ABSTRACT
By the second half of the thirteenth century there were in full life changes, some long gestating, which affected both the institutional and inner lives of the church. The emergence of strong national monarchies had serious implications for the way in which the church as an institution functioned. If this can be seen most vividly in the high drama of henchmen of a French king physically assaulting the person of a pope, the phenomenon was played out less dramatically elsewhere. Among the Christian kingdoms of Europe must now be factored the monarchies of the Iberian peninsula, for in the second half of the thirteenth century the long process of the Christian recovery of Muslim lands was complete, save for Granada, and the Christians of Castile, Aragon and Portugal had taken their place in the world of medieval Christianity.
