chapter 8 The Aragonese Episcopate and the Military Campaigns of Alfonso i the Battler against Iberian Muslims

Pablo Dorronzoro Ramírez

Peninsular Crusading and Military Activity of Aragonese Bishops

If there has ever been a peninsular king who honours the nickname estab- lished by historiographic tradition, this is undoubtedly Alfonso i of and Navarre, “the Battler.” Under his rule nascent Aragon would settle its territorial bases, definitively descending from the precipitous Pyrenees to complete the process initiated by his two immediate predecessors on the throne, and pro- gressively invading the plains, much more populated and better adapted for agriculture. This huge expansion carried important changes in the mentality of Aragonese people at every social and institutional level, causing the concept of crusade to become much more virulently rooted than in the rest of Western Christendom, including other peninsular kingdoms. The witnessed an almost exponential territorial growth during the thirty-year reign of Alfonso i (1104–1134). According to data pub- lished by Antonio Ubieta Arteta, the lands that several monarchs occupied during more than twenty-five years were, in hectares: Ramiro i (1035–1069), 71,967; Sancho Ramírez (1062–1094), 300,036; Peter i (1094–1104), 295,364; and finally Alfonso the Battler (1104–1134), 1,819,696.1 Clearly, the Aragonese king- dom was immersed, from its very beginning, in a process of continuous expan- sion, mostly at the expense of Muslim districts along the Upper Border (Somon- tanos of and Barbastro), and conquest of the important saraqusti taifa in the Valley (Saragossa and the so-called Regnum Cesaraugustanum). But such a long process required a series of legitimizing tools, both ideolog- ical and spiritual; it needed a means of joining the forces of different agents participating in the common goal of the kingdom’s expansion. Thus, we face the concepts of holy war and peninsular crusading. Neither can be considered at all unique to the Kingdom of Aragon and they have been extensively studied;

1 Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, 6 vols. in 8 pts. (Saragossa: Anúbar, 1981–1989), 1:8.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004353626_010 234 dorronzoro ramírez nonetheless, there are several specific nuances in the case of Aragon, basically concerning problems related to the kingdom’s small size and the tremendous vulnerability of its frontiers.2 One of these distinct Aragonese elements is the frontera (frontier), a term found for the first time in 1059 among the documents of Ramiro i.3 Philippe Sénac suggests that the concept of frontier emerges together with connotations of war. In the tenth century, the word Extrematura defined the southernmost lands of the Kingdom of Pamplona, but in the times of Ramiro i we encounter the term frontera belonging to the “military semantic register,” for it is used to define places as the advanced, ever associated with the concept of “whatever lies ahead.”4 This concept probably merged with those of freedom, wealth, and war against Islam in the minds of Aragonese people, which in this paper we will relate to one of the major institutions in the reconquering process, the church of Aragon.

2 There are, indeed, numerous works dealing with the concepts of holy war and crusade that focus on the Iberian Peninsula. It is not the aim of this essay to treat this subject intensively, so I will only point out some major works about the different peninsular areas. In the particular case we are dealing with, the Kingdom of Aragon, see esp.: Carlos Laliena Corbera, “Encrucijadas ideológicas. Conquista feudal, cruzada y reforma de la Iglesia en el siglo xi hispánico,” in La reforma gregoriana y su proyección en la cristiandad occidental: siglos xi– xii (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, Departamento de Cultura y Turismo, 2006), 289–333; idem, “Guerra sagrada y poder real en Aragón y Navarra en el transcurso del siglo xi,” in Guerre, pouvoirs et idéologies dans l’Espagne chrétienne aux alentours de l’an mil, ed. Thomas Deswarte and Philippe Sénac (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 97–112. See also more general works: Jean Flori, “Réforme-reconquista-croisade. L’idée de reconquete dans la correspondance pontificale d’Alexandre ii à Urbain ii,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 40.160 (1997): 317– 335; idem, “Le vocabulaire de la ‘reconquete chrétienne’ dans les lettres de Grégroire vii,” in De Toledo a Huesca. Sociedades medievales en transición a finales del siglo xi (1080–1100), ed. Carlos Laliena Corbera and Juan F. Utrilla Utrilla (Saragossa: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1998), 247–267. For the case of the neighbouring and León, focusing on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “Iglesia y violencia, en torno a la idea de cruzada,”Hispania Sacra 49.99 (1997): 349–361; idem, “Obispos, guerra santa y cruzada en los reinos de León y Castilla (s. xii),” in Cristianos y musulmanes en la Península Ibérica: La guerra, la frontera y la convivencia, ed. Juan I. Ruiz de la Peña and Miguel Á. Ladero Quesada (Ávila: Fundación Sánchez-Albornoz, 2009), 219–256. See also his article in this volume. 3 It happens to be the monarch’s testament: Colección diplomática de San Juan de la Peña, ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, 2 vols. (: Anúbar, 1962–1963), 1:178, no. 150. 4 Philippe Sénac, “La frontera aragonesa en los siglos xi y xii: ‘Pro defensionem christianorum et confusionem sarracenorum’,” Territorio, Sociedad y Poder. Revista de estudios medievales 4 (2009): 151–166.