page_title: Pedro Fróilaz de Traba
section_title: Final war with Urraca (1120–1123)
hierarchical_section_title: Pedro Fróilaz de Traba / Political career / Final war with Urraca (1120–1123)
caption_attribution_description: Publish by= Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez. Galego: Pico Sacro, Boqueixón. Galicia
context_page_description: Pedro Fróilaz de Traba was the most powerful secular magnate in the Kingdom of Galicia during the first quarter of the twelfth century. According to the Historia compostelana, he was "spirited ... warlike ... of great power ... a man who feared God and hated iniquity," for Diego Gelmírez himself had "fed him, like a spiritual son, with the nutriment of holy teaching." Brought up at the court of the Emperor Alfonso VI, Pedro raised the future Emperor Alfonso VII in his household. Around the latter he and Diego formed a "Galician party" that dominated that region during the turbulent reign of Urraca. In September 1111 they even had the child Alfonso crowned king at Santiago de Compostela, but it was Pedro who was imperator in orbe Galletiae.
  Widely travelled and well-connected, especially through the prestigious marriages of his many daughters—he had at least sixteen legitimate children by his two wives—Pedro was, besides a political and military figure, a religious one. Sometime before 1109 he founded the first religious house for women in Galicia. As a result of his generosity to the Cathedral of Saint James in Compostela, Pedro is the best known Spanish nobleman of his era.
context_section_description: In the years 1118–19, Pedro Fróilaz is revealed in the surviving documents of the period to have been the most important lay supporter of the royal prerogative and the imperial pretensions of Alfonso Raimúndez. In the spring of 1120 Urraca returned to Galicia and formed a tenuous military alliance with Diego against certain supporters of Pedro Fróilaz. The local campaigning was a success. During the subsequent campaign against Theresa of Portugal, however, Urraca had imprisoned Diego and attempted to assert her authority in his lordship directly. At that juncture her son left her camp and joined that of Pedro in the vicinity of Santiago. This incited some citizens to riot in support of Diego, and Urraca was forced to release him on 28 July 1120, although she would not restore his secular authority. The archbishop then enlisted the aid of Pedro, Alfonso, and Theresa. In the fall the queen was forced to concede the fiscal lands around Sahagún to her son's direct rule.
  In 1121 Urraca confiscated the secular lordship of the archbishop of Santiago, including his fortresses and castles. This led to a dispute with the papacy, and Pope Calixtus II sent letters to the queen threatening excommunication. Negotiations between the monarch and the bishop were reopened, but they were soon broken off and Urraca gathered an army and invaded Galicia. She marched to the castle of Cira, thence to Tabeiros and Salnes, and finally camped at the mount of Picosacro, close by Santiago de Compostela. Archbishop Diego and Count Pedro raised an army and fought a few skirmishes, but the prelate soon arranged a peace. A royal document of 23 May records Urraca in obsidione super Acromonte ("in siege above Acromonte"), probably a reference to Picosacro. It indicates that, contrary to the testimony of the Historia compostelana, Alfonso Raimúndez was then with his mother's forces, not those of Pedro Fróilaz. Diego was able ultimately to force the return of his church's lands, and probably Pedro received an equally favourable settlement from the queen. He was with the queen on 22 March 1122, when she confirmed Alfonso's donation of the monastery of San Martín de Pinario to the church of Compostela, and was with her again on 8 March 1123 at Lugo, with most of the Galician high nobility. Sometime after this, and perhaps before she came to an understanding with Diego on 27 March, Queen Urraca had Pedro arrested and imprisoned along with his sons. Her exact motive is unclear, although his fiefs were confiscated. Pedro remained a royal prisoner at least until Urraca's death, and his sons continued to support her enemy, Theresa of Portugal. The Chronicon iriense, a history of the diocese of Santiago de Compostela, may have been written between the years 1121, when Pedro and the Galician magnates were forced to swear oaths to Bishop Diego, and 1123, when Pedro and his sons were imprisoned by the queen. On this account, the Chronicon was designed to bolster Diego's claims by a recourse to the history.
caption: Pico Sacro ("sacred peak"), where Urraca camped her army to threaten Santiago
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