Weddings in History: Ritual and Financial Exchange in Tenth-Century Christian Spain

By Jessica Knauss 

Image by Gerard Belfast (Flickr)

Chaucer's Wife of Bath speaks of having husbands "at church door." She couldn't have even considered the interior of a church as a venue for her five weddings, not because the husbands' families weren't religious, but because marriage was not yet a formal sacrament of the Catholic Church.

Because I'd read the Canterbury Tales long before, when it came time for me to write about the tenth-century wedding where things start to go wrong in Seven Noble Knights, I knew what the ceremony wouldn't look like... but, like Judith Starkston, I knew I couldn't just skim over what could be some dramatic, tension-filled, character-building moments. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 required a priest to bless the union and the publication of banns, but my novel takes place more than 200 years before that.

In Seven Noble Knights, the wedding (and especially the bride) is observed by the bride's new nephew-in-law, a fifteen-year-old who may not understand everything he sees, but is a keen observer. So I delved into what little we know about early marriage ceremonies.

Statue of Isidore of Seville outside the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

No wedding could take place without a betrothal. Isidore of Seville (560–636), the most influential and prolific Latin writer after Augustine (and more or less a "local boy" for Seven Noble Knights) described many features of a betrothal: The woman is escorted by married women to the wedding site; the couple joins hands, which are bound with a cord; an officiant spreads a veil over the couple, untying the woman's hair; the couple receives crowns or garlands; the bride and groom exchange rings in an Iberian display of equality; and the bride is escorted to her new home. Isidore also recommended that the engagement ring be worn on the fourth finger because a vein led directly from it to the heart. Isidore doesn't mention it, but most other sources report a kiss or some other physical sign of commitment.

The betrothal in Seven Noble Knights is off-the-cuff because the bride and groom are just meeting for the first time. Although the groom's sister is prepared with a cord for the handfasting, the groom is too astounded with the bride's beauty to seal the promise with a kiss. I reserved the other rituals for the wedding itself because there is so little written about these ceremonies, which seem to have held less legal importance than the first promises of the betrothal.

A magic circle preserved in stone outside the cathedral door in Arcos de la Frontera.

The presence of the clergy at a wedding in 974 might have seemed unusual. A priest might bless the couple and spread incense smoke over the bridal bed, because the emphasis is still on the consummation of the union. I included these elements in my tenth-century wedding, but the lack of Church presence also left space for rituals of pre-Christian origin.

Because the Visigoths, who took over the peninsula at the fall of Rome, were so Romanized, Spain lacks a lot of the pagan/Catholic syncretism that defines other European versions of Christianity. That must be why I was so impressed with a magic circle I saw outside the cathedral door in Arcos de la Frontera. It was said to be used for the ritual cleansing of infants before baptism. In Seven Noble Knights, the married women escort the bride into a magic circle the groom's sister has just drawn and decorated with pungent herbs.

I knew my readers wouldn't believe a wedding without some kind of set vow, but it shouldn't include any mention of God or eternity for this secular ceremony. The earliest vow I found came from the twelfth-century jurist, Gratian. His preoccupation with weddings is restricted to the explicit willingness of both bride and groom, and his words work well: "I receive you as mine, so that you become my wife and I your husband." It emphasizes the equality of the participants, but also that this is an economic exchange above all.

Continuing with the economic theme, in my version of a tenth-century wedding, the bride and groom discuss dowry and bride price and the Count of Castile orally confirms which lands the couple will govern together after they've said the vows. They also pass coins back and forth to each other in a reflection of a ritual still seen in Spanish weddings today.

The lack of knowledge about weddings in the early Middle Ages, at first frustrating, ended up giving me an exceptional opportunity to link the present and past creatively with new meanings appropriate to the story.

Jessica Knauss earned her PhD in Medieval Spanish with a dissertation on the portrayal of Alfonso X’s laws in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which has been published as the five-star-rated Law and Order in Medieval Spain. Look for her book of short stories based on the Cantigas, coming 2021. A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss has edited many fine historical novels and is a bilingual freelance editor. Her historical novel, Seven Noble Knights, will be published in December 2020 by Encircle Publishing. Find out more about it here, and her other writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too!

HEA or Not: Urraca of León-Castile and Alfonso I of Aragón

By Jessica Knauss

A Marriage That Sparked Rebellion, Sieges, and Battles

She was the Queen of Castile. He was the King of Aragón. Their marriage could unite two dynasties and create the most powerful kingdom in Western Europe…

You might think I’m referring to the 1479 union of Isabel and Fernando, the Reyes Católicos, one of the most successful monarchical couples in history (and profiled beautifully here). But this Queen of Castile and King of Aragón were married 370 years before Isabel and Fernando. The marriage of Urraca of León and Castile and Alfonso I of Aragón was an experiment in nation-building that failed miserably, perhaps to pave the way for the later success of the Reyes Católicos.

Statue of Urraca in the Parque del Buen Retiro
(Photo by Jessica Knauss)

Before this explosive marriage, Urraca had already been a child bride, given birth to the boy who would be Alfonso VII, and become Queen of León and Castile. She married her first husband at the age of eight. Historical evidence suggests that the marriage was consummated when she was all of thirteen. She had no time for naïveté, and by the time her first husband died and she was on the marriage market again, she was 26 and ready to assert all the command granted by her position. In Aragón, women were not allowed to become queen, but in Castile, Urraca had always known ultimate earthly power as her birthright. Regardless, her authority became jeopardized during the life of her father, who named her brother his heir and opened up the possibility of his illegitimate children, including his daughter Teresa, sharing the fractured kingdom with the legitimate ones. Her father unwittingly trained Urraca in strategy and the willingness to fight for her rights.

Statue of Alfonso I of Aragón in Zaragoza
(WikiMedia Commons)

Alfonso I of Aragón, known as “the Warrior,” proved the validity of his nickname in battle and also in this marriage. He was well over 30 when the nuptial negotiations began and had been the King of Aragon for five years when the wedding took place. His agenda revolved around the taking and keeping of cities and power, occupations in which women did not play a role. Alfonso’s inured bachelor ways left him unprepared for Urraca’s refusal to play a subordinate role to his imperial ambitions.

The fireworks began when Urraca’s father came up with the mere idea of getting Urraca and Alfonso I together. In spite of the obvious advantages such a union would have against the Almoravid threat from the south, many local nobles feared the eastward shift in power. They were also anxious to unite their own families with the Castilian royal line. The marriage negotiations, which took place over the protests of Castilian and French nobles in addition to Urraca herself, became protracted beyond the death of Urraca’s father. Once Urraca was Queen, any new marriage could disenfranchise her ability to assure her children’s inheritance. Pure enjoyment of the privileges of widowhood may have been her chief reservation about Alfonso I.

Swayed by a sense of duty to her father’s wishes, Urraca married Alfonso in 1109 at the castle of Monzón de Campos. Alfonso wasted no time in titling himself Emperor of Spain and naming his Aragonese nobles to high positions all over the Christian part of the Iberian Peninsula. The Galician nobles declared a rebellion when they insisted Urraca’s son was the rightful inheritor to their kingdom. Alfonso responded with military action and established control against Galician troops at Monterroso Castle in 1110.

This military action was only a prelude to the unrest and all-out civil war the marriage would provoke for the next few years. It seems that Urraca and Alfonso had an explosive case of negative chemistry. Two factions developed at court, each one in support of one spouse against the other. Urraca quickly achieved an annulment from Pope Paschal II on the basis that she and Alfonso were second cousins. She also cited abuses, tyranny, removing bishops from their dioceses and planning the death of her son. Urraca had already put some geographical distance between herself and Alfonso, but he refused to accept the annulment. When he learned that she had been carrying on an affair with Gómez González, an important count at her court, Alfonso had Urraca imprisoned and used all his military might to take over as many cities that supported her as he could, deposing more bishops and archbishops as he went.

Urraca as Queen
(WikiMedia Commons)

Gómez González, with the help of the Queen’s supporters, freed her from Alfonso’s prison and took her to Candespina, where they thought she would be safe. Alfonso could not allow such an affront to his power. In October 1111, with support from Urraca’s illegitimate half-sister Teresa, he won the Battle of Candespina, which Gómez González did not survive.

The emotional blow of losing her lover did no harm to Urraca’s strategic thinking. Teresa attempted to use the victory as a bargaining chip, but Urraca hated her more than she hated Alfonso. She agreed to reconcile with her husband as long as he forced Teresa to stay within her own lands in Galicia.

With disregard for Alfonso’s wishes, Urraca then proceeded to proclaim her son from her first marriage King of Galicia. The entire year of 1112 was a succession of confrontation and reconciliation in words and deeds, including the battles of Astorga and Carrión de los Condes. In 1113, the Queen besieged Burgos, the most Castilian of cities. Although his military prowess could have won the city for Alfonso, he understood that with only the support of his Aragonese and Navarrese nobles, he wouldn’t be able to make this empire work in any practical way. He finally accepted the annulment in 1114, making it official at a council in Palencia and returning to Aragón.

Urraca's royal signature

Urraca never married again, preferring to keep the company of powerful men without being under their thumbs. The union of Castile and Aragón would have to wait for a different kind of spark.

The definitive work in English about Urraca’s reign is Bernard F. Reilly’s The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126.

A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss has edited many fine historical novels. Find out more about her historical novel, Seven Noble Knights, and her other writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too!

Freedom Fighters: The Inspirations for Zorro

By Jessica Knauss

From the 1990's series Zorro, the most colorful,
cheesy incarnation of the legend
(and my guilty pleasure)

I feared it would be difficult to think of freedom fighters I would enjoy writing about. I focus on medieval Spain, and records for actual freedom fighters in that time and place are few, and none of them successful.

Then I remembered that one of my favorite characters of all time is a Hispanic freedom fighter. A fictional compilation of several stirring figures, Zorro successfully fights for freedom in my home state of California, and is well educated, skillful, and charming in all his many incarnations.

Wikimedia Commons.

Three historical personages may have inspired Johnston McCulley’s 1919 serialized novel The Curse of Capistrano, which spawned all the movies, series, and later books.

Terrifying portrait of Joaquín Murrieta
that appeared posthumously in the Sacramento
newspaper. Wikimedia Commons.

Joaquín Murrieta (c. 1829 - c. 1853) was a Mexican national who came to California during the gold rush. Legends and dime novels sprouted up after his death, making it difficult to discern the truth about his life. The most certain fact is that his actions (“outlawry”) made the new State of California very upset and spurred the incorporation of the California rangers. They hunted down and killed three men, one of whom may have been Murrieta. Murrieta’s presumed head then became part of a strange continuation of medieval relic worship. After serving as proof of Murrieta’s death so the rangers could receive the reward money, the head was preserved in brine and displayed for paying customers. Today, some people interpret Murrieta’s bandidos and their alleged marauding as resistance to Anglo dominance in California and an attempt to recuperate for Mexico the territories lost via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The 1998 movie The Mask of Zorro pays tribute to Murrieta’s contribution to the Zorro legend by naming the main character Alejandro Murrieta.

Statue of Hidalgo in
Coyoacán (D. F.), México.
Wikimedia Commons.

An earlier (and less likely) possibility for inspiration for the Zorro character is Father Manuel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753 – 1811). The most widely recognized freedom fighter in this group, Hidalgo gave the speech known as the Grito de Dolores during Mass on September 16, 1810, calling on the people to overthrow the Napoleonic government and restore the Spanish monarchy in Mexico. A national hero, he needs no more explanation, but in this context, it’s worth noting that his sharp wit merited him the nickname El Zorro (the Fox) and, like our fictional character, he supported the Spanish monarchy against perceived foreign encroachment in Mexican (or former Mexican) territory.

The most fascinating possible real-life Zorro is William Lamport (1615 - 1659), an Irishman who fought for indigenous rights in Mexico. Vicente Riva Palacio wrote a novel about Lamport in 1872 that could easily have influenced McCulley’s first Zorro book. The Irish Zorro by Gerard Ronan is the 2004 biography of this unique figure. What is it about the seventeenth century that it produced such learned swashbucklers? Always clever (like a fox), Lamport is said to have spoken at least fourteen languages fluently, but never seemed to know when to keep his mouth shut. He fled the British Isles, where he had been sowing sedition and his wild oats, to spend some time as a pirate and end up at the Spanish court. The Conde-Duque de Olivares, the most powerful man in Spain at the time, sent Lamport to Mexico as a spy. While there, he took at least one noble lover and came to sympathize with the enslaved Indians. He’s said to have written the first declaration of independence in the Indies. This document promised land reform, equality of opportunity, racial equality and a democratically elected monarch more than a century before the French Revolution. Lamport was imprisoned for plotting against Spain and escaped for two days, during which he plastered Mexico City with anti-Inquisition pamphlets. The Inquisition later burned him at the stake as a heretic, but it’s said he resisted to the end, strangling himself before the flames could take him.

In spite of my consuming interest in history related to Spain, I might never have known about these extraordinary freedom fighters if it hadn’t been for the fictional character they (could have) inspired. I doubt Johnston McCulley had anything on his mind beyond profiting from writing, but inadvertently, he ensured the legacies of Murrieta, Hidalgo, and Lamport would live on.

A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss has edited many fine historical novels and is currently a bilingual proofreader at an educational publisher. Find out more about her historical novel, Seven Noble Knights, and her other writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too!

June 1, 1252: Retracing a Day in the Life of Alfonso X el Sabio

Alfonso X in the monument in Plaza Nueva, Sevilla

Today Sevilla, Spain, is the capital of Andalusia. It exudes Baroque splendor at the same time that it shows off the latest technology. In this post, however, let me take you on a tour through the small nucleus of the city and imagine what it was like on one specific day during the reign of King Alfonso X. Alfonso's father, Fernando III, took Sevilla from the Moorish taifa king in 1248, only four years before our day. It quickly became Alfonso's favorite city and he spent nearly half his reign here, in spite of frequent, extensive travels for matters of court and politics.

The remains of the Moorish baths that were extant in Alfonso's time now house
an Italian restaurant. www.sanmarco.es

Just beyond the cathedral, nestled up close to the royal palace for protection and a short commute to the king's side, Sevilla's Jewish quarter keeps its secrets in a maze of narrow streets. Today's judería is largely a nineteenth-century reconstruction, but it preserves the idea of what it must have been like to walk around Sevilla in the thirteenth century as well as at least one authentic bit of history: the archways of a Moorish bath. While these baths served the community at large in the thirteenth century, Alfonso X and his household probably used a bath within the royal palace walls on a daily basis. On June 1, 1252, Alfonso probably took great care in his morning grooming routine, calling on all the available attendants and slaves.

Only the lower three quarters of the Giralda
bell tower existed in 1252.

Behind him, the best lineage and upbringing as well as training in politics and war. Ahead, spectacular achievements in the arts and sciences, the disappointing pursuit of his candidacy for Holy Roman Emperor, strife, and much more war. But on June 1, 1252, Alfonso X, whom history calls "el Sabio" (the Learned), was crowned King of Castile at thirty years old. Reasonably experienced at that age, but also not too old, the new king might have been a little nervous, but also secure in his destiny and obligation when the decree rang out at the cathedral in Sevilla.

The current cathedral in Sevilla is an enormous gothic masterpiece, started some 200 years after Alfonso's coronation. The cathedral in Alfonso's time would have been architecturally a mosque, hastily reconsecrated to the Christian faith. The minaret would subsequently be redesigned as a bell tower, but even today it preserves the wide ramps visitors can climb to stand under the bells and look out over the city. Originally, these interior ramps were intended to accommodate a muezzin, who would ascend to the highest point in Andalusia on horseback to perform the call to prayer.

Fernando III as depicted in a 17th-century sculpture
in the Sevilla cathedral treasury

Fernando III's conquests and his ability to unite the kingdoms of Castile and León made him so well loved that he became a serious candidate for sainthood just after his death on May 30, 1252. Alfonso, the heir to that legacy of consolidating the Iberian peninsula under Christian power, had a lot to live up to.

With the city mourning the beloved king, and with the pragmatism that usually dominates Castilian politics, the coronation was probably not an elaborate affair. No descriptions have come down to us, but it likely took place in the morning hours and involved Alfonso's oath, a bishop placing the ceremonial crown upon Alfonso's head, and oaths of fealty from the many noble vassals present. Alfonso's biographer Ballesteros Beretta imagines that the spectators then lifted Alfonso on their shoulders and paraded him around the cathedral square. Did he look down and see the faces of the nobles who would revolt against him, or the brother who would conspire against the crown? Perhaps he looked into the bright sky of Sevilla and glimpsed the Virgin Mary smiling on him. The cult of Mary would be Alfonso's lifelong devotion.

After a bit of a welcome to his new role, it's likely King Alfonso had to head straight back to the royal palace to work on matters of state. Like the cathedral, the royal palace in Sevilla was adapted from a beautiful complex constructed by the previous Muslim rulers. Only one salon and one garden area survive from the original building. Although splendid, they are now dwarfed by the labyrinthine layout and opulence of the mudéjar-style palace constructed for Pedro the Cruel in the fourteenth century.

The gothic sections of the palace were constructed beginning in 1254. New crossed archways hold the ceilings up elegantly in this small chapel and two other state rooms. In 1535, Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V had the gothic rooms covered with painted tiles and tapestries commemorating the conquest of Tunis. Alfonso would have slept and toiled in the original buildings while the gothic salons were constructed and moved his business to the area that would most impress a specific visitor once all was complete.

At the end of a terribly busy and emotional June 1, 1252, Alfonso would have climbed into a bed supported on ropes and furnished with the softest ticking, the finest sheets, and the most luxurious pillows. Although most historians have tried to paint an unhappy picture of his marriage, the person most likely sleeping next to Alfonso was his consort, now Queen Violante. She would bear ten children who survived into adulthood. She would also become embroiled in the battles of royal succession that took place upon the death of her firstborn son. But on June 1, 1252, Violante assumed her new role with quiet dignity and stood by her husband in the cathedral, the square, and the palace.

A driven fiction writer, Jessica Knauss is also a freelance editor, a translator, and a founding partner and editor at Loose Leaves Publishing. Find out more about her writing and bookish activities here. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, too! She took five of the photos in this post in 2009 and can't wait to go back to Spain. 

Her tribute to Alfonso X's contribution to world culture, Our Lady's Troubadour, lets you experience the Cantigas de Santa Maria in a fun new way!

Traitors & Turncoats: The Wife of García Fernández in Historical Epic

By Jessica Knauss

Our main source for Castilian epic poems are the traces they’ve left in – of all things – historical writing. Especially in the workshop of Alfonso X el Sabio in the thirteenth century, medieval Spanish men writing about their local past turned to the stories they knew from minstrels and other oral traditions. It doesn’t seem so odd when we consider that these heroic sagas are more often than not about real-life figures. Spanish literary realism has long roots.

This Castilian historic/epic tradition, which has a looming responsibility in forming the notion of Spain, relishes anecdotes about traitors who persist in the Spanish imagination even today. Readers may be familiar with the betrayal of King Sancho that sets off the cycle of El Cid. An earlier royal meets a similar bloody end in the “Romance of Prince García.” The story on which I base my first novel, The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, tells of a betrayal that wipes out an entire generation of Castilian warriors.

The chapter of history known as “The Traitor Countess” is so full of betrayal that the title refers to not one countess, but two.

In the story, García Fernández is Count of Castile, the highest secular authority in the land at the end of tenth century. His wife Argentina takes a liking to a minor French noble and escapes with him. García’s subjects pressure him to go after her and erase this stain on his honor. When he arrives, he meets the French nobleman’s daughter, Sancha. In exchange for marriage to the count, she lets him into her father’s – and new stepmother’s – bedroom, where he hides in wait of the signal. When she tugs on the cord she’s tied around his foot, García emerges from under the bed and decapitates the lovers, thus regaining honor for himself and his independent county.

The new countess is welcomed in Castile, but comes to yearn for more power, which she intends to gain by marrying a Moorish prince. She malnourishes García’s horse so that it seems fit, but fails him in battle. García is taken prisoner to Córdoba, capital of the Islamic caliphate, where he is executed.

But Sancha can’t run off with her Muslim lover until she does away with her son, Sancho, García’s heir. Sancho finds out about his mother’s plans and when she offers him a drink, he insists she take it instead. Thus she dies from her own poison.

Scholars love the themes of female disruption of power in this story, but perhaps more fascinating for the historian is the way it adapts historical facts to create an even more exciting drama. García was the Count of Castile, and his heir was Sancho. García perished in battle against Muslim foes. But Sancho’s mother was not called Sancha, and García had only one wife. Her name was Ava and she left no evidence of even attempting to betray her husband or son.

I’ve often wondered why the fictional version ended up in the history books when the facts made more sense. My hunch is that the man who compiled the histories, King Alfonso X, was preoccupied with themes of traitors and turncoats because of treasonous demands the Castilian nobility made of him and the series of revolts in every corner of the realm during his reign. His son Sancho eventually deposed him, but that treason probably occurred too late to affect the writing of the histories.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for this psychological reading is that in the epic versions, all traitors come to the end they deserve, as in the violent deaths of both of the traitor countesses. It didn’t always turn out that way in real life.

Jessica Knauss is seeking representation for her first novel, The Seven Noble Knights of Lara. Learn more about Jessica and her writing at:

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