137 



ALFONSO VIL 



ALFONSO II. 



138 





Having remained undisputed lord of BO large a portion of the 

 peninsula, Alfonso turned his arms against the Saracens. He invaded 

 Portugal, and made most of the Moorish petty chiefs his tributaries. 

 He afterwards took Coria, and then attacked Toledo ; and had not 

 the Altnoravides with a powerful army invaded Spain, he would have 

 expelled the Moors from the peninsula. He gave his illegitimate 

 daughter, Theresa, in marriage to Henry, count of Besanjon, with his 

 conquests in Portugal, and the title of count. During his reign the 

 famous hero Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, surnamed the Cid or Sidi, the 

 Moorish word for Lord, performed those exploits which have fur- 

 nished abundance of materials to romance-writers. 



King Alfonso died in 1109, at Toledo, in the seventy-ninth year of 

 hia age. His son tiancho having fallen in a battle against the Moors, 

 the crowns of Leon and Castile fell to his eldest daughter Urraoa. 

 (Mariana, ix., x., ch. 8-20 ; 1-8.) 



ALFONSO VII. [ALFONSO I., of Aragon.] 



ALFONSO VIIL, king of Castile and Leon, styled the Emperor. 

 At the death of his mother, Queen Urraca, he became king in 1126. 

 The misrule of that princess's government, and the wars which had 

 devastated Castile during the latter part of the preceding reign} ren- 

 dered the beginning of his own very stormy. Several places were 

 held by his step-father, Alfonso VII., until they were subdued, but 

 at last the two princes were reconciled, and Alfonso VIII. remained 

 sovereign lord of Castile and Leon. About the year 1137 he was 

 obliged to march an army into Galicia against the Count of Portugal, 

 Alfonso Henriquez. Though the Portuguese had the advantage, 

 Henriquez sued for peace, which Alfonso readily granted. 



In 1140 he attempted to conquer Navarre, but failed. In his wars 

 with the infidels, Alfonso was more successful. He obtained many 

 signal victories over them, and advanced the Castilian frontiers to 

 Andalusia. His last battle against the Almohades was undecisive ; 

 after which he returned towards Toledo, and died in his tent in 

 August, 1157. At the close of hig reign, the military order of Alain- 

 tara, to which Christian Spain owed so much, was instituted. He 

 was succeeded in Castile by Sancho III., and in Leon by Fernando II. 

 (Mariana, x., xL, 8-20; 1-7.) 



ALFONSO IX., king of Leon, succeeded his father Fernando in 

 1188. He was dubbed a knight by his cousin, Alfonso III. of 

 Castile. For a short time the two relatives lived on good terms ; but 

 in 1189, a dispute about the possession of some territory in Eatrema- 

 dura led to repeated wars. Alfonso first married the Princess 

 Theresa of Portugal, from whom he was forced to separate by Pope 

 Celestine III. ; he then married the daughter of his cousin of Castile, 

 and the marriage was again annulled by the Pope on the same plea 

 of relationship. Alfonso then conquered Merida, Caceres, and other 

 important places in Estremadura, and while on his road to Santiago, 

 he died at Villanueva de Sarria, in 1230. His son Fernando HI. 

 succeeded to the crowns of both Leon and Castile. (Mariana, xi, xil, 

 16-22; 1, 2 ; Chronicle of A If onto el Sabio.) 



ALFONSO X. of Castile and Leon, surnamed 'El Sabio' (the 

 Learned), owing to hia legislative, scientific, and literary labours, was 

 the son of Ferdinand IIL, whom he succeeded in 1252. One of the 

 first acts of his reign was so dishonourable that it throws an indelible 

 spot on his character. Ueing discontented with his queen, Dona 

 Violante of Aragon, because she had no children, he sent his ambas- 

 sadors to the King of Denmark, stating that he was about to divorce 

 his wife, and requesting him to send him one of his daughters as a 

 bride. The Princess Christina accordingly set out from her father's 

 court, and having traversed France and Germany arrived at Valla- 

 dolid. By this time the queen had a daughter, and Alfonso was 

 reconciled to her, and the Princess of Denmark, mortified and dis- 

 appointed in her hopes of an honourable marriage, died a few months 

 after. In 1253 Edward, the son of Henry III. of England, paid him 

 a visit. He was magnificently entertained by that prince, who con- 

 ferred on him the honour of knighthood, and married him to his 

 daughter, LeontSr, commonly called Eleonor. In 1256 he became a 

 competitor for the imperial crown, but Kichard, earl of Cornwall, was 

 elected by a small majority of the Diet On the death of Kichard in 

 1271, Alfonso renewed his application, but Rudolph of Habsburg was 

 elected. In vain did Alfonso, who had assumed the title of emperor, 

 protest against the validity of this new election; in vain did he 

 lavish his wealth to form a party in his own favour ; his pretensions 

 only served to involve him in perpetual dispute with the secular 

 princes of the empire, as well as with the Pope, who, weary of his 

 importunities, went so far as to excommunicate his adherents. The 

 enormous expense which the ambitious projects of Alfonso entailed 

 upon him, and the adulteration of the coin, to which he is known to 

 have resorted in order to raise money, made him unpopular with his 

 subjects, who began loudly to complain of hia expensive follies. 

 This state of things was taken advantage of by a few discontented 

 barons who formed a league against Alfonso, at the head of which 

 was his own brother the Infante Don Felipe. Having obtained the 

 assistance of Mohammed I., sultan of Granada, who promised to make 

 a diversion in their favour on the frontiers of Castile, they rose in 

 arms in 1270 ; but upon Alfonso promising them that their grievances 

 should b redressed, they dispersed, and tha most turbulent retired 

 to Granada, where they were kindly received by the Moorish king. 



In 1275, during the absence of Alfonso on a fruitless visit to Pope 



Gregory, then at Beaucaire in France, respecting his pretensions to 

 the empire, his eldest son, the Infante Fernando de la Cerda, died. 

 This was the cause of fresh disturbances, for a question now arose 

 whether the offspring of the lufante, who had left two sons by a 

 French princess, was to be preferred to the second son, Don Sancho. 

 This led to a series of distressing civil wars. Sancho was disinherited 

 by a junta at Seville and was solemnly cursed by his father, but he 

 succeeded in reducing Alfonso to such extremity that he applied to 

 Abu Yusuf, sultan of Marocco, and requested his aid in money and 

 troops, offering to pawn him his crown. The African crossed the 

 straits at the head of considerable forces; Sancho, on the other hand, 

 concluded an alliance with Mohammed II. of Granada, and the civil 

 war which now raged was rendered more than usually destructive 

 and atrocious by the interference on both sides of foreign powers 

 professing a hostile religion. Both parties ravaged the country 

 without gaining any decisive advantage, until at length Alfonso was 

 prevailed upon to pardon his rebellious son, and to restore him to his 

 favour. He died shortly after, in 1284, in the eighty-first year of his 

 age. The character of Alfonso was a curious compound of weakness 

 and vindictiveness, and of the best as well as of the worst qualities 

 of human nature. Upon the whole, fickleness rather than incapacity 

 seems to have been his leading fault. That in the midst of such 

 troubles Alfonso should have been able not only to devote himself to 

 the cultivation of science and literature, but to acquire learning so 

 extensive for the age in which he lived, is really wonderful. Not- 

 withstanding the few moments of rest which his immoderate ambition 

 and the revolt of his subjects allowed him, he conferred such services 

 both upon his own country aud upon the world at large, as few royal 

 persons have done. Spain owes to him not only her earliest national 

 history, aud a translation of the Scriptures, but the restoration of her 

 principal university, that of Salamanca, the introduction of the ver- 

 nacular tongue in public proceedings, and the promulgation of an 

 admirable code of laws. Science is greatly indebted to him for the 

 celebrated astronomical tables known by his name, which were still 

 universally used in Europe at the beginning of the 16th century. It 

 is probable that Alfonso employed in their construction several 

 Moorish astronomers of Granada, who visited his court for the express 

 purpose of superintending, if not of making them. Their epoch is 

 the 30th of May, 1252, the day of his accession to the throne. They 

 were printed for the first time at Venice, 1492, 4to, and went subse- 

 quently through several editions. It has been asserted by Salazar 

 (' Origen de his Dignidades Soculares de Castilla y Leon,' p. 105) that 

 in the promulgation of the body of laws known as ' Las Siete 

 Partidas,' because it is divided into seven sections or parts, Alfonso 

 had only a small share, that code having been begun in the reign of 

 his father Ferdinand III. But this has since been discovered to be 

 an error. Ferdinand perceived, no doubt, the defects of the Visigothic 

 code, but he never attempted to remedy them, and the task was 

 reserved for his son. The revival of the study of Roman law, which 

 was then taught in the Italian universities, and his wish to appear as 

 a legislator in the hope of obtaining the imperial crown, the favourite 

 object of his ambition, urged him on to the arduous task of legis- 

 lating for a warlike and chivalrous nation. How cautiously he pro- 

 ceeded in his great design will appear from the fact that his first 

 compilation for actual use was the ' Fuero Real,' which consisted of 

 ordinances or laws taken from the local ' fueros ' or charters, with a 

 few monarchical axioms from the Justinian code, and that neither 

 Alfonso nor his immediate successors, Don Sancho el Bravo and 

 Fernando IV., attempted to enforce them as the law of the laud. 



ALFONSO XI., king of Castile and Leon, succeeded his father 

 Fernando IV. in 1312, being only n few months old. A long series 

 of convulsions attended his minority. When ho came of aje he 

 quieted the intestine disturbances, and seriously pursued the wars 

 against the Infidels. He took Tarifa and Algeciras from them, but 

 died of the plague while besieging Gibraltar, in 1350. He was suc- 

 ceeded by his son Pedro the Cruel. (Villasau, Cronica del Key Don 

 Alfonso el Onceno; Mariana, xv.) 



ALFONSO I., king of Aragon, surnamed El Batallado'r, ' the 

 Battler,' succeeded his brother Pedro in 1 1 04, and marrying Queen 

 Urraca of Castile and Leon, was styled king of those provinces also. 

 This marriage was annulled iu 1114. In a succession of victories he 

 rescued from the Mohammedans almost all the territory south of the 

 Ebro. He laid siege to Saragossa, aud after four years of struggle he 

 entered it by capitulation in 1118, and made it the capital of Aragon. 

 In 1120 he defeated a numerous army of the Almoravides near 

 Daroca. Tarragona, Meguinenza, and Calatayud were also among his 

 conquests ; and he carried his victorious arms even to Andalusia. 



In 1134 he invested Fraga, when the wall of Valencia, Abeu Gama, 

 advanced with a considerable force to relieve the town. A battle 

 took place, in which the Christians were defeated and Alfonso killed. 

 He was succeeded by his brother Ramiro II. 



(Florez, Eipana Kagrada ; Chronica Adefonai Imperotorit, vol. xi. ; 

 Rodericus Toletanus, De fiebui Hitpanids ; Mariana, x. 8.) 



ALFONSO II. succeeded his mother Petronila on the throne of 

 Aragon when he was only eleven years of age. He extended the 

 frontiers of his kingdom on the side of the Mohammedans, penetrated 

 into the territory of Valencia, and aided Alfonso IX. of Castile in 

 investing Cuenca. For this important service Aragon was made 



