Ponce Giraldo de Cabrera
Ponce Giraldo de Cabrera, called Ponç Guerau in Catalan or Pons in Occitan, was a Catalan nobleman, courtier and military leader in the kingdoms of León and Castile.
Ponce came to León in the entourage of Berenguela, daughter of Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, when she married King Alfonso VII of León at Saldaña in November 1127. Immediately after his arrival, Ponce assumed a position of some importance in the kingdom. By 1143 he held the title of count, the highest rank of the Leonese nobility. By 1145 he had been appointed the king's majordomo, the highest official in the realm.
Early career (1126–1140)
Catalan origins
Ponce was a son of Guerau II de Cabrera, the first viscount of Àger and Girona, and thus a great-grandson of Arnau Mir de Tost. His mother was Guerau's second wife, Elvira, probably a daughter of the Leonese magnate Pedro Ansúrez and his wife Elo Alfonso. Ponce was born between 1098 and 1105; he had two brothers, Ferrer Guerau and Bernat Guerau, both born before 1100. In his father's will of 1131, he was nominated as heir to the greater part of his father's lands and titles. Ponce succeeded his father in 1132 as Viscount Ponç II. By 1145 he had ceded control over Àger and Girona to his son, Guerau III de Cabrera.In the nineteenth year of King Louis VI of France, Ponce witnessed Count Raymond Berengar III of Barcelona grant the guardianship of the young heir to the viscounty of Bas to his seneschal, Guillem Ramon II de Montcada. In the charter, Ponce's surname is given as de Capraria. There is a charter dated to 25 October 1122 in which Ponce, using the vicecomital title, pledges fealty to the bishop of Girona, Berenguer Dalmau. If authentic, this charter, found in the Cartoral de Carles Many cartulary, shows that Ponce was already sharing in the government of the Cabrera lands with his father as early as 1122.
Establishing a base of power in western León
The first evidence of Ponce's presence in the kingdom of León is the dating clause of a private charter dated 27 October 1128, which states that it was drawn up while "Ponce Giraldo and his merino Pelayo Peláez ruling the castle of Ulver", that is, modern Cornatel on the southern edge of the Bierzo. This charter is preserved in the cartulary of the monastery of San Pedro de Montes, where Ponce seems to have been much esteemed—a charter of a later date refers to him as "the most noble Count Ponce". Ulver had been held by the powerful magnate Ramiro Fróilaz as late as May earlier that year, and by July 1133 it was back in his hands. It is possible that it was returned to his hold much earlier and that Ponce's rule was very brief. It was certainly only at the behest of Alfonso VI that an important castle in the region of one of the most powerful men in the kingdom could be bestowed on a relative newcomer like Ponce. Ponce later acquired lands in the district of Senabria, south of the Bierzo and across the Sierra de la Cabrera, where charters preserved in the cartulary of San Martín de Castañeda record two property exchanges he made in 1132 and 1135.Some time earlier Ponce purchased some land at Covelo from one Pedro Bellido. On 31 March 1132 he sold the same land to García Pérez and his wife Velasquita for a breastplate, a mule and thirty rolls of linen. In August 1135 he more land "in the territory of Senabria" beside the river Tera to the same couple for a mule valued at fifty morabetinos and a horse worth eighty. Both these donations indicate that at the time "Ponce ruling Senabria." His control of Senabria and the surrounding territory lasted until shortly before his death.
Around the same time, between 1129 and 1138, Ponce also came into neighbouring districts of La Cabrera and Morales, which had previously been under the lordship of Ramiro Fróilaz. Ponce later served closely with Ramiro on several military campaigns. The two even shared the tenancy of Astorga in 1154, and probably somewhat later that of Villafranca del Bierzo. A tenancy, known in contemporary sources as a prestimonium, feudum, honor or tenencia, was a piece of crown land given in fief to a nobleman who did homage for it to the king. A tenant was charged with raising troops from his tenancy in wartime and collecting taxes and administering justice in peacetime. In sparsely populated areas, a tenant was expect to encourage the settlement of his land. Tenancies were not hereditary and varied greatly in size. The tenancies held by Ponce "display a markedly military aspect", being mainly on the southern or western frontier.
Relationship with the royal court
Although Ponce benefited early in his career from royal patronage, he was at first "a fairly peripheral figure... one among a large number of second-rate Leonese nobles who lacked the wealth and political clout of the great magnates of the realm." During the first half of Alfonso VII's reign, Ponce was rarely in attendance at the curia regis, where noble attendees "were expected to counsel the monarch in the day-to-day business of government." The first record of Ponce at court dates to 25 March 1129, when the court was staying at Palencia and the king made a grant to the archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela, witnessed by Ponce among others. Although he was at court still, or again, on 8 July, that was the last time before 23 March 1131, making his an absence of almost three years. During the decade of the 1130s his attendance at court was sporadic, marked by another three-year absence and one of two years. In 1135 or 1136, he was in Catalonia again, signing a conventientia with his overlord and relative, Count Ermengol VI of Urgell.The reasons for such prolonged absences cannot be ascertained with certainty today, but at least four possibilities are likely: poor health, the need to visit his Catalan territories, the demands of military campaigns elsewhere, or the loss of royal favour. In 1139 Ponce took part in the successful Siege of Oreja, where Alfonso reconquered the city from the Muslims. On 22 February 1140, Ponce was at Carrión de los Condes to witness the treaty between Alfonso VII and Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona, which treaty is preserved in the Liber feudorum maior. The next year, Ponce joined the punitive expedition Alfonso led against his cousin Afonso Henriques, who had proclaimed himself King of Portugal in contravention to a treaty he had signed with Alfonso. His presence in Portugal is attested in the Chronicon Lusitanum, which reports that he was captured at the Battle of Valdevez, and in a charter given by Alfonso at Santiago de Compostela on 23 September 1141. It is possible that the Catalan fought with distinction in these two wars in Andalusia and Portugal, since shortly afterwards he became a prominent figure at court. As a tenant of the crown, he would have been expected to raise a contingent of knights and infantry for the campaigns. In the fall of 1142 Ponce's relationship with the court permanently changed. He confirmed 376 of the 543 charters issued by Alfonso VII after that date, making him the most regular curial attendee among the counts of the kingdom.
Prince of the empire (1140–1157)
Prince of Zamora
There is a dubious charter dated 12 February 1140 that refers to Ponce as lord of Castrotorafe and Zamora. The former he is not otherwise recorded as ruling; the latter he is known to have ruled between 6 June 1142 and 6 November 1159. There is a charter slightly earlier, dated 5 April 1142, that refers to Ponce as "Ponce, count in Zamora", but the use of the comital title is anachronistic, as there is no other evidence he held it before June. There is a more ambitious forgery in the purported fuero of Castrotrafe, dated 2 February 1129, which cites Ponce as "ruling Zamora" over a decade before he is otherwise known to have done so. There is no other evidence of Ponce holding Castrotorafe in lordship, but he is known to have had close contact with the town.The earliest clear and unambiguous reference to Ponce ruling Zamora and its district is in the list of confirmants ofAlfonso's grant of the village of Fradejas to the Diocese of Zamora on 6 June 1142. This document, which refers to Ponce as "at this time prince of Zamora", was drawn up while Alfonso was besieging Coria and indicates that Ponce participated in that campaign. Zamora had previously been held by Osorio Martínez, the brother of Rodrigo Martínez, who had died at an earlier siege of Coria in 1138. At around the time of the second siege, Osorio became estranged from the emperor and his fiefs, which had previously been held by Rodrigo, were confiscated. Ponce benefited from his fall, for not only Zamora, but Melgar de Abajo in the Tierra de Campos and Malgrat between Zamora and León were transferred from Osorio's possession to his, by at the latest 27 April 1146 and 7 February 1148, respectively. Ponce was soon expanding his lordship in the Tierra de Campos: by 1146 he had the tenancy of Villalpando and by 1151 he had received Villafáfila.
It is possible that Ponce received two other large tenancies in southern León at this time, Salamanca and Castrotorafe. The evidence that Ponce ever held the latter is inconclusive, but he had received that of Salamanca by 21 January 1144 at the latest and possibly at the same time as he was granted nearby Zamora. The Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, a contemporary account of Alfonso VII's reign, relates how the Salamancas were defeated four times in the years 1132–33 before "they offered tithes and their first fruits to God, and favored the gift of valor and prudence while waging war, reason, subsequent to their prayers, they were a constant threat to the Moors in their own land under the leadership of Count Poncio, several battles and great victories which included great spoils, he city of Salamanca famous for its knights and infantry very rich from the spoils of war."
Shortly after the reconquest of Coria, but no earlier than 29 June, Ponce parted from the royal court and probably headed for Zamora. He was there when Alfonso VII visited on 5 October 1143, and gratefully bestowed on him the deserted village of Moreruela de Frades, located about thirty kilometres north of Zamora. There Ponce founded an abbey dedicated to Santa María for some Cistercian monks, probably the first of its kind in Spain. The original charter granting him the village stipulated that he should build a monastery there and "maintain and conserve" it. On 28 July 1156, acting for the monks, he procured a "pact of friendship" with the townsmen of Castrotorafe, and he endowed the Cistercians with more land, but there is no record of his favouring the monastery much beyond this. It was left to his kin and descendants to endow the monastery with lands throughout Spain and make it "one of the wealthiest houses in the peninsula" in the thirteenth century.