Alfonso the Battler

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Alfonso I
Felicie de Roucy

Alfonso I (c. 1073/1074

Alfonso VI. Alfonso the Battler earned his sobriquet in the Reconquista. He won his greatest military successes in the middle Ebro, where he conquered Zaragoza in 1118 and took Ejea, Tudela, Calatayud, Borja, Tarazona, Daroca, and Monreal del Campo. He died in September 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Muslims at the Battle of Fraga
.

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

Luna, Ardenes, and Bailo
.

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

Almoravids, and to supply them with a capable military leader. But Urraca was tenacious of her right as queen regnant and had not learnt chastity in the polygamous household of her father. Husband and wife quarrelled with the brutality of the age and came to open war, even placing Urraca under siege at Astorga in 1112.[3] Alfonso had the support of one section of the nobles who found their account in the confusion. Being a much better soldier than any of his opponents he won the Battle of Candespina and the Battle of Viadangos, but his only trustworthy supporters were his Aragonese, who were not numerous enough to keep Castile and León subjugated. The marriage of Alfonso and Urraca was declared null by the pope, as they were second cousins, in 1110, but he ignored the papal nuncio and clung to his liaison with Urraca until 1114.[4] During his marriage, he had called himself "King and Emperor of Castile, Toledo, Aragón, Pamplona, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza" in recognition of his rights as Urraca's husband; of his inheritance of the lands of his father, including the kingdom of his great-uncle Gonzalo; and his prerogative to conquer Andalusia
from the Muslims. He inserted the title of imperator on the basis that he had three kingdoms under his rule.

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

A denarius of Alfonso's, minted at Jaca, bearing his effigy and the inscription ANFUS-REX ARA-GON (Anfusus rex Aragonensium, King Alfonso of Aragon).

The king quarrelled with the church, and particularly the

Pope Calixtus II brought about an arrangement between the old man and his young namesake.[4]

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

Ahmad II al-Musta'in of Zaragoza at Valtierra. In 1107, he took Tamarite de Litera and San Esteban de Litera
. Then followed a period dominated by his relations with Castile and León through his wife, Urraca. He resumed his conquests in 1117 with Fitero, Corella, Cintruénigo, Murchante, Monteagudo, and Cascante.

In 1118, the Council of Toulouse declared a

crusade to assist in the conquest of Zaragoza. Many Frenchmen consequently joined Alfonso at Ayerbe. They took Almudévar, Gurrea de Gállego, and Zuera, besieging Zaragoza itself by the end of May. The city fell on 18 December, and the forces of Alfonso occupied the Azuda, the government tower. The great palace of the city was given to the monks of Bernard. Promptly, the city was made Alfonso's capital. Two years later, in 1120, he defeated a Muslim army intent on reconquering his new capital at the Battle of Cutanda
. He promulgated the fuero of tortum per tortum, facilitating taking the law into one's own hands, which among others reassumed the Muslim right to dwell in the city and their right to keep their properties and practice their religion under their own jurisdiction as long as they maintained tax payment and relocated to the suburbs.

Modern statue of Alfonso as a warrior in the Parque Grande José Antonio Labordeta, Zaragoza

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.

Alfonso VII. He confirmed a treaty with Castile the next year (1128) with the Peace of Támara
, which fixed the boundaries of the two realms.

He conquered Molina de Aragón and populated

Valencia
, which had fallen again upon the Cid's death.

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

Alfonso VII of Castile, for the papacy would be bound to press the terms of such a pious testament.[b]
Generous bequests to important churches and abbeys in Castile had the effect of making the noble churchmen there beneficiaries who would be encouraged by the will to act as a brake on Alfonso VII's ambitions to break it – and yet among the magnates witnessing the will in 1131 there was not a single cleric. In the event it was a will that his nobles refused to carry out – instead bringing his brother Ramiro from the monastery to assume royal powers – an eventuality that Lourie suggests was Alfonso's hidden intent.

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

relics
) of Alfonso the Battler, with the skull centre, facing the viewer. Photograph by Enrique Capella (May 1920).

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,

Sancho III of Navarre, put himself forward but garnered no local support. The nobility of Navarre aligned behind Pedro de Atarés, the grandson of Alfonso's illegitimate uncle, while the Aragonese nobility rallied around the abbot-bishop Ramiro. A convention was called at Borja
in order to develop a consensus. Pedro de Atarés had so alienated his own partisans there with his perceived arrogance that they had abandoned him, yet at the same time were unwilling to accept Alfonso's younger brother Ramiro. The convention then broke up without ever arriving at a compromise, and the two regional factions proceeded to act independently.

The choice of the Navarrese lords fell on

García Sánchez III and protégé of Alfonso VII to be their king. The Aragonese took Ramiro out of a monastery and made him king, marrying him without papal dispensation to Agnes, sister of the Duke of Aquitaine, then betrothing their newborn daughter to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, who was then named Ramiro's heir. "The result of the crisis produced by the result of Alfonso I's will was a major reorientation of the peninsula's kingdoms: the separation of Aragon and Navarre, the union of Aragon and Catalonia and – a moot point but stressed particularly by some Castilian historians – the affirmation of 'Castilian hegemony' in Spain"[8] by the rendering of homage for Zaragoza
by Alfonso's eventual heir, Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona.

Pseudo-Alfonso the Battler

Sometime during the reign of

Third Lateran Council in March 1179. The letters were probably written towards the end of 1178 or in January 1179 at the latest.[10] According to an annalist source for the years 1089–1196, the pretender was received with honour and pomp in Zaragoza, Calatayud, and Daroca, which the Battler had conquered, but after it was found out that he was false he was executed before the city of Barcelona in 1181.[11] Modern historian Antonio Ubieto Arteta has hypothesised that the Aragonese lords of the tenancies of Zaragoza, Calatayud, and Daroca – Pedro de Luesia, Loferrench de Luna, Pedro de Castillazuelo (lord of Calatayud), Pedro Cornel (lord of Murillo de Gállego), and the majordomo Jimeno de Artusilla, all of whom disappear between 1177 and 1181 in the documentation of their tenancies – supported, at least initially, the pretender.[12] These lords also appear in the later legend of the Bell of Huesca
, which has no historical basis, as the victims of Ramiro II (1136). Since, historically, they were not active in the 1130s, it is possible that the historically based legend of the pseudo-Alfonso had some influence on the genesis of the Bell of Huesca.

The earliest chronicle source for the imposture is

Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona
, who had been exercising power in Aragon, and the succession of the child Alfonso II in 1162. The death of the impostor, by hanging, must have occurred in 1163.

Competitors for succession

Candidates to succeed Alfonso the Battler
Muniadona of
Castile
Sancho III
of Pamplona
Sancha
of Aybar
Stephanie
of
Barcelona
García
Sánchez III
of Pamplona
(mistress)Ferdinand I
of León
Garsendis
of Foix
Ramiro I
of
Aragon
Amuña
Sancho IV
of
Navarre
Sancho
Garcés of
Uncastillo
Alfonso VI
of León
and Castile
Felicia
of
Roucy
Sancho
Ramírez
of Navarre
and Aragon
Isabella
of
Urgell
Sancho
Ramírez
Count of
Ribagorza
Peter I
of Navarre
and Aragon
García
Sánchez
of Atarés
García
Ramírez
of Navarre
Alfonso VII
of León
and Castile
Petronilla
of
Aragon
Ramon
Berenguer IV
Count of
Barcelona
Peter
of
Atarés
  
Candidates for the crowns of Navarre and Aragon in 1134
Marriage and legitimate descent
Liaison and illegitimate descent

Notes

  1. Crónica de San Juan de la Peña he died in his sixty-first year [1]
  2. ^ Pope Innocent II indeed did write Alfonso VII to just this effect, 10 June 1135 or 1136.[8]

References

  1. ^ Lourie 1975, p. 639.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Reilly 1995, p. 133–134.
  4. ^ a b c d  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Alphonso s.v. Alphonso I., king of Aragon". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 734–735.
  5. ^ "Biography of King of Aragón y Navarra Alfonso I (1073–1134)". TheBiography. Retrieved 17 June 2019.
  6. ^ Constable & Zurro 2012, p. 203.
  7. ^ Lacarra 1978, p. 35.
  8. ^ a b Lourie 1975, p. 645.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ 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.

  12. ^ Ubieto Arteta (1958), note 24, who also connects the appearance of the pretender with the economic disasters that befell Aragon in 1174.
  13. ^ 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.

  14. ^ 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..

  15. ^ Zurita's account is found in his second book, twenty-second chapter, and is completely recapitulated by Ubieto Arteta (1958), 29–30.

Sources

Regnal titles
Preceded by
Peter I
King of Aragon

1104–1134
Succeeded by
King of Navarre

1104–1134
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Urraca of León (1109–1126)
Alfonso VII
(1126–1134)
Succeeded by