The seven hundred year period between 722 and 1492 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become a cherished feature of the self-image of the Spanish people.
Posted in Africa, Cathedrals, El Cid, Europe, History, Literature, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Babieca, Burgos, Castilla y Leon, Cordoba, El Cid, Gladiator, La Tizona, Moors in Spain, Reconquista
Once over the river we crossed a bridge lined with statues depicting the heroes of the Reconquesta and then, there he was – El Cid, looking fearsome with his grizzled beard, wild cloak flowing madly behind him, his mighty sword La Tizona extended ahead of him, much too big and heavy for an ordinary mortal, his burning eyes fixed ferociously on an enemy army as he led a charge to victory against the Moors sat on his magnificent famous white steed Babieca.
Posted in Africa, Beaches, El Cid, Europe, History, Knights of St John, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Babieca, Burgos, Castilla y Leon, Cordoba, El Cid, Gladiator, La Tizona, Reconquista, Weekly Photo Challenge
“When it was night the Cid lay down. In a deep sleep he fell, And to him in a vision came the angel Gabriel: “Ride, Cid, most noble Campeador, for never yet did knight Ride forth upon an hour whose aspect was so bright. While thou shalt live good fortune shall be with thee and shine. ” ” El Cantar del Mio Cid
As we wandered around the streets of Burgos I was reminded constantly of the story of El Cid.
The seven hundred year period between 722 and 1492 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised and interpreted their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become an established feature of the self-image of the Spanish people.
It has become embellished into a sort of organised Catholic national crusade and although there is some truth in this much of it in reality was simply due to the expansionist territorial ambitions of competing northern Spanish kingdoms such as Asturias and León.
In legend the focal point of the story of the Reconquista has been the heroic tale of Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar or El Cid, the National hero of Spain and revered by many as being single-handedly responsible for the victory of the Catholic Kingdoms over the North African Moors but whilst El Cid was undoubtedly a great warrior and soldier he was only one of many who contributed to the Crusade.
The explanation for his pre-eminence is the responsibility of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who was the foremost Spanish historian of his age and the author of the standard biography of the Cid, first published in 1929. Pidal gave substantial credibility to the ‘Poema de Mio Cid’, which was a work written at the height of the crusading age and, crucially, fifty years after the Cid’s death. Then, his valiant deeds against the Muslims made him a suitable exemplar to inspire a generation of holy warriors fighting the Crusades, and his life quickly moved from reality into the realms of legend.
In the eighth century almost all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by hostile Muslim armies from North Africa. Only a number of areas in the mountainous north that roughly correspond to modern Asturias, Cantabria, Navarre and northern Aragon managed to resist the initial invasion and many years before El Cid this was to become the breeding ground of the Reconquista.
Life under Moorish occupation was rather mixed, for many it wasn’t that bad and under Islam, the status of Christians and Jews was recognised, there was great religious and social tolerance and in return for a small tax they were free to practice their own religion but for others there was persecution and intolerance and this forced the disaffected to migrate north to take refuge in the Christian Kingdoms. Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace however and by the end of the tenth century Muslims of ethnic Iberian origin are believed to have comprised the majority of the population of Andalusia.
In legend the story of El Cid and the reconquest has acquired a rather simple plot of Christian Spain against Muslim Moors but throughout this period the situation in Iberia was much more complicated. As well as fighting against each other Christian and Muslim rulers commonly fought amongst themselves, the Berbers of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the fundamentalist Arab leadership from the Middle East and to further complicate matters interfaith alliances were not unusual. The fighting along the Christian Muslim frontier was punctuated by prolonged periods of peace and truces and distorting the situation even further were the legions of mercenaries who frequently switched sides and fought for cash.
El Cid lived at this confusing time and he too at various times had Muslim allies and at other times worked for Muslim paymasters against Christians because he was, in short, a warrior for hire, a mercenary, who spent much of his career fighting for whoever paid him the most.
In popular culture the reconquest has been raised to the status of a crusade and the expulsion of the Moors as liberation from an occupying army but again this is not strictly the case. At this time Córdoba became the largest, richest and most sophisticated city in Western Europe. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa and Muslim and Jewish scholars played an important part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe.
The indigenous cultures interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, thus giving the region a distinctive culture. Outside the cities, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners, and the introduction of new crops and techniques led to an improvement and expansion of agriculture.
However, by the eleventh century, Muslim lands had fractured into squabbling rival kingdoms and this encouraged the northern Christian kingdoms to expand southwards with the opportunity to greatly enlarge their territories and consolidate their positions.
As early as 739 Muslim forces were driven from Asturias and a little later Frankish forces established Christian counties south of the Pyrenees and these areas were to develop into the Kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia. The Kingdoms pushed south and the capture of Toledo in 1085 was soon followed by the completion of the Christian powers reconquest of all the northern territories.
El Cid’s greatest contribution to the Reconquesta came during this phase of the war and his finest victory was the capture of Valencia in 1094, which he later died defending in 1099.
After a period of Muslim resurgence in the twelfth century the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain in the thirteenth, Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248 leaving only Granada in the south, which since 1238 was a dependent vassal of the King of Castile.
In 1469, the crowns of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. In 1478 the Moors were driven from the Balearic Islands and in 1492 the Christians captured Granada, ending seven hundred and eighty-one years of Islamic rule in Iberia.
The Treaty of Granada guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims but the new state of Spain was beginning to flex its muscles and the year 1492 marked the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus and a law requiring Jews to convert to Catholicism under the Spanish Inquisition or face expulsion from Spanish territories. The Catholic Monarchy instigated a policy of unrestrained ethnic cleansing and not long after, Muslims too became subject to the same requirement.
___________________________________________________
More posts about El Cid:
El Cid and Alvar Fáñez – another hero of the Reconquest
El Cid and the Castle of Belmonte
El Cid – The Film Fact and Fiction
_______________________________________________
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Literature, Spain, World Heritage
Tagged Babieca, Burgos, Castilla y Leon, Cordoba, El Cid, Gladiator, La Tizona, Reconquista
The seven hundred year period between 722 and 1492 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become a cherished feature of the self-image of the Spanish people. It has become embellished into a sort of organised Catholic national crusade and although there is some truth in this much of it in reality was simply due to the expansionist territorial ambitions of competing northern Spanish kingdoms such as Asturias and León.
In legend the focal point of the story of the Reconquista has been the heroic tale of Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar or El Cid, the National hero of Spain and revered by many as being single handedly responsible for the victory of the Catholic Kingdoms over the North African Moors but whilst El Cid was undoubtedly a great warrior and soldier he was only one of many who contributed to the Crusade.
A hero needed a wife and El Cid was married in either in1074 or 1075 to Doña Ximena of Oviedo, a city in the modern day Principality of Asturias in the north of Spain but in the eleventh century part of Alfonso VI’s Kingdom of Leon and Castile.
The anonymous Latin prose history of the life of El Cid, the’ Historia Roderici’ identifies Ximena as the daughter of a Count Diego of Oviedo, but there is no evidence to confirm this and the later Poema de Mio Cid names her father as an equally unknown Count Gomez de Gormaz and some historians have laterly concluded that this is one and the same person. Tradition states that when the Cid laid eyes on her for the first time he was overcome by her great beauty and fell in love with her on sight. If she looked like Sophia Loren then that isn’t all that surprising!
The explanation for the Cid’s pre-eminence in the history of the Reconquista is the responsibility of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who was the foremost Spanish historian of his age and the author of the standard biography of Rodrigo, first published in 1929. Pidal gave substantial credibility to the ‘Poema de Mio Cid’, which was a work written at the height of the crusading age but, crucially, fifty years after the Cid’s death and in an age without rigorous record keeping then fifty years is a long time in which to get historical ‘drift‘. Then, his valiant deeds against the Muslims made him a suitable exemplar to inspire a generation of holy warriors fighting the Crusades, and his life quickly moved into the realms of legend.
In the eighth century almost all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by hostile Muslim armies from North Africa. Only a number of areas in the mountainous north that roughly correspond to modern Asturias, Cantabria, Navarre and northern Aragon managed to resist the initial invasion and many years before El Cid this was to become the breeding ground of the Reconquista.
Life under Moorish occupation was rather mixed, for many it wasn’t that bad and under Islam, the status of Christians and Jews was recognised, there was great religious and social tolerance and in return for a small tax they were free to practice their own religion but for others there was persecution and intolerance and this forced the disaffected to migrate north to take refuge in the Christian Kingdoms. Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace however and by the end of the tenth century Muslims of ethnic Iberian origin are believed to have comprised the majority of the population of Andalusia.
In legend the story of El Cid and the reconquest has acquired a rather simple plot of Christian Spain against Muslim Moors but throughout this period the situation in Iberia was much more complicated. As well as fighting against each other Christian and Muslim rulers commonly fought amongst themselves, the Berbers of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the fundamentalist Arab leadership from the Middle East and to further complicate matters interfaith alliances were not unusual. The fighting along the Christian Muslim frontier was punctuated by prolonged periods of peace and truces and distorting the situation even further were the legions of mercenaries who frequently switched sides and fought for cash.
El Cid lived at this confusing time and he too at various times had Muslim allies and at other times worked for Muslim paymasters against Christians because he was, in short, a warrior for hire, a mercenary, who spent much of his career fighting for whoever paid him the most.
In popular culture the reconquest has been raised to the status of a crusade and the expulsion of the Moors as liberation from an occupying army but again this is not strictly the case because history teaches us that (except for the Nazis) there is always two sides to any argument. At this time Córdoba became the largest, richest and most sophisticated city in Western Europe. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa and Muslim and Jewish scholars played an important part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe. The indigenous cultures interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, thus giving the region a distinctive culture. Outside the cities, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners, and the introduction of new crops and techniques led to an improvement and expansion of agriculture.
However, by the eleventh century, Muslim lands had fractured into rival kingdoms and this encouraged the northern Christian kingdoms to take advantage and expand southwards with the opportunity to greatly enlarge their territories and consolidate their positions.
As early as 739 Muslim forces were driven from Asturias and a little later Frankish forces established Christian counties south of the Pyrenees and these areas were to develop into the Kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia. The capture of Toledo in 1085 was soon followed by the completion of the Christian powers reconquest of all the northern territories. El Cid’s greatest contribution to the Reconquista came during this phase of the war and his finest victory was the capture of Valencia in 1094, which he later died defending in 1099.
After a period of Muslim resurgence in the twelfth century the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain in the thirteenth, Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248 leaving only Granada in the south, which since 1238 was a dependent vassal of the King of Castile.
In 1469, the crowns of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. In 1478 the Moors were driven from the Islands and in 1492 the Christians captured Granada, ending seven hundred and eighty-one years of Islamic rule in Iberia. The Treaty of Granada guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims but the new state of Spain was beginning to flex its muscles and the year 1492 marked the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus and a law requiring Jews to convert to Catholicism under the Spanish Inquisition or face expulsion from Spanish territories. The Catholic Monarchy instigated a policy of unrestrained ethnic cleansing and not long after, Muslims too became subject to the same requirement.
__________________________________________________
Other posts about El Cid:
El Cid and Alvar Fáñez – another hero of the Reconquest
El Cid and the Castle of Belmonte
El Cid – The Film Fact and Fiction
__________________________________________________
Posted in History, Spain, World Heritage
Tagged Cordoba, El Cid, Gladiator, La Tizona, Life, Reconquista, Travel
The seven hundred year period between 722 and 1492 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become a cherished feature of the self-image of the Spanish people.
Writing about my visit to Italy, Vesuvius, Capua and Rome has reminded me of the story of Spartacus.
Admired by, among others, Karl Marx and Che Guevara, Spartacus was the most famous leader of the Roman slaves in a major uprising against the Republic in the Third Servile War but although the iconic leader of the uprising has become a cult and a legend little is known about him beyond the events of the rebellion and surviving historical accounts of the Roman historians Plutarch and Appian that were written at least a hundred years after his death and are sometimes contradictory.
Contemporary sources all agree that Spartacus was a Thracian, which in ancient times occupied the area on the southwestern fringes of present-day north-eastern Greece and south-western Bulgaria. Plutarch described him as ‘…of Nomadic stock, more Hellenic than Thracian’. Appian provides some more detail and says he was ‘a Thracian by birth, who had once served as a soldier with the Romans, but had since been sold for a Gladiator’. Florus described him as one ‘who from Thracian mercenary, had become Roman soldier, deserter and robber, and afterwards gladiator’.
According to the differing sources therefore there are two explanations of how he became a Gladiator. Spartacus was either an auxiliary from the Roman legions later condemned to slavery, or a captive taken in war. Whichever is true, it is generally agreed that Spartacus was trained at the gladiatorial school near Capua, which became the site of the second largest Roman Amphitheatre after Rome.
In 73 BC, Spartacus was involved in a plan to escape and about seventy men seized improvised weapons, fought their way free and seized several wagons of gladiatorial supplies. They defeated a small force sent after them, plundered the region surrounding Capua, recruited many other slaves into their ranks and eventually encamped on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
The gladiators chose Spartacus and Crixus as their leaders and most probably they lived and fought together as a matter of convenience rather than as a single homogenous unit. Classical historians were divided as to what the motives of Spartacus were, Plutarch believed that he merely wished to escape northwards into Gaul but Appian and Florus wrote that he intended to march on Rome itself. There is no real evidence however that he had any noble ambition or aimed at reforming Roman society or abolishing slavery.
Events in late 73 and early 72 BC suggest independently operating groups of slaves, it seemed that some preferred to plunder Italy rather than escape over the Alps, and modern historians have identified a factional split between those under Spartacus and those under Crixus, who wished to stay in southern Italy to continue raiding and plundering.
The response of the Roman authorities was hindered by the absence of the army, which was fighting a revolt in Iberia. The Romans considered the rebellion a trivial incident and a simple policing matter. Rome dispatched militia under a praetor, which besieged the slaves on the mountain, hoping that starvation would force them to surrender but was outmaneuvered by Spartacus who left the mountain and attacked and defeated the unfortified Roman camp from the rear. The slaves also defeated a second praetorian expedition and with these successes, more and more slaves flocked to the rebel forces increasing their numbers to an estimated seventy thousand.
Spartacus was an excellent tactician and although the slaves lacked formal military training, they displayed ingenuity in their use of available local materials and in imaginative tactics when facing disciplined Roman armies. They spent the winter of 73–72 BC training, arming and equipping new recruits and operating in two groups under Spartacus and Crixus and expanding their area of influence.
In 72 BC, they began to move northwards and at the same time, the Senate, alarmed by the defeat of the praetorian forces, dispatched two consular legions which were initially successful, defeating a group of thirty thousand slaves commanded by Crixus but then were subsequently defeated by Spartacus.
Worried now by the rebellion and a perceived threat to Rome (it was one thing to deal with an uprising in Spain or Germany but this was only a few kilometres from the capital itself) the Senate charged Marcus Crassus with ending the rebellion and he was given command of eight legions, approximately fifty-thousand trained Roman soldiers. Crassus engaged Spartacus in a running battle forcing him farther and farther south as he gradually gained the upper hand and by the end of 72 BC, Spartacus was running out of options and getting trapped against the sea near the Strait of Messina.
If his objective was to cross the Alps it is unclear why he moved south in the first place (perhaps Crixus got the upper hand) but he began to move north again in early 71 BC and Crassus deployed six of his legions on the borders of the region and detached his other two legions to move in behind Spartacus in a pincer movement. Spartacus had some initial success against the legions behind him but after this Crassus’ legions were victorious in several engagements, killing thousands and forcing Spartacus to retreat south once again to the straits near Messina.
Spartacus tried to escape to Sicily but he was betrayed by pirates after having negotiated and paid for a passage for himself and two thousand men and then thwarted by Crassus who took strategic measures to prevent a crossing to Sicily and Spartacus was forced to abandon this plan and retreat further south. Crassus’ legions followed and built fortifications and the rebels found themselves under siege and cut off from their supplies.
At this time the legions of Pompey returned from Spain and were ordered by the Senate to march south to assist. Crassus feared that Pompey’s arrival would rob him of the glory and Spartacus unsuccessfully tried to exploit this and reach an agreement with him but after this failed the rebel army began to disintegrate and flea toward the mountains with the legions in pursuit. When the army caught up discipline among the slave forces broke down as small groups were independently and ineffectively attacking the oncoming legions. With few options, Spartacus turned his forces around and brought his entire remaining strength to bear in a desperate last stand, in which the slaves were completely routed and defeated. The eventual fate of Spartacus himself is unknown, but he is reported by historians to have died in battle along with his men.
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The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula
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Posted in Europe, Greece, History, Italy
Tagged Crassos, Crixus, Gladiator, Gladiators, Pompey, Roman Games, Roman Gladiator, Rome, Spartacus, Spartacus Blood and Sand, Vesuvius
“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” Gladiator (2000)
It was about a two hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Rome which took just over three hours and with a full day to pack in the coach picked us up before breakfast so we collected food parcels and set of for the Italian capital, which is the third most visited European city after London and Paris. The coach took the road towards Naples and then swung around the base of Vesuvius and picked up the A1 Autostrada that runs all the way from Naples to Rome and then on to Milan.
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Hotels, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Capua, Colosseum, Eternal City, Gladiator, Ivan Petcher, John Keats, Naples, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, River Tiber, Roman Empire, Roman Forum, Rome, Sorrento, Spanish Steps, Spartacus, St Peter's Basilica, Trevi Fountain, Vatican, Vesuvius, Victor Emmanuelle National Monument
The seven hundred year period between 722 and 1492 has long been known to historians of Spain as the ‘Reconquista’ and the Spanish have organised their medieval history around the drama of this glorious event which over time has become a cherished feature of the self-image of the Spanish people. It has become embellished into a sort of organised Catholic national crusade and although there is some truth in this much of it in reality was simply due to the expansionist territorial ambitions of competing northern Spanish kingdoms such as Asturias and León.
Click on an image to scroll through the gallery…
Tagged Babieca, Charlton Heston, Cordoba, El Cid, Gladiator, La Tizona, medieval knights, Reconquista, Spain, Ximena
Have Bag, Will Travel 