Alfonso VI, King of Castile and León, called the Brave

ALFONSO VI, King of Castile and León, called the Brave. - B. in 1030, d. in 1109, son of Ferdinand I, under whom the great conquests of the Christians in the Iberian peninsula began. His father had divided the monarchy among his sons: A., whose lot was León; Sancho, who received Castile; and García, who got Galicia. But Sancho dispossessed his brothers, so that A. had to take refuge in Toledo with the Moorish king Almann; afterward, however, when Sancho was treacherously killed (1072), A. was proclaimed king of Castile and of León, and after the defeat of García, also of Galicia. An arbiter in the internal struggles of the Arabs, he took advantage of this to conquer other lands, among them Madrid, and chiefly Toledo (1085), which became the center of Christian strength against the Crescent and the great hearth of the Spanish Church. During A.'s reign the "Cid Campeador," conqueror of Valencia, was famous. In his time too came the abolition of the Mozarabic liturgy and the adoption of the Roman rite, as had already been done in Aragon and Navarre. The coming of the African Almoravids, who brought aid to their coreligionists, embittered the last years of A., who thus saw the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula put in danger. In the extreme western strip of the peninsula, by concession of A., the county, later kingdom, of Portugal had its beginning, breaking away from Castile.