At the western edge of Europe and of Islamic expansion, the Reconquista in Spain was well underway by the eleventh century; it was intermittently ideological, as evidenced by the Epitome Ovetense written at the behest of Alfonso III of Asturias in 881, but it was not a proto-crusade. Increasingly in the eleventh century foreign knights, mostly from France, visited Spain to assist the Christians in their efforts. Shortly before the First Crusad...