Cistercians
The Cistercians the Order of Cistercians, are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. They are known as Bernardines, after the influential St. Bernard of Clairvaux; the term Cistercian, derives from Cistercium, the Latin name for the village of Cîteaux, near Dijon in eastern France. It was in this village that a group of Benedictine monks from the monastery of Molesme founded Cîteaux Abbey in 1098, with the goal of following more the Rule of Saint Benedict; the best known of them were Robert of Molesme, Alberic of Cîteaux and the English monk Stephen Harding, who were the first three abbots. Bernard of Clairvaux entered the monastery in the early 1110s with 30 companions and helped the rapid proliferation of the order. By the end of the 12th century, the order had spread throughout France and into England, Scotland, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe; the keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict.
Rejecting the developments the Benedictines had undergone, the monks tried to replicate monastic life as it had been in Saint Benedict's time. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour agricultural work in the fields, a special characteristic of Cistercian life; the Cistercians made major contributions to culture and technology in medieval Europe: Cistercian architecture is considered one of the most beautiful styles of medieval architecture. The original emphasis of Cistercian life was on manual labour and self-sufficiency, many abbeys have traditionally supported themselves through activities such as agriculture and brewing ales. Over the centuries, however and academic pursuits came to dominate the life of many monasteries. A reform movement seeking a simpler lifestyle began in 17th-century France at La Trappe Abbey, became known as the Trappists; the Trappists were consolidated in 1892 into a new order called the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, abbreviated as OCSO.
The Cistercians who did not observe these reforms and remained within the Order of Cistercians and are sometimes called the Cistercians of the Common Observance when distinguishing them from the Trappists. In 1098, a Benedictine abbot, Robert of Molesme, left his monastery in Burgundy with around 20 supporters, who felt that the Cluniac communities had abandoned the rigours and simplicity of the Rule of St. Benedict; the monastery church of Cluny Abbey, the largest in Europe, had become wealthy from rents, feudal rights and pilgrims who passed through Cluniac houses on the Way of St. James; the massive endowments and responsibilities of the Cluniac abbots had drawn them into the affairs of the secular world, their monks had abandoned manual labour to serfs to serve as scholars and "choir monks". On March 21, 1098, Robert's small group acquired a plot of marshland just south of Dijon called Cîteaux, given to them expressly for the purpose of founding their Novum Monasterium. Robert's followers included Alberic, a former hermit from the nearby forest of Colan, Stephen Harding, a member of an Anglo-Saxon noble family, ruined as a result of the Norman conquest of England.
During the first year, the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farming the lands of Cîteaux, making use of a nearby chapel for Mass. In Robert's absence from Molesme, the abbey had gone into decline, Pope Urban II, a former Cluniac monk, ordered him to return; the remaining monks of Cîteaux elected Alberic as their abbot, under whose leadership the abbey would find its grounding. Robert had been the idealist of the order, Alberic was their builder. Upon assuming the role of abbot, Alberic moved the site of the fledgling community near a brook a short distance away from the original site. Alberic discontinued the use of Benedictine black garments in the abbey and clothed the monks in white habits of undyed wool, he returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of manual work and prayer, dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance. Alberic forged an alliance with the Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with Duke Odo I of Burgundy concerning the donation of a vineyard as well as stones with which they built their church.
The church was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary on November 16, 1106, by the Bishop of Chalon sur Saône. On January 26, 1108, Alberic died and was soon succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the order into its crucial phase; the order was fortunate that Stephen was an abbot of extraordinary gifts, he framed the original version of the Cistercian "Constitution" or regulations: the Carta Caritatis. Although this was revised on several occasions to meet contemporary needs, from the outset it emphasised a simple life of work, love and self-denial; the Cistercians regarded themselves as regular Benedictines, albeit the "perfect", reformed ones, but they soon came to distinguish themselves from the monks of unreformed Benedictin
Kingdom of Castile
The Kingdom of Castile was a large and powerful state located on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region, it began in the 9th century as the County of Castile, an eastern frontier lordship of the Kingdom of León. During the 10th century its counts increased their autonomy, but it was not until 1065 that it was separated from León and became a kingdom in its own right. Between 1072 and 1157 it was again united with León, after 1230 this union became permanent. Throughout this period the Castilian kings made extensive conquests in southern Iberia at the expense of the Islamic principalities. Castile and León, with their southern acquisitions, came to be known collectively as the Crown of Castile, a term that came to encompass overseas expansion. According to the chronicles of Alfonso III of Asturias. In Al-Andalus chronicles from the Cordoban Caliphate, the oldest sources refer to it as Al-Qila, or "the castled" high plains past the territory of Alava, more south to it and the first encountered in their expeditions from Zaragoza.
The name reflects its origin as a march on the eastern frontier of the Kingdom of Asturias, protected by castles, towers or castra. The County of Castile, bordered in the south by the northern reaches of the Spanish Sistema Central mountain system, just north of modern-day Madrid province, it was re-populated by inhabitants of Cantabria, Asturias and Visigothic and Mozarab origins. It had customary laws. From the first half of the 9th century until the middle of the century, in which it came to be paid more closer attention to, its administration and defense by the monarchs of Leon – due the increased incursions from the Emirate of Córdoba – its first repopulation settlements were led by small abbots and local counts from the other side of the Cantabrian ridge neighbor valleys and Primorias and smaller ones, being its first settlers from the contiguous maritime valleys of Mena and Encartaciones in nearby Biscay, some of whom had abandoned those exposed areas of the Meseta a few decades earlier, taken refuge by the much dense and intractable woods of the Atlantic valleys, so they were not that foreign to them.
A mix of settlers from the Cantabrian and Basque coastal areas, which were swelled with refugees, was led under the protection of Abbot Vitulus and his brother, count Herwig, as registered in the local charters they signed around the first years of the 800's. The areas that they settled didn't extend far from the Cantabrian southeastern ridges, not beyond the southern reaches of the high Ebro river valleys and canyon gores; the first Count of a wider and more united Castile was Rodrigo in 850, under Ordoño I of Asturias and Alfonso III of Asturias, who settled and fortified the ancient Cantabrian hill town of Amaya, much farther west and south of the Ebro river to offer a more easy defense and command of the still functional Roman Empire main highway passing by, south of the Cantabrian ridge all the way to Leon, from the Muslim military expeditions. Subsequently, the region was subdivided, separate counts being named to Alava, Cerezo & Lantarón, a reduced Castile. In 931 the County was reunified by Count Fernán González, who rose in rebellion against the Kingdom of León, successor state to Asturias, achieved an autonomous status, allowing the county to be inherited by his family instead of being subject to appointment by the Leonese king.
The minority of Count García Sánchez led Castile to accept Sancho III of Navarre, married to the sister of Count García, as feudal overlord. García was assassinated in 1028 while in León to marry the princess Sancha, sister of Bermudo III of León. Sancho III, acting as feudal overlord, appointed his younger son Ferdinand as Count of Castile, marrying him to his uncle's intended bride, Sancha of León. Following Sancho's 1035 death, Castile returned to the nominal control of León, but Ferdinand, allying himself with his brother García Sánchez III of Navarre, began a war with his brother-in-law Vermudo. At the Battle of Tamarón Vermudo was killed. In right of his wife, Ferdinand assumed the royal title as king of León and Castile, for the first time associating the royal title with the rule of Castile; when Ferdinand I died in 1065, the territories were divided among his children. Sancho II became King of Castile, Alfonso VI, King of León and García, King of Galicia, while his daughters were given towns, Urraca and Elvira, Toro.
Sancho II allied himself with Alfonso VI of León and together they conquered divided Galicia. Sancho attacked Alfonso VI and invaded León with the help of El Cid, drove his brother into exile, thereby reuniting the three kingdoms. Urraca permitted the greater part of the Leonese army to take refuge in the town of Zamora. Sancho laid siege to the town, but the Castilian king was assassinated in 1072 by Bellido Dolfos, a Galician nobleman; the Castilian troops withdrew. As a result, Alfonso VI recovered all his original territory of León, now became the king of Castile and Galicia; this was the second union of León and Castile, although the two kingdoms remained distinct entities joined only in a personal union. The before Alfonso VI in Santa Gadea de Burgos regarding the innocence of Alfonso in the matter of the murder of his brother is well known. During the first years of the 12th century Alfonso VI only son Sancho died leaving only his daughter. Due to this Alfonso VI took a different approach to the rest of Europeans kingdoms, including France
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, known in Arab history as the Battle of Al-Uqab, took place on 16 July 1212 and was an important turning point in the Reconquista and in the medieval history of Spain. The Christian forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile were joined by the armies of his rivals, Sancho VII of Navarre, Peter II of Aragon and Afonso II of Portugal, in battle against the Almohad Muslim rulers of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula; the Caliph al-Nasir led the Almohad army, made up of people from the whole Almohad empire. Most of the men in the Almohad army came from the African side of the empire. In 1195, Alfonso VIII of Castile was defeated by the Almohads in the so-called Disaster of Alarcos. After this victory the Almohads took several important cities: Trujillo, Talavera and Uclés. In 1211, Muhammad al-Nasir crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with a powerful army, invaded Christian territory, captured Salvatierra Castle, the stronghold of the knights of the Order of Calatrava.
The threat to the Hispanic Christian kingdoms was so great that Pope Innocent III called European knights to a crusade. There were some disagreements among the members of the Christian coalition: French and other European knights did not agree with Alfonso's merciful treatment of Jews and Muslims who were defeated in the conquest of Malagón and Calatrava la Vieja, they had caused problems in Toledo, with assaults and murders in the Jewish Quarter. Alfonso crossed the mountain range that defended the Almohad camp, sneaking through the Despeñaperros Pass, being led by Martin Alhaja, a local shepherd who knew the area; the Christian coalition caught the Moorish army at camp by surprise, Alhaja was granted the hereditary title Cabeza de Vaca for his assistance to Alfonso VIII. According to legend, the Caliph had his tent surrounded with a bodyguard of slave-warriors who were chained together as a defense; the Navarrese force led by their king. The Caliph escaped; the victorious Christians seized several prizes of war: Miramamolín's tent and standard were delivered to Pope Innocent III.
Christian losses were far fewer. The losses were heavy among the Orders; those killed included Pedro Gómez de Acevedo, Alvaro Fernández de Valladares, Pedro Arias and Gomes Ramires. Ruy Díaz was so grievously wounded; the Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir himself died in Marrakech shortly after the battle, where he had fled after the defeat. The crushing defeat of the Almohads hastened their decline both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Maghreb a decade later; that gave further impulse to the Christian Reconquest and reduced the declining power of the Moors in Iberia. Shortly after the battle, the Castilians took Baeza and Úbeda, major fortified cities near the battlefield and gateways to invade Andalusia. According to Letter from Alfonso VIII of Castile to Pope Innocent III, Baeza was evacuated and its people moved to Úbeda, here the king laid siege and put to death 60,000 muslims and enslaved many more. According to the latin chronicle of kings of Castile the number given is 100,000 Saracens, including children and women, were captured.
Thereafter, Alfonso VIII's grandson Ferdinand III of Castile took Cordova in 1236, Jaén in 1246, Seville in 1248. In 1252, Ferdinand was preparing his army for invasion of the Almohad lands in Africa, but he died in Seville on 30 May 1252, during an outbreak of plague in southern Hispania. Only Ferdinand's death prevented the Castilians from taking the war to the Almohad on the Mediterranean coast, James I of Aragon conquered the Balearic Islands and Valencia. By 1252 the Almohad empire was finished, at the mercy of another emerging African power. In 1269 a new association of African tribes, the Marinids, took control of the Maghreb, most of the former Almohad empire was under their rule; the Marinids tried to recover the former Almohad territories in Iberia, but they were definitively defeated by Alfonso XI of Castile and Afonso IV of Portugal in the Battle of Río Salado, the last major military encounter between large Christian and Muslim armies in Hispania. In 1292 Sancho IV took Tarifa, key to the control of the Strait of Gibraltar.
Granada, Almería, Málaga were the only major Muslim cities of the time remaining in the Iberian peninsula. These three cities were the core of the Emirate of Granada, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. Granada was a vassal state of Castile, until taken by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. Harry Harrison's 1972 alternate history/science fiction novel Tunnel Through the Deeps depicts a history where the Moors won at Las Navas de Tolosa and retained part of Spain into the 20th century. Alvira Cabrer, Martín, Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla, Sílex Ediciones, Madrid 2012. García Fitz, Las Navas de Tolosa, Barcelona 2005. García Fitz, Was Las Navas a decisive battle?, in: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 5–9. Nafziger, George F. and Mark W. Walton, Is
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León; the County of Castile separated in 931, the County of Portugal separated to become the independent Kingdom of Portugal in 1139 and the eastern, inland part of León was joined to the Kingdom of Castile in 1230. From 1296 to 1301, the Kingdom of León was again independent and after the re-union with Castile remained a Crown until 1833, but as part of a united Spain from 1479. In the Royal Decree of 30 November 1833, the Kingdom of León was considered one of the Spanish regions and divided into the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca. In 1978, these three provinces of the region of León were included along with six provinces of the historic region of Old Castile to create the autonomous community of Castile and León. However, significant parts of the former kingdom today integrate these three provinces and the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Asturias.
The city of León was founded by the Roman Seventh Legion (usually written as Legio Septima Gemina. It was the headquarters of that legion in the late empire and was a centre for trade in gold, mined at Las Médulas nearby. In 540, the city was conquered by the Arian Visigothic king Liuvigild, who did not harass the well-established Roman Catholic population. In AD 717, León fell again. However, León was one of the first cities retaken during the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula, became part of the Kingdom of Asturias in AD 742. León was a small town during this time, but one of the few former Roman cities in the Kingdom of Asturias which still held significance. During Visigothic times, the city had served as a bishopric, incorporating the city into Asturias brought legitimacy to the Asturian monarchs who sought to lead a unified Iberian church, during a time when most of the Iberian Peninsula was governed by Muslim powers. León was created as a separate kingdom when the Asturian king, Alfonso the Great, divided his realm among his three sons.
León was inherited by García I. His successor was Ordoño II of León. Ordoño II of León was a military leader who brought military expeditions from León south to Seville, Córdoba, Guadalajara, in the heart of the Muslim territory. After a few years of civil wars during the reign of Fruela II, Alfonso Fróilaz and Alfonso IV, Ramiro II assumed the throne and brought stability to the kingdom. A brave military chief who defeated the Muslim armies in their own territory, Ramiro's expeditions turned the Valley of the Douro into a no-man's land that separated Christian kingdoms in the north of Iberia from the Muslim states in the south. Ramiro II was nicknamed "The Devil" by Muslims because of his great military skill; as the Leonese troops advanced they were followed by a process of repoblación, which consisted of repopulating the Meseta high plains, with people coming from Galicia and from Asturias and León. This migration of Leonese peoples influenced the Leonese language. During the repoblación period, there arose a distinct form of art known as Mozarabic art.
Mozarabic art is a mixing of Visigoth and Byzantine elements. Notable examples of the Mozarabic style are the Leonese churches of San Miguel de Escalada and Santiago de Peñalba. During the early 10th century, León expanded to the south and east, securing territory that became the County of Burgos. Fortified with numerous castles, Burgos remained within Leon until the 930s, at which time Count Ferdinand II of Castile began a campaign to expand Burgos and make it independent and hereditary, he took for himself the title Count of Castile, in reference to the many castles of the territory, continued expanding his area at the expense of León by allying with the Caliphate of Córdoba, until AD 966, when he was defeated by Sancho I of León. The Kingdom of León continued to be the most important of all those of the Iberian Peninsula. However, Sancho III of Navarre took over Castile in the 1020s, managed León in the last year of his life, leaving Galicia to temporary independence. In the division of lands which followed his death, his son Fernando succeeded to the county of Castile.
Two years in 1037, he defeated the king of León who died in the battle and because Fernando was married to the king of León sister, he became king of León and Galicia. For nearly 30 years, until his death in 1065, he ruled over the kingdom of León and the county of Castile as Ferdinand I of León. Early in its existence, León lay directly to the north of the powerful Caliphate of Córdoba; when internal dissensions divided Al-Andalus loyalties in the 11th century, leading to an age of smaller Taifa successor states of the Caliphate, the Christian kingdoms, sending tribute to the Caliphate found themselves in a position to demand payments instead, in return for favours to particular factions or as simple extortion. Thus, though scarcely influenced by the culture of the successor territories of the former Caliphate, Ferdinand I followed the example of the counts of Barcelona and the kings of Aragon and became hugely wealthy from the parias of the Taifas; when he died in 1065, his territories and the parias were split among his three sons, of whom Alfonso emerged the victor in the classic fratricidal strife comm
Spain
Spain the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula, its territory includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country. Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are part of Spanish territory; the country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar. With an area of 505,990 km2, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the fifth in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Spn or Spania.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi and Vandals. The Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces, into the Kingdom of Toledo, which more or less unified politically and all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was documented as Hispania. In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada; this led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion.
Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs. Until Aragon had been an independent kingdom, which had expanded toward the eastern Mediterranean, incorporating Sicily and Naples, had competed with Genoa and Venice. In the early modern period, Spain became the world's first global empire and the most powerful country in the world, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes more than 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were many advancements in the arts, with world-famous painters such as Diego Velázquez; the most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was published during the Golden Age. Spain hosts the world's third-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state.
It is a major developed country and a high income country, with the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization and many other international organisations. While not an official member, Spain has a "Permanent Invitation" to the G20 summits, participating in every summit, which makes Spain a de facto member of the group; the origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, are uncertain due to inadequate evidence, although it is documented that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians referred to the region as Spania, therefore the most accepted etymology is a Semitic-Phoenician one.
Down the centuries there have been a number of accounts and hypotheses: The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged", it may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean. The word in question means "Hyrax" due to Phoenicians confusing the two animals. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia
Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III, born Lotario dei Conti di Segni reigned from 8 January 1198 to his death in 1216. Pope Innocent was one of the most influential of the medieval popes, he exerted a wide influence over the Christian states of Europe, claiming supremacy over all of Europe's kings. He was central in supporting the Catholic Church's reforms of ecclesiastical affairs through his decretals and the Fourth Lateran Council; this resulted in a considerable refinement of Western canon law. He is furthermore notable for using interdict and other censures to compel princes to obey his decisions, although these measures were not uniformly successful. Innocent extended the scope of the crusades, directing crusades against Muslim Spain and the Holy Land as well as the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in southern France, he organized the Fourth Crusade of 1202 -- 1204. Although the attack on Constantinople went against his explicit orders, the Crusaders were subsequently excommunicated, Innocent reluctantly accepted this result, seeing it as the will of God to reunite the Latin and Orthodox Churches.
In the event, the sack of Constantinople and the subsequent period of Frankokratia led to an increase in the hostility between the Latin and Greek churches. The Byzantine empire was restored in 1261 but it never regained its former strength until its final destruction in 1453. Lotario de' Conti was born in Gavignano, near Anagni, his father was Count Trasimund of Segni and was a member of a famous house, Conti di Segni, which produced nine popes, including Gregory IX, Alexander IV and Innocent XIII. Lotario was the nephew of Pope Clement III. Lotario received his early education in Rome at the Benedictine abbey of St Andrea al Celio, under Peter Ismael; as Pope, Lotario was to play a major role in the shaping of canon law through conciliar canons and decretal letters. Shortly after the death of Alexander III Lotario returned to Rome and held various ecclesiastical offices during the short reigns of Lucius III, Urban III, Gregory VIII, Clement III, reaching the rank of Cardinal-Deacon in 1190.
As a cardinal, Lotario wrote De miseria humanae conditionis. The work was popular for centuries, surviving in more than 700 manuscripts. Although he never returned to the complementary work he intended to write, On the Dignity of Human Nature, Bartolomeo Facio took up the task writing De excellentia ac praestantia hominis. Celestine III died on 8 January 1198. Before his death he had urged the College of Cardinals to elect Giovanni di San Paolo as his successor, but Lotario de' Conti was elected pope in the ruins of the ancient Septizodium, near the Circus Maximus in Rome after only two ballots on the day on which Celestine III died, he was only thirty-seven years old at the time. He took the name Innocent III, maybe as a reference to his predecessor Innocent II, who had succeeded in asserting the Papacy's authority over the emperor; as pope, Innocent III began with a wide sense of his responsibility and of his authority. During the reign of Pope Innocent III, the papacy was at the height of its powers.
He was considered to be the most powerful person in Europe at the time. In 1198, Innocent wrote to the prefect Acerbius and the nobles of Tuscany expressing his support of the medieval political theory of the sun and the moon, his papacy asserted the absolute spiritual authority of his office, while still respecting the temporal authority of kings. The Muslim recapture of Jerusalem in 1187 was to him a divine judgment on the moral lapses of Christian princes, he was determined to protect what he called "the liberty of the Church" from inroads by secular princes. This determination meant, among other things, that princes should not be involved in the selection of bishops, it was focused on the "patrimonium" of the papacy, the section of central Italy claimed by the popes and called the Papal States; the patrimonium was threatened by Hohenstaufen German kings who, as Roman emperors, claimed it for themselves. The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI expected to be succeeded by his infant son Frederick as king of Sicily, king of the Germans, Roman Emperor, a combination that would have brought Germany and Sicily under a single ruler and left the patrimonium exceedingly vulnerable.
The early death of Henry VI left his 3-year-old son Frederick II as king. Henry VI's widow Constance of Sicily ruled over Sicily for her young son before he reached the age of majority, she was as eager to remove German power from the kingdom of Sicily as was Innocent III. Before her death in 1198, she named Innocent as guardian of the young Frederick until he reached his maturity. In exchange, Innocent was able to recover papal rights in Sicily, surrendered decades earlier to King William I of Sicily by Pope Adrian IV; the Pope invested the young Frederick II as King of Sicily in November 1198. He later induced Frederick II to marry the widow of King Emeric of Hungary in 1209. Innocent was concerned that the marriage of Henry VI and Constance of Sicily gave the Hohenstaufens a claim to all the Italian peninsula with the exception of the Papal States, which would be surrounded by Imperial territory. After the death of Emperor Henry VI, who had also conque
Seville
Seville is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville, Spain. It is situated on the plain of the river Guadalquivir; the inhabitants of the city are known as sevillanos or hispalenses, after the Roman name of the city, Hispalis. Seville has a municipal population of about 690,000 as of 2016, a metropolitan population of about 1.5 million, making it the fourth-largest city in Spain and the 30th most populous municipality in the European Union. Its Old Town, with an area of 4 square kilometres, contains three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Alcázar palace complex, the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies; the Seville harbour, located about 80 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, is the only river port in Spain. Seville is the hottest major metropolitan area in the geographical Southwestern Europe, with summer average high temperatures of above 35 °C. Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis, it became known as Ishbiliyya after the Muslim conquest in 712.
During the Muslim rule in Spain, Seville came under the jurisdiction of the Caliphate of Córdoba before becoming the independent Taifa of Seville. After the discovery of the Americas, Seville became one of the economic centres of the Spanish Empire as its port monopolised the trans-oceanic trade and the Casa de Contratación wielded its power, opening a Golden Age of arts and literature. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed from Seville for the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Coinciding with the Baroque period of European history, the 17th century in Seville represented the most brilliant flowering of the city's culture; the 20th century in Seville saw the tribulations of the Spanish Civil War, decisive cultural milestones such as the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and Expo'92, the city's election as the capital of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. Hisbaal is the oldest name for Seville, it appears to have originated during the Phoenician colonisation of the Tartessian culture in south-western Iberia and it refers to the God Baal.
According to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, the ancient name was Spal, it meant "lowland" in the Phoenician language. During Roman rule, the name was Latinised as Hispal and as Hispalis. After the Umayyad invasion, this name was adapted into Arabic as Ishbiliyya: since p does not exist in Arabic, it was replaced by b. NO8DO is the official motto of Seville, popularly believed to be a rebus signifying the Spanish No me ha dejado, meaning "She has not abandoned me"; the phrase, pronounced with synalepha as, is spelled with an eight in the middle representing the word madeja "skein ". Legend states that the title was given by King Alfonso X, resident in the city's Alcázar and supported by the citizens when his son Sancho IV of Castile, tried to usurp the throne from him; the emblem is present on Seville's municipal flag, features on city property such as manhole covers, Christopher Columbus's tomb in the Cathedral. Seville is 2,200 years old; the passage of the various civilizations instrumental in its growth has left the city with a distinct personality, a large and well-preserved historical centre.
The mythological founder of the city is Hercules identified with the Phoenician god Melqart, who the myth says sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic, founded trading posts at the current sites of Cádiz and of Seville. The original core of the city, in the neighbourhood of the present-day street, Cuesta del Rosario, dates to the 8th century BC, when Seville was on an island in the Guadalquivir. Archaeological excavations in 1999 found anthropic remains under the north wall of the Real Alcázar dating to the 8th–7th century BC; the town was called Hisbaal by the Phoenicians and by the Tartessians, the indigenous pre-Roman Iberian people of Tartessos, who controlled the Guadalquivir Valley at the time. The city was known from Roman times as Hispal and as Hispalis. Hispalis developed into one of the great market and industrial centres of Hispania, while the nearby Roman city of Italica remained a Roman residential city. Large-scale Roman archaeological remains can be seen there and at the nearby town of Carmona as well.
Existing Roman features in Seville itself include the remains exposed in situ in the underground Antiquarium of the Metropol Parasol building, the remnants of an aqueduct, three pillars of a temple in Mármoles Street, the columns of La Alameda de Hércules and the remains in the Patio de Banderas square near the Seville Cathedral. The walls surrounding the city were built during the rule of Julius Caesar, but their current course and design were the result of Moorish reconstructions. Following Roman rule, there were successive conquests of the Roman province of Hispania Baetica by the Vandals, the Suebi and the Visigoths during the 5th and 6th centuries. Seville was taken by the Moors, during the conquest of Hispalis in 712, it was the capital for the kings of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Almoravid dynasty first and
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "article name needed". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton.