CHAPTER ONE

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN: CALAHORRA AND THE KINGS OF , 1045–1065

Gómez makes his first documentary appearance as Bishop of Calahorra on October 31, 1045. He does so in a charter recording a donation made, by García III, King of Navarre (1035–1054), to the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, whose abbacy the bishop had held since 1039, and would continue to hold until his death in 1065.1 The context of his episcopal documentary debut concisely reflects the three character- istics that from the outset defined his episcopate. It speaks of his tre- mendous personal power: this document, in which Gómez is for the first time referred to as both abbot of the Rioja’s most powerful monas- tic foundation, and bishop of the diocese to which it belonged, records an important stage on his meteoric rise to the position of regional ecclesiastical superpower, which would culminate in his total monop- oly of the riojan church. It also reflects the Cathedral of Calahorra’s enduring insignificance as a diocesan centre during this period, here expressed by the absence of any references to Calahorra, whose Navarrese Reconquest just six months previously had paved the way for the official re-foundation of Gómez’s see.2 Finally, and most signifi- cantly, Gómez’s debut in a Navarrese royal charter illustrates the total identification with the Crown of Navarre that determined every aspect of his episcopate.

1 Antonio Ubieto Arteta (ed.), Cartulario de San Millán de la Cogolla (759–1076), Valencia, 1976, 237; CDMR, vol. II, footnote 1 to 221. 2 As was the case with many other Iberian Visigothic bishoprics that had fallen under Muslim occupation after 711, there was, in fact, some degree of continuity between Calahorra’s Visigothic bishoprics and those who ruled the re-founded see after 1045. Thus there is evidence that by the early ninth century that Calahorra’s bish- ops had taken up residence at the court of the Kings of Asturias in Oviedo. By the early tenth century, the Bishoprics of Alava and Nájera were considered to be the continua- tors of that of Calahorra, which remained under Muslim occupation. Ildefonso Rodríguez de Lama, ‘El cristianismo y los obispos riojanos en la época visigoda, 415–715’, in: J. García Prado (ed.), Historia de , vol.II: Edad Media, , 1983, pp.18–26. 14 chapter one

A signatory to 16 surviving charters of the Navarrese royal family, Gómez was an active curial figure.3 What is more, the particular esteem in which he was held by García III before his appointment as Bishop of Calahorra is reflected by an abundance of royal documents in which he is addressed as ‘venerable father’, ‘spiritual father’, ‘glorious abbot’, ‘our lord Gómez, glorious bishop and abbot’, and even on one occasion ‘most serene pontiff’ by the king.4 A document dated December 13, 1063, in which García III’s son, Sancho IV of Navarre (1054–1076), refers to Gómez as ‘magistro meo’ when alluding to some sins that he had revealed to the bishop ‘in confessione’, reveals that the bishop had also been appointed confessor to García III’s heir.5 Finally, Gómez’s position at the very heart of the Navarrese royal household is also illus- trated by his nomination as the only ecclesiastic among the six execu- tors of the will drawn up in 1060 by García III’s widow, Estefanía, of which his episcopal church of Santa María la Real de Nájera was fur- thermore the primary beneficiary.6 Gómez’s unrivalled proximity to the King of Navarre provides the background to his appointment in 1045 to the Bishopric of Calahorra. He was consecrated on March 14, 1046, in the presence of García III and Queen Estefanía, who marked the occasion by making a suitably grand personal donation to their new bishop.7 The historic Roman and Visigothic diocese to which Gómez was appointed had been officially resurrected in 1045 on frontier territory that extended from the city of Calahorra itself and the Lower Rioja in the East, to the Upper Rioja in the West. After the integration of the Bishopric of Valpuesta into Calahorra’s diocese in or just after 1049 (which is discussed in greater detail below), and before Castile’s gradual recovery of Valpuesta’s territory from Navarre between 1054 and 1067, the Diocese of Calahorra also extended east of the Rioja far into Old Castile, and from there northwards to the Cantabrian coast.8 Although there are no

3 CDMR, vol. II, 7, 13, & 18; Margarita Cantera Montenegro, ‘Santa María la Real de Nájera: Siglos XI-XIV’ (Unpublished PhD thesis), Complutense University Madrid, 1987, vol.II (appendix of primary sources), 10; Ubieto Arteta, San Millán, 237, 241, 242, 246, 255, 256, 259, 260, 267–9, & 285. 4 Ibid., 234–6, 241–3, & 246. 5 Agustín Ubieto Arteta (ed.), Cartulario de Albelda, , 1981, 49. 6 CDMR, vol.II, 19. 7 Ubieto Arteta, San Millán, 241. 8 José María Mínguez, Alfonso VI: Poder, expansión y reorganización interior, Hondarribia, 2000, p.62; Luis Javier Fortún Pérez de Ciriza & Carmen Jusué Simonena, Historia de Navarra I: Antigüedad y Alta Edad Media, , 1993, pp.104–5.