The reconquest struggle justified royal control over the church

Evidence

Alfonso affirms his right to subject Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the peninsula to his reign in his vast program of legal texts, in particular in his Siete partidas, a huge compilation of law composed at Alfonso’s behest. Alfonso made no attempt to implement the Partidas during his reign, so its provisions do not necessarily reflect real legal practice. Yet for that reason it provides a clear picture of how Alfonso envisioned his rule over his subjects and in particular (for our purposes) his Muslim subjects. For Alfonso, the struggle against Islam justifies royal control over the church: the kings have the right to ratify the election of the bishops, according to the Partidas, since it is the kings who defeated the Moors, transformed their mosques into churches, and replaced the name of Muhammad with that of Christ. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 976

Categorization

• XREF: Shows an unintended political consequence of anti-Muslim ideology — the same pattern of an external enemy legitimizing central power that recurs across the vault’s treatments of how Islamophobia serves state/elite interests.