Restoration or disruption? The reconstitution of diocesan spaces in the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Middle Ages

In: Vones, Ludwig (2019). Restoration or disruption? The reconstitution of diocesan spaces in the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Middle Ages. Melanges Casa Velazquez, 49 (2). S. 165 - 195. MADRID: CASA VELAZQUEZ. ISSN 0076-230X

Abstract

After the turbulence caused by the Islamic occupation, the restoration of the so-called primate power of the former Visigothic metropolis of Toledo on October 15, 1088 by Pope Urban II had important legal and political consequences thus destabilising the ecclesiastical network. The restoration of ecclesiastical provinces, diocesan structures and parish boundaries, as wall as the formation of dioceses from parish districts, posed almost insurmountable problems for the churches. The reasons were multiple. It is, therefore, not surprising that efforts were made to obtain the necessary legal cover to maintain established positions, while facing a possible radical change in the Hispanic Church constitution received in the Late antiquity but lost in the time of the Visigoths. Canon law did not have many effective instruments to consolidate a status obtained by Hispanic bishoprics in the late eleventh century, without the express permission of a specific authority. To fill these gaps in the legal bases, or even to compensate for their total absence, some dioceses have resorted to the production of instruments such as the History of Compostela, the Divisio Wambae or the Divisio Theodemiri, or to the worship of saints or their relics, which would justify, in this way, often obscure claims.