[Gascony is] a land rich in white bread and excellent red wine, strewn with forests and meadows, and with streams and healthy springs. The Gascons are fast in words, loquacious, given to mockery, libidinous, drunkards, prodigal in food, ill-dressed, and rather careless in the ornaments they wear. However, they are well-trained in combat and generous in the hospitality they provide for the poor.137
Codex Calixtinus
Strictly speaking, this thesis is concerned with Anglo-Spanish relations in the period 1150-1280. To understand these relations, we must nonetheless begin with an earlier period, and in paritcular with the relationships between the rulers of Spain and the lords of southern Gascony that hereafter were to prove so crucial in establishing links between Spanish and Plantagenet zones of influence. The ‘feeble’ hold that the dukes of Aquitaine had over Gascony (only annexed to Aquitaine in 1059) allowed the native lords a greater power in the region, drawing them closer to Navarre and Aragón.138 In the particular case of Béarn, throughout the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, the vicomtes of Béarn looked to Aragón as a protector, participated in Aragonese military enterprises against the Muslims of al-Andalus, and held lands from the peninsular kings. The aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade forced
Catalonia-Aragón to shift its focus from the French Midi to the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, changing its relationship with Béarn.139 As a result, Gaston VII vicomte of Béarn (1229-1290) shifted his alliances in the Iberian Peninsula from Aragón to Castile, as circumstances dictated. With regards to his Gascon holdings, he
137 Melczer, ed., The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York: 1993), IV, vii, p. 91. 138 Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire 1154-1224 (Harlow: 2007), 194.
139 Shideler, A Medieval Catalan Noble Family: the Montcadas, 1000-1230 (Berkeley: 1983), 115;
Tucoo-Chala, ‘Les rélations économiques entre le Béarn et les pays de la Couronne d’Aragon du milieu deu XIIIe. siécle au milieu du XVe. siécle’, Bulletin Philologique et Historique des Travaux
strengthened his alliances with the duke of Gascony, King Henry III of England, and later with his son, Edward [I]. At the same time, Béarn drew closer to the French crown. The consequences here were to place Gaston VII and his successors in a pivotal position on the frontier between zones of Plantagenet, Capetian and Spanish influence.
Béarn, traditionally regarded as part of Aquitaine, was until the administration of Gaston VII (1229-1290) a vassal and close ally of the kings of Aragón. Thereafter, although treated as part of Aquitaine, it enjoyed only loose ties to the Plantagenet rulers. Benoît Cursente has noted the ‘marginal’ position occupied by the vicomté in ‘L'éspace Plantagenêt’ during this period.140 Béarn, close neighbour of Aragón was at
the time more closely allied with the Iberian kingdoms than with Plantagenet Aquitaine. Such ties were further strengthened during the reign of Alfonso I of Pamplona-Aragón (1104-1134), when the vicomte actively participated in the king’s conquest of Zaragoza (1118). Subsequently, the vicomtes of Béarn increasingly played a part in Aragonese and, from 1137, Catalan politics, as they formed an alliance with the Moncada family. By contrast, contacts with the Plantagenet court were sporadic at best.141 It was not until the administration of Gaston Fébus (1343- 1391) that a central Béarnaise administration was created, so that the history of Béarn between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries must be built up through a scattered and partial collection of Spanish, French or English sources. Its study if further
complicated through the lack of original béarnaise documents, as the earliest cartulary of the region, the Cartulary of Sauvelade, has only partially survived in the
140 B. Cursente, ‘Les signeuries béarnaises entre deux âges (milieu xiie - fin xiiie siècle)’, in Les
seigneuries dans l’espace Plantagenêt : (c.1150-c.1250) (Bordeaux: 2009), 357.
seventeenth-century Béarnaise history by Pierre de Marca.142 To some extent
compensating for these losses, yet at the same time presenting its own problems of documentary transmission, the Fors de Béarn containing the customs of the vicomté, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, offers an invaluable source for the study of the legal history of the region.143 There is a relative abundance of documents surviving in Spanish archives, mostly in Aragón and Navarre, that can help build an image of Béarn. The present chapter attempts to explore Béarn’s close relations with Aragón from the mid-twelfth century, contrasted with its far looser ties to the
Plantagenet court (Appendix D and E).
The vicomté of Béarn was bordered to the east by Bigorre, and to the north by Armanac, Tursan and Chalosse (dépt. Landes). To the west were Dax, Soule and Navarre. To the south it was separated by the Pyrenees from Navarre and Aragón, so that its proximity to the Iberian courts was determined both by geography and through language. Because of Béarn’s mountainous nature, transhumant husbandry rather than agrarian plenty remained the basis of agricultural prosperity.144 Thus it is not
surprising that it shared interests with neighbouring Navarre and Aragón.
Alfonso I, King of Pamplona and Aragón
Béarnaise participation in Iberian affairs dates from at least the eleventh century. From the early twelfth century, decades before Henry II became duke of Aquitaine
142 Ibid., p. 359; cf. P. Marca, Histoire de Béarn (Paris: 1640).
143 P. Ourliac et al., eds., Les fors anciens de Béarn (Paris: 1990). They were ratiffied in 1288 by
Gaston VII de Béarn. Ibid., 143.
144 J. Ellis, ‘Gaston de Bearn. A Study in Anglo-Gascon Relations (1229-1290)’ (D. Phil, University of
through his marriage to Eleanor (18 May 1152), Béarn and the Iberian Peninsula already had a vibrant political and commercial relationship, often strengthened by marital alliances (see the appendices below including the Genealogy of the Vicomtes de Béarn).145 Throughout this period, the Béarnaise were an important element in the
Spanish crusade against the Muslims in the Peninsula.
In November 1095, pope Urban II preached the First Crusade. A wave of enthusiasm gripped Western Christendom as it launched an unprecedented campaign against the Muslim hold on the Holy Land. The venture culminated, on 15 July 1099, with the capture of Jerusalem. After the success in the Holy Land, French crusaders turned their eyes to the Iberian Peninsula whose Christian rulers were still wrestling against the Almoravids. Amongst the nobles who participated in the First Crusade were duke Guillaume IX (1086-1127) of Gascony and Aquitaine, and his vassal, vicomte Gaston IV of Béarn, who accompanied the duke in the sieges of Nicaea, Antioch, and in the assault against Jerusalem itself.146 Back in Europe, crusading enthusiasm
reverberated amongst the Pyrenean nobility, where Gaston IV, vicomte of Béarn (1088-31), and his brother, Centule II, comte of Bigorre, mustered armies to aid their Aragonese neighbours in their fight against the Muslims of al-Andalus.
This was not the first time that French nobles had aided their Iberian neighbours. Even so, this was arguably the first example of such joint efforts establishing long- term effects.147 French and in particular, Norman participation in the Spanish
145 Tucoo-Chala, ‘Relations économiques’, 115-9.
146 Ibid., la vicomté de Béarn et le problème de sa souveraineté. Des origines a 1620 (Monein: 2009),
34.
147 A Franco-Aragonese contingent fleetingly seized Barbastro from Muslim control (1065), only to be
recaptured months later. The definitive capture of Barbastro came only in 1100. Cf. Bull, Knightly piety and the lay response to the First Crusade: the Limousin and Gascony, c.970 - c.1130 (Oxford:
Reconquista went back to the eleventh century, certainly as far back as April 1073
when Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) had stated the conditions binding those who, like the count of Rouncy, participated in the Christian fight against the Muslim kingdoms of Iberia.148 Perhaps, the best-documented case of Anglo-Norman
participation in such endeavours is that of Rotrou II of Perche (1099-1144), to whom Orderic Vitalis dedicated a passage in his Historia Ecclesiastica. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in Rotrou's participation in the campaigns led by Alfonso I of Pamplona-Aragón (1104-34) against the Almoravids.149 Rotrou’s presence in the Peninsula is documented from 1122 onwards, when he appears as
senior or count of Tudela. Thereafter, Alfonso I granted him several estates in the
Ebro area.150 Rotrou was cousin of Alfonso I of Aragón, and his participation in
Spanish affairs has been seen both as a search for booty and as the discharging of a family obligation.151 Rotrou’s Iberian enthusiasms supply a context for the case that particularly concerns us here: that of the vicomtes of Béarn.
Gaston IV, vicomte of Béarn
1993), 83-9; Guichard, Al-andalus frente a la conquista cristiana: los musulmanes de Valencia (siglos XI-XIII) (Valencia: 2001), 62.
148 Mansilla, La documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio III (965-1216) (Rome: 1955), no. 6. 149 The counts of Perche already had interests in England before the twelfth century, but the marriage
of Rotrou II (1099-1144) to Henry I’s illegitimate daughter Matilda brought them further interests. Later, Geoffrey III (1191-1202), Rotrou III eldest son, married Matilda (July 1189), daughter of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, thus she was the niece of Richard I of England, from whom he received an important marriage portion. Cf. Chibnall, ed., The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford: 1978), VI, xiii, 1-6; Thompson, Power and Border Lordships in Medieval France: the County of the Perche, 1000-1226 (Woodbridge: 2002), 59-60; 71-8; Nelson, ‘Rotrou of Perche and the Aragonese Reconquest’, Traditio, 26 (1970); Villegas-Aristizabal, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman participation in the Iberian Reconquista c. 1018 - c.1248’ (PhD, University of Nottingham, 2007), 108-128. The title of the king of Navarre (rex Navarrae) only came into use until the reign of Sancho VI (1150-94), when he stopped using the title of king of Pamplona.
150 Lacarra y de Miguel, Documentos para el estudio de la reconquista y repoblación del Valle del Ebro
(Zaragoza: 1982-5), no. 91.
151 Ibid.; Ibid., ‘Los franceses en la reconquista y repoblación del valle del Ebro en tiempos de Alfonso
Exhibited in the museum of the basilica del Pilar in Saragossa is the ivory horn ('olifant') of Gaston IV of Béarn: a reminder of Béarnaise participation in the
Aragonese reconquista.152 After returning from the Holy Land, where he had fought alongside Raymond IV of Toulouse and Robert of Flanders, Gaston IV and his brother, Centule II of Bigorre, actively participated in the conquest of Saragossa led by Alfonso I of Navarre-Aragón.153
Ties between Gascon lords and the Spanish kingdoms were not new. However, a clearer picture of such connections begins to emerge, from c.1100 onwards. In many cases, these relations rested on a foundation supplied by strategic marriage alliances. According to Marcus Bull, such alliances were a way for the Iberian kingdoms to ‘limit military aid from France’, at the same time as strengthening Iberian influence over the French Midi.154 Marriage also secured military help against rival kingdoms in times of conflict. It strengthened commercial partnerships. At some time c.1085, Gaston, the son of the vicomte Centule V of Béarn (I of Bigorre), married Talesa (Talèse, Taresa), daughter of Sancho Ramírez, señor de Aybar, natural son of Ramiro I of Navarre and brother of the future King Sancho I of Aragón and V of Navarre.155 At the time, Centule already held Ara and Peña in Aragón.156 In 1086, the marriage alliance secured for Centule V and his son, Gaston, Sancho’s oath (‘sacramentum’) to defend his vassal (‘meus homo’) from bodily harm save against Sancho’s lord
152 Cf. Lavesa Martín-Serrano et al., ‘El olifante fatimí del Museo Pilarista de Zaragoza’, Anales de
Arqueología Cordobesa, 12 (2001).
153 On Gaston’s participation in the Holy Land cf. Runciman, A History of the Crusades: The First
Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: 1987), 160, 277.
154 Bull, Knightly Piety, 89.
155 Bull considers Sancho de Aybar’s peregrination to Jerusalem (‘…pergere in viam sepulchri domini
Iesuchristi causa orationis ad Sanctum Joanem…’) as a ‘family connection with Gaston’s participation on the First Crusade’, however it is difficult to see this as a motivation for this participation in the Crusade and then in the conquest of Saragossa in 1118. Cf. Ibid., 94; Lema Pueyo, Alfonso I el Batallador rey de Aragón y Pamplona (1104-1134) (Gijón: 2008), 85-6; Ibarra y Rodríguez, ed., Documentos correspondientes al reinado de Sancio Ramires (1907-1913), ii, no. 76.
(‘dominus meus’), Alfonso VI of León-Castile, Guy of Poitiers or his son, William.157
It is also possible that this marriage prompted the comte of Bigorre to honour his duties to Sancho, in a territorial agreement signed with Raymond-Guilhem I, vicomte of Soule (1080-88), in which Gaston promised his help against all men, save the king of Pamplona and the count of Gascony (‘…excepto rege Pampilonie et comite Gasconie’).158 Following the marriage (c.1113 X June 1114), Gaston appears in the
records as lord (‘senior’) of Barbastro (‘vicecomes Guaston in Barbastro’). However, it is impossible to determine whether he received this honour as a result of marriage or as a reward for his military assistance to the Iberian king.159
Béarnaise interests were not limited to military assistance. The vicomtes of Béarn also shared religious interests with bordering Aragón. Of particular significance here is the hospital of Santa Cristina de Somport (‘Summo portu’). From the time of Sancho III ‘el Mayor’ (1004-1035) of Castile, Pamplona and Aragón, and
subsequently of Ramiro I (1035-1069) of Aragón, the hospital was a key stopping point for pilgrims going to Compostela and for merchants crossing the Pyrenees.160
The circumstances of its foundation remain a matter of controversy, although some scholars have suggested that it was entrusted to the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, in order to guard the ‘communications’ between Béarn and Aragón.161 Somport lay on the chief road south from the béarnaise town of Oloron, an important commercial
157 From 1077, Alfonso VI of León-Castile used the title ‘Emperor of Spain’. Ravier et al., eds., Le
cartulaire de Bigorre (XI-XIII siècle) (Paris: 2005), no. 25.
158 Ibid., no. 43; ibid.
159 Ubieto Arteta, Los tenentes, 224; Lacarra y de Miguel, ‘Franceses en la reconquista’, 67; Durán
Gudiol, Colección diplomática de la catedral de Huesca (Zaragoza: 1965), no. 112.
160 Ubieto Arteta, ‘Los caminos que unían a Aragón con Francia durante la Edad Media’, in Les
communications dans la Péninsule Ibérique au Moyen-Age. Actes du Colloque de Pau 28-29 mars 1980, Collection de la Maison des Pays Ibériques (Paris: 1981), 24. The route was mostly used by Italian, Provencal and people from the Languedoc. Melczer, ed., Pilgrim’s Guide, 85 n. 9.
161 Buesa, ‘Los caminos de Santiago. Aragón, Somport y Jaca’, in Los caminos de Santiago. Arte,
centre and a key stopping point for pilgrims.162 The Hospital’s importance was such
that the Codex Calixtinus (c. 1140-1173) describes it as one of ‘three columns essential for the support of (God’s) poor’, in the same league as the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Alpine refuge of St-Bernard de Mountjoux. Failing to name the founder, the Codex further states that ‘therefore, he who had built those places, no matter who he may be, will partake, without any doubt, of the kingdom of God'.163
As a result of its importance and to enhance its standing, the hospital of Santa Cristina was richly endowed with property by the vicomtes of Béarn. In 1104, Talesa donated to the Hospital the ‘pardina’ of Nueveciercos, with all its lands and rents, for the redemption of her soul and of the souls of her parents (‘pro redemptione anime mee vel parentum meorum’).164 A decade later, in July 1116, Pope Paschal II (1099-1118) confirmed the privileges and donations granted by Gaston IV to the Hospital.
Because of this confirmation, Gaston has traditionally been identified as Somport’s founder, an identification that, as Antonio Ubieto Arteta has shown, is not supported by the existing documentation.165 Whoever its founder was, Santa Cristina continued
162 The town of Canfranc, later held by the house of Béarn, was in charge of keeping the road through
Somport always open, for which a toll was paid. Ibid., 15.
163 Melczer, ed., Pilgrim’s Guide, B. IV, Ch. IV, p. 87-8.
164 Originally dated 1107, is incorrect. AHN, Clero Secular-Regular, Car. 711, no. 1, in
http://pares.mcu.es; printed in Kiviharju, Colección diplomática del Hospital de Santa Cristina de Somport I años 1078-1304 (Helsinki: 2004), no. 5. Pardina can imply a large property with or without a central construction, mainly destined for agricultural use. It can also mean a dwelling house or an abandoned estate. Cf. Rivas, ‘Aproximación histórica a las pardinas, un hábitat disperso del Alto Aragón occidental’, Hábitat disperso (historia, sociedad, paisaje), (2011), 99. As A. Ubieto Arteta has already noted, Nueveciercos was later disputed by the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, cf. Ubieto Arteta, ‘Los primeros años del Hospital de Santa Cristina de Somport’, Principe de Viana, 27 (1966), 268.
165 Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien. Vorarbeiten zur Hispania pontificia II: Navarra und Aragon,
Abhandl (Berlin: 1928), no. 28; Ubieto Arteta, ‘Somport’, 270-1. On donations to religious houses in Gascony by the vicomtes, cf. Tucoo-Chala, ‘Principautés et frontières. - Le cas du Béarn’, Actes de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 4 (1973), 122. M. Lacarra has hinted the possibility that Talesa was the founder as she held an alberguia in Canfranc destined to help the pilgrims. Buesa, ‘Los caminos de Santiago. Aragón, Somport y Jaca’, 17.
to attract Béarnaise support. The vicomtes gave further lands and privileges and, on 13 June 1128, entrusted the hospital with the perpetual government (‘in perpetuum gubernandum comiserunt’) of the unidentified hospice of Silva Fageti.166
From 1117, whether because of the marriage alliance to Talesa, or because of the furore that followed the First Crusade, Gaston IV of Béarn and Centule II of Bigorre, enthusiastically aided Alfonso I of Navarre-Aragón against the Muslim Almoravids who held the Ebro Valley (see Map 1- The Almoravids).
The Almoravids
The Almoravids emerged from the 1060s onwards as a major new force within the Muslim world. Their hold over the Maghreb was based upon a religious revival that attracted the Berber tribes. From 1062 to 1086, Yusuf ibn Tasufin (1061-1106) was engaged in a relentless battle for the north of Africa. Having successfully conquered Fez, he reorganized the region’s administration and established his capital in
Marrakesh. Yusuf then focused on al-Andalus, the Muslim kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula.
On 23 October 1086, Yusuf ibn Tasufin arrived in Seville with a contingent of African Berber forces to wage a war against the Christian advance in the Peninsula.
166 The donation came after the death of Centule (d. 1128), taken by Ubieto Arteta to be the son of
Gaston IV and Talesa, who succeeded his father in 1130 and died in Fraga in 1134. The document probably alludes to the death of Centule II of Bigorre, brother of Gaston IV of Béarn ( ‘…Notum sit presentibus atque futuris quoniam Gasto bearnensium uicecomes et uxor eius nomine Talesa inspirante spiritus sancti gratia pro sua suorumque parentum ac Centulli filii sui nuper defuncti eterna
redemptione.’): Kiviharju, Colección diplomática, no. 37; cf. Ubieto Arteta, ‘Somport’, 270-1;. On other properties of the Santa Cristina cf. Á. Canellas López, ‘El cartulario de Santa Cristina de Somport’, in Homenaje al profesor Juan Torres Fontes (Murcia: 1987), 210.
His armies defeated Alfonso VI of León-Castile (king of León from 1065, and of León Castile from 1072-1109) in the battle of Zalaca (Sagrajas). Regardless of the setback, Alfonso VI continued to make treaties with the taifa kings, who often plotted against the forces sent from Marrakesh by Yusuf (as was the case with Yusuf’s failed campaign of 1088).
Yusuf took it upon himself to strengthen the Almoravid hold over al-Andalus. To achieve this, he established new bylaws governing, what he perceived, as the traitor
taifas who had allied with the Christian kingdoms. Despite the earlier Muslim
setback of 1088, a third campaign was launched in 1090 taking Granada and Málaga. The following year (1091), Yusuf conquered Seville, Almería, Badajoz and Lisbon.