Introduction
The royal women of the Middle Ages are a fascinating object of study. Not only because of the unfair neglect to which they have sometimes been subjected, but also because their life events usually represent a much richer picture than that of men from the same period. A medieval king is usually king of Aragon or Castile, son of another king of Aragon and Castile and father, in turn, of a king of Aragon or Castile. Women, due to the role they played as currency for the capricious games of alliances of the time, offer a much broader range of references to different domains and political ups and downs between their paternal and maternal family, that of their husbands and that of their their sons and daughters.
All Aznárez is one of the main examples of a medieval woman with family ties to different kingdoms and counties of her time. In her case, moreover, her ties were not limited to the domains of the Christian zone of the Peninsula, but also extended to the emirate, first, and the caliphate, later, of Córdoba. And that family relationship with al-Andalus was not just anecdotal, but had enormous importance in peninsular history. This was due to Toda's role as a key political element of her time.
In the 19th century, Queen Victoria followed an active policy of marriage alliances that meant that in the following decades practically all the crowned heads in Europe were descendants of the British queen and that she was known as "the grandmother of Europe". The case of Toda Aznárez can be considered comparable to that of Victoria with regard to the kingdoms, counties and domains of the peninsular Middle Ages.
1.- Origin of Toda Aznárez and links with al-Andalus
Toda's mother was one of the daughters of the king of Pamplona, Fortún Garcés, named Onneca Fortúnez. Father and daughter were captured by the Muslims in the year 860 and taken to Córdoba where they remained until approximately the year 880. During his captivity, Fortún nominally continued to hold the title of King of Pamplona, but effective government was exercised in his absence by Count García Jiménez.
This ended up leading to a dynastic change in the kingdom of Pamplona, because although after his return Fortún Garcés (from the Arista dynasty) returned to the throne, García's sons Jiménez, first Íñigo Garcés and then his brother Sancho Garcés, continued to be a powerful force in the kingdom. This was so to such an extent that in the year 905 Fortún Garcés ended up renouncing the crown in favor of Sancho Garcés I, the first king of the Jimena dynasty. This resignation was carried out without violence, perhaps due to Fortún's age (he was already eighty years old), who retired to the Leyre monastery until his death. Contributing to this peaceful transition was the fact that the new king's seizure of power had the support of King Alfonso III of Asturias and the counts of Aragon and of Pallars and Ribagorza.
As for the daughter of Fortún Garcés, Onneca, during their captivity in Córdoba she married the emir Abdalá I, with whom she had a son named Muhammad. She later returned to Pamplona with her father and there she married a nobleman named Aznar Sánchez, from whom our protagonist was born. Therefore, Toda had a Muslim half-brother in Córdoba who was the son of the emir, named Muhammad. He did not inherit the title from his father, but the one who did was his own son:Abderramán III, the man who turned Córdoba into a caliphate. In other words, the powerful first Caliph of Córdoba was the nephew of Toda Aznárez.
To complete the picture of the complex relations of Toda's maternal family, we cannot fail to refer to his connection with the important Muslim family of Visigothic origin, the Banu Qasi, settled in the Saragossa area. The wife of Fortún Garcés and mother of Onecca was a member of that family, granddaughter of Musa ibn Musa, who in his time was known as "the third king of Spain", due to his powerful position between the Christian domains and a, then, decadent emirate of Córdoba.
Having established the bases of the family ties of the ancestors of Toda Aznárez, it is time to deal with the ties that she established by her marriage and by her descendants.
2.- Marriage and children of Toda Aznárez:the spider web of family alliances in the Peninsula
Dynasty changes were delicate moments in the kingdoms of the Middle Ages, often involving violent confrontations between the new monarchs and the surviving members of the families evicted from power. Sometimes this problem was put an end to by arranging the marriage of the new king or his children with one of the women belonging to the outgoing dynasty. In this way, the descendant of that union would carry the blood of both families and doubts about the legitimacy of the reigning dynasty would dissipate.
2.1.- Toda's Marriage :We have already commented that the change from the Arista dynasty to the Jimena dynasty in Pamplona in the 10th century was carried out peacefully and with the support of neighboring kingdoms and counties. But when the time came to look for a wife for Sancho Garcés I (his first wife, the Aragonese Urraca Galíndez, had died or had been disowned) an ideal candidate, due to the nobility of her blood and her belonging to the Arista family, was Toda. Aznárez, who thus became queen consort of Pamplona.
2.2.- Offspring :a son was born from the marriage between the two, García Sánchez I, who inherited the throne in 925 when his father died and who ruled until his death in 970. They also had four daughters, Sancha, Urraca, Velasquita and Onneka. In the Peninsula at that time the most powerful Christian domain along with that of Pamplona was the Kingdom of León. Unlike Pamplona, which in the sixty-five years after the rise to the throne of the Jimena dynasty only had two kings, in León in the same period there were up to ten monarchs. It was not surprising, then, that the daughters of the kings of Pamplona were destined to marry successive kings of Leon. Toda played an important role in the design of this game of conjugal alliances of her descendants for the benefit of the Pamplona kingdom.
2.3.- Links of the daughters of Toda with kings of León :Sancha married Ordoño II (King of León between 914 and 924). Ordoño had been married twice before and had several children. Two of them in turn married daughters of Toda Aznárez:Onneca married Alfonso IV (926-931), who succeeded Ordoño II after a period of struggles for the throne. Onneca died in the year 930 and her husband decided first to retire (according to some sources because of the pain he felt at the death of his wife) and become a monk. When in the year 931 he repented and tried to recover the throne, it had been inherited by his brother Ramiro II, who captured and ordered his brother Alfonso to be blinded.
Ramiro II was already married but, possibly with the intervention of Toda Aznárez, he repudiated his wife and, like his father and brother, married another of the daughters of the kings of Pamplona, Urraca, who thus became queen of León along with Ramiro II (931-951). Toda Aznárez was thus the mother of three queens of León and, as a consequence of their offspring, the grandmother of two other Leonese monarchs (Sancho I and Ordoño IV) who disputed the throne with an important participation of his grandmother Toda.
2.4.- Marriages to ally with neighboring counties :Toda's fourth daughter, Velasquita, after a failed marriage to the Biscayan Count Munio Vela, after his death she was engaged and married a brother of the Count of Ribagorza, another of the neighboring counties.
But the game of marriage alliances for her daughters concocted by Toda Aznárez did not end here. Sancha, who had been widowed by Ordoño II, was still young and an excellent match for the nobles of the area. She was thus given in marriage to the count of the important county of Álava, belonging to the kingdom of León but bordering Pamplona, Álvaro Herraméliz. And when he died, around 930, he was still able to find an even better match for Sancha; neither more nor less than the head of the thriving county of Castilla, Fernán González. For him, the union was also very convenient, since it made him the brother-in-law of his lord, the king of León, Ramiro II, forged an alliance with the neighboring kingdom of Pamplona and, not least, he was related to the widow of the county of Álava . This made it easier for Ramiro to grant him the title of Count of Álava, which he joined with the one he already held as Count of Castile. Fernán González thus became a very powerful character within the kingdom of León, but (contrary to legend) neither during his mandate nor afterwards did the county of Castile become independent from the Kingdom of León.
2.5.- Family ties with Córdoba :meanwhile, in al-Andalus, Toda's nephew, Abderramán III, proclaimed himself caliph in the year 929 and undertook a government task that would not only lead him to dominate all of Muslim Spain, but would also make him the arbiter of disputes between the contenders to dominate the Christian kingdoms, a role in which Toda once again played a very prominent role due to his family relationship with the caliph.
There were still more marriage alliances to forge for Queen Toda, but for that we had to wait for one of her grandchildren to grow up and, in the meantime, our protagonist had an active role to play in your realm and neighboring domains.
3.- Regent of Pamplona:pacts with the caliphate
When her husband Sancho Garcés I died in 925, Toda's son and successor to his father, García Sánchez I was just a child, which made it necessary for a figure to bear power in his name. Initially, Toda was accompanied in government by her son's tutor, named Jimeno. When he died in 931, Toda began to exercise power directly on behalf of his youngest son. And shortly after, the importance of Toda Aznárez in the complicated peninsular political panorama of the 10th century was to become clear.
Abderramán carried out an attack against the Christian north of the peninsula in the year 934 that began with a systematic campaign of looting and destruction throughout the Castilian counties before heading to the Kingdom of Pamplona. There, his aunt the regent Toda, on behalf of her son, García Sánchez, and to save his inheritance, recognized Abderramán as lord, declaring "his complete submission and his disregard of the other Christian kings, allies, relatives, etc. ., so that they would stop helping them and harming the Muslims, opening their paths and helping the kadis of the border against all insurgents.”
This pact would not last long, because in the year 937, in which Abderramán conquered Zaragoza by putting down a local rebellion, the caliph sent a successful punitive expedition against Pamplona, understand that Queen Toda had broken her commitment not to rise up against the caliphate, by helping the rebels from Zaragoza.
4.- Christian alliances:the battle of Simancas
In the year 939 the caliph called his subjects to holy war and set out from his capital on June 29, 939. A huge Muslim army headed towards León, but in his path stopped before the fortress of Simancas, which would be a military risk to leave behind without conquering. Aware of the importance of this campaign, Ramiro II himself awaited the enemy in Simancas, along with his subjects Fernán González and the Count of Monzón, Asur Fernández, among other notables. For the purposes that interest us here, among those magnates was his ally García Sánchez I of Pamplona, who was already of legal age.
After several days of battle with uncertain results and without being able to break the Christians despite their numerical superiority, the Muslim army began to retreat towards the Duero, being harassed in the retreat by the Leonese and suffering, now, a heavy defeat, in addition to the defection of some of the leaders of its border forces. The Andalusian force (about eighty thousand men) was annihilated in the Alhándega ravine. The caliph himself was about to be captured.
The First Castilian Annals (written almost immediately after the battle, in the year 940) narrate what happened as follows:«there the Ishmaelites were scattered, killed and despoiled. The worshipers of Christ rejoiced, they returned to their homes with rich booty and Galletia, Castile, Álava and Pamplona became rich with their spoils.”
Some later chronicles, most likely more interested in epic legend than historical accuracy, even noted that Toda herself was present at the battle. And not only that, but she did it by engaging in combat with her sword. This meant that in the following decades there was talk in Europe of a peninsular warrior queen, named Tuta, who was a kind of Boudica, the British warrior queen who fought against the Roman domination of her island.
The battle of Simancas, due to the importance of its result in the survival and consolidation of the Kingdom of León and due to the alliance of Christian forces that fought in it (all the counties and future kingdoms derived from that of León, including the Castilians of Fernán González and a Navarrese force), can be compared in its significance with the one that took place almost three centuries later in Las Navas de Tolosa.
As for Toda, he still had a lot to cut in the history of the peninsular Middle Ages. And to this we will dedicate the second post of this series.
Women in History. All Aznárez, the matchmaker queen.
County of Castile. Toda Aznárez, wife of Sancho I Garcés of Pamplona.
Image| Wikimedia Commons
Family Trees elaborated by Ventura Contents for the book From Covadonga to Tamarón.