castilla, queen, 151, 206, 233–235, 238 Bernardo del Carpio, 51, 52 Berta, queen, 161, 182, 229 Biblia Primera of León, 211 Blanche of Castilla, queen, 235 Boadilla, 88, 89 Bobastro, 95–97 Borghorst cross, 196–197 Bouchard, Constance Brittain, 12, 229–230 Bourdieu, Pierre, 173 Braga, 125, 132 Burgos, see of, 2, 151–152, 157, 183 burial of the dead, 175–180 Butler, Judith, 106n5, 107n6 Cabre i Pairet, Montserrat, 66–68 Caesarius of Arles, 65, 87 candelabra, seven-branched, 184–185, 193 Cangas de Onís, 22, 37–41, 47, 164 Cantabrians, 37–38, 47 Cardeña, monastery of, 95, 153 Carruthers, Mary, 170 Castilla: county of, 52, 55–56, 72–77, 79, 95, 124; kingdom of, 108, 151, 207, 238 Cecilia, saint, 98 Celanova, monastery of, 72, 117, 123–124, 126–133, 139, 144 Chaldeans, 54–55 charisma, 5–6, 83, 104, 123, 145, 241, 243 Charlemagne, 12, 13, 51, 245 charters: and audience, 106, 110, 119; confirmants, 105, 108, 116, 118–119, 131, 152, 160–162, 169; and divine authorization, 106–107, 110, 113–114, 122, 158–160, 169, 172, 179; and gender, 106, 113–114, 122; and liturgy, 106, 110–114, 116, 123, 158–160, 167; networks of, 105–107, 115–116, 152; and performance, 105–108, 113, 116, 118, 122–123; as physical objects, 106, 108, 118–119, 169, 183; and social networks, 104–105, 108, 110, 116–117, 123, 152, 160; witnesses, 105, 108, 119 Chelles, monastery of, 244 Chindasuinth, king, 25, 28–29, 31, 33, 53–54 Chintila, king, 25, 28–29 Christi ancilla, 72, 72, 81, 111, 114, 158 Chronica Najerense, 59 Chronicle of 754, 32 Chronicle of Albelda. See Albeldense Chronicle of Alfonso III. See ad Sebastianum; Rotense

Church councils, 65; Visigothic, 22, 24–31, 65 Cixilo, queen, 25, 32, 53 Clark, Elizabeth L. 7n21 Cluny, monastery of, 79, 99, 152–153, 179, 181–185, 222–225 Codex de Roda, 47, 57–58, 90, 192, 211–212 confessa, 67–68, 143 conquest of Spain, Muslim, 1, 18, 21–22, 26, 32–33, 37, 44–45, 53, 55, 79, 152, 190 Constance of Burgundy, queen, 154, 161, 182, 228–229, 238 Constantina, saint, 84, 88–91, 94 Constantine, emperor, 89–90 Corbet, Patrick, 244 Córdoba, 47, 70, 91–96, 111–112, 126, 129, 131, 134, 137, 139, 141, 228, 241; mosque of, 139–140 corulership, 25–26, 151, 233, 236, 238 court, 11, 105, 120, 123, 141–142, 176 Covadonga, 44, 47, 54 Covarrubias, monastery of, 72, 72, 75, 179, 232, 234 Da¯r al-Na‘u¯ra, 141–142 de Morales, Ambrosio, 189–191, 206 Denia, 201 Deo dicata, 66, 70, 131, 149, 234 Deo vota, 66–67, 69–70, 75 Derrida, Jacques, 106n5 Descalzas Reales, monastery of, 237 descent from the Cross, 101–102 Dhuoda, 36 Díaz y Díaz, Manuel C., 91, 113 diplomas, royal. See charters Dodds, Jerrilyn, 138–139, 142 domina, 10, 67–68, 71–73, 77–78, 80–81, 91, 102, 135, 148–150, 159, 163–164, 168, 177–178, 206, 234, 240 Dracontius, De laudibus Dei, 112 Duby, Georges, 8–9 Eadfled, 68–69, 244 Earenfight, Theresa, 9, 237–238 Edith, abbess, 244 Edward the Elder, king, 68, 244 Egica, king, 25–26, 29–32, 53–54 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, 8, 222, 245 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 195–196 El Escorial: &.I.3, 213–217; a.I.13, 88–89; monastery of, 237 Elipandus, bishop of Toledo, 67 Elvira Fernández, 3, 73, 81, 108, 148–149, 152, 154, 160–161, 190, 193, 197; and Alfonso VI, 3; and Lugo, 150, 158–160;

INDEX lineage of, 72, 78; religious status of, 78–79; will of, 146–147, 163–164, 182–183, 231 Elvira García, queen, 149–150, 162, 219 Elvira Menéndez, queen of Alfonso V, 219 Elvira Menéndez, queen of Ordoño II, 67, 123–124, 126 Elvira Núñez, 117 Elvira Ramírez, 123, 125–126, 144–146; and family memory, 69–70, 74; and Guntroda Gutiérrez, 131–133; property of, 143–146; religious status of, 69–70; ruling for Ramiro III, 3, 71–72, 74; and Saint Pelayo, 71, 77, 126, 129, 134–137, 175, 241; and San Salvador de Palaz del Rey, 128, 137, 175 Elvira Suárez, 156–157, 159–160 Elvira Vermúdez, 74 Emma, abbess, 82–83 End Times, 205, 208–209, 213–217 epigraphy, 38, 40–43, 61, 87 Ermesinda, queen, 37, 47, 49, 237 Ermogius, bishop of Túy, 92, 126 Ervig, king, 25, 29–31, 33, 53 Eslonza, monastery of, 113, 120, 122, 166–168, 172, 179, 184, 186, 192, 195, 204, 233–234 Essen, 196, 240–241 Eucharist, 193, 197, 199, 204; as gift and commemoration, 172, 174–175; and Masses for the dead, 182–183 Eugenius of Toledo, 31 Eve, 99 Facundus Beatus. See Fernando and Sancha Beatus Fatimids, 196, 201–202 Favila, king, 47 Fernando I, 52, 73, 78, 91, 95, 97, 120, 148, 156, 158, 166–167, 177–181, 201, 203, 205–207, 209, 213, 217, 219, 221, 224, 228, 232, 245; Beatus of, 206–207, 209–213, 216–217, 234; as count of Castilla, 75–76, 79, 95; death of, 3, 108, 200, 218–219; and his daughters, 3–4, 13; Libro de horas of, 205, 217–220, 245; marriage to Sancha, 60, 76–77, 98 Fernando II, king of Aragón, 236 Fernando III, king, 151, 233 Fernando and Sancha Beatus, 206–207, 209–213, 216–217, 234 Fernando Fernández, 164, 166 Fernando Flaínez, 76, 166 Ferreira, Maria do Rosário, 5n14 Flaín Fernández, 166–167, 178–179, 195

269

Florentia, 84–87, 222–223 Florus of Lyon, 218 Foot, Sarah, 65–66, 68 Fortún Garces, king, 89–90 Foucault, Michel, 7n19, 16n49 Francia, 242, 244, 246 Froila Gutiérrez, 124, 126 Fronilda Fernández, 73 Fronilda Peláez, 120, 178 Fruela, brother of Alfonso I, 47 Fruela I, king, 48–49 Fruela Díaz, 164, 166–167 Galicia, 2, 32, 56, 89, 108, 116–117, 119–120, 122–124, 129, 131–134, 136, 144, 149, 151, 153–154, 158, 162, 176, 228, 230, 232, 238 Galla Placidia, 32 Gallicanus, saint, 89–90 Gambra, Andrés, 146, 167 Gandersheim, abbey of, 196, 240, 243 García, bishop of Jaca and Pamplona, 82 García I, king, 167 García II, king in Galicia, 2, 4, 108, 113, 116, 122, 151, 154 García Fernández, count, 72, 72, 179, 212 García Iñíguez, king of Pamplona, 89, 91 García Sánchez, count, 73, 75–77 García Sánchez III, king, 219 García Sánchez V, king, 59 Geary, Patrick, 170, 181–182, 204 gender, 6, 11, 14; fluidity of, 85–86, 93–94; and performance, 106, 113, 122; virago, 96 German Empire, 19, 66, 83, 101, 181, 185, 200, 226, 240–243, 246 Gijón, 39, 44, 47 Gil de Zamora, Juan, 59 Gisela, abbess, 12, 245 giving, 18–19; to the Church, laws about, 34–35; counter-gifts, 118, 162, 171, 173–175; and death, 173–174, 179, 184; as a game, 173–174; to God, 61, 64, 84, 110, 160, 171, 173–174, 184; and intercession, 169, 172; memory of, 169, 173, 182–183; objects from women, 184–186, 188, 190, 192–195; reciprocal, 13–14, 56–57, 171–175; and social networks, 107, 160; transformation of gift and giver, 171– 172, 185; by women, 14, 16, 61 God, 208; as creator, 111; as king, 1, 64, 112–113 Goering, Joseph, 198 Gómez-Moreno, Manuel, 190 González, María Cruz, 40–43 Gonzalo Menéndez, 125, 128, 132, 134–136

270

INDEX

Gregory I, the Great, pope, 215 Gregory VII, pope, 152–153, 223 Grierson, Philip, 23–24 Guifré, count of Barcelona, 82–83 Guimaráes, monastery of, 132–133, 136–137 Gundemar, king, 24 Guntroda Gutiérrez, abbess, 123, 126, 128–129, 132, 135–136, 142, 148; and Elvira Ramírez, 131–133; and Saint Pelayo, 129–131, 136, 143 Gutier Menéndez, 117, 124 Gutier Núñez, 117 Harris, Julie, 190–191 Helia, saint, 60 Henry II, emperor, 216, 241 Henry III, emperor, 216 Henry of Burgundy, count, 228, 230 Hilsdale, Cecily J., 170n4 Historia Silense, 76, 180, 191, 204, 221–222, 231, 239, 245 “Holy Grail,” 201–203 Hosius of Córdoba, 84 Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, 241, 243 Hugh, abbot of Cluny, 182, 184 Ildefonsus of Toledo, 64, 113 Ilduara Ériz, 124 inalienable possessions, 13–15, 175, 200–201, 243 incest, sibling, 3, 58–61 infantazgo, 15, 146–147, 164, 175, 204, 232 inheritance: matrilineal, 38, 40, 42–43, 239; patrilineal, 43, 48, 55, 239; and royal women, 6, 104, 146, 148, 158, 205, 222, 230–231, 236, 242; under Visigothic law, 18, 21, 28–29, 32–37, 48, 52, 239 Isabel (Elizabeth), queen of Alfonso VI, 161, 228–229 Isabel I, queen, 236 Isabelle of Longchamp, 235 Isidore of Seville, 84–85, 88; cult of, 71, 77, 91, 94, 114, 180, 193, 207; Etymologies, 205, 212–215; History of the Goths, 22, 24, 32; Regula monachorum, 88 Isla Frez, Amancio, 218 Jarrett, Jonathan, 82 Jerome, 88, 215 Jesus Christ, 167, 172; as brother, 86; as groom, 85–86; as king, 111–113, 141–142, 158–159, 207–208, 233; lineage of, 191, 210–212, 216–217; as Savior, 136–137, 188, 194; as son of Mary, 114; and women, 85–86, 102

Jimena, queen, of Alfonso III, 50 Jimena Muñoz, 229 Jimena Ordóñez, 5, 67–68, 123–128, 142–143, 148 Jimeno, bishop of Burgos, 152–153 John and Paul, saints, 89–90 John Cassian, 86 John of Biclar, 32 John the Baptist, saint, 58, 60, 81–82, 176–181, 194–196 Jordan, Mark, 91–92 Juana de Austria, 237 Justa Fernández, 195 keeping-while-giving, 13–14, 19, 56, 175–176, 200, 234 King, P. D., 23, 36 kings, power of, 8–11, 16, 246; Visigothic, 26–32 king’s two bodies, 16, 27 Languedoc, 66–67 Las Huelgas, monastery of, 234–234; Beatus, 206, 234–235 Lauwers, Michel, 174 Leander of Seville, 84–89, 91, 222 Le Lys, monastery of, 235 Leodegundia, “queen,” 57–58, 89 Leodegundia, scribe, 88–89 León: city of, 37, 55, 72, 76–77, 124, 133, 136, 144, 163, 166, 176–181, 194; kingdom of: 49, 55–58, 60, 67, 75, 108, 113, 123, 126, 151, 176, 207, 228, 231–232, 238, 241 León-Castilla, kingdom of, 49, 55–57, 67, 75, 82–85, 108, 151, 175, 181, 187, 210, 223, 225, 228–230, 233, 235, 238–240, 243, 245–246 Leovigild, king, 23, 47 Leovigoto, queen, 31–32 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 170 Leyser, Karl, 242–244 Liber Testamentorum, 118, 197 Libro de horas of Fernando I, 205, 217–220, 245 lineage, 6; cognate, 33, 36, 49, 53, 212, 230; maternal, 12, 49, 52–53, 185, 210, 219, 236, 239; matrilineal, 6, 18, 36, 40, 42–43, 47–49, 51–55, 87; memory of, 179, 181, 205, 207, 210, 212; of objects, 200, 196; paternal, 185, 210, 219, 239; patrilineal, 36, 41, 43, 47–49, 54–55; royal, 18, 72, 75, 78, 191, 210, 212, 236, 239, 244; in Visigothic law, 33, 36. See also succession, royal

INDEX liturgy: in charters, 106, 110–111, 113–114, 116, 119, 123, 158–160, 167; for consecration, 66, 69; nocturnal office, 86, 94, 205, 217, 220; Old Spanish, 64, 69, 78–79, 92, 152–153, 175, 206, 217, 220, 223; Roman, 79, 82, 152–153, 175, 223; Romano-Germanic Pontifical, 66; and women, 12, 92 Liuva, king, 24, 31 lordship, 8, 246; held by women, 10, 72–74, 83, 242 Louis IX, 235 Lucas of Túy, 239 Lugo, 150, 154–155, 157–160; revolt at, 107, 153, 155–160; Tumbo Viejo, 158 Madīnat al-Zahrā’, 141 Madrid BN, 112, 91 Magnani, Eliana, 171–172 Magnou-Nortier, Elisabeth, 66, 68 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 170 Mamede, saint, 137, 143 manuscripts. See names or shelfmarks of individual manuscripts Marcellina, 63 María Fruélaz, 162–164, 194–195, 197 marriage: as gift exchange, 13, 56–58, 80; as hostage taking, 57; hypogamous, 56–57; property and, 34–36; strategies of, 56–60, 79, 90–91, 98, 228–232; to Muslims, 57, 90–91, 98, 101–102 Martin, Georges, 147, 164 Martín, scribe, 167 Martin, Therese, 181, 203 Martín Alfónsez, 119 Martínez Díez, Gonzalo, 75–76 Martín Flaínez, 166–167 martyrs, 18; models for royal women, 62, 92–93, 103 Mary, Virgin, 87, 111, 113, 136–137, 139, 159, 178, 194, 208; death of, 215; life of, 101, 188–189, 191–193; as model, 64, 89, 90; as mother, 114, 159, 233, 237; as queen, 158–160, 177, 233; as throne of wisdom, 210; as vessel, 198 Mary Magdalene, 99, 101–102 Mathilda, abbess of Essen, 184–186, 200, 210, 240; cross of, and Otto, 185, 188, 200 Mathilda, queen, 225, 241, 243 matriarchy, 37, 40 matrilineality. See lineage, matrilineal Maubuisson, monastery of, 235 Mauregatus, king, 49 Mauss, Marcel, 170 Melania the Younger, saint, 88

271

memory, 18–19, 176; of the dead, 19, 169, 174–184, 188, 207, 213, 215, 219, 224, 234, 239; of giving, 169, 173, 182–183; learned, 170, 205, 207–209; and royal women, 14, 62, 70, 83, 206–207, 213, 217, 219 Miro, king, 32 Mocedades de Rodrigo, 52 monarchy: as rule by a family, 5, 10; as a ruling system, 5–6, 18, 104, 107, 145, 237–238, 240 monasteries, 4, 15, 19. See also names of individual monasteries Morgan, Lewis H., 40 Morgan Beatus, 209, 211–212 Mozarabs, 138–139 Muhammad al-t.awı¯l, 91 Munia, queen, 50–51 Muniadomna, queen, 76 Muniadomna Díaz, 125, 128, 132, 134, 136, 143 Munio Fernández, 117, 178–179, 195 Munnuza, 47 Muño, bishop of Burgos, 152–153 Mu¯sa ibn Mu¯sa, 90 Muslim Spain. See al-Andalus Navarra, 56–58, 77, 79, 192 Nelson, Janet, 12–13 Nepotianus, 37, 50–52 networks, social. See social networks Noli me tangere, 99, 101–102 Normans. See Vikings Nuño, bishop of León, 177 Oca, see of. See Burgos, see of Oda of Saxony, 240, 243 Odilo, abbot of Cluny, 225 Odoíno Vermúdez, 132–135, 143 Oexle, Otto Gerhard, 170 Onega García, 73, 76 Oppa, bishop, 54 Ordoño I, 52, 55, 58 Ordoño II, 58, 67, 70, 133 Ordoño III, 70, 72, 123–125, 132, 136, 175, 197 Ordoño IV, 125, 141 Ordoño Vermúdez, 120, 178 Orense, 154, 159 Otto, duke of Swabia, 185–186 Otto I, emperor, 241, 243 Otto II, emperor, 185–186, 241 Otto III, emperor, 185, 241 Ottonian Empire. See German Empire Oviedo, 2, 22, 39, 49–50, 74, 124, 144, 176, 188–191, 203, 207. See also Arca Santa

272

INDEX

Pachomian Rule, 88 palace, 49–51, 64, 70, 81, 95–96, 124, 128, 141–143, 152, 175–176, 179, 181, 194, 224, 234, 237, 241, 244–245 Pamplona, 192; kingdom of, 56–57, 79, 89 Parks, Annette, 57 patrilineality. See lineage, patrilineal Paul Albar, 111–113 Pedro, bishop of León, 184, 193–195, 197, 204 Pedro, “dux” of the Cantabrians, 47–48, 50 Pedro I, king, 227 Pedro Ansúrez, 119, 195 Pedro González de Lara, 229 Pelayo, bishop of Oviedo, 176–177, 190–191, 197; Chronicon, 97–99, 101–103 Pelayo, king, 37–38, 45, 47–49, 54, 237; sister of, 47 Pelayo, saint, 70–71, 84, 91–94, 96, 98, 101, 117, 123, 126, 129, 132, 134–137, 141–143, 175, 180, 239–241; body of, 131, 176–177. See also Elvira Ramírez; Guntroda Gutiérrez; Sancho I penance, 20, 179, 205, 218–222, 225–226 performance: in charters, 105–108, 113, 116, 118, 122–123; and gender, 106, 113, 122 personality. See charisma Peter, saint, 172 Pfaltzel, monastery of, 128 Pitt-Rivers, Julian, 57–58 Poema de Fernán González, 52 Portugal, 124–125, 132, 163, 228, 230, 235 power, 5–19, 104, 107, 246; authentication of, 13–15, 17, 243–244; and charisma, 2–3, 5–6; economic, 4–6, 15, 18, 20, 104–105; and religion, 13–17, 19–20, 244; and women, 5–8, 10–11, 14–20, 104, 122, 143, 145, 147–148, 175, 229, 238, 245–246. See also agency; kings, power of; property and; public and private; social networks Pravia, 22, 49, 67 Prayerbook of Queen Sancha, 77, 205, 214, 217–218, 220–225, 235 property: and power, 104, 107, 122–123, 143, 145–148, 162, 174; of royal women, 5, 62, 83; and social networks, 104, 107, 116, 122, 143, 145, 148, 152, 162–163, 169 Protoevangelium of James, 192–193 public and private, 6, 8–9, 14, 43, 65, 68, 105, 108, 141, 217 Quedlinburg, monastery of, 241, 243 queens, 9–10, 31–32. See also names of individual queens

Radegund, queen, 225 Raguel, 91 Ramiro I, king of Aragón, 79–80 Ramiro I, king of Asturias, 45, 50, 52 Ramiro II, king of Aragón, 77–78 Ramiro II, king of León, 70, 125–126, 128, 132–133, 136–137, 175 Ramiro III, king, 70, 71, 125–126, 135, 145, 176 Raymond of Burgundy, 154, 166, 228 Reccared, king, 22, 24–27, 31, 47 Reccared II, king, 24 Reccesuinth, king, 25, 28–29, 32–33, 52 Reciberga, queen, 31 Reglero de la Fuente, Carlos, 161 Reilly, Bernard, 153–155, 230, 232 reproduction: biological, 14, 29, 58, 60; cultural, 14, 60 Ripoll, monastery of, 82–83 road to Emmaus, 101 Roderic, king, 23, 26, 45, 53–54, 237 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, 239 Rodrigo Ovéquiz, 119–120, 154–157, 159 Rodrigo Romániz, 156–157 Rodrigo Velásquez, 125, 131–133, 135 Roman/Rome, 87, 89, 92; in Spain, 37–42; law, 36. See also liturgy, Roman Rosendo, abbot of Celanova, 117, 126, 128–129, 132, 144, 149 Rosenwein, Barbara, 152, 157 Rotense, 44–45, 47–48, 50, 52–55, 192, 212, 239 Rubin, Gayle, 13, 56 Ruíz, Teofilo, 16–17 sacral kingship, 16–17, 243–244; Visigothic, 26–27 Sahagún, monastery of, 76, 113, 144, 168, 182–183, 223 Salisbury, Joyce, 90 salvation, concern for, 171–175, 179–180, 184, 190, 194, 205, 213, 217, 220–221, 240 Sampiro, Chronicon, 70–72, 132, 134–135, 239 San Adrian de Boñar, 186 San Angel de Atarés, monastery of, 80 San Antonín de Fingoy, 158–160 San Bartolemeu de Rebordans, 181 Sancha, queen, 3, 52, 60, 120, 148, 150, 158, 177, 193–195, 197, 219, 221, 224–225, 228, 245; betrothal to García Sánchez, 75–77; as book patron, 77, 205–207, 209, 213–215, 217–219, 221–222, 226; marriage to Fernando I, 76–77, 98; and San Isidoro, 77, 91, 180–181, 203. See also Fernando and Sancha Beatus; Prayerbook of Queen Sancha

INDEX Sancha de Aibar, 79–80 Sancha Muñoz, 178 Sancha Raimúndez, 4, 147, 149, 228, 231–232; heir to great aunts, 102, 163–164 Sancha Ramírez, 5, 79, 81–83 Sancha Vermúdez, 74–75, 149–150, 188 Sancho I, king, 4, 70–71, 125–126, 132, 134, 136, 141, 144, 146, 175; and Saint Pelayo, 126, 134, 136 Sancho II, king of Castilla, 2–3, 59, 95, 108, 150–151, 154, 213, 215 Sancho II, king of Navarra, 192 Sancho III el Mayor, 75–76, 79, 192, 209 Sancho Alfónsez, 228, 230 Sancho García, count, 73–74, 179 Sancho Ramírez, king, 79–80, 82 San Isidoro de León (San Pelayo, San Juan Bautista), monastery of, 71, 77, 81, 91, 94, 102, 114, 117, 143, 149, 162, 164, 167, 177–178, 180, 183–184, 188, 193, 199–200, 204, 206, 207, 218, 222, 232–234; burial at, 213, 219; pantheon, 192, 181, 203–204, 206 San Juan Bautista de León. See San Isidoro de León San Juan de Baños, 138 San Juan de Hérmedes de Cerrato, monastery of, 152–153, 183 San Juan de la Peña, monastery of, 80–81 San Martiño de Pazó, monastery of, 128, 130–131, 137–142, 148 San Miguel de la Escalada, monastery of, 164, 166, 209, 211, 231 San Paio de Mosterio, monastery of, 129–131, 136 San Payo de Rabal, 129–131, 136–137 San Pedro de Campo, monastery of, 151 San Pedro de Siresa, monastery of, 80 San Pelayo de Albeos, monastery of, 116–117 San Pelayo de León. See San Isidoro de León San Pelayo de Oviedo, 71, 117, 182 San Pelayo de Villar, 129, 131, 136 San Salvador de Oña, monastery of, 73–74, 179–180 San Salvador de Palaz del Rey, monastery of, 70, 74, 137, 175, 179–180; and Elvira Ramírez, 128, 137, 175 Santa Cecilia de Aibar, monastery of, 80 Santa Comba de Bande, monastery of, 129, 132–136 Santa Cruz de La Serós, monastery of, 80–82 Santa Eulalia de Fingoy, monastery of, 150, 158–160

273

Santa Eulària de Estaon, 198 Santa María de Najera, monastery of, 179 Santa María de Ribeira, monastery of, 129–131, 136, 143 Santa María de Wamba, monastery of, 164, 231 Santa Marina de Asadur (“Satur”), monastery of, 67, 128 Sant Climent de Taüll, 198 Santiago de Compostela, 115–116, 119, 133, 149, 154, 163, 183, 230–231; Tumbo A, 118 Santiago de León, monastery of, 177–178 Santiago de Peñalba, monastery of, 137, 139 Sant Joan de les Abadesses, monastery of, 82–83 Santos, Juan, 40–43 Sant Pere de Burgal, 198 Sant Quirze de Pedret, 198 San Vicente, monastery of, 129 Schmid, Karl, 170 Scott, Joan, 11 Senkschmelz cross, 200 Sevilla, 108 Sewell, William H., 6, 11 siblings, intimacy and support, 61, 83, 86, 96. See also incest; sisters Sibylla Tiburtina, 216 Siete Infantas de Lara, 52 Silo, king, 48, 51, 67–68, 245 Silos Beatus, 212 Sisebut, king, 24 Siseguntia, queen, 32 Sisenand, king, 24–25, 27 sisters,12; helping brothers, 113, 148, 151–153, 161, 243; of kings, 47, 52, 59–61, 96. See also siblings Sobrado, monastery of, 135 social networks, 10–12, 205; and power, 16, 19, 104–105, 107, 120, 122, 134, 238; and the sacred, 105, 110; and women, 18, 61–62, 104, 107, 116–118, 123, 143, 148, 150, 160, 163, 195. See also charters and; giving and spolia, 200 Stafford, Pauline, 9n27 Strabo, Geography, 37, 40 subjectivity, 6–8, 246 succession, royal: Asturian kingdom, 21, 37, 44–51, 53–55, 60; matrilineal, 37–38, 40, 51–55; patrilineal, 21, 52, 54–55; Visigothic, 21, 23–26, 29, 31–32, 36–37, 45, 52–54, 239; and women, 5, 104. See also inheritance; lineage

274

INDEX

Suevi, kingdom of, 32 Suger, abbot of St. Denis, 195–196, 200–201 Suinthila, king, 24 Tábara, monastery of, 163–164, 231; Beatus, 235 Tegridia Sánchez, 73–74, 179 Temple, of Solomon, 184, 193 Teresa, queen of Ordoño II, 197 Teresa, queen of Portugal, 228, 230, 235 Teresa Ansúrez, queen, 71, 74, 145, 151 Teresa Muñoz, 178, 195 Teresa Vermúdez, 74–75, 84, 98–99, 101–103, 149–150, 158, 162 textiles, 192–194, 197 Theophanu, abbess of Essen, 197 Theophanu, empress, 185–186 Toda García, 76 Toledo, 44, 98–99, 151, 154, 158, 190, 192, 227, 232, 238 Tonga, 56–57 tribes: kinship, 37–43; Vadinenses, 37, 40–41 Tulga, king, 25 Túy, 1–2, 55, 108, 113–118, 144, 163, 181 Tyconius, Commentary on the Apocalypse, 208 Ulrich of Zell, Consuetudines, 224 ‘Umar ibn H. afsu¯n, 97 Umayyads, 44, 56–57 Urraca, queen, 4, 18, 75, 102, 154, 166, 197, 199, 228–231, 235 Urraca Fernández, 1–3, 81, 102, 148, 151–152, 154, 160–161, 182–183, 185, 187–188, 190, 193, 231, 240; birth of, 76–77; chalice of, 199–201, 203–204; and Cluny, 217, 222–226; and Eslonza, 120, 150, 163, 166–168, 172–173, 179, 184, 186, 192, 204–205; gifts of, 193, 195–197, 202; incest allegations, 3, 59–60; lineage of, 72, 78; refounds Túy, 1–4, 64, 78, 107–108, 110–119, 122–123, 148, 150–151, 156, 158, 163, 167, 181; religious status of, 78–79; and Virgin Mary, 64, 81, 181, 199–201, 203, 222 Urraca García, abbess of Covarrubias, 72, 75, 179 Urraca García, queen, 75–76

Veni redemptor gentium, 64, 113, 142 Vermudo I, king, 45, 49–50 Vermudo II, king, 74, 120, 125, 145, 150, 157, 176, 178, 219 Vermudo III, king, 75–77, 156, 180, 213, 215, 219 vessels: Eleanor of Aquitaine, 193, 196, 200–202; rock crystal, 195–197, 202–203; and women, 197–198, 204 Vigil, Marcelo, 37–42, 47, 50, 52, 58–59 Vikings, 1, 108, 114–115, 135 Vimara, 48 Viñayo, Antonio, 71 virginity, 15, 18; and martyrdom, 63–64, 70, 84; and purity, 64, 84–86, 187; value of, 61, 63–64, 84–85, 104, 107, 238 virgins: as brides of Christ, 85–87; and cemeteries, 64, 70; claustration of, 65, 79, 95–96; consecration of, 63–69; as gifts to God, 64, 84; as palaces, 64, 70, 93, 96, 142; prayers of, 84; restrictions on, 88, 97; as vessels, 93 Visigoths, 82; aristocracy, 23–26; elective kingship, 21, 23–26, 28, 37, 45; king’s family, 21, 23, 25–32; law, 32–37; queens, 31–32. See also church councils; inheritance; succession Wamba, king, 25, 53 Weiner, Annette, 13–15, 60, 175, 179 widows, consecrated, 5, 63, 66–69, 82; property of, 35–36 William of Malmesbury, 68, 78 Williams, John, 186, 189, 211, 213 Wilton, monastery of, 244 wise and foolish virgins, 198 Witeric, king, 24 Witiza, king, 25–26, 45, 53–54 Wollach, Joachim, 170 women, 2, 7, 11–12, 14–15, 157, 160–161; consecrated, 55, 60, 62, 68, 71, 78–79, 85; intercession, 113, 118, 122–123, 159, 175, 180, 185, 213, 217, 219, 225, 234, 238; and marriage, 12, 56–58, 79, 229; rape, 94; and the sacred, 15–17, 20, 61, 98. See also power and; property and; textiles Yu¯suf ibn Ta¯shf ¯ı n, 154

van Houts, Elizabeth, 170 Vaquero, Mercedes, 52 Vela Ovéquiz, 154–155 Velasquita, domna, 116–117 Venantius Fortunatus, 225

Zaida, queen. See Isabel (Elizabeth), queen Zalla¯qa, battle of, 154, 192, 227 Zamora, 59, 232 Zaragoza, 155, 196, 202, 227