The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

We have seen at another point in this history that during the eleventh century the Spanish Arabs fell into complete dissolution; the Christian states, on the other hand, grew into closer and closer union by means of frequent intermarriages and increased trade relations. This process of unification and internal adjustment, as well as the necessity of closing all the gaps left open by the sword of Al-Mansur, held in check the holy war for a period of nearly a century. At the end of that time it was resumed with greater brilliancy and success than before.

Not alone by reason of the fortunate alliances he was able to make did Sancho II merit the title of Great; greatness was to be achieved in Spain mainly by warring upon infidels, and many were the engagements during which the Moors were made to feel the might of his sword. Not content to rest here, he carried his victorious arms, in the intervals of preparing the substitution of the Christian dynasty of Aznar for that of Pelayo, into the heart of the Moslem country to the very walls of Cordova.

[1072-1146 A.D.]

At Sancho’s death Spain was divided into four kingdoms. But Alfonso VI reunited Castile and Leon in 1072, and resumed in Spain the holy war which had been made extremely popular in Europe by the preparations for the First Crusade. The news of the Christian reverses in Jerusalem, and also the growing influence of the holy see, had a powerful effect on Spain. It was the desire of Gregory VII to bring under his domination the Spanish Christian states which had hitherto enjoyed complete religious independence, and in case of their failure to yield it was feared that some day he would arm all Christianity against them.

Always characterised by boundless presumption, Gregory VII demanded of Alfonso VI that he pay him tribute, on the pretext that all lands taken from the infidels were by right the property of the church. Alfonso refused. Then Gregory fell back on another point, the adoption by the Spanish Christians of the Roman instead of the Gothic or Muzarabic ritual to which they had been used. Eventually Alfonso adopted the Roman ritual. Henceforth complete communion was held with Rome by the Spanish people which eventually became the most pronouncedly Catholic, if not always the most submissive to the holy see, of all the races of the earth.

Ferdinand I had profited by the divisions existing among the petty Arab sovereigns to wrest from them many of their possessions. He took Viseu, Lamego, Coimbra, and made the king of Toledo pay him tribute. In 1085 Alfonso VI was even more successful, gaining possession of the entire kingdom. Toledo, formerly the capital and metropolis of the Goths, became once more an important centre; and its restoration marks the fourth stage of the progress of the Christians from the Asturias, where they began their onward march, to the heart of the peninsula, where they were to take up a firm position behind the barrier of the Tagus.

Five years later the Capetian, Henri de Bourgogne, great-grandson of Robert king of France, who had distinguished himself at the conquest of Toledo, took at the mouth of the Douro, Porto Cale, which Alfonso raised to importance by making it the countship of Portugal. Simultaneously with this the famous Cid, Rodrigo de Bivar, the hero of Spanish chivalry and romance, achieved victory after victory along the coast of the Mediterranean, the most important of which was the conquest of Valencia (1094). Finally in 1118 Alfonso I, king of Aragon, won for himself a capital after the manner of the king of Castile, by taking possession of Saragossa, where a Moslem dynasty had long been in power. Thus the Christian invasion, divided like an army into three columns, was steadily advancing across the peninsula, one column in the centre, one in the east and one in the west.

In the centre progress was suddenly arrested, and was later checked along all the lines by unforeseen obstacles which the Christians were unable to surmount until after the lapse of nearly a century. Two new Moslem hordes poured in upon the land, surprising the Spanish conquerors in the midst of their belief that the sources of these invading tides had long since been exhausted. The Almoravids, and after them the Almohads, swarmed out of Africa and revived in the Moslem provinces of Spain the ancient faith of Islam. The names of these two sects signify, respectively, “close alliance with the faith,” and “Unitarians.” The Almoravids steadily increased their power and the extent of their dominion. At the death of the Cid (1099) they retook Valencia, gained possession of the Balearic Isles, and in 1108 won, in a battle as sanguinary and hard-fought as that of Zallaka, a signal victory over Alfonso VI. The Christians asked themselves in alarm if Spain, but half reconquered, was about to be wrested from them again.