Acclaimed historians Bernard F. Reilly and Simon R. Doubleday tell the story of the reign of Queen Sancha and King Fernando I, who together ruled the territories of León and Galicia between 1038 and 1065—often regarded as a period in which Christian kings and their vassals asserted themselves more successfully in the face of external rivals, both Viking and Muslim. The reality was more complex. The Iberian Peninsula remained a space of multiple, intertwined forms of power and surprisingly nuanced relationships between—and among—the diverse configurations of Christian and Muslim authority. Some of these complexities would be obscured by later generations of medieval chroniclers, whose narratives focused on the singular authority of the king and expressed a more binary view of interreligious relations. Through their account of the key events and turning points of Sancha and Fernando’s reign, Reilly and Doubleday propose a revised understanding of its political culture, offering a corrective to accounts that have emphasized a stark opposition between Christian and Muslim powers, a supposedly steady growth and centralization of royal government, and the individual figure of the monarch. Exploring the interplay of crown and elites, underscoring the role of royal women, and rejecting the Reconquista paradigm, León and Galicia Under Queen Sancha and King Fernando I reenvisions medieval Iberia at a pivotal stage in European history.

The vast majority of studies on rulership in medieval Europe focus on one kingdom; one type of rule; or one type of ruler. This volume attempts to break that mold and demonstrate the breadth of medieval Europe and the various kinds of rulership within it. How Medieval Europe was Ruled aims to demonstrate the multiplicity of types of rulers and polities that existed in medieval Europe. The contributors discuss not just kings or queens, but countesses, dukes, and town leadership. We see that rulers worked collaboratively with one another both across political boundaries and within their own borders in ways that are not evident in most current studies of kingship, inhibited by too narrow a focus. The volume also covers the breadth of medieval Europe from Scandinavia in the north to the Italian peninsula in the south, Iberia and the Anglo-Normans in the west to Rus, Byzantium and the Khazars in the east. This book is geared towards a wide audience and thus provides a broad base of understanding via a clear explanation of concepts of rule in each of the areas that is covered. The book can be utilized in the classroom, to enhance the presentation of a medieval Europe survey or to discuss rulership more specifically for a region or all of Europe. Beyond the classroom, the book is accessible to all scholars who are interested in continuing to learn and expand their horizons.

In Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, twenty-three international authors examine art, religion, literature, and politics to chart Galicia’s changing place in Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds from late antiquity through the thirteenth century.

"This volume provides a series of new perspectives on the political, military and religious history of the reign Fernando III, king of Castile-León from 1217-1252. The essays collected here address the conquest of al-Andalus and the policies of Fernando III, Christian-Muslim relations in the Peninsula, the creation and curation of royal networks of power, the role of women at the Castilian court, and the impact of religious change in Castile-León. Assembling an international group of eleven leading scholars on this period of Iberian history, this volume combines military and religious history with a variety of novel approaches and methodologies to ask new and exciting questions about the reign of Fernando III and his place in medieval European history. Contributors are Martín Alvira, Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Janna Bianchini, Bárbara Boloix-Gallardo, Cristina Catalina, Francisco García Fitz, Francisco García-Serrano, Edward L. Holt, Kyle C. Lincoln, Miriam Shadis, and Teresa Witcombe"--

This study traces the history of San Isidoro in León from a small eleventh-century palatine chapel housed in a double monastery to a great twelfth-century pilgrimage church. Its most groundbreaking contribution to the history of art is the recovery of the lost patronage of Queen Urraca (reigned 1109-1126).

Makes available, for the first time in English translation, four of the principal narrative sources for the history of the Spanish kingdom of León-Castile during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Three chronicles focus primarily upon the activities of the kings of León-Castile as leaders of the Reconquest of Spain from the forces of Islam, and especially upon Fernando I (1037-65), his son Alfonso VI (1065-1109) and the latter's grandson Alfonso VII (1126-57). The fourth chronicle is a biography of the hero Rodrigo Díaz, better remembered as El Cid, and is the main source of information about his extraordinary career as a mercenary soldier who fought for Christian and Muslim alike. Covers the fascinating interaction of the Muslim and Christian worlds, each at the height of their power. Each text is prefaced by its own introduction and accompanied by explanatory notes.