ABSTRACT
The political and religious context in which local priests operated in the period was one of very limited governmental and administrative activity. The best case that can be made that a request for burial was directed to a local priest, a Castilian case of 964, was however accompanied by a gift of land, presumably a de facto fee. Control of local churches, and thereby of priests, was overwhelmingly proprietary, as one would expect given the strength of proprietary interests in churches. Local priests must often have assisted in negotiating price when they recorded sale transactions, because they prepared the record in advance, leaving a gap for the price which was filled in later. The character of the ecclesiastical landscape of northern Iberia was extremely mixed, with pockets and networks of episcopal or monastic interest, sites of lay proprietorship, the accumulations of excessively proactive priests, local churches with dependent churches and isolated institutions.
