Ferdinand III of Castile

Ferdinand III of Castile , called "the Saint" (Peleas de Arriba, 1199 or June 24, 1201 - Seville, May 30, 1252), He was King of Castile from 1217 to 1252 and of León from 1230 to 1252. Son of Berenguela, Queen of Castile, and Alfonso IX, King of León, he dynastically unified the Castilian and Leonese kingdoms, which had remained divided since 1157 when Alfonso VII the Emperor, upon his death, distributed them among his sons, the infantes Sancho and Fernando.

During his reign, within the framework of the Reconquista, the kingdoms of Jaén, Córdoba, Seville and what was left of Badajoz, whose annexation Alfonso IX had begun, reduced the Iberian territory in the hands of the kingdoms. Muslims. At the end of the reign of Fernando III, they only possessed in Andalusia the kingdom of Niebla, Tejada (occupied by Alfonso X in 1262 and 1253) and the kingdom of Granada, the latter as a Castilian fiefdom. The infante Alfonso, future Alfonso X, was sent by Fernando to the conquest of the kingdom of Murcia; the Muslims capitulated and the region remained as a Castilian dominion, after which Alfonso conquered the squares of Mula and Cartagena. When Fernando acceded to the throne, in 1217, his kingdom barely exceeded one hundred and fifty thousand square kilometers; in 1230, when he inherited Leon, he obtained another hundred thousand and, based on uninterrupted conquests, he managed to get another hundred and twenty thousand.

He was canonized in 1671, when Clement X was Pope and Carlos II reigned in Spain.

Family origins

Son of Alfonso IX of León and his second wife, the Infanta Berenguela of Castilla, his paternal grandparents were Fernando II of León and Queen Urraca of Portugal and his maternal grandparents were Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor de Plantagenet. He was born in 1199 or 1201. His parents' marriage was annulled a few years later, in 1203, due to the consanguinity of the spouses.

Five children were born to this marriage: Leonor, who died soon; Constanza, who was a nun in the monastery of Las Huelgas de Burgos; Berenguela, who married Juan de Brienne, Emperor of Constantinople; Fernando (III) and Alfonso de Molina, father of Queen María de Molina, wife of Sancho IV. And on her father's side he had two sisters: the infantas Sancha and Dulce.

Childhood

Monument to Fernando III in his place of birth, where was the former Monastery of Our Lady of Valparaiso.

In Peleas de Arriba, a place between Zamora and Salamanca, there was a monastery founded by a Zamoran priest named Martín Cid. The monastery had a hostel to serve passers-by and pilgrims who traveled the Vía de la Plata. In this environment Fernando was born, while his parents were camping in the mountains when they made a route from Salamanca to Zamora. In 1232 Fernando III moved the monastery to his birthplace, a place called Valparaíso. The Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Valparaíso existed until the confiscation, in 1835. The Cronicón Cerratense gave Fernando the name of Rex Fernandus Montesinus.

Pope Innocent III declared null in 1203 the marriage of his parents, Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela of Castilla, alleging the relationship of the spouses, because he was Berenguela's blood uncle. The separation of the marriage was approved in 1203, and the annulment in 1204. Having exhausted all the resources against the pope, Berenguela returned to the court of his father (Alfonso VIII of Castile) with all his children except Fernando, who remained in the Leonese court with his father, the king of Lion.

After the early death of King Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1214, his son Enrique acceded to the throne as a child and Berenguela became head of the regency.

However, Álvaro Núñez de Lara usurped the royal authority and seized several castles. Berenguela had to seek the support of Gonzalo Rodríguez Girón, lord of Frechilla and butler of the queen, and took refuge in his castle in Autillo de Campos, Palencia. However, this place was besieged by Lara and Berenguela asked his son for help, who appeared with fifteen hundred men and made Lara flee. Enrique's short reign (1214-1217) was characterized by the fight between two factions of the nobility: the one headed by Berenguela and which also brought together important families such as the Girón, Téllez, Haro and Cameros, and the one led by the Lara, who were supported by the cities, most of the nobles and the bishops. Henry's death in 1217 sharpened the conflict, which devastated part of the kingdom.

Berenguela had a castle, from the XIII century, in the town of Piedrahíta, province of Ávila. Currently, in this place is the parish church of Santa María la Mayor, which preserves remains of the fortress. According to local tradition, Ferdinand III was born in this castle.

King of Castile

In 1217, after the sudden death of Enrique I of Castile, the rights to the crown passed to Berenguela who, fearing possible claims by her former husband, the King of León, hid it from him and asked that he be brought to Fernando to protect himself from Lara. The Leonese king, persuaded by his eldest daughters Dulce and Sancha, did not want to let him go. However, Fernando managed to escape and met his mother in the castle of Autillo, who, through a solemn act, proclaimed him King of Castile around June 10 or 14, 1217 in Autillo de Campos. The official coronation took place in Valladolid around July 2 or 3.

Álvar Núñez de Lara, senior lieutenant of Castile, surrounded Valladolid with the approval of Alfonso IX of León. The King of Leon sided with the Laras after the death of Enrique I. Fernando and his mother had to retire to Burgos. This was followed by a series of Leonese conquests along the Sequillo River and looting of areas near Valladolid by Alfonso IX. Ferdinand did not fight against his father, and sent him messages that under his reign Castile would be a friendly kingdom. and, although Alfonso did not pay attention at first, he ended up retiring to León tired of these actions. On August 26, 1218, the Pact of Toro was signed, which put an end to the hostilities between Castilla and León. Of course, Alfonso was paid ten thousand maravedíes that were due to him by the former King Enrique for a change in the castle of Santibáñez de la Mota. In exchange, the Leonese king renounced his claims to the border territories with Castile. Pope Honorius III mediated between the two kingdoms to end the conflict and prepare to participate in a new crusade, preached at the IV Lateran Council.

In the early days of the reign, part of the former supporters of the House of Lara went over to the ranks of the new king, but others remained hostile to Berenguela and his son. Among these, in particular, were numerous bishops and the cities in the south of the kingdom. Among the bishops, the main support for the new king came from those of Burgos and Palencia, who obtained generous favors from the sovereign. Among the nobility related to Fernando, those who had obtained abundant lands and royal concessions in times of Alfonso VIII. The confrontations due to the succession lasted two years and included both the forays of the Leonese through Tierra de Campos and Castilian Extremadura as well as the clashes with the Lara, from whom in the summer of 1217 Fernando seized lands between Burgos and Logroño and several royal possessions further south of the kingdom. Near the castle of Ferreruela, between Palenzuela and Palencia, Alfonso Tello arrested the Count of Lara, who was taken to Bu long and forced to surrender all the castles he had in possession and to help the king against his brother Fernando Núñez de Lara in exchange for regaining his freedom. Fernando Núñez de Lara submitted shortly after, but the Lara rebelled against Fernando again in 1218, with the help of Alfonso IX, who invaded Castile to the south of Toro. The final defeat of the House of Lara came in 1218, after the death of Álvar Núñez in Toro.

In the middle of 1219 a Castilian procession headed by Mauricio, Bishop of Burgos, arrived at the court of Frederick II of Germany and, probably in Hagenau, in Alsace, the marriage contract took place between his fourth daughter, Beatriz de Suabia, and Fernando III. Fernando gave Beatriz as a dowry the villas, castles and his royal rights over Carrión de los Condes, Logroño, Belorado, Peñafiel, Castrogeriz, Pancorbo, Fuentepudia, Montealegre, Palenzuela, Astudillo, Villafranca Montes de Oca and Roa. Beatriz, with the retinue of notable men from Castile, set out on the road from Alsace to Burgos, passing through the Court of Paris, because she wanted to greet the dauphin's wife, the future Louis VIII of France, and mother of the future Louis IX of France, Blanca, sister of her future mother-in-law, Berenguela. On November 27, Fernando was knighted in the monastery of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas de Burgos, where he was given his sword. On November 30, in the same city, the wedding celebration took place in the cathedral. The queen was very loved by the people and aroused admiration. The chronicler Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, not at all inclined to use epithets for her, describes her as optimal, pulchra, sapiens et pudica ("very good, beautiful, wise and modest"). And she was very fond of classical and vernacular culture, something she had assimilated while training at the Court of Emperor Frederick II. She will pass on to her husband and her children a similar love of culture. His son Alfonso X el Sabio would praise him in one of his Cantigas and a sculpture from the 17th century is preserved in the Burgos Cathedral XIII that represents it.

First campaigns in Andalusia

The pacification of Castile at the end of the 1210s and the beginning of the following decade, due to the treaty with León and the defeat of the nobles opposed to Fernando, allowed him to undertake new campaigns in the south of the peninsula. The Andalusian territories were in crisis and the caliph Al-Mustansir had signed truces with the Castilians in 1214 and 1221. The decision to undertake new conquests, shared by the Castilian nobility, was taken by Ferdinand in 1224.

As a consequence of internal problems, the Almohad empire fell apart. During the reign of Caliph Al-Mutansir the cities gained more power in the caliphate. Al-Muntansir's death in 1224 sparked a power struggle that culminated in the appointment of Al-Mamoun as caliph in 1227. Yahya al-Mutasim did not recognize this ruler and created his own caliphate in North Africa, causing Al-Mamun to move to the Maghreb to fight that rebellion. The cities of Al-Andalus began to form kingdoms ruled by the cadis, thus forming the third kingdoms of taifas. The governors Alhamar of Seville, Zayyan of Valencia and Mahfuz of Niebla created their own taifas. Al-Bayyasi, who had been an Almohad governor of Seville, became emir of Baeza and reigned over the cities of the Alto Guadalquivir.

In 1224 Fernando left Toledo with a contingent of great men from Castile, the master of the Order of Santiago and who, later, were joined by the Order of Calatrava with their master at the head; they headed to Sierra Morena and concentrated in the castle of Baños, where Al-Bayyasi rendered them pariahs. Later, Fernando marched against the city of Quesada and other castles, which were quickly taken in September. Later he continued his conquests for the kingdom of Jaén, the center of the Castilian campaigns between 1224 and 1230. Given the distance of Quesada from the Castilian border, Fernando ended up evacuating the square.

Fernando became such a friend of Al-Bayyasi that he gave him his firstborn son and Fernando raised him with his family. The scion accompanied the Castilian king in his conquests through Andalusia and obtained honors for it. It is not known with certainty that Al-Bayyasi converted to Christianity, but everything seems to indicate that this was the case. The King of Valencia, Zayd Abu Zayd, did not know what position to take regarding this attitude of Christians and had not recognized the authority of Caliph Al-Adil. His cousin, Al-Bayyasi, urged him to become a vassal of Fernando, so he went to Cuenca, where the Castilian court was located at that time, and swore perpetual vassalage to the king in Moya in March 1225..

In the summer of 1225 Ferdinand organized a campaign in the province of Jaén, for which he requested a bull of the crusade from Pope Honorio III. At the end of that year, Honorio III granted the bull of the crusade to those who fought in Holy Land and in the lands of Castile. The bull was disclosed by the Archbishop of Toledo and by the Bishop of Burgos.

Later, Fernando led an offensive against the fortress of Priego (Córdoba), which he took, and continued to the city of Loja, a city that he also conquered. The siege of Jaén, on the other hand, was unsuccessful. Forces took the city of La Alhama, which had been abandoned by its inhabitants due to fear of the Christians. And in this way they reached Vega de Granada itself, where, fearing to follow the same fate as the previous squares, the inhabitants spoke with Fernando and offered the release of 1,300 Christian slaves and the rescission of the contract that obliged Álvaro Pérez de Castro. the Castilian to serve the king of Granada, joining the Christian expedition, which made the decision to return to Toledo.

After this campaign, based on the agreements reached, Al-Bayyasi, Emir of Baeza, gave Fernando the castles of Martos and Andújar.

In the autumn of 1225 Fernando met again with Al-Bayyasi in Andújar, demanding that he hand over the castles of Burgalimar, Salvatierra and Capilla to comply with the Las Navas pact. Al-Bayyasi offered him the fortress of Baeza, which was occupied by the Order of Calatrava. Salvatierra and Burgalimar soon surrendered, while Capilla resisted but was finally taken, after a siege, in September 1226. While the siege of Capilla was going on, news arrived of the death of Al-Bayyasi after a revolt by the people of Cordoba, who accused him of helping the Castilians in the conquest of Capilla. After his death and as a consequence of the vassalage pact, Fernando III took charge of his possessions and, despite the fact that Baeza asked Jaén for help, it was finally conquered on December 1. Fernando III gave possession of the city to Lope Díaz de Haro.

In 1226 the castle of Montiel was conquered, which was granted to the Order of Santiago in 1227.

Ibn Hud created his own kingdom in 1228. In 1231 he controlled all of Al-Andalus with the exceptions of the taifas of Niebla and Valencia.

Between 1228 and 1230, Fernando undertook various campaigns both to consolidate the conquests of previous years and to prepare the capture of Jaén, for which he cut down its lands. However, the new siege of it between June and September 1230 failed again. The death of Alfonso IX of León that same month of September and the assumption of his crown by Ferdinand put an end to this period of campaigns in Al-Andalus, as the Castilian monarch had to concentrate on dealing with the problems of the unification of the two kingdoms.

King of Castile and León

Reunification of Castilla y León

On the death of his father, Alfonso IX, in 1230, Ferdinand claimed the throne of León, to which the pope had confirmed his heir in 1218, despite Alfonso's probable intentions of bequeathing it to Sancha and Dulce, daughters of his marriage with Teresa of Portugal. The disputes between Fernando and Alfonso —an ally of the Laras, facing the Castilian king— had complicated the possibility that the former inherited the Leonese throne upon the death of the latter. Leon was divided among the supporters of the infantas and those who preferred Fernando.

While the princesses and their mother Teresa of Portugal locked themselves up in Zamora protected by their father's lieutenant, Rodrigo Fernández Feo, Fernando, accompanied by his mother Berenguela and the Bishop of Toledo, entered the kingdom and was received as king in Toro. The city of León was divided between the supporters of Fernando and those of his sisters, but finally the Castilian king entered the city and received the homage of the majority of the nobility, the clergy and the representatives of the cities of the kingdom.

After a meeting in Valencia de Alcántara (Cáceres) or in Valencia de Don Juan (thirty kilometers from Benavente) between the two queen consorts, Teresa of Portugal and Berenguela de Castilla, they went to Benavente, where they met where Fernando and the archbishops of Santiago and Toledo were located, and where the Concord of Benavente or Treaty of Third Parties was signed on December 11, 1230, in which the infantas renounced their possible rights to the throne and the transfer of the crown of León to Fernando in exchange for compensation of thirty thousand maravedis per year to Dulce and Sancha and the ceding of some fortresses that would rejoin the Crown when they died., different laws and institutions—León and Castilla in the person of Fernando. There were hardly any changes in the offices of the kingdom and the king kept in his post even some adversaries who had stood out in the succession conflict. In 1231 the document was confirmed by Pope Gregory IX. Also that year the Agreement of Sabugal, between Fernando III and King Sancho II of Portugal to define the borders and seek an alliance against Islam. The new King of León handed over the castle of San Esteban de Chaves to the Portuguese and promised to defend Queen Teresa if necessary. The pact between Fernando and his sisters put an end to the Leonese succession conflict, but it did not prevent part of the nobility and the Leonese Church opposed the new Castilian monarch; The core of the rejection of Ferdinand was probably Galicia. Between 1230 and 1233, the sovereign was involved in the pacification and organization of his new kingdom. His domains were divided into three administrative units, managed by a merino mayor: Castile, Leon and Galicia.

The unification of the kingdoms ended the ongoing border clashes between the two kingdoms that had occurred on and off since the 11th century. The importance of the nobility in the area and the vagueness of the border had favored the fights in this area.

In 1232, Ferdinand, Beatriz de Suabia and the Bishop of Segovia visited Santiago de Compostela.

New campaigns in Al-Andalus

During the years of management of the Castilian-Leonese union, the king limited himself to supervising the incursions into Andalusian lands, which were carried out mainly by the military orders, some nobles and the border bishoprics, especially the one from Toledo. In 1231 the Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada took the Plaza de Cazorla in Jaén, after having seized Quesada, Toya and the entire region in April, which Fernando had entrusted to him if he managed to conquer them.

Once again he organized an expedition against Al-Andalus in which were Captain Álvar Pérez de Castro and many nobles and knights such as the Pérez de Vargas brothers, Rodrigo González Girón, Tello Alfonso de Meneses, Pero Miguel, Pero de Guzmán (father of Guzmán el Bueno) and many others, and, naturally, a large group of knights from Calatrava and Santiago. They skirted the city of Córdoba, devastating the countryside and assaulted the castle of Palma del Río. The caudillo Ibn Hud went with his troops to face this expedition in an olive grove near Jerez, a battle ensued, Ibn Hud finally beat a retreat, leaving Jerez to its fate, making the Christians a formidable booty.

In 1233 a host organized by the Bishop of Plasencia, with the participation of the military orders, conquered the city of Trujillo. On September 29, 1234, Fernando conquered the city of Úbeda. For these conquests, Fernando it benefited from the internal confrontations between the Andalusian lords. In 1234 the military orders once again seized Medellín, Alange and Santa Cruz and around 1235 Magacela and Hornachos. The king, however, did not participate in the incursions of that year, both due to the death of his wife and due to the noble uprisings he had to face in the north of Castile.

In 1235 the castle of Torres de Albánchez was conquered. The castle of Chiclana de Segura, according to some historians, could have been conquered between the end of 1226 and the beginning of 1227, and, according to others, in 1235. In any case, it is in 1235 when Fernando III granted Chiclana de Segura to the bishop of Osma. This, in turn, granted it in 1239 to the Order of Santiago, forming part of the Montizón y Chiclana charge.

The following campaigns, in which the king participated again in person, delegating the government of the kingdom to his mother Berenguela and, after her death in 1246, the infante Alfonso de Molina, marked the second part of the reign. In twelve years, Fernando took over a large part of the Andalusian territory and many of its large cities, such as Córdoba and Seville.

Conquest of Cordoba

The Almohad governor of Córdoba signed a one-year truce with Ferdinand III in 1235. For this, the emir had to pay 430,000 maravedis. However, this truce did not prevent the Castilians from attacking bastions that no longer depended on the emir, so Fernando took the castles of Iznatoraf and San Esteban. That year Beatriz de Suabia died and Fernando moved north. The emir decided not to pay what was agreed and Christians from the border councils led by Domingo Muñoz from Segovia took the suburbs of Córdoba and became forts. In addition, some Moorish deserters informed the Christians that the city was unguarded and it was very easy to reach Axerquía, which a small group of soldiers did. This happened in January 1236 and the king, upon finding out, gathered forces from León, from Salamanca, from Zamora and from Toro and from the military orders and marched towards Córdoba. Accompanied by the Infante Alfonso, by Castilian and Leonese nobles, by troops from the councils and by the forces of the bishops of Cuenca and Baeza, Fernando arrived in the city in February. James I of Aragon was stalking Valencia, and Ibn Hud preferred to withdraw to Almería and go to protect that square with their ships, giving up Córdoba for lost. Córdoba, abandoned by its emir and discouraged by the siege, capitulated; Ferdinand's solemn entry into the city took place on June 29, 1236. The king left Alfonso Téllez de Meneses as governor of the city and Álvar Pérez de Castro as military governor. The Castilian-Leonese king then signed a truce of six years with Ibn Hud, for which he promised to pay him tribute. Fernando also restored the Cordovan bishopric, which remained as a suffragan of Toledo, like others (Baeza, Coria, Cuenca and Plasencia) until the metropolis of the ecclesiastical province (Seville). The conquest of Córdoba and the restoration of the bishopric prompted Pope Gregory IX to grant Ferdinand important prerogatives, both canonical (papal protection of the royal family and indulgences to those who participate in the campaigns of Fernando), as well as economic and political.

The mother recommended that her son Fernando marry a second time and he accepted the suggestion. The mother, to avoid kinship among the nobles, sought the help of her sister Blanca de ella, who recommended Juana de Ponthieu or Danmartín. Juana came from France with a party that left after the marriage was celebrated in Toledo. The wedding was celebrated in the cathedral of Burgos in November 1237 and was officiated by the same clergyman as their first wedding, the bishop of the Mauricio diocese. In 1238 and 1239, he remained in the Burgos area, from where he had to send supplies to the last conquered areas, which were in difficulties.

The death of Ibn Hud in 1238 and the continuous decline of Almohad power paved the way for Ferdinand's new conquests in the Andalusian lands. Much of the Cordovan countryside capitulated to the Castilian-Leonese and in the early years of 1240 the Christians they subdued the kingdom of Murcia. In 1241, they seized Albacete.

Between 1240 and 1243 his conquests spread out in a fan, meeting hardly any resistance: Chillón, Gahete, Pedroche, Santa Eufemia, Obejo, Setefilla, Hornachuelos, Almodóvar, Luque, Lucena, Santaella, Montoro, Aguilar, Baena, Écija, Marchena, Morón, Osuna and Estepa.

Ferdinand III was faced with two fronts: Andalusia and Murcia. The first decided to reserve it for himself and for the second he sent his firstborn son. Alfonso traveled to Toledo in 1243 where an embassy from the King of Murcia, Muriel, arrived, bringing a list of conditions to become a lordship of Don Fernando. The reason is that Jaime I of Aragon had already conquered Valencia and Játiva and now, allied with Alhamar, king of Jaén and Granada, they wanted to take over Murcia. Alfonso accepted the document and signed the Capitulations of Alcaraz and later toured the region and temporarily settled in the Alcazar of Murcia. Later Alfonso signed with Jaime I of Aragon the Treaty of Almizra to set the limit of expansion of the Aragonese to the south. This agreement took as a pledge the arrangement of a wedding between Alfonso of Castilla and Violante, daughter of Jaime I. In 1244 Rodrigo González Girón and the master of Santiago, Pelayo Pérez Correa, joined Alfonso and seized the city of Mula, Lorca –which capitulated after arduous resistance– and Cartagena, which they were able to take thanks to a naval fleet that came of the Cantabrian, and that was a prelude to the plans that Fernando had with Seville. That same year of 1244, Fernando undertook his last offensive in Al-Andalus.

Conquest of Jaen

The city of Jaén had already been under siege from July 5 to 20, 1225, when it was defended by Álvar Pérez de Castro, before his contract to serve the king of Granada was terminated. In 1228 Fernando returned to those lands and took the town and castle of Castro and went up the Río de la Plata by the Veleta and Otiñar hills, whose population was devastated, as had been done with Grañena, on the Pitas hill. In 1230 he surrounded Jaén again and the surroundings were looted. In 1245, when Fernando was in Martos, Pelayo Correa encouraged him to take Jaén. Fernando left for Jaén with the company of his younger brother, Alfonso de Molina, and with the help of the orders of Calatrava and Santiago mainly. Jaén belonged to the taifa kingdom of Arjona, whose king was Áhmed ben Yúsuf ben Násar, known as Aben Alhamar, who finally transferred his kingdom to Granada. The siege, the third that Fernando undertook to take possession of the square, lasted seven months, from August 1245 to February 1246. Finally, Alahmar surrendered Jaén and recognized King Ferdinand's domain of his lands, the kingdom of Granada, in vassalage, paying half of their income, calculated at one hundred and fifty thousand maravedis per year. The survival of the kingdom of Granada was thus ensured, which would last for two and a half centuries. Alhamar had tried in vain to obtain the help of the Benimerines and, failing to do so, agreed to cede the square, whose population had to be evacuated. Fernando made his solemn entry into the city in March 1246. On his initiative, the bishopric of Baeza was transferred to Jaén in 1248. The conquest of Jaén also allowed the king to sign a league with Seville, whose lords feared the Hafsid sultan Abu Zakariyya Yahya I. The subsequent breakdown of the alliance precipitated the campaign that ended with its conquest by the Castilian sovereign. ellano-leonese.

Between March and April 1245, he went to visit his mother, Berenguela, and they met in Pozo de Don Gil, the place where Alfonso X founded Villa Real, which today is Ciudad Real. Her mother told her that she had been taking steps in Castilla and León but that she was tired and she needed to seclude herself in a monastery. In 1246, after conquering the fortress of Alcalá de Guadaira, near Seville, she received the news of her mother's death. She was buried in the monastery of Las Huelgas, in Burgos, in a simple tomb, but her granddaughter, who was a nun in that monastery, decided in 1251 to transfer her to a mausoleum in the choir, along with the remains of her parents, Alfonso VIII. and Eleanor.

In 1247 Pope Innocent IV granted a bull of the crusade for the Reconquest of Seville, according to which Fernando could take the tercios of the factory to pay the expenses of those who traveled to participate in it for Christian reasons.

Conquest of Seville

Table showing Axataf handing over the keys of Seville to Fernando III in front of one of the gates of the city, in a work of about 1750. The author took the license to make the cathedral appear as the Christians built it. The picture also shows the Virgin of the Kings in the heavens at the time of delivery. City Hall of Seville.

King Ferdinand commissioned Ramón de Bonifaz to set up a fleet to take the port city of Seville; the fleet was prepared between 1246 and 1248. Bonifaz headed for Cantabria where he obtained thirteen large ships as well as some galleys and smaller ships. The Christian fleet prepared to attack the Muslim fleet, which was in numerical superiority, in the Guadalquivir river and Fernando III sent land reinforcements. Finally, Bonifaz defeated the Muslim fleet, thus managing to deprive Seville of maritime reinforcements that could be sent from North Africa. In addition, the squares near the city were gradually falling into the hands of the Castilian-Leonese. On August 20, 1247, they began to besiege the city, but they discovered that the Emir of Niebla, Amen Amanfon, was sending reinforcements and food from the San Juan de Aznalfarache fortress using the boat bridge. One of the knights who stood out the most in that battle was Garci Pérez de Vargas. Infante Alfonso, accompanied by Pedro de Urgel from Portugal and some Catalan and Aragonese troops, joined the encirclement at the end of 1247 or beginning of 1248.

Fernando III sent the master Pelayo Pérez Correa to besiege the castle of San Juan de Aznalfarache, managing to take the square. To the north of the Torre del Oro was the boat bridge, through which supplies were sent to the city. In the chronicle Estoria de España by Alfonso X, it is explained that the boats on the bridge were linked together with iron chains. The historian Antonio Ponz, from the XVIII, says that a chain was securing the boat bridge. King Ferdinand made the decision to cut it. To do this, they took two ships and attacked the boat bridge. The first ship that hit failed to break it, but the second, captained by Bonifaz himself, managed to split it in two. After this, the intramural city was isolated from Aljarafe and the castle of Triana.

The city surrendered when it did not receive the requested help from the Hafsids of the Maghreb. The capture of the city by the Castilian troops took place on November 23, 1248. The caid Axataf delivered the keys to the city to Fernando III.

As had happened in other places, Fernando restored the Seville archbishopric, endowing it with munificence. The court settled in Seville until the king's death in 1252. His long campaign of conquest brought, however, new financial difficulties and requests for financial concessions to the papacy, which granted them.

The last campaigns were dedicated to subduing the Sevillian alfoz and various squares. In 1249 the monarch conquered Lebrija and already in 1250 the castle of Fontanar and its village, today Bornos, and Arcos de la Frontera. In 1251 his son Felipe, 21, was chosen as archbishop of the recently restored see of Seville, however he did not get to consecrate himself and married Princess Cristina of Norway. The infante Sancho, at the age of 18, was named Archbishop of Toledo.

Before 1252 there seems to be a ceding from the emir of Niebla to the then infante Alfonso. According to the historian of the XVI century, Jerónimo Zurita, the Emir of Niebla and the Algarve, Ibn Mahfuz, ceded the rights to the Algarve to him in an attempt to maintain good relations with Castile, since he was going to ask them for help to protect himself from the Portuguese conquest. According to a Muslim source from the beginning of the XIV century, the emir ceded to a certain Alfuns, possibly Alfonso, the Huelva places of Saltés and Gibraleón and three other unidentified sites with current locations.

The General Chronicle says that, after the conquest of Seville in 1248, Jerez de la Frontera, Medina Sidonia, Alcalá de los Gazules, Vejer de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, Sanlúcar la Mayor, Rota and Trebujena. Most likely, these places were not conquered in the reign of Fernando and that they simply remained as vassals, with the payment of the corresponding pariahs.

The General Chronicle states that, shortly after the conquest of Seville, Fernando planned the conquest of North Africa. The project was to carry out a crusade that would conquer from Oran to the Atlantic to control thus the two sides of the strait. This was possible, since in the Maghreb the Almohads were in an internal crisis and the Marinids were trying to gain a foothold in the territory, facing the Almohad caliphs and the Muslim kings of Tunis and Tlemcen. Alfonso X ordered the construction of the Shipyards of Seville for the manufacture of ships. In 1257 he made a military expedition to Taount, near Oran, and in 1260 he made another to Salé.

Cultural and political work

The equestrian statue of the monarch in the monument located in the Plaza Nueva de Sevilla, made in the 1920s. The statue of Fernando III is the work of Joaquín Bilbao Martínez.

He tried to unify and centralize the administration of the Castilian and Leonese kingdoms, promoted the translation of the Fuero juzgo and established Spanish as the official language of his kingdoms and of documents, replacing Latin. A lover of poetry, a song in Galician that he composed in praise of the Virgin is preserved, which also indicates his great Marian devotion. He ordered the Libro del septenario, also known simply as Setenario, a kind of draft of The seven games of his son Alfonso X who was a Text oriented towards education and of a philosophical nature that talks about the seven branches of the liberal arts and contains some concepts of common law. Alfonso X would later satisfactorily conclude this project of his father, giving it a more legal meaning. He also ordered the composition around 1237 of the Book of nobility and loyalty, made up of twelve wise men also known as the Book of the twelve wise men, a mirror of princes proposed by a consultative group of twelve learned people to help be a good ruler. This treatise has an epilogue by his son, Alfonso X el Sabio . It is a work of political law and norms of the duties of the ruler for a good government and the virtues that must be met to comply those obligations. The book is inspired by scholasticism and the Isidorian and Thomist doctrines and can be considered a precedent of the so-called Council of Castile.

In the cultural and religious field, he ordered the construction of the cathedrals of Burgos and León. In his time, Archbishop Rodrigo began work on the Cathedral of Toledo. The king's chancellor, Juan, founded the Cathedral of Valladolid and, later, as bishop of Osuna, built that cathedral. Nuño, bishop of Astorga, built the tower and the cloister of the cathedral for him. Lorenzo, bishop of Orense, raised the tower that was missing from his temple. He ordered the king to build innumerable churches, convents and hospitals and both he and his mother made important donations.

Despite their efforts to revitalize the Studium Generale de Palencia, which had entered an irremediable decline, which had been founded in 1212 by Alfonso VIII of Castile and transferred to Salamanca in 1218 by Alfonso IX of León, as it did not seem to function at the level university that was wanted due to the scarce resources available to it, canceled it in 1240 and from this moment Fernando devoted all his attention and resources to the University of Salamanca so that it would become one of the best in Europe.

Fernando III, concerned about his conquests in Andalusia, sought social calm in Galicia, and for this he leaned in favor of the ecclesiastical lords in the struggle they had with the councils of Compostela in 1238, of Tuy in 1249 and de Lugo in 1252 and created the figure of the representative of royal power, since he, from so far away, could not exercise power through adelantados. He distributed the new lands conquered among the military orders, the Church and the nobles, which gave lead to the formation of large estates.

Cutting

He took pains to ensure that music and good literary speech were given importance at his court. He organized tournaments and parties, which were enlivened by troubadours and minstrels. Among the troubadours close to him were Pero da Ponte, who composed stanzas lamenting the death of his first wife, Beatriz. The troubadours Domingo Abad and Nicolás de Romances, after the Reconquest of Seville, were rewarded with the inheritance of a fief each. The trovas and Galician songs, learned by him during his youth in Galicia, were his favorites. He was also a patron of artists. His son, King Alfonso the Wise, was a great writer and declared that his knowledge was due in large part to the interest that his father had in that his instruction was the best possible; and he describes it in the first passages of his Setenario, where there is an extensive panegyric of the character, virtues and deeds of his father Fernando III: intelligent, pious, well-spoken, with moderate eating and drinking habits, good horseman and courtier, respected by all:

To be known in such a good contention, that all omne quel veýe conosçíe that he was the lord of the others who ý estauan... He was mannosous in all good ways that good caualiero deuyese vsar; that he was well bofordar and alançar and taking weapons and arming very well and much betting. It was very well known to caçar all caça; others, to play tables and ascaques and other good games in many ways; e, pagándose de omnes cantadores e sabándole él fazer; et, otrosí, pagándose de omnes de corte que knew well to hinder and sing, e de joglares que sopiesen to touch estrumentos; ca desto se pagoua he much e a

The King's Death

The end of Fernando III the Holyby Virgilio Mattoni. 1887. Real Alcázar de Sevilla.

His death is attributed to dropsy contracted in the winter of 1251. He died on May 30, 1252.

On May 30, 1252, he was in the Alcázar. Four of the children he had with Beatriz de Suabia were with him; Alfonso, Fadrique, Felipe and Enrique; and her wife Joan of Ponthieu with the three children he had with her; Fernando, Leonor and Luis He was in the company of his relatives carrying a Crucifix.

He asked that Remondo, Bishop of Segovia, his usual confessor, administer the viaticum. Fernando dressed in a sackcloth. When the consecration took place, he knelt down and put an esparto rope around his neck, thus receiving communion.

A candle was brought to her to carry at the moment of her death and, before holding it, she raised her arms to heaven and said:

Lord, you gave me a kingdom that I had not, and honor and power that I did not deserve; you gave me life, this not durable, how much your will was. Lord, thank you and I give you back the kingdom that you gave me with that benefit that I could achieve and offer you my soul.

He asked the clergy to recite the litany and sing the Te Deum Laudamus.

The funeral took place on June 1, 1252 and was officiated by Remondo, Bishop of Segovia, in the cathedral. In the city there were royal vassals, bishops, abbots and rich men of the kingdom, who had come to show their lament.

Burial

General view of the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville.

The corpse of King Fernando III the Saint was buried in the Cathedral of Seville, three days after his death. Fernando III had arranged in his will that his corpse be buried at the foot of the image of the Virgen de los Reyes, which is supposed to have been given to the monarch by his cousin, King Saint Louis of France, and had also ordered that his burial be simple, without a recumbent statue.

Nevertheless, after the death of the king, his son Alfonso X ordered the mausoleums of his parents, covered with silver, and the seated effigies that represented them, covered with precious metals and precious stones, thus contravening the wishes of his father. In front of the image of the Virgen de los Reyes, donated by Fernando III the Saint to the Cathedral of Seville, were placed the effigies of Fernando III and his first wife, Queen Beatriz de Suabia, who appeared dressed, seated in veneered armchairs of silver and under canopies of silver gilt.

The seated image of Fernando III was crowned by a crown of gold and precious stones. The images of Fernando III and Beatriz de Suabia each carried crowns of gold and precious stones. The precious stones were confiscated by his descendant, King Pedro I of Castile, during the War of the Two Pedros, in the 14th century, arguing that they were not sufficiently protected.

The monarch was shown holding the sword in his right hand with the point up, and the sword was adorned with a ruby and an emerald. On the index finger of his left hand, in which he held the jeweled scabbard of his sword, he wore a gold ring with a sizeable ruby. Said ring would later be placed in the hand of the Virgen de los Reyes, who carried, like the Child Jesus that she held in her arms, a gold crown with precious stones, which were donated to her by Alfonso X the Wise..

After the death of Alfonso X, his effigy, in the same style as those of his parents, was placed next to them. The sarcophagi containing the remains of the kings were placed at the feet of the image of the Virgen de los Reyes, and were adorned with coats of arms showing castles, lions and eagles, the latter symbol of the House of Hohenstaufen, of which Queen Beatrix of Swabia was a member of.

Silver urn containing the mortal remains of Saint Ferdinand. Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville.

The effigy representing Fernando III was placed in the center of the chapel and to the left was that of his wife. When Ferdinand III the Saint was canonized in 1671, the seated image of the king, from the XIII century, was replaced by another Made by the sculptor Pedro Roldán, who according to certain sources made it in a few days, and was later gilded and stewed by a daughter of the painter Juan de Valdés Leal.

Currently, the silver urn containing the remains of Fernando III the Saint is placed on a masonry base, placed before the steps of the altar where the image of the Virgen de los Reyes is located. Four epitaphs are placed on the masonry base that supports the urn, composed in Arabic, Latin, Hebrew and Spanish.Tradition holds that the four epitaphs were composed by his son Alfonso X.

The silver urn that contains the remains of King San Fernando was made by the goldsmith Juan Laureano de Pina. It was begun in 1690, although financial difficulties meant that its completion was not completed until 1719, and several goldsmiths participated in its conclusion, having used silver, gilt silver and bronze in its realization. The outer urn covers the inner urn, with glass walls, in which the remains of the monarch rest.

The urn, which is considered the most important work of Sevillian baroque goldsmithing, is usually closed, although it can be opened to show the body of Saint Fernando, as is done on May 30, the feast of San Fernando, in which is exposed to the veneration of the faithful. In the decoration of the external urn, which protects the inner urn, the virtues of King Saint Ferdinand and the apotheosis of the Spanish monarchy are glorified, and it is also adorned with reliefs with floral motifs and vegetables.

Canonization

Retablo de San Fernando in the church of the Saviour of Seville. On its sides are San Luis Rey de France and San Hermenegildo and above are the sizes of San Diego de Alcalá and San Juan Bautista. The altarpiece is the work of José Díaz and was performed between 1760 and 1767. The image of San Fernando was carved by Antonio de Quirós in 1699, corresponding to the painter Francisco Meneses Osorio. San Luis and San Hermenegildo are works by Blas Molner.

For a canonization, in addition to the miracle, a reputation for holiness is required. After the death of Fernando III and his burial in the cathedral, a spiritual energy is generated that attracts the Sevillian faithful. Pope Sixtus V would confirm in 1590 that Fernando III possessed the halo of sanctity and that he deserved the treatment of saint, with based on the "radiance around the head that is given in Rome to the beatified and the diadem of the canonized." The restrictions of Pope Urban VIII made it necessary to demonstrate that this representation really was such and, once accredited, it was possible to promote the procedure from 1649.

Francisco López de Caro and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo were in charge of compiling all the images that existed in Seville of Fernando III. They began with a copper sheet that was kept in the Royal Chapel of the Seville Cathedral, which in turn it was a version of another that had been performed in Rome years before. In the same chapel they found an image in a tabernacle of San Fernando kneeling in prayer in front of an image of the Father. In the retrochoir of the cathedral there was an image of the surrender of Emir Axataf to Fernando III painted by Francisco Pacheco in 1634.

After collecting other portraits, they went to the Alcazar of Seville, where they found an image of the king in the Ambassadors' room. Other sites they visited were the Puerta de Jerez, the Franciscan convent of San Diego, the Puerta de la Carne, the church of Santa María la Blanca, the monastery of La Cartuja, the monastery of San Clemente, the Alhóndiga, the altarpiece of San Andrés from the convent of La Paz, the town hall and the convent of San Francisco annexed. In 3 years, starting in January 1649, both managed to gather numerous images that existed in the city of King Ferdinand that ratified the fame of sanctity of this person.

After this, we proceeded to give an account of the testimonies for the canonization in the 50s of the XVII century. From 1652 the image of San Fernando was already internationalized. In 1626 some witnesses, such as Juan Villavicencio y Alarcón, attested to the enormous popularity achieved by the image in Rome. He was also worshiped in the Monaco Cathedral, on his own altar. Juan de la Fuente Almonte, twenty-fourth alderman of Seville, stated that in the Viceroyalty of Peru he was called "Santo Rey Don Fernando".

On February 7, 1671, he was canonized by Pope Clement X.

Sponsorships

San Fernando is the patron saint of several towns such as: Seville, Aranjuez, San Fernando de Henares, Maspalomas (Gran Canaria), Villanueva del Río y Minas, San Fernando de Apure, Pivijay and the Ventas de Alcolea district of Albacete. He is also a patron of the Army of Engineers of the Spanish Army; as well as San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca in northern Argentina.

Since the creation in 1819 of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, also called the Diocese of Tenerife (Canary Islands), San Fernando is the patron saint of it and of the diocesan cathedral by bull of Pope Pius VII. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that this diocese is dependent on the Archdiocese of Seville, whose capital city has San Fernando as patron, and, on the other, to the fact that it was King Ferdinand VII who supported decisively the creation of this diocese. San Fernando is also the patron of the University of La Laguna, since this institution was founded under the name of Literary University of San Fernando .

Fernando, during the siege of Seville, had a flag with the effigy of the Virgin. The Muslims thought that destroying that flag would be a major blow against the morale of the Christian troops and they sent a small contingent to the Christian camp, which ended up damaging the flag with arrows. Fernando commented on this fact to the cleric Remondo, who recommended that he send it to the camp tailors for repair, but Fernando decided to sew it himself. For this reason, he was named an older brother of the Catholic brotherhood of the tailors' guild or the "alfayetes", which was the first to exist in Seville after the Reconquest. Said brotherhood had Saint Mateo and Saint Homobono as patrons and later added the Virgin of the Kings (patron saint of tailors) and Saint Fernando himself when he was canonized. That brotherhood still exists, with the name of Brotherhood of the Virgen de los Reyes, and has its worship in the church of San Ildefonso in the city.

He was also patron of the Spanish Youth Organization (OJE), a state youth organization in Francoist Spain that was dedicated to the national-Catholic civic-political training of young Spaniards, and which continues to exist today as a private organization within the scout movement.

Marriages and offspring

Monument to Fernando III the Holy in Baeza.

Ferdinand III the Saint married on November 30, 1219 in the church of Santa María de Burgos, with Beatriz de Suabia, daughter of Felipe de Suabia, king of Romans and duke of Suabia, and Irene Ángelo, daughter of Isaac II Angelo, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, with whom he had ten children:

• Alfonso X (1221-1284), King of Castile and Leon, after the death of his father Fernando III. He married Violante de Aragón.
• Fadrique (1223 - 1277). Executed by order of his brother, Alfonso X el Sabio and then buried in the missing monastery of the Most Holy Trinity of Burgos.
• Fernando (1225-1248). He died during the conquest of Seville in 1248.
• Leonor (1225) died in his youth.
• Berenguela (1228-1279), a nun in the Monastery of Santa Maria the Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos where he was buried.
• Henry (1230-1303). After his stay in Tunisia, he was appointed senator from Rome by Pope Clement IV.
• Philip (1231-1274), Archbishop of Seville, was buried in the Church of Santa María la Blanca de Villalcázar de Sirga.
• Sancho (1233-1261), Archbishop of Toledo and Seville.
• Manuel (1234-1283), master of Villena, Escalona, Peñafiel, Elche, Santa Olalla, Agreda, Roa, Cuéllar, Chinchilla, Aspe and Beas.
• Mary (1235-1235), buried in the Colegiata of San Isidoro de León.

After being widowed by his first wife, Beatriz de Suabia, King Ferdinand married Juana de Ponthieu in the city of Burgos in 1237, from whom he had the following children:

• Fernando (1238-c. 1264), Count of Aumale and Baron of Montgomery, died in France.
• Leonor (1240-1290), who married Edward I of England and was the mother of Edward II of England.
• Luis (1242-1269), Mr. de Marchena and Zuheros, married Juana Gómez de Manzanedo.
• Simon (1244-?). He died in his youth and was supposed to be buried in the monastery of the Dominicans of Toledo.
• John (1245-1245). He died newborn and was buried in Cordoba Cathedral.

Genealogy