Chapter 11. Meanings and Functions of the Royal Portraits of the Navarrese Dynasty in the Kingdom of León, 1038-1109

Abstract

The Kingdom of León came into being when the Asturian dynasty selected the city of León, originally a Roman military encampment, as its new political capital and the site of the coronation of the reges Legionis. The borders of the kingdom changed over the centuries, due to conflicts with the Umayyad Caliphate (929–1031), the Taifa dominions (1031–1092), the Almoravid Empire (1062–1147), the Almohad Empire (1147–1269), and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Portugal. The regnum Legionense existed as a self-sufficient sovereign entity from 910 to 1230.1 García i (r. 910–914), Ordoño ii (r. 914–924), and Fruela ii (r. 924–925) were the first three monarchs to rule from the civitas of León and were the sons of Alfonso iii (r. 866–910), the last sovereign to locate the seat of his power in Oviedo. This continuity meant that Asturian regal authority continued in León throughout the 10th century and into the first third of the 11th century. The rulers of the walled city claimed a connection with the long extinct and yearned-for kingdom of the Visigoths.2 Dynastic change came, however, after the rule of Bermudo iii (r. 1028–1037), who perished in the Battle of Tamarón at the hands of his brother-in-law Fernando de Navarra (r. 1038–1065). After this struggle, the wife of Fernando and sister of Bermudo iii, Sancha Alfónsez (1037–1067), became queen and the de facto last representative of the Asturian-Leonese line. Her children – Urraca of Zamora, Sancho ii of Castile (r. 1065–1072), Elvira of Toro, Alfonso vi of León (r. 1065–1109), and García ii of Galicia (r. 1066–1072) – as descendants of Fernando i, were sovereigns of the Navarrese dynasty (1038–1126).3 This line lasted until the death of Urraca (r. 1109–1126), who – with her husband, the princeps Raimundo of Burgundy (1070–1107) – produced a son and successor, Alfonso vii (r. 1126–1157), the first Leonese king of the Burgundian dynasty.

The present study analyses the images of royal sovereignty produced under the patronage and protection of the Leonese king and founder of the Navarrese dynasty, Fernando i, and his family, namely his wife Sancha, his firstborn daughter, the infanta Urraca, and his second-born son, King Alfonso vi. The images are found in private manuscripts, in rarely seen reliquaries, in murals for private funerary spaces, as well as in coinage and monumental sculpture, which were potentially on view to all members of society.4 A lack of space prevents me from analysing the royal images produced during the rule of the final representative of the dynasty, Queen Urraca, the firstborn daughter of Alfonso vi and the first queen to govern in her own right in medieval Hispania.5

The choice of this subject matter also gestures beyond the Navarrese dynasty itself in contextualizing the radical change that began with Fernando i with regard to the relationship between monarchs and their images. The surviving artefacts show that there was no figurative royal iconography in the Kingdoms of Asturias6 and León prior to the arrival of the Navarrese and their visual culture. However, it is well known that from the 10th century in the Kingdom of Pamplona, representations of monarchs reflected both the present and the Visigothic past. It can be inferred that the iconographic proliferation of the royal countenance in León during the mid-11th century was a response to the figurative culture in which Fernando i had been steeped since his infancy and of which he wanted to make judicious use. Royal images were a practical resource for this monarch, who implemented diligent administrative, ecclesiastic, fiscal, and artistic policies. He was a ruler who, above all, sought to make his kingdom predominant in the face of his native Navarre. Through the sword (the 1037 Battle of Tamarón and the 1054 Battle of Atapuerca),7 through ecclesiastic decrees (Council of Coyanza, 1055),8 and through art, Fernando i and Sancha managed to preserve Castile for León and, because of that, become the most powerful of the Iberian Christian sovereigns