To Ramiro, however, is due, at least, the honor of an authentic victory over the Moslem forces of the great Caliph, Abdur Rahman an Nasir (939), at Simancas, and afterward in the same year at Alhandega.
Ramiro, after the usual rebellion, abdicated, in 950, in favor of his son Ordoño—who had married Urraca, daughter of the principal rebel of the day, Fernan Gonzalez, count of Castile—and who succeeded his father as Ordoño III.
But decapitation was a far more certain way of suppressing rebellion than matrimony; and Fernan Gonzalez lived to intrigue against his daughter and her royal husband in favor of Sancho, a younger brother of the king. Ordoño, however, held his own against his brother, and revenged himself on his father-in-law, by repudiating his wife; who, with her personal and family grievances, was promptly acquired by Sancho, who succeeded, on his brother’s death, to the crown of which he had failed to possess himself by force. But even as a legitimate sovereign, Sancho, surnamed the Fat, was not allowed to reign in peace. He was driven from his kingdom by that most versatile rebel, Count Fernan Gonzalez, and sought refuge at the court of his uncle Garcia of Navarre at Pamplona. Thence, in company with Garcia, and his mother Theuda, he journeyed to the court of the Caliph at Cordova, where the distinguished visitors were received with great show of welcome by Abdur Rahman at Az Zahra; and where Hasdai, the Jew, the most celebrated physician of the day, succeeded in completely curing Sancho of the distressing malady—a morbid and painful corpulency—which incapacitated him from the active discharge of his royal duties.
The study and practice of medicine were alike disregarded by the rude dwellers in Leon; but the Cordovan doctor, surpassing in his success, if not in his skill, the most celebrated physicians of the present day, contrived to reduce the king’s overgrown bulk to normal proportions, and restored him to his former activity and vigor, both of body and mind. Nor was the skill of Hasdai confined to the practice of medicine. An accomplished diplomatist, he negotiated a treaty with his Christian patient, by which Sancho bound himself to give up ten frontier fortresses to the Caliph, on his restoration to the crown of Leon, while Don Garcia and Dona Theuda undertook to invade Castile in order to divert the attention of the common foe, the ever-ready Fernan Gonzalez.
In due time Sancho, no longer the fat, but the hale, returned to Leon at the head of a Moslem army, placed at his disposal by his noble host at Cordova, drove out the usurper, Ordoño the Bad, and reigned in peace in his Christian dominions. The visit of this dispossessed Ordoño to the court of the Caliph Hakam at Cordova, in 962, is an interesting specimen of the international politics or policy of his age and country.
As Sancho had recovered his throne, by the aid of Abdur Rahman, so Ordoño sought to dethrone him and make good his own pretensions by the aid of Hakam. The Caliph, already harassed by Fernan Gonzalez, and doubting the honesty of King Sancho, was not ill-pleased to have another pretender in hand, and Ordoño was invited to Cordova, and received by Hakam in the palace at Az Zahra with the utmost pomp and display. The Leonese prince craved in humble language the assistance of the Moslem, and professed himself his devoted friend, ally, and vassal; and he was permitted to remain at the Court of Hakam, to await the issue of events in the north. Some few days afterward a treaty was solemnly signed between the Caliph and the Pretender, and once more the glories of Az Zahra were displayed to the eyes of the astonished barbarian from Leon.
Nor did the fame of these splendid ceremonies fail to reach Sancho in the northwest; and his spirit of independence was considerably cooled by the prospect of a Moslem army, headed by his cousin Ordoño, making its appearance before his ill-defended frontiers. The maneuver was sufficiently familiar; and the reigning monarch lost no time in disassociating himself from the hostile proceedings of Fernan Gonzalez; and sending an important embassy to Hakam at Cordova, to assure him of his unwavering loyalty, he hastened to announce his readiness to carry out to the letter all the provisions of his recent treaty with the Caliph. Hakam was satisfied. Ordoño languished disregarded at Cordova, despised alike by Moslem and Christian, but unharmed and in safety as the guest of the Arab. Sancho reigned in peace until 967, when he was poisoned by the rebel count of the day, Sanchez of Galicia. His son, who was known as Ramiro III., an unwise and incapable monarch, reigned at Leon from 967 to 982, without extending the possessions or the influence of the Christians in Spain; and Bermudo II., who usurped the throne, was no match for the fiery Almanzor, who ravaged his kingdom, took possession of his capital, and compelled the Christian Court to take refuge in the wild mountains of the Asturias, and once more to pay tribute to the Moslem at Cordova.
Bermudo died in 999; and on the death of Almanzor, three years later, the Christian fortunes under the young Alfonso V., who had succeeded his father Bermudo, at the age of only five, began to mend. Cordova was given up to anarchy. The Moslem troops retired from Northern Spain. Leon became once more the abode of the king and his court, and though Alfonso gave his sister in marriage to Mohammed, an Emir or Vali of Toledo, he extended his Christian dominion in more than one foray against the declining power of the Moslem.
Alfonso V., who is known in Spanish history as the Restorer of Leon, sought to consolidate his own power, as he certainly exalted that of his clergy, by the summoning of a Council, after the manner of the Visigothic Councils of Toledo. The Council met at the city of Leon on the 1st of August, 1020, in the Cathedral Church of St. Mary. The king and his queen Elvira presided, and all the bishops and the principal abbots and nobles of the kingdom took their seats in the assembly. And if there was no Leander, nor Isidore, nor Julian to impose his will upon king or council, the interests of the Church were not entirely overlooked. Of the fifty-eight decrees and canons of this Council, the first seventeen relate exclusively to matters ecclesiastical, the next twenty are laws for the government of the kingdom, the remaining thirty-one are municipal ordinances for the city of Leon.
But Alfonso V. was not exempted from the usual rebellions, and marriages, and assassinations, and executions, which constituted the politics of the day. Garcia, the last Count of Castile, was treacherously slain in 1026; and Alfonso was himself more honorably killed in an attack upon a Moslem town in Lusitania in 1027.