1 - LEÓN AND CASTILE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Summary

On 1 July 1109, Alfonso VI of León and Castile, ‘emperor of all Spain’, passed away in Toledo. The previous week, water had miraculously begun to flow from the stones which lay in front of the altar of the church of San Isidoro in the city of León. According to Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, who claimed to have seen it with his own eyes, the marvel that took place that week in León was not simply a portent of the imminent demise of the great Leonese monarch, but of ‘the sorrows and tribulations that befell Spain after the death of the aforesaid king. That is why the stones wept and the water flowed forth.’ Bishop Pelayo, like many others of his generation, had good reason to hark back to the reign of Alfonso VI (1065–1109) as a golden age. Viewed from the turbulent times of his daughter Queen Urraca (1109–26), the period was remembered as one of material prosperity, boundless enterprise and large-scale territorial expansion. It was the time when León and Castile had ‘opened up’ to the rest of Europe and a throng of foreign (though mostly French) pilgrims, clerics, merchants and knights, impelled by piety in many cases and by the prospect of self-enrichment in countless others, had made their way across the Pyrenees in ever increasing numbers.