Wendy Davies - Acts of Giving - Individual, Community, and Church in Tenth-Century Christian Spain-Oxford University Press, USA (2007) PDF

AC TS OF G IV IN G
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Acts of Giving
Individual, Community, and Church in
Tenth-Century Christian Spain
WENDY DAV IES
1
1
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Preface
This book began in Padua, at a conference on donation post mortem;

I am indebted to the organizers and participants for the stimulation
of the occasion. It was one of a series of conferences on the transfer
of property rights in early medieval Europe organized, with others, by
François Bougard, Laurent Feller, and Régine Le Jan; participation in
them all was more than usually enlightening and this book is pretty
much a direct outcome of the experience. Spanish friends will not like
my focus on the tenth century and they will point out that I miss
the crucial significance of this or that by failing to note what happens
later. They will doubtless be right. However, I think it important to
look at tenth-century text in its own terms, without the benefit of
hindsight; some developments were not inevitable; and it is easier to
probe comparisons and contrasts with other parts of Europe without
the later lens, and also easier to focus on the process of change. Many of
my other friends will be surprised that I have rarely used archaeological
evidence. This is because, although there is important work in hand, it
is extremely difficult to synthesize from existing work within a purely
tenth-century context. We will undoubtedly get greater understanding
as current work feeds into the wider syntheses. Of course, some people
may be surprised that I am writing about early medieval Spain at all. I do
so because it is exceptionally interesting; because opportunities opened
up just as some other big projects came to a close; and because of the
coincident stimulus of the Transferts series. Although a new field of
study for me, I hope that the perspective of an outsider, with experience
of other parts of the early medieval world, can be fruitful; and I hope
I can do something to bring Spain into view in the wider pattern
of early medieval European development: it is so often omitted from
English-language European surveys. Since this book went to press there
has been a valuable addition to the Spanish bibliography in Amancio
Isla Frez’s, Memoria, Culto y Monarquía hispánica entre los siglos X y XII
(Jaén, 2006). Although its focus is quite different, parts are relevant to
the discussion that follows, especially that in chapter three.
I have many debts of gratitude. There are all the people who listened
to papers as I worked out some ideas, in Leeds, Birmingham, London,
Padua, Rome, and Madrid. Ann Christys, David d’Avray, Julio Escalona,
viii Preface
Paul Fouracre, David Ganz, Jinty Nelson, Riet van Bremen, Liesbeth van
Houts, Chris Wickham, Ian Wood, and Susan Wood, all read chapters
and made incisive and astute comments. I have also been lucky to have
had help on specific points (not least by providing me with books and
offprints) from: Isabel Alfonso, Ignacio Álvarez, Roger Collins, Carlos
Estepa, Margarita Fernández Mier, Sarah Halton, Jonathan Jarrett,
Cristina Jular, Iñaki Martín, Ana Rodríguez, Julia Smith, and Roger
Wright. I am deeply grateful to all these friends and colleagues for
their generosity with their time and knowledge—and especially to Ann,
Liesbeth, Riet, Chris, and Julio for reading and responding to the whole
work. I really could not have finished it without them; Julio’s energetic
criticism, coupled with encouragement, has been particularly helpful
over a long period. Obviously, none of them bears any responsibility for
the things I say: the errors are my own and I have sometimes obstinately
stuck to my views against their advice.
I am also grateful to the several bodies which have awarded funding
in the course of this work, especially for allowing me the opportunity for
essential field trips to think about landscape and land-use: UCL History
department, UCL Dean’s Travel Fund, the British Academy, and the
Spanish ‘Foundations of European Space’ project. UCL also gave me
six months of essential sabbatical leave. Richard Foster gave much-
appreciated help with the final stages, and Brian Williams drew the
maps, putting in considerable effort at very short notice. I am extremely
grateful to the following Spanish libraries for giving me permission
to reproduce manuscript pages: to the Biblioteca Nacional de España
(Madrid) for BN MS Vit. 14–2, fol. 209, for the cover illustration; to
the Patrimonio Nacional de España (Madrid) for the Biblioteca de El
Escorial MS D.I.2, Códice Vigilano o Albeldense, fol. 428r, for Fig.
7.1; and to the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid,
for Códice de San Millán de la Cogolla 25, fol. 145v, for Fig. 3.1.
Woolstone
December 2006
Contents
List of Figures x
List of Tables xi
Abbreviations xii
Note on Terms for Regions xiv
Note on Spelling xvi
1. Setting the Scene 1

2. San Pedro and Santa Comba: Churches and their
Proprietors 36
3. Dividing and Sharing Property 65
4. The Language of Donation 88
5. Donation to Churches: Purpose and Expectations 113
6. Gesmira, Recosinda, and Nuño Sarracíniz: Donation to Lay
Persons 139
7. Men and Women 164
8. Peasant Society 189
9. Rhetoric and Action 214
Bibliography 223
Index 237
List of Figures
0.1 Terms used for regions xv

1.1 Spain—relief and regions of the North 2
1.2 The Picos de Europa and Santa María de Lebeña 4
1.3 Galicia: looking west from Vila de Cruces 7
1.4 Principal political regions of northern Iberia in the tenth century 13
1.5 Location of sources of the main charter collections used 25
1.6 The meseta: the Campos south of Sahagún 27
2.1 The river Limia, near Santa Comba 37
2.2 Santa Comba 37
2.3 Selected churches and monasteries of north-western Iberia 39
2.4 The Liébana valley 43
2.5 Distribution of corpus et anima formulas 55
2.6 The proximity of clientship networks to their patrons 60
3.1 Family tree diagram from a tenth-century Riojan manuscript,
Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, Códice de San Millán
25, fol. 145v 71
6.1 Location of properties of Munio Fernández and Flaino Muñoz 147
7.1 Sancho II and Urraca, with Visigothic kings and a tenth-century
king and scribes, in the Codex Albeldense, Biblioteca de El Escorial,
MS D.I.2, fol. 428r 176
8.1 The territory of Rabal (after M. del C. Pallares Méndez) 191
8.2 Small fields and orchards in Rabal 192
8.3 Traces of former fields beneath the Porma reservoir in northern
León 193
8.4 Zones of different recording practice in respect of peasant
transactions 211
List of Tables
2.1 Transactions in churches and monasteries 42

5.1 Expressions of piety in records of donation to the church 118
6.1 Ninth- and tenth-century gifts to lay beneficiaries 141
7.1 Percentage of alienators of property, by gender 172
8.1 Peasant donation to the church 209
Abbreviations
A Cartulario de Albelda, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta (Valenc-

ia, 1960).
Ar Cartulario de San Pedro de Arlanza, antiguo monasterio
benedictino, ed. L. Serrano (Madrid, 1925).
C Colección documental del monasterio de San Pedro de
Cardeña, ed. G. Martínez Díez (Cardeña/Burgos, 1998)
(older edition: Becerro Gótico de Cardeña, ed. L. Serra-
no (Silos/Valladolid, 1910) = Historia de Castilla por los
PP. Benedictinos de Silos, vol. 3) ).
Cel O Tombo de Celanova, ed. J. M. Andrade, 2 vols. (Sant-
iago, 1995).
Forum Iudicum Leges Visigothorum, ed. K. Zeumer, MGH LL, sect-
io 1, Leges nationum Germanicarum (Hanover, 1902),
i. 35–456; English translation: The Visigothic Code (Forum
judicum), ed. S. P. Scott (Boston, 1910).
Li, Lii, Liii Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de León,
vol. 1 (775–952), ed. E. Sáez, vol. 2 (953–85), ed. E.
Sáez and C. Sáez, vol. 3 (986–1031), ed. J. M. Ruiz
Asencio (León, 1987, 1990, 1987).
LL The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv, ed. J. G. Evans with
J. Rhys (Oxford, 1893).
OD Colección documental del monasterio de Santa María de
Otero de las Dueñas, ed. J. A. Fernández Flórez and
M. Herrero de la Fuente, vol. 1 (León, 1999).
Ov Colección diplomática del monasterio de San Vicente
de Oviedo (años 781–1200), ed. P. Floriano Llorente
(Oviedo, 1968).
Portugaliae Portugaliae Monumenta Historica a saeculo octavo post
Monumenta Christum usque ad quintum decimum, 3, Diplomata et
Historica Chartae, ed. A. Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo and
J. J. da Silva Mendes Leal, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1868).
S Colección diplomática del monasterio de Sahagún, ed.
J. M. Mínguez Fernández, vol. 1 (León, 1976).
Abbreviations xiii
Sam El Tumbo de San Julián de Samos (siglos VIII–XII). Estudio

introductorio. Edición diplomatica. Apéndices e índices, ed.
M. Lucas Álvarez (Santiago de Compostela, 1986).
SJP Cartulario de San Juan de la Peña, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta, 2
vols. (Valencia, 1962–63), vol. 1.
SM Cartulario de San Millán de la Cogolla, ed. A. Ubieto
Arteta (Valencia, 1976).
Sob Tumbos del Monasterio de Sobrado de los Monjes, ed.
P. Loscertales de García de Valdeavellano, 2 vols.
(Madrid, 1976).
T Cartulario de Santo Toribio de Liébana, ed. L. Sánchez
Belda (Madrid, 1948).
V Cartulario de Valpuesta, ed. M. Desamparados Perez Soler
(Valencia, 1970).
Note on Terms for Regions
The political geography of Spain was extremely unstable throughout

the central middle ages and it is therefore difficult to find consistent
terms for regions that have some meaning but do not give a misleading
impression. The seventeen modern autonomous regions of Spain in
part reflect regional identities of the central middle ages but in part
do not do so at all. See Chapter 1, 11–16, for some discussion of
the changing political geography of the tenth century. For convenience
and consistency I have used the following terms when referring to
tenth-century regions (Fig. 0.1): ‘Portugal’, as used in tenth-century
text, that is referring to the northern part of the modern state of
Portugal; ‘Galicia’, much the same as the modern autonomous region
of Galicia; ‘western meseta’ for those parts of the kingdom of Asturias-
León lying south of the Cantabrian mountains, east of Galicia, and
north of the Duero river (essentially the modern provinces of León,
Palencia, and northern Zamora); ‘Asturias’ and ‘Cantabria’, much the
same as the modern autonomous regions; ‘Castile’ for the modern
province of Burgos, extended north to the sea and east into the modern
autonomous regions of País Vasco and La Rioja; ‘Navarre’, centred on
the modern autonomous region of Navarra but extending west into País
Vasco, south into La Rioja, and east into modern autonomous Aragón;
‘Catalonia’ for the northern half of the modern autonomous region
of Cataluña, extending north over the eastern Pyrenees and west into
northern Aragón. I have also often referred to the geographical units of
the Duero basin and the Ebro valley (see Fig. 1.1).
Note on Terms for Regions xv
Figure 0.1 Terms used for regions

Note on Spelling
There are wide variants in orthographic practice in tenth-century texts,

as is the case in most parts of western Europe at that time. I have
usually modernized proper names to the modern Spanish (Castilian)
form, where that is obvious. Where it is not, I have retained the spelling
of the texts used.
The spelling of Latin words is particularly variant, much more so than
in texts from many other parts of Europe at that date. These variants are
often linguistically significant and often have a significant bearing on
textual transmission. I have therefore always quoted text as published
in the most recent editions (many earlier editions ‘tidied up’ the Latin)
and have not attempted ‘improvements’. Readers familiar with classical
Latin will find many of these forms very strange; they are not ‘errors’ but
a precious insight into the way authors and scribes used the language in
the tenth century; see below, pp. 102–5, for further discussion.
1
Setting the Scene
This book is about northern Spain—so-called ‘Christian’ Spain—in the

tenth century. This is not a period chosen by chance. The tenth century
is particularly significant for the region: it is the time when suddenly,
after centuries spattered with only fragments of source material, written
texts become very plentiful and we begin to glimpse the working of local
society; we can thereby look at rural relationships at the point when
they were emerging from obscurity. The tenth century is also significant
because it spans some of the earlier stages of the so-called ‘Reconquest’
of Spain, a time when Christian communities of the north are thought
to have won back ground from invading Muslims of the south.
Before engaging with the texts, the transactions that they detail, and
the relationships which they illuminate, some scene-setting is essential.
First, the broad outlines of time, person, and place: the land and its
use; kings and kingdoms; and the status of ordinary people. Second,
the intellectual frameworks through which we can consider the period:
the availability of the texts themselves; the analytical models used by
recent generations of Spanish historians; and recent approaches to early
medieval texts of these kinds in other parts of western Europe.
L A N D A N D PE O P L E
Land, land-use, and landscape

What was the land of northern Spain like in the tenth century? On 15
June 959 five people from central Galicia (Goia, Iudila, Vicco, Rudila,
and Ovveco) were taken to court by the monastery of Celanova (see
Fig. 1.5).¹ They admitted entering the villa (i.e. farm) of Santa Olalla
near the River Miño (north of Orense)—a Celanova property—and
¹ Cel446.
2 Setting the Scene
admitted planting vines, cultivating fields, and building houses there.² In

court the bounds of the villa were confirmed and the five accused people
agreed to pay to Celanova, every year, a quarter of the produce from their
vines and chestnut trees; they were allowed to keep all the bread and
lentils they grew. Here is a text about land-use—it speaks of vineyards,
arable fields for growing cereals and legumes, chestnut trees, and rural
settlements; and it gives an indication of expanding agriculture and of
jealously guarded property rights, notwithstanding the clear availability
of space for development. Does it provide a useful model, from which
we can generalize? Are the data useful and transferable?
Figure 1.1 Spain—relief and regions of the North
² See below, pp. 196–7 for the word ‘villa’.

Setting the Scene 3
By comparison with Britain, Spain is a huge country, and it has a

very diverse landscape. It is a land of much high plateau, with high
mountain ranges projecting above the plateau, although the ranges are
broken by the two great river systems of the north—that of the Duero
and the Ebro. There are the Pyrenees in the north-east, cutting off Spain
from France; the Cantabrian mountains in the north, separating the
narrow coastal strip of the north coast from the Duero and Ebro basins;
the León mountains in the north-west, separating Galicia from central
Spain; the Iberian system bounding the Ebro valley on its southern
and western sides; and the Central system fringing the southern side
of the Duero basin (Fig. 1.1). All this makes for regional isolation and
regional difference, although the mountains were certainly not unused:
one Galician woman gave the monastery of San Juan near Lugo a farm
‘in the mountains separating Asturias and Galicia’ and we will encounter
other mountain farms, as also individuals who made their power base
in the mountains.³ The narrow northern coastal strip looks northwards
to the sea and is in many senses separate. The high rainfall of the
north-west makes Galicia wet and green, while much of the Duero basin
(modern Castile-León) lies on the plateau, the meseta, which is hot and
arid in summer, although it is crossed by long river valleys running
south from the mountains to the Duero (see Figs. 1.3, 1.6). Between
the basin and the coastal strip the Cantabrian mountains—high and
sometimes desolate—have some sheltered workable high plateau within;
the Liébana is a good, though atypical, example of a workable valley in
Cantabria, literally in the shadow of the completely unworkable Picos
de Europa mountains, but sheltering both farmers and learned men in
the tenth century and earlier (see Figs. 1.2, 2.4). To the east of both the
meseta and the Cantabrian mountains lie the high sierras of the Rioja,
with ‘old’ Castile running north across the hills and mountains from the
upper reaches of the Duero to the sea (see Fig. 1.4), then farther east the
long-used shelter of the Ebro valley, and yet farther east the foothills of
the Pyrenees (modern and medieval Catalonia). North and north-east
of the sierras lie the mountains of Navarre and the hilly green land of
the Basque country.
Although there is nothing like a Frankish polyptyque or the English
Domesday Book to give us an overall survey of properties and their
attributes, nevertheless something useful can be derived from charter
³ Sob38 (985); see below, p. 8 and pp. 146–8.

4 Setting the Scene
Figure 1.2 The Picos de Europa and Santa María de Lebeña

Setting the Scene 5
texts about landscape and land-use in tenth-century Spain.⁴ At one

level, despite such variation in the landscape, farming practices seem
remarkably similar from east to west and north to south of our area.
Mixed farming seems to have been the norm, with both arable and
pastoral elements wherever one looks. Mixed livestock was a norm too,
with cattle, sheep, and horses nearly always mentioned when stock
was listed; pigs, goats, and poultry also occur, although they are less
frequently enumerated (geese once formed part of a price payment).⁵
The stock that went with a church property on the Sorga brook, near
Celanova, in 927, amounted to 10 cows, 20 sheep, 10 pigs, and 10
geese; a small estate in the north, in Asturias, which changed hands in
980, had 4 oxen, 50 sheep, and unnumbered pigs, hens, and geese.⁶
These numbers are relatively small. Numbers of livestock on great
estates, however, could be vast: an early grant to San Félix of Oca
cites 268 cows, 85 pigs, 83 goats, 16 pack horses, 7 mules, and an ass,
besides riding horses and a flock of sheep; 15 yokes of oxen, 40 horses
and a stallion, 10 donkeys, 56 cattle and 2 bulls, and 720 sheep were
counted on one episcopal estate on the meseta; 100 mules, 150 good
horses, 18 herds of cows (in different locations, including more than 400
full-grown beasts), 50 yokes of oxen, and innumerable sheep, goats, and
poultry are noted on the lands given to Celanova by Bishop Rosendo.⁷
Arable cultivation put the emphasis on cereal crops more than any
other (wheat, barley, and millet are all specified in one Portuguese rent;
wheat, barley, and rye feature in a Sobrado formula). Arable land was in
fact measured in terms of its cereal productive capacity in many parts:
land was sold in Rabal near Celanova in 961 that could be sown with
two ‘sacks’ (modii) of grain; land was given by the king of Navarre in
?941 that could be sown with four sacks of grain; in 950 land was given
near Buezo, in Castile, that could be sown with four quarters.⁸ Grain
also frequently featured in statements of price, as did animals, again in
⁴ There is a recent, brief, economic survey of early medieval Spain in A. Isla Frez, La
alta edad media. Siglos VIII-XI (Madrid, 2002), 219–37, while T. F. Glick, Islamic and
Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 1979) contains some stimulating
economic analysis; there are several good analyses of the agrarian economy in regional
studies, such as, for example, M. del C. Pallares Méndez, El monasterio de Sobrado: un
ejemplo del protagonismo monástico en la Galicia medieval (La Coruña, 1979), 29–53,
and J. J. Larrea, La Navarre du IV e au XII e siècle (Paris and Brussels, 1998), passim,
although these are limited in geographical range. For charters, see below, pp. 22–6.
⁵ Sob94 (963). ⁶ Cel247; S308.
⁷ SM7 (864); Li220 (950); Cel2 (942); cf. Sob2 (955).
⁸ Cel84 (986), Sob98 (952); Cel380, A8, V27.
6 Setting the Scene
all regions: for example, arable was sold in 930 in Fontasquesa, on the
northern edge of the meseta, for two quarters of grain and two rams; half
a vineyard was sold in 963 in Marmellar (Castile) for grain to the value
of five solidi (a unit of account, notionally a silver ‘shilling’); arable was
sold in Cexo (southern Galicia) in 981 for a cow, a sack of wheat, and
two quarters of peas.⁹ The cultivation of vines was also important and
transactions in vineyards were almost as common—in all parts, east or
west, hill or plateau—as those in arable. The land that went with the
small monastery of San Miguel de Támara (Castile) comprised three
arable plots, three enclosures, a pasture, no less than five vineyards, a
terraced plot (faza), and two plots for houses, with two gardens.¹⁰ In
fact, records of transactions in individual vineyards increased two- or
three-fold in mid-century; the impression that viticulture was expanding
is reinforced by the many references, in the second half of the century,
to the vineyard ‘I planted myself ’; new vines, like new orchards, were
clearly established at this time across the whole region, like those in the
far North in the Liébana in the generation before 963, those in Galicia
a couple of decades later, or the orchards planted near León in the
generation before 977.¹¹
We can also derive some sense of land-use by looking at the formulaic
language used in charters. While some texts use a descriptive noun like
‘vineyard’ or ‘meadow’ or ‘wood’ to identify the subject of a transaction
or a dispute, others give a name to a property and list its appurtenances;
hence, standard phrases like ‘the villa at Carvajal, with its homesteads,
vineyards, and arable fields’.¹² One might be tempted to dismiss the latter
lists as mere formulas, of no significance for on-the-ground description.
However, such lists can be useful in two different ways: firstly, there
⁹ S34, C112, Cel571. In fact Galician prices are much more likely to be cited in
terms of grain, bread, and wine, than are those on the meseta, which preference payment
in cattle and sheep. One might be tempted to argue from this that there was more
arable in Galicia and more pasture on the meseta, but Galicians also commonly used a
cattle standard of value (for example, a horse worth fifteen oxen), and it is as likely that
people paid in scarce commodities as in what was common (note that pigs, which were
clearly common, hardly ever feature in prices; Ov9 (946), Ov12 (948) are exceptions);
see further below, pp. 157–9, for discussion of price. For solidi, see Davies, ‘Sale, price
and valuation in Galicia and Castile-León’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 149–74,
at 160–5, and below, p. 184.
¹⁰ C134 (968).
¹¹ T69, Cel197 (975–1011), Lii450; cf. OD12 (961), the orchard planted by an
uncle, Cel70 (962), the orchard planted with a husband, Sob69 (946); some of the
Sobrado examples are much earlier: Sob124 (860), Sob104 (918), Sob105 (921).
¹² For the former, S44 (932), Cel218 (936), for example; Liii571 (995).
Setting the Scene 7
is value in the formulas because they tell us about expectations; while

the list may well not be an actual description of the attributes of the
particular piece of land transacted, it is very likely to be a description of
the normal attributes in the area. When a 932 bequest to a priest of land
in the Porma valley specifies that it has arable fields, vineyards, orchards,
fruiting and non-fruiting trees, hills, springs, meadows, pastures, and
water courses, it is a reasonable assumption that land in the Porma valley
usually had those features at that time.¹³ All the more so because the
formulas vary by region: while the Porma formula is very characteristic
of land on the meseta, in Galicia formulas tend to specify a much wider
range of trees (arable, vineyards, orchards, cherry trees, hazelnut and
other nut trees, figs, (sweet) chestnuts, fruiting and non-fruiting trees)
and in Castile there are more formulaic references to mills, fishing rights,
and gardens, reflecting the much greater prevalence of reference to water
rights in those texts.¹⁴ Here we do begin to see some regional variation.
Secondly, from time to time lists of appurtenances move away from
the standard formula and become specific to a particular property: the
lists of fields and vineyards accompanying the church of San Miguel
of Támara, cited above, is specific to that place; similarly particular are
Figure 1.3 Galicia: looking west from Vila de Cruces
¹³ S45. ¹⁴ Cel163 (932), C109 (963), SM89 (971), SM95 (979), for example.
8 Setting the Scene
the (relatively rare) specifications of stock and the (relatively common)

specific descriptions of land in terms of planting capacity, also cited
above. When the lay owners of the estate at Piasca gave it to the
monastery of Piasca (way to the north in the Cantabrian mountains), in
930, it was transferred with a long list of chattels (books and liturgical
vessels) and a very precise specification of stock—two named serfs and
their children, 7 horses and a stallion, 10 cows and a bull, 20 sheep, 20
goats, and 30 pigs.¹⁵ This tells us something specific about the stock of
a small farm.
Specification of actual appurtenances is relatively rare; by contrast,
statements of boundaries are commonly and characteristically specific.
These come in two forms: ‘land beside the land of Gomiz Belaza, with the
land of John the priest on another side, that of Tellu Feles on the third,
and the Cardeña monks’ hill on the fourth’, on the one hand;¹⁶ or on the
other, boundaries running ‘below the fort as far as the ford above Erizila’s
weir and from there … along the road which goes to Quiroga as far as
Gandera above Gualamiru’s field; from there across Scaurieto’s field and
above the enclosure which Adulf and his wife gave you’.¹⁷ The former
(which are by far the most common) are important in indicating intensity
of land-use: in such landscapes worked properties were packed close
together, side by side. The latter are more occasional but, with their hills,
fields, trees, woods, streams, springs, crosses, and stones, usually indicate
both topographic and man-made features specific to the property.¹⁸
Given the presence of both specific material and usable sets of
formulas, some changes in land-use can be detected across the course
of the tenth century. While it is reasonable to think of almost all
land being used in one way or another, some land was clearly much
more intensively exploited than that used for hunting and gathering;
the areas of close-packed arable, with plots side by side, such as
characterize the valleys of the meseta and much of southern Galicia, were
farmed like this throughout the century. Necessarily, more is recorded
about that kind of land-use, but less intensively exploited land also
comes into the record: this is land that might well be transacted as
montes, hills or mountains, large expanses which were not farmed so
directly; in the formulas the distinction between intensive and extensive
exploitation is often made by differentiating ‘tamed’ and ‘untamed’ land
¹⁵ See above, pp. 5–6; S39. ¹⁶ C119 (964). ¹⁷ Cel224 (934).

¹⁸ Cf. Cel173 (922), SJP15 (943), OD6 (947), A20 (953), Ov19 (978), Sam40
(993).
Setting the Scene 9
(terrae domitae and indomitae); in fact, the long perambulations (the

second type of boundary statement) often defined tracts of this kind
rather than the more intensively exploited plots. There are changes in
their occurrence. Transactions in these large areas tended to decrease
across the century: there were far more in the 930s than there were
by the 960s; accordingly, the standard formulas changed across the
century and formulaic references to untamed land tend to disappear; in
Galicia, references to cleared land (terra calva) came in, with increasing
specification of stands of fruit trees and nut trees.¹⁹ The flurry of
planting new vineyards and orchards by mid-century has already been
mentioned. There is a strong sense of increasingly intensive exploitation,
by institutions as well as by individuals; and, by the end of the century,
as has been much discussed, major ecclesiastical landowners had become
highly entrepreneurial in the way they handled proprietorship—of this
we will hear more in due course.²⁰
Increasing exploitation at the turn of the millennium raises the ques-
tion of towns. That there were some towns in tenth-century northern
Spain is suggested by a good number of written references to settlements
that contemporaries identified as distinct from the countryside. They are
most consistently called civitates, cities, although León was increasingly
civis or cives in the later decades of the century and was sometimes called
urbs.²¹ The land for some distance round many of these settlements
was known as the suburb, suburbio, with churches and agricultural
land located therein; indeed, the word signified something more like
‘district’, larger or smaller, than the modern concept of suburb.²² Of
¹⁹ For example, montes: S42 (931), C27 (935), Cel218 (936); untamed land: S40
(930), S41(930), S209 (963); terra calva: Cel398 (963), Cel165 (963), Cel174 (964),
Cel338 (989).
²⁰ See below, pp. 61–4, 208–13. The point is made well in several excellent studies
of the growth of monastic lordship; see, for example, J. A. García de Cortázar y Ruiz
de Aguirre, El dominio del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla (siglos X a XIII).
Introducción a la historia rural de Castilla altomedieval (Salamanca, 1969); S. Moreta
Velayos, El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña. Historia de un dominio monástico
castellano (902–1338) (Salamanca, 1971); J. M. Mínguez Fernández, El dominio del
monasterio de Sahagún en el siglo X (Salamanca, 1980).
²¹ Civitas was usually primarily an episcopal see in the early middle ages, but in most
of the cases noted below the contexts indicate more than a purely episcopal settlement.
Zamora and Coyanza were also called civis in the late tenth century, Cel428 (983),
Lii360 (963). Urbs was also occasionally used of monastic settlements, like Sobrado,
Sob1 (952).
²² A suburb could stretch some distance: Cardeña, often located formulaically in the
suburb of Burgos, is 8 km away from the town; by contrast see C43 (944) ‘in suburbio
quod dicunt Agusini’, the relatively small district of Ausín, for a suburb with no focal
10 Setting the Scene
course, whether or not these places had an urban character and distinc-
tive economic function, rather than simply being physically different, is
much more difficult to assess. There are brief references to Lugo, Oca,
Coyanza, Salamanca, Simancas, and Zamora, just enough to indicate
that they came within the consciousness of some record-makers as
distinctive places.²³ Astorga, Dueñas, Cea, and Burgos are more solid
in the record: Astorga and Dueñas had urban plots and houses; Cea
did too, as well as a fortification and market; while Burgos had its own
distinctive population and shops.²⁴ In fact, however, it is only León
for which we have sufficient detail to be sure of its urban physical
character and urban economic function.²⁵ We hear of its walls, gates,
and towers; the many roads that led to it; the monasteries, churches,
and cemeteries within it; the city as royal centre and as locus of judicial
hearings; and the many town plots, often known as cortes.²⁶ Town
plots were quite substantial and had something of the character of a
rural homestead in the town.²⁷ They often seem to have been fenced
off; they could have several buildings on the plot, apparently includ-
ing different residences—some had as many as five smallish houses
(casas); they occasionally had a church; they might have gardens and
granaries; and they also tended to have associated lands, located in the
suburb.²⁸
‘town’. Cf. also Li17 (904), ‘suburbio de kastro’ of Monzón, and S270 (973), the suburb
of Melgar (also with castrum). See further C. Estepa Díez, ‘El alfoz castellano en los siglos
IX al XII’, in España Medieval, IV, Estudios dedicados al professor D. Angel Ferrari Núñez
(Madrid, 1984), 305–41, at 311–14.
²³ Lugo: Cel179 (927); Oca: SM9 (869), perhaps no more than a bishop’s see at that
date; Coyanza: Lii360, Liii530 (989); Salamanca: Li149 (941); Simancas: Lii469 (979);
Zamora: Cel430 (951), Lii409 (968), Cel428.
²⁴ Astorga: Sam115 (982), cf. Liii548 (991) and Liii578 (997); Dueñas: S171 (960),
Lii478 (980); Cea: S130 (951), Lii311 (959), S315 (983), S327 (984), S349 (994);
Burgos: C5 (912), C46 (944), C151 (972), C189 (982), C203 (992).
²⁵ The classic picture of tenth-century León of C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Una ciudad
Hispano-cristiana hace un milenio. Estampas de la vida en León (4th edn., Buenos Aires,
1947 [originally published 1926]), may perhaps overstate the urban quality, but its
essential point remains very reasonable. There is helpful relevant material in C. Estepa
Díez, Estructura social de la ciudad de León (siglos XI—XIII) (León, 1977), passim, but
especially 113–21, 153–64, 199–215.
²⁶ For example: Li43 (917), Li230 (950), Lii296 (956), Lii426 (973), Lii489 (982);
Li168 (943), Liii586 (999); Li42 (917), Lii311 (959), Lii425 (973), Liii520 (987);
Lii416 (972).
²⁷ Modern English ‘court’ has too many aristocratic overtones to be a useful transla-
tion. Some rural homesteads, i.e. farmsteads, are also referred to as cortes, e.g. S368 (956).
²⁸ Li109 (936), S64 (937), Lii412 (970); Li83 (929), Li180 (944), Li230 (950),
Lii296 (956); Lii462 (978); Li76 (928), Liii611 (994–1001); Li180, Lii279 (954).
Setting the Scene 11
Overall then, although the landscape of northern Spain was in

itself very diverse, there were broad similarities in land-use, with some
regional difference within that broad pattern, such as the greater
consciousness, and perhaps exploitation, of fruiting trees in Galicia and
of water rights in Castile. The overall trend across the century was
for increasingly intensive exploitation of the land, as also for greater
interaction with growing urban foci—straightforward references to
markets, like that at Cea, increased, while the monastery of Cardeña
had its shops or warehouses in Burgos by 982 and that of San Millán
was buying vineyards to supply its guesthouse in 999.²⁹ This more
intensive land-use, and by implication growing productivity and perhaps
growing population, and this increasing propensity to produce for
the market, means that northern Spain shared the economic trends
evident elsewhere in western Europe at this time. The 959 case about
Santa Olalla, with which this section began, is indeed quite a useful
cameo.
Kings, counts, and kingdoms

While broad economic trends are relatively easy to discern, the political
system of northern Spain in this period is quite difficult to describe:
political geography was unstable; several different polities were in the
course of forming; and the internal political process was complicated by
military campaigns by and against Muslim leaders based in al-Andalus,
that is in southern Spain. Perspectives are inevitably influenced by our
knowledge of what happened subsequently, with the separation of the
Portuguese state, the emergence of powerful kingdoms of Castile and of
Aragón, and ultimately the ‘union’ of the Iberian peninsula (excepting
Portugal) in the decades on either side of 1500. So important are these
trends in European, and indeed world, history, it has been customary
to trace a growing process of political consolidation, which involved
the territorial expansion of minute Christian kingdoms of the north,
the ultimate expulsion of Muslim leaders, and the institutionalization
of processes of government within the kingdoms; traditionally this was
seen to have begun already in the late eighth century, not so long after
the ‘collapse’ of the former Visigothic state, and to have proceeded very
²⁹ SM116.
slowly at first but rapidly from the early tenth century and very rapidly
across the eleventh and twelfth centuries.³⁰
It would be possible to write the political history of the tenth
century within a completely different framework, paying more atten-
tion to the complex interplay of aristocratic conflicts within northern
Spain, the fragility of the dynasties that came to dominate, and
the inconsistent relationship between rulers and population; or it
would be possible, as has recently been the case, to frame it with-
in a context of increasing seigneurialization (the growth of private
lordly power).³¹ A number of different approaches are viable. For
present purposes, it is important to remember that political consolida-
tion was not inevitable and that conflict between high aristocrats was
frequent.
It is simplest to deal with the fluctuating political geography by
thinking in terms of four political zones, of very unequal size. First, the
kingdom of Asturias-León (increasingly called simply the kingdom of
León) constituted by the tenth century by far the largest political zone,
occupying—almost literally—the whole of the north-west quarter of
Spain. With its ultimate origins in the far north, in Asturias, its political
centre had been focussed at Oviedo in the late eighth century; over the
course of the ninth century its kings extended their political control to
the south and west, such that from 911 the city of León became their
new political centre. Within this kingdom regions such as Portugal,
Galicia, and Asturias were sometimes nominally controlled by royal
sons or brothers as distinct entities, although tenth-century León kings
are very noticeable in the major Galician charter collections and it is
debatable to what extent any distinct political identities—as apart from
geographical identities—were sustained.³² Within this kingdom lay a
second zone, the County of Castile, running north to the sea on the
kingdom’s eastern side, lying between the heartland of the kingdom of
León on the one hand and the kingdom of Navarre and the Muslim-
dominated Ebro valley on the other (see Fig. 1.4). Counts of Castile
are notable from the early tenth century and played an increasingly
independent role from the middle of the century; by the turn of the
millennium it was the relationships between the kings of León and
³⁰ For a recent survey in English of political developments, see R. Collins, ‘The

Spanish kingdoms’, in T. Reuter (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, III,
c.900-c.1024 (Cambridge, 1999), 670–91.
³¹ For seigneurialization, see below, pp. 28–9.
³² For an overview in Spanish, see Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 87–103.
Figure 1.4 Principal political regions of northern Iberia in the tenth century
Navarre and the count of Castile that were to constitute one of the
principal themes of political development.³³
Third, to the north-east of Castile lay the kingdom of Pamplona
or Navarre, its kings recorded from the ninth century and engaging
successfully with other Spanish rulers during the tenth, notably during
the long reign of García Sanchez I (925–70). This remained a small
kingdom during our period, with its Pamplona focus in the mountains
that are a western extension of the Pyrenees (including much of the
present-day Basque country), although tenth-century kings had interests
in the Ebro valley to the south and effectively incorporated the county
of Aragón to the east.³⁴ Last, in the north-east (and beyond the scope of
this book), in the Pyrenees and their southern and western hinterland,
lay Catalonia, subject to Frankish expeditions in the late eighth century
and established as a ‘march’ (border zone) of the Carolingian Empire in
the early ninth.³⁵ Initially comprising seven counties, more were added
³³ Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 103–9.

³⁴ For detailed consideration, see Larrea, La Navarre.
³⁵ Catalonia does not form part of the subject matter of this book since it was in
many ways distinctive in the early middle ages: there was the close association with
Frankish culture; it has also been the subject of major studies during the last generation,
before the more prominent counts began to absorb the lesser counties;
nevertheless, the counts continued to look to the north-east, towards the
Frankish state, for more than a century. In the later tenth century one
count, the Count of Barcelona, emerged predominant and the Frankish
orientation rapidly dissolved.³⁶
For the purposes of this work, then, the large kingdom of León
provides the wider political context for most of the transactions record-
ed in the charter collections, although an important set of these lay
in the County of Castile, which was within the kingdom. Some
transactions related to property in the kingdom of Navarre, or with-
in the range of the kings of Navarre, but there are far fewer of
these.
Kingdoms there may have been, but the extent to which kings
governed their territories or their people is arguable. There was certainly
an expectation of government—many charter texts are suffused with the
language of governance and of the supremacy of kings—but evidence
for machinery of government in the tenth century is relatively thin.³⁷
However, there is some. Kings held court, and attracted powerful
people, lay and clerical, to their courts; it is clear that for much of the
tenth century the city of León, as permanent focus of the royal court of
Asturias-León, was a busy political centre. Beyond the royal family and
the coming and going around the king, the best-evidenced mechanism of
government lay in the royal delegation of territorial control to powerful
individuals or religious communities. Aristocrats and corporate bodies
could be given charge of territories, a responsibility variously called
comissum, comitatus, and mandatio: the territorial authority exercised by
the monastery of Sobrado was called all three in successive decades of the
later tenth century.³⁸ Such territories might be as large as the County
and these studies are well-known beyond the Iberian peninsula. See the comments of
A. J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia. Power, Order, and the Written
Word (Cambridge, 2001), 5–6.
³⁶ The recent classic study of Catalonia in this period is P. Bonnassie, La Catalogne du
milieu du Xe à la fin du XIe siècle: croissance et mutations d’une société, 2 vols. ( Toulouse,
1975–76); see also his shorter assessment, P. Bonnassie, La Catalogne au tournant de l’an
mil. Croissance et mutations d’une société (Paris, 1990).
³⁷ See further below, pp. 93–5, for kings and charters.
³⁸ Sob106 (958), Sob107 (968), Sob108 (978). Cf. Sam170 (930) ‘comisso de
Lausata’ but Sam44 (975) ‘territorio Lausata’, whereas Liii548 (991) has the more
hierarchical ‘villa in mandatione N in territorio N’. The word comitatus has quite a
wide range of meaning: usually translated ‘county’, it might simply signify a physically
defined territory, but it could also signify ‘sphere of authority’—one of the Sobrado texts
of Castile (of the order of 200 km from north to south) or a more

practicable 30 or 40 km across; the holders of such authority might be
called count (comes) or less frequently duke (dux) or master (magister) or
they might have no distinctive title. Although they tended to try to hang
on to authority (and there are some well-documented cases of family
succession), there were certainly occasions when kings resumed and
redistributed property, particularly after ‘rebellions’, which suggests that
they could retain some control.³⁹ These issues are contentious, however:
scholars debate how far a count’s powers, and especially that of the count
of Castile, really stemmed from delegated royal authority, rather than
from independent or local community origins;⁴⁰ they explore the extent
to which royal power was in effect constrained by the interests of some
hereditary comital families;⁴¹ they question whether monasteries really
could exercise delegated royal power; and it is in any case clear that all
land did not necessarily fall within a comissum/mandatio: there was no
comprehensive, administrative ‘system’. Of course, many royal grants
to aristocrats were straightforward gifts of property, with no implication
of delegated royal authority across a territory; we have to be careful to
distinguish the purely proprietary grant from the grant ad imperandum
(for the purposes of command), as Carlos Estepa has shown.⁴² Despite
the textual subtleties, some grants of the latter type were undoubtedly
made and unambiguous acts of delegation become more evident as the
tenth century proceeded: in 929, for example, King Alfonso IV gave the
powerful Galician, Gutier (elsewhere ‘count’), the comissum of Quiroga
and five other places to govern, repeated in part by Alfonso’s brother,
King Ramiro II, to Gutier’s son Fruela in 942; in the early 950s King
Ordoño III gave the bishop of León the ‘castle’ of San Salvador to
govern, with two attached mandationes, an act repeated in 999 by his
relates a dispute about whether a local community fell within the comitatus of one bishop
or another, Sob109 (986–99). Cf. Sam78 (948) ‘villa Stephani, comitatu de Froian,
territorio lucensi’.
³⁹ Political confiscations: Liii541 (990), Cel104 (994), Cel266 (996), Liii581 (998),
for example.
⁴⁰ I. Álvarez Borge, ‘Estructuras de poder en Castilla en la alta edad media: señores,
siervos, vasallos’, in Señores, siervos, vasallos en la alta edad media. XXVIII Semana de
estudios medievales, Estella, 16 a 20 de julio de 2001 (Pamplona, 2002), 269–308, at 300,
304; J. M. Salrach, ‘Les féodalités méridionales: des Alpes à la Galice’, in E. Bournazel
and J.-P. Poly (eds.), Les féodalités (Paris, 1998), 313–88, at 363.
⁴¹ Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 288.
⁴² C. Estepa Díez, ‘Formación y consolidación del feudalismo en Castilla y León’, in
En torno al feudalismo hispánico. I congreso de estudios medievales (León, 1989), 157–256,
at 169–79.
grandson, King Alfonso V.⁴³ There are in fact some good examples of
the exercise of mandationes in the very late tenth century.⁴⁴
When the holder of delegated authority had something called a castle
to control, some military function is clearly implied, although we do
not know much about the physical character of such places at this time,
and it was the eleventh century before the detail of arrangements for
military provision became clear.⁴⁵ Maintaining and provisioning some
kind of strongpoint is one aspect of power exercised in the name of the
king. The nature of the power exercised in other cases is not nearly so
clear, although general statements that holders could give commands
and expect obedience are not uncommon.⁴⁶ What, if any, substance lay
behind such statements is largely a matter for speculation. However,
holders of delegated authority clearly derived income from such positions
and they clearly operated judicial courts.⁴⁷ Indeed, maintenance of a
public court system is the best evidenced of the duties such persons
performed in the tenth century. One could argue that some of these
were private courts, but the fines taken are better interpreted as due
payment and the texts that record detailed cases convey a strong sense of
the public, of regular and standard procedures, and of the participation
of other public officers such as the saio.⁴⁸ Holding a public court and
hearing ‘criminal’ cases was part of the job. And it was in the judicial
court that ordinary people could most obviously relate to the ruler,
through representatives such as these.
Ordinary people
As ordinary people go, it is difficult to get a sense of the character
of the ordinary townsperson in tenth-century contexts. There were
clearly many monks, nuns, and clergy about the town of León, as also
⁴³ Cel207, Cel499; Lii300 (951–6), Liii588, Liii589; cf. Li257 (952), Cel54 (955),
Liii577 (997).
⁴⁴ See C. Estepa Díez, ‘Poder y propiedad feudales en el período astur: las mandaciones
de los Flaínez en la montaña leonesa’, in Miscel-lània en homenatge al P. Agustí Altisent
( Tarragona, 1991), 285–327; and see further below, pp. 144–9.
⁴⁵ Salrach, ‘Les féodalités méridionales’, 322–8.
⁴⁶ e.g. Sam38 (937), Sob108 (978), Lii461 (978), Liii549 (991).
⁴⁷ See below, pp. 143–6, for examples and discussion.
⁴⁸ See further below, pp. 145–6, 182. The saio was a ‘kind of executive officer of
the court’, to borrow Roger Collins’s phrase, ‘ ‘‘Sicut lex Gothorum continet’’: law and
charters in ninth- and tenth-century León and Catalonia’, English Historical Review, 100
(1985), 489–512, at 505; this paper is helpful on court procedure.
the magistrates who presided at judicial cases; we occasionally hear

of tradespeople, like the furrier who witnessed a grant in 950;⁴⁹ and
then there were the donors and vendors of the urban homesteads,
many of whom must have been relatively wealthy. Indeed, some of
the latter resided outside the town,⁵⁰ although some were resident too,
as their texts saying ‘here in León’ imply; some may well have been
comparable to rich peasants in status. The illegible marks and signatures
that conclude the record of a sale from one lay couple to another in
972 probably touch this level.⁵¹ The minor clergy, monks, and nuns,
and the people serving the royal and episcopal courts, however, may
well have constituted the greater part of the ordinary townspeople. We
cannot see the actions of the people who lived in the casas within the
urban homesteads, for these elements are hidden. References to this or
that happening in the araballdes, poorer parts, hint at an unseen other,
but we have no way of knowing if this was a large or small proportion
of the town population at this time.⁵²
We know much more about the countryside in this period and
about peasants—that is, people who worked on the land themselves,
as tenants and/or small-scale proprietors. The image of the free peasant
proprietor is prominent in Spanish historiography of the twentieth
century, in many ways more than in the historiography of other early
medieval western European societies. This is because the small propri-
etor—pequeño propietario—was central to Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz’s
vision of repopulation and colonization of north-central Spain, as we
shall see, and has often featured in twentieth-century discussion of
tenth- and eleventh-century developments.⁵³ Although these ideas have
undergone much revision during the last generation, nevertheless the
figure of the small, free, proprietor remains familiar in the Spanish
landscape of the tenth century. In the light of all that has been written
since Sánchez-Albornoz wrote, is it still reasonable to be thinking of free
peasants in this area at this time?
Looking at tenth-century evidence, the corpus of charters has hun-
dreds of examples of small-scale dealing in property—buying, selling,
and exchanging; it also has many anecdotes of petty disputes and
offences—stealing one or two sheep, arguing over the boundary of a
field—of a type that characterizes peasant-level rural society; and it has
many people who did not travel far, living their lives within a single
⁴⁹ Li230. ⁵⁰ Lii279. ⁵¹ Lii416.

⁵² Lii270 (954). ⁵³ See further below, pp. 26–9.
community. The scale of the property interests of many of the actors

in the charters is small—like the two pieces (pedacolos) of land sold
by three couples to another couple, or the twenty cherry trees and two
apple trees planted, and sold, in Nigueiroá—far less than that of the
villas and widely scattered estates associated with aristocrats; properties
were confined, usually bounded by the plots of others; where values are
stated, they tend to be low, like those bought for slices of bacon and
small quantities of grain.⁵⁴ It makes no sense to view such landowners
as anything other than members of peasant society. Some will have been
relatively rich and some will have had relatively high status in their local
communities; others will have been relatively poor.
It does not follow from this that everyone who worked the land was a
free peasant. There were free proprietors and there were also free tenants:
we can see groups of peasants agreeing rents, as the peasants of Santa
Olalla did in 959; and we can see peasant proprietors who managed
their own lands as well as taking on stock and property for a landlord.⁵⁵
But there were clearly also some slaves and some servile dependents.
We should not imagine a landscape of uninterrupted freedom in the
countryside—some rural paradise—and we should not expect peasant
status to have been homogeneous.
The loss of peasant freedom is a major theme in European history of
the early and central middle ages.⁵⁶ It is also a theme in Spanish history.
Despite Bonnassie’s demonstration that Catalan slavery declined but
continued into the eleventh century,⁵⁷ slavery is conventionally seen
to have ended well before the tenth century. There were clearly slaves,
however, in some parts of northern Spain in the tenth century, in Galicia
in particular though not exclusively. We see them being bought and
⁵⁴ Lii460 (978), Cel421 (997); for boundaries, see above, p. 8; Li158 (942).
⁵⁵ Cel446 (see above, pp. 1–2); OD40 (995), OD41 (995); cf. incidental references
to rents, Cel243 (974), Cel353 (999). Some of the references to heredes may well have
denoted free tenants, e.g. S188 (961), Lii401 (967).
⁵⁶ Central among the many works is M. Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon
(London, 1965 [first published in French 1939–40]), especially 241–79, as also his Les
caractères originaux de l’histoire rurale française (Oslo, 1931); more recently G. Bois, The
Transformation of the Year One Thousand: The Village of Lournand from Antiquity to
Feudalism, trans. J. Birrell (Manchester, 1992) (first published 1989), and the ‘debate’ in
Past and Present: T. N. Bisson, ‘The ‘‘feudal revolution’’ ’, Past and Present, 142 (1994),
6–42; D. Barthélemy and S. D. White, ‘The ‘‘feudal revolution’’ ’, Past and Present, 152
(1996), 196–223; T. Reuter, C. Wickham, T. N. Bisson, ‘The ‘‘feudal revolution’’ ’,
Past and Present, 155 (1997), 177–225. The recent debate has been much concerned
with the point and rate of change. See further below, pp. 19–22.
⁵⁷ P. Bonnassie, La Catalogne, i. 298–302, ii. 828–9.
being given away, especially in lists of property with which women were
endowed on marriage; we read that servitude was the appropriate penalty
for adultery (although the woman in a recorded case avoided the penalty
by making a gift of land); we read of slaves being freed; and we hear
of male and female slaves among the labouring population of estates,
where they are differentiated from the freed and the free labourers.⁵⁸ The
bequest of the deacon Ermegildo is particularly striking (and extremely
unusual): he made provision for his freed men, so that they would remain
free, owing nothing to anyone except for the obligation to light a candle
for him every year; and he confirmed the gifts he had made to his house
boys, with a similar provision of freedom from future obligations.⁵⁹
Slavery clearly encompassed both rural and domestic slavery. Many
cases are located in Galicia and the northern regions of Asturias and
Cantabria, although they occur on the meseta too; however, even in the
west and the north, we cannot begin to estimate what proportions of
the populations were slaves.
Putting slaves to one side, was the status of free peasants secure? In
the longer term, some decline in status seems clear and has, reasonably
enough, been associated with developing powers of lordship.⁶⁰ How
far, however, can any decline be located in the tenth century? Servile
tenure—in which tenants, though of legally free status, had no freedom
to move away and were increasingly subject to onerous, often manual,
obligations—can be difficult to identify before the year 1000: there are
some clear cases but also many ambiguities.⁶¹ The texts note plenty of
tenants who owed ‘service’ to landlords; this may look like servitude,
but, in the language of these records, it usually means regular dues and
does not necessarily have servile overtones: in May 977 the confessor
Manni Ovécoz gave the bishop of León his villa on the banks of
⁵⁸ T19 (914), Cel477 (961); Cel576 (916), Cel577 (926), S207 (962), OD50 (s.d.);
Liii561 (994); T7 (831), Sob123 (867), Cel172 (943), SamS-3 (961); Sob77 (817), S39
(930), Sob64 (984), S328 (985).
⁵⁹ Li109 (936).
⁶⁰ See, for example, Estepa Díez, ‘Formación y consolidación del feudalismo’; R. Pas-
tor, ‘Sur la genèse du féodalisme en Castille et dans le León, Xe –XIIe siècles. Point de
départ pour une histoire comparative’, in H. Atsma, A. Burguière (eds.), Marc Bloch
aujourd’hui. Histoire comparée et sciences sociales (Paris, 1990), 259–70; J. A. García de
Cortázar and E. Peña Bocos, ‘Poder condal ¿y ‘‘mutación feudal’’? en la Castilla del
año mil’, in M. I. Loring García (ed.), Historia social, pensamiento historiográfico y edad
media (Madrid, 1997), 273–98; Salrach, ‘Les féodalités méridionales’. See further below,
pp. 28–30.
⁶¹ The terms used in the texts are often ambiguous; see A. Isla Frez, La sociedad gallega
en la alta edad media (Madrid, 1992), 208–14, for discussion of terminological problems.
the river Carrión, in the territory of Palencia, so that the inhabitants

should in future ‘serve’ (i.e. pay rent to) the monks of San Pedro and
San Paulo in Palencia; and the lengthy record of the dispute about
‘obedience’ from the church of Santa María of Bonimento in 992 is
essentially about the destination of its income and not about people
obeying orders.⁶² When charters record the transfer of people along
with land, this sometimes means slaves, sometimes servile dependents,
and sometimes free rent-paying tenants.⁶³
Less ambiguously, King Ramiro III’s gift of a villa on the river Esla to
the monastery of San Cipriano, in 978, specifies that the residents should
do ‘whatever work (opera) was necessary’; when the peasants who lived
near the Pardomino mountain agreed with the monks of Pardomino to
labour there, in 955, they were close to establishing a servile obligation; a
Portuguese text of 991 records that a couple promised not to leave their
land, and were subject to payment of a fine if they did; and records of
land donated ‘together with all the then inhabitants and anyone else who
should come to live there’ (like King Ordoño II’s gift to his man Tajón of
his villa of San Miguel, near Boadilla de Rioseco, as early as May 920)
repeat a formula, but the formula makes a point about automatically
expected obligations.⁶⁴ Further, the responsibility for paying dues was
sometimes assessed by birth, rather than by property, like those of some
dependents of Celanova, offering a clear case of hereditary obligations;
King Vermudo II’s gift of ten named men and their families to the
monks of Pardomino, while insisting that the men should serve as free
men, nevertheless equally insisted that the commitment should extend
to their offspring; and some texts imply that freedmen had hereditary
obligations, like the dispute over dues that was determined by establish-
ing that tenants were descendants of freed men.⁶⁵ Hereditary obligations
smack of servility. In Galicia, in particular, people with hereditary obli-
gations are named and listed in a manner which suggests that they
had no option but to maintain their obligations; there were those who
⁶² Lii451; Sob130; see also below, pp. 57–60, for client agreements to serve a church.
⁶³ Ambiguous cases, for example: Sob75 (858), Cel233 (886), SM89 (971), Sam44
(975).
⁶⁴ Lii461, Lii290 (see further below, p. 198, for Pardomino); Portugaliae Monumenta
Historica, CLXIV (991) (cf. Li43 (917), in which residents of one episcopal estate were
free to leave but had to leave half of their goods if they did); S19 (cf. Lii298 (956),
another royal gift).
⁶⁵ Cel144 (s.d.), cf. Cel84 (986); Liii574 (996); SamS-8 (985). SM30 (943) explicitly
allows the free inhabitants of a villa given to San Millán de la Cogolla by the king of
Navarre to leave if they wished, but others were tied to the service of San Millán.
ground the corn and those who looked after the pigs; those who provid-
ed the wax for church lighting; those who worked the saltpans.⁶⁶ The
examples run at least from the early tenth century and most obligations
were clearly not new at the time of recording. In some parts (and not
exclusively in the north-west), there were servile dependents as well as
free tenants for much of the tenth century, not forgetting the slaves and
the peasant proprietors. In other words, the patterns are more complex
than a simple picture of servile obligations imposed in increasing weight
from round about the year 1000: some customary obligations were in
place long before that date; there are occasional indications of new obli-
gations in the second half of the tenth century, while it is the case that
far more of the unambiguous cases fall in the second half of the tenth
century than the first. We should therefore think of a rural landscape
composed variously, in different regions, of different proportions of
slaves, servile dependents, and free peasants, the latter including both
tenants and proprietors, and also of different rates of change. We cannot
quantify those proportions because we do not have comprehensive data
and because of the ambiguities, but we need to remember both the
complexities and the likely differences from place to place.
It is evidently the case that we cannot always be clear about who was a
peasant and who was not, as also who was a free peasant and who was not.
Some groups can be easily excluded from the free peasant category: as in
other European cultures at this time, the servile did not often speak;⁶⁷
although individuals might be named in lists of people with obligations,
servile residents tended to move in a block; we rarely see them as
individual actors. Great aristocrats too—kings, counts, bishops, wealthy
property owners—are clear enough, whether by label, behaviour, or
scale. Neither serfs nor high aristocrats are likely to be confused with free
peasants. However, there is a wide social range between these two strata
and the texts are not explicit about the social status of many actors. That
being the case, there have to be guidelines for assigning status and in what
follows I adopt the following convention: where properties of small scale
were conveyed, where prices were low, where their donors and vendors
⁶⁶ Cel158 (942–77), Cel5 (986), Cel272 (993); cf. Cel92 (968), Cel154 (s.d.), and
probably, in Castile, C188 (981). Cf. Documentación medieval de Leire (siglos IX a XII),
ed. A. J. Martín Duque, no. 12 (arguably 991, but perhaps later) for ploughing, sowing,
and harvesting services due from thirty-three named individuals, as well as light dues
payable in cakes, bread, grain, or meat.
⁶⁷ See W. Davies, ‘On servile status in the early middle ages’, in M. L. Bush (ed.),
Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (London, 1996), 225–46, at 243.
were only associated with properties in one community, where these

donors and vendors did not themselves appear across a wide area, and/or
where the witness lists do not include identifiable aristocrats, then it is a
reasonable assumption that these actors were peasants. In what follows
I shall treat such characters as ordinary, non-noble, free people. Areas
of doubt will inevitably remain, particularly over isolated individuals;
sometimes one does not know and one cannot make a reasonable guess.
H I S TO RY
Charters
The texts that become so plentiful in the tenth century are charters,
as we have already begun to see. Although there are other kinds of
text available, many hundreds of charters survive from tenth-century
northern Spain.⁶⁸ These texts include records of sales, exchanges,
disputes, and donations (the latter comprising both lifetime gifts and
bequests). The charters are preserved as copies in some well-known,
often large, monastic and episcopal cartulary collections, and sometimes
as single sheets, many of which are originals.⁶⁹ The transactions which
they record peaked in the middle of the century, with far more in
the 950s and 960s than in earlier or later decades; indeed, numbers
before 920 total less than a hundred; from 930 the increase was steep
until the 950s (during which there were several hundred transactions),
partly because of a significant increase in the proportion of small-scale
business; and from 970 numbers drop off quite steeply.⁷⁰
Different collections have different profiles, however, and there is
considerable variation in regional distribution. In the following couple
of pages, I indicate the basic statistics of the collections which have
been most used in this book, with their regional associations.⁷¹ In fact,
⁶⁸ There are a few narrative sources, though their content is quite sparse. The major
chronicle covering the tenth century is an early eleventh-century work, only recoverable
from later compilations: J. Perez de Urbel, Sampiro. Su cronica y la monarquía leonesa en
el siglo X (Madrid, 1952). See further below, pp. 183–4, on narrative sources.
⁶⁹ See below, p. 92, for single sheets and originals.
⁷⁰ For detail of transactions in the largest collections, see W. Davies, ‘Sale, price
and valuation’, 154–5. See below, pp. 209–13, for small-scale transactions and the
significance of the sudden increase.
⁷¹ Numbers given for transactions are necessarily approximate, and I wish to avoid
giving any spurious sense of precision. Numbers of transactions do not precisely mirror
most collections include material from different sources, for a cartulary

is often the result of a complex process of accumulation.
The late twelfth-century cartulary of the monastery of Celanova,
in Galicia in the west, not far from the present northern border
of Portugal, includes about 225 recorded tenth-century transactions
(Fig. 1.5).⁷² Other important Galician collections, though smaller for
the tenth century, are those from the monastery of Sobrado de los
Monjes, 45 km north-east of Santiago de Compostela, and from that
of San Julián at Samos, 65 km to the south-east of Sobrado, in the
western foothills of the Cantabrian mountains; they record just under
100 and 60 transactions respectively.⁷³ The next major group involves
the several collections in the archive of the bishopric of León, to the
east of Galicia, one of the most important foci in the Duero basin; this
episcopal collection includes records from urban and rural monasteries
which subsequently came into the hands of the bishopric and has over
580 recorded tenth-century transactions, of which about 200 are on
single sheets.⁷⁴ There is also a very large collection from the monastery
of Sahagún, on the plateau, 50 km to the south-east of León itself,
with over 430 tenth-century transactions.⁷⁵ Also from the same region,
the numbers of records: what was or was not a transaction is sometimes arguable; some
charters record more than one transaction; some record texts such as inventories or
sworn witness statements and do not record any transactions; some records duplicate
transactions recorded elsewhere. For this count I have excluded obviously corrupt
documents; included boundary statements, records of disputes, and exchanges (as
transactions other than sale or donation); and included confirmations with donation
figures. Where there are minor discrepancies with previously cited numbers, it is because
for present purposes I have used a different classification.
⁷² O Tombo de Celanova, ed. J. M. Andrade, 2 vols. (Santiago, 1995) — a late twelfth-
century cartulary comprising, in the opinion of this editor, three earlier collections;
charters cited by number as Cel1, Cel2, etc. There has been much criticism of this
edition (see J. I. Fernández de Viana y Vieites in Commission Internationale de
Diplomatique, Vocabulaire International de la Diplomatique (Valencia, 1997), 45, n. 23),
but it is the one that has been available to me and I have found it helpful.
⁷³ El Tumbo de San Julián de Samos (siglos VIII–XII), ed. M. Lucas Álvarez (Santiago
de Compostela, 1986); a cartulary of c.1200, charters cited by number as Sam1, Sam2,
etc. Tumbos del monasterio de Sobrado de los Monjes, ed. P. Loscertales de García de
Valdeavellano, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1976)—two twelfth-century cartularies, charters cited
as Sob1, Sob2, etc.
⁷⁴ Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de León, vol. 1 (775–952) ed. E. Sáez,
vol. 2 (953–85), ed. E. Sáez and C. Sáez; vol. 3 (986–1031), ed. J. M. Ruiz Asencio
(León, 1987, 1990, 1987)—the core of the edition is a large cartulary of the first third
of the twelfth century; charters cited as Li1, Li2, Lii259, Liii512, etc.
⁷⁵ Colección diplomática del monasterio de Sahagún, vol. 1, ed. J. M. Mínguez
Fernández, vol. 2, ed. M. Herrero de la Fuente (León, 1976, 1988)—from two
a small but important group of 50 charters, mostly on single sheets,

comes from Otero de las Dueñas, 25 km north-west of León, in
the southern foothills of the Cantabrian mountains, including a lay
archive of the eleventh century.⁷⁶ Farther to the east, in Castile, lies
the monastery of Cardeña, in the western foothills of the Sierra de
la Demanda, on the edge of the plateau, lying just to the south of
the city of Burgos, beside one of the main routes from central Spain
to France, then as now; this late eleventh-century cartulary includes
over 200 recorded tenth-century transactions.⁷⁷ Although they have
fewer tenth-century records than the large sets, there is useful Castilian
material in some of the smaller collections, particularly from Valpuesta,
in the mountains to the north of Burgos, and from San Millán de la
Cogolla in the rich agricultural lands of the modern Rioja, to the east
(comparative numbers of transactions for Valpuesta are 36, San Millán
121).⁷⁸ There are in addition a few from Arlanza, also in Castile, a few
from Albelda, within the orbit of both Castile and Navarre, and even
fewer from San Juan de la Peña, farther east in Aragón (comparative
numbers for Arlanza are 25, Albelda 28, San Juan 11).⁷⁹ Two small but
very important collections come from much farther to the north: one,
including a wide range of early material, comes from Santo Toribio
in the Liébana, in Cantabria on the northern side of the Cantabrian
mountains, and the other comes from San Vicente in Oviedo, again
on the northern side of the Cantabrian mountains, but farther west, in
Asturias, to the north of León (62 and 24 transactions respectively).⁸⁰
collections, one a copy of a cartulary of the early twelfth century and the other a cartulary
of 1110; charters cited as S1, S2, etc.
⁷⁶ Colección documental del monasterio de Santa María de Otero de las Dueñas, ed.
J. A. Fernández Flórez and M. Herrero de la Fuente, vol. 1 (León, 1999), cited as OD1,
OD2, etc.
⁷⁷ Colección documental del monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña, ed. G. Martínez
Díez (Cardeña/Burgos, 1998), (older edition: Becerro Gótico de Cardeña, ed. L. Serrano
(Silos/Valladolid, 1910)); 1998 edition cited as C1, C2, etc.
⁷⁸ Cartulario de San Millán de la Cogolla, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta (Valencia, 1976)—an
early twelfth-century collection, from several sources, cited as SM1, SM2, etc. Cartulario
de Valpuesta, ed. M. Desamparados Perez Soler (Valencia, 1970)—a late eleventh-century
cartulary, cited as V1, V2, etc.
⁷⁹ Cartulario de Albelda, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta (Valencia, 1960), cited as A1, A2,
etc.; Cartulario de San Pedro de Arlanza, antiguo monasterio benedictino, ed. L. Serrano
(Madrid, 1925), cited as Ar1, Ar2, etc.; Cartulario de San Juan de la Peña, ed. A. Ubieto
Arteta, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1962–63), charters (in vol. 1) cited as SJP1, SJP2, etc.
⁸⁰ Cartulario de Santo Toribio de Liébana, ed. L. Sánchez Belda (Madrid, 1948), cited
as T1, T2, etc.; Colección diplomática del monasterio de San Vicente de Oviedo (años
781–1200), ed. P. Floriano Llorente (Oviedo, 1968), cited as Ov1, Ov2, etc.
Figure 1.5 Location of sources of the main charter collections used
There are sometimes small numbers of tenth-century charters in other

collections, such as that from Leire; I have occasionally noted their
contents but have not included them in statistical analyses—as also
applies to the rather more considerable corpus from Portugal.⁸¹ There
are also many hundreds of charters from Catalonia, in the region of the
Pyrenees, in north-east Spain, but that region lies beyond the scope of
this work.⁸²
Altogether records of approximately 1,960 transactions survive from
the region here considered, of which 980 are gifts and 850 are sales—very
large numbers by northern European standards; by comparison, just
under 100 survive for the same region from the ninth century. This char-
ter material has often been discussed and there is a rich historiography
⁸¹ Documentación medieval de Leire (siglos IX a XII), ed. A. J. Martín Duque

(Pamplona, 1983); there are 13 charters of pre-1000, some of doubtful authenticity.
Portugaliae Monumenta Historica a saeculo octavo post Christum usque ad quintum
decimum, 3, Diplomata et Chartae, ed. A. Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo and J. J. da
Silva Mendes Leal, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1868); there are 184 charters of pre-1000, again, some
of doubtful authenticity.
⁸² See references above, nn. 35, 36.
of more than a century of Spanish comment;⁸³ despite that work, there

are still aspects to explore, particularly in the context of recent research
on other parts of western Europe, and in the context of the several
illuminating studies of donation published in the past two generations;
there is also much still to do to bring the work of Spanish historians to
the attention of early medieval scholars elsewhere.
History and historians: medieval Spain

Early medieval Spain has a rich historiography. The past century of
historical writing has been dominated by the powerful idea of the
Muslim conquest of 711 and its perceived consequences. It is thought
that this conquest was overturned across many centuries by the long
struggle between Christians and Muslims, the so-called Reconquest, the
final conquest of the Muslims coming in 1492. In this model, ideas
of depopulation and repopulation play a major part. In response to
the initial Muslim incursion, it was argued by several historians, but
especially by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, that King Alfonso I of Asturias
(739–57) adopted a policy of strategic depopulation in Galicia and in
the large expanse of the Duero basin. Muslim conquest provoked further
Christian migration, particularly from the Duero valley (see Fig. 1.1),
the Christian population of Spain fleeing north to the inhospitable
Cantabrian mountains and north-west to the farthest corner of Galicia,
leaving vast expanses of unoccupied and depopulated land. As Christian
kings slowly won back territory in the late ninth, tenth, and eleventh
centuries, it is argued, the Hispanic population gradually returned from
the north to the deserted lands, reinforced by Mozarabic settlers from the
south, and together they restored settlement and agriculture.⁸⁴ Like the
⁸³ For example, influential papers such as: C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías: la

encomendación en Asturias, León y Castilla’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español,
1 (1924), 158–336; J. A. Rubio, ‘ ‘‘Donationes post obitum’’ y ‘‘donationes reservato
usufructu’’ en la alta edad media de León y Castilla’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho
Español, 9 (1932), 1–32; L. G. de Valdeavellano, ‘La cuota de libre disposición en el
derecho hereditario de León y Castilla en la alta edad media’, Anuario de Historia del
Derecho Español, 9 (1932), 129–76; E. Sáez, ‘Nuevos datos sobre el coste de la vida en
Galicia durante la Alta Edad Media’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 17 (1946),
865–88; J. Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis et animae’’. Laicos y monasterios en la alta
edad media española’, in J. Orlandis, Estudios sobre instituciones monásticas medievales
(Pamplona, 1971 [first published 1954]); J. Gautier Dalché, ‘Le domaine du monastère
de Santo Toribio de Liébana: formation, structure et modes d’exploitation’, Anuario de
Estudios Medievales, 2 (1965), 63–117.
⁸⁴ Mozarabic: Arabized Hispanics, often Christian.
Figure 1.6 The meseta: the Campos south of Sahagún
American pioneers, the colonizers brought a spirit of freedom to central

Spain and their settlements became free communities of small-scale
proprietors.⁸⁵
Belief in depopulation and repopulation was highly influential, at
scholarly and popular levels, until very recently (and still is, in some
quarters); the concept has affected most aspects of the interpretation of
social and political change in the early middle ages. Of course, some
scholars reacted against the ideas of Sánchez-Albornoz, and other ideas
increasingly became prominent in the later twentieth century. To begin
with, ‘feudalism’, which Sánchez-Albornoz and others had thought
inappropriate for Spain, was re-instated. In the mid-1960s Barbero
and Vigil began to publish their work on the formation of Spanish
feudalism, arguing that although in part it evolved directly from late and
⁸⁵ C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires,

1966); idem, ‘Repoblación del Reino Asturleonés’, in his Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre
las instituciones medievales españolas, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1976–80), ii. 581–790 (first
published 1971, but see his comments already in id., ‘Las behetrías: la encomendación en
Asturias, León y Castilla’, at 198–203); idem, ‘Pequeños propietarios libres en el reino
Asturleonés. Su realidad histórica’, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto
medioevo, 13 (1966), 183–222. See A. Ubieto Arteta, Atlas Histórico. Como se formó
España, 2nd edn. (Valencia, 1970), 38–49, 59, for visual representations of maximum
depopulation in the eighth century and gradual repopulation thereafter.
post-Roman society, that is from the fifth and sixth centuries, those parts
of northern Spain which were little touched by Romanization sustained
a tribal society whose transformation from collective property-owning
kin groups to villages of individual owners constituted a different
and later route to feudal society.⁸⁶ Most historians of the subsequent
generation accepted a basic principle of feudal development, with variant
approaches; in other words, they accepted the emergence of a world
characterized by the domination of private lords over the persons,
labour, and surplus of a largely servile peasant population, the near
absence of slavery, the fragmentation of the public power of the state
and its dispersal among the greater private lords. The development of
private lordly power (i.e. the process of seigneurialization) has been
more central to the historiography than detail of fiefs, vassals, and
varieties of aristocratic service, although the latter do of course feature.
Most scholars identified the central middle ages as the key period of
feudalization, charting the development at different rates within a tenth-
to twelfth-century bracket, although often quite late in the bracket, and
pointing to differences between the Spanish development and that of the
classical Frankish manor.⁸⁷ Discussion still continues.⁸⁸ The language
of feudalism, however, is today embedded in Spanish historiography.
Alongside the acceptance of feudalism, other themes have emerged.
Regional history became prominent from the 1970s, with close attention
to local development through systematic study of, in particular, monastic
seigneuries —like the hugely influential works of García de Cortázar on
San Millán de la Cogolla and of Mínguez on Sahagún.⁸⁹ Other issues
emerged in the context of the feudal discussion, taking on a life of their
own: the collapse of community collectivities in the face of growing
seigneurial power, for example; the emergence of a class of mounted
⁸⁶ M. Vigil and A. Barbero, ‘Sobre los orígenes sociales de la Reconquista. Cántabros

y vascones desde fines del Imperio romano hasta la invasión musulmana’, Boletín de la
Real Academia de la Historia, 156 (1965), 271–339; their main work is A. Barbero and
M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en la península Ibérica (Barcelona, 1978), especially
155–200, 354–404, and particularly 370–1, 401, in this respect. See further below,
pp. 65–71, for family property.
⁸⁷ See especially Estepa Díez, ‘Formación y consolidación del feudalismo’. For a useful
survey of approaches, see J. A. García de Cortázar, ‘La formación de la sociedad feudal
en el cuadrante noroccidental de la península ibérica en los siglos viii a xii’, Initium, 4
(1999), 57–121, especially at 69–75.
⁸⁸ See for example Señores, siervos, vasallos en la alta edad media. XXVIII Semana de
estudios medievales, Estella, 16 a 20 de julio de 2001 (Pamplona, 2002).
⁸⁹ García de Cortázar, El dominio del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla; Mínguez
Fernández, El dominio del monasterio de Sahagún; see above, p. 9.
soldiers, termed milites and caballeros, and its social consequences; and
the strength, or the privatization, of public power.⁹⁰ Recently a new
trend has emerged, a trend that questions the fact of depopulation
itself and therefore of repopulation and colonization, especially in the
Duero valley. Muslim invasion and campaigning may not after all
have sent the Hispanic population of the meseta fleeing north into the
mountains; most, it is now argued, stayed where they were, continuing
to farm, their settlements in some parts connected through networks
of supra-local units.⁹¹ This is not entirely new, for qualifications to the
stark depopulation model had been proposed long before the recent
trend;⁹² Menéndez Pidal had clearly made the point that the word
populare in early medieval texts, literally ‘to populate’, could refer to
the imposition of new political and administrative structures rather
than to new settlements. Some (more modest) decline in population
now tends to be invoked in place of total desertion, as is—as we have
seen—new colonization arising out of sheer peasant dynamism in the
tenth and eleventh centuries, in a context of demographic growth.⁹³ In
other words, the intensification of agricultural production that is clearly
signalled by the texts seems to have been associated with new kinds of
proprietary rights, alongside new expectations of regular and increasing
⁹⁰ See for example J. Escalona Monge, ‘De ‘‘señores y campesinos’’ a ‘‘poderes feudales
y comunidades’’. Elementos para definir la articulación entre territorio y clases sociales
en la alta edad media castellana’, in I. Álvarez Borge (co-ord.), Comunidades locales y
poderes feudales en la edad media (Logroño, 2001), 115–55; J. A. García de Cortázar, La
sociedad rural en la España medieval (Madrid, 1988), 27–36; Estepa Díez, ‘Formación y
consolidación del feudalismo’, 164–74; Salrach, ‘Les féodalités méridionales’, 373.
⁹¹ J. Escalona Monge, Sociedad y territorio en la alta edad media castellana. La
formación del alfoz de Lara, BAR International Series no. 1079 (Oxford, 2002) and
idem, ‘Unidades territoriales supralocales: una propuesta sobre los orígenes del señorío
de behetría’, in C. Estepa Díez and C. Jular Pérez-Alfaro (co-ord.), Los señoríos de
behetría (Madrid, 2001), 21–46; I. Martín Viso, Fragmentos del Leviatán. La articulación
política del espacio zamorano en la alta edad media (Zamora, 2002); S. Castellanos and
I. Martín Viso, ‘The local articulation of central power in the north of the Iberian
peninsula (500–1000)’, Early Medieval Europe, 13 (2005), 1–42, especially 21–41. For
a helpful survey in English see J. Escalona Monge, ‘Mapping scale change: hierarchization
and fission in Castilian rural communities during the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in
W. Davies, G. Halsall, A. J. Reynolds (eds.), People and Space in the Middle Ages,
300–1300 ( Turnhout, 2007), 143–66, at 143–49.
⁹² R. Menéndez Pidal, ‘Repoblación y tradición en la cuenca del Duero’, in M. Alvar,
A. Badía, R. de Balbín, L. F. Lindley Cintra (eds.), Enciclopedia Lingüística Hispánica,
2 vols. (Madrid, 1960–67), i. xxix-lvii; cf. Barbero y Vigil, Formación del feudalismo,
226–7, and cf. García de Cortázar, La sociedad rural, 21–2.
⁹³ Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 293–4; Larrea, La Navarre, 196, 589–91; Martín
Viso, Fragmentos del Leviatán, especially 43–59; peasant colonization with comital
control, Bonnassie, La Catalogne au tournant de l’an mil, 39–57.
returns to major landlords. Again, the Santa Olalla cameo of 959 is

relevant, the monastic lord establishing rights to some of the product of
the peasant colonizers.
Historical approaches have changed a lot in the last generation. Raids
from the south of Spain, and expeditions to the south, did happen,
even if we now acknowledge that several northern kings had diplomatic
relations with Muslim leaders in the later tenth century and even if
the raids had less cataclysmic consequences than once supposed—one
example of the kind of disruption that might ensue is the action of a
minor monastery near León which, when raided by Muslims in 988
and stripped of all its animals, sold off land in order to have the means
to restock.⁹⁴ Raiding was a reality, but for the most part it does not
seem to have interrupted the settled farming regime which the vast
majority of texts describes; if Christian society was frontier society in
the tenth century, there is relatively little trace of it north of the Duero,
be it either a frontier of pioneers or a militarized frontier. The work
of Sánchez-Albornoz nevertheless remains central; his work endures
through the very fact of reaction against it. One cannot navigate a way
through even the most recent Spanish literature without an awareness
of the dominant model and its influence.
History and historians: early medieval giving

Historians of other parts of western Europe have not been so influenced
by a single dominant model. One theme shared across several national
traditions during the past couple of generations, however, has been
a sustained interest in early medieval gifts and giving; many aspects
of donation have been explored with detailed attention and subtlety.
Most of this work has focused on Germany, France, Italy, and England,
with relatively little attention to the rich corpus of northern Spanish
material. Central to the recent study of donation has been the work
of Karl Schmid and his colleagues in Münster and Freiburg, whose
systematic work on Libri memoriales in the 1960s and 1970s opened up
new ways of investigating aristocratic family structures and aristocratic
patronage networks.⁹⁵ Here careful analysis of the names of donors to
⁹⁴ S340.
⁹⁵ K. Schmid, ‘Neue Quellen zum Verständnis des Adels im 10. Jahrhundert’,
Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, 108 (1960), 185–232; idem (ed.), Die
Klostergemeinschaft von Fulda im früheren Mittelalter, 3 vols. (vol. 2 in 3 parts) (Munich,
churches, recorded in books of commemoration, not only demonstrated

the important social role of monastic communities in preserving the
memory of dead patrons but also revealed family commitments to
particular foundations and patterns of alliance-making, as well as a
host of material on the structure and particularities of relationships
between kin. Donation to the church was obviously an important social
phenomenon in itself, with enormous economic consequences, but it
was more than that: donation practice belongs within a spectrum of
wider social relationships. The German work has been particularly
important in establishing that fact and in illuminating aristocratic strata
within society, especially in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.⁹⁶
American scholars working on French material in the 1980s, in
part drawing on the long French tradition of research into the nobility,
extended the scope of enquiry into donation practice.⁹⁷ Stephen White’s
major study, relating to western France and extending into the later
twelfth century, is an exploration of the social meaning of transactions.⁹⁸
Beginning with kinship groups, it focuses on the laudatio parentum,
family approval of grants, and takes the study of family structure and
family networks into new areas by looking at the (irregular) composition
1978); and the collection of his key papers in idem, Gebetsgedenken und adliges Selbst-
verständnis im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1983). See Karl Leyser’s discussion, ‘The
German aristocracy from the ninth to the early twelfth century: a historical and cultural
sketch’, Past and Present, 41 (1968), 25–53, and his words of warning in K. J. Leyser,
Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society (London, 1979), 50–1. Many of the
papers in Frühmittelalterliche Studien of the 1970s derive from the work of Schmid’s
team, members of which remain influential. G. Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien
im Spiegel ihrer Memorialüberlieferung: Studien zum Totengedenken der Billunger und
Ottonen (Munich, 1984); and O. G. Oexle (ed.), Memoria als Kultur (Göttingen, 1995)
represent important and influential developments within this tradition; for a survey
of developments, see M. Borgolte, ‘ ‘‘Memoria’’. Bilan intermédiaire d’un projet de
recherche sur le moyen âge’, in J.-C. Schmitt and O. G. Oexle (eds.), Les tendances
actuelles de l’histoire du moyen âge en France et en Allemagne (Paris, 2002), 53–69.
⁹⁶ The social range extends, however, in work such as M. Borgolte’s study of records
of donation pro anima, ‘Gedenkstiftungen in St. Galler Urkunden’, in K. Schmid and
J. Wollasch (eds.), Memoria. Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im
Mittelalter (Munich, 1984), 578–602.
⁹⁷ The tradition goes back to P. Guilhiermoz, Essai sur l’origine de la noblesse en France
au moyen âge (Paris, 1902); more recently, G. Duby, La société aux XI e et XII e siècles
dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953), is seminal, and most of his subsequent work
has relevance; cf. many of the papers collected in his Hommes et structures du moyen
âge. Recueil d’articles (Paris, 1973). The French historiography of féodalité has been very
influential in Spain; see above, pp. 27–8.
⁹⁸ S. D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western
France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill, 1988).
of such groups and the principles of inclusion within them. In the course
of this work he makes a valuable assessment of what giving for the sake of
the soul, pro anima mea or pro remedio animae N, might have meant in
practice:⁹⁹ in effect he explored some of the motivation that lay behind
giving, while at the same time emphasizing the significance of the
‘spiritual capital’ acquired by the act.¹⁰⁰ Drawing on the Münster and
French traditions, but also on the earlier, anthropologically influenced,
historiography of gift exchange, Barbara Rosenwein’s To Be the Neighbor
of St Peter focused on the exceptionally large collection of charters from
Cluny, in Burgundy, and investigated the transactional aspects of giving
within the context of local society.¹⁰¹ Giving did not mean disposing
of one’s goods and divesting oneself of assets; donors always got
something in return for their gifts, maybe a place in heaven but—more
immediately—access to a network of continuing relationships in life;
and their connections with the property they had donated were often
sustained.¹⁰² Richer peasants came into view in her study, along with
the complex of social relationships at local level, for donation was more
of a group than an individual activity and property was a kind of ‘social
glue’.¹⁰³ Both White’s and Rosenwein’s works, while obviously making
important contributions on the symbolic significance of donation, also
made a valuable point about the temporality of giving—phases of
giving rose and fell; there was no simple, steady, increase; there were
distinct periods in which donation to the church predominated over
other recorded transactions.
⁹⁹ There are important Spanish studies of donation pro anima: J. Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio
corporis et animae’’ ’, and also his ‘La elección de sepultura en la España medieval’, in
his La iglesia en la España visigotica y medieval (Pamplona, 1976 [first published 1950]),
257–306.
¹⁰⁰ White, Custom, Kinship, 152–4.
¹⁰¹ B. H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s
Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, 1989). For gift exchange, M. Mauss’s Essai sur le don (Paris,
1925) was the essential stimulus; its influence on early medievalists has been widespread
but the following papers have been particularly influential: P. Grierson, ‘Commerce in
the Dark Ages: a critique of the evidence’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
5th ser., 9 (1959), 123–40, and W. Miller, ‘Gift, sale, payment, raid: case studies in
the negotiation and classification of exchange in medieval Iceland’, Speculum, 61 (1986),
18–50; cf. R. Le Jan, Femmes, pouvoir et société dans le haut moyen âge (Paris, 2001),
119–31.
¹⁰² Although it relates to a later period, R. Pastor, E. Pascua Echegaray, A. Rodríguez
López, P. Sánchez León, Transacciones sin mercado: instituciones, propiedad y redes sociales
en la Galicia monástica, 1200–1300 (Madrid, 1999), is a notable Spanish work which
has drawn on this tradition; available in English as Beyond the Market (Leiden, 2002).
¹⁰³ Rosenwein, To be the Neighbor, 202.
Patrick Geary’s Phantoms of Remembrance, published in 1994,

explored motivation for giving in the context of a wide-ranging study
of memory—family memory, institutional memory, political memo-
ry—in the tenth and eleventh centuries; using German and French
material especially, and drawing strongly on the German tradition, he
explored the ritual commemoration of death, emphasizing the signifi-
cance of commemoration of the family—this was donation to ensure
that the family of the donor be remembered and indeed its memory
perpetuated.¹⁰⁴ He also explored the gender associations of giving, by
region, concluding that women were central to the preservation of family
memoria in the East Frankish (German) kingdom while, although they
had comparable functions in the Western Frankish (French) kingdom,
the role of women was not emphasized in the record in a compara-
ble way; indeed, often explicitly, the men of the reformed monastic
orders took over the function of keeping memory alive.¹⁰⁵ This book
was extremely influential during the 1990s and stimulated a range of
complementary studies, of which those by Elisabeth van Houts are par-
ticularly important.¹⁰⁶ She demonstrated, bringing more English and
¹⁰⁴ P. J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the
First Millennium (Princeton, 1994). Cf. Althoff, Adels- und Königsfamilien, especially,
on the liturgical commemoration of the high aristocracy in Germany; though focused
on eleventh to thirteenth centuries, M. Lauwers, La mémoire des ancêtres, le souci des
morts. Mort, rite et société au moyen âge (Paris, 1997) contains much pre-eleventh-century
material on liturgical commemoration in western Europe. Note the brief comments of
García de Cortázar, La sociedad rural, 43, on sustaining historic memory, and with that
family titles to property, by writing, in eleventh- and twelfth-century Spain.
¹⁰⁵ For royal women in Germany, the (French) work of P. Corbet, is crucial: Les
saints ottoniens. Sainteté dynastique, sainteté royale et sainteté feminine autour de l’an Mil
(Sigmaringen, 1986); see also, extending the discussion to include royal women in
France, M. Parisse (ed.), Veuves et veuvage dans le haut moyen âge (Paris, 1993), which
includes the Catalan paper by M. Aurell i Cardona, ‘Les avatars de la viduité princière:
Ermessende (ca. 975–1058), comtesse de Barcelone’, 201–32. Also R. Le Jan, Famille et
pouvoir dans le monde franc (VII e —Xe siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995),
passim but especially 54–7, 333–79; the latter’s themes are developed in Le Jan, Femmes,
pouvoir et société. M. del C. Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, una Aristócrata del Siglo X (La
Coruña, 1998), especially 125–34, deals with some relevant Spanish material, at comital
level, from Galicia.
¹⁰⁶ E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London,
1999); E. van Houts (ed.), Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300
(Harlow, 2001). See also the useful survey in J. L. Nelson, ‘Gender and genre in women
historians of the early middle ages’, in J. L. Nelson, The Frankish World, 750–900
(London, 1996), 183–97. Also, for more criticisms, B. Jussen, ‘Challenging the culture
of memoria. Dead men, oblivion, and the ‘‘Faithless Widow’’ in the middle ages’, in
G. Althoff, J. Fried, P. J. Geary (eds.), Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory,
Historiography (Cambridge, 2002), 215–31.
Italian material into the discussion, that donation for commemoration

was not so bluntly gendered as Geary had suggested and that both men
and women had specific, and complementary, roles in remembering
the past. All of this work, which focuses more on aristocratic than on
other parts of society, is of course important for developing the gender
perspective. However, it is also significant in extending understanding of
the nature of noble families, of their mechanisms for self-perpetuation,
and especially of their perspectives of themselves; family consciousness
was a pervasive theme: memorialization was a kind of self-reflection, an
aspect, therefore, of the history of mentalités.
Most recently, in the context of a comparative study of the transfer
of family property in Europe in the early middle ages (within the
sixth to the eleventh centuries), an international group of scholars
took a detailed look at post mortem donation, picking up Georges
Duby’s ‘link between remembering the ancestors and transmitting
the patrimony’ and paying particular attention to the relationship
between grants to save the soul, family remembrance, and strategies to
preserve the patrimony.¹⁰⁷ Preservation mechanisms like the founding
of proprietary churches, the repetition from generation to generation of
precarial gifts, the habit of reserving the usufruct for the donor’s family,
were explored in different European contexts. In her introduction to
the ensuing publication Régine Le Jan emphasized some ambiguities
and tensions—tensions between collective and individual donation,
ambiguities over the disposability of inherited land, the tension between
preserving the inheritance from fragmentation and risking its ultimate
loss by making a gift to the church.¹⁰⁸ François Bougard, in concluding,
provided some salutary warnings: how many families in fact disappeared
as a result of alienating property to the church, and did not preserve the
patrimony at all? how many families used completely different strategies
to preserve memory, like freeing slaves or erecting stone monuments?
how many families, particularly outside the aristocracy, simply made no
attempt to preserve the patrimony?¹⁰⁹
¹⁰⁷ G. Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre. Le mariage dans la France féodale (Paris,
1981), 50; Duby’s point, commenting on the mid-ninth-century Manual of Dhuoda, was
actually about patrilineality: Dhuoda’s son must pray for her husband’s family, not her
own, he suggested. F. Bougard, C. La Rocca, R. Le Jan (eds.), Sauver son âme et se perpétuer.
Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut moyen âge (Rome, 2005); this book
includes a valuable paper on family memory in Catalonia: Ll. To Figueras, ‘Fondations
monastiques et mémoire familiale en Catalogne (IXe -XIe siècle)’, ibid., 293–329.
¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 1–6. ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., 485–94.
This book, then, is an exploration of some of those themes in the

Spanish context, and a search for points of similarity and contrast with
European trends. It is about donation—the giving of property, since
that is the kind of donation that is recorded, usually landed property.
It is about who gives and who receives; about what is given; about
reasons for giving; and about the place of giving within the complex
of social and economic relationships in society as a whole. The gender
and status of donors are important themes that run throughout, and I
am interested in probing as much of the practice of peasant society as is
possible. Commemoration takes its place too; one important question
which arises from earlier work is not so much the obvious question
about gender specificity and memorialization but the less obvious
question about status specificity: were acts which were undertaken
to perpetuate memory a symptom of distinctively aristocratic social
behaviour or did they spread more widely through society? The book is
also about donation as a type of transaction: other kinds of transaction
are sometimes presented as donation while gifts can be concealed under
the guise of some other mode of exchange; indeed, to what extent, in
this Spanish world, was donation itself separable and distinctive? Did
the act of giving have such specificity that it could be differentiated from
other kinds of exchange?
People transferred property in vitam and post mortem, to take effect
during their lives or after their deaths. Donation of both types in fact
had consequences for the rest of the donors’ lives—it never simply
kicked in at the point of death. Giving was therefore very much a part
of living.
2
San Pedro and Santa Comba: Churches
and their Proprietors
Round about 956 the monk Odoíno ran off with a woman called
Onega, someone his mother had brought to their family monastery of
Santa Comba on the gentle banks of the River Limia in southern Galicia
(see Figs. 2.1, 2.2). This was but one colourful episode in Odoíno’s
more than usually colourful story, at least the way he told it himself.
Not long after, he was back at Santa Comba, only to be thrown out
when Onega accused him of plotting against Count Rodrigo in the
stormy days of the late 950s. The monastery was thereupon handed
over to a woman called Guntroda, in response to her request, but
a change of heart by the count—on his deathbed—allowed Odoíno
to recover it again. At that point Odoíno’s relative, Elvira, abbess
of the nearby San Martín of Grau, appeared on the scene and took
over Santa Comba by force (per vim), although by 982 Odoíno was
insisting that he had transferred ownership of Santa Comba from
himself to the much larger Galician monastery of Celanova, together
with liturgical vessels and vestments, appurtenant lands, a nearby farm,
and another church.¹
This very complicated story hangs on the ups and downs of family
interest. Odoíno had acquired Santa Comba from his father, Abbot
Vermudo, probably round about 930, and Vermudo in his turn had
got it from his own father, a deacon also called Odoíno. The first
Odoíno had received it, as a ruin, from his relative Count Odoario who,
according to tradition, had been given large tracts of land to ‘colonize’
in Portugal and Galicia by King Alfonso III of Asturias round about
872—one of the major stories of recent ‘repopulation’ that characterize
¹ Cel265; for Celanova, see above, p. 23. For a rather similar story, see Sob-
122 (960).
San Pedro and Santa Comba 37
Figure 2.1 The river Limia, near Santa Comba
Figure 2.2 Santa Comba
tenth-century northern Spanish texts.² In fact, the woman Guntroda

had appeared some time before the 950s, holding the title deeds of
² See above, pp. 26–9: we do not have to suppose that the land had been completely
deserted; rather that it changed hands and was put to new uses. For the story, cf.
38 San Pedro and Santa Comba
Santa Comba, which she refused to hand over to the monk Odoíno
when he took up his inheritance. She was eventually persuaded to do
so by Bishop Rosendo of Celanova, at the request of King Ramiro II,
to whom Odoíno had given very substantial gifts (mules, cloth, silver,
and 520 cattle), alongside his petition for a resolution of this dispute
with Guntroda. Although the dispute was apparently settled in favour
of Odoíno, she re-appeared in order to claim the monastery at the time
of his defection with Onega and clearly sustained an interest in it for
several decades.
We know this story from a very long and rambling account, sup-
posedly in the words of Odoíno, preserved in the Celanova archive.
Parts of this account are obscure but the chronology is credible and
fits with the broad picture of politics in north-west Spain that can be
derived from other sources. Whether we should believe all the detail
is another question but, whatever view we take on that, the story is a
very strong statement of sustained interest in the ownership of a small
religious house and its lands by a monk, his father, his grandfather,
and a relative of the latter; his mother and at least one other female
relative also demonstrated a sustained, indeed forceful, interest. As for
Guntroda: she was the daughter of Count Gutier’s sister and hence
the cousin of Bishop Rosendo (Gutier’s son); she was perhaps distantly
related to Odoíno himself.³ If we had her story, things might look
different: from her point of view, she may have attempted to sustain
regular life at Santa Comba across the middle years of the tenth century,
but have been constantly thwarted by the intrusions of the reckless
and disobedient Odoíno. Unfortunately we do not have her story, but
there is enough in Odoíno’s tale to see that control of religious hous-
es, as well as appurtenant property, could be hotly contested between
members of the Galician aristocracy in the tenth century. In this case,
physical possession of the casa (the religious house) features again and
again. That the conflicts were between aristocrats is evident from the
C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires,

1966), 223–26; idem, ‘Repoblación del Reino Asturleonés’, in his Viejos y nuevos estudios
sobre las instituciones medievales españolas, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1976–80), ii. 581–790, at
610–17. For the even earlier Bishop Odoario and el ciclo odoariano, see A. Isla Frez, La
sociedad gallega en la alta edad media (Madrid, 1992), 54–61.
³ Otherwise, Abbess Guntroda of Pazó: Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega, 122; cf. M. del
C. Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, una Aristócrata del Siglo X (La Coruña, 1998), 127–8,
131–2; Cel2 (942), Cel357 (949), Cel7 (950). Cf. Abbess Guntroda in Cel505 (935)
and Cel416 (959).
Figure 2.3 Selected churches and monasteries of north-western Iberia
parts played by king and count, as also from the size of the associated
properties.
Although this is a more than usually detailed story, the case is
not unique. Hereditary interests stretching back to the time of Count
Odoario’s ‘colonization’ were still the basis of credible, and successful,
claims to property a century later. Only 25 km to the east of Santa
Comba, the ownership of the church of San Pedro de Laroá was
disputed between Brother Vimara and Count Menindo Gundisalviz
shortly before 1054 (see Fig. 2.3). Eventually Vimara, together with
twelve suitable witnesses, as directed by the judges of a local court,
swore an oath that his ancestors had rebuilt the ruined church and
that their children and grandchildren had endowed it, around 900,
with 20 metres of land all round the church, for the purposes of
burial, and a further 120 metres all round to generate income for the
clerics resident there.⁴ This oath was successful and Vimara’s claim was
⁴ Cel267, Cel271 (909)—a highly suspect document; see Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega,
98. Strictly, 12 and 72 passus respectively all round the church, where a passus was a
notional five Roman feet, and a Roman foot conventionally 33 cm. For the 72 passus,
sustained, although continuity of family interest across the intervening

150 years is certainly not demonstrated by the surviving texts.⁵ What
is particularly striking is the fact that family interest was sufficient
legitimation. It is also interesting that the ten named children and
grandchildren of the founder were supposed to have been in control
of San Pedro back in 900. In the meantime, during the tenth century,
through processes which do not survive in the record, San Pedro had
acquired a significant endowment of local farms; some of these were
deserted by the turn of the century, but were restocked by Vimara, who
arranged for the church and its property to be transferred to Celanova
after the death of his successor, the son of a benefactor. However, there
was still dealing in portions of these farms, by other parties, in the early
twelfth century.⁶ The continuing market in this land may suggest that
Vimara’s gift was far from total. What is important for our purposes,
however, is that those in charge of the Celanova archive thought the
eleventh-century demonstration of the donor’s family interest sufficient
to establish Celanova’s own property title.
Much farther to the east, in the very different landscape of the meseta,
similarly long-standing interests are evidenced. On 1 May 974, King
Ramiro III confirmed the powerful monastery of Sahagún in possession
of the churches of San Esteban in Boadilla and Santa Columba in Melgar,
in the valleys of the rivers Sequilo and Cea to the south and south-west
of Sahagún (see Fig. 2.3).⁷ More than thirty years before, an abbot
called Lubila had given San Esteban, which was part of his own family
property, to the community of another church in Melgar, San Clemente;
separately, in the 950s or 960s, a woman called Fakilo had then given the
monastery of San Clemente itself, which she had acquired from her own
family, to Sahagún. Meanwhile Lubila’s relative, Bishop Gundisalvo,
claimed ownership of San Clemente for his own monastery of Santiago;
as a result, a deal was done that San Clemente should belong to the
bishop’s monastery of Santiago but its dependent church of San Esteban
should be transferred to the monastery of Santa Columba. Gundisalvo’s
successor then gave San Clemente to Sahagún, in 967, and the monks of
Santa Columba gave their church and San Esteban to Sahagún in 973.
see also, for example, Sam99 (?854), Sam226 (947); cf. Portugaliae Monumenta Historica
a saeculo octavo post Christum usque ad quintum decimum, 3, Diplomata et Chartae, ed.
A. Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo and J. J. da Silva Mendes Leal, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1868),
LIV (944), LXIII (951).
⁵ See also Cel139 (1025–40), Cel272 (993), Cel270 (1045), Cel299 (1046).
⁶ Cel269 (1106). ⁷ See above, p. 23, for Sahagún.
Lubila’s brother Tajón also claimed—unsuccessfully—that his rightful

inheritance had been diverted to Sahagún.⁸ This is a complicated series
of events with two apparently different families with interests in a
group of nearby churches. Again, we see family control of churches and
monasteries, and continuing expectations of control, across the tenth
century, only to be broken by the acquisitions and proprietary interests
of a very powerful monastery like Sahagún.
Much farther north, at Limanes near Oviedo, north of the Cantabri-
an mountains, a man called Aurelio built a church dedicated to Santa
María in the early tenth century. He passed that church on to his
cousin Dulcidio, who in his turn passed it on to Aurelio’s grand-
son, the priest Artemio. Artemio restored the church, and divided
the attached property; he gave some of it to the church of San-
tos Pedro y Pablo, which was in the care of his son Esteban and
daughter Teudildis, and the rest—all the houses and appurtenant
land—to the priest Modesto, on 26 December 990, with the instruc-
tion that he should pass it on to someone following the monastic
life, preferably from their families.⁹ Here again, this time in an area
without the tradition of colonization, family interest in churches is
explicit—although not always contested. In this case, however, we
do not see tenth-century absorption by a more powerful religious
federation, but just the continuing proprietary interests of small-scale
clerics.
Transactions in churches and monasteries constitute approximately
13% of known ninth- and tenth-century transactions (bearing in mind
that the total number of transactions recorded in surviving ninth- and
tenth-century northern Spanish collections is just over 2,000), although
in practice the proportion of total transactions may well have been
higher.¹⁰ These church transactions cluster in the period 940–970.
This time-band certainly reflects the greater availability of records from
that generation but the proportion in the decade of the 940s (which has
nearly a quarter of all recorded transactions in churches or monasteries)
is extremely high: it constitutes nearly a third of transactions of any
⁸ S276, S77 (941), S126 (950–67), S246 (967), S270 (973). ⁹ Ov24.
¹⁰ See above, pp. 22–5, for transaction numbers. Transactions in farms and estates
with names like ‘Villa Sant N’, a characteristically Galician formulation, probably
involved the transfer of churches too, which would increase the proportion, although
they are not specified in the texts; for example, Cel33 (936) ‘villare de Sancto Martino’,
Cel418 (941) ‘villa de Sancto Petro’, Cel357 (949) and Cel529 (953), both ‘villa de
Sancta Eolalia’.
Table 2.1 Transactions in churches and monasteries, in ninth and tenth
centuries, by number, by source collection, per decade
% of total
transactions
Cel Sob Sam L OD S C SM Ar A V T Ov per decade
9th Century 5 0 3 3 0 0 0 11 0 0 3 5 0 30
900–09 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 15
910–19 0 0 0 6 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 18
920–29 5 0 1 1 0 6 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 19
930–39 7 1 1 2 0 1 1 2 2 0 0 0 0 11
940–49 6 0 2 8 0 4 19 12 0 0 3 2 1 27
950–59 7 3 1 3 0 5 10 12 0 1 0 0 0 13
960–69 1 5 1 3 0 3 12 2 0 0 0 1 0 10
970–79 0 0 3 4 0 2 4 1 1 0 0 0 0 9
980–89 3 0 3 3 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 7
990–99 4 2 2 4 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 1 1 14
% of 9th- and 10th-
century
transactions 16 8 28 7 2 5 25 31 12 4 14 13 8 13
kind that were made in that decade, way above the 13% mean (see
table 2.1). Transactions in churches were a little above the 13% mean in
the 910s and 920s, while those in the 960s, 970s, and 980s were a little
below; the 940s, for whatever reason, saw an increase in the transfer of
ownership of churches and monasteries.
There appear to be no especial regional differences in the chronology
of these transactions. There is, however, a marked difference in the
regional incidence of church transactions. The very large collection of
Sahagún charters includes an exceptionally low proportion (5%, against
the mean of 13%), and the proportion of León records is also well below
the mean (7%). Proportions of church transactions in Cardeña, San
Millán, and Samos collections are all well above the mean (25%, 31%,
and 28% respectively).¹¹ These deviations are so striking that they are
likely to be significant, and will be explored below.¹²
Just as important as the fact of regional difference is the fact that
virtually every collection of tenth-century charters across northern Spain,
large or small, includes records of transactions in which non-royal, as well
as royal, families are seen to be controlling churches and monasteries:
¹¹ See above, pp. 23–5, for these monasteries. ¹² See further below, p. 63.
Figure 2.4 The Liébana valley
they founded them, they also dealt in them, in entirety and in portions,
and they argued about rights of control. Family control is evident from
as early as surviving records begin, and the implications are that it was
no new thing then.¹³ Already in 829, in the mountains of Cantabria
in the far north, a father and son transferred a monastery they owned:
Valeriano and his father Teodario gave their monastery of San Salvador
at Osina (off the gorge that leads into the Liébana valley) to the abbot and
monks of Villeña, high on the hillsides of the Liébana (see Fig. 2.4).¹⁴
The narratives of other charters locate similar transactions in the 840s,
870s, and maybe 880s, in the different regions of Galicia and Castile;
some of these are suspect records, but it is nevertheless significant that
the writers chose to record such dealings as family dealings and to place
them in the mid- and later ninth century.¹⁵ Christian culture of the
¹³ J. Orlandis, ‘Los monasterios familiares en España durante la alta edad media’,

in J. Orlandis, Estudios sobre instituciones monásticas medievales (Pamplona, 1971 [first
published 1956]), 125–64, at 131, 145, argued that the family monastery of the ninth
and tenth centuries ultimately had Visigothic origins; this is probably too concerned with
the distant past, particularly in view of the new foundations that can be tracked in the
ninth and tenth centuries; however, some foundations were clearly several centuries old.
¹⁴ T6.
¹⁵ Cel208 (842), Cel271 (879), SM10 (871—a suspect record), Cel242 (884, perhaps
more correctly dated in the 930s).
tenth and eleventh centuries expected families to have had proprietary

interests in churches, and believed that many interests had pre-tenth-
century origins. As surviving records increase, as they did in the tenth
century, the examples multiply. In 934 the Galician Count Gutier and
his wife divided their properties, which included churches, between
their children; and in 931 a man called Pedro and his wife swapped with
Velasco and his wife their villa of Verín (near the Portuguese border)
for another at Cameledia with its church of San Pedro; one document
from 976 formally records the transfer of several churches from father
to son—perhaps this unusual use of the written instrument for transfer
within the family indicates some concern that hereditary transmission
might no longer be secure; in the following decade, another couple,
Sandino and his wife Eiloni, were swapping churches, this time their
villa and church of San Salvador for another in Quiroga with its church,
also San Pedro.¹⁶ Transferring our glance from Galicia to the meseta, the
priest Gonzalo failed to keep control of his family church of San Justo;
a man called Mateo and his brothers argued about control of the church
of San Esteban on the river Cea, and lost, in 946; another called García
Refugano lost the battle to keep his family church in Tubilla del Lago in
Castile in 957; but twenty years later a man and his daughter gave their
villa in Palencia, with its monastery of San Pedro and San Pablo, to the
bishop of León, a property which had come to them from the man’s
father and grandfather.¹⁷ These family interests were ‘lay’, ‘clerical’, and
both: we should not try to distinguish too precisely between the lay and
the ecclesiastical. Families could well be both: Mantella and his wife
Leocadia, together with their son Gundisalvo, who was a priest, gave
away their church of Santa María, in 949, to the abbot of a small local
monastery in Castile and the abbot’s brother.¹⁸
T H E C H U RC H : S T RU C T U R E A N D AU T H O R I T Y
Given the plethora of anecdotes about proprietary interests, one might

well ask about the shape of ecclesiastical authority in the tenth century
in northern Spain. There was no neat system of parishes, each with its
¹⁶ Cel478, Cel460, Sam61 (cf. the disputes over control noted in Sam44 (975),
Sob109 (986–99), Sob130 (992)), Cel487 (983)).
¹⁷ C35 (941), Li192, C90, Lii451 (977); cf. Lii330 (960), Lii432 (974).
¹⁸ C65.
exclusive territory and with a parish priest to care for the souls of residents
and to provide sacraments like the important rites of baptism and burial.
Indeed, it looks as if it was the twelfth century before such a system
began to be put in place.¹⁹ There seem, however, to have been plenty
of churches and monasteries—quite a variety of religious institutions,
as well as a large number. There were bishops too, about a dozen in the
kingdom of Asturias/León by 900.²⁰ In these texts bishops usually appear
as authority figures; we can see them consecrating new foundations and
occasionally taking disciplinary action, as Bishop Sisnando did when he
confiscated property from a monk who had committed sexual offences.²¹
With an urban or proto-urban base, these were men who consorted with
kings and attended high-level political meetings, men with substantial
personal property interests, men who disposed of churches to this or
that incumbent.²² However, the extent to which the appointments
they made arose from their episcopal responsibilities rather than from
their personal property interests is extremely unclear.²³ When Adosinda
founded the church of San Pedro (Sorga), she explicitly put it under
the control of the bishop, so that, whatever priest or deacon should
follow the holy life there, he should acknowledge that it was the bishop’s
place.²⁴ The block of churches that Bishop Froilán assigned to Sahagún’s
¹⁹ J. Orlandis, ‘La elección de sepultura en la España medieval’, in J. Orlandis,

La Iglesia en la España visigotica y medieval (Pamplona, 1976), 257–306, at 283–4;
J. Orlandis, ‘Reforma eclesiastica en los siglos XI y XII’, in J. Orlandis, La Iglesia (first
delivered 1974), 307–48. Cf. A. Isla Frez, La alta edad media. Siglos VIII-XI (Madrid,
2002), 248–51, on reforming councils in the eleventh century; and C. Estepa Díez, in
‘La discussione sulla lezione Sotomayor’, Cristianizzazione ed Organizzazione ecclesiastica
delle Campagne nell’alto medioevo. Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto
medioevo, 28 (1982), 670–83, at 679–80, on the fact that Christianization was still in
progress in the Basque country c.1200.
²⁰ Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 239–43, cf. 247–8; see Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega,
75–93, 100, and S. Castellanos and I. Martín Viso, ‘The local articulation of central
power in the north of the Iberian peninsula (500–1000)’, Early Medieval Europe, 13
(2005), 1–42, at 40–1, for shifting episcopal sees in Galicia and Castile respectively.
²¹ Sam128 (849), the suspect Cel271 (909); Lii479 (980).
²² Li16 (878–904), T17 (885), S30 (922), for example; but see Castellanos and
Martín Viso, ‘The local articulation of central power’, 28, who refer to bishops without
see on the Cantabrian coast.
²³ Cf. Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 243; and Estepa Díez, ‘La discussione’, 678–9:
churches in the Liébana in the ninth century were ‘at the margins’ of episcopal
organization.
²⁴ Cel247 (927): ‘sub manibus pontificis domni Rudesindi episcopi ita ut qui in ipso
loco in vita sancta perseveraverint tam presbiter, confessor vel quem diaconus ibidem
duxerit … ipsius pontificis sit in eadem prefato loco’. Isla Frez argued that she made the
grant to Rosendo as abbot of Celanova rather than as bishop, Sociedad gallega, 83.
control in 999 probably derived as much from his episcopal authority as

from his proprietary interest.²⁵ But these cases are unusual; most ‘gifts’
of churches that bishops made to priests or monasteries could as easily
have come from their personal, as from their episcopal, resources, as
is sometimes explicitly indicated.²⁶ Contemporaries probably did not
differentiate between episcopal and proprietary power on the ground,
however. More to the point is the fact that, powerful as bishops were,
clearly many other people, lay and ecclesiastical, exercised the power of
distributing churches and making appointments too. Bishops do not
seem to have exercised control over all establishments within their regions
and it is common for Spanish historians nowadays to stress that the power
of bishops was declining from the later Visigothic period and probably
continued to decline until the eleventh-century reform took root.²⁷
The records note the existence of many churches (ecclesiae), often with
an associated priest specified; such priests might hold their churches by
agreement with the owner, passing them on to their own offspring or
family.²⁸ The owner could be a bishop, or a monastic community, or a
lay family, or even the priest himself, and the owner usually exercised
an interest in any property that went with the church. Appurtenant
property is frequently specified. The priest Cagito was ‘given’ the church
of Santo Tomé to ‘live in’ by the owner, the monastery of Samos; when
this priest neared the end of his life, he gave the church back to the
monastery, together with gifts of his own, and also all the property he
and the church had acquired through gifts made for the salvation of
souls.²⁹ ‘Church’ in these cases often meant more than a single edifice;
a church complex frequently seems to have included dwellings—casas;
that of San Román y San Mamed at Mao in Teixeira had a church,
houses, a food store, a cook house, a wine or cider press, and orchards,
as well as further appurtenant property.³⁰
Many establishments were called ‘monasteries’; monasteries were
of different sizes, large and small, and size must have affected their
²⁵ S359. The sanction of S29 (922) appears to refer to episcopal jurisdiction.

²⁶ A bishop’s personal interests: Ov11 (948), S253 (969), for example; the bishopric’s
interests are sometimes in effect detailed in the ‘restorations’ of churches that kings made
to bishops, e.g. Lii508 (985).
²⁷ Castellanos and Martín Viso, ‘The local articulation of central power’, 8–9, 40–1;
Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega, 96–100, has an elegant demonstration that interpolations into
tenth-century texts were included to suggest the exercise of episcopal powers.
²⁸ See, for example, Sob48 (994); and cf. Susan Wood, The Proprietary Church in the
Medieval West (Oxford, 2006), 541–3.
²⁹ Sam217 (973). ³⁰ Sam99 (?854).
character. The major house of Cardeña had 204 monks named in 921,
while the less substantial local monasteries of San Martín of Modúbar
had 33 cited in 975 and that of Piasca in Cantabria had 36 nuns and an
abbess in 941;³¹ one would expect a structured day at such institutions.
However, very much smaller numbers are also often encountered: that
of Santa Olalla de Airas had eleven in 976 (two priests, two brothers,
five sisters, an abbot, and an abbess); that at Santa Columba (Melgar)
had twelve, and that at San Sebastián y Santa Gadea had six.³² The
word monasterium encompasses many different kinds of institution,
from large and regular to small and informal, from the property-owning
corporation to the family enterprise. Indeed, lay religious households,
often headed by a confessus, must have been very difficult to differentiate
from a small monastery.³³ For that matter, the extent to which the
small monastery was actually any different from a ‘church’ is extremely
uncertain—a point reinforced by the facts that the same foundation
may sometimes be called a church and sometimes a monastery and that
some (although not necessarily all) ‘churches’ appear to have had small
resident communities.³⁴ The church at Limanes, discussed above, was
explicitly to pass to someone who ‘followed the monastic life’.³⁵
The other side of the problem of differentiating ‘church’ from
‘monastery’ is the problem of establishing the extent to which a
³¹ C14, C167, S79.

³² OD20, S270 (973), S257 (970); see further below, pp. 176–81, for male and
female communities.
³³ See below, pp. 107–8, 179–80, for discussion of these lay households.
³⁴ S77 and S126; S39 (930), S257; cf. ‘churches’ with associated abbots: Cel62 (935),
Sam226 (947), C108 (963). Cf. the comments of Orlandis, ‘La elección’, 319, on the
difficulty of differentiating between churches and monasteries; also Isla Frez, La alta
edad media, 252; and M. I. Loring García, ‘Nobleza e iglesias propias en la Cantabria
altomedieval’, Studia Historica. Historia Medieval, 5 (1987), 89–120, at 90–1. (For
similar issues in the English church at a comparable period, see J. Blair and R. Sharpe,
‘Introduction’, in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds.), Pastoral Care before the Parish (Leicester,
1992), 1–10, and also the cautionary words of H. Pryce, ‘The Christianization of
society’, in W. Davies (ed.), From the Vikings to the Normans (Oxford, 2003), 138–67,
at 147–9.) Isla Frez points out that traditionally the distinction between churches and
monasteries was that, unlike churches, monasteries did not have to give up a third of
their income to the bishop, a distinction that was in fact very unlikely to have been
operative in the ninth and tenth centuries, although Sob48 (994) refers to it; for the
elusive third, Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega, 93–9. For debate on whether this third had
in fact been operative in the Visigothic period, see M. Sotomayor, ‘Penetración de la
iglesia en los medios rurales de la España tardorromana y Visigoda’, Cristianizzazione
ed Organizzazione ecclesiastica delle Campagne nell’alto medioevo. Settimane di Studio del
Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto medioevo, 28 (1982), 639–70, at 650–2.
³⁵ See above, p. 41.
priest might function independent of a residential community in this

pre-parochial world. Given that many clearly lived within religious
communities, large and small, and that some must have lived in great
aristocratic households, was it ever the case that a single priest served
a church? Clearly this is implied where appointments were made by a
monastery owning a distant church, as in Cagito’s case above. But many
transactions of gift or sale were made by or to priests apparently acting
as independent agents, and a good proportion of those transactions
related to churches. Some of the transacting priests clearly acted with
or for small religious communities; some acted with wife and children;
some acted with their wider family; and some acted alone.³⁶ While
it remains possible that there was always an unmentioned resident
community in the immediate neighbourhood, on balance it is extremely
unlikely that this applies to every single transaction made by a sole
priest or a priest with his nuclear family. It must be likely that some
churches simply had one resident associated priest, even if there was
sometimes a lay or religious owner in the more distant background.
What we cannot know, however, is the number or proportion of
such cases.
One would expect priests, be they independent or part of a com-
munity, to have gone to the local bishop for ordination, but there is
little direct evidence of this. That apart, authority over churches and
monasteries seems to have been conditioned by proprietary interests.
This impression is partly, of course, an effect of the available records,
records which are overwhelmingly concerned with property interests.
That may be so, but they nevertheless clearly provide evidence of hun-
dreds of cases of primarily proprietary control. The owner gave away or
sold church or monastery as he or she saw fit, or fractions of a church or
monastery, as we have seen above. The owner received, or allocated to
another body, the income associated with a religious foundation. The
owner seems to have had a major influence over the appointment of
incumbent priest or abbot.
And for whom were the services of a church provided, and indeed
what services? Clearly they were available for the owner, and it is not
unreasonable to suppose that tenants might benefit where the owner had
a nearby or surrounding estate. There are quite a few indications that
others too might benefit, that is those who lived in the neighbourhood
³⁶ For examples: A19 (950); Li88 (930); SM52 (949); Cel222 (954), Sob8 (964),
S350 (996).
of a church or a monastery.³⁷ We know that priests and monks wrote

documents on behalf of local proprietors, great and small, including
documents recording transactions between purely lay persons.³⁸ This
happened in all areas, and was already a common practice in the late
ninth and early tenth centuries, that is before the flood of transactions
of the 930s and thereafter. There are also occasional explicit comments,
such as that invoking the duty of the sacerdos at the church of Santiago
de Toldaos to proclaim the Gospel to the people; or that relating the
need of the many lay heirs of a ‘founder’ for someone to teach them; or
the involvement of the peasants of Villabáscones in Castile in endowing
their local church—very much a community enterprise.³⁹ To some
extent, priests and churches served local communities, just as small
monasteries might also do.
What services were provided for these nearby residents? Clearly
practical services, sometimes, like writing. And teaching, as requested
above—moral and spiritual guidance. There must also have been some
element of pastoral care, even if it was a rather distant saying of prayers
for the people, since there are many references to pastoral care within
the charter texts: Felix and Riquilo made grants to San Cosme y San
Damián in 943 and 955, respectively, specifically in order that the
monastery should manage the care of their souls.⁴⁰ The particular rite
of baptism, on the other hand, is rarely mentioned, and so we do
not know how this was organized in the tenth century; reference to
burial is relatively common, although it is clear that people had a free
choice of burial place at this period and although we know much
more about aristocratic burial than that of peasants.⁴¹ Endowment of
both churches and monasteries with vestments and liturgical vessels
³⁷ I. Álvarez Borge, Poder y relaciones sociales en Castilla en la edad media (Valladolid,

1996), 54–5, 69–70, argues that early churches in Castile were local community
churches, but that such churches increasingly became detached from the community as
they gained in power. For communities, see below, pp. 193–202.
³⁸ See further below, pp. 95–6.
³⁹ Sam128 (849), Sam170 (930), C45 (944–50) and below, p. 52; cf. C52 (945),
C54 (945); and cf. Álvarez Borge, Poder, 55, on the Villabáscones case.
⁴⁰ Li175: ‘ut pro animam meam curam gerant’; Lii293.
⁴¹ See further below, pp. 121–5. See Orlandis, ‘La elección’, especially 264–8, on
freedom of choice. The several rock-cut cemeteries of the meseta may well have a
bearing on peasant burial in the early middle ages, but their chronology is in need of
re-assessment; Julio Escalona points out to me that a site like Revenga (Castile), with its
associated traces of a church, must have a substantial tenth-century phase; see J. Escalona
Monge, Sociedad y territorio en la alta edad media castellana (Oxford, 2002), 174. M.
McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca,
sufficient to allow celebration of festivals and the saying of mass was

not uncommon, but how far there was regular Sunday celebration is
unclear.⁴² Although this would obviously have been normal within the
monasteries, how far, if at all, the laity could and did participate is
unknown.
C H A N G I N G R E L AT I O N S H I P S
The situation was by no means static, however, during the tenth

century: there were shifting patterns of proprietorship and there was
growing competition for authority. Most of the recorded transactions
in churches and monasteries are just that—transactions concerned with
existing structures and communities. We do not hear much about the
moment of foundation because that was usually in the distant past. As
noted above, this moment was often located in the period of real or
supposed colonization, something that happened in the time of King
Alfonso III (866–911), or even earlier, when farms were being stocked
and new buildings constructed. Such is the case of Abbot Senior, who
founded several churches in Galicia before the 840s, and passed them to
his cousin; or the case of Bishop Ataúlfo, who constructed a church of
San Juan Bautista on the coast near Oviedo in the late ninth century as
a family burial place, an establishment which was still changing hands
within his family in 948.⁴³
There were, however, some new foundations in the first half of the
tenth century, made by lay couples as well as by clerics. Adosinda and
her husband founded the basilica of San Pedro in Sorga sometime
before 927, and provided a very large endowment in order to establish
regular prayers for herself, her husband, and her children. Bishop Diego
built houses and churches near Valpuesta, in the mountains of Castile,
and bought land from his brother as an endowment, all of which he
transferred to the monastery of Valpuesta in 940. Fafila’s son Egas
founded the church of San Vicente at Louredo on the River Miño
north west of Celanova, sometime before 952, when his father gave it
farms, vineyards, orchards, stock, a silver cross and liturgical vessels, a
Psalter, and other books. Churches founded by the ‘men’ (homines) of
1994), 123, points out that it is very unclear if parish priests in France said prayers for
the dead before the late eleventh century.
⁴² Cel247, for example. ⁴³ Cel208 (842), Cel271 (879), Ov11.
Ermegildo and Eldonza in Galicia must have been established in the 950s
or 960s.⁴⁴ People were still founding family churches and monasteries
until mid-century (or at least we can still see them doing so); after the
950s, records of such foundations disappear. While there may of course
be unrecorded cases, it looks as if families stopped expressing religious
commitment in this way in the middle of the century. As we shall see,
they were more likely to express it by making a donation to an existing
major church or monastery.⁴⁵
Although there is a certain amount of information about the found-
ing of churches and about dealing in them, in fact most records of
transactions in family churches and monasteries are records of their
alienation from the family. Although lay ownership of churches con-
tinued throughout the tenth century into the eleventh and beyond,
from the 950s there was also a clear tendency for lay families to resign
their interests, although they may well have tried to reinforce their own
memorialization in the act of so doing, rather than abandon it.⁴⁶ Again
and again, a married couple or siblings or a mother and son give away
their church, or their villa with its church. Although there are records of
lay and ecclesiastical families dealing in churches and monasteries right
through the tenth century, what we hear about most is the donation of
churches and monasteries to the greater churches or monasteries. For
example, to take the decade of the 950s, San Millán records include
that of two brothers and their mother giving their church to a local
monastery, that of a married couple giving their church to the same
monastery, and that of two siblings and a cousin giving their church
to San Millán itself; Celanova records have a couple and their children
giving their villa and its church to Celanova, as did a family group of six;
Cardeña records have a man giving the inheritance that he acquired with
his sister, including a church, to Cardeña, as did a married couple and
a pair of sisters; Sahagún records have a woman giving her monastery
to Sahagún itself, as did a high aristocrat, and a couple of (related)
deacons who gave villas and associated churches; Sobrado records have
a couple making the key gift of the church and appurtenant property
⁴⁴ Cel247, V16, Cel558, Sam132 (978). ⁴⁵ See below, pp. 124–6.

⁴⁶ Orlandis, ‘Reforma eclesiastica en los siglos XI y XII’, argues that the main
movement of alienation came in the mid-eleventh century. This may well be the case,
but there are plenty of instances of alienation in other parts of western Europe before the
eleventh century; it was a long process and changed during its course; see C. J. Wickham,
The Mountains and the City: The Tuscan Appennines in the Early Middle Ages (Oxford,
1988), 43–7, 57, and Wood, Proprietary Church, e.g. 755.
to the monastic community of Sobrado itself.⁴⁷ Clearly, we can only

measure the records that happen to survive, and in those one might
expect donations to churches to predominate, but it is notable not only
that records of new private foundations disappear from the 950s, but
that records of alienation from lay owners increase. The records that we
have clearly suggest changes in practice.
What of the status of these founders, dealers, and donors? In most
cases we know their gender and we usually know whether they were
lay or clerical and if lay whether royal, comital, or other aristocrat.
On the basis of surviving material, the alienators were overwhelmingly
men, but nearly a quarter of cases involved married couples. In fact,
two thirds were religious of one sort or another, especially priests and
abbots. Nearly a third of the rest were kings or other royalty, as might be
expected; other lay aristocrats feature more frequently than counts, but
not as much as kings. It is quite rare to be able to suggest unambiguous
peasant participation in this movement—hardly surprisingly, since
these are transactions concerning estates. One can sometimes glimpse
peasant interest, however, as in the case of the villagers of Villabáscones,
twenty-four of whom endowed their local monastery of San Martín
with land in 944. Many of the twenty-four witnessed subsequent small
transactions and by 956 the community, as a body, was negotiating
with the abbot of San Martín about water rights—doubtless a pointer
to the increasing power of the abbot.⁴⁸ Here the proprietary interest is
that of the local community, or a section of it, not that of the family.
There are other cases of community action in relation to local churches,
although aristocratic interests are much more prominent in the texts.⁴⁹
CORPUS ET ANIMA
Many of the family churches and monasteries that went out of private
possession, then, were transferred by priests. It is interesting that a
⁴⁷ SM57 (950), SM70 (956), SM79 (959), Cel497 (950), Cel489 (953), C71/77
(950), C74 (950), C86 (954), S126 (950–67), S145 (955), S165 (959), Sob1 (952).
⁴⁸ See above, p. 49; C45, C87 (955), C89 (956), C108 (963); see also below, p. 204.
Castellanos and Martín Viso, ‘The local articulation of central power’, 41, argue that
many monasteries may have had pre-tenth-century peasant community origins.
⁴⁹ See further below, pp. 201–2. Note, however, that—both before 931 and in the
period 926–1100—J. A. García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aguirre, El dominio del monasterio
de San Millán de la Cogolla (siglos X a XIII) (Salamanca, 1969), 83–4, identified more peas-
ant than noble proprietors transferring churches to monasteries other than San Millán.
significant number of the charters recording alienation by priests include

formulas which suggest that—literally—the donor gave himself to a
monastery as well as any church and property that might be specified
by the text. The most striking of these giving words are those of
the common phrase trado animam et corpus (or corpus et animam),
as for example occurs in the record of the priest Quíntila’s gift of
13 February 945: ‘trado in primis anima et corpus proprium; deinde
ecclesie Sancte Marine et Sancti Iusti propria mea ratione’, ‘I give first
[to Abbot Esteban and all the monks living in Cardeña] my own soul
and body, and then my share of the church of Santa Marina and San
Justo [in Pesquera]’.⁵⁰ Also common are variations on the formula trado
memetipsum, as recorded of the priest Ariolfo on 30 March 945: ‘trado
in primis memetypsum; deinde ecclesie Sancte Crucis et Sancti Iuliani’,
‘I give myself first, and then the church of Santa Cruz and San Julián’.⁵¹
There are over 150 occurrences of these formulas in these texts, with
roughly equal numbers of each of the two main types. What are they
about? Do they record the donor’s entry into the power of the receiving
monastery, perhaps literally by entry into the monastery? Is this a way
of recording that a person joined the monastic community?⁵² The
association of these formulas with the transfer of churches by priests
to monasteries is particularly striking, and requires some exploration.
Orlandis characterized traditio corporis et animae as an indicator of
a particular quality of lay relationship with a monastery. He argued
that it denoted familiaritas, lay membership of the monastic family,
the abbot supporting the relationship by providing either spiritual
protection for the lay members, especially in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, or socio-economic support.⁵³ The former is not dissimilar to
the religious fraternities found in ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-century
German contexts (although Orlandis was arguing that there was a
specific quality to these relationships in Iberia that was not found
⁵⁰ C48; see above, p. xvi, for a warning that one should not expect classical Latin
grammar in these texts.
⁵¹ C49.
⁵² Susan Wood advises me that tradere seipsum does indeed often imply entry to
a monastic community in Bavaria and Italy in the eighth and ninth centuries (pers.
comm.); cf. Wood, Proprietary Church, 643 n.33, 670 n.68, 758 n.28.
⁵³ J. Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis et animae’’. Laicos y monasterios en la alta
(Pamplona, 1971), 217–378, at 254–63 and 309–38 especially. Cf. S. Moreta Velayos,
El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña. Historia de un dominio monástico castellano
(902–1338) (Salamanca, 1971), 102–4.
elsewhere in western Europe).⁵⁴ A careful look at occurrences within

our charter collections shows that, for tenth-century contexts, Orlandis
overemphasized the essentially lay character of this relationship, and
also that these apparently straightforward formulas conceal a range of
different gifts and circumstances.
First, corpus et anima, and then related formulas. Tenth-century
occurrences of corpus et anima come overwhelmingly from the Cardeña
collection, between 917 and 999 (a remarkable 75% of all cases in all the
collections considered here); the others are from Valpuesta, Albelda, San
Millán de la Cogolla (which include some pre-tenth-century examples),
Arlanza, and Liébana material.⁵⁵ This looks like predominantly Castilian
practice (see Fig. 2.5). The distribution is so skewed that it suggests that
these words arise from diplomatic habits, that is from habits of writing,
rather than that they indicate any distinctive kind of transaction. The
latter point is also made by the fact that charters in the Cardeña collection
which record gifts to other monasteries in the same period often use
different formulas.⁵⁶ Trado memetipsum, and variants, also occurs in
Cardeña material, of the second half of the tenth century, although
much less commonly (20% of all cases); other occurrences (of which
there are pre-tenth-century examples) are from San Millán, Valpuesta,
Liébana, Sahagún, León, Samos, Sobrado, and Celanova collections. In
other words, they come from the western meseta and Galicia as well as
from Castile, although nearly a third occur in San Millán material and
it would be fair to say that even this kind of formula is relatively rare in
collections from outside Castile.⁵⁷ That point is especially notable given
the very large numbers of charters from León, Sahagún, and Celanova.
Second, the destination of gifts recorded in these ways. Recipients are
virtually always abbots and never lay persons; the exceptions are gifts
made to two priests and a bishop.⁵⁸ The point may seem obvious but
⁵⁴ Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis et animae’’ ’, 220–1, cf. 263–8; see above, pp. 30–1
for German spiritual networks, and below, pp. 107–8, 177–8 for lay commitment.
⁵⁵ V25, A19, A21, Ar8, Ar9, Ar21, Ar23, Ar24, T76, but cf. also Portugaliae
Monumenta Historica, XXIII (919); Moreta Velayos, El monasterio de San Pedro de
Cardeña, 102, counted forty-seven Cardeña instances in the tenth century. The verb is
usually trado; very occasionally one finds offero (e.g. C162) or commendo (e.g. C117).
Further, arguable, cases are Sam210, of 907, from Samos in Galicia, which has the corpus
element only; and SM79, of 959, from San Millán, which has the anima element only.
⁵⁶ For example, C80 and C84, within a run of 950s charters using corpus et anima.
⁵⁷ Cf. also the doubtful charter Ov1, of 781, which has anachronistic insertions.
⁵⁸ Priests: C117 (964) and Cel442 (826); bishop: V18 (945), V33 (929–57), V34
(957).
Figure 2.5 Distribution of corpus et anima formulas
clearly these formulas are explicitly concerned with religious transactions,

and are overwhelmingly concerned with gifts to monasteries. The gifts
to the laity which feature in these collections are never recorded in this
way. Hence, a priori, the expectation that they may record entry to a
monastery is entirely reasonable.
Next, ranges of meaning. The entry of an individual donor to
a monastery is certainly on some occasions made explicit by the
accompanying text. For example, the priest Lázaro, along with family
members, gave his family church at Pedernales to Cardeña, and then
gave himself (anima et corpus) and his share of family property, in 946;
Salito, the founder of San Juan and San Millán (Henestra), sometime
before 947, gave himself and all his goods to the monastery and became
its abbot (tradi metipsum); the priest Citayo gave shares in his property
to the monastery of Abellar (León) and agreed to live under its rule in
955 (dono me ipsum); the man Flaino gave all his goods to the monastery
of Turieno in the Liébana in 959, and asked to be corrected, in the
monastery, if he were thereafter disobedient (concedo me); the priest
Vermudo was committed to the monastery of San Juan de Loyo by
his parents and ultimately, in 969, gave himself and all his property
to that community (me ipsum offero).⁵⁹ It is also sometimes explicitly

recorded that small monasteries gave themselves to larger monasteries,
using these formulas to express the gifts; in effect this must have meant
the transfer of property rights from the smaller to the larger institution
and presumably, ultimately but not immediately, the end of the smaller
institution. Hence, the abbot and ten monks of the former community
church of San Martín at Villabáscones gave themselves and properties
to Cardeña in 963 (corpus et anima), as did the abbess Argilo and
her family in 981 (also anima et corpus), and the abbot Adica and
six monks to the monastery of Albelda in 950 (animas et corpora).⁶⁰
The several documents recording ‘pacts’ between an abbot or abbess
and a group of men or women agreeing to lead the monastic life are
similar; they tend to use these formulas to record their commitment.
Agreement between twenty-seven women and Abbess Nonna (759, San
Miguel de Pedroso), eleven women and two men with Abbess Urra-
ka (959, Pedernales), another between thirty-three monks and Abbot
Azenari (975, Modúbar), all use the corpus et anima formula; another
between fifteen men and two women with Abbot Fulgaredo (871,
Galicia) simply says tradimus.⁶¹ The last three stress the future obedi-
ence of those making the agreement to their abbots and abbess. The
eleven people, including a priest, who gave themselves to the church
of an unlocated San Pedro in 918, renouncing everything and all their
property, may well be a comparable case.⁶²
It is therefore perfectly clear that these formulas implying transfer
of the person as well as the property were indeed used to record a
person’s entry into a monastery, along with an accompanying property
transaction, particularly in Castile. This is but one dimension of a
wide range of material which shows that it was a normal expectation
for monks and nuns who joined monasteries to join taking property
with them. The monk Nunila gave all his property to his monastery
in Marmellar de Arriba in 949; the monk Diego gave his private
church to Cardeña; Abbot Lope of Bezares in the Oca mountains
gave all his property to his monastery, sometime shortly after 964;
the widow Electa gave to the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor
⁵⁹ C57, SM46, Lii288, T56, SamS-7.

⁶⁰ C108 (see above, p. 52), C187, A19; cf. the early example (post 785) in Sam137.
⁶¹ SM1, C95, C167, Cel61.
⁶² T24 (perhaps Viñon, a dependency of San Martín of Turieno in the Liébana
valley). Cf. the suspect Ov1, a similar pact between twenty-six monks with an abbot and
a priest, which states that they renounced the world (abrenuntiamus seculum).
(just south of León) some lands and vineyards on behalf of her two
sons within that monastery.⁶³ The first three of these records use
person-donation formulas (i.e. corpus et anima or trado me); the latter
does not.
Most of the cases cited above use person-donation formulas in
sufficient numbers to demonstrate that they were clearly considered
appropriate for recording gifts made on entry to a monastic community.
However, it is equally clear that some such gifts were made that were
not recorded in this particular way. In 950 a couple gave their only son
to the monastery of Buezo, with a generous endowment; a priest gave
his entire property to a León monastery in 954 in order that he might
live there; a man called Airico provided for all his property to go to
Abellar if he entered that monastery—the point is nicely made.⁶⁴ Small
monasteries handed themselves over to larger monasteries too, without
using the formulas: Abbot Crescencio made arrangements in 947 to
give the brothers of the church of San Pedro and San Clemente, and
all their property, whether real estate or chattels, to Cardeña, although
this was to be after his own death; and the six monks of San Sebastián
y Santa Gadea gave themselves and all their goods to the monastery of
Santiago de Valdávida in 970.⁶⁵ It was not deemed essential to specify
gift of self, body, or soul in such cases, particularly in areas outside
Castile.
By contrast, completely different contexts for the use of person-
donation formulas are also apparent. Grants recorded in this way did
not necessarily involve the gift of churches; in fact, a greater number
(more than twice as many) records the transfer of other kinds of
property. Such gifts were made in order to ensure that prayers were
said for the donor or to ensure the burial of women and men at the
monastery—the body literally placed there by others.⁶⁶ Or they were
made in order to ensure practical support of some kind, like care in
old age or in widowhood.⁶⁷ Rather more comparably to the Orlandis
model, some cases seem to reflect the commitment of the laity—those
who continued as laity—to local monasteries. A family, based in Melgar
and Gordaliza (south of León), made grants and agreed to serve the
bishop of León, as their parents had done (see Fig. 2.3); a series of people
⁶³ C63, C91 (957), C113, Liii528 (989).

⁶⁴ V20, Lii278 (cf. Li121), Li126 (938). ⁶⁵ C60, S257; cf. Liii535 (990).
⁶⁶ C90 (before 957), C39 (942), C117 (964), C211 (999), perhaps Cel81 ‘ubi corpus
meum [sic] nunc quiescit’ (973).
⁶⁷ C117, Lii265 (954).
in the Liébana made grants to Abbot Opila of San Martín (Turieno)

between 946 and 962 and commended themselves to serve him; and
a man gave his residence and a vineyard to Valpuesta in 957, and
himself ten years later.⁶⁸ The women Riquilo and Simplicia and the
couple David and Regina made grants and accepted the patrocinium,
patronage, of the abbot of Abellar between 955 and 960.⁶⁹ All of these
instances use person-donation formulas but the meaning here is quite
different from the ecclesiastical cases. Rather than physically enter the
monastery, the donors accept a continuing relationship with it: they
become clients, accepting the abbot’s patronage and support within
the context of local society, as well as undertaking to make regular
returns to him.⁷⁰ Although they contain no comparably specific phrases
of service or patronage, such an explanation would fit many of the
otherwise unexplained occurrences of person-donation formulas very
well, particularly those that refer to gifts made by women and by peasant
couples, which account for 30% of Cardeña cases.⁷¹
It is clear, therefore, that these self-donation formulas cover a range
of different circumstances, from individual priests or lay persons join-
ing a monastic community and transferring their churches, through
small monasteries handing themselves over to larger institutions, to
lay people opting for monastic patronage (the texts stress that they
chose—elegimus —it), and to lay people securing burial or support
of some sort. The suggestion, therefore, that use of these formulas
might simply be a pointer to arrangements for joining a monastery,
or simply be a pointer to lay relationships with the community, will
not work; the range is much wider. Although in some cases the con-
text is clear, in many cases the material is just not specific enough
⁶⁸ Lii443 (976); T51–T55, T58, and perhaps T70 (964) and T71 (966); V35, V39.
⁶⁹ Lii293, Lii328, Lii326.
⁷⁰ Cf., without the formulas, Sam170 (930), in which the heirs transfer to an
alternative patronage, or S78 (941) on the extensive patronage of a church given to
two brothers; see further below, pp. 128–30, 149–54 for systematic discussion of these
relationships. For extensive treatment of comparable rural patronage systems in ninth-,
tenth-, and eleventh-century Italy, and of the way monastic patronage might ‘structure’
local relationships, see Wickham, The Mountains and the City, especially chapters 2,
7, 9; cf. also, in a study more focused on the monastery, B. H. Rosenwein, To Be
the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca,
1989), especially ch. 2, on ‘building family associations’.
⁷¹ Tiny proportions from most of the other collections, because these texts are much
more likely to specify service or patronage, or because, as in the case of San Millán,
donors tended to be priests or abbots, not small-scale laity.
for us to know with certainty which context is appropriate; however,

the relatively large proportion of gifts from couples and single women
(sometimes explicitly widowed) must make it very likely that many of
these otherwise-unexplained formulas conceal protection arrangements.
The latter occur in material from the Cardeña, León, Santo Toribio,
Valpuesta, Sahagún, Celanova, and arguably San Millán collections,
with over half from the first of these, as might be expected.⁷² The
beneficiaries are for the most part the monasteries of Cardeña, Abellar
(transactions of which are a major feature of the León collections),
Turieno (the origin of most of the tenth-century entries of the Santo
Toribio collection), and Valpuesta (also a bishopric), but the Cardeña
material includes comparable donations to six other, minor, monas-
teries, the San Millán material to four other monasteries, the León
material to the bishopric and a monastery just outside the city, and
the Sahagún material includes a group of donations to the far northern
monastery of Piasca, as well as a donation to the monastery at Boñar.
The date range of these transactions runs from the second quarter of
the tenth century to the end of the century.⁷³ The likelihood that
such arrangements result from the actions of abbots aiming to build
local clientship networks is reinforced by the fact that the properties
donated are local to the benefiting monasteries—for Cardeña they lie
in Castile, but often very close to the monastery itself (Cardeñadijo,
Castrillo, Orbaneja, and so on); for Abellar much lies in Marialba;
for Turieno in the Liébana valley; and for Valpuesta in the immediate
environs, such as Pobajas and Gruendes (see Figs. 2.3, 2.6).⁷⁴ It is also
significant that the properties donated are of small scale rather than
great estates (aristocratic donations did of course occur, but represent
different kinds of relationship); hence, one couple gives water rights in
⁷² Cardeña 24, León 7 (including patrocinium cases), Santo Toribio 8 (including

service cases), Valpuesta 5, Sahagún 2, Celanova 1, San Millán arguably 7 (though the
case for most of these is weaker); 17 refer to donations by females, 13 to those by couples,
22 to those by males, and two refer to mixed groups.
⁷³ Cardeña 932–94, San Millán (?872) 942–97, León 927–89, Sahagún 957–96,
Celanova 969, Turieno 946–62 during the abbacy of Opila, and Valpuesta 950–73,
largely during the episcopate of Diego. Cf. the comments of J. Gautier Dalché, ‘Le
domaine du monastère de Santo Toribio de Liébana: formation, structure et modes
d’exploitation’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 2 (1965), 63–117, at 65, 79–83.
⁷⁴ The Piasca material in the Sahagún collection (S153) is a different kind of case,
and relates essentially to the local relationships of Piasca, itself ultimately absorbed by
Sahagún in the early twelfth century.
Figure 2.6 The proximity of clientship networks to their patrons
the river Arlanzón, a quarter of a mill, and a garden; a man gives half
a field, half a vineyard, and a garden; another couple gives nine fields,
two gardens, and some buildings; two women give vineyards; another
couple gives animals; a man gives a cow, a calf, a goat, and six sacks of
grain; a woman gives a field, two vineyards, and a weir, and so on.⁷⁵
These are small-scale, local, patronage networks, networks that are to
do with the relationship between churches and peasants. The donors are
certainly above subsistence level and have some means, but they are not
wealthy people and they are certainly not aristocrats, a subject to which
I will return in a later context.⁷⁶
⁷⁵ C24 (932), C75 (950), C83 (953), Lii328 (960), V33 (929–57), T58 (961), V39
(967), SM102 (991).
⁷⁶ See further below, p. 207–13 for peasants; and for clientship, pp. 128–9, 160–3.
But there are also different threads here. Priestly donations of churches
to monasteries, particularly those made by priests in the Cardeña orbit,
were more likely to be recorded by use of the corpus et anima formula
than other formulas: using this formula, there are at least twenty-
two cases of the absorption by Cardeña of churches and monasteries
donated by priests and abbots in the period 917–81, particularly in
mid-century.⁷⁷ The principal mechanism used seems to have been that
of the priest or abbot formally joining the larger community. Something
of the same process is also apparent for other powerful foundations:
using these formulas, the church of San Pelayo at Desojo and that of
San Bartolomé of Vartical went to San Millán in the 950s; the house
of San Vicente went to Albelda in 950; a small monastery in Melgar
was given by its members to Sahagún in 973; and there were donations
of churches by priests and monks to Valpuesta, Sobrado, and Celanova
between 945 and 985.⁷⁸ The formulas are a useful pointer to the fact
that private churches and small monasteries were not simply being
alienated by their private owners but were being absorbed by the larger
monasteries during the tenth century.
P RO P R I E TA RY P O L I C I E S
Family interest in churches, monasteries, and ecclesiastical property

seems to have been the norm in northern Spain at the start of the
tenth century. This is consistent with trends in western Europe as
a whole before the eleventh century. Families founded churches and
monasteries in Spain, sometimes explicitly in order to perpetuate their
own memory, as they did in France, Germany, or Italy.⁷⁹ And they
⁷⁷ See also Moreta Velayos, El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña, 46–9, who counted
twenty-four churches and eight monasteries absorbed in the period 935–95—regardless
of formulas. Cf. other monasteries which absorbed churches in the same part of Castile:
Santa María at Rezmondo benefiting from two such grants in the late 960s; and
monasteries at Taranco, Mardones, and Henestra as similar beneficiaries in the San
Millán collection; C134, C139, (SM2, SM3, SM5—all ninth-century), SM18 (912),
SM52 (949), SM83 (959), SM113 (997).
⁷⁸ SM66, SM79, A19, S270, V18, Sob8, Cel558, Cel265; cf. T76; priests gave
themselves and their property to Arlanza in 982 but no churches are specified, Ar23,
Ar24. See above, pp. 40–1, for the Melgar case. See García de Cortázar, El dominio de
San Millán, 107–11.
⁷⁹ See F. Bougard, C. La Rocca, R. Le Jan (eds.), Sauver son âme et se perpétuer.
Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut moyen âge. Collection de l’école française
de Rome, 351 (Rome, 2005), passim, and above, p. 34.
often kept control of their foundations, or acquired an interest in others,

for many generations subsequently. In northern Spain we can see the
clear beginnings of the movement to transfer the ownership of such
foundations away from private hands, as the establishment of new family
churches came to a halt and the impulse to hand over private churches
gathered speed in the mid-tenth-century, well before the influence of
the eleventh-century reform movement.⁸⁰ The gift of a church to itself,
with its furnishings and appurtenant property, is a characteristic kind
of grant, especially in this mid-century phase—‘I give the church of
San Pelayo to the church of San Pelayo’, as it were.⁸¹ Whether or not
lay families were feeling uncomfortable about possession of religious
property by the year 1000 we cannot know, for much was still in private
hands at that date. However, the trend towards transfer was clearly well
under way.
Many of the beneficiary monasteries seem to have developed self-
conscious proprietary policies: they acquired more and more property,
but they also began to build up clientship networks among the local
peasantry and to absorb churches and monasteries into their own
communities; this process of establishing lay and ecclesiastical com-
mitment to the monastery is signalled by the use of person-donation
formulas, although it is recorded with and without them.⁸² By this
latter process, networks of ecclesiastical dependencies were established,
known as deganeas/decanias by the end of the century, in a trend that
was not dissimilar to the establishment of federations of monasteries
in Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries or the great federation
that became the family of Cluny in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies.⁸³ The monk Gaudinas, for example, gave Celanova the rent he
got from Celanova’s dependency (deganea) of Santa Olalla of Berre-
do in 999—wheat, rye, and millet, to the value of 115 modii, and
⁸⁰ See Wood, Proprietary Church, for full discussion of the changes.

⁸¹ V5 (?870), Cel569 (922), C43 (944), S105 (946), Sam226 (947), Sam93 (951),
Lii274 (954), Sob36 (964), for example.
⁸² In contrast, Sahagún is a classic case of accumulation of property in the tenth
century, without the particular interest in accumulating ecclesiastical institutions; see
J. M. Mínguez Fernández, El dominio del monasterio de Sahagún en el siglo X (Salamanca,
1980).
⁸³ For example, Cel503 (985), Liii576 (997), Cel353 (999); cf. Orlandis, ‘Los
monasterios familiares’, 150–6, 159–64; García de Cortázar, El dominio de San Millán,
82–4; Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 256; Loring García, ‘Nobleza e iglesias propias’.
For Irish federations, see K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (London,
1966), 57–90, although more recent scholarship would assign the development of most
federations a longer time-span than she did.
more than 160 sesters of wine.⁸⁴ At the time this growth of monas-
tic federations may have presented an even greater challenge to local
bishops.
These proprietary trends were widespread and occurred on relatively
modest as well as grander scales. The disproportionately large number of
transactions in churches that are recorded for the 940s is, however, very
striking.⁸⁵ Most of these (91%) transferred ownership of the church or
monastery from lay or ecclesiastical owner to a monastery, large or small.
(Two of the other cases involved disputes over control of churches with
monasteries—which makes a complementary point.⁸⁶) There seem to be
deep, underlying trends here, towards the accumulation of ecclesiastical
institutions by monasteries, for the pattern is as characteristic of Galicia
as of Castile, and of Cantabria as of the western meseta, and applies
almost as often to minor monasteries as to the great monastic houses.
However, as we have seen, some tenth-century monastic collections
include a very high proportion of church transactions, while others have
far fewer. The unusually high commitment of Samos, Cardeña, and
San Millán archives to recording their acquisition of churches and small
monasteries in the mid- and later tenth century suggests that some of
their abbots had a particular interest in encouraging the donation of
churches at this time; if not, one would expect similar proportions in
the contemporary records of nearby houses. We have already noted the
actions of Abbot Esteban I at Cardeña, Abbot Opila at Turieno, and
Bishop Diego at Valpuesta in mid-century; some individual abbots seem
to have pursued proprietary policies with particular vigour, developing
the local peasant clienteles at the same time as building up the networks
of dependent churches. If we might savour a Braudelian moment,
there is an extremely interesting complementarity here between the
underlying trend and the vigorous actions of some individuals in favour
of a few institutions.
All of this may seem to fall within the restricted province of purely
religious history. It is of course of great importance that certain monastic
institutions were developing a particularly entrepreneurial spirit in the
second half of the tenth century, not simply in relation to landed
resources but in relation to ecclesiastical property in the widest sense;
⁸⁴ Cel353 (999); Gaudinas and his cousin had previously sold this villa to Celanova,
Cel354 (989).
⁸⁵ See above, pp. 41–2, for proportions.
⁸⁶ The remaining cases in the 9% are gifts, respectively, to a priest and a deacon, S78
(941), Sam78 (948).
and that the most successful of them were rivals for bishops. However,
the development is of yet more significance than that, because the
growth of extremely powerful religious property-holding communities
forms the backdrop to local society and local politics throughout the
tenth century.
3
Dividing and Sharing Property
FA M I LY I N T E R E S TS
The widespread occurrence of family churches and family monasteries

is only one aspect of the distribution and exercise of property rights
within and across families. There is plenty of evidence of shared family
interests in all kinds of property in northern Spain at this time; this
is demonstrated many times, in all parts, and from beginning to end
of the century. For a flavour of this evidence, consider the following
cases: four siblings together sold some of the Cea water meadows, on
the meseta, to the monastery of Sahagún in 919; five brothers together
sold some salt lands in Castile to Abbot Gomessano in 932; much
farther to the west, in Galicia, a married couple sold Bishop Rosendo
two ninths of their fisheries in the river Miño, one ninth inherited
from a grandfather and the other from a grandmother, the text says; a
man called Andreas, with his wife Ikilo and his wife’s sister Sarrazena,
sold a portion of the hillside which had come to the two women
from their late brother; and in 994 two brothers and their two cousins
(one male and one female) sold Abbot Falconio (and his mother and
sister) some arable inherited from their family.¹ With a greater degree
of complication, a woman and her nephew sold her share of a garden
to the monastery of Buezo in the Bureba, in 950, and gave away her
brother’s share; the nephew was presumably the woman’s brother’s son
and stood to inherit both portions, had he not resigned his interest by
participating in his aunt’s transaction. Four years later, farther west near
León, a priest and his cousin sold the abbot of Santos Justo y Pastor
seven eighths of their millrace, leaving the final eighth in their uncle’s
hands. In the following decade, Abbot Silo made substantial gifts to
the Galician monastery of Sobrado, except for some of the land he
¹ S18, SM20, Cel494 (935), Li183 (944), C207 (congermani, that is, descended from
the same ancestors; cf. modern Spanish primo hermano, first cousin).
66 Dividing and Sharing Property
had inherited from his parents, which was reserved for his sisters and
cousins. And in 986 four relations of a married couple, four children of
different parents (called propingus et sobrinus [sic]), confirmed a grant of
land on the river Esla to the nunnery of Santa Marina; this grant, which
had been made by the couple ten years earlier, comprised a villa with
substantial, scattered, appurtenances to the west and south.² Clearly
brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts—and both small-scale and
great proprietors—could sustain shared interests in property and knew
very well that they did so.³
The control and transmission of property in these Spanish societies
raises some difficult questions. However, there were notional rules
about it, derived from sixth- and seventh-century Visigothic law, and
these rules are occasionally alluded to in charter texts.⁴ Clearly some
literate people maintained a sense of ancient legislation governing
these matters, and indeed knowledge of precise texts, but it would be
unreasonable to suppose that all proprietors (or even all record-makers)
did so; in any case, practice in the tenth century clearly deviated from
Visigothic prescription in many respects. In what follows, my intention
is to indicate actual practice, in so far as it can be deduced from
charter texts.
Whatever the notional rules, customary practice in these societies
clearly respected two main principles: first, landed property rights
normally passed from parents to children, male and female, peasant
and aristocrat;⁵ second, especially among aristocrats, husbands often
made additional provision for their wives. Hence, there are many
examples of portions reserved from the paternal inheritance for both
sons and daughters, as they also were from common marital property;
children of both sexes inherited from their mothers, who clearly in
some circumstances could have much more than a life interest in landed
² V26; Lii283 (millrace: recum de molino); Sob7 (961, suprinos); OD26 and OD21.
‘Villa’ can signify farm, estate, a smaller unit of property, settlement; see below,
pp. 196–7.
³ See E. Montanos Ferrin, La familia en la alta edad media española (Pamplona, 1980),
especially 161–300, in a study covering eighth to thirteenth centuries, on the exercise of
property rights by family groups and on the relative importance of different members of
the family; action by parents and children is strongly emphasized.
⁴ S190 (961), Sam132 (978), Cel375 (997), for example.
⁵ Cf. the comments of M. I. Loring García, ‘Sistemas de parentesco y estructuras
familiares en la edad media’, in J. I. de la Iglesia Duarte (ed.), La familia en la edad media.
XI semana de estudios medievales. Nájera, del 31 de julio al 4 de agosto de 2000 (Logroño,
2001), 13–38, at 35.
Dividing and Sharing Property 67
property; and children might act as executors for their father’s property.⁶
The marriage settlements of which we have detail, conveyed by husbands
to wives, included extensive landed property, as well as slaves and stock.
Count Gutier’s gift to his wife Ilduara included a long list of villas,
while Gonzalo’s gift to Elvira included lands and houses in at least eight
different locations.⁷
Family interest in property rights is common enough in western
European medieval societies, involving wider or narrower circles of
relatives; such interest most obviously came into play at the point
of property transfer, whether by lifetime gift, sale, or exchange, or
by inheritance at death. In this northern Spain was no different, but
Spanish texts are unusual in also frequently invoking the concept of
ownership ‘in common’, especially by the descendants of a common
grandfather (‘in common’ here refers to joint ownership of a delimited
plot or plots and not the very different case of common pasture rights
or common wood-collecting rights⁸). Property could be owned in
common by siblings, and by cousins, and the sharing could extend to
the offspring of siblings.⁹ Common ownership of this type seems to
have been more than the complex of family interests in the transmission
of heritable land, such as found in many societies, for it is described
in specific and distinctive terms; it seems to have been a special
category of ownership, found earlier and later, from north to south
and east to west.¹⁰ Hence, we find that in 943 Felix sold land to
⁶ Paternal inheritance: Sob59 (920), Cel498 (927), SM64 (952), Lii323 (959),
Sam S-3 (961), Ov24 (990), for example; common property: Cel169 (962); maternal
inheritance: Sob66 (917), Ov5 (917), Li225 (950), Lii282 (954), Cel440 (958), Cel492
(988); executors: Lii473 (980). A mother’s heritable property was not the same as the life
interest a widow might exercise in respect of her husband’s heritable property, for which
she held, as it were, a kind of guardianship on behalf of her children; see further below,
p. 73.
⁷ Cel576 (916), S207 (962); cf. Cel577 (926), Cel75 (955), Ov18 (974), Sam239
(985); cf. also Sam198 (1013), in which a gift pro nuptiis had to be renegotiated when
Guntroda left her husband for a life of confession and he took a new wife. For these
arrangements, see further below, pp. 168–9. Although Gunterigo’s gift to another
Guntroda (Cel577) reflects the provisions of Visigothic law in a remarkable way (Forum
Iudicum III.i.6), marriage settlements were clearly much more varied than allowed for
by the ancient law. Eleventh- and twelfth-century material provides more detail; see
M. A. Bermejo Castrillo, ‘Transferencias patrimoniales entre los cónyuges por razón del
matrimonio en el derecho medieval castellano’, in de la Iglesia Duarte (ed.), La familia
en la edad media, 93–150, especially at 112–28.
⁸ As in SM39, SM40. ⁹ Cf. Forum Iudicum IV.ii, on the rights of collaterals.
¹⁰ The fact that common property existed is a point made many times in the scholarly
literature; see, for example, F. de Arvizu y Galarraga, La disposición ‘mortis causa’ en el
the monastery of Abellar that had come from his aunt Ponia, in a
place where he had property in common (abemus comune) with his
cousins.¹¹ At a much earlier date, in the far north, in the Liébana, the
brothers Pepino and Petrunio gave a married couple half an orchard
in Argüebanes which they had in common (abemus comune) with one
Monesto. In Castile, in 966, Alvaro sold Munnio the vineyard he
had in common with him in Pobajas (quem abeo tecum comune); and
earlier another Munnio sold Anderquina half the vineyard in Rama he
owned in common with his cousin (abeo comune cum meo coiermano).
On the meseta, in 957, a man called Godesteo gave Abbot Julián
of Santos Justo y Pastor half of the three vineyards in Matadeón
he owned (cummune) with his brother, further land in Oteros, and
a quarter of the chattels which he had in common (abeo comune)
with his wife and mother-in-law. Over forty years later, two brothers
did a deal with the priest Bellite by which the priest was given half
of the farm which was the brothers’ inheritance in Matarromarigo,
except for two pieces of land which they had in common (comunes)
with their cousins, while the brothers got a shroud for their mother,
another farm with two houses, and a vineyard.¹² Owning in common
could also extend to include religious bodies, whether for reasons
of family connection or otherwise: in 958 Egika and his wife sold
the monastery of Sobrado their portion of a vineyard they owned in
common (habebamus communiter) with the monastery; a few years later,
Deutio gave Abbot Opila and San Martín of Turieno the vineyards
he had in common with the church of San Pedro of Viñon (abuit
comunes).¹³ It is quite clear from these examples that family members
derecho español de la alta edad media (Pamplona, 1977), 57; and more recently, M. A.
Bermejo Castrillo, Parentesco, matrimonio, propiedad y herencia en la Castilla altomedieval
(Madrid, 1996), 321–402.
¹¹ Li167; cf. Cel65 (957), Sam32 (962), Lii439 (975), Cel462 (985), Ov24 (990).
¹² T13 (875); V38; C29 (937); Lii304; Liii585 (999). See, with reference to
the early part of our period, G. Martínez Díez, ‘Las instituciones del reino astur
a través de los diplomas (718–910)’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 35
(1965), 59–167, at 115–19 (also noting co-litigants); and, largely with reference
to Cantabria, M. I. Loring García, ‘Dominios monásticos y parentelas en la Castil-
la altomedieval: el origen del derecho de retorno y su evolución’, in R. Pastor
(ed.), Relaciones de poder, de producción y parentesco en la edad media y moderna
(Madrid, 1990), 13–49, who deals with ‘collective’ property, and its division (18–22),
but does not differentiate between heritable family property and that in common
ownership.
¹³ Sob56; T61 (962—see above, p. 58); on sharing with monasteries, see further
below, pp. 80–4.
differentiated the parts they owned in common from the parts in which
they had a simple family interest. We therefore need to think of family
land in two categories, even if in practice the categories sometimes
overlapped: that which was formally in common ownership and that
which was not, though nevertheless subject to family involvement
at the point of transmission.¹⁴ Whether or not common ownership
involved common exploitation, we do not know, but it is possible,
as it is also possible (indeed, perhaps likely) that it involved sharing
produce; that is less likely with other family land, in which the family
interest was in practice concerned with its heritability rather than its
day-to-day management.
The fact that there were shared, common, interests in land did
not prevent division of common property. We should not think
of it as an unchanging constant. The cases cited above show that
parties could split their common properties and give away or sell
parts of them; they also show that one individual, like Godesteo,
could have shares in different sets of common property as well as
have other heritable property. Alvaro’s and Egika’s cases also clear-
ly demonstrate that one party to common ownership might buy
out another’s interest. Individuals, even at a relatively low econom-
ic scale, could have a complex of different kinds of interest in landed
property.
Just as common property could be split, so could packages of
heritable land: we can see the deliberate division of great estates in
their transmission from generation to generation. Bishop Rosendo
divided the huge estates of his parents, Gutier and Ilduara, with his
two brothers and two sisters in 934, assigning the different portions
in great detail. Rosendo himself benefited twenty years later when one
Gundulf, on his deathbed, split his estate in four—between his wife,
his niece, Rosendo, and the church of San Salvador and Santa Cruz
of Portomarín.¹⁵ The first is an exceptional but unambiguous case of
a five-way split of an inheritance between extremely wealthy siblings,
but there are dozens of other cases of siblings agreeing on the division
¹⁴ Compare, for example, landholding in Egypt in the second and third centuries
, where land was both owned (and worked) jointly and also ‘divided’ between heirs,
at all social levels; J. Rowlandson, Landowners and Tenants in Roman Egypt: The Social
Relations of Agriculture in the Oxyrhynchite Nome (Oxford, 1996), especially 172–5. I am
indebted to Riet van Bremen for this reference.
¹⁵ Cel478, Cel75 (955). For other examples of formal division (the colmellum
divisionis), see Sob63 (877), Sob2/4/5 (955–66), Sam23 (982).
of their individual, small-scale, inheritances.¹⁶ They might do this by

uncontested agreement, as three brothers did in the Páramo area in
947; they might do it unwillingly, as happened when Constancio went
to court to claim his share from his brothers;¹⁷ and they would often
do it by buying one another out of their interests. Valerio bought
property from his brother Marcelino, as did Gemelo and Genetrigo;
Nunila son of Ariulfo sold to his sister; and an uncle sold to a
nephew, who sold to a female cousin, who sold on to another (male)
cousin.¹⁸ Division occurred in the normal passage of property from one
generation to another; it was part of the to-and-fro of regular lifetime
transactions.
The shares of individuals, then, were often identifiable, even if
there was an overarching family interest. In 960 Nonelo sold to
the powerful lay couple Taurelo and Principia a quarter of the
orchards in Ujo that were inherited by himself, his brothers, and
his heirs; the quarter was his personal portion, mea ratio. At the
end of the century the widow Sendina gave Bishop Froilán half of
her villa in Carvajal, a villa which she had acquired with her hus-
band; she gave half only, for the other half had been given to the
monastery of San Salvador of Cillanueva by her brother-in-law, who
clearly had an interest in her husband’s share—the half she gave
away was her share of a joint marital acquisition.¹⁹ Indeed, mar-
ried couples might act together to sell a share of land which one
of them had in common or had inherited with other parties, as
did, respectively, Aldoret and Mariem in 944 and Aeiza and Rosa-
cia in 960; the latter sold a quarter of the field they had inherited
with brothers and other relatives from an uncle.²⁰ Respective shares
might also sometimes be re-assigned: away in the west, the deacon
Gunterigo, on behalf of his brother and sisters, split their villa of
Filgueira, a property which had been their grandfather’s and then
their mother’s, between themselves and Bishop Rosendo, assigning half
each.²¹ So, division was possible; consolidation was possible; assembly
¹⁶ For example, Cel71 (916), Cel7 (950), SamS-3 (961), Lii444 (976). Note that,
in this respect, aristocratic and peasant practice seem to have been essentially the same,
even when aristocrats had power over the people on their lands, as some clearly did; large
estates with dependents could be divided, just as small plots of arable could (S328 (985),
for example). For tenants and dependents, see above pp. 17–21.
¹⁷ Li194; Li187 (944).
¹⁸ C1 (899), Li97 (933), Sam226 (947); cf. S1 (857), S206 (962).
¹⁹ Lii324; Liii571 (995). ²⁰ Li181, Lii327. ²¹ Cel506 (955).
Figure 3.1 Family tree diagram from a tenth-century Riojan manuscript,

Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, Códice de San Millán 25,
fol. 145v
and re-assembly was possible; and re-allocation of shares was also

possible.
FREEDOM OF DISPOSITION
One outcome of the splitting of common and inherited property was

some capacity for individuals to dispose of inherited land quite freely,
without family constraints. The deacon Ermegildo ordered all his very
substantial goods to be sold and the proceeds given to the poor; he
was clearly not constrained by any family interests. On a much smaller
scale, in 954 two brothers, acting as executors for a third brother who
had died, gave Abbot Julián of Santos Justo y Pastor a third of some
fields in Campo de Villavidel on the river Esla; they administered this
alienation of family property on his behalf.²² There is a large literature,
particularly of the central twentieth century, on family property in
northern Spain. In this literature, the issue of freedom of alienation is
much discussed, that is, of how far individuals could dispose of family
land beyond the appropriate group of relatives, ignoring or denying
family claims. Although large alienations from family property were
clearly made in the tenth century, it is notable that portions were
often retained for children, like the two thirds reserved by Sesmiro
for his wife and children and the half reserved by Gigulfo for his
daughters, from gifts made to Celanova;²³ and although the monk
Gaudinas gave Celanova all the inheritance he had from his parents and
grandparents, and everything he had bought from his aunt and from
his uncle’s wife, portions were reserved for his sister and for his cousin
as well—the implication is that he respected the reservations of the
previous generation.²⁴
Throughout the period covered by our texts, some element of free
disposition of family land is evident; however, the critical issue is whether
it was possible to give all of it away, and particularly to cut out a child’s
interests completely. The texts suggest that there was an expectation
that, since inherited land normally passed to them, it should not be
diverted from offspring; in other words, the totality of inherited land
should not be freely disposable. This is demonstrated by the many cases
in which a gift to a religious body was arranged for the future, provided
that no children were born to the donor: Vermudo gave several plots
in Mansilla and Grajalejo to the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor,
on the meseta, unless his wife were to produce a son, in which case the
²² Li109 (936); Lii273. ²³ Cel70 (962), Cel338 (989). ²⁴ Cel353 (999).

monastery was to have half; Count Rodrigo and his wife provided for
extensive gifts to Sobrado, in Galicia, unless they were to have children,
in which case churches and the poor were to get a fifth; Menendo Díaz
did likewise for Samos, also in Galicia, the monastery only receiving
a fifth in the event of offspring; comparably, Cida Aion gave away all
her property, apart from that which was her husband’s, since the latter
portion was destined for her children; while a woman called Jimena
cut her son’s wife out of his inheritance but not their son.²⁵ The
same certainty that children should expect to inherit is indicated when
childlessness was the explicit reason for giving: Leticia gave because she
and her husband had no children; Elarino and his wife Gundilo reached
old age without children, and gave; Eulalia gave because her children
were dead.²⁶ Associating children with their parents’ alienations, as also
happened frequently, makes the same point in a different way: the
children could be presumed to have resigned their interests by joining
in making the gift.²⁷ Limiting—to her own lifetime—the interest a
widow might enjoy in respect of her husband’s inheritance makes the
point in yet another way.²⁸
Despite all those normal expectations, in some cases the inheritance
was nevertheless diverted from children. It was not just that families
divided common property. People sometimes gave away land from their
paternal inheritance, without reservations in favour of children who
might yet be born; people also made gifts that established a life interest
for siblings or cousins, in effect reducing their capacity to pass on
inherited land to their own heirs; and both women and men sold from
maternal and paternal inheritances.²⁹ The very fact that some fathers
chose to pass inherited property to their sons by written gift, sale, or
profiliation (a kind of adoption, in this case literally taking on the son as
son) emphasizes that some people were aware that normal rules might
²⁵ Lii303 (956), Sob4 (959—see below, pp. 76–8, for the fifth), Sam175 (973),
Liii561 (994—see further below for this case p. 184), S342 (989); cf. Cel75 (955).
²⁶ Li73 (927), Sam119 (931), Li230 (950); cf. Sob122, referring to the generation
previous to 960, Sob4 (959), A27 (978). Gifts could also be made to lay parties because
of childlessness, as in Cel228 (936).
²⁷ Li195 (947), Lii351 (961), Ov22 (980), SM112 (?997), Liii585 (999), for example;
in an alternative version of this kind of transaction, it was the children who made a gift,
reserving the larger portion of the transfer until after their mother’s death, C116 (964).
²⁸ Lii399 (966) is a clear case.
²⁹ Lii304 (957); Li83 (929), Li106 (936), Li251 (952), Lii288 (955); sales from
maternal inheritance: Sob73 (883), Ov5 (917), Cel440 (958), Lii431 (974), S330 (986);
sales from paternal inheritance: Li15 (904), Sob59 (920), Li100 (934), S103 (945), OD9
(950), S195 (961), Cel377 (996).
be diverted and that they had to take exceptional steps to ensure

normal succession.³⁰ Women did this too: Fronilda sold to her
daughter.³¹
After a long discussion, Arvizu y Galarraga argued that free disposition
was indeed possible by the end of the tenth century;³² the points made
above show that this must have been the case, earlier as well as later in the
tenth century. Whatever the prevailing expectations, free disposition (i.e.
cutting out the interests of offspring and family) was obviously possible.
However, what we do not know is the extent to which this happened.
This is a difficult issue because many of the texts are ambiguous: from
what is written, it is often impossible to know if an entire inheritance
was being alienated or simply a part of it. On the other hand, where texts
appear to be unambiguous, clearly an inheritance could be alienated
and equally clearly there could be reservations for family members; both
things did happen, both early and late in the tenth century. In fact,
many of the grants of total property after death were made by priests
or religious persons and, given their religious status, these are likely to
have negotiated separate provision from family property.³³ Moreover,
when lay couples made unexplained grants of all their property, to come
into effect after death, there must be a possibility that they were in fact
childless; apart from the fact that this is sometimes explicitly stated,
it must be implied when nephews or cousins were associated with the
grant, as also when the gift was in return for care for the couple.³⁴
There are also explicit statements that relations were to have use of the
land granted until the donor’s death, but not thereafter, again implying
childlessness.³⁵ If so, such alienations did not damage the interests of
children, since there were no children. Completely free disposition was
obviously possible, but maybe it was not so freely invoked as sometimes
appears to be the case.
In view of the variety of practice that is evidenced in the tenth
century, and of the complexity of property interests people could have,
it is difficult to support the proposal that common property virtually
³⁰ Sam61 (976), Lii316 (959), Lii488 (944–82), for example. See further below,
p. 84, for profiliation.
³¹ C192 (984).
³² Arvizu y Galarraga, La disposición ‘mortis causa’, 155–62; cf. 351–6.
³³ Priests, for example, Li121 (937), Lii279 (954); with relations associated Liii514
(986).
³⁴ For example, nephews: Lii332 (960); care: Li222 (950—see further below, pp. 139,
151–3.
³⁵ E.g. Li83 (929).
disappeared at this stage. Barbero and Vigil argued that, in Cantabria

and the Pyrenees, one could see a change from communal to individual
property.³⁶ We have clearly seen the constant division of family property,
in all parts, that is in far more areas than Cantabria and the Pyrenees.
We have also seen cases of the disposal of inherited land.³⁷ However,
it is not that individual property emerged in the tenth century from a
world where everything was owned in common; rather, the evidence
suggests a continuum of sharing, dividing, and pooling, in a process
that went on for generations. Indeed, in parts of Asturias even today,
common property is still shared out, re-assembled after a period, and
shared out again in new configurations.³⁸ There is nothing to suggest a
gradual change away from common to individual property in the tenth
century. We can see families splitting and sharing their lands, and we
can see individuals dealing in acquired land, in the earliest texts that
survive, from the middle of the ninth century onwards;³⁹ by the end of
the tenth century there was still common property, and that common
property might occur as much on the meseta as in the far north.⁴⁰ That
continuum of sharing, dividing, pooling, and re-dividing may well have
been centuries old; what was different by the end of the tenth century
was not the introduction of individual property as such but the impact
of the proprietary policies of the great monasteries.⁴¹ Those policies
meant that individual shares increasingly went out of the flexible family
pool and into the hands of the permanent religious corporation—the
classic ‘dead hand’.
F R AC T I O N S
Many of the transactions illustrated above deal in fractions of property;

Gunterigo’s division of Filgueira split the villa into two halves, but also
³⁶ A. Barbero and M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en la península Ibérica

(Barcelona, 1978), 370.
³⁷ There was plenty of acquired property around, that is, property which had come to
its owner by purchase or gift rather than by inheritance, like Sendina’s half-villa. All the
implications are that acquired land was much more freely disposable than inherited land.
³⁸ I am extremely grateful to Margarita Fernández Mier for this observation.
³⁹ See above, T13, S1, Sob73, C1, Ov5, for example.
⁴⁰ Cf. Liii585 (999). We get the same kind of insight, where we have evidence of
practice, into the year-by-year process of splitting and sharing in other early medieval
societies in which property rights were conceptualized as a family matter; cf. W. Davies,
Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (London, 1988), 67–76.
⁴¹ See above, pp. 61–4.
rather confusingly referred to the ensuing portions as ‘fifths’. In fact, the

fractions that occur in these texts are essentially of two different kinds:
on the one hand, anything from a half to a ninth; and, on the other, the
‘fifth’, traditionally that portion of family property which, according
to Visigothic law, was available for free disposition.⁴² Each kind has a
different significance.
References to the fifth (quinta) are widespread, although they are
noticeably rare in the tenth-century material of some collections (for
example those from Oviedo, Valpuesta, and Otero de las Dueñas) and
they are considerably more common in Cardeña material than in that
from elsewhere. The term is more likely to be used to refer to things
given than to things transferred by other mechanisms, but does not
exclusively do so. References are found in credible texts from as early as
the mid-ninth century, but most occur from the late 940s onwards and
are a particular feature of the second half of the tenth century.⁴³ This
tendency to concentrate in the later tenth century is disproportionate
to the total spread of transactions. It is also notable in collections with a
fair proportion of pre-940s material, such as those from Santo Toribio,
Sahagún, and León—in other words, places that recorded transactions
in the earlier tenth century evidently did not preference this word;⁴⁴
collections with a high proportion of originals also exhibit the pre- and
post-940s difference, again supporting the suggestion that the mid-tenth
century saw some change.⁴⁵ The selective use of this word, the associ-
ation with gifts, and the mid-tenth-century spurt in usage, all make it
likely that the appearance of the ‘fifth’ in charters reflects a writing fash-
ion—diplomatic practice—rather than new kinds of donation; after
⁴² There is a vast literature on this. See especially the classic statement of L. G. de

Valdeavellano, ‘La cuota de libre disposición en el derecho hereditario de León y Castilla
en la alta edad media’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 9 (1932), 129–76;
Martínez Díez, ‘Las instituciones del reino astur’, 109; J. Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis
et animae’’. Laicos y monasterios en la alta edad media española’, in J. Orlandis, Estudios
sobre instituciones monásticas medievales (Pamplona, 1971), 217–378, especially at 277,
279–83 (‘the most frequent’ form of gift); Arvizu y Galarraga, La disposición ‘mortis
causa’, 62–3, 179. Orlandis, in ‘La elección de sepultura en la España medieval’, in
J. Orlandis, La iglesia en la España visigotica y medieval (Pamplona, 1976), 257–306,
remarks at 260–1 on views that the Visigothic fifth was converted into the pro anima
quota—an understandable, but arguable, way of looking at its occurrence.
⁴³ 90% post 942; half of the remaining 10% occur in suspect ninth-century charters
in the Sobrado collection. SM8, ostensibly but arguably of 867, records the donation of
his fifth by an abbot endowing a monastery which he was founding.
⁴⁴ Although T10, of 852, provides an exception to this comment.
⁴⁵ See below, p. 92, for originals.
all, plenty of gifts of part properties were made before the 940s. The
likelihood is reinforced by the fact that a very high proportion of the ben-
eficiaries of transactions in fifths were large monasteries—approximately
75%; this is higher than the monastic proportion of beneficiaries of
all transactions, and significantly higher than the proportion of large
monasteries that were beneficiaries of all transactions. Donors and ven-
dors of fifths, by contrast, were of very mixed status—often aristocrats,
often peasants, sometimes priests or bishops or abbots.
Although the fifth, in strict legal terms, meant the alienable portion
of family property, as used in these charters it often seems to mean ‘our
portion’, ‘our share’, whatever the size and proportion of the donor’s or
vendor’s land.⁴⁶ So, tradimus quintam nostram tam in terris quam et in
vineis (we give our fifth, arable as well as vines); michi placet ut in mea
vita … de terras quomodo de vineas medietate serviet … post meum obitum
… illa quinta libera abeant potestatem (I agree that half of the land and
vineyards should provide [for the monastery] during my lifetime and …
they shall have power over the whole fifth after my death); placuit mihi
… ut facerem vobis scriptura venditionis de quinta quam abeo de marido
meum [sic] (I agreed to sell you the fifth I got from my husband).⁴⁷
However, sometimes the word conveys more of a sense of a fraction: ‘we
give you half our villa, except for the fifth reserved for our daughters’;
‘we sell you a fifth of our portion of the saltpan’; ‘we sell two fifths of
our quintana’.⁴⁸ Very occasionally it seems to retain its classic meaning,
as it did when Elvira gave a fifth of her vast properties to the poor and to
Sobrado in 959, reserving the rest for children, or when Bishop Pelayo’s
father provided him with a fifth in order to enter monastic life.⁴⁹ In
many cases, then, the ‘fifth’ is little more than a simple word for property
and it does not retain much of the strict legal connotation beyond the
fact that this kind of property was obviously alienable (there do not
appear to be any significant differences in usage in this respect across
time or space). It therefore looks as if those creating records for the larger
monasteries in the later tenth century adopted the word as a particularly
appropriate term for their acquisitions; it was especially appropriate
⁴⁶ Arvizu y Galarraga, La disposición ‘mortis causa’, 65, also makes this point re
common goods.
⁴⁷ C116 (964), Liii528 (989), Cel163 (932).
⁴⁸ Cel169 (962), C99 (961), Li198 (947).
⁴⁹ Sob4, Cel461(982). Conversely, however, the part of Eirigu’s property that was
not alienated to Bishop Rosendo as payment of a fine was the fifth retained for his three
daughters (Cel169 (962)); the term clearly had lost precision of meaning.
because it held the connotation of free disposability, bringing increased

security to properties acquired from families.
Other fractions also occur widely and their use is overall much more
common than reference to the simple fifth—halves, thirds, quarters,
sixths, sevenths, eighths, and ninths. Nor are references to them clustered
in the later tenth century, although there are plenty at that time. As
demonstrated above, there seems to have been a continuous process of
giving, selling, and sometimes swapping, fractions of existing properties.
Hence, in 918 a man gave two thirds of a villa in Galicia and one third
of a saltpan; a couple of years later, another man sold a quarter of his
inheritance from his grandparents, whose portion had been a ninth;
later, on the meseta, a couple sold the priest Vincimalo a seventh of some
water rights; Sancho gave Cardeña a third of the church at Cardeñadijo
in 945; Gunterigo and his siblings gave half the Filgueira villa to
Rosendo in 955 (the property already having been split for thirty years);
and Nonelo sold a quarter of his family orchards in Ujo to Taurelo and
Principia.⁵⁰ Here is an ongoing process of fission: when Sendina gave
the bishop of León half a villa, the other half had already been given
away by her brother-in-law; Rapinato’s uncle was able to hold on to
an eighth of his millrace, but his nephew and his cousin sold the other
seven eighths.⁵¹ So also the large estates which fragmented by bequest,
like the long list of villas and churches which Gundulf split between
his female relations, Bishop Rosendo, and the Portomarín church.⁵²
Gifts and sales from very large estates might involve a complex of bits
and pieces: a major gift to the monastery of Samos in 982 included
fourteen halves of different properties, two different thirds, a quarter,
and an eighth, in Bande and in other places.⁵³ The corollary, of course,
as argued above, was that the pieces were assembled and reassembled.
The process was a process of fission and accumulation not one of simple
morcellation.
The donors and vendors of these fractions of property were some-
times clerics, and sometimes aristocrats, but, where the portions were
tiny, they often seem to have been people of small means—Sánchez-
Albornoz’s small proprietors themselves.⁵⁴ The beneficiaries of such
transactions were overwhelmingly religious but not so exclusively so
⁵⁰ Cel493, Sob67 (920), Li172 (943—cf. Sob19 (931), in which a seventh was
exchanged), C54, Cel506, Lii324 (960—see above, p. 70).
⁵¹ Liii571, Lii283; see above, pp. 70, 65. ⁵² Cel75; cf. Cel461.
⁵³ Sam23. ⁵⁴ See above, p. 17.
as is the case with those who received fifths, and not so invariably
monasteries, let alone large monasteries. They include a noticeable
number of lay couples—nearly two fifths of such beneficiaries in the
León collection and even more in that from Otero de las Dueñas,
although proportions are much smaller in Celanova and Sahagún mate-
rial. The reasons for this variation have more to do with the nature of
different charter collections than with regional difference in practice.⁵⁵
Unambiguous differences in regional practice are difficult to identify
but there has been some discussion about whether notional halves and
thirds were the portions appropriate for conveying an inheritance in
Galicia and León respectively.⁵⁶ It is certainly the case, as Carlos Estepa
has shown, that grants of a third by profiliation are notable in and
around León in the second half of the tenth century.⁵⁷ However, it
was clearly a long way from being an invariable practice: there are
profiliation grants which used neither of these fractions and León
profiliation grants that used halves; there are plenty of alienations of
half and third inheritances, in both regions, by transactions other than
profiliation; thirds occurred quite frequently in the far west; and a ‘third’
was sometimes a word for a complete inheritance, as a fifth could be.⁵⁸
In fact, use of a half was far commoner, both in Galicia and on the
meseta, than use of a third—about four times as common. Giving half
to the church and keeping half for the family is a familiar pattern—like
half to Celanova and half to the donor Gogino’s sons.⁵⁹ In many cases
reference to these halves points to a further process, to something more
than the regular, perhaps centuries-old, splitting and sharing between
family members. Many half properties that were given away or sold
were in effect an advance on the alienation of the whole property.
When Brandila gave the monastery of Santos Cosme y Damián all his
vines and garden, he kept a half to support himself; the monastery did
⁵⁵ For powerful lay couples, and for the rationales behind donation, see further below,
pp. 149–63, 207–8, 126–30.
⁵⁶ C. Estepa Díez, Las Behetrías Castellanas, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 2003), i. 42.
⁵⁷ Profiliation: giving, as if to one’s child; in effect, choosing an heir, making a
bequest. See further below, p. 84.
⁵⁸ Profiliation using neither, e.g. Cel228 (936), Lii354 (962); León profiliation using a
half, Lii488 (944–82) (cf. Estepa’s note on Liii585, Behetrías, 42 n.12); other alienations
of halves and thirds, Cel342 (885), Cel221 (939), Sob59 (920)—sale of half a paternal
inheritance; thirds in Galician and Portuguese texts: Cel70 (962), Cel343 (995), and
Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, XXIII (919), XXXIX (933), CXVII (976), CXXI
(977), CXXXIII (981); third as whole: Lii455 (978).
⁵⁹ Cel575 (954).
not pick up the full grant until his death. So also Vistrario’s gift to
Celanova and Electa’s to the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor.⁶⁰ Or
one family member might give half and another give the other half,
like Vizamondo’s sale of half a house to Celanova (his mother had
already given the other half ) or Jimena’s gift of half a villa to Sobrado
(her uncles had already given the other half ).⁶¹ This process—far from
regular family splitting—was about making provision for the church,
in effect diverting the inheritance away from the natural heirs. It is
such cases that give power to the argument for increasing freedom of
disposition.
SHARING
Property might be split up but it was also owned in common, as

discussed above.⁶² Not only that; it is clear that common ownership of
property could sometimes be deliberately extended by the creation of
new shares. There is a kind of transaction recorded in some charters
called the incommuniatio, the act of including another body in the group
of sharers. Hence we have references to cartulae incommuniationis (occa-
sionally scriptura incommuniationis)—charters recording the extension
of sharing—and references to making such transactions (faceremus
vobis incommuniationem or incommuniamus); kartula inparzationis and
inparcamus are occasional variants.⁶³
Most of the contexts for sharing are straightforward: usually couples
(but sometimes the actor was a single individual or a parent and children)
shared all or more commonly a fraction of their property (a half, a third,
a fifth) with another party, most frequently a bishop or abbot.⁶⁴ The
properties were often of small scale and portions could be reserved for
heirs. Occasionally the transaction was in return for a price paid and
sometimes it was in the expectation of help and support.⁶⁵ It is rare for
detail to be included of how this sharing would work in practice but one
text of 992, relating to Bubal in Galicia, relates how Ikila Fafilaniz and
⁶⁰ Li150 (942), Cel68 (989), Liii528 (see above, pp. 56–7).

⁶¹ Cel73 (954); Sob64 (984). ⁶² See above pp. 68–70.
⁶³ See what follows for references to the standard forms; for the variants: scriptura
incommuniationis Cel231 (943); facere incommuniationem Cel424 (934); inparcare and
kartula inparzationis Cel476 (941).
⁶⁴ Cel424 (934), Cel476 (941), Cel343 (995), Cel519 (998).
⁶⁵ Cel394 (956), Cel519; for help and support, see below, pp. 151–3.
his wife Ocorabia shared half of their inheritance with the monastery
of Celanova; they were thereafter to give the monastery half of their
produce of wine and a quarter of their bread every year; however, if
the monastery were to give them cattle and land for development, they
would increase the bread render to a half.⁶⁶ It seems likely that this kind
of arrangement underlies many of the transactions extending sharing.
Whether for reasons of piety, or to gain some benefit, or because they
were persuaded, peasant families might agree to make regular returns
to a monastery by entering into such sharing (in effect, share-cropping)
arrangements. That this was familiar in Galicia by the late tenth
century is indicated by the fact that royal gifts and confirmations could
mention people who were committed to share, homines incomuniatos,
resident—amongst others—on land that was transferred, people who
were obliged to make returns to the new owner.⁶⁷ It was expected that
some such people might be present on great estates and that they would
have a tributary relationship with the owner.
Couples of relatively limited means were most often involved in such
transactions, as far as our records go, but there were others too. An
aristocrat extended shares to a countess in order to compensate her
for killing one of her attendants; a priest shared half a church with
another person, for reasons unknown.⁶⁸ On the other hand, sometimes
references to sharing are so vague that the term barely seems to denote
more than ‘transfer’: a list of small portions by the river Arnoia given
by the couple Julián and Olalla to Celanova in 950 ends with a dating
clause which refers to this cartula donationis et incommuniationis, charter
of gift and sharing; and the widow of a duke referred to property she
and her husband had acquired by purchase, gift, and incommuniatio.⁶⁹
While many of these references clearly record a distinctive kind of
transaction, some may not.
All of the above examples come from Galicia and from the Celanova
collection. In the tenth century the terminology of sharing was over-
whelmingly a feature of Celanova charters and the beneficiaries were
overwhelmingly abbots of Celanova. There are four more examples
from the Sobrado archive, where the beneficiaries were the couple
⁶⁶ Cel490.
⁶⁷ Cel5, cf. Cel53 (both Vermudo II, of 986 and 988 respectively); cf. Portugaliae
Monumenta Historica, LXXVI (959) and CXXXVIII (983), recording very large grants
by high aristocrats.
⁶⁸ Cel456 (940), Cel231 (943). ⁶⁹ Cel497, Cel210 (991).
Ermegildo and Paterna, whose property formed the core of the tenth-
century Sobrado estate, and King Ordoño.⁷⁰ There are also about half
a dozen tenth-century occurrences in northern Portuguese charters,
most of which relate to the monastery of Guimarães and neighbour-
hood.⁷¹ Very occasionally these words occur elsewhere, sufficient to
indicate that this habit of thinking was not completely confined to
the far west. There is a particularly suggestive charter in the León
collection. The charter, surviving on a single sheet, is largely concerned
to record a sale of some land, a house, a vineyard, and a ninth of a
mill to the abbot of Abellar by a woman and her daughter Aurifila.
This was their inheritance from the woman’s first husband, Aurifila’s
father Abraham, who had previously divided it with his brother Juan.
Clearly the woman had remarried, for a final section of the charter adds
that Aurifila has agreed to this sale because her mother and stepfather
had given her rights, alongside the children of their new marriage, by
sharing her stepfather’s property with her (pro que me incomuniatis in
vestra ereditatem [sic]).⁷² Here is a glimpse of the fact that this concept
of extending membership of the common pool—incommuniare —was
not confined to Galicia, and that, as in the Sobrado and some of
the Portuguese cases, it could be used to refer to straightforward lay
transactions.
Were it not for these cases, this might simply look like a feature of
Celanova’s diplomatic practice. However, the manner of reference, and
the number of variants, suggest that it was probably more than that:
the terminology seems to reflect a habit of thinking, a way of looking
at things, and a kind of transaction, that was particularly characteristic
of Galicia and northern Portugal. Notwithstanding all that, we should
keep in mind the rarity of this word in tenth-century text: the total
number of cases is small—little more than twenty in Galicia and a
handful in Portugal—and three quarters of the Spanish cases come
from the Celanova archive, recording grants to Celanova; a good case
can also be made that the monastery of Guimarães, source of several of
⁷⁰ Sob29 (931), Sob14 (942), Sob32 (941), Sob30 (955); also Sob15 (945), but this
charter is also twice carta donationis and once carta venditionis. See below, pp. 135–8,
156–60 for gift/sale ‘confusion’.
⁷¹ Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, LIX (949), LX (950), LXXVI (959), CXXXVII
(983), CXXXVIII (983), CLXVI (992), CLXXIII (995). Several of these texts survive
in very late copies; several relate to the property of Countess Mumadona, founder of
Guimarães, preserved in the so-called ‘Livro de Mumadona’.
⁷² Li156 (942).
the Portuguese examples, had a close relationship with Celanova at that

time.⁷³ It looks as if, whatever wider currency there may have been, this
was a way of thinking about giving that was picked up and extended by
the Celanova scriptorium, just as traditio corporis et animae was picked
up and extended by the Cardeña scriptorium.
Transactions of incommuniatio have occupied a place in the scholarly
literature, however, that is out of all proportion to their occurrence.
Sánchez-Albornoz argued that incommuniationes were the equivalent of
the later benefactoría agreements of Castile and León and represented
the commendation of donors to beneficiaries, in other words freemen
submitting to a powerful lord for protection.⁷⁴ Estepa has shown
that incommuniatio and benefactoría were not as identical as Sánchez-
Albornoz assumed, but Isla Frez, in an influential paper of 1984, took
the argument in a different direction.⁷⁵ He stressed that use of incom-
muniatio was indeed a technique by which the powerful appropriated
property but argued that it differed from Sánchez-Albornoz’s commen-
dation because it established hereditary obligations of dependence from
the heirs of the donor to the heirs of the recipient.⁷⁶ He drew parallels
with gift by profiliation (the practice of adopting an heir, profiliatio)
⁷³ See J. Mattoso, ‘Portugal no reino asturiano-leonês’, in J. Mattoso (co-ord.), História

de Portugal, I, Antes de Portugal (Lisbon, 1993), 441–562, at 473–4; cf. C. J. Bishko,
‘Portuguese pactual monasticism in the eleventh century: the case of São Salvador de
Vacariça’, in C. J. Bishko, Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History 600–1300 (London,
1984 [first published 1982]), IV.139–54, at 152–3. Mumadona, in whose charters these
words occur, was the daughter of Bishop Rosendo’s sister Adosinda (Mattoso, ‘Portugal
no reino asturiano-leonês’, 537) and Rosendo (of Celanova) is named as a signatory to
Mumadona’s large endowment of Guimarães, of 959 (Portugaliae Monumenta Historica,
LXXVI). As it stands, this text raises questions of authenticity, although it was used by
Mattoso as a credible charter (A nobreza medieval portuguesa. A familía e o poder; 2nd
rev. edn. (Lisbon, 1987), 141, 271), and it is quite clear that Mumadona was a member
of the Galician aristocracy, of which Rosendo himself was so much a part. It is also the
case that both of Rosendo’s parents had Portuguese properties; see M. del C. Pallares
Méndez, Ilduara, una Aristócrata del Siglo X (La Coruña, 1998), 12, 49, 50.
⁷⁴ C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías: la encomendación en Asturias, León y
Castilla’, in C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las instituciones medievales
españolas, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1976–80), i.17–191 (first published in Anuario de Historia
del Derecho Español, 1 (1924)), at 67–96; cf. his ‘Pequeños propietarios libres en el
reino Asturleonés. Su realidad histórica’, Settimane di Studio del centro italiano sull’alto
medioevo, 13 (1966), 183–222, at 187. He was in part following earlier, Portuguese,
commentators. See below, pp. 153–4, for commendation.
⁷⁵ A. Isla Frez, ‘Las relaciones de dependencia en la Galicia altomedieval: el ejemplo
de la incomuniación’, Hispania, 44 (1984), 5–18; Estepa Díez, Las Behetrías Castellanas,
i. 41–5.
⁷⁶ Isla Frez, ‘Las relaciones de dependencia’, 5, 8, 16; cf. idem, La sociedad gallega en
la alta edad media (Madrid, 1992), 228–34.
and argued that both incommuniatio and profiliatio were mechanisms by

which strangers acquired rights in family property and other relations
lost rights. As a broad interpretation, this is entirely reasonable, as it is
also reasonable to suggest that in the long term powerful people acquired
more and more rights over the property of free peasants.⁷⁷ However,
Isla’s arguments, like Sánchez-Albornoz’s before him, depended very
much on eleventh-century texts. In tenth-century texts, the term had a
more limited range of reference and occurred in very limited contexts;
above all, it was rare. In the tenth century it could be associated with an
obligation to return produce to the recipient; it was not associated with
menial dependence.
A word on profiliatio. This ‘adoption’ technique was a mechanism for
passing on property to a body, as if to a child, as many texts explicitly
say.⁷⁸ In the tenth century it was used by childless people to nominate
heirs; by people with children to win favours or support from the
powerful or the well-off; by people with or without children to reward
others for service of some kind; and, increasingly, by people with or
without children to make bequests to the church, both in vitam and post
mortem, in life and after death.⁷⁹ It is often little more than donation
(cartula donationis vel perfiliationis is very common) and the choice of
this particular word may reflect a need to stress an unusual mechanism
in a world where freedom of disposition was far from generally agreed.
The contexts of its use in the tenth century were several, although
sometimes, as Isla argued, it clearly operated like incommuniatio, as a
method of sharing property with others.⁸⁰ As in that case, there was not
much of dependence about it: some gifts were only to come into effect
after the donor’s death and many gifts were of part, rather than total,
properties.⁸¹
⁷⁷ See above p. 28. The argument that ‘tribal society’ was collapsing is rather more
questionable; the notion seems to depend on uninvestigated assumptions about the
relationship between blood, family, and ‘tribe’; Isla Frez, ‘Las relaciones de dependencia’,
9, 11; Barbero and Vigil, La formación del feudalismo, 384, 394 (where profiliatio is
deemed to supply ‘proof ’ of the survival of tribal society).
⁷⁸ S143 (954), S178 (960), S191 (961), for example.
⁷⁹ For example, in vitam: S184 (960), Lii356 (962); post mortem: Lii455 (978).
⁸⁰ Lii331 (960), S184 (960), for example.
⁸¹ See further below, pp. 160–1, for more detailed discussion. Barbero and Vigil,
La formación del feudalismo, 380–94, presented the classic and much-cited treatment of
profiliatio, as an ‘instrument to break the social and economic cohesion of consanguinity’
(ibid., 384), but even they stressed that its importance came in the late eleventh century
(ibid., 380), and they paid little attention to tenth-century texts.
Incommuniare, and sometimes profiliare, were about sharing property;

they were not about total alienation. Obviously anyone could do
it—peasant or aristocrat, lay or cleric. Perhaps a familiar concept
across a much wider area, it seems to have been more common in
Galicia and Portugal than elsewhere and to have been taken up by
the Celanova scriptorium for the specific purpose of describing a type
of ecclesiastical endowment. It is often viewed as a kind of Galician
equivalent of the gifts which led to Frankish precarial grants, temporary
grants made by a landowner; in the Frankish world, peasants are seen
to have given up ownership of their plots to more powerful landlords,
receiving them back as precaria, and paying regular dues from them
thereafter. Even if there is a superficial similarity here, the Galician
process was not the same.⁸² It was conceptually different because the
donor by incommuniatio remained an owner and did not simply become
a tenant or leaseholder. It was also in practice different since the donor
of a shared plot might well reserve a portion, unshared, for his or
her heirs, frequently retaining full ownership of a portion for him-
or herself. Tenth-century incommuniatio was, in effect, a strategy for
preserving family interest in property: by extending shares in the pool
of common property, families strove to preserve their own proprietary
powers.
FA M I LY S T R AT E G I E S
In the face of growing church proprietorship and increasingly aggressive

exploitation of their properties by some abbots and bishops,⁸³ the
existence of fractions and the habit of ‘sharing’ let us see some of
⁸² For the standard approach, see R. Latouche, The Birth of Western Economy,
trans. E. M. Wilkinson (London, 1967 [first published 1956]), 24–6, on fifth-century
Gaul. The precaria (initially precarium), really a grant on light terms in response to a
petition, came to denote many different kinds of arrangement; for early forms see I.
Wood, ‘Teutsind, Witlaic and the history of Merovingian precaria’, in W. Davies and
P. Fouracre (eds.), Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995),
31–52, at 43–9; and for the development, S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval
Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), 78–9, 89–90, etc. See further references below,
p. 86, n.84. Precaria were known in Spain (Barbero and Vigil, La formación del
feudalismo, 76–9; Wood, ‘Teutsind, Witlaic’, 46), but there is no need to suppose any
direct connection between the precaria of Isidore and of the Visigothic law codes and the
incommuniationes of the tenth century.
⁸³ See above, pp. 61–4.
the strategies employed by families to preserve their own interests in

their property. By sharing they kept some; by dividing and alienating
a fraction they got to keep a fraction, often a larger fraction, although
some appear to have alienated totally. Although, overall, it looks as if
there was some diversion of property from independent proprietors to
largely religious, and some lay, landlords, this process was modified by
sharing and by splitting off portions. These strategies for preserving
family interest look different from some of those employed in the
Frankish world, where full ownership of property might be alienated
but continuing rights to the usufruct of the property negotiated.⁸⁴ (Some
Spanish alienators of the tenth century did similarly reserve rights to
the usufruct for family members, but such cases are very rare.⁸⁵) The
usufruct strategy implies greater levels of, and more rapidly developing,
dependence, than the sharing strategy. If the apparent contrast here is
a real contrast, one would expect a stronger, less dependent, peasantry
in northern Spain in the central middle ages—that is, a world with
higher proportions of free peasants and with obligations of less menial
kinds—as indeed appears to be the case; this might go some way to
explaining the distinctive types of lordship that emerged there.
What is particularly interesting here is that there do seem to have
been deliberate strategies for preserving family property.⁸⁶ Although
this chapter has emphasized some differences from strategies employed
elsewhere in western Europe, others were more similar: we have already
noted the founding and maintenance of proprietary churches; we shall
in due course see the spread of family memorialization.⁸⁷ Against the
backdrop of the continuing fission and re-assembly of family property,
new things were happening to property in the tenth century. These most
obviously followed from the development of entrepreneurial proprietary
policies by the great monasteries and the consequent diversion of some
family property into their hands. But they also involved some shifts in
habits of recording property transfer, as different monasteries brought
their preferred words into the record. The language of transfer already
⁸⁴ See above, p. 34, and see F. Bougard, C. La Rocca, R. Le Jan (eds.), Sauver son âme
et se perpétuer. Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut moyen âge (Rome, 2005);
cf. the hundreds of precarial grants in eighth- and ninth-century Saint-Gall material,
H.-W. Goetz, ‘Coutume d’héritage et structures familiales au haut moyen âge’, ibid.,
203–37, at 222–9, and those in France, Switzerland, and Italy cited below, p. 134.
⁸⁵ Cel7 (950), Cel251 (993), for example.
⁸⁶ Cf. Isla Frez, Sociedad gallega, 226, on aristocratic strategies for preserving the
patrimony, although his focus is on the prevention of fragmentation.
⁸⁷ Above, pp. 36–44; below, pp. 123–6.
had some distinctive characteristics, with—for example—its unusual

emphasis on the concept of common ownership. In the later tenth
century great monasteries used words like quinta to emphasize the
disposability of the portions they acquired, and places like Celanova
appropriated the concept of incommuniatio. The interplay between
changing practice and the changing language of donation was subtle;
and it can offer further clues to understanding what was happening on
the ground.
4
The Language of Donation
FORMULAS
The language used to record the making of gifts in these tenth-century

Spanish texts is often brief and simple but it is also often very elaborate,
and laced with pious explanations; in extreme cases it can be very
convoluted. That may at first sight appear problematic but it is, on
the contrary, rather helpful: while the genre is undoubtedly formulaic,
there is a great wealth of different forms within these records; to dismiss
this kind of writing as simply formulaic would miss a key to one level
of understanding of process and relationships.¹ The range of language
deployed has to be taken into account and its significance explored.
At the simplest level, a record of donation might run as follows:
‘In the name of God. I and my wife greet you, abbot and brothers of
monastery X, in the Lord. We have agreed, of our own free will, to
make you a charter of donation, for the salvation of my parents. I give
the arable which is at the place Y, completely; and I include half of
the meadow there. Let power be given to you so that you have this
securely and can do whatever you wish with it’. A detailed indication
of the land’s location may often be included; and the record usually
concludes with a secular sanction against anyone who contravenes the
gift, a dating clause, and a witness list.² A common elaboration is the
¹ A point made in the brief but helpful discussion of the value of ‘useless formulas’
in J. L. Martín, ‘Utilidad de las fórmulas ‘‘inútiles’’ de los documentos medievales’, in
Semana de Historia del Monacato: Cantabro–Astur–Leonés (Oviedo, 1982), 81–6.
² ‘In Dei nomine. Ego Aiza et uxor mea Argentea vobis domno Sperando abba et
fratres Sanctorum Iusti et Pastoris monasterio, in Domino salutem. Placuit nobis atque
convenit, propria et spontanea nostra voluntate, ut faceremus vobis kartula testamenti,
pro remedio de parentum meorum. Concedo illud, ego Argentea, ipsa terra qui est in
locum predictum iuxta karrale qui pergit ad illa nave, et de alia parte terminum …, ab
integra; etiam aditio vobis in illo prato medietatem. Ut abeatis illud firmiter de dato
nostro, et quicquid exinde agere, facere vel iudicare volueritis, sit concessa vobis potestas.
Siquis aliquis homo ad inrumpendum venerit vel venerimus contra hanc kartula, hanc
The Language of Donation 89
addition of a clause spelling out that control of the land freely transfers
from one party to the other, as in: ‘In the name of God. I and my wife
greet you in the Lord and in eternity, Doña Fredesinda. There is no
doubt, but it should be noted that we will give you, and we do give you,
half of our land at Z; and from this day it shall be transferred from our
right (iure) into your control (dominio), and whatever you want to do
with it, you have free power’. ³ Such charters are not long (preamble,
notification, and disposition may number no more than sixty or seventy
words) but they are not casual; they are formal documents, and use
standard formulas; we often know who wrote them, for the scribes are
identified, as the priest Gauventio is in the second example above.⁴
The more elaborate charters use a much wider range and greater
number of formulas as preamble and by way of explanation of the gift,
and often include religious sanctions; comparable phrases sometimes
occur in records of sale or exchange but they do so very infrequently,
for elaborate language is a particular characteristic of gift texts.⁵ The
range of formulas is indeed surprisingly wide, although the range of
ideas they convey is quite limited. The donor is weighed down by sin
or looking for expiation or remission of sins; he or she fears hell or
wants to evade the infernal penalty, or the torment, or the abyss; more
positively they (for the donor is often a married couple or a group
of siblings⁶) want to enjoy paradise, or the heavenly kingdom, or the
celestial mansion; they want eternal life; they want to be for ever joyful
with the saints (or angels, or the chosen); they often want a reward (or
recompense); or they want to be worthy of eternal glory; on the day of
judgment, when the trumpet sounds, standing before God, they want
per me, hanc per extranea, que ego et Argentea vindicare non valuerimus, ut pariemus
vobis ipsa hereditate duplata, et vobis perpetim abiturum. Facta series testamenti et
adfirmationis v kalendas novembris, era DCCCCLXXXVI. Argentea in hanc kartula
testamenti a me facta. Aiza qui sum vigario de Arenta et adfirmo. Amoroze ts.’; Li203,
of 948. (In this particular case it is the wife’s land that is given, and the husband acts
for her; see below, p. 171 for comparable cases.) In translating this and other examples
in this chapter, I have in most cases aimed to convey the meaning in modern English,
rather than give a literal translation.
³ I quote the sense of the introduction and main giving words, Li11, of 897. ‘Ut de
odierno die et tempore de nostro iure in vestro dominio sint vestri donati adque concessi,
et quidquid de illos facere volueris, liberam, in Dei nomine, abeas potestatem.’
⁴ ‘Gauventius presbiter ubi rogitus fuit scriptor manu ( The priest Gauventio, as
requested, wrote [this] by [his own] hand).’ See below, pp. 99–102, 91–8, for scribes
and for the sources of standard formulas.
⁵ Sale and exchange, for example, Lii489 (982), C191 (984).
⁶ See above, pp. 65–71, for owning in common and shared family interests.
90 The Language of Donation
the beneficiary to intercede for them. Of course, many of these ideas

draw upon biblical statements and some texts quote directly from Old
or New Testament—especially from the Pentateuch, Psalms, Proverbs,
or Gospels, in a wide range of styles. So we find ‘this is my name for
ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations’ (Exod. 3: 15) in the
record of a very large gift from a deacon to the bishop of León; the rather
gloomy ‘the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth
to others’ (Ps. 49: 10) in a charter recording a religious woman’s gift to
a monastery; and ‘I have no pleasure in [emended to ‘I do not want’]
the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from this way and
live’ (Ezek. 33: 11); or, unsurprisingly, ‘Give, and it shall be given unto
you’ (Luke 6: 38) in records of many gifts, whether large or moderate;
and, as is common in records with a royal interest, ‘Come … inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ (Matt.
25: 34).⁷
In all of this the fertility of expression is striking, particularly since
the material comes from only one century, from only one—admittedly
large—region, and from the writings of communities that were prone
to use the formulaic. Take for example the simple idea of the burden
of sin. Here is a flavour of the range of different ways this might be
expressed: ‘pecatorum nostrorum oneris pregravationem’; ‘criminum
pergravatum et copia peccaminum oppressum’; ‘ex toto peccatorum
mole depresso’; omnem nigredinem peccatorum’; ‘cunctorum meorum
nexibus … peccaminum’; ‘molle criminis delictorum meorum’; ‘ingentis
sceleribus opressum’; ‘veniam … nostrarum noxarum’; ‘peccati gravati’;
‘ego namque peccator’; and the telling ‘A me etenim inutile et peccatrix
(And so I, useless and a sinner [salute you in God])’.⁸ Likewise, the
apparently straightforward concept of the day of judgment can be
expressed in many ways: ‘ducat me ante tribunal Domini nostri Ihesu
Christi’; ‘in illa examinatione’; ‘apud Deum’; ‘ante Deum’; ‘ad diem
sancti tremendi iudicii’; ‘dum in examinis diem (apparueris magnus et
manifestus)’; ‘ad diem magni iuditii’; and the more personal ‘Domine tu
⁷ Li109 (936), Lii413 (970), Lii490 (983), Lii274 (954) and Liii535 (990), Liii548
(991), for example.
⁸ Orthography and grammar frequently stray from classical norms; I quote the texts as
printed, without attempting ‘improvements’; see further below, pp. 99–104. Examples
are from Li5 (873), Li42 (917), Lii409 (968—common in many collections, cf. SJP30
(995)), Lii265 (954), Cel247 (927), Lii296 (956), S105 (946), SM97 (984), OD21
(976), Sob52 (930), Liii520 (987); León material has a particularly wide array, not just
because it is the largest collection, but because it draws on a wide range of different
recording traditions in its neighbourhood; see further below, pp. 92–7.
es iustus iudex’.⁹ Some charters deploy almost the entire array of these
phrases; some select one or two; and, as we have seen, some have none
at all, even for donations to a church or monastery. That difference of
approach to the record is interesting and is worth exploring further.
C R E AT I N G T H E R E C O R D S
Whether or not the language deployed is elaborate or simple is partly

to do with the identity of the beneficiary—but not entirely so, as I
shall demonstrate below. Drafting by the beneficiary is clear in many
monastic contexts. The same phrases can occur again and again in records
favouring a particular monastery, sometimes across several decades, as we
have already seen with Cardeña’s repetition of tradere corpus et animam
and Celanova’s of incommuniationes.¹⁰ The brief but distinctive ‘ut
evadamus portas inferni (so that we may evade the gates of hell)’, also
signals a gift to Cardeña.¹¹ Celanova record-makers had a particularly
neat way of expressing the benefit to the donor: ‘Et abeatis vos inde
temporale subsidium et ego ante Deum premium inconvulsum (and
from that you will get a temporal subsidy, while I [will get] a continuing
prize in the presence of God)’.¹² Sahagún writers had a very distinctive
invocation which marks their records of gifts to their monastery; there
are variants but the words ‘Patronis sanctissimis Sanctorum Facundi
et Primitivi quorum corpora tumulata dinoscitur esse in locum super
crepidinis alvei Zeia’ usually constitute the core.¹³ For a period in the
940s and 950s the scribes of San Martín of Turieno in the Liébana
valley used a distinctive local diplomatic to record substantial lay gifts
to their monastery, incorporating the words ‘quia per vestris sanctis
⁹ ‘May he lead me before the tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ’, Li177 (943), cf.
Liii570 (995); ‘in that examination’, C32 (939); ‘in the presence of God’, Lii274 (954);
‘before God’, Cel36 (889); ‘at the day of the holy, tremendous, judgment’, OD29 (988);
‘while at the day of examination you will have revealed [yourself ] great and visible’,
Cel256 (936); ‘at the day of the great judgment’, Cel246 (969), Liii555 (993); ‘Lord,
you are a just judge’, Cel256 again.
¹⁰ Above, pp. 54–6, 80–3.
¹¹ C30 (937), C147 (971), C172 (977), C201 (988), etc.
¹² Cel177 (952), Cel503 (985), Cel209 (997); cf. Cel210 (991), Cel216 (993). The
sentiment sometimes occurs in other collections too: e.g. Sob38 (985), S352 (996).
¹³ ‘To the most holy patrons, Saints Facundo and Primitivo, whose bodies are
distinguished by being buried in a hollow in the ground in the place Cea’, S128 (950),
S221 (964), S228 (965), S245 (966), S255 (970), S293 (978—incorporated in a royal
charter), S303 (980), for example.
orationibus me arbitror impetrare ut fruar celestibus regnis quia nichil

me abere bonum recordor ex meritis; et qui hec paginola tenuerit pro
N non pigeat orare si Deum absque verecundia videat’.¹⁴ And the more
elaborate ‘et/ut eorum sufragiis eruamur ab omni malo flagitiorum,
et post heredes fieri mereamur in regno polorum’ signals what San
Millán deemed appropriate for Navarre royal grants in its favour.¹⁵ The
monastery of Abellar seems to have enjoyed quoting a version of ‘O
Lord God … keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of
the heart of thy people’ (I Chr. 29: 18), when gifts in its favour were
recorded,¹⁶ while grants to the bishopric of León (whether to the same
or to several different bishops) can share several lines in common.¹⁷ It
would seem that straightforward gifts to a major monastery or bishopric
were usually recorded by the receiving institution, using its standard
favoured formulas. Indeed, it looks as if record-makers at those and
other institutions sometimes took an earlier record and copied virtually
all of it, inserting an appropriate description of the newly acquired land
and a new set of witnesses. Two grants to the monastery of Santiago
‘de Cellariolo’, during the abbacy of Ranosindo, are almost identical
from beginning to end, one from a priest in 956 and the other from a
person called Egila in 961; the latter is on a single sheet, probably an
‘original’, with no scribe named (the monk Baltario wrote the former).¹⁸
¹⁴ Loosely translated as: ‘through your holy prayers I get to enjoy the heavenly
kingdom, since I am mindful that nothing good comes from my own merits; and he
who shall hold this little page should not hesitate to pray for N if he should approach
God without due respect’; T45 (941), T51-T55 (946–52), T58 (961), T70 (964).
¹⁵ Freely rendered as ‘and with their support we shall be released from the evil of
our disgrace, and thereafter be worthy to become heirs in the kingdom of heaven’;
SM65 (952), SM72 (957), SM75 (957); cf. SM91 (972), SM110 (996). Several of these
charters were drafted by the abbot of San Millán himself; see further below, p. 94, on
abbots drawing up charters on royal instruction.
¹⁶ Lii469 (979), Lii487 (982), Liii520 (987), for example.
¹⁷ Li5 (873), Li6 (874), and Li76 (928); Liii539 (990) and Liii571 (995), for example.
¹⁸ Lii296, Lii351. It cannot be assumed that all charters on single sheets represent
original records, since some of them are demonstrably copies or forgeries; see R. Pacheco
Sampedro, ‘Arqueología archivística y documental’, in C. Sáez (ed.), Libros y Documentos
en la alta edad media. Los libros de derecho. Los archivos familiares. Actas del VI
Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Cultura Escrita, vol. 2 (Alcalá de Henares,
2002), 55–91, at 83–4; cf. O. Guyotjeannin, J. Pycke, B.-M. Tock, La Diplomatique
Médiévale ( Turnhout, 1993), 126–29. However, where single sheets record small-scale
transactions by ordinary people, it is customary to treat them as originals, as many
are likely to have been. The editors of volume 1 of the León collection, and volume
1 of the Otero collection, count 93 and 312 originals respectively (44 before 1000 in
the latter case): E. Sáez, Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de León, vol. I
(775–952), (León, 1987), xxiii, and J. A. Fernández Flórez and M. Herrero de la Fuente,
Although these records are only five years apart, they have completely
different descriptions of lands donated and almost completely different
witness lists: the former, recording the priest’s gift, is largely witnessed
by clerics; the latter, lay, gift appears to be largely witnessed by lay
persons, including at least three families and the owners of adjacent
properties. Were it not that the latter is on a single sheet, as ‘copies’ of
this kind often are, one might think that copying came at the stage of
creating a cartulary; but clearly copying a handy model was one way to
create a contemporary record.¹⁹
Composition by the receiving monastery or bishopric was one way to
create a record, but that was not the only way. There were royal charters,
often (and increasingly so across the tenth century) of considerable
length and elaboration. Dealing with royal diplomatic has its own
special problems, given the tendency for later interpolation or direct
falsification. Fortunately, the work of many editors, especially of the
last two generations, allows us to navigate a way through the pitfalls;
the single sheets from the León collection are also particularly helpful
in providing standards and comparanda. Sometimes, royal records of a
given period used identical or similar formulas, just as monastic records
did. Grants to two different beneficiaries from King Ordoño II and
his wife Elvira, on 9 January 916 and 8 January 917 respectively, have
near identical texts (sharing the same quotations from the first Book
of Samuel and from Proverbs); as might be expected, the witness lists
are not identical but have significant overlap.²⁰ Both survive on single
sheets and the first was written by Sarracino; no scribe is named on the
latter. Royal charters of the same period sometimes, however, just share
a few formulas. Ordoño III’s grant to Bishop Rosendo of Celanova
in 955 has some diplomatic in common with records of his gifts to
Colección documental del monasterio de Santa María de Otero de las Dueñas (854–1108)
(León, 1999), 28; cf. J. I. Fernández de Viana y Vieites, ‘Problemas y perspectivas de la
diplomática de los reinos asturiano, leonés y castellano leonés en la alta edad media’, in
Sáez (ed.), Libros y Documentos, 39–53; Commission Internationale de Diplomatique,
Vocabulaire International de la Diplomatique, ed. M. Milagros Cárcel Ortí (Valencia,
1997), 41–4; E. Pastor Díaz de Garayo, ‘Los testimonios escritos del sector meridional de
Castilla (siglos X–XI). Ensayo de crítica documental’, Historia, Instituciones, Documentos,
24 (1997), 355–79, at 357–8; and M. Lucas Álvarez, La Documentación real astur-leonesa
(718–1072)= El reino de León en la alta edad media. VIII (León, 1995), 75–6, on over
300 royal originals pre-1000.
¹⁹ Cf. Li42 (of 917) and Lii412 (of 970), where the beneficiary of the first is the
donor of the second; it looks as if the earlier record was used as a model for the later
(although there may well be an error in the date of the former).
²⁰ Li38, Li41.
Bishop Gonzalo of León at about the same time.²¹ Ramiro III’s grants
to the monastery of San Cipriano de Valdesaz and to that of Sahagún
in 978 also have echoes of the same formulation.²² Vermudo II’s grants
of 25 December 989 and 25 June 990, to two different laymen, have
some common formulas, some overlap in witness lists, and the same
scribe, Brother Munio.²³ At other times, however, particularly in the
case of grants to the bishop of León, even royal grants appear to have
been drafted by the beneficiary. Hence, while Vermudo II and his
wife Velasquita’s grants to two different monasteries in 985 have many
common formulas, some witness overlap, and the same scribe (the
‘notary’ Cresconio Arvadi), the king’s grant to the bishop of León eight
days after the second monastic gift has several common witnesses, but
episcopal diplomatic, and a different scribe.²⁴ Vermudo’s grant to the
monastery of Celanova of the same year (29 September) is recorded in
the monastery’s diplomatic and, doubtless reflecting the more westerly
location, has very few witnesses in common with the León group.²⁵
Several of the Navarre kings’ grants to San Millán in the later tenth
century explicitly appear to have been drafted by the abbot of San
Millán;²⁶ that kings used monastic scriptoria to draft not just records
of their own donations but all kinds of document is well-known in the
eleventh century.²⁷
In fact, the variety in the formulation of royal grants is in many
cases more striking than its standardization. Sancho I’s two grants to
Sahagún, made on the same day, 26 April 960, have very similar records
but even these are not identical.²⁸ Ramiro III and his wife Elvira’s
grants to Sahagún of a decade later, 11 May 971, despite having the
same scribe, Julián, have very different diplomatic from each other.²⁹
There is also the particularly telling case of Vermudo II’s grants to his
armiger (armour-bearer), Fruela, and to another trusted layman, Munio
²¹ Cel54, Li257 (952), Lii300 (951–56), the latter on a single sheet.

²² Lii461 (a single sheet), S293 (which probably has an interpolated sentence, Lucas
Álvarez, La Documentación real astur-leonesa (718–1072), 191–2).
²³ Liii530 and Liii541, both on single sheets.
²⁴ Lii506 (22 October), Lii507 (8 November), Lii508 (16 November); the first and
last are on single sheets.
²⁵ Cel503.
²⁶ ‘Sisebutus abbas Sancti Emiliani exaravit’, SM97 (984); cf. SM72, SM74, SM75
(all 957).
²⁷ See I. Alfonso, ‘Judicial rhetoric and political legitimation in medieval León-
Castile’, in I. Alfonso, H. Kennedy, J. Escalona (eds.), Building Legitimacy: Political
Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies (Leiden, 2004), 51–87, at 76.
²⁸ S175, S176. ²⁹ S261, S262.
Fernández, in 989—the same year and the same scribe but completely
different diplomatic; and here the records appear to be originals.³⁰ In the
tenth century kings seem to have been inconsistent in their approach to
producing records: sometimes they used episcopal or monastic scriptoria
to record royal favours, but sometimes, although it was more than a
century before royal chanceries were to be established, they used scribes
attached to the court, who wrote for the king and in his interest, like
the priest Jimeno, scriba regis of García Sánchez of Navarre, or Felix,
the notarius regis of Vermudo II of León.³¹ We know the names of
many such scribes and it is clear both that there could be several at any
one time and that they had a very wide repertoire of formulas available,
from which they might select in varied and creative ways. The record
of one of Ordoño III’s grants, made in May 956, names two notaries:
the priest Ambrosio and the priest Zalame, who was the chief notary,
notarius maior;³² that they were in orders is not surprising. Two of the
985 royal grants in fact name ‘monks of the palace’ too: Osorio and
Gutino, who were priests, and Nuño, who was a deacon. Four years
later, Vermudo’s grant to Fruela names three different monks of the
palace.
Records for other kinds of donor were also written by priests, for
we find them named as ‘notary’ or ‘scribe’ on many other records.
Apart from the royal cases, it is not always apparent where these
priests came from and why they were making the records. We might
expect that some priests worked for aristocratic families and provided
writing services for them:³³ someone made an inventory of Fernando
Vermúdez and Elvira’s charters in 976, a precious glimpse of the fact
that lay families could take as much care of their documents as religious
institutions did.³⁴ Much of the corpus of tenth- and eleventh-century
texts in the Otero de las Dueñas collection makes the same point about
³⁰ OD30, Liii530.
³¹ SM30 (943), king’s scribe; OD30 (989), king’s notary. See Commission Interna-
tionale de Diplomatique, Vocabulaire International de la Diplomatique, 33, 43, and Lucas
Álvarez, La Documentación real astur-leonesa (718–1072), 219–20, for chanceries; also
Lucas Álvarez, La Documentación real astur-leonesa , 221–8, for documents produced by
the entourage surrounding the king.
³² Lii295, on a single sheet; cf. S98, two notaries in a grant of Ramiro II, of 945 (a
reworked text). See below, p. 99, for the terminology of scribe and notary.
³³ As suggested by Carlos Estepa in a late tenth-century context, ‘Poder y propiedad
feudales en el período astur: las mandaciones de los Flaínez en la montaña leonesa’, in
Miscel-lània en homenatge al P. Agustí Altisent ( Tarragona, 1991), 285–327, at 310.
³⁴ OD22.
lay attitudes to documents, for the thirteenth-century monastery of

Santa María inherited an extremely substantial lay archive, originating
from the activities of two early eleventh-century aristocrats, Fruela
Muñoz and Pedro Flaínez.³⁵ Some of the other priests who wrote
charters were clearly resident in monastic communities, but they did
not invariably have such an immediate monastic context. We have seen
above that some churches in northern Spain had one resident associated
priest, a person who had sometimes been appointed by a distant lay,
monastic, or episcopal owner, but who sometimes appears to have been
an independent agent.³⁶ There were priests available in the countryside
in addition to those who lived in monastic communities and those
attached to aristocratic households.³⁷
Gifts are not the sole subject of the records, and the surviving corpus
of charters includes records of sale and exchange, in which many of
the actors were lay persons. Lay men and women certainly gave to the
church, but they also made gifts to each other and, especially, bought
and sold property from and to each other.³⁸ Sales between lay persons, in
which there was no contemporary ecclesiastical interest, were frequently
recorded by priests. So, for example, the priest Zezo recorded a sale of
land on the river Torío from one lay couple to another in 910, in a
complete but unelaborate record; the priest Stephen recorded another
sale between laity in Marialba in 928 in a similar record; the priest
Atriano recorded a sale between married couples of land on the river
Esla in 936 in a similar record; the priest Gómez recorded the sale of
another plot in Marialba in 944 from a couple to a deacon who was
acting for his cousin, again in a simple charter; in another, in 953, the
priest Leovildo recorded the sale of an orchard in central Galicia from
one couple to another; in another, in 984, the priest Graciano recorded
³⁵ Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección de Santa María de Otero

de las Dueñas, 21–3, and passim. Cf. Warren Brown on lay archives in fifth- to early
tenth-century France and Germany, ‘When documents are destroyed or lost: lay people
and archives in the early middle ages’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 337–66, and
A. J. Kosto on lay archives in tenth- and eleventh-century Catalonia, ‘Laymen, clerics,
and documentary practices in the early middle ages: the example of Catalonia’, Speculum,
80 (2005), 44–74, at 62–3. For Pedro Flaínez, see further below, p. 146.
³⁶ Above, p. 48.
³⁷ Cf. the numbers of priests listed by Estepa, ‘Poder y propiedad’, 307–08.
³⁸ For gifts to the laity, see below, pp. 139–63. Cf. the elegant demonstration of
the existence of large numbers of lay charters in tenth- and eleventh-century Catalonia,
Kosto, ‘Laymen, clerics, and documentary practices’. As in many parts of western Europe,
records of purely lay transactions could be preserved in monastic archives when they
provided evidence of relevant past ownership or of the transmission of property.
the sale of half a plot and an orchard in Corniero from a couple to a

woman; and the priest Sendino recorded the sale of land in Posadilla in
Astorga by a couple to a layman and his sons in 999, again in a simple
charter.³⁹ The priest Gauventio’s record was of a gift of a few apple
trees from a couple to a lay woman in 897, in a very simple charter;
likewise, the priest Juan recorded the gift of inherited land from one
couple to another in 931, and the priest Maxito recorded a gift in the
Cantabrian mountains from a couple to a layman in 960; the priest
Vermudo recorded a gift of property near the river Valderaduey from
one woman to another in 973, in a rather more elaborate charter; and
so on.⁴⁰ Sometimes we find the records of the same scribe in different
collections, showing that they were not attached to the source of the
surviving archive: the priest Godesteo wrote charters of sale from a man
called Salite to different purchasers, in 961 and 963; the ‘deacon and
notary’, Felix, wrote a charter of donation for a couple and a charter of
sale for a woman and her daughters for land near León in 962 and 961
respectively.⁴¹ Although some writers have no recorded description of
status, there are very many examples of priests and deacons performing
what were in effect notarial functions for the lay community, and
notably for laity in local rural communities, as we know that they did in
many other parts of Europe in the early middle ages.⁴² This is not to say
that small monasteries did not perform such functions too: transactions
between lay persons could also take place in the presence of monastic
communities and it seems likely that in such cases a member of the
³⁹ Li25 (on a single sheet), Li78, OD3 (single sheet), Li179, Sob95, S371, OD46
(single sheet).
⁴⁰ Li11 (single sheet), Sob78, S178, Lii425. The Celanova collection records very
few lay to lay transactions, although a woman sold land in Rabal to a confessus in 1003,
recorded by another confessus (Cel383).
⁴¹ S188, Lii363; Lii356, S194.
⁴² See W. Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany
(London, 1988), 137–8; R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cam-
bridge, 1989), 104–34 (of Switzerland); B. H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint
Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, 1989), 75; P. Bonnassie
and J.-P. Illy, ‘Le clergé paroissial aux IXe –Xe siècles dans les Pyrénées orientales et
centrales’, in P. Bonnassie (ed.), Le clergé rural dans l’Europe médiévale et moderne (Actes
des XIII e Journées Internationales d’Histoire de l’Abbaye de Flaran, 6–8 septembre 1991)
( Toulouse, 1995), 153–66, at 161; J. Belmon, ‘ ‘‘In conscribendis donationibus hic ordo
servandus est … ’’: l’écriture des actes de la pratique en Languedoc et en Toulousain’,
in M. Zimmermann (ed.), Auctor et Auctoritas: Invention et conformisme dans l’écriture
médiévale (Paris, 2001), 283–320, at 292–3; L. Casado de Otaola, ‘Escribir y leer en
la alta edad media’, in A. Castillo Gómez (co-ord.), Historia de la cultura escrita: Del
próximo oriente antiguo a la sociedad informatizada (Gijón, 2002), 113–77, at 123.
community made the record.⁴³ Indeed, abbots sometimes made the

records of major transactions to which they were not a party.⁴⁴
To add complication, it looks as if more than one party to a transac-
tion sometimes had a record made: two versions of the sale of a vineyard,
enclosure, and springs by the river Cabia survive, land sold by a man
called Felix and his family to a small local monastery on 1 May 939.⁴⁵
(Interestingly, the witnesses, although largely the same in each version,
are recorded in a different order, which should make us cautious about
assuming a relationship between the order of a list and status.) That
variant versions were known to exist is made evident by some cases
of dispute. In a case of 945 between a monk and a priest, each had a
charter purporting to show his ownership of a disputed inheritance; the
monk’s was shown to be false and thrown into the fire.⁴⁶ Two charters,
both apparently originals, recording essentially the same gift from a
nunnery to a monastery on 1 March 990, again emphasize the fact
that different records might be made, but also highlight how different
in style and spelling the records could be: the first, which could have
been a draft for the more formal second, is much simpler in style and
spells witness names in non-standard fashion—Frenade/Fredenando,
Terasico/Trassico, Iuanes/Ihoannes, Christovalo/Cristoforus; it also
demonstrates how the case endings of classical Latin could be aban-
doned by some writers ‘Ego Leticia et Maia et colegium serores de
Santi Laurenti vobis colecium fratriis de Sancti Salvatoris. Facimus inter
nos unatem de …’.⁴⁷ There was clearly plenty of opportunity for local
variants in the records.
S TA N D A R D L A N G UAG E A N D VA R I AT I O N S
Although we know something about individual writers of large books,

we do not know so much about writers of charters, or about their
⁴³ As in Lii402 (967), for example; perhaps cf. SJP5 (c.850). I would not rule out the
possibility of lay scribes too, but it would be much more difficult to make the case for
most of northern Spain than it was for Kosto to make it for Catalonia, ‘Laymen, clerics,
and documentary practices’, 56–60.
⁴⁴ Li184 (944), the record of the resolution of a major dispute; cf. Abbot Diego
below, p. 107.
⁴⁵ C31; cf. C32, C97, C140, C144, C184 (939–81), Lii410 (968). ⁴⁶ C55.
⁴⁷ Liii534, Liii535 (Leticia and Maia and the community of sisters of San Lorenzo
[greet] you, the community of San Salvador. We have agreed …). One might expect
‘collegium sororum Sancti Laurentii … collegio fratrum Sancti Salvatoris’.
training, in the tenth century.⁴⁸ One recent editor has described the
scripts of originals in the León collection as ‘rustic’, the product of rural
clerics with a ‘low level of culture’, but others have begun to identify
individual scribal characteristics, emphasizing the number of different
individuals involved and their capacity for adapting formulas.⁴⁹ Further
work on charter scripts can be expected in the future; for the moment we
have to make deductions about scribal habits from the texts themselves.
Charter texts depended on the repetition of set formulas. Although
there are a number of possible scenarios, it is conventional to suppose
that basic training for the composer of charters consisted initially
of mastering writing (by copying models over and over again) and then
of mastering content by memorizing formulas appropriate for records of
different kinds of transaction.⁵⁰ The words used to describe the writers in
the charters themselves are mainly scriptor and notarius, but occasionally
exarator; the verbs used to describe their actions are usually scripsit or
notuit, but sometimes exaravit or titulavit.⁵¹ At first glance these words
may seem to imply that different people performed different functions
during the business of record creation, with some distinction between
the composer of the words on the one hand and the writer of the text, to
whom the words were dictated, on the other, or even between those two
and a third person who prepared a draft on temporary material; very,
very occasionally a scribe’s signing-off clause shows some contemporary
⁴⁸ For the scribes of the great codices of the tenth century, see C. García Turza
(co-ord.), Los manuscritos visigóticos: estudio paleográfico y codicológico. I. Códices riojanos
datados (Logroño, 2002). Cf. the bishop who wrote books of the bible and service books
with his siblings, Sob123 (867). For Catalonia, Kosto, ‘Laymen, clerics, and documentary
practices’, 58, notes schools in monasteries and cathedrals and one—exceptional—lay
school, c.1000.
⁴⁹ J. M. Ruiz Asencio, Colección documental del archivo de la catedral de León, vol. III
(986–1031) (León, 1987), xxvi; Fernández Flórez and Herrero de la Fuente, Colección
de Santa María de Otero de las Dueñas, 27.
⁵⁰ B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. D. Ó Cróinín
and D. Ganz (Cambridge, 1990), 38–9; P. Riché, Écoles et enseignement dans le haut
moyen âge (Paris, 1989), 224–5; R. Wright, Early Ibero-Romance (Newark, 1994), 128;
T. J. Walsh, ‘Spelling lapses in early medieval Latin documents and the reconstruction
of primitive Romance phonology’, in R. Wright (ed.), Latin and the Romance Languages
in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1991), 205–18, at 211–12. Cf. the seventh-century
training ephemera preserved on slates, from the Psalms and computus, in I. Velázquez
Soriano, Las Pizarras Visigodas. (Entre el latín y su disgregación. La lengua hablada en
Hispania, siglos VI-VIII) (Salamanca, 2004), 58.
⁵¹ Literally ‘writer; person who has learned the signs (notae); person who provided a
draft on a wax tablet’, and ‘write; take notes; make a draft; inscribe’. Very occasionally
depinxit (literally ‘paint’), Liii520 (987). For examples: Li11 (897), C46 (944), SM72
(957); S178 (960), S214 (963), Liii580 (998), OD26 (986).
awareness of such distinctions, as in ‘Fragianus notuit, qui hoc scripsit

(Fragiano, who wrote this, composed it)’, and ‘Aloytus diaconus qui et
notarius dictavi et scribsi (I, Aloyto, deacon and notary, have composed
and written it)’.⁵² However, statements like these are very unusual and
it is unlikely that such distinctions were in practice sustained in this
early medieval world.⁵³ While one can well imagine some differentiation
between the author, the scribe, and the copyist in the great monasteries,
given the levels of scholarship evident in the Riojan manuscripts of the
tenth century, it is very unlikely that there was any such differentiation
in small monasteries and among those serving rural localities; it is more
likely that local scribes chose the words as well as writing them down,
drawing upon their store of memorized formulas.⁵⁴
All of these scribes must in effect have been using formularies,
even if orally transmitted through the process of memorization, rather
than transmitted in forms like the comprehensive texts from seventh-
and eighth-century Francia with which we are familiar (although the
tenth-century formulary from the Catalan monastery of Ripoll must
indicate that written collections of formulas are far from unthinkable in
northern Iberia).⁵⁵ Without formularies of one kind or the other, it is
very difficult to explain why records of sale in the early tenth century,
in different areas, particularly sales between laity, use the same standard
formulas over and over again.⁵⁶ In any case, some of these sale formulas
had previously been used in the sixth- and seventh-century records that
⁵² OD2 (932)—copy on a single sheet; Aloyto worked in comital circles, Cel48 (941),
Cel2 (942); the wealthy deacon Ermegildo indicated that he had provided a written draft
of his own bequests, ‘omnia mea que litteris exaravi’, Li109 (936). Cf. Bischoff, Latin
Palaeography, 41.
⁵³ Casado de Otaola, ‘Escribir y leer en la alta edad media’, 132. Although relating
to a different context and a later period, Michael Clanchy’s chapter on the technology
of writing conveys an excellent sense of the different processes that could be involved
in producing medieval records, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307
(London, 1979), 88–115.
⁵⁴ Modern linguists tend to use the word ‘notary’ to describe these charter writers; in
view of its connotations of public office, and often of lay status, as in, for example, early
medieval Italy, I have preferred to use the more neutral ‘scribe’.
⁵⁵ ‘Marculf ’s Formulary’, for example, in Formulae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi, ed.
K. Zeumer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges in quarto, section 5 (Hannover,
1886), 36–106. M. Zimmermann, ‘Un formulaire du Xème siècle conservé à Ripoll’,
Faventia, 4/2 (1982), 25–86, in a collection of miscellanea. Cf. the use made of
formularies by Brown, ‘When documents are destroyed or lost’, to make his case about
lay interest.
⁵⁶ Cf. above, p. 90, on the wide array of preamble formulas in León material; and
cf. Sob58 (865), which refers explicitly to the law of sale.
are preserved on slates; and Gil has demonstrated the likely existence of
a ‘Visigothic’ formulary preserved in an early modern manuscript.⁵⁷
We can envisage the process of charter composition like this: an actor
in a transaction would tell the scribe the kind of content needed and
the latter would then draw up the text, as instructed, in the appropriate
fashion—rather like the process of instructing a solicitor in the modern
world and securing a document in technical, legal language.⁵⁸ The
finished text would be read out, a point made explicitly by many
Cardeña charters: when Munio and his wife sold a vineyard to a man
called Lihoar in 965, they ordered a record to be made and heard
it read out.⁵⁹ This was a culture in which spoken performance was as
important as the record.⁶⁰ Some actors may have requested the inclusion
of specific, personal, touches: for example, an otherwise standard record
of donation of a substantial house in Grajal in 961, from a widow to
Sahagún (where the transaction was performed), includes an unusual
sentence noting how she accepted conjugal union with her husband
with the aid of a blessing and noting God’s gift to them both of their
three children;⁶¹ it looks like a personal comment and certainly was
not a standard output from the Sahagún scriptorium. Other actors may
have requested the inclusion of a few or more pious phrases, the greater
the number the more likely the record’s origin in a monastic centre: the
record of Eldoara’s gift to Doña Imilo begins with no fewer than thirteen
(printed) lines of invocation, naming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit three
times and dwelling on the concept of unity in the Trinity.⁶² Some
⁵⁷ Velázquez Soriano, Las Pizarras Visigodas, e.g. nos. 8, 19, 40; J. Gil (ed.), ‘Formulae
Wisigothicae’, in his Miscellanea Wisigothica (Seville, 1972), 70–112; whether or not
this formulary was Visigothic in origin is arguable, but Pastor Díaz de Garayo, ‘Los
testimonios escritos’, at 359, 379, has made a very strong case for it.
⁵⁸ Cf. Roger Wright’s characterization of the process, Early Ibero-Romance, 129–30;
Rosamond McKitterick’s, Carolingians and the Written Word, 94–8; and—with more
detail—Belmon’s, ‘ ‘‘In conscribendis donationibus hic ordo servandus est …’’ ’, 305–14.
⁵⁹ C122; cf. C117, C118, C119, C120, C121, C123, C124 (964–5), and many
other cases. Lihoar was associated with Cardeña; C128 (another charter of the transaction
recorded in C122, made six months later).
⁶⁰ Cf. R. Blake, ‘Syntactic aspects of Latinate texts of the early middle ages’, in
R. Wright (ed.), Latin and the Romance Languages in the Early Middle Ages (London,
1991), 219–32, at 219, 229; Wright, Early Ibero-Romance, 130–3, 144–5.
⁶¹ S190. Although unlike Sahagún diplomatic, it is reminiscent of formulas for the
donation of dos; see Zimmermann, ‘Un formulaire’, 80–1.
⁶² ‘Sub Christi nomine et sancte Trinitatis, Patris videlicet et Filii et Spiritus Sanctus,
individua maiestas, cuius nutu famula Dei Eldoara, quod corde credimus et ores proprios
Patris ingenitus, Filius genitus, Spiritum quoque Sanctum nec anterior nec posterior,
set ex ambobus procedens …’; Lii425 (973). That there were ready-made elaborate
other actors, who were based in a religious context—monastery or lay

religious household—and who had training, may actually have written
their own texts: a small but special group, with the capacity to do so.
It follows that some of the variations from standard diplomatic
occurred because the writers were sufficiently educated to add their
own personal touches to the record. A whole page on the glory of the
Trinity; an agreement to ‘fight on under the rule and put their shoulders
under the abbot’; a stream of consciousness that is barely formulaic at
all, almost as if written as the writer thought; a statement of devotion
that an aristocrat ordered to be made.⁶³ All strike the modern reader
with their individuality. So also the immensely personal texts that break
the formulas of what are, after all, merely deeds of conveyance with
a cry of adoration or entreaty: ‘te adoro, te deposco, Redemptori ac
Salvatori meo’; ‘oramus, Domine, oramus’; ‘obtamus, obtamus, ut de
nostris oblationibus cunctis quibus placere Deo studuimus nemo nichil
aufferre’; or ‘ut parcas Domine parcas tanto vulnere fessis qui noster es
plasmator et ductor’.⁶⁴ One can imagine the individual cleric, monk,
or holy woman constructing a much more personal record, as much a
personal statement of faith as a record of a material transaction.
Some kinds of variation from standard diplomatic, however, are
quite different from these: they stand outside the literary crafting, and
they seem to draw on other traditions. That such texts were written
some intellectual distance away from the art, skills, and training of the
great monasteries is apparent in their grammar and in some respects in
their orthography. Although texts of many kinds deviate from classical
Latin norms, charters written in royal courts and in major ecclesiastical
centres, by contrast, tended to respect the Latin cases and to use classical
or patristic vocabulary. This difference is evident if we compare charters
of different provenance, royal as against peasant, which are preserved
on single sheets.⁶⁵ The non-classical forms are particularly notable if
preambles available is clear from the seven additional donation models in the Ripoll
formulary, ‘Zimmermann, ‘Un formulaire’, 82–5.
⁶³ Cel210 (991), SM86 (967), Sam61 (976—see below, pp. 110–12), S114 (949).
⁶⁴ ‘I entreat you, I demand of you, my Redeemer and Saviour’, Cel461 (982); ‘We
are praying, O Lord, we are praying’, Sam115 (982); ‘We wish, we wish that no one will
take anything from all the offerings with which we strive to please God’, S330 (986); ‘so
that you spare us, Lord, spare us, wearied by such a wound, you who are our creator and
guide’, Cel7 (950); cf. Cel256.
⁶⁵ Compare, for example, the royal texts of Li18, Li38, Li41, Li79, OD30, and the
nuns’ text of Li80, with the peasant transactions recorded in Li82, Li135, Li139, Li223,
OD34, OD37.
cartulary copies from the great monasteries are compared with originals,
for they have a tendency to standardize the spelling and grammar of
originals: adque becomes atque, azessit becomes accessit, tibi et uxor
tua becomes tibi et uxore tue, loco predictum becomes in locum predic-
tum, nobis non valemus becomes nos non valuerimus, terra … abiturum
becomes terra … abitura, ego … quem fieri voluit becomes [ego] … quam
fieri volui, and so on.⁶⁶ The contrast between originals and copies
shows that, while texts written outside the major centres may some-
times simply have been carelessly written, such texts frequently (though
not invariably) used non-classical forms of the language.⁶⁷ These texts
are the texts that originated from the smallest monasteries, the lay
households, and the independent, or quasi-independent, priests. They
must to some extent reflect local patterns of speech and vocabulary, in
other words, local vernacular Romance;⁶⁸ their orthography, without
in any sense being phonetic transcription, must in some respects reflect
habits of pronunciation.⁶⁹ This is especially striking in texts recording
transactions between lay persons, but it can also be true of texts relating
to small monasteries (as in the case of the Leticia and Maya text quoted
above) and of records of the transactions of the clergy. To make the
⁶⁶ Li25, of 13 April 910, in firstly single sheet and then cartulary copy versions;
cf. Li73, Li79, etc. The changes made in cartulary copies are very systematically treated
by the editor of the first León volume, Sáez, Colección de la catedral de León, vol. I,
xxv–xxviii; cf., less systematically, J. M. Mínguez Fernández, Colección diplomática del
monasterio de Sahagún, vol. 1 (León, 1976), 11–12. Cartulary copies might also augment
the number of pious formulas, e.g. Lii270 (954); cf. Lii415 (971), two different cartulary
copies. Cartulary copies of texts are normally, of course, of later date than their single
sheet exemplars.
⁶⁷ This point about the two traditions is made well by Walsh, ‘Spelling lapses’, 207.
⁶⁸ R. Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France
(Liverpool, 1982), passim, but especially 165–75; for a concise statement of the
argument, see also Wright, ‘The non-existence of ‘‘Leonese Vulgar Latin’’ ’, in Wright,
Early Ibero-Romance, 127–34. There have been great debates about the form of the
language that these texts reflect: Menéndez Pidal had argued that they represented
‘Leonese Vulgar Latin’, a register between Low Latin and vernacular Romance, but many
modern commentators accept Wright’s revision, i.e. that the scribes were writing their
own language, Romance; cf. Blake, ‘Syntactic aspects of Latinate texts’, and C. Pensado,
‘How was Leonese Vulgar Latin read?’, in Wright (ed.), Latin and the Romance Languages,
190–204. For some contrary views, see M. Banniard, ‘Language and communication
in Carolingian Europe’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History:
Volume II c.700–c.900 (Cambridge, 1995), 695–708.
⁶⁹ This is a more contentious point, but see Walsh, ‘Spelling lapses’, 210–14.
The suggestion sometimes made that the formulas in these texts usually have fairly
‘correct’ Latin while the ‘freer composition’ does not, does not stand up to scrutiny; cf.
Ramell’s case below, and the material cited by Pensado, ‘How was Leonese Vulgar Latin
read?’, 201.
point, I quote almost in full a charter written by a priest to record

another priest’s gift of half of his goods to a deacon, in 977.
In Dei nomine. Ego Fagildo presbiter tibi Sabbarigo diaconus, in Domino
Deo eternam salludem. Macnum est enim tidullum donacionis vel consecione,
in co nemo poteest largidatis inrumpere, set quiquit grado animo, expontania
volluntate, donatur vell ofertur semper libenter ancplectet. Ideoque plaguit mizi
ut faceremus tibi, sicut et facio, kartula donationis vell consezionis de omnia
mia kausa, quam eciam mea ereditate vell quiquit visum sum avere, medietate
ex integra dono vobis adque concedo, tam in vidam quam eciam post hobidum
<m>eum, facio es eo quot tum estederit volluntas. Ida ut ab odierno die vel
tempore de nostro iure in vestro iure trada aque confirmata, tu <e>t omnis
posteredas tua, per seculla cuncta. Siquis tamen, fiet minime credo, contra
in anc kartulla disrumpendum vennerit vell venerimus, anc per nos, anc per
alliquia personam subrogida, tunc abeaas podestadem de nos adprende ipso
que in ista kartulla resonat duplado vell quantum ad te fuerit meliorado, et tibi
perpedim avidurum.
Facta kartulla donacionis ipsas kalendas ienuarias, era xv post M.
Fagildo presbiter … manus mea fecit …
Ramell presbiter noduit.⁷⁰
What is particularly interesting here is that the charter uses very
standard formulas, which occur throughout the tenth-century corpus,
from east to west, but that Ramell chose to write them down in non-
classical grammar and spelling;⁷¹ hence, plaguit mizi for placuit mihi,
in vidam … post hobidum for in vitam … post obitum, fiet minime credo
for quod fieri minime non credo, contra in anc kartulla disrumpendum
vennerit for aliquis contra hanc cartulam ad inrumpendum venerit,
quantum … meliorado for quantum … melioratum, and so on. Very
standard material but non-standard transmission.
Local variation sometimes went further than the use of irregular
spelling and grammar. Sometimes a collection includes a record of quite
different form, like the third-person record of a sale of a vineyard on the
river Eslonza made in the late 970s;⁷² there are hints here of an entirely
different diplomatic tradition. Other hints of the existence of different
diplomatic traditions occur in records of gifts introduced by the formula
‘Magnus est titulus donationis’. Ramell’s charter quoted above is in fact
⁷⁰ Lii448; Lii467 (979), which records a woman’s sale of a vineyard to a priest, is

another good example; both survive on single sheets.
⁷¹ See below, p. 105, for a more classical version of the full opening dispositive formula,
and the example cited above, n. 2, for more classical versions of standard formulas.
⁷² Lii472 (single sheet).
one of these but here is the full formula in a more standard form (there
are often variants on the last part of the sentence): ‘Magnus est titulus
donationis in qua nemo potest actum largitatis irrumpere neque foras
legem proicere sed quicquid grato animo donatur pronaque voluntate
facere quis decreverit semper libenter amplectitur’.⁷³ The sentence is
usually followed by something like ‘Ideo placuit nobis … (Therefore we
have agreed … )’. This formula occurs in Liébana, Celanova, Sobrado,
León, Sahagún, and Cardeña charters, across the tenth century.⁷⁴ Not
surprisingly, it introduces records of gifts, but a very high proportion of
the transactions in which it occurs is between lay persons. These may
be of high status—a count’s gift to his wife, a king’s gift to a trusted
servant⁷⁵—but many are peasants contracting with other peasants, and
with their more powerful neighbours. The actors are not exclusively lay
(as the Ramell case makes clear), and monasteries or religious individuals
might benefit from such gifts; many of the records were in fact made
by priests. Although undoubtedly widespread, the use of this formula
is not especially common; it crops up here and there, but infrequently.
Here we have a trace of a diplomatic that was different from the
dominant tenth-century ecclesiastical tradition, a diplomatic familiar to
local priests and monasteries in their various localities and primarily
used to record gifts from one lay person to another. It is, in fact, one of
Gil’s formulas of ‘Visigothic’ origin and may have had a long history of
pre-tenth-century use.⁷⁶
These uneven traces of local diplomatic practice suggest that those
who made records were working with existing traditions, some of which
had archaic elements. Members of local communities used writing;
writing had standard elements; records using standard formulas were
made for the laity in rural communities; and there was some local
variation in scribal habits. Records were made for the laity regardless
of whether or not there was a large monastery nearby and whether or
not a large monastery was an actor in the transaction; where there was
⁷³ S318 (15 May 984). Loosely translated as ‘Great is the deed of donation, by which
a gift cannot be broken or put beyond the law, but, whatever be given with a thankful
heart, he who so desires can proclaim it for ever free’.
⁷⁴ For examples across time and space: Sob72 (858), T19 (914), Li35 (915), Cel498
(927), Cel304 (937), Sob12 (945), Li223 (950), Lii315 (959), S178 (960), S214 (963),
Lii411 (969), S370 (972), C188 (981), C203 (992).
⁷⁵ Cel576 (916), Liii530 (989—single sheet).
⁷⁶ Gil (ed.), Miscellanea Wisigothica, 100–1; see Casado de Otaola, ‘Escribir y leer
en la alta edad media’, 144–5, on interest in copying Visigothic texts in the tenth
century.
no large (or small) monastery, records were made by local priests, in

effect performing a notarial function for peasant communities. This is
of exceptional importance in understanding not only the records but
the culture. Further, a basic, record-making tradition, with standard
formulas, was shared by local priests and by those in greater centres;
variant standards, of archaic origin, sometimes surfaced in the localities.
On the other hand, there was also a much more elaborate record-
making habit (or series of habits), lodged in the great aristocratic
and ecclesiastical houses, which used those standard formulas but
which had, by the tenth century, a much wider range of formulas
available.
L A N G UAG E A N D S TAT U S
Elaborate language, not surprisingly, tends to be employed in the records

of donors who had high status. A very high proportion of the charters
with florid preambles, pious explanations, and lengthy sanctions, records
the gifts of aristocrats and religious persons.⁷⁷ This was not invariably so,
for even the gifts of kings could be recorded in short formal documents,
like Alfonso IV’s gift to the monastery of Abellar on 15 March 930.⁷⁸
However, about 80% of these elaborated texts are associated with the
deeds of those who are identifiably noble or ecclesiastical and an even
greater proportion of the exceptionally elaborate documents have those
associations: royal and episcopal documents are usually immediately
recognizable by their length; preamble, notification, and giving words
can easily total 300 to 500 words, five or six times the length of the brief
texts with which I began this chapter.⁷⁹
Kings and bishops were not the only originators of such elaborate
texts; comital and other aristocratic families did so too, as did monks,
priests, and deacons.⁸⁰ There are two particularly interesting sub-sets of
⁷⁷ See above, pp. 89–91, for examples. The inclusion of an elaborate religious
sanction, in addition to a secular sanction, is a particular feature of records of gifts to
religious bodies; see, for example, the sanction quoted in the Appendix to this chapter,
p. 112.
⁷⁸ Li86 (single sheet); it has a short text but quite a long witness list.
⁷⁹ For example, episcopal texts on single sheets: Li43 (917), Li76 (928); royal texts
on single sheets: Li38 (916), Lii270 (954), Liii550 (991). (Many episcopal charters are
much longer, but survive only in cartulary copies.)
⁸⁰ For example, a priest Li93 (932), an abbot Lii409 (968), some nuns Liii535 (990),
an aristocratic couple Liii587 (999)—all on single sheets. See also the aristocratic gifts
this group: women and lay religious families. Many of the most lengthy
and pious charters record the gifts of religious women—abbesses,
nuns, ancillae or famulae Dei (‘female servants of God’, i.e. women
committed to God)—like the two nuns, Eilo and Goisenda, who gave
their (clearly substantial) estates to the abbot of Celanova in 993; or
the ancilla Christi, Ermigia, who gave her half of a substantial estate
near the river Valderaduey to the nunnery of Santiago in León in
970.⁸¹ The former charter begins with an elaborate invocation and a
very elaborate salutation, before describing the property at some length
and seeking some regular memorial for the donors. The latter has an
elaborate salutation, followed by a lengthy preamble with three biblical
quotations, a lengthy description of the property, and a long sanction.
The percentage of women donors in these elaborate texts is not in
itself striking but the association of women with some of the most
developed expressions of piety is notable. It is tempting to suppose
that they composed these records themselves, as some may well have
done, but their records often terminate with the name of a male scribe,
who may have been author and not simply someone who recorded
their dictation.⁸² The former abbot Diego was the writer for Eilo and
Goisenda.
Lay religious families were not especially numerous either but their
presence is nevertheless striking in association with this kind of text.
These people, frequently termed confessus or confessa, were laity commit-
ted to follow a religious lifestyle. They appear to have taken some kind
of vow of commitment, but did not join a monastery, often remaining
in their secular households and continuing in effect to live secular
lives.⁸³ Married couples stayed together, with their children. They were
clearly publicly identifiable—perhaps they wore distinctive clothing or
some kind of badge—and appear to have been recognized as distinctive
in major cartularies, such as the comital records in the Cardeña collection, like C27
(935) and C42 (943) (excluding the many falsified records here), and such as the gifts
of Bishop Rosendo’s family in the Celanova collection, e.g. Cel256 (936), Cel7 (950),
Cel92 (968).
⁸¹ Cel216 (see also an alternative version at Cel251); Lii413; cf. C187 (981).
⁸² See below, p. 180 for a likely example of female authorship.
⁸³ See J. Orlandis, ‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis et animae’’. Laicos y monasterios en la alta
(Pamplona, 1971), 217–378, who believed he had identified the distinctive institution
of familiaritas, that is, lay membership of a monastic family; for doubts about this
interpretation, see above, pp. 53–4. See Sam23 (982) for a wealthy confessus who made
a public statement of his commitment.
individuals.⁸⁴ A man and his wife, confessus and confessa, gave to the
same nunnery in León in 995 as Ermigia had done; in Galicia a count’s
mother, confessa, quoting twice from scripture, gave to the church of
Santa Maria in Osoño; the widow of a duke, also confessa, gave to
Celanova in a highly elaborate record, requesting a place for her own
burial there.⁸⁵ In view of their distinctive lifestyle, and public position,
it is not at all surprising that the records of their donations should have
a more than usually pious bent.
By contrast, the short, unelaborated, donation documents over-
whelmingly relate to the transactions of small-scale, peasant farmers,
just as the texts recording sales from lay person to lay person often
relate to this group.⁸⁶ They may indeed include a brief phrase of pious
explanation—hardly surprising when the beneficiary was a monastery
and the scribe a local priest—but they do not elaborate the explanations
and they do not pile formula upon formula, as the longer charters do.
Of such a type is my opening example, recording a gift to a monastery
by a lay woman and her husband in 948.⁸⁷ There are many other such
examples. They deal, overwhelmingly, with small properties: a couple
and their children give their share in a saltpan to Cardeña; another
couple give a vineyard in Marmellar; a man gives the monastery of
Abellar some bits and pieces in Marialba; a woman and her children
give a priest her share in the local orchards of Montecillo; a man called
Julián, with his wife and children, gives Bishop Rosendo several bits and
pieces of land in the neighbourhood of the river Arnoia; four named
siblings, with others unnamed (germanos minores), give a quarter of a
mill on the river Cea to the monastery of Valdávida.⁸⁸ The gifts may
have been made for pious reasons but, for peasant donors, the scribe did
not adorn the document with pious phrases. Saving the soul may well
have merited a mention, but fear of hell and hope of reward did not.
Donation is recorded in many ways in tenth-century Spain. Royal
courts, episcopal households, and major monasteries had their own
dedicated scribes and their own distinctive styles of writing; but records
were also made in local communities for lay people, often by local
⁸⁴ I am grateful to Roger Collins and Susan Wood for their help in understanding
the nature of this group. See further below, p. 177.
⁸⁵ Liii570, Cel492 (988), Cel530 (999).
⁸⁶ See above, pp. 96–8. ⁸⁷ Li203; see above, p. 88.
⁸⁸ C30 (937), C107 (962), Li126 (938, single sheet), OD14 (964, single sheet),
Cel497 (950), S173 (960). For a wider range, see for example Sob71 (918), T35 (927),
SM54 (c.949), T73 (975), S332 (986), Cel409 (990), Liii575 (997).
priests or deacons, as they were also made in small monasteries. A

standard group of donation formulas seems to have been available to
virtually every kind of writer, derived from formularies, but some scribes
deployed these within an array of florid and elaborate language. Kings,
bishops, aristocrats, abbots, and lay religious families are associated
with the most elaborate forms of record. Peasant donors, like peasant
vendors, are associated with shorter, simpler records. This must in part
have been because they did not have access to the most highly trained
record-makers but it may also have been because intentional points were
being made about status. Whoever paid for the production of their texts,
whether alienator or beneficiary, apparently did not consider it suitable
to decorate records of peasant transactions with florid language.⁸⁹
Peasants may also have been less concerned about the delights of the
heavenly kingdom. Indeed, perhaps peasants made gifts to priests and
monasteries for different reasons from those that stimulated kings and
aristocrats.
⁸⁹ Although the voice of the charter text is the voice of the alienator, one might
think it was more in the interest of beneficiaries of gift or sale to see to the production
of a document—all beneficiaries, not just the major monasteries. Some donation texts,
however, are so personal it is extremely difficult to see them as other than the responsibility
of the alienator, and we know that both parties sometimes had documents made (see
above, p. 98). For more standard texts, beneficiary instruction must be a possibility: four
sales to the same purchaser, on the same day in 964, have almost identical formulas,
Lii371–74, for example. In such cases, we must presume that the drafters thought ‘basic’
texts appropriate for peasant alienations.
Appendix to Chapter 4
A N E X A M P L E O F A L E N G T H Y D O N AT I O N C H A RT E R
In this record of 3 June 963, the confessus Sunilano gives his son, the priest
Vermudo, his family monastery of Santiago and San Pelayo de Barbadelo in
Galicia, with substantial appurtenant properties and churches. The opening
invocation and salutation, and the final sanction, dating clause, and witness
list, are all close to standard formulas, but the long and repetitive disposition
is not at all standard in its arrangement and, although it draws from standard
formulas from time to time, its overall effect is to suggest a personal view of
hopes and aspirations. The witnesses listed are of very high status.⁹⁰
For a flavour of the text in English, here are some brief, freely rendered, pas-
sages.
‘I your poor servant Sunilano … salute you, our son, the priest Vermudo, in the Lord
God … I and the confessa Nunnita [his wife], and all the brothers, confirm your election
as abbot and guardian of this place … We give you, from God in heaven, this holy place
of St Martin, with its buildings and all appurtenances; where there is a more suitable
place for a monastery, you should build, and set it up, and attract good men, who will
help you in all good things, men who persist in the fear of God night and day, who
live by the holy rule, with their feet rushing to church, with their hands toiling, and
ensuring a reward for travellers and the poor. Use all your goods, and do not fail to pray
and celebrate anniversaries, do all good things, banish evil, work, so that you reap the
fruit of your labour in eternal joy and we receive a reward before God; and you, beloved
son, take care of all our goods, because we only assign Christ as your heir. And if a good
man should arrive, either one of our relations or someone unconnected, who should be
humble and obedient, he should receive your love; and he who is proud, contumacious,
and does evil shall have no part with you here … Always listen to our sound advice,
and spend your days on good works, and seek advice from good men, and show your
generosity, so that you offer God your soul; and everything which we give you, with
good heart, you shall have in perpetuity.’
In nomine sancte et individue Trinitatis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Ego
exiguus famulus tuus Sunilani confessus vobis patronis meis sancto Iacobo apos-
tolo et sancto Pelagio et omnibus reliquiis sanctorum, quorum hic continentur
ecclesia hic in Barvatello, quam edificavit Audilane et Teodemundus abba,
Visclafredoni abba, et in ultimo Nunnita confessa, et ipse Sunilane initiabimus
⁹⁰ Sam61.
Appendix to Chapter 4 111
et quantum potuimus tantum fecimus, quoniam mors antecedit nobis et quem
dominus adiutus fuerit renovet et conmutet in melius; et beatus homo qui
sperat in Te; et qui adiutus est a Deo; monet enim Dominus dicens ‘Date
et dabitur vobis’. Ego quidem Sunilani confessus tibi filio nostro Veremudo
presbitero in domino Deo eternam salutem amen.
Dubium quidem non est sed plerisque cognitum manet atque notissimum
patet cum sis tu filius meus iam quidem sacerdotali honori adeptus, nunc
tempus ego quidem confessionis iugo Christi militum totis viribus sanctorum
patrum normam desiderans, placuit mihi atque convenit propia mea voluntate
integroque consilio liberoque arbitrio, ut in Dei honore et tuo amore facerem
tibi filio meo iam dicto textum scripture de bonis meis, rebus, vel quicquid
visus sum habere, tam de aviis, tiis, avunculis vel parentibus meis, quam
etiam et de meo iermano Veremudo, presbitero, Pelagii filio, sicut ille mihi
concessit per textum scripture testamenti ecclesiam sancti Petri cum omnibus
suis bonis sicut in scripturas illius resonat in primis locum sancti Salvatoris
latere montis Parami, ripa Logii, cum omnibus bonis suis et suis familiis et
suos cartarios, priores, et antecessores, vel avolos et tios nostros usque ad
minimam rem cum omnibus edificiis, palatiis, et intus in ea, rem viventem,
iumenta, armenta, apes, et oves et omnes suas adiunctiones ubique in nomine
meo et de ipso priore fratre meo iam memorato ab omni integritate tibi
dono atque concedo; et aliam ecclesiam sancti Mametis erga ripa Logii cum
omnibus bonis suis sicut in scripturis suis vel testamenti resonat … [plus seven
further churches, seven villas, one with a church, and two hereditates, one with
a church].
Tam ego Sunilani simul et Nunnita confesa, vel omnes sui fratres, filii
Trodilli, nepte Visclafredoni abba, Dayldus presbiter, Vistressilli confesa, Fre-
denandus et Ioaquintus et Ayricus presbiter, hec omnia condonarunt nobis et
de illis abba et eligerunt vel tutorem loci illius, sicut et nos presentes fecimus
Deo iubente et scriptura dicente ‘Qui inter vos fuerit humilis et ultimus sit
vester dominus et qui fuerit inter vos maior sit vester servus’.
Ipsum locum sanctum iam prefatum sanctum Martinum cum cunctis edifitiis
et prestationibus suis et omnibus suis familiis et suis scriptis veteribus et novis
et omnibus bonis suis, et sanctum Iacobum cum omnibus bonis suis, unde
in primis inquoavimus et hic finimus, tibi concedimus a Deo excelso et, ubi
plus aptum fuerit locus pro monasterio, in omnibus istis locis facias, instruas,
edifices, et plantes et homines bonos ad te aplices qui te adiuvent in omnibus
bonis et, qui in timore Dei persistant die noctuque et, qui per regulam sanctam
vivant pedibus alacres ad ecclesiam, manibus ad laborem, et ad mercedem in
pauperes et peregrinos. Omnia vestra expendite et vestros votos et anniversarios
et kalendarios ne pigritetis, et omnia bona facite, mala dimittite, et facite
labores, ut reportetis fructum laborum vestrorum in gaudium eternum et nos
recipiamus mercis lucrum ante Deum; et du, dilecte fili, tene custodiam super
omnia nostra, quia alium heredem tibi non ponimus nisi Christum.
112 Appendix to Chapter 4
Et si de aliqua parte homo bonus advenerit ex propinquis aut extraneis, qui
plus humilis fuerit et obediens, caritatem, que culmen est bonorum operum,
ipse de manu tua accipiat, qui et pro te currat et nos non obliet; superbus et
contumax et maleficus nullam partem hic tecum habeat; humilis servus Christi
et ministri Dei et ancille Christi, qui pro animabus suis devote curam gerant.
Salubre nostrum audi consilium semper, et in operibus bonis dies tuos in
bono expende, et cum bonis consilium prebe, et distributorem te ostendas,
ut inamam tuam cum fructu bono Deo offeras; et omnia que tibi cum bono
animo concedimus habeas in perpetuum vel ille, cui tu omnia reliqueris in parte
ecclesie nostre; in parte extranea vel secularia aut fiscalia non promittimus nec
cuiquam. Insuper tibi dilecto filio nostro vel abbati concedimus ecclesiam sancti
Adriani in illo monte de Paramo, sicut illam obtinuit domnus Ambrosius, et
domnus Ranosindus nobis concessit per scriptura testamenti et de presura de
nostris intercessoribus vel aviis, et omnia nostra ubicumque potueris invenire.
Hec omnia suprataxata, que gratanter a nobis sunt adnotata irrevocavil-
ia permaneant secula cuncta … sequentibus temporibus hunc factum meum
infringere aut inrrumpere temptaverit vel presumpserit, nec vocem habeat nec
licentiam sed sit excomunicatus a fide catholica et a corpore et sanguine Domi-
ni, et cum Iuda Domini proditore habeat partem in eterna dampnatione; et
pro temporali pena pariat tibi vel voci tue omnia que in testamento resonat
duplata vel triplata et insuper unum auri talentum exsolvat post partem ecclesie
potestatis, et hec series testamenti in perpetuum habeat firmitatis roborem euo
perenni.
Notum die III nonas iunii era XIVa post milesima.
Sunilani confirmans in hac scriptura testationis et donationis manu propia
signum indidi. Nunnita confesa in hac series testamenti, quam fieri volui manus
mea confirmo.
Ranemirus princeps confirmo; Rudesindus episcopus confirmo; Giloira Deo
dicata confirmo; Veremudus serenissimus princeps confirmo; Froila Vimaraz,
armiger eius, confirmo; Rudericus Velasquiz confirmo; Naustas testis; Arias
testis; Alvitus testis.
5
Donation to Churches: Purpose
and Expectations
Whatever we might think was the peasant rationale for donation,

explicitly pious reasons for giving are stated throughout this material.
They sometimes come in a formulaic statement, perhaps brief, perhaps
elaborated; they sometimes come as a specific intention—I give you this
in order that I may be buried in the porch of the church at N—and they
sometimes come as a formulaic or personalized request for continuing
commemoration. Indeed, nearly 90% of all the donations recorded in
these charters were made to ecclesiastical individuals or communities,
and about four fifths of those were expressly made for pious reasons of
one kind or another.
In modern legal usage donation is about handing things over ‘without
consideration’, that is without explicit prior agreement that something
will be given back in return. In this modern understanding, ‘giving’
is differentiated from ‘exchanging’ and from ‘selling’, in other words
from handing something over as a result of an agreement between
two or more parties, with a precise return specified in advance. Tenth-
century Iberian scribes also usually differentiated clearly between the
concepts of giving and selling, consistently associating sale but not
gift with the concept of price, pretium, for that which was to be
given in return, price normally being paid in movables of measur-
able value.¹ Of course, things were given in return for gifts—most
obviously countergifts²—and things might also be expected to be
given in return for gifts, just as we expect some kind of parity in
¹ See below, pp. 135–8. Exchanges usually involved exchange of one piece of landed
property for another. The language of exchange records hovered between that of sale and
gift: we find both donare and kartula vendictionis for the exchange in Lii386 (965), and
both dare and kartula vindicione for that in Lii388 (965), but karta commutationis could
also be used, as in the former.
² See below, pp. 135–6, for countergifts.
114 Donation to Churches
present-giving in the twenty-first-century western world. However,

there is no implication in this corpus of material that a countergift was
obligatory, nor that there was the kind of overarching ‘gift economy’
that has been proposed for some early medieval societies.³ Charters
recording sales for price are almost as common as those recording
gifts.
Nevertheless, although the records kept the concepts separate, early
medieval donation to the church was a kind of giving which often
did envisage an ultimate return, even if it was to come after the
donor’s death. An air of reciprocity hung about these transactions. That
something was expected back is explicitly stated by the more elaborate
charter formulas and implicitly indicated in many of the briefer charters
of gift; by virtue of the gift, monks and clergy became intercessors,
mediators between this life and the next, arranging the ultimate return.⁴
Sometimes, however, tenth-century texts make it clear that donors
expected a return for their gifts in the earthly world and occasionally
their scribes brought the concept of sale into such transactions, as if they
thought that the vendors were doing outright deals with the clergy for
their immediate benefit. Very occasionally the texts even seem confused
between the categories, as if the gift required so obvious a return that the
scribes did not know how to classify it.⁵ There is therefore an element
of the contractual, sometimes overt, sometimes implicit, in much of
³ See above, pp. 30–4, for the classic literature on gift exchange and for studies
of early medieval giving, such as B. H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter:
The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 909–1049 (Ithaca, 1989), especially 132–43.
Note the thoughtful assessment of the place of gift exchange in early medieval Frankish
societies in J.-P. Devroey, Économie rurale et société dans l’Europe franque (VI e –IX e
siècles), vol. 1 (Paris, 2003), 175–93.
⁴ See the excellent discussion of these issues by Stephen White, Custom, Kinship and
Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1050–1150 (Chapel Hill,
1988), 26–7, 158; in contrast, A. Guerreau-Jalabert, ‘Caritas y don en la sociedad
medieval occidental’, Hispania, 60 (2000), 27–62, argued that no return was expected
for such gifts.
⁵ Lii357, for example; see further below, pp. 136–7. Cf. White, Custom, Kinship
and Gifts to Saints, 196, who argues that the distinction between gift and sale only
really appeared in the twelfth century; others have made the point for northern Spain
that sale became more evident in the late eleventh century, for example, M. I. Loring
García, ‘Dominios monásticos y parentelas en la Castilla altomedieval: el origen del
derecho de retorno y su evolución’, in R. Pastor (ed.), Relaciones de poder, de producción
y parentesco en la edad media y moderna (Madrid, 1990), 13–49, at 47–8. However,
in tenth-century northern Spain, the distinction between gift and sale is usually
sustained and is very clear in most sets of texts; the Cardeña collection, for example,
is an exception in having relatively few sale texts, although even these are clearly
differentiated.
Donation to Churches 115
tenth-century donation to the church in northern Spain. That was not

at all unusual in the European context.⁶
In what follows I shall deal in turn with the three kinds of expression
of pious motivation (formulaic statement, specific request, and donation
for the purpose of commemoration), exploring their spatial and temporal
occurrence.⁷ However, some gifts were made to churches and clerics for
reasons that were not religious; these will be considered subsequently.
There may well have been many other, unrecorded, layers of motivation,
but it is the intention here to identify and explore the rationales that
were stated.
F O R M U L A I C PI E T Y
Most gifts to the church in these collections were made for no return
in life. However, awareness of the post mortem return is often close to
the surface of the texts that record them. Just as they did in other parts
of Europe at the same time, some records display a clear understanding
of the causal relationship between giving in life and reward in heaven:
in the record of the gifts of Foracasas ibn Tajón to the monastery of
Sahagún of 1 January 955, after a long preamble and lengthy detail
of the gifts, the text continues ‘you can give alms to the poor and to
slaves from these gifts, so that (ut) I earn God’s pardon for my sins
through your holy intercession’.⁸ The record of the much smaller gift of
Fruela Vélaz and his wife of 23 June 964 concludes, after the invocation
and short disposition, that ‘from that [i.e. from the gift] there shall be
lighting for the altar, food for the monks, support for the poor, and alms
for the needy, and for us there shall be remission of sins before God’.⁹
The record of the gift of a villa by Genobreda and her son, Nuño, dated
⁶ Cf. a fifth-century Ravenna bishop’s ‘négoce spirituel’, Ph. Jobert, La notion de

donation. Convergences 630–750 (Paris, 1977), 185; Jobert argued that the ideology of
the redemptive value of giving was established by the seventh century, ibid., 192.
⁷ Cf. the three categories of rationale identified by J. A. García de Cortázar y Ruiz
de Aguirre, El dominio del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla (siglos X a XIII).
(Salamanca, 1969), 54–6: spiritual, material, and expecting some kind of countergift,
like burial.
⁸ S144. See White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints, 26–7, for a good discussion
of similar notions.
⁹ S220; cf. S221, S303. Cf. also, above, p. 91, the favourite Celanova formula
contrasting the temporal subsidy gained by the monastery with the perpetual reward to
the donor.
17 April 970, after a relatively short preamble, goes on to say ‘we offer
our villa to God and to this holy monastery of Samos for the salvation
of the soul of Cesabi Efimariz, Nuño’s father … so that (ut) we shall
be worthy to find pardon for our sins before God’.¹⁰ The ideas here
are standard and formulaic in expression, but the explicit connection
between immediate value to Sahagún or Samos and long-term benefit
to the donor is particular to these records.
The reasons recorded for the overwhelming majority of donations
to churches were very general, with the same words repeated in many
charters from across northern Spain and across the century. Very
standard formulas were used, usually without language or intention
that was specific to the donor. These formulas were sometimes of the
elaborate kind discussed in the preceding chapter and were sometimes
brief and simple. If they were elaborate, a long preamble might provide
a religious context for the gift, emphasizing the terrors of the day of
judgment or hopes of eternal reward in heaven; usually some words of
intention were also directly linked with the giving words in the phrases
or clauses of the disposition (‘I give so that … ’). The purposes most
directly associated with the verbs of giving were remission of sin, pardon
for sin, intercession with the saints, or prayers from the monks, as in the
Sahagún and Samos examples above. However, it was salvation of the
soul of the donor, or of someone close to the donor, that features most
consistently in the records, either in combination with other purposes or
alone: pro anima mea (for my soul) or pro remedio animarum nostrarum
(for the salvation of our souls) or pro remedio animae fratris mei (for
the salvation of my brother’s soul) are the standard forms, although
occasionally there is expansion to take in the cure or care (cura) of the
soul (pro anima mea curam abeant).¹¹ In most of these Spanish charter
collections, just over half of the donations made for pious reasons refer
to the soul. Formulaic references to the soul are not in themselves
¹⁰ Sam102.
¹¹ For example, ‘ut pro remedio anime mee vel pro anima domno meo Gundissalbo
Telliz, trado … ’, C18 (929); the original ‘Ordonius rex et Urraka regina … Vovimus
votum Domino Deo nostro, ob remedium animarum nostrarum … ’, Lii298 (956);
‘Ita ut … duos agros et ipsa vinea … sit concessum pro animabus nostris’, S219 (964);
‘Conzedimus ibidem ipso monte, propter remedium animas nostras vel de parentes
nostros … ’, OD35 (993); the last three are on single sheets. The Latin cases vary; we find
pro animam, pro animae meae, pro remedium, pro remedio animabus nostris, and so on,
as well as the forms given above. For the expanded form, for example: ‘Concedo [duas
rationes] post parte monasterii … ut sit in manibus abbatis … ad cuius regimen fratres
fuerint reconditi, ut pro animam meam curam gerant’, Li175 (943).
remarkable in the context of early medieval European records, for

such statements occur widely. Jobert identified the first occurrences in
Ravenna documents of the early seventh century, and drew attention to
their occurrence in mission areas of northern Gaul from the late seventh
century and their frequent use in Alsace and Germany thereafter.¹² In
more western parts of the continent, the pro anima formula became
more common in the eleventh and twelfth than in earlier centuries.¹³
In Spain, the ideas of donation en beneficio del alma and the pro anima
cuota are fundamental to Spanish scholarly discourse of the early and
mid-twentieth century, to such an extent that one might think the pro
anima formula invariable, although it would be fair to observe that
scholars of many regions tend to use ‘gifts pro anima’ as shorthand
for any kind of giving to the church in this period.¹⁴ The shorthand
is unfortunate, because there are important distinctions to be made
between records that use the pro anima/pro remedio animae formulas
and those that do not: the distinction between gifts for very specific
pious reasons, requiring specific action on the part of the beneficiary,
and gifts for rather general pious reasons, has some significance.
In the order of two thirds of donations to the church were made
forwhat can only be called formulaic or ‘unspecific’ pious reasons,
whether mentioning the soul or not: they do not request celebration of
particular anniversaries, or burial of specific individuals, or construction
of a church or oratory in a specific place; they simply use one or more of
the pious formulas. About 42% of donations to the church were made pro
¹² Jobert, Notion de donation, 213–17; cf. H. Fichtenau, Arenga. Spätantike und

Mittelalter im Spiegel von Urkundenformeln (Graz, 1957), 144; M. Borgolte, ‘Gedenks-
tiftungen in St. Galler Urkunden’, in K. Schmid and J. Wollasch (eds.), Memoria.
Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter (Munich, 1984),
578–602, at 584–93; M. Lauwers, ‘Commentaire. Memoria. À propos d’un objet
d’histoire en Allemagne’, in J.-C. Schmitt and O. G. Oexle (eds.), Les tendances actuelles
de l’histoire du Moyen Âge en France et en Allemagne (Paris, 2002), 105–26, at 107.
¹³ In western European charters, English and continental, pro anima mea was not so
commonly used before the eleventh century, although it was exceptionally common from
then onwards; see White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints, 29; cf. Jobert, Notion de
donation, 224, on its ‘dilatation’ from the mid-eleventh century. Interestingly, it occurs
in Celtic contexts, insular and continental, in earlier centuries; see W. Davies, ‘Saint
Mary’s Worcester and the Liber Landavensis’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 4 (1972),
459–85, at 464–6 (its use in largely uncorrupted Llandaff charters of the eighth and
ninth centuries is notable, e.g. LL178, LL184, LL169a).
¹⁴ ‘For the benefit of the soul’ and ‘the pro anima quota’. See J. Orlandis, ‘La elección
de sepultura en la España medieval’, in his La iglesia en la España visigotica y medieval
(Pamplona, 1976), 257–306, especially 259–61 for references; see above, pp. 76–8, for
discussion of the quota or ‘fifth’.
anima/pro remedio animae; another 26% were made for unspecific pious
reasons, without using those particular formulas (they use, for example,
‘propter amore beatissimi paradisi et evadendum laquens penarum
inferni’, ‘ut merces michi eveniad per vestro intercessu apud Domini
copiosa’, ‘potius per eius intercessione aliquam ante Deum possim
invenire remunerationem’);¹⁵ another 12% were made for very specific,
stated, pious reasons; while about 14% of such donations, interestingly
and surprisingly, have negligible or no expressions of piety.¹⁶
Given the later frequency of the formula, and its influence on the
historiography of donation, the 42% mean for the occurrence of pro
anima/pro remedio animae is surprisingly low. As we can see, although
Table 5.1 Expressions of piety in records of donation to the church, by

collection, as percentages of stated reasons for giving in those records¹⁷
Unspecific Pro anima, Specific
pious pro remedio pious Secular
reasons animae reasons No pieties reasons
Cel 17 34 12 21 16
Sam 39 38 10 8 5
Sob 28 48 10 10 4
L 23 40 15 15 7
OD 11 34 22 11 22
S 33 47 9 5.5 5.5
C 33 53 8 5 1
SM 17 41 5 36 1
A 19 62 19 0 0
Ar 24 43 24 9 0
V 32 45 7 13 3
SJP 30 20 10 20 20
T 22 31 33 11 3
Ov 22 11 56 0 11
Total % 26 42 12 14 6
Total nos 229 370 108 121 49
¹⁵ Li27 (912), Li110 (936), Lii309 (958).

¹⁶ See below, pp. 126–30, for donations to the church that were expressly made for
non-religious reasons (6%).
¹⁷ These percentages do not include donations to the laity, hence variation from
figures for percentages of all donations. Note that the raw numbers for some collections
are small; too much significance cannot be attached to proportions in those cases: Albelda,
Arlanza, San Juan de la Peña, Otero de las Dueñas, Oviedo.
many collections reflect the mean, there are in fact some striking
variations from it. Most of these are not regionally differentiated, but
the low and very low proportions of pro anima grants in the far northern
Cantabrian and Asturian collections of the Liébana and Oviedo are
striking, while it is interesting that they have correspondingly high
proportions of specific pious reasons, as also does that from Otero de
las Dueñas. Celanova and San Millán collections—in very different
regions—are notable for their high proportions of records that have no
or minimal expression of pieties, even though grants to the church are
being recorded. While the explanation for such diversity must sometimes
be to do with individual actors’ instructions to the scribe, it must be likely
that record-making practice is the principal explanation—particularly
when collections from different monasteries in one region have divergent
practice. Looking at the chronology of occurrences helps to develop this
explanation.
The broad trend is that pro anima grants are much more common in
the second half of the tenth century than in the first. This trend does
not match the overall incidence of donations, since it starts later and
continues strongly in the last two decades of the tenth century, when
raw numbers of records decline. Although the Otero collection has few
records of donation to the church, it is nevertheless the 970s before the
formula occurs there; although it occurs in Sahagún material from the
920s, it is the 980s before the formula was obviously used in preference
to others; although it occurs in León material from the 910s, the 950s
are the years when the relative balance between use of this formula
and of other non-specific formulas changes; although many Celanova
records lack pious expressions, it is the 980s before the formula becomes
common; and for Samos, it barely occurs at all before the 950s. If
we look at collections with a significant number of charters on single
sheets, the point is made even more clearly: in León collections, while
both the pro anima formula and other expressions of pious motivation
occur on single sheets, the increasing use of pro anima from the 950s is
in records for which we only have cartulary copies. Take in particular
Ordoño III’s restoration of a suburban León church to the bishopric: the
cartulary copy adds ‘remedium anime avorum vel parentum nostrorum’;
the original single sheet does not have it.¹⁸ The low incidence of the
expression in the single sheets of the Otero collection is also striking.
Indeed, many of the records on single sheets from other sources have
¹⁸ Lii270 (954).
few pious expressions. What this seems to suggest is that, while pro
anima and pro remedio animae certainly occur in charters from the ninth
century onwards, they are not nearly as common as might be expected
during the tenth century;¹⁹ that usage clearly started to increase in the
last decades of the tenth century; and that it is one of the phrases that
tended to be added when cartulary copies were made in the eleventh or
later centuries. Notably, where it occurs in originals there tends to be
a strong monastic or royal interest; it is much less commonly found in
records made by local priests.
This means that, in effect, there was no contemporary stated rationale
for a significant (though immeasurable) proportion of tenth-century
pro anima gifts. While it is reasonable to argue that the long charters,
full of pieties, associated especially with the gifts of clergy, aristocrats,
lay religious households, and religious women, express a contemporary
ideology of expected reward in heaven, this cannot apply to many of the
shorter charters.²⁰ Where awareness of the reward is causally related to
the verbs of giving,²¹ or where the soul of a named relative is identified,
again it is reasonable to suppose that the record-maker, at least, shared
the reward ideology; but no comparable awareness is indicated by the
short charters with an unspecific pro anima/pro remedio animae.
S PE C I F I C PI E T Y
Although standard formulas may have been used as well, in a small

percentage of cases (about 12% of all kinds of donation to the church),
much more specific pious reasons for making the gift were given.²²
These specific reasons include an unusual gift of land in order that a
monastery may be founded—for the souls of the donors, their parents,
¹⁹ Although prayers for the soul (anima) of the dead feature throughout the surviving
liturgical ordines; see further below, pp. 122, 125.
²⁰ See above, pp. 106–8, for the people associated with elaborate expressions of piety.
²¹ As in the examples above, pp. 115–16.
²² Note that M. McLaughlin shows a comparably low (though higher) proportion in
her study of prayer for the dead in early medieval France, demonstrating that proportions
rose in the late eleventh century and also that the reasons, where demonstrable, were
often ‘crisis’ (e.g. deathbed) gifts; Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early
Medieval France (Ithaca, 1994), 123, 169–71, 262, 267. Cf. the notable increases in
Burgundy after 1040, Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor, 204–6; and L. Feller on pious
donation as an eleventh-century phenomenon in central Italy, Les Abruzzes médiévales.
Territoire, économie et société en Italie centrale du IX e au XII e siècle (Rome, 1998), 821–2.
and their ancestors²³—but the purposes were more usually to ensure

provision of some aspect of the burial or of another service; to secure
burial in a specific place, such as within the monastery itself; to ensure
continuing, repeated prayers for the donors; or to provide for their
explicit commemoration on a regular basis, sometimes on a specified
feast day. Such specific requests are essentially a feature of the second half
of the tenth century and—commemoration apart—cluster in the 950s,
thereby reflecting the distribution of all donations.²⁴ Raw numbers are
too small to suggest any significant regional differences, but Castilian
collections of any size include relatively few such requests and the
northern collections of Oviedo and the Liébana have relatively many
(though the Oviedo group is tiny).²⁵
Gifts were made so that masses could be said, candles lit in honour
of a loved one, funeral rites performed, or a shroud procured.²⁶ Just as
there was an element of reciprocity when gifts were made for less specific
reasons (the gift was made so that sins would be forgiven, intercession
would be made, and so on), there was an explicit expectation of some
return here: the gift was made in order that a specific action be performed
in the foreseeable future. These were contracts and both parties had
obligations. When the language of sale was used in the record, as it
occasionally was, attitudes openly bordered on the commercial: land in
Rama was handed over in 937 and the ‘price’ (precio) paid for this land
would be provision of a shroud when the vendor died and performance
of masses for him; a widow and her son sold land near Oviedo in 980 and
the purchaser paid for it with a cap and wax for the candles which were
to be lit for the dead husband and father.²⁷ Both transactions—though
intrinsically no different from the gifts above (for land was more often
²³ Cel569, of 922; cf. Li75, of 927. For new foundations, and their increasing rarity
in the later tenth century, see above, pp. 50–1.
²⁴ For commemoration, see below, pp. 123–6; for the distribution of donations, see
above, p. 22.
²⁵ So also that from Otero de la Dueñas, although numbers there are also very small.
²⁶ Cel177 (952); Sam164 (989); S128 (950), S130 (951); Liii585 (999), for example.
Occasionally deals were made with lay persons in order to have candles lit or masses said;
see T64 (962?), Sob92 (934). Cf. the liturgical office of the dead and votive masses in Le
Liber Ordinum, ed. M. Férotin (Paris, 1904); for example, the prayer for the anniversary
of the dead at cols. 447–8.
²⁷ C29, Ov22. Although it relates to a later period, there is a very interesting attempt
to identify the cost of providing a mass in M. Aventín, ‘La familia ante la muerte: el culto
a la memoria’, in J. I. de la Iglesia Duarte (ed.), La familia en la edad media. XI semana
de estudios medievales. Nájera, del 31 de julio al 4 de agosto de 2000 (Logroño, 2001),
387–412, at 398–401.
‘given’ than sold in order that masses be said or candles lit)—were

conceptualized as sales by the recorders (the son of a priest in the latter
case), with the service provider presented as purchaser.
Gifts were also made to secure burial in a specific place.²⁸ The two
women Eilo and Eusicia wanted to be buried with the brothers at
Cardeña, as did the priest Mikael; the high aristocrats Jimeno and
Adosinda (Bishop Rosendo’s sister) wanted burial within the monastery
of Celanova; a man called Bonello requested burial in the monastery of
San Vicente (Oviedo) in Asturias; the rather wealthy woman Eldoara
made gifts to secure burial in the nunnery of Santiago in León.²⁹
Another man, Nuño Sarracíniz, arranged with a priest to organize his
burial.³⁰
Records of gifts in order to secure repeated prayers, or make repeated
offerings, are largely formulaic and often echo the formulas of elaborate
preambles. As such, they could hardly be classified as ‘specific’. However,
when such formulas are closely associated with the giving words they
look both more immediate and more personal. Abbot Crescentio gave
Cardeña a church, so that prayers would be said for his dead brother as
well as himself; Abbot Omar gave half of his property near Zamora to
two confessors, so that they would keep on praying for him; the priest
Halile gave lands in Valdesogo to the monastery of Abellar, in order
that the monks’ continual prayers might liberate him from a second
death; the wealthy lay couple Adriano and Leokadia gave lands that
stretched as far as Astorga so that the church of Santa Marina would
keep on praying for them after they died.³¹ In an unusual shift of the
responsibility for prayer to a lay party, the charter recording Rodrigo
and Elvira’s grants to Sobrado goes on to request that whoever survived
the other should pray that his or her soul should be snatched from
hell.³²
²⁸ See Orlandis, ‘La elección de sepultura’, for discussion of donation for burial; his
discussion focuses on eleventh- and twelfth-century material and his statement, at 262,
that donation to the church was often accompanied by a request for burial in a specific
place would not hold good for the tenth century.
²⁹ C39 (942), C82 (952), C211 (999), Cel7 (950), Ov18 (974), Lii425 (973).
³⁰ C117 (964); see further below, pp. 139, 152, for this case. See also similar
arrangements with monasteries, although the specific place of burial is not specified in
the texts: SM64 (952), V22 (950), OD23 (978).
³¹ C60 (947), cf. C191 (984); Lii409 (968), cf. Liii512 (986), Liii550 (991); Liii566
(994); OD21 (976).
³² Sob5 (966); Rodrigo’s brother, Bishop Sisnando, was also party to the transaction
but this clause appears to refer to the couple.
D O N AT I O N F O R C O M M E M O R AT I O N
Giving in order to ensure family commemoration has been a major

theme of European scholarship in the past generation. It has been amply
demonstrated that aristocratic families, in particular, made donations
to the church in the middle ages in order to perpetuate their own
memory and enhance their sense of family identity; the techniques
used have been elaborated—from listing in Libri Memoriales, to dona-
tions recorded by charter and the compilation of cartularies, to regular
commemoration in the liturgy in a formal memoria, to the erection
of substantial monuments.³³ We have already seen that some fami-
lies founded churches and monasteries in northern Spain, effectively
ensuring their commemoration by that means, although the prac-
tice—current in the ninth century—was disappearing by the second
half of the tenth.³⁴ If the practice of founding churches and monasteries
was declining in the tenth century, was commemoration ensured in
other ways?
On 24 October 889 the priest Beato restored the church of San
Salvador near the river Eyres in Arnoia in southern Galicia, endowing it
with vineyards and orchards, houses and furnishings, books and liturgical
vessels. Joining the community there himself, he asked that after his
death successive abbots should always remember him (in memoria
abeant) and should celebrate his holy days and his anniversaries with
divine service.³⁵ A century later, Abbot Mandino of Samos and his
brothers gave substantial estates on the river Mao, also in Galicia, to
the monastery of San Julián at Samos, requesting that after their deaths
the monks should say prayers and anniversary masses for them, so that
the memory of their good works should not disappear.³⁶ Farther east,
near León, the priest Citayo took the unusual step of requesting that an
oratory be built as a memorial on land he had given to the monastery
of Abellar, having arranged to enter the monastery, made provision for
his brother and sister, and made further endowments; very suggestively,
the oratory was to be built where his parents had lived—a more than
³³ See above, pp. 30–4, and nn. 99, 102, 104, 105, and 107 there for Spanish com-
ment. For the erection of substantial monuments in eleventh-century Spain, see R. Walk-
er, ‘Images of royal and aristocratic burial in northern Spain, c.950–c.1250’, in E. van
Houts (ed.), Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past (Harlow, 2001), 150–72.
³⁴ See above, pp. 36–44. ³⁵ Cel36. ³⁶ Sam151 (16 May 992).
usually explicit creation of a lieu de mémoire.³⁷ Memorials were not

only a matter for the clergy; some others were just as concerned about
personal commemoration, kings and their families especially. The king
of Pamplona, Sancho II Garcés Abarca, and his wife Urraca, in 984
confirmed estates which his parents had given to San Millán de la
Cogolla, so that, in addition to regular prayers, there should be a special
commemoration with masses, psalms, and chanting, three times a year,
every year.³⁸ Seven years later they gave substantial properties to the
monastery of Leire, farther to the east, in memory of his brother Ramiro,
who was buried there, with the request for annual commemoration in
this royal mausoleum.³⁹ The powerful León royal, Elvira, gave Sahagún
an estate in memory of her brother Sancho and also, a couple of years
later, handed over the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor to its own
community, for commemoration of this brother.⁴⁰ Similar actions could
happen at a lower social scale: the widow Entregoto gave a villa in the
north to the church of Oviedo in memory of her parents, her husband,
and her ancestors; and two siblings sold a plot of land, in Val de Covellas,
to the priest Mavia Indura for the souls of their parents Azalone and
Senvita; in return he provided thirty masses and preservation of their
memory along with that of the ‘other dead’.⁴¹ This simple text of 940 is
a ‘local’ record, not one associated with one of the large monasteries; it
is particularly interesting that it indicates that the dead were customarily
remembered. Meanwhile, it records the transaction as a sale, regular
memorialization being the price paid by the priest for the land.⁴²
The examples above suggest that quite a wide social range of people
made gifts (or occasionally sales) in order to perpetuate the memories of
themselves or their families, although the practice was overwhelmingly
aristocratic. In fact, the number of charters that explicitly record the
intention to perpetuate memory is rather few—just over thirty, a tiny
proportion both of surviving charters and of donations. We can increase
the number by 50% by including those charters that provide for annual
services of celebration, for the intention was clearly the same: Adosinda,
³⁷ Lii288 (25 April 955).

³⁸ SM97 (‘missarum, psalmorum, clamorum’, literally masses, psalms, and the clamor,
the liturgical shout). Cf. the clamor (beginning kyrie eleison) in the ordo for burial, Liber
Ordinum, ed. Férotin, cols. 111–13.
³⁹ Documentación medieval de Leire (siglos IX a XII), ed. A. J. Martín Duque (Pamplona,
1983), nos. 9, 11 (991).
⁴⁰ S255 (970), Lii432 (974); for Elvira, see below, pp. 174–6.
⁴¹ Ov20 (978) and Li137, both on single sheets. ⁴² See further, pp. 132, 135–8.
her husband, and her children were to be remembered at Celanova every

Christmas day; the deacon Ermegildo was to be remembered at Abellar,
with candles and offerings, on every anniversary of the birthday of
St James; the priest Vermudo was to be remembered at San Juan de
Loyo every feast of the Assumption of St John.⁴³ Whether or not explicit
memorialization was either the intention or the effect of all the other
pious donations to the church we cannot know. Casual references to
lists of the dead who were to be remembered and to recording the names
of those who made offerings suggest that some of them must have been
regularly commemorated; so does the occasional insertion of the words
‘every year’ in a standard formula.⁴⁴ The surviving liturgical texts, that
is those in the Liber Ordinum, much of which is likely to have been
available in the larger religious houses in the tenth century, offer plenty
of opportunities for the repetition of names of those to be remembered,
and a great variety of votive masses.⁴⁵ Commemoration, then, may well
be significantly under-represented.
While bearing that possible under-representation in mind, we cannot
avoid the fact that charters that clearly mention, or unambiguously
imply, memorialization of their donors or other named persons are very
rare; they are again a particular feature of the second half of the tenth
century. There are a few ninth- or early tenth-century examples but
almost three quarters of them fall after 950. This is particularly striking
since, again, it does not reflect the overall distribution of charters nor
that of donation charters (of which the main bulks fall in the years 930 to
970, and 940 to 970, respectively). This is especially well demonstrated
by the León collections, which include many pre-950 charters but only
three pre-950 references to specific commemoration or annual ritual (in
936, 937, and 940). It looks as if specification of memoria increased
after the main wave of donations started, and continued even when the
number of donations was declining; indeed, it looks as if procedures
for memorialization in ritual became established at this time. There
is little variation in the patterns from east to west, for in this respect
Leonese practice is much the same as Galician; however, it is notable
⁴³ Cel247 (927), Li109 (936), SamS-7 (969).

⁴⁴ Above, p. 124; A19 (950); Lii432 (974); ‘pro meorum delictorum veniam per
singulos annos’, S137 (952).
⁴⁵ For example, the mass perhaps composed by the tenth-century Salvo of Albelda,
Liber Ordinum Sacerdotal (Cod. Silos, Arch. Monástico, 3), ed. J. Janini (Silos, 1981),
92–5, at 94; for Salvo, ibid. 25. The whole work, dated to 1039 in the Silos MS. 3
version, has votive masses whose archetypes predate the tenth century; ibid., 13–24.
that reference to memoria is rare in the Castilian texts of Cardeña and

Valpuesta at this period.
D O N AT I O N F O R ‘ S E C U L A R ’ R E A S O N S
Gifts were also made to clerics, churches, and monasteries for entirely
different reasons, often for precisely the same kinds of reason that
gifts were made to lay proprietors;⁴⁶ these kinds of gifts were made to
persons or communities of power and property, whether religious or
lay. Some gifts to the ecclesiastical powerful were made in gratitude for
some recent event: for bringing a lapsed monk back to a monastery,
for saving a child, for paying a ransom to the Muslims; these donors
were literally giving thanks for very particular, one-off, events.⁴⁷ Others
were restorations of properties lost and returned.⁴⁸ More usually gifts
for non-religious, or outright secular, reasons were made because of
obligations to the recipient, whether externally imposed or voluntarily
undertaken. A little less frequently, gifts were also made to secure
support.
The most common occasions of obligation evidenced in records of
donation were those that arose from court rulings that property should
be handed over, from judicial or other pressures to compensate for
offences committed, and from requests to discharge debts. Because
bishops themselves served as judges, and one would therefore expect a
portion of the fines to have gone to them, some otherwise unexplained
‘gifts’ to clerics may in fact have been made for such reasons.⁴⁹ We often
do not know precisely why a court ruled as it did, or why a case went
to court in the first place, but sometimes there is some detail: church
proprietors took legal action against peasants who had gone, in one
case, into a local priest’s vineyard or, in another, on to a monastery’s
arable, and had begun digging or ploughing, as Dulquite did near
León in 978 and Belito and Kalendo did in Valdoré some twenty years
later; other intruders, doubtless more aristocratic, might seize whole
estates and start to work them.⁵⁰ In effect, disputed ownership (or
⁴⁶ See below, pp. 139–63 for gifts to the laity.

⁴⁷ Cel511 (955), SJP31 (late tenth century), SM99 (986).
⁴⁸ S293 (978), for example.
⁴⁹ Sob75 (858), for example. See below, pp. 143–6, for fines.
⁵⁰ Lii458, OD43 (997), S356 (998); cf. also T30 (922), Li116 (937), C54 (945),
SJP18 (948).
disputed rights to use land) lay behind many of these cases; the dispute
was sometimes explicit—shares in water mills were openly disputed
between two abbots, Citayo and Gomelo, in 977.⁵¹
When property was handed over in compensation for an offence,
there is often no record of a formal judgment and some of these gifts
may have been partly compensatory, but partly penitential. The offences
run from minor peasant thieving, like taking timber and stealing sheep,
to the fornication and adultery committed by peasants, aristocrats, and
clergy alike, and from that to assault and killing.⁵² Once when a man
called Rapinato got drunk, he rushed off to Sahagún in a rage, broke
down the doors, entered the monastery, and killed a monk; despite the
inebriation, there was probably a reason for his behaviour—perhaps
a good reason—but in this case the king intervened, confiscated his
parcels of property, and gave them to the monastic community. There
was no such royal intervention when Revel took some friends to Bishop
Sisinando’s estate and also killed, but subsequently Revel simply handed
over half his vineyard to the bishop.⁵³ Teodemiro’s case was similar:
walking along one day, round about 964, he came across a monk and
happened to stab him in the arm, so the story goes; the arm hung limp,
so Teodemiro rushed off to Sahagún, asked for pardon, and gave the
community a plot of land in Melgar.⁵⁴
Many of these compensation cases involved peasants. Discharging
debts by handing over plots of land also seems to have been a feature
of tenth-century peasant life in these regions.⁵⁵ Gifts of vineyards in
lieu of renders of wine and grain that should have been paid regularly
were made from the villages close to the monastery at Celanova, as they
were similarly made to a local priest on the meseta.⁵⁶ Gifts of land were
also made to priests and monasteries because they had helped out with
food and wine or cider in the past—sometimes explicitly because it
had been a ‘bad year’.⁵⁷ Monks and clergy helped out in bad times,
⁵¹ Lii452 (977).
⁵² Theft: Liii590 (999), Cel169 (962); adultery: Cel72 (952), Lii479 (980), Cel338
(989).
⁵³ S287 (977); Lii463 (979), cf. Lii464, of the same day, recording the names of
Revel’s guarantors.
⁵⁴ S218. ⁵⁵ See further below, p. 157.
⁵⁶ Cel411 (989), Cel409 (990), Lii457 (978); cf., on a much larger scale, the different
case of the abbot of Samos, who persuaded wealthy laymen to pay a debt on his behalf,
rewarding them with the gift of a villa in El Bierzo, Sam178 (988).
⁵⁷ V27 (950), OD14 (964), Lii465 (979); perhaps cf. Sam241 (969). See further
below, pp. 151–2.
and subsequently were repaid with a land grant; such transactions are
particularly characteristic of the villages round Celanova in the 960s but
did occur on the meseta too (though they are much less characteristic of
parts of Castile).⁵⁸
The other common, but not quite so common, non-religious reason
for making gifts to the church was in order to secure support of some
kind, whether in general or in some specific form. Purpose was expressed
in general terms that bishops and large monasteries, in particular, and
occasionally priests, should ‘defend’ estates, should keep a watchful eye
over the donor’s affairs (including his or her court cases), and should
give ‘help’, sometimes expressed through the formula ‘ut habeamus de
vos moderationem et defensionem’ (so that we have rulings and defence
from you).⁵⁹ We find a few peasants as well as aristocrats making such
gifts, and also the occasional member of the clergy, although aristocrats
are more evident; the woman Segesinda gifted Bishop Rosendo in
these terms in 932; a peasant couple gifted the priest Munio more
modestly in 978, and so on. Sometimes the gift for support was
couched in more specific terms in order to ensure supplies of food
and clothing in the future; and, unusually for these records, one abbot
gifted a nunnery in the city of León specifically in order to supply
his monks with clothing.⁶⁰ Again we find a wide social range involved
in such transactions, and clergy as well as lay people. The abbot who
secured clothing supplies was probably primarily concerned to acquire
commodities, but most of these people were seeking patronage. Indeed,
‘opting for patronage’ (eligere patrocinium) is a standard formula in
Abellar charters; the priest Melic, for example, gave water rights in
the river Porma to the monastery of Abellar and at the same time
accepted its patrocinium in 959.⁶¹ We do not have to suppose that such
transactions constituted ‘commendation’ and resulted in the exclusive
personal commitment of donor to patron that characterizes the classic
⁵⁸ See W. Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation in Galicia and Castile-León in the tenth
century’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 149–74, at 159–60 and 171–2, for a brief
discussion.
⁵⁹ Cel501 (932), perhaps Lii265 (954), Cel394 (956), Cel246 (969), Lii455 (978),
Cel519 (998). Sánchez-Albornoz’s word for this phrase was ‘protection’; see ‘Las behetrías:
la encomendación en Asturias, León y Castilla’, in his Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las
instituciones medievales españolas, i. 15–191, at 75.
⁶⁰ Li180 (944); Cel575 (954), Lii462 (978).
⁶¹ Lii321; cf. Li42, in which patrocinium was transferred, Li175 (943), and Sob123
(867), in which freed slaves were to be under the patrocinium of the beneficiary church.
See also above, pp. 57–60, for ecclesiastical patronage.
models of European socio-economic development;⁶² it is important to

remember the variety of forms that early medieval patronage could
take.⁶³ The donors chose to join a support network, which may in
some cases have had little practical effect and in others resulted in
hands-on help. That lords or patrons did sometimes in practice give
help in court cases is shown by the fact that gifts were also given in
thanks for such help in the past. Bishop Rosendo intervened in one
Galician case, helping a man called Adaulfo to secure some land in
Nigueiroá, and he received a third of the land secured as a reward;
the priest Melic helped another priest who had been taken to court
‘in chains’, and was rewarded with a plot of land; Mandino, abbot
of Samos, helped the widow Fernanda against the court claims of
her sister-in-law on land her husband had given her, and that land
ultimately passed in grateful thanks to Samos; and, on a smaller
scale, the monks of Sahagún paid the fine for a peasant who had
stolen a horse and were subsequently given his whole inheritance.⁶⁴
Ecclesiastical lordship could clearly be of very practical assistance to
clients.
Donations of these kinds are essentially a feature of the second half
of the tenth century, although a few took place in the preceding thirty
years. This is interesting because the distribution again does not quite
reflect the overall distribution of tenth-century charters (heavy in 930 to
970) nor that of donations (heavy in 940 to 970);⁶⁵ while slow to start,
these actions continued through the 980s and 990s, when the overall
number of recorded transactions was declining. Since numbers are small
relative to the total number of all donations (in the order of 5% of the
latter), they may be skewed by a Celanova group in the 950s and a León
group in the 970s (the former reflecting Celanova’s interest in recording
the many actions of Bishop Rosendo and the latter reflecting the survival
of a small archive relating to the priest Munio). However, it is worth
considering if the relative increase in these kinds of donation late in the
⁶² See further below, pp. 153–4. For Spain, see C. Estepa Díez, Las behetrías
castellanas, 2 vols. (Valladolid, 2003), i. 41–3, pace the influential treatment of Sánchez-
Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías’; cf. A. Barbero and M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en
la península Ibérica (Barcelona, 1978), especially 155–200, 354–404. For European
parallels and contrasts see further the discussion below, pp. 160–3.
⁶³ Cf. the comments of C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005),
438–41.
⁶⁴ Cel527 (950), S133 (951), Sam239 (985), S358 (998).
⁶⁵ See Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation’, 154, for charts.
century reflects a real increase in transactions to secure support.⁶⁶ There

do not appear to be any significant regional distinctions in distribution,
except for the fact that Cardeña is notably under-represented in the
group. Rather than concluding that this indicates some real regional
difference, it may well be more of an indication of the kind of documents
that Cardeña scribes chose to preserve, and emphasizes their particular
interest in recording pious rather than other kinds of donation.
G E N D E R A N D S TAT U S I S S U E S
In the light of the uncertainties discussed above surrounding pro

anima gifts, the gender and status of pro anima donors cannot be
meaningfully explored. In texts recording other kinds of unspecific pious
motivation, as we have seen, aristocrats and clergy feature strongly; so do
religious women, although their numbers are relatively few. In the texts
recording specific pious motivation, both clergy and aristocrats are again
prominent in the lists of those making provision for repeated prayers,
while aristocrats are more prominent in making burial arrangements
(comparable arrangements were presumably normally made for the
clergy⁶⁷). Men and women, both separately and together, requested
burial in specific places; there is no noticeable gender distinction here.
There are gender distinctions, however, both in making arrangements
for repeated prayers and also in making arrangements for the rite of
burial and other rites. Both men and women arranged for prayers, but
more than twice as many men as women are recorded as doing so; men,
or men and women together, made provision for elements of burial or
other ritual, but women alone are very rarely recorded as doing so. Male
actors are, overall, much more frequently associated with specific pious
reasons for giving than female actors.
The beneficiaries of donations for commemoration were overwhelm-
ingly monastic communities; priests sometimes benefited too but these
cases are unusual. As for the donors: overall, more men than women
⁶⁶ Cf. indications of an extension of private lordship at this time; see references cited
above, p. 29 n. 90; and I. Álvarez Borge, ‘Estructuras de poder en Castilla en la alta
edad media: señores, siervos, vasallos’, in Señores, siervos, vasallos en la alta edad media.
XXVIII Semana de estudios medievales, Estella, 16 a 20 de julio de 2001 (Pamplona, 2002),
269–308, at 308.
⁶⁷ Although not always: the neighbours of the monk Liciano got together to make
provision for his mortalia near Valpuesta in 939 (V15).
made provisions of this kind, in a ratio of two to one, although men,

women, and mixed groups all did so. Men are particularly evident in
making provision for annual celebration. Bearing in mind that many
donors were monks or clergy, this is hardly surprising. The people
who were commemorated in perpetuity were also overwhelmingly men,
unless they were of both sexes (couples, groups of siblings, and so on).
All of this is interesting, and perhaps more surprising, given the burden
of the literature on the memorializing functions of women in early
medieval cultures, and it appears to set northern Spain in stark contrast
to some parts of Europe.⁶⁸ However, recent work on the complementary
roles of men and women tends to modify the starkness of the contrast:
men played an active part in memorialization in many other parts
of Europe. It would still, however, be reasonable to stress a contrast
between Spain and Germany, where the evidence for the female role
is particularly strong, in this respect.⁶⁹ Second, it is noticeable that
whereas men made such provision at almost any time in the period
considered, in proportion to the total numbers women are more evident
in the latter half of the tenth century; although numbers here are too
small for certainty, they tend to suggest that this may have been a
function in which women had an increasingly prominent role. Third,
whereas men overwhelmingly made provision for commemoration of
themselves (kings and bishops are particularly notable here), women
overwhelmingly made provision for others (husbands, brothers, parents,
especially), although—like men—they also provided for themselves in
the company of others; married couples would give in order to secure
their own commemoration, for example. So, insofar as our texts allow
us to see what was happening, women may well have been performing a
function for the family group that men did not perform. Their numbers
may have been smaller but they could nevertheless have developed a
socially distinctive role.⁷⁰
⁶⁸ See Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 21, 49–73; R. Le Jan, ‘Douaires et pouvoirs

des reines en Francie et en Germanie (VIe –Xe siècle)’, in F. Bougard, L. Feller, R. Le
Jan (eds.), Dots et Douaires dans le haut Moyen Âge (Rome, 2002), 457–97, at 479–83.
⁶⁹ See above, pp. 33–4. E. Santinelli, ‘Les femmes et la mémoire: le rôle des comtesses
dans la Francie occidentale du XIe siècle’, in F. Bougard, C. La Rocca, R. Le Jan (eds.),
Sauver son âme et se perpétuer. Transmission du patrimoine et mémoire au haut moyen âge.
Collection de l’école française de Rome, 351 (Rome, 2005), 459–84, argues, against
Geary, that eleventh-century countesses in France had a greater role in memorializing
than counts.
⁷⁰ I suggested in ‘Buying with masses: ‘‘Donation’’ pro remedio animae in tenth-
century Galicia and Castile-León’, in F. Bougard, C. La Rocca, R. Le Jan (eds.), Sauver
What about the status of donors for commemoration? A high pro-

portion of donors for whose gifts commemoration is specified, about
half, are demonstrably aristocrats. Of the remainder, about two thirds
are clergy (several of whom had property interests of aristocratic pro-
portions, like the deacon Ermegildo) and the rest are unknown or
peasants. Comparable proportions apply to those who are themselves
commemorated in perpetuity. There do seem to be a few peasant cas-
es—suggested both by the scale of properties and by the simplicity
of the records⁷¹—but they are rare. The Celanova collection does not
appear to record peasant gifts for this purpose at all; where they do
happen to be recorded, peasant gifts were to the smaller churches and
monasteries (like Santiago de Cellariolo and San Miguel), or to priests,
rather than to the large communities;⁷² that being the case, peasant
donation may be under-represented, the records not copied into the
major cartularies. Even allowing for that possible under-representation,
donation for commemoration appears to have been an overwhelmingly
aristocratic practice; the point is made as much by the elaborate lan-
guage of the records as by the scale of properties donated and personal
associations of the donors. Not surprisingly, and by no means unusually
in the European context, it was aristocrats who wanted their memory
perpetuated and their family identity enhanced and preserved.
The fact that it was peasants rather than aristocrats who made
gifts of property in order to discharge debts and in order to pay
fines, compensations, and penances has already been stressed. It is not
surprising but it is socially and economically important as an indicator
of one of the principal mechanisms by which churches, monasteries,
and clerics acquired property at this time. Gifts to the church for
secular reasons were overwhelmingly made by men or by a group that
included both sexes. Few women feature, except as partners in couples
or larger groups, and where they do feature they are most prominent in
the discharging of debts, whether acting alone or with a male partner.
Unlike women, men were involved in making all categories of these
gifts, but are especially notable in making the grants that followed court
cases or those made in compensation for offences. It would be reasonable
son âme et se perpétuer (Rome, 2005), 401–16, at 416, that the occurrence of women
may be to do with the disposability of their property; this may well have been a factor
but given the disposability of all kinds of property demonstrated above, pp. 72–5, it is
very unlikely to be the sole explanation.
⁷¹ See above, pp. 108–9. ⁷² Li137, Lii351, Lii427, for example.
to say that the kinds of offence that are recorded are gendered: they tend
to be masculine acts.⁷³
I M P L I C AT I O N S
There are two very striking things about the preceding survey: the
proportion of pro anima gifts made in the tenth century was relatively
low, certainly less than half of all gifts to the church and probably a lot
less than that; and gifts were made to church bodies for reasons that had
nothing to do with piety. In a significant number of cases we do not
know the reason why gifts were made; in many the reason is suggested
by the (ecclesiastical) record-maker and may have nothing to do with
the donor’s motivation. Given that the pro anima formula may often
have been subsequently inserted into tenth-century texts, it is likely
that the proportion of gifts to the church for non-religious reasons was
significantly higher than the measurable 6% of donations to the church
that we can count.
For those gifts for which credible motivation is suggested, the role
of men in making donations for specific pious reasons, especially for
commemoration, is especially clear. The interest of aristocratic families
in ensuring their own commemoration is also clear, though at quite a
small scale. The former gives something of a distinctive character to
the region; the latter mirrors practice in western Europe as a whole,
although not in scale.
Gifts were made to the church to get something in the afterlife, to
get something at the point of death, and to get perpetual commemora-
tion—continuing in life, as it were, after death. Gifts were also made
because of obligations to church or monastery or to secure support in
life—of enormous importance as the route by which ecclesiastical prop-
erty increased (and not just to the benefit of large institutions, for local
priests like Munio and Melic benefited too, although their acquisitions
were often subsequently absorbed by the more powerful institutions⁷⁴).
Gifts for commemoration and gifts to secure support are both
notable in increasing, relative to the total number of donations, in the
last twenty years of the tenth century. This is particularly interesting
and suggests that, on the one hand, donation for ritual commemoration
⁷³ See further below, pp. 181–6, for gendered offences. ⁷⁴ See above, pp. 61–4.
probably replaced foundation of churches as the principle means of

perpetuating memory; and on the other that the increase in patronage
contributed to the extension of private lordship. The number of cases of
donation for commemoration is really very small in the tenth century,
even if we allow for under-representation, but the likelihood must be
that—whereas foundation of churches was necessarily an aristocratic
interest—making a gift for commemoration in the liturgy, needing less
resource, tended to expand the social scale of those commemorated. By
the year 1000 perpetuating memory was still overwhelmingly, but no
longer exclusively, aristocratic.
There are strong echoes of European trends in this material. As
everywhere, transactions had social overtones; and some gifts clearly
established continuing relationships with beneficiaries, especially those
which led to active patronage relationships.⁷⁵ The importance attached
to getting a return for the gift has strong parallels in many other
European countries, and the motivations for giving were very similar.
As elsewhere in Europe, family mausolea had explicitly been established
in the ninth and earlier centuries, with the foundation of some family
churches;⁷⁶ and family churches, whether or not associated with special
burial, could clearly be the focus of family identity, as they were, for
example, in the eighth-century Rhineland.⁷⁷ On the other hand, the
absence of precarial gifts to the church and of relationships dependent
on the precaria, such as characterized East and West Francia, and
for a short period Italy, is very striking.⁷⁸ Overall, there were some
comparable processes and similar movements in Spain, but there were
some significantly different mechanisms; where similar, on the whole
the scale was smaller and the chronology later, and the parallels are
closer to the French than to the German models. The very fact that
there are no surviving Spanish Libri Memoriales from this period is in
itself a significant contrast.
⁷⁵ See above, pp. 57–61.

⁷⁶ See above, pp. 36–43. Cf. B. H. Rosenwein, ‘Property transfers and the Church,
eighth to eleventh centuries: An overview’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen
Âge, 111 (1999), 563–75, at 565.
⁷⁷ See M. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley,
400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000), 25.
⁷⁸ See, for example, L. Morelle, ‘Les ‘‘actes de précaire’’, instruments de transferts
patrimoniaux (France du Nord et de l’Est, VIIIe –XIe siècle)’, Mélanges de l’École Française
de Rome. Moyen Âge, 111 (1999), 607–47; Ph. Depreux, ‘L’apparition de la précaire à
Saint-Gall’, ibid., 649–73; L. Feller, ‘Précaires et livelli. Les transferts patrimoniaux ad
tempus en Italie’, ibid., 725–46. For precaria, see above, p. 85.
Appendix to Chapters 5 and 6
C O N C E P TS O F G I F T A N D S A L E
One might argue about what constitutes a gift and what constitutes a sale,
but the distinction is one that was used by tenth-century writers: the language
of gift and sale was in most cases strongly differentiated, and the concept of
price was central to sale.⁷⁹ By ‘giving’ they meant transferring something to
another party, without a pre-arranged price or return gift being necessary to
validate the transaction (although a countergift might subsequently follow it);
by ‘selling’ they meant transferring something to another party, as a result of
contract between the two parties, for a pre-determined price, to be paid at a
pre-determined time.⁸⁰ Hence, charters of gift used words like donare, tradere,
and concedere (give, hand over, concede) and cartula donationis or occasionally
concessionis (charter of gift),⁸¹ while sale charters usually had the active verb
as vendere, to sell, with the document itself called a cartula vendicionis, charter
of sale, and a price, pretium, being specified. Hence, ‘we sell you a villa in
Fontasquesa and received a price of one bay cow’ or ‘a price which satisfied
me’; often texts include the words ‘I have accepted the price and nothing
remains’.⁸² This concern with price also occurs in composite records, like
the 940s text from San Millán in which a long list of separate small-scale
transactions has price associated with all those termed sales, but not with those
termed gifts.⁸³
Of course, gifts to the church might sometimes provoke a material countergift
in response, especially if the donor was a high aristocrat (the word for countergift
is usually (h)onor, sometimes offertio): a mule given to the countess in recognition
⁷⁹ Spanish scholars have pointed to clauses in the much later Fuero Viejo, which
indicate that sale transferred land without appurtenances whereas donation transferred
land with appurtenances; see Loring García, ‘Dominios monásticos y parentelas en la
Castilla altomedieval’, 46–8. Appropriate as that may be for the later middle ages, I
cannot detect any such differentiation in tenth-century text.
⁸⁰ Note the emphasis of Visigothic law on the appropriate time for paying the price,
Forum Iudicum V.iv. 4, 5.
⁸¹ See above, pp. 88–9, 104 for full examples.
⁸² S34 (930): ‘vendimus … Et accepimus de vos in precio una vacca laura’; S53 (933):
‘et alio precio que michi complacuit’; ‘et de ipso pretio aput vos nichil remansit sed
completum est’, Cel237 (934); ‘et de pretio aput vos devitus nicil remansit’, S120 (950).
⁸³ SM59 (943–51); in fact the gifts are, by contrast, explicitly pro anima.
136 Appendix to Chapters 5 and 6
of a large gift of land in 935; a rabbit skin given in acknowledgement of the
gift of a large estate in 954; a carpet and a tunic given in recognition of the
confirmation of a grant in 957; linen cloth for an act of corroboration in 960;
and the unusually large countergift of two yoked oxen, ten sheep, a blanket, and
a skin in the 980s.⁸⁴ In such cases not only was the language different but the
timing of the return and the level of obligation to make it were different from
the timing of the price payment and the necessity of making it. These were
presents—gestures of appreciation—and were clearly not a necessary condition
for completion of the main transaction. Countergift was not, therefore, the
same as price: the latter was defined and agreed in advance, and it was essential
to meet it in full; failure to produce the price, at the right time, would invalidate
the transaction.
In the vast majority of cases these distinctions between gift and sale,
countergift and price, were maintained. Although the essence of the distinction
was therefore usually clear and consistent, there are a few texts in which it was
not, and indeed where the concepts appear confused—hence we find kartula
donationis vel venditionis (charter of gift and sale);⁸⁵ or we sometimes find a
straightforward record of a gift which bizarrely terminates with a reference to
‘this cartula venditionis’.⁸⁶
Even more confusingly, sometimes transactions which appear to be gifts for
no consideration were called ‘sales’, and contracts for a price were called ‘gifts’.
Grants were made to court presidents, following judgments, as directed by the
judge, but are recorded in the language of sale;⁸⁷ gifts were made, without price
or countergift, and are called sales;⁸⁸ deals appear to have been done, for a price,
but are recorded as gifts;⁸⁹ gifts were made to the church, but framed as sales,
with the price to be paid in masses;⁹⁰ and gifts of food and sustenance were
made in hard times and subsequently retrospectively reframed as an advance
payment for property, a down-payment, as it were, on a future purchase.⁹¹
What did all this mean? We should not lose sight of the fact that most
records of sale recorded sales of land, for a specified material price, the price
changing hands at about the same time as the land; and most records of gift
recorded grants for no material consideration. We are dealing with a small
proportion of records that look confused. Although the authors of these texts
usually kept the categories distinct, occasionally they do not appear to have seen
them as so distinct. Sometimes they really seem to have been confused between
⁸⁴ C27, Lii265, V35, S178, S302; cf. S26, S285, Li168, Lii276, C23, C46, Cel570.
⁸⁵ Lii350, Lii357, Cel535, for example; cf. Lii285, S140; and a Catalan example of
989 noted by Ll. To Figueras, ‘L’historiographie du marché de la terre en Catalogne’,
in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds.), Le marché de la terre au moyen âge (Rome, 2005),
161–80, at 163.
⁸⁶ SM90, Cel456, for example. ⁸⁷ Cel393, Liii578. ⁸⁸ S75.
⁸⁹ Liii585, Cel394; cf. Cel535. ⁹⁰ Li137, C29 (see above, pp. 121–2).
⁹¹ Cel436. See further below, pp. 152, 156–60.
Appendix to Chapters 5 and 6 137
categories; but sometimes, although their records look confused, their thinking
can be explained. A family exchanged property with the monastery of Cardeña
in 941: they gave the abbot houses, a garden, and land around the church of
San Torcuato, and received in return houses, a garden, two plots of land, and a
vineyard elsewhere, as also a skin; the verbs used are ‘exchange, sell, and hand
over’, the document is called a ‘charter of sale and exchange’, and what they
received is described as ‘countergift and price (accepimus ex vobis in honore vel
precium una vinea … )’.⁹² Two records concerning Munio Fernández fall into
this category and, given that he was involved in a number of transactions of
both gift and sale, this is interesting.⁹³ In 996 a married couple ‘sold and gave’
him and his wife a vineyard in the Ardón valley and received a horse from them
‘as price and gift’; the charter is twice called a ‘charter of sale’.⁹⁴ The other
concerns a gift made the following year after one of Munio’s court judgments,
although the text is called a ‘charter of sale’ and the active verb is ‘we have
agreed to sell’; in the price clause the writer has then inserted the outcome of the
judgment, in place of a price.⁹⁵ There is clearly confusion in these cases about
what kinds of transaction are being recorded and which formulas to use. In the
latter case the author has decided to use the sale formulas, even though they
don’t quite fit; in the Cardeña case the author decided to use the sale formulas,
and adapt them slightly to allow for the fact of exchange. There is a kind of
rationale here. Reading between the lines in the Cardeña case, it looks as if a
deal was done to stop the family building more houses round the church (the
text specifies that they have given up the right to build any more there), and
it looks as if they received a little more than they handed over; so there was a
contract, and there were sweeteners—as well as exchanging they received both
a bit more, as ‘price’, and also a skin, as countergift.
In the Munio case, and in ‘sales’ for good that had been done in the past,⁹⁶
sale formulas appear to have been chosen because it was land that was handed
over, rather than movables, in compensation for deeds done in the past. There
is some sense here that the record-makers thought that using land to meet debts
or fines or compensations ought to qualify as contractual sale. Differently, in
other cases, like the ‘sales for masses’, the reciprocal element in donation to the
church seems to have come to the fore; the fact that something was expected
⁹² C36. ⁹³ See below, pp. 145–8, for Munio Fernández.

⁹⁴ ‘Ideo accessit bone voluntas ut venderemus vel donaremus vobis vinea nostra … et
accepimus de vobis in precio et in dona una equa, quantum a nobis bene complacuit, et
de ipso pretio nichil remansit in debito’, Liii573.
⁹⁵ ‘Pro que accepimus iudicio cum Cedinus presbiter et pectavimus ad illo uno kavallo
in xl solidos et proinde abevimus a dare alio kavallo a comite Monio Fredenandiz de alios
xl solidos. Et proinde damus vobis medietate in ipsa hereditate Monio Fernandiz, que
nobis bene conplacuit’, Liii578. I have italicized the price clause; compare ‘Et acepimus de
vos in pretio solidos x, quem nobis bene conplacuit’, Liii579 (997), written by a different
scribe. Cf. Cel393 for a comparable case to Liii578.
⁹⁶ See below, pp. 151–2.
138 Appendix to Chapters 5 and 6
back for the donation found its way into the record; and these donations were
framed as sales. Occasionally both the material and the spiritual return got
a mention—like a couple’s sale of half a villa to Sahagún in 954 both for
the care of their souls and also for money.⁹⁷ There are, then, a number of
different factors which underlie these real or apparent confusions. Occasionally
there appears to have been real confusion, because the formulas available were
insufficient to explain the transaction; at other times at first sight it looks to us
as if the record-makers were confused, but there is a detectable rationale to their
choice of words; more often, however, the categories of gift and sale were kept
separate. Even when the categories were kept separate, however, the inclusion
of pious formulas in records of gift inevitably introduced an element of the
contractual into the concept.
⁹⁷ S140.
6
Gesmira, Recosinda, and Nuño
Sarracíniz: Donation to Lay Persons
In 950 Gesmira gave all her property in the villa called Torre to
the lay couple Flaino and Brunildi, so that they could take her into
their house and look after her, as well as taking care for her soul
after her death. In 962 Recosinda gave half of her land in a villa in
Ujo to the couple Taurelo and Principia, also lay, so that they could
provide her with bedding and warmth. In 964 Nuño Sarracíniz gave
property in Orbaneja and Villímar to the priest Iñigo so that he would
look after him in infirmity and old age, as well as make sure that he
was properly buried.¹ Providing for care in old age is one element
in the complex web of reasons for gift-giving in these tenth-century
Spanish societies.² In two of the above cases the recipients were not
churches or clerics, as we usually expect of transactions recorded in early
medieval charters, but lay couples. How much gift-giving went to lay
beneficiaries? To what extent was gift-giving in order to secure material,
practical, support of this kind a particular feature of donation to the
laity?
D O N AT I O N TO T H E L A I T Y
About 14% of all the gifts recorded in these tenth-century charter

texts were gifts to the laity. In over two-fifths of these lay gifts, no
¹ Li222, Lii357, C117; see above, pp. 116–22 for grants for care of the soul, and for
provision of religious ritual.
² A well-known later medieval practice, as recorded, for example, in the corrody; see
B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100–1540 (Oxford, 1993), 179–209. Dr
Harvey points out that care could be provided as much for the young as for the old, and
that it might include distribution of food to those living outside the monastery as well as
to the ‘monastic lodger’, ibid., 179, 208.
140 Gesmira, Recosinda, and Nuño Sarracíniz
reasons are stated in the texts for what motivated the donors; while
one can speculate about the motivation, they have to be excluded
from primary analysis of what lies behind these actions. That leaves
just under eighty cases, spread across the whole century and across all
collections. Although widespread, it is nevertheless interesting that gifts
to the laity are significantly under-represented in Castilian collections;
this is particularly notable in the large data sets from Cardeña and
San Millán de la Cogolla (where they constitute only 3% and 1%
of donations respectively), especially since donation is much more
prominent than sale in these groups of charters. By contrast, gifts to lay
persons are over-represented in the substantial Sobrado and Celanova
collections from Galicia (46% and 24% respectively), although in these
cases the over-representation can be explained: most of the Sobrado
examples, which fall between 916 and 952, were gifts to Ermegildo and
Paterna, whose estate became the core of the monastery’s foundation
endowment.³ Most of the Celanova examples fall between 924 and 947;
many of these were gifts made to Countess Ilduara, mother of Bishop
Rosendo and founder with him of that monastery. The presence of
these two groups skews the figures: because of their association with
Sobrado and Celanova in their foundation years, there is an unusually
high survival rate; and, although made to a lay woman in the Celanova
case, many of those gifts appear in fact to have been destined for the
monastery.
A fifth of donations to the laity fell in the 960s and another fifth
in the 980s and 990s. Although the 990s figures are again skewed by
an accident of survival—the inclusion of the family archive of Pedro
Flaínez in the Otero de las Dueñas collection, which accounts for nearly
half of the examples⁴—these decades still reveal a disproportionately
high number of gifts to the laity; it was the 950s not the 960s, it may be
recalled, that were the high point of recorded giving in the tenth century
and the 980s and 990s saw a decline in all kinds of recorded transaction,
including donations.⁵ Overall, then, it appears that donation to the laity
was a notable feature of practice in Galicia and the western meseta, but
it was not so notable in Castile. It occurred throughout the century but,
although numbers at the end of the century are very striking, uneven
³ M. del C. Pallares Méndez, El monasterio de Sobrado: un ejemplo del protagonismo

monástico en la Galicia medieval (La Coruña, 1979), 71–83.
⁴ See further below, pp. 144–8, for this family. ⁵ See above, p. 22.
Gesmira, Recosinda, and Nuño Sarracíniz 141
survival rates make it difficult to attribute any conclusive significance to

numbers per decade.⁶
Table 6.1 Ninth- and tenth-century

gifts to lay beneficiaries, by collection,
as percentage of all gifts per collection
Gifts to
Number of laity as %
gifts to of all
laity gifts
Cel 26 24
Sam 4 8
Sob 32 46
L 30 12
OD 11 65
S 20 12
C 3 3
SM 1 1
V 0 0
Ar 1 6
A 0 0
SJP* 1 14
T 10 28
Ov 2 25
Total 141 14
* a suspect charter
Although we cannot always determine the status of participants in

these transactions, the proportion of aristocratic donors is notable, and
this has a bearing on our interpretation of the rationales for giving. Over
a quarter of donors to the laity were clearly aristocrats; a few were clergy;
and a half were clearly peasants. Even more strikingly, virtually all of the
beneficiaries whose status can be determined were aristocrats—about
three quarters of the total; only a couple of recipients might reasonably be
identified as peasants. Donation to the laity therefore appears from the
⁶ Figures for the Liébana, to the north, in Cantabria, are also high but relatively early
in occurrence; figures for Oviedo are high but numbers negligible; figures for Otero are
high because of the lay archive.
outset to relate to different kinds of process: aristocrats giving to other

aristocrats as well as peasants giving to aristocrats. All the charter collec-
tions tend to reflect these overall patterns, although peasant donation is
more evident in Sobrado, Otero, and León material than in the others.
Gender differences are also interesting and to some extent unexpected.
While the examples with which this chapter began might suggest that
it was women, especially, who made grants to the laity, in fact, overall,
the proportion of women doing so is—at 18%—very close to the
mean for all women alienators;⁷ proportions of men are also close to the
mean, though slightly lower; proportions of married couples are slightly
higher. Sahagún texts have slightly higher proportions of couples and
lower of women; Celanova texts have lower proportions of couples and
higher of men; however, overall, there is nothing particularly striking
about gender differences in donation to the laity. Gender difference in
recipients is much more striking. More than 60% of gifts were made to
married couples, a relatively low 26% to men, and again 18% to women.
Married couples thus feature particularly strongly as the beneficiaries of
gifts.
Where reasons for donation to the laity are given, the prominence
of aristocrats begins to be comprehensible. Some charters simply record
the gifts of kings to trusted men, fideles, a kind of gift one would
expect to have been made in these societies, whether recorded in
writing or not; kings made gifts to those who served them faithfully,
as Ordoño II did to Tajón and Fernando Assuriz, and Vermudo II
to Fernando Núñez, often using lands that had been confiscated from
rebels; kings also granted rights to rents and to other income to those
to whom they delegated political control, as Ramiro II did to Fruela
Guttieriz (Bishop Rosendo’s brother).⁸ Other aristocrats acted similarly,
in gratitude for faithful service, obedience, and love: Elena gave an
urban homestead in León to her cousin; Jimena, the king’s daughter,
gave a villa in Bubal to the same brother of Rosendo, Fruela; and, on a
much smaller scale, Adosinda gave a deacon and his children a quarter
of a smallholding.⁹ There were also occasional gifts to family members,
⁷ See below, pp. 171–3, for consideration of alienators by gender.

⁸ S19 (920; see Lucas Álvarez, La Documentación real astur-leonesa (718–1072), 164),
S285 (pre-976—a brief reference within the main text), Liii541 (990), Cel499 (942);
cf. Li123 (937), Liii530 (989), S84 (943), Cel533 (927). See above, pp. 14–16, for
delegated authority.
⁹ S206 (962), Cel505 (935), Cel423 (957); cf. Ov4 (916), S75 (940), from and to
priests. See further below, pp. 160–3, for discussion of clientship.
recorded by charter in order to ensure they were not contested by

other relatives;¹⁰ occasional marriage settlements, provided by parents
or husbands;¹¹ occasional gifts in gratitude for help given in bad times
or for specific acts of assistance, just as such gifts were made to clerics
and monasteries who had helped out;¹² and very occasional gifts to
lay persons to ensure that religious ritual be provided, particularly
at death.¹³ The two most prominent, and probably most significant,
categories of gifts to the laity, however, are gifts made to pay fines
or compensations, and gifts made for ‘doing good’. Both need some
detailed examination.
C O U RT D E C I S I O N S
Gifts made to the laity as a consequence of court decisions are recorded

in donation format and are a prominent element in the first category
(they constitute more than a third of those for which we know the rea-
sons for giving); they comprise both fines and compensatory payments.
They feature in collections from San Juan de la Peña, San Millán,
Arlanza, León, Otero, Sobrado, and Celanova—which is a geographi-
cally representative spread.¹⁴ The largest groups are from the Sobrado,
León, and Otero collections. Compensation cases are relatively straight-
forward and the rationale for them is usually easy to comprehend; the
beneficiaries were mostly wealthy landlords. So, following judgments,
Ilduara received compensation for the murder of her young retainer,
and a man called Menendo was compensated for the wrongful seizure of
his lands in troubled times; the couple Munio Ovekiz and Guldregoto
were compensated (with land) for the theft of two of their horses, and
the woman Paterna for the fact that her two cowherds were wrongly
accused of theft; the wealthy couple Fruela and Adosinda received a
series of compensatory land grants from their tenants for loss of stock
¹⁰ e.g. C192 (984), Cel74 (963); see also above, pp. 44, 73–4, for transactions of this
kind; transmission of property by charter within families is unusual, although there are
hundreds of incidental references to the fact of transmission to relatives.
¹¹ See below, pp. 168–70.
¹² OD27 (987), S332 (986), Cel436 (924), Sam6 (997). For gifts of this kind to the
clergy, see above, pp. 127–8; and in general see below, pp. 151–2.
¹³ Cel172 (943), T64 (?962); cf. the sales for masses at Sob92 (934), C29 (937).
¹⁴ Cf. also Portugaliae Monumenta Historica a saeculo octavo post Christum usque ad
quintum decimum, 3, Diplomata et Chartae, ed. A. Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo and
J. J. da Silva Mendes Leal, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1868), LVIII (949).
and failure to pay due rents.¹⁵ Gifts made in order to pay off debts,
although they were often made as a result of agreements rather than of
court decisions, are similar and were made to lay landlords just as they
were to ecclesiastical landlords.¹⁶ Plots of land were given as a substitute
for twenty-three missing measures (perhaps sacks) of corn and for forty
sesters of cider, for example, as well as for debts that were not detailed.¹⁷
Fines are more complicated. There are some isolated examples, from
as early as the 930s, of fines being paid for offences committed, although
the exact circumstances of these isolated cases are often unstated. A false
land claim in Castile led to a fine being levied on the claimant, a fine
assessed in money terms, but the role and status of the beneficiary is
unclear from the record; whether or not the half-vineyard given to court
president Godesteo Menendiz by the dowry-less Eldesenda at the end of
her case was a fine or some kind of compensation is not certain, as also
where blame attached in this episode; nor do we know precisely why
Bonmenti had to give Cecilio meat and cider following a case about a
cow.¹⁸ On the other hand, early Sobrado cases are clear that fines were
paid to the court president for theft, but in most cases they are unclear
about what, if anything, went to the injured party.¹⁹ The entirely clear
fine payable to the king, King García Sánchez I, following a land dispute
in Navarre, unfortunately comes from a suspect record.²⁰
There are, however, two groups of fines paid in the 990s which are
much more illuminating; although they certainly leave some questions
open, this kind of donation begins to let us see how local dispute
processes worked, as well as different levels of interaction between
locality and representatives of the ‘state’. One group comes from the
Otero collection, from the Pedro Flaínez archive,²¹ and the other from
the Leonese collections of San Antolín del Esla and San Juan de León.
The former concerns fines paid to Count Flaino Muñoz and his wife
¹⁵ Cel456 (940), Liii559 (993), Cel248 (before 991), Lii378 (964), OD37 (994),
OD40 and OD41 (995); cf. Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, CXI (975).
¹⁶ See above, pp. 127–8.
¹⁷ S198 (962) and Cel229 (947); cf. Sam132 (before 978) and Sam178 (988).
¹⁸ SM23 (936); Lii355 (962); Lii473 (before 980).
¹⁹ Sob54 (930), Sob21 (931), Sob24 (931), Sob29 (931). The perhaps wrongly-dated
Sob75 (858) appears to indicate a fine to the judge and compensation to the injured
party.
²⁰ SJP18 (948).
²¹ See C. Estepa Díez, ‘Poder y propiedad feudales en el período astur: las mandaciones
( Tarragona, 1991), 285–327.
Justa and the latter concerns fines paid to Count Munio Fernández and
his wife Elvira.²² Most of these records are explicit about the fact that the
count held the court and received the fine. Flaino’s cases involved assault
and wounding, rape, theft, and attack by siege; Munio’s included theft
and adultery; in other words, these are the kind of serious breaches of the
peace, as offences against the whole community, in which rulers came to
have an interest, as criminal legal systems developed alongside essentially
compensatory civil systems.²³ Now, although it was their role to hold
the court, it would appear that the counts and their families benefited
personally from these gifts: the properties given them as fines were not
passed on to the ‘state’ nor passed to the victims as compensation,
for they were subsequently transmitted along with the counts’ family
properties.²⁴ In one of Munio’s cases it is recorded explicitly that one
payment went to the victim and the other to the count, but that is very
unusual—‘we had to make a payment to him [the injured man] of a
horse worth 40 solidi and we had to give another horse to Count Munio
Fernández worth another 40 solidi’; as often happened, a grant of land
was made to the value of 40 solidi rather than chattels or cash being
handed over.²⁵ We see very clearly here that one reason for donation
to the laity was the result of judicial process, the fines going to build
up the personal property of counts, and perhaps others, who presided
in court. Was this legitimate appropriation? A form of payment for
the service the count provided? ²⁶ A mechanism for warning people
to behave? To see counts receiving fines for fornication is particularly
unexpected; one might have expected penitential payment to go to the
²² OD31 (991), OD33 (992), OD34 (993), OD44 (998); Liii556 (993), Liii561
(994), Liii578 (997).
²³ The development of the English legal system is a classic example of this process; see
P. Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (only 1 vol.
of a 2-vol. work published, Oxford, 1999), i. 25, 147–8, 364, and passim; it is expected
that ch. 9 of vol. ii, which is particularly relevant, will be published posthumously. I am
grateful to Stephen Baxter for this advice.
²⁴ Cf. the disposal of Munio’s property, Liii743 (1016), and some of Flaino’s, OD82
(1009).
²⁵ ‘et pectavimus ad illo uno kavallo in xl solidos et proinde abevimus a dare alio
kavallo a comite Monio Fredenandiz de alios xl solidos’, Liii578; cf. also Liii624
(1002). Julio Escalona reminds me that many of the secular sanctions attached to
charters imply that compensation went to the injured party when transactions went
awry. For the significance of paying in land rather than chattels, see further below,
pp. 219–21.
²⁶ There was a long distant background in Visigothic law of paying judges fees for
hearing crime cases, Forum Iudicum II.i.24.
church, and/or compensation to the family of one party, rather than the
exaction of secular penalties.
It is worth looking at these counts in a little more detail. Munio
Fernández took part in the noble rebellion against the king of León
in 991, although in 989 he had received a major grant of land near
Coyanza (now Valencia de Don Juan, south of León) from the king; he
was back in court circles by 992 and his family seems to have been in
close touch with the royal family—his son Pedro received royal grants
too and the king himself witnessed Munio’s monastic endowment in
1011.²⁷ Munio and his wife continued to receive property in lieu of
fines until at least 1008, although it looks as if his active period in
court was coming to an end around 1010. They also received gifts for
unspecified reasons until 1011, and were involved in many exchanges
of property.²⁸ In 1011 he and his wife founded the monastery of San
Juan Bautista within the city of León, making generous endowments
and putting Abbess Teresa in charge.²⁹ Five years later we hear of
the division of his heritable land between his four children and must
presume him dead. His property essentially lay in a block lying to the
south and south-west of León, stretching for 40 km, roughly bounded
on the east by the course of the river Esla, and running for about 20 km
to the west of this line. Property that came to him and his wife as
fines came essentially from within this block—in other words, he was
presiding over courts in this area and dealing with offences committed
within it.
Flaino Muñoz had a more northerly orientation and his family
focus lay 40 km to the north-east of León, on the southern side
of the Cantabrian mountains (the Alto Esla). One grandfather may
have been the Flaino whose assistance Gesmira had sought in 950;
another was Vermudo Núñez, an associate of the king’s in the 940s and
950s, who made substantial grants to Sahagún.³⁰ Flaino’s father and
mother, Munio Flaínez and Froileva, were very prominent landlords,
²⁷ Liii559, Liii530, Liii623 (1002), Liii701 (1011). See P. Martínez Sopena, La tierra
de campos occidental (Valladolid, 1985), 333, 337–8, who points out that Munio was
from the family of the counts of Saldaña.
²⁸ Fines: Liii603 (1001), Liii624 (1002), Liii630 (1003), Liii632 (1003), Liii671
(1008); gifts for no specified reason: Liii573 (996), Liii694 (1011), Liii721 (989–1013).
²⁹ Liii701.
³⁰ S93, S98, S99, S101, S104, S129, S130, S145, S146, S147, for example. Flaino’s
sister Jimena identified Vermudo as her grandfather, S328 (985); he was Flaino’s
mother’s, Froileva’s, father; although much of his property was in the Sahagún region he
did also have property in the mountain region of Valdoré, as did Flaino, S114 (949). See
Figure 6.1 Location of properties of Munio Fernández and Flaino Muñoz
involved in at least twenty transactions of gift and purchase between

947 and 962; these lay mostly in the northern hills—indeed some
(at Caso) were way north in the mountains of Asturias—although
Munio attended transactions in the neighbourhood of León, where he
Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos occidental, 331; Estepa, ‘Poder y propiedad’, 296,
289 n. 14.
witnessed grants to Vermudo Núñez and his wife.³¹ However, these

were essentially mountain lords. Munio and Froileva were the people
who were owed the twenty-three sacks of corn noted above, the last
of their joint transactions to be preserved; Froileva made purchases
alone in 962 and 963 and presumably Munio died round about this
time.³²
We have no record of Munio taking fines but his son Flaino appeared
on the scene in the late 980s; his daughter Jimena was also active in
the 980s and 990s, a patron of Sahagún, and another son, Velasco
Muñoz, made large gifts of northern lands to the monastery at Boñar in
996.³³ Flaino was count, sitting as a judge, sometimes with other judges
to assist him, and taking fines in the mountainous region of Valdoré,
13 km east of Boñar and 8 km north-west of present-day Cistierna.³⁴
By 1009, when his wife and surviving children exchanged half a villa
with his grandson, and made a grant for his soul, he was dead.³⁵ His son
Pedro was actively involved in transactions in this mountain region from
996; he was ultimately a count too, with his own areas of responsibility,
involved in judicial business and taking fines.³⁶ He was involved in at
least seventy transactions of one kind or another and is last heard of
in 1052.³⁷
These two cases are important because we have so much detailed
information about the families across several generations. We can see in
each case a powerful, hereditary landlord, with connections to the king,
in charge of a relatively small, defined region, taking fines for ‘crime’
committed in his region. It is particularly interesting that the counts
appear to have benefited personally from the judicial system, but also
that both men received numerous other gifts in addition to the several
³¹ Lii286 (955), Lii305 (958), OD6 (947), OD11 (961), OD12 (961), S107 (947),
S108 (948), S178 (960), S191 (961), for example. See Estepa’s discussion of his
acquisitions, ‘Poder y propiedad’, 289–90 and 296–7; he argues that Munio was
displaced from the Cea valley to the north (though Martínez Sopena, ‘El conde Rodrigo
de León y los suyos. Herencia y expectativa del poder entre los siglos X y XII’, in R. Pastor
(ed.), Relaciones de poder, de producción y parentesco en la edad media y moderna (Madrid,
1990), 51–84, at 53, suggests that the family may already have been mentioned at
Valdoré, in the north, in 854).
³² S198; S201, S205, S213. ³³ S328, S357; S352.
³⁴ OD31 (991), OD33 (992), OD34 (993), OD43 (997), OD44 (998).
³⁵ OD82.
³⁶ OD42 (996), OD70 (1006), OD71 (1006), OD73 (1007), OD76 (1008),
OD99 (1014), OD181 (1027), OD213 (1035), OD227 (1039), OD241 (1046), for
example.
³⁷ See Estepa, ‘Poder y propiedad’, 300; cf. OD245 (1048), OD253 (1057).
transactions of sale and exchange in which they were involved. We shall

return to these gifts a little later.
DOING GOOD
The other prominent reason for making gifts to the laity was because
the beneficiary had done some good—literally bonum facere —to the
donor, in other words had looked after (or was to look after) the donor in
some way. Hence, the two brothers Pepino and Petronio gave Fraterno
and his wife half an orchard in Argüebanes (on the edge of the Liébana
valley) in 875, ‘so that they should do good’ to the brothers; a man called
Eulalio in 915 gave the couple Vicencio and his wife his share (sorte) of
land in Viñon (also on the edge of the Liébana valley) inherited from
his parents, ‘so that as long as he lived they should do good to him and
provide clothing’; while a woman, another woman and her male cousin,
and a man, on three separate occasions in 962–63, gave land in the
same region to the couple Savarigo and Guestrilli because of the good
that had been done—in bad times, in the first two cases.³⁸ Although
some of these people were clearly peasants, the woman Severa (one of
those who gave in 962) was equally clearly an aristocrat, with property
scattered in several locations. The formulation of ‘doing good’ is only
rarely reflected elsewhere in tenth-century charters and appears to be a
particular characteristic of the way relationships were conceptualized in
this northern, Cantabrian, group. The only other direct parallels are the
León charters recording Gesmira’s gift to Flaino and Brunildi, so that
‘during my lifetime you should do good to me’, although interestingly
this may have come from a mountain context to the north of the
meseta; and Recosinda’s gift to Taurelo and Principia of half her share
of family land ‘because you do me much good’, also from the north, in
Asturias, about 20 km south of Oviedo.³⁹ The phrase also occurs in the
tenth-century record of the aristocrat Segesinda’s gift to a bishop in the
north-west (Rosendo) so that he should ‘do good to me and support my
cases in court’.⁴⁰
³⁸ T13, T22, T64, T65, T69 (a slightly different case—see further below, p. 151).
³⁹ Li222, Lii357; see above, p. 139, for Gesmira and Recosinda, and pp. 24–5, for
the northern context.
⁴⁰ Cel501 (932); cf. Lii455 (978), a couple to a priest ‘pro que mici bene facis’ and
Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, LXVII (953), a woman to the monastery of Guimarães
‘ut eis benefaciatis’. See above, pp. 127–8, for support sought from religious bodies.
What was all this ‘doing good’ about? What in practice did it mean and
what were the couples who were also themselves beneficiaries providing?
These and related texts have a major place in Spanish historiography since
Sánchez-Albornoz devoted an important early paper to the subject.⁴¹
He argued that these texts provided evidence of the continuation of
late Roman commendation, in two distinct forms, on the one hand by
the donor agreeing to serve the patron in return for food and clothing
and on the other by the donor transferring property to the patron
in return for protection; further, he argued that commendation was
widespread in the tenth- and eleventh-century Astur-Leonese kingdom,
even where the texts were silent about it;⁴² and that the benefactoría cited
in eleventh-century texts (in which the right to choose a lord featured)
subsequently developed into the distinctive lay lordship of the behetría
of the later middle ages. Recently Carlos Estepa has shown, in a major
work, that these were not forms of commendation in the commonly
understood sense, that the word benefactoría referred to the bestowal of
benefits in a rather general sense; that the reasons for the development
of the behetría were many and various; and that bonum facere and
bene facere did not evolve directly into the behetría.⁴³ The idea that
there was widespread commendation in northern Spain, of the kind
epitomized by the seventh-century Frankish Formulary of Tours (that is
⁴¹ C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las Behetrías: la encomendación en Asturias, León y

Castilla’, in idem, Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas, 3
vols. (Madrid, 1976–80), i 15–191 (first published 1924).
⁴² Ibid., 83; he implies, 63–89, that a very high proportion of all sales and gifts
made by small proprietors, to both lay and ecclesiastical beneficiaries, were acts of
commendation, mostly of the second type. This interpretation, however, goes far beyond
the import of the texts. See above, pp. 83–4, for Sánchez-Albornoz and the incommuniare
grants of Galicia. (Cf. also A. Barbero and M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en
la península Ibérica (Barcelona, 1978), 377–80, and M. I. Loring García, ‘Nobleza
e iglesias propias en la Cantabria altomedieval’, Studia Historica. Historia medieval, 5
(1987), 89–120, at 97; compare Fustel de Coulanges, Les origines du système féodal. Le
bénéfice et le patronat pendant l’époque mérovingienne (Histoire des institutions politiques de
l’ancienne France, vol. 5, Paris, 1890), 262. Sánchez-Albornoz was strongly influenced
by Fustel’s treatment of late Roman commendation and his emphasis on subjection of
client to patron.)
⁴³ C. Estepa Díez, Las Behetrías, i. 41–5, and earlier work, such as his ‘Formación
y consolidación del feudalismo en Castilla y León’, 223–40, and the editors’ prologue
to C. Estepa Díez and C. Jular Pérez-Alfaro (eds.), Los señoríos de behetría (Madrid,
2001), 10. In fact, texts using the words bene facere and benefactoría play a larger part
in the discussion than those using bonum facere: ‘lo importante es el concepto que
radica en el ejercicio del bene facere’, Estepa, ‘Formación y consolidación’, 224. Estepa
notes, Behetrías, i. 43, that a 1029 grant to a benefactor was to ensure post-mortem
commemoration, somewhat similar to Gesmira’s intention.
binding, exclusive, personal commitment of the commended person to

the patron), is therefore no longer held to be appropriate; ⁴⁴ we should
not assume that these northern Spanish bonum facere texts must have
been recording acts of commendation by donor to recipient.
The ‘doing good’ texts are not very specific about what should be, or
had been, done, but there are one or two clues.⁴⁵ Very unusually, the
875 text does use the word ‘commend’ and associate it—‘you should
hold us commended and do good’;⁴⁶ Severa’s grant is both retrospective
and prospective, because ‘you picked me up in a bad year and did many
good things for me’ and also that ‘a bad year might come and hunger
might overtake me’; Matezia and her cousin’s grant is formulated as a
sale, for which the price paid was goats, cheeses, grain, ‘and other good
things which you have done for us in a bad year’; Vermudo’s grant
to Savarigo and his wife refers to the gifts the couple had made and
the fine clothing provided;⁴⁷ Gesmira’s says that ‘you kept me warm in
your house and provided for me (gubernasti)’ as well as looking forward
to the likelihood of good to be done; and Recosinda’s notes that she
‘accepts blankets and bedding from you and that you provide for me
(gubernas) and keep me warm’. These things seem to be about practical,
physical care: provision of food and of shelter, and sometimes clothes.⁴⁸
⁴⁴ ‘Formulae Turonenses’, no. 43, in K. Zeumer (ed.), Formulae Merowingici et

Karolini Aevi, MGH LL in quarto, sectio 5 (Hannover, 1886).
⁴⁵ Cf. Estepa, Behetrías, i. 43, on the vagueness of the concept.
⁴⁶ Noted also by Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías’, 74; this is the only one of these
texts to refer to the notion of commendation.
⁴⁷ This text is difficult to translate. It reads ‘dono vobis ad vestra mesa super vestrum
panem et vinum et vestrum onore quod fecistis mihi et adhuc insuper presentastis mihi
mutalina hoptimum vestimentum’ ( T69). Since the gift to the couple comprised a
vineyard, for their lifetime, it was presumably to supply their table; I take it that this was
in respect of the onor they had done him and the clothes they had provided. In these
texts onor usually signifies a countergift and therefore perhaps indicates things that had
been given.
⁴⁸ Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías’, made relatively little of the bonum facere texts
because he was more concerned with the benefactoría and with service, but he does
include them at 76, as also 83 n. 233 citing Gesmira and Recosinda. It should be
clear that the relationship which was his main concern—that is the provision of
service and/or rent for a patron in return for food and/or protection—is perfectly well
indicated in some of the eleventh-century texts that he cites (e.g. ‘Et post obitum vero
nostrum sedeant ipsas villas filios nostros laborent et parciant vobiscum, et faciant vobis
veram obedientiam et fidelem servicium, et vos illis faciatis bonum et habeant de vos
moderatione et in verbo et in facto’, Cel572 (1012)); however, note that here the client
is to provide the service, whereas in my examples above it was often the patron who
had already provided the service and was therefore being rewarded; see further below,
pp. 161–3.
Although other texts do not use the bonum facere expression, they
record gifts made for very comparable reasons. Though made to a priest,
Nuño Sarracíniz’s grant for care to be provided in old age is reminiscent;
so is Sanzone’s, also to a priest, because he had provided bread for
his son, goat milk for his daughter, and clothing for himself, in ‘that
awful year’ (isto anno pessimo), when he was dying of hunger; and so
is Leocadia’s to the monastery of Abellar for ‘clothing, shoes, food,
and heating’—all donations to religious institutions but cast within a
comparable social and economic framework.⁴⁹ In Galicia Gondesendo
gave a share of a smallholding to a layman because he had given him
bread and wine and had provided for him (guvernasti) in a bad year
from March until July.⁵⁰ It is also implicit in the (abused) gift that
Reparado and Trasvinda made to their cousins that the cousins should
look after them in old age—as was clearly not to be the case.⁵¹A rather
more political version of this kind of support comes with Valentino and
Donna’s gift to a lay couple because they had protected them from the
fisc and from the judge (de iudice).⁵² Assistance given in bad times, be
it by layman or church, may have looked at the time like a free gift but
clearly it often set up an obligation to repay the gift when times were
better, a kind of debt.⁵³ Those with resources could disburse the surplus
they had to spare, expecting some kind of return at an unspecified point
in the future.
Nearly all of these cases are about practical support—deals done
with the rich to get essential supplies, especially food, when times were
bad.⁵⁴ Lay couples, in particular, were often the beneficiaries of the gifts
⁴⁹ C117 (964), V27 (950), Lii462 (978); see above, pp. 127–8. Cf. Sam241 (969),
a sale to the monastery of Samos by the woman Frogildi, for food, drink, and clothing
that had been received.
⁵⁰ Cel436 (924); cf. Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, CXXXV (982).
⁵¹ See below, p. 185. ⁵² S332 (986).
⁵³ Cf. the very similar ninth-century Italian cases cited by L. Feller, ‘Enrichissement,
accumulation et circulation des biens. Quelques problèmes liés au marché de la terre’,
in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds.), Le marché de la terre au moyen âge, (Rome, 2005),
3–28, at 21–4. Fustel de Coulanges, Les origines du système féodal, 101, in the context of
discussing the fifth-century Gaulish work of Salvian, remarked that the giver may have
looked liberal but was actually creating a debt.
⁵⁴ Gifts of food and clothing are reminiscent of the victum et vestimentum phrase
which occurs in the Tours commendation formula, which has seemed to many scholars to
reinforce the commendation argument; see, for example, Orlandis’s elaborate treatment
of food and clothing for those entering the familiaritas relationship with monasteries
that he proposed, although his examples come overwhelmingly from the twelfth century,
‘ ‘‘Traditio corporis et animae’’. Laicos y monasterios’, 222–3, 309–38 (see further above,
pp. 53–4), and Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 384. However, the Tours
given in grateful thanks for earlier handouts. In some of these cases it

is clear that the donor entered the household of the providers, literally
to be cared for there: ‘keeping me warm’ seems to be code for taking
someone in. Other examples seem to have been more short-term and
were to do with providing necessities in particularly bad times; and
others record gifts as a guarantee against future bad fortune. Although
there are slightly more women than men who made such gifts, people
of both sexes did so;⁵⁵ and they were nearly always—as might be
expected—people without partners, although not invariably so. All the
‘warming’ cases relate to women. These were people who did not have
an effective household set-up, and presumably not much of a wider
family network.
So, could this after all have been about commendation, as the earliest
Liébana text might suggest? Was this a Spanish version of a general
European post-Roman process, in which small-scale free proprietors
submitted their persons and gave up their property to great landlords
in order to secure assistance and protection in an increasingly unstable
world? Clearly not. Aristocrats as well as peasants made such gifts; the
donors often gave only a portion of their properties, not all of them;
some of the gifts were to come into effect after the death of the donors;
there was no associated service obligation; and the number of such cases
is really very small within the overall tenth-century context. As the texts
say, this seems in practice to have been about individuals either seeking
help from the wealthy in hard times, or providing for the event of future
bad times. It is not about personal commitment to the wealthy, let alone
total, irreversible, commitment, although of course one would expect
some sense of obligation to these providers to have been established
in such small-scale rural societies. What it is about, then, is in the
first instance economic—getting the wherewithal to sustain life; it is
sometimes about direct, physical, care for the weak, feeble, and old; it
also seems partly to be about the support mechanisms used by partnerless
people—those who, for whatever reason, did not have extended families;
formula guarantees service in return for food and clothing, whereas service is not specified
in these particular Spanish contexts; gifts and sales for victum et vestimentum are in fact
very uncommon in this tenth-century material (although see Sob10 (943), Portugaliae
Monumenta Historica, CIII (971)); and in charters the phrase victum et vestimentum is
more likely to refer to gifts made in order to supply the poor or monks than to refer to
handouts to a donor (e.g. S144 (955): ‘pro victu atque vestimento monachorum’; Sam93
(951), S165 (959), Sob5 (966), S303 (980)).
⁵⁵ But for gender differences overall in donating to the laity, see above, p. 141.
it is also consequentially about extending patronage—lining up and

getting supporters, in an altogether looser, less autocratic, framework
than the commendation model.⁵⁶ It is not about the whole society, nor
even the whole of peasant society, although it is probably reasonable to
suppose that such procedures might be found as well in Galicia, or the
western meseta, or Castile, as in the north: although the bonum facere
phrase clearly reflects wording characteristic of Asturias and Cantabria,
the practices which it encapsulates were more widespread.
And what about the levels of control, the power over persons,
exercised by the provider? The word gubernare occurs several times and
is suggestive of steering, governing, ruling, although I have translated
it as ‘providing’. Overall, there is very little to suggest that the people
who provided food and shelter, the rich beneficiaries of gifts of land,
achieved sustained powers of direction over those who made the gifts.
Such powers of landlords over dependent tenants clearly sometimes
existed, but they had arisen for a variety of reasons, some of which
lay in the distant past.⁵⁷ This was light-touch patronage, not the
establishment of heavy burdensome bonds. Those who were ‘governed’
in these texts are those for whom support was provided, often in the
household. ‘Governing’ here must be governing in the sense of a head
of household setting the rules for the members of the household, who
were necessarily subject to his (usually male) authority. One thinks
of some of the stock characters of modern novels, the gentlewoman
taken into the house of a relative, or the tutor or governess, without
household of his or her own, doing the jobs that no one else wanted to
do, eternally grateful but totally powerless, like Fanny Price in Mansfield
Park, always reminded of her ‘place’. ‘Governing’ was to do with the
power of the paterfamilias, not the power of the serf-owner or seigneurial
lord.
G I F TS TO T H E L A I T Y F O R N O A P PA R E N T
REASON
As indicated above, a noticeable proportion of gifts to the laity—over

two-fifths of the group—were made for no stated reason, and the texts
⁵⁶ Commendation of a kind did start to feature in eleventh-century texts, however;

Estepa, ‘Poder y propiedad’, 320.
⁵⁷ See above, pp. 17–22.
contain few clues about what was happening. Having examined those
made for stated reasons in some detail, we are now in a position to make
some suggestions. Nearly three-quarters of these unexplained gifts were
made to couples; they were made by men, women, and mixed groups,
but mostly by couples. They occurred from late ninth to late tenth
century, but notably in the 960s; and they occurred in most collections
and most regions, with the exception of Castile.
The basic profile of this gift-giving therefore reflects that of gift-giving
to the laity for stated reasons. Clearly these gifts for which we have
little detail, some of which are gifts by profiliation, could have been
made for all kinds of reason, including all of the reasons cited above.⁵⁸
There may well have been deals between family members; there was
doubtless some movement of property between members of the royal
family and its close associates;⁵⁹ and there was probably some gift-giving
in order to clear debts, make rewards for past service, and pay fines
and compensations. Some of these gifts, like those made to Gutier and
Ilduara in Galicia, may in fact have been ultimately destined for the
church: one church was given to a lay couple for their lifetime only, to
be passed on to Sahagún.⁶⁰ Others, from ‘your servant’ (servus), were
made to lords (domini) and presumably met the terms of some personal
obligation.⁶¹
Some of the couples who received gifts for no stated reason are
exactly the same wealthy couples who took fines or who received gifts
for support that had been provided in hard times.⁶² Most of the gifts to
Munio Flaínez and his wife were made for no stated reason, although
we know that one gift was in lieu of debt, as also that Munio’s son
was a count and took a number of fines; and that Vermudo Núñez,
his father-in-law, had received such gifts too. Count Munio Fernández
and his wife Elvira are another such case, receiving many fines as well
as the occasional gift for no apparent reason. These families bought and
exchanged a lot of property as well as receiving gifts, just as Savarigo and
Guestrilli in the Liébana gave and bought land, as well as receiving gifts
⁵⁸ See above, p. 84, for profiliation (i.e. adoption), and see further below, pp. 160–1.
⁵⁹ Cf. Cel493 (918).
⁶⁰ For example, Cel518 (931), Cel218 (936), Cel509 (937), etc.; S25 (921).
⁶¹ Li3 (864), Li4 (870), Sob52 (930), Sob30 (955), Lii356 (962), Sam132 (before
978). Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 382, treated the ninth-century León
grants noted here as evidence that the ‘servants’ had previously received goods from their
masters.
⁶² See above, pp. 141, 143–6, 152–3.
in recognition of help given in hard times.⁶³ Other notable purchasers

received unexplained gifts too: Bagaudano and Faquilona (probably
Savarigo’s parents), who bought in the Liébana between 914 and 932;⁶⁴
Ermegildo and Paterna, who bought in central Galicia from at least
920 until 953;⁶⁵ the major-domo Ansur, and his wife María, who
bought around Sahagún between 958 and 967, and perhaps with a
second wife Ilduara in the 970s;⁶⁶ Fruela Vélaz and his wife Jimena,
who bought around Coyanza (Valencia de Don Juan) between 962
and 968.⁶⁷ These clearly were all wealthy aristocrats with available
surplus—that is, with resources to dispense. It therefore seems likely
that, in addition to gifts made for the wide range of reasons noted above,
some of the unexplained gifts went to these couples because they had
provided. It is notable that virtually all of Bagaudano’s many purchases
were paid for in food. Again, we do not have to suppose that the
donors of unexplained gifts of land entered into lifelong, enforceable,
commitment, or a life of subjection, as a result of such gifts; nor
that their gifts represented all their property—some texts are explicit
that the beneficiary was only to have a share, just as children did.⁶⁸
They were simply gifts and belong to the world of loose patronage
networks.
G I F TS F R A M E D A S S A L E S ?
In the present context of gift-giving for purposes which were not

primarily religious, it is worth considering the nature of some sale
transactions. As indicated above, the layman Bagaudano and his wife
received gifts in the Liébana in the early tenth century but they were
also noticeable purchasers of land; they used food to pay for their
⁶³ T52 (947), T53 (950), T54 (951); T65 (962); T64, T69.
⁶⁴ T18, T21, T23, T25, T26, T27, T32, T36, T39, T40, T42; T41 perhaps implies
that Bagaudano had received the property exchanged as a fine. Barbero and Vigil’s
suggestion, Formación del feudalismo, 380, that his family property was transferred to
San Martín of Turieno, of which their son Opila became abbot, and that Savarigo was
another son, is entirely reasonable.
⁶⁵ For example, Sob67 (920), Sob79 (927), Sob101 (931), Sob102 (935), Sob87
(953), Sob89 (953).
⁶⁶ S158, S169, S182, S187, S194, S199, S210, S223, S237; S260, S268, S269, S272,
S273, S278, S282; S284, S285, S308.
⁶⁷ Lii352, Lii360 (see below, p. 186), Lii406.
⁶⁸ Hence gifts by profiliatio, by adoption; S178 (960), S191 (961), for example.
purchases.⁶⁹ When Matezia and her cousin gave land to Savarigo and
Guestrilli in recognition of the good the couple had done them, that
transaction was recorded as a sale, with both the good done in the past
and the food which had been handed over described as the price paid
for the land; and when Recosinda gave Taurelo and Principia half her
land in Ujo for the good they would do her in the future, that record
was described as a ‘charter of gift and sale’.⁷⁰ A woman, Gogina, also
‘sold’ the priest Braolio half an orchard in recognition of grain he had
supplied to her.⁷¹ Shifting the perspective a little towards debt, two
men, Martín and Félix, ‘sold’ to a man called Arias and his children
their share of some enclosed land (dehesa) in Fontecha, in lieu of the
grain, wine, and cheese they owed him; a widow, also called Guestrilli,
‘sold’ the priest Munio her vineyard in 978 in lieu of the wine that she
owed him, worth thirteen and a half solidi;⁷² and the following year,
with her sons, she ‘sold’ the same priest a plot of land for grain owed.⁷³
As we have seen, ‘gifts’ of vineyards they owned were also made in
lieu of regular renders of wine and grain owed by villagers close to the
monastery at Celanova.⁷⁴ Now, as in the latter case, when debts were
discharged or past assistance rewarded by handing over plots of land—a
characteristically peasant practice—the transaction was usually called a
gift; however, sometimes exactly the same kind of transaction was called
a sale, as if the unpaid rent was a price the beneficiary, by writing it
off, paid in advance for some land; and as if the gift made to assist
the needy was similarly a price paid in advance for property. In effect,
when the ‘debt’ was discharged with a gift of land, the food given by the
priest or lay lord and the rent unpaid became—retrospectively—the
⁶⁹ Bagaudano and his wife were central to the interpretation of Barbero and Vigil,
Formación del feudalismo, 377–80, where their purchases are interpreted as transactions
which initiated relationships of dependence. In this they mirrored the approach of
Sánchez-Albornoz; see above, pp. 150–1.
⁷⁰ T65; Lii357 (the text is more of a gift text than a sale text but it is twice called
kartula donationis vel venditionis); see above, pp. 139, 151. See further above, pp. 136–8
for discussion of ‘confusion’ between the categories of gift and sale.
⁷¹ OD14 (964).
⁷² A different individual (from the ‘territory of León’) from Savarigo’s wife, who was
located in the Liébana.
⁷³ Lii371 (964); Lii457; Lii465, a problematic text as it stands because it literally says
that the priest owed the woman the grain (‘pro illa cebaria de renobo que mici abuisti a
dare’); the only reasonable sense to make of it is that it was her debt and that the endings
of the verbs are incorrect.
⁷⁴ Cel411 (989), Cel409 (990); see above, pp. 127–8. See above, pp. 18–21, for
the combination of proprietorship and tenancy that was characteristic of some peasants’
property rights.
price.⁷⁵ Bearing that in mind, it is worth exploring whether the many

apparently straightforward sales of small plots of land, for which the
price is specified in terms of food and drink, could in fact have been
comparable transactions.
It is far from my intention to suggest that all sales should be, or
might be, viewed in this light. Sales were of many different types,
operating at different social levels, with a great range of different price
categories.⁷⁶ Some sales were made by aristocrats and some sales were
made to religious corporations for what look like essentially commercial
reasons; purchases were made to consolidate property, for reasons of
more efficient management and exploitation; some sales were made for
extremely high-value prices, like the vineyard which changed hands
between lay couples for a value of 150 solidi in 927 or orchards sold
to Celanova in 961 for fine horses, a carpet, and silver plate;⁷⁷and sales
were made to religious communities from which any balance in the
value of the land which was not met by the price paid was to be devoted
to alms in memory of the vendors’ parents or other relations—the price
paid may strictly have been too low but the transaction was clearly
concluded in terms of value.⁷⁸ In all these cases price and value were
important to the participants.
However, there were other kinds of sale: sales were also made for
directly consumable food. When sales were made for payment in food,
price tended to be expressed in measures of grain, or wine, or cider, and
more occasionally in cheeses or bread. The format of the record was
usually that of the straightforward sale document: ‘I sell (vendo) you
this and I have accepted a price of that, which is agreeable to me, and
you have nothing more to give’. Hence, a group of siblings sold the
woman Fredesinda some woods for cider, grain, and a cheese; Vímara
and his wife sold the monastery of Abellar half a vineyard for salt and
grain; the priest Rapinato and his cousin sold their shares in a family
mill to the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor for grain; Rodrigo sold
Bishop Rosendo a vineyard for rye, millet, and wine; Domnito sold
⁷⁵ Cf. Feller, ‘Enrichissement, accumulation et circulation des biens’, 23, on price as

the cost of all the help given; and Ll. To Figueras, ‘L’historiographie du marché de la
terre en Catalogne’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds.), Le marché de la terre au moyen
âge (Rome, 2005), 161–80, at 167, on the inability to pay debts as a primary reason for
sale.
⁷⁶ See W. Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation in Galicia and Castile-León in the tenth
century’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 149–74, for discussion of price.
⁷⁷ Li74, Cel380. ⁷⁸ e.g. Li254 (952), Lii336 (961), Lii343 (961).
Munio Flaínez and his wife half a plot of land for bread and wine;
and so on.⁷⁹ The same Taurelo and Principia who received gifts from
Recosinda for her support paid one Nonelo in grain and cider for half
a plot of arable and a quarter of an orchard, again in Ujo; it makes
sense to see the vendor of such tiny portions as the principal initiator of
such a transaction, selling whatever he could to get food.⁸⁰ Sales of this
kind were made to clergy, laity, and monastic communities; they were
made by men, women, married couples, and mixed groups, both lay
and clerical; they were made from early until late in the tenth century.
They occur in all parts and in most charter collections; however, they
are particularly prominent in Celanova and León collections, especially
in mid-century, and they are relatively rare in Castilian collections.⁸¹
This partly reflects the size of collections and the overall incidence of
sale as against donation, but the mere handful in Cardeña material is
nevertheless notable, particularly given the low incidence of donation
to the laity.⁸²
One can envisage, therefore, that some of these so-called sales could
just as well have been recorded as gifts made in recognition of assistance
given in the past when food was short and times were hard. Of
course, sometimes they are also likely to have been deals—contracts to
secure supplies in times of shortage—closer to the true ‘sale’ but lying
precisely within the same social and economic framework as gifts made
in recognition of assistance. We do not have to suppose that this only
happened in dreadful years, like those in the middle of the tenth century,
because such sales happened in all decades. We do not have to suppose
that they involved the vendors in relationships of tied dependence: it is
striking that the properties alienated were small, and often fractions; the
⁷⁹ Li22 (908), Li170 (943), Lii283 (954), Cel392 (961), S193 (961). Cf. other
examples of sales for food: to a lay woman (confessa), Cel437 (943); to the priest Vicente,
Ov8, Ov10, Ov12, Ov13 (937–49).
⁸⁰ Lii324 (960). Cf. Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation’, 159–60 and 171–2.
⁸¹ See Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation’, 152–5, for comparative statistics. It is
impossible to do a meaningful count of all sales for food because in some cases the value
of the price is given but the objects handed over are not identified; further, animals
handed over in payment have an uncertain status in this respect—they may have been
handed over for immediate consumption or as stock.
⁸² Absence from Cardeña texts could be explained by suggesting that Cardeña scribes
did not choose to copy and preserve such records in their cartulary; it does not have
to imply that such transactions did not happen. However, the lack is very striking.
(S. Moreta Velayos argues that eight donations with countergifts were in fact sales,
El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña. Historia de un dominio monástico castellano
(902–1338) (Salamanca, 1971), 116–19).
vendors kept plenty back.⁸³ But we do have to consider that this was
probably part of a familiar and ongoing economic process: in times of
shortage, peasants would get food from richer neighbours, and sooner
or later would reward them by handing them a plot of land—land, be
it noted, not their own surplus food or other chattels.
G I V I N G , PAT RO N AG E , A N D C L I E N TS H I P
Gifts were made to lay persons for a range of very different reasons,
although gifts to secure practical support were a significant element of
that giving. Clearly the beneficiaries in such cases were not distinctively
lay, however, for gifts for practical support were also made to the clergy;
lay and ecclesiastical landowners alike might provide support in court
or handouts of food; although there are as many such gifts to laity as
clergy recorded, there is no reliable basis for estimating whether this
practice benefited more laity or more religious or was roughly the same.
One thing that these transactions certainly make clear is that there were
some very wealthy aristocrats around, lay and clerical, people who had
resources to spare, and that they themselves could benefit hugely when
they took on the role of provider. A couple like Ermegildo and Paterna,
in early tenth-century Galicia, amassed very considerable property by
receiving fines, attracting gifts, and buying up land, sometimes for food
handouts, although their property was soon transferred to the monastery
of Sobrado.⁸⁴
Spanish writers of the past generation have placed a heavy emphasis
on the importance of gift by profiliation in this process, arguing that
such gifts gave strangers rights in family property and inaugurated new
relationships of dependence.⁸⁵ Some gifts to the powerful were certainly
⁸³ It would be possible to interpret other kinds of price paid as evidence for the
Sánchez-Albornoz model: price often included bedding (cf. the ‘warmth’ specified in
some of the bonum facere texts), lengths of cloth (which could have been for clothing),
and shoes (cf. the calciatura that Leocadia ordered), e.g. Lii322 (959), where the price
for a plot of land was a ‘best’ Moorish blanket and a pair of shoes; however, although
an amusing exercise, this is going too far. For all the reasons stated above, these were
not transactions leading to dependence; and many of the lengths of cloth were of special
character and very high value.
⁸⁴ Not for ever: see A. Isla Frez, La sociedad gallega (Madrid, 1992), 229, on the
transfer of a significant interest to Count Menendo González in the eleventh century.
⁸⁵ It has become common to argue that all ‘profiliation’ gifts, i.e. gifts in which the
recipient was taken on ‘as it were as a child’ (and many of the unexplained gifts were
gifts by profiliation, but we should remember that profiliation gifts had

other purposes too, that the properties conveyed were often but small
fractions of the donors’ lands, and that a wife could transfer property
to her husband by profiliation.⁸⁶ There simply is no reason to assume
that in the tenth century a gift by profiliation meant that the donor
commended him- or herself into a state of dependence. As suggested
above, the word may well have been chosen by the record-maker not
because it had any precise signification but as a way of emphasizing the
donor’s freedom of disposition. Of course, as has often been suggested,
profiliation gifts may well have had the effect, in the much longer term,
of diverting property into the hands of the powerful, but it was only
one of several practices that led in that direction.
What is also noticeable about these transactions is that when the
wealthy dispensed food, what they got in return was nearly always
land. Poorer people do not seem to have had access to liquid capital
nor sufficient surplus of consumables to give back when good times
returned.⁸⁷ The only thing they had to give was land. This clearly had
social and economic consequences, with a tendency for those rich in
land to get richer and the poor to get poorer, but our evidence of such
transactions is limited in scale and suggests that the impact must have
been limited at this time.
Questions about the quasi-feudal, or proto-feudal, or feudo-vassallic,
nature of these gifts between lay people naturally leap to mind.⁸⁸ Was
property given in return for service? Was such service accompanied
by close personal commitment between donor (patron) and recipient
profiliation gifts), were gifts by which the donor entered into a service relationship with
the beneficiary, in effect a form of commendation; see especially Barbero and Vigil,
Formación del feudalismo, 380–94; also A. Isla Frez, ‘Las relaciones de dependencia en
la Galicia alto-medieval’, Hispania 44 (1984), 5–18; idem, Sociedad gallega, 233; and
M. I. Loring García, ‘Dominios monásticos y parentelas en la Castilla altomedieval: el
origen del derecho de retorno y su evolución’, in R. Pastor (ed.), Relaciones de poder, de
producción y parentesco en la edad media y moderna (Madrid, 1990), 13–49, at 28. This
could sometimes have been the case but, as argued here, it is perfectly clear that all kinds
of rationale lay behind such giving; it is also the case that some acts of profiliation were
clearly intended to provide the donors, not the recipients, with services (cf. Cel228).
⁸⁶ See above, pp. 83–4. S370 (972), for a wife’s profiliation gift to her husband.
⁸⁷ Although, of course, it is landed gifts that are recorded; in theory there could also
have been a hidden stratum of repayment in goods, but see further my comments below,
pp. 219–21.
⁸⁸ For these categories of enquiry see J.-P. Poly and E. Bournazel, La mutation féodale,
X e –XIIe siècles (Paris, 1980); and for updates, E. Bournazel and J.-P. Poly (eds.), Les
féodalités (Paris, 1998).
(client), indeed perhaps exclusive and binding commitment? Some ele-

ments of the Spanish patterns are certainly comparable to those of the
classic western European (in effect Frankish) models. Kings unques-
tionably had followers who were seen to be faithful (fideles, fidelissimi),
whom they rewarded for loyal and faithful service.⁸⁹ Relationships
between some donors and some beneficiaries were described in terms of
love (amor, dilectio, caritas);⁹⁰ in an aristocratic milieu this was a way
of conceptualizing relationships of commitment. One female donor,
making the gift to a deacon for service done, even specified that he
might not take another patron while she was alive; there are certainly
shades of lifelong commitment here.⁹¹ And landed property was clearly
handed over as a reward for service—servitium—by men and women.⁹²
All of these features are reminiscent of the classic models. However,
there are significant differences: rewards for service were usually explic-
itly for service completed in the past; and when Sanzone gave the
priest his field and garden for the service he had done, that service was
explicitly the service of providing food and clothing, not the kinds of
active service, whether agricultural or administrative or military, that
we usually imagine.⁹³ The land handed over was usually for permanent
use by the beneficiaries, and was often explicitly freely disposable—they
could pass it on as they wished; and, most importantly, this is but an
extremely small element of the property transactions that are recorded,
and even of the property transactions between laity. All of these features
are unlike those of the traditional models.
The patron/client relationship sometimes looks more permanent,
more institutionalized, in the relationship between donor and church.
To choose the patronage of the church might mean entering a monastery,
but it more often meant joining the monastery’s local, small-scale,
patronage network.⁹⁴ These relationships have an air of permanence
since the monastery, or occasionally church, was a physically enduring
element in the local scene, although the gifts and sales to lay couples
⁸⁹ S19 (920), S285 (976), Liii541 (990); cf. the (?eleventh-century) interpolations in
Sob6 (966).
⁹⁰ S75 (940), S206 (962), Cel505 (935). ⁹¹ Cel423 (957).
⁹² Ov4, S75, S206, Cel423, perhaps Cel505; see above, pp. 141–2.
⁹³ V27.The one apparently clear tenth-century exception to this is the 952 gift of
Fernando Vermúdez to Vermudo Aboleze for service which had been done and which
the latter promises to be done in the future, S365; see Estepa, ‘Formación y consolidación
del feudalismo’, 223, and Las behetrías, i.44, emphasizing that Vermudo Aboleze was not
a dependent peasant and was free to choose a lord.
⁹⁴ See above, pp. 57–61, 128–9.
make it perfectly clear that lay patronage networks were common too
and could last a long time. The power that was realizable by sitting
in court is evident from the many cases cited here, and this was a
characteristically, though not exclusively, lay activity; it was transferred
across generations of lay families, as well as sometimes being transferred
to the church. What was also common to lay and ecclesiastical client
relationships at this period, and what distinguished them from later,
service-based relationships, was the place of the gift in relation to client
and patron. In this period, it was the client who gifted the patron with
property, expecting support in return, whether practical or protective,
temporary or long-term, or spiritual and perpetual—the client was the
land donor; it was not a case of the patron giving the client property
in order to support future service, nor of the client giving himself and
his service and accepting food supplies in return, as in the dominant
European models.⁹⁵ Making grants to the laity to enter the patronage
network does not look new in the tenth century, and may well have
followed decades, if not centuries, of light-touch patronage systems, in
which the interests of client and patron were often reasonably balanced.
It looks as if such gift-giving may have been increasing in the later tenth
century, perhaps as royal orders reinforced the responsibilities of some
local aristocrats. Local priests like Melic and wealthy peasants like David
and Regina, however, tended to choose monastic patronage. In the long
term this was a significant driver of social change, for the balance shifted
in favour of wealthy proprietors, once powerful religious corporations
became involved. Even with the high profile of donation to the laity in
the 990s, there was still more than four times as much recorded giving
to the church in that decade.
⁹⁵ Cf. above, n. 48. Note that the Tours formula (above, n. 44) provides for the donor
to commend his person not his property; cf. gifts of service (and property) in return for
food in East Frankia from 745, Ph. Depreux, ‘L’apparition de la précaire à Saint-Gall’,
Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen Âge, 111 (1999), 649–73, at 659.
7
Men and Women
It would be relatively easy to make it appear that women had a special

role in making donations to the church in tenth-century Spain. There
are some notable examples. Ramiro II’s daughter Elvira made gifts to
several churches in memory of her brother Sancho in the 970s; the
woman Eldoara gave all the property she had inherited from her mother
to the nunnery of Santiago in León, with the request that she be buried
there herself; the sisters, and abbesses, Eilo and Goisenda, gave many
properties in Galicia (including one villa their aunt had given them) to
the monastery of Celanova, with a request for annual services for their
own memorial; the widow Entregoto made grants of land near Oviedo
in memory of her parents, her husband Lallino, and her ancestors, just
as the widow Emilo Hamita gave property in Grajal to the monastery
of Sahagún in memory of her husband Sendino; and so on.¹ Women’s
capacity to act is striking, from east to west and north to south, and the
church was not the only beneficiary: Ranemira and her two daughters
gave half of what they had inherited from her mother to the powerful
Galician lay couple, Ermegildo and Paterna, and other women gave
to lay couples in order to secure support.² However, the preceding
chapters have provided plentiful evidence of men and women acting
together, exchanging, selling, and giving property, in all kinds of deal,
large and small. This is as true of peasant couples—witness especially
the many peasant sales of small plots of property—as it is of aristocratic
couples, where the typical transaction was more likely to have been a
gift of several entire villas.³ One member of a couple might also act
with the consent of the other, like the women who sold small plots near
Oviedo with the consent of their husbands, or alternatively the woman
¹ S255 (970), Lii432 (974); Lii425 (973), cf. C39 (942), C82 (952); Cel216 and
Cel251 (993); Ov20 (978), S190 (961).
² Sob60 (916). There were relatively high proportions (although small numbers) of
women making gifts for support; see above, p. 153.
³ e. g. Cel71 (916), S128 (950), T70 (964), Ar21 (970), S285 (976), SM97 (984).
Men and Women 165
who confirmed, in a separate document, her husband’s gifts of property

near León.⁴ Men and women doing things together was one aspect of
normal life.
We have also seen plenty of examples of men as well as women acting
separately—to such an extent that it makes Barbero and Vigil’s view
that it was women who played a fundamental role in the transition
‘from tribal to feudal society’ very difficult to accept.⁵ Women received
property from fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and
acquired it by purchase; so did men. Property could be transferred by
and through women, as demonstrated perfectly well by the examples
which begin this chapter, as it could be transferred by and through men:
Agela, son of Emenecio, and Vigila, son of Lecinio, sold the wood they
had inherited from their fathers, whose ancestors had established it;
Armentario Díaz gave the monastery of Cardeña a quarter of a saltpan
that had come from his father; Salite sold his share of water rights in the
river Cea, which had come from his father Alvaro’s inheritance; Rodrigo
sold Munio Flaínez and his wife his share of the inheritance that came
from his father Sisverto; the deacons Alvaro and Abraham sold a villa
they had received from their uncle, a bishop; Gavino and his two sons
gave Celanova everything he had inherited from both parents; and so
on.⁶ In fact, the records log noticeably more cases of male transmission
than of female. The impression given by tenth-century written sources
is that both men and women had access to property and exercised
property rights, both separately and together, but that more men had
more property.
Despite the powerful arguments that have been deployed to demon-
strate that women had a special role in preserving family memory in
medieval Europe, we have seen that in northern Spain in this period
more men than women took action to commemorate themselves and
their families.⁷ Unless much has gone unrecorded, it looks as if women
had a role in this respect, but that they did not have a distinctive role.
⁴ Ov8 (937), Ov9 (946); S150 (956), with reference to S144 (955).
⁵ Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo, 404. Their argument depends essentially
on the view that succession to the Asturian kingship had matrilineal traces in the eighth
and ninth centuries (ibid., 327–53); the examples they give of transmission of property
through females in the ninth and tenth centuries (ibid., 362–401) are entirely reasonable,
but the number of them is small and they are not compared with transmission through
males.
⁶ S72 (938), C56 (945), S188 (961), OD11 (961), Lii403 (967), Cel303 (996). See
also examples cited above of brothers acting together, pp. 65–9.
⁷ See above, pp. 130–3.
166 Men and Women
Women could also, like men, take forthright and vigorous action—we
saw three powerful women making the running in the monasteries
of Galicia in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.⁸ But authority
unquestionably resided in maleness: rulers were male; counts were male;
panels of boni homines (trusted men, worthies), who were sent to investi-
gate disputes, were male; named representatives of peasant communities
were usually male.⁹ But, in the latter case, not invariably.¹⁰ How far is
that impression of male dominance in matters of property supported by
the detail of the texts? How far, in a world dominated by male authority
figures, could women do what men could do?
C O N T RO L O F P RO PE RT Y
As we have seen, landed property rights normally passed from parents to

children, male and female.¹¹ Hence, both sons and daughters inherited
portions of land, and they inherited from their fathers and from their
mothers too. The result was that many women controlled landed
property in their own names, across the status range. Such property
was separately identifiable as their own; accordingly, when Martín and
his wife sold some land to the monastery of Abellar in 942, his wife
also sold a different piece of her own land, separately identifiable with
separate boundaries.¹² This point is reinforced at peasant level by the
frequent citation in boundary clauses of adjacent properties which were
owned or worked by women.
If women were as capable as men of inheriting property, and that in
effect seems to have been the practice, one has to ask if they inherited
portions of comparable size and if their powers in relation to inherited
property were the same as men’s. There are no consistent indications
of the relative size of portions: we hear of women securing a third, a
half, and equal shares with brothers, but in most cases we simply do
not know.¹³ The five-way split of Bishop Rosendo’s inheritance with
his two brothers and his two sisters looks as if shares were virtually
⁸ See above, pp. 36–8.

⁹ For example, worthies: V8 (911), V10 (919), Sam46 (933), Cel93 (950); commu-
nity representatives: Sam144 (878—forty-one men in this case), Sam247 (909), Sam170
(930), C22 (932), SM50 (948), Cel489 (953), C89 (956), S289 (977); see further below,
pp. 199–201.
¹⁰ S44 (932), Cel224 (934), Cel95 (950–51). ¹¹ See above, pp. 66–71.
¹² Li157 (942). ¹³ Cel375 (997), Lii293 (955), Li156 (942).
Men and Women 167
equal;¹⁴ and Gundulfo’s bequest was split four ways between his wife,
his niece, the nuns of Porto Marín, and Rosendo—again the portions
look similar.¹⁵ It would be hazardous, however, to argue from these two
exceptional cases to a general norm (exceptional because both involved
Bishop Rosendo); in practice shares are likely to have varied with
personalities and with circumstances. Relative size of inherited portions
has to remain an open question. As for powers: we have seen that in
practice inherited land was often owned ‘in common’, regardless of sex,
as it was also just as frequently divided.¹⁶ Where owned in common, it
was necessarily subject to the constraints of all partners; where divided,
the outcome was, again, identifiable property for individual males
and individual females, as also the diversion of inheritances. Although
property normally devolved to children, both men and women disposed
of maternal and paternal inheritances, sometimes disinheriting their
children,¹⁷ just as married couples disposed together of land that
had come from one or other set of parents.¹⁸ Men and women also
had acquired property alongside that which they had inherited, both
separately and as married couples, acquiring it by purchase, gift, or
judicial award; both men and women disposed of land they had
acquired, as did their children;¹⁹ and widows and widowers might
dispose of their previously shared interests.²⁰ To the extent that men
were able to dispose of landed property, women seem to have had
comparable powers of disposition.²¹
¹⁴ Cel478 (934); the second sister’s share is missing because there is a gap in the
manuscript; however, the other four each had a long list of properties, including many
fifths.
¹⁵ Cel75 (955). Visigothic law had allowed for equal shares for brothers and sisters
(Forum Iudicum IV.ii.1, IV.ii.9), but practice was clearly more complicated in the tenth
century. Cf., in the Frankish world, R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc
(VII e –X e siècle). Essai d’anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995), 354, 378–9, on the fact that
women’s roles were changing in the tenth century, with evidence of an increasing need
for their consent and of increasingly significant roles for widows.
¹⁶ See above, pp. 67–70.
¹⁷ For example, Sob92 (934); cf. Sob79 (927), and see above, p. 73.
¹⁸ Sob65 (905), Li88 (930), Cel33 (936), Cel409 (990), for example.
¹⁹ SM21 (?932), Li103 (935), Cel374 (961); Cel436 (924), Sob85 (929), Sam16
(989).
²⁰ Li156 (942), S121 (950), Lii307 (958), S190 (961), S212 (963), S328 (985).
²¹ M. I. Loring García argued for equal or superior powers for women in the later
ninth century in Trasmiera in Cantabria, but not elsewhere in the Asturian kingdom;
‘Dominios monásticos y parentelas en la Castilla altomedieval: el origen del derecho de
retorno y su evolución’, in R. Pastor (ed.), Relaciones de poder, de producción y parentesco
en la edad media y moderna (Madrid, 1990), 13–49, at 18–24.
168 Men and Women
Land that came to a married couple from a parent was not necessarily
inherited, for it might have come as a marriage settlement.²² Marriage
settlements are only rarely identified in these texts, but when they are
the detail is interesting. The detail of dowry (casamento) from mother
to daughter, in an Otero charter that is not precisely dated, has a very
long list of furnishings and household goods, slaves, and stock, but no
land; the casamento that had been transferred from father to daughter in
a Galician charter of 952 included a house; Eldesenda married without
dowry (dos), ran into problems, and ended up in court.²³ We can also
see some couples handling land that had come from the wife’s father; it
must be likely that such property had come as dowry, for the use of the
household established by the marriage. The power of disposal in these
cases was mixed: in the Galician case cited above, the father recovered
the dowry and gave it to the local bishop, because his daughter Bitillo
had committed adultery with a monk; given that sexual union had taken
place, one could view this as a bestowal of the dowry on his daughter’s
(?new) partner’s paterfamilias, which might possibly have been used to
support the couple in some way. This was a special case. In most others
the couple exercised power of disposition, although occasionally the
man may have done so.²⁴
Another type of marriage settlement (also acquired land) was that
which a husband or his family conveyed to his wife, the ‘morning gift’;²⁵
such gifts might well include substantial movables and stock, as well
²² See M. A. Bermejo Castrillo, ‘Transferencias patrimoniales entre los cónyuges por

razón del matrimonio en el derecho medieval castellano’, in J. I. de la Iglesia Duarte
(ed.), La familia en la edad media (Logroño, 2001), 93–150, at 110–15 for terminology,
and for a proposed change in marriage gifts from ‘morning gift’ to ‘dowry’ during the
middle ages; such a change is not indicated by tenth-century material as such (and this
is not implied by Bermejo, who focuses on the thirteenth century and later as the time
of change).
²³ OD50 (tenth century), Cel72; Lii355 (962).
²⁴ Couple: OD27 (987), Cel409 (990), Sam115 (982); perhaps man only: Lii304
(957).
²⁵ Dos is the most common Latin term in these texts for morning gift (‘dot indirecte’
and ‘Morgengabe’ in French and German historiography), although arras occurs too,
as well as giving in or pro nuptias. See F. Bougard, L. Feller, R. Le Jan (eds.), Dots et
douaires dans le haut moyen âge (Rome, 2002), passim, for terminology and practice in
the early middle ages. Note the highly unusual use of the expression ‘body-price’ (pro
comparatione corporis mei) in thirteenth-century Galicia, A. Rodríguez, ‘ ‘‘Ex parte matris
mee’’. Propiedad, herencia y dotes en las comunidades locales gallegas (siglos XII–XIII)’,
Arenal, 8 (2001), 291–314, at 305, as also Dr Rodríguez’s warning that the terms used
in practice often do not reflect the prescriptions of the law, ibid. 313–14.
Men and Women 169
as land. Count Gutier’s widely scattered gifts to his wife Ilduara, and
Gonzalo’s gifts to Elvira of land in at least eight different locations,
have already been noted.²⁶ Both Sisnando and Gunterigo gave their
wives, Eldontia and Guntroda, ten named male and ten named female
slaves, in a remarkable reflection of the provisions of Visigothic law,
as well as extensive stock and thirty villas in the former case and at
least eight villas in the latter case (although most marriage settlements
were clearly much more varied than allowed for by this ancient law).²⁷
Earlier, a woman called Proflinia had referred to the villas and other
properties in two locations in the Liébana that her husband had given
her; in Portugal, Oliti Tetoniz provided for his wife Adosinda to
have precious silverware and silken clothes, as well as villas, stock,
and equipment, and a tenth of his goods, in another reflection of
a Visigothic rule; and, in Galicia, Fruela gave his wife Fernanda a
villa in Mao, while making provision for his sister from another villa.
The property that Seniorina had from her father-in-law may well have
come to her for similar reasons.²⁸ All the unambiguous cases show
the women controlling disposal of lands acquired in this way—a case,
perhaps, of distinctively female property rights, women’s property, as it
were.²⁹
Practical control of the morning gift, then, seems to have lain with
the woman to whom it had been given. In many other cases, the
patterns suggested by the records are so varied that it is difficult to be
certain about practical control. A man’s or a woman’s name might be
attached to a property but did this mean that the man or woman was in
practice in control of it? Reading the documents, one still cannot help
coming away with a sense that overall men had greater powers of control
²⁶ Cel576 (916), S207 (962); above, p. 67.

²⁷ Sob119 (887), Cel577 (926); Forum Iudicum III.i.6. Cf. A. Isla Frez, La sociedad
gallega (Madrid, 1992), 224–6, on the continuity of Visigothic traditions, citing Sob119,
although his main argument is that new procedures were also evident in the tenth century.
²⁸ T7 (831); Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, LVI (946); Sam239 (pre-985); Sob14
(942). Cf., differently, Ov18 (974), in which a husband, on his deathbed, divided his
property between his wife and the monastery of San Vicente; Portugaliae Monumenta
Historica, CXLVI (985), in which a couple made explicit provision for each surviving the
other, unus ad alius de nostras ereditates; and Sam198 (1013), in which, very unusually,
a gift pro nuptiis had to be renegotiated when another woman called Guntroda left her
husband for a life of confession and he took a new wife.
²⁹ Cf. T7, Cel577, Sob14, Sam239. But see Bermejo Castrillo, ‘Transferencias
patrimoniales’, 124–6, for more limited powers in the longer perspective.
170 Men and Women
than women: there were many more male than female transactors;³⁰
reservations were made in the event of birth of a son, filius, rather than
that of a daughter; men made this or that agreement about disposal;
brothers made provision for sisters.³¹ Despite all that, male control was
not invariable; women did act alone and in their own right.³² To what
extent, then, did women exercise these comparable powers?
The easiest way into this issue is to look at relative powers within the
context of marriage. The over-riding impression that men dominated
property rights is largely sustained within the married context. When
couples transacted together, the form of the record is sometimes ‘I, a
man, together with (una cum) a woman, sell’ rather than the commoner
‘man and woman sell’.³³ This recording practice seems to point to
male superiority, something which may also be emphasized by a specific
phrase or recorded action: a couple sold land together, although the
plot was actually the wife’s; a wife confirmed her agreement to what her
husband had decided; husbands consented to wives’ disposal of their
own property, or disposed of it themselves; a husband witnessed on
behalf of his wife; a husband instructed his wife to donate from his
share of his parental inheritance; a man acted on behalf of his sisters
and mother, in respect of the mother’s land.³⁴ All of this is what one
would expect from a western European early medieval society. However,
there are some exceptions to these patterns. Sometimes we read that
husband and wife had equal shares: Zelano and his wife Valeria together
‘equally’ sold some land near Valpuesta; Revel and his wife together
‘equally’ gave land to Abellar and he made sure she had half of their
common property, a transaction which was witnessed, very unusually, by
³⁰ See further below, pp. 171–3.

³¹ Provision for sisters, e.g. Lii288 (955), Lii329 (960), Sam239 (985).
³² Cf. the separate juridical personality proposed for Leonese women: J. Guallart,
‘Documentos para el estudio de la condición jurídica de la mujer leonesa hace mil años’,
Cuadernos de Historia de España, 6 (1946), 154–71, and the extensive literature of the
twentieth century on the law of women, married and widowed (for example, E. Gacto
Fernández, La condición jurídica del cónyuge viudo en el derecho visigodo y en los fueros
de León y Castilla (Seville, 1975),50–64, 207–11, 222–5); but note that F. de Arvizu
y Galarraga, La disposición ‘mortis causa’ en el derecho español de la alta edad media
(Pamplona, 1977), 71, warned that conditions were not uniform.
³³ e.g. Li57 (921), S41 (930), C204 (993). Cf. A14 (947), in which a man and his
wife are recorded together in the witness list, although she does not feature in the main
text.
³⁴ Li90 (931); Li131 (939—‘quam abui de parte uxori mee’); Cel256 (936—‘quod
vir meus elegit … ego confirmo’); Ov8 (937), Ov9 (946), Sob100 (945); Sob11 (945);
Sam29 (post 976); Cel506 (955).
Men and Women 171
three couples.³⁵ Some authors, at least, differentiated common marriage

property from both the man’s and the woman’s property, and some
took care to stress equal rights in it, although all did not do so. By
implication the many acquisitions made by married couples, especially
peasant couples, through buying and selling small plots of land, fall into
the same category of common marriage property.
There are also exceptions of a different kind. At times the record
presents the woman as taking the lead: the common formats ‘man and
woman transact’ and ‘man, together with woman, transacts’ become
‘woman and man transact’ and ‘woman, together with man, transacts’;
a couple sell, but the woman is named first and is first to be named in
the witness list; a woman gives and her husband confirms.³⁶ In Galicia,
in the later middle ages, a distinctive circulation pattern for property
inherited from a mother can sometimes be traced: such property would
move from mother to son to his wife.³⁷ There are not enough con-
sistent indications to make the same point for the tenth century, even
in Galicia, but there are some suggestions, as in the examples which
began this chapter, that where property came to a woman from the
female side, this was property for female control—perhaps a second
type of distinctively female property right at this period, and one as
characteristic of the meseta as of Galicia.
So, within a general context of predominantly male control, women
could control property too. The key question is therefore one of relative
proportions. It is obviously impossible to answer this conclusively but
one way of approaching it is to look at participation in multiple
transactions: in the note of a series of mid-tenth-century sales to a lay
couple in Melgar, three were made by men, three (or perhaps four)
were made by women, three were made by couples, and two by mixed
groups (usually comprising siblings or cousins); in the inventory of
transactions made by a lay couple near Otero de las Dueñas, six were
made with men and three with women; and in the list of purchases
made by the deacon Quintila, in Lemos, nineteen were bought from
men, nine from women, and eight from couples.³⁸ We may also get
³⁵ V9 (913), Li118 (937)—una pariter; cf. V12 (929), Li195 (947); see above,
pp. 70–3.
³⁶ T27 (921), T57 (959), Sob14 (942), Li179 (944), Li200 (948), Li223 (950), S103
(945), S109 (948), S131 (951); Li203 (948). Cf. the comments of M. del C. Pallares
Méndez, Ilduara, una aristócrata del siglo X (La Coruña, 1998), 54–9, on women as
principal actors in Galicia.
³⁷ See Rodríguez, ‘ ‘‘Ex parte matris mee’’ ’, 304–12.
³⁸ S94 (945–54), OD22 (976), Cel454 (936–77).
172 Men and Women
Table 7.1 Percentage of alienators of property, by
gender, by collection and region
Men Women Couples Mixed Groups
Cel 42 16 34 8
Sam 70 16 14 0
Sob 38 25 28 9
L 43 18 31 8
OD 37 15 41 7
S 48 15 28 9
C 46 14 28 12
SM 49 7 22 22
V 56 13 24 7
Ar 33 17 29 21
A 61 7 11 21
SJP 56 11 28 5
T 55 9 23 13
Ov 44 32 20 4
Galicia 45 19 29 7
W meseta 45 17 30 8
Castile 48 12 25 15
North 52 15 22 11
Total 46 16 29 9
some guide by looking at overall proportions of alienators of land, that

is at those who are named as giving, selling, and exchanging property.³⁹
Overall, across all collections, 46% of alienators were men, 16% were
women, 29% were couples, and 9% were mixed groups.⁴⁰ This would
suggest that women were far from exercising equal powers of control
over property to those of men, but gives some sense of the proportion
of property that may have been distinctively within the power of
women; within marriage it looks as if males normally took the lead,
but did not invariably do so.⁴¹ One might suggest that, broadly, male
³⁹ Recipients of land are obviously just as important, but since so many recipients were
religious institutions it would be difficult to get usable comparative figures by gender.
⁴⁰ On the importance of action by couples, see further below, pp. 185–8.
⁴¹ The overall female proportion strongly supports the estimate made by Herlihy
for Spain in the tenth century (17%), although he used a smaller Spanish data set;
D. Herlihy, ‘Land, family and women in continental Europe, 701–1200’, Traditio,
18 (1962), 89–120, at 108. Cf., rather differently, the 12% of the names cited in
the Celanova collection pre–977, that are women’s names, Pallares Méndez, Ilduara,
54.
Men and Women 173
interests predominated over those of women in the ratio of something

approaching 3:1. Interestingly, although there is great variation between
different charter collections (70% men alienators in Samos, but 38% in
Sobrado; 41% couples who alienated in Otero de las Dueñas, but 14%
in Samos; 32% women in Oviedo, but 9% in the Liébana; 22% mixed
groups in San Millán, but 4% in Oviedo), there is very little difference
between regions: Galician proportions are much the same as those of
the western meseta, which are much the same as those of Castile and
those of the north.⁴²
The other interesting question is change over time. There was a rela-
tive increase in female participation in the latter half of the century, and
especially in the last thirty years of the century, in Leonese collections,
but not strikingly in others. Bearing in mind that the bulk of recorded
transactions falls in mid-century, and that the León collections come
from a number of different sources, that is probably significant and may
at least partly be a consequence of increasing freedom of disposition.⁴³
Apart from that, there are no noticeably consistent trends.
WO M E N I N P U B L I C
That women could take the lead in property transactions is quite clear.
Such women had public roles, and were not confined to the domestic
sphere, aristocrat and peasant alike. Women also feature in witness lists:
not just the alienator of property, and her associates, but other women
too are recorded as witnesses of transactions; not very many of them, but
sufficient to differentiate these societies from some in parts of northern
Europe.⁴⁴ Once, most unusually, the Galician woman Argilo was named
as guarantor for a priest in a dispute over control of a church, and we
⁴² Variations from the mean are partly due to the very small size, and unrepresentative
character, of some collections and partly due to the kinds of transaction recorded—where
cartulary compilers recorded more gifts than sales, proportions of male alienators tend to
be enhanced.
⁴³ See above, pp. 72–5.
⁴⁴ For example, T32 (925—cousin of principal actors, together with her brother and
husband), Cel444 (933—a wife), Cel2 (942—the donor’s mother, sister, aunt, and
other women), Lii313 (959—a neighbour’s wife), Sob36 (964—four sorores, probably
nuns), Ov18 (974—five deo votae, a woman identified as Olalio’s wife, and another
woman), Cel462 (985—the donor’s mother and four other women), Liii538 (990—a
mother). Only a handful of women feature in the 6,000 witnesses cited in ninth-century
east Breton charters, W. Davies, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval
Brittany (London, 1988), 77; note that Sarah Halton has warned, however, that female
174 Men and Women
see her speaking to ‘the people’ in the council.⁴⁵ At least twice, women
brought court cases, as Fernanda successfully defended her marriage gift
against her sister-in-law’s claim; another woman unsuccessfully sued the
monks of Sahagún over property in Cerecedo, although she had an advo-
cate to speak for her in court.⁴⁶ Women transacted on their own, without
any reference to males, like the confessa Gundisalva, who gave on her own,
and the wife Sisgundia, who gave from her own as well as giving with her
husband, and the purchaser Leda; one woman actually said that she was
giving on her own behalf (in mea voce); Guntroda and her daughter gave
to a nunnery on behalf of the committed ancilla dei, Aroza, presumably as
executors; and in one early sale in the Liébana, a man, his wife, and anoth-
er person all had separate prices paid to them for their individual portions
of a vineyard.⁴⁷ All of these cases indicate a role in public for women.
Royal women, mothers as well as consorts, are especially notable in
being formally associated with, or consenting to, the acts of kings: Toda,
mother of King García Sánchez I of Navarre, is one such, as also Elvira
and Teresa, aunt and mother respectively of Ramiro III of Asturias-León;
the latter appears in a particularly wide range of different charter col-
lections.⁴⁸ Later chronicles present these tenth-century royal women as
powerful, manipulating, abbesses; there is probably an element of truth
in those perspectives of power, although tenth-century charters hardly
prefigure the later stories.⁴⁹ They do, however, make the public authority
of women such as Toda, Elvira, and Teresa, each of whom took control
during royal minorities, perfectly clear.⁵⁰ We have already noted Elvira’s
gifts in memory of her brother, but she also bestowed property on her
uncle, and, although she was not the wife of a king, several charters
term her regina, queen, during her nephew’s minority—Arab histori-
ans certainly treated her as ruler before her sister-in-law Teresa took
witnesses have often been ignored by commentators: ‘The church and communities:
Cluny and its local patrons 900–1050’, University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, 2006,
ch. 5, ‘Creating the social relationship’.
⁴⁵ Sob130 (992). ⁴⁶ Above, p. 169; S159 (958).
⁴⁷ Sam157 (993), Cel338 (989), Liii519 (987); Sob70 (941); Lii486 (982); T11
(868).
⁴⁸ A5 (928), SJP17 (947), SM72 (957), SM81 (959); above, p. 164, Lii411 (969),
S261 (971), S262 (971); Lii442 (975), Cel206 (977), S293 (978), Lii482 (981),
Sam115/199 (982).
⁴⁹ See the comments of Ann Christys, Christians in Al-Andalus (711–1000) (Rich-
mond, 2002), 97–8.
⁵⁰ Cf. R. Collins, ‘Queens-dowager and queens-regent in tenth-century León and
Navarre’, in J. C. Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship (New York, 1993), 79–92,
emphasizing stronger queenships in Navarre.
Men and Women 175
over.⁵¹ Teresa appears with, though usually placed before, other roy-
al women and her authority as queen was still being invoked some
years after her son’s death.⁵² Other royal consorts witnessed and con-
firmed—Ramiro II’s wife Urraca in the 940s and 950s, Vermudo II’s
successive wives Velasquita in the 980s and Elvira in the 990s, often
associated with their husbands in the dispositive texts and high in the
witness lists;⁵³ Sancho II Garcés Abarca of Navarre made gifts with the
consent of his wife and sister (both called Urraca), as well as his son
and brother, his widow still ruling thirty years later with her grandson
Sancho el Mayor.⁵⁴ Sancha’s wife Urraca is even portrayed in the formal
pages of fine Riojan manuscripts of the period (see Fig. 7.1).⁵⁵ These
royal females appear so often that it clearly must have been normal
for royal women to be publicly associated with their husband’s, and
sometimes son’s or brother’s, transactions in the tenth century. One
royal associate, Ilduara, who married the León king’s wife’s brother, and
was aunt of three kings, certainly amassed both considerable property
and public position in southern Galicia, as is well evidenced by the
charter texts; when her nephew, Ramiro II, delegated authority to her
son Fruela it was explicitly to be exercised under the guidance of his
mother, sub manus mater tua, tie nostre Ilduare.⁵⁶
MALE AND FEMALE IN RELIGIOUS

COMMUNITIES
All kinds of women, then, could play a public role, even if they did not
do it as often as men. Property was in many respects a domain of shared
activity, although the male interest was overwhelmingly dominant.
⁵¹ See Collins, ‘Queens-dowager and queens-regent’, 85. Cf. the much earlier Sam39
(962), in which she confirms, before Teresa, her brother’s gifts.
⁵² Lii482, Sam115/199, Sam156 (983), for example, preceding Sancha, her son
Ramiro III’s wife; Liii543 (990), Liii560 (994).
⁵³ Cel249 (941), Sam2 (951—or just possibly Ordoño III’s wife in this case); Sam27
(981), Cel503 (985), Cel5 (986), Sam56 (988); Liii521 (987), Liii567 (994), Sam6
(997).
⁵⁴ SM88 (971), SM91 (972), for example; SJP34 (1005).
⁵⁵ In the Codex Albeldense, for example, of 974–6; S. de Silva y Verástegui,
Iconografía del siglo X en el reino de Pamplona-Nájera (Pamplona, 1984), plate 26; cf.
ibid., plate 27.
⁵⁶ Cel499 (942); for a full study, see Pallares Méndez, Ilduara. Ilduara, it may be
recalled, was the mother of Bishop Rosendo, founders together of the monastery of
Celanova.
176 Men and Women
Figure 7.1 Sancho II and Urraca, with Visigothic kings and a tenth-century
king and scribes, in the Codex Albeldense, Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS D.I.2,
fol. 428r
Men and Women 177
What about religious commitment? Were there distinctively male and

female spheres of activity, or did men and women for the most part do
the same things?
If we look at lay religious families—laity, committed to follow a
religious lifestyle, remaining in their secular households and continuing
to live secular lives—the texts convey the same impression of shared
male and female activity as conveyed by many of the property interests
discussed above. Married couples stayed together, with their children,
though frequently marked out by the special terms confessus and confessa
and publicly identifiable as different from the uncommitted laity.⁵⁷ A
confessus and his wife, a confessa, gave to the nunnery of Santiago in
León in 995; twenty years before, the confessus Sunilano and his wife
Nunnita, confessa, endowed their priest son with substantial goods in
Galicia; much earlier Arborio and his wife María gave everything to the
monastery of Abellar, Arborio achieving the status of confessus (grado
confessionis) by the time of his death, his wife continuing to live for
twenty-three years sub religioso grado.⁵⁸ Men and women made this
commitment together. The confessa Guntroda, who left her husband
for the religious life, is an extremely unusual case.⁵⁹ Family monasteries
were in some respects similar: Metereo and his mother Abodimia,
termed abbot and abbess respectively, did things together, giving lands
and agreeing to put themselves under the rule of Santa Cristina; Argilo,
her brother Valero, and her sister Onega, termed abbess, monk, and
conversa, respectively, together gave their church of San Cebrián and its
appurtenant property to the monastery of Cardeña; and Abbot Senior
and his wife Leovegodo, deo vota (committed to God), together had
a daughter Genobreda, also deo vota, who was controlling properties
inherited from them in the mid-tenth century.⁶⁰
While couples committed to religion and family monasteries show
men and women pursuing the religious life together, use of these terms
in some texts suggests alternative paths. The words confessae and confessi
are used to refer to groups of committed religious, as well as to couples:
when a count’s widow, Velasquita, made generous gifts to Santa María
de Osoño, the act was witnessed by three confessi, four abbots, and
⁵⁷ See above, pp. 107–08.

⁵⁸ Liii570; Sam61 (976—see Appendix to Ch. 4, above, pp. 110–12); Li72 (927)
and Li256 (952).
⁵⁹ Sam198 (1013).
⁶⁰ SM86 (967); C187 (981); Cel566 (950-59); cf. C207 (994), Sob110 (pre-955),
Sob121 (964), Sob8 (964).
178 Men and Women
four confessae; when Leodegundia made several gifts to the monastery

of San Mateo de Vilapedre, the act was witnessed by a confessus, four
confessae, an abbot, an abbess, and five priests.⁶¹ It looks as if confessi
and confessae might also be admitted within monastic communities, as
directly suggested by Baltario’s gifts to the monastery of San Miguel de
Piñeira, which were for the benefit of the priests and confessi serving
the church.⁶² How far they were consistently differentiated from monks
and nuns must be arguable, although the fact that different terms were
selected is striking.⁶³
If we look at those who chose to make a break with family and
live a religious life within a separate religious community, more dis-
tinctions between the sexes begin to become apparent. Although some
communities were for men and women together,⁶⁴ there were many
communities just for men and many just for women; accordingly, there
were both prominent abbots and prominent abbesses, each acting in
their own right (as elsewhere in Europe and the Near East in the
⁶¹ Cel492 (988), cf. Cel505 (935); SamS-3 (961); cf. Sob121 (964), an exchange
between monasteries witnessed by nine deo votae. Note that all of these cases are Galician
(but see also the Oviedo case above, n. 44).
⁶² Sam93 (951); cf. the deo vota sub regula et abbate [Samos], Sam175 (973) and the
deo dicata and perhaps her deacon husband, both of whom lived in the monastery of
Sobrado, Sob88 (996).
⁶³ The extent to which the deo vota was different from the confessa is also arguable,
although it is again striking that the different terms are used in these charters and that
their use does not appear to reflect distinctive scribal habits; cf. SamS-5 (963), which
has one confessa and one deo vota as principle actors, or Li42 (917) which implies some
difference between the sorores, religiosae, and virgines in the nunnery of Santiago in León.
M. Cabre i Pairet argues convincingly that in Catalonia at this time deo votae and deo
dicatae could refer both to nuns and to women living a religious life outside a regular
community; noting use of the terms in patristic writing on virginity and widowhood,
her main argument is that the terminology of female religious was ambiguous until
the impact of the Gregorian reform in the later eleventh century; ‘ ‘‘Deodicatae’’ y
‘‘deovotae’’. La regulación de la religiosidad femenina en los condados catalanes, siglos
IX–XI’, in A. Muñoz Fernández (ed.), Las mujeres en el cristianismo medieval. Imágenes
teóricas y cauces de actuación religiosa (Madrid, 1989), 169–82. The terms deo vota and
deo dicata, in northern Spanish texts, were clearly interchangeable, while it looks as if
ancilla Dei/Christi was a term to describe the quality of religious commitment rather
than a distinctive state; hence, it is applied to abbesses, confessae, and deo dicatae alike.
⁶⁴ For example, the community of Santa Eulalia de Airas, at the time of donations
in 976, appears to have had five men and six women associated, including both abbot
and abbess (OD20); cf. the fifteen men and two women who signed a monastic pact
with Abbot Fulgaredo, Cel61 (871); and the monastery of Sobrado was a community of
brothers and sisters, Sob64 (984), Sob88 (996), etc. That of San Cipriano del Condado
had connections with the nunnery of Santiago in León, to which it was ultimately given,
Li201 (948), Lii412 (970); the monks and nuns in Sam171 (988), under their Abbess
Gontina, lived together for a period.
Men and Women 179
early middle ages, women could achieve considerable secular power by

adopting the religious life).⁶⁵ Apart from the family monasteries, for
the most part monks and nuns seem to have kept themselves separate
in the tenth century, although they might—like Abbot Cipriano and
Abbess Felicia⁶⁶—negotiate with each other. So, when Aseredo joined
a monastery, his daughter joined a nunnery; monks and nuns associated
with Valdevimbre could not agree to live together; and there were
brothers of San Clemente in Melgar, of San Martín of Fonte de Febro,
and of San Salvador de Loio, but sisters of Santa María of Porto Marín,
of San Miguel of Pedroso, of Santa Olalla in Camellas, besides the
brothers of large, prominent monasteries like Celanova, or Sahagún,
or Cardeña, and the sisters of prominent nunneries like Santiago in
León.⁶⁷
While there were both male and female houses, the sheer variety
of terms available for religious women is notable, as it is also notable
that women of the high aristocracy had a tendency to adopt a religious
way of life on widowhood: hence, the widows Aragunti and Countess
Velasquita, confessae; likewise Onega, confessa, widow of a duke, who
made a gift to Celanova requesting a place for her own burial there.⁶⁸
So also the dowager queen Teresa, confessa, ancilla Christi, ancilla
ancillarum, and—though never married—the powerful queen Elvira,
deo vota, deo dicata;⁶⁹ Rosendo’s mother, Ilduara, retired to the nunnery
of Santa María of Vilanova at the end of her life.⁷⁰ References to lay
women with religious commitment, whether they maintained the lay
lifestyle or were adopted within a monastery, are also more notable
than those to lay men with religious commitment; there appear to be
many more, particularly in León collections, although in Castile there
⁶⁵ See, for example, the East Frankish women discussed by Karl Leyser, Rule and Con-
flict in an Early Medieval Society (London, 1979), and the Byzantine women discussed by
Evelyne Patlagean, Structure sociale, famille, chrétienté à Byzance (London, 1981), VIII, XI.
⁶⁶ Li180 (944).
⁶⁷ Cel511 (955)—see further below, p. 185; Lii312 (959); S77 (941), Lii295 (956),
Cel179 (927), SM39 and 40 (945), OD29 (988), as examples. It has been argued that
‘double’ communities were an older norm and the establishment of separate houses a
result of the influence of Carolingian ideas, Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, 130–2, but the
picture is very mixed and it is difficult to identify consistent trends across northern Spain
during the tenth century.
⁶⁸ Cel230 (995), Cel492, Cel209 (997), Cel530 (999).
⁶⁹ See above, pp. 174–6. Note the provision of Visigothic councils that widowed
queens should not remarry but retire to the church: Collins, ‘Queens-dowager and
queens-regent’, 84–5.
⁷⁰ Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, 16; cf. ibid., 124–27.
180 Men and Women
are relatively few of either; in Galicia, where the religious culture seems
to have had a different quality, male and female numbers look more
comparable.
As noted in Chapter four, some of the texts associated with female
religious have a particularly pious turn of phrase.⁷¹ Often adorned with
biblical quotations, these texts elaborated standard ideas into developed
and individual expressions: the invocation to the record of a different
Elvira’s gift to Celanova, daughter of Duke Arias and deo vota, elaborates
on the virtue and wisdom of God and lists some of the saints sent to
the world; Abbess Argilo’s gift of her family church includes a long
preamble on preparation for the day of judgment; the preamble to the
record of Sarracina’s gift to Abellar, Christi ancilla deo dicata, plays
on the notion of the light of truth; a little later, in the early eleventh
century, Guntroda’s grant to Samos uses the first person to emphasize
her personal plea for mercy.⁷² The gifts of the confessa, Gudilonis, to the
monastery of San Juan de Quarto were preceded by a far from standard
preamble: invoking the Virgin Mary, as well as the Holy Trinity, it
notes how the Holy Spirit came down and entered Mary’s womb; the
Word thereby being made flesh, the immutable essence of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit was lodged in her virgin entrails, her son ultimately
taking on the pain and weariness of the world as, flogged and stoned, he
went to the cross.⁷³ It seems likely that some of these texts were written
by the women themselves and hence that we may well have examples
of distinctively female writing⁷⁴—an expression of the feminine, as it
were, without any feminization of religious language itself;⁷⁵ they were,
perhaps, modest forerunners of some better known communicators of
female piety of the central and later middle ages.⁷⁶
For most records, however, the authors and the scribes were men,
over and over again, unambiguously named as such, just as the clergy
⁷¹ p. 107.
⁷² Cel8 (962); C187 (981); Liii520 (987); Sam198 (1013). Cf. the long preambles in
records of gifts attributed to Countess Mumadona, Ar5 (923), Ar6 (929).
⁷³ Sob38 (985). The text finishes, very unusually, with a note on fine cloth.
⁷⁴ Although note the case of the abbot who wrote on behalf of nuns, above, p. 107.
⁷⁵ See C. Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle
Ages (Berkeley, 1982), 113–14 and passim, on the feminization of religious language.
However, see the fabricated record SJP21 (981) for an unusual Spanish example from
these collections: mother church nourished the faithful as mother’s milk feeds children;
perhaps a twelfth-century fabrication.
⁷⁶ Such as Hildegard of Bingen, a writer of extraordinary power and sensitivity in the
twelfth century; see especially B. Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of
the Feminine (Berkeley, 1987).
Men and Women 181
were unambiguously men. Religious authority was male; the deity was
male, glorious and majestic; provision for pastoral care, in so far as it
existed, seems to have been male; most of the perspectives on the tenth
century that have been transmitted to us were male.⁷⁷ Religious virtue,
on the other hand, seems almost to have been gender blind: sanctity
was as much feminine as masculine; humility applied to the best of men
and women alike; loving was as much a male as a female characteristic;
and nuns, just as much as monks, fought the good fight of spiritual
warfare.⁷⁸ If authorship was so intransigently male, and religious virtue
was undifferentiated by gender, were masculine, or indeed feminine,
attributes ever conceptualized and applied in these cultures? We clearly
have only a very partial picture but, despite the formulaic nature of
charter texts, there is a fair amount of narrative detail embedded within
them. Is it possible to pursue the perspectives of these narratives at all?
Were there standard values or models? Is there a consistent picture of
masculinity, or femininity, to be drawn?
MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY
Despite the capacity of the men and women discussed above to do

the same kinds of things, masculine behaviour was in some respects
presented as distinct from feminine behaviour in these texts. Men were
presented as overwhelmingly confrontational and combative. If we look
at the detail of disputes which are narrated in this material, of which
there are over a hundred, there are some quite striking patterns.⁷⁹
To begin with distinctions between different categories of offence.
Offences such as rape, assault, abduction, killing, and the political
offence of rebellion, were characteristically male offences. In this case
or that, whether related briefly or in some detail, it is men who were
portrayed as the perpetrators. They attacked; they seized people and
⁷⁷ Cf. the comments of J. M. H. Smith, Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History
500–1000 (Oxford, 2005), 116.
⁷⁸ Male and female saints: passim. ‘ego humilima vestra ancilla’, C161 (972–6); ‘ego
exigua et inutilis Goncina’, Sam18 (933); ‘ego exiguus licet inutilis presbiter’, Lii329
(960); ‘pusillus atque exiguus famulus vir ego Adelfius’, Sam43 (938). Loving: passim,
but especially Sam99 (854), V19 (950), Lii333 (960). Monks or nuns qui militant:
SM86 (967), Lii302 (956), Lii321 (959); Li42 (917), Lii412 (970), Lii486 (982); Sob5
(966), Sob107 (968), Sob64 (984).
⁷⁹ There are glancing references to half as many disputes again, but I focus on those
for which there is narrative detail.
182 Men and Women
animals; they killed, with open violence, on the road, in the fields, within
the homestead. The portrayal of this aspect of the masculine is decidedly
physical and decidedly violent, ‘incensed with diabolical fury’, as one
author put it.⁸⁰ Argimiro went to Licinia’s house at night and took her
virginity per violentia, raping by force.⁸¹ Dom Patre’s ‘gang’, consisting
of himself, his sons Prudentio and Sebastiano, their cousins Fafila,
Ansuro, Gontino, Menendo, and the latter’s son Armentario, terrorized
the neighbourhood of Valdávida in the hills off the Cea valley, 25 km
north of Sahagún, killing and perpetrating ‘many very bad evils’, until
they were thrown out of the kingdom and their property was confiscated
by the king.⁸² Farther west, in Galicia, Pelayo’s more aristocratic gang
of ruffianly companions battered a young man called Fruela to death;
unfortunately for them, this young man was the countess Ilduara’s
retainer and in consequence Pelayo had to give her half of his rights
in twelve separate villas.⁸³ A case which looks like a case of legitimate
distraint which went wrong is also characterized by violence: the men
Senuldu and Eizon entered the house of Sandino Moniz, with saiones
(legal officers) accompanying them; Senuldu roughly removed three
men from the house, doing so with such ferocity that one died.⁸⁴
Whatever legitimate case there may have been to start with, he had
to compensate Sandino with two vineyards in Quiroga, together with
their associated fruit trees, chestnuts, garden, and rough land. With less
fatal consequences, but still with violence, Tegino, son of Braolio and
Farella, entered Doña Paterna’s woods, seized two of her herdsmen, and
held them for fifteen days, accusing them of stealing a cow—perhaps
also a case of arguably legitimate distraint; the court cleared the men of
the suggested theft and Tegino’s parents had to pay Paterna a third of
the inheritance they had in several villas.⁸⁵
Violence is used as a distinctively masculine trait—just as abbots were
expected to castigate and correct their monks: one abbot was encouraged
to teach, censure, and correct, by chastising, training, and punishing;
another was asked to correct a donor, in front of everyone, if the latter
⁸⁰ Lii442 (975). ⁸¹ OD33 (992).

⁸² S84 (943). Cf. S287 (977), cited above, p. 127, in which a man broke down the
doors of a church and killed a monk inside it, and Lii400 (966), in which a disruptive
family group promised not to cause more trouble.
⁸³ Cel456 (940).
⁸⁴ Cel165 (963). Distraint: seizing someone’s goods or person, in order to force him
to go through due legal process.
⁸⁵ Lii378 (964).
Men and Women 183
should be stubborn or disobedient.⁸⁶ Portrayal of the feminine, on the

other hand, does not have these attributes of violence, although women
certainly committed offences. It is relatively easy to make this negative
point—that is, about the characteristics that women did not have—but
the feminine is not drawn in any detail in these texts. The author of
the text of Gunterigo’s marriage settlement with Guntroda stresses her
sweetness—three times in quite a short text—but this looks like a
topos from the store of language appropriate for such transactions: ‘with
love for your sweetness and with gratitude that we are bound together
in a marriage agreement’.⁸⁷ A Portuguese text of mid-century uses the
same words, and a Sobrado text of the late ninth century elaborates the
notion.⁸⁸ Several of these marriage texts explicitly mention the modesty
of the wives, and the fact that the husband’s gift to them was made
in respect of their virginity—a particularly apt way of referring to the
morning gift;⁸⁹ ‘et tue virginitatis intemerata pudicia elegi’ (and I have
chosen the spotless purity of your virginity) was Sisnando’s comment
when he recorded his gifts to Eldontia.⁹⁰ Again, these look like stock
phrases, although they certainly suggest a stereotype of marriageable
woman as sweet, modest, and virgin. Looking beyond the charter texts
does not add much to this limited picture. The Chronicles of the late
ninth and tenth centuries portray a world almost entirely inhabited by
men; the rare references to women are brief, mentioning them only as
objects of marriage or seduction, or as models of virginity.⁹¹ Sampiro’s
Chronicle, of the early eleventh century, is much the same, again
emphasizing woman as subject of marriage and procreator of children:
‘King A took wife B and produced son C’ is a repeated format.⁹²
Sampiro, however, shows some interest in Elvira, the later, ‘Pelagian’,
⁸⁶ Sam210 (907); T56 (959). Ar8 (930) is very unusual with its stress on the
humiliation of women before the abbess.
⁸⁷ Cel577 (926) and above, p. 169; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae, XI.ii.18, emphasizing the
necessary submission of women to men: he says that the word mulier, woman, comes
from mollities, softness.
⁸⁸ Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, LVI (946); Sob119 (887).
⁸⁹ See above, p. 168, for terminology.
⁹⁰ Sob119; see above, p. 169. Cf. pro decorem … castitatis et pudorem tue virginitatis
(for the distinction of [your] chastity and the modesty of your virginity), Portugaliae
Monumenta Historica, LVI, and the rather later propter pudorem et decorem virginitatis
tue, Sam31 (1059).
⁹¹ Crónicas Asturianas, ed. J. Gil Fernández, J. L. Moralejo, J. Ruiz de la Peña (Oviedo,
1985).
⁹² Chronicle of Sampiro in J. Perez de Urbel, Sampiro, su crónica y la monarquía
leonesa en el siglo X (Madrid, 1952), especially 315, 318, 320, 329, 333, 335.
184 Men and Women
redaction of this text calling her regina, like the charters, and attributing
some authority to her; notably, however, it is only the chaste Elvira,
deo devota, who evokes this interest.⁹³ The virtue of female chastity was
very much the subject of the ‘Passion of Argentea’, a Passion whose
context is Andalusian but which may have had a northern Spanish
origin. Cardeña scribes certainly had an interest and perhaps made
their copy—the only copy—in the later tenth century.⁹⁴ These are
interesting perspectives—as male images of the feminine—but they are
obviously very limited and give a rounded picture neither of feminine
attributes nor of male attitudes to them.
If rape, assault, and killing were distinctively masculine offences, other
kinds of offence are not so gendered. Responsibility for fornication was
attributed to women as well as to men: when the girl Bitillo slept
with the monk from Celanova, it was the girl’s parents who made
reparation for her offence, not—as might be expected—the monk’s
abbot; when Gigulfo slept with his godmother (comatre), not only did
he make a substantial penitential payment of property himself, but his
wife Sisgundia—for some reason acknowledging that she shared his
sin—made over her vineyard as well; Cida Aion slept with Peter, her
godfather, and as a result handed over her own property (although not
that shared with her husband) to the local presiding judge; but the
man Flaino, admitting in court that he had slept first with another
man’s wife and then with her daughter, agreed to pay a fine to the
value of five solidi.⁹⁵ Blame for the lapses of monks and nuns similarly
lacks gender specificity. Abbots and priests could be accused of sleeping
with concubines and nuns of sleeping with allcomers, as pride and the
Devil took hold of a community.⁹⁶ The lapsed nun Menosa, who kept
slipping in and out of the community of San Julián in Castile, was
eventually forced to make a deal with her abbess, handing over to the
⁹³ Perez de Urbel, Sampiro, 329–32, 338–9.

⁹⁴ See Christys, Christians in Al-Andalus, 101–7. The copying of this, and other
Spanish Passions, is difficult to date, beyond the likelihood of something before the late
eleventh century; date and place of original composition is even more difficult, ibid.,
82–8. The Passionaries are, however, relevant, for one of the Silos manuscripts is a
compendium of material for nuns; female saints’ Lives and works on virginity were also
clearly copied in the tenth century, ibid., 94–5.
⁹⁵ Cel72 (952), Cel338 (989), Liii561 (994), OD38 and OD39 (995). For fines,
see above pp. 144–6. Solidi were units of account, to a value of twenty-two to the
pound-weight of silver; there is no need to suppose that this fine was paid in silver,
though it may have been; see W. Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation in Galicia and
Castile-León’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 149–74, at 159–65.
⁹⁶ Lii278 (954), Sob122 (960); Crónicas Asturianas, chs. 5, 16.
Men and Women 185
sisters cloaks, an overcoat, bedding, substantial quantities of grain and

wine, and two vineyards, in order to be permitted to leave once and
for all; a priest negotiated on her behalf and she named two (male)
guarantors for the property she was giving.⁹⁷ When Aseredo entered the
monastery of San Adrián in Galicia, perhaps in Lemos, and his daughter
entered the nunnery of San Miguel, he split his property between the
two houses.⁹⁸ Subsequently he dropped out; ‘stung by the arrows of
the devil’, he lapsed into secular life and the to-and-fro of the world.
Hearing this, the king intervened and empowered the local bishop to
take action. Aseredo returned to the monastery and his property was
then split three ways—between the house of San Adrián and that of
San Miguel, and the bishop. The destination of a monk’s or a nun’s
property was obviously critical to the resolution of such cases, but in
all this males and females behaved in similar ways, and are presented in
comparable terms.
Offences involving households and household goods—breaking and
entering, theft—were as likely to be attributed to married couples as to
men, and certainly responsibility for the offence was often recorded as
borne by a couple. The childless couple Reparado and Trasvinda took
on their cousins, the couple Aderico and Sesina, as heirs (by profiliatio,
by ‘taking on as child and heir’). Rather ungratefully, listening to the
advice, as it were, ‘of vipers’, as soon as the documents were completed,
Aderico and Sesina started to insult their benefactors, stole their stock,
ejected them from their home, tied them up, and held them by force
for two days and a night; in due course Reparado and Trasvinda were
rescued, revoked their bequest to the ungrateful cousins, and then re-
assigned their property to Bishop Rosendo.⁹⁹ Another couple, Eirigu
and his wife Seniorina, stole sheep from the monk Marín and ate them;
Gonzalo and his wife Elo did likewise; the man Ramiro stole a horse
from a monk, but he and his wife made reparation together.¹⁰⁰ These
cases are not gendered: males or females might commit the offences,
but males and females together might well take responsibility for paying
the penalties—as must in any case have been the consequence of most
peasant offences; a fine on the perpetrator was a fine on the household.
⁹⁷ C129 (966).
⁹⁸ Cel511 (955); see above, p. 179. Cf. Cel179 (927), Lii432 (974), S322 (984),
Lii507 (985), and perhaps Sam156 (983), although we do not know why the monk was
in chains.
⁹⁹ Cel228 (936). For profiliatio, see above, pp. 84, 160–1.
¹⁰⁰ Cel169 (962), Liii556 (993), S358 (998). Cf. Sob21, Sob24, Sob29 (all 931).
186 Men and Women
So, when Lupi and several of his mates surrounded a priest’s house,
laying siege to it all day, eventually setting fire to it, and burning it
down, it was Lupi and his wife Elo who met the consequences, not
Lupi and his mates.¹⁰¹ It is interesting that these problems are presented
as household responsibilities, just as the very male acts of homicide
might, in some circumstances, be paid for by associated females. Velite
was the gardener of the monastery of Abellar and, while gardening
for the monastery, also planted fruit trees for himself and his family
on a plot nearby. At some point he killed someone (and perhaps was
killed himself—we do not know, but he disappears from the record);
his wife and children were taken to court in the city of León; there
they came to an agreement that they would sell to the monks of
Abellar the trees Velite had planted, for which they received some grain,
bread, and wine.¹⁰² Again it was the household, not the perpetrator
of the deed, that took the brunt of the penalty; if Velite was still
alive, he was not pursued; if he was dead, his offence did not die
with him.
Property disputes were similarly presented; the actors were as likely to
be couples or groups of men and women as men or—more occasionally,
reflecting their less active presence in property deals—women. So,
Hazeme and his wife Felicia unsuccessfully took the priest Cedino to
court in 997 over a disputed property and ended up by having to
compensate both the priest and the local count.¹⁰³ So also the several
communities involved in disputes with landlords over the boundaries
of estates: although the latter are often simply termed homines, an
all-inclusive (but gendered) ‘men’ of villa Santa María and Vilazá, they
¹⁰¹ Lii360 (963). There is something missing or confused in this record. As it stands,
the consequence was that damage was assessed at the value of 130 and 60 solidi,
respectively, for slaughter and for the fire, and that Lupi and his wife sold their vineyard
to Fruela Vélaz for the substantial sum of 100 solidi; this sale looks like a benefit to Lupi,
not a penalty. The priest and a nun had expressed the wish that Lupi should stand in
court before Fruela. Fruela must have been a judge, like Munio Fernández and Flaino
Muñoz, who also made purchases; see above, pp. 144–9. The sums are high but enforced
sale of valuable property could be a penalty; see the next case, n.102, and also Cel393
(961), Liii525 (989). However, it is perhaps more likely that two different records have
been conflated in this cartulary copy, a standard record of sale and a note of an affray,
and that the sale is not directly connected with the affray.
¹⁰² Lii450 (977); cf., for another case of a man losing a case and the wife and children
meeting the penalty with him, C151 (972). See further below, pp. 219–20, for the
penalty of forced sale and the relative value of land and movables.
¹⁰³ Liii578; to get some idea of the values above (nn. 95, 101), they had to give a
horse to the value of forty solidi; they paid this off with half their inheritance in La
Bañeza—perhaps half a villa, so quite substantial.
Men and Women 187
clearly included men and women, young and old; the women of Piasca
who made a pact with Abbess Ailón are called homines.¹⁰⁴
Debts were a different case. As already indicated in the context of
debts to the church and to lay persons,¹⁰⁵ women are disproportionately
prominent in the discharge of debts. If we look at the pattern of debt
redemption overall, to lay and ecclesiastical creditors, then we find that
very few men acting alone are presented as responsible parties; women
discharged them (perhaps because they were often widows, left with
clearing the obligations) and couples also discharged them. Offino and
his wife Savilli gave Ilduara land with apple trees and cherry trees in
lieu of the forty sesters of cider they owed her; Guestrilli gave the priest
Munio a vineyard in place of wine to the value of thirteen and a half
solidi, which she owed him; Vegilio and his wife Gontrodo gave Fruela
Vimáraz and his wife a vineyard in lieu of the stock which Vegilio had
contrived to lose; and many more such.¹⁰⁶ At least two thirds of these
cases are attributable to couples—once again because these were mostly
peasant obligations which fell on households rather than individuals.¹⁰⁷
The practicalities of living and of resources intrude in records of this
kind—there is little gendering of the presentations because the authors
thought in terms of the responsible unit rather than in terms of this or
that person.¹⁰⁸
So, masculinity was conceived as both extremely violent and extremely

quiet and contemplative, with the contemplative sometimes interrupted
by the violent. Femininity was not conceived as violent; in its religious
manifestations it took on a particularly pious air; in its secular man-
ifestations it was, as much as anything, busy with things to do. The
portrayals of male behaviour and female behaviour are close to common
stereotypes in western European history. In view of the fact that religious
authority was proper to men, that clergy were male, and that the creators
of most records were men, it is extremely interesting that so much of the
life that they portray was not particularly gendered. Men and women
¹⁰⁴ Cel93 (950), cf. Cel272 (993) and Ar18 (965); see below, pp. 199–202, for
communities and disputes; S79 (941), Hecce nos homines qui subter notatee sumus et signa
facturee —the names listed are female.
¹⁰⁵ See above, pp. 127–8, 157–60. ¹⁰⁶ Cel229 (947); Lii457 (978); OD40 (995).
¹⁰⁷ For example, couples: Cel411 (989), Cel409 (990), Li116 (937), Lii473 (980),
OD41 (995), S198 (962); women: Lii465 (979), OD14 (964).
¹⁰⁸ Cf. the importance of couples as actors in the statistics compiled by E. Montanos
Ferrin, La familia en la alta edad media española (Pamplona, 1980), 337–53 (spanning
eighth to thirteenth centuries, be it noted).
188 Men and Women
did things together, exercised property rights together, and did both
separately as men or as women. Both peasant and aristocratic women
seem frequently to have operated in the public sphere, and were not con-
fined to the domestic interior—which is farther away from European
stereotypes. As we have seen, women were listed as witnesses, and thus
were present at public meetings; women could be taken to court and
sometimes they themselves brought court cases; a queen could preside
over a court case.¹⁰⁹ Although they certainly sometimes had people to
speak for them in court, so did men; but people of both sexes seem often
to have spoken for themselves.¹¹⁰ Although women do not seem to have
exercised any special role as preservers of family memory, they did of
course transfer property, and property was transmitted through them,
and they did sometimes take memorializing initiatives. But so did men.
¹⁰⁹ Above, pp. 173–4; Lii410 (968).

¹¹⁰ Spokespersons for men: S88 (943), Li179 (944), Li253 (952); for women: S159
(958), Lii492 (983), C197 (985). On women’s capacity to conduct a case, cf. Forum
Iudicum II.iii.6.
8
Peasant Society
It was the peasant couple which so often featured as the responsible

household unit, and peasant behaviour has often been identified and
differentiated in this book. What do we know of peasants and peasant
society? What shape did a peasant property have, in contrast to the
farms and estates of lesser and greater aristocracy?¹ What were its
constituent parts? Most of the material suggests that a household’s
property would have consisted of a mixture of different plots scattered
within a community territory. Valencia and her nine children sold three
lots of arable in different parts of Villobera in 950, and Ziti accepted five
small plots for half his portion in La Braña.² When Rebelle and his wife
swapped houses with Salvador and his wife in Leonese territory in 965,
he gave a small house (casa) in Villaverde with its immediate surround,
some plots of arable, half a mill, water rights, half a meadow, and half
a bramble patch; he received in return another house with its surround,
some plots of land, and some money.³ When Jimeno and his wife sold
Leonese property to the priest Vallito, shares in a garden, in a water
meadow, and in a vineyard, were included with the house and arable, as
well as some cherry trees.⁴ Farther west, in southern Galicia, acting for
his sister María as well as himself, Justino and his wife sold several plots
in Rabal to Bishop Rosendo: some arable which lay beside another man’s
house, with an orchard at the head of the arable; more arable, lying
beside the road; a vineyard on a different stretch of the road, leading
to his father’s house; some uncultivated land with apple trees round it;
and another orchard, by his father’s house.⁵ As it happens, many plots
¹ Much can be gleaned from the excellent discussions of the countryside in J. M.

Mínguez Fernández, El dominio del monasterio de Sahagún en el siglo X (Salamanca,
1980), especially 65–133; S. Moreta Velayos, El monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña.
Historia de un dominio monástico castellano (Salamanca, 1971); J. García de Cortázar, El
dominio del monasterio de San Millán de la Cogolla (siglos X a XIII). Introducción a la
historia rural de la Castilla altomedieval (Salamanca, 1969).
² Li216, Li158 (942). ³ Lii388. ⁴ Lii435 (974). ⁵ Cel380 (961).
190 Peasant Society
and orchards were sold in Rabal in the 960s, a village territory which
Pallares Méndez has plausibly reconstructed as being about 3 km x 3 km
at maximum extents (see Fig. 8.1).⁶ So many of these plots were sold
to Celanova that none of them can have been large; an entire peasant
property may at maximum have been of the order of 15 ha and one of
its constituent plots of arable or vines of the order of 2 ha maximum,
although in practice there must obviously have been great variation.⁷
When these texts refer to plots, they are referring to units that were
relatively small, of field size rather than farm size, allowing for variations.
Some have associated measurements, expressed in terms of the amount
of grain needed to sow them.⁸ A sense of similar size is conveyed by the
many statements of boundaries: back in Leonese territory, one piece of
Andisilo’s arable in Sollanzo had the Abellar monks’ land on one side,
that of Queia and of Manne on two other sides, and the road to Sollanzo
on the fourth; Ansilda had two vineyards in Valdevimbre, inherited from
parents, which were surrounded in the one case by the lands of García,
Balderedo, Orondone, and Abolcazeme respectively, and in the other
by those of Faino, Gratiosa, and the monks of Valdevimbre; Hamama’s
meadow in San Ginés was bounded by the lands of Brother Abolbalite
(to whom she sold it in 982), of Mexite, of the nuns, and by the road.⁹
We have seen that portions of inherited land might be reserved for
siblings or cousins, and that portions were often identified as fractions,
from halves to ninths; there were shares in mills, in salt pans, in fruit
trees, in meadows, and in gardens; there were vineyards and orchards.
All indicate the mixed character of a peasant holding, scattered across
⁶ M. del C. Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, una aristócrata del siglo X (La Coruña, 1998),
38–47; she notes thirty-two Rabal documents from the period 956–97, ibid., 37; cf.
her comments on intensity of exploitation, ibid., 23.
⁷ This estimate is based on an assumed surface area for Rabal of 9 km2 . The
equivalent of about twenty entire properties (whole hereditates and packages of sep-
arate plots) was alienated to Celanova in the later tenth century, mostly as separate
plots in the 960s; there must have been at least twice that number that were not
alienated (i.e. a total of say sixty properties), and each property must have been
composed of at least six plots (several arable, the house plot, a vineyard or two,
an orchard). Compare the 170 casas listed in the 1764 Rabal cadaster, Pallares, Ild-
uara, 44, n. 108. These calculations are, of course, no more than a very rough
estimate.
⁸ See above, pp. 5–6.
⁹ Lii383 (965), Lii366 (963), Lii485 (982); Hamama was abbess, presumably of
the nuns, so this meadow was property of a small monastery, but the point is
still made: these were small plots, whether owned by peasants or small religious
communities.
Peasant Society 191
Figure 8.1 The territory of Rabal (after M. del C. Pallares Méndez)
community territory, hard by the plots of friends and neighbours,

accessed by roads that were old, new, and ‘public’.¹⁰
We might therefore think of a free peasant’s property as consisting
of a house, several plots of arable, one or two vineyards, an orchard,
¹⁰ For example, Li229 (950), SM18 (912), C89 (956), C175 (978), C211 (999),
Lii361 (963), Lii422 (973), Lii430 (974); T69 (963), Cel197 (975–1011), OD12 (961);
Lii391 (965), Ov19 (978), Lii445 (976).
192 Peasant Society
Figure 8.2 Small fields and orchards in Rabal
perhaps a meadow, perhaps a patch of uncultivated land or a copse,

with a share in rights to use water, mills, and scarce things, with some
family members having rights to share in some of the plots (but not
all), all lying within a single community territory.¹¹ Rich peasants will
have had several houses, rather more plots of arable and vineyards,
bigger shares of mills and scarce resources, and sometimes plots in a
neighbouring community; poor peasants will have had fewer of all these.
The priest Juliano endowed the church of Santa Juliana at Peñacorada
with property inherited from his father; the list includes an unspecified
number of arable plots, two meadows, a quarter of an orchard, use of
the mill by the church of San Cipriano for two days and a night, two
vineyards in Grajal, more vineyards in Zeion, three farmhouses, barns
with grain within them, three barrels, two beds and their bedding, a
chalice and patten, horses, oxen, cattle, sheep, and pigs.¹² Apart from
the liturgical vessels, this is probably a fair representation of the goods
of a wealthy peasant (we should envisage local priests rather as we
might envisage rich peasants, particularly in the period before private
churches were absorbed by local monasteries¹³). More than twenty years
later, Juliano gave his church and its property to Sahagún; by then his
¹¹ See above, pp. 65–71, for family sharing and dividing.

¹² S274 (974). ¹³ See above, pp. 62–3.
Peasant Society 193
Figure 8.3 Traces of former fields beneath the Porma reservoir in northern
León
property interests had expanded and he had benefited from several gifts;
besides the land which went with Santa Juliana, there were shares in
two more mills, of six days and three days respectively, and there were
six vineyards.¹⁴
COMMUNITIES
I have used the notion of ‘community territory’ in the above discussion

in order to convey the fact that peasant property did not comprise a
series of isolated holdings but lay within a network of inter-related,
adjacent plots; it also lay within an economic framework that shared
scarce resources and recognized the rights of individual households to
known shares, whether larger or smaller. Sharing was not the same thing
as common rights: in these texts shares are often very precisely defined
as that proportion which a party had a right to use him- or herself,
although peasant collaboration and co-operation in a more general sense
is implicit throughout the corpus of charters and is sometimes explicit.
The fact of collaboration does not of itself mean that these people
¹⁴ S350 (996); cf. gifts of land and water courses given in 987 (S338).
194 Peasant Society
had a developed sense of community, nor that community territories

were necessarily strictly defined and differentiated one from another.
So, to what extent, did a group of neighbours, or others, have any
sense of community identity, indeed of a larger collective as opposed to
household or family identity? And to what extent, if at all, was group
territory defined as group territory?
These are difficult questions to answer but there are some things
to be said. The notion of peasant community has been important in
Spanish historiography of the second half of the twentieth century, with
a tendency to draw a distinction between the aldea communities of the
meseta (loosely, ‘village’ communities), many of which are supposed to
have grown out of a colonizing effort, and the more scattered populations
(comunidades del valle) of the more mountainous north. The two have
been seen to have had different characters, the valle communities being
dispersed, without village centres, and subject to the control of chiefs,
while the aldeas were more likely to have had nucleated centres, lacked
chiefs, and by convention had a more egalitarian character.¹⁵ There
have been assumptions that these populations, particularly those of the
aldeas, had community identities, although there has been relatively
little investigation of direct expressions of identity or of the structure of
such communities, except in the context of proposed change in the very
late tenth century. This is because community identity has been equated
with egalitarianism, and because the destruction of ‘community’, and
increased hierarchization within it, has been central to the model
of increasing lordship that is seen to characterize northern Spanish
development of the late tenth and eleventh centuries.¹⁶ Some extension
¹⁵ See J. A. García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aguirre, La sociedad rural en la España

medieval (Madrid, 1988), 25–9, for a brief survey and for a third type of community,
the comunidades de ciudad y tierra characteristic of lands south of the river Duero and
of a later phase of development; see J. Escalona Monge, ‘De ‘‘señores y campesinos’’ a
‘‘poderes feudales y comunidades’’. Elementos para definir la articulación entre territorio
y clases sociales en la alta edad media castellana’, in I. Álvarez Borge (ed.), Comunidades
locales y poderes feudales en la edad media (Logroño, 2001), 115–55, at 121–7, for a
recent critique. The issues addressed in these debates are important, and relate not only
to depopulation and repopulation (see above, pp. 26–30) but also to feudalization and
seigneurialization; cf. A. Barbero and M. Vigil, La formación del feudalismo en la península
Ibérica (Barcelona, 1978), especially 279–85, on the north.
¹⁶ C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘El régimen de la tierra en el reino asturleonés hace mil años’,
in his Viejos y nuevos estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas, 3 vols. (Madrid,
1976–80), iii. 1315–1521 (first published 1978), at 1465–7, argued that pasture rights
implied a communal regime; cf. below, n. 45. For lordship, see references above, p. 28;
and I. Álvarez Borge, ‘Estructuras de poder en Castilla en la alta edad media: señores,
Peasant Society 195
of the powers of lordship in that period has been demonstrated, and

such an extension ultimately had some impact upon the freedom
and status of the peasantry;¹⁷ however, it does not have to follow
from this impact that peasant communities must have been egalitarian
before.¹⁸ That such an idea has been current at all owes much to
the completely inappropriate model of the English village community
of the late middle ages, with its open fields and rights in common
pasture; as also, quite differently, to the assumption that a past phase
of ‘tribal society’ must have been characterized by co-proprietorship.¹⁹
We need to look again at these issues, without those particular as-
sumptions.
A look at the contemporary evidence suggests that there is some
material pertinent to community activity and identity but that there are
a lot of things that we do not know. Recorded place-names may have
some bearing on the issues, since settlements or territorial units could
in practice have provided frameworks for community development.
Whether we look at the north, to the classic valle country in Cantabria
or in northern Castile, or at the west to Galicia, or at the classic aldea
country of the Duero valley, there was a wide range of ways to locate
settlements and name land units: some arable in or beside a named
place; a plot of land in a named place in a villa; some arable in a villa, or
in a valley, or in the mountains (for example, ‘in La Braña; beside the
river Esla; in the agro de Bromedo in the villa of Rabal; in the villa de Bera
(Villobera), or in the valley of Covellas, or on the Aurio mountain’).²⁰
Sometimes plots were located more topographically—‘arable below the
monastery, between two roads, one going to León and the other running
through the valley of Ardon’²¹—although it may be difficult to trace
these points on the ground now: property boundaries indicated precise
location partly by using streams and roads but largely by naming those
siervos, vasallos’, in Señores, siervos, vasallos en la alta edad media. XXVIII Semana de
estudios medievales, Estella, 16 a 20 de julio de 2001 (Pamplona, 2002), 269–308, at 282,
and idem, Poder y relaciones sociales en Castilla en la edad media. Los territorios entre el
Arlanzón y el Duero en los siglos X al XIV (Valladolid, 1996), for detailed examination of
southern Castile.
¹⁷ See above, pp. 17–22, for peasant freedom.
¹⁸ See the comments of Escalona, ‘De ‘‘señores y campesinos’’ a ‘‘poderes feudales y
comunidades’’ ’, 142, on the inappropriateness of the egalitarian assumption.
¹⁹ See A. Isla Frez, La alta edad media. Siglos VIII–XI (Madrid, 2002), 201, on the
adoption of the English model; Barbero and Vigil, La formación del feudalismo, 228,
370–80, for tribal society. See above, pp. 67–9, for owning in common.
²⁰ Li158 (942), Li91 (931), Cel386 (961), Li152 (942), Lii323 (959), Li153 (942).
²¹ Lii327 (960).
196 Peasant Society
people who had adjacent plots, as we saw above, in a manner that

was as meaningful at the time as it is useless to us now. Sometimes
place-names fitted within a hierarchy of naming—land in Torío in the
territory of León; orchards in the villa called Amoroce in the territory
of Sorga; a vineyard in the place Rennones in the villa called Setimo in
the territory of Astorga; a villa called Castrello in the district (alfoz) of
Siero; a villa in the vega (meadows) of San Adriano in the district (pago)
of León; a villa in the territory of Coyanza in the region of Cantabria
[sic].²² However, the categories of settlement name—hamlets, villages,
and larger settlements—and of territorial name are not consistently
expressed and it is often unclear if a place-name refers to a settlement
or a district; practice might in any case be expected to vary from region
to region and from time to time. Territorial names were clearly of
several orders: the smaller villa in the larger territorium or valley in
the even larger region (the latter sometimes comparable to the modern
‘autonomous region’ (see above, Fig. 0.1)), although both relatively
small and relatively large settlements could have a ‘territory’ attached
and ‘territory’ itself could be larger or smaller.²³
Such units potentially gave shape to their residents as communities,
or had themselves been shaped by communities. It does not follow that
they should have done so,²⁴ much less develop structures of community
regulation, but it is possible. The most consistent suggestions that this
sometimes happened relate to the word ‘villa’. As in many parts of
western Europe, the significance of the term ‘villa’ has been much
discussed.²⁵ In Spain, the territorial import of the word has been
²² Li162 (943—Torío is a river name), Cel254 (942—Sorga also), OD37 (994),

C53 (945), S335 (987), Liii530 (989). See C. Estepa Díez, ‘El alfoz castellano en los
siglos IX al XII’, in España Medieval, IV, Estudios dedicados al professor D. Angel Ferrari
Núñez (Madrid, 1984), 305–41, for regions, territories, and alfoces; and see also above,
pp. 14–16, for administrative units.
²³ S123, S225, S337 for examples of villas in valleys; cf. Lii508: ‘valle cum suas villas’.
Sam18 (933), S192 (961), Sob8 (964) for villas within other villas. S219 for the territory
of Melgar and S126 for its boundaries; Li162, Li138, for the larger territories of León
and Astorga.
²⁴ See W. Davies, ‘Introduction—community definition and community formation
in the early middle ages: some questions’ and ‘Populations, territory and community
membership: contrasts and conclusions’, both in W. Davies, G. Halsall, A. Reynolds
(eds.), People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300–1300 ( Turnhout, 2007), 1–12,
295–307.
²⁵ Cf. the change from classical Roman ‘estate’ to French ville, ‘village’ and then
‘town’. See G. Ripoll and J. Arce, ‘The transformation and end of Roman villae in
the West (fourth–seventh centuries): problems and perspectives’, in G. P. Brogiolo,
N. Gauthier and N. Christie (eds.), Towns and their Territories between Late Antiquity
Peasant Society 197
emphasized in the context of the Alto Esla on the southern side of the
Cantabrian mountains, while its initial reference to nucleated settlements
has been noticed in the western Tierra de Campos.²⁶ In many of the
examples cited above, ‘villa’ was a territorial designation (although it
could be a term of proprietorship—X’s villa—or a settlement name);
that this was so is made quite clear by the fact that villa boundaries could
be described, just as churches, houses, orchards, plots of arable, and
vineyards, were frequently sited within them.²⁷ As for size: the Rabal
villa discussed above was something like 3 km across; three adjacent
villas of Pazos, Verín, and Abedes, farther south in Galicia, were no
more than 2 km across.²⁸ Some of the villas on the meseta look bigger:
those to the west and south-west of Sahagún are up to 5 km across,
although villas within the territory of Melgar must have been smaller.²⁹
The largest of these, at approximately 20 km2 , are of a size comparable
to village territory (the rural parish) as it emerged in southern England
in the later middle ages, although smaller than the English hundred
or Breton plebs of the early middle ages.³⁰ As always, the differences
should not be a cause of surprise or concern: we should expect plenty of
variation, both within regions and within Spain.
What is important in the present context is not so much size as
the fact that the word villa could signify a definable territory. The
inhabitants of a local territory clearly did sometimes develop a collective
identity in tenth-century northern Spain, both using the framework of
the villa and sitting across and outside it. There were at least three kinds
of context for this: inhabitants of a territory who shared a relationship
with a landlord; those who came together because of physical proximity
and the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), 63–114; for Frankish examples, and some
criticisms, see G. Halsall, ‘Villas, territories and communities in Merovingian northern
Gaul’, in Davies, Halsall, Reynolds (eds.), People and Space, 209–31, especially 209–19;
see also the discussion of C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005),
465–81, 510–13.
²⁶ C. Estepa Díez, ‘Poder y propiedad feudales en el período astur: las mandaciones
( Tarragona, 1991), 285–327, at 291–4; cf. for Galicia, Pallares Méndez, Ilduara, 24–5;
P. Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos occidental (Valladolid, 1985), 106.
²⁷ Lii333 (960); S299 (979); the villa in S100 (945) had at least seven houses; Cel390
(961) and the examples above, p. 189.
²⁸ Cel95, cf. Cel502; see further below, pp. 199, 201.
²⁹ S265 (972). See the maps of Mínguez, El dominio del monasterio de Sahagún, 232,
242, and of Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos, 119–25.
³⁰ Of the order of 50 km2 , though always with wide variations; see Davies, Small
Worlds, 65–6.
198 Peasant Society
and/or economic necessity; and those who shared use of a particular

church. The three contexts were not necessarily exclusive.
The residents of a landlord’s estate (sometimes called a villa) might
take collective action by virtue of the fact that they were his tenants, or
dependents; in other words, because they had common interests in the
face of the lord. That the residents of such estates were not passively
compliant, but took action on their own account, is demonstrated by
occasional records of negotiations between lords and residents, as in the
rent negotiations noted in Chapter one.³¹ In 977 the people of the villa
of Fuentes, given to Sahagún by the king six years previously, agreed
to serve the monastery and no one else, on pain of a heavy fine; seven
of them named guarantors for their undertaking.³² The year before,
all the inhabitants of Villa Castellana, between Melgar and Gordaliza
(south and west of Sahagún), are recorded as giving their villa and
themselves to the bishop of León, to serve him and his church of Santa
María, as their ancestors had done for two previous bishops; who knows
what pressurized them to make such a gift, although we may suspect
episcopal drafting of a document confirming commitments that were
already expected.³³ It is nevertheless significant that the record presents
the action as a voluntary gift by the tenants. Others, not necessarily
residents of existing estates, might act together (or be forced to act
together) to inaugurate similar relationships: twenty-one named men,
who lived in three different settlements but worked on the Pardomino
hills, agreed to pay a quarter of their produce annually to the monastery
in the valley below.³⁴ Six named men, with the son of one of them,
negotiated use of a hillside with the abbot of San Martín de Cercito
because their own lands were worked out; three or four named people
from each of seven different locations witnessed this deal.³⁵ We see these
people taking joint action together by virtue of their shared membership
of a tenant or dependent relationship.
As discussed above, the term villa was also used as a territorial
designation without any necessary contemporary implication of single
³¹ pp. 1–2, 18.

³² S289, cf. S262 (971); some of them stood as guarantors for each other; for similarly
intricate patterns of suretyship, cf. W. Davies, ‘Suretyship in the Cartulaire de Redon’,
in T. M. Charles-Edwards, M. E. Owen, D. B. Walters (eds.), Lawyers and Laymen
(Cardiff, 1986), 72–91, at 83.
³³ Lii443 (976). ³⁴ Lii290 (955); see further below, p. 200, and above p. 20.
³⁵ SJP32 (s.d.); given its relationship with the preceding charter in this collection, this
record cannot be earlier than the late tenth century and could be of the early eleventh
century.
Peasant Society 199
proprietorship. The inhabitants of such territories, and of other territo-

ries with different descriptors, also sometimes took collective action, on
their own account, as corporate bodies.³⁶ They gave and sold plots of
land, and engaged in disputes with neighbouring lords or communities.
Nine named people from Melgar gave a meadow to a local monastery in
932; up to seventeen named inhabitants of Quiroga and Caldelas gave
several plots to San Xoán de Lamas in Galicia a couple of years later;
in the following decade, twenty-four named people of Villabáscones, in
Castile, gave land to found a monastery; a little later twenty-six named
people sold their mills in the river Cea, with adjacent land and water, to
Valdávida, and a generation later thirty-two people seem to have sold
their entire settlement, of Villamol, to Sahagún.³⁷ Most of these groups
are large and their collective action explicit; it is particularly telling that
such care is taken to record the personal names of the actors.
There are not usually so many people named in records of disputes,
but the Galician case of Bishop Rosendo against the inhabitants of three
different villas is nevertheless instructive. In this case the bishop went
to the king in or before 950 because he thought that the people of
Santa María of Verín were encroaching on his own estate of Baroncelli
(Pazos) from the east and that the people of Vilazá and of Albarellos
were intruding from the west. An extremely high-level delegation was
sent from court to determine the true boundaries of the estate on the
ground; the delegates seem to have spent a long time searching for
stones and other markers out in the field.³⁸ Here it is clear that there
were three distinct communities surrounding the bishop’s estate, each
taking action on its own account. When bishops themselves disputed,
local community representatives were called in to give evidence, as were
two from each of five communities in a late tenth-century Sobrado
case.³⁹ The case concerning the villa of Santa Olalla in Lemos in 959
³⁶ Cf. Escalona, ‘De ‘‘señores y campesinos’’ a ‘‘poderes feudales y comunidades’’ ’,

129, on villas as communities.
³⁷ S44; Cel224 (934)—this text is ambiguous about which names participated,
possibly members of the same family; C45 (944–50)—see further below, p. 204; S142
(954); S327 (984).
³⁸ Cel93; see R. Pastor, Resistencias y luchas campesinas en la época del crecimiento y
consolidación de la formación feudal. Castilla y León, siglos X–XIII, 2nd edn. (Madrid,
1990; first published 1980), 79. Cf. the rather similar case of boundary pressures by
the inhabitants of Manzaneda and of Garrafe recorded in Li89 (931), of the villas of
Castroncán and of Pascais recorded in Sam46 (933), and of the Liébana recorded in T62
(962).
³⁹ Sob109 (986–99).
200 Peasant Society
has a few names—apparently the names of the heads of five families;

here they were taken to court as a group for entering that villa, planting
vines and arable, and building houses; they agreed, ultimately, to pay
the monastery of San Pedro a quarter of their produce every year, in
grapes and chestnuts.⁴⁰ The case of the seven communities who entered
monastic land on the hills of Pardomino, ploughing, pasturing their
animals, and cutting trees, is similar, except that at that stage (in the
940s), it was the bounds of ‘lay land’ that were defined, excluding the
communities from (monastic) mills and ploughed land; similarly, thirty
named men from eight locations in the Lózara valley in Galicia agreed
with the monks of Samos their rights to live in the valley, but also agreed
not to encroach on monastic land.⁴¹ Rather unusually, the men of San
Juan en Vega (de Infanzones), led by one Gondemaro, took action
against the abbot and monks of Valdevimbre on the grounds that the
monastery had interfered with the water flow at the confluence of the
rivers Torío and Bernesga (14 km south of León) and thereby damaged
their mills; even more remarkably the king found in favour of the men
against the abbot.⁴²
The fact of collective action by communities is demonstrated even
more strongly by records of disputes between communities themselves.
Named men of the villas of Sauto and Leginoso came before Count
Gutier in dispute about their boundaries. A panel of boni homines
(respected elders) was despatched to ascertain where the line had run of
old; they found the point where the bounds of Sauto and Leginoso, and
also Ranosendi, intersected, and then went on to trace the lines between
three other villas.⁴³ A couple of years later, the bishop of Santiago
heard a similar case between two communities from farther north, each
with its own spokesperson; it was again solved by boundary walking
and finding stone markers.⁴⁴ It is interesting that there seem to have
been physical markers between these Galician communities, markers
which were regarded as ancient in the earlier tenth century.⁴⁵ There
⁴⁰ Cel446 (959—see above, pp. 1–2); cf. Cel150 (987), C22 (932).
⁴¹ Li184 (944) (cf. above, p. 198, for three of the Pardomino communities subse-
quently ‘agreeing’ to give a quarter of their annual produce to the monks); Sam247
(909); cf. Cel507 (985); cf. Pastor, Resistencias, 85, and C. Estepa Díez, Estructura social
de la ciudad de León (siglos XI–XIII) (León, 1977), 197–8.
⁴² Li128 (938). ⁴³ Cel502 (940); cf. Pastor, Resistencias, 79.
⁴⁴ Sob129 (942).
⁴⁵ Also interesting that these boundary disputes are very rarely about grazing rights
(although see the explicit gift of grazing rights in C109 (963)); many are explicitly
about ploughing rights, like Sam247 (909). References to pasture rights are quite rare
Peasant Society 201
is a similar case between the inhabitants of the villa Santa María (led
by Countess Trudildi) and three neighbouring communities a decade
later. This time a large group of the elders (maiores natu) of the bishop’s
estate of Baroncelli (Pazos) was sent off to search for the markers;
taking in the bounds of a further two communities on their travels, they
finally decided in favour of the Santa María community.⁴⁶ In this case
representatives of the four communities in dispute were named. It is an
important case since the bishop’s tenants appear to have included elders
of sufficient status to resolve disputes between communities.
Differently, and more tentatively than the very clear cases above, it
is likely that members of the lay community who related to a specific
church or monastery sometimes took action together; in such cases,
rather than the territorial unit providing the framework for community
development, a focal point did so. This kind of grouping is inherently
credible—after all, it is precisely what happened to the people of the
parish for much of the subsequent millennium in western European
society—but it is difficult to demonstrate unambiguously at this time.
The suggestions lie in the fact that a few groups, called councils and
assemblies in the texts, are defined by the name of a church. When
the king heard the case over water rights brought by the men of San
Juan en Vega against the abbot and monks of Valdevimbre, the men are
described as the men of the ‘assembly in San Juan’; a generation later, a
sale between lay parties of a vineyard in the villa Rebolare, near León,
was witnessed by several named persons and ‘others of the council of
San Julián’; a gift to the monastery of Santos Justo y Pastor of land at
San Juan, in the villa Fuentes, was confirmed by the ‘assembly of San
Juan’, while a gift of vines in the valley of Covellas to the monastery of
Abellar was witnessed by many of the ‘council of San Juan’; a sale to
Sahagún of land in Ataula was witnessed by named persons and ‘many
others of the council of San Andrés in Villa Mutarraf’, while a sale to
the monastery of San Andrés itself was witnessed by the ‘assembly in
in the tenth century and only occur notably in Castile, especially in the San Millán
charters (e.g. SM38, 39, 40 (all 945), SM73 (957), SM95 (979)), but note also, in
Castile, V2 (notionally 804), Ar4 (924), Ar12 (932), and see Escalona, ‘Mapping scale
change: hierarchization and fission in Castilian rural communities during the tenth
and eleventh centuries’, in Davies, Halsall, Reynolds (eds.), People and Space, 143–66,
at 155–9 and n. 58, on Orbaneja; cf. also the undated SJP31 in Aragón. Reference
to pasture, as opposed to pasture rights, is common enough; the implication must
be that, outside Castile, the rights were not a matter of competition in the tenth
century.
⁴⁶ Cel95 (950 and 951).
202 Peasant Society
San Andrés’.⁴⁷ The named people, from these assemblies and councils,
are not identified as priests or monks, although priests feature elsewhere
in these witness lists. It seems plausible that, at the least, these were
people who met in church, given that nearly all meetings recorded in
this way took place in winter, between November and February; hence
the occasion and the location defined the groups.⁴⁸ It is also conceivable,
or even likely, that the people of the councils were those who had a
relationship with the churches, as was clearly the case in later centuries.⁴⁹
COUNCILS
Whatever we may think of the likelihood that some groups were defined
by their relationship to a church, groups of people—however they were
defined—undoubtedly took collective action. The examples cited above
show collective action in Galicia, on the meseta, in the Liébana valley,
in Castile, and in Aragón. We do not know much about the internal
workings of such bodies, or how much structure there was, but we
have already seen that the words ‘council’ and ‘assembly’ (concilium and
collatio) in some circumstances came to be used of their meetings. Indeed,
in later centuries the local council, or concejo, came to be a familiar
aspect of the rural landscape.⁵⁰ Reference to rural councils in the tenth
⁴⁷ Li128, collacio—see above for this case; S268 (973), concilium (it is not clear which
San Julián is intended, but perhaps the church in the suburbs of León, S341); Lii493
(983) and Liii515 (986), collacio and concilium (it is unclear which San Juan); S300 (979)
and S301 (979), concilium and collatio (a farm associated with the proprietary church
of San Andrés had been given to Sahagún in 959 (S165) and the Villa Motarraf had
been given in 970 (S255); Ataula is about 40 km south-west of Villa Motarraf, where
it seems that the Ataula transaction was performed). I have used ‘assembly’ to translate
collacio/collatio, to make the point that the witnesses may have been other than monks,
since it is clear in other contexts (see below) that this word can refer to lay groups. For
the view that these, and many other collationes, represented communities, see C. Estepa
Díez, ‘Formación y consolidación del feudalismo en Castilla y León’, in En torno al
feudalismo hispánico. I congreso de estudios medievales (León, 1989), 157–256, at 191–2.
See further comment below, n. 55, and below, pp. 202–7, for councils.
⁴⁸ Cf. Li88 (930), lay/priest sale in front of the church of San Lorenzo; Lii262
(953) and Li137 (940), in the first of which there was a lay/lay sale and in the second
executors discharged their obligations before witnesses, both in conventum/o ecclesiae,
i.e. in meetings in church; SM88 (971), a royal grant witnessed in the church of Santa
Olalla.
⁴⁹ Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos, 513, notes that the word collación came to
refer to the association of parishioners.
⁵⁰ See M. del C. Carlé, Del concejo medieval castellano-leonés (Buenos Aires, 1968);
cf. also C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Repoblación del Reino Asturleonés’, in his Viejos y
Peasant Society 203
century is not particularly common, and there may be no more than

twenty such cases (although ‘council’ is of course a common word, and
there were also kings’ councils, judicial courts described as councils,⁵¹
city councils,⁵² bishops’ councils, and occasionally aristocratic councils).
In the rural context, that is when associated with people of a named rural
settlement or district, the word council clearly refers to an assembled
group of people, a collectivity; from the numbers of individual names
associated, it must refer to quite a wide collectivity, comprising different
households. Hence, a gift was confirmed in the council of Villalba in
950; seventeen named men and all the council of Villabáscones made the
agreement with their local abbot over water rights in 956; a gift to the
bishop of León of a vineyard in Perares was witnessed by thirteen named
men and ‘more from the council’ in 979; a substantial gift of several
villas in 987 was witnessed by representatives of the Villa Motarraf
assembly as well as by other groups.⁵³ The word collatio, here translated
‘assembly’, sometimes occurs as a direct synonym for council:⁵⁴ the nine
named people who made the Melgar gift in 932 were joined by all
the collatio of Melgar, a meeting subsequently referred to as council of
Melgar.⁵⁵ Both words imply meetings.⁵⁶ Attendance was often by quite
a large group—too large to constitute simply the ‘dominant lineages’
nuevos estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1976–80),
ii. 581–790, at 753–8, and his ‘El régimen de la tierra’, at iii. 1447–75, as also Estepa,
‘Formación del feudalismo’, 236–40.
⁵¹ See especially OD38 (995), where concilio is a synonym for iudicio; cf. A27 (978),
OD43 (997).
⁵² Of Burgos, especially, e.g. C151 (972), but cf. León in Lii312 (959), Lii416 (972).
⁵³ C70 (950), C89 (956), Lii466 (979), S335 (987); see also concilia in Lii391 (965),
Lii396 (966), S275 (974), S283 (976), C192 (984), Liii532 (990), Liii572 (996), and
the examples in n. 47 above.
⁵⁴ Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos, notes, 507, both the interchangeability of
concilium and collatio in the tenth century and the fact that these words refer to a
collective.
⁵⁵ S44, S298 (979); cf. the aristocrat Rodrigo Alvarez’s concilium and collatio,
Liii577(997), which may have been the assembly of people, or their representatives, in
Rodrigo’s sphere of delegated authority, his comissorio (see above, pp. 14–15), or may
simply have been the community of Ferreras, already evidenced fifty years earlier as one
of the Pardomino communities, Li184 (944); see above, p. 200. Collatio is also frequently
used of the coming together of a monastic community, large or small; a gathering, as
it were. It is, for example, a common term for Sahagún’s monastic community; cf.
also Cel173 (922), ‘cum collatione fratrum Sancte Marie’ and T24 (918), ‘ex fratrum
collacione’. Hence, my hesitation at supposing that all of those associated with church
names referred to the local lay, rather than a local religious, community, pace Estepa
Díez, Estructura social de León, 198–9.
⁵⁶ Cf., explicitly, Sam35 (944), fecit collationem ‘he called a meeting’, several times.
See also the collatio in Lii331 (960).
204 Peasant Society
that feature in some of the Spanish historiography—although there is

no need to suppose that all residents attended.⁵⁷ We also do not have
to suppose that all members of a council were proprietors; clearly some
were tenants. The council therefore seems to have been the assembly
of the group that—for whatever reason—took decisions for the whole
community.
If we look in detail at a few cases, we can begin to glimpse the process
that lay beneath these gatherings. The places named in association with
such groups were often settlements—Melgar, Perares, the farm at San
Andrés, San Juan en Vega, and the unidentified San Juan and San Julián;
they are often places which remain in the landscape as, or to become,
villages, and often roads led to them; there was a castrum, perhaps some
kind of fortification, at Melgar, as well as houses and farmsteads, and the
place had associated territory.⁵⁸ They were sometimes villas—Villalba,
Villabáscones. As noted above, the Villabáscones council was negotiating
with the abbot of the local monastery of San Martín in 956. About ten
years earlier, twenty-four members of that community had given land to
endow their local church, and in 955 a few of them had sold some water
rights to it. Not long after, in 963, the abbot of San Martín gave the
whole monastery, and all of its lands and property rights, to the much
larger monastery of Cardeña, witnessed by some of the twenty-four of
two decades earlier.⁵⁹ The local householders of Villabáscones thereby
lost their local monastery, which they had certainly patronized and
had perhaps created. When they first appeared, no collective term was
used to describe the twenty-four. When they came to negotiate over
water rights, the seventeen and others were called the council. It is as
if they developed a collective identity in the course of their changing
relationship with the monastery.
Of course, conscious collective identity or not, leaders seem to have
emerged, or at least spokespersons for the groups, just as community
representatives sometimes went to witness transactions in which the
⁵⁷ Compare ninth-century Breton village communities, in which those who were

male and free attended village meetings; serfs and women did not, and perhaps some free
males did not; see Davies, Small Worlds, 88–9.
⁵⁸ The reference to the much discussed joint council of the three settlements of
San Zadornil, Berbea, and Barrio, of 955 (SM67), appears to derive from an eleventh-
century rather than a contemporary text and is in any case doubtful; see Álvarez
Borge, Poder y relaciones sociales, 36–7, and idem, ‘Estructuras de poder’, 281–2,
n. 22.
⁵⁹ C108. Cf. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Repoblación’, 693, and Pastor, Resistencias, 39.
Peasant Society 205
community had an interest.⁶⁰ In many (though by no means all) of

the instances of collective action cited above, two or three are named
as representatives of the group: Gondemaro led the men of San Juan
en Vega; the Quiroga and Caldelas donors have one or two people
named for each different set of relations; one or two were named for
each of the four villas involved in the Santa María dispute; Vasalle
and Haliffa were named for the Villa Castellana group that ‘offered’
service to the bishop; and, very interestingly, seven people were named
as representatives (vigarii) and guarantors (fideiussores) for the seven
communities working the Pardomino hills; even more interestingly the
latter are identified as representatives of the plebium, literally ‘ordinary
peoples’, a term used in other parts of Europe in the early middle ages
for rural and other communities.⁶¹ There are also occasional Galician
references to plebes at this period.⁶² The case of Filauria is also interesting.
She was the first-named (and by implication the spokeswoman) of the
nine named members of the Melgar assembly who gave the meadow to
the small monastery of San Juan. She seems to have been a rich peasant,
later purchasing several small plots in the neighbourhood, and later still
giving many of those to the much larger monastery of Sahagún to the
north-east.⁶³ Spokespersons were not necessarily, however, the richest.
It is also striking that these councils are relatively unusual (they
were certainly unusual in other parts of Europe at such a date). The
earliest reference to a rural council seems to come in 950 (collationes
from 932) and the rest are scattered across the remainder of the tenth
century.⁶⁴ Their occurrence appears to be a new development of that
⁶⁰ E.g. S364 (946), a sale witnessed by groups from seven locations; cf. the witness
groups in SJP32 (above, n. 35) and the community representatives who gave evidence
(above, pp. 198–9).
⁶¹ Li128, Cel224, Cel95, Lii443, Li184 (cf. Li102 (935)); cf. Sob109 (above n.
39). For the term plebs, see P. Aebischer, ‘La diffusion de plebs ‘‘paroisse’’ dans l’espace
et dans le temps’, Revue de linguistique romane, 28 (1964), 143–65; A. Castagnetti,
L’organizzazione del territorio rurale nel medioevo ( Turin, 1979), 9–30; W. Davies,
‘Priests and rural communities in east Brittany in the ninth century’, Études celtiques,
20 (1983), 177–97, at 177–82. In many areas, by the ninth century, the word plebs
was most frequently used to denote the territory dependent on a baptismal church,
although in the Breton case it referred to a unit of civil association, the primary unit
of social organization (which could of course have had its origin in adherence to
a church).
⁶² Sam128 (849), Sob109 (986–99).
⁶³ S44 (932), S94 (945–54), S162 (959), S164 (959); S265 (972). See Mínguez, El
dominio de Sahagún, 147, for Isca, Filauria’s husband.
⁶⁴ The concilium of Iubera (Castile) is mentioned in A8, of uncertain date but perhaps
as early as 941.
206 Peasant Society
time. Although there is good evidence of peasant community action

in all parts, the occurrence of councils is more restricted: there are
Castilian and Leonese examples, especially but not exclusively near the
towns of Burgos and León, but they are not recorded in the west or
the north; councils, then, seem to have been a particular characteristic
of the meseta at this period.⁶⁵ Moreover, even there, while we hear of a
concilium here and a collatio there, most places had no such identifiable
meeting. It is tempting to suppose that reference to councils simply
arose because of diplomatic practice, a term favoured by a few recording
sources. However, the references come from a range of different sources,
including at least nine on single sheets, written by different scribes in
different places. They include records of sales between lay persons as well
as of gifts to churches and monasteries, and one record of a bequest from
a father to sons; most are short, unelaborated, records.⁶⁶ It therefore
looks as if the practice of identifying the meetings of some rural groups
as ‘councils’ was a local habit and quite widespread. Moreover, we have
noted that when the people of Villabáscones first met to endow their
local monastery, their meeting was not called a council; by the time
they were negotiating with the abbot, it was. It is worth considering
whether groups of people became more accustomed to meet, began to
institutionalize meetings, and thereby developed a greater sense of group
identity as they had to negotiate with their own lords or with local larger
landowners who were competitors. While meetings began as occasions,
they were clearly on the way to becoming institutions by 1000; and
local scribes in some parts were aware of the development. Indeed, from
the 960s the word collatio was developing a spatial sense too, land in
the sphere of this or that assembly (or community meeting), like the
vineyard in ‘valle de Antimio in collationem San Juan Evangelista’ sold
in 979.⁶⁷ In any case, well before 1000, reference was made to people of
or from the council, as befits an institution rather than an occasion.⁶⁸ We
might therefore imagine that, as the powers of lords developed, as they
⁶⁵ There is a passing reference in a Liébana text, T71 (?966), which suggests that the
charter of donation was made in an unlocated concilio.
⁶⁶ See above, pp. 108–9, for the significance of brief records.
⁶⁷ Lii468, cf. Lii391 (965); Liii546 (991), Liii547 (991). Interestingly, all these are
cases of sales, small-scale, in short basic records; the usage again seems to reflect a local
habit of locating properties rather than an established, formulaic, written tradition. Cf.
the semantic range of ‘parish’, which includes the land associated with the community
for which pastoral care was provided. The spatial sense of collación was common in the
central middle ages.
⁶⁸ S300, Lii466, Liii572, for example.
Peasant Society 207
undoubtedly did, rural communities became more likely to have regular

meetings, councils, to develop a common position.⁶⁹ This represents a
change in the later tenth century, as the identity of rural groups in the
meseta—far from being destroyed—crystallized and formalized.
PE A S A N T D O N AT I O N
Actions by rural groups in the tenth century and the increasing incidence
of meetings indicate a growing sense of self-awareness by peasant
communities in some parts of northern Spain. Patterns of peasant
behaviour were often distinctive. It was peasants, in particular, who
split and shared family property, dealing in fractions of increasing
complexity—half a vineyard, a ninth of the meadow, a fourteenth
of the arable, and so on; and it was individual peasants, especially,
who would ‘share’ some of their property with a bishop or monastery,
undertaking to pay regular renders and thereby committing their families
to lasting obligations. We can see a peasantry increasingly attached, even
if lightly, to ecclesiastical landlords.⁷⁰
We also get a glimpse of the procedures available to peasants for
making deals. While many transactions may have been orally conducted,
and never committed to writing, some peasants certainly used records.
Local priests and local monasteries made records for them, using standard
formulas in brief and unelaborated texts, perhaps quickly indicating a
pious reason for making the gift but, in records of gifts to churches,
avoiding references to the torments of hell and the delights of heaven.
Sales also feature prominently in peasant dealing, sometimes as an aspect
of the splitting and sharing, but sometimes—especially with sales to
clergy—in effect a kind of payment for help in bad times past. Again,
we see the role of the clergy becoming ever more prominent, a source of
surplus in times of scarcity.⁷¹
Peasants made gifts to the church for different reasons, and sometimes
for purely pious reasons, as any aristocrat might do. But peasants are
⁶⁹ Cf. Martínez Sopena, La tierra de campos, 506, 510. This is essentially the point
made by Martínez Sopena about merino (lord’s agent) and concejo in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries; the point can reasonably be extended back to the tenth century.
Cf. also A. J. Kosto, ‘Reasons for assembly in Catalonia and Aragón, 900–1200’, in
P. S. Barnwell and M. Mostert (eds.), Political Assemblies in the Earlier Middle Ages
( Turnhout, 2003), 133–49, who uses many tenth-century examples.
⁷⁰ See above, pp. 69–71. ⁷¹ See above, pp. 108–9, 156–8.
208 Peasant Society
particularly notable for making gifts to pay off debts and to provide
compensation for committing petty offences; sometimes they also made
them to secure support. Peasants were not much involved in making
gifts in order to secure liturgical or some other form of religious
commemoration, or burial within the church, although two things here
are notable: one or two peasants actually were involved in those kinds
of gift; and, where they were, there were both regional distinctions (it
did not happen in Galicia) and differences in the kind of ecclesiastical
communities patronized (they tended to give to small monasteries and
avoid the powerful corporations).⁷² Overall, the tenth-century material
suggests that peasants had, or were developing, a rather different kind
of relationship with priests and monks from that which aristocrats had;
this is not at all surprising, for a relationship that was clearly more
economic and less spiritual. Ritual celebration and participation were
less important here, although a few peasants did enlist the services of
priests and other religious for their own family purposes. Indeed, it looks
as if social access to ritual may have been slightly expanding by 1000.
Can we pursue the incidence of peasant transactions in the record?
We cannot always be sure of the status of the actors who appear in these
charters, but bearing in mind the criteria stated in Chapter one,⁷³ it
looks as if there were changes in the patterns of peasant donation across
the tenth century and different patterns in different regions. Most abbots
and bishops had more recorded dealings with kings and aristocrats in
the tenth century than with peasants, and some may have determined
to deal with kings and aristocrats rather than with those who lived
nearby. It is obviously difficult to quantify peasant participation because
of the inevitable uncertainties about status, especially where numbers of
records in a given collection are low. However, estimates can be made
and, while remembering the uncertainties, the large collections suggest
broad proportions which are credible. Tentatively, then, we may say
that peasant giving constitutes a relatively small proportion of donation
to the church recorded in this period, something in the order of 25%.
By no means all of this was for pious reasons, as indicated above.
There are very strong regional differences, which remain marked even
where collections of records are small: in other words, the patterns are
regionally consistent.
The proportion of peasant donation seems to have been relatively
low in Galicia, as also in what we have from Aragón. Although there
⁷² See above, p. 132. ⁷³ pp. 21–2.

Peasant Society 209
are many gifts by aristocrats recorded in the Samos collection, no more

than a handful could be from people of peasant status; Sobrado also has
at most a handful of peasant gifts to the church, although peasant trans-
actions with the laity feature very strongly in this group; and although
we also see peasants very clearly in the Celanova collection, because of
the many sales recorded in mid-century, at most 20% of donations to
the church could be attributed to peasants. In Aragón, the San Juan
de la Peña collection does not appear to have any records of peasant
gifts at this time—numbers are small anyway, but even so there are at
least eleven records of royal or aristocratic gifts in the tenth century. By
contrast with this Galician pattern, the number of peasant grants to the
church looks relatively high in Castile, as also in Cantabria, in so far as
we have statistically significant material from the north.⁷⁴ About 35% of
the Cardeña donations could reasonably be classified as of peasant status;
Table 8.1 Peasant donation to the church, by

collection, as % of all gifts to the church
% of all gifts to the church
Cel 20
Sam 5
Sob 10
L 27
OD 33
S 25
C 35
SM* 23
V 58
SJP 0
T 33
Ov 22
Total 25
* higher % if multiple transactions disaggregated
San Millán records have more uncertainties, and are notably marked by
royal and comital gifts, but small-scale peasant giving—often recorded
in very brief notes—looks close to or above the mean; numbers from
Valpuesta, Arlanza, and Albelda are too low to be statistically significant,
⁷⁴ Cf. above, p. 52, n. 49 for peasant activity in Castile.

210 Peasant Society
and peasant donation is certainly not notable in the latter two; however,
Valpuesta seems to have an extremely high proportion, over 50% of
gifts, although the percentage is skewed by the set of gifts of the 950s
to the monastery of Buezo. Total numbers of donations are also rather
low in records from Cantabrian Liébana, but here too the peasant
proportion looks higher than the mean (about 33%). Unsurprisingly,
peasant donation in the large collections of records from the western
meseta comes closest to the 25% mean (see Table 8.1).
Most of the charter collections considered here begin with records
of the late ninth century but do not record significant numbers of
transactions until the decade following 910. Whenever a collection
begins, the earliest transactions are dominated by aristocrats, be they
lay or ecclesiastical; ordinary people do not play much part in the
recorded transfer of property rights. But in many cases, particularly
where the collections are large, there comes a clear time when the
business transactions of ordinary people start to feature in the records.
This is most striking in the large, and richly varied, collections of the
western meseta, where the evidence in this respect is particularly strong:
although ‘ordinary people’ start to feature as alienators around 920 in
the León collections, peasant donation to the church is not notably
recorded before the mid-930s; at nearby Sahagún it was also the 930s
when this activity began to be noted; at Otero de las Dueñas, where
numbers are vastly lower, it was in the 940s. Interestingly, where the
proportion of peasant donation to the church is either relatively high or
relatively low, and numbers of charters are high, it was also the 930s
when records of peasant donation became notable: from 932 round
Cardeña, San Millán, and also Celanova. Where numbers of charters
are lower, there is—not surprisingly—much greater variation, and in
most cases there is too little material to identify a point at which peasant
records became common; however, for Valpuesta it was the 950s. In
the northern collection of the Liébana (San Martín de Turieno and
associated institutions), however, where numbers are relatively small,
there was not such a change in the 930s; records of peasant donation to
the church appear to have begun earlier, although it was the 960s before
the proportions become notable.⁷⁵
This pattern, that is of peasant transactions entering the written
record at a noticeable point, is reinforced if we also look at the recording
⁷⁵ For example, T10, T12 (both ninth century), ?T24 (918), T29 (921); there are
also early gifts to lay recipients.
Peasant Society 211
of transactions of sale. In the León collections, there were earlier peasant

sales but the main series began in the late 920s, as also for Sahagún; for
the small but important collection from Otero this started in the 940s.
Outside the western meseta, the situation is different. Where records
of peasant donation are relatively few, in Galicia to the west, there
are relatively few sales recorded: there are few sales of any kind in the
Samos collection; in that of Celanova, although there are some sales
from the 930s, the main bulk of peasant sales falls only in the 960s;
in the Sobrado collection, sale to the laity is recorded from as early as
the early ninth century, but is only notable from the 920s, for just over
a generation. Where records of peasant donation are relatively many,
in Castile to the east, sale is also relatively rare: it is not noticeable
in Cardeña records until the 960s; San Millán, Arlanza, and Albelda
collections have few sales at all in this period; Valpuesta records do
include sales from 913, but most of the collection records gifts. By
contrast, in the collections from the north, Oviedo records peasant sales
from 917, and arguably earlier, and the Liébana does so from the early
ninth century (see Fig. 8.4).
Figure 8.4 Zones of different recording practice in respect of peasant transac-

tions
212 Peasant Society
There are some major regional cultural differences here: in León

and the western meseta north of the Duero, peasant sale and peasant
donation to the church were recorded in notable quantities from the
920s/930s. In Galicia, peasant donation and sale were for the most part
recorded in relatively low quantities from the 930s, although in the
case of Celanova numbers of sales rose markedly in the 960s; and in
the case of Sobrado, peasant gifts and sales to lay persons began earlier
and were much more evident than transactions with the church until
the mid-tenth century. In Castile, peasant donation was recorded in
relatively large quantities from the 930s, and peasant sale was not often
recorded, with the exception of that to Cardeña in the 960s. In the
north, both peasant sale and peasant donation were recorded from the
ninth century.
Clearly, in most regions there is a horizon in the 930s at which
peasant transactions start to show noticeably in the written record.
Different kinds of explanation are conceivable: most obviously, the 930s
could be the period when peasants first began to make transactions;
alternatively, it could be the period when transactions began for the first
time to be committed to writing; or it could be the period from which
records happen to be preserved. The latter kind of explanation must
certainly play some part, because of the acquisition policies of major
monasteries, building up title to more and more property; however, the
second kind of explanation is probably also relevant as well: ecclesiastical
beneficiaries had reason to see transactions from which they benefited
committed to writing—the increase in buying from peasants in the case
of both Cardeña and Celanova in the 960s is directly attributable to
entrepreneurial monastic policy; and even the first explanation probably
plays a part, for the interest of churches and monasteries in acquiring
even small portions of land must have introduced more mobility in the
transmission of peasant property. All three explanations appear relevant:
more transactions from the 930s, more records, and more preservation
of records. Now, it is extremely unlikely that there were no peasant
transactions at all before the 930s: the smaller but longer series from
Cantabria indicates that there were some, while the numbers of sales and
gifts between purely lay parties which are particularly well demonstrated
in Sobrado, León, and Otero collections show that peasant transactions
could be recorded from an early date.⁷⁶ Indeed, I have argued above that
⁷⁶ See above pp. 100–1.

Peasant Society 213
there may well have been a long tradition of donation to lay patrons in
some parts, some of which was certainly recorded.⁷⁷ Castile appears to
have been different, perhaps because of a different economic base (there
was either more pasture or more competition for pasture) or because of
lower levels of recording independent peasant activity.
Peasants did not begin transacting in the 930s and their transactions
did not begin to be recorded then. There is background, in both respects.
But there seem to have been changes at that time. What changed most
obviously were the record-keeping habits of the larger monasteries.
Our impressions are conditioned by the recording practice of major
monasteries—hence, houses like San Juan de la Peña, Albelda, Arlanza,
and Samos appear to have been more interested in recording and
preserving gifts from aristocrats than from others. Our impressions are
also conditioned by copying and keeping habits—houses like Cardeña,
Celanova, and Sahagún did not copy much material from before
their own foundation dates, while others assiduously kept or copied
outdated archives; in some cases—Sobrado and Otero de las Dueñas
especially—the chance incorporation of substantial lay archives in the
monastic record reveals practices (the volume of lay/lay sale especially)
which would not otherwise be suspected.
If changes in record-keeping habits are the most obvious of changes,
we should not forget the others. Overall the material also suggests an
increase in the volume of peasant transactions, notably from the 930s,
not least because most of the major monasteries sought to develop
their relationships with local residents. This is most evident in and
near urban León. We do not merely see procedures that had previously
been hidden, we see new things happening. While peasants had clearly
been buying and selling landed property for generations, and giving it
to powerful lay patrons, they seem to have begun giving to churches
in previously unimaginable quantities. That was partly an inevitable
consequence of the increased significance of churches and monasteries
as landlords, for more ecclesiastical landlords meant more ecclesiastical
creditors and more ecclesiastical sources of support; it was also because
some peasants actively chose ecclesiastical patronage.
⁷⁷ p. 163.
9
Rhetoric and Action
We have seen, again and again, how much the form and language
of the record conditions our interpretation of northern Spain in the
tenth century. This is precisely what we would expect as historians,
although the particularities of some of the recording practice have
sometimes had a quite disproportionate impact upon the historiogra-
phy: the favourite phrase of this or that monastic house (like trado
corpus et animam or incommuniatio) have taken on a life as distinctive
institutions;¹ the words have seemed to indicate distinctive practice,
when they have simply been a mode of reference. However, the way
that scribes used standard formulas can be instructive, just as deviation
from the favourite phrase can in itself provide insights. The inter-
play between the rigidly formulaic and the free flow of language is
even more illuminating; all this, and the content of the non-standard,
even florid, pieces of prose that scribes inserted, can take us beyond
the record to tenth-century actions and attitudes. The considered
inversion of the standard formula ‘man and woman give/sell’ to the
occasional, self-conscious, ‘woman and man give/sell’ makes a signifi-
cant point; and, despite the very formal genre, we sometimes glimpse
the personal insight: witness the contrast between the stereotypical
‘sweetness’ of the bride and the very individual expressions of female
piety.²
There are, clearly, many things that we cannot see: most obviously,
these texts overwhelmingly deal with transactions in land; we do not
know about transactions in movables, nor about their relative volume,
nor about many other aspects of ordinary and extraordinary life. In
view of these unavoidable limitations of the source material, it becomes
essential to take a comprehensive overview, and avoid arguing from
the single case or even from the single collection, given how much
the attitudes of the recording house condition the textual outcome.
¹ See above, pp. 54–6, 80–3. ² See above, pp. 183, 180.
Rhetoric and Action 215
House style is apparent in most collections;³ and, while some chose

to preserve a range of types of record, others—like Cardeña’s focus
on donation—chose to focus on a single type. This informs, but also
distorts.
Despite the limitations, language and form are themselves revealing. It
is language and form that provide a clue to the status of principal actors,
for the transactions of aristocrats are recorded in different ways from
those of peasants.⁴ Language and form are also significant indicators
of regional difference. There is insufficient material from Aragón and
Navarre to draw distinctive regional pictures at this time. However,
there is plenty of material from other parts. Although there are some
strong similarities, the culture of Galicia frequently looks distinctive:
there is more evidence of servile dependence, rather less of free peasant
deals, a different quality to the religious culture, and a wider range of
valuation systems.⁵ And then there is Castile. Again and again Castilian
patterns look different from those found elsewhere: the region has more
transactions in churches but fewer instances of donation for the purposes
of commemoration, fewer gifts to discharge debts, lower proportions of
female alienators and of gifts to lay persons, fewer indications of peasant
buying and selling, and so on. This is not the place to pursue why this
should have been so, and our perceptions are strongly conditioned by
the particular preoccupations of the major recording centres, but there
are nevertheless hints of underlying socio-economic difference, as also
of less of a local recording tradition.⁶
Records of donation slightly outnumber other kinds of record;⁷ not
surprisingly, therefore, giving to the church inevitably emerges as a major
theme. It looks as if some ninth-century aristocratic families in northern
Spain were as interested in ensuring perpetuation of their memory as
were families elsewhere in Europe, at that time and earlier. That interest
continued throughout the tenth century, although the mechanisms for
commemoration tended to shift from founding churches and monas-
teries to providing, through land grants, for liturgical commemoration
³ See above, pp. 91–3. ⁴ See above, pp. 106–9.

⁵ For valuation systems, see W. Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation in Galicia and
Castile-León’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), 149–74, at 165–70, and references
there cited.
⁶ See above, pp. 211–13.
⁷ Contrast Catalonia, where there are more records of sale surviving from pre-1000;
Ll. To Figueras, ‘L’historiographie du marché de la terre en Catalogne’, in L. Feller and
C. Wickham (eds.), Le marché de la terre au moyen âge (Rome, 2005), 161–80, at 162.
216 Rhetoric and Action
and sometimes burial.⁸ To that extent, the Spanish picture fits wider
European models reasonably well, although the chronology of memo-
rialization falls later and the commitment does not look as strong as it
does in, say, eighth- and ninth-century Germany—there are, after all,
no Spanish Libri Memoriales of this period. In fact, most families seem
to have had no concern at all to ensure their own commemoration, and
those that were so concerned did not invariably or even mostly entrust
the act to women. This was only one aspect—and a narrowly restrict-
ed one—of the complex of motives impelling people to give landed
property away to the church. People gave land for spiritual reasons and
they gave for purely practical reasons; they gave land because they were
forced to do so, to meet debts or pay fines; they gave land to reward past
service or past assistance; they gave land to gain material benefits in life
and to secure support in the short term or in old age.⁹ Giving for the
sake of the soul—pro anima mea—accounted for at most two-fifths of
all donation for which we have evidence, a significant proportion but
not as much as we often tend to assume.
People made gifts of land to the laity too, and had clearly done so
for a very long time.¹⁰ Such giving goes back as far as we can see and
is well-evidenced in parts of northern Spain which had unquestionably
long-standing, stable, populations—in other words, in parts where there
has been no suggestion of depopulation and repopulation. Giving to
the laity does not seem to have been a particular response to tenth-
century developments but rather a standard mechanism for balancing
resources in essentially self-regulating societies, and as such a mechanism
for securing social support when family was not there to provide it.
Families often were there, however, and family interests are reflected
throughout the corpus of tenth-century records. Despite some of the
earlier historiography, there is very little to suggest any significant change
in family structure in this period: family interests are as evident in the
year 1000 as in 900 and families at many social levels adopted strategies
to protect the patrimony, as they did elsewhere in western Europe. The
strategies they employed, however, were different from those beyond the
Pyrenees, as the instruments that they used were different; sharing land
beyond the circle of natural heirs served to maintain family interest, as did
splitting and sharing with patrons. Hence, total alienation of their power
over family property seems to have been rare; more usually, some control
⁸ See above, pp. 61–2. ⁹ See above, pp. 113–26, 126–34.

¹⁰ See above, pp. 139–63.
was retained, even if the family interest was squeezed. Fragmentation of

family land is therefore not particularly evident, despite its recurrence in
the literature—division and reassembly of property seems to have been
the practice, rather than an unending process of morcellation.¹¹
Giving to the church and to the laity did not therefore constitute
the total commitment signalled by commendation of the classic kind,
nor did it lead to gifts returned as precaria, as it did in many parts
of western Europe—a major contrast.¹² It certainly did not cause
seigneurialization, although it may well in the long run, and indirectly,
have contributed to an increase in seigneurial power by first establishing
an increase in landlordship. The clearly observable increase in patronage
networks of the second half of the tenth century must have contributed
too—witness the disproportionate number of gifts to the powerful to
procure support in the 980s.¹³ The level of seigneurialization in northern
Spain was quite low by continental western European standards in the
tenth century; as Spanish scholars have shown, the major changes
came in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as purely proprietary
powers—landlord powers—developed to become seigneurial.¹⁴
Donation to the laity was socially and economically important, but
donation to the church is stronger in the record; it led to enormous
changes in both ecclesiastical proprietorship and ecclesiastical patronage
in the course of the tenth century, itself a time of increasingly intensive
agricultural exploitation. Huge estates were amassed, not least from
the gifts of aristocrats, and some monks and clerics took on significant
roles in secular society: an abbot could preside over a court case to
settle purely lay disputes between lay persons.¹⁵ Again, as Spanish
scholars have shown, one reason for the increase was the practical estate
management of major monasteries, and of individual abbots, kicking in,
as it did, at different points in the tenth century: land was exchanged,
property consolidated, new lands acquired, both by encouraging gifts
and by buying, in order to exploit the landed resource more effectively;
hence the purchasing by Sahagún in the 930s and 940s, by Celanova
in the 960s, by Cardeña in the 980s. And at least some abbots, perhaps
¹¹ See above, p. 86. ¹² See above, pp. 85, 134.

¹³ See above, pp. 58–60, 128–30, 149–56.
¹⁴ See the classic discussion of Estepa, ‘Formación y consolidación del feudalismo’, at
161–3, where he stresses the distinction between propiedad dominical, dominio señorial,
and señorío jurisdiccional (roughly ‘landlord power, seigneurial lordship, and the full
seigneurie’, where the latter is the ‘concrete expression’ of seigneurial lordship).
¹⁵ T66 (962), for example.
not many at this stage, established new rights to the product of peasant
labour as they allowed peasants access to work monastic land.¹⁶ We
saw an increasing number of transactions in churches in the 940s, as
powerful monasteries absorbed minor churches and monasteries and
broke the proprietary interests of lesser clerics, building widespread
networks of ecclesiastical institutions as they also began to build more
local networks of lay clients.¹⁷ Churches were acquired in mid-century
from lesser clerics, and from lay proprietors too, for the latter were
tending to divest themselves of ecclesiastical property from that point.
The changing attitude to lay proprietorship accompanies a shift in the
quality of (largely aristocratic) lay piety, as ritual celebration began to
replace ownership; the shift is perhaps also signalled by the increasing
number of references to female religious from the 970s and by the hints
of the widening of social access to ritual late in the century.¹⁸
Some other things emerge from this study, which are not quite
so familiar as the drift towards seigneurialization. One of these is
that, although women are more visible in Spain than they were in
many parts of Europe at that time, and could play a public role at
several social levels, behaviour is frequently presented in ungendered
terms. Masculinity may be indicated through a habit of violence and
femininity through a stereotypical sweetness, but men and women
are more often shown doing things together, with both shared and
complementary roles, sharing responsibilities as a household unit.
Another thing that emerges is that in the tenth century donation and
sale sometimes do not look very different, even if at other times they
were clearly distinct. The categories were occasionally openly confused;
gifts could be retrospectively framed as sales; and records of sale could
be used to mask a whole series of gifts.¹⁹ It is not just that there was no
such thing as a free gift, most people expecting a return on what was
given, be it in this life or the next; and it is not that these were ‘gift
economies’ poised to transform into the fully commercial.²⁰ Although
those who recorded transactions used a repertoire of model formats that
¹⁶ See above, pp. 17–22. ¹⁷ See above, pp. 62–4.

¹⁸ See above, pp. 120–6, 179.
¹⁹ See above, pp. 135–8, 156–60. Cf. some comparable ‘confusions’ in eleventh-
century French records: S. Weinberger, ‘Donations-ventes ou ventes-donations? Confu-
sion ou système dans la Provence du XIe siècle’, Le Moyen Âge, 105 (1999), 667–80.
²⁰ See F. Curta, ‘Merovingian and Carolingian gift giving’, Speculum, 81 (2006),
671–99, especially 674–8, for a robust criticism of the notion that gift economies
characterized the early middle ages.
maintained a distinction between gift and sale, our perceptions of what

was gift and what was sale are mediated through the scribes’ need to
choose between these two available formats. In effect deals were done in
making gifts and most people seem to have known that they were doing
deals. ‘Gifts’ often therefore had an element of sale about them, but
the deals were not purely commercial, and were embedded in the nexus
of social relationships.²¹ Accordingly, sale formats were also sometimes
used to record this kind of gift; but, on the other hand, some sales had
much more to do with a land market, a distinction concealed by the
standard format of the records.²²
There are also deeper economic realities. I have observed from time
to time that many payments were made in land. When peasants were
overwhelmed with debt—the annual render that could not be met, the
grain or wine owed to a landlord—they often paid off the debts with
a gift of some of their land.²³ And when peasants had to pay fines and
provide compensation they often did so with a land grant.²⁴ Sometimes
the relative values look extraordinary to those used to modern western
European land values: vineyards were handed over for stealing a few
sheep, fields for stealing clothes or for cutting wood, a farmstead and
houses for committing adultery.²⁵ Of course, there may well be an
additional element of penalty in these cases and we may not simply be
seeing the value of the loss returned; however, vineyards and fields were
handed over for missing rents too.²⁶ Not only that. The relative value
²¹ Cf. L. Feller, ‘Enrichissement, accumulation et circulation des biens. Quelques

problèmes liés au marché de la terre’, in L. Feller and C. Wickham (eds.), Le marché
de la terre au moyen âge (Rome, 2005), 3–28, especially 28, who demonstrates that the
economic function of the sale of land in the middle ages varied with the status and
relationships of the actors; as also, in an earlier work, that there are some close parallels
in the contexts of Spanish tenth-century sales with those of ninth-century central Italy,
L. Feller, ‘Précaires et livelli. Les transferts patrimoniaux ad tempus en Italie’, Mélanges
de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen Âge, 111 (1999), 725–46, at 743.
²² For an illuminating discussion of the economic as against social bases of sale, see
C. Wickham, ‘Conclusions’, in Feller and Wickham (eds.), Le marché de la terre au
moyen âge, 625–41.
²³ Cf. L. Feller, Les Abruzzes médiévales. Territoire, économie et société en Italie centrale
du IX e au XII e siècle (Rome, 1998), 392, arguing that land had low value in bad years,
such as those of 850–70, and that peasants had nothing else to sell.
²⁴ There may well have been payment in movables too, which went unrecorded; we
have no way of knowing the relative proportions (although it is notable that there are no
incidental hints of this, as one might expect, while there are plenty of explicit comments
that the alienator did not have the wherewithal to pay rent or fine, e.g. Sob31 (951); cf.
the land given to cover a fine of a horse, worth 40 solidi, Liii578 (997) and above, p. 145).
²⁵ Cel169 (962), Liii556 (993); OD34 (993), Liii590 (999); Liii561 (994).
²⁶ Lii457 (978), Cel411 (989), Cel409 (990), OD41 (995).
of stock and land does not match our modern expectations: whole or
half inheritances were handed over to meet the value of a good horse or
a few sheep, shares in twelve separate estates (villas) to meet the value of
five cows, an entire villa to meet the value of stolen horses (half of it was
later sold for three horses, three oxen, and a skin).²⁷ (In recorded prices,
be it noted, there was wide variation in values so we should not in any
case expect arithmetic consistency.²⁸) Clearly we need to rethink our
assumptions about relative values and go back to a world where there
was not such a shortage of land as characterized the more recent past;
rather, at many social levels there may have been a shortage of stock and
goods, of produce. Even monasteries might sell land in order to restock
with animals.²⁹ Peasant households seem to have numbered their stock
on their fingers: nine cows and eight horses, of which one was a riding
horse, for a rich peasant household, for example.³⁰ That does not mean,
all the same, that these people were happy to dispose of their land.
Indeed, selling land could itself be a penalty, as it was for the gardener’s
wife who was compelled to sell her vineyard as a penalty for homicide
and for the men who had committed arson who had to sell another.³¹
There are several points to note here. Firstly, having goods was desir-
able; goods were important; peasants—doubtless reluctantly—gave up
land rather than any of their produce; but, in the tenth-century world,
alienating land was the only option if they had insufficient consum-
ables.³² Secondly, there was clearly pressure on food supply, as the many
peasant encroachments on monastic land and the many border haggles
testify;³³ whether because of demographic pressure, or because their
own land was worked out, or because they had been forced to alienate
some of it, peasant farmers sought to extend the area under cultivation
and produce more.³⁴ The rhetoric of repopulation, which is prominent
in some of these charters, conceals competition for practical control
²⁷ Cel248 (before 991), Sob23 (949), Cel456 (940), S358 (998).

²⁸ See Davies, ‘Sale, price and valuation’, 165–70; and Feller, ‘Enrichissement,
accumulation et circulation des biens’, especially 21, on price varying with social
relationship.
²⁹ S340 (988). ³⁰ Lii488 (944–82).
³¹ Lii450 (977), Lii360 (963); see above, p. 186.
³² As in other cultures at other times: Liesbeth van Houts points out to me, from
family memory, that during the Second World War food shortages forced the poor to
sell to the rich whatever assets they had, in order to get necessities for survival.
³³ See above, pp. 8–11, 199–201.
³⁴ See above, p. 198, and SJP32, for worked-out land. Cf. Larrea, La Navarre,
589–91, for increasing peasant production.
of economic resources. ‘Repopulation’ seems to have been more about

establishing control of the exploitation of land by the powerful than
about introducing new residents; free peasant farmers, in the end, were
under some pressure. Thirdly, although the consequences may not have
been anticipated at the time, any transfer of land from poor peasant
to rich landlord, shared or not, had immensely important long-term
consequences, as—quite simply—the rich got richer and the profile of
social and economic differentiation became steeper.
So what changed in the tenth century? At one level, not so much,
although some of the conditions for later change were established.
Giving and selling had been going on for generations, at all social
levels. What really changed was not the mere fact of donation to the
church—which had also been happening for generations—but peasant
donation to the church. We have seen the strength with which peasant
transactions began to show in the record in the 930s;³⁵ peasants engaged
with ecclesiastical proprietors at levels unseen before; peasants joined
monastic clientship networks as they chose monastic patrons; peasants
often gave or sold to the church in order to clear debt, and what they
gave or sold often went out of circulation into a ‘dead hand’. It was
this new volume of peasant engagement with ecclesiastical landlords
that ultimately made for significant change: as those landlords became
powerful religious corporations, collective identity sharpened in the
localities, and long-established balances of give and take finally shifted.
³⁵ See above, pp. 210–13.

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Index
abbots 52, 63, 217–18 Bagaudano and Faquilona 156, 157

grants by 62, 61 n. 69
writing by 94, 98, 107 Barbero and Vigil 27–8, 75, 84 n. 77,
see also Opila 157 n. 69, 161 n. 85, 165, 194
adoption, see profiliation benefactoría agreements 83, 150
adultery 127, 145, 168 beneficiaries:
agriculture 2, 5–6, 11, 69 drafting by 91–3, 94, 109 n. 89
intensive 8, 9, 11, 217; see also arable lay 79, 95, 139–56
extensive 8–9 monastic 51–2, 54–64, 77,
Abellar, monastery of 58, 68, 82, 106, 116–29, 130–1
123 Bible, The, quotations from 90, 92, 93,
charters of 92 107
patronage of 59, 128, 177 bishops 45–6, 64, 106
Albelda, monastery of 25, 61 see also Diego, Froilán, Rosendo
cartulary of 24, 54, 209, 211, 213 bishoprics, see León, Valpuesta
aldeas 194–5 Boñar, monastery of 59, 147, 148
alfoces 196 boni homines 200
Alfonso I, king of Asturias 26 see also elders
Alfonso III, king of Asturias 36, 50 bonum facere 149–54
Alfonso IV, king of Asturias-León 15, see also support systems
106 books 8, 50, 123
Alfonso V, king of Asturias-León 16 boundaries 8–9, 186, 190, 195–6
Ambrosio, priest and notary 95 disputes about 199–201
ancillae Dei 107, 178 n. 63, 179–80 Buezo, monastery of 65
arable 5–6, 7, 8, 9 Burgos 9 n. 22, 10, 11, 25, 206
plots 8, 189–90, 192 burial 49, 57, 121, 130, 139
Aragón xiv–xv, 13, 208 place of 50, 122, 124, 179
Arborio and María 177
aristocrats 12, 21, 81, 105, 149, 156, Cantabria xiv–xv, 2, 149, 195, 209
160 slaves in 19
families of 15, 123–5, 133, 215–16 Cantabrian mountains 3
gifts of 106, 128, 130, 132, 141 Cardeña, monastery of 9 n. 22, 11, 25,
Arlanza, monastery of 25, 61 n.78 137, 204, 217
cartulary of 24, 54, 209, 211, 213 cartulary of 24, 42, 63, 91, 101,
assault 127, 145, 181 105, 126, 140, 159, 209–13
assemblies 201–7 occurrence of corpus et anima
Astorga 10, 196 n. 23 in 54–6, 58
Asturias xiv–xv, 2, 12 occurrence of quintae in 76
slaves in 19 monks at 47, 184
Asturias-León, kingdom of 12 patronage of 59–60, 61
Aurifila, daughter of Abraham 82 care of souls 49, 116
authority 165 care (physical) see economic
ecclesiastical 44–50, 181 relationships, support systems
episcopal 45–6 cartularies 22–5, 93, 103, 119, 173
authors 99–102, 107, 180–1 n. 42
238 Index
Castile xiv–xv, 2, 7, 11, 140, 155, 195, commemoration see memorialization
209, 211, 213, 215 commendation 128–9, 150–1, 152
County of 12, 14; see also counts n. 54, 153–4, 217
castles see fortifications commerce 10–11
Catalonia xiv–xv, 2, 13, 25, 34, 96 common property see property
n. 35, 136 n. 85, 158 n. 75, 215 communities, local 28, 49, 105–6,
n. 7 108–9, 193–207
formulary from 102 disputes between 200–01
cattle 5, 6, 8, 192, 220 identity of 194–200, 204, 207
cattle standard 6 n. 9 representatives of 204–05
Cea 10, 11 compensations 127, 143, 182, 186,
Celanova, monastery of 25, 217 219
cartulary of 23, confessae 107–8, 110, 169 n. 28,
lay beneficiaries in 79, 140, 141 177–80
peasants in 209–13 confessi 47, 107–08, 110, 177–9
dependents of 20 copyists 99–101
diplomatic practice of 54, 82–3, 85, corpus et anima, gifts of 52–61, 62
91, 94, 105, 119, 129, 132 corrody 139 n. 2
patronage of 59, 128, 159 see also support systems
property of 5, 36, 61, 72, 80, 190, cortes 10, 192
212 councils 201–07
sharing with 81–3 countergifts 113–14, 135–6, 151
cereals 5–6, 21, 151, 157, 158, 159, n. 47
190 counts 15, 145–9
charters 22–6, 79, 88–91, 110–12, of Castile 12–13, 15
214–16 of Catalonia 14
monastic 120 see also comitatus, Gutier, Odoario,
royal 93–5, 120 Rodrigo
see also cartularies, diplomatic couples, married 79, 141, 155, 164–5,
practice, language, records 168–72, 185–7, 218
chestnuts 2, 7 see also households
childlessness 72–3 courts, judicial 16, 143–9, 163, 174,
churches 10, 46 184, 186, 188
authority over see authority rulings of 126, 137, 182
(ecclesiastical) see also fines
differentiation of from Coyanza 9 n. 21, 10, 146, 147, 156
monasteries 47–8
foundation of 50–2 David and Regina 58, 163
gifts to 113–34, 152, 155, 213, 221 decanias 62–3
lay community of 201–2 debt 127–8, 132, 144, 152, 155, 157,
proprietary 36–64, 218 187, 219
chronicles 174, 183–4 deo votae 177, 178 nn. 61 & 63,
Cida Aion 73, 184 179–80
cider 127, 144, 158, 159, 187 depopulation 26–7, 29
civitates 9–10 Diego, bishop of Valpuesta 59 n. 73,
see also León 63
clientship networks 59–60, 62, diplomatic practice 54, 76, 77, 79, 82,
128–9, 160–3, 218 91–8, 106, 119, 206, 214–15
collective action 198–202, 204, 206 see also formularies, formulas
colonization 17, 27, 50, 221 disputes 12, 181–2, 186, 199–201
peasant 2, 9, 29 distraint 182
comissum 14–15, 203 n. 55 donation 113–15, 135–8
comitatus 14–15
Index 239
donation (cont.) see also agriculture
chronology of 51, 61–2, 119, 125, femininity 181–8, 218
129–30, 133–4, 140–1, 173, feudalism 27–8, 161–2
208–13 fideles 141, 162
framed as sale 156–60 fifths see quintae
in vitam 84 Filauria 205
by peasants 207–13, 221 fines 126, 136, 143–6, 184, 185,
post mortem 34, 84 186
by priests and abbots 61, 132 Flaino and Brunildi 139, 146
records of see charters Flaino Muñoz, count 144–5, 146–9
for secular reasons 126–34, food 150–3, 157–61
139–63, 216 see also cereals, cider, wine
see also churches, corpus et anima, formularies 100–02, 109, 150–1
laity, transactions formulas 6–7, 9, 88–109, 110,
donation practice 35 135–8, 214
European 30–4 memorization of 99–101
see also gift exchange pious 101–02, 103 n. 66, 107,
dos 168–9 115–20, 138, 180
dowry 168 Tours 151–2, 152 n. 54, 163 n.95
Duby, Georges 31 n. 97, 34 ‘Visigothic’ 99 n. 50, 101, 105
Duero valley 2, 3, 26, 195 see also corpus et anima,
incommuniationes, preambles,
Ebro valley 2, 3, 12, 13 pro remedio animae, quintae,
economic relationships 152, 153–4, sanctions, witness lists
156, 160, 161, 207, 216, 220 fornication 127, 184
elders 201 see also adultery
Elvira, abbess of San Martín of fortifications 10, 16
Grau 36, 38 Forum Iudicum see Visigothic law
Elvira, daughter of King Ramiro fractions of property 65, 75–80, 86,
II, 124, 164, 174–6, 184 159, 190–3
Ermegildo, deacon 19, 72 Francia, East 30–3, 61, 85, 86, 117,
Ermegildo and Paterna 82, 140, 156, 131, 134, 163
160 Francia, West 13–14, 30–3, 61, 62,
estates 5, 18, 69, 198–9, 217 85, 86, 117, 134, 162
Esla, river 146, 147, 197 freedmen 19, 20, 128 n. 61
Estepa Díez, Carlos 79, 83, 150, 217 freedom 18–21, 195
n. 14 Froilán, bishop 70
eternity, desire for 89, 116, 120 Fruela, armiger 95
exarator 99–100 Fruela, son of Gutier 15, 142, 176
exchanges 113
records of 96 Galicia xiv–xv, 2, 7, 11, 12, 79, 140,
195, 208, 211–12, 215
familiaritas 53, 152 n. 54 arable in 8, 9
family 65–87, 153, 216 prices in 6 n. 9
burial places 50 servile dependents in 20–1
remembrance 30–4, 123–5, sharing in 82–5
215–16 slaves in 18–19
tree 71 García Sánchez I, king of Navarre 95,
see also aristocrats, households, 144, 174
patrimony, property rights gardens 6, 7, 10, 65, 189–91
farms 10 n. 27, 189–93 Gaudinas, monk 72
in mountains 3 Gauventio, scribe 89
small 5, 8 Geary, Patrick 33–4
240 Index
gender 130–3, 181–8 dynasties of 12
of donors 52, 172 see also Alfonso I, Alfonso III, Alfonso
Gesmira 139, 146, 149, 151 IV, Alfonso V, León, García
gift economies 114, 218 Sánchez, Navarre, Ordoño II,
gift exchange 32 n. 101, 38, 114 n. 3, Ordoño III, queens, Ramiro II,
115–16, 120, 121 Ramiro III, Sancho I, Sancho II
goats 5, 8, 151 Garcés Abarca, Vermudo II
grammar 102–5 kingdoms 11–14
grants ad imperandum 15 government of 11, 14–16, 163
guarantors 174, 185, 198 n. 32, 205 territorial expansion of 11
gubernare 151–2, 154 see also Asturias-León, Navarre
Guimarães, monastery at 25, 82–3,
149 n. 40
Guntroda, abbess of Pazó 36–8 labour service 21, 161–2
Gutier, count 15, 38, 44, 67, 69, 169, laity 57–8, 95
200 alienation of proprietary churches
by 51, 218
as communities of churches 201–2
hell, fear of 89 gifts to 79, 139–56, 213, 216
helping out in bad times 127–8, 136, as transactors 96–8, 103–6
149, 151–2, 157, 159 see also beneficiaries, households
heritability of property 67, 69, 166–8 (religious)
historiography: landscape 3–5
European 18, 30–4, 132, 162 land-use 1–11, 189–93
Spanish 17, 26–30, 194–5, 217; see language 214–15
also Barbero and Vigil,
elaboration of 89–91, 101–2,
Sánchez-Albornoz
106–8, 132
horses 5, 8, 143, 158, 192, 220
simple 88–9, 96–8, 108–9, 124,
households 153, 185–7, 218
religious 47, 102, 103, 107–8, 206
177–9 stereotypical 183, 218
see also couples, property see also formulas, Latin, Leonese
houses 189–93 Vulgar Latin, Romance
house plots 6, 189–90 Latin 98, 102–5
urban 10, 17 law see Visigothic law
husbands see couples legumes 2, 6
Leire, monastery at 25, 124
León 25, 79, 196 n. 23
Ikila Fafilaniz 80–1 bishopric of 40, 198
Ilduara, countess 67, 69, 140, 143, charter collections of 23, 59, 173
169, 176, 179, 182 diplomatic practice in 42, 54, 76,
incommuniationes 80–5 92, 105, 119, 179
Ireland 62 lay beneficiaries in 79, 143
Isla Frez, Amancio 83, 84 peasant donation in 141, 159,
Italy 33–4, 61, 117, 134, 152 n. 53
209–12
city of 9, 10, 12, 14, 16–17, 186,
Jobert, Ph. 115 n. 6, 117 206, 213
judgement, day of 89, 90–1, 116, 180 kings of 12–13, 14; see also kings
judges 145–6, 148, 152, 163 Leonese Vulgar Latin 103 n. 68
Libri memoriales 30–1, 123, 134
killing 127, 181, 182, 186 Liébana 3, 4, 43, 68
kings 52 life interest 67 n. 6, 73
chanceries of 95 lights, commemorative 19, 121, 125
charters of 93–5, 102 n. 65, 106 liturgical vessels 8, 50, 123, 192
Index 241
liturgy 120 n. 19, 121 n. 26, 123, 124, Damián, Santos Justo y Pastor,
125 Sobrado
livestock 5, 8, 187, 220 monks 49, 56–7, 178–80
see also cattle, goats, horses, pigs, grants by 74, 106, 132
sheep see also abbots, Gaudinas
lordship: morning gift 168–9
growth of 19, 134, 194–5, 206, mountains 8
207, 217 as power base 3
monastic 9, 129 Mumadona 82 n. 71, 83 n. 73
Munio, priest 128, 129, 157
Magnus est titulus donationis 104–5 Munio Fernández , count 95, 137,
mandationes 14–16 145–6, 147, 155
Marialba 39 Munio Flaínez 146–8, 155, 159, 165
marital property 70, 170–3 Muslims 11, 26, 30, 126
see also couples, marriage settlements
markets 10, 11, 219 Navarre xiv–xv, 2
marriage settlements 67, 168–73, 183 kings of 13, 20 n. 65
see also morning gift kingdom of 13, 14
masculinity 181–8, 218 notaries see scribes
masses 121, 123, 124, 125, 136 notarius 99
see also liturgy, ritual Nuño Sarracíniz 139, 152
meetings 202, 203, 206 nuns 56–7, 107, 178–80, 185, 190
Melgar 10 n. 22, 39, 196 n. 23, 197,
199, 203, 204, 205 oblates 55
church of Santa Columba in 40, 47 Odoario, count 36–9
Melic, priest 128, 129, 163 Odoíno, monk of Santa Comba 36–8
memorialization 31–4, 123–6, Opila, abbot of San Martín de
130–2, 133–4, 215–16 Turieno 58, 63, 68
men 132, 164–88 orality 101–2, 103
dominance of 166, 170–3, 181 orchards 6, 7, 9, 149, 159, 186,
as donors 130, 141, 172–3 189–93
role of in memorialization 131, 133 ordinary people 16–22
meseta 3, 6 n. 9, 7, 79, 128 see also peasants
arable in 8 Ordoño II, king of Asturias-León 20,
western xiv–xv, 140, 209, 211–12 93, 141
millrace 65, 78 Ordoño III, king of Asturias-León 15,
mills 7, 189–93, 200 93, 95
modii 5, 62 originals see single sheets
monasteries 23, 46–8, 103, 177–80 Orlandis, J. 53–4, 152 n. 54
as beneficiaries 51–2, 54–64, 77, orthography see spelling
116–29, 130–1 Otero de las Dueñas, monastery of
entry into 55–7, 185 Santa María at 25
foundation of 50–2 charters of 24, 76, 79, 95, 119, 121
networks of 60, 62–3, 218 n. 25, 141, 143, 210–11, 213
see also Abellar, Albelda, Arlanza, Oviedo 12, 25, 41
Boñar, Buezo, Cardeña, monastery of San Vicente in 24
Celanova, Leire, Otero de las charters of 24, 76, 119, 121, 211
Dueñas, Oviedo, Piasca, oxen 5, 192, 220
Sahagún, Samos, San Juan de la
Peña, San Miguel de Támara,
San Millán de la Cogolla, Santa pacts, monastic 56, 187
Comba, Santiago, Santo Pamplona see Navarre
Toribio, Santos Cosme y paradise, desire for 89
242 Index
Pardomino mountain 20, 198, 200, profiliation 73, 79, 83–4, 155, 160–1
203 n. 55, 205 property:
monks of 20 appurtenances of 6–8
parishes 45, 201–2 control of 166–73
Passionaries 184 n. 94 division of 69–70, 75, 76–80,
pasture 6 n. 9, 194 n. 16, 200 n. 45 166–7, 170–1, 189–90
pastoral care see care of souls freedom of disposition of 72–5, 76,
patrimony, preservation of 34, 85–7 78, 79, 80, 84, 161, 162, 167,
patrocinium see patronage 173 see also quinta
patronage 57–8, 128–9, 134, 151, held in common 67–9, 74–5, 80–5
154, 160–3, 217 of a household 189, 191–2
see also proprietorship interests of bishops 45–6
Pazos 197, 199, 201 transactions, small-scale 17–18,
peasants 17–22, 108–9, 160, 166, 103–6
189–213, 221 transmission within families
in clientship networks 58–60, 129 of 66–7, 82, 166–7
in court cases 126, 185–7 see also heritability, marital property,
debts of 127–8, 132, 157, 187, marriage settlements,
219–20 transactions
property of 189–93 property rights 127, 165
sharing property 81, 193 of children 72–4, 80
transactions by 52, 78–9, 102 n. 65, family 38–44, 61–3, 65–87
105, 132, 141, 149, 207–13 female 169, 171
see also colonization, communities transfer of vii, 62, 89–91
Pedro Flaínez 96, 140, 144, 148 see also life interest
pequeño propietario 17, 18, 27, 78 proprietorship:
Piasca, nunnery at 8, 47, 59, 187 entrepreneurial 9, 63–4, 75, 86,
piety 113, 115–26, 180, 216 133–4, 212, 217
see also formulas lay 40–52, 63, 218
pigs 5, 6 n. 9, 8, 21, 192 monastic 61–3, 75, 162–3, 212,
place-names 195–7 217
plebes 205 see also churches
Portugal xiv–xv, 12, 25, 82–3, 85, pro remedio animae 116–20
169 protection see clientship networks,
poultry 5 patronage
prayers, regular 50, 57, 116, 120 n. 19, public power 16, 28, 29
122, 124
preambles, formulaic 89, 100 n. 56, queens 174–6
107, 116, 180 n. 72 quintae 76–8, 79
precaria 85, 86, 163 n. 95, 217
prices 5–6, 80, 113, 121, 135, 151, Rabal 189–92, 197
157, 158–9 Ramiro II, king of León 15, 38, 142,
priests 46, 48–9, 192 176
appointment of 45–6, 48 Ramiro III, king of León 20, 40, 94,
grants by 52, 61, 74, 132 174
notarial functions performed rape 145, 181, 182
by 95–7, 103, 106 rebellions 15, 181
see also Melic, Munio Reconquest 26
pro anima cuota 117 records, creation of 49, 91–8, 105–6,
see also quintae 207, 211–13
pro anima gifts 32, 116–20, 133, 135 personal 102, 110–12
n. 83, 216 preservation of 211–13
productivity, agricultural 11, 29 see also cartularies, charters, sales
Index 243
Recosinda 139, 149, 151, 157 San Juan de la Peña, monastery of 25
regional differences 42, 79, 82–3, 119, cartulary of 24, 209, 213
128, 140, 173, 195, 208–9, San Juan en Vega de Infanzones 200,
211–13, 215 201, 205
rents 20, 21, 62, 81, 127, 144, 157, San Martín de Turieno, monastery
187, 198 of 60, 68
Reparado and Trasvinda 185 charters of 91, 105, 119, 121, 141
repopulation 17, 26–7, 29, 36–9, n. 6, 209–11
220–1 patronage of 59–60
ritual, religious 33–4, 49–50, 121, see also Opila, Santo Toribio
131, 143, 208, 218 San Miguel de Támara, monastery of 6,
see also liturgy, masses, 7
memorialization, prayers San Millán de la Cogolla, monastery
roads 8, 189–91 of 11, 25, 61, 124
Rodrigo, count 73, 122 cartulary of 24, 42, 54, 63, 92, 94,
Romance 103–4 119, 140, 209–11
Rosendo, bishop and abbot of dependents of 20 n. 65
Celanova 5, 38, 69, 70, 83 n. 73, patronage of 59
166–7 Santa Comba, monastery of 36–40,
intervention by 129, 199–201 37, 39
Rosenwein, Barbara 32, 58 n. 70, 114 Santa Olalla of Lemos, villa of 1, 11,
n. 3 18 199–200
Santiago in León, nunnery of 40, 164,
Sahagún, monastery of 25, 61, 62 179
n. 82, 124, 217 Santo Toribio, monastery of 25
charters of 23, 42, 54, 76, 79, 91, cartulary of 24, 54, 76
105, 119, 141, 210–13 see also San Martín de Turieno
gifts to 146, 148, 205 Santos Cosme y Damián, monastery
patronage of 59 of 79
saiones 16, 182 Santos Justo y Pastor, monastery of 65,
sales 113–15, 135–8, 152 n. 49, 68, 72, 80, 124
158–60, 186 n. 101 Savarigo and Guestrilli 149, 155, 157
language of 121, 136, 151, 156–60, Schmid, Karl 30–1
157 scribes 89, 93, 94, 95–8, 102–4, 107,
records of 89, 96, 100–1, 104, 108, 206, 214, 219
158, 211, 218–19 training of 99–101
salt 158 scriptor 99
saltpans 21, 65, 77, 78, 190 scripts 99
salvation see pro anima gifts, pro remedio see also writing
animae seigneurialization 12, 28, 194 n. 15,
Samos, monastery of San Julián at 25 217
cartulary of 23, 42, 54, 63, 119, serfs 8, 18, 20–1
209, 211, 213 see also tenure
gifts to 73, 78 service (servitium) see labour service
Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio 10 n. 25, services, church 48–9
17, 26–7, 30, 83–4, 128 n. 59, settlements 6, 9–10, 189, 191–2,
150–1, 194 n. 16 195–7, 202–5
Sancho I, king of León 94 see also houses, villas
Sancho II Garcés Abarca, king of share-cropping 81
Navarre 124, 175, 176 sharing property 80–5, 86, 167
sanctions 88, 89, 106 n. 77, 112, 145 sheep 5, 6, 8, 17, 185, 192, 220
n. 25 shops 11
San Juan Bautista de León 144, 146 siege 145
244 Index
sin, burden of 89, 90, 116 Valdevimbre, monks of 200, 201
single sheets 22, 92 n. 18, 102, 103, Valdoré 146 n. 30, 147, 148
104 n. 70, 106 n. 79, 119–20 Valpuesta, bishopric of 25, 61
slates, inscribed 99 n. 50, 101 cartulary of 24, 54, 76, 126, 209,
slaves 18–20, 168, 169 211
Sobrado de los Monjes, monastery patronage of 59
of 14, 25, 61 valle country 194, 195
cartularies of 23, 54, 81–2, 105, value of property 18, 158, 186 n. 103,
140, 141, 143, 209, 211, 213 219–20
gifts to 65, 68, 73, 80, 160 Verín 197, 199
solidi 6, 184 n. 95, 186 n. 103 Vermudo II, king of Asturias-León 20,
spelling xvi, 102–5 94, 95, 141, 176
status 18, 21–2, 106–9, 195, 215 Vermudo Núñez 146, 148, 155
of donors and founders 52, 130–3, victum et vestimentum 152 n. 54
141 Villabáscones 39, 49, 52, 199, 204
suburbio 9, 10 Villa Motarraf 201, 202 n. 47, 203
Sunilano, confessus 110–12, 177 villas 1, 195, 196–8
support systems 57, 80, 128–9, 139, vineyards 6, 9, 11, 57, 68, 158,
149–54 189–93
violence 181–3
Tajón, fidelis of Ordoño II 20, 141 virginity 182, 183, 184
Taurelo and Principia 70, 139, 157, see also morning gift
159 Visigothic law 66, 67 n. 7, 76, 145
tenants 18–21, 198, 204 n. 26, 167 n. 15, 169
tenure, servile 19–20 see also formulas
Teresa, queen, wife of King Sancho vows 107
I 174–6
terra calva 9 water rights 11, 78, 189–93
terrae indomitae 8–9 White, Stephen 31–2, 114 nn. 4 & 5,
territorial control 14–16, 146–9, 203 115 n. 8
n. 55 widows 176, 178 n. 63, 179
territorial units 195–7, 206 wine 127, 157, 158, 159, 187
theft 127, 144–5, 182, 185 witness lists 88, 93, 94, 98, 106 n. 78,
towns 9–10, 11, 16–17, 206 112, 173
tradespeople 17 wives see couples, women
trado me 53–6 women 132, 153, 164–88
transactions 78 as donors 130, 141, 172–3
in churches and monasteries 41–2, in public 173–6, 188, 218
63, 218 religious 107, 179–81, 218
lay 103, 218 role of in preservation of
numbers of 25–6, 51–2 memory 33–4, 130–1
trees, fruit 7, 9, 11, 18, 186, 189–93 taking the lead 171, 187
see also orchards see also queens, widows
tribal society 28, 84 n. 77, 165, 195 wounding 145
Turieno see San Martín of Turieno writing 49, 99, 100, 211–13
habits of, see diplomatic practice
Urraca, wife of Sancho II Garcés
Abarca 175, 176 Zalame, priest and notarius maior 95
usufruct 86 Zamora 9 n. 21, 10

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AC TS OF G IV IN G

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WENDY DAV IES

This book began in Padua, at a conference on donation post mortem;

1. Setting the Scene 1

0.1 Terms used for regions xv

2.1 Transactions in churches and monasteries 42

A Cartulario de Albelda, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta (Valenc-

Sam El Tumbo de San Julián de Samos (siglos VIII–XII). Estudio

The political geography of Spain was extremely unstable throughout

Figure 0.1 Terms used for regions

There are wide variants in orthographic practice in tenth-century texts,

This book is about northern Spain—so-called ‘Christian’ Spain—in the

Land, land-use, and landscape

admitted planting vines, cultivating ﬁelds, and building houses there.² In

Figure 1.1 Spain—relief and regions of the North

² See below, pp. 196–7 for the word ‘villa’.

By comparison with Britain, Spain is a huge country, and it has a

³ Sob38 (985); see below, p. 8 and pp. 146–8.

Figure 1.2 The Picos de Europa and Santa María de Lebeña

texts about landscape and land-use in tenth-century Spain.⁴ At one

is value in the formulas because they tell us about expectations; while

Figure 1.3 Galicia: looking west from Vila de Cruces

the (relatively rare) speciﬁcations of stock and the (relatively common)

¹⁵ See above, pp. 5–6; S39. ¹⁶ C119 (964). ¹⁷ Cel224 (934).

(terrae domitae and indomitae); in fact, the long perambulations (the

Overall then, although the landscape of northern Spain was in

Kings, counts, and kingdoms

³⁰ For a recent survey in English of political developments, see R. Collins, ‘The

³³ Isla Frez, La alta edad media, 103–9.

of Castile (of the order of 200 km from north to south) or a more

the magistrates who presided at judicial cases; we occasionally hear

⁴⁹ Li230. ⁵⁰ Lii279. ⁵¹ Lii416.

community. The scale of the property interests of many of the actors

the river Carrión, in the territory of Palencia, so that the inhabitants

were only associated with properties in one community, where these

most collections include material from different sources, for a cartulary

a small but important group of 50 charters, mostly on single sheets,

Figure 1.5 Location of sources of the main charter collections used

There are sometimes small numbers of tenth-century charters in other

⁸¹ Documentación medieval de Leire (siglos IX a XII), ed. A. J. Martín Duque

of more than a century of Spanish comment;⁸³ despite that work, there

History and historians: medieval Spain

⁸³ For example, inﬂuential papers such as: C. Sánchez-Albornoz, ‘Las behetrías: la

Figure 1.6 The meseta: the Campos south of Sahagún

American pioneers, the colonizers brought a spirit of freedom to central

⁸⁵ C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires,

⁸⁶ M. Vigil and A. Barbero, ‘Sobre los orígenes sociales de la Reconquista. Cántabros

returns to major landlords. Again, the Santa Olalla cameo of 959 is

History and historians: early medieval giving

churches, recorded in books of commemoration, not only demonstrated

Patrick Geary’s Phantoms of Remembrance, published in 1994,

Italian material into the discussion, that donation for commemoration

This book, then, is an exploration of some of those themes in the

Figure 2.1 The river Limia, near Santa Comba

Figure 2.2 Santa Comba

tenth-century northern Spanish texts.² In fact, the woman Guntroda

C. Sánchez-Albornoz, Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires,

Figure 2.3 Selected churches and monasteries of north-western Iberia

sustained, although continuity of family interest across the intervening

Lubila’s brother Tajón also claimed—unsuccessfully—that his rightful

Figure 2.4 The Liébana valley