Alfonso X of Castile

“ After a long reign which succeeding generations have ever borne in mind as a period of glory, justice, and general prosperity, Alfonso VI died in 1109 of a broken heart at the defeat of Ucles and the loss of his only son. His daughter Urraca, queen of Leon and Castile, who governed the country during her son’s minority, espoused Alfonso I, king of Aragon, as her second husband. But instead of strengthening the unity and power of Christian Spain, this alliance led to furious civil wars which served to strengthen and prolong Moslem dominion. ”

“ Alfonso VII lived to see the hardly won town of Almeria again wrested from Castile. On his return from a military expedition he died in the pass of Muradal, a prince endowed with strength, intelligence, and the love of justice, full of zeal for the Christian faith and generous to churches and cloisters. With him the series of “emperors of Spain” comes to an end (1157) .
With the death of Alfonso VII of Castile, and that of Raymond of Aragon and Catalonia, which followed five years later, the Christian kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula again entered on evil times. ”

“ He engaged in a number of campaigns against the Moslems, and made some minor conquests, but these wars were of slight consequence except as they bore on his struggles with the nobles. The same thing may be said for Alfonso’s European policy, which aimed not only at the aggrandizement of Castile but also at his acquisition of the title of Holy Roman Emperor. The kings of Castile had long claimed the throne of Navarre, and Alfonso now attempted to invade that realm, but desisted when it seemed that this might lead to complications with Jaime I of Aragon. ”

“ Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional rights of their subjects. They well knew, that the spirit of liberty was too high among them to endure it. When the queen of Alfonso the Fourth urged her husband, by quoting the example of her brother the king of Castile, to punish certain refractory citizens of Valencia, he prudently replied, "My people are free, and not so submissive as the Castilians. They respect me as their prince, and I hold them for good vassals and comrades." ”

“ But the reign of Alfonso V was above all disastrous upon this point, as we have said; it was the best time for the nobles and holders of grants. To remunerate the nobles who fought at his side, the luckless pretender to the throne of Castile considered nothing too much—titles, favours, grants, salaries, pensions, allowances, marriage dowries, education of the children of nobles, gratifications for ordinary and extraordinary services, real or pretended ”

“ Alfonso IV, surnamed the Brave, had scarcely grasped the reins of sovereignty, when he exhibited, in a manner little becoming royalty, his vindictive feelings towards his illegitimate brother, Alfonso Henriques, who, to escape his wrath, had just fled into Castile. Having collected some troops, and been joined by a prince of Castile, he entered Portugal, laid waste the frontiers, and put to the sword every living being that fell in his way. ”

“ In his last will, Alfonso named his two daughters—for the kingdom had long ceased to be elective—joint heiresses of his states. Fortunately for Spain, the majority of the Leonnese took a sounder view of their interests than Alfonso. Nobles, clergy, and people were too numerous in favour of the king of Castile, to leave those princesses the remotest chance of success. No sooner did that prince hear how powerful a party supported his just pretensions, than he hastened from Andalusia into Leon. ”

“ The next following reigns had their share of internal strife and one important event in the course of the Moslem wars,—the defence of Calatrava in 1158 by two Cistercian monks, who procured an army by proclaiming a crusade. Out of this event there came the founding in 1164 of the important military order of Calatrava. Alfonso VIII (1158-1214) inherited the throne of Castile while still a child. War and disorder followed until 1180, for the kings of León and Navarre and various nobles endeavored as usual to profit for themselves at the expense of the newly enthroned monarch. ”

“ When he ascended the throne the war with the Moors had been reduced to operations of minor importance and they recognized the Castillian monarch as their master. But here as elsewhere history repeats itself. Each Christian king on the peninsula was dominated by the desire to extend his territories; and, since there was no longer the necessity of standing together against the common foe, a series of petty quarrels soon arose followed by attempted conquests. As time went on, not only Alfonso’s own nobles, but his brothers and even his own son became involved against their king. ”

“ Henceforward history follows the fortunes of the two kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which rose upon its ruins. Side by side with them Catalonia flourished in the east, blest with culture and prosperity, but exercising no particular influence on the course of events; and towards the end of the century some knightly adventurers laid the foundation of the kingdom of Portugal in the west, the northern part of which Alfonso conferred first on his son-in-law, Raymond of Burgundy, and then on Count Henry, the husband of his natural daughter Theresa, as a fief of the kingdom of Castile. ”

“ I have always considered Don Alfonso an honourable [Pg 370] man, and Castile by right belongs to him; but as connivance in the death of Don Sancho can be attributed to no one with greater probability than to him, I am of opinion that the Castilian people should demand an oath from him that he had no part whatever in the treacherous crime of Bellido Dolfos. Castile is held in the highest honour, and for that very reason it has a right to know if he is an honourable man, whom it proclaims its lord and king. ”

“ In Aragon, indeed, the nobles did extort a promise from the king that they should not be put to death or deprived of their estates by his mere decision. In Castile they never went beyond begging or extorting grants of the crown lands, or pensions charged on the royal revenue. Alphonso X. ended his life in a civil war with his son Sancho, who claimed the succession in preference to the children of his elder brother, Fernando de la Cerda, and in virtue of a doctrine of which much was heard in the middle ages elsewhere than in Spain. ”

“ Two more counts of the same name continued the dynasty of Ansúrez till the year 1208; but of these the town saw little, for as Counts of Urgel they were vassals of Aragon, and spent most of their time in that kingdom. The last count left half of his Castilian dominions to the Pope, the other half to his daughter Aurembiax, who was believed to be the mistress of the King of Aragon. Alfonso VIII. of Castile can hardly, therefore, be blamed for setting aside a disposition which handed over the principal town in his kingdom to two foreign potentates. ”

“ The second known author in Castilian literature bears a name much more distinguished than the first. It is Alfonso the Tenth, who, from his great advancement in various branches of human knowledge, has been called Alfonso the Wise, or the Learned. He was the son of Ferdinand the Third, a saint in the Roman calendar, who, uniting anew the crowns of Castile and Leon, and enlarging the limits of his power by important conquests from the Moors, settled more firmly than they had before been settled the foundations of a Christian empire in the Peninsula. ”

“ At first the king intended to oppose the infante; but seeing how generally the deputies owned him,—how all classes, nobles and citizens, prelates and peasants, joined his brother,—he retreated into Spain, to solicit the support of his cousin, Ferdinand III. As that saintly monarch was too busy in the Andalusian wars to assist the fugitive king in person, he recommended the interests of his guest to his son Alfonso. The Castilian infante showed no want of zeal in behalf of his relative. He collected a considerable army, and invaded Portugal. ”

“ Alfonso the Tenth was then reigning in Castile; a prince, to whom, to render his glory complete, fortune ought to have given better sons, and vassals less ferocious. Posterity has given him the surname of The Wise; and beyond all doubt it was merited by the extraordinary man, who in an age of darkness could unite in himself the paternal and beneficent regards of the legislator, the profound combinations of the mathematician and astronomer, the talent and knowledge of the historian, and the laurels of the poet. ”

“ To King Alfonso of Castile those tidings shall they take.
CXXXIII.
"Where art thou, Muño Gustióz, vassal of fair report
In a good time I cherished and reared thee in my court.
To King Alfonso in Castile these tidings do thou take.
His hands with heart and spirit do thou kiss them for my sake--
I am known for his vassal, he for my lord is known--
At the dishonor done me by the heirs of Carrión
Shall the good King be troubled in his soul and in his heart.
He gave to wed my daughters, therein I had no part. ”

“ Alfonso VIII., King of Castille, succeeded to his throne in troublous times. His native country was overrun and subjugated by a people alien in nationality and religion, and his own particular dominions were a prey to civil dissensions, which had gathered strength during his minority. The Pope, Innocent III., seeing how he was beset, had called on other Christian nations to assist him in resisting the encroachments of the Moors ”

“ From time to time the king’s jealousy broke out afresh, and more than once Don Rodrigo was banished, but in the end the Cid always returned to Castile, for in truth, as we have said, the land prospered but little in his absence. After conquering the Moors in Valencia and elsewhere, his fame and wealth grew greater than ever, and two of the proudest nobles in Castile, the counts of Carrion, prayed Alfonso to use his rights as liege lord, and to grant them the Cid’s daughters in marriage. ”

“ The sudden death of Ferdinand IV., which took place during an expedition into the province of Jaen, left the destinies of the Castilian monarchy in the hands of an infant of thirteen months, who afterwards became king under the name of Alfonso XI., offered new temptations to rival aspirants to the regency, removed the salutary restraints of law, and abandoned whole districts to anarchy. Civil war raged between the numerous factions into which the nobility was divided—the weaker being often exterminated and their possessions confiscated by the victors ”

“ Civilisation and morals declined, and vice and crime throve to such an extent as to bring the Castilian people everywhere into contempt. From the court itself all sentiment of honour and justice had disappeared. The king neglected his Portuguese wife in the most insulting manner, and treated his mistress, Leonora de Guzman, as queen. Garcilasso de la Vega, Alfonso’s favourite, made himself notorious by perfidy, trickery, and murder till he and his son were slain by the indignant nobles ”

“ On the throne of Castile, or within its shadow, we have seen a succession of such poets and prose-writers as Alfonso the Wise, Sancho, his son, Don John Manuel, his nephew, and the Chancellor Ayala, to say nothing of Saint Ferdinand, who preceded them all, and who, perhaps, gave the first decisive impulse to letters in the centre of Spain and at the North. ”

“ As his children were not of age and the Navarrese refused to acknowledge the fratricide as their sovereign, the two kings Alfonso VI of Castile and Sancho Ramirez of Aragon marched into the neighbour kingdom, put Raymond to flight and divided the country between them; the country as far as the Ebro being united to Aragon, and Rioja, with Najera and Calahorra and the Basque provinces of Alava, Guipuzcoa, and Biscay falling to the share of Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon. ”

“ The queen, Leonora of Castile, at whose instigation the alienation had been made, cherished a deep resentment against her stepson. Pedro despised her anger; and, to incense her the more, seized on Jativa, which had been assigned to her on her marriage with his father, and loudly proclaimed his intention of revoking every grant made by the king, whenever he should succeed to the sovereignty. It was not in Alfonso’s power to stifle these dissensions, which not only imbittered his peace but aggravated the hydropsical disease under which he had long suffered. He died at Barcelona, in 1336. ”

“ Almost equally renowned was Jayme I, [75] the King of Aragon, who took the Balearic Isles from the Moors in 1229, Valencia in 1237, the province of Murcia in 1266, and who, before he died in 1276, had gained thirty pitched battles with the enemy, and had founded, some say, more than two thousand Christian churches. But he has the credit of having introduced into Spain the terrible Inquisition (in 1232) , and that goes far toward counterbalancing his meritorious work for the freedom of his country.
Alfonso X, called “the Wise,” because he was more a scholar than soldier, succeeded St. ”

“ By the irony, or perhaps the eternal justice of fate, all the chicanery of Ferdinand, all the wisdom, the labours, and the fervour of Isabella brought disaster, ruin, and death to Spain. A thousand times happier would it have been for Castile to have remained isolated in its corner of Europe, untroubled with the complications of vast European connections, rather than to have been dragged by Aragon into a position of responsibility and world-wide ambition for which neither its native resources nor the extent nor character of its population befitted it. ”