Pelayo Curvo [1] was a Galician nobleman active between 1128 and 1173.
![Tombstone of Pelayo's granddaughter, Elvira Gonzalez [pt] in Alcobaca Alcobaca Mosteiro 426.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Alcoba%C3%A7a_Mosteiro_426.jpg/220px-Alcoba%C3%A7a_Mosteiro_426.jpg)
Pelayo was a son of Fernando Yáñez. [2] [3] His wife was María Garcés. [4] In the Livro Velho de Linhagens , she is called María Marañón. According to the Historia Compostellana , she was a niece of Archbishop Diego Gelmírez. Together they had four children: Gonzalo Páes, Sancha Páes, María Páes and Teresa Páes. According to the Livro de Linhagens of Pedro de Barcelos, the troubadour Pedro Rodríguez de Palmeira died of love for María Páes. [5]
Pelayo is traceable in the historical record from 1128, when he was serving as the archbishop's merino . In that year, García Pérez de Traba and his followers robbed some merchants who had come to Padrón from England and Lotharingia to sell their wares in the market of Santiago de Compostela. According to the Historia Compostellana, the archbishop sent Pelayo at the head of a group of soldiers to recover the loot. The robbers were confronted in the mountains, defeated in combat and the loot recovered and restored to the merchants. [6]
Pelayo remained loyal to King Alfonso VII of León after the Portugal rebelled. He was probably the anonymous merino deputed by Diego Gelmírez to lead Galician forces against the rebels in the early 1130s, according to the Historia Compostellana. [7] In 1137, he took part in the recapture of Tui. [8] He was also present at the siege of Oreja in 1139. [9] In 1141, during a visit to Compostela, Alfonso VII found Pelayo to have violently seized some property of the monastery of San Martiño Pinario and ordered him to restore it. [10]
Pelayo witnessed his first royal charter in May 1133. [7] He never regularly attended the royal court and, until 1155, he almost never attended without his father. After 1155, he generally appeared only on major occasions when the itinerant court was in the north of the kingdom. [3] When his father was granted tenancies in the south of the kingdom in the 1140s, Pelayo was given his Galician tenancies. By 1149, he was tenant of region around Tui and by 1152 also of Toroño. [3] He mostly resided in these tenancies, which were on the border with Portugal. [3]
In 1140, Pelayo referred a dispute brought before him as lord by the nuns of San Pedro de Ramiranes and the knight Álvaro Rubeo to the royal court at Salamanca. [11] In September 1141 at Santiago de Compostela, Alfonso VII adjudicated a dispute between Pelayo and the monastery of San Martiño Pinario. [12] In October 1146 at Tudején , Pelayo, acting as majordomo "in place of Count Ponce", witnessed the king's charter to Santa María de Niencebas . King García Ramírez of Navarre was present at this meeting to discuss Alfonso's planned campaign against Almería the following year. [13] At the same time, he was a witness to the treaty of alliance between Alfonso VII and the Republic of Genoa. [14] The Poema de Almería does not name him, but mentions the participation of Fernando Yáñez and his many sons. [15]
Pelayo did not inherit Montoro from his father in 1154. It was given instead to Nuño Pérez de Lara. [16] On 26 September 1158, King Ferdinand II granted him lands in compensation for damage done to his lands in Galicia by Portuguese forces. [17] On 20 April 1159, he and his wife purchased a share in the church of Santa Cristina in Lavadores from Alfonso Oséviz for seventy solidi . [4]
Pelayo and his wife were still alive in 1173. [18]
Alfonso VII, called the Emperor, became the King of Galicia in 1111 and King of León and Castile in 1126. Alfonso, born Alfonso Raimúndez, first used the title Emperor of All Spain, alongside his mother Urraca, once she vested him with the direct rule of Toledo in 1116. Alfonso later held another investiture in 1135 in a grand ceremony reasserting his claims to the imperial title. He was the son of Urraca of León and Raymond of Burgundy, the first of the House of Ivrea to rule in the Iberian peninsula.
The Historia Compostelana is a historical chronicle by several authors based on the relation of events by a writer in the immediate circle of Diego Gelmírez, second bishop (1100–1120) then first archbishop (1120–1140) of Compostela, one of the major figures of the Middle Ages in Galicia. The narrative of the Historia Compostelana spans the years 1100 – 1139, the years of Gelmírez' tenure, in three books. Its twofold central agenda is to extol the Archbishop's doings, while establishing the foundation and rights of Santiago de Compostela, including its founding legend, which provided apostolic connections with Saint James the Great. The bishopric had been transferred from Iria Flavia to Compostela as recently as 1095.
Diego Gelmírez or Xelmírez was the second bishop and first archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, modern Spain. He is a prominent figure in the history of Galicia and an important historiographer of the Iberia of his day. Diego involved himself in many quarrels, ecclesiastical and secular, which were recounted in the Historia Compostelana, which covered his episcopacy from 1100 to 1139 and serves as a sort of gesta of the bishop's life.
The Kingdom of Galicia was a political entity located in southwestern Europe, which at its territorial zenith occupied the entire northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded by the Suebic king Hermeric in 409, with its capital established in Braga. It was the first kingdom that officially adopted Catholicism. In 449, it minted its own currency. In 585, it became a part of the Visigothic Kingdom. In the 8th century, Galicia became a part of the newly founded Christian Kingdom of Asturias, which later became the Kingdom of León, while occasionally achieving independence under the authority of its own kings. Compostela became the capital of Galicia in the 11th century, while the independence of Portugal (1128) determined its southern boundary. The accession of Castilian King Ferdinand III to the Leonese kingdom in 1230 brought Galicia under the control of the Crown of Castile.
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FernandoPérez de Traba, or Fernão Peres de Trava, was a nobleman and count of the Kingdom of León who for a time held power over all Galicia. He became the lover of Countess Teresa of Portugal, through whom he attained great influence in that domain, and was the de facto ruler of the County of Portugal between 1121 and 1128. The Poema de Almería, a Latin poem celebrating one of Alfonso VII's major victories of the Reconquista, records that "if one were to see him [Fernán], one would judge him already a king."
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Munio or Muño Peláez was a Galician magnate, a member of the Banu Gómez clan, during the reigns of Alfonso VI, Urraca and Alfonso VII. By December 1108 he held the title of comes (count), the highest in the kingdom. He was a son of count Pelayo Gómez, grandson son of Gómez Díaz de Carrión and Teresa Peláez. His mother was Elvira Muñoz, half-sister of count Rodrigo Muñoz, and daughter of Munio Rodríguez and Ilduara Velázquez. Elvira's ancestors had founded the monastery of Santa María de Ferreira.
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 (1109–26). 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.
Rodrigo Vélaz was the "count of Galicia, who held Sarria" according to the near-contemporary Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris. During his long public career he was the dominant figure in mountainous eastern Galicia while the House of Traba dominated its western seaboard. He served under three monarchs—Alfonso VI, Urraca, and Alfonso VII—and was loyal to all of them, never figuring in any rebellion. The contemporary Historia compostellana is a valuable source for his life, since there are no aristocratic archives surviving in Spain from this period. Rodrigo's career must be pieced together from the few references in the chronicles and the charters preserved in various ecclesiastical archives.
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