Ferdinand III was King of Castile from 1217 and King of León from 1230 as well
as King of Galicia from 1231. He was the son of Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela
of Castile. Through his second marriage he was also Count of Aumale. Ferdinand
III was one of the most successful kings of Castile, securing not only the
permanent union of the crowns of Castile and León, but also masterminding the
most expansive campaign of Reconquista yet.
By military and diplomatic efforts, Ferdinand greatly expanded the dominions
of Castile into southern Spain, annexing many of the great old cities of
al-Andalus, including the old Andalusian capitals of Córdoba and Seville, and
establishing the boundaries of the Castilian state for the next two
centuries. Ferdinand was canonized in 1671 by Pope
Clement X and, in Spanish, he is known as Fernando el Santo, San Fernando or
San Fernando Rey. Places such as San Fernando, Pampanga, and the San Fernando
de Dilao Church in Paco, Manila in the Philippines, and in California, San
Fernando City and the San Fernando Valley, were named for him and placed
under his patronage. Early life
The exact date of Ferdinand's birth is unclear. It has been proposed as early
as 1199 or even 1198, although more recent researchers commonly date
Ferdinand's birth in the Summer of 1201. Ferdinand was born at the Monastery of
Valparaíso. As the son of Alfonso IX of León and his
second wife Berengaria of Castile, Ferdinand is descendent of Alfonso VII
of Leon and Castile on both sides of his parents as his paternal grandfather
Ferdinand II of Leon and maternal great grandfather Sancho III of Castile were
the sons and successors of Alfonso VII. Ferdinand has other royal ancestors from
his paternal grandmother Urraca of Portugal and his maternal grandmother
Eleanor of England a daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
From his birth to 1204 Ferdinand was designate as the heir to his father's
kingdom of Leon with the support of his mother and the kingdom of Castile
despite he was Alfonso IX's second son. Alfonso IX already had a son and two
daughters from his first marriage to Teresa of Portugal but at the time he
never acknowledge his first son also named Ferdinand as his heir, But the
Castilians see Teresa's Ferdinand as a protenial rival and a threat to
Berengaria's Ferdinand. The marriage of Ferdinand's parents was
annulled by order of Pope Innocent III in 1204, due to consanguinity.
Berengaria then took their children, including Ferdinand, to the court of her
father, King Alfonso VIII of Castile. In 1217, her younger brother, Henry I, died
and she succeeded him to the Castilian throne and Ferdinand as her heir, but
she quickly surrendered it to her son. Unification of Castile and León
When Ferdinand's father, Alfonso IX of León, died in 1230, his will delivered
the kingdom to his older daughters Sancha and Dulce, from his first
marriage to Teresa of Portugal. But Ferdinand contested the will, and
claimed the inheritance for himself. At length, an agreement was reached,
negotiated primarily between their mothers, Berengaria and Teresa, and
signed at Benavente on 11 December 1230, by which Ferdinand would receive the
Kingdom of León, in return for a substantial compensation in cash and
lands for his half-sisters, Sancha and Dulce. Ferdinand thus became the first
sovereign of both kingdoms since the death of Alfonso VII in 1157.
Early in his reign, Ferdinand had to deal with a rebellion of the House of
Lara. Conquest of al-Andalus
Since the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 halted the advance of the
Almohads in Spain, a series of truces had kept Castile and the Almohad
dominions of al-Andalus more-or-less at peace. However, a crisis of succession
in the Almohad Caliphate after the death of Yusuf II in 1224 opened to Ferdinand
III an opportunity for intervention. The Andalusian-based claimant, Abdallah
al-Adil, began to ship the bulk of Almohad arms and men across the straits
to Morocco to contest the succession with his rival there, leaving al-Andalus
relatively undefended. Al-Adil's rebellious cousin, Abdallah al-Bayyasi,
appealed to Ferdinand III for military assistance against the usurper. In 1225,
a Castilian army accompanied al-Bayyasi in a campaign, ravaging the regions of
Jaén, vega de Granada and, before the end of the year, had successfully
installed al-Bayyasi in Córdoba. In payment, al-Bayyasi gave Ferdinand the
strategic frontier strongholds of Baños de la Encina, Salvatierra and Capilla.
When al-Bayyasi was rejected and killed by a popular uprising in Cordoba shortly
after, the Castilians remained in occupation of al-Bayyasi's holdings in
Andújar, Baeza and Martos. The crisis in the Almohad Caliphate,
however, remained unresolved. In 1228, a new Almohad pretender, Abd al-Ala Idris
I 'al-Ma'mun', decided to abandon Spain, and left with the last remnant of the
Almohad forces for Morocco. Al-Andalus was left fragmented in the hands of
local strongmen, only loosely led by Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hud al-Judhami.
Seeing the opportunity, the Christian kings of the north - Ferdinand III of
Castile, Alfonso IX of León, James I of Aragon and Sancho II of Portugal -
immediately launched a series of raids on al-Andalus, renewed almost every
year. There were no great battle encounters - Ibn Hud's makeshift
Andalusian army was destroyed early on, while attempting to stop the Leonese at
Alange in 1230. The Christian armies romped through the south virtually
unopposed in the field. Individual Andalusian cities were left to resist or
negotiate their capitulation by themselves, with little or no prospect
of rescue from Morocco or anywhere else. The twenty years from 1228 to 1248 saw
the most massive advance in the reconquista yet. In this great sweep,
most of the great old citadels of al-Andalus fell one by one. Ferdinand
III took the lion's share of the spoils - Badajoz and Mérida, were promptly
inherited by Ferdinand in 1230; then by his own effort, Cazorla in 1231, Úbeda
in 1233, the old Umayyad capital of Córdoba in 1236, Niebla and Huelva in
1238, Écija and Lucena in 1240, Orihuela and Murcia in 1243, Arjona, Mula and
Lorca in 1244, Cartagena in 1245, Jaén in 1246, Alicante in 1248 and finally,
on 22 December 1248, Ferdinand III entered as a conqueror in Seville, the
greatest of Andalusian cities. At the end of this twenty-year onslaught, only
a rump Andalusian state, the Emirate of Granada, remained unconquered.
Ferdinand annexed some of his conquests directly into the Crown of Castile, and
others were initially received and organized as vassal states under Muslim
governors, although they too were eventually permanently occupied and
absorbed into Castile before the end of the century. Outside of these vassal
states, Christian rule could be heavy-handed on the new Muslim subjects.
This would eventually lead to the mudéjar uprisings of 1264-66, which
resulted in mass expulsions of the Muslim populations. The range of
Castilian conquests also sometimes transgressed into the spheres of
interest of other conquerors. Thus, along the way, Ferdinand III took care
to carefully negotiate with the other Christian kings to avoid conflict, e.g.
the treaty of Almizra which delineated the Murcian boundary with James I of
Aragon. Ferdinand divided the conquered
territories between the Knights, the Church, and the nobility, whom he
endowed with great latifundias. When he took Córdoba, he ordered the Liber
Iudiciorum to be adopted and observed by its citizens, and caused it to be
rendered, albeit inaccurately, into Castilian.
The capture of Córdoba was the result of a well-planned and executed process
whereby parts of the city first fell to the independent almogavars of the Sierra
Morena to the north, which Ferdinand had not at the time subjugated. Only in 1236
did Ferdinand arrive with a royal army to take the Medina, the religious and
administrative centre of the city. Ferdinand set up a council of partidores
to divide the conquests and between 1237 and 1244 a great deal of land was
parcelled out to private individuals and members of the royal family as well as
to the Church. On 10 March 1241, Ferdinand established seven outposts to
define the boundary of the province of Córdoba.
Domestic policy On the domestic front, Ferdinand
strengthened the University of Salamanca and erected the current Cathedral of
Burgos. He was a patron of the newest movement in the Church, that of the
mendicant Orders. Whereas the Benedictine monks, and then the
Cistercians and Cluniacs, had taken a major part in the Reconquista up until
then, Ferdinand founded houses for friars of the Dominican, Franciscan,
Trinitarian, and Mercedarian Orders throughout Andalusia, thus determining
the future religious character of that region. Ferdinand has also been credited
with sustaining the convivencia in Andalusia. He himself joined the Third
Order of St. Francis, and is honored in that Order.
He took care not to overburden his subjects with taxation, fearing, as he
said, the curse of one poor woman more than a whole army of Saracens.
Death Ferdinand III had started out as a
contested king of Castile. By the time of his death in 1252, Ferdinand III had
delivered to his son and heir, Alfonso X, a massively expanded kingdom. The
boundaries of the new Castilian state established by Ferdinand III would
remain nearly unchanged until the late 15th century. His biographer, Sister
María del Carmen Fernández de Castro Cabeza, A.C.J., asserts that, on his
death bed, Ferdinand said to his son "you will be rich in land and in many
good vassals, more than any other king in Christendom."
Ferdinand was buried in the Cathedral of Seville by his son, Alfonso X. His tomb
is inscribed in four languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and an early version of
Castilian. He was canonized as St. Ferdinand by Pope Clement X in 1671.
Today Saint Fernando can still be seen in the Cathedral of Seville, for he
rests enclosed in a gold and crystal casket worthy of the king. His golden
crown still encircles his head as he reclines beneath the statue of the
Virgin of the Kings. Several places named San Fernando were founded across
the Spanish Empire in his honor. The symbol of his power as a king was
his sword Lobera. Family
= First marriage = In 1219, Ferdinand married Elisabeth of
Hohenstaufen, daughter of the German king Philip of Swabia and Irene
Angelina. Elisabeth was called Beatriz in Spain. Their children were:
Alfonso X, his successor Frederick
Ferdinand Eleanor, died young
Berengaria, a nun at Las Huelgas Henry
Philip. He was promised to the Church, but was so taken by the beauty of
Christina of Norway, daughter of Haakon IV of Norway, who had been intended as a
bride for one of his brothers, that he abandoned his holy vows and married her.
She died in 1262, childless. Sancho, Archbishop of Toledo and Seville
Manuel of Castile Maria, died an infant in November 1235
= Second marriage = After he was widowed, he married Joan,
Countess of Ponthieu, before August 1237. They had four sons and one
daughter: Ferdinand, Count of Aumale
Eleanor, married Edward I of England. They had sixteen children including the
future Edward II of England and every English monarch after Edward I is a
descendant of Ferdinand III. Louis
Simon, died young and buried in a monastery in Toledo
John, died young and buried at the cathedral in Córdoba
Ancestry Notes
References Edwards, John. Christian Córdoba: The
City and its Region in the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press: 1982.
Fernández de Castro Cabeza, María del Carmen, A.C.J., Sister The Life of the
Very Noble King of Castile and León, Saint Ferdinand III
Fitzhenry, James. "Saint Fernando III, A Kingdom for Christ." Catholic Vitality
Publications, St. Mary's, KS, 2009. n-catholic-saints.com/saintfernando.html
González, Julio. Reinado y Diplomas de Fernando III, i: Estudio. 1980.
Menocal, María Rosa. The Ornament of the World. Little, Brown and Company:
Boston, 2002. ISBN 0-316-16871-8 Shadis, Miriam, "Berenguela of Castile's
Political Motherhood", in Parsons, John Carmi; Wheeler, Bonnie, Medieval
Mothering, New York: Taylor & Francis, ISBN 978-0-8153-3665-5
Shadis, Miriam. Berenguela of Castile and Political Women in the High Middle
Ages. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-23473-7.
Saint Ferdinand at the Christian Iconography web site
External links Ferdinand at Patron Saints Index
n-catholic-saints.com/saintfernando.html The death of Saint Ferdinand III, the
very noble King of Castile and Leon