Leon

Leon, medieval Spanish kingdom. Leon proper included the cities of León, Salamanca, and Zamora—the adjacent areas of Vallodolid and Palencia being disputed with Castile, originally its eastern frontier. The kings of Leon ruled Galicia, Asturias, and much of the county of Portugal before Portugal gained independence about 1139.

The rise of the medieval Leonese kingdom began with García I (909–914), who set up his court on the site of the former Roman permanent camp of the Legio VII Gemina, abandoning the former Asturian capital at Oviedo (see Asturias). The period of Leonese hegemony in Christian Spain nominally lasted until the death of Alfonso VII (1157), but it had, long before, been seriously undermined by the conquests of Sancho III Garcés the Great (1000–35) of Navarre and by the elevation, on his death, of Castile from county to kingdom. During the 10th century, when the caliphate of Córdoba was at its most powerful, Leon lost ground in the struggle with the Moors, and its kings often had to accept a de facto submission to the caliphs. Leon, however, had inherited from the Asturian monarchy a strong attachment to Visigothic tradition, and its rulers, sometimes taking the title of emperor or king of all Spain, furthered the Reconquest wherever possible.

The second period in Leonese history runs from 1157 to 1230, when the kingdom was ruled, in separation from Castile, by its own kings, Ferdinand II (1157–88) and Alfonso IX (1188–1230). Relations with Castile were rarely friendly, but Leon was a stable political entity during this time and won notable victories over the Moors in Leonese Extremadura. After the final union with Castile (1230), Leonese political and administrative institutions were, for a time, maintained, and the records of the Cortes show that some sense of the separate identity of Leon survived into the first half of the 14th century.

During the first century of its existence, there was a large influx of Mozarabic immigrants into Leon. These introduced strong Arabic linguistical and cultural influences into the kingdom. Modern Spanish historiography—concerned often to justify medieval Castilian separatism—has tended to portray medieval Leon as an archaizing, Byzantine type of state overready to compromise with the Moors. The evidence for this is not wholly convincing. Leon successfully bore the brunt of the caliphate’s attacks and seems to have been the first Peninsular kingdom to evolve popular parliamentary institutions.

The modern provinces of León, Salamanca, and Zamora, roughly coterminous with the medieval kingdom, were incorporated after 1979 into the comunidad autónoma (“autonomous community”) of Castile-León (q.v.).