Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (review)

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.

Some historians of Spain might take issue with giving the Reconquest such a central place at the expense of a more multicultural approach in understanding the evolution of the medieval Hispanic kingdoms. In the context of military history, I would be inclined to qualify some of the assumptions made here. Securing papal support did not always have a religious motive (as the author admits); so classifying a campaign authorized the king to tap ecclesiastical resources to finance his activity. The impoverished frontier bishoprics felt the financial strain of these conflicts often without compensatory relief (witness modern Homeland Security and bankrupt local governmental budgets). It is arguable that O'Callaghan does not sufficiently allow for unmitigated territorial greed as the central motivation for Hispanic kings, a commonplace phenomenon in Europe, without which there may never have been either crusade or reconquest. The contrast between the attitudes toward Muslims evidenced by extra-peninsular crusaders in Spain as against those of Spaniards (e.g., the Lisbon and Las Navas campaigns) raises concerns about pushing the crusades comparison too far. Nonetheless, the large array of evidence, extensive notes, and a full bibliography make this compelling book a valuable resource, cavils aside.