Accession to the throne In Silo's time, monarchs were apparently elected by the nobility as in the earlier
Visigothic Kingdom. Monarchs were chosen from among a small number of dynasties. Preference tended to go to the son of a king or, where that was not possible, to the husband of a king's daughter, as had happened in the case of Alfonso and of Silo himself, or, failing that, to another male of royal lineage thought capable of governing. Nevertheless, there is academic controversy about the mode of succession: election after the Visigothic style, matrilineal succession according to indigenous practice, and hereditary in royal lineages. Each of these theories leads to a somewhat different account of Silo's accession to the throne.
Reign According to the
Chronicon Albeldense, Silo kept peace with the Muslims
ob causam matris, "for his mother's sake". The meaning of this phrase has been debated by scholars. It could mean that his mother was a Muslim with some sort of connection to the Umayyad Emir Abd al-Rahman I, or that she was a hostage of Abd al-Rahman in
Córdoba, or it could mean yet something else. One could explain the inactivity of the Muslims with respect to the Kingdom of Asturias by the fact that Silo's reign coincided with the intervention of
Charlemagne in Spain in 778. Charlemagne could not maintain the siege of
Zaragoza and had to retire by way of
Roncesvalles, suffering a great defeat there, and the subsequent campaign of Abd-al-Rahman I in 781 into the
Ebro Valley in revenge against those who had been favorably disposed toward the French invasion. Conversely, within the Kingdom of Asturias, during Silo's reign
Galicia rebelled for the second time, having done so before during the reign of
Fruela I. The chronicles do not elucidate the motives for the rebellion. The rebel army faced Silo's troops in the
Battle of Montecubeiro in what is now the
Province of Lugo, where he defeated them, ending the rebellion. The oldest known medieval written document in the
Iberian Peninsula dates from Silo's reign. The
Diploma del Rei Don Sílo (
Diploma of King Silo) dates from 23 August 775. In this contractual document of donation
"pro anima" ("for the sake of the soul"), Silo granted particular properties in the village of
Tabulata (now Trabada) in
Lucis (Lugo) to a group of monks, with the intention that they would found a monastery.
Moving the court to Pravia Upon ascending to the throne, Silo moved the capital from
Cangas de Onís to
Pravia, the region in which he was a local magnate, a landed aristocrat. The new capital had the strategic advantage that Pravia, an ancient Roman settlement, was located in the valley of the
Nalón River along the Roman road to
Asturica Augusta, now
Astorga. Furthermore, once Silo extended the frontiers of the realm to
Galicia, Cangas de Onís was now quite far from the center of his kingdom. == Death and succession ==