Christianity and the Unification of Iberia During the Reconquista

In contemporary Western societies, who are going through a neo-romantic stage, the Crusades have led to an immense literature and a remarkable popularity. In the scientific field, this phenomenon has encouraged the debate on the ideological and cultural issues surrounding Crusade. Since that in the Iberian Peninsula had developed fights between Muslims and Christians before 1096, it is inevitable that historians have wondered about the influence of the reconquest in the origins of the crusading movement. In this paper, we critized the widespread view among Anglo-Saxon historians, according to which secular piety and spirituality were instrumental in the development of the First Crusade, and struggles carried out in the Iberian Peninsula did not influence in the extraordinary adhesion of the European nobles to this issue. In addition, other concepts that may help to explain the intensity of the response, such as " aristocratic networks, " and at the same time help to understand the weight of the Hispanic experience in this movement.

From Alarcos to Las Navas: The Church’s Policy of Christian Unity in Iberia Between Two Battles, 2024

The Christians of Iberia, in their pursuit of reclaiming the lands they regarded as the legacy of Rome, the Visigoths, and Christianity itself, initiated a process that would later come to be known as the Reconquista. With the advent of the Crusades, the Church increasingly became a central actor in this endeavor. In the ecclesiastical view, Iberia constituted another front of the Crusading movement-one geographically closer to Catholic Europe than Jerusalem. Conscious of this proximity, the Church exerted considerable effort to preserve the integrity of the conflict within the peninsula and to mobilize Christian masses against the Muslim forces. However, the machinery that sustained this struggle often faltered due to the political rivalries among the Christian kings of Iberia. Internal conflicts emerged as principal impediments to the overarching policy of expelling the Muslims from the region. In response, the Church intensified its interventions in the peninsula's political affairs to ensure internal stability. Following the Castilian defeat at the Battle of Alarcos in 1195, the Kingdom of Castile found itself threatened not only by Muslim forces but also by its Christian neighbors, the kingdoms of León and Navarre. For the Church, which sought to subjugate Muslim power and, if possible, drive it beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, it was intolerable that a Christian monarch engaged in a sacred struggle should be attacked by a fellow Christian ruler. Moreover, these "treacherous" kings did not hesitate to forge alliances with Muslim powers.

2023

Famed in recent years for its ethnic diversity, Medieval Iberia; a territory in Southwest Europe, now consisting of Spain and Portugal, bore a multi-cultural landscape of differing religious populations living alongside each other in a state of Convivencia. The Iberian peninsula housed two of the greatest religious powerhouses of the Middle Ages: Latin Christendom and the Muslim Caliphate. The term “Convivencia”, initially coined by Spanish philologist Americo Castro, is essentially defined as the ‘coexistence’ of Muslims, Christians and Jews of Iberia from the 8th century until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492; a form of “medieval multiculturalism” if you will. With this in mind, this paper seeks to investigate changing ideas regarding Christian identity with a view to interfaith relations in Christian sources from the 9th and 13th centuries. It is arguable that regardless of status, being either subject or sovereign, the Christian identity always managed to be victorious in terms of piety and commitment to one’s faith.

Two Kingdoms of the Reconquista: A comparative study of the fall of Valencia (1238) and Granada (1492) and their shift from Muslim to Christian orientation, 2023

The history that emerges from the Reconquista is something of a marvel when one considers the significance of these crusades and their impact on the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. Taking into consideration the size of the Iberian Peninsula, as a region, the entanglement of these two similar, but still different religious cultures, shows how complex a scenario of holy war really was. While the thought of holy war, be it a crusade or a jihād, shifts one’s thoughts to the Near East, in particular the Holy Land, the scale and significance of the 800 year-long reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula must not be overlooked. The mixed culture that developed in Iberia after the Islamic conquests of the early 8th century are a unique case in the medieval European sphere of influence. No other mainland European region, with perhaps the acceptation of the island of Sicily, has gone through such a radical cultural change, Christian-to-Islamic-to-Christian, in such a relatively short period of time. Therefore, the rise and fall of al-Andalus as a region of mixed Christian and Islamic culture is an important scenario when one considers the geographical position of Iberia with the rest of Christian Europe. With this in mind, this dissertation attempts to tackle two main goals, one on a region-wide level and the other on a more local level. The first goal is to understand and highlight how treaties between the major political players of the Reconquista affected the regions of Valencia and Granada on a large region-wide scale. Further, this section of the study takes into consideration how the eventual implementation of these various treaties, which ranged throughout the 800 years of the Reconquista, affected the many religious groups of both Valencia and Granada. This importantly notes any changes to both regions economies and takes into consideration any resulting migrations away from these regions. The second goal, takes the region-wide outcomes and analyses these factors on a smaller local scale. This is achieved by looking at the archaeology, architecture, population movements within the local scenario and, most importantly, the Christianization process that took shape in these regions after the various Christian conquests by the northern Iberian kingdoms from the late 10th and 11th centuries till the fall of Granada in 1492. However, these two goals could not be achieved without first tackling the standard terminology used in such a study, and secondly, an in-depth historical background of the major political players that played a role in the history of the Reconquista. Therefore, Chapter 1 of this dissertation highlights the necessary terminology for this type of research, such as the communities referred to as the Mudejars and the Dhimmi. While Chapter 2 gives an in-detail historical analysis of the Kingdoms of Aragon, Catalonia, Castile-León, the Umayyad, Almoravids and Almohads Caliphates, a general overview of the taifas and an in-depth historical analysis of Granada and Valencia. This historical overview ranges from their founding during the Roman period to the end of their respective conquests during the 12th and 15th centuries. From Chapter 3 onwards, the focus then shifts to the factors mentioned above in Valencia and Granada, with Chapter 3 tackling the treaties, alliances and warfare on the regional level and Chapter 4 tackling these outcomes on the local level. This is done through the use of the surviving archaeology on the rural and urban landscapes, while also considering the material culture from a historian’s perspective in reference to the historical literature. The eventual outcomes are then considered and compared, in relation to Valencia and Granada, within Chapter 5. Therefore, this dissertation will tackle the cultural, religious, economic and warfare factors of the Reconquista by comparing and contrasting the regions and cities of Valencia and Granada. Importantly, these main factors will be viewed on both the region-wide level and on the local level, which is further sub-divided into the rural and urban landscapes.

The Historians Magazine Website, 2023

As part of my undergraduate degree at the University of Malta I was required to write a dissertation. Being passionate about the medieval period and crusading I wanted to work on these principles. My Supervisor, Mr Charles Dalli, suggested working on a comparative study of two major cities/regions in the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista and, thus, ‘The Two Kingdoms of the Reconquista’ was born in the summer of 2021. After extensive secondary research of works by authors, such as, R. Burns and J. Hillgarth, Valencia and Granada were chosen as candidates. Granada was the perfect candidate for this kind of study, for, among other reasons, that it was the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia. This fact gave a perfect starting point for the cultural shift from Islamic to Christian culture to take place in a relatively short period of time (1238-1492). However, why choose Valencia over other regions, such as Toledo, Seville and Cordoba? The crusade against Valencia had the largest effect on the future expansion of the Aragonese Empire, and after its capture, the Christianisation process took time to take hold over the Islamic presence there, both in the regional and urban contexts. Therefore, Valencia was the perfect candidate to undertake a comparative study against Granada, which went through the process much faster and affected the future expansion of Castile-León. Therefore, the dissertation covered these points, noting how certain treaties and alliances affected the way the Christian Kingdoms dealt with the Islamic Taifas after their capture, how they affected the rate at which the Christianisation process unfolded and how this Christianisation process can be seen through the archaeological record today. It is through these factors that the eventual cultural shift can be seen and how two regions, which are relatively close together, evolved so differently from each other.