Description:
King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family and War brings together a diverse group of scholars whose work concerns the reign of Alfonso VIII (1158-1215). This was a critical period in the history of the Iberian peninsula, when the conflict between the Christian north and the Moroccan empire of the Almohads was at its most intense, while the political divisions between the five Christian kingdoms reached their high-water mark. From his troubled ascension as a child to his victory at Las Navas de Tolosa near the end of his fifty-seven-year reign, Alfonso VIII and his kingdom were at the epicenter of many of the most dramatic events of the era.
Contributors: Martin Alvira Cabrer, Janna Bianchini, Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J., Miguel Dolan Gómez, Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Kyle C. Lincoln, Joseph O'Callaghan, Teofi lo F. Ruiz, Miriam Shadis, Damian J. Smith, James J. TodescaBrief description: James J. Todesca is Associate Professor of History at Armstrong Atlantic State University. His many studies investigate the economic developments of the Kingdom of Castile, and he is author of Forging Castile-León: Lordship, Economy and Culture along a Medieval Frontier and editor of The Emergence of León-Castile: Essays Presented to J. F. O'Callaghan (Farnham, 2015).
Review Quotes: The essays in this collection are of an impeccable scholarly standard; the book offers valuable contributions to the scholarship on twelfth-century Iberia, and on a reign that has received little attention in the Anglophone world.---Simon R. Doubleday, Hofstra University