Kingdom of Le贸n
Kingdom of Le贸n coat of arms| | | Spanish (Christian) kingdoms c.925鈥"929; note that Castile at that time was still a Le贸nese county rather than an independent kingdom |
| | | | Kingdom of Leon, year 1030 | | "Reino de Castilla a帽o 1210" |
| | Kingdom of Leon, year 1210 | |
The city of
Le贸n was founded by the
Roman Seventh
Legion (for unknown reasons always written as
Legio Septima Gemina ("twin seventh legion"). It was the headquarters of that legion in the
late empire and was a center for trade in
gold which was mined at Las M茅dulas nearby. In
540, the city was conquered by the
Arian Visigothic king
Liuvigild, who did not harass the already well-established Catholic Christian population. In
717 Le贸n fell again, this time to the
Moors. However, Le贸n was one of the first cities retaken during the reconquest and became part of the
Kingdom of Asturias in
742. It was a small town, but the surviving Roman walls bear the medieval walling upon them.
In
913, an independent
Kingdom of Le贸n was founded when the Christian princes of
Asturias along the
northern coast of the peninsula shifted their main seat from
Oviedo to the city of Le贸n. In doing so, they turned their backs on the unnavigable
Atlantic Ocean, infested with
Vikings at the time, and settled in the
meseta, the high tableland of central
Spain, an historic shift.
Almost immediately, Le贸n began to expand to the south and east, securing the newly gained territory with numerous castles. The newly added area was the County of
Burgos until the 930s, at which time count
Fernan Gonzalez of
Castile began a campaign to expand Burgos and make it independent and hereditary. He took upon himself the title King of Castile, after the numerous castles in the area, and continued expanding his kingdom at the expense of Le贸n by allying with the
Caliphate of Cordoba, until
966, when he was stopped by
Sancho.
Constant rivalry between the two kingdoms opened rifts that could be exploited by outsiders, and
Sancho III "the Great" of Navarre (1004鈥"1035) absorbed Castile in the 1020s, and added Le贸n in the last year of his life, leaving
Galicia to temporary independence. In the division of lands which followed his death, his son Fernando succeeded to the county of Castile. Two years later, in
1037, he conquered Le贸n and Galicia. For nearly thirty years, until his death in
1065, he ruled over a combined kingdom of Le贸n-Castile as
Ferdinand I of Le贸n. In these clashes in an impoverished and isolated culture, where
salt-making and a blacksmith's forge counted as industries, the armies that decided the fate of the kingdoms numbered in the hundreds of fighting men.
Directly to the south of Le贸n lay the incalculably rich, sophisticated and powerful Caliphate of Cordoba, like a Western
Byzantium. Internal dissensions divided
Andalusian loyalties in the
11th century, so that the impoverished Christians who had been sending tribute to the Caliphate, found themselves in a position to demand payments (
parias) instead, in return for favours to particular factions or as simple
extortion.
Thus, though scarcely influenced by the culture of the successor territories of the former Caliphate, Ferdinand I followed the example of the counts of
Barcelona and the kings of
Aragon, and he became hugely wealthy from its gold coinage. When he died in 1065, his territories and the
parias were split among his three sons, of whom Garcia emerged the victor, in the classic fratricidal strife common to feudal successions.
Few in Europe would have known of this immense new wealth in a kingdom so isolated that its bishops had virtually no contact with Rome, except that Ferdinand and his heirs (the kings of Le贸n-Castile) became the greatest benefactors of the
Abbey of Cluny, where Abbot Hugh (died 1109) undertook construction of the huge third abbey church, the
cynosure of every eye. The
Way of Saint James called pilgrims from Western Europe to the supposed tomb of
Saint James the Great in
Santiago de Compostela, and the large hostels and churches along the route, encouraged building in the
Romanesque style.
The taking of
Toledo (
May 6,
1085) by
Alfonso VI was a turning point in the development of Le贸n-Castile and the first major milestone in the
Reconquista. Christian
Mozarabs from
Al-Andalus had come north to populate the deserted
frontier lands, and the traditional view of Spanish history has been that they brought with them the remains of Visigothic and Classical culture, and a new ideology of
Reconquista, a
crusade against the Moors. Modern historians see the fall of Toledo as marking a basic change in relations with the Moorish south, turning from extortion of annual tribute to territorial expansion. Alfonso was drawn into local politics by strife within Toledo. He then found himself faced with the unfamiliar problems of settling garrisons in the small Muslim strongholds dependent on Toledo (which had fallen to him with the city) and the appointment of a Catholic
bishop. Revised definitions of the role of a Catholic king faced with the
independent Muslim client-states that bought him off with gold had to be resolved in timely fashion by a Catholic king now governing sophisticated urban Muslim subjects.
The two kingdoms of Le贸n and Castile were split again around 1195, when a major defeat of
Alfonso VIII weakened the authority of Castile, but the lands were reunited in 1230 under
Ferdinand III. The Atlantic coastal province separated as the independent
Kingdom of Portugal.
Though later kings of Castile continued to take the title King of Le贸n as the superior title, and to use a
lion as part of their
standard, power in fact became centralized in Castile, as exemplified by the
Astur-Le贸nese language's replacement by Castilian.
In the 16th century, Le贸n became a captaincy-general under a formally unified Spanish kingdom. The modern
province of Le贸n was founded in 1833. The former lands of Le贸n are now part of the
autonomous communities of
Castilla-Le贸n,
Extremadura,
Asturias and of the
Portuguese state.
*
List of Leonese monarchs*
Kingdom of Galicia*
History of Portugal*
R.A. Fletcher, The Episcopate in the Kingdom of Le贸n in the Twelfth Century: Chapter 1 gives the cultural context of earlier and
12th century Le贸n.
