Martin I (bishop of Oviedo)

A tonsured Martin, holding his will, in a Romanesque miniature of the near-contemporary Liber testamentorum ("Book of testaments").

Martin I (died 1 March 1101)^[1] was the fifteenth Bishop of Oviedo from 1094.

On 23 March 1097 Alfonso VI, probably at Sahagún, where he had spent Christmas, made a large donation to Bishop Martin which was confirmed by most of the major court figures. Martin remained with the court through Easter (5 April) and was present in León on 14 April when Alfonso made a donation to the Cathedral of León.^[2] Martin confirmed a document of the council of Palencia on 5 December 1100, the last reference to him in the documents. He was succeeded by Pelagius sometime between then and 1102.^[3] This Pelagius is called "bishop" in documents from as early as 1098 and some historians have concluded that he was Martin's auxiliary or coadjutor.^[4]

Notes

1. Simon Barton and Richard A. Fletcher (2000), The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 65. The date of 1 January is found in the Oviedo Enciclopedia.
2. Bernard F. Reilly (1988), The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 284.
3. 1102 is the date Reilly gives in Alfonso VI, 14, for Pelagius' appointment by Alfonso VI.
4. Reilly (1982), The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 31–32, finds this solution unlikely but laments the state of the evidence.