Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (review)

Abstract

Joseph O'Callaghan offers a survey of military activity in Spain from the later eleventh century through the mid-thirteenth century, following earlier narratives such as Derek Lomax's Reconquest of Spain (1978) and that undertaken in my Society Organized for War (1988). However, the author has a very particular focus in this work, namely kings' endeavors to connect their combat enterprises to the emergence of the papal crusading program in the same era. He scrutinizes the ecclesiastical sources of the period to establish the importance of papal support through crusading bulls for Iberian royal war plans against the Muslim opposition to the south. The first chapter lays out the argument and outlines the case. The next three chapters narrate the assorted royal campaigns in the various Christian kingdoms, from Barbastro in 1163 to the conquest of Seville in 1248. The last three chapters describe, in turn, the style of warfare, church assistance in campaign financing, and the liturgies connected to the reconquest and crusading. During the course of the book's development, O'Callaghan makes some comparisons to the Crusader Near East, and argues on behalf of an expanded concept of the Crusades that would include the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. The case has never been laid out before with such detail and skill, and includes detailed analysis of royal and papal documents as well as a considerable number of chronicle accounts testifying to the religious motivation involved in the peninsular conflict. Moreover, the first chapter offers an interesting survey of the emergence of a militant bellicosity within Christian Europe prior to the Crusades, and its later role in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.