Bermudo III., who succeeded, on the death of his father, Alfonso V., in 1027, as king of Leon, was at once attacked by his powerful neighbors, and the little States were distracted by family quarrels and civil war until the death of Bermudo in battle, in 1037, when the male line of the house of Leon became extinct. On the death of Bermudo III. in 1037, Ferdinand I., king of Castile, the second son of Sancho the Great, succeeded to the kingdom of Leon, and became, after over twenty years of civil war (1058), the most powerful monarch in all Spain. The Moslems offered but an uncertain and half-hearted resistance to his arms. For while the Christians were growing strong, the Moslem empire was already declining to its fall. And the decay of the Caliphate of Cordova, and the internal dissensions of the Arabs, enabled Ferdinand not only to recover all the territory that had been conquered by Almanzor, but to pursue the disheartened Moslem as far as Valencia, Toledo, and Coimbra. Ferdinand confirmed the Fueros of Alfonso V., and summoned a council at Coyanza (Valencia de Don Juan), over which, with his Queen Sancha, he presided in 1050. All the bishops and abbots, together with a certain number of lay nobles thus assembled _ad restaurationem nostræ Christianitatis_, proceeded to make decrees or canons, after the manner of the Councils of Toledo, of which the first seven were devoted to matters ecclesiastical, and the remainder connected with the civil government of the country. With territories thus recovered and augmented, with cities restored and fortified, Ferdinand determined to excel all his Christian predecessors, and to emulate the noble example of the Arab, by enriching his dominion, not with treasures of art or literature, with schools, with palaces, with manuscripts--but with the bones of as many martyrs as he could collect. An army was raised for this sacred purpose, and the country of the Moors was once more invaded and harried by the Christian arms. Ibn Obeid of Seville, learning the objects of the invasion, offered Ferdinand every facility for research in his city; and a solemn commission of bishops and nobles were admitted within the walls to seek the body of Justus, one of the martyrs of Diocletian. But in spite of all the diligence of the Christians, and all the goodwill of the Arabs, the sacred remains could nowhere be found. At length the spirit of Saint Isidore removed the difficulty by appearing miraculously before the Commission, and offering his own bones in the place of those of Justus, which were destined, said he, to remain untouched at Seville. The Commission was satisfied. And the body of the great Metropolitan, “fragrant with balsamic odors,” was immediately removed to the Church of St. John the Baptist at Leon--to the great satisfaction of both Christians and Moors, in 1063.