Alfonso X of Castile

Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X of Castile
	Alfonso X in a medieval miniature from the Book of Games
King of Castile
Reign	June 1, 1252 – April 4, 1284
Coronation	June 1, 1252
Predecessor	Ferdinand III
Successor	Sancho IV
Born	November 23, 1221; Toledo
Died	April 4, 1284 (aged 62); Seville
Burial	Royal Chapel of Seville Cathedral
Spouse	Violant of Aragon
Issue	See Issue
House	House of Burgundy
Father	Ferdinand III
Mother	Beatrice of Swabia

Alfonso X of Castile, called "the Wise" (el Sabio) (Toledo, November 23, 1221^[1] – Seville, April 4, 1284), was King of Castile, of León and of the other kingdoms in whose name he styled himself between 1252 and 1284.

After the death of his father, Ferdinand III the Saint, he resumed the offensive against the Muslims and occupied Jerez (1253), Salé, the port of Rabat (1260) and conquered Cádiz (c. 1262). In 1264, he had to face a major revolt of the Mudéjars of Murcia and of the Guadalquivir Valley. As the son of Beatrice of Swabia, he aspired to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, and so he devoted more than half of his reign to this project without obtaining any positive result.^[2] In 1273, he founded the Council of the Mesta of Alfonso X.^[3]

The last years of his reign were especially somber due to a succession conflict caused by the premature death of his firstborn son, Ferdinand de la Cerda, and this, added to the minority of the rest of his children, ended up leading to the open rebellion of his son, the Infante Sancho, and of a large part of the nobility and cities of the kingdom.^[2] Alfonso died in Seville in the course of these revolts after having disinherited his son Sancho.

As regards administrative matters, he carried out a beneficial economic policy, reforming the currency and the treasury and also granting numerous fairs.

He is furthermore renowned for the literary, scientific, historical and legal work produced by his royal scribes.^[4]

Alfonso X sponsored, supervised and often participated with his own writings, together with a group of Latin, Hebrew and Islamic intellectuals known as the Toledo School of Translators, in the composition of an enormous literary output that to a large extent initiated prose in Castilian. From his own pen he produced the Cantigas de Santa María and various other verses, and he also made a great contribution to the learned language of the time at the court of the kingdom, Galician-Portuguese, which, thanks to his contribution, has survived down to us.

In 1935, his work as an astronomer was recognized by naming the lunar crater "Alphonsus" in his honor.^[5]

Biography

Period as infante

The firstborn son of Ferdinand III the Saint and of Beatrice of Swabia (daughter of Philip, former claimant to the German imperial throne, and granddaughter of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa), Alfonso was born in the City of Toledo on November 23, 1221, the feast day of Saint Clement.^[6] He had three sisters and six brothers.^[7] On March 21, 1222, he was sworn in as heir in the city of Burgos.^[7] To take charge of his upbringing, Urraca Pérez was appointed as his nurse and García Fernández de Villamayor as his tutor; the latter had been mayordomo to Queen Berengaria, and his second wife was Mayor Arias de Limia.^[8] With both of them he was raised in Villaldemiro and in Celada del Camino.^[8]^{[lower-alpha 2]}^[9] Part of his childhood was spent on the properties his caretakers held in Maceda (Galicia), where he would learn Galician-Portuguese,^[10] which he used in the Cantigas composed in his scriptorium, at least ten of which were surely by the King himself.^[3]^[8] Once at the Court of Toledo, he received a careful education in many fields, while at the same time he began to associate with the heirs of the principal noble families of the kingdoms of Castile and León.

Campaign in Andalusia and Battle of Jerez (1231)

In 1231, while Ferdinand III was touring the principal cities of the Kingdom of León after having taken possession of it, some historians stated that the sovereign sent his son the Infante Alfonso; but in that year the latter was barely nine years old and was in Salamanca, so that the said Infante Alfonso was a brother of Ferdinand III, whom he did commission to attack the Muslim kingdoms of Córdoba and Seville, accompanied by the magnates Álvaro Pérez de Castro el Castellano and Gil Manrique.^[11] This brother was the Infante Alfonso of Molina, son of the late Alfonso IX of León.^{[lower-alpha 3]} And that, owing to the minority of the King's son, the Infante Alfonso who would indeed have been present at the battle was in fact the son of King Ferdinand III.

He ordered Don Alvar de Castro, el Castellano, to go with him, to guard the infante and as captain of the host, for the infante was very young and not yet so valiant, and Don Alvar Pérez was a seasoned and very valiant man.^[12]

From Salamanca, and passing through Toledo, where forty Toledan knights joined them, they headed toward Andújar, and from there set out to lay waste the land of Córdoba, and afterwards the Cordoban municipality of Palma del Río, where they exterminated all the inhabitants and took the town, then heading toward the Kingdom of Seville and toward Jerez de la Frontera, where they set up the Christian camp near the Guadalete River.^[13] The emir Ibn Hud, who had gathered a large army divided into seven corps, placed himself with it between the Christian army and the City of Jerez de la Frontera, forcing Alfonso's troops to fight. During the battle that followed, known as the Battle of Jerez, Alfonso's army defeated the Muslim troops, despite the numerical superiority of the latter. Alfonso X the Wise later referred to the Battle of Jerez, fought in the year 1231, in which Álvaro Pérez de Castro el Castellano led the Christian hosts, as follows:

It is fitting that you who will hear this history should know that the thing in the world that most broke the Moors, whereby they came to lose Andalusia and the Christians won it from them, was this raid of Jerez, for the Moors were left so broken that they could never afterwards have the daring or the strength they had had before against the Christians, so great was the fright and the fear they took that time.^[13]

After his victory at the Battle of Jerez, Álvaro Pérez de Castro headed to the Kingdom of Castile and handed the Infante Alfonso over to his father the King, who was in the city of Palencia.

In 1235 his mother, Queen Beatrice, died, and in 1240 his father gave him his own household, supported by Leonese and Andalusian revenues.^[14] In 1242 he took part in crushing the rebellion of Diego López de Haro.^[14]

Conquest of the kingdoms of Murcia and Seville

Having come of age at nineteen, Alfonso officially used the title of heir and began to exercise government activities in the Kingdom of León. Shortly afterwards, he undertook various military operations:

In 1243, owing to the illness his father was suffering, the infante took charge of the campaign to conquer the Kingdom of Murcia (1243–1245), with the help of certain Muslim leaders of the territory.^[15] The taifa feared being absorbed by the neighboring Granadan kingdom, and its lord decided to request the protection of the Castilian-Leonese, who sent him troops and an embassy in April 1243.^[16] Most of the regional leaders came to terms with the Castilian-Leonese at Alcaraz, but Mula, Lorca and Cartagena refused to do so and were subjugated, the first two in the spring of 1244 and the third at the beginning of 1245.^[15] In the course of these operations he signed the Treaty of Almizra (March 26, 1244) with James I of Aragon, his future father-in-law, establishing the borders between the two kingdoms.^[17]
In 1246, he may have taken part in the long siege operations against Jaén, which ended with its conquest.^[18]
In 1246–1247 he took part in the Portuguese civil war, supporting Sancho II of Portugal against his rival and brother Alfonso of Boulogne.^[19] After defeating the Portuguese forces near Leiria, he left the kingdom to take part in the conquest of Seville.^[20]
In 1247–1248 he served on the front line in the conquest of Seville.^[18] Because of his father's broken health, Alfonso took charge of distributing the newly acquired territories among the members of the host, as well as of various tasks of government.
The castle of Alicante was conquered in the year 1248, supposedly, according to local tradition,^[21] but historians reject this as unhistorical.^[22] Alfonso's control of that city is not proven until the year 1252, when he issued a privilege establishing the Concello of Alacante. Shortly afterwards, the towns and fortresses of the Vinalopó came to form part of the appanage of his brother, the Infante Manuel of Castile, with the creation of the Lordship of Villena. King James I of Aragon had offered Castile the right to possess these territories as a marriage dowry with his infantas Violant and Constance of Aragon, while Alfonso, in exchange, had granted the sovereign of Aragon the right to recover Alicante at any time as a gesture of diplomatic good neighborliness.^[23]

Two years before the taking of the City of Seville, the betrothal of the Infante Alfonso to the Infanta Violant of Aragon, daughter of James I of Aragon, had been celebrated, although the wedding was not held until January 29, 1249, in the city of Valladolid.^[16] The Queen was on the point of being repudiated as barren, but she became pregnant in 1253 after resting in the City of Alicante at a place that has since been known as "the Good Rest".^[24] A marriage of State, it did not prevent Alfonso from continuing to maintain relations with Mayor Guillén de Guzmán, with whom he had a daughter.^[16]

On May 31, 1252, Ferdinand III the Saint died, and on June 1 the Infante Alfonso was proclaimed King, reigning as Alfonso X of Castile and León.^[25]

Domestic policy

The reign of Alfonso X was a reforming reign, which would initiate the process that would culminate in the modern State of the era of the Catholic Monarchs. It likewise established the supremacy of Castile among the kingdoms that made up the crown.^[26]

Economic measures

The main economic development in the primary sector took place in transhumant sheep farming, driven by the Castilian annexation of the Guadalquivir Valley.^[27] In the middle of the century the routes of the main cañadas reales were defined (the Leonese, the Segovian, the Sorian and the Manchegan).^[27] The principal economic measure of the reign was the creation of the Honrado Concejo de la Mesta of shepherds, which brought together all the shepherds of León and Castile in a national association and granted them important prerogatives and privileges, such as exempting them from military service, testifying in trials, rights of passage and grazing, etc.^[28] The exact year of its foundation is unknown, but it must have taken place between 1230 and 1263.^[29]

In the cities confraternities, forerunners of the guilds, grew, despite the King's opposition.^[30]

The King's main economic objectives were the promotion of trade and the homogenization of the territories he governed.^[31] As regards the former, he tried to ease internal transactions by reducing the taxes levied on them, while establishing tariffs on imports and exports to increase the revenues of the Crown.^[31] The towns through which foreign trade passed were fixed.^[31] The introduction of a common system of weights and measures was encouraged.^[31] During the reign twenty-five new fairs were created, which usually lasted a week and coincided with religious feasts.^[32]

As for fiscal policy, the Monarch's objective was the rapid increase of the revenues of the Crown, which at the end of his father's reign had sunk into virtual bankruptcy.^[33] To that end he established new taxes on thriving economic activities, such as trade or transhumant livestock farming, and tried to obtain frequent servicios (extraordinary contributions), especially from 1264 onward.^[34] The servicios, unlike their predecessor, the pedido, affected the nobility and the clergy, and aroused their discontent.^[35] The general increase in the tax burden also gave rise to opposition among the urban oligarchy and was one of the reasons for the noble rebellion of 1272.^[36]

Legislative reforms

Alfonso X sought to renew and unify the various fueros that governed his dominions.^[37] To achieve that objective, the first step was the drafting of the Fuero Real for the cities of the country. This legal unification formed part of the general attempt to homogenize the royal territories that Alfonso undertook.^[38]

El Espéculo would be the first drafting of a unified legal code, along the lines of the Fuero Real; it was a legal compendium of Castile, which was sent to the urban centers as a reference work.^[39] It would be promulgated in 1255. However, the following year an embassy arrived from the Italian city of Pisa offering Alfonso its support to stand for the imperial throne. The Castilian King then decided that his team of jurists should prepare a new, expanded legal code, based on the Espéculo and on Roman-canon law. This is the Siete Partidas,^[39] drafted between 1256 and 1265, of which it has even been said^[40] that, for their quality and their internal and external significance, they are comparable in the world of Law to what the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas was for theology.

Alfonso not only promulgated new laws, but also created new offices, such as that of adelantado or that of admiral, a reflection of the growing importance of the Castilian fleet.^[41] The office of Adelantado mayor of Andalusia was created in 1253 for the conquered Baetic Andalusia.^[42] Next, the equivalent for Murcia was created.^[42] This new office also replaced the merinos mayores in Castile and León.^[42] In the 1260s the adelantamientos of Andalusia and Murcia were joined (they were separated again in the following decade) and the adelantados of Castile and León disappeared.^[42] The figure of the Adelantado of Álava and Gipuzkoa was also created.^[42] Their function was essentially judicial: they were the principal and appellate judge of the territory assigned to them and represented the King in his absence at certain acts, such as the receiving of castles or the taking of oaths.^[43]

He was the first Castilian monarch to use the Cortes, first assembled in León in 1188, as a regular instrument of government.^[44] The sessions, very frequent in Alfonso's reign, were attended by the three estates: nobility, clergy and third estate (procuradores of towns and cities), unlike what happened with their predecessor, the curia regia, from which the last of these was excluded.^[45] The primary objective of convening the Cortes was to obtain extraordinary subsidies, since securing new funds was a constant concern of the King.^[46]

The King was, in Alfonso's view, the "head of the kingdom", the "vicar of God", though independent of the Church in his temporal power, and he therefore tried to strengthen the power of the Crown as much as possible.^[47] The King was the legislator of the kingdom and the supreme judge.^[48] He was also the head of the Army and the head of the Public Administration, as well as the one who decided the foreign policy of the kingdom.^[48] Alfonso did not, however, confine himself to applying the old laws and exercising his traditional prerogatives, but was a reformer, a legislative innovator.^[48]

The King's legislative reforms provoked the rejection of urban and noble elements, whose privileges were threatened by the growing intervention of the State in the particular legislations.^[37] This rejection was one of the causes of the great noble rebellion of 1272, which forced the King to give way and allow some towns to recover their old fueros, discarding the royal one.^[37]

Resettlement activity

Undoubtedly, the most important work undertaken by this monarch in this field was the resettlement of the former Kingdom of Seville, which made it possible to consolidate the conquests of Ferdinand III.^[49] The objectives of the Alfonsine resettlements were twofold: economic (to improve the exploitation of the territory) and military (to protect vulnerable points).^[49]

As soon as the city of Seville surrendered, the houses of its urban center and the surrounding lands were distributed among the soldiers of the royal and noble hosts, as well as among people coming from every corner of the Crown of Castile. This model of resettlement, which emptied of Muslims those towns that had been taken by force or that capitulated after a siege (as was the case with the main cities of the Guadalquivir Valley), coexisted with the retention of the native population in different areas. Many mountain towns of Jaén and Córdoba, and others of the countryside and plains, surrendered to the Castilians by capitulation, whereby the latter took charge of their fortresses and the collection of taxes, while the Mudéjars kept a certain political and religious autonomy.

This system was not viable after the Mudéjar revolt of 1264. The resulting expulsion of Muslims from the Andalusian lands and the demographic exhaustion of the kingdoms of Castile and León resulted in an extremely low population density in the south, which could not be alleviated by Alfonso X's resettlement work in the district of the Guadalete and in the Bay of Cádiz, nor by seigneurial initiatives on the border with Granada. In the end, the settlers would concentrate in the large cities of the Guadalquivir Valley.

The most dangerous points were entrusted to the military orders: that of Santiago obtained Segura, Estepa and Medina Sidonia (after the disappearance of the short-lived Order of Saint Mary of Spain, founded by Alfonso); that of Calatrava received Martos and Alcaudete; and that of Alcántara, Morón.^[50] The King also tried to strengthen the councils, the principal one in the area being that of Seville.^[51]

In Murcia the situation was similar, although there was no expulsion of Mudéjars after the rebellion of 1264.^[52] Castilian and Aragonese settlers (45 % in some districts), ultramontanes (mainly French and Italians), Mudéjars and Jewish communities lived side by side in the region.^[52] The poorest areas were left almost depopulated, and part of the population, both Mudéjar and Christian, left the region.^[52]

Alfonso X also promoted the so-called interior resettlement, with the founding of new towns and polas (pueblas) in regions of the north and interior of the peninsula.^[53] With this he sought to reinforce royal jurisdiction in areas where lordships of various kinds had traditionally predominated.^[54] Thus, we can list the following:

Aguilar de Campoo in Castile (1255).
Cangas de Tineo in Asturias (1255).^[55]
Villa Real, present-day Ciudad Real, founded at Pozuelo de Don Gil in 1255. It was established in order to counter the power that the Order of Calatrava exercised in the district.^[53]
Santa Marta de Ortigueira in Galicia (1255).^[55]
Tolosa, Villafranca de Ordicia and Segura in Gipuzkoa (1256).^[55]
Treviño in Burgos (1254).^[55]

The Mudéjar revolt

As early as the beginning of the reign, in 1253, Alfonso had to face rebellions in the territories recently incorporated into Castile.^[56] Tejada, near Seville, rose against the King, as did Lebrija, Arcos, Medina-Sidonia and Jerez; the last of these resisted the Castilians until 1261.^[57]

A few years after having renewed their submission to Castile, which they had already offered to Ferdinand III, the small tributary territories of Niebla and Jerez de la Frontera saw Alfonso X take from them by force of arms what little autonomy they had left.^[58] Jerez was conquered after a month-long siege, at the end of 1260 or the beginning of the following year.^[58] Niebla was conquered next, in February 1262, with ease; its lord went to Seville, where he lived until his death.^[59] The Muslim population of the kingdom was expelled and another resettlement process, similar to that of Seville, was carried out there.^[58] That same year the resettlement of Puerto de Santa María and of Cádiz also began.^[60]

These conquests, as well as other breaches of the capitulations agreed at the time with the Andalusian and Murcian Muslims who had surrendered without resistance during the campaigns of Ferdinand III, provoked a concerted uprising among the Mudéjar population of the south of the peninsula, supported by the King of Granada (1264).^[60] The uprising began in May 1264 in Jerez, whose alcázar the rebels seized, and soon spread to other towns such as Arcos, Lebrija or Medina-Sidonia.^[61] In Murcia the uprising began in Lorca.^[61] The rebellion was crushed in almost all of Andalusia within six months, while in Murcia, left to its fate, the combined intervention of Castilian and Aragonese troops was necessary, under the command of James I of Aragon himself.^[62] The Aragonese King forced the surrender of Murcia in January 1266, an event that marked the beginning of the end of the rebellion in the region.^[61] Alfonso then concentrated on Jerez, the main center of the rebellion, which he recovered in October of that same year, after reconquering other minor strongholds.^[62] This revolt resulted in the expulsion or flight of many Andalusian Mudéjars, and the depopulation of vast areas of the Campiña of the Guadalquivir.^[63]

Relationship with the Church

Alfonso used the Church as an instrument of government.^[64] Some figures of the high clergy received important government posts and acted as royal ambassadors, both to the Pope and at other courts.^[65] One of the principal churchmen of the reign was Raymond of Losana, Archbishop of Seville, a close collaborator of the King.^[65]

On the other hand, Alfonso tried to appropriate part of the ecclesiastical revenues, which aroused the displeasure of the prelates and drew them closer to the nobility that was discontented with royal taxation.^[65] He did, however, manage to keep the tercias reales that his father Ferdinand had obtained from Pope Innocent IV to help pay for the wars against the Muslims.^[66] This was one of the main sources of income for the royal treasury.^[66] When he definitively renounced the German imperial crown, the Pope of the moment, Gregory X, compensated him with a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom for six years.^[67] He did not, however, manage to get any of the popes of the time to back him decisively in his claims to the German throne.^[66]

Relationship with the nobility

The King's relationship with the nobility went through various stages, although in general the latter strengthened its power during Alfonso's reign.^[68] In the distributions of land in conquered Andalusia and in Murcia, the high nobility, the "ricoshombres", obtained large estates.^[68] The seigneurial regime also spread: the great landowners accumulated more and more jurisdictional powers.^[69]

The two principal lineages of Alfonso's reign were those of Lara and Haro, who were rivals.^[69] Other important families of the high nobility were those of the Castro, Guzmán —one of whose members, Mayor, was the King's lover—, Manzanedo, Meneses, Fróilaz, Saldaña, Cameros, Girón, Trastámara and Limia.^[70] All of them enjoyed extensive domains that brought them abundant revenues, held the principal offices at court and were often related to one another.^[71] Part of the high nobility opposed the economic and political measures of the sovereign, which sought to strengthen the power of the Crown.^[71]

The first disagreements between the King and the nobles occurred in 1255, with the uprising of Diego López III de Haro, supported by James I of Aragon and by Alfonso's brother, the Infante Henry.^[72] The rebellion, centered in the Lordship of Biscay and in Andalusia, was crushed.^[73] The next significant noble rebellion was that of 1270, after a period of conciliation between the nobles and the Monarch.^[73]

Relations with the royal family

The conduct of the King's brothers was, in general, harmful to him.^[74] Henry and Frederick rebelled against him; he had the latter executed.^[74] Philip also did so in 1272.^[74] Sancho became Archbishop of Toledo, but died shortly afterwards.^[74] The youngest male of the family, Manuel, was a faithful companion of Alfonso until, at the end of the reign, he rebelled against him in support of his nephew Sancho.^[75] Of his half-siblings on his father's side (children of Ferdinand III's second wife), only Eleanor played an important role in the kingdom, by marrying the English heir, Edward Plantagenet.^[75]

Foreign policy

The question of the Algarve

Throughout his reign, Alfonso X styled himself "king of the Algarve". The origin of this attribution is obscure. According to some authors, such as the Marquis of Mondéjar, the Algarve would have been donated to him by Sancho II of Portugal in payment for the support the Castilian had given him in 1246 against the man who would end up removing him from government, his brother Afonso III of Portugal. For others, such as José Mattoso,^[76] the Castilian King's claim to the lands south of Lisbon reflected the desire to see his feudal superiority over the Portuguese Monarch recognized; the rights of Alfonso X in the Algarve obtained from the King of Niebla are also traced. Be that as it may, after the accession of Alfonso X of Castile to the throne, a war began between the two kings for control of the Algarve. The conflict ended in 1253 with the agreement on the marriage of the Portuguese King to an illegitimate daughter^[20] of King Alfonso X, Beatrice, and the handing over of a usufruct over the Algarve for the benefit of the Castilian King until the son of that marriage reached the age of seven.^[77]^[78] Alfonso also received the lifelong service of fifty knights of the region and the possibility of granting lands in it.^[20]

In 1260, Alfonso X added to his titles that of King of the Algarve. But in April 1263, he signed a treaty, ratified in 1264,^[79] by which he ceded the usufruct of the Algarve to his grandson Denis, heir of the Portuguese King, in exchange for military vassalage.^[80]^[79]^[81] With the Treaty of Badajoz of 1267 this military tribute was abolished and the borders were fixed on the Guadiana River.^[81] The Castilian King continued to use the title of King of the Algarve, but only in reference to the territory of the former taifa of Niebla.^[78] For his part, King Afonso III began to use the title of King of Portugal and of the Algarve from March 1268.^[82] The reason for Alfonso's cession was his desire to improve relations with the neighboring kingdom.^[83]

Relationship with Navarre

Relations with Navarre were strained at the beginning of Alfonso's reign.^[84] Theobald I of Navarre, of French origin, had oriented the kingdom toward France.^[84] Fearing an attack by the Castilian King, the kingdom signed an alliance with Aragon.^[84] Alfonso, for his part, reached an agreement with England in the spring of 1254: in exchange for his ceding his possible rights to Gascony, the objective of the English, the latter undertook to cooperate with the Castilian King in Navarrese affairs.^[84] To strengthen the league, Prince Edward of England, heir to the throne, married one of Alfonso's sisters, Eleanor, in Burgos that same year.^[84] Castilian-Navarrese relations later improved, during the reign of Theobald II, who made his kingdom almost a Castilian protectorate.^[85] So did those of Castile with Aragon, and in 1256 Alfonso signed a treaty of friendship with the Aragonese Monarch, James I the Conqueror.^[85]

Rapprochement with France

In 1266, Alfonso decided to tighten the bonds with France by marrying his son and heir, Ferdinand, to a daughter of the French Monarch, Louis IX.^[83] The wedding between Ferdinand and Blanche of France was celebrated at the end of November 1269 in Burgos.^[83]

Rivalry with Granada and wars with the Marinids

Alfonso's first act against the Muslim powers of the south of the peninsula and the Maghreb was the creation of a naval base at Alcanate in the summer of 1260.^[86] Next, the Castilians occupied and sacked the port of Salé for several days in September of that same year.^[87]

The relations of Castile with Granada were generally strained, with unstable pacts giving way to almost continuous conflicts.^[88] If Alfonso tried to undermine the power of the Nasrids by supporting some arráeces, the Granadan emir did the same by stirring up the rebellious Castilian nobility.^[88] In 1264 the Granadan sovereign supported the muladí rebels against Alfonso.^[61] In 1265 the two sides reached a temporary agreement that did not put an end to the tensions.^[88] On the death of Muhammad ibn Nasr, his son Muhammad II signed a new agreement with Alfonso by which he undertook to pay him three hundred thousand maravedís a year; this pact did not put an end to the enmity between the two kingdoms either.^[88]

This became evident again in 1275, when the Marinids invaded the peninsula encouraged by the Nasrid sovereign.^[88] The Maghrebis conquered Tarifa and Algeciras and defeated the Castilians at the Battle of Écija.^[89] They then raided the districts of Jaén and Seville, before withdrawing again to the south of the strait.^[89] Alfonso signed a truce with them, which ended in 1277, when the Marinids laid waste the Aljarafe and besieged Córdoba.^[89] The Andalusian councils sued for peace, which the Marinid sultan granted.^[90] In 1278 Alfonso tried to conquer Algeciras to hinder the enemy's passage to the peninsula, but his fleet was defeated by that of the Marinids and the siege ended in failure.^[90]

Alfonso and his son Sancho continued to harass the Nasrid kingdom and got its sovereign to agree to resume the payment of parias, but this did not solve the problem, which resurfaced in the last years of the reign.^[91]

The fecho del Imperio

In 1256 Alfonso X received an embassy from the republic of Pisa in Soria.^[92] It came to offer him its support to be a candidate for "emperor" and "king of the Romans", an office vacant since the death of William of Holland.^[93] For Alfonso belonged, as the son of Beatrice of Swabia, to the German family of the Hohenstaufen, which claimed to be the holder of the rights to the Empire.^[94] Alfonso X accepted the Pisan offer and proceeded, by sending diplomats, money and even troops to the Ghibelline cities of Italy, to gather support for his imperial aspiration.^[95]

Alfonso encountered many difficulties in this undertaking. In Castile itself, many nobles expressed their disagreement over the extraordinary demands for money and soldiers. In Soria, the local nobles went as far as mutiny (the so-called conspiracy of Soria). Abroad, Pope Gregory X opposed Alfonso's claims, being interested in weakening the Empire. In addition, there was the complex system for electing the Emperor, which belonged to seven prince-electors.^[96] These held two votes: in that of January 1257 they chose the English candidate, in that of April of that year, the Castilian.^[96] Three of them voted for Richard (brother of Henry III of England), while four voted for Alfonso (1257).^[96] However, the Englishman traveled quickly to Aachen, where he was crowned beside the tomb of the first medieval emperor of Western Europe, Charlemagne, in May, although he did not obtain papal sanction.^[96] The Castilian, on the other hand, remained in his kingdoms, thereby losing his opportunity to assert his election as King of the Romans. He would never set foot on German soil. In the following years Alfonso spent enormous sums of money to pay for his efforts to be crowned Emperor by the Pope, as well as to support his partisans in Italy and Germany militarily and financially. In 1271 Alfonso was preparing to go to Italy to lead his partisans and at last obtain the imperial crown, and the following year his rival, Richard, died.^[97] However, the election of Gregory X in 1271 definitively frustrated his imperial aspirations.^[97] Unfortunately for the Castilian Monarch, the Roman Church kept drawing out the dispute until Alfonso was forced to renounce in 1275, after a meeting at Beaucaire with Pope Gregory X.^[98] The latter had already denied the validity of Alfonso's election in 1272 and had recognized Rudolf I of Habsburg as Emperor in 1274.^[99]

Behind this dispute may have lain the intention of the Wise King to see himself recognized as superior by the other kings of the peninsula, recovering the old theoretical supremacy that his ancestor Alfonso VII the Emperor had held.^[100] According to other authors, Alfonso's imperial aspiration was due to his desire to create a Mediterranean empire that would then allow him to undertake a crusade and conquer the Holy Land.^[101]

The fecho de Allende

At the beginning of his rule, Alfonso X took up an old project of his father's, that of continuing the Reconquista beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. He completed the great shipyards of Seville to build the fleet needed for the invasion of Africa, appointed an almirante mayor de la mar (high admiral of the sea), and obtained from Rome authorization to preach the Crusade in Castile, which meant being able to raise money in exchange for spiritual benefits. Episcopal offices were even appointed for the future Maghrebi dioceses, and diplomatic contacts were initiated with various kings of North Africa.

Despite all these preparations, the large-scale invasion of the Maghreb was not undertaken. Everything came down to a few plundering expeditions and the capture of an isolated coastal stronghold. The best-known raid was that of Salé, a North African port sacked in the summer of 1260 by the fleet of Admiral Juan García de Villamayor (son of the tutor of Alfonso X). But the main objective of this Crusade, Ceuta, remained in Islamic hands.

The difficult last years

In the last stage of his life, Alfonso X had to face various failures and misfortunes, including the death of his heir (1275), rebellions of nobles and within his own family, the failure of the attempt to conquer Algeciras (1278), and Marinid invasions.

The noble rebellion of 1272

The great noble revolt of 1272 was hatched at a large meeting of the magnates of the kingdom held in Lerma at the beginning of 1271.^[102] The Infante Philip, the King's brother, likewise took part in it, as well as representatives of some cities.^[103]

In 1272 the great majority of the nobles, headed by the Infante Philip (brother of Alfonso X) and Nuño González de Lara, put a series of demands to the Monarch.^[104] Essentially, the rebels wanted to eliminate the King's fiscal measures and to return to the traditional fueros, which were more lax regarding the obligations of towns and vassals toward the sovereign.^[105] They considered that the King's agents committed abuses and wanted Alfonso to stop creating new towns on royal lands and to ask for fewer extraordinary contributions.^[103] Part of the clergy and of the urban oligarchy, also discontented with royal fiscal policy, joined the rebellion.^[106] The reconciliation between the King and the insurgents was due to the mediation of Queen Violant and to the concessions of the sovereign.^[107]

When Alfonso turned a deaf ear to these protests, the aristocrats "denaturalized" themselves and went into exile in Granada together with their feudal armies, causing serious damage along their way. Between 1272 and 1273 the heir infante, Ferdinand de la Cerda, negotiated the reconciliation with the rebels in a difficult context of war against the Nasrids and the Marinids. In the end, the Prince achieved peace with them and with Granada.

Conspiracy of 1277

The rebellion of 1272 had barely been resolved when Alfonso had to face a new threat: the conspiracy of his brother the Infante Frederick and of a prominent nobleman, Simón Ruiz de los Cameros, in 1277.^[107] Although the motives of the conspiracy are not clear, it may have been due to the illness the King was suffering at the time and to the young age of the heir, which may have encouraged the infante to try to seize the throne.^[108] When the King recovered from his illness, he had the principal conspirators executed.^[108]

The troubled succession

The firstborn and heir to the throne, Ferdinand de la Cerda, died in 1275 at Villa Real, while on his way to confront a new North African invasion in Andalusia.^[109]

According to Castilian customary law, in the event of the death of the firstborn in the succession to the Crown, the rights were to fall to the second son, Sancho; however, the Roman private law introduced in Las Siete Partidas established that the succession belonged to the sons of Ferdinand de la Cerda.^[110]

The King was at first inclined to satisfy the aspirations of Sancho,^[111] who had distinguished himself in the war against the Islamic invaders in place of his late brother. But later the King, pressured by his wife Violant and by Philip III of France, uncle of the so-called "Infantes de la Cerda" (sons of Ferdinand), was forced to compensate the latter.^[112] Sancho, known in historiography as the Brave for his strong character, confronted his father when the latter sought to create a kingdom in Jaén for the eldest of the sons of the former heir, Alfonso de la Cerda, and thereby satisfy the King of France with an alternative solution.^[113]

In the end, the Infante Sancho and a good part of the nobility of the kingdom rebelled in 1282.^[106] Sancho convened Cortes in Valladolid that deposed his father and recognized him as king.^[114] Most of the notables of the kingdom, from Queen Violant or the Infante Manuel to a large part of the nobility, the clergy and the councils, took Sancho's side.^[114] Alfonso, ill, took refuge in Seville.^[114] Once again, the fiscal and legislative innovations were the reasons put forward by the rebels, who wanted a return to the old customs.^[115] The rebellion meant the collapse of Alfonso's fiscal and monetary policy.^[116] Alfonso, however, kept the favor of the Pope, at the time Martin IV, and of the King of France.^[114] On recovering from his illness at the end of 1282, he cursed his son, whom he disinherited in his will, and, helped by his former enemies the Marinids, began to recover his position.^[117] As more and more rebel nobles and cities were abandoning Sancho's faction, the Wise King died in Seville, on April 4, 1284.^[118] Sancho, despite having been disinherited, was crowned in Toledo on April 30, 1284.

Marriage and issue

Before marrying Violant of Aragon, his marriage had been negotiated on two occasions, when he was an adolescent. The first was in 1234, with the Infanta Blanche of Champagne, daughter of King Theobald I of Navarre.^[119] Later, with Philippa of Ponthieu, sister of his stepmother Queen Joan, for which union Pope Gregory IX issued a dispensation on August 31, 1237. Both engagements came to nothing, and by 1240 his marriage to Violant had already been agreed, as recorded in the will of January 1, 1241, of James I the Conqueror, King of Aragon, where he mentions his daughter Ioles, coniugi Alfonsi, primogeniti illustris regis Castellae.

He had several natural children before marrying, these and their respective mothers being the following:^[120]

With María Alfonso of León, his aunt, illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso IX of León and Teresa Gil de Soverosa, he had:^[121]

Berengaria Alfonso (c. 1241–?). She married, after 1264, Pedro Núñez de Guzmán, and died young and without issue.^[121]

With Elvira Rodríguez de Villada, daughter of Rodrigo Fernández de Villada, he had:^[122]

Alfonso Fernández el Niño (1242–1281), Lord of Molina and Mesa by his marriage to Blanca Alfonso de Molina, great-granddaughter of Alfonso IX of León.^[123]

With Mayor Guillén de Guzmán, 1st Lady of Alcocer, Cifuentes, Viana de Mondéjar, Palazuelos, Salmerón and Valdeolivas, daughter of Guillén Pérez de Guzmán and of María González Girón,^[124] he was the father of:

Beatrice (c. 1242/1244–1303), who inherited her mother's lordships and was Queen of Portugal by her marriage to Afonso III of Portugal.^[125]

From his marriage on January 29, 1249, in the Collegiate Church of Valladolid to Queen Violant of Aragon, daughter of James I the Conqueror, eleven children were born:^[126]

Berengaria (Seville, 1253–1300). The firstborn,^[127] she was proclaimed heiress to the kingdom in 1254, but the birth of her brother Ferdinand displaced her. She was betrothed to Louis of France, son and heir of Louis IX, but they never married owing to the premature death of the groom in 1260. She was the only one of the King's legitimate children who remained by his side during the rebellion of the Infante Sancho.
Beatrice (Burgos, 1254 – after 1280), married the Marquis William VII of Montferrat,^[127] vicar of Alfonso X in the Empire, in 1271, in Murcia.
Ferdinand de la Cerda (1255–1275). Heir to the Castilian throne,^[127] he married in 1269 Blanche of France, daughter of Louis IX of France, with whom he had two sons.^[127] His premature death allowed his brother Sancho to become king. He was buried in the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos.
Eleanor (1256–1275).
Sancho IV of Castile (Valladolid, May 12, 1258 – 1295), King of Castile^[128] on the death of Alfonso X. Buried in the presbytery of Toledo Cathedral.
Constance (February/October 1259 – July 23, 1280), a nun in the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas^[128] and buried there.
Peter (Seville, between May 15 and July 27, 1260 – October 20, 1283).^[128] Father of Sancho of Castile "el de la Paz",^[128] he was buried in the now-vanished Convent of San Francisco in Valladolid.
John (between March 22 and April 20, 1262^[128] – June 25, 1319).
Isabel of Castile and Aragon (c. 1263–1264). She died in infancy.^[120]
Violant of Castile (1265–1287/1308), married in June 1282 Diego López V de Haro, Lord of Biscay.^[120]
James of Castile (1266–1284), Lord of Cameros.^[120]

While already married he had the following children by an unknown mother, both of them minors when their father made his will in January 1284:

Martín Alfonso,^[129] abbot in Valladolid, mentioned as the brother of Urraca Alfonso in the codicil to the King's will.
Urraca Alfonso,^[129] also mentioned in the codicil to the will of Alfonso X, who entrusted his natural daughter Beatrice with the task of marrying her half-sister honorably. She may have been the Urraca Alfonso who was Abbess from 1296 to 1320 in the Abbey of Las Huelgas in Burgos at the same time that her niece, Blanche, daughter of her half-sister Beatrice, was lady of that monastery between 1295 and 1321.^[130] She should not be confused with her namesake, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso IX of León and of Teresa Gil de Soverosa, who married Pedro Núñez de Guzmán, Adelantado Mayor of Castile.^[131]

Ancestry

Ancestors of Alfonso X of León and II of Castile

1. Alfonso X of León and II of Castile
2. Ferdinand III of Castile
3. Beatrice of Swabia
4. Alfonso IX of León
5. Berengaria of Castile
6. Philip of Swabia
7. Irene Angelina
8. Ferdinand II of León
9. Urraca of Portugal
10. Alfonso VIII of Castile
11. Eleanor Plantagenet
12. Frederick I Barbarossa
13. Beatrice of Burgundy
14. Isaac II Angelos
15. Irene Palaiologina?
16. Alfonso VII of León
17. Berengaria of Barcelona
18. Afonso I Henriques
19. Mafalda of Savoy
20. Sancho III of Castile
21. Blanche Garcés of Pamplona
22. Henry II of England
23. Eleanor of Aquitaine
24. Frederick II of Swabia
25. Judith of Bavaria
26. Renaud III of Burgundy
27. Agatha of Lorraine
28. Andronikos Doukas Angelos
29. Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa

Cultural activity

Title page of Las Siete Partidas. Printed edition of 1555, glossed by Gregorio López.

Alfonso's education was careful; the Monarch had a great thirst for knowledge and a great respect for culture because his mother, Beatrice of Swabia, was orphaned of both parents and was educated at the cultured Sicilian court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen, future Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who spoke nine languages, protected and promoted science and culture and founded the University of Naples in 1224. A portrait of Alfonso the Wise that underlines the royal passion for knowledge inherited from his mother is offered by the Libro de los judizios (3rd, 1-22):

In this our time God was pleased to give us a lord on earth who knows justice and all good, a lover of truth, a searcher of sciences, a seeker of doctrines and teachings, who loves and gathers to himself the wise and those who engage in learning, and does them favor and grace, so that each of them strives to set forth the branches of knowledge in which he is versed, and render them into the Castilian tongue to the praise and glory of the name of God and to the honor and esteem of the aforesaid lord, he who is the noble King Don Alfonso […] who ever since he came into this world has loved and gathered to himself the sciences and those learned in them, and has enlightened and made good the great want that existed among the Latins for lack of the books of the good and proven philosophers.

From his youth, before 1252, the date on which he was crowned King, Prince Alfonso, besides writing cantigas de escarnio e maldezir in Galician-Portuguese and other secular ones, of which 44 have been preserved,^[132] and, very probably, some hymns of praise to the Virgin Mary, sponsored the translation into Castilian of a book of exemplary tales (or exempla): the Calila e Dimna. When older, he summoned to his Court troubadours such as the Genoese Bonifaci Calvo, who wrote in Occitan and Galician-Portuguese, the Catalans Arnaut Catalán and Cerverí de Gerona, the Frenchmen Guiraut Riquer and Peire Cardenal and the Galicians Airas Nunes, Pero da Ponte and Alfonso Eanes do Coton; there were also renowned Hispano-Hebrew poets who dedicated praises in verse to him, such as the Toledan Todros Abulafia, author of a vast songbook composed during his reign, not yet translated into Spanish. Even Giovanni Boccaccio uses him as the central character in the first tale of the last day of his Decameron, where his generosity is praised.^[133]

Outstanding among the extensive Alfonsine works are: the Fuero Real de Castilla, the Espéculo and the Siete Partidas, among the legal works; the Tablas alfonsíes, among the astronomical ones; and among those of a historical character, the Estoria de España and the Grande e general estoria or General estoria, a work of universal history. The Cantigas de Santa María is a collection of lyric songs, written in Galician-Portuguese and accompanied by musical notation and very colorful illustrations that are among the finest painting of their time. The Lapidario deals with the properties of minerals, and the Libro de los juegos with recreational subjects (chess, dice and tables), sports of the nobility at that time. The King's involvement was sometimes direct and sometimes indirect, but he was undoubtedly the architect of these works:

The king makes a book not because he writes it with his hands, but because he composes its arguments and corrects and evens and straightens them and shows the manner in which they should be done, and then whoever he orders writes them down. But we say for this reason that the king makes the book.

— Alfonso X the Wise, General estoria I, f. 216r.

That is to say, he conceived the plan of the work, provided the means to carry it out and gave precise instructions on its structure and content, and even went down to details such as specifying the drawings and illustrations that were to adorn the text. This concern for a work well done is also shown in the prologue of the opening treatise of the Libros del saber de astrología, which is the Libro de las figuras de las estrellas fixas que son en el ochavo cielo, a revised version undertaken in 1276 of a first translation made in 1256. There it is said that the King ordered the translation of the text from Yehudá ben Mošé and Guillén Arremón de Aspa in 1256.

And afterwards this aforesaid king corrected it and ordered it to be composed, and he removed the passages he understood to be superfluous and duplicated and that were not in correct Castilian, and put in the others that he understood to be fitting, and as for the language he corrected it himself. And in the other branches of knowledge he had as compilers Master John of Messina and Master John of Cremona and the aforesaid Yhudá and Samuel. And this was in the 25th year of his reign.

For this work Alfonso summoned a group of scholars in the Hebrew, Arabic and Latin languages, with whom he formed his royal scriptorium, also known as the Toledo School of Translators. He had the collaboration of Christians who came from all over Europe, Jews and Muslims, who carried out important scientific work by rescuing texts from Antiquity and by translating Arabic and Hebrew texts into Latin and Castilian. These works would definitively establish Castilian as a learned language, in both the scientific and the literary spheres. From his reign onward, moreover, it would be used as the language of the royal chancery instead of Latin, which had been the language in regular use in the royal diplomacy of Castile and León.

He also created in Seville some Studii or general Schools of Latin and Arabic. He likewise founded in 1269 the School of Murcia, directed by the mathematician Al-Ricotí.

He raised to the rank of university the General Studies of Salamanca (1254) and Palencia (1263), that of Salamanca being the first to bear that title in Europe.

Legends

The King is credited with the order that in all the inns of Castile a small portion of food, usually cured meat or cheese, be served with drinks — what Cervantes called llamativos of thirst and Quevedo avisillos, and in the 20th century called tapas — in order to delay drunkenness and prevent the fights and troubles it caused on leaving the taverns, roadside inns and eating houses. This custom gave rise to several etiological legends, although the oldest and most solid is this one, because it is supported by the fact that King Alfonso prided himself on being a gastronome and on being the King with the best table in Europe, as he declares in his secular cantiga XLIV:

There were kings here of greater power / in conquering and in winning lands, / but none who took greater pleasure / in eating when they give him a good meal... / for I took great delight in very good eating.^[134]

Attempts are made to link this legend with a journey of the King to Jerez de la Frontera. Another legend, set this time in the Alcázar of Segovia, charged him with having committed out of pride a blasphemy against God by asserting that, had he been present when God created the world, he would have made it differently, as a result of which the divine punishment of a great fire in this alcázar (1258) would have occurred, in which important figures of his Court perished, and, in other versions, his marginalization at the end of his days in Seville from his own kingdom, disputed and for the most part dominated by his son the future Sancho IV.^[135]

The first version of this legend, now lost, dates from the end of the 13th century, perhaps spurred by the noble rebellion known as the Conspiracy of Lerma (1272), the rebellion of the future Sancho IV and the death of the heir prince Ferdinand de la Cerda, the starting point of a deep legal controversy over the legitimacy of the order of royal succession. Moreover, it was quite common in the literature of the period (as in the Libro de Alexandre) to condemn as pride in any monarch the pretension of knowing and mastering nature and of undertaking reckless enterprises burdensome to the nobles, as in the case of Alfonso X had been the pursuit of the imperial crown or the overriding of the "good fueros" of old in favor of the demanding new Alfonsine Fuero Real and the Siete Partidas; the rebellious medieval nobility always delighted in curbing monarchical power and in watching a judge judged and questioned for trying to consolidate a strong institution, as the kings of absolutism would later achieve from the Catholic Monarchs onward.^[136] Widely circulated orally, and sometimes told as a prophecy made about the newborn and recounted to his mother Beatrice, the written testimonies of the legend appear in the 14th century. It was taken up by the Chronicle of 1344, by another Crónica found in the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, and it is also found in a codex of legal texts (BNE 431); there are also written testimonies of it in Portugal, Aragon, Navarre and Catalonia, sometimes attributed by confusion to King Ferdinand IV "the Summoned",^[137] and it made one of its last appearances in El baladro del sabio Merlín (Seville, 1535).^[138]^[139]^[140]

Preceded by

Ferdinand III

King of Castile
1252–1284

Succeeded by

Sancho IV

Preceded by

William of Holland

King-elect of the Romans
1257–1275
(rival of Richard of Cornwall,
1257–1272)