Alfonso the Battler
Alfonso I | |
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Felicie de Roucy |
Alfonso I (c. 1073/1074
His nickname comes from the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña (c. 1370), which says that "they called him lord Alfonso the battler because in Spain there wasn't as good a knight who won twenty-nine battles" (clamabanlo don Alfonso batallador porque en Espayna no ovo tan buen cavallero que veynte nueve batallas vençió).[2]
Early life
His earliest years were passed in the monastery of Siresa, learning to read and write and to practice the military arts under the tutelage of Lope Garcés the Pilgrim, who was repaid for his services by his former charge with the county of Pedrola when Alfonso came to the throne.
During his brother's reign, he participated in the taking of Huesca (the
.A series of deaths put Alfonso directly in line for the throne. His brother's children, Isabella and Peter (who married María Rodríguez, daughter of El Cid), died in 1103 and 1104 respectively.
Matrimonial conflicts
A passionate fighting-man (he fought twenty-nine battles against Christian or Moor), he was married (when well over 30 years and a habitual bachelor) in 1109 to the ambitious Queen
Alfonso's late marriage and his failure to remarry and produce the essential legitimate heir that should have been a dynastic linchpin of his aggressive territorial policies have been adduced as a lack of interest in women. Ibn al-Athir (1166–1234) describes Alfonso as a tireless soldier who would sleep in his armor without benefit of cover, whom when asked why he did not take his pleasure from women, responded that the man devoted to war needs the companionship of men not women.
Church relations
The king quarrelled with the church, and particularly the
In 1122 in Belchite, he founded a confraternity of knights to fight against the Almoravids.[6] It was the start of the military orders in Aragon. Years later, he organised a branch of the Militia Christi of the Holy Land at Monreal del Campo.
Military expansion
Alfonso spent his first four years as king in near-constant war with the Muslims. In 1105, he conquered Ejea and Tauste and refortified Castellar and Juslibol. In 1106, he defeated
In 1118, the Council of Toulouse declared a
In 1119, he retook Cervera, Tudejen, Castellón, Tarazona, Ágreda, Magallón, Borja, Alagón, Novillas, Mallén, Rueda, Épila and populated the region of Soria. He began the siege of Calatayud, but left to defeat the army at Cutanda trying to retake Zaragoza. When Calatayud fell, he took Bubierca, Alhama de Aragón, Ariza, and Daroca (1120). In 1123, he besieged and took Lleida, which was in the hands of the count of Barcelona. From the winter of 1124 to September 1125, he was on a risky expedition to Peña Cadiella deep in Andalusia.
In the great raid of 1125, he carried away a large part of the subject Christians from Granada, and in the south-west of France, he had rights as king of Navarre.
He conquered Molina de Aragón and populated
He went north of the Pyrenées in October 1130 to protect the Val d'Aran. Early in 1131, he besieged Bayonne. It is said he ruled "from Belorado to Pallars and from Bayonne to Monreal."[citation needed]
At the
His final campaigns were against Mequinenza (1133) and Fraga (1134), where García Ramírez, the future king of Navarre, and a mere 500 other knights fought with him. It fell on 17 July. He was dead by September. His tomb is in the monastery of San Pedro in Huesca.
Death
Succession
The testament of Alfonso leaving his kingdom to the three orders was dismissed out of hand by the nobility of his kingdoms, and possible successors were sought. Alfonso's only brother,
The choice of the Navarrese lords fell on
Pseudo-Alfonso the Battler
Sometime during the reign of
The earliest chronicle source for the imposture is
Competitors for succession
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Notes
- Crónica de San Juan de la Peña he died in his sixty-first year [1]
- ^ Pope Innocent II indeed did write Alfonso VII to just this effect, 10 June 1135 or 1136.[8]
References
- ^ Lourie 1975, p. 639.
- ^ Carmen Orcástegui Gros (ed.), "Crónica de San Juan de la Peña (Versión aragonesa)", Cuadernos de Historia Jerónimo Zurita, 51–52 (Zaragoza, Institución «Fernando el Católico», 1985), p. 459.
- ^ Reilly 1995, p. 133–134.
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Alphonso s.v. Alphonso I., king of Aragon". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 734–735. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "Biography of King of Aragón y Navarra Alfonso I (1073–1134)". TheBiography. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
- ^ Constable & Zurro 2012, p. 203.
- ^ Lacarra 1978, p. 35.
- ^ a b Lourie 1975, p. 645.
- ^ They were first published in the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France (Correspondance de Louis VII), XV (Paris: 1878), 2nd ed., no. 223–4, pp. 71–2, and utitised extensively by Marcelin Defourneaux, "Louis VII et le souverains espagnols. L'enigme du «pseudo-Alphonse»", in Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal, VI (Madrid: 1956), 647–61. They were published again by Ubieto Arteta (1958), appendices I and II, pp. 37–8.
- ^ Ubieto Arteta (1958), 35, cites the evidence for Aragon's early support for Alexander III against the Antipope Victor IV. The earliest possible date at which Berengar could have been travelling to Rome to meet Alexander is after 23 November 1165, when the latter finally took up residence in Rome.
- ^ Antonio C. Floriano, "Fragmentos de unos viejos anales (1089–1196). Transcripción y análisis paleográfico. Crítica histórica", Boletín de la Academia de la Historia, CXIV (1929), 153–4, cited in Ubieto Arteta (1958), 36:
Vino un ferrero e dixo: «yo so don Alfonso, el que presó a Çaragoça e Cadatayut e Daroqua»; e recebido es en aquellos lugares con grant honra e con grant ponpa. E dice muchas cosas que semeiavam verdat de lo passado quel havia fecho. E era tenido por senyer e por don Alfonso. E despues fue conoscido que non era aquel, e enforcáronlo muy desonradament devant la ciudad de Barcelona.
- ^ Ubieto Arteta (1958), note 24, who also connects the appearance of the pretender with the economic disasters that befell Aragon in 1174.
- ^ The account in De rebus Hispaniae (Madrid: 1793), II, 150–51, quoted in Ubieto Arteta (1958), note 1:
[Alfonsus] nam victus occiditur et si occisus inventus fuerit dubitatur. Ab aliquibus enim dicitur corpus eius in montis Aragonis monasterio tumulatum a mauris tamen ante redemptum. Ab aliis dicitur vivus a proelio evasisse et confusionem proelii nequiens tolerare peregrinum se exhibuit huic mundo effigie et habitu immutatus. Et annis aliquot interpositis, quispiam se ostendit qui se eumdem publice fatebatur et multorum Castellae et Aragoniae id ipsum testimonio affirmabant qui cum eo in utroque regno fuerant familiariter conversati et ad memoriam reducebant secreta plurima que ipse olim cum eis habita recolebat et antiquorum assertio ipsum esse firmiter asserebat. Demum tamen quia cum ex regno plurimi sectabantur et de die in diem eorum numerus augebatur. Aldefonsus rex Aragoniae fecit eum suspendio interire.
- ^ The account in the Crónica de los Estados Peninsulares: texto del siglo XIV, ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta (Granada: 1955), 128, quoted in Ubieto Arteta (1958), note 2:
Otros dicen que de vergüenza que era vencido sent passo la mar a Jerusalem, pero nunca lo trobaron ni muerto ni vivo. Otros dicen que a tiempo vino en Aragon e fablo con algunos que sopieran de sus poridades. Otros que alli se perdio e non fue conoscido..
- ^ Zurita's account is found in his second book, twenty-second chapter, and is completely recapitulated by Ubieto Arteta (1958), 29–30.
Sources
- Constable, Olivia Remie; Zurro, Damian, eds. (2012). "Grants to Military Christian Orders". Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources. Translated by Brodman, James W. University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 203–208.
- Lacarra, José María (1978). Alfonso el Batallador. Guara Editorial.
- Lourie, Elena (1975). "The Will of Alfonso I, El Batallador, King of Aragon and Navarre: A Reassessment". Speculum. 50:4 October (4): 635–651. S2CID 159659007.
- Reilly, Bernard F. (1995). The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031-1157. Blackwell.
- Ubieto Arteta, Antonio. "La aparición del falso Alfonso I el Batallador." Argensola, 38 (1958), 29–38.