The Episcopate and Reconquest in Thetimes of Alfonso Vii of Castile
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chapter 7 The Episcopate and Reconquest in the Times of Alfonso vii of Castile and León Carlos de Ayala Martínez Bishops and the Reception of the Crusade Idea in the Kingdoms of León and Castile If there is any specific theme that would allow us to place the rule of Alfonso vii (1126–1157) in a proper political and ideological context, it is the idea of crusade. When this monarch ascended to the throne in 1126, it had been only three years since the moment when the First Council of the Lateran had sanctified the crusade movement and granted those who would participate in it spiritual protection and absolution.1 And when, roughly thirty years later in 1157, the king was dying while returning from an unsuccessful campaign in Andalusia, it had been only nine years since Christendom had experienced the bitter taste of defeat during the Second Crusade, which humiliated St Bernard and his teachings.2 The Iberian Peninsula and more specifically the lands of León and Castile ruled by Alfonso vii were by no means separated from this intensified ful- filment of the crusade idea, in which Christian Europe was involved in the quarter-century between the First Lateran Council in 1123 and the failed at- tempt at conquering Damascus in 1148. First of all, Calixtus ii’s general council did not ignore the Iberian Peninsula. The tenth canon, concerning the cru- sade, made iter hierosolimitanum and iter hispanicum clearly equal as a pair 1 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, et al., 3d ed. (Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, 1973), 191–192. 2 The key element in St Bernard’s teachings between 1146 and 1147 was the idea to strengthen Christianity in, then withdraw from, the Holy Land. However, at the beginning of 1147, along- side the great crusade which was aimed at the Holy Land, St Bernard declared absolution—an identical indulgence to the one for those who accepted the cross in order to go to Jerusalem— for those who would join the fight against the “enemies of Christ’s cross, who live beyond the Elbe River.” This was the famous Bernard’s crusade against the Polabian Slavs (the Wends): Obras completas de San Bernardo, 8 vols. (Madrid: La Editorial Católica, 1983–1993), 7:1216– 1219, ep. 457. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004353626_009 208 de ayala martínez of statutes giving the same type of rights, privileges, and assumed benefits for crusaders. What is more, Pope Calixtus ii as the result of the general council appealed to the whole Christian world to join the Spanish war and promised the same absolution “quam orientalis ecclesie defensoribus fecimus.”3 However, if the First Lateran Council did have the Spanish situation in mind, the Second Crusade fulfilled one of its desiderata. This was confirmed by Pope Eugene iii when in his bull Divinadispositione from April 1147, issued to support the fight against the Slavs in accordance with the pattern of a general call to crusade, he mentioned the concepts which Alfonso vii used against the Saracens.4 And to demonstrate the emperor’s involvement in the crusade, he did not hesitate to present him with a golden rose one year later, which the pope would use to publicly thank people who by their actions showed extraordinary dedication in defending Christianity.5 During Alfonso vii’s reign the intensive exchange of knowledge and experi- ence connected with the crusade surely did not stop, and it is indisputable that the king counted on the invaluable cooperation of his bishops, “the eyes of the Church” as they were once called by St Bernard.6 Without a doubt these eyes were clearly looking at the impulse to start the crusade, which Pope Calixtus ii wanted his pontificate to be identified with and which was later clearly present in St Bernard’s enthusiastic and militant teachings. Two bishops, the monarch’s most loyal subjects, were especially responsible for the implantation of the new ideas in the royal court. We are referring here primarily to Peter of Agen (a man belonging to the group of French clergy recruited by the archbishop of Toledo, Bernard of Sédi- rac, at the end of the eleventh century), who was a cathedral canon in Toledo, an archdeacon in Segovia, and from 1119 the first bishop of this renewed diocese. He was a man close to the court, well liked by Queen Urraca, who most likely entrusted him with the education of her daughter, the infante Sancha; and 3 La documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio iii (965–1216), ed. Demetrio Mansilla (Rome: Instituto Español de Estudios Eclesiásticos, 1955), 79–80, no. 62. 4 “Rex quoque Hispaniarum contra Sarracenos de partibus illis potenter armatur, de quibus iam per Dei gratiam saepius triunphavit”: Eugene iii, Epistolae et privilegia, ed. Jacques- Paul Migne, pl 180 (Paris: Apud J.-P. Migne Editorem, 1855), 1203–1204, ep. 166. See Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, pa: University of Penn- sylvania Press, 2002), 45. 5 LadocumentaciónpontificiahastaInocencioiii, ed. Mansilla, 94–96, no. 78. On the meaning of this Lenten symbol compare Giuseppe Sacchi Lodispoto, “La rosa d’oro,” StrennadeiRomanisti 45 (1984): 467–483. 6 Obras completas de San Bernardo, 8:340–341..