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Recent publications about King Alfonso X have tended to focus on his role as monarch in the context of the institutions of the realm. This book, however, emphasizes the human dimension of this extraordinary figure. Drawing on King Alfonso’s own works and on extensive archival sources, both well-known and neglected, Salvador Martínez brings to life a king who valued the possession of knowledge above all earthly riches. The "Learned King" left a vast legacy of work, which would influence developments in both Spain and Europe, most significantly in the transfer of knowledge from the Arabs to the Christian West. With his intellectual curiosity and his pursuit of wisdom, Alfonso X is a towering figure at the origins of modernity.
In the "Cantigas de Santa Maria," a collection of about four hundred poems written in Galician, Alfonso X, el Sabio, king of Castile-Leon, has left us a kind of poetic biography. This volume explicates the historical circumstances surrounding the stories that the king tells about himself and his kingdom. As Mary's troubadour, he appeals to her as his advocate and consoler.
The studies included in this volume, written over a period of nearly thirty years, deal principally with two major themes, namely, the reign of Alfonso X, el Sabio (1252-84), one of the great kings of medieval Spain, and the development of the cortes of Castile-León, a characteristc example of the emergence of European representative parliamentary institutions. An introductory study describes the integration of medieval Spain into western Europe in the late eleventh century.
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Alfonso X (1221–1284) reigned as king of Castile and León from 1252 until his death. Known to history as El Sabio, the Wise, or the Learned, his appreciation for science and the arts led him to sponsor a number of books on the history of Spain since its Roman settlement. Among them were the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of over four hundred poems exalting his favorite patron saint, Mary, and chronicles of all the kings of Castile and León, Navarre, Aragón, and Portugal. Alfonso X died before his own life could be written. His was a reign fraught with political intrigue and double crosses, almost constant war and equally constant diplomacy, royal largesse and economic instability...
Alfonso X of Castile (1252-1284) was a true philosopher-king, a medieval monarch whose contributions to science, music, historiography, poetry, fiction, and art have had lasting influence. His grand vision was to bring Castile into the mainstream of high civilization and to create a united artistic and religious people. To that end, he established Castilian as a proper language (it is now the fourth most spoken in the world) and wrote one of the most extensive and influential law codes in western history. After centuries of attention to the northern European countries, scholars increasingly are turning to Hispanic countries in general and to Alfonso's vast influence in particular. The contri...
In the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of more than four hundred poems written in the language of medieval Galicia in praise of the Virgin Mary, Alfonso X, el Sabio, king of Castile-Leon, has left us a kind of poetic biography. Declaring himself Mary's troubadour, he appeals to her as his advocate and consoler as he recounts specific events in his life and that of his kingdom. As he tells us about his family, his war against the Muslims of Granada and Morocco, the treachery of the nobility, his frequent illnesses, and his fear of hellfire and damnation, he reveals much about his personality and his spirituality. This volume explicates the historical circumstances surrounding the events described in the cantigas. The Cantigas de Santa Maria is a royal biography unique in thirteenth-century Europe.