Leon, Burgos and Salamanca: a historical and descriptive account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Count Raymond and his wife, Urraca, were assisted in their beneficent labours by the famous bishop, Jeronimo Visquio. This prelate, a native of Perigord, and a monk of the order of St. Benedict, had come to Spain with the equally illustrious Don Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo. He accompanied the Cid as chaplain to Valencia, and on the reduction of that kingdom became its bishop. On the death of his patron he returned to Toledo, and was almost immediately appointed to the joint see of Salamanca and Zamora. In a deed, dated July 1102, the count confers upon him extensive privileges and revenues, which were confirmed by the king in 1107, the towns included in the diocese being furthermore specified. To Jeronimo we owe the old cathedral of Salamanca in which he was at last, full of years and honours, laid to rest. It had been his wish to have been laid beside his old master at Cardeña. He lived to witness the troubles attendant on the second marriage of Queen Urraca, to whom he was ever faithful; and was the first to acknowledge the primacy of the powerful Gelmirez, Archbishop of Santiago.

On Jeronimo’s death in 1120, his successor, Gerardo, was driven from the see by the Aragonese opponents of Urraca, and found an asylum with his metropolitan. The accession of Alfonso VII. resulted in the deposition of the next bishop Munio, who was a violent partisan of Aragon. He made determined efforts to recover his authority, without success, the intercession even of St. Bernard availing him nothing. Meanwhile a certain count, Don Pedro Lope, who appears to have been all-powerful in the town, shut the gates against the canonical bishop, Berengario, who succeeded at last in taking possession of his see only by the direct intervention of the king in 1135, after a lapse of four years.

The rebellious temperament of the Salamancans thus early manifested itself. A year or two later it was to cost them very dear. Scorning the leadership of any count or chief, the townsmen made repeated forays into Estremadura in search of glory and plunder. Returning laden with booty, they were met by a powerful Moorish army. The Mohammedan commander demanded a parley with their leader. The Salamancans replied that each man was his leader, whereupon the Moor thanked God for the folly of his adversaries. An engagement ensued, which might be better described as a massacre than as a battle, and but few returned to Salamanca to tell of the fate of their comrades.

The bitter lesson was repeated thrice in after years before the insensate citizens were sufficiently humbled to appeal to the king for assistance. He sent them as commander a famous warrior, Don Ponce Vigil de Cabrera, who was received in sorely tried Salamanca with much enthusiasm. The indomitable spirit of the citizens under able captainship achieved wonders. The castle of Albalat was taken and razed to the ground, and the whole district of Ciudad Rodrigo subjugated. Alfonso VII. in 1147, as a mark of favour, empowered the Alcaldes to build or to rebuild the city wall, and to encircle the suburbs with another.

Yet in 1170 we find the Salamancans allied with the people of Avila in arms against Fernando II., King of Leon. They regarded the founding of Ciudad Rodrigo as an encroachment on their privileges, and elected one Nuño Serrano as their king. On the field of Valmuza they gave battle to the king. Consulting the direction of the wind, they set fire to the brushwood, hoping that the smoke would be driven in the faces of their opponents. The wind suddenly changed, however, to the utter discomfiture of the rebels. The luckless Nuño was captured and burnt alive, and haughty Salamanca lay at the feet of the conqueror.

Fernando did not cherish resentment against the rebellious town. He called a Cortes here in 1178, and liberally endowed the see. In gratitude for the royal favour, Bishop Vital upheld the marriage of Alfonso IX. with his cousin, Teresa of Portugal, thereby bringing upon himself the fulminations of Pope Celestine III., and ultimately the sentence of suspension and deposition. Meanwhile the fighting spirit of the Salamancans was gratified by the establishment of the military order of Alcantara by two of the townsmen, Don Suero Fernández and his brother Gomez. The knights attached themselves to the Cistercian Order, their headquarters being the hermitage of San Julian de Pereo, on the banks of the Coa. The order was approved in 1177 by a bull of Pope Alexander III., afterwards confirmed by Lucius III.

Alfonso IX. endowed Salamanca with the university, which was destined to make its name known to the utmost confines of Christendom. This was a flourishing time in Salamanca. The Dominicans and Franciscans settled in the town; buildings, colleges, churches, and convents sprang up on all sides. The banner of Salamanca was seen in the forefront of the battle at Caceres, at Montanchez, at Merida; it fluttered over fallen Trujillo and Medellin; it waved before the walls of Ubeda in 1234, and of Granada two years later. The townsmen followed the Infante Alfonso to the sieges of Murcia and Seville (1248) and were rewarded for their valour by the privilege of holding open markets—probably heretofore the prerogative of the governor.

To these halcyon days there succeeded for Salamanca a long period of discord and warfare. Sancho el Bravo, when prince, held the town against his father; and in 1288 it was severely punished for its loyalty to the king by the rebellious Infante Don Juan, whose father-in-law, Don Lope de Haro, seized on the citadel. Under its walls halted the Portuguese army of King Diniz, marching upon Valladolid. In 1308 Salamanca made a vigorous defence, in the interests of the Queen Regent, Maria de Molina, against Nuñez de Lara.

The city is honourably distinguished by the refusal of the ecclesiastical council, held here in 1310, to condemn the doomed order of Knights Templars, who were, however, despoiled of their property here as elsewhere by decree of the Council of Vienne. A more cheerful function, the year following, was the baptism of the Infante Alfonso, born here, August 13, 1311. The lordship of his native city was afterwards given by this king to his wife, Maria of Portugal. The Salamancans fought well at the battle of the Salado (1340) under their bishop Juan Lucero. It was this prelate who in 1354 dissolved the marriage of Pedro the Cruel with Blanche of Bourbon, and celebrated the king’s amazing union with Juana de Castro, whom he repudiated on the following day. Lucero’s successor, Alfonso Barrasa, was a fervent partisan of Enrique de Trastamara. He followed him to the field with a force of five hundred archers, and held the city against his enemies. Meanwhile the Tejadas, one of the most powerful families of Salamanca, had declared for Don Pedro, and threw themselves into Zamora. The town was taken by Enrique’s partisans, while Don Alfonso Lopez de Tejada retired to the citadel, leaving his sons in the hands of the enemy. On their father’s refusal to surrender, the miserable lads were put to death. Don Alfonso escaped to Portugal, where he did not return till the reign of Juan I. He died in his native city in the year 1404. Bishop Barrasa on the triumph of Enrique II. was liberally rewarded for his devotion, and entrusted with important and honourable embassies to Flanders and Italy.

We read that St. Vicente Ferrer was in Salamanca at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and as a Spanish writer has it, converted the Jews to the unity of the faith on the ruins of their synagogue. He does not appear to have been equally successful in converting the Christians to the spirit of their faith, to judge from the following tragic incident which stained the history of Salamanca in his day. A quarrel arose over a game of pelota between two brothers of the family of Manzano and two of the Enriquez. The two latter were slain, and their slayers fled to Portugal. The mother of the victims, Doña Maria Rodriguez de Monroy, shed no tears, but silently and stoically gathered together her retainers and retired to her country seat at Villalba. A day or two later she, with a few followers, suddenly fell upon the murderers of her sons as they sat in fancied security at their inn in some Portuguese town, killed them, and bore their heads in triumph back to Salamanca, where she flung them upon the tombs of the Enriquez. But from this deed of vengeance sprang a bloody vendetta between the two families and their partisans, which the eloquence of St. Juan de Sahagun in 1460 allayed but could not extinguish. When forced to lay aside the sword and dagger, the bowl and philtre became the instruments of this unquenchable hate. Nay, as late as the reign of Philip II., the rival factions wore different colours, and eagerly seized the opportunity to contend against each other in jousts and tournaments. Juan de Sahagun, whose good deeds are strikingly relieved against so dark a background, himself fell a victim to poison, administered by a lady, whom his preaching and exhortations had deprived of her lover. Acclaimed at once (1479) as the patron of the city, it was not till October 17, 1690, that he was formally enrolled in the list of the saints of the Catholic Church. His feast is celebrated on the day of his death (June 11).