Project DEGRUPE : Goals and Historiographical Contextualization *

Th is paper aims to present the main axes of the project DEGRUPE whose principal objective is to study the role of the clergy in the construction of the Iberian monarchies and mobility circuits designed by these protagonists. To fulfi ll this objective, the interuniversity project team of DEGRUPE opted for a comparative perspective between diff erent kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. Th e second part of this paper consists of a brief analysis of the underlying historiographical framework of the project including mainly research on relationship between clergy and royalty in the middle ages.

especially of secular clergy, in the creation of space for mobility, and circulation of cultural and political models which can be extended to the whole European christianitas.Its second stage goes deeper and compares, at the level of case studies, the clergy's contributions to the construction of the Iberian monarchies: Portugal, Castile and Aragon.
Th e choice of the comparative approach derived from the need to establish, in concrete terms, the similarities and diff erences existing in a process that took place more or less simultaneously in the Iberian kingdoms, but also from the notion that ecclesiastical groups on which this analysis is based cannot be understood in terms of national boundaries, since they shared a wider space which encompassed the circuits of mobility defi ned by their individual trajectories.
Th us, any specifi c, unilateral choice of one kingdom, or of clergymen centred around one crown, would restrict our analysis, especially when we intended to produce in the fi rst place a picture of the careers and trajectories which made these men worthy of note.
Bearing in mind how wide this subject is, we have defi ned some primary levels of research and refl ection, resulting from a questionnaire which we deemed essential for a deeper understanding of the role and importance of the clergy in the establishment of Iberian monarchies.
Th e fi rst level of questioning rests on the need to know the constitution of clerical universes linked to royal chapels of the kingdoms involved in our analysis and to the exertion of administrative functions either in the monarchs' circles or as being their representatives to the papal powers.To this end, it is essential to reconstruct these universes in individual terms.Th is will be achieved by resorting to documental sources and the information already collected from published studies.
Given the dimension of some documental funds -particularly those from the Catalonian ..
kingdom -this reconstruction will be based on investigations limited by pre-defi ned criteria, instead of an exhaustive survey of all available data.
Th e proposed articulation between the world of chaplains and confessors of kings and the royal family and the group of those who held administrative positions in the king's circle is based, fi rstly, on the evident need to study the role and importance of the royal chapel and its members in the context of the Iberian kingdoms, despite the examinations already carried out.It is also based on our understanding that the chapel worked as a privileged spot for recruiting clergymen for positions both in the diocesan structure and in the administrative and political apparatus.
Th e second level of our analysis involves defi ning and demarcating the circles of European and Peninsular mobility of Portuguese and Castilian episcopal clergy, by considering their records of University training, the benefi ts they enjoyed in diff erent places throughout Christendom, and the positions they occupied in the ecclesiastical or political structure.
Detailed knowledge of these circuits and of their range will provide us with a concrete notion of the importance of mobility in the construction of careers, as well as a better understanding of the circulation of information, knowledge and models of organization and construction of royal power, in which many of these clergymen played important roles.
To this end, it will also be important to understand the social and cultural profi le of the clergymen connected to the political structure, as well as to grasp the trajectory typologies and the articulation between ecclesiastical and political careers from the 13 th to the 15 th centuries, using a perspective that compares diff erent Iberian spaces.
Lastly, we seek to improve our knowledge of the clergy's forms of infl uence and intervention in the context of the formation of Iberian monarchies, in the chosen time frame.
To pursue these goals, we start from the notion of the clergy's importance as a major factor in the constitution and defi nition of Iberian monarchies on multiple levels: from the infl uence exerted at the juridical level which helped to build political legitimation, to the performance of duties in administration, external representation and spiritual support.We also assume the need to see this infl uence not only in the light of the local or national importance of these clergymen, but also considering their insertion in the networks that went beyond the kingdoms' political frontiers and extended, to varying depths, to other territories in Christendom.In this context, we will seek to assess the weight of these networks in defi ning itineraries and career models.
Likewise, we want to grasp the mechanisms and criteria of identifi cation, and selfidentifi cation of the members in this group, and the ways in which such mechanisms reinforced the amplitude of international networks.
Achieving the goals referred above implies the consultation of ample and diverse documental resources -royal documentation above all, but also diocesan and incontestably, papal documentation as well.
Th is heuristic approach will pursue clear objectives, aiming to identify actors and to reconstruct careers.Its targets will be royal service and presence in political spaces, and also mobility, rather than reconstruction of diocesan or capitular clergy.

Historiogra phical contextualization
Th e study of the clergy's role in the construction of medieval European monarchies is not, in itself, an objective endowed with originality in its formulation.
Since the 1980s, if not earlier, the role of the Church in the formation of the Early Modern State -to adopt here the conception assumed and heralded at the time -has been a fi eld of study of key importance, especially as far as French historiography is concerned.
Th e proceedings of the symposium "État et Église dans la génèse de l' État Moderne", published in 1986,3 are among the earliest examples of a course of investigation which would see a key moment when the European Science Foundation approved the project "Les Origines de l'État Moderne en Europe, XIII e -XVIIII e siècle" under the direction of Wim Blockmans and Jean Philippe Genêt. 4 Th is project originated an output of seven volumes, published, for the most part throughout the 1990s, which propounded refl ections around seven themes, previously defi ned and assigned to diff erent work groups.
As Wim Blockmans said, back in 1993, such a wide-ranging project had made it necessary to surpass three kinds of frontiers: the linguistic and national boundaries of our "quotation circles", the limits set by period defi nition, and the boundaries separating disciplines.5Th ese objectives were identifi ed, in simpler terms, in the introduction to the volume dedicated to the elites of power, by mentioning the innovative features of this programme: "il serait interdisciplinaire, il regrouperait des médiévistes et des specialistes du début de la période moderne, et, evidemment, il serait international". 6ence, the option for an extended chronology and a range of subjects that (applied in all their chronological and geographical extension) have provided us with analytical frameworks to which many of us are still indebted.
But the renewal in political history, and particularly in the historiography of the state, which Wim Blockmans identifi ed in 1993, had its roots in the contributions of sociology and social scientists to the reformulation of questions on the emergence and evolution of state forms in the European context. 7h e role of the Church and clergy in the construction of the state, although it did not receive specifi c attention, was present in several of the published volumes, most notably in the article « Le clergé dans l´État » by Hélène Millet included in the volume dealing with the elites of power. 8In that article diff erent levels of participation were considered, deepening the refl ections already present in earlier works, but now a synthesis of the diff erent forms of this contribution could be created.
Hélène Millet was later appointed to be in charge of the ongoing project Fasti Ecclesiae Galicanae, and of the long work of identifying and reconstructing the diocesan clergy of the French kingdom throughout the Middle Ages. 9h us, the goal was not only to describe the levels of collaboration or presence of clergymen, but also to identify the intervening actors at the diocesan level, with their individual itineraries.
Th e same concern lay behind the Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae collected from 1962 onwards, by Diana Greenway and covering the period from 1066 to 1300, following the work already done by John Le Neve and continued by T. Duff us Hardy. 10h e identifi cation of actors proposed by these authors sought to articulate the level of individual identifi cation with that of the institutions' social constitution, calling for methodological renewal and the integration of prosopographical methods in the study of large groups of individuals.11

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Th is methodological and conceptual renewal received fundamental contributions from sociologists and anthropologists, focusing both on the genesis and evolution of state realities and on the forms of organization of societies and communities.Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, Marcel Mauss and Michel Foucault are some of the authors 12 whose concepts helped renew and revise the questionnaire underlying analyses directed at pre-Ancien Régime societies.
Anglo-Saxon historiography had already a long tradition of production in this fi eld.Names such as Walter Ulmann, Christopher Cheney and Robert Swanson, among others, produced some of the most important studies on the relationship between the English monarchy and the Church. 13Roger Bartlett, in the 1990s, off ered a fresh reading of the construction of Europe in the Middle Ages, providing important clues for a review of the role and contributions of religion in the process of shaping a European medieval space. 14Th e works of Michael Clanchy, 15 although focused on specifi c chronologies of political history, are also essential contributions about the presence of the church in defi ning English royalty.
Th e Anglo-saxon historiography have preserved for a long time the individual, biographical approach.Biographies of key ecclesiastical fi gures in royal circles, such as Th omas Beckett or Stephen Langton 16 gave us knowledge of their individual trajectories, and simultaneously established connections to the construction of royal power and to the importance of the posts they held. 1712 Elias 198912 Elias -1990;;Elias ;Bourdieu 2010Bourdieu , 2011;;Mauss 1988;Foucault 2010;Foucault 201113 Ulmann 1978;Cheney 1941Cheney , 1956;;Swanson 1989;Wright 1980. 14  Bartlett 1993. 15 Clanchy 1993, 1998. 16 Cheney 1967and Cheney 1956.For more recent examinations see: Hernandez -Linehan 2004. 17Some new perspectives and analysis can be found in Harvey 2014; Burger 2012; Gemmill 2013.
In France as well, Bernard Guenée took up afresh biographical itineraries in his account of the lives of four prelates. 18Recently, Christine Barralis, Th ierry Pécout and Pascal Montaubin are some of the names who have continued investigating the relations between the Church and monarchy and attempting the reconstruction of ecclesiastical elites. 19n the Iberian Peninsula, the role of the Church and the clergy in the formation of Iberian monarchies has been studied from a more generic point of view which discussed the evolution of political power, written by historians such as Ladero Quesada, or more specifi cally in works by Nieto Soria (e. g. his doctoral dissertation), 20 by Carlos Ayala 21 and by Oscar Villarroel 22 in the case of Castile.
Some partial studies on dioceses have provided deeper knowledge of the functioning of diocesan institutions, as well as (in some cases) of their social makeup. 23However, institutional analysis has been clearly favoured, at the expense of an analysis of the ecclesiastical elites' constitution in a more global sense.
In this context, we have currently at our disposal solid studies on the episcopate of Leon far back in time, 24 on the Castilian epis- 18 Guenée 1987. 19 Many of these young historians were part of the Groupement de recherche européen "At the Foundations of the Modern State: the Legacy of the Medieval Clergy", a cooperation between numerous universities of Europe.Some of the contributions of these authors can be found in studies like De Cevins -Matz 2010.and Barralis -Boudet -Delivré -Genêt 2014. 20Ladero Quesada (1989) ..
copate from the 13 th to the 15 th centuries and a considerable number of small studies about certain bishops. 25n Portugal, the panorama is not much diff erent.Recent syntheses on Portuguese historiography from 1950 on 26 demonstrate some of the defi ciencies in these areas.
Th e project Fasti Ecclesiae Portugaliae (1071-1325), developed from 2002 to 2006 at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, supported by a team from several universities, sought to attain in connection with the Portuguese dioceses some of the goals established by the Fasti projects mentioned before, however, taking into account the characteristics of production and the scarcity of published sources available at the time.Th is process yielded a database which will be hopefully made available to the public in the near future. 27h e presentation of this project had at its root the development of studies on dioceses and the clergy throughout the 1980s and 1990s.In conclusion, Portuguese historiography in the second half of the 20 th century, on the Church's role in the structuring of Portuguese royalty and the organization of the national space, had forerunners such as Erdmann, 28 and was later continued by focusing primarily on the political component of that process -as is the case with the studies by José Mattoso 29 and Armando Carvalho Homem. 30 In parallel, the study of dioceses progressed from the 1970s onwards − with a debt to the doctoral theses presented by Avelino de Jesus da Costa and José Marques, on the archdiocese of Braga 31 -with the publication 25 See the works of Nieto Soria already mentioned whose works are central contributions to the knowledge of social background and political infl uence of these men. 26Vilar -Rosa .See bibliography mentioned in the paper namely other state of the art made in the previous years. 27Jorge -Henriques -Lopes -Rodrigues -Vilar 2004. 28Erdmann 1935. 29Mattoso 1985. 30Costa 1959 andMarques 1988. of studies on the dioceses of Évora, Lamego, Coimbra and Porto. 32Th ere was also progress in individual studies focusing on bishops and canons − some of them were collected in the books which resulted from the refl ection carried out in the context of the project mentioned above, 33 while others were scattered in journals and as book chapters.
In these last decades, some dissertation theses took up anew the construction of royalty in the 12 th and 13 th centuries; in the thesis by Maria João Branco,34 or the relations between state and Church in the 15 th century present in the study by Margarida Garcez, 35 as well as the relations between royalty and episcopate. 36h e development of studies on Portuguese clergy and its social background concurs with the refl ection on its role in the construction of royalty, and this project is the outcome of that concurrence.
In the background lies a mature refl ection on the processes of institutional organization, and the demand to know and rethink the space of political construction in a comparative, geographically expanded perspective -not only in terms of political boundaries, but also considering the mobility of its elites, in which clergy plays a crucial role when we seek to study the construction of royalty and the Iberian political spaces in the medieval context.
In conclusion, this text it is not a state of art, but only a way of presenting some of the contributions behind the project DEGRUPE.Many others stay unmentioned in the notes, but present in the refl ections during construction of this project.
All the projects are, in some ways, sons of their times.And this one is no exception.It is another attempt to understand cultural, reli gious and social mobility in a time where political boundaries where yet in construction.
; Nieto Soria 1988, . 21Ayala Martinez 2008. 22Villarroel Gonzalez 2006. 23Th e studies about Spanish dioceses in the Middle Ages are so great in number that they are impossible to be mentioned in one note.As examples of some recent studies see Diaz Ibanez 2003; Lop Otin 2002 and their bibliography.However, there are studies for many dioceses like Santiago de Compostela, Córdova, amongst others. 24Fletcher 1978.For the kingdom of Leon see Fernandez Catón 1969-2004, specially the study of José Sanchez Herrero (Sanchez Herrero ), even if this work is namely about diocesan organization.