"A Convent for ‘la Sabia’: Violante de Aragón and the Foundation of Santa Clara de Allariz”

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV

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Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia

A Cultural Crossroads at the Edge of Europe

Edited and Translated by

James D’Emilio

LEIDEN | BOSTON


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Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xxiv List of Figures, Maps, and Tables XXVI Abbreviations xxxii List of Contributors xxxviii

Part 1: The Paradox of GaliciaA Cultural Crossroads at the Edge of Europe

1 The Paradox of GaliciaA Cultural Crossroads at the Edge of Europe 3

James D’Emilio

Part 2: The Suevic KingdomBetween Roman Gallaecia and Modern Myth

Introduction to Part 2 126

2 The Suevi in GallaeciaAn Introduction 131

Michael Kulikowski

3 Gallaecia in Late AntiquityThe Suevic Kingdom and the Rise of Local Powers 146

P. C. Díaz and Luis R. Menéndez-Bueyes

4 The Suevic KingdomWhy Gallaecia? 176

Fernando López Sánchez

5 The Church in the Suevic Kingdom (411–585 ad) 210Purificación Ubric


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vi Contents

Part 3: Early Medieval GaliciaTradition and Change


6 The Aristocracy and the Monarchy in Northwest Iberia between the Eighth and the Eleventh Century 251

Amancio Isla

7 The Charter of TheodenandusWriting, Ecclesiastical Culture, and Monastic Reform in Tenth-Century Galicia 281

James D’ Emilio

8 From Galicia to the RhôneLegal Practice in Northern Spain around the Year 1000 343

Jeffrey A. Bowman

Part 4: Galicia in the Iberian KingdomsFrom Center to Periphery?


9 The Making of Galicia in Feudal Spain (1065–1157) 367Ermelindo Portela

10 Galicia and the Galicians in the Latin Chronicles of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 400

Emma Falque

11 The Kingdom of Galicia and the Monarchy of Castile-León in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 429

Francisco Javier Pérez Rodríguez


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viiContents

Part 5: Compostela, Galicia, and EuropeGalician Culture in the Age of the Pilgrimage


12 St. James in Galicia (c. 500–1300)Rivalries in Heaven and on Earth 477

Thomas Deswarte

13 CompostelaA Cultural Center from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century 512

Adeline Rucquoi

14 The Tomb of St. JamesComing to Terms with History and Tradition 543

John Williams †

15 The European Architecture of Church Reform in GaliciaThe Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela 573

Henrik Karge

16 The Topography of Images in Santiago CathedralMonks, Pilgrims, Bishops, and the Road to Paradise 631

Manuel Castiñeiras

17 Dreams of Kings and BuildingsVisual and Literary Culture in Galicia (1157–1230) 695

Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras

18 Cistercian Scriptoria in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesA Starting Point 765

Ana Suárez González

19 A Convent for La SabiaViolante of Aragón and the Clarisas of Allariz 812

Melissa R. Katz


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viii Contents

Part 6: Language and Literary CultureFrom Latin to Galician-Portuguese


20 Galician Before 1250 843Roger Wright

21 On the Music of Galician-Portuguese Secular LyricSources, Genres, Performance 862

William D. Paden

22 Making Poetry, Making WavesThe Galician-Portuguese Sea Lyric 894

Amélia P. Hutchinson

Part 7: Modern Galicia and the Middle AgesCastros, Castles, and the Camino de Santiago


23 Castles vs. CastrosThe Middle Ages in the Construction of Galician National Identity 917

Ramón Villares

Part 8: EpilogueFuture Directions

Epilogue: Future Directions in the Study of Medieval Galicia 949James D’Emilio

Index 963

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004288607_024

chapter 19

A Convent for La SabiaViolante of Aragón and the Clarisas of Allariz*

Melissa R. Katz

Naturalmente no todos los monasterios tuvieron que andar el mismo camino para llegar a esta meta [de ser en buena parte reales]. Hay monasterios que nacieron enteramente reales, como un antojo religioso o un refugio espiritual. Este es acaso el sello más peculiar en Allariz. Sigue existiendo un cierto miste-rio sobre esta iniciativa. Todavía cabe preguntarse: ¿por qué un monasterio real in Galicia?; ¿por qué una Reina sentimental y fisicamente lejana de Galicia tiene este pensamiento?; ¿por qué precisamente la pequeña villa de Allariz?1

A Padre Oro y sus buenas preguntas

Introduction

In the medieval cult of memory, the marking of a grave served not only to record one’s earthly presence but also to remind the living of one’s passing and invite prayers for the salvation of one’s soul. The sliding scale of burial prestige ranged upward from humble tombstones to elaborate sepulchres, funeral cha-pels, and the endowment of a monastic complex. Within the economics of salvation, initial expenses for a monastic foundation were exorbitant: one had to provide for land, building materials, labor costs, and transportation, and divert rents and other incomes to render the institution financially viable, if not self-sufficient. The return on such an investment, however, could not be equaled: a religious community engaged in continual prayer and supplication on behalf of their departed benefactor. For noble women, the role of monastic patron for female communities held particular resonance, as an accepted channel of female authority, and as a method to provide a suitable residence for widowed or unmarried women of high birth. Within the Visigothic and early Leonese kingdoms, widows of the reigning kings who survived their

1 García Oro (1990), 130.

* I wish to thank Amy Remensnyder, Sheila Bonde, Mercedes Vaquero, Therese Martin, Pamela A. Patton, Simon Barton, Joseph T. Snow, James D’Emilio, Jesús Llorente de Cea, Miguel Ángel González García, David Nogales Rincón, Francisco Javier Pérez Rodríguez, and José García Oro for their valuable comments on the project at various stages in its evolution.


813A Convent for La Sabia

2 Orlandis (1957–1958), 125–126; Collins (1993), 84–85.3 No definitive biography of the Violante of Aragón exists to date. For brief biographies:

Kinkade (1992–1993); Vann (1993), (2003); O’Callaghan (2005); Katz (2013). Queen Violante features in biographies of Alfonso X as part of the struggle over succession. See, among oth-ers, Ballesteros (1984); O’Callaghan (1993); Martínez (2003), (2010); González Jiménez (2004); Valdeón (2005). For glimpses of her life after Alfonso’s death: Gaibrois (1922–1928), (1936); Nieto Soria (1994); Valle (2000); Carmona (2005).

4 Testament of Violante of Aragón, 11 April 1292 and 5 January 1302 (henceforth “Testament”): Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional [=ahn] Clero, carpeta 1429, no. 5 and 6 [=1429/5, 6]; Carta real of Violante of Aragón confirming her testament, 24 September 1295: Ourense, Archivo Histórico Provincial [=ahpo] Clero, Santa Clara de Allariz, no. 25, a document placed in its proper context by Katz (2013). To date no diplomatic study exists of the queen’s wills, although several versions of a 17th-century transcription (ahn Clero, 4900/1), omitting certain key clauses, are in circulation, e.g., López (1927a).

5 A scholarly account of the marriage of Yolant and Jaume I can be found in VanLandingham (2005). VanLandingham gives 1251—the year of her testament—as the date of Yolant’s death, although the queen remained alive at least until 1253, when the Llibre dels feits (chap. 362) records her accompanying the king on a visit to Valencia.

6 Her selection as Alfonso’s bride dates back to 1240: Martínez (2003), 109. A ceremony per verba de presenti was held in Valladolid on 26 Nov. 1246, but the union was not consummated

husbands were required by both law and custom to retire to a monastery until their own demise.2 The dowager queens of Aragón and Castile-León were under no legal strictures to retire, but they often withdrew to convents out of custom and convenience; such contingencies were no doubt on the minds of all royal women when arranging for monastic foundations.

Violante of Aragón (c. 1236–1300/1301) followed in this tradition when she established a Franciscan convent in southern Galicia, twenty-five kilometers from the episcopal city of Ourense. Santa Clara de Allariz would serve as an occasional residence for the widowed queen after the death of Alfonso X, el Sabio (1221–1284, r. 1252–1284), and as a refuge from a troubled family situation exacerbated by the death of their eldest son, Fernando de la Cerda (1255–1275), and the rival claims to the throne of their second-eldest son, Sancho (1258–1295), and Fernando’s two young sons, the infantes Alfonso and Fernando de la Cerda.3 Her desire to be buried there is made explicit in her will of 1292, and emphatically reiterated in a related document of 1295, though, as we shall see, there is uncertainty as to whether this wish was ever fulfilled.4

Violante was the eldest child of the king of Aragón, Jaume I the Con queror (1208–1276, r. 1213–1276), and his second wife, Yolant of Hungary (1215/19–c. 1253).5 Her marriage to Alfonso X of Castile, son of Fernando III of Castile (1201–1252, r. 1217–1252) and Beatriz von Hohenstaufen of Swabia (c. 1202–1235), took place in Burgos in January 1249.6 Violante—Yolant in Catalan, Yolanda in


814 Katz

until 1249, the date traditionally given for the wedding: Vann (1993); González Jiménez (2006), 200.

7 In a sampling of documents from the 1250s and 1260s preserved in Salamanca Cathedral, one finds her name spelled most frequently Violante (ten times) or Yolante (eight times), with variant spellings of Violant, Violent, Yolant, Iolant, and Byolanta, see Marcos Rodríguez (1962). To be consistent with current scholarly usage, I will refer to her as ‘Violante’, and reserve the Catalan version ‘Yolant’ for her mother, as a way of distinguishing the two. Violante’s age is based on the date of her parent’s marriage, contracted in 1234 and consummated in 1235. This would place the birth of their first child, Violante, in 1236 or 1237: Moxó (1989) 72–73.

8 Foundations imply the creation of a new entity, and encompass both a financial or in-kind contribution and a degree of active agency on the part of the founder, often exercised in tandem with a religious organization. Activities of royal largesse and generosity to pre-existing foundations do not meet these criteria. The hospice of Villafranca de Montes de Oca to which the queen left property (casas) in July 1283 and income in April 1292 cannot be considered her foundation, as the institution was established in the twelfth century: Ballesteros (1984), app., doc. 1423; ahn Clero, 1429/5, lines 24–26. The proprietary lan-guage of her testament (mio ospital que yo ffis, line 24) does indicate a strong identification with the enterprise, and a possible role in the expansion of its built fabric. See also the discussion below (n. 62) of her role in the establishment of San Pablo de Valladolid.

9 Nieto Soria (1994), 55. Fernando III and Sancho IV did make pilgrimages to the celebrated Galician shrine.

10 Early in her marriage, Violante of Aragón made a pilgrimage to Santiago, unaccompanied by Alfonso: Gaibrois (1922), vol. 1, p. 15. She is not known to have visited Galicia again until the establishment of Santa Clara de Allariz.

English—was fifteen at the time the marriage was consummated, and Alfonso twenty-seven; this would be his first and only marriage, and would produce eleven children, ten of whom lived to adulthood.7 Her year of death is rou-tinely listed as 1292, the date of her earliest surviving will, though in truth she would live on until the winter of 1300. Even these bare facts are difficult to tease out of the historical record. The rare certainty of doña Violante’s clouded life is her firm desire to be buried in Allariz, her one major monastic foundation, endowed for the express purpose of receiving the queen’s corpse.8

Allariz and the Castilian Monarchy

Scholars have puzzled over the location for her endowment, especially as Galicia is thought to have been of marginal interest to Alfonso X, who is not known to have made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela or even to have visited the region after his childhood.9 Its centrality in the life of his queen is therefore all the more intriguing.10 Many scholars have wrestled with this same



11 Allariz was a realengo, with the counts of Limia as the primary landowners until 1446, when the counts of Benavente became seigneurs of the village: Cid (1984), 27.

12 Kinkade (1992–1993), 13.13 Poem from the Cancioneiro da Vaticana, published in Cantigas d’escarnho, no. 20, p. 36.14 Ballesteros (1984), 13.15 Ballesteros (1984), 49–51, 88; Cid (1984), 52–53; Martínez (2003), 28. In 1232, García

Fernández received the seigneury of Manzaneda from Fernando III: González (1983), vol. 1, p. 101; vol. 2, pp. 552–553.

16 Martínez (2003), 27; González (1983), vol. 1, p. 101.

question, none more eloquently than Prof. José García Oro, whom I quoted in the opening epigram. That doña Violante would have had occasion to visit Allariz, a royal villa affiliated with the crown of Castile-León, is not at all sur-prising; that she would choose to retire there after her husband’s demise, and make it her final resting place, is less explicable.11

Some authors have pointed to Alfonso’s youthful residency in the region to explain a choice the queen made decades later.12 Alfonso certainly had ties to Ourense; he, like his father Fernando III, spent periods of his childhood in Galicia, learning the Galician tongue he used to such great effect in his poetry. Verses in his Cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dezir allude to the good wine of Ourense, enjoyed as a youth:

Assi com’ eu beveria [do] bõo vihno d’Ourensassi [eu] queria bõo son de [O] cunctipotenspera meester Joan.13

Antonio Ballesteros speculated that the infantes were raised in Galicia to com-pensate for the marginal position, literally and figuratively, that the region occupied within the kingdom.14 Nevertheless, Alfonso X’s lifelong devotion to the Galician language may be viewed as a sign of affinity with the region.

Ballesteros identified Allariz as the boyhood home of the Wise King, a claim echoed by Alfredo Cid Rumbao, though H. Salvador Martínez has since shown that his guardian, García Fernández de Villamayor, owned property in Manzaneda de Limia (now Maceda).15 Allariz and Maceda each lie three leagues (about 25 km) from the city of Ourense, but a similar distance apart from each other, and hence are not equivalent. Furthermore, Alfonso X only spent part of his youth in Galicia, with substantial time spent on García Fernández’s other estates in Villaldemiro and Celada del Camino, outside of Burgos, where the infante could be educated in the ways of the court and his ayo maintain political influence.16


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17 Colección de fueros, vol. 1, pp. 501–502; Vázquez Núñez (1907).18 Alfonso IX, doc. 88, [106], 186–187, 297–298, 429, 523–525, pp. 131–132, 155–156, 259–262,

397–399, 544–545, 624–629. For other royal visits, see Documentos reales…Galicia, doc. 202, 310, 577, 579, 681, 683, pp. 98–99, 149, 256–257, 295–297; Cid (1984), 14, 30, 37. Alfonso X issued no documents from Allariz.

19 Document issued at Allariz (24 Dec. 1272): ahn Clero, 1451/19. See Documentos reales…Galicia, doc. 794, p. 345.

20 The text of Sancho’s letter to the townsmen of Allariz (issued 18 March 1282), pledging to defend them and uphold the fuero alaricense of Alfonso VII, can be found in Cid (1984), 61.

21 Cid (1984), 5–7. See also Cid (1980). More likely, the castle of Allariz occasionally hosted short royal visits, along the lines of Alfonso X’s brief stay in Castrojeriz (3–4 March 1255) or Belorado (1–2 Feb. 1256), as in Ballesteros (1935), 104–105, 150.

22 A shift in protocol suggests that the couple’s definitive estrangement occurred between 5 July 1281 (the date of the last carta real issued jointly in the name of Alfonso X and the queen, doña Violante) and 16 Dec. 1281 (the date of the first carta real issued in the name of Alfonso alone, as son of King Fernando and Queen Beatriz).

Allariz did hold some distinction within the kingdom of León, having been the first town in Galicia to receive a fuero, issued in 1131 by Alfonso VII and used as the model for subsequent royal charters in the region.17 In addition, docu-ments confirm the periodic presence of monarchs, especially Alfonso IX, who made eight visits during his reign of forty-two years (1188–1230), though gener-ally in association with a longer stay in the town of Ourense itself.18 Sancho IV, the son of Alfonso X and Queen Violante, first visited Allariz as an infante in December 1272, adjudicating a dispute involving the Cistercians of Melón.19 In March 1282, Sancho and his brothers Pedro and Juan passed again through Allariz, soliciting the town’s allegiance in his campaign to wrest the crown from his father.20 That spring, Allariz became the first town in Galicia to declare in favor of Sancho’s quest for the throne; the same year the first (surviving) document regarding Violante’s Clarissan foundation was issued. Nevertheless, there is nothing to indicate that Allariz had ever hosted an extended royal pres-ence, much less acted as “the historic capital of the kingdom of Galicia,” as Cid Rumbao claims.21

Furthermore, this line of reasoning presumes that doña Violante’s choice of Allariz for her sepulchre was dictated entirely by its position in Castilian poli-tics and dynastic history, an ironic supposition given that the Castilian mon-archs were estranged at this point, and a desire to commemorate her husband’s childhood is hardly a credible motive.22 Indeed, the election of Allariz coin-cided with the period of greatest strain between Violante and Alfonso, capped by a dramatic marital separation. Initially close, doña Violante had collabo-rated with her husband on important matters of state, showing a flair for



23 The Crónica de Alfonso X (cax) records Violante serving as an intermediary between Alfonso and the empress of Constantinople (chap. 17), soothing disgruntled prelates and ricos homes at the Cortes in Burgos (chap. 26), and resolving disputes between Alfonso, the Andalusian grandees, and Muhammed II of Granada (chap. 53–58). See also Muro (1994–1995).

24 Ramón Muntaner: Crónica, chap. 23.25 Chroniclers report facial pain and periodic psychosis during this period. Presilla (1987),

435, identified cancer of the maxillary antrum as the cause of his erratic behavior from the mid-1270s on.

26 Ballesteros (1984), 860–866; O’Callaghan (1993), 228–248, and Martínez (2003) 425–434, treat the incident in detail. It is recorded in the cax, Anales Toledanos III, Crònica de Sant Joan de la Penya, Zurita’s Anales de la Corona de Aragón, and other sources.

27 Ballesteros (1984), 860–866; Kinkade (1992–1993), 8–9. Aragonese chronicles, interest-ingly, attribute the flight to Alfonso’s having abused Violante: Crònica de Sant Joan de la Penya 36, pp. 130–131.

28 O’Callaghan (1993), 245, takes this view, based on cax (chap. 71), which implies that Sancho IV and Pere el Gran plotted together to keep the young infantes from falling into the hands of the Capetians in France, implying that doña Violante might have been part of their conspiracy. Martínez (2003), 430, hedges his bets, judging both motives plausible.

diplomacy that complemented her husband’s erudition.23 In our day, attention is drawn to the queen’s absence in Alfonso X’s wills and minimal presence in the Cantigas. During the thirteenth century, however, the couple drew atten-tion for sharing a bed, as recorded in Cantiga 345 and in Ramón Muntaner’s account of their visit to his father’s house in February 1275.24

By the end of the 1270s, both the kingdom and marriage were in crisis. The untimely death of their first son, Fernando de la Cerda, in 1275, was followed by a notable instability in Alfonso’s behavior, perhaps due to pressure on the brain caused by sinus cancer.25 Soon after, their second son, Sancho, began agitating to succeed his father over the rightful claims of Fernando’s own offspring. Shortly after the Cortes of Segovia in 1278 named Sancho as heir to Alfonso X, doña Violante fled to her native Aragón, where her brother Pere el Gran (Peter the Great, 1240–1285, r. 1276–1285) occupied the throne. With her, she brought her two young grandsons, Alfonso de la Cerda (known as el Desheredado, 1270–1327/33) and his brother Fernando (1272–post 1322), and the boys’ widowed mother, Blanche of France (1253–1320), sister of the French king Philip III the Bold (1245–1285, r. 1270–1285), an ally of Aragón.26

The episode is rife with ambiguity. Most authors believe that doña Violante acted out of fear for her grandsons’ welfare.27 Some, however, interpret the removal of the young infantes from Castile as a tactic to assist Sancho in his bid for the throne.28 H. Salvador Martínez raises the interesting possibility that the


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29 Martínez (2003), 432.30 Martínez (2003), 430–434, disagrees, arguing that a woman of doña Violante’s political

and diplomatic skill would not undertake such a reckless act if it were not a life-and-death matter.

31 The defeat of the fleet at Algeciras in 1278 was blamed (incorrectly, I am sure) on the debt incurred by this payment, and led to the death of the royal moneylender, Çag de la Maleha. Many take the account in chapter 71 of the anti-Aragonese cax at face value, marveling at how the queen could have managed to spend so much during her stay at her brother’s court. None consider that the calculations of the queen’s expenses might include sums designed to compensate Pere el Gran for the ‘inconvenience’ of his sister’s stay or, indeed, the loss of influence over Castilian internal affairs which her return caused him. To my mind, bribery on the part of the Castilians or extortion on the part of the Aragonese seems credible, especially given that three years later the Aragonese king would extract financial payments and territorial compensation from Sancho IV in exchange for official recognition of the latter’s claim to the throne of Castile (see Zurita, Anales 4.100, pp. 346–350).

32 The threat posed to the kingdom should France enter the conflict on behalf of the disin-herited infantes goes unacknowledged in all chronicles.

prime agent of the family’s departure was the recently widowed Blanche of France, noting her repeated requests to return to her native kingdom following the death of Fernando de la Cerda, all of which Alfonso X denied.29 Still, the incident is cast as the fuga de doña Violante, with few remarking on the black humor of the beleaguered king being forced to send their son Sancho, with whom he was engaged in a struggle over succession, to negotiate the return of his absent wife. On a political level, her actions commanded attention—even Pope Nicholas III took a hand in the negotiations for her return—yet the politi-cal and familial were closely intertwined, and the errant queen often seems the most prudent member of a querulous family.30

Violante returned to Castile under royal escort in the summer of 1279 or early 1280, after Sancho paid a large sum, ostensibly to cover debts accrued by her household in Aragón, but just as likely to compensate her brother for the embarrassing episode and to entice doña Violante to return to her conflicted kingdom.31 Blanche continued on to France alone, while the infantes de la Cerda remained under guard in the castle of Xátiva, safe from the machina-tions of Philip the Bold.32 The negotiations may well have provided doña Violante the funds with which to begin building her convent; the events cer-tainly supplied the impetus to attend to her own needs, both worldly and spiri-tual, and begin arrangements for a ‘safe house’ where she could discreetly retire from discord at court. A woman at odds with her husband and, later, a widow in conflict with the court, Violante of Aragón prepared her convent



33 See García Oro (1990), 133, and Kinkade (1992–1993), 13, who writes, “Meanwhile Violante also sought to extend her sphere of influence in Galicia where in July 1286 she founded a convent of nuns in Allariz, a rural area where Alfonso had been raised as a child.” On Violante’s widowhood, see Katz (2013).

34 The convents were in Pamplona (Navarre, 1228), Zaragoza (Aragón, 1231), Burgos (Castile, 1234), and Lamego (Portugal, 1258); see García Oro, (1994), 167, 169–174; Moreira (1994), 211.

35 Moorman (1968), 209.36 Her maternal aunt, the future St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231), became a Franciscan

tertiary, as did her niece, Isabel of Aragón (1271–1336), later St. Elizabeth of Portugal. Sanctity ran in the family: Violante’s maternal first cousin, a Dominican nun, became Blessed Margaret of Hungary (1248–1271).

37 Letters of April 1263 and 6 March 1267: Archivo de San Francisco de Valladolid, carp. 2, no. 2 and 7; Rojo (2005a), 209 and 219 ff. Doña Violante’s earliest known act of patronage inde-pendent of Alfonso X was the making over of certain houses in her possession to the Order of Calatrava: letter of 8 Feb. 1260, as noted in Ballesteros (1984), app., doc. 445. Shortly thereafter, the mendicants won her lifelong favor. Averkorn (2002) places doña Violante’s endeavours on their behalf in context.

retreat in Galicia as a spiritual and emotional refuge, I would argue, and not a royal stronghold from which to launch a revolt, as some have proposed.33

Allariz and the Clarisas

Santa Clara de Allariz was the third monastery of Poor Clares to be founded in Galicia, the first (and only) in the diocese of Ourense. At the time of its plan-ning, female Franciscans were present in all four kingdoms: Castile, Aragón, Portugal, and Navarre.34 The spread is remarkably rapid, given that Clare of Assisi had only joined St. Francis’s new order in 1212, and no priories (male or female) were founded outside of Italy before 1220.35 As all but the Portuguese foundation predated St. Clare’s death in 1253, the women religious were known as Damianitas, and later as Damas Pobres. By the time the order arrived in Galicia—Santiago de Compostela (1259/1260), Pontevedra (1271), and Allariz (1282/1289)—the designation Clarisas applied.

Allariz was not the first Franciscan house on the peninsula to enjoy royal patronage: both Violante’s husband and father had been early supporters of the order, and numerous relatives had been patrons and, in some cases, mem-bers of the order.36 She herself had already made an in-kind donation of prop-erty to the Franciscans of Valladolid for whom she advocated in the 1260s.37 Many contemporaries also shared the queen’s fondness for the Clarissans, including Beatriz (1247–1303), the illegitimate yet beloved daughter of Alfonso


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38 Arco (1954), 35. In 1260, doña Mayor established the small convent of Santa Clara de Alcocer (near Guadalajara) as her burial foundation, two decades before Violante would plan her Galician convent: Ballesteros (1984), app., doc. 468, 470. García Oro (1988), 449, suggests that the convent, miniscule in size, under construction since 1252, and only endowed by the king’s mistress eight years later, was heavily subsidized by Alfonso X and can be considered an Alfonsine foundation.

39 The modern appellation ‘Camino de Plata’ did not come into use until after the coloniza-tion of the Americas.

40 García Oro (1988), 149–170.41 Super ordinatione et incorporatione Monasterii quod excelentissima domina Domina

Yolant, Castelle et Legionis Regina illustris ad divinum cultum et honorem beate virginis Clare construere et ordinare intendit…(ahn Clero, 1429/1).

42 Charter of Sancho IV: ahpo Clero, Santa Clara de Allariz, libro 47, f. 366v; Archivo General de Simancas, Privilegios, libro 368, artículo 4. Land purchases of Macías Núñez: ahpo Pergaminos, Santa Clara de Allariz, no. 13, 14. Nuns from Santa Clara de Zamora were also sent to Portugal to establish convents in Entre-os-Rios in 1256 and Coimbra in 1314. The latter house was founded by Violante’s niece Isabel de Aragón; the former moved to Oporto c. 1405 by Queen Philippa of Lancaster: Moreira (1994), 213–215.

X, and Beatriz’s mother, Alfonso’s long-time mistress Mayor Guillén de Guzmán (1211–1262).38 Yet Allariz was the first house established for the purpose of receiving a royal body; this deviation from custom proved a significant boon for the Franciscans in their efforts to solidify their presence in the kingdom.

Unusually, Santa Clara de Allariz was located in a small, agricultural town rather than a major population center, underlining that an alternative strategy was at work in the selection of its site, if not one immediately apparent. Most of the early Clarissan monasteries on the Iberian Peninsula were founded along the pilgrimage routes to Compostela, with Allariz a stop along the southern Camino de las Castellanos and Camino Portugués.39 As the kingdom expanded southward, male Franciscan foundations were made in less populated territo-ries recently conquered from the Muslims.40 These settlements later grew into communities of substantial size, but Allariz retained its rural character.

Planning for the queen’s convent dates to the early 1280s. The earliest surviv-ing document is a letter of 18 July 1282 from fray Matteo d’Acquasparta, cardinal protector of the Order of Friars Minor in Rome, to the head of the order in the province of Santiago, regarding the queen’s intentions to found a convent in the diocese of Ourense.41 No locale is specified, perhaps an innocent omission, or an indication that a suitable location was still under discussion. Next comes a series of documents from 1286, including the charter issued by Sancho IV and two purchases of land by Macías Núñez, procurador general and business agent for the nuns of Santa Clara de Zamora, who would populate the new convent.42 The nuns arrived by 1289, if not before, but the convent complex



43 For the arrival of the nuns: Archivo Municipal de Allariz, Carta de avenencia, 20 May 1289.44 Pope Honorius IV (1285–1287), Ex parte vestra (18 January 1286): Bullarium franciscanum,

vol. 3, pp. 555–556. See López (1927b), 25–26.45 The bishop had his merino burn the monastery for having given refuge to the murderer of

his nephew, who sought shelter there. Extensive documentation regarding the case can be found in the papal archives, and a lively summary of la ocasion que todos saben in Castro (1722) 4.15, p. 189.

46 Letter of Sancha Eanes to Domingo, bishop of Silves, 20 Feb. 1294: García Oro (1990), 137, n. 121. Nothing explains why a bishop was brought from so far away; possibly neighboring prelates did not wish to directly defy Pedro Eanes, or possibly the bishop of Silves, a Dominican himself, wished to aid mendicant expansion into the hostile see of Ourense.

47 A temporary chapel must have been in place for the nuns’ use from the 1280s on, as it is the first stone, and not the finished church, that fray Domingo is asked to bless.

48 The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) gave secular clergy the right to receive income from liturgical celebrations such as funerals, a significant source of income for parish priests placed at risk by laity engaging mendicant preachers for such ceremonies. See Bruzelius (2008).

was far from complete, delayed by difficulties related to the consecration of its church.43

Conflict had arisen by 1285, with the bishop of Ourense, Pedro Eanes de Novoa (1286–1308), refusing to give the customary blessing of the first founda-tion stone of the church. Despite a papal bull stating that in case of denial by a diocesan bishop to bless the church, altars, or cemeteries of a Franciscan tem-ple, the same function could be carried out by any other Catholic bishop, the nuns of Allariz and their Franciscan sponsors continued to pursue a diplo-matic solution.44 Additional bulls had no effect, and relations deteriorated fur-ther until 1294, when the bishop had the friary of San Francisco de Ourense burned to the ground—an act that led to his eventual excommunication by Pope Clement V (1305–1314).45 Patience at an end, Abbess Sancha Eanes wrote to fray Domingo, bishop of Silves (a seaport on the Algarve, then part of Castile), inviting him in to give the necessary blessing.46 It had taken twelve years from the start of the convent’s planning and eight years from the acquisi-tion of land by Macías Núñez for church building to get underway.47

The obstacles encountered at Allariz were by no means unique. By the mid-thirteenth century, the mendicants were under serious attack in Iberia, as else-where in Europe, from both secular and regular clergy, disturbed by the Franciscans’ growing popularity among the laity and their ability to siphon off funds and donations.48 New foundations in central Castile had been met with active and often violent opposition, leading the minorites to turn to the under-populated frontierlands of Extremadura, Andalusia, and inland Galicia—a


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49 Linehan (1993), 522–524.50 Rojo (2002), (2005a), (2005b). I thank Prof. García Oro for bringing these articles to my

attention.51 On the queen’s donation see n. 37. Valladolid would not become a bishopric until 1595.52 Nicholas IV, Cum omnis vera (15 Nov. 1290) and Quanto studiosius (12 Dec. 1290): ahn

Clero, 1429/2; Bullarium franciscanum, vol. 3, pp. 58–59; vol. 4, p. 187; cited in López (1927a), 11–14.

53 Nicholas IV, Exigentibus vestrae (13 Feb. 1291): Bullarium franciscanum, vol. 4, p. 218. Testament (11 April 1292): ahn Clero, 1429/5, lines 5–7.

54 ahn Clero, 1429/5, lines 31–32. The testament also lists Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo and the Franciscan provincials of Santiago and Castile among her manssessores & testamenta-rios but awards them no individual bequests. Both doña Sancha and fray García receive 3,000 maravedis each, while Alonso Domínguez receives 2,000 maravedis.

strategy that earned the crown’s support, for their valued role in the repo-blación of newly-conquered territory.49 Doña Violante had encountered the internal church struggle already with the Franciscans of Valladolid, for she had supported their efforts in the 1260s to move from rural Río de Olmos to a new location in the city center.50 The move was blocked by the powerful abbot of Valladolid—ironically doña Violante’s own brother, the infante Sancho de Aragón (1250–1275)—leading the queen to send strongly-worded letters sup-porting the planned move and affirming her gift of houses near the Plaza Mayor for the new friary.51

Despite the bishop’s opposition, her second venture as a Franciscan patron—and first as foundress—moved ahead. Bulls of a happier note sanc-tioned observance of the rule of St. Clare and forbade entry to the convent to all nonprofessed persons save the queen and her ladies-in-waiting.52 Finally, Pope Nicholas IV authorized burial of lay persons within the monastery com-plex, at which point Violante of Aragón prepared her last will and testament, asserting five times within its first seven lines her intention to be buried in Santa Clara de Allariz, the monastery founded for this express purpose and her chief beneficiary.53 Named as her executors are Abbess Sancha Eanes and two Franciscan friars, Alonso Domínguez de León, confessor to the bishop of León, and fray García Blandes (c. 1245–1332), confessor to the queen.54

The exact nature of Alonso Domínguez’s relation to the queen is unspeci-fied—he may have been a chaplain or confessor, though he is not identified as such—and he seems to have had no direct role at Santa Clara de Allariz beyond his duties as executor. His name reappears as one of ten signatories to the 1295 codicil that reasserts the bequests of her 1292 testament and warns against anyone interfering with her wishes. There, he is simply identified as a friar of



55 ahpo Clero, Santa Clara de Allariz, no. 25, line 21. Alonso Domínguez also appears in the 1288 testament of Bishop Martín Fernández of León (1254–1289): es, vol. 36, app. 70, pp. 158–160. He is identified as Steban Alfonso Domingues de la Orden de los frayles menores, nuestro Confesor in the will’s opening and as Frey Alfonso at the end.

56 García Blandes receives extensive coverage in early Franciscan chronicles, due to his beat-ification and campaigns for his canonization. See Marcos de Lisboa (1570) 9.1–5, pp. 237–240; and Castro (1727) 5.13–16.

57 According to a chronicle of c. 1614, the monarchs were only partial patrons; doña Violante is credited individually as the donor of a piece of liturgical silver: Castro (1971), chap. 20, ff. 50v–51r.

the order of St. Francis.55 García Blandes, on the other hand, was clearly an intimate of both the queen and the Clarisas, serving first as doña Violante’s confessor, then confessor and vicar of Santa Clara de Allariz, and finally as pro-vincial general of the Franciscans of Galicia.56 A member of the friary of San Francisco de Ourense, founded in 1270 with the joint patronage of Alfonso X and his queen, Blandes was no stranger to the bishop’s antagonism.57 Indeed, it was he and the friars of Galicia who had most to gain from the establishment of a royal monastery in Allariz, which strongly suggests that it was religious and not dynastic politics that governed the selection of Allariz for this decisive foundation. The installation of another mendicant outpost in the bishopric of Pedro Eanes was an act of provocation, and the royal imprimatur provided by its foundress essential to the strategy. Such an aggressive gesture would be unthinkable without the support of a strong and unassailable patron such as Violante of Aragón, who was still the ruling queen of Castile-León at the time Ourense was targeted for her interment.

Within Bishop Pedro’s see, but outside of his immediate neighborhood, Allariz was strategically poised for maximum effect both offensively and defen-sively, allowing the Franciscans of Galicia to hide behind Violante of Aragón’s support while flaunting their disregard for the bishop’s fierce opposition. The queen’s confessor was the logical intermediary between the order and its patron. Proximity to Blandes was an incentive for her to locate her sepulchre in Allariz, but not enough of a motivation to justify the immense effort needed to establish the convent there; the Franciscans’ need to expand the order by chal-lenging the bishop’s virulent hostility does explain this. Thus, García Blandes was able to harness the queen’s piety to his own purposes, and doña Violante was able to provide substantial aid to the order to which she planned to com-mend the care of her immortal soul.

To collaborate in the plan, Violante of Aragón had to change her burial plans substantially, as her testament indicates. Following the procedure stipulated in Title 18, Law 103 of the third Partida, doña Violante revoked all prior


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58 Testament (11 April 1292): ahn Clero 1429/5, lines 19–20, 22–23.59 See n. 5 regarding the year of her mother’s death. Perhaps pregnancy inspired the youth-

ful testament and her curious intention to be buried in the kingdom of her birth—highly unusual for a reigning queen and worthy of further exploration. Malicious claims of doña Violante’s barrenness, originating with the mid-14th-century anti-Aragonese cax and per-sisting to the present day, are wholly unfounded. Over twelve years, doña Violante would give birth to at least eleven children, ten of whom lived to adulthood.

60 García Oro (1990), 111.61 Ibid., 132.62 Carta real (royal decree) of Violante of Aragón, 1 May 1276: ahn Códices, B-1261, f. 2, tran-

scribed in Agapito y Revilla (1911), 9, and García-Serrano (1997), 63, n. 237. See notes 8 and 37 above concerning other patronage.

63 Her testamentary bequests include 3,000 maravedís de la guerra to each of the Franciscan monasteries in Galicia, 2,000 to each of the Dominican monasteries of Galicia, and 3,000 (overall) to the Franciscans of Castile. So, while she is partial to the friars menores, she is also well disposed towards the friars predicadores (ahn Clero, 1429/5, lines 17–18). The

testaments, including one placing her body alongside that of her mother, Yolant of Hungary, in Vallbona des Monges, a Cistercian monastery in present-day Lleida; and another in which she requested to repose in Zamora.58 In nei-ther case is a date given, though the language implies that her mother had already died, making the first of the two previous wills no earlier than 1253, the year seventeen-year-old Violante would give birth to her first child, Berenguela.59 Nor does the 1292 testament specify where in Zamora doña Violante planned to be buried, though Santa Clara de Zamora seems likely, given that nuns were brought from that venue to populate the satellite founda-tion in Allariz. Thus, her decision to be buried in Allariz represented a change of location but not of mendicant affiliation.

Nevertheless, one element did change. At Santa Clara de Zamora, doña Violante would not have been a foundress; the convent had been in existence since the twelfth century, adopting the Franciscan mantle in 1237.60 This led García Oro to attribute the move from Zamora to Allariz to doña Violante’s desire to play a more prominent role as a patron of her burial institution, given that prior to the 1280s having a foundational role had not been a concern for her.61 Her role in the establishment of San Pablo de Valladolid in the 1270s can-not properly be considered a founding one, although the exact nature of her involvement has proved confusing. In 1276, at the request of the Order of Preachers, doña Violante urged the municipal authorities of Valladolid to grant them land for their pending foundation, in keeping with her prerogative as sei-gneur of the city.62 This support no doubt did influence the outcome of the friars’ petition, and given her mendicant proclivities, was likely given happily.63



latter bequest is one of the lines omitted in Atanasio López’s transcription (1927a) of the queen’s will.

64 García-Serrano (1997), 70–73.65 Ibid., 71, citing ahn Clero 3572/4 (15 Oct. 1284).66 Medrano (1729) 2.28, pp. 310–313.67 Libro becerro de San Pablo de Valladolid (1767), ahn Códices, B-1261, f. 29.68 Besides Santa Clara de Allariz, Violante gave gifts, mostly exchanges of houses and land, to

the Franciscans and Dominicans of Valladolid, the military Order of Calatrava, Burgos Cathedral, a pilgrim’s hospice in Villafranca de Monte de Oca, and the monasteries of San Pedro de Angoares (near Ponteareas, Pontevedra) and San Pedro de Arlanza: Hernando del Castillo (1584–1621, repr. 2002), vol. 3, p. 41; mhe, vol. 1, doc. 92; Santa María la Mayor, Valladolid, doc. 66, 67; Gaibrois, vol. 3, doc. 123, 349, 486, 501; Repartimiento de Murcia, 1–4, 103–106, 156–157, 163–164, 218–222, 243–249; Ballesteros (1984), doc. 445, 626, 638, 700, 809, 1118, 1442–1443; Kinkade (1992–1993), 13; Vann (1993), 142; García Serrano (1997), 63–67.

Nevertheless, she neither gave of her property to San Pablo de Valladolid (as she had to San Francisco de Valladolid), nor provided subventions for its oper-ation, and this compromises any claims to her foundational agency.

More to the point, it would be difficult to grant her the status of foundress because it is doubtful that the Dominicans wanted her—or any member of the royal family—to play such a role. The Dominicans of Castile appear to have consciously refrained from pursuing foundations jointly with the monarchy, preferring to deal directly with municipal authorities.64 One notes, for exam-ple, that doña Violante was appealed to only when the council of Valladolid proved intransigent. Since the order regularly benefited from royal (and papal) favor during the thirteenth century, and received considerable subventions from the monarchy, the strategy must have been deliberate. Of the nine Dominican monasteries founded in Castile in the thirteenth century, only one—San Ildefonso de Toro—can be said to be the direct product of royal patronage: it was founded in 1285 by Queen María de Molina (1260–1321) through monetary contributions and gifts of property acquired specifically for the foundation.65 Even in Valladolid, Medrano’s history of the order praises doña Violante’s role in San Pablo’s establishment, but quickly notes that since María de Molina donated the actual structures she is the one who justly merits the title of foundress.66 San Pablo’s own chronicle makes no pretense of royal origins, however, stating clearly that el convento nunca fue de patronato real.67

This brief digression sheds light both on doña Violante’s patronage and the divergent strategies pursued by the Dominicans and Franciscans with regard to their establishment in the kingdom. Doña Violante’s patronage as a reigning queen was moderate and her benevolence not distributed widely when com-pared with others, such as her daughter-in-law María de Molina.68 In her


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69 Navarro (1994), 307–309. Berenguela, daughter of Alfonso X and Violante, has tradition-ally been designated the founder of Santa Clara de Toro, but Navarro argues convincingly against this; he also notes María de Molina’s role in the establishment of Sancti Spiritus, the female Dominican house, in 1316.

70 On queenly patronage as a political tool, see Parsons (1993), Earenfight (2005), and Martin (2006).

71 Linehan (1997), 140, rates Bishop Pedro Eanes de Novoa of Ourense one step worse a friar-baiter than Bishop Suero Pérez of Zamora, protagonist in his study of the Dominican convent of Santa María in Zamora.

seigneury of Toro, for example, María de Molina founded not only the Dominican house of San Ildefonso, but also the Franciscan convent of Santa Clara and the Premonstratensian monastery of Santa Sofía.69 Doña Violante’s decision to concentrate her efforts on Santa Clara de Allariz after Alfonso’s death may indicate an income too limited to allow for wider largesse, but equally may signal a desire to enhance her agency in a single project rather than dilute her generosity by bestowing it broadly.70 One must also not dis-count the evident sincerity of her religious devotion to the Franciscans. Not inclined to engage in patronage as a means of enhancing her worldly status, Violante of Aragón seems to have been motivated as much by spiritual as material ambition, however redolent of internecine intrigue. As the years passed, doña Violante’s actions took on an added imperative, for as her eco-nomic resources dwindled and her influence at court diminished, the disposi-tion of her body became one of the few agents of royal authority still under her control, and its possession one of the chief weapons in the arsenal of the Galician friars in their quest to expand.

The nuns chosen to populate the fledgling convent at Allariz also contrib-uted significantly in the strategic expansion. Their home diocese, Zamora, was the seat of another mendicant foe, Bishop Suero Pérez (1255–1286), who at mid-century was busy harassing the Dominican ladies of Zamora; perhaps the Poor Clares were next on his list.71 Yet, by expanding into the adjoining bishop-ric of Ourense, the Clarisas of Allariz were not fleeing controversy, but actively courting it. This further confirms the role of the female Franciscans in the aggressive expansion policies of their order in thirteenth-century Castile.

Allariz and the Queen’s Body

Violante of Aragón would live on for seventeen years after the death of her estranged husband in April 1284 and his burial in the lavish royal chapel in



72 Martínez de Aguirre (1995).73 Testament (11 April 1292): ahn Clero, 1429/5, lines 2–4.74 Kinkade (1992–1993), 15–17; Katz (2013).75 Registro de la Cancillería de Sancho IV (1292–1294), in Gaibrois (1922), vol. 1, doc. 49.76 Testament of Alfonso X: Martínez (2003), app. 8, p. 620.77 The Cardeña manuscript dates from the early 14th century; the passage is transcribed in

Berganza (1721), vol. 2, p. 586; and es, vol. 23, p. 379.

Seville, whose preparations overlapped with those at Allariz.72 While Alfonso X resolutely focused southward, on territorial expansion, doña Violante—the first infanta of the Crown of Aragón to marry a Castilian heir to the throne—retreated northward to its Leonese cradle, where a rural Galician town offered a welcome haven. It is unlikely that she ever took the veil at Santa Clara de Allariz, an intention expressed in her testament, but rather used the monas-tery as a residence, remaining free to come and go at will.73 The years following the death of Sancho IV in April 1295 left doña Violante particularly isolated from the court, now governed in all but name by his widow, María de Molina, the queen regent.74

During her son’s lifetime (and perhaps beyond), the dowager queen received an annuity of 150,000 maravedis, a sum that left her nominally independent yet dependent on her family’s largesse.75 The bequests made in her will confirm that she was not a person of great wealth. All told, she dispensed 259,000 mara-vedís dela guerra (the devalued post-1265 currency), the bulk of her estate—220,000 maravedis—and all of her belongings going to Santa Clara de Allariz. By comparison, in his second will (21 January 1284), Alfonso X left 200,000 maravedís to his illegitimate daughter, Urraca Alfonsez.76 Yet, just as monasteries are composed of more than bricks and mortar, so did doña Violante’s gift aid the Franciscan cause in ways that exceeded the monetary value of her estate. Of greatest value, one could argue, was the physical pres-ence of her royal body in its soil.

Hence, the greatest irony of the lengthy struggle to secure a burial founda-tion for Violante of Aragón is that hers is a missing body, one whose final rest-ing place is open to debate. We have no proof, other than her strong volition, that the queen was ever laid to rest in Allariz. The Coronica de San Pedro de Cardeña, a fourteenth-century chronicle of Castilian history through the reign of Alfonso X, closes with an entry on the queen’s death, stating tersely:

E despues la Reyna doña Violant su muger, fija del Rey de Aragon, el año del Jubileo fue a Roma, e a la venida adolecío en Roncesvalles, e finò: e yace y enterrada.77


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78 Flórez (1761), vol. 2. p. 46; Arco (1954), 42.79 Morales (1572), 159.80 Report of Gerónimo Chirivoga [de Quiroga], Allariz, 9 November 1613: ahpo Clero, libro

51, ff. 61–64; repr. in García Barriuso (2002), 83–88.81 Testament, Aldonza Lopez (25 March 1344): García Barruso (2002), 58. Testament, Ruy

Páez de Biedma (1345): ahn Clero, 1429/20. The testaments of the infantes do not survive but a 1329 privilege from Alfonso XI confirming their bequest of annual rents of 4,000 maravedis to Santa Clara does: ahn Clero, 1430/11.

82 Morales (1572), 159.

The conclusion that Violante of Aragón, on her way back from a pilgrimage to the first-ever jubilee year in Rome, died and was buried in Roncesvalles, how-ever, is problematic. The Pyrenees town, for one thing, had no such tradition prior to the mid-eighteenth century, when Enrique Flórez, based on the Memorias at Cardeña, placed her tomb there; all subsequent texts have fol-lowed his lead, leaving the views of earlier authors forgotten.78 Ambrosio de Morales (1513–1591), for example, in his catalogue prepared for Philip II (1566–1598), reported that the queen was buried in Allariz, not Roncesvalles, though he also gave Castile as the location of her demise.79 In 1613, Philip III (1598–1621) commissioned Gerónimo de Quiroga to carry out another royal inquiry, which involved entering the nun’s choir to confirm the burial place of the santa Reyna:

y esta sepultada en el dicho Coro con una tumba guarnecida de brocado con sus Armas Reales, y anssi mesmo estan enterrados en otra tumba en dicho coro los señores Yfantes Dn. Phelipe y D.ª Margarita, sus nietos, hijos del señor Rey Dn. Sancho, su hijo.80

Their tombs were then opened for inspection, and the bodies found in an excellent state of preservation.

Surely Violante’s grandson, the infante Felipe (1292–1327), and his wife, Margarita de la Cerda (c. 1300–1330), along with Aldonza López (d. 1344), lady-in-waiting to the dowager queen, knew the location of doña Violante’s body when they requested sepulture in Santa Clara de Allariz. Unfortunately they provided no confirming evidence of her whereabouts and offered no commen-taries like that of Ruy Páez de Biedma, Viscount of Monterrei, who in his will of 1345 quite helpfully requested to be buried at the foot of the prince’s tomb.81 More troubling still is the nuns’ uncertainty as to the location of the tomb of their illustrious benefactress, as reported by Ambrosio de Morales in 1572.82 To be fair, all interments at Allariz were eclipsed by the arrival in the mid-four-teenth century of the body of fray García Blandes, around whose tomb a



83 Marcos de Lisboa (1570) 9.1–5, esp. pp. 237–238.84 See Arco (1954) and Castillo et al. (1990) for data, and Walker (2001) for analysis.85 I thank David Nogales Rincón for bringing this practice to my attention. See Nogales

(2005), (2009).

miracle cult formed, bringing pilgrims from across the region to be healed by his intervention, a cult carefully administered and recorded by the nuns, in hopes of securing his canonization.83

Several factors argue for doña Violante’s body having been transferred from Roncesvalles to Allariz for final sepulture, namely, the unlikelihood of an Aragonese princess and Castilian queen being left across the border in Navarre, the regularity with which royal bodies were exhumed and reburied in medi-eval Castile, the relative ease of transportation from Roncesvalles to Allariz via the Camino de Santiago, and finally, the strong incentive her executors had to ensure that Santa Clara received custody of her body.

Stasis was not a feature of Castilian burial practice. Alfonso V established his pantheon at San Isidoro in the eleventh century by bringing the remains of his father, Vermudo II, from Santa María de Carracedo to León; Alfonso VI did the same in the twelfth century, uniting several of his six wives and numerous ancestors at San Benito de Sahagún. In the thirteenth, Alfonso IX brought his father Fernando II to rest beside him in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, while Alfonso X moved his mother Beatriz of Swabia from Las Huelgas to Seville Cathedral, where Pedro I also had María de Padilla transferred a century later from Santa Clara de Astudillo. Pedro’s corpse, in turn, was moved in the fifteenth century from Montiel in La Mancha to Santo Domingo el Real in Madrid, where his granddaughter, Constanza of Castile, had assembled numer-ous royal cadavers in her newly formed dynastic pantheon. Clearly, no taboo against exhumation existed within the Castilian royal family.84

Quite the opposite: a policy held in which a body could be placed ‘on deposit’ in a temporary burial arrangement until a suitable setting or proper chapel could be formed.85 The chronicle’s reference to doña Violante’s having died and been buried in Roncesvalles could well indicate a temporary entombment until her remains could be transported from Roncesvalles to Allariz. Indeed, to have left the queen’s body on Navarrese soil, when her Aragonese homeland lay such a short distance away, would have been extremely odd, and given her status as the first infanta of Aragón to become queen of Castile, it is conceiv-able that all three kingdoms could have aided in her transfer.

However, the party that had the most to gain via doña Violante’s arrival at Allariz, and the most to lose had her corpse remained in Roncesvalles, was the Order of Friars Minor. The convent’s fate was still precarious at the time of the


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86 The interdict and displaced friars are mentioned in the wills of María Velasquez (11 July 1303, Archivo de la Catedral de Ourense, Pergaminos, 1439) and María Eanes Gibarra (4 May 1305, Archivo de la Academia de la Historia de Madrid); see García Barriuso (2002), 45.

87 Cid (1984), 183; Limia (2002).88 Rodríguez (1984).89 Conde-Valvís (1950), 182.90 Rodríguez (1984).91 Stafford (1983); Parsons (1993); Vann (1993); Earenfight (2005), (2013); Martin (2006),

(2012); Woodacre (2013).

queen’s death, and the entrenchment of the Franciscans in Galicia far from certain. By 1303, the Poor Clares of Allariz were under episcopal interdict, and the friars of Ourense ejected from their monastery, some taking up residence in Allariz.86 The presence of doña Violante’s dead body, the first reigning soul committed to Franciscan custody, would be as beneficial to the minorites as her advocacy in life, or perhaps more.

Officially, the question remains irresolvable. Nothing save Quiroga’s testi-mony states conclusively that the queen’s tomb was ever installed at Santa Clara de Allariz but, on the other hand, nothing states that it was not. Sadly, no physical evidence survives to help resolve the question. Successive fires destroyed the medieval convent of Santa Clara; the current complex dates from 1732 to 1794.87 Although rebuilt on the same site, the footprint was sub-stantially altered; the site of the medieval church is currently occupied by the convent kitchens and inaccessible to the lay public.88 At Roncesvalles, the medieval collegiate church was destroyed by fire in the sixteenth century, and the surviving sarcophagi reinstalled at random.89 The tombs at Allariz were desecrated by French troops in 1809, and the ashes of the honored dead rebur-ied after the war in a common tomb in the lower cloister cemetery.90 The reli-gious community founded by Violante of Aragón did survive its tumultuous beginnings, however, and Santa Clara de Allariz remains her living legacy.

Conclusion

As scholars have amply demonstrated, every gesture made by a royal woman reveals nuances of royal power and prestige.91 Violante of Aragón’s efforts to establish a convent to receive her mortal remains reveal the instability of her position and anxiety regarding her authority. Santa Clara de Allariz, her one substantial act of philanthropy, took shape at a time in the queen’s life when she was deprived of her wealth and marginalized from the court, calling into



92 García Oro (1990), 130.93 Ariès (1977), 190.

question assumptions regarding queenly patronage as a strategy for cementing power and extending influence. Those who have assessed her actions in the light of dynastic politics overlook fundamental factors that lend clarity to a complex story.

Even had the Castilian crown in the 1280s felt the need to establish a royal foothold in Galicia, why would Violante of Aragón—estranged from her hus-band and in conflict with the court—have been chosen? And why, as Alfonso’s widow, would she continue to struggle against the fierce opposition of Bishop Pedro Eanes to establish a royal foothold for a regime in which her role had been reduced to one of spectator? Only by considering the two parties involved—the Franciscans and their patron—can one answer the crucial questions of why a royal monastery was founded in Galicia by a queen with no ties to the region, and why precisely in the modest town of Allariz.92

If a testament, as Philippe Ariès says, is a means of associating earthly wealth with heavenly salvation, of gaining aeterna without permanently losing temporalia, then doña Violante’s bequest amply fulfills its obligations.93 Her legacy rests primarily in her advocacy of the fledgling Order of Friars Minor; by making Santa Clara de Allariz both a residence and a funerary chapel, Violante of Aragón lent her body to the cause of their advancement. Daughter, wife, and mother of kings, Violante’s body in death became a prize for the Franciscans, a devotional locus for the Poor Clares, and a dynastic memorial for the ruling houses of both Castile and Aragón.

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"A Convent for ‘la Sabia’: Violante de Aragón and the Foundation of Santa Clara de Allariz”

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