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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ALM-ANC |
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ALPHONSO V ., " Africano," was born in 1432, and succeeded his father Edward in 1438. During his minority he was placed under the regency, first of his mother and latterly of his uncle, Dom Pedro. In 1448 he assumed the reins of government and at the same time married Isabella, Dom Pedro's daughter. In the following year, being led by what he afterwards discovered to be false representations, he declared Dom Pedro a rebel and defeated his army in a battle at Alfarrobeira, in which his uncle was slain. In 1458, and with more numerous forces in 1471, he invaded the territories of the Moors in Africa and by his successes there acquired his surname of " the African." On his return to Portugal in 1475 his ambition led him into Castile, where two princesses were disputing his succession to the throne. Having been affianced to the Princess Juana, Alphonso caused himself to be proclaimed king of Castile and Leon; but in the following year he was defeated at Toro by Ferdinand, the husband of Isabella of Castile. He went to France to obtain the assistance of Louis XI., but finding himself deceived by the French monarch, he abdicated in favour of his son John. When he returned to Portugal, however, he was compelled by his son to resume the sceptre, which he continued to wield for two years longer. After that he fell into a deep melancholy and retired into a monastery at Cintra, where he died in 1481. ALPHOxso VI., the second king of the house of Braganza, was born in 1643 and succeeded his father in 1656. In 1667 he was compelled by his wife and brother to abdicate the throne and was banished to the island of Terceira. These acts, which the vices of Alphonso had rendered necessary, were sanctioned by the Cortes in 1668. He died at Cintra in 1675. Spanish Kings.From Alphonso I. (739757) to Alphonso V. (9991028) the personal history of the Spanish kings of this Kings of name is unknown and their very dates are disputed. medieval ALPxoNso I. is said to have married Ormesinda, and mod- daughter of Pelayo, who was raised on the shield in ern Spain. Asturias
chief
secret marriage of his sister Ximena with Sancho, count of Saldana, and the feats of their son Bernardo del Carpio. Bernardo is the hero of a cantar de gesta (chanson de geste) written to please the anarchical spirit of the nobles.The first faint glimmerings of medieval Spanish history begin with ALPxovso III. (866914) surnamed " the Great." Of him also nothing is really known except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom known as " of Galicia " or " of Oviedo " during the weakness of the Omayyad princes of Cordova. ALPHONSO IV. (924931) has a faint personality. He resigned the crown to his brother Ramiro and went into a religious house. A certain instability of character is revealed by the fact that he took up arms against Ramiro, having repented of his renunciation of the world. He was defeated, blinded and sent back to die in the cloister of Sahagun. It fell to ALPHONSO V. (9991028) to begin the work of reorganizing the Christian kingdom of the north-west after a most disastrous period of civil war and Arab inroads. Enough is known of him to justify the belief that he had some of the qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His name, and that of his wife Geloria (Elvira), are associated with the grant of the first franchises of Leon. He was killed by an arrow while besieging the town of Viseu in northern Portugal, then held by the Mahommedans. (For all these kings see the article SPAIN: History.) With ALPHONSO VI. (10651109) we come to a sovereign of strong personal character. Much romance has gathered round his name. In the cantar de gesta of the Cid he plays the part attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, to Charlemagne himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of heroic and self-willed noblesthe idealized types of the patrons for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. (For the events of his reign see the article SPAIN: History.) He is the hero of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio and the Inf antes of Lara
gentleman although a Moor, the passionate loyalty of his vassal Peranzules and his brotherly love for his sister Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him for hero. They are the answer to the poet of the nobles who represented the king as having submitted to take a degrading oath at the hands of Ruy Diaz of Bivar (the Cid), in the church of Santa Gadea at Burgos, and as having then persecuted the brave man who defied him. When every allowance is made, Alphonso VI. stands out as a strong man fighting for his own hand, which in his case was the hand of the king whose interest
Bernard
inscriptions in Arabic letters. After the death of Constance he perhaps married and he certainly lived with Zaida, said to have been a daughter of " Benabet " (Al Motamid), Mahommedan king of Seville. Zaida, who became a Christian under the name of Maria or Isabel, bore him the only son among his many children, Sancho, whom Alphonso designed to be his successor, but who was slain at the battle of Ucles in iro8. Women play a great part in Alphonso's life.[ALPHOxso I., king of Aragon, " the Battler," who married Urraca, daughter of Alphonso VI. (11041134), is sometimes counted the VIIth in the line of the kings of Leon and Castile. A passionate fighting-man (he fought twenty-nine battles against Christian or Moor), he was married to Urraca, widow of Raymond of Burgundy, a very dissolute and passionate woman. The marriage had been arranged by Alphonso VI. in 1106 to unite the two chief
Bernard
exile and expelled the monks of Sahagun. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and Leon to his stepson Alphonso, son of Urraca and herfirst husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II. brought about an arrangement between the old man and the young. Alphonso the Battler won his great successes in the middle Ebro, where he expelled the Moors from Saragossa; in the great raid of 1125, when he carried away a large part of the subject-Christians from Granada, and in the south-west of France, where he had rights as king of Navarre. Three years before his death he made a will leaving his kingdom to the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Sepulchre, which his subjects refused to carry out. He was a fierce, violent man, a soldier and nothing else, whose piety was wholly militant. Though he died in 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Moors at Braga, he has a great place in the reconquest.] End of Article: ALPHONSO V If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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