The Christians soon again succeeded in winning the upper hand of the Moslems. It was not only that religious enthusiasm, the chivalrous fighting spirit of the time and the prospect of knightly lands and spoil continually attracted fresh combatants to the standard; but dissensions and disorganisations amongst the disciples of Mohammed facilitated the progress of their arms. One party of the Moors called in the aid of the Castilian king. Alfonso VII did not hesitate to profit by the disorder amongst the Mohammedans. While the Portuguese king conquered Lisbon with the help of the crusaders, the Castilian “emperor,” in conjunction with Raymond of Barcelona, Count William of Montpellier, and the Christian chivalry of all the Spanish kingdoms, marched to the coast towns of Almeria, the headquarters of the Mohammedan pirates, invested it on the land side whilst the fleet of the Genoese and Pisans blockaded the harbour, and after a long siege compelled it to surrender. The garrison were put to the sword, and incalculable spoil was carried off. Raymond Berengar fought with like success against the Moslems on the Ebro, where, again supported by the Genoese and Pisans, he took the important city of Tortosa, and then added the whole territory on the river to his kingdom (1148).
Alfonso VII lived to see the hardly won town of Almeria again wrested from Castile. On his return from a military expedition he died in the pass of Muradal, a prince endowed with strength, intelligence, and the love of justice, full of zeal for the Christian faith and generous to churches and cloisters. With him the series of “emperors of Spain” comes to an end (1157).
With the death of Alfonso VII of Castile, and that of Raymond of Aragon and Catalonia, which followed five years later, the Christian kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula again entered on evil times. Whilst the Mohammedan world, united and strengthened under the rule of the Almohades, acquired fresh power in the south and southeast, and won back much of its ancient possessions, in the north the vigour of the attack and resistance was broken by divisions and civil contentions.
Although the kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia passed undivided to the young King Alfonso II, and his suzerainty extended over a great part of Languedoc and the country of Provence which was governed by a relative of the royal family, on the other hand, under the sons and successors of Alfonso VII the Castilian kingdom was dismembered; for Leon with Galicia and Asturias, and Navarre with the Basque provinces seceded from it and started an independent political existence under their own princes, without paying any further attention to the feudal superiority of Castile. The results of these partitions were intestine disputes and family quarrels which stood the Moslem in good stead.
[1157-1197 A.D.]
The divisions and weakness of Spanish Christendom would have gained a still greater ascendency, had not the clergy admonished the knighthood to the struggle against the infidels as a religious duty and kept alive their zeal for the faith. They encouraged the formation of the Spanish orders of knighthood to which the preservation of the Christian kingdoms and the final overthrow of the Mohammedans was principally owing. Besides the order of Calatrava which Raymond, abbot of the monastery of St. Mary at Fitero, founded in 1158 on the model of the Templars and according to the Cistercian rule, another brotherhood of the faith had come into existence in the year 1156. This was subsequently called the order of Alcantara, after its chief fortress. In Galicia the priesthood enrolled a number of warlike robber knights in the order of St. James of Compostella (1175), for the protection of the church of the tomb of St. James (St. Iago) in that city, and laid on them as their most sacred duty the obligation of escorting pilgrims thither.
It was principally the courage and religious enthusiasm of these armed brotherhoods that prevented the Moslem from again bearing the banner of Islam across the Ebro and Douro in the second half of the twelfth century, when Castile was distracted by internal strife, due to the enmity and jealousy of the two princely houses of Lara and Castro, when the Christian kings of the various states turned their arms against each other, when in Catalonia the confusion mounted to such a height that two archbishops of Tarragona were murdered and Portugal and Leon lay under ban and interdict on account of a marriage between near relatives, and anarchy and the right of the strong hand ruled unchecked.
Since the days of the great Almansor no prince had warred against Christian Spain with so much success as the Almohad, Abdul-Mumin, “the commander of the faithful.” But when, against the advice of his officers, he risked a battle at Santarem, he suffered a defeat in which he lost his life. But his son Yakub Almansor, a prince whose virtues and great qualities were not inferior to those of his contemporary Saladin, soon avenged his father’s death. The Third Crusade increased fanaticism even in the Pyrenean peninsula. Undisciplined hosts of pilgrims landed in the west and south, marking their path by robbery and devastation, and Christian and Saracen were spurred to fresh encounters. Roused by a devastating raid of the archbishop of Toledo against Seville, and by a written challenge of the Castilian king Alfonso “the noble,” Yakub Almansor took the field with his whole army. The Christian host, especially the numerous knights of the fraternities, both those of the country and foreign Templars and knights of St. John, opposed him at Alarcon and suffered a complete defeat (1195). The flower of the Christian chivalry were left on the battle-field. Almost all New Castile, as far as the fortress of Toledo, fell into the hands of the infidels; the mountains and citadels of Guadarrama and the want of provisions alone prevented the Moslems from again penetrating to the mountain districts of Asturia. Moreover the Castilians were at war with the Leonese and it was not until the marriage of Berengaria, the daughter of the Castilian king, with the king of Leon that a reconciliation was effected (1197). But, for this, king and kingdom were laid under an interdict, because the marriage was against the church’s law on account of the relationship of the parties, until Berengaria agreed to a divorce and returned to Castile. Her children, however, were considered as legitimate. At the same time Sancho of Navarre concluded an alliance with the Moorish party of the Almohads, in the hope of obtaining the supremacy over the Christian kingdoms by their assistance.
[1197-1212 A.D.]
Under these circumstances it seemed as though the Spanish Christians must succumb. Fortunately for them, Yakub Almansor died four years after the battle of Alarcon. It was not till the new emir Muhammed al-Nasir had succeeded in mastering his enemies, after several bloody battles, that he again undertook a “holy war” against the Christians. But in the meantime the northern kingdoms had revived and the zealous efforts of pope and clergy had succeeded in temporarily adjusting intestine feuds.