Kingdom of Leon
The kingdom of León (in Latin: regnum Legionense; in Astur-Leonese, reinu de Llión; in Galician: Kingdom of León; Portuguese: Kingdom of Leão) was an independent medieval kingdom located in the northwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in the year 910 when the Christian princes of the kingdom of Asturias, on the north coast of the peninsula, moved their capital from Oviedo to the city of León. It had a leading role in the Reconquest and in the formation of the successive Christian kingdoms of the western peninsula. From it arose the counties of Castile and Portucale, which later gave rise to the independent kingdoms of Castile in 1065, and Portugal, in 1139. The remaining territories of the Leonese crown were united with those of the emerging Castilian kingdom to form the Crown of Castile. at 1230.
From 1296 to 1301, during a succession conflict, the kingdom of León temporarily became independent again to finally reintegrate as part of the Crown of Castile. The approximate territories that formed this kingdom were reconsidered as a region in the XIX century by means of the Royal Decree of November 30, 1833, in which the modern Spanish territorial demarcation was defined. The León region was divided into the modern provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca. In 1981, those three provinces were included along with six other provinces from the former region of Castilla la Vieja to create the autonomous community of Castilla y León. However, important parts of the former kingdom today make up these three provinces, part of the traditional Castilla la Vieja and the autonomous communities of Extremadura, Galicia and Asturias.
Territorial extension
The kingdom of León was located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula; At its maximum extension it included the north of Portugal, the current autonomous communities of Galicia, the Principality of Asturias, Cantabria, the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca, Castilla la Vieja, the current province of Cáceres, Badajoz and the north of Huelva..
History
9th-10th centuries: kingdom of Asturias
The first years of the existence of the Christian territory appear shrouded in darkness, due to the paucity of the sources that hardly discover any of the questions that arose from the first years of the kingdom of Asturias and its struggle for survival. After the conquest of the peninsula by the Ismaili armies in 711, pockets of resistance appeared located in the Cantabrian area and in the figure of Don Pelayo. Pelayo, a refugee on the Auseba mountain, led the harassment of the Arab troops that marked the beginning of the Christian resistance. But it was really Alfonso I of Asturias (737-757), Pelayo's son-in-law, who in an attempt to organize the territories, founded the monarchy as such, extending the kingdom to the Cantabrian Mountains. In the time of Alfonso II (791-842) the capital was installed in Oviedo, and it is at this time that the Holy Sepulcher was discovered. Ordoño I, in the year 856, repopulated and rebuilt the walls of the city of León and Astorga. Alfonso III the Great (866-910) was the one who moved the border to the Duero, repopulating Zamora, his being one of the great reigns of the Asturian dynasty.
The city of León became a strategic point in the kingdom due to its history, its powerful Roman fortification, as well as a nerve center of the Asturian territory, whose capital had been found twenty kilometers to the south, in the city of Lancia.
The Lion's Crown
After the death of Alfonso III the Great, the kingdom of Asturias was divided and divided among his sons:
- García I receives León, Álava and Castilla, founding the kingdom of León.
- Ordoño II receives Galicia.
- Fruela II gets Asturias.
When García I died in 914 without descendants, Ordoño II moved to León where he was acclaimed king, which meant that Galicia and León shared the same monarch, and the one who definitively moved the capital of the kingdom of Asturias from Oviedo to León. This meant the creation of a new kingdom, that of León, which brought together the Asturian kingdom, since Fruela II remained in Asturias, but recognizing the primacy of the Leonese kingdom.
In the context of the struggles between Alfonso IV and his brother Sancho Ordóñez, the kingdom of Galicia and León stopped sharing a king, since Sancho took refuge in Galicia fleeing from his brother in 926, crowning himself King of Galicia and maintaining the independent kingdom until his death in the year 929. At his death, the government of both kingdoms fell to the person of Alfonso IV.
One such uprising led to the coronation in Galicia of Bermudo II of León (982). The new king defeated Ramiro III de León and ended up unifying both territories again.
With the formation of the new kingdom, the reconquest against the Muslims continued and even the fight against other Christian kingdoms such as Navarre.
11th century: Hegemony of León and the imperial crown
The kingdom of León expanded towards the Duero and the Central system up to the current Extremadura and achieved milestones such as the endowment of privileges of Alfonso V, the creation of a Leonese repopulation art and a great development of the administrative systems.
In the XI century, Sancho III El Mayor of Navarre acquired the county of Castilla as an inheritance. In 1035 he left said county to his son Ferdinand. Fernando I was married to Sancha, sister, in turn, of Bermudo III de León. Fernando provoked a war in which the Leonese sovereign died in the battle of Tamarón against the Castilian-Navarrese coalition. Since Bermudo III had no offspring, his brother-in-law (Fernando I) appropriated the Leonese crown, brandishing the rights of his wife, taking the title of King of León with great opposition among the Leonese, who did not want to see the man who had become monarch. he killed his king. Thus, Fernando returned to unite the county of Castilla to the kingdom of León. On the death of Ferdinand I in 1065, his will followed the Navarrese tradition of dividing the kingdoms among the heirs:
- The firstborn, Sancho II, was given the county of Castile with a royal title: so was the kingdom of Castile.
- To Alfonso VI, the favorite according to the chronicles, was granted the territory provided by the mother: León, who enjoys the best and most valuable Muslim pariahs;
- To the third, García, Galicia and the city of Coímbra were handed over, the first conquered Muslim city.
- His daughters Urraca and Elvira, the jurisdiction of all royal monasteries.
Sancho II of Castile, not satisfied with the distribution, since his younger brother obtained the most important kingdom, started a war. Together with Alfonso VI he conquered Galicia. Sancho, not content with Castile and half Galicia, attacked his brother and occupied León with the help of El Cid. Thanks to Urraca, the bulk of the Leonese army took refuge in Zamora, which Sancho surrounded; It was the famous siege of Zamora, where the Castilian king was killed by the Leonese nobleman Vellido Dolfos, and the Castilian troops withdrew. In this way, Alfonso VI recovered all the territory, ruling as king of León, Castilla and Galicia.
In the reign of Alfonso VI, the power of the Leonese monarch over Castile was consolidated, being recognized as "Emperor of the Hispanic Kingdoms" by Pope Gregory VII. In addition, with Alfonso VI there was a rapprochement with the rest of the European kingdoms, especially France, since he married his daughter Urraca with Raymond of Burgundy (1090) and, later, Teresa with Enrique de Burgundy (1095). In the council held in Burgos in 1080, the Mozarabic rite, used until then in León, was replaced by the Roman one.
In the time of Alfonso VII the Emperor (1126-1157), kings of the entire Iberian Peninsula and southern France declared themselves his vassals. However, after a period of imperial splendor, the unit faded, and the title of emperor of León also disappeared.
Already under Alfonso VII, Portugal became independent from León, creating a kingdom governed by Alfonso VI's daughter, Teresa, married to Enrique de Borgoña, and the border fights with Castile intensified, and at her death, Alfonso's son, Fernando II, inherited the kingdom of León, and Sancho III, that of Castile.
His successor, Alfonso IX, became one of the most famous monarchs of the kingdom of León. Under his mandate, the Leonese Courts of 1188 were convened, the first European courts in which the third state participated. They recognized the inviolability of the home, the mail, the need for the king to convene Cortes to make war or declare peace, and numerous individual and collective rights were guaranteed. These Cortes were followed by those of Benavente (1202), in which the principles and economic rights of the Crown of León and its inhabitants were established, and other new ones in León five years later. In the Courts of Benavente in 1202 it was stated that the Crown of León was made up of four territorial entities: León, Galicia, Asturias and Extremadura.
With Alfonso IX the kingdom spread throughout Extremadura, achieving great territorial expansion. He s. XIII was a period in which the peninsular kingdoms experienced a height of nationalist sentiments. The territorial expansion of the kingdoms of Portugal and Castilla, which threatened to close the exit to the south of the kingdom of León and the claim of the kings of Castilla to annex the kingdom caused constant warfare between the kingdoms of León, Portugal and Castilla. These wars had as occasional allies the taifa kingdoms, which alternately participated on the side of any of the Christian kingdoms. A direct consequence of this was that the kingdom of León did not participate in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, for which reason the Leonese sovereign was excommunicated by the pope. Upon his death, the king ordered to maintain the independence of León, declaring his daughters heirs, and guarantors of the same to the orders of chivalry. However, Ferdinand III of Castile, contravening his father's will, managed to get the young heiresses of the kingdom of León to cede their throne to him, so the kingdom of León was annexed by Castile to form the Crown of Castile in 1230. As additional information, Alfonso IX also created the General Study which in the time of Alfonso X of Castilla became the current University of Salamanca.
The development of cities: the boroughs
Cities began to develop near fortresses, monasteries or in ancient Roman civitates. Some of these cities were strengthened by the Camino de Santiago and began to be known as burgos, differing from rural villages in the preponderance of economic activity not linked to cultivating the land.
On the route of the Camino de Santiago, villages arose from Aragon to Galicia from the XI century. Leon also benefited from the passage to the holy place. But other towns also developed on the side of the French road, on the banks of the Duero, such as Zamora, Toro or Valladolid, the latter reaching great development after the arrival of Count Pedro Ansúrez at the end of the century XI.
About León, the Arab geographer and traveler Al-Idrisi wrote in the 12th century century:
"There is a very profitable trade. Their inhabitants are savers and prudent,» [and over Zamora], "It is located on the northern shore of the Duero and surrounded by strong stone walls, its territory is fertile and covered with vineyards, its inhabitants possess wealth and are engaged in trade."
To the south of the Duero river, in the then known lands of Extremadura, the birth of cities was for defensive purposes, but over time an economic and commercial activity of similar importance to the northern cities began to develop of the Douro.
The bourgeois appeared, who were the inhabitants of the boroughs (not to be confused with the current meaning of the term bourgeois), who were added to clergy and nobles. The bourgeois were mainly dedicated to trade and the production of manufactured objects and their growth was limited economically and socially by the nobility (mainly dedicated to the land), for this reason in the century XII there were bourgeois revolts against the seigneurial authorities. From these revolts, the inhabitants of the burgos obtained certain demands.
The arrival of Jewish communities during the XI and XII by the Almoravid intransigence in al-Andalus, who began as artisans, merchants and farmers mainly.
12th century: link between Christianity and Islam
In the 12th century Europe witnessed a great advance in the intellectual field thanks to León and Castilla. Through Islam, classical works previously forgotten in Europe were recovered and contact was made with the wisdom of Muslim scientists.
The Camino de Santiago did nothing but enhance the exchange of knowledge between the kingdoms of Castilla, León and Europe, in both directions.
In the XII century, multiple religious orders similar to European ones also appeared, such as those of Calatrava, Alcántara and Santiago and a multitude of Cistercian abbeys were founded.
13th-14th centuries: León integrated into the Crown of Castile
The death of Fernando I de León, who ruled the empire in the name of his wife Sancha de León, sister of Bermudo III, gave birth to the kingdom of Castile by ceding it as such to his eldest son Sancho. After the monarch's death in 1065 the kingdoms were divided among his sons. In a civil war against his brothers Alfonso and García, he dynastically reunited the kingdoms of León and Castilla for the first time. Later a second union took place from 1072 with Alfonso VI until 1157 at the death of Alfonso VII. Around the year 1230 with Ferdinand III the Saint, King of Castile since 1217, the kingdoms of León and Castilla came under the same Leonese sovereign who, due to various circumstances, was first King in Castile.
In 1230 Alfonso IX of León, who had donated his kingdoms to his daughters, died, and after many efforts Fernando III signed an agreement (Concordia de Benavente) by which his sisters (Sancha and Dulce) renounced their inheritance rights to the kingdom of León, taking more than two years to gain control of the territory due to the opposition of the people of León and its nobles, who closed the doors of the walls of its capital to the new monarch. Kings of the Crown of Castile (Juana I) held the titles of King of Castile and King of León.
Although the two kingdoms shared the same sovereign, the Cortes of León continued for a long time; even each of the two kingdoms was legislated separately even if there was a joint meeting. In 1349 Alfonso XI held the Cortes of this kingdom in the city of León.
For a long time, individual kingdoms and cities kept their particular rights (among which were the Fuero de León, the Fuero Viejo de Castilla or the different municipal fueros of Castilla, Extremadura and Andalusia, the councils of León, the fuero of Oteruelo granted in 1417), while a common territorial right was being articulated around the Partidas (c. 1265), the Ordenamiento de Alcalá (1348) that still maintains the Pisuerga as the traditional line between León and Castilla[citation required], and the Laws of Toro (1505).
The unstable situation created after the death in 1295 of Sancho IV and the accession to the throne of his nine-year-old son Fernando IV, was taken advantage of by various nobles to rebel against the young monarch. Among them was the infante Juan, Ferdinand's uncle, who claimed his rights to the throne and proclaimed himself king of León, Galicia and Seville. Although he was crowned as such in León in 1296, the internal situation finally began to stabilize and he ended up renouncing his rights and swearing allegiance to Ferdinand IV in 1300.
Throughout the entire XIV century there were several attempts to make the kingdom of León independent, achieving it de facto, albeit barely John of Gaunt in the mid-XIV century. He was defeated by John I and the two kingdoms were re-integrated in the same crown
15th-18th centuries: The Kingdom of León in the Modern Age
The kingdom of León maintained its structures during the Modern Age, preserving its characteristics of territorial organization, which was reflected in the cartography of the centuries XVI, XVII and XVIII and its own institutions, such as the Adelantamiento or Merino Mayor of the kingdom of León, the Defender of the kingdom of León, etc.
19th century: formal disappearance of the kingdom
The last incidental appearance of the kingdom of León in history occurred between June 1 and September 25, 1808, when the Junta Patriotica de León assumed sovereignty over the kingdom of León in the War of Independence until the ceded it to the Central Supreme Board in the act of its constitution.
In 1833 the definitive (and currently in force) provincial division promoted by Javier de Burgos took place, which definitively eliminated previous territorial divisions. With the creation of the provinces, an assignment of said provinces to regions was included, without any type of administrative or other type of competence. One of these regions is that of León.
Imperial title
This title was adopted from the X century by the Leonese monarchs, as an expression of a unitary Hispanic idea, which implied the political supremacy of León over the other peninsular kingdoms that were being formed. The kings of Leon aspired to restore the Hispano-Gothic state, believing themselves to be direct heirs of the last Visigothic monarch, Don Rodrigo. Already in the Asturias of the IX century the imperial idea was accepted, especially under the reign of Alfonso III, called magnus imperator or imperator noster.
Ordoño II (imperator legionense), Ramiro II (magnus basileus), Ramiro III, Alfonso V, Bermudo III and perhaps Sancho III the Mayor of Navarre after having inherited León and Castilla (although this title is only documented in a unique coin, today commonly attributed to the reign of Alfonso VII of León), they adopted the title of emperor.
Ferdinand I was called rex imperator, and Alfonso VI of León came to be called Imperator totius Hispaniae. In 1135, Alfonso VII was solemnly crowned emperor in León. Among his vassals were the Kings of Aragon, Navarra and Portugal, the Count of Barcelona and various Muslim monarchs, who, upon the Emperor's death, rejected the theoretical political supremacy of the title.
Government: Courts and councils
Like all medieval kingdoms, supreme power by the grace of God rested with the king. But rural and urban communities began to emerge to make decisions about problems of daily life.
This is how the councils, or concilium, began as a way of self-governing population centers in which all residents had representation, as the Council of Berbeja, San Zadornil and Barrio (955) attests:
We all, who are of the council of Berbeja, Barrio and San Zadornil, men and women, young and old, maximum and minimum, villains and infanzones [... ]
These open councils evolved into closed councils, in which a part of the residents represented the rest. They also achieved greater power such as the election of magistrates and officials, mayors, town criers, notaries,...
Given the growing power of the Councils, the need for communication between the king and them arises, and here is the birth of the Cortes in the year 1188 in León. In the medieval Cortes of Leon, the inhabitants of the cities were a small group, known as laboratores and did not have legislative powers, but it was a point of union between the king and the kingdom, something in which the Kingdom of León had been a pioneer in medieval Europe. The courts would thus be made up of three estates (clergy, nobility, representatives of the cities) and appear as a dialogue between the king and the curia, on the one hand, and the representatives of the cities and towns on the other.
In 2013, UNESCO declared this system of courts the cradle of the European parliamentary system.
Culture
The kingdom of León produced some of the oldest texts with traces of a Proto-Romance language in the Iberian Peninsula: the Nodicia de Kesos.