Imperator totius Hispaniae
Imperator totius Hispaniae is a Latin title meaning "Emperor of All Spain". In Spain in the Middle Ages, the title "emperor" was used under a variety of circumstances from the ninth century onwards, but its usage peaked, as a formal and practical title, between 1086 and 1157. It was primarily used by the kings of León and Castile, but it also found currency in the Kingdom of Navarre and was employed by the counts of Castile and at least one duke of Galicia. It signalled at various points the king's equality with the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and Holy Roman Empire, his rule by conquest or military superiority, his rule over several ethnic or religious groups, and his claim to suzerainty over the other kings of the peninsula, both Christian and Muslim. The use of the imperial title received scant recognition outside of Spain and it had become largely forgotten by the thirteenth century.
The analogous feminine title, "empress", was less frequently used for the consorts of the emperors. Only one reigning queen, Urraca, had occasion to use it, but did so sparingly.
History
Kings of Asturias
One of the earliest references to the Kingdom of Asturias, predecessor of the Kingdom of León, as an empire is in the Chronicle of Alfonso III, which says that King Silo "subjugated the people of Galicia to his imperial rule". The reference is clearly to the rule of the Asturian king over several peoples, namely Asturians, Galicians and Basques.A surviving charter of 863 refers to Ordoño I as "our lord, residing in the Asturias", qualifying him as a "commanding prince". This residential form of title was preferred because the Asturian kingdom at this stage was not ethnically unified or well-defined.
Kings of León
Alfonso III
There exist two diplomas dated to the reign of Alfonso III of Asturias and referring to him as emperor, but both are early twelfth-century fabrications emanating from the scriptorium of the Diocese of Mondoñedo and Bishop Gonzalo, designed to bolster that church's claims in a dispute of 1102. The first document, dated to 866 or 867, confirmed by Alfonso, who signs as "I, Alfonso, of all Spain emperor, who is unworthily permitted to be called the Catholic". The other refers to him simply as "Alfonso, Emperor of Spain". The forger may have borrowed these exalted titles from the chancery of Alfonso VI, who was using the title imperator totius Hispaniae at the time. The subscription lists of both these charters are compatible with the dates, and it has been suggested that the clauses referring to Alfonso as emperor are derived from authentic charters.There exists a letter purportedly written by Alfonso III to the clergy of the Cathedral of Tours in 906, wherein the king is arranging to purchase an "imperial crown made of gold and precious stones, fitting to his dignity" kept at Tours. Alfonso almost invariably calls himself simply "King Alfonso" in his surviving charters, but in the letter he uses the elaborate and high-ranking style "Alfonso by the power and assent of Christ king of Spain". A similarly grandiose title is given to Alfonso in the contemporary Chronica Prophetica : "glorious Alfonso in all the Spains to reign". The authenticity of the letter is still debated.
Besides the apocryphal charters, there are genuine, posthumous documents referring to Alfonso as emperor. In one that dates from 917, in the reign of his son Ordoño II of León, the king confirms as "Ordoño, son of the Emperor Alfonso the Great". A document from 950 can also be cited that refers to Alfonso with the imperial title. The pertinent passage reads: "They put in place a border with Gonzalo, son of our lord emperor Prince Alfonso".
Tenth century
A royal diploma of 922, where Ordoño II refers to himself as emperor, is the first recorded instance of a Leonese king doing so. The charter reads, "I, the most serene emperor Ordoño". Ordoño II's successor, Ramiro II, is not titled "emperor" in any contemporary document, but a charter dated 940 and preserved as a copy in the cartulary of the monastery of Eslonza is dated by "our reigning lord and emperor", the reigning king being Ramiro II. Although he apparently avoided the imperial style himself, his subjects and his successor did not. Private documents of his reign commonly refer to him as the "great king", as in a document of 930. In a private charter from the first year of Ramiro's son Ordoño III, the king is called "our reigning lord prince Ordoño, heir of the lord emperor Ramiro" and the charter was given "at Simancas in the presence of the emperor". In a charter of 954, Ordoño is described as "most lordly emperor, son of Ramiro".Contemporary documents of the reign of Ramiro III of León use the magnified titles basileus and magnus rex. The former is a Latinisation of the Greek for "king" and was the title employed by the Byzantine Emperors. To western European ears it had an imperial inflection. During the regency of Ramiro's aunt, the nun Elvira Ramírez, the king confirmed a document of 1 May 974 as "Flavius Ramiro, prince, anointed great basileus in the kingdom... I confirm with my own hand. Elvira, basilea, paternal aunt of the king". The Roman personal name Flavius, which originally meant "blond", was popular among Romanised barbarians, and the kings of the Visigoths took to using it as a Byzantine-sounding title, to give themselves legitimacy. Its use in a document of the tenth century harkens back to Visigothic rule and peninsular unity. A judicial document that emanated from the royal court in 976 refers to a certain royal servant as "in the palace of the most lordly king–emperor... in obedient service to his most lordly emperor".
Eleventh century
In the first decades of the eleventh century, the Catalan Abbot Oliba referred to the kings of León, Alfonso V and Bermudo III, as imperatores. Two charters of Sancho Garcés III of Pamplona for the monastic house of San Juan de la Peña, both erroneously dated to 1025, use the same dating clause identify Bermudo III as "emperor in Galicia". It is not clear what the imperial title means in this charter, which appears to have been issued before Sancho's conquest of the city of León, when Bermudo was reduced to ruling Galicia, for the conquest came in 1034 and the charter was drawn between Bermudo's accession in 1028 and the death of Duke Sancho VI of Gascony on 4 October 1032. There exists a charter of 1036 issued by Ramiro I of Aragon, which lists the sovereigns then reigning in Spain thus: "Emperor Bermudo in León, and Count Ferdinand in Castile, and King García in Pamplona, and King Ramiro in Aragon, and King Gonzalo in Ribagorza".Rulers of León and Castile
Ferdinand I
Upon the death of his elder brother García Sánchez III of Navarre in 1054, Ferdinand I of Castile and León gained a position of preeminence among the Christian kings of Iberia. He was first called "emperor" by the notaries employed by his half-brother, Ramiro I of Aragon, the same ones who in 1036 called Ferdinand's predecessor Bermudo III "emperor". In a royal Aragonese charter of that same year, before Ferdinand had even defeated Bermudo and taken his kingdom at the Battle of Tamarón, Ramiro refers to his brother as "emperor in Castile and in León and in Astorga". A similarly-worded charter was issued in 1041 and again in 1061, where the order of kingdoms is reversed and Astorga ignored: "emperor in León and in Castile".Ferdinand is sometimes said to have had himself crowned "Emperor of Spain" in 1056, but this is based only on the first use of the imperial style in a charter of his own, preserved in the cartulary of Arlanza: "under the rule of the emperor King Ferdinand and the empress Queen Sancha ruling the kingdom in León and in Galicia as well as in Castile". This title was only used on one other occasion during his reign. A document of 1058 dates itself "in the time of the most serene prince Lord Ferdinand and his consort Queen Sancha" and later qualifies him as "this emperor, the aforesaid Ferdinand". The Chronicon complutense, probably written shortly after Ferdinand's death, extols him as the "exceedingly strong emperor" when mentioning the Siege of Coimbra.
After Ferdinand's death in 1065, his children took to calling him "emperor". In 1072, Alfonso VI, Fedinand's second son, referred to himself as "offspring of the Emperor Ferdinand". Two years later, Urraca of Zamora and Elvira of Toro referred to themselves as "daughters of the Emperor Ferdinand the Great". In a later charter of 1087, Ferdinand is referred to first as "king", then as "great emperor", and finally just as "emperor" alongside his consort, who is first called "queen" then "empress". Sancha's epigraph at the Basilica of San Isidoro calls her "Queen of all Hispania".
In the fourteenth century a story appeared in various chronicles according to which the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of France demanded a tribute from Ferdinand I. In certain versions the Pope is named Urban and in other versions Victor. According to this late account, the king was prepared to pay, but the Cid declared war on Pope, Emperor and Frenchman, who rescinded their demand. For this reason "Don Ferdinand was afterwards called ‘the Great’: the peer of an emperor". In the sixteenth century this account re-appeared, extended and elaborated, in its most complete form in the Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana. He wrote that in 1055 at the, the Emperor Henry III urged Victor II to prohibit under severe penalties the use of the imperial title by Ferdinand of León. This story is generally regarded as apocryphal, although some modern authors have accepted it uncritically or seen a kernel of historical truth in it. Spanish historian A. Ballesteros argued that Ferdinand adopted the title in opposition to Henry III's imperial pretensions. German historian E. E. Stengel believed the version found in Mariana on the grounds that the latter probably used the now lost acts of the Council of Florence. Juan Beneyto Pérez was willing to accept it as based on tradition and Ernst Steindorff, the nineteenth-century student of the reign of Henry III, as being authentically transmitted via the romancero. Menéndez Pidal accepted the account of Mariana, but placed it in the year 1065.