De La Destruction Aa La Restauration: L'idaeologie Du Royaume d'Oviedo-Laeon (VIIIe-XIe Siaecles)

The Reconquista is a historiographical concept denoting Christian expansion, to the detriment of the Muslims, in the Iberian Peninsula. Expansion occurred through warfare and resettlement. While some historians still see the warfare conducted by Christians from the Asturias and Leon as the essence of the Reconquista, other historians have more recently argued that this war only took on such an ideological dimension in the late ninth or tenth centuries. Contemporary religious and political sources from the Asturias and Leon do not mention the anachronistic term, reconquista, but talk instead of restoration. This notion is drawn from a worldview that sought to restore the Romano-Visigothic past which, in the eyes of contemporaries, had been destroyed by the Muslim invasion. Thus, the Asturo-Leonese royalty saw itself as upholding the Visigothic monarchy and sought to restore the sovereignty of the new Visigothic monarchy to its full extent. French text.