Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History 600-1300 Charles Julian ...

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Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History
600-1300
Charles Julian Bishko
VIII
Additional Note
[77A] On the emphatically imperial character of Cluny's bond with Alfonso VI and the Leonese-
Castilian ruling dynasty, there must now be consulted the important work (with full recent
bibliography) of Peter Segl, which ably re-examines Hispano-Cluniac relations in the 11th and 12th
centuries. (1) The same imperial context can be further confirmed from the notable late 11th-century
codex, now preserved at Parma, of St Ildephonse of Toledo's De virginitate beatae Mariae, which
Abbot Hugh I presented to the Hispanic-king-emperor. (2) This sumptuous illuminated manuscript, done
at Cluny in gold letters on purple vellum, is reminiscent of the famous imperial presentation codices
produced by the Echternach School in 10th and 11th century Germany; and could have been sent to
Spain in grateful acknowledgement shortly after the census doubling of 1077 or, alternatively, in the
wake of Hugh's visit to Burgos in 1090, at the time of his promulgation of the special pro-Alfonsine
liturgical Statuta of 1090-1093 (above, 72-4). Segl notes (204-207) that, contrary to p. 59 above, Peter
the Venerable, St Bernard of Clairvaux and others do occasionally designate the rex Hispaniae as
imperator. It may be added that the Burgundians also coupled the monarchical benefactors of Spain and
England (73, above, note 69): see Peter's Letter 89 to Bishop Albaro of Liege: "post reges Hyspanos et
Anglos", and the special intercessional ordinance for the year 1200 decreed by Abbot Hugh V: "pro ...
regibus Anglorum et Hispaniarum". (3)
The Hispano-Cluniac coalition in the papal crisis of 1080 has been usefully treated at some length by
H. E. J. Cowdrey, although I am not in entire agreement with his contentions. (4) By some scholars
Alfonso VI's donation in 1089-1090 of 10,000 talenta (gold dinars) continues to be seen as an
extravagant new benefaction made by an overly pious ruler for the express purpose of funding the
construction of Cluny III. But as I have insisted elsewhere, this (by trans-Pyrenean standards)
enormous sum was in fact the overdue settlement of five years' arrears in the discharge of the doubled
Hispanic census of 1077; (5) it was the abbot who motu proprio decided to dedicate it to his ambitious
building program.
[78A] Something more needs to be said regarding the remembrance by the Cluniacs of Fernando I's
consort, the queen-empress Sancha, so patently a major influence upon her Leonicizing husband and
her son Alfonso VI in their intimate alliance with the Burgundian abbey. Sancha must have been highly
regarded by the monks as socia along with Fernando, and perhaps also as benefactrix in her own right.
Nevertheless, while commemoration of her obit on VII. Id. Nov. (7 November; she died in 1067 not, as
erroneously above, in 1077)is attested by the Necrology of Villars-les-Moines (6) --and Wollasch has
shown this obituary to be in fact that of the foremost Cluniac nunnery of Marcigny-sur-Loire and

therefore closely based upon Cluny's own lost Necrology (7) --it remains true that at the time of her death
in 1067 the queen-empress does not seem to have been allotted anything more than the customary
annual commemoration of her anniversary. Only in later years, and thanks to the eleemosynary and
intercessional negotiations of her son Alfonso VI, can Doña Sancha be found enjoying also the
exceptional privileges of inclusion alongside her husband in the Fernandine praebenda and the
assignment of a special, if anonymous, collect.
On several topics raised in the foregoing Study, some further brief observations may be made. The
subject of intercessional commemoration linking the Cluniacs with lay rulers, nobles and other
benefactors is being fruitfully pursued by Prof. Joachim Wollasch and his students. A recent byproduct
is the quantitatively based monograph by Dietrich Poeck, which ably analyzes the donors, motives and
benefactorial concessions connected with the numerous lay burials made at Cluny in the 10th and 11th
centuries. (8) On the major 11th-century Cluniac custumals or consuetudinaries of Bernard and Udalric,
the badly needed and long awaited modern critical editions promised in the Corpus Consuetudinum
Monasticarum directed by Dom Kassius Hallinger have yet to appear. Since neither Philippeau nor
Hallinger in their valuable studies (published before my paper of 1961) on the codices and
chronological problematics of these works exploited the Hispanic intercessional passages assembled
above, (9) the utility of my data in helping to narrow the respective dates of composition has yet to be
assessed within the manuscript tradition as a whole. The statement (58, above) regarding noncelebration
at Cluny of the nocturnal office during the Nativity octave should probably be restricted to
mean only that pro defunctis.
The view of the preceding Study that in the later 11th and early 12th centuries Cluny offered no such
liturgical supplications for any other Iberian sovereigns as she did for the king-emperors of Leon,
demands a certain degree of modification regarding the Navarro-Aragonese monarchs Pedro I (1094-
1104) and Alfonso I el Batallador (1104-1134). Fifty years ago Ramackers published from the
Collection Baluze in the Bibliothèque Nationale a text which Baluze himself had taken from fol. 74 v of
Cluny's [79A] lost Obituary. This is a statutum or praeceptum of Abbot Hugh I which describes the
admission to the abbey's societas of the French-born bishop Peter I of Pamplona (1083-1115), also
known as Pierre d'Andouque, Pedro de Roda or Pedro de Anduque. (10) In addition to detailing various
intercessional privileges accorded this celebrated prelate for his repeated generosities to the abbey, this
piece also contains two highly interesting references to King Pedro I of Aragon-Navarre. In one
passage, where the charities of Bishop Peter to the Burgundian congregation are warmly
acknowledged, the text goes on to declare that not only did he journey all the way to Cluny "cum suis
praeclaris muneribus" but that "secumque etiam munera domni Petri regis detulit." (11) A second such
passage, after relating the Pamplonese bishop's admission to confraternity and the list of intercessional
honors granted him in life, at the time of his death, and in commemoration of his anniversary, makes
the following stipulation: "Hoc etiam disponimus, ut in omni uita sua oratio illa, quam pro salute domni
Petri regis cotidie in missa dicendam stabiliuimus, pro ipso similiter dicatur, ut quae pro rege
singulariter pronuntiaretur, nunc pluraliter pro ambobus proferatur." (12)
These two extracts from the Cluniac Obituary provide firm evidence that at some point in his ten-year
reign King Pedro I of Aragon-Navarre, abandoning the coolness towards Cluny characteristic of both
the Navarrese and Aragonese royal houses from ca. 1040 on, became a generous benefactor of the
abbey and the recipient of exceptional liturgical intercession, through the inclusion, at Abbot Hugo's
express order, of a special oratio on his behalf in the daily Mass. We can safely assume a substantial act
of royal charity preceded this concession: one that took the form not of a census, as with Fernando I
and Alfonso VI, or Pedro's own current annual stipend to Rome, (13) but a donation of money or
treasure, made at one specific time. When this occurred, under what circumstances, and with what

elevance for Cluny's previous imperial link with the reges Hispaniarum of Leon and Castile, are all
questions calling for brief consideration.
The chronology can be fixed with fair assurance. Since the Petrine oratio, once instituted, was still
being observed at the time when Bishop Peter brought a second royal charity -- as well as his own
munera, so praeclara as to induce the abbot to couple his name with that of his sovereign in the daily
supplication -- it follows that we can distinguish two separate occasions of royal Aragonese-Navarrese
benevolence. These in turn are most logically correlated with the two climactic points in Pedro I's reign
when major victories over the infidel and acquisition of abundant spoils would prompt placing Cluny
among the monasteries and churches with which the monarch piously shared his good fortune. The first
of these would have been the reconquest of Huesca in 1096, and since this city with its rich booty did
not capitulate until 27 November, (14) the royal munera are not likely to have reached Burgundy until
the following spring or summer. Thus the year 1097 is most probably to be taken as the time when
Hugo [80A] introduced a new daily collect in the Mass for the ruler of Pamplona and Jaca. Similarly,
Pedro's I's second bestowal of munera, after what is clearly an interval of several years, can be linked
to his capture of Barbastro in 1100. Once again, the date of the city's surrender falls in the autumn, on
18 October, (15) so that Bishop Peter's crossing of the Pyrenees and appearance at Cluny with his
monarch's new benefaction are most naturally placed in the summer of 1101.
If we can thus perceive that from 1097 on, during Alfonso VI's later years, a reciprocal bond of
benefaction and liturgical recognition for the first time united Cluny with the king-emperor's principal
opponent in Christian Spain, the resolutely anti-imperial monarch of the Aragonese-Navarrese
federation, are we to interpret this as the extension of the bitter political enmities of the Peninsula into
the very choir of the Burgundian abbey-church (16)
Three things seem reasonably plain. First, the two royal Petrine donations, of presumably 1097 and
1101, must reflect in part at least the persuasive influence upon Pedro I of the bishop of his Navarrese
capital. The latter's ties with the Cluniacs, although secondary to those with his old alma mater Sainte-
Foi de Conques, possibly go back to soon after his installation in 1084, under Sancho Ramirez, as head
of the Church of Pamplona. (17) He was present with the king at the fall of both Huesca and Barbastro,
when spoils were being distributed to religious centers on both sides of the Pyrenees; (18) and, in the
case of Sainte-Foi de Conques at least, we have direct testimony to his ability to induce both Sancho
Ramirez and Pedro I, as well as their nobles, to bestow alms upon foreign monks. (19) Secondly, the
collect pro salute domni Petri regis stands as a vitalicial, purely personal supplication, with no
provision for dynastic continuation. Thirdly, although impressively honorific, the Petrine oratio fails to
place the Aragonese-Navarrese sovereign on anything like the exalted plane of the imperial Hispanic
intercessional privileges, as these are recorded in the custumals of Bernard and Udalric and in the
Hugonic Statuta; and the fact that Bishop Peter's praeclara munera could equate him with his king in
the oratio confirms the distinctly secondary level of liturgical solemnity allowed the king of Jaca and
Pamplona.
Other implications are less readily determinable, and merit further inquiry. A highly probable factor in
bringing about the novel friendship of Cluny with Pedro I may have been the increasingly strained
relations between Abbot Hugh and Alfonso VI in the latter's last two decades, although the Aragonese-
Navarrese benefactions of 1097 and 1101 both precede by some years the apparent disruption of
Alfonsine-Cluniac amity. This estrangement intensifies, probably, in 1103, when the king-emperor first
begins publicly to acknowledge his half-Moorish son, the Infante Sancho, as his heir designate, and
culminates in 1105, when Cluny's mediation of the [81A] successoral pact between the Burgundian
counts Raimundo of Galicia and Henrique of Portugal demonstrates her defiance of Alfonso and
determined adhesion to the original plan, the co-succession of Raimundo and Doña Urraca. (20) Yet,

even before 1103-1105 or Pedro's first donation of 1097, we can suspect a marked cooling of Abbot
Hugh's affection for the Leonese-Castilian emperor caused by an undocumentable but strongly
indicated suspension of the Hispanic census by reason of Alfonso's loss of his Taifa tributaries and the
financial demands of the Almoravid war.
Thus it becomes possible to conjecture that in Aragon-Navarre in 1097, following the lucrative
conquest of Huesca, it was not only royal piety but also conscious foreign policy that motivated the
sending of Muslim booty from the fallen city to Cluny in a calculated effort to exploit the abbey's
strained ties with Leon and attract Hugo's influential support towards Jaca-Pamplona. And are we
similarly justified in deducing that the Cluniac abbot, desperate for funds to maintain his costly
building program, to say nothing of the burden of feeding and clothing his large congregation, cordially
welcomed this Iberian charity from an unexpected source, the long hostile Aragonese-Navarrese royal
house, and, even at the risk of displeasing the Leonese-Castilian rex-imperator, gratefully elevated
King Pedro I to the limited ranks of those exalted persons who, along with the reges Hispaniarum,
received daily mention in the formal supplications of his famed center of liturgical intercession There
is reason to think that to both of these questions affirmative answers are in order; but pending further
archival investigation and much closer study of Hispano-Cluniac affairs in Alfonso VI's two terminal
decades, the case must obviously be left sub judice.
On the other hand, Pedro's successor in 1104, Alfonso I, may for some few years between 1109 and
1113 have received full imperial intercessional privileges as the consort of the queen-empress Urraca, if
not in consequence of the latter's accession to the Leonese-Castilian throne in July 1109, then during
and after the years of bitter hostility between the two spouses when el Batallador claimed and used the
Hispanic imperial title in his own right. Alfonso reputedly made gifts to Cluny and may have briefly
enjoyed the abbey's recognition; obscurity surrounds this never seriously investigated question; (21) but
any friendship between the Burgundian monks and this formidable reconquistador who regarded
himself as the legitimate ruler of both Navarre-Aragon and Leon-Castile must have terminated by 1113.
This was the year -- as I have contended ("The Spanish Journey of Abbot Ponce," Study X in this
volume) -- of the intervention in the Spanish dynastic crisis of the Cluniac head, Ponce de Melgueil,
and the abbey's henceforth open alignment with the anti-Aragonese cause of Doña Urraca and her
young son Alfonso Raimúndez, the future Alfonso VII.
One possible by-product of these royal Aragonese contacts with the abbey under Pedro I and Alfonso I
has never been given the attention it surely merits. This is the gift to the Cluniacs, made first in 1133,
and again in 1141 and 1145, by the Aragonese [82A] magnate Fortún Garcés Cajal of what became the
one Burgundian priory in Navarre, San Adrián de Vadoluengo near Sangüesa; see "Peter the Venerable's
Traverse" (Study XIII in this volume), from around note 44 of text. Cajal, long governor of Nájera and
other Alfonsine tenencias in the Rioja, is the one Aragonese baron known to have endowed Cluny; his
generosities may well be connected with those of the two kings, with whom he claimed a blood
relationship.

Notes for Study Eight: Additional Note
1. Peter Segl, Königtum und Klosterreform in Spanien (Kallmünz, 1974), 193-217.
2. M. Schapiro, The Parma Ildefonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript from Cluny and Related
Works (n.p. 1964); but this study errs on the historical context of the gift. Cf. also C. R. Dodwell, "The
Gospel-Book of Goslar," Times Literary Supplement, 19 Nov. 1976, 1463-4.
3. The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), I, 229 (Ep. 89); II,
157-9; PL CLXXXIX, 279A (Ep. Ill, 2); Statuts, chapîtres généraux et visites de l'Ordre de Cluny, ed.
G. Charvin (Paris, 1965- ), I, 52.
4. H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), 214-47.
5. See my "Fernando I and the Origins of the Leonese-Castilian Alliance with Cluny" in Studies in
Medieval Spanish Frontier History (London, 1980), 46 50; Spanish version in Cuadernos de historia
de España, XLVII-XLVIII (1968), 122-7.
6. Necrologium des Cluniacenser-Priorates Münchenwiler (Villars-les-Moines), ed. Gustav Schnürer
(Freiburg, Schweiz, 1909. Collectanea Friburgensia, N. F., X). Under VII. ID. Nov. appear the words
Sanctia Regina (p. 83); the Longpont necrology reads Sanctia regina Hyspanorum (ibid.).
7. Joachim Wollasch, "Qu'a signifié Cluny pour l'abbaye de Moissac" in Moissac et l'Occident au XIe
siècle (Toulouse, 1964), 13-24 (also, Annales du Midi, LXXV, 1963, 345-52); idem, "Ein
cluniacensisches Totenbuch aus der Zeit Abt Hugos von Cluny," Frühmittelallerliche Studien, I (1967),
406-43.
8. D. Poeck, "Laienbegräbnisse in Cluny," Frühmittelalterliche Studien, XV (1981), 68-179.
9. H. R. Philippeau, "Pour l'histoire de la coutume de Cluny," Rev. Mabillon, XLIV (1954); 141-51; K.
Hallinger, "Klunys Bräuche zur Zeit Hugos des Grossens (1049-1109)," Zeitschrift der Savigny-
Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonist. Abteil., XLV (1959), 99-140. On the unexplored Iberian
circulation of Bernard's custumal, and a hypothesis of its passage via Sahagun to Sao Vicente de
Pombeiro and other Portuguese houses, see J. Mattoso, Le monachisme ibérique et Cluny (Louvain,
1968), 125, 204, 216, 223, 272-4, 375-7.
10. Johannes Ramackers, "Analekten zur Geschichte des Rcformpapsttums und der Cluniacenser,"
Quellen und Forschungcn aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, XXIII (1931 -32), 48-9 (no.
XVIII); cf. 30-2. See also H. E. J. Cowdrey, "Unions and Confraternity with Cluny," Journ. Econ. Hist.,
XVI (1965), 161, to which I owe this reference. On Peter, see J. Goñi Gaztambide, "Los obispos de
Pamplona del siglo XII," Anthologica Annua, XIII (1965), 147-95.
11. Ramackers, 48.
12. Ibid., 49.
13. P. Kehr, "El papado y los reinos de Navarra y Aragón hasta mediados del siglo XII," in Estudios de
Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón, II (1946), 130 3; Ant. Ubieto Arteta, Colección diplomática de
Pedro I de Aragón y Navarra (Zaragoza, 1951), 159 60.
14. Ant. Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón. [I] La formación territorial (Zaragoza, 1981), 122-8.
15. Ibid., 129-30.
16. On Aragonese-Navarrese relations with Castile under Sancho Ramirez and Pedro I, see Ant. Ubieto
Arteta, "Homenaje de Aragón a Castilla por el condado de Navarra," EEMCA, III (1947-48), 7-28;
idem, Col. dipt, de Pedro I, 129-31.

17. Cf. Abbot Hugh's words "in episcopatu suo nobis... magna et multa exhibuisset karitatis seruitia"
(Ramackers, 48).
18. Ubieto Arteta, Col. dipl, de Pedro I, 96-7 and Docs. nos. 24, 25 (Huesca), 96 (Barbastro).
19. See the prose prologue to the versified biography of Peter preserved in t. 143 of the Collection
Doat, Bibl. Nat., Paris: "Procurauit etiam multa bona conferri dicto Conchensi monesterio... a felicis
memoriae Sancio et Petro Sancii filio ipsius regibus pampilonae et aragonum" (fol. 177v).The same
prologue cites Bishop Peter's establishment of a permanent confraternal sociale foedus between the
fratres Conchenses and the cathedral chapter of Pamplona (fols. 177-177V); this must have antedated
his personal entry into societas with Cluny.
20. P. David, "Le pacte succesoral entre Raymond de Galice et Henri de Portugal," Bull, hisp., L
(1948), 275-90, at 285-8. On the date 1105, and the historical circumstances of the intervention of the
Cluniac chamberlain Dalmace Geret in the imperial succession crisis, see my "Count Henrique of
Portugal" (Study IX in this volume).
21. Some suggestive data on Alfonso I's imperial status down to 1126 (Urraca's death) or 1127 (Peace
of Támara) can be found in J. M. Ramos y Loscertales, "La sucesión del rey Alfonso VI," An. hist.
derecho esp., XIII (1936-41), 36-99 (at 62ff.); J. M. Lacarra, Alfonso el Batallador (Zaragoza, 1978),
62 and note 14; Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109-1126
(Princeton, 1982), 106-7, 121, 170-1, 180, 194; but none of these works considers the bearing on the
Leonese-Cluniac alliance.