Peter III of Aragon

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Peter III of Aragon (Valencia, 1240-Villafranca del Panadés, November 11, 1285), called the Great, was son of James I the Conqueror and his second wife Violante of Hungary. He succeeded his father in 1276 in the titles of King of Aragon, King of Valencia, and Count of Barcelona. In addition, he also became king of Sicily.

Biography

Married on June 13, 1262 in the cathedral of Montpellier with Constance of Hohenstaufen, daughter and heiress of Manfredo I of Sicily, they were crowned in Zaragoza, probably on November 17, 1276, in a ceremony in which Pedro canceled the vassalage that his grandfather Pedro II had arranged with the papacy.

His entire reign was focused on the expansion of the Crown of Aragon throughout the Mediterranean and for this he took advantage of his marriage to Constanza to claim the Sicilian crown. Sicily had been under the sovereignty of Charles of Anjou since 1266 who, with the support of Pope Clement IV, who did not want any Hohenstaufen in southern Italy, had been invested as king after defeating Manfredo at Benevento, who died in battle..

The Angevin monarch had Manfred's three sons blinded and, in 1268, he captured and had Conradin beheaded, who – as a grandson of Frederick II – was the last male heir of the Hohenstaufen house. The line of succession then passed to Constanza, who offered refuge in Aragon to the families in favor of her father, the Lanzas, the Laurias and the Prócidas. From there, Juan de Procida, Roger de Lauria and the rest of the old Hohenstaufen party organized the opposition to Carlos de Anjou with Pedro as a candidate with Byzantine support.

Peter III of Aragon, represented in the Genealogy of the House of Aragon, written by order King Martin I of Aragon.

A fleet of the Aragonese crown, under the command of Conrado Lanza, crossed the African coasts in 1279 to re-establish Aragon's feudal sovereignty over Tunisia, which had been weakened by the death of the emir Muhammad I al-Mustansir. Later, in 1281, Peter III assembled a fleet to invade Tunisia and asked the newly elected Pope Martin IV for a bull declaring the military operation a crusade, but the pope, of French origin and supporter of Charles of Anjou, refused.

When the fleet was preparing to set sail, the events known as the Sicilian Vespers took place in Sicily, which caused the expulsion from the island, after a great massacre, of the French. The Sicilians then sent an embassy to Pedro III offering him the Sicilian crown, to which he was entitled thanks to his marriage. The Aragonese king then set his fleet to Sicily, where he arrived on August 30, 1282 and was crowned king in the city of Palermo.

He immediately sent an embassy to Charles of Anjou, who was in Messina, urging him to recognize him as King of Sicily and to leave the island. The defeat of the Angevin fleet in Nicoreta, at the hands of Admiral Roger de Lauria, forced Carlos to leave Messina and take refuge in his kingdom in Naples.

Pope Martin IV responded to the Sicilian coronation of Peter III with his excommunication (November 9, 1282) and his deposition as King of Aragon (December 21, 1283), offering the crown to the second son of the King of France, Carlos de Valois, whom he invested on February 27, 1284, and declaring a crusade against Aragon, between 1284 and 1286, for his intervention in Sicilian affairs against the papal will. Most of the conflict took place in Catalan lands, although the first episodes took place on the Navarrese-Aragonese border. In response, the Aragonese attacked the French in Mallorca and Occitania.

The situation in which Pedro III found himself was totally unstable, since he not only had to face the French invasion that was being prepared north of the Pyrenees, but also had to face serious problems within his kingdoms that had arisen before the economic needs caused by the conquest of Sicily.

Peter III the Great in the hill of the Panizasby Mariano Barbasán. 1891. (Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza).

Pedro III solved the internal problems by granting, in the Courts of Tarazona (1283-84), the formation of the Aragonese Union and taking an oath to the General Privilege that defended the privileges of the nobility; He also granted the County of Barcelona the constitution "Una vegada l'any" in the courts held in Barcelona between 1283 and 1284.

Once the internal problems were solved, he was able to focus his attention on the French invasion, which under the command of the French king Philip III himself took the city of Gerona in 1285, only to immediately have to withdraw when the Aragonese fleet returned from Sicily under the command of Roger de Lauria and inflicted a total defeat on the French squadron in the Formigues Islands and then a land defeat in the Panizas ravine, when the French troops withdrew.

After his great victory, Pedro III set out to confront his brother Jaime II of Majorca and his nephew King Sancho IV of Castile, who had not supported him during his conflict with the French, but his premature death prevented it.. At the end of October 1285, the king fell ill when he was preparing to travel to Barcelona and had to stop in the town of Sant Climent where the doctors, who traveled from the capital to treat him, could do nothing to save him. He died on the festivity of Saint Martin on November 11, 1285. Forensic studies of his remains, exhumed in 2010, indicate that his death was probably due to a lung condition.

Relationship with Jaime I

Pedro was the legitimate son with whom the king had the most contact, although he was not always cordial due to certain actions that aroused suspicion on the part of the monarch. The relationship began to suffer in 1262 according to Ernest Belenguer, when the infante opposed the distribution of the kingdoms, in which he would only inherit the core of the Crown of Aragon, leaving the infante Jaime the kingdoms of Valencia and the Balearic Islands as well as Roussillon, Cerdagne and the lordship of Montpellier. But it would not be until 1264 with the Aragonese intervention in support of Castile before the Mudejar rebellion in the area that the rivalry between father and son would manifest itself, even so at the end of the life of King Jaime I, his last decisions were aimed at facilitating the seizure of power of the infant Pedro, so it seems that the relationship between the two must have improved.

The first time that James I mentions his son in the documents is on March 26, 1251, when he grants the county of Barcelona to the then 11-year-old infant, when the king attended courts there, this act has been considered as a presentation with a propaganda tinge of the infant in the Catalan sphere, surely to be seen as an alternative to the still eldest infant Alfonso. Over the years this link with the Catalan lands would continue to be shown as it would appear on his diplomas as heredi Catalonia although this would change in 1262 when the king made a will again in August and named him heir from Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia.

Burial

In his will, Pedro III arranged for his body to be buried in the Monastery of Santes Creus, of the Cistercian order. The monarch's obsequies were celebrated with great solemnity and the king's body was placed in a red porphyry urn, which Admiral Roger de Lauria brought from Sicily. He was the first Aragonese monarch to be buried in the Monastery of Santes Creus.

King James II of Aragon ordered the construction of the tombs of King Pedro III the Great, his father, at the same time that he ordered the creation of his own tomb and that of his second wife, Blanca of Naples. It was decided that the tombs would be sheltered, as they did, under baldachins carved in white marble from the quarries of San Feliu, near Gerona. When King Jaime II ordered the creation of his own tomb, he took the tomb of his father as a model.

The tomb of King Pedro III was made between 1291 and 1307 by Bartomeu de Gerona and is richer than that of his son Jaime II and his wife. A large temple with openwork tracery houses the tomb of the king, with the urn surrounded by images of saints.

The epitaph of King Pedro III, placed in front of the mausoleum, on the pillar that separates the presbytery from the side chapel of the transept, reads the following inscription:

PETRUS QUEM PETRA TEGIT GENTES ET REGNA SUBEGIT,

FORTES CONFREGITQUE CREPIT, CUNCTA PEREGIT,AUDAX MAGNANIMUS SIBI MILES WHO FIT UNUS,WHO BELLO PRIMUS INHERET JACET HIC MODO IMUS,CONSTANS PROPOSITO VERAX SERMONE FIDELIS,REBUS PROMISSIS FUIT HIC ET STRENUUS ARMIS,FORTIS JUSTITIA VIVENS AEQUALIS AD OMNES,ISTIS LAUDATUR VI MENTIS LAUS SUPERATUR,CHRISTUS ADORATUR DUM PENITET UNDE BEATUR,REX ARAGONENSIS COMES ET DUX BARCINONENSIS,DEFECIT MEMBRIS UNDENA NOVEMBRIS,ANNO MILLENO CENTUM BIS ET OCTUAGENO,

QUINTO, SISTE PIA SIBI TUTRIX VIRGO MARIA.

In December 1835, during the First Carlist War, government troops made up of the French Foreign Legion (from Algeria) and several companies of migueletes lodged in the monastic building, causing extensive damage to it. The royal tombs of Jaime II and his wife were desecrated. The remains of Jaime II, son of Pedro III, were burned, although it seems that some remains remained in the tomb. The mummy of the Blanca queen of Naples was thrown into a well, from where it was removed in 1854. The tomb of Pedro III, due to the solidity of the porphyry urn used to house the royal remains, prevented his remains from flowing the same way luck.

Remains of Peter III of Aragon in the 21st Century

In 2009 the mortal remains of the king were found in his tomb in Santes Creus. Through a sophisticated endoscopy technique and an analysis of the gases contained inside, it has been possible to verify that it is the only tomb of a monarch in the Crown of Aragon that has never been desecrated.

Marriage and offspring

From his marriage to Constance in 1262 were born:

He had two natural children with Juana, before marrying García Romeu III (d. January 2, 1275), rich man from Aragón, son of García Romeu II, with Artal IV de Alagón (d. 1295), X Lord of Alagón in 1293, III lord of Sástago, I lord of Pina de Ebro, Calanda and Alcubierre, with descendants and with Pedro López de Oteiza:

He had two natural children from his relationship with María Nicolau, before marrying Constanza:

From the relationship he had around 1275-1280 with Inés Zapata, to whom he donated the towns of Liria and Alcira in the Kingdom of Valencia, four illegitimate children were born:

From María Pérez de Logroño he had:

Ancestors


Predecessor:
Jaime I 		thum
King of Aragon and Valencia
Count of Barcelona
1276 - 1285 		Successor:
Alfonso III
Predecessor:
Carlos de Anjou 		thum
King of Sicily
(along with Constance II of Sicily)
1282 - 1285 		Successor:
Jaime I of Sicily