[31] The real dividing line between the Roman and medieval worlds came not with the Barbarian invasions of the fifth century but with the Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. This interpretation, known to historians as the Pirenne Thesis, is more applicable to the history of the Hispanic peninsula than to that of any other part of western Europe. The historically enduring Hispanic kingdoms were those created in the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of most of the peninsula. The eight-century reconquest that followed was an historic enterprise without parallel in human history. Elsewhere invading forces and cultures have either been quickly repelled and eliminated or else as in Russia accepted as overlords by the native population. Exotic forces, once firmly implanted, have been absorbed by or have transformed the autochthonous culture. In Hispania, invading Muslim society could not be simply defeated and rejected, and much less could it be absorbed. Yet it was not completely accepted, either, and resistance by small independent groups of the indigenous population was maintained for centuries, becoming the major conditioning factor in the Hispanic cultures, until finally the Muslims had been completely defeated, subjugated, and ultimately expelled from the peninsula.
 
It should be remembered that the resistance of that minority of the population which remained Christian and independent was not inspired [32] by any racial antagonism between Hispano-Christians and Berber-Arab Muslims. For that matter, after a generation or so the great majority of Muslims were Hispanic converts. Hence the antagonism was essentially cultural and religious.

The only parts of the peninsula relatively untouched by the Muslim invasion were the mountainous regions of the far north in the Pyrenean and Cantabrian ranges. These areas had never been fully integrated into either of the preceding Hispanic political communities, Roman or Visigothic. The native Cantabrian and Basque populations stoutly resisted outside domination, though the Cantabrians had been partially Romanized and had reached a modus vivendi with the Visigoths. Small groups of native Cantabrians and Hispano-Visigoths resisted Muslim dominion in the more inaccessible parts of Asturias and the eastern Cantabrians (the latter, somewhat shakily organized as the duchy of Cantabria under the Visigoths, roughly corresponded to the modern province of Santander). About the year 718 they recognized as leader a warrior named Pelayo, apparently a Visigothic aristocrat. Pelayo's stronghold lay in the Picos de Europa district of eastern Asturias, near the center of the greater Cantabrian range. In 722 his followers ambushed and destroyed a Muslim attack force below the mountain of Covadonga, giving the Christians their first clear-cut victory. After the death of Pelayo (737) and of his son Fáfila (739), the military leaders of Asturias and Cantabria elected as successor Pelayo's son-in-law Alfonso, the son of the late Visigothic duke of Cantabria. He subsequently became known to history as Alfonso I (739-757), first regular ruler of the nascent kingdom of Asturias.

 

Pelayo	718-737	Garcia	911-914
Fáfila	737-739	Ordoño II	914-924
Alfonso I	739-757	Fruela II	924-925
Fruela I	757-768	Sancho Ordóñez	925-929
Aurelio	768-774	Alfonso IV	929-931
Silo	774-783	Ramiro II	931-951
Mauregato	783-788	Ordoño III	951-956
Vermudo I the Deacon	788-791	Sancho I the Fat	956-966
Alfonso II the Chaste	791-842	Ramiro III	966-985
Ramiro I	842-850	Vermudo II	985-999
Ordoño I	850-866	Alfonso V	999-1028
Alfonso III el Magno	866-911	Vermudo III	1028-1037

Farther east, autonomous nuclei of Hispanic people survived in the interior valleys of the Pyrenees throughout the eighth century. Their numbers were slightly increased by Christian immigration from the south, and they were to some extent sheltered by the mountainous terrain. Yet their population was small, even compared with the kingdom of Asturias, and at first they were obliged to come to terms with Muslim authorities, accepting a kind of tributary status. The Pyrenees lay astride the route of Muslim expansion into western Europe, and because the northeastern part of the peninsula was more urbanized and productive than the northwest and also more Mediterranean and warm, it drew greater attention from the Muslims. All the main cities in the northeast--Zaragoza, Pamplona, Tarragona, Barcelona, Lérida, Gerona--were occupied directly, and the more southerly of them were soon in process of Islamization. Facing heavy military pressure and lacking any buffer zone, the small Hispanic population of the Pyrenees was at first completely hemmed into the mountain area.
 
As the Muslims had moved up into the peninsula, a number of Visigoths and lower-class Hispani had crossed the Pyrenees into Septimania. Though the Muslims established a tenuous subordination of Septimania in their destructive raids between 718 and 732, they [35] were unable to extend their control permanently beyond the Pyrenees for reasons discussed in the foregoing chapter.
 
Frankish counterattacks from the north, followed by the outbreak of civil war among the Muslims, quickly altered the balance of power. After 742, part of Septimania renounced its tributary status, though the remaining Gothic overlords in Septimania sometimes preferred distant association with Córdoba to Frankish domination. In 756 Narbonne, the largest town in the region, acknowledged the sovereignty of the Frankish monarchy, which soon incorporated all the territory down to the Pyrenees. Charlemagne attempted to roll back the Muslim frontier by extending a Frankish protectorate over northeast Hispania at the behest of anti-Umayyad Muslim dissidents. In 778 a Frankish expedition against Zaragoza failed, but in 785 the Christian inhabitants of Gerona, in the northeastern corner of the peninsula, accepted Frankish suzerainty. In a series of limited campaigns fought between 785 and 811, Franks occupied and fortified the strongpoints of the southern Pyrenean foothills. The eastern and central Pyrenean regions were then organized on the Frankish principle into six counties -- Urgel, Pallars, Barcelona (seized in 801), Ribagorza, Sobrarbe, and Aragón -- under the Frankish monarchy.
 
The counties of the Pyrenees were more intimately associated with the culture and institutions of the rest of western Europe than was the semi-isolated kingdom of Asturias on the other side of the peninsula. Development of a semi-feudal political structure based on Frankish models, military reliance on Frankish assistance, the religious influence of Carolingian Catholicism, and cultural crosscurrents from France and Italy all drew the population of the Hispanic March into closer contact with the main forces shaping medieval western Europe.

The Basque territory of the western Pyrenees had never been completely occupied and incorporated by an invading power. During the eighth century, its inhabitants maintained their customary hostility to outside domination and maneuvered between the Muslim emirate and Frankish expansion. Basques were probably responsible for ambushing the rearguard of Charlemagne's expedition of 778 when it retreated toward the north. In the course of a major expedition to restore the emirate's power in the northeast three years later, Abd-al-Rahman I occupied Pamplona, the only true city in the Basque country, and established Muslim control over lower Navarre (roughly in the area just south of the southwestern foothills of the Pyrenees). The Basques had all the less difficulty in establishing peaceful relations [36] with the Muslims because few Basques had been Christianized and religious antagonism was not acute. The nearest Muslim power was not the emirate of Córdoba, but the semi-autonomous principality of the Hispano-Muslim Banu Qasi dynasty along the upper Ebro, from whence had come help against the Franks. An independent Navarrese state first began to take form in the final years of the eighth century (ca. 796-798) under a strong leader, Iñigo Arista. The history of Navarre for the next hundred years and more was turbulent, with fluctuating borders and a number of invasions from Al-Andalus, Nonetheless, an organized Navarrese state was created, and a close alliance was maintained with the neighboring Banu Qasi through interdynastic marriage.

During the height of Muslim power in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Pyrenean counties remained comparatively static and self-contained. The only dynamic, expanding power was the mountain kingdom of Asturias. With Galicia and most of the Cantabrian range organized within their territory, the Asturian rulers had the dual advantage of possessing greater resources than any single Pyrenean county and of facing less determined resistance to their immediate south for the sparsely inhabited buffer zone of the Duero valley contrasted sharply with the strong, prosperous Muslim urban centers of the northeast that hemmed in the Pyrenean counties.
 
The struggle for independence in the northwest had at first been a desperate fight for survival, but it soon generated a broader ideal and a more comprehensive objective, at least for the immediate circle of the Asturian monarchs. Rather than considering themselves overlords of a parochial principality, the Asturian rulers tried to legitimize broader ambitions and a claim to increased sovereignty by identifying their throne with the lost legacy of the Visigoths. As early as 760, after increased Visigothic emigration to Asturias and the first generation of successful counterattacks, the "Neo-Gothic" idea of restoring the independent Hispano-Christian monarchy of the Visigoths was foreshadowed. During the course of the next century, a political identity and goal were developed by the Asturian court. The discovery of an impressive tomb in central Galicia early in the ninth century provided the kingdom with a spiritual patron. The tomb was soon labeled as the sepulchre of "Santiago"--St. James, the brother of Christ--and the saint subsequently adopted as the patron saint of Asturias-León. Whereas the leaders of the Pyrenean counties thought of themselves as autonomous within a broader political framework, the rulers of [37] Asturias began to identify themselves as heirs of the Visigoths charged with an imperial mission of reconquest.
 
The Neo-Gothic idea was developed during the reign of Alfonso III "el Magno" (886-911), apparently the first Hispano-Christian king to claim the title of emperor. If the title was indeed used by Alfonso el Magno--and the sources are by no means unequivocal about such a claim--it referred only to the lands of the Hispanic peninsula, which were held to be the legitimate patrimony of the successors of the Visigothic monarchy. From the time of Alfonso el Magno there was a conscious revival of certain Visigothic court forms, such as the traditional rite of royal consecration, employed to symbolize the continuity and legitimacy of the kingdom. It might be noted that in the ninth and tenth centuries the notion of regaining domination over the peninsula did not imply the expulsion or extermination of Muslim rivals. What was involved was political sovereignty and religious authority, something not incompatible with the limited system of "discriminatory toleration" practiced in Al-Andalus vis-a-vis Christians and Jews, save that the roles of superior and subordinate would be reversed.
 
The Asturian church played a major role in the development and diffusion of the Neo-Gothic idea. Its hierarchy, after freeing itself from any dependence on the Mozarab church, was ambitious to assert the sovereignty of Asturian institutions and expand their influence. Learned clerics and monks formed the only intelligentsia of that time; they prepared the arguments and discovered the precedents for Neo-Gothic legitimist ambitions on the part of the crown and served as its chief propagandists.
 
The expansion of Asturias was a slow, halting process. Advances were made during the long, constructive reign of Alfonso II "the Chaste" (791-842), but it was not until the time of Ordoño I (850-866) that the line of Tuy-Astorga-León-Amaya was effectively occupied, and then to some extent repopulated and fortified. During the long reign of Alfonso el Magno, severe internal conflicts within the emirate led the Asturians to believe at one point that destruction of the Cordoban state was imminent, and in 881 a royal expedition struck deep into the heart of Al-Andalus. Before the death of Alfonso el Magno a line of occupation was reached that stretched through the Duero and Mondego valleys from Simancas to Zamora to Coimbra. The formidable strength of the unified caliphate made further advance in the tenth century difficult, but Ramiro II (931-951) inflicted a crushing defeat on Abd-al-Rahman III at Simancas in 939 and was able to occupy, in a tenuous fashion, the regions of Salamanca, Avila, and Sepúlveda. Altogether, the one hundred years from the start of the reign of Ordoflo I (850) to the death of Ramiro II (951) more than [38] doubled the kingdom. Alfonso el Magno moved the capital from the hilltown of Oviedo to the more attractive city of León to the south, and the kingdom was henceforth known by the geographically more descriptive title Asturias and León, or simply León. It had grown larger than all the Hispano-Christian principalities to the east put together.
 
Thus the people of the northwest became the creators and protagonists of what was to be the historic Spanish tradition. The mountainous regions of Asturias and Cantabria had been peripheral and among the least sophisticated of the peninsula, though the districts of Galicia and Braga to the southwest were more developed. In the eighth century, of course, the notion of Spanish as distinct from Muslim or Moorish scarcely existed for the independent northern mountaineers. The adjective Hispanic had been from the beginning of Roman times a merely geographic term. During the early Middle Ages Hispania or Espaffa referred to the territory of the peninsula, most of which was dominated by Muslims. Consequently adjectives derived therefrom might refer more frequently to Muslims than to Christians. As late as 996 the term espanesco meant "Moorish" rather than "Spanish" in the modern sense. The word espanyol (in Castilian, español) was apparently first coined by Provençal merchants in southwestern France to denote all the people who lived south of the Pyrenees, Christian or Muslim. Thus the independent identity of the people of the northwest was not originally conceived of as Spanish but was defined in two different ways. One was by region (Asturian, Galician, Leonese), and the other was as Christian (or at least non-Muslim). Therein lay a second paradox, in that the Asturians and Cantabrians who became the first champions of independent Hispanic Christendom against the Muslims had been the least Christianized of the Hispanic population (save for the Basques, who later tended to react in the same fashion). They came to stress Christianity in part to distinguish themselves from the religion of their antagonists.

Because of the depopulation and devastation that prevailed for a century in the Duero valley, one of the few ways in which Muslim armies could strike directly at the heartland of Asturias-León was by travelling up the Ebro valley along the old Roman road northwest from Zaragoza. To guard against invasion from this direction, the Asturian monarchy built a series of castles and fortified villages in the mountains above the upper Ebro, where the route could be sealed off. [39] This territory (in the modern provinces of Santander, Burgos, and Alava) was known in ancient times as Bardulia after the Celtiberian tribe that had inhabited the region. By the beginning of the ninth century it was beginning to be called in the local vernacular Castiella or Castilla --"the land of castles"--from the Latin castella.
 
The people of the eastern Cantabrian range had been even less Romanized than had the inhabitants of Asturias. The effective Romaniztion and Christianization of Cantabria was not really accomplished until after the influx of a certain number of Visigothic and Hispano-Christian refugees in the eighth century. Apparently there was also an ancient linguistic boundary between Asturias and Cantabria-Bardulia which persisted into the Middle Ages. Thus the Asturian-Leonese romance dialect, like the Galician (and also the Catalan), retained the normal Latin f, whereas the Cantabrian romance dialect apparently excluded it and included an aspirate sound. If this interpretation is correct, the influence of the Cantabrian dialect can still be heard in two of the linguistic pecularities of the Castilian language. Of the three major romance languages that were formed in the peninsula, Castilian developed into the most original, probably because of its beginnings in one of the remote and least cosmopolitan regions, a region whose linguistic individuality was already marked.
 
Communication with Cantabria-Bardulia and administration of that region always presented a problem for the Asturian monarchy, because of distance and rough terrain. As early as 804 a separate bishopric, that of Valpuesta, was organized to administer religious affairs in Castile. In the mid-830s Alfonso II the Chaste appointed several regional judges to administer the local affairs of Cantabria-Bardulia. After another generation passed, they were replaced by several regional "counts" to administer local districts, the most important of which was called the county of Castile, a name later given to the entire area. By that time the Castilians had come to constitute a separate territorial and social group within greater Asturias-León, a frontier society that was ruder, more militant, more egalitarian, and more self-reliant than the settled and developed areas of Asturias and Galicia.

The Asturian state developed early a strong concept of royal sovereignty. Specific challenges of life in the peninsula, coupled with Neo-Gothic theory, resulted in a vigorous monarchy that did not succumb to the decentralizing effect of internal power struggles of the sort that were weakening other west European monarchies. The Hispano-Visigothic [40] law, the Fuero Juzgo, emphasized the overriding legal authority of the rex as ruler of the regnum (kingdom or public power), so that in theory the Leonese crown held public authority over all its domains. The royal state was viewed as sovereign in itself and not merely the patrimony of a dynasty regulated by local custom, as in the more feudalized areas of western Europe. Practice, however, was something else, and de facto resistance by local districts, dissident aristocrats, or even serfs against higher authority was not uncommon. At first, succession to the throne remained semi-elective, though within the original dynasty, and the principle of strict hereditary succession was not fully established for nearly three hundred years. The eighth and ninth centuries were marked by intermittent revolt and at least one successful deposition of a sovereign. This notwithstanding, the Asturian-Leonese monarchy proved more stable than had that of the Visigoths, at least until the middle of the tenth century.
 
Supremacy of the crown was reinforced by the need of its subjects to maintain military unity in the face of a much stronger Muslim state to the south. The Asturian monarchy raised military forces directly and was not dependent merely on feudal levies. Most of the ablebodied men, at least in the frontier areas, were under some obligation to bear arms. Warfare was not the prerogative of a single class, and the crown was able to maintain considerable control over military power because it upheld the Romano-Visigothic principle that newly conquered land that was unoccupied belonged to the royal fisc and thus added regularly to its income. Retention of a moneyed economy, augmented by military raids and border expansion, enabled the crown to pay for some services and thus be less dependent on personal relationships. Organized administrative and judicial affairs rested on the authority of the crown, which normally appointed officials to their posts rather than recognizing such posts as the personal patrimony of local feudal overlords.
 
In most of western Europe, the power of the medieval aristocracy lay in its feudal politico-juridical dominion over local territories and in its reciprocal military obligations toward the crown and the local region. Only in Catalonia did the Hispanic nobility form along this west European pattern, but actual social circumstances in the Hispanic principalities did not always differ as greatly from the norms of feudal western Europe as the differing legal systems might imply. The Leonese monarchy, for example, lacked resources to administer local affairs throughout the kingdom, and in many areas local overlords appropriated nominal functions of the crown, even if on an ad hoc basis.
 
At any rate, a distinct hereditary aristocracy existed from the time of Alfonso I, made up of vigorous Hispano-Visigothic elements and [41] the warrior elite of the local population. Though some aristocrats possessed hereditary estates, the establishment of such endowments was gradual and did not become general for almost two centuries. The aristocracy was largely a military class whose members enjoyed special privileges, such as exemption from taxes and ordinary labor. Military leaders and local overlords or administrators of the crown were frequently given grants of land or the income from herds of cattle or cultivated strips to maintain themselves, and in certain cases received special titles, but for the first century or so such grants were only lifetime awards and were not hereditary. The only original hereditary right of the aristocrats was that of transmitting special opportunities and legal exemptions to their heirs. By the tenth century, if not before, there had developed a system of vassalage whereby local aristocratic military leaders swore special fealty and vassalage to the crown, which in turn recognized certain privileges of its vassals, but this was not at first accompanied in Asturias-León by the granting or recognition of special feudalities--inherited fiefs under the permanent dominion of a local vassal who was free to govern them as a private domain. Only gradually did local barons and other aristocrats manage to establish inherited landed dominions and property rights, either by establishing their authority over local peasants in a reciprocal military and economic relationship or by gaining hereditary, rather than temporary, possession of the lands and rights granted as a reward for military or administrative service. It was not until the tenth century--the first "decadence" of León--that new benefices and grants of special income and exemptions were granted to aristocrats without the requirement of service in return.
 
There were at least two distinct classes in the nobility from the very beginning: the ordinary warrior aristocrats, those with horses and other accoutrements, who enjoyed special exemptions but received only minor soldadas (fees), and the high aristocrats, called magnates or ricoshombres, who enjoyed greater salaries or the income from larger grants of land. The difference between the upper and lower classes of nobility lay not in their legal status and exemptions, which were roughly the same for both, but in their wealth and the importance of titles and honors which they held. The size of soldadas or landed benefices and the category of positions held in royal service, or all these combined, were what raised the ricohombre (literally "powerful man") over the rest of the warrior aristocracy.

The condition of the peasantry, particularly in the kingdom of León but to a lesser extent elsewhere, was varied and extremely complicated. [42] Perhaps most of the population of the north were originally free peasants, free in the sense that they were recognized individually under the law and were not bound to the land or placed under special obligations other than taxes and normal community responsibilities. In Galicia, which was more settled and traditionalist, however, a large proportion held the status of colonos or homines, juridically free and not fully enserfed but still bound not to have the land which they worked. Moreover, in Galicia there was also a class of outright serfs, augmented in the eighth century by a few captive Muslims.
 
A distinct social difference crystallized almost immediately between the inner and outer zones of the kingdom. The military elite endeavored almost from the beginning to preserve the traditional social hierarchy and subjection in the most settled, best developed, and most secure parts of the kingdom, primarily in Galicia and in some parts of Asturias. In the wilder or more exposed regions, such as Cantabria-Castile, the outer parts of Asturias, or the new frontier area of León, a rough sense of social equality or at least of tight functional unity prevailed. In these regions the right of peasant proprietors to their own lands or flocks was usually recognized, and in turn nearly everyone had a common interest in the defense of the land against the Muslims. New opportunities were created by the rolling back of the frontier. The more disgruntled or enterprising from the settled zones could often move to the most exposed areas, where they might normally expect land or cattle, better grazing opportunities, and fewer special exactions upon them.
 
The first major instance of social unrest was a serf revolt in Asturias between 768 and 774. It was put down with the aid of the crown, but many serfs are said to have run off to frontier districts where they were allowed to live as free peasants. This in turn created something of a labor shortage in the interior of Galicia, so that some of those remaining in serfdom had to be granted the more lenient adscripted status of homines.
 
At the time of the emergence of a separate county of Castile in the tenth century, most of the Castilian population were free peasants. Even the intermediate grade of adscription to the land as homines or colonos was almost nonexistent among them. Early Castile was a semi-egalitarian warrior community, whose members to a large degree shared the same responsibilities and the same opportunities. An aristocratic class developed, but at first it was mainly a group of military leaders chosen for achievement, not birth.
 
The situation remained more complicated in Galicia, Asturias, and the new territories of León. In the southern region of León--the Duero valley--repopulated slowly after the mid-ninth century, most [43] peasant immigrants established themselves as independent proprietors in presura (occupation) freeholds. Free peasant landholders were much less numerous in Asturias and the more settled parts of León, and soon were only a small minority of the population of Galicia, but changes in status occurred constantly. The situation of the Galician colonos or homines improved at the time of the major repopulation of the Duero valley in the first half of the tenth century. Some moved to new freeholds farther south, and many of those remaining had to be granted better terms to keep them on the land. Save for the small class of serfs, legal adscription to the soil became less and less common. One class of colonos, called iuniores, were recognized as being only renters and free to move whenever they liked. Eventually a decree of Alfonso V of León in 1017 officially declared all colonos free of legal adscription to the soil, leaving only the few serfs, concentrated in Galicia, still bound to the land.
 
Though the number of peasants legally bound to the land declined, it became increasingly difficult for independent peasant proprietors to maintain their position. From the first generations of the kingdom of Asturias, they had been under pressure in Asturias and Galicia to seek protection from warrior aristocrats by placing their land under incomuniatio (in later Castilian, encomendación), granting the overlord full use of part of it and keeping only a portion for themselves. This process of encomendación was soon widespread in Galicia, and later extended to the frontier districts of Portugal as well as to Asturias and León. It became increasingly common, until individual freeholders had disappeared as a class in Galicia.
 
The process of encomendación took a milder form in the newer districts of León, and later in Castile. The system there was called benefactoria (in Castilian, behetría) and at first required merely that collective peasant groups pay a sort of rent on their lands and pastures to support the military aristocracy. Under the terms of benefactoria, peasants normally retained their full personal freedom and the use of all their lands. Moreover, they were at first normally free to break the relation or choose a new overlord-protector. There was a tendency to tighten up these terms in León however, as early as the tenth century, and they became increasingly rigorous in later generations. Furthermore, there was always the possibility that because of debt, crime, or misfortune a peasant might sink from encomendación or benefactoria into homone status. On the other hand, there were occasional examples of serfs or homines being freed of prior obligations and given land by their overlords to hold in encomendación.
 
Some peasants were involved in dual status relationships. For example, in portions of León where peasant proprietors retained their [44] land, they also might undertake obligations to work as laborers or homines two or three days a week on seigneurial plots.
 
In some districts, peasants could place their land under the protection of the church through a process known as oblación, but this came to involve varying degrees of financial obligation. Homines on church lands were normally better treated than those on the lands of the aristocrats, and in troubled times peasants sometimes voluntarily accepted homine status under a local church or monastery. By the twelfth century, however, new land management techniques had made clerical administrators more demanding, and there were occasional revolts of homines on church land.

From the beginning there was also a small class of free landless peasants who worked exclusively as salaried laborers. And in Castile, Navarre, and Aragón there was a class of yunqueros, peasants who owned oxen or other cattle but little or no land of their own. These became more numerous in the twelfth century.

By the twelfth century serfdom--peasants held in semislave status, tied to the land, without juridical personality under the law--was disappearing. By that time practically the only fully enserfed were Muslim captives, some of whom worked on the land but who were more commonly in domestic service. During the thirteenth century nearly all remaining landed serfs (found mainly in Galicia) were raised to colono status, giving them individual recognition under the law and in most cases freedom of movement, though under heavy obligations for the use of land.
 
Though slaves were numerous in affluent Al-Andalus, there were comparatively few outright slaves in Asturias-León. Again, nearly all held in this condition were captive Muslims, and the actual difference between Muslim serfs and Muslim slaves in León was apparently often complicated and unclear. The slave class became somewhat more numerous in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the Christian principalities grew in wealth and power.

Very characteristic of medieval Hispano-Christian society was the predominance of various forms of associationism or communalism. It is true that, as indicated earlier, the occupation of new land by reconquest permitted the establishment of numerous new allodial freeholds as private property, but in the majority of cases the old Roman principle of complete, unfettered private property no longer prevailed. The main source of wealth was land, but most land was not [45] owned, pure and simple, by a single party. The need for cooperation and division of responsibility for defense and the civil order was generally accepted, and a sometimes bewildering variety of claims, rights, shares, or interests were established relating to the use or production of a piece of property. Most land was held in a kind of condominium, part of the usufruct going to the overlord--whether aristocrat, church, or crown--and part to those who worked on it or otherwise "owned" it. Numerous kinds of sharecropping arrangements were worked out on lands that formed part of seigneurial or church domain, or were held under encomendación or benefactoria. This was the more common because part of the northern section of the peninsula had never been fully incorporated into the Roman property system and pre-Roman forms of communalism had not died out by the time of the Muslim conquest.
 
Associative arrangements functioned not only between members of hierarchic relationships but on the cooperative level of peasant village communes and pastoral associations as well. Particularly in Castile, but also to some extent in the frontier regions of León, much of the land was held by peasant villages that administered and reapportioned use of land and herds in common. In turn, local regional associations of villages and later of towns were formed for the regulation of common problems.
 
The medieval Hispano-Christian family was also organized along communal and associative lines, based on the joint rights of the parents. In place of Roman marital rights investing all power in the husband, medieval Hispano-Christian law in all regions held that marriage constituted a society of equal rights, based on half-and-half sharing and equal division of property among families and heirs. The same rule was normally applied to all income from or additions to community property. This reflected the greater emphasis on women's role in the post-Celtic society of part of the northern hill country, as well as the influence of Christian principles. Its sharp contrast to the norms of the orthodox Muslim society of Al-Andalus is obvious.

Even though the explicit feudal principle was not recognized in the legal structure of Asturias, and the military aristocracy at first was held to be more distinctly a service aristocracy than in other parts of western Europe, separate domains were built up by members of the aristocracy and by the church, probably starting as early as the second half of the eighth century. The origin of the seigneurial domains [46] lay more in practice than in theory. As explained earlier, dominion over land was considered legally to be a temporary award in return for service or the maintenance of military strength. Legal jurisdiction by aristocrats was originally meant to represent the jurisdiction of the public power, which could only be administered through intermediaries.
 
In practice, however, there was an early tendency in the more settled parts of Galicia and Asturias for dominions of aristocrats to become permanent and inheritable and for aristocrats to exercise economic and legal jurisdiction by mere right of dominion, not as temporary lieutenants of the crown. This did not nullify the tendency toward sharing and associationism, for seigneurial domain was frequently limited by tradition and the local custom of peasants' rights. By the tenth century, at any rate, de facto relationships in much of the northwest were passing into law; seigneurial and church domain were recognized over most of Galicia, and parts of Asturias and old León as well.

Of all regions of the peninsula, the one with the greatest social mobility, autonomy, and communal associationism was Castile. The inhabitants of Cantabria-Bardulia had never been subjected to as developed a social hierarchy as had obtained in the centers of Roman and Visigothic Hispania. The conditions of Castilian frontier society in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries precluded the growth of the degree of social subjection and hierarchy that were already established in Galicia. Local Castilian peasant villages and communities enjoyed district autonomy, and frequently made decisions by means of open village meetings. There were numerous examples of peasants proven in battle who outfitted themselves with horses and became knights (in Castilian, caballero, "cavalryman"). It might also be noted that until the broad southward expansion of the eleventh century, cavalry were rather less important in Castilian hill warfare than in some other regions, and peasant infantry more important. Indeed, the booty obtained in semiconstant warfare offered new property to whoever was able to take it, reducing the degree of social stratification.

Border districts were always the most democratic, not merely in Castile but in León as well, for peasant groups had to be granted better terms, often including peasant community autonomy, to induce them to settle the hazardous frontier. Enterprising peasant [47] groups might resettle a district entirely by themselves on grants of presura, or with specific cartas de franquicias (charters of rights or immunities) from the crown, sometimes obtained ex post facto. The expansion of Castile was frequently a matter of osmosis. Most important of all was the establishment of new peasant communities as concejos, self-governing corporate councils, with cartas pueblas (charters) recognizing local rights and autonomy. Such practices were at the root of the system of local and municipal fueros (rights) that formed the basis of much of the historic Castilian legal structure.

It would be inaccurate to try to establish an absolute social and legal dichotomy between Castile and León. In the frontier districts of León there were semi-autonomous concejos just as in Castile. Not all local districts or peasant communities in Castile were autonomous, and by the eleventh century a trend had set in among elements of the new Castilian aristocracy to carve out their own seigneurial domains. Yet in general a difference in tendency and degree did exist, mainly because of the challenge and opportunity of Castile as a frontier region. It followed also that if Castilian society was freer, more autonomous, socially mobile, and egalitarian than that of greater León, it was ruder and more insular.

There were several currents of immigration into the northern principalities during the early Middle Ages, but the only one of significant proportions was the movement of Christian Mozarabs from Al-Andalus into the north, primarily into the major state, the kingdom of León. The flow of immigrants varied but continued fairly steadily for three centuries and more, the biggest influx probably occurring during the second half of the ninth century, when León was expanding and the pressure on Mozarabs in the south had begun to mount. It has been conjectured that Mozarab immigrants played a major role in diffusing sophisticated (sometimes Islamically-derived) cultural forms throughout the northwest, in the development of the Neo-Gothic and reconquest mystiques, and in the reestablishment or development of hierarchical institutions.
 
Up until the eleventh century, the Muslim population of the Christian states was small, consisting exclusively of prisoners carried back to the north. They were normally reduced to semislave status but were also more apt than not to be converted to Christianity. Conversion did not guarantee freedom, but it was the first step in the amelioration of their condition. In the more settled areas, particularly [48] Galicia, captured Muslims were frequently absorbed by the local society within a generation or two. No major centers of Muslim population were captured during the first three centuries of the reconquest; most Muslims in the path of the Christian advance withdrew, and only a comparative few were seized. Thus in the early Middle Ages they formed no ethno-religious bloc in the north.
 
The large Jewish society in the south played a significant role in the economic and cultural life of Al-Andalus, but few Jews lived in the Christian principalities before the eleventh century. The backward northern economy was unattractive, and the advantages of Muslim rule were appreciated, at least until the eleventh century, when conditions began to change. Even before then, however, very small groups of Jews were established in a few of the leading centers, engaged in commerce.
 
Aside from the Mozarabs, the most important group of immigrants in the tenth and eleventh centuries were the French, known as francos (Franks), who entered the peninsula in small but fairly continuous numbers from the ninth century on. The first notable Frankish immigration flowed into the Catalan counties in the ninth and tenth centuries, and during the eleventh expanded into the western principalities. The Franks were predominantly of three types--religious reformers and monks, who exercised a major influence on Spanish Catholicism (as well as government and economic development) and will be discussed in a subsequent chapter; military crusaders and adventurers, who sometimes lent decisive impetus to the reconquest, expecially in Aragón; and middle-class merchants and artisans, who played a major role in building up trade and urban economic life, to a greater extent during this period (the tenth and eleventh centuries) than did the Jews. Unlike the latter, middle-class French immigrants tended to merge with the general population after a generation or two.

Urban society only slowly began to develop in the north during the tenth and the first part of the eleventh centuries. During the period of caliphal splendor in Córdoba, León, the capital city of the northwest, had a population of scarcely 7,000. The only other towns of importance were Astorga, Oviedo, and the religious shrine of Santiago de Compostela. Farther east were Pamplona, Barcelona, and Gerona. Nearly all the towns that did exist had been laid out under Roman rule. What passed for towns in most localities were simply large [49] churches or villages fortified for military defense. Significant change came only with the great expansion of the eleventh century and the economic stimulus of tribute payments and other newly incorporated sources of wealth.

For two centuries, a series of comparatively strong rulers, external pressures for unity, territory of manageable dimensions, simplicity of social forms, modest population, and strong natural frontiers combined to create relative unity and continuity behind the monarchy of Asturias-León. These conditions changed during the course of the tenth century. After the death of Ordoño II (924), domestic disputes multiplied. During the second half of the century the throne was occupied by a series of weak rulers whose ineptness encouraged particularism and dissension. At the same time, the kingdom faced the awesome challenge of the military might of the tenth-century caliphate, the sharpest threat from the Muslims since the original conquest.
 
Dynastic dissension in León was due in part to the active intervention of Navarrese diplomacy. Three successive Leonese kings were married to Navarrese princesses, all daughters of the redoubtable Queen Toda of Pamplona, who was the key to north Hispanic politics for twenty years and the principal organizer of the coalition of Christian princes that defeated Abd-al-Rahman III at Simancas in 939. Leonese dissension was compounded by the influence of aristocratic cliques and the failure of the crown to develop an administrative system beneficial to the domain as a whole.

Navarrese diplomacy encouraged the separation of Castile, and after the death of Ramiro II in 951, rival heirs from successive marriages of the late king plunged León into its first full-fledged civil war. Sancho I (known as Sancho the Fat or the Crass), the younger son of Ramiro's second (Navarrese) marriage, required help from Navarre and from the caliphate to retain his throne. He was forced to recognize the suzerainty of Abd-al-Rahman III and ruled feebly for ten years. Sancho was then succeeded by an underage son, Ramiro III (966-985), whose unhappy reign coincided with the rise of al-Mansur, a drastic contraction of Leonese frontiers, and years of devastation and misery. A Galician-Leonese reaction eventually established Vermudo II (985-999), a son of Ordoño III, on the throne, but the kingdom could not escape further suffering from the summer campaigns of al-Mansur. At times it seemed that all the achievements [50] of two hundred years were being destroyed. Only toward the end of the reign of Alfonso V (999-1028) was domestic unity regained and the resettlement of border districts resumed. During the six harsh decades of 950-1010 León had lost its expansive momentum and had nearly broken apart.

A major factor in the dissension of tenth-century León was the particularism of the region of Castile, where neither the regional counts nor the people felt close to the Leonese state system. Regulated by their own common law, largely free of social coercion, and often left to their own devices in the face of Muslim onslaught, the Castilians forged an identity of their own. Castile lay at the crossroads of diverse ethnic groups and principalities, but out of conflict and expansion had formed its own ethos and was developing its own language. The leader who first took effective advantage of this was a royally appointed count of Castile, Fernán González, in an attempt to assert Castilian autonomy during the reign of Ramiro II. Though several times defeated, he rallied most of the Castilian population behind him, and during the convulsed generation that followed the death of Ramiro II, established the full autonomy of Castile on terms of virtual independence. For twenty years, from 950 to 970, he governed as count of Castile, in conflict at varying times with the Cordoban caliphate, the kingdom of Navarre, and León itself.
 
Castile's chief reason for being was military, and it did a better job of defending itself against Muslim onslaught than any other Christian principality. The most redoubtable quality of Fernán González was his fierce military leadership. The vernacular Castilian romances later remembered that

The elite cavalry of lesser nobles was increased to 600 by González, and though it may have bent, the military structure of Castile did not crack under the Muslim onslaught. Most of the wealth of the land was in livestock, which was herded out of the way or into the hills, limiting economic loss. By the beginning of the eleventh century, Castile had weathered the storm of the "iron century" in rather better condition than the more sophisticated but less vigorous and more politically and socially divided regions of Old León.

The small Basque region of Navarre (or Pamplona, as it is often called, after its capital and only real city) was originally one of the smallest but also the most ethnically homogeneous of Hispanic principalities. Its population was at first largely non-Christian, and only in its capital city and among the ruling class was Romance dialect spoken; elsewhere people spoke the isolated, autochthonous Basque tongue almost exclusively. The early history of Navarre is shrouded in mystery, for almost no records have survived. Though the region was not fully Christianized until the twelfth century, it may be inferred that Christian proselytization was carried on fairly continuously, particularly from the north, where Navarre lay more open to French influence than any other Hispanic region save the Catalan counties of the eastern Pyrenees.
 
Navarrese history took a new direction in 905, when a new dynasty was established in Pamplona under Sancho Garcés I (905-925). The one-hundred-year-old alliance with the Hispano-Muslim Banu Qasi rulers of the neighboring upper Ebro region was broken, and the Navarrese crown adopted an Hispano-Christian policy of expansion and reconquest. With military assistance from León, the Nájera district (in modern Logroño province) to the southwest was conquered between 918 and 923, though beyond that point the small Navarrese forces were unable to make headway. Indeed, the resurgence of Muslim power under the tenth-century caliphate soon forced the Pamplona rulers to return to their more customary policy of compromise and the renewal of marriage alliances, wedding a Navarrese princess to the heir of al-Mansur.
 
Somewhat paradoxically, the backward, non-Romance-speaking, still partly unchristianized Navarre nevertheless became by the end of the tenth century extremely receptive to new influences, in part because of its position astride the western Pyrenees. Navarre and the Catalan counties were the first Hispanic regions to be influenced by the tenth- and eleventh-century Catholic reform movements from France, which were transmitted through them to Castile and León. The eastern principalities served as channels of European modernization in a variety of ways: new forms of administrative organization, mercantile practice, training and functioning of clerks and scribes, artisanship, and military technology (particularly in the development of stronger horses, weapons, and chain mail for the new style of heavy cavalry) began to filter through the Pyrenean states. Though the Catalan counties in some respects may have been farther advanced culturally and economically, Navarre by the early eleventh [52] century had become the peninsula's best-organized state politically, thanks in large part to a series of vigorous and capable rulers. Navarre was the only non-Muslim region unravaged by al-Mansur, and it was clearly the most unified.
 
The "modernization" of Navarre occurred just as the Muslim caliphate was crippled by the death of Adbul Malik. This provided a major opportunity, and Sancho III "el Mayor" (1004-1035) seized it to make Navarre briefly the leading Hispano-Christian state for the first and only time in its history. Sancho was unequivocal about the royal nature of his sovereignty; he was strongly influenced by French monarchist theory and feudal norms, and followed the French practice of claiming to rule "by the grace of God," a formula subsequently adopted by other Hispanic kings. His ambitions were greatly assisted by the weakness and division of León, which had not yet recovered from the civil turmoil and devastation of the century before. Sancho first annexed the three small counties to the east (Aragón, Sobrarbe, Ribagorza) and then extended Navarrese control over much of the Basque territory on the northwest side of the Pyrenees. When his father-in-law, Sancho Garcia, third count of Castile, died in 1017 leaving only a small son as heir, Sancho of Navarre established himself as protector of Castile. This enabled him to incorporate the Basque-speaking districts of northeastern Castile (roughly modern Alava and Vizcaya) into Navarre. After the nephew came of age, he was murdered in 1028 by dissident Castilian nobles (perhaps with Sancho's encouragement), and Sancho incorporated all of Castile into his realm. From that point he pressed against the borders of León, fomenting rebellion by aristocratic dissidents and defeating the Leonese monarchy in battle. At the beginning of 1034 Sancho entered the city of León in triumph. Basing his claim on vague dynastic relations, support of fractious nobles, and the right of conquest, he asserted control over the Leonese throne and declared himself emperor of all the Hispano-Christian principalities. He died one year later, at the height of his power.

The Navarrese "empire" was no more than a personal creation of Sancho el Mayor, depending in large part on the weakness and disunity of its neighbors. Navarre itself lacked the resources to dominate the rest of Christian Hispania, and the empire immediately dissolved after Sancho's death. The dissolution, in fact, was arranged by Sancho himself, who gave vogue to French feudal theory and practice in the Hispanic states, introducing the term vassal into Castilan usage. He divided his three principal domains among his sons, with the understanding that the two younger sons in their separate patrimonies of Castile and Aragón would recognize the suzerainty of [53] the eldest, Garcia of Navarre (1035-1054), who inherited the dynasty's home principality. In the long run, however, the neighboring territories of Castile and Aragón benefitted more than did Navarre from new changes and techniques that were introduced during the eleventh century. In the decades that followed, the other states grew stronger, while Navarre remained comparatively static and no longer enjoyed leadership as effective as that of Sancho. When García tried to encroach directly on Castile, he was defeated and killed in battle in 1054. The Navarrese monarchy not only lost hegemony but subsequently encountered difficulty in maintaining the integrity of its domains.

The small Hispanic states of the early Middle Ages were divided by formidable geographic barriers, by linguistic differences, and at times by violent political conflict, yet these disparities were mitigated by undercurrents of religious and cultural unity. The Hispano-Visigothic liturgy was used not only by Mozarabs in Al-Andalus but also by Christians throughout the peninsula, and even for a time across the Pyrenees in formerly Visigothic Septimania, under French rule since the eighth century. The Hispano-Visigothic legal code, the Fuero Juzgo, was widely employed by the first generations of the Catalan Pyrenean counties, as well as in Asturias-León. Common artistic and architectural forms were followed, based on Hispano-Visigothic culture and the use of the peculiar Visigothic Latin script. All of this helped to keep alive the sense of a common Christian Hispania during the difficult centuries of Muslim hegemony.

By the eleventh century, the Hispano-Christian princes had also developed similar ambitions: the reconquest of territory and expansion to the south. Though this sometimes led to conflict, cooperation was more common, based on a common sense of historic mission. Yet the separate territorial political entities formed during these first centuries had laid deep roots, and expanded their frontiers southward rather than coalescing. Thus despite an underlying Hispano-Christian peninsular identity, monarchico-territorial pluralism became accepted as a legal and natural fact in the state systems of greater Christian Hispania.

[335] The best general one-volume history of Spain in the Middle Ages is Luis Suárez Fernández's Historia de España: Edad Media (Madrid, 1970). The leading historian of the kingdom of Asturias-León is Claudio Sánchez Albornoz. His principal works dealing with early medieval Spain are En torno a los orígenes del feudalismo, 3 vols. (Mendoza, 1942); Despoblación y repoblación del valle del Duero (Buenos Aires, 1966); and a collection of brief studies, Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españoles (Mexico City, 1965). Joaquín Arbeloa, Los orígenes del reino de Navarra, 3 vols. (San Sebastián, 1969), is an interesting new work. The most extensive history of tenth-century Castile, though somewhat misleading on Castilian origins, is Justo Pérez de Urbel's Historia del Condado de Castilla, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1945). Pérez de Urbel has also written a biography of the leading Hispanic ruler of the early eleventh century, Sancho el Mayor de Navarra (Madrid, 1950). A. Cotarelo Valledor, Historia crítica y documentada de Alfonso III (Madrid, 1933), is a political biography of one of the most important Asturian kings.

[336] The fundamental study of the question of an Hispano-Christian identity is José Antonio Maravall, El concepto de España en ía Edad Media (Madrid, 1954). See also Maravall's Estudios de historia del pensamiento español (Madrid, 1967). The idea of Hispanic empire is treated by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, El imperio hispánico y los cinco reinos (Madrid, 1950), and Alfonso Sánchez Candeira, El "Regnum-Imperium" leonés hasta 1037 (Madrid, 1951). Useful studies of reconquest and repopulation are contained in J. M. Lacarra, ed., La Reconquista española y la repoblación del país (Zaragoza, 1951).

There is a detailed survey of early medieval Hispanic society by Alfonso García Gallo,"Las instituciones sociales de España en la Alta Edad Media (Siglos VIII-XII)," Revista de Estudios Politicos, Suplemento de Política Social (1945), vols. 1 and 2. See also Sánchez Albornoz's Estampas de la vida en León durante el Siglo X (Madrid, 1926, 1965). The principal work on medieval Hispanic slavery is Charles Verlinden, L'Esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale. I. Peninsule Ibérique-France (Bruges, 1955). For early medieval Hispanic culture, see Enrique Bagué, Historia de ía cultura española: La Alta Edad Media (Barcelona, 1953); and Gonzalo Menéndez Pidal, "Mozárabes y asturianos en la cultura de la Alta Edad Media," Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia 134 (1954): 137-291.