These, after having conquered the Iberian Visigoth domains
It was in those irredentist mountains where, around 722, the Asturians led by Pelayo defeated the Muslims of Al Qama in a severe battle near the Cova Dominica
Be that as it may, the Asturian-Cantabrian lands welcomed the remains of the Visigothic power that always tried to subdue them. There, taking advantage of the preceding aristocratic substratum 5 , Pelayo managed to consolidate a network of alliances that established the foundations of the future Asturian kingdom . His military success in Covadonga gave him enough prestige to unite under his leadership the Asturian clans that supported the battered figure of the monarchy. But, something that gave him even greater dignity was having been the depositary of certain relics evacuated from the disappeared Visigothic kingdom, because in those moments of crisis the veneration of the sacred and the respect towards those who kept it became capital 6 .
Even so, the shadow of Cain that had kept the Asturian-Cantabrian peoples at war with each other since time immemorial was not diluted. Now, as if from an inheritance of the gothic morbid it was, that shadow was materialized in the struggle of the new aristocratic clans for power, a struggle that endangered the existence of the nascent Asturian kingdom. The stone Asturian bastion that had contained the Muslim advance was not effective in protecting the towns it guarded from themselves.
Despite this, a solid nucleus of resistance managed to establish itself after the union of the Cantabrian and Asturian centers thanks to the marriage of Alfonso I, son of the dux cantabriae Peter 7 , with Ermensinda, daughter of Pelayo. However, the expansion of this nucleus was always threatened by Galician and Basque rebellions and, above all, by the aforementioned internal instability, which was articulated around the question of succession, legitimized in the parental relationship with the Pelayo lineage.
It is in this situation of struggle for power that the figure of Alfonso appears , son of a Basque prisoner, Munia, and King Fruela I, son of Alfonso I and, therefore, grandson of Pelayo. Fruela's life ended violently along with that of his brother Vimara after a fratricidal fight between the two. When the legitimate heirs died, Aurelio, their cousin, ascended the throne, and was succeeded by Silo, husband of Adosinda, the daughter of Alfonso I. The lack of offspring led Adosinda to convince her husband to join the throne 8 to the son of his brother Fruela, who was barely twelve years old.
However, the beginnings of Pelayo's great-grandson's career were difficult. He was not able to establish himself as king after Silo's death when he was deposed by Mauregato, an illegitimate son of Alfonso I, being forced to take refuge in Alava lands while his aunt Adosinda was confined in a monastery in Pravia. Even after Mauregato's death, the situation remained hostile for Alfonso, as he was once again removed from the throne by Vermudo, a brother of the late King Aurelio.
During this stage of game of thrones Various Islamic incursions followed one another that imposed a relationship of submission of the Asturian kingdom with respect to the Emirate of Córdoba. Faced with such a situation, against the sector of the political-ecclesiastical elite that supported Mauregato and Vermudo, and that chose to compromise with the Muslims, the defenders of the Visigothic restoration and Catholic orthodoxy rose up against Adoptionism 9 . After Vermudo's defeat against the Muslims on the banks of the Burbia, it was these orthodox who, led by Beato de Liébana, pressured the king to abdicate in favor of Alfonso, whose royal anointing 10 It finally happened on September 14, 791. Thus began the long and transcendental reign of Alfonso II.
The Chaste King did not erect great fortresses, because Asturias does not need walls, the mountains are his walls. However, at this time the greatest enemy was intramuros , and Alfonso II knew that the best bulwark against internal dissent could not be the great Asturian peaks, but rather sacred walls that would instill respect and adherence in his people 11 .
With that determination, in the same year of his coronation, Alfonso II moved his royal seat from Pravia to Oviedo 12 , a place that stood out for being a religious building complex whose sacredness was ideally suited to protect the figure of the king, and which, from then on, became the heart of the Asturian monarchy until the beginning of the 10th century.
The sacralization of the Asturorum Regnum
Despite the fact that these buildings were destroyed by the Muslims in 794, Alfonso II rebuilt the complex erecting four new churches, among which San Salvador stood out, surpassing in dignity to its predecessor 13 . Thus, Oviedo ended up consecrating itself as an eminently sacred place that dissuaded profanation and clothed the royal figure with a dignity that retracted noble dissidence. The rebellion in 801 was the last in his reign 14 .
From that moment on, the sacred axis of Oviedo gravitated around the veneration of three realities:the Cross, which ended up becoming the emblem of the Asturian kingdom 15 ; Christ, under the patronage of Salvador, to whom the most important church in Oviedo was offered; and the already mentioned relics, a true agglutinative around which they united, seeking their protection, both the Christians of the north and those who fled Muslim rule 16 .
It was the latter who, during the 8th and 9th centuries, moved a good part of the Christian relics of the extinct Visigoth kingdom to the north. The largest of these relics was the one destined to house them; the Holy Ark, the one that, as Alfonso VI verified after its solemn opening in 1075, housed an incredible treasure . According to legend, this Ark would have come from Jerusalem itself, from where it would have left full of relics after the conquest of the city by Chosroes II in 614. After a long journey along the African coast, it would have ended up in the Visigoth court of Toledo to be definitively transferred to Asturias after the Islamic conquest.
Such dignity gave the opportunity to compare this Holy Ark with the very Ark of the Covenant and King Solomon, builder of the great Temple of Jerusalem, with Alfonso II, builder of the so-called Holy Chamber 17 , destined to guard such a worthy treasure. Taking care of Pelayo de Oviedo 18 , this act of Alfonso II "would result in the solidity of his kingdom and in the salvation of all his people".
But the great milestone of the reign of Alfonso II was the discovery of the tomb of the Apostle Santiago . If the early medieval churches fought to possess the greatest relics, what greater relic than the mortal remains of one of the first companions of Jesus?
If we believe it, between 813 and 820, an anchorite named Pelayo reported to Bishop Teodomiro de Iria Flavia that he had seen some lights shine on a hill in the Libredón forest, where it turned out that there was a tomb. It was not long before they identified it as that of the Apostle Santiago el Mayor.
It is known that the area of the Arcis Marmoricis
19
It was a Paleo-Christian cult center in which a primitive sacred burial was preserved. However, it is very unlikely that this was the burial place of Santiago el Mayor
20
, since there is no historical support to affirm that Santiago preached in Hispania
21
, and the translatio
However, the fact that the Son of Thunder was buried in the narrow strip of the world that the peninsular Christians still dominated, and that his tomb was discovered at a time when they believed they were at the gates of the Final Judgment 24 It was too attractive an idea to deny the reality of it. Northern Christians needed a banner 25 to unite them and guide them to victory against the infidel, so they did not hesitate to become the guardians of one of the most sacred enclaves of Christianity and to assume their role as its bastion.
Alfonso II, whether or not he really believed in this story 26 , he was aware of his transcendence and knew how to use it in his favor. After being informed of the discovery, taking advantage of the Jacobean cult spread by Christians fleeing from the south, he soon erected up to three churches to honor that locus sanctus . From that moment, Santiago de Compostela would be called to become the most important holy place in Europe after Rome, where the remains of Saint Peter rested, as well as a great pilgrimage center whose Camino 27 it would be the artery around which a good part of European Christians were united. The kingdom of Asturias It was no longer just a small Christian domain located at the end of the world, from that moment it rose as the custodian of one of the most revered centers of Christianity .
This not only allowed Alfonso II to dominate the secessionist Galician nobility, but also marked the culmination of the sacralizing process of his kingdom and of the royal figure himself, something that translated in the respect of the other Christian sovereigns and in the solid fidelity of their subjects, who would end up assimilating said fidelity with that due to Christ 28 . Attacking the king or kingdom became sacrilege.
Alfonso II against Islam
The other pillar on which this regnum christianorum was built it was that of dynastic legitimacy 29 . The Asturian kings pretended to be the legitimate heirs of the Visigothic monarchs, who managed to establish a kingdom that dominated the entire peninsula 30 . However, the Asturian Christians wanted to see themselves as the redeemers of the arrogant Goda that led to the disaster against Islam. Following this vision, among the Goths "the right hand of Christ raised up her servant Pelayo" 31 whose race would destroy the enemies of Christendom. Exploiting this idea, Alfonso II developed a neo-Gothicist policy whose objective was to reimpose the Visigothic political-administrative tradition while redeeming his heirs by fighting against the infidel.
The restoration of the Gothic Order in the Church fits in this direction, which laid the foundations for the future ecclesiastical structure of the Kingdom of Asturias and materialized in the foundation of the bishopric of Oviedo and in the rupture with the Toledo metropolis, considered heterodox for embracing adoptionism 32 .
With a kingdom consolidated around the pillars of neo-Gothicism and sacredness, Alfonso II was able to reverse the previous situation against Islam . The temporizing policy that Aurelio, Silo and Mauregato had maintained with the great emir Abderramán I shifted towards an all-out fight against the infidel that provoked a resumption of the Islamic offensive 33 .
But the Asturian kingdom faced by the successors of Abderramán I had become a fully formed kingdom whose people renewed their traditional fighting spirit. The result was that, after the campaigns of 794 and 795, when the hosts of Hisham I sacked Oviedo, the Muslims never entered Asturian territory again . Thus, after the first incursion, in an act reminiscent of Furio Camilo's victory over the Brennos Gauls after the sack of Rome, Alfonso II defeated the Muslims on his way back to Lutos, obtaining a victory that consecrated him as a military paladin and that heralded the beginning of a new era.
After Hisham's death in 796, a period of internal revolts began in the emirate that Alfonso took advantage of to strengthen his position and strengthen ties with the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne. Thus, after sacking Lisbon in 798 he sent an embassy to Aachen to present the trophies won to the Muslims who guarded the city. The result was that Al-Hakam I had to face joint Christian pressure along the entire northern frontier. In this way, Barcelona was taken by the Franks in 801, while in 799 the Arista family prevailed over the Banu Qasi in Pamplona, a city that would end up being conquered by Luis the Pious in 812. Finally, the emir's last campaign, that of Wadi Arun, ended in disaster after the defeat inflicted on the banks of the Oroncillo by an alliance of Vascones, Pamploneses and Asturians.
The aggressiveness of Abderramán II did not have to be effective either, since, after a campaign through Álava in 823, in 825 his troops were again stopped by the Astures in Naharón and El Ancient 34 . Even so, the war persecuted Alfonso until his death, resisting two new attacks from the Cordovan emir in 838 and 841.
Upon his death in the year 842, the indomitable Asturian kingdom not only remained intact 35 , but since then the emirs of Córdoba definitively dismissed their desire to conquer it.
The reign of Alfonso II marked a turning point in Hispanic Medieval history , without him the weak Asturian kingdom would have run the risk of disappearing, so the subsequent historical development would have been very different.
The Chaste King was not a great conqueror, the expansion of the Kingdom of Asturias under his rule was timid and based more on repopulation than on conquest. However, during his tenure he managed to consolidate the young Asturorum Regnum , offering a firm base on which the Christian kingdoms would be formed which, together with their eastern counterparts, would end up dominating the entire Iberian Peninsula.
The protection of its mountains, the bravery of its people and the sacredness with which Alfonso endowed the kingdom, made Asturias considered by many Christians as a sacred bastion, the Jerusalem celestial, where evil finds no place 36 .
Notes
1 In a process that combined pacts and armed conquest.
2 Knowledge about the history of Pelayo is confusing, therefore, what is referred to in this essay about him is one of the versions that exist of his biography. In response to this, according to the Crónica Ovetense he would be the son of the doge Favila, of royal blood, and according to the Rotense would have been spatarius of kings Vitiza and Rodrigo.
3 Among the relics that Pelayo could have saved, those belonging to the martyr Eulalia stand out, who was invoked as the protector of the Christian troops and patron saint of Spain before the proclamation of Santiago, whose mortal remains would end up being transferred by the Christians who fled from Mérida during the reign of Silo (774-783).
4 The battle of Covadonga would be magnified by later Christian sources with the intention of establishing the Kingdom of Asturias on glorious origins, as well as to legitimize the royal line descended from Pelayo.
Regarding the etymology of the name Covadonga there are two important theories. One alludes to the Celtic term onna , river, from which onnica would derive , source, resulting in the toponym of Cova de onnica , “the cave of the source”. However, in this essay we have chosen to use the Latin expression Cova Dominica , “Cueva de la Señora”, alluding to the Virgin Mary, given that the main work that recounts the supposed battle, the Chronicle of Alfonso III, thus refers to the place where it took place.
5 The perpetuation of monarchical power was possible due to the fact that, since the late Roman period, a landed and military aristocracy was implanted in those lands that gradually replaced the traditional tribal system with patronage ties based on servitude and patronage, something that facilitated the establishment of a feudal monarchical system. For more information see “Pelayo and the Asturian elites” in Desperta Ferro Antigua y Medieval nº 69 .
6 Although Pelayo could be related to the royal Visigothic lineage, the legitimacy of blood would not be very significant in those lands, even more so taking into account the elective nature of the previous Visigothic monarchy. For this reason, his prestige had to be based above all on military success and respect for the relics of which he was the custodian.
7 The doge from Cantabria Pedro was the leader at the head of the first nucleus of northern resistance; the famous stronghold of Amaya. According to the Chronicle of Alfonso III he was a descendant of the lineage of Leovigildo, which gave his son Alfonso a legitimizing reinforcement regarding his royal position.
8 Tradition that goes back to the Roman Empire by which the ruling emperor or king tried to perpetuate the command within his family or close friends of him and that was constantly used during the Visigothic kingdom contravening the traditional elective process; formalized since the IV Council of Toledo.
9 During the reign of Mauregato, the so-called adoption complaint was developed. This originated after the celebration of the Council of Seville in 784, presided over by Elipando de Toledo, where a doctrine was adopted aimed at ingratiating himself with Muslims according to which Jesus was a human being raised to divine status by "adoption" of God. The declaration of this doctrine marked the beginning of a confrontation between its defenders and those in favor of maintaining orthodoxy, among which Beatus of Liébana stood out, who were supported by Charlemagne. This confrontation meant the rupture of northern Hispanic Christianity with the metropolitan see of Toledo and the beginning of a neo-Gothicist current that sought to restore the Gothic order in the kingdom of Asturias.
10 The royal anointing was the sacramental act by which the holy oils were applied to a new monarch. The origins of this tradition would go back to the biblical model of the anointing of kings in the Old Testament. This tradition would finally be institutionalized by King Sisenando during the IV Council of Toledo as a way of reinforcing the sacred character of the monarch.
11 The respect that the sacred has inspired among peoples throughout history in its multiple variants is proof that the will of the Chaste King was not wrong.
12 The news of the transfer of the royal seat from Pravia to Oviedo by Alfonso II (before Pravia the seat was located in Cangas de Onís) is given to us by the Crónica de Alfonso III . We know that at this time Oviedo was a small settlement located on a hill located at an important road junction. This nucleus was founded by Fruela I and was basically made up of a group of religious buildings. Among these, the two churches founded by Fruela I himself stood out, one dedicated to the Savior and the other to the martyrs Julián and Basilia, and the monastery of San Vicente.
13 The sacred complex of Oviedo under Alfonso II was mainly made up of the churches of San Salvador, Santa María, Santa Leocadia and San Tirso.
14 According to the Chronicle of Abelda, Alfonso II was deposed and imprisoned in the monastery of Albaña, from where he would later be released by Teuda to be reinstated on the throne. It was the first time since the beginning of the Visigothic era that a deposed king regained the throne.
15 The cult of the cross would go back to the origins of the Asturian kingdom as veneration for the cross that Pelayo himself raised in Covadonga. This veneration is confirmed in the church built around 738 in Cangas de Onís by order of Favila, since it was under the invocation of the cross. For his part, in 808 Alfonso II donated a beautiful cross of gold and precious stones to the church of San Salvador which, according to legend, was made by two angels who appeared to the king in the form of pilgrims and to whom it owes its name; Angels Cross. The inscription on the back of his lower arm highlights the protective role of the king and emits resonances that link him to the Emperor Constantine himself and the battle of the Milvian Bridge:hoc signo tuetur pius hoc signo vincitur inimicus (With this sign the pious is protected. With this sign the enemy is defeated). Just a century later, in 908, Alfonso III would donate the Victoria Cross to the same cathedral, which, accompanied by the alpha and omega, would become the emblem of the Asturian kingdom.
16 Relics were perceived during the Middle Ages as sacred vestiges capable of ensuring extraordinary protection to those who possessed them. The greater its quantity, the greater its protection. To better understand the religious value that the relics reached during the Middle Ages, see “Findings, transfers and thefts. A history of relics in the western world”, in Desperta Ferro Arqueología e Historia nº 5.
17 This room would have been built after the victory of Alfonso II against the Muslims in Mourning in the year 794, although such a date is the subject of debate. Although tradition has attributed its construction to Alfonso II, there is no mention of it in the documents from this period. The chamber was divided into two areas:the Basilica of Santa Leocadia, whose cult was promoted in Toledo from the reign of Sisebuto; and the church of San Miguel Arcángel, in which Alfonso II deposited the Ark.
18 Bishop of Oviedo between 1101-1130.
19 arcis Marmoricis (marble arches) is the toponym used to designate the area where Santiguo el Mayor was supposedly buried. Later it could be called the campus stellae , the field of stars, in reference to the luminaries that, according to tradition, would have appeared to Pelayo indicating the place of the grave. The word Compostela could be derived from this last toponym.
20 There are indications that the remains may have belonged to Prisciliano, a 4th-century Hispano-Roman bishop
d.C. promoter of the priscillianist ascetic doctrine, who was declared a heretic and ended up being sentenced to death during the government of the usurper Magno Máximo.
21 Tradition supports that Santiago preached in Hispania around the 30s of the 1st century AD, but we must not forget that the apostle was one of the defenders that the message of Jesus was basically destined for the Jewish people, which contradicts an act of proselytizing preaching . Paul of Tarsus was primarily responsible for opening Christianity to the Gentiles.
22 The Latin word traslatio alludes to the transfer of relics from their place of origin to another (see “Findings, transfers and thefts. A history of relics in the Western world”, in Desperta Ferro Arqueología e Historia n.º 5 , p. 63).
23 According to tradition, Santiago the Elder was the first of the Apostles to be martyred, being beheaded by order of Herod Agrippa I, after which the described prodigy would occur.
24 Beatus of Liébana himself expressed this feeling in his Commentarium in Apocalypsin , coming to foresee the End of the World around the year 800 A.D.
25 Indeed, Santiago would end up becoming the banner around which the Christian kingdoms would unite on various occasions throughout the so-called Reconquest to fight against the Muslim power in the Iberian Peninsula, where the fight reached the sign of a Crusade. The invocation of the apostle in the war against the Muslims was so important that he would come to be called Santiago Matamoros (after the legendary battle of Clavijo), becoming the patron saint of the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula. Respect for the apostle extended even among Muslims, thus the fact that Almanzor during the sacking of Santiago de Compostela in 997 prevented his soldiers from profaning his tomb is understood.
26 It must be admitted that the king's religious devotion must have been sincere, since religion was quite internalized at a time when life was becoming much harder than it is today. Likewise, the Chaste King gave continual tokens of his piety throughout his life. Proof of this was his famous chastity, a quality that many during the Middle Ages conceived as a Christian virtue. The Abaldense chronicle highlights that Alfonso led a most chaste life without a wife (according to some historians he could have been married to a certain Berta, related to the French royal house, but with whom he had no offspring). In keeping with this chaste attitude, after he fell into disuse during the Visigoth period, Alfonso II promoted the reintroduction of celibacy among the clerics of his kingdom. In spite of everything, the remarkable thing about Alfonso II was not his piety, but the intelligence that he showed of him by using her as an axis around which to consolidate his kingdom.
27 Alfonso II is considered to be the first pilgrim to Compostela, since it was during his reign that the primitive road was created that linked the royal seat of Oviedo with the Holy Place that kept the remains of the Apostle Santiago.
28 The foundation of Santiago de Compostela was the culminating point of the sacralizing process carried out by Alfonso II. With this, he managed to sacralize the monarchy itself (something that a good part of the sovereigns of Antiquity and the Middle Ages sought), which presented itself as the protector of religion and of the sacred places and relics linked to it. The sacralization of the monarchy was an authentic safeguard to protect the royal figure, while instilling authentic veneration among the subjects. In the Christian-Visigoth sphere, this had been developing since Recaredo's conversion to Catholicism, when the link between the monarchy and the Church began to tighten, seeking the unity of the kingdom under a common faith. From that moment the king was a protector of the Church and a protégé of the Church. Alfonso II recovered this tradition with obvious success.
29 As has been pointed out in note number six, at the beginning of the Kingdom of Asturias, dynastic legitimacy would not be very significant. La vinculación con la estirpe regia visigoda se explotó, sobre todo, con los sucesores de Pelayo.
30 Según el imaginario de la época, dicho dominio (consolidado en buena parte tras el reinado de Leovigildo) se habría conseguido por haber abrazado la verdadera fe, la cual habría legitimado a los visigodos como un pueblo digno de gobernar sobre los demás. La conversión de Recaredo al catolicismo reforzaría esta supuesta legitimidad. La idea base de la Reconquista será recuperar los dominios del antiguo reino visigodo de Toledo, apoyándose los diferentes monarcas en la legitimidad dada por su vinculación con los reyes godos.
31 History of Spain in the Middle Ages , p. 108.
32 El obispado de Oviedo se convirtió un pilar básico dentro de la reorganización del reino. Así mismo, la fundación de diversos centros religiosos como los monasterios de Taranco o Tobiellas sirvieron como eje vertebrador en el proceso de la repoblación de lo que sería la futura Castilla.
33 Durante el largo reinado de Alfonso II se registraron más de quince campañas dirigidas desde el emirato de Córdoba contra el reino de Asturias. Siguiendo a Sánchez-Albornoz, dicha ofensiva se iniciaría durante el reinado del rey Vermudo I como motivo del intento de colonización de la primitiva Castilla y el Bierzo, saldándose con su derrota a orillas del Burbia. Esto supuso su renuncia en favor de Alfonso II, quien estaría llamado frenar definitivamente a los musulmanes.
34 Estas derrotas debilitaron aún más a un emirato que se hallaba envuelto en revueltas internas, entre las que destaca la de los mártires mozárabes. Durante estos años Alfonso II pudo haber realizado algunas incursiones en el interior del emirato de Córdoba, atacando Medinaceli y Guadalajara hacia el 834.
35 A pesar de la integridad territorial de reino, a la muerte de Alfonso II se reanudaron las tensiones internas debido a la falta de descendencia del rey. Su piadosa castidad le impidió establecer una pieza clave para la integridad de un reino durante la Edad Media; la descendencia dinástica. Estas tensiones internas, aunque nunca lograrían superarse definitivamente, fueron apaciguadas durante el reinado de Alfonso III, con quien se inicia la verdadera expansión del reino de Asturias. Por ello, podemos considerar a Alfonso III como el primer rey conquistador en el marco de la llamada Reconquista, idea esta que toma cuerpo durante su reinado.
36 History of Spain in the Middle Ages , p. 111.
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Webgrafía
- Biografía de Pelayo de Oviedo:https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/24830/pelayo-de-oviedo