Spanish chivalry

During the Middle Ages, Medieval Europe was engaged in almost constant warfare and conflict. European warfare during the Middle Ages was marked by a transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics and the role of cavalry and artillery. In addition to military tactical and technological innovations during this period, chivalric military and religious ideals arose giving motivation for engagement in the ceaseless warfare. In the Iberian Peninsula (particularly in Spain or the territories that would come to be Spain), chivalric ideals and institutions would be adopted and exercised with more fervor than anywhere else.

Chivalry, or chivalric codes of manners and proper military engagement, is believed to have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula during the 10th century CE, in the context of the Reconquista, when Frankish knights, who were willing to fight the Muslim invaders of Iberia prior to the Crusades, appeared to protect pilgrims flocking to the tomb of apostle James in Galicia.St. James himself was known and celebrated in Christianity as ‘the slayer of the Moors’ and the discovery of his body by Christians has been considered a possible igniting factor of the Reconquista. The Reconquista had begun under Alfonso II (791–842), and would last nearly 700 years as Christians attempted to suppress and push Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. However, the instatement of chivalric knightly orders and the chivalric ideals and codes of conduct weren’t present on the Iberian Peninsula until almost the second century of the Reconquista. In the context of the Reconquista, and the geographically close proximity of Christian and Muslim populations, the atmosphere for the development of Knightly Orders was ripe and in the subsequent centuries chivalry flourished in Spain to a greater extent than it did in other Christian states.

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