Duchy of Cantabria
The duchy of Cantabria or province of Cantabria was an administrative or military region of the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo, which arose as a result of the annexation of the northern lands of Burgos to the Cantabrian coast by King Leovigildo, completed around 581. The available documentary evidence, such as the conciliar act of the XIII Council of Toledo, or the notes of the Anonymous of Ravenna, despite being clear indications of the existence of this duchy, are not irrefutable proofs, and against the historians who maintain the legitimacy of this division, others maintain that the dignity of dux conferred on Pedro de Cantabria was more honorific than material. Its hypothetical limits remain unclear today. For Martínez Diez, its approximate limits were set in the north by the Cantabrian coast, from the Pyrenean Aquitaine to the Bay of Santander; from here, and in a south-southeast direction they went up the Pas valley to the confluence with the Luena, and continued to the Escudo pass, and from here to Aguilar de Campoo; they continued along the channel of the upper Pisuerga to the vicinity of Peña Amaya, where the capital was established; they continued in an east-southeast direction to Burgos to follow the foothills of the Sierra de la Demanda to Ágreda and head north-northeast, passing through Sangüesa to the Pyrenees. For González Echegaray, the Duchy of Cantabria should encompass the territories of the ancient Cantabrians, stressing the fact that classical sources mention Mount Hijedo, in the current autonomous community of Cantabria, as part of this province. Similarly, Pereda de la Reguera considers that the extension of the duchy would not only include the territory of the Cantabrians, but a much wider area that goes as far as La Rioja, not seeing it as logical that the name of Cantabria or the presence of Cantabrians could float on a territory during a specific time.
The creation of this province, entrusted to a dux, was intended to ensure the stability of the Visigothic kingdom in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, threatened by the Basque tribes. After the collapse of the Visigothic monarchy with the Muslim invasion, the duchy was subjected to harassment by the invaders, who ended up conquering and destroying the capital of the duchy, Amaya in 714. The first documentary evidence of the name of the province dates from the year 682., when San Julián refers to King Wamba's stay in Cantabria.
The Duchy of Cantabria should not be confused with the territory of the ancient Cantabrian tribes, whose area of influence was much smaller and not completely included in this demarcation. The equivalence between Roman Cantabria, the Duchy of Cantabria and current Cantabria has been the subject of debate.
Historical and territorial context
The Romanization of Hispania among the ethnic groups of the north of the peninsula was less profound and extensive than that of the rest of the Hispanic territory. These tribes were included in the province of Tarragona, and among them, the Cantabrians and the mountain Astures were the ones that resisted the domination of the Roman Empire the most. While the Basques were linked to Rome by a relationship of friendship and collaboration similar to that of the Galicians, the Cantabrian-Asturian resistance forced the empire to undertake one of the longest campaigns in its history.
The main interest of the metropolis in these lands, very rough terrain and unsuitable for extensive agriculture, was in the mining of gold and iron ores from the north, such as those of Las Médulas or Cabárceno, to what had to be adapted and secured the transport routes, and in the defense of their allies against the looting incursions of the Cantabrian tribes.
This may explain the scarcity of Roman cities in Cantabria, and the fact that the imperial footprint was almost limited to the construction of communication routes, the articulation of an elementary administrative structure, and a Latinization that ended up being imposed after 400 years of Roman rule. The decline of Rome and the gradual decomposition of the empire until its collapse, exemplified by the disappearance of the Roman cities of Julióbriga and Flavióbriga, would mean the recovery of the independence of the Cantabrian peoples from a central power, although as he points out Guinea, it is very unlikely that they returned to their old system of social and cultural organization, except perhaps in the reappearance of some indigenous traditions limited to the family sphere. It must be added that the bloodletting that the Cantabrian wars entailed for the indigenous population —killed in combat, extermination of men capable of fighting and deportation to work as slaves— together with the subsequent obligation to abandon the hill forts to concentrate on the flat lands, easier to control, had as a consequence the depopulation of a good part of the north of the peninsula.
The later Visigothic monarchy did not seem to show any more interest in the Cantabrian region than Rome had previously shown. The scarcity of Visigothic vestiges, concentrated in Campoo (cave of Los Hornucos, Espinilla necropolis, El Castillete de Reinosa site) and in the coastal areas, suggests that the Germanic influence was limited to the areas of communication with the Meseta and the ports maritime, places where there was already a settled Hispano-Roman population, while the smaller and more isolated nuclei, and therefore more unrelated to Romanization and Visigotization, suffered an irreversible decline, as witnessed by the almost total non-existence of cultural testimonies of the pre-Roman indigenous population in the post-imperial era.
The arrival of the Visigoths
In the prologue to "Las glossas Emilianenses", Ramón Menéndez Pidal hypothesizes that before the Visigothic eruption there already existed in the 5th century a Roman military demarcation among the Astures, Tierra de Campos, the Rioja Baja and the Cantabrian Sea, and it was precisely the Campi Gothorum, to the south of that mark, where the Visigoths settled in the 6th century. The Visigothic pressure on the Basque tribes probably caused an overpopulation of the Basque mountains with the subsequent plundering raids on the plain, which remained unstable and insecure territory.
Historians such as Albornoz or Schulten have defended the theory of the invasion and displacement of the Basques to Vardulia and the territory of the Caristians and Autrigones, perhaps protected by their Roman allies, or else taking advantage of the decomposition of the empire and the early years of disorder with the Visigothic invasion. Although there is no clear evidence of the nature, extent and importance of the alleged looting by the Basques, it does seem certain that there must have been a serious enough conflict for Leovigildo to postpone the repression of the rebellion of his son Hermenegildo in the south of the peninsula., to finish off the conquest of the north.
Whether motivated by the looting of the Basques, to contain the Basque expansion, or to increase and unify his kingdom, the Visigothic monarch conquered the Cantabrian plaza of Amaya in 574, and in 581 he founded Victoriaco, probably located on the Álava plain very near present-day Vitoria. The new province thus became one of the eight divisions of the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo and the military base used by King Wamba to control the Vascones. This province would end up being administered by a dux, as can be verified with the signature of eight dukes at the XIII Council of Toledo (year 683), as representatives of eight provinces, two more than the predecessor Roman provinces: Asturias and Cantabria.
Settings
The Visigothic monarchy annexed, as has been said, the land of the Cantabrians, Caristians, Várdulos, Austrians and Vascones, although it seems that their control was precarious, as would be demonstrated by the frequent Basque revolts, which lasted until 711 and provoked the military repressions of Recaredo in 590, Gundemaro in 610, Sisebuto, Suintila in 621, Recesvinto Chindasvinto in 642, Wamba in 672, and Rodrigo himself. The Gothic footprint in Basque land, quite diffuse, has as its greatest exponents the foundation of the cities -perhaps military strongholds- of Victoriaco (Leovigildo) and Olite, in addition to the remains in the necropolis of Pamplona and the Ciudad de Cantabria site (Logrono).
Between the reigns of Leovigildo and Sisebuto, Fredegario's chronicle speaks of a dux of Cantabria named Francio who was under the tutelage and tribute of the Merovingian Kingdom. No more references to this fact can be found in the other sources, but archeology has shown the expansion of "Aquitanian" type burials; by the easternmost territories that are attached to the duchy, which demonstrates the penetration of Merovingian rule.
However, there is no reliable record of when or how this duchy was established. The clearest indication is the existence of a Petris ducis just before the Muslim invasion, but the attributions of this doge are unknown, and who were his predecessors in office, except perhaps and with many reservations, Duke Favila. For authors such as Castillo y Montenegro, the creation of the duchy must have been made between 653 and 683, based on the fact that in the VIII Council of Toledo there were only six corresponding signatures with six duces provinciae, while in the acts of the XIII council, there were eight signatures.
In addition, its function within the crown is unknown about this duchy, discussed from different perspectives. With Chindasvinto and Recesvinto appears the figure of dux provinciae, a military chief who for Pérez-Bustamante was the highest judicial authority in a province, on whom the committees and the iudices. The delimitation of the functions of the dux is complex, since they gathered around his figure both the powers inherited from the Roman provincial structures and the new Gothic organization. Up to now they have only been recognized as dukes of Cantabria with some certainty, Doge Pedro and his son Alfonso. Of the other possible dukes cited in chronicles, sometimes reliable documents, and other simple falsifications, there is not sufficiently reliable information. Juan Antonio Llorente affirms that there were dukes in Cantabria since the Gothic era, almost all of them of Visigothic royal lineage, being vassals of the Visigothic kingdom except the last one, a vassal of the Asturian kingdom. These are: Favila; beremond; Pedro; Pelayo; Alfonso; and Fruela.
Historical discussion about its location
The Duchy of Cantabria would have been founded in a dark period in the history of northern Hispania. Little is reliably known about the territorial organization of the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo. In Spanish historiography there are differing opinions about the territorial location of the Duchy. Some authors, such as González Echegaray, consider that it extended on the slopes of the Cantabrian Mountains, while other historians, such as Sánchez Albornoz, are inclined to consider La Rioja as the nuclear zone of the duchy.
There are also divergences about the possession of historically defined territories at certain times, such as the defense made by Llorente in 1808 of the ownership of the lordship of Vizcaya to the duchy, alleging that it was then part of the territories of Doge Pedro and not a lordship special. Llorente affirms that Vizcaya was still part of the duchy when it, according to him belonging to the Kingdom of Navarre, was given as an inheritance by King Sancho to García. Such sentence agrees with the Pinatense Chronicle:
Aquesti king Sancho lordió Nauarra, et Aragon, et el ducado de Cantabria, et all the lands that his agüelo Sancho Abarca lordió et conquirió, et por su muller señorió Castiella, et Leon entro Portogal, because for his brotherly succession he was prouenido. Et for his probity and virtue which was in him, Gascoña submitted to his principality; and he subjugated here the comte of Sobrarbe which was his vassal, and recognized him for senyor.Chronic pinatense. San Juan de la Peña.
La Rioja core
Its capital would be in Peña Amaya, south of the "fuentes del Ebro" which Cato the Elder mentions as the country of the Cantabrians, and which was populated until the time of the Muslim conquest. In times of the Visigoths, it is mentioned in the chronicles that the province of Cantabria extended to the lands of La Rioja, the Ribera Navarra.
Two would be the main towns of the province: Peña Amaya and the City of Cantabria, located near the current Logroño. Both cities were taken in the year 574 by the Visigothic king Leovigildo. Braulio de Zaragoza, bishop of Zaragoza (631-651), recounts in his well-known work on the life of San Millán the preaching of this saint in the second of these two cities. He appeared before the Cantabrian Senate, where he exhorted its inhabitants to convert. Since the inhabitants of Cantabria ignored the advice of San Millán, the following year it was destroyed by Leovigildo's troops:
The same year, in the days of Lent, the destruction of Cantabria was also revealed to him; therefore, by sending a messenger, he commands the Senate to meet for Easter. Rebuke yourselves all on the appointed day; tell him what he had seen, and rebuke them their crimes, murders, thefts, incests, violence and other vices, and ward them to do penance. They all listened to him respectfully, for they all worshiped him as a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ; but one, called Abundancio, said that the Holy One stumbled upon him for his old age: but he warned him that by himself he would experience the truth of his proclamation, and the event later confirmed him, because he died on the edge of the avenging sword of Leovigildo. And when he had entered there by dolo and perjury, he also girded himself in the blood of others, because he had not repented of his wicked deeds: for the wrath of God was on all men.Vita Sancti Aemiliani, XXVI. San Braulio.
The city of Cantabria was not rebuilt again, although traditions and stories related to its destruction still circulate in La Rioja and Navarra: The ivory chest of the Monastery of Yuso contains images related to the preaching of San Millán in the city, and the Castilian poet Gonzalo de Berceo reported these events in his biography of San Millán in verse.
Mountain Core
The Cantabrian Rioja has been discussed by those who point out that from reading the Life of San Millán it does not follow that the Cantabria that Leovigildo occupies is the homonymous city of Logroño, and that the chronicle speaks of the activity of the saint in the territory of the Cantabrians and the surroundings of the city of Amaya. In this sense, Joaquín González Echegaray, who extensively studied this subject in his work Cantabria in the transition to the Middle Ages, notes that:
[...] in the same tradition of the monastery of San Millán is remembered the apostolic activity of the Holy in Cantabria, stating that it is not La Rioja, but the region of Mount Igedo, together with the sources of the Ebro, as a former glosa says on an emiliantic codex of the tenth century: Cantabria sita est in mons Iggeto iuxta fons Iberi.
Thus it is said that the fact that the Duchy of Cantabria at the end of the Visigothic period included the middle valley of the Ebro river is unfounded as there are no definitive arguments that indicate it; however, both García Moreno and Martínez Díez show the error of this judgment, by pointing out different passages from other cartularies, including the one from Emilian, in which different places in La Rioja are mentioned as belonging to the duchy.
Basque core
At the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century, the theory was put forward that pre-Roman Cantabria and the later duchy had been in the current Basque provinces. Gabriel de Henao defended this current in 1689 with some inconsistency, as he established the existence of Julióbriga near Reinosa and the Portus Victoriae Iuliobrigensium in Santoña, while identifying Castro-Urdiales as formerly Flaviobriga , establishing the etymological relationship Portus Amanum-Sámano. Later, the Basque-Cantabrist position was defended by another Jesuit from the 18th century, Manuel de Larramendi, in The defeated impossible. Art of the Bascongada language (1736). In this work he says:
The ancient cramps, which were the terror of Mrs.Orbe, Rome; (...) and they are the fathers and grandparents of the Gipuzkaans.Manuel de Larramendi; The impossible defeat. Art of the Basin Language.
This argument was later developed in another book, in 1736. However, he refers to the mythical character Tubal, thus ending his historical argument.
Disputes
The versions that trace the Duchy of Cantabria to a State that emerged from the rebellions in the mountains after the Roman conquest, have their origin in the forger Antonio Lupián Zapata and his Cronicón de Hauberto, a document proven false, as non-existent is its supposed original author, the Benedictine Hauberto.
Diego Gutiérrez Coronel, commissioner of the Inquisition in the 18th century, traces the title of duke or prince and the existence of a Cantabrian state to the end of the Cantabrian wars, briefly portraying their lords and the events that occurred during their lives, taking them for precursors of the county of Castilla. Arriving in the Gothic period, he named Andeca, Beremundo, Pedro and Fruela as dukes, saying of Pedro that he maintained an independent sovereignty from the Muslims and no longer attached to the Visigothic kingdom. The author's objective was to demonstrate the independence of Cantabria, at least to a certain degree, from Roman times until its inclusion in the crown of Castile, citing various sources in his text, such as Silio Itálico and Bishop Idacio. This version is supported by the fact that total Visigothic control did not go much further than Toledo, whose maximum expression was the existence of the kingdom of Galicia, with the struggles in northern Spain and specifically in Cantabrian lands being constant and documentable at first.. Diego Gutiérrez says of this period that
And even though king Leovigildo came to the city of Amaya did not pass from there, because it was then the trust, and the end of the Duchy of Cantabria
He explains the origin of the duchy by saying that the rebellious Cantabrians, already defeated by the Romans, withdrew to the northernmost mountains under the leadership of a chief named Lupo, who he calls the first prince or duke of Cantabria, although he did not constitute no State with defined or stable territory, which ended up marrying Agrippina, daughter of Marco Agrippa, temporarily ending hostilities with Rome; This story is taken from Pedro de Cossío y Celis (s. XVII), harshly criticized today. In his speech, Diego Gutiérrez documents how Cantabria lost most of its territory after the Roman conquest and how it recovered a large part of it in the configuration of its duchy, setting its limits before the fall of the Visigoths in the river Sella at the west, the town of Bermeo to the east and the surroundings of Bureba to the south; Based on these data, he offers an explanation of the appearance of the name Cantabria in La Rioja, as a natural extension of this territory.
Appealing to chroniclers and historians, Diego Gutiérrez affirms that at the end of the 7th century, on the death of Lupo VII, the territory was fragmented into three pieces, and the sovereign of each one continued to hold the title of Duke of Cantabria:
- Andeca: Duke of what today coincides with Las Encartaciones de Vizcaya and La Rioja.
- Beremundo: Duke of the future Asturias de Santillana.
- Pedro: duke of the areas after beautiful with the Four Villas of the Costa and the old region of Bardulia.
This version is opposed to that of Llorente in that the aforementioned dukes had no blood relationship or vassalage with the Visigoths, thus explaining why the title Duke of Cantabria is not found in their monarchy, in addition to the fact that they do not appear in the councils of Toledo; This last fact, although it would demonstrate the independence of a Cantabrian state, is the opinion of the author and he does not refer it historically with any document or testimony. Díez Herrera explains the non-appearance of the dukes in the councils of Toledo saying that the duchy was included in the province of Galicia, so it would be likely that it depended on the diocese of Auca, which did have a presence in the aforementioned councils. Lastly, Diego Gutiérrez considers the popular use of the name Castilla during Duke Fruela's lifetime as the cause of the loss of that of Cantabria.
This entire version is also collected by Francisco de la Sota (Crónica de los príncipes de Asturias y Cantabria, 1681) and later by Jerónimo de Zurita, although Iglesias Gil, when speaking of the historical limits of Cantabria and mentioning which authors defend this current, indicates the list of dukes and princes prior to the Visigoths as mythical and biblical, based on the false chronicle or Crónica de Hauberto. However, it is true that In light of the little that is known, the Cantabrians must have enjoyed great autonomy until Leovigildo's campaign against them, and even afterwards, as demonstrated by the few and localized signs of acculturation of Roman heritage.
Another important current of deformation of the Duchy was that of the Basque-Cantabrists, linked to a certain extent with the personal interests of the Haro family, lords of Vizcaya. Initially, the Haro family tried to identify with the lineage of the Dukes of Cantabria, introducing their heraldry in works by authors from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Pedro Cossío and Celis. These authors resorted to all kinds of inventions, from Isis and Osiris to the Virgin Mary, to justify the connection between the Haro and the dux of Cantabria. Taking advantage of Hauberto's false chronicle, the mountain scholars began to make extensive genealogies of Dukes of Cantabria, which despite lacking a historical basis, were spreading. The confrontation between the Basque-Cantabrist ideas, backed by the Jesuits, and the Montaña-Cantabrist ideas, defended by the Benedictines, ended the predominance of the latter, Basque-Cantabrianism being relegated to scholars of Basque history and evicted from the main historiographical currents.
These versions, from Hauberto to Sota, have been shown to be false, due to their lack of scientific support.
Duchy of Cantabria and Kingdom of Asturias
In any case, Pedro (second dux of Cantabria), father of King Alfonso I the Catholic, is titled Duke of Cantabria, among others, the Chronicles of the Bishops Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada Toledano (13th century); Lucas Tudense (Eo tempore Adefonsus Catholiicus, Petri, Cantabriensis Ducis filius); the General Chronicle of Don Alfonso X the Wise (year 1289, based on the Mundi Chronicle of Lucas de Tuy of the year 1230), Firmiter omnes obtinui munitipnes, sucit to the most victorious Rege Domino Adefonso, Petri Ducis filio and the chronicler Assas in his General Chronicle of Spain.
The reality is that, after the Arab invasion, Cantabria was the only territory in the Iberian Peninsula in which no fixed garrisons or administrative centers were established, regardless of the effectiveness of the invasion.
According to the historian Joaquín González Echegaray in his work Cantabria Antigua, Don Pelayo, who leads the uprising against the Vali Munuza, is named leader of the Christians, achieves the liberation of all Trasmontana Asturias from Cordoba rule and seals a pact with the Duke of Cantabria, Pedro, by virtue of which the marriage of Ermesinda, daughter of Don Pelayo, with Alfonso, son of Duke Pedro, is arranged, thus consolidating the union of both Christian nuclei in the fight against Islam. On the death of Don Pelayo in 737, his son Fáfila (or Favila) was appointed chief of the Astures, who three years later was killed by a bear during a hunt in Llueves, a village on the mountain of Cangas de Onís. Alfonso is elected successor to the throne of his father-in-law Don Pelayo and his brother-in-law of his Favila; Perhaps it contributed to his prestige that he was the son of Duke Pedro. It so happened that although Favila apparently had children, they were even minors. In any case, Alfonso I the Catholic never used the title of Duke of Cantabria, enduring the name of Asturias to refer to the kingdom in general and later also to most of the territory that the Autonomous Community of Cantabria occupies today was called the Asturias of Santillana. However, the Duchy of Cantabria, still integrated in Asturias, was ceded by Alfonso I to his brother Fruela once he obtained the throne of Asturias, so the duchy survived as a territorial division until 768 (date of Fruela's death)., when it was divided into counties. The genealogist Luis de Salazar y Castro, supported by Llorente, affirms that the duchy was divided between the brothers of the King of Asturias Aurelio, son of Fruela, last Duke of Cantabria, in this way: Castilla County for Rodrigo Froilaz, Lara County for Gonzalo Froilaz and Castrojeriz County for Sigerico, as well as other minor counties.