Fernando III OF CASTILE
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Saint Fernando III OF CASTILE (1201-1252)

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      Ferdinand III in a 13th century miniature     Saint Ferdinand III    
 
Name: Fernando III OF CASTILE 1,2
Sex: Male
Name Prefix: Saint
Nickname: "The Saint"
Father: Alfonso IX OF LEÓN (1166-1230)
Mother: Berengaria OF CASTILE (1180-1246)

Individual Events and Attributes

Birth 1201 monastery of Valparaíso
Occupation (1) frm 1217 to 1252 (age 15-51) King of Castile and Toledo
Marriage Count 2
Occupation (2) frm 1230 to 1252 (age 28-51) King of León and Galicia
Religion Roman Catholic
Group/Caste Membership House of Burgundy (Anscarids/Ivrea/Capetian)
Child Count 15
Occupation (3) 1230 (age 28-29) King of Leon and Galicia
Occupation (4) 1236 (age 34-35) King of Cordoba
Death 30 May 1252 (age 50-51) Seville
canonised as a saint 1671 (age 469-470) Rome
Burial Cathedral of Santa Maria

Additional Information

Occupation (4) by conquest
canonised as a saint by Pope Clement X

Marriage

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      Eleanor of Castile         The tomb of Eleanor of Castille's viscera at Lincoln Cathedral.     Monument at Charing Cross to Eleanor of Castile. Photo by Dana Otstott Shear January 2012
 
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      Eleanor of Castile detail from Charing Cross. Photo by Dana Otstott Shear January 2012     Eleanor of Castile detail from Charing Cross. Photo by Dana Otstott Shear January 2012     Charing Cross at the Charing Cross Underground Station. Photo by Dana Otstott Shear January 2012     Home of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile at The Tower of London. Facing the Thames River, this tower is now known as "The Bloody Tower." Photo by Dana Otstott Shear January 2012
 
Spouse Jeanne DE DAMMARTIN (1191-1279)
Children Eleanor OF CASTILE (1241-1290)
Marriage bef 20 Nov 1237 (age 35-36) Burgos

Individual Note

Saint Ferdinand III (5 August 1199 – 30 May 1252), was the King of Castile from 1217 and King of Galicia and Leon from 1230. He was the son of Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela of Castile. Through his second marriage he was also Count of Aumale. He finished the work done by his maternal grandfather Alfonso VIII and consolidated the Reconquista. In 1231, he permanently united Castile and Galicia-León. He was canonized in 1671 and, in Spanish, he is Fernando el Santo, San Fernando or San Fernando Rey.

 

Ferdinand was born at the monastery of Valparaíso (Peleas de Arriba, Zamora) in 1198-99.

 

His parents' marriage was annulled by order of Pope Innocent III in 1204, due to consanguinity. Berenguela took their children, including Ferdinand, to the court of her father. In 1217, her younger brother Henry I died and she succeeded him to the Castilian throne, but immediately surrendered it to her son, Ferdinand, for whom she initially acted as regent. When Alfonso died in 1230, Ferdinand also inherited León, though he had to fight Alfonso's heirs, Sancha and Dulce, daughters of his first wife, for it. He thus became the first sovereign of both kingdoms following the death of Alfonso VII in 1157.

 

Early in his reign, Ferdinand had to deal with a rebellion of the House of Lara. He also established a permanent border with the Kingdom of Aragon by the Treaty of Almizra (1244).

 

St Ferdinand spent much of his reign fighting the Moors. Through diplomacy and war, exploiting the internal dissensions in the Moorish kingdoms, he triumphed in expanding Castilian power over southern Iberian Peninsula. He captured the towns of Úbeda in 1233, Córdoba in 1236, Jaén in 1246, and Seville in 1248, and occupied Murcia in 1243, thereby reconquering all Andalusia save Granada, whose king nevertheless did homage as a tributory state to Ferdinand. 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 (the Ajarquía) of the city first fell to the independent almogavars of the Sierra Morena to the north, which Ferdinand had not at the time subjugated.[1] Only in 1236 did Ferdinand arrive with a royal army to take Medina, the religious and administrative centre of the city.[1] 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 the Church.[2] On 10 March 1241, Ferdinand established seven outposts to define the boundary of the province of Córdoba.

 

On the domestic front, he strengthened the University of Salamanca and founded the current Cathedral of Burgos. He was a patron of the newest movement in the Church: that of the friars. Whereas the Benedictines and then the Cistercians and Cluniacs had taken a major part in the Reconquista up til then, Ferdinand founded Dominican, Franciscan, Trinitarian, and Mercedarian houses in Andalusia, thus determining the religious future of that region. Ferdinand has also been credited with sustaining the convivencia in Andalusia.[3]

 

The Primera Crónica General de España asserts that, on his death bed, Ferdinand commended his son "you are rich in lands and in many good vassals — more so than any other king in Christendom," probably in recognition of his expansive conquests.[4] He was buried within the Cathedral of Seville by his son Alfonso X. His tomb is inscribed with four languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and an early incarnation of Castilian.[5] St Ferdinand was canonized by Pope Clement X in 1671. Several places named San Fernando were founded across the Spanish Empire.

 

The symbol of his power as a king was his sword Lobera.

 

In 1219, Ferdinand married Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen (1203–1235), daughter of the German king Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina. Elisabeth was called Beatriz in Spain. Their children were:

 

Alfonso X, his successor

Fadrique

Ferdinand (1225–1243/1248)

Eleanor (born 1227), died young

Berenguela (1228–1288/89), a nun at Las Huelgas

Henry

Philip (1231–1274). He was promised to the Church, but was so taken by the beauty of Princess Kristina 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 (1233–1261)

Juan Manuel, Lord of Villena

Maria, died an infant in November 1235

 

After he was widowed, he married Joan, Countess of Ponthieu, before August 1237. They had four sons and one daughter:

 

Ferdinand (1239–1260), Count of Aumale

Eleanor (c.1241–1290), married Edward I of England

Louis (1243–1269)

Simon (1244), died young and buried in a monastery in Toledo

John (1245), died young and buried at the cathedral in Córdoba

 

REFERENCES:

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 0316168718

Edwards, John. Christian Córdoba: The City and its Region in the Late Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press: 1982.3

Sources

1Weis, Frederick Lewis & Sheppard, Walter Lee, Jr, "Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700: Lineages from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and other Historical Individuals". p 110, 109-30; 111, 110-29.
2"Genealogy Page of John Blythe Dodson". 54.
3"Wikipedia". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_III_of_Castile.