Alfonso VI of Leon

Alfonso VI of León, called "the Brave" (1040/1041-Toledo, July 1, 1109), son of Fernando I of León and of His wife, Queen Sancha, was King of León between 1065 and 1072 in a first reign, and between 1072 and 1109 in a second, of Galicia between 1071 and 1072 and also between 1072 and 1109, and of Castile between 1072 and 1109.

During his reign, the conquest of Toledo took place (1085) and the battles of Sagrajas and Uclés took place, which were two defeats for the Leonese and Castilian retinues. In the second, the King's heir, the Infante Sancho Alfónsez, died.

Family origins and childhood

The son of King Ferdinand I and his wife, Queen Sancha de León, Alfonso was a "Leon infant with Navarrese and Castilian blood". His paternal grandparents were Sancho Garcés III, King of Pamplona, and his wife Queen Muniadona —daughter of Sancho García, Count of Castilla— and her mother were King Alfonso V of León and his wife Queen Elvira Menéndez.

The year of his birth is not recorded in medieval documentation. A contemporary text by the anonymous chronicler of Sahagún who met the monarch and was present when he died, relates that he died with 62 years of life and 44 years of reign, therefore, he would have been born in the second semester of 1047 or in the first half of 1048.

According to the Silense, the first-born, Urraca, came into the world when her parents were still counts of Castile, before they reigned, so she was born in 1036/37. The second-born, Sancho, was born in the second semester of 1038 or 1039. Infanta Elvira may have been born in 1039/40, Alfonso in 1040/41, and the youngest of the brothers, García, between 1041 and April 24, 1043 when King Ferdinand, in a donation to the abbey of San Andrés de Espinareda, he mentions his five children. All of them, except Elvira, confirm a document in the monastery of San Juan Bautista de Corias on April 26, 1046.

All the sons of King Fernando, according to the Silense, were educated in the liberal arts and the men were also educated in arms, the "art of running horses in the Spanish manner" and in hunting. The cleric Raimundo was in charge of Alfonso's apprenticeship in letters. Already being king, Alfonso named him Bishop of Palencia and referred to him as magistro nostro, viro nobile et Deum timenti. Possibly Alfonso spent long periods in Tierra de Campos where he learned the art of war and what was expected of a gentleman along with Pedro Ansúrez, son of Ansur Díaz and nephew of count Gómez Díaz de Saldaña, all of the Banu Gómez lineage.

Ascension to the throne

As the second son of the King of León and Count of Castile, Ferdinand I, and Queen Sancha de León, Alfonso would not have been inherited. At the end of 1063, probably on December 22, taking advantage of Since numerous magnates had gathered in the capital of the kingdom for the consecration of the Basilica of San Isidoro de León, Fernando I convened a Curia Regia to publicize his testamentary provisions, in which he decided to distribute his patrimony among his children, distribution that would not become effective until the death of the monarch in order to avoid discord arising after his death.

• The Kingdom of León was recited by Alfonso, "the most extensive, valuable and emblematic part: the one that contained the cities of Oviedo and León, the cots of the Astur-Leoness monarchy", which included Asturias, León, Astorga, El Bierzo, Zamora with Tierra de Campos as well as the toledana taifa.
• His older brother, Sancho, corresponded to the Kingdom of Castile, created by his father for him, and the pariahs over the Taifa kingdom of Zaragoza.
• His younger brother, García, corresponded to the whole region of Galicia, "elected to the category of kingdom" that extended to the south to the river Mondego in Portugal plus the pariahs of the Taifa king of Badajoz and Seville.
• His sisters Urraca and Elvira corresponded to the infantazgo, that is, "the patronage and the rents of all the monasteries belonging to the royal heritage" on the condition that they could not marry.

Historian Alfonso Sánchez Candeira suggests that, although the reasons that led King Ferdinand to divide the kingdoms are unknown, Alfonso el de León inheriting the implicit imperial title, the division could have been due to the fact that he considered it convenient for each male child will inherit the region where they were educated and where they spent their first years. In any case, the main consequence of the paternal decision was the unleashing of fratricidal struggles for power that lasted seven years.

Reign

First stage (1065-1072): consolidation of the throne

After his coronation in the city of León in January 1066, Alfonso had to face the expansionist wishes of his brother Sancho who, as the eldest son, considered himself the only legitimate heir to all of their father's kingdoms. They begin when Queen Sancha dies on November 7, 1067, an event that will open a period of seven years of war between the three brothers and whose first act will take place on July 19, 1068 when Alfonso and Sancho face each other in Llantada, In a judgment of God in which both brothers agree that the one who is victorious would obtain the kingdom of the defeated. Although Sancho wins, Alfonso does not comply with what was agreed, despite which the relations between the two are maintained as shown by the fact that Alfonso attended, on May 26, 1069, Sancho's wedding with an English noblewoman named Alberta and where both decided to unite to divide the kingdom of Galicia that had corresponded to García, the youngest of the sons of Fernando I.

With the complicity of Alfonso, his brother Sancho entered Galicia in 1071 and, after defeating his brother García, seized him in Santarém and imprisoned him in Burgos until he was exiled to the taifa of Seville, governed by Al -Mutamid. After eliminating his brother, Alfonso and Sancho call themselves kings of Galicia and sign a truce.

The Jura de Santa GadeaMarcos Hiráldez Acosta. 1864. (Palacio del Senate de España, Madrid).

The truce is broken with the battle of Golpejera in 1072. Sancho's troops are victorious, but he decides not to pursue his brother. Alfonso was taken prisoner and imprisoned in Burgos, later he was transferred to the Sahagún monastery, where his head was shaved and he was forced to take the chasuble. Thanks to the intercession of his sister Urraca, Sancho and Alfonso reached an agreement for Alfonso to leave and take refuge in the taifa of Toledo under the protection of his vassal, King Al-Mamún and accompanied by the faithful Pedro Ansúrez, friend of his childhood, and his two brothers Gonzalo and Fernando.

Alfonso, from his exile in Toledo, achieved the support of both his sister Urraca and the Leonese nobility who became strong in the city of Zamora, a lordship that Alfonso had previously granted him, forcing Sancho, in 1072, to besiege the city to subdue it after Urraca refused to exchange it for other places that Sancho had offered him, eager to control the stronghold of Zamora, "key to future expansion south of the Duero". During the siege, King Sancho was killed in October of that year. Tradition or legend narrates the episode with the detail that during the siege, a Zamoran or Galician nobleman named Vellido Dolfos appeared before the king as a deserter and, with the excuse to show him the weak points of the walls, he separated him from his guard and managed to end his life with a spear. Although there is no record that Sancho's death was due to treason rather than deceit, since Dolfos he was an enemy of Sancho, his The murder was due to a warfare typical of the siege situation and it did not take place on the walls but in a nearby forest where Dolfos took the Castilian king away from his armed protection. The violent death of his brother Sancho, who left no descendants, allowed Alfonso to recover his throne and claim Castile and Galicia for himself.

Although Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a trusted man and standard bearer of King Sancho, was found in the siege of Zamora, there is no record of his actions. Nor can the death of his brother be attributed to Alfonso, who was exiled and far from the facts, "but the minstrels and the ballads filled this void with beautiful literary creations devoid of any historical reality."

At this moment, the Legend of Cardeña about El Cid (13th century) situates the exculpatory oath of the possible participation of Alfonso in the murder of his brother, which El Cid took in the church of Santa Gadea de Burgos (Jura de Santa Gadea) and that would cause a relationship of mutual mistrust between the two, although Alfonso tried to get closer by offering his niece Jimena Díaz in marriage along with the immunity of his estates. These events and their consequences would eventually come to be considered historical by a multitude of chroniclers and historians, although most of these currently reject the historicity of the episode.

Sancho's death was also used by García to recover his own throne, but the following year, on February 13, 1073, he was called by Alfonso to a meeting, and was arrested and imprisoned for life in the castle of Luna, where he would finally die on March 22, 1090. With the two brothers eliminated, Alfonso had no problem obtaining the loyalty of both the high clergy and the nobility of his territories; to confirm this, he spent the next two years visiting them.

In 1087 or 1088, a revolt broke out in Galicia against the concession to Alfonso's son-in-law of this region. The uprising was put down and helped Alfonso to reorganize the episcopate in the west of the kingdom; the bishop of Santiago was deposed, along with two others of the seven in the area.

Second stage (1072-1086): territorial expansion

Consolidated on the Leonese throne, and with the title of emperor that he inherited from the Leonese neo-Gothic tradition, Alfonso VI dedicated the next fourteen years of his reign to enlarging his territories through conquests such as that of Uclés and the territories of the Banu Di -l-nun. He was also titled, from 1072, rex Spanie .

General view of the city of Toledo, conquered by Alfonso VI el Bravo in 1085.

Alfonso relied on a group of nobles who supported him during his reign. In addition to the faithful Ansúrez, this group was made up of his brother-in-law Count Martín Alfonso, tenant of Simancas and Tordesillas and brother of Eylo Alfonso, the royal lieutenant Pedro González de Lara and Fernando Díaz. Other figures such as Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar or the king's son-in-law, Count Raimundo de Borgoña, had a secondary influence in the circle of the Alfonsine court.

Its first move was made in 1076, when the Navarrese monarch Sancho Garcés IV died and was assassinated, the Navarrese nobility decided that the throne would not pass to their minor son, but to one of the grandsons of Sancho III of Pamplona: Alfonso VI or Sancho Ramírez de Aragón, who invaded the Navarrese kingdom. After reaching an agreement, Sancho Ramírez is recognized as King of Navarre and Alfonso annexes the territories of Álava, Vizcaya, part of Guipúzcoa, La Rioja and La Bureba, adopting in 1077 the title of Imperator totius Hispaniae ('Emperor of all Spain').

But his great territorial expansion will be at the expense of the Muslim taifa kingdoms, for which Alfonso continued with the practice of economic exploitation through the pariah system, getting most of the taifa kingdoms of Muslim Spain to be his tributaries, a practice to which military pressure was added. In 1074 he probably recovered the payment from the pariahs of Toledo and that same year, aided by troops from this city, he cut down the lands of the Granada taifa, which as a consequence also began to pay tribute to Alfonso. In 1076, the emir de Zaragoza, who wanted to seize Valencia without being hindered by Alfonso, agreed to resume the payment of the outcasts. In 1079, he took possession of Coria.

Alfonso VI conquers Toledo on May 25, 1085. Banco de la Plaza de España de Sevilla

One of the initiatives of these years, which has gone down in history as Rueda's betrayal, will end in failure. It took place in 1083 in the Rueda de Jalón castle, when Alfonso received news that the warden of said fortress, which belonged to the Taifa kingdom of Zaragoza, intends to surrender it to the King of Leon. The troops sent by Alfonso are ambushed upon entering the castle and several of its main magnates die.

In 1074, his vassal and friend, the king of the taifa of Toledo Al-Mamún, had died poisoned in Córdoba, who was succeeded by his grandson Al-Qádir who, in 1084, requested Alfonso's help for the second time in the face of an uprising that wanted to overthrow him. Alfonso took advantage of the taifa king's call for help to besiege Toledo, a city that would fall on May 25, 1085 and al-Qádir was sent as king to Valencia under the protection of Álvar Fáñez. In order to facilitate this operation and to recover the payment of the pariahs of the city, which he had stopped paying them the previous year, Alfonso besieged Zaragoza in the spring of 1086. At the beginning of March, Valencia accepted al-Qádir; Játiva tried to resist by requesting the help of the wren of Tortosa and Lérida, who made an unsuccessful incursion through the region before retreating harassed by the hosts of Fáñez.

After this important conquest, the monarch titled himself emperor of the two religions and as a gesture before the important Muslim population of the city, he promised, in addition to respecting their properties, to reserve the main mosque for their worship. The decision was revoked by the recently appointed Archbishop of Toledo, Bernardo de Sedirac, taking advantage of the absence of the monarch of Toledo and availing himself of the support of Queen Constanza of Burgundy. The archbishop transformed the mosque into a cathedral.

The occupation of Toledo, which allowed Alfonso VI to add the title of King of Toledo to those he already held (victoriosissimo rege in Toleto, et in Hispania et Gallecia), led to the seizure cities like Talavera and fortresses like the castle of Aledo. He also occupies the then city of Maŷriṭ in 1085 without resistance, probably by capitulation. The incorporation of the territory located between the Central System and the Tagus River, will serve as a base of operations for the Leonese crown, from where it could undertake greater harassment against the taifas of Córdoba, Seville, Badajoz and Granada.

Third stage (1086-1109): the Almoravid invasion

The conquest of the extensive and strategic Toledo taifa, the control of Valencia and the possession of Aledo, which isolated Murcia from the rest of al-Andalus, worried the Muslim rulers of the peninsula. The military and economic pressure on the taifa kingdoms made the kings of the taifas of Seville, Granada, Badajoz and Almería decide to ask for help from the Almoravids who, at the end of July 1086, under the command of the emir Yúsuf ibn Tasufín, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and disembarked in Algeciras.

In Seville, the Almoravid army joined the troops of the Taifa kingdoms and together they headed for Extremadura where, on October 23, 1086, they faced the troops of Alfonso VI in the battle of Zalaca, who he had been forced to abandon the siege to which he was subjecting the city of Zaragoza. He was also met by Álvar Fáñez, who had been called from Valencia to join the king's forces. The battle ended in defeat of the Christian troops, who returned to Toledo to defend themselves, but the emir did not know how to take advantage of the victory, as he hastily returned to Africa due to the death of his son. The clash marked the beginning of a new stage in the peninsula that lasted about three decades, in which the military initiative passed to the Almoravids and the kingdom of Alfonso had to remain on the defensive; In any case, he managed to retain Toledo, the main objective of the Almoravid attacks. These did not cease during the last two decades of Alfonso's reign and stopped the Leonese expansion through the peninsula that had occurred in the time of his father Fernando and during the first part of their own government.

Alfonso asked the Christian kingdoms of Europe to organize a crusade against the Almoravids who had recovered almost all the territories that Alfonso had conquered, with the exception of Toledo, a city where Alfonso was strong. To strengthen his position, he reconciled with El Cid, who went to Toledo at the end of 1086 or beginning of 1087. As a consequence of the serious defeat, the Andalusian taifas stopped paying him outcasts; this seriously undermined military funds. of the Leonese Crown. As a consequence of this lack of funds, the king had to entrust the defense of the border increasingly to great lords: El Cid in the east, Álvar Fáñez between Valencia and Toledo and in this, Pedro Ansúrez. Further west, the same task was left to Count Raymond, the monarch's son-in-law. El Cid managed to subdue Alfonso to the Levantine taifas again over the next two years.

Although the crusade was not finally organized, it did lead to the entry into the peninsula of a significant number of crusaders, including Raymond of Burgundy and Enrique of Burgundy, who married two of Alfonso's daughters, Urraca (1090). and Teresa (1094), which led to the establishment of the Burgundian dynasty in the peninsular kingdoms. Some of the crusaders unsuccessfully besieged Tudela in the winter of 1087, before withdrawing. That same year, the king crushed a revolt in Galicia, which sought to free his brother García.

In 1088 Yusuf ibn Tasufin crossed the strait for the second time, but was defeated at the siege of Aledo and suffered the desertion of many of the kings of the Muslim taifas, which motivated the emir to arrive on his next visit with the decision to remove them all and remain the sole king of all of al-Andalus. Alfonso used that castle as a base for raids through the eastern lands of the Sevillian taifa, an activity that continued from 1087 to 1090. Thanks to the Muslim failure Before Aledo, Alfonso had been able to resume the collection of the pariahs, through threats to cut down the Granada territory in the case of the sovereign of this city and running the Sevillian territory to recover the submission of the city of the Guadalquivir. Abd Allah ibn definitively estranged Buluggin de Granada with Ibn Tasufin, Alfonso promised to help him in exchange for his submission. Like Granada, Zaragoza and other Muslim territories in the eastern peninsula they resumed the payment of pariahs to the King of Leon. For the next five years, Alfonso presented himself as the defender of the independence of the peninsular taifas against the Almoravids, although the imposition of pariahs complicated the pacts with the Andalusian emirs. These tributes, however, were fundamental to guarantee the royal income, the basis of the royal munificence that partly sustained the power and prestige of the monarch. Attempts to impose them again on the Sevillian taifa through an incursion into their territory was not only a failure, but also counterproductive: the Sevillian emir refused to pay them and called the Almoravids to his aid. It seems that Alfonso did not personally participate in this campaign.

In June 1090, the Almoravids made a third landing: they deposed the king of Granada, defeated al-Mamún, governor of Córdoba, and after the battle of Almodóvar del Río, entered Seville, sending its king into exile al-Mutámid. Their siege of Toledo was unsuccessful and, due to the late arrival of Alfonso to help the city in August, they abandoned it. In the second half of the year and the first of the following, they seized all the southern taifas; Alfonso, who had promised to help the sovereign of Seville, failed in this purpose. The king suffered setbacks on all fronts: in the east he was unable to seize Tortosa due to the late arrival of the Genoese fleet that was to participate in its capture; further south, al-Qádir was deposed in a revolt; in the south, his relationship with Zaida, daughter-in-law of the Sevillian emir, did not serve to favor his image as a champion of peninsular Islam against the Almoravids; finally, in the west, the alliance with the emir of Badajoz was not enough to free the east from the conquest of its territory by the Maghrebis. As the price of the pact, Afonso had obtained Lisbon, Sintra and Santarém, but lost them in November of the 1094, when his son-in-law Raymond, in charge of its defense, was defeated by the Almoravid army that had taken Badajoz shortly before. Alfonso had easily seized all three at the end of April and beginning of May 1093 and, with they had taken over all of Portugal north of the Tagus. The only good news for Alfonso was provided by El Cid, who managed to recapture Valencia in June 1094 and defeat the Almoravid army that advanced against him in October at the battle of Cuarte; this victory fixed the eastern border for about a decade.

In 1093 Raymond had received the government of large territories: the entire Galician and Portuguese Atlantic coast to the north of the Tagus. However, the birth of Sancho Alfónsez that year —perhaps on September 13— and the death of the queen Constance were serious setbacks for the count's ambitions, as they removed him from power and diminished his influence at court. As a climax, Alfonso decided to marry a Lombard, Berta, at Christmas 1094, instead of choosing a French woman again., a measure he must have taken to reduce Burgundian influence in León. In August and September 1095, the kings toured Raymond's lands. Next, the king cleverly thwarted a conspiracy against him by his sons-in-law Raymond and Henry, who they wanted to divide the kingdom upon his death. To make them antagonistic, Afonso married his daughter Teresa to Enrique in 1096, and granted the couple the government of the county of Portugal, hitherto dominated by Raymond, which comprised While Raymond's rule was limited to Galicia, the move deprived Raymond of half of his land and made Enrique a new rival for the Leonese throne.

Another aspect that allowed Alfonso to maintain his authority in the kingdom was the good relations he maintained with the papacy. The troubles of Pope Urban II due to his confrontations with the German Emperor Henry IV and the French King Philip I favored the understanding between the pontiff and the Leonese sovereign, interested as his predecessors on the throne had been in dominating the church of the kingdom and its abundant resources.

In this way the two cousins instead of allies became rivals with opposing interests; their successor pact jumped in the air, and from then on each one would try to win Alfonso's favor.

Estatua de Alfonso VI en los Jardines de Sabatini de Madrid (F. Corral, 1753).

In 1097 there was a fourth Almoravid landing. The news was received by Alfonso VI when he was probably on his way to Zaragoza to help his vassal King al-Musta'in II in his confrontation with the recently crowned Pedro I of Aragón. The Almoravid objective was once again Toledo, on whose path was the castle of Consuegra and where, on August 15, they met the Christian troops who were again defeated in the battle of the same name. Shortly after, the Almoravids they also defeated Álvar Fáñez in the Cuenca region, the other end of the Leonese defensive line. Shortly after and without managing to challenge Consuegra, where the remains of the royal army had taken refuge, the Almoravids withdrew. The defeats did not entail losses territorial restrictions or enemy incursions and the king returned to Sahagún a little later, in September or October. It is believed that the court spent Christmas in Santiago and not in León or Sahagún, as was usual. Subsequently, Alfonso dedicated himself to reinforcing the southeastern border of the kingdom, between the Muslim squares of Atienza, Sigüenza and Medinaceli, that of San Esteban de Gormaz and the Sierra de Guadarrama, to hinder the communications of the enemy movement between the south and Zaragoza.

In 1099, the Almoravids conquered a large part of the castles that defended the Toledo area —Consuegra fell in June— and the following year they tried to seize Toledo, unsuccessfully. The 1099 campaign meant the loss for the Leonese of the southern half of the Toledo taifa conquered the previous decade, the fixation of the border approximately in the Tagus and, consequently, that Toledo was left in a vulnerable situation, as a border town. Alfonso, who is believed to have led the defense of the southern border in the campaign of 1099, he soon withdrew to Sahagún, in October; he spent Christmas there and Queen Bertha died soon after, in the early 1100s. The queen must have been ill for some time because the king was quick to choose a new consort.

He directed the defense of Toledo in 1100 Enrique, Alfonso's son-in-law, since he had gone to Valencia to inspect its defenses; El Cid had died the previous year and the government of the city fell to his widow, Jimena. The loss of Valencia also heralded the Almoravid conquest of Zaragoza and with it, the loss of the last source of outcasts for the Leonese and a new threat to the kingdom's eastern border.

At the beginning of 1101, Urraca, the last of the king's siblings still alive and who had been a close adviser to the sovereign, died. Alfonso had to remain in Sahagún at least until Easter, which fell at the end of the year. April. The main military task of the year was the reinforcement of Salamanca and Ávila as bastions before the possible loss of Toledo; the two towns were to serve as western protection for the area south of the Duero, still in assimilation. The first was to monitor the old Vía de la Plata that connected Mérida with Zamora and the second, access to the region through the port Arrebatacapas in the Sierra de Guadarrama. The task was entrusted to Count Raimundo.

In 1102, Alfonso sent troops to the aid of Valencia in the face of the Almoravid threat. The battle between the Leonese and the Almoravids took place in Cullera and ended without a clear winner, although Valencia fell into Almoravid hands due to how costly it was for Alfonso defend this square. Alfonso supervised the evacuation of the city in March and April, and set fire to it before leaving; in May, the Almoravids took possession of it. The loss of Valencia augured the fall into the hands of the Almoravids of Zaragoza and, with it, the emergence of a serious threat to the eastern border of the kingdom. The Emir of Zaragoza, before the As events took, he sent his son to make a pact with Ibn-Tasufin and stopped paying pariahs to Afonso. To protect the area south of the Duero from the east, the Leonese king appointed a bishop for Osma in 1102 and surrounded and took Medinaceli (in July 1104, after a long siege), a key place that allowed the attack on the Toledo region from the east along the Jalón valley, in 1104. The town was also in the road that linked Zaragoza with Toledo and, beyond the Tagus, with Córdoba and Seville. In 1104, 1105 and 1106, he made several incursions into Andalusian territory; in the last one he reached Malaga and was able to escort Mozarabs who settled in his kingdom as settlers. In the fall of 1106, he was in the east of Castile and then returned as usual to León. In 1107 there were no notable battles. The king spent Christmas of that year in Sahagún and in May he proclaimed Sancho Alfónsez heir in León.

In 1108 the troops of the Almoravid Tamim, governor of Córdoba and son of Yúsuf ibn Tasufín, went again against the Christian territories, but the chosen place was not Toledo, but Uclés. Alfonso was in Sahagún, recently married, older and with an old injury that prevented him from riding a horse. Álvar Fáñez, governor of the lands of the Banu Di-l-Nun, was in command of the army, and he was accompanied by the infant heir Sancho Alfónsez. The armies clashed in the battle of Uclés, where the Christian troops suffered another harsh defeat and in which, in addition, the infant heir to the throne perished, which resulted in a thirty-year hiatus in the reconquest and independence of the Portuguese county. The military situation was also serious, as the Almoravids They seized almost immediately the entire defensive strip of the Tagus from Aranjuez to Zorita and there were uprisings by the Muslim population of the region. Alfonso rushed to the south to defend the borderlands, although in September, due to the lack of After the planned enemy assault on Toledo, he had already returned to Sahagún.

Wives, concubines and offspring

In 1067 his marriage to Agate of Normandy, daughter of King William I of England and Matilde of Flanders, was negotiated, but her premature death frustrated the project.

Miniature of the 1513 manuscript of the National Library that represents a scene of Chronicon regum legionensium of Bishop Pelayo

According to Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, a contemporary of the king, in his Chronicon regum legionensium, Alfonso VI had five wives and two nobilissimas concubines. The wives were, according to the bishop, Inés, Constanza, Berta, Isabel and Beatriz and the concubines Jimena Muñoz and Zaida.

Agnes of Aquitaine

In 1069 the betrothal agreement was signed with Agnes of Aquitaine, daughter of Guido William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers and Matilde de la Marche. Agnes was barely ten years old and we had to wait until she turned fourteen to celebrate the marriage that took place at the end of 1073 or beginning of 1074. It appears in royal diplomas until May 22, 1077 and from that date, the king appears only in the documentation. Agnes died on June 6, 1078.

Reilly suggests that the marriage had been annulled the previous year, probably due to childlessness. However, Gambra disagrees, saying there are no reliable sources to support this claim. The information about the supposed repudiation only appears in one volume of L'art de vérifier les dates and, according to Gambra, «It becomes impossible, in the absence of better references, to grant credence to the affirmation of the repudiation of Inés". In addition, he points out that the Tudense, in his Chronicon mundi , indicates that the queen was buried in Sahagún. Finally, he points out that "if an event of this magnitude had really occurred, it would be meaningless [...] for Alfonso VI to immediately marry another princess from the family of Inés". Inés and the king's next wife, Constanza, were third cousins, both descendants of Duke William III of Aquitaine.

On the other hand, Orderico Vital, an English chronicler of the 12th century, said that the marriage of Agnes and King Alfonso had been annulled in 1080 for reasons of consanguinity and that Agnes had remarried in 1109 with Elías de la Flèche, Count of Maine. According to Jaime de Salazar y Acha, the one who married the Count of Maine was Beatriz, the last wife of Alfonso VI.

Jimena Munoz

After the death of Inés, the king maintained a relationship with Jimena Muñoz, concubine nobilissima, according to Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, of whom two daughters were born between 1078 and 1080.

• Elvira Alfónsez (c. 1079-April of 1157), married Raimundo IV de Tolosa, Count of Tolosa, and after enviudar with Count Fernando Fernández de Carrión.
• Teresa Alfónsez. Countess of Portugal as part of his bridal dowry, he married Enrique de Borgoña. The son of both, Alfonso I Enríquez, was the first king of Portugal.

Constance of Burgundy

He married a second time at the end of 1079 with Constance of Burgundy, with whom he appears for the first time on May 8, 1080, widow, childless, of Count Hugh II of Chalon-sur-Saône, and daughter of Robert the Elder, Duke of Burgundy and Hélie de Semur, and great-granddaughter of Hugh Capet, King of France. She was also the niece of Abbot Hugh of Cluny, and aunt of Henry of Burgundy. the king's desire to strengthen ties with the powerful abbey of Cluny the reason for the betrothal.

Fruit of this marriage, which lasted until the queen's death in 1093, six children were born, five of them died in childhood, and the only one who survived was:

• Urraca I de León (1081-1126), who succeeded his father on the throne. He contracted two marriages; with Raimundo de Borgoña and Alfonso the Batallador, king of Aragon. He also had two children born of his relationship with Count Pedro González de Lara. The son who had had with Raimundo de Borgoña, Alfonso VII the Emperor.

Zaida

Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo mentions Zaida as one of the king's two concubines and says that she was the daughter of Al-Mu'támid, the Taifa king of Seville. Zaida, in fact, was his daughter-in-law, married to his son Abu Nasr al-Fath al-Ma'mun, king of the taifa of Córdoba.In March 1091 the Almoravids besieged the city of Cordova. Zaida's husband, who died during the siege on 26/27 of that month, as a precaution, sent his wife Zaida and her children to Almodóvar del Río. After being widowed, Zaida sought protection in the court of the Leonese king and she and her children converted to Christianity, she was baptized with the name of Isabel and became the king's concubine.

From this relationship he was born between 1091 and 1095, possibly in 1094:

• Sancho Alphonsez (c. 1094-1108), his only male son and heir to the throne. His premature death in the battle of Uclés accelerated the end of his father.

In the chronicle De rebus Hispaniae, by the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, the Moor Zaida is counted among the wives of Alfonso VI. But the Crónica najerense and the Chronicon mundi indicate that Zaida was a concubine and not the wife of Alfonso VI..

According to Jaime de Salazar y Acha, followed by other authors, including Gonzalo Martínez Díez, they married in 1100, legitimizing their son who became crown prince of the Christian kingdom. For Salazar y Acha, Zaida and the king's fourth wife, Isabel, are the same person, "Despite the tremendous efforts of later historians to try to show us that Zaida was not the Moor", and would also be the mother of Elvira and Sancha Alfónsez. Another reason given by the author is the fact that shortly after the king's wedding to Isabella, the infante Sancho began to confirm royal diplomas and if Zaida had not been the new queen, she would not have consented to Sancho's new role to the detriment of his possible future children. He also cites a diploma in the cathedral of Astorga from April 14, 1107 where the king grants some privileges and acts cum uxore mea Elisabet et filio nostro Sancio. This is the only diploma where he is cited as "our son", since in others he only appears as the son of the king although Queen Elizabeth also appears.

Reilly accepts that there were two Isabels, the Moorish Zaida —baptized Isabel— and the other Isabel, but argues that to strengthen Sancho Alfónsez's position, King Alfonso annulled the marriage to Isabel in March 1106 and married Zaida The hypothesis that Alfonso VI had married Zaida had already been rejected by Menéndez Pidal and by Lévi-Provençal.

On March 27, 1106, King Alfonso confirmed a donation to the Lorenzana monastery: (...) eiusdemque Helisabeth regina sub maritali copula legaliter aderente, an unusual formula confirming a legitimate marriage. Salazar and Acha y Reilly interpret this quote as proof that the king had married Zaida, thus legitimizing their son and the concubinage relationship. Gambra, however, opposes it and says that it is "an extremely flimsy, starting with the documentary reference, hardly significant. Its character is rather ornamental and literary". He died in 1107, according to his epitaph. Montaner Frutos also mentions a donation from Queen Urraca years later, in 1115, when she donated some properties to the cathedral of Toledo and only mentions one Isabel as the king's wife.

Bertha

On November 25, 1093, he contracted a third marriage with Berta, although a document dated April 13, 1094 does not mention it, which «is strange because it is part of a time when the inclusion of of the royal consort in the diplomatic tenor". It seems that Alfonso's choice was due to his desire to limit Burgundian influence in the kingdom. The genealogist Szabolcs de Vajay, for onomastic reasons, suggests that Berta was a member of the house of Savoy, daughter of Amadeo II of Savoy (d. 1180), brother of Pedro I of Savoy, great-niece of Berta of Savoy, great-granddaughter of Berta d'Este and first cousin of another Berta, who was queen by her marriage with Pedro I of Aragon. His presence at court is recorded for the first time on April 28, 1095. He died between November 17, 1099, the date on which he confirms a royal diploma for the last time, and November 15, January 1100 when the king appears alone in a donation to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The On January 25, 1100, the king made a donation to the monastery of Sahagún in memory of his deceased wife from whom there was no descendants.

Elizabeth

His penultimate marriage was at the beginning of 1100 with Isabel and "the controversy has been based for centuries on whether the latter was the Moor Zaida or a different character." Both appear together for the first time on May 14, 1100 although the diploma is considered suspicious, and the second time in that same year but without a date. The last mentions of Elizabeth in royal diplomas were on 8 and 14 May 1107 and she probably died in the middle of that year. This is, according to Salazar and Acha, Zaida who after her baptism was called Isabel. Its origin is uncertain. Bishop Pelayo does not refer to its origin. Lucas de Tuy in the XIII century, based on Isabel's epitaph, makes her the daughter of King Louis of France, who at that time would have to be Louis VI, although there is no record that he had a daughter named Isabel and, furthermore, if so, she would have been about five or six years old when she married. Reilly considers that its origin was probably Burgundian, although it is not recorded in the documentation.

Two daughters were born from this marriage:

• Sancha Alfónsez (c. 1102-c. 1125), was the first wife of Rodrigo González de Lara, Count of Liébana, with whom Elvira Rodríguez de Lara, wife of Count Ermengol VI of Urgel, Urraca and possibly Sancha Rodríguez.

• Elvira Alfónsez (c. September 1103 -6 February 1135), married in 1117 with Roger II, king of Sicily and Duke of Apulia (m. 26 February 1154).

Beatrice

King Alfonso contracted a fifth marriage, possibly in the first months of 1108, with Beatriz. Both appear together for the first time on May 28, 1108 in the cathedral of Astorga and later in two other royal diplomas; on January 1, 1109 in the cathedral of León and for the last time on April 25 of the same year in the cathedral of Oviedo, about three months before the king's death. According to Bishop Pelayo de Oviedo, once the king's widow, Beatriz returned to her homeland. Jaime de Salazar y Acha suggests that she was the daughter of Guillermo de Poitiers, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers, and Hildegarda of Burgundy and that after being widowed, she remarried Elias de la Flèche, Count of Maine. There were no descendants from this marriage.

Succession crisis

Alfonso, already old, had to deal with the succession problem. Berta had died without giving him an heir at the end of 1099; shortly after Alfonso married a French woman who gave him two daughters, but no son. To further complicate the situation, in March 1105 Alfonso Raimúndez was born, son of Urraca and Raimundo and grandson, therefore of Alfonso. To this possible pretender to the crown was opposed by the king's son with Zaida, Sancho. Montenegro believes that the king legitimized Sancho probably coinciding with the meeting of a council in Carrión de los Condes in January 1103 because from that date, Sancho begins to lead the list of confirmers of royal diplomas, before his brothers-in-law Enrique and Raymond of Burgundy. In May 1107 Alfonso imposed recognition of Sancho as heir, despite the probable displeasure of his daughters and sons-in-law, in the course of a royal curia held in León. The situation improved for the king with the death of Raymond in September and the agreement with Urraca so that she would remain as lady for life of Galicia, except in the event that she married, since then Then it would pass to his son. A few months later, at the beginning of 1108, Alfonso's wife also died who, despite her age, remarried the Frenchwoman Beatriz, with whom they had no children and who survived him. The defeat at Uclés had revived the problem of Alfonso's succession when the heir, Sancho Alfónsez, died in the fighting.

To ensure the succession, Alfonso then chose Urraca, but decided to marry her to his rival and famous warrior Alfonso I of Aragon in the autumn of 1108. Some of the nobility and clergy suggested that the infanta marry the principal de the Castilian nobles, Gómez González, Count of Lara, but the king was strongly opposed and chose the Aragonese king. Although the marriage took place at the end of the following year, it did not lead to the expected stability, but to a long civil war that broke out. It lasted eight years. The marriage was sterile and, after Alfonso's death, most of the nobility and the bishops of the kingdom refused to submit to the Battler.

Death and burial

After probably spending the winter in Sahagún, he marched to Toledo at the end of May 1109 or shortly after, to prepare to defend the border from the expected Almoravid attack as a result of the disaster at Uclés. In the spring, the enemy had seized Alcalá de Henares. Shortly before Alfonso's departure to the south, Teresa and Enrique left the court and went to their lands, already in bad relations with the court. They did not even attend the proclamation as Urraca's heir in Toledo or the subsequent burial of Alfonso in Sahagún or the coronation of Urraca at the end of July.

Alfonso VI died in the city of Toledo on July 1, 1109 The king had come to the city to try to defend it from an imminent Almoravid assault and to proclaim Urraca heiress in the city of the Tagus. His death occurred after the proclamation and disrupted the military plans. His corpse was taken to the Leonese town of Sahagún, being buried in the Monastery of San Benito de Sahagún at the end of July or beginning of August, thus fulfilling the will of the monarch.. The king's mortal remains were deposited in a stone tomb, which was placed at the foot of the church of the monastery of San Benito, until, during the reign of Sancho IV, it seemed improper to this king that his predecessor was buried at the foot of the temple, he ordered the tomb to be moved inside the temple, and placed in the transept of the church, where the tomb containing the remains of Beatriz Fadrique, daughter of the infante Fadrique de Castilla, who was found. he had been executed by order of his brother, Alfonso X of Castile, in 1277. When Alfonso died, the Leonese throne passed to his daughter Urraca.

Facade of the monastery of the Benedictine nuns of Sahagún, where the remains of Alfonso VI de León lie

The sepulcher that contained the remains of the king, who has now disappeared, was supported by alabaster lions, and was a large chest of white marble, eight feet long and four feet wide and high, with the lid covering it. It was covered smooth and with black slate, and the tomb was normally covered by a silk tapestry, woven in Flanders, in which the king appeared crowned and armed, finding on the sides the representation of the arms of Castile and León, and in the part of the head of the tomb a crucifix. The tomb that contained the remains of Alfonso VI was destroyed in 1810, during the fire that suffered the monastery of San Benito. The mortal remains of the king and those of several of his wives were collected and preserved in the abbey chamber until 1821, when the religious were expelled from the monastery, being then deposited by the abbot Ramón Alegrías in a box, which was placed on the southern wall of the Chapel of the Crucifix, until, in January 1835, the remains were collected again and placed in another box, being taken to the archive, where the remains of the sovereign's wives were found at that time. The purpose was to place all the royal remains in a new sanctuary that was being built at the time. However, when the monastery of San Benito was confiscated in 1835, the religious handed over the two boxes with the royal remains to a relative of a religious, that hid them, until in 1902 they were found by the professor of the Institute of Zamora Rodrigo Fernández Núñez. At present, the mortal remains of Alfonso VI the Brave rest in the monastery of the Benedictine nuns of Sahagún, in a sepulcher of cream marble and with a high relief of the monarch, and in an adjoining tomb, lie the remains of several of the king's wives.

Legacy

Statue of Alfonso VI in Toledo

In the cultural field, Alfonso VI promoted the safety of the Camino de Santiago and promoted the introduction of the Cluniac reform in the monasteries of Galicia, León and Castilla. In the spring of 1073, he made the first concession of a Leonese monastery to the Cluniacs.

The monarch substituted the Mozarabic or Toledo liturgy for the Roman one. In this regard, the popular tradition tells that Alfonso took a Mozarabic breviary and a Roman one and threw them into the fire. When only the Roman breviary burned, the king again threw the Mozarabic into the fire, thus imposing the Roman rite. It is possible that this legend is the origin of the saying that affirms "There go the laws, where the kings want".

Alfonso VI, the conqueror of Toledo, the great Europeanizing monarch, sees, in the last years of his reign, how the great political work carried out cracks before the push of the Almoravids and internal weaknesses. Alfonso VI had fully assumed the Leonese imperial idea and his openness to European influence had made him aware of the feudal political practices that, in the France of his time, reached their most complete expression. In the conjunction of these two elements, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz sees the explanation of the concession iure hereditario (sharing the kingdom between the two daughters and the son instead of bequeathing the entire kingdom to the only son). –more typical of the Navarrese-Aragonese tradition– of the governments of the counties of Galicia and Portugal to his two Burgundian sons-in-law, Raimundo, Urraca's first husband, and Enrique, married to Teresa. From that decision, after a few years, Portuguese independence and the perspective of an independent Galicia began under Alfonso Raimúndez, which later did not come true when he became Alfonso VII of León.