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The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-1157. By Bernard F. Reilly. The Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. xvi + 431 pp. $65.00 cloth.
Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile has suffered in his posthumous reputation from the great expectations he raised and did not fulfill. As the son and heir of the unfortunate Queen Urraca he was the great hope of those who expected a strong king to end the anarchy of her reign, and his solemn coronation as "emperor of Spain" brought to its climax the aspirations of the Leonese dynasty to the hegemony of the Iberian peninsula as successors to Visigothic Toledo. His efforts to conquer southern Andalusia were initially successful, and raised the hope of a final victory in the Reconquista centuries before they came to fruition.
However, while he did put an end to the anarchy of Urraca's reign, he was not able to establish complete peace for most of his reign or to channel all his energies to the war against Islam. While the other Christian kingdoms were willing to give lip service to his paramount role as "emperor," they also were willing to try their fortune at wresting the leadership of Christian Spain from him, and it was during his reign that Affonso Henriques managed to establish himself as king in what had been the county of Portugal and that Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona married Petronilla of Aragon and created the Aragonese-Catalan realm as a potential rival for the leadership of Spain. The rise of Aragon and Portugal as viable and large kingdoms meant the end of the Leonese-Castilian hegemony-Alfonso was the last "Emperor...