Alfonso the Battler
Encyclopedia
Alfonso I called the Battler or the Warrior , was the king of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother Peter I. With his marriage to Urraca
, queen regnant of Castile
and León
, in 1109, he began to use, with some justification, the grandiose title Emperor of Spain
, formerly employed by his father-in-law, 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 Egea, 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.
, learning to read and write and to practice the military arts until the tuition 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 Battle of Alcoraz
, 1096), which became the largest city in the kingdom and the new capital. He also joined El Cid
's expeditions in Valencia. His father gave him the lordships of Biel
, 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.
, a passionate woman unsuited for a subordinate role. The marriage had been arranged by her father Alfonso VI of León in 1106 to unite the two chief Christian states against the Almoravides, 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. 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. 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, who responded when asked why he did not take his pleasure from one of the captives of Muslim chiefs, responded that the man devoted to war needs the companionship of men not women.
. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and León to his stepson, Alfonso VII of Castile, son of Urraca and her first husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II brought about an arrangement between the old man and his young namesake.
In 1122 in Belchite, he founded a confraternity of knights
to fight against the Almoravids. 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
.
, 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.
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 claims as usurper-king of Navarre. From 1125 to 1126, he was on campaign against Granada
, where he was trying to install a Christian prince, and Córdoba, where got only as far as Motril. In 1127, he reconquered Longares, but simultaneously lost all his Castilian possessions to 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 Monzón
in 1129, before besieging Valencia
, which had fallen again upon the Cid's death.
He went north of the Pyrenees 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."
At the Siege of Bayonne
in October 1131, three years before his death, he published a will leaving his kingdom to three autonomous religious orders based in Palestine and politically largely independent on the pope, the Knights Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, whose influences might have been expected to cancel one another out. The will has greatly puzzled historians, who have read it as a bizarre gesture of extreme piety uncharacteristic of Alfonso's character, one that effectively undid his life's work. Elena Lourie (1975) suggested instead that it was Alfonso's attempt to neutralize the papacy's interest in a disputed succession— Aragon had been a fief of the Papacy since 1068— and to fend off Urraca's son from her first marriage, Alfonso VII of Castile, for the Papacy would be bound to press the terms of such a pious testament. 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 is 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. Alfonso was a fierce, violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly militant. His tomb is in the monastery of San Pedro
in Huesca
.
; the Navarrese lords, perhaps irked at the personal union of Aragon and Navarre signalled their independence by putting García Ramírez, Lord of Monzón
, descendant of an illegitimate son of García Sánchez III, to the throne in Pamplona
. "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" by the rendering of homage for Zaragoza
by Alfonso's eventual heir, Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona.
, the Battler's grandnephew, a man came forward claiming to be Alfonso the Battler. The only contemporary references to this event are two letters of Alfonso II addressed to Louis VII of France
; they were carried to Louis by Berengar, the Bishop of Lleida, but are not dated. According to the second of these, the pretender was then living in Louis's domains, meaning the Principality of Catalonia
, which was ruled by Alfonso under Louis's suzerainty. This pretender was an old man (appropriately, since the Battler had died some decades earlier) and Alfonso II expressed confidence that Louis would arrest him at the earliest possible moment and bring him to justice. The first letter supplies sufficient information to date it approximately, since the Bishop sojourned at the court of Louis on his way to Rome. It is known from other sources that Berengar attended the Third Lateran Council in March 1179. The letters were probably written towards the end of 1178 or in January 1179 at the latest. 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. Modern historian Antonio Ubieto Arteta, has hypothesised that the Aragonese lords of the tenencies 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 tenencies—perhaps support, at least inititally, the pretender. These lords also appear in the later legend of the Bell of Huesca, which has no historical basis, as the victims 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 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada
, writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, who records that there were several legends then current about the death of Alfonso the Battler: some believed he perished in the battle of Fraga, some that his body had never been recovered, others that he was buried in the monastery of Montearagón
, and still others that he had fled from Fraga in shame after his defeat and became a pilgrim as an act of penance. Some years later, Rodrigo writes, though he does not give a year, an impostor arose and was received by many as the Battler, though Alfonso II had him arrested and hanged. This is the earliest reference to the impostor's end. The legend was amplified in later years. According to the fourteenth-century Crónica de los Estados Peninsulares, the Battler went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he lived for many years. The Crónica de San Juan de la Peña also recounts the incident, but it depends entirely on Rodrigo and the Estados Peninsulares. It is not until the seventeenth-century historian Jerónimo Zurita penned his Anales de la Corona de Aragón that new details were added to the legend. Zurita's dates the impostor's appearance to the death of 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.
Urraca of Castile
Urraca was Queen regnant of León, Castile, and Galicia, and claimed the imperial title as suo jure Empress of All the Spains from 1109 until her death in childbirth, as well as Empress of All Galicia.- Childhood :...
, queen regnant of Castile
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
and León
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León...
, in 1109, he began to use, with some justification, the grandiose title Emperor of Spain
Imperator totius Hispaniae
Imperator totius Hispaniae is a Latin title meaning "Emperor of all Spain". In Spain in the Middle Ages, the title "emperor" was used under a variety of circumstances from the ninth century onwards, but its usage peaked, as a formal and practical title, between 1086 and 1157...
, formerly employed by his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. Alfonso the Battler earned his sobriquet in the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
. He won his greatest military successes in the middle Ebro
Ebro
The Ebro or Ebre is one of the most important rivers in the Iberian Peninsula. It is the biggest river by discharge volume in Spain.The Ebro flows through the following cities:*Reinosa in Cantabria.*Miranda de Ebro in Castile and León....
, where he conquered Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
in 1118 and took Egea, Tudela
Tudela, Navarre
Tudela is a municipality in Spain, the second city of the autonomous community of Navarre. Its population is around 35,000. Tudela is sited in the Ebro valley. Fast trains running on two-track electrified railways serve the city and two freeways join close to it...
, Calatayud
Calatayud
Calatayud is a city and municipality in the province of Zaragoza in Aragón, Spain lying on the river Jalón, in the midst of the Sistema Ibérico mountain range. It is the second-largest city in the province after the capital, Zaragoza, and the largest town in Aragón other than the three provincial...
, Borja
Borja, Zaragoza
Borja is a town in the province of Zaragoza, community of Aragon, north-eastern Spain.-History:The town's origins date back to the 5th century BC, when a Celtiberian settlement, known as Bursau or Bursao, existed near the current ruins of the castle...
, Tarazona
Tarazona
Tarazona is a municipality in the Spanish province of Zaragoza, in the autonomous community of Aragon. It is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tarazona and the capital of the Tarazona y el Moncayo Aragonese comarca.- History :...
, Daroca
Daroca
Daroca is a city and municipality in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain, situated to the south of the city of Zaragoza. It is the center of a judicial district....
, and Monreal del Campo
Monreal del Campo
Monreal del Campo is a municipality located in the province of Teruel, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 2,391 inhabitants....
. He died in September 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Muslims at the Battle of Fraga.
Early life
His earliest years were passed in the monastery of SiresaAbbey of San Pedro de Siresa
The Abbey of San Pedro de Siresa is a monastery in Siresa . It was constructed between the 9th and 13th centuries, and is the northernmost monastery in Aragon.-History:...
, learning to read and write and to practice the military arts until the tuition of Lope Garcés the Pilgrim, who was repaid for his services by his former charge with the county of Pedrola
Pedrola
Pedrola is a municipality located in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 2,906 inhabitants....
when Alfonso came to the throne.
During his brother's reign, he participated in the taking of Huesca (the Battle of Alcoraz
Battle of Alcoraz
The Battle of Alcoraz took place in 1096 outside Huesca , pitting the besieging forces of Peter I of Aragon and Navarre against the relief forces of Al-Musta'in II of Zaragoza. The siege was begun some two years earlier by Peter's father, Sancho Ramírez, who had camped at the time in the Castle of...
, 1096), which became the largest city in the kingdom and the new capital. He also joined El Cid
El Cid
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador , was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat...
's expeditions in Valencia. His father gave him the lordships of Biel
Biel, Zaragoza
Biel is a municipality in the Spanish province of Zaragoza, in the autonomous community of Aragon. Biel included the village or "Lower Local Entity" of Fuencalderas....
, Luna
Luna, Zaragoza
Luna is a municipality located in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. It is in the judicial district of Ejea de los Caballeros in the northeast of the province. It is 65 km from Zaragoza...
, Ardenes, and Bailo
Bailo
Bailo is a municipality located in the province of Huesca, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 256 inhabitants.-Villages:*Bailo*Larués*Arrés*Alastuey*Arbués*Paternoy*Especiello*Gabás*Huértalo...
.
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
El Cid
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador , was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat...
), 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 Urraca of León, widow of Raymond of BurgundyRaymond of Burgundy
Raymond of Burgundy was the fourth son of William I, Count of Burgundy, and was Count of Amous. He came to the Iberian Peninsula for the first time during the period 1086–1087 with Odo I, Duke of Burgundy...
, a passionate woman unsuited for a subordinate role. The marriage had been arranged by her father Alfonso VI of León in 1106 to unite the two chief Christian states against the Almoravides, and to supply them with a capable military leader. But Urraca was tenacious of her right as queen regnant
Queen regnant
A queen regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right, in contrast to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigning king. An empress regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right over an empire....
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. 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
Battle of Candespina
The Battle of Candespina was fought on 26 October 1111 between the forces of Alfonso I of Aragon and those of his estranged wife, Urraca of León and Castile, in the Campo de la Espina near Sepúlveda. Alfonso was victorious, as he would be again in a few weeks at the Battle of Viadangos.The battle...
and the Battle of Viadangos
Battle of Viadangos
The Battle of Viadangos or Fontedangos was fought in the autumn of 1111 between the forces of Alfonso I of Aragon and the Galician allies of his estranged wife, Urraca of León and Castile, at Villadangos north of Luna, some twenty kilometres from León...
, but his only trustworthy supporters were his Aragonese, who were not numerous enough to keep Castile
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
and León
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of 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. 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
Gonzalo of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza
Gonzalo Sánchez was made Count of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, two small Pyrenean counties, before 1035 by his father, Sancho III of Navarre. He succeeded to these domains after his father's death in that year and ruled them as vassal of his brother García Sánchez III until his death...
; and his prerogative to conquer Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
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, who responded when asked why he did not take his pleasure from one of the captives of Muslim chiefs, 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 Cistercians, almost as violently as with his wife. As he defeated her, so he drove Archbishop Bernard into exile and expelled the monks of SahagúnSahagún, Spain
Sahagún is a town in the province of León, Spain. It is the main town of the Leonese section of the Tierra de Campos comarca.Sahagún is notable for containing some of the earliest examples of the mudéjar style of architecture. It lies on the Way of St. James.The initial town arose due to the...
. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and León to his stepson, Alfonso VII of Castile, son of Urraca and her first husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II brought about an arrangement between the old man and his young namesake.
In 1122 in Belchite, he founded a confraternity of knights
Confraternity of Belchite
The Confraternity of Belchite was an "experimental" community of knights founded in 1122 by Alfonso the Battler, king of Aragon and Navarre, and lasting until shortly after 1136. Members could enlist permanently or for a set time, vowing "never to live at peace with the pagans but to devote all...
to fight against the Almoravids. It was the start of the military orders in Aragon. Years later, he organised a branch of the Militia Christi of the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
at Monreal del Campo
Monreal del Campo
Monreal del Campo is a municipality located in the province of Teruel, Aragon, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 2,391 inhabitants....
.
Military expansion
Alfonso spent his first four years 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 Esteban de la Litera. Then followed a period dominated by his relations with Castile and León through his wife, Urraca. He resumed his conquest in 1117 by conquering FiteroFitero
Fitero is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.The Monastery of Fitero is situated here.-External links:*...
, Corella
Corella
Corella may refer to:Ornithology* Corella , a member of a group of cockatoos from the subgenus Licmetis*Corella , the journal of the Australian Bird Study Association, formerly called Australian Bird Bander...
, Cintruénigo
Cintruénigo
Cintruénigo is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.-External links:** http://www.loignoro.com* Pagina web de Loignoro, grupo de rock-punk de Cintruénigo*...
, Murchante
Murchante
Murchante is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.-External links:**...
, Monteagudo
Monteagudo
Monteagudo is the name of:* Monteagudo, Bolivia, a town in Bolivia* Monteagudo, Navarre, a town and municipality located in the province of Navarre, Spain* Monteagudo del Castillo, a town and municipality in the province of Teruel, Spain...
, and Cascante
Cascante
Cascante is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.During the Roman period, Cascante was known as Cascantum.-External links:**...
.
In 1118, the Council of Toulouse declared a crusade to assist in the conquest of Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
. Many Frenchmen consequently joined Alfonso at Ayerbe
Ayerbe
Ayerbe is a town in the Hoya de Huesca comarca, in the autonomous community of Aragon in Spain.-Geography:Ayerbe is located 28 km from Huesca on highway A 132 in the direction of Pamplona, on the Gállego river...
. 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
Battle of Cutanda
The Battle of Cutanda or Batalla de Cutanda was a battle in June of the year 1120 between the forces of Alfonso I the Battler and an army led by Ibrahim ibn Yusuf occurring in a place called Cutanda, near Calamocha , in which the Almoravid army was defeated by the combined forces, mainly of Aragon...
. 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.
In 1119, he retook Cervera, Tudejen, Castellón, Tarazona, Ágreda, Magallón, Borja, Alagón, Novillas, Mallén, Rueda, Épila and populated the region of Soria
Soria
Soria is a city in north-central Spain, the capital of the province of Soria in the autonomous community of Castile and León. , the municipality has a population of c. 39,500 inhabitants, nearly 40% of the population of the province...
. He began the siege of Calatayud
Calatayud
Calatayud is a city and municipality in the province of Zaragoza in Aragón, Spain lying on the river Jalón, in the midst of the Sistema Ibérico mountain range. It is the second-largest city in the province after the capital, Zaragoza, and the largest town in Aragón other than the three provincial...
, 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
Lleida
Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida, as well as the largest city in the province and it had 137,387 inhabitants , including the contiguous municipalities of Raimat and Sucs. The metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants...
, 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 claims as usurper-king of Navarre. From 1125 to 1126, he was on campaign against Granada
Granada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
, where he was trying to install a Christian prince, and Córdoba, where got only as far as Motril. In 1127, he reconquered Longares, but simultaneously lost all his Castilian possessions to Alfonso VII. He confirmed a treaty with Castile the next year (1128) with the Peace of Támara
Peace of Támara
The Peace of Támara also known as the Pact of Támara was a peace treaty signed in Támara de Campos in June 1127 which delimited the territorial domains of Alfonso I of Aragón and Alfonso VII of Castile ....
, which fixed the boundaries of the two realms.
He conquered Molina de Aragón and populated Monzón
Monzón
Monzón is a small town in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It has a population of 17,050. It is located in the northeast and adjoins the rivers Cinca and Sosa.-Historical overview:...
in 1129, before besieging Valencia
Valencia (city in Spain)
Valencia or València is the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third largest city in Spain, with a population of 809,267 in 2010. It is the 15th-most populous municipality in the European Union...
, which had fallen again upon the Cid's death.
He went north of the Pyrenees in October 1130 to protect the Val d'Aran
Val d'Aran
The Val d'Aran is a valley in the Pyrenees mountains and a comarca in the northwestern part of the province of Lleida, in Catalonia, northern Spain. Most of the valley constitutes the only part of Spain, and of Catalonia, on the north face of the Pyrenees, hence the only part of Catalonia whose...
. Early in 1131, he besieged Bayonne
Bayonne
Bayonne is a city and commune in south-western France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture...
. It is said he ruled "from Belorado to Pallars and from Bayonne to Monreal."
At the Siege of Bayonne
Siege of Bayonne
The Siege of Bayonne was launched by Alfonso the Battler, King of Aragon and Navarre, apparently against the Duke of Aquitaine, William X, and lasted from October 1130 to October 1131. The city of Bayonne was then a part of Aquitaine, nominally a part of France...
in October 1131, three years before his death, he published a will leaving his kingdom to three autonomous religious orders based in Palestine and politically largely independent on the pope, the Knights Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, whose influences might have been expected to cancel one another out. The will has greatly puzzled historians, who have read it as a bizarre gesture of extreme piety uncharacteristic of Alfonso's character, one that effectively undid his life's work. Elena Lourie (1975) suggested instead that it was Alfonso's attempt to neutralize the papacy's interest in a disputed succession— Aragon had been a fief of the Papacy since 1068— and to fend off Urraca's son from her first marriage, Alfonso VII of Castile, for the Papacy would be bound to press the terms of such a pious testament. 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 is 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. Alfonso was a fierce, violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly militant. His tomb is in the monastery of San Pedro
Abbey of San Pedro el Viejo
The Abbey of San Pedro el Viejo is a former Benedictine monastery in the old town of Huesca, Aragon, Spain. The present Romanesque structure was built by the Benedictines in the 12th century...
in Huesca
Huesca
Huesca is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the comarca of Hoya de Huesca....
.
Will and testament
His testament was not honored: Aragon took his aged brother abbot-bishop Ramiro out of a monastery and made him king, marrying him without papal dispensation to Agnes, sister of the Duke of AquitaineDuke of Aquitaine
The Duke of Aquitaine ruled the historical region of Aquitaine under the supremacy of Frankish, English and later French kings....
; the Navarrese lords, perhaps irked at the personal union of Aragon and Navarre signalled their independence by putting García Ramírez, Lord of Monzón
Monzón
Monzón is a small town in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It has a population of 17,050. It is located in the northeast and adjoins the rivers Cinca and Sosa.-Historical overview:...
, descendant of an illegitimate son of García Sánchez III, to the throne in Pamplona
Pamplona
Pamplona is the historial capital city of Navarre, in Spain, and of the former kingdom of Navarre.The city is famous worldwide for the San Fermín festival, from July 6 to 14, in which the running of the bulls is one of the main attractions...
. "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" by the rendering of homage for Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
by Alfonso's eventual heir, Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona.
Pseudo-Alfonso the Battler
Sometime during the reign of Alfonso II of AragonAlfonso II of Aragon
Alfonso II or Alfons I ; Huesca, 1-25 March 1157 – 25 April 1196), called the Chaste or the Troubadour, was the King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona from 1164 until his death. He was the son of Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona and Petronilla of Aragon and the first King of Aragon who was...
, the Battler's grandnephew, a man came forward claiming to be Alfonso the Battler. The only contemporary references to this event are two letters of Alfonso II addressed to Louis VII of France
Louis VII of France
Louis VII was King of France, the son and successor of Louis VI . He ruled from 1137 until his death. He was a member of the House of Capet. His reign was dominated by feudal struggles , and saw the beginning of the long rivalry between France and England...
; they were carried to Louis by Berengar, the Bishop of Lleida, but are not dated. According to the second of these, the pretender was then living in Louis's domains, meaning the Principality of Catalonia
Principality of Catalonia
The Principality of Catalonia , is a historic territory in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula, mostly in Spain and with an adjoining portion in southern France....
, which was ruled by Alfonso under Louis's suzerainty. This pretender was an old man (appropriately, since the Battler had died some decades earlier) and Alfonso II expressed confidence that Louis would arrest him at the earliest possible moment and bring him to justice. The first letter supplies sufficient information to date it approximately, since the Bishop sojourned at the court of Louis on his way to Rome. It is known from other sources that Berengar attended the Third Lateran Council in March 1179. The letters were probably written towards the end of 1178 or in January 1179 at the latest. 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. Modern historian Antonio Ubieto Arteta, has hypothesised that the Aragonese lords of the tenencies 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 tenencies—perhaps support, at least inititally, the pretender. These lords also appear in the later legend of the Bell of Huesca, which has no historical basis, as the victims 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 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada
Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada
Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada was a Navarrese-born Castilian Roman Catholic bishop and historian....
, writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, who records that there were several legends then current about the death of Alfonso the Battler: some believed he perished in the battle of Fraga, some that his body had never been recovered, others that he was buried in the monastery of Montearagón
Montearagón
Montearagón or Mount of Aragón can refer to the following sites:* Montearagón, Toledo* Castle of Montearagón near Huesca, Aragón...
, and still others that he had fled from Fraga in shame after his defeat and became a pilgrim as an act of penance. Some years later, Rodrigo writes, though he does not give a year, an impostor arose and was received by many as the Battler, though Alfonso II had him arrested and hanged. This is the earliest reference to the impostor's end. The legend was amplified in later years. According to the fourteenth-century Crónica de los Estados Peninsulares, the Battler went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he lived for many years. The Crónica de San Juan de la Peña also recounts the incident, but it depends entirely on Rodrigo and the Estados Peninsulares. It is not until the seventeenth-century historian Jerónimo Zurita penned his Anales de la Corona de Aragón that new details were added to the legend. Zurita's dates the impostor's appearance to the death of 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.