El Monasterio de Lorvão y los confines de la Beira (siglos IX-XII). Apuntes sobre la memoria histórica de un espacio de contacto

Abstract

The Beira district serves as a model for studying the frontier areas of the early medieval Iberia. The constant changes in the political control of the region did not affect the stability of its indigenous Christian population. The reorganisation of the territory after the Christian conquest in 878 did not destroy previous social structures. The endurance of Arab-Romance onomastics could be understood as a sign of the maintenance of some links with al-Andalus. The second period of Islamic political control (998-1064) confirms this explanation, due to the implementation of a kind of Andalusi protectorate north of the Mondego river, an area shaped by a tessellation of Christian small polities. Lorvão and other monasteries survived through adaptation to the new political structure. The reconquest of Coimbra in 1064 did not cause a complete change, but the pressure of the clergy which supported the Gregorian reform, promoted the process of Latinization. The development of royal chronicles and the compilation of ecclesiastical chartularies were important facts of the social and cultural process of transformation in the 12th and 13th Centuries