imperial title, under its feminine form *imperatrix*. It appears, however, in only six of her diplomas<fnref n="12" />. In fact, from December 1109, the title was monopolised by the king of Aragón-Navarre, Alfonso I the Battler (1104-1134), spouse to Urraca for a brief period between 1109 and 1114. The Battler kept on making use of it after their marriage was dissolved, and half of his records until 1127 bear it<fnref n="13" />. By that date, it had passed on to Urraca's son, Alfonso VII.

With the reign of Alfonso VII (1126-1157), the Hispanic imperial phenomenon reached both its peak and its end. Under his rule the title *rex* was abandoned and, after his mother's death, Alfonso was almost systematically designated *imperator* (*totius*) *Hispaniae* in the records issued by his chancery<fnref n="14" />. By this time there were few variants, with the said title almost unchanged until the very end of Alfonso's reign, when he used a German-influenced and more grandiose formulation in less than a dozen diplomas<fnref n="15" />. Closer examination of Alfonso VII's records also shows the extent to which they were 'imperialised', with the vocabulary of the *imperium* saturating the diplomatic formulary,

<footnote n="12">¹² I. Ruiz Albi, *La reina Doña Urraca* (1109-1126). *Cancillería y colección diplomática*, León 2003, docc. 10, 14, 15, 33, 60 and 149.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ See J. Á. Lema Pueyo, *Colección diplomática de Alfonso I de Aragón y Pamplona, 1104-1134*, San Sebastián 1990.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ While awaiting the much-anticipated critical edition of Alfonso VII's diplomatic collection by Miguel Calleja-Puerta, we still depend on the inventories provided by M. Lucas Álvarez, *El reino de León en la alta Edad Media: V. Las cancillerías reales (1109-1230)*, León 1993, pp. 87-314, and the appendix to B. F. Reilly, *The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-1157*, Philadelphia 1998, pp. 323-398. Some of Alfonso VII's diplomas issued after 1126 still display the royal title, but they are a minority: see M. Calleja-Puerta, *Documentación cancilleresca y territorialización del poder: los espacios del rey en los diplomas de Alfonso VII (1116-1157)*, in *Los espacios del rey: poder y territorio en las monarquías hispánicas (siglos XII-XIV)*, cur. F. Arias Guillén, p. Martínez Sopena, Bilbao 2018, pp. 19-38, here p. 21 and note 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ For example, « pius, felix, inclitus, triumphator ac semper inuictus, totius Hispanie diuina clementia famosissimus imperator », as appears for the first time in a diploma dated 22 April 1156: Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, *Colección Salazar*, leg. C, carp. 2, n. 4, referenced in Reilly, *León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII* cit., p. 394, n. 929.</footnote>
from the preambles to the final subscriptions<fnref n="16" />. For the first time the title also appears in the records' external features of authentication: *signa* and seals. Additionally, the scope of the imperial phenomenon during this period extended beyond the productions of the chancery, with coins minted with the legend IMPERATOR<fnref n="17" />, and a *Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris* (henceforward, CAI) written around 1147-1149 to the glory of Alfonso's achievements<fnref n="18" />. Finally, both this chronicle and a number of records assert that an imperial coronation ceremony even took place for him on 26 May 1135, in the cathedral of León and in the presence of his vassals, comprising Hispanic kings of both Christian and Muslim faiths and extra-peninsular potentates<fnref n="19" />. With the abundance and variety of sources testifying to it, Alfonso VII's imperial experiment was clearly the most elaborate. It is thus all the more surprising that he was also the last *imperator Hispaniae*. After his death in 1157, the title suddenly disappeared from royal chancery practices, and there was no more “emperor of Spain”<fnref n="20" />.

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ For the details of this imperialisation of the diplomatic formulary, see Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 319-328.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ F. Álvarez Burgos, *Catálogo de la moneda medieval castellano-leonesa. Siglos XI al XV*, Madrid 1998, pp. 22-32; A. Roma Valdés, *Moneda y sistemas monetarios en Castilla y en León durante la Edad Media (1087-1366)*, Barcelona - Madrid 2000, chap. 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ *Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris*, ed. A. Maya Sánchez, in *Chronica Hispana Saeculi XII : Pars 1*, Turnhout 1990, pp. 109-248. Although anonymously authored, the *CAI* was written by a cleric close to Alfonso VII and probably at his instigation. As a biographical account, it covers Alfonso's reign until the year 1147 and the beginnings of a military expedition that would end with the conquest of the Islamic port-city of Almería during the same year. To narrate the preparations for this campaign, the chronicler resorted to leonine hexameters and composed what is known as *Prefatio de Almaria*, ed. J. Gil, *ibi*, pp. 253-267. In this chapter I am using the English translation of the chronicle and *prefatio* by S. Barton, R. Fletcher, *The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest*, Manchester - New York 2000, pp. 162-263.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ See the next section of this chapter for further details about this ceremony.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Although the evidence suggests that Fernando III, king of Castile from 1217, then of Castile-León from 1230-1252, might have envisaged a claim to the imperial title: see Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 384-386. Carlos de Ayala recently returned to this question, arguing that even though Fernando III's alleged wish to be called emperor was never realised, the king indeed devised an imperial agenda, in close connection to</footnote>
This abrupt unravelling of medieval Hispanic imperial experimentation is only one of the enigmas surrounding the subject²¹. Another relates to its meaning. What did scribes have in mind when they resorted to the imperial qualification to mark out their king's authority ?

*What did it mean to be an imperator? The aporias of the documentation*

Scholars looking for an explanation of the meaning of the Hispanic imperial title in the documentation will see their ambition frustrated. Admittedly the *CAI* casts light on Alfonso VII's imperial designation, referring to the circumstances that gave meaning to such a title. From this work we learn how the imperial coronation was performed on the occasion of a three-day council convened in León in May 1135. During the second day,

the ideal of crusade, that manifested into an 'African project' of expanding his sway beyond Iberia : C. de Ayala Martínez, *Empire and Crusade under Fernando III*, in *The Sword and the Cross : Castile-León in the Era of Fernando III*, cur. E. L. Holt, T. Witcombe, Leiden 2020, pp. 15-43.

²¹ Various propositions have been made by scholars to explain why Alfonso VII's successors ceased to claim the imperial title. Some have argued that the last unsuccessful decade of Alfonso VII's reign ruined the idea of a Hispanic imperial leadership (Ayala, *Empire and Crusade* cit., p. 18 and note 12). Others, including myself, have pointed out the role played by the separation of Castile and León and the national consolidation of the Iberian Christian kingdoms (Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 376-386) and the weakness of feudal bonds on which, as we will see, Alfonso VII's imperial construct relied (S. Vital Fernández, *Alfonso VII de León y Castilla (1126-1157). Las relaciones de poder en el centro de la acción política y social del Imperator Hispaniae*, Gijón 2019, partic. chap. 7). Wolfram Drews, who interprets Alfonso VII's imperial coronation as a reaction against the caliphal proclamation of the Almohads, links the disappearance of the imperial title after 1157 to the changes in the Islamic context and a lack of caliphal 'imperial' competition that would have rendered the Hispanic imperial claims null and void (Drews, *Imperial Rule in Medieval Spain* cit., pp. 299-315). It should be noted that even if the Hispanic imperial title indeed disappeared with Alfonso VII, the Hispanic hegemonic ambitions of the Castilian and Leonese kings did not, nor did the recollection of past emperors, which were on the contrary reappropriated in various contexts : Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 386-407.
as granted to previous *imperatores*. For these, the imperial assignation remained an undefined diplomatic practice.

Unquestionably, this practice echoed in other sources, contemporary and posterior, evidencing how the imperial claims made in the chancery were to some extent mirrored elsewhere<fnref n="24" />. This is true mostly of Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII in private charters and narratives from Castile-León where they are sometimes referred to as ‘emperors’. Alfonso VII in particular came to be nicknamed by a modern historian the emperor “by antonomasia” because of the large number of sources identifying him simply by this title without even naming him<fnref n="25" />. However, in these sources, the imperiality of the Spanish kings was not further explicated. Beyond the kingdom of Castile-León, the practice of calling its rulers *imperatores* was also acknowledged, although only occasionally. Popes never addressed them as emperors<fnref n="26" />. And if a few other Iberian rulers used the title to refer to their Leonese neighbour, it was only on discrete occasions. Even those rulers whom the *CAI* presented as vassals of the emperor mostly designated him as ‘king’ in their own records. However, a few other external sources, mostly narratives, employ the title. Among these, two went as far as to propose its explanation.

The earliest comes from the Norman chronicler and abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel Robert of Torigni (d. 1186), author of a universal chronicle written over the second third of the twelfth century. Referring to the victories of Iberian rulers against Muslims in the year 1147, Robert mentioned the conquest of Almería by “the emperor of Spain, whose imperial capital is the city of Toledo”<fnref n="27" />. He was probably puzzled by the unusual imperial title

<footnote n="24">²⁴ For the documentary basis on which the statements made in this paragraph and the next rely, see Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 226-251, 357-372 and 386-394.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ J. A. Maravall, *El concepto de España en la Edad Media*, Madrid 1981 (ed. or., Madrid 1954), p. 453.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ The *Estoria de España* composed in the third quarter of the thirteenth century would state that Alfonso VII had requested from Pope Innocent II that his imperial title be acknowledged after the coronation of 1135, but there is no evidence that this was the case: Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., p. 310.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ « Imperator Hispaniarum, cujus imperii caput est civitas Toletum » : *Chronique de Robert de Torigni, abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel ; suivie de divers opus*</footnote>
of the king, because he added some clarification about it later in
his account of the events that occurred in the year 1154 :

Ludovicus rex Francorum duxit uxorem filiam Anforsi regis Hispaniarum. Caput regni hujus regis civitas est Toletum ; quem, quia principatur regulis Arragonum et Galliciae, imperatorem Hispaniarum appellant.

*Louis [VII], the king of the French, married the daughter of Anforsus [Alfonso VII], king of Spain. Toledo is the chief city of the dominions of this king, who is called the emperor of Spain, because his sway extends over the petty kings of Aragón and Galicia²⁸.*

Concurring with the author of the *CAI*, the Norman chronicler thought Alfonso VII deserving of the imperial title because he was considered a king of kings – although over a territory slightly different to that presented in the *CAI* since it was in this instance limited to Christian regions of the Iberian Peninsula²⁹.

Another explanation for the title was supplied approximately at the same time by another historiographer, this time a Muslim, and concerning Alfonso VI. The Tunisian chronicler Ibn al-Kardabūs (d. early thirteenth century) discussed in detail the situation of the eleventh-century Andalusí principalities – or *taifas* – in his *Kitāb al-Iktifāʾ*, a general history of Islam up to the beginning of the Almohad period in the twelfth century. Describing at length the relationship between the *taifa* kings and Al-

cules historiques de cet auteur et de plusieurs religieux de la même abbaye, ed. L. Delisle, Rouen 1872, vol. 1, p. 245.

28 *Chronique de Robert de Torigni* cit., p. 282; English translation by J. Stevenson, *The Chronicles of Robert de Monte*, Lampeter - Dyfed 1991, p. 74. This entry was probably written shortly after the event, and possibly before Alfonso VII's death as suggested by the use of the present tense in *appellant*.

29 One present issue consists of understanding to whom Robert of Torigni was referring when mentioning « the petty kings of Aragón and Galicia ». If we can identify the former as (probably) Ramón Berenguer IV (d. 1162), Count of Barcelona since 1131 and de facto ruler of Aragón from 1137 as the result of his union with Petronilla, daughter of King Ramiro II of Aragón, who renounced his kingship in that year, this presents the problem that there was no kingdom of Galicia in this period. Could this be how the Norman chronicler designated not Galicia but Portugal, which became an independent kingdom in 1140 ? On the relationship between Alfonso VII and Portugal, see Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 301-302 and 350-351.
fonso VI, with the latter portrayed as an ambitious and cunning tyrant, Ibn al-Kardabūs recounted in particular the king's scheming that led to his conquest of Toledo in 1085, and the subsequent submission of many *taifas*. After which time, Ibn al-Kardabūs concluded that,

> Elated with success, the Christian king began to assume the titles and to imitate in every respect the conduct of great monarchs and Caesars. His ambition increased two-fold; and he surrounded his person with such splendour and magnificence that all mortals appeared contemptible before him. Seeing the Muslim princes become subservient to him, he took the title 'Emperor' [*al-inbirāṭūr*], which, in the language of the Christians, means as much as Commander of the Faithful [*Amīr al-Muʿminīn*] with us. Whenever he addressed any of them in writing, he would style himself 'Emperor of the adherents of the two faiths [*al-inbirāṭūr dū-l-millatayn*]<fnref n="30" />.

The words of this Muslim observer echo, to some extent, the *CAI* and Robert of Torigni's justification of Alfonso VII's use of the title of *imperator*: Alfonso VI started employing it when *taifa* rulers “bec[a]me subservient to him”, suggesting that he too was a king of kings as his sway was recognised to extend into Muslim territories. But Ibn al-Kardabūs also went further in his interpretation of Alfonso VI's imperial claims, arguing that they were modelled on the old Roman practice of the Caesars and resulted in an affected universal ambition and an arrogation of the title proper to the Muslim caliph.

The accuracy of Ibn al-Kardabūs's statement is debatable, and his proposition that Alfonso VI used the title of “Emperor of the adherents of the two faiths” when addressing Muslim rulers remains, for want of archival evidence, dubious at best. The Christian side of the documentation certainly testifies to Alfonso VI's ambition to rule over both Christians and Muslims within Iberia. Nevertheless, nothing supports the idea of a claim

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Text adapted from the English translation of Ibn al-Kardabūs’ work included in Al-Maqqarī, *The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain*, trans. p. de Gayangos y Arce, London 1840, vol. 2, Appendix C, p. xxxii. For the translation of the Arabic *al-inbirāṭūr dū-l-millatayn* I follow the proposition of A. MacKay, M. Benaboud, *Yet Again Alfonso VI, ‘the Emperor, Lord of the Adherents Of the Two Faiths, the Most Excellent Ruler’: A Rejoinder to Norman Roth*, «Bulletin of Hispanic Studies», 61, 2 (1984), pp. 171-181.</footnote>
to a universal emporship, which was always limited to *His-
*pania<fnref n="31" />. Besides, diplomatic records evidence a chronology mark-
edly distinct from that proposed by Ibn al-Kardabūs to explain
Alfonso VI's first assumption of the imperial title. Indeed, the
king started being titled *imperator Hispaniae* in his records in Oc-
tober 1077³², which allows us to discard the conquest of Toledo
in 1085 as the event that initially led to the imperial claim. This
Arabic source is revealing, nonetheless, of how the imperiality of
the Spanish kings, barely defined contemporaneously, could give
rise to posterior reappropriations and, in such instances, could be
redefined.

In fact, the *CAI* itself did not proceed any differently. Written
from 1147-1149 and interpreting *a posteriori* an imperial corona-
tion that had happened in 1135, it was also rewriting the chro-
nology of Alfonso VII's imperial reign. As mentioned earlier, Al-
fonso VII started claiming the imperial title in a systematic man-
ner from the moment he ascended to the throne in 1126, and
even on some occasions before that date<fnref n="33" />. However, in the
chronicle, prior to the narration of the imperial coronation of
1135, Alfonso is systematically titled *rex*; only afterwards is he
titled *imperator*. Rebuilding the chronology of Alfonso's reign,
making his readers believe that the king became an emperor only
in 1135, the author of the *CAI* reveals as useless as Ibn al-

<footnote n="31">³¹ The title “Emperor of the adherents of the two faiths” is also pre-
sented as that allegedly used by Alfonso VI in his correspondence with the
*taifa* king of Seville, al-Mu‘tamid, in yet another later Arabic text, the four-
teenth-century anonymous *Al-Ḥulal al-Mawṣiyya*, chronicling the history
of Berber empires. A few decades ago, the question of this title’s authen-
ticity has been the object of a harsh debate between Angus MacKay and
Muhammad Benaboud on the one side, and Norman Roth on the other,
the latter arguing against it. It remains, in any event, undocumented in the
evidence contemporaneous to Alfonso VI’s reign, whether in Arabic or
Latin. I have argued previously that, if anything, it could correspond to an
Arabic adaptation, in the mind of al-Kardabūs and the anonymous chron-
icler, of Alfonso VI’s title variant, *imperator constitutus super omnes Hispaniae
nationes*. For the purpose of the argument, the Hispanic scope of this var-
iant would have been amplified to embrace universal claims and further
highlight the arrogations of the Christian king. See Sirantoine, *Imperator
Hispaniae* cit., pp. 223-225.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² See above note 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ See below note 46.</footnote>
Kardabūs to account for the reasons why the king actually assumed the imperial title in the first place.

*Why not remain just rex? The imperial title in its contexts*

Unsatisfying as they may be, the details provided by the *CAI*, Robert of Torigni, and Ibn al-Kardabūs nevertheless concur in justifying the assumption of the imperial title as the result of a context in which being king was not enough to express the extent of the domination exerted by the rulers of Castile-León. In that sense, they suggest another way of looking at the Hispanic imperial phenomenon. Instead of trying to understand what it meant to be an *imperator*, we ought to consider the benefits of no longer remaining only *rex*. This question might not seem very different from the previous one. However, it moves the issue towards a slightly different perspective, leading one to think of the imperial phenomenon as a practice developed in order to meet a need attached to specific contexts of rulership. For Ibn al-Kardabūs, the imperial title resulted from the need to communicate Alfonso VI's prideful submission of the *taifa* kings and his alleged arrogations to universality; for the Latin chroniclers, it was the consequence of a need to characterise the authority which Alfonso VII exerted beyond his kingdom. In that perspective, examining Hispanic imperial claims in the light of the successive contexts in which they emerged allows us to discern the needs that were left unsatisfied by kingship alone.

Until the mid-eleventh century, the scarcity and nature of sources evidencing the imperial epiphenomenon make it difficult to consider it as anything more than the caprice of a handful of scribes. And yet, I argue that in doing so, these scribes were seeking to highlight in their charters the paramount power (*imperium*) of kings – who themselves never actually used the title *imperator* – in a context where kingship was faced with several challenges. As the kingdom of León expanded, its rulers met difficulties in imposing their authority over newly annexed territories. Besides, succession practices were not strongly established and different branches of the dynasty opposed each other in the period under consideration. In this context of a latent erosion of royal authority, the scribal practices described above must be read as answering a simple need for emphasis, by using a lexicon com-
monly employed in the period to connote the highest authority – namely, the supreme, indisputable authority of a king, a potentate, or of God himself, as attested in many of the texts that constituted the religious and legal foundations of the contemporaneous scribal culture, from the Holy Scriptures to the *Liber Judicialis*.<fnref n="34" /> To qualify royal authority as *imperium*, and to call kings *imperatores*, was no more than a rhetorical means of asserting that there was no higher power within the kingdom of León.

The context in which Alfonso VI started claiming, in the first person this time, to be 'Emperor of Spain' was very different. During the decade leading to Alfonso's first assumption of the title in 1077, the king's itinerary was, to say the least, one of success<fnref n="35" />. First, Alfonso VI came out as the winner of the intermediate struggle that opposed him to his brothers García and Sancho until 1072. Each one had inherited part of their father's kingdom when King Ferdinand I died in 1065. However, by 1071 García was ousted, and his kingdom of Galicia was in Alfonso's hands. Then, after a period of exile in Islamic Seville and Toledo from May to October 1072 that ended with the assassination of Sancho II of Castile, Alfonso VI managed to retrieve his own and his brothers' kingdoms. Having regained authority over the entire former kingdom of Castile-León, Alfonso could rightly be qualified in one of his records dated 19 November 1072, as "unequaled among other kings of the present time"<fnref n="36" />. Following these first achievements, the king was also able to progressively restore the protectorate that his father had once established over the *taifas* of Badajoz, Toledo, Zaragoza and Seville. By 1075, he had added to the number of his Muslim tributaries the *taifa* of Granada. From then on, his sway extended over a large part of Islamic Spain, where he acted as the arbiter of the diplomatic relations between *taifas*, according to a strategy of weakening that did not go unnoticed among contemporary observers. Thus, the Granadan emir 'Abd Allāh (d. after 1090) attributed to Alfonso the following reasoning:

<footnote n="34">³⁴ These are the conclusions that I developed in Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 53-166.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ The events alluded to in the next paragraphs are further developed in B. F. Reilly, *The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065-1109*, Princeton 1988, chapp. 1 to 5.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶ « Inconparabili presenti tempore aliis regibus » : Gambra, *Alfonso VI, II* cit., doc. 12.</footnote>
The more rebels there are, and the more rivalry there is among [*the taifas*], all the better it is for me. [...] I am not of their faith, and all the inhabitants hate me. [...] The best plan, indeed the only plan, is to threaten one with the other and to take their money all the time until their cities are impoverished and weakened. When they are weakened, they will surrender and become mine of their own accord<fnref n="37" />.

Alfonso VI's ambitions finally reached new Christian territories too. As a result of King Sancho Garcés IV's death in June 1076, the heirless Navarrese kingdom was seized and partitioned by his neighbours Castile-León and Aragón, the former inheriting the Rioja region. Besides, in addition to this territorial expansion, Alfonso VI also extended his dominions, since evidence suggests that the Aragonese king Sancho Ramírez (d. 1094) might have on this occasion made homage to him for parts of the Navarrese regions that he had annexed. The scope of territorial hegemony amassed by Alfonso VI by 1076 was therefore accurately represented when, upon entering Rioja and confirming the *fuero* of Nájera, he titled himself "Alfonso by the Grace of God king of all Galicia and León and Castile, ruling all the way to Calahorra and exercising leadership over Yspania* [i.e. here al-Andalus]"<fnref n="38" />.

It is not merely casually that Alfonso VI's adoption of the title *imperator Hispaniae* in 1077 intervened precisely in the aftermath of the events summarised above<fnref n="39" />. At this point of his suc-

<footnote n="37">³⁷ ‘Abd Allāh ibn Buluggīn, *The Tibyān: Memoirs of ‘Abd Allāh b. Buluggīn Last Zīrid Amīr of Granada*, trans. A. T. Tibi, Leiden 1986, pp. 89-90.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ « Aldefonsus Dei gratia rex tocius Gallecie et Legionis et Castella, usque in Calagurram dominans et in Yspania principatum tenens » : Gambra, *Alfonso VI, II* cit., doc. 41. Traditionally in the Iberian documentation up to the end of the eleventh century, the term *Hispania* could refer either to the geographical unit also known as Iberian Peninsula, in close relation with the former Visigothic polity, or to al-Andalus inasmuch as Muslims occupied the majority of the peninsular territory in the immediate aftermath of their arrival in 711. On the malleability of the medieval concept of *Hispania*, see A. Isla Frez, *Memoria, culto y monarquía hispánica entre los siglos X y XII*, Jaén 2006, pp. 166-184.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ In his time, Ramón Menéndez Pidal proposed to explain the imperial claim by another of Alfonso VI's contemporaneous victories: for him it was the expression of Alfonso's resistance to Pope Gregory VII's at-</footnote>
cessful itinerary, Alfonso's royal title must have been deemed as neither suitably underlining nor designating the wide area of influence over which his multi-faceted authority was exerted. Now, what better word was available to express the power accumulated by one who was then more than a king<sup>40</sup> ? Alfonso's scribes seem on this occasion to have followed the same logic elaborated by Bede the Venerable (d. 735) almost four centuries before in his *Ecclesiastical History*, when he used the substantive *imperium* and the verb *imperare* to write about the authority of King Æthelbert of Kent (d. 616) exceeding the boundaries of his initial kingdom<sup>41</sup>. Moreover, if the peninsular extension suggested by the new adjunction of the genitive *Hispaniae* was still an ambitious projection in 1077, it fitted quite well with the programme of territorial expansion stressed in 'Abd Allāh's words quoted above. This ambition would remain wishful thinking, especially following the Almoravid takeover of al-Andalus from 1086 that put an end to the Christian protectorate on *taifa* kingdoms. As a result, the imperial idea that developed around Alfonso VI would evolve too<sup>42</sup>. However, when it first appeared, the title *imperator Hispaniae* was meeting a need created by a new geopolitical situation set in the present. Alfonso VI had become an emperor be-

tempts to intervene in the internal affairs of Castile-León (Menéndez Pi-
dal, *El imperio hispánico* cit., pp. 99-103). The hypothesis, however, does not
satisfy a closer examination of the documents, as evidenced by Isla Frez,
*Memoria* cit., pp. 149-151; also Gambra, *Alfonso VI, I* cit., pp. 694-697.

⁴⁰ This was the sensible question asked by J. Muldoon, *Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800-1800*, Basingstoke - New York 1999, p. 54, when examining “the use of the imperial language to describe unusually powerful rulers, kings of kings, [which] may have been due simply to the lack of a suitable term for such a ruler”.

⁴¹ N. J. Higham, *An English Empire. Bede and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings*, Manchester - New York, 1995; Bede, *Ecclesiastical History of the English People*, ed. B. Colgrave, R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford, 1969, Book I, chap. 25; Book II, chap. 5. For a larger discussion of Bede's use of these terms, see Mauntel, *Ideas of empire* cit.

⁴² I argued that the variants observed in Alfonso’s imperial title (see above note 11) were attempts to adapt it to the evolution of Iberia’s geo-political situation. They also marked the pragmatic inflexions of the use of the imperial title to palliate the limitations of the title of *rex*, towards a more neogothicist redefinition of the imperial idea which, for want of space, I will not elaborate upon presently : see Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 208-222.
cause his royal title did not adequately express the unprecedented
power that he had accumulated.

When Queen Urraca claimed the title of *imperatrix* in her
turn, it was far from reflecting a situation of dominance akin to
that which her father had enjoyed. In the aftermath of Al-
fonso VI's passing in 1109, the kingdom of Castile-León de-
scended into a period of turmoil that lasted as long as his suc-
cessor's reign. For over sixteen years, civil war opposed the sup-
porters of the queen, the supporters of her son from a first mar-
riage, Alfonso Raimúndez, and those of Urraca's momentary
husband, King Alfonso I of Aragón-Navarre<fnref n="43" />. In this context,
each one had strong needs in terms of legitimacy: they all felt
the necessity to convince their subjects that they were the rightful
heir to Alfonso VI, and the uses that all three of them made of
the imperial title can be interpreted as a direct extension of their
fight for the right to rule. Usually titled *regina Hispaniae* in her
diplomas<fnref n="44" />, Urraca presented herself as *imperatrix (totius) Hispan-
iae* on five occasions between September 1110 and October 1114,
as well as one last time in 1120⁴⁵, that is, mostly during the period
when she was unhappily married to the Aragonese king, and chal-
lenging his intention to rule in her place in the Eastern regions
of the kingdom of Castile-León. Alfonso I would counter her by
adopting, in his turn, the imperial title in his own records from
the moment his spouse inherited her father's throne. As noted
above, this habit even endured after the obscure cancellation of
Alfonso's union with Urraca, and his diplomatic collection attests
that it survived until 1127.

To understand what made Alfonso I stop using this title pre-
cisely after that date, the role of the last contender for the imper-
rial title during the civil war must be taken into consideration: Al-
fonso Raimúndez, who from March 1126 became king as Al-
fonso VII. Evidence suggests that Urraca's son partook in the
tactical play for the claim to his grandfather's imperial inheritance
as well. Indeed, the title *imperator* appears in the *intitulatio* of a

<footnote n="43">⁴³ On the factual events of this period, see B. F. Reilly, *The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca (1109-1126)*, Princeton 1982; M. Recuero Astray, *Alfonso VII, Emperador. El imperio hispánico en el siglo XII*, León 1979, chapp. 1 to 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Ruiz Albi, *La Reina Doña Urraca*, p. 292.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ See above note 12.</footnote>
small number of the records he issued before becoming king,
from as early as 1117⁴⁶. Moreover, the importance he gave to the
title once he succeeded his mother is further confirmed by the
clause that was added to the peace treaty he signed in June 1127
with Alfonso I in Támara<fnref n="47" />. Although the original document has
not survived, its contents were summarised in the mid-four-
teenth century Aragonese *Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña*. Along
with the final settlement of the territorial disputes that had pois-
oned Castilian-Leonese political life since 1109, the treaty stip-
ulated that “thereafter Alfonso [of Aragón] did not wish to be
called Emperor, but rather King of Aragón, Pamplona and Na-
varre”<fnref n="48" />. This assertion in the late chronicle might well be inau-
thentic, but the concordance between the Támara settlement and
the last occurrence of the imperial title in Alfonso I’s records is
striking nonetheless<fnref n="49" />. In the meantime, as mentioned earlier, Al-
fonso VII had started to assume the title *imperator (totius) Hispa-
niae* systematically in his own records. This succession of events
and evidence suggests that Alfonso VII probably envisaged his
imperial dignity initially as part of a strategy to legitimise his in-
heritance. He followed the example of his grandfather Al-
fonso VI and became emperor like him because he had to, in or-
der to counteract the same means his mother and stepfather had
resorted to with the view of justifying their own legitimacy. For
the three of them, the title *imperator Hispaniae* was not equal to
the hegemonic meaning Alfonso VI had given it – which they
could have hardly pretended to anyway. But it provided the con-
tinuity for which they all competed.

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 305-306. It is to be noted that some of these records present issues of authenticity.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ J. Á. Lema Pueyo, *Alfonso I el Batallador rey de Aragón y Pamplona (1104-1134)*, Gijón 2008, pp. 319-321.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ « Aqueste don Alfonso de aquí adelant non se quiere clamar empe-
rador, sino rey de Aragón, de Pamplona et de Navarra » : C. Orcástegui
Gros, ed., *Crónica de San Juan de la Peña (versión aragonesa)*. Edición crítica,
« Cuadernos de Historia Jerónimo Zurita », 51-52 (1985), pp. 419-556,
here p. 463.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ Alfonso I’s records posterior to June 1127 displaying the imperial title all present issues of authenticity : J. Á. Lema Pueyo, *Instituciones políticas del reinado de Alfonso I “el Batallador”, rey de Aragón y Pamplona (1104-1134)*, Bilbao 1997, pp. 43-44.</footnote>
The competition for the imperial title that can be observed
between Urraca, Alfonso of Aragon, and Alfonso VII therefore
explains its survival from 1109 into the early years of the latter's
reign. It also probably explains what happened next. As seen
above, the *CAI* justified the imperial coronation of Alfonso VII
by exhibiting his status as king of kings. In doing so, the chroni-
cler was shedding light on the successful trajectory followed by
the ruler between 1126 and 1135. During this first decade of his
reign, Alfonso VII not only pacified his kingdom, but also devel-
oped a network of hierarchical relations that placed him at the
foreground of the Iberian political scene<fnref n="50" />. By the end of the
1120s, the rebellious nobility of Castile-León was tamed or ral-
lied, the autonomous tendencies of the Portuguese county were
neutralised, and in 1128 Alfonso's succession was guaranteed by
the birth of a first son he had fathered with his recently-wedded
Catalan wife, Berenguela. Consecutive to this union, an alliance
with Berenguela's father, the count of Barcelona, Ramon Ber-
enguer III (d. 1031), allowed him to significantly restrict the Ar-
agonese king's ability to manoeuvre loyalties, which in its turn
resulted in the peace treaty of Tábara in 1127. Eventually, Al-
fonso I's death in 1134 propelled Alfonso VII to the role of ar-
biter of his complicated succession<fnref n="51" />. Discarding the deceased's
last wishes to bequeath his kingdom to the Military Orders of
the Holy Land, Alfonso VII, in accordance with the nobility of
Aragón-Navarre, seized the occasion to annex territories in the
Rioja region, to negotiate with the newly proclaimed king of
Aragón, Ramiro II (d. 1157), over his control of the kingdom of
Zaragoza for some time, and to receive, in May 1135, the homage
of García Ramírez (d. 1150) who became the ruler of the Na-
varrese part of the late Aragonese king's possessions. Finally,
building on these successes, Alfonso VII felt strong enough to
renew the strategy of conquest and protectorate over al-Andalus
that had been put on hold since the end of the eleventh century
by the Almoravid conquest of the *taifas* and the Castilian-Leonse

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ On Alfonso VII’s itinerary, the first decade of which is summarised in this paragraph, see Reilly, *León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII* cit. ; on the network of relations that he built, Vital Fernández, *Alfonso VII de León* cit.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ A. Ubieto Arteta, *Navarra-Aragón en la idea imperial de Alfonso VII de Castilla*, in *Estudios de Edad Media de la corona de Aragón*, VI, Zaragoza 1956, pp. 41-82.</footnote>
civil war. Alfonso's tactic in that instance led him to take ad-
vantage of the dissatisfaction created amongst the elite of the
former Andalusí *taifas* by the Almoravid rule. Having received, in
1131, the homage of Sayf al-Dawla – “Zafadola” in the Christian
sources, – heir to the once powerful Hudid *taifa* of Zaragoza,
Alfonso made him the leader of an Andalusí resistance sup-
ported by Castilian power<fnref n="52" />. On the strength of this alliance, the
Christian king was finally able to resume the traditional summer
expeditions of conquest and plundering from 1133. By mid-year
1135, Alfonso VII therefore found himself in a situation to some
extent similar to that of his grandfather Alfonso VI in 1076: his
sway extended largely beyond the boundaries of his own king-
dom. Like Alfonso VI before him, Alfonso VII probably felt the
need to formalise this heterogeneous dominion. However, unlike
Alfonso VI, Alfonso VII was already *imperator Hispaniae*.

It is precisely this context and need that give sense to the im-
perial coronation, to all appearances superfluous, of May 1135.<fnref n="53" />

<footnote n="52">⁵² On Zafadola, see F. García Fitz, *Relaciones políticas y guerra. La expe-
riencia castellano-leonesa frente al Islam, siglos XI-XIII*, Seville 2002, pp. 82-98,
and A. Minnema, *A Ṭāʾifa in Exile : Sayf al-Dawla and the Survival of the Banū
Hūd*, « Al-Masāq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean », 31/1 (2019),
pp. 1-19.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ Wolfram Drews brought attention to another event that, according to him, can contextually explicate Alfonso VII’s imperial coronation : the establishment of the Almohad caliphate in 1132 (Drews, *Imperial Rule in Medieval Spain* cit., pp. 304 and 308). The hypothesis bears the merit of highlighting “the entanglement of the political systems” (p. 309) between Christian and Islamic worlds. It is, however, speculative and remains unsupported by evidence, as the scholar himself acknowledges. Crucial to Drews’s proposition is the parallel that he establishes between Alfonso VII’s imperial experiment and that of his grandfather Alfonso VI : for him the imperial coronation of 1135 would have manifested the willingness of Alfonso VII to compete with the hegemonic claims of the newly proclaimed Almohad caliph, in the same way that the title of “emperor of both religions” brandished by his grandfather Alfonso VI manifested his competing with the Almoravids by expressing an aspiration to rule universally over Christians and Muslims. However, the historicity of such a title for Alfonso VI is dubious, something that Drews failed to address in his study. As we have seen above in our comments to Ibn al-Qardabūs’s explanation of the imperial title (see above and note 31), this title appears only in later Arabic sources. From my own analyses I argue instead that, if the initial assumption of the imperial title by Alfonso VII</footnote>
It intervened in order to restore meaning, or rather to produce
new meaning, for the Castilian-Leonese idea of empire. By corre-
lating the imperial title to Alfonso's status as suzerain over Count
Ramón Berenguer and Kings García Ramírez and Zafadola,
among others, the author of the *CAI* might have simplified a sit-
uation that was far from simple, institutionally and practically. But
he surely also offered a new temporality for the imperial dignity,
making it the very contemporaneous result of Alfonso VII's posi-
tion of dominance that was recently achieved rather than inherited
from his grandfather⁵⁴. Moreover, this recreation of the empire's
chronology was not a novelty when the chronicle was written in
1147-1149. On the contrary, the documentation shows in fact that
it had its precedents from May 1135 and the aftermath of the im-
perial coronation. Thus, it has been advanced that the event
marked the moment when coins were first minted with the legend
IMPERATOR⁵⁵. It also, and undoubtedly, marked the beginnings of
the imperialisation of the diplomatic formulary, as noted above⁵⁶.
From the end of May 1135, the vocabulary of the *imperium* literally
saturated Alfonso's records, to the extent that any occurrence of
the title *rex* is to be interpreted as evidence of inauthenticity⁵⁷. Par-
ticularly interesting in this regard is the wording of the dating
clause, where the recorded chronology of Alfonso's reign was im-
pacted too. Many records are dated by reference to the 'years of
the empire', year one following immediately upon the imperial

had to do with his grandfather being *imperator totius Hispaniae*, the imperial
coronation evidences a distanciation from Alfonso VI's imperial experi-
ment (see below and note 54).

⁵⁴ It is to be noted that in the *CAI* Alfonso VI is never referred to as *imperator* but only as *rex*. Similarly, Alfonso VII's diplomatic records barely mention Alfonso VI's imperial title when the king is mentioned. See Si-rantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., p. 334.

⁵⁵ This is the idea most commonly sustained by numismatists, alt-
hough it was questioned by Roma Valdés, *Moneda y Sistemas Monetarios* cit.,
pp. 70 and 87.

⁵⁶ See above note 16.

⁵⁷ See Reilly’s remarks in his list of Alfonso VII’s records : Reilly, *León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII* cit., pp. 334-336, about docc. 134, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161 and 171.
coronation<fnref n="58" />. Time and place dates are also often supplemented with « diplomatic micro-narratives »<fnref n="59" /> showcasing the emperor’s glorious deeds, for example, the reception of a new vassal, the visits of papal legates, royal marriages, conquests or military expeditions in al-Andalus, and so forth, each one systematically involving and naming the *imperator*<fnref n="60" />. In that configuration, long before the *CAI*, the records produced in the chancery worked as if Alfonso’s imperial dignity did not exist before May 1135, and they participated in a remodelling of Alfonso VII’s imperial claims that was much needed in a geopolitical context that bore little sustained connection with that of earlier years.

***

The reconfiguration of the imperial idea at the scale of Alfonso VII's reign exemplifies something that, ultimately, characterises the Hispanic imperial phenomenon for its entire duration : the reactivity and creativity of scribes and ideologues. Iberian imperial assignations from the ninth to the mid-twelth centuries evidence how rulers and their entourage, starting from the same notion of *imperium* and the same title of *imperator*, eventually built distinct levels and meanings of ‘imperiality’ to answer the different contextual needs that they encountered.

From the mid-ninth to mid-eleventh centuries, kingship lacked efficiency in the growing kingdom of León, and resorting

<footnote n="58">58 At first, those records referred to the number of years that had passed since the imperial coronation. See for example : « In anno II ab illo quo coronam imperii primitus in Legione accepi » : Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 13093, f. 85r-v, listed in Reilly, *León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII* cit., p. 342, doc. 253 (15 May 1136). From October 1139, another formulation, most of the time included within the clause of corroboration, consisted of dating the records in reference to ‘the *umpteenth* year of the empire’. See for example : « Ego Adefonsus imperator hanc kartam quam iussi fieri anno Xº mei imperii confirmo et manu mea roboro » : Á. Rodríguez González, *El Tumbo del monasterio de San Martín de Castañeda*, León 1973, doc. 15 (March 1145).</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ The expression was coined by Amaia Arizaleta, who studied these diplomatic micro-narratives in the documentation of Alfonso VII’s successors : A. Arizaleta, *Les Clercs au palais. Chancellerie et écriture du pouvoir royal (Castille, 1157-1230)*, Paris 2010, online, http://e-spanialivres.revue.s.org/154, chap. 3, parr. 78-99.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ Sirantoine, *Imperator Hispaniae* cit., pp. 323-324.</footnote>
to the notion of *imperium* allowed scribes to enhance exaltant au-
thority. Later on, with Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII, being king
was still not enough, this time because kingship by itself did not
reflect the extension of the sway that these rulers had come to
acquire over their respective reigns, which went far beyond the
extension of the kingdom of Castile-León alone. Claiming the
imperial title over « the whole of Spain » was thus an attempt to
both name and display the specific situation of hegemony over
most of the Iberian Peninsula as achieved by the two Alfonsos.
But with Urraca, Alfonso I of Aragón and during the early years
of Alfonso VII's reign, we observe that the phrase 'emperor/em-
press of Spain' could also be emptied of its previous hegemonic
meaning, and used as a mere tool to build continuities in rul-
ership in a context in which kingship was disputed between sev-
eral contenders.

The Spanish example provides a fascinating case-study for
the malleability and the horizons of possibilities offered by the
notion of empire in the Middle Ages.
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>
JOHN WATTS

*Imperial England, 1150-1550*

*Imperial England, 1150-1550*

*Abstract*: As examples from Edward I's reign demonstrate, the main uses of imperial ideas in England were first to celebrate English hegemony over the British Isles, and secondly – via Roman Law – to underpin both royal sovereignty and the mechanisms of the later medieval state. These same factors help to explain the relatively limited use of imperial language in the period, especially after 1300. English kings did not rule or claim all their territories on the same basis; their authority over the British Isles fluctuated; imperial ideas posed problems as well as providing opportunities; and they were easily assimilated to traditions that were more readily identified as royal and English.

*Keywords*: King, State, Roman Law, English, British.

Let us begin with three images of King Edward I, anti-hero of Rees Davies' brilliant lectures on *The First English Empire*, conqueror of Wales, hammer of the Scots, and near-unifier of the British Isles under English rule<fnref n="1" />.

The first is at Nefyn, in North Wales, in 1284. Here, Edward celebrated his conquest of the country with a round table in deliberate homage to the great British king, Arthur, ruler of the whole island, conqueror of much of western Europe, and victor over Rome, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth<fnref n="2" />. Nefyn had been a residence of the recently-defeated prince of Wales; it was also where Gerald of Wales had found a copy of the prophecies of Merlin, Arthur's great wizard; and it was near Caernarfon, where Magnus Maximus, father of the emperor Constantine, lay buried<fnref n="3" />. The previous year, Edward had begun to build his great

<footnote n="1">¹ R. R. Davies, *The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093-1343*, Oxford 2000.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Geoffrey of Monmouth, *The History of the Kings of Britain*, ed. L. Thorpe, Harmondsworth 1966, Part Seven (capp. IX and X).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Davies, *English Empire* cit., pp. 31-32; M. Prestwich, *Edward I, London 1988*, p. 120.</footnote>
castle at Caernarfon, its details echoing the polygonal towers at
Constantinople and also alluding to the multi-coloured castle by
the river-mouth in Magnus's dream, as related in the *Mabinogion*,
the collection of legends of ancient Britain. This, then, was Ed-
ward as high king, lord of the whole island, saturated in imperial
myth, but not choosing the name of emperor, even though that
name had been employed to describe earlier pan-British rulers –
on two dozen occasions before 1066, according to George
Molyneaux, and at stray moments in the twelfth century<fnref n="4" />. In the
1130s, around the time Alfonso VII was giving himself an imperial
coronation, the Anglo-Norman chronicler, Geoffrey Gaimar,
wrote of the tenth-century King Edgar, « he held the land as an
emperor [...]. He alone ruled over all the kings. And over the Scots
and the Welsh. Never since Arthur had any king such power »<fnref n="5" />.
This was the kind of authority Edward I possessed.

The second image is at Edward's coronation ten years earlier,
in 1274. At this ceremony, the king apparently swore to preserve
the « iura regni illibata », linking his undertaking to « coronacio
nostra »<fnref n="6" />. In a letter to Pope Gregory X written soon after, he re-
ferred to his crown as « diadema... regni », saying that he could do
nothing touching it « absque ipsorum [sc. prelatorum et procerum]
requisito consilio faciemus »<fnref n="7" />. According to a chronicler, he laid
his crown aside as soon as Archbishop Kilwardby had put it on his
head, vowing that he would not wear it again until he had restored
to it the lands that his father had alienated<fnref n="8" />. Here was Edward ex-
posing the ambivalence of the doctrine of *iura regni* – the rights of
the realm, meaning those of the king, the ruling part, as well as the
rights and liberties of the people. Here he was also warning the
pope that the guardianship of holy church was very much part of
these *iura*, and it would be for the king and his greatest subjects,
prelates and magnates, to guard its resources and decide how to
manage its affairs. In all this, he used the language of Roman law

<footnote n="4">⁴ G. Molyneaux, *Why were some Tenth-Century English Kings Presented as Rulers of Britain?*, « Transactions of the Royal Historical Society », 6th ser., 21 (2011), pp. 59-92, partic. 62-64 ; D. Bates, *The Normans and Empire*, Oxford 2013, pp. 11, 23-24.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Davies, *English Empire* cit., p. 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ H. G. Richardson, *The English Coronation Oath*, « Speculum », 24 (1949), pp. 44-75, partic. 49.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ Prestwich, *Edward I* cit., p. 91.</footnote>
– diadema, ius, illibata – and in a manner that showed he understood perfectly well that he was « imperator in regno suo »<fnref n="9" />.

The third image is of Edward at the small town of Udimore, near the port of Winchelsea, in Sussex, as he prepared to embark on his expedition to Flanders in August 1297. Facing refusals to provide uncustomary military service and incipient tax resistance, the king employed a gamut of romano-canonical justifications for his actions: he « desires always the peace and quiet and welfare of the people of his realm »; he fights for the « honour and common profit of his realm »; he has laid burdens on the people because of the wars waged against him « from which he could not defend either himself or his kingdom without help from his good people – the need (necessitas) is greater than ever it was at any time »; and finally, in an echo of « laesio maiestatis », no-one should sow discord between « the lord and his people » for fear of the great harm that could arise, « more dangerous and more serious than any ever was in this land »<fnref n="10" />. Here was the king overwhelming custom with the « tremendum regie majestatis [...] imperium » as the *Leges Henrici Primi* put it, the « auctoritas publica » provided by the people, or « populus », to the emperor (here « lord »), for their common defence in a state of necessity<fnref n="11" />. These burdens had been accepted by representatives of the « populus », bearing « plena potestas » (as parliamentary writs, developing between 1268 and 1295, put it), and on a principle of « quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbitur »<fnref n="12" />. Edward did not stand before his subjects as a lord of lords, entitled to feudal service from his tenants, but as *tutor* or emperor, defending and governing his people for their « utilitas publica » or, in the vernacular of the time, « commun/common profit »<fnref n="13" />.

These three illustrations depict the three main ways in which imperial ideas were used in England in this period. First, they were

<footnote n="9">⁹ G. Post, *Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State*, 1100-1322, Princeton NJ 1964, capp. viii and ix and pp. 462-471.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ « Royal Proclamation, 12 August 1297, Udimore », *English Historical Documents, III, 1189-1327*, ed. H. Rothwell, London 1975, pp. 477-480.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Post, *Studies* cit., pp. 374-376, 417, 462-463.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² *Ibi*, cap. III.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ G. L. Harriss, *King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369*, Oxford 1975, cap. 2, and W. M. Ormrod, “Common Profit” and “Profit of the King and Kingdom”: *Parliament and the Development of Political Language in England*, « Viator », 46 (2015), pp. 219-252.</footnote>
part and parcel of a cluster of images reflecting what Rees Davies called « island mythologies », associating English kings with the rule of the British Isles, and rendering them, via Arthur and Constantine, analogous to Roman Emperors<sup>14</sup>. This is perhaps the most prominent form of “English Empire” in the historiography – the prescriptive ideas that underpinned the assertions of English kings in our archipelago, though it is worth noting that, by the thirteenth century, those assertions were based as much on records of submissions and treaties as on the mythic claims of chronicles and ancient letters<sup>15</sup>. It is also worth remembering that the projection of royal rights exceeded the British Isles, to include large parts of France and, from 1340, the crown of that kingdom<sup>16</sup>. The rationale for Plantagenet rule over French territory was never imperial in style, and forms part of what the editors call “imperiology”, rather than “imperiality”.

The second and third examples draw attention to the impact of romano-canonical language on English political life, but I want to develop them in slightly different ways. The second main way in which imperial ideas were used in later medieval England was to capture the sovereignty of the English king, notably over the church, but also over the realm, over all justice, and (generally with the participation of his great men and representatives of the community, gathered in parliament) over law and custom. The Edwardian riposte to Gregory X in my example feeds through into the famous assertion of Henry VIII in 1533, that

> this realm of England is an Empire ... governed by one supreme head and king having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same; [...] he being also institute and furnished by [...]. Al-mighty God with plenary, whole, and entire power, preeminence, authority, prerogative and jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final determination [...] in all causes<sup>17</sup>.

<footnote n="14"><sup>14</sup> Davies, *English Empire* cit., cap. 2.</footnote>

<footnote n="15"><sup>15</sup> R. R. Davies, *Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100-1300*, Cambridge 1990, pp. 75, 94-96.</footnote>

<footnote n="16"><sup>16</sup> For a recent collection that covers ‘empire’ in both the British Isles and France, see *The Plantagenet Empire, 1259-1453*, cur. p. Crooks, D. Green, W. M. Ormrod, Donington 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="17"><sup>17</sup> « An act in restraint of appeals. St. 24 Hen. VIII, c.12, 1533 », *English Historical Documents, V, 1485-1558*, ed. C. H. Williams, London 1967, pp. 738-741, partic. 738.</footnote>
This battery of Roman imperial language can be traced back
as far as the twelfth century, when Henry II asserted the iura regni
and honor and dignitas of his crown against the claims of Thomas
Becket, and when, according to John of Salisbury, he promised to
emulate his grandfather, Henry I, who he said had been « king,
apostolic legate, patriarch, emperor and all that he wished in his
land »<fnref n="18" />. But this was not only an empire over the church: as I have
indicated, romano-canonical language was also used to dignify the
king's extensive judicial rights. The « tremendum regie maiestatis
... imperium » allowed Henry I – called a glorious Caesar – to
quash customary law; to Bracton, the king had « omnia iura in
manu sua »; according to a note of the « Great Cause » of 1291-
2, Edward I could act as « imperator » in « condere novam
legam »<fnref n="19" />. Later on, the vernacular tract *Somnium Vigilantis*, written
at the height of the Wars of the Roses, referred indirectly to the
« imperye or auctorite » of the king or « soverain »; and the recov-
ery of the royal judicial and fiscal rights, which this text and others
anticipated, was certainly a major inspiration for Henry VIII's take-
over of the church<fnref n="20" />. In the wake of the fifteenth-century civil
wars, as in the wake of the twelfth-century "Anarchy" or the "Bar-
ons' War" of the mid-thirteenth century, a series of imperially-
minded kings set out to regain and assert their sovereignty.

The third usage of empire is a different deployment of ro-
mano-canonical ideas. Edward I's proclamation at Udimore in
1297 evokes the way in which these ideas were a crucial substrate
of the major constitutional developments of the twelfth to four-
teenth centuries: the establishment of the common law, which, as
we have seen, owed something to imperial assumptions about sov-
ereignty and the comprehensiveness of royal jurisdiction, and the
convening of assemblies (whatever else that development owed to
notions of liege homage, feudal convention and administrative

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Post, *Studies* cit., p. 429; John of Salisbury, *Opera Omnia*, ed. J. A. Giles, II, London 1848, p. 114.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Post, *Studies* cit., pp. 462-463, 464-465, 470-471; *Leges Henrici Primi*, ed. and tr. L. J. Downer, Oxford 1972, p. 80.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ J. p. Gilson, *A Defence of the Proscription of the Yorkists in 1459*, « English Historical Review », 26 (1911), pp. 512-525, partic. 518, 520.</footnote>
routine) ; the growth of taxation, representation and legislation<fnref n="21" />.
Like the assertion of royal sovereignty, these derivations from the
Roman Empire were not just ideas, but social and political facts.
Instrumentalised by royal ministers and advisers, they quickly be-
came resources for subjects too : the legal system grew on the back
of extensive public demand as well as royal initiative ; legislation
responded to the petitions and complaints of collectivities and in-
dividuals ; even taxation could be a social resource, providing an
organised means for paying soldiers, forestalling seizures of wool
and foodstuffs, sustaining the fortunes of the military classes, lu-
bricating the relations between creditors, representative elites and
the crown. In these ways, the medieval state was made from below
as well as from above, but its benefits were made available through
the adoption of imperial ideas – these were very clearly *notions ef-
fectives* in the words of the editors<fnref n="22" />. For Rees Davies, the centre-
piece of what he called the « intensification of lordship » in the
thirteenth century was the way in which the overlord became the
only lord (witness Edward I's references to « the lord and his peo-
ple ») ; for Maurice Powicke and Gerald Harriss, the key develop-
ment was that of the « communitas regni »<fnref n="23" />. Both ideas were sub-
stantially inherited from Roman Law, from the emperor who alone
« upholds the status reipublicae », in the words of Justinian, and
from the « populus » or « universitas romanus », for whose com-
mon good all government existed<fnref n="24" />.

So these were the three main forms of “imperiality” in play in
medieval England – a series of myths and precedents for rule over
the British Isles ; a notion of sovereignty, including over the
church and over the law ; and a net of ideas and institutions, drawn

<footnote n="21">²¹ For Roman influences on the common law and legislation, see J.
Hudson, *The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volume II: 871-1216*,
Oxford 2012, pp. 498, 531-533, 572 ; for Roman influences on the origins
of parliament and taxation, see Harriss, *King, Parliament* cit., pp. 21-26 and
cap. II.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Cf. introduction.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Davies, *Domination and Conquest* cit., cap. 5, partic. 103, 107 ; Harriss, *King, Parliament* cit., pp. 509-517 ; F. M. Powicke, *King Henry III and the Lord Edward: the Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century*, Oxford 1947.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ *The Digest of Justinian*, edd. T. K. Mommsen, p. Krueger, A. Watson, I, Philadelphia 1985, p. XLVI. For the partly Roman origins of the term *communitas*, see J. Watts, *The Commons in Medieval England*, in *La légitimité implicite, II*, cur. J.-Ph. Genet, Paris 2015, pp. 207-22, partic. pp. 211-214.</footnote>
from Roman and canon law, forming the main basis of the medi-
eval state – Jean-Philippe Genet’s *Genèse de l’état moderne* in its Eng-
lish form<fnref n="25" />.

And yet, after 1066, and before the 1530s, English kings almost
never called themselves emperors, and their gestures towards the
imperial were limited, temporary and often adventitious. In the re-
mainder of this short paper, I want to consider why that was<fnref n="26" />.

One reason could lie in the very multiplicity of imperial frame-
works, and in their potential incompatibility if taken too far. Pre-
tending an Arthurian high kingship over the British Isles was all
very well, but from one perspective it could be too limited – when,
for instance, the crown wanted to impose direct rule on subordi-
nate territories and to ignore their claims to regnal identity, as it
did at times with Wales and Scotland in the decades around 1300,
or, in a different way, from the 1530s, when the crown sought to
merge Wales with England and to rule Ireland directly from West-
minster<fnref n="27" />. Equally, to assert imperial lordship over the whole ar-
chipelago and/or over parts of France ran the risk of looking ab-
surd when large areas of this space patently operated autono-
mously. The English king may have established a romano-canon-
cal monarchy over England (indeed this was normally the engine
that enabled him to act so powerfully against his neighbours), but
he did not rule Ireland, Wales, Southern Scotland and northern or
western France in anything like the same way – and there were
many times, of course, when he did not rule most of these areas
at all.

Romano-canonical empire raised two other problems. One
was the tension between its autocratic and (as it were) democratic
and communitarian dimensions – between the overwhelming lord-
ship of the imperial king, and the various potential or implicit re-
straints contained in the ideas and practices of law, counsel and

<footnote n="25">²⁵ J.-Ph. Genet, *La genèse de l'État moderne : culture et société politique en Angleterre*, Paris 2003.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ The same question is considered *en passant* by Jean-Philippe Genet, in his essay, *Empire and the English Identity : Reflections on the King of England's Dominium*, in *Plantagenet Empire*, cur. Crooks et al. cit., pp. 35-48, partic. 40-44.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Davies, *English Empire* cit., pp. 25-28; S. G. Ellis, *The Making of the British Isles: the State of Britain and Ireland, 1450-1660*, Harlow 2007, pp. 97-104.</footnote>
representation. This dialectic was a feature of all romano-canoni-
cal regimes, perhaps – certainly in practice, and arguably also in
theory : the juxtaposition of the « lex regia » and the « Digna vox », but also the ambiguities of the lex regia itself, to say nothing of
the implications of « quod omnes tangit... » or of the idea of the « universitas » or « communitas » and so on<fnref n="28" />. Perhaps these inter-
nal tensions discouraged too persistent a promotion of the impe-
rial matrix.

A second problem was more specific to the English kingdom
– the differences between the claims and interests of the crown
and those of the « communitas regni Angliae », exposed so sharply
in 1340 and 1420 when parliament reminded the king that his
realms of England was not to be subordinated to the pursuit of his
titles in France : it would not pay for the defence of that other
kingdom, and there were limits to what the English would do to
support the king in asserting his rights<fnref n="29" />. The same tension runs
through the whole period from the twelfth century to the sixteenth
– whether it was attempts to limit service obligations or fiscal ob-
ligations, to avoid expensive foreign entanglements, or to rein in
the king's allies and agents, the representatives of the English po-
litical community tended to set strict limits to royal projects<fnref n="30" />. The
romano-canonical « communitas » could not consistently be har-
nessed to Arthurian or Plantagenet fantasies ; or it could only be
harnessed in a limited way.

There are perhaps two other reasons why more was not made
of imperial claims in England. One is that they were interwoven
with other ideations of kingship and political community – with
notions of conquest and inheritance, for instance ; with feudal
conventions of aid and counsel as obligations of tenure (arguably
as important in the construction of parliament as « quod omnes
tangit [...] » and « plena potestas ») ; with lordship and property,
which were key components of the post-1066 regime – the regime
of *dominus rex*, who subjected Scotland, for example, « by right of

<footnote n="28">²⁸ p. Stein, *Roman Law in European History*, Cambridge 1999, pp. 59-61; J. Canning, *A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300-1450*, London - New York 1996, pp. 8-11.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ *Rotuli Parliamentorum*, 6 voll., ed. J. Strachey, London 1767-77, II, p. 113 (no. 9); IV, p. 127 (no. 25).</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ G. L. Harriss, *Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England*, « Past and Present », 138 (1993), pp. 28-57, partic. 40-46.</footnote>
ownership to our power »<fnref n="31" />. These ideas could be made compatibil with those of empire, but they could also enclose or overwhelm them. For much of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the notion of the king's right to external territories (usually a combination of hereditary right and recorded submission) was much more central to the dynamics of assertion in the British Isles and France than any idea of empire<fnref n="32" />. This was a notion of right that was familiar to all landowners, and not significantly derived from any set of imperial theories, even if the terminology of *ius* was ultimately Roman<fnref n="33" />. And looking to the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one might want to give at least as much weight to republican ideas as imperial ones – those underpinning the « Angliae respublica », as Robert Whittinton called it in a 1519 tract presented to Cardinal Wolsey<fnref n="34" />. And what do we make of this fascinating advice given by Bishop Stephen Gardiner to Henry VIII in 1538 ? If the king were to mediate between France and Spain,

> Me thinketh it were possible they should depend of us, and then the King's Highness, as he is Emperor indeed in his realm, so he should in deed *imperare* through and over all, and himself no further to care what other men do, but they all care what he doth. In that me think were greatness<fnref n="35" />.

Here is an imperial trope pushed to the foreground, but har Cross Reference:
nessed to the sphere of diplomacy : the king could enjoy a rather
abstract kind of empire by engaging in the kind of political sphere

<footnote n="31">³¹ For the central role of the Conquest in the sovereignty of the English king, vd. G. Garnett, *Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure*, Oxford 2007. For the feudal context of parliament, vd. J. C. Holt, *The Prehistory of Parliament*, in *The English Parliament in the Middle Ages*, cur. R. G. Davies, J. H. Denton, Manchester 1981, pp. 1-28. For the quotation, vd. Davies, *English Empire* cit., p. 27.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² Davies, *Domination and Conquest* cit., pp. 75-79, 99-105; J. Watts, *The Plantagenet Empire and the Continent: Retrospect and Prospect*, in *Plantagenet Empire* cit., pp. 403-420, partic. 407, 408-410.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ See e.g. J. C. Holt, *Rights and Liberties in Magna Carta*, in Id., *Magna Carta and Medieval Government*, London 1985, pp. 203-215, partic. 205-206; S. F. C. Milsom, *Historical Foundations of the Common Law*, 2nd edition, London 1981, pp. 119-124.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ T. F. Mayer, *Thomas Starkey and the Commonweal: Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII*, Cambridge 1989, pp. 19-20.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ D. Potter, *Foreign Policy*, in *The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety*, cur. D. MacCulloch, Basingstoke 1995, pp. 101-133, partic. 116.</footnote>
which was coming to mean most to European princes – interna-
tional dialogue, not domestic governance or control of territory<fnref n="36" />.
In this instance too, then, other ideas absorbed, even trumped, im-
perial ones.

This leads to a final point : imperial ideas and languages had
come to form, or merge into, traditions that were regarded as Eng-
lish and royal. One can see this very clearly in the work of the mid-
fifteenth-century thinker and commentator, Sir John Fortescue,
whose notion of « dominium politicum et regale » drew on Aris-
totelian and, to a lesser extent, romano-canonical ideas, but who
saw this kind of polity as quintessentially English, and developed
it in relation to English institutions, such as parliament and the
common law, and to episodes from the English past, such as the
coming of Brutus to Britain and the foundation of the kingdom
by a "fellowship" of peers<fnref n="37" />. He used the example of the Roman
« lordshippe off gret partye of the world » to inspire the king to
adopt the recommendations on counsel contained in his tract on
the Governance of England, but he was talking about the Repub-
lican period, and the thrust of his works was to argue that monar-
chy limited by law and counsel was the natural and historically-
authorised path for the English ruler to follow<fnref n="38" />. And so it was
with other writers and opinion-formers. English kings wore impe-
rial crowns (intermittently from 1399, but with increasing confi-
dence) because they had acquired a physical one from Richard II,
because it became traditional, and because it marked them out
from French kings, with their open crown<fnref n="39" />. When Henry VIII
was considering putting himself forward for election to the impe-
rial throne in February 1517, Bishop Tunstall told him that only
Germans and subjects of the Empire could take that seat,

Whereas your Grace is not, nor never sithen the Christian faith the
kings of England were, subject to the Empire. But the crown of

<footnote n="36">³⁶ J. Watts, *Plantagenet Empire and Continent* cit., pp. 416-419.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ *Sir John Fortescue on the Laws and Governance of England*, ed. S. C. Lockwood, Cambridge 1997 ; quotation from p. 86.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ Quotation from *The Governance of England: Otherwise Called The Difference Between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy*, by Sir John Fortescue, Knight, ed. C. Plummer, Oxford 1885, p. 149.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ p. Grierson, *The Origins of the English Sovereign and the Symbolism of the Closed Crown*, « The British Numismatic Journal », 33 (1964), pp. 118-134, partic. 128-131.</footnote>
England is an empire to itself, much better than the empire of Rome: for which cause your Grace weareth a close crown<fnref n="40" />.

A few years later, Henry's advisers would echo this idea in their preparations for the Break with Rome, proudly citing a fake letter from Pope Eleutherius, refusing a grant of Roman Law to the ancient British king Lucius, on the grounds that he already had « lex Britanniae », and, like the Emperor in his territories, made law « per consilium regni vestri »<fnref n="41" />. The legacy of Constantine, Arthur and the romano-canonical kit that contributed so much to the king's legal sovereignty, to his common law and his parliament, was merged into an English political identity. That identity might from time to time wear imperial clothes, but it had no need to ape anyone else : it was itself ; it was a kingdom that was also an empire.

And so to conclude. Imperial frameworks had been important in the construction and working of the English political system, contributing to a rich field of legitimations, but always multiple and always interwoven with other traditions, both domestically and in royal policy towards neighbours in the British Isles and on the continent. This pattern of development helps to explain why the imperial *imaginaire* was just an element in a self-consciously English, or Anglo-British, Anglo-Norman, or Anglo-Plantagenet profile – a profile full of fudges, and flexible in its gestures, but increasingly aware and proud of its distinctiveness. The triumph of that tradition – « En Angleterre, rien qu'en Angleterre » – was no doubt because it served so many local interests, and did so most of the time<fnref n="42" />. Whatever it owed to imperial themes, those themes became drops in an English ocean.

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ *Ibi*, p. 133.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ W. Ullmann, "*This Realm of England is an Empire*", « Journal of Economic Historical History », 30 (1979), pp. 175-203, partic. 190 ; Id., *Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages*, London 1961, p. 161.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² M. Bloch, *En Angleterre, rien qu'en Angleterre*, « Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale », 33 (1935), pp. 320-323.</footnote>
Finito di impaginare nel
luglio 2023
La storia degli imperi è un ambito di ricerca piuttosto studiato, non altrettanto lo è quella dell'“imperialità” intesa come orizzonte concettuale di riferimento esemplare, che manca ancora di un approccio completo. Tuttavia, la diffusione e il successo dell'ideologia imperiale sono misurabili in relazione all'impronta che essa imprime nelle forme emulative delle monarchie non imperiali. I volumi di questa collana mirano a indagare tali aspetti, concentrando l'attenzione sugli “pseudo-imperi” cristiani che si sono costituiti nel Medioevo e nella prima Modernità. In altri termini, intendono esplorare tutte le modalità di quella che può essere definita “imperialità derivata” o “seconda”: cioè le forme di imperialità che talvolta, sebbene in modo ricorrente, hanno caratterizzato quelle istituzioni di tipo monarchico o principesco che non potevano assumere il nome di impero, ma che ne hanno reinterpretato alcuni aspetti.

La vastità del territorio è attributo necessario di imperialità? Un impero è solo un regno più grande? Rielaborando gli interventi al convegno scientifico tenutosi alla Maison Française di Oxford nel giugno del 2018, questo libro mette in discussione i legami sviluppati a partire dal Medioevo tra l'idea di impero e la sua espressione geografica. Più precisamente, riflette sul rapporto tra razionalità politica imperiale e configurazione territoriale attraverso alcuni casi di studio tratti dai regni di Sicilia, Francia, Ungheria, Spagna e Inghilterra.

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