Sancho Garcés III of Pamplona

Sancho Garcés III (c. 992/96-October 18, 1035), nicknamed the Greater or Greater, was king of Pamplona from 1004 until his death. His reign is considered the stage of greatest hegemony of the kingdom of Pamplona over the Spanish-Christian sphere in its entire history. He dominated by marriage in Castilla, Álava and Monzón (1028-1035), which increased with the county of Cea (1030-1035). He added to his domain the territories of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza from 1015 and 1018, respectively. His intervention in the heart of the kingdom of León in 1034-35 has been the subject of opposing interpretations: from a lightning war to a more or less voluntary collaboration with Bermudo III, since the documentation does not mention fights between Leonese and Navarrese.

He was designated in a letter as Rex Ibericus by Abbot Oliva and Sancio rege Navarriae Hispaniarum by the Gallic chronicler Rodolfus Glaber. In the act of translation of the body of San Millán dated May 14, 1030 —according to the historian José Antonio Vaca de Osma— it is said of King Sancho: “reigning in Nájera, in Castilla and in León the king of Spain” Authors such as Germán de Iruña in 1935 supported the disputed interpretation that in 1034, after the capture of León, he had himself proclaimed Imperator totius Hispaniae, based on a coin with the inscription «Imperator» minted in Nájera and attributed to this monarch. This coin is currently considered to be after Sancho el Mayor and the claims that it was named Imperator are unfounded.

Reign

His parents were García Sánchez II el Temblón and Queen Jimena Fernández, daughter of Fernando Bermúdez, Count of Cea and Countess Elvira Díaz of the house of Saldaña. The close relationship between the kings of Pamplona, León and Castilla meant that, of his four grandparents, one was from Navarre and the rest, from Leon or Castilian. According to the documentation available, Sancho must have been born between 992 and 996. He spent his childhood at the time of the last campaigns of Almanzor, around the year 1000, whom his father continually faced, allied with the Count of Castile. His main influences at this time and in the early days of his reign were his mother Jimena, from Leon, and his paternal grandmother Urraca, daughter of the Castilian count Fernán González.

The kingdom of Pamplona at the death of Sancho III el Mayor (1035) Kingdom of Pamplona Aragon County and dependencies belonging to the Pamplonian monarchy since 922 Ribagorza win and annexes (1018-1025) Borders restored by Sancho III el Mayor (1018-1025) Land lost in 922 Area linked to Pamplona since the centuryX County of Castile and Álava Zone disputed by the Kingdom of León Kingdom of León Muslim domains

When his father disappeared around the year 1000, there was an interregnum dominated by a cousin of his father, Sancho Ramírez de Viguera. Sancho Garcés ascended the throne between November 3, 1004 and March 1, 1005, although perhaps he was proclaimed king before, on the death of his father. At that time he was not more than twelve years old —between nine and thirteen, most likely more these than those. He inherited the kingdom of Pamplona with the county of Aragón under the guardianship of a regency council made up of the bishops, his mother and his grandmother Urraca Fernández. The kingdom was then made up of three well-differentiated regions: the territories of the old kingdom around Pamplona, extended towards Guipúzcoa, Aragón and the lands of La Rioja The extent of the kingdom had hardly changed since the death of Sancho Garcés I in 925. However, this situation would change with the new king, since after the death of Almanzor in 1002 the Caliphate State of Cordoba was in deep crisis internal that would end with its abolition in 1031. The Christian kingdoms would take advantage of the new situation of weakness of the Andalusians to reverse the state of submission and permanent fear before Córdoba that in the case of Pamplona had lasted for several successive reigns. The tables had turned.

Sancho III had his residence in Nájera, which displaced Pamplona as court and capital of the kingdom, and he is considered the first Europeanist king, since he extended his relations beyond the Pyrenees with the duchy of Gascony and accepted the new political, religious and intellectual currents in Europe. In 1010, he made the first visit by a peninsular monarch north of the Pyrenees since the Muslim invasion of 711; He went to Saintonge, where he met with the King of France and several Frankish lords. He was the first Navarrese king to establish relations with the Roman Papacy, which his successors maintained and strengthened, ending the three centuries of ecclesiastical isolation of the peninsula. —except for the Hispanic Marca. He favored the spread of the Cluniac reform throughout his territories. He established a friendly epistolary relationship with the abbot of Cluny, Odilón. some monks, probably Aragonese, in it; they learned it by residing at Cluny for some time, before returning to his monasteries.

His reign coincided with the crisis of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which began with the death of Almanzor and ended with the beginning of the Taifa kingdoms. During the king's minority, Pamplona was only the object of one of the campaigns of Almanzor's sons, the one that Abd al-Málik al-Muzáffar undertook against Sobrarbe and Ribagorza County —peripheral territories— in 1006, where he left some garrisons. During the short period in which his brother and successor, Abderramán Sanchuelo, Sancho's first cousin, ruled the caliphate, the kingdom was not attacked. The collapse of the caliphate and the outbreak of civil war in al-Andalus eliminated the almost continuous threat that had posed, and allowed the consolidation of the regency of Pamplona. The Muslim danger disappeared for several decades.

He sought the unification of the Christian states, either through bonds of vassalage or under his own command. He modified the layout of the Camino de Santiago, which at that time crossed Álava and avoided the lands of La Rioja for safety reasons, hitherto subjected to Muslim incursions. Instead of arriving from Pamplona to Burgos through Irurzun, Huarte Araquil, Salvatierra, Miranda de Ebro, Pancorbo, Briviesca and Quintanapalla, Sancho made the pilgrims follow a somewhat straighter and shorter route, through Puente la Reina, Estella, Logroño, Nájera, Santo Domingo de la Calzada and Villafranca Montes de Oca.

County of Castile

Changes in the pamplonian-leon border between 1016 and 1065. The advance of the Spanish territory in Sancho times and the subsequent partial retreat, when his son Fernando was made with the lioness crown

He began a period of cordial relations with the county of Castilla, facilitated by his marriage to Muniadona, the eldest daughter of the Castilian count Sancho García. From this marriage, which had already taken place in 1011 when the king was already older of age, García Sánchez III of Pamplona was born, who succeeded his father, Fernando (Count of Castile), Gonzalo (regulus of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza) and Jimena, Queen of León by marrying Bermudo III. The wedding made him a relative of the families of the most powerful counties of the kingdom of León, those of Castilla, Saldaña and Carrión. Before his marriage to Muniadona, Sancho had had a natural son, Ramiro, who was accepted into the family and to whom a royal title was granted, that of regulus. in Córdoba together with Berber hosts to put one of the Umayyad suitors on the Cordovan throne, whom he kept under his protection.

Following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, who had skilfully taken advantage of the deep crisis in al-Andalus to recover the territories conquered by Almanzor and his son from the Castilians during their frequent campaigns, Sancho obtained the return of some fortresses and territories of the people of Cordoba, in 1011-1012. The relationship between the Castilian count and the King of Pamplona was cordial; Sancho García served him as a political model until he died in 1017.

In the year 1016 the envoys of Sancho III el Mayor and Sancho García, count of Castilla, Fortún Ochoa de los Cameros and Nuño Álvarez de la Bureba respectively, established by agreement the limits between the kingdom of Navarra and the county of Castile in the La Rioja-Soriano section, a border that started at Mount San Lorenzo and ended at Garray and the Duero. The disputes over control of the La Rioja area of San Millán de la Cogolla, where Castilla had great influence since the times of Fernán González, as can be seen in the documentation of San Millán. For a century, the border remained peaceful and unchanged.

Sancho III also supported the marriage between García Sánchez, son and heir of the Count of Castilla, and Sancha de León. When García went to León to get married in 1029, he was assassinated. Due to his marriage to Muniadona de Castilla, the deceased's sister, it fell to Sancho III to govern the destinies of the counties of Castilla, Monzón and Álava, although he was designated Count of Castilla to his son Fernando -perhaps the secondborn-, perhaps to dispel any suspicion that he wanted to take the title of count. The Castilian nobles, in exchange for recognizing Sancho's authority due to his marriage to Muniadona, insisted on maintaining his identity and in having a lord who was not going to inherit the Navarrese crown, conditions that Sancho accepted. Although he was never count of Castile, he actually went on to govern his territory. Already in García's lifetime, however, he had actually seized from the county (Álava, La Rioja and La Bureba). The murder of the count allowed him, however, to seize the entire territory, alleging the rights of his wife. In practice it was he and not Fernando, who ruled the county until 1035, the year in which he died. He appears as lord of the territory already in the year 1029, in which García Sánchez is believed to have died. kingdoms.

Almost immediately and using the old Castilian claims to the domain of Tierra de Campos, it seized the counties of Saldaña, Carrión and Monzón in the second half of 1029. Since the year 1030 it appears governing the lands of the county of Cea, Regnante rege Sanctio in Ceia et rege Ueremudo in Legione. The territory of Cea also fell within its influence, since the mother of Sancho el Mayor was the sister of Pedro Fernández, Count of Cea, died around 1028 both sons of Fernando Bermúdez, second count of Cea, and his wife Elvira Díaz de Saldaña. He conquered Astorga and León (1034). Although for a long time it was considered that Sancho was entitled Imperator, it is a theory that Germán de Iruña put forward in 1935 and was followed by numerous authors, based on a coin attributed to his reign with the inscription Imperator minted in Nájera. But said coin would be a unique specimen, and is currently considered to be after Sancho el Mayor, issued during the reign of Alfonso VII of León, so the basis that held that it was titled Imperator is without foundation.

On December 21, 1034, Sancho restored the Palencia headquarters, entrusting Ponce, Bishop of Oviedo, with its organization.

Ribagorza County

Estatua de Sancho el Mayor in Pamplona

He took advantage of the internal difficulties of Sobrarbe-Ribagorza to impose his interests as a descendant of Dadildis de Pallars and husband of Muniadona, who was the granddaughter of Ava de Ribagorza.

The lands of Sobrarbe, ravaged by the caliphate, were incorporated into the kingdom of Pamplona around 1015. Upon the death of Guillermo Isárnez de Ribagorza, between the end of 1017 and the beginning of 1018, Sancho Garcés took control of Ribagorza's territory corresponding to Guillermo Isárnez, since his wife was the niece of the Countess Mayor. This, Sancho's rival to the county throne, saw her aspirations frustrated by the quick military maneuvers of the King of Pamplona, which allowed her to seize the most of the county in 1017-1018. Almost all the rest of the territory corresponding to Mayor de Ribagorza by the distribution of 1010, was incorporated by the king of Pamplona around 1025. Count Ramón Sunyer kept the eastern bank of the Noguera river Ribagorzana and some lands in the west, which united the County of Pallars Jussá. Sancho also recovered some of the lands that the Muslims had seized in the campaign of 1006 in the valley of the Ésera river.

Taifa of Zaragoza

Sancho was the main enemy of the Taifa of Zaragoza, which emerged from the dismemberment of the Caliphate of Córdoba and was ruled by the Tuyibíes. The fighting between the people of Pamplona and Zaragoza was continuous, and alternated. When the first Tuyibí emir died, Múndir I, in 1022, Sancho took the opportunity to seize some border territories, of limited extension, in the area of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza. The enmity of the two States continued during the reign of the next emir, Yahya al-Muzáffar. Sancho's main achievement was not to conquer large territories from the Muslims, since the territorial gains were minimal, but to unify the military efforts of the counties that later, with his son Ramiro, constituted the kingdom of Aragon and to erect a powerful line of border defenses. that allowed the increase of the population and the concentration of resources for future conquests.

Gascogne

Under his rule, the Christian kingdom of Nájera-Pamplona reached its greatest territorial extension, covering almost the entire northern third of the peninsula, from Astorga to Ribagorza. maintained a close relationship, on October 4, 1032, he tried to extend his authority over the former ultra-Pyrenean Vasconia between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, although he did not succeed, when he inherited the Eudes duchy:

By the North, the border of the Pamplonian kingdom is clear, the Pyrenees (although the authority of the Navarre kings has been extended to Baztan, which is most likely, but which cannot be credited until the year 1066), and was not changed. It is not true, despite all the times it has been said, that Sancho III attained the domain of Gascony (the only Vasconia of that time, that is, the territory between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, in which the population we can consider Basque by its language was only a minority). The Navarre king only pretended to happen in 1032 to the Duke of Gascuña Sancho Guillermo, who was dead without descendants, which was enough for him to reign in Gascuña in some documents. But the truth is that the inheritance rested in Eudes, as it was said before.

Kingdom of Leon

Relations with León were strengthened thanks to the wedding of a sister of Sancho, Urraca Garcés, with the widower Alfonso V, which took place in 1023. Although the new canonical doctrine prohibited marriages between people who had some ancestor common in seven generations, Sancho circumvented the prohibition to celebrate the marriage. Sancho Garcés also ruled the county of Cea on the death in 1028 of his maternal uncle, Pedro Fernández, third count of Cea, who left no male descendants.

From the end of 1032, he appears as lord of León and Astorga, probably due to the influence of his sister Urraca, Alfonso's widow, who must have called on him and his stepson Bermudo III to help in the face of the uprisings that occurred after the king of Leon died. At the beginning of 1035, he withdrew from the Leonese territories, which were fully recovered by Bermudo, who at that time married Sancho's daughter, Jimena Sánchez. At the end of the previous year, shortly before returning the territory to Bermudo, Sancho restored the bishopric of Palencia, which had existed in the days of the Visigoths, but had disappeared due to depopulation of the area in the century. VIII. He entrusted this task to a Catalan monk, Poncio, bishop of Oviedo at the time and closely linked to the Pamplona royal house, which followed the Roman liturgy, and not the traditional Mozarabic one, a symbol of Sancho's relationship with European religious currents of the moment to.

Death

He died on October 18, 1035, still quite young, without his death being expected, since the eldest of his sons and heir, Garcia, was traveling to Rome at that time to fulfill a vow he had made.

His burial place is still the subject of controversy, since both the monastery of San Salvador de Oña (Oña) and the pantheon of the kings of San Isidoro (León) have tombs that claim to correspond to this monarch and there are written sources which document both theses. Even so, most historians consider that Sancho is buried in Oña. According to Martínez Díez, it was his son Fernando who was in charge of transferring the king's corpse to the Oña monastery and presiding over the funeral for the dead king. His wife survived him by at least thirty-one years and died in the summer of 1066.; by then all the male children of the marriage had already died and probably only Jimena, widow of the Leonese king Vermudo, was living.

Distribution among his heirs

The Iberian peninsula in 1030, including the county of Castile during the reign of Sancho III.

Before he died (1035) he made a will according to Navarre law, by which the patrimonial kingdom of Pamplona would be inherited by his eldest son, García, who would govern directly in "the kingdom of Pamplona, with its addition to La Rioja (...) and the county of Aragón". The county of Castilla —inherited from his wife, but linked to the kingdom of León— was divided between two legitimate sons: García received Álava and a large part of the county of Castilla (the Bureba, Montes de Oca, Trasmiera, Encartaciones and Castella Vetula); while Fernando, who had already been designated Count of Castile in 1029, received a reduced county of Castile (the area of Burgos up to the Duero). And dependents of the King of Pamplona were Ramiro, who received lands in Aragon and Navarre, and Gonzalo, who would receive them in Sobrarbe, Ribagorza and other distant points in Aragon. This is how Philippe Sénac maintains:

«On a longtemps supposé, à partir de sources telles que la Silense Chronicle ou la Chronic Najerense, that Sanche III currency are royaume between ses fils selon des parts qui reflétaient la hiérarchie des droits à l'intérieur de la famille royale. Ramire, né avant le mariage de son père avec domna Muña, la fille du comte de Castille, aurait reçu l'Aragon, puis, suivant l'ordre de primogéniture, García la Navarre, Fernando la Castille, et Gonzalo le Sobrarbe et la Ribagorce. Cette thèse repose sur un document daté de 1035, dans lequel Sanche III remit le territoire aragonais à son fils Ramire, Loarre, San Emitier et les villas qui en relevaient à Gonzalo, et Ruesta et Pitiella à García. Cette thèse fut d'abord mise en cause par J. M. Ramos Loscertales pour lequel elle semblait contraire aux traditions employées a l'époque en matière de transmission successorale, puis définitivament rejetée par A. Ubieto. Selon cet auteur, l'emsemble du royaume de Sanche III revint a García; Fernando reçut le titre de comte de Castille, Gonzalo de regulus in Sobrarbe et Ribagorce, et Ramire celui de regulus in Aragon”.

Some authors such as Tomás Urzainqui maintain that:

«Sancho III the Major did not have to award anything to his son Fernando in a testamentary way, since the county of Castilla had received him, in 1029, directly for the rights of his uncle the "infant" García, rights that had corresponded to the mother of that doña Mayor». In fact, Fernando after the death of his uncle García Sánchez in León appears in the documentation as Count of Castilla: regnante rex Sancio In Legione et comite Fernando in Castella, Fredinando Sánchez comitatum manager, regnante gratia Dei, principe nostro Sanctio et prolis eis [sic] Fredenandus comes.

Sancho the Major. Work of the centuryXVII of Juan Ricci. Monastery of San Millán de Yuso.

However, the inheritance of Sancho el Mayor has been a source of controversy among historians, since some do not apply Navarre law to said inheritance. Thus, José María Lacarra affirms that:

«The truth is that the Pyrenean legal tradition, already established in the X century by the Sancho Garcés dynasty, was based precisely on the non-disintegration of the Kingdom, that is, on transmitting to the successor all territories. In the Kingdom of Pamplona, distant territories such as Aragon and Nájera remain under the same reins as the death of Sancho Garcés I (905-925). However, even though the firstborn was the only one who inherited the property, that is, the Kingdom, with the increases it had obtained, the desire to give to the other children had introduced the custom of establishing them a property with territorial goods that could transmit to their heirs, although without dissociating them from the Kingdom, since they were subject to the fidelity due to the Sovereign, sub manu of the firstborn."

The dismembered county of Castile inherited by Ferdinand I would once again be, after Sancho's death, under the authority of the King of León, as evidenced by the Castilian documentation, where the name and title of the King of León is still recorded.

Offspring

As a bachelor he had a first child with Sancha de Aibar:

• Ramiro I de Aragón (c. 1006/1007-8 May 1063), Aragon régulo (held in those times by bastard), married to Gilberga (Hermesenda) Roger de Bigorra (m. 1049) and Inés de Aquitaine.

He married Muniadona de Castilla around 1011, with whom he had:

• García Sánchez III de Pamplona el de Nájera, king of Pamplona (c. 1012-1054), married to Estefanía.
• Fernando Sánchez el Grande (c. 1016-1065), Count of Castile (1029-1037) and King of Leon (1037-1065), married to Sancha de León, sister of King Bermudo III.
• Jimena Sánchez (1018-1063), who married King Bermudo III.
• Gonzalo Sánchez (c. 1020-1045), régulo de Sobrarbe and Ribagorza.
• Major Sanchez, wife of Ponce III of Tolosa.

Family tree