The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-1157.(Review)

With the publication of The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-1157 (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 1998, pp.xvi+431. $65, Bernard F. Reilly completes his trilogy devoted to the Leonese-Castilian kingdom which began with his study of Queen Urraca in 1982 (rev. ante, c. 158) and continued with that of her father Alfonso VI published in 1988. In their painstaking scholarship these three volumes constitute a monument to a distinctive approach to the history of that monarchy in the century between 1065 and 1157. Readers acquainted with those earlier works will not be surprised to find that Reilly's narrative chapters (2-4) are firmly pegged to Alfonso …