Customer Reviews

Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Middle Ages Series)

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Joseph O'Callaghan's book Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain provides readers with an overview of military action in the Iberian Peninsula from 1063-1248. He outlined the constant struggle between Islam and Christianity for dominion of the area and successfully showed the complexities and difficulties faced by the Christian kings and nobles. As in the Levant, occasionally a Christian king would ally with a Muslim leader if it was temporarily beneficial. Many truces and treaties were signed between enemies in attempts to stall war, they were not always honored.

The genealogical tables for both the Christian and Muslim leaders provided in the book were a very good resource to have. O'Callaghan mentioned so many names, and the tables provided assistance in knowing who was who and when they ruled. Without the tables the reader is likely to get lost. The maps provided a good visual representation of where boundaries were and showed when territory changed hands.

O'Callaghan made a differentiation between Reconquest and crusade. Reconquest efforts occurred by the Christian kings for centuries as they fought to regain lands that were under Muslim control. Officially crusades only occurred when there was clerical support and backing which granted the crusaders specific rewards. Crusade activity generally was considered Reconquest activity, but not all Reconquest activity had crusade status. To the Christian kings, the exact status might not have mattered; they were fighting for the sake of Christianity to defeat the Muslims and enlarge their kingdoms.

O'Callaghan provides several chapters on general crusading issues as they related to the Iberian campaigns including warfare and tactics, the difficulty of financing crusades, and the involvement of the Church. The chapters provide an overview of the crusading process and would benefit readers new to the crusade era. However, more experienced readers may find these sections repetitive of other works. O'Callaghan closes each chapter with a brief summary, this seemed like a good way to pull the chapter together, restate the main themes, and prepare for the next chapter.

The final Muslim kingdom, Granada, fell in 1492. With its fall the Reconquest in Spain was finished and further expansion ideas were beyond Crusade goals. No new bulls were issued, but the Spanish and Portuguese still had strong Crusade mindsets. The peninsular Christians had spent 400 years fighting Muslims but finally were successful. In the Levant the Crusader kingdoms fell after a couple hundred years. In the end, the Iberian crusades proved to have brought about permanent changes and to have had the only lasting positive advances for Christendom.

Joseph O'Callaghan is an expert on Medieval history and makes his thesis very clear that the history of the Spanish Reconquista should be included when studying the history of the crusades. Very convincing and well researched!

All too often people forget that there were many Crusades conducted outside of the Holy Land. The Spanish Crusades were among the most important and large scale in Christendom. This book is the place to start in your studies of medieval Spanish Crusading.

Joseph O'Callaghan's wide-ranging yet relatively brief book takes what is often regarded as a parochial subject and makes the case for the "influence of crusading ideology" on "the evolution of the reconquest ("reconquista") from the late eleventh century until the middle of the thirteenth." In other words, the battles in the Spanish frontier after 1050 or so should be--must be--viewed in terms of the Crusades as a whole. Following an introductory chapter, he describes this era chronologically and proceeds to examine the military, financial, and religious aspects of this Spanish Crusade.

Whether the battles against the Muslim principalities in southern Iberia are called "reconquista" or "crusade" might seem an argument over semantics, but the focus is much broader: what is important is not what we call the conflicts now but how they were thought of then--and the difference matters a great deal. What is clear from O'Callaghan's book is that Europeans as a whole, and the papacy especially, regarded the Iberian fighting as part of a broader struggle. The reconquest was not a local offensive in the Spanish frontier but (at the risk of oversimplification) the western front of a two-front war. And, from the perspective of Christian contemporaries, it was the successful half of a struggle that, in today's view, failed.

"Christian success in Spain owed much to papal encouragement," O'Callaghan concludes, and that support took many pivotal forms: the fulfillment of Crusader's vows granted to those who stayed in or traveled to Spain rather than to the Holy Land, the remission of sins granted to Crusaders, and financial and material aid. Bishops and surrogates preached the taking up of arms for spiritual gain, a cult of martyrdom developed mirroring that in the East, the cross was worn and religious banners were flown--all these elements famous for the eastern crusades were equally prevalent in the west. In fact, the evidence is so persuasive that it is often just as accurate to discuss (as the author does) the significant influence of the Spanish conflict on the characteristics of the crusades in the Holy Land.

Although O'Callaghan does not assume that the reader is a specialist, his book is, unapologetically, a monograph and his marshaling of evidence might prove overwhelming for the lay reader. But his prose is jargon-free, and readers with interests in either medieval Spanish history or in the Crusades will find here a treasure trove of material that is both relatively unknown and utterly fascinating.

There's books that mention a subject, and then there's books that address the subject. This is clearly the case of the second. This is a really great read. The size of the book is a little deceptive, as there's really only 211 pages of key reading, but the purchase is well worth it.

Thank you Mr O'Callaghan for your work!