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ABSTRACT
According to medieval records, on 1 June 949 a devastating wildfire swept across the northern Meseta, with notable intensity in the Bureba region of northeastern Castile. This study examines the possible causes of the conflagration with special emphasis on anthropogenic factors. In more modern and better documented conflagrations, human mismanagement of woodland, leading to a disastrous build up of fuel in the years before the fire, is consistently observed as a significant contributing factor. Here I argue that the exposed lowland areas flanking the Roman road that passes through Briviesca, which were vulnerable to Muslim incursions, would have been relatively under-exploited until the early tenth century. Thereafter they would have started to be fully exploited, leading to a period of uncontrolled deforestation of the valley floor, a dynamic that then contributed to the severity of the ensuing fire of 949.
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Notes
1 Moritz et al., “Learning to Coexist with Wildfire.”
2 Fernandes, “Fire-Smart Management of Forest Landscapes.”
3 Flórez, España Sagrada, 318. Although the contents are distinctly Castilian in perspective, their preservation in the Tumbo Negro of Santiago de Compostela has led to them being referred to in the past as the Anales Compostelanos. They were recently republished in a critical edition by Martín (“Los Annales Castellani”), but here I use the old transcription as it is more faithful to the original with regards to this entry. For a recent overview of the Castilian anales, see Bautista, “Listas regias y Anales en la Península Ibérica.”
4 “flamma exivit de mari et incendit plurimas urbes, et villas, et homines, et bestias, et in ipso mari pinnas incendit: et in Zamora unum barrium, et in Carrion, et in Castroxeriz, et in Burgos C. casas, et in Birbiesca, et in Calzada, et in Pontecorvo, et in Buradon et alias plurimas villas combusit,” Flórez, España Sagrada, 318. The meaning of the Castilian word barrio is explored below.
5 The date given in this second tradition is 939, which is problematical for two reasons: it appears out of sequence (after 940); and 939 was regarded as one of the greatest years of the Castilian tenth century, that of their victory over the Muslims at Simancas, and so is difficult to reconcile with it being described as an iniquitous year. Given that other annalistic traditions support the 949 date, as does the charter evidence, it seems likely that the 939 date is the result of the fusion of the wildfire story with a series of portents traditionally associated with the battle of Simancas.
6 “kalendas iunii die sabbati” (Anales Burguenses, also known as the Crónicon de Burgos); “kalendas juni dia de sábato” (Anales Cardenienses, also known as the Crónicon de Cardeña), both published by Martínez, “Tres anales burgaleses.”
7 “Levantóse el ábrigo, un viento escaldado, avueltas d’el un fuego rabioso e irado,” Gonzalo de Berceo, Vida de San Millán, verse 387. In this version another Bureban village, Monasterio de Rodilla, is associated with the conflagration as is Tardajos, just west of Burgos.
8 “Vieron aquella noche una muy fiera cosa: venía por el aire una sierpe rabiosa,” Poema de Fernán González, verse 471.
9 Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, docs. 20–31.
10 Respectively, Martínez Díez, Cardeña, docs. 67–80; Mínguez, Sahagún, docs. 94, 120–22, 124–25, 127; Sáez, León, docs. 210–19, 221–30.
11 For example, a plot with sixteen apple-trees, a pear-tree and an ash-tree (Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, doc. 24), or an arable plot and an orchard with five apple-trees, three walnut-trees and a pear-tree (Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, doc. 28).
12 “defectus et inflatus de famen … ego morieba de famen … et induististis corpus meum de saia et manto,” Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, doc. 28, 1 June 950.
13 “separastis mici ipsam rationem quod unus ex uobis manducabat … et super hoc capra cum lacte, unde reuibesci filia mea,” Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, doc. 28.
14 Peterson, “El gran incendio castellano,” and “The Peasant Widows.”
15 Álvarez, Historia general de Zamora, 128.
16 Galbis, Catálogo sísmico; Munuera, A Study of Seismicity; Martínez and Mezcua, Catálogo sísmico; https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terremoto_de_Espa%C3%B1a_de_949.
17 Crespo-Martín, “Review and Extension of the Seismic Catalogue,” 13.
18 Comissão Técnica Independente, Incendios em Pedrogão Grande, 49.
19 Comissão Técnica Independente, Incendios em Pedrogão Grande, 45.
20 Comissão Técnica Independente, Incendios em Pedrogão Grande, 45.
21 Angle, The Great Chicago Fire, 3.
22 Colbert and Chamberlain, Chicago and the Great Conflagration, 189.
23 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 5–6.
24 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 19.
25 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 35.
26 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 53, 157.
27 “Levantóse el ábrigo, un viento escaldado, avueltas d’el un fuego rabioso e irado,” Gonzalo de Berceo, Vida de San Millán, verse 387.
28 “Venía por el aire una sierpe rabiosa,” Poema de Fernán González, verse 471.
29 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 26, 57.
30 Wells, Fire at Peshtigo, 58–72.
31 Fernandes, “Fire-Smart Management of Forest Landscapes;” Moreira, “Landscape – Wildfire Interactions.”
32 Among the seminal works are Duby, Guerriers et Paysans; Fossier, Enfance de l’Europe; and Wickham, “European Forests in the Early Middle Ages.” More recently, Bépoix and Hervé, in La forêt au Moyen Âge, bring together the work of over forty scholars on a wide range of related issues; while Larrea, “Défricher la terre,” concentrates on the appropriation of land for clearance in the middle Rhine region. With reference to Castile see Pastor, Castilla en el tránsito, on the growth of cultivated land at the expense of the woods; Escalona, “Bosques y pastizales en la Sierra de Burgos,” on the relationship between animal husbandry and woodland; Davies and Peterson, “The Management of Land-Use in Old Castile,” and very recently Armendariz, “Explotar y gestionar el bosque,” concentrates on the dehesa system of woodland management.
33 Aymeric Picaud, Liber Peregrinationis, 38.
34 On the use of the dehesa system in Hiniestra, i.e., in the Montes de Oca, twenty kilometres south of Briviesca, see Davies and Peterson, “The Management of Land-Use in Old Castile,” 57; and focused slightly further south around Cardeña, Armendariz, “Explotar y gestionar el bosque.”
35 Wickham, “European Forests in the Early Middle Ages,” 155.
36 Stewart, Names on the Land, 116.
37 Peña and Pérez-Jordà, “Estudios carpológicos,” 26.
38 Morla, “Investigaciones paleobotánicas en la cuenca central del Duero,” 4.
39 Zapata, “A Palaeoenvironmental and Palaeoeconomic Approach.”
40 Crónica Albeldense, XV.13, in Gil, Crónicas asturianas.
41 Peterson, Frontera y lengua en el Alto Ebro, 293.
42 López-Sáez, “Transhumance Dynamics in the Gredos Range.”
43 García González, “Castilla en la Alta Edad Media,” 150.
44 González de Tejada, Historia de Santo Domingo, 65–67. The date is based on that of the death of St Gregory of Ostia, Dominic’s mentor, after which the latter returned to the woods and started clearing them.
45 Wickham, “European Forests in the Early Middle Ages,” 157.
46 “llegò a un sitio llano, poblado de Arboles, y malezas, entre el río Oja y un arroyo que baxava por cerca del lugar de Ayuela, de quien distava una legua dicho Desierto sitio … y un quarto de legua de Pino de Yuso, Somsoto, y San Medel, lugares que le circundan,” González de Tejada, Historia de Santo Domingo, 40–43.
47 Peterson, Frontera y lengua en el Alto Ebro, 352.
48 Peterson, Frontera y lengua en el Alto Ebro, 358.
49 Espinosa, Calagurris Iulia, 272.
50 Sánchez Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del Valle del Duero.
51 Peterson, Froncea, doc. 41.
52 Martínez Díez, Cardeña, doc. 109.
53 Becerro Galicano Digital, doc. 382.
54 Ruiz Asencio, Valpuesta, docs. 20–23.
55 Activity around Burgos is recorded from 899 in the Becerro Gótico of Cardeña (Martínez Díez, Cardeña, doc. 1), and thereafter profusely in this cartulary. In the Froncea cartulary activity in the same area is documented from 931 (Peterson, Froncea, docs. 1, 14).
56 Peterson, Froncea, doc. 12.
57 On clearance for vineyards, see, Larrea, “Défricher la terre,” 20.
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David Peterson
David Peterson has a degree in History from Oxford University and a Doctorate (2006) in Medieval History from the Universidad de Burgos. His research centres on early medieval society in northern Iberia and is based mainly on written sources and onomastics. He is the author of two monographs on respectively, the Sierra de la Demanda (2006) and the Alto Ebro region (2009). While based at the Universidad del País Vasco he was responsible for the development of the digital edition of the Becerro Galicano de San Millán de la Cogolla (http://www.ehu.eus/galicano/), and currently concentrates his research on medieval documentation and on the onomastic evidence for Islamic influence on early medieval Castile. Since 2015 he has taught Medieval History at the Universidad de Burgos ([email protected]).