Religious houses, violence, and the limits of political consensus in early medieval León (NW Iberia)

This paper explores violence against religious houses as an indicator of the limits of political negotiation and consensus building in early medieval polities. It analyses records of attacks against religious houses and clerics from León (NW Iberia) that escape traditional interpretations of violence as a tool in the negotiation of social relations, and construes the events as an expression of local social cleavages. In so doing, it provides a guideline for probing similar records in ways that might illuminate aspects of social relations and dynamics otherwise obscured by the dominant themes of the documentary sources from this period.This work has been supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, Grant Agreement n. 793095 (CLAIMS). The author is also a member of the research group Grupo de Investigación en Arqueología Medieval, Patrimonialización y Paisajes Culturales / Erdi Aroko Arkeologia, Ondaregintza eta Kultur Paisaiak Ikerketa Taldea, código IT1193-19, and of the research project FEDE, funded by the Ministry of Economy (Spain), Ref. HAR2016-76094C4-3-R. Peer reviewe