Adapting History to Modern Values: Re-evaluating Vellido Dolfos

Abstract

[EN] In 1072 the city of Zamora, in the Northwest of Spain, was besieged during some months by the King Sancho of Castile and his army. This historical fact was part of the civil war between the sons of King Fernando I after his death and the territorial division of his kingdom. Zamora was located in the Kingdom of Leon that in the territorial division mentioned before corresponded to the second of its children, Alfonso VI. During the siege of the city, King Sancho II died at the hands of a knight named Vellido Dolfos, while inspecting the city walls in his company, according to the narration of different chronicles. This knight had fled from the interior of the city, besieged for months, and had gone over to the Castilian side entering the service of King Sancho II, as his vassal. Usually, historiography has given us a vision of Vellido Dolfos as a prototype of medieval "traitor". Possibly, this would be due to the literary treatment that medieval chronicles built on the affair that involved the death of the Castilian king during the siege of the city. This study aims to review the figure of Vellido Dolfos through the medieval chronicles and charters in which he appears and also what the historiography has transmitted about him. It is a question of placing him in his real historical context to explain the role that he played in the way King Alfonso VI arrived to the Castilian-Leonese throne. At the same time, we will seek to give explanation to the phenomenon of vindication of his figure as a “hero of the city”, which is more responsive to current policy issues than to a real interest in the scientific knowledge of the history, its interpretation and the transmission of this knowledge to the society.