Fortún Garcés Cajal
Fortún Garcés Cajal (also called Fortunio Garcés Caixal or Caxal) was an Navarro-Aragonese nobleman and statesman, perhaps "the greatest noble of Alfonso the Battler's reign".[1] In 1113 Fortún replaced Diego López I de Haro in the large and important tenancy of Nájera.[2] He held it until 1134.[3]
Fortún received from Alfonso grants of both property and lordship over Daroca and Tudela.[1] In 1127 Fortún and his wife Tota bough various properties around Tudela from some Muslims. In 1130/1 the couple purchased property at a place called Uli in interior Navarre. They perhaps "needed the written word, because, as Bishko has pointed out, their holdings were scattered throughout the Ebro River Valley and also located in the interior of Navarre." The couple also disposed of their property through wills and made grants through charters.[1]
A royal charter of Alfonso the Battler enacted at Briviesca on 10 October 1129, names Fortún as holding that tenancy. Another charter, this time a private one from the abbey of San Salvador de Oña, dating to November of that same year, recognises the lordship of Rodrigo Gómez, a partisan of Alfonso VII of León, who was extending his influence into the Bureba. These two charters indicate the contested nature of this frontier district. At a local level the king of León's man was recognised and active as tenant, but when the king of Aragon was present, his choice of tenant, in this case his most powerful magnate, was enforced.[4]
At Gronium, a ford of the Ebro two kilometres from Munilla, Fortún founded a bridge with a hospital and a church dedicated to Saint John around 1120.[5] This foundation served the pilgrims along the Way of Saint James. By his will Fortún "divided his honour between his nephews", Fortún Íñiguez and Sancho Íñiguez, respective lords of Grañón and Belorado.[6]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 William C. Stalls, "The Written Word in the Aragonese Reconquista", Anuario de Estudios Medievales 22 (1992), 13.
- ↑ Carlos Estepa Díez, "Frontera, nobleza y señoríos en Castilla: el señorío de Molina (siglos XII–XIII)", Studia historica: Historia medieval 24 (2006), 21 n. 30.
- ↑ Luis Javier Fortún Pérez de Ciriza, "La quiebra de la soberanía navarra en Alava, Guipúzcoa y el Duranguesado (1199–1200)", Revista internacional de los estudios vascos 45:2 (2000), 441.
- ↑ Estepa Díez (2006), 24 nn. 45 and 47.
- ↑ José G. Moya Valgañón, "El trazado del camino de Santiago en la Rioja: aspectos de planeamiento y construcción", Semana de Estudios Medievales de Nájera (Nájera, 1993), IV, 106.
- ↑ Estepa Díez (2006), 22 n. 39: diuisit suum honorem suis nepotibus.
Further reading
- Bishko, Charles Julian. "A Hispano-Cluniac Benefactor in the Epoch of Navarro-Aragonese Separation: Fortún Garcés Cajal and the Founding of San Adrian of Vadoluengo (Sangüesa), 1133–1145", Estudios en homenaje a Don Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz en sus 90 años (Buenos Aires, 1983), vol. 2, 275–312.
- García Larragueta, Santos Agustín. "El Temple en Navarra", Anuario de estudios medievales 11 (1981), 635–61.
- Lema Pueyo, José A. "Las tenencias navarras de Alfonso I 'el Batallador'", Primer Congreso General de Historia de Navarra, 3. Comunicaciones, Príncipe de Viana, anejo 8 (1988), 61–70.
- Lema Pueyo, José A. "Las cofradías y la introduccíon del Temple en los reinos de Aragón y Pamplona: guerra, intereses y piedad religiosa", Anuario de estudios medievales 28 (1998), 311–31.
- Sagredo Fernández, F. "La tenencia de Bureba en la primera mitad del siglo XII." Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel, OSB (Santo Domingo de Silos, 1977), vol. 1, 197–217.