Moving

I am going to relaunch this blog on wordpress.com. Please look for me
here.

Where to go from here?

So I am going to start updating this again. I should have done so in the year or so since my trip to Spain. I have after all been to a variety of interesting and not so interesting places since July of last year. I will make a small effort at catching up, and try to stay on top of things going forward.

Leaving Spain

So after 55 days, I have left Spain. Overall, the research trip was quite successful. It has also been a good experience from a variety of perspectives: more time with my dad's family, great improvement in my Spanish skills, and I saw lots of great stuff. Overall though I feel like I have been gone way too long. I doubt I will do two months again.

This was also the first time I actually lived in a big city for any length of time. I can say unequivocally that I don't really like it. Madrid is a beautiful city, but the metroplex is a hot, sweaty, smelly, dirty place, with lots and lots of people. There are certainly advantages to living in big cities: you don't need to drive, lots of things to see and do, almost too many options for just about everything. But after this test, I think I can safely say that I am not a big city person.

My favorite part of this trip was definitely Toledo. That town is much more my speed, and it is absolutely gorgeous. I strongly suspect that Burgos and Segovia would be equally livable.

So all in all I am happy to be home. I will miss lots of little things, like jámon and Fanta de Límon, chorizo and sangria... mostly food I guess. I will also miss getting to treat my research like a full time job. The research is what makes academia great, but the reality of the matter is that it almost never gets one's undivided attention. Damian Smith, my friend from Saint Louis University, mentioned to me that every professor always talks about their PhD research as though it was the best time of their lives, but also admit that it was stressful, confusing, and difficult. I agree with that, and wholeheartedly hope that this was not the best two months of my life.

Campo de Moro

Speaking of the Almoravids, the Moroccan dynasty who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the late eleventh century in order to salvage the deteriorating military situation in Al-Andalus... Yesterday I visited the Campo de Moro, the formal gardens between the Manzanares River and the Palacio Real in Madrid.

The Campo de Moro is so-called because in 1109, when an Almoravid army besieged Madrid, they camped in this spot below the Alcázar, the old castle which stood on the site of the Royal Palace. The name stuck, even after the space was incorporated into the grounds of the Palace in the sixteenth century. I had never been there before, somehow. It is like a mini-El Retiro, but less crowded and with peacocks wandering around.

Mio Cid

My final thoughts on Burgos revolve around Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid Campeador, Spain's most famous medieval resident. His titles derive from Arabic and Latin. El Cid is a Spanish derivation of the Arabic title cidi, meaning lord. Campeador is the romance (Spanish) version of the Latin title Campi Doctoris, meaning expert of battles.

Rodrigo Diaz was a knight from a minor noble family in the Burgos region. He came of age in the second half of the eleventh century, and served King Sancho II at a time when the kingdom of Castilla-León was divided amongst the three sons of King Fernando I. When Sancho was assassinated, Rodrigo transferred his services to Alfonso VI, his brother.

El Cid had a rocky relationship with Alfonso. He apparently suspected him of complicity in his brother's death, and in a semi-legendary episode, made him swear an oath in one of the churches of Burgos attesting to his innocence. Rodrigo was also an especially charismatic and popular person, and so had many jealous enemies at court. Eventually, Rodrigo was accused of embezzling tribute payments from some of Alfonso's Muslim clients. Alfonso exiled Rodrigo from Castilla as a result.

El Cid was not a man to simply accept such setbacks. He gathered his followers and placed himself in the service of Yusuf al-Mutamin, the ruler of the Muslim city-state of Zaragoza. He successfully helped his Muslim friend for several years, defending Zaragoza quite successfully against the Count of Barcelona, whom he captured twice. It was the second defeat of Barcelona that earned him his Campeador nickname, which first appears in a Latin poem, the Carmen Campidoctoris (Song of the War-leader), which dates from the 1080s.

Rodrigo became an expert in the politics of the eastern Iberian peninsula. In the early 1090s, when his Muslim ally al-Qadir was kicked out of his city of Valencia, El Cid set out to carve a principality for himself. He triumphantly entered the city in May of 1094, and held it for the rest of his life.

He was immediately challenged by the arrival of the Almoravid dynasty from Morocco, who had come at the request of the Andalusian Muslims to help them against their powerful Christian neighbors (El Cid and Alfonso VI). Alfonso VI was badly defeated by the Almoravids at the battle of Zallaqah in 1086. El Cid, however, managed to successfully defeat Almoravid attacks on his principality twice in the later 1090s.

Rodrigo Diaz died peacefully in Valencia in 1099, at about sixty years of age. He was a legend in his own time, and, within 100 years, was the subject of a major Latin biography, and Spain's first and most famous medieval epic, the Cantar de Mio Cid. Though later generations of Spanish Christians tried to turn El Cid into the ultimate Christian hero, he was, in all reality, a mercenary and free-booter, equally at home, as were many of the elites of his day, like Alfonso, in both the Christian and Muslim courts of eleventh century Spain.

Burgos Castle

I first visited the Castle of Burgos with my father in 1992. I have revisited lots of places on this trip which I had initially visited with my dad, but this was the only one for which I had very strong memories of being there with him. I was actually really sad as I climbed the hill to the Castle, which sits, naturally, at the highest point in the town. When we were there in 1992, the Castle was entirely a ruin. I actually took some pieces of the wall, which I still have at home. So, when I reached the top of the hill and discovered a partially restored Castle and museum, I was snapped out of my depressing state of deja vu.

The Castle now is a very well put together tourist attraction, complete with two reconstructed towers. You can even visit the extensive cave system beneath the Castle, where the garrisons drew their water.

The Castle has an impressive history. It was an Iron Age fort of Iberian people, which, unlike the rest of northern and central Iberia, was never conquered by the Celts. It was abandoned at some point during the Roman period, and not reoccupied again until the tenth century, when the Castillians fortified the hill as a defensive position against Muslim armies marching north to raid their lands.

Burgos is actually a Germanic word, "Burg", meaning town. The town was so-called to differentiate it from the Castle. So the burg which grew up around this military site is Burgos. The town prospered, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as the military frontier with Al-Andalus was pushed southward, and as Burgos became an important stop for pilgrims making their was toward Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest of the Peninsula.

The Castle was converted into a royal palace, but the city of Burgos gradually lost its important place in royal politics as the attention of the monarchs remained fixated on the south. Eventually the Castle fell into disuse and ruin.

The military function of the place was revived in the early nineteenth century, when the French army made Burgos its headquarters. The Castle was redesigned as a Napoleonic-era fort, complete with extensive batteries and outer-works. It was besieged by General Arthur Wellsley, commander of the British forces in the Peninsula, in October of 1812. The future Lord Wellington (that title had to wait on his final defeat of Napoleon in 1815) had roundly beaten the French by the time he reached Burgos, and they were compelled to surrender after a relatively brief siege. As they left, they decided to blow up the Castle.

So the Castle was ruined again, and remained that way until 2005, when renovations were completed and the new mueseum was opened. It is a neat site, though I am glad I got to see it both as it is and as it was.

Burgos Cathedral

Burgos has one of the most impressive Gothic cathedrals in Spain, or anywhere, for that matter. The bulk of the Cathedral was built between 1221 and 1300, with some major additions in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It is a perfect example of French Gothic architecture in its purest form.

The Cathedral is in very good overall condition, having undergone some great recent renovations. Externally it is in better shape than the Cathedral of Toledo, which has some pretty deteriorated statues. All in all, this is an incredible church.

The problem with these churches, from my perspective, is that as living religious centers, they undergo extensive reconstructions which often obscure the historical nature of the buildings. Often the renovations are very consciously ideological, for example the transfer of the bodies of El Cid and his wife Jimena to the Cathedral in 1919. Sure, it was neat to visit the grave of Castilla's most famous knight, but how much more interesting would it be in its proper context (the Monastery of Silos, outside the city)?

My historical quibbles aside, this Cathedral is a massive, spectacular pile. It is without a doubt the single most impressive thing I have seen during my time in Spain. Just the detail of the Stations of the Cross in the stained-glass in the Sarmatel door rosette is fantastic (dates to 1240).