We had finished the first entry in this series on the historical parallels between King Alfred of Wessex and King Alfonso III of Asturias by pointing out that there were more aspects in which both reigns are similar and that they would be subject of this second entry. As can be seen, they are of much greater depth and significance than those already reported.
6.- Establishment of a military defense system for his kingdom . It had already been pointed out that both Alfonso and Alfredo took advantage of the truces they agreed with their Muslim and Danish rivals, respectively, to strengthen the military situation of their kingdom and prepare it for the more than foreseeable renewal of hostilities in the following years.
– Alfonso decided that the momentary peace achieved after his two battles won in the year 878 should serve to consolidate not only the southern border of the kingdom, but also the defenses in general, as well as of the organizational structure of the repopulated territories in the last reigns.
Numerous castles were built in this way between the Cantabrian mountain range and the Duero (Luna, Alba, Gordón, La Valcueya), but it was also used to build fortresses on the Asturian coastline (Castrillón , San Martín), in the main communication lines of the kingdom (Curiel, Tudela) and various defensive buildings in the capital of the kingdom, Oviedo.
Furthermore, the movement towards the south of the border line of the kingdom was marked by the construction of different castles along it:Zamora and Toro on the banks of the Duero; Simancas and Dueñas in the Pisuerga; and in the thriving county of Castile, under the command of its second count Diego, the repopulation of the Gothic Fields and Ubierna was undertaken (882). In the east, to prevent new incursions, he commissioned Don Diego to build a fortress on a hill next to the Arlanzón River. That fortress, founded in the year 884, would be the future capital of Castile and would be called Burgos.
Alfonso III also took advantage of the truce to shore up the administrative and religious organization of the kingdom, restoring various episcopal sees from the Visigothic era already on conquered land. In the words of Ruiz de la Peña Solar:«The Great King carried out a policy of ecclesiastical and administrative elevation that manifested the restoration of episcopal sees and the reinforcement of the patronage of Santiago, the creation, frequently on pre-existing establishments, of a first network of proto-urban centers with a clear political-military function, the erection or consolidation of monastic centers».
– For his part, Alfred took the pertinent measures to improve the situation of his kingdom against new incursions by establishing of a chain of fortified cities that ensured that none of his subjects was more than 30 kilometers from a place of refuge. Many of these cities were located on ancient settlements from the Bronze Age or Roman times. He also undertook the construction of a fleet of ships to defend his coasts from the feared Scandinavian ships. He completed the military preparation of his kingdom with the establishment of a communication system through watchtowers that would allow the alarm to be raised quickly in the event of an attack.
7.- Religious sense . For both monarchs, religion was an essential element in the government of their respective kingdoms. Not only because their religious beliefs were deeply rooted, but also because, being Christian kingdoms facing enemies who practiced other religions but in whose domains numerous Christians resided, it was a formidable political weapon.
– During the reign of Alfonso III, faith occupied a very important place. There is evidence of epistolary contacts with the papacy, which came to ask the Asturian king for military help in the face of the Muslim threat in the Italian peninsula and which authorized the construction of a new basilica in Compostela to improve the attack by Alfonso II, after holding a council which took place in Oviedo.
In addition to the aforementioned restoration of ecclesiastical sees in the territories he conquered, the Great King undertook the construction of an important number of churches and monasteries:San Salvador de Valdediós, San Adriano de Tuñón, San Miguel de Villardedeyo, San Pedro de Cardeña, San Benito de Sahagún, among others.
The Asturian monarchs, starting with Alfonso III, also relied on existing ecclesiastical headquarters to strengthen their power. As Carvajal Castro indicates, "the monasteries and the episcopal sees played a fundamental role in the integration of the Meseteño spaces in the Asturian monarchy."
It also stands out, due to its symbolism, the making and donation to the cathedral of Oviedo to celebrate the centenary of another donation (that of the Cross of the Angels by Alfonso II), of the magnificent Cruz de la Victoria, which covered with spectacular goldsmith work what, in theory, was the wooden cross that Don Pelayo carried in Covadonga and that was in the church of Santa Cruz de Cangas de Onís, built by Favila. This cross is currently the emblem of Asturias.
– Alfredo traveled to Rome as a child to visit the Pope. He surely had to do with the fact that, having three older brothers, he was initially destined for a religious career. This experience left a deep mark on him. The religion was a political instrument in the fight against the Danish pagans in whose kingdoms numerous Christians resided and a beacon that marked the way of a recovery for Christianity in the old province of Britannia. If any sense of unity existed between these different Saxon kingdoms, it was no doubt due to Christianity, which coined the term 'Church of England', when England was politically far from existing as a nation. This did not prevent the different monarchies from contending with each other for a long time.
In addition to this political component, religion personally became an essential element of the king's life. A monk who knew Alfredo left the following testimony:«the king attends religious services daily; he is always praying and reciting psalms. He goes to church at night to pray secretly without the nobles knowing about him».
Some sources suggest that his deep Christian sense was what led him to forgive Guthrum after his victory at Edington in exchange for the Dane being baptized. We have already seen that both one and the other probably had other, more political motivations to agree to carry out this ceremony.
8.- Writing «historical» chronicles . One of the most remarkable characteristics of the reigns of Alfonso and Alfredo was their eagerness to write down the history of their respective kingdoms. It is true that for both the objective pursued with these chronicles was more related to their expansionist ambitions than to historical reliability. We will discuss this objective in the next section, focusing here on listing the documents produced.
– The first chronicle of the kingdom of Asturias from the reign of Alfonso III is the so-called Albendense Chronicle , completed around the year 883, so called because the copy that is preserved comes from the monastery of La Albelda (La Rioja), which tells a universal story, albeit with a hagiographic account of the monarch during whose mandate this work was written. A few years later the Crónica alfonsina was written , so called because it is believed that it was written by Alfonso III himself or with a very direct influence from him, which narrates the history of the Visigoth and Asturian kingdoms, from Wamba to Ordoño I. The Rotensian version of this chronicle (so called because it is known through a codex preserved in Roda) is more concise and with a more popular approach. The version ad Sebastianum from the Alfonsine Chronicle (so named because it is headed by a letter from Alfonso III to someone named Sebastián) is more careful and seems to be a cultured evolution of the Rotense, polished by Sebastián himself, probably a bishop, at the request of Alfonso III.
– The main source of narration of the events that occurred in Anglo-Saxon England it is known as the AngloSaxon Chronicle , a series of annals that recount what happened on the island from the withdrawal of the Roman army in the fourth century to the Norman invasion in the year 1066. Its writing began to be elaborated in the reign of Alfred the Great, as in the case of the Asturians in the 880s and, also as in the case of the Alfonsine chronicles, their historical reliability is doubtful, especially with regard to the reign of Alfredo himself, who was more concerned with the propagandistic effects he was pursuing than with the veracity of what he said. reported.
9.- Dreams of unification of Christian territory . Perhaps the most significant element in this relationship of parallels between the reigns of Alfred of Wessex and Alfonso III of Asturias, and at the same time the most relevant to explain the historical importance of both monarchs, is the one that refers to their claims to establish a kingdom as extensive as possible, looking in the mirror of previous forms of unified government in the Iberian Peninsula in the case of Alfonso and in part of the island of Great Britain in the case of Alfredo.
– In the 880s, the Emirate of Cordoba was in a situation of decomposition caused by the advance of the Christian domains and by internal rebellions in places like Mérida, Toledo, Ronda or Zaragoza, which made the emirate only effectively control the area near Córdoba. This encouraged the Asturian monarch to dream of recovering all the possessions of Visigoth Hispania and motivated the writing of the chronicles that we have cited and his claim that the Asturian monarchy be heir to the Visigoth. Ruiz de la Peña Solar draws attention to the fact that "the name of Spain, as the seat of a community, of a nation that temporarily sees itself, in part, subjected to a strange power, that of the Muslims, but that in every case is conceived and expressed as a unit, it appears again and again, with insistence, in the three texts that make up the historiographical cycle of Alfonso III».
But Asturias was not the only Christian domain on the Peninsula. On its eastern border was the kingdom of Pamplona. The Pamplona monarch, Fortún Íñiguez, was imprisoned in Córdoba and governed in his name García Jiménez, although the Arista, Velasco and Jimeno families were still strong in the region.
And further east, in the Hispanic March, the crisis of the Frankish kingdom took its toll and local aristocrats tried to take advantage and become independent. Thus, Galindo Aznárez governed Aragón, Count Ramón governed Pallars-Ribagorza and Wilfredo el Velloso, Count of Barcelona, also ruled the counties of Urgel, Cerdaña, Gerona and Osona.
Ruiz de la Peña draws attention to what the appearance of these new Christian powers in the Peninsula, outside the Kingdom of Asturias, means. He indicates that it:
[…] forced Alfonso III to a type of formulation of his own authority that expressed the hegemonic aspiration of his kingdom in which he seemed called to be and to a shared and not exclusive company of the Asturian-Leonese monarchy, of recovering Christian rule over all of Spain. In this context, […] the use by the last monarch of Oviedo of a new title should be interpreted, already in the final stage of his reign, absent until then from his own documents and previous royal diplomas […]:« Hispaniae rex ».
In the same sense, Molina Molina points out that:
[…] in a letter addressed in 906 by the Oviedo monarch (Alfonso III) to the clergy and people of Tours, of doubtful authenticity, but not absolutely recusable, that one is entitled Hispaniae rex; and his son Ordoño II and his subjects call him on various occasions magni imperatori e imperatori nostro. These diplomatic testimonies reinforce the pretensions to the peninsular domain that, at least theoretically, Alfonso III maintained.
-As regards Alfred of Wessex , began his task of recovering Christian territories by the kingdom of Mercia. In the 880s he was elected as earl of Mercia a Saxon nobleman named Aethelred. In the year 883 he swore allegiance to Alfred, who also granted Aethelred the hand of his daughter Aethelflaed.
In the year 886 the King of Wessex delegated his authority over the city of London to Aethelred. London had traditionally belonged to the kingdom of Mercia, but the fact that Alfred, who had conquered it with his own forces at great cost, delegated authority to Aethelred was a clever image operation in the face of the Danelaw Saxons, since it showed that the king of Wessex respected the traditions of the rest of the kingdoms. It was one more way, added to the fame of his conquests and military victories, of earning the respect and admiration of the non-Wessex Saxon population.
It must be taken into account that, among the different Saxon kingdoms that existed on the island of Great Britain, Mercia had been the predominant one during the 8th century, so this subjugation to the primacy of Wessex carried great symbolism.
Alfred's final claim was aimed at consolidating the idea of Wessex not as one more of the island's Saxon kingdoms, but as the kingdom, the only Saxon domain over all of England free of Danes. While his predecessors were called rex Westsaxonum or rex Occindentalium Saxonum , from about 880 documents produced at Alfred's court increasingly referred to him as rex Anglorum et Saxonum or as Aelfred Angul-Saxorum rex . In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Alfredo's entry into London in the year 886 is thus recounted:"and in him all the English who did not live under Danish slavery placed their hopes." It can be said that the Viking invasions and the agreements signed between Alfredo and Guthrum laid the foundations of a unified Anglo-Saxon England.
Thus, the battle of Edington was, for the Wessex chroniclers, a struggle of the representatives of the English essence against the invading barbarians in which the survival of the spirit was at stake. from England. It is not really known who made up the bulk of Alfred's army and it is possible that Guthrum's army was fought by native Saxons from Mercia and East Anglia. But for the ideological narrative pursued by the chroniclers of Alfred and his successors, it was essential to project this image and qualify as Vikings those who were as British as they were.
For these reasons and for having stopped the Danish invasion and recovered more territory than was initially part of the kingdom of Wessex, he is considered by many to be the first English king and is known by the title of "the Great".
Conclusion
The reigns of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, and Alfonso III the Great, King of Asturias, not only coincided in time, but the two monarchs successfully confronted non-Christian enemies who had settled in the two old provinces Romans of Britannia and Hispania and both expanded their domains at the expense of these rivals. Both Alfredo and Alfonso set themselves the goal of having their kingdoms reoccupy those lands and put all their military, diplomatic and religious efforts at the service of this idea and for this they wrote chronicles in which the ideal of a Christian England and Spain was reflected. and united under his crown, prioritizing the propagandistic objective over historical veracity. It is true that in both cases it was necessary to wait a long time and that it was his successors who completed the task, but Alfredo and Alfonso paved the way for the kings who sat on the throne after them.
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