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“Because of incest which one of the two of them committed”: A Letter about Two Third Crusade Participants from the Archivo Catedralicio de Toledo

  • Taking the seven generations proviso from canon law and speculating that two offspring survive to reproduce – a smallish but not unreasonable postulate – produces 64 descendent offspring from one individual ancestor. Because two ancestors are necessary for reproduction, this increases the number of descendants to 128 in a single generation, and inter-generational marriages appear to have been not uncommon in the medieval period. As a result, prohibitions of intercourse and/or marriage within seven degrees of consanguinity and four degrees of compaternity (i.e., having a godparent in common) was a marked severity imposed by canon legal collections in the long twelfth century and probably represented a considerable burden for small medieval settlements: Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (New York, 2001), 11, 28. As William North has noted about the work of Bonizo of Sutri, medieval legal thinkers recognized that knowledge of wrongdoing was key to determining whether incest had been committed: William L. North, “Bonsai of the Consanguinities: Cultivation and Control of Incest Regulation in the Works of Bonizo of Sutri,” Early Medieval Europe 23/4 (2015): 478–99.
  • Burchard of Worms’s canon law collection dedicated a whole book to incest and marriage law: Burchard von Worms, Decretorum Libri XX, rev. ed. Gérard Fransen and Theo Kölzer (Darmstadt, 1992), 107R–111R. In Gratian’s first recension of the Decretum, the word incest already appears more than twenty times across more than fifteen entries: Gratian, Concordia discordantium canonum seu Decretum, ed. Anders Winroth et al. (https://gratian.org/first-recension-working-edition), D.26 d.p.c.4; D.27 c.9; D.83 c.1; C.3 q.4 c.4; C.6 q.1 c.17; C.23 q.5 c.45; C.27 q.1 c.14; C.27 q.1 c.17; C.27 q.1 d.p.c.43; C.32 q.7 d.p.c.18; C.35; C.35 q.2/3 c.7; C.35 q.2/3 c.10; C.35 q.7 d.a.c.1; C.35 q.7 c.1; C26 q.1 d.p.c.2. The wide array of citations from Gratian indicates that the question contained many internal factors that would influence any decision; Larson, citing a case that certainly made use of Gratian, noted that Alexander III had instructed that “particular circumstances of the sin and sinner must be taken into account: ‘But concerning adultery or incest, penance ought to imposed for them in accord with what the sin itself and the nature of the sinner demand’.” Atria Larson, Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Twelfth Century (Washington, DC, 2014), 453.
  • On the practice of dispensations, see Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe (New York, 2013), 174–76.
  • Nicholas M. Haring, “‘Liber de dulia et latria’ of Master Michael, Papal Notary,” Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971): 188–200. Haring did not seem to know that Clement had, two-and-a-half years earlier, recommended Michael for a prebend at Toledo: Archivo Catedralicio de Toledo, A.12.A.1.21. Maleczek does not include Michael in his prosopography of the curia, save in a footnote where he merely cites Haring’s work and notes that he existed: Werner Maleczek, Papst und Kardinalskolleg von 1191 bis 1216. Die Kardinäle unter Coelestin III. und Innocenz III. (Vienna, 1984), 77 n. 95.
  • No formal printed catalogue exists of Toledo’s archives, but the archive itself has two editions of a fichero, an annotated card catalogue, which guides researchers. No copy of it has been published. When this article was first submitted, there had been no formal edition of this letter, but while the article was in its final revisions, the first new volume of the Papsturkunden in Spanien series in nearly a century appeared, presenting papal contents from Castile, including this text: Daniel Berger, Klaus Herbers and Thorsten Schlauwitz, eds., Papsturkunden in Spanien: III. Kastilien (Berlin, 2020), 486–87.
  • Gerald Tanner, ed. and trans., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1990), 1:201; Larson, Master of Penance, 478. It is worth noting that Innocent III later stated that a certain W., who came from the diocese of Lincoln, had been given a crusading penance – but claimed that he could not complete it because of his poverty – in the narratio of a letter remanding the man and his penance back to the jurisdiction of an Augustinian prior in the diocese: Kenneth Pennington, “Introduction to the Courts,” in The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington, DC, 2016), 19.
  • On the chronology of the Third Crusade and the coincidence of these departures: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 3rd ed. (New York, 2013), 107–19.
  • Archivo Catedralicio de Toledo, O.11.A.1.14, dorse. The contents of the dorse read: “Toletanis archiepiscopo pro Jacobo et Michaele laicisque.”
  • Richard’s sea-borne expedition was not unique in crusading history, but it was one of the largest naval expeditions yet mounted. It seems unlikely that the two men would have been robbed at sea without papal comment about piracy, which suggests that they were on foot and journeying to a departure point which was on a path which could lead to Rome: Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 107–19.
  • On the social conditions of Languedoc in the period, see John Hine Mundy, Society and Government at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars (Toronto, 1997). The supposition that the two men were from Languedoc or Provence is merely speculation, but I think it not unsound as a postulate.
  • On Hyacinth Bobone’s role as a legate to Iberia, see Damian J. Smith, “The Iberian Legations of Cardinal Hyacinth Bobone,” in Pope Celestine III: Diplomat and Pastor, ed. John Doran and Damian Smith (Farnham, 2008), 84–115.
  • Joseph O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, 2003).
  • On the chronicles that survey these campaigns see Dana Cushing, De Itinere Navali: A German Third Crusader’s Chronicle of his Voyage and the Siege of Almohad Silves 1189 AD / Muwahid Xelb, 585 ah (N.p., Antimony Media, 2014). On the wars in the Algarve as part of the larger network of holy wars in southern Iberia in the late twelfth century: O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 58–60.
  • William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–1187 (Rochester, NY, 2008), 139–78; Nicholas Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca NY, 2012), 207–94; Patrick O’Banion, “What has Iberia to do with Jerusalem? Crusade and the Spanish Route to the Holy Land in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 383–95. There is some debate about how closely and how quickly the experiences of crusading in the Iberian theatre became aligned in the period, but in the region of Castile-León, specifically, Ayala Martínez has shown that the reign of Alfonso VII realized a considerable push in this direction by the late 1130s, but this had its roots in the previous generation: Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “On the Origins of Crusading in the Peninsula: The Reign of Alfonso VI (1065–1109),” Imago Temporis Medium Aevum 7 (2013): 240–65, esp. 250–64; Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “Obispos, Guerra Santa, y Cruzada en los reinos de León y Castilla (s.XII),” in Cristianos y Musulmanes en la Peninsula Ibérica. La guerra, la frontera y la convivencia, ed. Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada et al. (Avila, 2009), 235–52.
  • O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 50–77; Peter Linehan, Spain, 1157– 1300: A Partible Inheritance (New York, 2007), 1–36.
  • Albarracín and its status as an independent lordship has yet to receive the kind of extensive treatment that its history merits, but the works of Mons Dolader, Canellas López, and Fuertes Doñate are an important start to updating Almagra Basch’s work: Miguel Ángel Motis Dolader, “El señorío cristiano de Albarracín. De los Azagra hasta su incorporación a la Corona de Aragón,” Comarca de la Sierra de Albarracín (Zaragoza, 2008): 97–106; Carlos Fuertes Doñate, “La guerra como articulación de la sociedad. La frontera de Albarracín en los siglos XII y XIII,” Roda de Fortuna: Revista Electônica sobre Antiguedade e Medievo 3, no.1–1 (2014): 503–15; Ángel Canellas López, “Cancilleria señorial de Albarracín (1170–1294) (Tafel XIV–XX),” in Congrès de la Commission internationale de diplomatique, ed. G. Silagi (Munich, 1984), 517–57; Martín Almagro Basch, Historia de Albarracín y su sierra: El señorio soberano de Albarracín bajo los Azagra (Teruel, 1959).
  • O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 57–58.
  • O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 59. The speculation about Castile’s imperial ambition in the period is my own, but it is informed by the work of Ayala Martinez, Sirantoine, and Fernández Conde on the subject, albeit examining different periods: Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “Empire and Crusade under Fernando III,” in The Sword and the Cross: Castile-León in the Era of Fernando III, ed. Edward L. Holt and Teresa Witcombe (Leiden, 2020), 15–43; Hélène Sirantoine, Imperator Hispaniae: les idéologies impériales dans le royaume de León (IXe–XIIe siècles) (Madrid, 2012); Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, “La construcción teórica del poder en la primera edad media.” in El reino de Hispania (siglos VIII–XII): Teoría y practices del poder, ed. Francisco Javier Fernández Conde, José María Mínguez, and Ermelindo Portela (Madrid, 2019), 107–31.
  • Kyle C. Lincoln, “Beating Swords into Croziers: Warrior Bishops in the Kingdom of Castile, c. 1158–1214,” Journal of Medieval History 44/1 (2018): 92–97.
  • Linehan, for example, was pleased to note that Gonzalo Pérez existed but was compelled to say little else: Linehan, History and the Historians, 313.
  • Juan Francisco Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo en el siglo XII (1086–1208), 2 vols. (Rome, 1966), 1:200–2; Andreas Holndonner, Kommunikation – Jurisdiktion – Integration: Das Papsttum und das Erzbistum Toledo im 12. Jahrhundert (ca. 1085–ca. 1185), Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 31 (Berlin, 2014), 567.
  • On this expansion in the reign of Alfonso VIII: Jose Manuel Nieto Soria, “La fundación del Obispado de Cuenca (1177–1183). Consideraciones político-eclesiásticas,” Hispania Sacra 34/69 (1982): 111–30; Bonifacio Palacios Martín, “Alfonso VIII y su política de frontera en Extremadura: la creación de diócesis de Plasencia,” En la España medieval 15 (1992): 77–96.
  • Rivera Recio edited most of this bull but relegated it to a footnote: Juan Francisco Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo, 222, n.74. I concur with O’Callaghan’s analysis regarding the contents and importance of the bull (O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 57–58), but I think that Gonzalo’s later actions in favor of a campaign based on this privilege suggests his involvement as a local lobbying effort. Smith’s comments (Damian J. Smith, “The Papacy, the Spanish Kingdoms and Las Navas de Tolosa,” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 20 (2011): 160–62) have nuanced my thinking on the importance of Cum pro peccatis, but have contributed more to underline its importance as a part of the larger papal view of the Third Crusade in Iberia, about which we have both written.
  • O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, 58.
  • Of course, the circumstances that fostered a tai’fa kingdom were quite different: Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of Al-Andalus (New York, 1996), 130–54. Miguel D. Gómez also treats this, examining the interplay between both the Christian and Muslim would-be-warlords, in his paper: “E vino un oso: The royal life and strange death of Sancho Fernández de León” (presented at the 55th annual Midwest Medieval History Conference, Middle Tennessee State University, October 21–22, 2016; publication forthcoming).
  • Armando de Sousa Pereira, Geraldo Sem Pavor: um guerreiro de fronteira entre cristãos e muçulmanos c. 1162–1176 (Porto, 2008); Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (New York, 1989).
  • On the peculiar position of Albarracín in the period, see above, note 16.
  • On the campaigns undertaken by the “men of Ávila,” see James F. Powers, A Society Organized for War: The Iberian Municipal Militias in the Central Middle Ages, 1000–1284 (Berkeley CA, 1987), 22–37.
  • Conedera has noted the particular closeness between Alfonso VIII’s royal administration, the high clergy of Castile, and the Iberian military orders: Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., “A Wall and a Shield: Alfonso VIII and the Military Orders,” in King Alfonso VIII: Government, Family, and War, ed. Miguel D. Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln, and Damian J. Smith (New York, 2019), 102–17.
  • Teofilo Ruiz has noted that the transition between concentrating pious bequests and providing for a wide variety of penitential giving occurred during these same years in Castile among the “middling sorts”: Teofilo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton NJ, 2004), 21–26, 110–32.

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