History
In 1117 Alfonso the Battler conquered the town of Belchite, about twenty-two miles southeast of his main target, the city of Zaragoza, which surrendered on 18 December 1118. The following years were spent consolidating these gains, and it was not until 1122 that Alfonso established a confraternity of knights in Belchite. He may have "envisioned international crusading movement based on military orders", [5] as Peter Schickl suggested and Alfonso's will may attest. [6] The foundation charter of the confraternity does not survive, but that of the similar Order of Monreal, founded by Alfonso in 1128, does. [7] We know that the foundation charter of Belchite was witnessed by the most powerful bishops from throughout Spain: Bernard de Sedirac, Oleguer Bonestruga, Diego Gelmírez and Guy de Lescar. [2]
José Lacarra (1971) speculated that the confraternity was merged into the Templar organisation, but there is no evidence of its continuance beyond 1136. [8] More probably it had collapsed by the time of Alfonso the Battler's will (1134), leaving its confirmation charter of 1136 as a political ploy in the haggling over the succession in Aragon. [9] [10] In 1143 a settlement was reached in which Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona gave the castle at Belchite to the Templars "according as [they could] best come to terms" with its lord, Lope Sanz (Sánchez), who was the princeps and rector of the confraternity in 1136. [10] [11]
Organisation
The confraternity was to have its headquarters either at Belchite or any other suitable fortress in the frontier beyond Zaragoza. It was granted all booty it could seize from the Muslims and exempted from the quinta, the fifth of the booty traditionally owed to the sovereign. It was permitted to colonise any depopulated lands, but all its property was held per deum (of God) and inde deo serviant (for serving God). It elected its own leader, titled princeps or rector, and it employed two merchants exempted from all customs and tolls. Furthermore, the members were permitted to judge cases brought by outsiders against any member. [12]
On 4 October 1136 a synod convened by Alfonso VII sat in Burgos and, at his request, granted an indulgence for those lent support to Belchite. Present were three archbishops—Raymond de Sauvetât, Diego Gelmírez, Paio Mendes—twenty bishops, nine abbots and the Papal legate Guido Pisano. [5] The support that qualified could be permanent or temporary membership, or a donation, and the indulgence applied everybody both lay and religious. The equating of reconquista with crusade was based on the idea of opening a route to Jerusalem through Spain and North Africa. Likewise the Confraternity of Belchite is explicitly compared to the Hospitallers and the Templars, and the indulgence to that granted for the 1113–15 Balearic Islands expedition and the 1118–20 conquest of Zaragoza:
Let he who wishes to serve God [in Belchite] for a year gain the same remission as if he went to Jerusalem. . . If any knight or anyone else, living or dead, should leave his horse or arms for the service of God [in Belchite], let him have the same indulgence as he who has bequeathed them to the Hospital of Jerusalem or the Temple. . . Therefore, dearest brothers, make haste toward the great joy of this indulgence with an eager spirit[.] [B]y the same indulgence the tomb of the Lord [sepulcrum Domini] was delivered from captivity, as were Mallorca and Zaragoza and other places, and likewise, by the favour of God, the road to Jerusalem [iter Hierosolymitanum] from this region [pars] will be opened [aperietur] and the Church of God, which is held there as a slave in captivity, will be liberated. [13]
Much of the language of the indulgence is borrowed from the speech made by Diego Gelmírez at the Council of Compostela (1125), the only other instance of such an indulgence being issued by a Spanish ecclesiastic and not by a pope in the twelfth century. This strongly suggests that Diego was influential in writing up the indulgence of 1136. [14]
The confraternity of Belchite has been compared to the Danish confraternity founded around 1151 by Wetheman. Both represented a local application of the new crusading ideology. [15]
Influence of the ribāṭ
The Spanish orientalist José Antonio Conde was the first to propose a connexion between the military orders and the Islamic ribāṭ :
It seems highly probable that from these rábitos developed, both in Spain and among the Christians in the East, the idea of the military orders, so distinguished for their valour and the outstanding services which they rendered to Christianity. Both institutions were very similar. [16]
In his work on Spanish historiography (1954), Américo Castro also "proposes that the medieval Christian military orders of fighting religious men were modeled on the Islamic ribāṭ." [17] His proposal was rejected for lack of positive evidence by Joseph O'Callaghan (1959), before being taken up by Thomas Glick and Oriol Pi-Sunyer as a textbook example medieval acculturation through stimulus- or idea-diffusion:
Many an alien institution which is basically attractive may be unacceptable in its original form. But it may act as a stimulus to a reinvention within the confines of the recipient culture of a similar institution consonant with the values of the recipient. The ribāṭ was attractive to the Christians and fulfilled a social and military need but was unacceptable owing to Spanish religious values. For the Christians it would have been thoroughly repugnant to take on the trappings of that very religion whose extermination was life's highest goal. Nevertheless we may posit that the Islamic concept acted as a stimulus towards the reinvention of the ribāṭ in completely Christian guise. In such a case, moreover, the anthropologist would expect precisely not to find that document institutional continuity upon which the medievalists so depend. [17]
Elena Lourie argues that the notion of temporary service, so alien to Christian idea of vocation, yet central to the nucleus of the rule of Belchite of 1122 (preserved in the re-issue of 1136, with changes) could only have come from the Islamic ribāṭ. Already the confirmation charter of 1136 shows a shift in emphasis towards the permanent members, and the difference in rank between permanent and temporary members of the Templars shows, Lourie argues, that the one is further from any Islamic source and closer to Christian monastic tradition. Belchite is a "half-way house" between municipal fraternities, the monastic orders and the ribāṭ. [18] She goes on to quote the objection of O'Callaghan why "[i]f the ribāṭ with its complement of warrior-ascetics existed in Spain for centuries ... the first Spanish military order [the Order of Calatrava ] was not founded before 1158?" [10] According to Jesuit historian Robert Ignatius Burns, borrowing from a position of strength, which the Christians of Iberia attained only by the mid-eleventh century, is preferred to borrowing from weakness. [19]
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, León and Galicia, 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 Ejea, 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.
The Reconquista was a period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711, the expansion of the Christian kingdoms throughout Hispania, and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492.
Alfonso VII, called the Emperor, became the King of Galicia in 1111 and King of León and Castile in 1126. Alfonso, born Alfonso Raimúndez, first used the title Emperor of All Spain, alongside his mother Urraca, once she vested him with the direct rule of Toledo in 1116. Alfonso later held another investiture in 1135 in a grand ceremony reasserting his claims to the imperial title. He was the son of Urraca of León and Raymond of Burgundy, the first of the House of Ivrea to rule in the Iberian peninsula.
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Arab history as the Battle of Al-Uqab, took place on 16 July 1212 and was an important turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain. The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army, made up of people from all over the Almohad Caliphate.
A military order is a Christian religious society of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades, both in the Holy Land and in the Iberian peninsula; their members being dedicated to the protection of pilgrims and the defence of the Crusader states. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders.
Ramon Berenguer IV, sometimes called the Saint, was the count of Barcelona who brought about the union of the County of Barcelona with the Kingdom of Aragon to form the Crown of Aragon.
The Order of Mountjoy was a military order during the crusades.
García Ramírez, sometimes García IV, V, VI or VII, called the Restorer, was the King of Navarre (Pamplona) from 1134. The election of García Ramírez restored the independence of the Navarrese kingdom after 58 years of political union with the Kingdom of Aragon. After some initial conflict he would align himself with king Alfonso VII of León and Castile, and as his ally take part in the Reconquista.
Belchite is a municipality and village in the province of Zaragoza, Spain, about 40 km southeast of Zaragoza. It is the capital of Campo de Belchite comarca and is located in a plain surrounded by low hills, the highest of which is Lobo. The area around Belchite is one of the most arid places of Aragon.
Agnes was Queen of Aragon during her brief marriage to King Ramiro II, a former monk. The couple separated after the birth of their only child, Queen Petronilla, and retired to monasteries. Agnes chose the Abbey of Fontevraud, from where she continued to take part in the affairs of her sons from her first marriage to Aimery V, Viscount of Thouars.
The Crusade of Barbastro was an international expedition, sanctioned by Pope Alexander II, to take the Spanish city of Barbastro, then part of the Hudid Emirate of Lārida. A large army composed of elements from all over Western Europe took part in the siege and conquest of the city (1064). The nature of the expedition, famously described by Ramón Menéndez Pidal as "a crusade before the crusades", is discussed in historiography, and the crusading element of the campaign is still a moot point.
Monzón is a small city and municipality in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. Its population was 17,176 as of 2014. It is in the northeast and adjoins the rivers Cinca and Sosa.
Saint Olegarius Bonestruga was the Bishop of Barcelona from 1116 and Archbishop of Tarragona from 1118 until his death. He was an intimate of Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, and often accompanied the count on military ventures.
The Order of Monfragüe was a Spanish military order founded at the castle of Monfragüe near Plasencia on the Tagus in 1196. The order was founded by the knights of the Order of Mountjoy who dissented from a merger with the Knights Templar. The order never prospered and on 23 May 1221, by order of Ferdinand III of Castile, it was merged into the Order of Calatrava.
Rodrigo Álvarez was a Galician nobleman and crusader from the Kingdom of León. He founded the military Order of Mountjoy in 1174 and affiliated it with the Cistercian Order that he had long patronised.
This is a list of some of the modern orders, decorations and medals of Spain.
Guy de Lons, also known as Gui or Guido de Loth, was the Bishop of Lescar from 1115 to 1141. He made extensive travels in Spain on four occasions, three as Papal legate. He began construction on the extant Lescar Cathedral in 1120.
Teresa d'Entença was the eldest daughter of Gombald d'Entença and his wife Constance of Antillón. She was Countess of Urgell in her own right; however, control over her estate passed to her husband, Alfonso IV of Aragon.
Guido Pisano was a prelate and diplomat from Pisa. He probably belonged to the family of the counts of Caprona, and was promoted to the College of Cardinals and appointed to the deaconry of Santi Cosma e Damiano by Pope Innocent II on 4 March 1132.
Paio Mendes was the Archbishop of Braga from 1118 until his death. He was an adherent of the cause of Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal.
