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Order By Fax 239-949-9537
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Old Spanish Scuttlebutt If you’ll remember, we left the bloody fields of Spain in the capable if hardly genteel hands of Alfonso VI and El Cid Campeador, whose last earthly act was to ride out dead from the gates of Valencia propped on his horse Babieca and holding his famous sword Tizona on high (with the aid of supporting planks and poles). This unexpected resurrection was enough to startle and astonish the besieging Moors he had both served and betrayed into falling back in enough confusion to allow his family and funeral cortege to make haste on the road to Castille. Now, after a century and more of advancing and retreating princes and caliphs, warrior priests, consolidation and dissolution of principalities, Christian valor and black intrigue, while the face of Spain changed more dramatically than that of a diva at her dressing table, enter the good guys. |
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Ferdinand III (“El Santo”), heir to Castille through his mother and to Leon through his father, Alfonso ix, once more reunited (and this time for good) these two classic symbols of valor and authority. Like his ancestor, Alfonso VI, he almost didn’t have the chance, as his Papa was not amused to have the Castille he had coveted handed over by an unsuitably independent wife to their stripling son. But since the ~Wise” Berengaria had the gumption to effect the transfer under the authority of the Cortes, and since the influence of the Church was now a power that had to be acknowledged, infanticide (even among royalty) was becoming a no—no. So Alfonso decided to throw in his hand with, rather than against, his son; and between them, with the aid of Aragon, Navarre and Catalonia, Ferdinand took back from the Moors: Merida, Badajoz, Cordova, Jaen, Murcia, and finally Seville, whose great mosque he had converted into a Catholic church. Further, he forced the Moors, who had transported the bells of St. James of Compostela from Galicia to Cordova on the backs of Christian prisoners, to return them on their own. |
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Ferdinand, whose campaign was waged with a cross in one hand and a bludgeon in the other, was so successful in Christianizing the better part of Moslem Spain that he was canonized in 1671 by Pope Clement X. His son and heir, Alfonso X, earned his nickname, “The Learned!~ (“al Sabio”) by making the first royal contribution to the academic disciplines of law, astronomy, and linguistics. One of his notable achievements was his insistence that official documents be written in the Castilian language, rather than the poor Latin of the Middle Ages. Alas, his political acumen played second fiddle to his passion for learning, and his failure to consolidate the gains of his father would result in another plunge into darkness, bloodstrife and religious war for the emergent Spain. |
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How does all this reflect in the coins? The examples shown of Ferdinand’s coins introduce: (1) the cross fleury, which persists in Spanish coinage as the distinguishing feature of new world coins minted in Mexico well into the reign of. Philip V (C. 1730) 2) the actual rendition of the rampant lion as symbol of Leon.
Notable in the coins of Alfonso X is the persistence of the pictorial rendition of both Lion and Castle, the heart of the coat of arms of the Spanish Monarchy. As |
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