Imperator totius Hispaniae

[2] 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.

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".

[23] The Chronicon complutense, probably written shortly after Ferdinand's death, extols him as the "exceedingly strong emperor" (imperator fortissimus) when mentioning the Siege of Coimbra.

[29] According to this late account, the king was prepared to pay, but the Cid (who in reality was a young and very minor figure during Ferdinand's reign) declared war on Pope, Emperor and Frenchman, who rescinded their demand.

[33] 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.

This letter was addressed to the "kings, counts, and other princes of Spain" (regibus, comitibus, ceterisque principibus Hyspaniae), an indication that Gregory did not regard Alfonso as unique among Spanish rulers.

In a papal letter dated 7 May 1078 Gregory confirmed that he was sending Cardinal Richard to Castile "as the King of Spain has asked and your counsel has desired" (sicut rex Hispaniae rogavit et vos consilium dedistis).

[42] Other possible incentives for Alfonso to stress his hegemony over the Iberian peninsula include the submission of most of the taifas (Islamic factional kingdoms) to his suzerainty by the payment of parias (tribute) by 1073, and the annexation of La Rioja and those parts of Castile belonging to Navarre after the assassination of Sancho Garcés IV in 1076.

His most elaborate imperial title was ego Adefonsus imperator totius Castelle et Toleto necnon et Nazare seu Alave ("I, Alfonso, emperor of all Castile and of Toledo also and of Nájera, or Álava").

[50] The Historia silense, written shortly after his reign in the ambit of the Leonese royal court, refers to Alfonso twice as the "orthodox Spanish emperor" (ortodoxus Yspanus imperator).

[58] There is some controversy over Alfonso's use of the title "Emperor of the Two Religions" (al-Imbraţūr dhī-l-Millatayn), which appears in a surviving letter he sent to King al-Mu‘tamid ibn Abbād of Seville.

All the uses of this title by the queen come early in her reign, and perhaps formed "a conscious device to offset the authority of her ‘imperial’ husband", Alfonso the Battler, who was at the height of his power in the "dark days" of 1112.

[65] One of Urraca's most prolific known notaries, Martín Peláez, with fifteen surviving charters, three original, to his name, occasionally paired the title "chancellor" (cancellarius) for himself with that of "empress" for his sovereign.

[68] On 26 June 1110, on the other side of her realm, Urraca issued a diploma to Diego López I de Haro of the Rioja, signing as "Queen of Spain" (Ispanie regina) and without mentioning her husband, who was then in Galicia.

[76] A closer source, the contemporary Annales cameracenses, written by Lambert of Waterlos (died c.1170), do suggest wider European recognition of Alfonso's imperial stature.

[80] Herman of Laon (Hermannus monachus, "Herman the monk"), writing in his De miraculis sanctae Mariae Laudunensis de gestis venerabilis Bartholomaei episcopi et sancti Nortberti libri tres ("Three Books on the Miracles of Saint Mary of Lyon, on the Deeds of the Venerable Bishop Bartholomew, and on Saint Norbert"), notes that: Totaque pene Hispania sibi subjugata adeo nominis sui opinionem dilatavit ut ab aliis alter Julius, ab aliis secundus Carolus vocaretur, ob memoriam illius praeclari Caroli Francorum regis, qui quondam Hispaniam victor subegit.

Impressed by Alfonso's imperial title, on his return trip he issued a charter in which he refers to himself in the address as "ordained by the Providence of God the August Emperor of the Franks" (dei ordinante providentia Francorum Imperator Augustus) at Arzacq on Wednesday 9 February 1155.

[88] In a document of 29 November 1152, Sancha Raimúndez, who herself was titled "queen" as an honorific granted by her brother, Alfonso VII, refers to his spouse Richeza as empress: Domina Rica imperatrix et uxor domini ...

The most extensive title he ever used occurs in a document of 26 December 1032: "the aforementioned most serene King Sancho reigning in Pamplona and in Aragon and in Sobrarbe and in Ribagorza as well as in all Gascony and also in the whole of Castile, and overlording, it may be said, amply in León, that is, in Astorga ruling (inperante) by the grace of God".

The first, dated 24 September and preserved in the cartulary of San Juan de la Peña, connects his imperium with all his domains: "[in] the times of King Sancho holding [his] empire in Aragon and in Pamplona and in Castile and in León".

The letter was addressed to Sancho: For the lord and venerable Iberian king, Oliba, bishop of the holy see of Vic, with all the community of Santa Maria de Ripoll governed by him, desires the joys of life both present and future.

In his Historiarium sui temporis libri quinque, the French chronicler Ralph Glaber lists the kings have maintained friendly relations with Robert II of France by sending him gifts and petitioning him for aid.

[115] The fourteenth-century Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña, in its fourteenth chapter, notes that "because of the wide lands that he possessed and which he was made to dominate Sancho was called ‘emperor’.

In a fuero granted to Castrojeriz in 974, which survives in a thirteenth-century confirmation, he refers to himself as "I, García Fernández, by the grace of God count and emperor of Castile" (Ego Garssia Ferdinandi, gratia Dei comes et imperator Castelle).

[122] Another local count, who with the help of Almanzor would briefly expel king Bermudo II and control the eastern part of the Kingdom of León as well as its capitol, would likewise express imperial pretensions.

[123] Alfonso X of Castile, reigned 1252–1284, would run in the 1257 imperial election during the Interregnum of the Holy Roman Empire and claim the titles rex Romanorum and imperator electus.

[130] The imperial title has at times been connected to (i) the independence of Spain from the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires, (ii) the supremacy of one Spanish king over others, (iii) the king who held the Visigothic capital of Toledo or León, capital of the Visigothic "successor state", (iv) a military commander with success on the battlefield, (v) rule over multiple peoples (in an ethnic or religious sense), or (vi) propaganda, as in the case of Cluny or courtly historians or biographers.

The first historians to seriously study the usage of the imperial title in certain documents pertaining to the kings of León were, around the same time, A. Schunter and Ernesto Mayer, who argued that it had been adopted in order to affirm the independence of the Leonese from the restored Roman Empire of Charlemagne (crowned by Pope Leo III in 800).

[132] The historian Roger Collins suggests that "the intermittent use of the title imperator, "emperor", by the rulers of Asturias and León from the tenth century onward seems to have indicated their hegemonial pretentions.

[141] This manuscript, now preserved at Parma, was illuminated at Cluny in gold letters on purple vellum, a style "reminiscent of the famous imperial presentation codices produced by the Echternach School" for the Holy Roman Emperors in the preceding two centuries.