Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada
Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada or El Toledano (Rada or Puente la Reina, Navarra, ca. 1170-Vienne, June 10, 1247) was an ecclesiastical, military, historian and statesman in Navarra and Castilla.
Archbishop of Toledo for almost forty years, he obtained the Primacy of this seat and founded its current cathedral on the old mosque; he served as advisor and diplomat to the King of Navarra Sancho VII and to the Castilians Alfonso VIII and Fernando III, of whom he was chancellor; he organized the Christian crusade against the Almohads of al-Andalus, personally directing several campaigns of the Reconquista war, including Las Navas de Tolosa; he won, by donation or military conquest, numerous lordships throughout the Castilian territory, the main one being the overtaking of Cazorla; he excelled in the Lateran and Lyon councils. A scholar and polyglot, he was also the author of a chronicle entitled De rebus Hispaniae, also known as Gothic History or Chronicle of Toledo, in which describes the history of Spain from its origins to 1243.
Biography
Family and education
Born around 1170 in Rada, he was the son of Jimeno Pérez de Rada, lord of Cadreita and Rada, who served in the court of Sancho VII of Navarre, and of Eva de Hinojosa; His paternal grandparents were Pedro Tizón de Rada, who had a decisive intervention in the accession to the throne of Aragon of Ramiro II, and Doña Toda; his maternal grandparents were Miguel Muñoz de Hinojosa, lord of Hinojosa del Campo y de Deza, who served Alonso VII, and Sancha Gómez, lady of Boñices; of her brothers, Martín and Munio were well appreciated by Alfonso VIII of Castile, the first as bishop of Sigüenza and abbot of the monastery of Santa María de Huerta, and the second as a soldier and courtier; His cousins on the maternal side were Rodrigo, Bishop of Sigüenza, and Martín, steward of Alfonso VIII and Enrique I. His maternal family's Sorian ancestry would later facilitate his access to the Castilian court, over and above his Navarrese origin. He had several siblings, including Bartolomé, who succeeded his father in the estates of his house as his firstborn, and María, who was a nun in Las Huelgas.
After completing his first studies (it is not clear if in Soria under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, Abbot Martín de Hinojosa, or in Navarra under the Bishop of Pamplona Pedro de Artajona), he studied philosophy and law at the university Bologna for about four years, between 1195 and 1199 approximately, and theology another four in Paris; around these dates, more specifically in 1201, he wrote his will. Having Spanish as his first language, during his life he also mastered Latin, Basque, Italian, French, German, English, Arabic and possibly Greek and Hebrew.
Return to Spain
In the last decade of the XII century, the situation in the Iberian Peninsula had been complicated and unstable: the league of Huesca from 1191, which had united Alfonso II of Aragon, Sancho VI of Navarre, Alfonso IX of León and Sancho I of Portugal against Alfonso VIII of Castile, had weakened with the withdrawal of the Aragonese and the death of the Navarrese; Castilla y León signed peace in 1194 through the Treaty of Tordehumos, and the following year they all united against the Almohad hosts of Abu Yaqub Yusuf al-Mansur to end up being defeated in the battle of Alarcos; The tensions that arose that same year on the Castilian-Navarre border were resolved with the truce signed in 1196 by Castile, Aragon and Navarre, which was broken shortly afterwards, leading the first two to ally against Navarre in 1198, invading their territory, while Portugal threatened Leon for Galicia.
In the south things were no better: after the riots that occurred after the death of Yusuf al-Mansur in 1199 had subsided, his successor Muhammad An-Nasir alternated peace and war with the Christian kingdoms on the border of al-Andalus, while in North Africa he was at odds with the Háfsids for control of Ifriqiya. To the north, Philip II of France was waging his own war against the English Plantagenets in Aquitaine, while Pope Innocent III was trying to unite all Christian princes in a new crusade.
Rodrigo returned to Navarre in 1203, where his father introduced him to the court of Sancho VII, of which he soon became private. It is assumed that at this time he had already received religious orders at least up to the degree of deacon. In 1206 Castilla signed peace with León through the Treaty of Cabreros, and the following year, through the mediation of Rodrigo, with Navarre through the peace of Guadalajara; His diplomatic efforts during the signing of this agreement and his maternal Castilian descent earned him the trust of King Alfonso, who from this moment would have him as his trusted man.
Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain
He was actively involved in the foundation of the General Study of Palencia, the first of this title in Spain. On the recommendation of Alfonso VIII, he was elected bishop of Osma in 1208, but before receiving the consecration as such, the Archbishop of Toledo Martín de Pisuerga died, and the cathedral chapter chose Rodrigo as his successor, and he was confirmed by Innocent III in February. of 1209. At that time Toledo, the city of the three cultures (Muslim, Christian and Jewish), was the main population center of the kingdom, and its archdiocese the only metropolitan see of Castile, which had Cuenca, Osma, Palencia as suffragans, Segovia, Siguenza and Albarracin. Tarragona (which included Calahorra), in the kingdom of Aragon, Santiago de Compostela (including Ávila), in that of León, and Braga, in Portugal, were the other three metropolitan centers on the peninsula; Narbonne, in France, had jurisdiction over some bishoprics in Catalonia; Burgos depended directly on the Holy See.
The following year he received priestly orders and consecration, obtaining the bull by which the Pope confirmed the Primacy of the Diocese of Toledo. The achievement of primacy would be a constant throughout his archbishopric: when Toledo was reconquered from the Muslims in 1085, Archbishop Bernardo de Cluny had managed to get Urban II to declare Toledo the superior authority over the other archdioceses of the peninsula, thus recovering the that it was supposed to have in Goth times, but still in the s. XIII the archbishops of the remaining archdioceses and some bishops of Toledo, dissatisfied with this decision, refused to recognize it, while the Holy See provisionally maintained the status quo and repeatedly postponed the final ruling on the matter.
Towards the battle of Las Navas. Latin Quran Translation
The peace agreements signed between the Christian kingdoms during the first decade of the century were the occasion that the Catholic Church had been waiting for to unite them all in a new crusade against the Almohads, who for their part were threatening to march north. In 1209 Innocent III addressed a bull to all the Castilian dioceses in which he ordered them to induce his king to war against the Saracens, in imitation of what Pedro II of Aragon had been doing in the lands of Valencia. In 1210 Marcos de Toledo gave him a translation of the Koran into Latin that he had commissioned, the second to be done in that language in Europe.
Two years later, Rodrigo was in charge of collecting the bull of the crusade from the pope and preaching it throughout Italy, Germany and France, gaining followers for his cause. The results of his effort materialized in 1212, when a large army made up of Castilians, Aragonese, Navarrese, and French concentrated in Toledo to confront, led by the archbishop, the Almohad hosts, who were decisively defeated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The military campaign against the Saracens continued for another two years; In the king's absence, Rodrigo was the one who directed the military operations from Calatrava, also facing the hardships of famine and plague that spread through the area.
Reign of Henry I
In 1214 he returned to Burgos together with Alfonso VIII, who died shortly after on his way to Portugal, 25 days before his wife Eleanor. King Alfonso was succeeded by his son Enrique, only ten years old, supervised by his sister Berenguela, who assumed the regency of the kingdom. Soon the Laras intrigued to attract the young king to their side, achieved which they began to use royal authority for their own benefit, and Rodrigo had to leave the court, returning to Toledo.
In 1215 he attended the IV Lateran Council, whose most important point was the organization of a new crusade in the East; Rodrigo's intervention obtained papal permission for the peninsular kingdoms to carry out their own holy war in Spanish territory against the Almohads, thus diverting the Muslim forces from the war center in the Holy Land. Two years later he traveled to Rome again to settle the lawsuit over the supremacy of his seat, which was once again dismissed. The new Pope Honorio III named him his legate in Spain for ten years with the task of organizing the crusade of all the Christian kingdoms against the Muslims, of which he was also designated as military leader.
Reign of Ferdinand III
On his return in January 1218, King Enrique had died accidentally, and the throne of Castile had been occupied by Ferdinand III, son of Berenguela and her ex-husband Alfonso IX of León; the riots that followed his coronation were appeased with the military defeat of the Lara by Berenguela's troops and with the peace agreements between Castilla and León, in which Rodrigo had a large part. From this moment Rodrigo would be an important point in Fernando's court, who would have him as his chancellor until his death.
During the following years, in his capacity as archbishop and leader of the crusade, he led the military expedition with which he tried unsuccessfully to take Cáceres (1218) and the one directed against the border of Valencia, where he conquered the castles of Serreilla, Sierra and Mira, but failed against Requena (1219), he was busy fighting the Albigensian heresies that were spreading from France, he took charge of the administration of the diocese of Segovia during the incapacity of Bishop Gerardo, he arranged for the sending of Dominican missionaries and Franciscans to Andalusia and Morocco, taking advantage of the policy of religious tolerance of the Almohads, celebrated the wedding of Juan de Brienne with Berenguela de León, and was designated as tutor of the infants Felipe and Sancho de Castilla, whose education he entrusted to Pedro Pascual. However, his most well-known work at this time was the beginning of the construction of the cathedral of Toledo: after obtaining the bull by which the Pope granted him authorization to collect funds from the ecclesiastical income of the remaining churches of the archdiocese, he began the works on the new cathedral on the site of the old mosque; With the presence of King Ferdinand, in 1226 the first stone of what would be considered one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture in Spain was officially laid.
Advanced Cazorla
In 1230 he was together with Fernando III in a new military expedition in Jaén, when after withdrawing from the impregnable city of Jaén, they heard news of the death of King Alfonso IX of Leon, Fernando's father. Abandoning the campaign, both marched to León, where after resolving the disagreements over the succession, both kingdoms were united under the Crown of Castile.
Fernando was left taking possession of his new kingdom, and entrusted the command of the hosts on the Andalusian border to Archbishop Rodrigo, granting him the advancement of the territories he conquered; In 1231 Rodrigo managed to advance the Christian positions by taking Quesada Iznatoraf and Cazorla, which would remain attached to the archbishopric in what would become known as the overtaking of Cazorla, in which Rodrigo had almost absolute authority, and whose government he entrusted to Navarrese relatives and close friends.
In addition to this territory, during his life he obtained several more places with lordship rights for himself or for his archdiocese, by right of conquest or by donation: some of them were Villaumbrales, in Palencia; Alcaraz, Almagro and Calatrava in La Mancha; Martos, Úbeda and Andújar in Jaén; Yepes, La Guardia and Torrijos, in Toledo; Cadreita and Arguedas, in Navarre; Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid; San Torcuato, Uceda, Talamanca in Guadalajara, as well as Brihuega with its corresponding villages, where he used to retire to rest almost every year. In 1214 the king donated the Milagro castle and its territory between the port of Los Yébenes to the Marchés port and from here to the Estena river, Abenójar and the Guadiana gorges, the field of Arroba and Alcoba, Robledo de Miguel Díaz, the Sotillo de Gutier Suárez, the Navas de Ancho Semeno and the villar de Pulgar.
New negotiations in Rome
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In 1235 he traveled again to Rome to settle with Gregory IX the disagreements with the military orders of Santiago and Calatrava, who wanted to be independent from the dioceses and thus be exempt from paying church taxes. On his return he returned to Navarre, where the new king Teobaldo I was preparing his march to the crusades; Rodrigo's intervention prevented Fernando III from starting a new war against Navarre, taking advantage of Teobaldo's absence. Arriving in Castile he found himself occupied with the organization of the diocese of Córdoba, conquered during his stay in Rome.
In 1237 he traveled to Lisbon together with the bishop of Palencia Tello Téllez de Meneses to put order in the excesses that Fernando de Serpa, with the consent of his brother King Sancho II of Portugal, committed against the Portuguese clergy. The following year Jaime I of Aragon reconquered Valencia, which was annexed ecclesiastically to the Archdiocese of Tarragona, under the ministry of Archbishop Pedro de Albalat; Rodrigo traveled to Rome that same year to claim Toledo's jurisdiction over this headquarters, which before the Muslim occupation had been a suffragan of Toledo, and insist again on the matter of primacy, which Gregory IX provisionally confirmed to him. On his return, he crossed through the ecclesiastical territory of Tarragona carrying the primatial cross and granting indulgences, which did not sit well with Albalat, who was doubly annoyed by the lawsuit in Valencia and by the ostentation that Rodrigo made of his primacy, excommunicated him.. The excommunication would be annulled shortly after by the Pope; The diocese of Valentina, which was first granted to the man from Toledo in a trial held in Tudela in the presence of both archbishops, several years later remained definitively for the man from Tarragona after appealing to the Holy See.
In 1239, together with the Archbishop of Tarragona, he took part in the resolution of the schism that occurred in the see of Pamplona after the death of Bishop Pedro Ramírez de Pedrola.
Death and burial
He died in 1247 aboard a ship in which he was sailing through the Rhône on his return from the First Lugdunense Council. His body was embalmed and buried in the monastery of Santa María de Huerta, in the face of the protests of the monks of Santa María of Fitero, who claimed it for themselves.
| Mater Navarra, nutrix Castella, Toletum Sedes, Parisium Studium, mors Rhodanus, Horta mausoleum, coelum requies, nomen Rodericus. Bis quater adde fuet, erit constructio flat. |
The tomb in which his remains rest was opened on several occasions: in 1508, when by order of Cardinal Cisneros they wanted to verify the authenticity of his tomb; in 1558 due to the flooding of the Jalón river; in 1670 when the Duke of Medinaceli paid for the gate of the chapel; in 1766 when building the new altarpiece in the main chapel; in 1773 with a new flood of the river; in 1865, when, as arranged by Joaquín Fernández Cortina, ecclesiastical governor of Toledo during the illness of Archbishop Pedro Inguanzo Rivero, they tried to carry out the transfer of the body to the cathedral of Toledo (which finally did not take place); in 1886, when a joint commission from the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of History proposed to study his remains; in 1907, at the request of the Marquis of Cerralbo; in 1947 on the occasion of the seventh centenary of his death; and finally in 1968, when the Institute for the Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art took charge of its restoration.
Historiographic work
In addition to being an ecclesiastic and a man of arms, he was also a historian. Under the auspices of Fernando III he assembled a copious library, which, bequeathed to Huerta after his death, disappeared four centuries later in a fire.
His best-known work is De rebus Hispaniae, also known as Chronicle of things that happened in Spain, Gothic history or Chronicle of Toledo, which describes the history of the Iberian Peninsula up to 1243. He wrote the first chronicle of the legendary battle of Clavijo. Fundamentally, its merit resides in the fact that he uses a critical method as a historian, intelligently questioning his sources, making use of documentation and resorting to Arab sources to contrast his data (an extremely valuable aspect, since then only Arab historiography appreciated the economic and social). His De rebus Hispaniae, which follows the model of the Najerense Chronicle, became a prime source for Alfonso X's Estoria de España the wise. The work was soon translated into the different Romance languages of the peninsula, beginning with the Aragonese Estoria de los godos from around 1252 and the Catalan Crònica d'Espanya attributed to Pere Ribera of Perpinyà, and in these two ways, it significantly influenced the conception of a dominant unitary history of Spain until the 15th century.
He also wrote an extremely interesting Historia arabum, exceptional at the time for its attention to Arab-Islamic culture, and a Breviarium Eccliesiæ Catholicæ, or Expositio Catholica Scripturæ, a sacred history unpublished to date, ranging from the creation of the world to the separation of the apostles. Fidel Fita is also the author of the Cantar de Roncesvalles.
Works
Editions of his Complete Works
- Rerum hispanicarum scriptores aliquot, ex bibliotheca clarissimi uiri Dn. Roberti BeltFrankfurt, Andreas Wechel, 1579.
- Andreas Schott, "Roderici archiepiscopi toletani De Rebus Hispaniæ...", in: Hispaniæ illustratæ...4 vol. Frankfurt: Claudium Marnium, 1603.
- PP. Toletanorum quot extant opera nunc primum simul edita, ad codices mss. recognita, nonnullis notis illustrata tomus tertius Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Toletanæ Ecclesiæ Praesulis, opera praecipua complectens opera, auctoritate et expensis excellentissimi domini FrancisMatriti apud viduam Ioachimi Ibarra, 1793.
- "Historia de rebus Hispaniæ sive Historia gothica", p. 1-208
- "Roman history", p. 209-223
- "Ostrogothorum History", p. 224-228
- "Hunnorum, vandalorum, suevorum, alanorum et silinguorum historia", p. 229-241
- "History arabum", p. 242-283.
- Rodericus Ximenius de Rada, Opera, index of places and people prepared by Ma Desamparados Cabanes Pecourt, facsimile reprint of the 1793 edition, Valencia, Texts Medievales, 22, 1968.
- Roderici Ximenii de Rada Opera omnia, edition of Juan Fernández Valverde, Turnhout, Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediævalis, LXXII), 1987:
- "Historia de rebus Hispaniæ sive Historia gothica", p. 1-208
- "Roman history", p. 209-223
- "Ostrogothorum History", p. 224-228
- "Hunnorum, vandalorum, suevorum, alanorum et silinguorum historia", p. 229-241
- "History arabum", p. 242-283.
Other works
- Dialogus libri vitae
- Breviarium Historiæ Catolicæ compilatum to Roderico toletanæ Ecclesiæ priest.
Spanish translations of his works
- History of Spain of the Archbishop Don Rodrigo translated into romance1545.
- Spanish Chronicle by the Archbishop of Toledo Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, translated into Spanish and continued by Don Gonzalo de la Hinojosa, Bishop of Burgos, and then by an anonymous man until 1430. 203 h. s- XV. [Universidad de Sevilla ms. 1059]
- "Crónica de España de Arzobispo Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. He brought it in Spanish and continued it until his time Don Gonzalo de la Hinojosa, bishop of Burgos, and then an anonymous one until the year of 1454", in Collection of unpublished documents for the history of Spain by the Marquis of the Fuensanta del Valle, Tomo CV, Madrid, Print by José Perales and Martínez, 1893.
- History of the facts of Spain, trad. de Juan Fernández Valverde, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989.
| Predecessor: Diego de Acebes |  Bishop of Osma (electo) 1208 | Successor: Melendo |
| Predecessor: Martín López de Pisuerga |  Archbishop of Toledo Primate of Spain | Successor: Juan de Medina de Pomar |
| Predecessor: Juan de Soria |  Senior Chancellor of Castile 1230-1247 |
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