Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2

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Spain in the twelfth century 491

and vines. Though Castilians mocked the Frenchmen who returned home be-

fore the battle of Las Navas in 1212,

the heat which drove them had proved the

Muslims’ most reliable ally throughout the previous century and as unfamiliar

an experience to the foreign recruits of the Christian rulers as the camels in the

enemy army which the chronicler so regularly mentioned.

Foreign warriors were preceded by foreign pilgrims. For well over a cen-

tury already Santiago de Compostela had been attracting Christians from far

aﬁeld; by 1105 the earliest recorded English pilgrim, the Yorkshireman Richard

Mauleverer, had been there. But, despite the fact that at mid-century another

Englishman did not think the place worth commenting on, by the time Louis

VII of France made the journey in 1154,Santiago’s fame and prestige who estab-

lished. This transformation was due above all to Diego Gelm

ırez during whose

pontiﬁcate (1100–40) the see was raised to metropolitan status (1120) and the

mighty romanesque cathedral and the vast complex of buildings associated

with it was largely completed.

The guidebook for pilgrims which comprised the ﬁfth and ﬁnal book of the

contemporary work Jacobus (the so-called Liber Sancti Jacobi) described the four

major routes along which pilgrims travelled from France, converging at Puente

la Reina and continuing by way of Estella, Logro

no and Burgos (where it was

joined by the road from Bayonne), Sahag

un, Le

on, Astorga and Ponferrada

before entering Galicia. The guidebook is full of essential information con-

cerning both the necessities of life – bread (excellent at Estella, but then Estella

was French), rivers (poisonous in most parts of Navarre, safer further west), ﬁsh

and meat (fatal everywhere) – and the inhabitants of the region whom the trav-

eller would encounter: the barbarous Basques with their terrifying language;

the Navarrese with their particularly disagreeable habits, whose name betrayed

the malignity of their origins (Nauarrus: non verus) and who ate like pigs and

sounded like dogs; the Castilians, a people as vicious as their land was fertile;

and at the end of the journey the Galicians, bad-tempered and litigious.

Jacobus was not a guidebook in any ordinary sense of the word, and its

widespread dissemination after about 1170 was moreover something of an ac-

cident.

Even so (and whether these sentiments merely reﬂected their author’s

personal prejudices or were an expression of common opinion), the effect

of their publication ought to have been to have discouraged foreigners from

Below, p. 507.

Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris,bkii, chs. 23, 27, 33, 52, 73, 92.

azquez de Parga, Lacarra and Ur

ıa R

ıu (1948–9), i,pp.51, 64;Fletcher (1984), p. 96;Miret y Sans

(1912). It was Oviedo that possessed ‘the most precious relics of all Spain’ according to the chronicler

of the siege of Lisbon: De expugnatione Lyxbonensi,pp.63–5.

Libri sancti Jacobi,pp.349–60;V

azquez de Parga, Lacarra and Ur

ıa R

ıu (1948–9), i,pp.202–15;

Defourneaux (1949), pp. 102–6.

Hohler (1972), pp. 55, 69.

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492 peter linehan

venturing to Spain at all. Yet still they came, and all along the road, and to

the north and the south of it, towns and settlements responded to their pres-

ence. The camino franc

es, Christian Spain’s main economic artery, supplied the

peninsula with the commodity which it needed most: people. With the parias

they had received from the Muslim south the eleventh-century rulers of the

Christian north had been able to afford to smooth the pilgrim way, mending

bridges and deterring brigands, and by providing security and fueros which

exempted them from tribute had persuaded the men and women who came

to pray to stay to trade and ﬁght. Though no longer in receipt of the parias

themselves, their twelfth-century successors reaped the human reward.

They also imitated their predecessors’ techniques. To the episcopal city

of Pamplona, the ﬁrst place of any consequence on the road from Ronces-

valles, Frenchmen came in ever-increasing numbers during the pontiﬁcate of

its Frenchbishop Peter of Rodez (1083–1115). In 1129 Alfonso I of Aragon granted

those of them (‘totos francos’) who settled in the region of San Saturnino de

Iru

na the fuero that Pyrenean Jaca had received from his father Sancho Ram

ırez

in 1063.

The effect was to establish a highly favoured mercantile ‘burgo’,

physically and juridically separate from the existing city, where the franci were

allowed to choose their own judge (‘alcaldus’) as well as monopolize the trade

with pilgrims, and the native Navarrese were excluded. Accordingly, a double

city was created, and a seedbed of strife prepared which would ﬂourish until

the ﬁfteenth century. The same form of apartheid existed at Estella, a French

new town created in 1090 by diverting the pilgrim road from its former course,

though here the harshness of division was mitigated when in 1187 Sancho VI

extended the fuero of the French to its other inhabitants.

Meanwhile the

‘Pseudo-Turpin’, the spurious memoirs of Archbishop Turpin of Rheims (one

of the casualties of Roncesvalles according to the Song of Roland ), attributed

the discovery of Santiago’s tomb to Charlemagne, and spread the story that as

well as establishing the church of Compostela and decreeing that ‘all prelates,

princes and Christian kings both Spanish and Galician’ should thereafter be

subject to its bishop, the Frankish emperor had reconquered the entire penin-

sula not just once but three times, on each occasion the feckless locals losing

the initiative again as soon as he left them to their own devices.

In the form in

which it was incorporated as the fourth book of Jacobus, having originated as a

book for teaching Parisian schoolboys grammar, the ‘Pseudo-Turpin’ seems to

Valdeavellano (1969), pp. 103–76;Gautier Dalch

e(1979), pp. 67–85.

The fuero granted to Jaca was adopted further aﬁeld than Pamplona; details in Fueros de Navarra.

Valdeavellano (1969), pp. 136–40;Defourneaux (1949), p. 250.

Libri sancti Jacobi,pp.306, 325–6 (Santiago as ‘sedes secunda’ after Rome, St James having been

maior amongst the apostles after St Peter, ‘et in celis primatum super eos tenet’); Defourneaux (1949),

pp. 82–90.

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Spain in the twelfth century 493

date from the middle years of the century. But well before this francophobia

found expression in both word and deed. No one from abroad had ever come to

Christian Spain’s assistance, the Leonese author of the so-called Historia Silense

insisted, putting the historical record straight, least of all Charlemagne who

‘in the manner of the French’ had been corrupted by gold and at Roncesvalles

had been defeated by the Navarrese.

And meanwhile a counter-legend was

developing, that of Bernardo of Carpio, the ‘anti-Charlemagne’ who worsted

the emperor at Roncesvalles.

At Sahag

un, however, where a contemporary’s list of those who had re-

sponded to Alfonso VI’s appeal for settlers ‘from foreign nations, from my

own kingdom and from various other parts’ (1085) included Gascons, Bretons,

Germans, English, Burgundians, Normans, Provenc¸aux and Lombards, the

violence that erupted during the civil wars of Urraca’s reign (1110–16) was not

directed against the foreigners, but organized by them and the locals together,

who made common cause against the abbatial jurisdiction under which the

king had placed them, formed themselves into a concejo and appealed to Alfonso

of Arag

on for assistance. The looting of the royal monastery was undertaken by

the latter’s brother, Ramiro, the future saviour of the Aragonese dynasty. In the

disturbed conditions of the 1110s such resentments were the more easily ma-

nipulated. At Santiago in 1116–17, having stirred up Bishop Diego Gelm

ırez’s

enemies against him, Urraca came close to suffering the consequences herself.

The brotherhood formed by those who seized power at the end of the

pilgrim road demonstrated the potential of the forces brought in to colonize

and trade all along its length, notwithstanding the fact that the ‘germanitas’

(as an unsympathetic contemporary described it) which has created so much

excitement amongst some social historians seems to have been largely composed

of Galicians.

It also demonstrated the need to maintain control over these

forces and to ensure that they were directed where they really were needed.

Fear of social anarchy was never far away. The chronicler of Alfonso VII told

the story of the ‘optimates’ of Salamanca who resolved to raid towards Badajoz

in order to ‘make a name for themselves and not let any prince or duke enjoy

the credit’, and in consequence suffered a crushing defeat.

Only after they

Hohler (1972), pp. 33–40; Historia Silense,pp.129–30.

efourneaux (1949), pp. 302–16.Bernardo of Carpio seems to have been a creation of the second half

of the century. There is no mention of him in Historia Silense despite the fact that the date assigned

to that work, 1110–20, may well be too early: Canal S

anchez-Pagin (1980), pp. 101–2; Linehan (1993),

ch. 5.

efourneaux (1949), pp. 232–8;Fletcher (1984), pp. 185–9.

Pastor de Togneri (1973), pp. 13ff.

‘Eamus et nos in terram Badalioz et faciamus nobis nomen grande et non demus nomen glorie

nostre ullo principi aut duci.’ ‘Who is your leader?’, the Moorish king asked them, and on hearing

from them that they all were concluded that they were mad: Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris,bkii,

chs. 27–8.

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494 peter linehan

had done penance, paid the church their tithes and ﬁrst fruits and submitted

to the emperor’s commanders did God give them victory again, and proﬁt (ii,

p. 29). The moral of the chronicler’s story was clear. The interrelationship of

the parties whose complementary activities constituted the code of the frontier

was vindicated. The sin for which the warriors had had to do penance was the

social sin of insubordination.

Although not all the towns along the pilgrim road were exclusively mercan-

tile in character,

those south of the Duero (‘Extremadura’) and further still

beyond the mountain range of the cordillera central (‘Transierra’) were princi-

pally military. Toledo on the Tagus marked the southernmost extent of an area

stretching from Lisbon to Tortosa: rough and inhospitable country only lately

(and indeed still) the haunt of bears and boars, as Alfonso VI described the re-

gion of Segovia in 1107.Inrecent years a series of pioneering studies has almost

entirely transformed our knowledge of the processes of resettlement of the area

after 1085 and of the role of ﬁghting families organized by national groupings

in the occupation of strategically situated walled cities to each of which was

attached an area of open land running down to the Tagus. The example of

Avila, with its massive fortiﬁed cathedral, revealed the ability of these groupings

to retain their own identity while collaborating in the common task. The Arab

geographer al-Idrisi describes the city as a cluster of small villages. Around such

places livestock was kept, to be brought within the walls at the approach of

the enemy. At such times the countryside was evacuated, obliging the raiders

from the south either to remain for only a single day or to bring all necessary

provisions with them.

The effective limit of the Christian reconquest at any

time was determined by the furthest pasture south in which sheep might safely

graze. There could be no question of agriculture: standing crops were a standing

invitation to enemy arsonists. Animals can be moved, vines cannot.

For the

same reason monasticism did not ﬂourish on this frontier, as it had in earlier

times further north and as it continued to do in Catalonia under the auspices

of the monks of Poblet (founded 1150–3). It was in Galicia that the cloistered

Cistercians made their mark, inﬁlling the Galician hinterland. In Castile

they served a different function, not on the Christian frontier with Islam

(where their warrior brethren were active), but on Castile’s with its Christian

neighbours. During the 1170s, at Alfonso VIII’s behest, the communities of

Bujedo, Herrera, Rioseco and Benavides were all relocated for this purpose.

Gautier Dalch

e(1979), p. 74.

Barrios Garc

ıa (1983–4); Portela (1985), pp. 94–115;Powers (1988), pp. 93–205;Garc

ıa de Cort

azar

(1990), pp. 55–121; Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, bk ii, chs. 47, 84.

Garc

ıa de Cort

azar (1990), pp. 62–3.

McCrank (1983); Pallares M

endez and Portela Silva (1971), pp. 69ff; Alv

arez Palenzuela (1978), pp.

83, 90–1, 103, 121–32;Mox

o(1979), pp. 269ff.

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Spain in the twelfth century 495

Those who undertook the task, coming from other parts of the peninsula or

further aﬁeld, were induced to do so by terms such as those of the fuero which

Alfonso VI had granted to Sep

ulveda in 1076,acode subsequently adopted as

far aﬁeld as Morella in Aragon (1233) and Segura de Le

on to the south of

Badajoz (1274). Sep

ulveda provided immunity for all-comers: even murderers

were assured of refuge once they had crossed the Duero.

On his way to seek

monastic sanctuary at Cluny ‘because there was nowhere for him to stay’ in

Alfonso VII’s kingdoms, the treacherous Count G

omez N

nez would have

passed streams of aspiring frontiersmen travelling south for precisely the same

reason, the ruthlessness of whose exploits on arrival bore witness to the rugged-

ness of their origins.

Here the quality most admired was vigour (strenuitas),

and the most reprehensible failing its opposite, that ‘negligence’ in maintaining

arms and equipment which according to the chronicle of Alfonso VII led to

the loss of Mora and was only to be expiated by a series of acts of conspicuous

bravery against the enemy resulting in much carnage and booty.

Eternal vigi-

lance was the rule: at Plasencia when ﬁre broke out the ﬁrst duty of the citizens

was to secure the city walls. But offensive warfare as well as defence was the

business of members of the non-noble municipal militia (caballer

ıa villana),

and in pursuit of it they regularly travelled prodigious distances, striking deep

into Muslim territory.

With them often went churchmen. Many of these were foreigners too, men

of the stamp of Bishops Peter of Osma, 1101–9, who had come there from

Bourges, or his contemporary Jerome of Valencia who explains in the ‘Poem

of The Cid’ that he had come from France to the frontier ‘because of the urge

he had to kill a Moor or two’ and had since lost count of his tally. An episcopal

formulary of the early thirteenth century contains a letter from the bishop of

Zamora enquiring of the king of Le

on when the ﬁghting was to start.

Quite

how distinctively religious the motives were of the likes of Bishop Ram

on of

Palencia–aCatalan monk who was reported to have enfeoffed his church’s

possessions, let his episcopal palace go to rack and ruin and gone off to live

in a hut near the front line – we have little means of knowing and none at all

of judging. The commitment of the chronicler of Alfonso VII, for example,

was rather more tepid. Though he may have been a bishop too, he describes

atreaty between his hero and Afonso Henriques as ‘apparently useful’ because

aez (1953), pp. 46 (‘Et si aliquis homo de Sepuluega occiderit alium de Castella et fugier usque ad

Duero, nullus homo persequatur eum’, c.13), 190, 200.

Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris,bki, ch. 87 (‘quia nusquam erat ei locus ad habitandum’).

Ibid., bk ii, chs. 46–9.

Ibid.,bkii, chs. 2, 18;Bl

ocker-Walter (1966), p. 151; Linehan (1993), ch. 9; Lourie (1966), p. 59;

Powers (1988), p. 1.

Linehan (1993), ch. 8.

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496 peter linehan

‘good for Christians’.

And it was not concern for Christendom that weighed

with the crusaders who allowed themselves to be sidetracked to Lisbon in 1147;

it was the ﬁne print concerning spoils. By the terms in which they bid for

volunteers for the Almer

ıa campaign that same year, ‘all the bishops of Le

and Toledo’ who unsheathed both swords, the divine and the earthly, in the

cause conﬁrmed that from one side of the peninsula to the other it was the

rewards of ‘both lives’ that mattered.

The circumstances which prompted Spain’s rulers to grant fueros such as that

of Sep

ulveda – little money, fewer men, abundance of territory theoretically at

least theirs to dispose of – and the calculating spirit in which the warriors at

Lisbon and Almer

ıa discharged their Christian duty, together provided ideal

conditions for the making of agreements which historians of other parts of

twelfth-century Europe are accustomed to describing as ‘feudal’, though to

their Spanish colleagues while General Franco was alive the concept of feu-

dalism seemed ideologically difﬁcult and tended to be rejected as altogether

too European (and therefore too alien) a proposition. Since the mid-1970s,

however, feudalism has been ﬁercely embraced for the reassurance it provides

that, as well as approximating to European norms, medieval Spain may even

have measured up to Marxist requirements. Recent historical literature on the

subject is very slippery therefore, certainly more so than the twelfth-century ev-

idence itself. The statement in the ‘Historia Roderici’, for example (which can

hardly be later than the 1140s), that Alfonso VI granted the Cid and his heirs

lands to be held in perpetuity, is unequivocal. And similar grants which Alfonso

VII made to lesser folk during the last years of his reign provide conﬁrmation.

The reign of Sancho III of Castile, which lasted just a year (1157–8), was no-

table for the foundation of the ﬁrst of the Spanish military orders by Raimundo

the Cistercian abbot of Fitero. Alfonso VII had entrusted the Templars with

custody of Calatrava, the fortress at the gateway to Andaluc

ıa which he had con-

quered in 1147, but being unable to provide for its defence after his death they

had returned it to Sancho III. Raimundo’s confraternity followed the Cister-

cian rule but when in 1164 the friars of Calatrava were admitted to that order its

rigour was modiﬁed so that they could engage in military activity. The order of

Santiago, established by Fernando II of Le

on in 1170 to serve the same purpose,

Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris,bkii, ch. 87 (‘quia bona Christianis, utilis uisa est’).

‘Mercedem uite spondent cunctis ruriusque. / Argenti dona promittunt cumque corona/ Quicquid

habent Mauri rursus promittitur auri’: Prefatio de Almeria, lines 43–5.

‘Insuper autem talem dedit absolutionem et concessionem in suo regno sigillo scriptam et conﬁr-

matam, quod omnem terram uel castella, que ipsimet [sic] posset adquirere a Sarracenis in terra

Sarracenorum, iure hereditario prorsus essent sua, non solum sua uerum etiam ﬁliorum suorum et

ﬁliarum Suarum et tocius sue generationis’: ‘Historia Roderici’, c. 26.Cf. Smith (1983), pp. 57–8;

Los cartularios de Toledo,p.81; Linehan (1993), ch. 7.

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Spain in the twelfth century 497

differed to the extent that its rule allowed its knights, who were lay brothers, to

marry. As the Almohad danger increased, responsibility for the defence and re-

settlement of the vast area between the Tagus and the Sierra Morena was vested

in them. In Portugal the order of

Evora (later of Avis) was founded soon after

1166.InArag

on, however, the Templars and Hospitallers were dominant.

Sancho III’s premature death in August 1158 left Castile with a three-year-

old ruler, Alfonso VIII, and by the terms of Sancho’s will Gutierre Fern

andez

of Castro as his tutor until he reached the age of ﬁfteen. Gutierre’s tutorship

immediately provoked the opposition of the Lara family, who (1160–1)secured

custody of the child-king, occasioning the invasion of Castilian territory by

Sancho VI of Navarre and Alfonso’s uncle, Fernando II of Le

on. By 1162 Toledo,

which had successfully resisted the forces of Islam since 1085, was in Leonese

hands with Fernando Rodr

ıguez of Castro installed as governor. In August of

that year Ram

on Berenguer IV died, leaving as his heir another small Alfonso,

the four-year-old Alfonso II, and rendering the already precarious situation

of the peninsular Christians even more perilous. Its survival until 1170, when

to the inconvenience of two royal minorities was added that of Afonso of

Portugal’s broken leg, was certainly not due to the exertions of Fernando of

on. The m

ee at the gates of Badajoz in which Afonso I’s limb was crushed,

thereby preventing him from ever riding again, involved not the enemies of the

cross but his Leonese son-in-law who in order to protect his interests in that

region of the south-west now proceeded to make a treaty with the Almohad

caliph Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf (1163–84).

In September 1162 Fernando II, having assumed the title ‘king of Spain’

or ‘of the Spaniards’, had taken Alfonso of Arag

on under his protection and

in the following July all but succeeded in seizing the person of his nephew,

Alfonso of Castile. Meanwhile, Ibn Mardanish, who since 1159 had extended

his rule from the Valencia–Murcia area as far west as Ja

en, Ubeda and Baeza,

suffered defeat at the hands of the Almohad army outside Granada (1162),

and when the same fate again befell him at Murcia (Oct. 1165)the kings of

Arag

on and Navarre combined to oust him.

After 1166, while the Aragonese

were preoccupied with recovering the county of Provence, which in 1131 had

passed to Ram

on Berenguer III’s younger son, Berenguer Ram

on, Christian

achievements in the south-west were due to Geraldo sem Pavor (‘the Fearless’),

the Portuguese Cid, as he is regularly described on account of his having been

exiled by his king and ending his days in Almohad Seville, but whose feats of

derring-do at Trujillo,

Evora, C

aceres and Mont

anchez (1165–6) equally entitle

him to be remembered as the Portuguese Scarlet Pimpernel.

Lomax (1978), pp. 107–11.

Valdeavellano (1968), pp. 561–2.

Lacarra (1952).

Cabestany (1960), pp. 63–73; Lopes (1941), pp. 93–4.

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498 peter linehan

Either in 1169 or in the following year Alfonso VIII, now aged ﬁfteen, began

his effective reign, a rite of passage marked by two developments of great

signiﬁcance: an alliance of peace and friendship with Alfonso II of Arag

(Sahag

un, 1170), sealed in 1174 by the latter’s marriage to his aunt Sancha of

Castile and his own to Eleanor, daughter of Henry II of England. How he had

managed to survive his stormy minority is unclear: our knowledge of events

in Castile during these years is more than usually sketchy, with not a single

chronicle to enlighten us. However, it appears that the year 1166 marked a

turning-point and that a crucial part was played by the city of Toledo and its

archbishop John of Castellmorum (1152–66). At the synod of Segovia in March

‘all the bishops of the kingdom of King Alfonso’ under the archbishop’s pres-

idency invoked canonical penalties to ensure that those who held any honor

of the king within the kingdom did him homage as his vassals, and declared

those who did not to be under equal obligation to defend the kingdom from

attack. And in the autumn Toledo was again reconquered, this time from the

Leonese invader. As in 1085,animportant role was again played by the city’s

Mozarabs, this time under the leadership of their alguacil (chief of police),

Esteban Ill

an. On this occasion, however, they received their due reward. For

eighty years they had been excluded from high ofﬁce both civil and ecclesiasti-

cal. Now the French archbishop, whose pontiﬁcate witnessed the establishment

of the so-called Toledo school of translators in which Mozarabs were much in-

volved, lifted the embargo. By 1164 one of their number, Domingo Alpolich

en,

had been appointed urban archpriest of Toledo. And soon after, perhaps, the

policy of conciliation was furthered when Alfonso VIII uniﬁed Toledan law by

extending the Mozarabs’ distinctive fuero to all its citizens.

By whatever means, by the end of the 1160s Castilian morale had been

sufﬁciently restored to ensure that neither the arrival of the caliph Yusuf in the

south in 1171, nor even his alliance with both the king of Le

on and Fernando

Rodr

ıguez of Castro and the death of Ibn Mardanish and the surrender of his

kingdom to the Almohads in the following year, precipitated the catastrophe

that had seemed inevitable as recently as ﬁve years before. Though Yusuf’s

armies penetrated as far north as Talavera, forcing both Castile and Portugal

to make truces (1173), the failure of their siege of Huete in the previous year

had already testiﬁed to the strength of Castilian resolve and to the increasing

effectiveness of the military orders. In 1177, moreover, a year after the caliph’s

return to Tunisia, Alfonso VIII captured Cuenca. For this, the ﬁrst signiﬁcant

military achievement of his reign, Alfonso was greatly obliged to Alfonso of

Arag

on and in return for his assistance at the siege the latter was released

Linehan (1980), pp. 34–6;Hern

andez (1985), pp. 79–82;d’Alverny (1982), pp. 445–6;Garc

ıa Gallo

(1975), pp. 361–2, 438–45, 480; Linehan (1993), ch. 9.

Spain in the twelfth century 499

from the homage which the kings of Arag

on had owed for the kingdom of

Saragossa since 1136. The Castilian’s concession acknowledged new peninsular

realities. In the judgement of the Catalan historian Soldevila, however, it was

achieved at exorbitant cost. Scrupulous regard for feudal niceties had prejudiced

the interests of the Corona de Arag

on in an area in which it had legitimate

ambitions of its own. And the same verdict has been given of the treaty of

Cazola (March 1179) the terms of which reiterated those of Tudell

en, but with

two signiﬁcant variations. At Cazola Castile abandoned its claim to fealty in

respect of future conquests within Arag

on’s sphere of inﬂuence, and Aragon

ceded to Castile the kingdom of Murcia.

On the same occasion the two rulers

concluded a pact of alliance and friendship against all other rulers, Moorish

and Christian alike, ‘but most particularly against the king of Navarre’. Two

months later by the bull Manifestis probatum (23 May 1179) Alexander III

ratiﬁed Afonso of Portugal’s conquests, and recognized his royal title and the

rights of his successors.

These events gave formal effect to a severing of links with the past of which

the late 1170sprovided various other indications. One of these was the repudi-

ation of the Leonese ancestry of the king of Castile’s grandfather Alfonso VII,

and hence of his links with the rulers of Visigothic Spain, in favour of an alter-

native genealogy which traced his descent from Nu

no Rasura, the champion

of tenth-century Castilian independence from Le

on.

Another was the termi-

nology adopted by the Castilian chancery. After 1168,asroyal authority began

gradually to be reasserted, Alfonso VIII was regularly presented in majestic

terms. Throughout the 1170s the theme of regia maiestas, with its Romanist

connotations imitative of contemporary German usage, was dominant. After

1180,however, quite suddenly the tone changed. While in Aragon the royal

chancery ﬁnally abandoned the practice of dating documents by the regnal year

of the French kings, in Castile Christianity displaced majesty. After his capture

of Cuenca and the self-determination in different senses of the kingdoms of

Arag

on and Portugal, the ruler of Castile assumed the new role of champion

of christianitas, and on the gold maraved

ıs he issued from 1172 in replacement

of the interrupted supplies of Almoravid dinars, Alfonso VIII ﬁgured as ‘the

prince of the Catholics’.

Circumstances in the south of the peninsula and further aﬁeld conspired in

the king of Castile’s favour, providing him with a stage on which to act out this

Soldevila contrasts Catalonia’s high-minded, Christian, Hispanic idealism with the unscrupulous

nationalist realism of Castile which had never observed the terms of its own vassalge to Le

on.

The sacriﬁce of Aragonese rights in Murcia in exchange for the renunciation of a purely nominal

overlordship he describes as ‘disastrous’ (funesta): (1962), pp. 208–11.

Lacarra (1972), ii,pp.74–8;Feige (1978), pp. 300–12.

onica general de Espa

na,pp. liii–lv.

Linehan (1993), ch. 9.

500 peter linehan

exalted role. By 1182 he was able to attack C

ordoba and wreak havoc along the

coast from M

alaga to Algeciras. In July 1184 Yusuf died of a wound received

while besieging Santar

em. When in the following year death also removed

both Afonso I of Portugal and Fernando Rodr

ıguez of Castro, the latter’s

son Pedro Fern

andez surrendered to Alfonso the lordship centred on Trujillo

which his father had held of the caliph. Castile and the order of Santiago, which

Alfonso established there, were thus provided with both extensive territory at

the expense of Le

on and a strategically signiﬁcant bridgehead in the south-west

for attacks into Andaluc

ıa. Fernando II of Le

on’s removal from the scene in

January 1188 left the king of Castile as the peninsula’s senior ruler while in

the aftermath of the catastrophe suffered by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem

at Hattin Christian Europe was scouring the horizon for effective military

leaders. Two developments of these years conﬁrmed the extent of Alfonso’s

pre-eminence. One was his foundation in 1187 of a dynastic pantheon in the

‘capital of Castile’ such as the church of San Isidoro had provided in the previous

century: the Cistercian nunnery of Las Huelgas at Burgos where later he chose

to be buried, rather than with his father and grandfather at Toledo. The other

was the informal acknowledgement of his hegemony by the other peninsular

rulers implicit in the series of alliances against him into which they entered

culminating in the Pact of Huesca between Sancho I of Portugal, Alfonso IX

of Le

on and Alfonso of Arag

on (May 1191), with which Sancho of Navarre

associated himself two months later.

The late 1180swere also notable for a series of supposedly new departures

which in the modern period have been adjudged constitutionally signiﬁcant.

In his old age Fernando II of Le

on had married his long-time mistress Urraca

opez of Haro, a lady to whom he had paid tribute in 1183 for the good service

which she had done him ‘with her body, her castles and her men’.

Fernando’s

successor, Alfonso IX the child of his father’s earlier uncanonical union with

Urraca of Portugal, therefore had a scheming stepmother to contend with

on his accession. The uncertainty of the seventeen-year-old’s situation in the

ﬁrst summer of his reign accounts for two events of July 1188 which were to

determine the course of the rest of it. At the curia of Carri

on sometime between

the 4th and the 28th of that month, the European ascendancy which Alfonso

VIII now enjoyed was manifested by his knighting of Conrad of Hohenstaufen,

the son of Frederick Barbarossa, and the giving to him in marriage of the eight-

year-old heiress of Castile, Berenguela. On the same occasion, a few days earlier,

the king of Le

on was also knighted and kissed the hand of his Castilian cousin in

token of vassalage.

As time passed the indignity which this act of submission

represented bore ever deeper on Alfonso IX. His alliance with the Almohads

Gonz

alez (1944), i,p.35.

Rassow (1950); Procter (1980), p. 75;Mart

ınez D

ıez (1988), p. 142.