De la destruction a la restauration: L'ideologie du royaume d'Oviedo-Leon (VIIIe-XIe siecles) (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Westminster Abbey Reformed: 1540-1640 Sybil M. Jack Knighton, C. S. and Richard Mortimer, eds, Westminster Abbey Reformed: 1540-1640, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; cloth; pp. xv, 293; 2 b/w illustrations; RRP £59.95; ISBN 0754608603. Deswarte's study challenges many of the established ideas about the surviving Christian kingdoms in the period after 711 when Islam was dominant in Spain. He focuses on the way in which history was recreated and then further modified to meet the new needs produced by these changing circumstances. His main stress is on the ideology that underlay the religious and spiritual and behaviour of the rulers in this period. He insists that they interpreted the Muslim victories as divine retribution for sin and believed that their main duty was to repent and reform. He rejects the interpretation that asserts that the idea of Reconquest only appeared in the second half of the eleventh century under the influence of the French and the Papacy. Deswarte shows that the arrival of Islam in Spain caused a sharp revision in the narratives of the previous kingdom. The Visigoths had initially had a bad press from the catholic clerics because although Christian they were Arians. Only in 589 when king Recurred repudiated Arianism did the chroniclers transform the Visigoths into the true heirs of the Roman Empire. Deswarte's objective is to tease out of the scant and doubtfully reliable available materials the ideology of the kingdom of Léon and the changes that it underwent. To the chronicles, he adds formal documents such as liturgies, diplomatic, epigraphy and numismatics. He rejects both the idea that from the start the monarchs envisaged a crusade, and the argument that 711 marked the [End Page 214] end of the world and that what followed was the founding of a native dynasty in Oviedo-Leon that was not Gothic. He proposes that the three key ideas of the Visigoths, that is king, fatherland and people, were taken up and developed by the new monarchs who sought to claim continuity with these kingdoms. The establishment of a new and Muslim royalty in the South, and the recognition of their authority (but not the acceptance of their religion) by their Mozarabic subjects meant that these Christians lost their defining identity as members of the Spanish fatherland of the kingdom of the Visigoths. This was painted by the Christian chroniclers, who identified the Muslims as the descendants of Ishmael, as divine judgement. The Chronicles present the Muslims as a foreign and pagan people, effectively as barbarians. Often the Mozarabians are presented as traitors for accepting their overlordship. They could not be heirs to Visigothic traditions. Historians have usually described the northern Spanish kingdoms as isolated and still tribal. Deswarte, however, argues that despite some local peculiarities their culture before 711 had already been Christian and Romanized and that after 711 society remained under the civil law of the Visigoths that ultimately derived from Rome. The dynasty maintained the old Visigothic ceremonials in the Palace and in war. Their autonomy was underlined by their choice of a new secular capital at Oviedo; the continuity and legitimacy of their rule was established through their determination to re-establish the traditional Episcopal framework and their presentation of themselves as purified followers of the true religion who sought spiritual regeneration so that they would become worthy in God's eyes. The use of holy oil in their consecration emphasized the role God played in choosing them and guiding their lives. They were ordained to the service of their people. The growth of the cult of St James of Compostela, the apostle of Spain, and the elevation of Compostela to the top of the religious hierarchy, supported the ambitions of the new dynasty. The rulers of Leon saw an indissoluble tie between spiritual regeneration and the restoration of the now lost Christian kingdom of Spain to which they aspired. Deswarte argues that in the setback of 884 the royal house made personal repentance and humility the virtue through which they sought to re-establish their power. The legitimating and motivating myth remained their inheritance of Visigothic traditions. War against the Muslims, a basic royal activity in...