Since the fall of the Roman Empire we have witnessed an atomization of the political space that entails a desperate lack of documents. Of the first king of Asturias we do not have any reliable source that tells us about his origins and that he was contemporary with his early years, in addition, as García Noriega says, [1] Pelayo Unlike Arturo, he had no one to sing his deeds.
Despite all the difficulties, we can try to shed some light with the available materials, since we have Arabic and Christian sources, which despite their ideological bias can serve our purpose , as long as they are read with the necessary precautions, since nobody escapes, that in the case of the chronicle of Alfonso III, these texts seek the legitimation of the monarchy itself , connecting with the ancient Visigoth royalty, through Pelayo, an approach that is very unlikely, as we will see.
To begin the approach to the search for Pelayo's origins, we must begin by clarifying the dominant socio-political panorama in the region in which he starred in the events that concern us here . There is a general opinion among specialists of this period according to which, after the fall of the Roman Empire, there was an emergence of local powers, which would strengthen its domination over small regions or valleys. Thus, we would witness in the Asturian territory a resurgence of the tribal or gentile society, present in this region before the arrival of Rome and that after the conquest could not have been completely eliminated. This starting point used in his day by Barbero and Vigil, is currently defended, with nuances, by scholars such as Fernández Conde[2] or Chris Wickham,[3] so it would be this type of tribal society that Pelayo would have led in the battle of Covadonga , a society capable of organizing its territory and establishing alliances with other local chiefdoms to deal with larger threats. In this regard, it is interesting to recall a piece of news that can be taken as a precedent for what happened in the famous battle that made Pelayo famous, and that is that, according to the Visigoth chronicles, in the year 680 King Wamba set sail for Asturias to suffocate a revolt. This news coincides with the findings of the latest archaeological excavations carried out in the surroundings of La Boya peak and Homón de Faro, both on the Carisa road, the point of entry to Asturias from the plateau. In this environment there are a series of defensive constructions used in this early Middle Ages, but in a time before the events of Covadonga. The location of these walls, together with the news of the Wamba campaign, gives us an idea of the existence of a local power, jealous of its own freedom and capable of mobilizing large numbers of men and material resources to organize its defense, in an area that exceeds 1500 meters of altitude.
Therefore, if we accept the implantation of a gentile-type society in Asturias, with a high degree of political independence in Visigothic times, capable of revolting against the kingdom of Toledo, it will be easier to understand the development of subsequent events, and begin to suspect that whoever leads the revolt against the Muslims cannot be foreign to the territory in which the confrontation takes place and that the origin of that leader was hardly Visigothic.
There are another series of considerations that lead us to rule out the Visigothic origin of Pelayo, starting with his own name, which is not of Germanic descent, but Roman. Despite the fact that the chronicle of Alfonso III makes a determined effort to present the Asturian monarch as belonging to the Visigoth lineage, it is not likely that a high-ranking individual among the Visigoths used a Latin anthroponym . It should not be forgotten that the editors of the Chronicle write their texts with a clear desire to legitimize the Asturian monarchy itself, trying to connect the court of Oviedo with that of Toledo, Pelayo being the link that unites both extremes.
Islamic authors such as Ibn Khaldun also reject a Gothic origin for the protagonist of Covadonga.
Thus things are, at present the vast majority of historians support the idea of the Andalusian polygraph, as Eduardo Manzano says, «the possibility of a Visigothic origin of Pelayo is quite remote ». [4]
Pelayo, an Asturian nobleman?
Given that the Visigothic origin of the first king of Asturias seems to be ruled out, and since it is not likely that his origin was Islamic, we should be inclined to think of Pelayo as a character autochthonous . The chronicles of the kingdom of Asturias show, in the words of Ruiz de la Peña, "a desperate laconicism"[5] with which they can contribute little to clarify this matter, however, among the non-chronistic documentation we find a really interesting text. It is the will of Alfonso III in which he donates the church of Santa María de Tiñana . This building would have been received by his predecessor, Alfonso II as part of the inheritance of his great-grandfather, Pelayo himself. Thus, this news confirms that Pelayo was the owner of land and properties in the center of Asturias, with which we are dealing with a person belonging to the upper echelons of that tribal society that we mentioned earlier.
Up to here the news and investigations prior to the events strictly related to Covadonga, from this point the chronicles offer an account of the events in which the confirmation of the autochthonous hypothesis of the first Asturian monarch.[6] According to the Rotense chronicle, Pelayo was in Brece, a town located in the current council of Piloña, in eastern Asturias, when he was warned that the Muslims were after him, upon hearing the news he crossed the Piloña river and headed to Mount Auseva, place where he is chosen by the Astures and where the confrontation with the Islamic troops will take place. The fact that Pelayo was chosen as chief of operations presents us with a society in which the different local chiefs ceded their authority to someone of confirmed prestige, and the existence of links between the groups of the center and the east, as highlighted by the subsequent transfer of the short to Pravia. In any case, the most striking thing is the fact that he was chosen princeps in the way he was , Well, as Mínguez rightly says «Pelayo is chosen as princeps; but not in the Roman or Visigothic sense of the term, but rather as the person in charge of directing military operations.”[7] The same author also draws attention to the egalitarianism that exists between the different leaderships, and how strange it is that after Covadonga, Pelayo managed to retain that supremacy among those who had been his equals, and inaugurate a successor dynasty, perhaps thanks to the prestige obtained in combat.
After the failure of the punitive operation against the insurgents, the Islamic column that followed Pelayo chooses to retreat, but does not retrace his steps in an attempt to unite their forces to those of the garrison stationed in Gijón under the command of Munuza, if not in an easterly direction towards the Liébana region, surely because it offered greater advantages, in terms of security, to reach the plateau and not have to cross an Asturias that would seem to be experiencing a general uprising.
On the other hand, and according to the information offered by the Visigothic chronicles, this area has been uninhabited since Leovigild's campaigns, so it could cause few inconveniences to a retreating column; In turn, the Asturian chronicles confirm this assumption by stating that part of the work of Alfonso I was to repopulate the territories of Primorias and Liébana. The fact is that this column did not come out of these valleys intact because they were buried by one of those frequent avalanches or argayos which is the name that land displacements receive in local terminology.
As for Munuza, upon learning of the disaster of the punitive expedition sent against Pelayo, he decided to leave Asturias through the port of La Mesa, following the valley of the Trubia river, but not it achieves its objective because they are reached by the Astures in Olalies and there they found death. The Olalíes episode It is the continuation of Covadonga and conveys the vision of an Asturias on a war footing, with a theater of operations that goes at least from Onís in the east, to Proaza in the center. Pelayo, who led the actions in Covadonga, must have also organized the response in Olalies, thus reinforcing the image of a local leader, with strong ties to the territory and a good connoisseur of that same territory.
Bibliography
- Aguirre Cano, V.M. The construction of Asturian royalty:power, territory and communication in the High Middle Ages. Santander 2018.
- Arrau-Dihigo, L. Political history of the Asturian Kingdom (718–910) . Gijon 1985.
- Barber, A; Vigil Pascual, M. The formation of feudalism in the Iberian Peninsula . Barcelona 1978.
- Isla Frez, A. The Chronicle of Alfonso III and the Asturian Kingdom . Oviedo 2019.
- Manzano, E. Historias de España. Medieval times. Barcelona 2015
- Ruiz de la Peña, J. I. The Asturian Monarchy. Oviedo 2001.
- VV. AA. Chronicles of the kingdoms of Asturias and León. Leon 1985.
- VV. AA. The kingdom of Hispania (8th-12th centuries). Madrid 2019.
- Wickham, C. A New History of the High Middle Ages:Europe and the Mediterranean World 400-800. Barcelona 2016.
Notes
[1]García Noriega http://www.nodulo.org/ec/2006/n053p13.htm
[2]F. J. Fernandez Count. Social and political powers in Asturias. 8th-10th centuries. Territory society power.
[3]Chris Wickham. A new history of the High Middle Ages:Europe and the Mediterranean world 400-800, page 339.
[4]E. Manzano Stories of Spain. medieval times p. 109
[5]J. I. Ruiz de la Peña. The Asturian Monarchy.
[6]Despite using the expression "Asturian monarch" or "King of Asturias" in allusion to Pelayo, perhaps these terms should be used strictly from the reign of Alfonso II.
[7]J. M. Minguez. The kingdom of Hispania p. 155