Peter II of Aragon
Peter II of Aragon, nicknamed "the Catholic" (Huesca, July 1178 - Muret, present-day France, September 13, 1213), was king of Aragon (1196-1213), Count of Barcelona (1196-1213) and Lord of Montpellier (1204-1213). He was the son of Alfonso II the Chaste of Aragon Barcelona and Sancha de Castilla.
Biography
He was born, almost in all probability, in the month of July 1178 in Huesca, the city where his father Alfonso II was, who that same month granted at least two documents. He received baptism in the cathedral of Huesca. His childhood was spent in the Alto Aragonese capital raised by his mistress Sancha de Torres.
Peter II ruled as King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona and Lord of Montpellier; according to Iglesias Costa this meant assuming recognition over Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, although those titles were omitted from Alfonso II. These were former counties already united to the Kingdom of Aragon in the time of Ramiro I.
In general terms, the reign of Pedro II was dedicated to politics in the trans-Pyrenean territories with some results but ultimately failure, which, apart from the decrease in financial resources and the indebtedness of the crown during his reign, determined a Less attention was paid to the Hispanic border, where he achieved different advanced positions in Andalusian territory, such as Mora de Rubielos (1198), Manzanera (1202), Rubielos de Mora (1203), Camarena (1205) and Serreilla, El Cuervo, Castielfabib and Ademuz (1210) although he played a political role in support of a joint Christian action that would curb the strength of the Almohad power in the peninsula, and he actively participated together with Alfonso VIII of Castile and Sancho VII of Navarre in the campaign that culminated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, a Christian triumph, according to many decisive, and already of great resonance at that time.
Pedro II renewed the infeudation or vassalage of Aragon to San Pedro (as Sancho Ramírez and Pedro I had done long ago) with his coronation by Pope Innocent III in the Monastery of San Pancracio in Rome in November 1204, also acquiring the commitment to grant the Papacy an annual sum. This policy of papal legitimization made him the first monarch of the kingdom to be crowned and anointed. From him and by concession of the Holy See in a bull issued on June 6, 1205, the Aragonese monarchs had to be crowned in the Seo de Zaragoza by the Archbishop of Tarragona after requesting the crown from the Pope (a formality that implied permission of Rome), this prerogative being extended to queens in 1206.
Married in 1204 to Marie de Montpellier, a marriage guided by his interests in the French midday that gave him sovereignty over the city of Montpellier, his short marital life was about to create a situation of succession crisis due to lack of heir. Queen María finally gave birth to a son, Jaime I, who guaranteed the continuity of the dynasty although there was a divorce attempt as early as 1206, which the pope did not grant, to marry María de Montferrato, nominal heiress of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem., by then non-existent in practice.
He died on September 13, 1213 in the battle of Muret, near Toulouse.
Occitan politics
Occitan heritage
Peter II did not renounce the policy in Occitania and with him the culmination and failure of that policy in the Crown of Aragon which, inherited from the Barcelona Count House since the 19th century xi and the campaigns with the help of ultra-Pyrenean magnates of Alfonso I of Aragon, his father Alfonso II had increased his double status as Count of Barcelona and King of Aragon.
Ramón Berenguer I had initiated, in opposition to the counts of Tolosa, a policy of penetration in Occitania of the county of Barcelona with the acquisition of the territories of the counties of Carcassonne and Rasés (later lost at the hands of the Trencavel), which continued in the xiii century with Ramón Berenguer III and IV, consolidating their position in the area as counts of Provence and obtaining, between 1130 and 1162, the vassalage of numerous lords in the area.
Alfonso II, in the context of the Almohad expansion (which acted as a brake on the expansion towards the south in the Iberian Peninsula), but now also as the first titular sovereign of the Crown of Aragon (which provided him with a base of territorial power) had reinforced its presence in Occitania against the expansionism of the county of Tolosa and was "on the verge of creating a Pyrenean kingdom that would include the basins of the Ebro and the Garona". reality, culminating the Occitan dynastic tradition now in a new context of alliances before the attempt of expansion in the area of another rival monarchy, the Capetians.
Partnership Policy
Despite the fact that the County of Provenza, belonging to the House of Aragon, had been assigned to his brother Alfonso II of Provenza, Pedro II maintained his activity in that complex board of interests marked by its political fragmentation, the attempt to expand about it, the development of Catharism and the consequent conflicts with Pope Innocent III, interested in eradicating it and imposing himself on the area.
In 1200 he arranged the marriage of his sister Eleanor and Raymond VI of Toulouse. In a council in Bagnères-de-Luchon in 1201, Bernardo IV of Cominges became a vassal of the King of Aragon, in exchange for the delivery of the Aran Valley, which belonged to the Catholic king. In 1202 the Count of Toulouse married the Infanta Leonor. In 1204, Pedro II married María, heiress of the Count of Montpellier, also having, as a vassal, Ramón-Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne. That same year he intervened in the area forcing a peace between his brother, the Count of Provenza, and the Count of Forcalquier, an ally of Pedro II.
He also became a feudatory of the Holy See in November of that same year, undoubtedly with his sights set on playing a political role in the area from a position of pre-eminence and legitimacy, in his capacity as king crowned by the pope and distanced from Catharism, against which some measures were taken both in Provence and in Montpellier, having to put down a revolt in the latter city in 1206.
On the other hand, interested in an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, he engaged another of his sisters, Constance, with the King of Sicily Federico II Hohenstaufen, a marriage that ended in 1210, to be crowned emperors in 1212 of the Holy Empire.
The Cathar Movement and the Crusade
Throughout the xii and xiii centuries, the The influence of Catharism, a Christian heresy with origins in Asia Minor and the Balkans (Paulicians and Bogomils), had been spreading in the Latin West and strongly consolidated in the so-called Occitania or territories of the current French south, where a Cathar Church was structured. with several bishoprics and whose epicenter was the area of the city of Albí, for which reason it is also called the Albigensian movement. The situation of coexistence with this rival church, tolerated by the powers of the area (a situation favored by the atomization of political power and the absence of an effective center of power in Occitania, never achieved by the county of Tolosa), threatened hegemony there. of the Roman Church.
At the same time, Occitan prosperity aroused the expansionist ambition of the French Capetian monarchy and its baronies on the Isle of France, ready to use any argument to intervene in the territories of the Langue d&# 39;oc. For his part, Innocent III found in the French monarchy the most favorable means of stopping "heresy" and reducing his proselytes to obedience to Rome, for which reason he was always complacent and predisposed to favor the French king's undertakings, to who will also support in the battle of Bouvines and in its conflicts with England. From this communion of interests arose the crusade against the Albigensians that began to take shape at the beginning of the xii century and that finally the pope preached throughout Latin Christendom, with special success in the Isle of France, legitimizing the French monarch in his expansive policy by sending against the Occitan territories –considered heretical by Rome– a powerful army commanded by Simon de Montfort under the name of Crusade.
The beginning of the crusade
The event that sparked the conflict was the assassination in January 1208 of Pierre de Castelnau, sent to Toulouse as papal legate to mediate on behalf of Rome, which led the Pope to excommunicate the Count of Toulouse and promulgate the crusade against the Albigenses.
The «lightning» war in 1209 was initially directed against the vizcounties of the Occitan Trencavel dynasty, where the brutal capture of Béziers took place, with a generalized massacre without distinction of creed that was later illustrated in the famous phrase attributed by the chronicles to the papal legate Arnaud Amaury. This initial phase of the crusade ended with the siege and subsequent capture of the city of Carcassonne in the summer of 1209, after which they were granted to the French crusader Simon de Montfort, by the legate himself. papal, the subject lands of the Trencavel family. From his new possessions he would maintain a policy of attacks and assaults on the lordships of the area, including the failed attempt to take Toulouse in 1211 and he began the persecution and burning of Cathars through the Inquisition, created expressly by Rome in 1184 with the objective of to eradicate the so-called Cathar or Albigensian heresy.
Pedro II Negotiations
The situation created generated among the Occitan powers a feeling of threat and rejection of the French intervention and the crusade that was propitious for Pedro II the Catholic, as king and vassal of the papacy since 1204, to obtain a prestigious position in the area acting as intercessor before the papacy and protector before Simón de Montfort (already in the taking of Carcassonne in 1209 he avoided a massacre by negotiating with the crusaders an expulsion of the Cathars), prestige increased with his successful participation against the Muslims in Las Navas de Toulouse. Having obtained the vassalage of the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, and other powers in the area, he deployed a pacification policy arranging the marriage of his son, the future Jaime I, with the daughter of Simón de Monfort, handing him over to him, as guarantee, the guardianship of the young prince and sole heir to the lineage, who remained in Carcassonne. He likewise negotiated with Arnaud Amaury, now Bishop of Narbonne and also present in the Las Navas campaign, the convocation of a synod in Lavaur to attempt reconciliation.
The battle of Muret and the death of the king
After the failure of the reconciliation between the Occitans and Simón de Montfort, Pedro II declared himself protector of the threatened Occitan lordships and of Toulouse. Despite the fact that his son remained under the guardianship of Simón de Montfort and the excommunication of Innocent III, who had finally chosen to support the French cause, he finally assembled an army in his kingdoms and peninsular territories with which he crossed the Pyrenees and next to the Occitan allies laid siege to the city of Muret, where Simon de Montfort went. Starting from an advantageous situation in terms of forces and supplies, in the campaign, it seems, his hosts acted hastily and disorganized without waiting for the arrival of all the contingents. He would be killed when he was isolated by the French knights in a fight in which the king occupied a dangerous position in the second squad, instead of, as usual, being in the rear. The death of the king brought disorder and rout among the Toulouse-Aragonese forces and the consequent defeat. Muret meant the failure and abandonment of the claims of the Crown of Aragon over the ultra-Pyrenean territories and, according to the author Michel Roquebert, the end of the possible formation of a powerful Aragonese-Occitan kingdom that would have changed the course of the history of France and Spain.
Excommunicated by the same Pope who crowned him, he remained buried in the Hospitallers of Toulouse, until in 1217 Pope Honorius III authorized the transfer of his remains to the royal pantheon of the Monastery of Santa María de Sigena in Huesca, where he was buried outside the sacred precinct.
The young Jaime, heir to the crown of Aragon
After Pedro II died, Simón de Monfort still kept Jaime, the heir to the throne, in custody, who had been orphaned of father and mother in that same year of 1213, when Queen María de Montpellier also died at only 33 years of age in Rome, where she had traveled to defend the indissolubility of her marriage.
Faced with this situation, the Aragonese and Catalan nobles possibly requested the restitution of the young heir to Simón de Montfort. An embassy of the kingdom was sent to Rome to request the intervention of Innocent III who, in a bull and through the legacy Pedro de Benevento, forcefully demanded that Simon de Montfort hand over James, which finally took place in Narbonne in the spring of 1214., where a delegation of notables from his kingdom awaited him, among whom was Guillem de Montredon, Master of the Temple in Aragon in charge of his guardianship.
As a child, Jaime I of Aragon crossed the Pyrenees for the first time to be, together with his cousin, Ramón Berenguer V of Provenza, trained and educated with the Templars of Aragon in Monzón, before stopping in Lérida, where he was sworn fidelity joint Courts of Aragon and County of Barcelona.
Marriages and offspring
He married Maria de Montpellier in 1204 with whom he had only one child:
- Jaime I de Aragón Montpellier, February 2, 1208-Alcira, July 27, 1276) King of Aragon, Valencia and Mallorca, Count of Barcelona, Urgel and Mr of Montpellier.
With an unknown noblewoman:
- Constanza (?- 1252) was a natural daughter and married Guillermo Ramón II of Montcada, senescal of Barcelona on 7 November 1212, and gave them as dotes the villas and castles of Serós, Aitona and Soses, died in 1252 and was buried in the pantheon of the Moncadas in the Old Seo.
With an unknown woman, although authors such as Martin Aurell defend that he is the brother of Constanza, both sons of "A lady from Sarroca" although there is no proof of this:
- Peter of the King(?-1254) was canon and sacristan of the cathedral of Lleida, to whom there are also authors such as Josep Trenchs and Òdena who link him as the father of Jaime Sarroca, bishop of Huesca, Pedro del Rey, bishop of Lérida and of a certain Guillermo, notary, scribe and regent of the Foreign Ministry, instead of Jaime I of Aragón.
With an unknown woman:
- Sancha(?-??), it is known that he married Pedro IV vizconde de Vilamur, to whom Peter ceded on December 31, 1232, the castles and villas of Ballobar, in the region of the bass Cinca, of Olvena, in the Somontano, and Alins del Monte, in the Litera, until the payment of 1500 morabetinos of the gold of the 3000 promised. It is known that he had two children of this marriage, Sancha and Pedro V, Viscount of Vilamur.
According to Occitan tradition, the king had an affair with Azalaïs de Boissezon.
| Predecessor: Alfonso II |  King of AragonConde of Barcelona 1196-1213 | Successor: Jaime I |
| Predecessor: Guillermo VIII | Mr. Montpellier (Together with his wife Mary) 1204-1213 | Successor: Jaime I |