The emergence of León-Castile c.1065–1500: Essays presented to J.F. O’Callaghan

To many medieval Europeans north of the Pyrenees, the Iberian Kingdom of Lean-Castile was remote and unfamiliar. In many ways such perceptions linger today, and the fact that Lean-Castile is mentioned at all in current textbooks is the result of efforts begun by scholars some forty years ago. Joseph F. O'Callaghan was part of a small group of English-speaking medievalists who banded together at conferences in the early 1970s to share their knowledge of Spain. O'Callaghan's general A History of Medieval Spain (1975) introduced a generation of English-speaking medievalists to Iberia. Still much of the new scholarly interest over the past decades has been directed toward the Kingdom of Aragon-Catalonia with its exceptionally well-preserved archives. The Emergence of Lean-Castile brings together the current research of O'Callaghan's colleagues, students and friends. The essays focus on the politics, law and economy of Lean-Castile from its first great leap forward in the eleventh century to the civil strife of the fifteenth. No other volume in English allows the reader to trace the institutional development of the kingdom with this chronological breadth. At the same time the volume integrates the Leonese experience into the wider discussions of lordship and power.