Fruela I of Asturias

Fruela I of Asturias, called the Cruel (722-Cangas de Onís; 768), son of Alfonso I and the Queen Ermesinda, was King of Asturias between 757 and 768.

Biography

At the beginning of his reign he faced an army sent by Abderramán I, Emir of Córdoba, in Pontuvio (Galicia). In this battle, which took place between May 757 and May 758, Omar, the son of Abder-Rahman's cousin by blood, was taken prisoner and had his throat beheaded.

He repopulated some places in Galicia as far as the Miño River, which marked the southwestern border of his kingdom. He had to harshly repress the incursions of the Basques from Álava against their territories in Cantabria. After several successful campaigns against them, he would agree to an exchange of hostages and agree to his marriage with his second cousin, Munia, daughter of the Basque lord of Gascony named Lope and a daughter of Fruela de Cantabria. Their son would be protected some time later in the territory of his maternal relatives and supported by them to recover the throne. Shortly after he had to suppress another rebellion of the Galician nobles in the year 766.

He reformed the clergy of his kingdom, forbidding clerics to marry and even forcing married men to leave their wives, which earned him the enmity of a large part of this establishment.

Fruela founded several monasteries of the Order of Saint Benedict, among them that of San Vicente de Oviedo, which was the origin of the city of Oviedo, where he is buried together with his wife. The cartulary of San Millán de la Cogolla includes the constitution, granted by Fruela on April 24, 759, of a female convent of twenty-eight nuns, with Nuña Bella as abbess, and with its presbyter in San Miguel de Pedroso (Burgos), in the eastern border of the kingdom, where a strong Christian-Visigoth nucleus resisted the Arab invasion under the protection of the Ayago mountains and the Sierra de la Demanda.

Seeing that his brother Vimarano was winning the favor of the aristocracy, he killed him personally, accusing him of leading a conspiracy to dethrone him. After the assassination, Fruela took Vimarano's son, named Bermudo (not to be confused with the King of Asturias Bermudo I), and had him raised as a son, perhaps trying to repair the damage caused by his death.

Even so, the murder of his brother aroused the enmity of the nobility, who conspired to assassinate him in the court of Cangas de Onís. Once Fruela was assassinated, his cousin Aurelio, son of Fruela de Cantabria, was chosen as successor to the throne.

Burial

Pantheon of Kings of Oviedo Cathedral

After his death, the corpse of King Fruela I was buried in the church of San Salvador in Oviedo, which he had ordered to be built, in which his wife, Queen Munia de Álava, was also buried. Subsequently, the church of San Salvador de Oviedo was sacked and razed, in the year 794, by Muslim troops and, then, King Alfonso II of Asturias ordered the rebuilding of the temple.

In the 16th century, the Córdoba chronicler Ambrosio de Morales pointed out the possibility that Alfonso II transferred his father's remains to the new church of San Salvador in Oviedo or that he ordered their transfer to the now-defunct church of Santa María de Oviedo, close to San Salvador, which the same monarch ordered to build.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the historian Luis Alfonso de Carvallo pointed out that Alfonso II ordered the transfer of the mortal remains of Fruela I to the chapel of King Casto in the cathedral of Oviedo, which would mean that they currently lie next to those of the other monarchs buried there.

Marriage and offspring

She married Munia de Álava and they were the parents of:

• Alfonso II de Asturias (c. 760-842).