The Impact of the Crusades 125
Lateran Council of 1123—which discussed campaigns in Spain in detail and was
attended by at least three Spanish bishops or their representatives—Calixtus II
made it clear to the Christian faithful that he regarded the Spanish wars as
crusades:
Those who have put crosses on their clothes, with a view to journeying to Jerusalem or
to Spain, and have later taken them off, we command by our apostolic authority to
wear the crosses again and to complete the journey between this Easter and the fol-
lowing Easter.126Indeed a few months earlier the archbishop of Compostela, diego galmirez, had
already taken the unprecedented step of proclaiming a Spanish crusade.
during the Second Crusade of 1146–1149 crusades in Spain were given a much
clearer definition by Eugenius III in his general letter ‘divini dispensatione’ where
he broadened the whole theatre of crusading by including the Baltic and the Iberian
peninsula as well as palestine and Syria127 Then in 1155 Canon One of the Council
of valladollid (January 1155), held under the presidency of the papal legate
Cardinal Hyacinth, who himself took the Cross and prepared to lead a crusade
against Muslim forces in Spain, restated the doctrine of crusade indulgences.
Crusading in Spain continued into the thirteenth century, culminating in 1212
when the French, Navarese, Castilian, portuguese, and Aragonese armies led by
peter II of Aragon united against Muslims in the massive battle of Las Navas de
tolosa.128 The battle was such a decisive victory for the Christian kingdoms that
after 1212 the only Muslim state to survive intact in the Iberian peninsula was
granada. That finally fell in 1236 and became a vassal state of Castile for the next
250 years. Nevertheless thirteenth-century popes continued to promulgate military
ventures in Spain; in particular Clement Iv who in 1265 issued ‘Non sine misterio’
charging the archbishop of Seville to continue to preach the crusade.129
during the Reconquista the papacy became increasingly concerned with three
major issues in Spain which concerned Jews. The first was the use of Jews as royal
officials. As early as 1081 gregory vII complained to Alfonso vI of León and
Castile (1065/1072–1109) that such practices gave too much authority to Jews
over Christians:
You should no longer in any way allow Jews in your land to rule over Christians or to
hold power over them. For what is it to place Christians below Jews and to subject
them to their judgement but to oppress the church of god and to exult the synagogue
of Satan, and, while you wish to please the enemies of Christ, to set at naught Christ
himself.130126 Tanner, Vol. 1, p.192: ‘Eos autem qui vel pro Hierosolymitano vel pro Hispanico itinere cruces
sibi in vestibus posuisse noscuntur et eas dimisisse, cruces iterato assumere et viam ab instanti pascha
usque ad sequens proximum pascha perficere, apostolica auctoritate praecipimus’.
127 Eugenius III, ‘divini dispensatione’ (11 April 1147), ‘Epistolae et privilegia’, PL 180, cols
1203–4.
128 rist, The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1216, p.57; p.219.
129 Clement Iv, ‘Non sine misterio’ (26 March 1265), Grayzel, Vol. 2, pp.85–9.
130 Anna Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom
(Harlow, 2011), pp.113–14: ‘in terra tua Iudeos Christianis dominari vel supra eos potestatem exercere