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A History of Spain and Portugal
Vol. 1
By Stanley G. Payne
Chapter Four
Castile-León in the Era of the Great Reconquest
The Hispano-Christian reconquest and reoccupation was a continuing process of more than seven centuries, punctuated, however, by long pauses which Muslim strength, Christian exhaustion, or internal quarreling made inevitable. The reconquest may be divided into seven phases:
1. Ca. 740-790: conquest of the southern Cantabrian foothills and lower Galicia
2. Ca. 850-950: expansion into the Duero valley (in Catalonia, conquest of central Catalonia)
3. Eleventh century: conquest of the central plateau and central Portugal
4. Early twelfth century: conquest of lower Aragón and southwestern Catalonia and expansion of the southern and southwestern borders of Castile-León into Extremadura
5. Thirteenth century: climactic period of the reconquest, with the conquest of the Balearics, Valencia, all the south-central peninsula, and most of the south, save for the emirate of Granada and a few coastal points
6. Early fourteenth century: minor extension of Castilian territory along the southern coast
[56] 7. Fifteenth century: completion of the reconquest, ended by the occupation of Granada (1482-1492).
It should be kept in mind, of course, that there was often a lag of one hundred years or more between conquest and effective settlement or occupation.
The New Power Balance and Renewal of Leonese-Castilian Imperialism
The collapse of the Cordoban caliphate opened the way to a drastic change in the power balance of the peninsula. While Muslim leadership and strength splintered, the Christian principalities were expanding with a vigor only partially related to demographic changes. for the Christian states were still more lightly inhabited than the taifa lands. Key to the expansion were the recuperation of Leonese strength and unity and the reunification of Castile and León under the Castilian monarchy, accompanied by reinvigoration of the old Leonese program of imperial reconquest and Hispanic unity, first sketched out in the eighth century. A secondary factor of some importance was the development of mailed heavy cavalry, which had a distinct advantage over Muslim light cavalry and infantry, though it is not clear to how great an extent the Leonese-Castilian forces actually relied on heavy cavalry. Aragón and Catalonia also increased their military power, assisted by French adventurers and crusaders, but their forces remained much smaller than those of the large kingdom of León-Castile.
The reunification of León and Castile was accomplished by Fernando I (1037-1065), second son of Sancho el Mayor, who had inherited the county of Castile and raised it to the rank of kingdom after the Navarrese "anti-emperor"'s death in 1035. Meanwhile the young Leonese king, Vermudo III (1028-1037), had regained his capital after Sancho's death and begun to reassert the imperial sovereignty of the Leonese crown. In the process, he tried to reoccupy the territory in eastern León that had been seized earlier by Sancho for Castile, but was killed in battle by the Castilian forces of Fernando in 1037. Since Vermudo left no heir, he was succeeded by his rival, Fernando of Castile, who also happened to be Vermudo's brother-in-law, since Fernando was wed to a Leonese princess. Henceforth Fernando was ruler of "Castile-León," the younger and less-developed kingdom taking precedence in the royal title of the Sánchez dynasty because it was Fernando's inherited patrimony, whereas the larger and more important León was an acquired territory. In fact, [57] the main role in the later reconquest by Fernando was played by the militant aristocrats and expansionist prelates of wealthier, more developed, and more imperial-minded León.
The united Castile-León of Fernando I fell heir to the historic Leonese imperial program, interrupted by a century of internal weakness and Muslim pressure. Nearly two decades were passed in recuperation, restoration of unity, and settlement of the border quarrel with Navarre, finally resolved in 1054 with the death of the Navarrese king, García. In the following year Fernando I launched the first of a series of assaults against the Muslim border taifas that filled the last decade of his reign. The major territorial conquests were made in the southwest, where Viseu was seized in 1057 and Guarda and Coimbra in 1064. More important geopolitically and economically was the reduction to tributary status of the three leading taifa emirates along the frontier--Badajoz, Toledo, and Zaragoza. Large annual parias (tribute payments) swelled the resources of the Castilian-Leonese crown and encouraged the military mercenary, overlord, ethos that was developing more markedly in Castilian-Leonese society than in the Pyrenean counties.
Though Fernando I had adopted the imperial reconquest program of the traditional Leonese monarchy, he proved unable to resist the feudalizing inheritance policy that had been introduced by his father. He divided his domains among his three sons and awarded territorial grants to his two daughters, giving them the title of queen. This created intense conflict and rivalry after Fernando's death. At the end of seven years of internecine strife, the second son reunited the dual kingdom as Alfonso VI of Castile-León (1065-1109) and, in Leonese terminology, "Emperor of Hispania."
Leonese imperial policy could now be resumed. Within another decade most of Al-Andalus had been subjected to tributary status under the Leonese crown, and in 1082 Alfonso VI led an expedition to the southern tip of the peninsula, where he rode his horse out into the water in a symbolic gesture to show that all of Hispania was under Leonese suzerainty. The city of Toledo was a major prize, and key to the peninsula's fairly populous and productive central plateau. That entire region had been seized directly by 1085, moving the boundaries of Castile-León far southward from the Duero to the Tajo river valley and establishing Leonese dominion in the very center of Hispania. Reoccupation of the Visigothic capital gave further impetus to the imperial pretensions of the Leonese crown.
Territorial expansion and the large income from parias also opened a new era in the economic affairs of León and Castile. Urban life developed, as new towns were founded and the few already established grew. Commerce increased and began to acquire a significance [59] it had never known before. This was stimulated by Alfonso VI's encouragement of the immigration of monks, merchants, and artisans, who helped form the nucleus of a middle class in the towns of northern Castile and León. It was also assisted by the growth in traffic along the road to Santiago de Compostela, whose shrine had become the destination of thousands of west European pilgrims. The new prosperity stimulated building, the endowment of churches, the development of the arts, and the general growth of Leonese culture. Population expanded, and by 1100 the greater kingdom of Castile-León numbered approximately two and a half million inhabitants.
Resettlement of the Region between the Duero and Tajo: The Concejos of Castile and Leon
Much of the newly acquired land between the Duero and Tajo was taken over by common soldiers and peasant immigrants, who formed communities that were given royal charters (fueros) as semi-autonomous concejos (council districts). The concejos covered most of the territory in the region. They were not so much municipal governments as governing councils of rural districts with a fortified village or small town in the center of each to serve as cattle market and military rallying point. The larger concejos thus included sizable tracts of land surrounding the main town around which they were organized. Concejos were organized on a semi-egalitarian basis; in some districts all the local vecinos, or permanent residents, had a voice in choosing the local council, though in others the most vigorous or wealthy soon formed a local oligarchy. Most of the land within the concejos was held under varying terms of condominium or communal ownership, though agricultural as distinct from pastoral land was sometimes set aside as strictly personal property. A considerable share of each district was held as tierra concejil-"council land" of the community. Other portions were classified as bienes de propios, semiprivate lands still subject to community regulation. Since animal-grazing was the basis of the economy, the principle of absolute private property was less useful. Under the terms of their fueros, most concejos were free to administer their local affairs and dispense justice, and were nominally responsible to the crown only for payment of taxes and military levies. The most important of the concejos were Salamanca, Avila, and Segovia. Though concejo settlement had begun by the mid-eleventh century, it was not complete for more than one hundred years, until after the frontier had moved south of the Tajo.
The founding of the eleventh-century concejos was accompanied by the establishment of an intermediate military elite in New Castile [60] and lower León--the caballeros villanos or commoner-knights. This had already begun in Castile during the tenth century and had been hastened by two developments. First, there was the tendency, already marked by the tenth century, for the aristocracy in León and to a lesser degree in Old Castile to settle into an hereditary caste. What had earlier been a military and administrative service aristocracy had established itself as a privileged group, exempt from taxation and in some cases even military service, but enjoying hereditary dominion over lands and other perquisites, and among the high aristocracy over family titles as well. All this elevated its members into a feudal caste of regional socio-economic domination in Galicia, Old León, and Old Castile and deprived the crown of many of the services for which aristocratic status had originally been the reward. Second, the heightened warfare of the tenth century, followed by the renewed expansion of the eleventh, called for more mobile and offensive forces than had been needed for scattered raiding and defensive warfare in the northern hills. The Christian principalities had to expand heavy cavalry to secure military domination, but it was an expensive process.
The cheapest, most direct way was through broad expansion of the class of caballeros villanos, ordinary peasants who proved themselves in battle and were granted sufficient land or condominium shares in the concejos to maintain their expensive military equipment and retinue. Such expansion was made possible by the fact that horses were more available to commoners on the Hispanic frontier than anywhere else in western Europe. Formation of this nonaristocratic military elite strengthened royal power, discouraged aristocratic factionalism, and built military strength in the frontier areas where it was needed most. It recognized and reaffirmed the open society of frontier Castile-León, where common shepherds and peasants could rise to elite status.
Prominence of the Medieval Hispanic Venturero
During the eleventh century there emerged the Hispanic venturero (adventurer, professional soldier or mercenary), who for five hundred years was to be a common figure throughout western Europe and the Mediterranean and even parts of central Europe and northwest Africa. Ventureros came from all the Hispanic principalities, but the exorbitantly military style of Castile, coupled with its poverty, made professional warriors more often than not Castilian in origin, though probably the most famous of all were the special companies of Catalonia. Whether campeadores on land or mareantes on the sea, they were found in almost every theater of operations; Hispano-Christian [61] mercenaries were the last elite corps defending the fanatically Muslim Almoravid empire. Generations of this kind of experience found their fruition in the epic conquistadores of the sixteenth century.
The Reconquest Checked: Rise of the Almoravid Empire
By the time of the incorporation of Toledo, Alfonso VI was collecting tribute not merely from Muslim frontier districts but from the taifas of Seville, Granada, and other important southern regions. He demanded that a lieutenant from among his officials be allowed to supervise the government of the emirate of Seville. Other military lieutenants occupied strategic fortresses in the south central, southern, and southeastern parts of the peninsula to ensure Castilian military dominance and continued tribute payments.
In 1085, there seemed nothing to hinder Castilian conquest of all the taifas of southern Hispania, though the economy and culture of the south continued to flourish. Silks, leather goods, cotton textiles, pottery. and farm products made the taifas the economic wonder of the peninsula, and their commerce remained extensive, but tribute payments were raised higher and higher, threatening to bleed away this prosperity. The only hope of respite from Castilian pressure was Muslim assistance from outside the peninsula.
Relief was available from the forces of a dynamic new Muslim power that had swept across Morocco from the western Sahara during the past generation. In 1039, a Maghrebi jurist and evangelist had been invited into the western Sahara to inculcate formal Islamic practice among the wild Touareg tribes of that region. This faqih, Ibn Yasin, preached a simple, ascetic, as well as militant interpretation of Islam and quickly collected a following calling themselves al-murabi-tun ("united for holy war"), westernized as Almoravids. In their fanatical fervor, the Almoravids preached the jihad and spread across the western Sahara like the early followers of Mohammed in the Arabian Hedjaz. The Almoravids' militant, puritanical doctrine--advocating strict, literal obedience to the Koran, daily ablutions, the shunning of money-making, the giving of alms and rejection of vice, and the fear of hell counterbalanced by hope of salvation through militant implementation of the will of Allah--caught fire among the fierce, half-pagan tribesmen. Within twenty years the Almoravids carved out a loose, theocratic state that covered much of the western Sahara. Though in theory submissive to the sovereignty of the Fatimid caliphate at Cairo, the Almoravid state actually constituted an independent empire. It conquered the tribes of the upper Senegal, spilled over into western Algeria, and invaded sedentary and more [62] cultured Morocco. The Almoravids brought a promise of lowered taxes and relief for the poor, and by 1080 nearly all Morocco had been conquered.
As early as 1077, the Almoravids had been approached for military assistance by taifa representatives. The conquest of northern Morocco was completed in 1084, one year before Toledo was incorporated into Castile. The need of the taifas was desperate, and in 1086 an explicit invitation to cross the straits was tendered by al-Mutamid of Seville, who at the same time sought to make sure that the taifas would not fall under Almoravid domination. The invitation to do battle in support of the emir of Seville against Castile was accepted by the Almoravid leaders as a logical extension of their jihad.
As usual, Alfonso VI seized the initiative, meeting the Almoravids on Muslim territory at Sagrajas (near Badajoz). The Almoravid forces relied chiefly upon compactly organized, trained infantry, armed with lances and javelins and protected by hippopotamus-hide shields. In addition, they included an elite corps of black African guards, light cavalry interspersed with small camel corps to frighten the enemy's horses, and units of archers and crossbowmen. At Sagrajas the forces from Seville bore the brunt of the formidable Castilian charge while a mobile portion of the Almoravids flanked the Castilian host and struck their camp from the rear. Defeated, the Castilians retreated in fairly good order, and the Almoravids retired to Africa without exploiting their victory.
The only real prospect for independence of what remained of Al-Andalus--still nearly two-thirds of the peninsula--seemed to lie in a permanent Almoravid military presence. This left the taifa rulers in a dilemma, for they were no more eager to be taken over by the fanatical, somewhat primitive Almoravids than by the equally rigorous Castilians. By 1090, however, an Almoravid party had formed among the people of some of the larger taifa cities. It was led by fanatical faqihs and supported by Muslim traditionalists increasingly conscious of their Muslim identity and fearful of Christian domination; also by the poor, hoping for relief. The Almoravid leader, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, had gauged the feebleness of the taifa emirs, weak in religiosity, many of them steeped in self-indulgence. He returned to the peninsula in 1090 and within two years had seized the main taifa capitals in the south. Soon nearly the entire southern half of the peninsula had been incorporated in the Almoravid empire. The frontier then for several decades was stabilized south of the Tajo, since the Almoravids were not strong enough to assault the new line of Castilian settlements in the very center of the peninsula.
There seems little doubt that Almoravid rule was at first fairly popular among Hispano-Muslims. Yet the Almoravid military elite [63] was culturally inferior to its appanage, and the Almoravid period is sometimes painted as one of intolerant suppression of the "high culture" of the taifas by the puritanical and fanatic Africans. It is true that secular poetry and the use of musical instruments were discouraged, but the decorative arts, song, and popular poetry continued to flourish. The achievements of Hispano-Muslim culture in the second half of the twelfth century attest its survival under the Almoravids.
With the eleventh-century shift in power and the subsequent establishment of the Almoravid empire in southern Hispania, the sense of ethno-religious identity among Hispanic Muslims and of intense hostility toward Christians was sharpened. The traditionalist Malikite rite, which had become less universal, was rigorously reimposed, and the ulemas (religious teachers) were employed as an instrument of policy. What remained of the traditional Hispano-Muslim "discriminatory toleration" ended with the Almoravids, who inaugurated a policy of direct persecution of the few remaining Christians in the south. Jews also suffered and for the first time were beginning to look to the Christian princes as saviors from Muslim persecution. This was a consequence of the Almoravid interpretation of the jihad, and something of the same degree of militance and intolerance was begining to be shared by Hispanic Muslims as well. By the twelfth century the gap between Christian and Muslim Hispania was greater than ever before.
The Epic of the Cid
As Almoravid power grew, it veered away from the strongly-held Castilian center of the peninsula toward the prosperous urban centers and irrigated fields of the east coast. There at Valencia the greatest military figure of medieval Hispania, the legendary national hero Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known from the terminology of his Muslim subjects as the Cid, had carved out an independent protectorate.
As far as is known, the Cid was a renowned Castilian knight, vassal of Alfonso VI, banished from his native kingdom because of a misunderstanding. He entered the military service of the emir of Zaragoza and gained more laurels in the eastern part of the peninsula. As the Almoravid danger grew, he was accepted again into the service of the Leonese crown, and though Alfonso VI remained jealous and suspicious, he was granted hereditary autonomous dominion, under the crown of León, of all Muslim land that he could conquer in the peninsula's east. Between 1088 and 1092 the Cid carved out a domain reaching from the region of Lérida and Tortosa down to Valencia, and proved a shrewd ruler as well as a clever and ruthless warrior. [64] Large tribute payments were exacted from the Muslims, in keeping with the Hispano-Christian practice. In 1092 the pro-Almoravid party in wealthy, populous Valencia rebelled against their emir, who was a vassal of the king of León. Mobilizing his maximum force, the Cid took advantage of civil strife in Valencia to add that city to his domain after a long siege that decimated the Muslim population. Major Almoravid counteroffensives to regain Valencia were twice defeated, and even the Muslims admitted the extraordinary astuteness and military prowess of the new Valencian overlord. The Cid combined some of the prime characteristics of the new Hispanic society of his time. He represented the growing initiative of Castile, personified the ideal of the warrior overlord, and prosecuted the reconquest while demonstrating an understanding of Muslim psychology and ability to treat with and govern Islamic people. During the last decade of his career he cooperated with Leonese, Aragonese, and Catalans in the crucial struggle against the Almoravids. After he died in 1099, however, the Levantine regions could not be defended. Alfonso VI drove off a Muslim force that besieged the Cid's widow in 1102, but lacked the strength to do other than evacuate and burn Valencia. The surrounding district was immediately seized by the Almoravids.
The Succession Crisis and the Social Revolt of 1109-1117
The second half of Alfonso VI's long reign (1065-1109) was a painful anticlimax. At one point this Leonese-Castilian king who called himself emperor had seemed to be wresting nearly the entire peninsula from the Muslims, only to lose most of the remaining Muslim territory back to the Almoravids after his harsh tributary policies encouraged African intervention. He had been the most European of Leonese kings; he had tried to bring Castile-León fully into the orbit of European diplomacy for the first time and had encouraged the official Romanization of Castilian Catholicism (see chapter 7). During his long reign he had displaced both his brothers and outlived four wives, but after 1086/1089 his armies remained largely on the defensive. New Castile was devastated by Almoravid raids in 1097-1099 and 1108, suffering lesser incursions in between.
Despite his four marriages, Alfonso VI left only two daughters upon his death in 1109, one, Urraca, legitimate, and the other, Teresa, a bastard. Alfonso, who had established strong political and religious ties with Burgundy and had married three French princesses, had wed both his daughters to prominent Burgundian nobles seeking their fortunes battling the infidels in Hispania. Teresa and her husband, [65] Count Henrique, had been awarded the county of Portugal (roughly the northern third of modern Portugal), which formed the southwestern corner of the kingdom of León. Intent upon expanding their patrimony, they began to intrigue against the crown while governing their own territory independently. The resulting emergence of the independent kingdom of Portugal is the topic of chapter 6.
Alfonso's heiress, Urraca, was already widowed at her father's death. According to Leonese custom, the crown could not be inherited by a woman alone, so immediately after the death of Alfonso VI she was wed to the only reigning king in Hispania, Alfonso I "the Battler," sovereign of Aragón and Navarre (which was for several generations under the Aragonese dynasty). The marriage reunited the eastern and western branches of the Sánchez dynasty that had split in 1035, but it was a political and a conjugal failure from the beginning. Dona Urraca was stubborn, independent, and given to frequent changes of mind; the Battler was a pious crusader, apparently with a streak of misogyny in his nature, who devoted himself to a rarely interrupted series of campaigns against the Muslims. The powerful Leonese magnates resented a strong new king and were rebellious and eager to increase their own power. Conflict between king and queen and the machinations of grasping nobles had by 1110 led to civil war in León.
The struggle was deepened and complicated by the first major social revolt in Leonese history, led by the middle classes in some of the newly expanded towns of northern León and Castile and to some extent spearheaded by French immigrants. Their uprising against the exactions of regional overlords was much like the revolt of communes in France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In a few regions there were also rebellions by peasants bound in servitude, supported by poor village priests who sympathized with their lowly parishioners against the wealthy prelates and big monasteries. Some of the townspeople looked to Alfonso the Battler as their champion, for he had been generous toward the towns and the small commercial class in his own kingdom, where there was not yet a large, powerful aristocracy or strong establishment of monasteries to dominate society.
Most of the Leonese aristocracy and church hierarchy struggled to isolate Alfonso from his new kingdom. The marriage between distant cousins was annulled by the papacy as incestuous, and after several years of political frustration and civil war Alfonso the Battler withdrew completely and returned to his raids against the Muslims, leaving Urraca's very young son by her first marriage to eventually succeed him as Alfonso VII of Castile-León.
The social revolt was not put down finally until 1117, but it ended with complete victory for the upper classes, and some of the townspeople [66] active in the rebellion were forced to leave the kingdom. The outcome was frustrating to social and economic change. Towns in Castile-León remained comparatively few, small, and poor; internal affairs of the kingdom were dominated by the aristocracy to an extent greater than in the more rapidly developing areas of western Europe. The status of the concejos in the southern half of León-Castile was hardly affected, but the rural, agrarian character of the Leonese-Castilian economy was accentuated. The later twelfth century, marked by internal disorder and wars, was a time of relative economic decline. The society was still composed almost exclusively of aristocrats and peasants, warriors, priests, and shepherds, and was not developing the urban middle class and economy that were changing France, the Low Countries, west Germany, and northern Italy. The kingdom's primary export was wool to the textile towns of France, England. and the Low Countries, supplemented by other products of the countryside such as wax, hides, and honey. The extension of this rurally produced, partly aristocrat-dominated export trade in the second half of the eleventh century did, however, encourage commercial and maritime development along Castile's Cantabrian coast, where by 1200 a series of small but fairly active ports had been established.
The Crusade and the Crusading Orders
The first three and one-half centuries of warfare between Christians and Muslims in the peninsula were essentially a political power struggle having little or no ideological meaning and consisting of cattle raids or other depredations for booty by both sides. The Muslims normally did not practice the jihad and the main ideological justification for aggressive warfare by the Christian states, particularly by León, was the essentially political one of recovering the lost sovereignty of the Gothic monarchy. This was a major basis for the imperial claims of the Castilian-Leonese crown.
Among the Muslims, circumstances changed during the hegemony of al-Mansur, and the jihad was preached with great intensity during the Almoravid invasion. As for the Christians, the explicit ideal of the crusade as a holy war against Muslim usurpers was introduced from France and Italy during the Catholic religious renewal of the eleventh century. It was a consequence of the expanding population, military strength, and assertive spirit of western Europe, and of the increased power of the Hispanic kingdoms. The primary target of the western crusades was the Holy Land, but the struggle against the Muslims in the peninsula also received attention. As early as 1064, nearly three decades before the First Crusade to Palestine, the papacy promised [67] indulgences to French knights who volunteered to assist an Aragonese campaign against the Muslims. From the twelfth century on, crusading expeditions against Hispano-Muslim states were common in the military life of the Hispano-Christian kingdoms, including the new state of Portugal. The advantages of papal authorization for an official crusade were threefold: it boosted morale, encouraged Hispano-Christian political unity, and provided financial and military support through special subsidies and indulgences. The institutionalization of the crusade and its accompanying religio-military psychology. which subsequently became an important motivating factor in Castilian and Portuguese expansion, can be seen as the consequence of two factors: extra-Hispanic religious influences, and the radicalization of the long Christian-Muslim struggle in the peninsula.
Branches of the two major military crusading orders, the Knights Templars and Hospitalers, were soon established in the peninsula. This was followed by organization of a number of strictly Hispanic crusading orders, of which the three most important were the Knights of Calatrava, organized on the southern extremity of New Castile in 1157, the Order of Alcántara, founded in Extremadura about 1165, and the Order of Santiago, formed near Cáceres in 1170. The military usefulness of the crusading orders was clear from the outset, for they played a major role in defending and expanding the frontier. Within a century of their foundation, the three largest orders had become wealthy institutions with large domains, and important economically and politically in the affairs of Castile and León and to a lesser degree in Portugal and Aragón.
Yet the institutionalization of the crusade still did not create an absolute and unbridgeable gulf between Christian and Muslim. Crusading was used for purposes that were in large measure political, and political circumstances were still sufficient to overrule crusading. At the end of the twelfth century, following the temporary division of Castile and León and a major defeat of Castilians by the Muslim Almohad state, the crown of León still found it expedient to form a temporary alliance with the Almohads against its own Christian rival, Castile.
Antipathy to Islam was never so strong as to preclude admiration for and adoption of certain practices of Hispano-Muslim society. Muslim baths were retained in some of the cities seized by the reconquest, the practice of veiling women was adopted and maintained by Christian Society in some of the southern regions for several centuries, and hundreds of Arabic words were incorporated into the Hispanic languages. Polite ceremonious speech and even ways of referring to God were affected. To what extent certain facets of Hispano-Muslim [68] psychology were also reflected in that of Hispano-Christians has been a matter of extensive debate.
Institutional and Social Change in Twelfth-Century Castile and León
Alfonso VII, the son of Queen Urraca's first marriage, came of age in 1126 and restored unified rule during a long reign that lasted thirtyone years, until his death in 1157. When the Almoravid empire broke up during the 1140s he extended the reconquest deep into the south, though he was unable to hold most of his gains. Like his grandfather, Alfonso VII claimed the title of emperor and with it the right to divide up his lands among his heirs; the experience of the past century had no effect upon the short-sighted practice of Castilian-Leonese sovereigns of this period. All of Castile proper was willed to his elder son, who in 1157 became Sancho III of Castile, while the lands of León were granted to a younger son, crowned Fernando II of León. Castile and León remained separate for nearly three-quarters of a century, until reunited by San Fernando III in 1230.
This division of the kingdoms marked the effective end of the Leonese claim to empire over Christian Hispania. León had long been the largest, most important, and most ambitious of Hispano-Christian states, but the eleventh-century reconquest had greatly expanded Castile, to almost equal it in size. Moreover, the southern territories of New Castile included the former ruling city of Toledo, encouraging Castilian claims to leadership in Hispanic affairs. After 1157 there existed a large and independent Castile, separate kingdoms of Navarre and Portugal, and a united crown of Catalonia-Aragón. León could no longer pretend to hegemony; when Castile and León were later reunited, Castile took precedence not merely in name but in political and military reality as well, until eventually the lands of Castile-León were called simply the kingdom of Castile.
Sancho III of Castile survived his father by a single year, leaving as heir a three-year-old son, Alfonso VIII (1158-1214). Throughout the Middle Ages effective monarchy depended on a strong king; with a three-year-old as ruler, power was violently disputed by factions of the Castilian nobility, who tended to coalesce around the two feuding houses of the Castros and Laras. The people of Castile suffered considerably during the next ten years, as authority was usurped by a lawless aristocracy. Seigneurial domain was extended, and the already powerful nobility of León grew more powerful. It had become increasingly common for the crown to make explicit grants of señoríos and abadengos (seigneuries and church domains) carrying with [69] them social and economic jurisdiction over the land. Thus by the twelfth century much of León and some of Castile had become feudal in fact. The vogue of French ideas and French feudal terminology in Castile and León during the eleventh and twelfth centuries encouraged the trend.
It should be understood, however, that this de facto feudalization was not the same as the de jure feudalization of France and some other areas of western Europe. Seigneurial jurisdiction in León and Castile was with some exceptions limited to economic control, and governmental and juridical power over the seigneuries, at least in theory, still remained in the hands of crown. The authority of a strong monarchy was still predominant, and the process of economic feudalization worked from the top downward, through dispensations of the crown, as much as from the bottom upward, through the initiative or usurpation of local aristocrats. Moreover, in León, aristocratic holdings did not form the large compact semi-unified domains that they did in parts of France, but were usually made up of a patchwork of small territories, sometimes widely dispersed, over which economic seigneury had been recognized. Their crazy-quilt nature reduced the political or military power that could be exercised by aristocratic houses.
The system of benefactoria, by which local peasant groups recognized the overlordship of noble families and paid them shares of produce or rent, was extended considerably during the twelfth century. Both its name and nature were changing in the process. In Castile and eastern León the system, which had become known as behetría, was growing more restrictive. Under many original behetría arrangements the recognition of lordship might extend de mar a mar (from sea to sea), meaning that peasant villages dissatisfied with the protection and services of their overlord might switch their alliegance to another defender. By the twelfth century, the practice had become limited to one of de linaje de linaje (from lineage to lineage), meaning that any change of allegiance must be to a member of the same aristocratic family. Though behetría peasants were not homines or colonos, in many cases their freedom of movement was being limited to movement within their districts or to other domains held by their ruling families. Whereas the benefactoria system had originally been an arrangement for mutual defense, by the twelfth century it had become largely a means of institutionalizing aristocratic domination of the land. Exactions increased, as various forms of sub- and superinfeudation were practiced at different levels of the aristocracy, the more powerful overlords obtaining special diviseros or extra payments, from peasants who were already paying shares to their immediate [70] overlords. This extension of aristocratic control was a consequence of the insecurity and disorder of the twelfth century, and particularly of the turbulent decade of the Castros and Laras. By that time, autonomous local communities had disappeared in the greater part of the kingdom of León. The greatest concentration of new seigneuries and behetría arrangements occurred in the Duero plain of Castile and León, the region which had been resettled between 850 and 1050. Behetrías also became much more common in Old Castile, though their terms tended to be more liberal. Until the beginning of the twelfth century, most of the peasants of Castile had escaped living under direct seigneurial or behetria exactions, but by the end of that century many were subject to them.
The region that preserved local liberties most fully was the new concejo territory along the Tajo. The communities there, led by their local elite of caballeros villanos, held the Castilian and Leonese frontier firm against the onslaughts of the new Muslim invaders from Morocco. Whereas, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the peasant population of the Duero region had been depleted by emigration to the frontier and had fallen under seigneurial control, concejo districts were being organized and populated on the southern frontier. The concejos of the greater Tajo region and beyond became a major stabilizing force in the kingdom.
Rise of the Muslim Almohad Empire
The strength of Almoravids lay in their military skill and religious zeal. Their civil organization and culture were never sufficiently advanced to weld a unified empire. Their domains were heterogeneous in the extreme, and in their most culturally sophisticated territory, Al-Andalus, they never sank deep roots. To most Hispano-Muslims, the Almoravids were foreigners who ruled by military power alone. The social reforms promised rarely materialized, and after several decades Almoravid rule came more and more to seem a mere military occupation. Furthermore it was opposed by local variants of Hispano-Muslim religious heterodoxy which had begun to show strength in the eleventh century, religious trends that tended toward the mystical, with populist and meliorist overtones. Reflecting the feelings of most of the Hispano-Muslim population, they were also anti-Arabicist, but one major result of this religious upsurge was to encourage opposition to Almoravid political and religious orthodoxy. Revolts began in the 1120s in Hispania and later became widespread in Morocco, where the last defenders of the Almoravid emperors were an elite guard of [71] Christian mercenaries. By 1147, the empire had been completely torn apart.
During the next twenty-five years, power in the south and east once more fell into the hands of local taifa rulers, much as during the preceding century. Their dominion lasted only one generation, for another militant Muslim empire was rising in Morocco. Known in the European languages as the Almohads, this new power was based on a Muslim reform movement that had begun, not among Saharan nomads, but among the agrarian Berbers of the Atlas Mountains. The Almohads (al-muwahhidun, "asserters of religious unity") preached a more sophisticated and mystical version of Islam in place of the simple, anthropomorphic religion of the Almoravids. By 1147, they had replaced the Almoravids as masters of Morocco and had begun to intervene militarily in the peninsula. Alfonso VII of Castile had made great gains in the wake of the Almoravid collapse, occupying Córdoba for three years (1146-1149) and holding the major port of Almeria for a decade (1147-1157), but nearly all his advances were wiped out by the Almohad counterattack. During the years that followed, the Almohads added most of Algeria and Tunisia to their realm, and by 1172 firmly established their control over all the neotaifa territories in the peninsula. Their position in Hispania at first was stronger than the Almoravids' had been in 1100, and their territories in North Africa even more extensive, but they never rewon Christian territory save that of Alfonso VII's most recent conquests.
The Apex of Hispano-Muslim Culture
The Almohads came from a more advanced, more urban society and were considerably more sophisticated than their predecessors. Almohad emperors were quickly acclimatized to Al-Andalus and before the end of the twelfth century had established their capital in Seville. They were much more interested in the arts than were the Almoravids, and the last and in some ways the fullest blossoming of Hispano-Muslim culture came in the late twelfth century under their rule. This was the era of the great Muslim Aristotelian Averroes (Ibn Rushd), perhaps the greatest philosopher in the history of Islam. During this period secular and religious literature flourished, as did new rationalist and mystic religious expression. Art and architecture were vigorously pursued, and Hispano-Muslim architecture was introduced and copied with considerable success in the larger towns of Morocco. During the twelfth century the popular verse forms of muwashaha and zéjel, deriving partly from Hispano-Romance culture, [72] were perfected and widely practiced. It was tragic and ironic that this most culturally syncretistic form of Hispanic literary culture flourished at the very time that the traditional political hostility between Muslim and Christian society was replaced by increasingly implacable religious and ideological antipathy.
Most of the Hispano-Muslim population under the Almohads remained traditionalist and orthodox Malikite in religious observance. In 1195, the cultured Almohad emperor, Abu-Yaqub Yusuf, had to order the burning of the heterodox writings of Averroes in order to assure the support of the populace in the struggle with Castile, and the learned philosopher fled to a more tolerant haven in the Maghreb at Marrakesh.
As with the taifas, the failure of the Almohad empire in the peninsula was not economic and cultural but military. Even though the Almohad rulers maintained political unity and won several important military victories over the Castilians, their wealth and following, though considerable, did not generate sufficient military power to face the large warrior kingdom to the north, which in the decisive struggle would draw assistance from other Hispanic kingdoms and other parts of western Europe.
The Reign of Alfonso VIII (1158-1214)
After Alfonso VIII came of age, he reasserted the authority of the crown in Castile, restored a degree of domestic order, and resumed the military contest with the Almohads. The treaty of Cazorla which he signed with the Aragonese crown in 1179 settled a long-standing border dispute between these neighboring Christian kingdoms and set a line dividing all remaining Muslim territory in the peninsula between Aragonese and Castilian spheres of conquest.
Developments in Hispanic military technology of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century brought a shift away from reliance on the massed charge of heavy cavalry and toward greater tactical dexterity, with the use of light cavalry for mobility and flanking maneuvers. From the thirteenth century on, light cavalry was in general use among Christians as well as Muslims.
Alfonso VIII suffered a major defeat at Alarcos in New Castile (1195), but gained complete revenge just before the end of his reign by virtually shattering Almohad military power at the great Christian victory of the Navas de Tolosa (1212). For more than half a century Castile and its Christian neighbors had been shedding each other's blood in border warfare, but in the crucial battle with the Almohads, large armies from each of the other four Hispano-Christian kingdoms [73] supported the Castilians. In terms of numbers of men engaged-- possibly 50,000 on each side--the Navas de Tolosa was the biggest battle yet to have been fought in Hispanic history. Loss of life was usually not great in medieval battles, but the decisive victory of 1212 was apparently accompanied by a slaughter of the defeated Muslims as they fled in disarray. The booty was enormous, replenishing the treasuries of the Hispanic crowns; for a short time Sancho the Strong of Navarre was the leading moneylender of western Europe from the investment of his share. However, the disease that followed the battle, engendered perhaps by the mass of rotting corpses, and the scarcity and famine of the succeeding year, discouraged the Christian forces from following up their triumphs and partitioning Almohad territory.
The Great Reconquest of San Fernando III (1217/1230-1252)
The crowns of Castile and León were finally reunited in 1230 under Fernando III, son of Alfonso IX of León and of the daughter of Alfonso VIII of Castile. When his uncle Enrique I of Castile died in 1217 without heirs, Fernando inherited the Castilian throne, then reunited it with León thirteen years later upon the death of his father. Meanwhile after about 1224 the Almohad empire, at a hopeless military disadvantage, began to break up, as had the Almoravid empire before it. After two decades of diplomatic maneuver and occupation of border zones, Fernando resumed major campaigns of conquest with the occupation of Córdoba and the surrounding countryside. Murcia in the southeast was taken in 1243, Jaén, the gateway to Granada, in 1246, and the imposing city of Seville in 1248. By that time the Catalan-Aragonese reconquest in the east had been completed, while the entire Cáceres-Badajoz region in the southwest had been occupied by Alfonso IX of León during the last years of his reign (1227-1230). By mid-century the only Muslim territory of any size that remained was the emirate of Granada in the far southeast. It was reduced to vassalage upon agreeing to pay a large annual tribute in precious metals. The pious, crusading Fernando III ("el Santo") was making plans to leapfrog Granada and launch a grand Hispanic crusade across the straits to overpower Morocco, when he died at Seville in 1252.
The Mudéjares of Castile
Large numbers of Muslims were first incorporated into the territories of the Castilian crown during the occupation of the Tajo valley and [74] adjoining regions under Alfonso VI in the eleventh century. Muslims who lived under Christian rule were known as mudéjares. Most urban Muslims were deported to make room for Christian immigrants in the key economic and military centers; they were normally treated leniently and allowed to take all movable possessions with them. Only a minority remained behind, so that the great Muslim cities of the peninsula were converted one by one from mostly Muslim to mostly Christian communities, though the Jewish minorities usually remained fixed. This uprooting of most of the urban Muslim population and their culture guaranteed the Christianization of reconquered territories in the south.
The mudéjar peasantry were treated quite differently, for they were normally allowed to till the soil or practice crafts as before, subject only to a special crown tax and the payment of rent or shares to the new overlord. In most cases they received formal garantías from the crown, specifying such terms and freedom to practice their own religion, together with the option to emigrate if they preferred.
During the first two decades of Castilian rule in western Andalusia, the Christians remained a small minority concentrated in occupied towns which they lacked the numbers to fill completely. Encouraged by the invasion of the southern tip of the peninsula by the Merinid empire of Morocco, a great mudéjar rebellion broke out in the countryside during 1263 and at first threatened to overturn Castilian rule. After this major revolt was throttled, royal policy changed, and the majority of the Muslim peasantry, particularly in western Andalusia where they were most heavily concentrated, were driven out of the kingdom, some to Granada, others toward Africa. Portions of the mudéjar peasantry remained in some areas, but in general the medieval Hispanic advance did not absorb the Muslims or even incorporate them as a minority; it drove them before it. The reconquest was not merely a matter of military occupation, but of expanding the Hispano-Christian population and institutions southward.
Castilian Repopulation and Resettlement in the Thirteenth Century
The thirteenth-century reconquest greatly increased the size of Castile. In 1212, Castile and León together covered approximately 235,000 square kilometers, but by 1265 they had grown to approximately 355,000 square kilometers. The thirteenth-century reconquest was one of the most decisive developments in Castilian history not merely because of its military and territorial significance. however, but equally because of its social and economic consequences, for the resettlement policy of the thirteenth century differed considerably from that of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
[75] Most of the lands south of the Tajo-central plateau area were divided among the nobility, the crusading orders, and the church. Some of the Christian peasants who moved into the south during the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries worked as braceros or jornaleros (day laborers) on large estates or cattle lands, but the majority rented small plots from overlords or church institutions, or worked land as sharecroppers on tributary financial terms rather than on a traditional or associative basis, as in the north. In most of the north, "useful dominion," the right to work the land, was recognized as pertaining to peasants even on seigneurial domain; in much of the south, "useful dominion" was held by the overlords, and peasants worked plots on whatever tenns they could get. Juridically, there was no question of homone or benefactoria status in the south; social and economic status there was more individualistic, and that was an incentive for immigration during the first few generations. Compared with the more densely populated north, terms of cultivation were often fairly favorable during the first century or so of resettlement but became more onerous as population increased.
There was, however, considerable variation between regions. A small minority of peasant immigrants managed to establish alodial property rights in a few areas, but more important were the formation of concejo districts in parts of the south-central region and the granting of autonomous fueros to a number of the repopulated Andalusian towns. The new concejos and some of the smaller towns were inhabited in part by stockmen who grazed livestock on a small scale on concejo land under royal, not seigneurial, domain. Such elements were only a minority in the south, but they were free of seigneurial domination, and their direct loyalty to the crown had a stabilizing effect on the southern regions of Castile and León.
The Triumph of Seigneurial Domain
Division of most of the reconquered south under separate jurisdiction of aristocracy, church, and crusading orders marked the triumph of seigneurial domain over the greater share of the peasantry and landed economy of Castile, accentuating the weight of the aristocracy and the church as institutions. The first codification of the rights of the aristrocracy appeared early in the thirteenth century (under Alfonso VIII) as the Fuero Viejo de Castilla (or Fuero de los Fijosdalgo de Castilla). This may have been the fruit of opposition to Alfonso VIII's effort to limit the granting of señoríos and the terms of their jurisdictions during his reign.
There was never a truly concerted effort on the part of the Castilian crown to reduce the privileges of señoríos, even during the reign of [76] Alfonso VIII, and amid the renewed internal difficulties that beset Castile during the late thirteenth century, seigneurial domain was extended. Most seigneuries during the thirteenth century, however, still rested primarily on economic rights--to profit from the land and its uses--and in the great majority of cases did not explicitly include the juridical and fiscal (or tax-collecting) control of the overlord over his peasants.
An indication of the wealth and influence of the aristocracy is given in the tendency developing toward the end of the thirteenth century for the nobility to limit entry and turn itself into a fixed caste. Heretofore, the military aristocracy in Castile had been fairly open to recruits, but from the late thirteenth century an increasing number of suits were brought by nobles in opposition to those who claimed aristocratic status.
The Economy of Thirteenth-Century Castile
Castile's twelfth-century economic stagnation was overcome in large measure by the stimulus of the great thirteenth-century reconquest and the subsequent expansion of the wool export trade. The invasion of the Merinid dynasty in Morocco between 1263 and 1268 occasioned considerable economic loss in the south, checking commercial expansion, but a period of growth commenced about 1280 and lasted for approximately half a century, until the ravages of the Black Death.
The Christian overlords of the conquered territory of Al-Andalus did not attempt to maintain its traditional rural economy. Peasant immigrants from the dry-farming regions of the north often lacked the skills to maintain irrigation and other complex farming systems, and the irrigated alfoz around Córdoba, for example, fell into considerable decay. Medieval Castile had always been the most pastoral society in western Europe, and its expansion merely accentuated the emphasis on cattle and sheep. Grazing and shepherding required less manpower than agriculture, and this fact encouraged abandonment of cultivation in some regions.
Extension of the wool trade made it the major single source of wealth for the kingdom, and for the crown it had the advantage of being easily taxed because of its increasing organization and concentration. One of the most important economic institutions in Castilian history was created in 1273, when Alfonso X established the Honorable Council of the Mesta, a broadly based syndicate of sheep owners that subsequently gained extraordinary influence.
During this period Castile failed to develop anything approaching [77] the urbanization or town manufacture found in the Low Countries or north Italy--or even Catalonia. Its agriculture, largely because of soil and climate, was backward even by thirteenth-century standards. Its only invention was the precursor of the modern cattle ranch, developed in the south-central region between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries.
The Castilian Sense of Wealth
By the thirteenth century much of Castilian society had formed a distinctive set of values regarding wealth and economic activity. The land of Old Castile was poor and unproductive. Insecurity and intermittent warfare had discouraged attention to long-term economic projects--agriculture, crafts, commerce--and cattle and sheep were its main wealth, mobile and self-generative. Income was the reward not so much of work as of conquest. Precious metals and manufactures flowed in considerable measure from alien territory in the south whose treasures might be appropriated by armed force. Thus in Castilian society riches were commonly considered not as something that one created or built, that is, worked for, but as something one conquered or enjoyed because of one's status as a warrior conqueror, a nobleman. The function of land was not as property with which to create wealth, but rather as dominion from which wealth might be extracted by superior right. Hence the notion of wealth and land as a result of military action and domination, rather than power and domination as a result of having land and developing its wealth. Hence also the particular importance of the aristocratic class as the military elite that enjoyed the full status and fruits of domination, and the identification of much of lower-class aspiration with the military style. The nobility was dominant in almost all of medieval Europe, but in most other regions there was a greater challenge to aristocratic values, at least among townspeople. Almost nowhere was there as wide an acceptance of the aristocracy and its particular sense of wealth, status, and dominance as in Castile.
The habit of living from imperial tribute began in the eleventh century with the influx of paria payments and continued in varying forms and degrees for almost eight hundred years. The first major inflation caused by a sudden influx of money and treasure came during the first generation after the major phase of the reconquest, during the reign of Alfonso X (1252-1284). The new income was concentrated in the military elite and groups of the aristocracy and resulted in an orgy of luxury goods buying and importing that unbalanced the late thirteenth-century Castilian trade equilibrium. To an [78] extent, this foreshadowed the post-imperial inflation of Habsburg Spain in the sixteenth century.
The Incorporation of Hispanic Jewry
A major socio-cultural result of the thirteenth-century reconquest was the incorporation of the main body of peninsular Jewry into the Christian kingdoms. The Jewish population was concentrated in the towns of the south and east and prospered greatly during the early centuries of Cordoban toleration. From early times, however, there were also small communities enjoying toleration and legal protection in the leading northern Christian towns. Growth of Muslim intolerance, combined with the expansion of the Christian principalities, encouraged Jewish migration northward from the eleventh century on. Castilian Jews served in the forces of Alfonso VI at several of his major battles.
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the heyday of Hispanic Jewry, and in some districts they achieved the rights of aristocratic fuero. The upper stratum of Jewish society grew wealthy, while Jewish intellectuals were the most vital and productive of the peninsula. The base of Hispanic Jewry, however, was composed of the artisans and craftsmen in the medium and large-sized towns, where they constituted a major source of skilled labor. In a few districts small groups of Jewish peasants tilled the soil or cared for vineyards.
Cultural Achievements of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
The most important cultural achievement of medieval Hispania was the transmission of classical knowledge and Muslim learning to the world of Latin Christendom. Much of ancient Greco-Roman knowledge had been lost to the western world during the Middle Ages, and for several centuries the scientific work done in Islamic countries considerably surpassed that of western Europe. The Hispano-Christian states, as the bridge between Christendom and the Muslim world, were able to translate and transmit a great deal of this from the Arabic. The work had begun in a few Catalan monasteries during the tenth century. It reached its peak during the twelfth century, when a number of monastic centers and clerical schools, led by that of Toledo, collected and translated large numbers of ancient Jewish and Muslim works of philosophy, philology, mathematics, medicine, law, botany, astronomy, and geography. Visiting scholars from other parts of western Europe, carrying these materials back with them, [79] helped to change the course of medieval European culture and shape the form and content of its emerging philosophy and science.
Though the work in the main was done in the twelfth century, its most famous center was the royal school of translators that flourished in the thirteenth century in Toledo during the reign of Alfonso X, a sovereign known to history as Alfonso el Sabio, "the Wise," for he was the only philosopher-king to grace the throne of Castile. With the expanded income that Castile enjoyed after the great reconquest, he encouraged manifold undertakings in scholarship and the arts. Serious historical study, for example, was encouraged in the Castile of Alfonso el Sabio for perhaps the first time in medieval western Europe.
Castilian literature in the vernacular also emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Castile had been one of the first regions in western Europe to use the vernacular in official documents, dating from the eleventh century. This was perhaps due to its simpler society or even to the linguistic complexity of an area in which Romance vernacular, Arabic, and Hebrew all came into play, encouraging the avoidance of Latin in public materials and manuscripts. By the thirteenth century the three main linguistic domains of the peninsula had been carved out: Castilian as the most broadly spoken language in the center (flanked by a parallel Leonese dialect in the west and Aragonese in the east), Galician-Portuguese in the far west, and Catalan in the northeast. The other two principal languages were also developing a vernacular literature, and in refined poetics Galician was more advanced than Castilian. With a long cultural tradition of the most fully settled society in the kingdom, Galician served as the court literary language of Castile itself in the thirteenth century.
The peninsula did not lag far behind the most advanced parts of western Europe in the creation of institutions of higher learning. The first peninsular university was founded in Palencia in 1212 and later moved to Valladolid. It was followed by the University of Salamanca, which subsequently became the outstanding school in the peninsula, in 1220, the Studium Generale of Lisbon in 1290 (which later became the University of Coimbra), two Catalan universities (Lérida, 1300; Perpinyá, 1350), and an Aragonese university at Huesca in 1354. There was no university in Navarre, but Navarrese students were not uncommon at the University of Paris.
Codification of Fueros and Expansion of Royal Law
The expansion of learning and revival of Roman law brought considerably greater attention to matters of law, administration, and legal [80] jurisdiction. One consequence was a general movement toward the systematization and written codification of laws and rights, beginning with the Fuero General de Navarra, early in the century, followed by the Furs de Valencia (1240), the Fueros de Aragón (1247), the Libro de Los Fueros de Castilla (1248), the revised Costumes de Catalunya, and the Costums de La Mar for Catalan shipping.
Because of sustained efforts by the territorial aristocracy to encroach on the rights of town and peasant communities, there was a general trend toward the explicit regranting of fueros and local charters in all the peninsular principalities during the thirteenth century, to protect the local communities. Another equally important aim was the clarification and extension of the crown's authority. Thus some towns found that they were escaping aristocratic domination only to come under closer royal control.
Of all the intellectual undertakings of Alfonso X's reign, the project of greatest immediate importance was his effort to develop a unified system of royal law. In 1255, only three years after he came to the throne, Alfonso's jurists brought out a written Fuero Real, an only partly harmonized compilation of Castilian common law and new royal statutes not based on any clear precedent in the traditional Fuero Juzgo. Though the application of the Fuero Real was carefully limited, Alfonso's goal was a perfectly harmonized system of universal law, both theoretical and practical, that would satisfy social demands and enhance the authority of the crown, while resolving the limitations, insufficiencies, and contradictions of medieval legal practice.
The result of ten years of work by royal jurists was the famous Siete Partidas (Seven Divisions of Law) of 1265, a rationalized system of universal justice under central monarchy and the first great didactic literary classic in the Castilian vernacular. It was also revolutionary in that it would have done away with much of the common law and foral (local statute) practices. Thus it aroused such vociferous protests from aristocrats and towns that it was not promulgated until almost one hundred years later, and was never put into effective use.
The Political Failure of Alfonso el Sabio
The fate of the Siete Partidas was symbolic of Alfonso's reign. His primary achievements were cultural; in practical affairs his reign ended in disaster. He had pretensions to being the first extra-Hispanic Castilian imperator, for his mother was Beatrice of Swabia and he was encouraged by minor dissidents in central Europe to seek the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. A good deal of money was wasted on bribery in this venture which ended in complete failure. A few [81] years earlier he had given away in a daughter's marriage dowry the claim to Gascony, inherited by the Castilian crown through his great-grandfather's marriage. In 1257 his forces played a major role in helping the Portuguese complete the reconquest of the southwest corner of the peninsula by occupying the Algarve, but Alfonso made no effort to claim part of that territory for Castile's crown or its aggressive aristocracy, some of whom rose in rebellion at what they considered Alfonso's sacrifice of their opportunity for aggrandizement. In 1263 came the beginning of the Merinid invasions and the great mudéjar revolt, followed by five years of border war, and then by another Merinid invasion in 1275.
During his last years Alfonso continued his effort to impose central Roman law, and he claimed the imperial right to divide his kingdom between his son and grandson. In 1282 the aristocracy and towns rose in revolt and deposed him in favor of his direct heir, Sancho, who was more respectful of foral right and seigneurial privilege. Two years later, the embittered philosopher king died in impotence and failure.
Origins of the Castilian Cortes
Spanish historians have derived considerable satisfaction from the fact that the first medieval parliament representing the three principal estates of society met in León in 1188, antedating the first parliamentary assemblies in all other European kingdoms. Medieval parliaments evolved in much the same manner in most parts of western and central Europe. The Leonese monarchy, like its Visigothic predecessor, was accustomed to convene periodic meetings of a royal council (curia regia) to advise on major policy matters and establish a sort of consensus. The curia regia was composed of leading aristocrats, royal administrators, and church hierarchs. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries it was occasionally supplemented by meetings of a curia plena, a broader royal assembly of lesser officials, nobles, and churchmen. As medieval society grew increasingly complex, the legitimization of changes in royal succession and in taxation and coinage became more difficult. By the twelfth century, the urban population in León and Castile had achieved some modest significance, as witnessed by the revolt of Urraca's reign and by the initiative of towns and concejos in some regions in forming juntas or hermandades to keep the peace and protect local economic interests. Since the aristocracy and church were exempt from ordinary taxation, the increasing costs of royal government could only be met by new levies raised from the towns and peasants, and such funds could be collected efficiently only if agreed to by taxpayers or their representatives. [82] Moreover, church leaders urged that town leaders be summoned to agree on means of limiting disorder on the roads and in the countryside.
In 1188 Alfonso IX of León faced major problems in consolidating his rule over an internally divided and disorderly kingdom, and he also faced mounting financial demands. To deal with these issues he summoned representatives of leading towns to meet with aristocrats and church officials at a royal assembly. He proclaimed a brief royal charter promising justice and recognizing local laws as well as the need to establish greater order. At a subsequent meeting he gained approval of a debasement of coinage to increase royal purchasing power. This Cortes (literally, "courts") was the first assembly representative of all three estates to meet in any European kingdom. Since the problems that induced Alfonso IX to summon this meeting were not unique to León, the introduction of a three-estate Cortes probably occurred there first because of the tradition of foral autonomies and rights for local groups in the Leonese (and Castilian) politicojuridical system. León accorded greater legal recognition to the interests of its various regions, towns, and classes than was to be found in the local-liberty systems of most of medieval Europe.
The meeting of the first three-estate Cortes in Castile cannot be dated as precisely as in the case of León. Such an assembly met in Castile in 1212, but there may have been an even earlier one. The respective dates for other peninsular kingdoms are: Catalonia, 1214 or 1218; Aragón, 1247; Portugal, 1254; Valencia, 1283; and Navarre, 1300. By comparison, the first regional parliament in Germany was summoned in 1232, the first English parliament in 1265, and the first estates-general in France in 1302. After 1250, Cortes meetings for León and Castile were usually joint meetings, but until the latter part of the fourteenth century there were also occasional separate meetings and several limited convocations of representatives from specific regions of Castile. After that only unified meetings of representatives of the three estates of León and Castile were held.
The original medieval Cortes had no institutional charters or rights and privileges as autonomous assemblies. They had no inherent legislative function, but were summoned solely at the convenience of the crown. Though in some periods frequent, meetings were often extremely irregular, and there was no legal specification as to which towns were to be represented. The composition of Cortes, particularly in Castile, often varied considerably from meeting to meeting.
Nevertheless, by the last years of the thirteenth century a philosophy of popular sovereignty was developing among some of the town representatives. There was at least one attempt, though unsuccessful, to codify the rights of representatives of the third estate, and some of [83] the latter soon went beyond a mere response to royal requests and asserted their right to ratify new laws. The Cortes assembly of 1282 was used to legitimize the deposition of Alfonso X and the accession of his son Sancho. By the end of the century, the Cortes of Castile had established the unwritten right to vote on all new taxes, present grievances to the crown, and ratify succession to the throne. During the next century, the Cortes was important in regulating succession crises and royal regencies during the minorities of sovereigns. But unlike the parliaments of Aragón and Catalonia, the Castilian Cortes never institutionalized by charter its specific legal prerogatives and never developed juridico-administrative machinery to guarantee its precise jurisdiction over certain kinds of decisions.
Constitutional Status of the Basque Region
The Basque-speaking territories southwest of the Pyrenees remained culturally and politically apart from neighboring states. Navarre, which in its Hispanic domain comprised roughly the eastern half of the Basque region, preserved its independence of the other Hispanic principalities, but from the thirteenth century on was drawn more and more into the French orbit through dynastic marriage. Its institutions were similar to those of neighboring Aragón (see the following chapter), but it became a cultural backwater and by the close of the thirteenth century was one of the least developed areas of the peninsula.
The western half of the Basque country was made up of three distinct districts: Guipuzcoa to the northeast, Vizcaya to the northwest, and Alava to the south. These three provinces were never united, but for several centuries belonged alternately to the crowns of Castile and Navarre. By the twelfth century, the whole population had been officially Christianized. Its social structure was somewhat anomalous; the peasantry lived for the most part on family farms, though with strong extended-family or clan bonds. Local districts, villages, and peasant groups were quite jealous of their autonomy, but had not been able to escape a process of seigneurial subordination rather like that which had taken place in northern Castile. There had never been much (if any) outright serfdom in the western Basque provinces, but behetría relationships predominated.
Association with Castile became more attractive than subjection to the sovereignty of Navarre in part because of the greater degree of feudal subjection in Navarre. The Basque aristocracy was numerous and turbulent, but its powers were restricted by local custom. The most egalitarian region was Guipuzcoa, in which by the close of the [84] Middle Ages virtually the entire population had claimed aristocratic status, meaning equality before the law and exemption from many kinds of taxation. Guipuzcoans also claimed the right to choose their own overlord. In 1200 they renounced the sovereignty of the Navarrese crown under pressure and recognized Alfonso VIII of Castile as their king. The southern Basque "county" of Alava was conquered at the same time, but its provincial autonomy was fully recognized in 1332. Vizcaya, the northwestern district, was constituted as a señorío of the local aristocratic family of Lopez de Haro in the eleventh century under the suzerainty of Castile, and finally became a direct seigneury of the crown in 1379. The fueros of all three districts were officially recognized and guaranteed by the crown, which was represented in each by an adelantado, or royal governor, as in all other major regions of Castile. Local affairs were resolved mostly by regional or local assemblies of notables. There was no attempt to impose a Castilian royal law upon local customs, and save for a few limited taxes, the local assemblies of notables and town representatives (a sort of district Cortes without a sovereign) negotiated taxes with the crown.
From the beginning of Castilian history, Basque immigration from the north had been significant in the development of Castilian society. Though most of the population continued to speak their native Basque, a form of romance dialect akin to Castilian had been the official, legal, and cultural speech of the leaders and towns of the region from the tenth or eleventh century on. The Basques thus increasingly became a part of the Castilian world, and their emigrants played a major role in the expansion of Castilian society.
Bibliography for Chapter IV
[336] The classic study of the Cid, though nationalistically biased, is Ramón Menéndez Pidal's La España del Cid (Madrid, 1947). Perhaps the principal historian of twelfth-century León and Castile is Julio González. His major works are Regesta de Fernando II (Madrid, 1940); Alfonso IX, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1942); Repartimiento de Sevilla, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1951); and El reino de Castilla en Ja época de Alfonso VIII, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1960). For the period of Alfonso el Sabio, see Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Alfonso el Sabio and Sevilla en el siglo XIII (Madrid, 1913).
The key work on the crusade in Spain is José Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de Cruzada en España (Vitoria, 1958). Two of the principal military orders are treated in Derek W. Lomax, La Orden de Santiago (1170-1275) (Madrid, 1965), and Francis Gutton's somewhat less useful L'Ordre de Calatrava (Paris, 1955). On military affairs, see Ambrosio Huici Miranda, Las grandes batallas de la reconquista durante ías invasiones africanas (Madrid, 1956). The background of military organization is well explained in Elena Lourie, "A Society Organized for War: Medieval Spain," Past and Present, no. 35 (Dec. 1966), pp. 54-76. French influence is treated in Marcel Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne aux XIe et XIIe siécles (Paris, 1949). The best Spanish account of the Almoravids is Jacinto Bosch Vilá, Los Almorávides (Tetuan, 1956). The fundamental work on the medieval Castilian Cortes, though weak on the origins of the institution, is still the study by the fin de siècle Russian Hispanist, W. Piskorski, Las Cortes de Castilla en el período de trénsito de la Edad Media a ía Moderna (1188-1520) (Barcelona, 1930). Demetrio Ramos, Historia de las Cortes tradicionales de España (Madrid, 1944). gives a brief description. Joseph F. O'Callaghan, "The Beginnings [337] of the Cortes of León-Castile," American Historical Review 74, no. 5 (June 1969): 1503-37, is vital for understanding the origins of the Leonese-Castilian Cortes. The main work on Castilian towns and local self-government in this period is María del Carmen Carlé, Del concejo medieval castellano-leonés (Buenos Aires, 1968). Pedro Corominas, El sentimiento de la riqueza en Castilla (Madrid, 1917, 1951), presents an important hypothesis on Castilian social and economic values.
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