Pedro Manrique de Lara

Pedro Manrique de Lara (died January 1202), commonly called Pedro de Molina or Peter of Lara, was a Castilian nobleman and military leader of the House of Lara. Although he spent most of his career in the service of Alfonso VIII of Castile, he also served briefly Ferdinand II of León (1185–86) and was Viscount of Narbonne by hereditary right after 1192. He was one of the most powerful Castilian magnates of his time, and defended the Kingdom of Toledo and the Extremadura against the Almohads. He also fought the Reconquista in Cuenca, and was a "second founder" of the monasteries of Huerta and Arandilla.

Pedro was married three times. By his first marriage, to a Navarrese princess, he forged a connection with the lineage of the folk hero El Cid, and scholars have suggested that Lara patronage lies behind the epic Poema de mio Cid. Pedro's second wife was a relative of Henry II of England. Pedro's trans-Pyrenean connexions explain his adoption of seals for authenticating documents; he is the first Spanish aristocrat from whom an examples survives. He also adopted the style "by the grace of God" to indicate his independence in ruling the lordship of Molina, which he inherited from his father.

Inheritance Pedro was the eldest son and heir of Manrique Pérez de Lara and Ermessinde, daughter of Aimery II of Narbonne. He regularly called himself "de Lara", a toponymic surname first employed by his grandfather and namesake Pedro González. Pedro's descendants adopted his own patronymic, Manrique, as part of their surname. Pedro's patrimony was extensive, but he is well known among historians for how much of it he mortgaged or sold for a small profit. This had led to the accusation that he was a poor administrator. He owned land at Cogolludo.

Pedro first appears in a public document on 18 December 1157. Pedro's father died at the Battle of Huete in the summer of 1164 and his semi-independent lordship of Molina was inherited by his widow, who promptly invested half of it in her eldest son. By November 1164 Pedro was governing the eastern fief of Atienza, which his father had held before his death. Dating to 1 March 1165 is the only document that cites Pedro as actually ruling Lara, from which his family took its name.

First marriage Pedro's first wife was the infanta Sancha Garcés, a daughter of King García Ramírez of Navarre and his second wife, Urraca, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso VII of León and Castile and his mistress Gontrodo Pérez. This was thus a highly auspicious match for the young nobleman. She first appears as his wife in a donation to the Praemonstratensian foundation at La Vid dated to 1165. This presents problems, however, as her first husband, Gaston V of Béarn, did not die until 1170. In May 1172, Pedro and his brother Manrique donated half of the saltworks (salinas) of Tercegüela to the abbey of Santa María de Huerta and Abbot Martín de Finojosa. In February 1173 Manrique along with Sancha donated the remaining half in exchange for a horse. This charter reads was "made in the month of February in the era 1211 in the year when King Sancho of Navarre gave his sister to count Pedro son of Manrique" (facta ... mense febrero in era M.CC.XI in anno quando rex Sancius Navarre dedit sororem suam comiti Petro filio comitis Almarica). This indicates that the marriage must have occurred sometime after February 1172, and as Sancha does not appear with her husband in the donation of May 1172, probably after that date as well.

Sancha and Pedro had three sons: García, Aimerico, and Nuño. Nuño, known as Nuño Pérez II to distinguish him from his great uncle, Nuño Pérez I, was still alive in 1228. He had received the tenencia of Bertabillo. Nuño Pérez I and Pedro Manrique shared the guardianship of the young Alfonso VIII before he attained his majority in 1169. British historian Richard A. Fletcher believed that Manrique, the Bishop of León from 1181 to 1205, was a son of Pedro and Sancha, although it is more likely that he was Pedro's brother.

Sancha was a great-granddaughter of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, called the Cid. It has been argued that the author of the Poema de mio Cid, perhaps Per Abbat, was patronised by the Lara family and that the Poema can be read as a work of escarnho e mal dizer ("shaming and cursing") against the Laras' enemies, the Castros (represented in the epic by the Infantes de Carrión). The town of San Esteban de Gormaz, nearby where the daughters of the Cid were beaten and abandoned, was also the site where the Laras, led by Pedro's father, hid the young Alfonso VIII in 1163; and the favourable light shone on Avengalvón, the last Muslim ruler of Molina (which fell to the Christians shortly before 1138), may reflect his relationship with the later Lara rulers of the same. He regularly titled himself Dei gratia, "by the grace of God", a rare usage for a nobleman in twelfth-century Spain, perhaps borrowed from his Occitan or Catalan cousins. There is also an example of his use of the phrase munere divino ("by divine mercy"). In 1168 he was sent to govern the tenencias of Osma and San Esteban de Gormaz in eastern Castile. On 4 October that year he made a donation to the parish church of Molina.

Pedro was a regular patron of the military order of the Knights of Calatrava. He made his first donatio to them on 8 May 1169. In 1169 Pedro intervened to arbitrate a dispute between the settlers of Molina and the Abbey of Huerta concerning the boundaries of the village of Arandilla. On 5 November 1172 he was cited as governing Cabezón. By 3 April 1173 Pedro was governing the Kingdom of Toledo, the region centred on the populous city of Toledo and bordering al-Andalus to the south. That year, when Alfonso VIII invaded Navarre as far as Pamplona, Pedro acted as a mediator between his sovereign and the king of Navarre, Sancho VI, his brother-in-law. The war ended in a treaty in October.

Use of seals The earliest surviving aristocratic wax seal from Spain is found hanging from a document of Pedro's dated 22 January 1179. Since this practice was already current in France, it is probable that it entered Spain through the Laras' connexions with Narbonne and was certainly influenced by Occitan and Catalan designs. It may have been made from a matrix cast as early as 1164, when Pedro succeeded his father in Molina.

The seal is double-sided, both sides bearing equestrian depictions of Pedro. The obverse bears the barely discernible legend "seal of count Pedro", and the reverse and indiscernible legend that appears to be a sentence or motto. This would be the earliest of only three examples of personal seals from medieval Spain bearing mottoes. The charter to which it was attached put the village of Torralba de Ribota, which belonged to the mother church at Calatayud of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre in Spain, under the protection of Pedro Dei gratia comes, "by the grace of God count". It was confirmed in the city of Calatayud on Saint Vincent's Day in the year 1217 of the Spanish era. The identification with Pedro Manrique is secure, since there was neither another count named Pedro in Castile at the time nor any other count using the style Dei gratia. Pedro was at Torralba in March 1179. On 20 March Pedro assisted Alfonso VIII in laying the foundation stone of the Abbey of Huerta.

Relations with religious houses On 11 February 1172 Pedro received half the vill of Beteta from Cathedral of Santa María in Sigüenza in exchange for the monastery of Santa María de Molina. On 17 May he made another donation to a Cistercian house, this time the Abbey of Huerta. Although he made donations to the Praemonstratensians and the Benedictines (the monastery of Arlanza on an unknown date ), the Cistercians were his preferred monastic order. The Cistercian historian Ángel Manrique in his Annales Cistercienses (II, 429) considers Pedro and his descendants, the Manriques de Lara, as the "second founders" of Huerta because of their numerous benefactions. In October 1176 he made an apparently pious donation to the cathedral of Sigüenza, for this time he received nothing in return. On 16 January 1178 he made his second donation to the parish of Molina. Later that year (28 June) Pedro pledged 2,000 maravedíes for the construction of a monastery at Arandilla, which had lain in his jurisdiction since at least 1169. Besides the money, not only did Pedro offer land for the building of an abbey, he also granted the monks of Huerta (who were to build it) some four hundred sheep, forty cows, and ten mares. Pedro also instructed that he was to be buried at Arandilla if work on the monastery had not been finished by the time of his death, and that his successor was to donate a further 3,000 maravedíes. As early as 14 March 1167 Pedro's mother had attempted to establish a monastery there. She gave the usufruct of her estates at Arandilla to the monks of Huerta for two years on that date, and also promised them some properties at Molina. Ermessinde further pledged 200 gold pieces per annum for the erection of a monastery at Arandilla, offering even to pay the salary of the master builder who would supervise its construction. On 23 April he made a further pious donation (of two houses) to the Cathedral of Santa María in Burgos. Some time in 1183 Pedro and María mortgaged their joint property of the vill and castle of Los Ausines to the monastery of La Vid for 1,000 maravedíes.

Member of the Leonese court and second marriage Pedro is last seen ruling Toledo in May 1179. On 28 June that year he made a donation to Huerta, his third.

Pedro took as his second wife Margaret (Margarita, Margerina). The couple first appears as married in a charter redacted at Angers and preserved in the cartulary of Llanthony Secunda, recording the gift of bridewealth to a certain Margaret, relative of Henry II of England, by her husband, Petrus Dei gratia comes de Lara. The properties granted were Molmera (perhaps Molina), Andaluz, Agusino, Eles, and Polvoranca. It is dated "the tenth kalends of February of the Era 1221" (x kal′ februarii Era(t) m cc xxi), that is, 23 January 1183 according to Evans, but Church says of it, "Dated 23 January, it must have been granted in either 1184, 1185 or 1186." This charter is the only evidence to hint at Margaret's origin. They made another donation to the Order of Calatrava in which she was cited as "countess (comitissa) Margaret" on 30 December 1187 (or perhaps 1186). The couple was still married on 17 November 1189 when they made another donation to Calatrava. She gave him no known children. This appointment could not have lasted much more than a week, for Ferdinand had returned the former official, Rodrigo López, to the office by 16 February. By that time, however, Pedro had been appointed to a post away from court: the large and important, if quiet, tenencia of Asturias de Oviedo. His tenencias steadily increased throughout the year. By 22 February he was governing the "towers of León", that is, the royal citadel that controlled the capital city; by 6 July he held Salamanca and Toro, the latter only briefly; and by 26 September he was holding Ciudad Rodrigo, an important city in the south of the kingdom. On 4 March 1186 Pedro was styled a "vassal of king Ferdinand" (uassallo regis Fernandi). There is an isolated reference to his governing Babia on 16 March and Luna on 31 March–1 April. He continued to govern Asturias de Oviedo, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Salamanca until at least 5 May that year. He held onto León a short while longer, for he was still in charge of the fortress there on 21 May.

On 29 January 1187 Pedro made a second donation to Alcalech (his first had been in 1176). After 1190 Pedro no longer held Atienza. On 13 June 1195 Pedro made a second donation to the cathedral of Sigüenza. The confirmation was duly received from Ermengarde, "by the grace of God, viscountess of Narbonne, and my relative Pedro, by the same grace count." This demonstrates that on the other side of the Pyrenees Pedro continued to style himself and be styled as a count, as in "Count Pedro, Viscount of Narbonne".

In 1192 on the abdication of his aunt (died 1197), Pedro succeeded in the viscounty of Narbonne. Aimerico remained behind in it, for he did not return to Castile until after Pedro's death in 1202. Besides the viscounty, Pedro also inherited suzerainty over the viscounts of Béziers, which he included in his cession to his son of 1194. Excepted was the castle of Montpesat, which Pedro retained under his control.

Death and legacy In April 1199 Pedro was present at Huerta when it was visited by Alfonso VIII, the occasion for which the Poem de mio Cid may have first been publicly recited. On 30 October 1199 he made his second donation to La Vid.

Although there is no further mention of Pedro's second wife, Margaret, after their joint donation to Calatrava on 17 November 1189, his third and final wife (and widow), Mafalda, is not mentioned until after his death, on 3 February 1202, when she and her eldest son by Pedro, Gonzalo, sold their estate at Tragacete to the city council of Cuenca for 4,000 maravedíes. She also had by Pedro a son named Rodrigo or Ruy, He also became the lord of Montpesat.