Voto de Santiago
Voto de Santiago (Eng .: Jacob's vow ) is the general name for the vows of Asturian kings , in which they asked the apostle James for support for or mediation in their concerns with God. To redeem it, they gave or donated the vowed to an institution associated with the Apostle James, usually the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela .
Specifically, it describes the vow that the Asturian King Ramiro I is said to have made on the occasion of the Battle of Clavijo , and a fee that resulted from the vow. This particular vow and submission are discussed below.
content
In the document, the following statements are assumed to King Ramiro: Some of his predecessors (not named) did not fight against the Muslims out of laziness and neglect of duty, but bought the peace by paying an annual tribute. This tribute, the tribute of the one hundred virgins mentioned here for the first time, consisted of a hundred Christian virgins, 50 from the nobility and 50 from the people, who were given to the Muslims. He, Ramiro, refused to pay tribute and chose to fight. First his army was routed and then gathered again at Clavijo. There the holy apostle James (Santiago) appeared to him in a dream as the patron saint of Spain and promised him help for the coming battle. The next morning the Christian troops went into battle with the cry “Help us, God and holy Jacob!” And won, with the apostle himself appearing as a knight on a white horse. 70,000 enemies had fallen. As a thank you Ramiro had afterwards granted the Church of St. James in Santiago an annual payment, which was to be paid as a general tax by all Christians in the empire.
History of the voto
Calahorra is mentioned as the place of the vow . The payment included ceding the first yields from fields and vineyards as well as part of the spoils from the clashes with the Moors to the Cathedral of Santiago. The levy was initially applied to the Christian subjects of the kingdoms of Asturias , León and Castile , and later to the Rioja and Navarra; it was paid in addition to the church tithe.
On July 25, 1643, on the occasion of St. James' Day, the Voto de Santiago was renewed by Philip IV (Spain) and institutionalized as a national tax; the Cortes de Cádiz collected it in 1812, as did other privileges of the old system, the Antiguo Régimen .
Franco restored Jacobean patronage and voting in the Spanish Civil War , claimed Santiago's protection for his troops and attributed his success at the Battle of Brunete on July 25, 1937 to the intervention of the apostle. The patronage has continued to this day and is confirmed annually in a religious act in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The Spanish king takes part in this mass personally or a high official (crown prince, minister) on his behalf.
Sources
The battle report can be found in the Chronicle De rebus Hispaniae of Bishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada , in which he describes the history of the Iberian Peninsula until 1243.
Jiménez de Rada relied on a certificate allegedly issued by King Ramiro after the victory in Clavijo on May 25, 844, the Privilegio de los Votos . This document was forged around the middle of the 12th century by Cardinal Pedro Marcio - clergyman at the church to be supported - in Santiago de Compostela and is of no value as a source for the 9th century. Herbers assumes that there was a real Privilegio, but issued by Ramiro II , limited to the Galician-Leonese kingdom and not related to a slaughtering aid Jakobi. The representations of the forged document were adopted in the 13th century by Jiménez de Rada as well as by the chronicler Lucas von Tui and thus found their way into later historical works, in particular the Estoria de España ( Crónica General ).
The battle of Clavijo is said to have taken place on May 23, 844 on the "Campo de la Matanza" (battlefield) near Clavijo . The veracity of this claim has long been debated, but the Spanish historians Gregorio Mayáns and Francisco Cerdá y Rico made it clear in the 18th century that the battle, like other pious forgeries in Spanish history, belongs in the realm of the imagination. The difficult evidence for battle and vows only seems problematic from today's perspective due to the different understanding of politics in the Middle Ages.
The "original" of Ramiro I's document in 1543 is said to have been misplaced in the course of a legal dispute against the town of Pedraza when it was supposed to be presented in the Valladolid office . Various copies exist, including that of the Corias monastery in Asturias; this is now kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid.
Political and economic relevance
The role of Santiago as patron saint and the Voto de Santiago experienced a self-contained coupling with their connection: Whoever paid the levy accepted the patron, whoever accepted the patron could not refuse him the levy.
The falsification of Voto is however - in the light of competition between the Bishop cities - and perhaps especially Toledo to see Santiago de Compostela: The young kingdom of Asturias supported - cut off from the religious center and Metropolitan Seat Toledo - on James as Reich saints and promoted Santiago as a new religious center. With the reconquest of Toledo in 1085, this role had become obsolete. The Voto was thus a suitable means of strengthening Santiago without obviously attacking the precedence of Toledo as the seat of the Primate of Spain .
The material benefit from the vote was considerable and aroused the desires of other church representatives who tried to direct a similar blessing to their institution. Gonzalo de Berceo, for example, demanded copatronate for St. Aemilianus - because he had also intervened in the battle - and a comparable fee for his monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla .
Against this background, the committed reaction of the defenders of the Jacobean patronage over Spain is understandable when - supported by the rural population - the idea and demand arose to transfer the patronage to Teresa of Ávila : with the change the levy would have been obsolete and the Compostelan cathedral chapter one has lost an important part of his income.
literature
- Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz: La auténtica batalla de Clavijo , in: Cuadernos de Historia de España 9, Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1948, pp. 94-139
- Paulino García Toraño: Historia de el Reino de Asturias , Oviedo 1986, pp. 249-254, ISBN 84-398-6586-4
- Klaus Herbers: Jakobsweg: history and culture of a pilgrimage , Beck, ISBN 978-3406535949
- Klaus Herbers: Politics and Adoration of Saints on the Iberian Peninsula. The development of the "political Jakobus" in Jürgen Petersohn [ed.]: Politics and adoration of saints in the high Middle Ages , Sigmaringen, 1994, ISBN 3-7995-6642-2
References and footnotes
- ↑ Karl Marx: The revolutionary Spain , in: Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - Works, Volume 10, Dietz Verlag, Berlin / DDR 1961, pp 468, available online via mlwerke.de: Voices of the proletarian revolution .
- ↑ German: Chronicle of Spain , also known as Historia gothica o Crónica del toledano
- ↑ Herbers, Politik, p. 234 (see literature)
- ↑ Link to the text: see web links
- ↑ cf. Herbers, Politik, p. 198 ff.
- ↑ Herbers mentions a forged document that claims that the Castilian Count Fernán González has issued an Aemilianus privilege. see. Herbers, Politik, p. 236