Ferdinand I of Leon

Fernando I of León, called “the Great” or “the Great” (c. 1016-León, December 27, 1065), was Count of Castile from 1029 and King of León from 1037 until his death, being anointed as such on June 22, 1038.

He was the son of Sancho Garcés III of Pamplona, called "el Mayor", king of Pamplona, and of Muniadona, sister of García Sánchez of Castilla. He was appointed count of Castile in 1029, although he did not exercise effective government until his father's death in 1035. He became king of León by his marriage to Sancha de León, sister of his king and lord, Bermudo III, against the one who rose up in arms, who died without leaving offspring fighting against Fernando in the battle of Tamarón.

His first sixteen years of reign were spent resolving internal conflicts and reorganizing his kingdom. In 1054, border disputes with his brother Garcia III of Pamplona turned into open warfare. The Leonese troops killed the Navarrese monarch in the battle of Atapuerca.

He carried out an energetic activity of Reconquista, taking the squares of Lamego (1057), Viseo (1058) and Coimbra (1064). He also subjected several of the taifa kingdoms to the payment of outcasts to the Leonese kingdom. When he died, he divided his kingdoms among his sons: the first-born, Sancho, was assigned the patrimonial status of his father, the county of Castilla, elevated to the category of kingdom, and the outcasts over the taifa kingdom of Saragossa; Alfonso, his favorite, received the Kingdom of León and the imperial title, as well as the rights over the Taifa kingdom of Toledo; García received the Kingdom of Galicia, created for this purpose, and the rights over the Taifa kingdoms of Seville and Badajoz; Urraca and Elvira were given the cities of Zamora and Toro, respectively, also with royal title, and adequate income.

Traditionally, he has been considered the first king of Castile and founder of the Castilian monarchy, and there are still historians who continue to maintain this thesis. However, much of the most current historiography considers that Ferdinand was not King of Castile and that the origin of this kingdom dates back to the death of this monarch, with the division of his states among his sons and the legacy of Castile to the eldest son. Sancho with royal title. In the words of Gonzalo Martínez Diez:

We can and must affirm with absolute certainty the fact that Fernando was never king of Castile, and that this never changed his county nature, subordinated to the king of Leon, to become a kingdom, until the death of Fernando I in 1065.

Biography

The future Fernando I de León had to be born after 1015, and there is no certainty that he was the second son of Sancho III el Mayor, as traditionally believed. Most of the authentic documents of the time place him as the fourth son of the King of Pamplona, after Ramiro I of Aragon, García Sánchez III of Nájera and Gonzalo I of Ribagorza. According to Sánchez Candeira, he must have been born between 1016 and 1018. His father was the Navarrese king Sancho III el Mayor, of the Jimena dynasty and his mother, Mumadonna, of the family of the counts of Castile. In 1029, at access to the Castilian county, Fernando was no more than thirteen years old.

Count of Castile

Imaginary portrait of Fernando I de León, by Antonio Maffei. 1855. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

When Count Sancho García de Castilla died in 1017, he left García Sánchez, a seven-year-old boy, as his heir, beginning a turbulent period for the Castilian county. Alfonso V of León recovered the lands between Cea and Pisuerga, conquered years before by Sancho, while Sancho the Greater intervened to protect his young brother-in-law, taking advantage of it to seize several places border.

Evolution of the border between the kingdom of Navarre and the county of Castile between 1016 and 1065.

In 1027 García Sánchez de Castilla came of age and tried to strengthen ties by marrying Sancha, sister of the young King of León, Bermudo III. However, he was assassinated by the sons of the Count of Vela, who fled from Castile, it is assumed that at most in the year 1028, since in that year it ceases to be mentioned in the documentation. The people of Leon saw in this death the hand of the king of Pamplona, and the Castilians a Leon conspiracy. In any case, Sancho the Elder, was favored by the assassination: since the late Count García did not have children, Sancho invoked the rights of his wife Muniadona to govern in Castile, thus the documentation places him as the only ruler of the county of Castile. However, King Sancho appointed his son Fernando Count of Castile, but it is not known exactly when the appointment was, the first documentation of this fact is from July 1029, thus showing the Castilians that the county was not to be annexed, and that the county was to retain its own entity. However, the king of Pamplona showed himself to be the true power in Castile, and the fact that he had appointed his son a count ensured that his authority was "fully recognized and legitimized". This fact determined that the county of Castilla, which was not independent, denied the sovereignty of the King of León over himself, breaking the bond of subordination with the kingdom of León and placing it under the authority of the King of Pamplona; In this way, from 1028, no Castilian diploma alludes to the King of León. Ferdinand obtained the title of count, but it was his father, whom he continuously accompanied according to the documentation that is preserved, and not him, who held royal power in Castile.

Fernando married Sancha de León, his deceased uncle's fiancée, in 1032, who provided the land between the Cea and Pisuerga rivers as a dowry. The weddings, attended by both Bermudo and Sancho, were probably celebrated in Burgos. The betrothal did not change the situation of Ferdinand, who remained count in name only, while his father continued to exercise royal power in Castile, which he retained until his death in 1035. Ferdinand continues to appear in the documentation along with father, in whose court he must have continued despite the marriage. Another gesture towards the Castilian church was the choice of the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza as the burial place, which he confirmed even after having obtained the royal crown from Leon.

When King Sancho died, Fernando was left as a Castilian count subject to Bermudo. He already enjoyed, as his father had done, the sympathies of a large part of the Castilian nobility and, to win those of the county clergy, he resumed the custom of the ancient counts to treat the religious houses of the region with greatness.

In 1037 Bermudo III married Jimena Sánchez, daughter of Sancho Garcés III of Pamplona, and his wife, Queen Muniadona of Castile, with which the three kings became double brothers-in-law: Bermudo, Fernando and García from Nájera, and claimed those lands, which led to war between the three brother-in-law kings. Some authors consider that this moment is when Count Fernando changed his title to King of Castile , although there is no documentary evidence of this. The break in relations between Bermudo and Fernando must have occurred at the beginning of 1037 and the first half of the year the two sides must have dedicated themselves to gathering their armies for war.

The Leonese throne

Fernando I along with his wife Sancha de León

The conflict between brothers-in-law was resolved in the battle of Tamarón, on September 4, 1037. The Castilian troops were reinforced by the army of King García of Pamplona. Bermudo, with the impetus of his age, he spurred his horse Pelagiolo and entered the enemy ranks, where he was killed by a Castilian lance. The Leonese transferred his body to León and deposited it, along with those of his parents, in the pantheon of the church of San Juan. In return for the help he had received from García, Fernando gave him Castilla la Vieja, the Castilian territories between the Ebro and the Cantabrian Sea. García, in reality, wanted to take over the whole of the county, which aroused tensions and finally the war between him and Fernando.

When Bermudo died without issue, his sister Sancha, Fernando's wife, was his successor to the throne. However, the people of Leon took some time to accept the new monarchs. For months Count Fernando Flaínez (uncle of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar and grandfather of Jimena Díaz), he refused to hand over the city to whom he considered a usurper, if not a murderer. According to the Crónica Silense, Fernando arrived from Sahagún (from "the confines of Galaecia"). Finally, after securing his position in the Curia Regia, Fernando and his wife entered León peacefully, and "in the era of M.LXX. VI to X of the kalendas of July (June 22, 1038) Don Fernando was consecrated in the church of Santa María de León and anointed king by Servando, bishop of happy remembrance of said church».

The same chronicle states that in the first sixteen years of his reign he was unable to make incursions against the Mohammedans, busy subduing the nobility of the kingdom. This is confirmed by the Najerense Chronicle:

It was occupied for sixteen years in resolving the internal conflicts of his kingdom and in taming the fierceness of some of the magnates, no incursion outside its borders could be carried out against foreign enemies.

He had to subdue not only the turbulent nobility, but also some villas, whose power was beginning to grow. Around 1050, the task of reorganizing and subjugating the kingdom must have been fundamentally completed.

He confirmed the Fuero de León, granted by his late father-in-law, Alfonso V, ordered to continue observing the Visigothic code as a fundamental law of the kingdom of Leon, and adapted to the uses and customs of his new kingdom, surely influenced by his wife the Queen Sanchez.

The war with Navarre

At the sixteenth year of his reign, Fernando had to face the war against his older brother, García III of Pamplona. Both brothers had spent years fighting over the territories that their father had segregated from Castile and annexed to the kingdom of Pamplona (La Bureba, Castilla la Vieja, Trasmiera, Encartaciones, and the Montes de Oca), carrying out constant incursions. Leonese king, who, suspecting his brother, avoided being arrested and was saved. Over time, it was the man from Leon who fell ill, and his older brother who returned the visit, apparently innocent of any accusation, and to show his good disposition, but with the desire to see the sick man disappear to occupy his throne. Fernando He took advantage of the opportunity to lock him up in the castle of Cea, from where he escaped thanks to his cunning and the help of several accomplices.

García then prepared for war, and with some Muslim allies he invaded the lands of Castile, rejecting the emissaries who proposed peace in the name of his brother, “proposing that each one live in peace within his kingdom and desist from deciding the issue by arms because they were both brothers and each one had to live peacefully in his house." Thus, Fernando came out to meet him with a strong contingent, and both armies met in the battle of Atapuerca on the 15th. September 1054.

García had established himself in the middle of the Atapuerca valley, three leagues east of Burgos, but the Leonese occupied a nearby hillock at night and from it fell at dawn against the Navarrese and their allies. Fernando gave the order to capture them alive. to his brother, because his wife Sancha had asked him to. But the nobles of León, who had not forgotten the death of their king Bermudo, finished off García.Another version attributes his death to a group of his own subjects, forced to flee to Castile before García's humiliations and tax demands. Sánchez Candeira mentions a third possibility, which comes from the Anales de Compostela: that the king was assassinated by one of his knights with whose wife he had had relations, and that he took advantage of the disorder caused by the charge of the knights Leonese to attack him and kill him.

In any case, García's army fled in disarray, numerous prisoners falling into Leonese hands, including a large part of his Moorish contingents, against whom Fernando charged after his brother died. Fernando recovered his brother's body and he ordered him to be buried in the church that he had founded, Santa María de Nájera. Ferdinand's victory resulted in the reincorporation of the claimed lands (Castilla la Vieja) into Castile, establishing the border on the Ebro river and imposing vassalage on his young nephew Sancho Garcés IV, the new king of Pamplona. Peace with Navarre lasted until 1058.

Before November 1058, a new war broke out between the two Iberian kingdoms, perhaps because of the Leonese incursion into the taifa of Zaragoza, a vassal of Navarre. In the clashes, the Navarrese lost various western territories of their kingdom: the region of Belorado, Valpuesta and what they conserved from the Oca mountains. Zaragoza, faced with the conflict, abandoned vassalage to Navarre and submitted to León. The war continued until April or May of 1062.

Kingdom reorganization

The kingdom of Leon at the end of the reign of Fernando I. It also shows the division of the kingdom as provided by Fernando I in 1063: Castilla (Sancho), León (Alfonso) and Galicia (García).

With the counts of Leon subdued and the borders secure, Fernando I applied himself to consolidating the structures and institutions of his kingdom, already pacified. He played a fundamental role in peninsular politics and in shaping the political map of the 11th century. Likewise, in terms of legislative policy, his work was very important, reforming some aspects of the Leonese Regia Curia, or restoring the Visigothic canon law through different regulations contained in the Council of Coyanza (1050 or 1055), which the same monarch presided over. This council marked the conclusion of the process of internal reorganization, of subjugation of the nobility and the towns and of correction of the excesses of both these and the royal officials. At the same time and gradually, he launched an administrative reform, substituting wherever he could, the nobles were dependent on the Crown and disrupting the inheritance of the territories, although at all times avoiding directly confronting the nobility. He abolished some counties and in others, he handed over the government of the territory to people he trusted in instead of the descendants of the deceased counts.

During his reign, the new Europeanist currents that arrived in the Iberian Peninsula through Navarre were introduced into the Leonese monarchy. Among them, its relationship with the Order of Cluny and some of the first artistic manifestations of the new Romanesque art on the peninsula stand out: the crypt of San Antolín in the cathedral of Palencia and the royal portico of the Collegiate Church of San Isidoro de León (1063)., later converted into a royal pantheon. That same year of 1063, the remains of San Isidoro de Sevilla were deposited in the recently built Leonese church.

Probably coinciding with the consecration of the new basilica, on December 22, 1063, the king announced his intention to divide the kingdom among his offspring, to avoid disputes when he died. His father had done the same with him and the rest of brothers and half-brothers. Castilla and the outcasts of Zaragoza were granted to Sancho; to Alfonso, the kingdom of León proper and the outcasts of Toledo; to García, Galicia and Portugal, in addition to the outcasts from Badajoz and Seville.To the two women, Urraca and Elvira, he granted them the infantazgos of the monasteries of the kingdom, on the condition that they remained single.

Policy towards Muslim territories

Fernando I welcoming Santo Domingo de SilosBartolomé Bermejo and Martín Bernat (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

From that moment on, Leon's expansive policy began, especially towards the southern Muslim territories, greatly weakened by the division of al-Andalus, after the fall of the Cordoba Caliphate and the rise of numerous Taifa kingdoms. Thus, and now definitively and decidedly, the Reconquest was resumed.

One of the main results of Fernando I's policy was the subjugation of several of the taifa kingdoms and the collection of pariahs (imposed for protection and not being attacked) to the richest taifas, such as Toledo, Seville, Zaragoza or Badajoz. At the same time, several attacks and conquests took place. The conquest of the Portuguese squares of Lamego (1057) and Viseo (1058) and the definitive capture (1060) of those of San Esteban de Gormaz, Berlanga de Duero and other castles and squares of the Bordecorex river, in the upper Duero territory, stand out. To take the former, the army assembled by Ferdinand set out from the Gothic Fields in September or October 1057 and surrounded the plaza until it fell on November 27. The following spring, Ferdinand returned to the area, this time once by the Astorga-Braga road, to undertake the capture of Viseo. The city, famous for its archers who had killed his father-in-law Alfonso V, surrendered on July 23, 1058. Subsequently, it seized other places from the region, such as Penalva and Travanca. He conquered the whole of Beira Alta between 1057 and 1064. A little further east, he repopulated Zamora and its alfoz, devastated in the raids of Almanzor and his son al-Muzáffar. Even further to the east, during the reign of Fernando, some towns were repopulated It is mainly to the north of the Duero, but also occasionally to the south. Gumiel de Izán (1042) appears for the first time in documents; Honor of Valdearados (1044); Baths of Valdearados (1048); Peñaranda, Aranda and Castrillo de la Vega (all of them in 1054); and Alcoba de la Torre y Berzosa (1062). According to Sánchez Candeira, the incursion into the southwestern zone of the Zaragoza taifa in which Fernando seized the Gormaz castle and seized Berlanga and the Bordecorex valley took place at late summer and early winter of 1058, after having taken Viseo and before the outbreak of the war with Navarre. After securing the right flank with these conquests, he crossed the border with the Toledo taifa and destroyed several castles in the valley of the Salado River (Huérmeces, Santiuste and Santamera). The attack by Sancho Garcés IV of Pamplona in September or October forced Fernando to abandon the campaign against Toledo. The war, favorable to the Leonese, made the emir of the Zaragoza taifa, allied of the Navarrese, chose to change sides and pay homage to Fernando, who also seized some territories from Sancho. The contest lasted until the spring of 1062 and prevented the Leonese monarch from continuing his incursions. s against the taifas. Probably in the summer of 1062, he resumed the old campaign against Toledo: he devastated Talamanca and cut down the fields of Guadalajara and Alcalá. He surrounded the latter, who requested help from al-Mamún. the square with rich presents and the offer of submission to Fernando, which he accepted in exchange for abandoning the siege. Zaragoza and Toledo already subjected to vassalage, in June or July 1063 he entered the taifa of Seville, who also agreed to pay him outcasts to avoid the havoc of the campaign.

He then marched west and besieged Coimbra, next to the Mondego river, which fell into his power after staunch resistance on July 9, 1064, and whose government he handed over to the Mozarabic count Sisnando Davídiz, along with that of all the territories to south of the Duero and between Lamego and the sea. Sisnando obtained wide powers in the region and was left in charge of the repopulation and defense of the southern border. The series of western and eastern conquests flattened the extent of the Christian population of the territories to the south of the Duero, gradual and informal, since the region was then more protected from possible Muslim incursions, which could only reach it through the ports of the Central System.

Responding to the agreed pacts, Fernando I sent his son, the infante Sancho, to the aid of al-Muqtadir, Taifa king of Zaragoza, when the Plaza de Graus was attacked (1063) by Ramiro I of Aragón, his half-brother, who was defeated and killed. Later, he led a punitive expedition to the Ebro Valley (1065) in order to avenge a massacre of Christians that occurred in Zaragoza and claim al-Muqtadir's vassalage and payment of pariahs, that had not been given. After this punishment, the expedition continued towards Valencia, where its king Abd al-Malik ben Abd al-Aziz al-Muzaffar Nizam al-Dawla, after resisting the siege of the city, put up a fight in the battle Paterna, where he ended up defeated. Shortly after, Fernando I felt ill and ordered a return to León at the end of October.

The King's Death

Ferdinand I arrived in León on Christmas Eve in 1065 and his first visit was to the church of San Isidoro, entrusting himself to the saints to help him in his transition to the afterlife. That night he accompanied in the choir the clerics, chanting Matins in the Mozarabic rite, and at dawn on Christmas Day he saw that his life was ending. He received Communion at Holy Mass, following the rite, under both kinds, and then he was carried in his arms to bed. At dawn on the 26th, seeing his end approaching, he summoned bishops, abbots and clergy, ordered them to dress him in the royal mantle, place the crown on him and take him to the church. He knelt before the altar with the relics of Saint Isidore and Saint Vincent, and prayed and begged God to welcome his soul in peace:

Your power is, yours is the kingdom, Lord. Above you are of all kings, and all kingdoms of heaven and earth are given to you. And in that way the kingdom which I received from you and ruled for the time that You, by your free will, wanted, I will return it to you now. I ask you to welcome my soul, coming out of the voragine of this world, and to welcome it with peace.

Silense Chronicle

Afterwards, she took off her cloak and crown, lay down on the ground and underwent the public penance ceremony, wearing a sackcloth and receiving ashes on her head. At noon the following day, December 27, 1065, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, the king died surrounded by bishops, after a reign of twenty-seven years, six months and twelve days, at about 49 years of age, which few exceeded at that time and which the chronicler judged "good old age and fullness of days."

On his death, instead of respecting the Visigothic and Leonese law that prevented dividing the royal possessions among the heirs, he followed the Navarrese legal principles of considering the kingdom as a family patrimony. The distribution was carried out according to the provisions of the deceased sovereign in 1063. This distribution gave rise to seven years of fratricidal fights between the brothers, which ended with the reunification of the territory by Afonso.

Burial

Panteón de Reyes de San Isidoro de León, where the body of King Fernando I the Magno was buried.

Ferdinand I was buried in the Pantheon of Kings of San Isidoro de León that he himself had built, next to the supposed tomb of his father, Sancho el Mayor, Rex Pirinaeorum montium et Tolosae On the lid of his tomb they carved the following Latin epitaph:

H. E. TUMULATUS FERNANDUS MAGNUS REX TOTIUS HISPANIAE. FILIUS SANCTII REGIS PIRENAEORUM ET TOLOSAE. ISTA TRANSTULIT CORPORA. SANCTORUM IN LEGIONE BEATI ISIDORI ARCHIEPISCOPI AB HISPALI VICENTIIMARTYRIS AB ABELA. ET FECIT ECCLESIAM HANC LAPIDEAM. HIC PRAELIANDO FECIT SIBI TRIBUTARIOS OMNES SARRACENOS HISPANIAE ET CEPIT COLIMBRIAM, LAMEGO, VESEO, ET ALIAS. ISTE VI CEPIT REGNA GARSIAE ET VEREMUDI. OBIIT VI K. JANUARII. ERA MCIII.

That translated into Spanish comes to say:

Here is buried Fernando Magno, king of all Spain, son of Sancho king of the Pyrenees and Tolosa. He moved to Leon the holy bodies of Saint Isidoro Archbishop, from Seville, and of Vincent martyr, from Ávila, and built this stone church, which was once clay. He made his tributaries, with the weapons, all the Saracens of Spain. He took over Coimbra, Lamego, Viseo and other places. It was adhered by the force of the kingdoms of García and Vermudo. He died on 27 December (the era) 1103.

Marriage and offspring

In 1032 he married Sancha de León, daughter of Alfonso V and sister of Bermudo III. From this union were born:

• Urraca de Zamora (1033-1101), Sra de Zamora.
• Elvira de Toro (1038-1099), Mrs. Toro.
• Sancho (1038/1039-1072), king of Castile as Sancho I, and of Leon as Sancho II (1065-1072).
• Alfonso (1040/1041-1109), king of Leon (1065-1072), Castile and Galicia (1072-1109), as Alfonso VI.
• García (1042-1090), king of Galicia (1066-1071 and 1072-1073), as García II.

According to the Silense Chronicle:

King Ferdinand educated his sons and daughters in the first place in the liberal disciplines, which he himself had studied erudially, and then arranged for his sons, at the appropriate age, to learn the equestrian arts and military and venatory exercises in the Spanish style, and the daughters, far from all idleness, formed them in the honest feminine virtues.

Ancestors