The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

by Thomas Asbridge

Meanwhile, in Spain and Portugal, Christians had begun to reconquer territory from the Moors, and in 1085 the Iberian Latins achieved a deeply symbolic victory, seizing control of Toledo, the ancient Christian capital of Spain. Nevertheless, at this stage, the Latins’ gradual southward expansion seems to have been driven by political and economic stimuli and not religious ideology.