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Spanish chivalry code6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() Others have suggested that Chivalry's decline was due to the expulsion of the Muslims with the fall of Granada in 1492, or the centralization of political power under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Some historians have attributed the fall of Chivalry and Knightly Orders to Cervantes because he “smiled Spain’s chivalry away” with his satirical Don Quixote. The decline of knightly Orders in Spain is the subject of much debate. In this period of peace between the Orders and the Muslims of the peninsula: mercenaries were hired to replace and assist Knights in their fighting, Masters of the Orders were no longer religiously appointed, and civil war was waged between Christian Knights with conflicting loyalties. However the years that followed the death of Ferdinand III were relatively peaceful in Castile and the morale of the Orders was undermined. For instance, Ferdinand III of Castile’s reign facilitated the rise of more Spanish Orders because of the desire in the kingdom led by the king to crusade against the moors. The prominence of knightly orders in the political and military realms of the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula fluctuated with the crusader zeal of the kingdoms’ rulers however, their power was not exclusively tied to the Crusader Kings. In Calatrava, during the middle of the 12th century Castilian Knights established a fortress, which would later be abandoned due to the threat of Muslim attack, then again within fifty years a fort of the Order of Calatrava was then rebuilt and became a fortified monastic community. The early formation of the Orders of the peninsula was dangerous and unstable. In the 12th–13th century, most of the prominent Spanish Knightly orders were formed. ![]() However, in Spain the Christian knights and kingdoms were engaged with what was almost universally acknowledged as a foe to Christianity, and this common enemy had some role in uniting Christian kingdoms in the cause of the Crusades and Reconquista. In other Christian kingdoms the fighting was at least initially waged between Christians of different kingdoms, and as such was more debated and contested within Christian circles. The greatest foes of the Spanish Christian knight were, above all, Muslims who were not an imagined enemy, but one deeply entrenched in reality and not as distant as the infidel, or enemy, was for the knights of France or Germany. One determinate factor to the strong adoption of chivalric Orders, in Spain, is the Reconquista in which Christian Kingdoms attempted to expel Muslims from the peninsula. The Iberian Peninsula had multiple factors contributing to the strong chivalric ethos exemplified by Spanish Knights. Some scholars have suggested that the later Spanish Military Orders, like that at the fortress of Calatrava, pledged their loyalty primarily to their Kingdom, in this case Castile, but orders like the Templars or Hospitallers were more independent and not necessarily loyal to any kingdom consistently. But there seems to be a consensus that the knights had obligations to both and an overarching allegiance to the Church, as both were in direct contact with knights (and often royalty were themselves knights and Crusaders). ![]() Historians seem to be conflicted as to whether Knights in Spanish were directed more by Castilian and Catalan-Aragonese royalty or by the Papacy. In the context of the Reconquista, and the geographically close proximity of Christian and Muslim populations, the atmosphere for the development of Knightly Orders was ripe and in the subsequent centuries chivalry flourished in Spain to a greater extent than it did in other Christian states.Ĭhivalry in Medieval Spain cannot be understood outside of the context of the Military Orders of Knighthood. However, the instatement of chivalric knightly orders and the chivalric ideals and codes of conduct weren’t present on the Iberian Peninsula until almost the second century of the Reconquista. The Reconquista had begun under Alfonso II (791–842), and would last nearly 700 years as Christians attempted to suppress and push Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. James himself was known and celebrated in Christianity as ‘the slayer of the Moors’ and the discovery of his body by Christians has been considered a possible igniting factor of the Reconquista. Chivalry, or chivalric codes of manners and proper military engagement, is believed to have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula during the 10th century CE, in the context of the Reconquista, when Frankish knights, who were willing to fight the Muslim invaders of Iberia prior to the Crusades, appeared to protect pilgrims flocking to the tomb of apostle James in Galicia. ![]()
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