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and among those who had, at the same time, advanced juridical, historical, and theological knowledge. The specific places within Castile where we find this expression reveal a cultural setting of this sort. The anonymous author of the Historia Roderici (History of Rodrigo; ca. 1147) employs it in a very specific way: “Hunc autem Rodericum Didaci Santius, rex tocius Castelle et dominator Hyspaniæ, diligenter nutriuit et cingulum militie eidem cinxit” [“That Sancho, king of all Castile and ruler of Hispania, raised up Rodrigo Díaz with all his love and put the military sash on him”]. (Martínez Díez et al., Historia latina de Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar 54).¹⁴ The language here is not neutral. It deploys terms and expressions that belong to imperial chancery Latin, and the Latinate institutions of the empire of Justinian and Theodosius. King Sancho, who knights the Cid, is here referred to as “king of all Castile,” a phrase that enjoys a semantic confluence with the Imperium Totius Hispaniae [“Empire of All Hispania”] formula coined by Alfonso VI (1040–1109, self-proclaimed Imperator Totius Hispaniae in 1070) and made to take on greater prominence during the reign of Alfonso VII (r.1126–1157, referred to as imperator from the beginning of his reign), the same period during which the History of Rodrigo was composed.

      The bishop and historian Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (1170–1247) makes use of the cingulum militiæ accingere formula when speaking of the knighting of Conrad III Hohenstaufen (1173–1196), son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1122–1190), and likewise that of Alfonso IX of León (1171–1230), both carried out by Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1188 in the city of Carrión de los Condes:

      Mortuo rege Fernando successit ei eius filius Aldefonsus. Hic fuit homo pius, strenuus et benignus, set susurronum vicissitudine mutabatur; et a consobrino suo Aldefonso rege Castelle et Sancio rege Portugalie infestatus circa primordia regni sui uenit ad rege Castelle, et in curia Carrionis accintus ab eo cingulo militari, manum eius fuit in plena curia osculatus; et in eadem curia rex Castelle nobilis Aldefonsus Conradum filium Frederici imperatoris Romani accinxit similiter cingulo militari.

      [With the death of King Fernando (II of León), his son Alfonso (IX of León) succeeded him to the throne. He was a pious, strong, and good man, but he was much altered by the vicissitudes of events and was attacked by his cousin Alfonso, the king of Castile, and Sancho, the king of Portugal. Near the beginning of his reign he went to the king of Castile, and in the curia of Carrión he had the military sash put on him by this same king and he kissed his hand in front of the full curia; and in that same curia the noble Alfonso, king of Castile, similarly put the military sash on Conrad, the son of Frederick, the Roman emperor.] (Jiménez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniæ, 246)

      Thus, in both cases of chivalric investiture, the Latin scribe employs the cingulum militiæ accingere formula.

      The cingulum militiæ accingere formula seems to have no directly comprehensible meaning in Spanish, if we are to judge based on how it is translated within the Estoria de España, composed in the scriptorium of Alfonso X. There is a certain degree of anxiety in the manner in which this translation is produced. The translators do not seem to think that the reference to the military sash is self-explanatory, so in each case they add a supplement to reinforce its meaning. While they maintain the archaeological substratum of the expression that they have inherited, they incorporate another, more modern one that may reveal a good deal about the ritual act that is taking place:

      (Alfonso IX de León) fue guerreado de su primo don Alffonsso, rey de Castiella, et de don Sancho, rey de Portogal, çerca de los comienços de su regno. Et ueno estonçes el rey don Alffonsso de Castiella a Carrion a cortes que fizo y; et cinxo alli este rey don Alffonsso de Castiella la çinta de caualleria a don Alffonsso rey de Leon, su primo cormano, et armol alli et fizol cauallero; onde esse rey don Alffonsso de Leon beso alli la mano a don Alffonsso rey de Castiella ante todos, la corte llena. Et en essa misma corte otrossi esse noble rey don Alffonsso de Castiella çinxo la çinta de caualleria et su espada a don Corrado fijo de don Fradric emperador de Roma et fizol cauallero.

      [(King Alfonso IX of León) went to war with his cousin Alfonso, king of Castile, and Sancho, the king of Portugal, near the beginning of his reign. At that time, King Alfonso of Castile arrived in Carrión to preside over his Cortes; and there King Alfonso of Castile put the sash of chivalry on King Alfonso of León, his first cousin, and there armed him and made him a knight; at which point King Alfonso of León kissed the hand of King Alfonso of Castile in front of everyone at the full Cortes. And at this same Cortes the noble King Alfonso of Castile girded the sash of chivalry and his sword on Conrad, the son of Frederick the Emperor of Rome and made him a knight.] (Menéndez Pidal, Primera Crónica General de España, 666–67; emphasis mine)

      The act of chivalric investiture that the Latin text narrates seems to be much more focused on the presence of Conrad than that of Alfonso. In both cases, the ceremony expresses in its entirety an act of domination, but it is of a totally distinct nature. The domination of Conrad by Alfonso is related to the political alliance being sealed on this occasion, namely the matrimonial alliance between the son of the emperor and the daughter of the king. The knighting of Conrad by Alfonso sets into practice an imperial ritual, derived from the very terminology of the Roman Empire. In the expressive re-elaboration that makes up the Castilian version of this narration, Castilian historians must translate not only the formula’s signifier, but also its referent. The ceremony, as well as the mode in which it is expressed, seems foreign, like something that shares the provenance of the person knighted.

      The concision in the expression of the ceremony is also surprising. Research devoted to medieval rituals spells out the process by which the texts that narrate these ceremonies not only reproduce them in great detail, but also state their meaning, giving rise to the theological and political traditions of ritual hermeneutics. Both characteristics are absent in this narrative.

      This absence explains why, upon narrating the dramatization of seignorial domination and of the imposition of the Castilian over the Leonese, the historian contents himself with a reference to the knighting of Alfonso IX of León. The crucial detail is the kiss of the hand that Alfonso of León sees himself obliged to give Alfonso of Castile in the presence of the entire Cortes (Rodríguez-Velasco, “El Cid y la investidura caballeresca”). This act of corporal subjugation, the body inclining itself in the traditional act of accepting one’s lower place within a hierarchy of power (as opposed to the relation of relative equality implied by a kiss on the lips), amid the full Cortes is a powerful sign of the manner in which social actors during the late medieval period worked to reorganize hierarchies of national power within the Iberian Peninsula and in line with Castilian imperial projects.

      Alberto Montaner has accurately suggested that the expression cingulum militiæ cingere refers to the action of having the sword girded. In its late medieval Castilian context, the Roman military weapon has disappeared from the field of the formula’s referent, and it seems to have been substituted by a weapon not only fundamental for armed confrontations but also for chivalric distinction. For Montaner, the epic formula “que en buena ora cinxó espada” [“who in a good hour girded on his sword”] applied to the Cid is a clear example of such a reference, and should be read as “en buen momento fue armado caballero” [“at a good time was knighted”] (“Prologo” cxvli).¹⁵ Montaner maintains the use of this formula in the History of Rodrigo and the Historia de rebus Hispaniæ (History of Hispanic Matters). Finally, along the same lines, in the Poem of the Cid, it is clearly associated with the reign of Alfonso VIII and emerges from Cistercian textual and intellectual models through texts authored by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, such as Liber ad milites templi de laude novæ militæ (In Praise of the New Knighthood). Both theses—the notion that Rodrigo and the Cid were first redacted during the era of Alfonso VIII (the period in which I believe that we should situate the beginning of the monarchy’s interest in the institution of chivalry) as well as the idea that Saint Bernard and the Cistercians exerted their influence—seem acceptable (Rodríguez-Velasco, “Vida y estirpe de Colada y Tizón”). It may not turn out equally acceptable, however, that both theses should be supported by a study of the formula in question. It is so vague, so universal, so commonly employed

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